I'm going to review records in my collection, and you'll be able to decide if they're worthy of your collection. These records are what I consider "must haves" for any jazz aficionado, and would be found in their collections. I wont review any record that's not on CD, nor will I review any record if the CD is markedly inferior. Fortunately, I only found 1 case where the CD was markedly inferior to the record.
Our first album is "Moanin" by Art Blakey and The Jazz Messengers. We have Lee Morgan , trumpet; Benney Golson, tenor sax; Bobby Timmons, piano; Jymie merrit, bass; Art Blakey, drums.
The title tune "Moanin" is by Bobby Timmons, it conveys the emotion of the title like no other tune I've ever heard, even better than any words could ever convey. This music pictures a person whose down to his last nickel, and all he can do is "moan".
"Along Came Betty" is a tune by Benny Golson, it reminds me of a Betty I once knew. She was gorgeous with a jazzy personality, and she moved smooth and easy, just like this tune. Somebody find me a time machine! Maybe you knew a Betty.
While the rest of the music is just fine, those are my favorite tunes. Why don't you share your, "must have" jazz albums with us.
Well, this is certainly not jazz (aldo they have worked with some notable jazzmen), but still, interesting music, if you like that type, I beleive that Op would be interested, as well as @mahgister and perhaps some of you guys as well
The name of the choir is ’Skruk’, they are from Norway and they have been active for almost 50 yeras now. SKRUK has a varied repertoire, influenced by Norwegian folk music, spirituals, world music, and jazz, and has collaborated with many musicians,
Thanks very much.... I discovered this one thanks to you...
Very interesting!
I had already some albums with Mahsa Vahdat , Persian music is one of my love...
Farsi and Russian are my favorite languages for song... For sure i like German and italian, but i have a soft spot for these languages sounds....
Jazz being "freedom" musical synonymus, any music can be assimilated or transformed in jazz anyway.. Welcome....And jazz had taught us that musicians incorporating improvisations matter not less than written compositions...
Like classical music, jazz is a general perspective, a spirit attitude, far more encompassing than just a restrictive "style"....
I am under the shock now of listening the album with Freddie Hubbard and Woody Shaw, thanks to your insisting recommendation...Trumpet mastery twice in one album is incredible...
The last time you put me in schock so great as this, was with our beloved Pat Martino irresistible creativity ...But trumpet is my instrument in second with piano first and guitar in third position... There exist for sure other great trumpeters than Miles Davis and Chet Baker....But i cannot buy all albums that exist, i need recommendation ...
After the master playing of my above post, here we have a clear explanation.... Fascinating...
I think the origin of humanity is humor victorious over fear in creation, the recreation of time in ceremony where music and speech reunited again recreating man itself and men together...
A remark about drums in general : So astounding and refined is Indian tabla drumming, and it is refined and deep in musical meaning and with metaphysical meaning, i was always flabbergasted how African traditional drummer evoke something way more deep in a sense in their "rolling speaking" way about our human origin more than about cosmology like in the Indian case...
There is at the end no personal taste so much who moves us toward music but more a thirst for learning experience at the end...
For this Grant Green album i love very much, like some others Grant Green, you are very right...
When i spoke about time in classical written music where the maestro determined the quality of the "musical time" and his value, i spoke about two extreme polarities about musical time like in the case of Furtwangler and Celibidache...
But i must admit that i begun to love jazz at a mature age only, when i was able to distinguish and perceive the most important element in music, which is musical time out of metronomical or measured time, a phenomenon especially at the heart of what improvising jazz musicians together experienced when playing at their optimal they created a piece where all is working well in his own time dimension...
This is the reason why now i love more musicians interpretation than the written score... Why i love jazz at the same level than classical.... And why i can appreciate Indian and Persian music as much as these other two European music for example...
When i was young, and not being a musician nor an educated music student, i goes only with my taste, now with maturity i learned slowly how to learn, listening "musical time" expression...What you called "magic"...My tastes were no more the main ruler in my listening, and it is for this reason i was able to open my mind to others musical dimensions...
Musicians are the salt and the meal of music not only and mainly the written score....Time is on their hands not in the written score....
My best to you and all....
On a different thread, mahgister wrote very eloquently about “time” in music; specifically, an orchestral conductor’s time conception. It could be said that the musical “particulars” that come into play (😉) in the expression of time in music are, fundamentally and to one degree or another, the same no matter the genre. When there is agreement on a deep level, the magic happens.
For sure when i distinguished musical time and physically measured time, i was also speaking of polarites like un the usual Extreme opposite concept of time polarities between Furt, and Celi...Bernstein being more in the middle and for me more Beethovenian in his Egmont than Celi for sure... But speaking about this polarity between Furt and Celi , I was speaking about classical interpreted written musical score...
This polarity between musical time and physical measured time is so important in jazz , i discovered it when i read about a black musician in Us , i forgot who, who was instructed by an African musician about the necessity for the music to "roll" ... He tested this african musician with pieces of european music, and often the African did say "it does not roll" even with some jazz sometimes..
Intrigued he decided to go to Africa...And the end of his story is that he finally understood what "rolling means"...
I interpreted this anecdote by listening to the way some interpretation of playing jazz musicians goes the fine line between this polarity: between measured repeated intervals of physical usual time and musical time sentences and beating "rhymes" in and out of usual flowing time... The pattern is a rolling resonant waves for me something akin to poetical time and resonance in speech compared to prosaic means...The African Youruba speaking drums are spectacular example of this in the hand of a master able to make the drum roll and speak and certainly one of the inspiration in the black soul origin of jazz......Time is no more flowing so much but metamorphosing itself into being ...Time unchained rolls...
I dont know if my post make sense for a seasonned musician... I am not one at all... I only listen.... 😁😊
Frogman you are very right about Jazz.... There is no best...Only our favorite for a specific musical jazz "idiom"...The more i learned about jazz the more my preference have evolved too...
It is also true about classical interpretations, here too our "best" is less an expression of "the" best there is than a reflection about ourself...
But when all that is said, in a written musical idiom like classical language , some creators emerge out of the crowd...
For me my favorite is Bach( the best 😁😊) and in a less evident way for the rest of the people, i favor Scriabin i put on par with all others geniuses i loved too ....
I was very moved when i learned that one of the greatest and purest interpreter of classical Indian music on the sarod, Ali Akbar Khan, own a Bach portrait and admire him dearly...
There is no best, save Bach, even Chopin thought so and he borrow a lot from Bach in his music.... 😁😊
I apologize for my Bach cult bordering on completely subjective preference, but i am not alone by far....
In jazz i have to many favorite now to enumerate them...
For example i like Bill Evans very dearly but what About the great Oscar Peterson and many others ?
I think i am able to love all jazz musicians for what they are: pure musician in a quest for their own freedom....
Jazz is not inferior to classical neither to Indian music neither to any musical style....
Jazz is spiritual freedom too....
It liberate me from my prejudices and ignorance about music....
Music cannot be superior to his musicians... This is a jazz lesson....
In a way Bach is not superior to Bill Evans...Why?
Because Evans will teach something to Bach himself....
Bach learned from all great composers of his time, he admired Vivaldi and Corelli or Buxtehude and copy them by hand with devotion....
He was humble, even if he know his own trade to the minute, like great mathematicians and craftsman are because they worked all day without rest...Like are jazzman like Sun Ra who played 7 /7 almost 24/24 all his life...I admire him too... But his albums collections is too vast to be listened to for me right now (100 albums officially).... 😁😊
You wrote that you admire Schiff’s style. I do also and would be tempted to characterize what I hear as, not lacking, but devoid of “STYLE”. Not sure I can put what I mean into words. Incredibly dignified playing in every positive sense of the word.
I am amazed by your choice of words...
Andras Schiff is a genius who gave to his second version of Bach well tempered klavier exactly the playing transcendent quality you describe concretely ...
I an glad someone put precise words on my impression and admiration for Schiff Bach...
I think music is, ultimately and from the start, a musician language and all musicians are able to TRANSLATE one idiom to another one ...
Human culture in spite of his manifested differences is universal....Consciousness is one...
Then jazz, classical, or Indian or Chinese music are understandable by any musician on earth and by any listener...The greatest discovery of the last century was the inter-translation and influence between all specific cultures and revealing that in essence there is only one with many communicating facets...Then so much precious is the center of any tradition to be what it is, so much precious are the area of contact between them...
The musical interplay between playing a tune or a symphony , or improvising and creating a new one is a musician matter...
Music is musicians heart affair and there is no absolute frontier between lovers...
Classical for me is like Tai-Chi....Jazz is like real martial art....
In Indian music the mix between improvisation and planning is balanced , it is why this style is so deep....
None is inferior though in any musical styles......
Each musician is a personnality and the life of a classical musician is not the same life than a jazz one in any written novel....
Chet Baker or Miles Davis dont look like the usual classical musician ....
How Baker or Miles did their practice? They play all night in a bar drinking ....
How did Murray Perahia did his practice? Alone in a room....
And between our two hemispheres one goes looking his internal map, the other one wait for the unrecognized around him....
Any musician can chose to be anything he want , he is free but habits are also masters....
We are programmed by ourselves...
This is at the same time our freedom and the limit of our freedom...
Our brain obey our heart, but when the heart has set his choice the brain take the habit seriously....
Any jazz musician can play jazz, or the reverse, but they win usually at one game or the other....Keith Jarrett being an exception....
But remember like said frogman that the greatest musicians were master at improvisation....The crowds came to see them improvising and were amazed... For example Bach walking kilometers to listen Buxtehude improvising, or Bruckner so amazing at organ improvisation that people dumbfounded claimed that he was Bach reincarnated....Bruckner was born the greatest organ improviser before learning how to compose... Remember Paganini mesmerizing audience in a trance by violin improvisation so flabbergasting people thought he was possessed by the devil.... Listz and Scriabin after him founded modern piano music by improvisation on the spot also.....
For example the Vivaldi phrasing style is so remarkable, that we know right on the spot that this priest with a special permission from the pope to interrupt a mass to play music, improvized so easily, that he said that he was "able to compose more speedily than for someone to transcribe anything written "....
Reality is a complex matter, the brain, too and the heart only is simple because he is the master of his two slaves hemispheric servants...
Musicians improvise or play a written score because their heart said so at the times they chose....
I must confess i dont like usually much many drummers solos.... These one are more music than "drummers solos"....This is why i like them Morello and Roach ...
I think that he has the right to speak his mind and new blood is welcome no ?
And anyway it is a shame Youn Sun Nah the korean jazz/pop/folk singer is not more known ... She is more than simply talented.... It is a versatile singer like Joni Mitchell was...A true artist...
And why not Elena Frolova , a less impressive voice, but a no less impressive poet.... But here we are no more in jazz for sure...
I apologize...
i listen geniuses nevermind the genre anyway....I quit listening genre and style only long ago...Any great musician will do even chinese one, jazz or not... :) 😁😊
Then welcome to anyone who dare to speak his mind...
Or is it a closed club?
By the way i always spoke for myself and dont appeal toward an invisible crowd for help to attack someone, especially newcomer...
Sorry but i spoke also my mind...
We are all friends here and may differ of opinion, this is a good thing....Not a reason to throw stones to anybody....
I like discussion a lot with reason....
I am dismayed at the number of people that stay stuck on the old classic names.
I will only add that i love classic in jazz because i dont know all of them by far....
Then my only criterion isnot new versus old jazz, but genius versus more ordinary....
Then i differ with our new guest on this point....
I cannot evaluate jazz players as well and as precisely and historically as erudite as frogman ...
As he said there is no rule...
Most geniuses are known in all human fields ...
But unrecognized geniuses by all save a few who knows them exist ...
Roger Boscovitch is no less genius than Newton but he was very less known...
Gesualdo in music is a genius on par with many more well known others ... his genius is more visible today ... Only Monteverdi can exceed him with his creativity ... And only Bach can rival Monteverdi in genius anyway...But if we forgot who is the better, Gesualdo is unique in all musical history ...
And in the short history of jazz which is now an earth global affair, many names deserve to be more well known who are not so well known in North America...
One thing is sure, music moves us and the way music moves us at the end obey no rules and sometimes some music moves us more than it moves many others ...
Music at the end is a personal affair more than a cultural race to win a prize...
We cannot love all musical geniuses at the same level for each one of them ...We obey our heart and our heart is unjust or unwise he does not need any reason to love ...
I discovered long time ago that i love musicians more than the musical language because each musician give its interpretation in its own unique way ... Understanding each musician is an ideal position , i am not qualified nor able to do it ... I love too much some to be fair and balanced ... It is why i appreciate frogman judgment so much ...
Philly Joe with a great group of personnel including Pepper Adams, Blue Mitchell, Julian Preister, Sonny Clark and Jimmy Garrison and, here’s an "obscure player", tenor Bill Baron Jr., the older brother of the great pianist Kenny Baron
Jazz after the war stay not just a specialized genre from America but became little by little a musical universal new larger encompassing language ... As interesting as classical ....
You mentioned Jan Johansson. I agree he is under rated. My favorite album of his might be his Folkvisor, Jazz Pa Svenska album. It is just a piano and an upright bass. It is very well recorded and it is on my “test track” list. Really great decays and presence.
I focussed my attention on a drummer these days ... It is not often the case ... Sometimes in the past i did it as for Paul Motian for example or Elvin Jones ...
Manu Katché is very interesting ...
I am interested by albums created around him ...I listen to 9 of them now ...
He did never take the stage and serve the music so well we forget him but his work is so minimalistically musically good ... Colored me impressed ...
Each post of frogman is like a small jazz masterclass ...😊
Thanks ... It help my ears/brain to listen differently and approach a musician as Davis with more understanding than just my mere uninformed "taste" ...
Music is also ethic and knowledge not only esthetic, each musician embody an ethical,esthetical and a knowledge perspective inherited from his time which he contribute to transform ...
Arguably, this is a prerequisite for performing ANY style of improvised music well.
It’s pretty hard to stay "in the zone" while switching back and forth between right and left brains.
Your topic brought the following to mind:
"Just a little more and this instrument is gonna be so connected with my brain that my fingers aren’t gonna have to play it"
-- Duane Allman
Great post stuartk... thanks ...😊
The threshold of virtuosity is passed when this is the instrument which play you, no more you playing the instrument ...
Music only grows ,not without, but certainly out of virtuosity ...
I had this impression listening all great musicians ...
By the way it is true of the thinking process too in the same way as it is true for a set of artistic gestures , the thought process must go on its own and the thought process work better without the ego ....Mathematics thinking is the best example of this ...
" The tools think better than you , let it work " -- Anonymus craftmanship artist
Wonderful lines by my most revered jazz pianist about his art that he explained so well here ...
Nature is only one complex and simple gesture with no ego behind this gesture manifesting through all phenomenon ... Japanese zen culture as Chinese Taoism integrate it perfectly...
In Europe Goethe seeing of plant and mammals and physical phenomenon as light and colors expressed it so well that few understood it ... Goethe never used mathematical formulas to exorcise nature or never hypothetized an evolutionary mechanism , his scientifical goal what not establishing a new theory but to change the way we look by forgetting any abstract theory and learn how to look before and behind our ego ...
Bill Evans dont play piano with his ego; we feel he play without any ego, lost in music or lost in meaning ...
"There is a Japanese visual art in which the artist is forced to be spontaneous. He must paint on a thin stretched parchment with a special brush and black water paint in such a way that an unnatural or interrupted stroke will destroy the line or break through the parchment. Erasures or changes are impossible".
I don’t enjoy many K. Jarrett recordings for the same reason.
Of course, in some circles, such a statement is liable to provoke a similar reaction to ramming a stick into a hornet’s nest!
I like Keith Jarrett and Miles Davis but i love Bill Evans and Chet Baker ...
Keith Jarret is a marvellous super talented pianist with an ego he never learned to forgot though ... He play for himself first ...than there is mannerism in his playing so captivating it is and it is... I own one hundred albums of Jarrett by the way then nobody can accuse me of hating him 😁 ...
But Bill Evans play for people, forgotting himself, without an ego or forgotting his ego , lost in music with us and moved by the music as we are with him ...
Keith Jarrett impress me more than he moves me ...
It is the reverse for Bill Evans....
I exactly remember the first time i listened Keith Karrett in 1976 in the Koln concert with a friend in his appartment ... i was impressed...Something pulsating in my mind i never forgot ...
I remember exactly where and with whom i listened Bill Evans in a car long time ago and i was instantly moved ... Not so much impressed but moved by his playing something beating in my heart not in my mind at all ...I never forgot...
Now Jarrett cannot stop speaking, mumbling etc because he is alone with the music, oblivious of us, we are not with him for him ...
Evans is with us silently ....Music for him is not a show so good it can be but a sacred intimate moment he partake with us and never just for himself ...
It is the same for Chet Baker ...I own 100 albums of Baker too ... I admired Keith Jarrett and Miles Davis; but Evans and Baker are more my friends than mere idols ... They spoke to me personaly more than they play music...
I remember even thinking the first month : are Baker a top virtuoso and Evans too are they top good musicians ? I never doubt one second that Keith Jarrett and Miles Davis were top musicians virtuoso and never ask that question in my first listenings because it was evident from their playings...
But like as you are with a woman that moves you a lot, you dont think about his way of making love if it must reflect a perfect or imperfect love making styles mastery waiting to be evaluated ... We think as such with a woman who we paid for entertainment not about a woman we love nevermind what ... I apologize for my example... I could not have a better one ...😁
For me Baker and Evans are in a class of their own with no comparison with anybody even to musicians with more virtuosity ... And they are many other top musicians at the trumpet as at the piano ...But they are not my personal friends...
My new low cost tube preamplifier with three tone controls well done (50 bucks) for my active speakers make my soundfield even better and it was good already...
Then i listened the sound ( not the music) of my system for the last 24 hours...😁
It is really a joy to have a better component which help but nothing beat relaxed musical listening ( not excited sound testing ) ...
I will begin to listen music after my calming of nerves ...
😊
«Sound accompany music and reveal his beauty as a wedding dress for a woman it dit not replace it or her so beautiful the dress or the sound could be »-- Anonymus single frustrated audiophile soon maried and listening music for the first time of his life relaxed ...😉
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