Clint Eastwood Carnegie Hall Concert Review
This post was inspired by my viewing of the Clint Eastwood's "After Hours" Jazz Program on NBC today. It is Off Topic, kinda. You will be the best judge of that.
I was caught pleasantly off guard today 'Round Noon' by a televised replay of a jazz concert I had attended in 1996 at Carnegie Hall. At the time, I wrote a review on it and published it in the Network Magazine (previously called LAN Magazine) Forum on Compuserve. The title of the thread was Jazz Lan(d). It follows below.
[Keep in mind that this was just short of two years ago. Talk about a guy changing his tune, eh? <g>]
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RE: Clint Eastwood Carnegie Hall Concert Review
DATE: 10/20/96 10:29 AM
Tom, and All,
I sometimes regard network dynamics for their musical qualities, forming mental images and visualizations of rushing forces, star bursts and dancing notes, morphing and stabilizing for only a few seconds at a time in proportion to the activity and direction of network flows. There is the heavy burden of Layers One and Two, matched only by that of Layer Seven, in terms of staying power. The other layers are only called upon as needed, and if chosen in the design. [1998 late edit: I know, I know...shields up and waiting!]
As I view the utilization on Internet convergence points such as those at the NAPs and the likes of MFS' MAE EAST and MAE West, I find it hard not to visualize what must be taking place at various times of the day in those places, especially during peak-hours and lunch times. There's a form of music to it all, complete with stacatto, legatto, allegroes, andantes - and definitely during peak periods, a resounding Crescendo, all adding to a sense of turbulence and chaos, and later on, to a sense of respite. In the wee hours of the morning, in many places, it's a kind of placid state, where the net sits idle, doing a rope-a-dope, gaining in energy for the new day's orchestrations.
Remember my post script in the IP vs Tag thread re:
>I'm going to Carnegie Hall tomorrow night to see John Fadis and the CH Jazz Band gang. The theme of the concert is the Jazz Music from Clint Eastwood's Films, I think... Yeah, it sounded strange to me, too!< ??
I've been a season ticket holder at Carnegie Hall for many years, going back to the Eighties and before, and I value my box seat as one would their URL. I've been to over fifty or more jazz concerts there in my lifetime. This past Thursday's concert ranked at the top of them all, right along side of the best that Dizzy and Miles themselves offered in their lifetimes.
Clint Eastwood is not only totally NUTTSO CRAZY about jazz (his opening words on stage: ' I Luuuv Jaaazzzzz' ), but he's had a major-league jazz talent it in his back pocket all along, just in case his acting career fell through the cracks, as the story goes. It wasn't announced, or even in the program guide, but he made a curtain call -- just when the parking-lot cheats were bailing, when the regular concert "appeared" to be over.
He came on, received a standing ovation, said a few nice things, and then stated:
"I know that I'll probably not have another chance at this in my lifetime, and I'll never be able to live down passing up this opportunity at Carnegie Hall, so I'd like to sit down for a moment and try my hand at a 'lost chord.' "
He sat down and slowly got into a form of boogie-woogie at first (after some uncertain moments on my part, because I didn't know that he could play as well as he does) and proceeded to crank it up and blew the socks off of anything we had heard previously that evening, which in itself was sensational. His bee bop style is unbaleeeeevable, and caught me, along with everyone else, entirely off guard. For the first couple of minutes he was going it alone.
Then the drummer made an entry to give him some additional support with isochronicity, and then the bass came in and added the asynchronous element of syncopation.
Soon we had the brass section, the Sax Squad, with point and counterpoint abounding like so many spikes on a utilization plot, doing symmetrical and asymmetrical things all over the map. Throughout all of this, no one was stopping to check standards or RFCs, whatsoever. Not only was there no standard, but there was no pre-arranged script or title, for this was all free-form jazz -- jamming at its best.
And finally, the entire mob got into the jam -- everyone except the strings section that Warner Brothers had hired for this taped event. They just sat there like an ATM Forum committee, befuddled and looking slightly out of tune.
TOTAL BLOWOUT!! I'd have to search back to the Sixties for something comparable to this one! One that comes close in my mind is a back-to-back appearance of The Duke and Brubeck in 1966 which was put on at Lincoln Center. Duke played Brubeck's music, and vice versa. Brubeck went on to do another of these with Leonard Bernstein titled: " Brubeck Plays Bernstein Plays Brubeck," but that was far more subdued than this one, as you could imagine. Brubeck is another one who treats timing issues with little or no respect, being able to go from 9/8 to 3/4 to 11/8 to 4/4 to 5/4, all in the same piece, without need of a switch, much less a router.
The entire program consisted of theme songs and soundtrack titles that Eastwood had a hand in picking for the various movies he'd directed since the early Eighties:
"Play Misty for Me" (Misty, The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face, )
"Bird" (This Time the Dream's On Me)
"In the Line of Fire" (I Don't Know What Time It Was)
"White Hunter, Black Heart" (Satin Doll)
"The Bridges of Madison County" (I See Your Face Before Me)
"Honkeytonk Man" (San Antonio Rose)
"Thelonious Monk: Straight, No Chaser" (Straight, No Chaser and 'Round Midnight)
It was Eastwood who did the bebop biopic on Charlie Parker in '88 called "Bird." He also helped secure financing for Bertrand Tavernier's 'Round Midnight, starring Dexter Gordon.
From the Carnegie Hall program insert:
"And in his own stylish action picture, 'The Gauntlet,' Eastwood showcased Jon Fadis and Art Pepper on the soundtrack, bespeaking a classy insider's appreciation of jazz musicians.
The concert was unique in another way, as well. Eastwood's son, Kyle, heads up a band known as the Kyle Eastwood Quartet, and they came out to do "This Time the Dream's On Me." Another family tie was that of Thelonious Monk Jr. who led the party with the "Straight No Chaser" medley. TSM Jr. plays the drums, and does the rounds with his own quartet as well. I've seen him before at Lincoln Center as well as at Carnegie, in the past, and I think that he's doing well for the family name.
An interesting thing about Monk Sr.: He graduated from a technical high school in Manhattan, where he was celebrated as a mathematical genius. His application of mathematical formulae to his style of playing were intuitive and he applied them to his writings with regard to chord structures and timing. These qualities contributed to the seemingly dissonant and somewhat need-to-get-accustomed-to-it before-you-like-it brand of jazz. But oooohh, once you get accustomed to it....
Ordinarily, the show would consist of a squad of Carnegie Hall Jazz Band regulars, led by the totally-inimitable-for-his-brand-of-humor Fadis, and a cameo appearance usually by someone who has achieved legendary status, like Mel Torme, Winton Marsalis or Tito Puente. The events are supported financially by attendance subscriptions and by the patrons and benefactors of CH, but this one was had the added backing of Pepsi and Warner Brothers as well, so they had enough bucks to bring in a stellar list that would make anyone familiar with jazz perk up, begin pulsing and tap their feet immediately.
I managed to swipe a bundle of programs from an usherette when she wasn't looking <he he he>, so if you want a copy, e-mail me your postal address. It contains a special insert describing Clint Eastwood's history in this regard, and points to the numerous examples of his injecting Jazz, at every opportunity, when he is directing a film.
Regards, Frank Coluccio - Brooklyn's Foremost Jazz Nut!
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