This is way OT... heck, It's Sunday.
>>Take it away, Frank. Sounds like the only sound to hear. Monk and Coltrane. You like that bebop huh? <<
About once every five or ten years I experience a touch of tofflerian shock. Sometimes all it takes is something like this silkroad subject to push me over the edge. At that point it's good for me to step back and go back to basics. Then I come back, and everything is all better, once the smoke clears.
Last week I did exactly that and went back to my jazz teachings and I did listen to quite a bit of Monk and the guys who used to call 125th Street "Home." And I went to a couple of concerts.
On Thursday it was Carnegie Hall night to hear Jon Faddis, with guest conductor Gerald Wilson (eighty-ish) conduct the CHJazz Band . Wilson was so good at it, that Faddis had better give some thought about his job security.
The theme of the night was the music of Jimmi Lunceford and Tommy Dorsey. Branford Marsalis made a cameo appearance and did some things that re-established my regard for him, which got lost temporarily when he went "commercial." I'd forgotten how good a jammer he actually was.
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From carnegiehall.org :
JIMMIE LUNCEFORD AND TOMMY DORSEY:
THEN AND NOW
THE CARNEGIE HALL JAZZ BAND
Thursday, November 12, 1998 at 8:00 PM
Carnegie Hall Jazz Band
Jon Faddis, Music Director
Special Guests: Branford Marsalis, Gerald Wilson, Snooky Young
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Last night's jam at Lincoln Center featured some really old timers like Harry "Sweets" Edison (83), Al Grey on the Trombone (74), Stephen Riley (also 74) and these guys couldn't care less about coherence, modal dispersion, or compacting lambdas, except for how it applied to their life's work. Cyrus Chestnut was his own incredible self on the 88's, and the sounds that Nicholas Payton has been putting out on his trumpet have been altogether awesome, lately.
From WBGO's site at wbgo.org
"This season's "battle royale" will feature several generations of musicians playing the blues up, down, sideways and in the "gut bucket." In a rhythm section led by Cyrus Chestnut, such jazz heavyweights as Al Grey and Teddy Edwards will spar with younger talents including Nicholas Payton, Stephen Riley and others...."
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One theme that has been going through my head since my last day of posting here, and in a way related to this Silk Road topic, is a piece I once heard Monk perform at a workshop. It's titled: "Mysterioso." |
