Bach's Christmas Oratorio

I've been listening and listening again to this magnificent work. I have nothing else to say at this time. 

Aaron Thibeaux "T-Bone" Walker and Significant Texas Others

As a young boy in Detroit and Highland Park, Michigan I saw T-Bone Walker, Ivory Joe Hunter and Amos Milburn - Texas Blues Men - perform on the Ed McKenzie weekly Saturday television program that began in 1954. I also remember seeing Art Tatum, Charlie Parker, Eddie "Lockjaw" Davis and Charlie Ventura on McKenzie's show. What a thrill for a grade school kid. Take a look at the Ed Mckenzie Collection website at the Charles H. Wright Museum of African American History. It contains 67 photographs of musicians who appeared on his radio and television shows.
http://chwmaah-archive.com/?page_id=3413&album=9&gallery=12
   I also remember watching the fledgling NBA basketball games on Saturdays too. This was during the period in the NBA's reign when the only Black players that I knew of were Earl Lloyd and Nat "SweetWater" Clifton.
   Charles Brown, "T-Bone" Walker, Ivory Joe Hunter and Amos Milburn were of Texas, as were my mother and her parents. I must have heard these wonderful musicians on the radio, because their music has been with me for such a long time - since grade school! I've always liked my blues with guitars and horns. In addition, I preferred bluesmen in the company of jazz musicians (or rather jazzmen in the company of bluesmen). These Texas bluesmen were very able pianists. "T-Bone" Walker was a great guitarist. And to my way of hearing, Charles Brown was a great pianist. There's a snap and twang to their playing that I associate with Texas tenormen - Booker Erwin, Dewey Redman, Illinois Jacquet, Arnett Cobb, Ornette Coleman and others. It's almost a "T-Bone" Walker guitar sound on the tenor saxophone. I've had the great fortune of hearing these saxophone magicians in person.

Charles Brown, Franz Liszt, Jimmy Smith, Milt Jackson, Coleman Hawkins, Benny Golson & Art Farmer

It's utterly amazing, or so I think, that Art Blakey needed only to take his place in drummer's chair to energize a recording session - listen to the Jimmy Smith sessions with both Donald Bailey and Art Blakey on drums. Bailey was a very well respected drummer. To my ears he and Jimmy Cobb were in the same classroom - very precise time and fastidious, deferring to the leader of the band. Blakey was the leader of the band, he pushed whomever happened to be on the bandstand or in the recording studio with him - exhorting Lee Morgan, for example, "Play your horn! Get mad." Whitney Balliett who wrote precisely, fastidiously, and eloquently about jazz for the New Yorker for many years was very much into drummers. I think that Big Sid Catlett, Jo Jones and Buddy Rich were admired by Balliett as was Art Blakey. I think that Blakey came out of Big Sid's classroom. Catlett played with everyone - Bechet to Parker (so did Kenny Clarke). Big Sid Catlett was out of his own classroom. Tony Williams (R.I.P.), Andrew Cyrille and Sunny Murray are our master drummers.
   The above gets me to Jimmy's Smith's recently released Blue Note CD, Six Views of the Blues with Cecil Payne, baritone saxophone, Kenny Burrell, guitar and either Donald Bailey or Art Blakey, drums. This music hadn't been released before (to my knowledge, at least). It must have been shelved by Blue Note  because it doesn't fit the 'Jimmy Smith groove'. It certainly fits my groove. I much admire the genius  of  his Hammond B-3 when he's hooked up with horn players - Lee Morgan, Jackie McLean, Curtis Fuller and Lou Donaldson.
    The CD reissue of Milt Jackson's Atlantic and United Artists recordings with Coleman Hawkins, Bennie Golson, Art Farmer and Tommy Flanagan contains some astonishing playing and great tunes. Another marvelous 2004 reissue is that bearing the title Charles Brown Alone at the Piano on the Savoy label. Mr Brown is one of my favorite vocalists. He is a tremendous piano player also.
   I just recently fell under Franz Liszt's spell. Charles Rosen in his The Romantic Generation has some very informative and ear-opening things to say about Liszt's late piano music and lieder pointing to Debussy and Schoenberg. Alfred Brendel's Philips recording - Liszt: Late Piano Works is on my turntable as I write these words.

Music Is Finally In The Air - Stitt, Nono, and Stockhausen

I discovered a Sonny Stitt disc in cyberspace entitled Moonlight in Vermont. It features a very formidable rhythm section consisting of Barry Harris, piano; Reggie Workman, bass; and Tony Williams, drums. Quite a swinging thing indeed. This disc was unknown to me.

In the summer of 1952, when the Darmstadt summer courses reconvened, they were intellectually dominated not by Leibowitz and Messian but by Stockhausen, Nono, and Boulez …. (Paul Griffiths, Modern Music and After, p. 41)

   Luigi Nono's (1924 - 1990) recorded music has been in my vinyl stacks for quite a while - three DGG discs, an RCA, and a Wergo. The last few days I've been listening to a remarkable (and cheap) Wergo CD presenting his compositions Polifonica - Monodia - Ritmica, Canti per 13, Canciones a Guiomar, and "Hay que caminar" sonando I - III.

   I have also returned to my vinyl Nono discs. I haven't been thinking enough or clearly about this wonderful, beautiful, engaging, and engaged music to do more than pull my reader's coat. I like the expression, "pull someone's coat". It sounds like one of Prez's things. But somewhere back there, a memory trace (true or false) suggests to me that's this is an expression from a Socratic dialogue. But this locution, notion, image has been with me - my later and former selves - for at least half a century. And it sounds like something I heard on the corner, as it were. Nevertheless, it's an arresting notion and a very hip thing (Iceberg Slim?).
   I've been listening and enjoying Karlheinz Stockhausen's Contra-Punkte, Refrain, Zeitmasze, and Schlagtrio. His Gruppen, composed for three orchestras, and Zeitmasze, for five winds are on my all-time-all-time list of tunes. Why? Because I grew up with this music; it's grown-up music - "And my new 'loves' all seem so tame". I wore out Robert Craft's Columbia (budget!) recording of Zeitmasze and Pierre Boulez's Le Marteau sans maître. Well I wouldn't count minimalism as a love interest at all.
    It is a very interesting ("coat pulling") exercise to read Paul Griffiths' account of Zeitmasze and then listen to the recording a few times (See Griffiths, op. cit., page 92 or don't). Indeed, it's complicated music; but it sounds so fine; and that's all that matters. Schlagtrio is a very slow and meditative conversation between piano and percussion. Very fine ….   

Defenses of Anarchism - Income Inequality All The Way Down

Socrates, Bertrand Russell, Martin Luther King, Noam Chomsky, Kenneth V. Cockrel, Amy Goodman, General Baker, Naomi Wolf, Cornel West, Paul Krugman and (stylistically) Karl Kraus are my political theorist-activist all-stars - those who have influenced my thinking and spirit the most. Ms Wolf's article linked below and the 900+ Comments must be read.
   The links shown below will help to clarify the Occupy Wall Street (OWS) picture. Robert P. Wolff's book, A Defense of Anarchy was very influential in my political thinking. Indeed, the only other political treatise that I recall reading (and re-reading) was (is) Plato's Republic. Wolff's book is especially worth attending to today. His blog, The Philosopher's Stone, is also worth our attention.    

Naomi Wolf, Guardian:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2011/nov/25/shocking-truth-about-crackdown-occupy
Naomi Wolf: Reception, Responses, Critics
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2011/nov/28/naomi-wolf-reception-responses-critics?intcmp=239
Mattathias Schwartz, New Yorker:
http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2011/11/28/111128fa_fact_schwartz
John Heilemann, New York Magazine:
http://nymag.com/news/politics/occupy-wall-street-2011-12/


   Two tastes from Robert P. Wollf:

The OWS Movement has already won. In ten weeks, it is completely changed the focus of the public conversation in America, from debt reduction and Congressional deadlock to income inequality. That is a simply extraordinary victory, achieved completely without the big money backing that launched and sustained the Tea Party.

Idly surfing the web, I came upon a remark made by Paul Krugman on a Sunday talk show. Speaking of Newt Gingrich, Kurgman said, "He is a stupid man's idea of what a smart person sounds like." That is the most perfect description I have ever heard of a high profile politician. Credit where credit is due. 

http://robertpaulwolff.blogspot.com/

How the Present Determines the Past

Along with Julian Barnes memoir Nothing To Be Frightened Of, Jonathan Lear's Freud, and Nicholas Cook's Music: A Short Introduction, I am reading Daniel Kahneman's exciting Thinking, Fast and Slow. Not much time left for listening to music. I am exercised these days by understanding notions of understanding, by both understanding music and human understanding. Kahneman's book has made me mistrust philosophy. But this justified mistrust has led me back - once more! (philosophy is a sickness after all) - to Wittgenstein, who also mistrusted philosophy! Ludwig Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations dances around the grammars of understanding and of understand quite a bit. This of course connects up with rule-following, which in turn connects up with meaning. He contrasts understanding pictures, music, and sentences. Saul A. Kripke in his Wittgenstein On Rules And Private Language connects Wittgenstein's views on these matters with those of David Hume and Nelson Goodman on meaning, induction, and skepticism. So one thing has led to many others.

   Kahneman's book has reminded me of how one can be misled by one's present beliefs in interpreting past events, how one's present self-consciousness determines what one believes about the past, and how 'memory' is tricked and tripped up by our present beliefs and concepts. The illusions of understanding work both ways: the past corrupts the present and the present corrupts the past. As I've noted before Schoenberg affects my hearing Mozart and Mozart affects my hearing Kagel. In what specific ways? I wonder.    

    

Thanks & Forgetting

I have very dark thoughts about the Thanksgiving holiday. While most people's thoughts run to a vision of the Mayflower crowd and Ozzie and Harriet, my thoughts run for some strange reasons to the indigenous Native Americans and Woody Allen's Hannah and her Sisters - best American holiday film ever, better than It's a Wonderful Life. I think what Thanksgiving means for many people is the beginning of the 'Thanks-getting' festivities - Black Friday which begins for some merchants on Thursday, Thanksgiving day! But of course there are three professional football games on TV today - thankfully we don't have to be mindful of any ugly historical bits. Nor do we, while watching football, have to engage with our families very much. 

    Except for "Jingle Bells" are there any Thanksgiving tunes? "Turkey in the Straw" I guess. But of course being a true American is in large part about forgetting, isn't it? "Don't know much about History" is another Thanksgiving tune.
     Thanks:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PF7cLnijKBs&feature=youtu.be   

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UBNi36U4SQI&feature=youtu.be

P.S. Hadley Freeman in November 22, 2011 Guardian writes:

Yes, it's Thanksgiving time in America, that special holiday marking the Anglo-Saxon invasion of someone else's country, which Americans celebrate by eating sweet potatoes and marshmallows. Mixed together, naturellement.

Is that what I was getting at?

Paul Krugman has - as always - something interesting to add about Thanksgiving:

http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/11/23/thanksgiving-is-un-american/?nl=opinion&emc=tyb1





  

Tho' Thought Matters . . . .

I haven't been listening to much music lately. Nor have I been thinking about what matters either. Nor have I been reading much, except for the New Yorker. I have looked at a few films via cable - I'm very impressed by Julianne Moore and her acting, she seems to take on serious and dangerous rôles, e.g. in the films Chloe and Savage Grace. I'm not a "film person", though I did enjoy Part 1 of the Woody Allen PBS documentary. Could it be that I'm anxious about Black Friday? Not a chance. I do get rather nostalgic as we roll into the holiday weeks. I haven't yet turned on my Christmas way-back music juke box yet, but I'll get there. I thought that I might share with my readers(!) my all-time (partial) list of favorite holiday tunes.

But first I'll begin with two sweeping claims: Anything by J. S. Bach and the entire Lady in Satin album by Billie Holiday.

Now the list:

"Merry Christmas Baby" by Charles Brown - Greatest Christmas Tune Ever, surpasses "The Christmas Song"!

"BeBop Santa Claus" by Babs Gonzales
"'Round About Midnight" by Babs Gonzales with Jimmy Smith's Trio
"Green Sleeves" by Bill Smith (c) with Jim Hall (g)
"Do You Miss New York" by Dave Frishberg
"La Mer" by Patricia Kaas
"The Christmas Song" by Pharoah Sanders
"Autumn in New York" by Ella Fitzgerald & Louis Armstrong
"My Favorite Things" by Sarah Vaughan
"Green Sleeves" by John Coltrane
"Bluesology" by Milt Jackson & MJQ
"Vocalise" Paul Desmond & Milt Jackson
"Money Honey" by The Drifters
"Yusef's Mood" by Yusef Lateef
"Birdland Story" by Eddie Jefferson & James Moody
"Santa Claus is Coming to Town" by Paul Bley
"It's the Talk of the Town" by Coleman Hawkins
"It's the Talk of the Town" by Herb Jeffries
"You Send Me" by Leon Thomas & Hank Crawford
"Santa Baby" by Eartha Kitt
"God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen" by Oliver Lake
"My Girl" by Hamiet Bluiett
"Manhattan" by Lee Wiley
"Lush Life" by Johnny Hartman & John Coltrane
"Guess Who I Saw Today" by Nancy Wilson
"When Johnny Comes Marching Home" by Jimmy Smith Trio
"Some Other Time" by Tony Bennett & Bill Evans
"Thanks For The Memories" by Gretta Keller 

EdgeFest - The Rest

There are a couple of music composition and performance tricks that I find particularly bothersome. The most bothersome trick for me is minimalism - the endless, sound-deadening chord; over-done micro-tonality. Second-place dishonor goes to over-done circular-breathing performances by wind players. There is music that is terribly fun to perform and not terribly fun to listen to. Recently I've developed an aversion to much of the piano music that I've been confronted with. Pianists who incorporate minimalist-composition routines in their improvising have to my ears developed a pianistic form of 'circular breathing'. Minimalist music and circular-breathing don't let any 'fresh air' out or in - it's just the same stale air.   Now that I've let the reader know what I don't care for, it's time to air what I did find to my liking among the remaining EdgeFest-2011 performances (I wrote previously about the performances of Sylvie Courvoisier-Mark Feldman and the Tamarindo Trio - Tony Malaby, William Parker and Tom Rainey).

    The trio composed of Andrew Bishop (saxophones), Tim Flood (bass), and Gerald Cleaver (drums) performed in the manner of free-jazz - competent improvisors who didn't arrest or distress me. In this case, as in my listening to the Tamarindo Trio, I kept attending to the rhythm section and not to the saxophones. This attention-bracketing phenomenon occurs quite often in my aural confrontations with free-jazz trio ensembles - the rhythm's on top and the tenor or soprano is on the bottom. I guess my ears have become to accustomed to the playing of the much missed Fred Anderson (R.I.P.).
    Ned Rothenberg's Clarinet Quintet #1. The composer performed on clarinet with the Mivos String Quartet. This five movement work was very appealing to me. The work performed quite expertly. There were two places in the work that I found off-putting - one was the section in which the writing called for John Adam's Shaker Loops style grinding in unison by the four strings and the other was a circular breathing section performed by the clarinetist that didn't seem to fit the contour of the work in the least. In all though, the Clarinet Quintet #1 is a captivating work that was very well performed.
     Enesco Re-Imagined - Lucian Ban and John Hébert. Georges Enescu (1881-1955) was a Romanian composer, virtuoso violinist, conductor, and teacher who resided in Paris. In spite of having recordings of his first and second string quartets and his opera Oedipe, I didn't know Enescu's music. So I had to take it on faith that the music that I heard was Enescu's music re-imagined. Never the less the re-imagined music that I heard was charming and interesting. It was performed by an all star ensemble - Lucian Ban, composer & piano, John Hébert, bass, Joyce Hammann and Mat Maneri, violins, Badal Roy, tabla, Andrew Bishop, saxophone, and Gerald Cleaver, drums.
   James Cornish's Short Opera Project - a musical setting of poems by Philip Levine. The instrumentation consisted of baritone horn/trumpet - James Cornish, reeds - Piotr Michalowski, bass/bassoon - Marko Novachcoff, bass - Christopher Skebo, cello - Abby Alwin, and mezzo soprano - Deanna Relyea. The music touched on Kurt Weill. Deanna Relyea's voice and singing were a treat for me.
   Vinny Golia & Friends - Golia (reeds), Tad Weed (piano), Alex Noice (guitar), Jon Armstrong (alto saxophone), and Andrew Lessman (drums). I was very impressed with Armstrongs playing - a lot of fire. I was not taken with the entire music experience. Golia is a very proficient saxophonist and enjoys near legendary status as the leader of west-coast free-jazz. I don't think I was up to enjoying his playing that evening. Again we had some of the marks of free-jazz: multi-instrumentalists must play all of their instruments, must do circular breathing, must begin softly to get the audience's attention - the way Miles started a set with a ballad, . . . .
    Craig Taborn gave a solo piano recital on Friday evening. The audience was very into what he was up to. I wasn't up to Taborn that evening. I certainly admire his playing and his musicianship. But his playing was too dense, too minimalist, too static - I needed more space to stretch out in. I was informed by a  person who knows about Taborn's music that he have changed his approach to improvising. Some may reckon that it's for the better, evolution of a new style perhaps; I found it mildly suffocating, not enough lightness, . . . .
    Joel Harrison 7: Search performed Harrison's compositions. His 7 consisted of Seamus Blake, tenor saxophone; Christian Howes, violin; Dana Leong, cello; Drew Gress, bass; Jacob Sacks, piano; Dan Weiss, percussion; and Harrison, guitar. The composer suggests that his compositions touch on Olivier Messiaen, John Adams and Arvo Pärt. To my way of hearing these last two influences are to be resisted - but these professed influences were not discernable to my ears in the music on offer by Harrison's 7 that Saturday afternoon. The playing of Christian Howes, violin and Dana Leong, cello was outstanding. The compositions were not very interesting to my mind. The piano seemed out of the compositional mix, as did the guitar. I can't understand guitars in conjunction with pianos - either one or the other but not both is best. And indeed I think guitar and bass guitar are better yet. The music was performed expertly. But the compositions weren't saying much to my ears and mind. The audience was captivated once more.
    Rova Saxophone Quartet. Bruce Ackley, Larry Ochs, Jon Raskin, Steve Adams. The quartet's chamber-music approach to its performances and the compositions of its members (and other composers) presents the listener with extremely precise articulation of the music-materials. The Quartet's music-material and spiritual tastes and influences are from the right places and spaces - Sun Ra, Varèse, Xenakis, AACCM, Ornette Coleman, and Coltrane. No discernible minimalist detours with Rova. The music offered was sublime. The audience that evening witnessed what was happening, and it knew it! A perfect way to end the 2011 EdgeFest.
     So I'm neither a minimalist enthusiast nor gaga about circular-breathing displays. I was enthralled by much of what I heard at this year's EdgeFest. The EdgeFest director, Deanna Relyea deserves our thanks for once again making wonderful performers of serious art music available to us.
 

        

EdgeFest (Continued) Must Wait, Charlie Rose, Mac-Attack & Baseball

I know I'm tardy with my wrap-up of the delightful Kerrytown, Ann Arbor 2011 EdgeFest. In addition to being in the holds of Art Blakey, Lee Morgan and Jackie McLean, I've been in the hold of my new wireless printer and Mac's recent operating (non-co-operating) system OS 10.7 "Lion". This last hold among holds has been excruciating - IT talk, unhelpful AppleCare chats, etc. I'll cash-out my EdgeFest review promise after game seven of the baseball's World Series tonight - Go Cardinals!

    I was very surprised to see Amy Goodman of Democracy Now! and Chris Hedges of TruthDig on the Charlie Rose TV program this week. I also listened carefully (last evening's Rose broadcast) to the author Amos Oz's sane and insightful thoughts concerning the 'Israel-Palestine' situation - I realize this way of putting it begs the question concerning Palestinian statehood, but isn't this is the only solution? Oz emphasized the lack of courage by politicians on both sides of this terrible situation.

http://www.democracynow.org/
http://www.truthdig.com/

Sunday After The EdgeFest

I'll have more to say about the EdgeFest upon my return to Columbus, Ohio. I can say that this year's festival was very successful from both an artistic standpoint and from the audiences' very positive reception and engagement with the music. Strings were a major thing and there was some very fine violin and cello playing. There were also very impressive piano and wind instrument performances. 

     Mean while Art Blakey and his Jazz Messengers have gotten hold of me.

EdgeFest 2011 - Kerrytown Concert House, Ann Arbor, Mi.

Thursday, October 19 was the first concert of the 15th annual EdgeFest in Ann Arbor, Michigan. The music is presented primarily in the Kerrytown Concert House that seats approximately 80 new and advanced music enthusiasts. 

    This year’s festival, which runs though Saturday, got off to a tremendously good start with the piano-violin wife and husband duo of Sylvie Courvoisier and Mark Feldman. They performed the each other’s compositions and a couple of pieces by John Zorn. I had heard Courvoisier a few years ago at the much missed National Bohemian Home in Detroit. Feldman appeared a the Guelph Festival two years ago in the context of a large ensemble. The music I heard last evening was very exciting. Courvoisier smacks the piano, both the keys and strings, in compelling musical ways - her articulation of melodic-rhythmic events leaves space for the listener to take the music in; she doesn’t rush her audience. Feldman’s playing was equally precise and beautiful - his intonation and his playing were quite beautiful - it was fast and clear.

    The final music event of the evening involved Tony Malaby (tenor & soprano saxophones), William Parker (bass), and Tom Rainey (drums). We all know about Parker’s rock-steady, rhythmic, and melodic playing - he tightens up most of the groups in which he plays. The drummer, Tom Rainey, I had not heard before (nor had I heard of him). His playing was a real treat - he played the drums and didn’t play around with the drums. The leader, Tony Malaby, was new to me also. This group presented its audience with an hour and ten minute music event. During this music event, I kept thinking of Sonny Rollins’ Sonny Moon for Two. In this case the audience was presented with very fine playing and interesting melodic and rhythmic ideas and articulation of Parker and Rainey. Malaby’s playing was less interesting to me. It flowed (a good thing) but it didn’t grab or amaze me. His ideas were less than expansive. I found was soprano saxophone tone irritating. One can certainly discern in Malaby’s playing his musicianship and saxophone mastery.  

J. S. Bach and Lee Morgan - It's Sunday After All

I've been listening to the music of J. S. Bach and Lee Morgan this past week. Bach's recorded music was provided by Nikolaus Harnoncourt and Gustav Leonhardt - Cantatas; Viktoria Mullova and Ottavio Dantone - Sonatas for violin and harpsichord; Philippe Herreweghe - Mass in B minor; Taverner Consort & Players • Andrew Parrott - Magnificat & Easter Oratorio; Jacques Loussier Trio - Goldberg Variations & Various Bach & Schumann • Kinderszenen; Gabriela Montero - Bach and Beyond; Andrew Manze and Rachel Podger - Solo & Double Violin Concertos, and Glenn Gould - Goldberg Variations (of course).

   In conjunction with the above I've been reading Nicholas Kenyon's recently published The Faber Pocket Guide to Bach - his guide to Mozart is also fine work for those of us 'down here on the ground' (= non-academics).

     My Lee Morgan listening resided in his The Procrastinator - with Bennie Maupin on tenor, Caramba,  and Infinity - the last with Jackie McLean on alto.
     Admittedly the above list encodes a lot of music, many hours of listening. But what other means does a person have available to administer to one's soul after one's favorite teams - the Michigan Wolverines and Detroit Tigers - have been defeated in the same weekend? I'm sad about these loses, but I"m so glad about the wonderful music that I got next to. Sweet music ....

P.S.   WKCR-FM     

Minimalism - Football, Baseball, and One Other Thing

Living in Columbus, Ohio and having to see The Ohio State University's colors (Scarlet and Grey) everywhere I travel has caused me to be an even more ardent University of Michigan enthusiast than I would have been otherwise. This year the Maize and Blue's football fortunes are on the rise while the Buckeye's football stock has plummeted. U of M in addition to being a great, world-class university has these good-making desiderata going for it, in all of football (at least): the best fight song ("The Victors") and the best uniforms. So I've been attending to Michigan football. 

The Detroit Lions professional football team is also undefeated. While profession football bores me, I'll have to watch the Lions play the Chicago Bears on TV tonight.

I love baseball this time of year - playoff baseball. There have been some terrific games already. It was very moving to see my Detroit Tigers defeat the highest-payroll in baseball,  New York Yankees in their series. I also had to giggle when the second highest-payroll team, the Boston Red Sox, were bounced by the lowly Baltimore Orioles - the Red Sox didn't make it to the post season, suffering one of the biggest September collapses in baseball history. 

Bill Harris Kresge Arts in Detroit Eminent Artist of 2011 - Party

September ended with a fabulous - not minimalist in any sense - Kresge Foundation party honoring the music-poet, dramatist, educator, fountain pen collector, and friend of over 50 years Bill Harris. The party was held at the Virgil H. Carr Cultural Arts Center located in Harmony Park in downtown Detroit. Bill Harris' wife, Carole played a large part in the interior design of the Carr Cultural Arts Center when it was revamped. Carole Harris took care of many (most?) of the necessary party details. Bill and the wonderful actor, Council Cargle performed dramatic readings from Bill's plays. The excerpts from the plays, the poetry thereof, were rendered with exception feeling and dramatic skill. The readings were for me the high point of the party. The food and drinks were fine too.

It was wonderful to see people I hadn't seen for too many years - the graphic artists, Elizabeth Youngblood and A. G. Smith, and the writer and Metro Times editor, W. Kim Heron. Kim Heron hosted the fine Sunday jazz radio program on WDET-FM, Destination Out. The program like so many worthwhile and vital projects in America was supplanted by a mindless and meaningless 'news' and talk radio format - part of the prolonged American Cultural Blackout, I guess.

Those present at the Bill Harris Kresge Foundation Party were given an impressive 80 page, full color book with marvelous photographs, excerpts from Bill's writings, essays, and much more besides. 

http://kresge.collegeforcreativestudies.edu/eminent-artist-award.html         

Coltrane! Coltrane! John Coltrane - né September 23, 1926

The last time that I heard John Coltrane in person was January 22, 1966 - the year before his death. His quartet performed at Cobo Hall in Detroit, Michigan. On the program with  Coltrane's quartet were  Monk's quartet and Sarah Vaughan accompanied by a trio. Coltrane also performed with Monk that evening for the last time. My wife and our unborn son were there with me. Our friends, the Murphy's, also attended this concert. The first time that I heard Coltrane was in the fall of 1959 when he appeared at Ford Auditorium with the Miles Davis Sextet. A rather full account of the fabulous August 1961 performance of Coltrane's group at the Village Gate in NYC which featured Eric Dolphy and Roland Kirk appears in my blog posts of March 17 and 26, 2011.
     Happy Birthday, John!

http://www.johncoltrane.com/

Apropos of Free-Jazz, Guelph Jazz Festival, and Schoenberg

The composer Allen Shawn's Arnold Schoenberg's Journey is a wonderful book. He explicates Schoenberg's music for the rest of us, for the unprofessional atonal enthusiasts. My view is that the atonal - I know "atonal" is a bad choice of nomenclature, a bad choice for getting things right - music in our life is often more accessible (another bad word) to jazz enthusiasts than to classical (another bad word) music enthusiasts. I recommend reading Shawn's short chapter 10, "Wrong Notes". Shawn compares Thelonious Monk 'composing' at the piano with Schoenberg's rapid-pace and nearly trance-like way of 'composing' at his writing desk, writing that Schoenberg, "believed passionately that art should come primarily from the unconscious." (106) He continues by posing four very interesting questions:

What if Schoenberg's music had been improvised? What if it belonged to the world of "free jazz"? Or more realistically, what if the technical aspect of Schoenberg's music had been kept secret when it was first introduced? Would it have more easily found a following if it had been presented as a form of spontaneous expression? (106)

I don't think that Schoenberg or Monk would have "easily found a following" in any case: their music isn't simple enough - unlike the music of a Marsalis, a Glass, or an Adams.
      In Schoenberg's music, as in free-jazz, the interval seems to be the thing. This is especially true of Henry Threadgill's music and his magic. As I noted in the Guelph Jazz Festival post, if one is interested in Schoenberg improvised, listen to Spooky Action's Schoenberg disc.

    

Sunday Morning - Red Baron et al.

#s 8 & 10 are left as exercises for the reader. Try YouTubing the list. Until I have something to say,

Cheers!

Hold on! Today's vinyl day. Later for YouTube!

Guelph Jazz Festival

This year's Guelph Jazz Festival was held in Guelph, Ontario, Canada on September 7 - 11. There was more music presented than was possible to take in. Typically the music presented is improvised, avant garde, and experimental - a mix of young and seasoned musicians. I've attended Guelph with a friend three times, in 2007, 2010 and 2011. Last year's festival was rather disappointing musically - it seemed to have been sponsored Apple Computer and ECM Records. George Lewis and his MacBook were ubiquitous and the latter 'performer' detracted from the music that managed to break through. But 2010 was never the less enjoyable. It's often worthwhile to hear what's not happening. And Guelph is a charming city. This year the merchants of Guelph were wary of the American dollar - isn't everybody! 2007 was Anthony Braxton's and William Parker's Curtis Mayfield Project's Guelph - it was a stupendous Guelph! We didn't attend in 2009 - the Guelph of David Murray, Fred Anderson, and the World Saxophone Quartet - since I had been involved in presenting Murray and the WSQ in Columbus, Ohio in 1999 and thereafter in a number of different guises over a six year span. But I'm sorry that I missed Guelph 2009 - David Murray and Milford Graves, Hamid Drake and Fred Anderson! How stupid could I have been? 

     Hamiet Bluiett of the World Saxophone Quartet and the grandmaster of the baritone saxophone, contra-bass clarinet, and much else remarked to me a while back that when he was coming of age musically he and his fellows looked to the young musicians to find out what was happening musically. Today, he went on to say, its the older musicians who are the beacons of what's happening. In terms of Bluiett's point, this was certainly the case - the 'old heads' were happening and showing the way forward (sometimes the way forward is back).

      I find the piano-saxophone duo format wanting musically in many cases. A few satisfying recorded examples include David Murray & Dave Burrell/John Hicks, Dave Brubeck & Paul Desmond and Marshall Allen & Terry Adams - we should remember also the recorded piano-trumpet masterpieces of Lewis Armstrong & Earl Hines and Chet Baker & Paul Bley. I think that the piano-saxophone performances that I find unsatisfying are those in which the pianist has a weak left hand, where the music lacks a bottom, where one hears a doubling of the melodic lines by the piano and saxophone. Right.

      A trio of piano, bass/drums, and saxophone/trumpet is a way of satisfying this author's performance preferences. We recall, don't we, the wonderful piano-drum-trumpet/winds duos and trios of Shelly Mann, Russ Freeman, and Shorty Rogers/Jimmy Giuffre?
     Free-Jazz - a-melodic and a-harmonic - the sound-events are the thing. [*]
One of the great, good things about about the annual Guelph Jazz Festival is that it emphasizes improvised avant-garde free jazz. It gives free-jazz players a chance to play their music and to get paid too. Getting paid is very important for free-jazz musicians; since, unless they have university or other teaching gigs, most music presenters refuse to present new music or free-jazz.
     We all know that free-jazz began with Ornette Coleman, John Coltrane, Charles Mingus, Cecil Taylor, Albert Ayler, Don Cherry, Sun Ra and others. We also know that free-jazz is defined by negative attributes - it's a-melodic, a-harmonic, a-rhythmic. It eliminates the traditional rhythm section as accompanist form. There are almost as many free-jazz styles as there are free-jazz players - there is no singular free-jazz style. But there are varying degrees of freedom in free-jazz. Sometimes the musicians have written scores or head-arrangements. Most often, however, music scores are absent. We also know that European free-jazz musicians have their own variety of free-jazz, one that is more out of the European art-music tradition. But Schoenberg, Webern, Bartok, and Stockhausen are favorites of both North American and European free-jazz musicians. N.B. North American includes Canadian!
       The stone free-jazz music that I heard in Guelph was performed by Trevor Watts (saxophones) and Veryan Weston (piano); Lotte Anker (saxophones), Craig Taborn (piano), and Gerald Cleaver (drums); and Creative Collective - Kidd Jordan (tenor saxophone), Joel Futterman (piano), William Parker (bass), and Alvin Fielder (drums); and Paul Plimley (piano), William Parker (bass), and (a drummer whose name I don't know who was pressed into service for the absent Gerry Hemingway).
       The free-jazz performances of Lotte Acker et al. and Paul Plimley et al. were composed of sound-events that didn't have beginnings, middles, or endings. They just began and then stopped. Lotte Acker's saxophone playing reminded me of what has been said of the earliest role of the tenor  saxophone, with its slap-tonguing techniques: it was a rhythm instrument supporting a bass line. So I thought Acker was tip-toeing with the saxophones while Taborn and Cleaver were playing their percussive piano and drums, respectively.

The Vancouver, BC pianist Paul Plimley engaged the music with a trio that included William Parker, bass and a drummer, whose name I don't know, who was sitting in for the estimable Gerry Hemingway. Plimley's set was too long, given what he was playing - two hands close together at the top of the piano keyboard then bounced to the bottom of the keyboard, over and over again. Cecil Taylor's former bass-man tried to steer the piano to the middle of things, but without success. The drummer tip-toed throughout. All in all too much of the same patterns with no flow.

      Creative Collective - Kidd Jordan (ts), Joel Futterman (p), William Parker (b), Alvin Fielder (d). For me the music created by the Creative Collective was the highlight of the Guelph Jazz Festival. This was free-jazz playing at its best. The group played in one long music-event. The music moved, it flowed, it had a beginning, middle, and end. Four fabulous musicians. Futterman and Fielder were unknown to me. Fielder played the drums, no tip-toeing with him. William Parker didn't have to direct traffic in this context (as he had done with Paul Plimley); he showed why he is so highly regarded as a bassist and musician. Kidd Jordan and Joel Futterman knocked me out with their forceful, subtle playing and musicianship. "Creative Collective" is certainly true of these musicians.

     On the stone-free-jazz side of the Guelph Jazz Festival, Trevor Watts & Veryan Weston and Creative Collective were superb and thrilled me with their musicianship.

On the Other Side. I heard Tygve Seim (saxophones) & Andreas Utnem (keyboards), Nicolas Caloia (bass) Quartet with Jean Derome (winds), Guillaume Dostaler (piano), Isaiah Ceccarelli (drums) and Henry Threadgill's (winds) Zooid with Liberty Ellman (guitar), Stomu Takeishi (bass guitar), José Davila (trombone & tuba), Elliot Kause (drums), and Christopher Hoffman ('cello).

     Tygve Seim & Andreas (ECM recording artists) performed in St. Georges Church. This space was apt for their ECM, Garbarek-like vibe. The audience, it appeared, was enthralled by the stillness of their etherial music. It sounded too good for me. But that's the ECM way.

      Nicolas Caloia's Quintet music was enjoyable for me. It was the most straight ahead music that I heard - it wasn't experimental or free-form. It was well played. I was impressed by J. Derome (winds) and G. Dostaler (piano).

       Henry Threadgill - Zooid. His music has been characterized as sui generis and his instrumentations and voicings as bizarre (The Penguin Guide to Jazz on CD, 5th ed.). I first heard Threadgill in person with the group Air in Ann Arbor (1980?). I was also most impressed by his flute solo on David Murray's recording Ming. Henry Threadgill gave an interview in Guelph as part of the festival program. He mentioned the music of Arnold Schoenberg as having influenced his music. He also alleged that American string players are very weak when it comes to rhythm - far weaker than string players of other countries. Now pay attention here!
       There is a group out of New York University that calls itself Spooky Actions (after Albert Einstein's phrase). Spooky Actions has recorded improvisations based on the music of Schoenberg, Webern, and Messiaen. The Webern arrangements and improvisations are in Threadgill's neighborhood conceptually. I think it's quite interesting to listen to Spooky Actions' Schoenberg and Webern recordings followed by Schoenberg and Webern followed by Threadgill. Then listen in reverse order. Then ..... Of course Monk is in there too. Go figure/listen.
       Threadgill-Zooid's was captivating to my ears - it was about time for musicians to bring their music-scores to the front. The musicians were all superb. The music moved up and down, but it flowed too. It wasn't free but it wasn't constrained either. It was very satisfying to my ears.
       Last Thing. I would urge one to go to the Guelph Jazz Festival website and look at the archive of previous festivals. One will be astounded by the assortment of great musicians who have contributed to making the Guelph Jazz Festival one of a kind and something not to be missed.      

[*]Ekkehard Jost's Free Jazz, Da Capo Press, 1994 is the thing for inquiring music minds.
http://www.guelphjazzfestival.com/2011_season/performers
http://jazztimes.com/sections/concerts/articles/28468-guelph-jazz-festival-colloquium
http://www.spookyactions.com/
     http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/17/arts/music/roulette-opens-in-brooklyn-with-camilla-hoitenga-review.html?_r=1&scp=1&sq=Henry%20Threadgill&st=cse

The Moral Stance & Laser-Guided Democracy

Noam Chomsky's 1966 essay "The Responsibility of Intellectuals" is along with Peter F. Strawson's "Freedom and Resentment" one of the two best essays that I have ever read. I remember pouring over both essays in the dimly lit Wayne State University library in 1966. The Vietnam war against the Vietnamese people was quite underway and  Detroit's 'Insurrection' occurred the following year. Both of these abuses of power were lethal actions brought by the privileged, educated few - Harvard, Yale, Stanford men (mostly), against the unprivileged many. According to Chomsky's recent essay, "The Responsibility of Intellectuals, Redux" (September/October Issue Boston Review, the United States' official version of democracy is quite limited in its extent and in our government's application of its democratic principles. On page five (5) Chomsky writes,

What particularly troubled the Trilateral scholars was the “excess of democracy” during the time of troubles, the 1960s, when normally passive and apathetic parts of the population entered the political arena to advance their concerns: minorities, women, the young, the old, working people . . . in short, the population, sometimes called the “special interests.” They are to be distinguished from those whom Adam Smith called the “masters of mankind,” who are “the principal architects” of government policy and pursue their “vile maxim”: “All for ourselves and nothing for other people.” The role of the masters in the political arena is not deplored, or discussed, in the Trilateral volume, presumably because the masters represent “the national interest,” like those who applauded themselves for leading the country to war “after the utmost deliberation by the more thoughtful members of the community” had reached its “moral verdict.” 

By "excess of democracy" Chomsky means "democracy for the rest of us, for those of us down here on the ground (Cornel West's apt phrase) - "All for ourselves and nothing for other people." We've seen this "vile maxim" pursued by our President, by his friends in powerful places, and by his ghosts in Congress - his imaginary opposition.

     Noam Chomsky's two essays are very instructive and repay one's attention. Peter Strawson's fine 1960 essay is also worthy of our attention. Lastly The New Yorker profile by Larissa MacFarquhar of the philosopher Derek Parfit offers rewarding reading. Parfit gets quite worked up about human suffering. Thus Chomsky, Strawson and Parfit fit together. 

http://www.bostonreview.net/BR36.5/noam_chomsky_responsibility_of_intellectuals_redux.ph

http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2011/09/05/110905fa_fact_macfarquhar

Bechet, Ellington & Coltrane

Duke Ellington's  Music Is My Mistress contains a portrait of the soprano saxophonist and clarinetist Sidney Bechet, whom Ellington characterizes as "one of the great originals." (pps. 47-8) Bechet was greatly admired by Johnny Hodges and John Coltrane greatly admired Johnny Hodges. Although, Hodges main instrument was the alto saxophone, he occasionally played the soprano saxophone - he even had a hit recording in the late 1950s featuring his soprano saxophone. It seems to me that John Coltrane's and Lucky Thompson's soprano saxophone conceptions are primarily by way of Hodges, whereas Steve Lacy's is by way of Bechet. These master musicians, masters of the soprano saxophone, are about it for me as far as liking soprano saxophone action. Typically I don't like what the younger, Wayne Shorter generation does with this difficult instrument. A couple of other soprano saxophonists who I think master the instrument are Bob Wilber and Oliver Lake - they play the curved version of the soprano.

     Ellington talks about Bechet's getting a wooden sound from his clarinet, something Duke finds very rare. Sidney Bechet gets an almost Ben Webster or Gene Ammons sound that blows one away. The other soprano-players tend to squeeze where Bechet has an intense vibrato and huge sound - try Bechet's wonderful French Vogue recording with the 'moderns' Martial Solal, Pierre Michelot, and Kenny Clarke. 

     Bechet was a great clarinet player; according to Gunther Schuller, Early Jazz, one of the three great clarinetists in the New Orleans tradition; the other two were Johnny Dodds and Jimmy Noone. (p. 195) Schuller explains Bechet's unique soprano sound as deriving from his clarinet conception. Bob Wilber is closest to Bechet in his conception; Wilber is a clarinetist too, whereas most of the younger soprano players play either tenor or alto saxophone and have a saxophone conception. 

      For a thrill listen to Sidney Bechet's and Billie Holiday's Summertime (the latter in a small group with Artie Shaw on clarinet).        

John Coltrane

Sunday is my music day. I listened to John Coltrane most of the day. His birthdate is 23 September - an important date in a number of ways. "Lonnie's Lament" is haunting me.

Pierre Boulez, Rocco Di Pietro & Rayesti

Wolfgang Rihm via Paul Griffiths

This morning I tuned into my main modern music guide Paul Griffiths' webpage to find out what was happening. He has a review of a recording by the Arditti String Quartet of the 12th Quartet of Wolfgang Rihm, his Interscriptum, and Fetzen. After reading Griffiths's account of this music, I was shocked that it fell out of Amazon's Cloud onto my hard drive. It's truly wonderful, brilliant music. Read Griffiths and perhaps it will fall upon your ears too. Griffiths' link is below.


http://disgwylfa.com/new.html

Slow Listening - "'Take your time!'"

Wittgenstein offers this advice to philosophers, Culture and Value (p. 80e), "This is how philosophers should salute each other: 'Take you time!'" This kind of advice usefully applies to music critics, philosophers of music, and music enthusiasts - "Take your time: Listen and re-listen!"
     I have described Andrew Porter's routine for approaching new music in a previous post. Richard Wollheim, the philosopher of aesthetics whose thing was the visual arts primarily, writes somewhere that his routine for contemplating a painting consisted of sitting in the gallery containing the painting he was interested in viewing; just sitting there for a long time so as to unburden himself of unpainterly distractions and to prepare himself aesthetically (as a surgeon might prepare to operate) to regard the painting with the right attitude. Clement Greenberg, the high-priest of modern art critics, would back into the gallery, turn around quickly, quickly take in the painting with his (critical) eyes, and judge there and then and there whether the painting was worthy of his continued critical regard.
      Of course, in either case - painting or music - robust experience is necessary; in addition to slow looking or slow listening, repeated visual and auditory experiences of the works under consideration. With new music performances, whether recorded or live, there are problems inherent in the partnership relation that exists between the composer and performing musicians. A composer composes a piano sonata (say), she (Sofia Gubaidulina, say) messes around with the emerging work at the piano, commits her experiments to paper, takes her brand new sonata to a new music specialist (the pianist Ursula Oppens, say) to work out the performance details. And to put the vitally important finishing touches - accents, phrase markings, tempo indications &c. - on the extant score. Sometimes these indications are incorporated in subsequent editions of the score - however with contemporary works, what one first sees in a score is all that one will ever get. There's also a further problem: some composers are pianists, and know there way around a piano keyboard; other composers haven't a performer's clue about writing for the piano. Beethoven knew what made the piano and pianists tick; Schoenberg didn't have a Beethoven pianist's sense. See Mitsuko Uchida's discussion of Schoenberg's piano music on YouTube.
         Point. (We're almost there.) Experiment in slow listening. Collect as many recorded accounts of Schoenberg's Five Pieces for Piano as is feasible - a small sample might consist of Gould, Wolpe, Pollini, Hellfer, Jacobs, and Spooky Actions. If one can find even earlier recordings, it's even better for our experiment. Now the outcome of this listening experiment will be increased musicality, because the performers have learned what Schoenberg's work is about, and have helped to shape the pieces. It's more than interpretation; it's articulation of the music both in and out of the score. Try it.
        Comments are always welcome.
        Thanks to Art Blakey and The Jazz Messengers for helping me with this post.           

Mauricio Raúl Kagel (1931 - 2008) - New & Newer Music

Many so-called serious-music devotees could be accurately described, in Daniel Dennett's terminology, as not believing in serious-music (God); but believing rather that they ought to believe in serious-music (God). Now serious-music devotees are most often not serial-music devotees. They may get to Mahler, but not beyond. That's alright as far as is goes. There's a hell of a lot of great music between Guillaume de Machaut and Gustav Mahler.
     The above is what I started with, what I started to say, a couple of days ago. I've been obsessed lately with, among other things, the Julliard String Quartet's early mono recordings of the Vienna Trinity - Schoenberg, Berg, and Webern. I've also been listening to Mauricio Raúl Kagel, the headliner of this post, Stockhausen, and Boulez. I've been reading Paul Griffiths' (my modern music tutor) The Substance of Things Heard. (Speaking of quartets, I'm re-reading Lawrence Durrell's The Alexandria Quartet.)
     I discovered a very interesting blog yesterday that treats music and recordings in a very interesting manner. Its called The High Pony Tail. Its link appears on the sidebar. Later I hope to complete what I started to say herein. Until then a great deal of reading and listening are required of me.

Newer Music - Runnin' It Down

My New and Newer Music listening project has gotten off to a very slow start. I've tried to get down with Louis Andriessen's music; but I've not yet experienced a break through into this composer's world. Most of my home listening involves chamber music or at most chamber orchestras - massive orchestral works aren't often played; exceptions are Wagner, Mahler, Schoenberg, Berg, Stockhausen.... But I'm a chamber music person, a Basie or Ellington sized ensemble is enough for me.

     I was excited to have the opportunity to audition Louis Andriessen's string quartets as performed by the Schoenberg Quartet. The results were not impressive to my ears. I must admit that it appeared to me that Andriessen was not entirely committed to composing string quartets. The Quartet in two movements (1957) is the work of an eighteen year old composer. Its straight-ahead string quartet writing, and not remarkable in any way. I was most looking forward to the Charlie Parker inspired quartet, Facing Death (1990). It incorporates elements of Parker's Ornithology. While it's obviously a labor of love, for Parker and bebop's creators; the quartet's performance took a few measures to get into the music, but after the ensemble caught fire the music after the halting beginning actually sounded exciting - the way bebop sounded. After four or five auditions, I did not dislike Facing Death (as I had on previous hearings). Is this the composition of a stone-minimalist composer? Let's see. Let's call this?

     There's plenty of melodic repetition, tastes of droning, cranked-up harmonic shots near the end of the piece. Characteristic properties of minimalism, yea? I am amused at myself in having to admit that after five of six hearings I liked Andriessen's Facing Death! First couple of hearings I hated it. This minimalist stance of mine - my droning, micro-changing attitude, from a hater to a liker - regarding  Andriessen's quartet exemplifies a fundamental critical principle of mine.

     In order to apprehend an unfamiliar musical work one  must attend to the work over a course of repeated hearings. The great former music writer for The New Yorker Andrew Porter outlined his requirements for reviewing performances of new music as follows: a copy of the score, a pen-light with which to follow the score during the performance, and a tape of the performance.

     So it's not too much to require of ourselves when facing new music to submit to repeated hearings.  

New and Newer Music - The Usual Suspects and Others

 Among the music that I listened to recently were works for clarinet and small orchestra by Elliott Carter, his Clarinet Concerto and John Adams, his Gnarly Buttons. I am a long-time admirer of Elliott Carter's music, his string quartets, piano sonatas, Sonata for Flute, Oboe, Cello & Harpsichord, Double Concerto..... I do not admire John Adams' Shaker Loops or his Gnarly Buttons. Adams' music is too slick for me. I can understand why he has his devotees - the music is well-crafted, has catchy titles, flag waving American stuff. But it's not for me; it has surface meaning at best, virtuosity without a center, an M & M candy without the good stuff inside. The Adams' works that I know are too simple-sounding. I have the same problems with Philip Glass's music.
     Many years ago I heard the Philip Glass Ensemble perform at the Detroit Institute of Arts. It was a spellbinding event for me - soprano saxophones, electric pianos and organ, sound projection. Indian ragas and Coltrane elements. Wow! The surface of an M & M candy tastes fine; but after you're done with it, you wish there were more to the candy as a whole.
     I have a number of new and newer CDs to audition. What I propose to do over the coming weeks is listen to some of these CDs each day and blog about what I think I have heard. I'll listen to them and see if there's anything happening.
     The usual suspects. Among the 28 compact discs are multiple discs featuring the works of Mauricio Raúl Kagel (1931 - 2008) and Wolfgang Rihm (*1952) and single discs devoted to the compositions of George Crumb (*1929), Brian Ferneyhough (*1943), and Louis Andriessen (*1939). These are composers with whom I am most familiar.
     The others. There are included in the 28-CD set 29 composers with whom I've had no listening contact. I like surprises, in Whitney Balliett's phrase, I like "the sound of surprise". So I hope there are many sonic surprises encoded in these compact discs!
     Now must bounce to the listening. I'll report what I think I've heard tomorrow.
     Cheers.

     Addendum - 9/2/11

     Pierre Boulez, in a recent interview, remarks on the music of Philip Glass and John Adams as follows:

The minimalism of Philip Glass and Steve Reich is "interesting for five minutes", says Boulez contemptuously. "But it represents creative exhaustion. If you spend a whole piece repeating just one chord [as Glass tends to do] it's like being in a red room, and staying in it for your whole life.

Finally you want to say, could you please change something." The music of John Adams, whose terrorist opera The Death of Klinghoffer is currently being proudly trailed by the Coliseum, is "just movie-music". But isn't Adams's music a direct reaction to the music of Boulez? "If so, it's an infantile reaction. Music like that you can prepare in one rehearsal, put it in a concert, and everybody is satisfied. And two days later, nobody remembers it."

http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/classical/features/pierre-boulez-ray-of-light-or-lord-of-the-dark-side-discuss-2296306.html

"How does it feel in the swing?" - That Hammond B-3 Thing

I had the good fortune to hear Don Pullen on the Hammond B-3 organ as part of David Murray's group in Ann Arbor, Michigan many years ago. In my previous Friedrich Gulda post, I mentioned that Gulda had performed with the organist Barbara Dennerlein. Aside from her appearance on Gulda's Mozart No End and the Paradise Band Sony CDs, I hadn't any deep impressions of her Hammond B-3 artistry.
      Since I hadn't quite finished with what I had to say about Friedrich Gulda and related subjects, I thought I'd see (and hear) what Barbara Dennerlein had to say on YouTube - see the links herein. The Dennerlein YouTube clip featuring the organ, tenor saxophone and drums reminded me of David Murray's group that I heard in Ann Arbor (where else!) featuring the greatly missed Don Pullen on the Hammond B-3 organ. One organ-thing led to others.
      I resisted organ music during my formative years. Then I heard the fabulous Hammond B-3 master Jimmy Smith in the mid-1960s at the 20 Grand Club in Detroit. Imagine J. S. Bach improvising on a great organ in Weimar (circa 1714). Jimmy Smith was one of the most magical musicians that I have ever heard - and I've been involved as a devotee in a lot of music magic and wizardry. The thing about playing a Hammond B-3 is that one has to use one's arms, fingers, and both feet. This creates a dance vibe immediately. And Smith's sublime ballad artistry is on a par with that of that master of masters, Milt Jackson of the Modern Jazz Quartet. Smith and Jackson are bebop-masters, masters of swing. Paul Berliner in his book Thinking Jazz writes,

Within the musician's scale of values, rhythmic aspects of performance are fundamental. "One of the most obvious aspects of the music to people who know jazz," observes Chuck Israels, "is: How does it feel in the swing? These are things that are very subtle and that jazz musicians appreciate in a particular way. [244]

      There are certainly swing elements in the Beethoven piano sonatas, in Bach, in Bartok, in Schoenberg - listen to the Julliard Quartet's mono performance of Schoenberg's 1st String Quartet, one of the most intense swinging things we'll ever hear. I've heard Bud Powell in Beethoven and Bartok in Max Roach's double-quartet. So all of this great music is just that: It's great music.
      Friedrich Gulda, one of the great 'classical' pianists of the 20th Century, understood where music greatness resides. It resides in the music and not in the music-labels. Music-making is a performance-art - great music resides in performances of music. [One might even think of the art of painting as performance-art, as recordings - how many takes were there before the final take that we know as the Mona Lisa, and was it the final take?] There may never be another musician like Friedrich Gulda. But I hope there are some classically-trained cats in hats out there.
      In the mean time, thank goodness, there's also Oliver Lake's Organ Quartet - the link appears below.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CcT2HE5agiE

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LYP7Mxss3_U&feature=BFa&list=PL05818E4F3CB74566&index=22

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FtVMNKLkbTs&NR=1

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=98XyM-Fbx1k

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ra4kYAYCdeI&NR=1

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JUW9iwcwEKY

Friedrich Gulda Jazz-man (1930 - 2000)

What is a jazz-man? How does one pick out a jazz-man? Are there identity criteria for jazz-men and jazz-women?, for jazz-persons? A jazz-person is a person who wears a hat or a cap when he or she performs music. Yes, Bucket-head would fall under the  heading jazz-person, even though he wears a Kentucky Fried Chicken bucket on his head when he performs. (Did anyone see Bucket-head on PBS's Austin City Limits with Pharoah Sanders and Hamid Drake?)
   Friedrich Gulda wore his jazz-man's cap when he performed Bach, Beethoven, or Mozart. He wore this emblem of honor when he conversed at the piano with the great musicians of the remote and recent past - the aforementioned trio of composer-performers and today's composer-performers:  Miles Davis, Horace Silver, Chick Corea, Herbie Handcock, Barbara Dennerlein, Cecil Taylor and other creative master-musicians.
   This morning I'm listening to Gulda's Bach, The Well-tempered Clavier Bk I & II (1972-73 4-Philips CDs). Gulda's wonderful Complete Beethoven Piano Sonatas are available as budget-priced Brilliant Classics CDs. 
   To my ears Friedrich Gulda's most swinging recordings are the Beethoven: Complete works for cello & piano on DGG that he recorded with another favorite musician of mine, cellist Pierre Fournier. According to the DGG notes, Gulda suggested to Fournier that his Beethoven might be somewhat too 'French', to this Fournier replied, "My playing wasn't too 'French' for Schnabel." With that exchange, Gulda and Fournier became instant friends.
   Fifteen years or so ago, I was listening to The Ohio State University's 'public' radio station WOSU-FM. WOSU reckons itself to be a 'classical music' radio station - these are scary-quotes not exactly scare or raised eyebrow quotes. Anyway, that day the DJ played John Coltrane's recording of his composition Alabama. After playing Coltrane's recording the DJ apologized to the station's listeners for departing from the station's professed-fund-raising-format. I called the station's programming director, and suggested to her that station should apologize, not for playing Coltrane; but for playing Classical Top 40 bits and pieces all day. Needless to say WOSU is still Top 40. Tune in to Columbia University's Great Radio Station instead. See its link on the sidebar.
   Friedrich Gulda was one of the great pianists and musicians of the 20th Century. Classical Music Radio Stations - especially stations representing public universities! - should take a Gulda or Ellington stance, presenting both European and American music, letting the music take its listeners. Public radio, except in rare instances, has resigned from any Enlightenment Project.
   Classical music, ah yes! - Coltrane, Bach, Beethoven, Mozart and Friedrich Gulda in his cap.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CFXL4J-oKw4
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yaCErlW-3p8


 
    

Reading, Writing and Music

ON NOT BEING ABLE TO READ
I cannot read and listen to music. I can write while listening to music. What happens when I set out to write is that music helps me to get into the writing. But once I'm into it I can turn the music off or not.
   But on a daily basis I need a certain amount of music. Music makes my life flow better. I think that I could do without television all together; except for college football - Go Blue!


Being in the Plato Flow
A week or so ago I was entirely in the Plato flow. Plato was making sense to me again. I could, I thought, discern Plato’s strategies; I could see where his arguments were headed; I was aware of his dramatic intentions. I had read Plato many times since my first encounter with him in college. But this time I was fully aware of his music; I knew what tunes he had called; I followed the chord-changes his tunes were based on.
   We’re all aware that Plato had a place for almost anything one could imagine in one’s philosophy. What seems quite strange to those not in Plato’s flow is ‘his‘ stance on poetry and the arts. In 1999 the eminent Plato and Aristotle scholar Myles Burnyeat gave seminars and talks at Ohio State University. After one of Professor Burnyeat’s talks on Plato, I asked him a naive (an amateur’s) question about a remark that he made in his talk that appeared the me (amateur that I was) at odds with something of his that I had read in The London Review of Books. I can’t remember the 1999 question that I put to Professor Burnyeat, and I’ll get to his answer and how he straightened me out in a minute. But first I’ll note something that I’ve noticed in recent years about philosophy department talks by visiting philosophers. There is very little in the way of argument.
   In the fabulous 1960s philosophy department talks absolutely bloody affairs - killing-fields of argumentation. Not all of the visiting philosopher-firemen were taken in by the young Edmund Gettier’s and Robert Sleigh’s and the more senior Richard Cartwright’s and Hector Castaneda’s counterexamples and 'helpful' explications - "Professor Geach you can't really be about asserting that anyone throughout the history of mankind worshiped the same God - you can't mean that can you?'' Geach might have replied, "Thank you Dr. Gettier. I'll make a note of that". While this exchange is going on, Professor Geach's wife, the eminent philosopher, G. E. M. Anscombe is sitting there smoking a cigar. Some like A. J. Ayer just turned up their noses, as Jelly Roll Morton might have done, suggesting that his interlocutor was rather like foul-air, something that needed to be let out. Other visiting philosophers were utterly destroyed on these cutting-session occasions.
   As I alluded to above a typical scene goes like this.  A philosopher reads a paper. An interlocutor might express discomfort with the presenting philosopher’s view, remarking something in the way of, “I’m worried by your view that Xs are really Ys, that propositions are really ordered pairs” or some such thing. Then the presenter says, “Oh?” and the department chairman says “Drinks will be served”, and everyone in the room thinks, “Cool”.
   Professor Burnyeat gave his talk on Plato and I, an utter amateur, was the only one who asked him a question! One of the department members said to me, “I thought you were going in another direction with your question.” He perhaps should have entered the conversation that I was having with Professor Burnyeat.

   Professor Burnyeat replied to my question (whatever it was), as best that I can remember, as follows. During Plato’s time (429 - 347 BCE) the Rupert Murdocks - news media moguls - were the poets, the Homers, the dramatists. What worried Plato according to Burnyeat was the early exposure of the young to the news and propaganda of the day and of the past. We have the same problem today with television, movies, and the internet. So Plato was in favor of censorship of the ‘news’ as transmitted by the poets. Being naive about this aspect of Plato’s views, I hadn’t thought about censorship very much; except to think that it was strange of Plato to propose censorship in any case. It’s Plato’s strangeness, dramatic power, illumination of both sides of an issue, and his powerful arguments for and against an issue that draws me to him. 
   Today it's not only the young who should be spared the lies and propaganda of Fox News and others but our so-called adult news gathers too. I've suggested where to find the news in these pages previously.   

High School Reunion, What?

Last weekend I attended the Highland Park (Michigan) High School 50-ish class Reunion - Classes 1959 thru 1963. It was very well organized and well attended - the dinner was sold-out. As a consequence it was very enjoyable. This was my first (and certainly my last) reunion.
     Highland Park had a great school system when I was a student. It was a fabulous city to grow up in - the population was about 50,000, the ratio of automobiles to students was about 1:6 (unlike today's ratio of 1:1), we walked everywhere. Basketball was the game of choice (soccer?, no way) and we played in the summer from noon until the sun set. After sundown, it was Carlings Black Label Jumbo beers, cigarettes, and 'manly' talk. Precious!

Reading and Listening to Plato

I've been attending to Plato lately - Euthyphro, Apology, Crito, Phaedo, Republic in the Tom Griffith translations. I've also been peeking into some of the scholarly doings - Grote, Burnyeat, Santas, Fine (among others). So much for what I've been doing and thinking about. I hope to Blog on about my Plato soundings in the future, but not soon.
     My Plato preoccupation has precluded my usual music obsessions. But Plato directs my very limited music listening to the string quartets of Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven and to Mozart's and Beethoven's piano sonatas - the wonderful-jazzman Friedrich Gulda CDs. I had started a blog-post on these music-matters, but Plato stopped me.
     Plato stops me here too.
 

"Carlos", Plato, & No-Doz? (not required)

It's Sunday. I feel that I must explain myself concerning my blog-abouts - Where has Rayesti been blog-wise? Yesterday my wife and I attended to Olivier Assayas' 5 1/2 hour film "Carlos", featuring Edgar Ramirez in the title rôle. This engrossing film is a docu-fictional account of  the old-school terrorist Illich Ramírez Sánchez - better known as "Carlos". Carlos and his various crews (old-school "gangs") had a violent 20 year run, beginning in 1974, as Europe's maddest, baddest, and most wanted criminals. Carlos is presently in a French prison. Since I'm not down with the death-penalty, that's exactly where I. R. Sánchez should remain - in prison.
     Plato. Ah, Yes! Since the Fabulous 1960s Plato has been my man. I was formally introduced to Plato by George Nakhnikian in his Introductory Philosophy course at Wayne State University. I continued my Plato studies at Wayne with Raymond Hoekstra.
     Today, Christopher Rowe is tutoring me. His very instructive Plato and the Art of Philosophical Writing, CUP, 2007 is my guide. Rowe opposes the scholars' usual tripartite arrangement of the Plato corpus into Socratic, Middle-period, and Late-period dialogues. He prefers a pre-Republic, Republic, Post-Republic arrangement - with Socrates, in jazz terms, soloing with Plato throughout; free-(jazz)-Plato. In other words, Christopher Rowe maintains that the character of Socrates in the dialogues is Plato's mouthpiece. It's all very complex; that's why it thrills me - very musical. The Introduction of Rowe's book has 175 endnotes! I am down with Plato and Christopher Rowe's Plato.

Earl Rudolph "Bud" Powell (1924 - 1966) & Significant Others

In his Guardian article [http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/jul/24/norway-tragedy-extremism-europe] on the tragic killings in Norway, Aslak Sira Myhre writes:

When the world believed this to be an act of international Islamist terrorism, state leaders, from Obama to Cameron, all stated that they would stand by Norway in our struggle. Which struggle will that be now? All western leaders have the same problem within their own borders. Will they now wage war on homegrown rightwing extremism? On Islamophobia and racism? 

Simon Goldhill in his book Foucault's Virginity writes:

The failing search for a pharmakon for desire is a topos of Hellenistic poetry, and Theocritus, the pastoral master, begins one of his most famous poems (Idyll 11) with the declaration that 'there is no pharmakon for desire, no salve, no ointment, other than the Muses'.

This line of Theoritus's, along with Simonides's For the Spartan Dead at Thermopylai (480 B.C.) 
         
         Take this news to the Lakedaimonians, friend,
         That here we lie, who followed their command.
                                                          Peter Jay, 1981

have affected me, whenever I summon them, in a way that prevents my speaking for a long while.
     It took a very long time for me this morning to speak to myself about the 95 lives taken in Norway by the Norwegian rightwing extremist, Anders Breivik.
     Yet I have also had trouble speaking to myself about our madmen, our own rightwing extremists in our House of Representatives (and elsewhere), and especially the quite 'mad, bad and dangerous to know' John Boehner, Republican of Ohio.
     There is no pharmakon for the political desires of the rightwing Republican kind; certainly no Muse or Song either. Who will take the news to our Commander, to President Obama? Here we lie, down here on the ground, with Boehner's and Obama's hands in our pockets - which brings to my mind Dizzy Gillespie's tune "A handfull of Gimmie and a Mouth-full of Thank-You-Much". Of course the other Republican mascots (aka "Democrats") are outraged, mad at their mascot, President Obama. Ha Ha.

Bud Powell, Dexter Gordon, Francis Paudras and Bertrand Tavernier - Round Midnight


Thinking this morning about Norway, Boehner-Obama, hands in my pocket down here on the ground (our socio-economic Thermopylai) led my thoughts to Bud Powell, and then to the Dexter Gordon, Francis Paudras, Bertrand Tavernier-Round Midnight nexus. I don't know why. It just happened. I decided to listen to Bud Powell all day (Sunday is my music day anyway). And I decided to listen to Bud Powell with Bird, with Dexter, with Stitt, with Byas (did I miss anyone?).
     Then I decided to watch Tavernier's film Round Midnight, starring Dexter Gordon. Then I decided to re-look at Paudras's Bud Powell book, Dance of the Infidels: A Portrait of Bud Powell.
     Why all of this? I wish that I could provide an explanation for my insistence on Bud Powell, on Messrs. Gordon, Paudras and Tavernier. As Marcel Duchamp explained to an interviewer, "We have to make our own arrangements." Why Bud Powell? is a mystery to me. His life and music - his music was his life - appeared to me as follows.
     1957 - I heard Bud Powell in person at the Masonic Temple in Detroit,  as part of the Birdland All-Stars Tour. Listened to the Savoy recordings of Charlie Parker with Bud Powell throughout high school. Listened to Powell's Blue Note recordings in college and afterwards. Listened to Bud Powell with Dexter Gordon, Sonny Stitt and Don Byas through the years. Met and listened to Detroit's Barry Harris (keeper of Bud Powell's flame) in New York City in 1961. Watched Tavernier's Round Midnight in 1986 and thereafter. The image I have is like that of a telescoping tunnel as seen on TV shows like The Prisoner.
     I got up at noon today; read the Guardian and its accounts of the tragic Norway event and the absurd USA Obama-Boehner minstrel show; decided to devote myself to Bud Powell and related masters and matters. While our minstrels do their steps - to what music one can't imagine, we (the rest of us) search for our Muse, for our music, for our anthem. It certainly won't be in the key of "I have a dream". It appears to be rather in the key of our minstrels' "We have a scheme." Right.
     You know the steps here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pharmakos
   

Sweet Music - Bitter Reviewer

I had thought about blogging-on about my music-ecology experiences, the madness involved in promoting performances of the musics of Schoenberg, Kagel, Kurtag, David Murray, and Oliver Lake in Detroit, Michigan and Columbus, Ohio. Indeed, I promised my reader to blog-on about it. I decided this morning - as I lay in bed deciding if and when to get up - not to blog-on about my dismal, depressing, disgusting mad-dog experiences as an unpaid music-ecology front-man for the imperialist 'Classical' music presenting establishment.
     I thought to myself this morning, Why not listen to music this Tuesday? Why not blog-on about what thrills you instead of blogging-on about what disgusts and chills you? Why not indeed!
     But there remains one disgusting matter that I must dispense with before "accentuating the positive". John S. Wilson, the former jazz reviewer for The New York Times is in my view the all-time, worst reviewer ever to have written about jazz. (His successors at NYT haven't been much better either.) Circa 1959 I got a copy of Wilson's book The Collector's Jazz: Modern - a volume presently held together by a rubber band. He trashes nearly all of my favorites - Gil Mille, John Coltrane, Donald Byrd, Jackie McLean(!), Art Blakey(!); while praising Stan Kenton, Les Brown, Lennie Niehaus, Shorty Rogers. Draw your own conclusion from this sample and juxtaposition. Terrible stuff, this Wilsonian hacking; making the jazz safe for us. Stick with Gunther Schuller, André Hodeir, Amiri Baraka, Whitney Balliett, A. B. Spellman, or Val Wilmer. Later for Wilson and NYT Wilsonians.

     Whereas almost none of Schönberg's row music ever equalled Pierrot Lunaire for sheer beauty of sound, Webern seems to have been far better equipped for this type of writing; in Das Augenlicht he devised a vocal polyphony which, despite a certain rigidity due to the alternating of homophonic and contrapuntal passages, attained a very high degree of aural refinement. [André Hodier, Since Debussy: a view of contemporary music, p. 73]

Doesn't the Hodier passage above compel us to tune into Arnold S.'s Pierrot  and Anton W.'s Augenlicht in order to find out what André is trying to tell us? Hodier's Jazz: It's Evolution and Essence is one of the best books ever written about jazz. His Since Debussy is also an outstanding work, as are his Toward Jazz and especially his The Worlds of Jazz. The works of the above noted authors - not Wilson - along with Paul Griffiths, Andrew Porter, and (of course) Sir Donald Tovey would straighten out the conceptual confusions of many of our present day philosophers of music aesthetics (if only they read them instead of, or in addition to, each other).
     Let's listen to Schönberg and Webern; let's find out about beauty - twelve-tone-row-wise.
     I had planned to go on with this; but I thought better of it. Plato's Meno is tugging at my coat.

 

Bert's Marketplace - Drop Me Off There!

Jim Murphy, Thom Pride, and I were recently at Bert's Marketplace in Detroit's Eastern Market for an evening and morning (11:30PM - 3:00AM) of wonderful Detroit music - improvisations grounded by driving-intense-poly-rhythmic pulsations provided by the rhythm section that featured superb electric piano, rock-steady bass, and outrageous percussion by the young drummer (just two years out of high school). The quartet's trumpet player had a lot to say also and his attack, while percussive and strong, was less to the front of the music, and was a little (not much) laid back. These musicians certainly knew what they were doing. And they went for what they knew!

     Names, names, names . . . . That magical Friday (8 July 2011) the only 'hat' that I had on was my music hat; I had neither my Blogger’s nor my journalist’s hats with me. I was transfixed by the music. [As I write this, I’m listening to Art Blakey and The Jazz Messengers - Blakey and his Messengers were present at Bert's Marketplace that Friday. That’s what it was like.] Except for the surname, "White", of the fabulous post-high- school drummer, I don’t know the names of the other members of the quartet. When I am apprised of the missing names, I'll revise what I've written here. I must add that the other drummer (no-name yet) on the date was terrific also.

     I met Scott Reiter, an alto saxophonist and band leader, who was sitting in with the quartet. Scott is from Toledo, Ohio and is a friend of the pianist Stanley Cowell (the Second Toledo Flash) and poet, DJ, etc. John Sinclair (I've mention John elsewhere). Scott was at Stanley Cowell’s house when The Toledo Flash, Art Tatum was giving a piano lesson! To have met a person who was in a room with 'God' ! . . . . Scott pointed out to me that the legendary piano-man, Johnny O'Neal was in our room that evening. He also pointed out a post-high-school alto saxophonist who proved to be quite on "creative alert" and up to hanging with what was happening musically.

     Now the quartet’s keyboardist (no-name yet) performed brilliantly Friday. After Johnny O'Neal sang a ballad, he assumed the piano chair. The mentioned keyboardist stood behind O'Neal with his mobile-phone’s camera ready to photograph O'Neal’s flying fingers. A piano lesson was provided and photo-notes were taken - it was a piano-flash and percussion-discussion kind of night; the horns weren’t locked out by any means, it’s just that the rhythm-thing was so, so heavy.

     The young lady who attended to our refreshment needs was engaging. The music was both engaging and incredible.

http://youtu.be/U1zZJRPy0MQ

"Destination Out"

I discovered this morning a wonderful music-ecology website, Destination Out. Check it out for yourself.

http://destination-out.com/

What To Do? What To Think About? - Coming Distractions

Over the past few days, my time has been delightfully spent as a short-order cook for my son and his family. I have also spent some of this time with my doctors. Regarding the later the Viennese satirest Karl Kraus comes to mind. His German is reputed to be untranslatable; but there have been 'translations', among which are the following (I quote from memory):

Doctors: "Your money and your life."

Psychoanalysis: "Psychoanalysis is that disease of which it reckons itself to be a cure."

     I've been thinking about writing about my experiences as an unpaid, unappreciated and reviled music producer (I prefer the term "music-ecologist") - projects which involved the Arditti String Quartet, David Murray, Oliver Lake, Hamiet Bluiett, John Stubblefield, the World Saxophone Quartet, and D. D. Jackson. Except for the Arditti, photographs of these master musicians have been displayed in this Blog at various points.[*] Thus this music-ecologist shared a similar fate of certain environmental-ecologists: distain and marginalization.
     What might be the opposite of eco-nut? Eco-Imperialist, Rapist, I suppose. What might be the opposite of music-eco-nut? I leave this as an exercise for the reader.
     [*] Arditti link with photograph: http://www.ownvoice.com/ardittiquartet/

"Take The Inequality Quiz" with Juan Cole

It becomes a larger part of my internet day (internet ritual, religion, or whatever) to look in on Prof Juan Cole's blog. This morning I was directed to Cole's Inequality Quiz by Prof Brian Leiter's very useful, informative, and insightful philosophy blog - links to both are displayed below and on this site's sidebar.
     I found Cole's quiz utterly fascinating and consciousness-opening. If there were such a thing as political debate in our Banana Republic sans bananas, the Inequality Quiz just might open a few folks' eyes, or at least get up a few major-party politicos' noses - "Let that foul air out!" as Mr. 'Jelly Roll' Morton noted.

Thanks to Juan Cole for raising the inequality-stink.

http://www.juancole.com/2011/06/rudolph-us-inequality-quiz.html
http://leiterreports.typepad.com/

Email To A Friend While listening to J.S. Bach

Dear Friend,

I don't think much has changed since C. Wright Mill's Power Elite. I think your friend is correct in his view - just follow the money. By the time a person is elected to congress or becomes president, he or she is already paid for, and bent in the direction of his/her 'betters'/sponsors. Legislation is written and paid for by special interest groups, legitimized by 'think-tanks', and unread, mis-understood, enacted by congress and the president.

   How could the USA have been in a continuous state of war since Korea? How is it that we need 850+/- military bases around the world?  It's still the military-industrial complex. I still Like Ike! I have a very high opinion of our military - lots of smart people.
   I have a very low opinion of our political 'leadership'.
   What is one of the two major exports of the USA? Arms and military technology. Our wars are terrible advertisements for US Arms Dealers. The USA sells a lot of arms around the world, to everyone and almost anyone. It's not guns or butter; it's guns all the way down and all around - Israel, Pakistan, .... "Who will buy and sample ... (our) supply? (Arms) for sale."

   When Thomas Friedman of the stolid New York Times calls for a third party, things are a lot worse than we imagine

Happy Days,

Rayesti

P.S.: Back to Philippe Herreweghe and Collegium Vocale Gent - Bach Motets BWV 225 - 230.

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