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 ….