Listening Experiences - 1

The past few days I've been listening to recently acquired CDs with music by Schoenberg, Berg, Webern, and Henze performed by Quatuor Diotima, Fred Sherry String Quartet, bass Nicholas Iserwood. I've also been listening to five Mal Waldron (piano) discs, two with his trio, one each with a quintet, with Jeanne Lee (vocal) and with Archie Shepp (tenor & soprano saxophones).
   Rediscovering Mal Waldron's music has been good for my brain/mind and soul. Neither Mal Waldron nor Jeanne Lee are with us, both passed away. As far as I am aware Mr Shepp is still with us. The Waldron pairings with Miss Lee and Mr Shepp are enthralling and soul-stirring. In 1984 Shepp and Lee made a live recording that produced the enchanting Tune For Shepp (Circle Records). (All of this is leading to many other things that we'll file under Coming Distractions.) Before I leave the vocal side of Mal Waldron - he was after all Lady Day's piano-man - I must note the fabulous recording of Soul Eyes that Mal Waldron made with the vocalist Judi Silvano. Now to the 'serious' European cats, Arnold et al.
   I've never found it useful to distinguish creative music ('Jazz') from so-called, mis-called 'Classical' music from an aesthetic point of view - Duke's dictum still prevails: If it sounds good, it is good. Right!
Now what one should be about, what I hope that I am about, is music ecology - issuing music reminders,  'stickie-notes' before it's too late. Indeed, WKCR-FM remains one of the foremost music ecologists - if you're reading this post try getting next to WKCR on the internet, Google it!
   One of my main persons, Maestro Pierre Boulez in an interview was asked about American composers. He replied - in his usual way - (something along this line) "America doesn't have anyone of Hans Werner Henze's caliber, and that's not setting one's sights very high." I used to listen to Henze's music quite a lot. I listened to Henze along with Boulez. I find their music exciting. And I liked Henze's politics. His El Cimarrón - a diary of a runaway slave for bass voice, flute, guitar and percussion - was a favorite of mine. I listened to the incomplete vinyl DGG recording directed by Henze with the bariton William Pearson. Another of Henze's works that attracted my attention was his Der langwierige Weg in die Wohnung der Natascha Ungeheuer (The Tedious Way to the place of Natascha Ungeheuer). [We've all had these tedious-way experiences.] This DGG vinyl recording features William Pearson, Fires of London: piano quintet; Philip Jones Brass Quintet; Gunter Hampel Free Jazz Ensemble; Stomu Yamash'ta, percussion; and recorded tape. Damn! Natascha Ungeheuer is reckoned as the siren of a false Utopia - a lot of that going on today. What could be hipper than all of that - it was like Archie Shepp's Impulse recordings, like John Coltrane's Ascension, like The Art Ensemble + Fontella Bass. But puzzling Pierre did have a point about American 'composers'; but a quite allusive point. One must remember that Boulez in print is one person; Maestro Boulez is another person. The latter Pierre is totally committed to creating music.
   One of my points concerns the disparagement of creative music (jazz) by academic American composers. How is that composers who are quite influenced by creative music, who take John Coltrane's music or Lennie Tristano's music - I have Philip Glass and Steve Reich in my sights here - straight away without acknowledgement? I attended a performance by the Philip Glass Ensemble in Detroit many years ago. I had never heard Glass's music before. I read about him in the Village Voice. So I thought that I would give his music a listen. I was spellbound by the performance - take Coltrane, Indian music, African drumming and make a distillate of those ingredients, then amplify this compound. In what did my spellboundedness reside?
   More on these subjects later. Must bounce.