Free jazz.

I can't address the criticisms but there is a lot endless blowing and then there are some great recordings. I found it OK to get into listening to it. I like the noisy-ness of some of it. The AMG quote though is not something to dwell on, i think.

(sorry for all the posts, I've just woken up)

But Nick, I'm guessing that free jazz just ain't yr cup of hair, basically. I didn't think any of it was 'selfish and pretentious and indulgent and exclusionary' - Evan Parker had his eyes closed 'cos he was actually listening really hard to what was going on around him, and I never got the feeling that the group were playing for themselves rather than the audience - in fact a lot of it seemed a touch overly polite to me, but then I generally prefer my free jazz to be loud and painful. You also missed Han Bennink playing the drum riser and the stage floor, and an incredible bowed solo from William Parker.

Also went to see Joe McPhee/Paul Hession/Jon Edwards playing at Gallery 291 last Sunday - now THAT was a truly great free jazz gig!

i wz going to do something for nylpm last year, a crosscut crit of amm and unrest, in ref.the baggage you are expected to bring into the performance space to read the work at hand (however i wz too busy to get to the amm show, so it spluttered...)

(PROVISIONAL THESIS: amm declares "nothing at all", and i think part of the discussion of successful vs unsuccessful amm wd be the truth or untruth of this; unrest by contrast requires a considerable and quite pegged-down history of pop and rock, which in the long run makes it closer and potentially richer to insiders, but a lot less accessible to outsiders....) (cf josh's thread, that eddie prevost contributed to...)

Perhaps you didn't see the interaction because your unfamiliarity with the genre made you unsure of what to look for. Different types of music require different types of listening.

I find this music particularly arrogant and selfish, it shuns it's audience, it refuses to communicate

I don't understand this at all-- this strange demand that it communicate to you, and that since it doesn't it's "selfish." When in fact it's actually just your problem. You think most people at that show would agree that the music didn't "communicate" to them? Maybe there's some subtext I'm missing here, but you sound like some 19th-century musicologist who goes to China and listens to Chinese music and says, "It's so strange, it shuns its audience, it doesn't communicate..."

What's to get?

Plenty.

i wandered along to see the Spring Heel Jack collaboration (with *supergroup* Evan Parker/William Parker/Matthew Shipp/Han Bennink/John Spaceman) play last night to an audience of around 1500 at the RFH in london. testament also to the simple formula that clever marketing = hip crowd.

10 minutes in and it was clear that there were 2 groups playing - the improvisers.. and the bedroom improvisers..

once evan parker started playing dreamy bedroom sax (the trigger of which was perhaps one of SHJ walking across stage in front of him during a solo) it was all over..

the first set barely held together.

the second set completely fell apart.

if the musicians were bored in the first they were pissed off in the second. bennink and parker (bass) started out the second set in an attempt to create the substance but it turned into a rockout that was more jelly than jam. shipp was resigned to mark out the bars with power chords. evan parker stopped playing completely with 20 minutes to go. all left the stage before their names had even been introduced.

sad.

I'm uncomfortable when people come down on new avant-garde listeners in the way that Charlie did above. I understand why, of course -- I've dealt with plenty of students who were bigoted, for instance, and couldn't possibly believe that (for instance) dissonant music like Webern could ever possibly be rewarding. But for me, spending a fair amount of time actually playing free jazz and free music has only reinforced Sturgeon's law -- that being that "95% (some sources say 90% or 99%) of everything is bullshit/crap". A statement which is just as true of other forms of music, of course, and which I take with a grain of salt. But I can completely sympathize with Nick, in that I've had that same experience and arrogance is exactly the feeling that's evoked in the listener when a free music concert doesn't come off, or is undertaken by a group unable to conjure a convincing performance.

All that being said, when it does come off, it's an amazing thing, and I hope you (Nick) get to experience it before you're too soured on the idiom as a whole. All the musicians present are capable of great things on a good night.

Julio, the McPhee gig kicked off at the v. civilised time of 5pm - plenty of time to get home afterwards. More gigs shld start at this time!

yeah, they should. its a big prob for me.

I like this thread and I think charlie is being a bit hard on nick.

It is really down to the individual players involved. How much experience they have in this idiom... how good they are at listening to one another... Oh, and by the way, I wouldn't make anything of the "eye contact" or lack thereof amongst the players. If anything, this tells me they are focusing more intently on the sound being created. Maybe try a record, where you don't have to worry about the contexts created by the performance space. And of course, can shut it off whenever you like! I'd start at the beginning with one of the real touchstones of the movement, Spontaneous Music Ensemble's karyobin. Collective improvisation that moves and breathes like a living organism.

I think that arrogance is a bad word to use in this situation, but I think it's rather "arrogant," if you will, to go to any concert (free jazz or not) and think that because the music played will be "in" a certain genre, that somehow you should expect only like 5 parameters of it. It's okay to not be familiar with free jazz and go see a show and not like it (hey, I'm really familiar with free jazz, and there are shows I don't like, either), but it seems weird to me to go expecting to hear Mingus or something. There wasn't a whole lot of overlap/interaction between Mingus and the free players when he was alive (although I'm sure a lot of free jazzers - then and now - listen to his music), why would you think that 30-40 years later free jazz would sound like his music? It's more the expectation that's disappointing you (although in this case it sounds like the group as a whole didn't really gel). I for one can't imagine being disappointed by Han Bennink or William Parker, but then again I haven't heard/seen every group they've been involved with, either. And I think, even though it sounds unsuccessful, some credit must be given to Jason Pierce and SHJ for at least trying this, playing with guys who each have about 40 years of playing under their individual belts (Shipp is an exception, obv.).

Joe McPhee rules, btw. Very underrated.

This is why I thought Charlie's comments were pretty right on: Bennink is just terrific, and while I'm sure he has off nights, the sound of the orginal post suggests (to me) that Nick hasn't tried listening to free jazz and isn't sure how to listen to it. Which is completely fair play, by the way, it's a really challenging sort of music that asks the listener to learn a whole new set of listening skills.

One of the most rewarding things I've tried (and improved at) as a listener is avoiding the initial knee-jerk reaction of "this is not what I thought or hoped it would be" and instead trying to approach records and performances on their own terms. You have to surrender a bit of yourself when you listen to music, all the more for music that's somewhat out of your zone of comfort and familiarity. Don't expect it to entertain or impress you outright, without any effort on your behalf.

People always talk about free jazz/improv in terms of interactions among players, and between players and audience (in terms of gauging reactions, showing approval, etc.) -- terms like "conversation, dialogue, communication" (some of which you use in your initial post) are an attempt to understand these more abstract musical maneuvers in terms of a universally understood set of human interactions. I think Mark S. is really onto something (haha when is he not!) when he writes:

"i wonder if the free-jazz-attitude-to-audience mayn't be a bit like the ilm-attitude-to-poster, as it seems to have evolved: it assumes a certain level of semi-aggressive confidence in the listener, that the interested audience will not simply be recessively pleading "come into my world and coax me out"

Newbies to ILM encounter a world of in-jokes, seemingly obscure references, familiarity with each other's personalities, etc. One can react defensively to this: "Hey, *I* don't get this, I'm not part of this circle, these jokes and references don't reverberate with me, they just anger me." Or one can do what most mature folks do when they encounter new social situations in "real life": to sit back for a bit and try to piece together what's going on, not to expect to be able to jump right in and understand everything, and, above all else, not to expect everyone else to pander to them. If you accept free jazz as a metaphorical conversation, as you seem to, then you have to acknowledge the kinks that might arise when you attempt to enter the conversation.

Charlie was kinda right when he said "you sound like some 19th-century musicologist who goes to China and listens to Chinese music and says, "It's so strange, it shuns its audience, it doesn't communicate..."," but it's probably better to think of it in terms of unencountered social group rather than unencountered culture. It would seem rather disingenious to, say, attend one Alcoholics Anonymous meeting in Omaha, Nebraska, and return only to proclaim "I don't see what anyone gets out of those group therapy sessions!"

"And I found none of that enjoyment last night, nor could I understand how anyone else could , beyond arrogant posturing which posits oneself in an inner circle of people who 'get it'."

Now this itself is pretty arrogant, I'd say. I don't think Charlie's vitriol is all that unjustified when I read this, for you quite baldfacedly imply that anyone who derives pleasure from free jazz is an arrogant poseur. You should probably rethink that statement.

To be fair, after a busy week at work I was kind of kranky and tired, and I really wanted something nice and relaxing for a Friday night. Walking into this without a completely open-mind was clearly erroneous, but at least it was a start. I've got a copy of The Shape Of Jazz To Come upstairs and I just may crack it out for the first time tomorrow and see if it maybe gives me an alternative starting point that maybe sets me up better.

There were definitely moments last night when I was nearly grabbed by what was going on, but they were few and far between enough, and not quite powerful enough, that I didn't want to stick with it past the interval. Plus when the SHJ guy with the sequencers was crumpling a plastic bag and tearing up pieces of paper into a microphone (plus holding a trumpet without apparently playing it? - Emma says she thinks he was trying to play it, but couldn't because there was something wrong with it?), I just thought he was a poseur.

As for music and communication, isn't music all about communication, on whatever level? I don't think it was arrogant of me to expect communication to me from the music, but maybe it was naive. I've taken enough steps from one kind of music to another to know that I can appreciate forms outside of my immediate historical understanding, and in many cases it takes time, picking up on seeds of attraction and communication and letting them germinate before going back to them to see them flower, and last night, as a starting point for free jazz (and an accidental one at that), I think it was far from ideal.

Nick, you're probably right that it was a far-from-ideal starting point for you and free jazz -- two drum 'n' bass guys + some players who can be considered jazz tenuously at best + former dronerock poster boy (whose playing on the album *is* really good though ;-) ) = interesting... Judging from what you said you liked in your initial post, I'd recommend starting with some of the older guys' stuff. Charlie, and others I'm sure, can give you far better and more extensive suggestions than I can, but you sound like you've got a start with Ornette. If you like that record, check out his _Live at the Golden Circle in Stockholm_ to get an idea for how this stuff works in a live setting (ignoring for the moment of course obvious barriers like you not actually being there and stuff) -- also Coltrane's _Live in Seattle_ but that's a little more hairy and intense. Judging also from what little I know of your musical tastes, you need to check out Alice Coltrane -- I only have _Journey to Satchadinanda_, but I've heard some other stuff of hers, and while it's not exactly "free," there's some playing there, especially by Pharoah Sanders (another great one worth checking out), that will give you a good taste of free jazz that really communicates and connects, even for those not too familiar with the stuff.

Free-Jazz, is a genre in which performances can vary, some nights might not succeed, but when musicians connect, free jazz is one of the most beautiful forms of music that has ever been gifted to the earth.

gail brand is currently god.

some UK cds seem like snapshots of "happening" type events that did or didn't come together depending on what you heard in it -- earlier "free jazz" releases from the u.s. whether 'live' or not have always seemed well choreographed demonstrations of intelligence and power

the economics have changed -- five years ago there was so much improv coming out on cd -- compare that to the '60s and '70s when the occasional releases from the major free jazz figures were still marginalised for economic and culturally-blinkered reasons, meaning these releases were typically the best gig of a tour or a project that had been rehearsed for months

suddenly there have been so many gigs and so many cds of the more eccentric english style -- many of these more recent cd re-issues and all-star gigs maybe serve a nostalgia english people have for the ad hoc ensembles of the past -- cds used to be artistic statements, but now they're more like files or gigs

and so Matthew Shipp releases more cds per annum than Cecil Taylor -- these guys have different approaches, all artists, all very loosely categorised with the umbrella term "free jazz" -- Shipp is happy to work with Spring Heel Jack, yet Taylor has steadfstly refused the advances of rockstars (like "J Spaceman" -- what is he doing there?) however well meaning, who wish to try and push what he does to a wider public (with the attendant compromises)

"I believe in freedom. Freedom of assembly, free speech, free religion, even free love. But I draw the line at free jazz".

max harrison to thread.

re. JCOA/Communications - weird how Mantler never really followed up the implications for big-band improv he opened up here (Barry Guy showed signs of doing so with the LJCO on "Ode" but then he went off on another tangent), instead drifting into psych-prog rock and/or bad bartok impressions. strange. then again he never had such great soloists to work with after that.

Having read the thread i'm not so sure anymore.

Its not gonna sound ecstatic or anything but there were some good, worthwhile moments among the not-so good. On balance I'm glad i went.

does distorted noise-based improv = free jazz if played on wind instruments?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x6lX1SkYksI

I love this kinda shit (saw WJU live and they tore the fukkin place apart), I just don't know if it's really "jazz."

there are/were a lot of bands doing this in the SF Bay Area in the past few years, some of it is awesome, some of it isn't as awesome. There's definitely a free jazz influence to some extent.

h8 this

i love it. throwing your cymbals is definitely jazz, if bennink is jazz that is...

Thought of this v old thread when I saw these clueless remarks by Brian Eno here:

One of the things you're doing when you make art, apart from entertaining yourself and other people, is trying to see what ways of working feel good, what feels right. What gets the results you want? And for me, it isn't top-down architecture that does that – but it's not chaos, either. I don't want to do free jazz! Because free jazz – which is the musical equivalent of free marketeering – isn't actually free at all. It's just constrained by what your muscles can do. It turns out that anything that is called free anything isn't really. It's just constraints that you don't recognise.

I think most of the ppl who make this music have rejected the term itself, although for what reasons I now forget. Ornette has for sure spoken against the term. And Cecil doesn't even term his music jazz:

It's about American music that never existed in the world until we did it.

I've never heard a free jazz rec and thought that the person(s) involved have found an idea of freedom, or that there's an anything goes approach at all.

Know its shotting fish, barrels, etc.

I'm drawing a blank - what's the free jazz album that has two rhythm sections panned hard left & right?

most likely 'free jazz' by ornette coleman or 'ascension' by coltrane

that's right - I'm thinking of the Coleman one. I thought it was his band but I forgot which album. thanks!!

lol

did you ever like it?

or have your tastes changed as you've gotten older?

Mine certainly have. I rarely have any desire to listen to my Albert Ayler records these days. But I've been all about Ornette lately, whose playing I could barely stand 20 years ago, when I was really into guys from the Shepp/Ayler school

I don't think I ever liked it all that much but I used to try to. I like some Ayler records but my favorite, Spiritual Unity, works for me because it's only three instruments, each occupying a pretty different part of the sonic spectrum and playing pretty sensitively together in spite of it being noisy.

i like the noisy chaos every once in a while but i have more use for "slow-burning free jazz." there is even a thread on it: Slow-burning Free Jazz

ayler is good but i can't imagine liking him more than coltrane

think i'm ready to give sun ra a shot. any recs for intense and hypnotic ra or should i just dive in somewhere.

i like ayler more than coltrane

xp to mattress

I really like The Magic City, Lanquidity, and the Singles collection, but those are v. different. in the vein of what you describe, "Life Is Splendid" is a pretty amazing live one, also maybe check out Kohoutek Concert?

ty!

the two ra albs on actuel - solar-myth approach vols 1 and 2 - are p freaky

http://www.forcedexposure.com/Catalog/BYG.340HLP.html

I dig Heliocentric Worlds, esp vol 2.

I don't think I ever liked it all that much but I used to try to

^this. it's fun to play, can be fun to watch sometimes, not fun at all to listen to on record.

Ornette's "Live at the Golden Circle" pair are loads of fun to listen to!

yeah I particularly don't enjoy most what I would call "blastoff free jazz" -- everyone skronking loudly together for 20 minutes.

― Hier Komme Die Warum Jetzt (Hurting 2), Friday, June 13, 2014 4:56 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I like it, and it was a concert of that approach that gave me my first exposure to this music. As long as it's not self-consciously approached as "free jazz," it can be effective.

But I'm frequently reminded of this Bill Dixon quote:

There is more to some areas of music than the dynamic of velocity and density even though (for whatever reason) the attractiveness of that umbilical cord of persuasion that is far often and too easily thought of (by the neophyte and the theoretically more knowledgeable but pseudo cognoscenti) as when 'it's happening.' Ah, that energy. That sweet energy.

That stuff is a lot more fun live than on record, particularly in the case of (much as I hate to say it) Peter Brötzmann. I have dozens of albums of his, and there are only two or three that I return to - Machine Gun, stuff by Full Blast (trio with electric bass and almost-metal drumming) and Nothung, a trio disc with William Parker and the drummer from Full Blast, Michael Wertmüller. And Last Exit, of course, but they were a mix of free jazz and ultra-aggressive rock/metal. When it comes to out jazz on record, I prefer something that starts out structured and then explodes, then subsides again, to stuff that's raging full-on from first moment to last.

Hey Matt, the sun ra thred is probably the place to go for Sunrock recommendations.

xpost good example there - I loved seeing Brotzmann perform with Marilyn Crispell and Hamid Drake, but find "Machine Gun" too frenetic and wearying for my aging ears. (Wish I'd been able to find it a decade earlier.) And yeah, no problems playing Last Exit cause they're METAL.

Brotzmann live can be mind-altering. One of the best live shows I ever saw was the Chicago Tentet (+2) in San Francisco. But then again, a slightly different configuration of that tentet played a very weak set (imo) in Victoriaville in 2005.

seeing brotzmann playing live last month after only being familiar with his late 60s and early 70s stuff = total eye-opener!

was a solo show and his playing seemed very controlled but some of sounds he got were whoah

Did he have the full array of instruments?

A lot of that stuff is definitely better live, for sure. It just has more room to breathe for one thing.

Not to mention the whole 'wow, they're actually MAKING those sounds!' aspect

"South Side of the Sky" is fairly clear once you know the programmatic content

lol sorry wrong thread

idk - i feel that a lot of it is better on recordings because sometimes live, it is too loud and you end up putting in earplugs or standing way in the back, and you end up losing some of the sound. If you have fancy earplugs, then congratulations, I don't. Plus, with recordings, there is editing involved, as opposed to in a lot of live gigs, even the best ones, there is still a fair amount of time spent getting to an interesting place, that unless you are really entranced by the process, isn't the most rewarding, musically.

Damn, I've never been at any live jazz thing where the sound's anywhere NEAR as loud as any rock concert. One reason I'm not a huge fan of rock concerts.

xposts: based on my untutored eye/ear, he was using baritone, soprano & tenor. no ear blistering volume but it certainly filled the room.

Used tenor, clarinet and bass clarinet when I saw him; and spent most of the time in the upper registers of all three

I dunno, I think Brötzmann gets unfairly (but understandably) tagged as being a "sonic terrorist." The three times I saw him -- duo w/Drake, Chicago 10tet, duo w/ Walter Perkins -- had incredibly vast (and sometimes abrupt) dynamic shifts. And the duo with Perkins was among the most reflective and sensitive performances of this music I've ever seen. Even some of his earlyish records, particularly the '71 FMP set with Van Hove, Bennink, and Mangelsdorff (probably my favorite record of his), have him backing away from full-on skronk for long stretches.

no lime tangier, you might like No Nothing, a solo disc on FMP. He runs through all of his instruments, and there are the typically shouty moments, but some of the most devastating passages are the quietest.

He's definitely a much subtler player than he's given credit for being. I've seen him at least twice myself—Die Like A Dog once, and the show with Thomas Borgmann, William Parker and Rashid Bakr that's since been released as The Cooler Suite, and I think I might have seen him one other time at the Vision Festival—and each was dynamic. But the records I have, particularly the ones where he's playing with Mats Gustafsson and Paal Nilssen-Love and blowing for a half hour at a stretch, don't really lend themselves to repeated home listening, for me anyway.

Anyone curious about PB's more sensitive side needs to hear 'Tales Out Of Time' on Hat.

i prefer alan silva's "luna surface" {sic} to "machine gun" anyhow.
i'm always waiting for brötzmann to release his duet with james hetfield "pirate songs".
for all his howling void machismo he still sounds way too cabaret / oompah to me.
i'll take frank wright / john tchicai / frank lowe / charles tyler over brötzmann any day, but they don't have that "tom of finland" asthetic that the wolf-eyes fans seem to go crazy for.
AEOC are way awesome but suffer from having the worst band name in history.
napalm death "you suffer but why?"
AEOC "because we chose to call our band the art ensemble of chicago"

I dunno, I think Brötzmann gets unfairly (but understandably) tagged as being a "sonic terrorist."

yea, i agree it's a little unfair. tbh i've never heard 'machine gun' or 'nipples' but my favorite brotzmann album is a live set w/ william parker and hamid drake called Never Too Late But Always Too Early, has a HUGE range of wild noisy screeching and also quiet, simmering tension and it's all really great. would highly recommend this album.

Bit late here but Brotzmann is not - and has never been - a "sonic terrorist", that's ignorance. No need to bring in the solo albums where he'll inevitably show the reflective moods.

Its not your thing, fine, but that's his tone.

alongside the canonical brotdiscs, i also really dig this black forest sojourn w/ han bennink, who often seems to bring out his partner's inner sonny rollins:

http://www.atavistic.com/albums.php?id=173

I also like him on Ginger Baker's No Material, with Sharrock, Skopelitis, and uhhh--the bass player from Das Pferd (Laswell got stuck somewhere on the way to Switzerland). How is he with Caspar?

I have the Peter/Caspar disc; it's OK. Caspar's sort of slow-burning riffs don't really blend that well with his dad's playing, but it has its moments. One day I want to check out the Marz Combo disc, which was a 10-piece band (Toshinori Kondo on trumpet; Werner Ludi, Larry Stabbins and Peter on saxes; Hannes Bauer and Paul Rutherford on trombones; Caspar and Nicky Skopelitis on guitars; William Parker on bass; and Anton Fier on drums) that only played one gig ever.

Brötzmann recently played a gig with Hamid Drake and William Parker for an elementary school assembly program in Austin, TX. lucky kids

Really digging this Morris/Parker/Cleaver disc from 2012 ("Altitude").

Oh yes, Altitude is a good 'un. I shall have to dig it out again sometime.

There's a Brotz live album coming out on Cafe Oto's label of his gig there with vibes player Jason Adasiwiecz and the in-house rhythm section of Steve Noble and John Edwards. I imagine that'll be a bit more subtle, although Adasiwiecz is not your average mellow vibes guy...

Brotz is on brilliant form these days. Best I've heard of past five years is his Japanese trio Yatagarasu. Runs the gamut in terms of dynamics and the piano playing is incredible.

Still working my way through the amazing William Parker live box on Aum Fidelity. So much amazing music there. What a band his quartet is. Hamid Drake is probably my favourite living drummer; he swings with such freedom. Gorgeous.

I hugged Hamid Drake once. It was one of the best hugs I have ever had.

Stew I didn't even realize you still hang around here at all.

Hello! Jazz always draws me in... :)

That Parker box is so fucking good. I tried to get The Wire to let me write a full-page review of it, but it got cut down to a slightly longer than usual regular write-up, 600 words or so. It's the kind of thing you could spend a month listening to.

Hamid is one of the nicest guys I've ever met, too. He and William both. That's one reason why it was so shocking to see William go after Howard Mandel in public recently, because William has never had anything bad to say about anyone as long as I've known him (about 15 years at this point).

Looks like at least some of the box stuff is on Spotify.

Yeah, and the individual shows are available for purchase on iTunes.

I haven't checked to see what's up there, but I'd recommend the first two discs, documenting a gig at Yoshi's. The quartet at its best. The first set is really energetic, full of big tunes and infectious rhythms. It never stays still, yet feels coherent. The second set dials it back a little, a bit more exploratory and abstract. The disc with the expanded band including Billy Bang on violin is a big favourite too. Love that guy's playing, and Parker and Drake work up some killer grooves. The final disc is the most 'free', with Cooper Moore opening things right out on piano. The Raining On The Moon disc is great too if you're more into the song side of Parker - Lena Conquest on vocals.

Finally getting my long overdue review of it together for The Quietus. Better late than never I guess...

Curious to know if the Thurston Moore / Chris Corsano / Paul Flaherty / Wally Shoup 4Tet stuff is worth tracking down, particularly curious about the Roadhouse Sessions disc I've seen.