jazzery

[calimac]

Don't let my enthusiasm for classical music fool you: I don't like all of it, and there are vast fields of other forms of music that mean nothing to me whatever. Such as jazz. I've heard a fair amount of it (cool modern jazz is the background music of choice for proprietors of used book stores), and an occasional individual piece will strike my fancy: "Take Five" by Dave Brubeck is kind of catchy, and if Windham Hillery is a form of jazz, I like a lot of that, though not enough to buy any. But though voidampersand and others have taught me a bit about jazz, as a form it strikes no musical response in me whatever. (One nimnul who briefly appeared in my life accused me of feigning a non-response through snobbery. Honey, these days jazz is a snob elitist's music second only to classical. If I wanted to be a snob, I'd direct my disdain at rap stars and pop bimbos.)

A touch of jazz can liven up a work by somebody like Copland, but my experience with full-scale jazz-classical fusion has been pretty deadly. Nevertheless, I have hopes that some day I might get it, and I always want to continue my classical education, so having a ticket to yesterday's SSV concert of three such works, I went.

I haven't been so bored at a classical concert since the last time (and by god that will remain the last time) I heard Tod und Verklärung.

David Amram's Triple Concerto showed a bit of life, but not any charm, in the final movement based on Middle Eastern folk music, but the rest sounded like the kind of jazz parody that Allan Sherman did with the Boston Pops - "Pete Tchaikovsky's Blues," that sort of thing.

Duke Ellington's Black, Brown & Beige in a cut-down version: three movements supposedly 20 minutes long, it seemed longer as the Duke kept coming to what sounded like final cadences and stopping but the movement didn't end - wrong again, Hubert - and what I learned from this work is 1) he has a not-particularly-striking seven-note motif that he loves to repeat but has no idea what to do with; and 2) if you put a mute in it, you can make a trombone emit really weird and ugly sounds. Even the third time around it was amusing, though.

After this, George Gershwin's An American in Paris, a work I've disliked for decades (I like Rhapsody in Blue, though), came as an old friend. Though I count the opening section as the most obnoxious earworm in classical music, the second half of the piece is pretty nice. There's a slow theme that sounds a lot like "Bess, you is my woman now"; it's good, but in a musical-theatre way, not a classical way.

Lots of virtuosity from the musicians, but virtuosity isn't musicianship. The orchestra sounded tinny. Enthusiasm from much of the audience, but if the SSV ever does this sort of thing again, I think I'll just skip it.

Comments

[sartorias.livejournal.com]

There are two jazz pieces I like--"Take Five" and "Blue Rondo a la Turk." In both cases there is a perceivable melody, and for lack of proper term, a structure. Most jazz to me (and I grew up hearing it all the time) sounds like wailing without benefit of melody, or purposeless tinkling and twiddling, as as for harshly blown saxes, it has the same negative effect as screaming, distorted amplified guitar does--just hurts my ears, crosses firmly from music to noise.

[baldanders.livejournal.com]

FWIW, "Black, Brown, and Beige," while having many virtues (to my ears), is far from the best Ellington, and (I think) not the piece most likely to appeal to classical ears. Ellington had more of the classical virtues doing his own thing.

I came late to jazz -- and classical -- and my guess is, if you don't like Ellington, Mingus, or Threadgill -- the most composition-leaning of the major jazz musicians -- jazz may not have anything for you.

[(Anonymous)]

I wonder if anyone who goes in to a concert expecting not to like it way can come out changed? Not saying that it can't happen ... just never heard of it.

[kip-w.livejournal.com]

Sounds to me like you just don't like jazz. I like a bit of it, myself. In my ears, Art Tatum (solo piano) can do no wrong, but please don't rush out and listen to some and then tell me you don't like it. I take stuff too personally.

It's hard for me to find any genre I don't at least like some of. True, there are some I haven't listened to enough to find the bit I like. Even country western has some good stuff in it, and that's a statement I'd have undergone unnecessary root canal to avoid saying thirty years ago.

[voidampersand.livejournal.com]

I think I would have the same reaction as to the SVV program. I may like jazz more than you, but I can really do without pops, and most jazz-influenced classical pieces are either pops or avant-garde curiosities. Last night Spike and I saw Gubaidulina's Offertorium and Tchaikovsky's 5th at Davies, with Kurt Masur conducting. It was glorious. Offertorium was intensely modern, but it worked for me because I could hear the Royal Theme (from the Musical Offering) in every phrase, even as it was pounded to pieces and put back together. It seemed very much in the spirit of Bach, who was not much of one for compromise either. I also liked the Tchaikovsky. The orchestra played their hearts out on both pieces, and at the end they were waving their bows and stomping their feet for Mr. Masur. It was nice to see that.

Meanwhile, as we type, Don Byron is playing in San Francisco. I wonder if you have listened to him. His playing is all over the map (swing, classically-influenced jazz, bebop, klezmer, funk, love ballads, avant-garde compositions of his own, and cartoon music, and probably some others that I've missed), but it's indisputably jazz and he plays with extraordinary talent and care. Maybe that no-compromise attitude is why I like him so much.

I think that jazz at its roots is the blues, and that to fully appreciate jazz you need to enjoy the early and more blues oriented jazz artists such as King Oliver, Jelly Roll Morton, Louis Armstrong, and Bessie Smith, and the unnamed New Orleans funeral marching bands who came before. Other artists such as Benny Goodman, Duke Ellington, Charlie Parker and Thelonious Monk brought in classical influences (Parker particularly dug Stravinsky), but you can still hear the blues in everything they did. Not that you have to like it, but I think it makes it a lot easier if you already happen to enjoy the blues. The other aspects of jazz, the improvisation and the quoting of popular (at the time) songs, can be picked up.

[alanro.livejournal.com]

I heard Tod und Verklarung twice last year, both times as the initial piece of a concert program, and enjoyed it as much as you did. In fact, I cannot think of any piece by Richard Strauss that I would voluntarily pay to listen to. This piece of music always seems (in my experience) to be scheduled as the initial piece of a concert programme. Often, this spot in the programme is reserved for a short piece so that latecomers will not miss the heart of the concert... I feel the same way about latecomers to a symphony as I feel about people who leave baseball games in the seventh inning. They should not be catered to.

I know very little about jazz, but shikzoid has been listening to live jazz for almost thirty years and I trust her judgment when she points out a show that she thinks I would enjoy. Professor Longhair comes to mind, as does Mose Allison (who we saw perform live when we were in Chicago last winter).

[(Anonymous)]

Alan, have you heard Strauss's Piano Quartet? It's very nice, and rather Brahmsian.

- Jennifer (http://perfectfifths.com)