Kevin Sun

This approach to balancing rhythmic phrases and the resultant dynamic rhythmic symmetry, are reminiscent of the phrases that tap dancers and drummers use. These devices are constant occurrences in Parker's music, as demonstrated in this song, and Navarro and Powell demonstrate much of the same tendencies. Of course, all of this is occurring so rapidly that there is no such analysis as I am giving here is involved on the part of the musicians. But I do think that these kinds of balances are involved in the feel of the music, and this is what contributes to the music's effect. I believe that the initiated (the musicians who are near Parker's musical level) are the first who are affected, then they transmit the information and influence the musicians just below their level, and so on. The collective impact of these concepts (albeit necessarily in diluted form) eventually gets communicated to the public's ear. — Steve Coleman About a month ago I poste

Imagine the Sound  (1981) is a collection of both live and in-studio performances punctuated by commentary by the artists: Paul Bley, Archie Shepp, Bill Dixon, and Cecil Taylor. The contrast in production style with the Ken Burns Jazz  series is stark; the interview segments in Imagine  are far more casual, with notable shots of Shepp and Bley smoking pipes and Taylor interrupting eloquent answers mid-sentence to light his cigarette, but no less illuminating and generally just more real-to-life. The majority of the film is performance footage, all of which is excellent. I remember seeing clips of Cecil Taylor performing solo from this documentary in Jazz  years ago, and these performances are hard to forget not only because of the astonishing, up-close views of Taylor's physical exchanges with the instrument, but because they take place in an all-white studio space (it looks like the loading program from The Matrix ). I won't say much about the performances in the docu