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Showing posts from December, 2014

James Moody & Mark Turner on "The Plain But The Simple Truth"

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A gem from the '90s Continuing the effort to post forgotten transcriptions from the past year, I finally finished up two solos that I'd started at the very beginning of the year: James Moody & Mark Turner on a Bb blues.  Miguel had recommended the album, Warner Jams, Vol. 2: The Two Tenors , to me at the end of 2013, mentioning that I should check out the difference in time feels between Moody and Mark. It's a fascinating document of two great artists conversing across generations, and definitely worth digging up a copy if you've got the time and resources ("Satellite" and "The Man I Love" are also particularly memorable). At times, it's truly gravity-defying how much Mark plays behind the beat without dragging; Moody, as usual, sounds ebullient throughout.  To my knowledge, there weren't any more Warner Jams after this one. The first volume was a mash-up of a bunch of second-generation 'Young Lions,' and I have

Back To the Liner Notes

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"Lester Young is breathing" by Lola Lonli  ( Wikimedia Commons ) After another holiday-driven Prex run , I dug into the liner notes for some more miscellanea and apocrypha.  Bouncing With Bud (1962),  J.B. Figi I hadn't read anything by J.B. Figi prior to the liner notes to this 1962 Copenhagen session (featuring a 15-year-old NHOP), but I was impressed by his stark, gothic evocations of Bud and his inner machinations. Maybe it's not the place of the liner notes author to fictively psychoanalyze an artist of Bud's stature, but it's certainly more memorable than the usual liner note banalities. Some highlights: BUD LIVES! Chalk that upon the wall, a reminder, a challenge to the too-ready pallbearers. Tormented, haunted, above all-erratic, he may be; but the Powell mind still stalks baroque corridors, fingers still translate wrought-iron into music...   ...Because Bud retains his glimpse of another, frightening dimension, an added ingredient removi

Bud Powell on "'Round Midnight"

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For my final project in the Bud/Bird class I took this semester, I decided to transcribe Bud's  astonishing chorus on 'Round Midnight from One Night in Birdland  (1950).  Ethan Iverson has already extensively discussed performances from this recording and Bud in general in his Bud Powell Anthology . As he asserts with italics : The piano chorus on "'Round Midnight" is the best  this song has ever been played except by the composer. A pretty weighty pronouncement, but I'd like to hear any contentions if the well-listened readers have them. Also, one caveat: consider the end-of-semester context of this assignment and forgive me for hasty mistakes etc . here. I've appended an "analysis" at the end of the transcription, but a lot of this was written last minute; the real stuff, as always, is on the record. C Bb Eb "Analysis" * * * * * “‘Round Midnight,” recorded live at Birdland, NYC, May 15-16-17 t

Playing Piano by Foot: Charles Ives & Physical Reorientation

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Charles Ives (left), pitcher, ca. 1894 In Vivian Perlis's superb Charles Ives Remembered: An Oral History  (1974), one Ely Ryder, a peer of Ives in his childhood town of Danbury, Connecticut, remembers walking in on Ives playing the piano: Charles Ives and I were teen-agers of about the same age. One day I went up on the hill to the Ives house to visit Charlie, and I found him playing a piano. I was astonished to find that he played it with his feet as well as with his hands. All expert piano players use their feet to affect the piano, but I just learned it that day! At first, I thought that Ryder meant simply that Ives was a smooth operator of the pedals, but I have a sense that this isn't what he meant: Ives literally played the piano using his feet.  This particular anecdote stuck with me as an especially memorable instance of experimentalism for its own sake—that is, for the joy of discovery and exploration into the personally unknown. Non-goal-oriented play lik