Listening to Jazz for over 40 years

This is an interesting topic, one which has emerged in some of the other threads over the years. I think it is a combination of many factors.

It may simply be a case of maturing and refinement of taste. But whatever the style or genre, music has to be played with feeling if I am to connect and I fail to find this in much modern music, certainly modern 'pop'. Conversely, I still enjoy exploring back through the history of jazz - anything bebop and beyond seems to draw me in.

Another thing which may compound the musical accessibility problem is that not only do I have less time to listen actively to music, but also I buy a lot more which means less time per disc. If I don't get hooked on first of second listen then it often gets filed and forgotten. In my youth I might have bought one or two albums a month and would have listened repeatedly whilst doing homework. That repeated listening really paid off, such discs being ingrained in my psyche.

I think I'll now go play Miles's Porgy & Bess, see how I get on...

quote:

Originally posted by mikeeschman:

Pianists like Earl Hines and Art Tatum come to mind, as does Bill Evens.

I might have the perfect suggestion for you, Mike ... Keith Jarrett's most recent "Standards Trio" release, Yesterdays. If you like Hines, Tatum, and Evans, I can't imagine you wouldn't like this.

quote:

Are any of the older posters here also suffering the closing of doors? Is this inevitable?

Not this older poster ... not inevitable at all.

All best,
Fred

Mike
I'm 57 so got to jazz late (brought up on Hendrix, Cream etc.) Have a trawl through Naxos Jazz. When I wondered where to go from Blue Note I bought a few of these on the basis of the cover being attractive (they were cheap) and some of them are very good indeed. It's a treat to hear good jazz, well recorded on modern equipment.
Also Joe Lovano while I'm on the subject.
Mick

While I have yet to assemble 40 years of listening experience I can relate. I go through periods of not being at all interested in one or all of my three foundational genres: jazz, classical and electronica. I recognize though that you may be describing something more permanent perhaps, or listening to jazz with classical ears?

In some ways music is like bubblegum; after a chewing it for a while the flavor fades. I find myself wondering what I ever saw in Vivaldi or why does my Peter Rauhofer at the Roxy disc have such a high playcount. I have a playlist of every song I remember having highly rated throughout my life. It is interesting to see which songs I still appreciate, which I have a renewed appreciation for and which I simply no longer enjoy. I think it's okay to no longer enjoy music that you once enjoyed greatly; your current experience of the music does not invalidate how it moved you before or somehow make the music lesser because of it.

quote:

Originally posted by fred simon:

quote:

Originally posted by mikeeschman:

Pianists like Earl Hines and Art Tatum come to mind, as does Bill Evens.

I might have the perfect suggestion for you, Mike ... Keith Jarrett's most recent "Standards Trio" release, Yesterdays. If you like Hines, Tatum, and Evans, I can't imagine you wouldn't like this.

quote:

Are any of the older posters here also suffering the closing of doors? Is this inevitable?

Not this older poster ... not inevitable at all.

All best,
Fred

Took the plunge and ordered this.

Thanks Fred.

My pleasure, Mike. And yours, too, I hope.

Just had my first listen to Yesterdays.  Beautiful.  I enjoyed it right out of the box.

It really is, isn't it? Glad you're digging it, I knew you would.

Did you happen to read about the last track, Stella By Starlight? It's from a sound check, the only time Jarrett has released one, and to my ears it has such a clearly relaxed, no-stakes, nothing-to-prove vibe. At its end, you can hear them laughing and Jarrett says something like "I hope someone was taping that!"

By the way, in the new forum, when the word "jazz" is used in a thread title, it looks like: j***  -- as though it was a four-letter word beginning with "j" ... gave me a good laugh.

Anyone else see this? Shows up with latest versions of Firefox and Safari and of Mac OSX

Yeah, that is pretty weird. I believe jazz was a dirty word at the turn of the 20th century but I can't imagine that a language filter would be screening it now. That's pretty silly.

This is a weird but happy circumstance.  For months if not years, I have tried to "get" "Gnu High".  After many attempts, I could listen and comprehend but not enjoy.  Then Fred Simon recommended Keith Jarrett's "Yesterdays", which I got on with on first listen without effort.

Now after three or four runs through "Yesterdays" I returned to "Gnu High" out of curiosity and found it to be very immediate and accessible and enjoyable.

I have been trying to pay all my attention to listening for some time, and I think that is what made possible this change in tastes.

If your tastes can't change, reams of new music remain inaccessible. 

I think that is the biggest challenge, to remain open to the new.  Now I believe that paying attention to what you hear is the best way to allow new experience.

Simple but easy to ignore or forget.

My favorite idea I got from Fred Simon is the idea that music thrives on the tension between two unequal notes sharing a beat.  It neatly summarizes the whole of rhythmic tension in music.

Simple ideas are powerful when accepted :-)

Right on, Mike ... very glad to hear it.

I think you might be ready to make the leap to Jarrett's Personal Mountains, which I consider to be not only one of his very best, but one of the greatest albums of all time.  It's a live recording of his so-called "European Quartet," and you'll find everything there ... from rousing and thorny (yet still accessible) to heart-achingly beautiful and tender, to soulful and bluesy. Some of these pieces you'll "get" right away, others might take a little time, but the reward is deeply satisfying and profoundly transcendent.

All best,
Fred

I'm ordering "Personal Mountains" this weekend.

Thanks Fred, for re-lighting the fire :-)

I'm too old to lose anything that has been part of my life for this long, at least without a fight.

You're more than welcome, Mike.

Just take your time with Personal Mountains ... much more challenging, but really worth it when you come out the other side. Do persevere.

Alternatively, you could try Jarrett's album Belonging first, and if you get on with it, Personal Mountains after. I had suggested the latter first because it's a live recording and you had indicated some preference for those. But Belonging is the first album with Jarrett's European quartet, and it's a deep masterpiece.

My hope is that you'll eventually fall in love with both. And then there's My Song ...

Best,
Fred

Just had my first listen to "Personal Mountains".  It "feels" like a single work in five movements.  Enjoyed most of it, although I feel he may hang onto phrases longer than necessary in moving the music forward, at least from time to time.

I don't hear a meter or a key in "Oasis", so the music seems to stall out, losing all forward momentum.  That may be intentional, but don't think I like it.  Music without meter or key has no internal narrative musically, and exposing that narrative is one of the chief joys in listening to music, at least for me.

Quote: Mikeeschman
The off color notes don't come across as "blue" notes that illuminate the melody. They just sound out of tune.
_____________________________________________________

For me one of the great appeals of Miles Davis' playing is and always has been his discord. Even in (later) live recordings where he has obviously got it wrong, I find the character it gives very appealing.

I do not like 'bum' notes from most players, and in many cases there should not be any fault as what they are attempting is not that difficult, but with Davis it is different, and those notes contributed to his style.

An example from a different art form was how Picasso sometimes developed sketches, he would do an intitial sketch from reality, but then make a series of sketches each from the previous sketch, so that marks and smudges from the previous image became a feature of the next. The resluting image was not a copy of reality but an expression of style.

I hope that makes sense.

Jamie, that makes a lot of sense.

 Having been married to a piano tuner / rebuilder for 37 years, I never enjoy out of tune notes.  They are more like paint thrown by a vandal on a Picasso.   Sliding out of tune is not an acceptable way to create dissonance, at least for me.

It never really bothered me till the last 4 or 5 years.  Can't explain that, except I've been paying more attention for the last 4 or 5 years.

I think everyone has things in music and the arts that they react strongly to in a positive or negative way.

I quite understand disliking discord, it makes more sense really. Especially if you spend so much time perfecting tuning with pianos.

It isn't a rebellion thing for me liking discord, I think it fits with my love of abstract art. With jazz I tend to find performances without discord, smooth jazz, just as difficult to listen to, as I suspect many find discordant playing.

Outside jazz, I like some music that a lot of people find quite objectionable (not in terms lyrical content), but I suspect that many who strongly dislike such music would be surprised that I find lovers of that music find the kind of generally accepted music piped at us in so many public places just as objectionable.

I get what you're saying Jamie, but there are any number of ways to introduce dissonance to music without resorting to playing out of tune, like suspensions.

One thing about some jazz, and Miles Davis in particular, is that the experimentation that would take place in the privacy of rehearsals, or at the piano when composing, often happens live on stage, or even live in the studio.

Perhaps not so much in Davis' earlier days, but by the time of albums like 'Bitches Brew' there was no preparation or rehearsal, just performance and the tapes rolling.

Mike I have really enjoyed the discussions where the two of us have engaged, but unfortunately so many other members who I have enjoyed the information and opinions of seem to have left the forum over the last month, and I don't think that I will be spending much time here in future.

Being a new dad doesn't leave me a lot of time either.

A pity, but all the best if I do not make any contributions, at least for a while anyway.

Jamie, the new forum leaves me cold as well.

Above all else, Mike, this is a work that you'll need to spend serious time with ... it ain't called Personal Mountains for nothing!

It does very much feel like one multi-movement work, in fact, there are several direct segues. Not sure what you mean about "hanging on to phrases longer than necessary," at least, that's not a reaction I've ever had in listening to this.

Oasis is monumental, but you need to hear it on its own terms. Yes, much of it has no meter, although some passages do have a steady pulse. It's not diatonic music (actually, none of these pieces are), so there is no key per se, but there is a prevalent tonal center, which is A minor. A major element is the use of scales and modes which refer more to the sound of Spanish, Arabic, and even Russian music. The proper written melody, which isn't played until over 4 minutes of an 18 minute piece, does have prescribed harmonic movement, albeit returning frequently to the A minor home base. As the sole written material, it helps to realize that everything else is completely improvised, even some things that don't sound improvised at all.

"Losing all forward momentum"? That's complicated ... I can see how the lack of consistent meter might throw you off, but here's what I hear: it's an aural landscape, a desert ... it's desolate and forlorn, time doesn't move forward, it hovers. There are mirages, and struggles both external and internal ... personal mountains. The pain and joy of humanity, often wrapped in the same phrase. It unfolds in a manner similar to the way much music of non-Western cultures unfolds, the classical music of India, much Arabic music, including forms intended to induce a trance to be used as a gateway to spiritual transcendence.

I totally agree that "exposing that [internal] narrative is one of the chief joys in listening to music," but could not disagree more that "music without meter or key has no internal narrative musically." I assure you that Oasis has a an eloquent and evocative musical narrative, absolutely. It's there, waiting for you to follow its path.

Everthing you say makes sense, and I guessed that Oasis is trying to achieve some sort of stasis.

I'm going to spend a lot more time with "Personal Mountains".

I didn't get everything first time out, but enough to go back again and again.

Fred, I can't express how grateful I am for the analysis you include in your responses.  Knowing something to listen for changes what I hear.

What I am referring to in hanging onto phrases longer than necessary, I'm talking about repetition of phrases with minor changes, rather than developing the themes.

Multi-cultural music is something new to me.  Not exactly sure how I feel about it, but it is something new to think about, and it has my curosity up :-)

Hey Fred,

I've bought many of your recommendations in the past and have really enjoyed them.  However, I'm really struggling with Personal Mountains.  I go back to it every now and then but I just dont get it.  I was listening and enjoying Radiance last night so I can handle some dissonance but PM just leaves me cold. 
Guess its into the corner of the classroom with the dunce hat on .

The melody at night, with you, reduces me to tears every time.  Such a beautiful record, but technically probably the worst ECM issue ever.

Hi Colin, take off the dunce hat. (insert emoticon here)

Are you a fan of Keith's so-called American group? To me, Personal Mountains at times comes closer to the vibe of that group than any other European quartet album, although still not quite as challenging as some tunes from the American group.

How do you feel about Nude Ants? Recorded just weeks after Personal Mountains, it includes performances of two pieces also on PM, except that those on PM are superior, by far. This version of Innocence is one of the most luminously beautiful performances ever recorded; Prism, too.

It's funny, I don't hear PM as being that dissonant, certainly not as much as many passages on some of Keith's recent solo albums, or even as far back as Sun Bear Concerts. The title track is turbulent, yes, but not that dissonant. Oasis has passages of poly-tonality, but always firmly anchored to the home base of A minor, so again, not that dissonant. Challenging, for sure, but with deep humanity. And a tour de force for Garbarek. I also don't hear anything nearly as dissonant/challenging on PM as, for instance, Mandala on My Song.

I agree absolutely on The Melody At Night, With You, though quite a different album in almost every way, recorded as Keith was emerging from his bout with CFS, intended at first as only a Chirstmas present for his wife. BTW, its less than stellar sound quality is the result of Keith having recorded it himself at home ... decent enough not to impede the music, but not up to typical ECM standards. Then again, nowhere near as bad as Spirits, also recorded by Keith at home on multi-track cassette, distortion and all!

Your call, of course, but I urge you to persevere with Personal Mountains.