Female jazz vocalists are on the very top now, I guess that mainly because of Norah Jones’ popularity. One could argue if what Norah Jones does is actually jazz or not, but if her popularity affects other singers’, then it’s fine with me.
For me the best living jazz singer is Cassandra Wilson. I love her for her deep voice, her expression and especially her fantastic arrangements. She just knows how to make a jazz masterpiece from a simple song (she covers famous pop/rock songs as well, like U2’s “Love is blindness” or Sting’s “Fragile”). Here, especially for Bluetrain readers, Cassandra Wilson’s version of Neil Young’s “Harvest Moon” (“New Moon Daughter”, 1995).
Jarrett's Solo concerts -- Bluetrain asks, readers answer
Today, while I was listening to Jarrett’s Vienna Concert for the n-th time, I asked myself, which of his famous solo concerts is the best one? Everyone knows the great Köln Concert, and most people find it the best solo piano recording ever made, but Jarrett himself once said, that he thinks Vienna Concert is his best solo performance. I don’t know. I like Paris Concert as well, and I admire The Carnegie Hall record. Well, Bluetrain readers, what do you make of it? Which one is the best?
Think I’m gonna start a series of posts about famous jazz tunes. There’s so many great jazz standards with a so-called background, and there’s so many great performances, that I just can’t stop myself from writing about at least some of them.
Since we have an examination session in Poland now and I should obviously be studying, I’m listening to a lot of music instead. Last night I launched my media player and typed “bebop” into the search bar. A few records popped up, and I’ve chosen two of them to listen.
Bebop is a jazz style, we all know that. But I’m not sure if everyone knows, that there’s also a standard by Dizzy Gillespie that is titled “Bebop”. The name of the style (which was, by the way, developed by Gillespie and Bird) is derived from that very theme, and here’s what Dizzy once said about its origin:
In the Onyx Club, we played a lot of original tunes that didn’t have titles. We just wrote an introduction and a first chorus. I’d say, ‘De-da-pa-da-n-de-bop’… and we’d go into it. People when they’d wanna ask for one of those numbers and didn’t know the name, would ask for bebop and the press picked it up and started calling it bebop.
“Bebop” became one of the most known Gillespie’s tunes then, and was later played by numerous artists. It has a very fast and complicated line, which is usually performed by all musicians unisono in the beginning and then improvised by each one. “Bebop” was originally written for a big band (and indeed it does make the biggest impression when played by many musicians), but was also performed by quartets and trios.
Among all the performances I know, I’ve chosen one which I wanted to share with you. It’s played by Bags and ‘Trane, and was recorded somewhere around 1960. The quality of the record is quite poor, but the quality of music is by far the most impressive. Ladies and gentlemen, Connie Kay on drums, Paul Chambers on bass, Hank Jones on piano, Milt Jackson on vibraharp and John Coltrane on a tenor sax — “Bebop”.
Did you people know, that Chick Corea once made an album called “Children’s Songs”? Well he did, and I remember myself listening to those records a long time ago, while I was a kid. I heard three pieces from that album on the radio, and couldn’t get them anywhere in Poland. Luckily for me and all other Corea fans, ECM re-released the album last year, so that everyone can enjoy these marvellous miniatures.
The composition presented here is, however, the last piece on the album, also being the only one not performed by Corea solo, but together with violin and a cello, and it’s called “Addendum”.
reload
Hey,I’m not sure if anyone reads this, but if someone does, I apologize for some strange things which may be happening to the site layout. We’re changing things a bit, and for a while Bluetrain might look a bit odd. Hopefully we’ll be done within a couple of hours.
The Year 1905
I know that “Bluetrain” is devoted to jazz music, but, as Duke once said, there is no well-defined boundary between jazz and classical music, so let me just recommend one beautiful symphony here. It’s Shostakovich’s 11th, also known as “The year 1905”.
I guess that among all of his compositions, the best known are his early ones. Among symphonies, obviously the fifth and the seventh (“Leningrad”). I’ve never heard “The year 1905” before, until last evening at Warsaw Academy of Music. Now that’s an awesome piece of music to say the least. Has a wonderful main theme with a marvelous melody, followed by a powerful forte with percussion and brass. Great harmony, intriguing instrumentation, stunning final. Grab some record if you can.
Masada obsession
I just can’t understand it. Whenever I heard about Jewish music, I was never interested. What’s interesting in it anyway? Same melodies played in such a characteristic way, that you can’t recognize which band is playing. All those violin solos and similar rhythms — it’s just boring, isn’t it? Of course it is. Until you hear Masada playing.
It’s a project led by John Zorn, my beloved, noisy saxophonist, and it’s been playing since early 1990s. The idea is to create a “songbook”, consisting of a large number of simple melodies, which can be played by small bands. But that’s not good enough to claim Masada a special project to me. John Zorn puts it that way: “The idea with Masada is to produce a sort of radical Jewish music, a new Jewish music which is not the traditional one in a different arrangement, but music for the Jews of today. The idea is to put Ornette Coleman and the Jewish scales together.” So what we got? Tons of free-jazz-noise and beautiful 
Jewish melodies mixed up together. Sounds impossible? Not even it is possible, it’s amazing.
My first contact with the group was two years ago, when I heard the album by Electric Masada, a live record titled “50th birthday celebration, vol. 4”. The word “live” doesn’t give a proper impression of this record. I’d rather say: “wild”. Imagine a group of instrumentalists playing free-jazz music in Jewish scales, with an electric guitar (plus a strong distortion effect), bass guitar, drums and percussion, electric piano, electronic noises (awesome Ikue Mori), and Zorn with his screaming saxophone on top of all that. Sounds a bit terrible, but it’s more than marvelous. The effect they’re getting is something between trash metal and free jazz, with a lot of gorgeous melodies. So if you want to hear something really strong and weird, Electric Masada is your band. (Though if you’re really tough, and want something stronger, grab their second album: “At the mountains of madness”; everything that was said regarding their first record applies to the second one, only that it’s just more intense…)
Listening to Electric Masada brought me to the roots of this evil music, which is much more polite and a bit more chamber. Original Masada, or rather their first record “Alef” (which is unfortunately the only one I know) brings peaceful sounds, but it’s definitely not as dull as all those klezmer bands.
If you like dull klezmer guys though, you might get closer to them while listening to Masada String Trio. Three lads + a conductor sitting between them play Masada compositions in a more elegant and traditional way. Not as traditional as Cracow Klezmer Band of course, but you wouldn’t expect something conservative from Zorn now, would you?
Now, for the sake of completeness, let me link to some nice video, featuring Electric Masada playing “Tekufah”. Enjoy the noise and the harmony!
Bach
There’s nothing like a good Bach for goodnight. As we used to call him in music school: “The first jazz man. Ever.”