Yes. I found this really fitted my mood this evening. :-)
I find I have periods when I play him to death.
I don't know about you, but I tend to play him loud on the main system, rather than anywhere else. It's all that wonderful percussiveness, I think.
I think you're probably on to something there. I think the dynamic impact of a percussion strike is basically inherent to the nature of the instrument. On recorded stuff, the more the volume level reveals the precise nature and size of the impact the better. Especially when its so nakedly recorded, as Bartsch's stuff seem to be.
Yes. I found this really fitted my mood this evening. :-)
I find I have periods when I play him to death.
I don't know about you, but I tend to play him loud on the main system, rather than anywhere else. It's all that wonderful percussiveness, I think.
I think you're probably on to something there. I think the dynamic impact of a percussion strike is basically inherent to the nature of the instrument. On recorded stuff, the more the volume level reveals the precise nature and size of the impact the better. Especially when its so nakedly recorded, as Bartsch's stuff seem to be.
And the drummer (whose name escapes me - Kaspar someone?) is great, too. The whole thing is percussive (OK, except for the bass clarinet). There's little to beat a great ECM recording.
Not all of them are up to scratch, though. The recent Jack DeJohnette/Ravi Coltrane/Matthew Garrison album is lacking at the low end, for example :-(
Miles Davis, Wayne Shorter, Herbie Hancock, Ron Carter and Tony Williams. Every one of them in unbelievable form. Give it a listen, especially if you don't know it.
Unfortunately, I can't find anything on YT related to this one. It's a live album with a pickup band from the Bay Area, but Pepper's playing is always worth dropping everything for. It also contains one of Pepper's funniest and most touching monologues - you can't call his between-tunes spiel 'announcements'.
The story of these is basically, he was so nervous on stage much of the time that he talked and talked and talked. And some of them are classics.
Inevitably, I'm playing one of jazz's greatest albums:
Art Pepper - The Complete Village Vanguard Sessions
Pepper, plus George Cables on piano, George Mraz on bass and Elvin Jones on drums. I've said so much about this album (all 9 cds) in the past that I'm not going to bore you with any more.
Just beg, borrow, stream or whatever a copy and immerse yourself.
Not on YT, of course ;-) But some of the same musicians are on this live recording:
WTF is it about? Here's what it says on YT, which is as good a bio of Joe Maneri as I've read:
Personnel: Joe Maneri- saxophones, clarinet, voice Mat Maneri- electric violion John Lockwood- acoustic bass Randy Peterson- drums
Joseph Gabriel Esther "Joe" Maneri (February 9, 1927 - August 24, 2009), was an American jazz composer, saxophone and clarinet player. Violinist Mat Maneri is his son. After decades of obscurity, Maneri's distinctive saxophone and clarinet works gained praise and relative fame in the 1990s. To conventional Western sensibilities, some of his passages may sound 'out-of-tune'- but there is a consistent, internal logic to his unorthodox playing; critic Charlie Wilmoth describes Maneri's playing as "a slippery, space-filled alien blues".
An Italian-American born and raised in Brooklyn, Maneri played clarinet and saxophone in various dance bands and on the Catskill circuit as a teenager, often performing traditional Greek, Turkish, and Syrian music or Klezmer at weddings and other gatherings. He would later incorporate some elements of such music in his own compositions. He studied with Josef Schmid (not the tenor but a conductor and student of Alban Berg) for a decade before being commissioned by conductor Erich Leinsdorf to write a piano concerto for the Boston Symphony Orchestra, which was rehearsed but never performed in concert. Maneri was impressed by the music of Arnold Schoenberg and organized a jazz ensemble that performed some twelve tone music. (His later music is, however, not in the twelve-tone technique.) In 1963, this quartet recorded a demo for Atlantic Records, due in part to Gunther Schuller's interest in Maneri. The recording was not released until 1998, when American Splendor writer Harvey Pekar — who had obtained a copy of the demo — played the music for composer John Zorn, who released the music on his Avant Records as Paniots Nine. The recording shows a synthesis of Maneri's experience with vernacular musics of American immigrants and his understanding of twelve-tone composition along with a developed style of "free" improvisation, analogous to the contemporaneous innovations by Sun Ra and Ornette Coleman. In 1965, he performed, as soloist, a piece composed by David Reck. dedicated to Coleman and conducted by Schuller at Carnegie Hall. Little else was heard from him until he was hired, at the behest of Schuller, to teach at the New England Conservatory of Music in 1970. He led one of the few microtonal composition courses in the United States (Jamie Saft, Cuong Vu, Judith Berkson, Noah Kaplan, Bhob Rainey, Katt Hernandez, Tim Crofts, composer Randall Woolf and Matthew Shipp have been among his students). In 1985 he co-wrote (along with Scott Van Duyne) and published the workbook Preliminary Studies in the Virtual Pitch Continuum. He was also part of the 80s klezmer revival in New England. Maneri continued his teaching, but performed and recorded rarely until the early 1990s, when his son Mat Maneri coaxed him into more public appearances. Joe said, "I had an experimental microtonal sextet about 15 years ago, which would practice in my house. One night, when he was 14, Mat came down from his bedroom with his violin and joined us. He was already the best player in the group. He set a pace for the rest of us." As Mat says, "Even, then, I thought of my role as being a bridge between this and that — Joe being 'that'." Maneri gained significant attention, and released a number of recordings, often on ECM Records. His recorded music is informed by his microtonal theories and compositions which use 72 equal temperament, the equal division of the octave in 72 parts, although he doesn't confine himself to that temperament in performance: "We don't use theories when we play. We can't. We are those things. If they took X-rays of us, you would see all of the music inside." (Blumenthal, 1999) In 1988 Maneri founded the Boston Microtonal Society. In 1999, Tales of Rohnlief marked the recording debut of Maneri's own constructed language. Writer Harvey Pekar — a longtime fan of Maneri — insisted Maneri's music be featured in the film version of his comic book American Splendor. In 2003, 24 of Maneri's poems, written in his own language, were included in the anthology Asemia. On May 17, 2009, three months before his death, Maneri was awarded an Honorary Doctorate from New England Conservatory. He died of complications from heart surgery on August 24, at the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, Boston.
A1 Thoroughbred Drums – Alphonse Mouzon Flute – Billy Harper Flute, Saxophone [Soprano] – George Marge French Horn – Ray Alonge Percussion – Donald McDonald Saxophone [Baritone] – Howard Johnson (3) Trombone – Garnett Brown Trumpet – Ernie Royal, Johnny Coles
A2 Spaced 05:02 A3 Love In The Open 08:11 A4 Variation On The Misery 15:00
B1 Blues In Orbit 18:00 Drums – Alphonse Mouzon Flute – Billy Harper Flute, Saxophone [Soprano] – George Marge French Horn – Ray Alonge Percussion – Donald McDonald Saxophone [Baritone] – Howard Johnson (3) Trombone – Garnett Brown Trumpet – Ernie Royal, Johnny Coles
B2 Proclamation 24:50 B3 General Assembly 26:40 B4 So Long 33:50
Credits
Artwork By – Elisabeth Winckelmann
Bass – Herb Bushler Drums – Elvin Jones (tracks: A2 to A4, B2 to B4) Flute – Hubert Laws (tracks: A2 to A4, B2 to B4) French Horn – Julius Watkins Guitar – Joe Beck Harp – Gene Bianco (tracks: A2 to A4, B2 to B4) Percussion – Sue Evans (tracks: A2 to A4, B2 to B4) Photography – Adelhard Roidinger Photography [Backcover] – Ralph Quinke Piano, Electric Piano, Arranged By, Conductor – Gil Evans Producer – Sam Gordon Saxophone [Tenor] – Billy Harper Trombone – Jimmy Cleveland, Jimmy Knepper (tracks: A2 to A4, B2 to B4) Trumpet – Snooky Young* (tracks: A2 to A4, B2 to B4), Mike Lawrence (tracks: A2 to A4, B2 to B4) Tuba – Howard Johnson (3)
Notes Tracks A2 to A4 and B2 to B4 recorded 1969 in New York. Tracks A1 and B1 recorded 1971 in New York.
Gil Scott Heron and His Amnesia Express - Tales of Gil Scott Heron
It's a live album, and this live video is of a gig I was almost certainly at in London in 1990 - he played there many times in the 80s and early 90s, and I caught nearly all of them - perhaps all of them.
How I miss him.
Gil's words from the '70s (when this song was written) just get more relevant as time goes by.
Winter in America
From the Indians who welcomed the pilgrims
And to the buffalo who once ruled the plains
Like the vultures circling beneath the dark clouds
Looking for the rain
Looking for the rain
Just like the cities staggered on the coastline
Living in a nation that just can't stand much more
Like the forest buried beneath the highway
Never had a chance to grow
Never had a chance to grow
And now it's winter
Winter in America
Yes and all of the healers have been killed
Or sent away, yeah
But the people know, the people know
It's winter
Winter in America
And ain't nobody fighting
'Cause nobody knows what to save
Save your soul, Lord knows
From Winter in America
The Constitution
A noble piece of paper
With free society
Struggled but it died in vain
And now Democracy is ragtime on the corner
Hoping for some rain
Looks like it's hoping
Hoping for some rain
And I see the robins
Perched in barren treetops
Watching last-ditch racists marching across the floor
But just like the peace sign that vanished in our dreams
Never had a chance to grow
Never had a chance to grow
And now it's winter
It's winter in America
And all of the healers have been killed
Or been betrayed
Yeah, but the people know, people know
It's winter, Lord knows
It's winter in America
And ain't nobody fighting
Cause nobody knows what to save
Save your souls
From Winter in America
And now it's winter
Winter in America
And all of the healers done been killed or sent away
Yeah, and the people know, people know
It's winter
Winter in America
And ain't nobody fighting
Cause nobody knows what to save
And ain't nobody fighting
Cause nobody knows, nobody knows
And ain't nobody fighting
Cause nobody knows what to save
No! We're all here but too busy listening rather than posting
As some Nirvana didn't escape notice, here's something to keep it company. I was listening on the plane a wee while agoo.
I like it. Don't know them at all. Time for some investigation, I think sir!
Billy Martin is the grooviest drummer on the planet! (IMHO)
I'll have to listen to it again to try to figure out why poor John Scofield has so upset you. Personally, he's one of my fave guitarists.
I just don't like jazz guitar. At all. Absolutely nothing personal against John. He's probably very good at it. :-)
I don't like old fashioned heavy-stringed, semi-acoustic single-note run jazz guitar, but I can't hear that in here. But you are 100 per cent correct. He is a jazz guitarist, and one of the top three in the world.
Scofield, along with Bill Frisell and Pat Metheny have been at the top of the tree for 30 years, when the three of them forged a kind of jazz guitar renaissance.
Billy Martin is the grooviest drummer on the planet! (IMHO)
I'll have to listen to it again to try to figure out why poor John Scofield has so upset you. Personally, he's one of my fave guitarists.
I just don't like jazz guitar. At all.
Absolutely nothing personal against John. He's probably very good at it. :-)
I don't like old fashioned heavy-stringed, semi-acoustic single-note run jazz guitar, but I can't hear that in here. But you are 100 per cent correct. He is a jazz guitarist, and one of the top three in the world.
Scofield, along with Bill Frisell and Pat Metheny have been at the top of the tree for 30 years, when the three of them forged a kind of jazz guitar renaissance.
In which case, I'll stay lurking in the Middle Ages on that one... ;-p
Billy Martin is the grooviest drummer on the planet! (IMHO)
I'll have to listen to it again to try to figure out why poor John Scofield has so upset you. Personally, he's one of my fave guitarists.
I just don't like jazz guitar. At all.
Absolutely nothing personal against John. He's probably very good at it. :-)
I don't like old fashioned heavy-stringed, semi-acoustic single-note run jazz guitar, but I can't hear that in here. But you are 100 per cent correct. He is a jazz guitarist, and one of the top three in the world.
Scofield, along with Bill Frisell and Pat Metheny have been at the top of the tree for 30 years, when the three of them forged a kind of jazz guitar renaissance.
In which case, I'll stay lurking in the Middle Ages on that one... ;-p
This is the first 'proper' Prime Time recording, although its not credited to Ornette Coleman and the Prime Time Band (or variations) as it would be later.
The Julius Hemphill Sextet - Fat Man and the Hard Blues
The hugely influential, yet pretty obscure sax man with one of his more famous (less unknown????) albums.
Fat Man And The Hard Blues 1991 Julius Hemphill - Alto sax Marty Ehrlich & Carl Grubbs - Soprano & alto James Carter & Andrew White - tenor Sam Furnace - Baritone
Comments
Complete with LP gremlins on the 2nd track!
Thanks. :-) Will give this a proper listen. Quite intrigued on a quick flick through...
Joe Maneri- saxophones, clarinet, voice
Mat Maneri- electric violion
John Lockwood- acoustic bass
Randy Peterson- drums
Joseph Gabriel Esther "Joe" Maneri (February 9, 1927 - August 24, 2009), was an American jazz composer, saxophone and clarinet player. Violinist Mat Maneri is his son.
After decades of obscurity, Maneri's distinctive saxophone and clarinet works gained praise and relative fame in the 1990s. To conventional Western sensibilities, some of his passages may sound 'out-of-tune'- but there is a consistent, internal logic to his unorthodox playing; critic Charlie Wilmoth describes Maneri's playing as "a slippery, space-filled alien blues".
An Italian-American born and raised in Brooklyn, Maneri played clarinet and saxophone in various dance bands and on the Catskill circuit as a teenager, often performing traditional Greek, Turkish, and Syrian music or Klezmer at weddings and other gatherings. He would later incorporate some elements of such music in his own compositions. He studied with Josef Schmid (not the tenor but a conductor and student of Alban Berg) for a decade before being commissioned by conductor Erich Leinsdorf to write a piano concerto for the Boston Symphony Orchestra, which was rehearsed but never performed in concert.
Maneri was impressed by the music of Arnold Schoenberg and organized a jazz ensemble that performed some twelve tone music. (His later music is, however, not in the twelve-tone technique.) In 1963, this quartet recorded a demo for Atlantic Records, due in part to Gunther Schuller's interest in Maneri. The recording was not released until 1998, when American Splendor writer Harvey Pekar — who had obtained a copy of the demo — played the music for composer John Zorn, who released the music on his Avant Records as Paniots Nine. The recording shows a synthesis of Maneri's experience with vernacular musics of American immigrants and his understanding of twelve-tone composition along with a developed style of "free" improvisation, analogous to the contemporaneous innovations by Sun Ra and Ornette Coleman. In 1965, he performed, as soloist, a piece composed by David Reck. dedicated to Coleman and conducted by Schuller at Carnegie Hall. Little else was heard from him until he was hired, at the behest of Schuller, to teach at the New England Conservatory of Music in 1970. He led one of the few microtonal composition courses in the United States (Jamie Saft, Cuong Vu, Judith Berkson, Noah Kaplan, Bhob Rainey, Katt Hernandez, Tim Crofts, composer Randall Woolf and Matthew Shipp have been among his students). In 1985 he co-wrote (along with Scott Van Duyne) and published the workbook Preliminary Studies in the Virtual Pitch Continuum. He was also part of the 80s klezmer revival in New England.
Maneri continued his teaching, but performed and recorded rarely until the early 1990s, when his son Mat Maneri coaxed him into more public appearances. Joe said, "I had an experimental microtonal sextet about 15 years ago, which would practice in my house. One night, when he was 14, Mat came down from his bedroom with his violin and joined us. He was already the best player in the group. He set a pace for the rest of us." As Mat says, "Even, then, I thought of my role as being a bridge between this and that — Joe being 'that'."
Maneri gained significant attention, and released a number of recordings, often on ECM Records. His recorded music is informed by his microtonal theories and compositions which use 72 equal temperament, the equal division of the octave in 72 parts, although he doesn't confine himself to that temperament in performance: "We don't use theories when we play. We can't. We are those things. If they took X-rays of us, you would see all of the music inside." (Blumenthal, 1999) In 1988 Maneri founded the Boston Microtonal Society.
In 1999, Tales of Rohnlief marked the recording debut of Maneri's own constructed language.
Writer Harvey Pekar — a longtime fan of Maneri — insisted Maneri's music be featured in the film version of his comic book American Splendor.
In 2003, 24 of Maneri's poems, written in his own language, were included in the anthology Asemia.
On May 17, 2009, three months before his death, Maneri was awarded an Honorary Doctorate from New England Conservatory. He died of complications from heart surgery on August 24, at the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, Boston.
Drums – Alphonse Mouzon
Flute – Billy Harper
Flute, Saxophone [Soprano] – George Marge
French Horn – Ray Alonge
Percussion – Donald McDonald
Saxophone [Baritone] – Howard Johnson (3)
Trombone – Garnett Brown
Trumpet – Ernie Royal, Johnny Coles
A2 Spaced 05:02
A3 Love In The Open 08:11
A4 Variation On The Misery 15:00
Drums – Alphonse Mouzon
Flute – Billy Harper
Flute, Saxophone [Soprano] – George Marge
French Horn – Ray Alonge
Percussion – Donald McDonald
Saxophone [Baritone] – Howard Johnson (3)
Trombone – Garnett Brown
Trumpet – Ernie Royal, Johnny Coles
B2 Proclamation 24:50
B3 General Assembly 26:40
B4 So Long 33:50
Credits
Artwork By – Elisabeth Winckelmann
Bass – Herb Bushler
Drums – Elvin Jones (tracks: A2 to A4, B2 to B4)
Flute – Hubert Laws (tracks: A2 to A4, B2 to B4)
French Horn – Julius Watkins
Guitar – Joe Beck
Harp – Gene Bianco (tracks: A2 to A4, B2 to B4)
Percussion – Sue Evans (tracks: A2 to A4, B2 to B4)
Photography – Adelhard Roidinger
Photography [Backcover] – Ralph Quinke
Piano, Electric Piano, Arranged By, Conductor – Gil Evans
Producer – Sam Gordon
Saxophone [Tenor] – Billy Harper
Trombone – Jimmy Cleveland, Jimmy Knepper (tracks: A2 to A4, B2 to B4)
Trumpet – Snooky Young* (tracks: A2 to A4, B2 to B4), Mike Lawrence (tracks: A2 to A4, B2 to B4)
Tuba – Howard Johnson (3)
Notes
Tracks A2 to A4 and B2 to B4 recorded 1969 in New York.
Tracks A1 and B1 recorded 1971 in New York.
As some Nirvana didn't escape notice, here's something to keep it company. I was listening on the plane a wee while agoo.
Scofield, along with Bill Frisell and Pat Metheny have been at the top of the tree for 30 years, when the three of them forged a kind of jazz guitar renaissance.
Self title debut album very easy to listen to.
Julius Hemphill - Alto sax
Marty Ehrlich & Carl Grubbs - Soprano & alto
James Carter & Andrew White - tenor
Sam Furnace - Baritone