Sight Reading
"Musical thoughts and afterthoughts"
Marco Bertoli
Nome: Marco Bertoli
Italian journalist, translator and music writer for italian Musica Jazz magazine, based in Milano, Italy.
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Benoît Delbecq: Phonetics / Nu-Turn
Le même jour / Multikulta / Zao Wou-ki / Pointe de la courte dune / The Elbow Room, Vancouver / 4MalW / Yompa / Au Louvre.
Mark Turner (ten.), Oene Van Geel (viola), Benoît Delbecq (p., elettronica), Mark Helias (cb.), Emile Biayenda (batt.). Francia, 2003.
SONGLINES SA1552-2, distr. Ird.
«Nu-Turn»: In Rainbows / In Lilac / On Ne Dit Pas Regarder La Lune, On Dit «Luner» / On Laterite / Into Neon / On Embers / Nu-Turn (Étude De Nu) / In Funfairs / Into White.
Benoît Delbecq (p., p. preparato). Vancouver, 11 e 12-12-2001.
SONGLINES SGL SA1543-2, distr. Ird.
40 year-old Frenchman Benoît Delbecq, a long-time collaborator of Michael Moore and François Houle, is that rarest of things— an original musical thinker. His 2005 CD “Phonetics” picks up where “Nu-Turn” (2001), left off. As is his mode, Delbecq assembled the lineup for “Phonetics” from different continents: America (USA - Turner and Helias), Africa (Cameroon - Biayenda), Europe (Holland - Van Geel).
The main focus of “Phonetics” is on rhythm. Delbecq devised rhythmic cycles based on an African style, made up of additive metres (Biayenda articulates them in a marvellous, loose way) which in turn, give shape to centripetal melodies, also African in character. The speed and articulation of these sequences, which lack a recursive pulse, are left to sax and piano to illuminate with the viola mostly confined to harmonic support. Turner and Delbecq display a remarkable interplay over Helias’ flexible ostinato.
In the end, listening to this music is much easier and more rewarding than any attempt to describe it might be. We find ourselves drawn into a world of sound, both very personal yet oddly familiar in an ‘ancestral’ sense. Hypnotic sounds without the narcotic quality often found in contemporary music where recursion is used to evoke stasis or trance. On the contrary, with Delbecq’s compositions the music is infused with forward momentum.
What precedents can we invoke for this music? “…How Time Passes… “ (Don Ellis, 1961) is where we first find a twelve-tone-row used as basis for improvisation, the same technique used in Zao Wou-Ki. Ellis’ style is also summoned up by some odd time signatures, such as 14 in Au Louvre, but in both pieces the processes are much less demonstrative and strained. Elsewhere in the recording, the harmonic framework loses ground to melody and rhythm, diluted in simple polymodal structures (F and F sharp Lydian in Multikulta).
All in all, the overall sound is one of jazz — what with Mark Turner’s glacial tenor sound and Biayenda integration of African meters with jazz licks and funk grooves (The Elbow Room, Vancouver), which can be reminiscent of Ed Blackwell. As a pianist, Delbecq’s timing and use of space owes much to Paul Bley and Mal Waldron and, by his own admission, to Ligeti’s Études (even though in “Phonetics” we hear traces of the earlier Musica Ricercata).
Ligeti (the Études and the harpsichord pieces) is a much more palpable presence in “Nu-Turn”, an austere recording whose stark music sounds as if it were waiting for other instrumental colors to light it up as the balafon-sounding prepared piano makes clear. In other places, the experiments on meter recall a comparison with Lennie Tristano’s Turkish Mambo.
Mark Turner (ten.), Oene Van Geel (viola), Benoît Delbecq (p., elettronica), Mark Helias (cb.), Emile Biayenda (batt.). Francia, 2003.
SONGLINES SA1552-2, distr. Ird.
«Nu-Turn»: In Rainbows / In Lilac / On Ne Dit Pas Regarder La Lune, On Dit «Luner» / On Laterite / Into Neon / On Embers / Nu-Turn (Étude De Nu) / In Funfairs / Into White.
Benoît Delbecq (p., p. preparato). Vancouver, 11 e 12-12-2001.
SONGLINES SGL SA1543-2, distr. Ird.
40 year-old Frenchman Benoît Delbecq, a long-time collaborator of Michael Moore and François Houle, is that rarest of things— an original musical thinker. His 2005 CD “Phonetics” picks up where “Nu-Turn” (2001), left off. As is his mode, Delbecq assembled the lineup for “Phonetics” from different continents: America (USA - Turner and Helias), Africa (Cameroon - Biayenda), Europe (Holland - Van Geel).
The main focus of “Phonetics” is on rhythm. Delbecq devised rhythmic cycles based on an African style, made up of additive metres (Biayenda articulates them in a marvellous, loose way) which in turn, give shape to centripetal melodies, also African in character. The speed and articulation of these sequences, which lack a recursive pulse, are left to sax and piano to illuminate with the viola mostly confined to harmonic support. Turner and Delbecq display a remarkable interplay over Helias’ flexible ostinato.
In the end, listening to this music is much easier and more rewarding than any attempt to describe it might be. We find ourselves drawn into a world of sound, both very personal yet oddly familiar in an ‘ancestral’ sense. Hypnotic sounds without the narcotic quality often found in contemporary music where recursion is used to evoke stasis or trance. On the contrary, with Delbecq’s compositions the music is infused with forward momentum.
What precedents can we invoke for this music? “…How Time Passes… “ (Don Ellis, 1961) is where we first find a twelve-tone-row used as basis for improvisation, the same technique used in Zao Wou-Ki. Ellis’ style is also summoned up by some odd time signatures, such as 14 in Au Louvre, but in both pieces the processes are much less demonstrative and strained. Elsewhere in the recording, the harmonic framework loses ground to melody and rhythm, diluted in simple polymodal structures (F and F sharp Lydian in Multikulta).
All in all, the overall sound is one of jazz — what with Mark Turner’s glacial tenor sound and Biayenda integration of African meters with jazz licks and funk grooves (The Elbow Room, Vancouver), which can be reminiscent of Ed Blackwell. As a pianist, Delbecq’s timing and use of space owes much to Paul Bley and Mal Waldron and, by his own admission, to Ligeti’s Études (even though in “Phonetics” we hear traces of the earlier Musica Ricercata).
Ligeti (the Études and the harpsichord pieces) is a much more palpable presence in “Nu-Turn”, an austere recording whose stark music sounds as if it were waiting for other instrumental colors to light it up as the balafon-sounding prepared piano makes clear. In other places, the experiments on meter recall a comparison with Lennie Tristano’s Turkish Mambo.
( Musica Jazz, April 2005)
• Benoît Delbecq's interview
postato da: Counterpoint alle ore 14:05 | link | commenti (164)
categorie: africa, turner, ligeti, ellis, delbecq
categorie: africa, turner, ligeti, ellis, delbecq
McCoy Tyner: Plays John Coltrane
Naima / Moment's Notice / Crescent / After The Rain / Afro Blue / I Want To Talk About You / Mr. Day.
McCoy Tyner (piano), George Mraz (bass), Al Foster (drums). New York, September 23, 1997.
IMPULSE 589 183-2
The Impulse! label celebrates John Coltrane's 75th birthday by issuing this set, recorded live at NY Village Vanguard on September 23, 1997 (birthday of the great saxophonist).
McCoy Tyner, the Village Vanguard, Impulse! and five of Trane's most famous tunes are included, plus two songs inextricably connected to him. Such an imposing list of influences could possibly lead astray the most sober of critics.
But things stand differently. What we are dealing with here is an overt hommage, an honest proposal of a viewpoint allowing the listener to pick up subtle details. One minute into the record though, I'd put away any such worries. Because this is a wonderful set, an hommage completely worthy the dedicatee. Moreover, this is a fervid affirmation of McCoy Tyner's musical mastery.
"McCoy has an exceptionally well developed sense of form", a famous Coltrane's quotation goes, "Both as a soloist and an accompanist. Invariably in our group, he will take a tune and build his own structure for it". Along the same lines, we marvel at how Tyner subjugates every composition he happens to be playing to his own harmonic rules. Such remarks help to focus on Tyner's musical personality and historical position. In posing himself here as "Coltrane's pianist" (a noble but also potentially embarassing label that Tyner always wore with pride), the pianist defines his own style in close relationship with the material which shaped it.
Of the seven compositions on this CD, Moment's Notice (from "Blue Train", 1957) is the only one Tyner never recorded with Coltrane; the extra meaning we hinted at above, comes from a dialectic confrontation between past and present. The "hommage" to Coltrane, thus, doesn't sound occasional, but an uninterrupted flow of a natural expression, bearing the mark of biological necessity.
An example of this can be heard in Naima, which opens the set. The typical piano solo prelude is followed by a slightly askew statement of the theme, alternating between a linear approach and brisk harmonic interpolations; the rhythm section enters and asymmetric fragments of the tune appear, only to be absorbed all of a sudden by dark block-chords and fast modal fragments up high on the keyboard. The harmonic rules Tyner "subjugates" his material to, have become staples of formal pattern. Coltrane's theme, originally as epigrammatic and static as an haiku, is injected with an inner drama, the bridge rhytmically dense and harmonically contrasting, the out-chorus, contemplatively oscillating between I and IV degree, a whirling closure, much more "conclusive" than in any of Coltrane's renderings.
Besides, Moment's Notice is worked out using pedals, now explicit, now implicit, in the form of harmonic anticipations or delays. The keyboard is fully and intensely exploited through all its extension, now glittering, more often dark. The tune, intended by Coltrane as an hurdle-race through fast and frequent chord changes (hence the title), is recast as a solid whole. The second chorus sees Tyner mimicking, single-notedly, Coltrane's hectic phrasing.
It's just an episode. Throughout the whole set, Tyner's renditions of Coltrane's compositions are constantly pianistic. Listen carefully to After The Rain, a piano solo of rare intimacy, and I Want To Talk About You. In this last track, Tyner's unique talent as a balladeur shines brightly, freeing Billy Eckstine's song of any hint of corny romanticism to wrap it up in his own brand of grandiosity. In this amazing performance, Tyner alternates single-note choruses with block-chords, ending in an uncharacteristically humorous coda.
Bassist George Mraz's playing is outstanding throughout the set. Bass duties are notoriously tricky in backing a pianist whose left hand is as strong and authoritative as Tyner's. In order to avoid redundant doubling of the bass line, Mraz, when not majestically walking the 4/4, breaks into short and ever inventive ostinatos. He fully deserves the ample solo space the pianist grants him.
Al Foster is a drummer of a different kind than Elvin Jones, an inevitable comparison, or even Tony Williams or Alphonse Mouzon, just to mention two of Tyner's famous one-time sidemen. Clear, bright, accurate, Foster provides here a very apt expressive contrast to the leader, cutting for himself an exceptional exploit in Afro Blue, a singing solo, introduced by a chorus of marvellous metric ambiguity. The whole track is a lecture given by the three men on the thousands of possible ways to play in 3 time.
One of the best piano records recently heard, and an absolutely worthwhile chapter in McCoy Tyner's musical history.
McCoy Tyner (piano), George Mraz (bass), Al Foster (drums). New York, September 23, 1997.
IMPULSE 589 183-2
The Impulse! label celebrates John Coltrane's 75th birthday by issuing this set, recorded live at NY Village Vanguard on September 23, 1997 (birthday of the great saxophonist).
McCoy Tyner, the Village Vanguard, Impulse! and five of Trane's most famous tunes are included, plus two songs inextricably connected to him. Such an imposing list of influences could possibly lead astray the most sober of critics.
But things stand differently. What we are dealing with here is an overt hommage, an honest proposal of a viewpoint allowing the listener to pick up subtle details. One minute into the record though, I'd put away any such worries. Because this is a wonderful set, an hommage completely worthy the dedicatee. Moreover, this is a fervid affirmation of McCoy Tyner's musical mastery.
"McCoy has an exceptionally well developed sense of form", a famous Coltrane's quotation goes, "Both as a soloist and an accompanist. Invariably in our group, he will take a tune and build his own structure for it". Along the same lines, we marvel at how Tyner subjugates every composition he happens to be playing to his own harmonic rules. Such remarks help to focus on Tyner's musical personality and historical position. In posing himself here as "Coltrane's pianist" (a noble but also potentially embarassing label that Tyner always wore with pride), the pianist defines his own style in close relationship with the material which shaped it.
Of the seven compositions on this CD, Moment's Notice (from "Blue Train", 1957) is the only one Tyner never recorded with Coltrane; the extra meaning we hinted at above, comes from a dialectic confrontation between past and present. The "hommage" to Coltrane, thus, doesn't sound occasional, but an uninterrupted flow of a natural expression, bearing the mark of biological necessity.
An example of this can be heard in Naima, which opens the set. The typical piano solo prelude is followed by a slightly askew statement of the theme, alternating between a linear approach and brisk harmonic interpolations; the rhythm section enters and asymmetric fragments of the tune appear, only to be absorbed all of a sudden by dark block-chords and fast modal fragments up high on the keyboard. The harmonic rules Tyner "subjugates" his material to, have become staples of formal pattern. Coltrane's theme, originally as epigrammatic and static as an haiku, is injected with an inner drama, the bridge rhytmically dense and harmonically contrasting, the out-chorus, contemplatively oscillating between I and IV degree, a whirling closure, much more "conclusive" than in any of Coltrane's renderings.
Besides, Moment's Notice is worked out using pedals, now explicit, now implicit, in the form of harmonic anticipations or delays. The keyboard is fully and intensely exploited through all its extension, now glittering, more often dark. The tune, intended by Coltrane as an hurdle-race through fast and frequent chord changes (hence the title), is recast as a solid whole. The second chorus sees Tyner mimicking, single-notedly, Coltrane's hectic phrasing.
It's just an episode. Throughout the whole set, Tyner's renditions of Coltrane's compositions are constantly pianistic. Listen carefully to After The Rain, a piano solo of rare intimacy, and I Want To Talk About You. In this last track, Tyner's unique talent as a balladeur shines brightly, freeing Billy Eckstine's song of any hint of corny romanticism to wrap it up in his own brand of grandiosity. In this amazing performance, Tyner alternates single-note choruses with block-chords, ending in an uncharacteristically humorous coda.
Bassist George Mraz's playing is outstanding throughout the set. Bass duties are notoriously tricky in backing a pianist whose left hand is as strong and authoritative as Tyner's. In order to avoid redundant doubling of the bass line, Mraz, when not majestically walking the 4/4, breaks into short and ever inventive ostinatos. He fully deserves the ample solo space the pianist grants him.
Al Foster is a drummer of a different kind than Elvin Jones, an inevitable comparison, or even Tony Williams or Alphonse Mouzon, just to mention two of Tyner's famous one-time sidemen. Clear, bright, accurate, Foster provides here a very apt expressive contrast to the leader, cutting for himself an exceptional exploit in Afro Blue, a singing solo, introduced by a chorus of marvellous metric ambiguity. The whole track is a lecture given by the three men on the thousands of possible ways to play in 3 time.
One of the best piano records recently heard, and an absolutely worthwhile chapter in McCoy Tyner's musical history.
(Originally published 2001, Allaboutjazz Italy)
The Bad Plus (2005 interview)
The Bad Plus are not really new, even if the recent worldwide clamor made them seem like the hottest thing since Charlie Parker put a sax to his lips and BLEW. Their signing for Sony (2003) and the subsequent releasing of “These Are The Vistas”, “Give” and “Suspicious Activity” was accompanied by a flurry of marketing (including a movie in the rockumentary fashion) quite unusual for a jazz outfit. With Reid Anderson on bass, Ethan Iverson on piano and David King on drums, The Bad Plus is a creative group effort.
Sony’s marketing department insists on the trio’s pop songs covers, although these are only a minor part of the BP repertoire. A “cooperative of composers” these musicians had already enjoyed a moderate renown before they formed their group. In person, The Bad Plus are soft-spoken in a way their music is not – a roiling mix of bright colors and aggressive dynamics, precariously balanced between irony, sentimentality and a sense of impending disaster. They might remind the listener of certain new American writers—David Foster Wallace, J. Safran Foer, Jonathan Lethem—for example.
Anderson: “Foster Wallace comes from the Midwest, just like us. Growing up there instead of New York or Chicago we found ourselves exposed to different influences and freer, I think, to follow our own inclinations, less burdened with what’s cool and what’s not”.
Iverson: “I see a connection with those writers in a shared sense of American belonging . The way I feel this belonging is in acknowledging the many musical traditions of the U.S. Coming to BP, jazz and classical for me; for Reid and Dave also rock, pop, country…”.
Anderson: “I am a songwriter, and I like to sing along with my guitar. In my compositions, the melody dictates the course to harmony and rhythm, à la Ornette if you like - Ornette is a lodestar for all of us. Thus, I don’t really write differently for BP than for my rock group, Sun, even if of course I take in account Ethan’s and David’s personality”.
Melody:
As an encore to their set at the Blue Note in Milan, the BP premiered their iconoclastic version of Chariots of Fire (now on ”Suspicious Activities”) . During the interview I told them how my friend responded to the song: “They play with such sentiment!”.
Iverson answered, “That’s true, it’s such a beautiful melody and we love playing it. Oh, so you heard some irony in our arrangement? Well, let’s put it this way, Vladimir Nabokov wrote that a mark of the work of art is its balance between irony and sentiment. In this sense, the very choice to play Chariots of Fire could be seen as a declaration of intent… like doing a difficult thing but always trying to communicate”.
Anderson: “Jazz musicians often sport a defeated look on stage, as if despairing of ever being understood. After our gigs lots of people come backstage and tell us ‘I didn’t know I could enjoy jazz’. But our music is not especially accommodating. We simply use a strong melody as a cue for communication. That’s all it is behind our covers”.
MB: Do you pay attention to the so called “schools" of the piano trio”? Like the black one (Ahmad Jamal, for instance) and the white one (Evans, Jarrett)?
Anderson: “No”.
Iverson: “I never really thought in these terms, but i appreciate the reference to Ahmad Jamal [Anderson nods vigorously], especially the Crosby-Fournier trio, where each man used to write his own part. So we love Jamal and cooperative bands, but also bands with a strong leadership: Coltrane, Coleman, Jarrett’s American quartet are strong influences, with their warm, fuzzy sound”.
MB: Ethan, for the first time in your career with BP you were given the chance to play jazz every day.
Iverson: “Yes, and my technique registered a huge improvement, my sound grew bigger. I needed that, because my listening habits tend to austere and rarefact music”.
MB: Will you still pursue individual endeavor?
Iverson: “No, the BP turned definitely into a full-time job!”.
Sony’s marketing department insists on the trio’s pop songs covers, although these are only a minor part of the BP repertoire. A “cooperative of composers” these musicians had already enjoyed a moderate renown before they formed their group. In person, The Bad Plus are soft-spoken in a way their music is not – a roiling mix of bright colors and aggressive dynamics, precariously balanced between irony, sentimentality and a sense of impending disaster. They might remind the listener of certain new American writers—David Foster Wallace, J. Safran Foer, Jonathan Lethem—for example.
Anderson: “Foster Wallace comes from the Midwest, just like us. Growing up there instead of New York or Chicago we found ourselves exposed to different influences and freer, I think, to follow our own inclinations, less burdened with what’s cool and what’s not”.
Iverson: “I see a connection with those writers in a shared sense of American belonging . The way I feel this belonging is in acknowledging the many musical traditions of the U.S. Coming to BP, jazz and classical for me; for Reid and Dave also rock, pop, country…”.
Anderson: “I am a songwriter, and I like to sing along with my guitar. In my compositions, the melody dictates the course to harmony and rhythm, à la Ornette if you like - Ornette is a lodestar for all of us. Thus, I don’t really write differently for BP than for my rock group, Sun, even if of course I take in account Ethan’s and David’s personality”.
Melody:
As an encore to their set at the Blue Note in Milan, the BP premiered their iconoclastic version of Chariots of Fire (now on ”Suspicious Activities”) . During the interview I told them how my friend responded to the song: “They play with such sentiment!”.
Iverson answered, “That’s true, it’s such a beautiful melody and we love playing it. Oh, so you heard some irony in our arrangement? Well, let’s put it this way, Vladimir Nabokov wrote that a mark of the work of art is its balance between irony and sentiment. In this sense, the very choice to play Chariots of Fire could be seen as a declaration of intent… like doing a difficult thing but always trying to communicate”.
Anderson: “Jazz musicians often sport a defeated look on stage, as if despairing of ever being understood. After our gigs lots of people come backstage and tell us ‘I didn’t know I could enjoy jazz’. But our music is not especially accommodating. We simply use a strong melody as a cue for communication. That’s all it is behind our covers”.
MB: Do you pay attention to the so called “schools" of the piano trio”? Like the black one (Ahmad Jamal, for instance) and the white one (Evans, Jarrett)?
Anderson: “No”.
Iverson: “I never really thought in these terms, but i appreciate the reference to Ahmad Jamal [Anderson nods vigorously], especially the Crosby-Fournier trio, where each man used to write his own part. So we love Jamal and cooperative bands, but also bands with a strong leadership: Coltrane, Coleman, Jarrett’s American quartet are strong influences, with their warm, fuzzy sound”.
MB: Ethan, for the first time in your career with BP you were given the chance to play jazz every day.
Iverson: “Yes, and my technique registered a huge improvement, my sound grew bigger. I needed that, because my listening habits tend to austere and rarefact music”.
MB: Will you still pursue individual endeavor?
Iverson: “No, the BP turned definitely into a full-time job!”.
(Musica Jazz, December 2005)
Raymond Scott
You rarely come across such a resolute devotion to an artist as the one professed by Irwin Chusid—–music producer, manager, journalist—–towards Raymond Scott, further proof of the peculiar nature of almost anything regarding this composer.
Scott, born Harold Warnow in 1908, died 1994, was an outsider of some success at the height of the Swing Era. Between 1937 and 1939 his sextet, which he pointedly referred to as Quintet, recorded many program pieces of bizarre inspiration including War Dance for Wooden Indians, New Year's Eve in a Haunted House, And the Cow Jumped Over the Moon. The label “jazz”, as it applies to his music, is effective only in describing the instruments in the orchestra.
Scott’s kinetic and, as it were, visual compositions, mostly bi-thematic (as is the case with the most celebrated, Powerhouse), relate loosely to the chamber-music mood of the contemporary small groups led by John Kirby. In fact, Scott would later employ Kirby’s arranger, Charlie Shavers. Other influences added to his melting pot of sound: a taste of the freakish from the “novelty” side of Red Nichols’ Five Pennies, the “futuristic” pieces Don Redman wrote for the Fletcher Henderson band in the Twenties and a fictitous exoticism straight from the Broadway stage. There is even a shade of the plaintive from the “Yiddish swing bands” of the Thirties. All of the above were executed with mechanical precision, with little or no room for improvisation or even swing, if not as quotation.
In 1943 Carl Stalling, music director at Warner Brothers, chose about twelve of these colorful and kinetic miniatures to comment on the hijinks of Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck etc. Scott’s music owes its survival, both subliminal and fragmentary, to this interesting choice for cartoon soundtracks. From 1945 on, Scott devoted himself as inventor more than as composer, to the electronic synthesis of sound, a field in which he is an obscure pioneer. His subsequent output (published by Chusid in two CDs) could easily be seen as forerunner to genres such as ambient and techno.
Irwin Chusid’s discovery of Scott’s music was in all likeness written in the stars and happened, with a jolt of recognition on Chusid’s part, almost twenty years ago. This author/producer who authored a study on outsider music (Songs In the Key Of Z, A Cappella Books, 2000) has not only promoted Scott’s music republishing on CD, but has, in essence, created the Raymond Scott Orchestrette. The seven musicians of the Orchestrette were originally part of the twenty-five Chusid gathered in in New York in 1998 on the occasion of a concert of music by Raymond Scott. Chusid asked them not to try in any way to reproduce Scott’s Quintet, but rather to rethink the repertoire, taking all imaginable liberty with the arrangements.
This is exactly what one hears in the RSO’s performances and on their CD «Pushbutton Parfait» (Evolver, 2002). In the contemporary rhythmic pulse of Wayne Barker’s and Will Holshouser’s scores, (the former, sumptuous and neo-lounge , the latter, drier and therefore more faithful to the classic Scott sound) Scott’s music reaffirms its musical and poetic values through recreations whose charms lie mostly in their distance from the originals. Improvisation finds the ample room it was denied in the Quintet sides. Here is RSO’s lineup: Rob Thomas or Sam Bardfeld, violin, Michael Hashim, alto and soprano sax, Brian Dewan, miscellaneous instruments and vocals, George Rush, bass, Clem Waldmann, drums.
The new arrangements capitalize on the instrumentalists’ individual timbres: the opposite of what happened in the Quintet, where musicians were considered machines (and treated as such by Scott, according to Anita O’Day’s recollections). This “contrary” approach has led the Orechstrette to avoid Scott’s more popular hits (Toy Trumpet, Dinner Music for a Pack of Hungry Cannibals) as well as the more onomatopoeic (Bumpy Weather Over newark, Serenade to a Lonesome Railroad Station). What’s astounding are the acoustical renditions of a couple of Scott’s electronic tunes, Little Miss Echo and Bass Line Generator, which also show the composer’s skill in manipulating minimalistic musical ideas.
How do the RSO’s renditions compare to the originals? The general feeling is of a dehydrated music with water added, sometimes a few bubbles and maybe a little colorful umbrella. The extra ingredient is, essentially, the human warmth of an expressively uninhibited execution that might have bugged Raymond Scott. He was a visionary artist but a timid and repressed man, lost in his dreams of a musical sound “ethereal, immaterial, full of space” (from a 1937 interview with Popular Mechanics), in pursuit of which, aided by machinery of his own devising, he would spend the rest of his days.
Scott, born Harold Warnow in 1908, died 1994, was an outsider of some success at the height of the Swing Era. Between 1937 and 1939 his sextet, which he pointedly referred to as Quintet, recorded many program pieces of bizarre inspiration including War Dance for Wooden Indians, New Year's Eve in a Haunted House, And the Cow Jumped Over the Moon. The label “jazz”, as it applies to his music, is effective only in describing the instruments in the orchestra.
Scott’s kinetic and, as it were, visual compositions, mostly bi-thematic (as is the case with the most celebrated, Powerhouse), relate loosely to the chamber-music mood of the contemporary small groups led by John Kirby. In fact, Scott would later employ Kirby’s arranger, Charlie Shavers. Other influences added to his melting pot of sound: a taste of the freakish from the “novelty” side of Red Nichols’ Five Pennies, the “futuristic” pieces Don Redman wrote for the Fletcher Henderson band in the Twenties and a fictitous exoticism straight from the Broadway stage. There is even a shade of the plaintive from the “Yiddish swing bands” of the Thirties. All of the above were executed with mechanical precision, with little or no room for improvisation or even swing, if not as quotation.
In 1943 Carl Stalling, music director at Warner Brothers, chose about twelve of these colorful and kinetic miniatures to comment on the hijinks of Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck etc. Scott’s music owes its survival, both subliminal and fragmentary, to this interesting choice for cartoon soundtracks. From 1945 on, Scott devoted himself as inventor more than as composer, to the electronic synthesis of sound, a field in which he is an obscure pioneer. His subsequent output (published by Chusid in two CDs) could easily be seen as forerunner to genres such as ambient and techno.
Irwin Chusid’s discovery of Scott’s music was in all likeness written in the stars and happened, with a jolt of recognition on Chusid’s part, almost twenty years ago. This author/producer who authored a study on outsider music (Songs In the Key Of Z, A Cappella Books, 2000) has not only promoted Scott’s music republishing on CD, but has, in essence, created the Raymond Scott Orchestrette. The seven musicians of the Orchestrette were originally part of the twenty-five Chusid gathered in in New York in 1998 on the occasion of a concert of music by Raymond Scott. Chusid asked them not to try in any way to reproduce Scott’s Quintet, but rather to rethink the repertoire, taking all imaginable liberty with the arrangements.
This is exactly what one hears in the RSO’s performances and on their CD «Pushbutton Parfait» (Evolver, 2002). In the contemporary rhythmic pulse of Wayne Barker’s and Will Holshouser’s scores, (the former, sumptuous and neo-lounge , the latter, drier and therefore more faithful to the classic Scott sound) Scott’s music reaffirms its musical and poetic values through recreations whose charms lie mostly in their distance from the originals. Improvisation finds the ample room it was denied in the Quintet sides. Here is RSO’s lineup: Rob Thomas or Sam Bardfeld, violin, Michael Hashim, alto and soprano sax, Brian Dewan, miscellaneous instruments and vocals, George Rush, bass, Clem Waldmann, drums.
The new arrangements capitalize on the instrumentalists’ individual timbres: the opposite of what happened in the Quintet, where musicians were considered machines (and treated as such by Scott, according to Anita O’Day’s recollections). This “contrary” approach has led the Orechstrette to avoid Scott’s more popular hits (Toy Trumpet, Dinner Music for a Pack of Hungry Cannibals) as well as the more onomatopoeic (Bumpy Weather Over newark, Serenade to a Lonesome Railroad Station). What’s astounding are the acoustical renditions of a couple of Scott’s electronic tunes, Little Miss Echo and Bass Line Generator, which also show the composer’s skill in manipulating minimalistic musical ideas.
How do the RSO’s renditions compare to the originals? The general feeling is of a dehydrated music with water added, sometimes a few bubbles and maybe a little colorful umbrella. The extra ingredient is, essentially, the human warmth of an expressively uninhibited execution that might have bugged Raymond Scott. He was a visionary artist but a timid and repressed man, lost in his dreams of a musical sound “ethereal, immaterial, full of space” (from a 1937 interview with Popular Mechanics), in pursuit of which, aided by machinery of his own devising, he would spend the rest of his days.
(Musica Jazz, February 2005)
---
• Errata
Irwin Chusid makes some fine points:
• Errata
Irwin Chusid makes some fine points:
From: Irwin Chusid <RaymondScott@musicsales.com>
Date: 2:29 AM
To: Marco Bertoli
There are a few factual errors, which I'll correct for your future
reference:
Scott, born Harold Warnow
He was born "Harry Warnow"
Between 1937 and 1939 his sextet, which he pointedly referred to
as Quintet, recorded many program pieces of bizarre
inspiration including ... And the Cow Jumped Over the Moon
"And the Cow Jumped Over the Moon" was recorded around 1960 by Scott's band
called The Secret Seven.
The seven musicians of the Orchestrette were originally part of the
twenty-five Chusid gathered in in New York in 1998
The Scott tribute concerts took place in 1996 and 1997. We did not have a
concert in 1998.
