I found this on Youtube recently and couldn’t resist posting it. I actually have a vinyl LP of the album Tough Tenors, featuring Eddie “Lockjaw” Davis and Johnny Griffin as the eponymous rugged saxophonists, but it’s one I haven’t yet transferred to digital. As the album title suggests, Messrs Davis and Griffin play their instruments in a very muscular fashion, so at teams it seems like music to lift weights by, but they play with a great deal of imagination too. Here, for example, is very original version of the Dizzy Gillespie/Chano Pozo composition Tin Tin Deo, with a particularly fabulous solo by Johnny Griffin.
P.S. The album was recorded in 1962, and the other musicians were Horace Parlan (piano), Ben Riley (drums) and Bud Catlett (bass).
I noticed a news item this morning which explains that the Supernova Cosmology Project have found a supernova with a redshift of 1.71, which makes it the most distant one found so far (about 10 billion light-years away). That – and hopefully others at similar distances – should prove immensely useful for working out how the expansion rate of the Universe has changed over its history and hence yield important clues about the nature of its contents, particularly the mysterious dark energy.
Of particular relevance to this blog is the name given to this supernova, Mingus, after the jazz musician and composer Charles Mingus. Both the discovery and the great choice of name are grounds for celebration, so here’s one of my favourite Mingus tracks – the delightfully carefree and exuberant Eat that Chicken, from the Album Oh Yeah. Enjoy!
Yesterday I happened to be listening to the classic album A Love Suprememade by the John Coltrane quartet in 1964. Since the second of the four “movements” (for what of a better word) of this work is called Resolution, I thought it would be a good thing to post on New Year’s Day to welcome everyone to 2013!
A Love Supreme is one of my favourite jazz albums, not only because it’s glorious music to listen to but also for its historical importance. Shortly after making this record Coltrane comprehensively changed his musical direction, abandoning many of the structures that underpinned his earlier work and adopting an approach heavily influenced by the free jazz of the likes of Ornette Coleman and, especially, Albert Ayler. Not everyone likes the music Coltrane made after he made that transition (in 1965) but having taken his earlier style to such a high peak as A Love Supreme he and the rest of the band no doubt felt they couldn’t go any further in that direction.
There are glimpses of the later freer approach in the third track, Pursuance, when the drum and saxophone interchanges between Elvin Jones and Coltrane threaten to break the regular tempo apart, and on this (the second) track Resolution, when McCoy Tyner abandons his usual single-note lines in favour of much more complex chordal improvisations. I think Coltrane’s solo on the last track, Psalm, is entirely improvised and , accompanied by Jones’ rising and falling drum rolls, it acquires a hauntingly solemn atmosphere which makes the hairs stand up on the back of my neck every time I hear it. What a fantastic drummer Elvin Jones was.
But I haven’t got time to analyse the whole album – another’s words are in any case no substitute for listening to this masterpiece yourself – so I’ll just mention that Resolution is based on an 8-bar theme that’s very reminiscent of the theme Africa featured on Africa/Brass made a couple of years earlier. To me it sounds like Coltrane is just itching to cut loose on this track. His saxophone tone has a harder edge than usual for that period, giving the piece an anguished, pleading feel. Elvin Jones is also magnificent, his polyrhythmic accents spurring Coltrane to a climactic solo.
The intensity of Resolution ignites an even more dramatic onslaught on the next track, Pursuance, basically a blues taken at a very fast tempo, before the mood changes completely for the final part, Psalm. And all this builds from the opening track, Acknowledgement, which closes with the whole group chanting the words A Love Supreme in unison to a simple four-note figure stated at the opening of the piece.
Four tracks amounting to just over 30 minutes of music, but a masterpiece by any standards.
It’s with some trepidation that I find myself facing the long journey to Newcastle tomorrow. There’s been heavy rain overnight (even leading to a Flood Alert along the Taff near my house) and quite a lot of disruption on the railways today as a consequence. Nevertheless I’m determined to make an attempt to get into the Christmas spirit. If Fats Waller can’t do it, nobody can. Here’s his classic version of Jingle Bells on which the general atmosphere of hilarity and inspired chaos allows his superb musicianship to shine all the more brightly. Few ever managed to play Harlem Stride piano as well as Fats Waller, and he’s on top form in the opening choruses of this record.
Will I make it home on Christmas Eve? In the immortal words of Mr Waller “One never knows, do one?”
It’s a cold and dreary Sunday and I’m definitely in need of a pick-me-up, so I thought I’d share this you. It was recorded live in 1981 by the Carla Bley Band and can be found on a superb album called, appropriately enough, Carla Bley Live! When this record came out I was an avid listener to Humphrey Lyttelton’s radio show The Best of Jazz and he chose this magnificent track featuring the trombonist Gary Valente as a taster for the album. It became one of the all-time favourites on his show and he played it a number of times over the years. It’s also one of the most-played tracks on my iPod, as I find it very uplifting on long and wearisome train journeys.
The trombone is usually described as a brass instrument, but Gary Valente makes his sound more like it’s made of wrought iron; Humph described the sound as as “like that of a wounded bison”. Anyway, ignore the rather dull pictures of churches used in the video, and just listen to one of the most overwhelming performances in all of Jazz; the immensity of Valente’s trombone sound is at times almost terrifying. And if you’re one of those people who dislikes Jazz that’s stylistically dated later than about 1945, give this a hearing because it’s absolutely drenched in the Blues and Gospel traditions. I’ll even let you call it awesome…
P.S. No, I haven’t gone religious, but this track disproves the old theory that the devil has the best music…
It’s Sunday and once again I have to go into the office in order to get next week’s teaching sorted out, so no time for one of my long boring weekend specials. However, I thought I’d continue the theme of yesterday’s offering (?) with this clip of Jackson Jeffrey Jackson demonstrating his unique trumpet style after a short interview with the great Louis Balfour. Nice. Don’t ask me what the tune is though. After all, this is Jazz!
Yesterday we hosted a seminar by João Magueijo from Imperial College. It was a really interesting talk but the visit also a number of staff and students, including myself, the chance to chat to João about various things. In my case that primarily meant catching up on one another’s news, since we haven’t talked since early summer and a lot has happened since then. Then we had drinks, more drinks, dinner, drinks and then cocktails, finishing about 2am. A fairly standard night out with João, actually.
Among the topics discussed in the course of an increasingly drunken conversation was the fact that physicist Stephon Alexander had recently moved to Dartmouth College, a prestigious Ivy League institution in New Hampshire. I don’t know Stephon very well at all as I don’t really work in the same area as him. In fact, we’ve only ever met once – at a Cosmology School in Morocco (in 1996 or thereabouts); he was a graduate student and I was giving some lectures. On the left you can see a snap of him I took at that time. Can that really have been so long ago?
Anyway, I’ll resist the temptation to bemoan the passage of time and all that and get back to the point which is the connection that formed in my head between Stephon, yesterday’s post about the trials and tribulations facing prospective PhD students, and an older post of mine about the importance of not forgetting to live a life while you do a PhD.
The point is that although there are many things that may deter or prevent an undergraduate from taking the plunge into graduate studies, one thing shouldn’t put you off and that is the belief that doing a PhD is like joining a monastery in that it requires you to give up a lot of other things and retreat from the outside world. Frankly, that’s bollocks. If I’m permitted to quote myself:
I had plenty of outside interests (including music, sport and nightlife) and took time out regularly to indulge them. I didn’t – and still don’t – feel any guilt about doing that. I’m not a robot. And neither are you.
In other words, doing a PhD does not require you to give up the things that make life worth living. Actually, if you’re doing a physics PhD then physics itself should be one of the things that make life worth living for you, so I should rephrase that as “giving up any of the other things that make life worth living”.
Having a wide range of experiences and interests to draw on can even help with your research:
In fact, I can think of many times during my graduate studies when I was completely stuck on a problem – to the extent that it was seriously bothering me. On such occasions I learned to take a break. I often found that going for a walk, doing a crossword, or just trying to think about something else for a while, allowed me to return to the problem fresher and with new ideas. I think the brain gets into a rut if you try to make it work in one mode all the time.
I’d say that to be a good research student by no means requires you to be a monomaniac. And this is where Stephon comes in. As well as being a Professor of Theoretical Physics, Stephon is an extremely talented Jazz musician. He’s even had saxophone lessons from the great Ornette Coleman. I have to admit he has a few technical problems with his instrument in this clip, but I’m using him as an example here because I also love Jazz and, although I have a negligible amount of talent as a musician, have rudimentary knowledge of how to play the saxophone. In fact, I remember chatting to him in a bar in Casablanca way back in ’96 and music was the sole topic of conversation.
Anyway, in the following clip Stephon talks about how music actually helped him solve a research problem. It’s basically an extended riff on the opening notes of the John Coltrane classic Giant Steps which, incidentally, I posted about here.
Here’s a lovely and rare video of a performance by Dexter Gordon, playing What’s New in 1963 (after a characteristically jaunty introduction by him) which I just had to post. Actually, he reminds me a lot of Barack Obama in this clip…
It also gives me the excuse to post one of my all-time favourite Jazz photographs, which happens also to show Dexter Gordon but was taken in 1948 by the great Herman Leonard. Jazz clubs just haven’t been the same since the smoking ban…
I’ve been taking it easy today, attempting to recover from a bout of sickness by loafing about and listening to old records. I don’t know why I haven’t listened to Out of the Cool by the Gil Evans Orchestra for a while, but at least that meant I came back to it relatively fresh.
Gil Evans was one of the few composer/arrangers in Jazz to have successfully blended his own orchestral textures with solo improvisations in such a way that both complement each other; the scored passages he devised are complex and beautiful, but never so rigid that they inhibit the soloist’s imagination. He directed a number of albums that incorporated Jazz solos in classically-inspired orchestral settings, including Sketches of Spain and Porgy and Bess (with Miles Davis). This one is less famous than those, but in my opinion at least as good.
Trumpeter Johnny Coles (no relation) is particularly inspired by the imaginative surroundings constructed by Gil Evans on this album, and he responds by inventing beautiful solo lines on several tracks on this album. But the tonal spectrum he encompasses, his use of dynamics, and his distinctive play with inflection are best illustrated by his feature piece, Sunken Treasure, a mysterious, almost evanescent creation which he fashions out of Evans’ floating harmonies. I think this is the best track off a great album.
A late post this evening, as I’m just back from a short visit to Brighton. I travelled down there yesterday evening and stayed with an old friend in a house I lived in for a time about 25 years ago. I spent most of today meeting some of my future colleagues at the University of Sussex, who made me feel very welcome, and also catching up on some important things to be dealt with when I take over there in the new year. It’s all part of a gradual process of acclimatisation which I’ll need to do so I don’t take ages getting up to speed when I officially start. I didn’t get much time to wander about the town, but many Brighton memories have flooded back over the last couple of days. Cue an old favourite track that I listened to this evening on the train on the way home. It’s from a lovely album recorded by the unlikely combination of John Coltrane and Duke Ellington. They were men of different musical generations, but they admired each other enormously. It’s clear from the relaxed nature of this collaboration that neither felt he had any points to prove; each adapts his style to suit the other, with gorgeous results.
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In the Dark 