Rollins and Threadgill on The Jazz Sessions

Here's a shout out for Jason Crane's The Jazz Sessions.

Together with Stef at Free Jazz blog, the lovely guys at Destination: OUT!, npr's A Blog Supreme, Bad Plus' Do the Math (and, not to forget, my main man Tom Hull, Nate Chinen and the boys at NY Times, Gary Giddins, and a host of others), Crane is doing as much as anybody in spreading the word of jazz on the internet right now. His interview series takes an all-embracing view on the jazz world, and is conducted with equal parts curiosity, knowledge and respect. In the past, he's done sessions with such Perfect Sounds faves as Cooper-Moore, Vijay Iyer, John Hollenbeck, Matt Lavelle, Steve Lehman, Joe Morris, Mike Reed, and Matthew Shipp.

If you're unfamiliar with the series, now's a good a time as any to start listening, because this week, Crane brings out the big guns with interviews with Sonny Rollins and, available from Thursday 29th, Henry Threadgill.

Make yourself a fresh batch of coffee, sit down, and listen!

Ludvigsen R.I.P.

You foreigners won't get this, but one of my first musical heroes, Gustav Lorentzen a.k.a. Ludvigsen of the musical duo Knutsen & Ludvigsen, passed away yesterday. I can't begin to explain what their music and (mostly, but by no means always, nonsensical) lyrics have meant to me, and indeed whole generations of Norwegian children, young and old. Thanks for the memories.

Perfect Sounds Listening Booth, weeks 14-16, 2010

Wrote this a week or so ago, and had initially thought I'd have at least two more before I threw it out there, but the blog needs some action. So here's the first PS Listening Booth.

• Brad Mehldau: Highway Rider (Nonesuch, 2010) - Sure, he's melodically strong, and yes both his playing and the band is exceptionally solid and well tempered, but I find very little of what I look for and enjoy most in jazz in Mehldau's music; the tempered playing means the music is emotionally moderate and one dimensional as well. There's very little heart, no guts, no push and pull, no fun, no bursts of energy. His music feels brainy as in cold and calculated, not as in witty and smart. Highway Rider only confirms those impressions, though at times there are slightly more expansive and even filmatic themes here, augmented by a string section here and there and perhaps bent that way by Jon Brion's production. At their best, the band has a nice shuffle, reminicent of, say, Randy Newman (without the bite), but even here I miss something. Maybe it is vocals. At other times it's pretty, but very little else. For melodically strong low key jazz I'd rather look to Ben Allison. (5/10)*

* Grades are tentative, based on three or four listens, sometimes a few more. Much of the writing is done during listens, and should be considered notes more than final reviews.

EMP Pop Con 2010 - I fail, KEXP delivers

Failed to deliver on my promise to preview the panels/abstracts for Saturday and Sunday, but the fine folks at KEXP's blog have been doing reviews. Part one, part two, part three.

EDIT:

Christgau has a report on EMP here.

EMP Pop Conference 2010

The 9th annual EMP Pop Conference kicks off tomorrow, so I figuered I'd browse the abstracts to see if anything tickled my fancy.

The theme this year is The Pop Machine, and revolves around "stories of sounds and the machines that make them", which sounds a bit drier than the body and music-theme of last year. However, the first thing on the schedule tomorrow is a discussion between Nile Rodgers, Joe Henry, and Janelle Monáe, which should be very interesting.

Being a jazz fan and critic, Jason Toynbee's paper on "Jazz and the Politics of Recording" seems interesting: "It's been suggested that recordings of jazz are unrepresentative of the genre, even untrue to it. (...) In this paper I want to question the assumptions that lie behind the critique of jazz recording. Interestingly, that critique runs counter to the conventional wisdom in rock and pop criticism which has embraced recording not only as predominant medium, but also as a kind of muse, and sometimes even as the essence of the form (...)" (Friday, April 16)

Geeta Dayal will talk about Brian Eno and the studio as an instrument. (Friday, April 16)

As much as I'm tired of discussions on hipster culture (and the inevitable hipster bashing), Elizabeth Keenan's talk on the Dirty Projectors and cultural capital could be worth checking out. (Friday, April 16)

Douglas Wolk will do a talk on the future of listening to music (the abstract doesn't say, but I'd assume a discussion on Spotify, Rhapsody and the like may come into it at some point). (Friday, April 16)

Allen Lowe, musician, jazz historian, and compiler (and the man behind the great American Pop: An Audio History and the That Devilin' Tune-book and compilations, has a paper called "Looking at Down from Up: Blues from Blackface to Whiteface (or: All the Blues You Could Play By Now if Stanley Crouch was Your Uncle)", in which he among other things seems to take on Wynton Marsalis (who does deserve a beating every now and then). The subtitle of the paper, inspired by Charles Mingus' brilliant "All the Things You Could Be By Now If Sigmund Freud's Wife Was Your Mother", is also the title of one of Lowe's own composition, which you can hear from his website here. (Friday, April 16)

Will have a look at the schedules for Saturday and Sunday tomorrow.

Shutterbug

Updates coming during the week. 'til then: