Wynton Marsalis

Sorry to butt into an interesting conversation with my relatively prosaic inanities, but would I be right in guessing that Wynton M draws the line at hard bop? I take it Bitches Brew would be too modern for him? :) I take it A Love Supreme would have had some worrying developments for him ...

8 Mile mentioned that "Louis Armstrong trashed bebop at the time and Miles said he thought Cecil Taylor played like someone with psychological problems" ... and was it Miles who accused Monk of playing the wrong notes?

Let me start by correcting myself. I think Miles said that about Ornette, not Taylor. I'm not sure about the "wrong notes" quote regarding Monk.

As for Wynton, in his black and white universe, A Love Supreme = good and Bitches Brew = bad. In fact, he liked A Love Supreme enough that the LCJO performed it a few years ago.
 
Sorry to butt into an interesting conversation with my relatively prosaic inanities, but would I be right in guessing that Wynton M draws the line at hard bop? I take it Bitches Brew would be too modern for him? :) I take it A Love Supreme would have had some worrying developments for him ...

8 Mile mentioned that "Louis Armstrong trashed bebop at the time and Miles said he thought Cecil Taylor played like someone with psychological problems" ... and was it Miles who accused Monk of playing the wrong notes?

Sweetheart, we need to get you up to speed a little bit because the original piece is Part IV of A Love Supreme. In Wynton's defense, I have those electric albums BB, On the Corner, Live Evil. I don't and have never listen to them as much as Round about Midnight, Milestones, ESP or Nefertiti. You can't deny their importance though.

But I also believe that those of us living in our time are often ill equipped to pass judgment on the present. It always looks insipid by comparision to the past upon which we had had time for reflection, analysis and nostalgic glorification.

I think we havent even begun to scrape the surface or fully comprehend the power and capability of the babes of the 21st century, the internet, mobile telephony, artifical intelligence, stem cell technology and cracking the genome code. The 21st century will be a time for intense innovation for sure, and the musical arts will be a mirror to all of it.

We might not like it, you and me, but hey, we aint going to around to smell that cuppa coffee! ; )

...

I think I was making a semantic argument, and that is the the innovation that will come are a part of further developments in the breakthroughs in the sciences and in music that have already happened. In other words, the initial thrust of creative energy has already been set into motion. We've identified the gnome and developed internet and telecommunication technologies. Or maybe that is just my way of defending myself against being an old coot. :)

If you didn't listen to the speech from the clip this is what Orson Welles says:

You know what the fellow said – in Italy, for thirty years under the Borgias, they had warfare, terror, murder and bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci and the Renaissance. In Switzerland, they had brotherly love, they had five hundred years of democracy and peace – and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock.
 
Ken, a bit ambitious to get me up to speed but one can only try :)

I had BB eons ago and, while I always enjoyed the sound of it with Miles's plaintive bursts over jungle rhythms, I found it overlong. .

8Mile, A Love Supreme gets pretty cosmic at times so if Wynton loves it then he can't be too starched up IMO. The hard bop clip is pretty cool too. Whatever, he's just one musician with an opinion. I don't see why his opinion should count more than those of his peers. Influential friends?

If my memory serves me correctly I read about Miles's comments directed at Monk in The Jazz Book by Joachim-Ernst Berendt. I could be wrong ... I read it a long time ago.
 
Whatever, he's just one musician with an opinion. I don't see why his opinion should count more than those of his peers.

It doesn't, Polly, and that's the whole point. Wynton Marsalis is a highly visible target for jazz musicians and critics who have a chip on their shoulders, but the truth is that his success isn't taking food from anyone's table. You couldn't say that jazz would be a lot better off without Wynton Marsalis, nor could you say that it is any better because of him.
 
I know you'll probably like this Jay but I'll ask anyway. Why should people be looking for "innovation" in an art form that is 100 years old? I just don't hear it happening and if it is I am asking the question, where? please inform me. That doesn't mean I like what I hear any less. It doesn't man that I don't like to be challenged with what I hear. I could roll off 20 pieces of music, 10 of which would be radically innovative, and for me, I wouldn't love them any more than the other 10 that weren't. In 1913, Stravinsky was writing The Rite of Spring and Ravel was writing his neo-classical Le Tombeau dun Couperin. In ten years, Stravinsky was a neo-classicist. Ravel never became an expressionist. But you now, there something wrong with me if I think like that. Not everyone is going to innovate.
 
Yet new forms of jazz are always going to happen because someone will always combine jazz with any new black music that comes out, in today's case, hip hop (ref: Matt). There's also nu jazz, where the difference between jazz and jazzlike music is less clear cut, certainly for consumers who like the sound of jazz but prefer more structure and less soloing.

What about what had been said earlier in the thread about Wynton (or his allies?) influencing jazz funding? If conservatives are controlling the funds and giving scraps to progressives, that would sound typical enough in pretty well all areas of society.

I wonder how much of this is political? According to my home-schooled ear there's no clear dividing line between free jazz and avant garde, and the avant garde crowd tend to be enthusiastic lefties. That's never going to attract much love from the conservative establishment.
 
I know you'll probably like this Jay but I'll ask anyway. Why should people be looking for "innovation" in an art form that is 100 years old? I just don't hear it happening and if it is I am asking the question, where? please inform me. That doesn't mean I like what I hear any less. It doesn't man that I don't like to be challenged with what I hear. I could roll off 20 pieces of music, 10 of which would be radically innovative, and for me, I wouldn't love them any more than the other 10 that weren't. In 1913, Stravinsky was writing The Rite of Spring and Ravel was writing his neo-classical Le Tombeau dun Couperin. In ten years, Stravinsky was a neo-classicist. Ravel never became an expressionist. But you now, there something wrong with me if I think like that. Not everyone is going to innovate.

I wonder that myself at times. No, I don't see it happening but maybe it is happening, it's just that it hasn't blossomed yet, I don't know.

What's troubling to me is the adherence to functional harmony, to the old standards and to the tried-and-true chord-scale approach to improvising that's taught in every jazz program in every school everywhere.

It could well be that to expect the sort of innovations that rocked jazz in the past is to be chasing rainbows. You can't get any more "inside," and I don't see how you could get any more "outside" either.

When I see jazz performed I enjoy the musicianship but to be honest I'm never hearing anything new. Is it possible to do anything new and still call it jazz? :)

Jazz is a funny thing that way. It's so codified, you know? Everyone knows what it sounds like. But I guess all genres of music are that way.
 
I was listening to a clip of an interview with John Adams today in which he was dissing pop culture. He said that the great divide in America today is between the classical world and pop. I've met Mr. Adams several times, praised him in front of the GM of the Met Opera for which he thanked me. I told him I was following his career since he was with ECM and he got a kick out of that because now he is the most performed composer in the world. But that divide is just so 1950s man. It is almost embarrassing to hear him say that.

He has a point because there is an anti-intellectual bias that exists in American culture and dare I say contemporary culture as a whole. And we know that the gross over-commercializing of our world, esp the art world, is really a problem. Everything becomes exploited, nothing is sacred and nothing has inherent meaning.

Today you have so many composer who have no interest in popular culture at all. I talked to a composer who was setting Bob Dylan lyrics for orchestra. he had never heard Bob Dylan, never mind the tunes he was setting. He just has no interest in it at all. I told him I thought that was bizarre and he should give it a listen. The greatness of guys like Bach, Mozart and Beethoven was that they embraced the culture as a whole. For Beethoven, all me would be brothers, not just the bourgeois brats who ran things, whom he hated. Nu jazz hip hop jazz is already been done, ten years ago. is it innovative? I don't think its chartering new musical grounds although it may be politically significant. That certainly doesn't mean that its not good and we shouldn't listen to it.


Marsalis gets a lot of money because he does a lot of education. That a no-brainer right there is your a writing proposals. It's also not just him now, but a host of people who will come though JALC. I really think that problem with public funding is that it creates a lot of bourgeois brats who have a lot of time to stick it to the working man who is paying their check. Let them write something that will make them a paycheck on their own. There is enough of an audience for any type of music, and it is your obligation as a composer to cultivate one. Who wants a bunch of composers who can't write music that any one wants to listen to. If you need money, write a film score. If you're a real composer that shouldn't detract from you latest master work. You get in trouble for saying that. Charles Ives worked as an insurance broker. Why should anyone pay your salary?

The more you talk to musicians the more you just get so tired of dealing with the BS. There is good music and bad music. And good music is what I like, and bad music is what I don't. And so I'm going to spend all my time rippin' on the bad music. It's all so old already. Hey, it's been done.
 
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I wonder that myself at times. No, I don't see it happening but maybe it is happening, it's just that it hasn't blossomed yet, I don't know.

What's troubling to me is the adherence to functional harmony, to the old standards and to the tried-and-true chord-scale approach to improvising that's taught in every jazz program in every school everywhere.

It could well be that to expect the sort of innovations that rocked jazz in the past is to be chasing rainbows. You can't get any more "inside," and I don't see how you could get any more "outside" either.

When I see jazz performed I enjoy the musicianship but to be honest I'm never hearing anything new. Is it possible to do anything new and still call it jazz? :)

Jazz is a funny thing that way. It's so codified, you know? Everyone knows what it sounds like. But I guess all genres of music are that way.

I'll be waiting for you first piece of serialist jazz. Actually, La monte Young was doing something like that, taking musical cells and creating pieces through improv. He still owes John Cale money. :p
 
I'll be waiting for you first piece of serialist jazz. Actually, La monte Young was doing something like that, taking musical cells and creating pieces through improv. He still owes John Cale money. :p

Anthony Braxton has been writing that sort of thing since at least the seventies.
 
Anthony Braxton has been writing that sort of thing since at least the seventies.

That's right. so much for innovation. He doesn't consider what he does jazz. lol
 
It doesn't, Polly, and that's the whole point. Wynton Marsalis is a highly visible target for jazz musicians and critics who have a chip on their shoulders, but the truth is that his success isn't taking food from anyone's table. You couldn't say that jazz would be a lot better off without Wynton Marsalis, nor could you say that it is any better because of him.
Jay not only is your comment uninformed, I'm pretty sure you know it is and are only trying to secure a contrary reaction. Despite a storied forum rage, encompassing thousands of posts, and attacks on every known artistic enemy real or imagined, you've always given a feigning pass to Marsalis, with one theory being that you're generally dismissive of federal grant funding, because you've never really understood all that, nor did you believe it cool to be so aligned with the man when in reality that same man is actually just the collective pockets of everyone.

Three years ago at aaj you asked for concrete Marsalis grant facts, they were supplied, you blew off the conversation and just kept saying the exact same thing. Three years later you're on this thread doing the exact same thing.

Here's the bottom line for anyone wanting to seriously view this past the gimmick. JALC by itself, takes several millions of dollars in grant money every year, and if you think that's not most of it, then you are truly unknowing of how small the grant allotment is for American jazz. Just to lay out a famous example---the entire 40 year old, 10,000 member International Association for Jazz Education, which was up until 2 years ago the second most expansive nonprofit jazz operation on the planet, was forced to declare bankruptcy over a matter of one million dollars.

Yes you heard that right---one million dollars. The entire educational infrastructure for a complete genre of music that included over 100,000 bands in the US alone died because it needed a million dollars. And yes I know a million is a lot, but for something that oversees millions of students?

My old man can make 10 community big bands in different towns that have never experienced regular jazz, run healthy and with optimum quality /for an entire year/ for less than what the bar staff and greeters make at Dizzy's Coca Cola Club make in half time.

Isn't taking food off anyone's table?

Really?
 
Jay not only is your comment uninformed, I'm pretty sure you know it is and are only trying to secure a contrary reaction. Despite a storied forum rage, encompassing thousands of posts, and attacks on every known artistic enemy real or imagined, you've always given a feigning pass to Marsalis, with one theory being that you're generally dismissive of federal grant funding, because you've never really understood all that, nor did you believe it cool to be so aligned with the man when in reality that same man is actually just the collective pockets of you and me.

Three years ago you asked for concrete Marsalis grant facts, they were supplied, you blew off the conversation and just kept saying the exact same thing. Three years later you're on this thread doing the exact same thing.

Well, at least I'm consistent.
 
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8Mile, A Love Supreme gets pretty cosmic at times so if Wynton loves it then he can't be too starched up IMO.
You need to hear the arrangement Polly. It was arranged for big band with Coltrane's melodic lines and most of his subsequent improvisations voiced for large ensemble, often with block voicings suitable for the US high school football field on a Friday night. Not to say this has never been done/ many Charlie Parker improvisations have been scored in this manner/ but this was perhaps one of the most soul drained adaptations of a modern jazz work ever, to say nothing of one of the most inappropriate works for big band ever. When the improvisations finally arrive they are played in entirely inappropriate style suggesting improv of an earlier time. In other words it's a mess.

Then if you really want the bizarre, check out his brother's entirely copped Love Supreme album where Branford attempts to recreate the entire disc often note for note. The first time I heard it I got the wierdest feeling hearing what sounded like a really good player attempting to imitate Coltrane but with a small figure or twist added or deleted. I actually knew someone who loved it because in his mind it was great to hear all of the old Coltrane ideas with proper digital quality.
 
Complaints about the head of any major arts organization can be levied. They get upwards of 2-4 million dollars a year to head an organization that subsists on grants, donations and trusts from the deceased. Many performers who play at these venues also make large remuneration because they bring in a lot of money.

I am sure that the reason why JALC is getting a large chunk of funding is because it is good for tourism, and brings in a lot of revenue for the city. It sits in a very, very high end piece of real estate in a mall that has a bunch of exclusive shops that are so expensive, I am not the person you would ask about shopping there. Lincoln Center was built over low cost housing. Dizzy's overlooks Central Park. The Jazz Standard and Village Vanguard are in basements.

That's the way funding is for anything in the USA. People complain about welfare; but massive amounts of funding go to corporations and the wealthy through subsidies in defense and farming, or research in medicine and energy that is offered free. It becomes discussed when the government bails out financial institution while executives get royal treatment or spa vacations. But it happens all the time.
 
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Complaints about the head of any major arts organization can be levied. They get upwards of 2-4 million dollars a year to head an organization that subsists on grants, donations and trusts from the deceased. Many performers who play at these venues also make large remuneration because they bring in a lot of money.

I am sure that the reason why JALC is getting a large chunk of funding is because it is good for tourism, and brings in a lot of revenue for the city. It sits in a very, very high end piece of real estate in a mall that has a bunch of exclusive shops that are so expensive, I am not the person you would ask about shopping there. Lincoln Center was built over low cost housing. Dizzy's overlooks Central Park. The Jazz Gallery and Village Vanguard are in basements.

That's the way funding is for anything in the USA. People complain about welfare; but massive amounts of funding go to corporations and the wealthy through subsidies in defense and farming, or research in medicine and energy that is offered free. It becomes discussed when the government bails out financial institution while executives get royal treatment or spa vacations. But it happens all the time.

Ken, the initial outlay for the very creation of JALC cost well over 50 million federal dollars, and no one can possibly say any one has made any of that money back, to say nothing of the numerous regional jazz organizations that went under during an extended building process that was lengthened for no other reason then to milk the well dry via the largest free publicity campaign in the history of the music. Compare it to a federally funded Super Wal Mart that comes to a small town, scares the old downtown into selling out, then slows down the building and elevates what is essentially a free ad campaign to get the last stubborn old guys out of there. That's why by far the largest jazz organization to have ever existed /IAJE/ sweats it out and dies over a million. But no need to worry, Wynton and company already have a new way to have jazz competitions to fill in that gap and DVDs to show you how to stage your event their way, with Wynton providing the necessary introductions. It's true, I've seen the thing.

Then to show they're actually doing something while a 2 year project takes many years, you create the Essentially Ellington Competition and send your own guys out there to redefine how US jazz competitions should be handled, while you extend your building campaign again entirely for free by announcing the filming of Ken Burns' Jazz which uses up the lion's share of the rest of federal jazz funding for the NEXT two years and milks the Lila Wallace fund bone dry for that same period. Then you go to the Doris Duke Foundation which is the last available private jazz funding remaining and strong arm a bunch of politically sensitive progressives into doing their part for social justice...and suddenly all the money is diverted forever.

The JALC funding outlay is based on matching grants from other arts organizations that essentially feed from the same trough to survive. In other words, you get a big pile of money from a trough then go to other organizations for more money that feed from the same trough.

And I know some don't want to address this but most of the jazz ever created exists outside New York and for a lot less money.

This is why the guy has the power and why NYC musicians are afraid to cross him. And yeah it does affect the way music is played. How could it not?

I know this is the case because I've been hearing about these pathetic battles my whole life. Problem is I will state all this exacting info, but the next thought from someone else is well but...followed by repetition of the same point I just disproved, because in the minds of many tragically hip jazz people sounding ambivalent gives them a sense of coolness because they're not really listening to music or have given up altogether. I do not count you as one of those. Yet the phenomenon exists.
 
You need to hear the arrangement Polly. It was arranged for big band with Coltrane's melodic lines and most of his subsequent improvisations voiced for large ensemble, often with block voicings suitable for the US high school football field on a Friday night. Not to say this has never been done/ many Charlie Parker improvisations have been scored in this manner/ but this was perhaps one of the most soul drained adaptations of a modern jazz work ever, to say nothing of one of the most inappropriate works for big band ever. When the improvisations finally arrive they are played in entirely inappropriate style suggesting improv of an earlier time. In other words it's a mess.

Then if you really want the bizarre, check out his brother's entirely copped Love Supreme album where Branford attempts to recreate the entire disc often note for note. The first time I heard it I got the wierdest feeling hearing what sounded like a really good player attempting to imitate Coltrane but with a small figure or twist added or deleted. I actually knew someone who loved it because in his mind it was great to hear all of the old Coltrane ideas with proper digital quality.

I didn't find Wyton's version on the Tube, only only found Brandon's. Sounded great to me, at least before it goes berko later on ... I've probably listened to that track twice before and not for a fair while, and it's too complex to be a "twice through" track. The way you've described Wynton's version sounds like an interesting idea that didn't come off. I've heard track by him that I enjoyed, like bop tune in the OP I keep fruitlessly referring to (haha) and I have a wonderful Herlin Riley solo in my YouTube favourites. But then again, I like the White Stripes :)


That's the way funding is for anything in the USA. People complain about welfare; but massive amounts of funding go to corporations and the wealthy through subsidies in defense and farming, or research in medicine and energy that is offered free. It becomes discussed when the government bails out financial institution while executives get royal treatment or spa vacations. But it happens all the time.

How true. In Oz we blithely pour squillions into sport but conservatives squeal about much more modest arts funding. I've never believed art should have to always pay for itself. If it requires rationalist justification it could be seen as a musical research lab where discoveries can be made that revitalises the pop scene, which always gets its ideas from edgier styles. For some years the pop scene has been cannibalising itself rather than growing. Not exactly enriching people's souls ...

PS. Just read Matt's last post. Grant allocation's another thing again. Organisations always win those games over the little guys.
 
Matt, I would bet a lot of that 50 million dollars went to constructing that building. But the money will come back over time. It's big business. It's an investment. One could question the legitimacy of having jazz at Lincoln Center to begin with. Opera and the classical music have always been funded by the aristocracy, and expressed their concerns. But jazz has been a populist art form. Who owns jazz these days?:)

Wynton did an album with Willie Nelson. I think he's trying to show he can be hip in many ways. We've had the discussion here time and again. Jazzers often feel uncomfortable with their populist past, and often players have been uncomfortable with their populist present. It does get frustrating to hear musicians incessantly degrade popular music. One can enjoy Jay Z as much as Boulez, and one can also get pretty tired of either one of them pretty quick. It's always exciting to me when composers can find a bridge between worlds. Copland and Bernstein were able to do that. There hasn't been a populist classical composer since Bernstein passed. No one came up to fill his shoes. I think Philip Glass tried; but once he started rewriting the same piece over and over again . . . That is really the tragedy of American music, and why that happened I don't know. Was it public funding of the arts? Was it over-commercializing of the arts? Was it just no one had any talent? There is a lot of mediocre talent that gets very far with hard work. I think that is the lesson of contemporary music.

I can see that the funding is a problem. Doris Duke used to present a lot of nice free concerts. But now they don't any more. I wasn't aware that it is because their funding is diverted to JALC, I thought it was the economy. Though it makes sense; they were doing free concerts at NYPL in Lincoln Center.

I would also agree that you can hear a major change in the composition of music, even since the establishment of JALC at Columbus Circle. It seems many of the younger are writing in a more conservative style. One of the things I do like is that you often hear a N'Orleans style of writing, and of course a renewed interest in history. I am one of those guys who sits in the middle. I don't mind it. I am patient. I've been waiting for something major to happen my whole adult life.

One can fight against the current. But that is the direction the wind is blowing. It will probably be that the better art will come out of those who struggle against the grain.
 
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Matt, I would bet a lot of that 50 million dollars went to constructing that building.
And that's one of the primary rubs Ken. 40 rebuilt existing structures could have been created in 40 different locations throughout America for the same money, and reached a whole hell of a lot more people from every walk of life, to say nothing of those 2-3 million playing in a school jazz ensemble every year. And don't think for a minute those requests weren't made and those grants weren't written, only to be told that the money was going to this one place so people who could already afford it could pretend to listen to jazz next to a pretty park in the only city stereotype informs you is relevant, and in doing so feel enlightened. It's a common pattern of behavior after all, seeing as how the classical world already adopts this formula at the expense of John Adams, the minimalists /there are more out there than Glass/ and any one else with the nerve to attempt something breakthrough.
One can fight against the current. But that is the direction the wind is blowing. It will probably be that the better art will come out of those who struggle against the grain.
The better art is always the result of struggle and injustice Ken. But wait for it because its closer than you think. And if anyone thinks the new crowd that's about to come up will put up with 5 seconds of this, then they're insane. The whole thing is about to be turned on its ear from the business end through the very way music is heard and felt. And none of these guys in control now will be able to do a thing about it because they've been too busy running their mouths to even know what's about to happen. Just look at these music forums Ken. Over the past 5 years I've noticed a microcosim of this very phenomenon. And for those behind the curve this time that wind you talk about is going to be very cold, while some who will feel it the worst will be some of the very ones we currently believe have all the answers.

I can't wait, because I'll be the perfect age to have a ringside seat.
 
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