On Jan 31, 2006, at 8:14 PM, John Howell wrote:
I seriously doubt that the solos were identical each time, given some of the name brand players, but David does point out a contradiction in the big band era. Once a song was recorded--and this goes for sweet jazz, hot jazz, or cool jazz equally--and people were used to hearing solos one particular way, that's the way they expected to hear them. The success of jazz recordings was ironically what caused this problem for jazz players, making a relatively free form into a relatively fixed form and actually suppressing creativity.
In Ellington's oevre, many solos, especially short ones, became functional parts of the composition. Changing them significantly might have altered the overall effectiveness of the performance. Whether one views this as adding or subtracting from creativity depends on how much romantic value one places on the concept of spontaneous composition. The composer often has one point of view, the player another.
In Bill Evans' music, there was far more fixed arrangement than most people realized, or were willing to admit. Sometimes the stability of that reliable framework served as a springboard for creativity, and sometimes it just provided assurance that the shape and meaning of the piece would come across consistently. Nevertheless, the illusion of spontaneity, or perhaps real emotional spontaneity, is more important than whether or not new notes are being played. I've heard jazz improvisations that sound dead in the water, in spite of the fact that they were being improvised, and performances of late Beethoven quartets that sound as if the music is being made up by the players. Go figure.
Chuck Chuck Israels 230 North Garden Terrace Bellingham, WA 98225-5836 phone (360) 671-3402 fax (360) 676-6055 www.chuckisraels.com _______________________________________________ Finale mailing list [email protected] http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
