Sorry about the mess. My attention is still not great with my blood pressure medication. REH
From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Ray Harrell Sent: Saturday, April 06, 2013 7:14 PM To: 'RE-DESIGNING WORK, INCOME DISTRIBUTION, EDUCATION' Subject: Re: [Futurework] [Ottawadissenters] Fw: morning rant Pat Metheny on Kenny G Thanks Mike, I don't really listen to either of the two gentlemen, although their resumes in commercial music are impressive. They are two different cultures for sure as they both point out. Both doing music that doesn't come from their own traditions even though Metheny is from a family of musicians and Gorelick is from a community that values music. Both communities may have different relationships to musical intonation and to intervals. Both may also be yelling at each other for singing a third community's music out of tune. Does it really matter that we are talking popular commercial music here? Still, although predictable and businesslike in its branding, jazz does hold a lot of energy. Not so much as Monday sports but energized nonetheless. Interesting. What is your understanding of it? Of the beautiful clarion tone of Louis Armstrong's words? (the third group and the one the music came from originally) The resonance of Armstrong's voice and beauty of vowel? As opposed to the gravelly trumpet tone filled with spit? (no I'm not being serious for those who don't understand.) Pitch and intonation are cultural. I don't listen to these people for fun. Unless I know them personally or have a project to do with them I don't attend. I can't afford it. I never understood Armstrong although I never heard him live. Hearing Peggy Lee live explained everything that I couldn't get from a recorded or videoed performance. She was an amazing performer in spite of all of her other issues. Maybe the same would have been true for Armstrong. These days, I've heard amazing tuning from the Jewish clarinetist Eddie Daniels or David Krakauer and others who truly are fabulous ensemble musicians. It's interesting that a great performer can stand to be imitated. You still get something useful. However, the merely parochial die in the imitation. As for imitators, entertainment is another matter all together. Daniels and Krakauer rise to the level of great ensemble Art. They are entertaining but not "entertainers." Entertainment is commerce and its rules for success are different. As for judgment? One needs a bit of humility about all of this. It's both sad and amusing when old pop musicians become hypercritical about the importance of their banalities. Their "new" music that was old a hundred a years ago, now recast as "improvisation." Taking that so seriously is a matter of brand and commerce. That's the fault of the economist salesmen who insists that all art is subject only to the value of money and profit. They are one and the same people who passed the law to allow people to carry guns in National Parks and who defend assault weapons. Perhaps it has to do with their loss of hearing from assaultive music. Beethoven made himself very clear about "improvisers." He told them to keep their hands off his music. He's long dead, people forget, and virtuosity declines as something new is researched and arises from the flames. The joke here is that its just possible that Gorelick may get the same place, in history, as La Boheme or Tosca which were also considered junk at the first performances as were most of Mahler's melodies. That's the "Trickster's" role in Art history. What seems mistakes sometimes is just a refusal to play banal patterns perfectly and as a result opens a doorway into something else. Think Steve Reich and Philip Glass (someone that Metheny has worked with) who were considered "Wallpaper Music" by the Juilliard trained conservatives like pianist/political scientist Samuel Lipman who gave us the Federalist Society, the Heritage Foundation and the New Criterion. In another era Lipman types were called Beckmesser by Wagner in Meistersinger, and a Donkey by Mahler in das Knaben Wunderhorn. As in the 19th century, the current performing critics and conservatives are still all wrong for which we, performers/composers and audience still suffer on every level. Just ask yourself where the great American vocal music of the depth and complexity of our poets and literary artists is? America has great poetry and literature but its claim to fame, in music, is improvisation on a 32 bar tune endlessly varied. That is not a substitute for a Schubert song or La Traviata and doesn't even live in the same universe as the six hour poem known as Die Meistersinger. Unfortunately, all too often, America's musical artistic thoughts are feral. All we can do is sing our pop banalities, other people's masterpieces, or be silent. That's is what America's immigration mess, with thousands of cultures all venturi effected into English, has give us. Chaos. REH From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of michael gurstein Sent: Saturday, April 06, 2013 5:50 PM To: Futurework Subject: Re: [Futurework] [Ottawadissenters] Fw: morning rant Pat Metheny on Kenny G I thought that you would like this one Ray. M ----- Forwarded Message ----- From: Richard Cooper <[email protected]> To: Bill O'Hara <[email protected]>; Robert Patterson <[email protected]>; Don Patterson <[email protected]> Sent: Saturday, April 6, 2013 7:30:50 AM Subject: morning rant http://www.jazzoasis.com/methenyonkennyg.htm
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