A profile from the latest Down Beat magazine, selected at random:
"Too often, a musician's reliance on arch concepts is proportional to his inability to make an emotional connection with listeners. Rarely does the opposite occur: an artist who practically conjoins with his audience with music grounded in heavy post-existential ideas.
Tord Gustavsen is such a rarity. On his two trio albums for ECM—the latest, The Ground, has recently been released in the United States—the Norwegian pianist creates transporting moods with heart-on-sleeve melodies and reverent hymn-like themes, rendered with a soft-spoken intensity, often at a glacial tempo. Yet, Gustavsen is not merely playing pretty for the people, but explicating a set of ideas set forth in his post-graduate thesis, “The Dialectical Eroticism of Improvisation.”"
I rest my case.
Actually, no I don't.
"Oversimplified, Gustavsen examines the role of listening in the improviser's negotiation with materials and the moment. Given the unabashed romanticism of much of his music, it's intriguing that Gustavsen turns to the terminology of musique concrete avatar Pierre Schaeffer. Ironically, Gustavsen uses concepts like “scenic consciousness” and “emergent quality” in the service of music that seems the polar opposite of Schaeffer's. Yet, Schaeffer would most probably agree with the spirit of Gustavsen's mood-setting application of scenic consciousness when the pianist describes it as “an approach that bypasses the conventions of music to make it a transcendent experience. It's a way to live in and breathe in the music as we play, to encounter the phrases as a landscape.”"
Yes, yes, it all makes perfect sense, but so what? I could make just as good a case for the dialectical eroticism of seven-a-side football, the pleasure derived from my response to my teamates' response to my decision to take the ball down the line and cut inside, but if I used the jargon on display here they'd give me a good kicking in the showers afterwards, and rightly so.
It annoys me that they daren't say it in plain English because they'd be found out. We'd all realize they're not so deep after all.
Wankers.
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11 comments:
somebody should set up "JAZZWATCH" for precisely this sort of thing.
(i'm a bit busy myself, like)
I don't think we could submit anyone to that sort of torture on a regular basis.
Yes, no doubt, jazz is certainly shite!
What pleasure can be derived from seeing you cut inside onto your RIGHT foot? Get the cross over you berk!
I was going down the right wing!
Jazz... hmmm... nice...
some of the mags are pretty good.
Sorry, Jazz is not shite, some Jazz is good, some is brilliant, some probably is shit. Pretentious twats writing about it do it no favours though.
Quite so, Jim, but if I'd made that point everyone would have agreed without any difficulty and we could have all had an early night.
My problem is probably with Jazz Snobs rather than jazz itself; and, I suppose, with those musicians who think jazz is an excuse with mucking around with musical instruments at the expense of the audience. If you want to do that, do it during rehearsals, you tossers!
those musicians who think jazz is an excuse with mucking around with musical instruments at the expense of the audience. If you want to do that, do it during rehearsals, you tossers!
have you heard "new picnic time" by pere ubu?
Is that a recommendation?
Any group that uses a theremin is alright by me.
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