If you think he’s great I’m damn envious, because you have whole new WORLDS of music to discover out there in the wide world that is just going to ORGASM you.
Ha, the majority of my albums are great jazz players. All I am saying is that I am not impressed with his albums, but he has the ability to hang it out when he wants to.
cmon, uke. cut j redman a break. hes not a great player yet, but hes pretty darn good, and hes not 30 yet. give him time.
‘wish’ is a pretty good album. and the lineup of blade, mcbride, and redman sounds awesome.
ya sure you dont have him confused with james carter? theres a corporate-generated hack if ever there was one.
[nitpick]Joshua Redman has currently reached the rather biblical age of 33, being born in 1969.[/nitpick] At which point I think one can ask a little more of musicians than that they merely show promise.
He’s a perfectly OK player, if indeed given to grandstanding, but I share U.Ike’s incredulity as his being the first name off the tongue when one’s naming great jazz players. (Ditto for Brubeck & Metheny, incidentally.) – If we’re talking about young hyped tenor players, I think James Carter is uneven & sometimes selfindulgent but deserves a listen: The Real Quietstorm, despite the ghastly title & cover, is a fine disc. It has some nicely judged covers of McLean, Sun Ra, Don Byas, Ellington &c., though it does fall foul of the showstopping highnote cliche on “Round Midnight”. In Carterian Mood is also pretty good: the opening “Lianmo” is quite lovely. – Probably better than either Carter or Redman is Mark Turner, whose selftitled debut on Warner I thought was pretty terrific: Redman enthusiasts will want it as it contains a marvellous reading of Tristano’s “317 E 32nd” on which Turner & Joshua Redman joust, both of them tossing off airily intricate high-register lines in the patented Warne Marsh manner. – However, major-label support can indeed begin to bring out the least appealing aspects of musicians; certainly the tracks I’ve heard off Redman’s latest disc haven’t sounded all that strong, & I found Turner’s latest (Dharma Days) a disappointment, being studiously oblique jazz in which Turner’s tenor is so veiled-sounding it’s like it’s behind a pane of glass.
I think Chick Corea is an excellent choice for easing your way into jazz. His 1975 No Mystery is my favorite jazz album.
As far as explaining jazz to the OP, I guess I would explain it by saying that it is a celebration of music’s three basic components: melody, harmony, and rhythm. As an interesting coincidence, the open chord of a guitar (that is, the chord it plays without any fingering) is an e-minor 11, a very nice jazzy chord. Just strum a well-tuned guitar without fretting anything and see if you don’t like the sound.
“Jazz is for people who are determined to feel good in spite of all that’s bad.”
– quoted by Gary Owens, KKGO, Los Angeles
“Jazz is the only music in which the same note can be played night after night but differently each time.”
– Ornette Coleman
And, Hayduke, if jazz is incomprehensible to you, I suggest you either:
[ul][]Ignore it and listen to somthing else, or[]Take a music appreciation class.[/ul]
Thanks, Doug Bowe, for bringing Ken Burns up so I can sound off.
In Burns’ series, he treats Jazz as an historical art form that had its heyday in the first part of the last century, and pretty much died out by 1950. But to many of us (musicians), the pre-1950’s were only an early development phase. Jazz is constantly evolving; it didn’t end in the 1940’s, and is very much alive today, and Marsalis is not its only aficionado.
While Burns’ series is very good in an historical sense, it is the last thing I would recommend to anyone who wants to know what jazz “is.”
Thank you, I was hesitating before:
The real name of that series is “Everything I Didn’t Know About Jazz Until Wynton Told Me.”
Pure trash, not worth watching. Did more damage to the “cause” than a big stack of Kenny G. albums.
Which doesn’t explain all those Billie Holiday fans out there. Oh well.
(That quote also reads oddly if one thinks of say Charlie Parker’s selfdestructive drug addiction–maybe it’s not so good to be determined to feel good…?)
Yeah, the Ken Burns juggernaut is appalling. The reactions I’ve encountered to it among fans, musicians & critics range from a few lukewarm positives (mostly to the effect that at least it’s nice to get a chance to see all the old footage, & it can’t be all bad if a new generation is introduced to classic early jazz), to widespread & genuine anger at the series’ idiotic polemical slant (in which the 1930s represents a peak from which the music slowly & then precipitously declines). The accompanying CD series is similarly wonky in its slant.
Your picture isn’t far off mine. It wouldn’t be surprising that there about the same percent excellent classical musicians, then, as there are jazz musicians, today. The difference is in part that we have hundreds of years of “classical” music, which has been refined by generations of musicians. With jazz, we’re dealing with a body of highly diverse material that hasn’t stood the test of time, which means that there’s a high proportion of compositions that will be utterly forgotten in 100 years.
A great problem with learning to like Jazz, is a characteristic several posters have noted–that it’s not one easily identifiable style. So when the original poster asks whether they’re missing something about jazz, maybe the answer should address who they’re listening to, which piece, which recording, how good the stereo is, etc.
This is a disagreement I had with a friend who composed movie music, and on the side had created some very modern stuff that was based on the golden mean, and the configuration of atoms in electron shells, if memory serves. I thought he played very well. But I couldn’t even get close to his compositions. He said almost exactly the same thing: it takes a long time, application, learning, blah-blah. He missed the point in several ways:
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Listening to music for most people is a pleasureable, nearly effortless experience. When I get off work I want to be entertained, not lectured to by steel strings.
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One needs to be suspicious of any art which makes unusual demands of the beholder to be accessible. Is there art that only people of exceptional intelligence or emotional depth can understand? Or is the artist just somebody who’s hopelessly off the rails and is now trying to convince everyone they’ve done something clever. After all, there are such things as poor, uninspired artists.
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The fact that people can really enjoy something that’s an acquired taste doesn’t mean that that taste is better. You could develop, I imagine, an acquired taste for fingers delicately scraped on a blackboard…but why bother?
I’d put this “shallow end of the pool” idea in a different context. Getting involved with jazz (for those for whom it doesn’t have a fairly immediate appeal) can be, (note can be), more like shucking 100s of oysters trying to find a pearl. One could spend a lot of effort and get nothing. And what if in the end it turns out he really doesn’t like any jazz? Are you going to refund his wasted time?
Which, of course, why the posters here are helpfully suggesting some of their favorites. One major question, surely, is asking the original poster what kinds of music he does like. If he says Brittany Spears, that’ll tell you one thing, and if he prefers Alice Cooper, then his jazz search would be something quite otherwise.
Random… very random direction… but where is the popular jazz these days?
Personally, I’m really in love with a band called The Seatbelts. They’re japanese, and their work I’m familiar with is music for an anime called Cowboy Bebop. The theme really resembles Take 5 in all the good ways, but there’s four other CDs worth of stuff from the series alone.
Anyone have an opinion on how real they are?
Anywhere else we do see jazz these days?
I consider myself a jazz fan, but I have to agree that 80-90% of it passes me by. Whether this is my fault or the music’s, I won’t try to guess.
I got into jazz in high school listening to and playing Chuck Mangione (just fun to listen to - had some hit tunes (tho “Feels So Good” is not one of his better tunes)) and Maynard Ferguson (who often did really far-out versions of the Beatles and other popular music, always with blaring trumpets, etc.), as well as swing music (“In the mood”, etc.). I started listening to jazz radio (personally, I dislike “soft jazz” stations but if it turns you on, go with it) and took note of the names of musicians that I liked: Wynton Marsalis, Keith Jarrett, Renee Rosness, Thelonious Monk, then went out and bought a few albums. This can be tricky as jazz musicians love to experiment and do many different styles. Jarrett’s solo piano work is my all-time favorite, but his ensemble leaves me cold - sounds too much like “standard” jazz. I avoided Miles Davis for years after hearing him at a free concert, but I now love “Birth of the Cool”.
So the bottom line is, listen to whatever grabs you. For instance, that “Charlie Brown music” (Vince Guaraldi) is jazz (another of my faves)!
My understanding is that The Seatbelts are primarily the brain-child of the very talented Yoko Kanno who’s the composer of a great many anime soundtracks. Her music is very diverse and, as far as I know, only touches on jazz and blues on the four Cowboy Bebop CDs. Her take on jazz seems highly eclectic and I thoroughly enjoy it. Also recommended is her soundtrack to Macross Plus (not jazz but just as fascinating).
To paraphrase Steve Martin, “Writing about music is like dancing about architecture.”
If what you hear moves you, says something to you, leads you in a direction that you may not have taken, or simply sounds pleasing to your ear, listen to it. Buy the records. See the live performances. It doesn’t matter if it is Kenny G, Duke Ellington, Dinah Washington, or Dinah Shore, if resonates with you put it in your bag and carry it with you.
Ah sweet jazz.
First thing first. DO NOT LISTEN to Charlie Parker…yet. Charlie Parker is tough and will almost certainly kill any small flame of interest you have in jazz. Ditto Coltrane.
I always tell people start with Big Band and Swing. Most folks don’t even consider this jazz. Then move into your basic
Maiden Voyage by Herbie Hancock and
Saxaphone Colossus by Sonny Rollins
Also, try Oscar Peterson and Dave Brubeck. These artists are what I consider sort of “gateway drugs” to the jazz world.
Avoid groups/musicians like Last Exit, Peter Brotzmann, Ornette Coleman, Cecil Taylor and Milli Vanilli.
I think it would be foolish to assume that the process of aesthetic evaluation & canonization is at all the same for the music of the 20th century as it was for previous centuries. Very little is likely to be “utterly forgotten” because of the advent of records, tapes & now CDs. The advent of an increasingly globalized culture means that music finds much wider audiences much more quickly, instead of (as often in the past) remaining highly localized; this surely has implications for the persistence of music over the longer duration. & the argument about “the test of time” is easily reversed: as a hypothesis let me suggest that the number of listening hours that a work has received from an audience is probably a good measure of its durability. The number of times a work is listened to by one person & by many people has been radically increased by recording technologies, so I wouldn’t be surprised if the process of evaluation and canonization has sped up. – In any case, this is all something of a red herring. So what are going to do, not listen to music during your lifetime because your grandchildren might think differently about it? Why should the judgment of 100 years hence be any more valid, anyway? You seem to be implying that judgments are more valid the less evidence one has to support them (other evidence being “forgotten”).
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I perhaps might understand this better if I understood your “difficulty”. I don’t understand why a listener need worry about “most people” when listening to music. Do you need to take a poll & ascertain if other people like a piece of music before you decide if you like it or not? If I understand your claim, it’s that “Because piece X is not enjoyed by ‘most people’, then it is no good.” But even this is simply to talk about your own tastes, it’s not a statement of objective fact. I am willing to bet there’s not a single genre of music or composition that is liked by “most people” in the absolute sense of the term (the population of the planet). Even U2 and the Beatles might look like parochial tastes from such a wide-angle perspective, I suspect. So what you mean is entirely dependent on your position; you perhaps mean “most people in the US” or “most of my friends” or the like. Fine, & I’m sure you’re right that jazz is only a minority enthusiasm in those two particular groupings, but there’s nothing to prevent your friend from addressing other communities.
I think you’re also wrong to consider the enjoyment of music in any sense “effortless”. It’s just that much of the effort was expended so long ago, as a child, that it’s nowadays forgotten. Learning how to appreciate music is like learning a language, & while you can do it at any point in your life it’s obviously easier when you’re young.
partly_warmer, whether you want to accept jazz as a form of music is up to you. Jazz as an artform is older than rock and pop today, are you going to question these forms of music as valid, or that havnt shown the test of time?
Tell me, is there one easily identifiable sound in classical music? If you look at what is considered classical music, from baroque to romantic, or from Bach to Mahler, what is it between these styles that common? The instrument sets are different, and ideas of tonality are drasitically different. Are you going to make an argument saying that the Beatles and Radiohead are two different styles even though they both fit into what was considered pop music of the day? In the case of Pop the styles change more quickly than with jazz, and yet I hear no one here questioning pop as a form of music that has yet to refine itself.
The bottom line is that in any kind of music whether it be classical or jazz or pop, there is no “ideal” definition of a genre of music. If there is a so called easy definition of what a style is for a particular music, then the style is shortlived, or has yet to evolve.
partly_warmer, im not going to quote your argument about the easy listening of music, but here is my response.
To those of us who have dedicated or lives to music, the complex forms of music that take a long time to learn and understand are the only kinds of music that we can appreciate as valid or as moving to us. The garbage that sells albums today may be easy to listen too, but its like asking a physicist at NASA to enjoy wasting his time doing simple arithmetic.
People will spend their time doing what they want with music, and whatever you say the complex genre’s of music will stay and continue to evolve.
The blanket dismissal of more popular forms of music is as mistaken as the blanket dismissal of less popular forms.
you’re right, I apologize.
Except for Barry Manilow.