[Dixielandjazz] What constitutes a competent musician?

[Steve Barbone]

on 12/19/06 6:51 PM, Scott Anthony at santh at pacbell.net wrote:

> A lot of this discussion seems awfully silly to me. I think most of us can
> tell instinctively just by listening to a few notes whether someone is
> incompetent on their instrument, no matter what the style.
> 
> Telling people that there is a difference in ideas between Pee Wee Russell
> and Benny Goodman is really stating the obvious, is it not?
> 
> I think the same instinctive awareness of competence can be found in other
> arts. Consider painters: Both Thomas Kincaid (ugh) and Andrew Wyeth are
> realistic painters. Just guess which one I consider a competent artist and
> which one complete hack.

To each his own Scott, but we were talking about the "sound" of the clarinet
not the ideas played. Benny Goodman (or maybe it was Artie Shaw) referred to
Pee Wee as "sounding like a leaky bicycle pump". Yet Kenny Davern adored Pee
Wee's various sounds. Do we then marginalize Pee Wee because some think his
does not sound like a clarinet should?
 
Also, living here in the Brandywine Valley not far from Andrew Wyeth, and
Driving carriages in clubs with Daughter in Law Phyllis Wyeth (Jamie's wife)
I am a big fan of all of the Wyeth family's paintings. However, I am always
amazed at how the art establishment in the Philadelphia area, as well as
other parts of the USA considered Andrew Wyeth to be just your average
journeyman painter, and father N.C., a mere illustrator.

For years the Philadelphia Art museum, run by establishment snobs, refused
to hang very much of his, or father N.C.'s work. Snobbish art critics panned
their work. So friends and fellow painters such as George (Frolic) Weymouth
and others here in  the Brandywine Valley built their own museum to hang
Andrew, N.C., Jamie and other Wyeth's works, as well as other painters of
the "Brandywine School". Called The Brandywine River Museum, in Chadds Ford,
about 30 miles from the Philadelphia Art Museum, it has more Wyeth on
permanent exhibition than any other public place I am aware of.

On the other hand many of the regular folks who are not art literati, adore
what Andrew Wyeth has done. It was almost as if Andrew Wyeth was the Kenny G
of the art world.

Cheers,
Steve Barbone

Hopefully that anti Wyeth, establishment snobbishness has started to change

Cheers,
Steve Barbone 

Cheers,
Steve Barbone