[Dixielandjazz] Well, it ain't The Dutch Swing College Band!!!!!

Thu Mar 23 20:48:01 PST 2006

Thanks guys I am so glad we see this the same way especially coming 
from two distinguished outside the USA artists.

It becomes more and more apparent to me the longer I stay on this great 
list that folks outside the birthplace of Jazz often seem to have much 
better image and grip on this music and it's meaning in History than 
right here at home in the USA, where it has simply been taken for 
granted for far far too long in my opinion.   It is no wonder that 
outside the USA it is still considered to be this great Country's ONLY 
Contribution to World Culture,  when oh when will we here at home ever 
wake up and understand that simple fact.   No wonder I play outside the 
USA much more than I do at home.   It must mean I am doing something 
correct anyway.

Tom " I get little or no respect " Wiggins  for most of my opinions, 
but what the hell they are freely given:))

Saint Gabriel's Celestial Brass Band
Ambassadors of American Culture

-----Original Message-----
From: Peter Sr. De Bruyn <peterdebruyn at gmail.com>
To: Cees van den Heuvel <heu at bart.nl>
Cc: tcashwigg at aol.com; dixielandjazz at ml.islandnet.com
Sent: Fri, 24 Mar 2006 00:59:55 +0100
Subject: Re: [Dixielandjazz] Well, it ain't The Dutch Swing College 
Band!!!!!

   I couldn't aggree more.......
  Jazz is played with what's going on in your hart and in your soul. All 
the rest comes extra....
  Maybe that's why real jazz player become better when aging, like Toots 
and so many others....
  Even if technicall skills tend to decline, the spirit for the music 
still grows.

 Cheers,

 Peter De Bruyn

 2006/3/23, Cees van den Heuvel <heu at bart.nl>: Hi Tom,

We are on the same track. There's nothing wrong with technical 
abilities,
but...
the true meaning of jazz lies in catching the soul of it, which can 
mean to
eliminate meaningless technique. Play the notes that matter, leave out 
the
ones that don't. Then you get to the heart of jazz: expression of 
feelings.
So: gifted musicians with a lack of technique can reach that goal.
Well trained musicians  can reach it too, but it is more difficult 
because
they have to choose what to use.

Jazz is music from the heart, not from the chart.

Cees van den Heuvel
 http://www.revivaljassband.nl

----- Original Message -----
From: <tcashwigg at aol.com>
To: <dixielandjazz at ml.islandnet.com >
Sent: Thursday, March 23, 2006 10:41 PM
Subject: Re: [Dixielandjazz] Well, it ain't The Dutch Swing College
Band!!!!!

Well said Cees,

That is exactly how some  guys on the list get into cat fights,
because they come at the music from two different directions and speak
similar but different musical languages.    As you say they rarely meet
and sound right, I say the players have to FEEL the music to be able to
do it justice and sell lit to a real audience. Hence Classical guys
sometimes make less than desirable Jazz players especially for
Traditional Jazz, and the early recordings bear a lot of this out to my
ears as they were developing jazz from their Classical roots.

I think the feeling that was transformed into the early jazz from the
Black players in New Orleans is what breathed the breath of life into
the Music and made it come alive  often with leaving out notes and
 hence the phrase it is often what you don't play that is important to
the song and the audience response, provided of course you have an
audience :))

Many Technically trained and often over musically educated players
often try to take it from it's simple feel good form and avant garde it
out to show off their proficiency and technical skills but almost
always leave the music flat and boring even if technically brilliant.
 They seem to play it as if to put it down and show off their Aloofness
at being above such simple music, but in my opinion, when they do so
they really don't have a clue about how to play it and get a real
audience response, as if they totally miss the often simplicity of the
music that makes it truly SWING :))

Hey Cees:    Your email address is bouncing back on me:  I tried to
send you a reply offlist.
Cheers,

Tom Wiggins

-----Original Message-----
From: Cees van den Heuvel < heu at bart.nl>
To: Steve barbone <barbonestreet at earthlink.net>; DJML
<dixielandjazz at ml.islandnet.com >
Sent: Thu, 23 Mar 2006 21:35:42 +0100
Subject: Re: [Dixielandjazz] Well, it ain't The Dutch Swing College
Band!!!!!

  I've never liked it. It's always the same trick:
Go from chaos to an imitation of a jazz style and back.
The audience falls for it and thinks "they can play
orninary jazz also, so the chaos must have an artistic
meaning" But when you listnen closer, you'll hear that
their imitation of e.g. dixieland is less than mediocre.
Big bands do the same: a written arrangement which
incorporates a dixie or New Oleans part.
The "dixie part" is always a caricature of the real thing.
A few years ago my band's trombone player got ill
and I contracted an in that scene famous trombone player.
When we started the concert he did all the caricatures:
vibrato, long tailgates etc. for a short while and then found
out he could'nt cope. I will always remember his words:
"I did'nt know you take this music seriously.." And after
that tried to do the right thing, but stayed less than mediocre
in this style.
It's a bit like people who think they can imitate a Spanish
 flamenco singer.
Playing trad jazz is a special craft. I know more trad musicians
that can play dixie, swing, bob and free jazz than the other way
around.
Last week I played in a session with a big band trumpet player that
is regarded as one of the best in the trade. A meaningful solo
in Royal Garden Blues? Forget it: just a plethora of meaningless
notes.
I have also played in a session setting with some of the musicians
that were mentioned in the article. Forget it, without music
they don't have a clue.
On the other hand, as a non reader, I could not hold their
chair in a big band for a minute.
Different worlds, each have their own value, but I hate it
when OKOM is put down as simple. Nonsense!
To each his own, without putting down other men's crafts.

Cees van den Heuvel
http://www.revivaljassband.nl

----- Original Message ----- From: "Steve barbone"
<barbonestreet at earthlink.net>
To: "DJML" <dixielandjazz at ml.islandnet.com>
Sent: Thursday, March 23, 2006 4:35 PM
Subject: [Dixielandjazz] Well, it ain't The Dutch Swing College
Band!!!!!

For Cees and our Dutch friends, as well as the more adventurous
members of
the DJML. The ICP, seems to be grounded in basic jump swing.
Interesting if
only to illustrate the progression from OKOM to Avant Garde.

Cheers,
Steve

Jazz Review - ICP Orchestra's Experimental Jazz Swings at Tonic

NY TIMES - By NATE CHINEN - March 23, 2006

For the first 10 minutes of the ICP Orchestra's early set at Tonic on
Tuesday night, the pianist Misha Mengelberg and the drummer Han
Bennink
indulged in an improvised duet, something they have been doing
together for
roughly 40 years. Their styles were complementary, if a bit bizarrely
so.
Mr. Mengelberg gave the impression of a man groping for the doorknob
in a
darkened room. Mr. Bennink occupied the same room, but with a
different
temperament, impatiently and heedlessly knocking things around.

That somewhat comedic contrast has always characterized Mr.
Mengelberg's
rapport with Mr. Bennink; as an exploratory pair, they have as much in
common with Laurel and Hardy as with Lewis and Clark. In 1967, they
applied
their collective energies to the formation of a Dutch avant-garde
movement
called the Instant Composers Pool, or ICP. (A third founding member,
the
multireedist Willem Breuker, left the organization within its first
decade.)
The ICP Orchestra, a flagship in a small fleet of like-minded
projects, took
shape in the early 1980's, with Mr. Mengelberg and Mr. Bennink at the
helm.

The 10-piece group still adheres to Mr. Mengelberg's mandate of
"instant
composition," a term that's best understood in opposition to the
formless
expanse of free jazz. At Tonic, most of the music was spontaneously
conceived, and a good deal of it bore the hallmarks of free-form
experimentalism: clarinet squeals, saxophone shrieks, twitchy arco
bowing on
viola, cello and double bass. But there were signposts embedded in the
music. Coordinated ensemble figures cropped up unexpectedly, hinting
at a
secret discipline and a fondness for bygone jazz styles.

Swing < the jump-band variety, not the polished orchestral fare < was
a
shadow presence throughout the evening. On one tune, horns and reeds
attacked a scrap of melody with ramshackle exuberance, while Mr.
Bennink's
bass drum thumped four beats to the bar. Mr. Mengelberg, soloing with
the
rhythm section, reached for a modern sensibility; he sounded more than
a
little like the Duke Ellington of "Money Jungle," a 1962 outing with
Charles
Mingus on bass and Max Roach on drums.

Every other member of the orchestra had at least one solo turn; a few,
like
the clarinetist Michael Moore, the cellist Tristan Honsinger and the
trumpeter Thomas Heberer, made multiple contributions. The most
engagingly
emphatic was Tobias Delius, playing tenor saxophone on a set-closer;
he
began in the hard rhythmic style of Illinois Jacquet, and gradually
pushed
toward catharsis.

Mr. Delius was essentially riding the wave of the ensemble's
propulsion,
which transported the song from crisp Ellingtonian swing (circa
1930's) into
cacophonous group improvisation (late 60's). In that moment, and on an
equally immersive rumba, ICP lived up to its name; not just the first
two
letters, but also P, for "pool."

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