[Dixielandjazz] Long Songs

[Stephen G Barbone]

How come we don't have long compositions like this in Dixieland? Kudos  
to the musicians in this quartet for their stamina. Below article  
excerpted for brevity, from the NY Times.

Cheers,
Steve Barbone


April 13, 2010 - NY Times - By Steve Smith

An All-Day Concert, but Only One Piece Was Performed

Morton Feldman's String Quartet No. 2 is hardly standard fare for a  
housewarming. Composed in 1983, the work runs more than six hours when  
played complete. But somehow it seemed ideally suited for the first  
public event mounted by Issue Project Room, a vital avant-garde  
performing arts presenter, in its future home at 110 Livingston Street  
in downtown Brooklyn on Sunday. A string quartet drawn from the fine  
new-music ensemble Ne(x)tworks did the honors. . . .



Despite its Brobdingnagian length, the quartet consists of Lilliputian  
parcels: succinct gestures, tiny shudders, rising and falling melodic  
cells. Sustaining mood at length while keeping an accurate count of  
repeats is one challenge; obviously, physical stamina is another.

Not that these players made their labor sound arduous. On the  
contrary, the playing was vibrant and poised, and even distinctly  
sensuous, throughout their performance, which started at 11:40 a.m.  
and ended at 5:38 p.m.

A hardy few dozen (audience members)  remained in place for the entire  
performance, striving to emulate the intense concentration the players  
were mustering.