[Dixielandjazz] Dixielandjazz Digest, Vol 116, Issue 9
Ken Mathieson
ken at kenmath.free-online.co.uk
Thu Aug 9 14:13:33 PDT 2012
Hi Billy,
I've downloaded the EIJF gig to my computer and listened to it a couple of
times. At this stage it's still a straight through 105 minute recording, so
I've still to edit it to break it down to individual tracks and burn it to
CD. I'm not on at the Ferry this Sunday, but I'll be there the following
Sunday, so I should have a couple of CD s for you then. Do you want it with
or without announcements (I'll make archive copies of both options). It's a
lovely gig with some fine playing all round, loads of energy and a terrific
feeling of joy in the performance.
I'll also have a think about the prog for Scarborough (I suspect it'll be
very similar to last year's Bude prog) and I'll bring you the tpt parts a
week on Sunday. I heard Cottontail (from Carter's Further Defintions album)
on the radio last Sunday and was blown away. He had written it for 2 altos
and 2 tenors plus rhythm and incorporated the original Ellington sax section
chorus. Benny's solo was a cracker and I'm tempted to transcribe it for the
4 saxes, add individual solos and also keep the Ellington sax chorus but
write a reduction of theEllington big band chart to top and tail the piece.
It could make a storming set closer if we can get some gigs for the CJO +
Alan.
Cheers,
Ken
----- Original Message -----
From: <dixielandjazz-request at ml.islandnet.com>
To: "Ken Mathieson" <ken at kenmath.free-online.co.uk>
Sent: Thursday, August 09, 2012 8:00 PM
Subject: Dixielandjazz Digest, Vol 116, Issue 9
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> Today's Topics:
>
> 1. Little Thomas Wiggins video Reading UK (Dixiejazzdata)
> 2. Re: Louis Armstrong's birthday (Jack Mitchell)
> 3. Take the A Train for a John Cage Redux (Stephen G Barbone)
>
>
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Message: 1
> Date: Wed, 8 Aug 2012 16:24:10 -0400 (EDT)
> From: Dixiejazzdata <dixiejazzdata at aol.com>
> To: dixielandjazz at ml.islandnet.com
> Cc: Dixieland Jazz Mailing List <dixielandjazz at ml.islandnet.com>
> Subject: [Dixielandjazz] Little Thomas Wiggins video Reading UK
> Message-ID: <8CF43BAE73B85B7-15EC-4E3D8 at webmail-m140.sysops.aol.com>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
>
> Thomas raised $1,750.00 dollars for wounded UK veterans charity in
> three days playing on the sidewalk
>
> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yUc28QVfbtY&feature=plcp
>
> Here is a funkier tune from his New Orleans Brass Band influences.
>
>
> Enjoy,
>
> Tom Wiggins the old one :))
>
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Message: 2
> Date: Thu, 9 Aug 2012 15:59:24 +1000
> From: "Jack Mitchell" <fjmitch at westnet.com.au>
> To: H?kan Forsberg <hakan.forsberg at umea.bonet.se>
> Cc: Dixieland Jazz Mailing List <dixielandjazz at ml.islandnet.com>
> Subject: Re: [Dixielandjazz] Louis Armstrong's birthday
> Message-ID: <BBF0E213AB8346BF869B287E1721ABDD at jackm>
> Content-Type: text/plain; format=flowed; charset="iso-8859-1";
> reply-type=original
>
> When Louis joined ASCAP in 1939 he gave his birth date as July 4, 1900, so
> that's what he believed then.
>
> Best wishes
> Jack Mitchell
>
>
>
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Message: 3
> Date: Thu, 9 Aug 2012 10:26:13 -0400
> From: Stephen G Barbone <barbonestreet at earthlink.net>
> To: DJML <dixielandjazz at ml.islandnet.com>
> Cc: Dixieland Jazz Mailing List <dixielandjazz at ml.islandnet.com>
> Subject: [Dixielandjazz] Take the A Train for a John Cage Redux
> Message-ID: <9A9145D5-24CD-4D74-A0B5-FE2B5DEADD75 at earthlink.net>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=windows-1252
>
> Not Dixieland and perhaps not OKOM, however it fits in with past
> discussions on this forum about Mr. Cage's 4':33". And it illuminates the
> thought processes of John Cage and his message of 4'33". . . . is it the
> ultimate "LISTEN"?
>
>
> Cheers,
> Steve Barbone
> www.myspace.com/barbonestreetjazzband
>
>
> John Cage Recital? Take the A Train
>
>
> By Allan Kozinn - MY Times - August 8 2012
>
> I HAD a spectacular John Cage moment on an uptown A train recently.
>
> You know about Cage moments, don?t you? We all have them, whether we think
> of them that way or not. They occur when happenstance kicks in, and
> surprising musical experiences take form, seemingly out of nowhere. They
> can happen anywhere at any time. This year, thanks to the Cage centenary,
> official Cage moments have been plentiful, with performers of all stripes
> ? students at the Juilliard School; ensembles like So Percussion, Iktus
> Percussion and the pianist Taka Kigawa, and the Flux Quartet and friends ?
> inducing them through spirited renditions of Cage?s music.
>
> But the unofficial moments are the ones to wait for. My earlier favorite
> Cage moment occurred just over a year ago, when I sprained an ankle and
> had an M.R.I. The technicians warned me that I might find the noise
> annoying, but as it turned out, I couldn?t help focusing on the machine?s
> repeating rhythmic patterns, pitches and changing overtones. I thoroughly
> enjoyed it, although in truth I found the M.R.I.?s music closer to early
> Philip Glass than to Cage.
>
> On the A train I wasn?t thinking about Cage at all. I had just heard an
> exquisitely turned, energetic performance of Schubert?s String Quintet in
> C at a church in Greenwich Village, and Cage could not have been further
> from my thoughts. Nor did the crowded subway car bring him to mind at
> first. But I noticed that it was unusually noisy.
>
> Typically, most of the noise you hear comes from the subway itself: its
> din drowns out conversations, and people tend to stare at their feet, or
> at whatever they are reading, and listen to their portable music players.
> But this Tuesday evening just about all the people were talking, and
> working hard to drown out both the subway and the chats taking place
> around them.
>
> I would normally have tuned all this out, but instead I sat back, closed
> my eyes and did what Cage so often recommended: I listened. I made no
> effort to separate the strands of conversation or to focus on what people
> were saying. I was simply grabbed by the sheer mass of sound, human and
> mechanical. It sounded intensely musical to me, noisy as it was, and once
> I began hearing it that way, I couldn?t stop.
>
> Strand upon strand of the chatter was animated and midrange: there were
> neither basso profundos nor soaring sopranos in this choir, but after a
> moment the pitch levels began to sort themselves out as a kind of
> orchestration. Argumentative voices created driving, punchy rhythms that
> sailed over more smoothly floating narrative tones.
>
> At least three languages were being spoken, each with its own melodic lilt
> and rhythmic character. To my left, a woman?s laughter momentarily changed
> the coloration of this vast choral tapestry and offset the argument to my
> right.
>
> Within it all, squeaking metal yielded a high-pitched ostinato, and the
> ever-so-slightly-clattery rumble of the train was the high-tech equivalent
> of a Baroque basso continuo. As the train pulled into each station, the
> muted squeal of the brakes, the opening and closing of the doors and the
> slight shift in the balance of voices as some people left and others
> entered, already talking, suggested shifts between connected movements.
>
> As I was listening, I began thinking about ?4?33,? Cage?s most famous and,
> in some ways, most misunderstood piece. It is often described as Cage?s
> ?silent? work; even Cage called it that. And it is frequently treated as a
> joke by people who have no interest in Cage?s philosophical approach to
> music and for whom a piece of silent music is, by definition, a
> contradiction in terms.
>
> But if Cage intended the performers of ?4?33? ? to keep quiet, he did not
> mean for the work to be heard as silence. He wrote it for the pianist
> David Tudor to perform in a recital at Maverick Concert Hall, near
> Woodstock, N.Y., in August 1952. The hall, which still hosts an ambitious
> summer series, is an open barn, set amid acres of woodland. Part of its
> charm is that the sounds of the environment ? birds, crickets, the wind
> rustling through the trees, the patter of rain ? mingle with the artful
> tones the musicians produce.
>
> Cage had been supplying artful tones since the 1930s, but in the 1940s he
> began thinking about the music that could be plucked from the air. That
> was the point of ?4?33?.? The pianist was to open the keyboard lid, sit
> quietly for 30 seconds, then close the lid and reopen it for the
> 2-minute-23-second second movement, and again for the 1-minute-40-second
> finale. (Those, at any rate, are the durations printed in the 1952
> Maverick program. In the published score, the movement lengths are 33
> seconds, 2 minutes 40 seconds, and 1 minute 20 seconds.) The piano was
> indeed silent, but the Maverick audience had plenty to listen to, or would
> have if its members weren?t busy being scandalized by what some regarded
> as a provocation.
>
> Can a subway ride count as a performance of ?4?33? ?? Absolutely. Cage
> later revised the performing directions to allow for readings by any
> instrument or group of instruments at any duration. And as I was reminded
> when I revisited Kyle Gann?s delightful study of the work, ?No Such Thing
> as Silence: John Cage?s 4?33? ? (Yale University Press, 2012), Cage
> eventually came to feel that no performers were necessary.
>
> I have heard ?4?33? ? performed by pianists, percussion ensembles,
> oboists, cellists and orchestras, but none of those versions were as
> exciting as what I now think of as ?4?33?: The Extended Subway Remix? by
> the A Train Yakkers, an ensemble so conceptual that its members had no
> idea they were in it.
>
> Cage would have understood.
>
> ?No day goes by without my making use of that piece in my life and in my
> work,? he told the composer William Duckworth in 1982. ?I listen to it
> every day.?
>
> ?I don?t sit down to do it; I turn my attention toward it,? he added. ?I
> realize that it?s going on continuously.?
>
> I spoke with Cage only twice: in a telephone interview (he was in Paris)
> in June 1992 and a few weeks later at a concert of his music in the
> Summergarden series at the Museum of Modern Art. I was hoping to speak to
> him again during the coming season, when he was to have celebrated his
> 80th birthday, but on Aug. 12 ? 20 years ago on Sunday ? he died of a
> stroke, and instead of another interview I wrote his obituary.
>
> It was a mad scramble, a journalistic version of Cage?s ?Roaratorio.?
> Editors were faxing stories about Cage taking peanut butter sandwiches to
> fancy parties and calling to make sure I would account for his importance
> in the art and dance worlds; colleagues were calling to ask, ?Have you
> heard?,? and I was trying to ascertain whether Merce Cunningham wanted to
> be listed as Cage?s surviving companion (he did not) while searching for
> concise ways to put Cage?s extraordinary career in perspective.
>
> Just as I finished writing, Tim Page, then Newsday?s music critic, called
> to suggest raising a beer in Cage?s memory and volunteered to pick up a
> six-pack on his way to my apartment. Thirty minutes later he was at my
> door, holding up a strip of white paper and saying, ?Look at this.?
>
> It was the receipt for the beer. The price? $4.33.
>
>
>
> ------------------------------
>
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