McCoy Tyner, Piano
Charlie Parker Jazz Festival – August 28, 2010
Marcus Garvey Park, Harlem
It was an emotional experience seeing the last living member of John Coltrane Quartet perform (after nearly 40 years; my bad). Tyner’s bearing in pictures from the days of the classic Coltrane quartet projected Eastern asceticism and deliberate humility (contrasting a certain wild energy of Elvin Jones, both musically and personally). Yesterday he seemed more outgoing and personable than I remembered. He brought his family and introduced them with a very American down-home friendliness to the crowd in front of him.
Those who expect to hear the complex but swinging right hand acrobatics Tyner used until the 1970s would have been disappointed. At yesterday’s concert, his playing was reminiscent of Abdullah Ibrahim or Keith Jarrett, sustaining incantatory ostinatos for whole numbers, and across numbers. In terms of the piano, it was all about how both hands work together, not melody (right hand) and accompaniment (left hand).
His first piece was the most intriguing. He set up a counterpoint between two very regular melodies, with chords changing with each melody note. It was classic (or classical) in its strict development and balance, but African in its polytexturality and churning depth below the surface.
Other songs included the standard I Should Care, Coltrane’s Mr. PC, and his own Blues on the Corner. On the latter two, he punctuated the ostinatos with some short, stabbing clusters. But otherwise his measured pace seemed appropriate to an elder statesman, rather than a young firebrand.
Sunday, August 29, 2010
The First Thing Bird Would Have Said
Revive Da Live
Charlie Parker Jazz Festival
(Raydar Ellis, Ben Williams, Justin Brown, Jaleel Shaw, Marcus Strickland, Marc Cary, Corey King and Ingmar Thomas)
“It’s too loud.”
This all star group’s aim, according to the program, is to “explore the genius of Parker by combining music from his past with modern day interpretations” in order” to educate and inspire broader audiences about the depths and origins of today’s popular music.”
The funk beats, a rapper, an electronic keyboard, and the modal harmonies so compatible with the ethos of the 1960s rock generation, would have been unfamiliar to Parker. But my gut feeling is he would have understood those things, because they are musical choices and he understood that music must change.
But the excessive volume—sensed even where I was at the other end of the park space from the stage—seems unmusical, and that, I submit, is where he would have drawn the line. These are all fine musicians, who offered very confident, interesting improvisations—no qualms there.
Why must it be so loud to appeal to “broader audiences”? (read: those unwashed multitudes who only know rock or hip-hop.) That seems to me to be caving in to corporate-backed technology and mass media as fast as Harry Reid caves in to the Tea Party. It’s one thing to use a public address system. It’s another to achieve a level of volume so electronic and alien that it subtly undermines the audience’s health. (Yes, I mean health.)
I’m not saying that it was ear-splitting. Just uncomfortable to body and breath. It’s about respect for nature, for public space, and the conviviality of the outdoor festival audience. An impromptu conga circle group was playing simultaneously (maintaining their regular Saturday meeting, one presumes). That sound added to the chaos. But close up, they seemed hipper, in the sense of understatement: more sensual, more about drawing you in than pushing you back.
I don’t know whether this acoustic problem was the responsbility of the producers, rather than the musicians. This is not the only jazz concert I’ve been to with this issue. It can’t be because I am old—I grew up in the ‘60s when loud became de rigeur (in every sense of the Gallic word). Can we talk about this, please?
The group updated a standard Bird recorded, I’ll Remember April, and his own Now’s The Time and Little Willie Leaps. The latter replaced the looping, difficult up-tempo rendition Parker chose with a much slower, straight-eighth note version made to fit a funk beat. The effect was to turn Parker’s roller-coaster into a treadmill.
Charlie Parker Jazz Festival
(Raydar Ellis, Ben Williams, Justin Brown, Jaleel Shaw, Marcus Strickland, Marc Cary, Corey King and Ingmar Thomas)
“It’s too loud.”
This all star group’s aim, according to the program, is to “explore the genius of Parker by combining music from his past with modern day interpretations” in order” to educate and inspire broader audiences about the depths and origins of today’s popular music.”
The funk beats, a rapper, an electronic keyboard, and the modal harmonies so compatible with the ethos of the 1960s rock generation, would have been unfamiliar to Parker. But my gut feeling is he would have understood those things, because they are musical choices and he understood that music must change.
But the excessive volume—sensed even where I was at the other end of the park space from the stage—seems unmusical, and that, I submit, is where he would have drawn the line. These are all fine musicians, who offered very confident, interesting improvisations—no qualms there.
Why must it be so loud to appeal to “broader audiences”? (read: those unwashed multitudes who only know rock or hip-hop.) That seems to me to be caving in to corporate-backed technology and mass media as fast as Harry Reid caves in to the Tea Party. It’s one thing to use a public address system. It’s another to achieve a level of volume so electronic and alien that it subtly undermines the audience’s health. (Yes, I mean health.)
I’m not saying that it was ear-splitting. Just uncomfortable to body and breath. It’s about respect for nature, for public space, and the conviviality of the outdoor festival audience. An impromptu conga circle group was playing simultaneously (maintaining their regular Saturday meeting, one presumes). That sound added to the chaos. But close up, they seemed hipper, in the sense of understatement: more sensual, more about drawing you in than pushing you back.
I don’t know whether this acoustic problem was the responsbility of the producers, rather than the musicians. This is not the only jazz concert I’ve been to with this issue. It can’t be because I am old—I grew up in the ‘60s when loud became de rigeur (in every sense of the Gallic word). Can we talk about this, please?
The group updated a standard Bird recorded, I’ll Remember April, and his own Now’s The Time and Little Willie Leaps. The latter replaced the looping, difficult up-tempo rendition Parker chose with a much slower, straight-eighth note version made to fit a funk beat. The effect was to turn Parker’s roller-coaster into a treadmill.
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