Re: Keith Jarrett on Ken Burns

From: Jason Witherspoon (arzachel@speakeasy.org)
Date: Sat Feb 10 2001 - 09:36:53 CET

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    At 11:20 PM -0800 2/9/01, Leslie N. Shill wrote:
    >Mark,
    >
    >on the one hand it has to be "touche" Keith! On the other hand not everyone
    >has the trans-universal overview that someone like Keith has of music. Very
    >few people, I would wager, living today have the vast depth and latitude
    >that someone like Jarrett must have but this series was not necessarily made
    >for these few people. To my mind, this series was made for a people from a
    >broader and probably less-informed strata of all the people who might be
    >engaged by this history.
    >
    >I can recall clearly the first time that I heard Keith Jarrett playing solo,
    >it was a piece called "Ritooria", if my memory serves me well, off of his
    >first solo album on ECM but I really think he was a little harsh in his
    >letter to the NY Times.

    Someone made the point over on rec.music.bluenote that one of Louis
    Armstrong's wives got about as much screen time as Charles Mingus;
    Eric Dolphy *wasn't even mentioned*. Please go read some of the
    posts over there to get an idea of how painful it is for people
    who've loved jazz *as a living art form* for the last 40 years to now
    be told that their music-- their lives-- were an unsuccessful detour
    on jazz's march to the Übermensch Marsalis.

    I find the series indefensible. If they'd just left out the modern
    giants, fine, but they actively disparaged them, just as Stanley
    Crouch did publicly at a recent awards ceremony. Sickening.

    -- 
    

    Jason Witherspoon ICQ #62837760

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