HOLD IT!!! REALITY CHECK!!!
So, Wynton's opinionated about the music he likes, well, so what? So am I,
so are you, so is everyone who cares about the music.
Guess what? If Miles Davis, the paradigm of a forward thinking musician,
directed the Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra, (there's a thought), he wouldn't
let Eric Dolphy get up their either! In fact, Miles thought free jazz,
Coltrane's later stuff, Don Cherry, Dolphy, Ornette, et. al, was the
ruination of jazz. Check his autobiography. Hell, Miles wouldn't even let
the Ellington-Mingus-Roach trio up there to play!
This is an excellent video series, so far. As for Wynton "non-writing" well,
I didn't think they gave Pulitzer's out for non-writing. (Blood on the
Fields.) Wynton is talented and conservative. So what? He's not the devil.
In fact, look at it like this. In the 1940's, Sergei Rachmaninoff was
writing lush piano concertos in the style of Liszt and Chopin, who worked
fully 100 years before him. He did this while his contemporaries,
Schoenberg, Weber, Berg, and the like, were writing in the new "serial"
style of composition. Rachmaninoff was dismissed as being as "old
fashioned," "reactionary," and etc.
Again, guess what? Rachmaninoff's 2nd piano concerto alone has sold more
records and put more musicians to work than all of those 12 tone composers
combined!
We've got to get over this old/new dichotomy. Wynton likes it old; good for
him. There is a helluva lot to know about the old timers, and this video
series lays it out nice. Real nice so far.
The question is really, are we going to keep the heritage alive or just
forget about it? If I choose to look forward in my listening tastes,
(P'taah, James Carter, Truffaz, Reprazent) that doesn't mean I can't
appreciate Wynton's historical perspective. He has some good insights. I
just wish he wouldn't talk over the solos!
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b30 : Sat Jan 13 2001 - 05:17:02 CET