Written by Jonathan Freilich
On
In video
Tagged Gil Evans, billy harper, gilevans, howard johnson, john stubblefield, umbria
Complete audio interview with Rex Gregory posted
Yep! sections 3 and 4 of an extensive interview with woodwind player and composer, Rex Gregory are up here...
All interviews are available as a podcast through the itunes store.
There is an RSS button below for the podcast page from this site on the right side of this page.
New music interviews coming soon...
A new interview with reedman, Rex Gregory. Also, two follow-up interviews: one with James Walsh and one with Mark Bingham.
Complete interview with musician, Aurora Nealand
Listen to parts 1,2,3, and 4, of an interview with colorful saxophone/clarinet/accordion/songwriter/electronic music composer, Aurora Nealand. Here...
Also available as a podcast through itunes or the RSS link on this site.
History repeats: further thoughts from reading an interesting article
Mark Twain said it doesn't repeat, it rhymes...
There is a preponderence of music in the clubs and on the streets played by young people (teens to late 20's) that seems festooned with an obsession about late 19th to early 20th century style. I have been confused about where this is coming from. Even the fashions of the players seems to hark back to that time but it comes out looking more like stretched out rags from the Bugsy Malone set. Mostly they are playing rags, medicine show music, blues, and folk-songs. You see them carrying around banjos, accordions and euphoniums. It's not new, it's already gone on long enough (at least five years here in New Orleans) that if it were the early 20th century they would already have come up with a new form of jazz and thrown themselves out of date. They are, however, gripping tightly onto some set of imagery and I have been wondering why. Perhaps, symbolically, it is showing what is in the following article...
http://newsjunkiepost.com/2011/05/14/1890s-america-a-peek-at-the-past-youre-repeating/
(For more on the idea in this post see this entry I wrote about the album by Aurora Nealand & the Royal Roses dedicated to Sidney Bechet (Sat. April 23). That piece was informed by similar ironies.)
This article, "America: A Peek at the Past You're Repeating" addresses more serious consequences of being unaware of social developments since the early 20th century. It is clear that, at least locally, there is the very same lack of awareness about music development since those same times. The very subject of those music developments of the 20th century, both sonically and lyrically, were mostly about liberation, human and civil rights, and class problems. Music is a mirror for what is going on in its culture, and it can't fail to be, although sometimes you have to be shrewd to see it clearly because the messages can be deeply masked (even from the performers.) Right now, on all music fronts and genres there seem to be two main strains
POTTS
...idea maker in action!
Interviews Podcast is up on itunes
You may find it easier to listen this way. Check it out!
http://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/interviews-with-musicians/id437164924
Complete audio interview with James "Jimbo" Walsh
A recent interview, in three parts, with composer, Dr. James P. Walsh is now up on the interviews page. This one is really interesting for all of you into musical thought and its relationship to other areas of musical practice and life.
If you are a local New Orleanian you may know him as Jimbo, bassist with Davis Rogan and Washboard Rodeo. Or as the the guitar player with The Other Planets. Or as the conductor of the Naked Orchestra. Or as director of the New Orleans New Music Ensemble.
Check it out here...
New Record available now- Electric Eggplant
It's here. The recording you've been waiting for...
Get it while it's hot! Available for instant download on...
Jonathan Freilich with
Stanton moore-drums
Todd Sickafoose-bass
Skerik-Saxophone
Mike Dillon-Vibes
Sneak preview...
01 The Asphalt is Harsh, Where's The Grass 1 by moroller
Interview with musician, producer and Piety St. recording studios founder, Mark Bingham
A four part audio interview with Piety St. Studios founder, Mark Bingham, is up on the interviews page... here
Interested in Yoga?
I am mostly keeping the content of this website to music. There are a couple of other things that I "present" though: yoga instruction is one. I've been a certified Iyengar yoga instructor for about seven years and was teaching previos to that for four years. I used to own half of a studio in New Orleans. I haven't been teaching regular classes for some time- except to help out other teachers. One reason I slowed down the teaching was that I was finding it harder to pass along information on the subject. The popular image of yoga that is reinforced in the media is often at direct odds with other viewpoints, and the modern yoga consumer is generally shopping for the reinforced image. They tend to move classes until they get the version of the story that was sold to them (which makes you wonder why they want classes at all.)
Anyway, all of this is discussed extremely well in an article/book review by Wendy Doniger. there is plenty of information about her floating around the web if you are skeptical.
HERE is a link... to the article.
What does this have to do with the major part of this site- music? Well, the two are very closely related in practice...but that's for another time.
I slowed the teaching to put more energy into composition, which started being necessary when I was writing the opera, Bang The Law.
Aurora Nealand & The Royal Roses: A Tribute to Sidney Bechet
Aurora Nealand has a new recording out. GO BUY IT!...
[This is not a review. I will get to that in a different way shortly, hopefully in an audio interview with Aurora Nealand.]
I am never sure why people are doing re-creations but it does seem that at the moment many listeners like music dripping with nostalgia for a bygone time. It's almost as though they need to be able to envision others than themselves and add in a few extra-musical elements besides the presented sounds by the musicians in front of them; seemingly seeking information about what people wore; what they ate; how they danced; what they drank. What is the necessity for the extra cultural baggage?
Perhaps, and this is just a thought, that to be with the unpredictability of what is in the present might have to mean that what any one person, listener, player, or group in a room might do is a little scary; it might require forming one's own opinion and coming up with a response.
Watching behavior in relation to the arts, music included, can be very indicative of the of shifting social dynamics in groups. It appears, looking into the preponderance of imitators of past style [and even businesses that promote it] that we may be going through a sort of regressive phase relative to those times of jazz creators such as Sidney Bechet. Both audiences and musicians now strike me as a little afraid of their own, unbridled self expression; as if it had less validity. In these times it's as though people are afraid of their own shadows where shadows are perhaps passions, impulses, desires, attractions; their own animal. Can this be where we are at 100 years after Freud, vanguard art, jazz, and a whole world of stuff that seems like it was there to tear the very underwear off the Victorians.
Paradoxes jump up when making comparisons between the earlier 20th century artists that created those musical inventions that are known as jazz, and their modern worshippers. Bechet for instance, was a huge, bold, figure and you can still hear it in his sound from the recordings. He is New Orleans saxophonist number one and embodies all that goes with that; a trademark sound, innovation, critical and rebellious personality, excitement no matter what the cost. He was even the saxophonist and clarinet player that Ellington most wanted for his own orchestra but he was turned down, allegedly because Bechet felt he could do it just fine himself and, listening to Bechet's recording of The Mooche would not lead one to disagree. Bechet's refusal is how Ellington came to hire Johnny Hodges and, luckily, that refusal, in hindsight, wasn't harmful. In fact, it was a classic case of serendipity for Ellington and for