I am sure you are all familiar with Murakami and Ozawa.
Murakami being one of the greatest novelists of our era and Ozawa on the other hand, is one of the greatest conductors of our time.
They are both from Japan and apparently close friends.
Most probably you know Murakami from his fiction novels such as "Norwegian Wood", "The Wind-up Bird Chronicle", "Kafka On the Shore" and more recently "IQ84" and "Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage". He also has a big passion about music, especially jazz and classical. Before he started writing, he ran a jazz cafe in Tokyo called "Peter Cat". I remember reading an interview with him where he was saying that he had decided to become a writer because he was not able to play a musical instrument therefore being a musician was not possible for him...Here I have to add that there are also some good non-fiction books of Murakami, one about running (he is also a keen marathon runner by the way) and one about the sarin gas attacks in the Tokyo underground.
Seiji Ozawa, Murakami's collaborator in the book, is a renowned conductor mainly associated with the Boston Symphony Orchestra. He spent 29 years as the musical director of the orchestra and also conducted the San Francisco, Toronto Symphonies along with Vienna State Opera. He started his music career as a pianist but after breaking his finger he shifted his focus from piano to conducting. He was quite successful even at his younger ages that brought him scholarships to work with Herbert von Karajan in Berlin and Leonard Bernstein in New York. He is 82 years old and has been struggling with cancer for the last 7 years.
Ozawa on the left, with Murakami
The book is based on a series of six main conversations dated between November 2010 and July 2011 along with some shorter discussions/exchanges of ideas again on music scattered in-between.
The main conversations shape around some classical works of high importance such as Brahms' Piano Concerto No.1, Beethoven's 3rd Piano Concerto and Mahler's Symphony No.1.
Cover of the Book (English translation by Jay Rubin)
To be able to follow the conversations, it might be a good idea to keep the pieces handy as in many parts of the book they refer to the music they are discussing about.
That's why I am sharing a Spotify playlist that has been created based on the book. You just need to show the below code to your smart phones with the app installed.
From the first pages of the book you can get a feeling about the roles of Murakami and Ozawa. Murakami frequently confirms his position as a layman music enthusiast filled with encyclopedic knowledge, whereas Ozawa as an ailing and tired maestro with a recollection of anecdotes. I got this feeling from Ozawa's continuous approval of Murakami's comments and like-minded approach towards Murakami.
They touch a variety of musical issues through their discussions on the compositions and different performances. I can share one issue that was quite interesting for me. In the first conversation where they discuss about Brahms' Piano Concerto No.1 (Bernstein conducting, Gould playing the piano), they bring up the topic of "who is the boss in a concerto performance, is it the conductor or the soloist?".
Here is a video clip from that specific concert where Bernstein made an historical pre-concert speech. Maybe you can decide who the real boss is...
Overall the book can be a good read for music, especially classic music enthusiasts. In my opinion, the book could be a little bit better by enriching the contribution from Ozawa's experiences rather than giving many details about his career where you can find elsewhere. Murakami makes a statement somewhere in the book arguing that the real success of a good writer depends on his/her rhythm. I have to confess that I could not find this rhythm in this book as opposed to his many great novels. If you read the book you can get a sensation that the two maestros have enjoyed their time and conversations together (well maybe Murakami a bit more), but will the readers enjoy as much as they did, I doubt it..
Let's finish with some good music.
"Kafka on the Shore", music by Eunbi Kim, words by Murakami
"Radetzky March", by Strauss, Ozawa conducting the Vienna Philharmonic
We are constantly speaking about music (well sometimes ketchup too) in our posts. Therefore I have decided to write about some key concepts or elements that create music.
Today we can start with the primary element of all music: "Sound"...
Generally it is not too easy to describe the phenomenon of sound without getting into physics but I will try to explain as simple as possible. If you ask me how I know this stuff is that it is purely related with my interest in synthesizers. Funnily when I was a kid, I thought that synthesizers were only musical instruments that could imitate the sounds of real acoustic instruments, obviously I was confusing them with sampling instruments (i.e. like an electronic keyboard playing a guitar sound). When I found out the enormous depth to synths, how they can shape sound or how one can generate an authentic sound even with the simplest synthesizer, I thought it was a good idea to check out how these marvelous machines worked. And it was that curiosity that allowed me to learn the stuff I will be mentioning. Maybe one day I will write the world of synths, who knows?
Sound:
One can make two definitions of sound that are perfectly correlated with each other.
First explanation approaches the sound with the involvement of physics and says that a sound is a pressure wave that is created by a vibrating object.
Second explanation is related with human physiology and psychology and it says that sound is a sensation that we experience when our ears are exposed to the above mentioned waves. Of course it is not our ears that convert these waves into sounds but a complex and marvelous system.
Briefly we can say that the waves or vibrations that are captured by our ears are transferred to our brains with an amazing flow where they are decoded and translated into sounds as we know them.
Now let's have a look at how sound travels. At this point please remember that sound can only travel in the air or in the water. Therefore we can easily claim that in space, where there is no air, there is also no sound (boring huh...).
It is the air molecules that carry the sound around. The vibrations that are created (imagine banging a drum) make the air molecules to start a similar motion. Since the air molecules move in a parallel direction with the wave itself we can say that the sound wave that is created is a longitudinal wave.
An example of a sine wave
It might be easier to visualize what's going on with the air molecules with the drum example.
When we hit the drum, the skin of the drum is stretched inwards. This causes the air to stretch in the same direction thus filling the space that is stretched after the hit.Keep in mind that the number of the molecules are still the same but just with the hit, there is more space for the molecules. This is called "rarefaction" (it is the area where the molecules look more comfy in the above picture).
Milliseconds later, after the hit, the drum skin automatically springs back, hence now occupying more space against the molecules. This is called "compression" and it is the area where the molecules seem squeezed. This movement is not a one time movement but rather a cycle depending on certain things such as the tension of the skin or the hardness of the hit. This cycle will be repeated until it dampens and will continue to make a sound until the skin is stabilized in its initial position.
We need to understand that the transmission that travels to our ears is not the air molecules themselves. It is the backward and the forward movement of these air molecules which we can call the oscillations.
Since we understood what sound is, we can now see the elements of sound.
Any sound in the universe (wherever possible of course), has 3 distinctive characteristics. These 3 parameters are; "pitch" (or frequency of the wave), "timbre" (tone color or the shape of the wave) and "loudness" (or amplitude).
From time to time we hear that the note A just above the middle C in the piano has a frequency of 440 Hz. This A (A440 or A4) note is generally used as a general tuning standard for musical pitch. But what does 440 figure represent?
The pitch or the frequency of a sound is a quality related with how high or how low that specific sound sounds compared to other sounds. Imagine a piano keyboard; the keys that are placed on the left hand side have much lower pitch than the ones on the right hand side. We call these low sounding notes as low frequencies or bass notes. On the opposite side of the piano placed are the high frequency notes or treble notes. But what is the parameter to create this difference? It is purely the frequency of each sound in reference to each other.
In more scientific words, a frequency of a sound is measured as the number of complete full oscillations per unit of time. The unit of this frequency is Hertz. If we imagine a 1 Hz sound, it means that the sound makes one oscillation per one second.
All of these would make much more sense if you can make an experiment with a tuning fork.
When you hit the tuning fork to a hard surface you might easily observe the vibrations being created (that is why the prongs of the tuning fork appear blurred).
As mentioned above, these vibrations create rarefaction and compression in cycles as waves. The waves move away from the sound source at the speed of sound which is approximately 330 meters per second. The pitch of a sound is determined by how quickly the sound wave is making the air vibrate. We can say that the sound is low if the oscillations are slower and high if the oscillations are faster over time.
For instance, our world famous A440 sound makes 440 oscillations per second.
So how does this scientific information translate into music? Each musical note has a pitch, that's how. Imagine a standard tuned guitar with 6 strings. If you pluck the A string (second from the top) and measure the frequency with a tuner, you should get a reading of 110 Hz (meaning the string is oscillating 110 times per second).
The frequency issue is very important in musical performances. If there is more than one musician involved, their instruments have to be very well tuned to play in line. Otherwise the same notes played on different instruments would sound out of tune compared to each other thus resulting an awful overall sound.
On the other hand, there is a concept called the "audible frequency spectrum" which represents the range a normal person can hear. Generally this range is between 20 Hz to 20 Khz (20 to 20,000 Hertz).
One last thing about pitch or frequency is the notion of the octave (one octave consists of 12 different sounds with 7 white and 5 black keys on the piano for example).
How do octaves relate with the pitch? In Western music that utilizes the equal tempered scales there is always a direct proportion between the notes. That is is why the system is called equal temperament in which the frequency interval between every pair of two adjacent notes has the same ratio (very roughly 6%). Meaning each key (including the black ones) is almost 6% higher in pitch or frequency when going up to the right hand side of the piano, therefore leaving you with a perfect 100% or double the ratio when you come to the exact same note you started with but an octave higher (i.e. we know that A4 on the piano is 440Hz, if you go up one octave the frequency will be 880Hz and if you go down one octave the tuner will read 220Hz).
I hope the pitch topic is clear for you.
The second universal element of sound is "timbre" or the color tone of the sound. Timbre is maybe best explained by the comparison of different instruments playing the exact same note. We can differentiate the sounds of various musical instruments by their tone color or tone quality. It is fairly easy to identify that lets say the note C is coming from a piano or a guitar even though a tuner will give you the exact same reading.
Therefore in simple terms, timbre is what makes a particular musical sound sound different from another even these sounds have the same pitch and loudness (will come back to loudness). But how is that possible scientifically?
We saw a picture of a perfect sine wave above. In nature this type of wave is almost impossible to come by (as far as I know it can only be created with a synth). This leaves us with the concept of "waveforms".
As you can see from the above short video, there are basically 4 types of waveforms (of course we can argue that the number can go to infinity with their derivatives).
These waveforms are sine, square, triangle and sawtooth. What determines the color tone or timbre of each instrument or even any sound, is very much related with the shape of its waveform (therefore harmonics).
Also notice that the above wave lengths are quite similar (I did not check with a tuner but looks like the same frequency or pitch, therefore same musical note probably). However we hear the sound of each wave quite differently and that is only created by the different motions and vibrations of the air molecules surrounding the sound source. Unlike the pitch of a sound it is not possible to explain the timbre in a quantitative way. It is more a qualitative element of sound. Musicians can even have the possibility to change the timbre of their instruments by very basic tricks. A violin player can easily change the waveform produced by bowing differently or a guitar player can make a major change in the sound only with an effect pedal.
If you are interested in waveforms and wish to learn more (at least on a visual level), you may download the below app for your IOS devices.
The last characteristic of sound is its "amplitude" or loudness in more general terms. I think this element is easier to grasp due to the fact that we are more familiar with it in our daily lives. Everyone knows that, for example, if you clap your hands more strongly you will hear a louder clap, or if you hit the drum with a drumstick instead of a chopstick, the sound will be more. How does this happen scientifically? Remember again our sine wave picture where in some areas the air molecules were more compressed and the opposite in other areas. Amplitude is defined based on the area between peaks and troughs of one cycle of a particular waveform.
The more the air molecules are compressed or rarefied, the waves will be wider vertically, thus making the distance between the peak and the trough bigger that identifies the loudness of the sound (imagine hitting the drum harder and harder each time and try to visualize the impact on the air molecules).
The loudness does not work in a linear way. If you double the distance between peaks and troughs our ears will not hear the sound as two times loud. Another anomaly is that loudness can be related with timbre, meaning certain sounds sound louder to our ears even they have the same amplitude.
However these are all related with our hearing mechanism, our ears/brains and our perception of sounds.
Like pitch, we can quantify loudness as well. Generally the loudness is measured with decibels. Decibel is a logarithmic value that expresses a ratio for comparing the loudness of 2 different sounds. For example 0 decibel (db) is the threshold of hearing, 60 db is the sound intensity of 2 people talking, whereas a rock concert can go up to 120 db. What you can keep in mind is that each 20 db increase in the sound level translates to a 10 fold increase in amplitude (i.e. 20 db is 10 times louder than 0 db, similarly 40 db is 10 times louder than 20 db). With the same calculation we can reach to the conclusion that a rock concert is 1000 times louder than your normal talking so be careful with your ears in such places (I tend to carry ear plugs to loud concerts in order to limit the sound intensity to my ears).
I hope this post has helped you to better understand what sound is and what are its elements. I find it very interesting and miraculous to be able to hear the sounds that are encoded in all the good music we are hearing.
I believe the world would be an extremely boring place without any sound hence any music like the great examples below...
It is time for a lighter post after such philosophical discussions 😳 on free jazz and free improvisation. As you might have noticed from the previous posts, I like to investigate the history of food, mainly things that we take for granted today. How they came out or whether there is a story behind always amuses me. So for today's post I chose the three condiments that people use almost on a daily basis. I am pretty sure that these three condiments are by far the most widely used condiments in the world (I don't know how they compare to Eastern condiments like soy sauce or hot sauce, something I need to check). Please keep in mind that these condiments are never in the same league with major gastronomical sauces (with the exception of a proper mayonnaise). As I said in the beginning, today just something light. Maybe we can have a dedicated post on real culinary sauces in the near future. Let's begin with ketchup. I guess everyone has a bottle of ketchup in their fridges to go with their french fries and burgers. Unfortunately I have also witnessed people pouring ketchup on their pasta, but what the hell, in matters of taste there can be no disputes. Some others, like the President Nixon, ate it pouring over cottage cheese and Japanese on rice. There is even a rumor in the US that they make ketchup ice cream...
Food historians believe that the ancestor of ketchup is a salty fish sauce called the "ketsiap" that British and Dutch sailors who have traveled to China in the 17th century have come across. This sauce was somewhat like soy sauce or oyster sauce. British people have created many sauces that have derived from ketsiap later, some from mushrooms, some from anchovies, oysters and even walnuts. The word was first used in 1690 but it was used as "catchup" and then transformed to "ketchup" in 1711. The first ketchup recipe in history dates back to 1727 and it is mentioned in a book named "The Compleat Housewife" by Eliza Smith. According to this recipe, the ketchup of the era was made with anchovies, shallots, vinegar, wine and sweet spices.
The first recipe similar to today's ketchup, made with tomatoes, came 85 years later in Nova Scotia from James Mease. Initially he called his sauce the "Love Apple". In the following years ketchup became quite popular in both continents with a major difference. Americans were using tomatoes for ketchup and the British were using mushrooms as their main ingredient. It is said that the first commercial ketchup was marketed by an American farmer in 1830. He sold his bottles with a price of 33 cents each. In the same years, Americans started to export tomato ketchup to Britain and they called their product as "tomato chutney" in order to differentiate it from the British ketchup.
The biggest success story behind ketchup is definitely related with Henry John Heinz. By the year 1872, he had already founded his company specializing in pickled food. He was quick enough to see the opportunity and wanted to invest in the ketchup production business and that made his company one of the biggest condiment companies in the world.
Here's an Heinz trick to pour the ketchup easily from the glass bottle
Our second condiment of the day is mustard which is an older condiment compared to ketchup. In it's simplest form is a mixture of crushed mustard seeds and water. It dates back to 40 AD and believed that it was created by the Romans who mixed unfermented grape juice (must) with grounded mustard seeds (probably from Asia) to make "mustum ardens" (burning must) which then transformed to mustard in the later ages. Historically it is not very clear whether the Romans used this new condiment themselves but it is a fact that they introduced it to the Gauls in France. Food history books mention that the mustard production by monks in monasteries in France was a common practice. Same books also write that the food stalls in Paris as early as in the 13th century, offered mustard to their customers. This was the case until the 18th century. However mustard lost its popularity after the introduction of new spices to Europe from America and Asia.
"Grey Poupon" - one of the first producers of Dijon mustard
During the first years of the 19th century, mustard again began to be a popular condiment, especially in France, with the creation of the Dijon mustard that has a less acidic flavor. It is one of the best selling mustard types in the world even today.
Another country that was specialized in mustard making was England. Jeremiah Colman, who was already a producer of flour, began to fine ground the mustard seeds in 1804. The company he founded is still one of the largest mustard producers in the world.
Our last condiment is mayonnaise. Gastronomically, it could be fair to separate mayonnaise from the first two condiments as it has a more complex culinary role. As we all know, proper mayonnaise is a sauce made with olive oil, egg yolks and lemon juice (or vinegar). It is an emulsion, meaning that it is a mixture of certain ingredients that can not be combined together (like oil and water). The magic here is created with the help of the egg yolks. There are numerous arguments about the history of mayonnaise but the one that has been widely accepted is that it was created in the town of Mahon in Menorca, Spain. It is believed to be an invention of the French chef of the Ducde Richelieu in 1756. While the Duc was defeating the British at port Mahon, his chef was creating a victory feast that included mayonnaise. The real world wide recognition occurred after the Mahon families that moved to America who were already familiar with the condiment.
Let's end our post with a recipe of home-made mayonnaise. Ingredients;
2 very fresh egg yolks
350 ml olive oil
2-3 table spoons lemon juice or white wine vinegar
1 tea spoon Dijon mustard
salt & pepper
Put the egg yolks and a pinch of salt into a large glass cup. Mix well. Start pouring the 1/4th of the olive oil slowly and steadily into the mixture and continue mixing. Now pour the lemon juice or the vinegar without stopping the mixing process. Now you can again start pouring the remaining olive oil. If the mix is too thick you might add some more lemon juice or vinegar. As a last step mix the mustard and the pepper. Voila, your home-made mayonnaise is ready without any additives or junk preservatives.
I am not sure if this post can be accepted as a continuation of my "Jazz Notes" because we will try to cover the concept of "Free Improvisation" that cannot be related only with jazz. Therefore I have decided to use something different as my title.
Unlike "Free Jazz", "Free Improvisation" is not a musical jazz style, in my opinion at least. There are various jazz experts who have been classifying it as a different style but I think that it is a very broad form to be classified as a distinctive style with specific characteristics, which I happen to believe that there are none.
Before entering to the topic, let's take a moment and try to make a definition of "right" or "wrong" music...If you are really a music lover, it is very difficult to find that definition. Yes, you have all the freedom to say that this music is bad or that one you didn't like. However these thoughts are purely subjective. One can say that, (no offense guys), the music of John Cage or Krzysztof Penderecki or Edgard Varese or Paul Lansky or John Zorn is terrible and non-listenable to, but what are his/her grounds for this argument? Only personal feelings and experiences. They might sound very different to what your ears are accustomed to hear and they might destroy all the musical notions that you have collected in your life. But is it enough to say that this music is wrong? Definitely not. We need to understand that there are no inherent rules of music, there are obviously certain structures or systems a musician has to follow but these can only prevent the music to be transformed into cacophony (for some even cacophony can be music, as it it represents a different possibility of the sounds in nature).
Can you define below music as wrong?
"Threnody for the victims of Hiroshima" by Penderecki
Or this?
"HPSCHD" by John Cage (if you liked try to listen😈 4:33 by Cage as well)
How about this one? Is it music or noise? Can noise be music?
"Night Traffic" by Paul Lansky
So different than each other...Would you like to listen to while having a romantic dinner? Probably not, but are they wrong? What do they represent? Can they be reflections of the past experiences of the composers? Back to the basic question: "Art for art's sake?" or "Art for the society?"...
I also recently noticed that people can feel themselves drawn into modern paintings than modern music. Is it something related with seeing and hearing? Have to admit, beats me.
Average listeners always have a tendency to hear pleasant and common harmonies. But what about dissonance? What about atonality? Can you stigmatize a dissonant or atonal piece of music as wrong music? Never, and don't forget that trying to play a piece of music without any harmony at all is extremely difficult; think about hitting the keys of the piano randomly, at some certain point there is a good chance that you will hit C-E-G together to create one of the the most common chords.
Remember only this; almost every collection of sound can be accepted as music. You may like it or hate it. You may even like something now that you have hated since today. It is all about the experiences and feelings. What do you feel when you listen to it? Maybe the composer wished that you hated it, who knows? And experiences; think about the tritones or augmented 4ths as musical intervals. These intervals were being called the "diabolus in musica" (Devil in Music) for a very long period of time and their usage probably guaranteed a hearing at the Inquisition court. However today, they are considered as one of the key intervals in modern music especially in jazz and blues.
So after this philosophical introduction 😉 let's see what we can tell about "Free Improvisation".
Free improvisation as the name suggests, is a music where the performers improvise freely (in a metalanguage approach, and not free from each other). In my opinion, it is more of a technique rather than a musical style. It is such a technique that musicians "play without memory", as described by one of the key figures of free improvisation, English guitarist Derek Bailey. He also adds that it can even be considered as the earliest musical style because mankind's first interaction with music should have been in the form of free improvisation.
We can define conventional music with three characteristics: Melody, harmony and rhythm. This music is composed of sounds, and these sounds can be defined with another three elements: Pitch (frequency of the sound wave), timbre (form of the wave) and loudness (amplitude of the wave).
In free improvisation, the musicians perform their music by playing with all these elements as the music progresses. It can be atonal, it can be nonrhythmic, the piano used can be tuned very differently or even be played without its keyboard (by plucking the strings inside), the guitarist may use a hand ventilator to touch the strings etc...
How did free improvisation evolve? Was it because the musicians were less skilled to play their instruments so that they started banging on the strings, or taping the sounds on the highways and playing them backwards? Obviously not. They were looking for something new, something that hadn't been done before, as it has always been the case. Especially in the second half of the 20th century where art had exponentially transformed, creative minds in music were not late to follow. The music scene's answer to Warhol, Dali, Picasso, Duchamp, Pollock, Godard, Cocteau, Cunningham and many many more that we call avant-garde today came with Ornette Coleman, Cecil Taylor, Albert Ayler, John Coltrane, Eric Dolphy first in the form of Free Jazz and right after with Free Improvisation that had been nourished from free jazz and modern classical music.
Just like free jazz, free improvisation placed the key elements of music except harmony in its core. It didn't sound familiar. And we can easily argue that it evolved mostly in Europe, by European artists that were inspired by free jazz. The classical art music composers of the 20th Century also played a very significant role in the development of free improvisation. Composers like Feldman, Stockhausen, Tudor, Crumb and Cage introduced the improvisation element to their music. They even wrote pieces not with conventional notation but with shapes and figures that required a total interpretation hence improvisation by the performer.
"Treatise" by Cornelius Cardew (try to play this score...)
If we come back to the jazz arena and question the association of "Free Improvisation" with jazz music, we can easily say that "improvisation" is the true commonality. It was already in the DNA of the musicians. However the improvisation that the jazz musicians had excelled at was a relatively structured kind reflecting the jazz idiom. The improvisation had reached its top level during the 1960s with the free jazz giants like Ornette Coleman, Sun Ra, John Coltrane and Cecil Taylor.
However the search for the new and even more creative never decelerated. At that moment European musicians coming from an art music tradition appeared on the stage with a more abstract technique. Guitarist Derek Bailey along with Keith Rowe's group AMM, both from England were the pioneers of free improvisation.
One of the best definitions of "Free Improvisation" has been made by Derek Bailey, in his book titled "Improvisation" (what a surprise 😊). You might recall this book from the earlier posts (Best books on Jazz). He mentions how his group, "Joseph Holbrooke" (named after an English composer) with Gavin Bryars on bass and Tony Oxley on drums,transformed from a band playing conventional jazz to free improvising band. You might refer to the book for further reading which I believe is a very good proof of what can be achieved in music by being courageous and continuous experimenting.
"Improvisation #1" by Derek Bailey
"Miles Mode" by Joseph Holbrooke Trio
AMM in a quite recent performance
Other major artists from Europe are saxophonists Evan Parker from England, Peter Brötzmann from Germany and guitarist Fred Frith again from England. Of course American sax players such as John Zorn and Anthony Braxton immediately jumped on the wagon as well to be the leading figures. One of the greatest bands of free improvisation was Art Ensemble of Chicago that can be considered as an extension of AACM (Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians, a non-profit organization) that was led by Muhal Richard Abrams in the late 60s (other members included Lester Bowie, Roscoe Mitchell, Don Moye, Henry Threadgill).
"Machine Gun" by Peter Brötzmann Octet (incl. Evan Parker)
"Theme de Yoyo" by the Art Ensemble of Chicago
Starting from the late 60s, free improvisation was at the heart of the art circles. Artistically, it was seen parallel to the Fluxus movement and other forms of performance art such as happenings (performances, events or situations meant to be considered as art or performance art; the free improvisers' performances were very similar without the distance between the performer and the audience).
In late 70s, it had also been a phenomenon in New York amongst specific art enthusiasts. Musicians such as John Zorn, Bill Laswell, George Lewis worked with each other and also with their European counterparts in both continents. Many of these musicians are still continuing to make improvised music even today.
"Zechriel" by Bar Kokhba Sextet (incl. John Zorn, Marc Ribot)
It would not be too fair to discuss about free improvisation and not mention the German recording label ECM. Founded by Manfred Eicher in 1969, ECM (Edition of Contemporary Music) record company is most probably one of the key recording companies that helped flourish this type of music.
"Improvisations for Cello & Guitar" by Derek Bailey and Dave Holland from ECM
Here is a list of the other free improvisers that I try follow if you want to listen more examples;
Saxophone: Steve Lacy, Trevor Watts and Willem Breuker
Trumpet: Kenny Wheeler
Guitar: John Russell, Keiji Haino and Marc Ribot
Piano: Cornelius Cardew, John Tilbury and Aki Takase
Bass: Dave Holland, Barre Phillips
Drums: John Stevens, Eddie Prevost and Cyro Baptista
Voice: Theo Bleckmann, Diamanda Galas
Let's finish with a little bit of philosophy again. For the last couple of posts we are talking about free jazz and free improvisation. However I still feel that the real meaning of "free" in these styles or techniques or forms, whatever you call them, is still a bit vague. What do we really mean with this only four letter word that can have a meaning to fill the universe? Maybe we can try to understand with Sartre's perspective.
He argues that all people have choices and all these choices have consequences. You are free to make a choice and you need to take the responsibility based on your choice, thus raising the question of how free are you? Freedom is power and freedom is in the moment and how you respond to things happening around you is far more important than what is happening. Just like music, or improvised music at least, you are in a group of people with free wills and you are there to create something new collectively, not individually (same discussion can also be made for solo performances), therefore can you be 100% free? Interaction is the limit to the freedom in jazz music. Musicians can be free of melody, harmony and tempo but they can never be free of the overall texture they intend to create.This is the paradox embedded in free improvisation. If it wasn't there to guard the music, most probably we wouldn't be considering it as music.
Here is a good example of such an interaction (I have to admit that it is also a composition that I play very well 😆...).
"4:33" by John Cage played by David Tudor
John Cage once said that there is not a hierarchy between sounds, directing us a question asking who can decide whether a sound is good or bad, or with the wording we used, "right" or "wrong"? This is the freedom that we need to understand in free music. Taking Cage's hierarchy arguments to another level, we can say it's not only between sounds that a hierarchy lacks, but also between instruments, band members and even the audience. This is the freedom that we should refer to.
I strongly have a feeling that "Free Improvisation" will be the musical norm in the future as long as art and artists exist on this world.
Back to the Jazz Notes.
As you can figure out from the title, this is the 10th post about the jazz history and styles. I really don't know whether it will be the last or not because the style I will be covering today is the last structured form of jazz music (yep, I know I'd promised a post on "Free Improvisation", it will come but I don't like to classify that as a separate jazz style).
However, Fusion or Jazz-Rock is definitely a jazz style on its own that has maybe re-popularized jazz for the first time after the Swing era.
By the 1970s, jazz had really been degraded by the American society (obviously with the exception of hardcore enthusiasts). Since the 50s, Rock'n Roll had taken the lead as the number one popular music in America, probably all over the world. Furthermore with the British invasion between 1964 and 1966, there was not a single soul on the planet that would argue the eminence of Rock'n Roll, not only versus jazz but versus all types of existing musical genres. When we think about the situation of the world (as I constantly try to point out that no art form comes out of the blue), I guess it wouldn't be too fair to approach this new rebellious sound with scorn. And no one did...
A movement, starting with Chuck Berry, Little Richard, Bill Haley, Bo Diddley and Jerry Lee Lewis followed by rockabilly King Elvis Presley and Carl Perkins, that most of the young generations identified themselves with, was destined to reach the top of the world. And it did...The world had embraced the Rock'n Roll phenomenon. Between 1964 and 1966, two British bands, most probably the greatest two bands ever, Beatles and Rolling Stones who had been nourishing (maybe even more than the American musicians) from all these artists, made the glittering entrance to the American music stage. After that, nothing was going be the the same... Fusion (or Jazz-Rock):
Imagine a bizarre musical scene where there are hardly new jazz recordings coming out, people not going to jazz clubs/concerts any more and only a handful of jazz musicians such as Miles Davis or Stan Getz selling albums. Was the great jazz music coming to an end?
"Is Jazz Dead?" a book by Stuart Nicholson
No way; as always has been the case, jazz musicians found a new way by taking up electric instruments, not swinging eight notes and playing over the beats of funk and rock'n roll, created a new form of jazz. They called this new style "Fusion" or "Jazz-Rock". Fusing of jazz with rock was not so new in fact. Guitarist Larry Coryell with his band Free Spirits was already playing in such a form as early as in 1966. However the new style waited to be associated with Blood, Sweat and Tears in 1967, with Chicago in 1968 and Ten Wheel Drive in 1970 (notice that all these bands are singer-based bands).
During the same period, Miles Davis had recorded his 1968 album, Filles de Kilimanjaro, that gave the signals that his music was wandering far away from his own jazz style. His next two albums, both recorded in 1969 (In A Silent Way and Bitches Brew), clearly indicated his transition to Jazz-Rock. "In A Silent Way" was the beginning of a fine collaboration between Miles Davis and Joe Zawinul and also with Herbie Hancock, and those synergies were going to change the future of jazz.
If we look at Fusion as a jazz style, we can immediately hear one key difference compared with all the previous jazz forms, and that was the use of electric instruments (even electronic). It was a form which allowed the musicians to combine the sophistication of jazz with the raw energetic power of rock. Percussions gained much more importance. Use of effects was quite popular. The compositions were all new material that had been composed thinking of the sonic possibilities of the bands.
Some of the jazz musicians perceived this as an opportunity to re-make jazz popular again, but for jazz purists the new style was seen as a betrayal. It is also a fact that fusion or jazz-rock was coming out straight after free jazz which had already caused a major flight from the musical genre. Apparently it was the jazz-rockers who had won this time and the new jazz form attracted a lot of attention not seen since the Swing era. The American society that was in a difficult situation due to on-going Vietnam war, corrupt politicians and racial inequality (notice how racism is vital in all jazz forms) had accepted this new style.
Jazz historians agree that there were a couple of musical explanations for this acceptance. Firstly, the instrumentation was very similar what people had been listening to since the beginning of rock music, everyone liked the electric instruments. There was so much power in the sound. Secondly, the music was relatively simpler in structure with less chord progressions and other harmonic complexities making it easy to listen to, follow and understand even though it was jazz. As we mentioned above, the use of numerous percussive instruments was appealing for the listeners. Maybe one last argument is that the use of too many repetitions of patterns or ostinatos made this music more melodic and enjoyable.
Now let's see the greatest figures of this style...
Miles Davis: In addition to his amazing contributions to many jazz styles, Miles Davis was also a leading figure in Fusion. Between 1964 and 1968, he made exemplary albums with his quintet that included Herbie Hancock on electric piano, Wayne Shorter on saxophone, Tony Williams on drums, and Ron Carter on electric bass. Maybe not entirely fusion albums but definitely in that direction. His main fusion albums, "In A Silent Way" and "Bitches Brew" came after his collaboration with pianist-composer Joe Zawinul.
Pharaoh's Dance by Miles Davis
John McLaughlin: He is a British guitarist who played in key fusion albums especially with Miles Davis. He is well known with his incredible proficiency in guitar playing and authentic tone. After Miles Davis he led the Mahavishnu Orchestra, one of the major fusion bands.
"Meeting of the Spirits/You Know You Know" by Mahavishnu Orchestra
Joe Zawinul: He is an Austrian pianist-composer that came to the USA at the age of 27. After working with Cannonball Adderly, he made highly acclaimed albums with Miles Davis and in 1971 he founded the greatest jazz-rock band, Weather Report. His band mates were Wayne Shorter on saxophones and Miroslav Vitous (later to be replaced with Jaco Pastorious). Weather Report definitely needs a dedicated post in this blog (maybe in the near future).
"Birdland" by Weather Report
Herbie Hancock: He was also a part of the Miles Davis' band till the early 70s. After that he led different bands and made numerous fusion albums. The most significant ones being with his group, Headhunters. He recorded very fine jazz funk albums. He made the synthesizer a popular instrument in fusion along with Joe Zawinul.
"Watermelon Man" by Herbie Hancock
Chick Corea: He is one of the key figures of the fusion movement both with Miles Davis band and later his own group Return to Forever.
"Return to Forever" by Chick Corea & Return to Forever
Fusion's popularity continued till the 80s and again with the changing world, it slowly retired from the jazz scene, leaving its place to a new style called "smooth jazz" or "pop jazz" (creating another discussion whether they can be called jazz or not)...
I was gathering some ideas on a post about "Fusion" (Jazz-Rock) that I was planning to write during the week-end. However today, 20th of January, 2018, Paul Bocuse, the Pope of Gastronomy and the Chef of the Century passed away at the age of 91.
He was one of the true pioneers of the "Nouvelle Cuisine" which is an approach known for its lightness and simplicity as well its emphasis on presentation compared to its predecessor "Cuisine Classique".
A fine example of Nouvelle Cuisine (source:Wikipedia)
He was also a good businessman. He opened his kitchen tools and fine foods line in 1979. In the same year he also began a vineyard business. He traveled to many countries for the promotion of the modern French cuisine and became a highly respected chef, especially in the USA and Japan.
In 1987, he initiated the "Bocuse D'Or", probably the most prestigious cooking competition in the world.
The ambassador of the French cuisine, Paul Bocuse, died today in Collonges-au-Mont-D'or, in the same room above his restaurant, in which he was born in 1926.
Apart from the great dishes that he created, he wrote many books on French cooking. His major two books are "Paul Bocuse's French Cooking"and "Bocuse a la Carte".
Here's a video from his restaurant.
I am sure he will be remembered as one of the greatest chefs of modern French cuisine.
I have to confess that the "Jazz Notes" posts are getting trickier and trickier everyday. Starting in the late 50s (especially 1959), the jazz styles, forms, structures, harmonic and chordal integrity, improvisation techniques, tonality, and instrumentation were pretty much upside down, totally going somewhere new very far from traditional jazz. "Well, maybe the whole world is going astray" said the departed jazz cats at that time looking down from where they are but I am pretty sure they embraced the novelties after paying attention to what the new generation had to say... Free Jazz: As opposed to what first time average listener thinks, "Free Jazz" is not a style where the members of a jazz band go out and hit the keys of a piano, cover the holes in their horns and blow, or pluck the strings of their basses randomly and independently. It is rather the opposite in fact. One highlight to make here is that "Free Jazz" and "Free Improvisation" are not the same things at all (however please allow me to leave the "Free Improvisation" topic to another post). "Free Jazz" is a form that mainly differentiates from its predecessors by freeing the player not to perform in a predetermined structural approach of chord progression. We can easily say that it was an innovation of these two great jazz musicians, Ornette Coleman and Cecil Taylor. Here we can take a short break from "Free Jazz" and raise a question to jazz enthusiasts. What would be the first 4 albums that you would buy (we don't download obviously😅) if you want to start a collection of jazz records? I bet most of the answers would include these albums;
"Kind of Blue" by Miles Davis
"Time Out" by Dave Brubeck Quartet
"Giant Steps" by John Coltrane
"Shape of Jazz To Come" by Ornette Coleman
And do you know the common thing about these 4 very important recordings? Let me tell you, they were all recorded in the year 1959. "Kind of Blue" was the first album of modal jazz. "Giant Steps" was maybe the apex of hard bop whereas "Time Out" was no less important in cool jazz. And Ornette Coleman's "Shape of Jazz To Come" was the pioneer of something new (the name of the album was changed from "Focus on Sanity" by Nesuhi Ertegun who was a real visionary and he had sensed that this recording would be a first of a new jazz style). As you can see from these fine examples, the period when free jazz was born, there wasn't a real search for a new jazz style as other all styles were young and at their top forms. But this is jazz and this is Ornette Coleman, both could not hold back from stirring the pot. "Free Jazz" can very well be defined as musical freedom. Unlike previous jazz forms, it was not performed on a series of predetermined harmonic structures or chords. It was totally a new sound allowing the musicians to use their instruments in unconventional ways like playing notes on registers generally not utilized, even squeaking was common practice (I could perform free jazz with my clarinet😈). It was called "free" because the musicians liberated themselves from structural patterns, predetermined chords and /or tempo. So they were free in a way to play whatever, whenever and however they wanted to. This led to a great opportunity for those musicians to experiment with different sounds enabling them to express their musical emotions in many different ways. One common element that "Free Jazz" shared with older forms of jazz was that the players never stopped listening to each other and never gave up the "call and response" format (maybe we can call it "reactions" now). "Free Jazz" was mostly atonal, meaning that the compositions did not necessarily have a definitive tonal structure as was the case with earlier styles. Maybe because of this it could not attract many listeners even though it was very artistic and emotional. One could also feel influences from Indian, Far Eastern and African sounds primarily due to the fact that these exotic music styles were not based on chordal progressions as well. One key difference compared to its immediate predecessor "Bebop" is that "Free Jazz" players improvised collectively just like the earlier forms of the genre. Obviously in a very different format and sound but still... Maybe another album that is even more prolific than "Shape of Jazz to Come" was Ornette Coleman's 1960 recording of "Free Jazz", an album that would give the name of the newly forming jazz style. The record features 2 separate quartets, each on another channel of the recording (on left channel: Ornette Coleman, Don Cherry, Scott LaFaro and Billy Higgins - on right channel: Eric Dolphy, Freddie Hubbard, Charlie Haden and Ed Blackwell). You may also use the album to check the polarity of your inputs & outputs 🙈🙉🙊. It is an improvisation only album and lasts slightly less than 40 minutes...
"Lonely Woman" - Ornette Coleman
Coleman was a multi-instrumentalist, playing trumpet, violin, alto and tenor saxophones. He was never a real virtuoso in his instruments but his ideas were really beyond imagination. Almost all the compositions in his albums (more than 20 maybe) were written by him. He was a very productive and an influential musician. We can say that a lot of musicians, even today are following his footsteps, especially the avant-gardists (a more general art form, musically interpretation can be defined as free jazz) and later the ECM artists.
"Free Jazz Part 1" - Ornette Coleman
Another main figure of "Free Jazz", as important as Ornette Coleman, is pianist Cecil Taylor. However, it might not be too fair to classify him only as a musician performing with this style. He can be considered as "above all styles". He was a classically trained pianist and a poet. His playing technique and sound was very different treating the piano as a percussive instrument (indeed it is in a way) just like an instrument with 88 tuned drums. He played without swinging and mostly created energetic textures with his piano rather than sentences. One can not hear melodies in his music. Taylor had given the clues of free jazz with his first album "Jazz Advance" in 1956. However his real widely accepted free jazz album is "Unit Structures" in 1966. You can feel the influences of contemporary 20th Century European composers such as Bartok and Stockhausen as well as American Charles Ives. We can say that he was a real modernist and performed in many styles such as "post-bop", "avant-garde" and of course "free jazz" (some jazz historians have a tendency to differentiate both forms: "avant-garde" and "free jazz"). In my opinion, free jazz is an extension of the avant-garde movement. This is evident especially in Cecil Taylor's later works, following the "Unit Structures"; he has made recordings that are closer to the art form of avant-garde by exploring the nontraditional, radical and experimental. We can maybe argue that avant-garde jazz has been evolved in the form of free jazz in the 60s but continued to grow on its own path incorporating many different unorthodox styles along the way.
"Enter Evening" by Cecil Taylor
On the other hand, culturally, the new jazz style was very well reflecting the sentiment of the society (especially in the USA) unleashing themselves from their inhibitions (i.e. sexual revolution, drug use, mini skirts, 1968 protests & Woodstock later). As it's been the case for the last century, unfortunately it still was an expression of anger by African-Americans who were still fighting for their civil rights (a lot was going on in the form of social tensions about racial integration such as "Freedom Riders", "Freedom Summer Project" and "Freedom Schools"). Apart from Coleman and Taylor, Albert Ayler was also a very innovative American musician who played the tenor saxophone in a way that was difficult to categorize. He was constantly trying to physically explore and push the limits of his horn that resulted in a raw and brutal sound. His sound was extremely different than other sax players. Unfortunately many average listeners thought that his music was only noise, a stigmata that he shared with almost all avant-garde musicians. In 1965, John Coltrane was recording his masterful "Love Supreme" in Rudy Van Gelder's studio in New Jersey. This album was already giving the signals of Coltrane's transition to a more spiritual level with his life and music. After going cold turkey, he was transforming almost with the speed of light. His productivity and energy was at such a level that he recorded the album "Ascension" only six months later than "Love Supreme". The new album was a perfect example of free jazz.
Then came the eccentric Sun Ra. At that time he was arguing that his music sounded more free than what the "freedom boys" were playing. It was true that he was different than the others, he was a "mystic cosmic traveler"...Some jazz historians discuss that Sun Ra was even a greater figure than Coleman and Coltrane especially in terms of improvisation structures due to the fact it was extremely difficult for a band with 50 members to improvise collectively when compared to 6-8 musicians. He was also a pioneer on using different instruments during his performances.
"Cosmos" by Sun Ra
Some other important characters who have shaped "Free Jazz" one way or the other are; bassist/pianist Charles Mingus, clarinetist/saxophonist Jimmy Giuffre, alto saxophonist/bass clarinetist Eric Dolphy, saxophonists Archie Shepp, Pharoah Sanders , Anthony Braxton, trumpetist Don Cherry and the band Art Ensemble of Chicago. In Europe, guitarist Derek Bailey, saxophonists Evan Parker and Peter Brötzmann. During later years, some of these musicians would be the forerunners of "Free Improvisation" which was a more European thing... "Free Jazz" was most probably the least popular jazz style of all time. Can you imagine that giants such as Ornette Coleman and Cecil Taylor could not even find venues to play in or half of Coltrane's listeners leaving his concerts during the intermission? I believe starting with free jazz and avant-garde, jazz music became trapped in a bell jar attracting a few listeners with an acquired taste. Is this bad? I am not in a position to answer that question but we need to accept that everything especially in art, happens for a reason...Today there are jazz musicians performing in a wide variety of styles from "Dixieland" to "Free Jazz" and we are free to choose what pleases us most musically. Therefore one can not and should not say that this jazz style is good or that style is terrible only by listening to it. We have to keep in mind that each style is something creative ad innovative and has resulted from the urge of questioning, experimenting and exploring the unknown, which defines jazz in a nutshell...
