Combination of lifting suitcases, sitting in cars for too long and worrying about the new book seems to have done in my back, yet again. Hence lack of recent posts, and, no doubt, of current coherence. I made it to half an hour of the LPO's rehearsal at the Royal Albert Hall yesterday but couldn't face sitting through a three-hour concert, so went home and MISSED WYNTON MARSALIS, about which I'm none too happy.
The LPO is touring Britain with Marsalis & his New York jazz band & a gospel choir in a big piece for big forces that he's written called ALL RISE. The orchestra is seriously excited about it - Tom says it's one of the best things he's ever done. I love big band jazz and was looking forward to hearing them in action - but the chairs in the Albert Hall eventually sent me and my lower back home for a hot bath instead. Watching the rehearsal - during which the unlikely combination of Kurt Masur and Marsalis proved quite an original team - was better than nothing, though.
Personally, however, I do have issues with the question of mingling jazz and classical playing in this way. I kept wishing the choir would shut up so we could hear the jazzers. It's a perennial question in the music magazines: do such joint-force efforts, whether with world music or jazz or pop, create something new and stimulating and inspiring, or do they water down their originals into some kind of three-legged hybrid that doesn't quite work? I always try to take the first view, but do sometimes find myself landing with the second despite myself. What do people think about this?
You can see the show in Manchester tomorrow (Tuesday) and Glasgow on Wednesday.
11 comments:
I find myself in a similar predicament when it comes to styles. Once, a friend and I did the whole Wolf Trap thing, complete with the bus ride and the catered box dinner, wine and the picnic blanket to see the self-same Wynton Marsalis. We enjoyed the concert very much once we relaxed into it; trouble is, we had been listening to his CLASSICAL CD. So perhaps its a matter of expectation?
I for one, wish Sir Paul (McCartney) and the esteemed Mr. Ravi Shankar would QUIT trying to "compose", and just write/play more music. But again, that may be a matter of expectation ...
Styles have to evolve, somehow, I guess, and it's not gonna always be so linear (or "pretty", for that matter)!
Egad. Talk about a thorny issue surrounding an open can of worms. Since my undergrad degree is in jazz comp/theory and my masters in classical comp/theory, I get asked about this all_the_time.
To me it boils down to "have the guys done their homework?" In other words, have the jazz cats gone through the effort to master the classical idioms, and vice versa. The answer to this is usually "no", and the final result is usually less than fully satisfying as a result.
If a rock or jazz guy creates some bast... er... bombastic amalgam of contemporary and classical music, the results are usually percieved by me to be amateurish and pretentious. Conversely, when classical guys "go jazz", the results are too often stilted.
While I think Wynton can move pretty seamlessly between jazz and classical as a player, I too have a hunch that I would have been less than fully satisfied by that particular concert.
Gershwin would have to be the ideal for me. His "Concert Music" sounds completely natural, for the most part, even though he started out as a Tin Pan Alley tunesmith. I always find that profoundly amazing, for some reason.
only way of dealing with a bad back like this (as long as you know it's not a slipped disk) is to keep on the move. No long sitting, or lying in bed, just walk walk walk walk
for your back heating pads & gentle gentle yoga? definitely wine (internally applied of course). maybe chiropractic too
say, you all should pop over to some of the singer sites, there's this relevant debate going on over Aprille Millo's recent "refusal" to perform "crossover".
lots of us are arguing i mean, discussing it fervently, these days. my post is called "Crossing Over ... To The Dark Side" read the comments too.
crossover is a VERY hot topic in classical music these days, especially with the (other current controversy raging out here) re: ticket prices and keeping and/or getting new audiences ...
I'm all for cross-over, but, alas, have far too often been confronted with monsters akin to that three-eyed fish in The Simpsons...
I get the impression that cross-over is really very very limited. 'Classical+Jazz' & 'Classical+quasi-pop' are more than common - but what about everything else? I'd love to see an orchestra explore fusing with a banghra band or really getting to grips with Bluegrass - now that would be something :)
Wine is my favourite back remedy... :-)
I think Wynton Marsalis's 'All Rise' doesn't really come under the Crossover heading as it's a totally original composition on his part - a vast jazz symphony, an attempt to recreate the symphonic jazz tendencies of the 1950s in a new way. I think Jonathan's wording 'really getting to grips with...' is very telling. The fact is that the majority of classical musicians, at least here in Britain, have no training in any style except mainstream classical - so demanding in itself that frankly there's no reason why they should - and the kind of freedom required in improvisatory, popular or other contemporary styles often passes them by. The LPO seems to have been immensely inspired by having Marsalis's Lincoln Center band sitting in its midst and they really got into the swing of it - in every sense. But mostly, 'really getting to grips with' a different style requires infinitely more rehearsal time than any British orchestra finds possible. Tricky.
Very true, Jessica, though I hadn't necessarily imagined the orchestra fully adopting the style of whatever fusion was at hand - after all, could a bluegrass fiddler really pull off the trickier violin passages in Heldenleben?!
Rather, the creative drive behind these collaborations often seems to be missing, maybe because the people who have artistic ability in both areas are also missing?
I'm too exhausted right now from arguing with the guys over at Sequenza 21 to take on a statement like "...the creative drive behind these collaborations often seems to be missing, maybe because the people who have artistic ability in both areas are also missing".
Arrrrgggghhhh.
I will simply point out that a good friend of mine will most likely have an orchestral work recorded by the LPO in November. She is a classical/electroacoustic composer and the particular piece in question has major swing jazz elements. She's taking her own conductor so he can get the feel of the swing jazz just right.
Did you get that? Repeat after me: Classical/Electroacoustic/ Swing Jazz.
(Maybe someone whose initials are JD could interview this person when she's in London? Hope, hope, hope ...)
I stand corrected! (and please let me know when the recording's available...)
Looks like that recording is "on'!
Jessica, would you be interested in interviewing the composer, when she is there in November?
I am looking for a recording of Schoenberg's Pierrot lunaire; Trio, op. 45, recorded in September of 1940 and included Leonard Posella playing flute and piccolo. If anyone knows where I could purchase a recording, I would be grateful for the information. I can be emailed at: nino@amtecsys.com.
Thanks.
Post a Comment