On 12/6/21 1:09 PM, mswd...@gmail.com wrote:
> On Monday, December 6, 2021 at 9:36:57 AM UTC-6, MINe109 wrote:
>> On 12/5/21 4:26 PM, raymond....@gmail.com wrote:
>>> very early forms of classical music involved some improvisation.
>> An understatement! Mozart, Beethoven, Chopin, Liszt, organists up
>> to present day.
>
> I'm reasonabvly aware of the history of improvisation in classical
> music, but I'm not aware of it having been present in any concert
> I've been to. So organ-playing is an exception, you say? Fine. That
> doesn't erase the huge distinction between the role of improvisation
> in jazz and classical.

More the exception than the rule, yes. For orchestral concert music
Lutoslawski comes to mind or any soloist-composed cadenza. However, my
distinction concerned the word "early." The "fidelity to the text" idea
seems a late Nineteenth Century innovation.

In article <solnp9$r1m$1@hope.eyrie.org>,
Todd M. McComb <mccomb@medieval.org> wrote:
>In other words, "classical music" involves improvisation *now*.

As it happens, already in my queue to audition (for the first time)
today/now:

https://magdamayas.bandcamp.com/album/objects-of-interest

A few days ago I was listening to NO ROOM FOR SQUARES by Hank Mobley.

Great album, but I doubt Mr Mobley would've accepted the label of classical music, even had the artistic /critical classical establishment proffered such an embrace.

Op maandag 6 december 2021 om 20:16:02 UTC+1 schreef mswd...@gmail.com:
> On Monday, December 6, 2021 at 10:23:17 AM UTC-6, hvt...@xs4all.nl wrote:
> > Op maandag 6 december 2021 om 16:36:57 UTC+1 schreef MINe109:
> > > On 12/5/21 4:26 PM, raymond....@gmail.com wrote:
> > > > very early forms of classical music involved some improvisation.
> > > An understatement! Mozart, Beethoven, Chopin, Liszt, organists up to
> > > present day.
> > Montero is still improvising before a public - at a very high level. The sense of it escapes me.
> >
> > The same applies to contemporary jazz. It is much ado about nothing - in my very humble opinion.The almost predictable right-hand runs, the ritualized body movements, the obligatory camaraderie, not to mention the sectarian attitude among the audiences ...
> >
> > Where are the days of Fats Waller?
> >
> > Henk
> When in the past 80 years does "contemporary" begin with you? Pointing to someone who died in 1943 as the paragon of improv hardly clarifies things.

Good question. We are from different generations. For me, "contemporary" starts early. All jazz up to and around WWII (including the 1950s) is easy for me to listen to. In the second half of the 20th century, jazz merged into popular music or became esoteric. My earlier post refers to this category.

Henk

Also new (to me) today -- "classical music":

https://anothertimbre.bandcamp.com/album/songs-for-a-shed

Le 06/12/2021, number_six a supposé :
> Great album, but I doubt Mr *mobley* would've accepted the label of classical
> music, even had the artistic /critical classical establishment proffered such
> an embrace.

A muffled sound (immediately recognizable !), but slightly grainy ...
Accentuations that punctuate a speech in short phrases with distinct
notes (but not detached) ... We are at the junction between bebop and
blues ...
He privileges the medium register and the melody...Intimate
musician...Whose soft melancholy was unfortunately in his time covered
by the incipient violence of the free jazz...
One of my favorite tenor sax player...

On Monday, December 6, 2021 at 1:21:11 PM UTC-6, Todd M. McComb wrote:
> In other words, "classical music" involves improvisation *now*.
> And classical music involved improvisation back in the day. But
> now, old classical music no longer involves improvisation!

I can accept that there is some classical music now that involves improv. It doesn't changes the basic outlines of the artform. As to the those composers that are indeed adding improv elements, wonderful- I wish them the greatest success. Care to list anything in particular?

On Tuesday, December 7, 2021 at 4:24:18 PM UTC-6, MELMOTH wrote:
> Le 06/12/2021, number_six a supposé :
> > Great album, but I doubt Mr *mobley* would've accepted the label of classical
> > music, even had the artistic /critical classical establishment proffered such
> > an embrace.
> A muffled sound (immediately recognizable !), but slightly grainy ...
> Accentuations that punctuate a speech in short phrases with distinct
> notes (but not detached) ... We are at the junction between bebop and
> blues ...
> He privileges the medium register and the melody...Intimate
> musician...Whose soft melancholy was unfortunately in his time covered
> by the incipient violence of the free jazz...
> One of my favorite tenor sax player...

Well written! Did I miss you recommending favorite Waldron?

In article <78f7b0a1-23a1-4be5-8fcd-9fa80104b2den@googlegroups.com>,
mswd...@gmail.com <mswdesign@gmail.com> wrote:
>I can accept that there is some classical music now that involves
>improv. It doesn't changes the basic outlines of the artform.

Indeed not, because the basic outlines of the artform have pretty
much always involved improvisation.

>Care to list anything in particular?

Yes, I did post (yesterday?) a couple of links in this thread to
new recordings of new classical compositions involving improvisation.
They won't bite.

I think it's fairly futile to compare jazz and classical "improvisations" since they are so different. Improvisation in classical music has often been a single instrument, either in a cadenza or as a keyboard player. Add more instruments and you are already getting towards free music unless there's a given chord structure like in jazz. But in jazz you also have a fixed beat from the drum kit, which is a jazz creation in itself. Take away the rhythm section and you take away the heart, soul and body of jazz. Classical improvisation is nowhere near this. Presumably it could be if you added a beat, a chord structure and a bass line. But that might end up not much different from contemporary jazz.

On Wednesday, December 8, 2021 at 7:02:54 AM UTC-6, Andy Evans wrote:
> I think it's fairly futile to compare jazz and classical "improvisations" since they are so different. Improvisation in classical music has often been a single instrument, either in a cadenza or as a keyboard player. Add more instruments and you are already getting towards free music unless there's a given chord structure like in jazz. But in jazz you also have a fixed beat from the drum kit, which is a jazz creation in itself. Take away the rhythm section and you take away the heart, soul and body of jazz. Classical improvisation is nowhere near this. Presumably it could be if you added a beat, a chord structure and a bass line. But that might end up not much different from contemporary jazz.

Well said. Presumably there is a general point about how jazz and classical are treated that survives this. But the idea that one can be thought of as an extension of the other isn't something I find appealing.

Op woensdag 8 december 2021 om 14:02:54 UTC+1 schreef Andy Evans:
> I think it's fairly futile to compare jazz and classical "improvisations" since they are so different. Improvisation in classical music has often been a single instrument, either in a cadenza or as a keyboard player. Add more instruments and you are already getting towards free music unless there's a given chord structure like in jazz. But in jazz you also have a fixed beat from the drum kit, which is a jazz creation in itself. Take away the rhythm section and you take away the heart, soul and body of jazz. Classical improvisation is nowhere near this. Presumably it could be if you added a beat, a chord structure and a bass line. But that might end up not much different from contemporary jazz.

Andy, how would you call Mehldau's improvisation?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zhetbn9ckvw&t=3157s

Henk

In article <b967d5d7-e302-4d5a-bebc-608c770e8df2n@googlegroups.com>,
Andy Evans <performanceandmedia@gmail.com> wrote:
>I think it's fairly futile to compare jazz and classical
>"improvisations" since they are so different.

I don't think your comments would continue to appear tenable to
you, if immersed in actual contemporary music making. Good luck
sorting the "classical" from the "jazz" in many new music concerts.

In article <soqtv8$4e0$1@hope.eyrie.org>,
Todd M. McComb <mccomb@medieval.org> wrote:
>I don't think your comments would continue to appear tenable to
>you, if immersed in actual contemporary music making. Good luck
>sorting the "classical" from the "jazz" in many new music concerts.

freejazzblog.org is doing a big series on Echtzeitmusik this week,
actually, including many interviews (including e.g. Magda Mayas,
whose work I already noted in this thread). If anyone actually
cares, that might be worth reading.

And I do realize that various people probably think I'm being
pedantic. But as I already noted, comments here about "how things
are" seem to revolve around just a few decades of the 20th century.
Let's consider e.g. Andy's remarks on the jazz drumset. Well,
Charlie Parker invented that & established it with bebop. Another
poster (Henk) has already said that Parker is "too contemporary"
to be good (or whatever) jazz. That leaves a history of... a few
decades of jazz in the early-to-mid 20th century. And then just a
few decades in the mid-to-late 20th century for bebop, and jazz was
on to something else. Indeed, it's been *another few decades*
since, such that they can celebrate 30 years of Echtzeitmusik right
now, or do 50 year anniversaries of the AACM, or note the NYC
Downtown fusion scene since at least the 90s. And most people today
are gonna associate the drumkit with rock music anyway.

On Wednesday, 8 December 2021 at 19:31:17 UTC, Todd M. McComb wrote:
> >I don't think your comments would continue to appear tenable to
> >you, if immersed in actual contemporary music making. Good luck
> >sorting the "classical" from the "jazz" in many new music concerts.
> freejazzblog.org is doing a big series on Echtzeitmusik this week,
>
> And I do realize that various people probably think I'm being
> pedantic. But as I already noted, comments here about "how things
> are" seem to revolve around just a few decades of the 20th century.
> Let's consider e.g. Andy's remarks on the jazz drumset. Well,
> Charlie Parker invented that & established it with bebop. And most people today
> are gonna associate the drumkit with rock music anyway.

Do you have a dog in the fight here about Echtzeitmusik? I listened to a bunch on YouTube, and as you say it's "contemporary music making" . Neither classical nor jazz, but what I heard was pretty close to musique concrete which dates back to the 1940s. Of course musicians have been experimenting with sounds of various kinds for ages and ages - all we've added recently is techno, synthesisers and all the rest of it as they became available for use. And one correction, the drum kit predates Charlie Parker by several decades. But your point about contemporary music is well taken. I suppose classical musicians would take it under their wing, but I doubt if jazz musicians would. They're generally pretty fussy about what they want to call jazz. I say this as somebody who worked as a pro jazz musician for 40 years or so including playing free jazz on occasion and playing with some of the ECM style musicians when I worked and lived in Norway. I was classically trained at the RAM where as a student I played the odd piece of new music including Penderecki conducted by himself. One of the students giggled at what he was being asked to play and a furious Penderecki sent him off the stage. Contemporary music is very important and long may it thrive, whatever it's called.

In article <76432ba8-9721-4b41-98ee-c640d8f56ecan@googlegroups.com>,
Andy Evans <performanceandmedia@gmail.com> wrote:
>Do you have a dog in the fight here about Echtzeitmusik?

I enjoy a lot of the music from that scene, review it, etc. But I
have no official association (whatever that would really be...) or
the like. If you heard mostly electronically mediated music, that
isn't really the theme, though... much is acoustic. (The scene
does pull upon Pierre Schaeffer & others though. Musique concrete
has ramified in a variety of directions....)

>They're generally pretty fussy about what they want to call jazz.

It really depends. I mean, there's the quote by William Parker
that's been at the top of RogueArt's web page for years:

'How dare we spend so much valuable energy answering such questions
as "What is Jazz?".'

I don't think anyone can really look at, say, the New Releases
listing at squidco.com, and put these things into easy buckets.
Some, yes, but many, no way. And it becomes less possible over
time.

On Wednesday, 8 December 2021 at 15:22:15 UTC, hvt...@xs4all.nl wrote:
> Andy, how would you call Mehldau's improvisation?
> > Henk

I've listened to a fair bit of Brad, have several of his CDs and saw him live. I find him interesting in a stylistic way - he's quite contrapuntal and uses his left hand in a more original way. Keith Jarrett talked about liberating his left hand also. I hardly ever play his music, though, since it doesn't move me much. I used to see a lot of contemporary classical pianist Nic Hodges when he lived in London and incidentally contributed regularly here many years back. I forwarded a bunch of jazz to him since he was interested in hearing some sounds, and what he liked most of all was Cannonball Adderley. And this is a guy who mostly plays avant garde music including several compositions written for him. Jazz has its uniqueness, which isn't just about improvisation. A lot of it is about feel, and what you do inside a rhythm. Same applies to a lot of Latin and World music.

On Wednesday, 8 December 2021 at 20:31:55 UTC, Todd M. McComb wrote:
> 'How dare we spend so much valuable energy answering such questions
> as "What is Jazz?".'
>
> I don't think anyone can really look at, say, the New Releases
> listing at squidco.com, and put these things into easy buckets.
> Some, yes, but many, no way. And it becomes less possible over
> time.

Yes, we do hear jazz musicians being frustrated at being asked "what is jazz", but behind this they can be very choosy. I was treated as a pariah and almost banned on the Audio Asylum Jazz forum for several weeks for suggesting not just that jazz was now a world music derived from but separated from the USA ( I gave examples from Europe and Asia including Kapustin) but that Icelandic garage music was in many ways close to jazz. Here's the track I posted.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HbsbieBog1c&list=PLCkgpK9U_33-KNSzwSQMLm0WSp1prEiGO&index=9

Believe me, the inmates thought I'd lost my marbles. I had to post several Cannonball Adderley tracks to re-establish my status.

In article <9ff8d419-d50c-4d14-8308-8b954c0e5071n@googlegroups.com>,
Andy Evans <performanceandmedia@gmail.com> wrote:
>Believe me, the inmates thought I'd lost my marbles. I had to post
>several Cannonball Adderley tracks to re-establish my status.

Ha ha, OK.

Well my interest is in new music, of which jazz has been a significant
font, not really in "classic jazz."

I will say, though, that if categories have a tendency either to
expand or to contract, to insist upon a less capacious sense of
"jazz" will probably lead to it shrinking to zero over time...
which, not coincidentally, similar people sometimes lament.

On Wednesday, 8 December 2021 at 20:49:30 UTC, Todd M. McComb wrote:
> Well my interest is in new music, of which jazz has been a significant
> font, not really in "classic jazz."

My interest is mostly in songwriters and electronic music. If you compare Weather Report and a typical garage track they can sound surprisingly similar, though their origins and players are very different
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sHLFY1fGF80 garage
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2DuePlxXfAM River People from Mr Gone by Weather Report
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l8fPVuK4DLw River People live

I chose Mr Gone as an example because it was memorably given one star by Downbeat on the basis that it wasn't jazz.

We're a long way from "you shouldn't have to ask what is Jazz because it's something you ought to know" or "there's no such thing as Jazz, there's just good music and bad music". Both statements that are about as informative as "there are three kinds of classical pianists, gay pianists, Jewish pianists and bad pianists".

Here are some favourite tracks - where would you put these?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4nbKxXC9T6Y&list=RDGMEMYH9CUrFO7CfLJpaD7UR85w&index=5 Yellow
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IsV8cV2sSJI&list=RDGMEMYH9CUrFO7CfLJpaD7UR85w&index=1 Hi Times
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ux3u31SAeEM&list=PLCkgpK9U_33-KNSzwSQMLm0WSp1prEiGO&index=7 Art of Noise

In article <1af78bdd-80b8-45ec-a1e5-46b37492196dn@googlegroups.com>,
Andy Evans <performanceandmedia@gmail.com> wrote:
>Here are some favourite tracks - where would you put these?

I often use a capacious definition of jazz... but yes, that's more
on the "classical" end for me. When you're talking popular song
forms etc., there are different ramifications. In particular,
"cultural appropriation" is an economic issue, so that starts to
come into play. That would be the only reason not to let musicians
define what they are playing for themselves....

Op woensdag 8 december 2021 om 21:32:56 UTC+1 schreef Andy Evans:
> On Wednesday, 8 December 2021 at 15:22:15 UTC, hvt...@xs4all.nl wrote:
> > Andy, how would you call Mehldau's improvisation?
> > > Henk
>
> I've listened to a fair bit of Brad, have several of his CDs and saw him live. I find him interesting in a stylistic way - he's quite contrapuntal and uses his left hand in a more original way. Keith Jarrett talked about liberating his left hand also. I hardly ever play his music, though, since it doesn't move me much. I used to see a lot of contemporary classical pianist Nic Hodges when he lived in London and incidentally contributed regularly here many years back. I forwarded a bunch of jazz to him since he was interested in hearing some sounds, and what he liked most of all was Cannonball Adderley. And this is a guy who mostly plays avant garde music including several compositions written for him. Jazz has its uniqueness, which isn't just about improvisation. A lot of it is about feel, and what you do inside a rhythm. Same applies to a lot of Latin and World music.

Thanks. I'd expected Nic Hodges to be a fan of free jazz. Cannonball Adderley's quintet in San Francisco is easy to listen to. The sextet, ten years later, is a different story. Did it make any difference for Nic?

Henk

On Wednesday, 8 December 2021 at 23:17:08 UTC, hvt...@xs4all.nl wrote:
I'd expected Nic Hodges to be a fan of free jazz. Cannonball Adderley's quintet in San Francisco is easy to listen to. The sextet, ten years later, is a different story. Did it make any difference for Nic?
> > Henk

I can't remember all the tracks I sent to Nic, but one was Glass Bead Games by Clifford Jordan, which he liked a lot. Can't remember which Cannonball track, but to me he had the same swinging style right through, both him and Nat, and they always had really cooking rhythm sections. Joe Zawinul introduced the electric piano, but the swing was always there. Nic liked jazz for being jazz, not some kind of crossover with contemporary music.

In article <sor4nn$8vp$1@hope.eyrie.org>,
Todd M. McComb <mccomb@medieval.org> wrote:
>In article <76432ba8-9721-4b41-98ee-c640d8f56ecan@googlegroups.com>,
>Andy Evans <performanceandmedia@gmail.com> wrote:
>>Do you have a dog in the fight here about Echtzeitmusik?

Re-answer: I'm responding to an assertion that classical music is
incompatible with improvisation. That came to involve some further
statements -- not by me -- about what jazz is, and I felt similarly
compelled to note that such a summary didn't cover all of what jazz
is *now*. The "now" being the hinge for my involvement in the
topic.