Still here...

 

... just about ;-)

My "Hallowe'en post" contained no exaggeration at all, but it was a one-off: I failed to follow it up. This is ultimately just a cyclic thing, and does not signify any greater shift in my tastes or opinions or interests; I listen (in depth) to several unrelated* types of music, and in spending so much of my free time in B's world(s) this year I have inevitably neglected some of the other areas which are close to my heart. That imbalance rectified itself over the last couple of months.

It's also definitely the case that, once I decided I was no longer** going to be able to match or exceed the blog's post count for 2008, I withdrew my attention from B's music completely for a while. At the beginning of November I did listen to one long-unheard item from my collection over the course of three or four days, the misleadingly-named Quartet (GTM) 2006 (recorded in 2005, released 2008); this, though, was a set which I found rather uninvolving when it first came out, and my experience this time (having not heard any of the music for the best of a decade) was somewhat similar. I didn't find the impetus to write about it - despite my recent close examination(s) of the GTM phenomenon - and indeed I probably went almost six weeks after that without listening to any of B's music at all. Of course, by the standards of previous such gaps in my listening... six weeks is nothing; but still, I hadn't yet finished even listening to the Standards or SGTM "megaboxes", so this definitely qualified as unfinished business. 

Last week I got an ideal opportunity to put an end to that, and as is often the way, I gorged myself. On a couple of days when I was working from home, with a task to do which required quite a lot of time but only some of my attention, I managed not only to press on with those two box sets (working my way through another two discs of each), but also to replay some of the huge quantities of NBH digital-only content which have found their way into my ears over the last six or seven months.

The music making up disc ten of the Standards box is heavy on modern jazz rep and light on (what I will insist on calling) cheese: in fact it has an oddly-unbalanced feel, comprising three Coltrane numbers, plus one each by Mingus and Monk, and one - I don't even know what it is, a show tune or an ancient Tin Pan Alley pop song, but Bing Crosby (of all people) gets a co-writing credit on it, and that's sufficient to tell me that it's not the kind of material I'm looking for in my life***. Disc eleven, again, mainly features pieces by modern jazzmen; although one of these numbers - "Skating in Central Park" by John Lewis (... I don't know it) - sounds saccharine enough that it could easily be out of the "other category": this being followed, as it is, by something called "When Joanna Loved Me" - definitely out of the "other category" - the cumulative effect on me was almost nauseating#. As regards the Lewis/MJQ number, if what B. likes about this is the chord sequence, it did occur to me that he could have achieved much the same feel by playing "This I Dig of You" by Hank Mobley, constructed over very similar changes and not nearly as sentimental-sounding... but there we are.

These feelings aside, I found much to enjoy on these two discs, where for the most part, at least, the leader and his pianist (plus the latter's sidemen) are able to explore the outer implications of the music without resorting to - you know, playing tunes or anything so incongruous. Oddly, both B. and Alex Hawkins seem to struggle to get to grips with Mingus' "Self Portrait in Three Colours" - both of them apparently thrown by a decision to play rubato, even though presumably this was something they discussed beforehand - but I did find much to like about most of this music. (Hawkins continues to be drawn irresistibly to the same Andrew Hill-isms I've observed from him on this collection before: specifically, he is apparently fascinated by a sort of "rocker" motif in the right hand, where (presumably) the thumb and little finger alternate notes in a fast figure, the former remaining static while the latter ascends a partial scale.)

The SGTM material is, of course, utterly astonishing. Over those two days I heard Comps. 255 and 256, the latter of which I have heard before##, but not sounding like this. The ensemble for these recordings was at such a peak of collective creativity, and so secure in the support of the composer, that they pushed these works into completely uncharted territories, resulting in music which is never even slightly predictable and which covers pretty much all bases from childlike "vocal scribbling" upwards. Given my own awkward relationship with "clean" vocals###, it says a lot for this music that I love it as much as I do; I really don't think I could ever get bored with it.

As for the replays, there will need to be many more of these before I feel even vaguely au fait with the massive treasure-house of NBH digital material... I chose a couple of these pretty much at random on the day, but did also consciously pick out two "all-star" creative orchestra projects: NBH034 and NBH028, each of which is far too complex and layered for me to have absorbed it properly while working, never mind attempting any sort of analysis. They are recordings which will withstand much repeat listening, being interpreted by musicians who are chiefly (034) or wholly (035) selected from among B's own former students, and thus thoroughly familiar with his methodologies; that sets them apart from recordings undertaken by musicians of short acquaintance, and indeed from recordings made by experienced creative musicians, who nevertheless may not have had much experience of playing B's music. Who knows... maybe one day I will feel qualified to undertake some sort of comparative analysis of these three sets of possibilities.

For the moment, that's that; although I do still plan at least one further post before the year is out. It feels as if a "2023 retrospective" is in order... and in principle, if I am able to recover my own train(s) of thought, I would still like to be done with that pesky Comp. 136 piece as well... but it wouldn't surprise anyone, least of all me, if that doesn't materialise until next year...

* Zappa considered everything he liked to be "from the same universe": he posited some sort of qualitative connection between the (post-)modernist neoclassical stylings of Stravinsky, Charles Ives and Edgard Varèse on the one hand, and his beloved doo-wop on the other, not to mention all points in between. But the chances are that nothing really connects these musics apart from Zappa's own taste, unless it be a degree of artistic authenticity ( - which he felt was lacking in much commercial music). If that is the case, I can sympathise: but of course that doesn't mean that I would like everything which he liked, and it certainly doesn't mean that FZ would have approved of everything that I like. These distinctions eventually melt away into subjectivity and ultimately become redundant.

- Insofar as I have identified any common features in my own various musical pleasures, the matter of structural density arises fairly frequently, but not always... I am happy to indulge these pleasures separately and severally, and not look for commonalities on the whole. Would I feel that way, if I had studied under B. myself? Probably not, but I will never know. (I read an interview with Tyshawn Sorey where he said that B. had encouraged him to compose music which reflected all of his own listening - and in Sorey's case, that really was a very wide range of musics indeed. Whether the student succeeded in meeting this challenging remit is not something I am qualified to judge.)

** For much of the past year, I was intrigued to see whether I would be able to sustain the rate of posting enough to hit "the magic 64", and at the start of November it was still "on" - but it became apparent pretty quickly after that that it wasn't, any more; and once I accepted that, it freed me up a bit to step away for a while. (I am still slightly amazed at how much I actually managed to get done this year.)

*** It is clear that B. loves playing standards - he must do, he's done it often enough - and he seems to take some specific pleasure in rooting out obscure old numbers that nobody else (with the possible exception of Sonny Rollins) would dream of playing. I can respect that, but at a distance; I don't have to like everything which he likes, which is just as well, since in practice...

# ... I am simply unable to do it. If I were merely exaggerating grotesquely in using words such as "nauseating", I would long ago have forced myself out of the habit; it's a genuine reaction, both powerful and unpleasant, and I have spent quite a bit of time trying to work out whence it derives. It's not that I'm incapable of appreciating a pretty tune played simply, for all I might joke about being allergic to pop music, etc; but I do seem to be unable to tolerate it when it's done by the maestro, for whatever reason(s). With his voice, there (apparently) must be a minimum degree of complexity and harmonic abstraction in order for the results to be palatable to me. If I had to hear him lead a quartet through a "straight" reading of "My Funny Valentine" or something like that, I might actually be sick. Some of the stuff on this gigantic box set comes perilously close to it.

- I don't expect this to be a popular opinion, and (believe it or not) I do try not to bang on about it for that reason. But it is genuine, and it does only seem fair to unpack it a bit.

## The first ever recording of a SGTM performance to circulate among collectors was, in fact, a reading of Comp. 256; it was later released digitally as NBH031.

### The designation "clean" for uninflected vocal timbre is one derived from extreme metal, where it is usually contrasted with "harsh" vocals. I first heard the terms used in the '90s, by musicians whose first language was not English; the term "clean", at least, does seem to have caught on somewhat.