Fresh edit of a DTM classic: Interview with Robert Dennis, composer of “Milk” (Sesame Street, 1975). 

Tonight the Billy Hart quartet starts at the Village Vanguard. Nice blurb in the New Yorker:

Down the road, I’ll be accompanying Mark Padmore in “Winterreise” on May 3 at Town Hall. The event was written up in the NY Times this past weekend.

It’s kind of a special series, where the concerts are notably inexpensive even when the performers are big stars like Mark Padmore. There’s usually no reason to advertise an event so far in advance, but this is a special situation, it might sell out very soon.

Tix.

October means: Incredible Shows in New York City! Happy to blast some friends and associates:

Ivan Ilić is in town, doing three shows at Bargemusic. I’ll be there Saturday night to see the “meditative” set of Scott Wollschleger and others. Great pianist, great rep.

Friday 11 October 2019, 7:00 PM

Hans Otte (1926-2007)
The Book of Sounds (1979-1982)
______

Saturday 12 October 2019, 6:00 PM

Keeril Makan (b. 1972, US)
Capture Sweetness (2018)

Scott Wollschleger (b. 1980, US)
Music without Metaphor (2013)
Gas Station Canon Song (2017/18)
Lyric Fragment (2019, premiere)

Melaine Dalibert (b. 1979, France)
Litanie (2019, premiere)
Danse (2019, premiere)
Percolations (2019, US premiere)
Etude II (2019, US premiere)

& works by Debussy and Satie
______

Sunday 13 October 2019, 4:00 PM

Haydn
Symphony no 44 in E minor
Transcribed for solo piano by C.D. Stegmann

Antoine Reicha
4 Fugues from Opus 97 Etudes

Beethoven
Sonata No. 8 in C minor, Opus 13 “Pathétique”

Friday, tomorrow, I’ll be checking out some Theremin Noir with Rob Schwimmer, Uri Caine, and Mark Feldman at Greenwich Music School. Part of the intriguing Progressive Chamber Music Festival.

Thursday, Oct 10 @ 7PM
Third Reality (Lisa Hoppe, Tal Yahalom, Charlotte Greve)
Pascals Triangle (Pascal Le Boeuf, Martin Nevin, Peter Kronreif )
Shoko Nagai & Satoshi Takeishis VORTEX

Friday, Oct 11 @ 7PM
Sirius Quartet
For Living Lovers (Brandon Ross & Stomu Takeishi)
Theremin Noir (Rob Schwimmer, Mark Feldman, Uri Caine)

Next week, I will sadly be unable to attend the premiere of Alvin Singleton’s String Quartet No. 4. Hallelujah Anyhow (what a title!). Related DTM: Interview with Alvin Singleton. 

Mario Davidovsky: String Trio
Julian Carrillo: String Quartet no. 10
Alvin Singleton: Hallelujah Anyhow CMA Commission WORLD PREMIERE
Matthew Greenbaum: Crossing Brooklyn Ferry for baritone and string quartet WORLD PREMIERE, text by Walt Whitman

Tuesday, October 15 at 7:00 pm
Americas Society
680 Park Ave., NYC
Free admission

A week from Sunday, another great pianist, Jason Hardnik, returns to town in a program honoring the Concord Sonata. Composer Jason Eckardt has written a piece combining original music with reimagined passages from the sonata, commissioned expressly to commemorate its centennial. H’mm! I’ll be there. Related DTM: Write It All Down.

UPDATE: IVES CONCERT HAS BEEN RESCHEDULED FOR APRIL 19!

Ives: Selected Studies
Jason Eckardt a melody which the air had strained (World Premiere)
***
Ives: Piano Sonata No. 2, Concord Mass., 1840-60
(with Claire Chase, flute)

SUN, OCT 20, 2019, 7:00 PM
National Sawdust

New for JazzTimes: A serious listen to Don Cherry’s Art Deco. (I spoke briefly to legendary producer John Snyder for this piece.)

New DTM post, about European Classical Music. For my students, but others may like it too: From Grandma’s Piano Bench.

New DTM page, mainly for my students, but perhaps for others as well: “Deepening Your Relationship to Musical Theatre.”

There was a slight hiccup in operations, but Do the G!g is back — at least until the end of the year. I’ll keep it up in 2020 if page views increase.

One of the “big” DTM cycles is Bud Powell Anthology. I’m very proud of this collection of transcriptions and opinions, they are also due for another tough edit. Here are four fresh bits and pieces that I plan to integrate in the future.

1. I transcribed “Glass Enclosure” (Download Glass Enclosure – Score)

2. Emmet Cohen sent me “Big Band Blues.” I thought I heard everything significant Bud recorded, but somehow missed this astounding track. Bud plays thick mysterious block chords — perhaps funkifying George Shearing? — before launching into what must be the most relentless collection of double-time lines on record before John Coltrane. Truthfully, I think Bud is “practicing,” not “performing,” on this track, but it’s still a hell of a document.

3. Red Sullivan sent me harrowing video of Bud Powell’s funeral procession.

4. A student brought in “Oblivion” the other day. I asked if they had heard Geri Allen’s version, which I included as one of the top Powell covers at the end of articles. I’ve been thinking about Keith Jarrett and bebop quite a bit, and must admit that Jarrett’s “Bouncing with Bud” with Gary Peacock and Jack Dejohnette misses the mark.  These musicians are all so great, of course, but the pianist just isn’t the right zone, and I’m not sure why.

Charlie Haden and Paul Motian are another Keith Jarrett rhythm section, and the “Oblivion” with Geri is just in the right space from all three. Amazing. Here’s the marvelous piano solo that ends with the perfect “bop judo chop” after fierce abstraction:

At Green-Wood Cemetery in Brooklyn last night, I heard Jenny Lin and Adam Tendler perform the cycle Harmonies poétiques et religieuses by Franz Liszt as part of the series The Angel’s Share,  produced by Death of Classical and Green-Wood, curated by Andrew Ousley.

After gathering at the cemetery entrance, Ousley took us on a long walk through darkening shadows. It felt like the beginning of a horror movie, as if only one of the audience was going to return from the torments awaiting the unsuspecting participants.

The concert space in the catacombs is more or less ground level, giving the feel of a chilly mausoleum.  It’s a tiny space; too small, really, but since we were enclosed in stone, the piano resonated in a wonderful fashion. I have rarely had such an immediate sonic experience at a piano concert.

Only two of the set Harmonies poétiques et religieuses are heard frequently, “Bénédiction de Dieu dans la solitude” and, especially, “Funérailles.” Lin played both to the hilt; I suspect she’s had “Funérailles” in her repertoire a long time. (You could hear the audience catch their breath after the famous furious left hand octave cascades.) While the rest of the cycle may lack the immediate appeal of the two “hits,” it’s all great music, surprisingly experimental, at times oblique, and always perfectly made for the instrument. I’ve never had the opportunity to listen to the whole work in one sitting before, and now realize that this massive collection has a powerful through-line and must be one of the most successful piano cycles lasting longer than an hour.

Tendler and Lin traded off movements and turned pages for each other. Both are virtuosos who sang the lyrical melodies and hammered out the climaxes as required. All and all, an unforgettable evening. The concert repeats tonight and tomorrow.

ECM 2643 is Common Practice, the Ethan Iverson Quartet featuring Tom Harrell, Ben Street and Eric McPherson.

Official Blurb:

The latest ECM album to feature pianist Ethan Iverson – following last year’s duo recording with saxophonist Mark Turner, Temporary Kings, and two lauded discs with the Billy Hart Quartet – presents the Brooklyn-based artist at the head of his own quartet in a program of standards and blues, recorded live at Manhattan’s famed Village Vanguard. Iverson’s quartet for Common Practice features as its prime melodic voice the veteran Tom Harrell, who was voted Trumpeter of the Year in 2018 by the U.S. Jazz Journalists Association. Iverson extols the quality of poetic “vulnerability” in Harrell’s playing, particularly in such ballads as “The Man I Love” and “Polka Dots and Moonbeams,” two of the album’s highlights. Common Practice also courses with an effervescent swing, thanks to the top-flight rhythm team of bassist Ben Street and drummer Eric McPherson, whose subtle invention helps drive Denzil Best’s bebop groover “Wee” and two irresistibly bluesy Iverson originals.

Produced by Manfred Eicher — Liner notes by Kevin Sun — Recording Engineers: Andreas K. Meyer, Geoff Countryman and Tyler McDiarmid.

Special thanks to Anthony Creamer.

Thanks also to Angela Harrell, Jed Eisenman, and Deborah Gordon. The disc is dedicated with sincere love and respect to the late, indomitable, wonderful, sorely-missed Lorraine Gordon, who caught an early set of this group and approved of the sounds.

Photo of Sun’s liner notes:

Press:

Wall Street Journal. (Common Practice – Wall Street Journal.)

AllMusic.

Extensive review by Jonathan Wertheim, linking the disc to DTM (he’s not wrong LOL)

NYTimes Playlist:

Marlbank.

(Related DTM: Interview with Tom Harrell.)

Two ECM records in two years! I’m very proud of both, not the least because I am the accompaniment for Mark Turner and Tom Harrell, musicians who I wish to emulate more and more.