You are right a great artist...... i deduce you love him much....
Merry Christmas to you....
Merry Christmas to you....
I admire Miles Davis, i admire Stravinsky; but i loved Chet Baker and Scriabin...You?
I like Chet Baker except when he sings. I have tried so hard to warm up to his voice but I simply can't connect. To my ears his voice comes across thin as water, lacking both soul and conviction. One of the least compelling voices I've ever heard....but I dig his trumpet playing. His trumpet has a voice with the nuance and conviction that his voice is lacking. |
I discover Chet for his trumpet voicing.... i understand perfectly your point all the more that his body voice is particular and his singing change a lot with time....I then understand that like any body voice, this voice could not appeal to all... I confess i love his body-voice BUT i love Chet Baker for his way to voice the instrument so much that at some times you forget completely the trumpet playing and remember only the singing of the trumpet and speaking of the trumpet in your heart... Like i said i discovered many years ago Chet Baker and at first i was surprized a lot by the impactful way he speak with the trumpet like anybody else....I was surprized because i have the impression that many other trumpet players are on par and even better virtuoso than him, for example Kenneth Wheeler is a genius like Miles Davis.... Kenneth Wheeler that i like a lot very much to the point to want all his cd like Miles Davis....But none of the 2 put tears in my heart....Except Chet Baker.... Why? Interestingly i discovered a trumpet player, a classical one, that have the same natural and moving voicing of the instrument....Andre Heuvelman in his album " Silence"....Interestingly Heveulman succeed his career in spite of a shorter arm infirmity at birth, in some way a tragedy that gives him a fragility, a humility, and a simplicity that is similar impeding event than the drug disease of Chet Baker, in spite of the great difference coming from their training histories and style.... By the way Chet Baker also relearn himself to play without any dentition after an attack and he succeed what seems impossible and reach even greatest musical heights or deeper state after that test event.... Heuvelman also learn to go over his impediment and became the first trumpet of the Rotterdam philarmonic orchestra...Like Chet his "sound" is warm and cool at the same times and speak directly to the heart, you will completely forgot that it is a trumpet.... Astounding for me.... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yERDKKbWx70 Then the question to know if Baker is a virtuoso of the trumpet begins to fade and to be secondary after some time for me, unlike the others trumpetists that we can listen to in the virtuoso scale where for example Miles Davis is at the top with few others... But then Chet Baker is on a scale of his own almost alone.....That explain the great love for many toward him.... His playing is a drama obsess with melody where he take refuge against himself and against the world, nothing else....It is this humility in his failings, and his simplicity in admitting them that touch the heart when he play....Listen to Andre Heuvelman who plays in the same scale for analogous reason.... Thanks for you interesting take on Chet.... Merry Christmas to you three_easy_payments |
Know just what you're talking about mahgister. For years I admired Mozart but never loved any, not at all. Classical music as a whole was kind of like that- liked some, admired some, never really loved any of it. One day by accident someone helped me make the connection with composers, realized Tchaikovsky turns me on, now I have just ordered my 3rd Tchaikovsky White Hot Stamper and am stoked and amazed at the coincidence because UPS notified me it was delivered just now! What I really love of course is the combination of superb music with beautiful recording. This is another fantastic coincidence because I just last night heard the new Patricia Barber Cafe Blue. Which is not new and I've had it a long time but on CD and this is the new 45 Impex 1Step pressing and oh my God what an experience! Can't say I am in love with Patricia Barber, per se, but I admire the talent on this record and absolutely love the way it sounds. The songs are all very different. All of them I get what they are doing, but some of them I LOVE what they are doing. Why some and not others? Why'd I love Jennifer Warnes Bird on a Wire first time I heard it? Why'd I fall head over heels for Born in Time? That's the million dollar question. |
Thanks millercarbon.... Your Tchaikovsky example is spot on.... Try his quartets if you dont already know them....I recommend Borodin quartet version... One day some great Russian musician , remembering a word he read in a book by Tolstoi speaking about some movement of a quatuor by Tchaikovsky, says that he was curious to look for this mysterious movement not precisely named by Tolstoi that was making him burst into tears....But there is 3 quatuors and what could this mysterious movement be? Each of this 3 quatuors has 4 movements, then one in these 12 is the right one.... Thinking that it will be easy to discover it after all, he listened to the 3 quatuors, but tears flows from him immediately from each and every movement of each quatuor.... He will never know after all which was the movement that has affected Tolstoi so much, because each movement of each one of these quatuors speak so much to the heart that it will stay a mystery... I can assure you that Tchaikovsky stay in my heart also after listening to these quatuors...Before that i only admired Tchaikovsky, but after that i loved him dearly.... Merry Christmas millercarbon.... P.S. i just begin to listen to Patricia Barber seems interesting thanks.... |