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I admire Miles Davis, i admire Stravinsky; but i loved Chet Baker and Scriabin...You?

What we listen to we cannot trace always a border between cold or cool admiration and heart wrenching love at first sight....

I admire Bach without limit but i love also him dearly....Here admiration and love are one....

The first time li listen to Chet Baker i was not even sure if it was a great trumpetist, but i love him without knowing why....

More i listen to Miles Davis more i admire him but i still wait for love to come....I like it a lot but it is not love and i know the first time i listen to him why he is a great trumpetist, unlike Chet, his mastering of the instrument was evident.... For Chet i listen not the trumpet but the voice of his instrument, i even forgot he was playing the trumpet and the question if he was great was secondary....Miles was great without any doubts.... But i am in love with Chet because he touch my heart.....



Sometimes the frontier between these 2 are less clear, i admire Brahms but i like him more than i love him.... Bruckner i admire him like a new Bach and i love him like our old grandpa with a feeling that will never end....

I admire Monteverdi at the level of my admiration for Bach, but i like him only , it is not this passionnate love that changes my heart and life like with those i love...

I love Bill Evans dearly but i admire Keith Jarrett greatly but without any passion....

I admire and love Vivaldi at the same times.....

I admire Telemann, Haendel, Haydn more than i love them..... I am in love with Purcell tough and Josquin Desprez.....

I admire Hildegard the Bingen and i love her without words.... I am in love with the organ composer Pachelbel but i only admire Palestrina....

I admire Arvo Part very much, but am i in love? No....Excep perhaps for one or 2 of his work: Alina for example....I admire and love Gorecki symphony of tears but not much the rest....Only respect for the rest of his works....

I admire Arrau, Horowitz, many pianists but am i in love? No, but i am in total love with Ervin Nyiregyházi , Ivan Moravec, or Sofronitsky....

I admire the composer Sorabji almost like Bach but dont feel any love at all....Deep fascination and admiration for a genius  that never speak from the heart to the heart, only from his brain to my brain.... But what a genius ! 

I admire many, many, female singers, but i am in love with only a few, i love Billie Holiday, Marianne Anderson for example....

I will not go on with my list any longer...

But what speak to our heart and what speak to our brain is not the same and sometimes some music speak for us to the 2 part of ourselves...

But one thing must me clear, i dont want to live without the great musicians whom i only admire. I like them like interesting friends, even if i am not changed by love at first sight with them, swimming in the sea of adoration....


What are those you admire but only like ? What are those you clearly are in love with?

When the brain speak first and always, it is admiration and friendship not love.... In love there is a mystery in with we participate and which transform our life....

Those who we admire gives us pleasure.... Those who we love gives us not only that but an ultimate meaning that go to your heart.....


Listening music is learning to listen into the many levels in us where music can reach and transform us.... Each music or musician has this potential to change us at a level or at another one, or at all levels simultaneously....But for sure it is different for each of us......

I apologize if my OP makes no sense for some.... I hope my question will make sense for some....

Thanks......

128x128mahgister
cmjones's avatar
cmjones
45 posts
 
I love John Hiatt, and admire Ry Cooder.
I love Taj Mahal, and admire Muddy Waters.
I love Charlie Haden, and admire Ornette Coleman.
I love Eva Cassidy, and admire Patricia Barber.
I love Mark Knopfler, and admire Eric Clapton.
I love Frank Zappa, and admire Trilok Gurtu.
I love Aretha Franklin, and admire Nina Simone. 
I love Steve Lacy, and admire Charlie Parker.
I love Ruben Gonzales, and admire Chucho Valdes.
I love Aaron Neville, and admire Donny Hathaway.
I love Miles Davis, and admire Freddie Hubbard.
I love Steely Dan, and admire Blue Nile.

I know little about classical music, but will certainly learn from this thread. Thanks for posting.
mahgister's avatar
mahgister OP
13,008 posts
 
I dont know what you will learn but i know already that i will learn a great deal with your posts and suggestions...

Thanks very much and my deepest respect.....
stuartk
2,764 posts
 
Very Interesting thread, even if it is somewhat "over my head"...

I've repeatedly encountered the judgment in Jazz publications that Miles was not particularly accomplished, technically--  that his strength lay more in his ability to convey emotion or "Duende". I'm not a horn player so I don't know whether this is true but compared to, say, Woody Shaw, Miles' playing sounds less virtuosic to me. 

I'd be curious as to "which Miles" you've listened to, as his recordings cover a wide stylistic range. My responses to his playing range from love to outright dislike, depending upon the musical setting. His "second great quintet" (with H. Hancock, W. Shorter, R. Carter and T. Williams) is my favorite Jazz group, period. I love and admire what those players did in that group. When it comes to players I "love", I can't help but "admire" their musicianship. There are many players who are clearly very skilled but whose playing doesn't move me, emotionally. I "respect"  those individuals. 

I'm more of an album-by-album listener. I can't think of any case in which I love every recording by a given artist, even those artists I love above all others. For example, "Europe '72" by the Grateful Dead is one of my best-loved recordings, period-- "desert island" material. for me. The fact that I play guitar no doubts helps with appreciation and thus, admiration for the playing. However, most of the band's output is far too sloppy and technically inconsistent for me to endure. I guess I both love and hate the Dead. 

I can't comment on Classical music except to admit that I respect its creators and practictioners but find it uninvolving, as a rule. The rhythms simply don't engage my body. (I'm one of those listeners for whom PRaT is vital). At the other end of the spectrum would be Rap/Hip-Hop, which offers nothing but rhythm and of an extremely monotonous (to my ears) character. 








 












mahgister's avatar
mahgister OP
13,008 posts
 
I’d be curious as to "which Miles" you’ve listened to, as his recordings cover a wide stylistic range. My responses to his playing range from love to outright dislike, depending upon the musical setting.






Thanks first for your participation and kind and interesting observations...

Food for tought!

First thing to be clear i like Miles Davis.... I dont know of anyone who like jazz who will not like him... I admire him for the player he was, taking the trumpet playing in a whole new range of styles and adventures.... His production is not all to my liking but in general i like a great portion of his creations...

Miles take the trumpet to his ultimate possibilities, and the trumpet serve him , impossible to not like him...

But the mystery for me is and always has been that Chet Baker touch me deeper in the heart with a minimalistic playing completely devoted to singing emotions with trumpet or voice.... I love him.... I dont even know if i admire him ! In truth i admire him, without being bothered by the admiration and the distance it create between the object of admiration and the admirer.... Because there is no distance, no separation at all between his music and my soul...

I listen to Miles always with pleasure, i listen to Baker with crunching emotion....


Another example is Sun Ra i admire him without reserve, but i dont know a single piece of him that can touch my heart.... None i know of.... But his production is enormous i must wait.... I like Sun Ra a lot....I will be always fascinated by him and his music engine.... But i will never love him like Bill Evans....I even bought the biography of Sun Ra....  
😁


I like Kenneth Wheeler for example very much like Miles, a true genius also, and i listen to all his cd with awe for his unique musical improvisation and sound....I admire him with all my spirit and soul and i know i admire him totally..... But why did he never touch me like Chet?
I like Wheeler so much i can listen to him 12 hours in line, i did it just days ago.....😊 I cannot be tired of his mastering of the trumpet.... It is a TRUE genius not at all under Miles... But not one of his piece touch my heart like Chet? Why?


In classical music my favorite example is Stravinsky, i admire him, but here admiration has killed my love.... I rarely listen to him, for me his music is always a cold perfect creation...A perfect object.... Unlike Scriabin that touch my soul.... Why ?




I dont say i am right, that my "taste" are right.... I am only fascinated by the mystery of music and the many levels where music touch our body, heart, soul, mind.....


Like most has understood my thread has nothing to do with bashing an artist and defending an other one at all....

My thread is a reflection about how deep music go into ourself and why?
stuartk
2,764 posts
 
Yes; "taste" is indeed a mystery.   I suspect, had we access to the entire spectrum of what we call a human being, we might have a better sense of what constitutes "taste". Music operates on multiple levels, some that are fairly evident and others that remain hidden from view for most of us.

I have a visceral dislike of the classically trained voice. Why? I could say that it sounds artificial or inauthentic to me, but does such terminology   really get to the heart of my antipathy? No. I suspect there is something else going on. Perhaps it's a result of experiences from past lives. Or, perhaps it has more to do with something that cannot be explained intellectually-- sound as vibration-- affecting me on levels I cannot perceive, only feel, and in a rather primitive manner at that-- solely in terms of liking or disliking. Call it resonance. 

Perhaps, the music we most love tunes us or entrains us within, a vibration or range of vibrations that connect us to a level of being we most crave to experience, whether we're cognizant of it or not. We could come up with all sorts of reasons why we love or hate Engelberg Humperdink, EmmyLou Harris, Yanni, Al Green, Ali Akbar Khan, Sara Vaughan or Kiri Takanawa  without ever perceiving what's going on at what might be called a subtle or soul level.

I'm theorizing that we recognize when what we're hearing resonates with this level because of how it makes us feel and how much we like whatever that feeling may be. For some, it may be peace; for others, aggression, excitement, melancholy or anger. People are "tuned" differently and so, enjoy "resonating" with different qualities of vibration. 

I have no idea if this is how things are or not; it's simply an attempt to expore possibilities within the bounds of my life experience and conceptual framework.  









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