Jazz for aficionados
Hi Stuart Limited doses of atonal/dissonance works for me as well. This is a live version (sounds nothing like the studio release) of Coltrane's Crescent with Pharoah Sanders alternating with Trane. The first 3 minutes you think its a melodic song unfolding nicely and then the dogs are let off the chains! |
Wow -- that's a pretty intense example! I cannot handle that. David Murray is an example of an artist whose recordings span a spectrum. I don't enjoy the more severe albums but I enjoy the more mellow ones, like this one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CBNXS7C-5So&list=OLAK5uy_nd0zv3V5YsbQ_wdk4MyFkij5UKnMKHhjQ&index=2 He did 3 or 4 albums with the same group, perhaps all recorded in one session. Ming's Samba is another I like. Could only find one tune on youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XDECyUGsU8Y
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"The main thing a musician would like to do is to give a picture to the listener of the many wonderful things he knows of and senses in the universe. That's what music is to me—it's just another way of saying this is a big, beautiful universe we live in, that's been given to us, and here's an example of just how magnificent and encompassing it is. That's what I would like to do. I think that's one of the greatest things you can do in life, and we all try to do it in some way. The musician's is through his music. Coltrane and Eric Dolphy interviewed by Don DeMichael, as cited in "John Coltrane and Eric Dolphy Answer the Jazz Critic DownBeat |
Life "encompasses" a lot. Different musicians choose to express their respective experiences of being human in different ways that may or may not be consistent with how a given listener defines "wonderful", "beautiful" or "magnificent". I guess it comes down to how much effort we’re willing to put in as individuals to try to find the "beauty" in something that initially strikes us as ugly/abrasive. There is an inevitable tension between artist and the one perceiving the art. As artists we want to be free to be genuine in our expressions. Presumably we want to facilitate some degree of communication, as well. For some, "the personal is the universal". For others, part of the craft is working with the material in ways that make the universality more explicit. It’s a balancing act. |
