Double Bass Free Jazz and Improvised Music

[Tom Lane]

OTOH, at the Berlin Jazz Fest last year, Anthony Braxton presented what I thought was a really good free jazz [Invalid or Expired Link Removed]. He had 60 musicians stroll through the [Invalid or Expired Link Removed] contemporary art and architecture gallery. In this case, there were some charts of a sort, sometimes, and a form, in the sense that the some or many or all of the groupings were pre-arranged, and where in the gallery they located was also, to some extent, planned, but after that, the music the listener experienced was very personalized, as the listeners and the performers wandered through the gallery. Many times I could hear a few different groups at the same time. At other times, if I got close enough to one of the larger ensembles, I could only hear one. What I found particularly interesting was how I would hear unanticipated climatic points, most of which were very brief, but happened fairly frequently. Kind of a free jazz performance art.

 

[Bruce Calin]

There was a guy in Mpls. who had a group called the "Free jazz ensemble." In spite of the usual jokes, there would occasionally be something worth listening to. It was very occasion specific in that the same players would do something interesting one concert and the next would be less successful. A different player would have a huge effect, which I guess is what it's all about.
I wonder where the Ornette Coleman harmelodic concept fits in. I always thought this idea was great for establishing some sort of structure that was something for the listener to hang a reference on.

 

[brianrost]

As I wrote above, as long as I have an emotional reaction, then it's good. The Parker/Cooper-Moore concert just never moved me. I was expecting it would eventually since I have several of Parker's albums and liked them. It's not like I hoped they would suddenly burst into a fractured take on "All the Things You Are". So was it just a bad night for them or was it a good night but just not for me? If I saw them again would I love it?

To some extent, recordings have a big advantage over a live performance: I can go back and listen to it again. I can think of any number of recordings I didn't get at all until I put them on as background music! As a kid I used to stack LPs up on the changer, put on headphones and go to sleep with the music still going. One night I cued up my first-ever Miles Davis album, the Live at Fillmore 2-LP that came out after Bitches Brew. I had played it a few times thinking "what the heck is this? I don't get it!". But that night I woke up in the middle of the album and was transfixed with what I heard. Next day I bought Bitches Brew and that was the start of my Miles journey which eventually took me all the way back to the sides with Bird. I'm still not there with Cecil Taylor

Another free show that blew my mind was Matt and Joe Manieri with Barre Phillips and (I think) Ralph Peterson at the Lizard Lounge. They played two sets, each non-stop. The clock told me that each set was about an hour but it felt like it had only been five minutes each. Whatever they were doing I was totally pulled into it.

 

[Keith Rawlings]

Am I just listening to the wrong things? I just can’t get into it. The secretary at my last job compared free jazz to what you would hear on a continuous loop if there was a Hell and you were banished there. I kind of agree with her.

 

[damonsmith]

Probably not. It isn't for everyone!

Am I just listening to the wrong things? I just can’t get into it. The secretary at my last job compared free jazz to what you would hear on a continuous loop if there was a Hell and you were banished there. I kind of agree with her.

 

[Tom Lane]

Am I just listening to the wrong things? I just can’t get into it. The secretary at my last job compared free jazz to what you would hear on a continuous loop if there was a Hell and you were banished there. I kind of agree with her.

I'm no expert, but I don't see why free jazz would be different than any other musical genre: a lot of the unpublished groups are really not very good, much of the published material is just "okay", and a much smaller fraction is brilliant, so, I think you have to seek out the "good" stuff, and even then, much of that might not be to your liking.

Here's a performer I think of as kind of a bridge between bebop or maybe cool jazz and free jazz. I think some have called him avant garde. Seems like a pretty flexible form in this performance.

 

[Eric Hochberg]

Some of the things I listened to as a youngster back in the day include Paul Bley's Mr Joy, Ayler's Spirits Rejoice, Charles Tyler Ensemble on ESP, Haden Liberation Music, Coltrane Ascension, Joseph Jarman Song For, and Michael Mantler Jazz Composers Orchestra. I also regularly attended AACM concerts in Chicago featuring Richard Abrams Sextet, AIR, Art Ensemble, Henry Threadgil and Cecil Taylor with Jimmy Lyons and Andrew Cyrille. Some of this music I loved and some, not so much.

Two more recent performances I attended include a Chicago Jazz Fest Roscoe Mitchell large band set that I couldn't sit all the way through. It was non-stop cacophony and I couldn't get with it.

And, the Dave Liebman Quintet at Cornelia St Cafe, featuring Ellery Eskelin and Sam Newsome on saxes with bass and drums. That was a mesmerizing hour of music making with ever changing textures, dynamics, brilliant, contrasting solos from the three sax players, and driving rhythms. In general, these are the elements necessary for me to really relate to the music, although there are always exceptions, it's art!

 

[Don Hergert]

I have to admit that I have serious trouble being touched by the Free Jazz and Improvised Music forms of jazz, but I have huge respect for people who perform them, especially for audiences that they know may be seriously challenged by their work. And I also have huge respect for people who, having known the nuances of many if not all of the forms of straight-ahead jazz, are willing to take it a few steps further, breaking the mold, causing such a "disturbance in the force".

There are parallels in other genre too, which also have trouble touching some audiences. In bluegrass, there are those who seek to "honor the gods" by copying the works that these gods created as closely as possible, and then there are those who seek to "honor the gods" by improvising and developing brand new sounds and techniques, also as these gods did. And there are plenty of acceptance related challenges in both of those directions. I'm sure this happens in many other genre too.

Like so many things, these schools of musical expression individually require nearly a lifetime to master. I hope that when all musical artists reach the end of their musical road, they can look back and be happily satisfied with the directions they have taken and the musics they have loved.

 

[damonsmith]

It is trickier than other music, in that various criteria is applied beyond whether or not you like it or not. Pros could do a very polished performance that doesn't present any new ideas where relative amateurs could stumble onto a truly new way of interacting or new sound or set of sounds.
It is a bit closer to art history where how you are contributing to the whole is part of the metric. Most often, each person has a unique enough set of sounds to bring out something special when put together with others.
When the musicians are not changing, you tend to end up with enough trust to really push where the interaction is going to be.

I'm no expert, but I don't see why free jazz would be different than any other musical genre: a lot of the unpublished groups are really not very good, much of the published material is just "okay", and a much smaller fraction is brilliant, so, I think you have to seek out the "good" stuff, and even then, much of that might not be to your liking.

 

[tsheldon]

I'd say that "waiting for something to happen" is a bit like trying to find a cat face in a Pollock or Rothko - even if you do find one it has nothing to do with what the artist is doing!

This is so good. So concise.

Thank you, Sensei!

 

[statsc]

I’ve always enjoyed playing free jazz more than listening to it, especially in situations that mixed free sections with more structured sections.

 

[Keith Rawlings]

I'm no expert, but I don't see why free jazz would be different than any other musical genre: a lot of the unpublished groups are really not very good, much of the published material is just "okay", and a much smaller fraction is brilliant, so, I think you have to seek out the "good" stuff, and even then, much of that might not be to your liking.

Here's a performer I think of as kind of a bridge between bebop or maybe cool jazz and free jazz. I think some have called him avant garde. Seems like a pretty flexible form in this performance.

Now Ahmad Jamal is awesome! I have Live at the Pershing: But Not For Me and Vol. 2 and they’re amazing! These don’t sound like the “free jazz” that I’m referring to.

 

[Keith Rawlings]

Some of the things I listened to as a youngster back in the day include Paul Bley's Mr Joy, Ayler's Spirits Rejoice, Charles Tyler Ensemble on ESP, Haden Liberation Music, Coltrane Ascension, Joseph Jarman Song For, and Michael Mantler Jazz Composers Orchestra. I also regularly attended AACM concerts in Chicago featuring Richard Abrams Sextet, AIR, Art Ensemble, Henry Threadgil and Cecil Taylor with Jimmy Lyons and Andrew Cyrille. Some of this music I loved and some, not so much.

Two more recent performances I attended include a Chicago Jazz Fest Roscoe Mitchell large band set that I couldn't sit all the way through. It was non-stop cacophony and I couldn't get with it.

And, the Dave Liebman Quintet at Cornelia St Cafe, featuring Ellery Eskelin and Sam Newsome on saxes with bass and drums. That was a mesmerizing hour of music making with ever changing textures, dynamics, brilliant, contrasting solos from the three sax players, and driving rhythms. In general, these are the elements necessary for me to really relate to the music, although there are always exceptions, it's art!

I’ve got to check these out. Thanks for all of the recommendations.

 

[brianrost]

Keith,

There's a very wide spectrum of music considered "free". What is considered the first "free" recordings from 1949 doesn't sound radical today. If you didn't know these two tracks were free improv, you probably wouldn't be able to tell just by listening.

 

[David Jayne]

Here's the best example I've heard. They claim there was no discussion, no charts, no nothing. They just started playing and this came out. Amazing stuff!

 

[brianrost]

At a clinic I attended, Jeff Berlin asked the audience to call out three notes. Some wise guy deliberately called out a note just a half step away from one of the others. Jeff then played each note in order, then reverse order, then in various other permutations across multiple octaves, then went into an improv that slowly wove in a few passing tones but kept coming back to those three notes. After 3 or 4 minutes of this, he stopped and asked if anyone in the audience knew how he had done that. The answer was simply that he considered all the possible keys, scales and chords those notes suggested and then used that knowledge to compose something on the spot.

 

[David Jayne]

At a clinic I attended, Jeff Berlin asked the audience to call out three notes. Some wise guy deliberately called out a note just a half step away from one of the others. Jeff then played each note in order, then reverse order, then in various other permutations across multiple octaves, then went into an improv that slowly wove in a few passing tones but kept coming back to those three notes. After 3 or 4 minutes of this, he stopped and asked if anyone in the audience knew how he had done that. The answer was simply that he considered all the possible keys, scales and chords those notes suggested and then used that knowledge to compose something on the spot.

A supremely talented guy. I've been following him lately. He's really changed. Not the same guy who got banned from here years ago; total 360.

 

[jallenbass]

Kind of Blue and Brubeck's Time Out are often cited as good introductions to Jazz for those who are unfamiliar with the style. What would be the Free Jazz/Improvised Music equivalent?

 

[turf3]

Kind of Blue and Brubeck's Time Out are often cited as good introductions to Jazz for those who are unfamiliar with the style. What would be the Free Jazz/Improvised Music equivalent?

Here's some that have resonated with me, at different times. There are different degrees of "freeness" amongst these. Some wouldn't be typically categorized as "free jazz" but have free elements. I'll say honestly that "extended techniques" bore me to tears if they become anything other than an occasional spice element. So my list will reflect that taste.

Early Ornette recordings ("Free Jazz", "Shape of Jazz to Come")
Hutcherson/Dolphy/Hubbard, "Out to Lunch"
Mingus, "Black Saint" (not really free but elements of it)
Dolphy - God Bless the Child
World Saxophone Quartet - "Plays Ellington"
Ronald Shannon Jackson
James Blood Ulmer
ARthur Blythe (he covers a big range of material)

Just a few ideas.

 

[damonsmith]

Kind of Blue and Brubeck's Time Out are often cited as good introductions to Jazz for those who are unfamiliar with the style. What would be the Free Jazz/Improvised Music equivalent?

As far as the real classics, I'd go with Spiritual Unity by Albert Ayler, Interstellar Space by Coltrane, Machine Gun by Peter Brotzmann, any early Art Ensemble of Chicago, any Braxton 70s group with Dave Holland (Circle is not the best of these, but very common). Those are all ways in to varying degrees!
Unless not hearing a 32 bar form is a shock to your system, the early Ornette albums are not going to cause you any trouble. His music gets best with David Izenzon on bass.
Another way in for us is solo bass albums: Was Da Ist by Peter Kowald is still the best as far as I am concerned. Any William Parker, Barre Phillips, Barry Guy or Joelle Leandre solo album is going to be a great way in for bassists.