The Elysian Fields

This single tune had an inordinate amount of influence on my own playing, especially that first minute or so, when it appeared in a Guitar Player magazine circa 1986. At a time when I was trying to play betterFasterMore, it taught me phrasing.

Techno (Album Version) is from the album Still Warm:

Getting back to Oscar Peterson and his trio, here we add one more person to the mix:

Ella Fitzgerald.

'nuff said, listen & watch:



You can hear Ella singing the tune as an MP3, from the album Jazz 'Round Midnight: Ella Fitzgerald

Chick Corea is very inspiring, even when he doesn't have a keyboard within reach.

I still remember bumping into him out in LA, and being asked by the owner of the music store I worked for to get his autograph for the store wall. I did so, approaching him tentatively as one might do to any living legend, and Chick obliged with two signatures - one for me, one for the store - without me asking for the second. While he was doing so, though, he talked to me about my music. He asked me questions about what kind of music it was, about my confidence in performing it, and was interested and engaged in the conversation, and offered encouragement. I didn't realize that, while talking, he had also written an extra bit on the autograph for me - echoing the tone of what he had been saying to me.

Most of the other musicians I approached for store autographs were more than happy to talk about themselves. While Chick wasn't the only exception, he was the only one who went out of his way to discuss me and my music.

I talked to him for maybe five minutes, and he wound up being one of my most influential music teachers... great guy!

Here's our current set-tune, 'Round Midnight, performed by Chick, along with John Pattitucci (keep an ear out for the bass solo!), and Dave Weckl:



A recording of this tune live - I can't quite tell if it's the same performance given the short sample; it doesn't seem to be - can be found on the album Alive.

Switching from Badi Assad to her older brothers Sergio and Odair, here they are along with Yo-Yo Ma, Nilson Matta, Paquito D'Rivera, and Cyro Baptista, performing Um a Zero (MP3)
from Yo-Yo Ma's album Obrigado Brazil:

Here is Brazilian guitarist and vocalist Badi Assad with the tune Ai Que Saudade D'oce (MP3) from her album Chameleon:

Here's another video of Nigel & Quintet, live at the 2008 BBC Proms:



This tune can be found on the increasingly nice two disc set, a Very Nice Album (Amazon.com).

The tune is, out of all the ones I've selected, perhaps the most classically flavored for the first couple of minutes, and then jumps into the jazziest of jazz trio type stuff.

Good music.

I suppose that, with a part 1 in the title, you can kind of guess where tomorrow's video is going... however, the one thing you won't be able to guess - without cheating and checking for related YouTube videos today! - is who the guest star will be in part 2...

Anywho, Nigel Kennedy.

Nigel's a violinist who threw the classical world into a spin when he had the nerve to play the music of the masters while sporting a punk haircut and attire. I think what upset most of the people who get upset at the lack of neat grooming and tuxedos whilst playing technically complex romantic violin concertos was that he played them so well, better than most of the clean-cut folks who should have been able to play a violin better on account of dressing like a penguin.

It sounds silly when you put it like that, but I remember hearing some of the classical radio announcers and media reports when Nigel started to get some international recognition, and that's basically the kind of things they said.

You can learn a bit more about Nigel by watching an excerpt from This Is Your Life (YouTube), where they talk about his work with Kate Bush amongst other things.

This piece is classified as jazz, although it mixes other elements in with it, and, if you stick around to the end, you'll be let in on the guest star for the second part.Here's the first part of Hills of Saturn, filmed live at Royal Albert Hall for the BBC Proms 2008:



You can hear Nigel and his Quintet on his first recording of his original works, the nicely titled Very Nice Album (Amazon.com).

John McLaughlin: Floating Point

I was really trying to resist reviewing this, on account of having his 2006 release in the bedside stack waiting for a review. To be fair, its only been there a week or so, but I've had it since 2006...

There are definitely some similarities between the two recordings - there's overlapping personnel, and there's a similar mix of his Eastern interests (see his Shakti or the Mahavishnu stuff) with a more traditional jazz.

Perhaps the most surprising thing is this doesn't really stand out as a guitarists record. The last track - Five Peace Band - comes the closest to a guitar driven tune, and even then, as I started typing this out, Hadrien Feraud breaks out into a bass solo section. Not a guitar-driven record at all, just some really good jazz.

On all the tracks, John plays a guitar synth, and that helps keep the guitar sound down - especially since on half the tracks he plays only guitar synth; the other half he plays both. Still, the lead instruments are likely to be the soprano sax, bamboo flute, or semi-wordless vocals.

While I've heard some lamenting amongst certain circles of guitarists about the long period John set down his electric guitar and played only Marielle (apologies, I can no longer link directly to it; the link goes to the Wechter custom gallery, where photos of Marielle can be found) - and I'm not one of them; not only do I love his acoustic stuff (especially his Concerto for Guitar & Orchestra "The Mediterranean"), but I've played Marielle, and it's flat-out the single best guitar in the known universe and 9 out of 10 unknown universes. Still, I think those anti-acoustic folks should be happy that he's playing the electric once again. Even if he's letting other brilliant and talented musicians spend time in the spotlight.

Joni Mitchell: Mingus

Joni? Jaco!

Okay, so, for me, the writer of all the lyrics and singer of all the melodies and player of all the guitars really takes a backseat to the brilliance of the bass player. Some others have been critical of this recording for much the same reason: Jaco really hogs the spotlight, he overrides everything else, blah blah. Not so much. I still hear Joni's voice, singing melodies some jazz fanatics insist prove she is incapable of being a jazz vocalist and other jazz fanatics insist she got spot-on. I actually do notice the guitar, which is pretty damn interesting on its own, and might make me want to listen to other Joni-stuff, although, to be fair, I'm here mostly for Jaco, on account of him being Jaco, and that's just the way it is.

This album gets a lot of critical flak, some as noted, some for the decision to put Mingus raps between most of the tunes - five raps vs. six tunes proper - but that just really doesn't fly in my world. I was expecting something disjointed, jarring, that interrupted my pleasure of the music. That didn't happen. They flowed nicely, and they were entertaining little glimpses into the life of Charles Mingus, and this is, after all, an album of Mingus music, dedicated to the then-recently-departed Mingus, who - back to Jaco's dominance on these tunes - happens to have been one of the, if not the, pre-eminent jazz bass players of all time.

If you couldn't hear Jaco on these tunes, or, if things had gone differently, whoever played bass in the band, that would be a shame. This is a musical memorial to the man, and the man was a bass player. Now, he was also a composer and a band leader, so a completely solo-bass outing wouldn't be a fitting tribute, but I see nothing wrong and hear so much that is right with the way this was done.

I've mostly been one for instrumental jazz, in fact, I think the closest I might come to a jazz singer on anything I have *thus far* in my collection would have to be classical soprano Ute Lemper's recording of Edith Piaf and Marlene Dietrich's cabaret repertoire, Illusions. I'll leave it up to the jazz fanatics to decide in how many ways that disqualifies me to evaluate Joni as a jazz vocalist, but, hey I like her voice and the melodies. I'm not even going to get into the lyrics themselves - more and more I'm coming to realize the place lyrics have in music, and it's not the same place that words have in poetry or literature. In fact, you can take damn fine examples of the latter, put them to music, and have them seem utter cheese. You can also take any schlump of words - sensical or not, or wordless sounds even - and string them together with a melody line that makes them pure poetry.

This is a great album, and will definitely get a lot of replay.

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Phenomenal.