Paul Bley: 12 (+ 6) In A Row [reissue]

Avant Jazz / Free Improvisation / Avant-Garde
premiera polska: 2008-03-21
seria wydawnicza: OGY SERIES
kontynent: Ameryka Północna
kraj: Canada
opakowanie: Triplefoldowe etui
opis:
The Guardian * * * *:
Paul Bley, the Canadian jazz-piano elder statesman who helped introduce the world to Ornette Coleman, is a fearless cross-genre experimenter; his keyboard virtuosity gives him a gravitas that lets most of his ventures dictate their own standards. He does everything with such certainty that the outcomes, however wayward or ostensibly insular, take on a sort of inevitability. ECM recently released a meditative set of unaccompanied variations from Bley; this album is a mix of solo, duo, and trio pieces, also involving reeds player Hans Koch and flugelhornist Franz Koglmann. Bley's improvised solos glitter, trill, dart and rumble with the taut precision of compositions, at times joining an almost Jarrett-like convivial chime to variations on the atonality of Schoenberg and Webern, and even outbursts of boogie-woogie. The group sections explore soft brass reveries set against staccato reed-blasts that sound like shots from an air-gun; ghostly bass clarinet notes against sharp piano chords; strange swing sections, in which snorting bass clarinet sounds become a kind of walking bass; and some jazzy duets in which Koch's tenor oddly resembles Evan Parker and Sonny Rollins. Bley's slowly weaving yet sometimes startlingly funky blues on Solo 6 is typical of the scope of his embrace of 20th-century music of all kinds. This is perhaps predominantly a set for free-jazz fans; however, it's jostling with absorbing melody, and all 18 tracks are invitingly short.
by John Fordham

Editor's info:
"... there is in essence no difference between consonance and dissonance ... there is therefore no real distinction, rather a difference of degree between them. Dissonance is only a further rung on a ladder which continues to develop."
Anton Webern

If, after over 400 years of harmonic development, atonality is the primary advance of European "classical" music in the 20th century, it is remarkable how quickly, easily, and naturally it was assimilated by jazz. Remarkable, but not surprising. If there was an inherent flaw in the earliest attempts at 12-tone organization, by Josef Hauer and Arnold Schoenberg, it was the difficulty they had reconciling rhythmic impetus with their harmonic experiments. Schoenberg, especially, tried to solve this by, perversely, adopting older dance forms, specifically from Renaissance and Baroque models. Ultimately, Webern and, shortly after, Messiaen, attempted to break free of established models and formalize rhythm as another component in the serial process; not even Pierre Boulez, later extending their theories, was able to fully integrate such rhythmic procedures to his own satisfaction.
But jazz's innovations all have come precisely in the area of rhythm. And, further, jazz musicians - composers and improvisers alike - are typically individualists and thus famously anti-process. So, though some isolated attempts at adapting serial methods to jazz occurred (from committed partisans like the little-known David Mack to dabblers like the onlybriefly-interested Shorty Rogers), most jazz artists who felt so inclined merely took what they wanted from atonality (usually the large, angular intervals and unconventional chord structures) for expressive effect, and ignored the larger issues of serial methodology. Examples abound in the jazz of the first half of this century, but Duke Ellington's The Clothed Woman of 1947 is a particularly pertinent one. Duke's keyboard clusters and atonal melodic contour were harbingers of things to come.
Some pianists, especially those with virtuosic technique to flaunt like Cecil Taylor, Howard Riley, or Borah Bergman, wedded their ventures into atonality with an Ivesian extravagance of structure and gesture (though this argument, too, is something of an oversimplification - Cecil Taylor's music, 12 (+6) In A
Art. Lange, April 1991

muzycy:
Paul Bley: piano
Hans Koch: reeds (clarinets & saxophones)
Franz Koglmann: flugelhorn

utwory:

1 Solo 1 3:13
2 Trio 1 3:37
3 Solo 2 3:34
4 Trio 2 2:22
5 Solo 3 3:27
6 Trio 3 3:04
7 Duo 1 1:59
8 Duo 2 1:58
9 Duo 3 2:17
10 Solo 4 4:27
11 Trio 4 2:59
12 Solo 5 3:47
13 Trio 5 4:57
14 Solo 6 4:57
15 Trio 6 4:28
16 Solo 7 2:37
17 Trio 7 2:20
18 Solo 8 3:07

total time - 59:08
wydano: 2008-02
nagrano: Recorded at Foundation Artists' House Boswil/Switzerland on May 23rd and 24th, 1990 by Peter Pfister
more info: www.hathut.com
more info2: www.improvart.com/bley/