WMV Music Web Log

Thinking about the upcoming St. Columba's EVOLUTIONS concert with John Kamman: Suppose we were to continue on this path of combined jazz and chamber music - what is the repertoire? Of course, there's the "classic" jazz-based works: the Martinu "Revue de Cuisine" from 1926, and Milhaud's "La Creation du Monde", also written for a French ballet in the late 1920's, interestingly enough.

But then there's all kinds of really interesting contemporary works like Frank Proto's Quintet, written for a "Trout-like" ensemble, but sounding quite improvisational and club-like. (Mark Stephenson turned me on to Proto). And also, Ives' Piano Trio, one of the great works of American music, piled contrapuntally high with witty, funny, even hilarious Americana - I particularly like the organist who can't keep a beat, gets lost, adding quarter notes here and there, but always very very loud; and the dizzy, falling-down drunk version of "My Old Kentucky Home." And there's the gospel church ecstatic blues rendition of some familiar hymn. Ives and Cage are real American originals, pioneers on what we can do with music on this continent, outside the shadows of Beethoven, Sweelinck, or Rameau. But then there are a whole lot of others, generations of them, free-spirited American composers of music. Think about Harry Partch! Or Bob Dylan. Really, the project is about American music, because both jazz and whatever you want to call the written-down stuff we play - they both draw on all the American sources and make new fabric out of them.

There's also this Australian work called "Rock Sonata", I think, which I would love to get my hands on - it's either about geology or rock n roll.