Sunday, October 7, 2007

Free jazz?


Improvisation, noise, contemporary classic and free jazz are not exactly selling loads of records. I think music like this is hard work for the listener (and performer?) because we don’t recognise enough patterns. In music melodies are the patterns we “need”, and we need variation (too much repetition makes us crazy). (Hey I’m only guessing here).
Things happen over time of course, due to evolution or revolution, or just hard work. It’s just like clothes looking cool one year, and ridiculous some years later. I remember the first time I heard Miles Davis’ “On the corner” in the 70s, it was just irritating. Now it sounds downright funky (not the whole record in one go!).
The reason for all this quasipsychological talk: I played Ornette Coleman’s ”Free Jazz: A Collective Improvisation” (1960) for the first time in years, and the shocking thing is, it sounds so fresh! I guess this double quartet sounded far out in 1960, but now it may even work on your vorspiel (it might perhaps be used for Wyatting on the nachspiel).

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