January Find of the Month

A stunningly beautiful, breathy sax playing Gershwin’s Someone to Watch Over Me. Located on The Ultimate George Gershwin Collection volume 2.

Romanticism

As I get older I am aware of the importance of the concept of romanticism – not just within jazz, but within life. Romanticism is more than the “act of being romantic” – it is an optimistic view, perhaps naively, of the world. When I think of the concept a hopeless romantic, what is it that brings to mind? A dreamer – someone who concentrates on the positive and forgets the negative in things. A person who creates a unrealistic view of something in their mind. Someone who can find beauty in a place or thing because of related associations or experience.

What romanticism entails is that brilliant optimism of life, flying in the face of reality and the doldrums of existence, regardless of what science or realism might offer. It is an insistence that the world is good and beautiful even when it appears not that way to others.

One must assume that if the romantic is seeing things in this light, differently than anyone else, his view must be incorrect, or at least irrelevant to most people. Obviously if ten people sit in a room and nine believe the walls are blue, they probably are blue irrespective of what the 10th person would say. So what is this “vision” of beauty and righteousness? Surely it is incorrect, but it certainly exists. In this way the romantic notion becomes abstracted from its object; the rose glasses are removed and inspected.

I believe this romanticism is as real as the rose glasses are. They are pure beauty and optimism – so pure that whatever is passed through this romantic ideology comes out more beautiful, more comforting, more loving and hopeful than ever would have been seen in reality. These romantic glasses are truly awe inspiring.

Can we describe these glasses, this conversion of the everyday from average to wondrous? We can try with words. But these concepts are difficult to find proper definition buckets with which to hold them. Music is the closest analogy, because music can be both the interpreter and the interpreted. It is, in fact, the process of turning life into beauty.

Where it all happened

The city all other cities want to be.  New York City, the greatest city in the world.

The Best Charlie Mingus is Not Actually Him

The best Charlie Mingus is not actually him playing bass, what he is known for. It is arguably one of the truest sets ever recorded, a solo piano album, intensely personal and rich. It was titled Mingus Plays Piano and recorded in 1963, thesame year the Beatles took England by storm. The recordings, from a poignant Memories of You to a staggeringly breathtaking Myself When I am Real, display romanticism, introspection and everything that makes solo, improvisational music so personal.

This album is very accessible and can be freely referred.

What makes jazz great

is the improvisation, above all.  The streaming musicality, the kind that never ends, even when the instrument is put down.  Music is separate but inseparable from the instrument; it gives reality to the virtual, a voice to thought.  It is a moment’s representation of life wrapped up into a ball the moment that it was played, something completely unique to that moment in time that we have somehow gained access to.

It is contemplative since it can be the most direct, un-mocked-up expression of emotion.  I believe it is the most expressive form of music and the easiest with which to create beautiful, cathartic melodies allowing direct access to the soul of the musician.

Current Sets

Recently I’ve acquired a few albums I wanted to quickly mention, one of them worth exploring.

Oscar Peterson, Oscar Peterson’s Finest Hour
2007 Compilation, recordings from 1950-1965

This CD contains some fast moving tracks, skillfully and blazingly played, by who I consider the greatest jazz/blues pianist who ever lived. For me, Peterson really comes into his own while playing romantic, breezy or contemplative solo piano, and these recordings are brilliant but high tempo. The real issue I have with this album is the recording quality, which is clawingly bad while listening to this great music.

I bought the album because of the tracks I hadn’t heard, plus a temptation to get another version of Mumbles with Clark Terry, if another version even existed than the one on Trio Plus One. It’s basically Oscar Peterson on piano and Clark Terry mumbling to the music, but it’s great jazz and fun to listen to.

George Gershwin, Essential George Gershwin
2003 Compilation, recordings from 1920-1937

This two disc album has some striking recordings of some of the most classic Gershwin tunes. The songs all have vocalists and it is great to hear the songs as they were originally intended – sometimes I think an instrumental version gives so much power to the performer that the resulting version of a song can become completely different and unrecognizable. This might say more about Oscar Peterson, for example, or John Coltrane if it were a sax set. Here you hear Gershwin as it was intended. The vocalists are great, but they do use that shimmery vocal style popular with music of the 1920s and 30s. The recording quality ranges from fair to excellent.

I think this is a thorough compilation with some great period editions of Gershwin tunes. However, I would not recommend it to early Gershwin listeners because there are much more accessible versions of his tunes. For that, I would definitely recommend Oscar Peterson’s The Gershwin Songbooks or any of Thelonious Monk’s classic versions of these infinitely romantic melodies.