Viddie: Semi-Simple Variations (TBP)

Finally, a notable jazz video less than 40 years old. No doubt it took a lot of arm twisting to get superlative geek jazzers The Bad Plus to play along in this video accompaniment to their recording of modernist composer Milton Babbitt's "Semi-Simple Variations." The track is from TBP's album "For All I Care" out last month on Concord.



Tip: Do the Math, The Bad Plus Blog, which has stills from the shoot and, as if to justify the peripatetic eye-candy, an essay by pianist Ethan Iverson on the blending of jazz and classic forms. (They also express the hope that Babbitt gets a chance to see the video before his 92nd birthday in May. I'm sure Rush would also appreciate a similar treatment for TBP's cover of Tom Sawyer.)

More on Babbitt (TNLD's own justification for the aforementioned leggy goodness, you ask? Uh huh.): AN NPR interview with the "difficult" composer

RIP Esbjorn Svensson

Video: A Picture Of Doris Traveling With Boris

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Sad news for a Monday: A bright light in the musical firmament has gone out, and much too soon. Swedish pianist Esbjorn Svensson died over the weekend in a scuba diving accident near Stockholm. He was 44.

When I first heard the Esbjorn Svensson Trio (a.k.a. est), it felt as though the music was arriving from the future and the past simultaneously. Although generally labeled as "jazz," their music drew from classical and Baroque influences even as it reached out the hip hop generation, touring with Bjork and other "rock" groups. I'm proud to have his statement above serve as the motto for this here blog. To say he'll be missed is a severe understatement. est's 12th album, Leukocyte, is scheduled for release in September.

Read also:

• A video tribute and survey of est's development at AllAboutJazz.com
  
• This remembrance of Svensson from Ethan Iverson of The Bad Plus, est's American fellow travelers
• My paltry musings about the band from last year

See also:

• This video for the song "Goldwrap" from the group's most recent CD
• This haunting fan video of "What Though The Way May Be Long"

Jazz of the 90s

The free-jazz cats over at Destination: Out continue to kick up a fuss in the jazz portion of the blogosphere. The dust has just about settled on their latest provocation: Best Jazz of the 90s, Parts 1, 2, 3, 4, 5A and 5B.

As an adult and a music appreciater for the length of that decade, I was amazed, humbled and enlightened by the torrent of response. As a peaceable adult I was appalled by the amount of useless point-scoring and petty shot-taking by many of the warrior squirrels in the comments. And this among the tattered remnants of those who claim to love jazz. It reminds me of the old saw about academic politics: They're so vicious because the stakes are so low.

One particularly insightful comment on the all this de gustibus came in the midst of a great post by Ethan of The Bad Plus (on the TBP blog, since he passed up participating directly in the D:0 B.O. 90s jamboree). He'd put up a blindfold test of a '96 Branford Marsalis track because:

...if I told a [fiery-eyed free jazz] acolyte that this was a rip of a rare dead free jazz saxophonist and a South African drummer on a defunct label that only released four records they would love it, but if I told them that it was Branford Marsalis (musical director of The Tonight Show with Jay Leno from 1992-95) and Jeff Watts on Columbia they would not be interested.

Context is everything, particularly in matters of taste, in any decade.

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UPDATE: Trumpeter Dave Douglas, mentioned frequently in D:O's Best of the 90s lists, weighs in with his thoughts on the subject on his Greenleaf Music blog. He takes an illuminating look at the issue of context for musicians (as opposed to warrior squirrels).

We would all learn from checking out Paul Bley and from playing with Tain. Couldn't agree more. But it's what you do with that that makes you who you are. Choices. Language. How am I going to play? Context. Compulsion.

Lee Bob says check it out.