v a l l e j o n o c t u r n o

In Another Life

Lyrics to Sandro Perri's In Another Life

Let me into this impossible dream
And know how not to know just what that means
Except to think of all that might be seen
In another life

No position, ladder or pit
No more response correct or unfit
Except where evenly sacrifice split
In another life
In another life

Level field, what goal is the game?
Any answer, a question remains
To flourish and without expansion or gain?
In another life
In another life

No love go undiscovered in hate
Or disadvantage in tragic state
No delusion about what is great
In another life
In another life

Humiliation, nor private distress
Breed obedience nor deviants
No sway in praise over in incense
In another life
In another life

Power seen in true and clear light
Loss unburdened, in natural flight
Nothing to have, no reason to fight
In another life
In another life

Black, brown, red, blue, yellow, green and white
Seen and understood in each its own right
And how freely goes a child at night
In another life
In another life
In another life

No word sent to distract or devise
Smokescreen, lightning, filler or guise
As in distance and closeness alike
In another life
In another life

There's no intelligent test in class
No touch too soft or too crass
But physically possible one’s head up one's ass
In another life
In another life

What use grafting sport to art?
Like pulling horse from cart
Just confusion about whole and part
In another life
In another life

None imprisoned by the word free
No fool falling for what they believe
Endless chances between you and me
In another life
In another life
In another life

For the rape of mind, body and earth
And the animal of engineered worth
The seed of greed dissolved in thirst
In another life
In another life
In another life

No rhyme of any cost or expense
Beats a rhythm born of defense
True disharmony right here on the fence
In another life
In another life
In another life

Beyond the choice of create or destroy
Inherit, steal, gift or employ
Fair is far too small a word we'd enjoy
In another life
In another life
In another life

So hold a promise no bigger than two hands
Hope scaled and re-read in human
And not reduced to a list of demands
In another life
In another life

Elvin Jones in France

Here is a really great session with one of Elvin Jones' high energy groups from the 70's-featuring Dave Liebman and Steve Grossman when they were most influenced by Coltrane's playing style. It probably did not hurt that they were playing with the drumming master himself. Outside of the cloudy transfer to digital the video shows real understanding of how to shoot a jazz group. Look at the shot selection and inter-play between the cameras. So glad someone actually preserved this concert. This is why I love Coltrane. Also some excellent close-ups of Jones while he is working.

 

Joao Gilberto's History

One of the best online sources about Joao Gilberto for English speaking aficionados is Daniella Thompson's Musica Brasiliensis, there she has this compact history of Joao that will elucidate who the man was and his great impact on contemporary music-here is from Plain Joao:

Bossa nova, that most personal and international of Brazilian musical forms, has been blessed with numerous gifted composers. By far the greatest was Antonio Carlos (Tom) Jobim. Alone or in partnership with poet Vinicius de Moraes, fellow composer Newton Mendonça, and other illustrious collaborators, Jobim created some of the most famous and enduring bossa nova standards, such as “Garota de Ipanema,” “Desafinado,” and “Corcovado.”

Tom Jobim and Vinicius de Moraes, the seminal bossa nova songwriting team, met in 1956, but the songs they turned out at the time were not particularly innovative. For two years, Jobim/de Moraes tunes sounded like traditional samba-canção (samba-song, a slower and more lyrical version of samba). Nobody got particularly excited over them. Then a certain young singer and guitarist came out of nowhere to give these songs a new vocal interpretation and a new beat. The year was 1958, and the new beat was soon known throughout the world as bossa nova.

That singer and guitarist was João Gilberto.

His seductive vocals caressed the ear as well as the soul, while his guitar set an insouciant swinging rhythm going. The voice pulled in one direction, the beat in another. The combination was mesmerizing and highly addictive, refreshing and modern. It opened a new page in the history of popular music. Yet it all began at the most traditional roots.

Bahia

João Gilberto do Prado Pereira de Oliveira was born on 10 June 1931 in Juazeiro, a small provincial town in the interior of the state of Bahia. His father, a prosperous merchant, was a stickler for education and insisted that each of his seven children obtain a school diploma. He was successful with six of them. The exception was the most intelligent child: Joãozinho, who from an early age was interested in only one thing—music. When João was fourteen, a bohemian godfather gave him a guitar that soon became an extension of his body. By the age of fifteen, he was the leader and arranger of a boys’ musical group that rehearsed under an old tamarind tree in the center of town and performed regularly at social functions.

The music João heard during his childhood in the 1940s emanated from the loudspeaker of a local store. It included U.S. hits like “Caravan” with Duke Ellington, “Song of India” with Tommy Dorsey, “Dream Lover” with Jeanette MacDonald, and “Ménilmontant” with the French singer/composer Charles Trenet. Of course, there was also a host of Brazilian successes of the period, such as Geraldo Pereira’s “Bolinha de Papel” with Anjos do Inferno; Herivelto Martins’ “Ave Maria no Morro” with Trio de Ouro, whose members included the composer and his wife, Dalva de Oliveira; Bide and Marçal’s “A Primeira Vez” with João’s singing idol Orlando Silva; and “Samba da Minha Terra,” composed by the great Bahian songwriter Dorival Caymmi and recorded by Bando da Lua. In later years, many of these old songs would find their way into João Gilberto’s repertoire and recordings, much to the consternation of his modernist fans.

By the time he was eighteen, João had outgrown Juazeiro and moved to Bahia’s capital, Salvador, to try his luck as a radio singer. Many singers of the period derived their sole income from performing on live radio shows. Traditionally, gambling casinos had provided the best employment for musicians, but when gambling was declared illegal in 1946, performers fell upon hard times, and competition for radio contracts became fierce.

João never became a radio success in Salvador, but while he was there, someone heard him sing and liked his voice. That someone was a member of the vocal group Garotos da Lua, who sang daily on Radio Tupi in Rio de Janeiro. Radio Tupi had just hired a new artistic director, Antônio Maria, who was to become a powerful columnist and successful songwriter (he would write the lyrics of “Manhã de Carnaval,” theme of the film Orfeu Negro). Maria took a dislike to the intimate singing style of the group’s lead singer, Jonas Silva. Complaining that Silva was singing baixinho and forcing the whole group to “whisper”—and when it came to singing carnaval songs, they “just didn’t make it”—Maria threatened to cancel the Garotos’ contract unless they replaced their crooner with someone who sounded more like Lúcio Alves, the highly popular founder and leader of the premier vocal group Namorados da Lua.

More

Joao Gilberto is Gone

 

From the La Times, an appreciation of the fantastic Joao Gilberto who passed away this weekend:

Gilberto’s death at age 88 was announced Saturday through the Facebook page of the musician’s son, João Marcelo Gilberto. The son offered no details on Gilberto’s death.

Over a seven decade career, the guitarist’s quick, liquid acoustic chords hit with a smooth but percussive energy, and coupled with his subtly expressive voice, transformed the music of his country and helped spread the sound across the world.

One of the most influential musicians of the 20th century, Gilberto and his peer and collaborator Antonio Carlos Jobim helped create and popularize bossa nova, a toned-down and romanticized take on Brazilian samba music.

“He could read a newspaper and sound good," Miles Davis once said of Gilberto’s tone.

As much a feeling as a set of musical rules, Gilberto’s aesthetic has resonated in the work of artists including Caetano Veloso, Sade, Gal Costa, Leonard Cohen, Joni Mitchell, Stereolab, Seu Jorge and pretty much every Brazilian songwriter since 1960. Gilberto’s daughter Bebel has been a guiding force in carrying bossa nova into a new electronic century.

"I owe João Gilberto everything I am today,” fellow Brazilian Veloso has said. “Even if I were something else and not a musician, I would say that I owe him everything."

If it’s true that some cultures are just better at making music, Brazil’s reputation was solidified when Gilberto and Jobim, both then based in Rio de Janeiro, joined forces in the late 1950s. Born 1,200 miles north in the province of Bahia, Gilberto was first drawn to the guitar at age 15.

Preternaturally artistic, he drew the concern of his parents at an early age. One story described the son during a mental evaluation. “Gilberto looked out of the window and noted the ‘wind tearing out the trees' hair … Told by the psychologist that ‘trees don't have hair,’ Gilberto replied, ‘And some people have no poetry in their souls’,” according to a 2003 story in The Times.

In 1958, Gilberto recorded “Chega de Saudade," a mesmerizing Jobim-penned crooner. Never much of a songwriter himself, Gilberto, then in his late 20s, regularly tapped Jobim’s work. That symbiotic musical relationship defined a movement, and along the way, bossa nova integrated itself into the global conversation in much the same way rock ’n’ roll did.

The difference? Where Chuck Berry and Elvis Presley upped the tempo, attitude and energy, Gilberto and Jobim soothed and seduced their way onto dance floors.

When the late Brazilian guitarist Oscar Castro-Neves heard his first Gilberto record, he recalled to The Times that he was astonished, comparing it to the first time he heard trumpeter Charlie Parker.

"It changed everything, for every young musician in Brazil. Once we heard what João was doing with the guitar and the voice, we all had to find a way to figure out how he did it," Castro-Neves told writer Don Heckman.

Rather than building Carmen Miranda-esque samba wildfires of big beat percussion to propel loud, expressive singers, Gilberto lighted a few candles and channeled the breathy tones of Chet Baker, Miles Davis and Frank Sinatra, as well as successful Brazilian singers Lucio Alves and Dick Farney. His success earned him a U.S. deal with Capitol Records in 1960.

Joag, Miucha, and Chico Buarque

For those wanting to listen to one of Gilberto's most pure albums that capture his magic and beauty, try Joao Gilberto (1973) which ripples with amazing rhythms and melodies that transcend time.Listen to Eu vim da Bahia.

 

Sounding Good

Occasionally you find a record (CD) that came out several years ago and that you missed. That happened to me tonight as iIwas busy processing fotos and went down a series of connections to a a session that Tony Malaby played with a great group of Europeans-the album is Sound Architects and it features the compositions of Stephene Kerecki. Also on the album is Bojan Z a very creative pianist whose music I've enjoyed throughout the years. Together they construct a great set of music that someone has to shine the light on. Here is one of the better reviews I found-the album is from 2012, back when the world was safe-it's from a very interesting blog Rhythm of Study:

In French bassist and composer Stéphane Kerecki’s latest album, Sound Architects, he presents a profound and unique artistic vision, realized through the leader’s well-crafted, imaginative compositions and enriched by a masterful ensemble whose individual virtuosities are out-matched only by their collective sensitivity, inventiveness, and dynamism. Compelling grooves emerge organically from the group’s improvisatory faculties, while Kerecki’s writing bestows on the listener melodies that perfectly capture a balance of logic, beauty, and soul. The ensemble’s every gesture is imbued with passion and superior musicality, producing an album that, as a whole, excites, inspires, and sings.

The entire ensemble enters by launching into “Serbian Folk Song,” the only composition on Sound Architects not written by Kerecki. An arrangement of the traditional song “Dunje i Jabuke,” this track explores the cultural roots Kerecki shares with invited guest artist, pianist Bojan Zulfikarpašić. Also joining Bojan Z as guest artist, U.S. saxophonist Tony Malaby completes Kerecki’s ensemble for which his long-tenured trio of Grimmonprez and saxophonist Matthieu Donarier provide the core. Listeners unfamiliar with the rhythmic structures of Eastern European or Balkan music may find following the groove a bit difficult here. The introduction follows complex pattern of long (3 beats) and short (2 beats) groupings, whereas the melody and improvisations generally follow a different, but more steady and repeating, pattern. Amid this frequent shifting, the ensemble performs with dexterous facility, playful intensity, and careful development—providing incontrovertible evidence that Kerecki has masterfully engineered the perfect collective of individual talents for the album. Bojan Z emerges here as a dynamic presence through a well-developed and virtuosic solo, while the interplay between Malaby and Donarier proves one of the driving forces behind not just in this track but on the entire album.

This dynamic continues on the subsequent track, “Le Scaphandre et le Papillon” (“The Diving Bell and the Butterfly”), which is the listener’s first extended encounter with Kerecki as composer and arranger. The song’s title shares its name with a film that served as inspiration for the composition: Kerecki names the 2007 film Le Scaphandre et le papillon (based on a book of the same name) as a major influence, namely because of its exploration of the creative potential for exceptional art to emerge from the strictest parameters and constraints. The film chronicles the life of journalist Jean-Dominque Balby, his recovery from a stroke that left him with “Locked In Syndrome,” and the amazing creative process through which he authored a memoir, dictating it by blinking his left eyelid, the sole muscular facility over which he maintained control after awaking from a stroke-induced coma. In fact, the dialectical relationship between freedom and restriction serves as a primary ideological tenet of Sound Architects. On this track, in addition to his first extended improvisation on the album, Kerecki arranges a contemplative and well-composed melody between both saxophonists, inviting them to intersperse free improvisation among the written passages.

On the album’s title track, Kerecki continues to utilize oscillation between freely improvised transitions and composed sections as a thematic compositional element, while introducing an additional technique that explores the freedom/restraint paradigm in yet another way: heterophony. This musical texture occurs when two or more interpretations of a single melody are performed simultaneously, as in Malaby and Donarier’s performance of the melody on “Sound Architects.” Heterophony can arise from the smallest gesture—an ornamented note or its slightly delayed attack—that alerts the listener that not only is more than musician performing but that each musician brings her or his own personality and virtuosity to the performance. These heterophonous individuals are Kerecki’s Sound Architects…who collectively realize his compositions through acute sensitivity to improvised creation and collaboration, each leaving their own unique, indelible marks on the musical constructions. The album’s energy and excitement derives largely from Kerecki’s writing which facilitates this collective emergence in which the ensemble’s members are well so attuned to each other that the lines between composition and improvisation—the seamless transitions between free group interplay and scored passages—are blurred as the band approaches improvised heterophony.

More

Todd Marcus Orchestra

Last Friday through Monday i had the opportunity to track Todd's talented orchestra between Baltimore and DC documenting this groups big band work on Todd's compositions.It was really enjoyable to take photographs and listen to exceptional jazz at the same time.

Vallejo Nocturno 2019 - Todd Marcus Orchestra

The Tenacity of Anthony Braxton

From the book on Anthony Braxton by  Graham lock, Forces in Motion:

“For an African-American, you know, a young man … I was thirty, thirty-one, with visions of a piece for four orchestras, a three-record set: how many projects like that do you see released? … I’ve always been ambitious in the sense of having ideas and wanting to get them executed. I was profoundly inspired by Stockhausen’s Carré and Gruppen, by Xenakis’ Polytope — there was no way I was not going to enter that region. If I’d waited for somebody to give me $100,000 for a project, I would still be waiting and the piece would not be written. I decided the only way to keep evolution going was to not think in terms of somebody helping me, I just had to do it myself. I mean, I specialize in not getting projects out! But I’ll be damned if I’m not going to write the project just because they’re not going to give me a performance or a record. If nobody ever performed it, it’s fine by me! Well, I don’t mean it’s fine … but I am prepared to accept that, I’m prepared to write twelve operas and never get one performance. And the thing is, you can’t complain if you don’t write it. So first I’ll write my twelve operas, then I’ll complain.”

Matthew Shipp's Impresive Trio

 

Vallejo Nocturno 2019 -Shipp's Trio at An Die Musik, Baltimore

From Pop Matters, reviewing the new Shipp Trio CD-we heard this trio last Friday and the music was stunning:

Signature is another trio album with bassist Michael Bisio and drummer Newman Taylor Baker, finding Shipp in the process of taking the jazz piano trio to such baffling heights that you'd swear the format no longer has a ceiling. Shipp's faithful would expect no less. Anyone who thought that the jazz piano trio already achieved its apex before Bill Evans grew a beard may die of shock when listening to Signature. The melodies are challenging, the songs ridiculously elastic, and the performances from all three musicians are equal parts virtuosity and vinegar. They have moved several galaxies beyond the melody-solo-solo-solo-melody cycle. Song lengths range from 49 seconds to 16 minutes, and nothing is done by half measures. Signature is the sound of jazz continuing along the progressive arc it was given many decades ago.

Of the ten originals on Signature, three of them are designed to show off Bisio and Baker's skills as well as Shipp's ability to think outside the compositional box. "Deep to Deep" the aforementioned 49 second song, displaying Bisio's ability to conjure overtones while bowing just one note. Baker gets his turn on "Snap" and "New Z". The former is a two-minute snare solo that explores the varying sounds within just one piece of percussion equipment. The latter sounds like a rain stick accompanied by a few cymbals, though I suspect the arrangement is more sophisticated than that. These three selections represent only six minutes of an album that lasts for an hour and two minutes, but they warrant discussion all the same seeing as how they represent Matthew Shipp's playfully open approach to music.

The remaining seven compositions aren't designed to give your ears any reprieve either. But if you have followed Shipp's career for any length of time, you're already aware that listening to his music will take some effort on your part. The piano figures that give life to "Flying Saucer" sound like an engine that won't quite turn over, or a program that won't quite load, though the rhythm section shows no sign of resting easy. "The Way" is an effective display of deep harmonies crossing paths with a sharp piano attack and occasional atonality. "This Matrix", the album's longest track, seems to pack every trick that Shipp's trio can summon into its length: muted piano strings, broken melodies, rambunctious noise, deafening, suspenseful silence, and tender explorations to bridge the gaps. It takes at least three minutes just to resolve all its loose ends.

Matthew Shipp remains just as ambitious as he is skilled. His recent career has been so prolific that it's difficult to step back and take stock of it all. Does Signature fit into a bigger overall picture? Does it compliment his other albums, trio or otherwise? Can we make an educated guess at what comes next? Mind you, these questions don't need to be answered to enjoy Matthew Shipp's music, but pondering them helps one appreciate the man's place in modern music.

Vallejo Nocturno 2019- Shipp & Bisio at An die Musik last week

Tonglen

Vallejo Nocturno 2019- A recent concert by Tonglen-Derrick Michaels, Sarah Hughes, Zack Branch, Derek Wiegmann at An Die Musik Live

Lira's Great Bossa Nova Testament

 

A telling story of Bossa Novaist Carlos Lira, a great Brazilian composer of that style:

In the early 1960s a rift was opening in the bossa nova movement as some – mostly younger – singers developed a taste for including political messages in their songs.  This approach often also involved a rejection of foreign influences in Brazilian music and a return to samba’s roots.   Carlos Lira (often spelled Lyra), born in Rio de Janeiro on May 11, 1936*, was perhaps the greatest leader of the bossa novistas “engajados” — Portuguese for politically and socially “engaged,” whose ranks included  renowned musicians like Edu Lobo and Nara Leão by the mid 1960s. The other side — “purists” who thought bossa nova should remain faithful to the contemplative serenity of songs like “O Barquinho” — included Lira’s former partner (and Nara Leão’s ex-boyfriend) Ronaldo Bôscoli, and the brothers Marcos Valle and Paulo Sérgio Valle. The Valle brothers composed the song “A Resposta” (“The Answer“) to criticize socially “engaged” bossa nova – and Nara Leão in particular.

In 1961, Lira — together with Oduvaldo Viana Filho, Ferreira Gullar, and others —  founded the Popular Culture Center (Centro Popular de Cultura) of the National Students’ Union, which aimed to support and disseminate “revolutionary art” among university students. By this point, according to Jairo Severiano and Zuza Homem de Mello, Lira was beginning to express frustrations with bossa nova, feeling it was “just a trite modern style, repeating the same romantic musings as always.” He began to compose more explicitly political and nationalistic songs, including “Mister Golden,” “Os Subdesenvolvidos” (“the Underdeveloped”), and “Influência do Jazz,” which laments the tainting of traditional samba with obvious foreign influences.

While the lyrics protest the influence of jazz, the samba is written in an Americanized, bossa nova style– using the pentatonic scale so pervasive in American jazz and blues compositions — with a melody that purposefully recalls American songs like “You Were Meant for Me,” from Singing in the Rain, and “Indian Love Call,” from Rose-Marie. 

“Influência do Jazz” was first released by the Tamba Trio on Zé Trinidade’s sunday program on TV Rio. It was an immediate hit, and was performed twice at the famous bossa nova show at Carnegie Hall — by Lira and the Oscar Castro Neves Quartet.

Lyrics translated to the classic song:

My poor samba
It started getting mixed up and modernized, and got lost
And the sway, where is it? It’s gone
Where’s that shimmy that stirs us up
Poor thing, my samba changed all of a sudden
Influence of jazz

It almost died
And ends up dying, is almost dying, it didn’t realize
That samba sways from side to side
Jazz is different, forward and back
And samba, half dead, got half warped
Influence of jazz

In the afro-cubano, it’s getting complicated
It’s going down the tubes, it’s going
It’s getting warped, going without rest
Going, leaving, falling off the scale

My poor samba
Go back there to the hillside and seek help where you were born
To not be a samba with too many notes
Not be a warped samba, forward and back
You’re going to have to stand on your own to be able to free yourself
From the influence of jazz