It's here. The recording you've been waiting for...
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Jonathan Freilich with
Stanton moore-drums
Todd Sickafoose-bass
Skerik-Saxophone
Mike Dillon-Vibes
Sneak preview...
01 The Asphalt is Harsh, Where's The Grass 1 by moroller
A four part audio interview with Piety St. Studios founder, Mark Bingham, is up on the interviews page... here
I am mostly keeping the content of this website to music. There are a couple of other things that I "present" though: yoga instruction is one. I've been a certified Iyengar yoga instructor for about seven years and was teaching previos to that for four years. I used to own half of a studio in New Orleans. I haven't been teaching regular classes for some time- except to help out other teachers. One reason I slowed down the teaching was that I was finding it harder to pass along information on the subject. The popular image of yoga that is reinforced in the media is often at direct odds with other viewpoints, and the modern yoga consumer is generally shopping for the reinforced image. They tend to move classes until they get the version of the story that was sold to them (which makes you wonder why they want classes at all.)
Anyway, all of this is discussed extremely well in an article/book review by Wendy Doniger. there is plenty of information about her floating around the web if you are skeptical.
HERE is a link... to the article.
What does this have to do with the major part of this site- music? Well, the two are very closely related in practice...but that's for another time.
I slowed the teaching to put more energy into composition, which started being necessary when I was writing the opera, Bang The Law.
Aurora Nealand has a new recording out. GO BUY IT!...
[This is not a review. I will get to that in a different way shortly, hopefully in an audio interview with Aurora Nealand.]
I am never sure why people are doing re-creations but it does seem that at the moment many listeners like music dripping with nostalgia for a bygone time. It's almost as though they need to be able to envision others than themselves and add in a few extra-musical elements besides the presented sounds by the musicians in front of them; seemingly seeking information about what people wore; what they ate; how they danced; what they drank. What is the necessity for the extra cultural baggage?
Perhaps, and this is just a thought, that to be with the unpredictability of what is in the present might have to mean that what any one person, listener, player, or group in a room might do is a little scary; it might require forming one's own opinion and coming up with a response.
Watching behavior in relation to the arts, music included, can be very indicative of the of shifting social dynamics in groups. It appears, looking into the preponderance of imitators of past style [and even businesses that promote it] that we may be going through a sort of regressive phase relative to those times of jazz creators such as Sidney Bechet. Both audiences and musicians now strike me as a little afraid of their own, unbridled self expression; as if it had less validity. In these times it's as though people are afraid of their own shadows where shadows are perhaps passions, impulses, desires, attractions; their own animal. Can this be where we are at 100 years after Freud, vanguard art, jazz, and a whole world of stuff that seems like it was there to tear the very underwear off the Victorians.
Paradoxes jump up when making comparisons between the earlier 20th century artists that created those musical inventions that are known as jazz, and their modern worshippers. Bechet for instance, was a huge, bold, figure and you can still hear it in his sound from the recordings. He is New Orleans saxophonist number one and embodies all that goes with that; a trademark sound, innovation, critical and rebellious personality, excitement no matter what the cost. He was even the saxophonist and clarinet player that Ellington most wanted for his own orchestra but he was turned down, allegedly because Bechet felt he could do it just fine himself and, listening to Bechet's recording of The Mooche would not lead one to disagree. Bechet's refusal is how Ellington came to hire Johnny Hodges and, luckily, that refusal, in hindsight, wasn't harmful. In fact, it was a classic case of serendipity for Ellington and for
"If a drunkard in a sober fit is the dullest of mortals, an enthusiast in a reason fit is not the most lively. And this, without prejudice to his greatly improved understanding; for, if in his elation was the height of his madness, his despondency is but the extreme of his sanity."- Herman Melville from The Confidence Man: His Masquerade
Starting work on these again.
Look out for interviews with Dr. James "Jimbo" Walsh and Luke Allen, leader of The Happy Talk band.
The previous interviews are all up now. look for the music interviews link or...here.
Folks often ask about the titles I give to musical pieces and records. The recent Naked orchestra record was called From Pandemonium to a View of Eidolons and, believe it or not, it was shortened from the song title, A dose of mer-c takes the fractured soul from pandemonium to a view of eidolons. There are a number of puns and references in there that mostly cover all of the sorts of things I was thinking of, reading, viewing etc. at the time of composition.
Here are some fun background bits about the record title:
PANDEMONIUM
From Paradise Lost by John Milton
Mean while the winged Haralds by command
Of Sovran power, with awful Ceremony
And Trumpets sound throughout the Host proclaim
A solemn Councel forthwith to be held [ 755 ]
At Pandæmonium, the high Capital
Of Satan and his Peers: thir summons call'd
From every Band and squared Regiment
By place or choice the worthiest; they anon
With hunderds and with thousands trooping came [ 760 ]
"The confusion concerning music as a means of communication clearly arises from a lack of understanding of what music really signifies. If we try to qualify the meaning of a piece or a passage of music in terms of specific emotions, we immediately run in to difficulties of which I have already spoken. Not only do we find the music essentially indefinable, but the more we try to to define it, the more unsatisfactory the result. What we achieve fails to be convincing as a true description of the music; and it becomes clear immediately that the music does not rouse the same specific feelings in different individuals- in fact, it does not define feelings at all. Once more, music embodies the attitudes and gestures behind feelings- the movements, as I have said, of our inner being, which animate our emotions and give them their dynamic content. Each of us qualifies these attitudes and gestures according to the associations that our experience has provided."- Roger Sessions from The Musical Experience
Yesterday we made much further strides forward in recording the quintet at Dave Pirner's. (See the earlier post below for further information about that.) A couple favorites: Joe cabral's piece, Cuando When? and this group playing "waiting for my gin to hit me".(Cabral singing)
For more on the subject of Waiting For my Gin To Hit Me and an interesting blog that Doug Garrison hipped me to, click here...
Aurora Nealand in studio:
Dan Oestreicher
check this lengthy but interesting article/review on the various problems connected with music presentation from the standpoint of "classical" music...
Check out the complete recent at the open ears music series performance of Jonathan Freilich & The Peaceful Revolution.
Jonathan Freilich- guitar
Aurora Nealand- Alto/ soprano sax
Dan Oestreicher- Baritone sax
Jeff Albert- Trombone
James Singleton- Bass
Doug garrison- Drums
Featuring all original compositions by Jonathan Freilich
