Monk

I recently read “Thelonious Monk, the Life and Times of an American Original” by Robin D.G. Kelley.  At 588 pages, a hundred of them end notes, it will likely remain the definitive work about the composer and pianist.

I found the chapters on Monk’s ancestors and the pre-war years in New York the most interesting.  The following concerns Rubie Richardson – of “Ruby My Dear” – Monk’s first love:

“Rubie  was undeniably one of the most desirable young women in San Juan Hill… Rubie and her younger sister Linnett were members of a social group called the ‘Brown Snapperettes.’… Her family was ‘up there’ they were uppity…,Skippy [the sister of the later-to-be Nellie Monk] used to say the Rubie was “such a much.”

Monk himself never really comes into focus.  Perhaps he was unknowable.  In retrospect, it’s amazing that he ever became successful and famous, not just because of his music, which was uncompromising..  He never had professional management, either artistic or business. His record labels didn’t produce him well

Perhaps he was unmanageable.  He was chronically late to gigs.  He started exhibiting serious mental health problems relatively early.  In 1957 he was in a minor automobile accident.  Appearing to be catatonic, he was taken to Bellevue for three weeks. 

It would appear that Monk was bi-polar.  One has to think that he received dreadful medical car.  He was treated with large doses of Thorazine, but was also given special “vitamin shots” of Benzedrine by a “society doctor” favored by socialites and musicians.    He also smoked a lot of dope and drank a lot.  So from about 1958 on, he couldn’t be left alone. 

During the last years of his life, when he had pretty much quit performing and was living in Baroness Pannonica de Koenigswater’s place in N.J., he was incontinent owing to prostrate problems and would rarely leave the house.  He died at the age of 65.

Musically, it’s clear that he was hard to work with.  Some of his tunes are quite difficult but many of them are really pretty simple.  However, the way he played them and the way he wanted them played was not.  There were rarely, if ever, any charts.  There were no set lists.  There were no rehearsals.  Monk was both demanding and non-communicative.  His piano playing was enormously forceful and he didn’t subordinate himself when the other musicians were soloing.  Unless, he dropped out entirely, wondered of the stage or started dancing.  The money was not terribly good.  Once he became popular, in the early ‘60s, the touring was endless.

“The Unique Thelonious Monk” a Riverside LP of Monk in trio format with Art Blakey and Oscar Pettiford was the first jazz record I ever purchased, back round 1958.  It's standards: Richard Rogers, Jimmy van Heusen, George Gershwin, and it’s absolutely astounding.  It’s also very well recorded.  The sheer brilliance and character of his piano sound, its depth and the complexity of the sound is unmatched

Jazz has had a history of instrumental stars with vivid, immediately recognizable sound signatures.  Charlie Parker, Johnny Hodges, Paul Desmond, Ornette Coleman and Lee Konitz all play the alto saxophone.  All are instantly recognizable within a few measures. If you hear eight bars of Ben Webster you want to hear more, it’s automatic.   It’s much harder to impose one’s will on the piano, one of the most mechanical of instruments.   He is perhaps the most immediately recognizable pianist in the history of jazz, a phenomenal technical and expressive achievement.  

His solos, at their best, had both logical inevitability and unexpected surprises.  As an improviser, he is in a class with Lester Young, Miles Davis and a few others.

Many recording has been released since his death, including quite a few live ones from the ‘60s.  Touring took its toll and not all of them should have been released.  There are also releases from the Riverside and Columbia years the include rejected takes and mis-queues.  Monk, according Kelley, was a perfectionist, who worked very hard to get what he wanted.  The principle Prestige, Riverside and most of the Columbia release constitute his true recorded legacy.

The fact that he achieved such a high level of artistic and commercial success is a testament to his character, talent and dedication.   That he did it in the face of such personal trials as a testament to his humanity.

“On the 27^th December 1971 (Monk and Nellie) went to the Rainbow Grill at Rockefeller Center to hear Duke Ellington’s Orchestra…. As soon as they walked towards their table, Duke stopped the band mid song and announced ‘Ladies and gentlemen, the baddest left hand in the history of jazz just walked into the room, Mr. Thelonious Monk… A few days later, Thelonious reverted into a catatonic state and had to be hospitalized again.”

Boulder Pianists in Review!

Larry Graham began the program notes for his generally estimable all Chopin recital at the Boulder Public Library last Sunday thus: “Among musicians, in general, Chopin is rarely ranked in the top echelon of composers.”  Of course, he then went on to explain whey this is wrong.  

As I posted a while ago, this anxiety about Chopin’s status among pianists is strange.  Perhaps pianists are just wary of other musicians’ jealousy.  What other instrument has such a vast solo repertory?  What other instrumentalists have, at least historically, risen to such international acclaim?  And made so much money?  Perhaps they think we’re just narcissists?

In any case Chopin is pretty much all solo piano and Graham’s polished technique and splendid sound more than made the case for him.  The program was ambitious and perhaps unreasonably long.  The first half consisted of ten short works: five Mazurkas, a Waltz, the A-flat Polonaise, two Etudes and a Nocturne, seven being dance forms.  The second half was the four Ballades.

Graham was suffering from some sort of injury to his left hand and had problems with a band-aid.  This probably accounted for some small technical lapses.  Interestingly, the most demanding passages – e.g., the coda from the 4^th Ballade – were handled with great security.  The second Ballade was especially fine.

Graham’s sound is remarkably integrated across all the registers.  A student of Rosina Lhevinne – who won the Gold Medal in piano when she graduated from the Moscow conservatory in 1898 – Larry Graham is an exponent of the finest traditions of what some call the golden age of pianism.

A week earlier, Christopher Taylor, an actual Boulder native, had returned to play the Brahmas D-minor concerto with the Boulder Philharmonic.  Taylor is, I think, more active on the concert stage than Graham.  They’re very different, although it’s hard to explain how.  One might think of Graham as a tenor and Taylor as a baritone, if that makes any sense.

The Brahms is a monumental dialogue between piano and orchestra with thunder, lightening and moments of lyrical introspection, all of which Taylor dispatched with great dynamic range and complete technical command.  The Boulder Philharmonic is about as good as one might expect from a small town, semi-professional orchestra, and Taylor’s concentration in the face of some of their problems was remarkable. 

This is the third time I’ve heard him and I’m more impressed each time.

The rest of the program consisted of a dispiritingly bad performance of the 3^rd Brandenburg which cruelly exposed the intonation problems of the strings  Perhaps music director Michael Butterman thought the extra rehearsal time for the section warranted the pain. Next came a tortured reading of Beethoven’s Fifth. 

If marketing really required a “Three Bs” evening, we, and the musicians, would have been better served with one of the smaller Beethoven symphonies. Still, Macky was completely sold out.

It should be said that the woodwinds acquitted themselves very well all evening, at no time better than during the beautiful slow movement of the concerto.

soundcloud - my music - god bless the child

Godbless  by  user1620611

The above is by me.  It's the famous Billie Holiday tune.  Last year, I read Donald Clarke's  Billie Holiday, Wishing on the Moon a loosely organized biography with extensive interview transcripts from people who knew her, transcripts Clark inherited from someone who had started the interview process shortly after her death.  It's a great read, but not a happy one.  She was a force of nature, and the world didn't treat her well.

One of the main contributors was Jimmy Rowles, the great pianist.  He's probably not much remembered.  Here's his picture:

The Death of Rythm and Blues

Bart’s CD Cellar in Boulder is closing.  Apparently it hasn’t been independently owned for awhile.  Whoever they were sold out so a chain and the chain is having bank problems.  Even though Bart’s remains profitable it couldn’t be saved or corporate couldn’t be bothered.

Barnes and Noble moved to its new “super store” but the CD section is maybe 20% of its non-super self.  (The department has been cut in half but is still kind of decent.)

There’s a lot that could be said about this and Don Pareles says a lot of it in today’s Times.  But I don’t see how anybody can earn a living in the music business – anywhere on the food chain.

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I just read this by Alex Ross.  More interesting than the Times and closer to the bone.  But I'm less optimistic than is he.

Pleasures of Proust

I’m not sure I’ve accomplished much, but I am certain that getting three people started on Proust counts for something.  I’ve been randomly re-reading and just finished the account on the narrator’s grandmother’s death, which is the first section of Part II of The Guermantes Way.  It’s only 31 pages long.

Now Remembrance of Things Past  is certainly not an easy read and getting started is something of a long haul.  Seemingly hundreds of pages elapse before anything happens, including the famous madeleine.  Unfortunate, perhaps, because Swan’s Way is actually the most conventional novel of the group.

In any case, Proust has a reputation for being obscure, hieratic, tenebrous, gloomy, perverted and metaphysical in the worst way.  Yet after reading the section on the grandmother’s death, harrowing as it is, the term that came to mind was Mozartian.  Or maybe de Ponteian.  The ensemble effects and the acute characterization of the different social classes, the telling details, the deftly drawn supporting characters,  the phenomenal craftsmanship, the humor and pathos all could come right out of Figaro.  As could the exceptional tact and delicacy of sentiment.

Proust, like Wagner, whom he admired, is not generally amenable to being excerpted.   The notion of time become space is central both.  Likewise, both achieve their greatest effects by making us wait and both are unreasonably demanding of our time.

But if you want to get a sense of the humble, domestic pleasures of classical narrative to be found in Proust’s great work, check out the mere 31 pages I’ve selected for your consideration

The above image is the cover of "Paintings in Proust" which includes reproductions of all the (real) paintings discussed in the book.  It went out of print almost immediately - I suspect the London publishing house had financial trouble.  But it's available now for around $30.  Buy it.

The uninitiated should know Proust knew a great deal about painting and wrote about it extensively in his book.  The "unreal" paintings are those painted by his characters.

Avatar!

I just saw Avatar which I was predisposed to hate. Because James Cameron is such a huge corn ball.  While the some of the aesthetics are annoyingly Maxield Parrish, the dialog dreadful and the world-view thuddingly Manichean, I came away marveling and touched.  You can read the reviews over at moviereviewintelligence, but I was struck by two comparisons that I haven't seen anybody else make.

First, Hayao Miyazaki.  There are many Miyazaki tropes: fantastic flying machines, fully realized imaginary animals, luminous floating seed-pods, ecological apocalypse.  The forest reminded me the one in Princess Mononoke.    Cameron's film lacks the moral complexity and generosity of the anime masterpiece.  But he shares Miyazaki mastery of action and motion.  In fact, with Avatar, Cameron joins the ranks of Miyazaki, Peter Jackson and Kurosawa in directing large action sequences.

Second, Wagner.  Really, Wagner really can't be staged.  If only someone would give Cameron or Jackson or  Guilermo del Toro $200 million to produce the Ring, I'd be very happy.

The thing I liked most, in a way, was seeing Segourney Weaver in her Avatar body looking like a 19 year old college student with dreads and a little red "Stanford" t-shirt.  The promise of art is deathlessness and this giant popcorn entertainment delivers a strange jolt of rememberence.

It's sexy too.

Sunday Miscellany

A worthwhile descussion on the state of recorded music but ignores classical and jazz.

Bill Douglas hipped me this analysis of at Lester Young "Do the Math."

I can't tell you how much I admire El Ultimo Trago by Concha Buika and Chu Chu Valdez.  Plus, it sounds absolutely sensational.

I've become fascinated by the music of Morten Feldman.  The pieces are so long, nothing seems to happen: preeminent modernism but the antithesis of what we think of as modern.