wtf?

[biggiesmalls]

(deleted accidental repost)

[ithinknot]

a compelling argument for the ideas expressed in our present fictitious quote

Sure - the 'Picasso', like most grandly reactionary takes, wraps some amusing and not-altogether-inaccurate social commentary in a reflexively uncharitable decline narrative proving the superiority (moral and otherwise) of The Past, generally, and the author, specifically

[elmsandr]

As an aside, let me suggest that this thread is an excellent example of how the Internet should work. Thoughtful responses, no name-calling etc.

I listened to a bit more of Flex Flyer on my Alexa. Still not sold.

If you like Monk, try the Steve Lacy and Roswell Rudd 'School Days' recordings. Good stuff, a little out there, but not so far as to require a thesis for each piece.

I'm a big Rudd fan... but his discography is probably not a daily driver for most.

Cheers,
Andy

[Doug Elliott]

The first few times I heard recordings of Roswell I was completely turned off. I liked Urbie, Watrous, Fontana.

But I have always made a point of going to hear every "name" player play live, whenever possible. I went to the trouble of hearing Roswell play several times. My high school and college teacher, John Marcellus, impressed on me the importance of having an open mind and open ears. (I'm sure anyone who studied with him has experienced that.) That's one of the reasons I have attended nearly every Trombone Festival, to hear all the great players play and talk, and absorb whatever there was to absorb. Including everybody, jazz, classical, and everything in between.

Hearing anybody live, for me, is a completely different experience than listening to recordings or even seeing videos. I could feel what Roswell was doing, where he was going with it, in a way that just doesn't exist on recordings. I just learn to filter out the good from the bad.

[PosauneCat]

a compelling argument for the ideas expressed in our present fictitious quote

Sure - the 'Picasso', like most grandly reactionary takes, wraps some amusing and not-altogether-inaccurate social commentary in a reflexively uncharitable decline narrative proving the superiority (moral and otherwise) of The Past, generally, and the author, specifically

Nice writing!

[biggiesmalls]

Hey congratulations ithinknot, you nailed it!

But I for one happen to be a believer in the "uncharitable decline narrative" (best expressed by Nietzsche in BGE, aphorism 262). And when one looks objectively at the ever-accellerating pace of decay and decline (moral and otherwise) that lies all around us in The Present, arguing the superiority of many aspects of The Good Old Days starts to seem not so far-fetched.

But hey, in the words of Sting:

"When the world is running down/
You make the best of what's still around."

And please do read the Arguelles book- it's much more than just a "grandly reactionary take."

[PosauneCat]

Hey congratulations, you nailed it!

But I for one happen to be a believer in the "uncharitable decline narrative" (best expressed by Nietzsche in BGE, aphorism 262). And when one looks objectively at the ever-accellerating pace of decay and decline (moral and otherwise) that lies all around us in The Present, arguing the superiority of many aspects of The Good Old Days starts to seem not so far-fetched.

But hey, in the words of Sting:

"When the world is running down/
You make the best of what's still around."

And please do read the Arguelles book- it's much more than just a "grand reactionary take."

I have new found respect for this forum. This post has mentioned both Wittgenstein and Nietzsche. I never anticipated that when I signed up.

[Trombo]

I have new found respect for this forum. This post has mentioned both Wittgenstein and Nietzsche. I never anticipated that when I signed up.

To paraphrase Socrates:
If you start playing the trombone if you have talent you will become a good trombonist, and if not you will become a philosopher (ог RR).

Sorry for my bad english.

[harrisonreed]

Can't let this place get too high brow here.

g9xKRn.gif

[Trombo]

Can't let this place get too high brow here.

g9xKRn.gif

Unfortunately or fortunately, there were no trombones in Socrates' time.
Socrates spoke about marriage to make it clearer.
"Will come across
good wife -
you become happy, you get a bad one -
become a philosopher".

[Cmillar]

"There are many roads to Rome"

(this famous quote was actually handwritten by Charles Ives on a trombone part as seen by the late Dave Robbins when he was freelancing between the LA studios, Harry James, Denver Symphony and others back in the 1950's. Think he said they were playing some Ives in Denver and he saw this on his trombone part)

[PatrickHasselbank2021]

As an aside, let me suggest that this thread is an excellent example of how the Internet should work. Thoughtful responses, no name-calling etc.

I listened to a bit more of Flex Flyer on my Alexa. Still not sold.

Yeah! Agree!++++

[dukesboneman]

I`ve been listening to Roswell for years.
I had the pleasure to see to him live in a very intimate setting in Rochester, NY twice.
He was performing the Herbie Nichols tunes from the 2 CD`s he recorded of them.
It was incredible. both concerts (which were about a year apart) went for over 2 hours.
NO intermission. He played for 2 hours straight. His ideas were really cool. If you went to the concert and were
expecting a mellow/smooth trombone sound (ala- Watrous, Fedchock or Urbie) you would be disappointed.
His sound was raw, powerful and really harkened back to an earlier age of playing. As said before he played alot of
Dixieland. and that was where he was coming from.
It was thrilling to watch Rudd as a showman too. He`s wander around the room as he soloed
There was no mistaking the fact that he EXACTLY what he was doing .
I saw a few posts of people not caring for his playing. That`s fine. You listened and made an informed decision.
There are players I don`t care for too. I saw the same reaction to Gary Valente`s playing at the ITA Conference at Ithaca College years ago. I was digging the hell out of his playing and guys were walking out saying things like "He can`t play", "He sounds too loud and awful", But Gary was telling his story as only he does.
Like him or not, Roswell Rudd is part of our shared Trombone History

[Cmillar]

This all reminds me of how a lot of trumpet players still don't like listening to Miles Davis "because he can't play the trumpet".

Well...at least none of here are that far gone.

(FWIW...I've always had trouble listening to Bob Dylan.)

[BGuttman]

I'm not a fan of Rudd, but people who know better than I say he's good, so I take them at their word. Similarly, I don't like some solos by other well-regarded players. But that doesn't mean they can't play. They just go in a different direction from me.

(I feel the same about Dylan. Wrote nice songs, sings like a crow.)

[Trombo]

New ideas are appreciated in contemporary art, but not
their quality.

[timothy42b]

I attended an Abby Conant concert once.

I had an idea what to expect and I enjoyed it though it stretched me a bit. It did not include much that was melodic although she can of course play that stuff beautifully.

Most of the audience was college students doing their mandatory quota of concerts. They were shocked. I heard OMG over and over.

[Joebone]

Abby Conant rocks! To be clear, I dig what Roswell Rudd did, but I'm awed by Abby's mastery of classical material and styles, coupled with her cutting-edge work.

[harrisonreed]

The mascara bleeding avant garde queen of the 80s. She did some CRAZY theatrical pieces. Comparing the two seems like a stretch. Abbie has such a great sound.

[timothy42b]

Abbie has such a great sound.

She does, and she showed off that sound in one 8 bar phrase - over a two hour recital of non tonal leaps over recordings of vacuum cleaners. If you were a college student getting your mandatory points for attending X number of concerts you might not have been expecting that! This was at VCU in Richmond VA, some years back.

[baileyman]

Thanks to all for mentioning her as I had never heard her play. Very interesting, here:

https://trombonefestival.net/2018/02/08 ... ie-conant/

it sure seems she has mastered the "dle" syllable. There are some low-high wide trills that sounds like doodle, and the frequent alternative tone note to note sounds like a slow doodle. Playing high on "dle" is a puzzle, though perhaps she's reversed the syllables for the pitches. Has she talked about articulation?

[chromebone]

Roswell Rudd was the real deal, he knew exactly what he was doing. In addition to his playing career, he assisted musicologist Alan Lomax in research projects at Columbia University and taught courses in Ethnomusicology at Bard and University of Maine; his playing/performance approach was from a historically informed folk/musicological perspective. He was very well regarded in avant circles, although it's really hard to completely pigeonhole him. The most apt description of his playing I have read was he was playing tailgate on a spaceship.

One of my very favorite albums is his tribute album he made in collaboration with Steve Lacy and Misha Mengelberg to Herbie Nichols and Thelonius Monk: Regenerationhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WQ_3NW3 ... 6ZSlzvinFn

If you listen to the first cut, Blue Chopsticks, he handles the head arrangement pretty adeptly, so he clearly had the chops when he needed them. His approach/sound was an artistic choice/statement; he didn't play technically/smoothly just for the sake of doing so.

He played the Catskill circuit for years as a backup/big band/sideman to earn a living, so he was quite capable of reigning it in when he needed to.

[Mv2541]

It saddens me to hear people speak about RR like this, but admittedly a less mature 19 year old version of myself shared many of the thoughts expressed in this thread. Even through my time studying with him I didn’t really ‘get it’, and by ‘it’ I mean any single thing that came out of his mouth or bell. I thought it was nonsense but it was so interesting that I kept making the drive out (to his log cabin in the Hudson Valley).

Things changed one day when I asked him about what he thought about playing/learning standards. He sat at the grand piano (that the cabin was built around) and played a few choruses of all the things, and I realized that the man COULD actually play changes really well. Then things started to click for me- he could have taken a more traditional route anytime if he wanted to, but his own voice was too strong and he chose to show his real self instead of what some people want or expect to hear. It’s really a shame he passed shortly after- I think I had just began to understand him.

“You blow in this end of the trombone and sound comes out the other end and disrupts the cosmos”

[jacobgarchik]

In his own words. Hope this is publicly shareable.

[ithinknot]

In his own words. Hope this is publicly shareable.

For those outside the Zuckerverse:

The Artist Formerly Known as Avant-Garde!

Back in the 1960’s, avant-garde was one of the terms used to categorize the new music. Because I was coming from Dixieland Jazz into this new music, the term struck me as strange and a little inappropriate. My understanding in those days was that the term was used particularly with those of us involved with free improvisation.

Most recently my patience was piqued by a reference to my playing at The Village Vanguard with Dave Douglas and his band WORD, where I read “avant-garde trombonist Roswell Rudd”. And so, it suddenly struck me that after plus or minus forty five years holding out as a creative performer that I am still today considered avant-garde in the minds of some writers .

I decided to look up avant-garde and was pleasantly surprised to find that it refers to innovative and progressive people in any field of endeavor. I can relate to that. So far, so good.

To have associations persisting for forty years or more is, in a way, gratifying and encouraging because I’ve always been devoted to our great classical American music, jazz, and continue to develop improvisations and compositions in the indigenous style.

But considering how I have performed in so many different musical situations and configurations since the 1960’s, and steadily evolved through the ‘70’s, ‘80s’ and ‘90’s to the present (listen to Roswell Rudd’s MALIcool, Universal/Sunnyside; or EL ESPIRITU JIBARO, Sunnyside; of Roswell Rudd QUARTET, Sunnyside), won a Guggenheim Fellowship for Composition, received awards for performing and arranging, am considered a Monk and Nichols scholar, and have recorded their compositions extensively, why would the label avant-garde - which has become a commercial stigma for Festivals and clubs, and it is the kiss of death to book anything called avant-garde ! -why am I stuck with this one hundred and forty year old label at the age of 73?

Born in nineteenth century France, the term designated artists who wanted to cut ties with whatever had been done before them. I, on the other hand, felt and feel very close to Dixieland, which I consider my musical roots, and that I was and am just evolving out of the tradition, with no desire to rupture with past aesthetics, but only to build upon and extend them. So in terms certainly of 19th century France and common usage at that time, I would not have been considered avant-garde. However, 20th century common usage of the term to include innovative and progressive would include me. Common perception, which is still more like the 19th century, makes this a distasteful term to most people, if not ambiguous.

I acknowledge that the writers who describe me in this way today may be using it as an accolade.

Somehow avant-garde has come to mean offensive, abrasive, and have negative connotations: what most people don’t want to hear. Some hard-core adventurous listeners did and still do seek out the avant-garde. Thankfully. But the more popular usage, which determines perception and overrides actual meaning could keep people away rather than bring them in.

So call me fun; call me Dixieland; call me innovative; call me lyrical; call me for the gig; call me an improviser, because after all, I am a jazz musician. But don’t call me late for dinner, and certainly not avant-garde!

P.S. – What is avant-jazz??

November 29, 2003
Roswell Rudd
Kerhonkson, NY 12446