[JPL] 3 Jazzmen, Obstinate and Wily

[Bob Harrigan]

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "r durfee" <rdurfee2003 at yahoo.com>
To: "jazzweek.com jazzproglist@" <jazzproglist at jazzweek.com>
Sent: Friday, August 24, 2007 4:04 PM
Subject: [JPL] 3 Jazzmen, Obstinate and Wily


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>
> August 24, 2007
> Music Review
> 3 Jazzmen, Obstinate and Wily
> By BEN RATLIFF
> The bassist Gary Peacock, the pianist Paul Bley and
> the drummer Paul Motian opened their week at Birdland
> on Wednesday and quickly slipped into a funny ritual
> of cussedness.
>
> About an hour long, the set superficially resembled a
> normal jazz-club performance: about a half-dozen
> songs, ballads, blues, standards, free improvisation
> and applause in the right places. The signposts were
> there, but it was as if they had been uprooted, turned
> around and put upside down. A song turned out not to
> be a song, or ended without fanfare, or showed no
> organized routine of theme and variations, or showed
> more wiliness than you thought was there.
>
> All three musicians came up in the late 1950s and
> early 1960s, when most assumptions about jazz became
> deeply suspect. One of those assumptions - and these
> musicians, in particular, overturned it - was that a
> piano trio is a leader with two accompanists.
>
> All three were involved in music that subsequently
> served as blueprints for advancing jazz. Back then Mr.
> Peacock made his blueprints with Mr. Bley, Albert
> Ayler and Bill Evans; Mr. Bley with Ornette Coleman
> and Sonny Rollins and Jimmy Giuffre; Mr. Motian with
> Bill Evans. They don't play together as a trio much
> anymore, and the challenge for them now is how to stay
> obstinate, how not to sound like their own blueprint.
>
> This is a cooperative trio, but Mr. Bley was the
> music's prompter and also the one musician who battled
> against the music most, or retreated farthest from it.
> He started off each piece of music with a slow,
> deliberate melody, usually ad-libbed. And most of what
> followed (except for a version of Sonny Rollins's
> "Pent-Up House" and a little decontextualized chunk of
> "I Can't Get Started") was freely improvised
> interaction, even if it didn't sound that way.
>
> Mr. Bley seized on wisps of familiar language: a
> ballad's chord progression, a bebop line or a
> beautiful blues phrase. Each of these moments lasted
> long enough to change the temperature of the music but
> not long enough to reveal itself as a particular song.
> He used these moments as connecting pieces and kept
> going forward. Or sometimes he didn't go forward at
> all; sometimes he played a short, percussive phrase
> that stemmed his flow entirely, then fell silent.
>
> Mr. Peacock listened hard and followed the arc of Mr.
> Bley's quickly changing harmonies. He kept the band
> regular, more or less, with big, clean notes, tracing
> a clear shape through the music, even playing walking
> eighth notes where it needed shoring up.
>
> Mr. Motian maintained a steady pulse, with constantly
> varying meter. His playing can have a poker face, a
> fascinating lack of affect, and here he used it
> brilliantly. He never busied up the music or acted as
> manic accompanist.
>
> Even as he maintained steady swing patterns on his
> cymbals - and, given a tune, strictly followed the
> melody and structure of "Pent-Up House" - he didn't
> respond to the usual prompts. He dumped the received
> wisdom and just played what he thought appropriate.
> There is a standard language of dynamics and ornament
> in jazz drumming, and when you hear someone ignore all
> that, it can be spooky.
>
> The Gary Peacock/Paul Bley/Paul Motian trio continues
> through Saturday night at Birdland, 315 West 44th
> Street, Clinton, (212) 581-3080.
>
>
> http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/24/arts/music/24bley.html?_r=1&ref=music&oref=login
>
> Roy Durfee
> P.O. Box 40219
> Albuquerque, New Mexico 87196-0219
> rdurfee2003 at yahoo.com
>
>
>
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