When I listen to 'Jazz Advance,' I understand why it was an anathema to many musicians and to the academy that was in vogue at the time. And I also understand why I like it. | | | | Cecil Taylor backstage at the Montreux Jazz Festival, July 9, 1976.
(Andrew Putler/Redferns/Getty Images) | | | | | | “When I listen to 'Jazz Advance,' I understand why it was an anathema to many musicians and to the academy that was in vogue at the time. And I also understand why I like it.”
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| | rantnrave:// If writing about music is like dancing about architecture, as numerous people have been accused of suggesting over the decades, then writing about CECIL TAYLOR is like standing still about an earthquake. His music—wild, elusive, borderless, improvisational, singular, free—defied both gravity and language. Or maybe it was the only thing on earth that wasn't defying those forces. If he sometimes seemed seven steps ahead of everybody else, it may have been that he was fully rooted in a present that everybody else was too distracted or preconditioned to notice. He was one of the least understood and most influential pianists of the modern era. He seemingly could commune directly with his piano. "It seems to me what music is, is," he once said. And that's exactly how he played it. BEN RATLIFF's obituary for the NEW YORK TIMES and MATT SCHUDEL's for the WASHINGTON POST are good primers for the jazz giant we lost on Thursday. "He ignored traditional concepts of melody, harmony and rhythm. No one left one of his concerts humming the tunes," Schudel writes. He "was forming a syntax where none had existed," adds (or counters) Ratliff, noting the "dazzling physicality and the percussiveness of his playing." Jazz critic HANK SHTEAMER, whose notes on Taylor's death you can find in the mix below, wrestled with how the very word "composer" does or doesn't apply to a musician like Taylor in this 2016 essay, in which he sketched out the ways his subject was rejecting one tradition/canon while honoring another. Rearranging the tectonic plates, as it were, a bit more to his liking. A monumental figure. RIP... So you don't think pop musicians are making "albums," per se, anymore? Stop what you're doing and listen to CARDI B's astonishing INVASION OF PRIVACY, all the way through, right now. Then let's talk... It's amazing how many female performers you can find for your summer festival when you try even a teeny bit. "This wasn’t something that we were consciously tallying: 'We have to have X amount of females or males on here,'" FYF FEST talent buyer JENN YACOUBIAN tells BILLBOARD. "When we laid out everything, this is what made sense for the festival and this is what we thought was going to be the best booking." That's it. That’s the entire secret... Where perhaps the two most-watched music stocks stand as we head into a new week: Down 12.2 percent from where it all started but relatively stable. Down 10.4 percent over the past week, with unwelcome news still in the air... MOLLY RINGWALD's wonderful NEW YORKER essay reassessing "THE BREAKFAST CLUB" in light of #MeToo belongs on the reading list of anyone involved in making, consuming or writing about any kind of art in a world that isn't, and never has been, black and white. "I hope [JOHN HUGHES' films] will endure," Ringwald writes after pointing out, in great detail, what's problematic about so many of them. "The conversations about them will change, and they should. It’s up to the following generations to figure out how to continue those conversations and make them their own—to keep talking, in schools, in activism and art—and trust that we care"... AMAZON kills MOZART IN THE JUNGLE... RIP RON DUNBAR. | | | - Matty Karas, curator |
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| The veteran radio personality is moving into late night. Here's one very, very long day in the process. | | |
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| It's all come full circle for Arthur Baker on stage at Miami's most mystical party. | | |
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| "It's extremely worrisome," says one high-powered agent. "Once these artists really do retire, who will be the replacements?" | | |
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| Dark Forces Swing Blind Punches |
| There was always that question of when he, that seemingly eternal, towering, incomparably enriching presence, both in the larger culture and in my sound-obsessed brain/heart, might no longer be there. And the answer to that is, really, never, because he seems as alive to me now as he ever did. | | |
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| Of all the jazz musicians who wrought definitive, revolutionary changes, Taylor’s advances went further than anyone else’s to expand the very notion of musical form. | | |
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| Sony will have first dibs on whether to buy out its fellow EMI owners. If they pass, who are the other potential buyers? Here's a primer on the coming sale of a massive publishing catalog. | | |
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| These days there’s nothing but data out there - social media statistics, Spotify artist insights, info about who your fans are, where they are, and when they listen to your music. But what do you do with all this data? And who is really benefiting from it? | | |
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| This article is the first in a two-part examination of the label that set the standard for issuing tax shelter albums. It’s a company that was started by one of the most infamous figures to ever make a buck in the music business. | | |
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| Kylie Minogue’s “Golden” uses Nashville to spruce up her light and fun sound, which is a better approach than some of her peers took. | | |
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| Although comeback and reunion gigs are rarely seismic events these days, this news felt like a sudden thunderclap: The eight shows mark the UK band's first Stateside concerts since 2000, when founder/sole permanent member Matt Johnson was supporting "NakedSelf," The The's last proper studio album. | | |
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| The space cowboy on finding a home for his four hundred and fifty guitars. | | |
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| On new album 'Forever Words,' John Carter Cash entrusts his father's writings to a variety of singers. | | |
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| The UK is home to a diverse, collaborative and newly confident jazz scene. We meet seven musicians reinvigorating the genre. | | |
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| The song is “a tribute to Yoko,” one of the singers says. | | |
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| One of contemporary techno's most exciting producers and one of the scene's most vocal advocates for female performers and fans comes to Coachella. | | |
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| Women may still be in short supply on every single one of Billboard's country charts, but one of the genre's newest stars, Carly Pearce, refuses to be discouraged by the boys club. With her debut album, "Every Little Thing," consciously channeled the strong and prolific women who ruled country music in the '90s: Faith Hill, Shania Twain, Alison Krauss, and Trisha Yearwood. | | |
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| Pop culture and music critic Stephen Thompson ponders the connection between Migos' signature flow and hallowed children's' literature. | | |
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| The assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. led directly to hip-hop, an era of black American culture, politics, and art that is often contrasted with his legacy. | | |
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| As the music industry struggles to fix a culture of abuse and sidelining women, the L.A.-and London based activist group SheSaid.So is helping women fill new roles and help others get started. | | |
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| Elvis died a victim of his own ego and excess. Will the country follow suit? | | |
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| | | | | | | Live at the Montreux Jazz Festival, July 2, 1974. |
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