Sunday, April 10, 2011

My Brother Celebrates Jazz

My brother is celebrating jazz this month because the Smithsonian is proclaiming April as Jazz Appreciation Month. So each day he will post about a jazz artist that he likes. This will include a video of the performer as well. Here's the link to his blog.

Here's his first post from the series:

I will participate by sharing the various ways that I appreciate jazz.

In the entire scope of music, jazz represents a tiny niche. Last I noticed, jazz accounted for 3 percent of music sales. Among those 3 percentage points, Kenny G probably represents 1, the Marsalis family another 1, leaving the last 1 for everyone else.

I like the idea of tiny-ness when it comes to jazz—because it is not tiny. Within that 1 percentage point is another world of creativity too massive to hear in just one month of formal observance. The music is filled with people who occupy a niche of this tiny niche yet cultivate a meaningful following.

Today, I recognize guitarist Mary Halvorson for occupying her niche of the niche in a most distinctive way. Her fearless style of slashes, spikes, and squalls is not a new approach—Jimi Hendrix and James Ulmer were doing similar things three and four decades ago—but I have never heard this vocabulary assembled for exactly this dynamic effect. I would describe the dynamic range as discreet to thoroughly impolite, but often with no gradations in between.



The video I have embedded does not show her at her most jarring. If you have a better suggestion for a video to embed, please let me know.

For more gloriously jarring Mary Halvorson, try her recent CD, "Saturn Sings."

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Thanks for the boost. It's hard to come up with something original and compelling each day. I'm glad Jazz Appreciation Month has just 30 days ... However, I've also made new online friends by advertising my posts on Twitter. Among them: A Dutch ensemble that combines a jazz combo with a string quartet, and a bass sax quartet from Germany (both odd concepts but musically successful — on their own terms). Read about them on the blog. — Ed