That Jazz - Monkey Max Music and File Download

Mingus’s 1972 album Let My Children Hear Music, one of his last recordings, is
one of his most ambitious compositions and ensemble arrangements of classical
scope. Appropriately, an online blogger noted that he purchased this
album together with a recording of Mahler’s Eighth Symphony and found
them to be equally challenging orchestral compositions.
The Modern Jazz Quartet
The Modern Jazz Quartet banded in 1952 and played for 22 years (members
included bassist Percy Heath, vibraphonist Milt Jackson, and drummer
Connie Kay, who later was replaced with Albert “Tootie” Heath). This long
history meant that leader John Lewis’s successful combination of classical
forms and arrangements with jazz instruments and improvisations suggested
one path for jazz musicians of the ’60s seeking fresh directions.
Lewis loved writing jazz pieces that utilized the classical fugue form (see
“Third stream and its classical elements” earlier in this chapter for info on
fugue), such as “Alexander’s Fugue,” “A Fugue for Music Inn,” and “Vendome,”
a composition that alternates with sections from Oscar Hammerstein and
Jerome Kern’s “All the Things You Are.”
Letting Loose: Free Jazz
Chapter 8: A Radical Departure: The 1960s and 1970s
Free jazz liberates players from traditional structures, such as melodic
themes, patterns of chords, and restrictions on the duration or format of
improvisations. Whereas third stream avant garde jazz was innovative for
bringing together jazz and classical music, free jazz was based almost entirely
on improvisation. Many free jazz pieces begin with a musical theme, and
then, as in other forms of jazz, the players take turns soloing.
But a song’s structure varies from loose to virtually nonexistent:
� Bandmates improvised collectively or one at a time.
� Music shifts occurred impulsively instead of on cue or from sheet music.
� Free-jazz players used instruments in unconventional ways to produce
unusual sounds such as horns generating moans, shrieks, and cries.
Along with John Coltrane, saxophonist Ornette Coleman and pianist Cecil
Taylor rank as the most influential adventurers in early ’60s jazz. Although
their music seems to be coming from shared ideas, Coleman’s emerged freer,
while Taylor’s had more structure. I cover all three pioneers in the following
sections.
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