Sunday, September 24, 2006

artists, cohabiting

The Bandwagon and The Bad Plus play double bills, but also talk to each other (I became a "Fleurette Africaine" fanatic the first time I heard the opening ghostly bass notes). The Iverson-Moran conversation confirms Darcy's comments on their similarities and should deepen his justifiable puzzlement with the differing media receptions.

The pop blogosphere regularly gets press, but I think that Ratliff's concert review is the first time the jazz blogosphere has gotten big Old Media exposure. We've definitely come a long way since 2003.

Speaking of Moran: is this any indication of what a duo with Ghostface would sound like? [via Do The Math] I spoke of Moran's Artist In Residence below.

Speaking of TBP: a video of a performance of the last section of "Physical Cities." [via rainblog] Here's what I wrote this summer:

Reid is an awesome composer, whose pieces tend to have a rock song feel to them. The first encore, "Physical Cities," was the biggest and best of them: it switched between ascending piano arpeggios over a hard-driving riff and a stabbing hip hop groove. The downshift from the stomping latter to the low-lying former was particularly delicious. And then, out of nowhere, came this unison morse code staccato section, with lots of dramatic rests. Imagine the rhythm of a Tim Berne composition, played on one note. It might have lasted 90 seconds, but what was so thrilling about it was that I truly had no idea how long it would go on, or what would come next (which happened to be a massive beat based on the morse code).
Of course, the song makes less sense truncated and it's slightly less suspenseful with the time slider along the bottom.