17 Musicians in Search of a Sound: Darfur
| 17 Musicians in Search of a Sound: Darfur | ||||
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| Live album by Bill Dixon | ||||
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Publication |
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| Label (s) | AUM fidelity | |||
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Format (s) |
CD |
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Title (number) |
13 |
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| occupation |
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Bill Dixon |
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Studio (s) |
Vision Festival XII, New York City; Firehouse 12, New Haven, CT (mastering) |
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17 Musicians in Search of a Sound: Darfur is a jazz album by Bill Dixon . It contains a recording of a performance at the New York Vision Festival in 2007. The album was released in 2008 by AUM Fidelity . Stephen Haynes coordinated the orchestra and production .
background
Dixon's activity as a composer dates back to his activities for the Jazz Composers Guild in the 1960s . After concentrating on smaller ensembles from the 1970s to the 1990s, he worked with larger ensembles such as the Exploding Star Orchestra in his later years until shortly before his death on June 16, 2010 . The work 17 Musicians in Search of a Sound: Darfur and its performance with the Bill Dixon Orchestra was commissioned by Arts for Art, Inc., the organizer of the New York Vision Festival, as one of three commissioned compositions at the Vision Festival XII in 2007. The performance was supported by the New York State Music Fund . Dixon's musicians, who played lead trumpet and acted as ensemble director, included Taylor Ho Bynum , Graham and Stephen Haynes , Dick Griffin , Steve Swell , Joe Daley , Karen Borca , JD Parran , Jackson Krall and Warren Smith . With several musicians from the “Darfur” project, Dixon continued to work with larger ensembles over the next three years, which he documented on the two albums Tapestries for Small Orchestra ( Firehouse 12 Records , 2008) and Envoi (Victo, 2010).
Music of the album
17 Musicians in Search of a Sound: Darfur is in the form of a suite with the long piece “Sinopia” at its center. The album begins with a “prelude”, the “brutal structure” of which begins with a lovely conversation among the woodwinds, before a “shooting festival of the brass” begins. The band then comes together when the dissonance rises in volume and violence and ultimately reaches a point where you have the feeling that it has to break off in silence. In painting, “Sinopia” would correspond to the color of dry earth; “Short foreboding sections, gloomy and threatening, at a slow pace”, which are reminiscent of film music and border on classical music, in which deep tones played in unison create a terrifyingly dramatic atmosphere that is heightened by the percussion. The cello and arco double bass differ from this with some dissonant sounds. "The dark cloud of sound ends in order to make the individual voices of the various instruments wail and howl, in a duet or with the entire ensemble, creating a full-toned and intense chaos, which stops abruptly and you come close to the main sound again." In "Scattering of the Following" gives the individual instruments the first opportunity for real improvisation with trumpet, tuba, bass saxophone and vibraphone in the center of the stage, in complete confusion and expressing emotional distress. “Darfur” is “one of the darkest pieces of orchestral melancholy and doom that stops halfway for screeching saxophone sounds and the screeching arco bass, supported by irregular drums, which leads the music to a crescendo of hopelessness, which is followed by a trumpet solo and then slowly the whole ensemble. ”The central piece“ Sinopia ”is followed by four short ones, which mirror the album's introduction, again with slowly played dark, melancholy and threatening ensemble sound (“ Pentimenti ”), a reference to painting that is reflected in the title and finds it on the cover and shows the composer's interest in creating timbres, new mixtures and approaches.
Track list
- Bill Dixon: 17 Musicians in Search of a Sound: Darfur (AUM Fidelity - AUM046)
- Prelude - 3:07
- Intrados - 3:58
- In Search of a Sound - 4:15
- Contour One - 1:43
- Contour Two - 0:10
- Scattering of the Following - 7:00 am
- Darfur - 5:27
- Contour Three - 3.14
- Sinopia - 23:37
- Pentimento I - 0:43
- Pentimento II - 0:17
- Pentimento III - 0:22
- Pentimento IV - 2:41
- All compositions are by Bill Dixon (Metamorphosis Music, BMI)
reception
Brent Burton wrote in JazzTimes (2008) that, like the previous album with the Exploding Star Orchestra , 17 Musicians was a “dense, extensive performance” and crackled “full of energy that you can only find in a live performance.” There is “a tension between impatience and restraint, which gives the improvisations a pleasant, albeit edgy, quality ”. The sound of the performance can best be described as a roar, which best fits the current Darfur conflict at the time .
Similarly, Michael G. Nastos said in Allmusic that the genocide in Darfur is not addressed through angry or outraged expressionist music, but through the choice of modes of expression that reflect the needy outcry of the people in Darfur. Dixon used long-lasting tones for this, which swell and disappear over the course of the program. This creates a "project of bitter emotions, skillful counterpoints and caustic reality in engagement in favor of conditions in the so-called civilized world that should never exist."
The author of the Free Jazz Blog keeps the concert recording of the musical highlights of the year; it is "uncompromising, but intelligent, with a band of great musicians who play in an incredibly controlled and focused manner." It is thus successful in every aspect where Evan Parker's boustrophedon falls short. Dixon used the orchestra to its full potential and created convincing music, powerful, deeply emotional and coherent in the auditory impression he created. Bill Dixon manages to create a large area of musical emotions by playing with the endless possibilities of this music, while at the same time tapping into the tragedy of Darfur. “This is a strong and powerful musical statement. And it's infinitely sad. "
Jode Tangari wrote in Pitchfork that there may not be any music that, in the combination of original expression and intellectual considerations such as free jazz, is the most suitable medium to address the (then) current war in Darfur. With his orchestration, Dixon formulated a kind of "controlled glow". The primary source of tension comes from the contrast between density and sparse. "From the listener's point of view, the tonal and textural variation of the project and relatively simple organization make it more accessible to a newcomer to the genre than a large part of free music , yet it takes a willingness to disregard the usual structures." Indeed, the work contains in a flow from vehemence to calm and back more in common with modern chamber music such as Olivier Messiaen's Quartet for the End of Time than with the music of Albert Ayler , Cecil Taylor and other free jazz greats. Dixon has created "an outstanding work of modern jazz and political commentary", Tangari sums up.
Jason Bivins noted in Dusted that the album offers the rare opportunity to hear Bill Dixon in the context of a larger ensemble that may include a. from members of the Anthony Braxton orchestra (Bynum and Dewar), on the loft scene of the 1970s and 80s (Daley, Borca, Smith), and contemporary musicians (Swell and Krall). The project is thus “a distillate of Dixon's unique vision - a collective improvisation that rests in equal measure in passion and indignation.” Fortunately, the sound is not muddy, the bane of recordings by large ensembles. The author highlights the solo performances of Taylor Ho Bynum in In Search of a Sound and Karen Borcas in Darfur . After the central track “Sinopia”, the rest of the album is not quite as eruptive. All in all, the concert recording is "a rich experience", which the author considers a must for both Dixon fans and ensemble improvisations.
Mike Corroto points out in his review of the album in All About Jazz on the influence Dixon on musicians of the younger generation as Axel Doerner , Taylor Ho Bynum, Peter Evans and especially Rob Mazurek , whose merit it was, Dixon with Exploding Star Orchestra brought together to have. Following the example of this 13-member ensemble, Dixon put together his group of 17 musicians for the Vision Festival . Similar to Thelonious Monk with his Town Hall concert or Charles Mingus with his orchestral work , the trumpeter had little time for rehearsals. As a result, there are on the one hand composed and on the other hand improvised passages. One gets the impression that Dixon sometimes leads the ensemble, at other times leaves the interpreter the freedom to pursue their own inclinations. Nevertheless, the music meets Dixon's standards; "The musicians create moods for his wide-open landscape of a vision by setting solos between caverns of sound." 17 Musicians in Search of a Sound have the "impression of a roughly knotted carpet made of fine materials."
Also in All About Jazz, Nic Jones noted that Bill Dixon's music had an "infinite color" here, played by an ensemble that was very sensitive to its intentions. It is understandable that a piece like “In Search of a Sound” uses Dixon's preferred instrumental timbre; "In doing so, he layers static sound blocks of individual voices in the service of a gloomy, foreboding ending that remains unfinished, and the seamless transition to" Contour One "enables forces to dissolve, a single cornet seems to wander through a devastated landscape." Sometimes feel it feels like the timbres are the only available comfort. In its whole menacing mood, Darfur comes alive with Warren Smith's timpani and Karen Borca's bassoon hatching the lines, and again these sound blocks are the hallmark of the music before Andrew Raffo Dewar's soprano saxophone ushers in a bridge to a heavy passage. One of the most striking features of the longest track on the album "Sinopia" are spirals of high tin tones that seem to dissolve in the ether over a bed of bass saxophone and deep brass. Dixon himself turns out to be a virtuoso of timbres and the musicians deserve recognition for the realization of this. Compared to the great achievements in “Sinopia”, “Pentimento I” to “Pentimento IV” are rather sketches in terms of their length. The fact is, however, that these parts of the work would be well suited to end a music program that was not created for comfortable listening, but was very challenging.
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b Information about the album at AUM Fidelity
- ↑ The others were Roy Campbell's Akhenaten Suite and William Parker's orchestral work Double Sunrise Over Neptune .
- ↑ a b Review of the album in Pitchfork
- ↑ a b c d Review of the album at Free Jazz Collective
- ↑ Discographic information on the album at Discogs
- ↑ Review of the album by Brent Burton (2008) in JazzTimes
- ↑ Review of Michael G. Nastos' album at Allmusic (English). Retrieved June 11, 2015.
- Jump up ↑ Jason Bivins' album review in Dusted
- ↑ Review of Mike Corroto's album in All About Jazz (2008)
- ↑ review of the album of NicJones in All About Jazz