Bass Players Under 30

There are lots of good bass players these days with tremendous chops, such as Linda Oh:

...Ben Williams:

...and what's-her-name Spalding:

...but I don't think these bassists should be playing gigs as leaders, which they all do from time to time.  They're not ready yet—although Esperanza Spalding is certainly qualified as a singer, which is different from leading a band as a bassist.  The problem with leading a band as a bassist is that the instrument is made for accompanying, first and foremost, so it's really difficult for a bassist to impress her or his musical personality on an ensemble... What often seems to end up happening with less experienced bassist-leaders is that they end up playing a lot of histrionic solos that creates a kind of structural imbalance in the music—kind of like building an excessively large, ornate pedestal for a comparatively inconspicuous statue.  Remember, even Charles Mingus didn't really start leading his own groups regularly until he was in his thirties, and only led a half dozen or so recording sessions before that point:

Jon Hendricks at Ninety

This is nice to see:

Jon Hendricks will turn ninety in September (NPR feature here), and even if his voice isn't what it was in his prime, he still sounds pretty good!  Although he and Annie Ross evidently don't get along, they still have managed to reunite once in a while.  Here's a short write-up by David Hajdu.

Hendricks, who's interviewed here, is a brilliant scat singer, as you can see in this clip of Lambert, Hendricks, and Ross singing Sonny Rollins's "Airegin" (solo starts at about 0:30).

The vocalese concept can be pretty hilarious, but I have to say that I don't think Hendricks is a great lyricist—maybe it's just that vocalese has never really escaped a kind of corny type of humor that was popular in the 1950s.  But a lot of it would work pretty well as just pure scat—wordless vocals.

Here's more LH & R—Horace Silver's "Doodlin'":

And here's Silver's original recording from 1954:

Don Cherry & Karita Mattila

Try playing these two videos simultaneously:

Michel Petrucciani: New Documentary

Michael Radford, who directed Il Postino, premiered a new documentary about the great jazz pianist Michel Petrucciani (1963-99) at this year's Cannes Film Festival.  Here's a trailer:

Here's a review from the Guardian, and some recent items in French here, here and here.  You can see another documentary about Petrucciani, in its entirety, here (also available on DVD), and you can watch a complete 1985 set at the Village Vanguard with guitarist Jim Hall (b. 1930) here.  A chronology of Petrucciani's life is available here (in German, English, and French).

There are a couple of books of transcriptions of Petrucciani's solos; one of them seems to be out of print, but another is available in France.  Some transcriptions are available online here, here, and here.  David Hajdu wrote a nice article about Petrucciani in The New Republic, which was reprinted in his book Heroes and Villains.

Earlier this year, the French writer Benjamin Halay published a full-length biography of Petrucciani.  There's also a Master's thesis by Phil Broadhurst in New Zealand.

Here's a transcript of an interview Petrucciani gave in 1998, a year before he died, and here's a filmed conversation:

For a pretty thorough discography, go here.  There are lots of good Petrucciani tracks on Grooveshark.  And some of the best albums that currently seem to be available on Amazon are Music, Solo Live, Live at the Village Vanguard, and Power of Three, with Wayne Shorter and Jim Hall, which is also available on DVD:

Here are a few good videos:
• "Little Peace in C for You," with Anthony Jackson and Steve Gadd:

• Duke Ellington and Juan Tizol's "Caravan," solo:

• ...and Ellington's "In a Sentimental Mood":

• ...and "C Jam Blues":

• "Looking Up":

Petrucciani is buried in Père Lachaise Cemetery:

Jean Renoir's The River

All right, I saw Jean Renoir's Grand Illusion (1937), and liked it.  I saw The Rules of the Game (1939), and liked it.  So I was looking forward to The River (1951):

What a massive disappointment!  I gave up after about half an hour.  I can't remember the last time I gave up on a film so quickly.  I guess maybe when it was first released, four years after India's independence, it gave Western audiences a nostalgic romanticized view of a recent colonial past, in pretty technicolor, that may have had a certain appeal.  But the dialogue is clichéd, the acting wooden, and the whole scenario pretty cringe-inducing.  If I have an hour and a half spare, I'd rather spend it looking at something that Jean Renoir's father cooked up seventy years earlier, in 1881:

 ...for more on the "Luncheon of the Boating Party," click here.

Hope Stephanie Germanotta's had a chance to check out Kathryn Kalinak

"Born This Way":

Bernard Herrmann's title sequence from Hitchcock's Vertigo:

Kathryn Kalinak's "A Brief Analysis of Vertigo".

Marcel Carné, Les Enfants du Paradis, Arletty

Carné....

Les Enfants du Paradis (1945):

Arletty... some forty years later...

"Si mon cœur est français, mon cul, lui, est international!"

Alan Riding on Charlie Rose:

Blue

Krzystof Kieslowski's Blue (1993):

Pablo Picasso's "La Vie" (1903):

Miles Davis's "Blue" from Aura (1984):

Yves Klein....

...his blue paintings, such as:

...and his Anthropometries of the Blue Period (1962):

Joni Mitchell's "Blue" (1971):

Hands

Michelangelo's "Creation of Adam" (1508-12):

August Rodin, Hand Sculpture:

Paul Strand's photograph "Rebecca's Hands" (1923).

M.C. Escher's "Drawing Hands" (1948):

Yvonne Rainer's "Hand Movie" (1966) (I think this was made when she was in the hospital and temporarily couldn't dance):

Richard Serra's "Hand Catching Lead" (1968):

Christian Moeller's mural at San Jose Airport.

Jesse Helms's "White Hands" (1990) racist television campaign ad:

Things Bartolomeo Cristofori May Not Have Anticipated

Misha Mengelberg:

Ursula Oppens playing Elliott Carter:

Yuji Takahashi playing Iannis Xenakis:

 Conlon Nancarrow, Study No. 5:

Harpo Marx:

Pierre-Laurent Aimard playing Ligeti:

Sylvie Courvoisier:

Lisa Moore playing Rzewski:

1967 Radio Piano Smashing Contest:

Maurizio Pollini playing Stockhausen:

Henry Cowell's The Tides of Manaunan:

Cecil Taylor:

David Tudor playing John Cage's Music of Changes:

La Monte Young's X for Henry Flynt:

Jean Barraqué's Piano Sonata:

Bartolomeo Cristofori (1655-1731), inventor of the piano: