Search: Sam Rivers

there should be a "not" between "will" and "provide", but I should also add that if one can remember how to spell connoisseur (sp?), then you can type that after www.bluenote.com/ and get a page that lists all the titles currently in print in that series. (its just the OOP titles that you cant get a list of).

FSS just came back out a week ago, so you are not late at all.

Surprised to see this tired old chestnut sprung back to life in 2003.

1. A set of chord changes using functional harmony can look/sound complex compared to what we hear in rock/pop but often they represent only minimal variations on well worn templates. Which is why a lot of mediocre jazzers can play comfortably by ear on tunes with functional harmony but struggle to improvise on rock/pop changes. It's the unconventionality (by functional harmony criteria) of rock/pop changes - the absence of cycle of fifth or II/V/I landmarks etc - that makes some jazzers uncomfortable with rock/pop harmonic patterns.

2. Of course jazz largely abandoned functional harmony in the early '60s. Many of the harmonic structures that were used by composers in the modal period were anything but complex, but unless you are going to dismiss modal jazz out of hand (ie huge chunks of Miles, Coltrane, Shorter, Hancock yadda, yadda) jazz players did not struggle to create great music using non-complex harmonies in this period.

3. To state the obvious, jazz musicians work through re-harmonisation. Taking simple harmonic patterns and rendering them complex through reharmonisation is a key element of the modus operandi of jazz. The twelve bar blues and "I've Got Rhythm" didn't become the template for bebop because they were harmonically complex.

I don't really feel like addressing the whole 'jazz covers of rock' thing, save for that I do think it is very tricky to do well and with respect to both genres/ways of doing things. I think the Bad Plus does it extremely well and I've talked about it on other threads.

Jordan the rock/jazz crossover is more interesting than ever IMO. Musicians like Dave Douglas, John Zorn, Uri Caine, The Bad Plus (Reid Anderson in particular is a serious jazz talent whatever the snobs may think), Esbjorn Svenson are doing brilliant stuff, although their recorded output still doesn't quite have the impact of their live work.

Rhythm has always been a bigger problem than harmony in welding rock and jazz. Hip-hop, and to a lesser extent electronica have made things easier by eroding the dominance of the very square bass drum on one and three/snare drum on two and four rock rhythm. In particular rhythms that are based on triplet subdivisions have, for the first time since swing, become part of pop's vocabulary and this is natural territory for jazzers. They are now able to use drum patterns that that are hip, popular, and work in a jazz context without the kind of compromises (funk etc) that made it difficult for soloists to find space to breath.

conquistador is grebt.

(as for Sam Rivers, I still haven't gone beyond Black Stars, the Fluid Motion thing I mentioned above, and Fuschia Swing Song, but I do like the guy)

Are these guys doing straight rock or covers from a variety of other musics? (zorn has covered thrash metal I suppose - I'm not sure whether its diff, in musical terms, from 'straight' rock?)

But I guess it did turn into how to adapt into a rock style.

I guess I don't know what you're getting at Julio...are you interested in whether they are doing a lot of covers, or who is doing rock covers, or whether they are covering music other than rock?

Speaking of piano players, dying to hear this one with Don Pullen (listed many places as a Pullen date despite both names gracing the LP cover), Capricorn Rising from 1975, shortly after Crystals was released. Anybody know it?

http://image.allmusic.com/00/amg/cov200/drd000/d059/d05952l1n0h.jpg

'contours' just has this bright lightness to it even when rivers is honking away.

you know, i haven't heard that one!

i've been listening to "contrasts" a lot lately.

usually i prefer 'dimensions and extensions', seems a little less bluenotey (67 as opposed to 65) in the songwriting/arranging, but maybe not so much as i had been used to thinking

"Dimensions & Extensions" has this weird flanging/out-of-phase recording quality to the ride cymbal throughout...very strange that Van Gelder didn't notice that

I finally picked up an LP of Conference of the Birds today. God what a great album. Record just jumps at you from the go it sounds so good.

Yup it's a classic. Braxton brilliant on it too.

Funny enough the shop had a later Holland record which I've always liked as well- 'Triplicate', with Steve Coleman & Jack DeJohnette. They do Four Winds on it and it's good of course, but not wise to A/B the two versions.

conference of the birds has absolutely amazing performances but does also seem to be recorded perfectly - the drums in particular sound incredibly good

it's amazing in that regard. Before ECM settled into a house style...

https://www.soundohm.com/product/zenith/pid/36742/

some absolute fire on this album

That link didn't work for me but here's the label website:

http://nobusinessrecords.com/zenith.html

The music is indeed fantastic, but having it as a single 53-minute track annoyed me, so I chopped it up in WaveLab, breaking it every time he switched instruments (from tenor sax to flute, from flute to piano). I wound up with three tracks of roughly 18 minutes each.

Zenith by the Sam Rivers Quartert was recorded 6th November, 1977 in Berlin, Germany, and re-mastered for this release by Arūnas Zujus at MAMAstudios. Personnel includes: Sam Rivers - tenor and soprano saxophones, flute, piano, Joe Daley - tuba, euphonium, Dave Holland - bass, cello, Barry Altschul - drums, Charlie Persip - drums.

oops dunno why the link doesn't this is what is

doesn't work

yeah, having a 53 minute track is a bit annoying, but at least some of it is awesome stuff!

More Sam Rivers is always a good thing. Has anyone heard Emanation, the live trio album released this year? Rivers, Cecil McBee and Norman Connors, which is quite the line-up.

Yeah, that's a good one, too.

For some reason, these aren't available digitally - you have to buy the CDs. They're worth it, though. The liner notes are great.

Got Rick Lopez' sessionography, my GOD it's huge.

Aslo, apropos the live series from No Business, some of them are available digitally.

Lopez sent me a PDF and the section about 1969 is definitely gonna be a big help for the Cecil Taylor book I'm writing. Lots of data, and a bunch of great quotes.

The No Business archive series now seem to be all up on Qobuz

The ever-handy Night Lights archive still has an hour and forty seconds of their '04 Rivers doc streaming:

A Brief Convergence: Miles Davis And Sam Rivers In 1964
By DAVID JOHNSON
Posted July 24, 2004

In 1964 Miles Davis had a new rhythm section in place-Herbie Hancock on piano, Ron Carter on bass, Tony Williams on drums-but he was still searching for a tenor saxophonist. Since John Coltrane's departure in 1960, Miles had gone through Sonny Stitt, Hank Mobley, Jimmy Heath, and George Coleman; he really wanted Wayne Shorter, but Shorter was still committed to Art Blakey's Jazz Messengers. In the meantime, the teenaged Tony Williams enthusiastically recommended a fellow Boston musician who was two years older than Miles-Sam Rivers, who had played everything from bebop and progressive big-band to r & b (he was working as T-Bone Walker's musical director at the time) and free jazz.

Rivers filled the tenor chair for several months in 1964, and his time with Miles is one of the more fascinating chapters in the Davis saga. One LP-Miles in Tokyo-is the only musical documentation that Columbia has ever provided of this particular ensemble. This week on "Night Lights" I'll be playing unreleased music from that same tour, featuring Rivers with Davis on "Autumn Leaves," "Oleo," and "Stella By Starlight"-tunes that were not played on Miles in Tokyo. (By the way, these unreleased dates will not be included in the forthcoming Miles Davis 1963-64 Sony box, either-not sure why!) We'll also hear selections from Fuchsia Swing Song, the album that Rivers recorded for Blue Note later that year with Davis sidemen Ron Carter and Tony Williams, as well as pianist Jaki Byard.

Weird. I just discovered that album like two weeks ago and bought it. Sam Rivers apparently did an online chat via JATLC around 2000 that's possibly lost to time, but someone saved this quote about his time with Miles from it:

Jonathan Feldman (Brooklyn, NY): On Miles Davis's "Live in Tokyo" album you stole the show. How did it feel to be so young and upstaging the most famous jazz musician in the world at that time?

Sam Rivers: Actually I was older than Miles at the time - by a year or two. I really didn't think I upstaged him. He sounded really good. He was sick at the time, but he sounded great. We were good friends, even throughout his whole life. When I played with Dizzy Gillespie, we talked all the time. I was just supposed to play with Miles until Art Blakey came back off tour with Wayne Shorter, and it was supposed to be a transfer, but I joined with Andrew Hill instead. There wasn't any animosity - that's just the way it went down. Miles had wanted Wayne for many years before that.

Thanks so much for posting about the book…one of my favorite musicians and I had no idea it was coming or exists.

he would've been 100 years old today (technically yesterday). some events happening are listed on his website:

https://samrivers.com/

and here's a brief celebration from kevin whitehead of fresh air:

https://www.npr.org/2023/09/25/1201511617/celebrating-jazz-great-sam-rivers-on-what-would-have-been-his-100th-birthday

$65 for the rick lopez sessionography. is it worth it?

$65 for the rick lopez sessionography. is it worth it?

noted

If you're a big enough fan it's definitely worth it. Rivers had such a unique life and career that it gives you a real insight into alternative pathways to creating the musical world you want to see/live in.