Tim Berne/Snakeoil

[aka Calum Da Jazbo]

well i have had difficulty keeping up any kind of intensity for a few years now and therefore have attentional challenges all the time .... this set failed to overcome my wanderingnesszzzzzzzzzzzzz....... hackneyvi oot it in #1

[Tom Adustus]

There was an interesting long interview with Tim Berne a month or two ago on "The Jazz Session" podcast.

See: http://thejazzsession.com/page/2/

The Jazz Session is a good listen, long interviews with interesting musicians. The talk is normally very good even if the music can occaisionally be off the wall !!!

One edition of the podcast last year consisted of an interview with a pair of young european horn players who were on tour in the USA playing very avant-garde-ish 'music'. About half way through the interviewer asked them about their musical education, the answer was none. They had never had a lesson !!!!! But the interview continued as if that was perfectly ok. It was a hoot. It should have been kept back for April 1st.

[aka Calum Da Jazbo]

thanks Tom ... interesting blog and a reminder how little efffort is puit into jazz on the net by AUNT and R3 ....




just so 20th century mindset innit

[Serial_Apologist]

thanks Tom ... interesting blog and a reminder how little efffort is puit into jazz on the net by AUNT and R3 ....

U browse?

[charles t]

Serialist, et al. Fine reactions. For the moment, it seems, Berne is experimenting with (excuse expression) crossovers into modern

neo-classical modes...

If you heard this set blindly a year or so ago, the name of Tim Berne would not !come to mind!

[hackneyvi]

I confess on the night I didn't go back for the second half. Went down to Tesco Metro at the interval and the short distance seemed like a long walk back. It was probably 10-ish by then anyway. But if I disliked the entire combination in a piece of the free and dance music; if the stylistic contrast seemed to render the music for all its complexity simplistic (A-B-A), nevertheless the dance itself, the getting there and the passing between were enjoyable.

I am reminded of Anthony Payne last year who I heard talking about his 1st string quartet. He referred to himself, self-deprecatingly, as falling between two stools. The people who liked his modernism, he said, disliked the romantic elements in his music, and the ones who liked the romantic elements disliked the modernism. It struck me when he said this - I had a very clear impression - that what this meant was that he had a different perspective because his musical position was an unusual one, between.

To make a parallel but not a likeness, Snakeoil/Payne feels like mixing pop art with action painting, like mixing what grins with what glowers. The effect isn't roundly pleasing - an appealing conceivable 'whole' isn't made - but the music can still be sincere and of interest.

[Tenor Freak]

This set went along at more or less the same levels of moderate intensity for protracted passages, which made it hard to maintain interest and therefore attention - a problem I've felt with several of TB's groups over the past few years.

S-A

Sums it up, really. I couldn't hear any changes in tension, and found Noriega's clarinet to be shrill; I wish he'd kept to the bass clarinet.

[Oddball]

the lack of grippingness in the performance ........made it hard to maintain interest and therefore attention S-A

After listening to this several times, it didn't resonate with me. Individual areas of interest, but no overall sense of purpose and didn't relate happily with my existing ideas of what should be in a Jazz performance.

Believe a previous group of his Buffalo Collision was also played on Jon3 - so far as I recall, I enjoyed that more.

[Tenor Freak]

I enjoyed Science Friction (avec Craig Taborn) much more.