Ring carbons
The ring carbon atoms in substituted benzenes exert a larger attraction on the valency electron cloud of the hydrogen atom resulting in an increase in the C-H force constant and a decrease in the corresponding bond length. I’m on the train, and that’s how it reads on the laptop of my next-seat neighbor. I thought you wanted to know.
I’m also sure that you’d want to know who you’re dealing with, so I’ve done a self portrait in the mirror of my hotel room.
Time to think back. The Moers Festival does state that it attempts to show the state of improvised music today, and though of course it necessarily has its leanings, and you cannot get more than a narrow slice of what actually is out there, how does the stuff I saw hold together?
Brötz won. I mean that’s clear as the sky. You just have to watch him backstage, he seems completely focused like all of the time, he’s, what? 69 years and again making some of the best music in all of his career. He will have staid family folk clapping wildly live who would run screaming if they had to listen to a record of his in their safe homes. Brötz totally rules, and I’m so glad I’ve witnessed him twice in his prime.
In not so good news, there is a lack of voices. There’s a lot of great ensemble play, but the excentric individual doesn’t seem currently in vogue. Some of those who did show a distinct voice somehow didn’t fare well on their repeat appearance, Tyshawn Sorey disappeared behind his music with his own group, Bill Frisell was shockingly clueless as to how to make music out of the duo gig with Henriksen, although his trio has been one of the highlights of the festival.
Overblowing your horn has become sort of the jazz lingua franca. Or make that esperanto. I find that somewhat lame, because the greatest of the screamers, like Sanders or Shepp or Brötzmann (or today Gustafsson) were never about blowing your top to create climax while the rhythm shuffles along. (Eg. listen to Don Cherry’s Symphony for Improvisers. It has Sanders weaving circles around tenor Gato Barbieri on piccolo flute. Then for the finale Sanders picks up the tenor too. While Barbieri is sure that emotion will translate into the listener’s ear whenever he honks, Sanders eats the sound from inside out. He’s not about projecting stuff, he’s deep into his medium. And that’s the difference, really, and if I stress this so much, it’s also because of the morning sessions I haven’t mentioned on the blog, which threw together the younger talent in free improvisations that were completely predictable, honking and hustling their way to a dutiful climax. There were a lot of third-generation Barbieris.)
More plusses: my childhood heroes are still going strong. (Does that mean I’ve now officially had a happy childhood?) And there’s such intelligence in the music, the last day sort of had the only drummers who would just hit on the kit without any scruples. Composition is the new improvisation (except for John Wall, where it’s the reverse, but I don’t think shuffling that around will change the meaning in any way).
Well, this time I’m really out for the unforeseeable future. Maybe some Plush folks can send me a CD now and then which I can officially, spontaneously, and unanimously embrace. Folks?
Until then, Lutz Eitel
