Richard -- These are great points and you made them beautifully. And I couldn;t agree more. Breaking new ground, well, that's amazing. But it doesn;t happen very often. I admire musicians who find what they do and refine it until it glows. Hank Jones leaps to mind. So do Vassar Clements and Richard Thompson. sh on 1/19/04 3:41 AM, Richard Gardner at richard.gardner@colourtone.co.uk wrote:
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This is an important point for me. I sometimes feel that there is a strong whiff of avant garde testosterone on the list equating musical value to sheer noise level. S/he has lost their edge - my ears didn't bleed this time.
Now don't get me wrong I love Brötzmann's Machine Gun and enjoy Yoshide, Merzbow and Musica Transonic. It just seems easy for some people to narrow down the field by ignoring/attacking a performance/CD because it does not attempt to pioneer the future of music.
I put on a CD or arrive at a performance and wait. On rare occasions I have had my view of the world changed (I have felt the synapses altering as the music unfolds) but generally I sit back and let gifted players carry me away by the breadth of their imagination, the unpredictability of their choices of notes and (for me this is important) the sheer skill of whatever they do. If the next day my ears are still ringing then that is great but it's not a judgement of the performance.
Richard