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Music Is The Healing Force Of The Universe The Inconsistency of |
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News from 2011 - January to May January 1 2011 L. S. E. Concert Poster The infamous concert at the London School of Economics, part of Ayler’s 1966 European tour, filmed by the BBC for its ‘Jazz Goes To College Series’, but never broadcast and the tapes later wiped, rears its head again. Last year I came across Humphrey Lyttelton’s account of the event, this year, thanks to Dave Bruce, I’ve now got the poster. Dave was at the concert and recently ran into the guy who sold him the ticket, who told him he’d found one of the original posters for the event. He intends to offer it for sale, probably on ebay, but Dave suggested he should let me have a photo for the site. Here it is - click the picture for the larger image. And many thanks again to Dave Bruce. |
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*** John Adams High School Marching Band 1954 - help wanted Richard Koloda sent me a couple of photos from Albert Ayler’s alma mater, the John Adams High School in Cleveland, from 1954. Both photos feature school bands and there is a possibility that Albert is in there somewhere. However the quality of the photos is not too good and I think the only people who will recognise Albert are fellow members of the band. So, if there are any out there, and the magical power of google has led you to this page, click on the images below to get the bigger picture and if you do recognise Albert, please let me know. |
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“AT EASE! Taking time from practice to pose is the John Adams Marching Band. Majorettes in new uniforms are, left to right, Mary Jane Michak, Annabelle Giddens, Dorothy Kisha, Carol Kozak; Dick Burke, drum major; Gloria Runser, head majorette; Janice Krochot, Shirley Conaway and Lynne Novak.” |
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*** Spiritual Unity at the Cleveland Museum of Art in March Margaret Davis Grimes has emailed details of two events in Albert Ayler’s hometown of Cleveland due to take place in March this year: Spiritual Unity: the Legacy and Music of Albert Ayler Friday, March 18th, 2011, 7.30 pm in the Gartner Auditorium of the Cleveland Museum of Art. Panel Discussion - Albert Ayler: Music, Spirituality and Freedom March 17th, 2011, 6 to 8 pm at the Thwing Center Ballroom (11111 Euclid Avenue), organised by the Baker-Nord Center of Case Western Reserve University. “A panel of interdisciplinary scholars will discuss key themes associated with the work of Cleveland-born jazz musician Albert Ayler, including relationships between America and Europe, freedom and order, and spirituality and jazz as well as concepts of cultural cross-fertilization. This event is held in conjunction with the performance by Spiritual Unity, Marc Ribot’s quartet dedicated to the music of Ayler, hosted at the Cleveland Museum of Art on 18 March. Pre-event reception will begin at 5:30 pm.” *** And finally . . . |
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*** A Very Ayler Christmas! - CD Review |
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1. Spirits - Angels from the Realm of Glory (8:40) Bernard Stepien Orchestra: Available from Bernard Stepien’s site. There was a recent article about the etiquette pertaining to Christmas music by Paul Morley in The Observer. When you start to listen to it, when you have to stop. Since the Jesuits had me till I was seven I’ve always believed that if you play White Christmas after midnight on January 6th then you’re in for trouble. I mean, they were going to send me to hell for all eternity for eating meat on Friday, so, god knows what penalties were incurred by listening to Bing after the Wise Men had been and gone. I received this CD on January 4th - Bernard had sent me a copy from Canada in plenty of time, but then the snow fell and Britain ground to a halt and the postal system collapsed. I reckoned I had three days to listen to the CD and write a review before I put it away until next December. I should also explain that the day before the CD arrived we’d just taken down the tree and all the decorations and that curious depression which tends to follow Christmas had descended on the house. So, conditions were not ideal for listening to A Very Ayler Christmas, but as the TV slowly returned to normal and the news programmes reappeared with their doom laden predictions for the coming year, I did my best. I have mentioned Bernard Stepien’s attempts to fuse Ayler tunes with Christmas carols a few times before, but I guess I should repeat myself because it is such a brilliant concept. This is not a case of playing carols in the style of Albert Ayler (à la Roland Kirk’s We Free Kings), instead the Bernard Stepien Orchestra take a carol and an Ayler tune and try to meld them together. At its best, you forget which tune is which and the effect is quite magical (although in my case that might just be the early onset of Alzheimer’s). However, be warned, such a high concept project has its pitfalls. You tend to imagine what it’s going to sound like and play your own version in your head so that when you finally get the CD you can be disappointed. I’m still not sure about the opening track, Angels from the Realms of Glory and Spirits, in fact I think I prefer the earlier version on Bernard’s site. However, the second track, Joy to the World and Bells, is quite magnificent. I think one of the problems is how familiar you are with the carols. And presumably for non-Ayler fans, how familiar you are with the Ayler tunes. So, Angels from the Realms of Glory, I don’t know that well, so for me it doesn’t work as well as the others. I also had a problem at first with the third track, Vibrations and Good King Wenceslas, since I’d always felt that the latter was one of the jollier carols (no baby Jesus and mangers and such, just a nice Socialist subtext), but linked with Vibrations it is taken at a dirge-like pace. However, listen to it again and it starts to make sense. I hope I’m not sounding overly critical here, but I think you have to clear away a lot of preconceptions before you can give this music a fair hearing. For example, the track which surprised me the most was Oh Come All Ye Faithful and Spiritual Rebirth. I’ve hated Oh Come All Ye Faithful for the last fifty years, ever since the Christmas my dad bought a tape recorder (one of those massive reel-to-reel efforts) and on Boxing Day all the aunts and uncles and aged parents assembled and had to record something and I was forced to sing Oh Come All Ye Faithful, in Latin. I think they taught us the Latin version at school because the English version does contain one of the worst lines in any song, religious or secular: “Lo! he abhors not the Virgin’s womb.” You find that with hymns, the first verse is usually ok and that’s the one everyone knows but when you go to funerals (which is the only time I set foot in church these days) and you sing the whole thing you’ll find all this rubbish creeping in. Anyway, I digress, but to make a legitimate point. When you’re dealing with things like Christmas carols which you’ve known all your life, you bring a lot of baggage with you. So the CD takes a few listens to divest yourself of said baggage. Simply put, Track 7 is great, I had no problem with it at all. Funnily enough I had more trouble with Track 5, Oh Christmas Tree and Ghosts. Admittedly you’ve got a problem with Oh Christmas Tree because it already has a twin - it’s the same tune as The Red Flag, so whenever I hear it I’m singing: Then raise the scarlet standard high. Added to that the spirit of Mary Maria is invoked at one point, so I was put off a bit. But it does contain a beautiful sax solo towards the end which mingles the two tunes to brilliant effect. Deck the Halls and Omega is the Alpha, is great. With Silent Night and Our Prayer you’re wrong footed again. Expecting something peaceful and dirgey, instead it’s one of the wildest tracks on the CD, but produces my favourite moment of all, when after a roiling version of Our Prayer (perhaps a nod to Don’s many demons), a sax emerges with a simple statement of Silent Night. The final track, Hark! The Herald Angels Sing and Infinite Spirit ends the CD in a very light-hearted manner - invoking for me the end of It’s a Wonderful Life, which can’t be bad. I would like to say something about the overall feel of the album, but it’s tricky. I almost want to say it’s amateurish but I know that will be misinterpreted. What I mean is it seems to be the work of amateurs, in the truest sense of that word - that the music is performed out of love - not as some clinical musical exercise. The whole thing does exude a playful and a joyful feeling which is quite in keeping with the spirit of Albert Ayler. I just hope Bernard makes enough money from the CD to do another one. There’s plenty of scope for a follow-up, neither of my two favourite carols are tackled here - God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen and In The Bleak Midwinter. And I’m sure you could mix Change Has Come with Carol of the Bells (or maybe just do Bells again so it’s Carol of the Bells Bells). And I also wondered whether the same approach could be made with other tunes - maybe revisit Ayler’s straight approach to the tunes on Goin’ Home and mix it up a bit. Still, for now we have A Very Ayler Christmas by the Bernard Stepien Orchestra and we should just be grateful for that. All in all, it’s a great CD, the Albert Ayler Christmas Album he never got round to recording. *** January 12 2011 A Very Ayler Christmas! Just a quick follow-up. Bernard Stepien emailed some comments about the review of his CD, A Very Ayler Christmas! (see below) including the following about the third track, Vibrations and Good King Wenceslas. I thought this was worth repeating here since as well as offsetting the terribly untechnical nature of my review, it also sheds light on some of the processes involved in creating this wonderful music. “Some pieces seem to have left you more puzzled than others. I love your impression on Vibrations and Good King Wenceslas. Don’t worry, the rest of my band needed some serious lectures of which I am locally famous to get the point and play it the way I wanted. Last year I explained or lectured to the audience that this was a combination that had only one note in common. The last note of each stanza, both for Vibrations and King Wenceslas. But later I found out myself that these two pieces had another thing in common, they are both modal. This is radically different than everything else both for carols and Ayler where everything is atrociously polyphonic in the V-I chord progression style. Now, the only problem is that both modes do not match exactly. Both modes are still alive in Arabic or Turkish music as the maquam ‘ajm and bayati. In my solo right after the vocals I first developed the ajm as a taksim, highly forbidding anyone else to play the slightest reference to a chord even if the ajm maquam corresponds to the very western major scale. I then made a smooth transition to the bayati maquam and all of a sudden you find yourself in Istanbul. The fake Nubian, Sun Ra style rhythm was one of the surprises of that recording. It was by no means planned and never turned up at previous rehearsals but it happened. I am still trying to analyze who was the culprit, me or Scott, the drummer. In any case everyone fell into the trap and we had a blast at this one. We also never managed to reproduce it either like that since then.” *** February 1 2011 Paolo Botti - Angels & Ghosts Last year when I was writing about the Sant’ Anna Arresi Jazz Festival I came across a video on youtube featuring a performance of Our Prayer and Zion Hill on the banjo by Paolo Botti. Now he’s released a CD, containing a mixture of Ayler tunes and tributes, played on a variety of instruments - banjo, dobro, viola and mandolin. |
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And if you’re wondering why Bobby Timmons’ ‘Moanin’’ is included - Ayler’s version is on volume 2 of The First Recordings.
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Another fine, original addition to the list of Ayler tribute albums and thanks to Marco Grossi for sending the information. *** My Name Is Albert Ayler Checking the My Name Is Albert Ayler website (which I do religiously at the end of every month, clicking the ‘shop’ button in case they’ve changed that opening sentence: “It’ll soon be possible to preorder the DVD on the website. More news on this shortly.”) I came across a couple of mentions of Ayler on The New Yorker blog by Richard Brody - one from last year, Ghost Stories and one from this, His Name Is Albert Ayler. The film was shown at the Maysles Cinema in New York on January 19th and 20th, and is also due to to be shown at the California State University on February 8th and the Cleveland Art Museum on March 16th, as part of the Albert Ayler hometown mini-festival which I mentioned last month. *** Evan Parker plays Albert Ayler Also in March, on Thursday 10th, Evan Parker & Kammerflimmer Kollektief will be performing Albert Ayler’s “Ghosts” at the Lux Æterna (The Transcendence of Music) Festival in Berlin. Thanks to Richard Rees Jones for letting me know about this. *** Stuart Maconie’s Freak Zone And just a note to say that Stuart Maconie’s Featured LP on his Sunday night programme on BBC 6 Music on 30th January was Spiritual Unity. The programme is available on the iPlayer until 5th February. *** And finally ... Just as I was about to put this month’s update online, I received an email from Kees Hazevoet with a link to this item on youtube.
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March 1 2011 Reminders and a couple of odd items Mentioned previously but worth repeating, two significant Ayler events this month: Berlin: March 10th: Evan Parker & Kammerflimmer Kollektief will be performing Albert Ayler’s “Ghosts” at the Lux Æterna (The Transcendence of Music) Festival in Berlin. Cleveland: March 16th: My Name Is Albert Ayler is showing at the Cleveland Museum of Art. March 17th: ‘’Albert Ayler: Music, Spirituality and Freedom - a panel discussion at the Thwing Center Ballroom (11111 Euclid Avenue), organised by the Baker-Nord Center of Case Western Reserve University. March 18th: Spiritual Unity: the Legacy and Music of Albert Ayler in the Gartner Auditorium of the Cleveland Museum of Art. *** Odd item 1 Albert Ayler’s obituary from The Times, December 5th, 1970: |
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Not sure what “Holy People” is, but I do like the ‘Mr.’ * Odd item 2 Currently on sale at ebay for $40 - the 8-track tape version of The Last Album: |
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For the Ayler fan who has everything - including, presumably, an 8-track cartridge player. *** March 8 2011 Thanks to Richard Koloda for forwarding this flyer for this month’s Albert Ayler events in Cleveland. Richard also let me know that Tom Welsh (Associate Director of the Cleveland Museum of Art) will be a guest on Richard’s radio show on WCSB Cleveland, today, 1 - 3 pm EST (that’ll teach me to let the emails go for a few days.) |
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March 23 2011 News of the site Apologies are in order. The site went down some time last week (thanks to everybody who let me know, especially Richard Koloda who was the first) and I then spent a frantic weekend trying to solve the problem. The root cause was the ownership of the domain name, ayler.org - too complicated to go into here, involving dead friends and dodgy internet companies - but the end result was that I had to change the site address to www.ayler.co.uk. Hopefully that’s it for some time to come - but I probably said the same thing when I changed from the old supanet site. *** April 1 2011 Hopefully somebody’s reading this and the new site (well the old site with the new address) is working o.k. Ayler at the Cleveland Museum of Art This month’s update is mainly photos. The first (with thanks to Imam Mutawaf Shaheed and Richard Koloda) was taken at the ‘Albert Ayler: Music, Spirituality and Freedom’ seminar in Cleveland on March 17th and brings together two of Ayler’s bassists: Henry Grimes on the left and Mutawaf Shaheed (formerly Clyde Shy) on the right. |
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The following evening Henry Grimes was performing with Marc Ribot’s Spiritual Unity at the Cleveland Museum of Art, in the presence of Albert and Donald’s father, Edward Ayler. The opening remarks of the M.C. prior to the concert are available here. *** Coltrane’s Funeral There are photos of John Coltrane’s funeral elsewhere on the site but thanks to Yair Dagan, who sent me some links, I can now add the two below. |
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They come from ’Walter Ohlemutzs collection and there’s also a photo of the Order of Service. |
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And coincidentally Dikko Faust just sent me a link to some rare Ornette Coleman items on the Destination Out site, including Coleman’s contribution to Coltrane’s funeral service. The Ayler performance is of course in the Holy Ghost box, and a rougher version of the radio recording is available on this site. So I thought I might as well add the Coleman performance as well. Click the picture of Ornette Coleman, Charlie Haden and Charles Moffett outside St. Peter’s Lutheran Church to hear it. |
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Yair also pointed me in the direction of the Jazzhus Montmartre site where there are some great photos of some of the jazz musicians who have played there over the years, including this one of Albert Ayler: |
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© Jan Persson And on another page of the Jazzhus Montmartre site, you’ll find this - a poster for Cecil Taylor’s appearance at the club in 1962. There’s some confusion about when Ayler first hooked up with Taylor, but the general opinion is that Albert first jammed with the Taylor Trio in Sweden at the Golden Circle in October 1962, then eventually was invited to join the group at this gig at the Jazzhus Montmartre in Denmark the following month. |
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And finally ... This is just very weird. I spotted it on ebay, but not having collected a stamp for fifty years I have no knowledge of the ways of the philatelist. The description runs thus: “2004 Jazz Legends souvenir cover from the 50th Anniversary Newport Jazz Festival. The cover is in excellent condition, it has been affixed with the Jazz Legends vignette stamp, cancelled on the date of the event with the Newport Jazz Festival cachet, 19th March 2004 with the cover specially illustrated for the 50th Anniversary event featuring Jazz legend, Albert Ayler. A great collectors piece of memorabilia, see the picture below.” |
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April 6 2011 A Quick Update Margaret Davis Grimes emailed me about last month’s events at the Cleveland Museum of Art and, in particular, Mr. Edward Ayler: “I thought I'd let you know that Edward Ayler is fine, and I spoke with him by phone the day before the concert of Albert's music that Henry played at the Cleveland Museum on March 18th with Marc Ribot, Roy Campbell, Jr., and Chad Taylor (Marc's quartet called Spiritual Unity), and we invited Edward Ayler, and he did attend the concert and was very moved by it, as we were by his presence. He is 97 years old and seems quite healthy and clear-minded. Of course, at 97 he is fragile. We invited him also to the panel discussion at Case Western University the day before, but he said he felt that going to two events in two evenings in a row would be a strain on him physically, and of course that's understandable. The Case Western panel was not recorded or filmed (so far as we know), but I do have Henry's remarks on paper, so I will mail a copy to Edward Ayler sometime soon. Warm wishes, *** And just a quick note, because otherwise I’ll forget, Kees Hazevoet let me know that the photograph by Jan Persson below was used on the cover of the original version of Ghosts. *** May 1 2011 Most of the work for this month’s update has been done by Yair Dagan (since I’m still in a state of shock on account of Stoke City making it to the F.A. Cup Final). Perhaps the most significant link he sent me was the following: Spirits Rejoice - a film by Brian Carpenter If you dig way back into the old What’s New pages in the Archives, you’ll find Brian Carpenter’s name cropping up now and again. Although I never mentioned it at the time he was working on a film about Albert Ayler’s influence on other musicians. We lost touch after a while and when Kasper Collin’s film was released, I assumed that Brian had given up on his project. Apparently not, and on his website he gives the following description of the film, which is now in post-production: “Spirits Rejoice (85 min, DV, 16mm, in post-production) Brian Carpenter, director Featuring Edward Ayler, Peter Brotzmann, Milford Graves, Henry Grimes, Mats Gustafsson, Sunny Murray, William Parker, Gary Peacock, Marc Ribot, Roswell Rudd, Alan Silva, Michael Snow, and Ken Vandermark, with narration by Harvey Pekar and Albert Ayler. Actor and saxophonist Jeff Robinson plays Albert Ayler. Spirits Rejoice is a feature-length documentary on today's free jazz scene as impacted by the life of saxophonist Albert Ayler, the mythological free music pioneer whose work in the 1960s kicked open the door for free improvised music. Ayler's search for continual development in the music through inner strength and spirituality was fought with a storm of controversy and criticism during his time. In 1970 his body was pulled from the East River, his death to this day shrouded in mystery. Decades after his death, a new generation of musicians, poets, dancers, painters, and filmmakers cite him as direct inspiration for their work. Spirits Rejoice takes us through the rollercoaster life and continued legacy of free jazz saxophonist Albert Ayler, switching between his biography in black-and-white 16mm narrated by Harvey Pekar and Ayler himself, and his legacy in the form of interviews and riveting performances in digital video “ Brian’s site also has some stills from the film and in his Radio section, an interview with William Parker which has an interesting bit about Albert Ayler (and if you check out his blog you’ll also find youtube clips of ? and the Mysterians and Del Shannon - enough of the non-Ayler references). * Articles about Ayler Among the other links from Yair was this article about Ayler (published in the Winter 2005 edition of Signal to Noise) on John Kruth’s site: The Healing Force of the Universe: Albert Ayler’s Life and Legacy (34 Years Hence) A Gary Giddins piece about the re-release of Ghosts and other Free Jazz albums on the Arista label, from the April 14th 1975 edition of New York Magazine, entitled ‘The New Thing, At Last’, which I’ve placed in the Archives. And an article by A. B. Spellman from the August 1969 edition of Ebony, entitled ‘Revolution in Sound’, which is not specifically about Ayler (so I haven’t transferred it to the Archives) but is well worth reading (via Google Books). The article concludes with this: |
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After which you should read Mark Gridley’s essay, ‘Misconceptions in Linking Free Jazz with the Civil Rights Movement: Illusory Correlations Between Politics and the Origination of Jazz Styles’ (originally published in the October, 2008 edition of College Music Symposium). Personally, I found this a very well-reasoned and necessary essay. You should also read the comments attached to the end - always fun seeing academics being catty with each other. And then there’s this page from Steve Lacy: Conversations edited by Jason Weiss (Duke University Press, 2006): |
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And finally from Yair, was this - an item from ebay, unreadable and possibly not worth adding here, except in those days before the internet and 24 hour news, this was how I first learned of the death of Albert Ayler, on the front page of the Melody Maker. |
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*** My Name Is Albert Ayler Inspires Swedish Indie Pop Star So said the headline on the blog page of the My Name Is Albert Ayler website (and yes if you click Shop it still says “It’ll soon be possible to preorder the DVD on the website. More news on this shortly.” Please define what is meant by ‘soon’ and ‘shortly’). The item is dated March 24th, 2011 and reads as follows: “According to P3 Swedish Radio’s Musikguiden Andreas Mattsson wrote his new song “AA” after having watched Kasper Collin’s documentary My Name Is Albert Ayler. *** And finally ... Thanks to Tim Witham for spotting a CD I hadn’t got on the Versions page - Ghosts by a trio featuring Dave Liebman, Jean-Paul Celea and Wolfgang Reisinger recorded back in 2001. *** News from 2004 (January - June) 2004 (July - December) 2005 (January - May) 2005 (June - December) 2010 (January - June) 2010 (July - December) 2011 (June - September) 2011 (October - December) 2012 (January - May) 2012 (June - December) 2013 (January - June) 2013 (July - September) 2013 (October - December) 2014 (January - June) 2014 (July - December) 2015 (January - May) 2015 (June - August) 2015 (September - December) 2016 (January - March) 2016 (April - June) 2016 (July - August) 2016 (September - December) 2017 (January - May) 2017 (June - September) 2017 (October - December) 2018 (January - May) 2018 (June - September) 2018 (October - December) 2019 (January - May) 2019 (June - September) 2019 (October - December) 2020 (January - April) 2020 (May - August) 2020 (September - December) 2021 (January - March) 2021 (April - July) 2021 (August - December) 2022 (January - April) 2022 (May - August) 2022 (September - December) 2023 (January - March) 2023 (April - June) 2023 (July - September) 2023 (October - December) 2024 (January - March) 2024 (April - June) 2024 (July - September)
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