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Richard Jernigan -> RE: All the Solea (Apr. 5 2016 6:40:19)
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Thanks, Ricardo for the "modern" stuff. Not sure how recent the Manolo Sanlucar/Indio Gitano is, but it's certainly not your grandmother's solea. The Duquende/Paco/Cañizares Solea is definitely several harmonic steps removed from the traditional. El Indio Gitano's later solea is like you said, textbook and cuadrao. The Montse Cortez and Diego del Morao SpB is innovative, but not that far out.
It takes a while for the general public to catch up to new stuff in any art form. Beethoven's late quartets were received with shock and horror, not only by the general public, but by the most cultured musicians and critics of the time, the 1820s. And they had years before that to get used to him coming up with new stuff all the time. It wasn't until 30 to 40 years later that the musicians and public caught up to them.
When the Miró Quartet played them here summer before last, everyone was ecstatic. It was a University crowd, but everyone really dug them. Probably 80% of the audience had grown up with them..
The 9-piece band I organized in high school in the early 1950s could read a big band swing type score and get a piece down tight in one rehearsal. We would get together on Saturday and listen to the top 40 and play along with the top 10 or 12, so we could do requests at dances. But Bebop was too much for them. Only one of the guys, Jimmy V., tenor sax player, was into one of the musical revolutions of the time, Rhythm and Blues. The white kids we hung with thought it was pretty risque.
I had to find some other guys to try to play bop with. I wasn't very good at it. I did better in a pro mambo band one summer, though it was fairly new stuff at the time as well. They needed someone who could play the high notes all night. My classical training was just the thing. The leader put me to woodshedding with the conga player until i was breathing, walking, dreaming the clave. Then he let me play solos.
The young conductor of the Washington Summer Symphony had a composer friend. One night at rehearsal parts were passed out for one of his pieces. The composer had made a study of Stravinsky and picked up his style pretty well. We murdered the piece. The constantly changing key and time signatures and the astringent harmonies threw us off. This was 40 years after the premiere of Le Sacre du Printemps, and 90% of the band were conservatory students. After one more try a week later, the conductor gave the parts back to his friend. We could play Brahms and Haydn pretty well.
Thirty years later I was at a trendy new restaurant in San Francisco with my Japanese girlfriend. There was an alto sax, drummer and bass. They were just background until something clicked, and I chuckled.
"What's funny Richard?"
"Guy is playing like Bird--Charlie Parker--one of the great revolutionaries of jazz."
She listened for a minute and said, "Richard, everybody plays like that."
"Exactly."
RNJ
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