Customer Reviews

Mark-Anthony Turnage / John Scofield: Scorched

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

What we have here is an attempt to blend jazz and classical music. And I thought the Third Stream was dead. It seems that contemporary composer Mark-Anthony Turnage has been taken by the music of John Scofield for quite some time and decided to write some material based on it for orchestra and big band, incorporating Sco + bass and drums into the soundscape. Does it work? Not very well, to these ears.

There are, it must be admitted, a few moments when things sound pretty natural, both from the orchestra/big band side as well as the small-group setting. But Sco certainly has sounded a lot freer and hipper in more natural small-group contexts. Even the audience's responses seem somewhat tentative (this was recorded live in concert).

Falls between two stools. Neither fish nor fowl. A Jackalope (not the great jazz improv group, but an amalgam that simply doesn't work).

The problem is that you can't make classical orchestras swing. Just doesn't happen. So what you get is some mildly interesting new music-ish orchestral passages punctuated by fairly standard small-group (Sco, guitar; John Patitucci, e-bass; Peter Erskine, drums) playing (not that this group is in any way deficient; it's just that they seem restrained, unable to completely cut loose). Why not just listen to either, say, Ligeti or Nono or Part, or one of Sco's latest discs?

You'd be a lot better off.

I attended NEC, and taught there, and I know Gunther Schuller a little, even played with his one of his sons on some jazz sessions. But my main interest is composition. I say this because I'm still sympathetic to the Third Stream project, and my background is partly why. However, aside from that, this is good music, and I'm breaking my silence to write this here.

I've heard a lot of forced attempts to combine styles -- that fail in one area or another. But this isn't one of them. Nor does it sound anything like Ligeti or Nono or a jazz session by Scofield, nor does it sound like Pops, nor Gunther Schuller's own Third Stream music, nor does it sound like film music. It's too densely composed and concise to be film music.

To my ear it sounds quite fresh -- equally successful in the jazz trio parts, the big-band parts, the orchestral parts, and the combinations.

Erskine is one of my favorite drummers, and he's in good form. So is Scofield. It's also well-recorded and well-balanced.

This doesn't really swing, but it *does* groove, and it has too much integrity to sound like film music. (I would know about film music without much integrity, because I spent over ten years writing the stuff.)

I specialize in composing microtonal music, with some jazz influence. I would be proud to have written this myself.

I'm only giving it four and a half stars because maybe only Mozart should get 5 stars.

A pleasure to listen to, and an inspiration, in every way.

Very suggestive music, in a way conveyingly cinematic. One piece is even called "Kubrik"... other is called "Nocturnal Mission"... you can hear a wide rannge of dramatic arrangements that will undoubtely carry you through the scenes of a very interesting imaginary movie.

This may not be the best way to hear Scofield but it has really great moments.