| Author |
Message |
    
Yvettep
AALBC .com Platinum Poster
Username: Yvettep
Post Number: 2698
Registered: 01-2005
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Monday, February 25, 2008 - 10:03 pm: | 
|
Oracle. What an intriguing name for a jazz ensemble — one that conjures prophecy, divination, mythological seers and soothsayers. It's also reminiscent of drummer Kendrick Scott's inspiration: another drummer-led group, Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers.
Kendrick Scott brought his group, Oracle, to the WBGO studio to play music from his self-released debut, The Source. The quintet plays three Scott originals, including "Memory's Wavering Echo," words borrowed directly from Rainer Maria Rilke's Letters to a Young Poet.
Every language has a poet. Consider the language of jazz, which happens to have many. New composers in jazz function like emerging wordsmiths. They inject the narrative of humanity with a fresh shot of adrenaline, and they reinvent the basic vocabulary of a cultural tradition. Scott is a new voice in jazz. He is a drummer, a composer, and a 2008 recipient of the ASCAP Foundation Young Jazz Composer Award.
Scott's music doesn't lay so easily in the beat, as one might expect from a drummer. "Whenever I'm composing, I'm actually singing melodies," he says. "I'll call my voicemail and sing a melody into the voicemail. Then when I get home, I sit down at the Fender Rhodes or at the piano and I'll try to harmonize it. And then I'll come up with some rhythms. Melody is first, harmony is second, and rhythm is actually third"...
Listen: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=19207655 |
Cynique
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Cynique
Post Number: 11687
Registered: 01-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Tuesday, February 26, 2008 - 01:13 pm: |
|
His music is like abstract art converted into sound. |
Yvettep
AALBC .com Platinum Poster
Username: Yvettep
Post Number: 2702
Registered: 01-2005
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Tuesday, February 26, 2008 - 01:51 pm: |
|
CYnique, when I first listened I was turned off, and (thought I) turned it off. But by mistake, I had it playing in the background as I was working and found myself drawn to it.
I love this line: "I'll call my voicemail and sing a melody into the voicemail." I love these kinds of uses for technology. But also, it sparked something in my imagination: I can see a mystery novel cenetering on that as a premise. Maybe a murdered composer's killer is found when one of her themes--sung only in her voicemail on a specific date--turns up in her rival's piece...
Novelists out there, feel free to steal that idea. LOL! |
Cynique
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Cynique
Post Number: 11700
Registered: 01-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Wednesday, February 27, 2008 - 12:57 pm: |
|
 |
|
Email This Page