Guild Sighting: Mary Halvorson

Mary plays outside, like way outside. She was Anthony Braxton's guitarist of choice for a long time.

But it would be a mistake to suggest that she can't play in a traditional Jazz manner. She is educated and has a strong traditional background. She just chooses to live on the outside for the most part. And she likes Guilds.



http://youtu.be/xJwyBBcP51A

http://youtu.be/mtzImWqYCTY

Older discussion here.

fronobulax said:

Older discussion here.

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Thanks.

I can respect Mary's desire to explore the deep boundaries of music, and I'm sure she is a very capable guitarist with standards and bop if she wanted to play like that. I just don't understand the seeming randomness and lack of harmony and melody with much of her music. Hey, to each their own. And at the risk of sounding sexist I still think she's hot even though I don't like her music. :love-struck::hopelessness:

guildman63 said:

I can respect Mary's desire to explore the deep boundaries of music, and I'm sure she is a very capable guitarist with standards and bop if she wanted to play like that. I just don't understand the seeming randomness and lack of harmony and melody with much of her music. Hey, to each their own.

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Gotta agree with you there! Respect the skill and spirit required to explore the random nature, but my soul doesn't seem to follow. Nice Guild, though. :encouragement:

guildman63 said:

I can respect Mary's desire to explore the deep boundaries of music, and I'm sure she is a very capable guitarist with standards and bop if she wanted to play like that. I just don't understand the seeming randomness and lack of harmony and melody with much of her music. Hey, to each their own. And at the risk of sounding sexist I still think she's hot even though I don't like her music. :love-struck::hopelessness:

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Thank you, my thoughts exactly! For me, though, I can live with outside playing and random harmony approach, but there's simple formula I apply to all music: if it doesn't swing, it doesn't mean a thing. Without rhythm that I can feel in my bones, it's irrelevant. But I know there's a super hip crowd out there that likes what she's doing, so she's doing all right!

Not that anyone has to like Halvorson's music .... any more than one has to like or dislike Kenny G.

I don't like it. I do like it. That's enough for me. Music either speaks to you or it doesn't. That's enough.

But yes... people said the same things, well some of the same things, not the she's hot parts, about Charlie Parker, Thelonious Monk, John Coltrane, Ornette Coleman etc. And similar things in the art world about Vincent van Gogh, Edvard Munch, Picasso, Salvador Dali, etc., etc. People still say the same thing about Jazz in general, even mainstream MOR Jazz.

And if we go way back, people actually trashed harmony as the work of the devil at one time. Music was modal - that is the way it is and should be. Harmony was limited to the accidental intersection of modal voices.

We mustn't ever colour outside the lines, even if the lines are arbitrary.

So we won't look at Derek Baily, Robert Fripp (at his most experimental), Fred Frith, Henry Kaiser, Sonny Sharrock, or Terrie Ex - etc., etc.

If one is interested in exploring the the cognitive psychological, psycho-linguistic aspects of the issue here, I offer the consideration of the concepts of Speech Community and Schemata/Genre Structures/Macrostructures/Mental Models:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speech_community

http://wikis.sub.uni-hamburg.de/lhn/index.php/Schemata

http://www.google.ca/url?url=http:/...wQFjAH&usg=AFQjCNF--cSXJSXbbuyS8p3qn-gycHaoGg

:wink: And just to put things in perspective, let's do look at the seriously whacked Terrie Ex with Han Bennink and Brodie West, not that I am entirely sure what to make of this myself:



I saw this group at IronWorks in Vancouver. Cindy Santana-Blackman was standing next to me in the SRO crowd. I didn't notice her at first. She seemed to be enjoying her anonymity, so I let her keep it. She was obviously digging Bennink.

My son, when he was five years old, was a huge Bennink fan. When he heard that I was going to see Bennink with Evan Parker at a free Vancouver Jazz Festival concert, there was absolutely no way he was not going with me, so I had to take him. After the show, he wanted to go talk to Bennink who was on the stage taking down his kit. I lifted my son up onto the stage, and he started to walk over towards Bennink. Bennink looked confused, so I told him my son was a huge fan, and he laughed and said, "Yes. Our music needs younger fans." He and my son talked for about 15 minutes. I have no clue about what. I couldn't hear. My son wandered back to me, and I lifted him down. I asked him what they had talked about. He just said, "Music." My son in his listening would go from Abba to Raffi to Stockhausen without any concern - it was music, just music. Children do not have preconceptions and prejudices unless we feed them to them. In a shopping mall later that year, my son asked Santa for a Jamaldeen Tacuma CD. Santa had no clue what he was talking about.

To each his own, but I will now play some music that I like to recover from that.

walrus

walrus said:

To each his own, but I will now play some music that I like to recover from that.

walrus

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If by "that" you mean, Ex, Bennink, and West, well it kind of makes Halvorson seem pretty straight, doesn't it? Good luck with the recovery.

Right! She seems downright melodic after them! But none of it is "music" to me personally...

walrus

walrus said:

Right! She seems downright melodic after them! But none of it is "music" to me personally...

walrus

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If we put Bennink into a different context, you would probably like him. He is an amazing drummer, and he can and does (rarely) play straight Jazz. There is a reason Cindy Santana-Blackman was in the audience. She stayed for the whole show.

Terrie Ex .... hmmm .... well ... I am still trying to wrap my head around his use of the guitar (tuning is optional when you attack a guitar with drum sticks and beat it against walls - no finish left on his sad axe, btw), and I confess that I do have a bit of a headache from the attempted wrapping. But I do try to be open minded, even if it hurts sometimes.

Since we are pushing musical envelopes...



Bassist posts on LTG once in a while

fronobulax said:

Since we are pushing musical envelopes...



Bassist posts on LTG once in a while

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Cool. I love Jon Hassell and have a bunch of his stuff on LP.

I think Miles Davis borrowed a lot from Hassell's early experimentation with processed trumpet; Hassell's work predates Miles's work in this style of horn playing, I think.

houseisland said:

Not that anyone has to like Halvorson's music .... any more than one has to like or dislike Kenny G.

I don't like it. I do like it. That's enough for me. Music either speaks to you or it doesn't. That's enough.

But yes... people said the same things, well some of the same things, not the she's hot parts, about Charlie Parker, Thelonious Monk, John Coltrane, Ornette Coleman etc. And similar things in the art world about Vincent van Gogh, Edvard Munch, Picasso, Salvador Dali, etc., etc. People still say the same thing about Jazz in general, even mainstream MOR Jazz.

And if we go way back, people actually trashed harmony as the work of the devil at one time. Music was modal - that is the way it is and should be. Harmony was limited to the accidental intersection of modal voices.

We mustn't ever colour outside the lines, even if the lines are arbitrary.

So we won't look at Derek Baily, Robert Fripp (at his most experimental), Fred Frith, Henry Kaiser, Sonny Sharrock, or Terrie Ex - etc., etc.

Click to expand...

I'm not sure I agree with that. You said it's ok to like it or not like it, but then proceed with kind of implying that those who don't dig just aren't hip enough to the 'real' art. Or at least that how it came through for me. I think you don't take into account that some of the folks who don't feel or like Mary's music may be very well informed about jazz, and where she come from. I, for one, consider myself a practicing jazz musician, I'm a dedicated jazz scholar, I'm very much familiar with all the cats you mentioned above. Some of the stuff I like, some not so much. But the point is, I understand what's Mary is trying to do, I just don't like the way she's doing it. It's my opinion, but it's an informed one, and I could write very long post point by point why I don't, with examples of other artists who are doing similar thing but in a more interesting way. But... I rather go practice guitar:star:

Let me just quote Art Blakey, who, when asked why he isnt venturing into avant-garde more, replied : "Because two hips make an ***" :wink-new:

Oh yeah, it's a Guild forum, and it's awesome AA indeed, no arguing here!

NYWolf said:

I'm not sure I agree with that. You said it's ok to like it or not like it, but then proceed with kind of implying that those who don't dig just aren't hip enough to the 'real' art. Or at least that how it came through for me.

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I agree, NYWolf!! It's a really mixed message when you say, "You either like it or you don't." But to follow it up with a list of reasons why you're short-sighted or living in the dark ages..... is a confusing thing.

Any time you push boundaries, you're gonna lose people. But over time almost everything evolves. Like walrus, I'm going to "recover" with things closer to my comfort zone. And that's okay..... :encouragement:

NYWolf said:

I'm not sure I agree with that. You said it's ok to like it or not like it, but then proceed with kind of implying that those who don't dig just aren't hip enough to the 'real' art. Or at least that how it came through for me.

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Then you are misreading my intentions. There are still a lot of people who cannot stand Charlie Parker, Thelonious Monk, John Coltraine, or Ornette Coleman, etc. There are artists and critics who believe that people like Picasso, Dali, and Wharhol are frauds. My statement has nothing to do with hipness or intelligence. It is more of a suggestion that liking, or perhaps understanding, kinds of music is related to what you are familiar with (the mental paradigms you hold as to what music is) and the community of musicians and music lovers you exist in. For example, I absolutely despise the Grateful Dead and am confused as to why people like them, but then I somehow missed them as a sociological event. They were not part of the community of my youth. I suspect that my feelings might be different if they had been. (Edit: I realize that I should have expanded upon or explained the concepts of speech community and schemata - they are related to what I am saying immediately above.)

Secondary to this suggestion above is the observation that what music is has changed and is changing. It evolves. If it didn't we would all be playing flutes made from bird bones with 5 or 8 note scales.

Then there is simply the matter of taste. I love Jim Hall, Kenny Burrell, and (early) Wes Montgomery, oh and Jimmy Bruno, too. I am moderately fond of Joe Pass. I do not like Herb Ellis Barney Kessel, and Howard Roberts - I cannot say exactly why, but like them I do not.

I try to keep an open mind about things, all music, for a number of reasons. One is that I used to be a total asshole music snob, and I hurt someone I liked very much very badly. I went into a moderately intoxicated Kenny G rant one evening and looked around to find a good friend in tears. She had given birth to her three children while listening to Kenny G - you can't get much more profound than this - and I had just taken a big dump on her memories and enjoyment of the experiences. The other reason is an interview I saw once with Quincy Jones where he was talking about playing with Ray Charles in the 1940s or 50s in the Seattle area. Jones and another musician were complaining to Charles about having to play polkas and schottisches, which they did not think were hip or cool. Charles exploded at them, saying that all music has its own soul, and if you can't find it you are no kind of musician at all. Hard words. I look for the soul in everything. And I am no kind of musician at all because I often fail to find it - but I don't disrespectfully dump on the music anymore when I don't get it. I still don't get Kenny G. I still struggle with finding anything in rap, and yet when I see bodies of some of the neighborhood kids plugged in and moving to the music, I realize that there must be something there - I just can't find it - it doesn't speak to me. I do not get the micro-tonal nature of north American aboriginal music; it all sounds like a mono-tone to me, and yet it has an electrifying effect on friends who grew up on reserves. I try. I fail. I keep trying. And I don't get Terrie Ex.

Apropos of nothing, I love Hank Williams, too. Edit: and I love Art Blakey, too. And I play modal music from the "dark ages" as well - Dowland, Campion, Rosseter, etc.

Rock n roll was once the devils music, and before that jazzers like Armstrong spoke of the new bop musicians in a very unflattering way. Maybe Mary is on to something that the rest of us aren't able to understand yet. Miles Davis always seemed to be able to take music in a new and different direction. Perhaps Mary is the modern day Miles? More power to her, but I will still listen to Barney Kessel, Grant Green, Wes Montgomery, and the original Miles Davis. Still, I do check her stuff out from time to time to hear something different.

davismanLV said:

I agree, NYWolf!! It's a really mixed message when you say, "You either like it or you don't." But to follow it up with a list of reasons why you're short-sighted or living in the dark ages..... is a confusing thing.

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I disagree with your reading of my intentions - I never said anyone was short sighted or living in the dark ages - this is something you are reading into it. Perhaps I am being inarticulate or careless in my choice of words.

Edit: I did not expand upon or explain the concepts of speech community and schemata ....

Her music does not soothe this savage beast. :numbness:

Joe

houseisland said:

He and my son talked for about 15 minutes. I have no clue about what. I couldn't hear. My son wandered back to me, and I lifted him down. I asked him what they had talked about. He just said, "Music."

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Thank you for sharing that! I visualized the whole exchange. Innocent ears are the best ears!

houseisland said:

I went into a moderately intoxicated Kenny G rant one evening and looked around to find a good friend in tears. She had given birth to her three children while listening to Kenny G - you can't get much more profound than this - and I had just taken a big dump on her memories and enjoyment of the experiences.

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And thank you for sharing this too. Wow, what a way to learn not to hate on what other people may love!

houseisland said:

all music has its own soul, and if you can't find it you are no kind of musician at all.

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I got my first taste of heavy metal in late elementary school. For a few years after that, anything but metal was for wimps. Cut my teeth on Iron Maiden and Guns' n Roses, then sunk into harder stuff like Anthrax, Megadeth, Suicidal Tendencies, the list goes on. Come early high school, I started to expand my horizons, and developed an insatiable appetite for Hendrix, Zeppelin, the old masters. Funny, because there was a time when I thought "classic rock" was - you guessed it - for wimps. I discovered trippy stuff like Yes.

Then I met this girl, who liked U2 a LOT, and guess what? All of a sudden it was ok to like bands like U2. It helped that I intersected U2's career at Achtung Baby, because that was "hard" enough to accept. Had I met U2 at Joshua Tree or Rattle and Hum, for example, I would have likely puked in disgust. But guess what? As I grew to love Achtung Baby and grew to love U2 as a band, I looked into their past and embraced everything that they were. My musical palette was expanding. Smashing Pumpkins went from "too mainstream" to "cool and acceptable" to "wow Billy Corgan is some kind of genius."

I will confess here, in public, that because of this said girl, I actually started to tolerate bands like Depeche Mode and When in Rome. I guess you can say I caught a small glimpse of the soul.

Now I listen to jazz and classical, in addition to my old favorites. I'm learning.