Re: [Harp-L] Re: Genius? LOL

[Steve Shriver <steveshriver@xxxxxxx>]

BTW- Bill plays both chromatic and diatonic (in ways that will astound.)


on 4/26/10 9:31 AM, Ev630 at eviltweed@xxxxxxxxx wrote:

> Sorry guys, I guess I was talking about diatonic. I have to admit I don't know
> what's what in the chromatic world. You may be entirely correct. I have heard
> that Bill Barrett is terrific.
> 
> On Mon, Apr 26, 2010 at 7:03 PM, Steve Shriver <steveshriver@xxxxxxx> wrote:
>> I have to throw in Bill Barrett¹s name here too. His solos sound like a drunk
>> man falling down the stairs who miraculously rights himself on the last step
>> and takes a little bow. His technical skills are unassailable, and he is
>> unafraid to try numerous instrumentations and styles. If you don¹t know his
>> work you can find it through billbarrett.net <http://billbarrett.net>
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> on 4/26/10 7:50 AM, Bill at bill.eborn@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx
>> <http://bill.eborn@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>  wrote:
>> 
>>> Elizabeth wrote
>>> "But who's done anything honestly new in the last 20 years?"
>>> 
>>> I must also respectfully disagree - I think there's lots of exciting
>>> harmonica around at the moment.
>>> 
>>> Take Gregoire Maret for example, a chromatic player obviously and extremely
>>> busy playing with a lot of significant people.  I've been tracking down his
>>> session work on Spotify (sorry you don't have this in the states yet, it's
>>> really useful).  I love his stuff with Dapp Theory and Steve Coleman, that
>>> angular M-bass stuff won't be to everyone's taste but it's very much 'now'
>>> in terms of the development of jazz and technically challenging in terms of
>>> what's happening there harmonically.  The other big technical challenge is
>>> that way he can mix the very delicate sound of chrom with all that brass.
>>> If anyone out there has tried to mix it with brass in a group improv at a
>>> jam session or whatever they'll no how tricky that can be.  I saw him with
>>> Tony Gray at Pizza Express in London last year and was totally blown away,
>>> chromatic with hard core jazz-rock fusion and totally holding it's own.
>>> .
>>> 
>>> So often when I hear a new to me chrom player, I think ok it's good but not
>>> as good as Toots - his legacy is so enormous and so defining but I reckon
>>> Gregoire takes the instrument to a new place and has found a place for it in
>>> a new music.
>>> 
>>> 
>>> As i understand it when Levy started on the harp, he was preoccupied by the
>>> lack of a minor third on the second octave in 2nd position, he thought
>>> that's crazy and set out to find it and when he'd found that missing note
>>> set out to find all the others, so it was maybe a more incremental thing,
>>> just one logical step after another with the consequential conclusion being
>>> that he could play much more complex music than is usually presumed possible
>>> on the harp.
>>> 
>>> That's an incredible and important development, as Sebastien Charlier
>>> mentioned in the article that jerome (i think) posted a link to here a while
>>> back, it's now possible to think of the diatonic harmonica as having a place
>>> in the conservatoire and for those musicians choosing this as instrument to
>>> apply the discipline associated with studying the instrument in the way the
>>> conservatoire would expect.
>>> 
>>> Another argument to think about if bemoaning the lack of interesting
>>> music, is the state, not of music but the music industry.  My theory is that
>>> music itself is very healthy but the industry is in a mess as it struggles
>>> to adjust to the industrial paradigm brought about by new technology -
>>> there's loads of great stuff out there but the reactionary, risk averse
>>> industry's not bringing it to us maybe that's more the problem
>> 
>> -- Steve
>> 
> 
> 

-- Steve