Articles by Brian Morton
Dock in Absolute: [Re]Flekt
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by Brian Morton
I wonder if I'd get away with it? An old friend was famous for his ability to turn out newspaper columns at lightning speed and with no notice, often after a generous lunch that had stretched on until near deadline time. He'd gruffly concede that yes, that's what they paid him for, yank out a few sheets of typing paper and without so much as a musing glance upwards, start pounding the keys. Ten, fifteen minutes later, the sub-editors were ...
Continue ReadingFrancesco Bearzatti and Federico Casagrande: And Then Winter Came Again
by Brian Morton
This liner-note begins, unusually, with a charitable appeal. Music reviewers and critics labour in obscure conditions, but this is not an appeal for better pay or more respect. Many of these poor souls suffer from a deeply embarrassing ailment that directly bears on their ability to function at all. As first the co-author and later sole author of a very large jazz reference book, I've had the symptoms for years. The condition is known to the very few doctors who ...
Continue ReadingMichel Reis: For A Better Tomorrow
by Brian Morton
It's always possible to get hung up on definitions, or metaphors. In modern jazz terms the most famous description of a piano is probably Cecil Taylor's “88 tuned drums," a clever way of characterising the instrument's percussive power and of removing it from the strong gravitational pull of European art music. I've always preferred Leigh Hunt's lovely description of the piano as a harp in a box. It's not clear whether Hunt meant it seriously, or as a sly put-down. ...
Continue ReadingEleonora Strino: Matilde
by Brian Morton
There isn't much training around for young arts interviewers, but one bit of advice that is usually thrown out is never to ask “Where do you get your ideas?" It's a seemingly banal question that can only attract banal--and sometimes very sarcastic--answers. And yet sometimes, in context, it's exactly the right question to ask. More often than one might expect, novelists, poets, and musicians are more than happy to say that the new body of work being considered began in ...
Continue ReadingHindsight: Enrico Pieranunzi, Marc Johnson and Joey Baron
by Brian Morton
Sometimes we're reduced to throwing down old bones and seeing what messages they deliver back. Maybe noticed at the time, but the recording of Hindsight, by the trio of maestro Enrico Pieranunzi, master bassist Marc Johnson and time-lord Joey Baron took place almost exactly sixty years after one of the most famous jazz piano sessions of all. When most admirers think of Bill Evans, their minds go first to the famous Village Vanguard sessions of June 1961, with Scott LaFaro ...
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