WOODSTOCK, N.Y. — The Creative Music Studio here remains underdocumented and little understood. But a definitive history of jazz in the 1970s — a book yet to be written — ought to give it central importance.
During the dawning years of jazz education the studio, run out of various repurposed settings — a barn, a Lutheran youth camp, a motel — was the unmusic school, roughly analogous to Black Mountain College, the progressive school in North Carolina that brought together avant-garde writers, dancers and painters in the 1930s, ’40s and ’50s.
The constant musical activity at the studio, in workshops and concerts, yielded about 400 hours of tapes: startling performances by Don Cherry, Anthony Braxton, Cecil Taylor, Lee Konitz, Frederic Rzewski, Jimmy Giuffre, Roscoe Mitchell, Steve Lacy, Abdullah Ibrahim, Carla Bley, Ed Blackwell and many others.
If the studio is to get its historical due, the tapes will lead the way. Karl Berger and Ingrid Sertso, the husband and wife who founded the school, have recently started restoring and remastering the recordings, a task expected to cost about $120,000. A benefit concert on Friday at Symphony Space will raise money toward that end, gathering friends, supporters and former associates of the school, including Mr. Braxton, John Zorn and Steven Bernstein. (Information and tickets are at symphonyspace.org.)
During the dawning years of jazz education the studio, run out of various repurposed settings — a barn, a Lutheran youth camp, a motel — was the unmusic school, roughly analogous to Black Mountain College, the progressive school in North Carolina that brought together avant-garde writers, dancers and painters in the 1930s, ’40s and ’50s.
The constant musical activity at the studio, in workshops and concerts, yielded about 400 hours of tapes: startling performances by Don Cherry, Anthony Braxton, Cecil Taylor, Lee Konitz, Frederic Rzewski, Jimmy Giuffre, Roscoe Mitchell, Steve Lacy, Abdullah Ibrahim, Carla Bley, Ed Blackwell and many others.
If the studio is to get its historical due, the tapes will lead the way. Karl Berger and Ingrid Sertso, the husband and wife who founded the school, have recently started restoring and remastering the recordings, a task expected to cost about $120,000. A benefit concert on Friday at Symphony Space will raise money toward that end, gathering friends, supporters and former associates of the school, including Mr. Braxton, John Zorn and Steven Bernstein. (Information and tickets are at symphonyspace.org.)
