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The Art of Conduction

The Art of Conduction. A conduction Workbook Lawrence Butch" Morris (Daniela Veronesi -ed.) Karma 224 pages ISBN-13: 978-1942607427 Lawrence Douglas Butch" Morris was undoubtedly one of the most unusual and, at the same time, influential figures on the New Jazz" scene of the last decades. Born on 10 February 1947 in Long Beach, California, he was a cornetist but also, and especially, a composer and conductor. He gradually came into the ...
read moreButch Morris

A solitary Butch Morris took the stage Saturday, July 5th at Tonic to perform a tribute to music aficionado Irving Stone at a memorial concert featuring some of the greatest players of New York's downtown music community. Taking a seat center stage, the bearded, bespectacled Morris reached into a shopping bag, appearing more like a philosophy professor searching for material to teach a class than a musician looking for the instruments on which he was going to perform. Dramatically he ...
read moreLawrence 'Butch' Morris: Holy Sea

When I consider Lawrence D. 'Butch' Morris' Conductions I always think about Ornette Coleman's 1960 recording Free Jazz and its double-gated LP cover reproducing a Jackson Pollock painting. Ornette seemed to be tossing sounds in the recording studio like (it was thought) Pollock splashed paints in his artist studio. What we come to learn about Jackson Pollock's work, after the hard drinking/fighting blue-collar myth is peeled back, is the genius of his controlled methodology for application of paint layers. Ornette's ...
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