Dr. Jacoby
Forumsvar Lagt Inn
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Innlegg
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COLLECTION SIZE:
No idea. About 6,000 LPs, probably 3,000 CDS, losts of digital files.
I don’t file soundtracks together, so I have no idea what percentage are soundtracks (or soundtrack related).
ACQUISITION HABITS:
I’ve more or less stopped. These days, I’m more likely to buy lossless downloads from Qobuz. I do take advantage of sales by the specialty labels, because none of the music I care about ever sells out anymore, so I can wait for something to go on sale.
LISTENING HABITS:
Random, based on mood. In October, I listen to lots of horror soundtracks.
… basically everything that is not created in the moment of playing (besides the obviously existing base composition).
Most “real” jazz is not 100% “created in the moment of playing.” Jazz musicians play arrangements. (See Art Tatum.) Even much free jazz will use some sort of a roadmap as a jumping off point. (See Anthony Braxton.) Improvisation in jazz usually occurs within existing frameworks.
Just jazz chords itself does not make music jazz.
Much more than chords. Rhythm, groove, feel, alternating between swing 8ths and straight 8ths, accents, etc.
That’s why some jazz purists will not consider a written solo (like Williams’ noted above) as real jazz…
Then they are also discounting much postwar jazz, including Ellington’s extended compositions, third stream compositions, etc.
Although, I just read in the Williams biography that he considers improvisation to be the most important thing in jazz – at least from the musicians’ point of view (Williams calls it “freedom”). 🙂
Well, sure. I think the primary issue with jazz scores is that cues have to be timed to the visuals, so you typically get shorter cues, especially if we’re talking about TV shows, meaning less time for a soloist to stretch out; whereas live, or on a record, those kinds of time restrictions don’t exist. In jazz scores, improvisation will mostly show up in source cues, or sometimes in longer cues if there is enough space for a solo.
Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass this past February.
Now there is something I woudn’t have expected. When Ms.Dr.Jacoby interviewed Herb about 10 years ago, he seemed as if he’d moved on.
There are several genres of music that include improvisation, yet they are not jazz.
And there are jazz compositions by major composers, including Duke Ellington, that contain no improvisation.
So improvisation, while a key component component of jazz, is not the only or ultimate criterion for assessing whether something is or is not jazz – especially when we consider the directions that jazz took in the postwar era with the third stream movement. I therefore have no qualms about characterizing Catch Me If you Can or A Streetcar Named Desire as jazz. YMMV.
You mean rearranged and rerecorded?
Well, yes, there was that, but I should have clarified: I was really referring to jazz or jazz-like scores to TV shows that received contemporaneous soundtrack albums. On “Peter Gunn,” for example, only the main theme and opening bass & drum section of “Fallout” were from the show. Mancini simply arranged a jazz album and called it “Peter Gunn.” Granted, some of the tunes, like “Dreamsville,” appeared on the show after the fact. This was somewhat typical with jazz TV scores, and it extended into the spy soundtrack era a few years later.
If I’m covering film history, I would have to include A Streetcar Named Desire as the first, and Bob Belden’s Three Days of Rain as the most recent great jazz score.
Johnny Mandel’s I Want to Live is probably my favorite.
This topic is complicated by the fact that a lot of jazz “soundtrack” albums were really promotional tie-ins, e.g., Peter Gunn, and not scores per se.
I generally prefer a well-curated album, but the fact is, not all album versions are well-curated, IMO.
So, I tend to like to complete, but I don’t listen to them that way. I generally use them to mildly revise or expand an album program. And if there was no album, I try to create one.
But a lot of complete score albums play like a giant track dump, without much thought going into pacing, transitions between tracks, etc.
I file by genre, so I may file albums by a particular film composer in various locations, depending on the genre of the music.
I was convinced you’d go for Baxter’s BORA BORA (Piccioni’s version is good too)!
Oh, both of those are in rotation every summer!
The first ones that I reach for are Tennessee Williams/Faulkner adaptations such as A Streetcar Named Desire, Baby Doll, Summer and Smoke, and The Long Hot Summer.
I also associate summer with the water, so any kinds of summery water scores such as Jaws, of course, or Beneath the 12-Mile Reef work for me.
For tropical adventure scores, there are things like Lalo Schifrin’s Rhino and Johnny Mandel’s Drums of Africa.
As for Les Baxter, scores like Cervantes and Markko Polo fit the bill.
That’s just off the top of my head.
My collection is SOOO incomplete! I don’t even have all the works of Gil Mellé and Basil Kirchin!
As regards to my OTHER favourite composers (Goldsmith and Williams), I think I’m missing about 50% of their output (counting expanded editions). Partly because I can’t afford them, and partly because I don’t want them.
On the bright side, I think you have more Leonard Rosenman and Gerald Fried than I do.
For the Red House rerecording I found it weird, that disc one has a running time about 70 minutes and disc two is just about 15 minutes. I remember liking disc 2, but I hardly ever played it as disc 1 covered most of the runtime. They should have split the score rather in the middle. Or leave out five minutes to be able to put everything on one disc.
There was some speculation that disc 2 was going to be filled out with the entirety of the Man in Half Moon Street CD that was released around the same time. It makes sense. Why sell one CD if we can get people to buy two?