sabato 8 maggio 2010

Jazz Inside Magazine

Jazzinsidemagazine.com è il sito internet di un bella rivista in lingua inglese dedicata esclusivamente alla musica jazz diretta dal vibrafonosta Eric Nemeyer, che presenta notevoli intervista ai grandi protagonisti della musica jazz, recensioni, articoli, notizie, ecc...
Nel sito c'è la possibilità di scaricare, in formato Pdf, i numeri arretrati della rivista, a partire dal mese precedente a quello di pubblicazione.
A questo indirizzo è per esempio possibile scaricare l'edizione di marzo 2010 della rivista, dove è presente una lunga ed interessante intervista al chitarrista Pat Metheny.
Ed ecco un'estratto dell'intervista tratta dalla rivista:
The new CD is magical! The dynamics and nuances in the articulation of the instruments make it all sound so non-mechanical. And the writing and arranging, as always, is beautiful. To you, what is the special significance of this project, one, in terms of its place in the evolution of musical instruments and musical contexts, two, the experience for the performer or controller, three, and for the listening audience?
It does seem to be an idea with a certain pull. People were obviously drawn to this same kind of thing in a fairly extravagant way a hundred years ago. And I don’t really see myself as being that wildly off the grid in general, my impulse with this was that I had been thinking about it since I was nine, and I was honestly amazed as each year went by that no one else had really gone all the way with it as medium in the modern era, using advanced harmony, compositional techniques, as a platform for improvising, etc. The experience of committing to this, then writing music for the instruments, and then preparing for a extensive tour has unbelievably challenging in every way. Besides the huge mass of technical things that I had to formulate and implement, I also had to examine my own views about music from many different angles. Honestly, I am not interested in any music that doesn’t groove or does not reflect spirit and soulfulness. Had I not been able to reconcile my standards of what is contained in those needs with the realities of what this setting offered, I would have bagged it. However, once the instruments came in and I started to figure out what was really possible with them that thought never again crossed my mind. At this point, I have only done a few gigs. But I was very curious to see what the early audience reactions were. What I have really liked is that it gets people talking. Everyone has an opinion and thoughts about this. That has to be a good thing. To me, that is a great byproduct of why we all go out and do the things we do. But what many people have said is that they are intrigued by the “how” of it for about the first ten minutes, and the remaining two hours and twenty minutes, they forget about all that and are just inside the music of it. When I started hearing that from people, I recognized that it had had basically the same trajectory with me – the first few days I was just thrilled with the instruments, then it went away and I was just writing music for a new platform in a different way. The whole thing for me is just that – a new medium to tell stories.
Can you tell me all of the different instruments that made up your Orchestrion?
I counted up the other day and there are around 400 solenoids (if you include each note on both pianos) and 100 or so pneumatics. The functional instrumentation is sort of a large rhythm section meeting a small percussion ensemble. Then there are the bottles in there that functions a little like a woodwind section.
I saw that the bottles had a milky hue to them. Did you put some chemical in there to keep the liquid from evaporating so that they stayed in tune?
It is mineral oil, so that it won’t evaporate. The milky color is some kind of preservative.....

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