Another lovely day in Holland Michigan. Eileen and I went for a long walk this morning. We walk down by the river. It’s a lovely walk and most people don’t seem to know there is a path that runs between downtown and the river’s edge. We did see a few people. But most people were there for the ongoing Tulip Time.

I made more food yesterday. Moussaka for me and pork chops for the wife. Actually I kind of forgot that Eileen doesn’t like eggplant. Ahem. Anyway. She liked her porkchop just find and I had fun making the Moussaka.

Life goes on. I am still reading “Blue:the murder of jazz” by Eric Nisenson and Spring Snow by Yukio Mishima.

Nisenson’s rant is giving me food for thought. He seems to be drawing a line between himself and the neoclassic jazz guys like Wynton Marsalis and Stanley Crouch. I agree with his notion that Jazz needs to keep transforming itself in order to preserve it’s artistic nature. But actually I go much further. I think that most art and music is like that. So Nisenson keeps talking about validity and who should be included on Jazz’s best list. I find this uninteresting. I am interested in what music has meaning for people and why. If that’s old timey Jazz, then that’s fine. But for myself I find that music has a function of helping me make sense of life. This cannot be just from the point of view of historical music Jazz or otherwise. What about now?

Unfortunately, most Jazz by living musicians doesn’t do it for me. I heard Dave Holland‘s group last year and they blew me away.

Here’s a link to 58 seconds on Youtube of Chris Potter taking a solo with this group. He’s the sax player and is also a composer.

Robin Eubanks is the trombone player and is also a composer. Here’s a video of him playing with a larger group but you can get an idea from it.

This is Dave Holland standing next to Miles Davis in 1991. I think he played with him at one point. As I listened to the Dave Holland group play, I quit thinking about whether it was Jazz or Contemporary or whatever. I just thought it was good music. But still most contemporary Jazz stuff I hear isn’t as interesting as what these players did when I heard them live.

The drummer, Nate Smith was pretty amazing. Very intuitive. Anticipated what soloists were doing and played right along with them. He’s playing on the Chris Potter video.

Anyway. I’m also plugging away on Mishima. I read some Mishima when I was young. I started reading Spring Snow because David Mitchell (who is an author I like right now) said Mishima’s tetralogy was a masterpiece. Spring Snow is the first volume.