Hello Comrades:)

I enjoyed Jon Baptiste fusion of classical, jazz and blues. It’s interesting for me to see what a creative virtuoso can do with the standard repertoire , but I could how a serious classical , jazz, or blues player might cringe. I’d love to hear your thoughts.

Another link

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gTP433HE50c

Not for me, I'm afraid. Not subtle enough, IMHO (the Fur Elise video).

Standard classical version a few bars, throw in a couple of blues licks, then back to the standard version (with obviously 'wrong' notes here and there to show how 'cool' it is!), rinse and repeat. Pretty much every college classical pianist stuff to impress the ladies.

Now don't get me wrong, I've heard some amazing stuff... seem to remember an Oscar Peterson thing where he went off on a Chopin or Rachmaninoff theme and took it to some insane places. But that was Oscar, a piano prodigy, doing prodigy stuff. Jon's no Oscar!

Well, no one is! Oscar's in a league of his own.

BTW, the first link is some kind of Flash thing (won't work on my computer and I hate Flash!), you got a normal YouTube link or were they both the same clip?

Flash was discontinued in 2020 due to security fails, so pretty much everything that was flash has been converted to other formats.

Bill

Did you make sure you chose the You Tube option when you uploaded the original file.

Bill

Sí señor.

Since that this topic generated so much conversation, I thought I’d revisit it, LOL.

Funny, for the most part, I’ve noticed jazz / pop pianist aren’t too impressed with Jon’s efforts to infuse the blues on into Beethoven. The reaction has been much more positive among my classical pianist’s counterparts. I think the jazz guys are just hearing the same old blues licks mechanically, inserted into an old classic , while classical guys are hearing something more fresh . The reaction was overwhelming favorable among non musicians though, who thought it was a completely original and genius take on a classic. By the way, this album is now number one on the classical/crossover charts. Immediately a very niche market, but how many of us have number one albums? LOL 😂

These reactions reminded me of Bill Evan’s thoughts on the layperson vs professional level musicians ability to hear and perceive music:

I do not agree that the layman’s opinion is less of a valid judgement of music than that of the professional musician. In fact I would often rely more on the judgement of a sensitive layman than that of a professional since the professional because of his constant involvement with the mechanics of music must fight to preserve the naivety that the layman already possesses.”

Keeping fresh ears is always a struggle for professionals! I try as hard as I can, but lay appreciation of music has taken such a downturn in the last 20 years or so, I refuse to be swayed by modern lay acceptance.

The charts are dominated by horrible little ditties with absolutely no harmonic interest in them, anything with more than four chords is shunned, choruses sound like the verses, precious few actual bridges, and heaven help you if you use a diminished or augmented chord or even stray far from diatonic simplicity…

Don’t get me wrong, I’m a fan of good popular music, it isn’t all Bill Evan’s and Oscar Peterson for me! I like rock, reggae, punk, grunge, you name it. But today’s dumbed down pop just does little for me. It’s no coincidence that the kids still revere great bands from the 70’s and 80’s, 40-50 year old music, when we (as a generation) didn’t exactly embrace music from the 20’s and 30’s back in the era when pop WAS ‘great’!

Pop lost its doorkeepers. There’s so little real money in pop any more, social media allows any hack to promote themselves almost as well as major acts, and we have lost the ‘filters’ that sieved out the garbage back when A&R men and the cost of music production kept it a field where actual talent was needed to even stand a faint chance of being heard.

The bar just keeps getting lower. And it keeps getting easier to impress nonprofessionals with music that wouldn’t even get past the talent scouts in the 70’s.

Be honest… what artist from today is likely to still get widespread airplay in 50 year’s time? Bet you they’re still playing Zeppelin, the Police, Journey, Marley etc in another 50 years.

Well Diki, I guess it’s just me and you that enjoy talking about music around here, or simply we’re just the last men standing, LOL.

Well, I completely agree with you about the sad state of affairs of modern popular music, but that wasn’t really my point . . But that is an interesting topic and I will add my two cents in it little bit here..

I was trying to say, if perhaps you could hear John Baptiste’s version of Fur Elise as a non-musician., you might enjoy it a little bit more.. but who knows?

As far as your assessment of popular music, I am in complete agreement. The frustrating thing is, I don’t think we’ve ever been in a period of time where we’ve had so many great young musicians.. there’s preteen kids out there that can absolutely burn on jazz standards, the classical repertoire, or any other genre for that matter. and there’s plenty of established pop artists like Lady Gaga and Bruno Mars for example, that can can really play and sing, but my feeling is they are pressured to really dumb things down and make it sound like everything else so they can sell.

I think older musicians always have and always will be critical of current musical trends. While you and I might look back with fondest of The Beatles for example, they for sure, had their fair share of criticism from the older musicians from that time period.

I remember when I was 12 years old, I was at home and heard the breaking news of John Lennon getting shot dead. My dad and his best friend, who happened to be a very accomplished jazz drummer were in the living room, listening to Clifford, Brown, and Max Roach. I burst in the living room to tell them the tragic news, and my dad‘s friends said something really awful “ it’s about time they shot that.***** , I hope they shoot the rest of that lousy band that destroyed music “

I’m not saying that you are like my dad’s friend, Diki. But as you are very well aware, anyone over 30 that is critical of youth culture, fashion and music will come across as rather cantankerous. Now get off my lawn! LOL 😂