8/19/2023 0 Comments Whole note studioMost of the musicians in the photos, and in the Blue Note catalogue, were young-in their twenties and early thirties. (Wolff documented many of these rehearsals, as in an image of Miles Davis, pencil in hand, working on a chart for a 1953 session, and in the one of Bud Powell, in the company of his son, Earl John, rehearsing the 1958 album “The Scene Changes,” on which all nine pieces are Powell’s originals.) It’s as if the label were setting up a classical modern-jazz repertory that rendered black American music an instant modern American counterpart to the European classical repertory and a part of the avant-garde music of the day.īud Powell with his son, Earl John Powell, at a rehearsal for Powell's “The Scene Changes” session, Birdland, New York City, December 1958. The repertoire of most jazz singing was rooted in the so-called American Songbook of repertory from plays and movies though many Blue Note artists certainly played these works, too, the core of the label’s repertory was rooted in instrumental improvisation-and in the musicians’ original compositions, which the label emphasized, by paying its musicians to rehearse, to prepare to record original pieces that were both unfamiliar and complex. The label concentrated on instrumental music, and there was an artistic point to that emphasis. Though there were female jazz musicians active at the time, they also, with very few exceptions, faced prejudice in the development of their careers-except for singers, who were prominent, but Blue Note recorded very few singers, male or female. Most of the musicians photographed by Wolff are men, because most of Blue Note’s roster of musicians were male. Together they fostered a collective body of work and a teeming set of individual performances that are at the center of modern jazz history and a core of the music’s living repertory Wolff’s images offer keen reminiscences of historic musical moments, and they inspire fantasies about what it would have been like to experience them in person. The pair founded the label eight decades ago, and ran it together until 1966. They were childhood friends in Berlin, Jews who escaped Nazi Germany. Wolff’s photos are a peculiar, passionate, and personal subset of the medium: they’re both documentary and promotional, made in part for use on album covers for the great Blue Note record label, of which Wolff was a co-founder, along with Alfred Lion. Yet there’s another crucial aspect of jazz history-the private side, of music made in recording studios-which is documented in a remarkable archive newly available online: the photographs of Francis Wolff, which preserve precious moments of some of the greatest musicians at work on some of the most enduring jazz recordings. (It’s newly reissued, and DeCarava’s work is also the subject of a pair of current exhibits at David Zwirner.) DeCarava’s musical portraiture is centered on the public performance of jazz in clubs and in concerts. His book “ The Sound I Saw”-a montage of his images and texts that he composed in the early nineteen-sixties but was unpublished until 2001-reaches deep to the experience, of the black American city life, that the music embodies and the musicians express. Never forget, music is the master and the system the slave.The photographer of jazz whose work is art in itself is Roy DeCarava. Perhaps the greatest trick however, will be the organic naturalness of hearing beyond a recording back to the joyful feeling of musicians playing together. Forget the Hi-Fi cliches of ‘strings on frets’ and ‘intakes of breath’ you will of course be dazzled by those tricks, naturally. Every component here aims to connect you to your music. Our products are the perfect antidote to musical reproduction modernity. Not so easy in a world of portable audio and ear buds. The artist wants every person who hears their composition, to hear it as they recorded it. We at Whole Note Distribution understand, and respect that relationship between musician and the music. It is delicate precious pure, and the musician or composer takes great care to place it either whole, or carved down to form what brings us all joy: music – let’s be honest it is why you have arrived here. LU KANG AUDIO, MOONRIVER AUDIO, THE WANDĪ whole note is the organic building block, and foundation of any piece of music. The best brands you’ve probably never heard: AGD, BOENICKE AUDIO
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