I’m on this new album from Nick Di Maria – a new performance of Miles Davis’ “In A Silent Way,” recorded live last Sunday.
It was a fun performance – I was one of two keyboardists on stage, which is a set up I enjoy (as long as the other keyboardist is the right kind of player, which Andrew Kosiba definitely is). Nick Di Maria and Steve Asetta on horns, Mike Dick on drums and Andrew Zwart on bass.
Performing these long, “open”/”freeform” jazz classics is always interesting – there’s so much left unwritten in the classic version that the best-known documented version song is really just an expression of the performers’ musical personalities. But we listen to that classic recording so much that we perceive every note as being a fixed part of the document – almost as if it were notated like a Bach piece or something. But then when we play it live, just as unscripted as the original version was, the song takes on a different character because it’s being played in a different place in a different time by different people.
Or even by some of the same people – compare the album version of It’s About that Time to a live version:
Album:
Live:
I like that these challenging, experimental pieces continue the rite and ritual of playing traditional “straight ahead” jazz: playing the melody, then improvising and listening to each other…
Anyway, that’s enough coffee-fueled philosophizing on a Saturday morning; I’ve got a grad-school application to get ready.
If you enjoy the freeform Miles music, you might also want to check out this recording of Steve Asetta’s Dog Hunch – I played organ on this too:
nate trier 