Daily best music in the world: hey, my brother's in Downbeat this month

Here's my brother, John Bishop, playing with Hal Galper and Jeff Johnson at the Blue Whale in Los Angeles. Tune is Ascendant, from one of the great records ever, The Ultimate Elvin Jones.

I've seen him play many, many times in the last 50 years, and recognize a lot of this as familiar material, but I've never been able to analyze what he does. I can figure out what a lot of people are doing, really not him. So I've got an interesting thing happening where the drummer I know best is essentially doing magic, so that's the way I think music is supposed to be made. Despite all the analytic stuff I do here— that's all a late novelty for me, most of my musical life has just amounted to going for it, attacking the performance.

Downbeat is running a feature on him I believe in the October issue, on the occasion of his label Origin Records releasing its 500th album. Consider participating in the jazz economy and subscribing. 

Daily best music in the world: Hal Galper Trio

Here's my brother, John Bishop, playing with Hal Galper, with Jeff Johnson on bass, at The Blue Whale in LA:

Post by The Hal Galper Trio.

John Bishop w/Hal Galper at Small's, NYC

Today is my brother's birthday, so here's a link for John Bishop playing with pianist Hal Galper at Small's in New York in February. Also in the group is the great Seattle (and elsewhere) bassist Jeff Johnson, who has been with Hal for years.

Listen to and purchase Hal's Origin CDs with this group, and with his trio with Reggie Workman and the late, great Rashied Ali.

And here's another thing with the trio:

Old & New Dreams - 1980 lecture/demonstration

From Warren Senders at Running Gamak, here is audio and a transcript of a clinic given at Harvard by Old and New Dreams (Don Cherry, Dewey Redman, Charlie Haden and Ed Blackwell) during their 1980 tour. They speak in depth about Ornette Coleman's "harmolidic" method, and about making music in general.




A fun aside: it was during this tour that, in one of the more inspired programming moves ever, my brother's fusion group, Glider (or was it Glyder? Including Portland bassist Kevin Deitz and LA guitarist Richard Smith), opened for OAND at Perry's in Eugene. I think that was set up by Portland bassist Andre St. James. I had just started taking drum lessons a few months before this, and was learning the nature of  life as a drummer by shlepping my snare drum the mile and a half to school 3 times a week. 

Questions and answers about Ed Blackwell, who was getting dialysis treatment and was not present:

Dewey Redman: ...if the drummer, who is the lifeblood of the group, is not here…it would give it a different inflection with the drummer, because he is the lifeblood, sets up the rhythm, counter-rhythm, etcetera.

[...]

Audience Member: Question for Charlie: Eddie Blackwell is not here, and you are the rhythm section for the time being. What’s that like?

Charlie Haden: Hard!

Mark Turner plays with Matt Jorgensen's group on Origin Record's Ballard Jazz Walk this month.