Columnist Izzy Feldman is unable to continue this interview due to illness and therefore we have enlisted cellist Kay Sherman to fill in for him. We wish Mr. Feldman a speedy recovery and hope to see him back at his post soon.
Jazzbeat Staff
Kay: Welcome back Mike and congratulations on your fantastic new CD, Sting Like A Bee
Mike:Thanks Kay and its good to be back dwelling amongst you. (Laughs)
Kay: The last time we spoke we discussed a certain criticism by a journalist of your then latest CD Float Like A Butterfly, You have now come out with this new sequel to it to 99% rave reviews as well as an airplay hit in the sense that it has been on the charts over 20 weeks now and peaked at # 3 on the big Jazz Week Chart. It has also occupied the # 1 spot on the Music Choice Chart on 4 different occasions and when last checked it was tied for the # 2 spot as of the April 26th charting. Considering that it was released in October of 2009 this must make you feel pretty good doesn’t it?
Mike:Yes, of course. The highest compliment I can receive in my estimation is the knowledge that I have made a CD that the people like. The chart activity that you cite appears to be evidence that I may have achieved that end to some degree. In that sense I am delighted.
Kay: Since the subject of our last segment of this interview was about jazz critics and since writer Izzy Feldman has a feature on this site in which he has been highly critical of jazz critics I wonder if you would respond to some criticism about this latest CD by a critic in a major jazz publication that is totally at odds with the rave reviews other critics have given it?
Mike: I am rather reluctant to make any sort of negative comments about a review, as I am aware that you can’t please everyone and that everyone is entitled to his or her own opinion.
Kay: This is true Mike but I find it interesting that artists can make a CD that 99% of the critics love as well as the public and then one critic comes up with a review that is totally at odds with all the rest. I am not looking for you to bash a critic so much as to get you to respond to some of the points made in the review in the sense of whether you agree with them or not or as to how you would answer the criticism. Would that be okay with you?
Mike: Well I guess I could try to accommodate your request to the best of my ability as long as we don’t slip into anything that might sound like an attack on the critic personally.
Kay: OK Mike, we won’t even mention the critics name. How’s that? For one thing, I think it would be of interest to our readers to hear an artist of your stature react to the things a critic says especially to a critic who I feel has written an unjust or unfair review.
Mike: OK then.
Kay: This review opens with the author stating “Three masters at work.” That statement alone should have warranted more than the two star rating he gave it in my opinion. Then he goes on to say, “none driven by any lingering need to prove himself: That pretty much wraps up Sting Like A Bee, not to mention a good number of trio albums by artists comparable to these in stature.” I wonder if you might comment on that statement?
Artist's Perceptions
(We at Jazzbeat wish the public to know that the opinions expressed in this column are strictly the opinions of the writers and do not necessarily reflect the opinion of Jazzbeat nor the artists and producers of jazzbeat)
"Cutting Edge Critics" and The Process of Elimination.
I am starting to find it comical now to read criticism that uses terms like "nothing new here" … "ground breaking"… "cutting edge" … "pushing the envelope" and on and on. It has become the litany of a certain segment of the jazz journalist crowd. Most of it is presented as praise for the "free jazz" movement or criticism of the "mainstream jazz" players.
It is not up to anyone to tell musicians how they can play a musical instrument in a free society but to criticize musicians because they do not play a certain way borders on asinine in my view.
This is exactly what the type critic who puts down players who swing because they are not "cutting edge" in their view is. It was pointed out in a recent interview, with a contemporary jazz musician, that most of these type critics would not be able to sing which part of a tune a musician like Monk would be in if you stopped a recording in the middle of one of his solos. I’m reasonably sure this would be true with about 99% of this crowd. The point being that they are unable to hear musical content and are only reacting to sound effects from a subjective perspective.
This is based in the silly assumption that abstract and weird=modern. Although I am of the belief that it is not what someone does that makes it art but how well they do it, I can’t help but notice that much of what these critics praise as "ground breaking" has been sounding the same since the 1960’s.
Since I have been to many of these types of performances which seem to start with a string instrument bowing or plucking a tremelo out of time followed by a percussionist sounding chimes or cymbals which lead to pecking punctuations on a snare drum. What inevitably follows next is a horn of some kind running beatless statements of melodic patterns based on synthetic type scales or runs with a high degree of emotional energy accompanied by clusters and runs on a keyboard instrument blending with loud tom tom rolls and furious cymbal crashes. Eventually this subsides back to the soft sound effects from the beginning which fade out to silence. This is usually followed by exclamations of "whew!" from audience members trying to show each other that they "got it" and "understand and appreciate the latest stuff."
I’ve seen and heard this so many times over the past forty five years that it is starting to resemble, for me, a bad joke.
While these types of atmospheric passages definitely have their place in music, I personally find a whole evening of it rather boring. Sometimes one of these escapades can last for an entire one-hour set.
Now, I don’t tend to suggest for one minute that this music or the people who play it have no right to exist. Nor do I suggest that people who like it or support it have no right to do so. I only have a problem when these types make suggestions to the effect that other types of music should cease to exist and that anyone who isn’t in their camp is just "not with it". This, to me, is ludicrous in view of the fact that many who embrace this direction have tremendous holes in their musicianship and musical development.
