Eugene David ...The One-Minute Pundit |
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Thursday, January 20, 2005
Jazz died decades ago; Christie's and Sotheby's are now holding the funeral.
This should help explain it: One auction piece from [John Coltrane's widow's] house in California - the original sheet-music sketches for Coltrane's 1964 suite "A Love Supreme," among the most important works in jazz - bears explicit notes and markings in Coltrane's hand. ("Make ending attempt to reach transcendent level"; "Rising harmonies to a level of blissful stability at end"; "Last chord to sound like final chord of 'Alabama.' ") These two pages, which have never been seen by scholars, aren't just a curio: they will affect scholarship. No, we don't have jazz music anymore, but we have plenty of JAZZ SCHOLARSHIP.
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