Eugene David<br>...The One-Minute Pundit

Posted 8:39 AM by Gene

Terry Teachout points to an old tribute he wrote of the jazz bandleader Maria Schneider:

She can write old-fashioned flagwaver-with-a-shout-chorus charts whenever she pleases, but prefers to turn out harmonically complex originals with subtly blended instrumental colors that suggest Evans without ever borrowing from him.

I hear a loud buzzer sounding because "Evans" -- that's the arranger Gil Evans -- not only worked with Miles Davis, who could be profoundly dismissive of his fans, he wrote for Claude Thornhill, whose band made some truly astonishing music but was a commercial failure -- and alas, it was a commercial failure because it pioneered in bop, among other things. While it is nice to hear somebody's plugging away at reviving the jazz carcass it ultimately won't work because this sounds for all the world like another tale of an artist pleasing himself when he ought to be pleasing an audience, but that luxury passed out of art a long time ago, and those three names alone, illustrious though they are, tell a small part of the tale.