Welcome to the weekly Sup Forums jazz Blindfold Test thread. Every Friday and Saturday. If you're new, the point of these threads is to have fun and encourage critical listening, discussion, and general enjoyment of jazz. All critical music listeners are welcome. The more participation we have, the more fun and successful these threads will be. In the interest of keeping the thread alive and bumped, any general jazz discussion is welcomed here as well.
For more information about how the threads work and listening suggestions, please refer to the pastebin: pastebin.com/UiCCG28N
THIS WEEK'S THEME: Jazz Versions of Classical Pieces COMPILED BY: JTG
NEXT WEEK: ??? COMPILED BY: ???
If you missed last week's thread, DON'T WORRY. It's not too late. Here are the links for the mystery tracklist. Download the tracks, record your thoughts/guesses/evaluations for each one, and then come back and post them in the thread. Remember, people will be posting guesses and thoughts in this thread so don't read the thread until you have listened to the music and collected your thoughts in order to avoid spoilers. Track info for this week's tracks will be posted on Saturday, so if you see the thread is close to dying before then, give it a bump.
1. Nice. This sounds like typical west coast playing, I’d say maybe Stan Getz. I don’t recognize the classical piece its based on though. It sounds like something you’d hear in a movie but not in a bad way. The counterpoint in the middle section is nice. I would have rather heard a sax solo than a bass solo though. 3 stars.
2. Sounds like pretty typical post-bop. For some reason my first thought is McCoy Tyner. I don’t recognize this one as a classical piece either. The piano solo got more interesting as it went and then the sudden shift to rock feel in the middle was interesting. I’m guessing this must be something pretty recent. I can’t tell what all is going on in this part, there are some weird sound effects and then it comes back to the swing feel but with a more abstract feel now. This one was pretty interesting. I have no idea who it could be. 3.5 stars.
3. Here’s one I actually know. It’s Dizzy Gillespie’s version of Reverie by Debussy. I always thought this song worked really great as a jazz arrangement. I guess the only thing is that I wish it featured Dizzy more. 4 stars.
4. I don’t recognize this classical piece but I think I would guess this was based on something classical even if I didn’t know that was the theme of this week. I couldn’t really follow the beginning and it kind of bored me but then once the piano does its solo I think it gets a lot more interesting. The soprano sax solo was kind of boring then too for some reason. I liked the piano but other than that this one just didn’t do much for me. 2.5 stars.
5. This has to be Django Reinhardt and Stephane Grappelli. But it sounds like there are two violins so I wonder who the other one is. It sounds gypsy as fuck. But it works great for this classical piece. I bet it’s Bach or something similar. This one was great 4 stars.
Angel Brown
6. This one is very calming. It’s not exciting at all but very pretty. It was nice an just the right length. If it were any longer it would have gotten boring. 3.5 stars.
7. I’m pretty sure I’ve heard this before. My first thought when I heard the tenor sax was that it sounded like Wayne Shorter so I’ll go with that guess. I didn’t know he ever did any jazz versions of classical music though. The second sax solo and the piano solo were my favorites. I liked how the piano kept hitting the lower notes from the melody in between his solo. Pretty nice overall though. 3.5 stars.
8. I didn’t really find anything about this one interesting. It sounded pretty uninspired. Maybe I should listen to it again though because I got a little bit distracted during this one. 2 stars for now though.
9. This has the feel of being based on something classical but it sounds like it’s just going to be a piano trio. I liked it but it did get a little bit long. Especially with the bass solo. The piano playing was pretty good though. 3 stars.
10. This is pretty different. I’d probably even call it nu-jazz. The talking in the middle was kind of weird but other than that I actually enjoyed this one more than I expected. This one could have been longer and developed more though. 3 stars.
Nathan Gonzalez
1: the composition sounds vaguely familiar, but whatever it's classical roots are they are fairly well hidden. Is this Debussy's Clair de Lune?
Maybe some Stan Getz/Gerry Mulligan thing or something like that? This sweet dual sax embrace is pretty nice. Doesn't really sound like Getz, though, maybe Lee Konitz. I learned this week that Konitz is coming to play at the local jazz club later this year - I wasn't even sure he was still alive, much less playing gigs internationally. Dude's almost 90 years old.
Late night mood.
2: I like the frenetic drum stylings, echoes of Tony Williams. Informed by 60's post-bop but seems to be more way modern than that.
No idea on the classical composition.
Cool moment when the rhythm suddenly changes. Makes this feel very contemporary all of a sudden. The bass solo is pretty cool, but I could do with less wah-wah funk guitar.
It's nice how this is divided into clearly different sections.Makes it feel very rewarding as a whole for me.
3: A more old time swing-approach here. Didn't get too much out of this one - a little too sweet and easy.
Jace Barnes
4: There's really a classical touch to this - I guess the lead instrument is a saxophone, but at first I wasn't sure whether it could be a french horn or some other smooth brass instrument.
I like the piano solo - it has a nice, little bit mysterious feel to it.
This reminds me a bit of Finnish pianist Aki Rissanen's (who I've had on a few of my blindfolds and some may know from Verneri Pohjola's Quartet) projects with belgian saxophonist Robin Verheyen (they've done duos, trios and quartets together). Here's them playing with Markku Ounaskari on drums. youtube.com/watch?v=uAC2UMbt4d4
This was interesting - it's the kind of music that demands a little attention, but also feels rewarding. Pretty good clearly classical music influence jazz, I think.
5: Hot! Old time gypsy jazz. It would be hard to not guess Django Reinhardt and Stephane Grappelli - they did at least some interpretations of classical music.
Two violins and the guitarist seems to be taking the back seat a little bit more than I'd expect from Reinhardt.
I'd say it's more likely that this is someone other than the obvious, but I have no better guesses. Feels like pretty "standard" jazz manouche to me.
6: An Erik Satie composition. One of the Gymnopedies, I'm pretty sure.
Yusef Lateef has recorded a rather similar version of Gymnopedie No. 1 - this kind of feels like an inferior version of that one. Hubert Laws has also done one.
This is neither one of those - maybe Herbie Mann?
The Gymnopedies are nice compositions, but it feels like you can only do limited things with them.
Caleb Hill
7: This is Wayne Shorter's version of Sibelius' Valse Triste from The Soothsayer.
As a Finn I've been exposed to much Sibelius and this is one version that I have to say that if I didn't know what it was, I wouldn't recognize as a Sibelius composition or indeed Valse Triste.
It's a pretty decent track - not one that I think of one of Shorter's best, but still good. Certainly gets more points from turning the source material into something pretty different and having it feel natural.
8: This melody sounds very familiar, but can't quite place it.
While the track as a whole is very different, some of the parts with clarinet(?) reminded me of Don Byron playing Copland's Billy the Kid on Bill Frisell's Have a Little Faith. I could certainly see him being involved in something like this.
A little too much of a funeral march feel for me as a whole, though - even with the more upbeat swinging part.
Camden Richardson
9: I don't have too much to say about this - the track has great momentum with the drums and bass really keeping it moving until stopping to enjoy the scenery for the bass solo.
This made me think of the Bad Plus that I was listening to earlier today due to their new album being available for streaming now at NPR for some reason, but I don't think they've done classical music apart from The Rite of Spring and this doesn't really sound that much like them anyway.
I think I like the drummer most of all on this one. He is doing some nice things.
10: Well, this is an odd combination of things with the with that trumpet and organ. The organ has very much a prog rock feel to it rather than traditional jazz organ to me.
A very hard track to get a grasp on with no context. I'm curious what the hell this is.
Adrian Nelson
bump
I'll post some responses in a little bit
Jaxson Foster
>1. It is definitely west coast guys but not Getz
>2. I could hear some Tyner in his playing. As you say it's somebody a bit more modern but probably not as recent as what you think.
>3. Glad somebody knows this one
>5. Nice catch on this one too
>7. Another good guess. It is Shorter.
>8. You should give this one another listen. I figured this would be one that people might guess right.
>10. Definitely on the nu-jazz side of things.
Isaac Ward
bumping with Jukka Perko and Iiro Rantala playing some Sibelius in an overly nostalgic, romantic nationalism fashion from their recent duo ACT release Takes Two to Tango with a cheesy tourism commercial type video apparently made for some Moomin-themed Japanese Finnish jazz compilation album
