Very Contemporary

Mingus and Black Saint was pretty cool. He is an artist I know from the Ken Burns Jazz series. The Black Saint doesn't seem to be out of the ordinary in that context. The only unusual thing in this piece was the ostinato in the Trombone being swelled instead of pointed. Pretty standard jazz for the most part, I don't hear anything I am unaccustomed to, nothing unexpected or unusual, given it's improvisatory nature.

Braxton's compositions were the same way. It's jazz, there was nothing surprising here. Reading about his composition 84 for 4 orchestras was really interesting and bizarre. I had never heard of anything like that, and then found an interview of Braxton discussing the work itself

John Zorn and his piece Cobra were by far the most on the edge listening for this set. At first it sounded like a jazz percussion section warming up, and grew to be a mixed, jumbled, intriguing, but also grew to be grating and irritating. The silence and lack of stability or form just did nothing for me. This performance of it particularly pushed me away the longer I listened to it. About the seventh minute it began to have a chance, but really it went right back to being a song without structure or stability, and grew dull. Instead of being pushed away I just grew to stop caring about the work as a whole. By the end I had completely lost interest.

Reading about Gunther Schuller was great! As a composer as well as performer I have studied and know of. Growing up in Coeur d'Alene (yes, no typo) Idaho, right next to Spokane Washington. Mr. Schuller has had a lot of influence in the area, conducting the Spokane Symphony and supporting a lot of Bach and Handel musics. I have played through his etude book for horn, and enjoyed the stories about him getting the principal seat with the Cincinnati Symphony at age 18! As a jazzer, I knew little of him, not even that he worked with Mingus and Dizzy Gillespie.

Jazz is a wonderful form, including the improvisatory nature of music that was lost to the mainstream since the days of Mozart. It's evolution as a truly American art form blending African slave songs with the western European tradition to create an improvisatory, semitonal sound that captivated our country for a century before evolving (devolving?) into rock.