Fact #31241
When:
Short story:
The Southern Syncopated Orchestra, a large American jazz ensemble featuring young clarinettist Sidney Bechet, plays at The Royal Albert Hall, London, England, UK, Europe.Full article:
Ernest Ansermet (reviewer, Revue Romande, 1918) : The first thing that strikes one about the Southern Syncopated Orchestra is the astonishing perfection, the superb taste and the fervor of its playing. I couldn't tell whether these artists feel it is their duty to be sincere, or whether they are driven by the idea that they have a "mission" to fulfill, or whether they are convinced of the "nobility" of their task, or have that holy audacity and that sacred "valor" which the musical code requires of our European musicians, nor indeed whether they are animated by any "idea" whatsoever.
But I can see they have a very keen sense of the music they love, and a pleasure in making it which they communicate to the hearer with irresistible force a pleasure which pushes them to outdo themselves all the time, to constantly enrich and refine their medium.
They play generally without written music, and even when they have it, the score only serves to indicate the general line, for there are very few numbers I have heard them execute twice with exactly the same effects. I imagine that, knowing the voice attributed to them in the harmonic ensemble and conscious of the role their instrument is to play, they can let themselves go, in a certain direction and within certain limits, as their hearts' desire.
They are so entirely possessed by the music they play, that they can't stop themselves from dancing inwardly to it in such a way that their playing is a real show.
When they indulge in one of their favourite effects, which is to take up the refrain of a dance in a tempo suddenly twice as slow and with redoubled intensity and figuration, a truly gripping thing takes place. it seems as if a great wind is passing over a forest or as if a door is suddenly opened on a wild orgy.
There is in the Southern Syncopated Orchestra an extraordinary clarinet virtuoso who is, so it seems, the first of his race to have composed perfectly formed blues on the clarinet. I've heard two of them which he elaborated at great length. They are admirable equally for their richness of invention, their force of accent, and their daring novelty and unexpected turns. These solos already show the germ of a new style.
Their form is gripping, abrupt, harsh, with a brusque and pitiless ending like that of Bach's Second Brandenburg Concerto. I wish to set down the name of this artist of genius; as for myself, I shall never forget it - it is Sidney Bechet.
When one has tried so often to find in the past one of those figures to whom we owe the creation of our art as we know it today - those men of the 17th and 18th centuries, for example, who wrote the expressive works of dance airs which cleared the way for Haydn and Mozart - what a moving thing it is to meet this black, fat boy with white teeth and narrow forehead, who is very glad one likes what he does, but can say nothing of his art, except that he follows his "own way" - and then one considers that perhaps his "own way" is the highway along which the whole world will swing tomorrow.
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But I can see they have a very keen sense of the music they love, and a pleasure in making it which they communicate to the hearer with irresistible force a pleasure which pushes them to outdo themselves all the time, to constantly enrich and refine their medium.
They play generally without written music, and even when they have it, the score only serves to indicate the general line, for there are very few numbers I have heard them execute twice with exactly the same effects. I imagine that, knowing the voice attributed to them in the harmonic ensemble and conscious of the role their instrument is to play, they can let themselves go, in a certain direction and within certain limits, as their hearts' desire.
They are so entirely possessed by the music they play, that they can't stop themselves from dancing inwardly to it in such a way that their playing is a real show.
When they indulge in one of their favourite effects, which is to take up the refrain of a dance in a tempo suddenly twice as slow and with redoubled intensity and figuration, a truly gripping thing takes place. it seems as if a great wind is passing over a forest or as if a door is suddenly opened on a wild orgy.
There is in the Southern Syncopated Orchestra an extraordinary clarinet virtuoso who is, so it seems, the first of his race to have composed perfectly formed blues on the clarinet. I've heard two of them which he elaborated at great length. They are admirable equally for their richness of invention, their force of accent, and their daring novelty and unexpected turns. These solos already show the germ of a new style.
Their form is gripping, abrupt, harsh, with a brusque and pitiless ending like that of Bach's Second Brandenburg Concerto. I wish to set down the name of this artist of genius; as for myself, I shall never forget it - it is Sidney Bechet.
When one has tried so often to find in the past one of those figures to whom we owe the creation of our art as we know it today - those men of the 17th and 18th centuries, for example, who wrote the expressive works of dance airs which cleared the way for Haydn and Mozart - what a moving thing it is to meet this black, fat boy with white teeth and narrow forehead, who is very glad one likes what he does, but can say nothing of his art, except that he follows his "own way" - and then one considers that perhaps his "own way" is the highway along which the whole world will swing tomorrow.