jazztalk.net

Bizarre project from MOPDTK that is getting a pile of comments on facebook:

http://online.wsj.com/articles/miles-daviss-jazz-masterpiece-kind-of-blue-is-redone-1412699010

Thanks for the link, pig pen. Cover band, in extremis. Something like the fifties dixieland revival bands or the re-enactors of the big bands era (Enoch Light)?

Thanks for the link, pig pen!

Wow, what an odd project! Most of the notes are the same, but ...

I enjoyed Jimmy Cobb's very balanced, insightful remarks at the end of the WSJ article.

Then, there is this:



Kind of, Kind of Blue: A Conversation with
Mostly Other People Do the Killing

By Moppa Elliott and Greg Elliott |15 September 2014




Photography by Bryan Murray

Mostly Other People Do the Killing‘s new album Blue is a note-for-note re-creation of Miles Davis’ classic 1959 recording, Kind of Blue. The audacious project, first conceived by Moppa Elliott and Peter Evans in 2002, intends to challenge the way people listen to jazz. By transcribing and recording what is arguably the greatest jazz album of all time, Mostly Other People Do the Killing affirms the greatness of the original while questioning the direction of jazz in the 21st century. The thought-experiment-cum-album forces to listener to examine what makes jazz actually jazz and brings the non-notatable elements music to the foreground: timbre, articulation and the ineffable nature of tone and feel.

Standing in for Davis’ classic band are Peter Evans on trumpet, Jon Irabagon on alto and tenor saxophone, Ron Stabinsky on piano, Moppa Elliott on bass and Kevin Shea on drums.



Bandleader Elliott sat down with his brother Greg in March of 2014 to discuss the inspiration and creation of Blue.

* * *

Greg: Why did you decide to do this kind of project?

Moppa: We thought about this years and years ago, and some part of my memory puts it while we were at Oberlin. Talking about this in like 2002. At that point, a note-for-note recording of Kind of Blue was one of many ridiculous things that we talked about doing and assumed that we probably never would.

But over the next several years when we would talk about it, it was such an interesting thought experiment that, at a certain point, it became possible and then a good idea. We seriously decided to do it four or five years ago, I remember doing the first transcriptions around January of 2010 during the first Mostly Other People European winter tour. Once the other guys started transcribing, too, we realized that it was actually going to happen. ‘We’re gonna do this.’ We weren’t clear on how, or when, or the particulars yet. It moved from thought experiment to thing we’re actually going to do.


Full story<

JazzWax

Marc Myers writes daily on jazz legends and legendary jazz recordings


October 09, 2014
Sort of Blue: Clone or Art?



By this time on Tuesday, the jazz community will likely be in an uproar—or will at least be dumbfounded. Blue, a new album by the quintet Mostly Other People Do the Killing, has broken a taboo of sorts by recreating the Miles Davis Sextet's Kind of Blue, note for note. I write about the album (due out on Tuesday), and its implications for jazz and the music industry in Friday's Wall Street Journal (go here). [Pictured above, from left, Mostly Other People Do the Killing's drummer Kevin Shea, bassist Matthew "Moppa" Elliott, alto and tenor saxophonist Jon Irabagon and trumpeter Peter Evans. Not pictured: pianist Ron Stabinsky.]

Kind of Blue (1959), of course, is jazz's most iconic album, influencing generations of jazz and rock musicians and becoming one of jazz's best-selling recordings. The modal framework used for the album's compositions and the genius of the musicians on the album created a breakthrough approach, providing jazz and rock musicians with a sense of how to improvise for limitless periods.



Tuesday's outrage over Blue is likely to come from two camps—those who don't take kindly to jazz's Mona Lisa being copied and positioned as art, and those who find copying Kind of Blue sort of wacky, since a perfectly good one already exists. To me, the fact that Kind of Blue has been copied is less interesting than why and what the thinking was behind it. Initially, I thought Blue might be a publicity stunt, since copying Kind of Blue could only produce one reaction among serious jazz fans—bafflement followed by condemnation.


Full story<

The album also got 4.5 stars in November's Downbeat.

I know we've had groups come through town doing these sorts of "remake" projects and I don't get the appeal. I generally enjoy MOPDTK, although they can be a bit frantic at times so I have to be in the mood. This one I can't see paying money for.

One of the worst "jazz" gigs I ever went to was a piano trio where the pianist played a note for note transcription of an Oscar Peterson performance. Totally sucked the life out of the music and I can't imagine that Moppa and the crew, as talented as they are, would do any better.

I was hoping that if we ignored it, it would go away.

I have yet to hear from anyone who's actually heard the record (not surprising since it won't be released until tomorrow). Early reviewers have reported that it does sound as note-for-note identical to the original as the band could manage. And apparently they are excellent copycats.

Some of the commentary on the net indicates to me that not everyone appreciates that this is not just playing KOB "in the style of." It's more like a faithful transcription, as if every nuance of the original performance had been captured on a score and was being played back conscientiously. Their aim was for it to be indistinguishable from the original.

This is very different from musicians making an homage album in the style of the original but with their own solos in the style of their models. It's also very different from a classical orchestra's interpretation of a symphonic score, for example. Each symphony orchestra aims to create a performance faithful to the score, but they certainly don't want to sound exactly like another symphony orchestra. That's where their interpretation comes into play. MOPDTK are apparently trying to remove any idea of "interpretation" other than "identical copy."

Here's an interesting article about it: http://www.buffalonews.com/columns/jeff ... c-20141012

It mentions the inspiration the band found in a short story by Borges, reproduced in the liner notes, called "Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote":

It’s about a supremely self-conscious 20th century writer who sets out to become Miguel de Cervantes completely independently so that he can write an exactly replicated version of “Don Quixote.” Which he does.

And, in the most profound joke in all international post-modern literature, Borges tells us, “The Cervantes text and the Menard text are verbally identical, but the second is infinitely richer.”

To me it seems like undergraduate-level self-indulgence. It might make for some interesting conversation over a beer, but why listen to it?

just one question for them... did they think they could do it better? and if not, why mess with perfection.

We have ALL heard the album [ probably numerous times]