écouter: les rencontres entre des Improvisateurs (Charlie Parker, Charles Mingus, etc.) et un Compositeur (Edgard Varèse)

Charlie Parker et Edgard Varèse (1954-1955):


extrait de Charlie Parker interviewed by Paul Desmond (Boston radio, early 1954)

P.D. - No, I know many people are watching you at the moment with the greatest of interest to see what you're going to come up with next in the next few years, myself among the front row of them. Well what have you got in mind?

C.P.- well, seriously speaking I mean I'm going to try to go to Europe to study. I had the pleasure to meet one Edgar Varese in New York City; he's a classical composer from Europe, he's a Frenchman, very nice fellow and he wants to teach me; in fact he wants to write for me because he thinks I'm more for, more or less on a serious basis you know, and if he takes me over, I mean after he's finished with me I might have the chance to go to the Academy of Music out in Paris itself and study, you know. My prime interest still is learning to play music, you know.

J.M. - would you study playing or composition?

C.P. - I would study both. I never want to lose my horn.

P.D - no, you never should.

C.P. - I don't want to do that. That wouldn't work.

Edgard Varèse "With jazz, the ones who could have been good become very conventional. I heard the man who was playing—what was his name? He died. He was a god of music in that field. He played a kind of saxophone—Charlie Parker. At that time he lived in New York. He followed me on the street, and he said he wanted to be with us. The day I left I said, "We'll get together. I'll take you for my pupil." Then I had to catch my boat. It's when I went to Europe for Déserts. And Charlie Parker died in '55, in March. Oh, he was so nice, and so modest, and he had such a tone. You could not know if it was an angelic double bass, a saxophone, or a bass clarinet. Then one day I was in that big hall there on 14th Street, the Cooper Union. Somebody said, "I want to meet you." She was the widow of Charlie Parker. She said, "He was always talking about you, so I know all about you." And that man was a great star. He wanted to study music and thought I had something for him." - (From Perlis and Cleve's Composers' Voices from Ives to Ellington

“He stopped by my place a number of times. He was like a child, with the shrewdness of a child. He possessed a tremendous enthusiasm. He’d come in and exclaim, ‘take me in as you would a baby and teach me music. I only write one voice. I want to have structure. I want to write orchestral scores.’ I promised myself I would try to find some time to show him some of the things he wanted to know.”

Edgard Varèse et les sessions de 1957

En 1957, Varèse a dirigé des jam sessions avec Art Farmer (tp), Teo Macero (t sax - futur producteur de Miles Davis), Hal McKusik (cl, a sax), Hall Overton (p), Frank Rehak (tb), Ed Shaughnessy (dms), Eddie Bert (tb), Don Butterfield (tuba) Bill Crow et Charles Mingus (cb) , Teddy Charles (vib)

Entre Mars et août 1957, these Sunday jam-sessions were followed by arranger George Handy, journalist Robert Reisner, composers James Tenney, and John Cage, choreographer Merce Cunningham. 

Sessions organisées par Earle Brown et Teo Macero,  Greenwich House Music School, 1957

écouter: quelques sessions entre des Improvisateurs de Jazz (Macero, Art Farmer, Hal McKusick, Hall Overton, Frank Rehak, Ed Shaughnessy, Charles Mingus, etc.) et le Compositeur Edgard Varèse

L'original est à la Fondation Paul Sacher, on peut entendre les enregistrements avec un meilleur son dans le film de Mark Kidel, Edgard Varèse, Les Films d'Ici, 1995

 

une partie d'un visuel que Varèse avait donné à Teo Macero pour les sessions

On peut entendre une influence des travaux d'Edgard Varèse avec des Improvisateurs de Jazz dans le Poème électronique, for tape (1957-1958)

An excerpt from Varèse's score for Poème électronique