Bailey died in London, not Barcelona.

Thanks Dan, looks like there was a mixup among sources on that point... I changed the title from "Barcelona" to "London"...

Otomo dedicated renditions of Lonely Woman during both his solo acoustic guitar and solo electric guitar sets tonight to "Derek Bailey, the master improviser", very moving. I think one audience member actually broke into audible tears near the end of the acoustic one.

"I rather agree that "musical scores" should be regarded as little more than an esoteric branch of literature, though certainly deserving of a little niche as a diversion from improvisation. Thanks for hitting that nail on the head in your book. Ink schmink."
Oh, it's time to have a go at composers again, is it?

Derek Bailey was a composer. His method was improvisation. I'm not going back to the dark ages on this terminology stuff.

Derek Bailey was a guitar player.

If we keep accumulating truths at this pace, Dan, we'll have a bio on him done in a few short months... :-)

This is a good time to bring attention to the beautiful review of Carpal Tunnel written for Bags by a different Derek.

Oddly enough I was listening to that on Saturday and found it a rather sad experience - even if the guitar playing is as fresh as ever, Bailey's voice sounds old and weary. This is probably not the moment to ask Bags punters for a Derek Bailey Best Of, but my own personal listening tribute to DB will be 1970s vintage. With reference to Jon's tale of teary Otomo fans, I rather suspect Bailey would have little time for such sentimentality (as in "sentiment in excess of the facts"). I hope our man in Vienna Noel Akchoté will soon be able to share some of his more hilarious DB anecdotes with us. Meanwhile, it's 950am here which means it's now OK to blast my neighbours with Topography The Lungs. Cheers Derek!

"master improvisor, composer, guitar player"
essayist, humorist, crank

it was derek's interest in webern's miniatures that made me see (at seventeen, at long last) that even the the shortest event of improvisation had all (if not exceeding) the complexities of a composition. this kind of analytical approach to improvisation was a real offset from cage's indetermincay for me where, in my early reading of it, essentally the cosmos plays the musician through the medium of numbers. and oddly it was derek's book that piqued my interest to attend feldman's lectures in buffalo (precisely when i should have become a rabid improv fundamentalist?), not cage's. that the guitar was itself a composition filled with variable subsets that offered to open into the as yet unsounded came to me from him. derek's gift i think was the trust in the situation that all the music depended on you, what you do. what skills to combat with anti-skills (which become skills). what do you do? it's sad occasion on which we come to make these kind of assessments. it only means something else is being born. does anyone know more precisely the time of his death?

Thanks for this piece, Mike, very touching, I very much enjoyed reading it. Now I think I'll dip into some of my favourite Bailey recordings, the solos, 'Drop Me Off At 96th' and 'Lace'.

Bailey's dying comes a shock to me. I didn't realize he'd been sick.

I too, caught Bailey with Ibarra (in NYC, along with the redoubtable Brian O.) My own take (not shared by Brian, as per usual) was that DB's playing was a little too subtle for Susie that night. Nice gig, though.

Seems like that Tonic gig could have been quite a Bagatellen conference, had any of us known the others back then. I was there, too, and also caught him in a (rather less successful) quartet with Zorn, Joey Baron, and I-forget-who on bass. That was in 2002, shortly after the Jazziz interview that yielded the quote that appears below this entry on the main page.

Daedal is one of the two Bailey/drummer duo discs I own, the other being Ore with Eddie Prevost. I dug 'em both out yesterday, along with a few of his sideman gigs - Nipples, More Nipples, and Manfred Schoof's European Echoes.

I'll always remember Bailey as one of the best interviews I ever got - smart, funny, and never for a second condescending to an idiot kid who had (and still has) only the sketchiest impression of his vast discography. (A lot of his fans could take a lesson from the man himself in that regard.)

"With reference to Jon's tale of teary Otomo fans, I rather suspect Bailey would have little time for such sentimentality"

a momentary outburst is all it was, Dan, I'm not even a hundred percent sure it was tears. it was a pretty intense feeling in the club, I don't see any reason to minimize that.

I was fortunate enough to see Bailey a half dozen or so times, though never solo, something I regret (despite Bailey's well-known antipathy toward such engagements!). I always had the opinion (and essentially still do unless someone can disabuse me of it) that, when he found himself in the company of, shall we say, musicians who weren't quite up to his calibre (or far, far short of it), he simply thought of their contributions as white noise to play off of and against, perhaps similar to the way he would, as I understand it, play alongside radio broadcasts. I had that impression a couple of times (as when I saw him with Ruins) though, who knows? maybe he was thoroughly enjoying it.

But seeing him with Cecil Taylor at Tonic a few years back was a special thing. He even managed, through sheer orneriness, to get Taylor to bend a little bit in his direction. A performance that had the all the makings of a titanic and disastrous clash of egos resulted in a momentous event. As always, seeing him perform, his level of pure concentration was massively impressive.

Too sad that he's gone.

Dan, fwiw, my fave Bailey tends to be solo, things like "Solo Guitar, Vol 2", "Takes Fakes and Dead She Dances", "Drop Me Off at 96th", "Aida", "Music + Dance" (well, sorta solo). But also, of course, "Iskra 1903".

I don't post much here (I am not one of the petit clan), but I do read Bagatellen regularly. And when I'm able to wade through on of Mr. Parker's incredibly long musings, I occasionally enjoy bits and pieces. But his comment about written composition being somehow inferior to improvisation (that is the gist of it, at least) once again leads me to question how seriously I can take him.

As for Mr. Bailey, RIP. For me, he was a musician whose ideas--like Cage's--were sometimes more interesting on the page than in practice, but he was nonetheless clearly an original. I do think he needed strong musicians to play with, people with their own voices (the session with Steve Lacy was the first that made me really dig Bailey). His genius, in the end, may be that of someone able to shed light on the hidden corners in other players' music.

my favorite bailey memory was in may or june of 2001 when i went to see him guest with tony bevan and john edwards and i think someone else. not realizing that times listed for improv shows in london are usually early by at least an hour, i showed up twenty minutes early and was told to go upstairs (which was outside and up a staircase) to the function room. As i was walking up the stairs, bailey's sound became immediately recognizable, so you can imagine my shock when i got to the top and there was no one else in the place. i just sat at the empty bar (not even a bartender) and sipped the pint i bought downstairs out of nervousness of not seeing any jazzers around, and listened to him play for about twenty minutes. very moving for me, just another day for him.

It's a sad day. Derek's passing hit me as hard as Sonny Sharrock's [pre-mature] death just over a decade ago.

My favourite [non-live] Bailey moment was a tape I'd received in the mail over a decade ago from Paul Haines [a good friend of Bailey's - check out "Darn It!"] with a recording of Bailey's New Year's greetings [single that was released on Table of the Elements]. Must be one of the most hilarious Bailey moments committed to tape.

Yeah, that New Year Message is great, though "George" from Playbacks is my pick for DB at his most hilarious (I'll be playing both during my all-Bailey radio show this Thursday, 10am-12:30pm Central @ wnur.org).
I too saw Bailey with Ibarra in NYC, though it was at Roulette, not Tonic. It was pretty great, though as with many of my first-time experiences seeing a "legend" in person, the voice in my head saying "Wow! That's Derek Bailey!" probably prevented me from listening as closely as I should have. Too bad I won't have a second chance - that was one iconoclastic, inspiring bloke.
Bailey in a listening test upon hearing Conlon Nancarrow: "What is this? A furniture demonstration?"
:)

Apart from hearing his brilliant music for years, one of my favorite moments was at the Huddersfield Festival in the mid 90's. He persuaded 30 grumpy "new music devotees" to join in his set with Louis Mholo by leaving their spring loaded chairs in a non idiomatic way.
And in about 1974 he mused "... sounds like McLaughlin" during a solo.
I failed in my attempt to set up a tour for the two greatest guitar players - Derek and John Fahey. I'll always regret that. Just listen and/in wonder.
And my sympathies to Karen and Derek's family and friends.
PK

he paved a good part of the path...

Hello Paul! Bailey & Moholo at Huddersfield eh? Was that recorded, I wonder?

PK: "I failed in my attempt to set up a tour for the two greatest guitar players - Derek and John Fahey."

Ah, but you managed to do the biz for Fahey, and he was worth the price of entry on his own. Thanks for that.

Derek and Moholo and Thebo Lipere at Huddersfield - it might have been recorded by the Festival. It is the equivalent of the rain storm [and coughing] on "Music and Dance". There is an CD 'Village Life', just get some grumpy folk to leave while you're listening.

Hi Dan - sad to meet under these circumstances.
And Brian - thanks.

We've lost so many great musicians over the past few years that I've become a bit numbed to hearing new passings. Losing Derek Bailey has brought back a little of my humanity I guess. When I was listening with virgin ears I cut my teeth on Brotzmann, the LJCO, Dunmall, and the likes. I knew of Bailey back then as a current (and still revolutionary) musician but had no idea my investigation of European improv would lead me directly to him. All roads led to the Music Improvisaiton Company and Iskra. In my mind he is the lowest common denominator in an extremely important area of music. He revolutionized the guitar and its implications in improvised music. He developed a language of its own that has inspired and influenced countless musicians, and for that we've lost a fucking monolith.

Michael, very nice and touching piece.

[Phil] Seems like that Tonic gig could have been quite a Bagatellen conference, had any of us known the others back then. I was there, too, and also caught him in a (rather less successful) quartet with Zorn, Joey Baron, and I-forget-who on bass.

[Mike] I'm pretty sure that would've been Reggie Workman on doublebass, because I remember a friend telling me about that gig and saying that it seemed like Workman was kind of at a loss to keep up with the other three because they were in hyper-intense mode... Workman is a brilliant player and composer and very open about music, but the idea was he'd bitten off more than he could chew in with those guys... Overall the gig was reported to be in the "fucking amazing" category...

There were 3 Tonic gigs with Ibarra/Bailey and Jason reports on a Roulette gig. When I was writing the bit above I didn't make much effort to find out dates and exact details because it doesn't seem important. I googled a little bit and didn't come up with much. I honestly can't even remember what years these were in. Probably 2001 or 2002 or so... Boy, my memory sure is fuzzy!

The Bailey/Ibarra gig at Roulette was in November 1999.

BTW, does anyone know if the TV series based on "Improvisation" is or will be available on home video? I'd love to see it.

Yeah, nice piece, very nice. I am really drugged about our losing Derek's corpus, though there is certainly more than enough music - commercial recordings, bootlegs, live concert memories for the lucky - to keep us enchanted for several lifetimes.

I was going to write up my thoughts on Derek's music for a sister publication, but it is such a drag that I find it a bit hard. I am upset over this, still.

Only had a brief interaction w/ him at Tonic sometime in 2000 when he was with Ibarra. Nice gig, though, and he seemed far friendly than Evan Parker, with whom I minced words not long ago.

And I'm not even going to get into the composition-improvisation debate. Fuck that, who gives a shit?

Don’t really have much to add to what’s already been posted. Bailey was a hero of mine & I’m proud to share his first name (just as I'm proud to share the surname of a certain leotard-wearing pianist). His passing comes as a blow, but as Cliff notes there’s a trove of treasure left behind. I’m hoping that the (jazz) media chooses to give him his proper due, but even if they turn a blind collective eye his legacy is unassailable.

First-class piece of correspondence, Mike. Thanks much for posting it (& thanks to Phil for posting that JT quote/pic).

Far as mine own favorites: Lace; Iskra 1903; London Concert; Outcome; Cyro; Village Life; Pieces for Guitar; Improvisations for Cello and Guitar and Mirakle.

There's an obituary in today's Guardian, available at:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/obituaries/story/0,3604,1674695,00.html

Here another, this time from the Independent, impersonal and and rather inaccurate:

http://news.independent.co.uk/people/obituaries/article335441.ece

The Guardian piece is fair enough, though this got me chuckling: "Just in time, he was caught by the ideal biographer, Ben Watson, in the book Derek Bailey and the Story of Free Improvisation." The other obituary's a piece of tosh written by someone who'd never even heard of Bailey let alone heard him.

Even after all these years, free improvisation, as practised by Bailey, is still not understood. Jazz had almost nothing to do with it, and the terms of reference that apply to jazz are inappropriate to describe his music. And to open up the discussion somewhat . . . the argument that the music is non-idiomatic is years (if not decades) out of date: free improv has become an idiom, as recognisable and (all too often, alas) predictable as any other music. What made Bailey so distinctive was how he fought against laziness and easy options in his playing, he genuinely tried not to repeat himself, and that's why the music from all periods of his 'career' still sounds vital. Will he be missed? Sorely missed? You bet!

Perhaps I should point out that the author of the Independent obituary is a jazz writer who may well know his jazz inside out, but apparently he knows nothing about anything else. My initial comments above were written in seething response to this obit, which, as Dan says, is a piece of tosh. It'll be interesting to see what's said about Bailey's life and work in jazz-haunted North America.

That Independent obit is shocking. I had wondered what had happened to Steve Voce; well, he's certainly not been widening his listening. Or doing his research.

Good point, Brian re: Bailey’s tenuous (at best) ties to ‘jazz’. But there’s a larger ‘jazz press’ than an ‘improv’ one for worse rather than better, esp. in North America, as you note. I fear it’s largely going to fall on them to spread the news of Bailey’s passing to the public &, pessimistically-speaking, they’re probably going to fail in the assignment.

By the way, what I wrote wasn't meant in any way to disparage jazz, which is a music of considerable importance to me, nor of the people who write well about it. Nor, for that matter, is 'jazz-haunted' intended to be a pejorative phrase, simply an observation that America, the home of jazz, has much stronger ties to it than we Europeans have, and improvisation seems to be more often seen as a closely orbiting satellite of jazz than as a distinct planetary body.

Hmmm.... I don't know, there's still a ton of jazz there in Bailey's playing, even if it's turned inside out (there's a memorable savaging of "Stella by Starlight" on Fairly Early with Postscripts, for instance). Wasn't it Steve Beresford who called him "a great bebop guitarist"?

Best memorial I've seen yet has been Steve Smith's. I'm glad he singles out Drop Me Off at 96th as his greatest solo album, as (thinking of the dozen or so solo Bailey albums I have) I think I'd have to agree. It's a crime that it's o/p.

Steve's piece is here:

http://nightafternight.blogs.com/night_after_night/2005/12/derek_bailey_19.html

Scatter was a great label, one of the first to work with live electronics in free improv. anyone know who ran that? I know it was Scotland-based.

"Wasn't it Steve Beresford who called him "a great bebop guitarist"?" Think that was Lol Coxhill who said that, Nate.

I agree, Nate. But a few jazz chords (and occasional tunes) sprinkled throughout a 40-year career don't make Bailey a jazz guitarist, nor fundamentally should he be considered as such. As I said in an earlier comment: "Jazz had almost nothing to do with it."

I've just learned about Bailey's death and I'm shattered to bits about this. His recordings of the past few years (on Tzadik) with a great variety of "groups" sound fresh indeed and point to many directions for his music to express itself. I'm new to this site, as a Wire reader I recognize a few writers/musicians' names. The piece on DB in last year's Wire was wonderful --what a great interviewee. Could someone tell me if Bailey ever played/recorded with Wadada Leo Smith?

DC: "Could someone tell me if Bailey ever played/recorded with Wadada Leo Smith?"

Not to my knowledge, David, but some of the North American contributors to Bags may know better.

DC: "Could someone tell me if Bailey ever played/recorded with Wadada Leo Smith?"

May 25-27, 1977; ICA, London

LS/MR/DB/TH/AB/SL/EP 25:39
EP/HB/DB 5:30 [part of a longer piece]
HB/AB/DB 8:39
TH/MR/SB/HB/DB 10:29
EP/LS/DB - second of four pieces 4:19
Leo Smith[LS]: trumpet; Maarten Altena[MR]: bass; Derek Bailey[DB]: guitar; Tristan Honsinger[TH]: cello; Anthony Braxton[AB]: clarinet, flute, alto sax, soprano sax; Steve Lacy[SL]: soprano sax; Evan Parker[EP]: soprano sax, tenor sax. Han Bennink[HB]: drums; Steve Beresford[SB]: piano;

Company 5 [Company]: Incus (UK) 28 (LP) 1978 [track 1]
Company 5 [Company]: Incus (UK) CD41 (CD) 2001 [track 1]
Company 6 [Company]: Incus (UK) 29 (LP) 1978 [tracks 2,3]
Company 6 & 7 [Company]: Incus (UK) CD07 (CD) 1991 [tracks 2,4,5]
Company 7 [Company]: Incus (UK) 30 (LP) 1978 [tracks 4,5]

Note: The Company records contain further performances from the same set of dates. They're not listed here because they didn't include Bailey as a participant.

Yeah, it sure ain't jazz! but I just find that it's too easy to claim that Bailey left that body of music behind or that it's not at all present in his music. Similarly I get a little peeved by the commonly expressed idea that his music is "atonal" & "meterless". Re: the former, given (e.g.) his fondness for guitaristic circle-of-fifths patterns in many of his recordings, the harmonic picture is far more treacherous & complex. & there is sometimes an implied meter too (on Drop Me Off at 96th there are long passages you can tap you foot to, if you're patient & not flummoxed by the ametrical interludes & occasional adjustments of tempo).

Enough of my pedantry. Time to pull out some of DB's discs for another listen. Peter Stubley once kindly dubbed me some of the hard-to-get 1970s solo albums & I think I'll start there. -- The first one I bought was Village Life, anyone have a fondness for that one? Like (admittedly) many Incus releases, the recording/balance is rather off (One Time is another instance), but it's gorgeous, almost-subliminal music with a shimmering array of percussion from Louis Moholo & Thebe Lipere. Great stuff.

Nate, I'm sceptical about the tonality claim. But maybe your hearing is just more acute than mine. Anyhow, because it comes from you, I intend to test it with a couple recordings over the next few days.

Incidentally, if you're correct, my sense (though I could be wrong) is that Bailey would have considered his hanging about a specific tonal center a failing on his part. I would have thought that that was something he tried to resist.

I'm less interested in the rhythmic claim--to the extent that I can understand it. In any case, I don't see any necessity for there be a meter in order for something to be "foot-tappable."

We're just approaching the subject from different angles, Nate. All I'm saying is that if one views Bailey's music through the jazz prism one gains only a partial and rather distorted image of his achievements.

I've just been revisiting the Iskra 1903 recording, which is absolutely amazing. This trio shared the bill with the Parker/Lytton duo at the Royal Station Hotel in Newcastle upon Tyne in, as I recall, 1972. I went with a friend who'd heard free improvisation and thought I might like it. I came out of the concert utterly perplexed but thoroughly intrigued and eager to learn, a combination that's stood me in good stead for more than three decades, so I'm very grateful to messrs Bailey, Guy, Rutherford, Lytton and Parker.

"Scatter was a great label, one of the first to work with live electronics in free improv. anyone know who ran that? I know it was Scotland-based."

It was Liam Stefani from Glasgow. Don't know what he does now.
I believe that the guy who runs the french label Textile knows him. Probably Dan W. should know that better than me.

I don't know, actually - but I can ask Benoit Sonnette at Textile if he does. Seems everyone's got this Bailey solo disc except me! Grr!

liam still lives in glasgow. the label ceased activity a few years back. he has been working recently at a record store called 'monorail'. he makes a visit to london a couple of times a year and always pops into sound 323 to say hello. very nice chap indeed!

Yet another obit, this one's from the NY Times:

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/30/arts/30bailey.html

"a great bebop guitarist"?" Think that was Lol Coxhill who said that,

Lol says it often indeed ........

is there a Death or a Life possible BESIDES the "Record" OBJECT ?

I added the photos today.

[Paul Kelly] And in about 1974 he mused "... sounds like McLaughlin" during a solo.

[Mike] This has got to be the most hilarious one-liner about him ever!!! I'm practically rolling on the floor in stitches... And maybe the best possible one-liner to remember him with?! Thanks for sharing this and the hilarious chair story.

Brian, you said "Jazz had almost nothing to do with it" but Mr. Bailey's professional jazz stint sounds like it heavily informed his own take on the guitar, a take that still emphasized virtuosic playing ability and the whole looking-at-something-from-a-bunch-of-different-angles propulsion that kept jazz interesting.

It doesn't seem like such a big leap from Louis Armstrong to Charlie Parker to Derek Bailey. ---- Three of the great ear-openers, to be sure!!! (wouldn't that be a trio?)

I agree with that. Derek Bailey went to great pains to dissociate himself from the dreaded J word, which is perfectly understandable (though I still take issue with all the "non-idiomatic" stuff in his book - to my way of thinking there's no such thing as non-idiomatic) but jazz standards were his bread and butter for many years, and the memory of that kind of phrasing and timing was written in the muscles, whether he wanted it to be or not. You don't - can't - unlearn what you've spent years of your life learning. You can try - and it's fun - but as Fred Frith says, improvising is about playing everything you've ever done in your life. Derek Bailey SWINGS, god damn it.

"but as Fred Frith says, improvising is about playing everything you've ever done in your life. "

hmm, I'd say that truly improvising is about forgetting everything you've ever played previously in your life, at least on one level. obviously no one can really totally do this, but that doesn't mean it's not a platonic ideal of some kind.

My argument wasn't fundamentally about what Bailey played but about how he'll be (mis)perceived by jazz obit writers such as Steve Voce. And, as I said earlier, the non-idiomatic business, which was largely correct or at least arguable when Bailey wrote his book, is now incorrect, yet people keep trotting it out year after year like a gospel truth.

Just found this clip : Derek with dancer Tanaka Min. Superbe !

http://blogfiles.wfmu.org/BT/derekmin.mpg

Another one too I already mentionned some months ago :

http://www.dunoisjazz.info/TRESOR1.htm

Direct link :
http://www.dunoisjazz.info/CLIPS/1983/bailey.wmv

"is there a Death or a Life possible BESIDES the "Record" OBJECT ?" -Akchote

"as Fred Frith says, improvising is about playing everything you've ever done in your life"
-Warburton

"truly improvising is about forgetting everything you've ever played previously in your life" -Abbey

"there ain't no life nowhere"
--Pat Metheny (or Pat Travers, was it?)

"The silence of death from the side of the still living---we know nothing of the loudness of death from the side of the now-dead---is painful precisely because it is silent, it is the end of the question...Thus the dead pass into the realm of secrets. Is this not beautiful? Are we not maddened by the question, by the relentless exchange? The dead have ceased to exchange.
--Howard Barker

I can say nothing pro or con about Mr. Howie Woofer's plays but his essays have a few things to ruminate.

If only Fred really meant something more like "we remake what we have done in our life in sounds"

then we'd have a different tack

robin trower? ..."there ain't no life nowhere"
who said that, damn...

Brian O. wrote:
"I always had the opinion (and essentially still do unless someone can disabuse me of it) that, when he found himself in the company of, shall we say, musicians who weren't quite up to his calibre (or far, far short of it), he simply thought of their contributions as white noise to play off of and against, perhaps similar to the way he would, as I understand it, play alongside radio broadcasts. I had that impression a couple of times (as when I saw him with Ruins) though, who knows? maybe he was thoroughly enjoying it.”

Jeff replies:
“…shall we say, musicians who weren't quite up to his calibre (or far, far short of it)”

Brian,
let’s please please not say that, however having already doneso. “caliber” is among the worst metaphors in the bag.
You can only know if a musician thinks this way if you ask him or her. But you don’t ask generally because it’s impolite and even a bit tacky. Most people won’t talk in such a way unless they are well-oiled in the company of long time friends and if they have half a conscience they will regret doing so later. (Einstein doesn’t sit back saying ah I am the great Einstein who had better ideas than me. And yes, there is a Neils Bohr and a Hermann Weyl and a Heisenberg etc. all of which you know had their best ideas just like you: almost by accident after longs weeks of running through other people’s old ideas ---sounds a bit like jazz, hmm, or just Frith?---. But ideas are alive only in as much as they help us grasp what is happening in the world.) I’d like to examine this issue without this metaphor and taken away from the strictly musical context. Think about his work with dancers. They are almost not of the same species as you and I but they are often faster. Back when Philip Gayle was living still in Houston he showed me a video of Derek working with Min Tanaka. I must say that Min, who I think of as among the toughest nails in the world, frighteningly aware of himself and his environment, looked beyond silly. Derek flashed between ironic smile and poker-face and let out scurries and clusters of notes here and there. No evidence of disrespect. It was hard to tell if Min was deliberately doing a mock modern diva dance (no one was laughing as I recall) but given that I have heard him say that he can hardly ever watch a video of himself performing without thinking it’s bullshit, I am inclined to think he was just having a very hard time finding something meaningful to do on that occasion. I consider Min among the few artists who come out of the long dead movement of Butoh to be doing something always worth seeing. Amazing that Derek didn’t just step in to “make it happen” or “steal the show”. It was on the mountain stage in Hokushu. I didn’t see or hear Derek doing something that hadn’t seen/heard him do before. Scrape the strings, flurry a bit then hard clamping down into jagged pizzicati. Issue a clear silence of waiting. No volume pedal for those birds in the trees. It was not really great. It was okay. You had to wonder a bit why this document, certainly not the first or last meeting between the two, was ever released. Then Phil changed to a video of Derek working with a tap dancer the name I forget but that he sat in a chair always stays with me. The man switched rhythmic patterns and tempi with extraordinary fluidity and the flecks and cracked arpeggios from Derek mingle with the clattery taps and it went into a strange stochastic ballet to polyrythmic schizophrenia to eventually take on the semblance of a box of glass shards swirling in a can agitated by one of those paint mixer machines. There was a great coming together of sounds. Reflection: the body often works in silent ways that a music made of only sounds cannot make a bridge to. Two great improvisors can fail to meet. The best music is made not only of well-organized sounds. I don’t really care to change your opinion Brian, but maybe Derek could only reply to what he heard in the Ruins in kind and it may be that their way of playing music is a couple generations removed from his own and he could not hear them the right way to participate. Derek was great but he was not all things in the world. Each music we make demands something specific from us. Ruins are a bit heavy handed for my taste (I love melt bannana unabashedly however) but Ruins sure can fill a club with young folks. Why did Derek choose to do the Ruins concert? I would suggest: as a test of what could be done, to see what would happen. The experiment attracted my attention. I think I was in NYC then but I didn’t have enough money to go.

“he was a musician whose ideas--like Cage's--were sometimes more interesting on the page” —Paul B

and this for me shows that he had idea resources that were not executable in his own playing perhaps nor in his own time. Ideas in writing are clearly not “for me” (the writer) but for others to work with. This is true also where, as in performances where we don’t quite “get it” when we first hear it, an artist gives more than what he has been called upon to give. Derek certainly always did this. Except when he didn’t.

enuff

I didn't realise at first that this clip with dancer Tanaka Min is an extract from a video "Mountain Stage" available on Incus catalogue.

FWIW, I like Bailey's recording with Ruins. Way more than Mirakle, anyhow.

(Hmmmmm. Doesn't somebody ALWAYS show up who likes something most people think everybody knows is terrible? It's annoying, really.)

You saw my Mattin review, yes? :-)

Hey, I liked both of them! (but I liked Mirakle a lot more).

"I didn't realise at first that this clip with dancer Tanaka Min is an extract from a video "Mountain Stage" available on Incus catalogue." -jacques o

so the clip is probably from the video i am talking about above. but i wonder what you think is superbe about it? upon reflection of course i realized that for the "toughest guy in the world", a person who has the reputation for (years ago) running a kind of bootcamp for existentialist art (upon whose grounds i have actually trod) to show himself as a silly prancing swooping bowing bending piece of post-human putty is perhaps a nice one trick pony ride out of an encounter with a great musician...but i have seen him, and bailey, more than just this once on video. and i recall min saying they had worked together a few other times. i guess the clip is not the whole performance...i can't download it for some reason...good thing, because then i might have to reconsider my opinion...

You saw my Mattin review, yes? :-)

Yes, but I stopped at the word "lambent" which I was too lazy to look up.

Funny, I debated using the word in a musical context, but I just liked the evocation:

1. gleaming: softly gleaming or glowing

2. playing over surface: flickering or playing as a flame over a surface without burning it

Jeff: "but i wonder what you think is superbe about it?"

suspension of time ... strength and quietness... maturity and simplicity and many others

Could someone possibly post a copy of the NEW YORK TIMES obit, referred to repeatedly here? You can't get to it via the NYT site without registering...

December 30, 2005
Derek Bailey, 75, Guitarist and Master of Improvisation, Dies
By BEN RATLIFF

Derek Bailey, the English guitarist who helped to form a fractured style and a cohesive philosophy for European free improvisation, died at his home in London on Sunday. He was 75.

The cause was complications of a motor neuron disease, said Martin Davidson, a record producer and friend.

Mr. Bailey explained his art unpretentiously, often simply as a matter of personal choice, but his style of playing guitar was a kind of reaction against all systems in music. By the 1970's it had become a system unto itself - a virtuosic, physical one, of clicks and chimes and harmonics and aggressive bursts of volume, arrhythmic and nonlinear but still coherent and powerful.

Despite his roots in jazz and his professional relationships with many jazz musicians - he played with the drummers Tony Williams and Paul Motian, the saxophonist Steve Lacy and the guitarist Pat Metheny - Mr. Bailey was not playing jazz, nor pretending to. He often referred to his work as "nonidiomatic improvising," meaning that it did not refer to any particular idiom or style. Over time it became its own idiom, and he sought to perform with artists from nonimprovising traditions, like the drum-and-bass producer DJ Ninj and the Chinese pipa player Min Xiao-Fen, and even with nonmusicians, like the Butoh dancer Min Tanaka and the tap dancer Will Gaines.

Born in Sheffield, Yorkshire, Mr. Bailey grew up in a working-class family, the son of a barber. An admirer of the jazz guitarists Charlie Christian and Oscar Moore, he started guitar lessons as a boy, inspired partly by an uncle who played guitar and worked in a music shop.

In 1950, after brief service in the British Navy, he began work as a professional musician, playing jazz in pubs and restaurants in Sheffield. He often worked in dance halls, and one of his jobs was in the pit band for Morecambe and Wise, the popular English comedy team. More and more, he said later in interviews, he would begin to practice his own ideas on the bandstand, quietly, so the rest of the band could not hear.

By the mid-1960's, having become successful enough as a commercial musician to buy a house in Manchester, Mr. Bailey had met the bassist Gavin Bryars and the drummer Tony Oxley. Together they formed the Joseph Holbrooke Trio, named after a British composer who had died a few years earlier. They began playing a freer kind of jazz, sometimes basing it on the music of John Coltrane's quartet and Bill Evans's trio but also trying to upend jazz conventions.

Mr. Bailey at the time was heavily influenced by Anton Webern and wrote pieces for solo guitar in Webern's style. He soon abandoned composition and began practicing smaller units of sounds and notes, which he would fold into improvisations.

After about 1967, Mr. Bailey did not compose in the traditional sense; he only improvised from scratch, using all the tiny bits and phrases that he had been working on. He became involved in an improvising group, the Spontaneous Music Ensemble, but after that his music became more concentrated and personal. He performed and recorded continuously, making more than 100 albums, alone, in duets or in the various assemblages of musicians that he finally organized into a regular event, Company, held in various cities from 1976 to 2002.

In 1970 he helped start a record label, Incus, with the saxophonist Evan Parker, one of his frequent musical colleagues until the mid-1980's. Between Incus, which released 30 of his own recordings and still functions, and his regular Company performances, Mr. Bailey kept busy through the 1990's, playing with seemingly every major and minor figure in the world of experimental improvised music.

In 1980 he wrote an influential book, "Improvisation: Its Nature and Practice in Music," exploring improvisation in Indian music, flamenco, jazz, rock and Baroque music. The book was adapted as a television series for England's Channel Four in 1992.

Several years ago Mr. Bailey and his wife, Karen Brookman, began living part time in Barcelona, Spain. They moved after Mr. Bailey started having problems with his hands, a development he made public earlier this year with his final record, "Carpal Tunnel."

He is survived by Ms. Brookman, of London and Barcelona, and a son, Simon Bailey, of San Diego.

Some of Mr. Bailey's most celebrated albums were made in the last decade for Avant and Tzadik, the New York saxophonist John Zorn's labels. One of them was entirely counterintuitive for a musician who became famous for playing no written music: called "Ballads," it consisted entirely of ballads favored by jazz musicians, played in bursts of suggestion, in his craggy, unsentimental, highly personal style.

"suspension of time ... strength and quietness... maturity and simplicity and many others"

i saw this rather in the mountain and not so much in the men...

and i appreciate your sincere reply

jg

on that particular occasion, i mean.
(looks bad to say that outide of the context on the other side of the solemnity of the obit-- which was good to read)--but

it was my feeling
at the time...

r.i.p. derek

Just thought I'd mention that, re: one of the above comments and for any other interested parties, the complete TV series, "Derek Bailey -On The Edge- Improvisation In Music", is up on the Uknova bittorrent tracker as a tribute.

RIP.

Just adding a few more items for reference and tying up some loose subthreads...

There's a piece over on One Final Note about Bailey's passing. Of special note is John Eyles' brief essay because he is from the same neighborhood Bailey lived in for decades.

Pasted here is a short tribute written by Bruce Lee Gallanter for the 12/30/2005 edition of the weekly Downtown Music Gallery newsletter. There are probably few Americans who've seen Bailey play as many times as Bruce and he's been a hardcore supporter of Bailey's music and free improv in general for decades. (His terminology reflects his roots in a wide range of American and European avant-jazz and avant-improv, which for him are all organically connected by his listening experiences. Even in his own record collection he doesn't separate the jazz from the other kinds of improv.) That DVD of the in-store performance is still readily available for sale from Bruce's shop, a really fine performance in which Bailey was still getting to know a hollow-body guitar he'd just acquired and was very excited about.

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DEREK BAILEY 1930-2005

On December 25th, avant/jazz/guitar legend Derek Bailey passed away at the age of 75. He suffered what was at first diagnosed as Carpal Tunnel Syndrome for the past few years and eventually succumbed to motor neuron disease. He was living in Barcelona, Spain for the past few years, but was back in London when he flew from this world.

Derek Bailey was perhaps the most influential and adventurous experimental guitarist to come from England, evolving out of the trad-jazz scene of the fifties into the avant/jazz scene in '60s London. By the late sixties he was a member of the Joseph Holbrooke Trio (w/ Evan Parker & Gavin Bryars), Spontaneous Music Ensemble (w/ John Stevens & Trevor Watts) and Music Improvisation Company [with Parker, Hugh Davies, and Jamie Muir], which later became the amorphous Company under his leadership. These groups were at the birth and center of the British free-jazz scene. Derek Bailey and Evan Parker started their own record label called Incus in the early seventies, one of the first artist-run outfits. Although Derek and Evan had long since parted ways, the Incus label continued with 60+ releases, many of which are now sadly unavailable.

Derek's playing was absolutely unique and idiosyncratic - nobody sounded quite like him. His style was constantly evolving and, when playing electric, he developed a distinctive way of using feedback. Although he played with the best members of the British free/jazz scene, he also forged relationships with a number of European players like Han Bennink & Peter Brotzmann, Japanese free players like Kaoru Abe, Toshinori Kondo and Motoharu Yoshizawa, as well as American improvisers like Anthony Braxton, George Lewis and John Zorn. Derek organized an annual festival called Company Week in the 80's & 90's, which brought together a unique group of international improvisers from varied backgrounds.

What set Derek apart is that he was always 'game' to play with just about any "interesting" player, no matter where they were coming from. Due to his friendship with John Zorn, Derek had performed and recorded with an unlikely cast of characters: The Ruins, Haino Keiji, Jamaaladeen Tacuma & Calvin Weston, Tony Williams & Bill Laswell, et al. Over the past decade, Derek & Zorn organized a few Company festivals at Tonic, again putting together unrelated musicians for their first time. At the last of these festivals a few years back, Derek brought the members of IST (Simon H. Fell, Mark Wastell & Rhodri Davies), as well as the veteran tapdancing legend Will Gaines.

Although Derek enjoyed playing with other avant guitarists (Eugene Chadbourne, Henry Kaiser, Fred Frith, Noel Akchote & even Pat Metheny), he has played more duos with drummers than any other combination. Check out this list: Tony Oxley, Louis Moholo. Han Bennink, John Stevens, Eddie Prevost, Cyro Baptista, Gregg Bendian, Susie Ibarra, Jamie Muir, Ingar Zach, Shoji Hano & Michael Welch. Other amazing duos would include Cecil Taylor, Steve Lacy, Evan Parker and Joelle Leandre.

Almost exactly four years ago, Derek Bailey played a solo acoustic guitar concert at our old store on 5th Street. It was one of the proudest moments for me in the near 15-year history of DMG. It was captured on video and released on DVD by our pal Robert O'Hare and it makes me smile whenever I view it.

Derek told a story at that performance about working in a record/musical instrument store that was pretty hilarious. He had such a dry yet gentle wit. Morever, his playing will always be a constant source of inspiration to adventurous musicians and listeners the world over. He will be sorely missed. - BLG

Derek would have turned 76 this coming January 29th

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[Paul B] I don't post much here (I am not one of the petit clan), but I do read Bagatellen regularly. And when I'm able to wade through on of Mr. Parker's incredibly long musings, I occasionally enjoy bits and pieces. But his comment about written composition being somehow inferior to improvisation (that is the gist of it, at least) once again leads me to question how seriously I can take him.

[Mike] Well, since I was echoing Bailey's own view clearly presented in his book, if you don't take me seriously then at least I'm in good company!

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[7thharm] Brian, you said "Jazz had almost nothing to do with it" but Mr. Bailey's professional jazz stint sounds like it heavily informed his own take on the guitar, a take that still emphasized virtuosic playing ability and the whole looking-at-something-from-a-bunch-of-different-angles propulsion that kept jazz interesting.

[Mike] Both of these qualities are universally present in the idiomatic improvised music of dozens of cultures having no relation to jazz, a point made most eloquently by none other than the man of honor in this discussion. His book cites ragas, flamenco, etc. There is a charming pathos to people missing Bailey's basic messages and imputing a jazz aesthetic to his music even as he is eulogized. I agree with Marley on this "jazz" matter.

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Jeff, I really enjoyed reading your comments here and elsewhere recently, like the post on the other Bailey thead... Thanks! Yours is truly a lively mind with riches to be shared! I do partially disagree with your thoughts about the electronics/laptop thing in the Eubanks thread though... Really wanted to jump in there at some point, but I'll let it pass...

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[Brian Marley] ...the argument that the music is non-idiomatic is years (if not decades) out of date: free improv has become an idiom, as recognisable and (all too often, alas) predictable as any other music.

[Dan] I still take issue with all the "non-idiomatic" stuff in his book - to my way of thinking there's no such thing as non-idiomatic

[Brian Marley] And, as I said earlier, the non-idiomatic business, which was largely correct or at least arguable when Bailey wrote his book, is now incorrect, yet people keep trotting it out year after year like a gospel truth.

[Mike] This is hardly the place to take up such a serious topic, but I'll just register my disagreement with you guys on this point. I quite seriously consider Bailey's concept of non-idiomatic improvisation to be just as valid now and in the future as it was decades ago, while also acknowledging that tremendous subtleties lurking below the terminology. Besides the fact that free improvisation is used by musicians with vastly differing instrumentation and basic structural dispositions, to the point where it cannot be said to be generally recognizable, methodology and idiomaticity are totally separate concepts being conflated here. For a thumbnail sketch of my take of non-idiomaticity, see my review of Jack Wright's Places to Go. As that was the first piece I ever contributed to Bagatellen, I suppose it's only fitting to come full circle with it here on my day of resignation from any association with the site, which I will explain momentarily in the "civility" thread. I hope to take up this theoretical topic of idiomaticity with you guys at another time and place...

http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio3/jazz/index.shtml

A BBC tribute/documentary on Derek Bailey that you can listen to for about another week. Features a Music Improvisation Company recording from the BBC archive etc. Well worth a listen.

musician tributes from the Wire:

http://www.thewire.co.uk/web/unpublished/derek_bailey.html

Well worth a read:
http://www.dispatx.com/issue/05/en/syntactics/01.html

Liam Stefani is my brother-in-law!!!! He still lives in Glasgow. He's still involved in music and is now making his own.

Liam Stefani is my brother-in-law!!!! He still lives in Glasgow. He's still involved in music and is now making his own.