Django Bates` Belovèd : Confirmation Released 17th

Django Bates’ Belovèd : Confirmation
Released 17th September 2012
Django Bates’ Belovèd
Album: Confirmation
Label: Lost Marble LM007
Release date 17h September 2012
Distributed by Proper Note
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Track Listing
1. Confirmation (6:07)
2. We Are Not Lost, We Are Simply Finding Our Way (6:48)
3. Sadness All the Way Down (3:42)
4. Donna Lee (6:54)
5. Senza Bitterness (3:00)
6. Giorgiantics (8:48)
7. Now’s the Time (4:37)
8. Dimple (4.33)
9. Peonies As Promised (7:49)
10. A House Is Not A Home (3.09)
Total playing time
56:58
Django Bates has told the story of setting out, as a schoolboy, to find other Bird
lovers in South London by whistling Charlie Parker lines in public spaces and how,
one day, another rare bird (Steve Buckley) responded by whistling another line back.
This has poetic correspondence with the way birds find their mates or mark their
territory. By finding a musical partner and indicating the area of musical interest, he
chased two birds with one tone. Can I find a way to work Dodo Marmarosa into this
story? mmm...if "marmorosa " means pink marble in Italian this makes me think of
Django's house name, "Lost Marble Dept". Clearly a Dodo in the hand is worth two
lost marbles but maybe I'm losing mine!
"Bird Lives" was the prophetic graffito seen on a NY wall soon after Parker's death
and it continues to testify to the remarkable time-capsule from the future that was
bebop.
Already with "Beloved Bird" (LM004)), Django made it clear that his approach
would be to deconstruct and reconstruct the Parker lines. Both the melodies and the
harmonies are reconsidered, fragmented and thoroughly "Djangoised" in that joyful,
insouciant and insanely clever way that characterises all his work. It is hard at this
point to decide which decisions are made in advance and rehearsed, and which are
arrived at in performance. By this time in the life of the trio it may well be that an
intuitive understanding of the "methodology" by which this fragmentation and
realignment is arrived at, on the part of Peter and Petter, means that we are hearing a
mixture of both ways of working.
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Django Bates’ Belovèd : Confirmation
Released 17th September 2012
The Django originals stand in their own right but also serve to re-contextualise the
Parker lines, using the same rhythmic and harmonic signature that is brought to bear
in the re-working of "Confirmation" et al.
Notwithstanding the extraordinary arrival of the Tristano school while Parker was
still alive, (which can in itself be understood as a homage to Charlie Parker), the
inspiration of CP's genius has been continuously marked since his death: Ornette's
"The Legend of Bebop"; the New York Art Quartet's take on "Mohawk", with its
stanza by stanza broken time statement of the theme; it is clear that Dolphy was a CP
continuator, listen to "Far Cry"; George Lewis' marvellous "Homage to Charlie
Parker" - these are just a few instances that spring to mind.
Stepping back and putting this dialectic in a longer historical context, it seems as
though there have to be regular repeats of the debate over whether jazz is a closed
language, ready for its "classical" phase, or an "open sky" that cries out for periodic
renewal. There are either/or characters who take sides and others who want it all.
Django loves it all.
After all that, what to make of the almost de-coupled, almost secret track, the
Bacharach/David classic, "A House is Not a Home", sung with a surprising degree of
reverence by the usually irreverent Ashley Slater? Is this like that announcement at
the end of side 2 of Gato's "Chapter One" where he announces "Chapter Two"? and
then what to make of the ghostly kaleidoscopic revisiting of Bird song in the coda? If
it presages a "Bacharach reconstructed" project then look forward to more
Djangology.
Meanwhile dig "Confirmation". As T.S.Eliot has it, "Art never improves, but... the
material of art is never quite the same."
Evan Parker 2012
Personnel
Django Bates Piano, Celeste, backing vocals
Petter Eldh double bass, backing vocals
Peter Bruun drums, backing vocals
Special guest Ashley Slater vocal on the final track A House is Not a Home
Track Listing Composers
1. Confirmation. (Charlie Parker. Bluewater Music).
2. We Are Not Lost, We Are Simply Finding Our Way. (Django Bates. PRS/MCPS).
3. Sadness All the Way Down. (Django Bates. PRS/MCPS).
4. Donna Lee. (Charlie Parker. Screen Gems-EMI Music, Inc.)
5. Senza Bitterness. (Django Bates. PRS/MCPS).
6. Giorgiantics. (Django Bates. PRS/MCPS).
7. Now’s the Time. (Charlie Parker. Screen Gems-EMI Music, Inc.)
8. Dimple. (Django Bates. PRS/MCPS).
9. Peonies As Promised. (Django Bates. PRS/MCPS).
10. A House Is Not A Home. (Lyrics: Hal David, Music: Burt Bacharach. Sony/ATV Harmony UK).
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Django Bates’ Belovèd : Confirmation
Released 17th September 2012
Autumn Tour Dates
22nd September 2012
7th October 2012
22ndNovember 2012
23rd November 2012
24th November 2012
25th November 2012
26th November 2012
27th November 2012
29th November 2012
30th November 2012
1st December 2012
AMR Geneva Switzerland
Brugge Jazz Festival Belgium
Rolf Liebermann Studio Hamburg Germany
Rolf Liebermann Studio Hamburg Germany( 2nd Show)
Stratford Circus London
Coersfeld Germany
Hannover Germany
Berlin Germany
Sheffield Crucible Studio Theatre promoted by Sheffield Jazz
Wakefield Jazz Club
The Venue Leeds College of Music.
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