Columbia Professor of Music John Szwed discusses improvisational techniques and references to jazz in Kerouac's writings. He notes that Kerouac, who first experienced Harlem as a student at Columbia, thus believed that "Harlem is part of my alienation."
Legendary Columbia Records producer George Avakian discusses his relationship with Beat Generation author Jack Kerouac. Avakian's brother, film director Aram Avakian, was a character in a Kerouac novel. In this video excerpt, George Avakian begins by discussing his brother's friendship with Kerouac stemming from their days as classmates at the Horace Mann School in Upper Manhattan during the late 1930s. He goes on to describe the relationship he developed soon after with Kerouac, who reviewed of some of Avakian's first recording production efforts.
Composer, french horn player, writer and raconteur David Amram talks about his association with Beat Generation artists Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, Peter Orlovsky, Larry Rivers, and Gregory Corso. Amram moves then to a discussion of the multiple connections of jazz and improvisation with modern culture. In this clip, Amram is introduced by Sara Villa, who talks briefly about Amram's role as a character and score composer in the movie "Pull My Daisy."
© 2009 David Amram. Used with permission. All rights reserved.
As jazz continues to migrate across national, ethnic, and cultural borders, jazz festivals function as physical and symbolic spaces where the dynamics between the vernacular and the cosmopolitan are put into play. In this talk, Dr. Anne C. Dvinge of the University of Copenhagen takes a closer look at jazz festivals, and specifically the Copenhagen Jazz Festival, as manifestations of this double sense of the cosmopolitan and the vernacular, where jazz enters into dialogue with local music cultures.
This excerpt concludes the discussion of the CMS archives. Click here for Part I.
This panel discusses the CMS archives and the preservation efforts now underway that will make its recordings, texts, scores, courses and other materials available to the public.
The continuation of the panel on the Creative Music Studio's embrace of non-Western, non-European instruments. Click here for Part I.
This panel explores the Creative Music Studio's embrace of non-Western, non-European instruments and practices with alumni who are important vectors of this pan-cultural synthesis. In the same spirit, it questions and deconstructs the idea of "world music," citing Ravi Shankar's aphoristic comment that "everybody lives in the world."
Moderator Adam Rudolph is a composer, improviser and percussionist whose Organic Orchestra realizes a music notation and conducting system he developed.
This is the second part of a panel moderated by Karl Berger discussing the philosophy of music education at CMS. Participants are Marilyn Crispell, James Emery, Oliver Lake, and Ingrid Sertso. Click here for Part I.
This panel discusses the philosophy of music education at CMS. As moderator Karl Berger puts it, the program gives students "ways to deepen the experience of playing and listening to music, focusing on attention, expression, and communication." The panelists are composer Marilyn Crispell, guitarist and composer James Emery, saxophonist and composer Oliver Lake, and vocalist and CMS founder Ingrid Sertso. Click here for Part II.
