Textwell oil change12/19/2023 Like scholars engaged in rigorous exegesis over a Torah portion, he and his cadre will dissect the tune so that each of its 48 measures guides a 10-minute improvised passage. In line with Schott’s nature not to rush things, the Shavuot performance embraces the Jewish tradition of burning the midnight oil to study sacred texts. Any chart of it ends up in some way reflecting its editor.” New sources that have become available and new videos where you can see him playing it change the story. “It’s famously contentious as to what the actual text is and who composed what. “There are a lot of difficult choices notating something like this,” Schott said over coffee at a West Berkeley café as he offered a rabbinic-like commentary on the composition’s tangled history. An eight-hour multimedia event performed live in San Francisco at Light Rail Studios and streamed online, the concert is the centerpiece of Dawn, a reimagining of the holiday Shavuot launched in 2008 by the Jewish arts and culture nonprofit Reboot. But coming off the stage, Davis groused to Newport impresario George Wein that “Monk plays the wrong changes” to his own tune.īerkeley guitarist John Schott is well aware of “’Round Midnight’s” indeterminate status, which is one reason why he’s convened an extravagantly talented minyan of improvisers to explore the composition at an all-night Shavuot musical meditation starting June 4 and ending at sunrise June 5. While pianist Thelonious Monk’s sublime ballad “’Round Midnight” has been recorded many hundreds of times, including more than a dozen by the composer himself, the exact contours of its form and harmonic structure have been debated, parsed, interrogated and contemplated since the birth of modern jazz.įirst recorded in 1944 by Ellingtonian trumpeter Cootie Williams, the composition is indelibly linked with Miles Davis, whose breathtaking rendition at the 1955 Newport Jazz Festival with an all-star combo including Monk revitalized the trumpeter’s career and led to a contract with Columbia Records. Talmudic scholars have nothing on jazz musicians when it comes to disputing the fine points of a canonical text - well, tune.
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