GoogObits ("Obituaries and essays augmented by Google seaches. There is a lot to learn from the dead.") pays tribute in its most recent entry to Mal Waldron, the pianist, composer and arranger who passed away a week ago in Brussels.
An excerpt:
Mr. Waldron's long career as a pianist and arranger included leading his own bands around the world. For much of the last four decades he played and lived mostly in Europe, but his recordings with companions like Eric Dolphy, John Coltrane and Steve Lacy kept his ideas in the ears of American fans, especially other musicians.
Listening to Mr. Waldron was a fascinatingly dry, dark pleasure. He belonged to no particular school or style, and his curt piano style reflected that outsider status. He repeated short motifs endlessly, as if meaning to grind them into the keyboard; a stylistic descendant of Thelonious Monk, he pared down Monk's already quite cropped melodic lines to percussive nubs. He focused his attention toward the lower half of the keyboard, and completely avoided sentimentality.
Toward the end of his life he had a soft, muffled keyboard sound, almost as if he were playing parlor music — but a kind of parlor music infused with bebop harmony and rhythm.
GoogObits continues to be a great read.
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From the Someone-Has-Too-Much-Time-On-Their-Hands Department:
