Charles Mingus - The Black Saint And The Sinner Lady and Ah Um. As well as Dave Brubeck - Time Out
Black Saint in particularly a masterpiece and automatically jumped in my top 100 and gets a 14/15. All the pieces seems to have a sense of dramatic arc with clear shifts in intensity throughout the piece and having multiple clearly delineated sections within the piece that sounds fundamentally different. Ssuch as the relaxed beginning of Duete solo Dancers that build ups to climatic wild carnival music. Group Dancers with the extended piano section and then descending flute comes in and then mid section cacophony of horns. This is dramatic music that almost prog like multiple sections suite and a clear sense of narrative momentum that I don't hear listening to Miles Davis.
While I like Ah Um and Time Out little less then Black Saint as it's less emotionally gripping.
What I like is that there is a sense of departure and return in a lot of the pieces.
A lot of the pieces seem to be structured in ABA. A having thematic material that is usually quite memorable and melodic (such as the blue Rondo ala turk ) B improvisational section and then returning back to the theme. in blue rondo ala turk the theme even has two different keys one in major and minor and so there is modulation there and there is a transition between the two section where he does rapid crosscutting between the blue rondo theme in the additive rhytmic irregular time signature and the steady 4/4 jazz improvisation when he is transition from A to B and from B to A that I found impressive.
So the improvisational section even if it is harmonically static is a lot more enjoyable as a point of contrast rather than being the whole point for the entire piece.
I'm not too sure whether this is the beginning of me liking Jazz. I relisten to Kind Of Blue/Bitches Brew/In A Silent Way/A Love Supreme and I hated all of them.
I'll probably will listen to some of the recommendations below when I have time
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