Klarinet Archive - Posting 000059.txt from 2007/03

From: "Kevin Fay" <kevin.fay.home@-----.net>
Subj: RE: [kl] Hearing is believing, or is it?
Date: Sun, 04 Mar 2007 22:39:58 -0500

Kurt Heisig listed a pile of identifiable jazzers, and some classic-ers:

<<<Gee---Plas, Lennie, Grover, Stitt (on alto), Phil Woods, Desmond,
Marshall Royal, Johnny Hodges, Bud Shank, Mike White!, Wes Montgomery,
Johnny Smith, Louis, Maynard, Claude Gordon, Hugh Masakela, Harry James,
Benny Goodman, Pete Fountain, Woody Herman, Artie Shaw, Gerry Mulligan, Art
Carney, Mark Levine, Charlie Byrd, Charlie Parker, Coltrane, Bechet, George
Shearing, Les McCann, Ramsey Lewis, Vince Guaraldi, JAY MCSHANN, Cal Tjader,
Lionel Hampton, Charlie Ventura, Coleman Hawkins, Pete Christlieb, Don
Menza, Ray Pizzi, Al Anthony, Ray Anthony, Al Hirt, Getz, Charlie Shavers,
Raul De Souza, George Roberts, and a hundred more...

Classically---James Galway, Rampal, Maurice Andre, Ghitalla, Sabina Meyer,
Harvey Pittel, Sigurd Rascher, Marcel Mule, Pekka Savijoki, Daniel
Deffayet.>>>

To which Dan Leeson replied:

<<<So you say. But how would you do in a blind test? What is talking in
this note is ego, not proof.>>>

As I alluded to in another post, my mates and I used to do this very thing,
for hours on end, using a collective stack of albums several feet in depth
(plus what we could score from the college's music library). Much of the
time foamy carbo-loaded beverages were involved, true - but we kept careful
score, as the losers would have to purchase penalty beers for the winners.

With the list of jazz musicians listed here, I would bet you a very large
pizza (plus a pitcher of penalty beer) that Kurt would correctly identify at
least 85-90% correctly.

I think that the % for the classical musicians would have a lower percentage
- it would for me - since the range of "acceptable" tone quality is much
narrower, and one can more easily recognize individual performance style
when much of the performance is improvised. But I'd bet an equally large
pizza, with extra pepperoni, that I'd pick out Rascher and Mule correctly
100% of the time.

Down Beat magazine has had a column titled "Blindfold Test" immediately
before the back cover as far back as I can remember. Many of the musicians
polled are astonishingly ignorant of others' playing. Others pick every
player, every tune, every time.

kjf

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