Zorn at The Barbican
I went to The Barbican yesterday to see John Zorn, Milford Graves, Tony Oxley, Gavin Bryars, Bill Laswell, George Lewis and Mike Patton play a tribute to Derek Bailey. They played in various permutations, but nothing they did could stop me feeling that Zorn is over-rated. Tony Oxley was outstanding, of course, and Milford Graves is a great drummer too (and I was seeing him for the first time) but, that apart, I thought what was played was generic free jazz (far from being the contradiction in terms it ought to be), with little to distinguish it from lots of other free playing you can see without first being fleeced for £25.

I should add that it was something of a treat to see George Lewis play. I've seen film of him before which didn't have a great impact, but tonight there was a sort of poetic integrity to his contributions, as well as a light touch (quite welcome after Laswell's ham fisted efforts). By coincidence, on the day of the concert I happened to be reading his essay on 'Improvised Music After 1950: Afrological and Eurological Perspectives', which struck me at first as just Black Nationalist special pleading but, the more I read it, the more convinced I was about the *extent* to which European art music embodies a reaction to innovations in Jazz (which Lewis claims works as the 'epistemological other' of European art music). I mean, I know there's a debt, but he really emphasises how crucial Jazz was to these changes, as well as showing how, eg., Cage tried to supress the debt.