Jon Hassell - Last night the moon came dropping its clothes in the street

Lois Gilbert · February-7th-2009, 09:10 PM

Jon Hassell
Last night the moon came dropping its clothes in the street

Jon Hassell: trumpet, keyboard
Peter Freeman: bass, laptop
Jan Bang: live sampling
Jamie Muhoberac: keyboard, laptop
Rick Cox: guitar, loops
Kheir Eddine M’Kachiche: violin
Eivind Aarset: guitar
Helge Norbakken: drums
Pete Lockett: drums

US Release date: February 3, 2009

ECM CD: B0012573-02

25 years after his last ECM recording, the highly-influential Power Spot (recorded in 1983/84), Jon Hassell returns to the label with a new album - issued to coincide with the trumpeter’s first US tour in two decades.

Last night the moon came dropping its clothes in the street takes its title from a line from a 13th century poem by Jalaluddin Rumi:

“Last night the moon came dropping its clothes in the street.
I took it as a sign to start singing.
Falling up into the bowl of sky.”

The striking, almost surreally-vivid image (in Coleman Barks’ contemporary translation) seems to speak to Hassell’s aural re-imaginings. His own ‘singing’ opens up new angles of vision, as his very vocal trumpet lines are reframed in works that contrast, combine, or melt together aspects of ancient and hypermodern idioms in a musical meta-language which can embrace sounds from all the compass points, sounds of the city, sounds of the natural world. In the past Hassell’s termed his personal genre Fourth World: by any name inspirational, its implications have registered with pop and rap and jazz artists as well as classical chamber musicians and filmmakers… And purely as an instrumentalist, Hassell’s influence has been widely felt, too. Nils Petter Molvaer , Arve Henriksen and Paolo Fresu are but three ECM-associated trumpeters who acknowledge a debt to the liquid tone and weightless, floating quality of Jon Hassell’s trumpet improvisations, and to his pioneering use of electronics in tandem with his horn.

Hassell describes the music of Last night the moon as “a continuous piece, almost symphonic, with a cinematic construction” and drifting “clouds made out of many motifs”. Core material is drawn from a session at Studios La Buisonne near Avignon in April 2008, with detail added in Los Angeles in November and December. Live recordings from Courtrais, Belgium and London, as well as a remix of a piece originally created for a Wim Wenders movie, are also integrated into the atmospheric, filmic flow, along with short samples snared throughout 2008.

Jon Hassell: “The word ‘montage’ pops out of my memory bank...Not only does it describe the little montages that serve as transitions between longer pieces (themselves montages of motifs that keep reappearing in new contexts) but the music presented here is a montage of the last years of concerts and the changing cast of the group I call Maarifa Street – all musicians who have contributed their personalities – the way an actor does to a film – to this living, morphing process that occasionally gets set down as a ‘record’.”

***

Born in Memphis, Tennessee, Jon Hassell grew up with ears alert to divergent aspects of the jazz tradition, one early influence including Maynard Ferguson’s “stratospheric” trumpeting with the Stan Kenton Orchestra. While studying at the Eastman School of Music, Hassell became increasingly interested in serial music and more experimental expressions of the new music avant-garde, in the mid-60s travelling to Cologne to study with Karlheinz Stockhausen. Returning to New York in 1967 he met and befriended Terry Riley. Hassell played on Riley’s landmark recording In C, and was introduced by Riley to La Monte Young with whose Dream House project he toured through the 1970s. An encounter with the music of Indian singer Pandit Pran Nath proved pivotal. Hassell studied extensively with Pran Nath, subsequently incorporating vocal inflections of raga into his trumpet playing, developing a new style for his instrument and his music as a whole. Vernal Equinox (1977) laid down the matrix of the idiosyncratic yet wide-open idiom Hassell has continued to develop and redefine over the last three decades: “My aim was to make a music that was vertically integrated in such a way that at any cross-sectional moment you were not able to pick a single element out as being from a particular country or genre of music.”

In 1986 Brian Eno, a frequent collaborator, would observe that “Jon Hassell is an inventor of new forms of music – of new ideas of what music could be and how it might be made. His work is drawn from his whole cultural experience without fear or prejudice. It is an optimistic, global vision that suggests not only possible musics but possible futures.” An enticing proposal for the most diverse musicians, Hassell’s collaborators over the years have ranged from Peter Gabriel to the Kronos Quartet, Ry Cooder and Bono, and his trumpet performances have featured on recordings with Björk, Baaba Maal, Ibrahim Ferrer, Ani di Franco, David Sylvian, the Talking Heads and many others.

Additionally his playing and/or music has been heard in numerous films including The Last Temptation of Christ, Trespass, Wild Side, Greenwich Mean Time, Angel Eyes, Owning Mahowny, Million Dollar Hotel and more.

Jon Hassell’s albums as a leader are:
Vernal Equinox (1977)
Earthquake Island (1978)
Fourth World Vol 1: Possible Musics (1980)
Fourth World Vol. 2 : Dream Theory In Malaya (1981)
Aka-Darbari-Java / Magic Realism (1983)
Power Spot (1986)
The Surgeon Of The Nightsky Restores Dead Things By The Power Of Sound (1987)
Flash Of The Spirit (1988)
City: Works Of Fiction (1990), Dressing For Pleasure (1994)
Sulla Strada (1995)
The Vertical Collection (1997)
Fascinoma (1999), Maarifa Street / Magic Realism 2 (2005)
Last Night The Moon Came Dropping Its Clothes In The Street (2009).

Since 2005 he has led the collective Maarifa Street, with whom he will perform on his February 2009 tour. Dates are:

Thursday February 5 Columbus, OH Wexner Center
Friday February 6 Knoxville, TN Bijou Theater
Sunday February 8 Philadelphia, PA Word Café Live
Tuesday February 10 New York, NY Zankel Hall at Carnegie Hall
Thursday February 12 Minneapolis, MN Walker Art Center
Friday February 13 Los Angeles, LA Royce Hall
Saturday February 14 Vancouver, BC Chan Center

In April 2009, Jon Hassell and Brian Eno deliver their Conversation Piece at London’s Queen Elizabeth Hall. This “conversational remix”, an animated juxtaposing of philosophies of life, art and music, was premiered to acclaim at Norway’s Punkt Festival in 2008.

Lois Gilbert · February-7th-2009, 09:47 PM

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00...SIN=B001O2MBBE

Nitya · February-8th-2009, 11:35 AM

Last night the moon came dropping it's clothes in the street
I took it as a sign to start singing
Falling up into the bowl of sky

-Jalaluddin Rumi (13th century)

Nitya · February-8th-2009, 11:43 AM

Jon Hassell
Last night the moon came dropping its clothes in the street
ECM Records 2009

By Henry Smith

Coinciding with his first tour of the States in over twenty years, trumpet player and self-described Fourth World musician Jon Hassell returns to ECM for his first release on the label since Power Spot (1985). With Last night the moon came dropping its clothes in the street, a title taken from a 13th century poem, Hassell continues his distinctive musical pursuits in the form of "a continuous piece, almost symphonic, with a cinematic construction."

This approach is perfect for Hassell, whose slowly developing sound worlds are best when given time to fully expand. The cinematic stance spoken of is a further display of Hassell's working methods; even before his collaborations with Brian Eno on Fourth World Vol. 1: Possible Musics (EG, 1980) and Fourth World Vol. 2: Dream Theory in Malaya (EG, 1981), Hassell had been combining musical elements from around the globe in a montage-like structure. Further, in Hassell's words, "the music presented here is a montage of the last years of concerts and the changing cast of the group I call Maarifa Street...who have contributed their personalities the way an actor does to a film."

Read the entire review at: http://www.allaboutjazz.com/php/article.php?id=31700

Nitya · February-8th-2009, 11:46 AM

Jon Hassell
Last night the moon came dropping its clothes in the street
ECM Records 2009

John Kelman

While he's rarely been out of action, the past couple years have seen a significant increase in the public exposure of trumpeter Jon Hassell, especially in Europe. Hassell may not be as well-known, say, as Miles Davis, but amongst a broadening group of musicians and listeners, it's become clear that his influence may well be no less pervasive—just, perhaps, more understated and subversive. While Hassell has continued to release albums periodically over the past decade—notably the sublime, uncharacteristically acoustic Fascinoma (Waterlily Acoustics, 1999) and sultry Maarifa Street: Magic Realism, Vol. 2 (Nyen, 2005)—Last night the moon came dropping its clothes in the street is the trumpeter's first album for ECM since 1985's Power Spot and, with the label's greater international reach and a major North American tour on the horizon, it may well be the album that introduces the innovative artist to a larger listening public and clarifies just how significant he has been and continues to be.

It's no hyperbole to suggest that without Jon Hassell there'd be no annual Punkt Festival, nor would artists like Arve Henriksen, Nils Petter Molvaer and David Sylvian (amongst others) be quite the same. Hassell's innovations in the areas of live sampling, real-time soundscaping and a musical confluence that he refers to as "The North and South of You"—meaning the cerebral/intellectual versus the physical/sensual—have inspired so many artists since his early collaborations with legendary producer/ambient music forefather Brian Eno that, while his name may not be as well-known as it should, it's an undeniable truth that the entire musical world would be a very different place without him.

Read the entire review at: http://www.allaboutjazz.com/php/article.php?id=31702

Dennis Gonzalez · February-8th-2009, 06:01 PM

I'm really pissed because ECM is sending out all kinds of hype on this magnificent CD, and it's not gonna be released until Tuesday, even though the releases said at first it'd be out last Tuesday! I can't fuckin' wait that long!

Nitya · February-8th-2009, 06:28 PM

Quote:

I'm really pissed because ECM is sending out all kinds of hype on this magnificent CD, and it's not gonna be released until Tuesday, even though the releases said at first it'd be out last Tuesday! I can't fuckin' wait that long!

Nah nah-nah I got my copy January 3 ;-).............

It is verrrry different from anything you have heard from JH before.

I am also heading to Vancouver Saturday. Ken Pickering is promoting JH at Chan Centre U of BC. Hoping to hang around with Jon and Peter Freeman (bass & loops) and Jan Bang (best button pusher in the world).

Touring Band:

Jon Hassell: trumpet, keyboard
Peter Freeman: bass, loops, MacBook
Jan Bang: live sampling, electronics (best button pusher in the world)
Kheir Eddine M'Kacich: violin
Dino J. A. Deane: electronics

lpgeffen · February-8th-2009, 07:40 PM

Amazon just wrote to say that they had put a copy in the mail. It might get here by Tuesday.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Dennis Gonzalez

I'm really pissed because ECM is sending out all kinds of hype on this magnificent CD, and it's not gonna be released until Tuesday, even though the releases said at first it'd be out last Tuesday! I can't fuckin' wait that long!

djbinder · February-8th-2009, 08:06 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Dennis Gonzalez

I'm really pissed because ECM is sending out all kinds of hype on this magnificent CD, and it's not gonna be released until Tuesday, even though the releases said at first it'd be out last Tuesday! I can't fuckin' wait that long!

It was made available in digital format on February 3, with the intention to follow-up with hard cd format on February 10.
Best,
Dave

Korowa · February-9th-2009, 11:53 PM

Any word when this title will be released in Europe?

lazarus · February-10th-2009, 02:40 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Korowa

Any word when this title will be released in Europe?

The releasedate in Sweden is March 16.

Lois Gilbert · February-13th-2009, 03:14 AM

http://www.latimes.com/entertainment...,6574440.story

From the Los Angeles Times
Trumpeter Jon Hassell strikes cosmic-sexy balance
The musician and his band Maarifa Street, who'll be at UCLA's Royce Hall tonight, stretch the boundaries of jazz music with their hybrid sound.
By John Payne

February 13, 2009

Trumpet player-composer Jon Hassell is an artist with endless enthusiasm for the ways music and art can connect -- he's best known for drifting ambient jazz that marries rhythmic and tonal sources from the ancient world with space-age digital technology.

But Hassell's relentless pursuit of a new kind of music means he's had to deal with quizzical looks when it comes to that old bugaboo of how to categorize his sound.

"People start talking about, well, is it jazz or not jazz or this and that," Hassell, 71, said with a smile recently at his home in West Los Angeles.

"I say, look, I'm a painter: I'm in a big loft, I have all the things around me that I've collected tacked up on the walls, in bottom drawers, etc., and these all fall into the category of things that I really like."

Tonight, Hassell and his band Maarifa Street will bring his indefinable sound to UCLA's Royce Hall, part of his first U.S. tour in 20 years, supporting his recently released ECM collection, "Last night the moon came dropping its clothes in the street."

Its unusual title, from a work by 13th century poet Jalaluddin Rumi, refers in part to the prolonged process of the music's conception and assembly, which took place in studios in the south of France and in Los Angeles.

"The moon is dropping its clothes in the street," he said, "I thought, well, here's one line that's completely cosmic and completely sexy at the same time."

That cosmic-sexy balance -- and his expressed desire "to make something which is extravagantly beautiful" -- has obsessed Hassell in one way or another since his student days. The Memphis-born musician grew up daydreaming about the music of Les Baxter and Eden Ahbez and went on to earn a degree in theory and composition at the renowned Eastman School and to study electronic and serial music with German electronic pioneer Karlheinz Stockhausen in the late '60s.

Through his initial recordings with minimalist visionaries La Monte Young and Terry Riley, he met Hindustani raga master Pandit Pran Nath, whose teaching encouraged Hassell to invent a new way of playing his trumpet, one that would hybridize traditional jazz/classical technique with Pran Nath's tone-bending Kirana vocal style.

Hassell's goal, he said, is "making the world safe for pleasure." He explained how his influences have affected his pursuit of that goal in compass points.

"Stockhausen was North, in a sense the end of the kind of ultra-complexity, of a certain kind of intelligence -- even though he himself toward the end was doing pieces that sound quite Eastern. Pran Nath was South; he opened the window to looking at everything, hearing certain things. The world of Pran Nath was like an expansive ocean of possibilities."

For Hassell, the pursuit of ever-evolving music is important. Onstage, the music might have a comforting sensual flow, yet it can erupt and morph into scenes of utter unpredictability -- not unlike late-period Miles Davis and not unlike the cinema.

"More and more I try to utilize those, to learn from those moments," he said, "and try to introduce it into the live concert. I'm saying, 'Go for it, let that thing happen.' "

For this seven-date tour, Hassell has gathered a sympathetic troupe to spontaneously reinvent his mystically moody compositions. Longtime collaborator Peter Freeman joins on bass and laptop computer, Jan Bang and Dino J.A. Deane perform live sampling and electronics and Algerian violinist Khei-Eddine M'Kachiche adds to the perfumed air.

As for Hassell's own motivations, "It's always about making an ecstasy pill for me," he said. "Perhaps in a kind of reverse way, when things are bad you may want it more; you may think a place of ecstasy is even more valuable, more desirable and more therapeutic."

bigtiny · February-13th-2009, 09:34 AM

I got mine yesterday. I've listened once and thought it superb. One of my favorite artists....

bigtiny

Nitya · February-14th-2009, 01:27 AM

25 years after his highly influential “Power Spot” album, Jon Hassell returns to ECM with his collective Maarifa Street and some spacious Fourth World dub-montage music, his uniquely vocal trumpet sailing forth into mysterious soundscapes. Jon Hassell describes “Last night the moon” as “a continuous piece, almost symphonic, with a cinematic construction” and drifting “clouds made out of many motifs”. Core material is drawn from a session at Studios La Buissonne near Avignon in April 2008, with detail added in Los Angeles in November and December. Live recordings from Courtrais, Belgium and London, as well as a remix of a piece originally created for a Wim Wenders movie, are also integrated into the atmospheric, filmic flow, along with short samples snared throughout 2008.

BrianL1 · February-16th-2009, 11:26 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Nitya

25 years after his highly influential “Power Spot” album, Jon Hassell returns to ECM with his collective Maarifa Street and some spacious Fourth World dub-montage music.

Is the sound of this one similar to the last Maarifa Street recording?

Nitya · February-17th-2009, 01:11 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by BrianL1

Is the sound of this one similar to the last Maarifa Street recording?

Trumpet is similar but music is more laid back and is built in layers. It sounds like it should be one long track of changing moods. Mesmerizing is the only word I can think of that describes it. The music is relaxing. Very still but amazingly beautiful with Jon's trumpet playing around with the music the way Miles did on In a Silent Way. Also the sound of the recording is extraordinary.

Korowa · February-19th-2009, 06:23 AM

I wish I could catch one of his live performances..
.

me wag · February-19th-2009, 10:42 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Nitya

The music is relaxing. Very still but amazingly beautiful with Jon's trumpet playing around with the music the way Miles did on In a Silent Way. Also the sound of the recording is extraordinary.

When the electric bass first comes in it is downright startling. It's not so much that it's loud but it is so stark that has an effect like bombs going off in the midst of the calm. I agree with the Miles comparison but I would say the whole early Miles fusion era is a reference point as well although obviously with more of an ambient bent.

Chris D · February-27th-2009, 04:01 PM

I see this is out on LP. I'll be gettin' me some new ECM vinyl!

lazarus · February-28th-2009, 02:02 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Chris D

I see this is out on LP. I'll be gettin' me some new ECM vinyl!

Where did you see that?
I can´t find it on vinyl anywhere. I have this on cd but since I´m both a vinylnut and a big fan of Hassell I will buy this on vinyl also if I only could find it.

Chris D · March-2nd-2009, 10:00 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by lazarus

Where did you see that?
I can´t find it on vinyl anywhere. I have this on cd but since I´m both a vinylnut and a big fan of Hassell I will buy this on vinyl also if I only could find it.

It was listed in the Jazz Loft's vinyl section, so I was looking forward to getting it at my local shop. But then your question came up, laz, and I went back to the catalog entry. Sure enough, it's a CD entry that somehow got into the vinyl catalog list.

So it might not be pressed after all. Steve Lake, any news? Can we beg for Hassell vinyl?

john williams · March-5th-2009, 05:54 PM

Played it for the first time last night. This is a stunning record.

Nitya · March-6th-2009, 01:26 AM

Jon Hassell, "Last Night the Moon Came Dropping Its Clothes In the Street" (ECM). If Jon Hassell did indeed set out several decades back to create an idiosyncratic strain of music that would fit neatly into no single category, he has by now succeeded. In a career that found him studying in both Buffalo and Rochester, traveling to India to fully digest the glorious micro-tonal intricacies of that country's music, earning both respect and scorn in the jazz community, and becoming a first-call for the more esoteric and discerning class of rock musicians, (David Sylvian, Peter Gabriel, Brian Eno), Hassell has played by no one's rules but his own. If that meant delving into ambient sounds, or treating his trumpet to a lavish buffet of effects devices, or attempting to phrase his solos like an Indian Kiranic singer, well, then so be it. With "Last Night the Moon Came dropping Its Clothes In the Street," Hassell and his band, Maarifa Street, delve into a protean, constantly morphing melange of sound. Far from formless and nowhere near "new age," the group weaves a dreamy tapestry of sound assimilating African, Indian and American forms, all presented with a serial composer's conception of time and space. Hassell in fact studied with Karlheinz Stockhausen and the late Stockhausen's tendency to create scenarios of "controlled randomness" in his pieces hangs above Hassell and company's efforts here. This is beautiful, evocative, often transcendent music, but most importantly, it's also substantive; though he's been accused of merely doodling in the dippy ooze of new age music, Hassell is in fact a radical who can be seen to have carried on the work started by Miles Davis with the albums "In a Silent Way" and "On the Corner," with much more of an emphasis on the European influences than the African- American ones. You get as much out of "Last Night the Moon Came" as you put into the listening experience. It is, as the saying goes, a real trip.

Review written by Jeff Meirs, Buffalo News, March 1, 2009

Korowa · March-31st-2009, 03:12 AM

I wonder if the track "Blue Period" is a recognition of the Miles Davis 1950s 10" album;
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_Period_(album)

bigtiny · March-31st-2009, 10:39 AM

It might be. Hassell has often cited Miles as a major influence, usually talking more about the electric period, bu this kind of reference is not out of the question....

bigtiny

Korowa · March-31st-2009, 11:18 PM

I just booked tickets for the live performance at the Sydney Opera House :-)

http://www.sydneyoperahouse.com/whatson/jonhassell.aspx

‘One of the God-like geniuses of contemporary music…as important as Miles Davis or Jimi Hendrix or James Brown or the Velvet Underground.’ -The Wire

Composer/trumpeter/visionary. Jon Hassell is the creator of a style of music he calls ‘Fourth World’ – a mysterious, unique hybrid, both ancient and digital, composed and improvised, Eastern and Western. His ‘vocal’ trumpet performances appear on records by Björk and Talking Heads, and his collaborators include Peter Gabriel, Ry Cooder and Bono. This concert must be seen. ‘It was a dreamy, strange, meditative music that was inflected by Indian, African and South American music, but also seemed located in the lineage of tonal minimalism. It was a music I felt I'd been waiting for.’ Brian Eno

Korowa · March-31st-2009, 11:23 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by bigtiny

It might be. Hassell has often cited Miles as a major influence, usually talking more about the electric period, bu this kind of reference is not out of the question....

Yes, Northline reminds me of a Miles track from that period

Nitya · April-1st-2009, 12:45 AM

Blue Period is a remix of Amsterdam Blue which was a part of the soundtrack of the Wim Wenders film Million Dollar Hotel. Bono also did music for the film. Both Bono and Jon have walk ons in the film. Amsterdam Blue was dedicated to Chet Baker who fell from a hotel window and died in Amsterdam.

john williams · April-1st-2009, 07:44 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Korowa

I just booked tickets for the live performance at the Sydney Opera House :-)

I just bought tickets for this show too. Can't wait.

BrianL1 · May-5th-2009, 07:21 PM

Nice interview/article on Hassell here: http://www.allaboutjazz.com/php/article.php?id=32743