A Frolic of My Own

Jazz, Books, Food, and the Writing Life

Blogging from New Orleans, La

14 December 2005

Last night we hit the rink at the Galleria. I managed to skate for 45 minutes without falling on my ass. I credit yoga for my newly acquired sense of balance.

Ice skating at Christmas time is a quaint tradition. It’s less old fashioned when the rink is surrounded by outlets for Versace and Luis Vuitton.

I was at first worried about the music piped into the rink. The first song was an overwrought Christian power ballad celebrating the season. Something about “Mary” and “Calvary” and “losing her son.” If this is what we’re fighting in the war on Christmas, then I sure hope we win. Luckily, they soon cued up music more about reindeers than redemption.

Posted by Todd at 8:03 am | Comments (2)

13 December 2005

Judge Stanwood R. Duval Jr. of the Eastern District of Louisiana ruled that FEMA must provide evacuees with hotel rooms through February 7. He also called the agency “numbingly insensitive” and “unduly callous.” Those, my friends, are the words of man who has dealt with FEMA firsthand.

We’re still waiting to see some assistance from FEMA. I spend another hour talking to the agency today, but I still don’t ever expect to receive a penny.

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5 December 2005

The songs on Triptych Myth’s The Beautiful play out like a series of cinematic scenes. The jazz trio, led by Cooper-Moore on piano with Tom Abbs on bass and Chad Taylor on drums, starts the record in a traditional manner—the piano and drums chatter back and forth a few measures before the bass enters and the whole group locks into a groove. But they soon abandon the standard jazz format to follow a curve more like the crescendo of a dramatic tale. The romantic piano motif of “Pooch (For Wilber Morris)” conjures images of a ballerina stepping across a room, while the odd contrast of the frenetic drumming keeps the track from becoming sentimental. The slow, creeping rhythm of “Last Minute Trip Part One” could be the soundtrack for a caravan’s slow march in a long-forgotten desert epic.

Cooper-Moore has been involved in the creative music scene for over thirty years, although he has often been overshadowed by collaborators such as David S. Ware. After a frustrating European tour in 1981, he destroyed his piano with a sledgehammer and a match. He redirected his energy first towards childhood music education and then to performing on a collection of hand-built instruments. In the early 1990s, Cooper-Moore returned to the piano as a member of William Parker’s group In Order to Survive. With the Triptych Myth, he has assembled his first working jazz group in decades.

Cooper-Moore has perhaps been inspired by the time he spent scoring theater and dance productions. The Beautiful, however, is undoubtedly a jazz album. Cooper-Moore crafts a haunting ballad on “Frida K. The Beautiful.” Chad Taylor fires the upbeat “Poppa’s Gin in the Chicken Feed” with a funky intensity. The album ends with Cooper-Moore tapping out single notes—a peaceful coda to the frenzy of creativity that came before. The final notes hover in the air unresolved, waiting to be fulfilled by Triptych Myth’s next recording.

Also posted at Blogcritics.

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