Blindfold’s guest is the young jazz drummer Mehmet Ali Şimayli this time. Şimayli studied the drums with Turgut Alp Bekoğlu during his high school years. The musician received the Arif Mardin scholarship in 2016 and attended the jazz drums performance summer program at Berklee College of Music. He completed the BAU Jazz Certificate Program in 2017 and attended the Berklee Umbria Jazz Clinics the same year. He won the Young Jazz competition with Vibes Trio and performed at Istanbul Jazz Festival. He performed in festivals and in concert venues with Portrait And A Dream which consists of Kerem Can Dündar, Anıl Tuncer, Cenk Esen and Yiğit Can Öztop. He recorded an EP called Red Planet with the same band, and released it in October 2019 on digital platforms. He shared the stage with Bülent Ortaçgil, Erkan Oğur and Emin Fındıkoğlu. The musician studied in Bilgi University’s Music Department between 2017-2020. We presented this young musician with a selection of four pieces from both the old and current eras.
Paul Motian
Paul Motian And The Electric Bebop Band
JMT 1993
Shaw Nuff – Charlie Parker
Joshua Redman (ts)
Kurt Rosenwinkel, Brad Schoeppach (g)
Stomu Takeishi (b)
Paul Motian (d)
The guitarist sounds like Scofield. The drummer started with a fragmented, Motianesque attitude. In the style of Paul Motian… I haven’t listened to this music before. It doesn’t sound like something new. He plays like one of the old masters. The drums started off similarly to Paul Motian but then reminded me of the later period Albert Heath. This drummer is rather old then. It is reminiscent of Roy Haynes’s late periods as well but I believe he doesn’t have such a recording. The saxophonist has a bright tone, I have listened to him before, I thought it could be Michael Brecker but then decided against it when he started to play trills influenced by Charlie Parker.
Paul Motian And The Electric Bebop Band is the name of the album.
Kurt Rosenwinkel ve Joshua Redman çalmış. Güzel bir albüm.
Kurt Rosenwinkel and Joshua Redman recorded with him. It is a great album.
How did you understand it was Paul Motian right off the bat?
Paul Motian is a specialty of mine… I really love him as a drummer. I imagine his playing style in front of my eyes when I hear him play. From the tuning of his drums, the way it isn’t a pre-prepared and serviced drum kit, and instead it features heavy cymbals, loosely tuned drums… But mainly from his approach to head, the fragmentation, the swing and his characteristics during trading…
Donny MacCaslin
Fast Future
Greenleaf Music 2015
Fast Future – Donny McCaslin, David Binney
Donny McCaslin (ts)
Jason Lindner (keyb)
Tim Lefebvre (b)
Mark Guiliana (d)
This reminds me of Bad Plus’s album with Joshua Redman. Mark Guiliana is the drummer here. It also is reminiscent of Knee Body. I hear many markers that are unique to Guiliana. I could say this is his jazz quartet but that doesn’t have as much synth as this. The synth and the keyboard sound similar to Jason Linder. Even if it isn’t Guiliana, it is just the opposite of the old school and trashy sound aspects of Paul Motian’s music; this is a new and packed drum kit… We are listening to a drumming style that developed in the past 20 years here. Like Eric Harland for example. The saxophone could be Donny McCaslin or Jason Rigby. This team consists of Mark, Donny, Jason Linder and Tim Lefebre I think.
Donny McCaslin, Fast Future album. This same group of musicians were featured in David Bowie’s latest album Black Star.
Yes, David Bowie heard them play at New York 55’ Bar and suggests them to work together. Guitarist Ben Monder was there as well. Mark is a significant drummer who made his mark in the drumming history in the past 20 years. His characteristic quantized drums are special. Because when we look into the history of jazz, of course there is no wrong or right here, but the drums seem to be played more organically and instinctually. That is why I don’t want to call it industrialized but this packed drumming style has entered genres that are influenced by jazz, gospel and funk. The most important characteristic of Mark is the grooves that feature barely-heard snare and kicks when we look at the orchestration of the stickings within the triangle of hi-hat, kick and snare… The extra tight tuning of the drums were used back in the day but this was followed by the fusion era. This era sports big stages with amplified music and microphoned drums. I like listening to how most of the drummers adapted to this transitional era. How did they adapt to the new-style drum kits and new stages? It is rather interesting to hear this. A lot of drummers don’t sound like themselves when they are playing on the big stage. But quite a few, like Tony Willams, Peter Erskin, Elvin Jones, play with huge kits, while some remain with the same approach in the later periods as well. The drum sound we hear in this recording is after this transitional era; “Yes, we digested some of these elements, and a modern drum kit can sound like this as well” approach slowly becomes the norm.
Do Chris Dave and Mark Guiliana come from different schools?
Chris Dave relies heavily on Groove, from what I have listened to. For example, he adds bongo to the drum kit. We could say it is a different school because hip-hop, the laid back grooves of MPC and producer J-Dilla are in the foreground. . Robert Glasper comes frop bop roots but Chris Dave doesn’t emphasize this background. For example, it makes one think that he doesn’t want to sound bop even with his projects with Kenny Garret.
Buddy Rich
The Wailing Buddy Rich
Norgran Records 1956
The Monster – Harry “Sweets” Edison
A Yüzü
Thad Jones (tp)
Joe Newman (tp)
Ben Webster (ts)
Frank Wess (ts)
Oscar Peterson (p)
Freddie Green (g)
Ray Brown (b)
Buddy Rich (d)
B Yüzü
Sonny Criss (as)
Harry Edison (tp)
Jimmy Rowles (p)
John Simmons (b)
Buddy Rich (d)
This generally sounds more like entertainment music, the grammar in which the bebop era sentences are thrown around doesn’t exist here. It is blues and there are more readily-understood sentences on top of that blues. It is reminiscent of Gene Krupa in a sense but I don’t believe it is such an old recording. It could be a recording in which the drummer is the bandleader due to the feathering and the imminent entry to trading right after the piano’s intro. This comes from old school big band tradition. More like Buddy Rich. We can understand that from the hi-hat tricks. Ball Room music style. This type of jazz which provides much fan service raises some questions in my head, same applies to Buddy Rich… The man is a wizard! I thought it could me Max Roach from the rudimental performance of the first trade but it doesn’t have the trashy nature of Max (we can explain this as the lack of diligence while hitting the notes, the way they blend in together in a seemingly random manner), which I enjoy more. Buddy Rich is of course a musician to pay attention to. The most attractive aspect of jazz for me is how bop era and Charlie Parker, for example, free musical concepts along with the political atmosphere. It is a genre that can exist with its mistakes. Of course, this doesn’t make this recording less historically significant, but it feels a lot like “Show music” to me.
Buddy Rich. The Wailing Buddy Rich album. Oscar Peterson plays the piano here.
Yes, this is a great group of musicians.
Trilok Gurtu
God Is A Drummer
Jazzline 2019
Joseph Eric – Trilok Gurtu
Frederik Köster (tp)
Emre Merallı (vi)
Christophe Schweiser /tb)
Kalpana Patowary, Zara (vo)
Jonathan Cuniado (eb)
Sabri Tuluğ Tırpan (p)
Nitin Shankar (perc)
Trilok Gurtu (d, tabla, vo)
The intro is rather tiresome. Through Composed type of music. It sounds like a fusion era recording or right before that. Might be mid-80s. It isn’t something I listen to often. I hear pitchless drums. I hear santurs and tablas… Drummers like such progressive things in their albums. I initially thought it could be Dave Weckl. But it is too sloppy for Dave but in a good sense. It could be Steve Gadd as well. It is good but too tiring for me. It is like the characteristics of a period for me. There are things to learn from all periods but I see this more as a transitional time. I cannot distinguish the chacteristics of the musicians here since I don’t listen to this subgenre often. It sounds similar to Wayne Shorter’s “sounds from World musics” concept in Native Dancer. I think drums and percussions are recorded on top of one another here. It could be someone who likes layered recordings as a percussionist. I thought of Zakir Hüseyin when I heard the tabla.
Trilok Gurtu. God is A Drummer album.
The drums sounded reminiscent of Stephane Galland as well. Trilok played the drums here as well; I have a friend who plays the tabla, we talked a lot about it just the other day!
The pianist here is Tuluğ Tırpan.
Yes, I thought the pianist might be Turkish.
Thank you for this great Blindfold.
Thank you as well.
