Jon Hassell
Today we’re listening to Jon Hassell, an American trumpeter and composer from Memphis. We last recommended him in 2022. Born in 1937, he studied music in NY and DC before heading to Germany to study with Stockhausen.1 Hassell got into experimental electronic music and recording techniques, and developed a style he termed “fourth world” – in his words, via the book Ocean of Sound:
…a “coffee coloured” classical music of the future – both in terms of the adoption of entirely new modes of structural organisation (as might be suggested by the computer ability to rearrange, dot-by-dot, a sound of video image) and in terms of an expansion of the “allowable” musical vocabulary in which one may speak this structure – leaving behind the ascetic face which Eurocentric tradition has come to associate with serious expression.
We’re playing two of Hassell’s records release about thirty years apart. 2009’s Last Night the Moon Came Dropping Its Clothes in the Street is a freeform, airy record, half live recordings, reminiscent at times of Miles Davis’ In A Silent Way. Vernal Equinox from 1977 combines global styles with synthesizers and jazz improvisation. On NTS, Roadkill Ikebana recently released a great one-hour set of music from across Hassell’s oeuvre.
Last Night the Moon Came Dropping Its Clothes in the Street - Jon Hassell (63m, no vocals)
Spotify / Apple Music / YouTube Music / Amazon Music / Tidal
Vernal Equinox - Jon Hassell (50m, no vocals)
Spotify / Apple Music / YouTube Music / Amazon Music / Bandcamp / Tidal
We wish you a great start to your week.
