@dpcon said:

I immediately said, "You should hear the late Beethoven quartets, they're just as radical and use the same principals of composition."

This is so true. Isn´t late Beethoven simply A-M-A-Z-I-N-G?

However, "liking" is such a bitch. I mean admiring, yes, but liking? I certainly don´t LIKE Wagner, I never hear him for my enjoyment, but I admire him for his composing. I suggest making a distiction.

Mathis,

I actually was trying to make a distinction between admiring and liking. But if a sax player doesn't like Coltrane or Jazz pianist doesn't like Bill Evans or a trumpet player doesn't like Miles Davis, I just don't understand it. Because it seems to me that they are the definition of all that is good in Jazz. Even if one prefers Louis Armstrong or Wynton Marsalis and doesn't really "like" Miles Davis - I can understand that, but not a total rejection and ceasing of even listening to Miles. His music is totally unique from the others and a major part of the history of music - not to mention gorgeous beautiful stuff.

It's the wholesale rejection of an entire era of indisputably great music that just baffles me - by a musician anyway. I suppose one feels what one feels.

Dave Connor

Jazz and Romantics - that reminds me to Uri Caine. Does anybody know his recording of Wagner excerpts with chamber ensemble and jazz musicians (he himself is famous as a free jazz piano player) live in the streets of Venice? It´s probably the cutest interpretation of the Ride of the wellcures I ever heard. He brought it down to a viennese coffeehouse compatible version but full of swing. I loved it! [:D]