Books by Bill Dixon
L'OPERA: a Collection of Letters, Writings, Musical
Scores,
Drawings, and Photographs (1967-1986), vol. I.
Metamorphosis Music, BMI, 1986. (out of print)
**A revised edition is forthcoming as well as Volume II.
Books by Bill Dixon
L'OPERA: a Collection of Letters, Writings, Musical
Scores,
Drawings, and Photographs (1967-1986), vol. I.
Metamorphosis Music, BMI, 1986. (out of print)
**A revised edition is forthcoming as well as Volume II.
A REVIEW OF
L'OPERA: A Collection of Letters, Writings, Musical
Scores, Drawings, and Photographs (1967-1986), vol. I
by: Arturo Vivante
Music, Bill Dixon says, is an expression of itself alone. It is the least imitative of the arts, and for this reason perhaps the purest. For him it is above all "...a beautiful moment of translucent freedom...surprising even one's self." In his new book entitled L'OPERA--which here means not a dramatic musical representation, but rather: work, the author's work--Bill Dixon has collected a number of his notes, essays, letters, musical scores, drawings, and photographs.
Music--its study, its practice, its teaching--is for him almost a religion to which he has dedicated himself with extraordinary intensity. His prose has an uncanny fervor. It is almost as if we were hearing him speak. Anyone who has listened to him across the dinner table, he is a marvelous raconteur and inimitable conversationalist--or witnessed the charm, grace and warmth with which on the stage he introduces his pupils, will find echoes of his voice in these written words. He is a wellspring of thoughts, ideas and opinions which he often rapidly interjects amid sentences through the lavish use of parentheses. The effect is one of remarkable vivacity--the very flow of life in print.
In some pages, as at the beginning, he traces his own life from his birth in Nantucket, where he first heard the rhythm of the sea, to New York to which he moved in his boyhood, and where he became an artist, and later around 1951, a musician. Though he has traveled a great deal giving concerts in American and abroad, Bennington College, where he teaches Black Music, has been his base for the last twenty years. He finds the expression "Black Music" more felicitous than the term "jazz" which may at times have pejorative connotations. The appellation Black Music, too, gives us a clue to its origin, in Africa, and its rebirth over here, especially in Harlem. Spontaneity and improvisation are its essence. It thrives on the unpredictable, the unexpected, the new. It is "a venture, an adventure," he says, "on which one embarks." Refreshingly he writes, "I also have no commitment to either fashion or vogue; what strikes my fancy, I do."
Not only has Bill Dixon composed and played Black Music with his trumpet, he has lived it too. He has heard, seen, met and worked with many of the best musicians of his time. Because he is able to write about it truthfully, philosophically--of dance, for instance, he says that "it is not just movement...it exits in our vision," and he speaks of "the feeling-presence of certain instrument;" and in a more critical vein, he is wary of "the slickness that is almost ever present when a piece of music is played or rehearsed for a long period of time"--this book is a wonderful commentary of his time. He has come to Black Music intimately, and in L'OPERA we partake, we breathe its spirit. In a way the book is a key to Black Music. Bill Dixon deftly turns it, opens the door, and lets us glimpse into its resonant chamber. This then is a musician's notebook, his portrait, his identity. It is a book of hopes, aspirations, accomplishments, not the least of which is the nurturing of gifted students. "Teaching," he says, "is the ultimate and, quite possibly, the most creative of the arts." What comes through the book, perhaps even more than the magic of the music, or the artistry of the drawings (non-imitative, like music "existing for themselves alone...with no story to either tell or support...never secondary") or the quick of life of the photographs, is Bill Dixon the inspiring teacher. Not only do we hear him playing the trumpet, we also hear his students. "He has come quite close to making his instrument his own speaking voice," he says about one of them. It could certainly be said of himself, but the wonder of it is that he has many voices, one of which is this book.
Arturo Vivante has been contributing short stories to the New Yorker since 1958 and has also published in Vogue, the New York Times, and the London Magazine. His books include: Poesie (1951); A Goodly Babe (1966); The French Girls of Killini (1967); Doctor Giovanni (1967); and Run to the Waterfall (1979). He has taught literature at Bennington College and MIT.
Dixonia
A Bio-Discography of Bill Dixon
Compiled by Benjamin Ian Young
Greenwood Press. Westport, Conn. 1998.
440 pages
Reviews
Odyssey and Dixonia Reviews on One Final Note
Bill Dixon - The One Final Note Interview (1.1MB pdf)
Bill Dixon - The Odyssey to Dixonia (184K pdf)
What Price Criticism? Bill Dixon at Victoriaville by Eric Lewis for www.esse.ca
Download article (156K pdf)
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