Milford Graves

Well, I, my first, uh, uh, real, like, sit down with a John Coltrane recording was the recording Om on a rooftop in New York City in the fall of '91.

And I thought that was just, like, uh, I didn't know that was a genre of music until I went to college and I started studying, uh, music theory with, uh, Bill Dixon and, uh, percussion with Milford Graves.

And there I learned that there's this whole underground of music that was going on in New York, and in California, um, that eventually evolved.

By '64, '65, you're talking about non-metric, non-melodic jazz.

Um, but I've always been interested in music myself.

It's like a total recall.

Um, and, uh, I never was really, uh, formally trained, but I kind of flopped around and learned my, got my way to Bennington and learned how to play jazz and learned the history and learned how to write, uh, up at Bennington, uh, working with Bill Dixon and, um, and Milford Graves, uh, primarily.

And, um, got into journalism.

Westerlyn will perform at this year's Big Ears Festival as a duo with Nicole Mitchell.

The first work Westgerland chose as being formative for him was Continuous Conversations by Milford Graves.

This track met me at a time when I was just starting to kind of open up

from a childhood of you know, listening to some punk music and, and arrowing into kind of a jam band territory.

but it was, you know, very straight world and, and, um, didn't have much room for things like downtown New York, downtown music scene was not included in that, you know, of course.

Uh, I started looking for alternate modes of education and a neighbor of mine went to Goddard college, uh, in like 2000, 2001, something like that as like an open program where you can like, you know, pick your own, um, classes kind of like make up your own it's almost it's almost more of like a phd but for like a bachelor's program so i started getting interested in this thing went and visited goddard college realized it wasn't really like the music the music department didn't really have like the resources that i was looking for i uh came back feeling a little bit okay maybe i'm not gonna do that and then somebody was like well another friend of ours is going to bennington college You should check that out.

And Milford Graves is there.

He's a drummer and he's got records on the Zodiac label.

Drumming, we can start with drumming.

I mean, it's just, you know, from Steve Gadd, Billy Martin, you know, like Milford Graves.

Mark Juliana, Matt Chamberlain, you know, the list goes on and on.

It's like just those dudes.

Drumming, we can start with drumming.

I mean, it's just, you know, you get Steve Gadd, Billy Martin, you know, like Milford Graves.

Mark Juliana, Matt Chamberlain, you know, the list goes on and on.

It's like just those dudes.

playing strict time.

And of course, Milford Graves would say, that's dangerous, man.

Our body doesn't work like a metronome.

Throw that thing out.

You're treading in funny areas where you don't belong, where you're too soon or you're

too late, Charlie.

It's similar to what we said earlier about Milford Graves.

The heart shouldn't beat.

Close to a thousand people came.

Albert Ehler's quartet opened the service with Ehler on tenor, his brother Donald on trumpet, Richard Davis on bass, and Milford Graves on drums.

They played a medley of their own compositions, Love Cry, Truth is Marching In, Our Prayer.

Not Coltrane's music, but their own.