Dexter Gordon to Jon Christensen: “You’re not from Harlem, and you’re 20 years old – play how you feel!” My brother, John Bishop, said this on Facebook: “He was the sound, aesthetic, time feel, phrasing, […]
Category: Jon Christensen
VOQOTD: Jon Christensen on technique
From Jon Christensen’s Modern Drummer feature in the early 80s: MD: What makes a drummer interesting to you? What do you look for? JC: Having watched a lot of drummers over the years, you can […]
Transcription: Jon Christensen — Keep It Like That- Tight
Here’s Jon Christensen doing some nice open, dynamic playing on a slow, static vamp: Keep It Like That — Tight from Terje Rypdal’s self-titled album on ECM from 1971. We love Christensen because he’s a […]
DBMITW: Jon Christensen is great
Jon Christensen, on Ralph Towner’s Solstice: Maybe it’s not a perfect analogue, but I think of him as the Billy Higgins of the fusion era– an egoless (in his playing, at least!), perfectly musical drummer. […]
A crash course in the ECM feel
Look for the photos with water and the Helvetica font. The “ECM feel”, as it’s now being called, is a style that evolved in the late 1960’s and 70’s, and has since become one of […]
Transcription: Jon Christensen – Dansere
This goes out to my old friend Tim Willcox, who turned me on to this record- Jan Garbarek’s Dansere, with Jon Christensen on drums. Christensen is pretty important to the current thing going on in […]
Three Paiste cymbals
UPDATE: I think I’ve correctly ID’d one of the other cymbals. I’ve been on a vintage Paiste cymbal-buying kick recently. Here are the findings on my finds: 22″ Formula 602 Dark Ride – circa 1975-76 […]
Jon Christiansen @ 4OTF
Go read this post about Jon Christiansen at Four on the Floor– I haven’t even had a chance to read it yet, but it doesn’t matter. One of the great facilitators in drumming, I think […]
Jon Christensen solo
Via Trap’d, here’s a solo by Jon Christensen: He has always struck me as being sort of the Billy Higgins of the ECM era- egoless-seeming, non-pyrotechnic. I’m working on a transcription of one of his […]
Transcription: Jon Christensen – Long As You Know You’re Living Yours
Here’s Jon Christensen playing some of those ECM backbeats on Long As You Know You’re Living Yours, from Keith Jarrett’s Belonging. I mean to tackle the big one- The Windup- soon, but in the mean […]