It’s an old story and there are countless threads (1., 2., 3., 4.,…) and it would be great if MBS-10868 would be implemented, but that would not solve all problems.
The Louis Sclavis Quintet has two album releases (one is currently “main artist credited as”), but the second hardly has anything to do with the first. Different instruments, different personnel - it was recorded 10 years later - only same number of participants.
If I try to associate members to the group, I would mix up unrelated musicians, who never played together ← there is no known beginning or end date. In fact, the group was never “formed” or “dissolved”, only counted for the one occasion.
I would like to merge Trio, Quartet and Quintet into the main artist - I will not touch the Duo and the Louis Sclavis Atlas Trio because of distinct names, as well as the Sextet because of two occurrences with similar personnel. The Septet is already “credited as”.
Any complaints? (I would like to put this up for discussion and not start right away)
I personally would not object, but based on past discussions I expect others will.
I recently found this on a very old wiki page put together by some jazz editors (largely @dmppanda, I believe) making the argument that “formations” are not “groups”:
Why the concept of group is essentially inadequate to represent formations
A group:
is a named entity, and is created by one or more persons
has an history: creation, old members departing, new members arriving, disband
is distinct from its members, at least in the intention if not in facts
may be assimilated to the notion of “project”, from the point of view of its participants
has a consistency: members don’t change overnight, and most time stick together for a while
has a structure, that doesn’t evolve much: functions in the group are distributed to persons
should be considered as an artist entry or as a performance name, as it is indeed the intent of the artists to release stuff under that particular name representing the entity they created
A jazz formation (most time):
is not a named entity, and is not created
doesn’t have an history (something not created can’t…)
is essentially a numerical indication of the number of sidemen present on a particular gig, and is essentially an extension of its leader
may be assimilated to the notion of back-up “band”, from the point of view of its leader
has no consistency: John Doe trio may change three times in three sessions (except John Doe of course)
has no fixed structure: overnight, John Doe trio may be a bass/piano/drums, then a guitar/saxophone/drums
should NOT be considered as an artist entry or as a performance name, as most time, a John Doe Sextet album is a John Doe created, composed and led album, where session musician do play and accompany John Doe.
Aren’t these “groups” like Jazz itself? Just an ever changing entity at the whim of those involved. Depends who is in the room on the day.
As we have the ability to alias things I can certainly see the logic of merging some of these. But I would attempt to ping editors who spent time untangling things previously. Only a small number of editors read this forum. I remember seeing huge amounts of work going into people like Charlie Parker and his various line-ups.
I think part of the puzzle here is some quintets\quartets\etc are longer lasting that others. There is not really one rule that could fit all cases.
One downside I see of merging it all is it makes it even harder to say who was in which lineup.
I think we can all agree that groups with defined membership that remains constant for some time should be treated as artists, even if they fit the naming pattern of The Joe Bloggs Quartet.
The nature of many of these formations (to use @dmppanda’s term) is that there is no “lineup” as such. There’s who played on a particular recording session, but that can be captured with performer relations.
This would be even worse than the current situation. Typically there is only one “Lisa Voc Trio” entry today; having a separate one for each set of personnel would be extremely unwieldy, and lead to a lot of misfiled releases/recordings.
A performer relationship at release or recording level means that performer will no longer have the artist to artist relationship of being in that group.
To be a “member of” there will need to be a Group artist somewhere. If Fred Bloggs had various quartets\quintets and other line-ups over the years how would the database show his musical colleagues? If he always had John on bass how would the database show that at an Artist level?
You can rename a trio to a quartet to a quintet and they all have members.
Longer lasting formations with largely unchanged personnel should certainly be separate. These should also have band members linked. But if their collaboration was just for one album… I can’t see the difference between a musician playing on an album of the solo artist or the same artist’s Quartet. They have their instrument relationships and that’s it.
I would suggest guidelines like this:
A Trio, Quartet, Quintet, etc. is a separate artist, if…
its members have a history together (more than one release with mostly the same members, or if it’s know that they have toured for years)
the group has a distinct name (not just [main artist] Quartet)
Other formations, including reappearances with different personnel, should be “main artist credited as”
I would keep only one artist and explain in an annotation if there is no Wikipedia article giving details. (and I would have checked details myself before merging anything.)
possibly an actual example of one that shouldn’t be merged (tho I’m not super familiar with the group) is The Dave Brubeck Quartet. at least on the two albums I have (Time Out and Time Further Out) the lineup is identical, tho looking at their relationships, they’ve had a lot more members over time than the 4 on the back of my CDs
that said, for cases where the trio/quartet/quintet/octet/et cetera-tet aren’t a consistent lineup, I’m for merging these multi-one-off groups into one
Agreed, and if you asked a jazz fan to name members of the Dave Brubeck Quartet, most would name saxophonist Paul Desmond immediately, and many would come up with drummer Joe Morello as well. Both those men were longtime members who contributed significantly to the identity of the Quartet.
On the other hand you have the Dave Brubeck Duo which I’d never heard of, but appears to be just a pared-down version of the Quartet on a few tracks of one album.
One example that I keep coming back to of a non-group formation is the Thelonious Monk Septet. This particular combination of musicians recorded one studio session together, and never played live as an ensemble. We’d never even consider them a group, except that the record company decided to label the resulting LP with that name on it.