A recording of 6 year old Autumn Poppy improvising on a Summer's afternoon on an early 20th century portable foot harmonium.
Wednesday 11 September 2013
Chin47: Greater Than Or Equal To "And In That World I Feel No Pain"
Greater Than Or Equal To are the improvising behemoth of Simon "Robodub" Mathewson and Flora Cavalino Bertolli, joined on this release by Jane Saunders, Leon Lord, and Ergo Phizmiz. Recorded over 2012-2013, "And In That World I Feel No Pain" is choice cuts and edits of sessions by two prolific improvisers.
Veering between tribal rhythms, intense polyphony, electronic nightmares, and woozy opium den soundtracks, these recordings variously bring to mind King Crimson, Sun Ra, and electroacoustic scores to Eastern European animation films. From the minds of two very different yet highly compatible musicians, Greater Than or Equal To produce a distinctive and timeless sound.
And here's Greater Than Or Equal To in a live improvised soundtrack to Piotr Kamler's remarkable film "Chronopolis" ....
Keep your eyes peeled for a plethora of new and marvellous releases on Chinstrap shortly, including Modersohn-Becker, Federsel, Elvis Herod, improvised music by children, and more Greater Than Or Equal To.
Saturday 31 August 2013
'I've Suffered For My Art, Now It's Your Turn!' (Jazz Musicians and Their Audience)
At a time when jazz is perhaps more economically challenged than at any time in the past, it’s not a bad idea for jazz musicians to have a think about their audience, and their relationship with it.
Jazz musicians and the audience - then and now
The presentation of jazz has changed tremendously over the course of its history – in earlier times jazz was seen, by its practitioners as much as by its audience, as another form of entertainment. I’ve just been reading Count Basie’s autobiography, and it’s clear from this that Basie’s initial ambition was to get into ‘show business’, and he began in Vaudeville, backing singers, dancers, comedians etc. Though his career mutated into that of one of the most respected bandleaders in the history of jazz, he never lost his image of himself as being an entertainer as well as a serious musician.
The presentation of jazz has changed tremendously over the course of its history – in earlier times jazz was seen, by its practitioners as much as by its audience, as another form of entertainment. I’ve just been reading Count Basie’s autobiography, and it’s clear from this that Basie’s initial ambition was to get into ‘show business’, and he began in Vaudeville, backing singers, dancers, comedians etc. Though his career mutated into that of one of the most respected bandleaders in the history of jazz, he never lost his image of himself as being an entertainer as well as a serious musician.
And this is generally true of most musicians of his generation and even later generations. The beboppers were revolutionary musicians, and denizens of a counter-culture with its own codes and ways of being. They were also aware of themselves as artists, yet even they were very conscious of how they looked on stage – see if you can find any photos of Bird playing in public without a jacket and tie on. Even the iconoclastic Monk, when asked what the band should wear, replied, ‘Sharp as possible!’ And even the taciturn Coltrane, architect of the extended solo and someone with an apparent disregard for the staying power of an average audience, would insist on his band wearing suits whenever they played in a concert hall setting.
So up to the 1960s at least, jazz musicians were very aware of what they saw as their responsibilities to the audience at least in terms of presentation. Then something changed – the idea of musician as artist, and a rebellion against the idea of musician as entertainer, took hold in jazz. Since the 1970s there have been many variations in how jazz musicians present themselves to their audience, but I think it's fair to say that in general, thoughts about the audience are not on top of most jazz musicians' agenda. Musicians have usually devoted most of their time to honing their craft and developing their art, and have been happy to let the chips fall where they may as far the audience is concerned. There is almost an unspoken belief that it's the audience's job to figure out the music, and the musician doesn't need to take them into account. It's the musician's job to play the music and the audience's job to listen - clearly demarcated roles, with no room for compromise.
The Big Questions
But now, when it's more challenging than ever before to make a living as a jazz musician, perhaps players need to ask themselves about their relationship to their audiences, not just for the sake of economics, but for the sake of their art too. Good questions for a jazz musician to ask themselves could be:
For some jazz musicians, even asking those questions is heresy, and is already moving into the area of showbiz.
But for me, there is no reason why an acknowledgement of the role of the audience, and an understanding of what might affect an audience, (and in what way), is any kind of sell-out, or dumbing down of your artistry. It's simply a recognition that music is played for people and there's a dynamic at play in live performance. An understanding of that dynamic should be important to the musician, since his or her success or failure, (both artistic and commercial), will depend upon a successful negotiation of that dynamic.
To take each one of those questions in turn:
Why do people go to hear live music?
Music used to always have a societal function - it accompanied something. A religious ceremony, a landmark in life (birth, marriage, death), a celebration, a ceremonial occasion. Since the advent of recorded music, this has changed utterly, and now the reasons people attend music performances are as many and varied as the music and the audience itself. On any given night, in any city in the world, you might have people listening to Shostakovitch in a concert hall, jazz in a jazz club, punk rock at a rock venue, and dancing to techno at a dance club. But could there be a common thread linking all of these people at these very varied performances?
Yes there is, and it's this: anybody who goes to a live music performance, wants to feel different when they leave the venue, than when they went in.
They want to feel something, experience something, take part in something or maybe have something done to them. They may want to be made happier, or given food for thought, or, in the case of dancing, have some kind of physical release. This is the reality - people do not go out and pay money in order to feel the same as if they'd stayed at home - they want an experience of some kind, a transformative experience, at least as far as their mood goes.
So the next obvious question for the musician, wondering if we do make people feel different, is -
How does my music feel?
As musicians we ask often ask ourselves how our music sounds, but do we pay any attention to how it feels? As a player, a good question to ask yourself is as follows - imagining yourself as a stranger, coming into a performance of your music - how do you think that the music you typically play, would feel to you, (the stranger)? Do you think it would make you feel good? I'm not talking about the technical intricacies of the music here, I'm talking about the vibe. What kind of feel and vibe does your music put out, and if you can identify that in your own mind, do you think this vibe is the one you''d like to communicate to others?
Connected to that question is the next one:
How do my performances look?
Now this is a question that is usally very low on the priority list of many jazz musicians. To even consider dressing up for a gig is often considered the worst kind of commercial/sell-out mentality. But the visual aspects of performance are very important to audiences. I'm not necessarily talking about how the band is dressed, (though a certain breed of musicians' proclivity for shuffling onstage looking like they just got out of bed, having slept in their clothes, probably doesn't do much for the audience's anticipation of what's to come), but how everything looks.
This may or may not include how the band is dressed, but will definitely include the band's demeanour on the stage, and how well the audience can see everything that's going on. In recent years, aware of how much music is consumed on Youtube, I started to film a lot of my performances. It's amazing what being at the viewfinder end of a camera does for your awareness of how things look, and one of the worst things to look at visually, is a big stupid music stand directly in front of the player, obscuring everything they're doing! There's nothing duller from an audience's point of view than seeing five people on stage looking down at music stands, or even worse, looking at music stands directly in front of their faces - visually it's the most boring thing possible.
I appreciate that in these days of little rehearsal time and lots of original music, music stands are a necessity, but some thought should be given to minimising the visual distraction of the stands, and keeping them as far from the audience's line of sight of the musicians as possible. Any chance of memorising the music, and getting rid of the stands should be taken, and any band that plays a standards gig, reading from music stands, deserves to be horsewhipped!
Am I aware of a connection to my audience, and is it important?
Is it important for you to connect to your audience, or do you feel that it's their job to connect to you? That's a subtle but important distinction. In the case of the former, there's a paramount desire on the part of the performer to communicate something to the audience, in the latter there's an assumption that the playing of the music will in itself be sufficient to nourish the audience. In the first instance the performer may pay attention to the aforementioned visuals, and make an effort to communicate with the audience verbally as well as musically. In the second instance such things as visuals and non-musical communication are not taken into consideration, or deemed important.
Whichever way you lean in your own dealings with the audience, I do think it's important to at least be aware of the audience, and at least have made a conscious decision as to what your relationship with them is.
It's a show!
My own view is that all performances are a show. No matter what kind of music you play, there's an element of the visual involved, and there are also 'performance' elements involved. No matter how much weight you may place on the music itself, the visual and performance aspects of the event will have an impact on the audience. Jazz musicians often forget that the majority of their audience are not musicians and have little or no knowledge of, or interest in, the technicalities of the music. To the general public, the atmosphere of the event is of tremendous importance, and everything that goes into the creation of an atmosphere should be of interest to the musician. We are dependent on people returning to our performances, so the effectiveness of what we do should concern us.
Miles Davis was famously, (or so it seemed), unconcerned with his audience, but this in itself became a show! Audiences enjoyed, (and expected), the famous Davis taciturn personality - the glowering, the pacing, the turning his back on the audience, became a show in itself. Jarrett's fussiness and demands for silence, irritating and pretentious as it sometimes is, does make for drama - when he walks on the stage there's a sense of something happening that goes through the hall. The Coltrane Quartet's visceral physicality in live performance was a show in itself. None of these performers had a typical showbiz connection to their audience but all of them provided a show nonetheless.
I think what's important, regardless of which approach you take to your audience, is that you should be aware that there, (hopefully!), is an audience there, and in all likelihood they have paid money to see you, and perhaps travelled a distance to do so, and taken time out of their lives to listen to your music. That deserves recognition. Recognition that the audience have a role to play in the performance of live music. Acknowledging the audience, at least in your own mind, can be a valuable tool to you in being able to take a more broad view of the message and impact of your music, and give you a more objective view of what it is you're doing, or trying to do. I believe that acknowledging the importance of the audience will have a positive impact on your music.
If you think the audience are of no importance, then fair enough - but play at home!
But now, when it's more challenging than ever before to make a living as a jazz musician, perhaps players need to ask themselves about their relationship to their audiences, not just for the sake of economics, but for the sake of their art too. Good questions for a jazz musician to ask themselves could be:
Why do people come out to hear live music?
How does my music feel?
How do my performances look?
Am I aware of a connection to my audience and is it important?
For some jazz musicians, even asking those questions is heresy, and is already moving into the area of showbiz.
But for me, there is no reason why an acknowledgement of the role of the audience, and an understanding of what might affect an audience, (and in what way), is any kind of sell-out, or dumbing down of your artistry. It's simply a recognition that music is played for people and there's a dynamic at play in live performance. An understanding of that dynamic should be important to the musician, since his or her success or failure, (both artistic and commercial), will depend upon a successful negotiation of that dynamic.
To take each one of those questions in turn:
Why do people go to hear live music?
Music used to always have a societal function - it accompanied something. A religious ceremony, a landmark in life (birth, marriage, death), a celebration, a ceremonial occasion. Since the advent of recorded music, this has changed utterly, and now the reasons people attend music performances are as many and varied as the music and the audience itself. On any given night, in any city in the world, you might have people listening to Shostakovitch in a concert hall, jazz in a jazz club, punk rock at a rock venue, and dancing to techno at a dance club. But could there be a common thread linking all of these people at these very varied performances?
Yes there is, and it's this: anybody who goes to a live music performance, wants to feel different when they leave the venue, than when they went in.
They want to feel something, experience something, take part in something or maybe have something done to them. They may want to be made happier, or given food for thought, or, in the case of dancing, have some kind of physical release. This is the reality - people do not go out and pay money in order to feel the same as if they'd stayed at home - they want an experience of some kind, a transformative experience, at least as far as their mood goes.
So the next obvious question for the musician, wondering if we do make people feel different, is -
How does my music feel?
As musicians we ask often ask ourselves how our music sounds, but do we pay any attention to how it feels? As a player, a good question to ask yourself is as follows - imagining yourself as a stranger, coming into a performance of your music - how do you think that the music you typically play, would feel to you, (the stranger)? Do you think it would make you feel good? I'm not talking about the technical intricacies of the music here, I'm talking about the vibe. What kind of feel and vibe does your music put out, and if you can identify that in your own mind, do you think this vibe is the one you''d like to communicate to others?
Connected to that question is the next one:
How do my performances look?
Now this is a question that is usally very low on the priority list of many jazz musicians. To even consider dressing up for a gig is often considered the worst kind of commercial/sell-out mentality. But the visual aspects of performance are very important to audiences. I'm not necessarily talking about how the band is dressed, (though a certain breed of musicians' proclivity for shuffling onstage looking like they just got out of bed, having slept in their clothes, probably doesn't do much for the audience's anticipation of what's to come), but how everything looks.
This may or may not include how the band is dressed, but will definitely include the band's demeanour on the stage, and how well the audience can see everything that's going on. In recent years, aware of how much music is consumed on Youtube, I started to film a lot of my performances. It's amazing what being at the viewfinder end of a camera does for your awareness of how things look, and one of the worst things to look at visually, is a big stupid music stand directly in front of the player, obscuring everything they're doing! There's nothing duller from an audience's point of view than seeing five people on stage looking down at music stands, or even worse, looking at music stands directly in front of their faces - visually it's the most boring thing possible.
I appreciate that in these days of little rehearsal time and lots of original music, music stands are a necessity, but some thought should be given to minimising the visual distraction of the stands, and keeping them as far from the audience's line of sight of the musicians as possible. Any chance of memorising the music, and getting rid of the stands should be taken, and any band that plays a standards gig, reading from music stands, deserves to be horsewhipped!
Am I aware of a connection to my audience, and is it important?
Is it important for you to connect to your audience, or do you feel that it's their job to connect to you? That's a subtle but important distinction. In the case of the former, there's a paramount desire on the part of the performer to communicate something to the audience, in the latter there's an assumption that the playing of the music will in itself be sufficient to nourish the audience. In the first instance the performer may pay attention to the aforementioned visuals, and make an effort to communicate with the audience verbally as well as musically. In the second instance such things as visuals and non-musical communication are not taken into consideration, or deemed important.
Whichever way you lean in your own dealings with the audience, I do think it's important to at least be aware of the audience, and at least have made a conscious decision as to what your relationship with them is.
It's a show!
My own view is that all performances are a show. No matter what kind of music you play, there's an element of the visual involved, and there are also 'performance' elements involved. No matter how much weight you may place on the music itself, the visual and performance aspects of the event will have an impact on the audience. Jazz musicians often forget that the majority of their audience are not musicians and have little or no knowledge of, or interest in, the technicalities of the music. To the general public, the atmosphere of the event is of tremendous importance, and everything that goes into the creation of an atmosphere should be of interest to the musician. We are dependent on people returning to our performances, so the effectiveness of what we do should concern us.
Miles Davis was famously, (or so it seemed), unconcerned with his audience, but this in itself became a show! Audiences enjoyed, (and expected), the famous Davis taciturn personality - the glowering, the pacing, the turning his back on the audience, became a show in itself. Jarrett's fussiness and demands for silence, irritating and pretentious as it sometimes is, does make for drama - when he walks on the stage there's a sense of something happening that goes through the hall. The Coltrane Quartet's visceral physicality in live performance was a show in itself. None of these performers had a typical showbiz connection to their audience but all of them provided a show nonetheless.
I think what's important, regardless of which approach you take to your audience, is that you should be aware that there, (hopefully!), is an audience there, and in all likelihood they have paid money to see you, and perhaps travelled a distance to do so, and taken time out of their lives to listen to your music. That deserves recognition. Recognition that the audience have a role to play in the performance of live music. Acknowledging the audience, at least in your own mind, can be a valuable tool to you in being able to take a more broad view of the message and impact of your music, and give you a more objective view of what it is you're doing, or trying to do. I believe that acknowledging the importance of the audience will have a positive impact on your music.
If you think the audience are of no importance, then fair enough - but play at home!
Wednesday 24 July 2013
Wayne's Magical World
I went to see Wayne Shorter’s quartet last night, the now classic band that he’s had for more than 10 years. This is the second time I’ve seen them, and it was equally as good as the first. There’s something magical about this band. They’ve received a lot of praise and recognition over the last several years and they absolutely deserve it – and more. Watching them in action last night, I witnessed something quite unique – there’s nobody really doing what these guys do.
First of all, the music is so abstract, yet they are playing forms and structures. It’s free, yet it’s tied to the jazz conventions of melody and harmonic structure. They have a repertoire, but no set programme – sometimes compositions appear, are touched upon, only to disappear again. At other times a piece is explored for more than twenty minutes. There are solos of a kind, yet they are all collective – for a moment it seems one or the other of the quartet will be soloing, only for one or more of the other members to become involved and take over.
Over the course of the performance the music evolves organically in front of your eyes. I HATE to use this cliché, but in this case it’s absolutely the correct one - at a concert by the Wayne Shorter Quartet, you are taken on a journey. The performance last night began in what seemed to be unfocussed meandering, with each member fluttering in an out of the music. It was hard to grasp any underlying or unifying structure, and you could be forgiven for believing that the band were unable to find any kind of forward motion, and were just noodling. But slowly, yet inevitably, the music began to become both more cohesive and yet mutate into something else. As a listener you got the sense of some greater structure rising out of the four constituent parts, yet being unable to put your finger on how this was being done.
And this is the magic of this band – the way they can collectively create something singular that is comprised of the four constituent parts. Something that is not pre-conceived, yet can attain the most formal structure, a structure that is created by the free-flowing narrative of the band. It’s an extraordinary balancing act, and one that can only be achieved by a) a band that has been together for this long, b) has such great virtuoso musicians within it, and c) is led by a genius….
And Wayne really is a genius, under even the strictest meaning of that overused word. Apart from the compositions themselves, his ability to guide the band simply by what he plays is extraordinary. His timing is perfect, his entry and exit points are masterful. And the choice of notes…… his ability to play such unexpected notes in relation to the underlying harmony, yet always remain lyrical is unique – nobody else can do this like he can.
And the band are perfect – Danilo Perez almost seems like the MD, free to start something, or suggest something or take the music in any direction he wants. Wayne allows him to do this, yet, by dint of his playing, remains in complete control of the ultimate direction of the music. Brian Blade is the dramaturge in the band – his use of dynamics thoroughly energises the music, and when he really gets going, it’s one of the greatest sights in contemporary jazz drumming. And John Patitucci is the unsung hero of this band. The way he interweaves his lines with the other guys, while holding the bass function down is masterful. He knows exactly when to go and when to stay. When Blade slips off the metric grid in one of those blazing attacks, Patitucci will fix it in a split second. He is a virtuoso bassist who puts his virtuosity completely at the service of the music
Wayne is 80 this year and still looks and sounds strong, with no seeming diminution of his powers. But all humans are mortal and so if you get a chance to see this group – a group that will definitely be spoken of as one of the great bands of jazz history – you should go, and avail of the opportunity to see something unique and magical. The following video clip gives just a glimpse (but only a glimpse), of what will be in store for you.
Friday 19 July 2013
Orrin Evans!
How could I have missed out on the music of Orrin Evans for so long!? Yes I was aware of his name, I knew he was a member of Tarbaby along with Eric Revis and Nasheet Waits, both of whom I'm very familiar with. I also knew he was the leader of the highly regarded Captain Black Big Band, but somehow, I'd never checked him out. And I think it's true to say that on this side of the Atlantic he's not so well known - certainly in comparison to some other pianists. But having listened intently for the first time last night, I've come to realise that this guy is a major contemporary jazz pianist and I can't believe I've missed out on his music for so long.
But the one good thing on missing out on something good, is that you get the pleasure of real discovery, and this is what happened last night when, on an iTunes browse, I came across his trio recording 'Flip the Script' - and what a recording it is......
Evans plays with Ben Wolfe on bass and Donald Edwards on drums, in a programme of mostly his own compositions, and it's a powerful and creative piece of work, full of things to admire. In a time when so much contemporary jazz features medium tempo, straight 8s, vaguely melancholy pieces, the sheer variety of this trio recording is very refreshing. Both ends of the tempo spectrum are explored extensively, and it's so bracing to hear both very fast tempos and very slow tempos being played fearlessly, and with such panache. One of the reasons that musicians don't play these tempos so much is because they're both really hard to do! Evans' trio eat up the challenge of this and pretty much everything else. Evans creates very interesting compositions, all of which have some wrinkle or other that differentiates them from the run of the mill jazz ditties that are so often churned out in this idiom. And they really swing - burning jazz piano trio playing of the first rank.
There's one other little kink in this recording that i really enjoy, and that is, strangely enough, that the piano is not the best instrument I've ever heard. It's definitely suffering in some places, but somehow that works for the recording, giving it a kinship with earlier piano recordings where it was not always possible to get a perfect instrument for your recording - try McCoy's 'Ebony Queen' as an example of what I'm talking about. Not that the Evans recording's piano is as jangly as that on the McCoy recording, and I'm sure most pianists would always want the best piano they can get, but somehow that edginess to the piano adds to the cutting edge of the music - especially on the uptempo pieces. At least to me!
Having listened to this recording it's a mystery to me how I could have missed out on Evans for so long - after all he's very highly regarded in the US and is Grammy nominated, placed second in the Monk competition etc. - but somehow his star is lower here than it should be. Hopefully that will be rectified soon - I know my lack of knowledge of his work is going to be rectified immediately!
Here he is talking about 'Flip the Script' - if you haven't checked Orrin Evans out already and you love great jazz piano playing, then do yourself a favour and have a listen
Friday 21 June 2013
Six Reasons Why I Love Jazz
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Louis Armstrong's Hot Five - the real Jazz Age
I was recently reading all the hype about the new Gatsby film, and reading so much rubbish, (at least in the Irish papers), being written by journalists about the ‘Jazz Age’ - journalists who have NO idea what they’re talking about, bar what they read in Wikipedia. And this got me thinking about how while there's all this fuss and hyperbole being written about the ‘Jazz Age’, the music itself struggles so hard to be heard and to survive. A very good point was made by a friend of mine (thank you Billy!), in which he observed that the people who actually created jazz would never have been allowed into the hotels and residences of Gatsby and his pampered idiotic ilk, unless as entertainers, in which case they would have been treated as servants.
And this got me thinking about the REAL value of this music – a music of honesty and beauty, with an incredible history – a music that is in a different universe from the one inhabited and illustrated by the vapid shenanigans of a bunch of rich airheads from the 20s. I began to think about the reasons why I love this music so much, and here are some of them…………
1) It’s The Product Of An Amazing Human Story
There are three universal musical languages, music that is played and listened to everywhere: European classical music, rock music, and jazz. Classical music evolved through the church and later through an aristocratic elite, rock music by Post WWII, (mostly middle class), English and American baby boomers, and jazz emanated from a people who were an underclass, descended from slaves, and often existing in conditions that were not much better than slavery.
Afro-Americans were despised and abused by the majority population, denied basic human rights and were deprived economically. Yet this oppressed underclass gave mankind one of its greatest musical gifts. A music that was democratic, inclusive, powerfully emotional, a music whose message spread around the world with extraordinary speed, and spoke to people of all races and nationalities. In the history of human art, there has never been a story like this – a music that rose out of the worst social conditions, yet which was joyful, progressive, celebratory, and participatory, with a universal message.
Jazz is a unique human, artistic triumph, created in an environment of incredible adversity.
2) Jazz music celebrates both the individual and the collective
Jazz is both a group music and an individualist’s music. To be able to play for the greater good of, and contribute to the ensemble, is an indispensible quality for any good jazz musician. To describe a player as someone who ‘doesn’t listen’, is the worst criticism one musician can give to another. To act as one is the ultimate aim of any band.
Yet at the same time individualism is not only highly prized, but expected, and celebrated. Jazz is a music that has evolved both through the work of great bands, andgreat soloists. To express yourself in an individual way is the sine qua non of all jazz musicians, and the history of the music is illuminated by great soloists on every instrument.
Jazz is both a collective music and a virtuoso music. To work for the collective, yet be yourself – what a wonderful combination of qualities, and, as a human being, what a wonderful esthetic to be involved in.
3) Jazz is a Meritocracy
Playing jazz at the highest level is hard, and demands a lifetime of dedication practice and commitment. In such an environment only the best players survive and get to play the music – at least in the long term. Yes, like all music, jazz does have its fair share of bullshitters and charlatans – guys who know a little and can sound competent for a minute, as long as it’s in a certain musical environment that they can control. They then depend on various non-musical qualities to keep themselves in the limelight, (they’re usually good hustlers and self-promoters), but ultimately they will always fall away. Because jazz is about being a great player all the time, over a long period of time, in any situation. You can only control the situations you are in for so long, and ultimately if in the end, if you can’t really play, then you can’t sustain a career at the top table of the music.
And I really like that, because then ultimately the people who do the work and have the talent, get the careers. I’m not talking about amateur or part-time musicians here – I love when people play the music for pleasure alone. It’s the guys who can’t really play but pretend they can, and that they are worthy to play with the greatest musicians, that bother me. But happily, the charlatan thing where a musician who hasn’t done the work, but hires and uses great players to give themselves a patina of competence, doesn’t succeed in the long term. In the end the music will find you out (the real musicians will find you out on the first tune……), and that’s a good thing, because ultimately the music will be created and evolved by people who really care about it.
4) Jazz is the broadest of broad churches, yet retains its traditions
Another seeming contradiction. Jazz music is omnivorous, and always has been. It is accepting of all material as being grist to the creative mill. It is a music that grew from the combining of many elements to create a new music, and a new approach to making music. From the outset it has been relentlessly modernistic – the new thing being prized, both instrumentally and in the overall music. Armstrong, Ellington, Parker, Coltrane, Miles – those five names alone embody a huge reservoir of innovation and dedication to the idea of change. The inclusion of new elements has been in jazz since the outset, and here, in the first part of the 21st century, jazz can cater for the widest possible tastes, yet still remain true to itself.
If you like swing, Brazilian music, Afro-Cuban music, electronica, extended form composition, instrumental virtuosity, lyrical simplicity, seriousness, playfulness, depth, bluesiness, mystery, orchestral writing, solo playing, funk, minimalism, density, sparseness, sad music, happy music, celebratory music, intense music – then there is something for you somewhere in the jazz tradition of the past 100 years.
There is no other music that encompasses the range of musical influences that jazz does, yet retains its own identity through its history, rhythmic language, collective spirit, spontaneity, virtuosity, and improvisational traditions.
5) Jazz musicians love music……..
That may sound self evident, but not all professional musicians love music, surprising as that may seem to the lay person. There are many professional musicians who are not particularly invested in music for its own sake. They may find it a convenient way to earn a living and they may even enjoy what they do for social reasons. Many professional musicians are certainly interested in the craft of music, and interested in the social aspects of being around music (who got what gig, - and why they shouldn’t have, anecdote after anecdote, who screwed up on this or that gig etc.), but they’re often not terribly interested in music as an art form. And some, (though not all of course), orchestral musicians are clock punchers, working every week for their salary. Highly skilled of course, but ultimately not too invested in the music they play.
But I’ve yet to meet a serious jazz musician who was not ready to talk about music at the drop of a hat. If there’s one thing jazz musicians love, it’s talking about music – great recordings, the differences between one musician and another, their own philosophy of what they do, what they’re working on musically, asking what you’re working on musically, a great musician or recording they’ve recently discovered etc.
If you choose jazz as a means of earning a living, and are prepared for the long haul and hard graft that is required to make a living doing so, you have to love music! Love of the music is the reason people get into jazz in the first place, and the ones who remain in the profession of jazz musician have a passion for the music that is infectious. If you want to see a jazz musician’s eyes light up, start talking to him or her about music…..
6) Jazz has produced some of the greatest music of all time
‘Hot Fives’, ‘Black Brown and Beige’, ‘The Savoy Sessions’, ‘Miles Ahead‘, ‘Shape of Jazz To Come’, ‘Blues and Roots’, ‘Five By Monk By Five’, ‘The Bridge’, 'A Love Supreme', ‘ESP’, ‘Bitches Brew’, ‘Facing You’, ‘Birds of Fire’, ‘Mysterious Traveler’……………. etc. etc.
Armstrong, Ellington, Basie, Tatum, Parker, Dizzy, Mingus, Miles, Ella, Monk, Rollins, Trane, Ornette, Evans, Konitz, Jarrett, McCoy, Corea, Shorter, Hancock, Steve Coleman, Liebman, DeJohnette, Bill Frisell….. etc. etc.
Nothing more to say really.
Wednesday 10 April 2013
Old World, New World
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This post is a response to an interesting blog by the great American pianist George Colligan on the subject of jazz in Europe. To get the most sense out of this one, you should read what he has to say by clicking here
Nguyen Le
John Hollenbeck
Jazz is absolutely an American art form in its origins, and like any musical art form, if you go to the source country from which it emanates you are always going to get powerful music. There is much great music coming from the US, as befits the country from which the music first sprang. No America, no jazz – period.
However the power of jazz is, (and was from its very beginnings), the universality of its message, which goes beyond the borders of the US. There’s a message for all mankind in jazz, which explains why it went all around the world almost immediately. A consequence of this was non-Americans playing, or trying to play the music. Usually they were poor copies of the American model, (though not always – Django Reinhard wasn’t too shabby for a European!), but as the decades went on, Europeans, (and Australians and Canadians etc), raised the standard of their playing, and then began to develop their own regional dialects of the music – music that sounded different to the original American model, but contained the essential elements of it.
I say ‘dialects’ here, because for sure the way jazz is played in Italy is, (in general), quite different to the way it’s played in Scandinavia. The same would be true of Germany and Ireland. There is no ‘European Jazz’ as a single entity, any more than there is an ‘American Jazz’ entity. There’s a huge difference between the music of Steve Coleman and Bill Charlap, between the music of Tim Berne and Brad Mehldau, yet they are all American jazz musicians. Similarly there’s a huge difference between the music of Lous Sclavis and Enrico Pieranunzi, or between Nguyen Le and Bobo Stenson.
So, in my opinion, George’s statement:
‘I question whether the music being called "Jazz" in Europe is actually Jazz’
is a sweeping approach which doesn’t take into account the sheer variety of approaches going on in Europe. To ascribe the same stylistic qualities to all European jazz is as narrow as assuming that Wynton Marsalis’ approach to jazz is the one followed by all Americans. Yes the origins of jazz are in the US, and the bulk of the greatest innovations and recordings have historically emanated from the US, (the majority of that coming from the Afro-American community of course). But to deny that non-American jazz musicians can produce jazz of value and originality is like claiming that because the great composers of classical music were European, then the music of Steve Reich, John Adams or Leonard Bernstein has no importance or value.
But while asserting that Europe has many creative world class jazz musicians, I would never subscribe to the argument that jazz in Europe is more creatively vibrant than that being created in the US. Conversely I don’t think the reverse is true either – that America has the monopoly on innovation and creativity. They’re both generalisations, and both arguments can be dismantled in a matter of minutes by even a brief examination of the music being created on both continents. The truth is that there is great music being created on both sides of the Atlantic, by both American and European musicians.
John Hollenbeck
And to the interested student of the history of the music (such as myself), I think we’re currently in a wonderful period in which jazz musicians from Europe and America are collaborating as never before in creating great music together. There are more European jazz musicians living in New York than ever before (Lage Lund, Jean-Michel Pilc, The Moutin brothers), and a bunch of Americans living in Europe, (John Hollenbeck, Gerry Hemingway, Kurt Rosenwinkel), and I don’t think there have ever been more bands with mixed European and Americans in them than there are currently. Which is tremendously healthy, and shows that this artificial division between European and American jazz is exactly that – artificial. Musicians on both sides of the Atlantic are producing amazing music, and both can, and do, enrich the other.
One thing that George talks about that is definitely true is that jazz is much more subsidized in Europe than the US, which is incredible if you think about it. Jazz - the amazing art form that America gave to the world, should be feted, celebrated and supported by the US, in the same way that Irish Traditional Music is supported in Ireland, Flamenco in Spain and Taiko drumming in Japan.
Vanguard Jazz Orchestra
Jazz is an American national cultural treasure and I find it extraordinarily sad that most people in the US, and the local and Federal governments in particular, couldn’t care less about it. How often do we see the US big gun orchestras, such as the NY Philharmonic, touring in Europe, playing European music to Europeans? Why isn’t the Vanguard Jazz Orchestra sent out instead? At a time when the US often has a poor PR image abroad, jazz is one of the great good news stories to come from the US in the past 100 years – the Americans should be out celebrating it and being proud of it all over the world……… But American taxpayers are not big on paying for culture of any kind, and so the chances of an entity like the VJO being sent out using taxpayer's money, in the way jazz in Europe is supported by European tax payer's money, is almost non-existent. Sad but true.
But the music lives on, and the geographical barrier between American and European jazz has never seemed smaller, and this has to be a good thing. Instead of parochial sniping between one side and another, let's celebrate the wonderful music that is coming from both continents, both individually and in combination.
To finish, here is a clip of a concert I was involved with in Belgium, with MSG, a trio featuring my Irish self, the Dutch drummer Chander Sardjoe, and the American altoist Rudresh Mahanthappa. An Irishman, a Dutchman, and an American, playing jazz together in Belgium - the future is now!
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