What is Your Music For?

In an interview I saw with him, the great Sufi singer Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, when asked how important the audience was, replied (and I’m paraphrasing here), that since he (Nusrat) needed people to share his music with, the audience was important. But, he added, he principally sang to ‘the singer inside myself – because if I feel he can hear me, then ultimately the listeners will too’

I thought of this wonderfully insightful comment recently when once again the whole question of who we’re playing for – the audience or ourselves – came up via an interview with Greg Osby where Greg was making the point that we need to stop playing for ourselves, (or for other musicians), and play for the audience. In the current economical and musical climate, and when we see Robert Glasper and Esperanza Spalding doing so well, it’s hardly surprising that these kinds of questions would rise to the surface again. Should we be playing for an elite few aficionados, or should we be tailoring our music in order for it to connect with more people?

For me, it depends on what you see your music as being for. If you see your music as functional – i.e. being used for a specific purpose which is not necessarily connected to the music itself – for example a wedding, or providing background music for a corporate event – then clearly you must tailor your music to suit the public. In all of these cases your music has a functional role, a predetermined slot into which it must be fitted. And as a musician you are being paid to fulfil that role, so the contract is clear: successfully fulfil the role and receive X amount of money in return.



The vast majority of the music played in the world is functional – and always has been. Down through the ages, the musician has played a functional role – Troubador, accompanist to rights of passage, dance music provider, herald of sporting events etc.If you see your music as functional, and your role as primarily functional, then you must tailor your music to suit the event and the audience.

There is however another reason to play music – to express an idea, or to express an aspect of the personality or emotions of the performer. This is a very different musical philosophy to that required of the functional musician. In this, the performer (or composer), rather than fulfilling a preordained role, is trying to express something of him or herself through the medium of music. In order to do this you need ultimately to play for yourself first and the audience second. Not through any selfishness or self-indulgence, but because it’s only by being honest with and to yourself, that you can truly be honest to and with the audience. If you don’t believe in your own music – and believe in it absolutely – then how can you expect anyone else to? You’ve got to absolutely believe in your music and do everything you can to express that belief in your music (such as developing the tools for expression through practice and technique), before presenting it to a listening public. If you’re not getting off on it, then why should anyone else?

Greg seems to suggest that from now on he will be tailoring his music to suit what he believes the audience will enjoy. But will he still believe in the music as deeply as he did before effecting this change? If so, fair enough. But again, if so, then why wouldn’t his own artistic instinct have taken him in this direction before now? My own feeling on Greg’s music is that he is a real individual, a distinctive voice, who has made a fantastic contribution to creative music over the past 25 years. I can’t help feeling that if, when he was starting out, and he’d thought of audience first, and his own instincts second, that we wouldn’t have heard the musical riches that he has given us. His expression of his own unique personality through music is what makes his contribution so valuable – not whether huge numbers of people liked it or not.



In the end, with this argument, we are dealing with the difference between putting art and creativity first, or functionality and accessibility first. And this is not about art = good and functionality = bad, it is just a recognition of the difference between the two. Each has their role to play in music. All I’m saying is that if your primary goal is to express yourself through music, then you’ve got to be honest about it. If what you love and do well is play funk or hip hop, then this is what you should be presenting to an audience. If what you love and do well is play contemporary improvised music, then this is what you should be presenting. Any deviation from honesty will never be as effective. Jazz musicians often think they’re such good players that they can play anything well – which is simply not true. There have been so many dreadful attempts by jazz musicians to play what they see as more commercial music, they think they can intellectually and technically reproduce what others do by instinct, but this approach is always doomed. The music is never good since it’s not really played with any conviction. The players don’t believe in the music itself, they just believe that audience will like it. Which is very insulting to the audience, since the players are playing down to them.

And if you’re playing creative music, but your concerns are primarily for the audience and what they might like, what do you really know about them? How can you go into a room and know what the expectations, history, demeanour, and attitude of 200 strangers is? How can you know what kind of day they’ve had? Whether they like your music, or hate your music? Whether they're there because they read about you in the paper, because their friends dragged them along, or because they know every recording you’ve ever made? You can’t know any of that stuff. All you can do is be honest – play the music YOU believe in to the best of your ability and try and share something with the audience.

I believe that if you’re a creative musician, and you start to tinker with your music to fulfil what you believe are the expectations of others, then there is no way of avoiding producing worse music than if you simply played what you believed in. If you want to be more popular then play functional music, but it’s misguided to think you can have one eye on your creativity and be counting the house with the other.......

Here’s Nusrat, doing what Parker did, what Armstrong did, what Coltrane did, what Miles did – singing to the singer inside himself



Addendum: Thinking about this again, there’s one other type of musician whose role is almost a genre of its own – being a classical musician. Interpreting the music of great composers, developing the huge technical skills required for this, and presenting it to a listening audience is a unique role for a musician. It’s not creative in the way that say Monk was creative, but at times the level of interpretation involved (on the part of soloists and conductors), does require a creative mind and approach, and musicians such as Gould, Horowitz, Menuhin, Richter and Perlman are among the greatest musicians in any genre.

Collective Consciousness - a true jazz virtue

The responses to my recent post about the lauding by critics of Robert Glasper’s recent music as a great leap forward, (both artistically and commercially), and in particular my questioning of whether what Glasper was doing was jazz at all, has got a discussion going on the hoary old question of ‘what is jazz’? While I’m reluctant to get into such a complex and ultimately unanswerable question, I have been thinking about one aspect in particular that I think is indispensible to what I would consider to be jazz – collective improvisation by the whole band.

This concept where the accompanist has an active rather than passive, or static role is one of the most unique features of jazz and is something I miss in the Glasper music under discussion, and also in Esperanza Spalding’s music. In general once you have a strong backbeat in action, it usually comes with a musical modus operandi where the soloist is in one area and the rhythm section is in another. The soloist solos over the groove, but the interchange between the soloist and accompanists is very limited – the collective improvisation and true interchange of ideas between soloist and rhythm section is missing. The clear 2 and 4 bar structures of much Hip Hop and Pop music also mitigates against fluidity and blurring of the lines of soloist and accompanist – each section being marked off with the drummer’s crash cymbal, the cymbal performing the role of cookie cutter in marking out the sections. The fluidity and improvised collective consciousness is missing.

This collective improvisation is very clear even in the earliest jazz recordings. The groups typical of those times involved themselves in what can best be described as multi-voiced counterpoint, each player weaving in and out and taking their turn in both soloing and accompaniment. Have a listen to Louis Armstrong’s Hot Five from 1927 – and in particular have a listen to Armstrong’s use of what later became known as metric modulation, at around 1.39.



In the 30s the concept of the rhythm section came into being and while the first traditional rhythm section line-ups (piano, bass, drums) were sometimes stiff and provided a rhythmic and harmonic cushion for the soloist rather than interacting with him (and in those days it nearly always was a him), jazz’s collective instinct soon reasserted itself and pianists and drummers found ways to both respond to and provide inspiration to the soloists. The soloists in turn could interact with the rhythm section, influencing how they performed and being involved in a true interchange between soloist and accompanist.

This became very well developed during the bebop period of the 1940s and early 50s – have a listen to Bird with Max Roach and Al Haig, at how both Roach and Haig are both responding to Parker, spurring him on, and how he in turn sparks responses in them. For example listen how at 1.53 the phrase Parker plays makes both Haig and Roach hit a strong and held accent on the second beat of that bar – true improvised interaction.




In the 50s and 60s this interchange between soloist and rhythm section developed in leaps and bounds – the Bill Evans trio defined a new way for the traditional piano trio to interact, Miles’ various quintets ramped up the interplay quotient until we reach arguably the apogee of this interconnected improvising concept – the quintet with Wayne Shorter, Herbie Hancock, Ron Carter, and Tony Williams. This group blurred the lines between accompanist and those being accompanied in a way that had never been seen before. The interaction between all five members of the group was of an extraordinarily high level, and they operated on a kind of philosophical telepathy. It wasn’t the kind of telepathy where everyone could predict what everyone else was going to do – that would have been very dull – but a telepathy in the way they seemed to understand what was required for the music at any given time, and that could include playing something really unexpected or something the diverged from the path the music was on at that time. Here they are in 1964 tearing through that old warhorse ‘Walkin’



To listen to the extraordinary creative organism that was that rhythm section is to hear something unique to jazz – the way they both respond to and drive the soloists is a wonder, it’s right at the top of the creative tree and this kind of interchange between the soloists and rhythm section is something you can only hear in jazz. And they weren’t the only ones doing this in the 60s – Coltrane’s group, in an albeit very different way – also played in a way in which the rhythm section were as important as the soloist at all times. McCoy, Garrison and Elvin were as indispensible to Coltrane’s music as Herbie, Ron and Tony were to Miles’. They don’t interact in the same way as Miles’ rhythm section but they are driving and shaping the music and it’s impossible to imagine this music without McCoy and Elvin in particular (I was never as big a fan as some people of the few recordings Roy Haynes made with the group) being as much a part of the identity of the band as Coltrane himself. Here they are (with Eric Dolphy and Reggie Workman on bass) in 1961 playing ‘Impressions’



What Miles, and Coltrane, and Evans, and Ornette and the members of their bands, and the members of many others, did was create a way of playing, a collective impulse in which each member had not only a role, but also a responsibility to add to the creative life of the band. And this way of thinking, of playing, of hearing, has stretched out to influence most of what became the mainstream of the music. It is unique to jazz – both soloist and accompanists have the freedom to lead and the willingness to be led, it is creative democracy at work, played in a spirit of equality and of parity.

For me, if you dispense with this interaction between rhythm section and soloist, the equality between accompanied and accompanist, you dispense with one of the vital jazz virtues. And as soon as you bring a backbeat into the equation, you’re immediately locking down the rhythm section, and removing the possibilities of interchange between front and back line. 10 years ago everyone was raving about Bugge Wesseltoft and Nils Petter Molvaer and saying this was the new way forward. But once again, like the Glasper music being lauded now, the preponderance of the backbeat robs the music of all of this organic interchange, eschews the collective improvisation tradition, and puts everyone in the band into clearly defined roles – soloist or accompanist, with little or no exchange between them.

Fortunately there are still great examples of the more collective way of playing out there, and for my money one of the greatest exponents of this way of playing, not just now, but of all time, is the current Wayne Shorter Quartet. Watch this stunning rendition of Joy Rider, and how it morphs, ebbs, flows, twists and turns under the collective guidance of the band, everyone taking responsibility, ready to move into the spotlight and back into the background as the music demands. This is JAZZ, with a capital J and several dozen Z’s after it. For me, apart from a few piano voicings, there’s really no similarity between what Glasper played on Letterman and what Wayne’s band do here. It’s not just the music that’s different, the whole improvising philosophy is different. In one you have the monolith of the backbeat, with some piano improvisations on top, with the other you have four musicians actively engaged in spontaneous creation (during which the backbeat makes an occasional appearance), using the medium of the composition as a launchpad. (I make no apologies for posting this clip twice in a short space of time - it's that good!)

One may argue about whether what Glasper is playing is jazz or not, but one thing’s for sure, what Wayne and Co are playing here is very definitely jazz!

Filesharing - The Reality

My recent diatribe against filesharing drew a mixed response, with some people, (nearly all musicians), being sympathetic to my stance, and others (nearly all not musicians), not. But for those who still think illegal filesharing is cool have a read of Ethan Iverson's post relating how Billy Hart's new album on ECM, which hasn't even been released yet, is already up on filesharing sites. What chance do we musicians have when we're faced with this kind of thing?

People might argue that the selling of music is finished, and a new way to distribute music must and will be found, but until such time as we the musicians agree to give our music away for free,the guys who upload this stuff are thieves and fences, and the people who download it are thieves.

Chin35: Elvis Herod "Underwater Workshop"

We are delighted to present a new release from prolific musical adventurer Elvis Herod, one half of the mighty Plushgoolash.



Back in the heady days of 2011, his first Chinstrap solo release, the Ergo Phizmiz produced "Keep It Regal", invented a new genre of hip-hop, called (c)hip-(s)hop, aswell as featuring the lyrics "Stop a second I just done a egg".


This was followed by "Arab Justice", a retrospective of sorts that ran the gamut of musical horrid, a genre of which Herod is an innovator and sex-master, and "Orson Welles' Dinner", a solo piano and electronics opus for culinary enthusiasts.


This new release is an imaginary workshop of an underwater scientist, dreaming aquatic perversions, reveries, and inventions. And very beautiful it is, too.


So put on your snorkel and flippers, and let the King of everything and nothing, Elvis Herod, drown you in naughty science.

Thank Heavens We're Saved! (Again)

How come every each time jazz is reputedly saved, it’s always saved by music that is very far removed from jazz?

So, if the pundits are to be believed, it looks like jazz is being saved - again... This time by Robert Glasper. The outpouring of critical acclaim and ‘this is the way forward’ type of verbiage around his ‘Black Radio' album, shows that yet again we’re at the point where a particular musician or particular approach is being hailed as a panacea for jazz’s commercial woes. Glasper’s appearance on Letterman and Esperanza Spalding’s stratospheric success are being seen as harbingers of a new popularity for jazz, and light at the end of a particularly dark commercial tunnel for the music. Whenever this kind of things happens – some figure in jazz music gains some kind of success in the mainstream arena, and everyone starts to get very excited – I’m always sceptical. And I’m sceptical for one reason alone – inevitably the reason why whatever newly hailed ‘breakthrough’ is so popular, is precisely because it doesn’t sound like jazz at all. In fact the less it sounds like the mainstream of the music, the more likely it is to be popular.

Now of course this brings us into the endless ‘what is jazz?’ debate, and this is not some thing I want to rehash here – I’ve given my two cents worth on that previously. I’m a believer in jazz being a very broad church that can contain many different congregations. I don’t believe you have to be playing blues and/or swing in order to be playing jazz, though these are undoubtedly the roots of the music, and the area which still houses the vast bulk of the music’s greatest achievements. But there are many ways to skin a cat, and over the years cats have been skinned in an incredible variety of ways. I’m not conservative at all when it comes to what does or doesn’t constitute jazz, but this performance by Glasper on Letterman is to my ears much too far away from the improvisational cut and thrust of what I would consider to be jazz:




It’s Hip Hop with some jazz piano interweaved here and there. And there’s nothing wrong with that if that’s what you’re into – and lots of people ARE into that. Which is precisely the point – to see Robert Glasper’s appearance on Letterman as some kind of harbinger of better things to come for jazz as a whole is naïve to put it mildly. There is no way that Robert Glasper’s more mainstream piano trio would ever have been invited onto Letterman. It is precisely because the music he plays with his Experiment band is NOT jazz that it can have mainstream appeal.

The same would go for Esperanza Spalding’s success – she has serious mainstream appeal, and the more she moves into the area shown in this video, the more mainstream appeal she will have:



I have no problem with any of this music – it’s well made, well thought-out, well played, and I think both Glasper and Spalding are great talents, and great jazz musicians. But it really bothers me when the music evidenced by these videos is held up as an example of a way forward for jazz, both in terms of direction and popularity. Musically there’s nothing particularly original about Glasper’s Letterman piece – Herbie Hancock did very similar things back in the 70s and in the 1998 ‘Return of the Headhunters’ album his ’Watch Your Back' is absolutely in the same neck of the woods. As for the claim that this music (and Spalding’s) shows a pathway to a new acceptance of jazz by the mainstream public, this doesn’t stand up to any kind of scrutiny.

I should say that it’s not Glasper or Spalding who are making the claims for their music being a giant leap forward in recognition terms for jazz, it’s the world of jazz punditry who once again seem to be besotted by the idea of a major breakthrough for the music being achieved through the rejection of many of the core values of jazz. I don’t believe for a moment that Robert Glasper’s success will have any impact on the careers of other jazz musicians, and the person who will benefit most from Esperanza Spalding’s success is Esperanza Spalding. Both of these musicians have something to offer mainstream audiences, and they’re playing in a commercial genre that mainstream audiences understand. But somebody who watches Robert Glasper on Letterman is not going to be any more sympathetic to say Tim Berne than they were before they saw the Letterman performance. Someone who watches Spalding’s video is unlikely going to be inspired to check out even as mainstream a figure as say Kurt Rosenwinkel. Someone who may be prepared to watch Glasper play a few fills on a Hip Hop tune are unlikely to follow him into the world of his trio and the extended solos that he would play in that context.

We have to accept that what most of us think of as being jazz will never be popular in a mainstream way. The vast majority of the generation who are currently growing up on iPhones, Lady Ga Ga and X-Box are unlikely to have any interest in the kind of music that demands full attention from the listener and an ability to engage with sometimes challenging music for lengthy periods of time. It’s just not going to happen – at least not in the kind of numbers suggested by an appearance on Letterman. What jazz has to do is increase the awareness of its core values, its variety, the rich rewards that are there waiting for those who are prepared to lend it a curious ear. While I’m convinced that jazz will never again be truly mainstream, I also believe it could do much better than it currently does in public awareness. There is lots there in jazz for an interested and sizeable minority of listeners to grab onto and enjoy. We just have to figure out how better to reach them. For me, the work done by Jason Moran is far more encouraging in this way than Glasper’s Hip Hop project. Glasper is selling Hip Hop with a jazz flavour. Moran has managed to engage with many different musics and eras yet retained a jazz centre to his music in which the traditional virtue of collective improvisation within the ensemble is always paramount. Without musically moving outside the jazz world, he has managed to broaden his audience and bring them along with him. It can be done.

Robert Glasper playing Hip Hop, or Esperanza Spalding’s recent music is not the future of jazz, either musically or financially. It is too far removed from the core values of jazz where the narrative of the music is created by improvising soloists. Jazz cannot be saved by making mainstream commercial music and labeling it jazz. If you take an orange and call it an apple, it’s still an orange. So instead of pretending that an orange is an apple and trying to sell it as one, let’s just forget the subterfuge, try and make a better apple, present it more successfully to the people, and let them decide for themselves.

The Boys In The Band

On the face of it the history of jazz seems to be a history of individualists and soloists. When people speak of the history of jazz they name names – Miles, Monk, Trane, Ellington, Armstrong etc On the other hand when people speak of the history of pop music or rock music they name bands –Rolling Stones, The Beatles, U2, Led Zeppelin, Black Sabbath, Nirvana etc But if you look a little deeper into rock music history, you can see that there are a lot of important individuals as well – Hendrix, Clapton, Bowie etc. And similarly, if you look at the history of jazz, you can not only see that it is a music that featured a lot of out-and-out bands, but also that a lot of the innovations of the great individualists would not have been possible if they hadn't created those innovations within the vehicle of a great band, specifically designed to support those same innovations.

Of course the concept of a band is one that is well recognised in jazz, but I'm not sure if it's given its due in terms of its importance in the development of the music. And, for musicians, I'm not sure that the possibilities for developing your music that having a real band affords you is fully appreciated.

At various points in its history, without the input of great bands, the history of the music would have been much different. Take two of the icons of jazz - Miles and Coltrane. Both Miles and Coltrane did influential work outside the ambit of their regular bands - Miles with Gil Evans for example, and Coltrane recording Giant Steps etc. But the vast majority of their most influential music was created from within vehicles that they consciously created in order to best express their overarching musical ideas - their bands.



The importance of bands can be seen if we compare another great trumpeter with Miles - Freddie Hubbard. Hubbard was undoubtedly one of the greatest trumpet players in the history of jazz - brilliantly virtuosic, swinging, a great improviser who played on many great and historical recordings. And at various times he fronted bands that also consisted of great players. But with Hubbard you never really get a sense of a concept that requires more than the virtuosity of the individual players to bring the music into being. You never get the feeling that Hubbard absolutely needed this drummer and that pianist and this saxophonist to achieve the vision of the overall music.

Hubbard's bands were vehicles for the playing of Freddie Hubbard. Yes his phenomenal playing required collaborators who were strong enough to stay the course with him, but his sidemen could easily be thought of as being interchangeable. Herbie, McCoy or Billy Childs - Elvin, Tony Williams, Al Foster - Hubbard played great with all of them, but you never get the sense that he absolutely needed any particular one of those pianists or drummers to realise his overall musical vision, he played great with all of them - but not differently. There is a monumental Hubbard trumpet legacy, but not a Hubbard band legacy. There is no concept of a Hubbard band approach to a piece of music in the way that there would be a Miles band approach.

And to compare Miles to Hubbard in this regard, while Miles was technically not the trumpeter that Hubbard was (although he was stronger technically than he's usually given credit for - such as his playing here which is killing!), he had a band concept that was second to none. The members of his bands, (at least up to the very latest years), were chosen not only for their great individual playing, but for their ability to realize the overall vision of the music that Miles had. As a result, it wasn't just the playing of Miles that was influential, in fact the music of Miles' bands, and the way they played that music was probably even more influential than his playing. It is impossible to imagine the current development of modern mainstream jazz without the input of the classic Miles bands of the 50s, 60s and 70s.


The same is true for Coltrane - his Classic Quartet was both a vehicle for his saxophone playing and a vehicle for the transmission of his overall musical concept. Again, like Miles, it is impossible to imagine the current development of mainstream contemporary jazz without the input of the Coltrane Quartet. Elvin and McCoy were themselves innovators and huge influences on players of their respective instruments, but the sound that the Coltrane Quartet made, and their approach to playing the music was at least as influential as the playing of the individuals within that quartet.

The same could be said for the Bill Evans Trio and the Ornette Coleman Quartet - both revealed a new way of playing in a group, of interacting, of creating music that was greater than the sum of its parts. Each group had a clear identity that was more than the identity of any one individual player. The same could be said for groups from both before this period (The Basie and Ellington bands) and after (Weather Report, Jarrett's American quartet, Dave Holland's quintet, Steve Coleman's Five Elements) and the band tradition continues into the present day with groups such as Jason Moran's Bandwagon, The Bad Plus, Tim Berne's Big Satan etc. All of these groups have a sound that is unique to the band, rather than being a showcase for any one member of the band.


There are different kinds of bands in jazz, (leaving aside the soloist with pick-up rhythm section genre, which is not really a band at all– it’s more like a marriage of convenience), but usually they fall into one of three categories

A collective

An out-and-out dictatorship

A benevolent dictatorship















The Collective

In the first example – the collective - there is no leader. Each member of the band has, (in theory anyway), an equal input into the material and the approach. A contemporary example of this would be the Bad Plus or James Farm. The advantage of this way of working is that, assuming everyone has a broadly similar aesthetic regarding the music, a group of people can shape the music collectively and through discussion and teamwork develop music that is unique to that collective.

The disadvantage can be that it becomes music by committee, with everything ending up in the middle because nobody wants to make a decision, or every decision becomes a tortuous thing with endless discussions over tempos, tune order, solo order and everyone having an opinion on everything. In my experience this is by far the most common format for young bands coming out of jazz schools – there is no leader per se, and the music often lacks a unifying identity or directional thrust. In order for a collective to work you need people who a) believe in each other completely, and b) are prepared to lead if necessary and be lead if necessary.


The Out-and-Out Dictator

The out-and-out dictatorship model is well known in jazz and harks back to the ‘bandleader as star’ idea. In this model the band is principally formed around the leader and it’s clear that the leader of the band is supposed to be the cynosure of all eyes. These bands are primarily a vehicle for the playing of the leader and even though others may have opportunities to solo and play extensively, their input is required primarily to support the leader and not to detract attention away from him or her. There are so many examples of this in the music, it’s hard to know where to start in giving examples. But I think a good example would be Oscar Peterson’s various trios. Even the greatest of them, the trio that featured Ray Brown and Ed Thigpen, is formed around Oscar’s playing and though Brown and Thigpen get lots of solo space the music clearly revolves around Oscar and inevitably everything leads back to him. I would think of Keith Jarrett’s Standards Trio as being in the same mold – great as his sidemen are, and they make such a contribution to the group sound, ultimately the trio is all about Keith. I think he went from the benevolent dictatorship (see below) of his 1970s quartets, to the out-and-out dictatorship model of his current trio.

These bands can be great or terrible, everything depends on the leader, his or her leadership abilities and how good the sidemen are. Believe it or not, some leaders were known for deliberately hiring sidemen who were not very strong in order to make themselves look even better. That kind of thinking is all about the star system and not about the music. Having said that, much great music was played by bands in which the music was really all about one guy – Errol Garner for example, and the aforementioned Jarrett trio would be another.


The Benevolent Dictatorship

In this model the bandleader doesn’t just hire people to make him or her sound good, the sidemen are hired to do justice to the overall musical vision of the bandleader and are hired for their ability to be able to understand and enhance the bandleader’s vision. In this type of group the bandleader encourages the sidemen to be themselves and allows them the freedom within the music to do what they do.

The ultimate model of this type of bandleader is of course Miles. His ability to pick the right guys for his music over a period of more than 30 years was extraordinary. Although he was a guy who was very conscious of his image and his status in the jazz community, he was never happy to simply feature himself in his bands, he always wanted to play the MUSIC he thought should be presented to the listeners. And that meant getting the right saxophonist, the right pianist, bassist and drummer. He would choose the guys he wanted and then he would give them the freedom to develop the music – he would hire them for what they could do and then let them do it. He famously gave almost no verbal instructions, he would just allow the players to do what they felt was right in the moment.

It wasn’t a democracy – Miles chose the tune order on a gig, nearly always took the first solo and would think nothing of cutting off a player if he felt the music should finish or didn’t like what he was hearing. In all his bands it was very clear who was the leader, but at the same time the players in the band really got to express themselves because of Miles’ overarching concern about his music rather than merely his trumpet playing.

Coltrane’s Quartet was similar – Trane hired McCoy, Elvin and Jimmy Garrison and then gave them the freedom to do what they do. Again he was concerned about the music rather than just his own playing. He was clearly the leader, but the sidemen were hired because of what they could contribute to Coltrane’s musical vision, not because they simply made Trane sound good as a player, or were bit part players to his featuring act. Again, Coltrane was clearly the leader and they played only his compositions but he hired these guys for their ability to realize his musical concept, not just to make him sound good. A modern version of this type of band would be Wayne Shorter’s great quartet of recent years – they definitely play with a band concept, but Wayne is also clearly the leader. Here they are playing a phenomenal version of Wayne’s ‘Joy Rider’




Of the various models I’m probably fondest of the benevolent dictator mode, since it gives such a great scope to create ensemble music as a single entity, but at the same time it can accommodate the vision of one person. When I’m in bandleader mode myself, this is definitely the route I take – I get the guys who can best realize the ideas I have for the music, and then I let them get on with it, with minimum interference from myself. If you pick your guys well you can usually get results that are even beyond your expectations and the music can go places that you didn’t anticipate – true serendipity.

Having said that, I’ve also had fun in a few collective situations, including recently in a band called Métier, where we had the good fortune to be funded by our local town council as Ensemble in Residence and could devote time to rehearse and develop the music. This band was really fun to work with and we played many good concerts, and made one album that I’m very fond of. Here’s a track from that – a piece I wrote called ‘Cascade’



And while I wouldn’t recommend going the route of complete dictator to anyone contemplating putting a band together, it can be educational for a young musician to get into the band of one of these older dictator types - providing they’re really good musicians of course – and be told what to do by a more experienced musician for a while. You can learn a lot this way, so sometimes even these out-and-out dictator type bands can be good.

But whatever mode you choose, I do think it’s very important for people to think in terms of bands rather than of just being interested in being an individual soloist. By developing a band you’re not just developing yourself, you’re also developing something that goes beyond your individual playing and gets into the whole area of developing a musical concept. Think collective identity rather than individual showcasing, think music rather than instrument. See the big picture – develop a band!

Noel Kelehan

(Left to right - Jim Doherty, Martin Walsh, John Wadham, Louis Stewart, Noel Kelehan - late 1960s)

It's been a grim few months for jazz recently, with the departure of such giants as Bob Brookmeyer, Paul Motian, and Sam Rivers. Here in Ireland, we've just had a serious loss of our own with the passing of the pianist, arranger, conductor and composer Noel Kelehan.

Any non-Irish readers of this blog, and indeed possibly even some Irish readers, may not know who Noel Kelehan was. That's because, outside Ireland he was only well-known in the commercial music world, having the distinction of conducting more Eurovision Song Contest winners than anybody else in the history of the competition. He was also well-known as an arranger, and wrote orchestral arrangements for many commercial recordings, including U2's “Unforgettable Fire” album. In Ireland, he was very well-known, but again in the world of television and radio - as an arranger and MD of some of Ireland's best known TV shows. But though I knew Noel's work as an arranger and conductor, my relationship with him and admiration of him was related to his position as one of the finest jazz musicians this country has ever produced.

Noel was the staff arranger for RTE, the national radio and television company in Ireland, and having to produce arrangements to order for anyone, (mostly singers, both good and terrible), who might come within the orbit of RTE, kept him predictably busy. His busyness with his arranging day job, and his success and fame in the commercial music world, kept him from working as much as he should have, and would love to have done, in the jazz world. And it's been interesting reading all the tributes that have been paid to him recently here in Ireland, and how his jazz work usually just gets an honourable mention.

But jazz was his first love, and he was one of the first jazz musicians in Ireland to reach the kind of playing standard that would allow him to comfortably perform with people of the calibre of of Zoot Sims, Kenny Wheeler, and Art Farmer. To those of us on the Irish jazz scene, Noel was much more than solely a TV arranger, he was a great hard bop swinging pianist, an important bandleader, and someone from whom everyone of my generation learned a huge amount.

When I started playing on the Irish jazz scene over 30 years ago, there were very few players on the scene, and certainly very few really good players. But at least there were some players around the scene to look up to and learn from. And Noel was one of these. But when he and a few others began playing in Dublin at the end of the 1950s, they really had to invent the entire scene for themselves. Without pioneers such as Noel - who somehow in the conservative Ireland of the time, recognised the value of, and fell in love with jazz - the great strides that have been made in the music in this country over the past three decades would never have happened. I can't imagine what it must have been like to try and learn to play this difficult and virtually unknown music in the Ireland of those days, with no access to material, no access to a scene, no possibilities of hearing great players on regular basis, and probably no appreciation by the public of the music that they were practising like maniacs to be able to play.

















(The Jazz Heralds, 1960)

But somehow they managed to figure stuff out by listening and copying as best they could, by organising sessions, and by doing all the things that players in a small, and at that time, isolated city, far from the jazz mainstream, had to do in order to learn the music. Most were never able to align their abilities with their aspirations, but Noel was one the exceptions that prove the rule. He was classically trained as a pianist, but self-taught as a composer, arranger and jazz pianist. I remember him telling me about hearing a George Shearing recording in the 50s when he was a teenager, and being blown away by it and trying to transcribe Shearing's solo from an EP - a process that involved much leaping up and down from the piano, and much replacing the needle, something that was wearing for the recording which evenutally got completely worn out. Noel told me he destroyed three copies of the recording before he was able to get what he wanted!

In 1963 he went to New York for a year but, thankfully for us, he returned a year later bringing with him even more knowledge about how the music should be played and the standard that needed to be aspired to, and he also became immediately involved in the commercial music world, writing for TV and radio. Jazz and commercial music were much more closely entwined in those days – jazz training would prepare you for work in the commercial world in a way that would be impossible now, so far have the two worlds diverged. Noel played jazz at every opportunity, organising big bands for which he wrote adventurous charts, writing pieces that involved string quartets and chamber groups playing alongside jazz musicians, playing in the bands of others and accompanying visiting international artists.

























(left to right - Keith Donald, Noel, Mike Nolan, John Wadham, Johnny Griffin, Ronnie Matthews, Frank Hess)

He also lead several small groups, one of which, The Noel Kelehan Quintet, became hugely influential on me around the time I got really serious about jazz in the late 70s. Noel’s quintet played in a hotel every Sunday night for over two years, and going to see them was like a pilgrimage for me. The music was hard bop and post hard bop (music by Horace Silver, Herbie Hancock, Miles etc. As well as Noel’s originals), and the band were great, with the rhythm section in particular, (which featured another international standard musician, the drummer John Wadham) being outstanding. This was for me the first chance to hear jazz being played live, week after week, at a very high standard, and it made a huge impression on me.

I don’t have any recordings of those gigs (unfortunately.....), but here is a trio version of "Gone With The Wind' recorded by me around that time, on one of the first recording Walkmans (remember those!?) which shows how Noel sounded in those days. On this gig he was battling with a cottage piano (even smaller than a normal upright), and playing in a bar, complete with casual conversations going on in the background. The music is compressed by the Walkman’s built-in mic, and the version you’ll be hearing has been transferred three times – but despite all this, you can still hear what a great swinging pianist Noel was, with a tremendous vocabulary. There are shades of Red Garland, Oscar Peterson and Bill Evans in there, but I would recognise Noel’s playing anywhere.......... He is accompanied by two stalwarts of the Irish scene of those days, the bassist Jimmy McKay and the drummer Peter Ainscough.

Gone With The Wind

It was around this time that I first began playing with Noel, and it was an education. It was an education trying to keep up with him. He was a very busy player – lots of notes and lots of chord substitutions, which would appear out of nowhere. Speaking as a bassist, unless you really paid attention, he could leave you for dead in a split second. But with Noel it wasn’t just teaching by musical example, he was also one of the few players of that era who would actually sit down and show you stuff if you asked him. Some of the other players took a delight in playing tunes you didn’t know and making you look foolish, but Noel never did anything malicious. He was always positive and supportive to me despite being light years ahead of me in knowledge and experience.

This musical and personal generosity was something he was renowned for, both in jazz and in his dealings with everyone. Here’s an example of it, and an hilarious moment of Irish musical history. The event is a ‘talent’ competition from 1961, in which the talent was so bad that the engineer in the studio decided to capture it for posterity. Noel was leading the backing trio, and in this track has to deal with the most incredible rendition of a maudlin Irish ballad in which ‘Mrs. Daly’ wanders through numerous keys, with the band in hot pursuit. It’s hilarious, but notice both how brilliant Noel is in following her harmonic trail, and how generous he is to the singer, trying to accompany and help her out as best he can.

Doonaree

And the generosity he displayed here is a recurring theme whenever musicians discuss Noel. When I was starting out trying to do some writing, Noel gave me several invaluable arranging lessons for which he refused to take any payment, a typical gesture on his part. And I also remember when I got my first orchestral music commission, the first thing I did was call Noel, plaintively asking for help. I’d taken the commission without having any experience of writing for an orchestra, and the euphoria having worn off, was faced with the reality of my situation. Noel, as always, helped enormously and I can still remember him saying “Number 1, don’t panic, and number 2, get a copy of ‘Orchestration’, by Gordon Jacob” - both great pieces of advice, the second of which undoubtedly saved my bacon, and I’ve used and recommended the Jacob book ever since.

Noel was a great musician, a pioneer for jazz in Ireland, a musical and personal example to younger musicians and when he became ill a few years ago it was a real blow to the scene here to have one of its real heavyweights sidelined like this. About a year ago he came to a gig I was playing with my group Trilogue – I caught sight of him out of the corner of my eye and felt the usual mixture of delight and nervousness that his presence at any of my gigs always brought on. We chatted afterwards and he was his usual generous and witty self, complimenting Izumi and Sarah and saying how much he enjoyed the music. As far as I know, it was the last gig he went to and I feel both sad about that, and privileged............

I remember seeing Noel play with Art Farmer and play an exquisite solo on ‘Blame It On My Youth’. At the end of the piece Art took the microphone and said ‘As it turned out, that tune featured Noel Kelehan on piano’, a generous and honest acknowledgement of a great musician by a great musician.

Here is Noel, as most of us here will remember him, burning through ‘This I Dig of You’ with Michael Buckley, Michael Coady on bass, and Peter Ainscough on drums. Michael’s solo is pretty savage too.... Yeah guys!

This I Dig Of You