Contemporary Music

Whenever I see those ‘best CDs of 2012’ lists that appear around this time of the year, it always reminds me of how much current music I don’t check out and how behind the curve I often am when it comes to the music that’s hot off the presses – or whatever the Mp3 equivalent of a press is.

There are a couple of reasons for my not being totally up to date – I think as you get older, your desire to hear every single new note coming out of the jazz scene becomes less strong. I’m still interested in new things, but not to the point of obsessively checking the jazz media to see what’s coming out, and who’s doing what. I used to be like that. Even in the pre-internet days when information was harder to come by, I was still absolutely up to date with what was going on.

I made it my business to know everything about everyone. I was hungry for the new – new influences, new techniques, new compositions, new genres. New was good. Now, although I’m still interested in new things, I’m also very interested in deepening my listening to music that I know, trying to glean more from that, explore its depths more. And I’m also interested in trying to deepen my own music, but not necessarily by constantly adding new things to it. Some of that is a byproduct of age – reflection is more a function of one's later years than one's callow youth.

Another reason I’m not so obsessed with checking out everything new is that I find myself a bit underwhelmed by a lot of the new music that seems to get the critics’ juices flowing these days. I find that a lot of the music that’s raved about – particularly music coming out of NY – is either complexity for complexity’s sake, or virtuoso mainstream music – music that idolizes soloists, (this is particularly true of the current crop of guitarists), for the speed they can play at, but ignores the fact that their music is essentially doing the same thing, (soloist with rhythm section, and solo following solo), as has been done for the past 60 years.

But every now and then I go on a trawl of recent music to see what I can find, and last week I hit pay dirt – three great recordings, all recently recorded, all quite different and yet all showing both personality and originality – particularly in composition.

All three recordings are connected in some way – all three feature alto saxophone and piano, two of the recordings share the same pianist, and two of them share the same altoist. 

Dave Binney

I should start with the oldest CD - Dave Binney's 'Third Occasion' which is not the prolific Binney's newest recording, (which I think might be the wonderful 'Graylen Epicenter', another recording which I've enjoyed very much). 'Third Occasion' is from 2009, but features many of the qualities that make Dave an important figure on the contemporary jazz scene. Although he's a virtuoso player in every sense of the word, his compositions are not just vehicles for his playing, but also form a vital part of what is clearly an overall musical concept rather than an instrumentally driven ethos. His music is not easy to play and often features complex rhythmic and harmonic structures, but he has a unique leaning, (in this very contemporary jazz setting), towards melodic hooks in his pieces that not only serve the music well, but are deeply attractive in their own right.

He has an ability to use simplicity to great effect - I'm always surprised by how much unison melodic writing there is in his pieces, even when there's more than one horn. Ones instinct when you've more than one melody instrument is to write contrapuntal lines, but Binney often eschews that and goes for repeated unison hooks that are almost anthemic at times.

Dave also has a great sense of the right collaborators for his music, and here with Craig Taborn, Scott Colley and Brian Blade he has chosen musicians which, like Dave, are all virtuosos but play for the good of, and from the inspiration of the music. This is not a playing by rote/soloist with rhythm section recording, it's a true collective, all playing for the good of the music and stepping out to make individual statements when called upon. I find Craig Taborn to be a particularly inspired choice as the pianist on this recording - he is a true individualist and his playing has a crystalline brilliance that really works well with the alto, creating a transparent sonority in the ensemble and brilliantly original solos. Check out "Squares and Palaces' as a great example of all the things I've mentioned.

Michael Formanek

Taborn's presence on the second recording I'd like to mention, Micheal Formanek's 'Small Places', also contributes in no small measure to the success of the music. Here Taborn's originality and control of sonority is captured beautifully by the ECM recording. Taborn is a true original, he is clearly a contemporary jazz pianist, yet he borrows none of the clothing of the usual modern jazz piano suspects - he is resolutely his own man, unpredictable and endlessly creative. He is getting a bit more credit for his brilliance these days, but I still think he is very underrated.

As is Michael Formanek. A real musician's musician and one of those 'super bassists' (like Drew Gress and John Hebert), who can really play anything, from very straight ahead to complex rhythmic music or completely open improvisation. But as if his versatility as a bassist wasn't enough, Formanek has always been a formidable composer. I've been listening to an old recording of his, 'Wide Open Spaces', for over 20 years. Small Places is his most recent album and again features wonderful writing - writing that suits the ensemble so well and sets them up for improvising. Again there is that crystalline alto with piano sound that I also remarked upon in Binney's recording, and some of this probably has to do with Taborn being on hand again. And once more the ECM recording with its molto-reverb policy, suits the music very well. Again this is music of complexity, and although it doesn't have the more conventionally melodic hooks of the Binney recording, it is often deeply attractive music, with an astringent lyricism. As it is with Dave's recording, there is never a dull moment here, since all of the players - Formanek, Taborn, Tim Berne and Gerald Cleaver - are great soloists and when you combine this with the very original writing, the interest never flags for a moment.

To hear what I'm talking about, have a listen here:

Tim Berne

Part of the fascination of Michael Formanek's album is hearing the very unique Tim Berne negotiating the harmonic landscapes of Formanek's music. Berne is a true original, with a sound all his own, and he has created music that is almost genre-specific to himself. He has almost created his own genre - something that only a very few can claim to have done. His playing owes almost nothing to the jazz mainstream, yet is clearly part of the jazz tradition. His music is acerbic, very rhythmic and has a concern with sonority that is all his own. I've been an admirer for along time and was looking forward to hearing this new band. What I wasn't expecting was how different this recording would be to what I'd known of Tim's music up to this point.

In a career liberally studded with unique recordings, this still qualifies as being pretty unique. It's almost like a chamber music recording - the instrumentation of alto, clarinet (Oscar Noriega), piano (Matt Mitchell), and drums/percussion (Ches Smith), gives it a lightness of sonority and clarity that took me completely by surprise. When I think of Tim's music I usually associate it with density and the gnarlier end of the spectrum when it comes to timbre. Here so much of the music has a transparency that is both refreshing and delightful. There's a brightness about the music that I believe is unprecedented in Tim's recorded output. There were hints of it in the past - I first noticed it on the coda to one piece on 'Science Friction' - but here it's given full reign and I've been listening to this music constantly since I bought this, amazed over and over by the sound of the music as well as the content.

What really strikes me about this recording is how European it sounds. I don't mean that as a criticism, or as a means of praise, just an observation. So much of this music has echoes of European art music in it. If someone had played me some of this music as a blindfold test, I would definitely have ventured that they were European musicians. At least up to the point where Tim took a solo - that would have been a give-away. As would the opening of 'Scanners' Both that composition (and Tim's soloing), are completely Berne-esque, and there's no mistaking the author of both alto sound and music. But there are other sections where the music has such overtones of European late 20th century art music, and also it has to be said, of European contemporary jazz of a certain stripe, (I'm not citing that as an influence, it probably just shows a common interest in similar musical idioms), that one could be forgiven for believing these musicians to be from the old rather than the new world.

But that observation aside, I must say I think this music is extraordinary. So original - there's a passage at around 5.25 of 'Simple City' that has a mesmerising harmonisation of the melody line - magical is not too strong a word to describe it. I love the ECM recording effect on Tim's sound too - he does have a very brawny sound and the ECM reverb takes some of the edge off that, which I think suits this music very well. I really regret missing the band when they were in Dublin last year - I hope to get to hear this amazing music live sometime. If only all through-composed contemporary music was as good as this..........

You can get a taste of the music here:

Three great musicians, three great bands, three great albums - although I don't follow everything that's going on as assiduously as I used to, it's so great and inspiring to come across wonderful music like this. Jazz is dead? Bullshit!

Here's Dave Binney with Taborn, Colley and Blade, live in Paris

How Does The Music Feel?

A friend of mine told me that at a recent jazz workshop, a very well known drummer said to him (concerning drum students attending the workshop), 'Man, all these guys can really play - and they all sound terrible!' A very funny remark, but with a huge truth contained inside it. As contemporary jazz grows ever more complex - especially in the field of rhythm - and as jazz schools raise the technical level of students to unprecedented heights, there is no doubt in my mind that we are often guilty of ignoring one of the most important elements of all music - its rhythmic feel.

By 'feel' in this context, I don't mean a generic feel as in 'swing feel' or 'Brazilian feel' or something like that, I mean the groove or the rhythmic centering of the music. I notice more and more that the idea of getting a good rhythmic feel - as opposed to playing accurately and in time no matter what the time signature - seems to be further and further down the agenda, if it's on the agenda at all. But the feel of music is incredibly important - it's arguably the most important thing, since it evokes an immediate response from the listener. And most listeners - which is something we musicians often forget - are not players. They're civilians, they're not in the jazz army and they don't care about the complexity (or lack of complexity) of music. They're there to listen and to experience, not to analyse. Most people couldn't care less whether you play in 15/8 and superimpose a 3 feel on top of that. That's the kind of detail that is only of interest to musicians.

Not that I've anything against complexity per se - I've spent a lot of my professional life playing complex music and spent countless hours trying to figure out how to do it and get better at it. I enjoy both simple music and complex music - to me it makes no difference what means you use to get to your message. As long as you actually have a message that is more than just the technique of the music. And there's the rub - I think there's a lot of music around that is solely about the techniques being used by the players, rather than having an overarching intent that is beyond the technique.

Of course this is an argument that has gone on forever in jazz - every generation of jazz musicians has accused the next generation of sacrificing feeling on the altar of technique. There's an element of circling the wagons about this kind of thinking, of protecting something - real or imagined - from the attacks of the avant garde. But this is not really where I'm coming from with this - it's more about the idea that no matter what form of rhythmic expression you choose, that it should feel good!

Feel good? What does that mean? Couldn't it be said to be subjective? Well, ultimately yes. But I do think the idea of something feeling good is not as abstract a concept as it might sound. What I mean by this is that the rhythm of the music should feel as if its coming from a central place, that it should have a weight, an internal energy a kind of groove template from which the music ultimately emanates. Without this central core the music just won't feel good - it may have a lot of detail to it, it may be technically adept and accurately in time, but it won't have that spark, that energy that carries the internal message of the music and that connects it to a tradition of some kind.

This word tradition is important here. Most rhythmic music is, or was at one time, connected to dance. Dance needs a rhythmic core that gives the fundamental energy to the dancers and around which all the music happens. There are so many examples of this - Afro-Cuban music, Belly Dance, Samba, Indian classical music, and of course at one point, jazz.

Jazz moved away from dance a long time ago, and indeed it's hard to make any case for jazz as a contemporary dance music after 1950, but the fact that jazz once was associated with dance has meant that the rhythmic impulse of jazz  always had a central core -  a groove - around which the music moved, and from which the music emanated, no matter how active and complex the music that whirled around this central core was. Despite jazz losing its direct connection to dance, and the rhythmic physicality of playing for dancers, the ghost of the the dance has always been there. This is the 'feel' which I'm talking about when I say that the music should feel good.

It seems to me now that this connection between feel and the music is often lost. Perhaps in chronological terms, the music has moved so far away from its dance origins that the physicality of the rhythm of jazz is something that is being forgotten or buried under the detail of an often complex music. Which would not just be a pity, but would also be dangerous waters for the music to sail into. Jazz has a hard time in the market place these days (or what remains of the market place...), and the permanent removal of a rhythmic feel good factor, would be a tragic loss for the music.

Because this rhythmic feel good factor is part of the music's history and tradition. The ingenious rhythmic placement of Armstrong's lines, Basie's rhythm section, Bird's rhythmic power, Blakey and the Messengers, Miles phrasing, Miles' various rhythm sections, the Coltrane Quartet, Monk, the Mahavishnu Orchestra, Headhunters, Weather Report, Wynton's first quintet, Steve Coleman and Five Elements, Wayne Shorter's current quartet, Brad Mehldau. The music of all of these players and bands, despite their often widely different styles and different eras from which they come, exhibit the rhythmic impulse that I'm talking about - a connection to groove and rhythmic physicality around which the rest of their music is formed.

I'm missing that rhythmic and groove impulse in a lot of the music I'm hearing recently. Drummers are hyper-active but often without a foundation - all that clattering piccolo snare drum stuff, fill after fill without any room for an underlying groove to make its presence felt. Bassists playing without connecting with the drummer, pianists and guitarists comping without rhythmically interacting with either bassist or drummer... Soloists with lots of notes but not really locking into the rhythm and the time. Generic grooves played without any understanding of the tradition and impulse from which they originated.

Musicians need to check out the fundamentals of the music and the history of the music. Anyone serious about playing jazz must study the rhythm and the rhythmic impulse of the music, and in particular they should study the feel of the music. Listen to this aspect of the music of the great players past and present and try and identify the rhythmic DNA that circulates through all of their music, giving it its rhythmic strength and feelgood factor. To all serious musicians - don't just ask yourself how your music sounds - how does it feel?

Here are three examples of rhythmically powerful pieces of music, all very different, all of which have a great rhythmic feel at the core of the music.

Wayne Shorter's Quartet - abstract and impressionistic yet rooted




Here's Herbie Hancock, Dave Holland and Jack DeJohnette swinging mightily while playing both complex harmony and rhythm




Steve Coleman and 5 Elements connecting complex harmony with interlocking odd metre funk

Tasteful? What's in a Word?

I just read a review of an album in which the critic described the rhythm section's playing as 'tasteful' I really hate when critics use that description of someone's playing, because to me it denotes several things.

First of all, when the word tasteful is used to describe the playing of the rhythm section, either individually or collectively, it tells me that the writer probably has no idea what to say about the them, and probably doesn't have enough knowledge of the intricacies of rhythm section playing to venture anything other than this bland phrase. It's a cop-out on the writer's part - a one-size-fits-all phrase to use when you've no idea how to differentiate the playing of one rhythm section player from another. It also implies an under-appreciation of how important the rhythm section is - the kind of writer who will  apply the 'tasteful' soubriquet to the rhythm section will usually have written extensively about the soloists in previous paragraphs and then, feeling they have to say something about the rhythm section, will describe their playing as tasteful. It's the same kind of lazy writing that trots out cliches like 'getting up close and personal with......' to describe an interview with someone.

If the rhythm section have had the good manners not to distract the writer from listening to the soloists, whom (ahem), after all are the most important members of any group, the critic will describe them as tasteful. Which brings me to my second point.

'Tasteful' can often be freely substituted by the word bland..... The kind of rhythm sections that are described as tasteful often are units that plod along, playing the right changes, keeping the time in an efficient way, doing nothing to frighten the horses. They have no identity and fulfill a function - they don't get in the way. Like good children, they are seen and not heard. Anonymous. In short, they are a terrible rhythm section. A rhythm section should always be adding to the music, not staying out of the way of it. This doesn't meant that they have to be incredibly active all the time in terms of amount of notes played (it depends on the context), but it does mean that whatever they're doing should be vital to the sound of the band, to the energy of the rhythm, to the forward motion of the music. It should be vital, not tasteful.

If a critic says that a rhythm section is 'tasteful' it usually means one of three things: 1) The critic has no idea about rhythm sections, how they work, or what to say about them. 2) The critic likes his or her rhythm sections to be of the 'seen and not heard/servant of soloists/Bebopper's Labourer kind. Or 3) The rhythm section is crap.

A final point in this mini-rant. What does 'tasteful' even mean in this context? Does it mean played with good taste? A subjective judgement if ever there was one...... Does it mean polite and well mannered? Or does it mean, appropriate to the music? For my money, the latter is the true definition of tastefulness. If a musician is playing in a way that is apposite to the requirements of the music he or she is being tasteful. Elvin Jones, rampaging through 'Transition' with Coltrane is the epitome of tasteful playing. Ron Carter, rhythmically and harmonically nudging and bossing Miles' band is tastefulness personified. Monk's comping behind Coltrane is an object lesson in good taste. Good taste is about doing the right thing in any musical situation, it is not necessarily only about being polite and self-effacing.

Poor Bill Evans is always burdened with that cliche by critics who see things in a very simplistic way. Because his music is lyrical and often on the quieter end of the dynamic spectrum, his playing is often thought to be 'tasteful' in the same way that a restaurant pianist's playing could be described as being tasteful. Quiet, not getting in the way, not drawing attention to itself. Well mannered. This does such a disservice to the depth and complexity of Evans' playing. Whenever I see a critic describe Evans' music as tasteful, I just can't take anything else they say seriously. This is a surface listener, a lazy writer, someone who really doesn't have the equipment to talk about the music in any depth.

If you are a jazz writer, please don't use this vapid cliche when describing someone's playing - do a bit of research instead, listen a little harder, tell us something worth knowing about the music you're describing instead of giving us some bland bromide that fulfills your word count but means nothing. 

In my opinion, describing someone's playing as tasteful is in the worst possible taste..........

Chin43: Dwoogie "Babble Off"

Chinstrap are delighted to present "Babble Off", 11 nuggets of gold from the vaults of the marvellous gentleman who goes by the name of Dwoogie, made between 2000-2003. It is an album for an extremely decadent electronic party at the apocalypse. Frantic rhythms and a reservoir of textures fly about like pinballs, competing for space with unforgettable melodic hooks, revealing a wild clatter of twenty-thousand stocks of kitchenware thrown down a vast staircase into a digital abyss from which delicious popgasmic flowers bloom. 



This release comes with artwork designed by another prime slice of gent, the great Oblivian Substanshall.

And direct from Kraków via Dwoogie mail come the following safety announcements...

1. Bloo. The title came from bluegrass, as I wanted to make as stupid a bluegrass piece as I could. Reckon it worked, personally.

2. Bieszczady. A region of Poland in the very southeastern corner. The oldest people who live there have been inhabitants of 5 countries during their lifetimes without moving house. The area was depopulated of its local minority inhabitants in a murderous campaign by the Polish authorities. It’s still mostly empty. I like it.

3. Fox On The Run. Play on words. The original “Fox On The Run” was by The Sweet, of course. But that’s irrelevant. The voice you hear on the track is Polish newsreader and now editor of Polish Newsweek, Tomasz Lis. Lis is the Polish word for “fox”. In the extracts you hear, Lis is cursing like a soldier, on mic, about how fucking shit a particular news item is. “Kurwa” is the Polish equivalent of “fuck”. It appears frequently on this track.

4. Last Train to Bemblow. “Bemblow” is a very poor transliteration of Polish “Bębło”, which is a village outside Kraków. My ex used to work there. It hasn’t got a rail link, but the track sounds trainy, so there you are.

5. Diana’s Chauffeur. An aural representation of what driving into a tunnel at 100mph might sound like.

6. Touch. Just a silly piece of scrap. No idea where the “Can I touch it?” sample came from.

7. The Last Snowman. This was written around one Christmas, when I sent it to members of my family as a present. The title is designed to mislead. It has nothing to do with winter. It’s a direct translation of the Polish epithet “ostatni bałwan”, which means something like “total idiot”. This may change your view of the song. It may not. Who cares anyway?

8. Soukup in Babylon. Named after a crazy Czech bus driver I came across outside Plzeń – one Pavel Soukup. We were staying at a campsite called, for reasons unknown, Babylon. That’s the title of the track. “Babble Off” is also a reference to this stay.

9. United State. At the time this track was being written I was working on a grammatical analysis of a foreigner learner’s English. In certain contexts, they said “United State” rather than “United States”. It was my job to find out what those contexts were. An interesting task, surprisingly enough. Unlike this note.

10. Mood. I found an online version of Frank Herbert reading “Dune”. A book I enjoyed very much as a teenager. The section I used for the recording is about Paul Atreides being trained by his weapons master Gurney Halleck. “Mood” is not important in this context.

11. Smackin’. Who doesn’t like “Smoke On The Water”? Well, me, for one, so I did a version with the stupidest sounding synths I could find. Incidentally the increasingly loud drone in the first section is a sample of King Crimson’s “Elephant Talk” slowed down and played backwards.

On The Road with Pekka - Part 1, Europe

In October and November of this year I took part in a two-legged tour with the great Finnish alto player Pekka Pylkkanen and as part of his Global Unit group. The first part of the tour took place in France and Switzerland, the second leg in Japan. I've played in this group in the past and it's always fun, being made up of great musicians from different parts of the world (hence the name). For the European leg the other musicians, apart from Pekka and myself, were the American pianist Greg Burk and the Brazilian drummer Carlos Ezequiel. Both wonderful musicians, I've played with them both before in Pekka's group, and with Carlos in several other configurations, including a memorable trip to India earlier this year.

My trip began as so many do, with having to get up at 4am (bleh.....) to catch the red-eye to Geneva, and from there to Basel where we were playing two nights at a wonderful club, The Bird's Eye. We were also going to do some live recording, some recording during the day, and combine that with a studio recording at the end of the week in France. A lot of people don't realise what musicians have to do on the road sometimes - in this case, we had four musicians who have come from four different countries, travelled long distances, went straight into rehearsal, put two sets of music together in 90 minutes, soundchecked, ate quickly and then played two sets of music. And some people think being on the road is glamorous!

Considering how little time we had and how tired he were, we played some very good music - a mixture of originals by Pekka, Carlos, Greg and I, and a few arrangements of jazz standards. But the extremely long day kicked in, and I definitely hit the wall half way through the second set - got totally exhausted and had to dig deep to keep my concentration and play competently at least for the last few tunes.

But a good night's rest will do wonders, and the next night was much better - the band sounded better and we were starting to get a real grip on the music. The result of getting to know your material in jazz is always one of creating a feeling of both tightness and looseness - tightness in that the written and composed material is played better, and looseness in the sense of a feeling of freedom within the material that comes from having confidence in knowing that material well. We got into some good energy and the audience responded warmly - it all boded well for the next day's recording.

And the recording the next day was indeed a good one - it was nice to record on stage rather than in the often sterile environment of the studio. And since we'd played the music the previous two nights we had the cushion of both being comfortable with the material and the recording environment, which is a real bonus. We recorded pretty much all our material and then recorded a bunch of improvised short vignettes - pieces improvised on the spot, each one started by a different member of the band. I've always liked doing this - these pieces can often reveal aspects of the band that are not evident in the written material. I haven't listened back to the material yet, but I'm looking forward to hearing these pieces - I think we did some really nice ones!

Recording finished, we headed to Basel airport (which must be the only airport in the world that straddles the border of two countries......), hired a car and drove into France. We headed for Metz to stay overnight, and on the drive there got into some lengthy discussions of politics and economics and the current political/financial situation. Jazz musicians should really record these on-the-road conversations - on this trip we pretty much solved all the world's problems - who needs politicians and economists when you have a jazz quartet to sort everything out!?

(Metz Cathedral)

We had some time off the next morning before heading to Fontainebleu, so Greg and I took a look around Metz, an interesting town that shows both German and French influences. The Cathedral is renowned and when you step inside you can see why - it's a vast Gothic construct with a soaring ceiling and featuring beautiful stained glass windows by Chagall. The size of it and the fact that people have prayed there since the 5th Century gives even an atheist like me an idea of the power religion has had on the minds of people over the centuries.

And the power that good food has on me in France should not be underestimated either - having basked in the glory of Medieval religion, it was time for Greg and I to bask in the glory of local French food, at a local market and to eat a simple but great lunch at a famous soup counter in the market, beside the cathedral. I partook in the delicacy of Boudin Noir with apples (an acquired taste perhaps, but one I acquired a long time ago, raised as I was on Black Pudding - the irish equivalent), while Greg had some fantastic slow-baked lamb. French food is often thought of as fancy and chef-y, but regional French food tends to be both simple and delicious.

And the food theme continued as we headed off for Fontainebleu to play the next gig - at a jazz club that is owned by and is an annexe to a Moroccan restaurant. The R-Jazz Club is a cosy little club and the owner and his family are lovely people - genuine enthusiasts who love the music and their club. It was really a pleasure to play for them, and also a pleasure to eat the wonderful food they provided for us before and after the gig - all jazz club gigs should be like this!

(Gourmet Market - Milly La-Foret)

We stayed the night at a small hotel in the nearby town of Milly La-Foret, a small quiet place that sports a gourmet market (more food!) on Saturday mornings. All kinds of artisan products were on display and the market demonstrated again the importance the French place on food - if only all countries were the same in this regard.......

And then it was off to another small town - Dammarie-Lès-Lys

 (Pekka and Carlos at the studio)

We were recording in a studio in the engineer’s home – I like these kinds of environments, again they’re a bit different to the airless bunkers that often constitute studios these days. The engineer’s house was in a small town in the countryside and the whole scene was pleasant and conducive to relaxed but concentrated work. Where else but France could you take a break and have a lunch of Confit Duck in a local restaurant? We got all the tracks recorded that we hadn’t managed to get to in Basel, and we re-recorded a couple of others, and then we headed for Dammarie-Lès-Lys where we would be staying for the next few nights.

Dammerie is close to Paris, and we had a day off the next day so it was a foregone conclusion that we would head into town at some point. And what a perfect day for a trip to Paris it was! A beautiful late Autumn day, bright sunshine – it was almost like being on the film set of one of those Hymn-to-Paris movies that Woody Allen makes. Carlos and Greg went in earlier and went around the Louvre, (Carlos commented that his smile is more mysterious than that of La Giaconda – see below and decide for yourself….), Pekka and I headed in during the late afternoon and we met up with the guys, walked around in the sunshine along the Seine, and had a delicious and very good value dinner in a great traditional Bistro, before heading back to our hotel in Dammarie. Sometimes being a musician IS glamorous! Or at least lots of fun………

(Carlos enters a smiling competition with the Mona Lisa)

The reason we were in Dammerie was because of its proximity to CMDL – the school of Didier Lockwood, where we did a combined workshop and concert performance. The school is in a lovely setting and has a student body of around 100, which is a perfect size in my opinion – big enough to be interesting, but not too big to become impersonal. I got together with the bassists, and we discussed various bass related issues, but also musical issues in the wider sense. When you get together with a group of students whom you haven’t met before, and you only have an hour, it’s hard to get into much concrete information, since by the time you know what it is they wish to work on with you, the time is almost up. But they were a very receptive group, we managed to get into some interesting stuff, and a good time was had by all.

After the workshop we played a concert for the students for about an hour – really fun, because at this point we really knew the music and were able to get into it immediately and explore it more fully at the same time. This was our last gig on this leg of the tour, so it had the usual bittersweet flavor that these last gigs on tours always have.

To give you an idea of some of the music we played, here's a recording of a piece of mine called 'Traditional', recorded live at the Bird's Eye club on the second night of the tour.

 

(Greg, Pekka, Carlos and I, outside the Bird's Eye Club in Basel)

 So that was that – some travelling, lots of music, lots of new music recorded, and lots of good food! I left the next morning to go back to Dublin to change my clothes re-pack my bags, and head off for the second leg of the tour – Japan!

Chinmix 04 - Simon "Robodub" Mathewson mashes the Chinstrap Back Catalogue

A delicious mash-up of the Chinstrap Back Catalogue by Simon Mathewson, the cheeky chappie behind the recent ROBODUB release.

Judgement! Competitions, Critics and the Jazz Meritocracy

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There’s been a lot of judging or discussions of judging in the online jazz world recently.

Ethan Iverson started one of the balls rolling with his questioning of the value and artistic merit of jazz competitions. This was prompted by the announcement of the impending Thelonious Monk competition, which this year focused on drums. The competition was subsequently won by Jamison Ross . People weighed in with varied opinions which ranged from outright support to outright opposition.

Then in another dust-up, the very strange jazz critic Brent Black launched an attack on George Colligan, ludicrously dismissing him as ‘second rate’. Needless to say this triggered an outpouring of scorn for Black’s opinion, and Black did himself no favours with a bitter, mean-spirited and puzzling tirade directed at Colligan’s gracious response.

And finally the Canadian pianist  Andrew Boniwell responded to Peter Hum’s review of his new recording with what might be best described as icy fury.

All of which made me think about this whole issue of our being judged by others, and indeed judging others ourselves. To what extent does the judgment of critics have an effect on musicians? What effect does winning a competition have? Or what effect does losing a competition have?

Seventeen years ago I was a  competition winner myself - the 1996 Julius Hemphill Composition Competition for this piece:

I must say I didn’t benefit immediately from winning, though it has to be said that competition was very small compared to the Monk Competition. Nor was it a stressful event for me, since there was no performance element involved, and no jury to look at out of the corner of my eye as I played. What winning did do for me was to give me a lot of confidence as a composer, and there’s no doubt that this kind of public approval of your work can have a very positive effect on you. On the other hand, If I hadn’t won it I don’t think I’d have been discouraged – I didn’t expect to win, and no-one was more surprised than me when I did.

But Ethan’s main point was whether such a competition would encourage individuality, or whether it would have the opposite effect, rewarding whoever was closest to the mainstream. The question is sometimes asked whether Monk could have even got into the final of the competition named after him? There's no doubt that if you have a panel of six judges, the winner will have to not only impress as many of them as possible, but also do whatever he or she can to alienate as few of them as possible. The more personal and idiosyncratic a performer is, the more likely they are to polarize the jury. There have been many famous cases of this in the classical world, the most celebrated of these being the Chopin competition of 1980 where Ivo Pogorelich, (a performer for whom the word idiosyncratic could have been coined), was eliminated in the third round, despite Martha Argerich calling him a genius. I have a feeling that a performer like Monk - a guy whose playing very much flew in the face of the prevailing pianistic orthodoxy of the day - would have had an equally polarizing effect on a jazz piano jury......

There's no doubt that in these difficult days for jazz musicians, anything that can help you to raise your profile is welcome, and winning something like the Monk competition is about as high-profile as it gets for jazz competitions. No doubt winning this competition will help Jamison Ross, but looking at his profile and bio, it's clear that he was already on his way - as were the 2nd and 3rd prizewinners, which confirms for me what I've believed for a long time - jazz is a meritocracy and always has been.

It's also a marathon rather than a sprint, and though something like winning a competition or getting a gig with a famous bandleader will definitely help, in the end it's the work you produce over a long period of time that will ultimately decide whether you succeed or fail. There are many examples of players who got a lot of press and attention at one time, maybe even a major record deal, and yet are hardly remembered these days. And I believe that this is because they ultimately didn't have something that could be sustained over a long period of time. They undoubtedly had some aspect of their music that was attractive for a while, (at least to the jazz media), but in the final shake-up it wasn't sustainable and didn't develop, and their star waned as a consequence of that. Jazz is quite Darwinistic in this sense and I think this is a good thing.

Jazz musicians have to deal with a lot of unfairness - the dice is loaded against them in so many ways - but within the jazz community I think, over a period of time, musicians achieve the status they deserve. I believe that if  you are a really great player, and you have something original and personal to offer, then sooner or later you will get recognition for that. 

Often you hear a story about this or that guy being a great player but never getting recognition, but as a general rule I don't buy it. If there's a truly great player who's not working, there's usually a reason for it - they're alcoholics, or junkies, or socially impossible, or difficult to deal with, or completely flaky, or recluses, or cripplingly shy, or something along those lines. I've yet to meet a truly great player who takes care of business but who's sitting at home forlornly waiting for the phone to ring........ 

Maybe New York is an exception to that rule, in that there are just too many musicians there, so someone can indeed be a great player but struggle to get recognition among the jostling crowds of other great players. But NY is different - a once a year gig at Small's under your own name and a 'tour' of Europe consisting of 6 gigs counts as being a success for a lot of people there.

But even in NY you can make a career for yourself if you're talented enough and have something to offer over the long term. In this way jazz hasn't changed - ultimately what's going to decide your status is your own playing. If you're a great player, you're immune from the slings and arrows of outrageous critics like Brent Black. His attack on George Colligan is toothless because Colligan's career demonstrates more than words ever can, the stupidity of Black's opinions. Someone who has played with a who's-who of contemporary jazz, including being a current band member of Jack DeJohnette's band has the ultimate imprimatur of the jazz world. His work and success is the the proof of his quality - this is the final arbiter of his quality and nothing that Brent Black can say can alter that. 

And jazz has always been like that and even though the jam sessions, that for many years were the proving grounds of aspirant jazz musicians, have ceded their Gladiatorial position as arbiters of musical ability, it's still true to say that the opinion of your peers is the one that is most important. Play well and you will eventually get the attention of established players, play with them and you will get the attention of the public and the media. I've lost count of how many times I first heard hitherto unknown (at least to me), great players when I went to see a band led by someone of real status - Mulgrew Miller with Woody Shaw, Terence Blanchard with Art Blakey, Gabriele Mirabassi with Rabih-Abou Khalil etc.

Yes it's nice to get a good review, yes it would be useful to be on the cover of Downbeat, yes it would be very helpful to win a major jazz competition. But ultimately what a jazz musician needs in order to succeed over the long term is the approval and admiration of his or her peers. Jazz has always been a meritocracy and it still is one. Competitions and critics may come and go, and you (or media admirers of yours) may talk a good game, but eventually you're going to have to shut up and show everyone the music. And thank heavens for that.