Tag: improvisation

Shifted Cliques

Posted on April 27, 2012 by - Columns

When I began this protracted discussion about cliques back in March, I had a specific goal in mind: to describe American music as part-and-parcel of the many sociopolitical echelons that comprise America as a distinct cultural entity. I now see that musical cliques have an amorphous quality that makes them, much like American music as a whole, difficult to pin down. While I try to focus on improvised (American) music in my posts as a stand-alone phenomenon practiced by a dedicated and rather large clique, the truth of the matter is that very little music is entirely improvised, yet most music includes a certain amount of improvisation. To further confuse matters, some of the most memorable creations by improvising musicians were mostly composed (Louis Armstrong’s “Cornet Chop Suey”) while some of the best-known compositions were mostly improvised (Count Basie’s “One O’ Clock Jump”). Take that a step farther and you have the related philosophical tenets that the best improvised music sounds composed and the best composed music sounds improvised! The reason the blog focuses on jazz so much is that, of all of the musical genres that are distinctly American, jazz is the one that incorporates improvisation the most, with the arguable exception of Latin American music. This, of course, starts a slippery discussion of how to define “American” when referring to “American music.” One of the things I love about NewMusicBox is that we try to use as broad a definition as possible, so that music performed in America can be included.

As I mentioned in the above-linked entry, jazz, as a recorded music, will very soon be a century old. On February 17, 1917, the Original Dixieland ‘Jass’ Band recorded two songs for the Victor Talking Machine Company, “Dixie Jass Band One Step” (introducing “That Teasin’ Rag”) and “Livery Stable Blues.” According to a currently accepted historical timeline, Victor originally offered trumpeter Freddie Keppard an opportunity to record with his Original Creole Orchestra in 1915. The group, also called The Creole Band, was co-led by bassist Bill Johnson and was engaged in a four-year tour of the vaudeville circuit. Keppard was considered to be New Orleans’s top cornetist (filling the slot left by the retirement of Buddy Bolden), but had moved to Los Angeles to join the Creole Band after King Oliver had “cut” him for the title in 1914. Keppard turned down Victor’s offer, ostensibly because he was concerned that others might “steal his stuff” and because the fee offered by the Company was much lower than he was used to getting for playing the vaudeville circuit (that the Victor Company also wanted the group to make a test recording for no money may have also been a significant factor). Things might be very different today if the Creole Band had accepted the offer. For one thing, the music being discussed might not be called “jazz,” since the word was mostly used as a sports terms, specifically in baseball.

The personnel of the Original Dixieland Jazz Band (they eventually respelled their name) consisted of: Nick LaRocca, trumpet; Larry Shields, clarinet; Eddie Edwards, trombone; Henry Ragas, piano; and Tony Spargo on drums. Spargo’s (his real name was Antonio Sparbaro) drum set employed a large bass drum (played with the butt of his right-hand drum stick), a snare drum, a “Chinese tom-tom,” a wood block, a cowbell, and a single suspended cymbal. While the drum set used was fairly standard for the time (and deserves more study as a truly American instrument), what has made the ODJB controversial is that the group was not made up of black or Creole musicians. LaRocca, Spargo, and Ragas were from families of Italian immigrants, Shields was from an Irish family, and I have yet to learn of Edwards’s nationality. Whether or not this began the long-standing argument over supra-cultural appropriation of African American music, it is part of its ubiquitous presence in the history of jazz. One of the things that strikes me about this is that, at the time, Italian and Irish Americans were not considered to be white, so, strictly speaking, the OJDB was not an example of supra-cultural appropriation—although LaRocca, in his later years and long after Italian Americans had become “officially” white, argued that African Americans had little or nothing to do with the origins and early development of jazz, apparently thinking that the idea of jazz having African socio-musical elements was part of a Communist plot to mix races in the South. This is an example of how musical cliques can be detrimental to society at large. Anyone who believes that African Americans played no part in the development of American music is just being silly. It’s like ignoring the input from Native Americans like Jack Teagarden, Max Roach, Oscar Pettiford, Mildred Bailey, Russell Moore, Kay Starr, or Jim Pepper.

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I received a comment on my post last week that inquired as to whether I consider “a living oral tradition to be a clique.” I neglected to address that in my direct response but would like to consider the query here. While, certainly, a group of individuals who participate in a specific oral tradition can be considered a clique (since they can make up an exclusive circle of persons held together by a common interest), I don’t see the oral tradition per se as much of a clique but more as a method for disseminating information about the clique concerned. And, while I still haven’t read Performing Music in the Age of Recording, I think I will, for the time being, disagree with the premise that the body of recorded music serves more as evidence for a “shift in attitudes toward the musical past.” The example of Louis Armstrong’s filing his almost note-for-note performance of “Cornet Chop Suey” two years before he recorded it is a blatant example of how a recorded performance, commonly understood as improvised, was proved vis-à-vis academic-style research to be through composed. It was the research that provides the shift. In reality, it is understood by many of those who learned to play jazz by oral tradition that much of what is assumed by the general public to be improvised is actually pre-composed. But what I wonder is how technology dovetails with the oral tradition. When a master musician gives lessons by using recorded media (cassette tapes, CDs, video tapes), is this part of an oral tradition? How about our blogging at NewMusicBox?

More on Cliques

Posted on April 13, 2012 by - Columns

I was recently at a rehearsal hosted by someone who, although a very good musician, is probably not very confident about improvising music. What led me to that conclusion was a piece of paper tacked to the wall above the piano titled “10 Steps for Practicing Improvisation.” I’m not sure if it was because playing improvised music makes up the greatest part of my professional life or that I’m conditioned to read anything posted on a wall with the word “steps” in it, but it caught my eye and I gave the note a bit more of my attention than the family pictures and postcard-size concert announcements that surrounded it.

The first thing that ran through my mind was something like, “You can’t practice improvising; you’re either improvising or you’re not,” which is pretty much what my colleagues said when I told them about it (although, to be fair, I only spoke to three). We then began rehearsing the music, comprised largely of standards from the Great American Songbook. But one tune, “Little B’s Poem” by Bobby Hutcherson, is not in the GAS, but is well known among various cliques of jazz musicians. I’ve been familiar with the tune since 1974, the year I worked for Hutcherson, so I, naturally, thought I had a “leg up” when we began rehearsing it. We ran through the chart that the singer had written out, and when we were done I pointed out that I thought some of the chart’s chords were different. I was told not to worry; that another bassist had taken the liberty of rewriting the chart with what he thought was the correct chord progression. I know the bassist and believe that I would probably agree with his version, but the singer said that the changes on the chart sounded better and I should play them.

It’s a fact that one of the ways that jazz musicians grow their craft, personally and as a community, is to reharmonize chord progressions on well-known tunes. The chord progression to George Gershwin’s warhorse, “I Got Rhythm,” has not just been used as the underpinning for thousands of melodies, but has also been reharmonized in hundreds of ways. Sometimes these reharmonizations can sound like they belong to another song entirely—something that composer, pianist, and lyricist David Lahm is known for among the clique of cabaret singers and jazz musicians (including David Baker and Randy Brecker)—and sometimes they sound just as good (or better) than the original progressions. (I learned the Bill Evans composition “Time Remembered” from pianist Kenny Werner, who had not only performed a subtle reharmonization, but added measures to the piece. Now it’s hard for me to play it the way it was originally written!) So we rehearsed it again, only this time the pianist and I took turns soloing. Because the chords were so different from the ones I remembered, I found myself asking to try soloing over them again, to familiarize myself with the voice leading—in short, I wanted to practice improvising!

Since then I’ve taken my pick-and-axe and gone spelunking down the memory hole to reexamine my own practice habits and have realized that I spend a lot of time practicing improvising. I’m sure that most improvisers do, but don’t display the knee-jerk reaction to seeing how someone else might organize their approach to practicing the technique. Maybe it was the idea of using “steps” for practicing it that bothered me, since I don’t really look at improvisation as something I can practice by degree, or something to be worked up to. I still hold to the tenet that you’re either improvising or not, and that it’s the details that are practiced (negotiating formal considerations and working on technical issues) and not the concept of improvisation. I think that’s what it boils down to, that improvisation takes one outside of the rules. The stronger one’s need to codify what one does while improvising, the less able one is to improvise effectively.

For instance, the piece of paper on the singer’s wall first suggests one practice long notes. No indication of which notes or how long they should be, just long notes. This is what most musicians do to warm up, whether they improvise or not. The rest of the sheet has become a blur, but it pretty much went on in the same vein, practicing the basics of good musical technique. The first time I saw saxophonist Joe Henderson conduct a clinic, he expressed a similar philosophy by stressing that the things he practiced the most were scales and arpeggios. The next thing he stressed was getting together with other musicians and learning solos from recordings. It’s important to note that these practicing suggestions are about technical facility and musical vernacular. Improvisation, per se, wasn’t discussed much. I would compare this with another musician’s “10 steps to Improvisation,” which has the student first just play the melody of a song, and then continually embellish it until it is no longer heard. This “tier-based” approach might lead one to think that there are levels of achievement in “real” improvisation. While the philosophy of learning the melody of a song before improvising on it makes excellent sense for an aesthetic approach to improvisation, it doesn’t acknowledge the existence of free improvisation, which is becoming an essential part of the American musical paradigm.

Looking at Henderson’s clinical discourse, the idea of belonging to a musical clique is given pedagogical weight. The idea is that improvisation is practiced at sessions while individual practice is for mastering the elements that one brings to the session. The clique was where decisions regarding the canon of the genre were established and what was learned were the musical standards that sold records. However, cliques are factions and factionalism can be detrimental to musical learning. There is, for instance, a clique of improvising musicians who look to a certain individual who codified a pedagogical methodology for jazz instruction in the 1940s. This individual was an excellent musician but was not accepted by the greater jazz community, especially during the 1960s and 1970s. As a result, many of this clique’s elder statesmen have declared a war on various artists who achieved greater success, one example being saxophonist and composer John Coltrane. While one might argue that they don’t like certain aspects of Coltrane’s playing (too many notes, too edgy a sound, etc.), his influence on American music has been profound—music before John Coltrane is very different from music after him. He left his mark on our nation’s consciousness largely by setting a standard of technical mastery that is, arguably, yet to be matched. But, in large part because of the effectiveness of what I’ll call the “non-Coltrane” clique’s pedagogical methods, there are potentially great players who eschew learning the music of John Coltrane and, thus, doggedly employ a sub-standard technique.

To be continued…

Now Hear This: The Nick Mazzarella Trio

Posted on March 30, 2012 by - Field Reports, Headlines

Nick Mazzarella Trio

Nick Mazzarella Trio: Mazzarella (alto saxophone); Anton Hatwich (bass); Frank Rosaly (drums)

To hear Nick Mazzarella play the alto saxophone is to hear a well-honed connection between his creative impulse and the horn that becomes an extension of his musical identity.  It is a creative instinct steeped in jazz history and brimming over with a passion for free improvisation.  In Chicago’s community of aggressively original talent and dedicated musicianship, his ability stands out. His trio has become an important vehicle for realizing his musical ideas, and it has become a significant presence in the local jazz circuit.

The Nick Mazzarella Trio performs often in Chicago and has achieved a rare level of near telepathic interplay between three deeply accomplished musicians that translates into sets where the trio simmers and frequently catches fire.

Nick Mazzarella’s alto saxophone playing consistently takes on the vocal and intervallic qualities of Ornette Coleman in ways that are startling when performing with his trio.  His music is not an emulation of the free jazz master as much as it is an ability to channel the energy and magnetic excitement that was present with Coleman’s trios in the 1960s,  a comparison completed by the harmolodic interplay between Anton Hatwich on bass and Frank Rosaly on drums.  It’s an influence that Mazzarella acknowledges via email correspondence:

What I find inspiring about Ornette is his genuine creative impulse. He arrived on the scene with a fully formed concept that was innovative and completely honest, playing the way he did because that was just how he heard music. The integrity of that approach, let alone the nature of the content of his art, is something I think all creative people aspire towards in some way. I’m influenced by Ornette as a saxophone player and an improviser coming from the jazz tradition, but I’m not really interested in sounding just like him or recreating what he’s already done. The truth Ornette’s sound and concept represents to me has helped me to identify what’s true within myself. If my music bears some resemblance to Ornette’s for some people, I think it can be attributed to my working through these external truths that have validated and unlocked some internal ones that are distinctly mine. As time goes on, I hear myself developing my own style, and the process of working on music like this is a lifelong pursuit.

Mazzarella has managed to make his way into the heart of that tradition and found plenty of room to develop his own identity as an up-and-coming jazz musician.  While the roots in Coleman’s music are strong, Mazzarella also cites Eric Dolphy, Henry Threadgill, Julius Hemphill, and John Coltrane as equally significant influences.  These aren’t just names for Mazzarella: the resonance with this tradition is tangible in his music.  His performances frequently draw upon the sonic language of these composers while offering an evolutionary counterpoint to the free jazz movement of the 1960s.  It is possible to close one’s eyes during a live Mazzarella performance and be transported to the same energetic sound that marked Henry Threadgill’s Air trio.  His resonance with Eric Dolphy’s harmonic approach is striking.  His ability to aurally reference these giants without laboring to emulate them is what sets him apart.  This is a living tradition and he is breathing fire into it.

Nick Mazzarella Trio

Nick Mazzarella Trio: Mazzarella (alto saxophone); Anton Hatwich (bass); Frank Rosaly (drums)

Mazzarella earned his master’s in jazz composition at DePaul University in 2009, though he brings an approach to composition that transcends his academic bona fides.  He primarily composes the music for his trio on the saxophone and occasionally at the piano, working out rough sketches and refining ideas while also leaving space for ideas to flow when they require less “working out.”  He then takes relatively fixed versions of his pieces to the trio and further refines his ideas through rehearsal, often relying on the group’s collective sensibility.

“I asked these particular people to be in my band because I want them to sound like themselves,” Mazzarella explains, noting that Hatwich and Rosaly each bring strong individual sensibilities to the music.  “They sound great individually as soloists, and they sound great together as a rhythm section. Over time, I think we three have built a unique and recognizable collective sound. The written material I provide is really just a vehicle for that collaborative effort to take place.”  Hatwich and Rosaly have developed into a creative pair that have set a new standard for rhythm sections in the Chicago scene.

The trio’s debut recording: Aviary, released in 2010 on Thought to Sound Records, offers a glimpse into the melodic constructions of Mazzarella’s pieces.  “Pistachio (for my bird)” in particular is a catchy tune that is practically an ear worm that doesn’t wear out its welcome.  Its Latin beat and circular melodic phrases that resolve into short repetitions over an understated harmonic progression become a launching pad for an approach to improvisation that balances delicately between restraint and blistering freedom.  The collaborative interaction and refined approach to this music is recorded with remarkable clarity on this studio effort.  At just over half an hour, it’s a tantalizing set that merely hints at where this trio can go.

Mazzarella album covers

The follow up release, 2011’s This Is Only A Test: Live at the Hungry Brain, explodes with a full set that reveals the electricity this group brings to their live performances.  The trio was at the top of their game for this particular performance (I was one of the lucky ones present) and their energy is remarkably well documented.  The searing, plaintive wails that make up the melodic line of “For Henry” is a particularly rewarding listening that shows off Mazzarella’s ability to channel a soulful approach to his material along with improvisations that deftly explore the extremes of register and emotional range.

Both of these recordings are highly recommended, even if they are just a hint of what’s in store as Mazzarella continues to develop his personal style and further refine his materials.  The collaborative role of his excellent rhythm section pushes this music up several creative notches, and shows The Nick Mazzarella Trio to be a creative force that should leave a lasting impression for some time to come.

Clique Enter

Posted on March 23, 2012 by - Columns

(Continued from March 9)

While competition has been a unifying, if not always edifying, quality of Western art music since the Pythian Games of Ancient Greece and (as much as it is part of the human condition) dictates what our daily musical experience looks and sounds like, I’m sure that music didn’t start out that way. The earliest music was about defining and strengthening one’s relationship with fellow human beings, the society they formed and the environment(s) they understood themselves to coexist in. But it is now an art, commodity and business in a market-driven globalized milieu that makes competition an essential thread sewn into the weave of our self-worth. The somewhat outmoded belief that, as Native American saxophonist Jim Pepper put it, “good, healthy competition” makes all who participate stronger might be being superseded by an institutionalized ruthlessness where any means are justified by successfully achieving one’s ends.

I was disheartened to find that in a course called “Effective College Teaching,” I had to vote one of my “teammates” as the weakest link as part of my final exam. I refused to participate in that exercise and assume that the rest of the team voted me as the weakest link. It was explained to me that in teamwork (which no improvising musician could possibly understand), there is no such thing as equal participation. Fortunately, the minimally passing grade didn’t hold up my master’s in jazz history, but it reminded me of stories I’d heard where a musician’s audition was compromised by another vying for the same opportunity. Sadly, a little dirty pool can be attractive to the pathologically ambitious. How does this relate to jazz and/or improvised music in general? I believe it goes to the fallacy of the so-called Noble Savage as an expression of social snobbery.

In course of time, an unmusical license set in with the appearance of poets who were men [of] native genius, but ignorant of what is right and legitimate in the realm of the Muses. Possessed by a frantic and unhallowed lust for pleasure, they…actually imitated the strains of the flute on the harp, and created a universal confusion of forms. T[his]…folly led them unintentionally to slander their profession by [assuming] that in music there is no such thing as a right and a wrong, the right standard of judgment being the pleasure given to the hearer, be he high or low. By compositions of such a kind and discourse to the same effect, they naturally inspired the multitude with contempt of musical law, and a conceit of their own competence as judges. Thus our once silent audiences have found a voice, in the persuasion that they understand what is good and bad in art; the old “sovereignty of the best” in that sphere has given way to an evil “sovereignty of the audience.”—Plato, Laws, 700a1

If it hadn’t been written 2,400 years ago, this quote could have been a critique of hip-hop culture (and I’m sure that there are those who would take that idea as an example of how the Ancient Greeks “got it right”), but for 500 years Western music has reflected the concerted efforts of a few groups of powerful Florentine gentlemen to reinvent the music of Ancient Greece by staging “works” emphasizing monodic unfolding of melody instead of Franco-Flemish architectures. That the influence of Vincenzo Galilei (father of astronomer Galileo)—who preferred the use of major and minor keys over church modes in his compositions—is attributed as spearheading the then modern style of composition requires a posture of scientificness applicable to academically-based musicianship. Whether or not this is a valuable, viable, or even valid approach to music making is moot because it is ubiquitous. Monody is how music is popularly expressed today and stands as a testament to what the elder Galilei and his drinking buddies thought about the music of Plato’s republic.

It is important to note that the Florentine Camarati were part of a shift from the study of Greek and Arabic writings to studying Greek and Roman texts as the basis for proper intellectual development. (One could assume that bribing a librarian in Rome was easier than bribing one in Constantinople.) This necessarily included an examination of the work of Roman historian and senator Publius Cornelius Tacitus. Among Tacitus’s writings was a narrative, Germania, that expressed the notion of something problematic about the Roman Empire, what with all of the conquest of surrounding lands and cultures to support the extravagant and decadent lifestyles of Rome’s ultra-wealthy businessmen and politicians. Tacitus saw a time when the police-state Rome had become would be unsupportable and looked to the German tribes of Northern Europe as having social traditions that were, since they apparently resisted Roman occupation so well, possibly better suited to successful civilization. To minimize any popular unrest his liberal insights might inspire, Tacitus was hustled out of Dodge with an appointment as governor of Asia and Anatolia. I can’t say whether or not Rousseau’s theories of natural humanity were directly inspired by Tacitus, but by the end of the Baroque period the inclusion of “noble savages” in French opera had become a great excuse for nudity in polite company and primitivism was part of cutting-edge philosophy and was an important part in the establishment of an independent national entity in the Western Hemisphere. Among the “Founding Fathers” was the inventor of a musical instrument that used tuned glass cylinders that vibrated when moistened. He also wrote an essay, “Remarks Concerning the Savages of North America” that suggested that so-called “primitive” cultures weren’t primitive at all; they had just developed from alternate philosophies and traditions.

It is no secret that the Eurocentric American mindset tends to look at modernity as equivalent to superiority vis-à-vis literacy and technological and economic development—an illiterate culture with uncomplicated tools that successfully lives in the same spot for thousands of years without destroying the local resources is the epitome of primitive and savage. This mindset is also dedicated to recreating itself as being independent from (and, therefore, superior to) its European origins and has gone to great pains to mask its Continental characteristics. This effort is inclusive of the arts and can be exemplified by the National Conservatory in New York’s hiring of Antonín Dvořák in 1892 as its director. A staunch advocate of musical nationalism, Dvořák was expected to help identify a course for the creation of distinctly American music. As the reader is well aware, he earned his $15,000 ($368,850 in today’s currency) by pointing to Native and African American music as a source of melodic and harmonic content. The beauty of Dvořák’s insight is that it went far towards establishing a permanent point of inclusivity and mutualism in American sub-and supra-cultural relations, a kind of collusion of cliques that would transcend the model of thematic appropriation demonstrated in his Symphony No. 9 (“From the New World”). Matters of non-European intonation not “fixed” on a specific pitch center, diverse and sometimes apparently randomly organized rhythmic schemes, socially informed musical forms, and large tracts of improvised elements—salient to African and Native American musics—were insurmountable to the literate-dominant processes of European American culture.

Looking just at the issue of improvisation, one thing is agreed: it isn’t ubiquitous among the practitioners of Western art music. Certainly there have always been performers who could improvise cadenzas and codas (if merely to cover up a mistake). Liszt, Paderewski, and Horowitz are all documented as having done so. But most “classically” trained performers find the prospect daunting and prefer to think of “interpretation” as synonymous with improvisation. This comes as no surprise since the amount of “dos-and-don’ts” codified in traditional music theory make improvising a convincing modern fugue extremely difficult. And forget about sonata form, that’s impossible. (I’d love to be proved wrong.) Even expert jazz improvisers like Louis Armstrong were known to write out solos before they were recorded or, like Charlie Parker, memorize their own improvisations to play later. Improvisation isn’t easy.

It might seem like a contradiction, but improvisation is nearly ubiquitous throughout the American music scene. In most major orchestras, improvisers can be found, usually among the brass, string bass, and percussion sections, and there are string quartets that include improvisation as a novelty. But non-improvising musicians aren’t necessarily tied down to specific genres or styles because they read music already composed. They can rehearse a new work for a premiere in the morning, record a soundtrack in the afternoon, and play Beethoven at night. Most big bands include musicians who aren’t improvisers. And while improvisers aren’t limited to improvising, when they improvise, a style or genre is usually associated with their improvisations. One of the natural tendencies is for cliques, small and exclusive groups of friends and/or associates, to form of musicians who improvise the same genre and style of music together.

To be continued …

This Should Be My Biggest Problem!

Posted on February 24, 2012 by - Columns

One of the biggest problems I have as a working musician is going out to hear music. All too often when there’s a concert I want to attend, I have to work. This was the case yesterday when guitarist Bill Frisell, music presenter and producer Hal Willner, and visual artist Ralph Steadman performed Kaddish for the opening night of the Tune-In Music Festival. I was playing with vocalist Melissa Hamilton and guitarist Tom Dempsey at Studio 100 and so I had to miss Frisell’s musical take on Alan Ginsberg’s epic poem. In fact, I’ll miss the entire festival because the two concerts that will happen when I’m not working elsewhere are sold out (I’m at Trumpets, the club I mentioned a couple of entries back, tonight). (Well, I could attend the “Composer in Conversation” event if I rush back from New Jersey and don’t hit any traffic—and the idea is tempting…) I wanted to attend the ISIM conference this year, but my schedule didn’t allow for that, either. I would have been able to attend one afternoon, which coincided with my wife’s birthday (a sustained diminished triad with wide and rapid vibrato should be perceptible to the reader).

I was able to take advantage of some last-minute comps to hear the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra perform at Carnegie Hall and thoroughly enjoyed the performance. My favorite piece on the concert was Michael Tippett’s Divertimento on “Sellinger’s Round”, which was an opinion not shared by the rest of my party. I think his use of quotes from Purcell and Arne as a neo-classical device reminded me of how improvisers might quote passages from other pieces during their solos. I also think that as the evening’s opener it suffered from the ensemble’s settling into the concert, which might have contributed to my friends’ initial impression. But after the first minute, Orpheus found their “groove” and delivered a mesmerizing concert. I rarely lose my sense of place in a hall like Carnegie, but their performance of Tchaikovsky’s Serenade for Strings did it for me. Fortunately, it was a great concert, because that’s just about the only one I’ve been to for a month. I’m just too busy with rehearsals, gigs, and preparing for them.

Not that I’m complaining! I really like to play and can use the money (since my car blew up on me last month—now that’s a problem!). But I find myself in a bizarre inversion of Paul Matthews’s observation in his excellent article, The Cycle of Get , where he remarks, “To listen is not to compose. Composition asks more of us.” The first analogy might go, “To improvise is to not listen,” but that isn’t the case at all; one has to listen deeply to improvise. What is the case, what’s really happening, is that the act of being an audience to music performance places the listener into a unique and varied relationship to the music being heard. I think I’m paraphrasing John Cage by saying, “Composing music, performing music, and listening to music are three different experiences that bear little similarity to each other.” Yet, while music won’t make the same demands on the passive listener that it does on the improvising musician, it still demands that the musician commit to a passive role for balance. At least that’s what I get from going out to listen to others play music. I notice the imbalance when I find myself listening to music on my car’s radio more than the news.

When I go to hear live music, I experience one of the few healthy things that our culture offers us: a chance to connect with members of our species without our differences being at the fore. Wouldn’t it be great to play music the same way? It seems like that should be the way it is, but our culture isn’t small enough to unify music making. I know that there are occasions when extremely large groups of people will make the same music together, such as Carnival in Rio de Janeiro, but that only lasts for a short while. E. F. Schumacher hit the nail on the head when he said, “Small Is Beautiful.” Being too big to fail means that we can’t sing the same song at once, we have to take turns. Being too big to fail means that there are professional music-makers who are out to prove their music is worth listening to, at any price. But there is a beauty when diversity meets in the music crucible and it sometimes forges a new sound, a new beat, a new texture, that those whose business it is to listen to music are always on the lookout for, either to embrace it or to reject it. It’s then that we become like Mohammed Fairouz’s “fighting families,” who play the same music even though they didn’t learn the same music. Wouldn’t it be great if we were like that without the music?

But we aren’t, so I can’t complain.

New England’s Prospect: Storyboarding

Posted on February 16, 2012 by - Field Reports, Headlines

New music seemed to explode out of the ground around Boston in the beginning of February like the tripods in the Spielberg remake of War of the Worlds. Something like this happens the same time most years, a sign, maybe, of how deep the academic calendar has wormed its way into the city’s general pace: it all feels like the natural life cycle of projects too complex to face in the rush of the new school year, so it has to happen now, now that everybody’s back from winter break, but before everybody gets sucked into the accelerating crunch of second semester.

So in the first two weeks of February, one was faced with, among other things,

—An Alea III concert featuring Boston University faculty composers, as well as a concert by Time’s Arrow, BU’s student new music group

—John Cage celebrations from piano students at New England Conservatory and So Percussion at Longy

—Cellist Matt Haimovitz and pianist Christopher O’Riley playing their “Shuffle.Play.Listen.” anything-goes repertoire at Regattabar

—A Collage New Music concert featuring four world premieres

—A chamber music Club Concert by the Boston Modern Orchestra Project at Oberon

—A recital by NEC composer and pianist Anthony Coleman

—A collaboration between pianist Vijay Iyer and George Lewis’s “Voyager” digital improvisation system at Wellesley College

—Boston Lyric Opera’s production of Peter Maxwell Davies’s The Lighthouse

Reader, I missed them. Thanks to an out-of-town venture, an all-day choral festival, the usual demands of part-time church and teaching and writing jobs, and a spousal demand that I watch the Super Bowl, I did not catch a single one of these events. I hang my head in new music shame.

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Georg Friedrich Haas

Georg Friedrich Haas – Photo by Philippe Gontier

In my defense, I did manage to get myself to a couple of unusually interesting concerts. The first was one of the more anticipated dates on the local new music calendar this season: the Boston premiere of Georg Friedrich Haas’s in vain, performed by the group Sound Icon at the Institute of Contemporary Art on Groundhog Day.

Haas’s hour-plus opus, composed in 2000, is already on a lot of people’s short list for the first great masterpiece of the millenium, and it’s not hard to see why. It’s technically impressive, a spectral-like microtonal vocabulary handled with absolute assurance, both harmonically and orchestrationally. (Among in vain’s 23 instruments is an accordion; as someone who, in my former composer life, often tried to integrate the accordion into ensembles large and small, the subtlety and seamlessness with which Haas does it was particularly jealousy-inducing.) It is a Serious Piece, with a serious theme (it was written in response to a resurgence of right-wing nationalism in Haas’s native Austria), and serious length and breadth. And it has a great existential hook: the lights in the hall fade in and out throughout the piece, and there’s a long stretch near the end that takes place in total darkness.

Sound Icon (I previously wrote about the group back in November) did what is becoming their customarily magisterial job, conductor Jeffrey Means keeping everything balanced and lively, the group’s stamina admirable. And the setting was terrific—the ICA’s sharp, uncluttered auditorium provided a space to match the music’s drama. (The ICA has only rarely programmed avant-garde music, turning over much of their performance calendar to the more mainstream presentations of World Music/CRASHarts, but their Public Programs Coordinator, John Andress, is also a percussionist and a new music stalwart, so maybe more hardcore repertoire might be coming to the place. It really is a great venue for it.)

Still, there was something about in vain that kept its distance. The main material is almost deliberately naïve, scales winding down in seeming perpetual motion, lush chorales, gong strikes of deafening, claustrophobic volume. A lot of the impact of in vain is in its length—it seems to justify the demands it makes on your time and concentration by making those demands.

When it works, it’s marvelous. In the final section, Haas brings back those opening scales, gradually getting faster, then looping back around to the original speed, only to begin the process again. The first time, it was deeply satisfying; when he did it a second time, it got to be a little annoying. But it was the third time through that sold it, the expected ending and the avoided ending somehow coming together in convincing ambiguity.

Other repetitions in the piece delivered far more diminishing returns—those gongs, for instance, so thrilling on first strike, drifted into a white-noise barrier; and a strobe-like flash illumination, detonating away the darkness, was similarly potent the first couple times, but as it came back again and again, the shock wore off, and its use as a coordinating device became distractingly apparent.

Then again, maybe all that was intentional; the music does seem intent on cultivating the gray area between process and expression. The most interesting thing about in vain, at least for me (and, really, the experience of in vain is a highly personal thing, a by-product of so much alone-in-the-dark listening), was how little of the music stayed with me. As it is happening, the piece is often overwhelming in the insistent way it envelops the ear; and yet, once it ends, so much of it seems to just vanish, a practically tangible dream-world dissolved in the light.

In mood and ambition, its boldfaced effects and sensual bleakness, in vain has something of the same tenor—if not the political implications—of the art of Anselm Kiefer, another virtuoso of grim landscapes. I thought of Kiefer’s artist’s books in particular: Cauterization of the Rural District of Buchen, for instance, a bound volume of the charred remains of painted canvases, or his massive sculptural books with pages of lead. But where Kiefer hints at a Hegelian view of historical progress—the past burned away, or sunk into the ground, so something new can grow from the wreckage—in vain posits something more cyclical, those descending scales forever chasing each other down, each acceleration encasing a glacial seed of its own repetition: light and darkness, in perpetual orbit, palpable and unremitting, yet transient and equivocal.

***

On February 11, I made it to a free-jazz improv show at the Lily Pad in Cambridge, performed by a group of local players: David G. Haas (piano), Jeff Platz (guitar), Scott Getchell (trumpet), Kit Demos (bass), and Luther Gray (drums). The Lily Pad doesn’t seem like much: a tiny storefront (late-arriving concertgoers can fill the entire place with their open-door draft), a few chairs, a shoebox stage space surrounded by hanging carpets. But the sound is excellent, and the disposition is adventurous.

Platz has fronted various groups—a band called Skull Session, which also featured Gray, as well as another band called Bright Light Group, featuring Getchell and Demos—and all four have recorded for Germany-based Skycap Records. Haas was nominally the outsider, but he had played with the late, great Joe Maneri for a time, and in the Boston improv/free-jazz world, a connection with Maneri is pretty much congruous with a connection to the scene.

And the quintet settled into musical conversation like they’d been doing it forever. Here’s a sequence I particularly liked, from their first set: Demos (by far the most far-out of the group, never meeting an extended technique he didn’t like) set up a strange ostinato, slapping his bass with dull thumps while bending the pitch with a whammy pedal; Platz layered some keening electric guitar sustain over it. With Gray and Getchell having temporarily dropped out, Haas added some whimsical percussion, tapping on the piano lid and music rack, John Cage-style. As Haas shifted back to the keys, tossing off bright sparks up high, Platz took over the percussive tapping, stopping the strings at the high end of the neck. This led into a full-band free-for-all, Getchell uncorking tight wails, Gray’s scattered attacks drifting in and out of a solid beat—which then morphed into fast, driving swing. Getchell then took over with a skittering solo—Gray’s energetic ride cymbal seemingly translated into trumpet terms, while Gray pulled back to sparse, ominous tom-toms.

For the next number, Demos moved over to modular synthesizer—a homebrew MFOS Ultimate—and, for a while, the rest of the band simply took in the resulting old-school analog chirrups and yowls with bemused interest. When they did start playing, I wasn’t sure what to expect; but the result was a surprisingly coherent Art-Ensemble-of-Chicago-meets-Doctor-Who vibe. That improv eventually returned to where the first one started, a moody, modal, minor-key ballad atmosphere.

The group’s second set was at once more mercurial—new tempos and rhythms and textures seeming to take off out of nowhere—and more straight-ahead, an anthology of more familiar jazz styles. But this one, too, arrived at exotic locales, winding up with a long colloquy between Demos and Platz that managed to feel both serene and cheekily stubborn (especially since the crowd for the next show was already filtering in).

In his book Primacy of the Ear, local jazz legend Ran Blake talks about “storyboarding” solos or interpretations or reinterpretations of repertoire:

I find a version of storyboarding to be a useful tool in composing or recomposing a piece as I prepare it for performance. It is a way to move beyond the spine of a piece without simply abandoning it, and it is a creative alternative to a sketch based simply on theory or abstract motivic development.

This quintet seemed to have that sense of scene, of musical setting; as the texture and mood would shift, everybody was quick and perceptive enough to lock into the new surroundings and start working with the scenery, and loose enough to immediately be casting an eye towards the next possible edit. It was provocative to compare this storyboard—fluid, moving, shifting the spotlight, lighting on details—with the storyboard for in vain, all long, carefully composed, slow-changing landscapes. It pointed up, for one thing, how much the construction of in vain is engineered for grandeur, even as the saturnine cast undermines it. The quintet’s improvisations were, by nature, closer to a road trip, the landscapes glimpsed from a moving vehicle. But sometimes, a glimpse can be as mesmerizing as a full immersion.

Improvising Conversation: No Idea Festival

Posted on February 10, 2012 by - Field Reports, Headlines

No Idea poster

Poster artist: Noel Waggener

To the uninitiated, free improvisation can often seem formless and confusing. Unlike theater or comedy, the lack of text to provide a narrative can leave an audience member lost in a world of sounds, rhythms, and gestures that may be difficult to reconcile as a whole. The “free” in free improvisation can give the impression that anything goes, and while there may be a kernel of truth in that, those for whom improvisation is a regular and important part (or the whole) of their musical experience know that the real freedom in improvisation is working within the initial constraints that often come in the opening moments of a performance. Listening, communicating, and moving towards a cohesive realization is no less than real-time composition, and to do it well requires experience, patience, and perhaps most importantly, restraint.

The No Idea Festival recently celebrated its ninth year with seven days of concerts in Austin, Houston, and San Antonio. An international roster of artists participated in workshops and performances in spaces large and small and, as a run up to the festival, the No Idea Sunday Series featured four performances from local and regional improvisers. Each performance was preceded by screenings of Derek Bailey’s documentary On The Edge: Improvisation In Music, a series of four 55-minute films broadcast in the UK in early 1992. The Austin NIF shows took place at The Broken Neck, a venue in east Austin that has not forgotten that a warehouse is supposed to be a huge unrefined space. Nods to acoustics were evident, but by and large this was a space that could in no time return to its storage or manufacturing roots. AV equipment was ubiquitous, not just for use by the performers but in service of archiving the event and at times the two sets of equipment seemed to overlap. NIF was sponsored by some of the usual suspects, including the Texas Commission on the Arts and Meet The Composer (its logo now amended to reflect the New Music USA transformation), as well as a few local heroes like Ruby’s Barbecue (Austin) and St. Arnold’s Brewery (Houston) which supplied a great spread (gratis!) and a keg respectively, with beers available for a modest donation.

Andrea Neumann and Bonnie Jones

Andrea Neumann and Bonnie Jones

The first set featured Andrea Neumann from Berlin and Bonnie Jones from Baltimore. Both artists were set up behind large custom-made electronic kits attached to boards approximately three feet square, replete with hard and soft-wired elements. Neumann’s board also featured the miniaturized guts of a piano which she was able to manipulate both physically and electronically during the performance. As Neumann began generating a low frequency, Jones slowly played bells that recalled the sound of an analog phone. Neumann’s frequencies slowly opened up, though still remaining in the low range, while Jones began to create light static in a rhythmic pattern, the pulsing beats panning across the stereo field. Jones used her fingers to create and break connections on the board, causing small, pointed moments to occur slowly and without pattern, like rain dripping from a tree long after a storm. Neumann began to work with the “piano,” physically playing a few notes while the electronics transformed the sound, the last note of which became the only controlled and sustained feedback of the set. While the feedback echoed in the space, Jones manipulated a number of stompboxes and other custom equipment, at one point dragging one piece around the board, using the sounds of the analog contacts connecting and disconnecting within the device to create a counterpoint to the feedback and a reimagining of the previous patternless rain music.

Maggie Bennett

Maggie Bennett

Maggie Bennett’s dance set began as the audience returned to their seats following a brief set change. Attached to the wall was a tremendous paper construction, like a waterfall pouring from the wall and flowing ten feet across the floor. Bennett’s performance was an exercise in control, her movements mostly small and subtle, at one moment seeming to fall asleep and the next moment waking up on the large paper wave. It was a compelling and direct translation of movement into sound, so much so that late in the set when she moved away from the paper, I experienced a bit of cognitive dissonance in that it was odd to see her move without hearing the sound of the paper. It struck me that in conventional dance the sound of the dancer’s feet slamming into the marley flooring is always distracting. It’s a sound that I’d rather not hear if possible, but here the secondary sound was developed, celebrated, and made a strong follower to Bennett’s lead.

Bhob Rainey, Greg Kelley, and Jason Lescalleet

Bhob Rainey, Greg Kelley, and Jason Lescalleet

Sound artist Jason Lescalleet was joined by his nmperign collaborators Bhob Rainey (saxophone) and Greg Kelley (trumpet) for the third set of the evening. Lescalleet used a variety of reel-to-reel and hand-held tape machines to create organic textures. He began by placing a reel-to-reel unit at the front of the performance space and setting in motion a length of analog tape which went through and then out of the machine, made a circular trip several feet around a microphone, and returned to its origin. A broken ostinato slowly formed from this circuit and remained for the first few minutes, establishing itself as a static framework. Rainey joined the ostinato, his sax sounding long tones like a sine wave mixed with breathing through the instrument that recalled the broken static of the original signal. Lescalleet moved almost constantly around the stage and behind his own electronic setup at the back, manipulating various pieces of equipment including smaller tape decks that were placed on the side of the stage. Kelley removed the mouthpiece from his muted trumpet while he and Rainey complimented the spare tape textures with long, quiet, subtle quarter-tone lines and more breathing and blowing through the instruments. As the piece developed, Lescalleet removed tape from one machine, spliced and taped it on the fly, and fed it into the main machine at the front of the stage. While he held the tape, minute changes in the timbres could be heard as the tape machine motors worked to keep the mail moving through the system. Low aquatic sounds shared space with more breath effects from Rainey and Kelley, leading to pops and crackles from the reassembled tape. Finally, Lescalleet disconnected each of the machines, bringing the performance to a close.

Bryan Eubanks, Chris Cogburn, and Vic Rawlings performing as LUCRE

Bryan Eubanks, Chris Cogburn, and Vic Rawlings performing as LUCRE

The fourth set featured Chris Cogburn, Bryan Eubanks, and Vic Rawlings on percussion, electronics, and cello respectively, performing as LUCRE. Though Eubanks’s contribution was primarily electronic, both Cogburn and Rawlings had their own electronic setups as well which they used during the set. The performance began with Cogburn creating resonance on a snare drum (snares off) by dragging rubber beaters and other materials across the head of the drum. With cymbals placed on a tom tom, Cogburn used a long thin dowel and did his best fire-starter impression, using both hands to create vibrations in the stick that drove both cymbal and drum. Eubanks created a slight white noise texture that extended for several minutes while Rawlings drew clicking sweeps from the cello, the sound further altered electronically to sound a bit like the ocean from very far away. Most of the performance (and this was true of all the performances) utilized primarily old school analog electronics, with instruments and sounds largely derived from older hardware, but this section also featured the odd contemporary digital moment, adding a welcome trace of “reverse anachronism” to an otherwise earthy and visceral show.

It was impressive that in these chamber performances the members of the ensembles spent as much time (or more) listening as they did playing. Thoughtful, well-paced conversations and occasionally conventional forms with fairly clear beginnings, middles, and ends (as opposed to more open-ended jams in which less formally connected smaller moments and motives might play a larger role) were evident in each set. Among Cogburn’s goals for this yearly festival is to provide a forum for performers to improvise together multiple times, not just within a given festival but over the course of several meetings over many festivals. These relationships change and grow over time, and it’s a treat for performers and audience members alike to experience the results of that growth.

James Falzone: Music Through Other Lenses

Posted on January 25, 2012 by - Conversations, Spotlight

James Falzone is not sitting back contentedly watching his star ascend.  “One can only do what one wants to do and see what rises,” he suggests.  As an accomplished performer, composer, improviser, and educator, Falzone pursues a musical vision rooted in the middle ground between the fully notated world of conservatory-trained musicians and the improvisation-based energy of jazz and creative music.  It is a territory he explores with an omnivorous appetite for musical influences and aesthetic directions, whether leading his quartet KLANG through a set of contemporary jazz compositions at a late night haunt, directing liturgical music with the Grace Chicago Consort, or composing for orchestra.

“I’ve always been intrigued by a wide variety of musics.  And I’m emotionally connected to them as well,” Falzone explains. “Not just that I find them interesting, but they move me.  I’m as moved by John Coltrane as I am by John Luther Adams as I am by John Bon Jovi.”

Falzone’s musical aesthetic centers upon how he filters and embraces his wide-ranging interests.  Rather than working within stylistic confines or pre-defined musical genres, he chooses to express his personal connection to the world at large through a concept he calls “Allos Musica”—other music.

“I wanted to start a project […] that could allow me to explore these different ideas,” Falzone says. “The whole Allos project is just a way to put an umbrella over all these different things that I’m interested in so that it wouldn’t just be James Falzone; it wouldn’t just be me playing.  It would be everything that is under Allos Musica.  My record company that I founded ten years ago now is called Allos Documents and everything just filters through that larger umbrella.”

One of his recent Allos Documents is Other Doors, a creative re-imagining of and tribute to the music of Benny Goodman realized by an expanded version of his KLANG quartet.  It is a striking synthesis of the musical spirit of Goodman that looks forward as aggressively as it looks back.

When the Chicago Jazz Festival first tapped Falzone to realize a project celebrating the centennial of Benny Goodman’s birth in 2009, he wasn’t sure they had the right person for the job.  “I’m not a nostalgic kind of player.  I love Benny Goodman.  I love the swing era.  What clarinetist wouldn’t? […]  It’s when the clarinet was a really popular instrument.  But I have no interest in nostalgia.”  So Falzone set about researching the life and music of Benny Goodman and found inspiration in the small ensemble works—particularly the trios and quartets of the 1920s and 1930s—and heard plenty of parallels between the Chicago of Goodman’s time and the Chicago of today.  “I try and do what I thought Goodman was doing in his day, which was a.) being himself, and b.) allowing his sidemen—his community—to be themselves.  Letting personalities intermingle and fight a little bit within the ensemble and so forth.”

His consideration for the players within his ensembles is similar to the consideration he extends toward his listeners as he takes into account the role that his music plays for those who hear it.  This is a quality learned through ten years as the music director at Grace Chicago Church.

“There’s something about the weekliness of doing liturgical music.  Each Sunday you come back and do this thing and it’s not about you.  It’s about serving these people,” Falzone points out, citing composers he respects who have done this type of work such as Messiaen and Bach.  “And that’s really a good place for any composer or any musician to be at from time to time.  Where you’re not making music for your own interests, you’re making it to serve others.  It’s really hard.  It also has taught me a great deal about music and about how music functions in culture.  I could come up with the coolest arrangement of some old hymn, but the congregation might not be able to sing it, and they’re there on Sunday for lots of different reasons that have nothing to do with me and my musical interests.”

Falzone’s solo clarinet piece, Sighs Too Deep for Words—composed as a structured, hour-long improvisation for clarinet and bells—represents one of his most pure statements as an artist. It is a piece that requires Falzone to enter into a meditative zone for the duration of the performance as he builds an internal dialog between three different “stations,” or performance zones.  “Every time I do the piece it’s a whole different experience for me and the audience,”  Falzone explains, going on to describe how different audiences can transform the piece. “I just did it a few weeks ago down at Southern Illinois University… it was mostly clarinet players in the audience.  So it had a whole different feel, with them interested in how I was getting these sounds and so forth.  I did it not long ago at a theological school and it took on a whole different feel.  Nobody cared about the music.  They were interested in more of the contemplative practice part of it, and the meditative part of it and the prayer part of it.  It’s the kind of piece that has a little different manifestation depending on the audience.”

The power of that influence is an element he carries with him from project to project. “When I’m putting out a record or putting pen to paper and making a piece, I think about its effect on the audience – on the listener.  It might not make me change a note.  I’d still say, ‘This is what I want.’  But it makes me think about it in a way that I might not had I not been involved in this other kind of service music.”

It’s that extra layer of consideration informed by experience that goes into creating music that gives the otherwise widely varied musical expressions of James Falzone its unifying quality.  It’s what allows him to distill so many different influences into an aesthetic that is identifiably his own, pushing at the boundaries of what music is and might be.

NEA and Jazz, Part 2

Posted on January 20, 2012 by - Columns

A minor correction from last week: I should have said “centered on” rather than “consisting of” when referring to the signature chromatic approach developed and codified by soprano saxophonist Dave Liebman. It distinguishes him from his contemporaries (Michael Brecker, Jerry Bergonzi, Steve Grossman) even when he plays on their principle instrument, the tenor saxophone.

I attended last year’s NEA Jazz Masters award ceremony when Liebman received his award. I couldn’t help but reflect on his early work with Elvin Jones, Miles Davis, and the first tour with his own collective group, Lookout Farm, during the 1970s. His playing was and is heavily influenced by John Coltrane’s legacy, but Liebman created a body of work that transcends that legacy and has offered a new direction in improvising, composing, and teaching that has been too underrated in the jazz academy and the corporate culture machine that hosted the ceremony. While this might be a result of pedigree (the term sounds odd, but it covers the difference between coming up through the “ranks” or being “placed”), a dichotomy in aesthetics is also involved. A comparison of two of jazz’s “Great Names,” Charlie Parker and the above mentioned John Coltrane, illustrates this well. Both were: improvising saxophone virtuosos whose work has sparked a reexamination of what is called American music; incessant practicers and studiers who learned everything they could about music (the younger Coltrane had more formal training); highly personal stylists who “piggybacked” on the work of previous masters; and continue to be, imitated widely. Both developed improvising strategies that made their work easily identifiable, even when compared with their imitators. But Parker drew on the outer world for his inspiration, quoting other musicians and popular songs in his solos, while Coltrane was inspired by his internal vision and arrived at a point where he pretty much stopped quoting anyone but himself. And while Parker mostly played in groups that performed in a “swing” tradition—playing over the chord changes of popular songs or on 12-bar blues, albeit with a high degree of harmonic sophistication, Coltrane formed groups that developed unique sonic environments, often playing music with few chords and very open (free) forms. Newcomers to Parker (except, possibly, Miles Davis) tended to play in his style and had little lasting effect on his playing, while newcomers to Coltrane (Albert Ayler, Ornette Coleman, Cecil Taylor, Sun Ra, Archie Shepp, Pharoah Sanders) greatly influenced his approach and musical output. I see Liebman as an example of the Coltrane model, right down to quoting himself more often than quoting others. This might be why he has gone largely ignored, except by those who need to know what great saxophone playing is about: he’s a musician’s musician. So it’s great that he is recognized as a jazz master, but that was then…

Sadly, Charlie Haden, like Von Freeman, could not attend the January 10, 2012, NEA Jazz Masters award ceremony where his daughter, Petra, accepted his award for him. A short video collage prefaced each award recipient’s introduction. Haden’s emphasized his gentle, yet persistent, political activism. One got the idea that his entire career has been one long soulful commentary on the affairs of humanity. Journalist and past president of the Louis Armstrong Educational Foundation Stanley Crouch delivered Haden’s official introduction and used the bassist’s tone as a springboard to discuss his belief that “jazz provides a symbolic metaphor as an answer” to “this period that is very dehumanizing…cold…[and] mechanical.” Ostensibly, that metaphor is “the deep meaning of jazz, which is empathy,” which is one of Charlie Haden’s most salient qualities. Another and much more profound one, humility, was revealed in the acceptance speech Haden wrote for his daughter to read:

I learned at a very young age that music teaches you about life. When you’re in the midst of improvisation, there is no yesterday and no tomorrow—there is just the moment that you are in. In that beautiful moment, you experience your true insignificance to the rest of the universe. It is then, and only then, that you can experience your true significance.

When one considers that Haden was arrested for dedicating a performance of his “Song For Che” to the “Black peoples’ liberation movements in Mozambique and Angola and Guinea,” the phrase “courage of one’s convictions” comes to mind. Apply it to the Jazz Masters’ tool kit as one would cheese to a quesadilla. The next musical interlude, a duet performance of Dave Brubeck’s “In Your Own Sweet Way” by vibraphonist Bobby Hutcherson and pianist Kenny Barron, exemplified this. Hutcherson, who now uses an oxygen tank to help him breathe, delivered a performance of the harmonically strict yet beautiful standard that held true to his roots as an avant-gardist and to his early work with Eric Dolphy. Many of his phrases seemed to begin on the “wrong” chord, but always deftly resolved to the “right” one (even when it wasn’t!). I was fortunate enough to work for Hutcherson during 1974, before I began touring with vibraphonist Cal Tjader. Then I saw the latter as a master lyricist and the former as a powerhouse (which he was). This performance, though, showed a sense of lyricism that embraces stark atonality and matched Barron’s deep respect for Brubeck’s chord progression. This was a command performance and the standing ovation, begun by the JALC orchestra, was well deserved.

In last week’s entry, I said I wouldn’t engage in a play-by-play listing of the Jazz Masters ceremony. It looks like that is what’s happening, though. So be it. It will probably be somewhat more provocative than the standard journalistic reportage, since the idea that this would be the last time an NEA Jazz Masters award would be given hung over the proceedings. Even though it turns out not to be the case, there is a very real possibility that the ceremony itself will be dispensed with. So this event was more about the soul of the music and its proponents than about who won and who didn’t. The messages delivered by the recipients, as well as by the planners and emcees, were sincere in their attempts to describe the value of this music as being more than mere entertainment, as transcending the profit motives of the very corporate sponsors who began marketing jazz in 1917. (That’s right, the music is only 95-years old.) Mark Lomanno, a pianist and scholar I had the pleasure of being a junior classmate of in Rutgers University’s Jazz History and Research Program, also attended the ceremony and put it well:

The arts are not just entertainment. Music, visual art, and poetry have all been the means by which the dispossessed, the marginalized, and the disadvantaged have expressed ideologies, preserved histories, educated communities, and cultivated understanding. Supporting the arts—not just through spending money, but also through personal and community action—does not have to be about personal indulgence and consumption, but could (and should!) be an opportunity to be a committed ally and advocate for those who might not have another means of expressing their ideas, their culture, and their visions.

Next week: Sheila Jordan and Jimmy Owens.

Developing an Act

Posted on January 12, 2012 by - Columns

In speaking with other composers, there are always so many questions I’d like to ask them about their music and how they went about putting it together: What were you thinking when you wrote this passage? What kind of stylistic influences informed your writing? Under what circumstances was the work conceived? However, if I were allotted only a single query for these situations, I’d make sure to ask the question that most consistently seems to reveal a composer’s fundamental character, namely: What is your attitude toward revision?

At the most basic level, there is a broad spectrum of approaches when it comes to tinkering with a “finished” notated piece, between those who endlessly tinker and those who (for various reasons) end up relatively content with their composition’s first incarnation. Sometimes the composer’s skill and the amount of time he or she had to work with have something to do with the decision to revise, but more often is has to do with the composer’s attitude and aesthetic predilections. Many composers are predisposed to tinkering, or simply have very high expectations for how closely their musical result ought to approximate their idea. Many know they likely won’t have time to revise, and approach the first draft accordingly. Some composers are not disposed to revising in general, but will consider it when something truly “goes wrong” or the prospect of more performances tempts a little finessing.

Yet the above attitudes toward revising apply to just one particular situation: that in which a composer intends for there to exist a final, “best” version of a given composition.

This is, of course, the situation in which many composers find themselves—especially composers whose goal is a document than can inspire performances with or without their own physical presence. But what about improvisers, singer-songwriters, composer/performers, DJs, and many for whom the distinction between revising and composing becomes almost meaningless?

It goes without saying that improvisers, DJs, and their ilk make tweaks all the time—it’s just that without the pressing need for a “definitive” version of the work, these tweaks become part of a continuous composing session rather than something appended to the compositional act.

While a notated composition forces us to choose our “best effort”, those who follow a favorite DJ, jam band, or even comedy act would attest that there’s also something to be said for a style of expression that is less rigidly controlled and is constantly adapting to the situation at hand. At the same time, music expressed through a notated score can potentially receive many more performances in more diverse geographic locations—something that still makes this old-fashioned mode of dissemination pretty hip.

As someone who spends a lot of time working with traditionally notated music, I’m always eager to bring ideas from folk and improvised sources into play—and to bring notated concert music up to date and in line with the level of excitement, timbral richness, and interactivity that makes the best pop music so engaging. Developing an act is about experimenting and responding to experience, and one that emphasizes the process of exploration as much as the discoveries; most of all, it’s a way of working that takes audience feedback into account as an essential part of the creative effort. So I wonder if it might be possible to develop a notated ensemble piece in a way that is likewise constantly evolving and defined?

I’ve recently completed a work that will be premiered more or less simultaneously by three piano trios. Based respectively in Boston, Toronto, and Salt Lake City, the groups will tour with the piece during the 2012/13 concert season. Knowing these details, I decided that I wanted a way to make each group’s performances unique and particular; so I wrote a piece in the form of several very short “modular” movements that can be played in any order—this is determined by each ensemble, who may settle upon a “favorite” configuration or change things up for each performance. Over time I’ll put new movements into rotation, so that the “building blocks” of the piece change to reflect my current thinking and audience input. It’s a kind of “act” developed over time with input balanced between myself and the performing ensembles, who each may continue to shape the work in profound ways long after the premiere performances.

It feels good to be revising some music for once not because of a mistake, but as the next step in an ongoing creative collaboration. When I was younger, I shied away from revising after imbibing the notion that making changes to my work indicated weakness or failure; but now I’ve realized that my work needs to grow, change, and react to stimuli from audiences and collaborators in order to truly be its best.