SCENA Jazz

A Conversation with Ornette Coleman

noreply@blogger.com (Félix-Antoine Hamel) — Tue, 02 Mar 2010 01:11:00 +0000

Mike Chamberlain

I interviewed Ornette Coleman over the phone in early June, 2009. He was leaving for Europe later in the day, and the interview was put off several times because Mr. Coleman was not completely prepared to go. Finally, at the last minute—I had an appointment of my own looming—his publicist called and said that Mr. Coleman would speak with me for twenty minutes. In the end, Mr. Coleman was very generous with his time, and the interview ran 28 minutes, until I could wait no longer to leave for my appointment.

Mike Chamberlain: I understand you're getting ready to leave for Europe.

Ornette Coleman: Yes, that's true.

MC: Well, I'll just take a few of your minutes, if I can.

OC: No, take your time.

MC: I want to ask you a few things. Next month, you're playing in Montreal, and they're giving you the Miles Davis Award. I wonder what that means to you at this point.

OC: Well, I think everybody wants everybody to be happy, so I think it's all for the same reason.

MC: Can you explain that for me?

OC: Well, the explanation is humans beings is all there is, but they recognize what knowledge can do and what it needs to do, and culture's one of the highest points of using knowledge as a form of freedom for what we call the human race. That's not too bad, is it?

MC: Not too bad, not too bad. And I mean, what I should have said at the very beginning was to thank you for all the music that you've given us over the years, because it was not always easy for you, especially in the beginning, and you've followed your own path despite a lot of hardship along the way, and I think that that in itself is something to be applauded.

OC: Well thank you very much, and if I had to do it over, I'd do it again.

MC: Everything?

OC: Yes, because the idea is all there is. And everyone has an idea of their own. That's not too bad, it's just where it becomes detrimental to the knowledge of humans is when it gets going the wrong way. There's no reason for knowledge to become an enemy to anybody.

MC: No, no. You came into the jazz world, such as it is, and I wonder about your relationship to the term jazz and how you feel about that word and how you feel about the jazz world, such as it is.

OC: Well, when you ask me how I feel, it is obvious that feeling becomes everything that has to do with knowledge, and knowledge is the interpreter that makes us do and know and learn, it's educational. But the most knowledgeable thing that exists is the soul of human beings, and that is something that only what is known as God can identify what a soul is before it came into existence as human beings. And I'm not sitting here trying to describe what it is. I just know that language has words and words mean different things, and the word soul refers to human beings, doesn't it? Or does it.

MC: I would hope so.

OC: Yeah, me and you both.

MC: [laugh] I hope we have souls.

OC: [laugh] you and me too. That would be good if we could identify it in a way that we wouldn't have to worry about it.

MC: Well that's true but it gets mixed up in a lot of different things I think, and the demands of the world are very harsh.

OC: One other thing—it doesn't represent all the qualities that represent the human race. Soul and poverty, it's enjoying something that you don't have and look past that. I imagine you could be the richest person in the world and still be lonely, you know, so….

MC: Happiness doesn't necessarily come with money, that's for sure.

OC: Oooh, you said it, you couldn't say it any clearer than that.

MC: Has it made a difference to you, when you think of your days when you were really, really scuffling, in the 50s in Los Angeles compared to now, when, as I understand, life is more comfortable for you, at least materially.

OC: I agree that confidence has done two things for me: It has aged me and it also has put me in lots of stress to survive. Not in a negative way, but in a way that we call knowledge, I mean, "what is your trade, and what do you do to make a living?" Everybody that's in the male species is built to represent what field you are in and what do you do to survive in the sense of what you have to do TO survive. Money is just a word, but love is the authority. It's just sad to realize that being human is like, I don't know, maybe a million years from today humans won't have to be by class, it'd be by soul.

MC: That would be good.

OC: Yeah, it would.

MC: I read this thing recently where you were talking about when you were first playing the saxophone, you picked it up and you thought, "OK, I'm just going to play the saxophone." And then when you started playing with other people, they told you that this wasn't good enough, that you needed more than that. And I like this idea of picking up an instrument, whatever it is, and just trying to be yourself on that instrument.

OC: Yes, well I think that should be a human condition that everyone is able to investigate. It's not a rule. Basically it comes under the heading of what you learn, why you grew up to do things that people bring into the world by the fact of what we call civilization, knowledge, and intelligence. But those are classified things that make what we call the human race in a much higher form to survive. And if that wasn't the way it is, human beings wouldn't be so complete in openly sharing and doing. Maybe there are human beings who created themselves, but I haven't met one. And it's so obvious that the word human is at the service of anything that has to do with form.

MC: OK?

OC: There's mosquitoes, there's thrashers, but the human being came into existence above all of those things. But for some reason, I'm just saying this because I'm classified as a human and I am a human being, it doesn't necessarily make you any better or any worse—it just gives you a title. I mean, look at the word God. The name of God doesn't have to be put into any category. It's really amazing for the life that is life to be able to support the whole world, and all we end up doing is working, and getting old, and pass. But now life itself don't do that. It's still here while you're gone.

MC: Life is pretty much indifferent to our individual existences.

OC: Oooh, you said it. You said it in the most intelligent way.

MC: But that's our fate as human beings. We struggle against the acceptance of these inevitabilities.

OC: Ooohh, you couldn't have said it better. But don't we respond to life as being the creative guide?

MC: I hope so, maybe the person such as yourself who is not only an artist with a very strong conception of what you want to do musically, but also somebody with a very strong—I don't even know whether to call it will, because I don't even know whether you look at it that way because you just do it because you need to do it—but the majority of people, and I would include myself among those people, often tend to go for the thing that is comfortable rather than the thing that is going to force us to struggle in certain ways. We want the certainty in our lives.

OC: Yes. But the word human cannot be connected to the word animal. That's why, isn't it? I don't know about heaven on earth, but there's nothing in the way of human beings making heaven on earth something that has to do with the quality of humans.

MC: No.

OC: Well, when is that going to happen?

MC: We're not evolved enough yet.

OC: What's that you say?

MC: Maybe we're not evolved enough as a species.

OC: Oh, right. But do you think we as a species is the right word?

MC: Well, it's a word.

OC: It is a word.

MC: We are designated as humans, and under that classificatory system, species is the appropriate word. We might want to sit and discuss that for a while, I'm not sure.

OC: But women seem to be more connected to humans because they actually grow humans inside of them. Men can't do that. He's on his knees. But what happens to the concept, what happens to life? Is life a word, does life exist?

MC: Uh-huh.

OC: No, I'm asking.

MC: Whoo, I don't know, man. I don't have a quick answer to that one.

OC: I don't know neither, but I know what the word is supposed to represent—anything that moves, talks, and can see, and walk and talk, that's called life. But is it life?

MC: Well, there's another thing, because every word can have a number of different meanings.

OC: That's a matter of fact right.

MC: And they've all got connotations. You know, I saw you perform last year in Burlington, Vermont. And I had a very interesting experience there. I took my seat and a couple sat down in the seats beside me. And the woman was sitting next to me, and the woman maybe was 65 or something like that, and she asked me who Ornette Coleman was, and I tried to explain, and she asked me: "Am I going to like it?"

OC: [Laughs] Well, she asked a good question.

MC: That's a good question, but there's no answer to it, of course.

OC: That's right.

MC: And I said: "Well I don't know, I'm hoping I'm going to like it, and it would be really nice if you like it, but we'll just have to wait and see what happens, and I expect to enjoy this very much." So you played the set, and I thought it was very wonderful. And the word I use to describe the performance is human. It's not without its flaws, but it's perfectly human in the way it's done, I thought.

OC: That's right. And imagine the word "human". What it means and what it represents doesn't necessarily tell you what kind and who and why. Nothing comes behind that. That's pretty heavy. And the thing about it, there are more people walking right who are called human than any other form of life. Now that's not too bad, but I don't know if the word human is causing humans to become enlightened, to be enlighted, by the quality of what we call God. Now God must be not only human but the only internal human. Because God only deals with the human being, doesn't he?

MC: I don't know, that again is another topic for debate.

OC: I know, but do you think there's any other form of life that God is interested in more than human?

MC: More than?... No. No.

OC: Me neither. But most everything I learned from God comes from humans.

MC: But we're supposed to have been created in God's own image, in some way.

OC: Yeah, but nobody has seen God's image.

MC: No, we don't know. [laughs]

OC: [laughs]

MC: That's true. And that's only what has been written in one particular book, so I'm not sure.

OC: [laughs]

MC: No, I'm not so sure about that. What about your approach to music making—has it changed over the years? I know your music has changed a bit, and you go through different stages, but your own internal approach, has that undergone any…..?

OC: The only thing I can tell you what I think it is and what it should be and what it's not going to become.

MC: OK.

OC: Life. That's a very good description of the human race—call it life. I mean the human being is the closest form in the world that is called life. Because life allows the human beings to indulge in all forms of thought, emotion, and concepts, put it that way. But they made something in there called money that not everyone's entitled to, they have to do something for it. That's not so nice. Someone else is making something that you can't make, but you have to work to get what they're making, and they're not concerned about you. Now, what is that called? It's not a job.

MC: No?

OC: Well, whatever it's called, it works like everything else. I mean, I'm not sitting here trying to put anything down because imagine, the word human only represents two forms. You have to have a form that basically looks the same when it sees another creature walking down the street. Right? The other is that you have to see the intelligence of the highest form of human. And it's obvious: the highest form of human is knowledge. Right?

MC: Yes.

OC: Yes. But how does knowledge treat everybody fairly? It doesn't.

MC: No, it doesn't.

OC: And it's not trying. You see, if you have something that's valuable, I want it so that I can make sure that you have to come back and relate to me to go to where you think I can take you.

MC: That's right.

OC: I'm not a soul or human being that is trying to analyze the quality of life. I just know that I'm alive. And when I'm no longer alive, I won't be in existence. But that's true of everything, isn't it?

MC: Yes.

OC: But that's not so good.

MC: Well, that's the way it is, and it's in the difference between what should be and is that we all try to find our place.

OC: But I don't think God dies. Does God die?

MC: I don't think so.

OC: Yeah, well, and God is not against you knowing what, how, when, where, and uh, what else…?

MC: Why?

OC: Yeah, now you said it. [laughs] You hit the nail on the head. "Why?" But now, is why only a quality of knowledge that doesn't mean what it means to everybody? If it does, we're in trouble.

MC: Well, I think we're in trouble.

OC: No, but the reason why I'm saying this is because I'm self-taught in everything I do, and I'm not bragging. I'm self-taught because I was raised by women, and they wasn't working to make me leave the house. They was staying in, and I was leaving the house. They knew then what knowledge meant. I'm learning what knowledge is and what it meant. But the real purpose of knowledge is human power.

MC: Oh yeah.

OC: Yes, human power. But it's not used to the same purpose by everybody.

MC: Definitely not.

OC: And look at the word love. I mean love represents, I think, the male and the female. But human beings? You see animals responding to each other like male and female, but they can't go to the store and buy a package of whisky or whatever.

MC: Well, we have language, obviously.

OC: Yes, something I was missing.

MC: But that's one thing you've used, "Sound Grammar" and "In All Languages" and so on, this notion of music as a communication of knowledge and feeling, an analogy to language in a lot of ways.

OC: Yeah, what you're describing is that there are many forms of things that are used to raise the human being's concept of knowledge in relationship to what knowledge does for the person. But the real purpose is that—look at light, light is probably the most advanced thing that exists on Earth, and yet it's just being like any other tool. The gravity that makes light, heat's got a lot to do with it. I'm not an authority on anything. I'm just talking because I've lived so long to describe something that I call light, and I know that it's made out of heat. But the human being is neither made out of heat OR light. It's made out of flesh and blood.

MC: We're mostly air, I think.

OC: Ooooh, you said something. Mostly air?

MC: In between the bits, you know.

OC: Oooh, you said something there. Like breathing?

MC: Well, just space, really. When you think about it, if you believe in atomic theory, we all consist of atomic particles, and those are mostly space in between the protons and neutrons and electrons. In that sense, it's kind of funny to think about it that way, because we all seem solid to one another.

OC: But you can't read about the quality that we're talking about that represents the same equivalent to what the Bible is. How did that get so far away where it doesn't have to be analyzed? That's pretty weird. I mean here is the one thing that's describing something that's eternal, and all you can do is read about it, but you can't participate in it.

MC: Well, I don't know…..

OC: I don't mean that you can't go to church and do your dues. I'm talking about what created the quality of what caused all that to come into existence. That's something else.

MC: That's the mystery, you know. That's the thing that's behind everything we call the material world. The material world is just one thing, and the other stuff like you're talking about, that's something else, and we don't know the answers to those questions.

OC: I know, but imagine, the only way that you die is if something kills you. I mean, of course, if you fall out of a 100-feet building and hit the ground, you're gonna die. But see, to kill is one thing, to live and die is another, but it's the same result. That's pretty weird.

MC: But isn't the ideal thing to try to live and not to be dead while you're alive, you know what I'm saying?

OC: Yeah, yeah, I understand. But it seems to me that you don't have to try to live. You've already been born with the substance that what made you be able to live. I don't know how it works, but it's definite: life doesn't have to get permission to exist.

MC: Mr. Coleman, I don't have any more time myself right now, and I know you're running around, I appreciate your time very much.

OC: Thank you very much. I enjoyed your conversation.

MC: I look forward to seeing you in Montreal.

OC: Thank you very much.

MC: By the way, I want to tell you about the lady at the concert: she really enjoyed the concert.

OC: Well, thank her for me.

MC: I'll probably never see the woman again, but she really enjoyed the concert, and I want to thank you very much for all the music you've given us over the years.

OC: Well, thank you. Do you play an instrument?

MC: I wouldn't go so far as to say that I play an instrument.

OC: You have an instrument?

MC: I do.

OC: Let me tell you this: three changes in Western culture that covers all the ideas that notes cherish—that's CMaj7, E flat minor 7, and D minor with a flatted 5th. So you have three chords with twelve different sounds. Now what you have to do is to create those sounds from your own emotions. You don't even have to think of the notes. You have to think of the notes you want to activate to make an idea. Don't think of the key or the melody, think of the notes. And you'll stay clear and know which one is relating to your own emotions. I know from experience.

MC: Sir, I appreciate the information.

OC: Well, tell me your name again.

MC: My name is Mike Chamberlain.

OC: Oh Mike, I've enjoyed speaking to you, and have a wonderful weekend.

MC: You too, and maybe one day we'll get a chance to speak again. It would be my pleasure.

OC: Any time.

Postcript

In spite of Ornette Coleman's abstruse way of articulating his ideas, there is one thing worth noting, namely, his single-minded devotion to them. Apart from his idiosyncratic manner of expression, you can see in our conversation how he resists attempts to deflect him away from his train of thought or to change the subject. He is going to say what he needs to say, no matter what. That's what he's done in his music-making since Day One.

NYC Winter JazzFest 2010: Sustaining the Future

noreply@blogger.com (Félix-Antoine Hamel) — Sat, 30 Jan 2010 06:04:00 +0000

by Sharonne Cohen

An infectious wave of energy blew through the NYC jazz scene on January 8th and 9th as the sixth edition of Winter JazzFest hit a two-block radius in the West Village. The festival has continued to expand and evolve since its inception in 2005, transforming into a well-attended, much anticipated off-season jazz extravaganza. Coinciding with the JJA (Jazz Journalists Association) and APAP (Association of Performing Arts Presenters) conferences, the festival showcased 250 musicians playing in 55 bands. Showcased through abbreviated 40-minute sets, these artists offered more than a glimpse of contemporary jazz in its myriad facets and wide-ranging influences.

Artists as diverse as Dr. Lonnie Smith, the 28 year-old drum phenom Mark Guiliana and the much-buzzed-about Vijay Iyer Trio packed all 5 performance spaces as a steggering total of 4,000 people - musicians, jazz heads, presenters, producers, managers and agents - roamed from venue to venue, maintaining sunny dispositions despite having to wait in line in frigid temperatures. The five venues (Le Poisson Rouge, The Zinc Bar, Kenny's Castaways, Sullivan Hall and The Bitter End) were filled to capacity throughout the festival's two nights, making wandering between shows somewhat difficult; once you were inside, you didn't really want to leave for fear of not being able to get back in, but there was that other thing happening at the club next door, a real predicament which, given the festival's steady growth, might need to be addressed by the festival's founder and producer, Brice Rosenbloom of boom BOOM Presents, in preparation for next year's edition.

The festival's program, packed with overlapping shows, required careful planning of my itinerary. My journey began at 6:20 Friday evening at Le Poisson Rouge, with Vancouverite Darcy James Argue's Secret Society. I'd been waiting to hear the big band live since the release of Infernal Machines; it was a good omen for things to come, the band showcasing Argue's progressive, multi-layered writing, horns shining in particular. Next up was bassist Ben Williams, winner of the 2009 Monk Competition and member of Stefon Harris' Blackout, playing at the small, overly-packed Zinc Bar, where sound issues diminished our capacity to appreciate this virtuosic young bass player. Williams and his Sound Effect, consisting of Jamire Williams on drums, Jaleel Shaw on alto and Dave Bryant on keys, played a bebop, pop and hip-hop-infused set with material ranging from Buster Williams' Christina to the lesser-known Michael Jackson tune Little Suzie. The Chelsea Baratz Quartet was up next at the Zinc, offering a somewhat watered-down set, pianist Orrin Evans and trumpeter Corey Wilkes gleaming with flashes of imagination. Mid-set I rushed back to Le Poisson Rouge, just in time to catch pianist Eric Lewis play Nirvana's Smells Like Teen Spirit, followed by Evanescence's chart-topper Going Under. Lewis, hammering the piano with the thrust of his entire body, was thrilled to have the oppurtunity to "treat the piano like a rock guitar", as he put it. "Feel that! Rock jazz! You heard it here first!" he exclaimed. Going straight into It Don't Mean a Thing, Lewis reminded the audience he'd played with the likes of Elvin Jones, Roy Hargrove and Cassandra Wilson, too.

Nicholas Payton's SeXXXtet left me wanting (and wondering why he was singing). I headed across the street to Kenny's Castaways to bask in the good vibes of the quirky, high-spirited Matt Wilson Quartet. Coating virtuosity with a layer of light-hearted merriment, Wilson, donned in a leopard-skin skirt and long black wig, matched his signature playfulness with an abundance of creativity, propelling his strong sense of history into the future. I stayed put for drummer Bobby Previte's New Bump Quartet with bassist Brad Jones and saxophonist Ellery Eskelin, Bill Ware's digitized vibraphone enhancing the electrifying overall effect, and Matt Wilson joining on snare drum towards the end of the set. Round midnight, when I thought I could hear no more, I surrendered to Mark Guiliana's Beat Music, listening from the crammed balcony as guitarists Nir Felder and Aaron Dugan played around Guiliana's beat-driven grooves, appearing on an upcoming album co-produced by Meshell Ndegeocello.

The second night of Winter JazzFest offered an even larger artist lineup, kicking off at 6 p.m. with a soulful solo performance by Italian singer Carmen Consoli at Le Poisson Rouge. The audience enjoyed her percussive acoustic guitar playing and expressive delivery through a mixture of Italian song, indie-rock, jazz and blues. Dedicating one of the tunes to her hometown of Catania, Sicily, Consoli explained that she was born between sea and volcano, fire and water, elements which have clearly informed her music and performance style.

Bassist Ben Allison followed, featuring violinist Jenny Scheinman, Shane Ensley on trumpet, Steve Cardenas on guitar and the killer chops of Rudy Royston on drums. The band played material from Allison's recent recording Think Free, with which the audience seemed to be well-acquainted. Introducing the crowd-pleasing Man Size Safe off Little Things Run the World, Allison revealed that it was "part of the Dick Cheney suite I've been writing for the past nine years". The energetic set ended with a guest appearance by Joey Arias, delivering a moving rendition of the theme song from Philadelphia.

Dashing over to Sullivan Hall, but unable to get beyond the front door to see (or even hear) Gretchen Parlato, I headed over to Kenny's Castaways for rising young bassist Linda Oh and her quartet. Sound problems made it difficult to get a clear impression of Oh's playing (on electric) or to the effect of the electronic samples she introduced. Next up at Kenny's was the JD Allen Trio, Allen's deep, penetrating sound on tenor heating up the already sweltering room. His band mates - Rudy Royston on drums and Gregg August on bass - displayed a strong synergy as they dug deep into material from Allen's 2009 album Shine. The trio elicited enthusiastic audience appreciation, a woman across the room dancing joyously (yes!) while a gentleman standing beside me hummed some of Allen's memorable themes.

Squeezing through the crowd I made it back out and dashed over to Sullivan Hall to witness Dr. Lonnie Smith tearing it up with his funk-soul-jazz recipe, then back to LPR, where I caught the last few moments of Benin-born guitarist/vocalist Lionel Loueke. Managing to get just past the door, I saw and heard enough to know he had captivated and moved the crowd with his brand of melodious African jazz. It was now almost 11 p.m., and I was only about halfway through my itinerary...

Over at The Bitter End, progressive funk-jazz-rock band Rudder (Chris Cheek on saxophone, Henry Hey on keys, Tim Lefebvre on bass and Keith Carlock on drums) were getting ready to hit. "Winter JazzFest is officially sold out!" announced Adam Schatz of Search & Restore, guest curator at Kenny's Castaways, as he presented the hard-driving, genre-defying band, which seared with infectious energy. Unable to tear myself away, I missed most of Vijay Iyer's trio, playing music from his latest album Historicity, widely considered one of the best albums of 2009.

Eager to hear the promising Ambrose Akinmusire Quintet, I headed back to Sullivan Hall. Winner of the 2007 Monk Competition, the young, gifted trumpeter generously shared the spotlight with his band mates - Walter Smith III on tenor, Taylor Egisti on piano, Harish Raghavon on bass and Justin Brown on drums - all abounding with skill and creativity. After a long night I was elated to finally score a bar stool and sat myself down to hear startling drummer Chris "Daddy" Dave with the inimitable Derrick Hodge on bass, Kebbi Williams on tenor, and Casey Benjamin joining the fold mid-set, adding some fiery intensity. Dave drew a late-night audience comprised of numerous musicians who had played over the course of those two nights, some listening intently, others conversing by the bar - a sight not uncommon throughout the festival, as artists rallied to support one another.

And the music kept going till 4 a.m.

Among the shows I regretfully missed due to time/venue conflicts were the Jenny Scheinman/Jason Moran duo; the Bitches Brew Revisited project; Tyshawn Sorey's Koan; John Hollenback's Claudia Quintet, which apparently tore it up; Mike Reed's People, Places & Things; Oran Etkin's fusion of traditional Malian and Jewish music; the William Parker Quartet and others. The music from the 18-or so shows I did manage to catch is still swarming in my head as I write these lines, continuing to energize and inspire - not only me, it seems, but much of the jazz community. The sight of venues packed with people eager for jazz was uplifting (the ticket price of $25 for an all-night, all-club pass - or $30 for both nights - was no doubt a factor). There was a much-needed buzz in the community and on the streets, supporting the broad spectrum of jazz voices on the scene today, some working more within the tradition while others stretched into a broader aesthetic, melding jazz with other genres and musical influences from around the world.

Winter JazzFest is, as noted by Jason Moran an a recent LA Times interview, unlike most other corporate- and sponsorship-heavy jazz festivals. Taking place in small clubs rather than large concert halls, its audience - ages ranging from twenties to sixties to the 85 year-old George Wein - was not your typically polite, clapping-on-cue crowd; they were rowdy and invigorated. Their enthusiasm, coupled with the vast and varied amount of captivating material and technical aptitude, serve as the ultimate, unequivocal and vociferous response to the ongoing discussion surrounding the current state of jazz.

Two perspectives on Jazz: Four views

noreply@blogger.com (Félix-Antoine Hamel) — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 16:09:00 +0000

by Marc Chénard

Since its inception a little over a century ago, jazz has been the object of much close scrutiny. When considering its rapid evolution, it is hard not to be amazed by the several transformations it has undergone. So much so, that it was never an eady task to define the music with any accuracy, a chore rendered impossible nowadays in our global village.

Yet, this has not prevented people from trying. In the myriad of books and articles written on the music, learned historians, journalists, music fans and even musicians themselves have offered their own takes on this issue. Through all of these, it seems more than obvious that one person's jazz is not necessarily someone else's.

But of the numerous 'definitions' of the music out there, two are particularly striking in that they offer radically different takes, each of these seemingly opposed to the other.

1-Jazz as the classical music of America. (Marshall Stearns)
2 Jazz as the sound of surprise. (Whitney Balliett)

The first of these definitions, it should be noted, was recently the object of another toundtable style article in the September 2009 issue of Downbeat, Dan Ouellette poses the question to three people as to whether this designation 'classical' should be abandoned altogether. Herwith is the opening statement of his column:

"According to the National Endowment of the Arts Study 'Arts Participation 2008; Highlights from a National Survey', audiences for jazz have been seriously dwindling. The study linked jazz with classical music as performing arts whose attendance has declined the most. Given the alarming stats, should jazz be tagged "America's classical music" because of an audience perception problem?" Downbeat, Sept 2009 p. 15.

While this question is of potential interest for discussion, this is offered as a complement of information to the issue raised here (and for those interested, search for the article in question, surely worth the read). Three musicians, one of whom is also a jazz educator and teacher, and one journalist/jazz historian were sollicted to give their views on both of the definitions, and to pronounce themselves on which of these they thought was more relevant, or satisfactory.

There are indeed several ways of dealing with the question, one being a more detached (or objective) way (based on observing the art form as it now stands); conversely, there is a more subjective approach where the participant can take a more personal stand, as informed by his or her own personal experience with the music. Thus: Has jazz attained a 'classical' status after a little more than a century of existence? Or: can it still surprise the listener in light of its extraordinarly quick evolution over this time period? These were but some possible avenues that were suggested to the particpants.

Coat Cooke, Vancouver
Saxophonist and artistic director of the New Orchestra Workshop (a.k.a. NOW Orchestra)

To me, I really have problems with both of these definitions, and for different reasons. Regarding Whitney Balliett's definition, I have always liked that definition on some levels. One part of the music I like is when there is that sense of excitment, or when your on the edge of the unknown, if you wish. However, that definition is also so vague and addresses the music in almost a naive way. Not only that, but I find it to be almost pejorative in the sense that this naiveté denigrates the music in a lot of ways, as it is reducing it almost to an umpulse, when in fact it is much more complex than that. That is but one aspect of a greater whole, because it extends far beyond that into a variety of cultural, sociological and historicals considerations. So reducing the music to 'the sound of surprise' is just an oversimplification of things, and even belittles it for the sake of a catch phrase. It's never easy to describe anything for that matter, and you should always wonder what the purpose of it is, or why you're doing it in the first place. All that to say that boiling all of this down to that is just not adequate. But as mentioned previously, it's a definition of one aspect of the music I happen to like, which is fine, but to have it as an overall descriptor is really treading on dangerous ground.

And I have the same feeling on the other statenent, too. When you look at the dictionnary definition of 'classical', it says that it's something considered to be 'serious'. But what then are the implications of that word? When looking at it from a Western perspective, there's an air of importance given to that term. True, there's no denying jazz is an important music and one that has reached a high level of development here in its birthplace. Now I was discussing this topic with a freind of mine, and I came to the point of saying that 'classical music' is something that can be readily defined, in the sense of being written down and reproduceable anywhere in the world, and at any point in time. In jazz, that is not the case, which, by the way, is a strange word in and of itself. Yet, when you look at the jazz of the pre-bop era, a lot of it was played by big bands (Ellington, Basie, Lunceford…) where it was very much written down, but with the jazz component in the solo improvisations (which, incidentally, was once the case in early 'classical' music as well, a practice gradually renoved from it so as to not be part of its description anymore). From be-bop on, however, it became a more strongly indivisualized music. In today's schools, they teach you to play like, say, Cannonball Adderely, when in fact it has nothing to do with individual expression at all. So jazz is not 'classical' in the sense of being codified, which doesn't mean it shouldn't be taken seriously.

Reno De Stefano, Ph.D.
Jazz guitarist/composer (Professor of Jazz Studies/Université de Montréal)

Let's start by saying that a precise definition of jazz is always problematic because it is a constantly evolving art form. What may appear to be a concise and clear definition for a particular style or period may be inadequate and totally inappropriate for another. One only need to listen to Art Blakey's Jazz Messengers ("Indestructible") from 1964 and to Cecil Taylor's "Unit Structures" from 1966 to realize that a definition of jazz would have to be quite general, all-encompassing and flexible to provide room for these two diametrically-opposed jazz aesthetics which co-existed side by side. Examples such as this one abound in the jazz tradition.

Marshall Stearns tries to illuminate his readers by positing that jazz has achieved the status of classical music as a distinctive and unique musical art form. It is true that jazz developed as an indigenous American art form, the culmination of a long process of maturation just as in classical music. Hence, jazz is to America what classical music is to Europe. The history of jazz (and classical music) is characterized by continuous stylistic change because it is in the nature of an art form to grow and develop. In the jazz discourse and its literature we discover that jazz is elevated above other indigenous forms ("America's classical music"), and we find this idea of an evolutionary progression reaching back to the beginning of the century. In his survey a History of Jazz in America, Barry Ulanov supports this view and explains that the history of jazz is a "curiously even one, chaotic at any instant, but always moving ahead in what is, for an art form, almost a straight line." Classical music as we know it, has gone through a similar type of development.

The contributions of master soloists such as Louis Armstrong, Coleman Hawkins, Charlie Parker, John Coltrane, Ornette Coleman and others have brought about major changes in the jazz language at different times throughout its complex history. It is clear then, that it becomes increasingly difficult to provide an adequate, all-encompassing definition of a musical language that is constantly going through rapid changes in vocabulary and sound.

There is no doubt that the jazz language and its sound have changed dramatically in its brief hundred-year history. So much so, that even swing players when first confronted with bebop thought it sounded Chinese to their ears. Every decade or so, master improvisers and composers have introduced innovations and distinctive "new sounds" to the idiom. Consequently, we can understand and appreciate Whitney Balliett's attempt to define jazz "as the sound of surprise." This sonoric individualism- the unfettered expression of the individual- is probably the most radical and most important aspect of jazz which differentiates it so dramatically from most other forms of music-making. In his book Musings, Gunther Schuller remarks that the "sounds of jazz, as musicians simply call it, are its most obviously distinguishing and memorable surface features." Even the purely rhythmic distinctions between and among players are much less pronounced than the timbral and sonority aspects. These have always been and still are today amongst the young generation of players, highly personal and specific.

In the future jazz will most probably continue to evolve and borrow from other musical styles and traditions. Any attempt to provide an accurate definition will become increasingly more difficult as jazz moves away from its indigenous African-American roots. However, as an art form jazz has already been consecrated, earning its status as America's classical music, never ceasing to surprise us with its sounds !

Christine Jensen
Saxophonist, composer, band leader (Montreal)

I have had time to question how to place jazz in the now. With the current recession barking at my heels that need to be oiled by funding from a vast array of sources, along with European travels through many jazz clubs, concert halls along with giving many masterclasses, I have come to realize that jazz is competing with a lot more music than it used to, as all genres continue to diversify. There is also the need to build a new, young audience as the older one is mostly attached to music from the past (eg. pre-1960 jazz). Traveling with Nordic Connect we have noticed a general disconnect in establishing an audience in jazz, as well as in selling our music on CD especially. I feel a steady decline in live audience participation, thus the decline in jazz audience population, although there are some bright spots. This has mightily affected record
sales, further diminishing the artist's budget in promotion. Talk about a cog in the wheel!

Defining jazz is a tricky thing for me. It has consistently evolved at a rapid rate due to a high influx of schooled musicians, as well as the addition of technology. So, defining it to me is more like defining improvised music as opposed to jazz (which contains such a broad spectrum of styles in it's own genre). I would not define jazz as America's Classical music for a variety of reasons. To attach "classical" is to attach a stigma of a style of music that has already been historically placed. The improvising musician puts the music in the now, which, to me, goes against the term "classical". I feel that jazz continually evolves through the musician searching out new structures that fuse composition and improvisation. I also believe the jazz artist is less inhibited once these two elements are fully explored , and I would only hope that Balliett's idea of the "sound of surprise" is the result. I think that Balliett's definition is most fitting, as ultimately the audience is introduced to something new each time they hear a jazz group that improvises. This is why jazz is jazz and why I think that it is an international or world music before it is America's classical music.

I find in my travels and in my teachings that the young jazz musician is more skilled than ever, and is at hard work attempting to find one's own voice rather than relying on the re-hashing of the American songbook with a limited vocabulary in improvisation (although the brightest stars are equally astute in paying homage to the songbook repertoire eg. Kurt Rosenwinkel). I believe that jazz should have the respect of the people and the state at the same height of classical music for this reason, but there are some serious obstacles. I feel that America* already has its own classical music whether it contains new compositions or it is the performance of standard repertoire. It is well structured on many levels as the composer is the ultimate storyteller. Classical music includes a high level of organization from the presenters in order for the ensemble or solo artist to take advantage of its audience. Jazz, on the other hand, can only be in a decline because of a lack of awareness and organization (festivals are still a beacon of light, but tend to limit jazz awareness by presenting their programs in a short amount of time). I have also noticed that the institutions that foster classical music have a tendency to repress the notion of artistry in jazz, and choose to further separate the genres, giving the classically trained musicians the advantage of pursuing a career that contains a lot more cultural support on many levels. To me jazz is jazz as long as it contains that element of surprise from the improvising musician. It is social music, and it bridges and draws from many genres, therefore giving even more meaning to it's own definition.

(*) When Stearns refers to America in his definition, I wonder if that includes Canada as well? Does he mean the United States, or the North American continent?

Mark Miller
Journalist and jazz historian. (Toronto)

Personally, I neither find "America's classical music" nor the "Jazz as the sound of surprise" to be entirely (or at all) satisfying as definitions. But if asked to choose between them — as indeed is the exercise here — I would prefer the latter, if only because it causes me less difficulty.

I have always resisted in principle, and resented in fact, any effort to quantify or qualify jazz in terms of classical music and thus implicitly establish a hierarchical relationship between the two fields in which one, classical music, becomes the standard to which the other, jazz, aspires. Jazz need not be quantified or qualified on any terms other than its own. (Unless, of course, it's for purposes of fundraising; how better to open the purse strings of public and private philanthropy than to claim equality with the music played by the symphony orchestras and opera companies that have traditionally received such support?) If the intent of calling jazz "America's classical music" is simply to suggest that Armstrong, Ellington and Parker (for example) are to America what Bach, Beethoven and Bartok (for example) are to Europe, in terms of their respective culture's highest musical achievements — well, that is perhaps innocent enough. But it is no more than a laurel; it is certainly not a definition. (And, as has been asked before in discussions of this sort, where does it leave Aaron Copland, Henry Cowell and Charles Ives?) Employed more formally, and for any purpose other than as a promotional catch-phrase, "America's classical music" fixes in place the aesthetics of jazz in ways contrary to what has historically been its inquiring spirit, as if its full measure has now been taken — a measure based on past events and evidently restricted, rather too jingoistically, to those events as they occurred in the contiguous 48 states. While this may be consistent with the comings and goings at Lincoln Center, it precludes the possibility that jazz might continue to evolve, a dangerous presumption to make of a music that has, in its 100-year history, done nothing but evolve — for better and, admittedly at times, for worse.

"Jazz as the sound of surprise" is a happier proposition, one no more adequate as a definition but one at least open rather than exclusionary in its implications. Although it is in fact just one of the many characteristics that might be ascribed to jazz, and although that characteristic is not unique to jazz, "the sound of surprise" places no limits on the music stylistically, culturally or geo-politically. Instead, it allows for — and even captures an essence of — the freedom that jazz has embraced and, if it's not held back by such sloganeering as "jazz is the classical music of America," will continue to embrace.

Note: Miller's newest publication, Herbie Nichols—A Jazzist's Life (Mercury Press) is to be realeased this month in Canada.

Vancouver International Jazz Festival 2009: Set 1: Introduction and Trio M

noreply@blogger.com (Félix-Antoine Hamel) — Fri, 11 Sep 2009 00:17:00 +0000

by Laurence Svirchev

The TD Canada Trust Vancouver International Jazz Festival has a special quality that differentiates it from the vast majority of music festivals. It presents not only an array of headliners to fill the the large concert halls, but it also emphasizes the musicians who represent the bulk of the Canadian jazz scene aesthetics and economy. Approximately 1800 musicians play the festival, and 52% of these are from the Vancouver area while another 15% are from the rest of Canada. I'll stand corrected if any other large North American festival, the Montreal festival for example, can even come close to this track record. The TD Canada Trust Vancouver International Jazz Festival goes one step further to make it the shining star of North American festivals: the restless rolling stone of jazz imagination finds its contemporary expression every June in Vancouver. The TD Canada Trust Vancouver International Jazz Festival spotlights creative Canadian and international musicians in the context of their long-standing collaborations, not in cubby-hole clubs, but in venues with great acoustics and comfortable seating.

One of these collaborative events, Ice hockey: Canada vs. Sweden featuring François Houle and Mats Gustafsson +12 was an extravaganza featuring musicians decked out in hockey jerseys. Two video screens showed vintage hockey matches; the screens switched to scoreboards when one side trumped the other with a goal. Fred Lonberg-Holm from Chicago a had immense fun refereeing the jocular relations between the Canadians and Swedes in a show which featured plenty of roughing and fast-paced improvisational skating. At the end of the match the score was even, Houle and Gustafsson faced off, not with the clarinet v. baritone saxophone, but over a child's board game. Gustafsson easily scored with a slap shot and the players then went through the post-game ritual of shaking hands with each other.

A different take on international collaboration came from the Félix Stüssi 5 + Ray Anderson. Stüssi is a Montréal-based pianist-composer who originally came to Canada from Switzerland. Anderson's original base was Chicago but now it is New York State. Then there was Joëlle Léandre, the French bassist who was ubiquitous at this year's festival, collaborating with a number of people, including a solo-duo set with Swiss improviser Urs Leimgruber. Gigs such as these may not be the economic engines that keep a festival boat afloat in these years of funding cuts to the arts, but over the course of the previous twenty-three annual festivals, Vancouver audiences have been privileged to cutting edge music. For example, in 1992, Bill Frisell told me that festival Artistic Director Ken Pickering was the first person in North America to ask him to play his own music at a festival.

Jazz journalists too-frequently review a festival's music in the chronological order in which they heard the gigs. While this may give a sense of how a festival flows, it is all too easy for the writer to concentrate on making comparisons between and among gigs, writing more about how the writer feels he becomes aurally saturated over 10 days. The range of music at the TD Canada Trust Vancouver International Jazz Festival is too broad, in my opinion, for such an approach. It is not fair to artists to compare a headline set of music veterans with the opening act, typically younger artists who represent the future of the music. In an attempt to keep the ears fresh, I listened to maximum two or three concert sets a day. With this dynamic in mind, I'll concentrate on some of the individual concerts I heard, starting with Trio M (Myra Melford, Mark Dresser, and Matt Wilson).

Trio M

Trio M's concert opened misterioso, seemingly as an open improvisation in slow time. Dresser played long-tones arco in the cello range; Wilson emphasized the toms with flutter anti-theses on the high-hat; Melford played sparingly, almost randomly, as she moved gradually out of the treble range into the mid-range. Then at four minutes, the preamble paid off in a grand anthem-like theme that evoked the strange paradoxical tension between music that is somber and celebratory at the same time. The musicians chose not to sustain this zone of tension for long. With Matt Wilson's explosive "Go!", the song took off as an express-train duo between the pianist and the drummer. From there the song went through multiple variations on themes, time changes, and emotional feel before ending at the thirty-two minute mark.

Many, including myself, had not heard Matt Wilson before. He made a strong impression upon the sophisticated group of listeners who frequented the Roundhouse Performance Center, so I would like to comment on his approach to music making. Wilson's delivery, although he is a thorough modernist, was oddly reminiscent of Joe Morello's, the underestimated drummer who made his mark with the classic Dave Brubeck Quartet. Morello was a drummer's drummer; it seemed that wasn't anything Morello couldn't do on the drums.

Wilson is no different. He frequents the drummers' classic left hand cross grip, ergonomics that perhaps delivers less rock power but instead grants the drummer a great range of expression at high velocity with a minimum expenditure of energy, particularly on the snare and the high-hat. With Wilson the listener also gets to hear an exceptionally powerful right foot that delivers rhythms independent of those generated by the other limbs. The result is an intriguing polyphony that belies what the eyes see when watching Wilson. He has an economy of motion at the kit which provokes the illusion he really is not that busy. For example, he will sometimes stop-motion his right hand at the top of the arc before making a decisive strike while the other three limbs in his kit's cast of characters are moving swiftly.

If the listener closes the eyes the realization kicks in that he possesses the same qualities of high-end expressiveness, aesthetics, vocabulary, and velocity as some of the drummers (like Paul Lovens, Han Bennink, and Hamid Drake) we have been privileged to hear in Vancouver. Trio M was worth hearing if just for this one discovery, which of course makes me want to hear Wilson (who by the way composed several of Trio M's pieces) in other contexts.

Back to the gig itself. With a reprise of the melody at the end of the express section, Melford dropped out and Wilson used a rapid deceleration of tempo on the high hat, a moment of silence intervened, and Mark Dresser soloed pizzicato at slow tempo, ending with his trademark right-hand slash against the strings: he hits with such speed that at the hand dramatically continues though the arc and ends up hanging at the horizontal for a moment.

Dresser is one of the sophisticates of the double bass, a true innovator in the way he has exploited the possibilities of combining the traditional acoustic properties of the instrument with contemporary electronic methods. He has discovered methods to enhance the natural vibrations of the strings that are too small to be heard without amplification. His bass has coiled pickups embedded in two strategic places on the fingerboard, allowing him to express as many as three simultaneous pitches on one string and at the same time control the volume of each pitch. The three pitches come from the two lengths above and below where his fingers press the string into the fretboard, and the third is the vibration of the whole string through the instrument.

These techniques are both powerful and beautiful magnifiers that increased the depth and intensity of the music. Midway through the first number of the concert, Dresser created creating a bowed cycle in the deep range of the bass occasionally punctuating it with a plucked the E-string that gradually transited into the cello range. Tucked into all that sound were eerie musics that sounded created totally by a synthesizer, but in fact were the amplified natural harmonics of short lengths of the strings which normally could not be heard by the human ear. What made the effects even more delicious were the happy concurrence of Melford lifting her hands off the keys and manipulating the strings inside the piano, with Wilson softly on brushes.

This song lasted some 33-some minutes. In fact it was not one composition but three, an interpolation of AL (Matt Wilson), The Promised Land (Melford), and Naïve Art (Matt Wilson). The segues, improvisations, counterpoints, instantaneous accelerations/decelerations, and tension-release cycles made the music simultaneously sound like both a total improvisation and a through-composed piece. This was one of the great things about listening to Trio M, they took the audience on a journey through space and time and one was never sure what would happen next. That essence of jazz is exactly what happened during the rest of the concert.

Reference CD: Big Picture By Trio M, www.cryptogramophone.com

Ornette Coleman, Montreal International Jazz Festival, July 9, 2009

noreply@blogger.com (Félix-Antoine Hamel) — Wed, 02 Sep 2009 15:42:00 +0000

by Mark Chodan

After an absence of more than 20 years, it would have been hard to pass up seeing Ornette Coleman on a Montreal stage. And what an impression he made…

The evening started with the FIJM presenting Ornette with their Miles Davis award, ironic given that Miles had little positive to say about Ornette and his band when they arrived in New York in the late 50s. His acceptance speech (or more accurately, "non-acceptance speech") was in the typically esoteric Ornette style where he spoke about how the only thing that was important for humanity was love. Ornette politely declined the physical award, dismissing it as a "gadget". Note: for those interested in familiarizing themselves with Ornettese, search out the CBC unedited podcast of an Ornette interview with Jian Ghomeshi from 2008.

Ornette and his quartet then proceeded to play well over one hour's worth of a mix of classic and newer Ornette music. With son Denardo Coleman on drums and bassists Tony Falanga (upright) and Al MacDowell (electric piccolo), the quartet was definitely closer to Ornette's Prime Time zone of the 80s than to the classic quartet of the 60s. Ornette stuck primarily to his alto although at many points he did switch to violin or trumpet for segments of many of the pieces.

The best way to picture the music, in my opinion, is to think of the quartet as a stripped down Prime Time, where the bassists function as the foundation, the x-axis, and Ornette and Denardo as the y-axis, where time can be stretched, compressed or side-lined. Falanga and MacDowell are clearly master musicians of the highest caliber, Falanga laying down the basic groove and MacDowell commenting and interjecting with his guitar-like piccolo bass. On this foundation Ornette and Denardo are free to enter dialogue amongst themselves and/or with the bassists.

Not to knock Denardo, but I couldn't help but wonder at certain points how different this quartet may have sounded with a different drummer. Throughout his career Ornette has not usually strayed too far from a basic pulse in his music, and this Denardo does provide. But it would be interesting to consider the musical possibilities if Ornette were to team up with, well, maybe not a Paul Lytton or Tony Oxley, but maybe Hamid Drake.

At 79, Ornette still has formidable stamina and a stunning sense of time. The set was followed by two encores, his classic Lonely Woman, and another piece which was either Michael Jackson's (!) "Beat It", or another Ornette piece that quoted the Jackson tune extensively, in the wake of Jackson's death only two weeks earlier.

Overall, Ornette Coleman's quartet provided an evening of exciting music. Gone are the days when Ornette could easily clear out a venue with his "radical" music of days gone by. These days Ornette is selling out concert halls and other large festival venues. This is an encouraging sign that perhaps great artists are no longer only recognized upon their deaths.

Anat Cohen Quartet: Revisionist Post Modern Jazz from the Big Apple

noreply@blogger.com (Félix-Antoine Hamel) — Mon, 13 Jul 2009 16:30:00 +0000

By Paul Serralheiro

The sound of the clarinet is not one associates with Modern Jazz, but Anat Cohen proved it is still a relevant instrument in her show Monday night at L’Astral (July 6, 9 PM) at the Montreal International Jazz Festival.

The main appeal of her playing was the fluidity of her ideas which was facilitated by an excellent technical command. At times, the technical display took the upper hand, and she would run rote patterns with little musical interest, but these were luckily infrequent, as her lyrical talents dominated.

The music making was aided by some excellent work by guitarist Gilad Hekselman. With a clear presence and a strong voice, Hekselman displayed some original thinking, especially in his percussive concepts. Despite some gratuitous over-reliance on showy playing at times--like the leader--his technical facility mainly served musical ends.

Likewise, bassist Joe Morris had a nice big sound, although his articulation was too heavy at times, where implied notes and rhythms would have been more efficient and effective.

Drummer Daniel Freedman, for his part, showed lots of energy and heart, although his articulation was rather sluggish in spots, missing spryness in his ride cymbal swing figures, for example.

The band purveyed some satisfying music--despite some reservations for this listener--bringing to life an interestingly conceived Jitterbug Waltz, to open the evening. Also memorable were the originals Jay’s Blues, and The Bucket Kicker, as well as a convincing version of Body and Soul, (despite the unimaginative arrangement), and a choro by Pixinguinha to close the show which lasted about 70 minutes, with no encore.

Félix Stüssi 5 & Ray Anderson

noreply@blogger.com (Félix-Antoine Hamel) — Sat, 11 Jul 2009 15:36:00 +0000

par Monique Poirier

Le 8 juillet dernier, le quintette de Félix Stüssi et Ray Anderson a capté l'attention de l'auditoire venu les entendre au Upstairs de Montréal. À cette occasion, le quintette présentait plusieurs nouvelles pièces qui feront partie d'un prochain CD. Dès les premières minutes, on a vite senti l'énergie de ce groupe en grande forme. Le tromboniste Ray Anderson s'ajoutait aux saxophonistes Bruno Lamarche et Alexandre Côté, assurant une section de vents très solide et homogène. Clinton Ryder à la contrebasse et Isaiah Ceccarelli à la batterie complétaient le groupe dirigé par le pianiste Félix Stüssi.

Ce qui m'a fascinée c'est la façon avec laquelle les compositions nous ont fait voyager, passant d'un inconnu un peu exploratoire vers un thème qui se développe soudain tout naturellement. Par exemple, cette pièce qui commence par un solo d'archet à la contrebasse avant d'émerger dans un thème où tout le groupe se joint. Parfois, c'est le thème de départ qui est bien établi, mais qui prend tout à coup une tournure inattendue. Comme dans cette pièce où le tromboniste est laissé seul dans une improvisation qui permet au trombone de parler, chanter, pleurer, chuchoter s'esclaffer dans des registres parfois insoupçonnés! D'ailleurs, les moments d'improvisation que nous a offert chacun des musiciens étaient des moments de liberté pleinement sentis qui s'intégraient fort bien dans les compositions de Félix Stüssi. Et comme pianiste, même s'il se faisait discret à certains moments, il a pu s'exprimer avec verve à d'autres moments dans un discours souvent monodique, mais jamais banal.

Il m'est resté de cette musique une impression d'équilibre entre structure et liberté, de plaisir de sortir des sentiers battus tout naturellement… Pas tellement pour l'exploration pure, mais parce que l'expression l'impose…

Ottawa International Jazz Festival 2009

noreply@blogger.com (Félix-Antoine Hamel) — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 23:32:00 +0000

By Ron Sweetman

The Ottawa International Jazz Festival for 2009 ran from Thursday June 25 to Sunday July 5 . There are four main series of concerts, the Connoisseur Series at Library and Archives Canada, Great Canadian Jazz at Confederation Park, Concert Under the Stars at Confederation Park, and Improv International at the National Arts Centre Fourth Stage. In addition, there were free concerts in various locations around town and on the OLG Stage, plus two panel discussions organized by the Jazz Journalists Association and nightly jam sessions. I'll take you through each major series chronologically, but I should explain that I did not attend every concert of every series.

At the Connoisseur Series, which featured pianists, I particularly enjoyed four pianists whose styles could hardly have been more varied - Toshiko Akiyoshi, Amina Claudine Myers, Patricia Barber and Lenore Raphael.

Toshiko Akiyoshi endeared herself to the audience with autobiographical anecdotes which served to introduce each piece she played. Bud Powell loomed large in the anecdotes and in her playing. Amina Claudine Myers demonstrated her strengths in gospel, jazz, blues and standards on piano and organ. Patricia Barber was the epitome of chic; the musical equivalent of New Yorker magazine. Lenore Raphael chose a selection of standards and elaborated on each one most skillfully.

Because of time conflicts, I attended few of the Great Canadian Series concerts, but one concert I particularly enjoyed featured the gutsy tenor saxophone of Andre Leroux, who was there with his Quartet.

The Concerts Under the Stars came on to the Main Stage after the Great Canadian Series each evening. What little I caught of Dave Douglas' Brass Ecstasy was very impressive. Dave's solos were inspired, and the concert was my first opportunity to hear the great French horn player Vincent Chancey in person. Singer Roberta Gambarini lived up to her reputation as one of the foremost jazz singers of our day. The few tunes I heard from Jimmy Cobbs' So What Band were delightful; I particularly liked the way in which the two saxophonists (Vincent Herring on alto and Javon Jackson on tenor) worked together. Soul singer Al Green put on a polished show to an adoring audience.

The Gary Burton Quartet Revisited kept the audience's attention, despite heavy rain. Both Gary and Pat Metheny soloed most effectively. Always a treat, the Maria Schneider Orchestra played beautifully, the arrangements being particularly effective. The same material played by an inferior orchestra might be dismissed as purely pretty, but the quality of the arrangements and the players would stifle any such assessment of this orchestra. Cuban pianist Chucho Valdes and his quintet did a strong set and were enthusiastically received by the audience.

The Concerts Under the Stars series ended with Brian Blade and Charles Lloyd. Brian Blade is that rare item; a drummer without ego. His excellent Fellowship Band was a model of restrained power and Brian limited himself to one short solo. Charles Lloyd performed remarkably well on tenor sax and flute for a man of his age, backed by an excellent quartet.

The Improv International series was the reason I missed so much of what went on elsewhere. This excellent series brings in improvisational talent from around the world, starting things off with the brilliant Monk's Casino from Germany, led by pianist Alex von Schlippenbach. Both trumpeter Axel Dorner on trumpet and Rudi Marshall on bass clarinet were outstanding, and von Schlippenbach demonstrated a rare understanding of Monk's music.

The high quality continued the next evening with Switzerland's Zoom. While all three musicians were excellent, trombonist Nils Wogram stood out as a world-class player. French pianist Baptiste Trotignon brought in four Americans to play with him. His playing was very sophisticated, and excellent solos were heard from Mark Turner on alto sax and Jeremy Pelt on trumpet and flugelhorn. Crystal Magnets was the disguise behind which French pianist Benoit Delbecq and Canadian pianist Andy Milne hid their piano duets. Music of a very high quality.

Some people found the Finish group Ilmiliekki unsatisfying, but I found that what they lacked in fire they made up in subtlety. Perhaps they suffered from comparison with the enormously dynamic and enjoyable Trio M (Myra Melford, Mark Dresser and Matt Wilson). It was obvious from the start that this trio just loves playing together, which they demonstrated by great musical empathy and supportive laughter. The series ended with another dynamic trio; Dutch pianist Michiel Braam, Dutch bassist Wilbert De Joode and American percussionist Mike Vatcher. This trio has played together for a long time, and their musical empathy was evident throughout their energetic and energizing performance. This series adds a fresh and vital dimension to the whole festival.

In conclusion, the 2009 Ottawa International Jazz Festival was one of the best ever. Come and join us next year!

_______________________________________________________________

--
Ron Sweetman
Tel: 613-730-2083 | Fax: 613-730-1818
Email: ronsweetman@kalixo.com <-- NEW!
http://www.inamellowtone.com

Toronto Jazz Festival 2009

noreply@blogger.com (Félix-Antoine Hamel) — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 15:46:00 +0000

By Alain Londes

The TD Canada Trust Toronto Jazz Festival enjoyed its 23rd edition this year with a similar structure to recent years. The Mainstage concerts in front of City Hall were nightly focal point as well as key locations such as the Grandmasters series at the Four Seasons Center for the Performing Arts for Sonny Rollins and Gary Burton Quartet, the Canon Theater for Tony Bennett, and two theater locations at Harbourfront. Toronto might not benefit from the same financial support as exists for Montreal but it attracts a solid programme of international musicians to complement the vibrant local jazz scene that operates throughout the year.

June 26: Sonny Rollins

On opening night, Mr. Tenor Madness himself, Sonny Rollins, kicked off the festival with an extended outpouring solo on Sonny, Please that probably lasted about 15 minutes. Sporting a white jacket and cool shades, some members of the audience stood up as soon as he appeared on
stage. Approaching the age of 79, he still exhibits an inspiring vitality.

He was joined by Clifton Anderson (his nephew) on trombone, Bob Cranshaw on bass, Kobie Watkins on drums, Victor Y. See Yuen with his Trinidadian influence on percussion and Bobby Broom on the far right side to provide a certain balance on guitar. He plays with sustained creativity and aesthetic balance. Being in his late seventies, Sonny is still a working musician, practicing every day, looking for that new feeling and inspiration, as well as capable of playing for hours.

On Irving Berlin's They Say It's Wonderful, Clifton Anderson and Bobby Broom were featured soloists followed by Rollins trading with the percussionist while Watkins and Cranshaw quietly sustained the foundation over the swinging rhythm. The audience enjoyed a quieter moment with the emotional In A Sentimental Mood with Anderson contributing the appropriate tone in his solo with references to melodies such as That's All by Brandt and Haymes. The ninety-minute show closed with a very short rendition of the calypso tune, Nice Lady and Global Warming.

June 27: Charlie Hunter

In addition to headliner concerts, one can easily identify certain gems at a number of venues. One such place is The Pilot Tavern which hosted Charlie Hunter on Saturday night. He was joined by Brooklyn based versatile drummer, Eric Kalb. Hunter already appeared at the festival
on the Mainstage yet the quieter and more intimate settings of The Pilot offers a closer taste of his talent in this duo setting. What made the evening fresh and relaxing was that the musicians did not have a set list of tunes that were pre-selected. Charlie Hunter started off by digging right into a blues that he felt like playing at that moment and even jocularly said to Kalb: "I don't know if I remember this one; we'll find out soon enough!" Of course he did and that was the pattern for the evening without ever being lost as these two musicians are talented professionals who have known each other for years. Charlie would set the foundation and Eric would join in. The evening was filled with rich bluesy grooves, sometimes heavy but never long and repetitive. Other pieces included some R&B as well as some funky head boppin' fast play with Kalb discreetly throwing his personal improvised part. His 8-string guitar, which is acts as a bass and as a guitar on the same instrument, is a very expressive instrument. Charlie Hunter is able to play both parts clearly that you stop to see where are they hiding the actual bass player. The duo closed the first set with a Michael Jackson tune, I can't help it as well as the humorously titled Every morning you wake up, New York says no.

June 28: Maria Schneider Orchestra

While BeauSoleil and Buckwheat Zydeco brought a bit of Louisiana up to a brisk Summer evening, Maria Schneider and her 18-piece orchestra enveloped the lucky audience to true musical poetry on Sunday night at the Fleck Dance Theatre, Harbourfront. In the Grammy award winning opening track, Concert in The Garden, you get the full flavor of the orchestra with a cinematic crescendo build followed by a relaxing guitar solo. The piece features a musical conversation between the piano and the accordion before the rest of the group slowly eases in. Some parts of the piece almost remind us of Wayne Shorter's approach to some of his compositions and orchestrations on certain projects. The versatile Scott Robinson moved to a beautiful soft solo on Evanescence. Many if not most of Schneider's compositions are very personal. In The Pretty Road, she described it as driving to a spot overlooking Windom, Minnesota, where she was born and to recreate memory glimpses when she reaches that observation post. The images included church hymns, Chopin, and her parents' favourite song As Time Goes By. Canadian born Ingrid Jensen highlighted the dream sequences by combining the trumpet, fluegelhorn, and a few discreet electronic sound effects such as birds and echoes. Tenor saxophonist Richard Perry soared in Rich's Piece, where he played with plenty of space for an unconstrained yet balanced sound. Final selections included Journey Home, Coming About, and Sky Blue featuring Steve Wilson on soprano sax for the welcomed encore. The band is like a family off stage and that cohesion was in full display adding to the sincerity behind the sound.

June 29: Gary Burton Quartet Revisited

The Botos brothers kicked of the opening of Monday night's Grandmasters evening before a packed and enthusiastic house. Louie Botos came all the way from Hungary to play bass with Frank Botos sitting on drums. Robi Botos was clearly thrilled to be part of the evening and called it "a special night, a special place, and a special audience." He selected a few melodic pieces including Gershwin's Someone To Watch Over Me. Later Attila came on stage on electric guitar and we even got to see Louie sing Reveries of Love even though he apparently speaks little to no English.

The main part of the highly anticipated evening was devoted to the recreation of Gary Burton's Quartet, a band he formed in the 60s. Pat Metheny joined that group in the 70s and then, as Burton pointed out, Antonio Sanchez was born. The first part of the program featured selections written by other composers. Chick Corea's Sea Journey was the perfect lyrical and flowing tune that showed the whole band as a unit. Burton led the way with his famous 4 mallets playing the vibes with deliberate precision and purpose. Steve Swallow provided the solid ground base throughout the show while standing and facing mainly Metheny and Sanchez. The drummer, who is also a member of the Pat Metheny Group, showed some of his dexterity during a solo without the need to go over the top. Following Carla Bley's Olhos de Gato, Swallow kicked off quickly into soloing at the beginning of his own composition, a tribute to Bill Evans, Falling Grace before being joined by Burton and the rest of the band in the groove. The performance took on a second level of energy as soon as the group dove into Metheny's Question and Answer with the growing intensity amplified by the guitarist's electric guitar. Such a rush naturally led to a rousing standing ovation by some fired up audience members.

Metheny used his custom made 42-string Pikasso guitar (created by Torontonian Linda Manzer) on The Sound of Water starting unaccompanied as the mystical notes enveloped the hall with Burton eventually completing the duo. We would also be treated to Summertime and the easy brazilian tune O Grande Amor before the band would come out for 2 encores. The overall sound of the evening was fresh and contemporary. Toronto was the final stop of the "Quartet Live" tour with many selections of she show available on the recent cd by that name (Concord Jazz, 2009). The Pat Metheny Group will hopefully be recording during the second part of next year.

June 30: Chris Potter Underground

Chris Potter's Underground finished off the second night at the Pilot Tavern to another sellout and enthusiastic crowd. A large number of music students were on hand to experience the talent up close of Chris Potter. The great saxophonist was surrounded by Craig Taborn on Fender Rhodes, Adam Rogers on guitar, and Nate Smith on drums. Potter kicked things off with an easy and short melody borrowing similar notes to the start of Coltrane's Love Supreme with a funky African beat supplied by the rhythm section. Rogers continued into an extended solo with heavy drum work by Smith before Potter would take charge with his improvisational ideas. This tune was called Facing East from Chris Potter's new CD Ultrahang (Artistshare, 2009) that came out on July 1st . During an interview earlier in the day conducted by Ted O'Reilly at the Ken Page Memorial Trust workshop, Potter talked about the rich polyphony that his Underground group provides. With fewer people you have more freedom and responsibility at the same time and it feels like jumping off a cliff. He clearly landed on this particular night as he
showcased his great talent and versatility by conducting improvisational investigations to his written pieces using a variety of idioms from his textural capabilities. To the listener, all of these musical ideas seem to flow seamlessly from one to the other under various rhythmic styles. The Underground band chose older selections as well such as Viva Las Vilnius. On Lotus Blossom by Billy Strayhorn, we heard the lighter side of Potter as he brought out the beautiful sounding bass clarinet with the Fender Rhodes adding to the mood of the quiet tune. The vibe that night was such that most attendees chose to stay for the second set and were even treated to an encore. Dave Holland will be bringing Chris Potter back again for his quintet on Friday night together with Robin Eubanks, Steve Nelson, and Nate Smith.

July 1: Chucho Valdés and Dave Brubeck

On Canada Day, music revelers were treated to different styles throughout the day. Rob McConnell led for the last time as a leader his famed Boss Brass at lunchtime on the square. Later in the afternoon, a large number of saxophonists filled the spaces in an attempt to break the world record of having the largest number of players performing a tune. Though the effort came short, it was a rare but invigorating experience for all attendees.

Cuba's greatest jazz pianist, Chucho Valdés, played 2 shows at Harbourfront in the evening. He was joined by Yaroldi Abreu on percussion, Lazaro Alarcon on bass, and Juan Rojas on drums. The opening Ellington medley including such pieces as In a Sentimental Mood, and Caravan, indicated the theme of the evening where Valdés and his musicians would approach a piece by eventually blending in a Latin touch. It is a beauty to watch our pianist play a fluttering of notes with his right hand while using his left for melodic ideas. One of the highlights during the first show was the group's rendition of Birdland with afro-cuban elements providing a rich appeal. Valdés played the melody with a deliberate sound with the other band members amplifying the intensity of the piece. At one point, an energetic exchange took place between Abreu and Rojas as the percussionist would be hitting the sides of his congas while the drummer went into his fast solo. Mayra Caridad Valdés, who fans will remember from her appearances in her brother's band Irakere, emerged for a couple of spirited songs. Her onstage presence and soulful voice offered a sincere dose of positive energy as audience members joined in to clap when prompted. In fact, the audience was very knowledgeable judging by their ability to quickly jump into the right rhythmic clapping pattern of the Clave. For the anticipated encore, they even yelled out requests such as Besame Mucho.

In the marquis tent at Nathan Phillips Square, the audience welcomed back the famed Dave Brubeck Quartet. The living legend kicked things off with a medley starting off with C-jam blues and including other Ellington pieces such as Take the A-train. This was a night of pure musical enjoyment on a national holiday and to watch true professionals at work. Bobby Militello demonstrated his full panoply of abilities on alto sax and flute as well as Michael Moore on bass. Brubeck's son, Matthew Brubeck, came as a special guest on cello by first playing Sermon on the Mountain and staying on until the end of the concert. The final part of the evening was devoted to commemorate a "little" recording called Time Out that emerged 50 years ago this year. From the ¾ waltz, Three To Get Ready, the night closed with the famous Take Five that to this day still sounds fresh and fun to play and hear.

July 2: Al Di Meola World Sinfonia

Al Di Meola showcased his World Sinfonia after previous appearances in the Trio formation. Enthusiastic fans were on hand to absorb every note from the international musicians representing Italy, Cuba, and Hungary. Arranged in a tight formation on stage, Di Meola sat right next to guitarist Peo Alfonsi. Fausto Beccalossi drew a lot of attention on the accordion and vocals, playing at different tempos and at times going head to head with Di Meola while complementing the same fast notes. The rhythm section included Victor Miranda on electric bass as well as the youngest member of the formation, Peter Kaszas on drums and longtime associate "Gumbi" Ortiz on percussion. The band showed much cohesion with perfect timing and musical balance when shifting between urgent lines and more relaxed rhythms. No evening would be complete without reference to a great inspiration in Di Meola's musical career, Astor Piazzolla, the Argentinian tango and bandoneon master. Double Concerto was the chosen piece on this night with the spirit of Piazzolla echoing throughout and ending on a spirited finish. Ortiz and Di Meola showed their personal connection during a fun trade in the middle of Bugliero. The international appeal of the World Sinfonia could be found in Siberiana, a piece inspired while touring around Siberia. Latin rhythms, jazz, and rock elements are all fused together. The double encore closed the show with the anticipated classic Land of the Midnight Sun.

July 3: Dave Holland Quintet and the Branford Marsalis Quartet

Jazz fans were in for an exciting double-bill on Friday night for the Mainstage concert. Chris Potter who enjoyed 2 sold out performances earlier in the week flew back to Toronto in order to join the Dave Holland Quintet together with Robin Eubanks on trombone, Nate Smith on drums, and Steve Nelson on vibes and marimba. These musicians have played together for such a long time that Dave Holland didn't need to direct anyone and therefore he could focus on his musical contribution. He presented a combination of past and current tunes. Step To It was a
new piece and really captures the style of this band today. Following the melody, Potter's energetic development on his solo seemed effortless even with a couple of feverish arpeggios. Holland followed with the perfect counterpoint with a careful hint of Miles Davis during the
bassist's tenure with the legend. On Last Minute Man, Steve Nelson starts off with careful marimba notes before switching to the vibes for the better part of the piece. Eubanks' solo included what sounds like an added voice to the natural trombone sound. The quintet played two tracks from the Critical Mass cd (Sunny Side, 2006) with Lucky Seven and Full Circle with Potter even outdoing himself.

The Marsalis name conjures up immediately a contemporary jazz brand. What is remarkable is how each musician of the well known family has developed into a musician in his own right. Luckily for us, Branford Marsalis, who at one point in his career was the leader of the first
Tonight Show band when Jay Leno took over, came back to jazz. The BMQ has just celebrated its 10 years as a solid unit and came to Toronto with Joey Calderazzo on piano and Eric Revis on bass. The only missing member of the band was Jeff "Tain" Watts who was currently working on
other projects. Justin Faulkner took his spot and made quite a splash. The Return of the Jitney Man kicked things off with Marsalis leading the tune off the downbeat and later featuring a feverish buildup between Calderazzo and Faulkner. This was just one of the tracks played from the group's recent CD, Metamorphosen (Marsalis Music, 2009). The bluesy Teo by Thelonious Monk kept the pianist involved with his melodic lyricism while the band leader observed with enjoyment. Branford Marsalis revealed his quieter side while playing soprano on The Blossom of Parting. Another soft tune, this time on the tenor, was You Don't Know What Love Is. At the end of the lovely evening, Chris Potter and Robin Eubanks surprised everyone when they returned to the stage to join Marsalis with Jumpin' At The Woodside as the encore. That's what a
festival should be beyond the scripted programming.

July 4: Kenny Werner Quintet and Eliane Elias

Two distinct styles were on full display this Saturday evening at the jazz fest. Over at Harbourfront, Kenny Werner brought with him major players to represent his quintet. Accompanying him on piano were his "band of brothers", none other than Randy Brecker on trumpet, David Sanchez on tenor sax, Antonio Sanchez on drums, and Scott Colley on bass. The quintet played mainly pieces from the CD released two years ago called Lawn Chair Society (Blue Note, 2007) that included Dave Douglas, Chris Potter, and Brian Blade. Blending straight-ahead jazz, R&B and funk under an accessible avant-gardist cloak, each musician showing his chops without the need to go over the top. For example, during the opening track, the tempo picked up during Werner's solo with Colley supplying a heavy bass hand with one brief insert of rumbling sounds before returning to the melody. Uncovered Heart is a tune that originally appeared on an album by the same title (Sunny Side, 1990) with Randy Brecker playing on that recording. Starting off with a melancholic piano solo, David Sanchez and Randy Brecker using a mute, join in this quiet musical interlude before being joined by Colley. A fun highlight was the satirical Inaugural Balls written following the 2004 US presidential election. Werner quipped about being inspired to "do something" and write a piece that would be played at the inaugural ball with all the tuxedos present. Harry Potter's fans will instantly recognize the main Hedwig's Theme, performed here in a jazz setting with David Sanchez playing deep tones in his solo and later Antonio Sanchez showcasing his tenacious drum play.

"From the groovin' to the groovacious," as Werner put it, the welcomed encore was a lovely reworked Work Song by Nat Adderley that had the same swing as the piece made popular by Cannonball Adderley but with a couple of flattened notes in the melody.

A bit of Brazil landed in the Mainstage concert following the swinging Curtis Stigers. Just like a few days ago Dave Brubeck noted the 50 year anniversary of the classic Time Out release, Eliane Elias was on hand to commemorate the new wave, the Bossa Nova, with Chega De Saudade. Written by none other than Antonio Carlos Jobim and Vinicius De Moraes, this '58 tune put the brazilian style on the map and would inspire a great many artists such as Stan Getz who put out classic recordings such as Getz/Gilberto (Verve/MGM Records, 1963). A very talented piano player who was greatly inspired by Bill Evans, Sao Paolo-born Eliane Elias brought a genuine and sophisticated voice to the lyrics heard this night. She would do the same on The Way You Look Tonight by Cole Porter, someone who influenced the new wave. Besides her long time bassist Marc Johnson, Rubens de la Corte played guitar with Rafael Barate on drums. Elias later introduced us to João Donato from the pre-Bossa phase and described his piano style in which his left hand would play latin/caribean while his right hand would handle the samba style. Donato co-wrote A Rã (The Frog) with Caetano Veloso who wrote the lyrics. Following a lovely ballad under the blue lights, Elias continued with other selections such as So Danço Samba and False Baiana. The concert drew to a close with the classics Desafinado and The Girl From Ipanema. One of her recent albums Bossa Nova Stories (Blue Note, 2009) is a rich homage to the genre with a fuller orchestra. Jazz fans should not miss her other successful album Something for You: Eliane Elias Sings & Plays Bill Evans (Blue Note, 2008).

July 5: Alain Caron Band, Kenny Garrett Quartet, and Sadao Watanabe

On this final day of the festival, the Mainstage concerts shifted towards fusion sounds with a smaller crowd that made the end almost anti-climatic despite the inviting sounds. Alain Caron and Le Band returned to Toronto to kick off the triple-bill. He opened up with P.A.C. Man and the jazzier Pole Position from Play (Norac Records, 1997). John Roney who moved to Montreal from Toronto was on the piano together with David Bellemare on tenor and soprano saxes. Philippe Melanson, a very young drummer would would probably be asked for ID everywhere in Toronto, played with youthful enthusiasm. The funky Freedom Jazz Dance let Caron really get heavy on the slap bass.

Alto saxophonist Kenny Garrett, who brought the house down a few years ago when opening up for Joshua Redman, was next on tap kicking things up with the catchy beat of Wayne's Thang. Garrett would show his command by pointing to the next person to offer a short solo. He showed his Miles Davis allegiance by throwing in a quick reference to Jean-Pierre. African rhythms were amplified by Justin Brown on drums and Kona Khasu on bass on Charlie Brown Goes To South Africa. Following a slow blues introduced by Corey Henry on the Fender Rhodes and another piece with a subtle Latin flavour featuring Garrett playing a few notes on the keyboard, the audience needed a pick-me-up of the musical kind. It came under the guise of a lengthy rendition of Happy People, where everyone would be invited to sing along and clap. It would restart as soon as the audience expected the end with Garrett urging on more cheers.

The evening ended with Sadao Watanabe and his 6-piece band who showcased various styles from funk to Latin together with his talented band of musicians from Japan. N'diasse Niang, originally from Senegal but now a Japanese citizen, showcased his decorated percussion instrument to provide the appropriate rhythmic touch on pieces such as Alalake-Lopin'. Following a light bossa, Watanabe introduced a tune that he tried to build as a samba but it didn't meet his own expectations, hence the name Not Quiet Samba. It had more of a smooth jazz feel to it. Watanabe eventually closed the show after midnight on an intimate note accompanied only by Akira Onozuka on acoustic piano with a fitting Jobim ballad.

Joshua Redman Quartet Plus Joe Lovano - July 5, 2009

noreply@blogger.com (Félix-Antoine Hamel) — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 16:33:00 +0000

By Mark Chodan

Startling realization: I haven't really listened to any mainstream jazz in (gasp) 15 years. This was my first thought as the Redman quartet (+1) were into the first notes of the head of the first piece of the show at Salle Gésu. While I had listened to my share of Redman and especially Lovano in the early 90s, this was sure to be an interesting re-visiting of a genre I had slowly drifted away from over the years.

Not only was the style very much mainstream, so was the program. Starting out with Booker Little and ending with a Sonny Stitt/Gene Ammons tune, they covered Shorter, Coleman, Tristano, as well as one original piece each, Redman's "Mantra #5" and Lovano's "Blackwell's Message".

Lovano's prowess on tenor was certainly as powerful as I remembered. A truly unique voice on the instrument, I was pleasantly surprised to hear that a lot of classic Lovano licks had been parsed from his playing as I remembered it from years back. This is certainly an attestation to Lovano's power as an improviser. On an instrument on which there is no lack of verbose players, I found Lovano's playing to be mainly in the service of the music, despite his astounding technical abilities.

Redman surprised me within the first minutes of his solo on "Rounder's Mood" of how much he sounded like Sonny Rollins (or was that a visual cue due to his haircut?). His playing has really opened up over the years, sounding very confident and clean, perhaps even cautious. There was a refinement in his playing (and crystalline tone) that made me question "at what expense?" Redman was obviously humbled by Lovano's playing, made clear by Redman's self-effacing comments between the pieces. I guess it is a bit tough to be faulting Redman for maybe holding back a bit given his sharing of the stage with a contemporary tenor monster.

The rhythm section provided the necessary support for the tenor-fest as one would expect, although with only with few solo spots for the musicians. Bassist Reuben Rogers laid down the bottom end with very much the same level of perfection as Redman's own playing (is there such a thing as too much perfection?) I got the feeling that opening up the role of the bass in this context would have brought the music in some different and stimulating directions. Pianist Sam Yahel suffered from amplification problems both in the hall as well as, apparently, from his monitors. Once the problem resolved half way through the performance, it became apparent that his playing is very minimalist, offering interesting colouring but rarely asserting himself within the ensemble. I must say that when given some space, Yahel's playing was among the most harmonically interesting of the concert. Drummer Gregory Hutchinson's performance was very strong in the mold of the great percussion masters, including a great deal of surprise and wit given the context.

Overall, a very strong performance, but one ultimately locked into the roughly 60 year-old tradition. While not necessarily merely creating embellishments on an established music, Redman's quartet and guest were certainly not questioning too many known musical parameters which are currently under investigation by others in other areas of the art.

Saxophonist André Leroux is almost “there”

noreply@blogger.com (Félix-Antoine Hamel) — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 20:51:00 +0000

By Paul Serralheiro

Montreal saxophonist André Leroux is an excellent player whose technique is impressive and articulate. This he made abundantly clear to a standing-room only audience at L’Astral on Saturday July 4, 2009 at 18:00 during the 30th edition of the Montreal International Jazz Festival.

Accompanied by some sympathetic, equally accomplished musicians - Norman Devault on piano, Christian Lajoie on drums and Frederic Alarie on bass - Leroux started out with a tune whose motives and cadences echoed the mannerisms of one of his obvious influences, the late John Coltrane. He went on to perform on tenor and soprano saxophones and flute for nearly 90 minutes, presenting mostly originals from his recent (and only) album as leader, Corpus Callosum. The only standard was Pensativa, by Clare Fisher, after which he joked how “there isn’t only Summertime that’s worth reprising.” The set ended with a François Bourassa tune, Offertoire.

Leroux’s playing was sure and masterly, the result of over two decades in the business, mostly as a session player, although he did present a tribute project to John Coltrane a couple of years ago at the Off Festival in Montreal and has been an important voice in Vic Vogel’s big band. His admiration and respect for Coltrane’s music is both the source of his strength and, ironically, the road block to a more original concept. While he has integrated aspects of Coltrane’s sound (an ample, velvety tone; ease with the altissimo register; and familiarity with multiphonics) his compositional ideas echo the master rather than allow for a more original voice. Leroux, for all his talent, maintains some of the mannerisms of the master without the depth and authority Coltrane achieved...mainly because Coltrane was expressing himself in a language he himself forged, while Leroux has not quite arrived there...yet. But there is still lots of promise and with time and perhaps less reverence for his model, Leroux may well get there.

Sensitive-Lee: Lee Konitz with Minsarah trio at FIJM play very, very subtle music

noreply@blogger.com (Félix-Antoine Hamel) — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 20:44:00 +0000

By Paul Serralheiro

He once admitted to being a “living adverb” due to titles such as Subconscious-Lee, Tender-Lee and his recent Deep Lee, so it was no surprise that alto saxophone legend Lee Konitz was an excellent conduit for some fine improvisation at the Gesu theatre Friday, July 3, 10:30 PM.

Starting off by saying “I’m glad to be here,” to which he added in a manner reminiscent of a stand-up comic, “I’m glad to be anywhere,” Konitz then announced that he was going to play “God knows what.” What followed in the next hour was some exceptionally fine interpretations of well-worn standards.

Accompanied by the young trio known as Minsarah (pianist Florian Weber, bassist Jeff Denson, and drummer Ziv Ravitz), Konitz launched into a very elastic version of Solar. This was followed by a tune that referenced a number of standards, among them Let’s Get Lost and Nature Boy. This was followed by a version of Cherokee which, again, referenced other tunes, among them Charlie Parker’s Constellation.

Next came You Don’t Know what love is and something Konitz announced as Play Fiddle Play, but ended up being a creative take on Kary’s Trance. After the curtain call the quartet returned for a short encore.

The music presented was conceived very spontaneously, with lots of space and freedom in the interpretation of form and harmonic structure. The younger musicians responded sensitively to the leader’s playing, and contributed their own more contemporary feelings for rhythm and melody in a refreshing, creative fashion.

A seminal figure in the post-bop era, beginning with his work with pianist Lennie Tristano and including his contributions to the Miles Davis-led Birth of the Cool sessions in the late 1940s, Konitz is no spring chicken. Yet, he has lost little of his beautiful tone and maintains an expressive technique.

The personality of his playing was matched by some idiosyncratic stage manners. He wore finger-less gloves. He stuck what looked like a handkerchief into his bell from time to time for a muted sound and he shrugged in a kind of jocular, dismissive way at the end of some tunes, as if to say “it’s not perfect, but so what.”

The show, although relatively poorly attended, just over half full, attracted a number of stars of the local scene, among them alto saxophonist Jean Derome and trumpeter Ivanhoe Jolicoeur who could be heard discussing the show in passionate tones outside at Midnight, while some non-jazz music blared from the festival area, bringing the fourth day of the 30th FIJM to a close.

Chamber "Jazz" in Montreal

noreply@blogger.com (Félix-Antoine Hamel) — Sun, 05 Jul 2009 05:29:00 +0000

by Marc Chénard

* Les tourneurs and Steppe: June 20, Off Festival de Jazz
* Quartetski does Satie: June 16, Suoni per il Popolo
* Quartetski does Purcell: June 28, Montreal Baroque Music Festival

No other musical genre in history has been so prone to be compounded with other terms than jazz. In the past, you had Hot Jazz and Cool Jazz, then Classic Jazz and Mainstream Jazz, followed by Soul Jazz, Free Jazz, Jazz Fusion, Punk Jazz, even Smooth Jazz. But there many more qualifiers for a music about which no two people seem to agree on as to what it is… or not. Of the other labels affixed to that four-letter word of uncertain origins, the word 'chamber' has surfaced from time to time. Implied, of course, is a quieter variant of its customary boisterous sound, what with its drums pounding out the beat, the brass blaring and saxes wailing. Essentially performed in small instrumental combos, and not infrequently with no drums, its dynamic is much closer to that of classical music, with greater emphasis on subtle nuances in musical gestures and attention to instrumental timbres. All of the preceding characteristics apply to four performances caught at three recent Montreal festivals. In fact, the links to the jazz idiom were tenuous at best, hence the quotation marks around that word in the title of this survey.

On June 20, a double bill presentation included in the program of the 10th edition of the Off Festival de Jazz exemplified this chamber jazz aesthetic, best described by the late Jimmy Giuffre as one of "quiet intensity." Opening the evening was a trio called Les tourneurs. Comprised of violist Jean René, reedist Philippe Lauzier (bass clarinet, alto and soprano saxes) and drummer/percussionist Thom Gossage, this unit performed four pieces in its three quarter hour set. First developed during a residency in France last Febuary, the music was conceived as part of a program for a contemporary dance company. While there were compositional elements, they were weaved into a fabric of non-idiomatic improvisation, avoiding the habitual discursive soloistic strategies for a more klangfarben-like development of sound textures. Performing at the Chapelle historique du Bon-Pasteur, a pristine sounding concert hall operated by the city, this trio played with finesse for the most part, although the drummer had to pull back on more than one occasion, at times threatening the fine balancing act of dynamic interplay. Both Lauzier and René are attentive and introspective players, the reedist more strongly influenced nowadays by such avant improvisers as John Butcher and Frank Gratkowski. At times, though, he would tend to milk an effect a little too much for the music's own good, i.e. extensive slap tonguing on the bass clarinet, or gurgling water in its mouthpiece. The violist, for his part, is a model of conciseness, and remains attentive to the music at all times, even when not playing. Overall, this excursion was very much a work in progress, requiring more focus and a greater sense of internal development, including a little more drama. That said, it will be interesting to see how and where they take this from there.

More conventional in instrumentation, but by no means run-of-the-mill in approach, was the following act of that evening. Spearheaded by its pianist and composer, Alexandre Grogg, Steppe is quartet whose name is well chosen. Indeed, its musical domain is like an open expanse, at times an almost barren one in its delicate shimmerings of cymbals reminiscent of tumbleweeds across an endless prairie. Behind his kit, Isaiah Ceccarelli is all texture whereas bassist Clinton Ryder assures a deep warm hum at the bottom end of the sound spectrum. Josée Lalonde delivers lyrics penned by the pianist in an art song style that harkens back to the Second Viennese School, with distant echoes of Steve Lacy. No attempt is made here to emulate jazz songstress mannerisms, instead, she stands back after delivering her lines and lets the trio explore. This is not a singer's group with a backup trio, as one would think when simply reading the personnel found on its debut recording "Sidereus Nuncius", but an instrumental group with a vocal adjunct. Some of its repertoire is actually purely instrumental, at times conjuring the ECM aesthetic but with an increased degree of harmonic abstractness more germane to contemporary classical music than experimental jazz. Worth nothing here is the fact that Grogg was awarded the François Marcaurelle Prize (named after one the event's founding fathers, who passed away three years ago). Selected by the festival's all-musician organizing committee, this most individualistic pianist was a deserving choice given his musical approach that is unlike any other of his colleagues on the Montreal scene. Apart from a monetary stipend for the mastering of a recording, he is invited back next year, something he foresees as a great challenge, even more so because of the musical demands he sets on himself. The Off Festival de Jazz de Montreal must also be commended for this bill, not only because of the pairing, but also for the setting that could not have been more perfect for an evening of thoughtful and heady music making. The one disappointment, however, was the rather thin crowd on hand that evening, in an established concert space in the community. For 2010, it would be most welcome that this venue be used again, with maybe a bigger attraction on the bill.

On June 16, another chamber-like quartet turned in an equally intriguing, albeit uneven performance at the city's prime experimental music fest, the Suoni per il Popolo. Hampered this year by permit problems in their original venue, the Casa del Popolo, festival organizers had to shuffle around several of their acts to other venues, one of these being the Centro Gallego, a block down the street from the aforementioned venue and its main concert hall across the street, the Sala Rossa. Attendance was also thin that evening, probably due to the facts that the room is unknown to the music public and is also hidden away on the third floor of a building serving as a social club for the Hispanic community. After an opening act of minimalist improv performed by Norwegian table top guitarist Håvard Volden and tubist Martin Taxt (drones from one, sound effects from other and basically few actual musical notes… you get the picture) the Montreal unit Quartetski took to the scene to do its take on the music of Érik Satie (more specifically his set of pieces Sports et divertissements) and the second of the quixotic Frenchman's Préludes flasques. Founded in 2005 by double bassist Pierre-Yves Martel (who has now forsaken the big fiddle for the viola de Gamba and treble viola), this ensemble found its name in conjunction with its initial repertoire project, heavily re-arranged covers of the piano pieces Visions Fugitives (the recording Quartetski does Prokoviev issued on Montreal's Ambiances Magnétiques label). While that original project had jazzy inclinations given its instrumentation of bass, drums (Isaiah Ceccarelli), reeds (Philippe Lauzier) and trumpet (Gordon Allen), this second project (premiered last year at the Off Festival) has drifted away considerably from its initial course. The absence of the bass clearly rids the group of its center of gravity, which does not mean that there is none left. Actually, the bass clarinet of Lauzier often grounds the group, especially in his prevalent use of slap tonguing and tenutos, whereas the bowed work of the leader and Allen often mesh in the treble register, leaving the drummer to his own means of rustling out sounds from his kit with sticks and chains, and violin bows on the cymbals and drum rims. Satie, as is well known, was a master of musical iconoclasm, and Quartetski does exactly that with his music, to the point of even casting off the compositions rather quickly to wander at will. Yet lengthy passages of collective improv ensue, which make the listener wonder if the chosen musical materials were necessary in the first place. Only the aforementioned Prélude (played at the end of the set), was more anchored into the composition, and offered a good change to the predominantly random musings of the performance. Mind you, there is nothing wrong with the fact that improvisation ought not necessarily have to be contingent to composition, but it's still slippery terrain to follow this course. And one good way to do this is with a measure of caution and especially with greater concision.

Hardly a fortnight after this performance, Quartetski was at it again, this time premiering their third such 'improv meets the classics" project. Their musical time travel brought them back a couple of centuries, more precisely to the times and work of Henry Purcell. A surprising choice, given the greater historical gap, it was nevertheless understandable in light of the context it was presented in. Including a group such as this one in this year's Montreal Baroque Music Festival could certainly be considered a daring, but Martel as a viola de Gamba player with credentials in both classical and ancient music makes the link here, even more so because he studied with one of the festival's chief organizers. That said this opportunity for these young musicians to perform here would present them with a set of problems, not only for themselves, but for their audience as well. For the musicians, of course, the question was how to go about employing contemporary extended techniques within this music and to 'reach' an audience with a very specific scope and understanding of musical history. Also for the audience was the issue of how willing were they to go down a path basically foreign to the their musical knowledge and taste.

By and large, it was obvious that the musicians had their hands on the breaks at all times, reading the pieces fairly respectfully and cautiously doing their own thing after. To Martel's credit, he provided narration for the audience, introducing the pieces and their basic approach to them. Although this particular listener was sitting in the back row, there was some puzzlement amongst the attendees in the room (more on that below) and generally polite applause at the end of each piece. As with the Satie project, improvisation and composition ran on parallel tracks, save for the last piece, the ever famous Dido's Lament, where Martel provided a bass line that give a nice lope to the piece. The musicians still have their work cut out here, and given their occupations at this time of year, they had to hastily put this program together in only a couple of rehearsals. As an aside, the setting of the concert was one of the most original ones seen by his writer: held in an a low-ceiling wooden attic atop of one of the city's oldest buildings in its historic quarter, there was a great big wheel in the room, used at one time to lift cargos into a stock room from the accosting ships in the neighouring port. A nice touch, too, was a post-concert offering of small cups of chocolate ice-cream, as this concert was subtitled Gelato Chocolato, as per the chocolate sub-theme of the festival, a food substance on which Purcell apparently 'overdosed' on at age 35. Just goes to show you that substance abuse among musicians ain't nothin' new!

Suoni 2009: Monk au casino et l'Année du Trio

noreply@blogger.com (Félix-Antoine Hamel) — Sat, 04 Jul 2009 17:29:00 +0000

par Félix-Antoine Hamel

Photo : Monk's Casino en action: Alexander von Schlippenbach, Rudi Mahall, Axel Dörner, Jan Roder, Uli Jennessen.

Pour sa neuvième édition, le Suoni Per Il Popolo de Montréal a encore une fois su présenter une sélection éclectique de jazz contemporain, de diverses tendances et divers horizons, de quoi satisfaire l'amateur le plus intransigeant. Outre la magistrale apparition du quintette Monk's Casino (notre photo), on pourrait aussi dire que 2009 aura été l'année du trio sous toutes ses formes, avec les groupes de Dave Burrell, Fred Lonberg-Holm, Michiel Braam, Nicole Mitchell, Lucas Niggli et Jean Derome.

6 juin, Sala Rossa (trio #1) : C'est donc au vétéran pianiste Dave Burrell que revint l'honneur d'ouvrir le volet jazz du Suoni de cette année, avec un trio énergique complété par l'incontournable William Parker à la contrebasse (un habitué du festival) et l'imposant Michael Wimberly à la batterie (que les amateurs connaissent peut-être pour ses enregistrements auprès de Charles Gayle). Nous étions donc, on l'aura deviné, devant un groupe d'une force de frappe potentiellement explosive, et en effet les premières mesures de la soirée annonçaient une sorte de Money Jungle version XXIe siècle. Cependant, cette rencontre de trois fortes personnalités, si elle devait donner lieu à quelques moments où le jeu des trois musiciens coïncidait parfaitement, ne fut peut-être pas à la hauteur du talent déployé. Par exemple, au cours de la performance, Burrell allait souvent se cantonner dans une sorte de répétition de motifs très ludiques, voire simplistes, rapellant quelque peu les thèmes vaguement enfantins qu'affectionne Misha Mengelberg, mais sans les géniales divagations de ce dernier. Comme si au lieu de ramasser son jeu (comme dans l'excellent disque Momentum, par exemple), il tentait de donner une performance déconstruite à partir d'un matériau déjà fragmentaire, squelettique. Dans ce contexte, son style semblait assez statique, et outre quelques envolées, clusters et phrases tourbillonantes évoquant l'un de ses contemporains - le regretté Don Pullen - le pianiste laissait souvent toute la tâche de propulser la performance à ses acolytes. Toujours solide accompagnateur, Parker a aussi livré quelques bons solos, alors que le jeu robuste de Wimberly, malgré un certain manque de nuances, assurait un bon niveau dynamique. Bref, une soirée quelque peu décevante par un certain manque de cohérence, même si Burrell et compagnie semblaient tout à fait heureux de leur présence et de celle de la foule, effectivement nombreuse ce soir-là à la Sala Rossa.

10 juin, Divan Orange (trio #2) : S'il y a toujours peu de violoncellistes que l'on peut associer au jazz et aux musiques improvisées, il semble pourtant qu'un certain renouveau de l'instrument se soit produit ces dernières années, et le responsable pourrait bien en être le versatile chicagoan Fred Lonberg-Holm. Projet initialement formé pour rendre hommage à Fred Katz, l'un des pionniers de son instrument dans le jazz, le Valentine Trio (avec Jason Roebke, contrebasse et Frank Rosaly, batterie) a aussi permis à Lonberg-Holm de livrer ses versions de pièces de Sun Ra, Gil Scott-Heron et Syd Barrett, tout comme ses propres compositions. Ce sont surtout ces dernières, tirées de son album Terminal Valentine, que le violoncelliste devait livrer ce soir-là, dans la petite salle du Divan Orange, devant trois ou quatre douzaines d'enthousiastes. Brillamment éclectique (il est capable, au sein du Vandermark 5, par exemple, des interventions les plus débridées), Lonberg-Holm utilise plutôt cet ensemble pour mettre l'accent sur le côté lyrique et mélodique de son jeu, remplissant en fait dans un tel ensemble le rôle qu'aurait un instrument plus conventionnel comme le piano ou le saxophone, par exemple. Utilisant quelquefois la manipulation électronique (toute une partie d'un de ses solos était basée sur des extraits de son jeu, enregistrés, dont il manipulait la texture au fur et à mesure), le violoncelliste est aussi possesseur d'une technique remarquablement variée et étendue. Le contrebassiste, Roebke, s'il a été surtout accompagnateur efficace et attentif, a su aussi prendre quelques solos où sa belle sonorité et son phrasé solide faisaient quelquefois penser à un jeune Charlie Haden. Mais c'est le jeu de Rosaly, percussionniste à l'imagination exceptionnelle, qui fut peut-être le clou de cette soirée. Avec un équipement plutôt minimal (grosse caisse, caisse claire, cymbale ride et hi-hat), le batteur devait faire preuve d'une invention peu commune, utilisant des petits objets pour varier les sonorités, et allant jusqu'à tirer des sons de trompette d'une petite cymbale posée sur la peau de sa caisse claire! Bien qu'il ait été peu couru des amateurs, ce concert a sûrement été l'un des points forts du Suoni de cette année.

15 juin, Sala Rossa (trio #3) : Outre l'instrumentation, on pourrait dire qu'il y a peu de ressemblances entre le trio de Dave Burrell et celui du pianiste néérlandais Michiel Braam, avec Wilbert De Joode (contrebasse) et Michael Vatcher (batterie). Groupe bien établi (ils ont réalisé trois disques ensemble et collaborent depuis une décennie), le trio est un lieu idéal pour développer les concepts du pianiste. Au cours de la performance, les musiciens semblaient choisir parmi les compositions du leader les thèmes qu'ils souhaitent interpréter, la performance d'un pièce consistant souvent en une juxtaposition de deux compositions. Beaucoup plus symbiotique que le trio de Burrell, le groupe semblait cependant quelquefois (surtout dans la première partie) succomber aux dangers d'un ensemble bien rodé, c'est à dire se laisser quelque peu porter par la musique. Braam, pianiste à la technique assurée, est un interprète particulièrement volubile, et semble toujours avoir quelque chose à ajouter à la discussion musicale, ce qui donne parfois une texture très dense. Si le côté vaguement humoristique et "deuxième degré" typique du jazz hollandais est plus présent chez son remarquable big band (Bik Bent Braam), il a aussi pointé son nez ce soir-là, avec une pièce basée sur un motif de piano western! La deuxième partie, plus ramassée, avec de longues références au R&B et au blues, devait s'avérer plus solide. Ah, maintenant, si le festival avait les moyens d'inviter le Bik Bent Braam l'année prochaine!

20 juin, Centro Gallego (un déluge de percussions et trio #4) : Comme j'avais découvert l'an dernier une remarquable musicienne de Chicago (la saxophoniste Matana Roberts), j'attendais avec une certaine fébrilité la prestation de sa compatriote Nicole Mitchell, flûtiste, avec son trio Truth or Dare. Mais d'abord, selon la formule des concerts se déroulant cette année au Centro Gallego, une première partie, assurée par l'ensemble de percussionnistes Speed River Squids, un projet réunissant le vétéran improvisateur John Heward, le batteur Jessie Stewart et les percussionistes Michel Bonneau (surtout aux congas) et Rob Wallace (divers "petits instruments"). À eux se sont joints en cours de performance les trompettistes Gordon Allen et Eric Lewis. Le pari d'une telle formation est de maintenir l'attention du public, et il a été largement tenu ce soir-là, grâce à la diversité de la palette sonore de l'ensemble. Même si les contributions de Wallace furent quelquefois inaudibles et souvent plus agaçantes qu'autre chose, la variété de ce déluge de percussions et les contributions de deux des trompettistes les plus aventureux de la scène locale devaient convertir les plus difficiles. Après cette solide entrée en matière, le trio de Mitchell devait prendre possession de la scène (imposant le silence par un petit rituel). Présentant une série de ses propres compositions, Nicole Mitchell (flûte, piccolo, flûte alto) a réuni un trio des plus originaux, avec Renee Baker (violon, alto) et Shirazette Tinnin (batterie). Ce contexte dépouillé convenait à merveille aux thèmes de Mitchell, parfois dansants, parfois chantants. Son jeu de flûte, parfois ponctué d'interjections vocales, n'utilise que rarement les clichés associés à son instrument, son phrasé rappelant celui, très naturel, d'un Sam Rivers, plutôt que les styles plus imités de Eric Dolphy ou Roland Kirk. Baker est une interlocutrice sympathique, au jeu tantôt rythmique tantôt lyrique. Tinnin est une percussioniste très physique, préférant souvent aux baguettes ses mains nues, utilisées soit sur l'instrument, soit sur son banc même, une caisse en bois. Ce contexte très intimiste a donc été parfait pour découvrir ces trois musiciennes de grand talent.

22 juin, Sala Rossa (le casino!) : Une salle bien pleine finalement, pour ce qui s'annonçait comme l'événement majeur du Suoni 2009. Beau coup pour le festival que cette prestation de Monk's Casino, groupe né de la rencontre entre le légendaire pianiste allemand Alexander von Schlippenbach, vétéran du free jazz européen, et le quartette Die Enttäuschung (Rudi Mahall, clarinette basse, Axel Dörner, trompette, Jan Roder, contrebasse et Uli Jennessen, batterie). Ces cinq musiciens, réunis par l'amour de la musique de Thelonious Monk, ont donc bricolé une façon de jouer dans son intégralité le répertoire monkien, et, lorsque faire se peut, dans la même soirée! En deux sets, c'est donc à peu près aux deux-tiers de l'oeuvre que le public montréalais a eu droit. De Little Rootie Tootie à Monk's Dream, de San Francisco Holiday à Skippy, le quintette, avec sa manière à la fois affectueuse et impertinente, a su renouveler une bonne fois pour toutes ce répertoire si fascinant qu'un musicien de l'envergure de Steve Lacy, par exemple, y a passé une bonne partie de sa vie. Si Schlippenbach s'est montré plutôt discret durant cette soirée (malgré quelques solos efficaces), ce sont surtout les souffleurs qui ont accaparé (littéralement) le devant de la scène. Vaguement cabotin, Mahall n'avait cesse de faire des blagues, jouant avec le rideau, entraînant les musiciens à sortir de scène pour le solo de contrebasse, faisant souvent réagir le public. Tout cela ne saurait nous distraire de son jeu de clarinette basse : avec une sonorité exceptionnellement puissante (même perçante), un phrasé agressif et un contrôle remarquable, Mahall compte certainement parmi les plus grands solistes de son instrument. Également technicien exceptionnel, Dörner s'est livré en solo à une démonstration mémorable de ses capacités, donnant à son instrument les sonorités les plus inouïes! En plus de ses capacités inégalées de bruitiste, Dörner a aussi su démontrer une bonne maîtrise du langage du jazz plus standard. Ce qui rend remarquable les interprétations de ce groupe, c'est cet effet que dans chacun de ces thèmes que nous connaissons, il y a "quelque chose qui cloche", toujours un élément perturbateur (changements de tempo, passages free, coupures, superpositions) qui rend la pièce familière curieusement déphasée, comme si sa substance s'était modifiée avec le temps, quelquefois imperceptiblement. Cette célébration de la musique de Monk, contrairement à certaines performances fossilisées d'une musique qui semble morte, n'aurait pu être plus vivante que lorsque, laissant Schlippenbach seul sur scène, les quatre autres, entonnant un riff monkien, vinrent se promener parmi le public, laissant le pianiste entamer, doucement, 'Round Midnight.

25 juin, Centro Gallego (trio #5 et... trio #6!) : Cette deuxième soirée au Centro Gallego devait être ma soirée de fermeture du festival. D'abord, l'un de nos plus distingués improvisateurs, Jean Derome (saxophoniste alto, flûtiste et grand joueur de bébelles devant l'éternel!) devait faire la pluie et le beau temps, accompagné de Nicolas Caloia à la contrebasse et de Isiah Ceccarelli à la batterie. Littéralement déchaîné comme il m'a rarement été donné de l'entendre (lendemain de la Saint-Jean oblige?), Derome a livré deux longs solos d'alto mémorables, entrecoupés de passages où, muni d'appeaux divers, et utilisant sa flûte en coloriste, il a su perpétuer la tradition des "petits instruments" chère aux improvisateurs post-free. Toute une ouverture, donc, pour le trio Zoom, du batteur helvétique Lucas Niggli. Travaillant depuis 10 ans avec le guitariste Philipp Schauffelberger et le virtuose tromboniste Nils Wogram, Niggli a trouvé avec ces deux musiciens un groupe idéal (quelquefois augmenté) pour ses compositions aux concepts rythmiques souvent complexes (comme il sied à un batteur). Contrairement à Frank Rosaly, Niggli avait à sa disposition un instrument imposant (incluant quatre ou cinq cymbales superposées) et un impressionant assortiment de baguettes de toutes tailles! Livrant avec ce trio plusieurs pièces tirées de ses albums Intakt (notemment Celebrate Diversity, Brain Ballad et Rough Ride, part 2), le batteur a su inspirer à son ensemble une interprétation dynamique et énergique. Schauffelberger, tenant le rôle quelque peu ingrat de liant entre le trombone et la batterie, a su s'acquitter de sa tâche avec brio, et ses quelques interventions ont été très justes et sans excès guitaristiques. Wogram, pour sa part, est assurément l'un des grands trombonistes de sa génération; son passage en solo absolu aurait pu être inventé par le Albert Mangelsdorff des grandes années. Une autre belle découverte au sein d'un des rares festivals où l'on peut encore en faire...

FIJM 2009 - Baptiste Trotignon Quintet at Gésu

noreply@blogger.com (Félix-Antoine Hamel) — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 00:38:00 +0000

by David Ryshpan

French pianist-composer Baptiste Trotignon played to a small yet receptive crowd at Gésu on Canada Night. Commencing the evening in trio with bassist Matt Penman and drummer Gregory Hutchinson, Trotignon's aptly titled First Song (which also kicks off his album, Share) displayed his delicate touch and lush harmonies underneath a diatonic melody. Trotignon got a round sound out of the instrument, and he has a vocabulary in line with what has been termed the "modern mainstream," with bursts of ragged bluesy trills, like Don Pullen polished smooth.

Tenor saxophonist Mark Turner joined the group for the second piece, Flow. Seemingly unhindered by his power-saw injury of November, his opening cadenza displayed his characteristic motivic development, delivered with an earnest sense of emotion. The head was a looping ostinato underneath a busy melody harmonized by Turner and Trotignon. Hutchinson proved to be a tremendous colourist - an underrated pioneer of the contemporary mainstream drum vocabulary alongside Brian Blade. Augmenting his kit with bells, shakers and tambourine, switching seamlessly between brushes, sticks and mallets, Hutchinson was the driving force of the group, along with Penman's woody bass sound. Trumpeter Jeremy Pelt completed the quintet, playing mostly flugelhorn with a warm, airy tone.

The centrepiece of the set was an untitled five-part suite, featuring all the group members at length. Throughout the course of this suite, Trotignon's playing seemed to match the level of intensity of the rest of the band. The hook-up between Hutchinson and Turner was especially strong, as was Pelt's energy on anything swinging. Trotignon's vocabulary is wide and versatile but he never really dug into his bluesy phrases with the attack and intention they needed. Hutchinson's broken straight eighth note feel was so potent, it rendered the transitions into swing anti-climactic. Pelt's trumpet was unfortunately overmiked in the house, and he sounded best when he backed off the mic and ate the swing feel for breakfast. The transitions between the movements of the suite were smooth and well-executed, blending into each other with the requisite amount of space. Hutchinson's samba feel of the fourth movement was highly enjoyable, and it was here that Trotignon's improvising hit its apex, digging into his phrases the way Penman had on his preceding solo.

There are many great moments in Trotignon's playing and writing. It seems that touring with such estimable company will only further his craftsmanship.

--
http://www.myspace.com/davidryshpan

Composing with the Moment: A conversation with Maria Schneider

noreply@blogger.com (Félix-Antoine Hamel) — Sun, 03 May 2009 14:52:00 +0000

May 3

Marc Chénard: In late June, you will be performing in Toronto, Ottawa and Montreal on three consecutive days; this will be the first time for you and your band to play in Canada.

Maria Schneider: Actually, we played once before, that was at the festival in Ottawa a couple of years ago.

M.C.: It can't be easy for you to tour with an orchestra that size.

M.S.: That's true, but we still manage to get out and do concerts here and there. Last summer, we even did a tour in Europe, but it's a little tough with the state of our economy, and it's going to get a little rougher, too.

M.C.: But even at that, it has to be difficult to pull off a tour, regardless of the prevailing circumstances. In logistical terms alone, you have to have 16 or 17 people find holes in their schedules.

M.S.: That's true. The band in fact has 18 musicians, including the accordion, and then there's me, our soundman, a road manager, so we are in fact 21. It's quite an adventure to go out on the road and it involves a lot of work just to make it happen.

M.C.: Last October, you premiered a new work that was commissioned by the Saint Paul's Chamber Ensemble in Minnesota. Now this was quite a departure for you in that it is a through-composed piece written for classical musicians, including a vocal soloist, Dawn Upshaw. Tell me a bit about this project and how it came about.

M.S.: The inspiration for this piece (entitled "Carlos de Andrade Stories") came from the writings of a Brazilian author I like to read. And the idea just came to me. Dawn knew me personally as well as my music and band, so she asked me a while back if I'd be interested to write something for her. At first, I was a little bit apprehensive because it was so different for me, since it would performed by classical chamber ensemble with her as a soloist. But in the end, I really loved doing it and it turned out very well, too.

M.C.: Did you immediately say yes when you were first approached, or did you give it some thought first?

M.S.: I didn't say yes on the spot. I mean, we talked about it for a long time, and I had to be talked into it in a way, because of the fear factor.

M.C.: To actually compose this, you had to shift gears, because you had to write for people who don't improvise, unlike those you have been working with until now. Because of that, did you have to rethink yourself as a composer?

M.S.: Well yes, but there's more than that. For one, the whole performance experience is different. With improvisers, you feel that everyone has kind of contributed to the music making by the end of the evening. But the improvisation part was not the biggest issue here; it was the rhythm section instead. I had none for this piece, and I didn't want to tack one on either, because I've never liked that kind of thing. What you have to do here is to figure out ways of putting all that rhythm and movement inside the orchestra. I was actually quite surprised how well it came to me.

M.C.: So once you got started on it, did the actual writing flow?

M.S.: It did. But there's one thing I really didn't count on to be help me here, and those were the words. These enabled me to find a real sense of direction in the piece, because they give meaning to the whole and suggest a lot of the rhythm, in that the sentences have rhythms, which then suggest ideas for melodic contours. The words really helped me to find a lead into the music.

M.C.: Until that time, you had not really worked that much with words.

M.S.: Hardly at all.

M.C.: I can assume then that this project enabled you to look at composing in a different way.

M.S.: That it did.

M.C.: A couple of days ago, you had a performance in Pittsburgh with your band and you're heading out for another gig in the next few days. I find it pretty remarkable in these times that an orchestra of this size can do a couple of gigs in a week.

M.S.: I'm pretty lucky. And with that work I did last year, I hope it will in a way broaden the audience. Personally, I love the idea of not having a genre-driven audience, but more one that just likes good music.

M.C.: It goes without saying you were playing in front a very different audience than the one you having been playing for.

M.S.: Well yes, but there were also a lot of my regular people, who come out to hear my band, who also attended that concert, but I hope it also brought new ones to the music as well.

M.C.: But the premiere was in Minnesota, which is where you're from, so it was something like going back to play for the hometown crowd.

M.S.: That's true in a way.

M.C.: How did it come about that the premiere took place there? Was it you who made the contact.

M.S.: No. It came from the Saint Paul's Chamber Orchestra. It commissioned the work.

M.C.: Are there any other performances of the work now in the offing?

M.S.: The next one is slated for Carnegie Hall, but it's a long way down the line, something like two years from now, and with me conducting. There are other dates also being talked about at this time. In fact Dawn also wants me to write something else for her and another orchestra. So there's a continuation to this.

M.C.: It seems like a new door has opened up for you.

M.S.: Yes. And it's one I'd like to keep pursuing because of how much I enjoyed doing this first work. Maybe I'd like to include a little bit of improvisation in the future, unlike this on, which was through composed.

M.C.: You mentioned conducting before. What then was your experience about standing in front of a group of classical players? How does it compare to a group of jazz musicians?

M.S.: Conducting is totally different. Actually it kind of threw me for a loop. I do have a lot to learn in this respect, but I still did okay. I'll definitely be taking some classical conducting lessons by the time the next performance comes around.

M.C.: You have to show the beat all the time.

M.S.: Much more. What really struck me is how much they play behind the beat, so I had to find a way to push them along. In jazz, everybody plays much more on time because they have a rhythm section, so I had to kind of smooth these players out and create expression in the music. Orchestral musicians want to see the beat.

M.C.: So you find jazzers to be much more in time, or maybe even ahead of it, than the classical players.

M.S.: When you put your hand down the jazz players are right on it. Boom! The orchestra players are just a bit behind it, they play the 'boom' just a bit after you put your hand down. It feels like you're dragging this big horse, it's very weird and even frustrating. But somebody showed me how to move them along. I thought it was by marking the beats more firmly, when in fact it's creating a more flowing sense of time. It's fun to discover a world where I have so much to learn, because it opens up new paths.

M.C.: In retrospect, it was an eye opener for you, both in terms of composing and actual performance. Turning now to your recordings, your most recent one "Sky Blue" is about two years old now, so I'm wondering if you have written new material since and if we can expect to hear any of this during your upcoming Canadian tour.

M.S.: I haven't written that much new stuff for my own band. What I wrote for Dawn Upshaw is pretty much the newest material I've done since the record, aside from a work written for the Monterey Jazz Festival. Once you've done a record, then you want to go out and play it on tour. Then, you give interviews and what not to promote it. You know, I didn't have a minute to compose in the year following the album's release (2007). That's the life of leading an orchestra and trying to compose. You'd be surprised to see how little of my day goes to composing. I can go even weeks on end without devoting myself fully to composing, I mean morning, noon and night, and never even get to the piano. My God! There are all the e-mails and business matters to take care of, it's insane.

M.C.: And with the Website and label added to that…

M.S.: That takes a lot, too. It's so labour intensive.

M.C.: Speaking of the label (ArtistShare), it's quite an original concept when you look at the site. How did this come about?

M.S.: Well, I did not develop it and the concept is precisely that, "artists share". Brian Camelio started it and he approached. I got very excited about the concept after he explained it to me, and I was the first artist to utilize it. He developed the idea, started up the label and is now its CEO. Basically, he's responsible for bringing all of the ideas to my own Website. And I can only say that it has worked very well for me. For instance, I managed the funds for "Sky Blue", a total of $170 000 to make that record.

M.C.: By what I have gleaned from the site, funds are raised through online CD purchases and a range of participant package deals. In fact, the highest participation level was to the order of $18 000 dollars given by a single donor.

M.S.: And it came from somebody I never met in my life. You know, there are people out there in the business world who also love the arts and want to contribute to it.

M.C.: Over the years, other orchestras have performed your music as well, for instance the radio big bands in Europe. What's your experience of working with such publicly funded bodies like these and how does it compare with you own, which, after all, doesn't enjoy any public financing at all.

M.S.: Those orchestras are really wonderful and it's a great they have them, too. To me, these largely benefit the local audiences. People are generally more informed and thus enjoy culture and music much more because they are more exposed to it. To me, the biggest upside is not for the musicians, but more how it benefits the community. That said, I don't lament the fact that my band is not that kind of a group, because when you run something on your own, it's really your own baby; and with all of the blood and guts that it takes to get that off the ground, it gives a certain intensity to it that, maybe, doesn't happen to the same degree when it's being run by someone else. There's an appreciation, or a feeling throughout the whole band of knowing what it takes to do it. So there can be times when there's a little bit of apathy happening when you have an organization running things. I, for one, have never applied for grants for my band. Mind you, I've received commissions, but these came through other organizations that did the applications. I'm not one to say that grants are a bad thing at all, but funding a record through a fan base appeals to me. I want my music to be able to turn a profit rather than depending on public money. I'm a capitalist! (Laughs) I may be a liberal one, but I'm a capitalist in the end.

M.C.: You started your orchestra some 15 or 16 years now, if I'm not mistaken.

M.S.: Well that depends. I started my first one with someone else back in 1988, so that's 20 years ago. But my first record under my own name I did four years later.

M.C.: Looking back at the early history of big bands, Ellington or even Basie for that matter, composers wrote not so much for instruments but for the people who played them.

M.S.: I've been dedicated to having this group grow over time, but I've made changes, or somebody may have left along the way…

M.C.: My question here is to know whether the players themselves have an impact on your writing, as if they are conditioning your way of composing.

M.S.: When you've have had a certain number of players around you for so many years, it's impossible not to. For instance, when I hear a tenor sax, I have Donny McCaslin and Rich Perry in my ear, I know their sounds. It would be hard for me to imagine that played by just any other player; those two musicians are voices in themselves and each have their own specific sound.

M.C.: It's like knowing their idiosyncrasies.

M.S.: Absolutely! It's more than just knowing it: it's all I know. What's hard for me is to write for some other group, and when I do, I just wind up writing for my own group, it's what I know after all. You can say it's ingrained. It's like growing up with a family: you are functioning according to the relationships you have in your life and what you know from these. My first real deep musical relationships are with these people; they are under my skin like you can't believe.

M.C.: When it comes to composing, do you use the computer?

M.S.: No. I use paper and always will.

M.C.: Any particular reasons?

M.S.: First of all, I'm not adept with it to that degree. Secondly, paper enables me to sketch out things, draw arrows and see the whole picture. I could never imagine music watching go by on the screen like that and being able to be creative. No way.

M.C.: Do you have a certain procedure, or way of going about things when composing? Or is it more intuitive, like making little sketches and tinkering with them as you go.

M.S.: I start that way and try to draw out something from that, play it out, think about it, examine it. A part of it is intuitive, another part is trying to put it together is some logical way. It's hard work, whatever way you look at it.

M.C.: There are composers who can write out their music without the benefit of an instrument, they say they can hear it all in their head, while others need to work it out, like on a piano.

M.S.: I use a piano. I do a combination of things, like playing something, pacing around for a while just to hear it in my head, then recording some of things I've played, or I might even dance to try to figure things out. In any event, I could not write what I write without using a piano. Yes, there are people who can do what you say and that blows me away, but not me.

M.C.: There are some composers who are also able to write clean copy, without ever scratching anything out, or hardly.

M.S.: Not me. I'm constantly reworking things and trying out this and that.

M.C.: The examples of Mozart and Beethoven are interesting in this regard. The first hardly ever made a change while the other was constantly rewriting, to the point of tearing up manuscripts. This tells me that there are composers who rely on their instincts and just go for it, while others are constantly questioning them.

M.S.: I do both, or am somewhere in between. I just don't write stuff and Bam! That's it. I would say I'm always questioning, but I lot of what I do is very intuitive. It's very hard to describe; in fact, it's amazing how hard it is to put it in words.

M.C.: When you bring in a new piece to a rehearsal, I gather there are changes made with the players, corrections, improvement and what not.

M.S.: Almost always.

M.C.: That would differentiate the jazz composer from the classical composer.

M.S.: Well, I'm not so sure about that. You hear about different versions of pieces that Ravel or Stravinsky revised. I think a lot of composers do go back and fix things.

M.C.: You said earlier on that you haven't done much composing lately.

M.S.: I'm starting to again, or I'm trying to get myself back into a composing mode. I have to say that I hit a burnout when I finished the Dawn Upshaw piece. I spent six obsessive months working on it; it's a 24-minute piece. I did several trips to Europe while I was in the middle of writing it, plus clinics and all of those other things. I have to say that I've been going nuts in the last six years of my life, from the moment I did my recording "Concert in the Garden", with all of the time spent writing the music and recording it, then the touring, preparing the next record, and the Website. I've been working like a fiend, so I kind of crashed after that concert and needed a little bit of time away from it. I've been busy since, and people keep sending me CDs, too. I've listened to hundreds of them and am trying to get back to people because I feel guilty not having followed up with them. The honest truth is that I'll have to start saying to people "I can't listen to all this anymore." There's music I want to study on my own, and it's very frustrating not to. I'm now getting back to people who sent me stuff three years ago. I've been catching up. But now I'm getting that feisty thing again, like getting angry that I haven't been writing. That's good for me, because it's time, or I feel like getting back to it again, even if I have no idea of what the hell I'm going to write.

M.C.: I gather you shift gears, go into composition mode and focus only on that.

M.S.: That's the case, and when I do then the business side of things goes to hell in the hand basket. But now, I'm going into this obsessive writing thing.

M.C.: Does this mean you're planning to write new material to present during your upcoming Canadian tour?

M.S.: I don't know. It depends if I'm excited by it, or it's good enough. Since we haven't performed any of my existing music up there, it certainly doesn't hurt to do what we do really well. And the band plays the music so well now, because we've toured it and it sounds much better than on the record. Not only have they got it down, but they bring something different to it every night, because they know where they can be free and where the boundaries are, or aren't. In that way they can really fly with it and have fun with it at the same time.

M.C.: I once read a story about your beginnings that appeared in the German magazine Jazz Podium. In one spot, you talk of writing arrangements for other bands, and there was one you did for Mel Lewis's band. Apparently he had played the piece too fast, and when you told him to do it slower, he kind of got mad at you and said why don't you start your own.

M.S.: Well, it was the other way around: I wanted it fast. When I rehearsed it with the band, I did it kind of slow and once we worked it out, then I asked them to take it up to the right tempo. That's where Mel got upset and said that everybody played things too fast. He was just being his feisty old self. But it was still great advice that I should start my own band. If I have strong opinions about my music, I don't want to be writing for others who then tell me how it should be done; I wrote the music, so I know how it should be played.

M.C.: So you felt very early on that you wanted to write for a group of your own. As you know, there are some arrangers and composers who write for others and are perfectly content in doing that.

M.S.: Not me. So it's true to say I did want to lead my own group to play my music.

M.C.: In your bio, two names always come up as major influences on you, Gil Evans and Bob Brookmeyer. For the former, it's mentioned you worked as an assistant. What does that mean more specifically.

M.S.: I first started out copying for him, then organizing his music, after which he had me do some transcribing. Then he asked me to re-orchestrate things, like when he started doing work for those radio bands in Europe. He wanted some of his smaller group music re-written for these larger groups. He also wrote music for the film "The Color of Money" (the project with Sting), and wanted me to write some of the musical cues. As things turned out, he was given me more and more responsibility. Quite frankly, I was not at a level yet to deserve to be in that position, but for some reason he felt like giving me that experience. Gil was just that kind of person: he would just choose someone, a musician or whatever, and stuck by him or her no matter what. And it was not necessarily based on a lot of research on his part.

M.C.: He was a very intuitive person.

M.S.: Yeah, that's exactly it: he lived according to his intuition. He would just do something and that was it. I was lucky that he intuited something about me.

M.C.: How did you first meet him?

M.S.: I met him in a real odd way. I had wanted to take lessons with him, but didn't dare call him out of the blue and ask. I was too intimidated to do that. I was working in a music copying office at the time (mid-eighties), and a composer by the name of Tom Pierson came in one day when I was doing some photocopying. We started discussing a certain score and ended up going out for a coffee. In our talk, he asked me who my favourite writer was, and so I went on about both Gil and Bob, but much more about Gil that day. Then he asked me what I liked so much about him, and so I got into all sorts of little details. So we parted ways on that, but that same evening he called me back to inform me that Gil happened to be his closest friend. Gil had told about Tom about needing an assistant and expressed interest in meeting me because some of his music had to be copied out for a rehearsal, so he asked if I could show up for it. I got his number, just called Gil and that was it. That's pretty lucky, right? It was just so odd how everything came together like that.

M.C.: With respect to Bob Brookmeyer, you went to study with after finishing at Eastman.

M.S.: Right. That was the one time in my life that I actually applied for a grant called the "Apprenticeship Grant". I sent him an example of my music for him to listen to before taking me on. We became really close after that, like colleagues or friends who bounce things off each other.

M.C.: When you consider it for a moment, Bob and Gil are so different from one another: the former has more of a systematic approach whereas the latter is much less formal.

M.S.: You can say that, but they both had so much respect for each other. In fact they are kind of opposites of each other. Gil told me once that he was kind of intimidated by Bob, who was really flattered when I mentioned it to him. Gil was always this kind of enigmatic character everybody felt was kind of floating in the clouds with the angels.

M.C.: I've always found it interesting how these two composers/arrangers factor into your own musical development, and how so different they were/are in creating music, in that they go about it in very different ways.

M.S.: For me, there are aspects in their conceptions of music that have intrigued me and which I find attractive enough to use in my own. With Bob it's about development and long through composed forms, that's his world. Gil, on the other hand, is more intricate in terms of orchestration. Bob's music isn't particularly intricate, his pieces are like broad strokes made on big canvas. It's something like Miro. Gil's are like tiny little pieces working with each other, lines connecting with each other, a bit like the mechanism of a watch. So it's the details and all of the subtle hues of colour with a lot of space in between, in which there is plenty of texture and even a lot of open spaces and air.

M.C.: So your music is something like putting the minutiae of Gil within the big pictures of Bob.

M.S.: I would say so.

M.C.: There are, of course, many more jazz composers who have made their mark. Let's say I pitch you a name, and tell me what occurs to you. For instance: Carla Bley.

M.S.: To be honest, I've never much listened to her, so I can't really tell you much. People in fact always say that I should listen more to her music, and I've been asked about her before. But I don't really listen to much jazz now, unlike before. I'm more into Brazilian music and classical.

When I use to listen to more jazz, in the years I was coming up, I'd be into George Russell, Thad Jones, Mingus, Ellington, even Bill Evans, Claus Ogerman.

M.C.: In jazz, there is often a distinction made between the 'arranger' and the 'composer'; they have slightly different functions whereas in classical music they are intertwined.

M.S.: In classical music, you do not find that too often, when one person is arranging someone else's.

M.C.: Exactly. If you compose the music, you're arranging it.

M.S.: Yeah. If I win a 'best arranger' award in Downbeat, for instance, I find that kind of strange to me, because I'm not really an arranger, composing is what I do. To me, an arranger is when Bob Brookmeyer arranges a whole album of standards: that's arranging.

M.C.: Speaking of standards, I was wondering about how you approach those kinds of pieces, or any kind of existing compositions others than your own.

M.S.: It's very different. I haven't really done any in years now, and have never really done them that often either, because I'm just interested in composing my own things.

M.C.: But there's one example, your arrangement of "The Days of Wine and Roses". Was it a challenge to you to actually take an existing piece and reshape it? Did you find it more difficult to actually arrange an existing piece than creating one of your own?

M.S.: It's difficult, but in a different way, but not more difficult than actually composing, which is far more difficult to me.

M.C.: Did you decide very early on to be a non-performer, not to actually play an instrument on stage, but just to fully devote yourself to composition? You do play piano after all.

M.S.: It has to do with the fact that I was never a great pianist and I don't want to hear myself play my own music, so I want to have a better player than myself do it.

M.C.: You're now at the same age that Gil was (48) when he decided to sit in front of a piano.

M.S.: I don't think you're going to see that with me. No chance. And even less so now, because I can't find enough hours in the day to practice. One of the things now that has changed a lot of our lives, and which is making it harder for us, is all this e-mail stuff, text messaging, constant distractions. Anybody can contact you at anytime of the day. Way back when, they didn't even have answering machines: if you weren't home, you weren't home and that was all to it. If you want to write, you have to go somewhere where you can't be disturbed. It's really hard now because you have to do so much.

M.C.: So when you get down to compose, you turn off all your machines.

M.S.: I should. What I would like is to work in a different place than here.

M.C.: I guess you'd have to find a little place out in the woods somewhere with just electricity and where no one can find you.

M.S.: With the economy as it now is, I guess it would be time for me to find a cheap little studio somewhere in the neighborhood where I can go to.

Conversation taken on March 23, 2009.

For more information, consult both her Website and the recording label:

http://www.mariaschneider.com

http://www.artistsshare.com

Patricia Barber: Distinction with a Difference

noreply@blogger.com (Félix-Antoine Hamel) — Fri, 01 May 2009 01:49:00 +0000

May 1st

A conversation with Marc Chénard

Marc Chénard: Earlier this year, there was an article in Downbeat concerning the 70 years of Blue Note and several artists were asked, you included, what their favourite album on the label was, and you chose "Portrait of Sheila" by Sheila Jordan. In it you extol her qualities as a singer and how that has influenced you, but I was wondering if it also had to do with the very spare and intimate setting of the album, because that is very much part of your own aesthetic.

Patricia Barber: Well, that's true. But I hadn't thought of that. I don't usually think things like that in those terms; I leave that to the professionals. And when I don't get a certain kind of intimacy, I always notice it. If my voice is not close miked in concert and it doesn't sound like me, the only thing left for me to say is to please make it sound like me. They can hear my recordings and I leave it up to them to get it right.

M.C.: I noticed that you are listed as the producer of your latest recording "The Cole Porter Mix".

P.B.: I have produced all of my recordings after "Distortion of Love" (produced by Brian Bacchus).

M.C.: You must be the exception here, because singers always have producers and A&R men calling the shots.

P.B.: I was certainly asked to do that in the beginning, but refused.

M.C.: I gather it must have taken time to convince a major label to accept you controlling your own product?

P.B.: Yes, we did have some, how should I say… discussions, and not just with Blue Note, but also with Richard Seidel at Verve and even with Dreyfus in France, where they were even lobbing insults at me because I was not allowing them to let them do the producing. It was quite a struggle in the beginning, but I've been calling all the shots ever since. Actually my lawyer drew up a contract I've been using ever since and which follows with me wherever I go. It says clearly that I have complete artistic control on what I do. Sure the record company has to be agreeable, and I have to say Blue Note has been wonderful with me, and likewise for Premonition before that. That's why I just didn't sign with anyone else than Blue Note or Premonition before that, because the boss at Premonition just let me do whatever I wanted to.

M.C.: That really set the precedent for you.

P.B.: Yes. I was determined to have something very individual to contribute and thought I could best do it that way, on my own terms.

M.C.: In looking at your bio, music came into your life very early because your father was a musician himself, a saxophonist who played in big bands. I guess that paved the way for your own career.

P.B.: Yes it did.

M.C.: Does that mean then that it was your intention to become a professional music from a very early age?

P.B.: Yes, it did. But I also knew where I wanted to do it, right here in Chicago.

M.C.: That's interesting, because we all know the old story of a young jazz player heading to New York to make the big times. Were you ever tempted to make the move there?

P.B.: Well, yes, maybe in my early years in Chicago, but not after that. I've had such wonderful work here, not to forget a close group of friends and family. There are trappings of success that have never interested me enough to give up other things, like my artistic independence and my

friends.

M.C.: Do you then believe that remaining in Chicago has enabled you to maintain that independence?

P.B.: I do. I think the people who work in Chicago (and that is my personal feeling), develop a certain sound because they have that ability to work regularly, something I find more difficult to do in New York.

M.C.: The New York scene is also a very competitive one. Do you think that it's not so much the case in Chicago, where it could be more cooperative or collaborative?

P.B.: Not to me, because the music business is tough wherever you are. There is much more supply than demand, so that tilts everything. Because it's very competitive, you have to be very good, but it's like that in every city. A lot of the New York venues are taken up by people from out of town, from Paris or wherever, which means there is not a music work available for local musicians.

M.C.: Going back to your own beginnings, did you family encourage you to go into music?

P.B.: I was encouraged the whole time. In fact, I really knew what I wanted to do from the time I was five years old. But it was more a question of knowing if it would be the smart decision to take. In high school, I was into music and knew what I wanted to do and where. But in college I started asking myself if it was really a good life decision. There were second thoughts along the way, but I got two degrees as a way to escape, if need be. I studied music and psychology, the latter was a general one which could allow me to go into law or medical school.

M.C.: Let's turn to music now. As a vocalist, we mentioned at the beginning Sheila Jordan and I'm sure you've listened to plenty more, but if you had to name three important influences, who would they be?

P.B.: Lets' see, there's Shirley Horn… then Elis Regina (a very strong influence on me) and Peggy Lee.

M.C.: And as for your main instrument, the piano, whom would you name there?

P.B.: Everybody thinks of Bill Evans, but Chick Corea has also been important to me. He's the one who pulled me into jazz for good in college, because I found it exciting what he was doing at that time with Return to Forever, that appealed to the pop rock side of me. Kenny Werner is also one of my current favourites, as is Jacky Terrasson because he's brought back the rhythm to the piano.

M.C.: On your records, everything is very concise, but do you like to stretch out more in a live setting, like all jazz artists for that matter. On YouTube there are several examples of that, too. I gather you must have a different mindset when it comes to recordings than to concerts?

P.B.: Definitely. A recording is a prototype; it's the thing that will go down in history. Now as far as I'm concerned, I allow myself to do whatever the hell I want to do in concert and for whatever amount of time. If we start one song and it lasts 30 minutes… well, I find that is in part what the public paid their tickets for: to see you improvise and stretch out on the stuff they've heard you play on in an already recorded version.

M.C.: When not on the road, you have your weekly Monday night gig at the Green Mill, something you've been doing for ages now.

P.B.: Yes, but I don't like doing Monday nights, it's just that things have worked out for me like that. Monday is tough, because I may be flying back from somewhere on the weekend, or attended a family event, yet I have to work right at the beginning of the week. It's just the way it is, it's how I started and everyone knows where I am, so the owner of the place and me don't want to change it.

M.C.: With a regular gig like that, I gather the place must be your testing ground for new material, if not a recording project.

P.B.: Always. It's my laboratory to test out new songs. If, for instance, there's a funny element to a song, and it don't get a laugh, then I take it back home to make it work better. I've also been recording my gigs there; I started paying the soundman there to do it for me. I literally have hundreds of recordings of myself and cannot possibly sift through them, it's an impossible task, really.

M.C.: It's also interesting to note that you've maintained a pretty steady group of musicians over the years, your bassist Michael Arnopol has been on board pretty well since your debut. So it must stand to reason that working with these musicians over such a long period has been an important factor in defining your own sound.

P.B.: It has been. They're like wonderful tools I can work with and all of them are great individual musicians. It's easy for me now, because they all intuitively understand what I'm going for. If we do something differently, then we talk it over at a rehearsal. Of course, they know I don't want 36 solo choruses after the narrative. But you'd be surprised. Sometimes, when someone sits in, it's like, I'm singing a song, and here you could think of Billy Holiday, Sarah Vaughan, Peggy Lee or anybody else you've ever heard, so I tell some of the story, then it segues into a kind of improvisational envelope, after which I continue the story, which is what the audience wants to hear. But you'd be surprised: there are some jazz musicians who don't understand that, so they'll go on for 36 choruses, and I'll just say to them: "You're fired." That's so stupid.

M.C.: So you have people sitting in at your Monday night gigs.

P.B.: Oh yes, I've had plenty of guests, but I just don't let them sit in like that, I specifically invite them to see if I can have a good connection with them. To me it's a way of stretching out some. Kenny Werner recently told me that I was looking very comfortable in my playing on stage and that the group sounds great, but felt it was time to shake it up. (Laughs) I found that to be an interesting take on things. But then again, Keith Jarrett doesn't do that, nor does Pat Metheny, although he does have several bands going on in parallel. That's good, too, and I work on other projects, too.

M.C.: And what are these exactly?

P.B.: There are some 'classical-esque' things I'm doing these days. Just as you called, I'm writing a song for a movie, the second time I'm doing this kind of thing. I will also be singing for the sound track, it's conceived for a specific scene. I also wrote and performed more of my own music for a very beautiful film called "Grey and Black and White" in which I also play the part of a singer. Just recently, I wrote a couple of songs for Jim Gailloreto's string quartet here in Chicago, I'm singing, too, and there is a saxophone part to it as well. I'm very excited about that because it came out quite beautifully. Jim asked me, and both of us were so thrilled about the results. He found the timbre of my voice blended so nicely with his group, so he asked if I wanted to continue with this project, and only gladly accepted his offer. I now have this feeling of stretching out into other areas.

M.C.: I also noticed, at least on your recordings, that you are one vocalist who really doesn't scat.

P.B.: In concert, I do that a little bit, like on some of the Brazilian things, with an odd item here and there. I used to scat my ass off at one time, when I was younger, but since I'm able to play the piano… I notice that a lot of piano playing singers, like Shirley Horn or Diana Krall don't scat much either, and much less than singers who are not also instrumentalists. I think it has to do with the fact that we get to explore improvisation on an instrument, so we don't have to do that with our voice. To my ears, scatting can be a little bit corny, but if it is done right it can be done beautifully because you use your voice as an instrument. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. Michael, my bassist, says: "You should have a license to scat." It's a very dangerous thing. When it's bad, it's really, really bad.

M.C.: I gather you've been focusing on the music of your September 2008 release ("The Cole Porter Mix") in your recent tours. Will that also be the case for your upcoming Canadian performances in Ottawa, Quebec City and Montreal?

P.B.: I guess that would be appropriate. But you never know what I am going to do.

M.C.: Which means you don't have a set program that you take out on tour.

P.B.: I've had a kind of rotating set going since the Cole Porter record came out, and that's what we have been doing, but we also throw in a couple of others things not to get too bored. As I said, you just never know.

M.C.: You like to keep surprises in store.

P.B.: Yes, but I do that for my own sake.

M.C. There's a clip of you playing an instrumental number, Mingus's "Nostalgia in Time Square".

P.B.: Yeah, we've been playing that at the Green Mill for a long time. We have such a huge repertoire to work with.

M.C.: By the way, there is another singer pianist who has even done a couple of strictly instrumental albums, Harry Connick Jr. Has it ever occurred to you doing a record like that?

P.B.: Oh my God! I would love to give up the vocals for a year just like Harry Connick. For me it's not only a question of resting my voice, but resting my soul. Singing is so intimate. I get weary of bearing my soul. I look at my musicians and envy them; they can chew gum, pick up their instruments and play. Singing is completely different because of that intimacy. I have a feeling everybody is peering at my soul, they know exactly how I'm feeling, if I'm sad, happy or what no. There's just such a lack of privacy.

M.C.: So what about that idea of a purely instrumental album?

P.B.: I don't think anyone would let me. I mean, I could do it on my own, but I don't think anyone would care. When you have people like Kenny Werner or Keith Jarrett, who would care. I think I'm becoming a really good pianist and can hold my own in concert, but you can't get anybody to care about the best pianist on earth right now.

M.C.: Speaking of recordings, have you been thinking about your next one?

P.B.: Yeah, but I'm a little bit stumped. I have various new songs written, like for movies and other things, so I could just compile them, but as far as a theme, I'm unsure at this time, but kind of want to be. No one has asked or forced me to decide about what I want to do next, and am glad about that, too. So I'm being given the time to find the proper inspiration. And I don't know what Blue Note is going through, like every other record company for that matter, what with all the changes in the marketplace. They may well be going through problems of their own.

M.C.: But in spite of these difficult times in the music business, things are going well for you, your recent touring schedule is proof of that.

P.B.: Not now. It could be very full, but I'm stepping back at this time, to get involved in other projects. I just came off a European tour last week. We're very popular over there: in fact we even had sold out crowds everywhere we went, from Madrid to Zagreb. To me it has nothing to do with the success or enjoyment we get from it to keep on touring, it's more a need for me to take a break from all that. It's tough when you go from one country to another on a daily basis, so I want to just draw back and explore these other areas of music, and time is running out. I mean, if you keep doing the same things every day and all of the time, suddenly you don't have any time left to get to those things in areas of music you would like to further explore. Jim Gailloreto asked me to write an art song, and I now have a couple of these that are a little bit different for jazz; in fact, they are quite a departure for me when I sing them on stage, and the effect is quite magical. My main interest now is to spend more time on composing than hitting the performance trail.

M.C.: You also seem to be a quite avid photographer; you have a whole section of pictures on your Website. Does photography inspire you musically?

P.B.: I love the camera. I don't know if it does inspire me musically, but it makes me so happy. It's not my job, so I don't have to do it, it's free of anxiety, and different kinds of cameras really interest me. And with everybody taking pictures digitally, it's kind of promiscuous, but I still

love doing it.

Conversation taken on April 10.

Check out Patricia Barber's very thorough and well organized Website, including a section of her candid shots at http://www.patriciabarber.com

Patricia Barber in concert :

Ottawa International Jazz Festival (National Library of Canada), July 3.

Salle Françoys-Bernier (Quebec City), July 9.

Festival International de Jazz de Montréal (Théâtre Maisonneuve), July 10.

Different Times and Different Places: A conversation with Phil Woods

noreply@blogger.com (Félix-Antoine Hamel) — Tue, 31 Mar 2009 16:05:00 +0000

by Marc Chénard

On February 28, 1959, a landmark concert took place in New York. A ten-piece band under the direction of the grand master Thelonious Monk premiered a number of his own pieces orchestrated for a large ensemble, a first for him. The resulting recording "The Thelonious Monk Orchestra At Town Hall" (Riverside Recordings, recently reissued in Concord's Keepnews Collection) remains on the finest albums of Monk's discography, if not of modern jazz. Much of the story of that now legendary concert is aptly recounted in a two-part interview feature with the album's producer, Orrin Keepnews, currently posted on youtube.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=URWCk3u99NI (Part 1)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QOZKIbouYV0 (Part 2)

Interestingly, three of the members of that orchestra are still around today: trombonist Eddie Bert, trumpeter Donald Byrd (essentially retired now from performance) and the still very much active altoist Phil Woods. Two days before the fiftieth anniversary of the event, Woods recollected some of his fading memories and observations concerning this show, including a few insights on the goings on before the event. And as a veteran of the jazz trenches, he went on to talk about another important chapter in his career, his European years. And far from slowing down (as can be seen at the end of the interview), it makes sense to have him tell us about some of his current recording and performing activities.

Long Ago and Far Away: The Town Hall Concert

Marc Chénard: As one of the three surviving of that concert, it's good to know for starters how you got involved in the first place.

Phil Woods: Hall Overton recruited me.

M. C.: That's interesting. On youtube, you can find podcasts of Orrin Keepnews (the record's producer) saying he has no idea of how Overton got involved in the project in the first place, and he never met anyone who could tell him either.

P. W.: Can't tell you myself, it might be Jules Colomby who hired him — i.e. the concert producer, who then became Monk's manager during the sixties.

M.C.: At the time you were hired for that concert, had you ever played with Monk before that?

P.W.: That was the first time for me. We first got our parts, studied them on our own and went into the rehearsals, which lasted ten days, maybe two weeks. In any event, we were well prepared for the concert. We're professionals after all.

M.C.: Even if you hadn't played with Monk before, you still must have been acquainted with his music at that time. Had you played much of it yourself?

P.W.: You see, Hall Overton was teaching at Juilliard back then, so we'd have jam sessions there. That's where I first learned about the project. In fact he had transcribed Monk's piano solos, so I asked him if I could study them. By the time the first rehearsal came around, I knew them quite well. Now, when it says G7, there are many kinds of ways of playing that chord in his music. For me, I never play a song until I can play it at the piano, and even if I couldn't play all of Monk's runs and things, I could certainly analyze those transcriptions, and since I was a composition minor at Juilliard, I could then analyze all the small details that were required when it came to performing them, so doing that work beforehand came in very handy. Mind you, I never considered myself a Monk specialist, but I still studied it to the point of being well versed in this genius's very angular and jagged compositions. I mean they were striking, as history has proven. But again, having gone to the keyboard first, where those pieces were first realized, was a big asset in putting them into the saxophone.

M.C.: Do you feel that Monk's music falls well on the saxophone?

P.W.: Most of the music doesn't fall well on the piano. When playing Monk, it has something to do with comfort. Some of the things were absolutely impossible, and that's why we needed all those rehearsals. But we were very well prepared for it, as I think the results show.

M.C.: So it took quite some time to really get a good handle on the music?

P.W.: That depends of the tune.

M.C.: "Little Rootie Tootie" certainly has to be the showcase piece of the recording.

P.W.: That one was the most difficult one to do, for sure. But as I said, we got the music before that and we went home to practice our parts individually before we even had our first rehearsal. We worked on that piece the most during the rehearsals because of the chorus we had to play that was a transcription of Monk's own solo that he did a couple of years earlier.

M.C.: Being the alto player, you were basically the lead voice, so there was added responsibility on your shoulders.

P.W.: I was the only Juilliard graduate there, so Hall knew where to put the hard parts. He knew my capabilities.

M.C.: That concert, of course, stands out in Monk's work, but it wasn't a one-shot deal. You had the chance of performing that program Monk on a few more occasions after that.

P.W.: Sure, I did a long European tour after that (in 1967), and there was the Lincoln Center concert four years earlier but also a couple more in the States as well. In Europe the personnel was different though, Ben Riley was Monk's quartet drummer at the time, then there was Johnny Griffin who had moved over there a couple of years before. We went all over the continent, Scandinavia, Germany, France, don't remember all of the stops but it was a pretty long trip.

M.C.: I jogged my memory by listening to the Town Hall Concert again. Do you ever go back and listen to it yourself?

M.C.: Haven't done that for years.

M.C.: Of the originals, I believe you and Donald Byrd are still around today, is it also the case for Eddie Bert?

P.W.: Right. I don't think any of the others are alive now.

M.C. You mentioned the European tour, and you see excerpts of that in the Monk film documentary "Straight no Chaser". You played the music of the original concert with other pieces added on as well.

P.W.: There were some more tunes that we first performed during the Lincoln Center concert, the one that had Steve Lacy on it. By the way, as a very interesting sidebar, Steve Lacy, as you know, had a band at that time that only played Thelonious Monk's music, and guess who doesn't get one solo that evening? Now I don't know what Monk was trying to tell him, maybe: "Get your own music, man."

M.C.: Lacy also played with Monk before that, for a couple months, along with Charlie Rouse.

P.W.: True, but he still didn't get a solo on that concert. I find that very strange. I don't know what it means, but it's an interesting sidebar.

High Fly: The European Years

M.C.: It was after that big tour that you decided to settle there.

P.W.: It was in 1968.

M.C.: What stands out from that time was the creation of your quartet, the European Rhythm Machine, it wasn't too long after arriving that that band came together.

P.W.: Actually, it was immediately upon arrival. Jean-Louis Ginibre is the one who first put it together. He was the editor of Jazz Magazine in the sixties. His wife, Simone Chevalier, was a singer. She used to perform the same set with Bud Powell at the Blue Note Café (in Paris) but she had to write out the list for him each time because he never could remember it for the seven years they did it. Eventually she decided to retire from singing and decided to do booking instead, and I turned out to be her first client. They first came to visit me in London, where I was working at Ronnie Scott's with Gordon Beck, who eventually replaced George Gruntz at the piano chair. At that time, Henri Texier was still in the French army, and Daniel Humair was a very established drummer by then. You could say that the plate was there on the table, waiting for me. Jean-Louis then found me a place to live in France, and that a great help for me in getting my feet on the ground and having things start to happen for me.

M.C.: That was something of a Golden Era in Europe in those years. There were plenty of your fellow countrymen who were pretty dissatisfied with the situation back home and were doing the same as you.

P.W.: That was not a banner year for America.

M.C.: I read somewhere that Nixon's election didn't cheer you.

P.W.: Yeah, but I was not happy about Vietnam either. Basically, I was not playing that much jazz anymore, I was trapped in the studios and wanted to break that chain. I was now selling beer and cigarettes on television, that's not what I was put here to do.

M.C. But your stay lasted five years, what made you decide to come back?

P.W.: Well, at that point in jazz history, the mainstream was not so popular anymore in Europe; I mean they were pursuing a whole different thing. And after five years, there was that danger of wanting to make you local, especially in France, where they want you to lower your price to the level of a "local" musician, and that was not in my plans. I was always grateful to European audiences because they gave me the conviction that I could perform and that I was not as bad that I thought, but for me it was time to play for my supper in my own country, where I was still relatively unknown. So it was time for me to bring it home.

M.C.: Was there a specific opportunity waiting for you back home, or you just wanted to go back. Period.

P.W.: It was time for me to come home.

M.C.: You certainly don't regret the decision 35 years later, as your career shows.

P.W.: Well I did at the time.

M.C.: If I remember, you landed in L.A. first.

P.W.: Talk about a disaster. Quincy Jones was the only one who gave me a gig, and there were a couple of nights and Donte's, that was a period during which I had an experimental band in which I was playing electrified saxophone. My staying in the States was something of a fluke. I was actually heading back to France after a year on the West Coast, but I first made a stop in New York to say goodbye to everybody, since my homecoming was a complete failure. I was staying at Jerry Dodgion's place (a fellow alto player) when Michel Legrand's manager happened to call him up. They were looking for a sax player for an upcoming engagement at Jimmy's for a week, followed by a recording date. They were asking if Jerry could do it, but he wasn't available, so he told them that Phil Woods was staying with him, so he asked them if they wanted to talk to him. And the rest is history, as they say. It's very bizarre when you think about it, because I was going back to France and was saved from that because of Michel Legrand. Can you imagine: A Frenchman saved me from going back to France! I don't know who's playing tricks on me, but it's ironic to say the least. In any event, we made that record called "Images", which got the Grammy for best jazz album, so that reinforced my return to the States.

What's New: Children's Corner

M.C.: Let's turn to your current activities now. For starters: what's new on the recording front?

P.W.: As we're talking, I have a new release coming out this week on the Jazzed Media label. It's "Children's Suite" I wrote way back in 1961, just after coming back from the Quincy Jones big band tour that went over to Europe the play the music for a musical called "Free and Easy". As I was unpacking my things, I came across a book of poems by A.A. Milne and, to make a long story short, I wrote out 15 songs in a month. I then wrote the author a letter telling him about it and wondered if I could record them with his words. But he refused by saying he didn't want to have anything to do with jazz people. So I just put it aside. Years later, I found out that the Disney Corporation now had the rights to these writings and after many detours I finally got permission (some 41 years later) to perform and record them. And I'm indebted to a great British actor by the name of Peter Dennis, who I had worked with on a couple of projects in London. It's called "Phil Woods – The Children's Suite" (Jazzed Media jm1040). I wrote arrangements for a little big band with a string quartet and two added voices, Bob Dorough and Vicki Dony, as well as Peter Dennis who recited some of the poems. Beyond that, there is also a double songbook of 25 of my songs I did lyrics to, and I'll be in the studio tomorrow to overdub some solos on, that's for a recording on the Italian label Philology, the lyrics are sung by a great Italian singer by the name of Michelle Lombardi. I have just finished a commission from the New Jersey Saxophone Quartet. Of late, I've been doing some residencies at DePaul University, and I just came back from one last week where I worked with the kids there and performed as soloist with its big band, who was playing my music, arranged both by Jim McNeely and myself. I'm going back there in late May at which time I will recieve an honorary Doctorate with a concert of my music to be given on that occasion. So I'm pretty busy. In the months to come, I'll be appearing in Barcelona, then to the festival in Marciac. I'm not a stationary target, you know. And because my wife doesn't want me to play at home, I have to travel!

(February 26, 2009)

Free jazz, no, "Jazz Free", yes. A conversation with Joe Lovano

noreply@blogger.com (Félix-Antoine Hamel) — Sat, 31 Jan 2009 04:32:00 +0000

February 1

On February 27, Joe Lovano will kick off a North American tour in Montreal with the San Francisco Jazz Collective (SFJC). As a preview to the group's upcoming visit, the tenor saxophonist tells us first about the group's brand new program, then offers an update on his own activities, like his landmark concert performance with Ornette Coleman last summer, his next release and a secrete playing wish.

Marc Chénard: The SFJC has all the ear markings of an all-star band. Looking at its history, you are one the newcomers to it, like Dave Douglas.

Joe Lovano: The Jazz Collective was put together in such a beautiful way, and it had a great personal when it first started back in 2004. It's been a real thrill for me to be part of it for the last two seasons, and now a third one is about to get underway. Both Dave and I joined during the Thelonious Monk period [in 2006], when Monk was the featured composer. Joshua Redman, who first instigated this group in his capacities as artistic director of the San Francisco Jazz Festival, asked me to take his place, because he wanted to focus on his own personal projects from then on. It was his idea then to bring together a number of musicians together in an ensemble that would feature the music of a given jazz composer in each new season. It started with Ornette Coleman, and then Coltrane, Herbie Hancock and Monk. I joined around the time that Nicholas Payton, the original trumpeter, and Bobby Hutcherson decided to split. So Stefon Harris, Dave and I stepped in. We three have been on board for the last couple of years, and after Monk we did Wayne Shorter last year.

M.C.: And for 2009, who then is the featured composer? And also: how do you make your choice?

J.L: We have decided to focus on the music of McCoy Tyner. Now, how we make our choice is simple: we, as the ensemble, just throw out names, at least we each put our bids in for the people whose music we would like to try to cover. Randall Kline, who is the director of the San Francisco Jazz Festival, also has his word to say. It's a real cooperative situation then, and a great one at that because several people are really involved in this and who all care very much about what we do. But ultimately, we, the band members have the final say. For a moment, we thought of covering the music of Horace Silver, but I believe that will be for next year. In fact this is my last season with the band, because I originally signed up for three years. I've got so much going on myself, my projects and what not, so I just want to move on and deal with my own musical conceptions. In any event it's been so great to be part of this ensemble, and I'm really looking forward to this coming season, too, since we will be covering some really beautiful tunes of McCoy's. But more than that, each of us has contributed an original piece to the program, as has been the case since its inception.

M.C.: So what then are the pieces you plan to cover?

J.L.: I chose to arrange McCoy's piece called "Aisha" [from Coltrane's 1961 Atlantic album "Olé"]. Robin Eubanks, our trombonist, combined "Indo Serenade" and "Parody", just like McCoy did originally; Matt Penman, the bassist, did "Three Flowers"; Renee Rosnes, on piano, chose "Fly with the Wind"; we also worked on "Four by Five", arranged by our alto player Miguel Zenon, then there was "Peresina", arranged by Dave Douglas, then "Consensus" by drummer Eric Harland. As said before, we each contributed an original the program. Mine is called "Jazz Free". Well, I don't play Free Jazz, but rather I play my jazz free. (Laughs) What I did here is to devise a piece in such a way that there are a lot of events written out, but we have to create the arrangements as we play it each night. Instead of me writing out something for us to rehearse and repeat in sequence, including set solo spaces, we have to create it right there on stage. That means, there will be different combinations of duets, quartets, in sum, changing configurations played in a flowing way, with little melodies cued in at each new performance. My intention here was to write something that would really contrast with all of the other pieces, so as to give us a moment in the set where we really have to put something together on the spot.

M.C.: That makes for a very substantial concert; there'll surely have to be an intermission somewhere along the way.

J.L.: Well, we have 14 pieces on our program, but each night is going to be a different combination of them, because we will not be able to cover it all in one performance. That also was the case that last year, with the program of Wayne Shorter music and Monk before that: Each concert had its own set list and solo orders. It's not a single package concert done each night. Because we have such a rich repertoire and an ensemble of this caliber, each individual being an inventive and individual voice in his own right, you want to feature everyone throughout the evening in a special way, so it would be hard to squeeze the whole program in like a set 'show', which is not what we want to do. Basically we will do it in such a way that we split it up between those of the chosen composer and our own. By doing it this way, we will learn how things come together from night to night and what ways we can take it. From the onset, the SFJC records its concerts and the best performances are packaged in multiple CD release where you can hear the whole repertoire of a given year. On last year's package, it took three CDs to cover all of our material and the Shorter pieces, so that's where you can get the whole thing. And let me tell you, it's a lot of music to take in! And it's quite challenging stuff, too. But everybody is just so incredible, as players for sure, but also as composers and arrangers, and each member's own personality also comes through. The nice thing with this group is that there is a great chemistry between us, we are all into each other's music, know each other and have been on the scene for a while. All of that adds to the flavor, or the inventiveness of how we play, like the great rhythm section we have; they can handle so many conceptions and ways of playing with such great articulation and precision. It's really something else. Now, we, as the front line, the four horn players, play with a real deep sound, and we use a lot of dynamics in the way we approach things as a section.

M.C.: The group's size is interesting in that it's somewhere between the small combo and the big band, so you can have something more sophisticated in terms of writing, but not too big to make it to be too confined by it either.

J.L.: But we also try to break it down into some more intimate moments throughout the set. By the way, until last year, the SJFC was an octet, but we will not have our vibraphonist Stefon Harris with us this season, because his wife is expecting right in the middle of our tour. So, there are three rhythm and a four horn frontline, with me, Miguel, Dave and Robin. Unlike the previous two seasons, when I used some soprano, I'm sticking just to tenor this time around; it was just a question of how things worked out arrangement-wise. But as you know, I use other horns, too [i.e. soprano sax, straight alto, alto clarinet and the aulochrome, a revolutionary type of double soprano sax with two mouthpieces and dual playing mechanisms]. I use some of these on my upcoming Blue Note release [due out in early May] called "Folk Art", in a new band of mine called 'US five'. James Weidmann is on piano, Esperanza Spaulding is the bassist, and I have two drummers Francesco Mala and Otis Brown. Nowadays, I'm really trying to put things together where it's not just the instrument that counts, but the people who play them, so I'm writing in such a way that their personality come through in the music.

M.C.: Since you brought it up, let's now turn to some of your own projects.

J.L.: For this year, the quintet is really what I want to focus on, but there's plenty of other things, too, like dates with Hank Jones in a quartet setting at Birdland for a week in April with George Mraz and Paul Motian. Also, I just recorded a trio with Brian Blade and John Pattitucci, for John's own next release, and have some dates with that for this year, like a week at Dizzy's, if I'm not mistaken. Also, I'm nominated for a Grammy for my recording "Symphonica", and there is some talk about some orchestra projects. I'm working on performing more original music in various settings and, of course, the two-week run of the trio with Motian and Frisell at the Vanguard, and a couple of things on the side as well. I have quite a creative year ahead of me.

M.C.: Joe Lovano always has many irons in the fire, we know that.

J.L.: Well it's so great to be on the scene for all these years, and to have relationships with so many people in such a multi-generational world of music.

M.C.: Speaking of relationships with people, do you have a kind of wish list of people you'd like to play with but never have up to now?

J.L.: Well, this last summer, I sat in with Ornette Coleman's band at the Baltica Jazz Festival in Germany. I was jazz artist in residence at that festival, and it gave me the chance to put together about four or five different concerts with a range of people. Ornette's band happened to be programmed for one of the evenings, and it was just the right moment to do it. In fact, I was just going to play a few tunes with him, and as I stepped up a third of the way through the set, I wound up playing with him right to the end of it, including the encores. Man, he was so embracing; it was so beautiful and inviting. He was the one who invited me to sit in, and it was just the right moment to do it. In fact, he invited me to sit with him before, over the last year or so, but the circumstances just didn't arise until last July, and it was certainly one of the great thrills of my life to be that close to him on stage and dig him, because he's something else. That saxophone sound of his is incredible, and his ideas flow so beautifully and clearly. It was amazing to share a space with him, to both harmonize with and have my little solo moments, just to be part of this beautiful conception of playing, of orchestrating. And, of course, I'd really love to do some other things with him (laughs). What makes it special are the double basses and Denardo on drums, too, so there was a really nice space within the rhythm section, with the basses accompanying Ornette and me to harmonize with him on occasion, even for me to emerge with my own ideas within the music as well. It's as if I found myself within three different kinds of places in the form of the music, and I was feeding off of these and trying to contribute from within, so I learned a lot from that.

With regards to your question about who I'd like to play with I haven't before, I'd like to play with Keith Jarrett at some time, and explore some music with him in whatever way, be it standards or originals, or maybe just improvise like that.

M.C.: Has a contact ever been made?

J.L.: Well, I've spoken to him a few times. At one point, he mentioned wanting to do something different, outside of his trio, and there was even a little talk of a quintet back at the time when he was on a little break because he wasn't feeling well. During that period, I spoke with him a little bit, but since his return, his trio has really taken off in so many beautiful directions. So I would love to play with him at some time, in that deep, intimate and warm music he plays. It's possible he might have said something about it in an interview, and I was even quizzed about it, too, and I responded: 'Oh yeah?' So there was something in the wind at one time, and it's still I'd love to pursue.

M.C.: Returning to the SFJC for a moment, it must be difficult for all of you finding time to meet and rehearse, as you are all so busy with your own things.

J.L.: The organization has been so on top of things that it made it possible for all of us to rehearse for a whole week in New York [i.e. the first week after the New Year]. They decided to have us rehearse here rather than in San Francisco like they've done previously, because all of us are based here anyway. Those rehearsals were also very intense ones. But we plan to do more before our first concert of the tour in Montreal; in fact, we're arriving a couple of days prior to the show to fine-tune ourselves. Those first five days were needed to work things out, but we need a couple more to refresh ourselves before the first show. It's really then that we will figure out the sequencing of tunes. You see, there's more to it than just playing one tune, followed by another and so on. There has to be a concept of orchestrating a program beyond a mere rundown of tunes. To put a 75 to 90 minute set together requires a sense of programming. And by rehearsing so intensely like we did, you really learn how things flow. And that's a very important thing about the presentation: beyond a set list, we want to capture the audience and take them with us on a beautiful journey that is going to be McCoy's music and ours, presented in a seamless kind of way. That's a challenge for us, as creative musicians, to bring this about in our approach. It's more than just playing your horn. And McCoy's music is so beautiful too, timeless, melodically and formally, rhythmically, you name it. It's going to be great to work out a program like that. As you may know, I've been playing a lot with McCoy. I'm on his latest release "Live at Yoshi's, Quartet" with Jeff Tain Watts and Christian McBride. To play and record with McCoy Tyner is great, and I've performed with him off and on since 1999, the first time was with Bobby Hutcherson, Billy Higgins and Charnett Moffett. I've done a lot of quartets gigs with him, at least once per year. Last December I played with him for one night at the Blue Note, where he had a whole week for his 70th birthday; he had a guest each evening, and I was one of them.

M.C.: As mentioned previously, the SFJC's season concerts are recorded for release. Do you record all gigs of a tour?

J.L.: We don't record everything; it's more the later part of the tour we do, like the last six or seven of them. We wind up in San Francisco, so I think they have that organized that for our performances there, and there might be something done for our New York date at Lincoln Center.

For more information on the collective, including their catalogue of limited edition CDs and live DVD:

http://www.sfjazz.org/SFJAZZCollective/2008/band.asp

Check out the artist's Website:

http://www.joelovano.com

Dave Douglas: The Creative Imperative

noreply@blogger.com (Félix-Antoine Hamel) — Sat, 31 Jan 2009 04:30:00 +0000

February 1

To make their mark, jazz musicians need a thorough grounding in the tradition and a distinct, original sound. While his grounding has been called into question by some critics, no one argues with the fact that trumpeter Dave Douglas is presently performing some of the most original music. From his "young days" with Horace Silver in the 1980s, to his seminal work in John Zorn's Masada, to his own prolific output as a composer and bandleader, Douglas is consistently one of the most interesting improvisers. In late February, he will visit with the San Francisco Jazz Collective (SFJC), one of many personal projects that he spoke about in a recent phone conversation.

Paul Serralheiro: You're just coming off the holiday break, right?

Dave Douglas: Actually I was rehearsing all last week with the Collective, so I'm no longer on holiday now. This year, we were lucky enough to do advance rehearsals in New York, just to get a jump on all the new music. Just yesterday [January 11] we did a kind of open rehearsal at the Lincoln Center; I think it was because of the annual arts presenters' conference. It was fun; there were plenty of friends and acquaintances around who came to check us out.

P.S.: You joined the SFJC in 2007.

D.D.: This is officially my third season with the group. Josh Redman was still there when I arrived. Each year we build a new program evenly divided between our own pieces and arrangements of works by great jazz composers, like Thelonious Monk in my first year. Joe Lovano replaced Joshua, and Stefon Harris took Bobby Hutcherson's place, then Robin Eubanks came in on trombone and we tackled a program of Wayne Shorter pieces. This time, we'll be doing the music of McCoy Tyner. And that, as you can imagine, changes the sound of the group quite a bit. Of these, the earliest is "Aisha" which dates from 1961, the most recent one being "Consensus" from 1977. My favorite McCoy piece is "Peresina" –it's from the 1968 album Expansions, a date with Woody Shaw and Gary Bartz.

P.S.: I know you have a lot of projects going and you have played with lots of people over the years, but what do you get out of this group that you might not have gotten in other places?

D.D.: Maybe a better way to look at it is what can I bring to it, in other words, what can I offer and how can I serve a group. This is the way I tend to look at it. To me this band is unique in the history of jazz. And I guess I can bring myself as a trumpet player to serve the music that these other members are writing and arranging. But as a composer and arranger myself, I also try to bring something vital, that brings out something in everyone. Now that might sound pretty lofty, but that's what music is all about for me: it's finding out who those individual players are and to bring out that voice in them so as to allow them to say something unique and personal.

P.S.: In what way is the group unique in the history of jazz?

D.D.: Everyone composes individual music with no limitations. The group is sponsored by a major jazz institution, SFJazz, a major organization that grew from being merely a presenter of a festival to being the creator of an entire vision of what this music can be. I'm proud to be a part of that.

P.S.: In an interview for the International Trumpet Guild a few years ago, you spoke to some extent about jazz education, and how much of it is focused on music of the 1940s and 1950s bop era. Are you and this group interested in addressing this issue by reconsidering some overlooked music of that period and thereafter?

D.D.: That's a huge question, and I don't want to speak for the group here. I'm sure that if you sat us all down at a table and asked us this question you would probably get widely disparate opinions. As for myself, I would say that one of the things with this band that makes it such a great playing experience, is that everyone comes to the job totally into the music. I never have the feeling–and this is the way I approach music personally–that none of us are presenting something as an argument for or against a given period of music or a certain player. The music we're making happens now, at this moment in time, and I don't think we should differentiate between music from the distant past and from today. Ultimately, when it comes to making music, all you can do is to try to involve yourself in the moment and to live through all the things we've lived in our lives.When I step away from my horn or write an essay, and you know I like to share thoughts I have about music on my blog, I may say some things in the context of thinking about where we are and what's going on that are more an analysis of the situation than really going into the act of creating music. I think they're really two separate things. I'm involved in jazz education most vigorously when I'm at the Banff school of music directing the Jazz and Creative music program, and it's really an interesting inner-conversation for me to be involved in "how do we think about music? How do we talk about it? And how do we communicate our thoughts and our practices?", even if we step out of such explanations into the real world of making music, which is beyond words, beyond philosophy, concept and argument. Trying to keep those two things separate in a way is important for me.

P.S.: Of late, you've been doing concerts in Germany with ensembles larger than those you normally participate in. In fact, you have stated that you were never really keen on big bands. Have you changed your attitude about these? What attracts you then to the projects you've been doing over there?

D.D.: That's a good question. True, I never really did much big band work. I once was in the stage band in my high school and just hated it. But that's not a reflection on the director, who was a wonderful person, a fine musician who taught me a lot of other things, but I just always wanted to play improvised music in small groups, which is how I've emerged as a composer, and that's what I do best... writing pieces that involve both improvisation and composition with the context of a small ensemble. The wonderful director of the Salzau Festival in Northern Germany [a.k.a. Jazz Baltica], Rainer Haarman, asked me if I would be interested in writing a suite for big band. I thought about it for a while and said it was time to do that. "Letter from America" is what the resulting piece is called. It's basically my quintet augmented by the big band of the North German radio (NDR). It was a lot of fun, but quite a challenge. For me, it was how do you take that format and make it sound both original and fresh? That's really tough to do because there have been so many great composers in that idiom, and I'm sure it's the same for a classical composer writing a string quartet: You're looking at these enormous towers of creativity and trying to live up to that. In spite of that, I still had a great time working on it. But there is yet another project which came along recently: Pianist Jim McNeely was hired to write big band arrangements for the Hessischer Rundkfunk [HR radio big band, based in Frankfurt] and he chose a dozen or so of my small group compositions. I'm going over there in early February to do that with him. Actually, I've been talking to Jim on and off for about eight months or so, discussing repertoire, so we'll be premiering that this month. To me it's just a coincidence that these two initiatives happened in Germany, but I'd surely want to bring this project to North America next year. But then again, since there are several such bands sponsored by their national-radios, it enables such projects to happen.

P.S.: Is the piece Jim McNeely arranging called "Blue Latitudes"?

D.D.: No, "Blue Latitudes" is an entirely different beast. It's for a chamber orchestra. This new project, I think, is called "The Big band meets Dave Douglas" or something like that. They are all compositions of mine written over the years, but arranged for big band.

P.S.: The piece for chamber Orchestra is also a big project, I would think. Is this something new for you?

D.D.: I think that's more of a thing where I was able to imagine the ensemble, choose the players and instruments. "Blue Latitudes" is much more coming out of the contemporary classical language.

P.S.: Is that something you're touring, or was that a one-time event?

D.D.: I think it's been performed about half-a-dozen times. There's another performance coming up in 2010; it's something I love to do and hope to be playing more, even to continue to write for. But it's not a big band work at all.

P.S.: As you say, it's a chamber orchestra. It must be quite a challenge to balance improvisation and writing for a large group. There are successful large improvising groups, the ICP, for one, proves that it can work, but what are the challenges of writing for a large improvising group?

D.D.: I try to find areas where the players in the ensemble have a lot of choice, but I think it is a very delicate balance. Even in the SFJC, we deal with issues of how to create this feeling of freedom and spontaneity and still have a sense of organization and structure. To me, that's really the forefront of composition, one of the most interesting parts and one of the reasons Wayne Shorter is still my biggest hero. It is also what I find most exciting about Gil Evans and Charles Mingus and even Thad Jones, and classical composers like Lutoslawski. Even in John Adams's music, which is almost completely notated, there are some areas of freedom and spontaneity that I think are really kind of interesting and revolutionary.

P.S.: You've played with a lot of different people, including singers like Sheryl Crowe and Patricia Barber. Is there anyone you haven't played with yet, but with whom you'd want to?

D.D.: Well, Céline Dion, of course. Can you make that happen?

P.S.: Well, I guess while you're up here, you can look into it.

D.D.: I know. I'm trying to be geographically topical. In all seriousness, though, there are way too many people to name. I think this is the richest period in creative music in the history of mankind; there are so many things that I would want to do, but I just find it takes time to make projects happen. When I'm not on the road performing, I'm composing, which takes up all my time. So I can't just drift from one collaboration to another without giving myself the needed time to conceive these.

P.S.: But you are comfortable in a lot of different settings, which is kind of unusual. Most musicians stick to one kind of music, but you're able to diversify and bring something to the music that's in keeping with your own vision, something quite special. In terms of tributes, you've also done quite a few of them. Is there anyone you're considering at this time beyond McCoy Tyner?

D.D.: Well, I have this new record that I've just made that's going to come out in the spring. It's a band that I've been playing with off and on since about 2005. It's called Brass Ecstasy. As you might know, the inspiration came from Lester Bowie's Brass Fantasy. Like his band, it too is a quintet with trumpet, French horn, trombone, tuba and drums. We do mostly new compositions, with a couple of covers. But I wouldn't call it a tribute to Lester; instead, I've been thinking a lot about trumpet players, something that never really was my main concern in music. When I started the band, I rather came to it as a composer who happened to play trumpet. A few years ago, I started focusing in on Don Cherry, Woody Shaw—who was always one of my favorites—and Lester Bowie. This record is more of a way of channeling a few of my own trumpet heroes.

P.S.: Speaking of trumpet players, Freddie Hubbard passed away just before the New Year. I noticed the nice tribute to him you posted on your blog. In it, you say that every trumpet player has learned something from Freddie. Would you care to comment on any specific personal influence Freddie had on you?

D.D.: I think that hearing Freddie Hubbard was what showed me the way to play over changes. He did it so effortlessly and everybody comes out of him in my mind, because he did it in a sort of textbook way. And then you hear your other favorite trumpet players, like Woody Shaw, who was much more idiosyncratic and perhaps even maybe more advanced harmonically, but much more difficult to grasp. As for Miles Davis, he was much more enigmatic, with fewer notes and guiding by elision. Apart from that, you might look at—and I'm just thinking of modern trumpeters here—Lester Bowie's way of getting through things. Baikida Carroll is also someone very important to me. But Freddie Hubbard is the chapter and verse way of navigating modern changes, and he's the one who showed me the light on how to do it. With John Coltrane as a figure in the music, it wasn't always easy to figure how to integrate his language, so I think one of the debts we owe to Freddie Hubbard is that he was the one trumpeter who was able to appropriate that language and show how it worked on a brass instrument.

The Jazz Icon Series: The Inside Track

noreply@blogger.com (Félix-Antoine Hamel) — Sun, 30 Nov 2008 17:01:00 +0000

The partners of Reelin' In The Years (from left to right): David Peck, Quincy Jones (series spokesman), Phillip Galloway and Tom Gulotta.

A conversation with producer Tom Gulotta

by Marc Chénard

In October of this year, no less than eight new DVDs were released on the much-heralded JAZZ ICONS series, this latest edition bolstering its current catalogue to 23 titles. Since its inception in 2006, the series has been very well received in the marketplace, benefiting from good media coverage, effective advertising campaigns and a solid distribution network worldwide. The current crop of releases, like those preceding it, are all on-camera performances of jazz greats captured for posterity by different European television stations. For the most part in black and white, these valuable visual documents span a period of close to two decades, the earliest dating back to 1958, the most recent ones shot in the mid-seventies.

This year's batch features, among others, masters like Sonny Rollins (one of the few 'Icons' still with us today), Bill Evans, Cannonball Adderley and the recently departed Canadian piano legend Oscar Peterson. For the second straight year, aficionados also have the option of purchasing all discs in a handsome box set that includes an exclusive bonus DVD with extra tracks not found on the remaining titles of this edition.

In its short history, there is little doubt that this audio-visual anthology has set a very high standard (and certainly a welcome one at that), for the presentation of musical performances. Just by the packaging, it's clear that those responsible for this undertaking have a love for the music, but that together with a savvy business acumen have enabled them to make their product fly. Based in San Diego, California, Reelin' in the Years, is a company of fairly recent vintage whose original purpose was not to produce films on its own, but based on its current successes, it has definitely found another raison d'être. In a recent phone conversation, Tom Gulotta, one of the company's main partners, offers some insight into the company's most ambitious artistic and business venture to date, first by giving some background on the business itself and its involvement in the series, then assessing the current state of affairs and, finally, by throwing out a couple of teasers concerning some of its upcoming releases.

Beginnings

"The way we started the Jazz Icons Series is that TDK first approached us about making a series of jazz DVDs, but we were a little skeptical at first, because they wanted us to produce these. More importantly, we would only commit to such a project if they were done the right way. You see, we've looked at a lot of jazz DVDs on the market, and we were not really interested in putting our name on a sub-standard product. Basically, the quality of what's out there leaves something to be desired, so we thought. To do things right means having everything done above board, like getting the clearances from all parties involved, the artists, or their estates (including the sidemen), the music publishers and what not. But we also wanted to put together quality packages with good artwork and informative booklets, too. All this would cost money, of course, and we told TDK that it would be an expensive proposition, but they agreed to our terms, and very much to our surprise I should add."

The company

"Reelin' in the Years Productions started in the mid-nineties. David Peck, my partner, actually founded it, and gradually built up his team in the ensuing years. I came aboard around five years ago. Our main business is acting as a representative for television stations around the world, and we serve as mediators between them and any interested parties requiring film footage for their productions, like documentaries. We are but one company in this field, though we are now one of the most prominent ones in this area. Our main business is what we call clip sales, which means negotiating fees for use of film clips of artists in documentaries. Then we got into the business of actually producing our own DVDs about five years ago, and we now have about 40 titles in our catalogue, above and beyond the Jazz Icon series. Just in passing, we are pretty confident that there will be another set of Jazz Icon releases in 2009 in spite of the tough economic situation we are facing these days."

The response

"When the first series came out two years ago, we were really thrilled by the response. But we insisted from the very beginning that both TDK and its American distributor, Naxos, take care of the advertising. We were adamant about having this product exposed to the right people, because we knew there was an untapped market out there; in fact, no one was really buying into it up until that time, because jazz DVD sales were very soft, even ugly, something in the order of a couple of thousand of copies and not much more. But we knew there was a potential market out there, and that there were more people who'd be really interested in this, if only it were done correctly, which meant better production values and proper media exposure through reviews and advertising. Both of those companies did their work, and they too were pleasantly surprised at the sales that came out of it. In fact, TDK made its money back in the very first year at that, and believe me, they laid out quite a lot."

Legal issues

"It's quite an involved process to produce one of these titles, because you have to negotiate with several parties: the artists, or their estates in many cases, the television stations, the music publishers, and as mentioned before, we even give due financial consideration to the sidemen, not just the leaders. As you can see, there are a lot of people who are getting paid here. In fact, when you look at this on paper, it doesn't really look very attractive for a company to invest this kind of money, and that is why it hasn't been done before, simply because people were too afraid to loose money in doing it this way. But we said to TDK to just trust us in creating a superior product that would get people not only excited about it, but having them want more of it. And happily, we were correct."

Sales

"On the average, I can say we have moved from about fifteen to twenty-five thousand copies from the first two editions, depending on the title. The John Coltrane, for instance, has certainly sold more than, say, the Louis Armstrong. As for the box sets, their numbers kind of level everything back a bit, but these are pretty popular as well."

What's Next

"Well, we can talk about this a bit, but we have not approached any of the artists, so I cannot go into any specific names for the time being. At this time, we are now looking into some footage from England from a mid-sixties TV series called 'Jazz from Studio 65'. For us, this is really the first time that we are engaged in a serious project with this broadcaster who, how should I say, has finally come around. Up until now, we have had good cooperation with other European TV stations, Belgium and Holland in particular, but then there are others that have great audio-visual archives who are just horrible to deal with, most notably France. It's ridiculous. They have theses beautiful films that will literally rot away on the shelves before anybody sees them, because they want so much money for them. Here in America, there is some stuff, but most of it has already been made available, like the Jazz Casual series from the early sixties. The problem in our country was that there were so few complete jazz performance shows on American television back then, and some of these are now lost, as they were either erased or just thrown away. Jazz artists rarely did full TV programs, but played maybe one or two songs on a variety show. When you look at our series, we go for complete, or extended jazz performances. And that's why the Europeans have to be admired, because they treasure jazz a lot more than the Americans do."

YouTube Sightings

"True, we have found a lot of footage by searching YouTube, but it is a two-edged sword for us. On the one hand, it is a great research tool to find out what is out there, but it's competition as well. I have a feeling a lot of people would say that 'I can just see that on YouTube' for free. In fact, this has lead us on occasion to ask some people to please take down something they have posted on it, like a whole song or a complete performance, it's just a matter of fairness. If it happens to coincide with footage that we represent and want to use in an upcoming title, then we ask them to take it down. Mind you, it doesn't bother us if there is only a clip posted, as long as there is reference to our commercially issued product."

An embarrassment of riches

"It goes without saying that we have plenty of things in our possession we'd like to put out. For instance, a lot of people ask us why we haven't issued a Miles Davis title yet. Well, it has to do with Sony, since they claim the rights to his music of the sixties. Happily, I can say that we do have at least two great Miles Davis television concerts (one from Stockholm in 1967) and we are planning the release of a DVD that should appear in the coming year. We will be the main producer of this title, so as to maintain the quality and values of our series, but at this time it appears more likely that Sony will issue it rather than ourselves."

Series focus

"For the time being, we want to exhaust the fifties and sixties first, then move on to more recent footage a little further down the road. We will be introducing newer artists very gradually, maybe a Herbie Hancock or a Chick Corea, then have them become more of an integral part of the series. That said, we still want to get as much of the old stuff out there before too much time goes by, or nobody remembers them anymore!" (Laughs)

Final thoughts

"The good response we have had is no fluke; it is the result of all parties doing their work properly in order to get the product out in the marketplace and to make it known through reviews and advertisements. All of our efforts have paid off, too, because people have responded to it and have become loyal to the brand. For those who have already purchased titles from the first two editions, they know by now they can go for more in our newest set. If they see our Sonny Rollins on the shelf, just to take one example, they know it will be great, so they'll pick it up without having to think twice about it."

Interview based on a transcript of a phone conversation recorded on November 11th, 2008.

For information on the company and its current catalogue:

http://www.reelinintheyears.com

La version française de cet article est disponible en ligne au site général du magazine:

http://www.scena.org

Teaching improvisation: Reality or myth?

noreply@blogger.com (Félix-Antoine Hamel) — Tue, 28 Oct 2008 18:40:00 +0000

November 1, 2008

(Version française incluse, voir plus bas)

Marc Chénard

There once was a time when conservatories viewed the practice of improvisation with something of a jaundiced eye; more often than not, students were discouraged to pursue this venue of expression, and banishing it from teaching curriculum was the surest way of ensuring that. But times they have changed. For better or for worse, it is now part and parcel of educational programs in high schools and universities alike. Though widely accepted nowadays, improvisation is still something of a hot potato as an educational topic. Given its transient and unpredictable nature, improvisation is subjected to the vagaries of the moment, resulting sometimes in missteps or accidents that are not always in accordance to the rights and wrongs of theoretical precepts.

Jazz, for its part, can be singled out as one of the most important developments in recent Western musical history, for it has legitimized anew the practice of improvisation. In its short history, it has succeeded in building a language all of its own, and a very complex one that has been readily codified by the educational system for its own purposes. But jazz, in the most generally understood sense of the term, is only one of many ways to improvise. Consider the myriad of world musics whose materials and practices are so much at variance with each other (including jazz), but where improvisation remains its most vital means of expression. Even here in the Western World, improvisation has opened up so many more venues, made possible by the arrival of free jazz, but expanding into areas remotely related to it, e.g. minimalism, noise music, electroacoustics and multi-media performances. Because of this expanse, the question arises if it is at all possible to teach improvisation, a question by no means new, but somehow more relevant than ever nowadays. To wit, there are more than a handful of jazzmen (both past and present) who have readily expressed their skepticism with regards to any kind of "teaching" of improvisation. One of these, the late alto saxophonist Paul Desmond, stated the following:

"Improvisation can be learned but not taught."

But is this point of view still valid nowadays? Given its acceptance in today's music education, this may well not be the case anymore. To shed some light on this issue, four points of view were sollicited, first by a pair of seasoned music educators, then by two performers of international standing.

Teacher responses

Andrew Homzy

(Professor of Jazz Studies, Concordia University, Montreal, Québec, Canada.)

Immediately, I question Desmond's credentials as an educator. His comment is anecdotal opinion - unless he has taken many courses in education, done the research and taught extensively. Improvisation can be taught - just as driving a car or licking postage stamps can be taught. Of course, the student has to want to learn.

However, not all students are equal. Some learn faster than others, some have more support in their social environment, and some are more talented. Also, some people take-up the wrong instrument—and dealing with an instrument which is in the wrong register for their way of hearing or to which they are nor physically adept can also

play into the chance of success.

Besides the physical mastery of the instrument, there is also the mastery of tone, rhythm and intonation. These are all factors which a good teacher will address. And there are very few good teachers.

This is not the place to expose a method or system of teaching improvisation. Rather it is more important to present the overall aspects which are fundamental.

I believe one of the most important aspects in teaching improvisation is to create a situation where the student feels safe. Where errors are considered as part of the learning process. This leads to confidence and trust - the most important aspect in a student-teacher relationship. As well, the teacher must be able to demonstrate what the student is expected to do. It can happen that the student can eventually out-strip the teacher. In this case, the teacher must ask the student to find another teacher - or if the teacher has a strong educational/intellectual background, such a teacher can still be effective in presenting concepts and ideas without actually being able to demonstrate them.

In closing, I would also say that a good teacher will find or create opportunities for the student to develop in a practical way. This might be as simple as encouraging the student to play with other students - running a jam session - recommending attendance at events in the community - introducing the student to established professionals.

I believe Paul Desmond was taught improvisation - just not in a formalized manner - and that he was an exceptional learner at that.

Reno De Stefano (Ph.D.)

(Jazz guitarist, Professor of Jazz Studies, Faculty of Music, Université de Montréal.)

In the jazz historical and pedagogical discourse as well as in various jazz publications we often encounter words and idiomatic expressions such as "The Jazz Language", "Jazz Vocabulary", "Elements of the Jazz Language", etc. For quite some time now many great performers, educators and authors have made comparisons and have found distinct similarities between the processes involved in learning to improvise jazz and learning to speak a particular language. I believe that through an understanding of these two very similar processes we can better respond to Paul Desmond's statement.

A child learns to speak English (or any other language) by listening to the sounds around him. He learns basic words from his mom, dad and siblings. However, in the first few years he has trouble constructing full sentences or expressing himself coherently. Through continued interaction with his family, siblings and friends he instinctively learns to listen, to pronounce new words, to correct himself, and acquires additional vocabulary which he uses to further express himself. Learning to make sentences is very difficult at first but the child slowly develops some basic language skills and some form of correct accent which he uses to express simple ideas. It is clear that from the very beginning the child learns sounds. He is guided and influenced by those around him strictly through an "aural process". However, is he really "taught" to speak the language, or does he pick up the skills aurally from his environment?

Similarly, jazz improvisation and its vocabulary has essentially developed and been passed on through this type of "aural tradition". Throughout history, jazz musicians have transcribed and memorized improvised solos of their predecessors and have continuously listened to recordings in order to learn jazz improvisation and jazz vocabulary. This was the most effective way to internalize the sounds of jazz and its distinctive rhythmic feel. They also interacted with others through jam sessions, gigs, concerts, recordings, etc. All this enabled the jazz musician to develop the vocabulary and the articulation needed (swing) in jazz improvisation. It is interesting to notice that in both the language and jazz improvisation processes, the accent and articulation (i.e. swing in jazz), can only be learned through intensive listening, that is, aural tradition.

We might say that a child learns to speak by himself through interaction with others and through daily practice of the newly acquired vocabulary. At first the learning is strictly hands-on and the child directly and instinctively participates in the learning process, not through classroom learning, but through living the daily struggle to express himself coherently.

The jazz improvisation student goes through the same type of early development and struggle. He hears all this music and jazz vocabulary around him, on recordings, in jam sessions, in concerts etc. and tries to make sense of it through his daily practicing and performing. However, it takes quite some time before his musical ideas are expressed clearly, coherently and with ease.

At some point the child goes to school and is taught new words, proper pronunciation, spelling, additional vocabulary, and the basic rules of grammar and syntax which will finally bring him to "understand the internal mechanisms of the language". We understand that this classroom approach is essential and it will teach him how to write properly, to speak better and more freely. It will teach him to understand how the language is put together and what is good and proper writing style. In conclusion, we might say that we can teach someone English but we do not necessarily teach him how to "speak" English. He must experience the language aurally or orally in everyday life through interaction in order to learn how to speak properly.

It is essentially the same process that is involved with jazz improvisation and the classroom approach. Students that improvise learn to further control the grammar and syntax of the jazz language through the guidance of a teacher. In a classroom they learn through analysis, how to use better voice-leading when improvising from one chord to the next, and are introduced to jazz sounds with which they were not entirely familiar. They might also learn to tackle more complex contemporary harmonies and chord progressions. Similarly, we can say that we can teach someone the "internal mechanisms of jazz improvisation and its vocabulary" but we do not necessarily teach one how to improvise jazz. He must experience learning through an individual and progressive "aural process" in order to experience the complete growth.

Performer responses

Steve Kuhn

(Pianist, active on the jazz scene since the late 1950s.)

Basically, I agree with that statement. You see, I came up in a time when there were no jazz schools around. I first learned how to play piano with a classical teacher in Boston, Margaret Chaloff (the mother of the noted jazz baritone saxophonist, Serge Chaloff). But I was also exposed to one of the earliest jazz teaching environments, the now legendary Lennox School of Music in the late 50s (where Ornette Coleman made his first big impression before his Five Spot engagement in New York). The teachers were all active performers participating in a summer music camp, so it was geared on sharing their experiences with the students rather than a set curriculum like they have in schools today. There is something in the wealth of experience you gain by working steadily that you just cannot get in a classroom. I was fortunate to come along in that period where you played constantly, there were so many outlets for the music and great players who were the teachers (Miles and Coltrane were really the two great leaders of that period). I was lucky enough to be Trane's very first pianist in his quartet, even though it lasted only two months, he was waiting for McCoy Tyner who was busy with Benny Golson's Jazztet at the time.) And as we know, the rest is history. All that to say then, that to really feel this music you've got to live it and it's the feeling that really counts, something which you can only learn by yourself.

Marilyn Crispell

(Pianist, best known for her work in the area of free improvised music.)

Well, I think that if it can be learned, it can also be tought somehow. I don't really see the difference here. Mind you, I've never held a teaching position, and never really wanted one either, but I like to give improvisation workshops anyway. For me, the most important is to make people more aware and responsive to what is going on, and there are ways of doing that, too. Pauline Oliveros gives a whole course on that, spread over four years or something like that. And I'm talking here about a context of free improvisation, not really one of, say, showing how to play chord changes and the like. Improvisation is more a question of playing attitudes, like, accompanying someone else, imitating what another person is doing, if not going in a completely other direction that what might be happening in a group. I like to have students play in duos, so they can really focus their attention on each other, and then we, meaning both I, the players and the rest of the participants can sort of analyze what went on in. It's not really a question of right or wrong here, it's more a question of making them better listeners, which to me is the key of all good improvising.

Want to comment or share your point of view?

Send responses to this blog

jazzblogsubmit@scena.org

(Note: Do not send attachments, but write directly in body of message and send.)

Résumés français

Introduction

Table ronde

Enseigner l'improvisation : fait accompli ou chimère ?

Reléguée pendant longtemps aux oubliettes de l'enseignement, l'improvisation musicale demeure la pratique la plus difficile à cerner d'un point de vue pédagogique.

Éphémère de nature, elle fait souvent la sourde oreille aux règles bien arrêtées du savoir théorique. Le jazz, comme on le sait, a replacé cette pratique sur l'échiquier musical de l'Occident, mais cette tradition s'est codifiée de manière à donner un droit de cité à l'improvisation dans les milieux scolaires. Il n'en demeure pas moins que le jazz, dans son acception habituelle, ne constitue qu'une approche possible à l'improvisation. D'une part, bien des musiques ethniques la conçoivent selon des critères différents, que ce soit en Inde, en Chine ou en Afrique; d'autre part, la musique occidentale abrite aussi un vaste éventail de pratiques purement improvisées, historiquement tributaires du free jazz, mais s'étendant dans d'autres domaines plus ou moins éloignés (minimalisme, bruitisme, électroacoustique, multimédia). Compte tenu de cette diversité, on peut se demander si l'improvisation peut véritablement s'enseigner, question certes pas nouvelle, mais plus pertinente que jamais. Bien longtemps avant que cette pratique musicale se répande dans tous les sens, certains jazzmen entretenaient le doute envers tout enseignement de type « scolaire ». Parmi eux, le réputé saxophoniste alto Paul Desmond, du célébrissime premier quartette de Dave Brubeck, déclara un jour : « L'improvisation s'apprend, mais ne s'enseigne pas. »

De nos jours, tout semble porter à croire le contraire. Rares sont les universités, conservatoires ou collèges qui ne sont pas dotés de cours, voire de cursus complets de jazz. Nous avons recueilli quatre sons de cloches sur cette question de l'enseignement de l'improvisation, les deux premiers de musiciens éducateurs de chez nous, les deux autres d'artistes de scène de réputation internationale.

Andrew Homzy

(Professeur titulaire, département d'études jazz, faculté de musique, Université Concordia.)

Tout de suite, je mets en doute les qualifications d'éducateur de Desmond. Son commentaire est purement anecdotique. On peut aussi bien enseigner l'improvisation que la conduite automobile, pourvu que l'étudiant veuille apprendre. Mais il n'y en pas deux pareils; certains sont plus doués ou apprennent plus vite que d'autres ou bénéficientd'un milieu familial propice. Un professeur doit aider l'étudiant à améliorer sa technique, à maîtriser le son, le rythme, etc. À mon avis, l'un des aspects les plus importants de l'enseignement de l'improvisation est la création d'un cadre dans lequel l'étudiant se sent bien et où l'erreur fait partie du processus. Cela instaure la confiance, élément essentiel de toute relation professeur-élève. De plus, un bon professeur trouve et crée des occasions propices au développement de l'étudiant. Desmond était un surdoué, mais je crois qu'il a reçu un certain enseignement en improvisation, même si ce n'était pas de manière formelle.

Reno de Stefano (PhD)

(Guitariste et professeur au programme d'études jazz, faculté de musique, Université de Montréal.)

Pour mieux répondre à l'observation de Paul Desmond, procédons à une comparaison entre l'acquisition du langage verbal et celui du jazz. Tout enfant apprend une langue d'abord par l'écoute des sons autour de lui pour ensuite les assembler de manière instinctive et graduelle en mots et en phrases. L'improvisation jazzistique découle aussi d'une tradition auditive, acquise par l'écoute et le repiquage de solos sur disque, sans oublier le jeu avec d'autres. L'écoute attentive est donc le seul moyen pour en arriver à la maîtrise des différentes articulations et des accents propres au langage verbal et au jazz.

En entrant à l'école, l'enfant apprend les règles d'une langue afin de pouvoir comprendre ses mécanismes internes. Bien qu'on la lui enseigne, cela ne veut pas nécessairement dire qu'il puisse vraiment la parler, phénomène qui, une fois de plus, repose sur l'écoute. Ainsi en est-il de l'improvisation jazzistique en situation scolaire : l'étudiant apprend ses mécanismes internes, mais cela ne signifie pas pour autant qu'on lui enseigne à improviser; l'écoute se trouve à être le seul garant d'une évolution constante des aptitudes de l'étudiant en matière d'improvisation.

Steve Kuhn

(Pianiste, actif sur la scène du jazz américain depuis la fin des années 1950.)

Je partage cet avis. Dans ma jeunesse, il n'y avait pas de ces programmes d'études de jazz. J'ai étudié le piano classique à Boston avec Margaret Chaloff, mère de Serge, un jazzman avec qui j'ai eu l'occasion de travailler dans mon adolescence. Cela dit, j'ai participé aux premiers cours de jazz qui se donnaient l'été à la Lennox School of Music, mais ces stages étaient dirigés par des performeurs établis, pas des universitaires. Le milieu éducatif actuel ne peut pas fournir toute la richesse d'expériences acquises en travaillant régulièrement sur scène. J'avais de la chance d'arriver à une époque où le travail ne manquait pas et où l'on apprenait en voyant les grands maîtres à l'œuvre. Le fait d'avoir été le premier pianiste du quartette de John Coltrane pendant deux mois en 1960, avant l'arrivée de McCoy Tyner, a été tout un enseignement pour moi. En un mot : on ne peut vraiment apprendre cette musique qu'en la sentant; personne ne peut t'enseigner cela.

Marilyn Crispell

(Pianiste associée à la mouvance du free jazz et des musiques improvisées.)

Je ne vois pas de différence entre les deux: si ça s'apprend, ça peut bien s'enseigner aussi.

Même si je n'ai jamais eu le désir de détenir un poste d'enseignante, j'aime quand même donner des ateliers d'improvisation. Ce qui compte pour moi, c'est de sensibiliser les gens à ce qui se passe autour d'eux et de rehausser leur capacité d'interaction. Entendons que je travaille dans un contexte de libre improvisation, alors ce n'est pas une question de montrer quels accords joués et comment. L'improvisation est davantage une question d'attitudes à prendre dans une situation de jeu, que ce soit d'accompagner un autre, de l'imiter ou d'aller à l'encontre même de l'activité musicale du moment. Un des exercices que je donne, c'est de faire jouer les musiciens en duos pour mieux fixer leur attention et de procéder à une espèce d'analyse ou de critique, si l'on veut, par le reste des participants. Je cherche tout simplement à aiguiser leur capacité d'écoute, ce qui demeure pour moi la clé du succès en improvisation.

Réactions ou commentaires?

Faites nous les parvenir à ce blog.

jazzblogsubmit@scena.org

(N.B. Pas de document en attache, écrivez directement dans le corps du message)

FIJM 2008 : Après le déluge

noreply@blogger.com (Félix-Antoine Hamel) — Thu, 07 Aug 2008 22:26:00 +0000

7 août

par Marc Chénard

Si l'Off Festival de jazz de Montréal passe pour la vitrine du jazz de chez nous et que le Suoni per il Popolo est devenu le rendez-vous des amateurs avertis en musiques créatives, le Festival International de Jazz de Montréal (FIJM) s'est donné depuis bien longtemps des allures de fête foraine, bien au-delà du genre musical qui figure dans son libellé. De toute manière, lorsqu'un événement placarde autant Public Enemy dans son programme qu'un clarinettiste Dixieland qui, de son propre aveu, se dit un amateur peu doué (vous voyez qui on veut dire...), cela en dit long sur les desseins de cette entreprise taillée, bien évidemment, aux goûts d'un public de touristes musicaux. Inutile de passer en revue dans ces lignes la litanie de critiques et de griefs formulés à son égard, c'est du réchauffé maintenant. Quoi qu'on dise sur ses visées (bien plus commerciales qu'artistiques, il va sans dire), il n'en demeure pas moins que l'amateur un tant soit peu connaisseur en la matière pourra tirer son parti de ce grand déluge musical annuel. Certes, on ne supplée jamais la qualité à la quantité, mais la probabilité augmente tout de même, si modeste soit-elle, en fonction du nombre. Comme par les années passées, quelques heureuses trouvailles se sont glissées dans son dernier lot de spectacles, trouvailles qui, doit-on le dire, sont souvent attribuables à des subsides de gouvernements étrangers permettant aux groupes de tourner dans notre pays.

Tel est le cas surtout de la série Jazz contemporain. Tenue cette année dans la plus petite des deux salles du Monument national, intimiste à souhait et tout à fait satisfaisante d'un point de vue acoustique, cette série donna l'occasion d'entendre cinq formations européennes, deux québécoises et un duo japonais.

26 juin. Ouverture avec le quintette de la pianiste et harpiste finlandaise Iro Haarla. Pour l'essentiel, elle présenta la musique de son disque ECM Northbound, paru en 2005, chroniqué d'ailleurs ici en mai dernier. En concert, la musique différait peu : les instrumentistes (pas les mêmes que sur le disque) jouant avec cette retenue si typique des musiques nordiques des compositions modales empreintes de lyrisme. Félicitons cependant la pianiste pour ses grands efforts déployés à donner ses présentations en français, d'autant plus qu'elle semblait bien mal à l'aise à assumer cette tâche en partant. À l'entr'acte, je me suis permis de prendre la poudre d'escampette (chose que je n'aime pas faire d'habitude), question de ne pas louper le second set du trio d'Evan Parker à la Sala Rossa (voir chronique plus bas). Du out of the cool de l'un, on se dirigea tout droit au into the hot de l'autre, et je ne vous fais pas dire que le mercure a fait tout un saut ce soir-là.

27 juin. Le duo hollandais de Ab Baars (saxo ténor, clarinette et shakuhachi) et sa conjointe Ig Henneman (violon alto) offrit un concert intimiste, moins planant ou lyrique que Haarla et cie, mais plus abstrait dans sa portée générale. Baars, que certains connaissent comme étant l'un des saxos les plus originaux, peut-être même décontenaçant à la première écoute, peut, dans un même solo, se faire doux comme sa partenaire, qui lui offre un contrepoint finement nuancé, puis rageur à la manière d'un Albert Ayler. Ensemble, ce couple a interprété de ses compositions, certaines reposant sur des thèmes aux contours mélodiques précis et jouées en reprise, d'autres servant davantage comme points de départ à des échanges purement improvisés. Bien que ce duo ait présenté son disque en concert (voir chronique, que l'on trouvera aussi en ligne dans le numéro de mai), on retiendra de cette musique d'improvisation de chambre une espèce d'austérité qui n'a pas su autant interpeller l'auditeur dans ce contexte que sur l'enregistrement.

28 juin. De l'intimisme des deux premiers soirs, on passait dans un tout autre registre avec le truculent trio suisse Steamboat Switzerland. Orgue Hammond, basse électrique et batterie, voilà une instrumentation calquée sur le fameux triumvirat Medeski, Martin and Wood; pourtant, la démarche de ces helvètes se situe à des lieux de son vis-à-vis américain. Comme le bref descriptif dans le programme l'indique (et avec justesse, pour une fois), il s'agit d'un alliage d'une énergie de rock métal à des compositions sophistiquées de musique contemporaine (preuves à l'appui, les liasses de pages noircies de notes étalées sur leurs lutrins). Décoiffante pour dire le moindre, cette musique ne s'apprivoise que si l'on laisse toutes ses notions sur le jazz à la porte. Il faut tout même admirer le savoir-faire des musiciens (Lucas Niggli, batterie, Marino Pliakas, basse et Dominik Blum, orgue) à maintenir un tel train d'enfer qui, en dépit de son volume sonore, n'était pas délétère pour l'oreille (attribuable au très bon boulot du preneur de son, qui a accompli impeccablement sa tâche dans tous les spectacles entendus dans cette série).

29 juin. Retour à des terrains sonores plus familiers, ou moins décapants, avec le couple nippon de Satoko Fujii (piano) et de Natsuki Tamura (trompette). L'une des artistes les plus prolifiques de notre temps, la pianiste compte près de 50 (!) disques en moins de 15 ans de carrière, tout un exploit. Compte tenu du fait que la première montréalaise de ce duo s'est déroulée à guichet fermé, tout comme le spectacle du lendemain — soit près de 140 sièges occupés à chaque soir — cela offre un signe encourageant que ces musiques souvent qualifiées de marginales attirent plus qu'une poignée d'amateurs. Qui plus est, le duo a été très bien reçu et nul n'avait à redire sur sa belle prestance en scène; entre eux, ils trouvèrent un savant équilibre entre lyrisme et audaces, la pianiste offrant un soutien exemplaire au trompettiste qui y alla d'un solo particulièrement enlevé avant la pause.

30 juin. Également en tournée pancanadienne, le Corkestra de Hollande (présenté lui aussi dans le numéro de mai du magazine) termina son périple de cinq villes à Montréal. Neuf musiciens sous la férule du pianiste et compositeur Cor (d'où le nom du groupe) Fuhler s'attaquèrent à un répertoire de pièces aussi singulières que son instrumentation (deux batteries, une joueuse de cymbalon, une flûtiste, un clarinettiste, un saxo ténor — l'excellent Tobias Delius — une guitare, contrebasse et piano). Un an après son début nord-américain au FIMAV à Victoriaville, cet ensemble récidiva avec une prestation que certains qualifieront d'échevelée, même d'iconoclaste. Parfois purement abstrait, parfois propulsé par un genre de swing clopinant, ce groupe, qui ne sonne comme aucun autre, ne manque pas de cet humour hollandais, parfois désarçonnant pour l'auditeur, celui-ci compris. Si jazz il y a au-delà des règles même de cet art, M. Fuhler a certainement quelque chose à proposer, ne serait-ce qu'au prix de certains coups dans l'eau.

Mais gardons-nous de croire que ce sont les seuls musiciens d'avant-garde qui manquent leur coup. Bien au contraire, car on en trouve des légions d'autres qui ne font que reproduire des formules convenues, faute de moyens ou de vision personnelle. Plus désolant encore est le fait d'entendre des musiciens doués, voire extraordinairement habiles techniquement, qui ne réalisent pas leur potentiel artistique. Exemplaire à cet effet, si exemple il y a, le saxophoniste James Carter est la preuve vivante de cette confusion qui sévit entre virtuosité instrumentale et virtuosité artistique.

6 juillet. En soirée de clôture du festival, M. James C. a marqué — non sans tambours et trompette — un retour attendu en ville après six ans d'absence. Armé de deux saxos (ténor et soprano), d'une clarinette basse et d'une flûte (qu'il n'employa pas), entouré de quatre inconnus qui lui servirent de toile de fond, Carter s'est livré à une démonstration grandiloquente de ses aptitudes instrumentales qui, on en conviendra, sont rien de moins que phénoménales. Certes, il serait difficile de trouver un autre musicien sur cette planète capable de l'égaler, mais il n'en demeure pas moins que la confusion qui pointait déjà jadis dans sa musique a atteint ici un véritable paroxysme, bien que plus d'une poignée de spectateurs n'y ait vu que du feu... Ce qui n'est guère surprenant, vu que bénéficiant de l'appui d'un major, le saxophoniste transforme la moindre de ses performances en véritable cirque médiatique. Sa prestation se déroula comme une copie quasi-conforme de son tout récent disque au titre un tant soit peu paradoxal : Present Tense (une chronique de ce disque paraîtra d'ailleurs dans la livraison de septembre de La Scena), le répertoire différant à peine du disque. Dans son ensemble, le concert passa en revue un véritable catalogue de styles de jazz d'époques antérieures : hard bop type des années 1950, hommage à Dolphy (son unique escapade à la clarinette basse, comme vous l'aurez peut-être deviné), un standard (You go to my Head, où il céda sa place a son acolyte trompettiste, plus musical en soi, mais résolument moins performant du point de vue technique), jazz latin, swing plus classique (pièce de Django Reinhardt) etc. Si on souhaite nous vendre cette salade comme du jazz au temps présent, aussi bien en faire son deuil et donner raison aux croque-morts qui l'estiment moribond depuis belle lurette. Quelle perte de talent, hélas !

5 juillet. Le soir précédent, dans la même salle du Théâtre Jean-Duceppe, l'un des plus vieux routiers du jazz se présenta sur scène d'un pas un tant soit peu hésitant (ce qui se comprend à 87 ans) : l'intarissable et l'inénarrable M. Dave Brubeck. (Notons ici en passant qu'il a partagé les honneurs de la série Invitation avec deux autres jeunots, soit Hank Jones, 90 ans le 31 juillet dernier — Happy Birthday Mr. Jones ! — et McCoy Tyner, 70 ans en décembre prochain. À bien y penser, on aurait pu facilement qualifier cette série comme étant l'aile gériatrique du festival et les organisateurs auraient pu tout de même décrocher une commandite de… Geritol !) Cela dit, je n'ai jamais entrevu la possibilité de voir un jour ce pianiste qui m'a toujours paru terriblement prévisible et lourd dans ses solos. Mais ici, la proposition était différente, soit la résurrection de sa musique écrite pour octette à la fin des années 1940, à l'époque même où il étudiait auprès de Darius Milhaud. (Les intéressés sont priés d'écouter les originaux sur Fantasy ou dans les deux premiers disques du coffret anthologique Time Was, PROPERBOX090.) Pour le concert, il fallait d'abord patienter en écoutant le quartette gruger de vieux saucissons, le déroulement de chaque pièce suivant un même plan de jeu, avec un solo de batterie en sus par-ci, par-là; en revanche, le saxo alto Bobby Militello a fait belle figure dans ses solos, sans compter un impressionnant tour de taille. Quant au pianiste… enfin, on connaît son histoire. Après un temps qui m'a paru terriblement long, cinq de nos musiciens se sont présenté sur scène, en l'occurrence : Janis Steprans, clarinette, André Leroux, ténor, David Bellemare, baryton, Aron Doyle, trompette et Jean-Nicholas Trottier, trombone. Pour ceux qui tiennent le compte, cela fait neuf musiciens, sans compter un directeur. Cela s'explique par le fait qu'on ait cru bon de diviser en deux la partie du clarinettiste d'origine, Bill Smith, qui, lui, tenait aussi celle du baryton. Puisque ces musiciens n'avaient eu leurs partitions en main que deux semaines avant le concert et qu'une seule répétition a eu lieu la veille — si l'on exclut une autre, plus brève, tenue durant le test de son l'après-midi même — on ne peut qu'applaudir le travail des nôtres dans une musique qui avait certainement ses exigences d'un point de vue technique, mais dont la virtuosité réelle se situait sur le plan artistique. Point de confusion ici, car l'exécution était pleinement mise au service du concept, plutôt que le contraire. Quant au public, il n'afficha pas le même enthousiasme dans cette partie que dans la première, au cours de laquelle il ne ménageait en rien ses applaudissements, trahissant ainsi son parti pris pour les formules convenues. Pour l'anecdote enfin, les partitions d'origine ont été perdues, retranscrites ces dernières années (pas toujours parfaitement, nous informe-t-on) puis rejouées en concert en 2004, soit plus de 55 après leur création. De nos jours, cette musique ne cache pas ses rides (comme celles du pianiste), mais elle a quand même devancé les plus célèbres séances du Birth of the Cool de Miles Davis de deux ans et tout le chapitre de la Third Stream Music d'une bonne décennie, sans oublier les multiples tentatives de réconciliation subséquentes entre le jazz et la musique classique. Et pour ceux qui se le demandent, ils ont bel et bien terminé le concert avec le plus célèbre morceau en 5/4 de tous les temps (arrangé sommairement pour l'ensemble au complet), pièce, qui, comme on le sait, a contribué davantage à la gloire du pianiste qu'à celle de son acolyte et compositeur du thème, Paul Desmond.

En bref
Depuis l'an dernier, le Bar Upstairs s'est associé au FIJM en programmant sa propre série de spectacles dans son antre de la rue McKay. Ce chroniqueur y a fait le détour en fin de festival pour assister au quartette du clarinettiste (si bémol et basse) Matthieu Bélanger. Pas de surprises pourrait-on dire, car le groupe a repris, à une exception près, son disque Insomnia (voir chronique dans le numéro de février de La Scena Musicale). En revanche, l'énergie du leader vaut le détour et sa maîtrise instrumentale fait de lui un des plus convaincants instrumentistes hantant la scène du jazz à Montréal. Plus effacé, le trio d'accompagnement (Andrée Boudreau, piano, Adrian Vedady, contrebasse, et Claude Lavergne, batterie) a bien tenu la cadence, mais ne pousse pas trop le clarinettiste, qui a tous les atouts nécessaires pour faire lever la musique à lui tout seul. En sus, il a offert une version latinisée du vieux tube de Joe Dassin, L'été des indiens, jolie mélodie en soi sur laquelle Bélanger a réussi à faire jaillir quelques belles étincelles à la clarinette basse.

Un mot enfin sur la programmation extérieure. Nul n'a besoin de parler des cohues entassées autour de la Place-des-Arts, et du capharnaüm qui y règne, le plus souvent dû à des sonos assourdissantes. Bien qu'ayant appris à me tenir le plus loin possible de tout ce cirque, j'y ai quand même osé y mettre les pas à deux reprises, la première étant la prestation du groupe australien Way out West, la seconde étant une représentation d'un groupe d'universitaires d'ici reprenant la musique du compositeur Raymond Scott. Juste avant de me rendre au spectacle de Brubeck, je me suis donc permis d'assister à une vingtaine de minutes d'un sextette australien, dont le disque sera recensé dans le numéro de septembre du magazine. Mal servi encore une fois par une sono qui réduisait le son de basse en un bourdon indistinct et une amplification exagérée de la grosse-caisse, ce groupe semblait à tout le moins chauffer les planches, mais ne pouvant pas vraiment faire une idée de la prestation, je me suis tiré avec le souhait d'avoir quelque chose de mieux à me mettre sous les oreilles avec le disque. L'ensemble étudiant, pour sa part, présenta des reconstitutions historiques de ce curieux compositeur qu'était Raymond Scott. Dans les années 1930, il fabriquait un genre de Novelty Music assez sautillante, sans improvisation aucune, et aux titres saugrenus (Dinner Music for A Pack of Hungry Canniabals, Tobacco Auctioneer, Boyscout in Switzerland…). Historique donc, cette musique n'a pas laissé d'impact sur le jazz, encore moins sur la musique en général, mais s'écoute de nos jours avec un sourire dans le coin de la bouche. Pour une demi-heure, on s'amuse, mais on a rapidement envie de se mettre quelque chose d'un peu plus substantiel entre les oreilles.

_________________________________________________________________

Le pouls du "Popolo"

noreply@blogger.com (Félix-Antoine Hamel) — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 15:13:00 +0000

par Félix-Antoine Hamel

Depuis 2001, les amateurs montréalais de musiques expérimentales et underground (toutes catégories confondues) réservent leur mois de juin pour un événement de taille : le Suoni Per Il Popolo. Ce festival des plus éclatés se tient tout au long du mois à la Casa Del Popolo et à la Sala Rossa, deux salles de spectacles situés respectivement au 4873 et 4848 boulevard Saint-Laurent. Partie intégrante de sa programmation éclectique, son volet jazz et musiques improvisées a toujours eu de quoi satisfaire; côte à côte, on retrouve des noms de marque, voire quelques légendes, ainsi que d'autres musiciens un peu moins connus, ces derniers permettant toujours d'avoir d'agréables surprises, sinon de faire des découvertes. Cette huitième édition n'a pas dérogé à la règle, mettant en vedette le trio d'Evan Parker, le Sun Ra Arkestra et Tim Berne parmi les têtes d'affiche, mais aussi la saxophoniste Matana Roberts et quelques musiciens scandinaves de la nouvelle vague. Ce chroniqueur a choisi d'assister à six concerts, qui se déroulèrent tous à la Sala Rossa.

Mercredi 4 juin. Un duo formé par le tromboniste Roswell Rudd et le contrebassiste Mark Dresser se devait d'être tout sauf minimaliste. Rudd, avec sa sonorité énorme, peut évoquer toute une section de cuivres, et Dresser, virtuose exceptionnel de son instrument, semble parfois avoir des doigts supplémentaires ! Le bassiste sollicita du reste un jeu de timbres et d'harmoniques surprenants au moyen de quelques pédales et autres effets électroniques bien dosés et parfaitement intégrés à son jeu. Fidèle à lui-même, quelquefois vaguement cabotin, Rudd nous rappela qu'il fut celui qui a su remettre au goût du jour certains éléments du jeu tailgate néo-orléanais dans le jazz moderne. Plus efficace sans sourdine, sa sonorité était plus vibrante que jamais. Le contrebassiste, pour sa part, était souvent appelé à fournir une ligne de basse conventionnelle, mais la façon dont il est arrivé à transcender cette tâche ne peut que susciter l'admiration. Le répertoire était surtout constitué de compositions de chacun des musiciens (dont le très africain et mémorable Ekoneni de Dresser), mais Rudd ne pouvait s'empêcher d'inclure quelques compositions de son ancien mentor, le pianiste Herbie Nichols, dont Freudian Frolics, une pièce que le tromboniste devait décrire comme un « high bebop ». Après deux sets bien remplis, le rappel (un poème assez dadaïste de Rudd soutenu par les glissandi expressionnistes de Dresser) mettait un curieux point final à une soirée autrement mémorable. Somme toute, ça commençait bien !

Jeudi 5 juin. « Wow! » fut le premier mot prononcé par Tim Berne lorsqu'il se trouva devant une salle pleine pour le premier set de Hard Cell, trio de longue date du saxophoniste avec le pianiste/claviériste Craig Taborn et le batteur Tom Rainey. J'avais déjà vu cet ensemble lors de l'édition 2001 du Suoni, dans un contexte quelque peu différent, puisqu'ils avaient alors littéralement chauffé à blanc la petite Casa Del Popolo, et que Taborn jouait alors exclusivement des claviers. Ce récent concert devait s'avérer plus acoustique, car Taborn se servit surtout du piano et ne se tourna qu'occasionnellement vers son Fender Rhodes, mais ce changement n'amenuisa en rien l'intensité de la prestation. Berne est un musicien qui a su créer un langage original et personnel et qui travaille inlassablement dans les paramètres qu'il s'est fixé : thèmes mordants bâtis sur des rythmes complexes, grooves insistants et déstabilisants, solos débridés, le tout servi à merveille par sa sonorité bluesy, le drumming dynamique de Rainey, et surtout le jeu énergique et polyvalent de Taborn, véritable pierre angulaire de cet ensemble. Le public enthousiaste accueillit comme il se doit cette musique musclée.

Samedi 14 juin. Retour au festival d'autres revenants, de provenance plus ou moins extra-terrestres ceux-là : le Sun Ra Arkestra. Leur prestation de 2006 (ma première expérience de l'orchestre en concert) avait eu, dans mon souvenir, un effet indélébile, et avec raison : voir une quinzaine d'hommes adultes (la plupart âgés) en costumes brillants et chamarrés, interpréter une pièce de Fletcher Henderson vieille de sept décennies est une expérience qui marquerait n'importe qui. Le concert donné en juin dernier (à guichets fermés, il faut le dire) était assez semblable à celui d'il y a deux ans, jusque dans le répertoire. Après une improvisation d'ouverture à plein régime, avec le maestro Marshall Allen à l'EVI (Electronic Valve Instrument), on eût droit à une remarquable leçon d'histoire (autant de l'orchestre que de la musique), qui fut aussi une fête formidable en l'honneur d'Allen, qui, cette année, célèbre ses 50 ans de collaboration à l'Arkestra ! Parmi les pièces entendues, retenons Way Down Yonder In New Orleans, avec un vocal armstrongien du trompettiste et maître de cérémonies Michael Ray, East Of The Sun, avec un beau solo du vétéran Charles Davis au saxo ténor, et Happy As The Day Is Long, de Fletcher Henderson, avec une introduction stride impressionnante du nouveau pianiste de l'Arkestra, Farid Barron, jadis sideman de... Wynton Marsalis (incroyable mais vrai!!!). Mais ce sont les pièces classiques de l'Arkestra, les compositions du regretté Sun Ra comme Carefree et We Travel The Spaceways (pendant laquelle des musiciens quittèrent la scène pour jouer en se promenant dans la salle), ou le funk irrésistible de Join The Light, composition plus récente, qui emballèrent littéralement le public, qui fit à nouveau un triomphe à cette formation légendaire à qui il faudra bien trouver une salle plus grande lors de son prochain passage en ville (qu'on souhaite bien)!

Mardi 17 juin. Pour ce chroniqueur, le concert de Matana Roberts fut la découverte de ce huitième festival. Cette saxophoniste alto originaire de Chicago n'est pas encore très connue chez nous : membre du trio Sticks & Stones, avec lequel elle a fait quelques disques, elle vient tout juste de publier un album sous son nom, soit The Chicago Project. Mais c'est dans une composition plus ambitieuse comme Mississippi Moonchile, qu'elle présentait avec son sextette à la Sala Rossa, que son talent s'épanouit pleinement. Oeuvre puissante, à la fois témoignage de l'expérience afro-américaine et réquisitoire contre l'intolérance et la politique conservatrice, c'est aussi une pièce aux dimensions très personnelles. Étalée en continu sur plus d'une heure, cette fresque est ponctuée par des spirituals déclamés par le chanteur Jeremiah (qui aurait pu facilement être un chanteur ellingtonien), par des solos très bluesy de Roberts, par la trompette polyvalente du montréalais Gordon Allen, par le piano robuste de Shoko Nagai, le tout soutenu par la rythmique de béton du vétéran contrebassiste Hill Greene et du batteur Tomas Fujiwara. Dirigeant l'ensemble par des petits signes de la main et appelant à haute voix les titres des sections de la composition, Matana Roberts intègre aussi un texte poignant à une performance qui s'inscrit dans la lignée des suites du regretté John Carter, conjugant une volonté de mémoire à un discours musical des plus modernes.

Mercredi 25 juin. Après un passage au festival de jazz de Vancouver, Ken Vandermark et les membres du quintette Atomic (moins le saxophoniste Fredrik Ljungkvist) débarquèrent à Montréal pour une soirée musicale bien remplie. Divisé en quatre parties (aucune de durant plus de 40 minutes), ce concert devait nous permettre d'entendre ces musiciens dans différentes configurations. Pour cet auditeur, la partie la plus satisfaisante de la soirée fut le set d'ouverture, une rare prestation solo de Vandermark, muni de ses deux clarinettes (en si bémol et basse) et de son saxo baryton. Évoquant Jimmy Giuffre dès les premières notes de sa performance (une furieuse attaque à la clarinette), Vandermark devait spécifiquement dédier à ce musicien mort en avril dernier un autre de ses solos. Également impressionnant au baryton, Vandermark possède maintenant un registre remarquable qui lui permet de tirer le meilleur de toute situation musicale. Après un court entr'acte, le set suivant devait nous permettre de constater encore une fois quel formidable percussionniste est le batteur Paal Nilssen-Love : ses attaques foisonnantes dans ses conversations avec le trompettiste Magnus Broo frôlaient l'improbable. On aurait aimé entendre davantage de musique du trio Free Fall (une autre référence à Giuffre, bien sûr). Le public montréalais eut tout de même la chance de découvrir le pianiste Håvard Wiik, partenaire de Vandermark et du contrebassiste Ingebrigt Håker Flaten dans cet ensemble de jazz de chambre. La soirée se termina ensuite sur une longue improvisation collective des cinq musiciens. De cette soirée plutôt morcelée, ou bigarrée si l'on veut, je garde un souvenir mitigé, comme si je n'avais vu que des extraits de plusieurs concerts complets.

Jeudi 26 juin. Mon périple festivalier devait toutefois se terminer en grande avec une vraie pièce de résistance : le trio d'Evan Parker, avec Barry Guy et Paul Lytton. Les trois maîtres improvisateurs britanniques jouent ensemble depuis plus de 30 ans, ladite formation existant depuis un bon quart de siècle. Le niveau d'interaction d'un tel ensemble est désormais inimitable… et assurément unique dans le monde de la musique improvisée. Ceux qui sont déjà familiers avec les disques de ce groupe connaissent l'approche musicale du trio : longues improvisations intenses livrées pour la plupart du temps en collectif, lignes angulaires de Parker, comme jouées à rebours, jeu énergique de Guy et invention rythmique sans cesse renouvelée de Lytton. Le second set débuta avec un solo à corps perdu de Guy, tout simplement époustouflant : utilisant des petites mailloches, puis son archet, qu'il coinça éventuellement les cordes de son instrument, le bassiste devait tirer de sa contrebasse des sons inouïs et provoquer des réactions tantôt d'hilarité, tantôt d'approbation d'un public médusé. Lytton, pour sa part, a su broder une trame percussive complexe, armé comme il était d'une panoplie d'accessoires, entre autres quelques woodblocks. Parker, magistral saxo ténor comme toujours (qui n'avait pas ce soir-là son soprano, restrictions de voyage obligent), y alla de ses volutes sonores les plus tortueuses avec toute la facilité (apparente) qu'on lui connaît; pourtant, il peut aussi ralentir son débit pour nous interpeller d'un lyrisme pourtant abrasif. Un court rappel (après un feu nourri d'applaudissements bien mérités) marqua la finale de cette soirée, de loin l'une des plus mémorables de ces huit années de festival.

D'ici la tenue de la prochaine édition du Suoni Per Il Popolo en juin 2009, les amateurs de musiques improvisées auront certainement bien d'autres rendez-vous à inscrire dans leurs agendas, en commençant par le 1er août avec le passage du Arrive Quartet, une formation de la relève de Chicago comprenant Aram Shelton (sax alto), Tim Daisy (batterie), Jason Adasiewicz (vibraphone) et Jason Roebke (contrebasse). Trois semaines plus tard, le 20, ce sera au tour du duo norvégien de Frode Gjerstad (sax alto) et de son compatriote batteur Paal Nilssen-Love de faire chauffer les planches de la Casa del Popolo, l'enseigne par excellence de toutes les musiques créatives en ville.

Addenda

par Marc Chénard

Bien que les têtes d'affiche contribuent de manière décisive à la réputation d'un festival, sans compter l'affluence dans ses salles, il ne faut jamais ignorer la présence des talents locaux. À ce chapitre, les responsables du Suoni per il Popolo reconnaissent pleinement ce fait en accordant une place non négligeable à nos musiciens, qu'ils soient du rock, de l'électronique, de l'impro ou je ne sais quoi d'autre. Parmi ce grand éventail de concerts, deux en particulier ont retenu l'attention de ce chroniqueur

Mardi 3 juin. Inscrire un quatuor à cordes travaillant principalement dans le domaine de la musique contemporaine n'est pas une évidence en soi, du moins dans le créneau des musiques expérimentales privilégié par cet événement. Pourtant, le Quatuor à cordes Bozzini a relevé un singulier défi en s'attaquant à une œuvre spécialement conçue pour (et avec) lui par deux des personnalités reconnues dans le cercle des musiques actuelles au Québec : Jean Derome et Joane Hétu. Fruit d'un travail commun échelonné sur une année complète, le Mensonge et l'identité reçut sa première nord-américaine, deux mois après sa création dans le cadre d'un festival de musique contemporaine tenu sous les auspices de la radio DLF (Deutschland Funk) à Cologne. (Notons ici qu'une supplémentaire se déroula à Vancouver le 24 juin, d'autres prestations européennes étant d'ailleurs prévues au cours de l'automne.) D'une durée de plus d'une heure, cette pièce, divisée en quatre mouvements, comportait une dimension textuelle (soit sur bande préenregistrée, soit par lecture en direct) et une dimension spatiale, où les musiciens se déplaçaient dans la salle entre plusieurs lutrins (soit 16 au total). Suivant d'abord une partition rigoureusement écrite, les interprètes étaient peu à peu appelés à assembler des sections à leur gré, quitte à improviser, Par ailleurs, chaque musicien récitait dans une langue différente (anglais, français, allemand, italien), tantôt des anecdotes personnelles, tantôt des aphorismes de sources littéraires diverses. Compte tenu des différentes dimensions exploitées dans cet assemblage musical, il en résulta une espèce de structure épisodique constituée de strophes discrètes, donc pas nécessairement conséquentes en termes de développement global. Par moments, on aurait bien souhaité que certains des matériaux aient été développés davantage, ou que l'un ou l'autre des musiciens ait pu faire une échappée, mais la conception essentiellement rigoureuse de l'œuvre consignait les interprètes (qui sont des musiciens classiques après tout) à des rôles très définis, en mal parfois d'une certaine souplesse, voire d'ouverture à des initiatives personnelles. En revanche, le fait que ceux-ci se racontent un peu permettait de personnaliser la performance, ce qui est rarement le cas en musique classique ou l'exécutant doit se soumettre à une musique. Pourtant, si l'on se concentre sur la substance musicale même, on ne pouvait que constater un certain manque de contenu harmonique, voire d'une exploitation plus poussée des possibilités timbrales des instruments à cordes qui, comme on le sait, sont si riches en magnifiques, et d'autant plus dans les mains des deux sœurs Bozzini, Stéphanie et Isabelle, alto et violoncelle respectivement, de Clemens Merkel, violon et conjoint de la seconde, ainsi que de Nadia Francavilla, également au violon. En dépit des apories, l'inclusion d'une telle expérience dans le cadre d'un festival comme le Suoni faisait certainement preuve d'une belle ouverture d'esprit de la part des organisateurs, si bien qu'on en souhaiterait d'autres dans l'avenir (du même genre ou d'autres, peu importe). Signalons enfin que le quatuor joua également une œuvre écrite pour eux par Malcolm Goldstein, qui, par la suite, fit son numéro d'impro solo en marmonant quelques vers. Si vous connaissez l'univers de ce musicien américain exilé chez nous (cagien, il va sans dire), vous avez déjà une bonne idée.

Mardi 24 juin. Par une soirée de Fête nationale québécoise, l'atmosphère était certainement chaleureuse et festive à la Sala Rossa, cette fois-ci avec le Ratchet Orchestra. Grand collectif musical de près de 30 musiciens (comprenant professionnels, semi-professionnels et amateurs), cette cohorte dirigée par le bassiste Nicolas Caloia s'inscrit directement dans la ligne du Sun Ra Arkestra : thèmes assez simples, impros qui se déroulent sur des ostinatos rythmiques un tant soit peu ronflants, le tout produisant une musique qui n'affiche pas de grandes ambitions artistiques en soi (si ce n'est qu'en nombre), mais qui se veut tout de même honnête et intègre (ce qui est déjà pas mal). Félicitions particulièrement le preneur de son qui a trouvé un équilibre parfait entre les sections, sans oublier la basse du leader qui assurait l'assise complète de l'orchestre. Outre les vents (quatre trompettes, trombone basse, sousaphone, sept anches), on comptait une section de six cordes — qui s'illustrèrent autant les uns que les autres à titre de soliste…une rareté — quatre percussionnistes, deux guitares, un piano et un soliste de marque : Jean Derome (flûte, sax alto, objets divers), le tout couronné (ou sous-tendu devrais-je dire) par le bassiste. Reformé en novembre dernier après dix ans de silence, cette nouvelle mouture de l'orchestre, plus ambitieuse que son prédécesseur, a justement produit un disque suivant sa première d'il y a six mois. J'y étais en ce 28 novembre 2007 et j'ai applaudi autant à cette première qu'à la récidive du 24 juin 2008. Un disque existe d'ailleurs, on en reparlera un de ces jours.

_________________________________________________________________

Off Festival Review

noreply@blogger.com (Félix-Antoine Hamel) — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 01:39:00 +0000

July 10, 2008

Montreal Jazz Fest Roundup

Part one:

Off Festival de Jazz de Montréal

June 13 to 21

by Marc Chénard

According to first indications, Montreal's alternative jazz festival, the Off Festival de jazz de Montreal, was met by unexpected success in its most recent edition. In a post-festival press release, the organizers reported a 20 % increase in attendance from the previous year, a surprise of sorts given a lack of real headliners or guest performers to bolster its lineup of local acts. But this year's ninth edition ran a week earlier so as not to overlap with the city's mega Festival international de Jazz de Montréal (FIJM), thus avoiding the inevitable drain of audience from it in its closing days.

For those who may not know about this festival, it was founded in 2000 by a collective of musicians as a means of representing their interests in the face of the city's mega-festival that paid but lip service to the local scene, a state of affairs that has only marginally changed since then. From its initial purpose as a means of protest, it has developed an identity of its own, serving as a kind of springboard for local musicians to present their wares for eventual recording and touring purposes.

The artistic direction of the event, it must be noted, is shared by a dedicated committee of musicians who do so on a voluntary basis. Given this fact, several changes of personnel have occurred over the years, but this turnover has an unattended benefit, which is to circumven the common pitfall of predictability that plagues many long-standing festivals. This ability to renew itself shows not only in its will to incorporate a wide range of jazz and improvisational music styles in its program, but also in its vocation of showcasing promising local talent, which, incidentally, is in no short supply. But like all festivals, this one, too, has to balance the tried and true with a share of newcomers and discoveries. As can be expected, there are always a share of hits, either total or partial, and misses to wit. But since jazz was never meant to be a fail-safe proposition in the first place but a matter of taking chances, the Off festival's program this year was daring in its inclusion of several bands unknown to this writer, thus providing an excellent oppurtunity to check out the field.

This year's edition bore a slate of 32 concerts spread over 9 nine days, a decrease of three from 2007. The bulk of the action was spread over three locations, including a late afternoon happy-hour series in a bar, two evening series at the event's main concert hall, le Lion d'or (at 8 PM and 9:30 PM respectively, the latter one free of charge), and an overlapping one in another club starting at 10 PM. Also of note were two performances held in conjunction with the third of Montreal's June music fests, the alternative-music dedicated Suoni per il Popolo, the first of which being the return visit of the Sun Ra Arkestra and a following night electro-improv encounter mainly comprised of Montreal players.

Overall, the vibe was definitely upbeat, but no real highlight emerged, at least for this writer. Instead, the interest lay more in the problems that arose in some of the performances, problems which should not be construed in negative terms, but more as raising some questions.

One such example was the performance of the trio by-Product accompanied by an ad hoc string quartet. The proposition was intriguing to say the least: tenor saxophonist Chet Doxas was inspired by French existentialist philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre's collection of stories entitled "Le mur" to create a series of pieces for his bandmates (his brother Jim on drums and Zach Lober on bass) and an accompanying string quartet. The meeting of strings and jazz, as history has repeatedly proven, is a musical minefield, what with all of the saccharine fiddling behind jazz players aspiring for some of kind of public legitimacy beyond their own sphere. Writing for strings, it must be said, is not a piece of cake, for it requires very specific knowledge of the particularities of those instruments, at least if one wants to make their parts sound more interesting that just sustaining long tones and producing tremolos. More problematic as well is the frequent lack of integration of the two, wherbey jazzers and strings players were content to ride on parallel tracks rather than really shunting from one to the other. As an acquaintance rightfully pointed out after the show, one could almost draw an invisible 'Wall' on stage during the performance, the left part occupied by the strings and a conductor planted in front of them, the right side staked out by the jazz trio. The sax player was front and center, both stagewise and solo-wise, his cohorts chipping in along the way, the drummer offering a pretty impressive gambit towards the end of their not-too long set of five pieces (all of which can be heard on a self-produced recording launched that evening). Regrettably, no solos were granted to the string players, even though lead violinist Stéphane Allard and violist Jean René are capable of doing so, a shortcoming which only underscores a basically schizophrenic relationship stemming from these encounters. On a plus side, the backing avoided much of the maudlin fare, but there was little in terms of development, the strings used more episodically to suggest mood and tone rather than developing some sort of countrapuntal discourse to the jazz trio. Although dealing with a bad flu, Doxas managed to kick up some dust as a soloist; while he was not in peak form, it must be said that he is one of the, if not the most promising modern-mainstream reedman to emerge in our city in the last five years. (Two years ago, he more than eloquently held his own as the opening act for a Wayne Shorter quartet peformance at the big jazz fest, that says something.)

Such reservations were obviously not shared by the Off's organizers who awarded its annual prize of excellence to Doxas and Co for their performance, a prize which includes an amount for the mastering of a future record. It will be interesting to see what this group's next move will be.

If the script was the essence of this opening evening act, the second half of the bill was an all improv affair that bore only minimal groundrules. Eight musicians associated with the city's Ambiances Magnétiques collective took to the stage for a series of musical games, spearheaded by reedist Jean Derome, who acted as emcee of sort and let the audience in as to the guidelines they would use. As is so often the case with such music of the moment, it is always hard to describe, let alone remember and give some sort of cogent post facto account. What's more, this approach to music making always raises the question of who derives the most enjoyment from the vagaries of free play: the audience or… the players?

On the night previous, another double bill brought other elements into play, first and foremost the blending of jazz and other musical traditions and styles. The opening set presented a quartet of piano, bass, percussion and oud, an ensemble called Oktoecho lead by composer Katia Makdissi-Warren. A trained composer in the contemporary musical tradition, her specialty is 'fusing' elements of Western and Middle-Eastern musics, given her own Lebanese background. A non-performer in this instance, although she plays piano and oud, at least when not assuming a conductor role, Warren wrote a series of pieces enabling the musicians to improvise within her set structures. As special guest, the Austro-American bassist Peter Herbert was given a couple of occasions to shine as a soloist, followed next by pianist Marianne Trudel, the latter showing her jazz proclivities in her solos. The sensitive percussion work of Patrick Graham was a nice touch, and the choice of a musician very much in tune with non-Western traditions provided a welcome alternative to the customary jazz drumming heard in this festival. Rounding off the group was a native Turkish oud player who seemed definitely more at home when the music stuck close to the Middle-East, electing to lay out in the 'jazzier' parts. All in all, an interesting rapprochement of musical cultures that could only be more successful in repeated performances (this one being a good step forward since its first presentation in town last February, this reprise enhanced in no small way by the guest bassist).

If two musical cultures were put to a test in that act, the next group seemed to throw several musical styles all into one pot. Common Thread is the name of a sextet lead by Montreal bassist Miles Perkin, a unit with a most original instrumentation of harp, steel guitar (and dobro), alto sax/flute, tenor sax/clarinet, drums/percussion and the leader/composer. At first, the drums seemed overly loud in the mix and tended to distract the listener from what was going on elsewhere. Throughout the set, one could hear country and folk influences (normal, considering the stringed instruments), some cutting edge pop and one of those churning North-African grooves in the final piece (logically titled 'Gnawa'). In keeping with those influences, this was more of a collective music, with limited solo room (but kudos to altoist Eric Hove for making the most of his two escapades). By and large, this is a music that searches in several directions, but there was a kind of restlesness to it all that prevented it from achieving a satisfying end result, something like a sum failing to exceed its parts. For those interested, this group has issued two CDs, including a self-produced side 'The Guessing Game', issued earlier this year and available through the artist's web. (http://www.milesperkin.com)

The closing night of the festival provided two more acts that, this time around, were unmistakeably in the jazz tradition. The aforementionned pianist Marianne Trudel premiered a new seven piece group with three brass (trumpet, trombone and French Horn), female voice (used purely instrumentally) and rhythn section. A composition project most obviously, this ensemble deftly negotiated a program of fairly elaborate pieces, bookended by a pair of piano trio pieces which, once again, betrayed Trudel's weakness, at least an instrumentalist, for Keith Jarrett. More satisfying to this writer were the full ensemble pieces, the first of which bore the indelible imprint of Kenny Wheeler but that succeeded in drawing away from that obvious influence by breaking the group down into various configurations. Along the way, everybody was granted at least one solo spot, although the French hornist, a non-improviser, was assigned a written part, and a tricky one at that as it demanded the player (Jocelyn Veilleux) to negotiate a number of register leaps (a perilous thing to do on such a unforgiving instrument like that one). Considering the limited rehearsal time, this ensemble delivered its goods convincingly and, like her previous quintet project of a couple years ago, let's hope that this one will take on a life of its own and hopefully hit the road for next year's festival circuit.

As festival closer, the saxophone quartet of Janis Steprans (supplied by bass and drums on a couple of pieces) was a model of flawless execution. With André Leroux on soprano sax, David Bellemare on alto (surely one of the city's best kept secrets), the excellent Jean Fréchette on baritone and the leader on tenor, this foursome is as solid as one can get in playing abilities. But there is one caveat, namely, the material which was firmly planted in the mainstream jazz tradition and offered no surprises whatsover (although a series of five through composed variations on the Monk tune "Ugly Beauty" was a novel idea, even if it went on for too long). This then is jazz according to the academic credo, spit polished and all, but with both feet stuck in the past rather than surging ahead.

To round up this review, a few mentions on some of the gigs heard in the afternoon and late evening. Although their take on post-hard bop (with a nod to Dave Holland) may not have been the most original, the quintet of altoist Mario Allard played the style as ably as many a band can do, not just here but anywhere for that matter. Particularly strong was the leader of this pianoless quintet, who incidentally was just awarded the prize for best composition during the FIJM's annual jazz competition.

Altoist Eric Hove displayed his talents at the helm of his unit Sound Clash, one that comprises bass, drums and a turntable player who weaved his filigrees to varying degree of success. In fact, to what degree does the latter's input enhance or detract the overall proceedings? A moot point maybe, but it seems not much would be lost without him. Hove, however, excelled in the quartet of tenor saxophonist Anna Webber, who displays a full sound on her horn and is just as adept, if not a tad more on her first instrument, the flute. With guitar and drums, she displayed some very interestingly crafted compositions that develop and expand in non obvious ways. A player and a group to watch for.

While Jason Sharp is one of our city's handful of baritone saxophone specialists, he uses two very singular instruments, the Hohner saxophone (an almost toy-looking saxophone with no mouthpiece but reeds inserted under its keys) and the even more exotic fujara (a sheep herding instrument made in the Czech Republic vaguely resembling a didjeredoo, but held vertically rather than diagonally). With drums, bass and steel guitar, his band is strongly influenced by Eastern European musics, so much so that its repertoire of originals seem all cut from a single cloth, the themes too similar to each other and the pieces developing in predictable ways after a while. An interesting concept and sound for sure, but one where the leader needs to develop and broaden the scope of his compositional chops.

While these concerts are but a cross section of the total festival, they nevertheless provide a good picture of an event that has courageously held its own for nine years now and is sure not to disappear from the map any time soon. And now on the cusp of its first decade, and with the good fortunes it has had this year, all bodes well for a cheery musical celebration in June 2009.