Many streams to cross

Dave Douglas has responded to Ethan Iverson's astute jazz in the '90s essay. While I earlier wrote that my perspective on jazz in the '90s is a little skewed and out of sorts, I agree with both these essays in different ways. My following opinions are coloured by the fact that I worked with Dave out at Banff a couple of years ago - easily a watershed moment in my musical development that still heavily influences my work today. I also recently interviewed Ethan and his TBP cohorts during the Montreal Jazz Festival.

Ethan's main point, for those late to the party, is this:

I believe that the tributaries that these two trios from 1996 represent are equally important considerations for the young improviser today. It hasn't really happened yet -- Joe Lovano comes closest -- but when players can eat up "Cherokee" with Jeff Watts and create free harmony with Barre Phillips at an equal level, that will really be something.

Ironically enough, both Dave and Ethan are too close to their own music and possibly too humble to state it, so I will: they are embodiments of authenticity in both streams. I mentioned this in my forthcoming review of TBP with guitarist Mike Stern at the Festival, but it was really fascinating to hear them go beyond their usual setting and work with new musicians and new forms. Ethan mentioned during the interview of having an identity crisis in soundcheck, of being principally a member of TBP or principally playing with Mike Stern. I'd argue he split the difference admirably. My respect and awe for Dave escalated tremendously after his appearance at the on-campus pub jam session at Banff, blowing the shit out of bebop changes and on sax faculty Mike Zilber's Coltrane-matrix-laden tunes on the weekly concert.

Dave is right that a musician bases their sound on choices of context, but his catalogue is proof that choosing a context can vary from project to project (and ideally should). What I think both of them try get at is that many artists choose a context in exclusivity, and throw other practices out with the bathwater. In the dichotomy Ethan presents, there's often a hesitancy among younger musicians delving into the other "stream" (for lack of a better term here), and in the surge of institutionalized jazz education, the free-harmony side of the spectrum gets short shrift. In practice, I find more and more musicians addressing free music and composition-based music equally, in interesting ways. There are still those who choose one over the other.

One musician who is an astonishing practitioner of both is Toronto guitarist Reg Schwager. When I was growing up in Toronto, Reg was the straight-ahead player par excellence, with a sweet, warm tone and heavy swing. He toured with George Shearing for a while (and still might, I don't know.) Then, through Panpot, a disc arrived in the mail: Québécois saxophonist François Carrier's entirely improvised Noh, with drummer/percussionists John Heward and Michel Lambert (another player equally at home swinging like mad or abstractly contributing to new musical conversations), and Reg. As I mentioned in my review of Ribot, my knowledge of the avant-guitar spectrum is limited at best, but Reg fit amazingly well with the rest of the musicians. Unlike some other, more "energy music" style releases I've reviewed, Reg and the others are listening as much as they are playing - and that seems to be the key skill that's often missing in a player's formation. We all study how to play, but rarely do we study how to listen. (Turns out he's also an aficionado of Brazilian music.)

There's any number of musicians who are equally at home playing free or playing tunes (many of whom appear on Ethan's post): John Hollenbeck, Jason Moran, Benoit Delbecq, Ben Monder, Vijay Iyer, and locally, fellow Banff alums pianist Marianne Trudel and bassist Miles Perkin. In my own musical life I've found it necessary to be involved with a number of disparate musical genres at any given time - writing for big band one day, playing free in a William Parker workshop the next, and gigs with R&B and jambands in the offing. When any one of those elements is missing from my schedule, I feel somewhat incomplete.

NB: Banff marked the first time I had ever played free with any sort of consistency or duration. While I may not be the next rising force in the actuelle scene, free improvisation has definitely informed how I approach the rest of my music and figured heavily in the Indigone Trio + Strings project.

In the company of strangers

My apologies for the backlog of blogging - I arrived back from New York on the eve of Jazz Fest, which I am as usual covering for both CKUT and Panpot. Look to Panpot for more general "week-in-review" writings to be supplemented here with longer reviews of more significant sets.

This past Tuesday marked the final reading session of the BMI Jazz Composers Workshop. I can't believe I've essentially been commuting between the two cities for eight months. It's been quite the honour to be surrounded by a completely new group of musical minds - I've had the opportunity to gather a new perspective on my music, by virtue of not having to play piano on my own tunes, but also by interacting with musicians I've long respected and admired. Our year-end concert is July 19 at Christ St. Stephens (120 W. 69th, between Broadway and Columbus) at 7:30 pm. I'm immensely thrilled to announce that my piece, "Blue Hole," will be premiered that night, along with work by brilliant composers and new friends, including Earl MacDonald, Jeff Fairbanks, Michele Caniato and others that don't have web presence.

After the final reading and a hang at some bar on Broadway & 46th which had Magic Hat #9 on tap, I headed over to a concert presented by the River to River festival at the World Financial Center. The Living Room was co-hosting a songwriters night headlined by Chris Thile and Martha Wainwright. Thankfully it was outdoors and the lamented air conditioning system of Darcy's Bang On a Can liveblog was nowhere to be felt. I got there as The Bees were playing. They were a fairly standard pop-folk-rock group, with solid vocal harmonies but rather stagnant song structures.

Fellow BMI composer Volker Goetze had accompanied me out to the WFC, and stuck around to check out Chris Thile on my urging. I guess most people know him as "the mandolin player from Nickel Creek," but he first came to my attention as a heavy newgrass instrumentalist in his own right and in his jaw-dropping duos with Béla Fleck. I had never seen him live but had meant to for years. Immediately after the first few notes of his opening instrumental, Volker said to me "This is already far more interesting." Hints of jazz harmonies crept into his strong songs that walk the line between alt-country, traditional country, indie rock and pop. His lyrics were at turns witty and tender. He had the WFC audience silent with only a mandolin and his voice, and with a stage presence far more confident than the normally awkward singer-songwriter rapport. At one point he said, "And now it's the point in my set where I like to play some Bach. Oh wait, this is a songwriter's night, I shouldn't have told you who wrote this." He then proceeded to nail the Gigue from the Partita in Dm for solo violin. Volker and I were stunned. Truly inspiring music as the sun was setting over the Hudson. Martha Wainwright followed, with her gruff, sardonic tunes. They were ruminative and rubato, delivered in a cracking voice somewhere between Janis Joplin and Tom Waits. It was a good way to wind down after Thile's tour de force.

"We don't play jazz, we play vision!"

So sayest Lewis “Flip” Barnes, the trumpeter/MC for the opening night of Vision Festival XII. That statement was realized to varying degrees of success by the five groups on Tuesday night at the Angel Orensanz Foundation, a converted synagogue in the Lower East Side, mere steps away from Tonic.

The concert opened with an invocation of sorts by poetess and vocalist Patricia Nicholson, William Parker on an African(-derived? -inspired?) box-like bass and Hamid Drake on frame drum, delivered while people were still filing in. Nicholson’s poetry was delivered with sincerity, but the smiles/raindrops/rainbows imagery rang a little forced and dated to me. The instances of her speaking in tongues and waving her arms in a neo-tribal hippie fashion seemed, in the wake of Matana Roberts’ Coin Coin performance at the Suoni festival, a little hollow. Parker and Drake exhibited their unique hook-up, but in one of the many sound problems to plague the evening, Drake’s frame drum was ill represented sonically.

William Parker followed up with his large ensemble commission and premiere, Double Sunrise Over Neptune. After having heard him quite recently in duo with Drake, I was extremely curious to hear what he would do with a much larger group. The piece consisted of three bass ostinati, played dutifully by Shayna Dulberger, the first of which I felt lasted far too long. While I loved the hypnotic grooves of the duo, in the large ensemble they felt ponderous and I longed for some more change-ups, if not in material than in texture. On the other hand, much of the initial string writing seemed underdeveloped, fleeting motives that would repeat twice and then move on to something only tangentially related. I was struck at how all the different cultures represented – the Indian vocalist Sangeeta Bannerjee, Bill Cole’s Eastern reeds, Joe Morris’ banjo, Brahim Fribgane’s oud – blended far better than expected. Much of the solos were in overlapping dialogues, many of which were tremendous – Morris’ flurried guitar with Mazz Swift’s soulful violin, Rob Brown’s hard-edged alto and responsive interaction with Bannerjee, “Flip” Barnes’ cogent trumpet logic, Jason Kao Hwang’s beautiful singing tone, and the combination of Drake and Gerald Cleaver was mighty indeed. Sabir Mateen indulged in his squeaking and squawking, in tandem with baritone saxist Dave Sewelson, and I longed for the opportunity to hear him do something – anything – else. Jessica Pavone was completely buried for her otherwise great viola solo, Bill Cole was generally too loud for the duration of the piece, Parker’s bass kora was mostly inaudible, and while the saxes’ first entry was overwhelmingly loud, their chorale parts were lost in the mix.

The ending of the piece arrived as a non sequitur, with Bannerjee abruptly starting to sing English lyrics in place of her earlier vocalise. Once it settled in, it was beautiful, and Parker’s string writing had vastly improved, with some gorgeous string quartet passages over Parker’s bass kora. Cole’s shakuhachi punctuations seemed out of place here, but it was a minor interruption. Double Sunrise could have been more effective in many ways, but even still was fairly successful. It was hard to tell who was responsible for the sonic clutter – the soundmen or Parker. I want to give Parker the benefit of the doubt here.

By contrast, the collective trio Fieldwork were all quite audible in the system. Vijay Iyer’s a fascinating pianist and composer – his hand position is like a tarantula traversing the keyboard, grasping odd intervals. Drummer Tyshawn Sorey looks like a Buddha behind the kit, embracing both the hip-hop machine-like grooves of Marcus Gilmore but with a looseness and fluidity of Dan Weiss, peppered with drum ‘n’ bass references. Saxophonist Steve Lehman dug into the Carnatic-influenced rhythmic patterns, sounding less brittle than I’ve usually heard him, and less edgy than Iyer’s usual alto cohort, Rudresh Mahanthappa. (My neighbour, DJA, felt differently.) At one point, through his phrasing and extended technique, he sounded like a human sampler. There was a cinematic quality to the music, with its dark intervallic harmony and the sonorous overtones from the Steinway. Iyer’s created a language for himself – his rhythmic conception and line construction are different from most, and quite systematic. He’s brilliant, and I appreciate his work, but I can’t say it often gets me on a visceral sort of level.

I’m still trying to figure out how to parse Cooper-Moore’s Keyboard Project. It was too insistent upon itself to be taken purely as farce, but too broad to be effectively subversive. Cooper-Moore spent most of his time ranting how “Jazz ain’t got no mama,” jazz being an orphan, whore and prostitute, and all he needed was some sort of punchline to complete it. When he wasn’t doing that, or singing in a gruff theatrical tenor, he was playing some hokey Hammond patch from an M-Audio keyboard controller. Dancer Marlies Yearby was nothing but distracting, ranting along with Cooper-Moore without even so much as a body mic. Her writhing about on the floor didn’t have any sort of direction to my eyes. The set was saved when they finally got into some music, with Darius Jones, Assif Tsahar and Willie Applewhite blowing hard over Chad Taylor’s propulsive groove straddling uptempo Latin, funk and Philly Joe Jones-style swing. The duo between Tsahar and Taylor was especially killing. Yearby confined herself to the wings and started truly dancing, out of the way of the band. This was fantastic “energy music” with momentum and dynamic. The soundmen seemed unprepared for the set: Nioka Workman’s cello was inaudible for most of the set, even while Cooper-Moore barked for cello; and there quite obviously should have been a vocal mic somewhere. It was irreverent, sure, and created a vastly different mood than the heaviness of Fieldwork, but without an obvious conceit, it was a hard world to enter. Lester Bowie’s commentary on some Art Ensemble tracks is irreverence done right.

Having seen Marc Ribot in an intimate solo setting a couple of weeks ago, it was truly spectacular to experience Spiritual Unity, his Ayler tribute project with Chad Taylor, trumpeter Roy Campbell Jr. and bassist Henry Grimes. Again, I admit my ignorance with Ayler’s music so I can’t provide titles, but there was such a power and passion to this music that automatically engaged me. The intriguing aspect of that project is how Campbell and Ribot translate Ayler’s sax skronk to their respective instruments – Campbell through a massive range from pedal tones to whistle tones, and Ribot through a fluidly distorted guitar with spiky, punky energy. Ayler’s music is essentially joyous, and the joy was contagious here. The intent with which this quartet performed and inhabited the music was really quite astounding to me. Chad Taylor exhibited his groove side with Cooper-Moore, and on the free ballad played here, he demonstrated his touch and sensitivity. The sound gremlins got in here, too: Grimes provided a resonant foundation for the band, but the pitches he played weren’t delivered through the system. I only heard him clearly when he soloed or played arco, unleashing the upper partials of the strings and driving the band forward. Hearing Grimes’ bowing again reinforced the debt William Parker owed in his own arco statement a couple of weeks ago at Sala. After seeing Ribot twice and hearing his love and admiration for Albert Ayler come through his music. I am now going to thoroughly investigate the original recordings.

I won't do what you tell me

On Sunday night, I finally made it out to a screening of What is Indie?, a documentary searching for the real meaning of "indie" in today's music industry. Directed, researched, and narrated by Dave Cool (yes, that is his real name), it's a worthy exploration of a relatively nebulous term and concept. I, like many of his interviewees, tend to associate that term as an abbreviation of "indie rock," but it's more of an attitude that cuts across genres and even labels. Cool even takes on the circular question of "If indie is an attitude, can you be indie on a major, or be non-indie on an indie label?" The answer winds up being yes - the rare major label artists that could issue creative terms to their label, or the artists caught in indie labels run like majors with creative strangleholds and exploitative business practices. Several of the interviewees bring up the idea of indie-by-default as opposed to indie-by-choice - artists who are waiting for one of the Big Four to snap them up, as compared to those who truly want to achieve success by their own definition.

I enjoyed the film, but it wasn't especially revelatory to me - as a musician I've heard all this before, but I don't think the film is geared towards musicians necessarily. It seems to be geared towards the layman, the listener who doesn't necessarily know where the industry's going or how it works. My Jazz Euphorium colleague and trumpeter Sean Winters rightly pointed out that there were no jazz musicians interviewed - a music that's had various levels of prominent independents and collectivists for decades. And also, the idea of being "indie" on a major isn't especially new or shocking - The Grateful Dead are the first who come to mind as being on a major label but playing and promoting their music on their own terms. If memory serves me right, I think Led Zeppelin had complete creative control while on Atlantic as well.

The screening was followed by performances by singer-songwriter Andrea Revel who's grown tremendously since I last saw her (and acquired a beautiful black Grestch Duo-Jet to boot); singer Amanda Mabro accompanied by well-meaning but often ham-handed piano and drums (the pianist was having monitor issues, so I'll refrain from commenting further); and my friends WhiteRoom, who have really come into their own as a live unit.

I suppose this is as good a place as any to link to the brilliant Marc Ribot essay. I spoke briefly with Ribot after his concert at Sala, and the treatment of creative musicians is truly at a critical juncture. If any city is going to purport itself to be a cultural centre, it needs to protect the ability of artists to live and perform. The imminent closing of Spectrum after this festival season does not bode well for the rest of Montreal, and if iconic landmarks like CBGB and Tonic are closing in the Apple, it doesn't bode well for the rest of market-driven, conservative-led North America.

***

In other news, my review of William Parker/Hamid Drake's duo performance at La Sala Rossa last week is up at Panpot, and tonight's Suoni engagement is Matana Roberts' Coin Coin, which I've been longing to see for a while. She's workshopping it with a few members of A Silver Mt. Zion.

Marc Ribot 06/04 (Suoni 2007)

The Suoni Per il Popolo (Sounds for the People) festival is in its seventh year, though it's only the first time I'll have attended this intensely. Organized by the Casa del Popolo crew, it's a month-long fête for improvised and forward-looking music, with a broad scope ranging from the chaos of ICP Orchestra to sound artists Martin Tétreault to the indie sounds of The Sea and Cake. Inaugurating this week of free jazz and improv programming at La Sala Rossa, a converted Spanish social hall which is still very red, was Marc Ribot, playing solo.

What little expectations I had were shattered quite quickly. Most of the Ribot I know is electric, with a certain punky, spiky aggression. He had three guitars with him last night - a steel-string archtop (looking like a big jazz box from the '30s), a nylon-string classical guitar, and an electric guitar, possibly a baritone guitar as it was tuned down to C#. The majority of the two sets was spent on the classical guitar, though he rotated through all three. If guitars had personalities or characters, the archtop was the zoot-suit wearing ancient hipster, with a cool swing. The electric was reserved for darker moods and sounds. The classical guitar was the omnivore, in Ribot's hands ranging from dissonant free explorations to meditative ostinati.

I don't really know enough about the heritage of experimental guitar playing to comment on where Ribot's coming from, nor do I know enough about guitar to comment technically on what he was doing. Ribot's knowledge of guitar history, though, was quite evident. From Delta blues to flamenco and other Latin idioms, from gypsy jazz and early swing through the developments of rock and post-Coltrane/Ornette/Ayler. A lot of the melodies he chose were folky in one way or another, from a couple of Ayler pieces being totally deconstructed, or a bluesy riff reminiscent of his work with Tom Waits played on the nylon-string. At times, the guitar could sound tortured, with notes just being squeezed through the neck - Ribot's contemplation and intent were obvious, which made the short bebop lick or flamenco flourish all the more impressive and resonant.

I didn't catch the names of a lot of the pieces he played. This is what I did get, though:
- First set opened with an Ayler tune (name unannounced, and my lack of familiarity with Ayler doesn't help here) on the archtop.
- Once he switched to electric late in the first set, after pieces on the classical guitar, he played a haunting version of "The Nearness of You" and accompanied himself through a dark and twisted "O Bury Me Not on the Lone Prairie," which he dedicated to Bush.
- First set ended on classical guitar, a piece that sounded like "Jimmy Crack Corn" but may have been Ayler's "Saints."
- Second set opened with an original, "The Joy of Repetition," "[written] after I fired my shrink." Majority of second set was on classical guitar, music from an unreleased movie score that he'd never played before.
- Encore on electric: "St. James Infirmary" (very close to the version on Saints) segueing into "Body and Soul." Ribot may be the only person that can make a fairly traditional reading of "Body and Soul" seem out-of-left-field.

Sounds for the people

For concert blogging, please direct your browser to PanPot where I will be one of their many correspondents for the 7th annual Suoni Per Il Popolo festival throughout the month of June. I did a preview show last night on Jazz Euphorium, and of the three jazz festivals in town (FIJM, Off, and Suoni) its lineup has me the most consistently excited. For PanPot, I'll be reporting on:
Rob Brown Quartet (June 5, La Sala Rossa)
William Parker/Hamid Drake duo (June 6, La Sala Rossa)
Matana Roberts' Coin Coin (June 13, Casa del Popolo) [featuring three members of A Silver Mt. Zion - should be interesting]
The Goods f/ Recloose (June 23, La Sala Rossa) [protégé of Detroit house guru Carl Craig]
Louis Moholo/Dave Burrell/Kidd Jordan (June 27, La Sala Rossa)

I'll also be attending Marc Ribot's solo show at Sala on the 4th. Watch for a report here (another PanPot correspondent will be attending as well). Unfortunately, I'm in New York when the ICP Orchestra invades Sala with their chaos, but if you're within reasonable driving distance of Montreal, go. (As a consolation, Han Bennink will be playing duo with Anthony Coleman during JazzFest if you miss ICP.)

In other mini-festival news, tomorrow is the St. Viateur street festival sponsored by Ubisoft Montreal, with musical entertainment provided by Socalled and Patrick Watson among others. A Mile-End block party that's been sidelined for the past couple of years, it's the first I've heard about it and I'm excited to see Watson, our local ethereal singer-songwriter done good, again.

This week we're gonna party like it's 1999

As has been noted pretty much everywhere, D:O is repping the 90s this week, with admirable assistance. Like Dan, I'm at the young end of the age bracket here. Though I became exposed to jazz in the 90s, my first years of exploring the music were decidedly repertory-based, leafing through DownBeat and acquiring as many classic albums as I could on a schoolboy budget. I guess I became more aware of new releases and artists towards the end of the decade, but really, not until the early Oughts when I was headed to university.

In playing along with the game and trying to come up with my own list, I don't really associate that many discs with the '90s. I don't remember when a lot of them were recorded (I almost forgot that Mehldau's Art of the Trio run with Warner Bros was in the '90s), unlike most of the stuff in the Behearer and pre-Behearer era which has been indelibly stamped with a time frame upon it in my head. I'm unsure whether it's because these discs were sort of running parallel with my development and so they're contemporary to me and not historical documents, or whether there's not really a cohesive set of '90s aesthetics to evaluate them on. Or maybe I'm just too young.

All this to say, go read the lists, listen to the music, and check out the reflections. Some album citations may surprise you - I didn't expect Nate Dorward to shout out Ruby Braff, for instance.

NYC diary May '07

While the space to stretch out en route is welcome, sold-out trains always wind up being more eventful. I wound up sitting beside two raucous teenagers, one of whom is a budding actor, who obsessed over their vices of smoking and drinking. In the café car, I overheard a loud gaggle of girls gossiping over their lives, and one of them asking if Canadians spoke English (because Mawntreawl is French). To which one replied, “Yeah, like Celine Dion. She’s French but she speaks English too.” The train wound up taking twelve hours instead of ten, and then we all had to get to where we were going. I felt too tired to haul out to NuBlu and check out Butch Morris’ conductions.

I wound up staying at a different hostel this time, in the East Village, a few blocks from Union Square. The immediate area didn’t really suggest anything to do – either walk the few blocks to Union Square or down to the Lower East Side. The vibe in that area was a little strange – it indeed felt like a village with all the small storefronts and restaurants, but it also felt a little lifeless compared to a few blocks down. As I returned to the hostel from the BMI meeting, a guy flew in front of me and wrestled down the guy attempting to steal his bike.

I was able to maintain my Tuesday morning bagel routine, at David’s Bagels on 1^st Ave. Afterwards, my friend had asked me to go pick up some coffee for her at Porto Rico on Bleecker Street. I walked the wrong way out of the subway, again, and wound up standing in front of Bleecker Street Records, a very very dangerous record shop with tons of hard-to-find (in my experience) R&B/soul compilations. In the tradition of many Montreal used book stores, a cat slept beside the entryway to the poster department. My coffee mission took precedence and I forced myself to leave empty-handed. I am convinced that Heaven must smell like the entrance to Porto Rico, with the various rich aromas of their fresh beans mingling together wonderfully.

Mike Holober ran the BMI meeting this time around, and once again gave very specific guidance and places to revisit. It was great to see everyone after my absence, and to hear what they’re working on, from revisions to new pieces. We seem to be having trouble securing a venue for our year-end concert, as Merkin Hall is under construction and some of the rental fees for other halls are astronomical. Watch this space, and/or MySpace, for more information. Given the calibre of stuff I’ve heard in the readings, the concert promises to be a strong one.

In my perusal of All About Jazz-New York, trying to figure out what to do this week, my first NYC visit post-Tonic, one listing jumped out at me: Eli Degibri, Mark Turner, Ben Street and Jeff Ballard at Louis 649 in the Lower East Side. Walking distance from the hostel, one of my favourite drummers ever who I’d had yet to see live, and a killer chordless quartet. I made sure to go. I got there early to secure a seat, which proved to be a truly wise decision, as Louis is smaller than anything I expected and was crammed to standing-room-only capacity. I only stayed for the first set, which consisted of an abstracted “Bye Bye Blackbird,” a backbeat tune (possibly original) that I didn’t know the name of, and a scorching “Walkin’.” Eli Degibri was listed as the leader, whose work I only know from one Herbie Hancock DVD he’s on. He’s a typical post-Coltrane, post-Henderson, post-Brecker modern tenor, with the requisite grasp of false fingerings and multiphonics. He was just flying all over the horn all set, and though there were moments that were interesting and promising, usually during trades with Mark Turner, I found myself paying more attention to Ballard and Street’s hookup. I’ve never heard Jeff Ballard play standards and swing for that amount of time, and he’s a monster at it. The second tune allowed him to unleash his modified Latin-influenced “Poinciana” beat that he does so well, and at one point he hinted at the drum ‘n’ bass groove he’s so adept at (Mehldau’s cover of “Knives Out” or Ben Allison’s “Riding the Nuclear Tiger”) but never went the whole way. Ben Street was really solid, and made walking solos sound interesting. I was fascinated by Mark Turner’s playing; in stark contrast to Degibri, the editing and process he went through was visible and audible, and the precise, intervallically diverse lines he played had such strong conception and conviction.

I ended my stay in New York by speaking a lot of French. At Louis, I was sitting beside one woman who lived in Montreal for a few years, along with two of her college friends from France. Back at the hostel, two French girls had checked in, in addition to the Franco-Ontarienne. There was a lot of confusion over sleeping accommodations, to the point where we addressed another roommate (a guy presumably from the South or Southwest, by his accent) in French out of habit.

PS: Happy belated birthday to Darcy. I arrived in town two days after his concert (which I am about to go listen to) and unaware it was his birthday.

Shutting the lid

In another crushing blow to the independent proliferation of creative arts, Pandora.com has been banned from streaming to various countries, including Canada (as of today). I'd gone through a love/hate relationship with the site. The idea, for those who haven't used it or heard of it, is to create custom streaming stations based on artists or songs with similarities determined by a bunch of music theory geeks in a back room. It can be further refined by user ratings. The concept is great, and has parallels with Last.fm or Yahoo!'s LaunchCast, but it has a vast database of music and may be the only one to purportedly deal with music on theoretical terms. My only qualm with it is in the results, and granted I'm a little picky. It takes a lot of tweaking because the areas isolated by the theoreticians may not be the common threads I hear. (It's also a bit disingenuous to claim all Brazilian music is related because it has Portuguese lyrics.) I had greater success with more minimal and popular forms of music, like the last station I created, seeded from the Jimmy Castor Bunch's "It's Just Begun."

According to founder Tim Westergren, the issue at hand is that Canada does not have an adequate license to cover what they do - it would need to be a nearly exact counterpart to the DMCA/SoundExchange combo in the States. That claim leaves me dumbfounded; between CRIA, CMRRA and SOCAN, we don't have adequate licensing for something like Pandora? My initial feeling is Westergren and co. just didn't know where to look.

The fact that Pandora only recently acquired the ability to associate IP addresses with locations not only befuddles me (as my blog's SiteMeter's been available for free for a long time now), but also raises the question: how does Pandora's service differ from Last.fm's radio features, or David Byrne's radio stream (or Kyle Gann's, or any number of streams I can get through iTunes), or the fact that I can listen and watch webcast material from various NPR affiliates across the US?

I've never come across an industry so entirely out of touch with the desires of its consumers as the music industry. As someone commented on the Pandora blog, "Other industries can only *dream* of treating their customers with the contempt that the music industry does." I've said it before: as a musician and composer, yes, I'd love to be compensated adequately for my work, but as it stands right now, the attention I would garner through having plays on MySpace, Last.fm, Pandora and various college/community stations internationally would only result in further compensation through gigs, potential album sales, etc etc. As a journalist and broadcaster, I get a kick out of programming music for whoever may be listening, and as a music fan I'm always into that one killer track someone sends out over the airwaves that is entirely new to me.

***

I'm going to New York next week after another protracted absence due to prior commitments and inclement weather. Monday the 21st is an embarrassment of riches that I won't be able to catch because of my train's arrival time: Montrealer Francois Bourassa is at Dizzy's with guest David Binney; Butch Morris does a conduction at Nublu; Ingrid Jensen's at 55Bar and Noah Jarrett & Todd Sickafoose's bands are at Bar 4. Depending on what time my train gets in, I may check out Ingrid or Butch Morris, or maybe just head on up to Smoke's jam session as per usual, with special guest Jim Rotondi on trumpet. With the closure of Tonic, I'm at a loss as to what to do on Tuesday night. All About Jazz-NY shows that Eli Degibri is playing with Mark Turner, Ben Street and Jeff Ballard at Louis 649 and Binney is hitting 55Bar again. I may trek over to Barbes and check out Slavic Soul Party.

Tactical manoeuvers

Professor Gann has an intriguing article on the vagaries of teaching and studying composition. He has described my sort of undisciplined nature quite aptly:

Typically, I think - and I ask this as a question - college age composers tend to have tremendous bursts of inspiration, and be almost incapable of composing when not inspired. As your psychology changes in your 20s, you start thinking less of individual moments (or melodies, or motives) and more about strategies for entire pieces (like chord progressions or rhythmic structures). Then it becomes easier to just sit down and start writing, inspired or not, and at some point inspiration creeps in and lifts the piece off the ground.

I tend to start with some sort of catalyst, some sort of initial inspiration, usually a melody or more abstract notion. Once that first melody is generated, then I can work away at it with a little less inspiration. I often find it difficult to return to pieces, especially if I've listened to a lot of music in the intervening time between sittings - my headspace and my relationship to the music is different. One piece of advice I've taken to heart is something Dave Douglas advised me at Banff a couple of years ago: never assume that because it's already on the page it's completed and set in stone, and that the best way to re-evaluate one's decisions is to re-copy the piece by hand. Re-writing it forces a re-thinking: do I really intend this? or is there another, a better way to achieve this effect?

In some cases - more and more frequently, actually - I try to set out objectives for myself to achieve in a piece. Sometimes it is a strictly musical challenge - writing reggae-influenced pieces without resorting to one-drop or dancehall in the rhythm section; sometimes it deals with a sound world or mood I want to achieve; sometimes I try to write a piece the entire opposite of everything I've written, like the one I'm working on now for BMI - uptempo and rocking. The success rate varies, and at certain points the music takes on a life of its own and may move away from the initial concept. I'm alright by that.

Gann wonders if it's even possible to teach composition, and the most successful composition lessons I've had dealt with process and headspace more than anything else. Usually it's one very simple piece of advice that opens a new door of perception. I very rarely write at the piano, or on any instrument, simply because I was advised to write as much as I could in my head and on paper and then move it to the piano if necessary. Later on, I found that if I write directly on Sibelius, I wind up taking the easy way out, whereas with pencil and paper the music is a lot more intentional. Michael Mossman, Don Byron, and Dave Douglas all advocate demanding certain questions of a piece before it is written, and by doing that one narrows down possibilities. I don't always start with those questions, because unlike Douglas I still do hear melodies in my head and indulge them, but once I hear those melodies I try to discover their universes.

I have had some very nuts-and-bolts composition lessons at BMI, courtesy of Jim, Mike Abene and Mike Holober, and usually it's more to do with the "lost in translation" pitfalls of orchestration than anything to do with the structure of the piece itself. Forcing myself to bring in substantial amounts of new material has made me aware of my clichés/formulas/preferences (the term varies depending on how self-critical I'm feeling), which is possibly the best composition lesson of all. I'm starting to self-identify as a composer though not solely so; I love playing too much to ever entirely leave it behind.

Lately, I've gotten into drawing inspiration from literature and film. Not by necessarily writing programmatic music, though. One piece I wrote for the trio, "Bella," was inspired by hearing Caetano Veloso's voice singing the Neruda poem (from The Captain's Verses) in my head. I "transcribed" the first stanza and worked from there. I guess one could call it a text setting, except it's not for voice. I had a similar sensation when I read Jorge Luis Borges' "Heraclito." I still need to set that.

I'm also tempted to try and utilize an organizational process I discovered by reading Murakami's Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World, a desire buttressed by watching David Lynch's Inland Empire last night. Both Murakami and Lynch set up organizational structures that initially seem fragmented, but as they progress the reader/viewer becomes aware of their properties, and some sort of unity is achieved at the end. Well, not entirely - the clues are fairly obvious in both Murakami and Lynch, but they still wind up being complete mindfucks.

Square pegs, round tables

A quick link - Carl (Zoilus) Wilson has a rather thorough five part recap of the Experience Music Project Pop Conference, and raises many questions that I'd like to weigh in on at a later date. Go forth and ruminate.

Also, Ethan on this business of creative music. Again, I think we may be at a fallow point in the financial backing of our music, what with label dissolutions, rampant venue closings and the like, but creatively there seems to be so much springing up.

What I take away from both Carl and Ethan is that the rhetoric needs to move away from lamenting the disappearance of the old models - crit-lit in print, traditional venues/receptions/career paths of creative music - and embrace the burgeoning alternatives.

Filling the blanks

Apologies for the protracted absence again, dear readers; between rehearsals, gigs, technical glitches, and life, I've been away from the blogosphere for a while.

Most of my time these past few weeks was spent rehearsing with May Cheung for her final graduation recital. She put together a great band for the event - myself, Dave Watts on bass and Karl Schwonik on drums, with Phil Parenteau guesting on tenor sax on a couple of tunes. It was my first time playing with May, Dave and Karl. The last time I played with Phil was in second year. May chose some fantastic and challenging repertoire - the monster being a transcription of Kurt Elling's recording of "Downtown" off Live in Chicago. Written by Russell Ferrante of the Yellowjackets, the chart we got was actually sent to May by Ferrante himself, and for that alone he has my utmost respect. It's a deceptively tricky tune; it sounds difficult, and it takes a little while to grasp, but on the page it's not nearly as hard as it sounds. (Then again, I didn't have to do that bass-vocal soli.)

Last night, I went to see Fieldtrip, fresh off their Banff Centre residency and a national tour. Full disclosure: Colin, Pat and Mark friends and frequent colleagues. They've got a unique sound - a chordless trio with alto is rare to begin with. Colin's alto tone is very edgy, somewhere between Cannonball and Ornette, though he can get it down to a whisper when he wants to. They play tunes to their fullest and are equally comfortable with free improv; indeed, many tunes would start with a theme, break away into open improvisation, and culminate in a new theme or a re-iteration of the earlier theme. The melodies are quite tonal and almost traditional. Pat spent a year in Africa, and I may be projecting the influence of kora on his bass playing, but objectively, he spent a lot of time in thumb position with open string drones, and his facility has vastly improved since I heard him last (and he was really good then, too). Mark is one of the most sensitive drummers I've had the pleasure of playing with, and I always love listening to colleagues in their other bands, with a little bit of distance. I'm really proud of those guys. I wish I could have stayed longer, but I'm fighting a cold and was fading fast.

Tomorrow night (Tuesday/May Day), I'm playing with drummer Wali Muhammad, bassist James Challenger, and vocalist Sara Latendresse at Winnie's (1455 Crescent). It's a new residency for the month of May, wherein we get down with our bad selves and cover some old-school R&B and neo-soul. Sara and I knew each other back in Toronto, but I haven't played with her much since we've both been in Montreal. It's going to be a fun night.

World Skip the Beat Playlist 4/30/2007

World Skip the Beat - FUNDING DRIVE edition
Hosts: Shawn Kennedy & David Ryshpan

Milton Trio Banana - "Alegria, Alegria" (s/t)
Dom Salvador e Abolição - "O Rio" (Som Sangue e Raca)
Hermeto Pascoal - "Little Cry for Him" (Slave's Mass)
Caetano Veloso - "Blue Skies" (A Foreign Sound)
Curumin - "Solidão Gasolina" (Achados e Perdidos)
King Sunny Ade - "Mo Ti Mo" (And his African Beats)
Angelique Kidjo w/ Joss Stone - "Gimme Shelter" (Djin Djin)
*Autorickshaw - "So the Journey Goes" (So the Journey Goes)
*Kiran Ahluwalia - "Meri Gori Gori" (s/t)
MIDIval PunditZ - "Fabric" (s/t)
Natacha Atlas - "Buthaddak" (Mish Maoul)
Andy Palacio & Garifuna Collective - "Amuñegu" (Watina)
Fanfare Ciocarlia - "Ibrahim" (Queens and Kings)
Ivo Papasov & His Bulgarian Wedding Band - "Byala Stala" (Orpheus Ascending)
Balkan Beat Box vs. Mahala Rai Banda - "Red Bula" (Electric Gypsyland 2)
Shukar Collective - "Taraf" (Urban Gypsy)
Konono No. 1 - "TP Couleur Café" (Congotronics 2)
Ex-Centric Sound System - "Bring Your Calabashe" (West Nile Funk)
Antibalas - "Beaten Metal" (Security)

As evidenced by the link above, CKUT is in funding drive mode. Gift giveaways and pledge info are available at the link above. The goal is $100K, but every little bit counts to keep CKUT on the air. I'll be hosting a special Funding Drive edition of Jazz Euphorium on Wednesday at 8 pm, and I'll be joined in the studio by Gordon Allen (pocket trumpet), Fred Bazil (tenor sax) and Remy Bélanger-de-Beauport (cello) for some live-on-air free improv.

RIP Andrew Hill

The great jazz composer and pianist Andrew Hill lost his battle with lung cancer this morning. He was 75.

I was a latecomer to Andrew Hill's music, only getting into it around the time of his millennial "comeback" with Dusk, A Beautiful Day and Greg Osby's Invisible Hand. His sense of line was invaluable in my development, and something I'm still trying to incorporate into my music.

Remembrances at Night after Night and be.jazz. Mwanji also has a link to one of Hill's final public performances (if not his last).

Each passing year seems to be more and more devastating for the loss of masters. In this young year we've already lost Michael Brecker, Alice Coltrane, Kurt Vonnegut and Hill, among many others. I become increasingly grateful for every note I get to hear, and more so for the notes I'm blessed to create and share.

Have you ever seen the rain?

This nor'easter may or may not put a damper on my travel to the BMI reading on Tuesday. I'll only know early tomorrow morning whether Amtrak is running and whether I'll be able to get a room at my hostel of choice. I'm eager to return to NYC after an unfortunately long absence, due to other commitments here in Montreal. The piece I'm working on is significantly different from anything I've written before, so I'm curious to hear how it sounds. I had a sort of constructional epiphany a couple of days ago, and thanks to Sibelius it was easy to enact. Normally I write pieces top-to-bottom and rarely reorganize anything; that happens in revisions, post-reading. It's also the most "rock"y of any music I've written.

Some gig announcements for the New Yorkers who read this blog:
- Tomorrow at Bar 4 in Park Slope (7th Avenue & 15th St.), guitarist/composer Lily Maase brings her band thesuiteUnraveling, to the stage after a hiatus. She's a really imaginative writer; I got to work with her briefly in Banff a couple of years ago, and her music really pushed the limits of my comfort zone. I've missed her recent hits in Montreal due to conflicts, unfortunately.
- If I make it to NYC, I'm definitely going to be at Ethan's 7 pm Klavierhaus hit, featuring the music of Bach and duos with violist Mat Maneri.
- Tuesday, thesuiteUnraveling's altoist Peter Van Huffel graces the Stone's stage (such as it is) with a new project called Quartetto Cui Bono, featuring Canadian ex-pats Michael Bates on bass, Ernesto Cervini on drums, and Art Bailey on accordion with special guest violinist Alicia Svigals. I'm guessing there's klezmer influences somewhere. They hit at 10 pm.
- Next Tuesday, April 24th, fellow BMI-er Mariel Berger brings her Obsidian Nonet to the Bowery Poetry Club. I always look forward to hearing her pieces at the readings - she's a bright, vibrant soul with some intricate, intriguing music.

Manhattan on the Rideau - 04/11/2007

So, as Mwanji mentioned in an earlier comment, this past Wednesday Indigone Trio went down to the National Arts Centre in Ottawa to participate in a videoconference master class with Kenny Barron. NAC and Manhattan School of Music have this broadband linkup so that people performing in Ottawa can be coached by MSM professors. I had participated in one of these master classes a year ago, when the McGill Jazz Orchestra went down and played student compositions for Michael Abene. I attended as a composer, not playing in the band, so it was a nice change to be playing on the Fourth Stage of NAC.

The attendance in Ottawa was astounding. For the Abene master class there were only a smattering of people; this time it was standing room only, even with additional chairs. There were three other pianists performing: Steve Boudreau, from Ottawa; Hoyuen Lee from Humber College; and Victor Cheng from U of T. Both the Toronto pianists study with Dave Restivo, one of my favourite piano players from my old stomping grounds.

My participation in this whole thing was very last minute, as my fellow McGillian Chad Linsley was supposed to attend but couldn't, due to a conflict; McGill professor Joe Sullivan ran into me before a rehearsal and asked me to do it. I was under the impression that Alex and Phil were not only going to play for me, but serve as a house rhythm section. I didn't realize that the clinic was geared towards solo piano, so I felt like I stuck out like a sore thumb. It was all rather hastily organized between me, Joe, and Pace Sturdevant at NAC, whose assistance and patience were invaluable.

Barron started the master class by briefly talking and playing through his history, starting with a short boogie/blues excerpt, then a piece played in the style of Tommy Flanagan, Monk's "Light Blue" and a Monkish rendition of "I'm Getting Sentimental Over You." I was quite impressed with the quality of the transmission from Manhattan to NAC; it sounded like sitting in the first few rows of a concert hall, if the piano were miked. There were a couple of glitches in the feed, but they were sorted out in short order.

Steve Boudreau then played "How Deep is the Ocean," in a manner reminiscent of Chick Corea's solo excursions, extending and massaging the form. He also played an original impressionistic ballad. Turns out we both studied with Jeff Johnston, which isn't surprising given our similar tastes and biases. Indigone played "Day Dream" as per Mr. Barron's request, and then we played "Not You Again," the Scofield line on "There Will Never Be Another You." Later in the Q&A, Barron revealed that Scofield is one of his preferred guitarists, so we lucked out with that selection - the other uptempo choices we had on our list were "Law Years" and "Enumeration" (my original composition).

Hoyuen Lee played a very minimalist rendition of "It Never Entered My Mind," starting with a series of As in different octaves. It would have fit in well with David Byrne's recent "one-note" concert at Zankel Hall. He followed it up with "All The Things You Are," exploding and exploring the form. His citation of Radiohead as an influence wasn't surprising, but his mention of hip-hop was, as I can't really decipher what about hip-hop had filtered into his playing. Of course, solo piano + Radiohead immediately conjures the spirit of Mehldau, which I know is something I try to escape. No disrespect to Mehldau or Lee, but it seems like Mehldau is the omnipresent comparison for pianists these days, and one that I've gotten a fair bit myself. Victor Cheng closed out the master class with impressive takes on "Tones for Joan's Bones" and "Hot House," swinging hard in appropriate ways. Of all the pianists, he was my favourite.

Barron is a fantastic musician, but he seems to be part of a camp of players who rarely, if ever, consciously tackle aspects of their playing and, as such, do not (I'm hesitant to say can not) address issues in specificity. The comments he had for me were diametrically opposed to what I've been told in the past, so maybe I've fixed my previous problems too much. On "Day Dream," I left a lot of space and played the melody sparingly, as Jeff always said I took up too much room. Barron felt I left too much space. He advised playing with the soft pedal, which to me can often be a crutch. The soft pedal is a specific sound, and isn't the same as a soft or light touch. On "Not You Again," he said the trio didn't have enough forward momentum, a far cry from our days when guitarist Mike Gauthier called us an "energy band" and every tune took off, whether it needed to or not. He didn't really have much to say about Lee's modernist excursions, and the most specific thing he said to Victor Cheng was that his left hand was getting in his right hand's way (which was true at times), but didn't really give much detail in how to go about fixing it.

During the Q&A, after a ridiculously oddball question (some archaic piece of trivia that had nothing to do with the previous hour and a half) and some fluff questions ("When can we see Sphere again?"; "Who's your favourite guitar player?") good questions about technique and practicing came up. Barron admitted he plays a lot and doesn't practice much, and doesn't have a warm-up routine. He also said he doesn't work with his students on technique because he doesn't really have to - all his students have their technique in order. Alex asked him if he had any ensemble rehearsal tips, which he didn't aside from "play together more." Someone asked about balancing one's solo playing and one's trio or group playing, and again Barron admitted that he never really consciously worked on solo playing, he just had a bunch of solo gigs and figured it out on the bandstand. Combined with the physical disconnect of the videoconferencing, the master class felt almost impersonal. I don't mean to denigrate Barron's musicianship, but there's only so much one can get out of generalities. I'd almost rather deal with someone like Wayne Shorter, whose statements often live in their own little world - at the very least it gets the mental gears turning.

After the session had ended, I had the pleasure to meet James Hale, of DownBeat and Coda fame. He interviewed me briefly for a piece he's writing about this whole NAC/MSM interface, I'm not sure for which publication.

God bless you, Mr. Vonnegut

The venerated and controversial satirist, Kurt Vonnegut, has passed away at age 84. Unlike many people, I didn't read Vonnegut in high school. I went on a tear of making up for lost time a couple of years ago, reading Hocus Pocus, The Sirens of Titan, Slapstick and a couple of others, I believe, all in the course of one summer. One thing that always struck me about his writing - besides his casual yet dry wit - was how he sets up these running gags, usually catchphrases that recur at (in/)opportune times. Ethan refers to "So be it" in Slaughterhouse Five; my favourite may be the use of "the excrement hit the air conditioning" in Hocus Pocus.

***

Via Dan, a letter from guitarist and activist Marc Ribot regarding the closing of Tonic (tomorrow) and Sin-é (a couple of weeks ago) and the changing place of improvised and/or experimental music in Manhattan. He links to the collective blog Take It To The Bridge. Unfortunately, not living in NYC, I haven't been able to make many of their meetings nor can I attend the last hurrah tomorrow night at a club that quickly became an important part of my life over the past few months. If you're within commuting distance of the place, show your support for fringe music in the Lower East Side.

***

There has been lots of buzz on message boards and blogs about the social experiment conducted by the Washington Post and Joshua Bell. A quick summary for those who haven't been following: Bell, a fantastic violinist and one-time poster boy for major label classical indulgences, was "busking" in DC's L'Enfant Plaza metro station during morning rush hour. They then surveyed the reactions (or lack thereof) of commuters. The consensus in many a post is how ashamed North America should feel as a culture, that they can't recognize beauty and art when it's staring them in the face. Is there something inherently wrong with classical music that even when stripped of its "elitist" trappings and customs, it still doesn't attract listeners? I don't really feel like that's the point at all.

Personally, I somewhat resent busking. The idea of having music thrust upon me, without my desire or consent, is not one I appreciate. In five years of daily commuting in Montreal, I've learned to tune out the subway musicians and the blaring iPods, or at least attempt to. I make a private note of which buskers are halfway decent, but I rarely tip or even go over to them. (The one recent exception was a kid in Lionel-Groulx metro doing a passable version of "Karma Police," only because I would never expect to hear that by a subway musician.) But quite honestly, because I consume so much music between my own performances and rehearsals, composing, record reviews, radio shows and pleasure listening, I don't want to be bombarded with anything during my commute, be it Rachmoninoff or Crowded House. And if I'm unfortunate enough to be commuting during morning rush hour, the only things on my mind are:
- Where's the metro train? and
- Has the caffeine kicked in yet?

Would I have appreciated the musical quality? Surely, but privately. Would I have recognized it as Joshua Bell? Probably not. Does that make me a horrible person, or uncouth pseudo-aficionado of the arts? No. It just makes me yet another impatient commuter. And in DC especially, time is precious. I don't think some Capitol Hill flunky can afford to be late for work just because some dude was playing nice tunes at a subway stop, and that is the case for many of us. If I'm commuting that early in the morning, it's because I have a very important place to be, and it could be Oscar Peterson at the metro entrance and I'd still probably offer nothing more than mild bemusement.

I have noticed that on the whole, I've experienced higher-calibre musicians in the NYC subways than here. There's this Mahavishnu-sounding violinist in Penn Station when I get off the train, and I've encountered some passable alto renditions of Jobim in various subway corridors.

All I want from tomorrow is to get it better than today

A quick plug/announcement:

Some may know that I'm a big Bruce Hornsby fan, well beyond "The Way It Is." If you haven't heard his music since The Range dissolved in the early '90s, you're missing out on some very inspiring music, and strong piano playing. Today, Easter Monday, is a good chance to rectify that and to do a good deed.

Si Twining, proprietor of the fansite Bruuuce.com has run a "Daily Dose Day" for the past three years, wherein he uploads a live mp3 or other such goodie (rare demos provided by Hornsby himself, videos, etc) every hour on the hour for a full 24 hours. In return for his generosity he asks his patrons to donate to the charity he has linked to on his site. In the past, and again this year, the recipient has been the Merlin Foundation, helping them build a Multiple Sclerosis therapy centre in the UK (where Si is located). This year a second charity has been added - the Carolinas Healthcare Foundation for ALS (Lou Gehrig's disease). The addition of this charity is at the behest of Hornsby's long-time assistant, Melissa Reagan, who has recently been diagnosed with ALS. I only had one e-mail encounter with Melissa, but she has been an integral part of the Hornsby organization and everyone who has dealt with her has nothing but praise for her. I wish her all the best.

So go forth and download, and if you're not a Hornsby fan, at least donate whatever you can. Later on today, Si will be activating Caesar Salad, the second edition of two-volume tributes to Bruce's music. Once it's live, you can download my cover of "Valley Road."

Been caught stealing

It saddens me that the 100th post in this blog is dedicated to the theft of instruments.

Patrick Krief, a Montreal multi-instrumentalist probably best known for his role as guitarist in The Dears, has had his jam space cleaned out, which he shares with a guy named Mike Nash. In the bounty were Nash's iMac and backup hard drives and Krief's white 1999 Fender Stratocaster, which family and friends bought him for his 18th birthday. The list, complete with serial numbers, is over at Krief's MySpace and enumerates around $20K in gear. He's offering $1000, no questions asked, in reward for the return of his Strat.

Robbery absolutely sucks, no matter what gets taken, but when it's loaded with original music that can't be replaced (in the case of Nash's computer drives) or instruments filled with priceless sentimentality, it cuts especially deep. Montrealers, keep an eye out in the pawn shops for this gear and let's all be aware and cautious of our gear and its surroundings.

The politics of fusion

Via Ethan and Dan, who got it from Jeff Parker, a great 1968 DownBeat piece by Wayne Shorter, "Creativity and Change." One prescient passage, below, reminded me of similar discourse around the height of the "jam-band" phenomenon, when fans of bands like Phish and String Cheese Incident also started gravitating towards Medeski, Martin & Wood, John Scofield, and Charlie Hunter:

When I hear a jazz musician say, "Well the young people—rock ‘n’ roll is their thing—they’re not going to even listen to jazz"—I think that they’ll change and grow up. Rock ‘n’ roll is changing with them. I’m hearing a whole lot of things from them. The "labels" are being taken off the bottles. As I said about the different scales, Western and Greek, it’s all one big thing. I saw kids with their long hair, beards and sandals sitting right down in front of the bandstand and they were part of a thing called jazz.

Speaking of labels being taken off the bottles, Hot Jazz meets Metametrics: Kyle Gann's impressively honest piece about utilizing external genre influences for his own gain. The discussion of the use of pop influence in classical music (and vice-versa to whatever extent that exists nowadays) hearkens back to Dave Douglas' essays around his piece Blue Latitudes a couple of years ago. The strength of a hybrid is the degree to which it integrates its heritages and traditions into a new creation. Even in the most irreverent music, there has to be some sort of respect for every element, otherwise it's shoddy patchwork.

I feel these essays are related, in the sense that the debate around the validity of pop-influenced classical music (read a few posts back on Gann's blog, or surf over to NewMusicBox) is fostered mostly by the critical, competitive spirit foisted upon art that Shorter writes about. The idea that hybrid music somehow demeans the music it's fusing has more to do with staunch traditionalism from critical figures. I know that in my own work, if I borrow external influences to jazz, I bend over backwards not to make it sound like a parody. One of the pieces I've written this year was inspired by the dancehall-toasting cabbies in Jamaica, but I did not want the drummer, much less the whole band, to play reggae. There's not much music more ridiculous than having 13 horns attempting to bubble and skank away in concert.

Musical discourse also needs to learn to separate the music from the musician. I consider myself a jazz musician, in that the jazz vocabulary and tradition is the bedrock of my musical education, and that a certain jazz sensibility informs everything I play, be it playing keyboards in a hip-hop band or writing for string quartet. That doesn't necessarily mean that my involvement turns the projects into "jazz-rap" or "jazz classical"; I try to approach each musical tradition on its own terms. As Gann mentions, there's a difference between writing a piece about (or a depiction of) jazz or reggae or hip-hop, and writing a jazz, reggae or hip-hop piece. There's a certain amount of dedication that varies between the two.