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.

Late additions

...to the blogroll, that is. I've belatedly added Peter Breslin's Stochasticactus to the list; like me, he's a musician/radio jockey, and often brings up quite challenging issues in the state of improvised music. Also stirring the pot is The Improvising Guitarist (whom I long thought was the alter ego of Stanley J. Zappa - my apologies to both of them), with a fabulous cache of essays on gender, race, and identity within music.

A non-music blog (blasphemy!) has been added: Freshwater Mermaid, a fellow Montrealer with acerbic wit and great insight into local, national and international issues. If you dig deeper into the blog, you'll find excerpts of a novel-in-progress. It may well be complete by now, I'm not sure.

The mighty Helen Spitzer, who helmed CBC's Brave New Waves for 8 momentous weeks before the show's untimely demise, has left the blogosphere for now. Jesse Jarnow is on vacation. Under the Mediatrics banner, a belated welcome to Hank Shteamer.

***

Steve has word that Tonic will shut its doors mid-April. When that headline popped up in my RSS feed, I was stunned. Tonic had become an integral part of my NYC experience, and I will miss it terribly. I'm working on a eulogy for PanPot right now.

***

The final show of Indigone Trio's March residency is tonight at Le Parc des Princes. We've broken in drummer Phil Melanson admirably. 8:30 pm, 2 sets of original compositions by ourselves and other people.

***

The other night, I was working on a new piece for BMI at my local Second Cup, and it was easily the strangest crowd I've ever experienced there: two tourists, above and beyond expecting waitresses at a Second Cup, spouting the most disjointed conservative rhetoric I've heard outside the O'Reilly Factor (accusing the recent Quebec election of not having issues - I suppose health care and education aren't issues enough - as well as accusing Canada of being a lefty-pinko land of lollipops and roses sufficiently out of touch with the reality of the rest of the world as the US sees it)*; two women rather loudly gossiping about the ineptitude of the returning officers and other scrutineers; and one guy who, after intently watching me work, started rambling at me about various quasi-related subjects.

* - the true irony: these guys were sitting right beside me, while the piece I was working on was catalyzed by my friend organizing the benefit concert for Darfur.

Jot notes

- My review of the Boxhead Ensemble's Nocturnes (featuring V5 cellist Fred Lonberg-Holm and Atavistic stalwart drummer Frank Rosaly is up at Panpot.
- Tonight marks the last of the dinner/cocktail-hour Indigone Trio sets at Le Parc des Princes (5293 ave du Parc, between Fairmount & St. Viateur). Next Thursday, we start at 8:30.
- Tomorrow, Kids Eat Crayons come out of the sandbox and invade O'Hara's Pub (1197 University). Our drummer/composer, Dennis W. Lee, leads a second life as a ska guitarist in Stepper, who will be joining us.
- Saturday marks another edition of Groove Night, featuring Indigone Trio bassist Alex Mallett making a rare appearance on electric. That's at Bar L'Oblique (1669 St. Hubert).

Les speakers feed et crachent

I went to see Karkwa last night, continuing the tour behind their album Les tremblements s'immobilisent. The last time I saw the band was before Les tremblements came out, so it was interesting to see what two years (give or take) on the road have done.

Karkwa's always been a tight band, and they've only gotten tighter. Guitarist Louis-Jean Cormier is still coming out of a sonic school of guitar playing reminiscent of the Edge or Jonny Greenwood, but his voice - as a singer and a songwriter - has gotten stronger. Their first album, Le pensionnat des établis, owed as much to Rage Against the Machine and Red Hot Chili Peppers as to Radiohead. Last night proved they're developing an original sound, and they've moved away from the funk-rock à la québecois (which they did admirably, I must say) and adopted an indie/post-rock vibe similar to their Montreal cohorts Patrick Watson, People for Audio and Pawa Up First (the latter counts Karkwa percussionist Julien Sagot as a member). Keyboardist François Lafontaine was impressive as always, adding to Cormier's textures and occasionally unleashing an actuelle-inspired rip or two.

Most of the music was drawn from Les tremblements, along with some new songs introduced and "Hold-Up" from Le pensionnat. I was impressed by their consistently creative harmonies and their willingness to extend their song forms. Both sets were introduced with soundscape creations (d)evolving into one of their tunes, and they tacked on an intriguing coda to "La marche."The penchant for odd meters has turned into an embrace of 3/4 or 6/8, and the genre-jumping of their first album has matured into a better synthesis of various influences. From the new songs they played last night, I look forward to Karkwa's future.

The color of memory

As have been rightfully linked throughout the jazz blog world, Mwanji's two essays on jazz and race are fantastic and important reading. I want to touch on a tangent of it that comes up in Matana Roberts' blog, especially in the comment from Jaleel Shaw. He writes:

I believe there are many reasons why we don't have more blacks at our shows. One is education. When I look back to my education in the public school, I wasn't taught about my culture at all. When I think about most of my fellow students, most of their parents weren't either. When I was coming up playing the horn, almost all of my music teachers in public schools were discouraging. They tried their best to make me quit and definitely didn't want to see me make it. ... So if most of the kids today aren't taught about their culture, their music, where are they going to go? What are they going to gravitate to?

There's two points in here that need to be addressed: the lack of respect or awareness of cultural history; and the accessibility of the music.

On one of my recent trips to NYC, my hostelmates were a bunch of gangly Swiss teenage (or early-20s) males. They were graffiti artists, with an arsenal of spraypaint bottles and Sharpie markers, sketching on pads at every turn. They were also avid hip-hop listeners, having gone on a crate-digging trip earlier in the week and playing tunes from their iPods when I got to the hostel. I asked them about the popularity of hip-hop culture in Europe, and they said that it was more popular there than in the States. Now, I'm talking about the totality of hip-hop culture here, the four elements that KRS-One and the rest of the old-school refer to: breakdancing, MCing, DJing, and graffiti. (The debatable fifth element would be beatboxing.) The Under Pressure festival here in Montreal every summer is essentially a block party celebrating those four elements, and at the best of times the crowd is half-and-half, but predominantly white. This is not a rhetorical question, this is one I would love an answer to: what has gone on in black communities that has prohibited them from respecting, admiring, and honouring their own cultural history?

MuchMusic (the Canadian relative of MTV) runs a 30-second spot every Black History Month, flashing the faces of pioneering black artists in jazz, soul, hip-hop, and rock. The idea is that without them, there would not have been any of these genres. It closes with a black kid saying "No way," and fades out to "kNOw the history." It's a travesty that anyone would have to be reminded of Prince's or Hendrix's contributions to modern music. At a certain point, it ceases to be strictly Black History and is more generally History, that shouldn't have to be relegated to a certain month. Christian McBride and ?uestlove both worried, in the wake of James Brown's death, that younger generations will remember Mr. Brown through Eddie Murphy's impersonations. James Brown was and is the lifeblood of so much music - funk, soul, and hip-hop to name but three - that it seems like a ludicrous possibility to me, but it may be a reality.

Shaw also brings up your boy, Flavor Flav, indulging in various incarnations of "minstrelsy" reality-TV style, in the 21st century, and Matana argues that he's essentially tarnishing the legacy of Public Enemy. I agree. Chuck D is still active, but on the fringes; Flav is a household vision, Viking helmet, clocks and all. Shaw and Roberts raise the question: can we no longer recognize minstrelsy? Do we no longer care? Why do so many hip-hop videos propagate the clichés of bling and sex, and any MC with real things to say gets lumped in the "conscious" camp? And this is in hip-hop, the lingua franca of modern African-American culture for 20-odd years. It doesn't bode well for jazz.

I remember something Branford Marsalis wrote a while ago, on his website I believe, essentially saying that jazz was something upwardly-mobile black people were supposed to like once they reached a certain age. That very well may be true, and it would also explain the "'black jazz is stuck in the mainstream and/or past' sentiment." There's a certain type of jazz upwardly-mobile 40-something Blacks are supposed to gravitate towards, and young Black avant-garde artists don't fit that bill.

The second issue is one of accessibility, which I've written about before. Never mind the interest or ability (or lack thereof) to teach students the history of African-American music, instruments cost money. Music lessons cost money. Conservatory training costs a lot of money. LaTasha Diggs responds to Matana's post saying that she had to pass on the Alice Coltrane concert because it was too expensive. Yes, artists should be paid, but I'll reiterate my belief that cover charges plus drink minimums add up to a cost that can be prohibitively expensive for the most interested listeners. It's necessary to supplement these concerts with lower-cost community involvement, like going to the high schools or community centres or whatever the case may be. If the listeners won't come to the musicians, the musicians need to go to the listeners. I remember in elementary and high school we would sometimes have visiting performers that would put on shows that dealt with some sort of knowledge or awareness. From what I've read about Matana's Coin Coin project, a modified version of it would be fantastic in schools. Jazz has to get out of its non-social aspect and engage its communities. That's where the AACM has succeeded.

Tomorrow is the question

Much is being made in the blogosphere of the current state of jazz, vis-à-vis education and marketing. I dealt with some of these issues earlier; re-reading it now, some of my statements about my own education are a bit unduly harsh, but the generalities of it are still true. There's a definite "meta-narrative" (to borrow Dan Melnick's term) being propagated among most jazz educators and students that is rarely deviated from.

Whenever debates about the state of jazz, or music in general, arise, I tend to balk at the amount of overly pessimistic rhetoric. It's not the music itself that's the problem: in fact, on a purely artistic and creative level, I think it's a fascinating time to be a musician. Every time I walk into CKUT, there's a steady stream of great music sitting in the New Release bin. Many of my colleagues are creating original music on a very high level. The problem lies in how music is presented, and as far as jazz and classical/"new music" goes, recruiting from outside.

Pat's right in accusing the IAJE of being insular. I think the annual conference would benefit from being run a little bit more like South by Southwest, in terms of being more open to the public. To attend the IAJE conference, one must be a member, or sign up for a membership upon registration. Music and musicians need to connect to the outside world and the community at large, and I think that's where the jazz/classical-industrial complex is faltering. Increasingly relegated to ivory towers and elite concert halls, it loses touch with the layman - and even a lot of students. Cover charges and drink minimums are often cost-prohibitive for a lot of interested listeners. The Village Vanguard has student discount prices, and I think that needs to go across the board.

I think a lot of people find jazz intimidating - not merely musically, but socially. The sense that prior knowledge of the music is a pre-requisite, that you have to know when to applaud, etc. To combat that, jazz needs to be brought to the people if people are not being brought to jazz. Indigone Trio's played gigs recently to audiences that never would have come to hear us before - in empty "rock" bars or at a quarterfinal of an a cappella competition. In each case, we have reached listeners with our music - not because we dumb it down but because we merely made it available to them. If jazz wants to cultivate younger listeners, bands need to get out to the high schools. Exposure is a wonderful thing, with amazing power. IAJE itself has even proven this -- in 2006 there was a percussion ensemble of middle-school kids ripping the crap out of intricate arrangements of "Spain" and "Caravan," and they had fun doing it! I soared with hope for the future generations.

Hope which is increasing chiselled away as arts education funding in Canada and the US is slashed left and right. I was discussing this with an educator friend, currently teaching at a high school in Montreal. I can't count how many studies have been done showing the importance of music in education, how it improves students' capacities in all areas, etc. Not to disparage maths and sciences, but it's not the be-all and end-all of education. There's a definite decline in the appreciation of culture, and maybe it's due to the lack of attention it receives in the media. I'm drawn to Frank Zappa's quote: "Your children have the right to know that something other than pop music exists."

There's also an underestimation of the potential audience, as listeners and as students. There's these "eureka" moments in music - very strong, almost visceral reactions. The opening of A Love Supreme, for instance. I can only hope to give someone that same feeling. And there's something about the "eureka" moments that arise from improvised music - be it jazz, freestyling MCs, or "jambands" - that are unique; the feeling I got from A Love Supreme was different than how I felt listening to Bartok's Miraculous Mandarin for the first time, but they were both very much epiphanal listening experiences. It's amazing what kids will latch onto if they're given the chance. I was 13 when I heard T.S. Monk's Monk on Monk big band - sitting third row, with the saxophone bells in my face, it was easily one of the best Hallowe'ens I've ever had, and kickstarted my serious interest in jazz.

And people need to be shown that jazz is alive and well today. Monk's music was being played, and re-energized, by living musicians - my introduction to Monk was not merely an artifact, and I think maybe my interest would have been less if it had been. As Darcy mentioned in his comments to Doug Ramsey's post, the biggest detriment to the music is protecting its past without presenting its present and future. [enter your own comment about Ken Burns here] This 13-year-old drummer I met at Cleopatra's Needle a few weeks ago is highly engaged with musicians that are working now; he's far more knowledgeable about the modern state of jazz than I was at 13. Let's hope there are more like him lurking out there in the morass of cultural apathy.

Linkage galore

- Via Dan, an incisive and insightful Vijay Iyer essay at All About Jazz. Finally, someone who can thoughtfully talk about the state of jazz (or any music) without resorting to apocalyptic hyperbole. I take some issue with the idea that music-school graduates are inherently more prone to "safe" music, and that if one struggles one is immediately validated as a musician (which Iyer himself equivocates).

- Via Ropeadope, Peter Costello's layman explanation of new tariffs on Internet radio in the States. Sadly, SOCAN wants to institute a similar thing here, called Tariff 22.

It seems that these changes serve to cast a wider net in order to implicate music sites, audio webcast, webcasts of radio station signals, audiovisual webcasts, webcasts of television station signals and game sites. Tariff 22 proposes a fee of the greater of either 7.5% of the Gross Revenues earned by or 7.5% of the Gross Operating Expenses of the site or service, with a minimum monthly fee of $200.00 for stations in our sector. It is also proposed by SOCAN that these fees be retroactive to January 2006. [...]
Tristis [Ward, National Campus and Community Radio Association representative] says that she agrees with SOCAN in the sense that all art has a value. Artists should receive royalties for the public performance of their music. She believes that stations are diligent about paying the fees to SOCAN. The problem occurs when SOCAN moves to ignore the artists’ desire to have their music promoted — something that stations naturally provide by webcasting their regular feed. The reality of the campus and community radio sector is that stations, faced with increased monthly fees, will simply be forced to pull their Internet feed. Some stations have already done so.
“Royalty collectors should recognize this,” says Tristis. “Stations in our sector are not in it for the money, often the people who are playing and promoting the music are volunteers. There just isn’t any fat to trim to pay for this extra fee.”
She also believes if artists knew about the proposed tariff they would not be in support of it.
“The kind of artists that are played on community and campus radio stations often have few other forums to get their music heard. Most of the time, new artists get exposure because of us. The webcasting offers a broader audience for the
artist but does not bring the station more money.”

Americans, write your Congresspeople. There was an e-mail address at CKUT on how Canadian musicians can protest Tariff 22. I'll get it soon and edit it into this post. Campus/community radio, and Internet radio, is the last bastion of creativity on the airwaves and we need to protect the multiplicity of broadcast voices at all costs.

- Speaking of campus/community radio, my latest Jazz Euphorium playlist is up.

- Indigone Trio hits tomorrow evening at Le Parc des Princes (5293 Parc, between Fairmount & St-Viateur). Our repertoire is growing and we're breaking Phil in quite nicely.

- We're also going to be the judging panel music at the ICCA quarterfinals at Redpath Hall on Saturday night. Two out of the three McGill a cappella groups - Soulstice and Tonal Ecstacy - are in the running this year; Effusion is sitting out after making the finals the past two years. It's always a kick to see what the other groups are doing: last year a group from York University did Kurt Elling's "The Uncertainty of the Poet," and as the judges took exceedingly long to deliberate and Kweku and the Movement exhausted our set, a vocal percussion jam ensued.

As a rule, I have tried to keep this blog apolitical. There's many great resources out there, far more knowledgeable and engaged than I am (like Lindsay or Craig). However, via Darcy, I've come across two very important pieces of legal/political news concerning musicians and artists that bear repeating.

Quick one first: An AFM bulletin encouraging musicians who have had run-ins with damaged gear or unruly airport officials while travelling with their instruments to email tperetti@afm.org with details. Doesn't matter if you're a union member or not, the more voices they have to present to US Congress, the better. I hope this extends to other countries, eventually. I feel especially sorry for any double-reed players who have to explain why they need to have gougers and knives and all sorts of sharp equipment on them when we're no longer allowed to fly with toothpaste in a carry-on.

A more intricate, and more disturbing story, courtesy of Carl (Zoilus) Wilson and Naomi Klein: Music being used as torture at Gitmo, and possibly elsewhere. I'll admit that when I first read inklings of this a few months ago, I laughed at the irony of the US government playing Rage Against the Machine, in any context. But Carl's right - now that torturous music is no longer a metaphor, but very real, it's no longer funny.

Unlike some European legal systems, the anglo-saxon tradition doesn't include droit moral, the "moral rights" of a creator over her work, which (among other things ) includes control over any use of the work that offends the artist's sensibilities. And I'm generally glad that it doesn't. Once a work of art is released into the public sphere, I believe, it becomes part of the collective unconscious, of popular/folk culture; compensation and copyright issues are trickier, but on principle images and ideas should be available for resuse, recontextualization, satire and even misappropriation. I don't think that the Catholic Church should control what artists do with icons of the Virgin Mary, or Muslims the image of Muhammad; and so I don't think Bruce Springsteen should have been able to stop Ronald Reagan from inverting the meaning of Born in the USA for propaganda purposes, though I wish people hadn't been careless enough to fall for it.

But musicians and music lovers' deeper moral rights are violated when the story goes beyond a figurative abuse of cultural discourse to the literal abuse of human subjects. [...] Perhaps the music industry could follow their lead, turning their attention from the "monetization" of music to the weaponization of it for a few heartbeats.

Some artists and composers do have somewhat of a droit moral, though, in the ability to refuse licensing, and I do not begrudge them that. In fact, unlike Carl, I think individual artists should be able to prohibit the use of their work in contexts they do not approve. There's a difference between a specific song and a global folkloric/religious icon like the Virgin Mary or Muhammad. The latter are concepts or models that artists work with - a figure in an artist's original creation, as opposed to an outside institution or corporation using an artist's work verbatim and wholesale. In other words, a more apt comparison would be using a reproduction of Caravaggio's Death of the Virgin for... I don't know, a cocktail mix label or something.

Metacritic

Ethan's interview with Stanley Crouch, David R. Adler's review of Crouch's compilation Considering Genius, and various other bits and pieces spurred this line of thought.

Much has been made of the Internet bestowing the privileges of mass media to anyone who has the mere seconds it takes to register an account, especially in the wake of Idolator's rogue Jackin' Pop extravaganza. Much of it has been a pity party from mainstream media, decrying the fact that indeed everyone now has the power to be a critic, or gatekeeper, or kingmaker, or whatever self-inflating pundit term may be coined the future. But when many mainstream critics have ossified in their tastes, is it really such a bad thing to have a burst of new voices?

Reviews should take the music (or film/production/play/etc) on its own merit, and the ideal critic is one who is as transparent and as catholic as possible. Much of music has a goal, whether it be programmatic music or a concept album (or both), and the best reviews should aptly demonstrate whether it succeeds or fails at achieving said goal. Nate Dorward's rules of reviews are ones I attempt to follow. In my small portfolio of published reviews, I think I've only ever panned a couple of artists here, and I view those as neophyte and immature mistakes. (I still stand by some of the opinions though - you can't call twenty minutes of the same damn thing two different tunes, unless they're parts I and II. Sorry.)

But it's scathing diatribes that bring the audiences and sell the magazines, which is why IAJE will intentionally pit Bob Blumenthal against Christian McBride; it's why people still talk about Pitchfork's over-the-top reaction to a mundane album; and it seems to be the only reason Down Beat still has the Hot Box. Anyone who's read DB for any length of time will know that John McDonough usually doesn't want to have anything to do with free improvisation or electronics (heaven forbid it should be free improvisation WITH electronics); and that John Corbett will praise anything with hefty amounts of "crazy experimental freedom." Jim Macnie and Paul de Barros are the more moderate voices in the box. But as a reader, I don't even look at McDonough's and Corbett's reviews for substance anymore: I know their tastes and I can tell just by the artist and/or label whether they'll like the record or not. Arthur Kaptainis of the Montreal Gazette makes it abundantly clear, in nearly every new music review he's forced to pen, that he feels it's a chore to attend concerts made up of music post-Schoenberg. Again, as an educated reader, I know exactly what to expect if it's a new music review with his byline. And I feel sorry for the readers whose only exposure to this music is through superficial tripe.

Writers like Crouch, whose biases precede them, get in their own way and in the way of their subjects. Crouch's reputation for "driving the thresher," and his acute ability to entirely miss the point, overshadows the majority of his contribution to the critical canon. And I welcome the opportunity blogging has given the unexpert critics, in the form of passionate listeners and musicians, to level the playing field, so that if major critic X didn't like this weekend's new music premiere, there's just as much of a chance via one's search engine of choice to find a review that maybe, for once, addresses the music. Blogs (for the most part) don't have to answer to editorial mandates or advertising dollars, and that's truly liberating for honest and respectable criticism.

The not-quite-excellent adventure

Commuting's a bitch. The upshot of delayed flights: complimentary drinks.

After scrambling all weekend to find a flight to get to the BMI reading yesterday, I received a call Monday night that my 6:30 am flight (Trudeau to Toronto's Pearson, connecting flight to LaGuardia) was cancelled, and luckily rescheduled for a 10:30 am flight direct to LaGuardia. So far, so good. Having no checked bags was a welcome bonus - I deplaned and immediately caught a shuttle into Manhattan.

I grabbed some lunch from the deli across the street from Local 802, and frantically set about taping the rest of my parts together. The piece I brought in is easily the longest piece, in terms of paper, I've written - nearly 60 pages of score, and parts ranging from 2-6 pages, depending on intricacy and formatting. No horrendous train wrecks, and I got a good idea of what needs to be fixed or kept in the piece. Mike Holober guest conducted the piece, as Jim came in late, and looked rather worse for wear - I guess he caught something from the flight back to NY from his latest European voyage; he missed the meeting last week as well.

Volker Goetze's piece brought a cameo from Lenny Pickett on Eb clarinet. Pickett played with a lot of slap-tonguing (whether by choice or by instruction, I'm not sure) and it sounded rather like Nintendo music sitting atop this lush orchestration. I had to leave early to catch a shuttle back to LaGuardia, and this is where it all went wrong.

I missed the 4:30 shuttle by 7 minutes (though the other person in line said it never showed up), and for a minute the 5:00 looked like it was going to blow by Grand Central Terminal. Upon arrival, I'm told all flights to Toronto are delayed by a ripple effect caused by an earlier mechanical failure and ensuing ground crew issues, and that the flights direct to Montreal are oversold because they downgraded the aircraft. Long story short, my 7:30 flight to Pearson was pushed back to 8:15, and the 10:30 connection to Trudeau was postponed till 11:20, which was further postponed to accomodate another late flight from Cancun. Didn't get back home until 1 am, all for a three-hour reading session in NYC.

The added benefit of the flights were that none of them cracked the 30,000-foot ceiling, above which my ears get horribly blocked. Given that I've got a final recording session with Kids Eat Crayons tonight and the start of an Indigone Trio residency tomorrow, I'm quite happy.

Linkage (which has already gone across the blogosphere): Ethan Iverson and Stanley Crouch. Darcy and Pat have cogent analysis; my only addition would be the irony of Crouch lambasting Leroi Jones' black-nationalist transformation into Amiri Baraka while he insists upon trotting out racially-fuelled perceptions of the jazz world.

Indigone Trio happenings

In March, Indigone Trio will be playing every Thursday from 6-8 pm at Le Parc des Princes, a new bistro up in the Mile-End neighbourhood (5293 Parc, in the area I once saw La Presse refer to as "le quartier de bagel"). The manager, Fred, is really keen on having this room be equal parts restaurant and venue. The ambience is quite nice, with large windows looking out onto Parc. For us, it's a great benefit to be playing every week, integrating new drummer Phil Melanson into the band.

Our gig last Friday, the first with Phil, showed quite a bit of promise. Though the crowd was small, it was populated by people we'd never played for, and they thoroughly enjoyed it. It was the first time "As of Now" and "First Impressions" have been played by Indigone Trio, though I've performed them in other settings.

Set I:
As of Now (D. Ryshpan)
Pleasure is All Mine (Björk)
Ramblin' (Ornette Coleman)
Love Is the Reason (A. Mallett)
Erghen Diado (Peter Lyondev)

Set II:
First Impressions (D. Ryshpan)
Law Years (Ornette Coleman)
Round and Round (A. Mallett)
Enumeration (D. Ryshpan)
Dupla Traição (Djavan)
One Finger Snap (Herbie Hancock)