An Alternate Workpoints
22/03/10 10:51 Filed in: Jazz
An alternate version of Workpoints - the critically acclaimed composition from 1968 written under the first bursary given to a jazz composer by the Arts Council of Great Britain - has recently been discovered. The original is being remastered prior to its digital release on eMusic, and the Alternate will follow in due course.
The recording was discovered on a CDR copied from a mystery tape with my name and 1969 written on it, found in his attic by Gerry Koster of Australian Radio. I had no recollection of any performances other than the first one (released on Cuneiform five or so years ago) and one from a subsequent Purcell Room concert. Some research among my press cuttings found that there had been others – two, at least, in 1969 – although the personnel, back-announced by me on the tape is not the same. The band on the newly discovered version has three changes from the original. Missing from the original all-star band were Harry Beckett, Mike Gibbs and Dave Aaron, but their replacements, Dave Holdsworth, Nick Evans and Stan Sulzmann – among the amazing crop of younger musicians around at that time - added a new feeling to the gig and, in some ways I feel that this may well be a better performance than the original.
The mystery remains but as one correspondent wrote when I posted a note about this on the All About Jazz Biritish re-issues site: ‘Another version of Workpoints will be great. The version I have already is one of the most remarkable pieces of music I've ever heard, and if this one is better that will be marvellous.’
The recording was discovered on a CDR copied from a mystery tape with my name and 1969 written on it, found in his attic by Gerry Koster of Australian Radio. I had no recollection of any performances other than the first one (released on Cuneiform five or so years ago) and one from a subsequent Purcell Room concert. Some research among my press cuttings found that there had been others – two, at least, in 1969 – although the personnel, back-announced by me on the tape is not the same. The band on the newly discovered version has three changes from the original. Missing from the original all-star band were Harry Beckett, Mike Gibbs and Dave Aaron, but their replacements, Dave Holdsworth, Nick Evans and Stan Sulzmann – among the amazing crop of younger musicians around at that time - added a new feeling to the gig and, in some ways I feel that this may well be a better performance than the original.
The mystery remains but as one correspondent wrote when I posted a note about this on the All About Jazz Biritish re-issues site: ‘Another version of Workpoints will be great. The version I have already is one of the most remarkable pieces of music I've ever heard, and if this one is better that will be marvellous.’
News and Reviews
01/03/10 13:15 Filed in: Jazz
In April I will be performing in Aarhus Denmark, after which I’ll will be meeting friends and doing business in Copenhagen and Amsterdam, before attending the jazzahead! festival, conference and exhibition in Bremen, Germany.
My recent blogs on Jazz Form and Critical Mass attracted some comments from other places on the web but, like the views in the jazz composer book, there seemed little appetite to confront these views head-on, apart from Peter Hum’ lengthy and interesting essay on Jazzblog.ca
However, despite what I had written in Critical Mass directing 14 Jackson Pollocks did make some Best of the Year lists:
Jazz Journal’s best of 2009 Poll - 6th in their top 10.
Perfect Sounds Favourite Jazz of 2009
Redwood Jazz Alliance Annual Picks
Jazzwise critic Duncan Heining’s Albums of the Year
as well as Avant Music News Picks of the Week Feb 1 2010.
Recent reviews and comments
Collier's music has pronounced and dissonant free-improv elements, but also structural involvement and concrete, crisply articulated rhythm [and] it swings.
David Adler, Lerterland
Although the overall effect is that of cascading polyphony, Collier’s compositional skill is such that individual and individualistic textures and timbres can be heard, no matter how many lines are unfolding at once.
Ken Waxman, JazzWord
A fusion of pre-planned architectures and regulated freedom allowing each soloist a spot under the sun yet never transcending into pandemonium … Music that sounds nonconformist and time-honoured at once, showing a nice conversancy with the material by the involved participants
Massimo Ricci, Temporary Fault
My recent blogs on Jazz Form and Critical Mass attracted some comments from other places on the web but, like the views in the jazz composer book, there seemed little appetite to confront these views head-on, apart from Peter Hum’ lengthy and interesting essay on Jazzblog.ca
However, despite what I had written in Critical Mass directing 14 Jackson Pollocks did make some Best of the Year lists:
Jazz Journal’s best of 2009 Poll - 6th in their top 10.
Perfect Sounds Favourite Jazz of 2009
Redwood Jazz Alliance Annual Picks
Jazzwise critic Duncan Heining’s Albums of the Year
as well as Avant Music News Picks of the Week Feb 1 2010.
Recent reviews and comments
Collier's music has pronounced and dissonant free-improv elements, but also structural involvement and concrete, crisply articulated rhythm [and] it swings.
David Adler, Lerterland
Although the overall effect is that of cascading polyphony, Collier’s compositional skill is such that individual and individualistic textures and timbres can be heard, no matter how many lines are unfolding at once.
Ken Waxman, JazzWord
A fusion of pre-planned architectures and regulated freedom allowing each soloist a spot under the sun yet never transcending into pandemonium … Music that sounds nonconformist and time-honoured at once, showing a nice conversancy with the material by the involved participants
Massimo Ricci, Temporary Fault
‘Full of visceral, dynamic and challenging music. Rather than tamed and tight, it feels baggy and wild, thereby satisfying Collier's professed taste, citing Duke Ellington, for music that has a "little dirt" to it.’
Peter Hum, Jazzblog.ca
the jazz composer, moving music off the paper
‘Your book finally made it to my desk, and after taking it up I literally couldn’t stop -- thanks for that polemically refreshing view.’
Wolfram Knauer, Director, JazzInstitut Darmstadt
‘This book gives a very different perspective on the current Jazz world [and offers] a valuable insight into the key characteristics of what makes Jazz, Jazz. It really does ‘move music off the paper’. … A Bloody Good Book!’
A reader’s review on Amazon
‘A real triumph and [an] important text.’
Raymond MacDonald, Glasgow Improvisers Orchestra
‘By encompassing methodical elucidation, historical context and personal examples, this book’s thesis can challenge any thinking musician who wants to write jazz compositions which exemplify both parts of that loaded phrase.’
Ken Waxman, Jazzword
‘[Your book] has really inspired me to get back into some rigorous work, as a player and composer, to ‘find a better way’, and to make an increased effort towards enlightening students as to the potential of our art.’
Adrian Kelly, musician and educator, Perth, Australia
‘I don't think I have the material yet to write a book about my philosophy as Collier does, but perhaps when I do, I'll aspire to craft a tome as enjoyable and candid as his, my disagreements with his perspective notwithstanding.’
Peter Hum, Jazzblog.ca
Darius, Midnight Blue, New Conditions (the third chronological compilation of Graham’s work from BGO).
‘Beautifully packaged by BGO, this is a classy reissue.’
Duncan Heining, Jazzwise
‘Even if this wasn’t a vintage period in British jazz, Collier’s music was both culturally aware and technically astute. And it swung like blazes.’
Brian Morton, The Wire
‘Congratulations on the reissuing of these great sessions! Absolutely fantastic, timeless music. Beckett in particular sounds great, as do all your original works. Thanks so much for all the wonderful music, from yesterday to today and beyond.’
Laurence Donohue-Greene, Managing Editor, AllAboutJazz-New York
Jazz Form
11/02/10 10:22 Filed in: Jazz
‘Two more pointers suggesting that there is such an entity as jazz form came with the discovery of two quotes connected with Duke Ellington’s work. One is Lawrence Brown’s comment that Ellington was ‘not a composer, but a compiler’, meaning that he used other people’s ideas and soloing skills to create ‘his’ masterpieces. The other was from producer Irving Townsend, who said that Duke would bring in lots of music but, of the half he played, a lot would be changed as he ‘thought of a better way’. To my mind – and ears – these are crucial elements of the jazz composer’s art.’
An extract from the article below.
My posting some week ago on my belief that critics should be proactive in seeking out talent new to them for their Picks of the Year, instead of relying on what the major labels choose to send them, achieved some traction on various blogs, including the start of a discussion on form in jazz. Like many such offshoots on the web, this fizzled out after a short time but I feel there is more that could be said, and this is an attempt to say it. Comments are welcome, and though I’m not set up to accept them in real-time, they can be sent via the website and will be published in due course.
The nub of the discussion was Chris Kelsey’s statement comparing John Hollenbeck’s Eternal Interlude, ‘a perfectly fine, skillfully written yet formally conventional big band album’, with my own directing 14 Jackson Pollocks, which Chris called ‘a visionary and inspired work that’s utterly unlike any big band album released since the death of Gil Evans’.
The use of ‘formally conventional’ to describe Hollenbeck’s work was challenged by David Adler, who said ‘If Hollenbeck is conventional, then maybe his friend and collaborator Meredith Monk is conventional. Her music employs consonant melody, after all. And that’s what I suspect Chris means. For “formally conventional,” read “not free jazz,” not explicitly tied to the post-Ayler school of skronk.’
As the temperature rose Chris Kelsey responded ‘”Formally conventional” is different from “conventional.” The Hollenbeck is in no way conventional when compared to Basie, for instance. But in terms of form, he works within established parameters. It has nothing to do with skronk, or whether it is or isn’t free jazz. The Hollenbeck album is excellent for what it is, but Collier’s redefines the concept of large ensemble jazz, something that cannot be said of Hollenbeck.’
(The Kelsey posts can be found by clicking on his name above and scrolling down to December 9 2009, ‘Begrudgingly submitted …’, and January 26 2010, ‘Messin’ With the Kid’, respectively. The Adler post can be found by clicking his name above.)
With due respect to Chris and David – and Darcy James Argue, who commented on John Hollenbeck’s music on Chris’s blog – I think that hiding within the formally conventional/unconventional argument there is a more basic point about form in jazz that is being overlooked. And perhaps the starting point for our thinking should be a look at what jazz has to offer compared to classical music.
‘Take time out to listen to one of Bach’s solo cello suites. The way that the single line is developed is quite staggering, a feat similar to that achieved in Gregorian chant. Listen to one of Bartók’s string quartets, or those of Beethoven, Ravel, or Debussy, where the power and complexity achieved by just four voices are amazing. Listen to a Shostakovich symphony for the colours, the weight, the sheer power. Or try any of the sixteen symphonies by the little-known Swedish composer Allan Pettersson
.
In comparison, it might seem that almost everything written in jazz is simple, naive and childlike. Many jazz compositions contain a great deal of straightforward repetition and simple transposition over some very basic chord changes. Perhaps Leonard Feather’s comment that ‘C-Jam Blues’ is ‘a trifle, even a child could have written it’, is true, not only about that very simple tune, but about jazz tunes, jazz compositions in general.
So why do jazz composers make the effort? Take time out to listen to a solo by Ben Webster or John Coltrane. Although they are, in theory, playing the same kind of instrument, their sounds are totally distinctive, as are their approaches to the tune in question. Additionally, the different colourings and shadings of almost every note, and the rhythmic and harmonic subtleties that are constantly on view, are incredibly complex. Allied with the development of musical ideas, they present a staggering vision of what, ostensibly, one person is capable of doing. Not, of course, that it is just one person. Take time out to listen to the interplay of the supporting rhythm section. The intricacy of their interlocking roles is a true miracle. And one that happens over and over again.
The sound world inhabited by jazz musicians presents an entirely different landscape from that inhabited by the music of Bach or Bartók or Shostakovich, and it is this difference that creative jazz composers want to incorporate into their vision of the world. Take time out to listen.’
If, indeed, time out is taken to listen to a good jazz solo it soon becomes apparent that ‘any extended solo needs a well-developed sense of form. There should be some subconscious internal logic underpinning it, and it should come to a satisfactory end. In this respect there is a connection between some aspects of modern literature and contemporary jazz solos.’
Both extracts are from the jazz composer
.
As an example from literature here’s a section from Malcolm Lowry’s Lunar Caustic
:
‘ - Or - was he dead? Ah ha, watch the surgeon slit the foot of the dead man! What next, Nostradamus? Will blood appear? Or has it clotted, in some vital organ? Bleed, dead man, bleed, set the poor surgeon’s mind at rest, so that he won't have to get drunk and go through the jumps and the blind staggers; the horror of the rats, the wheeling bushmills, and the Orange Bitters; bleed, so that he won’t find himself reflecting in summer that even Nature herself is shot through with jitteriness, the neurotic squirrel and the sparrows nibbling the dung where the octoroons, the creole and the quadroon have galloped past in black dust; bleed, so that he will not have to think how much more beautiful women are when you are dying, and they sway down the streets under the fainting trees, their bosoms tossing like blossoms in the warm gusts; bleed, so that he will not have to hear the louse of conscience, nor the groaning of imaginary men, nor see, on the window blind all night the bad ghosts - .’
That wonderful passage could, for me, be set alongside any good jazz solo. It has a sense of form, some subconscious internal logic and comes to a satisfactory, if surprising, end.
As critic Nicholas Kostyleff, writing about poetic inspiration, said: ‘the initial stimulus, the stimulus which first set the language habit to work, is soon lost sight of in the wealth of other language associations which are evoked from the sub- conscious.’ And as critic and poet Conrad Aiken said about William Faulkner’s long sentences: the ‘purpose is simply to keep the form – and the idea – fluid and unfinished, still in motion, as it were, and unknown, until the dropping into place of the very last syllable.
When it works, in jazz as in Faulkner, it is what critic Charles Fox called ‘the sudden transformation of the unexpected into the inevitable’.
Extracted from the jazz composer.
While I was writing the jazz composer, my thinking about these matters led me to what I came to think of as jazz form. Perhaps the easiest way to illustrate this is to look at Miles Davis’s Lincoln Center version of ‘Stella by Starlight’. The tune is not a jazz composition as such but is something that becomes a jazz composition because of the way it is performed on that particular occasion. That epiphany was part of the thinking which has led me to consider the matter of jazz form, however difficult that concept may be to pin down, as being of great importance to the art.
Two more pointers suggesting that there is such an entity as jazz form came with the discovery, while writing the book, of two quotes connected with Duke Ellington’s work. One is Lawrence Brown’s comment that Ellington was ‘not a composer, but a compiler’, meaning that he used other people’s ideas and soloing skills to create ‘his’ masterpieces. The other was from producer Irving Townsend, who said that Duke would bring in lots of music but, of the half he played, a lot would be changed as he ‘thought of a better way’. To my mind – and ears – these are crucial elements of the jazz composer’s art.
Such thinking is related to an earlier epiphany about the way I see jazz. This was the realisation that there are three kinds of improvising. Nothing new, they have been a part of jazz throughout its history, but the realisation that they existed, and could be built upon in a creative way in line with the way the music was developing, became the basis of my approach to the music.
The first kind, as expected, is the solo, and, obviously, its paramount presence in what makes jazz jazz. The second, which we can call textural improvising, is what the rhythm section do, an approach which can be developed to include all the members of a band as, say, Basie did with his head arrangements. The third kind is what I call structural improvising, where, as in a standard jam session – or Miles’s Lincoln Center ‘Stella’ – the shape of each piece changes from performance to performance.
To look at this another way. The term jazz composition has three elements, ‘jazz’, ‘composition’ and the portmanteau term ‘jazz composition’. I would submit that ‘jazz’ has some ideas inside the term that most will accept: it almost always includes improvisation; that improvisation almost always has some relationship to swing (not the period, but the articulation of the notes) and to individuality of approach; and that there is usually some collective element involved (soloists and rhythm section at its most basic).
I would state also that ‘composition’ has some evidence of structure (whether fixed or fluid) and some evidence of one person’s vision behind it. Not that the vision need be grand, nor the structure complex. Sometimes, as the saying goes, less is more. To take another example from Miles Davis: ‘Flamenco Sketches’ is just a set of five scales, ‘each to be played as long as the soloist wishes’, yet that simple basis was enough to produce a classic performance on Kind of Blue (two if you count the inclusion on later issues of an alternate take).
It would seem to be paramount that the portmanteau term ‘jazz composition’ should, in some way, combine those two ideas without allowing one to overwhelm the other. And that something different will be created. Something different from a theme-solos-theme performance, or that of a free improvising group. Something different from a fairly conventional arrangement, or a piece that is written to be played more or less the same way each time.
The underlying question is: if a soloist is expected to find something new to say every time he plays a piece; if the rhythm section are expected to react to that soloist and create their own textures to accompany him or her; if a performance by a small group is enhanced by the feeling that everything they are doing is improvised, should it be so easily accepted that the form of a jazz composition, even for a large group, stays the same apart from what the soloists are doing?
These various strands of thinking started to make up a picture of what I call jazz form, something which is rarely discussed but which has existed in various ways throughout jazz’s history. Indeed, as I realised relatively recently, this is something that, although not articulated clearly at the time, was of concern in some of my early compositions such as Mosaics and Songs for My Father. In those pieces the overall form (the order of the musical sections), and the internal form (who soloed when), were improvised during the actual performance. (In the case of Mosaics a recent archive discovery led to the release of The Alternate Mosaics, a notably different performance of the same piece, recorded on the same night.)
Despite my sniping at critics in general, I have to admit that this way of working has been recognised by some, and their words go some way to illuminating the subject of jazz form.
‘He has largely given up the lateral thinking so common in jazz and in music generally, and replaced it with different sound structures which are often simultaneous and kept together in the frame of space.’
‘Tension is built up by juxtaposition and superimposition of solo parts and ensemble, rather than by any routine principle of overall development.’
‘The most characteristic thing . . . is not the thematic ideas, but rather the feeling of growth, which goes streaming through it. The way in which he creates a unity, in its plenitude of expressions – where hovering, free rhythmic passages stand both in contrast to – and mingle with – sharply drawn motifs, while a number of soloists are making their marks with individual contributions.’
I used these quotes in the jazz composer and went on to say, ‘Those three critiques of my work … come from different reviews over the past thirty or so years. They are encouraging support for my view that a composition should make its own form, that ‘jazz form’, rather than following a predetermined plan, arises in some way from the DNA discovered in the initial idea during the composing process. The ‘act of composing’ has opened up the possibilities. The act of performing has shown one of the possible paths.
As Jackson Pollock said, ‘A picture is not thought out and settled beforehand. While it is being done it changes as one’s thoughts change.’
Pollock was called an action painter and I would submit that jazz – in all its elements - has to be an active art, an art which happens in real time, once.
Here’s an example from my music, as described and illustrated in the jazz composer:
‘Colours’, the conclusion of Shapes, Colours, Energy, combines structural improvising with textural improvising. Each of the three different levels is improvised from a given element. These roles are not allocated to specific instruments on the manuscript paper, and who plays what when can therefore be chosen with regard to the instrumentation available for each separate performance.
The first level, a pedal note, which continues throughout, is individualised, here by a designated group of low horns. Above this, the second level, here played by four reeds, each starting where he wishes, uses motific improvisation on a series of two-note motifs to create a ‘shimmering’ background. Once this is established, a third group, here three trumpet players, plays the given melodic motifs freely, each shadowing the other individual versions. Thus the piece, although based on written music, is almost totally improvised, texturally, in that the colours are not pre-decided, and structurally, in that the length of the section is entirely determined by the performance.
I would be the first to admit that, although I’m sure it exists, my discussion of jazz form doesn’t add up to a working definition. In fact, I wonder whether a complete definition is possible in assessing a music which is constantly changing and developing. Nor would I say that this is the route that all jazz composers should take. There are many whose work I admire – John Hollenbeck
, my sparring partner as chosen by Chris Kelsey, for one – who work in areas that may not allow this flexibility but whose compositions do show fresh thinking in an area that has often seemed moribund.
Additionally, there is an additional problem when discussing jazz composition. Unless we have access to a score, we can’t know for sure what is written to be played exactly, what is to be played freely, and just how much is left to chance. For example, in a review of an earlier piece of mine, a passage of background chords drew the comment from one critic that I was a great orchestrator. Whether I am or not is immaterial in this case, as the passage in question had been improvised by the musicians using methods suggested by me as the composer. (That this had been pointed out in the liner notes, and that another, different, performance of the same piece was available to the critic for the asking, brings us back to the earlier post on whether critics are practising due diligence.)
In writing the above I realise that I’m in danger of disturbing, even alienating critics and fans and other musicians who sees jazz composition differently than I do. But I can only stress that I am trying to show the true potential of the music. Indeed, while finalising this article I received an email from a colleague in Australia saying ‘your book has really inspired me to make an increased effort towards enlightening students as to the potential of our art’.
I would direct readers to ‘Murder in the North’ a recent article in the New York Review of Books by film critic David Thomson. He discusses Red Riding, a three part television series originating in the UK but available on DVD, saying that this was what television drama ought to be about: raw, often non-linear, but saying something.
Comments are welcome via the website.
Quotes that matter:
‘Nowadays a lot of people think the greatest jazz albums have already been made. I did that stuff for a while, wearing the suit, demonstrating all that superior manual dexterity, but in the end it hurt me to be around it. You can’t grow if you're going to say: “The contributions of my predecessors are greater than anything I can ever achieve.” Each generation has to have a chance to find itself.’
Christian Scott, quoted in The Guardian.
‘Pollock forgeries are easy to spot. Even if they seem to contain all the stylistic ingredients, they never hold up to prolonged viewing; a real Pollock is riveting because it teems with inner life.’
From a book review in The Economist
One final word on jazz form from Chris Kelsey’s blog:
But that doesn’t mean it’s not conventional in a wider sense, and that’s where the issue of context enters the discussion, for when I called John’s music formally conventional, it was in relation to Collier’s work, which in terms of form is decidedly unconventional – not just compared to Hollenbeck’s or the historical paradigm of big band jazz, but within the entire framework of Western composition.
An extract from the article below.
My posting some week ago on my belief that critics should be proactive in seeking out talent new to them for their Picks of the Year, instead of relying on what the major labels choose to send them, achieved some traction on various blogs, including the start of a discussion on form in jazz. Like many such offshoots on the web, this fizzled out after a short time but I feel there is more that could be said, and this is an attempt to say it. Comments are welcome, and though I’m not set up to accept them in real-time, they can be sent via the website and will be published in due course.
The nub of the discussion was Chris Kelsey’s statement comparing John Hollenbeck’s Eternal Interlude, ‘a perfectly fine, skillfully written yet formally conventional big band album’, with my own directing 14 Jackson Pollocks, which Chris called ‘a visionary and inspired work that’s utterly unlike any big band album released since the death of Gil Evans’.
The use of ‘formally conventional’ to describe Hollenbeck’s work was challenged by David Adler, who said ‘If Hollenbeck is conventional, then maybe his friend and collaborator Meredith Monk is conventional. Her music employs consonant melody, after all. And that’s what I suspect Chris means. For “formally conventional,” read “not free jazz,” not explicitly tied to the post-Ayler school of skronk.’
As the temperature rose Chris Kelsey responded ‘”Formally conventional” is different from “conventional.” The Hollenbeck is in no way conventional when compared to Basie, for instance. But in terms of form, he works within established parameters. It has nothing to do with skronk, or whether it is or isn’t free jazz. The Hollenbeck album is excellent for what it is, but Collier’s redefines the concept of large ensemble jazz, something that cannot be said of Hollenbeck.’
(The Kelsey posts can be found by clicking on his name above and scrolling down to December 9 2009, ‘Begrudgingly submitted …’, and January 26 2010, ‘Messin’ With the Kid’, respectively. The Adler post can be found by clicking his name above.)
With due respect to Chris and David – and Darcy James Argue, who commented on John Hollenbeck’s music on Chris’s blog – I think that hiding within the formally conventional/unconventional argument there is a more basic point about form in jazz that is being overlooked. And perhaps the starting point for our thinking should be a look at what jazz has to offer compared to classical music.
‘Take time out to listen to one of Bach’s solo cello suites. The way that the single line is developed is quite staggering, a feat similar to that achieved in Gregorian chant. Listen to one of Bartók’s string quartets, or those of Beethoven, Ravel, or Debussy, where the power and complexity achieved by just four voices are amazing. Listen to a Shostakovich symphony for the colours, the weight, the sheer power. Or try any of the sixteen symphonies by the little-known Swedish composer Allan Pettersson
.In comparison, it might seem that almost everything written in jazz is simple, naive and childlike. Many jazz compositions contain a great deal of straightforward repetition and simple transposition over some very basic chord changes. Perhaps Leonard Feather’s comment that ‘C-Jam Blues’ is ‘a trifle, even a child could have written it’, is true, not only about that very simple tune, but about jazz tunes, jazz compositions in general.
So why do jazz composers make the effort? Take time out to listen to a solo by Ben Webster or John Coltrane. Although they are, in theory, playing the same kind of instrument, their sounds are totally distinctive, as are their approaches to the tune in question. Additionally, the different colourings and shadings of almost every note, and the rhythmic and harmonic subtleties that are constantly on view, are incredibly complex. Allied with the development of musical ideas, they present a staggering vision of what, ostensibly, one person is capable of doing. Not, of course, that it is just one person. Take time out to listen to the interplay of the supporting rhythm section. The intricacy of their interlocking roles is a true miracle. And one that happens over and over again.
The sound world inhabited by jazz musicians presents an entirely different landscape from that inhabited by the music of Bach or Bartók or Shostakovich, and it is this difference that creative jazz composers want to incorporate into their vision of the world. Take time out to listen.’
If, indeed, time out is taken to listen to a good jazz solo it soon becomes apparent that ‘any extended solo needs a well-developed sense of form. There should be some subconscious internal logic underpinning it, and it should come to a satisfactory end. In this respect there is a connection between some aspects of modern literature and contemporary jazz solos.’
Both extracts are from the jazz composer
.As an example from literature here’s a section from Malcolm Lowry’s Lunar Caustic
: ‘ - Or - was he dead? Ah ha, watch the surgeon slit the foot of the dead man! What next, Nostradamus? Will blood appear? Or has it clotted, in some vital organ? Bleed, dead man, bleed, set the poor surgeon’s mind at rest, so that he won't have to get drunk and go through the jumps and the blind staggers; the horror of the rats, the wheeling bushmills, and the Orange Bitters; bleed, so that he won’t find himself reflecting in summer that even Nature herself is shot through with jitteriness, the neurotic squirrel and the sparrows nibbling the dung where the octoroons, the creole and the quadroon have galloped past in black dust; bleed, so that he will not have to think how much more beautiful women are when you are dying, and they sway down the streets under the fainting trees, their bosoms tossing like blossoms in the warm gusts; bleed, so that he will not have to hear the louse of conscience, nor the groaning of imaginary men, nor see, on the window blind all night the bad ghosts - .’
That wonderful passage could, for me, be set alongside any good jazz solo. It has a sense of form, some subconscious internal logic and comes to a satisfactory, if surprising, end.
As critic Nicholas Kostyleff, writing about poetic inspiration, said: ‘the initial stimulus, the stimulus which first set the language habit to work, is soon lost sight of in the wealth of other language associations which are evoked from the sub- conscious.’ And as critic and poet Conrad Aiken said about William Faulkner’s long sentences: the ‘purpose is simply to keep the form – and the idea – fluid and unfinished, still in motion, as it were, and unknown, until the dropping into place of the very last syllable.
When it works, in jazz as in Faulkner, it is what critic Charles Fox called ‘the sudden transformation of the unexpected into the inevitable’.
Extracted from the jazz composer.
While I was writing the jazz composer, my thinking about these matters led me to what I came to think of as jazz form. Perhaps the easiest way to illustrate this is to look at Miles Davis’s Lincoln Center version of ‘Stella by Starlight’. The tune is not a jazz composition as such but is something that becomes a jazz composition because of the way it is performed on that particular occasion. That epiphany was part of the thinking which has led me to consider the matter of jazz form, however difficult that concept may be to pin down, as being of great importance to the art.
Two more pointers suggesting that there is such an entity as jazz form came with the discovery, while writing the book, of two quotes connected with Duke Ellington’s work. One is Lawrence Brown’s comment that Ellington was ‘not a composer, but a compiler’, meaning that he used other people’s ideas and soloing skills to create ‘his’ masterpieces. The other was from producer Irving Townsend, who said that Duke would bring in lots of music but, of the half he played, a lot would be changed as he ‘thought of a better way’. To my mind – and ears – these are crucial elements of the jazz composer’s art.
Such thinking is related to an earlier epiphany about the way I see jazz. This was the realisation that there are three kinds of improvising. Nothing new, they have been a part of jazz throughout its history, but the realisation that they existed, and could be built upon in a creative way in line with the way the music was developing, became the basis of my approach to the music.
The first kind, as expected, is the solo, and, obviously, its paramount presence in what makes jazz jazz. The second, which we can call textural improvising, is what the rhythm section do, an approach which can be developed to include all the members of a band as, say, Basie did with his head arrangements. The third kind is what I call structural improvising, where, as in a standard jam session – or Miles’s Lincoln Center ‘Stella’ – the shape of each piece changes from performance to performance.
To look at this another way. The term jazz composition has three elements, ‘jazz’, ‘composition’ and the portmanteau term ‘jazz composition’. I would submit that ‘jazz’ has some ideas inside the term that most will accept: it almost always includes improvisation; that improvisation almost always has some relationship to swing (not the period, but the articulation of the notes) and to individuality of approach; and that there is usually some collective element involved (soloists and rhythm section at its most basic).
I would state also that ‘composition’ has some evidence of structure (whether fixed or fluid) and some evidence of one person’s vision behind it. Not that the vision need be grand, nor the structure complex. Sometimes, as the saying goes, less is more. To take another example from Miles Davis: ‘Flamenco Sketches’ is just a set of five scales, ‘each to be played as long as the soloist wishes’, yet that simple basis was enough to produce a classic performance on Kind of Blue (two if you count the inclusion on later issues of an alternate take).
It would seem to be paramount that the portmanteau term ‘jazz composition’ should, in some way, combine those two ideas without allowing one to overwhelm the other. And that something different will be created. Something different from a theme-solos-theme performance, or that of a free improvising group. Something different from a fairly conventional arrangement, or a piece that is written to be played more or less the same way each time.
The underlying question is: if a soloist is expected to find something new to say every time he plays a piece; if the rhythm section are expected to react to that soloist and create their own textures to accompany him or her; if a performance by a small group is enhanced by the feeling that everything they are doing is improvised, should it be so easily accepted that the form of a jazz composition, even for a large group, stays the same apart from what the soloists are doing?
These various strands of thinking started to make up a picture of what I call jazz form, something which is rarely discussed but which has existed in various ways throughout jazz’s history. Indeed, as I realised relatively recently, this is something that, although not articulated clearly at the time, was of concern in some of my early compositions such as Mosaics and Songs for My Father. In those pieces the overall form (the order of the musical sections), and the internal form (who soloed when), were improvised during the actual performance. (In the case of Mosaics a recent archive discovery led to the release of The Alternate Mosaics, a notably different performance of the same piece, recorded on the same night.)
Despite my sniping at critics in general, I have to admit that this way of working has been recognised by some, and their words go some way to illuminating the subject of jazz form.
‘He has largely given up the lateral thinking so common in jazz and in music generally, and replaced it with different sound structures which are often simultaneous and kept together in the frame of space.’
‘Tension is built up by juxtaposition and superimposition of solo parts and ensemble, rather than by any routine principle of overall development.’
‘The most characteristic thing . . . is not the thematic ideas, but rather the feeling of growth, which goes streaming through it. The way in which he creates a unity, in its plenitude of expressions – where hovering, free rhythmic passages stand both in contrast to – and mingle with – sharply drawn motifs, while a number of soloists are making their marks with individual contributions.’
I used these quotes in the jazz composer and went on to say, ‘Those three critiques of my work … come from different reviews over the past thirty or so years. They are encouraging support for my view that a composition should make its own form, that ‘jazz form’, rather than following a predetermined plan, arises in some way from the DNA discovered in the initial idea during the composing process. The ‘act of composing’ has opened up the possibilities. The act of performing has shown one of the possible paths.
As Jackson Pollock said, ‘A picture is not thought out and settled beforehand. While it is being done it changes as one’s thoughts change.’
Pollock was called an action painter and I would submit that jazz – in all its elements - has to be an active art, an art which happens in real time, once.
Here’s an example from my music, as described and illustrated in the jazz composer:
‘Colours’, the conclusion of Shapes, Colours, Energy, combines structural improvising with textural improvising. Each of the three different levels is improvised from a given element. These roles are not allocated to specific instruments on the manuscript paper, and who plays what when can therefore be chosen with regard to the instrumentation available for each separate performance.
The first level, a pedal note, which continues throughout, is individualised, here by a designated group of low horns. Above this, the second level, here played by four reeds, each starting where he wishes, uses motific improvisation on a series of two-note motifs to create a ‘shimmering’ background. Once this is established, a third group, here three trumpet players, plays the given melodic motifs freely, each shadowing the other individual versions. Thus the piece, although based on written music, is almost totally improvised, texturally, in that the colours are not pre-decided, and structurally, in that the length of the section is entirely determined by the performance.
I would be the first to admit that, although I’m sure it exists, my discussion of jazz form doesn’t add up to a working definition. In fact, I wonder whether a complete definition is possible in assessing a music which is constantly changing and developing. Nor would I say that this is the route that all jazz composers should take. There are many whose work I admire – John Hollenbeck
, my sparring partner as chosen by Chris Kelsey, for one – who work in areas that may not allow this flexibility but whose compositions do show fresh thinking in an area that has often seemed moribund. Additionally, there is an additional problem when discussing jazz composition. Unless we have access to a score, we can’t know for sure what is written to be played exactly, what is to be played freely, and just how much is left to chance. For example, in a review of an earlier piece of mine, a passage of background chords drew the comment from one critic that I was a great orchestrator. Whether I am or not is immaterial in this case, as the passage in question had been improvised by the musicians using methods suggested by me as the composer. (That this had been pointed out in the liner notes, and that another, different, performance of the same piece was available to the critic for the asking, brings us back to the earlier post on whether critics are practising due diligence.)
In writing the above I realise that I’m in danger of disturbing, even alienating critics and fans and other musicians who sees jazz composition differently than I do. But I can only stress that I am trying to show the true potential of the music. Indeed, while finalising this article I received an email from a colleague in Australia saying ‘your book has really inspired me to make an increased effort towards enlightening students as to the potential of our art’.
I would direct readers to ‘Murder in the North’ a recent article in the New York Review of Books by film critic David Thomson. He discusses Red Riding, a three part television series originating in the UK but available on DVD, saying that this was what television drama ought to be about: raw, often non-linear, but saying something.
Comments are welcome via the website.
Quotes that matter:
‘Nowadays a lot of people think the greatest jazz albums have already been made. I did that stuff for a while, wearing the suit, demonstrating all that superior manual dexterity, but in the end it hurt me to be around it. You can’t grow if you're going to say: “The contributions of my predecessors are greater than anything I can ever achieve.” Each generation has to have a chance to find itself.’
Christian Scott, quoted in The Guardian.
‘Pollock forgeries are easy to spot. Even if they seem to contain all the stylistic ingredients, they never hold up to prolonged viewing; a real Pollock is riveting because it teems with inner life.’
From a book review in The Economist
One final word on jazz form from Chris Kelsey’s blog:
But that doesn’t mean it’s not conventional in a wider sense, and that’s where the issue of context enters the discussion, for when I called John’s music formally conventional, it was in relation to Collier’s work, which in terms of form is decidedly unconventional – not just compared to Hollenbeck’s or the historical paradigm of big band jazz, but within the entire framework of Western composition.
Critical Mass
14/01/10 14:25 Filed in: Jazz
It seems as if every magazine, every blog, has done the usual end of the year, this time end of the decade, list of ‘the ten best CDs’. As I might have expected I only made the cut in a very few:
Duncan Heining’s Top 10 ‘Albums of the Year’ in Jazzwise;
NPR’s Patrick Jarenwattananon’s My Blog’s list entitled ‘Why this year is the year of the big band’ and
Chris Kelsey’s contribution as one of 99 critics polled in Village Voice.
This was preceded some days earlier by an entry (of which more later) in Chris Kelsey’s own blog which asked a question that has puzzled me too:
‘In the old major label days — when there were fewer releases, and the market was dominated by the big boys — consensus picks could be somewhat expected. But given the preponderance of indie recordings, and assuming the critics are as free-thinking and independent as we’d like to believe they are, it should be expected that very few records show up in any two lists.
Yet several do.’
What is hinted at here is how the critics concerned acquire their copies. Perhaps some go out and buy them - or specifically ask for them - because one of their fellow critics has turned them on to that particular artist, but somehow I doubt that, as will become clear from the tenor of this article. What seems to happen is that record companies send review copies to many individual critics (rather than the magazines they write for), knowing that in most cases they won’t get an actual review, in print or on the web, but that the reviewer – who may well enjoy the CD - will need them to refer to when he is asked for his end of year choices.
Francis Davis – curator of this year’s Village Voice poll – addresses this question from a similar point of view and cited a specific example, which I find somewhat disturbing:
‘But the main source of my blues was a concern specific to this poll. Two years ago, in this space, I worried aloud about major labels, with their vast promotional reach, dominating the standings. Those were the days, huh? Those majors that haven’t dispensed with jazz altogether to help stem the tide of red ink have severely trimmed their mailing lists, and many independents are becoming just as stingy with review copies.
‘Granted, the only thing more annoying than critics going on about getting more free CDs than they have time to listen to is the same freeloaders bellyaching about not getting enough. And it’s tough to fault labels for their sudden parsimony, because what sense does it make for them to send out a few hundred promos of an album expected to sell a couple thousand, tops? But I worried that this new PR austerity might tilt this year’s standings, and in at least one case, I bet it did. Critics can be pushovers for an ambitious concept the same as everybody else, which is why I have to believe that Dedicated to You, Kurt Elling’s salute to Coltrane and Johnny Hartman, would have waltzed to victory as Best Vocal if Concord had bothered to service more than a handful of us.’
There’s much to argue with there. Not least the point that ‘this new PR austerity might tilt this year’s standings’. Well, duh. I thought such polls were a genuine reflection of what the critics concerned genuinely saw as the best of the year. Not their opinion gathered from the review copies that they may or may not have received from the majors. More about this below.
All my recent work has been on small labels, lately my own jazzcontinuum mark, and neither they nor I can contemplate the outlay that such a blanket approach would entail. I’m speaking not of the cost of the CD itself, but of the postage from Europe to the generally American based jazz media. All this puts me and others like me at an obvious physical disadvantage – and that’s before we mention name-recognition and the ‘pack mentality’ of critics.
Given these facts it could be asked how can I complain? Jazz is a market-driven business and if you’re trying to sell refrigerators to Eskimos then you have to deal with the hand you’re dealt and learn to live with the consequences.
Well, I can and do complain, because these are people whose supposed job it is to act as gatekeepers to the world of jazz, to praise what’s praiseworthy, to damn, or ignore, what’s not, and to show what is on the horizon.
Before going further down that path, some clarification: I take it as a fact that ‘jazz happens in real time, once’. That could be in a recording studio or at a gig, but it’s the immediacy of the result that’s important. Which can’t be achieved if, in Chris Kelsey’s phrase, we’re inundated with such projects as So-and-So Plays the Music of Some Famous Dead Jazz Guy. (Or, perhaps more relevant to this post, So-and-So Writes Music very similar to that of Some Famous Dead Jazz Guy.)
I take it as fact that there is such a thing as jazz composition, where there is sign of a controlling vision, but where the voices of the musicians concerned are part of that vision. The three names which exemplify this are Duke Ellington, Charles Mingus and Gil Evans.
As an aside, but one that has a relevance to what we are discussing, I am flattered that various critics have seen fit to compare my work to each of those three (as well as others such as George Russell, Carla Bley and Dave Douglas). Here are some of the comments, more can be found at grahamcolliermusic.com.
Collier is in a league with George Russell and Charles Mingus in the demanding discipline of writing for large ensembles populated by musicians whose improvisation goes beyond the fringe of standard harmony.
Doug Ramsey, Rifftides (USA)
It’s a luminous performance, on a par – for me, at least – with any of Ellington’s late suites.
Brian Morton, The Wire
Collier’s music – rather like a free version of early Charles Mingus – continued to embrace long-form pan-tonal compositional frameworks.
Dan Warburton, Paris Transatlantic
Through the years Collier has consistently showed an affinity for nuance, color, and texture without sacrificing the emotional spontaneity that is at the heart of Jazz, somewhat in the vein of Gil Evans.
Steven Loewy, All Music Guide
I also take it as a fact that there is such a thing as jazz arranging, where a writer takes a tune – his own or somebody else’s – and ‘dresses it up’, orchestrates it, sometimes very skilfully as in the classic early work of Gil Evans, sometimes using relatively minor updates of the arranging clichés that have been around since Don Redman. What grates, though, is the way that some of these arrangers are called jazz composers, and not run-of-the-mill composers, either, but, ‘truly great’ ones, a phrase I challenged recently when it was applied to Jim McNeeley (see Keeping the Peace below), and which I saw recently attached to Bob Brookmeyer’s name. The same Bob Brookmeyer who said in an interview in the New York Times that ‘you don’t write in a solo until you’ve completely exhausted all you have to say’. Which I find a very strange comment coming from a jazz composer – whether he’s called great or not. The soloists are part of the jazz composer’s palette, in the same way that, in a lesser way, the various woodwind instruments are part of the orchestral composer’s palette.
But mention of Brookmeyer’s name brings us back to the subject of polls and critics.
In his summing up of the results of his wide-ranging poll of the top 10 CDs of 2009 in Village Voice, Francis Davis asked ‘anybody spot a trend?’, when commenting on the preponderance of votes for what he called Brookmeyerites such as Darcy James Argue and 2007 winner Maria Schneider. Francis is right in that there is a trend emerging but one that points in a different direction: namely, there is a pack mentality among many critics which, unfortunately for some of us, means they rarely look beyond the pile of CDs they receive to see what else is around.
A similar sentiment was to the fore in a recent blog by Chris Kelsey: ‘How, for example, does John Hollenbeck’s Eternal Interlude—a perfectly fine, skillfully written yet formally conventional big band album released on a small indie label — show up on so many lists, while Graham Collier’s directing 14 Jackson Pollocks—a visionary and inspired work that’s utterly unlike any big band album released since the death of Gil Evans (except for, I assume, those made by Collier himself) — has yet to appear on a single one that I’ve seen?’
I should perhaps mention that I have accepted that my lack of acclaim compared to some other writers is probably inevitable, and one that I have grown to accept without much rancour. In this respect I agree with Bill Evans: ‘I do feel a lot of acceptance and recognition and my ego is well-fed. I always accepted the fact that Guy Lombardo is a millionaire, and so on, and it just didn’t bother me that much as long as there was a little niche that I could find for what I wanted to do.’ (found in a recent entry in Peter Hum’s blog).
But back to the subject at hand.
Chris’s comments were taken up by John Hollenbeck himself, one of the writers mentioned by Francis Davis:
‘I really appreciate your comments on “lists”… I’m not a fan myself - one reason being is that everyone but #1 ends up feeling a little bad… I would like an answer to your question about Graham’s record, which I admire. My guess for my luck this year would be that it is a combination of a very good recording, timing, and money spent on publicity (or blogging your ass off - as some are doing these days). Also, I would guess most of the journalists who put my new album on their top ten did not hear Graham’s, because it is a European release and they did not get a copy of it or he is not even on their “radar” (again - luck, timing and money!)… since it seems most reviewers concentrate on younger artists.’
But as Chris responded there’s more to it than that:
‘Thanks, John. Your record is certainly worthy, of course, and I appreciate you taking my point in the spirit in which it was intended. You’re probably partly right about the reasons Graham’s record didn’t get the attention, but I’m not gonna let the critics off easily. Graham sought me out and sent me a copy, not only of his record, but of his book. I cannot believe that I was the only one to whom he reached out. Far from it, I imagine. I suspect his album is probably still in the pile of unlistened-to CDs on a lot of critics’ desks. That’s too bad. That speaks to my central point, which is basically that too many critics don’t do their due diligence.’
As Chris implies, I did send out copies of the CD to other critics in the U.S. Eighteen in all, of which only a few were reviewed, but happily all were favourable. eMusic chose it as one of their ‘notable new releases’ for August 2009, and Doug Ramsey said in Rifftides ‘Collier … produces serious music that makes demands on its listeners and gives generous compensation to those who welcome it on its terms.’
Which personalises the question Chris raises at the end of his comment: If such esteemed critics as Doug Ramsey can see that my CD is something worthy of a good review, and if the British critic Duncan Heining (author of a soon-to-be-published book George Russell: The Story of an American Composer
) says ‘The Vonetta Factor is one of the most genuinely modern big band compositions to come out of Britain for twenty years’, why has no other critic bothered to ask for a review copy? As I say above, I could have researched all the major critics and posted off copies to them, but as Chris says, the CD would probably still be on a pile of unlistened-to CDs. And I’d be out a lot of postage.
But that’s not the real point. The real point is that in the same way as I, as a compose, educator and author, try to keep up with what’s going on in my business – writing for the large ensemble – I would expect that a critic should be expected to keep up with their business, which is keeping up with what’s interesting on the jazz scene - wherever it’s happening - rather than just reaching for another CD from the pile.
Yes, I know it’s not that simple. And that it’s impossible to hear everything. But if I’m pointed in the right direction by a review I’ll try out some samples if I can find them, and probably invest in a CD or download. I’ve discovered some great music that way. Is it too much to ask that critics do something similar?
Perhaps they do and I’m maligning them, but hidden in the comment from Francis Davis and the Kelsey blog and its subsequent exchange, is a message deeper than what some might see as my wounded ego. As a Vanity Fair writer said in an article about the preponderance of ‘Cute’ culture: ‘[W]hen critics review films like Up or Wall-E, their tone suggests they’re dealing with something like The Seventh Seal rather than movies designed to exploit our caretaking instincts.’
It’s not too much of a stretch to apply that quote to the way jazz critics are dealing with what many jazz musicians are producing today. They seem much more concerned to exploit ‘our caretaking instincts’ – by their support of the musicians whose work is ‘perfectly fine, skilfully written, yet formally conventional’ - than they are to seek out new creative uses of the jazz language. While not wishing to follow Matthew Shipp’s methods of slating his fellow jazz musicians I feel that we shouldn’t ignore the fact that many of the acclaimed big band CDs of recent years – Darcy James Argue’s, Maria Schneider’s, Dave Holland’s – as well as those of Jim McNeeley and Brookmeyer himself, fit Chris Kelsey’s phrase; they’re ‘perfectly fine, skillfully written, yet formally conventional’. All very nice, within most people’s comfort zones, but not taking advantage of all that jazz has to offer. Such music has, as a colleague said once when we were discussing Brookmeyer’s writing, ‘no smell to it’. As Duke said about music in general, ‘it needs a little dirt’.
One could apply an old song title to the Brookmeyerites and ask ‘Is that all there is?’ If we read what the top tens tell us then we might be led to accept this. If we took the time to check out the work of Norwegian composer Geir Lysne or that of the Italian Roberto Bonati
- and of many others inside America as well as out - we’d realise that there is more. And that we’re being short changed if we don’t see some of their work in the ‘best of’ lists.
Other matters
It was with some incredulity that my partner John and I watched an English comedian being quizzed on ‘the life and music of Derek Bailey’ on a recent episode of the BBC’s Celebrity Mastermind, the first time that we know of where such a subject has been included. Good for the Beeb (and can someone choosing the subject of my own career be far behind?), but we did realise that most of the audience would doze off, as we do during the seemingly interminable questions on Edwardian tea-cups or some such subject, while waiting for the general knowledge rounds, where there is at least some chance of us getting one or two answers right.
Incredulity too, when we found out that Stuart Nicholson is now Professor of Music Journalism at Leeds College of Music. This at a time when due to media cuts many far better writers are given less space, or are out of a job altogether. Although … perhaps due to some fluke in the application process the only other contender for the post was Jack Massarik, in which case the better writer got the job! I hope that when Professor Nicholson is grading student papers he will deduct marks where the author of an article, used to back up the writer’s stance, is not named, even though where it was published may have been. As I reported below in The Poor Man’s Hugues Panassié Nicholson himself failed to tell us that the author of a New York Times article he used in strong support of his belief in the supremacy of Norwegian jazz was in fact the good Professor himself.
No incredulity when Wynton Marsalis seemingly attempted to get some cheap publicity (as though he needs it) by offering the Spanish fan who reported Larry Ochs to the police because his music wasn’t jazz, a stack of Marsalis’s own CDs. Marsalis’s office later said there had been a mistake and he never wanted his search [for the fan’s name] to become public. And if you believe that…
Some surprise when, as mentioned above, Matthew Shipp seriously put down Herbie Hancock and Wayne Shorter in two separate articles, thereby making it very clear that, no, he hadn’t been misquoted. While I think there may be a grain of truth in what he says, it would have been better if his criticisms weren’t so self-serving. However I am reminded of a quote from Howard Mandel that I used in the jazz composer:
Where is Hancock as leader of this gang? Why can’t or won’t he make a statement, rally his troupe to focus its expression, reach out to the listeners, wrap us in the music and take us higher? If jazz doesn’t do that, if it only wants to be admired, it’s ready for burial now.
Extracts from recent reviews.
More - and full attribution – can be found here and here.
the jazz composer, moving music off the paper
Highly recommended.
Wolfram Knauer, The Jazz Institute, Darmstadt
May well infuriate as many readers as it delights, but compellingly readable as it is, it is unlikely to leave anyone indifferent.
Chris Parker, Vortex Jazz Club
It’s that very individuality which has always been a mark of Collier’s composing, and as a consequence this book is integral to his overall musical conception.
Nic Jones, All About Jazz
Might inspire, or, at the least, provide new working methods to aspiring composers who will probably benefit from reading this book and considering the musical examples.
John Schu, JazzTimes
directing 14 Jackson Pollocks
two hours of fascinating music.
Chris Parker, Vortex Jazz Club
A fusion of pre-planned architectures and regulated freedom allowing each soloist a spot under the sun yet never transcending into pandemonium.
Massimo Ricci, Temporary Fault blogspot
And, as mentioned above, Chris Kelsey’s view that the CD is
a visionary and inspired work that’s utterly unlike any big band album released since the death of Gil Evans.
The Galapagos
Regular readers of this site will know that John and I went off to the Galapagos recently for a holiday among the tortoises, iguanas and blue-footed boobies. It was, as expected, amazing, although our enjoyment was somewhat spoilt by the constant noise of shutters clicking as our boat-mates vied to see how many pictures of said animals they could take. Resisting the impulse to scream ‘they all look the f..ing same’ as yet another one was digitally immortalised, we did in fact take some pictures. ‘It must be important, Graham’s taking a picture’ was one of the remarks overheard, and a carefully chosen selection of what we did take can be found here.
Similar views on camera-wielding tourists, quoting Walter Benjamin in the process, can be found at the website of John Gill, my companion in minimalist photography.
Duncan Heining’s Top 10 ‘Albums of the Year’ in Jazzwise;
NPR’s Patrick Jarenwattananon’s My Blog’s list entitled ‘Why this year is the year of the big band’ and
Chris Kelsey’s contribution as one of 99 critics polled in Village Voice.
This was preceded some days earlier by an entry (of which more later) in Chris Kelsey’s own blog which asked a question that has puzzled me too:
‘In the old major label days — when there were fewer releases, and the market was dominated by the big boys — consensus picks could be somewhat expected. But given the preponderance of indie recordings, and assuming the critics are as free-thinking and independent as we’d like to believe they are, it should be expected that very few records show up in any two lists.
Yet several do.’
What is hinted at here is how the critics concerned acquire their copies. Perhaps some go out and buy them - or specifically ask for them - because one of their fellow critics has turned them on to that particular artist, but somehow I doubt that, as will become clear from the tenor of this article. What seems to happen is that record companies send review copies to many individual critics (rather than the magazines they write for), knowing that in most cases they won’t get an actual review, in print or on the web, but that the reviewer – who may well enjoy the CD - will need them to refer to when he is asked for his end of year choices.
Francis Davis – curator of this year’s Village Voice poll – addresses this question from a similar point of view and cited a specific example, which I find somewhat disturbing:
‘But the main source of my blues was a concern specific to this poll. Two years ago, in this space, I worried aloud about major labels, with their vast promotional reach, dominating the standings. Those were the days, huh? Those majors that haven’t dispensed with jazz altogether to help stem the tide of red ink have severely trimmed their mailing lists, and many independents are becoming just as stingy with review copies.
‘Granted, the only thing more annoying than critics going on about getting more free CDs than they have time to listen to is the same freeloaders bellyaching about not getting enough. And it’s tough to fault labels for their sudden parsimony, because what sense does it make for them to send out a few hundred promos of an album expected to sell a couple thousand, tops? But I worried that this new PR austerity might tilt this year’s standings, and in at least one case, I bet it did. Critics can be pushovers for an ambitious concept the same as everybody else, which is why I have to believe that Dedicated to You, Kurt Elling’s salute to Coltrane and Johnny Hartman, would have waltzed to victory as Best Vocal if Concord had bothered to service more than a handful of us.’
There’s much to argue with there. Not least the point that ‘this new PR austerity might tilt this year’s standings’. Well, duh. I thought such polls were a genuine reflection of what the critics concerned genuinely saw as the best of the year. Not their opinion gathered from the review copies that they may or may not have received from the majors. More about this below.
All my recent work has been on small labels, lately my own jazzcontinuum mark, and neither they nor I can contemplate the outlay that such a blanket approach would entail. I’m speaking not of the cost of the CD itself, but of the postage from Europe to the generally American based jazz media. All this puts me and others like me at an obvious physical disadvantage – and that’s before we mention name-recognition and the ‘pack mentality’ of critics.
Given these facts it could be asked how can I complain? Jazz is a market-driven business and if you’re trying to sell refrigerators to Eskimos then you have to deal with the hand you’re dealt and learn to live with the consequences.
Well, I can and do complain, because these are people whose supposed job it is to act as gatekeepers to the world of jazz, to praise what’s praiseworthy, to damn, or ignore, what’s not, and to show what is on the horizon.
Before going further down that path, some clarification: I take it as a fact that ‘jazz happens in real time, once’. That could be in a recording studio or at a gig, but it’s the immediacy of the result that’s important. Which can’t be achieved if, in Chris Kelsey’s phrase, we’re inundated with such projects as So-and-So Plays the Music of Some Famous Dead Jazz Guy. (Or, perhaps more relevant to this post, So-and-So Writes Music very similar to that of Some Famous Dead Jazz Guy.)
I take it as fact that there is such a thing as jazz composition, where there is sign of a controlling vision, but where the voices of the musicians concerned are part of that vision. The three names which exemplify this are Duke Ellington, Charles Mingus and Gil Evans.
As an aside, but one that has a relevance to what we are discussing, I am flattered that various critics have seen fit to compare my work to each of those three (as well as others such as George Russell, Carla Bley and Dave Douglas). Here are some of the comments, more can be found at grahamcolliermusic.com.
Collier is in a league with George Russell and Charles Mingus in the demanding discipline of writing for large ensembles populated by musicians whose improvisation goes beyond the fringe of standard harmony.
Doug Ramsey, Rifftides (USA)
It’s a luminous performance, on a par – for me, at least – with any of Ellington’s late suites.
Brian Morton, The Wire
Collier’s music – rather like a free version of early Charles Mingus – continued to embrace long-form pan-tonal compositional frameworks.
Dan Warburton, Paris Transatlantic
Through the years Collier has consistently showed an affinity for nuance, color, and texture without sacrificing the emotional spontaneity that is at the heart of Jazz, somewhat in the vein of Gil Evans.
Steven Loewy, All Music Guide
I also take it as a fact that there is such a thing as jazz arranging, where a writer takes a tune – his own or somebody else’s – and ‘dresses it up’, orchestrates it, sometimes very skilfully as in the classic early work of Gil Evans, sometimes using relatively minor updates of the arranging clichés that have been around since Don Redman. What grates, though, is the way that some of these arrangers are called jazz composers, and not run-of-the-mill composers, either, but, ‘truly great’ ones, a phrase I challenged recently when it was applied to Jim McNeeley (see Keeping the Peace below), and which I saw recently attached to Bob Brookmeyer’s name. The same Bob Brookmeyer who said in an interview in the New York Times that ‘you don’t write in a solo until you’ve completely exhausted all you have to say’. Which I find a very strange comment coming from a jazz composer – whether he’s called great or not. The soloists are part of the jazz composer’s palette, in the same way that, in a lesser way, the various woodwind instruments are part of the orchestral composer’s palette.
But mention of Brookmeyer’s name brings us back to the subject of polls and critics.
In his summing up of the results of his wide-ranging poll of the top 10 CDs of 2009 in Village Voice, Francis Davis asked ‘anybody spot a trend?’, when commenting on the preponderance of votes for what he called Brookmeyerites such as Darcy James Argue and 2007 winner Maria Schneider. Francis is right in that there is a trend emerging but one that points in a different direction: namely, there is a pack mentality among many critics which, unfortunately for some of us, means they rarely look beyond the pile of CDs they receive to see what else is around.
A similar sentiment was to the fore in a recent blog by Chris Kelsey: ‘How, for example, does John Hollenbeck’s Eternal Interlude—a perfectly fine, skillfully written yet formally conventional big band album released on a small indie label — show up on so many lists, while Graham Collier’s directing 14 Jackson Pollocks—a visionary and inspired work that’s utterly unlike any big band album released since the death of Gil Evans (except for, I assume, those made by Collier himself) — has yet to appear on a single one that I’ve seen?’
I should perhaps mention that I have accepted that my lack of acclaim compared to some other writers is probably inevitable, and one that I have grown to accept without much rancour. In this respect I agree with Bill Evans: ‘I do feel a lot of acceptance and recognition and my ego is well-fed. I always accepted the fact that Guy Lombardo is a millionaire, and so on, and it just didn’t bother me that much as long as there was a little niche that I could find for what I wanted to do.’ (found in a recent entry in Peter Hum’s blog).
But back to the subject at hand.
Chris’s comments were taken up by John Hollenbeck himself, one of the writers mentioned by Francis Davis:
‘I really appreciate your comments on “lists”… I’m not a fan myself - one reason being is that everyone but #1 ends up feeling a little bad… I would like an answer to your question about Graham’s record, which I admire. My guess for my luck this year would be that it is a combination of a very good recording, timing, and money spent on publicity (or blogging your ass off - as some are doing these days). Also, I would guess most of the journalists who put my new album on their top ten did not hear Graham’s, because it is a European release and they did not get a copy of it or he is not even on their “radar” (again - luck, timing and money!)… since it seems most reviewers concentrate on younger artists.’
But as Chris responded there’s more to it than that:
‘Thanks, John. Your record is certainly worthy, of course, and I appreciate you taking my point in the spirit in which it was intended. You’re probably partly right about the reasons Graham’s record didn’t get the attention, but I’m not gonna let the critics off easily. Graham sought me out and sent me a copy, not only of his record, but of his book. I cannot believe that I was the only one to whom he reached out. Far from it, I imagine. I suspect his album is probably still in the pile of unlistened-to CDs on a lot of critics’ desks. That’s too bad. That speaks to my central point, which is basically that too many critics don’t do their due diligence.’
As Chris implies, I did send out copies of the CD to other critics in the U.S. Eighteen in all, of which only a few were reviewed, but happily all were favourable. eMusic chose it as one of their ‘notable new releases’ for August 2009, and Doug Ramsey said in Rifftides ‘Collier … produces serious music that makes demands on its listeners and gives generous compensation to those who welcome it on its terms.’
Which personalises the question Chris raises at the end of his comment: If such esteemed critics as Doug Ramsey can see that my CD is something worthy of a good review, and if the British critic Duncan Heining (author of a soon-to-be-published book George Russell: The Story of an American Composer
) says ‘The Vonetta Factor is one of the most genuinely modern big band compositions to come out of Britain for twenty years’, why has no other critic bothered to ask for a review copy? As I say above, I could have researched all the major critics and posted off copies to them, but as Chris says, the CD would probably still be on a pile of unlistened-to CDs. And I’d be out a lot of postage.But that’s not the real point. The real point is that in the same way as I, as a compose, educator and author, try to keep up with what’s going on in my business – writing for the large ensemble – I would expect that a critic should be expected to keep up with their business, which is keeping up with what’s interesting on the jazz scene - wherever it’s happening - rather than just reaching for another CD from the pile.
Yes, I know it’s not that simple. And that it’s impossible to hear everything. But if I’m pointed in the right direction by a review I’ll try out some samples if I can find them, and probably invest in a CD or download. I’ve discovered some great music that way. Is it too much to ask that critics do something similar?
Perhaps they do and I’m maligning them, but hidden in the comment from Francis Davis and the Kelsey blog and its subsequent exchange, is a message deeper than what some might see as my wounded ego. As a Vanity Fair writer said in an article about the preponderance of ‘Cute’ culture: ‘[W]hen critics review films like Up or Wall-E, their tone suggests they’re dealing with something like The Seventh Seal rather than movies designed to exploit our caretaking instincts.’
It’s not too much of a stretch to apply that quote to the way jazz critics are dealing with what many jazz musicians are producing today. They seem much more concerned to exploit ‘our caretaking instincts’ – by their support of the musicians whose work is ‘perfectly fine, skilfully written, yet formally conventional’ - than they are to seek out new creative uses of the jazz language. While not wishing to follow Matthew Shipp’s methods of slating his fellow jazz musicians I feel that we shouldn’t ignore the fact that many of the acclaimed big band CDs of recent years – Darcy James Argue’s, Maria Schneider’s, Dave Holland’s – as well as those of Jim McNeeley and Brookmeyer himself, fit Chris Kelsey’s phrase; they’re ‘perfectly fine, skillfully written, yet formally conventional’. All very nice, within most people’s comfort zones, but not taking advantage of all that jazz has to offer. Such music has, as a colleague said once when we were discussing Brookmeyer’s writing, ‘no smell to it’. As Duke said about music in general, ‘it needs a little dirt’.
One could apply an old song title to the Brookmeyerites and ask ‘Is that all there is?’ If we read what the top tens tell us then we might be led to accept this. If we took the time to check out the work of Norwegian composer Geir Lysne
or that of the Italian Roberto Bonati - and of many others inside America as well as out - we’d realise that there is more. And that we’re being short changed if we don’t see some of their work in the ‘best of’ lists.Other matters
It was with some incredulity that my partner John and I watched an English comedian being quizzed on ‘the life and music of Derek Bailey’ on a recent episode of the BBC’s Celebrity Mastermind, the first time that we know of where such a subject has been included. Good for the Beeb (and can someone choosing the subject of my own career be far behind?), but we did realise that most of the audience would doze off, as we do during the seemingly interminable questions on Edwardian tea-cups or some such subject, while waiting for the general knowledge rounds, where there is at least some chance of us getting one or two answers right.
Incredulity too, when we found out that Stuart Nicholson is now Professor of Music Journalism at Leeds College of Music. This at a time when due to media cuts many far better writers are given less space, or are out of a job altogether. Although … perhaps due to some fluke in the application process the only other contender for the post was Jack Massarik, in which case the better writer got the job! I hope that when Professor Nicholson is grading student papers he will deduct marks where the author of an article, used to back up the writer’s stance, is not named, even though where it was published may have been. As I reported below in The Poor Man’s Hugues Panassié Nicholson himself failed to tell us that the author of a New York Times article he used in strong support of his belief in the supremacy of Norwegian jazz was in fact the good Professor himself.
No incredulity when Wynton Marsalis seemingly attempted to get some cheap publicity (as though he needs it) by offering the Spanish fan who reported Larry Ochs to the police because his music wasn’t jazz, a stack of Marsalis’s own CDs. Marsalis’s office later said there had been a mistake and he never wanted his search [for the fan’s name] to become public. And if you believe that…
Some surprise when, as mentioned above, Matthew Shipp seriously put down Herbie Hancock and Wayne Shorter in two separate articles, thereby making it very clear that, no, he hadn’t been misquoted. While I think there may be a grain of truth in what he says, it would have been better if his criticisms weren’t so self-serving. However I am reminded of a quote from Howard Mandel that I used in the jazz composer:
Where is Hancock as leader of this gang? Why can’t or won’t he make a statement, rally his troupe to focus its expression, reach out to the listeners, wrap us in the music and take us higher? If jazz doesn’t do that, if it only wants to be admired, it’s ready for burial now.
Extracts from recent reviews.
More - and full attribution – can be found here and here.
the jazz composer, moving music off the paper
Highly recommended.
Wolfram Knauer, The Jazz Institute, Darmstadt
May well infuriate as many readers as it delights, but compellingly readable as it is, it is unlikely to leave anyone indifferent.
Chris Parker, Vortex Jazz Club
It’s that very individuality which has always been a mark of Collier’s composing, and as a consequence this book is integral to his overall musical conception.
Nic Jones, All About Jazz
Might inspire, or, at the least, provide new working methods to aspiring composers who will probably benefit from reading this book and considering the musical examples.
John Schu, JazzTimes
directing 14 Jackson Pollocks
two hours of fascinating music.
Chris Parker, Vortex Jazz Club
A fusion of pre-planned architectures and regulated freedom allowing each soloist a spot under the sun yet never transcending into pandemonium.
Massimo Ricci, Temporary Fault blogspot
And, as mentioned above, Chris Kelsey’s view that the CD is
a visionary and inspired work that’s utterly unlike any big band album released since the death of Gil Evans.
The Galapagos
Regular readers of this site will know that John and I went off to the Galapagos recently for a holiday among the tortoises, iguanas and blue-footed boobies. It was, as expected, amazing, although our enjoyment was somewhat spoilt by the constant noise of shutters clicking as our boat-mates vied to see how many pictures of said animals they could take. Resisting the impulse to scream ‘they all look the f..ing same’ as yet another one was digitally immortalised, we did in fact take some pictures. ‘It must be important, Graham’s taking a picture’ was one of the remarks overheard, and a carefully chosen selection of what we did take can be found here.
Similar views on camera-wielding tourists, quoting Walter Benjamin in the process, can be found at the website of John Gill, my companion in minimalist photography.
'Don't step on my melody'
12/11/09 10:21 Filed in: Jazz
To mark the last blog of 2009 (which may seem somewhat premature, but on Sunday I leave until the end of the year for all points west) I’m heading it with a comment which fits in well with my view of how jazz players and composers should interact.
‘All points west’ is a reference to my forthcoming travels. First stop is Parma, not only for the ham, but for a presentation of the book, and a concert of my music which will include The Blue Suite, inspired by the tunes on Kind of Blue. It was writing about the impact that the record had on jazz for the jazz composer book, that led me to try to capture the essence of each of the five pieces on the album in a new way. Not a pastiche but, to be pretentious, a homage to what the pieces, singly, and as a whole, have meant to me as a jazz composer and to jazz in general. Each of the five movements – ‘Kind of Sketchy’, ‘Kind of Green’, ‘Kind of Freddie’, ‘Kind of So What’ and ‘All Kinds’ - can be played alone and contain much room for improvisation, both from me as director and from the musicians concerned. But the aim is to ‘mix them up’, to move around freely between the movements during the performance, thus adding another dimension to my feeling that each performance of a jazz composition should be very different to the previous one.
After Parma it’s London, partially for the beer – sorry, partially to see friends – but also for a lecture at the Leeds Music College, and an appearance on the BBC’s Jazz Library. Presented by Alyn Shipton the programme, available for seven days after the broadcast date (mine will be on in the new year), is a look at the tracks and records which a jazz musician feels have been important in his life.
From London, it’s on to Madrid, again to see some friends - and some art, but mainly as the starting point for what we’re calling Graham and John’s big adventure: a trip to The Galapagos Islands, with some days afterwards in an eco-resort on the Pacific coast. After that I guess it’s back to a Skopelos winter, but perhaps the sight of blue-footed boobies on Galapagos will sustain us through that, and the necessary bread and water diet.
The quote used in the heading is from George Russell’s appearance on Jazz Library. He commented that Don Cherry had said to him ‘Don’t step on my melody’ and continued, ‘Having him on the band I realised that what he was doing was putting his own imprint on the melody. Much to my advantage, actually.’ Amen to that.
‘All points west’ is a reference to my forthcoming travels. First stop is Parma, not only for the ham, but for a presentation of the book, and a concert of my music which will include The Blue Suite, inspired by the tunes on Kind of Blue. It was writing about the impact that the record had on jazz for the jazz composer book, that led me to try to capture the essence of each of the five pieces on the album in a new way. Not a pastiche but, to be pretentious, a homage to what the pieces, singly, and as a whole, have meant to me as a jazz composer and to jazz in general. Each of the five movements – ‘Kind of Sketchy’, ‘Kind of Green’, ‘Kind of Freddie’, ‘Kind of So What’ and ‘All Kinds’ - can be played alone and contain much room for improvisation, both from me as director and from the musicians concerned. But the aim is to ‘mix them up’, to move around freely between the movements during the performance, thus adding another dimension to my feeling that each performance of a jazz composition should be very different to the previous one.
After Parma it’s London, partially for the beer – sorry, partially to see friends – but also for a lecture at the Leeds Music College, and an appearance on the BBC’s Jazz Library. Presented by Alyn Shipton the programme, available for seven days after the broadcast date (mine will be on in the new year), is a look at the tracks and records which a jazz musician feels have been important in his life.
From London, it’s on to Madrid, again to see some friends - and some art, but mainly as the starting point for what we’re calling Graham and John’s big adventure: a trip to The Galapagos Islands, with some days afterwards in an eco-resort on the Pacific coast. After that I guess it’s back to a Skopelos winter, but perhaps the sight of blue-footed boobies on Galapagos will sustain us through that, and the necessary bread and water diet.
The quote used in the heading is from George Russell’s appearance on Jazz Library. He commented that Don Cherry had said to him ‘Don’t step on my melody’ and continued, ‘Having him on the band I realised that what he was doing was putting his own imprint on the melody. Much to my advantage, actually.’ Amen to that.
Keeping the peace?
04/11/09 13:35 Filed in: Jazz
Ronan Guilfoyle: Whereas the problems I was thinking about when I was writing the blog, is a situation where if you’ve got X number of pieces and X number of soloists, you look at the line-up and you say to yourself “I have to give everyone a solo” - if I’m doing the math correctly that means I can have two soloists in this tune but I’m going to need three in that tune etc. and then I decide who goes in there, and who goes in there -- you have to do it, almost as a way of keeping the peace! (Laughs)
Jim McNeeley: (Laughs) Right! In the two albums I’ve written for the Vanguard Orchestra I wanted to make sure that the principal players all got at least a healthy shot, and that does end up as part of the planning for the music.
While such an exchange – from Ronan Guilfoyle’s Mostly Music blog - might be apt for an Arranging 101 seminar, it fits uncomfortably under the claim made in the introduction that ‘Jim McNeeley is one of the truly great contemporary American jazz composers’. It also flies in the face of what I believe is the potential of jazz composing: that it should be recognized as an art of its own, having some relationship to jazz arranging (of which Jim McNeeley is an expert), and some relationship to what we can call for the sake of shorthand, classical composing. The fact that so-called ‘jazz composing’ is often found to largely reside in one or other of those camps is at the heart of the problem.
As I wrote in the jazz composer:
In jazz, as we have seen, there have also been excellent arrangers, orchestrators, of their own and other people’s material. As a broad definition one could say that if there is obviously a tune followed by band variations and improvised solos, this could be said to be an arrangement. … [I]f one looks at classical composers … one can sense a form, hear recurring ideas, sense an overall control. It’s the work of one person, played by a group of others. … Although the dividing line may still be blurred at times, I think one can separate a jazz composition from a jazz arrangement in the same way. When the compositional aspects become more important, more involved, more integrated with what the soloist(s) are doing, then it becomes a jazz composition. When this is not apparent, it is an arrangement.
My main argument with the comments from Ronan’s blog is that the ‘composer’s vision’, if we can use so grand a word for what is being discussed, is seemingly superceded by some juvenile idea of fairness to the soloists. If truth be told I wouldn’t want anyone who thought he had the right to a solo on any particular tune or any particular night in a band of mine. Or, to bring up another point to which I’ll return later, that his or her solo should necessarily be a long one. The people I work with – and I am convinced that this is true of most ‘open’ jazz musicians - are aware that they are part of an entity and that, as the composer, and usually begetter of the gig, I’m in charge and that they have signed up for it in order to help me achieve my vision as a jazz composer.
One does make misjudgements at times, as this comment shows: On a Hoarded Dreams gig I let three of the soloists go on too long, [because their solos were so good]. This led some other members of the band to say that I should resist the temptation: ‘The audience haven’t come to hear the musicians as though they were playing in a club. They’ve come to hear your composition.’ Comments somewhat sobering for a bandleader, but encouraging for a composer.
Generally though one achieves – more or less – what one set out to do: to create a performance combining the particular talents of the musicians with your own skills to create a performance that is a satisfying whole. And the musicians who don’t solo should be happy that this has been achieved (and, if the music is open enough, feel that they have contributed to the end result in some creative way, rather than ‘just reading the notes’).
The main crux of the Guilfoyle/McNeeley discussion was about short solos, but at one point McNeeley says ‘But yes, the long solo thing is slightly different -- for example thinking about say Bartok’s ‘Concerto For Orchestra’, supposing you were to open it up and the clarinet player takes 64 bars of meaningless stuff - you’d never consider doing that.’ I find this an odd statement. I feel that the composer/director should only open a piece up if the piece demands it, and that the soloist should - and will, if properly chosen - react appropriately.
Two further points: I find it interesting that the figure of 64 bars – two choruses of a 32 bar tune – is mentioned, when much of today’s jazz composing is based on more open structures. Also, that one might expect ‘meaningless stuff’ from a soloist who was presumably chosen by somebody for that role. In this regard I’m reminded of some rather odd comments in similar vein, made by Bob Brookmeyer in a New York Times interview: My first rule became: The first solo only happens when absolutely nothing else can happen. You don’t write in a solo until you’ve completely exhausted what you have to say. If you give a soloist an open solo for thirty seconds, he plays like he’s coming from the piece that you wrote. Then he says, “What the hell was that piece that I was playing from?” And the next thirty seconds is, “Oh, I guess I’ll play what I learned last night.” And bang! Minute two is whoever he likes, which is probably Coltrane.’
Having said all this I’m sure that this blog, like the book it quotes from, may well, as a recent review said, ‘infuriate as many readers as it delights’. But, be that as it may, these are important issues which need to be considered by anyone interested in the real art of jazz composing. Which, in this context, means what should the relationship be between a jazz composer and his soloists?
Jim McNeeley: (Laughs) Right! In the two albums I’ve written for the Vanguard Orchestra I wanted to make sure that the principal players all got at least a healthy shot, and that does end up as part of the planning for the music.
While such an exchange – from Ronan Guilfoyle’s Mostly Music blog - might be apt for an Arranging 101 seminar, it fits uncomfortably under the claim made in the introduction that ‘Jim McNeeley is one of the truly great contemporary American jazz composers’. It also flies in the face of what I believe is the potential of jazz composing: that it should be recognized as an art of its own, having some relationship to jazz arranging (of which Jim McNeeley is an expert), and some relationship to what we can call for the sake of shorthand, classical composing. The fact that so-called ‘jazz composing’ is often found to largely reside in one or other of those camps is at the heart of the problem.
As I wrote in the jazz composer:
In jazz, as we have seen, there have also been excellent arrangers, orchestrators, of their own and other people’s material. As a broad definition one could say that if there is obviously a tune followed by band variations and improvised solos, this could be said to be an arrangement. … [I]f one looks at classical composers … one can sense a form, hear recurring ideas, sense an overall control. It’s the work of one person, played by a group of others. … Although the dividing line may still be blurred at times, I think one can separate a jazz composition from a jazz arrangement in the same way. When the compositional aspects become more important, more involved, more integrated with what the soloist(s) are doing, then it becomes a jazz composition. When this is not apparent, it is an arrangement.
My main argument with the comments from Ronan’s blog is that the ‘composer’s vision’, if we can use so grand a word for what is being discussed, is seemingly superceded by some juvenile idea of fairness to the soloists. If truth be told I wouldn’t want anyone who thought he had the right to a solo on any particular tune or any particular night in a band of mine. Or, to bring up another point to which I’ll return later, that his or her solo should necessarily be a long one. The people I work with – and I am convinced that this is true of most ‘open’ jazz musicians - are aware that they are part of an entity and that, as the composer, and usually begetter of the gig, I’m in charge and that they have signed up for it in order to help me achieve my vision as a jazz composer.
One does make misjudgements at times, as this comment shows: On a Hoarded Dreams gig I let three of the soloists go on too long, [because their solos were so good]. This led some other members of the band to say that I should resist the temptation: ‘The audience haven’t come to hear the musicians as though they were playing in a club. They’ve come to hear your composition.’ Comments somewhat sobering for a bandleader, but encouraging for a composer.
Generally though one achieves – more or less – what one set out to do: to create a performance combining the particular talents of the musicians with your own skills to create a performance that is a satisfying whole. And the musicians who don’t solo should be happy that this has been achieved (and, if the music is open enough, feel that they have contributed to the end result in some creative way, rather than ‘just reading the notes’).
The main crux of the Guilfoyle/McNeeley discussion was about short solos, but at one point McNeeley says ‘But yes, the long solo thing is slightly different -- for example thinking about say Bartok’s ‘Concerto For Orchestra’, supposing you were to open it up and the clarinet player takes 64 bars of meaningless stuff - you’d never consider doing that.’ I find this an odd statement. I feel that the composer/director should only open a piece up if the piece demands it, and that the soloist should - and will, if properly chosen - react appropriately.
Two further points: I find it interesting that the figure of 64 bars – two choruses of a 32 bar tune – is mentioned, when much of today’s jazz composing is based on more open structures. Also, that one might expect ‘meaningless stuff’ from a soloist who was presumably chosen by somebody for that role. In this regard I’m reminded of some rather odd comments in similar vein, made by Bob Brookmeyer in a New York Times interview: My first rule became: The first solo only happens when absolutely nothing else can happen. You don’t write in a solo until you’ve completely exhausted what you have to say. If you give a soloist an open solo for thirty seconds, he plays like he’s coming from the piece that you wrote. Then he says, “What the hell was that piece that I was playing from?” And the next thirty seconds is, “Oh, I guess I’ll play what I learned last night.” And bang! Minute two is whoever he likes, which is probably Coltrane.’
Having said all this I’m sure that this blog, like the book it quotes from, may well, as a recent review said, ‘infuriate as many readers as it delights’. But, be that as it may, these are important issues which need to be considered by anyone interested in the real art of jazz composing. Which, in this context, means what should the relationship be between a jazz composer and his soloists?
'There is no alternative'
22/10/09 12:07 Filed in: Jazz
I knew when I wrote the jazz composer that it wouldn’t please everyone, but a recent reaction has raised some interesting questions. I was in line to present a project in, let’s just say ‘somewhere in Europe’. The course organiser, after borrowing my book from a friend I had sent it to, has it seems decided that I can’t be trusted with his students because in the book I make clear my dislike of the music of some of his idols.
It’s an irony that according to some critics I did make clear my reasons for my opinions. Which brings me to the point: should students be shown that there is more than one way to sking a cat, or should they only be educated on the path which fits the course leader’s vision of what jazz should be?
I take it as self-evident that there are many ways of playing and writing jazz, it’s one of its strengths. But it’s also one of its weaknesses. If you stray from the jazz police’s straight-and-narrow view of the music, you have to find an audience – and perhaps convince others that your view is as legitimate as the views of those who prefer to live in the past.
When I was appointed to shape and direct the new jazz course at the Royal Academy of Music in London, there were mutterings off that I would teach the students all my new-fangled ways and that real jazz would go out of the window. My response was ‘Do me a favour, and give me credit for having a wide view of what jazz is, and what jazz education should be.’ And so it turned out, and I would hazard the opinion that we created a more inclusive jazz course than many others around the world. As well as the normal jazz school pursuits of harmony, ear-training and instrumental lessons (from a variety of teachers during their four-year stay) we taught the full range of jazz history as practically as possible. We even recreated classic jazz concerts and programmed them on the same evening as the launch of the annual CDs of student compositions. This was against the wishes of the suits, but was justified by the audience response to both halves and the evening’s CD sales.
The students seemed to have turned out well and some, Tom Cawley and James Allsopp to name but two, are being highly praised. Would they and others have been better educated if I had taught them all ‘my way’? I doubt it very much, as much as I doubt that students in, what we could call for shorthand, the bebop/Basie school of jazz education, are as well educated as they could be. Jazz is a continuum from Louis all the way up to Roberto Bonati* and beyond. We owe students an education that will demonstrate this.
* Italian composer and bassist Roberto Bonati is a good exemplar of this, as an instrumentalist, composer, educator and director of the Parma JazzFrontiere Festival, he knows the past is important, but is working for the future as well. To declare an interest, I’m working there in November - good jazz and Italian food, what more can one ask?
It’s an irony that according to some critics I did make clear my reasons for my opinions. Which brings me to the point: should students be shown that there is more than one way to sking a cat, or should they only be educated on the path which fits the course leader’s vision of what jazz should be?
I take it as self-evident that there are many ways of playing and writing jazz, it’s one of its strengths. But it’s also one of its weaknesses. If you stray from the jazz police’s straight-and-narrow view of the music, you have to find an audience – and perhaps convince others that your view is as legitimate as the views of those who prefer to live in the past.
When I was appointed to shape and direct the new jazz course at the Royal Academy of Music in London, there were mutterings off that I would teach the students all my new-fangled ways and that real jazz would go out of the window. My response was ‘Do me a favour, and give me credit for having a wide view of what jazz is, and what jazz education should be.’ And so it turned out, and I would hazard the opinion that we created a more inclusive jazz course than many others around the world. As well as the normal jazz school pursuits of harmony, ear-training and instrumental lessons (from a variety of teachers during their four-year stay) we taught the full range of jazz history as practically as possible. We even recreated classic jazz concerts and programmed them on the same evening as the launch of the annual CDs of student compositions. This was against the wishes of the suits, but was justified by the audience response to both halves and the evening’s CD sales.
The students seemed to have turned out well and some, Tom Cawley and James Allsopp to name but two, are being highly praised. Would they and others have been better educated if I had taught them all ‘my way’? I doubt it very much, as much as I doubt that students in, what we could call for shorthand, the bebop/Basie school of jazz education, are as well educated as they could be. Jazz is a continuum from Louis all the way up to Roberto Bonati* and beyond. We owe students an education that will demonstrate this.
* Italian composer and bassist Roberto Bonati is a good exemplar of this, as an instrumentalist, composer, educator and director of the Parma JazzFrontiere Festival, he knows the past is important, but is working for the future as well. To declare an interest, I’m working there in November - good jazz and Italian food, what more can one ask?
Jazz doesn't get any better
09/10/09 11:46 Filed in: Recommendations
Recommendations – the rationale
The inclusion of Hoarded Dreams as one of the 200 in The Penguin Guide to Jazz Recordings’ Core Collection, described as ‘a basic library of jazz records which readers… might consider as their first priority purchases’, was not only a well received accolade, but has prompted me to try something similar.
Over the next however long it takes I’ll be making a list of my Core 200 or so of tracks or records that I wouldn’t want to be without. It will be a mixture of jazz and classical, with perhaps some unexpected choices for a jazz composer to make. Also folded in will be some books and authors, painters and other artists, I have particularly liked and/or been influenced by. As such it will, in time, replace the Recommendations sections of this site.
The recommendations will start here in occasional blogs. After a while the core names will stay with the content being moved to Recommendations where they will be alphabetically listed by artist, with a composite list at the top of the page.
Links are now included to Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk.
Recommendations – List 7
Jimmy Giuffre
Jimmy Giuffre 3, 1961
ECM
Virtually any recording by Jimmy Giuffre with Paul Bley and Steve
Swallow is worth listening to, but the best starting point would be
this wonderful double CD [a repackaging by ECM of Thesis and Fusion, two classic Giuffre recordings from 1961]. The records include several tunes by Carla Bley, and a stunning remake of what was once Benny Goodman’s signature tune, Gordon Jenkins’ ‘Goodbye’. One doubts that the dancers of the 1930s would even recognise the tune, and, after Goodman’s classically influenced sound, they would probably hate the often quirky distortions that Giuffre produces from the same instrument. But it represents an original, very personal take on the tune, and a reminder of what jazz is capable of. In the mid-1990s I played the CD to a group of students. In the hush at the end one said ‘Jazz doesn’t get any better.’ Whether he meant the record was great, or that jazz hadn’t improved since, was left open.
Extracted from the jazz composer, moving music off the paper.
Jimmy Giuffre at Amazon.co.uk
Jimmy Giuffre at Amazon.com
Clement Greenberg (1909-1994)
Homemade Aesthetics, observations on art and taste
The Collected Essays and Criticism (4 volumes)
All Oxford University Press
I’ve been reading Greenberg’s criticism for most of my adult life and, although he has his detractors – and I don’t agree with everything he says - I have found many parallels in his writing to the way we should think about jazz. Here are some examples I use in the jazz composer.
For jazz to happen in real time once, it is essential that the music should, to repeat Clement Greenberg’s words, ‘determine, through its own operations and works, the effects exclusive to itself’. As is obvious, the effects peculiar and exclusive to jazz are not the written elements, the things that can be seen, but rather the things that can’t be seen, what the musicians do with what they are given. In a word, improvising. …
There is another statement from Greenberg which is of enormous relevance to jazz: ‘the acceptance, willing acceptance, of the limitations of the medium of the specific art’.
‘When it comes to aesthetic experience, you’re all alone to start and end with. Other people’s responses may put you under pressure, but what you then have to do is go back and look again, listen again, read again.’
Clement Greenberg at Amazon.co.uk
Clement Greneberg at Amazon.com
Michel Godard
Castel del Monte
Enja
Godard – an amazing tuba player – recorded this album in a 13th century castle in Ruvo di Puglia, Italy, built for Frederick II with huge empty spaces and ‘no obvious use’. Because of the castle’s octagonal shape Godard used eight musicians (including Gianluigi Trovesi and Renaud Garcia-Fons), but most of the music was recorded ‘in the inner courtyard under the open sky’. The effects are stunning with an intermingling of the two singers and the instrumentalists which is wonderful.
Castel del Monte at Amazon.co.uk
Castel del Monte at Amazon.com
Charlie Haden
Liberation Music Orchestra
Impulse!
This CD has rightly become a classic since it was recorded in 1969. Its message of protest is played by an all star band (Gato Barbieri, Dewey Redman, Don Cherry, Roswell Rudd among them) and has arrangements by Carla Bley, before whimsy overtook her. Ornette’s ‘War Orphans’ is an especial delight.
Liberation Music Orchestra at Amazon.co.uk
Liberation Music Orchestra at Amazon.com
Steve Harris & Zaum
Zaum
Above Our Heads the Sky Splits Open
I hope you never love anything as much as I love you
Slam
Steve Harris’s early death was a great loss to music. I have praised the music produced by his group in the jazz composer, stating that (heresy!) I much preferred it to that of Sun Ra:
‘This chapter’s dedicatees, Steve Harris (1948–2008) and his group ZAUM, have created, in their live performances and in their CDs, sets of miniatures that show distinct compositional form, with some moments of aggression, alongside some moments of pure beauty. To my ear they could have been composed, yet I am told that they were completely improvised in performance. Some of the sounds are undeniably jazz, some could have been created from music written by a contemporary classical composer. They provide a completely satisfying experience in an area where, for me – because of the risk taking? because of my preference for some kind of underlying form? – this is rare. … (As an experiment, after listening to Heliocentric Worlds, Volume 1, one of Sun Ra’s most praised albums, I put on a random track of ZAUM … I immediately felt drawn in to the sound world, and sense of form, that Steve Harris and his musicians were creating, an effect which had passed me by when listening to Sun Ra.)’
Zaum at Amazon.co.uk
Zaum at Amazon.com
The inclusion of Hoarded Dreams as one of the 200 in The Penguin Guide to Jazz Recordings’ Core Collection, described as ‘a basic library of jazz records which readers… might consider as their first priority purchases’, was not only a well received accolade, but has prompted me to try something similar.
Over the next however long it takes I’ll be making a list of my Core 200 or so of tracks or records that I wouldn’t want to be without. It will be a mixture of jazz and classical, with perhaps some unexpected choices for a jazz composer to make. Also folded in will be some books and authors, painters and other artists, I have particularly liked and/or been influenced by. As such it will, in time, replace the Recommendations sections of this site.
The recommendations will start here in occasional blogs. After a while the core names will stay with the content being moved to Recommendations where they will be alphabetically listed by artist, with a composite list at the top of the page.
Links are now included to Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk.
Recommendations – List 7
Jimmy Giuffre
Jimmy Giuffre 3, 1961
ECM
Virtually any recording by Jimmy Giuffre with Paul Bley and Steve
Swallow is worth listening to, but the best starting point would be
this wonderful double CD [a repackaging by ECM of Thesis and Fusion, two classic Giuffre recordings from 1961]. The records include several tunes by Carla Bley, and a stunning remake of what was once Benny Goodman’s signature tune, Gordon Jenkins’ ‘Goodbye’. One doubts that the dancers of the 1930s would even recognise the tune, and, after Goodman’s classically influenced sound, they would probably hate the often quirky distortions that Giuffre produces from the same instrument. But it represents an original, very personal take on the tune, and a reminder of what jazz is capable of. In the mid-1990s I played the CD to a group of students. In the hush at the end one said ‘Jazz doesn’t get any better.’ Whether he meant the record was great, or that jazz hadn’t improved since, was left open.
Extracted from the jazz composer, moving music off the paper.
Jimmy Giuffre at Amazon.co.uk
Jimmy Giuffre at Amazon.com
Clement Greenberg (1909-1994)
Homemade Aesthetics, observations on art and taste
The Collected Essays and Criticism (4 volumes)
All Oxford University Press
I’ve been reading Greenberg’s criticism for most of my adult life and, although he has his detractors – and I don’t agree with everything he says - I have found many parallels in his writing to the way we should think about jazz. Here are some examples I use in the jazz composer.
For jazz to happen in real time once, it is essential that the music should, to repeat Clement Greenberg’s words, ‘determine, through its own operations and works, the effects exclusive to itself’. As is obvious, the effects peculiar and exclusive to jazz are not the written elements, the things that can be seen, but rather the things that can’t be seen, what the musicians do with what they are given. In a word, improvising. …
There is another statement from Greenberg which is of enormous relevance to jazz: ‘the acceptance, willing acceptance, of the limitations of the medium of the specific art’.
‘When it comes to aesthetic experience, you’re all alone to start and end with. Other people’s responses may put you under pressure, but what you then have to do is go back and look again, listen again, read again.’
Clement Greenberg at Amazon.co.uk
Clement Greneberg at Amazon.com
Michel Godard
Castel del Monte
Enja
Godard – an amazing tuba player – recorded this album in a 13th century castle in Ruvo di Puglia, Italy, built for Frederick II with huge empty spaces and ‘no obvious use’. Because of the castle’s octagonal shape Godard used eight musicians (including Gianluigi Trovesi and Renaud Garcia-Fons), but most of the music was recorded ‘in the inner courtyard under the open sky’. The effects are stunning with an intermingling of the two singers and the instrumentalists which is wonderful.
Castel del Monte at Amazon.co.uk
Castel del Monte at Amazon.com
Charlie Haden
Liberation Music Orchestra
Impulse!
This CD has rightly become a classic since it was recorded in 1969. Its message of protest is played by an all star band (Gato Barbieri, Dewey Redman, Don Cherry, Roswell Rudd among them) and has arrangements by Carla Bley, before whimsy overtook her. Ornette’s ‘War Orphans’ is an especial delight.
Liberation Music Orchestra at Amazon.co.uk
Liberation Music Orchestra at Amazon.com
Zaum
Above Our Heads the Sky Splits Open
I hope you never love anything as much as I love you
Slam
Steve Harris’s early death was a great loss to music. I have praised the music produced by his group in the jazz composer, stating that (heresy!) I much preferred it to that of Sun Ra:
‘This chapter’s dedicatees, Steve Harris (1948–2008) and his group ZAUM, have created, in their live performances and in their CDs, sets of miniatures that show distinct compositional form, with some moments of aggression, alongside some moments of pure beauty. To my ear they could have been composed, yet I am told that they were completely improvised in performance. Some of the sounds are undeniably jazz, some could have been created from music written by a contemporary classical composer. They provide a completely satisfying experience in an area where, for me – because of the risk taking? because of my preference for some kind of underlying form? – this is rare. … (As an experiment, after listening to Heliocentric Worlds, Volume 1, one of Sun Ra’s most praised albums, I put on a random track of ZAUM … I immediately felt drawn in to the sound world, and sense of form, that Steve Harris and his musicians were creating, an effect which had passed me by when listening to Sun Ra.)’
Zaum at Amazon.co.uk
Zaum at Amazon.com
Machiavellian mixer of the musical maelstrom
06/10/09 10:58 Filed in: Jazz
As promised in the last blog, some extracts from the latest reviews.
directing 14 Jackson Pollocks.
Once again Collier's remarkable vision as a composer and Machiavellian mixer of the musical maelstrom comes arrestingly to the fore. In some ways, his act of composition is to choose his pyrotechnical players, light the blue touch paper, and let them soar and make sparks … the sum of these two CDs illustrates a talent long recognised as unique in world jazz by those who relish the art of the unpredictable.
Anthony Troon, Jazz Journal, October 2009
In directing 14 Jackson Pollocks, Collier reaches distillation of the notion that the orchestra, the written music and the improvising soloist comprise a trinity, each element inseparable from the other. … He produces serious music that makes demands on its listeners and gives generous compensation to those who welcome it on its terms.
Doug Ramsey, Rifftides, October 5 2009
Challenging large ensemble music that strikes a fine balance between structure and freedom. This is music full of interesting ideas and some great playing … his voicings are unusual and often challenging but there is much to reward the attentive listener. Collier’s music is fiercely individualistic inviting comparisons with the likes of Charles Mingus and Carla Bley.. … a fascinating glimpse at a distinguished jazz career.
Ian Mann, The JazzMann, September 2009.
His methods … yield some wonderful results with old and new material. Aberdeen Angus, Eggshell Summer, Third Simple Piece (all prefixed An Alternate), both performances of the blues Mackerel Sky, and the various Third Colour interpretations are among the most exhilarating, sensual, beautiful and disturbing performances in this era’s jazz.
Ray Comiskey, The Irish Times, September 25th 2009.
The Vonetta Factor is one of the most genuinely modern big band compositions to come out of Britain for twenty years. … The music vibrates with passion and brims with a sense of spontaneity and joyous release. At some point, this country must show its appreciation of composers like Collier. Otherwise, nothing makes sense.
Duncan Heining, Jazzwise, October 2009
Buy from The Store at grahamcoliermusic.com
or at Amazon.com
the jazz composer, moving music off the paper
One of the best, if not the best, summations of what jazz and jazz composing are supposed to be.
Jakko Tahkolahti, jazz critic and broadcaster, Finland (Personal comment)
Rather than dwelling on the less than satisfactory, Collier wants to inspire more creativity. There are frequent quotation from other writers … generally well used for advancing his own argument, and the conversational, deliberately repetitive style, works well. … Even if you don’t follow the section of notated examples from his own output, you’ll get a lot of stimulus from reading his words.
Brian Priestley, Jazzwise, October 2009
And to repeat my favourite:
Bloody Marvellous. But I wouldn't say yes to everything in it.
Ray Comiskey, The Irish Times (Personal comment)
Buy from The Store at grahamcoliermusic.com
or at Amazon.com or Amazon.co.uk
directing 14 Jackson Pollocks.
Once again Collier's remarkable vision as a composer and Machiavellian mixer of the musical maelstrom comes arrestingly to the fore. In some ways, his act of composition is to choose his pyrotechnical players, light the blue touch paper, and let them soar and make sparks … the sum of these two CDs illustrates a talent long recognised as unique in world jazz by those who relish the art of the unpredictable.
Anthony Troon, Jazz Journal, October 2009
In directing 14 Jackson Pollocks, Collier reaches distillation of the notion that the orchestra, the written music and the improvising soloist comprise a trinity, each element inseparable from the other. … He produces serious music that makes demands on its listeners and gives generous compensation to those who welcome it on its terms.
Doug Ramsey, Rifftides, October 5 2009
Challenging large ensemble music that strikes a fine balance between structure and freedom. This is music full of interesting ideas and some great playing … his voicings are unusual and often challenging but there is much to reward the attentive listener. Collier’s music is fiercely individualistic inviting comparisons with the likes of Charles Mingus and Carla Bley.. … a fascinating glimpse at a distinguished jazz career.
Ian Mann, The JazzMann, September 2009.
His methods … yield some wonderful results with old and new material. Aberdeen Angus, Eggshell Summer, Third Simple Piece (all prefixed An Alternate), both performances of the blues Mackerel Sky, and the various Third Colour interpretations are among the most exhilarating, sensual, beautiful and disturbing performances in this era’s jazz.
Ray Comiskey, The Irish Times, September 25th 2009.
The Vonetta Factor is one of the most genuinely modern big band compositions to come out of Britain for twenty years. … The music vibrates with passion and brims with a sense of spontaneity and joyous release. At some point, this country must show its appreciation of composers like Collier. Otherwise, nothing makes sense.
Duncan Heining, Jazzwise, October 2009
Buy from The Store at grahamcoliermusic.com
or at Amazon.com
the jazz composer, moving music off the paper
One of the best, if not the best, summations of what jazz and jazz composing are supposed to be.
Jakko Tahkolahti, jazz critic and broadcaster, Finland (Personal comment)
Rather than dwelling on the less than satisfactory, Collier wants to inspire more creativity. There are frequent quotation from other writers … generally well used for advancing his own argument, and the conversational, deliberately repetitive style, works well. … Even if you don’t follow the section of notated examples from his own output, you’ll get a lot of stimulus from reading his words.
Brian Priestley, Jazzwise, October 2009
And to repeat my favourite:
Bloody Marvellous. But I wouldn't say yes to everything in it.
Ray Comiskey, The Irish Times (Personal comment)
Buy from The Store at grahamcoliermusic.com
or at Amazon.com
or Amazon.co.ukBloody Marvellous
02/10/09 09:56 Filed in: Jazz
Some thoughts on reading and misreading.
Bloody marvellous, even though I wouldn’t say yes to everything in it.
A comment from Ray Comiskey jazz critic for the Irish Times on the jazz composer book.
For me that’s as close to an ideal review as I am ever likely to get for the book: it’s enthusiastic, but tempered with the realisation that, like jazz, it’s a matter of personal taste whether you agree with it all. In contrast, a recent letter to Jazz Journal contained a phrase which normally I would agree with, but in the context I find very annoying.
The phrase is ‘Clinical analysis of chords is irrelevant if it ain’t got you-know-what’ which is used to sum up of what the writer thinks the book is about. His confusion arises from his misreading of a review of the book in a previous Jazz Journal, which I took issue with in an earlier blog (Serious Concerns, July 1 2009). One area of concern which is wasn’t relevant to mention at the time, was the reviewer’s decision to spend almost half his review criticising the way I had named a specific chord. The matter had no relevance in terms of the book and was, anyway, one chord in the only eleven musical examples, most less than a page long, in a book of over 300 pages. (For the record there are two ways of naming that chord: I chose one, the reviewer favoured another. Get a life!)
But now that review is ammunition for a letter that uses ‘clinical analysis of chords’ as a stick to beat me with - odd because that approach is not in the book at all, and is in fact one of the many things the book argues against. Criticism of this kind bothers me not because it was part of a personal attack, but because a reviewer’s attempt to score a cheap point has led one reader, and possibly others, to think the book is something other than what it is. In a nutshell, this is part of the problem that jazz faces: good critics are few and far between and the less-good are becoming increasingly visible. (Although not always favourably - see Critical Mess, August 27th, 2009)
The next blog will carry some extracts from recent reviews of the book and CD. Thankfully they’re all positive, but, more to the point, they are more aware of what it is I’m trying to do. Surely we should expect that from all who attempt to criticise us?
Bloody marvellous, even though I wouldn’t say yes to everything in it.
A comment from Ray Comiskey jazz critic for the Irish Times on the jazz composer book.
For me that’s as close to an ideal review as I am ever likely to get for the book: it’s enthusiastic, but tempered with the realisation that, like jazz, it’s a matter of personal taste whether you agree with it all. In contrast, a recent letter to Jazz Journal contained a phrase which normally I would agree with, but in the context I find very annoying.
The phrase is ‘Clinical analysis of chords is irrelevant if it ain’t got you-know-what’ which is used to sum up of what the writer thinks the book is about. His confusion arises from his misreading of a review of the book in a previous Jazz Journal, which I took issue with in an earlier blog (Serious Concerns, July 1 2009). One area of concern which is wasn’t relevant to mention at the time, was the reviewer’s decision to spend almost half his review criticising the way I had named a specific chord. The matter had no relevance in terms of the book and was, anyway, one chord in the only eleven musical examples, most less than a page long, in a book of over 300 pages. (For the record there are two ways of naming that chord: I chose one, the reviewer favoured another. Get a life!)
But now that review is ammunition for a letter that uses ‘clinical analysis of chords’ as a stick to beat me with - odd because that approach is not in the book at all, and is in fact one of the many things the book argues against. Criticism of this kind bothers me not because it was part of a personal attack, but because a reviewer’s attempt to score a cheap point has led one reader, and possibly others, to think the book is something other than what it is. In a nutshell, this is part of the problem that jazz faces: good critics are few and far between and the less-good are becoming increasingly visible. (Although not always favourably - see Critical Mess, August 27th, 2009)
The next blog will carry some extracts from recent reviews of the book and CD. Thankfully they’re all positive, but, more to the point, they are more aware of what it is I’m trying to do. Surely we should expect that from all who attempt to criticise us?
All Change?
02/09/09 13:07 Filed in: Jazz
‘If I use familiar shapes I can put any colour in the world in them.’
That sentence – from the painter Terry Frost – was used to introduce a chapter on repertoire in the jazz composer, and was later used to point out the simple frameworks Miles used for the tunes on Kind of Blue.
If I’d have known about it in time I might well have also included this line from ‘Borges and I’, a prose poem by Frank Bidart:
‘We fill pre-existing forms and when we fill them we change them and are changed.’
(I did in fact use something similar later in the book from the critic Malcolm Cowley. He speaks of constructing a story which in its structure and in its telling is subject to change, and I drew a parallel to the jazz situation. But Bidart’s line expresses this thought much more concisely.)
On the surface, the phrase is only relevant to such jazz forms as the blues and the standard song, and I would argue that it is vital that the message of the phrase be taken on board by jazz performers and composers working in these situations (and especially by those using the forms to write what is called ‘original’ material, although in fact it is usually far from original). The aim should be to change the forms and, as performers and audience, to be changed by what has been done. Which shouldn’t be too hard a challenge in a music that’s meant to be creative. But listening to much of what is going on in jazz today makes one realise that the message just hasn’t got through to many of its practitioners.
To add an aside to the blog discussions going on elsewhere about jazz education versus the noble savage, I think the danger is that some of the fresh approaches students may have will get knocked out of them by forcing them to conform to what we might call, for simplicity, the chord-scale approach. This is in large measure due to the necessity, because of large classes and budget restraints, of teaching the same curriculum to everybody. The real difficulty for jazz education is encouraging the individuality of each student – which can be seen as a good argument for smaller enrolments. The talented students will come through regardless, but I’ve been doubtful for a long time about the sheer numbers of jazz students who are graduating. That’s an argument for another time, but one solution might be more wide-ranging music courses from which the outstanding jazz talents will emerge naturally.
Getting back to the phrase from the Bidart poem, I would also argue that it has relevance to those whose aim is to write something more complex. In their case the form is pre-existing (in their concept of the piece, not necessarily in any commonly used structure(s)), but in many cases it seems that the pre-existing form – and the language used – is not subject to change and the only change allowed is in the solos. Which, given the poor compositional standards we see in many jazz pieces, is putting a lot of weight on the soloist’s shoulders. From the other side of the divide, one acclaimed jazz composer (named in my book) has even stated that ‘the first solo only happens when absolutely nothing else can happen. You don’t write in a solo until you’ve completely exhausted what you have to say.’ Which is putting a lot of weight on the composer’s shoulders and, with banal and derivative jazz compositions being praised as good, even great, at times, what hope is there for the art known as jazz composition?
However, searching outside the market-led media one finds that there are many composers who are using their own forms flexibly and working within a non-derivative language to create good jazz compositions. I would argue that these are aspects of the art of the jazz composer which are essential if we are to change the performers and the audience.
And on that provocative note the blog and I are now on vacation. Back in late September.
That sentence – from the painter Terry Frost – was used to introduce a chapter on repertoire in the jazz composer, and was later used to point out the simple frameworks Miles used for the tunes on Kind of Blue.
If I’d have known about it in time I might well have also included this line from ‘Borges and I’, a prose poem by Frank Bidart:
‘We fill pre-existing forms and when we fill them we change them and are changed.’
(I did in fact use something similar later in the book from the critic Malcolm Cowley. He speaks of constructing a story which in its structure and in its telling is subject to change, and I drew a parallel to the jazz situation. But Bidart’s line expresses this thought much more concisely.)
On the surface, the phrase is only relevant to such jazz forms as the blues and the standard song, and I would argue that it is vital that the message of the phrase be taken on board by jazz performers and composers working in these situations (and especially by those using the forms to write what is called ‘original’ material, although in fact it is usually far from original). The aim should be to change the forms and, as performers and audience, to be changed by what has been done. Which shouldn’t be too hard a challenge in a music that’s meant to be creative. But listening to much of what is going on in jazz today makes one realise that the message just hasn’t got through to many of its practitioners.
To add an aside to the blog discussions going on elsewhere about jazz education versus the noble savage, I think the danger is that some of the fresh approaches students may have will get knocked out of them by forcing them to conform to what we might call, for simplicity, the chord-scale approach. This is in large measure due to the necessity, because of large classes and budget restraints, of teaching the same curriculum to everybody. The real difficulty for jazz education is encouraging the individuality of each student – which can be seen as a good argument for smaller enrolments. The talented students will come through regardless, but I’ve been doubtful for a long time about the sheer numbers of jazz students who are graduating. That’s an argument for another time, but one solution might be more wide-ranging music courses from which the outstanding jazz talents will emerge naturally.
Getting back to the phrase from the Bidart poem, I would also argue that it has relevance to those whose aim is to write something more complex. In their case the form is pre-existing (in their concept of the piece, not necessarily in any commonly used structure(s)), but in many cases it seems that the pre-existing form – and the language used – is not subject to change and the only change allowed is in the solos. Which, given the poor compositional standards we see in many jazz pieces, is putting a lot of weight on the soloist’s shoulders. From the other side of the divide, one acclaimed jazz composer (named in my book) has even stated that ‘the first solo only happens when absolutely nothing else can happen. You don’t write in a solo until you’ve completely exhausted what you have to say.’ Which is putting a lot of weight on the composer’s shoulders and, with banal and derivative jazz compositions being praised as good, even great, at times, what hope is there for the art known as jazz composition?
However, searching outside the market-led media one finds that there are many composers who are using their own forms flexibly and working within a non-derivative language to create good jazz compositions. I would argue that these are aspects of the art of the jazz composer which are essential if we are to change the performers and the audience.
And on that provocative note the blog and I are now on vacation. Back in late September.
Critical Mess
27/08/09 11:53 Filed in: Jazz
A recent news item by Peter Hum in jazzblog.ca, further publicised by jazz.com, castigates the London-based jazz critic Jack Massarik. Here’s an extract:
I thought that someone long ago had driven a stake through the "If it's not swing, it's crap" approach to jazz reviewing. I was wrong. Check out London critic Jack Massarik's recent review of a show by Chris Potter’s electric funk quartet, Underground:
‘Horticulturalists are growing alarmed about the Japanese knotweed, a fast-growing parasite that gradually strangles every healthy tree or shrub in its path. Musicologists should be similarly concerned about the unchecked spread of rock, that invasive rhythmic blight now poisoning jazz, folk and world music too.’
In that I have tangled with Massarik in the past – and also had the doubtful pleasure of hearing him play saxophone - I sent in a comment which referred to my history with him and concluded ‘It’s sad to see that such a cretin is still being given space - and in more than one publication - to write about jazz when far better writers can't get a gig. But at least it keeps him from playing the saxophone in public!’
When Massarik’s negative review of my 1985 concert was published I received many supportive comments and was given space in The Wire to publish a response. Even though the details are dated, I believe the message about critics, about subsidies, about governments and the arts is still very valid.
Brave New World?
A personal opinion by Graham Collier
“There’s no such thing as bad publicity” rates as a journalistic knee-jerk reaction; a childish response which is, in the eyes of the speaker, supposed to release him or her from any guilt; to invest his or her critique with some magic that can do no harm.
That reaction was given to me by Jack Massarik, jazz critic of London’s evening paper The Standard, when challenged about his review of the first night of the Camden Jazz Festival.
No such thing as bad publicity when a review of a festival starts with “A clammy air of doom hung over Logan Hall”? No such thing as bad publicity when “the whole exercise began to feel like re-arranging the deck chairs on the Titanic”?
How are the prospective punters at the rest of the week’s events supposed to react to these choice phrases? Rush off in the cold to buy tickets? Or stay at home saying: “Well, The Standard didn’t like it and telly’s not too bad tonight”?
Massarik mentions some reasons for his reading of the situation in his first two paragraphs: rate-capping possibly spelling the end of the Camden Jazz Festival, and the budgeting crisis of the much-delayed National jazz Centre.
In case you the miss the point that jazz in trouble, he has a stab at Bracknell too: “another jazz event destined to be axed this year”. No mention of the reasons for this arts-wide recession, chief among which is the worship by this present government and its acolytes, such as the Bracknell council, of its monetarist policy; a policy which has “no money left” after, of course, paying for Fortress Falklands and its unemployment costs, for anything to do with the quality of life. They’re even allowing our sewers to fall apart, for Christ’s sake, so what hope is there for a sensible arts policy?
Perhaps, writing in the paper he does, one can’t expect an anti-government line. We might, though, expect a little sympathy for the current beleaguered state of jazz. We might, too, expect a little more knowledge of the effects of this state of affairs on jazz and its musicians. I’m told that I “candidly admitted that Hoarded Dreams had been performed only once since its 1983 Bracknell performance”. I thought, as did the scores of others who protested to me about the Massarik piece, that I was being truthful about the realities of the jazz business.
Has he any idea of the realities of any jazz musician’s life where many worthwhile groupings of musicians never get past the first few gigs and never get recorded? Has he any idea what effort and financial resources are necessary for such a project as Hoarded Dreams to happen even once, let alone be repeated?
(And it might please Massarik’s Thatcherite soul to be told that all three performances of Hoarded Dreams were subsidised not only by the musicians – whose time and effort, as so often in jazz, were not paid commensurately – but by better-paid work abroad: in this case, West German radio, whose jazz policies put most other stations to shame. Yet another case where the arts bring money into the country and allow things to happen that couldn’t otherwise be afforded.)
Now to a musical point (and, please don’t read this article as an attack on Massarik because he didn’t like my piece: he’s entitled to that opinion; it’s the rest of it I object to!).
I’m castigated for leaving the rhythm section idle for ten minutes on end which is untrue. At least, it’s untrue in the way I choose to use the players who make up what is known as the rhythm section. If, by his comment, Massarik means they were idle from a time-playing role then, yes, I’m guilty. But, then, jazz went that way some time ago: Henry Ford offered any colour car as long as it was black; Massarik seemingly subscribes to that view of jazz – any colour as long as it’s in a steady tempo.
Following on from that, I’m told I’m not making the most of the big band’s resources. Which big band are we talking about? Duke Ellington? Mike Gibbs? Gil Evans? The resources of my particular band were me, and my control of its textures, and the array of soloists. There were, if I may immodestly state, more resources on view in the first ten minutes of Hoarded Dreams than in many a rack of NYJO and Thad Jones records.
Perhaps, in this brave new world of Standard-led Thatcherite arts, we’ll have to conform to a Massarik view of eternally swinging big bands (a return, if not to Victorian values, at least to pre-war ones); the National Jazz Centre will be a sweaty cellar where music under forty years old is barred (how about a critics’ band for the opening night – with us musician-journalists being allowed to get our own back); Jazz festivals will be banned under the 1986 “Any Gathering of More Than Twenty Guardian Readers is an Offence Against the State” Act.
Surely, too, jazz critics will achieve their rightful place, escorted to their tables by out-of-work jazz musicians and be able to order up any kind of jazz they wish – as long as it swings, of course. Then they can write about it – or will they be able?
Jazz has never prospered under extremist governments. See you in the salt mines, Mr Massarik!
As a contemporary note I might add that the 1985 Bracknell Festival performance of Hoarded Dreams was released for the first time in 2007 by Cuneiform and received an unprecedented number of rave reviews, among them being chosen as one of The Penguin Guide to Jazz Recording’s Core 200.
Perhaps that fact will be included in the notes to the long-awaited Collected Jazz Criticism of Jack Massarik. If it is published I for one will look forward to reading the reviews…
I thought that someone long ago had driven a stake through the "If it's not swing, it's crap" approach to jazz reviewing. I was wrong. Check out London critic Jack Massarik's recent review of a show by Chris Potter’s electric funk quartet, Underground:
‘Horticulturalists are growing alarmed about the Japanese knotweed, a fast-growing parasite that gradually strangles every healthy tree or shrub in its path. Musicologists should be similarly concerned about the unchecked spread of rock, that invasive rhythmic blight now poisoning jazz, folk and world music too.’
In that I have tangled with Massarik in the past – and also had the doubtful pleasure of hearing him play saxophone - I sent in a comment which referred to my history with him and concluded ‘It’s sad to see that such a cretin is still being given space - and in more than one publication - to write about jazz when far better writers can't get a gig. But at least it keeps him from playing the saxophone in public!’
When Massarik’s negative review of my 1985 concert was published I received many supportive comments and was given space in The Wire to publish a response. Even though the details are dated, I believe the message about critics, about subsidies, about governments and the arts is still very valid.
Brave New World?
A personal opinion by Graham Collier
“There’s no such thing as bad publicity” rates as a journalistic knee-jerk reaction; a childish response which is, in the eyes of the speaker, supposed to release him or her from any guilt; to invest his or her critique with some magic that can do no harm.
That reaction was given to me by Jack Massarik, jazz critic of London’s evening paper The Standard, when challenged about his review of the first night of the Camden Jazz Festival.
No such thing as bad publicity when a review of a festival starts with “A clammy air of doom hung over Logan Hall”? No such thing as bad publicity when “the whole exercise began to feel like re-arranging the deck chairs on the Titanic”?
How are the prospective punters at the rest of the week’s events supposed to react to these choice phrases? Rush off in the cold to buy tickets? Or stay at home saying: “Well, The Standard didn’t like it and telly’s not too bad tonight”?
Massarik mentions some reasons for his reading of the situation in his first two paragraphs: rate-capping possibly spelling the end of the Camden Jazz Festival, and the budgeting crisis of the much-delayed National jazz Centre.
In case you the miss the point that jazz in trouble, he has a stab at Bracknell too: “another jazz event destined to be axed this year”. No mention of the reasons for this arts-wide recession, chief among which is the worship by this present government and its acolytes, such as the Bracknell council, of its monetarist policy; a policy which has “no money left” after, of course, paying for Fortress Falklands and its unemployment costs, for anything to do with the quality of life. They’re even allowing our sewers to fall apart, for Christ’s sake, so what hope is there for a sensible arts policy?
Perhaps, writing in the paper he does, one can’t expect an anti-government line. We might, though, expect a little sympathy for the current beleaguered state of jazz. We might, too, expect a little more knowledge of the effects of this state of affairs on jazz and its musicians. I’m told that I “candidly admitted that Hoarded Dreams had been performed only once since its 1983 Bracknell performance”. I thought, as did the scores of others who protested to me about the Massarik piece, that I was being truthful about the realities of the jazz business.
Has he any idea of the realities of any jazz musician’s life where many worthwhile groupings of musicians never get past the first few gigs and never get recorded? Has he any idea what effort and financial resources are necessary for such a project as Hoarded Dreams to happen even once, let alone be repeated?
(And it might please Massarik’s Thatcherite soul to be told that all three performances of Hoarded Dreams were subsidised not only by the musicians – whose time and effort, as so often in jazz, were not paid commensurately – but by better-paid work abroad: in this case, West German radio, whose jazz policies put most other stations to shame. Yet another case where the arts bring money into the country and allow things to happen that couldn’t otherwise be afforded.)
Now to a musical point (and, please don’t read this article as an attack on Massarik because he didn’t like my piece: he’s entitled to that opinion; it’s the rest of it I object to!).
I’m castigated for leaving the rhythm section idle for ten minutes on end which is untrue. At least, it’s untrue in the way I choose to use the players who make up what is known as the rhythm section. If, by his comment, Massarik means they were idle from a time-playing role then, yes, I’m guilty. But, then, jazz went that way some time ago: Henry Ford offered any colour car as long as it was black; Massarik seemingly subscribes to that view of jazz – any colour as long as it’s in a steady tempo.
Following on from that, I’m told I’m not making the most of the big band’s resources. Which big band are we talking about? Duke Ellington? Mike Gibbs? Gil Evans? The resources of my particular band were me, and my control of its textures, and the array of soloists. There were, if I may immodestly state, more resources on view in the first ten minutes of Hoarded Dreams than in many a rack of NYJO and Thad Jones records.
Perhaps, in this brave new world of Standard-led Thatcherite arts, we’ll have to conform to a Massarik view of eternally swinging big bands (a return, if not to Victorian values, at least to pre-war ones); the National Jazz Centre will be a sweaty cellar where music under forty years old is barred (how about a critics’ band for the opening night – with us musician-journalists being allowed to get our own back); Jazz festivals will be banned under the 1986 “Any Gathering of More Than Twenty Guardian Readers is an Offence Against the State” Act.
Surely, too, jazz critics will achieve their rightful place, escorted to their tables by out-of-work jazz musicians and be able to order up any kind of jazz they wish – as long as it swings, of course. Then they can write about it – or will they be able?
Jazz has never prospered under extremist governments. See you in the salt mines, Mr Massarik!
As a contemporary note I might add that the 1985 Bracknell Festival performance of Hoarded Dreams was released for the first time in 2007 by Cuneiform and received an unprecedented number of rave reviews, among them being chosen as one of The Penguin Guide to Jazz Recording’s Core 200.
Perhaps that fact will be included in the notes to the long-awaited Collected Jazz Criticism of Jack Massarik. If it is published I for one will look forward to reading the reviews…
Nazi Rules and The Bass Saxophone
19/08/09 12:04 Filed in: Jazz
Ted Gioia’s jazz.com drew my attention to a posting on The International Review of Music an interesting website run by Don Heckman. In one posting Don had published what he called ‘Nazi Germany’s Dance Band Rules’ but had later discovered that they weren’t actual rules, just something invented by novelist Josef Skvorecky. The complete list can be found on the irom site but here’s the first as a taster: In the repertoire of light orchestras and dance bands, pieces in fox-trot rhythm (so-called swing) are not to exceed 20%.
In that I have been a great fan of Josef Skoverecky’s novels for many years, I had a feeling that I had read something different about the genesis of these rules and I added this to the comments on Don’s site:
Here is what Josef Skvorecky said in ‘Red Music’, an introductory memoir to two novellas published as The Bass Saxophone (Chatto and Windus, 1978). ‘[O]ne local Gauleiter issued an extraordinary (really extraordinary? In this world of ours?) set of regulations which were binding for all dance orchestras. I read them, gnashing my teeth, in Czech translation, in [a] film weekly, and fifteen years later I paraphrased them – faithfully, I am sure, since they had engraved themselves deeply on my mind – in a short story entitled “I won’t take back one word”.’ [A later note explains that this short story was ‘published finally in 1966 as Eine kleine Jazzmusik’.]
The Bass Saxophone is possibly the best story about jazz ever published. It deals with a young Czech sax player’s decision to, in a sense, betray his country by becoming so besotted by the sight of a bass saxophone that he hardly resists when ordered to play it because one of the visiting German musicians is indisposed. I was so taken with the story that I persuaded BBC Radio to adapt the novella and, of course, to hire me to do the music. It paid off too, as we won a Sony Radio Drama award for the production.
I asked Art Themen, who, like Skvorecky, should be better known than he is, to take the bass saxophone from it’s display (he’d never actually played it after an impulse buy!) and his first notes, like those of the Czech boy, were truly awful (and caused some consternation to the lunchtime drinkers outside a pub near his river-side apartment!). Later in the play however he had to recreate the sounds made by the previously indisposed and now angry German musician coming back into the band. As the boy said (as part of a wonderful almost Faulknerian ever-lasting sentence) ‘he played it like a dancing male gorilla, like a hairy bird of legend slowly beating its black wings …’.
To close the Comment I said that in the next day or so I would post some Bass Saxophone music on this blog. Here are two extracts from the original play, each filtered through the narrative device of having the boy ‘interrogated’ by his older self.
First the boy’s discovery of the bass saxophone:
Second ‘the dancing gorilla’ mentioned above:
In that I have been a great fan of Josef Skoverecky’s novels for many years, I had a feeling that I had read something different about the genesis of these rules and I added this to the comments on Don’s site:
Here is what Josef Skvorecky said in ‘Red Music’, an introductory memoir to two novellas published as The Bass Saxophone (Chatto and Windus, 1978). ‘[O]ne local Gauleiter issued an extraordinary (really extraordinary? In this world of ours?) set of regulations which were binding for all dance orchestras. I read them, gnashing my teeth, in Czech translation, in [a] film weekly, and fifteen years later I paraphrased them – faithfully, I am sure, since they had engraved themselves deeply on my mind – in a short story entitled “I won’t take back one word”.’ [A later note explains that this short story was ‘published finally in 1966 as Eine kleine Jazzmusik’.]
The Bass Saxophone is possibly the best story about jazz ever published. It deals with a young Czech sax player’s decision to, in a sense, betray his country by becoming so besotted by the sight of a bass saxophone that he hardly resists when ordered to play it because one of the visiting German musicians is indisposed. I was so taken with the story that I persuaded BBC Radio to adapt the novella and, of course, to hire me to do the music. It paid off too, as we won a Sony Radio Drama award for the production.
I asked Art Themen, who, like Skvorecky, should be better known than he is, to take the bass saxophone from it’s display (he’d never actually played it after an impulse buy!) and his first notes, like those of the Czech boy, were truly awful (and caused some consternation to the lunchtime drinkers outside a pub near his river-side apartment!). Later in the play however he had to recreate the sounds made by the previously indisposed and now angry German musician coming back into the band. As the boy said (as part of a wonderful almost Faulknerian ever-lasting sentence) ‘he played it like a dancing male gorilla, like a hairy bird of legend slowly beating its black wings …’.
To close the Comment I said that in the next day or so I would post some Bass Saxophone music on this blog. Here are two extracts from the original play, each filtered through the narrative device of having the boy ‘interrogated’ by his older self.
First the boy’s discovery of the bass saxophone:
Second ‘the dancing gorilla’ mentioned above:
Showing the way
17/08/09 09:17 Filed in: Recommendations
Recommendations – the rationale
The inclusion of Hoarded Dreams as one of the 200 in The Penguin Guide to Jazz Recordings’ Core Collection, described as ‘a basic library of jazz records which readers… might consider as their first priority purchases’, was not only a well received accolade, but has prompted me to try something similar.
Over the next however long it takes I’ll be making a list of my Core 200 or so of tracks or records that I wouldn’t want to be without. It will be a mixture of jazz and classical, with perhaps some unexpected choices for a jazz composer to make. Also folded in will be some books and authors, painters and other artists, I have particularly liked and/or been influenced by. As such it will, in time, replace the Recommendations sections of this site.
The recommendations will start here in occasional blogs. After a while the core names will stay with the content being moved to Recommendations where they will be alphabetically listed by artist, with a composite list at the top of the page.
Bill Evans: Peace Piece from Everybody Digs Bill Evans
Gil Evans: Miles Ahead, Sketches of Spain, Porgy and Bess; La Nevada; Zee Zee (from Svengali)
William Faulkner: As I Lay Dying, The Sound and the Fury
Hugh Fraser: ‘Dusk’ from Big Works
Jan Garbarek: Officium
George Gershwin: Porgy and Bess
Stan Getz: Focus; Anniversary
The inclusion of Hoarded Dreams as one of the 200 in The Penguin Guide to Jazz Recordings’ Core Collection, described as ‘a basic library of jazz records which readers… might consider as their first priority purchases’, was not only a well received accolade, but has prompted me to try something similar.
Over the next however long it takes I’ll be making a list of my Core 200 or so of tracks or records that I wouldn’t want to be without. It will be a mixture of jazz and classical, with perhaps some unexpected choices for a jazz composer to make. Also folded in will be some books and authors, painters and other artists, I have particularly liked and/or been influenced by. As such it will, in time, replace the Recommendations sections of this site.
The recommendations will start here in occasional blogs. After a while the core names will stay with the content being moved to Recommendations where they will be alphabetically listed by artist, with a composite list at the top of the page.
Bill Evans: Peace Piece from Everybody Digs Bill Evans
Gil Evans: Miles Ahead, Sketches of Spain, Porgy and Bess; La Nevada; Zee Zee (from Svengali)
William Faulkner: As I Lay Dying, The Sound and the Fury
Hugh Fraser: ‘Dusk’ from Big Works
Jan Garbarek: Officium
George Gershwin: Porgy and Bess
Stan Getz: Focus; Anniversary
The rewards for honesty
11/08/09 16:19 Filed in: Jazz
I recently added some comments to the Secret Society blog about whether critics and musicians should be honest when discussing their peers. I can’t see that this should be a problem, but, if this blog carried ads, a problem might develop. In that regard I can’t resist quoting from a spoof blindfold test I came across ‘How did I know it was [Brandford (sic)]? Because this is DownBeat which is mainly just advertising for Columbia, and Marsalis records for Columbia, and Columbia are giving him maximum hype at the moment. Quite simple really. And I see you got my cheque there, so I’ll give it five stars.’
In my comment I used a quote from Derek Baily’s Improvisation: Its Nature And Practice In Music
to which I added the first line in a subsequent discussion on the post. Here it is with the first line added: ‘The conventional wisdom now only allows one audience and it knows no limits, it’s omniscient and is to be courted by everyone. To play in a manner which excludes the larger audience or, worse, to prefer to play before a small audience, is taken as an indication that the music is pretentious, elitist, “uncommunicative”, self-absorbed and probably many other disgusting things too . . . The propaganda of the entertainment industry and the strenuous, if futile, efforts of the art world to compete with it, combine to turn the audience into a body of mystical omnipotence. And what it seems to demand above all else is lip-service.’
That this ‘one audience… has to be courted by everyone’ is I think one of the reasons that musicians and critics aren’t honest about their fellows. If you need to ask, that’s because of the pressures of conformity and of having to deal with the market. And hidden in this is the question of elitism. As I said in my Secret Society post ‘the music we’re talking about IS elitist. I’d go further and say that it HAS to be elitist … There's a middle ground between being elitist and the morass of lowest common denominator entertainment, made for an audience that needs to be told which film has grossed most, or which record is top of the charts before they’ll go see or go buy.
But that middle ground is shaky, very shaky as I think jazz is finding, as many musicians flail around trying to find something that's popular ('I know, let's play some Buddy Bolden music') rather than creating art, honest art for themselves and THEN find an audience - which I think is what the owner of this blog has done. We may not all like it (DJA's or any other creative act, but let's recognise that they are trying, look out for such efforts and when we find it support it instead of following jazz fashion).
Which of course raises the problem of making a living – but as I said last night when discussing this with a visiting Italian jazz critic: ‘Making a living only as a jazz musician?’
It may be simplistic but the choice may be as harsh as being an honest jazz musician, creating music for yourself first and then hoping the audience will find it, while making a living in any of the myriad ways I and others have done through the years. Or finding a way to tap the shrinking market and make a living as a full time jazz musician without compromising their music, which very few have been able to do.
Perhaps as a 72 year old composer, living on a small Greek island in reasonable comfort thanks to small pensions, some royalties and the gigs that do come in (at my age I’ve had to accept that there are a lot of other musicians lining up for the gigs that are available) I’m in a good position to criticise. But being in this position – and having achieved the level of recognition that I have - I feel I can and should criticise.
Which is why I started this blog, why I wrote what I did in the jazz composer book. I’ve tried to be honest in what I’ve done musically, and I expect others to be the same. And, in a very real way, whether I like the end result or not is immaterial.
Afterword: After writing this blog, but before I posted it, I came across very similar thoughts on Jazz Audiences, Doug Ramsey’s latest blog on Rifftides. Here’s an extract: ‘If jazz musicians find ways to reach larger audiences without watering down their art, it will be good for them and the future of the music. Calculated attempts to increase audience by forcing hybridization of the music itself have neither elevated its quality nor achieved permanent increases in attendance figures and record sales for uncompromised music. Such amalgams as disco jazz, soft jazz, smooth jazz and other varieties of near-jazz have done wonders for Kenny G and John Tesh, but little for players of undiluted jazz.
In a barroom discussion of such compromises, the guitarist Jim Hall once said, "Where do I go to sell out?" That was decades ago. You'll notice that he hasn't sold out. It may be that the NEA study illuminates what serious artists have always known even as they dreamt of popular acceptance, fame and wealth. The pianist John Lewis articulated it, and his quote has been popping up in the wake of the study: "The reward for playing jazz is playing jazz."’
Although I’m certainly not claiming I discovered the John Lewis quote (I think Gary Giddins did) I might point out that was also used in the jazz composer, which was well reviewed by Doug, before the NEA study was published. But wherever it came from the phrase is an apt summation of what I went into jazz for, and what I get out of it. The rest is gravy.
In my comment I used a quote from Derek Baily’s Improvisation: Its Nature And Practice In Music
to which I added the first line in a subsequent discussion on the post. Here it is with the first line added: ‘The conventional wisdom now only allows one audience and it knows no limits, it’s omniscient and is to be courted by everyone. To play in a manner which excludes the larger audience or, worse, to prefer to play before a small audience, is taken as an indication that the music is pretentious, elitist, “uncommunicative”, self-absorbed and probably many other disgusting things too . . . The propaganda of the entertainment industry and the strenuous, if futile, efforts of the art world to compete with it, combine to turn the audience into a body of mystical omnipotence. And what it seems to demand above all else is lip-service.’ That this ‘one audience… has to be courted by everyone’ is I think one of the reasons that musicians and critics aren’t honest about their fellows. If you need to ask, that’s because of the pressures of conformity and of having to deal with the market. And hidden in this is the question of elitism. As I said in my Secret Society post ‘the music we’re talking about IS elitist. I’d go further and say that it HAS to be elitist … There's a middle ground between being elitist and the morass of lowest common denominator entertainment, made for an audience that needs to be told which film has grossed most, or which record is top of the charts before they’ll go see or go buy.
But that middle ground is shaky, very shaky as I think jazz is finding, as many musicians flail around trying to find something that's popular ('I know, let's play some Buddy Bolden music') rather than creating art, honest art for themselves and THEN find an audience - which I think is what the owner of this blog has done. We may not all like it (DJA's or any other creative act, but let's recognise that they are trying, look out for such efforts and when we find it support it instead of following jazz fashion).
Which of course raises the problem of making a living – but as I said last night when discussing this with a visiting Italian jazz critic: ‘Making a living only as a jazz musician?’
It may be simplistic but the choice may be as harsh as being an honest jazz musician, creating music for yourself first and then hoping the audience will find it, while making a living in any of the myriad ways I and others have done through the years. Or finding a way to tap the shrinking market and make a living as a full time jazz musician without compromising their music, which very few have been able to do.
Perhaps as a 72 year old composer, living on a small Greek island in reasonable comfort thanks to small pensions, some royalties and the gigs that do come in (at my age I’ve had to accept that there are a lot of other musicians lining up for the gigs that are available) I’m in a good position to criticise. But being in this position – and having achieved the level of recognition that I have - I feel I can and should criticise.
Which is why I started this blog, why I wrote what I did in the jazz composer book. I’ve tried to be honest in what I’ve done musically, and I expect others to be the same. And, in a very real way, whether I like the end result or not is immaterial.
Afterword: After writing this blog, but before I posted it, I came across very similar thoughts on Jazz Audiences, Doug Ramsey’s latest blog on Rifftides. Here’s an extract: ‘If jazz musicians find ways to reach larger audiences without watering down their art, it will be good for them and the future of the music. Calculated attempts to increase audience by forcing hybridization of the music itself have neither elevated its quality nor achieved permanent increases in attendance figures and record sales for uncompromised music. Such amalgams as disco jazz, soft jazz, smooth jazz and other varieties of near-jazz have done wonders for Kenny G and John Tesh, but little for players of undiluted jazz.
In a barroom discussion of such compromises, the guitarist Jim Hall once said, "Where do I go to sell out?" That was decades ago. You'll notice that he hasn't sold out. It may be that the NEA study illuminates what serious artists have always known even as they dreamt of popular acceptance, fame and wealth. The pianist John Lewis articulated it, and his quote has been popping up in the wake of the study: "The reward for playing jazz is playing jazz."’
Although I’m certainly not claiming I discovered the John Lewis quote (I think Gary Giddins did) I might point out that was also used in the jazz composer, which was well reviewed by Doug, before the NEA study was published. But wherever it came from the phrase is an apt summation of what I went into jazz for, and what I get out of it. The rest is gravy.
'more raucous than Mingus-Evans-Ellington'
10/08/09 11:46 Filed in: Jazz
eMusic have been getting some flack lately for linking up with Sony and for changing their Download pricing system. Peppered among the complaints have been some saying that this may represent a death knell for the independent artist and record companies who have relied heavily on them in the past.
This may prove to be true in the future but at the moment I have no complaint as they’ve just picked my new CD directing 14 Jackson Pollocks as one of their ‘notable new releases’ in August and have given it a rave review, which I can’t resist quoting in full:
One of the most adventurous and distinguished British jazz composers, Graham Collier appropriately cites Charles Mingus, Gil Evans and Duke Ellington as mentors, even as he makes his own brief (on his website, jazzcontinuum.com, and on collections such as this one) for a separate identity for European jazz. The double-disc, directing 14 Jackson Pollocks (the title is a creative nod to the 14 musicians in the ensemble) is both more formally Euro-classical and more raucous than Mingus-Evans-Ellington. There are multiple layers almost constantly at play among the horn-heavy band, and their parts dovetail, fit tongue-in-groove, and collide in nearly equal measure.
It's generally a good sign for the composer when the longest piece is also the most satisfying, and "The Vonetta Factor" qualifies, with more than 21 minutes spent on at least four movements, including tuba and trombone eruptions, a rather sudden textural makeover to electronics and vibes/chimes, a dreamy bout featuring flute and piano, and a spirited sax scrum near the finish. The juxtapositions and arc of the piece make more sense through your speakers than they do on paper.
At the risk of being too simplistic, the more cacophonous, non-linear and "avant garde" stuff is more pronounced early on, with "An Alternate Eggshell Summer" moving closer to Mingus territory. The more straightforward material where you can hear echoes of Evans and Ellington is most pronounced in the "The Alternate Third Colour" series. Both discs are worth your time, provided you enjoy music that wants to set up shop as a heaving beast and then ambush you with moments of beauty and chromatic refraction.
Review by Britt Robson, eMusic.com
And this in from someone who has bought the CDs
I have to say I would not have suspected if I hadn't read the book first how much of the music is improvised, it is so strongly and beautifully melodic.
This may prove to be true in the future but at the moment I have no complaint as they’ve just picked my new CD directing 14 Jackson Pollocks as one of their ‘notable new releases’ in August and have given it a rave review, which I can’t resist quoting in full:
One of the most adventurous and distinguished British jazz composers, Graham Collier appropriately cites Charles Mingus, Gil Evans and Duke Ellington as mentors, even as he makes his own brief (on his website, jazzcontinuum.com, and on collections such as this one) for a separate identity for European jazz. The double-disc, directing 14 Jackson Pollocks (the title is a creative nod to the 14 musicians in the ensemble) is both more formally Euro-classical and more raucous than Mingus-Evans-Ellington. There are multiple layers almost constantly at play among the horn-heavy band, and their parts dovetail, fit tongue-in-groove, and collide in nearly equal measure.
It's generally a good sign for the composer when the longest piece is also the most satisfying, and "The Vonetta Factor" qualifies, with more than 21 minutes spent on at least four movements, including tuba and trombone eruptions, a rather sudden textural makeover to electronics and vibes/chimes, a dreamy bout featuring flute and piano, and a spirited sax scrum near the finish. The juxtapositions and arc of the piece make more sense through your speakers than they do on paper.
At the risk of being too simplistic, the more cacophonous, non-linear and "avant garde" stuff is more pronounced early on, with "An Alternate Eggshell Summer" moving closer to Mingus territory. The more straightforward material where you can hear echoes of Evans and Ellington is most pronounced in the "The Alternate Third Colour" series. Both discs are worth your time, provided you enjoy music that wants to set up shop as a heaving beast and then ambush you with moments of beauty and chromatic refraction.
Review by Britt Robson, eMusic.com
And this in from someone who has bought the CDs
I have to say I would not have suspected if I hadn't read the book first how much of the music is improvised, it is so strongly and beautifully melodic.
Only in America
06/08/09 18:12 Filed in: General
I don’t often run videos, and ever rarer do I touch on non-jazz subjects but this extract from an American talk show had my jaw dropping in total disbelief at how these things can happen in ‘the land of the free’. This is the sort of thing that Iran and other countries on the ‘unfriendly states’ list are, rightly, criticised for. Yet it happened and has affected the world ever since. Money well spent some might say, and these dirty tricks continue.
Incidentally, did you know that Obama’s ‘Kenyan birth certificate’ which is being brandished around is from a time when Kenya wasn’t even Kenya …
Incidentally, did you know that Obama’s ‘Kenyan birth certificate’ which is being brandished around is from a time when Kenya wasn’t even Kenya …
Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy
Jazz Blogs
30/07/09 13:41 Filed in: Jazz
Mostly Music Ronan G is the cyber-home of Irish bassist, composer and educator Ronan Guilfoyle. It’s more verbose than I usually have time for – he does admit that this is something that bothers him and keeps him away from practice - but it’s all good stuff. His July 25th post calling for more musicians to write about music is a welcome one, and includes a passing reference to this blog. Two of his earlier blogs which aroused much interest and comment on the web and on the IASJ discussion board were about how jazz education has an undeserved bad name.
Ronan has also joined in the discussion about grants in jazz – started by Nat Chinen that has given rise to much discussion about whether ‘grant-speak’ is a necessary tool for today’s jazz musician - and, no surprise, the conclusion is that it is, but that it’s a skill that many musicians have not acquired.
In the comment I posted I said that as the first jazz composer to receive an Arts Council grant in Britain (I can do grant-speak, though not as well as many I know), my experience was that such grants are never enough: that the composer/bandleader is subsidising them with his workload, and the musicians are often underpaid or not paid at all for rehearsals. In that regard, I was once challenged that I had been supported by the Arts Council throughout my career. My answer was that I had received more money from Radio Denmark to conduct their various bands in pieces commissioned by them, than I ever had from Britain. And had often had to use that money to subsidise concerts and projects in the UK.
Twenty Dollars had some interesting points to make about big band perfectionism as opposed to a looser approach, and this was picked up on Secret Society and elsewhere.
A good place to look for what’s new in blogs is Ted Gioia’s jazz.com which has a constantly changing box headed Breaking News and Opinion – which has, to declare an interest, has mentioned a few of my postings in the past.
Some early reviews of the jazz composer, moving music off the paper have been appearing on the web and elsewhere and extracts are posted on the dedicated site. Here’s a taster from Ted Gioia’s jazz.com review which I’m especially pleased with: ‘On any short list of the most polemical writers in jazz today, he is fighting for the top spot.’
Ronan has also joined in the discussion about grants in jazz – started by Nat Chinen that has given rise to much discussion about whether ‘grant-speak’ is a necessary tool for today’s jazz musician - and, no surprise, the conclusion is that it is, but that it’s a skill that many musicians have not acquired.
In the comment I posted I said that as the first jazz composer to receive an Arts Council grant in Britain (I can do grant-speak, though not as well as many I know), my experience was that such grants are never enough: that the composer/bandleader is subsidising them with his workload, and the musicians are often underpaid or not paid at all for rehearsals. In that regard, I was once challenged that I had been supported by the Arts Council throughout my career. My answer was that I had received more money from Radio Denmark to conduct their various bands in pieces commissioned by them, than I ever had from Britain. And had often had to use that money to subsidise concerts and projects in the UK.
Twenty Dollars had some interesting points to make about big band perfectionism as opposed to a looser approach, and this was picked up on Secret Society and elsewhere.
A good place to look for what’s new in blogs is Ted Gioia’s jazz.com which has a constantly changing box headed Breaking News and Opinion – which has, to declare an interest, has mentioned a few of my postings in the past.
Some early reviews of the jazz composer, moving music off the paper have been appearing on the web and elsewhere and extracts are posted on the dedicated site. Here’s a taster from Ted Gioia’s jazz.com review which I’m especially pleased with: ‘On any short list of the most polemical writers in jazz today, he is fighting for the top spot.’
The poor man's Hugues Panassié
26/07/09 16:08 Filed in: Jazz
In his article on Bugge Wesseltoft in the August issue of Jazzwise Stuart Nicholson tells us that ‘the remarkable success’ of Wesseltoft and Molvaer meant that ‘perhaps more than an earlier generation of Norwegian musicians such as Jan Garbarek, Jon Christensen and Arild Anderson, they were responsible for putting Norway well and truly on the jazz map of the world.’
Doubtful though that claim is – even hedged around with modifiers such as ‘perhaps’ and ‘well and truly’ - it serves to support Nicholson’s view of the (relatively recent) jazz map of the world as being heavily biased towards Scandinavia, and Norway in particular. He seems to forget that Italy, Germany, in fact every European country has contributed – and still contributes - to this jazz map. His Jazzwise piece goes on to justify this claim by saying ‘They [Wesseltoft and Molvaer] even caused reverberations in the home of jazz itself, ‘Europeans Cut In With a New Jazz Sound And Beat’ said a major feature in The New York Times in 2001.’
If you’re interested in following up this reference and finding out who wrote it (clue: his initials are S.N.), you can go to this URL – not used in the Jazzwise on-line issue, which is otherwise peppered with URLs.
And if you’re interested in sourcing the reference point for my title it was the same not-always-anonymous critic who in a review called me the poor man’s Stan Kenton, but I’d almost forgotten that…
Doubtful though that claim is – even hedged around with modifiers such as ‘perhaps’ and ‘well and truly’ - it serves to support Nicholson’s view of the (relatively recent) jazz map of the world as being heavily biased towards Scandinavia, and Norway in particular. He seems to forget that Italy, Germany, in fact every European country has contributed – and still contributes - to this jazz map. His Jazzwise piece goes on to justify this claim by saying ‘They [Wesseltoft and Molvaer] even caused reverberations in the home of jazz itself, ‘Europeans Cut In With a New Jazz Sound And Beat’ said a major feature in The New York Times in 2001.’
If you’re interested in following up this reference and finding out who wrote it (clue: his initials are S.N.), you can go to this URL – not used in the Jazzwise on-line issue, which is otherwise peppered with URLs.
And if you’re interested in sourcing the reference point for my title it was the same not-always-anonymous critic who in a review called me the poor man’s Stan Kenton, but I’d almost forgotten that…
Miles, a Dane, some Italians and Duke
13/07/09 13:00 Filed in: Recommendations
Recommendations – the rationale
The inclusion of Hoarded Dreams as one of the 200 in The Penguin Guide to Jazz Recordings’ Core Collection, described as ‘a basic library of jazz records which readers… might consider as their first priority purchases’, was not only a well received accolade, but has prompted me to try something similar.
Over the next however long it takes I’ll be adding to this list of my Core 200 or so of tracks or records that I wouldn’t want to be without. It will be a mixture of jazz and classical, with perhaps some unexpected choices for a jazz composer to make. Also folded in will be some books and authors, painters and other artists, I have particularly liked and/or been influenced by. As such it will, in time, replace the Recommendations sections of this site.
The recommendations will start here in occasional blogs. After a while the core names will stay with the content being moved to Recommendations where they will be alphabetically listed by artist, with a composite list at the top of the page.
Miles Davis: Kind of Blue, Bitches Brew, Live at the Plugged Nickel
Pierre Dorge & New Jungle Orchestra: Jazz is like a Banana
Dolmen Orchestra: Sequenze Arminiche
Duke Ellington: The Blanton-Webster Band, Money Jungle
The inclusion of Hoarded Dreams as one of the 200 in The Penguin Guide to Jazz Recordings’ Core Collection, described as ‘a basic library of jazz records which readers… might consider as their first priority purchases’, was not only a well received accolade, but has prompted me to try something similar.
Over the next however long it takes I’ll be adding to this list of my Core 200 or so of tracks or records that I wouldn’t want to be without. It will be a mixture of jazz and classical, with perhaps some unexpected choices for a jazz composer to make. Also folded in will be some books and authors, painters and other artists, I have particularly liked and/or been influenced by. As such it will, in time, replace the Recommendations sections of this site.
The recommendations will start here in occasional blogs. After a while the core names will stay with the content being moved to Recommendations where they will be alphabetically listed by artist, with a composite list at the top of the page.
Miles Davis: Kind of Blue, Bitches Brew, Live at the Plugged Nickel
Pierre Dorge & New Jungle Orchestra: Jazz is like a Banana
Dolmen Orchestra: Sequenze Arminiche
Duke Ellington: The Blanton-Webster Band, Money Jungle
On being compared to Duke Ellington
08/07/09 08:36 Filed in: Jazz
Whether jazz is America’s classical music or not, I doubt that there are many who would deny that when it comes to writing about jazz the American media is largely concerned with praising its own. There are of course all sorts of historic reasons for this, not least the fact that jazz was born in the US of A, but things have changed and, although one hates to write it (well not really), this quote from Herman Melville could be considered apt in many cases: ‘Let America first praise mediocrity, even in her children, before she praises... the best excellence in the children of any other land.’
While this comment could be said to be very broad-brush in terms of jazz criticism, there is more than a grain of truth in it – although one need also remember that some non-American critics are just as good at praising mediocrity, be it American or not, as some of their American counterparts.
But perhaps, in typical English fashion, I should apologise for using that opening paragraph at all, certainly apologise for using it as the lead-in to a piece about my own music being compared to those I consider to be at the top of the jazz composing tree. But I must say I am flattered and take much satisfaction that my work has been favourably compared to Ellington and Mingus, although in some senses I’m still peering around the corner wondering if there’s a big poster somewhere with April Fool written on it, or whether a big-name American critic is going to shoot the claims down in flames.
Until that happens here are two comments on my work by Brian Morton, co-editor of the Penguin Guide to Jazz on CD. In the liner notes to directing 14 Jackson Pollocks, my latest CD, he says that ‘up until [Hoarded Dreams], the formerly bass-playing Collier might have been described as Britain’s Mingus, but not after – Collier went back to the roots of the music and to the principle that jazz is not just about themes and solos, but also about individuals and collectives thinking in a very particular relation one to the other.’
The principle he talks about is, of course, predominant in Mingus’ music, as well as Duke Ellington’s, a source that Mingus and I would both recognise and venerate. It was heartening then to read in Brian Morton’s review of Hoarded Dreams in The Wire that ‘it was a luminous performance, on a par - for me at least - with any of Ellington's late suites.’ Although there has been some critical murmurings about the strength of those late Ellington pieces, it still seems somewhat remarkable that he should make the comparison.
I’m flattered to be compared with Mingus and Ellington - even for some of Duke’s suspect late suites - because it is a sign that what I do is, dare I say at last, being recognised as comparable to the best. Which could be likened to putting my head above the parapet so the jazz media can take pot shots, but I’m also encouraged by a review of Hoarded Dreams on the American-based Dusted website, not normally keen on jazz, which stated ‘Why a musician of Graham Collier’s stature is not more well known in the states, after all this time and with such credentials, is beyond me.’
It’s beyond me too, although I may have hinted at some of the reasons above. However, even in my own blog, I don’t want to give the impression that I am the only non-American deserving such accolades. Remember Herman Melville while you look for their names in the American jazz media, but take the time to find and listen to Italian Roberto Bonati, Austrians Christoph Cech and Christian Muelbacher, Norwegians Geir Lysne and Jon Balke, Australian Paul Grabowsky and the many other great jazz composers who are more heir to the legacy of Mingus and Ellington than a barrowload of Marsalis’s, Mintzers and McNeeleys.
While this comment could be said to be very broad-brush in terms of jazz criticism, there is more than a grain of truth in it – although one need also remember that some non-American critics are just as good at praising mediocrity, be it American or not, as some of their American counterparts.
But perhaps, in typical English fashion, I should apologise for using that opening paragraph at all, certainly apologise for using it as the lead-in to a piece about my own music being compared to those I consider to be at the top of the jazz composing tree. But I must say I am flattered and take much satisfaction that my work has been favourably compared to Ellington and Mingus, although in some senses I’m still peering around the corner wondering if there’s a big poster somewhere with April Fool written on it, or whether a big-name American critic is going to shoot the claims down in flames.
Until that happens here are two comments on my work by Brian Morton, co-editor of the Penguin Guide to Jazz on CD. In the liner notes to directing 14 Jackson Pollocks, my latest CD, he says that ‘up until [Hoarded Dreams], the formerly bass-playing Collier might have been described as Britain’s Mingus, but not after – Collier went back to the roots of the music and to the principle that jazz is not just about themes and solos, but also about individuals and collectives thinking in a very particular relation one to the other.’
The principle he talks about is, of course, predominant in Mingus’ music, as well as Duke Ellington’s, a source that Mingus and I would both recognise and venerate. It was heartening then to read in Brian Morton’s review of Hoarded Dreams in The Wire that ‘it was a luminous performance, on a par - for me at least - with any of Ellington's late suites.’ Although there has been some critical murmurings about the strength of those late Ellington pieces, it still seems somewhat remarkable that he should make the comparison.
I’m flattered to be compared with Mingus and Ellington - even for some of Duke’s suspect late suites - because it is a sign that what I do is, dare I say at last, being recognised as comparable to the best. Which could be likened to putting my head above the parapet so the jazz media can take pot shots, but I’m also encouraged by a review of Hoarded Dreams on the American-based Dusted website, not normally keen on jazz, which stated ‘Why a musician of Graham Collier’s stature is not more well known in the states, after all this time and with such credentials, is beyond me.’
It’s beyond me too, although I may have hinted at some of the reasons above. However, even in my own blog, I don’t want to give the impression that I am the only non-American deserving such accolades. Remember Herman Melville while you look for their names in the American jazz media, but take the time to find and listen to Italian Roberto Bonati, Austrians Christoph Cech and Christian Muelbacher, Norwegians Geir Lysne and Jon Balke, Australian Paul Grabowsky and the many other great jazz composers who are more heir to the legacy of Mingus and Ellington than a barrowload of Marsalis’s, Mintzers and McNeeleys.
'new listening experiences and understanding'
02/07/09 17:13 Filed in: Jazz
In my last blog I took what some may consider to be a grudging approach to what was, on the surface, a good review of the jazz composer book. But I feel my stance is justified by comparing that review to one just in from Chris Searle in The Morning Star. The review, like the first is positive, but, unlike its predecessor, it concentrates on my comments about people I like, and draws attention, as some of my other readers have, to the fact that the book has given ‘new listening experiences and understanding’.
Here are some short extracts:
Collier's favourite maxim is that "jazz happens in real time, once" - a truth that made me value even more preciously my record collection. For the greatest of jazz composers, and among them he names his trinity; Ellington, Gil Evans and Mingus, their most powerful testimony is "a framework which reflects the composer's thinking, while stimulating and informing the improviser, who ideally is inspired without being inhibited."
…
[H]is commentaries on pieces as short as Ellington's Harlem Airshaft or as long as Evans's and Miles Davis's Sketches of Spain or Mingus's The Black Saint and the Sinner Lady, give you new listening experiences and understanding.
…
For Collier, jazz is the most universal of musical forms: "That the music can now embrace what anyone has to offer should be a cause for celebration." Tradition becomes a propeller of the future, not a temple of the past: "For me," he asserts, "the music's strength is that risks are taken, new things are tried."
Here are some short extracts:
Collier's favourite maxim is that "jazz happens in real time, once" - a truth that made me value even more preciously my record collection. For the greatest of jazz composers, and among them he names his trinity; Ellington, Gil Evans and Mingus, their most powerful testimony is "a framework which reflects the composer's thinking, while stimulating and informing the improviser, who ideally is inspired without being inhibited."
…
[H]is commentaries on pieces as short as Ellington's Harlem Airshaft or as long as Evans's and Miles Davis's Sketches of Spain or Mingus's The Black Saint and the Sinner Lady, give you new listening experiences and understanding.
…
For Collier, jazz is the most universal of musical forms: "That the music can now embrace what anyone has to offer should be a cause for celebration." Tradition becomes a propeller of the future, not a temple of the past: "For me," he asserts, "the music's strength is that risks are taken, new things are tried."
Serious concerns
01/07/09 12:54 Filed in: Jazz
The first official review of the jazz composer book is now out – in the June issue of the newly revived Jazz Journal - and frankly I’m somewhat disappointed. Which may seem a strange reaction in that it was a generally good review, but I’m afraid it lives up to the criticisms I made of the whole business of jazz criticism in the book itself.
My point is that no real assessment of my argument went on. In the book I say that there are things we should look at closely in present day jazz and jazz composition, such as why certain people, certain styles, are popular, and why many creative artists from around the world are not known about. To do this I had to name them, and the reviewer, John Robert Brown, formerly of Leeds College of Music’s jazz department, has some fun listing most of them, but apart from a passing reference to Sydney Bechet and Charles Fox, failed to list those I do like and support to the hilt. Jazz composers such as Duke, Gil and Mingus, of course, but also musicians and writers like Keith Nichols, Harry Beckett, Paul Grabowsky, Geir Lysne and many more. He ends with the comment ‘The Jazz Composer is not a book of instruction. Indeed it’s more a book of destruction. But what fun, how entertaining – and how welcome.’ On the surface that could be something for the publisher to use, but it presents the book in a totally wrong light.
For the record the jazz composer was never meant to be a book of instruction, certainly not in any formal ‘this is how to compose jazz’ sense, but a book which throws up some philosophical arguments to make people think, to open up discussion as to whether I’m right, to allow readers to get angry with what I think. Fortunately this seems to have been realised by some of my first readers (their comments will appear on thejazzcomposer.com comments page in due course) and I’m hoping that later reviewers will take up the challenges I lay down.
In an indirect way these three recently discovered quotes add to my feeling that there is an argument to be made, a discussion to be had, and, are you listening jazz.com, some more to add to the ‘Is jazz America’s classical music?’ discussion.
First, also in the June edition of Jazz Journal, a delicious comment by Tim Garland who, responding to his interviewer’s remark that ‘Nefertiti’ was ‘pretty much through-composed’, said, ‘But Tony’s all over that’. For those who don’t know the original version of Wayne Shorter’s ‘Nefertiti’ this edited extract from the jazz composer will help put the comment in prespective.
Shorter’s tune ‘Nefertiti’ is … a perfectly good melody with interesting harmonies, yet it was in the initial performance, on the album of the same name, that it attained a relevance to jazz beyond that of being just a tune to blow on. It is arranged in such a way that the melody repeats over and over… As an accompaniment to this constantly repeating tune, drummer Tony Williams improvises freely, and magnificently, taking his layering approach to playing one step further. … Williams’ approach reverses the expected roles of front line and rhythm section. When Joe Zawinul, who was to join Miles some years later, first heard this track he told an interviewer, ‘that he kept waiting for the music to start (since there were no conventional solos). And only when the tune reached its end did he realise that the music had been happening all along.’
The musical end-result of ‘Nefertiti’ adds weight to the ‘jazz is a living music’ argument, which cropped up in an item from Josef Engels in Welt Online seen, in translation, via Darmstadt Jazz News: ‘It might simply be a question of definition. If you see jazz as a solid entity, it becomes kind of a classical music with all the necessary respect and reverence. If you see jazz as a living and flexible music that constantly changes both its musical and its aesthetic road, it might just as well live forever.’
And one can apply that point to Courtney Pine’s concern, commented on in the Garland interview, that jazz was becoming excessively Europeanised in certain quarters. Which is OK in my book, as long as the people doing it are European themselves. Which, come to think of it, Courtney himself can lay at least some claim to…
My point is that no real assessment of my argument went on. In the book I say that there are things we should look at closely in present day jazz and jazz composition, such as why certain people, certain styles, are popular, and why many creative artists from around the world are not known about. To do this I had to name them, and the reviewer, John Robert Brown, formerly of Leeds College of Music’s jazz department, has some fun listing most of them, but apart from a passing reference to Sydney Bechet and Charles Fox, failed to list those I do like and support to the hilt. Jazz composers such as Duke, Gil and Mingus, of course, but also musicians and writers like Keith Nichols, Harry Beckett, Paul Grabowsky, Geir Lysne and many more. He ends with the comment ‘The Jazz Composer is not a book of instruction. Indeed it’s more a book of destruction. But what fun, how entertaining – and how welcome.’ On the surface that could be something for the publisher to use, but it presents the book in a totally wrong light.
For the record the jazz composer was never meant to be a book of instruction, certainly not in any formal ‘this is how to compose jazz’ sense, but a book which throws up some philosophical arguments to make people think, to open up discussion as to whether I’m right, to allow readers to get angry with what I think. Fortunately this seems to have been realised by some of my first readers (their comments will appear on thejazzcomposer.com comments page in due course) and I’m hoping that later reviewers will take up the challenges I lay down.
In an indirect way these three recently discovered quotes add to my feeling that there is an argument to be made, a discussion to be had, and, are you listening jazz.com, some more to add to the ‘Is jazz America’s classical music?’ discussion.
First, also in the June edition of Jazz Journal, a delicious comment by Tim Garland who, responding to his interviewer’s remark that ‘Nefertiti’ was ‘pretty much through-composed’, said, ‘But Tony’s all over that’. For those who don’t know the original version of Wayne Shorter’s ‘Nefertiti’ this edited extract from the jazz composer will help put the comment in prespective.
Shorter’s tune ‘Nefertiti’ is … a perfectly good melody with interesting harmonies, yet it was in the initial performance, on the album of the same name, that it attained a relevance to jazz beyond that of being just a tune to blow on. It is arranged in such a way that the melody repeats over and over… As an accompaniment to this constantly repeating tune, drummer Tony Williams improvises freely, and magnificently, taking his layering approach to playing one step further. … Williams’ approach reverses the expected roles of front line and rhythm section. When Joe Zawinul, who was to join Miles some years later, first heard this track he told an interviewer, ‘that he kept waiting for the music to start (since there were no conventional solos). And only when the tune reached its end did he realise that the music had been happening all along.’
The musical end-result of ‘Nefertiti’ adds weight to the ‘jazz is a living music’ argument, which cropped up in an item from Josef Engels in Welt Online seen, in translation, via Darmstadt Jazz News: ‘It might simply be a question of definition. If you see jazz as a solid entity, it becomes kind of a classical music with all the necessary respect and reverence. If you see jazz as a living and flexible music that constantly changes both its musical and its aesthetic road, it might just as well live forever.’
And one can apply that point to Courtney Pine’s concern, commented on in the Garland interview, that jazz was becoming excessively Europeanised in certain quarters. Which is OK in my book, as long as the people doing it are European themselves. Which, come to think of it, Courtney himself can lay at least some claim to…
Coleman, Collier & Coltrane
22/06/09 11:43 Filed in: Recommendations
Recommendations – the rationale
The inclusion of Hoarded Dreams as one of the 200 in The Penguin Guide to Jazz Recordings’ Core Collection, described as ‘a basic library of jazz records which readers… might consider as their first priority purchases’, was not only a well received accolade, but has prompted me to try something similar.
Over the next however long it takes I’ll be adding to this list of my Core 200 or so of tracks or records that I wouldn’t want to be without. It will be a mixture of jazz and classical, with perhaps some unexpected choices for a jazz composer to make. Also folded in will be some books and authors, painters and other artists, I have particularly liked and/or been influenced by. As such it will, in time, replace the Recommendations sections of this site.
The recommendations will start here in occasional blogs. After a while the core names will stay with the content being moved to Recommendations where they will be alphabetically listed by artist, with a composite list at the top of the page.
Ornette Coleman: Lonely Woman
Graham Collier: Aberdeen Angus
John Coltrane
Malcolm Cowley
The inclusion of Hoarded Dreams as one of the 200 in The Penguin Guide to Jazz Recordings’ Core Collection, described as ‘a basic library of jazz records which readers… might consider as their first priority purchases’, was not only a well received accolade, but has prompted me to try something similar.
Over the next however long it takes I’ll be adding to this list of my Core 200 or so of tracks or records that I wouldn’t want to be without. It will be a mixture of jazz and classical, with perhaps some unexpected choices for a jazz composer to make. Also folded in will be some books and authors, painters and other artists, I have particularly liked and/or been influenced by. As such it will, in time, replace the Recommendations sections of this site.
The recommendations will start here in occasional blogs. After a while the core names will stay with the content being moved to Recommendations where they will be alphabetically listed by artist, with a composite list at the top of the page.
Ornette Coleman: Lonely Woman
Graham Collier: Aberdeen Angus
John Coltrane
Malcolm Cowley
Update
13/06/09 09:34 Filed in: Jazz
The good folk at jazz.com responded within a day to my latest post with this as a heading:
Jazz might be America’s Classical Music
Graham Collier agrees . . . or does he?
I can only hope that their readers - and mine - are thinking this through for themselves!
And on another side of jazzcontinuum you’ll find a new essay, this one, promised in the jazz composer book, is a close look at two performances of my composition The Third Colour.
Jazz might be America’s Classical Music
Graham Collier agrees . . . or does he?
I can only hope that their readers - and mine - are thinking this through for themselves!
And on another side of jazzcontinuum you’ll find a new essay, this one, promised in the jazz composer book, is a close look at two performances of my composition The Third Colour.
Did I say that?
12/06/09 11:05 Filed in: Jazz
While I’m flattered that Ted Gioia’s jazz.com site – always worth a look by the way – should run one of my blog pieces, I’m a little disturbed by the two headlines that were put above it.
Jazz is America’ classical music? Graham Collier disagrees was the main heading and rereading the article I can’t see how that was arrived at. I have never used the phrase ‘jazz is America’s classical music’ and while subscribing to it in a broad sense, I have always found it to be a sloppy phrase, reflecting an inferiority complex that attempts to compare jazz to ‘real music’. (For the record they’re different – as different perhaps as cricket and baseball!)
Taking the phrase at its face value there could be a definite case, but it opens a door which seems not to have occurred to jazz.com’s headline writer. If jazz is America’s classical music, then one could also state that symphonic music is Europe’s classical music (I admit it’s tautologous and I did think about saying ‘symphonic music is Europe’s jazz’ but it didn’t sound right. Now why is that I wonder? But I digress.)
If symphonic music is Europe’s classical music then any serious look at the subject must include Charles Ives, Elliott Carter and many others who took the European tradition and, coming from somewhere else, went somewhere else with their music. Which is the point I was making in the article – Europeans, and others around the world, have taken ‘America’s classical music’, and done their own thing with it. But, and this may be at the nub of the headline writer’s beef, this doesn’t seem to be allowed.
In making my case for non-American jazz to have its day I wrote ‘how long do we have to go on discussing whether jazz has to have its American ancestry showing like a bottle-blonde’s dark roots?’ and continued ‘Which, as I fully realize, is getting perilously close to implying racism.’ This charge was repeated in the second headline which read ‘Jazz's American-driven perspective is "getting perilously close to implying racism."’ A closer reading of the blog would refute this interpretation of what I actually wrote, but let’s take the headline at its face value and compare it with this remark from Branford Marsalis which I quoted in the article: ‘only those who have internalised the culture and way of life of African Americans can become jazz musicians. A prerequisite for this is to live in the US.’
This discussion will no doubt continue, but for now here’s a comment from Quincy Jones which one could say has some relevance to the points I’m making: ‘The Europeans at this point are ready to say, “Hey guys, we’ll just take jazz from here. You don’t know what the hell to do with it.” That’s the way Europeans feel now. And I remember when they were just drooling over Bird and Diz and everybody. And now they have some amazing musicians over there.’
Jazz is America’ classical music? Graham Collier disagrees was the main heading and rereading the article I can’t see how that was arrived at. I have never used the phrase ‘jazz is America’s classical music’ and while subscribing to it in a broad sense, I have always found it to be a sloppy phrase, reflecting an inferiority complex that attempts to compare jazz to ‘real music’. (For the record they’re different – as different perhaps as cricket and baseball!)
Taking the phrase at its face value there could be a definite case, but it opens a door which seems not to have occurred to jazz.com’s headline writer. If jazz is America’s classical music, then one could also state that symphonic music is Europe’s classical music (I admit it’s tautologous and I did think about saying ‘symphonic music is Europe’s jazz’ but it didn’t sound right. Now why is that I wonder? But I digress.)
If symphonic music is Europe’s classical music then any serious look at the subject must include Charles Ives, Elliott Carter and many others who took the European tradition and, coming from somewhere else, went somewhere else with their music. Which is the point I was making in the article – Europeans, and others around the world, have taken ‘America’s classical music’, and done their own thing with it. But, and this may be at the nub of the headline writer’s beef, this doesn’t seem to be allowed.
In making my case for non-American jazz to have its day I wrote ‘how long do we have to go on discussing whether jazz has to have its American ancestry showing like a bottle-blonde’s dark roots?’ and continued ‘Which, as I fully realize, is getting perilously close to implying racism.’ This charge was repeated in the second headline which read ‘Jazz's American-driven perspective is "getting perilously close to implying racism."’ A closer reading of the blog would refute this interpretation of what I actually wrote, but let’s take the headline at its face value and compare it with this remark from Branford Marsalis which I quoted in the article: ‘only those who have internalised the culture and way of life of African Americans can become jazz musicians. A prerequisite for this is to live in the US.’
This discussion will no doubt continue, but for now here’s a comment from Quincy Jones which one could say has some relevance to the points I’m making: ‘The Europeans at this point are ready to say, “Hey guys, we’ll just take jazz from here. You don’t know what the hell to do with it.” That’s the way Europeans feel now. And I remember when they were just drooling over Bird and Diz and everybody. And now they have some amazing musicians over there.’
How long, oh Lord?
09/06/09 17:38 Filed in: Jazz
‘How long, oh Lord, how long must we non-Americans keep hearing this same old s**t about ‘If it’s not American culture, is it still worth calling “jazz”?’? One could cite Dave Holland, Joe Zawinul, Django Reinhardt etc, but the argument is much bigger than that. We in Europe, and others around the world are producing music that reflects our own individuality while respecting the traditions of the music – and, if I may be immodest, sometimes receiving favourable comparisons to some of jazz’s greats such as Mingus and Ellington. They reflected ‘American culture’ and we’ve taken that and added some of ourselves to the mix, and in the process produced music which is unheard, unrecognized and, in comments like the quote above, insulted. I don’t want to start any new jazz wars, just trying to get some recognition that good jazz now exists everywhere and that banging on about how American it has to be misses out a great deal of great music.
Now remind me, where was Marian McPartland from?
That comment was posted by me on the new jazz blog at NPR, where, incidentally, British-born Marian McPartland has had a regular programme for many years. The original comment, ‘If it’s not American culture, is it still worth calling “jazz”?’, came at the end of an item discussing a web piece about a new CD by Gianluigi Trovesi which ‘draws primarily from the history of Italian music, from the Renaissance to contemporary free improvisation’ – which follows up the point I made in an earlier blog about how many Italian jazz musicians have used other influences.
But as my comment said, how long do we have to go on discussing whether jazz has to have its American ancestry showing like a bottle-blonde’s dark roots? Which, as I fully realize, is getting perilously close to implying racism. Which, not incidentally, is the point at which I ask if there is a word missing in the question. Should it read ‘If it’s not black American culture, is it still worth calling jazz?’ Which is, again not coincidentally, very close to Branford Marsalis’ remark that ‘only those who have internalised the culture and way of life of African Americans can become jazz musicians. A prerequisite for this is to live in the US.’
Isn’t it long past time to stop this BS about whether jazz needs to be black American, or just American? I spend a chapter on this in my new book, the jazz composer, called ‘It ain’t who you are (it’s the way that you do it)’. The chapter is dedicated to Jan Garbarek, as successful a non-American jazz musician as there has ever been. I’m not his greatest fan, but listening yesterday to his Officium – the ECM album where he improvises over the Hilliard Quartet singing Gregorian chant – I realised how beautiful the music is, and how it is, by my definition, jazz. In that statement I have the support of Bill Evans whose presence in Miles’ band, we must remember, was greeted with shock by black audiences, but was said by the other musicians to be because Miles wanted him there. Evans said, ‘Jazz is not a what, it is a how. If it were a what, it would be static, never growing. The how is that the music comes from the moment, it is spontaneous, it exists in the time it is created. And anyone who makes music according to this method conveys to me an element that makes his music jazz.’
An extract from the jazz composer, moving music off the paper:
Writing about the rise of abstract expressionism in America at a time when art was seen as European, critic David Sylvester wrote, ‘In the search for the absolute and commitment to the new, it was advantageous not to be a European, not to be steeped in a tired culture.’ He quotes Barnett Newman, one of the great painters in that style, as saying, ‘I believe that here in America, some of us [are] free from the weight of European culture.’
This point is nicely developed by Sylvester, who says that Newman was influenced by Europeans such as Matisse and Giacometti, but ‘it was they who had to deal with “the weight of European culture” and that it was because Newman was free of that weight that he could deal with Matisse and Giacometti and go on from there.’
In looking at what music is produced in the name of jazz, we can apply David Sylvester’s point that the descendants of the creators of an art form may be carrying too much baggage from the past. And that those coming to an art form from a different direction, may be able to dispense with all or most of that baggage, and, in so doing, shed new light on the subject.
The baggage carried by American jazz has been dealt with by Miles and Ornette. As Kirk Varnedoe said about Jackson Pollock and Picasso, ‘each, in different ways and degrees altered the international languages of modern art’. They challenged the view that bebop was the language of jazz, all that could be used, all that should be taught. Much American jazz missed this epiphany and continued – and continues – to create music that could perhaps best be described as ‘hard bop moderne’.
American musicians generally are aware of the great weight of jazz history behind them, and feel that they need to deal with it, to get it out of their system or, often, pun intended, to include it in their system.
It is, I believe, no coincidence that many non-American players, Garbarek for one, have taken much greater advantage of the newly exposed potential of jazz, than many Americans have. As pianist Bobo Stenson, a fellow Scandinavian, said, ‘the American jazz tradition is not so rigid for us as it is for American musicians … and we can be freer in our approach.’
Patrick Jarenwattananon, the moderator of the NPR blog, added this comment in reply to mine: ‘Just to clarify, I call what both Trovesi and what you make “jazz”! I think that much of what’s going on across the pond from where I am is awesome. But there is that ongoing debate: in Europe/the world’s reinvention of this reputedly American thing, has it become something else altogether? (That something else being equally valid, or even potentially more appealing.) Or is that not useful to ask?
It may be useful to ask, but I think the answer lies in what you call jazz. If, like Wynton Marsalis, when asked whether he liked European jazz, you answer ‘If it’s swinging and has some blues in it, I love it,’ then you’ve defined what jazz means to you. If I were to point out that in defining jazz this way you are missing a lot of good music then that starts to define what jazz means to me. But it’s not how you define jazz that’s the problem. It’s that some definitions, like Wynton’s, aim to exclude what many musicians devote their lives to, producing music which can be, as Patrick implies, equally valid, equally appealing.
There’s more on this in the jazz composer book, and more of the chapter I quote from above has just gone up on Bill Shoemaker’s Point of Departure web magazine.
That comment was posted by me on the new jazz blog at NPR, where, incidentally, British-born Marian McPartland has had a regular programme for many years. The original comment, ‘If it’s not American culture, is it still worth calling “jazz”?’, came at the end of an item discussing a web piece about a new CD by Gianluigi Trovesi which ‘draws primarily from the history of Italian music, from the Renaissance to contemporary free improvisation’ – which follows up the point I made in an earlier blog about how many Italian jazz musicians have used other influences.
But as my comment said, how long do we have to go on discussing whether jazz has to have its American ancestry showing like a bottle-blonde’s dark roots? Which, as I fully realize, is getting perilously close to implying racism. Which, not incidentally, is the point at which I ask if there is a word missing in the question. Should it read ‘If it’s not black American culture, is it still worth calling jazz?’ Which is, again not coincidentally, very close to Branford Marsalis’ remark that ‘only those who have internalised the culture and way of life of African Americans can become jazz musicians. A prerequisite for this is to live in the US.’
Isn’t it long past time to stop this BS about whether jazz needs to be black American, or just American? I spend a chapter on this in my new book, the jazz composer, called ‘It ain’t who you are (it’s the way that you do it)’. The chapter is dedicated to Jan Garbarek, as successful a non-American jazz musician as there has ever been. I’m not his greatest fan, but listening yesterday to his Officium – the ECM album where he improvises over the Hilliard Quartet singing Gregorian chant – I realised how beautiful the music is, and how it is, by my definition, jazz. In that statement I have the support of Bill Evans whose presence in Miles’ band, we must remember, was greeted with shock by black audiences, but was said by the other musicians to be because Miles wanted him there. Evans said, ‘Jazz is not a what, it is a how. If it were a what, it would be static, never growing. The how is that the music comes from the moment, it is spontaneous, it exists in the time it is created. And anyone who makes music according to this method conveys to me an element that makes his music jazz.’
An extract from the jazz composer, moving music off the paper:
Writing about the rise of abstract expressionism in America at a time when art was seen as European, critic David Sylvester wrote, ‘In the search for the absolute and commitment to the new, it was advantageous not to be a European, not to be steeped in a tired culture.’ He quotes Barnett Newman, one of the great painters in that style, as saying, ‘I believe that here in America, some of us [are] free from the weight of European culture.’
This point is nicely developed by Sylvester, who says that Newman was influenced by Europeans such as Matisse and Giacometti, but ‘it was they who had to deal with “the weight of European culture” and that it was because Newman was free of that weight that he could deal with Matisse and Giacometti and go on from there.’
In looking at what music is produced in the name of jazz, we can apply David Sylvester’s point that the descendants of the creators of an art form may be carrying too much baggage from the past. And that those coming to an art form from a different direction, may be able to dispense with all or most of that baggage, and, in so doing, shed new light on the subject.
The baggage carried by American jazz has been dealt with by Miles and Ornette. As Kirk Varnedoe said about Jackson Pollock and Picasso, ‘each, in different ways and degrees altered the international languages of modern art’. They challenged the view that bebop was the language of jazz, all that could be used, all that should be taught. Much American jazz missed this epiphany and continued – and continues – to create music that could perhaps best be described as ‘hard bop moderne’.
American musicians generally are aware of the great weight of jazz history behind them, and feel that they need to deal with it, to get it out of their system or, often, pun intended, to include it in their system.
It is, I believe, no coincidence that many non-American players, Garbarek for one, have taken much greater advantage of the newly exposed potential of jazz, than many Americans have. As pianist Bobo Stenson, a fellow Scandinavian, said, ‘the American jazz tradition is not so rigid for us as it is for American musicians … and we can be freer in our approach.’
Patrick Jarenwattananon, the moderator of the NPR blog, added this comment in reply to mine: ‘Just to clarify, I call what both Trovesi and what you make “jazz”! I think that much of what’s going on across the pond from where I am is awesome. But there is that ongoing debate: in Europe/the world’s reinvention of this reputedly American thing, has it become something else altogether? (That something else being equally valid, or even potentially more appealing.) Or is that not useful to ask?
It may be useful to ask, but I think the answer lies in what you call jazz. If, like Wynton Marsalis, when asked whether he liked European jazz, you answer ‘If it’s swinging and has some blues in it, I love it,’ then you’ve defined what jazz means to you. If I were to point out that in defining jazz this way you are missing a lot of good music then that starts to define what jazz means to me. But it’s not how you define jazz that’s the problem. It’s that some definitions, like Wynton’s, aim to exclude what many musicians devote their lives to, producing music which can be, as Patrick implies, equally valid, equally appealing.
There’s more on this in the jazz composer book, and more of the chapter I quote from above has just gone up on Bill Shoemaker’s Point of Departure web magazine.
Cavafy’s jazz connection
04/06/09 09:29 Filed in: Recommendations
Recommendations – the rationale
The inclusion of Hoarded Dreams as one of the 200 in The Penguin Guide to Jazz Recordings’ Core Collection, described as ‘a basic library of jazz records which readers… might consider as their first priority purchases’, was not only a well received accolade, but has prompted me to try something similar.
Over the next however long it takes I’ll be adding to this list of my Core 200 or so of tracks or records that I wouldn’t want to be without. It will be a mixture of jazz and classical, with perhaps some unexpected choices for a jazz composer to make. Also folded in will be some books and authors, painters and other artists, I have particularly liked and/or been influenced by. As such it will, in time, replace the Recommendations sections of this site.
The recommendations will start here in occasional blogs. After a while the core names will stay with the content being moved to Recommendations where they will be alphabetically listed by artist, with a composite list at the top of the page.
Christoph Cech: Die Launen des Capitan
T. J. Clark
June 22nd 2009: content moved to Core 200 detail .
The inclusion of Hoarded Dreams as one of the 200 in The Penguin Guide to Jazz Recordings’ Core Collection, described as ‘a basic library of jazz records which readers… might consider as their first priority purchases’, was not only a well received accolade, but has prompted me to try something similar.
Over the next however long it takes I’ll be adding to this list of my Core 200 or so of tracks or records that I wouldn’t want to be without. It will be a mixture of jazz and classical, with perhaps some unexpected choices for a jazz composer to make. Also folded in will be some books and authors, painters and other artists, I have particularly liked and/or been influenced by. As such it will, in time, replace the Recommendations sections of this site.
The recommendations will start here in occasional blogs. After a while the core names will stay with the content being moved to Recommendations where they will be alphabetically listed by artist, with a composite list at the top of the page.
Christoph Cech: Die Launen des Capitan
T. J. Clark
June 22nd 2009: content moved to Core 200 detail .
The Vonetta Factor
25/05/09 16:57 Filed in: Jazz
The publication of my new book, the jazz composer, moving music off the paper, and the imminent arrival of directing 14 Jackson Pollocks, my new CD, forced me to write a section - promised for thejazzcomposer website - on one of the compositions discussed in the former and included in the latter. Here’s an extract. The full article is here.
Vonetta Factor - Roger Dean (keyboards)
‘The simple narrative line is steadily overlaid and encrusted with levels of symbolism and descriptive parabolas, and the handling of time becomes less and less consecutive and linear.’
Unsourced comment on the techniques of Malcolm Lowry.
‘The title comes from the Miles Davis recording of Wayne Shorter’s ballad ‘Vonetta’ where Tony Williams adds a surprising and very independent drum level. This composition is designed to encourage such surprises and independence. What is written is only the starting point.’
Extract from the programme note.
The performance is improvised, by the band and the director, from four Grooves – illustrated on page 307 of the book - and various Extended Pages. ‘Each [Groove has its] unique feel and [is] associated with its own specific idea, as can be seen in the descriptive tags on the manuscript. The rhythm section provides the base, and the remaining players use the given ideas to add unexpected layers above, seemingly random and each time different … Each of the Grooves can, at my discretion, be ended by going to an instrumental cadenza. This can return to the Groove, or go on to all or part of what I called the Extended Pages.’
Extracted from the jazz composer, moving music off the paper.
An extract from the performance on directing 14 Jackson Pollocks
Section 2
Grooves and Keyboard 3.45
Keyboard solo and the extended page for Groove 2, with freely cued backings.
Vonetta Factor - Roger Dean (keyboards)
Jazz Dispute
22/05/09 16:26 Filed in: Jazz
Doug Ramsey’s Rifftides has become an indispensable part of my life. There’s always something worth reading or, in this case, looking at. It was apparently listed there some years ago but has recently reappeared. The clip is from You Tube and may, for all I know, have already been seen by everyone. But it’s new to me and I’m amazed at the skill and expressiveness shown by ‘Weeping Prophet’, the artist in question.
The music is "Leap Frog" by Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie, with Thelonious Monk, Curly Russell and Buddy Rich (1950).
The music is "Leap Frog" by Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie, with Thelonious Monk, Curly Russell and Buddy Rich (1950).
Aberdeen Angus revisited
14/05/09 10:09 Filed in: Jazz
In Jazztastic, my blog on April 15th, I discussed the original version of ‘Aberdeen Angus’, recorded on Down Another Road in 1969 and how that track had been included, alongside tracks by Stone Roses and Bert Jansch, in a compilation of tracks listened to on their tour bus by the British pop group Babyshambles .
As I said then, the tune was performed many times in the late 60s and through the 70s by my own band at various concerts. There is a very interesting performance (of which I have a very bad recording) from the Camden Jazz Festival a few weeks after the Down Another Road version where the rhythm section went into 3/4 for the bulk of the piece, which opened up the spatial aspects of the tune. This is what used to happen on gigs and showed – as Miles also did of course – that the tight rhythms of rock, of bebop, are not always necessary.
The articulation of these ideas – as opposed to just doing them – led to my decision to bring ‘Aberdeen Angus’ back into the travelling library after some years of leaving it sitting on the shelf. Somewhat belatedly perhaps, I realised that what we had been doing with it as a sextet could be expanded to larger groups, with the motifs being used as anchors of a performance to produce a more open, collectively-improvised approach.
More in The Jazztastic Aberdeen Angus in Writings.
As I said then, the tune was performed many times in the late 60s and through the 70s by my own band at various concerts. There is a very interesting performance (of which I have a very bad recording) from the Camden Jazz Festival a few weeks after the Down Another Road version where the rhythm section went into 3/4 for the bulk of the piece, which opened up the spatial aspects of the tune. This is what used to happen on gigs and showed – as Miles also did of course – that the tight rhythms of rock, of bebop, are not always necessary.
The articulation of these ideas – as opposed to just doing them – led to my decision to bring ‘Aberdeen Angus’ back into the travelling library after some years of leaving it sitting on the shelf. Somewhat belatedly perhaps, I realised that what we had been doing with it as a sextet could be expanded to larger groups, with the motifs being used as anchors of a performance to produce a more open, collectively-improvised approach.
More in The Jazztastic Aberdeen Angus in Writings.
Bartok, Beckett and Bonati
04/05/09 10:00 Filed in: Recommendations
More Recommendations
As I said in previous blogs the inclusion of Hoarded Dreams as one of the 200 in The Penguin Guide to Jazz Recordings’ Core Collection, described as ‘a basic library of jazz records which readers… might consider as their first priority purchases’, was not only a well received accolade, but has prompted me to try something similar.
Over the next however long it takes I’ll be adding to this list of my Core 200 or so of tracks or records which I wouldn’t want to be without. It will be a mixture of jazz and classical, with perhaps some unexpected choices for a jazz composer to make. Also folded in will be some books and authors, painters and other artists, I have particularly liked and/or been influenced by. As such it will, in time, replace the Recommendations sections of this site.
The recommendations will start here in occasional blogs. After a while the core names will stay with the content being moved to Recommendations where they will be alphabetically listed by artist, with a composite list at the top of the page.
Bela Bartok: String Quartet No. 6, Concerto for Orchestra
Harry Beckett
Luciano Berio: Sinfonia
Carla Bley/Paul Haines: Escalator Over the Hill
Roberto Bolaño
Roberto Bonati: un sospeso silenzio and A Silvery Silence
Betty Carter, Geri Allen, Dave Holland, Jack DeJohnette
Feed the Fire
C. P. Cavafy
Curios (Tom Cawley): Closer
June 1st 2009: content moved to Core 200 detail
More recommendations will follow in a week or so.
As I said in previous blogs the inclusion of Hoarded Dreams as one of the 200 in The Penguin Guide to Jazz Recordings’ Core Collection, described as ‘a basic library of jazz records which readers… might consider as their first priority purchases’, was not only a well received accolade, but has prompted me to try something similar.
Over the next however long it takes I’ll be adding to this list of my Core 200 or so of tracks or records which I wouldn’t want to be without. It will be a mixture of jazz and classical, with perhaps some unexpected choices for a jazz composer to make. Also folded in will be some books and authors, painters and other artists, I have particularly liked and/or been influenced by. As such it will, in time, replace the Recommendations sections of this site.
The recommendations will start here in occasional blogs. After a while the core names will stay with the content being moved to Recommendations where they will be alphabetically listed by artist, with a composite list at the top of the page.
Bela Bartok: String Quartet No. 6, Concerto for Orchestra
Harry Beckett
Luciano Berio: Sinfonia
Carla Bley/Paul Haines: Escalator Over the Hill
Roberto Bolaño
Roberto Bonati: un sospeso silenzio and A Silvery Silence
Betty Carter, Geri Allen, Dave Holland, Jack DeJohnette
Feed the Fire
C. P. Cavafy
Curios (Tom Cawley): Closer
June 1st 2009: content moved to Core 200 detail
More recommendations will follow in a week or so.
Jazz is like a Banana
29/04/09 10:26 Filed in: Jazz
The statement may seem as gnomic as Bix Beiderbecke’s ‘One by One a Cow goes by’, but when one thinks about it, jazz is like a banana, and the phrase may well replace my own mantra, jazz happens in real time, once.
But it may need the addition of an explanatory phrase, discovered by Pierre on the wall of a Copenhagen jazz club in the 1960s, a clarification which will no doubt be well received by the editors of the Penguin Guide to Jazz Recordings, who asked at the end of their assessment of the CD ‘How is jazz like a banana? Suggestions gratefully received.’ It’s simple really. As the wall mural said: ‘Jazz is like a banana - you eat it on the spot.’
Comment from Finnish journalist Jaakko Tahkolahti, (a self-styled Graham Collier fan):
I'm a bit surprised that you do not seem to be familiar with Sartre's famous remark, which was first published in 1947 in a special jazz issue of Les Cahiers America and in translation by Ralph de Toledano in the Saturday Review of Literature. His piece titled Jazz in America begins with: "Jazz is like bananas - it must be consumed on the spot." The idea is, of course, very close to your own motto about jazz, and also my own conception of this music. You can find the piece in English in the net [You may have to click on the book picture and scroll down to Sartre’s article]. It's also included in the book Frontiers of Jazz edited by de Toledano and published in Britain in 1966 in The Jazz Book club, no. 58.
Saeta's influence
23/04/09 15:21 Filed in: Jazz
There’s always been talk about whether individual countries in Europe have a national jazz identity. I have no doubt that for those musicians who have a recogniseable identity – John Surman, Han Bennink, Jan Garbarek for example – there are definite connections between their sound and what we can perceive as national traits. To make mention of Surman’s pastoralism, Bennink’s off-centre approach, and Garbarek’s cold clear sound may be the musical equivalent of anthropomorphism but it does make some kind of sense.
Listening, as I have lately, to much Italian jazz, courtesy of the Italian critic Claudio Bonomi, who I guess I could call my dealer, I see some trends there which could possibly be said to apply across the Italian board, but the reasons behind this are not immediately obvious.
Roberto Bonati, whose work will be discussed in the next recommendations blog, and Paolo Damiani, as well as the writers for the Dolman Orchestra, all manage – very successfully - to incorporate elements outside of jazz into their work. Moby Dick, Pasolini, and Gregorian chant have been the inspirations for some of their compositions, and in the production of it one hears operatic singers, Gregorian chants, biblical texts, the spoken word and much more. The end result may not fit the definition of jazz for jazz purists, but it does, undeniably, make fascinating listening. The same could be said of the Australian Paul Grabowsky, whose version of Vera Lynn’s ‘We’ll meet again’, discussed a couple of blogs ago, is something that only an Australian, with their reputation for down to earth irreverence, could have done.
The fact that Grabowsky uses a violin cadenza to introduce his work and that the Dolman Orchestra incorporates Surman – sometimes pastoral-sounding, often not - and a classical-sounding singer into their ‘Sequenze Armoniche (Some Gregorian Reflections)’ is proof of what I am edging towards: that among all the sounds available to a jazz composer today, anything is possible. In the right hands the elements retain their identity but at the same time they are incorporated into someone else’s vision. In this way jazz has become a much broader music without losing its character, and this should be celebrated.
We should also remember Gil Evans’ ‘Saeta’ where Miles Davis became, for the length of the piece, a Spanish singer taking part in a religious ceremony. In that piece Gil and Miles created a new way of looking at jazz which few others have taken up. But perhaps the Italians I mention have had ‘Saeta’ in the back of their minds…
Listening, as I have lately, to much Italian jazz, courtesy of the Italian critic Claudio Bonomi, who I guess I could call my dealer, I see some trends there which could possibly be said to apply across the Italian board, but the reasons behind this are not immediately obvious.
Roberto Bonati, whose work will be discussed in the next recommendations blog, and Paolo Damiani, as well as the writers for the Dolman Orchestra, all manage – very successfully - to incorporate elements outside of jazz into their work. Moby Dick, Pasolini, and Gregorian chant have been the inspirations for some of their compositions, and in the production of it one hears operatic singers, Gregorian chants, biblical texts, the spoken word and much more. The end result may not fit the definition of jazz for jazz purists, but it does, undeniably, make fascinating listening. The same could be said of the Australian Paul Grabowsky, whose version of Vera Lynn’s ‘We’ll meet again’, discussed a couple of blogs ago, is something that only an Australian, with their reputation for down to earth irreverence, could have done.
The fact that Grabowsky uses a violin cadenza to introduce his work and that the Dolman Orchestra incorporates Surman – sometimes pastoral-sounding, often not - and a classical-sounding singer into their ‘Sequenze Armoniche (Some Gregorian Reflections)’ is proof of what I am edging towards: that among all the sounds available to a jazz composer today, anything is possible. In the right hands the elements retain their identity but at the same time they are incorporated into someone else’s vision. In this way jazz has become a much broader music without losing its character, and this should be celebrated.
We should also remember Gil Evans’ ‘Saeta’ where Miles Davis became, for the length of the piece, a Spanish singer taking part in a religious ceremony. In that piece Gil and Miles created a new way of looking at jazz which few others have taken up. But perhaps the Italians I mention have had ‘Saeta’ in the back of their minds…
Jazztastic
15/04/09 13:09 Filed in: Jazz
I’ve been called many things in my time, some puzzling, as in Stuart Nicholson’s remark that he had always considered me to be ‘the poor man’s Stan Kenton’, some flattering, as in Brian Morton’s comment that Hoarded Dreams is ‘on a par - for me at least - with any of Ellington’s late suites’. One learn to take both good and bad with the proverbial shot of whisky, but the oddest adjective that has ever been applied is the word in the heading to this blog.
It came in a review of Back to the Bus Babyshambles, a set chosen by members of the well-known British pop group Babyshambles, as representative of the tracks they played on their band bus. This compilation included, alongside tracks by Stone Roses, The Clash and Bert Jansch, ‘Aberdeen Angus’, a tune of mine first recorded in 1969 on Down Another Road, long before any of the band were born.
A subsequent website review praised ‘the Jazztastic Graham Collier’ but try as I might I can’t warm to it as a description of what and who I am.
More in The Jazztastic Aberdeen Angus in Writings
It came in a review of Back to the Bus Babyshambles, a set chosen by members of the well-known British pop group Babyshambles, as representative of the tracks they played on their band bus. This compilation included, alongside tracks by Stone Roses, The Clash and Bert Jansch, ‘Aberdeen Angus’, a tune of mine first recorded in 1969 on Down Another Road, long before any of the band were born.
A subsequent website review praised ‘the Jazztastic Graham Collier’ but try as I might I can’t warm to it as a description of what and who I am.
More in The Jazztastic Aberdeen Angus in Writings
Adès, Aiken and the AAO
05/04/09 09:07 Filed in: Recommendations
The inclusion of Hoarded Dreams as one of the 200 in The Penguin Guide to Jazz Recordings’ Core Collection, described as ‘a basic library of jazz records which readers… might consider as their first priority purchases’, was not only a well received accolade, but has prompted me to try something similar.
Over the next however long it takes I’ll be adding to this list of my Core 200 or so of tracks or records which I wouldn’t want to be without. It will be a mixture of jazz and classical, with perhaps some unexpected choices for a jazz composer to make. Also folded in will be some books and authors, painters and other artists, I have particularly liked and/or been influenced by. As such it will, in time, replace the Recommendations sections of this site.
The recommendations will start here in occasional blogs. After a while the core names will stay with the content being moved to Recommendations where they will be alphabetically listed by artist, with a composite list at the top of the page.
Thomas Adès: Asyla
Conrad Aiken
Australian Art Orchestra: ‘Strange Meeting’
Jon Balke: Jøkleba! Live
May 1st 2009: content moved to Core 200 detail .
Over the next however long it takes I’ll be adding to this list of my Core 200 or so of tracks or records which I wouldn’t want to be without. It will be a mixture of jazz and classical, with perhaps some unexpected choices for a jazz composer to make. Also folded in will be some books and authors, painters and other artists, I have particularly liked and/or been influenced by. As such it will, in time, replace the Recommendations sections of this site.
The recommendations will start here in occasional blogs. After a while the core names will stay with the content being moved to Recommendations where they will be alphabetically listed by artist, with a composite list at the top of the page.
Thomas Adès: Asyla
Conrad Aiken
Australian Art Orchestra: ‘Strange Meeting’
Jon Balke: Jøkleba! Live
May 1st 2009: content moved to Core 200 detail .
Bolaño and Bonati
Roberto Bolaño and Roberto Bonati are two artists whose work impresses me more on every occasion. Bolaño is a Chilean author whose Savage Detectives and 2666 deserve the high praise they have received everywhere. My recent discovery of him has equalled my reaction to reading William Faulkner or Malcolm Lowry for the first time, and for me there is no higher praise.
Roberto Bonati is an Italian bass player and composer and artistic director of the Festival ParmaJazz-Frontiere. The inclusion of two of his records in a new-and-in-progress listing of those records and books I wouldn’t want to be without, is a sign of my high regard for him. (So far only Bartok has been given similar recognition but I’m sure that Miles, Duke, Mingus and a few others will join them in due course.)
The first part of the list will be published in April.
Roberto Bonati is an Italian bass player and composer and artistic director of the Festival ParmaJazz-Frontiere. The inclusion of two of his records in a new-and-in-progress listing of those records and books I wouldn’t want to be without, is a sign of my high regard for him. (So far only Bartok has been given similar recognition but I’m sure that Miles, Duke, Mingus and a few others will join them in due course.)
The first part of the list will be published in April.
Free Potatoes Today!
Another argument with our local bar owner about his downloading music free to play in his bar. His stance, ‘If I like it I’ll try to get the record, but there are no record shops on this small island’ echoes what I’ve heard from many of those who put my own music up for free download. My stance, ‘You expect me to pay for the vodka I’m drinking, but you won’t pay for the music we’re listening to’ fell, as always, on deaf ears.
I realise that some musicians want to give their music away for free but some of us don’t. I feel that I deserve some respect as a musician and that my art needs to be paid for, not least to pay the bills incurred in making it, or as seed money towards my next project. I agree that free full-track downloads can be useful as a marketing tool – and there will be a free download of a full track from my forthcoming new CD on my site soon. But that’s my choice. There shouldn’t be a middle man who has decided he can make decisions as to how my music is presented.
Which brings us to the free potatoes.
Imagine a case where, when driving by a field of potatoes, you’re greeted by a sign saying ‘these potatoes are free today’. When questioned about this, the man sitting by the sign says ‘Well, I didn’t grow them but I decided that anyone who wants can come in and take them for free. The farmer’s away growing something else in another field, but if he comes by I’ll tell him that I’m helping people to like potatoes, and that this will encourage them to buy their next bag legally.’
You can’t download the tracks at npr.org, but the National Public Radio site has a lot of fascinating material that can act as a taster to an artists’ work. They also have a jazz newsletter telling you what’s new. But it’s in the back catalogue where gems are sometimes found, like the analysis of ‘Over the Rainbow’ I came across recently. I’ve heard the tune hundreds of times but Rob Kapilow shone new light on its construction – and how it was treated in the original Judy Garland version.
Not that her’s is my favourite – not by a long way. That accolade goes to Austrian composer Christian Mühlbacher, whose treatment of the tune I made one of my classic advanced arrangements in the jazz composer book (in all good bookshops soon!).
Mühlbacher, an Austrian percussionist and drummer, manages, uniquely as far as I know, to record one album a year, always on 5th April. His version of ‘Over the Rainbow’ on 5-04-98 is a masterpiece of postmodernism, from the very distorted harmonies of the opening through the seemingly never-ending repetitions of the already repetitive melody in the bridge. They finally resolve into a multilayered patterned background, inside which random versions of the tune’s motifs appear and disappear. It’s recognisably ‘Over the Rainbow’, in the same way that Picasso’s paintings of guitars are recognisably guitars, but something new has been created.
I can’t – and won’t - offer a free download, but track it down. You won’t be disappointed.
PS: While I was looking for the URL to paste here I decided to order two more records by Christian Mühlbacher from the Extraplatte website…
I realise that some musicians want to give their music away for free but some of us don’t. I feel that I deserve some respect as a musician and that my art needs to be paid for, not least to pay the bills incurred in making it, or as seed money towards my next project. I agree that free full-track downloads can be useful as a marketing tool – and there will be a free download of a full track from my forthcoming new CD on my site soon. But that’s my choice. There shouldn’t be a middle man who has decided he can make decisions as to how my music is presented.
Which brings us to the free potatoes.
Imagine a case where, when driving by a field of potatoes, you’re greeted by a sign saying ‘these potatoes are free today’. When questioned about this, the man sitting by the sign says ‘Well, I didn’t grow them but I decided that anyone who wants can come in and take them for free. The farmer’s away growing something else in another field, but if he comes by I’ll tell him that I’m helping people to like potatoes, and that this will encourage them to buy their next bag legally.’
You can’t download the tracks at npr.org, but the National Public Radio site has a lot of fascinating material that can act as a taster to an artists’ work. They also have a jazz newsletter telling you what’s new. But it’s in the back catalogue where gems are sometimes found, like the analysis of ‘Over the Rainbow’ I came across recently. I’ve heard the tune hundreds of times but Rob Kapilow shone new light on its construction – and how it was treated in the original Judy Garland version.
Not that her’s is my favourite – not by a long way. That accolade goes to Austrian composer Christian Mühlbacher, whose treatment of the tune I made one of my classic advanced arrangements in the jazz composer book (in all good bookshops soon!).
Mühlbacher, an Austrian percussionist and drummer, manages, uniquely as far as I know, to record one album a year, always on 5th April. His version of ‘Over the Rainbow’ on 5-04-98 is a masterpiece of postmodernism, from the very distorted harmonies of the opening through the seemingly never-ending repetitions of the already repetitive melody in the bridge. They finally resolve into a multilayered patterned background, inside which random versions of the tune’s motifs appear and disappear. It’s recognisably ‘Over the Rainbow’, in the same way that Picasso’s paintings of guitars are recognisably guitars, but something new has been created.
I can’t – and won’t - offer a free download, but track it down. You won’t be disappointed.
PS: While I was looking for the URL to paste here I decided to order two more records by Christian Mühlbacher from the Extraplatte website…
How many notes?
11/03/09 10:19 Filed in: Jazz
The remainder of this posting has been moved to the jazz composer site.
The reward for playing jazz
15/02/09 13:28 Filed in: Jazz
‘What I've learned about being in this industry for a short period of time is that you either make it appealing to the crossover audience – Glastonbury main-stage – or you stay and play at the 606 Club and venues like that and at the end of the day you get a handful of shrapnel. And that means that the music that you play…you know, you can't really take it seriously if you're getting paid in shrapnel.’
Reading the interview with Courtney Pine in Jazz Review, from which that quote comes, I am very conscious of he fact that he regards jazz in a very different way than I do. Not just the desire to bring in outside influences – which I philosophically support while admitting that I usually dislike the results - but the underlying reason for actually playing the music. His stance is a valid one and will be supported by many, but there is another way of looking at it, and that was touched upon in the final sentence of my last post: ‘my record stands as someone who has fought all his life for jazz to exist as an art form.’
Before discussing this opposite view I should perhaps add that, although one could surmise that Courtney Pine’s success is one of the reasons behind the half million pound award to study black British jazz, and that he will no doubt be quoted heavily in the final report, there is no connection between this discussion of his views and my attack on the grant. (I should also add that Corey Mwamba a young black British jazz musician wrote to say he was fuming when he heard about the size of grant and hoping that some of the money would at least go to pay those who are interviewed.)
While attempting to deflect any connection between these recent posts I am also aware that Courtney himself is now entitled to call me before an assembly of the great and the good to justify any implied criticism of his way of life. Let me explain. After languishing in the ranks of the lowly OBEs (Officers of the Order of the British Empire, to which high state I was summoned in 1987, and he some years later) Courtney has recently been promoted to the higher rank of CBE (Commander of the Order of the British Empire). I’m still waiting my call to join him - not that I’m jealous, I can’t think of anytime that the OBE has been useful to me (although my mum was pleased) - but at the moment he outranks me and could, if he so wishes, order me to clean out the Queen’s stables or some such punishment.
But seriously. My view on why we jazz musicians do what we do can be summed up in these quotes, many of which are used in ‘deepening the game amid the background hum’, a chapter in the jazz composer book.
‘What is the focus of the practitioner? That's the important thing, because the type of return one seeks determines his output.’
Muhal Richard Abrams, from an interview by Bill Shoemaker
‘What is fascinating now is that it’s going to be much more difficult for the artist, because he must really deepen the game to be any good at all.’
Francis Bacon, in David Sylvester’s Interviews with Francis Bacon
‘If there is anything good in my poetry, people like you will find it. That’s all we can hope for, and goodness knows it’s enough. The effort alone is worth it.’
Selected Letters of Conrad Aiken
‘To play in a manner which excludes the larger audience or, worse, to prefer to play before a small audience, is taken as an indication that the music is pretentious, elitist, “uncommunicative”, self-absorbed and probably many other disgusting things too … The propaganda of the entertainment industry and the strenuous, if futile, efforts of the art world to compete with it, combine to turn the audience into a body of mystical omnipotence. And what it seems to demand above all else is lip-service.’
Derek Bailey in Improvisation its nature and practice in music
‘I would go as far as to say that one of the big problems with jazz, a large part of its background hum, if you like, is the feeling that it ‘ought to be popular’. The whole marketing and packaging … of jazz implies that there is an audience we should be looking for, rather than an art we should be trying to work within. … It could be argued that the ‘crisis in jazz’ is not lack of record sales, lack of audiences, but that sales per se, audiences per se, are seen as important.’
An extract from the jazz composer, moving music off the paper
Although I might yet get a T-shirt printed with ‘I gave my life to jazz and all I got was this lousy OBE’, I must admit that all things considered I have had a good jazz life doing it my way. I’m with John Lewis, who once said ‘The reward for playing jazz is playing jazz.’
But every once in a while I think of this passage from Malcolm Lowry’s Under the Volcano:
‘A madman passed, wearing, in the manner of a lifebelt, an old bicycle tyre … He muttered to the Consul but waiting neither for reply nor reward, took off the tyre and flung it far ahead of him … Picking up the tyre, he flung it far ahead again, repeating this process, to the irreducible logic of which he appeared eternally committed, until out of sight.’
Reading the interview with Courtney Pine in Jazz Review, from which that quote comes, I am very conscious of he fact that he regards jazz in a very different way than I do. Not just the desire to bring in outside influences – which I philosophically support while admitting that I usually dislike the results - but the underlying reason for actually playing the music. His stance is a valid one and will be supported by many, but there is another way of looking at it, and that was touched upon in the final sentence of my last post: ‘my record stands as someone who has fought all his life for jazz to exist as an art form.’
Before discussing this opposite view I should perhaps add that, although one could surmise that Courtney Pine’s success is one of the reasons behind the half million pound award to study black British jazz, and that he will no doubt be quoted heavily in the final report, there is no connection between this discussion of his views and my attack on the grant. (I should also add that Corey Mwamba a young black British jazz musician wrote to say he was fuming when he heard about the size of grant and hoping that some of the money would at least go to pay those who are interviewed.)
While attempting to deflect any connection between these recent posts I am also aware that Courtney himself is now entitled to call me before an assembly of the great and the good to justify any implied criticism of his way of life. Let me explain. After languishing in the ranks of the lowly OBEs (Officers of the Order of the British Empire, to which high state I was summoned in 1987, and he some years later) Courtney has recently been promoted to the higher rank of CBE (Commander of the Order of the British Empire). I’m still waiting my call to join him - not that I’m jealous, I can’t think of anytime that the OBE has been useful to me (although my mum was pleased) - but at the moment he outranks me and could, if he so wishes, order me to clean out the Queen’s stables or some such punishment.
But seriously. My view on why we jazz musicians do what we do can be summed up in these quotes, many of which are used in ‘deepening the game amid the background hum’, a chapter in the jazz composer book.
‘What is the focus of the practitioner? That's the important thing, because the type of return one seeks determines his output.’
Muhal Richard Abrams, from an interview by Bill Shoemaker
‘What is fascinating now is that it’s going to be much more difficult for the artist, because he must really deepen the game to be any good at all.’
Francis Bacon, in David Sylvester’s Interviews with Francis Bacon
‘If there is anything good in my poetry, people like you will find it. That’s all we can hope for, and goodness knows it’s enough. The effort alone is worth it.’
Selected Letters of Conrad Aiken
‘To play in a manner which excludes the larger audience or, worse, to prefer to play before a small audience, is taken as an indication that the music is pretentious, elitist, “uncommunicative”, self-absorbed and probably many other disgusting things too … The propaganda of the entertainment industry and the strenuous, if futile, efforts of the art world to compete with it, combine to turn the audience into a body of mystical omnipotence. And what it seems to demand above all else is lip-service.’
Derek Bailey in Improvisation its nature and practice in music
‘I would go as far as to say that one of the big problems with jazz, a large part of its background hum, if you like, is the feeling that it ‘ought to be popular’. The whole marketing and packaging … of jazz implies that there is an audience we should be looking for, rather than an art we should be trying to work within. … It could be argued that the ‘crisis in jazz’ is not lack of record sales, lack of audiences, but that sales per se, audiences per se, are seen as important.’
An extract from the jazz composer, moving music off the paper
Although I might yet get a T-shirt printed with ‘I gave my life to jazz and all I got was this lousy OBE’, I must admit that all things considered I have had a good jazz life doing it my way. I’m with John Lewis, who once said ‘The reward for playing jazz is playing jazz.’
But every once in a while I think of this passage from Malcolm Lowry’s Under the Volcano:
‘A madman passed, wearing, in the manner of a lifebelt, an old bicycle tyre … He muttered to the Consul but waiting neither for reply nor reward, took off the tyre and flung it far ahead of him … Picking up the tyre, he flung it far ahead again, repeating this process, to the irreducible logic of which he appeared eternally committed, until out of sight.’
Mr. P.C. and the capitalised imperative
In the last post I spoofed a Television conference by President Obama on jazz, but it’s the spoof email, not written by me, included in a previous blog which seems to have got me into trouble, and has led me to use John Coltrane’s tune title as part of the heading to this post.
In explanation, here is a comment I received regarding my blog on the half million pound grant for a study of Black British Jazz:
As an academic working on jazz history, I was interested to read your post on the Black British Jazz research grant. I have to say that I have a great deal of sympathy with your case (my first thought when I first heard about this award was that it would be needlessly divisive). But the reason I'm emailing is to say that you've GOT to take that Nigerian scam parody down! We are already in the much-contested and dangerous waters of race - to read in the same post talk of monkeys, cannibals, jungle tribes and so on is a tremendous misjudgment, and leaves you open to accusations of racism that I'm sure you don't deserve.
For the record, the spoof email stays. Not just because the capitalised GOT pissed me off, but because it stands as a funny take on the scourge of the real email scams, most of which we are told come from Nigeria anyway. That fact could be said to add to the western world’s racism far more than a veteran jazz musician’s attempt to spread the word about the existence of a spoof email which points out, in a very funny way, some of the problems that ALL jazz musicians, whatever their colour, face in trying to make a living. To miss this, points to an excess of political correctness, and a deficiency in the humour department.
And again for the record, all the words my correspondent complains about come in the list of song titles, which include Just Tribesmen (Lovers No More) and Blue Monkey. To me, and most jazz musicians these are funny and in the tradition of spoof song titles which are very much part of a jazz musician’s life.
However, spoof emails and song titles apart, what irritates me most about his comments is his misreading of my argument against the grant, which is, as he says, ‘needlessly divisive’. But surely the main point is that live jazz musicians need that money, not academics discussing a sub-group of the British jazz scene.
Perhaps to satisfy my correspondent’s political correctness I need to say that I intend no offense when I speak of a ‘sub-group’ of the British jazz scene. I also meant no offense to black British jazz musicians when I criticized the grant, but I seem to have become an unwitting part of my correspondent’s ‘we’ who ‘are already in the much-contested and dangerous waters of race’. Not me guv. I was just trying to point out how that large sum of money could be better used by being given direct to the musicians themselves, whatever their colour.
And as to being ‘open to’, and surely not deserving, ‘accusations of racism’, my record stands as someone who has fought all his life for jazz to exist as an art form, no matter where the musicians come from.
In explanation, here is a comment I received regarding my blog on the half million pound grant for a study of Black British Jazz:
As an academic working on jazz history, I was interested to read your post on the Black British Jazz research grant. I have to say that I have a great deal of sympathy with your case (my first thought when I first heard about this award was that it would be needlessly divisive). But the reason I'm emailing is to say that you've GOT to take that Nigerian scam parody down! We are already in the much-contested and dangerous waters of race - to read in the same post talk of monkeys, cannibals, jungle tribes and so on is a tremendous misjudgment, and leaves you open to accusations of racism that I'm sure you don't deserve.
For the record, the spoof email stays. Not just because the capitalised GOT pissed me off, but because it stands as a funny take on the scourge of the real email scams, most of which we are told come from Nigeria anyway. That fact could be said to add to the western world’s racism far more than a veteran jazz musician’s attempt to spread the word about the existence of a spoof email which points out, in a very funny way, some of the problems that ALL jazz musicians, whatever their colour, face in trying to make a living. To miss this, points to an excess of political correctness, and a deficiency in the humour department.
And again for the record, all the words my correspondent complains about come in the list of song titles, which include Just Tribesmen (Lovers No More) and Blue Monkey. To me, and most jazz musicians these are funny and in the tradition of spoof song titles which are very much part of a jazz musician’s life.
However, spoof emails and song titles apart, what irritates me most about his comments is his misreading of my argument against the grant, which is, as he says, ‘needlessly divisive’. But surely the main point is that live jazz musicians need that money, not academics discussing a sub-group of the British jazz scene.
Perhaps to satisfy my correspondent’s political correctness I need to say that I intend no offense when I speak of a ‘sub-group’ of the British jazz scene. I also meant no offense to black British jazz musicians when I criticized the grant, but I seem to have become an unwitting part of my correspondent’s ‘we’ who ‘are already in the much-contested and dangerous waters of race’. Not me guv. I was just trying to point out how that large sum of money could be better used by being given direct to the musicians themselves, whatever their colour.
And as to being ‘open to’, and surely not deserving, ‘accusations of racism’, my record stands as someone who has fought all his life for jazz to exist as an art form, no matter where the musicians come from.
Obama on jazz
28/01/09 10:15 Filed in: Jazz
President Obama’s decision to give his first television interview on jazz to NRK (the Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation) was greeted with dismay by the Marsalis party. ‘Although our stance on jazz being purely African American may appear to have lessened lately, we still feel that it’s too early to recognise Norwegian Jazz as being a worthy descendant of the music of Louis or Duke. We also protest the sponsorship of the broadcast by the German record company ECM.’
Historically the Marsalis party has been a strong supporter of the idea that jazz belongs only to African Americans. When asked ‘What do you think about European jazz?’ leader Wynton’s comment ‘If it is swinging and has some blues in it, I love it’, was greeted with derision by most European leaders, with Norway threatening to withdraw its ambassador from Washington.
Only last year deputy leader Branford took this further saying that ‘only those who have internalised the culture and way of life of African Americans can become jazz musicians. A prerequisite for this is to live in the US.’ And, In a recent interview with Wynton, the pianist Ethan Iverson said that ‘Jazz culture wasn’t part of my upbringing’, to which Wynton replied ‘Yes, it was. You’re an American’.
In these times of bi-partisanship these remarks could be seen as signs of a lessening of the Marsalis stance on race and origin. However the jazz website Destination Out chose to see it another way: ‘Here is Wynton at his best, his most magnanimous, his most Whitmanesque. Here’s the Dean of The One True Path of Real Jazz implicitly telling a white guy from Wisconsin that by taking the craft seriously and studying the past masters, that this is his birthright just as much as a third-generation musician from New Orleans. It’s a wonderful moment.’
President Obama’s address to the jazz world – made partially in Norwegian as a gesture to his hosts, forgetting perhaps, in a rare slip more reminiscent of his predecessor, that they speak better English than most Americans - made reference to both statements. He said that the change he was looking for was a much bigger one ‘We need to recognise that good jazz can come from anywhere in the world, be it Norway, Australia, even Kenya, ‘where my father came from, as I think I may have told you, and where they’ve named a road – or is it a town? – after me’.
In his closing remarks the President said ‘my party’s motto – it ain’t who you are it’s the way that you do it’ - is more relevant to jazz today than the Marsalis party could ever have imagined. The first order I have given to newly appointed special jazz envoy Jan Garbarek, is that he go to Kenya to find that road – or town - and establish the first Barak Obama jazz college there. The Norwegian government has agreed to fund the scheme to have such colleges everywhere in the world on the condition that student’s originality would be encouraged (no more Coltrane-esque clones), and jazz standards would be barred. I realise that the decisions not to allow soloists to play long streams of meaningless scales, and to prevent ‘Autumn Leaves’ from being played anywhere ever again won’t be popular with the Marsalis party. But in this time of the credit crunch and global warming I have to think of all the CO2 we will save by cutting out unnecessary notes, and the forests we’ll save by not having to print hundreds of fake books.’
As Obama was leaving a member of the press asked where all the students would find work after they graduated. Pausing in mid-stride the President said he was working on that and it would be a priority of his some time during February.
Historically the Marsalis party has been a strong supporter of the idea that jazz belongs only to African Americans. When asked ‘What do you think about European jazz?’ leader Wynton’s comment ‘If it is swinging and has some blues in it, I love it’, was greeted with derision by most European leaders, with Norway threatening to withdraw its ambassador from Washington.
Only last year deputy leader Branford took this further saying that ‘only those who have internalised the culture and way of life of African Americans can become jazz musicians. A prerequisite for this is to live in the US.’ And, In a recent interview with Wynton, the pianist Ethan Iverson said that ‘Jazz culture wasn’t part of my upbringing’, to which Wynton replied ‘Yes, it was. You’re an American’.
In these times of bi-partisanship these remarks could be seen as signs of a lessening of the Marsalis stance on race and origin. However the jazz website Destination Out chose to see it another way: ‘Here is Wynton at his best, his most magnanimous, his most Whitmanesque. Here’s the Dean of The One True Path of Real Jazz implicitly telling a white guy from Wisconsin that by taking the craft seriously and studying the past masters, that this is his birthright just as much as a third-generation musician from New Orleans. It’s a wonderful moment.’
President Obama’s address to the jazz world – made partially in Norwegian as a gesture to his hosts, forgetting perhaps, in a rare slip more reminiscent of his predecessor, that they speak better English than most Americans - made reference to both statements. He said that the change he was looking for was a much bigger one ‘We need to recognise that good jazz can come from anywhere in the world, be it Norway, Australia, even Kenya, ‘where my father came from, as I think I may have told you, and where they’ve named a road – or is it a town? – after me’.
In his closing remarks the President said ‘my party’s motto – it ain’t who you are it’s the way that you do it’ - is more relevant to jazz today than the Marsalis party could ever have imagined. The first order I have given to newly appointed special jazz envoy Jan Garbarek, is that he go to Kenya to find that road – or town - and establish the first Barak Obama jazz college there. The Norwegian government has agreed to fund the scheme to have such colleges everywhere in the world on the condition that student’s originality would be encouraged (no more Coltrane-esque clones), and jazz standards would be barred. I realise that the decisions not to allow soloists to play long streams of meaningless scales, and to prevent ‘Autumn Leaves’ from being played anywhere ever again won’t be popular with the Marsalis party. But in this time of the credit crunch and global warming I have to think of all the CO2 we will save by cutting out unnecessary notes, and the forests we’ll save by not having to print hundreds of fake books.’
As Obama was leaving a member of the press asked where all the students would find work after they graduated. Pausing in mid-stride the President said he was working on that and it would be a priority of his some time during February.
Are Chord Scales the Answer?
Whether chord scales are the answer depends of course on the question. First, two quotes which sum up my stance towards jazz and jazz education. The first is from composer Pierre Schaffer: 'music in terms of sound, not notes, harmonies, chords.' The second, from educator John Paynter, 'the first step must be the understanding of the medium and its potential. We can only discover this through creative experiment.'
Somewhat exhausted by a day’s sofa sitting enthusing for America’s new President, I’m taking this opportunity to avoid blogging and add ‘Are Chord Scales the Answer’, another of my earlier articles on jazz to this website.
First presented at the April 2000 Jazz Education Conference in Leeds, the article’s appearance in Jazz Changes, a magazine I co-edited for some years, attracted the sub-heading ‘Graham Collier’s attempt to disturb the people of middle England’. By which I meant not so much the attendees at the conference – although some of them did indeed need disturbing – but all those in jazz to whom playing safe seems to be a way of life.
To read more go to Chord Scales in Writings.
Somewhat exhausted by a day’s sofa sitting enthusing for America’s new President, I’m taking this opportunity to avoid blogging and add ‘Are Chord Scales the Answer’, another of my earlier articles on jazz to this website.
First presented at the April 2000 Jazz Education Conference in Leeds, the article’s appearance in Jazz Changes, a magazine I co-edited for some years, attracted the sub-heading ‘Graham Collier’s attempt to disturb the people of middle England’. By which I meant not so much the attendees at the conference – although some of them did indeed need disturbing – but all those in jazz to whom playing safe seems to be a way of life.
To read more go to Chord Scales in Writings.
How they do it elsewhere
15/01/09 08:56 Filed in: Jazz
In my last entry I argued against the award by the Open University of a half a million pounds to study Black British Jazz. The timely arrival of the weekly newsletter from The Jazz Institut in Darmstadt shows us that there is - surprise, surprise - another way such a sum could have been spent.
‘Hans-Jürgen Linke talks to the Social Democratic [MP] Monika Griefahn about the "Initiative Musik" [which was] recently endowed with additional 500.000 Euro annually that are specifically aimed to support jazz venues … The "venue support award", as it is being called, is to strengthen the infrastructure within which the music can live.’
Have an Academic New Year
04/01/09 10:53 Filed in: Jazz
Like John Surman, whose remarks head this chapter, I’m not an American. Nor, as would be obvious from pictures of us, are either of us African- American, or black. The distinction at the end of the sentence is not included for semantic reasons, rather to point, briefly, towards another aspect of this discussion. Namely, do black non-American jazz musicians have an advantage when it comes to playing jazz over their white counterparts? A question that became relevant in England some years ago, and made me wonder at the time how the pecking order works, and how far down it you have to be before you’re beyond the pale, and would be better off taking up knitting.
Those sentences introduce ‘it aint who you are, it’s the way that you do it’, Chapter 10 of my new book, ‘the jazz composer, moving music off the paper’, to be published in April. The chapter looks at the questions of race, gender and age in jazz today, questions which, let’s be honest, should not be an issue – should never have been an issue – in a music that Is supposed to be about individuality and freedom.
But they always seem to be with us. In the latest issue of The Economist an academic tells us, with no hint of irony, that the output of jazz musicians ‘rises rapidly after puberty, reaches its peak during young adulthood, and then declines with age and the demands of parenthood’. Tell that to Sonny Rollins, Ornette and Cecil, although it does bring back memories of National Youth Jazz Orchestra leader Bill Ashton’s remark when he had his first child that ‘jazz was not an occupation for grown men.’ But, when one reads the latest news from the world of British academia, the crassness shown by Ashton and The Economist fades into the background of bemused irritation one has had to constantly accept as part of a jazz musician’s life.
Jazzwise magazine recently announced that a grant of just under £500,000 has been given by the Open University to five academics (two from ‘music’, three from ‘sociology’) for ‘a study of Black British jazz’. To be honest I’d begrudge it if it were solely given to black musicians – why discriminate? – but to an academic study? And this in a time when musicians’ incomes are shrinking due to the credit crunch…
To put it in perspective: there could be £200 extra available for musicians and other costs at each of 2,500 gigs. Or £500 for each of a thousand gigs…
I guess Santa missed seeing the jazz musicians’ stockings once again, but one could argue that a far better use for half a mil. would have been a well paid gig for those musicians of all colours, genders and ages who’ve kept the faith despite woeful government funding over the decades.
The real irony is that another item on the same Jazzwise news page was a report of a benefit held at the 100 Club for ailing bassist Hugh Hopper. No mention was made of the amount raised, but it could be that they’re still counting it, while waiting for the donation from the academics to arrive.
As is the way of these things, a solution is arriving in jazz musicians’ email boxes - but act quickly, before the academics ask for another half million for a study of how Black British Jazz started in Nigeria!
Dear Friends, my name is Ndugood. I am a wealthy Nigerian prince who
loves the jazz of music. I am seeking your help to move $200,000,000 from my checking account here in Nigeria to the United States.
I too love the jazz of music and am planning to many jazz clubs at which I would like you to perform. You will receive $42,000 a night, plus a meal. My new "Tribal Village Vanguard" clubs will be of great success and you will become rich like the rest of American jazz musicians. I have already applied for building code exemptions to allow thatched stages and the spearing of live animals.
But I desperately need your help. My tribe, the Swindlisi, a peaceful jazz-loving people, has been horribly oppressed by the ruling military junta, which despises the jazz of music. My father, an exiled king and booking agent, was recently imprisoned under the draconian "three gigs you're out" law. And now I must flee my beloved country with all of my improbable wealth. But I need help in moving it. I have so much money that it will not fit in the allotted two checked bags and one carry-on. I am therefor want to transer the money through your ATM system. (The Nigerian ATM system cannot exchange international currencies; it only converts "antelope to money").
So please to just provide me with your full name and address, social security number, bank account and PIN numbers. And you will become incredibly (literally) rich from playing many jazz gigs. (Note: Union rules apply: three hour performances, two 15 minute breaks allowed, musicians to provide their own mosquito nets, one open fire per bandstand, one free meal plus anything you kill).
Act now. The first ten musicians to respond will receive a free copy of the Nigeria's Greatest Jazz Hits CD, by our beloved 'Disoriented' Gillespie Band, which contains the hits:
The Night Has A Thousand Flies
Goodbye Shrunken Head
Here's That Rainy Season
Just Tribesmen (Lovers No More)
Take the 'A' Trail
When I Fall In Quicksand
Half-Nelson Mandella
Blue Monkey
Leopard Skins and Moonbeams
Blue Mombossa
Almost Like Being In Lagos
Sunny Side of the Goatpath
I Didn't Know What Century It Was
Thank you for your many help. Your inordinately wealthy Nigerian brother,
Prince Ndugood.
Those sentences introduce ‘it aint who you are, it’s the way that you do it’, Chapter 10 of my new book, ‘the jazz composer, moving music off the paper’, to be published in April. The chapter looks at the questions of race, gender and age in jazz today, questions which, let’s be honest, should not be an issue – should never have been an issue – in a music that Is supposed to be about individuality and freedom.
But they always seem to be with us. In the latest issue of The Economist an academic tells us, with no hint of irony, that the output of jazz musicians ‘rises rapidly after puberty, reaches its peak during young adulthood, and then declines with age and the demands of parenthood’. Tell that to Sonny Rollins, Ornette and Cecil, although it does bring back memories of National Youth Jazz Orchestra leader Bill Ashton’s remark when he had his first child that ‘jazz was not an occupation for grown men.’ But, when one reads the latest news from the world of British academia, the crassness shown by Ashton and The Economist fades into the background of bemused irritation one has had to constantly accept as part of a jazz musician’s life.
Jazzwise magazine recently announced that a grant of just under £500,000 has been given by the Open University to five academics (two from ‘music’, three from ‘sociology’) for ‘a study of Black British jazz’. To be honest I’d begrudge it if it were solely given to black musicians – why discriminate? – but to an academic study? And this in a time when musicians’ incomes are shrinking due to the credit crunch…
To put it in perspective: there could be £200 extra available for musicians and other costs at each of 2,500 gigs. Or £500 for each of a thousand gigs…
I guess Santa missed seeing the jazz musicians’ stockings once again, but one could argue that a far better use for half a mil. would have been a well paid gig for those musicians of all colours, genders and ages who’ve kept the faith despite woeful government funding over the decades.
The real irony is that another item on the same Jazzwise news page was a report of a benefit held at the 100 Club for ailing bassist Hugh Hopper. No mention was made of the amount raised, but it could be that they’re still counting it, while waiting for the donation from the academics to arrive.
As is the way of these things, a solution is arriving in jazz musicians’ email boxes - but act quickly, before the academics ask for another half million for a study of how Black British Jazz started in Nigeria!
Dear Friends, my name is Ndugood. I am a wealthy Nigerian prince who
loves the jazz of music. I am seeking your help to move $200,000,000 from my checking account here in Nigeria to the United States.
I too love the jazz of music and am planning to many jazz clubs at which I would like you to perform. You will receive $42,000 a night, plus a meal. My new "Tribal Village Vanguard" clubs will be of great success and you will become rich like the rest of American jazz musicians. I have already applied for building code exemptions to allow thatched stages and the spearing of live animals.
But I desperately need your help. My tribe, the Swindlisi, a peaceful jazz-loving people, has been horribly oppressed by the ruling military junta, which despises the jazz of music. My father, an exiled king and booking agent, was recently imprisoned under the draconian "three gigs you're out" law. And now I must flee my beloved country with all of my improbable wealth. But I need help in moving it. I have so much money that it will not fit in the allotted two checked bags and one carry-on. I am therefor want to transer the money through your ATM system. (The Nigerian ATM system cannot exchange international currencies; it only converts "antelope to money").
So please to just provide me with your full name and address, social security number, bank account and PIN numbers. And you will become incredibly (literally) rich from playing many jazz gigs. (Note: Union rules apply: three hour performances, two 15 minute breaks allowed, musicians to provide their own mosquito nets, one open fire per bandstand, one free meal plus anything you kill).
Act now. The first ten musicians to respond will receive a free copy of the Nigeria's Greatest Jazz Hits CD, by our beloved 'Disoriented' Gillespie Band, which contains the hits:
The Night Has A Thousand Flies
Goodbye Shrunken Head
Here's That Rainy Season
Just Tribesmen (Lovers No More)
Take the 'A' Trail
When I Fall In Quicksand
Half-Nelson Mandella
Blue Monkey
Leopard Skins and Moonbeams
Blue Mombossa
Almost Like Being In Lagos
Sunny Side of the Goatpath
I Didn't Know What Century It Was
Thank you for your many help. Your inordinately wealthy Nigerian brother,
Prince Ndugood.
Could Cecil Taylor have saved the IAJE?
15/12/08 09:57 Filed in: Jazz
Ken Waxman’s website – a good source for current news on what we still call the avant garde – recently posted a link to The Shape of Jazz to Come, my transcription of a panel discussion at the IAJE conference in 2000. Headed ‘The Problems with “Jazz” Education’ Waxman sees in the fact that such a discussion was needed ‘some hint as to why the IAJE ceased to exist… Too often a major part of jazz’s history… was ignored by the so called schools of jazz, which concentrated on more traditional and/or more conventional music.’
I would agree that this could have been a contributory factor in the collapse of IAJE, but ironically it could have been seen as a good thing if the members had risen up in revolt against the lack of a few seminars on the music of Cecil Taylor and caused the edifice to tumble. More prosaically, and sadly more in keeping with the ethos of the organisation, the truth, rumour has it, is buried in the financial ledgers.
Derek Wadsworth (1939–2008)
News just in about the passing of Derek, a wonderful trombone player who was on my band for some years in the 1970s. He was perhaps better known for his work as composer for Gerry Anderson’s Space 1999, as well as appearances as arranger and/or Musical Director with such as Judy Garland and Dusty Springfield, but his jazz work was something else. As Thom Jurek said in the All Music Guide ‘The second section [of the title track Darius] features one of the greatest 1970s trombone solos’.
I would agree that this could have been a contributory factor in the collapse of IAJE, but ironically it could have been seen as a good thing if the members had risen up in revolt against the lack of a few seminars on the music of Cecil Taylor and caused the edifice to tumble. More prosaically, and sadly more in keeping with the ethos of the organisation, the truth, rumour has it, is buried in the financial ledgers.
Derek Wadsworth (1939–2008)
News just in about the passing of Derek, a wonderful trombone player who was on my band for some years in the 1970s. He was perhaps better known for his work as composer for Gerry Anderson’s Space 1999, as well as appearances as arranger and/or Musical Director with such as Judy Garland and Dusty Springfield, but his jazz work was something else. As Thom Jurek said in the All Music Guide ‘The second section [of the title track Darius] features one of the greatest 1970s trombone solos’.
Lived in houses
05/12/08 13:37 Filed in: Jazz
‘[W]hat is fascinating now is that it’s going to be much more difficult for the artist, because he must really deepen the game to be any good at all.’
‘The stuff I’m complaining about is cheap. It’s not doing anything … When I read the first page of [Walter Abish’s novel] How German Is It I said, wait a minute, this is doing something. Here’s a house that is lived in! ’
I was reminded of those quotes (from artist Francis Bacon and literary critic William Gass respectively) when, during en enforced absence from blogging, iPod’s shuffle god sent me three tracks in a row, all contemporary, all as it happens British, each representative in their different ways of what is good about the current jazz scene. Not that being British is particularly relevant here, but the truth is that two of the groups, and to some extent even the third, are largely unknown outside their own country, a fate common to much of the jazz which is ‘deepening the game’, and to much of the jazz which inhabits ‘a house that is lived in’.
Two of the three groups randomly chosen were from the older end of the scale. First, the John Surman Quartet, the most conventionally ‘jazz’ and certainly with the best known ‘name’ of the three. However, the group is not as recognised as it should be, containing as it does four of the very best jazz musicians Britain has produced: John Surman himself, John Taylor, Chris Lawrence and John Marshall. I remember seeing one of the quartet’s rare British appearances a few years ago and being knocked out – as indeed the musicians were – with the degree of rapport and sheer musical skill that they had demonstrated.
The second, ZAUM, should be a national treasure. The group led by drummer Steve Harris, whose premature death earlier this year was a great loss to British music, has a take on avant garde jazz which is as fresh and exciting as anything I have heard and their records should continue to show the way for many years to come. I praised the group in my new jazz composer book saying ‘ZAUM, have created, in their live performances and in their CDs, sets of miniatures that show distinct compositional form, with some moments of aggression, alongside some moments of pure beauty. To my ear they could have been composed, yet I am told that they were completely improvised in performance. Some of the sounds are undeniably jazz, some could have been created from music written by a contemporary classical composer. They provide a completely satisfying experience in an area where, for me – because of the risk taking? because of my preference for some kind of underlying form? – this is rare.’
The third group was Fraud, a young English group, whose music is highly confident and highly original, producing some of the freshest small group work I have heard in many years. Sometimes noisily punkish, at other times ravishingly beautiful they are, very deservedly, making a mark on the current British scene, and stand out among the re-packaging of the past which is so common among many of its contemporaries. I should declare an interest in that James Allsopp (co-leader with drummer Tim Giles) was among the final group of students I chose for the jazz course at the Royal Academy of Music before I left for sunnier climes, and he is featured on my forthcoming CD directing 14 Jackson Pollocks due in April.
Also at RAM, although some years earlier, was pianist Tom Cawley. His group’s new CD Closer was a recent purchase (and therefore not yet on my iPod) and so far, has proved to be one of the best CDs I have heard in a long time. I was always told by Tom and his fellow students, when I and the other teachers compared their bebop-or-die approach to the masters we had heard in person, that comparisons are invidious. But he probably won’t mind me commenting that I prefer his group to the two currently highly praised piano trios - no names, no pack drill, but it should be obvious who they are!
I should add that Tom has had the grace to say, some years after he left, that he thinks I was right at the time in insisting that they try to do something different and develop an individual voice. This he is well on his way to doing and, because of it, is standing out among his young contemporaries.
To paraphrase William Gass ‘Now it may be that in among these people are jazz musicians who are splendid. They are all very competent, but I don’t think there’s any pressure there at all. I’m upset when I hear young players who aren’t upsetting me. I mean they’re young’.
Tom Cawley and James Allsopp and older hands such as John Surman’s Quartet and ZAUM, show that jazz is alive and well, and capable of upsetting the listener, in the best possible way,
More can be seen on each of these groups in Recommendations.
‘The stuff I’m complaining about is cheap. It’s not doing anything … When I read the first page of [Walter Abish’s novel] How German Is It I said, wait a minute, this is doing something. Here’s a house that is lived in! ’
I was reminded of those quotes (from artist Francis Bacon and literary critic William Gass respectively) when, during en enforced absence from blogging, iPod’s shuffle god sent me three tracks in a row, all contemporary, all as it happens British, each representative in their different ways of what is good about the current jazz scene. Not that being British is particularly relevant here, but the truth is that two of the groups, and to some extent even the third, are largely unknown outside their own country, a fate common to much of the jazz which is ‘deepening the game’, and to much of the jazz which inhabits ‘a house that is lived in’.
Two of the three groups randomly chosen were from the older end of the scale. First, the John Surman Quartet, the most conventionally ‘jazz’ and certainly with the best known ‘name’ of the three. However, the group is not as recognised as it should be, containing as it does four of the very best jazz musicians Britain has produced: John Surman himself, John Taylor, Chris Lawrence and John Marshall. I remember seeing one of the quartet’s rare British appearances a few years ago and being knocked out – as indeed the musicians were – with the degree of rapport and sheer musical skill that they had demonstrated.
The second, ZAUM, should be a national treasure. The group led by drummer Steve Harris, whose premature death earlier this year was a great loss to British music, has a take on avant garde jazz which is as fresh and exciting as anything I have heard and their records should continue to show the way for many years to come. I praised the group in my new jazz composer book saying ‘ZAUM, have created, in their live performances and in their CDs, sets of miniatures that show distinct compositional form, with some moments of aggression, alongside some moments of pure beauty. To my ear they could have been composed, yet I am told that they were completely improvised in performance. Some of the sounds are undeniably jazz, some could have been created from music written by a contemporary classical composer. They provide a completely satisfying experience in an area where, for me – because of the risk taking? because of my preference for some kind of underlying form? – this is rare.’
The third group was Fraud, a young English group, whose music is highly confident and highly original, producing some of the freshest small group work I have heard in many years. Sometimes noisily punkish, at other times ravishingly beautiful they are, very deservedly, making a mark on the current British scene, and stand out among the re-packaging of the past which is so common among many of its contemporaries. I should declare an interest in that James Allsopp (co-leader with drummer Tim Giles) was among the final group of students I chose for the jazz course at the Royal Academy of Music before I left for sunnier climes, and he is featured on my forthcoming CD directing 14 Jackson Pollocks due in April.
Also at RAM, although some years earlier, was pianist Tom Cawley. His group’s new CD Closer was a recent purchase (and therefore not yet on my iPod) and so far, has proved to be one of the best CDs I have heard in a long time. I was always told by Tom and his fellow students, when I and the other teachers compared their bebop-or-die approach to the masters we had heard in person, that comparisons are invidious. But he probably won’t mind me commenting that I prefer his group to the two currently highly praised piano trios - no names, no pack drill, but it should be obvious who they are!
I should add that Tom has had the grace to say, some years after he left, that he thinks I was right at the time in insisting that they try to do something different and develop an individual voice. This he is well on his way to doing and, because of it, is standing out among his young contemporaries.
To paraphrase William Gass ‘Now it may be that in among these people are jazz musicians who are splendid. They are all very competent, but I don’t think there’s any pressure there at all. I’m upset when I hear young players who aren’t upsetting me. I mean they’re young’.
Tom Cawley and James Allsopp and older hands such as John Surman’s Quartet and ZAUM, show that jazz is alive and well, and capable of upsetting the listener, in the best possible way,
More can be seen on each of these groups in Recommendations.
Don't mourn, organise.
22/10/08 12:09 Filed in: General
Don’t mourn, organise
Those words, spoken by American labour activist Joe Hill, the subject of Wayne Horvitz’s fascinating new CD (of which more later), had a particular relevance after seeing Sarah Palin on television earlier this week saying what Barak Obama wants is socialism, a comment which drew a barrage of booing from her audience. (Booing at the dreaded word, not at her of course - they are all Republicans who see her as some kind of saviour, and who, some sources say, is considering making her own run for President in four years time…)
This is not meant to be an anti-American tirade, rather a comment on what I’ve said before. We keep hearing of how ‘America is the greatest country in the world’ yet millions are without health care, millions live in poverty and educational standards are generally incredibly low. Perhaps if they installed some measure of the dreaded socialism and paid more taxes – and started fewer actions ‘to protect our interests’ - then there might be some money available to solve these problems.
I guess writing this means that I may end up on some CIA watch list, but it’s worth commenting that almost all of those actions ‘to protect our interests’ have been failures and led to misfortune and countless deaths and many of them have, as Stephen Kinzer says in his Overthrow, America’s century of regime change from Hawaii to Iraq (Times Books, 2006), ‘actually undermined American security’.
I’m somewhat pessimistic about the end result of what is a fascinating time with the American presidential election being fought amidst a collapsing financial system. I would dearly love Obama to win, but the Republicans – known, un-ironically one assumes, as the ‘Grand Old Party’ – have, we must admit, a dubious history in recent elections of snatching victory not once but twice out of the jaws of the rightful winners.
If Obama doesn’t win my chances of getting back into America – a country I love, and many of its citizens I regard as my friends – may well be very slight. But if he doesn’t win, then I would suggest that Joe Hill’s cry ‘Don’t mourn, organise’ becomes paramount in our thinking.
The Wayne Horvitz CD I mentioned is called Joe Hill: 16 Actions for Orchestra, Voices and Soloist (New World Records). It’s a strange mixture of folk music, jazz, broadway shows and uses narration and songs to tell Hill’s story. It almost always works well and stands comparison with musicals such as Marc Blitzstein The Cradle will Rock, and, though far less jazzy, with Carla Bley and Paul Haine’s Escalator over the Hill. All a welcome surprise for me when, inspired by a review in Jazzwise but still, after several bad experiences over the years, somewhat sceptical of whether such a piece could work, I downloaded the album from eMusic. For more on Wayne Horvitz and the work in question go to Recommendations.
(My own adventures with words and music can be heard on my composition The Day of the Dead, which uses words by Malcolm Lowry, from his great novel Under the Volcano and other sources. An article on that work and Lowry’s interest in jazz can be seen in Writings.)
Those words, spoken by American labour activist Joe Hill, the subject of Wayne Horvitz’s fascinating new CD (of which more later), had a particular relevance after seeing Sarah Palin on television earlier this week saying what Barak Obama wants is socialism, a comment which drew a barrage of booing from her audience. (Booing at the dreaded word, not at her of course - they are all Republicans who see her as some kind of saviour, and who, some sources say, is considering making her own run for President in four years time…)
This is not meant to be an anti-American tirade, rather a comment on what I’ve said before. We keep hearing of how ‘America is the greatest country in the world’ yet millions are without health care, millions live in poverty and educational standards are generally incredibly low. Perhaps if they installed some measure of the dreaded socialism and paid more taxes – and started fewer actions ‘to protect our interests’ - then there might be some money available to solve these problems.
I guess writing this means that I may end up on some CIA watch list, but it’s worth commenting that almost all of those actions ‘to protect our interests’ have been failures and led to misfortune and countless deaths and many of them have, as Stephen Kinzer says in his Overthrow, America’s century of regime change from Hawaii to Iraq (Times Books, 2006), ‘actually undermined American security’.
I’m somewhat pessimistic about the end result of what is a fascinating time with the American presidential election being fought amidst a collapsing financial system. I would dearly love Obama to win, but the Republicans – known, un-ironically one assumes, as the ‘Grand Old Party’ – have, we must admit, a dubious history in recent elections of snatching victory not once but twice out of the jaws of the rightful winners.
If Obama doesn’t win my chances of getting back into America – a country I love, and many of its citizens I regard as my friends – may well be very slight. But if he doesn’t win, then I would suggest that Joe Hill’s cry ‘Don’t mourn, organise’ becomes paramount in our thinking.
The Wayne Horvitz CD I mentioned is called Joe Hill: 16 Actions for Orchestra, Voices and Soloist (New World Records). It’s a strange mixture of folk music, jazz, broadway shows and uses narration and songs to tell Hill’s story. It almost always works well and stands comparison with musicals such as Marc Blitzstein The Cradle will Rock, and, though far less jazzy, with Carla Bley and Paul Haine’s Escalator over the Hill. All a welcome surprise for me when, inspired by a review in Jazzwise but still, after several bad experiences over the years, somewhat sceptical of whether such a piece could work, I downloaded the album from eMusic. For more on Wayne Horvitz and the work in question go to Recommendations.
(My own adventures with words and music can be heard on my composition The Day of the Dead, which uses words by Malcolm Lowry, from his great novel Under the Volcano and other sources. An article on that work and Lowry’s interest in jazz can be seen in Writings.)
Praise!
15/10/08 09:26 Filed in: General
After sending a newsletter regarding my new websites far and wide I was delighted to see this about the main web site, grahamcolliermusic.com, from Rifftides:
The British composer, arranger and leader Graham Collier has a new web site that should win awards for design, thoroughness and easy navigation. The home page contains a link to a thirteen-minute montage of music from nine of Collier's eighteen albums over forty years. The montage is designed to be played while the visitor roams the site. It is a clever teaser, making the roamer want to hear more of Collier's daring writing played by superb musicians, among them trumpeters Kenny Wheeler, Ted Curson, Tomasz Stanko and Harry Beckett; pianist John Taylor; saxophonist John Surman; drummer John Marshall; and Collier himself on bass.
To read the whole thing, go here, and click on Home to see what he’s talking about.
Doug, biographer of Paul Desmond among his many other credits, has written about my music twice before when he reviewed Deep Dark Blue Centre and Hoarded Dreams. As I’ve mentioned before in my Recommendations, his Rifftides site is well worth looking at regularly. Strangely all the items seem to be posted at around 1.05 am, pointing perhaps to insomnia or perhaps a last chore with the cocoa?
The British composer, arranger and leader Graham Collier has a new web site that should win awards for design, thoroughness and easy navigation. The home page contains a link to a thirteen-minute montage of music from nine of Collier's eighteen albums over forty years. The montage is designed to be played while the visitor roams the site. It is a clever teaser, making the roamer want to hear more of Collier's daring writing played by superb musicians, among them trumpeters Kenny Wheeler, Ted Curson, Tomasz Stanko and Harry Beckett; pianist John Taylor; saxophonist John Surman; drummer John Marshall; and Collier himself on bass.
To read the whole thing, go here, and click on Home to see what he’s talking about.
Doug, biographer of Paul Desmond among his many other credits, has written about my music twice before when he reviewed Deep Dark Blue Centre and Hoarded Dreams. As I’ve mentioned before in my Recommendations, his Rifftides site is well worth looking at regularly. Strangely all the items seem to be posted at around 1.05 am, pointing perhaps to insomnia or perhaps a last chore with the cocoa?
Collapse!
09/10/08 09:26 Filed in: Jazz
There seems to be no doubt that we are in the middle of a world-wide credit crisis, and obviously jazz musicians are going to be affected on a personal, and professional level. In some ways we already have been, as this mess has been brewing for some time. In fact it’s no stretch to put the collapse of the IAJE, the International Association of Jazz Musicians, as an early marker in the problem – too much expense, too little income, no effective lines of credit. It’s sad that one of the seemingly crippling blows was a lack of attendance at the 2008 Conference, held in Toronto - the first to be held outside the continental United States.
I attended many IAJE conferences when I was working for the Royal Academy of Music in London. Always in January, always (until Toronto) in an American city (sometimes, surprisingly, in a very mild New York) they were huge events with thousands of participants, and hundreds of concerts, panels and exhibition stalls to enjoy. But there were some puzzling matters.
For example, I always found it slightly odd that they had a black caucus in a music which blacks have, rightly, laid such a claim to. But the fact that this existed led some of us on the fringes of what was essentially a mainstream love-in for jazz educators to say we should form a creative jazz caucus.
This didn’t happen, but once, after a disagreement with some of the board, I was asked to tell them what was wrong with the IAJE. I said it’s too big, too American, too market-led, and too involved with what I call the middle of jazz - bebop and the block-chord big bands. It had always seemed odd to me that organization supposedly dedicated to jazz education should pay so little attention to the beginnings of jazz, and so little regard to what can be called the cutting edge of the music, the creative stuff that IS still happening, although it’s drowned out by jazz-lite and by musicians and bands wanting to recreate their own - or someone else’s - past.
In 2000, at the IAJE conference in Seattle, I was asked to participate in a panel on teaching free jazz. We weren’t too surprised to be told afterwards that this was the first time such a discussion had happened at an IAJE conference... We were also interested to note that the panel was held at a very early hour in one of the more remote outposts of the huge conference hotel. We had a good audience, but we were mainly speaking to the already converted. As one observer said ‘Most of the attendees would travel to the next town to hear Jamie Aebersold speak at this time of the morning, but they won’t get up for you’.
It was also interesting that although every event was supposed to be recorded and later transcribed for sale to the public, this didn’t happen in our case. But I had taken the precaution of making my own tape, which was duly transcribed and published in Jazz Changes in 2003. It is reproduced here in Writings.
I attended many IAJE conferences when I was working for the Royal Academy of Music in London. Always in January, always (until Toronto) in an American city (sometimes, surprisingly, in a very mild New York) they were huge events with thousands of participants, and hundreds of concerts, panels and exhibition stalls to enjoy. But there were some puzzling matters.
For example, I always found it slightly odd that they had a black caucus in a music which blacks have, rightly, laid such a claim to. But the fact that this existed led some of us on the fringes of what was essentially a mainstream love-in for jazz educators to say we should form a creative jazz caucus.
This didn’t happen, but once, after a disagreement with some of the board, I was asked to tell them what was wrong with the IAJE. I said it’s too big, too American, too market-led, and too involved with what I call the middle of jazz - bebop and the block-chord big bands. It had always seemed odd to me that organization supposedly dedicated to jazz education should pay so little attention to the beginnings of jazz, and so little regard to what can be called the cutting edge of the music, the creative stuff that IS still happening, although it’s drowned out by jazz-lite and by musicians and bands wanting to recreate their own - or someone else’s - past.
In 2000, at the IAJE conference in Seattle, I was asked to participate in a panel on teaching free jazz. We weren’t too surprised to be told afterwards that this was the first time such a discussion had happened at an IAJE conference... We were also interested to note that the panel was held at a very early hour in one of the more remote outposts of the huge conference hotel. We had a good audience, but we were mainly speaking to the already converted. As one observer said ‘Most of the attendees would travel to the next town to hear Jamie Aebersold speak at this time of the morning, but they won’t get up for you’.
It was also interesting that although every event was supposed to be recorded and later transcribed for sale to the public, this didn’t happen in our case. But I had taken the precaution of making my own tape, which was duly transcribed and published in Jazz Changes in 2003. It is reproduced here in Writings.
Venice and Pollock
We live, as the Chinese said, in interesting times, and I feel that even at 71 I am still living in interesting times in terms of my career. I have today launched three new websites: grahamcolliermusic.com which is devoted to my past work, with news of what I’m up to now; thejazzcomposer.com which is currently acting as a teaser for my new book due next year; and the site you are currently reading, which will be devoted to an occasional blog, backed up by links to some of my earlier writings, and to some recommendations of what I think worthwhile to listen to, read, or just look at.
What I recently found to look at was Venice, a long held dream, which my partner and I realised in mid-September, travelling by ferry from Patras in Greece. Not the best way to travel – the presence of televisions in almost every public space is a curse of recent times – but the best way to arrive. The boat steams along the south side of Venice and the views from that height are as beautiful as I had ever imagined. As is most of the city – once you dodge the rain, and the incredible number of tourists (and this was supposed to be the quieter part of the year). The second best thing we did was visit Torcello, a quiet island about an hour away from the city, where, forewarned, we had booked for lunch at Locanda Cipriani. Great lunch, great setting, and hang the expense. They call themselves an inn and apparently Paul Newman, Elton John and ‘the entire Royal Family of England’ have stayed there. It’s also where Ernest Hemingway wrote Across the River and Into the Trees, said by my journalist friend next door to be known as his worst book. But when we go and stay, I’ll take a copy with me!
But the best thing we did was to see two amazing paintings by Jackson Pollock in the Peggy Guggenheim museum. She collected a staggering amount of good art, supporting many painters like Pollock along the way, but for us the pride of the collection was Jackson Pollock’s Alchemy. And, nearby in a travelling exhibition, was Phosphorescence, a partner painting to Alchemy.
I’ve been a great fan of Pollock for many many years and have read much about him. I saw the wonderful 1999 exhibition at the Tate in London, marvelled at Blue Poles in Melbourne, and still have in my mind’s eye a great late painting I saw on a visit to the stunningly set Louisiana Museum of Modern Art in Denmark. My last composition was memories arrested in space, six pieces for saxophone quartet inspired by Pollock paintings from 1947 – among them Alchemy and Phosphorescence! And my next record will be called directing 14 Jackson Pollocks after a comment from an artist friend of a friend who had attended the concert.
I’d like to go into ecstatic prose about Alchemy and Phosphorescence but it wasn’t that sort of experience. It was a sense of awe that this mass of what could be called chaos – but not by me - was so controlled, so deep, so spacious.
To end on a more serious note – I’ve often wondered at the propensity of Americans to keep saying they are ‘the greatest country on earth’. They’re entitled to think it, but why keep telling us?, especially at a time when they are mired in a credit crunch, and when John McCain chooses Sarah Palin as his running mate. If you haven’t seen her recent interview with Katie Couric on CBS, watch it and weep to see how ill-prepared – and ignorant – she is.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_WkCZV83Cp8&feature=iv&annotation_id=event_319249
Two pieces of my earlier writing have been added to the Writings page: The Churchill Report on Jazz Education in America, and The Shape of Jazz to Come?, a panel discussion about the teaching of contemporary jazz. Both will be referred to in forthcoming blogs.
See Recommendations for what I have been listening and reading lately.
Comments on any of this are welcome, although those from Republicans may get short shrift.
What I recently found to look at was Venice, a long held dream, which my partner and I realised in mid-September, travelling by ferry from Patras in Greece. Not the best way to travel – the presence of televisions in almost every public space is a curse of recent times – but the best way to arrive. The boat steams along the south side of Venice and the views from that height are as beautiful as I had ever imagined. As is most of the city – once you dodge the rain, and the incredible number of tourists (and this was supposed to be the quieter part of the year). The second best thing we did was visit Torcello, a quiet island about an hour away from the city, where, forewarned, we had booked for lunch at Locanda Cipriani. Great lunch, great setting, and hang the expense. They call themselves an inn and apparently Paul Newman, Elton John and ‘the entire Royal Family of England’ have stayed there. It’s also where Ernest Hemingway wrote Across the River and Into the Trees, said by my journalist friend next door to be known as his worst book. But when we go and stay, I’ll take a copy with me!
But the best thing we did was to see two amazing paintings by Jackson Pollock in the Peggy Guggenheim museum. She collected a staggering amount of good art, supporting many painters like Pollock along the way, but for us the pride of the collection was Jackson Pollock’s Alchemy. And, nearby in a travelling exhibition, was Phosphorescence, a partner painting to Alchemy.
I’ve been a great fan of Pollock for many many years and have read much about him. I saw the wonderful 1999 exhibition at the Tate in London, marvelled at Blue Poles in Melbourne, and still have in my mind’s eye a great late painting I saw on a visit to the stunningly set Louisiana Museum of Modern Art in Denmark. My last composition was memories arrested in space, six pieces for saxophone quartet inspired by Pollock paintings from 1947 – among them Alchemy and Phosphorescence! And my next record will be called directing 14 Jackson Pollocks after a comment from an artist friend of a friend who had attended the concert.
I’d like to go into ecstatic prose about Alchemy and Phosphorescence but it wasn’t that sort of experience. It was a sense of awe that this mass of what could be called chaos – but not by me - was so controlled, so deep, so spacious.
To end on a more serious note – I’ve often wondered at the propensity of Americans to keep saying they are ‘the greatest country on earth’. They’re entitled to think it, but why keep telling us?, especially at a time when they are mired in a credit crunch, and when John McCain chooses Sarah Palin as his running mate. If you haven’t seen her recent interview with Katie Couric on CBS, watch it and weep to see how ill-prepared – and ignorant – she is.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_WkCZV83Cp8&feature=iv&annotation_id=event_319249
Two pieces of my earlier writing have been added to the Writings page: The Churchill Report on Jazz Education in America, and The Shape of Jazz to Come?, a panel discussion about the teaching of contemporary jazz. Both will be referred to in forthcoming blogs.
See Recommendations for what I have been listening and reading lately.
Comments on any of this are welcome, although those from Republicans may get short shrift.