Gene Bertoncini: Out of Danger at the Cafe Ciao 5/13/11

Sometime late in the last century I purchased an LP called O Grande Amor by guitarist Gene Bertoncini and bassist Michael Moore. I got the disc primarily to check out Moore, who had then recently been described (I think in The New Yorker) as something like "the world's best jazz bass player". Despite the dubious hyperbole, I was deeply impressed by the bassist's lyrical virtuousity and spot-on intonation. What I didn't expect was how much I would enjoy Bertoncini's playing. His approach to the jazz guitar seemed very fresh at the time, and it still makes me very happy to hear him.

If memory serves, I attended a concert by this duo in 1979 or '80 at DePaul University, where I was a student at the time. That was the only opportunity I ever took to hear either of these wonderful musicians live, until last week, when Gene Bertoncini spent a couple of days in Chicago, giving master classes and playing a gig at a tiny West Loop restaurant called Cafe Ciao.

Surrounded mostly be friends, guitarists and other well-wishers, Gene turned in a heartfelt solo performance on his classical guitar. He seemed to be enjoying himself immensely, basking in the friendly glow of this casual venue, far from the New York City jazz jury - "out of danger" as he expressed it. Bertoncini is a sweet, humble, charming gentleman in his 70's (I'm guessing), with old world manners and a 50's hipster sense of humor. All of this personality comes through in his music, the result of a lifetime of hard work perfecting his art.

Bertoncini's style is akin to the work of Jim Hall, Charlie Byrd and Laurindo Almeida. He likes to blend and bend genres, often finding musical sense in fusing the compositions of, say, A. C. Jobim and F. Chopin, as he did the other night. The evening's playlist consisted of a seemingly spur-of-the-moment mixture of jazz and Brazilian standards, a couple of classical compositions and a brief reading of Bill Evans' harmonically enticing Very Early. A highlight of the evening for me was Gene's aforementioned mashup of Jobim's How Insensitive and Chopin's Prelude in Em (Jack Nicholson's character's signature theme from the classic film Five Easy Pieces).

Gene is such a deep and mature player that the occasional lapse or technical glitch did nothing to mar the overall vibe of his performances. His unique harmonic concept and warm sound carried the evening. In fact, this gig reminded me of the night I had the pleasure of hearing the legendary Andres Segovia give what must have been one of his final performances. Segovia played to a packed but pin drop quiet Orchestra Hall in the mid 1980's. Despite his advanced age and technical limitations, he had each of us present hanging on his every magnificent note - as did Gene Bertoncini last week.

Video: Walking Bass on the Minor Turnaround

New camera, better picture and sound. Here's 4 minutes of me walking through ii / V / i / vi in D minor:

Digital Real Book and FreeHand Music

Publisher (and bassist) Chuck Sher has released The Digital Real Book. Its a collection of 650 great tunes in 2 volumes drawn from his printed editions of The Real Book. I'd like to imagine that Chuck took the cue to go digital from PJN, but perhaps he thought of it independently. Either way, you can now download the books or purchase individual tunes.

The Digital Real Bookis being distributed by FreeHand Music, which, according to their website, has the most extensive selection of legal Digital Sheet Music available for musicians online. Their catalog includes over 125,000 downloadable sheet music titles from the world's leading artists, composers, and publishers. What's great about FreeHand Music is that many of their downloadable jazz charts are transposable to the key of your choice.

There's a search box on the right hand side of this blog that will whisk you over to their website. So if you're looking for a tune, or want to check out The Digital Real Book then head on over there.

I've begun adding links to these downloadable lead sheets to many of the tunes at PlayJazzNow, which I think will be a nice complement to the tracks if you want to work on the melody and/or lyrics to specific songs. We still offer free chord charts to everything, but those do not include melodies or lyrics.

Jazz vs Classical Music Notation

The September '09 issue of JazzEd Magazine has a provocative article on jazz notation entitled Common Errors in Jazz Music Notation. The piece is by Lee Evans, a professor of music at Pace University and co-author of the book How To Play Chord Symbols in Jazz and Popular Music. Mr. Evans' central thesis is that jazz chord notation and spelling ought to conform to the standards used by classical musicians.

I contend that harmonic notation serves a different purpose for jazz musicians than for classical players. Jazz players use chord changes as a means of giving shape to melodic improvisation. The chords determine (or at least suggest) the scalar context out of which the improvisor operates. Classical musicians reading lead sheets or fake book arrangements use the chord symbols in a much more static way - to accompany the melody of the tune they're reading. The scalar context is unimportant to someone who is not engaged in improvising.

Hence, there is no good reason why the nomenclature jazz musicians use ought to be considered inferior, or "incorrect and sloppy" as Mr. Evans would have it. The way jazz players notate, read and interpret harmony is very well suited to their needs; classical notation is irrelevant and often impractical.

It seems to me that jazz players tend to conceive chords based on three factors: harmonic function (or context), readability and aural quality. In other words, for a jazz musician, where the harmony derives from, how easy it is to recognize quickly and how the chord sounds take precedence over the rules of classical harmony.

For example, Mr. Evans is adamant that the chord spelled C E G Bb Eb ought to be called C7b10 instead of C7#9, unless the top note is written as a D#. Of course he is correct IF you accept the point of view that the way jazz musicians generally think of chords is inferior. The dominant chord with an altered 9th is not found in any diatonic scale; it is extracted from the diminished (or octatonic) scale. Therefore, the "classical" rules for note spelling don't necessarily apply. It is equally correct, from a jazz perspective, to think of the altered 9ths on a C7 chord as Db and Eb, and, given our predisposition to favor flats over sharps when reading, Eb is preferable to D#. (Just ask any saxophone or trumpet player which spelling they'd rather read.) The alteration "b10" is simply meaningless to a jazz player because the significant implication of the diminished scale is the presence of both altered 9ths and the absence of the natural 9th.

Another example is the chord Cdim7, which he insists must be spelled C Eb Gb Bbb. Though I get his point that, on paper, C up to A is a major 6th and not a diminished 7th, I'm quite certain that most of us would prefer not to have to interpret a Bbb on the fly. How it sounds rather than how it looks ought to be the determining factor. No matter how you spell the notes, a diminished 7th chord consists entirely of minor 3rds stacked on top of one another, and A is a whole lot easier to deal with than Bbb.

Mr. Evans also has a problem with the minor 6th chord. He feels that Cm6 ought to translate to C Eb G Ab. The problem here is that he is taking the chord form out of its most commonly used context, namely, as a tonic chord in a minor key. Jazz musicians don't usually use natural minor as tonic; we think of that chord as being extracted from melodic minor. So Cm6 really is C Eb G A. We use the m6 designation to distinguish that sound from the minor 7th (C Eb G Bb), which most commonly functions as a ii or vi chord.

The final part of the article states that "until such time as the...questionable practices... have been modified or changed, it is imperative that musical purists learn to function within these broken rules of theory, if they are to participate successfully in the jazz world".

This is an elitist and arrogant statement. First, Mr. Evans dismisses the traditional and highly functional way jazz musicians communicate with one another, calling our nomenclature both "questionable" and "broken". Then he makes matters worse by implying that "musical purists", whoever they may be, can "participate successfully in the jazz world" by adapting to our "incorrect, sloppy and broken" system.

Seems to me that there might be a few more skills that need to be learned if a classical musician wants to play jazz. The implication that any classically trained musician can become a jazz player by adapting to our "broken" rules is as wrong as it is demeaning. Mr. Evans' assertion that the "language of jazz [is] unfriendly and difficult to comprehend" is based on a fundamental lack of understanding of how we use that language. The fact that it differs from classical harmony is a function of its practical application. Different doesn't mean broken, incorrect or sloppy, unless one views jazz as an inferior genre - and I doubt very much that this is what Mr. Evans intends to communicate.

Your thoughts are welcome.