There's a wonderful series that's been airing on NPR for a few years called This I Believe. It's not a show per se; it is a collection of brief personal essays chosen and recorded for broadcast during All Things Considered. This past Sunday the essay really caught my ear as I was driving to my weekly gig at Unity Chicago. Entitled The Holy Life of the Intellect, it was written and delivered aloud by Canadian poet George Bowering.
Even though I am a devoted secularist, his essay reminded me of an aspect of jazz that I sometimes forget. Bowering states:
I believe that the human intellect is the closest thing we have to the divine. It is the way we can join one another in spirit.
Sometimes when you are listening to a great jazz musician performing a long solo, you are experiencing his mind, moment by moment, as it shifts and decides, as it adds and reminds. This happens whether the player is a saxophone player or a bass player or a pianist. You are in there, where that other mind is. His mind is coming through your ears and inside your mind.
This is a wonderfully succinct way of describing the ultimate goal of those of us who choose to express ourselves through the language of jazz improvisation. We desire to make this spiritual and emotional connection with our listeners, without which art does not exist. Musicians begin this process in our minds. We hear, we respond, we recall, we send impulses to our muscles to create certain sounds in the physical realm that express the inner workings of our minds.
Listeners process these sounds through the apparatus of their ears and brains; those "instruments" receive and decode the sounds we produce. The "intellect", for lack of a better term, is intimately involved in this process. Before anything can move us at our emotional/spiritual core it has to pass through the mind. Bowering goes on to say:
The first time I heard Charlie Parker playing “Ornithology” I was delighted. I was about 11 years old. You are so much alone with your mind as a kid, so when you hear someone else’s mind improvising, you feel an excitement you will never get from some music that just wants to keep a steady beat...
I believe that if there is a god, this is what he wanted us to do. It is the holy life of the intellect.
At the highest level of jazz as art, this is what it is all about. At this point in the essay I started thinking about John Coltrane, specifically his masterpiece A Love Supreme. I don't believe anyone can remain unmoved by this music; it is sublime and beautiful in the truest sense of that word. Not a moment later Bowering mentioned this album as a shining example of intellect and spirit in jazz. I was not surprised.
Monday, August 20, 2007
Friday, August 17, 2007
Max Roach
The great bebop era drummer Max Roach has died. The man played with everyone who was and is anyone in jazz. Ask any jazz drummer about influences and Max will be on their list (if they've done their homework). His style, techniques and approach are as evident in modern drumming as Charlie Parker's playing is in every instrumental jazz musician who has grown up in the past 50 years.
I got to play with Max once, in the mid-80's. I don't know how or why I got called to play this concert but I had some of the most fun I've ever had on a bandstand that night. The other players, including a somewhat shaky (time-wise) Kenny Burrell, were fine; Max was magnificent. His playing was elegant, strong without being overbearing, meticulous, fine tuned to what was happening in the moment. Not to wax egotistic, but Max liked my playing. He said I could make "quarter notes sing... and not everybody can do that."
I got to play with Max once, in the mid-80's. I don't know how or why I got called to play this concert but I had some of the most fun I've ever had on a bandstand that night. The other players, including a somewhat shaky (time-wise) Kenny Burrell, were fine; Max was magnificent. His playing was elegant, strong without being overbearing, meticulous, fine tuned to what was happening in the moment. Not to wax egotistic, but Max liked my playing. He said I could make "quarter notes sing... and not everybody can do that."
Monday, August 13, 2007
Good Experiment in Listening
Tonight I did something I've never done before. I'm doing some research for an upcoming article I'm writing on jazz composers who happen to be bass players. I recently purchased a small pile of new CDs by Ben Allison, Drew Gress, Avishai Cohen, William Parker and Scott Colley. It's a lot of music to really LISTEN to so I've been waiting for a break in my schedule to start. I somehow hit upon this crazy idea to take all five of these as yet unheard albums, stick them in my CD changer, hit shuffle play and listen without having any idea whose music would be playing at any given moment. I sat back and had one of the most interesting listening experiences of my life.
In addition to hearing some really great stuff I came to the realization that I often waste too much bandwidth reading the tray card and looking at the photos and artwork on the CD case while the music is playing. So I've been often guilty of not really giving the music my full attention, which is the least any music deserves if one purports to be a serious listener. Not having a pre-conceived notion of WHO is playing was also very telling. I know I would be pre-disposed to like or dislike something based upon my previous experience with that artist or because of something I may have read or heard about the music. This way I was free to respond to each piece as it unfolded right in front of my ears. Very refreshing.
After about an hour I started to get rather tired and thought I might get up and do something else for awhile. Just as I was about to do so, something came on the stereo that really caught my attention. I can't tell you what or who it was because I really have no idea. It was a short piece that used a repeating pedal tone, first heard on the bass. I think it was an Eb because that's the pitch that kind of stuck in my ear but I could be wrong (I don't have perfect pitch but I can usually get pretty close by listening to the texture of the note being played on my instrument). This one pitch kept being sounded as the chords moved underneath. Then the bassist played a wonderfully jagged yet melodic solo while the pedal note kept being played by the pianist.
This tune got my very excited. As it ended I stayed on the couch and started singing the note to myself and wound up writing a little folksy sounding tune in my mind. I ran downstairs to my music room and spent the next hour or so writing something of my own that echoes the concept of whoever's music I had just heard.
And if that's not the best result of listening to great music from a player's point of view then I don't know what IS!
In addition to hearing some really great stuff I came to the realization that I often waste too much bandwidth reading the tray card and looking at the photos and artwork on the CD case while the music is playing. So I've been often guilty of not really giving the music my full attention, which is the least any music deserves if one purports to be a serious listener. Not having a pre-conceived notion of WHO is playing was also very telling. I know I would be pre-disposed to like or dislike something based upon my previous experience with that artist or because of something I may have read or heard about the music. This way I was free to respond to each piece as it unfolded right in front of my ears. Very refreshing.
After about an hour I started to get rather tired and thought I might get up and do something else for awhile. Just as I was about to do so, something came on the stereo that really caught my attention. I can't tell you what or who it was because I really have no idea. It was a short piece that used a repeating pedal tone, first heard on the bass. I think it was an Eb because that's the pitch that kind of stuck in my ear but I could be wrong (I don't have perfect pitch but I can usually get pretty close by listening to the texture of the note being played on my instrument). This one pitch kept being sounded as the chords moved underneath. Then the bassist played a wonderfully jagged yet melodic solo while the pedal note kept being played by the pianist.
This tune got my very excited. As it ended I stayed on the couch and started singing the note to myself and wound up writing a little folksy sounding tune in my mind. I ran downstairs to my music room and spent the next hour or so writing something of my own that echoes the concept of whoever's music I had just heard.
And if that's not the best result of listening to great music from a player's point of view then I don't know what IS!
PJN Tracks Available for FREE
Two play along tracks from PlayJazzNow.com are posted and waiting to be sampled by you at Jason Heath's doublebass blog. There's a Blues in Bb and a standard turnaround in C. These tracks are just piano and drums and are intended for bass players. Tracks for all instrumentalists and vocalists are available directly from PJN. Enjoy!
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)