In The Cracks

Over the years I've written a lot of music that straddles classical and jazz music, and that uses elements from both traditions. I've written  orchestral, chamber and solo pieces, some of which have improvisation and some not. This is music that is truly 'in the cracks',  mostly using instrumentation and ensemble formats from the classical tradition, but using rhythmic and harmonic devices that come from other areas, particularly jazz.

Recently I created an album on Bandcamp called 'In The Cracks', comprised of a collection of these pieces, and downloadable for free. In this post I've written short descriptions of each piece on the album, with a link to the tracks themselves. There are some great musicians on here, both classical (National Symphony Orchestra of Ireland, Ioana Petcu-Colan, Conor Linehan etc.), and from the world of jazz, (Dave Liebman, John Abercrombie, John Ruocco etc.), and I hope you find something to enjoy. If anyone is interested in the compositions themselves, and would like the scores of any of these pieces, just drop me a line 

Synapsis (Concertino for Orchestra)

This is a sort of mini concerto for orchestra. Written in 2008, it features, at various stages, every section of the orchestra and really gives them something to play. It's a technically difficult piece, and the RTE NSO play it really well. The title came from a word a friend mentioned in an email, and I liked the fact that it sounded like a cross between synapse and synopsis. I imagined the idea of the orchestra being a large brain, and its synapses firing ideas from one side of the orchestra to the other. It has a lot of jazz influences, particularly in the rhythmic language, but also in the fact that the opening, fast 16th note phrase, (and much of the subsequent material), was taken from something Brad Mehldau played in a solo on a Michael Brecker album. Thanks Brad!

Music for String Quartet

A piece for probably the most classic of classical ensembles, the string quartet. When you're writing music for string quartet you've got one of the most outrageously accomplished musical traditions looking over your shoulder. But intimidating though it can be, it's also so satisfying to write for - so perfectly balanced and capable of so many different kind of expression. This continuous piece is in three sections - a spiky rhythmic motif, a lyrical slow section that moves between dark and light atmospheres, and a groove finale that descends into some chromatic madness.

Dave Liebman

Macrocosmos III

This is genuinely in the cracks, since it uses a symphony orchestra, a big band, and an improvising soloist - the great Dave Liebman. This is the 3rd movement of a large-scale piece for the Manhattan School of Music Jazz Philharmonic Orchestra (their combined symphony and jazz orchestras), and is in effect a concerto for soprano sax and orchestra. This is the largest group I've ever written for (more than 130 musicians), and it was both a pleasure to have such forces at my disposal, and a challenge to use them effectively.

Michael Buckley


Pipe Dreams

3rd section of a concerto for jazz flute and chamber orchestra, written for the great flautist and saxophonist Michael Buckley and the Irish Chamber Orchestra- it features both written and improvised passages for the flute. I added a drum set to the string orchestra for this piece, and also use bass guitar in this movement.

Concerto for Piano and Orchestra

Another daunting task for me - to write a piano concerto! In the classical tradition, as far as orchestra with soloist is concerned, there's probably no greater body of work than the piano concerto, and the greatest of the great - Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, Bartok, Ravel, Prokofiev, Rachmaninoff etc. - have written extraordinary and famous works in this idiom. So to take this on was a particularly challenging assignment for me. Although very familiar with many great piano concerti, I tried to use that tradition while at the same time bringing in elements from my own world, and influences from great pianists in that world, such as McCoy Tyner and Herbie Hancock. Conor Linehan is the wonderful soloist here with the RTE NSO, recorded live in Dublin

Sonata for Solo Violin

Writing for a solo string instrument is a completely different challenge to writing for a full orchestra. You have to balance and contrast the generally linear nature of the instrument, with chorded passages to fill out the texture. This is the finale of what is actually a very big work in five movements that takes almost thirty minutes to play. This movement features some serious fireworks for the violin and the great technical challenges are brilliantly surmounted by the violinist who commissioned this work, Ioana Petcu-Colan

Ensemble Avalon

A Little Blues

This piece is, as the name suggests, a 12-bar blues. It's completely written, but there are some very jazz elements in it, particularly in the violin and piano writing. Performed here by the great young Irish chamber group the Ensemble Avalon, I later went on to write some music for the pianist in this group, the very talented Michael McHale, and had already worked extensively with the violinist Iona Petcu-Colan (see the solo violin sonata above).

Groove Merchants

A funk piece for Wind Quintet? Why not! Commissioned and recorded by the outstanding UK wind quintet the Aurora Ensemble

Sonata for Solo Viola

Another piece for solo strings, this time the very underrated viola. This a four-movement piece which features a lot of rhythmic music and although the soloist for whom this was written - the notable and very accomplished Canadian violist Tanya Kalmanovitch - is a very fine improviser, and the music has many improvisatory flourishes, all of the the material is fully notated. This is the fourth movement, a groove piece.

John Ruocco

Music for Clarinet and String Trio

One of my earliest 'in the cracks' pieces, this time for string trio (the Hibernia String Trio), and clarinet, (on this performance the extraordinary virtuoso clarinettist John Ruocco who is equally at home in jazz or classical). This is the slow movement built on a kind of eastern modal melody that's later reharmonised. The clarinet is required to play both written passages and improvisation. John's improvisation on this is amazing

ARC - for 12 Saxophones

This is definitely the most unusual ensemble I've ever written for! This was commissioned by the European Saxophone Ensemble and they performed it all over Europe and recorded it. The challenge with this piece was not to make the ensemble sound like a giant accordion. The piece featured both written and improvised passages, and the instruments ranged from bass saxophone to sopranino, and rehearsals took place in a lovely small village in France - such a memorable experience for me for all kinds of reasons. I used the sound of the all the saxophonists fingering their instruments for the opening - a unique sonority.

John Abercrombie

Stillness/Movement (from Renaissance Man)

Music for string quartet and electric guitar - the first movement of 'Renaissance Man', a suite I wrote for jazz guitar trio and string quartet. This was written in memory of my father who had passed away thirty years earlier, and this movement was written based around a memory I had from my boyhood, walking in the forest at dawn with him, and the birds beginning to sing, quietly at first and then building to a cacophony of beautiful sound. In having this suite played I was privileged to have the guitar legend John Abercrombie play the guitar part - in this section he improvises in between the written passages for the strings

The Music of John Adams (for Jazz Musicians!)

I have a feeling young jazz musicians don't listen to classical music as much as did previous generations.  In talking to young musicians I find a lack of awareness of classical music which is quite different from people of my generation and earlier.  Jazz players have traditionally had a good knowledge and relationship with great composers. 20th Century music particularly appealed to the modern generation of players, Bird loved Stravinsky, Miles admired many composers, everyone loved Bartok.... You can hear the piano music of Ravel, Debussy and others informing the pianism of Bill Evans, Herbie Hancock and Chick Corea. etc. etc. And of course there was the so-called 'Third Stream' which attempted a fusion between the modern wings of both musics.

So it's an interesting phenomenon to see the relative lack of awareness of classical music among young jazz players these days. Of course some are listening to it, but in general I've found there to be a downturn in the classical listening habits of young jazz musicians in recent years.

Which is a pity, because there is so much great composed music out there, ready to inspire and elevate anyone who cares to listen. The purpose of this post is to introduce people, particularly jazz musicians, who care to check it out, and who may be unaware of it, to the music of the great American composer John Adams

Adams is an incredibly successful contemporary composer with a vast output, and one that happily is increasing every year. He has a huge expressive range, from taut minimalism, to opulently orchestrated pieces, many operas and oratorios, concertos, and chamber music of various kinds, the latter having been greatly expanded in recent years.

In 2007 I had the good fortune to be asked to be Artistic Director of that year's RTE Living Music Festival and had the wonderful task of programming a weekend of music whose main theme was Adams' music. I listened extensively to his output at that time and put together a programme that featured many of his works paired with jazz pieces. I felt this was particularly apposite given the nature of his music and the overtones, particularly rhythmic, of so many contemporary music styles which are contained within his compositions. Adams is a completely equal opportunities guy when it comes to the influences he welcomes into his music, and I can hear jazz sensibilities in much of his music along with other vernacular American styles.

This is not to say that Adams composes jazz music - he doesn't. Nor does he compose those dreadful hybrid pieces which stick what the composer imagines to be 'jazzy' passages onto his or her 'serious' work. These pieces are usually a dog's breakfast, with none of the rhythmic vitality of jazz or any of its improvisational flair. To me it always feels like the composer is slumming it, or 'letting their hair down' for a minute, and putting the serious work away in order to get down with those dissolute jazz guys. It always smacks of tokenism and condescension. And the music is usually dire too.

But Adams is different. In 2007, as part of that festival AD gig, I got to meet him and hang out with him for an hour or so. In talking to him, (and in reading his autobiography later), it became clear that here was someone who genuinely listened to, and had a knowledge and admiration of jazz, and rock, and bluegrass and many other American musics, as well as music from other parts of the world, and this widespread listening found its way into his music in many ways, and always in a very organic way. I admire him hugely as a composer and as a person - he is one of the most erudite musicians I ever met and if you look at any interview with him you will see someone who is both witty and knowledgeable about all kinds of things, not just music. His music is all of a piece with him as a person, and this clear connection between the man and the music is one of the characteristics that one so often finds in jazz. Despite the immense control of the music and the technical detail that he has, the music somehow always feels natural and organic and with an air of spontaneity about it. I think the reasons for this relate to how he has absorbed all his influences both from classical music and the many other musics he enjoys, and fused all of that into a personal language that is immediately identifiable.

As I said, he has a huge output, but I wanted to focus on some pieces that I know, as a jazz musician myself, will appeal to other jazz musicians. I've trawled Youtube to try and find good examples of these pieces and have not used the original recordings in order to stay on the right side of copyright law, and to stay on the right side of my own beliefs. If you see something here that you enjoy, please do buy the commercially available recording, it will help the serious music industry at least a little, will support the work of a great composer, and of course the sound will be one hundred times better than on the crappy Youtube compressed version you're listening to here!

Lollapalooza

A massive groove piece for orchestra! As a bassist I love the deep riffs he uses throughout this piece. Check out the typically brilliant orchestration too.



Eros Piano

This is an interesting piece, not one of his better known ones - composed after a hang with the great Japanese composer Takemitsu and the discovery of their shared love for the music of Bill Evans. It's a very reflective piece with some gorgeous voicings in the piano and beautiful textures in the orchestral writing.



John's Book of Alleged Dances - Dogjam

This is a movement from his composition for string quartet and pre-recorded prepared piano accompaniment. Although this clip isn't great visually, it had the best balance I could find between the recorded accompaniment and the live playing. Great off-kilter grooves in this composition and great string writing. I listen to this work a lot!



Saxophone Concerto - 2nd Movement, arranged for piano and saxophone

To be honest I find classical saxophonists' tone difficult to live with aurally. It always sounds closer to some form of oboe than the extraordinarily expressive instrument we know from jazz, and with the huge range of tone of its great players. The video here is of the 2nd movement of Adams' Saxophone Concerto arranged for piano and saxophone, and although the saxophone sound is the aforementioned classical one, there's much here to enjoy for the jazz musician - for example the sheer virtuosity of the playing and the very hip rhythms that inhabit the piece throughout.



Gnarly Buttons - Clarinet Concerto, 2nd movement

Another example of Adams' brilliance at coming up with titles for his pieces, and another favourite of mine - fantastic writing for a very unusual instrumentation that includes electric keyboard and banjo! This clip is good, but do check out the commercially available recording for a proper listen to the intricate detail of the orchestral writing and the properly gnarly clarinet part! Adams was himself a clarinetist at one point and you can hear the knowledge of the possibilities of the instrument shine through in the writing



Scratchband

And finally a piece that has, as far as I know, not been commercially recorded. This audio comes from the concert given at the 2007 RTE Living Music Festival by the London Sinfonietta. I deliberately programmed this piece because I think it's a fantastic piece, full of groovy rhythmic complexity and I know jazz guys will recognise the kinds of things that go on in contemporary jazz these days in that netherworld between funk, jazz and mathematics. And check out those electric guitar and bass parts - killer! I've only included a minute or so of this, because it's probably not legal to have it on here, but hopefully RTE and Adams and the Sinfonietta will forgive me for my 90 second transgression - as I said the work is not commercially available (I wish it was....), and I do it with the best possible motives!



There's so much more great music from Adams, not all as immediately connected to jazz as these pieces, but always brilliantly written and very profound in so many ways, and if this is your first exposure to his work, I hope it will serve as the gateway to many happy hours of listening pleasure and inspiration

In Praise of Complex Music

Previously I've been critical on this blog of music that is unnecessarily complex, music that is complex for its own sake, more concerned with demonstrating its own rhythmic technique than with delivering a message through music. And I'm still critical of that kind of technical posturing, but recently an incident set me off thinking about this idea of complexity and what value there is in it.

I recently underwent some acupuncture treatment, and having been needled up like a porcupine, I was lying there waiting for the needles to work their magic. I wanted to listen to some music while I was lying there and was going to listen to it on my iPod through headphones, but the Acupuncturist asked me if I'd like the music played through the stereo in the room. So she turned off the 'relaxation' music she usually plays, (which does anything but relax me!), turned on the iPod and left the room, leaving me to my music for about 20 minutes. When she returned to check the needles, a Dave Binney track was playing, in which Dave was taking on two drummers, and winning. She stopped, listened for a moment, and asked me incredulously, 'you find that relaxing!?' I said that yes, I did indeed find that relaxing - she shook her head, adjusted the needles and left the room. On my own again I started to think about this exchange and began to try to observe myself listening to the music in a bid to identify what it was I was listening to, and what kind of effect it had on me. What was I hearing that I found relaxing, but that to the therapist sounded like chaos?

As I lay there listening, I began to identify how I was listening to the music, what effect it was having on me, and what, if anything, was going on in my head. A lot of non-musicians at this point, (if any non-musicians read this blog!), are probably thinking that I was working out the technical details of the music, the time signatures, the harmony, the structure etc. But this was not actually the case - it's true I used to do that, but I gave it up a long time ago and only now do it if I need to analyse something for some particular purpose. It's true that as a musician one can find it hard to switch off the analytical machine completely, but as far as possible, when listening to recordings or concerts, I try to let the music wash over me.

So, there I was, listening to the music and trying to get a sense of what it was I was hearing and how it was affecting me. And I began to realise that what I was hearing was quite multi-layered - a sound here, a rhythm there, combinations of things, twists and turns in the lines, the rhythm section firing things up, a particular colour from the harmony. I tried to find a non-technical way to explain how I was hearing the music, and the best I could do was imagining being on a Gondola in Venice, (without the obligatory 'O Sole Mio' being sung in the background by a licensed bandit, otherwise known as the Gondolier), and floating down the canal and looking at the architecture of the buildings as I, (or they), floated past. In such a situation, you can see more than just the outline of the buildings; you can see the materials they're built from, the various indentations of windows and doors, lights behind curtains, shapes, proportion, half-glimpsed interiors, sunlight on the different surfaces - and all changing slowly as you float by. It's a complex collage of images which un-spools in front of you, but at the end of it you have a sense of what you've seen in a very rich and multi-layered way.

But this rich visual experience needs two factors in order for it to happen - the observed object needs to be multi-faceted, and the observer needs to have faculties to appreciate the different aspects of what's being seen.

And the same holds true for music.

Before I get into that, let me first qualify what I'm about to say - in all cases I'm talking about good complex music.  I'm not saying that complex is by definition good, or simple music is bad. I'm talking about good music which happens to be complex.

Complex music is different to simple music - it is multi-layered, it has a lot going on, the message it conveys is often ambiguous. A complex piece of music is analogous to a complex novel, play or film - its story may in itself tell a different story, what's on the surface may represent a deeper meaning, it may be structurally complex with many twists and turns, the ending may be very different to the expected one etc. In order for the music to have this multi-faceted quality, it must be complex.

In order to tell a more complex story the music must use more complex materials. More use of harmonic colour, more compositional structure, rhythms that are possibly polyrhythmic, more virtuosic playing from the performers. All of this, (and more), is necessary for the music to operate on more than one simple level. It will have a story to tell, but one which requires more narrative tools than the broad brush of the typical pop song. It may be a love song for example, but it will not be in the 'Yeah, I Love You Baby' mode of thousands of quick hits. Human life is complex and multi-faceted and this complex and multi-faceted music is required at times in order to tell these stories.

And in order to tell these stories you need listeners who are equipped to appreciate the intricacies of what unfolds in front of them. If the only buildings you'd ever seen in your life were one-room Portakabins, then Gaudi's Cathedral or a Calatrava structure may be beyond your comprehension. If the only kind of books you've ever read are holiday romances, you're unlikely to get very far with Joyce's 'Ulysses'. If the only movies you've watched were the Police Academy series, you're probably going to have trouble getting the inner meaning of Kurosawa's movies. Art on this level is unlikely to be immediately understood - it's not meant to be consumed immediately and discarded. It's meant to be thought about and experienced on many different levels and in order to be able to do that you will likely need some kind of development over a period of time in order to be able to appreciate all the subtleties.

In the same way that you can't leap from 'Janet and John Go To The Beach' to 'Finnegan's Wake', if you've been raised on a diet of Justin Bieber and Rihanna you're unlikely to be able to jump straight into 'The Rite of Spring'. You need time to develop the tools that will allow you to decode complex music. The usual way is through listening over a period of time to music of growing complexity, attuning your ear to the sheer variety of sound that is evident in this kind of music. You need to develop an ear where dissonance is not in itself automatically painful, where a wide range of dynamics within a single piece is intriguing rather than unsettling, where you can pay close attention to a piece of music that is over 5 minutes long and not get distracted. These are the kinds of tools you need to get the fullest experience from complex music.

And to get the fullest rewards - because rewards there are - good complex music is tremendously enriching for the mind, the body and the spirit. It is multifaceted and can be enjoyed on several different levels. You will get an experience from complex music that you won't get from one-dimensional music - that's what makes the journey and the effort worthwhile.

Now it could be that you couldn't be bothered engaging in the kind of long term investment that appreciating complex music requires, and that's fair enough. If you don't require more from music than what simple music can give you, then great. No problem. But don't try and tell people who do get enjoyment from complex music that they are snobs and elitist. There is a difference between those who enjoy complex music for itself, and those who might use it as a cultural stick to beat others with. If you choose not to go down the route of enjoying multi-layered music, don't make the mistake of condemning others who do. I feel no need to apologise for liking complex music, and I've written about it before here. I enjoy simple music too, but like complex music, it has to be what I would consider to be good before I can enjoy it. In the same way that I don't think complex music is automatically good, I don't think simple music is either.

And in many cases complex music can be enjoyed on a simple level too. I think of this as being like a tree; a tree can be seen as one large beautiful entity, but if you look closer you will see that this one large entity is in fact made of of a very complex series of smaller entities, and the tree can be visually enjoyed on both levels. The same could be said for a complex building like the aforementioned Gaudi Cathedral or the Taj Mahal.

And good complex music can encompass many forms and atmospheres, as in these three examples:

Here is Miles' great 'lost' quintet playing with complex abandon







And Yuja Wang playing two of Ligeti's extraordinary piano études







And finally the joy of Hermeto Pascoal's music - simple to appreciate yet very complex in construction





Miles, Ligeti, Hermeto - Coltrane, Bach, Weather Report, Sonny Rollins, Bill Evans, Stravinsky, Ravel, Monk, Ellington, Steve Coleman, Dave Liebman, Mozart, Keith Jarrett - hundreds of other great artists could be added to that list -  all artists who have produced sublime music in many different styles and atmospheres. With their music you can have the kind of wonderful multidimensional experience that you can only get from complex music. For the unfamiliar listener it can be puzzling and maybe daunting, but for the listener who is curious and prepared to meet it half way, its rewards are unending.

Working with James Joyce

This Saturday, (March 2nd - details below), I'll be premiering a new piece based on the writing of James Joyce. In doing it I'm very fortunate to have three of France's finest jazz musicians - Dominique Pifarely (violin), Stéphane Payen (alto), and Christophe Lavergne (drums), and the great Irish saxophonist Michael Buckley, playing with me. The mix of irish and French musicians isn't accidental, since the piece is called 'Counterparts - Joyce in Paris and Dublin', and is based around work he did when living in those two cities.

Music was very important to Joyce and his works are filled with descriptions of music, songs and singers. He himself was reputedly a fine singer, and he even competed in the Feis Ceol, (a venerable Irish amateur music competition, which is over a hundred years old and still going), entering the competition as a tenor. Joyce’s language is also very musical both in terms of rhythm and alliteration. The cities of Dublin and Paris are similarly very important to Joyce’s work – born and raised in Dublin but spending over twenty years of his adult life in Paris, both cities played crucial roles in his life and work.

The first impetus for writing the piece was my rereading of ‘Dubliners’, and being made aware again of Joyce’s musicality. The idea of Dublin and Paris came from my passing ‘Shakespeare and Company’  - the famous Parisian bookshop which had such an association with Joyce – on a recent trip to Paris. Since I’ve also had a close association with several French musicians in recent years, it was a short jump from the reading of Dubliners and thinking about Joyce’s life in the artistic hotbed that was Paris of the 1920s, to coming up with the idea of writing a piece for French and Irish musicians, based on writing undertaken by Joyce in both cities.

We also rehearsed the music in Paris and in Ireland  - before Christmas Michael and I went to Paris and rehearsed with Dominique, Stéphane and Christophe, and now we're at the Tyrone Guthrie Centre, a beautiful artist's retreat here in Ireland, working on the piece and putting the finishing touches to the shape of it.

‘Counterparts’ is partly written and partly improvised, and uses audio taken from street sounds recorded in markets in Dublin and Paris - it's always fun and a different kind of challenge to work with audio. The piece also uses text from various works both as a generator for the music, and in spoken word format as an integral part of the piece. Sometimes I’ve used direct material from the music in Joyce’s work, including ‘Say Goodbye To Girlish Days’, Joyce’s only known musical composition. In other parts of the piece I’ve used ideas from the works he wrote in Paris or in Dublin as generators of musical ideas. 

In Counterparts I’ve tried to create a unique environment for improvising musicians to explore the work of Joyce through musical means, and through that to reveal to the listener the sheer musicality of Joyce’s prose.

For  anyone in Dublin this Saturday March 2nd is interested in seeing the finished result of this work, you can come to the National Concert Hall at 1.05pm where the piece will be premiered as part of the New Music Dublin festival. Full details here

And here is a video clip of some of the rehearsals from Paris last year.

Music for Soprano Sax and String Quartet

It's a a pleasant surprise to accidentally stumble across a performance of your work that you didn't know had been done. In this case it was on Youtube and was a performance by a Polish group of the first movement of my 'Music for Soprano Sax and String Quartet', which I wrote for Dave Liebman in 1998. I think this piece is a good companion to the blog post I wrote about string writing in jazz, involving as it does a lot of the issues I discussed in that article.

The performers here are Andrzej Olejniczak & Apertus String Quartet. I knew Andrzej via email and I knew he'd performed the piece in Spain, but I didn't know about this performance or recording. They play the piece very well too and so it was a nice piece of Serendipity for a Sunday morning................

The String Problem

I’ve just been listening to Alan Ferber’s new recording ’Chamber Songs’, which features his nonet with the addition of a string group. I always keep an eye out for new jazz recordings that feature strings, because I have a particular interest in string writing, and am very curious as to how strings can be better integrated into a jazz context. I enjoyed Ferber’s recording, it has some very nice writing and playing on it and it’s really well recorded. He definitely knows what he’s doing, particularly with the nonet. Some of the writing had a tone poem quality to it that is quite attractively elegaic. But, for my own taste, I could have used a bit more counterpoint and polyphony from the strings and in the string writing in general.

This tends to be quite a bugbear for me – I love writing for strings and have done a lot of it both in my capacity as a jazz composer and also while writing for classical musicians. So far I’ve written two violin and piano sonatas, a violin concerto, a string quartet, a sonata for solo violin, a sonata for solo viola, a sonata for viola and piano, (for Tanya Kalmanovitch), a piece for string orchestra, music for string trio and clarinet, music for jazz guitar trio and string quartet (for John Abercrombie), and music for soprano saxophone and string quartet (for Dave Liebman) , as well as using strings in various orchestral pieces. As a bassist I am of course a string player myself, so I’m perhaps biased towards them and therefore fussier than the normal jazz musician when it comes to writing for strings..

Strings have proven to be problematic in jazz, in the sense that even in the 21st century a violin soloist, (or even rarer, a cello soloist, or viola soloist) in a jazz group is the exception rather than the rule. However in this post, I’m interested in discussing the integration of a string group as part of a composed piece, rather than discussing the paucity of string soloists in jazz, (perhaps that’s for another time).

String writing in jazz tends to be rather hit and miss – and perhaps more miss than hit. In general jazz writers tend to go for one of two options when writing for strings–they either use the strings as surrogate horns, or go for the dreaded “string pad” effect. “String Pad” is the term I’ve heard string players use to describe, in a less than complimentary way, the type of writing they often encounter from composers outside the classical world when dealing with strings. In this String Pad genre the composer goes for slow-moving chordal, lush backgrounds over which the jazz soloist does his or her thing. You can hear a lot of this string pad affect on “Bird With Strings”, where the lush backgrounds support Parker’s fantastic soloing. In this kind of writing the composer uses a string ensemble as a kind of block effect - slow moving chords that display the richness of the string sound. I can understand the temptation to use this kind of effect – after all the natural sound of a string group playing a chord is one of the richest sounds you can ever experience in music. And since we don’t normally deal with strings in jazz, when we get the opportunity to do so it’s very hard to resist the novelty of having this rich sound at your disposal. But it really is a kind of one-size-fits-all unimaginative way to use strings, and whenever I hear that kind of sound I always think to myself that the writer is being, at the very least, a bit lazy.

in reality string ensemble writing is all about counterpoint. From the baroque period onwards, (and even before this), counterpoint is the major feature of all string writing. They lend themselves so well to polyphony, and of course extend across the full range from deepest bass to highest treble. And strings not only cover the full range of the human voice, they also are able use as many expressive devices as the human voice. So with their ability to cover a very wide pitch range, and the huge range of techniques and devices that are available when writing for strings, it really is a cop-out to mainly use the strings as a kind of harmonic blotting paper filling up all the available space with their woody richness.



As I said, in string writing counterpoint is, to use the technical term, the shit. But in jazz we don’t tend to use counterpoint a whole lot – at least not in mainstream jazz writing. Have a listen to any post-bop recordings, then try and identify any use of counterpoint in the tunes. There’s usually not a lot there - any small bits of counterpoint tend to be used as small fillers to the main melody rather than any truly independent line. Like anything of course, there are exceptions to this – Mulligan’s piano-less quartet being a famous example, then George Russell’s masterpiece ’Jazz Workshop’ is another. But these are exceptions, counterpoint is rare in post-bop mainstream jazz.

And when we do use counterpoint, we tend to use a very “top–down” kind of writing, where the melody is played mostly in the higher pitched instruments and any counterpoint that’s going on is really just engaged with filling out the chords of the harmony underneath the melody - they’re often really just glorified guide-tone melodies. When I hear this kind of thing, I always get a sense that the composer conceived the music at the piano – you get that sense of the melody being played in the right hand while being supported by left hand chordal action. But examining compositions for string quartet by great composers reveals a whole other world of counterpoint. In this genre all four instruments are equal - the violins, the viola, or the cello can have the lead at any time, and themes, sub-themes, melody, and accompaniment are constantly flipped around through the ensemble. Rather than have the violin play the melody all the time supported by the lower instruments as in so much jazz string writing, in this world all the instruments are equal and are fully engaged in the cut and thrust of the musical dialogue.

There’s probably a reason why we jazz composers tend not to do this when writing for strings – this shit is hard! Counterpoint is hard. When you have four voices moving independently, their horizontal forward motion creates a vertical harmony. The writer needs to be aware at all times of the function of every note in all four instruments, how they relate to each other, and how they relate to the underlying harmony of the piece. Classical composers train for years to be able to do this, we get little or no instruction in this area–naturally enough, since we have other fish to fry, fish that take years in themselves to fry properly. But that’s no reason to succumb to the lazy string pad syndrome. I think if you have the luxury of working with a good string group you should try and write something worthy of the possibilities that this kind of ensemble can bring to your music.

My most recent piece that involved a string group is a recording that will be coming out in the not too distant future of a piece that I composed called “Renaissance Man”. This is a a large-scale piece for a jazz guitar trio and string quartet, with John Abercrombie as the guitar soloist. In this six movement work, I tried at all times to use the strings in the way that I believe they should be used, as contrapuntal protagonists in the musical dialogue, as well as occasionally using them for their beautiful colouristic tendencies. Here’s a sneak preview of one of the movements – the only one that is completely written, and features the string quartet alone - its called “And This Was Odd Because”, and features the group in very rhythmic groove oriented playing, as well as the aforementioned counterpoint.



If one has ever attempted to write string music, the best advice I can possibly give to anyone who wants to write for strings, but maybe hasn’t had much training in the genre, is to check out Bela Bartok’s six string quartets. Everything you need to know about string writing is contained somewhere in these quartets. The whole history of string writing to that point, is contained here - Everything you need is here with the possible exception of extended techniques, but really if you’re not an experienced string writer you is shouldn’t be worrying too much about extended techniques anyway. And Bartok puts plenty of different techniques into the string writing anyway – more than enough for all but the most experienced of string writers. Check out the amazing movement no. 2 from Quartet No. 4, where he uses the mutes to create a creepy rustling effect as the music hurtles around the four instruments.



Now THAT’S string writing! And of course great music. I still keep my ears and eyes open for great jazz string writing, but I’ve not had a huge amount of luck so far. Any suggestions as to good stuff to check out will be gratefully accepted and acted upon.

In the meantime here’s a little video clip from the making of the aforementioned ‘Renaissance Man’ recording – the CD should be out in early 2011.

Jazz Prodigies

Jazz has never been big on child prodigies. Unlike classical music, there have been very few bona-fide child prodigies in the music, or at least ones who made a genuine impact. Classical music has had its fair share of them, and several have successfully made the transition into adult performers of note. Probably the most famous of these (in the modern era – there was also Mozart of course), was Yehudi Menuhin, but there have been others such as Midori and Evgeny Kissen. The phenomenon of the child prodigy seems to be particularly prevalent in classical music – go onto Youtube today and you will see any amount of startlingly young children playing at a suitably startling technical level.



Child prodigies have had much less success in jazz and improvised music, both in terms of numbers of prodigies who appeared in the music and in relation to the ultimate long term careers of these prodigies. The most successful one of course was Tony Williams, whose extraordinary playing at the age of 14 with Jackie Mclean startled the jazz world and prompted no less than Miles Davis to lure him away from McLean’s band in 1963. Williams, along with Elvin Jones, became the most influential modern jazz drummer since Max Roach and strong echoes of his playing can be heard in the playing of most jazz drummers today. He went on to be a dominant force on the jazz scene till his death at the tragically early age of 50. Williams aside, I can think of no other child prodigy in jazz who continued his career into adulthood with the same kind of effect that Williams had, or that Menuhin etc. had in the classical world. I do remember teaching at the Banff Centre in Canada in 2002 and coming across an extraordinarily gifted 14 year old pianist called Aaron Parks who has of course gone on to great things in adulthood. But again he’s an exception.

It’s interesting to consider why jazz doesn’t seem to attract, or nurture prodigies in the way that classical music does, and has for over a hundred years. After all, why shouldn’t kids be able to negotiate the changes of a blues or Rhythm Changes when they can negotiate the much stiffer technical challenges of Brahms and Beethoven? My own feeling is that the demands of good jazz improvisation require not only a good technique and knowledge of harmony, but also a broad range of other skills, many of which depend on the maturity and empathy of the player. And maturity and empathy are not usually associated with 10 year olds.

Playing classical music, one can be guided and directed by a good and sympathetic teacher. The goals are a lot clearer – play the score correctly and interpret the notes in order to play the music the way the composer wanted it played. Playing improvised music in a group setting, on the other hand, is not just about one’s own playing, but also demands an ability to hear where one is in relation to everyone else, to respond to everyone else, and to allow one’s own path to be influenced by everyone else in the band, in real time. It’s an extraordinarily difficult task to be able to juggle the subjective and objective like this. And no matter how gifted one may be musically, to have the maturity and empathy to be able to bring off this particular balancing act is usually beyond even the most gifted youngster.

This post was prompted by my seeing two very gifted young musicians recently – the Israeli pianist Gadi Lehavi (14) and the Slovakian guitarist, now living in Ireland, Andreas Verady (13). Both are extraordinarily talented and have a genuine feel for the music – their ability to be able to process information is beyond what one could expect at their age. Lehavi in particular is almost scary in this respect. I watched him play ‘All the Things’ at a jam session in Den Haag recently, and I couldn’t get over the note choices he made, the harmonic ingenuity of his lines and his ability to turn on a dime when an alternative idea was suggested to him by something played in the rhythm section. How can someone so young amass such information, both technically and aesthetically at such an age!? Andreas is also very gifted, if more conventional in terms of his lines and note choices. I played with him at a workshop last year and was struck by his ability to get into the music once he picks the instrument up.


Of course the problem that always surrounds child prodigies is how to nurture their gifts and prevent them from becoming part of a kind of freak show. Audiences love watching children perform beyond the norm for kids of their age, and getting people to come and pay money to gawp at their abilities is like shooting fish in a barrel for promoters. The danger for these kids is that they’re paraded around the circuit and used as a promotional tool by festivals and promoters, and sometimes by the musicians who are performing with them. What these kids need is a nurturing musical environment where they can be given the support required to develop their extraordinary gifts. What they DON’T need is to be sold as a kind of freak, paraded around the circuit endlessly until they become too old to be of any interest to the rubes, and instead of spending all the time they should have spent developing their musicality they’ve worn themselves out playing endless gigs. So they end up at 20 years of age, pretty much playing the way they were when they were 14, but now being just one of hundreds of competent 20 year old players. The danger is that instead of having a long-lasting career in which their gifts enrich the whole scene, they become washed up in their early 20s.

So they need to be looked after very carefully, and it seems to me that Gadi is in good hands – he seems very unaffected by everything, has a real passion for the music and is not being paraded around endlessly by promoters and older musicians. On the other hand I’ve noticed that Andreas is being extensively touted around Ireland in the past 6 months as ‘Jazz Guitar Prodigy’ by festivals, promoters and older musicians. It has a bad feeling about it.

Lets hope that Gadi and Andreas make it beyond the realms of novelty, beyond the vested interests of those who love an opportunity to exploit novelty, and take their extraordinary gifts into their adulthood intact. In the meantime, let’s enjoy their brilliance

Here’s Andreas negotiating Giant Steps at speed




And here’s Gadi, showing extraordinary harmonic richness and improvisational ability on Corea’s ‘Spain’

Questionnaire 2 - Europe

So here's part two of my questionnaire. In this edition I ask the questions of some of my European friends and colleagues and, as always, the answers are fascinating. You can see Part 1 in which I asked the same questions of my colleagues in Ireland Here )

Chander Sardjoe (Holland - drums)

Give us an example or two of an especially good or interesting:


1. Melody:

"Santo Canto" by G.Rubalcaba New Cuban quartet on PASEO (2004) a great record with a unique musical language, i strongly recommend it!
"4 am" by Herbie Hancock on "Mr. Hands" (1980), "Neutral Zone" by Steve Coleman (1990)

2. Harmonic language:

Olivier Messiaen's Préludes pour Piano (1929), also the legendary chord changes on Dienda by Kenny Kirkland .

3. Rhythmic feel:

Linley Marthe, Anthony Jackson, Cannonball Adderley, Ignacio Berroa: in my book these are some of the people all worth transcribing in cut time to notate the details of their incredible phrasing as exactly as possible.

4. Classical piece:

Bach Sonatas and Partitas for violin solo 1720, Charles Ives Central Park In The Dark 1906

5. Jazz album:

My Favorite Things by John Coltrane 1961

6. Book on music:

Art Pepper Straight Life, for more technical stuff: "Musiques Formelles" by Iannis Xenakis - and K Ramachandrans "Mathematical Basic of the Thala System in Carnatic Music"

7. Name a great recording by someone that has influenced you:

Rhythm People by Steve Coleman and 5 elements 1990

8. Name someone whose music has influenced you, but that people who know your music would probably be surprised by:

Sting

9. Name a player on your instrument whom you think is very underrated:

Too many to name, but a few that come to mind are Larry Bunker, Mickey Roker, Marvin ‘Smitty’ Smith

Lars Jansson (Sweden - Piano)

Give us an example or two of an especially good or interesting:


1. Melody:

Bartok; Konzert für Orchester (Sz 116); IV. (Intermezzo Interrotto) Allegretto, Igor Stravinsky from Firebird - 'Ronde des Princesses', Lars Jansson-Ensemble MidtVest Worship of Self (Spice of Life)

2. Harmonic language:

II-V-I is still a lot to explore, the harmony of Olivier Messiaen

3. Rhythmic feel:

The Miles Davis rythm section, Hancock-Carter-Williams

4. Classical piece:

Alban Berg Violin Concerto, The String Ouartets by György Ligieti

5. Jazz album:

Herbie Hancock Trio with Ron Carter + Tony Williams (Sony), Ray Bryant 'Alone with The Blues', Jimmy Smith 'Organ Grinder Swing' (Verve)

6. Book on music:

All books by Bill Dobbins, Hal Crook 'How to Improvise', Fred Sturm 'Changes over Time', Stephen Nachmanovitch 'Free Play'

7. Name a great recording by someone that has influenced you:

Chick Corea 'Now He Sings Now He Sobs', Paul Bley with Gary Peacock (ECM)

8. Name someone whose music has influenced you, but that people who know your music would probably be surprised by:

The music of Anton Webern, Alban Berg, György Ligeti and John Cage

9. Name a player on your instrument whom you think is very underrated:

Swedish piano player Tommy Kotter

Nils Wogram (Germany - Trombone)

Give us an example or two of an especially good or interesting:


1. Melody:

Bach cello suites, "So Tender" by Keith Jarret, Michelle (and many other songs) by the Beatles

2. Harmonic language:

Birth of the Cool, Quartet for the End of Time, Wozzek,

3. Rhythmic feel:

Elvin Jones/Jimmy Garrison, Tony Williams/Ron Carter, Philly Joe Jones/Paul Chambers, Hermeto Pascoal's rhythm section

4. Classical piece:

Wozzek by Alban Berg, Piano Etudes by Ligeti

5. Jazz album:

'Expectations' by Keith Jarrett, 'Steaming' by Miles Davis

6. Book on music:

"Dharma Art" (it is not just on music but on arts in general)

7. Name a great recording by someone that has influenced you:

'Expectations' by Keith Jarrett, Miles Davis 'Steaming', Hermeto Pascoal 'Sa Nao Toca Quem Quer, Jimmy Knepper ' Idol of the flies'

8. Name someone whose music has influenced you, but that people who know your music would probably be surprised by:

Earth Wind and Fire, Stevie Wonder, Zappa, Beatles, Radiohead, The Ruins

9. Name a player on your instrument whom you think is very underrated:

Jimmy Knepper

Julian Arguelles (UK - Saxophones)

Give us an example or two of an especially good or interesting:


1. Melody:

I particularly like the slow movements to many symphonies and concertos, (for example Mahler 5 and Ravel Piano Concerto - the two handed one). On the jazz side i love Kenny wheeler's tunes, Django Bates' too ..... i could go on.

2. Harmonic language:

The same as above.

3. Rhythmic feel:

Tony Williams groove on the Miles albums, the same goes for Jack DeJohnette's on the Miles albums. I still love the grooves on Stevie Wonder albums, and of course Herbie's Headhunters. Paco De Lucia with Camaron (especially when they were playing a Bulerias) was up there too.

4. Classical piece:

Beethoven late string quartets are great.

5. Jazz album:

The Jarrett albums with Dewey (all of them), the classic Coltrane quartet (any of them

6. Book on music:

I've not read many books on music but Thesaurus Of Scales And Melodic Patterns by Slonimsky, and the Charlie Parker Omnibook were huge influences on me

7. Name a great recording by someone that has influenced you:

'Survivors Suite' by Keith jarrett, 'A love Supreme' by John Coltrane, Kenny Wheeler's 'Gnu High', Miles' 'Kind Of Blue', Ornette's 'Shape of Jazz to Come'

8. Name someone whose music has influenced you, but that people who know your music would probably be surprised by:

Paco De Lucia/Camaron

9. Name a player on your instrument whom you think is very underrated:

Heinz Sauer

Simon Nabatov (Russia - Piano)

Give us an example or two of an especially good or interesting:


1. Melody:

“In Tune” by Kenny Werner. It is, of course, not “just” the melody (the material in the upper voice) that fascinates me – everything there is working together – but the melody itself, the way it so organically, naturally slinky navigates it’s way through the rapidly changing meters, moods, even the whole genre-hints, while remaining perfectly homogeneous and true to the chosen story-telling mode. Delightful...

2. Harmonic language:

“Third World” by Herbie Nichols. Not so many, unfortunately, aware of the fact, that it was Nichols who, back in 1947, formulated the chord connections later known as “Giant Steps” progression – and that almost 15 years prior to Coltrane’s immortal contribution.
Well, in this case the chord pairs move the whole-tone scale down instead of the circle of fifths, but in some later tunes Nichols uses different strategies of stringing together those pairs, thus proving that it was in no way a fluke. Groundbreaking (no matter on how “small” of a scale) and wonderfully fresh, even today.

3. Rhythmic feel:

Maracatu – the powerful mesmerizing rhythm from Pernambuco, the northeastern state of Brazil. Of course, Maracatu is much more than the rhythm – it’s legends and stories, theater, sagas, costumes, dances, own carnival , poetry – it is a huge cultural tradition, harking back to the African ancestry and meshed together with the Brazilian sensibilities. The main rhythm itself, with the weak (or omitted) first and the strong accentuated second sixteenth of each group of four 16th, played against a bell pattern, has a wonderful duality about it, being strongly “off-centered” and clearly cyclical at once.

4. Classical piece:

Gérard Grisey “Vortex Temporum” - a breathtaking piece by the greatest spectralist composer. The way the most complex technical and formal procedures turn into the sensual (in the best French tradition) experience – also directly, as our sense of hearing is tested and challenged by the universe of the microtonal relationships – fantastic! And the piano cadenza, tuned 1/4 tone down, is as thrilling as anything I know...

5. Jazz album:

Nils Wogram’s “Root 70 on the 52 and 1/4 Street” – an ingenious blend of swinging jazz and quarter-tone music.


6. Book on music:

Helmut Lachenmann - “Music as existential experience”

7. Name a great recording by someone that has influenced you:

“Press Enter” - Kenny Werner

8. Name someone whose music has influenced you, but that people who know your music would probably be surprised by:

Caetano Veloso

9. Name a player on your instrument whom you think is very underrated:

Paul Plimley, Craig Taborn

Stéphane Payen (France - Alto Saxophone)

Give us an example or two of an especially good or interesting:


1. Melody:

Perspicuity by Doug Hammond, (or any of Doug's melodies). But especially the melody of the drums chants ! And knowing the melody of the drums, you know how to hear the melody. Those two lines don't make "sense" if played separately, but when played together, it sounds amazing !!


2. Harmonic language:

the work from Malik Mezzadri (aka Magic Malik), using what he calls "signature tonale". Also the work made by Octurn - a band/collective based in Bruxelles - around modes from Olivier Messian on the music of Bo Van Der Werf. And the harmonic world of pianist Benoît Delbecq

3. Rhythmic feel:

The different rhythmic feels of Sabar music from Senegal. And this so-called "traditional music" is really alive.

4. Classical piece:

"Musica Concertante Per 12 Archi" by Hungarian composer Sandor Veress. "An Index Of Metals" by Fausto Romitelli.

5. Jazz album:

Marc Ducret "Détail" - Benoît Delbecq "Pursuit"

6. Book on music:

"Polyphonies et Polyrythmies d'Afrique Centrale" (2 volumes) by Simha Arom

7. Name a great recording by someone that has influenced you:

I haven't heard it for years but I remember I was listening to it all the time : John Lindberg Trio: Give and Take with George Lewis, Barry Altschul (1982)

8. Name someone whose music has influenced you, but that people who know your music would probably be surprised by:

Michel Magne, great French composer well known for his soundtracks, but who did much more ...

9. Name a player on your instrument whom you think is very underrated:

Guillaume Orti !!!!

Chris Wiesendanger (Switzerland - Piano)

Give us an example or two of an especially good or interesting::


1. Melody:

Many of Ornette Coleman`s deep and beautiful melodies (Lonely Woman, Kathelin Gray, Tears Inside), "I Have Dreamed" (Rodgers & Hammerstein), "I See Your Face Before Me" (Schwartz /Dietz), Harry Richman`s "There Is Danger In Your Eyes Cherie"

2. Harmonic language:

Morton Feldman "Coptic Light" , Japanese No Theater and Gagaku Music, Son House.

3. Rhythmic feel:

Stevie Wonder playing drums on "Music of My Mind", "Dearly Beloved" from Sonny Rollins` "The Sound Of Sonny" (Percy Heath
bass and Roy Haynes drums), all the Wilbur Ware recordings, Aretha Franklin`s piano on " A Brand New Me" from the album " Young, Gifted and Black".

4. Classical piece:

Mozart`s 2 last symphonies (G minor and "Jupiter"), Beethoven`s Symphonie Nr. 7, Schubert`s String Quintet in C, Sibelius Symphony Nr.4,

5. Jazz album:

Miles Davis/ Gil Evans "Porgy and Bess", Art Tatum "God Is In The House".

6. Book on music:

Gerald Moore "Am I Too Loud?"

7. Name a great recording by someone that has influenced you:

Steve Lacy with Don Cherry "Evidence"

8. Name someone whose music has influenced you, but that people who know your music would probably be surprised by:

Marc André Hamelin, the great swedish metal group Meshuggah, Johnny Cash, Rosemary Clooney

9. Name a player on your instrument whom you think is very underrated:

Billy Kyle, Mel Powell, Cy Walter, Jimmy Yancey

The Psychology of Perfection

{If you’re interested in more context on this post, have a look at
A Question of Status}


In a recent discussion about the relative status in society of jazz and classical musicians, Lindsey Horner made the following very astute observation:

“The other part of the issue is why classical artists (mere interpreters) get far more respect, (not to mention money and fame) than their comparable jazz counterparts. I think some of that is the fault of jazz artists and how we have presented ourselves and our music. I won't name names, but I have heard even some of the great jazz musicians give lackluster and even just plain lousy performances on any given gig. I have never heard, nor can I imagine ever hearing, Alfred Brendel, Izthak Perlman or the Tokyo String Quartet sounding any less than very, very good, ever”

I completely agree with Lindsey’s observation – I too have seen some great jazz players give less than their best at times. I remember seeing Chick Corea, Eddie Gomez and Jack DeJohnette give an extraordinarily disappointing performance at the IAJE several years ago. Nobody, with the exception of DeJohnette, seemed interested in even trying to lift the music above the ordinary and it seemed to me like an exercise in coasting on reputation alone without any apparent feeling of need on behalf of the trio to actually live up to those reputations. It was depressing. And I’ve been stung several times by equally hallowed jazz names turning up and ‘phoning it in’, so to speak.

Yet anytime I’ve seen top rank classical performers (Menuhin, Gary Karr, Jorge Bolet, Ivo Pogorelich) they’ve always given first rate performances. Of course it could be that as far as their own standards were concerned, the performances were uneven – I have no way of knowing that - but even if that were so in their own minds, the performances were never shoddy, unconcerned or flippant at all. All the music was approached and played with the utmost seriousness and application, and a clear desire to serve the music and audience as well as possible.

So if it’s true that sometimes top class performers in jazz seem lackluster and uninterested, while their colleagues in classical music never take that approach, can there be an explanation as to why that should be? Are jazz musicians just more congenitally lazy artistically? Are classical musicians congenitally more serious?

Ever since reading Lindsey’s post about this I’ve been thinking about it and while there can never be any definitive answer to a question like that, I think there are elements at play here which are interesting and pertinent to the whole jazz/classical divide in terms of approach. I believe the different environment in which both musics are learned and are played has a very strong influence on differences in approach, one by-product of which is the aforementioned lapses into apathy sometimes seen in jazz performances. I’ll come back to that in a moment, but I also believe the nature of the two musics has a part to play – as follows:

Classical music (with the exception of recently written works) is a known quantity. The huge canon of great music written in this tradition is known inside and out, by performers, critics, and the public. If one plays Beethoven’s ‘Hammerklavier’ sonata or a Mozart concerto, or Ravel’s ‘Gaspard de la Nuit’, one is dealing with something that has a performance history and, within certain parameters, an agreed approach to performance. Every note of these pieces is known intimately, sometimes over a period of hundreds of years, by everyone concerned with or interested in classical performance. The scores of these great works are like the scripts of Shakespeare’s plays – they are cultural and artistic totems, the performance of which is seen as being the pinnacle of the art form. Given such an atmosphere of past history and artistic reverence, the reputation and status of the artist can stand or fall, be enhanced or be crushed, by his or her ability to do justice to these works.

If you walk onto the stage (or ‘concert platform’ as they call it in classical music!) and play Brahms’ Piano Concert No. 1 with a good symphony orchestra, the artistic stakes are very high. Nearly everybody in that room – musicians, critics, public – knows every note of this piece. In such a milieu, there is no room for any kind of off-hand approach, any shoddiness or lack of preparation. Technical perfection is usually required at the very least, then on top of that are all the elements of interpretation which play such a big part in the perceived success or failure of a performance of one of these classic pieces. This is why classical musicians will, in learning a piece, or studying it with a teacher, endlessly discuss tiny details at length and in a way that no jazz musician would contemplate. There is a demand in this music for perfection – perfection of technique, of intepretation, or performance.

The fact that perfection – even if it can be agreed what that means – can never be achieved doesn’t alter the demands for it made by audiences and critics alike. The technical perfection of recordings, and the perfection demanded by competitions, has ratcheted up these demands even further in the past forty years or so. This adds a definite nervous edge to classical performances. If there is any failure on the part of the performer to reach the expected technical standard, everything – the silence in the hall, the spotlight on the figure of the soloist, the pre-knowledge of the piece by all in the auditorium - conspires to expose that failure. It’s merciless, and the classical soloist knows it. At the highest levels – the Brendels, Ashkenazys etc. – the pressures and expectations are even higher. A sloppy or ill-prepared performance is not an option for them, unless they want their reputations in the mud.

I’m not suggesting that the reason that such wonderful musicians give such great performances is because of fear, but I do believe that the tradition of playing incredibly well known pieces in public does concentrate the mind a lot. The rules in a classical performance are very clear – the soloist knows them, the critic knows them, and the audience knows them. In such an atmosphere the task of the soloist is clear, the preparation is geared towards that and poor technical and/or attitudinal performances are kept to an absolute minimum.

Jazz musicians operate under a very different tradition – one of improvisation. In this milieu the music performed is not known, the tasks are much less clearly defined or generally agreed, and the performer has much greater freedom both in deciding the shape of each piece and the shape of the programme in general. The player has to create the music on the spot with his or her colleagues, decide the type of music played, the length of the solos the order of the pieces etc. etc. With the responsibility of coming up with the complete musical goods laying much more heavily on the jazz performer, any tiredness or lack of inspiration will automatically have consequences for the music.

In the case of the classical performer, even if they are tired, there is a clear musical road map laid out for them in the form of the score and the performance history and traditions of the piece – the jazz musician does not have the same assistance in the event of tiredness or lack of inspiration. This is not to say that any lacklustre performance by a great jazz musician is automatically because they feel tired or uninspired – of course laziness on the night, and maybe a lack of care on the night could contribute, but I do think the fact that the jazz musician is responsible for much more of the creation of the music than his or her classical counterpart does play a part.

It’s an interesting conundrum – on the one hand it could be seen that with known repertoire and such a demanding audience, the performance stakes are higher for the classical musician. But on the other hand, with so much more responsibility for the totality of the music laying on the jazz musician, the artistic stakes could arguably be said to be higher for them.

The second thing I think can be taken into consideration when examining the sometimes differing performance outlook of classical and jazz musicians is the environment in which performances of the two musics take place. In general classical musicians play in an atmosphere of quiet and respect. The cynosure of all eyes, they perform in environment where the full focus of everyone in the room is on the performer(s). They usually play in good listening conditions too, with no competition from audience chatter, no sound of cash registers, no doors banging or people getting up and down during the performance. And never a sense of the music being in any way treated as subservient to anything else going on in the room.

Jazz musicians on the other hand – all of them, from the totally unknown to the now incredibly famous, have all at one time or another experienced this feeling of having to battle other elements in order to perform their music. The psychological effect on the performers of this can easily be underestimated in my opinion. If the audience don’t care what you’re doing, if they’re not interested in how you’re performing the music, then why should you care?

A very illuminating example of the effect of this lack of audience interest on a great classical musician, when encountering it for the first time, can be found in a fascinating article about an experiment the great Amercian violinist Joshua Bell took part in recently.

This experiment was fascinating in itself, and I would encourage anyone interested in music to read it. In fact it also relates to another post I’ve done on background music –

The Music Plague

It describes an experiment where Bell anonymously went into a Washington Metro station and did some busking, to see if anyone would pay attention to, or notice the difference between one of the world’s greatest violinists and any other busker or street entertainer. You can read the article

Here

But leaving aside the main thrust of that article and returning to the main thrust of this one, there’s a very revealing quote from Bell about one aspect of his experience of playing outside the hallowed walls of the concert hall, where he is a revered performer, playing revered repertoire. Here’s the passage:

"It was a strange feeling, that people were actually, ah . . ."

The word doesn't come easily.

". . . ignoring me."

Bell is laughing. It's at himself.

"At a music hall, I'll get upset if someone coughs or if someone's cellphone goes off. But here, my expectations quickly diminished. I started to appreciate any acknowledgment, even a slight glance up. I was oddly grateful when someone threw in a dollar instead of change." This is from a man whose talents can command $1,000 a minute.

Bell has played, literally, before crowned heads of Europe. Why the anxiety at the Washington Metro?

"When you play for ticket-holders," Bell explains, "you are already validated. I have no sense that I need to be accepted. I'm already accepted. Here, there was this thought: What if they don't like me? What if they resent my presence . . ."

It’s clear that this sudden realization of his own, what we might call musical mortality, came as a real shock to Bell. But this environment he describes where people are ignoring the performer or may even resent their presence is one that will be familiar to jazz musicians of any stripe. Herbie Hancock or Sonny Rollins may never play in environments like that these days, but they did at one time.

And I believe this experience of sometimes awful playing environments does have an effect on the jazz musician, even when their careers may have risen to the point where they don’t have to endure it any more. If you’ve spent a lot of time playing in less than ideal performance environments, it’s hard to see the performance space as being a temple to music, and the act of performance as a being a ceremonial act in that temple – in the way that classical musicians do. If you add to this the more informal milieu of jazz performance, the greater freedom to take many different approaches from night to night, the lack of audience pre-awareness of the material that will be played and the greater responsibility on the performer to provide the bulk of the musical material I think you have conditions in which an occasional sub-par performance will occur. This is less likely occur in the narrower, goal-driven, more tightly focused, tradition-obsessed world of classical music.

Of course there can be variables in all of the scenarios I’ve put forward – John Coltrane was famous for the unremitting intensity with which he played his music night after night without exception, and there are also known examples of great classical musicians occasionally deviating from the performance straight and narrow. But if we look at the differences in performance practice, history, and playing environments of the two musics, I think we can see how even the great jazz musicians would have occasional lapses in their performance standards in a way that would be rare for a great classical musician.