Down With Jazz! Bejayzuz!

It’s not that long ago that Ireland was to all intents and purposes a Theocracy, not unlike present day Iran. In a similar way to the contemporary Iranian state, right up to at least the 1960s, the country was under the thumb of a cabal of clerics who interfered with every aspect of the state and whose number one concern was the wielding of their own power.  They interfered in every aspect of Irish life and left a legacy of brutality and child abuse (such as in their schools and Reformatories), which Irish people are still having to deal with today. But disgusting as the institution of the Catholic Church was,  (and often still is), occasionally the behavior of some of the dimmer members of that church, through the stupidity of their actions, gave us a badly needed laugh at the Church’s expense. One such dimwit was Father Peter Conefrey.

Conefrey was the founding member and leading light of the ‘Anti-Jazz League’ in the 1930s – a movement he hoped would rid Holy Catholic Ireland of the corrupting effect of jazz. Coneferey was convinced that jazz (although what he thought of as jazz would certainly not be recognised as such by any jazz fan or musician), was destroying the morals of the young people with its unholy rhythms and lewd dancing. He managed to lead a march against jazz through a tiny town in Ireland and through his contacts get questions asked in parliament about why Irish music was getting displaced on the radio by this sinful jazz music. But under the thumb of the clergy though Irish politicians may have been, this was too ludicrous for even the most devout Irish politician and the movement fizzled out relatively quickly. There’s a fascinating documentary on it here

This coming weekend I'll be taking part in a festival called 'Down With Jazz' which humorously takes the anti-jazz movement as its theme, but has in fact the opposite intention of the idiotic Father Conefrey, in that it is celebrating Irish jazz.

Over three days sixteen bands will show the variety and quality of the music produced here in Ireland by the local musicians and it should be a great festival since there's never been a higher standard of jazz music being played in ireland than there is now.

I think it's fair to say that in western Europe, Ireland's jazz scene is the one that is least known outside of its own borders. Every other scene in western Europe - the French, Italian, German, and various Scandinavian scenes for example - all would be known through various famous practitioners who have gained international reputations and are well known everywhere. Musicians such as Enrico Rava, Martial Solal, Jan Garbarek, and John Taylor are known internationally and through them people know there is a scene in the countries in which they live. Ireland would not be known in the same way in the jazz world, and truth be told, up to recently, while there were some great musicians here, there wasn't enough of them to constitute a 'scene'

Jazz had a slow start in Ireland - there were jazz influenced jazz bands in the 40s and 50s, but the first real jazz musicians began to appear at the end of the 50s and into the 60s with players such as the pianist Noel Kelehan and the drummer John Wadham, both of whom were world class. There were other players around the scene who were good also, but the real breakthrough came with the appearance of Louis Stewart, the great guitarist who was the first domiciled Irish musician to get international attention. Before that the bassist Rick Laird had played with musicians such as Sonny Rollins and Wes Montgomery as part of the house rhythm section in Ronnie Scott's Club in London, and later went on the play with the Mahavishnu Orchestra. Due to his Mahavishnu stint and appearances on various 'Jazz Icons' DVDs, he remains Ireland's most famous jazz musician. However Louis Stewart broke the mould in that he was the first Irish jazz musician, living in Ireland whose work was recognised internationally and he performed with Benny Goodman and a host of other great musicians during his career. A phenomenal guitarist, he inspired a generation of Irish players (including me), and made them believe that this music could be played at the highest level by Irish jazz musicians.

My peers and contemporaries, who came up in the 80s, included some really great musicians, many of whom were determined to expand their horizons beyond Ireland, some by moving abroad, some by studying abroad, and all of whom were very interested in current trends in jazz. Many of us were interested in developments beyond the customary hard bop style of the Dublin jazz scene and the result of that was a broadening of stylistic approaches in the Irish scene and the founding of something that every other European country had - a jazz school.

It took a lot of time to get the full time courses going there, but when they did the school had a real impact on the development of the music in Ireland and aspiring jazz musicians now had access to the same training and information as their European and American counterparts, as well as getting to sit in classes with many visiting musicians of renown. All of this, with the addition of the rise, development and ultimate boom (and now bust!) of the Irish economy had an explosive effect on the jazz scene here. With the coming of serious money into the economy more musicians started to land up on irish shores and this is turn enriched the scene further. Recordings were made, tours undertaken and organisations such as the Improvised Music Company, (the promoters of this weekend's event), created imaginative events and programming.

And this weekend will show the variety and quality of what's currently on offer in Irish jazz at the moment - everything from electronic-infused improvisation to traditional jazz, from through-composed large scale compositions to standards, from duos to big bands. The Irish jazz scene has come of age and the festival is a great showcase for the many great musicians and bands now playing here.

Here's Phisqa, a group that is an exemplar of what effect the influx of overseas musicians has had - led by a Peruvian drummer, it features a South African saxophonist, an Italian guitarist, a Venezuelan pianist and an Irish bassist

More traditional fare will be on display too and I'm really looking forward to playing some standards with the truly world class saxophonist Michael Buckley

I'll also be playing a set with 3G - a family affair that features my brother Conor on drums and my son Chris on guitar.

Things have really changed for jazz in Ireland and hopefully this (sold out), festival will help to make more people aware of the musical riches the scene currently contains. As they might  say in Ireland, regarding this weekend's doings - 'if Father Conferey was alive today he'd turn in his grave.....'

Stefano Bollani

I first became aware of Stefano Bollani on an Enrico Rava recording on ECM about 5 years ago, and I remember listening to the intro to the first piece, hearing the piano comping, and saying to myself 'who's that playing piano!?' It's a mark of Bollani's brilliance that he can make you stop short just by the way he's comping. After listening to his playing on that recording I checked out lots of his stuff and and I discovered a brilliant pianist and musician, with a complete command of colour and sonority aligned with gift for melody and a great time feel. Combine this with an extraordinary gift for improvisation and you have a recipe for the complete jazz musican - but........

In his recordings I also discovered what I can only describe as a mixed bag. Mixed in that I never really heard a recording in which, from start to finish, Bollani played in the sublime way that he can. Inevitably on every recording, he would play something that made me shake my head in admiration of the brilliance and depth of his playing. But, for my taste it would never sustain itself over the whole recording. There would always be one or two tracks in which Bollani would indulge in his penchant for humour, and this, for my money anyway, would detract from the whole and make the totality of the CD a less satisfying experience than if he had left those tracks out.

Having said that, I'm all for humour in music - I think jazz musicians these days are far too po-faced and far too prone to believing that the only deep emotions, or the only cool ones, are the ones where we're feeling angry, sad, intense, or pensive. But of course in life we also display happiness in our daily lives, and there's no reason why we should willfully omit happiness from the range of emotions we choose to display in our music - I've written about this before.

And Bollani does this humorous thing brilliantly - it's never cheap or puerile. He's genuinely playful and has the imagination and technique to bring off something like this rendition of 'Maple Leaf Rag' in which he inserts all kinds of 'stumbling' effects, phrase stretches and sly modulations to create a very funny and witty version of this hoary old chestnut





It's typical of Bollani that while the piece seems to be sloppily played, it's only possible to do something like this if you have a phenomenal command of the instrument. The same is true on this constantly modulating version of 'Tico Tico'





But while I enjoy the humour and wittiness of these performances, I always felt that they never really sat with the other pieces on the Bollani albums that I checked out - they were like jokes, albeit very good ones, being made at an inopportune time - jokes which gatecrashed a very sublime atmosphere and somehow diminished the overall impact of the music.

But then I saw Bollani play live last year, in a solo performance in France, and there it all made sense. Within the live context, the humorous flourishes seemed no longer out of place, but completely at one with the skittishness of Bollani's personality and the fecundity of his creative imagination. The guy who played a sublime version of 'Blame It On My Youth', was clearly the same guy who, for an encore, created an extraordinary collage of themes from suggestions shouted from the audience - yes the encore was a schtick, but was so creatively done and executed with such obvious enjoyment, that it seemed all of a piece with what had gone before.

And this year I saw him again, this time in the company of the unique Brazilian mandolinist Hamilton De Holanda, and again the reconciliation of both sides of Bollani's personality was even clearer. Playing Brazilian music in duo, all of his lyricism, technique, light-heartedness, rhythmic strengths and harmonic palette was on display and put at the service of the music. This was technically difficult music, but those uninitiated into the arcana of music technique would never have known it, such was the effortlessness and sheer joy in music making that was on display. Here they are from a concert last year, playing Piazzola's darkly lyical 'Oblivion'





Seeing performances like this has resulted in my previous reservations being completely overcome, and for my money, Stefano Bollani is one of of the finest jazz pianists in the world today - he really has so much to offer. While he's very well known in Europe, his profile is nothing like it should be in the US, though recent duets with Chick Corea might possibly change that a little. However, if the predictability and  typical herd instincts shown by the recent Downbeat Critic's poll is anything to go by I wouldn't hold my breath while I'm waiting.........

The Human Jukebox and the Unfamiliar

I went to a concert that was a first for me last night - a mainstream stadium pop concert. Paul Simon played at the O2 arena in Dublin and my good friend and great percussionist Jamey Haddad was playing in the band and comped me.

I should say at the outset here that I have absolutely no feeling for pop or rock music whatsoever – of almost any type. Somehow (probably because of my childhood, surrounded by jazz and classical), pop music passed me by. In my late teens I had a fleeting interest in Cream, and then progressive rock for a while (King Crimson mostly), but otherwise no interest, and certainly nothing that lasted. Between cassettes, LPs, CDs and Mp3s, I have over 3000 recordings in my home and not one of them is a pop or rock music recording. It does nothing for me and even the guys that a lot of jazz guys like – Sting, Bowie etc etc – leave me cold.

I do like the Beatles and admire their craft and the originality. And, (much to the surprise of many people who know me when they find out), I also like Burt Bacharach, whom I consider to be a real craftsman with a very original and identifiable style. But otherwise pop music does nothing for me. It’s not a value judgement (though sometimes it is – Justin Bieber! Lady GaGa!), it’s just personal. Pop music has no meaning in my life, doesn’t remind me of my youth, doesn’t connect me to people or places or things etc. etc. in the way that it does most people.

So, given my background and lack of empathy with all things pop and rock, it was hardly surpassing that this was my first time at a concert on this scale  - 14,000 people packed into the venue, seat prices starting at €56 rising to over €150 for the seat I was in, close to the front of the stage. And I must say I found the whole thing to be very interesting - I felt dispassionate, (if admiring of the professionalism and skill of the musicians), about the music, but interested in the vibe and general demeanor of everyone.

First of all it has to be said that Simon surrounds himself with very good musicians, most of whom play more than one instrument very well. Secondly it has to be said he does put on a very good show - the pieces go seamlessly between each other and clearly a lot of thought is given to pacing and making sure the show keeps rolling along. And it's a long show too - over two and a half hours without a break, and Simon has great energy and stamina which belies his 70 years. He's also a total pro - never slips up once, sings both in tune and pretty strongly for the whole concert. His only mis-step is when he occasionally breaks out some ill-judged dance moves, reminding one of an embarrassing elderly relative doing some 'hip' dancing at a wedding........

The music itself is a parade of his hits spanning almost 50 years, and of course the audience lapped it up. I was fairly familiar with about half of the pieces, less familiar with others, and totally unfamiliar with  the rest. In the first section of the concert, (before the African contingent arrives for the 'Gracelands' section), I'm struck by the amount of Americana in the music - overtones of country music, Cajun, blues etc. Simon seems to use all of these influences as backdrops to his songs, just as he does with the African music in the latter part of the concert.

Again, though I'm impressed by the professionalism, I'm unmoved by the music, but quite honestly, I was never expecting to get into it, and as someone with no familiarity or empathy for this kind of music, I'm not in any position to say whether this was a good performance by Simon's standards or not. I suspect, that as someone who has spent so much time at the top of his end of the business, he delivers a similar professionally well paced show every night.

But in my lack of response to the music, I was clearly in a minority of one in the auditorium - the audience adored it, cheering the opening bars of every familiar tune, singing along at certain points, and rushing the stage at the end when the opening chords of 'You Can Call Me Al' break out. But it's all quite sedate stage rushing, as the audience age profile is not one that would encourage any kind of physical activity that might create a need for a hip replacement after the gig......

And as I watched the adoration of Simon and the songs, I realized again, (and this is really the point of this blog), that what 99% of people want is something they know, and preferably something they can sing along to. What they don't want is the unfamiliar. The audience may all have loved Paul Simon, but if he had gone out there last night and played a whole evening of new music they probably would have rushed the stage. What most audiences want from a  concert, ultimately, is a human jukebox - someone who will regurgitate the hits, and give everyone a good night out and a sing-along. And there's nothing wrong with that.

But where does that leave those of us whose milieu is improvised music? In a tiny minority, that's where. One thing I realized a while ago, is that most people, as far as music is concerned at least, don't really like improvisation. They like what they know, not what they don't know. In most music performances audiences want a confirmation of what they like, a parade of familiarity - it's comforting and often celebratory, particularly so when (like the Simon concert I was at), it's experienced with a large crowd of others, all of whom are equally enamored of the music on display. But in improvised music, the audience is invited to participate in the unfamiliar, to experience the process of music creation rather than be presented with a comfortingly familiar result.

It should be noted that this love of the familiar is not confined to lovers of pop music, it's part and parcel of classical music too (where not even one note can be changed by the performer), and is not unknown among jazz fans. Jazz fans, and musicians, can also make demands of performers that they conform to some agreed norm that reinforces the audience members understanding of what jazz is. The comfort of the familiar is a requirement of some jazz listeners too -  improvised music doesn't always have the automatic support in the jazz community that one would imagine

Improvised music will never have the support and popularity that non-improvised music attracts, but it has qualities too that non-improvised music will never have. Last night at Paul Simon's gig everything was as carefully choreographed as any classical performance, there was no room for the spontaneous creative input of the musicians - everything was at the service of Paul Simon's songs and the requirement of the audience to hear the familiar. And I missed the creative input of the musicians, the sense that anything could happen at anytime, which is a quality I find tremendously attractive in music. At a pop or classical concert, you will never experience that moment where you know something has happened that never happened before and will never happen again in that precise way. This is the unique quality of improvised music, for both musician and listener, and has tremendous value, even if most of the 14,000 people in the O2 arena last night wouldn't have thanked anyone for it had it happened.

The human jukebox may be a comforting place to be for both performer and listener, but it's a place where you will never experience anything like this........

More Thoughts on Jazz Education, Art, Craft, and Entitlement

(Dave Liebman speaking to students and teachers at the IASJ Meeting in Graz)

Some recent thoughts on jazz education, prompted by attending the 2012 IASJ Meeting

I’ve spent the past week at the International Association of Schools of Jazz annual meeting in Graz in Austria. I’ve written before about what goes on at the IASJ meetings and what a buzz it is, and this year was no exception. Last year it was in Brazil, and this year in Austria so naturally the vibe of the location was quite different, but the camaraderie of the musicians – teachers and students alike – was as strong as ever. At a time when institutionalised jazz education as an idea is again under scrutiny, it was interesting and thought provoking to be part of this meeting and once again my feelings on the positive benefits of jazz education were both confirmed and reinforced.

I attended the meeting that saw the foundation of the IASJ  - an organization which was the idea of the Artistic Director Dave Liebman – in 1989, and have attended 20 of the 22 meetings so far. Being part of the IASJ was invaluable to our school in Dublin, which at the time of the foundation of the IASJ, was just beginning to take its first steps towards putting in place some fulltime jazz programmes, which culminated in us offering a BA in Jazz Performance, and a 2-year fulltime programme with transferring credits in Berklee College of Music in Boston. Being part of the IASJ and attending the meetings gave me an insight into what was involved in the setting up and running of a real jazz programme, the kind of subjects which should be covered, how the materials were most effectively taught, and the pedagogical philosophy underpinning the teaching of jazz. The meetings themselves, in which teachers and students from all over the world come together to play, hang, and discuss music, are fantastic giving everyone involved a great fillip and a chance to meet their colleagues from all over the world.

During the meeting there are regular meetings between teachers and school administrators that discuss pedagogical issues  and current issues related to the teaching of jazz in institutions. Usually these meetings catch the zeitgeist of current concerns among the jazz community as it relates to education, and this year was no exception.

 (Outdoor student concert in Graz)

Art, Craft and 'The Gig'

This year there was much discussion of the employability, or otherwise, of graduating students from jazz programmes. In the US in particular, the financial practicality of undertaking a jazz education in an institution is definitely an issue – how can someone who spends more than $100,000 on their education have any hope of making that back? The situation is somewhat different in Europe in that education is much cheaper so the ratio of education cost to possibilities of recouping that cost is more realistic. But it’s tough for jazz musicians in Europe as well and questions of how and what jazz schools should be teaching are both timely and apposite.

But despite agreeing with the principal of helping students to equip themselves with the tools to operate as professional musicians (music business courses, technology courses, entrepreneurship courses etc.) I feel we are in danger of losing sight of what it is that we (high level jazz schools) do best – teach the art and craft of playing improvised music. The economic situation being what is, jazz schools are under more threat than ever before from both market forces, and pressure, (from the school authorities themselves) to respond to market forces. The response to this has in my opinion, begun to become skewed in that I notice a trend to almost apologise for teaching jazz, and a trend towards viewing the business aspects of the programme as being the most valuable thing you can teach.  

But the reality is that many non-jazz schools offer music business and technology courses, and the vast majority of private music schools focus on the more commercial and business related aspects of music education.  For example, here in Dublin my school is the only one that offers full time jazz education and high level training in non-classical music performance. If we were to change our focus to offer separate courses in music business, music technology or writing for Gaming, then we’d immediately be in competition with at least 10 other schools in the Dublin area alone.

It’s the high level performance training that set jazz schools apart from all the other music schools. Only classical conservatoires offer similar high level performance training, and they are far more specialised than jazz schools, training musicians who are unsuited to almost any other form of musical employment other than classical.

 (Final student concert at the IASJ Meeting Graz)

I’m a firm believer in the teaching of craft despite the constant decrying of the amount of musicians being turned out by jazz schools. As far as the (incredibly inaccurate) received wisdom goes, jazz schools are anti-creativity and have a negative effect on the jazz scene. Bullshit. Jazz schools are, in my opinion, like Architecture schools – they teach a high level craft in a milieu which is also artistic. In architecture, most architects spend their professional lives designing functional buildings, some of which will be artistic, some less so. Occasionally brilliant architects will appear and their creations definitely occupy the artistic realm. But the architecture schools are not responsible for which of their students are more creative and artistic. All they can do  – is teach the craft of architecture, teach and show the history and work of great  architecture, and hopefully teach and inspire a new generation of great architects. But even if an architect only ends up designing a post office, they still need the craft level to make sure that the ceiling doesn’t come down on the head of a customer!

Similarly jazz schools should teach the craft of jazz (and related musics  as desired), introduce the students to the rich creative history of the music, encourage students towards creative goals and provide them with an environment in which they can fully benefit from both the knowledge and experience of the teachers and the creative energy of their fellow students.  A school that teaches high level craft, encourages creativity and supports a strong musical community is something to be proud of, not something to be slightly ashamed of just because some jazz critics, who don’t know their arse from their elbow, make brainless pronunciations on the negative impact of jazz schools.

 (Countryside outside Graz)

Anyone who attended the last IASJ meeting (or any jazz camp, workshop, summer school or similar) would attest to the happiness and excitement of the young musicians who attended, and could attest to the high level playing skills displayed by all of them. How could this joy in playing together and high achievement in performance be a bad thing? Some critics say that only the most talented and creative should be educated – but who is going to choose who has the benefit of an education and who doesn’t? The critics? Jesus, the day that happens we might as well all pack up and go home…………

Entitlement..........

Another thing that was discussed at this meeting, (mostly informally among the teachers), was the sense of entitlement among many students these days…… There definitely seems to be a trend towards the idea that a student deserves a high grade regardless of the effort put in. There’s no doubt that in this time of instant gratification the connection between effort and reward is less understood than ever before. In a field like jazz, where there are no shortcuts to high level achievement, there is no substitute for hard work, single-mindedness, and dedication. But more and more, we in the schools are starting to see a greater unwillingness among some students to put in the flying hours necessary to become an international standard jazz musician. Yet we are facing demands from these same students for high grades which they clearly haven’t earned. A sign of the times I think….. I hasten to add that not all students are like this, but there’s definitely a growing trend in this direction.

And the delusions of some of these students about how the music world works is not helped by the attitudes of some teachers and administrators whose indulgence of students, regardless of achievement, are bound to feed into the idea that you can be half-hearted about your commitment to the music and yet achieve a high standard of achievement. I heard one administrator recently, (at a different meeting to the IASJ), say that our job was to ‘get out of the way of the students’. Really? If a student really wants teachers out of his or her way, then surely the best way would be not to come to the school in the first place? If a student comes to a school, they should be there for the following reasons:

1 To be in a community of musicians

2 To take part fully in the musical life of that community

3 To take all they can from the experience and knowledge of the school’s teachers

The school’s job is:

1 To provide a place where this community of musicians can flourish

2 To provide an environment where creativity, craft and high achievement is valued among both students and teachers

3 To give the students the benefit of the experience and knowledge of the teachers

I didn’t come through the jazz school system myself, yet I am completely a believer in the value of these schools. Of course they’re not perfect – in the same way that democracy has its flaws but is the best system we’ve got. The community of musicians around which musicians learnt their craft in previous times, doesn’t really exist any more. Until or unless something better comes along, the best way to get the information you need as an aspiring young jazz musician is to go to a good school and partake of the life there -  for a while at least.

Here's an example of what great things young musicians can do when given the kind of opportunities attending a jazz school can bring. This is a student concert from last year's IASJ meeting in Sao Paulo

Barry Donohue's 'Anti-Matter' at the IASJ... by NewparkMusic

Elvin Again............ It doesn't get much better

If you ever want a masterclass in true rhythmic polyrhythmic complexity allied to one of the best ever swing grooves, have a listen to Elvin's playing on 'Transition' - if you have a proper stereo system, as opposed to an iPod player, use the stereo balance to just listen to Elvin - the separation is so extreme you can hear everything Elvin is playing, it's like standing beside him. Then listen to the whole track again with the full band, and hear the full context of what Elvin is playing and how he's responding to, and playing with Trane, McCoy and Garrison. Then lie down with a cold towel on your forehead....


Jazz drumming doesn't get any better than this......... Music doesn't get much better than this........

Ron Carter - The Master

Ron Carter turned 75 recently. It's amazing that, in a music with an incredibly high mortality rate, (especially among Carter's generation), that he's still around and that he's still active and playing. Like Wayne Shorter and Herbie Hancock, his bandmates in the legendary Miles Quintet of the 60s, he seems ageless - it seems impossible that there will come a time when he, (and they), will not be around. Carter has been on the scene since the very late 50s, and is apparently the most recorded bassist in history. He's certainly someone I've been aware of since I first started listening to and being aware of jazz in the early 70s, and as a bassist, he has had a profound influence on me.

Carter is for my money, the greatest walking bassist in the history of jazz. Big words, I know - and describing somebody in music as being 'the best' is a risky proposition, since it is ultimately unprovable,  and probably undesirable as well - music is after all, not a competitive sport. Maybe it would be more appropriate for me to say that as a walking bassist, nobody satisfies me on so many levels as Carter. Others have had an extraordinarily powerful beat (Ray Brown, Leroy Vinnegar), and some have a relentlessly creative mind when it comes to note-choices for bass lines (Scott LaFaro, Eddie Gomez), but none of combined these two elements in the way that Carter has.

Carter's ability to dictate the direction of the band through both rhythmic and harmonic means is unparalleled by any other bassist. Harmonically he seems to have a lexicon of possibilities to apply to even the most mundane tunes, and pieces that he must have played thousands of times. To hear Ron Carter play a blues is to hear the apogee of endless variation of a simple harmonic form. If you are an aspiring bassist and you want to learn how to play great walking bass lines on a blues or Rhythm Changes, just take virtually any RC recording and transcribe what he plays - everything you need is there.

Carter's bass lines come into the 'why didn't I think of that!?' category. They're not that complex in themselves, but they're so relentlessly creative - always shifting, always finding the perfect note, always outlining the harmony but in a way that follows an inexorable voice-leading logic. Carter bass lines are like voice-leading études - as perfect in this regard as any line from a Baroque composer. And they're always logical - hence the 'why didn't I think of that?' feeling you get as a bassist when you listen to Carter's lines. Of course the reason that you didn't think of that is because you (and by you I mean me!) are not as good as Ron Carter at this stuff! In fact in my opinion, nobody is as good as him at this voice-leading aspect of the music. Carter practices Bach a lot and you can hear this kind of contrapuntal intelligence in his lines.

And then there is the rhythmic creativity - Carter has the ability to fundamentally change the perception of the listener with just a slight shifting of where he is in the bar, or even in the beat. He will take a phrase and shift it backwards or forwards by a tiny amount, and the whole landscape changes. You can be suddenly taken outside your comfort zone by one one of these little rhythmic tweaks and kept out there until such time as he decides to, (almost always majestically, and at the perfect moment), resolve it and bring everyone home safely. He is a master of this, and I think his contribution to the Miles Quintet is extremely underrated. Yes Herbie, Tony and Wayne were amazing - but this band couldn't have achieved what they did with any other bassist.

His time feel is a wonder in itself, slightly to the front of the beat but rock solid, with an inner-sprung bounciness that's different to other great walking bassists. It has a more pliable feel than for example Ray Brown's big-as-an-oak-tree quarter note, and is more unpredictable rhythmically than either Brown's or Paul Chambers. He has his own lexicon of crafty embellishments  - triplets, pull-offs to the the open strings, leaps to the open string harmonics - which he varies endlessly and beautifully.

Here's a classic example - the amazing walking bass on Invitation from Joe Henderson's great 'Tetragon' album. Everything that's great about Carter's bass playing is on display here - if you want to know how to play so much C minor and yet never repeat yourself, then you need to check this out. The bass is a little over-recorded and the sound a little too early Barcus-Berry pick up (for my taste anyway), but the way Carter bosses this track is just extraordinary. And he and DeJohnette sound so good together.......



I studied this recording so much and blatantly copped a lot of Carter's methods of getting around cycle of 5ths progressions and ways of making extended minor key passages interesting.

Carter is of course best known for his time with Miles and playing with Tony Williams, but there's so much other good stuff out there. I particularly like his playing with drummers who have a broader cymbal beat than Tony had - particularly when he played with Elvin on such celebrated albums as 'Speak No Evil',  'The Real McCoy' and 'Trident'. I've heard anecdotally that Elvin and Ron didn't get on well on a personal level, which may explain why their recordings together are not extensive (I can't think of any live albums of them together - maybe someone can put me straight?), but any time they played together the feel is just great - Elvin's turbulent yet laid back forward motion works so well with Ron's springy certainty.

Another drummer that Carter sounds great with is Mel Lewis - Lewis also had a broad cymbal beat which  dovetailed beautifully with Carter's time feel. They recorded together a few times and one of my favorites is on Thad Jones and Pepper Adams' little-known gem of an album 'Mean What You Say'. Duke Pearson played piano on this recording which features some fantastic arranging from Jones, (a masterclass in small group arranging) and gives Carter lots of space to show the full range of his skills. Like here on 'H and T Blues' -

Again, Carter's creativity on the blues - a form he must have played literally thousands of times - is wonder to behold.

I must admit I've never been crazy about Carter as a soloist, though it is individualistic. Having said that, Carter did record one of my all-time favorite bass solos with the Great Jazz Trio, (Hank Jones, Carter, Williams) live at the Village Vanguard, where on 'Naima' Carter plays an extraordinary solo which is almost solely based on rhythm. By rhythmically manipulating the two pedal tones, he creates a riveting solo which should be mandatory study for all jazz bassists on how to make the most out of simple material by using rhythmic means alone. But in general, I've never felt that his soloing is on a level with his accompaniment and I've also never liked his own two-bass bands. But these are small personal cavils - nobody can be great at everything, and I do think he's a very interesting composer, writing little contrapuntal gems which are very individualistic. I particularly love a little-known album called 'Etudes' (with Tony Williams, Bill Evans and Art Farmer), that features some wonderful compositions - gems like 'Arboretum' and 'Rufus' which really should be better known. Carter actually has quite a distinguished history as a composer on classic recordings, such as 'RJ' with Miles and 'First Trip' from Herbie's classic 'Speak Like a Child' album. 

But it will be mainly as an accompanist that Carter will be known - and rightly so, since this is ultimately the role of the bass, no matter how much chops and harmonic information we may have acquired over the decades. If we're talking about accompaniment and the role of the bass in jazz, as far as I'm concerned, there's Ron Carter and then there's everyone else.........

Happy 75th Mr. Carter and thank you for the great music and inspiration

Postscript: Having said that Carter and Elvin never recorded live together, I found a clip of them playing together on Youtube. It's an All-Star conglomeration recorded at the Hollywood Bowl in 1982, and despite some cretinous editing, (and footage of people who indisputably prove that man is definitely not evolution's last word), there's some pretty burning music here

x`

Family Business

This Sunday sees the debut of 3G – a trio consisting of myself, my brother Conor, and my son Chris. Strictly speaking this isn’t the first gig for this trio, we made our actual debut about 8 years ago, at  the 50^th anniversary concert of Chris’ secondary school – one of those celebratory school concerts featuring amusing anecdotes concerning teachers and pupils of bygone days, earnest speeches and excerpts from musicals. We were on the bill because both Conor and I were also past pupils of the school, and featuring this trio of current and ex-students on the concert probably seemed like a good idea to the school authorities. They may have altered that opinion when we came onto the stage of the National Concert Hall, played completely free for a while and then played ‘Left End’ - a gnarly rock-influenced nugget written by Rick Peckham. Chris’ schoolmates loved us, but there were many raised eyebrows among the assorted bishops, parents and school dignitaries – true subversive fun.

And the subversive fun will continue on Sunday when we get together to play our first gig as a trio. We’ve been saying that this group will be the subject of future jazz trivia quizzes, as in

‘What band consists of two brothers, a father and son, and an uncle and nephew yet is only a trio?’

We’ve been rehearsing regularly for the past few months and it’s been a lot of fun. There’s a very nice dynamic in the group – obviously Conor and I would be a lot more experienced, but Chris has been around music in general, and this kind of music in particular, all his life, so he knows what the general vibe is and the way we think about a lot of stuff. He came through the Newpark Music Centre BA in jazz performance programme that we both teach at, but I did very little direct teaching of him while he was there – firstly because he probably got more than enough of my opinions at home, and secondly I felt it was good for him to be exposed to the techniques and opinions of other teachers and musicians. He’s also followed his own way outside of the jazz world, playing in various punk bands from an early age.  

But of course he grew up in a completely musical environment, and a mostly jazz environment, so when it came to the time to put this group together, there’s little for us to talk about in conceptual terms – we’re all broadly in agreement of how the music should go.

And the music we’re playing?

Well, in a way some of it is a throw-back to the Guilfoyle/Nielsen Trio days – lots of odd metre stuff, a love of intensity, extremes of tempo, virtuosity, rhythmic complexity, lots of swinging, standards and originals approached from a similar vantage point – a desire to burn!  In this group we’re consciously espousing the more physical aspects of contemporary jazz – there is very little ‘in the middle’ kind of stuff, it’s  all or nothing – no wishy-washy-ism allowed. It’s definitely connected to the old GNT way of playing, but it’s different too – Chris is a different guitarist to Mike Nielsen, and Conor and I  are further down the road of our own musical development since those heady days  of rhythmic discovery twenty years ago.

Of course on a personal level it’s great to be playing with my son – but it’s great on a musical level too, because Chris will really contribute something individual to the band and get something  different out of Conor and I. This will be the first of many trio excursions, as we’re determined to develop the music and the band over the coming months.

If you’re in Dublin tomorrow night (April 29^th) come on down to JJ’s and check it out. If you like committed, swinging, virtuosic and creative music, then this is for you.

Here’s a taste of what we’re going to get up to………..

A Week in India with George and Carlos

An account of our recent trip to Mumbai and Delhi and some thoughts thereon

Being awoken by the Muezzin’s call to prayer at 5.30 am suggests to my sleep-drugged mind that I’m in a different place. Waking up several hours later to see a hawk fly past my window in the hot sunlight confirms it. I’m in Mumbai, for the first time in fifteen years, with my good friends and great musicians George Kontrafouris and Carlos Ezequiel. This my sixth time in India, and it’s one of my favourite places on earth – the food, the people, the colour, the intensity, the sheer difference of it, make it an extraordinary place to visit, and I’m always glad to be back.

Apart from anything else, India always affords one the kind of good natured, yet baffling conversations that a seemingly simple request can generate. Like this morning when I went into the hotel coffee shop to get a coffee and something sweet.

Waiter: Good morning sir

Me: Good morning – could I have a coffee and something sweet – anything.

Waiter: A coffee sir?

Me: Yes, a coffee – and something sweet to go with it

Waiter: A sweet coffee sir?

Me: No, a coffee, and something like a biscuit or a cake or something

Waiter: Ah – a coffee with sugar sir!

Me: No, a coffee and something sweet to go with it

Waiter: Just a moment sir – (consulting a folder) what is your room number?

Me: 405

Waiter: But there is no booking for lunch for 405 sir

Me: I don’t want lunch, just a coffee and something sweet to go with it

Waiter: (With a baffled expression….) Just a moment sir.

He goes off and comes back with three more people, all consult in Hindi while looking at booking folder

2nd Waiter: You want lunch sir?

And off we go again…………

Eventually it gets sorted out and a coffee and some biscuits are produced, but every time I’ve been in India I get involved in these kinds of conversations regarding seemingly simple things, but in which both sided become increasingly baffled.

Having all made long journeys to get here, we take it easy on the first day, rest a lot and then go and see the Gateway of India, Mumbai’s famous monument and tourist trap, braving the touts, admiring the sea view and watching the throngs of happy Indians enjoying their Sunday off. The day finishes satisfactorily with a visit to a renowned North Indian restaurant for expensive, (by Indian standards), but delicious food.



The next day’s plan to head out on a trio excursion is stymied by George being sick. Not very sick but sick enough to make him a non-starter for the trip so Carlos and I go on a truncated version, starting with the extraordinary Mumbai Railway Station, built by the British and showing every sign of Victorian confidence in Queen and Empire. It’s a large building, and inside, a fascinating throng move endlessly through the station, each person intent on their own mission, but the whole looking like some giant organism, eddying and flowing to and fro. All main railways stations are hives of activity, but Indian ones are even more so – India Rail employs 1.3 million employees making them the one of the largest employers of human beings in the world. Whole support systems spring up around the stations, including families who live there. It’s an extraordinary scene – chaotic yet ordered.

To walk around the city is to be reminded again and again that the words ‘health and safety’ do not mean much to Indian society at large. Walking out on the street you can witness dozens of acts of hair-raising recklessness within minutes. Cars make U-turns with no warning, bicycles dash between buses and trucks, pedestrians walk straight into oncoming traffic, pillion passengers on motor scooters carry huge unsafe loads, families of 5 squeeze onto a Honda 50, people in cars balance two children on their knees in the front seat. To witness street life in Mumbai, (or pretty much any Indian city) is to watch a seething maelstrom of potential accidents.

And accidents DO happen – all the time. Yet the newspapers seem much more interested in the antics of teenagers, and the machinations of the Pakistanis than they do on the everyday carnage on the streets. For example, while I was in Mumbai the papers were full of an incident in which 6 teenagers crashed their car and one was killed. There followed four days of newspaper articles, much hand-wringing over the state of the nation’s youth, police promises to crackdown on bars selling alcohol etc. – yet in the same newspaper there was an article about the railways in which it was casually mentioned that 195 people had been killed on Mumbai’s railway network in January and February. 195 people killed in 8 weeks! That’s three per day…….



Over 1500 people were killed on Mumbai’s railways last year (mostly run over on the tracks), and yet the media were much more interested in this one car crash in which one person had been killed. Why? Probably because most of the people who died on the railways were poor and the teenagers were from the burgeoning middle class. But any society that accepts that level of carnage on its rail networks is one in which the idea of personal safety is not a priority.

I must admit that on one level I enjoy the madness on the streets – it’s street theatre writ large, you can stand on any street corner and see something amazing, startling and visibly arresting at any time. On the other hand there’s no doubt that this chaotic panorama that give Indian cities their unique visual impact, does come at a great cost to many people.

Carlos and I leave the railway station, take a wrong turn and instead of gazing at Mumbai’s Victorian architectural heritage, end up instead in a seething street market in Mohammed Ali Road, a Muslim area of the city. Although it presents us with another amazing tableau of Indian city life, the cacophony of car horns, dust, 35 degree heat, and sheer press of humanity drives us to seek air-conditioned shelter in a local restaurant where I have a refreshing dish of Khir (cold rice pudding), washed down with a Coke. We then take a taxi down to the Victorian section of the city, have a look around have a brief lunch and head back to the hotel. Fortunately George has now recovered and we eat in an excellent Hyderabadi restaurant attached to the hotel. Hyderabadi food should be much better known in the west than it is. In Europe and the US Indian restaurants are dominated by the same North Indian staples, which though good, don’t come close to representing the culinary diversity of India. Hyderabadi food is rich, but generally spicier than North Indian food, and with all kinds of different dishes which were developed during the Nizam period.

The next day, after a morning trip to Chowpatty Beach, we undertake the first performance at the Blue Frog. The Blue Frog is a very modern club that is breaking new musical ground in India – it’s very well equipped and has a lot of western music - mostly various offshoots of modern pop music, hip-hop, electronica etc. – 7 nights a week. Emmanuelle, the artistic director, once worked in Dublin for the Improvised Music Company, and I’d used that contact to make the initial connection. Emmanuelle made it clear to me at the beginning of our discussions that there was no point in playing acoustic jazz for a quiet listening audience there, since this audience didn’t really exist in India. So we arranged a programme of more funk oriented music which was still fun to play, but which we hoped would appeal more to local tastes.


(The Blue Frog, Mumbai)

The gear was fine, though Carlos had to re-skin the drums, and the sound guys were very good – they got a good sound very quickly, if only all sound engineers were like that……..


So, decent gear, good sound, appropriate music everything was set for a fun gig that night, but…………. Unfortunately the audience was terrible! There was a decent crowd of people in, but they had absolutely no interest in the music whatsoever, treated the whole event as a social evening, played with their iPhones, talked incessantly and some even stood with their backs to us. Each piece was greeted with lukewarm applause, some people seemed startled by the applause, and looked over their shoulders to see what was being applauded, as if surprised that the music wasn’t just coming from a hi-fi system.

I hadn’t expected much in the way of audience appreciation – I know jazz is an unknown quantity in India – but I must admit to feeling irritated by the audience. They’d paid a lot of money by Indian standards to come into the gig and no doubt felt they were cool and hip people by virtue of being in a place like the Blue Frog, but in the end their complete lack of appreciation for the music belied their self-bestowed hipness. I’m not saying that anyone who doesn’t like our music is unhip per se, but what bothered me wasn’t that they didn’t like the music, it was because they clearly had no interest in ANY music – it fulfilled that dreaded ‘lifestyle’ category, along with the iPhones and designer sunglasses and designer clothes. Anybody could have been up there on the stage – good or bad they would have all got the same reaction, whether they played well or not.

But we had fun playing for ourselves at least, and the Blue Frog people looked after us very well and that’s always nice. The next morning we set off for Delhi, for the second gig.


(At the Blue Frog, Delhi)

Delhi’s traffic seems almost worse than Mumbai’s , hard though that is to believe, and the hotel was on the edge of a busy road with traffic roaring past. But the hotel itself was very nice, rooms were great and the food in it was great. I really thought we’d found a gem of a place and made a mental note of it for future reference and trips to Delhi. I was later to be sadly disillusioned about the place, but for now we were very happy to be there.

Off to soundcheck at the Delhi branch of the Blue Frog, and it’s a similar looking place, with again very good equipment and nice and efficient people running the place. Carlos did a bit of surgery on the drums (as in taking the foam padding out of the bass drum so he could get a sound out of it), George figured out the idiosyncrasies of the keyboard, and I was very happy with a Markbass stack – I’d been using Markbass amps at home and to get one here was a great bonus.

The gig that night was a lot better, there were more musicians there and the audience was far more attentive, and consequently we played better too. We chatted afterwards to several musicians had a post-gig drink and went back to the hotel very satisfied with ourselves.


(George at the Red Fort)

We had a day off the next day and we filled it by paying a visit to the Red Fort – a Moghul Palace, still in great condition – a trip to Chandni Chowk, the extraordinary market in Old Delhi, and finally a visit to the Nizamuddin Dagar, a Sufi shrine.

The Red Fort was impressive, although I always find that once you’ve gaped at the huge and beautiful red sandstone walls, its a bit lifeless , and there’s not a lot more to see. Chandni Chowk on the other hand is bursting with things to see – cycle rickshaw guys carrying impossible loads, hawkers shouting and importuning, food sellers on the side of the street doing a roaring trade in Jallebis and Puris, shops selling everything from Pashminas to rifles, Sikh temples and mosque etc. etc. – all human life is there, and I always go to the Chowk every time I visit Delhi.

Here's a few minutes of footage from the Chowk, to give you a flavour of the scene......



We finish with a visit to the Nizamuddin Dargah, a famous shrine of a Sufi saint where the faithful come to pray and ask the saint to intercede on their behalf. On Thursdays, at sunset, the Qawallis – a group of singers and musicians who sing at these shrines, (the most famous of which would be the late great Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan) – sing their devotional songs beside the tomb of the saint and we were determined to see this. I’d seen Qawalli music before but always in concert halls, never in its proper setting.















(Qawalli Singers at the Nizamuddin Dargah)


The scene was extraordinary – thousands of people, many dressed in colourful garb, from many parts of the Muslim world, all worshipping at the shrine, but also buying food, buying offerings for the saint’s tomb, and surrounding the Qawalls as they sing their devotional songs. There’s a huge crush and constant movement. From a musical point of view (or at least my musical point of view) it’s a disappointment in that the noise of the crowd is so great, I can’t hear the musicians well at all. But although it’s disappointing musically, the scene itself is fantastic – it really felt like a privilege to see it.

Unfortunately the evening was to end on a sour note – I had my pocket picked on the way out and had my wallet taken…….. We were putting on our shoes and there was a small group of boys poking at us and begging, and it was in this melee that they managed to take the wallet. I realized immediately it was gone, but it was too late to do anything about it. We went back to the hotel to cancel my credit cards when we went back to the hotel to cancel the cards etc. the desk clerk wouldn't give me a key card to get back into my room until we paid him 300 rupees as a 'lost card charge'. The fact that I'd been robbed and had no money didn't make any difference to him, so I had to borrow the money just in order to get back into my room. That hotel is very nice, lovely rooms etc. - but I couldn't believe the lack of sympathy and customer service they showed in dealing with this. So beware this hotel – it looks good, but the management are a bunch of grasping sods. The name of the hotel is Saket27.

But although this was a bad way to end the trip, the whole thing was another great Indian adventure. India never lets you down – it’s always spectacular, and extreme, and intriguing, and annoying, and exasperating, and hilarious, and thought-provoking and many more things. This was my 6th time there – can’t wait for the 7th!


(The Last Supper!)

What is Your Music For?

In an interview I saw with him, the great Sufi singer Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, when asked how important the audience was, replied (and I’m paraphrasing here), that since he (Nusrat) needed people to share his music with, the audience was important. But, he added, he principally sang to ‘the singer inside myself – because if I feel he can hear me, then ultimately the listeners will too’

I thought of this wonderfully insightful comment recently when once again the whole question of who we’re playing for – the audience or ourselves – came up via an interview with Greg Osby where Greg was making the point that we need to stop playing for ourselves, (or for other musicians), and play for the audience. In the current economical and musical climate, and when we see Robert Glasper and Esperanza Spalding doing so well, it’s hardly surprising that these kinds of questions would rise to the surface again. Should we be playing for an elite few aficionados, or should we be tailoring our music in order for it to connect with more people?

For me, it depends on what you see your music as being for. If you see your music as functional – i.e. being used for a specific purpose which is not necessarily connected to the music itself – for example a wedding, or providing background music for a corporate event – then clearly you must tailor your music to suit the public. In all of these cases your music has a functional role, a predetermined slot into which it must be fitted. And as a musician you are being paid to fulfil that role, so the contract is clear: successfully fulfil the role and receive X amount of money in return.



The vast majority of the music played in the world is functional – and always has been. Down through the ages, the musician has played a functional role – Troubador, accompanist to rights of passage, dance music provider, herald of sporting events etc.If you see your music as functional, and your role as primarily functional, then you must tailor your music to suit the event and the audience.

There is however another reason to play music – to express an idea, or to express an aspect of the personality or emotions of the performer. This is a very different musical philosophy to that required of the functional musician. In this, the performer (or composer), rather than fulfilling a preordained role, is trying to express something of him or herself through the medium of music. In order to do this you need ultimately to play for yourself first and the audience second. Not through any selfishness or self-indulgence, but because it’s only by being honest with and to yourself, that you can truly be honest to and with the audience. If you don’t believe in your own music – and believe in it absolutely – then how can you expect anyone else to? You’ve got to absolutely believe in your music and do everything you can to express that belief in your music (such as developing the tools for expression through practice and technique), before presenting it to a listening public. If you’re not getting off on it, then why should anyone else?

Greg seems to suggest that from now on he will be tailoring his music to suit what he believes the audience will enjoy. But will he still believe in the music as deeply as he did before effecting this change? If so, fair enough. But again, if so, then why wouldn’t his own artistic instinct have taken him in this direction before now? My own feeling on Greg’s music is that he is a real individual, a distinctive voice, who has made a fantastic contribution to creative music over the past 25 years. I can’t help feeling that if, when he was starting out, and he’d thought of audience first, and his own instincts second, that we wouldn’t have heard the musical riches that he has given us. His expression of his own unique personality through music is what makes his contribution so valuable – not whether huge numbers of people liked it or not.



In the end, with this argument, we are dealing with the difference between putting art and creativity first, or functionality and accessibility first. And this is not about art = good and functionality = bad, it is just a recognition of the difference between the two. Each has their role to play in music. All I’m saying is that if your primary goal is to express yourself through music, then you’ve got to be honest about it. If what you love and do well is play funk or hip hop, then this is what you should be presenting to an audience. If what you love and do well is play contemporary improvised music, then this is what you should be presenting. Any deviation from honesty will never be as effective. Jazz musicians often think they’re such good players that they can play anything well – which is simply not true. There have been so many dreadful attempts by jazz musicians to play what they see as more commercial music, they think they can intellectually and technically reproduce what others do by instinct, but this approach is always doomed. The music is never good since it’s not really played with any conviction. The players don’t believe in the music itself, they just believe that audience will like it. Which is very insulting to the audience, since the players are playing down to them.

And if you’re playing creative music, but your concerns are primarily for the audience and what they might like, what do you really know about them? How can you go into a room and know what the expectations, history, demeanour, and attitude of 200 strangers is? How can you know what kind of day they’ve had? Whether they like your music, or hate your music? Whether they're there because they read about you in the paper, because their friends dragged them along, or because they know every recording you’ve ever made? You can’t know any of that stuff. All you can do is be honest – play the music YOU believe in to the best of your ability and try and share something with the audience.

I believe that if you’re a creative musician, and you start to tinker with your music to fulfil what you believe are the expectations of others, then there is no way of avoiding producing worse music than if you simply played what you believed in. If you want to be more popular then play functional music, but it’s misguided to think you can have one eye on your creativity and be counting the house with the other.......

Here’s Nusrat, doing what Parker did, what Armstrong did, what Coltrane did, what Miles did – singing to the singer inside himself



Addendum: Thinking about this again, there’s one other type of musician whose role is almost a genre of its own – being a classical musician. Interpreting the music of great composers, developing the huge technical skills required for this, and presenting it to a listening audience is a unique role for a musician. It’s not creative in the way that say Monk was creative, but at times the level of interpretation involved (on the part of soloists and conductors), does require a creative mind and approach, and musicians such as Gould, Horowitz, Menuhin, Richter and Perlman are among the greatest musicians in any genre.

Collective Consciousness - a true jazz virtue

The responses to my recent post about the lauding by critics of Robert Glasper’s recent music as a great leap forward, (both artistically and commercially), and in particular my questioning of whether what Glasper was doing was jazz at all, has got a discussion going on the hoary old question of ‘what is jazz’? While I’m reluctant to get into such a complex and ultimately unanswerable question, I have been thinking about one aspect in particular that I think is indispensible to what I would consider to be jazz – collective improvisation by the whole band.

This concept where the accompanist has an active rather than passive, or static role is one of the most unique features of jazz and is something I miss in the Glasper music under discussion, and also in Esperanza Spalding’s music. In general once you have a strong backbeat in action, it usually comes with a musical modus operandi where the soloist is in one area and the rhythm section is in another. The soloist solos over the groove, but the interchange between the soloist and accompanists is very limited – the collective improvisation and true interchange of ideas between soloist and rhythm section is missing. The clear 2 and 4 bar structures of much Hip Hop and Pop music also mitigates against fluidity and blurring of the lines of soloist and accompanist – each section being marked off with the drummer’s crash cymbal, the cymbal performing the role of cookie cutter in marking out the sections. The fluidity and improvised collective consciousness is missing.

This collective improvisation is very clear even in the earliest jazz recordings. The groups typical of those times involved themselves in what can best be described as multi-voiced counterpoint, each player weaving in and out and taking their turn in both soloing and accompaniment. Have a listen to Louis Armstrong’s Hot Five from 1927 – and in particular have a listen to Armstrong’s use of what later became known as metric modulation, at around 1.39.



In the 30s the concept of the rhythm section came into being and while the first traditional rhythm section line-ups (piano, bass, drums) were sometimes stiff and provided a rhythmic and harmonic cushion for the soloist rather than interacting with him (and in those days it nearly always was a him), jazz’s collective instinct soon reasserted itself and pianists and drummers found ways to both respond to and provide inspiration to the soloists. The soloists in turn could interact with the rhythm section, influencing how they performed and being involved in a true interchange between soloist and accompanist.

This became very well developed during the bebop period of the 1940s and early 50s – have a listen to Bird with Max Roach and Al Haig, at how both Roach and Haig are both responding to Parker, spurring him on, and how he in turn sparks responses in them. For example listen how at 1.53 the phrase Parker plays makes both Haig and Roach hit a strong and held accent on the second beat of that bar – true improvised interaction.




In the 50s and 60s this interchange between soloist and rhythm section developed in leaps and bounds – the Bill Evans trio defined a new way for the traditional piano trio to interact, Miles’ various quintets ramped up the interplay quotient until we reach arguably the apogee of this interconnected improvising concept – the quintet with Wayne Shorter, Herbie Hancock, Ron Carter, and Tony Williams. This group blurred the lines between accompanist and those being accompanied in a way that had never been seen before. The interaction between all five members of the group was of an extraordinarily high level, and they operated on a kind of philosophical telepathy. It wasn’t the kind of telepathy where everyone could predict what everyone else was going to do – that would have been very dull – but a telepathy in the way they seemed to understand what was required for the music at any given time, and that could include playing something really unexpected or something the diverged from the path the music was on at that time. Here they are in 1964 tearing through that old warhorse ‘Walkin’



To listen to the extraordinary creative organism that was that rhythm section is to hear something unique to jazz – the way they both respond to and drive the soloists is a wonder, it’s right at the top of the creative tree and this kind of interchange between the soloists and rhythm section is something you can only hear in jazz. And they weren’t the only ones doing this in the 60s – Coltrane’s group, in an albeit very different way – also played in a way in which the rhythm section were as important as the soloist at all times. McCoy, Garrison and Elvin were as indispensible to Coltrane’s music as Herbie, Ron and Tony were to Miles’. They don’t interact in the same way as Miles’ rhythm section but they are driving and shaping the music and it’s impossible to imagine this music without McCoy and Elvin in particular (I was never as big a fan as some people of the few recordings Roy Haynes made with the group) being as much a part of the identity of the band as Coltrane himself. Here they are (with Eric Dolphy and Reggie Workman on bass) in 1961 playing ‘Impressions’



What Miles, and Coltrane, and Evans, and Ornette and the members of their bands, and the members of many others, did was create a way of playing, a collective impulse in which each member had not only a role, but also a responsibility to add to the creative life of the band. And this way of thinking, of playing, of hearing, has stretched out to influence most of what became the mainstream of the music. It is unique to jazz – both soloist and accompanists have the freedom to lead and the willingness to be led, it is creative democracy at work, played in a spirit of equality and of parity.

For me, if you dispense with this interaction between rhythm section and soloist, the equality between accompanied and accompanist, you dispense with one of the vital jazz virtues. And as soon as you bring a backbeat into the equation, you’re immediately locking down the rhythm section, and removing the possibilities of interchange between front and back line. 10 years ago everyone was raving about Bugge Wesseltoft and Nils Petter Molvaer and saying this was the new way forward. But once again, like the Glasper music being lauded now, the preponderance of the backbeat robs the music of all of this organic interchange, eschews the collective improvisation tradition, and puts everyone in the band into clearly defined roles – soloist or accompanist, with little or no exchange between them.

Fortunately there are still great examples of the more collective way of playing out there, and for my money one of the greatest exponents of this way of playing, not just now, but of all time, is the current Wayne Shorter Quartet. Watch this stunning rendition of Joy Rider, and how it morphs, ebbs, flows, twists and turns under the collective guidance of the band, everyone taking responsibility, ready to move into the spotlight and back into the background as the music demands. This is JAZZ, with a capital J and several dozen Z’s after it. For me, apart from a few piano voicings, there’s really no similarity between what Glasper played on Letterman and what Wayne’s band do here. It’s not just the music that’s different, the whole improvising philosophy is different. In one you have the monolith of the backbeat, with some piano improvisations on top, with the other you have four musicians actively engaged in spontaneous creation (during which the backbeat makes an occasional appearance), using the medium of the composition as a launchpad. (I make no apologies for posting this clip twice in a short space of time - it's that good!)

One may argue about whether what Glasper is playing is jazz or not, but one thing’s for sure, what Wayne and Co are playing here is very definitely jazz!

Filesharing - The Reality

My recent diatribe against filesharing drew a mixed response, with some people, (nearly all musicians), being sympathetic to my stance, and others (nearly all not musicians), not. But for those who still think illegal filesharing is cool have a read of Ethan Iverson's post relating how Billy Hart's new album on ECM, which hasn't even been released yet, is already up on filesharing sites. What chance do we musicians have when we're faced with this kind of thing?

People might argue that the selling of music is finished, and a new way to distribute music must and will be found, but until such time as we the musicians agree to give our music away for free,the guys who upload this stuff are thieves and fences, and the people who download it are thieves.