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.
I first heard 'Jackie-ing' almost forty years ago when my father brought home a compilation double LP of Monk's Riverside recordings. At that time I had no technical knowledge or experience of music - I wasn't to become a player until much later and knew nothing about structure, form, jazz history or anything that would have given me an insight into Monk's music. Yet I was attracted to this music immediately. There was just something about it - a vibe, wittiness, swing, or more accurately, the combination of these elements - that spoke to me with an immediacy I don't think I'd experienced with my father's other jazz recordings. 'Jackie-ing' was a stand-out for me, even then. I listened to it so many times, loving it on an intuitive level, and I've been listening to it ever since. Like all perfect music, it never gets old, and this really is perfect music. Flawless.
Almost forty years later I began to think about what elements were involved in this track that made it so great, and when i began to investigate it in an analytical way, the music revealed even more facets which were always there, but were not so obvious. Like investigating any great music, (such as Bach or Bartok), an analysis of Jackie-ing reveals some of the reasons why it's so great, but still remains mysterious.
The recording was made in 1959, and featured Monk's long-time saxophonist Charlie Rouse, (who had only recently joined Monk at the time of this recording), the brilliant Thad Jones on the rarely heard cornet, who puts in an extraordinary performance on the whole album, and the stellar bass and drum team of Sam Jones and Art Taylor. It's an interesting recording in that it's one pf the few times that Monk recorded with the classic bebop line-up of trumpet (or cornet in this case), saxophone, piano, bass and drums.
This piece is classic Monk and in a way encompasses all the virtues that make him so unique - the slightly awry humour, the seemingly naive tune that catches you unawares, the incredible swing, the sonority and rhythmic complexity of the comping, and above all the primacy of the melody in determining the whole piece.
The Melody
The melody is an extraordinary affair - an almost banal tune that creates an anything but banal atmosphere. A seemingly simple 16 bar form, with a unison call/response melody that is largely made up of quarter notes, but which, through the use of displacement, catches the listener unawares, making you feel that you've somehow missed something. I remember when I was a kid, listening to this for the first time, thinking that perhaps the LP had skipped! This effect is achieved through the simple but brilliantly effective displacement of the main phrase of the theme. In measure 12, Monk starts the final phrase of the theme two beats earlier than you would expect, throwing everything out of kilter and effectively displacing the entire final theme phrase. This makes the theme finish two measures earlier than you would expect, leaving the drums to fill in the space at the end of the form that you instinctively feel shouldn't be there.
This displacement dominates the whole piece, as it infects the soloing throughout. It keeps the listener slightly confused all the time, because while the horns refer to this unexpected melodic twist in their solos, the bass and drums place the changes in the more traditional sixteen bar form. So everything feels like it's not quite lining up.
Monk also creates this dual world of off-kilter simplicity by the way he comps the melody, bringing the full range of his control of dissonance and understanding of piano sonority to bear on the melody. The placement of these clangorous chords is very strategic, and when you listen to the melody a few times you realise that there's nothing random or accidental about them. In measure four of the first head, Monk placed a very dissonant E natural in octaves alongside the humdrum F of the melody. This jarring effect is repeated at the same point in the second time through the head, but this time Monk uses an E and an Ab, (an octave and a major third above the E) to create the dissonance against the F. He does this in exactly the same way in the in-head and the out-head - clearly this order of dissonant chords was something that was planned in advance and is part of the composition rather than being something that was improvised on the spot.
The harmony of the tune is also quite mysterious. Mostly centering around Bb major (with a very prominent sharp 4th), with a few excursions to the territory of V chord, it strongly features the notes E and A, and yet Monk adds this mysterious Ab in his comping which one imagine would suggest a Bb7 chord (but which never appears). Again we are in the world of duality - a simple diatonic type Bb melody but with the major 7th and tritone clamouring for attention and an errant Ab buzzing around the theme.
Bass and Drums
(Sam Jones)
A huge amount of credit for the success of this track must go to Sam Jones and AT, whose contributions are judged to perfection. The connection between Jones' quarter note and AT's ride cymbal is sublime - both of them play forcefully yet neither of them are dogmatic. The beat is is clearly agreed between them, and they create what can best be described as a loping swing feel that both clears the ground yet is rooted to it. Jones note choices are always interesting, he never does the expected, yet he clearly outlines the changes. AT keeps the ride cymbal going throughout, there are no real fills, but the snare and bass drum keep up an insistent, percolating rhythmic counter-melody throughout. His wonderful 8-bar intro is a perfect example of what he does throughout the track - swings hard but with a melodic intelligence informing everything he does
Charlie Rouse
Rouse was never my favourite Monk tenor player. I always felt he stayed too long with Monk and all those live albums show someone who knows the music very well yet never really pushes it in the way that Coltrane and Rollins did. I also love Johnny Griffin on the live 5 Spot recordings. Griffin's playing with Monk is often maligned, but I think his playing on those recordings is inspired, the sheer amount of ideas he has and the technical ability he has to carry them out, is staggering. The usual criticism is that he plays too many notes, but if you're going to level that at Griffin you have to level the same charge at Trane!
But I'm getting off topic here - in this recording Rouse is absolutely at the top of his game, his tenure with Monk is just beginning and no doubt he was less jaded than he must have become in later years, playing the same tunes over and over again. His solo on 'Jackie-ing' is marvellous, starting off by brilliantly juggling the theme in different ways, paraphrasing it and using it, rather than the chords, to create his solo. Listen to the first chorus and Rouse's effortless reworking of the theme.
He goes on reworking it until he gradually moves away from it, at least in the sense of clear paraphrasing. By the end he's making more references to the underlying harmony and finishes with a wonderful phrase that doesn't feel like the kind of phrase or place, (the first bar of the form), where you would finish a solo. But despite the unorthodox last phrase, Thad picks it up in the 4th bar and uses it to launch his own solo - reminding me of an improvisational relay race where the baton is handed over effortlessly. Here's that moment:
Thad Jones
Thad Jones was hugely underrated. He was revered as a big band writer, but his abilities were pretty much all-encompassing and he was one of the most original trumpeters ever to play in jazz. Immediately identifiable, he was quirky yet swinging, completely in the tradition yet totally surprising. His note choices and use of thematic material to advance his solos showed how compositionally he thought, and in this regard he's up there with other thematic improvisers such as Sonny Rollins and Jim Hall. And, like Rollins, this made him an idea foil for Monk and his music. Never one to just run the changes, his ability to fully investigate the simplest motif and set off in pursuit of an idea, while never losing sight of where he was in the overall scheme of things, was unique among trumpeters and had few peers on any instrument.
Here he is simply brilliant. I never tire of his solo on this tune, it's remarkable for its sense of internal structure, respect for the atmosphere of the music, great swing and sometimes startling note choices. While not quoting the melody as closely as Rouse does, his solo still reflects the theme by the way he uses sometimes banal-seeming phrases which through brilliant rhythmic and timbral manipulation become startling. I always feel with his solo here, that though it faithfully follows the harmonic scheme of the piece, that if you took the solo out of the context of the tune, it would create its own internal logic, independent of the melody or chords of the tune from whence it came.
What's interesting harmonically is how he'll often skip notes in the scale and by doing so suggest a slightly Asian pentatonic quality to the line. The descending line he plays in this next clip, at face value conventional in the extreme, suggests a pentatonic scale consisting of Bb, D, E, G and A. This contradicts the conventionality of the phrase itself - more duality. And at the beginning of the next chorus he suggests a C major pentatonic, but heavily disguised by an up-rushing rhythmic shape that seems anxious to escape the confines of his cornet.
Monk himself helps Jones achieve this duality by virtue of his comping. One the things that I love about this track is that Monk comps throughout. These big slabs of bright dissonance appear throughout the piece in an amazing variety of rhythmic places. He is clearly engaged from start to finish and the way he ensures the primacy of the melody through comping that only obliquely refers to it, is an object lesson in both accompaniment and compositional thought through improvisation. And check out the way Monk picks up Thad's last phrase and uses its shape to start his solo - which puts him in a 3-beat cycle which is superimposed over the four of the bass and drums - something he resolves effortlessly........
Another feature of this track, and something that is common on a lot of Monk recordings, is that the solos don't follow the usual bebop dynamic curve, where each soloists starts quietly and then builds to a crescendo before handing over to the next guy. Here the dynamic remains the same throughout and the soloists could finish at any time. In fact this whole track is very far away from the bebop tradition where harmony rather than melody is the main instigator of improvisation. Here, the melody and the comping boss the whole piece and the soloists' prime concern is with melodic manipulation coming directly from the theme.
Here is the whole piece - a masterpiece in which you couldn't add a note, or subtract a note to or from anyone in the band without diminishing the overall piece.
There are very few perfect pieces in recorded jazz, but this definitely one of them
Whenever I see those ‘best CDs of 2012’ lists that appear
around this time of the year, it always reminds me of how much current music I don’t check
out and how behind the curve I often am when it comes to the music that’s hot
off the presses – or whatever the Mp3 equivalent of a press is.
There are a couple of reasons for my not being totally up to
date – I think as you get older, your desire to hear every single new note
coming out of the jazz scene becomes less strong. I’m still interested in new
things, but not to the point of obsessively checking the jazz media to see
what’s coming out, and who’s doing what. I used to be like that. Even in the
pre-internet days when information was harder to come by, I was still
absolutely up to date with what was going on.
I made it my business to know everything about everyone. I
was hungry for the new – new influences, new techniques, new compositions, new
genres. New was good. Now, although I’m still interested in new things, I’m also
very interested in deepening my listening to music that I know, trying to glean
more from that, explore its depths more. And I’m also interested in trying to
deepen my own music, but not necessarily by constantly adding new things to it.
Some of that is a byproduct of age – reflection is more a function of one's
later years than one's callow youth.
Another reason I’m not so obsessed with checking out
everything new is that I find myself a bit underwhelmed by a lot of the new
music that seems to get the critics’ juices flowing these days. I find that a lot of
the music that’s raved about – particularly music coming out of NY – is either
complexity for complexity’s sake, or virtuoso mainstream music – music that
idolizes soloists, (this is particularly true of the current crop of guitarists),
for the speed they can play at, but ignores the fact that their music is
essentially doing the same thing, (soloist with rhythm section, and solo
following solo), as has been done for the past 60 years.
But every now and then I go on a trawl of recent music to
see what I can find, and last week I hit pay dirt – three great recordings, all
recently recorded, all quite different and yet all showing both personality and
originality – particularly in composition.
All three recordings are connected in some way – all three
feature alto saxophone and piano, two of the recordings share the same pianist,
and two of them share the same altoist.
Dave Binney
I should start with the oldest CD - Dave Binney's 'Third Occasion' which is not the prolific Binney's newest recording, (which I think might be the wonderful 'Graylen Epicenter', another recording which I've enjoyed very much). 'Third Occasion' is from 2009, but features many of the qualities that make Dave an important figure on the contemporary jazz scene. Although he's a virtuoso player in every sense of the word, his compositions are not just vehicles for his playing, but also form a vital part of what is clearly an overall musical concept rather than an instrumentally driven ethos. His music is not easy to play and often features complex rhythmic and harmonic structures, but he has a unique leaning, (in this very contemporary jazz setting), towards melodic hooks in his pieces that not only serve the music well, but are deeply attractive in their own right.
He has an ability to use simplicity to great effect - I'm always surprised by how much unison melodic writing there is in his pieces, even when there's more than one horn. Ones instinct when you've more than one melody instrument is to write contrapuntal lines, but Binney often eschews that and goes for repeated unison hooks that are almost anthemic at times.
Dave also has a great sense of the right collaborators for his music, and here with Craig Taborn, Scott Colley and Brian Blade he has chosen musicians which, like Dave, are all virtuosos but play for the good of, and from the inspiration of the music. This is not a playing by rote/soloist with rhythm section recording, it's a true collective, all playing for the good of the music and stepping out to make individual statements when called upon. I find Craig Taborn to be a particularly inspired choice as the pianist on this recording - he is a true individualist and his playing has a crystalline brilliance that really works well with the alto, creating a transparent sonority in the ensemble and brilliantly original solos. Check out "Squares and Palaces' as a great example of all the things I've mentioned. Michael Formanek
Taborn's presence on the second recording I'd like to mention, Micheal Formanek's 'Small Places', also contributes in no small measure to the success of the music. Here Taborn's originality and control of sonority is captured beautifully by the ECM recording. Taborn is a true original, he is clearly a contemporary jazz pianist, yet he borrows none of the clothing of the usual modern jazz piano suspects - he is resolutely his own man, unpredictable and endlessly creative. He is getting a bit more credit for his brilliance these days, but I still think he is very underrated.
As is Michael Formanek. A real musician's musician and one of those 'super bassists' (like Drew Gress and John Hebert), who can really play anything, from very straight ahead to complex rhythmic music or completely open improvisation. But as if his versatility as a bassist wasn't enough, Formanek has always been a formidable composer. I've been listening to an old recording of his, 'Wide Open Spaces', for over 20 years. Small Places is his most recent album and again features wonderful writing - writing that suits the ensemble so well and sets them up for improvising. Again there is that crystalline alto with piano sound that I also remarked upon in Binney's recording, and some of this probably has to do with Taborn being on hand again. And once more the ECM recording with its molto-reverb policy, suits the music very well. Again this is music of complexity, and although it doesn't have the more conventionally melodic hooks of the Binney recording, it is often deeply attractive music, with an astringent lyricism. As it is with Dave's recording, there is never a dull moment here, since all of the players - Formanek, Taborn, Tim Berne and Gerald Cleaver - are great soloists and when you combine this with the very original writing, the interest never flags for a moment.
To hear what I'm talking about, have a listen here:
Tim Berne
Part of the fascination of Michael Formanek's album is hearing the very unique Tim Berne negotiating the harmonic landscapes of Formanek's music. Berne is a true original, with a sound all his own, and he has created music that is almost genre-specific to himself. He has almost created his own genre - something that only a very few can claim to have done. His playing owes almost nothing to the jazz mainstream, yet is clearly part of the jazz tradition. His music is acerbic, very rhythmic and has a concern with sonority that is all his own. I've been an admirer for along time and was looking forward to hearing this new band. What I wasn't expecting was how different this recording would be to what I'd known of Tim's music up to this point.
In a career liberally studded with unique recordings, this still qualifies as being pretty unique. It's almost like a chamber music recording - the instrumentation of alto, clarinet (Oscar Noriega), piano (Matt Mitchell), and drums/percussion (Ches Smith), gives it a lightness of sonority and clarity that took me completely by surprise. When I think of Tim's music I usually associate it with density and the gnarlier end of the spectrum when it comes to timbre. Here so much of the music has a transparency that is both refreshing and delightful. There's a brightness about the music that I believe is unprecedented in Tim's recorded output. There were hints of it in the past - I first noticed it on the coda to one piece on 'Science Friction' - but here it's given full reign and I've been listening to this music constantly since I bought this, amazed over and over by the sound of the music as well as the content.
What really strikes me about this recording is how European it sounds. I don't mean that as a criticism, or as a means of praise, just an observation. So much of this music has echoes of European art music in it. If someone had played me some of this music as a blindfold test, I would definitely have ventured that they were European musicians. At least up to the point where Tim took a solo - that would have been a give-away. As would the opening of 'Scanners' Both that composition (and Tim's soloing), are completely Berne-esque, and there's no mistaking the author of both alto sound and music. But there are other sections where the music has such overtones of European late 20th century art music, and also it has to be said, of European contemporary jazz of a certain stripe, (I'm not citing that as an influence, it probably just shows a common interest in similar musical idioms), that one could be forgiven for believing these musicians to be from the old rather than the new world.
But that observation aside, I must say I think this music is extraordinary. So original - there's a passage at around 5.25 of 'Simple City' that has a mesmerising harmonisation of the melody line - magical is not too strong a word to describe it. I love the ECM recording effect on Tim's sound too - he does have a very brawny sound and the ECM reverb takes some of the edge off that, which I think suits this music very well. I really regret missing the band when they were in Dublin last year - I hope to get to hear this amazing music live sometime. If only all through-composed contemporary music was as good as this..........
Three great musicians, three great bands, three great albums - although I don't follow everything that's going on as assiduously as I used to, it's so great and inspiring to come across wonderful music like this. Jazz is dead? Bullshit!
Here's Dave Binney with Taborn, Colley and Blade, live in Paris
A friend of mine told me that at a recent jazz workshop, a very well known drummer said to him (concerning drum students attending the workshop), 'Man, all these guys can really play - and they all sound terrible!' A very funny remark, but with a huge truth contained inside it. As contemporary jazz grows ever more complex - especially in the field of rhythm - and as jazz schools raise the technical level of students to unprecedented heights, there is no doubt in my mind that we are often guilty of ignoring one of the most important elements of all music - its rhythmic feel.
By 'feel' in this context, I don't mean a generic feel as in 'swing feel' or 'Brazilian feel' or something like that, I mean the groove or the rhythmic centering of the music. I notice more and more that the idea of getting a good rhythmic feel - as opposed to playing accurately and in time no matter what the time signature - seems to be further and further down the agenda, if it's on the agenda at all. But the feel of music is incredibly important - it's arguably the most important thing, since it evokes an immediate response from the listener. And most listeners - which is something we musicians often forget - are not players. They're civilians, they're not in the jazz army and they don't care about the complexity (or lack of complexity) of music. They're there to listen and to experience, not to analyse. Most people couldn't care less whether you play in 15/8 and superimpose a 3 feel on top of that. That's the kind of detail that is only of interest to musicians.
Not that I've anything against complexity per se - I've spent a lot of my professional life playing complex music and spent countless hours trying to figure out how to do it and get better at it. I enjoy both simple music and complex music - to me it makes no difference what means you use to get to your message. As long as you actually have a message that is more than just the technique of the music. And there's the rub - I think there's a lot of music around that is solely about the techniques being used by the players, rather than having an overarching intent that is beyond the technique.
Of course this is an argument that has gone on forever in jazz - every generation of jazz musicians has accused the next generation of sacrificing feeling on the altar of technique. There's an element of circling the wagons about this kind of thinking, of protecting something - real or imagined - from the attacks of the avant garde. But this is not really where I'm coming from with this - it's more about the idea that no matter what form of rhythmic expression you choose, that it should feel good!
Feel good? What does that mean? Couldn't it be said to be subjective? Well, ultimately yes. But I do think the idea of something feeling good is not as abstract a concept as it might sound. What I mean by this is that the rhythm of the music should feel as if its coming from a central place, that it should have a weight, an internal energy a kind of groove template from which the music ultimately emanates. Without this central core the music just won't feel good - it may have a lot of detail to it, it may be technically adept and accurately in time, but it won't have that spark, that energy that carries the internal message of the music and that connects it to a tradition of some kind.
This word tradition is important here. Most rhythmic music is, or was at one time, connected to dance. Dance needs a rhythmic core that gives the fundamental energy to the dancers and around which all the music happens. There are so many examples of this - Afro-Cuban music, Belly Dance, Samba, Indian classical music, and of course at one point, jazz.
Jazz moved away from dance a long time ago, and indeed it's hard to make any case for jazz as a contemporary dance music after 1950, but the fact that jazz once was associated with dance has meant that the rhythmic impulse of jazz always had a central core - a groove - around which the music moved, and from which the music emanated, no matter how active and complex the music that whirled around this central core was. Despite jazz losing its direct connection to dance, and the rhythmic physicality of playing for dancers, the ghost of the the dance has always been there. This is the 'feel' which I'm talking about when I say that the music should feel good.
It seems to me now that this connection between feel and the music is often lost. Perhaps in chronological terms, the music has moved so far away from its dance origins that the physicality of the rhythm of jazz is something that is being forgotten or buried under the detail of an often complex music. Which would not just be a pity, but would also be dangerous waters for the music to sail into. Jazz has a hard time in the market place these days (or what remains of the market place...), and the permanent removal of a rhythmic feel good factor, would be a tragic loss for the music.
Because this rhythmic feel good factor is part of the music's history and tradition. The ingenious rhythmic placement of Armstrong's lines, Basie's rhythm section, Bird's rhythmic power, Blakey and the Messengers, Miles phrasing, Miles' various rhythm sections, the Coltrane Quartet, Monk, the Mahavishnu Orchestra, Headhunters, Weather Report, Wynton's first quintet, Steve Coleman and Five Elements, Wayne Shorter's current quartet, Brad Mehldau. The music of all of these players and bands, despite their often widely different styles and different eras from which they come, exhibit the rhythmic impulse that I'm talking about - a connection to groove and rhythmic physicality around which the rest of their music is formed.
I'm missing that rhythmic and groove impulse in a lot of the music I'm hearing recently. Drummers are hyper-active but often without a foundation - all that clattering piccolo snare drum stuff, fill after fill without any room for an underlying groove to make its presence felt. Bassists playing without connecting with the drummer, pianists and guitarists comping without rhythmically interacting with either bassist or drummer... Soloists with lots of notes but not really locking into the rhythm and the time. Generic grooves played without any understanding of the tradition and impulse from which they originated.
Musicians need to check out the fundamentals of the music and the history of the music. Anyone serious about playing jazz must study the rhythm and the rhythmic impulse of the music, and in particular they should study the feel of the music. Listen to this aspect of the music of the great players past and present and try and identify the rhythmic DNA that circulates through all of their music, giving it its rhythmic strength and feelgood factor. To all serious musicians - don't just ask yourself how your music sounds - how does it feel?
Here are three examples of rhythmically powerful pieces of music, all very different, all of which have a great rhythmic feel at the core of the music.
Wayne Shorter's Quartet - abstract and impressionistic yet rooted
Here's Herbie Hancock, Dave Holland and Jack DeJohnette swinging mightily while playing both complex harmony and rhythm
Steve Coleman and 5 Elements connecting complex harmony with interlocking odd metre funk
I just read a review of an album in which the critic described the rhythm section's playing as 'tasteful' I really hate when critics use that description of someone's playing, because to me it denotes several things.
First of all, when the word tasteful is used to describe the playing of the rhythm section, either individually or collectively, it tells me that the writer probably has no idea what to say about the them, and probably doesn't have enough knowledge of the intricacies of rhythm section playing to venture anything other than this bland phrase. It's a cop-out on the writer's part - a one-size-fits-all phrase to use when you've no idea how to differentiate the playing of one rhythm section player from another. It also implies an under-appreciation of how important the rhythm section is - the kind of writer who will apply the 'tasteful' soubriquet to the rhythm section will usually have written extensively about the soloists in previous paragraphs and then, feeling they have to say something about the rhythm section, will describe their playing as tasteful. It's the same kind of lazy writing that trots out cliches like 'getting up close and personal with......' to describe an interview with someone.
If the rhythm section have had the good manners not to distract the writer from listening to the soloists, whom (ahem), after all are the most important members of any group, the critic will describe them as tasteful. Which brings me to my second point.
'Tasteful' can often be freely substituted by the word bland..... The kind of rhythm sections that are described as tasteful often are units that plod along, playing the right changes, keeping the time in an efficient way, doing nothing to frighten the horses. They have no identity and fulfill a function - they don't get in the way. Like good children, they are seen and not heard. Anonymous. In short, they are a terrible rhythm section. A rhythm section should always be adding to the music, not staying out of the way of it. This doesn't meant that they have to be incredibly active all the time in terms of amount of notes played (it depends on the context), but it does mean that whatever they're doing should be vital to the sound of the band, to the energy of the rhythm, to the forward motion of the music. It should be vital, not tasteful.
If a critic says that a rhythm section is 'tasteful' it usually means one of three things: 1) The critic has no idea about rhythm sections, how they work, or what to say about them. 2) The critic likes his or her rhythm sections to be of the 'seen and not heard/servant of soloists/Bebopper's Labourer kind. Or 3) The rhythm section is crap.
A final point in this mini-rant. What does 'tasteful' even mean in this context? Does it mean played with good taste? A subjective judgement if ever there was one...... Does it mean polite and well mannered? Or does it mean, appropriate to the music? For my money, the latter is the true definition of tastefulness. If a musician is playing in a way that is apposite to the requirements of the music he or she is being tasteful. Elvin Jones, rampaging through 'Transition' with Coltrane is the epitome of tasteful playing. Ron Carter, rhythmically and harmonically nudging and bossing Miles' band is tastefulness personified. Monk's comping behind Coltrane is an object lesson in good taste. Good taste is about doing the right thing in any musical situation, it is not necessarily only about being polite and self-effacing.
Poor Bill Evans is always burdened with that cliche by critics who see things in a very simplistic way. Because his music is lyrical and often on the quieter end of the dynamic spectrum, his playing is often thought to be 'tasteful' in the same way that a restaurant pianist's playing could be described as being tasteful. Quiet, not getting in the way, not drawing attention to itself. Well mannered. This does such a disservice to the depth and complexity of Evans' playing. Whenever I see a critic describe Evans' music as tasteful, I just can't take anything else they say seriously. This is a surface listener, a lazy writer, someone who really doesn't have the equipment to talk about the music in any depth.
If you are a jazz writer, please don't use this vapid cliche when describing someone's playing - do a bit of research instead, listen a little harder, tell us something worth knowing about the music you're describing instead of giving us some bland bromide that fulfills your word count but means nothing.
In my opinion, describing someone's playing as tasteful is in the worst possible taste..........
In October and November of this year I took part in a two-legged tour with the great Finnish alto player Pekka Pylkkanen and as part of his Global Unit group. The first part of the tour took place in France and Switzerland, the second leg in Japan. I've played in this group in the past and it's always fun, being made up of great musicians from different parts of the world (hence the name). For the European leg the other musicians, apart from Pekka and myself, were the American pianist Greg Burk and the Brazilian drummer Carlos Ezequiel. Both wonderful musicians, I've played with them both before in Pekka's group, and with Carlos in several other configurations, including a memorable trip to India earlier this year.
My trip began as so many do, with having to get up at 4am (bleh.....) to catch the red-eye to Geneva, and from there to Basel where we were playing two nights at a wonderful club, The Bird's Eye. We were also going to do some live recording, some recording during the day, and combine that with a studio recording at the end of the week in France. A lot of people don't realise what musicians have to do on the road sometimes - in this case, we had four musicians who have come from four different countries, travelled long distances, went straight into rehearsal, put two sets of music together in 90 minutes, soundchecked, ate quickly and then played two sets of music. And some people think being on the road is glamorous!
Considering how little time we had and how tired he were, we played some very good music - a mixture of originals by Pekka, Carlos, Greg and I, and a few arrangements of jazz standards. But the extremely long day kicked in, and I definitely hit the wall half way through the second set - got totally exhausted and had to dig deep to keep my concentration and play competently at least for the last few tunes.
But a good night's rest will do wonders, and the next night was much better - the band sounded better and we were starting to get a real grip on the music. The result of getting to know your material in jazz is always one of creating a feeling of both tightness and looseness - tightness in that the written and composed material is played better, and looseness in the sense of a feeling of freedom within the material that comes from having confidence in knowing that material well. We got into some good energy and the audience responded warmly - it all boded well for the next day's recording.
And the recording the next day was indeed a good one - it was nice to record on stage rather than in the often sterile environment of the studio. And since we'd played the music the previous two nights we had the cushion of both being comfortable with the material and the recording environment, which is a real bonus. We recorded pretty much all our material and then recorded a bunch of improvised short vignettes - pieces improvised on the spot, each one started by a different member of the band. I've always liked doing this - these pieces can often reveal aspects of the band that are not evident in the written material. I haven't listened back to the material yet, but I'm looking forward to hearing these pieces - I think we did some really nice ones!
Recording finished, we headed to Basel airport (which must be the only airport in the world that straddles the border of two countries......), hired a car and drove into France. We headed for Metz to stay overnight, and on the drive there got into some lengthy discussions of politics and economics and the current political/financial situation. Jazz musicians should really record these on-the-road conversations - on this trip we pretty much solved all the world's problems - who needs politicians and economists when you have a jazz quartet to sort everything out!?
(Metz Cathedral)
We had some time off the next morning before heading to Fontainebleu, so Greg and I took a look around Metz, an interesting town that shows both German and French influences. The Cathedral is renowned and when you step inside you can see why - it's a vast Gothic construct with a soaring ceiling and featuring beautiful stained glass windows by Chagall. The size of it and the fact that people have prayed there since the 5th Century gives even an atheist like me an idea of the power religion has had on the minds of people over the centuries.
And the power that good food has on me in France should not be underestimated either - having basked in the glory of Medieval religion, it was time for Greg and I to bask in the glory of local French food, at a local market and to eat a simple but great lunch at a famous soup counter in the market, beside the cathedral. I partook in the delicacy of Boudin Noir with apples (an acquired taste perhaps, but one I acquired a long time ago, raised as I was on Black Pudding - the irish equivalent), while Greg had some fantastic slow-baked lamb. French food is often thought of as fancy and chef-y, but regional French food tends to be both simple and delicious.
And the food theme continued as we headed off for Fontainebleu to play the next gig - at a jazz club that is owned by and is an annexe to a Moroccan restaurant. The R-Jazz Club is a cosy little club and the owner and his family are lovely people - genuine enthusiasts who love the music and their club. It was really a pleasure to play for them, and also a pleasure to eat the wonderful food they provided for us before and after the gig - all jazz club gigs should be like this!
(Gourmet Market - Milly La-Foret)
We stayed the night at a small hotel in the nearby town of Milly La-Foret, a small quiet place that sports a gourmet market (more food!) on Saturday mornings. All kinds of artisan products were on display and the market demonstrated again the importance the French place on food - if only all countries were the same in this regard.......
And then it was off to another small town - Dammarie-Lès-Lys
(Pekka and Carlos at the studio)
We were recording in a studio in the engineer’s home – I
like these kinds of environments, again they’re a bit different to the airless
bunkers that often constitute studios these days. The engineer’s house was in a
small town in the countryside and the whole scene was pleasant and conducive to
relaxed but concentrated work. Where else but France could you take a break and
have a lunch of Confit Duck in a local restaurant? We got all the tracks
recorded that we hadn’t managed to get to in Basel, and we re-recorded a couple
of others, and then we headed for Dammarie-Lès-Lys where we would be staying
for the next few nights.
Dammerie is close to Paris, and we had a day off the next
day so it was a foregone conclusion that we would head into town at some point. And
what a perfect day for a trip to Paris it was! A beautiful late Autumn day,
bright sunshine – it was almost like being on the film set of one of those Hymn-to-Paris movies that Woody Allen makes. Carlos and Greg went in earlier
and went around the Louvre, (Carlos commented that his smile is more mysterious
than that of La Giaconda – see below and decide for yourself….), Pekka and I
headed in during the late afternoon and we met up with the guys, walked around in the sunshine
along the Seine, and had a delicious and very good value dinner in a great
traditional Bistro, before heading back to our hotel in Dammarie. Sometimes being a
musician IS glamorous! Or at least lots of fun………
(Carlos enters a smiling competition with the Mona Lisa)
The reason we were in Dammerie was because of its proximity to
CMDL – the school of Didier Lockwood, where we did a combined workshop and
concert performance. The school is in a lovely setting and has a student body
of around 100, which is a perfect size in my opinion – big enough to be
interesting, but not too big to become impersonal. I got together with the
bassists, and we discussed various bass related issues, but also musical issues
in the wider sense. When you get together with a group of students whom you
haven’t met before, and you only have an hour, it’s hard to get into much
concrete information, since by the time you know what it is they wish to work
on with you, the time is almost up. But they were a very receptive group, we
managed to get into some interesting stuff, and a good time was had by all.
After the workshop we played a concert for the students for
about an hour – really fun, because at this point we really knew the music and
were able to get into it immediately and explore it more fully at the same
time. This was our last gig on this leg of the tour, so it had the usual
bittersweet flavor that these last gigs on tours always have.
To give you an idea of some of the music we played, here's a recording of a piece of mine called 'Traditional', recorded live at the Bird's Eye club on the second night of the tour.
(Greg, Pekka, Carlos and I, outside the Bird's Eye Club in Basel)
So that was that – some travelling, lots of music, lots of
new music recorded, and lots of good food! I left the next morning to go back
to Dublin to change my clothes re-pack my bags, and head off for the second leg
of the tour – Japan!
There’s been a lot of judging or discussions of judging in
the online jazz world recently.
Ethan Iverson started one of the balls rolling with his
questioning of the value and artistic merit of jazz competitions. This was
prompted by the announcement of the impending Thelonious Monk competition,
which this year focused on drums. The competition was subsequently won byJamison Ross. People weighed in with varied
opinions which ranged from outright support to outright opposition.
Then in another dust-up, the very strange jazz critic Brent
Black launched an attack on George Colligan, ludicrously dismissing him as
‘second rate’. Needless to say this triggered an outpouring of scorn for
Black’s opinion, and Black did himself no favours with a bitter, mean-spirited
and puzzling tirade directed at Colligan’s gracious response.
And finally the Canadian pianistAndrew Boniwell responded to Peter Hum’s review of his new
recording with what might be best described as icy fury.
All of which made me think about this whole issue of our
being judged by others, and indeed judging others ourselves. To what extent
does the judgment of critics have an effect on musicians? What effect does
winning a competition have? Or what effect does losing a competition have?
Seventeen years ago I was a competition winner myself - the 1996 Julius Hemphill
Composition Competition for this piece:
I must say I didn’t benefit immediately
from winning, though it has to be said that competition was very small compared
to the Monk Competition. Nor was it a stressful event for me, since there was
no performance element involved, and no jury to look at out of the corner of my
eye as I played. What winning did do for me was to give me a lot of confidence
as a composer, and there’s no doubt that this kind of public approval of your
work can have a very positive effect on you. On the other hand, If I hadn’t won
it I don’t think I’d have been discouraged – I didn’t expect to win, and no-one
was more surprised than me when I did.
But Ethan’s main point was whether such a competition would
encourage individuality, or whether it would have the opposite effect,
rewarding whoever was closest to the mainstream. The question is sometimes asked whether Monk could have even got into the final of the competition named after him? There's no doubt that if you have a panel of six judges, the winner will have to not only impress as many of them as possible, but also do whatever he or she can to alienate as few of them as possible. The more personal and idiosyncratic a performer is, the more likely they are to polarize the jury. There have been many famous cases of this in the classical world, the most celebrated of these being the Chopin competition of 1980 where Ivo Pogorelich, (a performer for whom the word idiosyncratic could have been coined), was eliminated in the third round, despite Martha Argerich calling him a genius. I have a feeling that a performer like Monk - a guy whose playing very much flew in the face of the prevailing pianistic orthodoxy of the day - would have had an equally polarizing effect on a jazz piano jury......
There's no doubt that in these difficult days for jazz musicians, anything that can help you to raise your profile is welcome, and winning something like the Monk competition is about as high-profile as it gets for jazz competitions. No doubt winning this competition will help Jamison Ross, but looking at his profile and bio, it's clear that he was already on his way - as were the 2nd and 3rd prizewinners, which confirms for me what I've believed for a long time - jazz is a meritocracy and always has been.
It's also a marathon rather than a sprint, and though something like winning a competition or getting a gig with a famous bandleader will definitely help, in the end it's the work you produce over a long period of time that will ultimately decide whether you succeed or fail. There are many examples of players who got a lot of press and attention at one time, maybe even a major record deal, and yet are hardly remembered these days. And I believe that this is because they ultimately didn't have something that could be sustained over a long period of time. They undoubtedly had some aspect of their music that was attractive for a while, (at least to the jazz media), but in the final shake-up it wasn't sustainable and didn't develop, and their star waned as a consequence of that. Jazz is quite Darwinistic in this sense and I think this is a good thing.
Jazz musicians have to deal with a lot of unfairness - the dice is loaded against them in so many ways - but within the jazz community I think, over a period of time, musicians achieve the status they deserve. I believe that if you are a really great player, and you have something original and personal to offer, then sooner or later you will get recognition for that.
Often you hear a story about this or that guy being a great player but never getting recognition, but as a general rule I don't buy it. If there's a truly great player who's not working, there's usually a reason for it - they're alcoholics, or junkies, or socially impossible, or difficult to deal with, or completely flaky, or recluses, or cripplingly shy, or something along those lines. I've yet to meet a truly great player who takes care of business but who's sitting at home forlornly waiting for the phone to ring........
Maybe New York is an exception to that rule, in that there are just too many musicians there, so someone can indeed be a great player but struggle to get recognition among the jostling crowds of other great players. But NY is different - a once a year gig at Small's under your own name and a 'tour' of Europe consisting of 6 gigs counts as being a success for a lot of people there.
But even in NY you can make a career for yourself if you're talented enough and have something to offer over the long term. In this way jazz hasn't changed - ultimately what's going to decide your status is your own playing. If you're a great player, you're immune from the slings and arrows of outrageous critics like Brent Black. His attack on George Colligan is toothless because Colligan's career demonstrates more than words ever can, the stupidity of Black's opinions. Someone who has played with a who's-who of contemporary jazz, including being a current band member of Jack DeJohnette's band has the ultimate imprimatur of the jazz world. His work and success is the the proof of his quality - this is the final arbiter of his quality and nothing that Brent Black can say can alter that.
And jazz has always been like that and even though the jam sessions, that for many years were the proving grounds of aspirant jazz musicians, have ceded their Gladiatorial position as arbiters of musical ability, it's still true to say that the opinion of your peers is the one that is most important. Play well and you will eventually get the attention of established players, play with them and you will get the attention of the public and the media. I've lost count of how many times I first heard hitherto unknown (at least to me), great players when I went to see a band led by someone of real status - Mulgrew Miller with Woody Shaw, Terence Blanchard with Art Blakey, Gabriele Mirabassi with Rabih-Abou Khalil etc.
Yes it's nice to get a good review, yes it would be useful to be on the cover of Downbeat, yes it would be very helpful to win a major jazz competition. But ultimately what a jazz musician needs in order to succeed over the long term is the approval and admiration of his or her peers. Jazz has always been a meritocracy and it still is one. Competitions and critics may come and go, and you (or media admirers of yours) may talk a good game, but eventually you're going to have to shut up and show everyone the music. And thank heavens for that.
The photo on the cover of my new CD 'Renaissance Man' is of my father Brendan, taken in about 1950, it shows him in a very relaxed moment, complete with cigarette and cup of tea, and is one of my favourite photographs of him
Renaissance Man is written in memory of my father and its genesis
goes back a long way in that if it hadn’t been for my father it’s
doubtful if I, or my brother Conor, who plays drums on this recording,
would be involved with music in the way that we are today.
My
father passed away at the age of forty eight, when I was seventeen, and
he was an extraordinary character. He wasn’t a musician but he was an
absolute devotee of music, with very specific tastes – classical music
from 1880 onwards, and jazz from 1945 onwards. So we were raised with
the music of Bartok, Stravinsky, Ravel, Shostakovitch and Prokofiev, and
the music of Charlie Parker, Miles Davis, Thelonious Monk, and Errol
Garner. As children, (there were eight of us!), he would play games with
us where we would have to identify the instruments of the orchestra, or
identify a particular soloist in a jazz piece. We didn’t realize it,
but he was giving us a fantastic aural musical education, and for some
of us he was setting the course of our future careers in music.
This
was 1960s Ireland, a conservative, culturally isolated place, so our
experience of all this great modern music was pretty unique for a child
of those times. And when you’re a child, the music you hear is the music
you hear – nobody told us that ‘The Rite of Spring’ was ‘difficult’
music, or the music of Bartok or Miles – to us it was just our everyday
music. And it wasn’t just in music that my father played the role of
cultural evangelist, he was also interested in literature, film and the
theatre and introduced us to everything from the Marx Brothers to Lewis
Carroll, from ’Twelve Angry Men’, to ‘Three Men in A Boat’. Thanks to
him we had a thorough cultural education at a time, and place when
something like that was very hard to come by.
I wrote this piece
on the 30th anniversary of his passing and I decided to write a piece
for jazz guitar trio and string quartet – two classic ensembles of their
respective genres that would be the perfect vehicle for what I wanted
to express. In choosing the musicians to play the piece it was a foregone conclusion that my brother Conor would play drums on the project, for obvious familial reasons as well as the fact that we'd played together for over 20 years.
(John, Conor and I at the rehearsal for the 1st performance of the music)
In choosing the guitarist for the piece, I wanted someone who could not just play the instrument well, but play in many different emotional climates - which is not a common quality in many players, and certainly is rare in young players. So I asked John Abercrombie to do it - we'd worked together several times previously and I had studied with him in Banff in the mid-80s, so we knew each other on both a personal and musical level. John is of course one of the great contemporary guitarists with a unique approach that is much more multi-faceted than most guitarists, or indeed musicians. John has the ability to play completely sparsely and quietly, or to completely burn. he also has a unique harmonic approach and sound and is a true improvisor. His sensitivity to the music and what I was trying to do with it was perfect for this project and he played the music beautifully.
In choosing the string quartet, I knew I needed really good players - in writing the piece I wanted to represent my father's love of modern classical music and I definitely didn't want a typical jazz 'string pad' effect. The writing for the quartet is very involved and very challenging at times, and Ioana, Cliodhna, Cian and Kate really did an amazing job on the music, I couldn't have asked for more.
(Rehearsing the piece at the 1st performance in 2005)
The piece itself is in six movements, each one
inspired by some memory of my father: some are inspired by quotes from
his favourite books, some by music he loved, and some by general
memories I have of him.
1) Stillness/Movement
A recollection of my father taking me cycling up to Killiney Hill, a local beauty spot, at dawn on a summer morning around 1970 when I was about 12. There were few cars in those days, and even fewer at 5am, and there was this feeling of being the only two people in the world - utter silence. Then the birdsong began, and got louder and louder till it reached a cacophony......
2) Mr. BP
Brendan Patrick Guilfoyle, was my father's name and this is a lyrical tune dedicated to him
3) George's Hat
This refers to a line from 'Three Men in a Boat' - 'It was George's hat that saved his life that day' - that my father found hilarious - and it is hilarious! If you know the book you'll know why, and if you don't then check it out!
4) This Was Very Odd Because
This refers to another line from classic literature, this time 'The Walrus and the Carpenter' from Alice in Wonderland', which my father would read to us and we would be expected to know the last line of every stanza.
5) It Was The Middle Of The Night
Although my father was a wonderful man with so many great qualities, he also had his dark side for sure, and could be pretty scary at times. This movement reflects that aspect of his personality
6) 2 Degrees East
The only explicitly musical reference, to John Lewis' blues 'Two Degrees East, Three Degrees West' from 'Grand Encounter'. My father loved this piece and played it incessantly. The theme is referred to here, but the treatment is completely different to the original.
And here is a little film about the making of Renaissance Man
My father passed away before any of us began
playing seriously, and I’ve always felt that it was so unfair that he
never got to hear the results of the groundwork he laid for us. But I
also feel very fortunate to have been able to write this piece, and to
have such great musicians perform it. Renaissance Man is written in
recognition of the great gifts he gave to us, and the debt we owe to
him.
As a little bonus - here's some footage of myself, John, Joey Baron and Michael Buckley playing a quartet arrangement of the 2nd movement, 'George's Hat'
Whenever you release a new recording it's an exciting and special moment, but for me, this release is particularly special and personal. In this case the importance to me of the music being widely heard outweighs any other consideration and so I'm selling the physical CD for a very low price. If you're interested in purchasing a CD you can click on the Paypal button at the top of this page. If you want to buy it in downloadable format you can do it here
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.....'
