Navigating the Arrhythmical: or How We Improvise Our Way Through Life.

Posted: Category: Improvisation

The rotation of the earth around the sun, the seasons, the menstrual cycle, the beating of the heart, the breath (… taxes!). We experience life as patterned and rhythmical, for indeed it is. Our very survival depends on staying in sync with all the rhythms of life—look what happens when we get out of sync with the rhythms of our planet’s climate.

But life’s rhythms aren’t perfect; they come with irregularities, imperfections, instabilities. Hearts skip beats. Along with life’s rhythms come a kind of spontaneous arrhythmia. It seems that we can’t ignore this either; life’s arrhythmia must also be lived with.

An awareness of all this is hardly new. Brilliant attempts to find meaning in life’s rhythms and arrhythmia form the bedrock of the human family’s store of knowledge and wisdom. Consider these meditations on life’s arrhythmia:

The Roman poet Lucretius, who more than two thousand years ago (and riffing on Epicurus, two hundred years before that) thought he’d discovered the origins of the universe in the arrhythmia of atoms. Atoms, the idea goes, move downwards together in straight lines. But by chance, some go their own way and swerve into their neighbours—these random collisions creating solids, from which come our physical world. Aspects of Lucretius’ thinking captivated the radical Enlightenment, and radicals closer to home, like Marx, Einstein, de Beauvoir and Derrida.   

Consider Darwin. DNA is the result of millions of genes copying uniformly. Mutations result from disturbances to this uniformity. Darwin places these mutations in the engine room of evolution. The point here isn’t the detail of Darwin’s or Lucretius’ ideas, but that life’s arrhythmia has been recognised and thought about deeply for about as long as there’s been deep thought.

It’s fascinating to observe in the arts of our own time the myriad ways life’s arrhythmia gets dramatised. The 2019 film Terminator: Dark Fate has moments in its introduction when a flash of visual and sonic static shoots across the screen. Where once the technological imperative of ever more refined imaging meant eradicating all such impurities from the screen, it’s now a chic reminder of life’s disorder to reinsert them. In the fanfare that opens Joe Zawinul’s 1996 album, My People, the pitch suddenly swoops down, then returns. This isn’t modulation as such, but—in the age of digital pitch correction—a deliberate and unmotivated disturbance to the pattern of the music’s tuning. Or from earlier in the modern era: The Rite of Spring. In the section “The Augurs of Spring”, we meet the most infamous, in-your-face arrhythmia in all of western music.

                                                                   * * *

That we (mostly) stay in sync with life’s rhythms means that carried around in our species’ toolbox is an aptitude for rhythmical patterning—we’re good at getting into life’s grooves. But our responses to the arrhythmical call on a different aptitude: the ability to act or react spontaneously. Importantly, we’re good at this too.

We’ve almost arrived at improvisation. Just as the rhythmical is woven into the fabric of our lives, so are disturbances to it and our responses to these disturbances. Our responses are not, therefore, just a succession of isolated fight-or-flight impulses. But what weaves them together?

Few of us want to linger ‘in the moment’ while our heart palpitates; instead, we anxiously anticipate the return of its steady rhythm. So it seems that our response to all of life’s arrhythmias holds within it a similar anticipation: a reordering of disorder, a restoration of rhythm. And because we’ve always attached meaning to life’s rhythms, this is nothing less than a restoration of meaning and purpose. We have now, I think, arrived at improvisation. 

Improvisation = spontaneity + purposefulness.

Science tells us that the physical world and its chance events are not purposeful or directed towards a goal. While this might be ok for the inanimate world, it’s not ok for us. Humans can’t live this way; we need meaning and order, and when it’s not forthcoming, we improvise it into existence.

Here lies the genesis of improvisation. Its roots are primal and existential, deeply implicated in the way we restore, protect, preserve meaning and coherence when these are absent or disturbed in our less-than-perfectly-coherent world. 

It’s funny then (in more ways than one) that the only place outside of jazz where improvisation gets a good rap, or any kind of rap at all, is in the light entertainment of popular culture. Theatre Sports and its TV derivatives—participants thrust into awkward situations, then left to improvise their way out—are enormously popular. Here, our primal aptitude (i = s + p) is put through its paces under the glare of the cameras, albeit only as some kind of clever party trick.­­­­­

But I want to believe that our delight in this ephemera is triggered by a deeper recognition: that improvisation is a generative force in our lives. For improvisation is not just responsible for the impromptu witty words of comedians, but for the totality of the human expression we know as “language”. It’s not just responsible for the advertising ditty, but for the human expression we know as “music”—jingles and Beethoven and Coltrane. 

Marx and all the rest saw the errant atom’s arrhythmical swerve as a breaking free, the original act of liberation. What wasn’t seen was that, whether its trajectory would eventually return it to the fold or end up outlining some never-before-travelled path, that atom would be improvising as it navigated its way along.  

Brecker’s Giant Steps

Posted: Category: Music

Mike Brecker wasn’t only recognised as a great player, but as a great writer. He liked to rework (and reharmonise) the standards that he played regularly. He did this in a clever way with Giant Steps, which he was gigging in his own band in the early 2000s. His reworking of Giant Steps is clever in two ways: in the A section, in between the two four-bar phrases that Trane joins kind of abruptly, Brecker slips in another descending-major-thirds sequence (as if Trane’s original idea wasn’t complicated enough!). It makes me think of the weird circular complexity of an Escher sketch, which we know from Brecker tunes and an album cover, he was already curious about.

The other change is in the B section. Here Brecker gives the original two-bar segments different tonal centres. It makes the B section – the most “in” section of the original Giant Steps – sound like the most “out”.

And then there’s his soloing. He makes it all sound so easy! Check it out on YouTube: “Michael Brecker (Giant Steps)”

Sonny Rollins – A Night in Tunisia

Posted: Category: Music

Sonny turned 91 this week. Good reason to celebrate him again, and have another close look at his incredible playing. His solo on A Night in Tunisia, and all his solos, from A Night at the Village Vanguard, shows his brilliance in full flight. My transcription of it is below. Enjoy!

Grand & Union

Posted: Category: Music

Thanks to all those who’ve wanted to know more about the background to my album Grand & Union.

Here it is … 

There are two influences running through it. One comes out of a project I have been doing for a while now with a NYC colleague, and which we call the Stravinsky Jazz Project. We’ve been touring it around the world, up until the pandemic hit. For this project we each produced a set of original compositions, informed in various ways by the music of Igor Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring. You see, Igor’s early ballet scores had a huge influence not only on classical music but on western music more generally. Jazz, for example, fell under their spell almost immediately. And certainly by the time of Bird, jazz was taking from Igor in all sorts of ways. 

In the Stravinsky Jazz Project I’ve been especially interested in Igor’s thinking about rhythm. The Rite of Spring uses a radical rhythmic approach; that’s what made this music infamous. It came about because the drama of the ballet—the actual fantasy it enacts on stage—is set in human prehistory. Igor was asked to imagine a sound and a rhythm for a primitive, prehistoric fertility ritual. Letting his imagination run wild, he came up with intense, disjointed, pulses that were heavily planted in a (prehistoric) ground.

But what happens when we take the ballet’s imagined “ground”, and reimagine it as the “street”? What if we hear Igor’s groove as a rhythm of the street, before we had streets! In other words, I wanted to see how Igor’s rhythmical ideas would stand up if they were transplanted from the make-believe, mystico-babble, street scene of the original ballet, to a contemporary street scene — from a fictional rhythm to a real one — to wit, hip hop. And so, the tunes “Grand & Union” and “The Rite Stuff” use a groove coming out of hip hop. I think Igor’s ideas stand up great in this setting.

If you want a bit more background on the Stravinsky Jazz Project, check out https://studio.youtube.com/video/8XAIGsbAyXw/edit . 

The second influence on the album is more personal and autobiographical. This is the tune “Ruby Mei”, which is played both as a duo and a quartet. Why the personal touch? Because Grand & Union is an Andy Sugg Group album, not a Stravinsky Jazz Project album (that will come at a later date).

I recorded Grand & Union in NYC in 2019 with some powerful young New York musicians who I’ve known for a while. The pianist/keyboardist, Brett Williams, has been in Marcus Miller’s band for many years. The drummer, Jonathan Barber, has toured with Pat Metheny and bassist, Alex Claffy, has toured extensively with Kurt Rosenwinkel. So, it’s a wonderful band; the guys got into the zone of the music straight away and dug in deep.And finally, a word about the artwork, which was designed by AlisaTanaka-King, the granddaughter of Inga King. Inga, of course, was one of Australia’s most important sculptors; a child of German Expressionism, Inge was born there two years after The Riteof Spring was first performed. As an artist, Alisa follows in her grandmother’s footsteps. My brief for Alisa was simple: listen to the music and capture visually what it captures in sound: that like the raw grunginess of Igor’s prehistoric “ground”, so too is our “street” a grungy place. Alisa has envisioned the grunginess of Grand & Union perfectly.

Two Presidents and a Saxophone – Pt 1

Posted: Category: Music Review

In the art of electioneering the cold spray of facts and figures is strictly for losers. Winners make their message generate heat by harnessing the power of finely calibrated theatrics. Thus it is that at election time all the world’s a stage. And if on that stage an iconic prop can fire the chemistry between polly and people even more, then that prop is worth its weight in votes.

So, when the man seeking to become the most powerful politician in the world uses prowess on the tenor saxophone to fire this chemistry, you know that instrument has some serious weight. By 1992 and Bill Clinton’s first tilt for the presidency, the saxophone was deeply insinuated in the ebb and flow of American life. A proven icon, its cachet came from the ground up. Clinton knew that it would be a smart move being seen with Adolphe Sax’s favourite invention hanging around his neck. 

But this wasn’t always so; the saxophone has a history.

Conceived in the wake of the Enlightenment’s quest to articulate a rational knowledge-based future, the saxophone reimagined brass and woodwind instruments by removing limitations (in dexterity and projection) which, while long-accepted features of their design, had become serious impediments as contemporary music looked to its own future. The saxophone was as powerful as a trumpet and as nimble as a flute. A single saxophone could shout out like Pavarotti and croon like Sinatra. It was acknowledged how closely its expressive qualities resembled those of the human voice—the supreme compliment for any musical instrument. But there was more; it was not one but an entire family of instruments, capable of enriching traditional ensemble soundscapes and, through its distinctive tone, suggesting innovative new ones. 

Sax set up shop in Paris in 1843 with reason to hope that, given half a chance, the saxophone would be a major player in the modernisation of French solo and ensemble music-making. And shortly thereafter, another president stepped onto the stage: Louis-Napoléon, elected by a fractious France in 1848. No stranger to the alchemy of electioneering, Louis-Napoléon turned out to be the first truly populist politician—he won his election by the kind of landslide that Clinton could only dream about. But the saxophone was too new and remote from the people at this time to stoke Louis-Napoléon’s campaign fire.

Nonetheless, like Sax, the new French president’s military had its own hopes for the instrument. Could it be a game-changer in rejuvenating the lacklustre performance of its vast network of military bands? The military wanted its new president to install the saxophone from the top down and, always the fast friend of his military, Louis-Napoléon eventually complied. In doing so he became the inventor’s most important patron.

The realisation of Sax’s hope was finally in train, but it was a train largely driven by the politics that both put Louis-Napoléon in power and would eventually throw him out.

If Sax’s instrument designs were ahead of their time, his business model was by then tried and true. He was in fact that very model of a modern capitalist: a factory owner. As a manufacturing entrepreneur (card-carrying member of the bourgeoise) he was part of a driving force reshaping western Europe throughout the nineteenth century. This force was the subject of vehement contestation and he was part of that too—his initial years in Paris had not been smooth (and that’s putting it mildly). 

The factory was a potent rallying point here; just how potent is clear when we remember that in the very year Sax’s presidential patron came to power Karl Marx published The Communist Manifesto, his stinging critique of modernity’s dark side in whose heart beat the factory system. The Manifesto’s fighting tone dramatised discord simmering since the French Revolution over modernity’s political and economic advances—who would be its winners and losers? It was this fundamental concern that set France’s political pendulum swinging from republicanism to monarchy throughout the nineteenth century.

The point here is not to judge Sax’s conduct as a manufacturing entrepreneur—was he a good capitalist or a bad one—but to highlight that, good or bad, he was affected by the sweeping cultural forces changing French society throughout his century, and that the reception of the saxophone during his lifetime can only properly be understood in this context. Sax positioned his manufacturing business in such a way that it flourished when the pendulum swung to the side of the monarchy but struggled when it arced the other way. Unfortunately for him, in 1870 the pendulum swung to the republican side and stayed there. And so it was that Sax and his new instrument found themselves on the wrong side of history. As the aging inventor gradually faded from view, so did his cherished invention. In the saxophone Sax’s technical vision had been brilliantly realised, but his hopes for its triumphant uptake were all but extinguished.

There’s an evocative scene set in Jean-Pierre Rorive’s retelling of the saxophone story in which a discarded instrument is retrieved from a trash can in France. The person retrieving it is an American musician on tour. A new chapter in the life of the saxophone was about to begin.

One Down One Up: The Wangaratta Festival of Jazz and Blues*

Posted: Category: Uncategorized

While all creative artists are primed for the ups and downs of taste, recognition, income and the like — it just goes with the territory — for Australian artists who play music, this territory has become a really slippery slope. ACDC’s rock might be firmly anchored at the summit of Aussie culture, but most of us roll like Sisyphus.

This is because the rhythm of life’s changes is so fast (maybe we should call this capitalism’s “bebop” period), and because the world of work inhabited by musicians is locked into this rhythm. Its touch might be light for a few, but for most of us it’s something more akin to the thrust of the Industrial Revolution.

It’s also because, in Australia, a concerted ideological assault on an arts culture that, in doing its job well, has the audacity to express views independent of the forces of power and privilege, makes an already difficult situation that much harder.

This is not to say that the arts don’t matter here anymore. The intense reaction against cuts to Radio National music programs reminds us of just how much they do — the reaction to all the celebrity muso deaths in 2016 does the same. And the stats prove it; studies like Arts Nation (2015) or Deloitte’s “Live Music Report” (2011) document what Aussies believe about the arts and give detailed accounts of participation rates (my favourite: more Aussies go to galleries in any given year than to the football!).

But the fact remains that the pace of change in the age of globalisation, and neo-liberal reaction to it, conspire to make this moment a struggle just to hang on.

Over this gloomy scenario, the growth of cultural festivals shines a ray of light. In North America, just 10 years ago, there were 2500 festivals. In Britain 221 were music festivals — 100 up from the previous three years. There were 250 jazz festivals in 33 countries.

Festivals matter. They celebrate the assertion of a public communal spirit over the private; the triumph of the real over the virtual. In defiance of tendencies that strongly divide us — political values, religious beliefs — festivals bring us together. They have economic value, too: think, “the MONA effect” and its offshoot music festival, MOFO; think, Iceland’s strategic investment in its cultural sector (now the second largest contributor to GDP) … the list goes on and on.

The Wangaratta Festival of Jazz and Blues has been a luminous example of this kind of success for over 25 years. Led expertly throughout by Adrian Jackson, Wangaratta has resonated loudly around Australia, the region and the globe.

What’s true about festivals for the community at large is even truer for the music community itself. Wangaratta offers Aussie musicians great audiences, a high-profile place to present new work, occasions to collaborate with peers; and, vital for any artist, the chance to “internationalise” our practice by working with artists from other countries — the benefits of which flow in every direction.

The photo shows this at work. It was taken at the rehearsal for Odean Pope’s Saxophone Choir project, which featured at Wangaratta 20 years ago this year (see the key in the bottom right-hand corner of the pic 1) Adam Simmons 2) Lachlan Davidson 3) Odean Pope — behind him on the silver tenor is Anton Delecca 4) Sandy Evans 5) Elliot Dalgleish 6) Andy Sugg 7) Julien Wilson — Ian Chaplin is out of frame).

This was one powerful gig. I still remember the energy in the green room before we went on stage! The large audience felt it, too (a standing ovation, I recall). It was an occasion to present works not heard before in Australia, to collaborate with national peers on a scale that rarely happens here, and to reach out internationally: reach out, in fact, to jazz’s foundation narrative — Pope was in Max Roach’s band, Roach was Charlie Parker’s drummer.

This gig exemplified the very best of the festival experience; but — and this is the point — gigs like this happen all the time, at every Wangaratta festival.

So, it was with well-rehearsed bemusement that we learnt on Black Friday that the triennial Federal funding sought by Wangaratta would not be renewed, but would instead be replaced by an allocation covering this year’s festival only. It would seem that — even in propitious times for the genre — festivals aren’t immune to a few ups and downs of their own. And for a quick reminder of why this funding decision is such a downer, here’s British historian Eric Hobsbawm (himself a big jazz fan):

Festivals are, like opera, not basically rational enterprises in economic terms. They cannot exist purely on ticket sales, any more than the Olympic Games or the football World Cup. Like opera, festivals, particularly costly ones, are hardly possible without public or private subsidies and commercial sponsorship.

Most recently, as if to rub salt into the wound, we learned that Jackson, the person responsible for turning Wangaratta into a Grand Slam event on the international jazz circuit, would not be invited to continue as musical director beyond 2016.

The current challenges facing Aussie artists and the great contribution made by festivals to their working life (and to the lives of local and national communities), are well-known to those charged with the duty to invest public funds in artistic endeavour. Is it too much to ask that these public servants — and the boards of our major festivals — might reflect again on Australia’s great achievements in jazz (which include the longest running annual jazz convention in the world, an illustrious history of soloists and groups punching way above our weight globally, and Wangaratta itself, a 25-year-plus success story) and not only stabilize support for the Wangaratta Festival of Jazz and Blues, but strengthen it? I hope not.

Now, back to pushing that rock …

 

* A version of this article was posted on ArtsHub Friday 3 March 2017. For more information on it and ArtsHub, visit artshub.com.au

Musique live et Disquaire Day

Posted: Category: Music

Musique live et Disquaire Day

C’est un moment de confusion pour les musiciens. D’une part, il n’y a jamais eu plus de musique dans nos vies ; de l’autre, la profession est de moins en moins viable. De la sonnerie à la radio, l’ascenseur, la salle d’attente, le supermarché, le bus, l’avion (la liste est sans fin), nos vies sont saturées de musique. Pourtant, les revenus des musiciens sont en chute libre, les clubs sont en difficulté et les ventes de CD sont en diminution.

La ville pourrait  vibrer avec le son de la musique, mais c’est surtout d’une sorte grossièrement fonctionnelle – atmosphérique pour les déplacements, les files d’attente, shopping, etc. Cette bande sonore publique implacable évince l’espace libre une fois réservé pour une expérience différente de faire de la musique: la musique live.

La perte n’est pas ici juste pour musiciens. La musique live est intensément sociale et représente une affirmation de la vie que notre « bande son » publique préfabriquée, ne traduit pas, et nous pourrions tous bénéficier plus de celle-là. Si il ne semble pas que nous l’obtenions pas la numérisation, qui jusque ici a été surtout bonne a influencer notre logique de consommation privée de musique (pensez : iPods, écouteurs, téléchargements), alors nous devons trouver de nouveau moyen d’encourager la diffusion de la musique live. Comment le faire est le défi pour les musiciens et les fans de musique aujourd’hui.

Le défi du musicien fait partie d’un problème plus grave. Terry Eagleton dit que nous devons imaginer de nouvelles formes d’appartenance et que certaines de ces formes auront quelque chose de l’intimité des relations tribales ou communautaires. Parce que la musique live et la culture qui l’entoure sont si bonnes à promouvoir des formes importantes de l’appartenance, la solution au problème du musicien est en même temps une réponse à un esprit d’aujourd’hui en quête de sens.

Et une partie de la culture de la musique live est le petit magasin de disques      indépendant. Les meilleurs de ces magasins rassemblent les gens, offrent des places pour échanger des idées et des contacts, font circuler la littérature « underground », et mettent en valeur la musique et les musiciens. Dans leur calme, modeste façon ils nourrissent une communauté créative et une alternative sociale. Ils sont un asile pour les musiciens indépendants.

Une histoire récente dans un journal européen a observé qu’il n’y avait plus que 27 de ces magasins restant dans le monde ! Par exemple, il y en a seulement un restant en France. C’est Souffle Continu, et j’ai eu le plaisir d’y jouer récemment avec des musiciens australiens et français (voir photo). C’était une super expérience et je remercie Guy-Frank, Théo et Bernard pour leur soutien dans cette réussite.

Alors, la prochaine fois que vous pensez à découvrir de nouvelles musiques ou musiciens, ou si vous voulez des informations sur des lieux ou des événements, passez à votre magasin de disques indépendant. Si vous êtes à Paris, visitez Souffle Continu (www.soufflecontinu.com). Et faites passer l’information à tout le monde à propos de « Disquaire Day ».

Disquaire Day est de 19 Avril 2014     France – www.disquaireday.fr      Australie – www.recordstoreday.com.au

Live Music and Record Store Day

Posted: Category: Uncategorized

Live Music and Record Store Day

It’s a confusing time for musicians. On one hand, there’s never been more music in our lives; on the other, the profession is becoming less viable. From the ringtone to the radio, the elevator, waiting room, supermarket, bus, plane (the list is endless), our lives are saturated with music. Yet musicians’ incomes are in free-fall, venues are struggling and CD sales are shrinking.

The city might be alive with the sound of music, but it’s mostly of a crudely functional kind – atmospherics for commuting, queuing, shopping, etc. This relentless public soundtrack crowds the headspace once reserved for a different experience of music-making: live music.

The loss here is not just to musicians. Live music is intensely social and life affirming in ways that our canned public soundtrack is not, and we could all do with more of it. If it’s not looking like we’re going to get it from digitization, which so far has only shown itself good at sexing up the logic of private music consumption (think iPods, headphones, downloads), then we need to devise new ways of fostering it. How to do this is the challenge for musicians and music fans today.

The musician’s challenge is part of a bigger problem. Terry Eagleton says that we need to imagine new forms of belonging and that some of those forms will have something of the intimacy of tribal or community relations. Because live music and the culture surrounding it are so good at promoting important forms of belonging, the solution to the musician’s problem is at the same time a response to an entire zeitgeist found wanting.

And part of live music’s culture is the small, independent record store. The best of these stores bring people together, offer places to exchange ideas and contacts, circulate underground literature, and showcase music and musicians. In their quiet, unassuming way they nourish a creative community and a social alternative. They’re a “Safe House” for independent musicians.

A recent story in a European newspaper observed that there were now only 27 such stores left in the world! For example, there’s only one left in France. It is Souffle Continu (Circular Breathing), and I had the pleasure of playing there recently with Australian and French musicians (see photo). It was a great experience and I thank Guy-Frank, Théo and Bernard for their support in making this happen.

So next time you’re thinking about checking out some new music or musician, or want info on venues or events, drop in to your independent record store. If you’re in Paris, visit Souffle Continu (www.soufflecontinu.com). And tell everyone about Record Store Day.

Record Store Day is 19 April 2014           Australia – www.recordstoreday.com.au          France – www.disquaireday.fr

Why Coltrane Still Matters

Posted: Category: Uncategorized

Everyone knows that John Coltrane was a major influence in jazz, but he died 46 years ago (this week, in fact), so in a music that prides itself on being innovative and up-to-date – if not leading the pack – does Trane still matter?

The answer is a resounding YES! He matters because of his great artistry and he matters because this artistry is expressed in and through improvisation.

Improvisation matters because we literally improvise our way through life. Our speech, our actions, even our thoughts, are in a very real way improvised. It’s not overstating it to say that the kind of life we end up having will depend very much on just how skilfully we can improvise our way through it. So an art form that foregrounds improvisation has the potential to resonate with us in a very special way; a way that other art forms cannot. While Beethoven’s notated compositions – the symphonies, say – are high-order models of planning and structure, they represent life as an ideal, life as it could be, life to be imagined. Improvised music, on the other hand, represents life as it’s actually lived.

This is why improvisation is jazz’s most enduring gift to us, and within it why Trane remains an inspiring model of the heights that improvised music can reach.

An artist is (I’m stealing from Benjamin here) both an inventor and a conserver. But sometimes the dual obligations of being true to the unique moment and of being the custodian of artistic tradition don’t sit together well. This is especially true in a music like jazz, in which the desire to “make it new” often accelerates a kind of forgetting or making redundant of its past.

But it doesn’t have to be like this. Conserving the tradition of Trane’s (and many others’) artistry means much more than simply playing his tunes, his arrangements, his lines in yet another season of gigs; it means we hear in this music not only something to imitate but something to stimulate innovation of our own. That’s how the best of the generation after Trane responded to him. And it was the innovations that this generation produced that expanded in two key directions both saxophone improvisation itself and jazz improvisation generally. Clearly outlined in the 1970s, these directions remain central to the art of jazz improvisation today.

Trane still matters because his example can still help us “make it new”. Artists like Trane are gifts that keep on giving; we don’t have to forget them.

Andy Sugg and George Garzone

Posted: Category: Music

George Garzone came onto the jazz scene in the late ‘60s and ‘70s, initially as a sideman – with Woody Herman, George Russell, Gil Evans and others – then as a leading post-Coltrane soloist. This emergence can be seen in a great YouTube video of Garzone doing Impressions with Michael Brecker, Dave Liebman and Joshua Redman (http://bit.ly/1525Uq and http://bit.ly/LmAkUL). It’s exciting just to see these heavy tenor players up on stage together, not to mention listening closely to what they’re actually playing. And what Garzone and the others play tells us a lot about jazz since the late ‘60s.

Garzone, Brecker and Liebman represent the first generation of post-Coltrane improvisers who carried over Trane’s interest in harmonic colour (in the form of chromaticism) into the aesthetics of the ‘70s and ‘80s. Brecker’s chromatic approach, flavoured by his interest in R&B, has a direct (it’s-smart-but-you-don’t-have-to-analyze-it) emotional hit. Liebman’s emotional punch can be more abstruse because there’s the flavour of late ‘60s Miles making it more abstract (it moves you in a “what-just-happened?” kind of way). Garzone’s chromatic approach is equally hard hitting but in a slightly different way again. He explains it as a kind of play with triads – not polytonality so much, just his own take on pan-diatonic chromaticism. (Then there’s Redman, whose approach represents a break from these three, but that’s a topic for another blog.)

When Garzone gigged with me last week and I called Impressions, I had this YouTube video very much in mind. It was great to hear him up close working his chromaticism hard on this tune once again. Here’s an excerpt. The chord of the A Sections is D minor, but you don’t get any of that in his solo at this point. The thinking and playing is out.

It was also great to hear him playing on my acoustic fusion tunes. Stylistically one step removed from modal standards (the repertoire – tunes like Impressions – that sent Trane off to the outer reaches of the tonal universe), my tunes have a bit more harmonic crunch built into them. Garzone’s soloing on them affirmed that, when it comes to colour, Trane’s direction is still the only game in town.

Check out Garzone here www.GeorgeGarzone.com