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Fifteen Minutes of Magic.

Fri, 19 Oct 2012 19:59:17 +0100

I like vinyl. Finding a long-lost recording on vinyl is like finding you hadn’t, after all, drunk all the Chateau Lafite. A friend, considering his preference for LP over CD, did not cite all the audiophile reasons, like smoother dynamics or listening fatigue, but remarked that vinyl, with its cover and notes and artwork, is a possession. What would he have made of Bruce Willis finding himself unable to bequeath his vast collection of downloads to his family? My recent purchase from Crazy Beats Records, Upminster, is an artifact. Magic and Movement by tenor sax player John Klemmer has a gatefold sleeve, with minimal written content, but a huge painting of a blonde young man – Klemmer himself? – lying on his back in water with a square of the canvas torn out to reveal the starlit cosmos. Add in the pompous eastern-style pronouncements, and you’re there. But where, exactly?

Some cultural orientation might help. It is 1973. The recording is on Impulse, which had been John Coltrane’s label since the early sixties, so the confluence of jazz and eastern mysticism was in full flow. Impulse was also host to Pharoah Sanders, Michael White and Gato Barbieri, which represents a definite world/West Coast/hippie/bells-and-shakers attempt to broaden the appeal of plain old jazz. I assume this is what Buddy Rich had in mind when he talked about “funny hats”.

1973 was a good year at Montreux Jazz Festival, where side 2. of this LP was recorded. Miles Davis was there, as was Canned Heat, Albert King, and Gene Ammons. Sam Rivers was there, which accounts for the presence of bass player Cecil McBee at the festival, and thus with Klemmer on 6^th July. McCoy Tyner recorded his classic album Enlightenment the next day, his group containing drummer Alphonse Mouzon, which accounts for Mouzon’s availability for the Klemmer performance. Mouzon also got to play with the huge gongs thoughtfully provided by the Paiste company. The last member of this ad hoc quartet was Tom Canning (piano), better known for his long stint with Al Jarreau.

John Klemmer had already made Waterfalls and side 1. of this album with a band comprising two quarters of the Fourth Way, Mike Nock (piano) and Eddie Marshall (drums), and Wilton Felder on bass. After the foursquare subtleties of this band, a lesser player getting on stage with the Canning/McBee/Mouzon outfit would have felt he had been dropped into a whirlpool. The title of the main piece, Tree of the Forbidden Fruit, is presumably a rationalisation after the event and it lasts about 15 minutes. It verges on a cutting session. The drums are a polyrhythmic barrage, the bass an off-the-beat staccato. The mood is militant and the execution supremely confident. The first-time listener is left stunned, gulping for air, pleading, where’s the one? Klemmer, nevertheless, rides the wave with Coltranesque brio and stamina.

Much is made of the spontaneity of jazz, its essential improvisatory character. But much jazz is hardly spontaneous at all, as remarked by drummer John Marshall. Play with the same people long enough and you’ll hear the same things. Nevertheless, one of the glories of jazz is its potential to concentrate the cultural influences of its time, put together a temporary gathering of musicians with all their differing attitudes and agendas, then transcend it all to produce a moment of concentrated excitement and beauty. They don’t make ‘em like this anymore: not often, anyway.

"His blackness had been equivocated by powder..."

Sun, 15 Jul 2012 12:02:37 +0100

A typical contemporary jazz composition: a four bar motif, followed by eight or ten wildly displaced accents, followed by another snatch of melody in a barely related key. Repeat, if you will, to make sure the audience has 'got it'. Now launch into the improv.

In 1999, Richard M. Sudhalter wrote a book called Lost Chords: White Musicians and Their Contribution to Jazz, in which he contends that a number of white players had a substantial input into the music and did not just emulate black innovators. This undoubtedly justified corrective was at the time widely disparaged by black musicians and others, who vehemently opposed his message.

However, it seems to me now that the whitening of jazz has risen to unhealthy levels, by which I mean that musical standards are more aligned with those of European or classical music: academic, intellectual. Part of this is due to the way jazz is learned, nowadays through academies, music schools, formal teaching, and less through the traditional means of collaboration and association. This point is borne out by Kenny Barron: "Current jazz - a lot of the young players: their music is very intellectual. You know, it appeals to the brain... I think it has to appeal to [the heart]."

I have written before about staying true to the idiom, and my argument here is that the jazz ethos of playing predominantly for feeling has been displaced by something quite alien: an emphasis on knowledge, theory and technique which has its roots in the European approach to everything - although how true this is to the European tradition itself is debatable. I get more of a kick out of Brahms than I do out of some jazz. And since I perceive that this influence within jazz is driven by a desire to legitimise it alongside 'serious music', it is hard to see how to combat it without musicians losing hard-won credibility as artists-to-be-taken-seriously.

Jazz cannot be conformist and survive. Why? Because it is hip music, and hip, as Norman Mailer showed us, means outside, judged by its own standards. Judging an idiom by the standards of another idiom inevitably imposes a Procrustean Bed: you chop off the bits that don't fit. This is what we see with today's squeaky-clean jazz: the heart has been excised. Kitty Grime famously described John Dankworth's music as couth, kempt and shevelled. That observation could now be applied much more widely. No wonder the spirit of jazz migrated into other genres: hip hop for example, out of the reach of academic standardisation.

(Title from Native Son, by James Baldwin).

What Happened to Trilateral?

Mon, 18 Jun 2012 21:21:20 +0100

Trilateral has pursued a modal/polyrhythmic direction, giving a sparse yet elegant treatment to standards and some original material. In July last year, I was contacted by a Spanish TV company looking for Jose Gomez. Would we be willing to take part in a programme about Spanish musicians living in London? Did stardom beckon? We hire a room at the Premises in Hackney Road. We play Fall. We play On Green Dolphin Street. We have to be playing as the camera man walks in, almost as if he'd stumbled upon us. Television, they say, creates its own reality. It certainly does: the atmosphere, the attitude, the spontaneity are all calculated. They also don't tell you how close the lens gets to your face as you're trying to play. Every pock-mark, every pimple is going to be spread across the screen like a relief map...

During 2011, Tobias Rupp the guitarist entered the Fawmers competition, which requires entrants to produce a composition for every day of February. Tobias pulled off this feat, recording some beautiful tunes in solo guitar format. Our association with Jose Gomez was nearly over - he has now returned to Valencia - so we invited the Sicilian bass player Emmanuele Vitale to help us work the pieces up for trio. All went well until Emmanule's other band got a management deal... Further development awaits the arrival of another bass player. Until then, those interested in Tobias's music can find him on the Reindeerrecords channel on Youtube, and his page on Myspace.

The Urban Sound

Mon, 25 Apr 2011 10:24:10 +0100

Music changes, but critics are largely conservative. Every artist that contributes to music brings some innovation, but critics often want to pin music down within some definitive framework. For Stanley Crouch, jazz has to have 4/4 swing, blues, afro-hispanic rhythms and ballads - these four things. Against this, you could argue that a measure of the strength of a culture is its ability to absorb aspects of other cultures, and yet remain itself. These are if you like the two poles of the argument, and raise the question, how far can jazz go and still be jazz?

Last Saturday night, I was listening Geo Rose by the late Tony Williams Quintet. I turned to my wife and commented that to me it had such an urban sound, a sound that captured the spirit of jazz. Without wanting to fall into the conservative trap, it does seem to me that jazz is urban music, that it comes from and reflects an urban environment. Think of Monk's uneven tread along sidewalks with the roar of traffic in the background and car horns incorporated into the melody. I question how far jazz can accomodate country and still be jazz. Steve Swallow and Gary Burton's attempts to infuse jazz with a country influence seemed to me to lose the jazz feel, just as Brubeck's incorporation of other influences produced something somewhat other than jazz. Perhaps these experiments were too much like adding too large quantities of a new ingredient to a classic dish - the thing needs to be done judiciously.

I'm not going to say jazz has to have this or that, but I am going to say it has to be true to its native environment to sound convincing. It is the sound of the city.

Great Body of the Riddle - the Tony Williams Ride Cymbal Sound.

Fri, 26 Nov 2010 11:41:22 +0100

“I can tell you this: there ain’t but one Tony Williams when it comes to playing the drums. There was nobody like him before or since.” So says Miles Davis in his autobiography, and almost as celebrated, sought after and pored over is the Tony Williams ride sound, as heard on the Davis albums Four and More and Nefertiti.

As students of online drum forums will know, the Old K Zildjian/Tony Williams sound is the holy grail of ride cymbals. What is it like? Broadly, the stick sound is more of a pah than a ping; the wash is low; the cymbal sounds slightly trashy. If you really want to know, listen to the records…

Cymbal manufacturers have jumped on this natural selling point. The Zildjian Company have, sensibly in my view, avoided marketing a Tony Williams ride, but have traded for years on the Old K sound, the sound of cymbals made by Kerope Zildjian. Turkish manufacturer Istanbul Agop make an Epoch ride, ostensibly a copy of the Nefertiti ride lent to drummer Lenny White by trumpet player Wallace Roney. Cymbalsmith Roberto Spizzichino has created a number of TW ride cymbals, which are exclusive and expensive.

Reviewers frequently say this or that cymbal is reminiscent of the Old K sound. Cymbals as disparate as the K Series Pre-Aged Dry Light Ride (not to be confused with) the K Custom Dry Light Ride (or) the K Constantinople Light Ride, all apparently recall the Old K sound, even though the first is a graceful, lively but not effusive cymbal with a dry but clear stick sound, the second sounds to some ears like a trash can lid, and the third… well, you get the idea.

The truth is, all quality cymbals are unique. It is impossible to copy a cymbal, since no two cast cymbals of the same size and model ever sound exactly the same. It is possible only to arrive in the same ballpark. In addition to this, cymbals age: there exists an interview with Roberto Spizzichino, where he says that one of his cymbals bought by Brian Blade via a third party was subsequently not recognisable to him as his own work. The Nefertiti cymbal itself will have aged and changed its sound. Furthermore, just as we accommodate Eastern food to suit Western taste, I’m sure we accommodate Eastern cymbals to suit the tastes of Western musicians. According to Wallace Roney, Tony Williams’ rides were of medium to medium-heavy weight; most of the copies appear to me to be thinner- or have I missed something?

When I was a teenager, the hip thing was to have Avedis crash cymbals and a K ride. To differ from this seemed to undermine your credibility (if your technique hadn’t already done this). Again, when I was young, I wanted to be different: we all did. Yet we all wanted to be the same, or at least dress and act within the same parameters as our peers. As Frank Zappa told a heckler in the Albert Hall, “Everybody in this room is wearing a uniform!“ In choosing cymbals, we want to have our own sound, whilst remaining within the boundaries of a consensus. Apart from anything else, it gives us something to talk about. And it sells cymbals.

But Old K is not the only game in town, or even in jazz. What about Art Blakey’s Sweet Ride, or Roy Haynes’ Flat Ride. Haven’t you ever wanted to play an Ed Thigpen Crystal Ride? So many cymbals so little time…

Spoiled for Choice

Wed, 13 Jan 2010 10:26:24 +0100

Towards the end of last year, I went to see Chick Corea’s trio gig at the Barbican with Stanley Clarke and Lenny White - all of whom I have admired for years. As you would expect, they were accomplished, inventive and virtuosic. Yet for all that, for me, it lacked something. As I remarked to a friend, These guys can do anything, and because they can, they do…

I wonder if it is sufficiently considered that the production of art requires constraints. Bix Beiderbecke had faulty technique; Roy Haynes does not hold clinics because he does some things the ‘wrong’ way; Ornette Coleman could not play in all the keys. Constraints can force innovation…

And discrimination. Philip Larkin - the great poet, and not-so-great jazz critic - drew attention to this in his criticism of John Coltrane, likening his method to one of those flick-books of a running dog which showed every possible position of the dog’s legs. Surely, the job of the artist was to select one? In Coltrane’s case, the criticism is surely unjust because, at the point in question, the exposition of every possible combination of notes exactly was Coltrane’s art.

That said, it remains the job of the artist to discriminate and present the audience with the result. Choice, which would seem always desirable, in terms of technique, stamina, theoretical knowledge and musical context might, I suggest, become inimical to art. We have just lived through a period of the greatest consumer choice probably in history. Music has reflected life, with greater opportunities for the jazz musician to train and professionalise, with higher quality ensembles, with a greater choice of instruments, effects and technology than at any previous time. Yet for all this, many people feel that the last thirty years has not been a fertile period for jazz.

Jazz emerged in an environment of scarcity, played on army-surplus instruments in a non-academic setting. If you want proof of how technical constraints can force a creative mind to achieve a novel conception of beauty, listen to the early Miles Davis. Even the celebrated cutting sessions of the forties and fifties between technical giants were also contests of lyrical beauty. I do not disparage virtuosity, or even the very wide choice of cymbals available today. Nor do I propose the emergence of some kind of naïve jazz - though that could happen. I simply suggest that all this choice has not produced a corresponding surge of creativity. Limitations can also be a resource…