Old & New

I had originally planned to write this post on the Marsalis family, so I feel a bit obligated to talk about them a little before I get into what I actually want to talk about. Most people know the name Wynton Marsalis, but some don't realize that Wynton is not the only Marsalis in jazz. Wynton, who plays the trumpet, has three brothers who each play jazz as well: Branford on saxophone, Delfeayo on trombone, and Jason on drums. Their father, Ellis Marsalis, introduced them to music early in their lives by being a jazz musician himself (on piano). As I was looking into more of the Marsalis family history I happened upon a video of Ellis Marsalis playing a piano duet at The Marsalis Family: A Jazz Celebration. He's playing the duet with Harry Connick Jr.

Harry Connick Jr. is a jazz pianist and an actor. He was born in 1967 making him considerably younger than Ellis Marsalis who was born in 1934. Harry was born in New Orleans and his parents owned a record store so it came as no surprise when he showed interest in music. He also showed considerable talent, having been recorded with a jazz ensemble at age ten.

The reason I go into this is because I think it is amazing how the old and new jazz can come together. Ellis Marsalis and Harry Connick Jr. are from completely different generations but they can come together and play together because of the bond that jazz ties them together with. Here's the video...enjoy!

Jazz, more than any other type of music, seems to bring musicians together to collaborate in new and inventive ways. We've seen it time and time again. An older jazz musician brings a younger, newer player under their wing and the music that they create is absolutely astounding because it brings together the best of the old and the new. Jazz has spanned the world and it's not going to leave any time soon because it just keeps changing. Musicians will keep collaborating and keep on producing masterpieces. This video is a great example because they're playing "Caravan" which has been around for ages, but it sounds renewed, revitalized and refreshed in this new rendition by the old and the new.

I feel like this is the point of music. As you watch the video, you can see that music is, for lack of a better word, flowing through both Marsalis and Connick, but it's much more than that. They have come to an understanding in that music. They are challenging each other and then coming together to work off of each others' ideas. And, as Marsalis and Connick are connected, so is the audience connected to them. Robert Fripp, an English guitarist and composer, once said, "The perception of the audience is the interesting part. If the audience doesn't hear what is going on, is it going on or not?".

Jazz was (and still is) misunderstood and even disliked by many people. For them, nothing is really "going on", but for those in the audience that understood or even just appreciated what was happening on the stage, jazz has always been "going on" and its' fans have always been enthusiastic and seemingly inexplicably connected to the performers on stage. Like all music, there is no universally accepted taste, but the music still brings those of us together whether it's at a concert or in a class like ours.

Critical Listening #13: Dancing Men

From the Swing Era, jazz took many new and drastic courses. Some of these new jazz genres included bebop, cool jazz, and free jazz. Though there were many small groups, there was also a reoccurrence of big bands playing new rhythms sometimes called fusion. This fusion piece is a mix of jazz elements and the heavy repetitive rhythms of rock. It is a Buddy Rich tune called "Dancing Men".

Buddy Rich, born in 1917, grew up playing the drums in the swing era, but also lived long enough to see the changes that jazz experienced. He experimented in many of these areas, playing the drums until his death in 1987.

8 bar drum introduction 

8 bar A 

8 bar B 

8 bar A 

8 bar B 

8 bar C 

8 bar A 

5 8 bar choruses -- sax solo 

8 bar A 

5 8 bar choruses -- bass solo

8 bar B 

4 bar A variation

8 bar B 

10 bar B variation

This song is written in 8 bar phrases with three main themes. The tune is hard-charging and takes a lot of energy to play especially because the first trumpet part is so high. The trumpets are supported by a strong bass line and trombone section. The drummer (Buddy Rich) keeps the energy up by filling the empty spaces and adding cymbal hits to accent certain lines. 

There are two soloists on this piece: saxophone and bass. But first I want to talk about Buddy Rich's drum fills which qualify as a type of mini-solo. Buddy Rich likes to use complex rhythms on the snare drum with hits on the other drums and cymbals. The saxophone solo is five choruses long. The solo seems to me to hint a bit at cool jazz but with an edge. The solo line is very flowing and not too harsh but the saxophonist's style is very upfront with little to no vibrato and a perpetual line of notes that reminds one of Charlie Parker and the bop era. 

The bass player has a five chorus solo right after the sax solo. It is really neat to hear a electric bass solo since they're not very common in early jazz which is what I usually listen to. The bass player plays a funk bass line using interesting rhythms in his solo. He is accompanied by the drummer playing a constant beat on the ride cymbal to keep the rhythm up and the pianist to help make sure we don't lose track of the tops of the choruses. I like this solo because it doesn't hurry at all even with the almost frantic drumming behind it. 

I thought this piece would make a good choice if for no other reason than that we tend to forget that there were still big bands in this time period even though small groups were more common. Buddy Rich throughout his career showed the unique ability to keep growing and changing his style to match and sometimes even surpass the popular music of the day. Though this tune might not be as well-known as "So What" or "Rhythmning", it is no less played in the world of jazz. 

The Chameleon

The leading experimental jazz pianist after 1945 was Herbie Hancock. It's not for nothing that he got the nickname "Chameleon". Herbie Hancock learned to play the piano as a child (starting at age seven) and studied classically until the age of twenty. In 2963, at age 23, Hancock joined Miles Davis's quintet while also continuing the solo career he had started in 1962 with the Blue Note label.

This piece is "Agitation" performed in Stockholm in 1963 by the Miles Davis Quintet (Miles Davis(trumpet), Herbie Hancock(piano), Wayne Shorter(tenor sax), Tony Williams(drums), Ron Carter(bass)). It is a post-bop piece that is a modal. We can hear Hancock's early style is very much bop inspired with the closely clustered chord progressions and the style of comping. At the very end, we hear a hint of Hancock's classical training.

After Hancock left Davis's band in 1968, he would form his own sextet and begin to create his persona as the Chameleon by experimenting in electronic jazz-funk. Hancock began to leave the piano behind to use other piano-type instruments including the synthesizer, the electronic keyboard, and even the Hohner clavinet. As a pianist it is interesting for me to hear how Hancock never loses his touch or nuances even as he changes instruments. Each of those piano-type instruments has a very different feeling when played and for some that presents problems when they switch between them--almost always the quality of playing on one instrument is lower than on the other. Hancock however keeps his style, no matter what instrument he plays on. The next piece shows where Hancock's music went with his sextet and with funk. This is "Fat Albert Rotunda" from the album of the same name which was released in 1969.

This piece shows how Hancock has grown as a pianist just by changing styles of music. He takes more chances as he plays and it pays off. This album was actually recorded as a soundtrack for the Bill Cosby cartoon Fat Albert. It opened up the door to many opportunities the biggest of which were the development of Hancock's jazz-funk style and his career as a score writer for films. Hancock would also write scores for the films Blow-Up and Death Wish as well as the soundtrack album for Round Midnight.

In his album Headhunters (1973), Hancock produced the song that would give him his nickname: "Chameleon". This song cemented his position as a crossover musician by being played on rock, pop, R&B, jazz and soul radio stations. This song contains a funk bass line with a synthesizer line that is at odds with the jazz type saxophone section and their repeated riff. Hancock uses polyrhythms and different styles of music brought together by the common bass line. This song is far ahead of its time and even seems to hint at old school hip-hop making Hancock one of the great innovators as a musician, not just as a jazz artist.

One of the things I like most about Herbie Hancock is that just because you don't like one of his tunes doesn't mean you're out of luck. He experimented in so many kinds of music and produced so many albums that you can always just try another one and you're almost sure to find something you'll like. He was truly the Chameleon: able to adapt and blend in with many, many different musical worlds.

Most people know "Watermelon Man" and I couldn't resist including this really neat clip of Hancock playing it on Elvis Costello's Spectacle. It's a great little video clip because he starts on piano, switches to synthesizer, then back to piano, and then finally back to synthesizer again. It allows one to see that his style doesn't diminish from one instrument to the next.

The last thing I really think is special about Herbie Hancock is his view of so-called "commercialism". Many jazz artists derided the making of music to appeal to audiences (and therefore make more money), viewing it as a kind of cop-out or betrayal to the real reason for the music. Hancock, when asked if his music played down to the audience, said, "Music, by itself is not valuable. What makes music valuable is the positive effect on the people who are going to hear it. When I started thinking about the people more, I approached music from the perspective of their lives, rather than from the music itself...it's commercial because it sells, not because there's anything condescending about it". Hancock not only enjoyed the music he wrote, but wanted others to enjoy it and understand it. He wanted his music to reach out to people in ways that made sense not only to him, but to them as well. I believe that this makes his music approachable even if it is different from what we might consider "typical".

Critical Listening #12: She Just Wants To Dance

Since we talked a bit about blues and R&B, I decided to break out some classics from my music library. My dad has a great love of blues, so I grew up listening to B.B. King, Ray Charles, and Keb' Mo' among others. Keb' Mo' became one of my favorite blues guitarists. The following is "She Just Wants To Dance" from the album Keb' Mo', released in 1994.

8 bar intro
4 bar A
4 bar B
4 bar A
4 bar B
4 bar C
8 bar bridge (intro chords)
4 bar A
4 bar B
4 bar A
4 bar B
4 bar C
8 bar bridge (intro chords)
8 bar guitar solo
4 bar C
8 bar intro chords + vamp

Though Keb' Mo' is not from the time period we are learning about in class, he is the quintessential blues guitarist. This song doesn't have a typical form but the four bar phrases are easy enough to follow as is the chord progression that matches the lyrics progression.

Though the chord progression follows a steady pattern and besides the short solo, Keb' Mo' makes this song very interesting by the very way he plays. It is overflowing with blues notes and he uses a steel pick to give the guitar a unique sound. He also uses a glass slide on his pinky finger which becomes more apparent on his solo.

In any jazz with vocals, the vocals are just as important if not more important than the instrumentation. Keb' Mo' has a very unique style of singing. He bends notes with his voice, stretches some out while cutting others short (almost popping the noise at the end of the word). He varies the melody by substituting comparable notes and changing the rhythm. He also has a very welcoming and entertaining stage persona.

His guitar solo is mostly slides to a higher register, using the glass slide to give the repeated chords a grating, but extremely interesting and original sound. His solo is short and mostly just a variation on the theme, but it employs a lot of the things we talked about when we learned about vaudeville guitarists and just the blues in general.

This piece is a catchy tune that allows you to start to understand some of the appeal of blues guitar. And I can say from experience that it definitely grows on you.

The Pianist and Free Jazz

It's been a while since I talked about how the piano style has changed with jazz so that's what I'll focus on in this post. Free jazz, more than any other movement, changed the entire way the music was viewed. Now, I will be the first to admit that my knowledge of free jazz is extremely limited, but as I've been exposed to more of it, I have developed a theory about the pianists. Though there are exceptions, the style of player piano for a free jazz group became much more percussive.

It is an interesting turn of events, but it makes sense (I even wonder if it might have some roots in Thelonious Monk's strange technique). Free jazz was about letting go of the boundaries of music. It left behind the accepted standards of rhythm, harmony, melody, and structure among other things. As such, the piano became out of place in a free jazz group unless they changed. The piano had always been a member of the rhythm section and not only that, but a key member in regards to providing the harmony and chord structure a group played on.

So when free jazz began to form, pianists who desired to play it had to change their technique. Pianists didn't have the same options as horn or sax players...a piano will never growl or squeal or squawk for a player, it won't even be slightly flat or sharp. But it can be extremely loud and percussive, so that was the path those early free jazz pianists took.

Cecil Taylor is, of course, one of the most known jazz pianists. His style is commonly acknowledged as percussive. The textbook even says, "Taylor takes that percussiveness to an unparalleled extreme. He is said to treat the piano as if it consisted of eighty-eight tuned drums". Another described his playing as such: "His wild piano attacks were akin to a voodoo ceremony. He pounced on the piano with the wild abandon of an angry lion producing a cacophony of angry, disjointed sounds, but was able to coordinate everything into one irregular package of raw emotion and sound images". The following piece is a sample of Cecil Taylor's piano technique (I like this one especially because it sounds like the jungle and they've included an orchestra).

Beyond Cecil Taylor and Sun Ra, my knowledge of free jazz pianists is a little lacking so I did some research and found a few others that I find interesting. The first is Kris Defoort, a Belgian pianist and composer. He was born in 1959 so by the time he started studying free jazz it had been around for a while. He too has that special brand of percussive sound. The video below is a recent video of Defoort's Trio (it was posted in 2010).

The last musician I'd like to highlight is Satoko Fujii (born in 1958), another present day free jazz artist. Fujii is Japanese and studied classical piano until she became interested in improvisation. She has a very unique style and has cited a strong connection with the American free jazz musicians of the 60s. She prides herself on bringing back the sense of showmanship that those musicians had as well as her desire to "make music that no one has heard before". The following is a recording of her and her quartet from 2009.

The piano just won't leave. Every time jazz changes, the pianists of that generation adapt. Their love of the music allows them to change not only their technique, but the accepted technique for the piano. These pianists will continue to stretch the boundaries of both their instrument and the art.

Sources: 
Jazz by Scott DeVeaux and Gary Giddins 
Jazz Musicians, 1945 to Present by David Dicaire
www.krisdefoort.com
www.satokofujii.com

Critical Listening #11: Doodlin'

The last track on "Horace Silver and the Jazz Messenger's" is a nice little tune called "Doodlin'". It is a nice hard bop tune that hints at the jazz funk that was developing. It was recorded in 1954. It is this piece I'd like to use as my critical listening. 

The form is simple enough--12 bar blues. 

1 bar piano introduction 

1st chorus (Theme A) 

2nd chorus (Theme A) 

3rd chorus (Theme B) 

4 piano solo

5

6

7 tenor sax solo

8

9 

10 trumpet solo

11

12

13 drums solo

14

15

16th chorus (Theme A) 

17th chorus (Theme A) 

1 bar extra + drum hit 

After the piano introduction, the sax and trumpet play Theme A in unison. It's a neat lick, what most musicians would call a "turn", and it is at odds with the rhythm kept by the bass and drums. It's easy to lose track of the rhythm until the lick lines back up with the rhythm section at the end of every four bar phrase. This theme is repeated in the second chorus exactly. The third chorus introduces a new theme, Theme B. Theme B is very interactive and contains a call and response between the trumpet and sax duet and the piano. Because the piano is so active in the third chorus, a perfect segue into the piano solo is provided. 

The pianist (Horace Silver) solos first. His solo builds builds on the blues scales the chord progression uses. He tends to use lots of repeated licks changing the key of the lick to match the chord progression. Silver's solo never seems to stop but neither is it very fast. With the steady walking bass and drums in the background, Silver's solo seems to hover somewhere between hard bop and cool jazz. His licks hint at hard bop but he is utterly relaxed and confident in his solo. 

The tenor player (Hank Mobley) solos next. His solo definitely seems cool. To me he almost sounds a bit like Paul Desmond though his licks are a bit harder and more defined at times. His solo becomes more solid and hard bop-ish as he progresses and this seems to energize the rhythm section. The drummer plays more hits and the bass pulls harder. Silver starts a boogie-woogie type ostinato in between phrases on Mobley's solo that will continue again in the trumpet solo. 

The trumpet player (Kenny Dorham) enters brash and swinging right from the beginning. He chooses an interesting rhythm that seems to work against the rhythm section and inspires Silver to bring back his boogie-woogie ostinato from Mobley's solo. Dorham works his way into the upper register and seems to me to almost sing the blues with his trumpet. He employs a variety of blues notes and keeps the energy Mobley introduced climbing. 

The drummer (Art Blakey) solos last. His solo is very rhythmic and loud. He plays a on the snare and toms mostly using little to no cymbal hits. He keeps time for most of his solo except for a disconcerting couple measures in the second chorus where he drops time completely (to the listener anyways...it ends up lining up completely) and plays a variety of cymbal hits. At the end of his solo (maybe as a sign to the rest of the band), he plays on the rim of his snare drum. 

The band comes back and plays Theme A twice more and ends with one extra measure that is cut off by a drum hit. The only part of this band not discussed was the bass player. The bassist (Doug Watkins) plays walking bass most of the tune, but it completely captured my attention. He plays with an excellent sense of not only rhythm, but also energy. Many times, I've noticed that bassists playing walking lines at non-challenging tempos seem bored. Watkins, although this piece isn't fast, seems to be absolutely enthralled by the piece and determined to show that in his bass line. That combined with how he and Blakey feed off the energy from the solos makes this piece an exciting listen whether you're a hard bop fan or not. 

It's About Time

Though the textbook claims that "by the 1960s, few observers could doubt that the unofficial rivalry between cool and hot had been decided in favor of hot", I have always felt more influenced by cool jazz at least in regards to piano.

When I began to play jazz piano as a sophomore in high school, I knew next to nothing about jazz. I remember being corrected constantly over playing too many "vanilla" chords, as my director liked to call them, and I struggled to improvise any solos that had direction or intricacy over the chord progressions. In short, I was an awful jazz pianist.

But with some encouragement from a friend of mine who was our band's lead tenor player, I decided to stick it out. My band director must have seen me struggling because he called me into his office one day after class and handed me a CD. It was the Dave Brubeck Quartet's "Time Out". I dutifully listened to it and it, for lack of a better phrase, caught a fire under me. I would listen to it obsessively, sitting at the piano transcribing my favorite licks by ear.

I will admit, I was never that great of a jazz pianist, but that album taught me to love jazz and taught me to listen to it. I began to understand how a person could create their own solos from nothing more than a set of chords and though my solos never sounded the way I really wanted them to, they were infinitely better than they had been and, better yet, the music I could create in my mind would occasionally find its way onto paper or into my better solos.

So, it is this album and its artists that I would like to talk about. For a young, uninspired, and lost jazz pianist, the Brubeck Quartet's cool melodies and interesting time signatures, both set me at easy and piqued my interest. The first piece on the album, "Blue Rondo a la Turk", was the focus of my critical listening last week so I'll skip to the second song.

"Strange Meadowlark" begins (and ends) with a cadenza (an unaccompanied performance by a soloist at the end or beginning of a piece) played by Brubeck. This cadenza with seems to sigh with longing for some long ago wish and shows a great proficiency for chords. As it goes on, Brubeck introduces more left hand chords that eventually lead into the theme, played by Desmond. Desmond has a very unique timbre and uses space extensively to accent the things he's played. Brubeck does the same in his solo which taught me the important of both space and understated solo lines. Too often as a pianist, I thought I had to be playing more than one note but Brubeck shows that it's not necessary to play many notes to make a good solo.

"Take Five" was written by Paul Desmond and is one of the most famous songs from this album. It is a great tune featuring Desmond extensively. Of his style, Brubeck once said, "There are so few guys that can play with the purity Paul had, but when I hear them...people who can develop a theme, and not play a million notes, but rather choice notes, I think, we were right. These are the guys who knock me out". I love this explanation because I knew that I, and most other jazz pianists, would never play licks that Charlie Parker or John Coltrane were using, but I could easily use Paul Desmond's licks. They were thoughtful, but approachable.

"Three To Get Ready" is a wonderful piece rhythm-wise. I love the way the beginning begins with straight eighth notes that eventually begin to swing, but occasionally resurface just to keep you on your toes. Brubeck's solo in this piece was one that I religiously listened to in order to transcribe portions of it and then transpose them to use them in different keys. His careful attention to accents and rhythm make a simple three note phrase seem like musical genius, and indeed it is. Rhythm can make a simple riff something else entirely.

The other three pieces on this album, "Kathy's Waltz", "Everybody's Jumpin'", and "Pick Up Sticks", were equally influential on me. I learned to play in a vast range of dynamics. Some critics have called Brubeck "heavy-handed" but I agree with his assessment of that complaint: "You know the piano was originally called piano e forte-soft and loud. I believe in using the full range of dynamics that the piano has to offer. That's what it is to play emotionally, reacting to what's going on around you". I also noticed and learned from Brubeck's comping style. He uses a lot of repetition with sparse comping, but his fills are always thoughtful and attention-catching, without displacing the soloist.

This isn't a typical research post for this class and maybe I've misjudged, but even as I learned from this album I never really understood how much I was absorbing until I began taking this class. I beginning to have a greater understanding of exactly how music affects us especially if we actively listen to it and seek to understand it. While our book did not expound much on Dave Brubeck and his Quartet, for me they will always be something more than just another band.

Sources: 
Jazz by Scott DeVeaux and Gary Giddins
The Great Jazz Pianists by Len Lyons