Post 6 - Jim Pepper

Like just about everyone else from class, I feel that there was so much to be covered with the history of jazz piano that just could not fit within six hours. In particular, I found the early recordings of Bill Evans to be interesting in how different they are from what I associate with his playing style. Based on what I’ve heard of his, I would have never thought of him as playing like boogie-woogie like he does at 14. I’ll also admit that usually when listening to his recordings I’m immediately drawn to the bass playing, especially with Bill’s trios that featured Scott LaFaro and Eddie Gomez. I’ve always found that the Bill Evans Trio embodied what I saw as the perfect sound of a jazz trio, which brings up what was briefly covered on the make up of trios. I found it interesting and was not aware of the early jazz trios consisting of piano-clarinet-drums before Nat Cole's trio.
Since Friday, I’ve listened to different recordings of Evans and looked at recordings of his composition “Waltz For Debby,” to notice differences or developments in his playing from its early recording on New Jazz Conceptions, the well-known Village Vanguard recordings, the later Bill Evans Album, and the Bill Evans/Tony Bennett Album. First of all, as a bass player I found this very difficult for many of these recordings, since the bass playing always stands out so well I often get distracted from a lot of what Bill is doing. But with each of these recordings over a span of almost twenty years, each one is recorded so that there is usually something fresh with each different version.
I also found the presentations from Friday interesting and informative. Before the class, I did not know much about Cedar Walton as well as Vijay Iyer or Craig Taborn. I thought Tara’s presentation offered a good synthesis of both musicians’ individual work and background as well as their collaboration. I found Alan’s presentation interesting and it showed how much of Herbie Hancock’s compositions may seem fairly simple melodically which make them catchy to the listener, yet are very complex harmonically.
Over the past six classes, I learned a lot of valuable information both with specific facts on musicians or periods as well as things to consider when looking at jazz from a historical or research standpoint. I’m definitely looking forward to the fall semester and what’s covered in Historiography, especially based on what we covered in this class and what was noted as being covered in that class.

Free Improv

When there is no framework -- no head, chord progression, groove, lyric, or time constraint -- how does one decide what to play?

I believe the improviser must derive his inspiration from somewhere. A groove and chord progression is an easy, obvious inspiration. Minus those things, the inspiration can come from visual surroundings, from other sounds such as the audience coughing or sirens outside, from silence, or from a fragrance in the air. Just because the inspiration is not aural does not make it any less strong.

As I said in our first class, I sometimes ask the audience for a topic, and then I will improvise on that topic. At one point I had some of my husband's paintings on stage with me, and someone called out that I should improvise based on one of the paintings. It was a dusky blue mountain scene with dark pines and a misty peak. I decided to play as if I were in the scene, climbing the mountain. So, the music had to project certain qualities: determination, refusing to stop or give up, gradual rising, the feeling of walking and moving, a variety of terrain, and finally the point of light.

There is a difference between playing based on something, and playing the thing itself. It depends on how you view the object as related to your music. If I am told to "play like the color green," or to "play the color green," would I play differently? I think so. To "play the color green" is to recognize the sameness between the sight and the sound. There is an intangible substance of art that that they both share. But to "play like the color green" assumes an inherent disconnect. It tells the improviser that she should never quite reach the inspiration, but she should try to get as close as she can. Either one of these instructions could yield a magnificent piece of improvisation.

My husband, a visual artist, likes to give students the following task: Paint the color red without using red. It makes them think of how they feel about red, what red means. It makes them think in layers like a diorama. One could do the same exercise with a jazz standard: Play 'A Train' without playing 'A Train'. There are many possible inroads to the intangible art substance of the song: the lyrics, the juxtaposition of whole notes and eighth notes, the "clash" between Cmaj7 and D7b5, the fact that you heard it in Paris while falling in love. Of course it will not be recognizable by ear to the audience, but the point is to perform it as it feels to you, and I believe this will resonate with the audience if you are able to successfully communicate it.

Health and happiness to everyone!

Bruce Wands Comments Class 6 – July 4 – Jazz Pianists

Bruce Wands Comments Class 6 – July 2 – Jazz Pianists

Sorry I’m late. I know our deadline for everything is tomorrow. I did quickly read through the postings and agree that it was an excellent class, as well as course. Since I am new in the program, I hope that the fall course will fill in some of the gaps we didn’t have time for. I really appreciated Gretchen’s thoughts. One of the things this entire class did for me was to provide new insights into improvisation and how each person has their own voice and style. The historical emphasis that Lewis put on research was also greatly appreciated. We do tend to live in the now and often forget to look at the roots of the tree house we are living in. I also liked John and Tara’s presentations. I am very impressed that the contribution level of the students in the program is so dedicated. All in all, the course really expanded my appreciation and knowledge of improvisation, personal style and, with Lewis’s encouragement, having the courage to express our selves in our own unique way. One of things I’d like to explore more is the interaction and contribution that the band members made to this past course and jazz history in general. I am mainly a bass player and am happy being in the background, but I do know how vital a rhythm section is to the band. While we only had time to focus on the main players, music is a group interaction and I’d like to gain some further insight into how that process works and evolves. I’m very much looking forward to the fall and will email everyone my paper tomorrow and will take some time over the summer to re-read the postings and give them some more thought. Enjoy the rest of the summer!

Gretchen's Post--Jazz Piano: The Limitless Possibilities

As an instrument, the piano has always been of considerable interest to me. The capabilities of performing on a piano are endless—melodic innovation, harmonic innovation, percussive or lyrical ways of playing, the opportunity to play polyrhythms, or at least contrasting right and left-hand lines, as well as the overall expressive qualities of the instrument itself (the wide range of pitches available, timbre, option to sustain a pitch while playing other pitches, etc.). In accordance with the vast array of possibilities associated with this instrument comes a field ripe for endless improvisation and artistic innovation.

We heard several examples of pianists in class who took full advantage of the opportunity to go “out” in their improvisatory explorations of the piano. I must admit, while I was aware of Earl Hines’ skill and approach that differed from the quintessential stride pianists James P. Johnson and Fats Waller, I had not heard the extent to which he explored the possibilities of harmony, range, and tempo during his solos. I was particularly intrigued by the version of “East of the Sun” we listened to in class. He is definitely not afraid of taking chances, and the thing that makes it work is that his “chances” sound very intentional. He doesn’t back off the notes like “I’m not sure if that’s right.” Instead, he seems to play his riskier chords with an even louder, more percussive sound, just to say “Here I am!!”

I went back and listened to one of Hines’ earlier more “stride-like” pieces from 1928—“A Monday Date.” While primarily in the stride style, there are still some very “out” things that he incorporates into this piece. Check it out here at redhotjazz.com if you haven’t heard it before (it’s the first piece on the list at the bottom of the page). Notice when he completely alters the tempo throughout the piece, as he did in several of the examples we listened to on Friday.

http://www.redhotjazz.com/hines.html

In addition to the presentation on Hines, I enjoyed listening to the Nat Cole’s piano recordings. Just out of curiosity, I went around and asked a bunch of my friends—musicians included—if any of them knew that Nat King Cole had been a well-known jazz pianist. Not a single one of them did. I would be curious to find out exactly when he started to slip out of people’s focus as a jazz pianist, to the point that the majority of people didn’t even know that he was one. His incredible performance from Jazz at the Philharmonic that we listened to was in 1944, but by the late ‘40s, he had already become a pop-singer icon. Do audiences really forget that quickly, or were they just not aware of him as a pianist to begin with? Though unfortunate, it makes sense in a way. If you are interested in pop music, and don’t care about jazz at all, why would you know/care who the top jazz pianists are? With my thesis research, I have run into similar perceptions of Harry Connick Jr. Some people only know of him as a Hollywood actor, and have no clue that he is a musician. Others, who haven’t ever actually seen him perform, think of him as a front-of-stage pop vocalist, and don’t realize that he is also the pianist in his big band.

Accordingly, Dr. Porter’s suggestion for historical research is invaluable—if you want to truly learn about someone or something at a given time, you can’t only consult what people are saying today, you must consider reception as it was going on then. Furthermore, you must also take into account the type of audience whose reception you are considering. Today, you might say that Connick is at the peak of his performing career—and still people aren’t aware that he plays jazz piano. Therefore, it is not only crucial to consider comments from the time, but also from varying groups from the same time period (popular audiences, jazz audiences, musicians themselves, critics, etc.).

I wish Friday’s class could have gone on forever—I love listening to jazz piano, and the range of different styles and musicians we covered was particularly impressive. I enjoyed everyone’s presentations, and each artist presented was very different from the ones discussed before. I had never heard either Vijay Iyer or Craig Taborn. Just the simple fact that they are still young, play fresh jazz piano (aren’t copying the styles of previous jazz pianists), and have completely different approaches from each other further suggests to me that the possibilities of jazz piano are endless.

Vijay Iyer

Hello all,

I happened to see the Vijay Iyer Trio at Birdland a couple of weeks ago, and I wrote a review (posted below) of the show. I figured that since Tara did a presentation on him, it would be relevant to include my review in this blog. I hope you enjoy it:

Time Flies When You’re Experiencing It

Lee Konitz sat at the bar in a white linen jacket at Birdland on Saturday night. He wasn’t performing, just checking out the scene. It probably wasn’t a coincidence he came by the night the Vijay Iyer Trio took the stage.
Mr. Konitz—who played alto saxophone with Lennie Tristano in the 1950’s—developed his dry, distinctive sound at a time when Charlie Parker mimics were flourishing. He sat serenely sipping his drink, his back to the stage, as pianist Vijay Iyer reverentially—but not self-effacingly—pointed out him out to the audience. Mr. Konitz, 82, and Mr. Iyer, 39, are of different generations, but they both understand their respective traditions and know what to take from and add to them.
Mr. Iyer is a polymath: an elegant man with profound thoughts in his head and on the piano. He has incorporated math, poetry, history and multiculturalism into his music. He studied physics at Yale. He operates with a complicated sense of purpose while keeping his artistic output relatable.
His trio—with drummer Marcus Gilmore and bassist Stephan Crump—plays complicated music, without drawing too much attention to complication. This group represents a new, ecumenical way of doing the piano trio: with touches of funk and Broadway and post-bop and hip-hop in its sound.
And there’s a balance in its sound and style that lets you know this group wants to be understood. You might not know what the time signature is at every moment, but the music still lets you in, makes you feel comfortable.
On Saturday, Mr. Iyer was pounding out chords with both his hands in seven-eight time for one jumpy section of a song. It sounded as regular as four-four—a good thing.
Rhythm is important to Mr. Iyer. “When you hear music,” said Mr. Iyer in an interview, “the rhythm is the underpinning of the way you experience it. In a way, the melody and harmony are secondary to that because rhythm guides you through the experience of time, and that’s such a fundamental quality of human experience.”
At one point, in M.I.A.’s “Galang,” Mr. Gilmore—the grandson of Roy Haynes—laid down a funk beat on the hi-hat, snare and bass. Whenever it appeared this beat might slip into glibness, he unfolded it with a snare-hit or an empty space that melded into Mr. Crump’s cushiony bass lines.
In Leonard Bernstein’s “Somewhere.” Mr. Crump laid down a walking bass line. Mr. Gilmore put down a beat that lassoed the propulsion of Mr. Crump’s bass line and turned it on top of itself. The melody, which Mr. Iyer played, floated clearly and beautifully above the mesh. In the Andrew Hill song “Smokestack,” Mr. Iyer played a pensive solo introduction that sounded, at times, like Thelonious Monk—with hints of stride and dissonant chord voicings and off-the-beat one-note interjections.
And in a way, this trio is playing in a vein that extends from Monk himself. Monk may have been inscrutable, but his music wasn’t. He wrote some of the catchiest and wittiest melodies in jazz. And he worked very hard at them, despite their seeming simplicity. The Vijay Iyer Trio, above all, preserved the original feelings of the songs they covered, while adding their own formal rhythmic calculations.
At the end of “Somewhere,” Mr. Gilmore looked over at Mr. Iyer and they both began to laugh. Mr. Konitz, still at the bar, took a sip from his drink and smiled.

Jim Pepper- Dave Brubeck

I will admit, before Friday’s class I was always rather apathetic when it came to Dave Brubeck, I never had anything against him that made me dislike him but at the same time I was never a big fan. I found his rhythm section boring, and as a bassist that is a big deal to me, but never thought about the fact that they haven’t done much recognizable work outside of Brubeck’s Quartet. I always found the experimenting with time signatures to be interesting, and I have a newfound respect for his piano playing since Friday that I never truly appreciated before.
I did not really think much of Brubeck as an “outsider” before the class, it just never came to mind, but it does make sense for me now. The list of collaborators Brubeck had is much shorter than other contemporaries who are at or near his level of popularity. And for the past fifty years, he’s primarily stuck with the same few songs when he performs live. But this brings up the fact that his fans are primarily non-jazz fans. His audiences know exactly what to expect when they see him perform, since he draws on the same few tunes, but he seems to be content with that. Looking at his playing techniques like using polyrhythm and polytonalities, I think much of that goes unnoticed by many listeners who are not familiar with much jazz outside of Brubeck’s work, and they probably are not familiar with other jazz pianists enough that they can compare him with.
I am still frustrated from Brubeck’s own personal accounts and interviews, where he allows myths to be viewed as fact, increasing his status as celebrity, and he obviously exaggerates his resume, particularly with the examples from the Octet period in trying to appear stylistically before the Miles Davis Nonet in the jazz history narrative. However, it is not like Brubeck is the only performer to have ever done this. But it shows there is much research to be done to distinguish fact from legend, but unfortunately this will probably only be done posthumously because of the tight control over telling Brubeck’s story.
Based on what we heard and saw with the interviews, I would agree that there were definitely missed opportunities for questions that focused on his approach to and study of harmony, something that definitely makes him stand out among other musicians and seems to go overlooked in many ways. If he focused more on this rather than exaggerating his personal biography and individual celebrity, he might have more respect and a wider fan base within the jazz world.

The Brubeck Recipe for Success

At the end of class, Lewis explained to us why Dave Brubeck does not have a stellar reputation in the jazz world. I'm going to offer some theories as to how these things have allowed Dave to build a stellar reputation in the non-jazz world.

he knows himself

He doesn't pretend he is something that he's not. He doesn't try to be popular, look around and see what's popular and try to get into that (for example, a swing band). He's not a politician. He's not afraid to not play bebop, and it's not a struggle for him. He can bring a sense of inner peace to what he does because he is being true to himself -- and because he does not wish he was something else. He is happy to be a non-bebop-playing jazz player.

the Wynton factor

He's a master storyteller. We were shown four channels that he has utilized to communicate with his audience: playing and improvising, composing, speaking, and writing in words. His talent for engaging the listener comes through in every case. There was the video interview where he spoke of racism and his relationship with his father, letting his feelings show. There was also the New York Times article, a brilliant way to speak directly to the listening public. I think there is always an uneasy disconnect between the artist and the public because the artist speaks a different language. It may be the language of music, of dance, of visual arts, or drama, but it has an essential abstract quality that the audience must accept without words of explanation. But when an artist uses the public's own language -- the written or spoken word -- to reach out, and it is done well, the public leaps at the chance to get closer.

(This may also explain the success of local jazz series such as at the Peddie School (Hightstown) and the Institute for Advanced Study (Princeton). These series have typically included an interview with the artist in addition to the concert.)

no fronting

As Lewis pointed out, Dave is an "out" player without having a reputation for it. Another way to say this is that he's unassuming; he does not have the affectations or attitudes common to those who play his kind of music. What is the stereotype of a strikingly abstract artist? Long hair, sunglasses, weird clothes, drugs, alcohol, strange or unusual way of talking, multiple marriages or relationships, publicity stunts, jail time, the list goes on and on. To meet Dave Brubeck on the street, based on the photographs and videos we have seen, I doubt that one would think he was an artist of any sort. His image to me is more like that of a schoolteacher.

As for the self-consciousness of an "out" player: I am reminded of my college East Asian History textbook. The first paragraph in the book decried its own title: "To the people who live there, it is neither east nor west and certainly not far." To Dave, his playing is neither out nor in, it's just home.

you had me at the pickup

Dave's rhythm sections are perfect for him. He surrounds himself with people who build him up and allow him to play the way he wants. Certainly he did not choose his rhythm section for their fame or for political reasons. We have heard his rhythm sections do nothing but keep time and solo when it's their turn. I have not heard any highly unusual solos from them. This disparateness between lead and accompaniment creates a spark that is powerful and compelling. Because the bass and drums' time is so predictable, Dave's eccentric rhythmic attack is exposed.

I think he could have had a "The Bad Plus" situation had he found rhythm players who would play more independently. But, I am sure that he did not want that. His love is to sit in time and experiment.

he's got pop hits

Dave has tapped into the world of pop-stardom with his arsenal of hits that are associated with him. He plays audience favorites and continues to pull them off to this day. A hit song is a powerful thing to possess.

I still wonder if he chooses to play the same concert every time, or if he does it for the sake of the audience. This is one of the drawbacks of pop-stardom: there is much less freedom to explore and discover on stage. So, he has made sacrifices in his performing career.

he has an "unshakably strong and highly individual identity" (direct quote from Lewis)

I agree -- and I believe this is the most important one. You must start with substance before it can grow and touch more and more people. Further, this quality is indestructible. Individuality can adjust to tragedy, can gain wisdom, can reach out, but can never be lost. Whatever is lost was never part of the individuality in the first place. If this were not true, Dave would not have been able to perform "Take Five" with the same feeling and identity for 50 years.

In sum, Dave Brubeck does not carry around "oppositional baggage," forces moving in the opposite direction to his success. I love it that there are people like him to set an example. He is not a perfect person -- would not make it in the field of historical research -- but we learn what we can from him.