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Running The Voodoo Down: WRITE A SONG:
“Speaking as a consumer and a jazz fan, I gotta say, with all due respect…f–k you guys. You wanna know why jazz albums don’t sell for shit? Because labels release recordings of lazy, entitled old-timers coasting on name recognition, sleepwalking through tunes everyone who’s into jazz has already heard 500 times before. “
Don’t hold back, Phil. Tell us how you really think.
Please, read the whole thing.
It is again an honor to have made the Rising Star Trombone list in the 2012 DownBeat Critics Poll. These polls can sometimes be awkward, and just downright silly at other times, but I must treat any list that puts my name in such good company as an honor.
Flutin’ High: Improvisation: Freedom and Responsibility: “How do you exercise responsibility within this freedom? Well, in music, it is relatively easy, just listen. “
(Via @musikFabrik.)
I disdain the use of the word “Jazz” as a reference to a monolithic cabal with a singular focus, but the article linked below contains some noteworthy insights, in spite of that J word usage.
‘It Can’t Be Done’: The Difficulty Of Growing A Jazz Audience : A Blog Supreme : NPR: “Jazz simply needs to continue doing what made it great in the first place: engage with popular culture in an intelligent, nuanced and sophisticated manner, as some successful groups are doing today. If there is any hope of audience building, this is where it lies. It must be organic, visceral and culturally relevant, qualities which cannot be consciously conjured by an audience development committee.”
(Via @tedgioia.)
Thoughts on music practice, adapted to other practices, which made me think about my music practice.
What Does Practice Look Like for You? – ProfHacker – The Chronicle of Higher Education:
“At the heart of Newport’s writing is the simple idea that success doesn’t require courage, it requires working hard in the right way. There are a number of ideas that follow from that: for example, you have to “become so good that they can’t ignore you” and becoming that good requires “hard focus.” The idea I’ve found most helpful is that to become good you have to practice deliberately.”
I’ve been meaning to write this for a while, but other things have been interrupting. They have been good interruptions, like a fabulous day in the studio recording with Hamid Drake on drums, Joshua Abrams on bass, and as the Godfather of New Orleans’ free jazz, Kidd Jordan on tenor saxophone. Eventually I’ll have solid news on when that will get released.
But the post that has been waiting to get written was actually instigated by an interview with Nicholas Payton on The Jazz Session. If you are unfamiliar with Nicholas or The Jazz Session (hosted by Jason Crane), go ahead and click through that link. It will be worth it.
In the interview, they were talking about Nicholas’ New Orleans roots, and he mentioned playing for dancers. I don’t know that I agree that “none” of the young jazz musicians have played much for dancers. I think anyone who has tried to make a living as a musician and isn’t a nose-in-the-air purist or jazz snob has had to play for dancing at some point. I know I spent large portions (read “almost all”) of my early career playing for dancing. Of course most of my career has been in new Orleans, so maybe I am making Nicholas’ point.
I do completely agree with his point however, that playing for dancers changes the way we play and the way we view what we do. This is in line with a view that has been articulated to me by others whom I also respect greatly.
At the 2006 Chicago Jazz Festival, I was walking from the Velvet Lounge to the festival hotel, with Dutch cornetist Eric Boeren. We were making small talk, and I asked what else he did. He asked what I meant. I said, “what other sorts of things do you play?” He responded that he didn’t do anything else. He was paid by the Dutch government to write and perform his own music. I said I was jealous, and I did all sorts of weddings, and anything else to get paid. He casually commented, “I sometimes wonder if I am missing out on something.”
My friend and colleague Benjamin Lyons has often stated that he feels like the musicians in New Orleans have an interesting take on improvised/creative/free/whatever music because we all do other things as well. We all play music that has a social meaning that can outweigh the pure musical meaning. Second line parades, jazz funerals, weddings, parties, etc. in New Orleans all have music as an integral part of the overall social meaning, but it isn’t so much about the music, as the music is about the event. The fact that we expect music to have this more important social meaning in these contexts, affects the way we make music in our more artistically centered endeavors. Even when we are being artists, we want to see people move.
I am sure that this is not a phenomenon unique to New Orleans, but it is definitely present here. If we all understand how to make a booty shake, or as Jimbo says “make the party happen” then we will all have a better idea of how to make art that connects with and moves people.
The October 2011 issue of Jazz Times has a couple of articles that (at least in part) deal with the issue of gender diversity, or lack thereof, in the jazz sphere. Nate Chinen‘s column addresses the lack of female jazz critics. In writing about why this lack of female jazz critics should bother us, he says, “You should care because our discourse lacks an illuminating perspective.” The issue also includes David R. Adler‘s piece entitled “Understanding Nicholas Payton.” Talking about the all female reed section in his TSO, Nick says that he is “…trying to develop a band that is more inclusive of different types of energies. Also, I think the feminine energy brings a different sensibility to the group, and it balances out the yang energy, which is cool.”
I agree strongly with these sentiments, not because I have two daughters and want them to feel comfortable becoming critics or musicians or whatever else they might like to become (although that is also true), but because as Nate and Nick each point out, the feminine perspective is different and important and good.
Last year I took part in a group called New Generation that was organized by Georg Graewe. We did two nights of shows in Dortmund, Germany. There were 12 of us in the group, although we broke down into smaller units as part of each show, and 7 of the 12 of us were women. It was the first time that I can recall I had ever been in the sexual minority in a musical situation. I have been in the racial minority in many musical situations, but never had I been in a group with fewer men than women. It was great. The energy was absolutely different than had the group been all men, and different in a positive way. It is hard to be specific about how the musical and social vibes were different, but they definitely were, and I think all of our musical, and critical, experiences would be well served to have a better balance of masculine and feminine energy.
I just received the August 2011 issue of Downbeat Magazine, which contains their Critics Poll results. I have long been ambivalent about magazine polls. There is no doubt that being listing in these polls is a good thing, but there are always so many good musicians who deserve to be listed and are not. Of course there are the usual silly results, like people appearing in the main category and the rising star version, such as Nicole Mitchell who won both categories on flute this year. Then there is Julian Priester appearing in the Rising Star Trombone category. Mr. Priester is near 70 years old, and is on some truly classic recordings. His star has been risen for some time now. In spite of these peculiarities, it is still an honor to make one of these lists. I write all of this to set up this post about how much love New Orleans musicians got in this year’s Downbeat Critics Poll.
Of course this post about New Orleans musicians in the poll is just an excuse to mention that I am listed in the Rising Star Trombone category this year. While I could name a number of other trombone players whose work I admire greatly who are not on the list, it does feel good to know that people are noticing what I am doing. And apparently some other New Orleans musicians are getting noticed as well.
We have our already world renowned musicians who still live in New Orleans, like Terence Blanchard, Herlin Riley, and Nicholas Payton, who got their expected mentions in the Jazz Group, Drums, and Trumpets lists. Our clarinet scene is well represented by Evan Christopher, Dr. Michael White, and Tim Laughlin. NOLA placed 3 trombonists in 4 spots on the Trombone and Rising Star Trombone lists. Delfeayo Marsalis and Trombone Shorty made the grown-ups tableTrombone list, and Trombone Shorty and I were at the kid’s table on the Rising Star Trombone list. It was also nice to see Kidd Jordan get some critic’s love, along with Jason Marsalis on vibes, John Boutté (Rising Star Male Vocalist), and Matt Perrine on sousaphone. I was especially pleased to see Jonathan Freilich on the Rising Star Guitar list and Aurora Nealand on the Rising Star Soprano Saxophone list, both well deserved.
The magazine lists the critics who vote in the poll, and I believe that only two of the voters in this year’s poll are New Orleans residents. The way the scoring works, one must appear on the ballots of at least three critics to make the list, so it is nice to know that critics from outside of New Orleans are aware of what we are doing here, and not just the stereotypical “New Orleans Music” version of what we are doing here, but some of the more creative aspects as well. I got 32 points, which means that at least six critics had my name on their ballot. To those of you who have noticed what I have been doing, thank you, I deeply appreciate the attention.
I hope I can handle the huge influx of CD orders. That is what happens after one makes one of these lists, right?
Over the past couple of years, I have been thinking about computer music instrument design, or how to turn my laptop into a musical instrument. Much of this is due to my participation in the Laptop Orchestra of Louisiana or LOLs. The process of writing a piece for the LOLs often involves designing an instrument, and in my thinking on the subject, I have been putting these instruments into two broad categories. Direct control instruments are instruments in which an action of the performer maps directly to a sound from the instrument, i.e. pull the trigger and sound comes out, move the joystick forward and the pitch changes, etc. The other category is code/process controlled instruments, or instruments where the sound is produced by a process, which is simply launched by the performer, or possibly live coded, but the performer does not have control of individual musical events once the process is set into motion.
I have tended towards direct control instruments in my own work. I think this is largely due to my trombone player DNA. I am used to playing an acoustic instrument (direct control) and so much of my performance world view has been formed by that experience. One of the difficulties with designing new direct control instruments is that it often takes a significant amount of time to learn to play them well. Like any instrument, one must spend some time with it to develop any technique or sense of musical connection to the instrument.
On the other hand, process controlled instruments allow for the creation of highly complex musical expressions with little or no time spent learning technique, but they lack the intimacy of control, especially in terms of timing, that one gets from direct control.
Tonight I was reading an article (from 1991) by David Wessel called “Improvisation with Highly Interactive Real-Time Performance Systems.” In this article, he describes a system that seems to be a direct process control system. He launches the processes (I use the term process to be consistent with my categories, I don’t know that he would use that word) from a direct control instrument. This returns the control of low level timing to the performer, yet allows the performer to still take advantage of what the computer processes have to offer. He also talks about mapping expressive gestures to entire phrases as opposed to single notes.
These ideas have started some wheels turning about my next computer instrument.
I love it when I discover that someone solved my current dilemma twenty years ago. That’s why we should always be attentive in history class.
Click the link above to hear an interview of me by Jonathan Freilich. Jonathan has been doing podcast interviews with New Orleans musicians, and he has a great knack for getting us to say things we didn’t know we knew.