Category Archives: Jazz Booth

Profiling Jazz

Neglected Masterpieces: Manu Katche’s ‘Neighbourhood’

Very few albums, in my opinion, match Kind of Blue, Miles Davis’ legendary 1959 recording. But I think I have finally found one.

Album coverDrummer-turned-leader Manu Katché’s Neighbourhood displays a quite awe-inspiring line-up of jazz legends (a factor so significant that the album cover is simply a list of players on the recording, which shows you the stature afforded the musicians); trumpeter Tomasz Stanko, saxophonist Jan Garbarek, with pianist Marcin Wasilewski and bassist Slawomir Kurkiewicz from Stanko’s own quartet, not to mention Katché himself.

Katché is a masterful and versatile dummer, having played alongside pop icons Peter Gabriel and Sting as well as being a colossus amonst jazz drummers – previous credits include Garbarek’s I Took Up The Runes, also for ECM. Neighbourhood is his debut recording as leader for the label, and has something of the timeless quality that made Kind of Blue so special: delicate, sparse textures that allow the music room to breathe, colourful harmonies that are leisurely in their exploration of the potential of modality and the twelve-bar blues.  The indebtedness to Davis’s album is perhaps most obvious on Miles Away which employs a similar bass-line and 6/8 rhythmic feel to All Blues.

Here’s a video for ‘Number One’ from the album:

There’s a simplicity about the music on the album that speaks of great profundity; as the leader and the drummer, Katché is completely alive to every nuance offered by Wasilewski’s delicate artistry, Garbarek’s plangent melodic lines and Stanko’s lyricism. There’s a relaxed funkiness to ‘Take Off And Land’ that still manages to generate a compelling rhythmic drive. 

Not many albums can stand next to Kind of Blue: but this one, perhaps, just might.

Jazz into Classical will go…

Like an aberrant relative of whom one is slightly wary and mistrustful, jazz has always occupied a slightly equivocal place in relation to the classical music tradition. Briefly adored by Les Six and the aspiring avant-garde in early twentieth-century France, it has never quite managed to find itself a comfortable place in the canon of Western classical music.

George Gershwin
Feeling blue: Gershwin

At the start of the twentieth-century, composers working in France were seized with enthusiasm for the latest craze, jazz, with printed sheet music of works by Scott Joplin and performances by the Paul Whiteman Orchestra fuelling the interests of composers such as Satie and the group, Les Six. Joplin’s opera Treemonisha ,written back in 1910 (although not performed in full realisation until over sixty years later), and Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess from 1935, both show established classical forms embracing jazz: indeed, although famed for pieces such as the ‘Maple Leaf Rag’ and other ragtime piano works, Joplin always referred to his piece as an ‘opera.’

Evidence of the enthusiasm for jazz can be found in the adoption of ragtime music, as in Stravinsky’s Ragtime; or from Satie’s Parade; although, as always with Stravinsky, you get the sense that Stravinsky is playing with jazz as an objective phenomenon, rather than as a visceral, gut-instinct style; he dissects it and plays with it from a distance, somehow, rather than it being the lifeblood of his writing. Antheil’s A Jazz Symphony saw jazz invading orchestral music in 1925.

Jazz harmonies abound in the music of Francis Poulenc. The second movement of Ravel’s Violin Sonata is entitled ‘Blues’ and is evidence of Ravel’s fascination with jazz. Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue opens with the glissando clarinet that immediately speaks of jazz playing; the harmonic palette of the piece is littered with extended jazz chords and copious use of the ‘blue’ note (flattened seventh).

Bad Boy of British contemporary music Mark-Anthony Turnage’s Blood on the Floor sees an improvising jazz trio set amidst a brash, contemporary-sounding ensemble. Turnage acknowledges that jazz and funk are passions of his, and when you listen to Momentum or Your Rockabye, you can hear it.

Artists themselves can be seen to cross the apparently insurmountable classical-jazz divide: André Previn conducts Debussy or improvises with Oscar Peterson; violinist Yehudi Meuhin improvises with Stephan Grapelli;

More recently, former Radio 3 Young Generation Artist Gwilym Simcock is working hard to blur the division between classical and jazz genres. Jazz pianist Julian Joseph collaborated with Harry Christophers’ ‘The Sixteen’ in a programme of Monteverdi for the Spitalfields Festival, up-dating the improvisation expected of keyboard players in the Baroque period for the modern, jazz-infused age. And trumpeter Wynton Marsalis stands astride the classical and jazz genres, moving between both with ease and demonstrating phenomenal technical ability in both fields.

Improvisation has always been at the heart of classical music: from extemporised continuo parts in the Baroque to Mozart’s own improvised cadenzas in the piano concerti, and some elements of spontaneous realisation in the aleatoric music of the 1960s: improvisation belongs with classical music, and isn’t necessarily a separate discipline. Improvisation itself is the very life-blood of jazz, the spontaneous creation of music as a response to the moment of performance, keeping jazz very much alive.

As the twentieth-century turned into the twenty-first, jazz began to establish more of a foothold in classical music, and now it’s sometimes difficult to extricate one from the other in the work of composers such as Louis Andriessen, Turnage, Simcock and others.

Jazz, classical music and improvisation: made for each other.

Neglected masterpieces: John Surman’s Stranger than Fiction

Just occasionally, a jazz album comes along that stands outside of its time, and becomes a classic. Miles Davis’ 1959 recording, Kind of Blue, Charles Mingus’ Ah Um, John Coltrane’s Blue Train; the list goes on. More often, perhaps, albums are released that as equally as timeless, yet somehow fail to attract the acclaim and the status that they might deserve.

Album artStranger than Fiction, by British saxophonist John Surman, is a wonderfully lyrical and expressive album on which the pieces display the trademark organic, melodic improvisational skills of Surman, matched by some beautiful exploratory playing from pianist John Taylor, whose careful attention to balance and texture recalls some of Morton Feldman’s piano pieces. There’s some understated support from bassist Chris Laurence, and delicate drumming from John Marshall.

The wonderful climbing line that opens ‘Tess,’ or the asymmetrical shifting patterns of the accompaniment which opens ‘Moonshine Dancer’ show the evocative colours that the group can weave; the mood is contemplative, almost spiritual, and the album never puts a foot wrong. No gesture is wasted, no phrase surplus to requirements: deft yet sure, the players are working together seamlessly yet creating plenty of space for one another.

Here’s ‘Moonshine Dancer;’

Released in 2007 on the ECM label, home of such artists as Keith Jarrett, Jan Garbarek, Marcin Wasilewski and other greats, the album is presented in the hallmark ECM style, monochromatic colours with no textural clutter and expressionist cover photography.

Inventive, expressive, and timeless. Listen for yourself to extracts from the album on Amazon here: you won’t be disappointed.

Exuberance in music: Joe Zawinul’s ‘Patriots’

For sheer unbridled exuberance in music and matchless energy, here’s the late, great Joe Zawinul’s ‘Zawinul Syndicate’ performing Patriots live in 1997.

After an all too brief but dizzying bass solo from the great Richard Bona, the unstoppable rhythmic drive of the piece kicks in: it’s hard not to be carried away by its infectious joie de vivre and sheer pleasure in playing. Once the groove has begun, propelled by some astonishing percussion work, it never lets up: the piece just cooks nicely and with such ease, you can forget that it’s leading at such a frenetic pace.

Zawinul led the great fusion band Weather Report in the 1970s and 80s, a legendary ensemble including ex-Miles Davis sideman, saxophonist Wayne Shorter, bassist Jaco Pastorius (listen to Teen Town to get an idea of Jaco’s astonishing virtuosity and raising of the bass to a melodic instrument; Bach would have loved it), and drummer Peter Erskine. The group’s dazzling blending of jazz, rock and world music saw the creation of great albums such as Black Market, Heavy Weather, 8.30 and Sportin’ Life.

 Zawinul himself played with Miles Davis for a brief period, and wrote the lyrical In A Silent Way from Davis’ album of the same name, and also played on Davis’ Bitches Brew, the fastest-selling jazz album of all time.

Zawinul’s own Zawinul Syndicate saw the same driving and energetic performances typified in Patriots right up until Zawinul’s death in September, 2007.

That’s the secret to music-making, and to great performances: passion, commitment and joy in performing.

(And to the members of the University Chamber Choir 2008-09, for whom I wrote a choral arrangement of Patriots: remember this ?! Happy days.)

The jazz-man’s necessary beat: rhythm in Swing.

Jazz may be all about the elasticity of time, about syncopation and the louche indolence of swing, but, to paraphrase George Gershwin, it don’t mean a thing if it ain’t got a regular pulse. (I can see why Ira changed the lyrics…)

You can’t pull against something if it’s not firmly fixed: in jazz, that’s the hi-hat. The crisp snap of the hi-hat on the second and fourth beat of a swing tune in 4/4 represents the twin pillars of the piece’s rhythm, around which swing can loll and flounce, secure in the knowledge that it is underpinned by a rock-solid rhythmic foundation. Music is often about the suspension of time, or what the American composer Elliot Carter has called the debate between ‘chronometric time versus psychological time,’ the regular pulse of the daily passage of life pitted against a time-scale imposed by the piece of music itself. Time, in jazz, slips and slides like a novice ice-skater, but one clinging firmly to the hoarding lining the rink: the security of the drum-kit.

Listen to the opening of Milestones, where the crisp homophony of the sideways triadic motion in the saxes and trumpet only works because the percussion defines exactly where the beats against which they are pulling lie: the driving ride cymbal and crisp rim-shot anchoring the beats.

And Dave Brubeck’s Take Five succeeds because the bass player roots the pulse firmly on the tonic ‘E’ every time the five-beat cycle begins anew, along with the pianist’s left-hand and a solid kick on the bass-drum.

(And, as an extra bonus, I love the descisive thwack on the snare(less) drum that marks the beginning of Desmond’s alto-sax solo when the tune ends in this clip).

The writer Michael Hall’s epithet which titles this post is spot on: the hi-hat provides the necessary beat. Next time you’re playing in a jazz ensemble, or improvising a solo, or simply listening to some Charlie Parker or Dizzy Gillespie, keep an ear out for the drummer: he’s holding it all together.

Be My Guest: Alanya Holder reviews Ronnie Scott’s Big Band

Be My Guest: an occasional series featuring guest posts and contributions. This week, Music Society President Alanya Holder reviews the Ronnie Scott Big Band as part of the Sounds New Festival, Canterbury.

—-

Ronnie Scott: “If it doesn’t turn you on…”

On Sunday 16th May, as part of the Sounds New festival, Ronnie Scott’s Big Band came to the Gulbenkian Theatre. But as an extra special treat, selected musicians from Canterbury Christ Church University were invited to an afternoon workshop with the director of the band, Pete Long. I was lucky enough to sit in and watch the experience! Pete Long is a fantastically extrovert character who clearly has a passion for all things jazz and big band. He was also a brilliant director, getting the absolute best out of everyone within minutes. The noise that engulfed the Gulbenkian Cafe was astounding. We also got a little insight into how rehearsals with the Ronnie Scott band must be as everyone was so relaxed and having a great time just enjoying the music. I also feel greatly enlightened by Pete Long’s words of wisdom during the day. A lesson every musician must learn is this; “Playing a note is like streaking, once you’ve started you’ve got to commit to it!” Also I think it is important we remember the day in a certain context; “Big band music – sometimes it’s used to accompany strippers.”

Album cover
Atomic Basie (1957)

So as the afternoon drew to a close everyone was eagerly awaiting the evening performance of the two iconic jazz albums: Atomic Mr. Basie and Ellington at Newport. The evening was not only fantastic music but I felt I left knowing a lot more about the two albums and the artists as Pete Long gave each song an introduction and history (not to mention a joke or two). It was great to hear the songs performed by the band that the students had played about with earlier in the day, as you could appreciate just how good both the students and Pete Long were at bringing the music to life. Almost every member of the Ronnie Scott band had a solo opportunity during the evening, the crowd favourite being the drummer who not only stunned us with drumming but juggling as well! A quirck which put a smile on my face was watching the pianist’s feet tapping away at an incredible speed along with all the songs, I was worried he might fall off his chair.

Ellington album
Ellington at Newport (1956)

The evening went from strength to strength and towards the end of the night every song and every solo received a cheer and a standing ovation. The passion for the music in the room was evident, even if jazz wasn’t your thing! But as Pete Long said; “If it doesn’t turn you on…then you haven’t got a switch.”

Written by Alanya Holder.

A very good year:Jazz @ 5.

So, the Jazz @ 5 season has drawn to a close. Now into its second year, the regular Wednesday showcase for jazz-loving Scholars, staff and students has really found its dancing feet. Set up by Dan Harding when he started in 2008 as a foil for the large-scale music-making of the University Big Band (as well as a chance to indulge in his passion for small-scale jazz ensemble-playing), the series has flourished since taking its first tentative steps in October 2008 onto the Gulbenkian Theatre foyer stage. 

Dina Watten
Dina Jazz

The series this year has featured a dizzying array of singers from the ranks of staff and students alike: Jo Turner, Jo Pearsall, Sophie Meikle, Miriam Zekagh, Dina Watten (pictured), Amy Clarke, Crystal Cowban, Lizzie McIver, Alanya Holder: all have graced the stage. Even former Scholar and jazz pianist Chris Manley has hot-footed it up the hill from Canterbury after work in order to continue playing in the series. Music this year has ranged from Fairground Attraction to Radiohead, as well as the usual array of popular standards and show-tunes. 

The original ensemble has grown to feature a regular quintet: pianist and leader Dan Harding, the elastic improvisations of guitarist Andrew Kitchin (pictured), the robust solos of saxophonist Will Rathbone – now enhanced by the arrival of some solid bass-playing from Sophie Meikle and the rhythmic underpinning of drummer Jon Nicholls. 

Guitarist Andrew Kitchin
The Kitchin sink: Andrew on guitar

And these groups are like buses: you wait for one, and then two arrive at once. This year has seen the birth of the JA Cross Quartet: Scholarship pianist James Cross and drummer Mike Macdonald have teamed up with Andrew and Will to form a refreshingly exploratory group, embracing Monk and Coltrane in their sound. 

Many thanks to everyone who has participated this year and made it such a success. As mentioned in a previous post, we were even blogged about by LondonJazz blogspot: it doesn’t get much better than that! Well, maybe Downbeat magazine, perhaps… 

We also present an album of images from Jazz @ 5, courtesy of the creative photography of Mick Norman. Some of the performers will be appearing in the Marlowe Tent at ArtsFest on Saturday 12 June: details to follow. 

Mick’s images.

The lights on-stage have faded, the piano is closed, the microphone stands alone. The singers sang, and set the sun. For now…

Prom Piece Preview: One Note Samba.

The Chorus piece for this year’s ArtsFest Prom is nearly finished.

With the arrangement for Chamber Choir now all but completed, I was left with no displacement-activity excuse to avoid getting to grips with what has turned out to be something of a monster. There’ll even be an array of Latin percussion as well, if I can organise it.

Herewith a sneak preview of the first few pages: if you’re singing with the Chorus in the Prom concert, this is a little taste of what you’re letting yourself in for…

[issuu layout=http%3A%2F%2Fskin.issuu.com%2Fv%2Flight%2Flayout.xml showflipbtn=true documentid=100426142652-b528e2825e1540aea0bdc2655ce0a27c docname=demo_one_note_samba username=UKCMusic loadinginfotext=One%20Note%20Samba%20preview width=420 height=297 unit=px]