I could see what you were reading

I promise I will eventually blog about the Infernal Machines sessions, which wrapped on Wednesday. But honestly I am still recovering from the experience -- three very long, very intense days, fueled primarily by caffeine and sublimated low-grade panic. I am incredibly proud of all of the musicians involved -- they played their assess off. But running these sessions is by far the hardest thing I have ever done and I'm still kind of in shock.

I want to give a big shout-out to the people who kept me from impaling myself on the nearest mic stand -- in addition to all the Society co-conspirators, these include our kickass producer, Sherisse Rogers, our fantastically thorough production assistants, Caitlin Smith and Kelly Fenton, and our superhumanly tireless engineer Paul Cox.

And of course, a huge thank you to all of the people who made all this possible in the first place by contributing to our recording fund. I am grateful beyond words to you all. Of course, if you would still like to make a contribution, your donations are most welcome -- there is still lots of mixing and mastering to be paid for. We will keep the Sponsor a Musician and Be Our Executive Producer options open until Feb. 15, and we will continue accepting donations via Fractured Atlas up until the album's release date in early May.

Blogging will be sporadic over the holidays, although I hope to finish introducing you to all of the amazing musicians who contributed to this recording. 

In the meanwhile, here are some things you must read:

• Ethan Iverson on Wynton Marsalis and the various and sundry issues associated with Wynton's public prominence. I believe this is the longest Do The Math post yet, so long that it is broken up into no less than eight different sections. But it is all sensational: incredibly thorough and on-point, an overdue but badly-needed corrective to a lot of the conventional wisdom about Wynton and other Young Lions. You should read the whole thing -- it is definitely required reading for anyone who enjoyed my Jazz Wars piece at NMBx -- but if you do nothing else, at minimum you should listen to Wynton's play-by-play analysis of his famous solo on "Knozz-Moe-King" from Live at Blues Alley.
  
  (Also: I can't quite believe Wynton doesn't think that Thad Jones solo on "Contemporary Focus" sounds like Thad! To me that is absolutely vintage Thad, right from the first phrase. Wynton is obviously hearing something in there that I'm missing.)


• This is a fantastic interview with Ted Hearne, composer of Katrina Ballads:
  

  One big thing is the drum set right now. There are a lot of composers who are trying to incorporate the drum set into classical arrangements. It’s really hard to do that and make a synthesis that makes sense, because people have been using drum sets for a long time. The drum set is a totally oral instrument and everyone has their own feel to it and if you try writing it down it’s very difficult to do and have it make sense. I feel like there are so many concert pieces that have a drum set in it and the drum set sounds so stupid. It doesn’t make sense in the piece. It sounds like someone is trying to make a pastiche of rock music or jazz.

  You know John Corigliano? I think he’s a pretty popular classical composer in America, and he has this piece called “Circus Maximus.” It’s this huge piece, for surround sound, he did it at Carnegie Hall, a marching band, people everywhere. It’s supposed to be this great post-modern piece about all the kinds of music. It’s maximal. There is a drum set, and it’s dumb. When the drum set comes in it’s doing this tsss-t-t-tsss. It’s this 30s jazz reference, it’s like the smallest sound bite that can represent jazz. Anyone who likes jazz now would be like, ‘What are you saying?’ It’s like music from the 30s, ok, thanks. Thanks for bringing that little sound bite in there. It’s not meaningful. It’s the same with rock. There are all sorts of interesting things going on in the indie scene, the ways people are using electric guitar; the evolution of rock music is very much alive, very cool shit is happening. But when you see it integrated into classical music very often it’s like, ‘just throw some distortion on the guitar, make it sound like rock music.’

• Aaron Parks is on the cover of this month's Jazziz, interviewed by Phil Freeman of  Running The Voodoo Down. Phil has posted the piece to his blog.
  

  “One of the things that I give thanks for is that I didn’t jump into leadership,” Parks says. “It was possible. I’ve been talking to Blue Note since I was 16 or 17 about doing things. But I wasn’t ready then and I knew it. And with my apprenticeship in Terence’s band for five years and in Kurt’s band for the last two years, I learned so much. Without those experiences, I would have never been able to make a record that I can stand behind, like I did with this one. It would have been a record of some standards, with some haphazardly chosen originals – just the new young guy who’s got some technique and whatever. But to me, that’s a pretty boring story. It’s been told over and over, and it’s not interesting anymore.”

  “The whole young lions thing, I mean, that formula should have died in the ’80s, and I think it really did die as far as listeners are concerned,” he continues. “They’re not interested in that anymore. But that’s the thing that’s worked in the past, and everybody’s reluctant to abandon it. So everybody’s still looking for the next hot young thing.”

Comments

[cbj smith]

1.

Wow, that Ethan Iverson post is FANTASTIC! Thorough and detailed, and the recorded examples are presented in a way that one could only get this easily from the InterWeb (I knew it was good for something!) Nice find, and kudos to Iverson and of course Marsalis for being so articulate about a subject that is too easy to be inarticulate about. (Sorry for that last sentence!)

[andrea]

2.

I would love to hear your take, Darcy, on this part of the interview (when you've got a moment...):

EI: I feel a certain anxiety about people knowing something about jazz and the jazz tradition. I’m a white guy born in Wisconsin in 1973. Everything I know about jazz is just because I had this passion for it for some reason – but no culture. Jazz culture wasn’t part of my upbringing.

WM: Yes, it was. You're an American. You heard the blues somewhere.

EI: I don’t think so, man. Only modern country and radio rock, that's all I knew, or would have known if I didn't go get it myself.

I feel tension about how little people know and respect some basic shit about jazz. And, compared to someone like you, I’m not even involved! I can only imagine the tension and frustration you feel sometimes about trying to get the message through.

Personally, I think WM is spot on and EI misses it. Modern country and radio rock are totally underpinned by the blues; it's almost weird that EI glosses that over. But as a white girl classical composer who grew up in suburbia with the same kind of commercial culture, I sympathize completely with the "what's my culture when the things that move me the most seem to be outside my culture?" or even that everything feels outside one's culture in the existential ennui that is American suburbia. Thoughts?

[DJA]

3.

Hey Andrea,

That's a big question! Perhaps worth a post in itself at some point, although you will have to give me a while. But to respond to a small point:

Modern country and radio rock are totally underpinned by the blues; it's almost weird that EI glosses that over.

You are right, but only to an extent. Imagine (it's easy if you try) that someone interested in Brazilian music was growing up in a community where the closest thing to authentic bossa nova they heard was the Sonny and Cher cover of "Girl From Ipanema."

Ethan is saying that in the community he grew up in, there was zero interest in or exposure to the black American musical tradition, except by very distant proxy. And (I think) Wynton is correctly pointing out the black influence on American music is pervasive and inescapable, and even highly diluted versions of that tradition can prime your ears for the high-proof stuff once you encounter it.

[David Adler]

4.

Listen to the audience response on Wynton's Amongst the People: Live at the House of Tribes. That's what Ethan means by "jazz culture," I think. Indeed, you don't get it from rock radio in Wisconsin.

It's also the furthest thing from "museum" culture, the thing that everyone tries to lay at Wynton's feet.

[Jeremy]

5.

Hey Darcy,

I'm a big fan of your blog and I rarely comment, but I feel obligated to stick up for Corigliano here, as Ted Hearne is simply not correct re: Circus Maximus.

As anyone who has even glanced at a Corigliano score since about the mid-70s knows, he uses a LOT of aleatoric notation, and the passage that Hearne slams is just that: there it is in my score, on p. 55, clear as day: "Jazz feel, hi-hat, brushes, qtr = 92" That, along with about two beats of the tss-t-t-tss pattern followed by a reaaaaallly long black line and "ad lib.," is all that exists in the score. Pretty loose notation, right?

(Side note: the rest of what the trap set plays in that jazzy movement is actually pretty "classical": highlighting motives and the like.)

So Hearne is simply not right that that's what Corigliano wrote. He wanted the player to improvise ("ad lib.") around that pattern, while remaining in a jazz idiom. Whether the Percussion 1 player in the performance Hearne saw/heard did that adequately is a performance question, not a composition question.

What Corigliano DID do is give the player a few parameters (instrument, tempo, style, dynamic) to improvise within. That Hearne should rail against that with such force strikes me as a bit odd, given that he spends the whole previous paragraph talking about how notating a drumset part is folly since it's an oral instrument (which I largely agree with--my own drumset parts are marked "ad lib." as well).

As for the drumset's association with rock and jazz, well, duh. I mean, it's been used pretty much exclusively in those two genres for nearly a hundred years now; of course it's going to have genre trappings akin to what the saxophone, the electric guitar, or even French horns used to have. If he feels that the drumset is limited by those genre trappings, he should write music that solves that problem rather than attacking other composers over things they didn't actually write.

There, end of rant.

[Chris Becker]

6.

But "jazz feel, hi-hat, brushes..." is REALLY vague. I don't know a drummer who wouldn't ask the composer for much more direction than that.

And maybe in early performances of the work Corigliano provided that additional direction to whoever was playing the kit? And a "dated" very straight ahead approach is what he wanted in his collage?

I appreciate Ted's larger point which is that these instruments (drums, electric guitar) generally associated with rock, blues, and jazz - all very vague terms :) - have undergone over many many years an evolution in performance techniques. And as a composer, you shouldn't denigrate that history by bringing a musicians a vaguely articulated concept of what you want (i.e. "Jazz feel..." It's lazy and speaks to ignorance about...uh...well, music.

And it takes time to build such a rapport doesn't it?

[James]

7.

And as a composer, you shouldn't denigrate that history by bringing a musicians a vaguely articulated concept of what you want (i.e. "Jazz feel..." It's lazy and speaks to ignorance about...uh...well, music.

First, I think this statement is quite a stretch.

Second, what's wrong with denigrating history?

Third, when I hear drumset in a classical piece, my problem is always with the classical drummer who is playing the part. I know that if Ted Poor was playing it, it would be sick.

Fourth, what's wrong with music from the 1930s anyway?

[Chris Becker]

8.

Hmm. I guess "jazz feel" isn't denigrating, it's just vague - and that written instruction may speak to a lack of experience the composer has with some types of music.

Not exactly the end of the world though. Composers often have to talk with their musicians to further articulate what it is they want. My guess is that is exactly what Corigliano does with his musicians. And that the very drum performance Ted heard was what Corigliano wanted. The score is just a guide.

And in my experience, in rehearsal, a good musician will make an effort to pull out more detailed instruction from the composer. Some of my work consists of very few written instructions accompanied (maybe) by a scale, a short chord cycle, or even a photo or drawing. With such a chart, the musicians I work with obviously have to "go off the page", but at the same time, there is a compositional gesture in the music. And if they need more direction to realize that gesture, they're gonna ask me.

One chart I created for an evening length dance performance called Like Dirt included a copied photo of Blind Willie Johnson, another photo of a broken violin set on top of a cracked expanse of dried clay, and a D natural notated in bass clef. Kinda vague, right? Was I denigrating Blind Willie? Well, no. In rehearsal, his recorded performance of "Dark Was The Night Cold Was The Ground" became the reference for myself (on laptop), a vocalist, trumpeter (Flip Barnes - William Parker's trumpeter), and a guitarist. I asked Flip to use breath and his effects pedals heavily. My guitarist and vocalist laughed when they heard the Blind Willie recording as the "key" of the song was "whatever key his guitar was in when it came out of the box." I chose a D natural for a drone and we went from there! I also asked for a really subdued very ambient texture up front (inspired in part by Blind Willie's humming on the recording) - the sounds I played via the laptop were like radio or vinyl static and maybe hums and crackle of electricity. The piece itself began that way, but blossomed each night into a very Gospel inspired climax with our vocalist freaking out everyone in the theater.

So an entire piece of music was birthed from a handful of instructions, some visual images, and open conversation among all of the players with me the composer.

[DJA]

9.

Great discussion!

Jeremy, I do not think think that Ted's complaint was about Corigliano's notation. The point about the drum set being an oral instrument means that it is not possible to capture the most important aspects of drum set performance on the page, no matter how you decide to notate it. Some classical percussionists have respect for and are conversant in this oral tradition -- most aren't. So odds are it's going to come out sounding like a pastiche (and a lazy, obvious one) not matter what is on the page.

Of course, there's nothing (necessarily) wrong with pastiche if that's what's intended. But if the hihat part is supposed to come out sounding like Jo Jones rather than some stilted, awkward parody, that's not something most orchestral percussionists are going to be able to pull off.

The point is that composers need to take some responsibility for who is going to be performing their music and how it's performed, something Ted does extremely well in Katrina Songs. I don't think you can segregate such things into "performance questions" and "composition questions" -- composers need to be involved in performances of their works. They can't just wash their hands and walk away, saying, "well, it's a 'performance question' and that's outside my jurisdiction."