Vancouver

I'm spending the very first two weeks of October in Vancouver. Coming back to Vancouver from Montreal always feels like a breth of fresh air, even if sometimes it feels like "where is everybody?". All the musicians I came up listening to are here, and I always try to see as many of them as I can.

Tonight I'm going to check a band at a certain loft venue called "the big much". The band features bari saxophonist Chad Makela, drummer Bernie Arai and guitarist Dave Sikula. I saw them back in May when I was here last and it was very cool. It's always so cool to see Chad play the saxophone because he really embodies many qualities I am trying to get into my own playing. I've studied with Chad and I hope to take a lesson with him while I'm here.

I've always been able to set up a few of my own playing situations. Next Thursday I'll be playing at a bar called El Barrio where my friend Cole Schmidt is curating a weekly gig. I'll be playing with Mike Kennedy on bass and Cam Stephens on drums. I know Mike from playing in a children's band led by Gord Grdina called the "Bluesberries". There was a very memorable tour we did to Kelowna where we stayed at a Bed and Breakfast complete with tennis courts and our own barbeque.

Then Friday I'm playing improvised music with two musicians I owe a lot too, guitarist Jared Burrows and drummer Stan Taylor. I'm really looking forward to next week.

Happy Birthday Roscoe Mitchell

There are a certain number of concerts I could have easily gone to, but didn't. These concerts include Tim Berne's Caos Totale, Jim Black's AlasNoAxis, a Bill Frisell concert, a Kurt Rosenwinkel concert and Drew Gress's 7 Black Butterflies band. I also wish I had gotten tickets to both sets of a mindblowing Sonny Fortune and Rashied Ali duo hit but maybe that would've just been too much.

At any rate, the concert I regret missing most is Roscoe Mitchell at the Vancouver Jazz Festival. Roscoe turns 69 today and I still don't know that much about his playing, though I have been making a conscious effort to listen to alot of his and other AACM music. (One day I will read George Lewis' book, "A Power Stronger Than Itself")

Here is a list of the records I enjoy that feature Roscoe Mitchell's playing:

Roscoe Mitchell - Sound, Noonah
Art Ensemble of Chicago - Reese and the Smooth Ones, Nice Guys

There is much, much, much more. Getting into this music took time, though it surely rewards thorough listening. Nonetheless, I can't but feel that getting into it would've been easier after seeing the man live and in the flesh. This music just makes more sense that way. I don't know whether I'll ever get a chance to see Roscoe Mitchell and once he's gone, decoding his message will be that much harder, for both future improvisors and myself.

There is a great interview with the man here.

Le Spectacle, Tim Berne and the Saxophone

Today I saw a concert featured in the L'OFF Festival de Jazz de Montreal. This city has two very fine jazz festivals that run basically back to back, the next being the International Montreal Jazz Festival, where I will be seeing Wayne Shorter's Quartet at what I'm told is a nice, intimate, good-sounding theatre.

The concert I saw tonight was a quartet of four famous Quebecois jazz musicians. They were:

Michel Cote - Tenor Saxophone
Alexandre Grogg - Piano
Pierre Cote - Bass
Pierre Tanguay - Drums

I had heard all kinds of things about Pierre Tanguay before coming here, and I'm not too sure why I hadn't seen him play until tonight. I could tell by the way the musicians walked onstage that it was going to be a great concert. There is a certain kind of authority and "This is going to music" type attitude that really comes across (at least to me).

The music consisted of simple but memorable compositions strung together with various levels of free playing. There was atleast a vague resemblance of Keith Jarrett's American Quartet (especially in the styles of Alexandre and Pierre Cote) but the music was clearly their own. One of the striking things about the band was how content Michel Cote seemed to be to play his own melodies, blow a little bit and step back and see what would happen. His sound was beautifully personal and reminded me of Charlie Rouse at times (it took a while to figure this out). The other interesting thing was the use of recordings of French people speaking, often several overlaid on top of each other, which Michel initiated as interludes, several times during Pierre Tanguay's drum solos and once over a piano drone created by striking mallets against the strings on the inside of the piano. This effect could've been tiresome but instead felt perfectly authentic and uncontrived.

All in all I was very inspired by this concert and must make an effort to see more jazz on this level in Montreal (it's clearly out there).

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I check Ethan Iverson's blog a little more than I'd like to admit (probably every day). Often I feel like quite a nerd for doing this, but not today when he posted a gigantic interview with Tim Berne, one of my favourite saxophonists ever.

I've already read this interview twice and it is incredibly illuminating. Highlights for me include knowing that Julius Hemphill used Sigurd Rascher's book Top Tones for the Saxophone.

In Vancouver I took not many more than a few lessons with a great baritone saxophonist Chad Makela. Chad definately believes in playing the saxophone in a very specific way that is definately "the real deal", for lack of a better way to describe it. This comes from his teacher Stan Karp, who studied with Buddy Collete and Joe Henderson among others. Many saxophonists from Vancouver have studied with Stan and everyone I've talked to has praised his methodical teaching methods (I also studied with Stan for about a year).

I remember telling Chad after seeing Bloodcount at the last Vancouver Jazz Festival that I saw Tim Berne playing with some kind of mouth guard in his mouth (This is true. I'd be curious to know if it's a regular or one-time thing. It isn't mentioned in the interview). Chad immediately replied: "Oh really? Suddenly I'm anti-Tim Berne. You can't play the saxophone with that shit in your mouth." I pushed the topic a bit further by saying that surely since studied with Julius Hemphill he must be legit. Chad replied by saying he had never heard Julius Hemphill play a straight long tone in his life and made some disparaging remark about the World Saxophone Quartet.

Now I respect Chad's position. Anyone who has heard him play the bari will attest that he knows what he is talking about. He also knows these Tim Berne records (though I doubt he has listened to much of Julius Hemphill or the World Saxophone Quartet.) Even though I will always aspire to play the saxophone as legitimately and with as much dedication as him, I can't deny the authenticity of Tim Berne and the pure bravado it takes to go your own way at any expense. I also believe that Chad too would acknowledge this on some level.

But the fact that Julius Hemphill was fully aware of and taught out of the Top Tones book (the same book Stan and Chad swear by; I also practice out of this book everyday) seems to refute the assertion that Julius Hemphill never played a "straight long tone" in his life (Tim Berne also admits to practicing long tones for 45 minutes every day religiously.)

As much as Stan and Chad value a strong tone (and they do), Stan once told me that as much as he is a stickler about sound, he is an even bigger stickler for time. (I never studied with him long enough to get as much time information from him, though the sound information was invaluable.)

Though I can assert that Tim and Julius practiced long tones, it is harder for me to assert that they would've practiced playing with the metronome in any serious way. (There is no mention of the metronome in the interview). Indeed, it seems that both Julius and Tim's sense of groove, which Tim admits to having a huge thing for, comes through osmosis from listening to soul and R and B music, music that has very little to do with jazz. It seems like this lack of a serious jazz beat is what would make Chad skeptical of Tim Berne and Julius Hemphill more than anything.

One of the records I bought when I was in Vancouver last month was Branford Marsalis' Contemporary Jazz, which features Tain Watts on drums. It's a good record; i hope to study it in greater depth at some point. One of the highlight tracks is the third, Elysium. It begins with 15 seconds of the most "out" Branford I would guess you would ever hear, complete with overblown multiphonics. After those fifteen seconds though, this idea is abandonned for straight ahead lines in a rubato Coltrane quartet setting, before moving towards a more complicated compositional structure in time. The free playing does return several times, admittedly, but never as blatantly as in those first fifteen seconds.

The track is fifteen minutes long and I'm not sure I understand what's really going on structurally, but I don't doubt that that (and Tain and Branford playing some fierce up-tempo swing) is what is important about this track. The free, or outside playing, just sounds tame to my ears, in a way that I know it wouldn't if Julius Hemphill were playing. I will probably always love this track though because to me it declares that this type of (free) music is going on 50 years old and even the so-called conservative axis of the music accepts it.

Related to this point is the part of the Tim Berne interview where they are discussing Julius Hemphill's famous Dogon AD record (which I have only this past year begun to study thanks to the McGill Library's vinyl collection complete with many Arista Freedom records) and Tim Berne states that it "probably wouldn't be as interesting with someone who plays the shit out of 11." There is some tribal element to that record where even though I feel that Julius and Baikida never really outline the 11 at all (Chad Makela might go as far as to say they aren't hearing it), their playing is still strongly authentic. I certainly wouldn't want to trade out Hemphill for Chad Makela (who CAN play the shit out of 11) on Dogon AD.

Interestingly, Chad Makela plays a Tim Berne-like role in bassist Tommy Babbin's band, Benzene. He definately sounds good, no question. Check out your body is your prison on his myspace.

There's definately more I could say about this but honestly I wasn't expecting to even write this much. There is plently more juicy material in that interview though, including Tim Berne's account of Dewey Redman and his thoughts about lifting solos and consciously trying to copy someone else.

Over the past few months I have been trying to explore Tim Berne's earlier music and his collaborations with Herb Robertson and Hank Roberts more since I was introduced to his music through Bloodcount. It's taking a big of adjustment but recently his stellar tribute to Julius Hemphill, Diminuitive Mysteries, has really clicked, but there is still lots more to investigate.

Books:

Stanley Crouch - The Artificial White Man: Essays on Authenticity
Kyle Gann - American Music in the 20th Century
Richard Brody - Everything is Cinema: The Working Life of Jean-Luc Godard
James Joyce - Ulysses (in small chunks)
Homer - The Odyssey (prose translation by W. H. D. Rouse)

Movies:

Hiroshima Mon Amour
Vivre Sa Vie
The 400 Blows
Jules and Jim
Down by Law
The Seventh Seal
Wild Strawberries
True Romance

Music:

Muhal Richard Abrams - Mama and Daddy
Leroy Jenkins - Space Minds New Worlds Survival America
Yusef Lateef - Into Something
Keith Jarrett - Surviver Suite
Lee Morgan - The Sidewinder
Joni Mitchell - Don Juan's Reckless Daughter
Warne Marsh - Warne Marsh
Dave Holland - Seeds of Time

Practice Regime

I'm trying to step up my practicing this summer. I've always been a terrible sightreader and don't have very good ears so I'm hoping to focus on sightreading and ear training alot as well as my sound and time-feel.

One of the things I'm doing to try to make this happen is keeping a practice journal. In celebration of this I'm posting my first entry here for all to see:

June 3rd, 09

10:50-11:30 Saxophone Warm-up
Mouthpiece blowing 5 mins F major Scale
Long tones middle C going to F above and G below trill “Hee”
Terrace Dynamics 4 different notes of varying register 4 different dynamic levels
“Finger Twisters” Phrygian all 12 keys three times
Overtones played with half step bends below in this order:
Fundamental-12th-Octave-2nd Octave
Then the same with three strong articulations
Overtone scales
Joel Miller Exercise Overtone Matching with metronome Octave Only mm=80 bpm
11:30-12:30 Transcribing Hank Mobley’s “Workout” Solo
12:50-1:30 Bebop Scales (3 parts) MM = 90
Scales with Metronome on 1 and 3 starting on the 6th degree on the and of 3
Pattern 3rds to 7ths w/ passing tone through cycle of dominants
Joel Miller Bebop Scale exercise Metronome on quarter notes MM= 100
Start on third, descend over an octave to seventh
Passing tone between 7th and root desc. Between 9th and 3rd asc.
1:40-2:10 Singing with Metronome Phrygian Scale and Two Phrygian Melodies from “A New Approach to Sight-Singing”
2:45-3:00 Sight-reading (3) in “Encyclopaedia of Improvisational Rhythms and Patterns” by Charles Colin
MM=100 for quarter notes and half notes, read as both concert pitch and Bb part
3:40-3:55 Etude from the Universal Method Eighth Note = 100 (Quick Breaths)
4:45-5:10 Sight-reading from the Omnibook

My chops are pretty much done after this. In the end, this isn't that much. 2 hours and 15 minutes with the saxophone, an hour lifting solos and half an hour singing.

This isn't very impressive, the hard part will be keeping it up. We'll see how I do.

Back Home

I spent the last three weeks of May visiting my hometown in Vancouver. Aside from seeing family and friends, I got to play a duo gig with one of my favourite guitarists, Ron Samworth, at the Illuminate Restaurant in Tsawwassen. Ron was my guitar teacher at Capilano College (now Capilano University) when I went there for two years. He was a revelation, and we talked about everything from reharmonizing standards to Ornette to the music business and what being an artist in the present day really means. He was also the first to introduce me to artists as varied as Ligeti, Paul Bley and Lenny Breau. To this day, he remains an inspiration. Ron is up teaching up at Banff right now alongside Dave Douglas and Tony Malaby.

I also had the pleasure of playing at 1067 Granville Street, a fairly well known artists loft in Vancouver. I played original music and free improvisations with two future roommates and good friends, James Meger (bass) and Omar Amlani (drums). We did some recording after that seemed to turn out well so I will properly have some of that up.

Upon getting back to Montreal I've moved into my third and definately nicest place so far at 1968 Sherbrooke. The biggest plus is the record player and vinyl collection that my friend James left here while he spends his summer in Vancouver. His collection includes some of the very best jazz records. A few that have been on constant rotation are:

John Coltrane - Coltrane's Sound
Keith Jarrett - The Survivor's Suite
Paul Bley - Fragments
Charles Mingus - Let My Children Hear Music
Wayne Shorter - Night Dreamer
Ornette Coleman - Broken Shadows

I'm not sure if this music (which I've listen to quite a bit already on cd) sounds better on vinyl, but it sure sounds good.

Coda: Thanks to Ethan Iverson for mentioning me in his recent Blog Competition. Ethan's blog is a model for all future jazz blogs on the internet and I have learned so much just by reading his interviews and analysis. More importantly, his playing is great as is his band The Bad Plus. If you haven't checked out his blog, do it now!

Angel Song

I still remember purchasing Kenny Wheeler’s Angel Song album as a young musician. Up until then I was mostly familiar with the more standard works of the jazz cannon, and hadn’t really ventured much past the 60s. My record collection mostly contained records on Columbia or Atlantic, so the cardboard packaging and dark, mysterious artwork so signature to ECM were intriguing. It was also more expensive than purchasing used classics at the place down the street.

But someone had told me of the virtues of Kenny Wheeler’s music and I was also only vaguely aware of guitarist Bill Frisell. This was also (with the exception of Birth of the Cool) my introduction to the music of Lee Konitz, who would also soon become one of my heroes. I had no idea what sounds would be contained within, but I guess I was feeling adventurous that day.

When I got home I was not disappointed. I still remember my fascination with the opening guitar chords which state the first melody. Sonically, the record seemed in a whole other world from what I knew. The music seemed to float along gently at its own pace without drums, and I didn’t miss them at all since most of my early experiences playing jazz music were in drummer-less duos anyway (I simply couldn’t find anyone to play with).

Little of the music on the record swings in the traditional sense. Indeed, it contains some of the best rubato playing I have ever heard. The line between time playing and rubato playing is also continually blurred. After a brief introduction from the guitar, the first half of Nicolette is played out of time by the trio of Wheeler, Frisell and Holland before stepping into a tentative waltz as Konitz takes the second half of the melody. I remember being shocked when asking a local professional drummer who admired Wheeler’s music about the album. He didn’t know it, no doubt because of the absence of drums. This seemed like heresy at the time but I can understand it now.

One of the truly great things about Kenny Wheeler’s music is his economic use of compositional materials. The music on Angel Song can be seen as one long suite, and harmonic and melodic material is carried over throughout.

The best example of this is the composition Kind Folk, a 32 bar piece in 9/8 time featuring a simple ostinato played throughout by Dave Holland. The first half of the composition is simply repeated up a minor third with a slight reharmonization. Because of this, a coherence is obtained that I feel is often missing from much modern jazz composition.

Despite the strength of the compositions, the musicians get plenty of say. It is worth noting that even though every composition on the record is extremely strong and bears the stamp “this music could only be written by Kenny Wheeler”, the individuality of the sidemen is consistently just as striking. This combination of strength plus flexibility is a big reason why this music is so successful, and no doubt the reason that Wheeler can employ musicians as diverse as Michael Brecker, Evan Parker, Stan Sulzmann and Jan Garbarek to name only four horns players who have worked with the trumpeter-composer.

One of the great mysteries of this record occurs on Unti, which I suspected was originally untitled. The tune begins with a Frisellian vamp in Gm before moving into a more complex composition that alternates between 4/4 and 3/4 time. For Wheeler’s solo, this fairly oblique structure is repeated, but when Konitz steps up to blow all that is used is a vamp alternating between Gm and Ebmaj7. No other version of this tune does such a thing and I even had the opportunity to ask Mr. Konitz about the session and the reason for the vamp. An absurd question, no doubt, and I got no answer. The solo is almost unrelentingly melodic in Konitz’s “truly improvised” style; a casual listen wouldn’t tell you anything has changed, and the form returns for the guitar solo. This moment remains one of the highlights of the record.

Consider too the diversity of improvisational approaches and backgrounds that comes together on the record. Where else could Lee Konitz’s dedication to Lennie Tristano’s ideal of true improvisation sit so comfortable next to Frisell’s unmistakable blend of Monk and Americana and still sound unquestionably like “Kenny Wheeler Music”?

But then again, it is not too much of a stretch to think of Lee Konitz applying his ten step method to a Kenny Wheeler tune. The melodies are just that strong.

Newcomers to this album might also miss just what a competent instrumentalist and improviser Kenny Wheeler is. His tone on the flugelhorn is full and distinctive. He regularly employs held long tones which alternate with quick flurries in odd groupings, and from time to time he will soar into the instruments stratosphere with ease while never compromising his extremely round, singing tone.

Has anyone seriously considered Wheeler as a trumpeter? He is undoubtedly a “true improviser”. Just listen to his extended dialogue with Konitz on Onmo, the closest thing to a blowing tune on the record. There is also an immediacy to his playing that is hard to fake. You can regularly hear him thinking about what to play next, and he is not afraid to take risks and let it all hang out. His playing is also flexible enough to fit almost any situation, from a big band down to solo playing and duos. I recently heard a trumpet trio of Leo Smith, Lester Bowie and Kenny Wheeler that was killing. He seemed right at home.

Ostinatos are also an integral part of Kenny Wheeler’s music, so it makes sense that almost every Kenny Wheeler record worth considering features Dave Holland, one of the best ostinato players ever. Here he handles his role with extreme grace, giving the music momentum and melodic counterpoint at all times. It seems as if this is the type of bass playing that Lennie Tristano’s music could always have benefited from, as Holland is not afraid to add rhythmic and melodic commentary to the soloist.

This concept really soars in the absence of drums. It is hard to imagine this record with Jack DeJohnette thrown in. I don’t know if the music would suffer, per se, but the sonic freedom is clearly welcome by these four, and the dialogue is really something. As a result, this is also the only ECM record I can think of where the reverb doesn’t seem to get in the way. A great record well worth careful study.

Winter Kept Us Warm

(T. S. Eliot reading "The Waste Land" here and here)

Last night I got a taste of what's to come, heavy snowfall. Having left my jacket at work, it was very cold indeed.

I recently met a grad student at McGill in Sound Engineering and have done two recordings in the past week with a great bass player and friend, James Meger, also from Vancouver. The first was recorded in McGill's Pollack Hall and was all improvised pieces of acoustic bass and tenor saxophone, except for one piece James brought in. The second, which took place from 12-7 am yesterday morning, features James on electric bass, laptop and sound manipulation and myself on tenor and electric guitar. We each brought in more compositions for this session and did more overdubbing. I also brought in an Aphex Twin tune called Alberto Balsalm which was particularly interesting. James did a really great job doing processed saxophone live while I played. Very cool. I hope to have some recordings up soon. We may even have enough stuff for a full record.

Music:

Sonny Rollins - Live at the Village Vanguard
Miles Davis - Filles de Kilimanjaro
Frank Zappa - Hot Rats, The Grand Wazoo, Waka/Jawaka, Absolutely Free, Shut Up 'n Play Yer Guitar, Joe's Garage, Apostrophe, Overnite Sensation
Jimmy Giuffre 3 - Fusion, Thesis, Free Fall
Paul Bley - Open, To Love
Charles Lloyd - Voices in the Night
Crosby, Stills and Nash - Crosby, Stills and Nash, Deja Vu
The Band - The Band
Joe Lovano - Live at the Village Vanguard
Gyorgy Ligeti - Lontano
Steve Reich - Eight Lines
Charlie Haden - Etudes
Jimi Hendrix - Axis Bold as Love
Tim Berne - Mind Over Friction
Steely Dan - Aja
Aphex Twin - ...I Care Because You Do
Ornette Coleman - Change of the Century
Lou Reed - Transformer
The Rolling Stones - Sticky Fingers, Let it Bleed
Bela Bartok - Violin Concerto No. 1, String Quartet No. 1
Alban Berg - Violin Concerto, 3 Pieces for Orchestra
Gustav Mahler - Symphony no. 5
Sun Ra - Jazz In Silhouette, The Magic City, Atlantis, The Heliocentric Worlds of Sun Ra Vol. 1 and 2, The Futuristic Sounds of Sun Ra
The Pixies - Doolittle

Books:

Raymond Chandler - The Big Sleep
Albert Camus - La Chute

Movies:

Easy Rider