secret comics

Jazz in the Present Moment - Part Whatever

OK, it's not like I'm going to be keeping meticulous track of these jazz asides that I wander off on, so don't count on their having any solid sequential underpinning. I mean, it may or may not be there, but it's not going to be my first priority. Forewarned is forearmed.

I wanted to talk a little bit about Keith Jarrett (not really the best website, but the best I can find at the moment). He's a jazz pianist who records for ECM Records. I wanted to keep these posts focused on current jazz artists, of whom I consider Keith Jarret one, but he's not necessarily a "young lion" like, say, a Ben Allison -- Jarrett recorded with Miles Davis on the Directions and Miles Davis at the Fillmore sessions in '70, and maybe on some Charles Lloyd (and other) records a little before that. I think he was kind of a piano-slash-muscial prodigy, composing music at like four or five (maybe three) and playing his first concert at age six. Supposedly he has a genuis-level IQ. For whatever that's worth.

Fast forward to the present. Right now, Jarrett's got two main artistic avenues, both of which I think are extremely vital and relevant to jazz in the here and now.

1. The more "dated", if you will, of the two, but the more avant garde and challenging in places is his solo piano work. Essentially, Keith Jarrett sits down at a piano and performs solo improvisational piano concerts, which are periodically recorded for posterity. Sometimes they run half an hour, sometimes and hour -- usually closer to the former, sometimes a few minutes longer. From what I understand, they're not scripted. He comes in with some melodic ideas maybe (and even that could be wrong), and he just works it out in front of the audience.

The results are usually stunningly beautiful, if (in places) not completely transcendent. His improvisation is not from the Ornette Coleman angry honk-honk-honk school (though he's not entirely adverse to well-placed dissonace), but rather from a more subtle, melodic approach that I can only assumes comes from his complete mastery of the piano.

I say his solo piano improvisiation is more dated because his first real venture into that field came out in 1973, Solo Concerts - Bremen & Lausaunne. For the record, it received a fair amount of critical acclaim upon and following it's release:

Best Jazz Performance (category: solo) - 1974, Grammy Nomination (USA)
Album of the year (Pop) - 1974, Time Magazine (USA)
Record of the Year (International Critics' Poll) - 1974, Down Beat (USA)
Record of the Year - 1974, Stereo Review (USA)
Record of the Year - 1975, The New York Times
Album of the Year - 1975, Time Magazine

The most well-known of these concerts is likely The Koln Concert, and for good reason -- another beautiful, haunting exploration of more themes and ideas than I can get into right now, but certainly worth a listen. Almost mandatory for any jazz or serious music fan, really. Jarrett releases a new solo record every several years or so... there's a pretty significant back catalogue built up if you're interested in exploring, including The Sun Bear Concerts 6-disc boxset (about $90-100 from Amazon or Barnes & Noble.com, Concerts, and Vienna Concert.

2. In 1983, Keith started recording and performing with drummer Jack DeJohnette and bassist Gary Peacock. Since then, over twenty years now, the Keith Jarrett Trio has explored the dynamics of stripped-down, expansive, acoustic three-piece jazz ensemble in exciting and challenging ways that few in the mainstream jazz community seem willing to learn from and emulate.

On one level, the Keith Jarrett Trio uses jazz standards as the foundation of their approach. Rather than simply limiting themself to predictable interepretations of traditional songs which have come before them, the Trio (at their best, all artists will have hits and misses) breathes new life into their material with inspired playing and fearless (at times, some would say almost avant) improvising. Records like this would include Still Live and Standards Vols. 1 & 2.

One of the key ways they do this is by engaging in longer, more indepth performances of certerpiece tunes -- say, the 26:43 minunte set opener "Autumn Leaves from Live at the Village Vanguard III to allow the each member of the band to spread out artistically and really make a contribution to the group's colective performance. You just can't argue that Keith Jarrett is shooting for a commercially successful Contemporary Jazz chart hit with a 26-minute live cover of "Autumn Leaves", played just by piano, bass, and drums. In their non-chart approach, the Trio seems to affirm their individual and collective committment of playing jazz with its roots in what has come before, but equally a part of the real, live artistic demands the present moment,the beauty of making jazz,places in front of each musicisan that must be answered in the here and now. It doesn't appear that making a hit record is even an afterthought for these gentlemen.

On the other hand, the Trio plays and records Keith Jarrett's and other original modern compositions on a semi-regular basis to show audiences another side of their artistic fearlessness, slightly freed from the history of classic jazz compositions, and even less concerned with ideas of hit recordings or whatnot -- records such as these would include Inside Out and Always Let Me Go.

For the record, the Keith Jarret Trio has a new record coming out on ECM, The Out-Of-Towners, Aug. 31. Check it out if you get the notion.

The Urgency of Now

As an undergrad, I wrote my American Studies thesis on The Role of Drugs and Alcohol in Defining Jazz as Marginal Culture. Frankly, it turned out to be kind of shite, for any number of reasons I'm not interested in going into right now. I passed, of course, and went on to get my little Honors certificate, but in my heart I wasn't happy with what I had made out of the riches I was given.

And so I've decided to reopen the idea of writing about jazz. Why? Well, my relationship with jazz not only didn't wither and die on the vine after graduation, rather it grew and flourished in completely wonderful and unexpected ways. I now can say with a straight face that jazz is a living, breathing force that I can experience in my present moments. Back then, I don't think I really got that. It may sound silly, but my extended studies left me locked in a straightjacket of history... I knew that the "greats" (Coltrane, Miles, Bird, etc.) all made unparalleled contributions to the artistic language of jazz, yet I was somehow convinced that at certain point (late 60's/early 70's maybe) no more "great" practioners were left, that everything after that (unspecified) point was derivative, thus inferior and not worth my time.

Mind you, I'm not a musician. I can sing a little, but that's it. I more or less got booted from the seventh grade band for not bringing my trumpet to practice. Plus, my knowledge of jazz is almost entirely self-taught. My mom's into Cab Calloway because her dad liked him, and that's a pleasant memory for her. I don't really know what kind of music my dad likes. So no one "mentored" me about jazz -- I just read a lot of books, listened to a lot of records, and fumbled along as best I could.

OK, not to get too much more convoluted, but I've got a pretty critical base argument that helped show me a different way of looking beyond jazz in as a solely prisoner of the standards of history. I'll try to make this short, so forgive glaring logic leaps if you see them. Here goes:

History to date is more-or-less an extended drama that provides definition for the various roles of every person who finds themself stuck in the thick of it. You can look at all time to date as the first four acts of a five act play, and our present situation as the fifth act -- only problem is, someone lost the script for the fifth act, and the show must go on. It's up to the actors to immerse themselves in the prior acts to figure out what their particular roles are to be, not slavishly subjegated to the past, but free to use it to give shape, form and meaning to their human decisions about how the play should continue.

Put another way, history is a language for each of us to study and mull over and internalize, but only insofar as we need a basic foundation (a floor, not a ceiling) to move forward with our words and culture in response to the new world we face.

Whew. Did that make any sense? I sure as hell hope so. So back to jazz...

I used to think (to some extent or other) that the only good or "worthwhile" jazz (A) was by the "old Masters" or ther progeny or, to a much lesser extent, (B) purist jazz painstakingly recreated today from triumphs of the past, avoiding any real contamination from the world of ugly popular culture and other "non jazz" things which, as it turns out, aren't really so bad after all. There may be a little truth to those concerns -- I still don't find the average rap/jazz combo all that thrilling, for example. Smooth jazz, on the other hand, or jazz that waters itself down for adult contemporary adult radio play, isn't really trying to rise above the level of background music, and I don't really find myself worrying about it much.

But I think I see now that the thrust of jazz, like the thrust of improvising that last lost act of a play that simply must go on, is to ground yourself in the "language" of history, not as the outer limits of your parameters, but as a foundation so you can recast, recontextualize, improvise on, and revitalize old truths with your own gifts in the present moment -- the present moment being the greatest gift of all.

Jazz is, in the end, communication and art, needing like all art both (1) passion and meaning and (2) truthful "language" to actualize the fullness of it's possibilities. And we need 'em both... otherwise, slavish devotion to bone dry jazz protocol eschews passion over art, and some free jazz's total rejection of the truth of jazz's musical language simply kicks art out the front door and gives passion free reign -- progress simply for the sake of progress.

This is not to say either extreme are not jazz, because they are. It's just... well, to produce even a glimpse of jazz's living, dynamic beauty, both the past and future of jazz will intersect into the terrifying, breathtaking here-and-now, the present moment when jazz can never again speak so truthfully nor shine so brightly.

So I say all of this because there is jazz out there, great and exciting jazz that transforms it's history into a language that I feel really speaks to the present moment. It's kind of up to us to have the ears to listen and the eyes to see the oft-elusive yet infinitely precious gift of the present moment. And on that note, I'm going to try to use the Secret Comics to occasionally share with you some of the jazz (and other) musicians and artists I find particulary compelling and inspiring in the here and now. As always, feel free to ignore the hell out of me.

Right now, though, I wish everyone sweet dreams and a wonderful tomorrow.

Jazz in the Present Moment - Part 1

I've put on my Sunday night thinking cap (not unlike my thinking cap from any other day of the week) and am getting down to brass tacks of mapping out a hopefully-fruitful detour for the Comics. On my headphones, I'm listening to Ben Allison's group Peace Pipe's self-titled record on Palmetto. So, this Peace Pipe record is appropos of exactly what now? Well, it's a damn good jazz record, was released in September '02, and features:

Ben Allison - upright bass
Michael Blake - tenor saxophone, soprano saxophone, bass clarinet
Mamadou Diabate - kora (which presumably is a harp-like instrument similar in sound to a flamenco guitar)
Frank Kimbrough - piano, prepared piano, Wurlitzer electric piano
Michael Sarin - drums, percussion

I'll probably get most if not all of the above-mentioned musicians into the discussion at some point, but not tonight. Just a bit of foreshadowing...

But for now the focus is on Ben Allison and his upright bass -- mainly because I own and increasingly enjoying the three sparkling and sometimes brilliant jazz records he's put out over the past two or so years -- Buzz with the group Medicine Wheel in 2004, the aforementioned Peace Pipe disc in 2002, and 2001's Riding the Nuclear Tiger.

Ben Allison's musical career of the past few years doesn't appear to be a random or haphazard endeavor. To wit,"[a]t the age of twenty-five Allison formed the Jazz Composers Collective ["JCCC"] - a musician-run, non-profit organization based in New York City that is dedicated to constructing an environment where artists can exerecise their ideals of creating and risking through the development and explorarion of new music." In order to get this written before the sun comes up, I'm admittedly putting off an extended discussion of the JCCC, but there is no possible way their importance can be overlooked as being integral to the art and lives of their members, which we'll most likely discuss just a little bit, here and there.