Keep Calm and Listen to Jazz

Interview with Tenor Saxophonist Ellery Eskelin

Ellery Eskelin creates with a vintage Conn

New York tenor saxophonist and composer Ellery Eskelin was gracious enough to consent to an interview on Crazy Bent Brass Tube this week. Ellery is a consistently interesting improviser and he recently celebrated 30 years in New York doing what he loves. He is a prolific and creative recording artist as well as the author of the intelligent blog Musings from a Saxophonist. My questions are in bold (RA) and Ellery's answers follow (EE); I did not edit any of his responses.

Interview with Ellery Eskelin, April 7, 2013

RA: When did you make the conscious decision to follow music as a career regardless of the economic consequences? And creative improvised music to boot? Didn’t your parents want you to be a dentist or an accountant? 

EE: I've wanted to be a jazz musician since I was ten years old. That desire overrode everything else. My parents were very supportive of me being a musician although they did have concerns about the type of music I played. 

RA: How have you managed to stay fresh and creative for 30+ years? Most of the so-called “young lions” have never progressed and are stuck in a rut in middle age – downright boring to listen to. 

EE: The process is exactly the same as it was the first day I got the horn. Still trying to figure out what I can do on it. I'm not too concerned with style or idiom. There's too much music that pulls on me. Plus, the old masters set the bar so high that I'm constantly inspired to push myself every day.

RA: What is your creative “well” – where do you pull inspiration from day after day?

EE: I love what I do. And it’s the way I express myself in the world. Plus, there's so much to do and such a limited time to accomplish it in. 

RA: Do you have a specific approach or “strategy” in mind when you begin a solo? If so, can you give some insight? 

EE: Whenever I'm improvising I think about what the music needs and try and do that. It requires an immediate, in the moment, non verbal state of mind, so that usually necessitates a feeling of movement, a gesture or a sense of phrasing just as I'm about to play. Once I have an idea of a musical shape the notes come to me at the very last moment, as I'm playing. 

RA: How have you avoided recording “Ellery Eskelin with Strings”? (or have you and I am unaware?) 

EE: See "Vanishing Point" (hatOLOGY 577) recorded in 2000 with Mat Maneri: viola, Erik Friedlander: cello, Mark Dresser: bass, Matt Moran: vibraphone. Completely improvised music. I'm rather proud if it. 

RA: Have you ever been forced to play weddings and bar mitzvahs or teach 8-year-olds to stay in music? 

EE: I played weddings when I was coming up. At a certain point, the singers could no longer follow my solos without getting lost so I sold my tuxedo and got a day job (shipping clerk at a record label) until my touring picked up enough that I could let that go as well. 

I've not yet taught a young person but I think I would enjoy the opportunity to approach things a bit differently, more direct ear learning and an introduction to basic I IV V harmony and improvising as soon as they could get around the horn a little. 

RA: Your most ridiculous day gig? 

EE: Well, I was a weekend janitor in a shopping mall for a little while during my school years. I like to think of that as good honest work. Worked on a commercial roofing crew for a summer. All the guys would keep telling me, "stay in school if you don't want to wind up doing this for a living"! 

RA: How do you deal with the egos in the music business without it getting under your skin? Seems like a large proportion of talented musicians are not nice people. 

EE: Actually I don't find that to be the case. The large proportion of the musicians I've met in my life have been pretty down to earth. 

RA: Do you feel you are missing out on anything in life because you pursued creative music as your profession? What about your family – have they missed out on something? 

EE: No, but when I realized that the president was younger than me it did get me thinking. But ironically there is something about going deeply into a subject that teaches us about the world and deepens our appreciation of other people and their work. As for family, I am blessed that they understand and support what I do. I hope that my values and actions can point to some other ways of looking at things in general. 

RA: It appears that you have to be a virtuoso to play any of today’s jazz styles. This kills the music as a people’s music because it limits participation in the creative process. How can the music survive and progress without becoming another form of classical music dependent on the conservatory? 

EE: I don't agree that being a virtuoso limits the audience's participation. If anything a certain kind of demonstrable virtuosity is something that audiences often grab onto even if it's not always deeply artistic. But jazz has never been a popular music with the public at large. In my experience the best thing for any musician to do is commit 100% to their vision and play with the commensurate conviction required to evoke some kind of emotional feeling in the listener. And besides, virtuosity comes in many forms. I consider Ben Webster to be a virtuoso in his sublime delivery of ballads. 

RA: I have a talented 16-year-old who plays tenor. But music is not her only talent/interest. Any suggestions on how she can stay engaged as a performer? Most young people quit playing after school. 

EE: Not sure how to answer that question. But in as much as music is a social event (playing with other people and playing for other people) I would imagine that maintaining that social connection would be beneficial. 

RA: Do you have some recommended learning resources for those not interested in pattern playing or paid-by-the-note tenor styles? 

EE: The idea of "learning resources" in itself seems to imply some kind of organizational methodology that often runs counter to want you're speaking about (which to me has more to do with the nuances of one's delivery). I recommend modeling one's playing after vocalists as a way of avoiding calisthenics and the playing of too many notes. Concentrate on phrasing and the active use of silence. Personally I don't like to think so much in terms of "lines" as much as I want to think in terms of melody. Having a strong sense of what you're doing with (or against) the rhythm also helps. 

RA: Thank you, Ellery.

Here are links to Ellery's web site, blog, and Facebook and YouTube pages:

web site
blog
facebook
youtube

Ellery Eskelin - New CD Release Announcement Trio New York II

Just received this in my email from Ellery Eskelin and thought I would take the opportunity to promote a really fine saxophonist.

TRIO NEW YORK II is NOW Available... Listen to samples on the website... See the promotional video on YouTube… Order on-line using Pay Pal for Immediate Delivery Worldwide...

Please visit the website and click the TRIO NEW YORK link for complete information and track samples. 

Have a look at the TRIO NEW YORK II video on Youtube. 

To ORDER NOW simply visit the Mail Order page. You’ll have the CD in no time!

ELLERY ESKELIN - TRIO NEW YORK II

prime source CD 7010

Ellery Eskelin - tenor saxophone

Gary Versace - Hammond B3 organ

Gerald Cleaver - drums

The New Yorker magazine recently referred to me as a saxophonist “with a romantic streak that runs parallel to his experimental leanings”. I like that. Romance is a descriptor that is rarely associated with the improv scene in New York City. And for the past couple of decades that is what I’ve been doing mostly. I’ve always thought of “Trio New York” as a free improvisation unit, in some ways a continuation of the type of work I’ve been doing all along, in other ways a distinct break from many of the concepts I’d been working with previously. For those of you familiar with our first recording, you'll know that we use the Great American Songbook as our source material.

“Trio New York II” is the second recording by this group and represents an evolution, the band having fine tuned it’s musical processes from gig to gig though our touring in Europe as well as performances in Canada and the US, most recently being the Detroit Jazz Festival. I’m very proud to be working with two of the great musicians of our time, organist Gary Versace (who knows his way around a Hammond organ and knows how to be creative with it) and Gerald Cleaver (who is both swinging and free, always with impressive dynamic sensitivity). This new release also coincides with the fact that as of this month I’ve been living in New York City for thirty years. A lot has happened during that time and I feel as though I’m finally in a place where I can truly integrate all my experiences into the music, from the early days up until today.

As for this recording, please know that it’s very important to me to take the extra time and expense to document this work and present it to you as a physical entity with the highest standards of artistic and technical quality possible. This documentation is not only central to my progress as an artist but I feel it is doubly important that as we are asking for your time and attention you should understand that you are getting a state of the art recording for your collection that you can value for many years to come. Trio New York II is released on my own “prime source” label.

Thank You,

Ellery Eskelin

Lee Konitz, Conversations on the Improviser’s Art

Just finished reading Andy Hamilton’s excellent book of interviews with and about 85-year-old alto saxophonist Lee Konitz, one of the few remaining survivors of Bird’s generation, who continues to create masterfully until this day. It is a good read all the way through and I heartily recommend it. Rather than review the book, since I am sure you can find reviews elsewhere on the net, I decided to post some of my favorite quotes from Lee. His prologue is a strong start: 

“I'm writing this after a trip to Vienna, and while I was there I had the opportunity to hear an Austrian tenor player, fifteen years old, who really played the instrument very well, and wowed the audience with his expertise. And a few days ago I heard an Italian alto player of the same age who was really unbelievably accomplished, instrumentally and musically – and he really got the audience shouting approval. When I was fifteen years old I was playing, but no one had really inspired me like these two guys have obviously been inspired. These two people were not aware, as of yet, of a true musical statement, without the sensationalism – something they will learn, we hope. 

…I never wowed an audience in my whole life like these young players did, so I can’t help but feel I've missed something. But in a more modest way I've been able to continue playing, in private and in public, with occasional comments from people after a concert telling me they like the way I played through the years.” 

On Charlie Parker: (Hamilton) At his peak, for a few years in the late 1940’s, Parker was probably the most phenomenal improviser jazz has ever seen. (Konitz) “Red Rodney was quoted as saying that he didn't think Bird knew the changes all that well! So I wonder. He certainly knew elementary harmony…” 

On Anthony Braxton: “Well, it’s the worst solo I've ever heard in my life, I think. I don’t know what his real intention is in doing this…I can’t stand his sound. I think it’s awful.” 

On practicing: “I haven’t read music for years. I don’t enjoy doing that too much.” 

On the sound of the saxophone: “Our sound has to do with our whole anatomy…We are the sound. When Charlie Parker borrowed my horn for a set at Birdland, to my complete astonishment, it no longer sounded familiar to me. It’s a most flexible instrument.” 

On perfect pitch: “No, I have imperfect pitch! Sometimes when things are right I can hear pretty accurately. But waking up in the morning and hitting a concert A or whatever, I have to think about that for a minute…Absolutely unsure – after all these years. That’s amazing!” 

Great stuff – go get the book and read more (yes, I know it is old school but some people still read books these days). Better yet, get out some Lee Konitz records and listen for a while.

Some Astounding Tenor Playing

I've been listening to the Mosaic 7-CD box set The Complete Blue Note Andrew Hill Sessions 1963-66 on my iTunes and have been astounded by the saxophone playing on these records. Not new to my ears, but hearing this all in one place has made me sit up wide-eyed and take notice. On these records, pianist Andrew Hill’s small groups featured three of the most astonishing tenor saxophonists ever – Joe Henderson, John Gilmore, and Sam Rivers – pretty much defining “Inside-Outside” playing. All the more astounding considering these recordings were made while John Coltrane was still alive, knowing that Coltrane’s sound and approach has so dominated post-60’s tenor saxophony. 

Rudy Van Gelder’s recordings, which set a high quality benchmark, bring the sound to life, sounding as fresh as if recorded this morning although going on fifty years old. It really says something about the level of Andrew Hill’s musicianship that he was able to attract these three as sidemen. It is nearly impossible to sustain this level of creative intensity and although Andrew played some superb music and was much recognized and awarded later in life, his subsequent recordings never again reached this pinnacle. 

Joe Henderson – the small, introverted man with a big sound – is the best known of the three saxophonists and by far the most widely heard. Personally I took his playing for granted when younger since he could be heard on so many mid-60’s Blue Notes, and I didn't really appreciate him until I saw him perform on the Grant Park main stage at the Chicago Jazz festival back in the mid-1990’s. Somehow seeing him live made me understand the connection between the man and the sound and I have listened to every note of his I can find since then. The paradigm of inside-outside playing. 

John Gilmore – Sun Ra’s tenor saxophonist for more than two decades – to the best of my knowledge never recorded a date as a leader (although he co-led 1957’s Blowin’ In From Chicago with Clifford Jordan). All the more surprising considering that he is someone that John Coltrane looked up to for inspiration and innovation during Trane’s spirit-searching days of the early 60’s. He can be found here and there as a sideman outside of his prolific recordings with Sun Ra’s groups – notably on Paul Bley’s Turning Point, McCoy Tyner’s Today and Tomorrow on Impulse and even on one Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers session. Here is a video of that session on YouTube – Gilmore in a conservative business suit and Lee Morgan sporting a really bad haircut. 

Sam Rivers – one year departed at this point and still under-recognized. Sam’s own mid-60’s Blue Note sessions are a peak of tenor saxophone playing on their own – the final CD in the Andrew Hill box was in the can when originally recorded and first released under Sam Rivers’ name in the 1970’s as part of a “two-fer” LP – Sam was at a peak of recognition at that time. Sam had played with Miles Davis for a short while prior to the Andrew Hill session, in Miles’ band after George Coleman and just before Wayne Shorter. Sam recorded on Miles in Tokyo and the more recently released Kyoto sessions from the same 1964 Japan tour. To me, these sessions sound better than Miles in Berlin from the next year with Shorter on tenor, but apparently Sam was too wild even for Miles! Maybe too advanced at the time. 

Get hold of the Andrew Hill box on Mosaic if you can, or any of the individual Blue Note CDs if you can’t find the box. The saxophone playing on these mid-1960’s sessions has never been surpassed.

Saxophonist Shola Emmanuel

In the shed with Shola Emmanuel

Nigerian saxophonist, composer, and arranger Shola Emmanuel visited me in Lagos recently. He was introduced four and a half years ago as the best saxophonist in Abuja and his skills have only improved since then. He is playing music nobody else in Nigeria is doing today. Hip hop and so-called contemporary R&B have eradicated local music like afrobeat and juju from the West African airwaves, and jazz, which never had that strong of a local scene, is low-profile. Shola is one of the foremost musicans keeping jazz alive and vibrant in Nigeria today, blending a strong grounding in African rhythms with fluid and creative improvisation.

Shola just self-produced his first CD, Nine Lessons by the Rhythm & Sax Orchestra, nine original compositions and arrangements with Shola up front on alto and tenor saxes (and trumpet on one track) over large group backings. The CD was launched at a concert in Abuja on October 21 which, by all accounts, was a sellout. Shola primarily plays alto although he pointed out to me that he, like many hornmen in Nigeria, started out on trumpet. Here is a Youtube video of Shola playing one of his originals, Into D Woods: 

We jammed for six or seven hours, part of the time joined by friend Tunde who plays alto. I played tenor and Shola split his time between his alto and borrowing my second tenor. He got a powerful sound out of the Kohlert. We mostly played out of my book which meant a heavy dose of Gene Ammons tunes, Jammin' with Gene, Treux Blue, and Happy Blues. Showboy dropped by and gave us all a workout in afrobeat; we played the horn sections of several Fela tunes and jammed through Night In Tunisia. I caught the proceedings on my Zoom recorder and have sampled two tracks for download, duets with Shola on alto and me on tenor: Caravan and Doxy, which we played in tribute to our mutual colleague, the late Dare Peter; click to listen. It is easy to identify each of us and Shola's fluent sound is apparent. 

Shola is a musician who has advanced significantly since I met him and will definitely be going places. His web site www.rhythmandsax.com is currently under construction as of this writing, but check back soon for downloads and gig notices. 

Tribute to the Late Nigerian Saxophonist Dare Peter

Nigerian Saxophonist Dare Peter

Saxophonist Shola Emmanuel came down from Abuja to visit and we jammed for a quick hour before heading off to the New Africa Shrine to hear Femi Kuti. Shola and I hadn't seen each other in four years but it didn't seem to matter, either musically or in friendship. I was taking the opportunity to catch up on hap'nin's of some of our other musician mates in Abuja when I learned some shocking news: in Shola's words, Dare is no more.

Bandleader and saxophonist Dare Peter passed away last month after struggling with a long illness. I don't know Dare's exact age but he couldn't have yet reached 40. He came across as kind of a hard-nosed Rasta type with his dreadlocks and Rastaman hat, but that hard exterior was far from the full reality as Dare proved himself to be a musician of heart and integrity in the time I knew him.

Dare Peter and Ron Ashkin in Abuja, 2008

Back in 2008, I walked in to the legendary Elephant Bar in Abuja and heard Dare playing Sonny Rollins' Doxy on alto, supported by a great local rhythm section. He immediately invited me up on stage to join him (here is an audio track of us doing Doxy). That cemented a musical relationship for the rest of the year when I became his second saxophonist, playing tenor, and we played his regular Elephant Bar gig as well as going out to other venues like Silver Spoon and the Arts & Crafts Village. It was at Silver Spoon with Dare's band that I backed up Dede Mabiaku, not knowing at the time that Dede was Fela Kuti's protégé and famous throughout Nigeria. Someone in the audience dashed me a bottle of Champagne that night.

Dare was inclusive and accepting as a bandleader, giving me plenty of chance to stretch out and improvise as the ideas flowed; not competing with me, cutting me off, getting in the way, or making me feel like I was stepping on his toes. There were plenty of times where he gave me the feeling that I was being featured by the band and not just playing a supporting role. He had a repertoire that spanned from jazz to highlife to pop and often a set would progress through all three styles; I'd usually play the jazz opening set and the highlife closer but usually chose to sit out on a lot of the chick singer vocals. Playing with Dare really opened up my desire to perform.

As a musician, Dare had an easy facility on alto sax with a screaming altissimo. His signature tune was Grover Washington's Mr. Magic. Here is a video Dare playing Mr. Magic in 2008:

I've posted this before, but this time it is for posterity (more videos can be found here as well). I understand that Dare married soon after I left Nigeria and leaves behind his wife and young son. Dare Peter, Nigeria's Mr. Magic, rest in peace.

Sean Bergin Has Left Us

Sean Bergin in Amsterdam, 2008

Belated sad news that Amsterdam tenor saxophonist Sean Bergin passed away on September 1. Sean was a great player and I got to know him a bit back in 2008. That year I was working in Nigeria and had a regular transit through Amsterdam Schiphol on my journeys back to Malaysia. One trip through, I stopped off for a lesson with composer and former Willem Breuker Kollektief tenor saxophonist Maarten Van Norden, and Maarten told me about this great locally-famous tenor player who had a regular Sunday afternoon gig. He suggested that I stop by to hear him after our lesson. 

I walked from Maarten's place to De Engelbewaarder (translation: The Guardian Angel), a lovely little canal-side bar at Kloveniersburgwal 59. Sean Bergin was playing with a piano-bass-drums trio and he sounded fantastic on his beat-up bare-brass Mark VI tenor. Great beer and great music. Blue Monk sticks in my mind, with a couple of local horn players sitting in. I chatted a bit with Sean; I recall that he was having reed problems and I offered him a reed out of my case, a 2-1/2, which was too soft for him so he declined. Sean played at De Engelbewaarder every Sunday and I stopped by a couple more times through the coming months to hear him. I brought Jackie by to listen during the summer of 2009 when she was in Holland riding with Coby and Marlies Van Baalen, but unfortunately Sean was on hiatus that Sunday and we missed out. 

Sean was one of those unsung local heroes who didn't build much of a following outside of his hometown but sure was a great, no, world class, player. He had recorded with Mal Waldron, a piano player who at one point had called Eric Dolphy as a sideman, so his musical abilities put him up there in good company. When I saw Sean, it didn't look to me like his music career had been too remunerative, though. Deep in my mind I had hoped to schlep my tenor to Amsterdam some Sunday afternoon and jam with Sean along the canal, but now that chance is foregone. Sean Bergin, RIP.

I'm getting tired of writing regrets and obituaries.

Again, A Bad Day for Tenor Sax Fans

This hasn't been a great week musically. Earlier in the month I wrote that I am almost afraid to read the jazz news these days. Then in comes the report that David S. Ware passed away from kidney failure on October 18. Another player I will not get the chance to hear live; fortunately his recorded legacy is substantial. 

Never a mainstream player, he hit the scene in the late 70's with the Cecil Taylor Unit and I first heard him playing his own music on Birth Of A Being (1977), an LP I came across while going through my collection in storage last summer. He is classified in the press as a "free jazz" player although I find that classification a misnomer that is often used pejoratively. For example, his allmusic.com biography makes the following statement which I find idiotic: "unlike a good many free players, Ware does not base his style on any particular technical shortcoming or theoretical misunderstanding." I don't know who these other players are the writer is referring to. I don't know of any free jazz players who base their playing on technical shortcomings or theoretical misunderstandings. Pure bunk, I'm sorry. 

Regardless of classification, though, David definitely had his own conception of improvisation; his New York Times obituary quotes him as saying “I’m not interested in chord changes”. The press is full of hype about him although I doubt it ever paid off big in material terms. The best place to find out about David is on his own web site, davidsware.com. 

David, may you rest in peace. Thanks for not compromising your musical values.

Oh yeah, his death distracted me from writing about the other reason this week has not been great for me musically. Despite all the anticipation and buildup, this year's Felabration in Lagos has been a disappointment. It has been impossible to find out exactly who is playing when and as a result I missed out on most of the music. I went over to the Shrine three times this week and struck out each time. Next week the schedule gets back to normal and I am hoping to catch Seun Kuti and Egypt 80 at their regular end-of-month gig next Saturday to make it up.

Joe Morris, William Parker and Marco Eneidi in Washington DC

The Joe Morris Trio at Bohemian Caverns: William Parker (b), Marco Eneidi (as), Joe Morris (g)

I flew into Washington DC from Lagos yesterday. Arrived early in the morning and the hotel didn't have any rooms ready. People were hanging out in the tiny lobby when I returned in the afternoon to check in. One man sitting on the sofa looked strangely familiar, like I knew him from somewhere before, but I couldn't quite place the face.

Coming down in the elevator I noticed that the guy standing next to me was holding an alto case so I struck up some small-talk conversation, you know...are you a musician, what kind of music do you like to play, what kind of horn do you play? He was Marco Eneidi, Viennese alto saxophonist with whom I was not previously familiar but who has played with the likes of Cecil Taylor, in town for a one-night stand at Bohemian Caverns. Marco said he was there with a trio, a guitar player and a bassist. So he proceeded to introduce me to the man sitting on the couch. "This is my bass player." I shook his hand and asked his name. "William Parker" was the reply.

William Parker and Marco Eneidi

My jaw dropped. William Parker? One of the best bass players on the planet, icon of creative free improvisation, and prolific recording artist who has been on my playlist for years? Then up walked the guitar player...Joe Morris, ostensible leader of the trio at Bohemian Caverns, who I knew from his recordings with great saxophonists like Ken Vandermark and Anthony Braxton...not your garden variety rhythm section by any means. Maybe one of the finest free jazz collaborations playing today. 

Joe Morris

We chatted for a while. William talked about how musicians create positive energy and help keep the world from imploding.

I went to 11th and U at 7:00 pm to hear the trio's gig. Two hours of sublime, cerebral free improvisation for an attentive but small audience, well less than a hundred, in a funky basement. The two one-hour sets passed like ten minutes. It was great for me to hear such high-level free improvisation after so long. I must thank Joe Morris, William Parker, and Marco Eneidi for not only staying dedicated to the cause but also making a success of it. Joe said that he is just a regular human being and that he has worked hard to be able to speak through his instrument. He told me that we should continue our conversation on line - too bad I don't do Facebook. 

You never know what is going to happen when you wake up in the morning; I certainly never expected to run into William Parker and hear such superb music when I got out of bed yesterday. One of the good surprises life holds.

Tribute to Von Freeman

I wrote this "note to self" after a conversation with tenor sax master Von Freeman at Andy’s, 11 E. Hubbard St., Chicago, on Sunday morning, August 12, 2007, from 1:30 – 2:30 AM. It is an apt tribute to the recently departed soul and one of my favorite pieces.

Setup: Von played a Selmer Mark VII tenor (complete with rubber bands) with an Otto Link 9 mouthpiece and Vandoren V16 #4 reeds, in a flight case. No stand; he put his horn under the piano during breaks.

Von played 3 Saturday night sets at Andy’s with his quintet, the (white) piano-bass-drums rhythm section including 25 year old Philly pianist Ben Paterson along with vocalist Bettye Reynolds. Very short breaks – these guys like to play. I had an interesting conversation with Ben during the break when he accidentally picked up and drank my drink – ended up buying me a Macallans and stayed and talked for a while. Ben is making it as a jazz pianist in Chicago and has an organ trio playing at Andy’s on Monday. Says he has avoided making a living playing weddings so far, lucky him. He said that playing with Von is great, Von really listens to him, and Von will be playing something totally modern and outside one minute and then a lick straight from 1942 the next. 

Von was playing Lester Leaps In when I arrived about 10:15. The highlight of the second set was Jumpin’ with Symphony Sid (which I was playing earlier in the day at PM Woodwinds in Evanston when I was trying out horns earlier in the day – I call my version Jumpin’ with Uncle Sid). I really felt like Von was channelling Pres. I had been reading about Pres in a book called But Beautiful in a bookstore that morning. The third set started with a long (~15 minute) rap followed by Robbin’s Nest. He concluded with April in Paris. Von likes playing long acapella obbligati. He had a good rapport going with Ben and was guiding Ben verbally as he comped and soloed. His playing was absolutely effortless. His edgy, acid tone is instantly recognizable. 

After the 3rd set ended I had a long and fascinating conversation with Von (“Vonski” as he likes to be called; he called me “Ronski”). Von is nearing 85 years of age, and as Ben said as we left the place at 2:30, he is maybe one of a dozen people remaining on the planet who have shared the experience of Pres, Bird, Dexter, etc. Roy Haynes is another. Von is white haired and walks a bit slowly, but his wits are totally about him. 

Von was extremely kind and engaging, not the least bit standoffish and arrogant. I mentioned that my Dad had just passed and Von started talking about how he was at the end of his time. He talked about his life and how when he was younger he was involved with gangs, drank heavily, etc., but luckily changed his ways and survived. He said at one time he felt a lot of self pity about not “making it” and I told him he has made it and is considered one of the living masters, how he is recognized all around the world, and how one writer even called him the greatest living tenor player (even better than Rollins!). He was flattered by this and didn’t seem to know. He is very Chicago-centered. He said that luckily he has had good health whereas Sonny has had some health problems. 

I mentioned that I felt he was channeling Lester and he said he had met Lester Young, and Lester was a very kind man. He said that Lester told a story, that playing that style was very difficult as most horn players followed Hawk and just played a lot of notes. He pointed to the keys of his horn and said the saxophone is built to play a lot of notes. Lester got beyond that. Von mentioned that Stan Getz, probably the best known direct Pres disciple, used to come and hear him play. 

I mentioned that I had the chance to hear and meet Dexter Gordon in the Village about 25 years ago and that Dexter was a real gentleman and I would remember him fondly forever, in the same way I would remember my conversation with Von. Von loved Dexter. He reminisced about a recording session he once did with Dexter on Joe Siegel’s label, with Jodie Christian, Red Rodney and Roy Haynes. Siegel told everyone to keep their solos short so Von as the first soloist did 4 choruses on a blues and then sat down. After the piano player, Dexter cut loose and played for about half an hour. Dexter told Von not to listen to the producer, just to play what he felt. Von said he listened to his four choruses later and couldn’t believe how well he played, said it didn’t sound like himself. It was someone else (God) playing. 

When he mentioned Bird he said that it wasn’t Bird playing the horn. Said that Bird had a really bad drug problem, and all the women loved Bird. 

Von said that music is not mathematics (i.e., you can’t play just by memorizing intervals and patterns), that it is something spiritual and from the soul. I said that was a function of the high level he played at – maybe much less skilled musicians have to play by the numbers. He agreed and laughed. He referred to his 3rd set rap about not letting the devil get between you and the sound. He said that he doesn’t practice any more – he doesn’t need to, his embouchure is like a rock after all these years and he used to play an 11 mouthpiece – but he used to practice 25 hours a day when younger. Music to him is way beyond conscious thought. Ben seconded this in a separate conversation. 

At the end of our conversation, as I was saying farewell, Von grabbed my hands, rubbed them, and held my hands in his for a long time. He said he was passing the gift on to me.

Bill of Goods

I will be heading back to Africa soon and will have some more interesting things to post. In the interim, I am writing one of my periodic musings (i.e. rants) about the music scene. Here goes...

We have been sold a bill of goods that music is perpetually evolving. Today's is better than yesterday's, more advanced. It's not true. I learned the conventional wisdom in school, that you can trace the evolution of jazz in a straight line from Armstrong to Parker to Coltrane. An overall trend towards ever-increasing sophistication in rhythm and harmony. You could fill a library with books analyzing the history of the music from New Orleans to Swing to Bop to Cool to Hard Bop to Modal to Freedom as if one style follows directly, naturally, from its predecessor and obviates the need to go back. In reality, things stagnated after Ornette, Trane, Ayler, Taylor, and the Art Ensemble, and the creative scene of my younger days has long ago been snuffed out by musical Reaganomics. Today you need a Master's Degree in performance to play jazz so your fellow musicians won't give you "the ray", and the University of the Streets has been shuttered for all intents and purposes. 

I was listening to Sam Rivers on my iPod the other day and had an epiphany of sorts. Listening to Sam play his tenor on Fuschia Swing Song (tunes written as far back as the late 50's), I heard him play so much music on his SML in 1965 that I realized NOBODY HAS EVER GOTTEN BEYOND THAT. Listen to Ellipsis. SHEEE-IT. Sam himself never got beyond that. 

My recent experiences in Africa reinforce the plateau state of yet another musical style, Afrobeat. Fela Kuti has been gone for 15 years and the music has not advanced much since then. Yes, there has been a Broadway play cheesifying his life and there are Afrobeat revival bands in the US, Europe, and Japan, but who wants to listen to a revival band made of copyists who learned their instruments in school when you can go back and listen to one of Fela's original records or his original band and offspring? His son Femi has been flirting with rap and hip-hop which I hope is just a way to make money and not a serious musical direction - because that music just can't compare. By my reckoning hip-hop has dominated commercial pop music longer than rock 'n roll at this point, even in Fela's home country of Nigeria, and musically I can't figure out why. Can't be about the music. Must be about the commercial. 

The conclusion from all this is that music definitely does not evolve in a straight line, and at present the creative music world is at a plateau. The result of obsession with too much technology - the hardware and not the software. The lack of live gigs has driven performing musicians into academia where they teach what can be documented, reproduced, and tested - that's why so many of today's horn players sound like John Coltrane ca. 1960 and none sound like Ornette or Ayler; originality is dissed rather than respected. Can you play your horn at Grade 8? Who cares? Did Tina Brooks pass his exam before recording True Blue? Music cannot be separated from its social context and that is why creative music has stagnated. The social milieu that created Bird and Trane no longer exists; we can only listen to their recordings, transcribe, analyze, and reproduce the sound. A society that measures your worth by how fancy your hand phone is doesn't have much space for musical innovation. 

One thing I have learned is that making music is actually a social process and something big is missing if you only concentrate on the technical. Music cannot be separated from its environment. Did you download that from the cloud and play it on your iPad? Was that a D7m5 or did Diz use another enharmonic spelling? Was that an E natural or an F flat? Do your ears care?

Dejan Terzic - a Great (and Wise) Drummer

I was looking at the web site of the Java Jazz Festival in Indonesia ("jazz" in the loosest Asian sense, Stevie Wonder is the headliner!) and saw that the great German drummer Dejan Terzic was with one of the acts, Nils Wogram's Nostalgia. Possibly one of the only true jazz acts on the bill, they actually play acoustic instruments and improvise. Nils plays trombone, another form of crazy bent brass tube.

I first met Dejan back in 2007 when he came to Penang with Anke Helfrich to perform at the Penang Island Jazz Festival courtesy of Germany's Goethe Institute, again one of the only jazz acts on the bill of a festival heavy on pop music and guitar wacka-wacka. I recognized Dejan from a recording he had done with George Garzone on Naxos from back in the days when people actually purchased CDs; I had picked it up to hear Garzone who is a monster on tenor.

Turns out Dejan was born in Banja Luka, one of the obscure places I'd worked way back when, so we started to talk and he and Anke ended up hanging out with my family for the few days they were on the island. I managed to acquire a friend who is not only supremely talented musically - a drummer with his own sound - but wise beyond his years. A couple of things he told me back in '07 stuck in my mind and have had an influence beyond what he can imagine:

1) Late late at night we were in my practice room and I was bellyaching to Dejan about how well I could play the sax was a direct function of how many hours I put behind the horn practicing. He said I was wrong, how good you are is a direct function of how many hours you spend on the bandstand playing gigs! How right he was. That was like a cold slap in the face - and then I woke up. From that point onwards for a couple of years I took any gig I could, from bar bands playing whiny Lionel Richie songs with a vocalist to straightahead jazz bands to highlife in Africa where I was one of 15 on stage to country and western rock on the beach to big bands, jam sessions, and Chinese weddings (seriously). I'm kind of beyond that now and am confident enough to play what I want to play because I managed to get on-stage experience playing all kinds of music all around the world. Dejan, whether you know it or not you woke me up as a musician with your late night words. Thank you.

2) Dejan also told me that if you want to gig all the time, play the drums. Bands always need a drummer. Everyone wants to play lead. If you think there are a lot of horn players out there, we are 1 in 100 compared to guitarists. To be a sax player on a gig you have to be really, really top notch. Rhythm players always have a home. I have found this to be exceedingly true since I reached the point where I can front my own bands. It is always a struggle to find a drummer. The drummer controls the band - the drum kit is not portable so the rehearsal venue is controlled by where the drums are, for one thing. Young players take heed!

In any event, we have stayed in touch on and off through the years and Dejan generously supplied us with a batch of his recordings. Dejan will be performing in Asia the next two weeks in Jakarta, Bandung, Singapore, and Bangkok. Catch him if you like creative improvised music and look out for him in Europe. Check out his web site too.

Loss of Another Saxophone Great

Unfortunate news is that Red Holloway passed away this week at the age of 84. The tenor saxophone world has lost another great player and living link to giants of the past. Red was an alumnus of Chicago's fabled DuSable High. This link is a nice tribute to Red with a detailed biography.

Seems like most of the players I really like are in their 70s and 80s now. Last year we lost Sam Rivers and Fred Anderson. We can only hope for the continued good health of the elder statesmen of the saxophone – Sonny, Ornette, Vonski, Yusef Lateef the most prominent among them. This is one music that offers constant paths to growth and the best players just keep getting better as they get older.

My Musical Biography, Part 5

I’ve been fortunate enough to travel the world while still young enough to appreciate it, and since Kazakhstan I travel with a tenor over my shoulder. I acquired a small form-fitting hard shell case to make airline travel less of a hassle. Work led me to Azerbaijan in 2007, where the driver picked me up one night and delivered me to Baku’s basement jazz club. When the band hit ‘Round Midnight I felt compelled to get over my trepidation, so I got up on the stand and jammed – my first public performance since who remembers when. I got an “ochin harasho” from the drummer…

Steve Black

Dare and George

The next year found me in Fela-land and my very first week in Nigeria I met some local musicians which led to several gigs per week for the rest of the year in bar bands, jazz bands, and highlife bands. What an amazing musical experience. The years of listening to Fela had gotten into my blood – I had been turned on to Fela by Kwame Olatunji in college – and I could play the music intuitively. The Nigerian musicians and fans treated me great – almost reverse discrimination – calling me white brother and asking me how I learned to play like an African. I played with guys whose instruments were held together with tape and rubber bands, real pieces of junk that didn’t stop great music from coming out. The same lesson Charlie Parker taught Phil Woods, I guess. Guys who hadn’t eaten a decent meal in days. I played mostly with bandleader and alto saxophonist Dare Peter and had some fantastic musicians for colleagues like the polyrhythmic drummer George, guitarist King Faj (the Nigerian Hendrix), scat-and-James Brown singer Steve Black, and tenor saxophonist Jonny who taught me highlife licks by ear as I stood next to him on the outdoor bandstand at the legendary Blake. One night one of Fela’s former music directors sat in with us. I actually got asked back for more. 50-year-old basically self-taught white man. There are some videos up on YouTube which I will post later.

Jonny

I’ve subsequently played in Colombo with a straight-ahead jazz quartet (I made it a quintet), had a bi-weekly gig in the Caribbean with Hans and the Hillbillies acting as horn section for a Waylon Jennings and Johnny Cash-inspired country rock band (Hans does a killer version of Folsom Prison Blues), in Holland, and even had a few gigs in musically-barren Abu Dhabi at a high-end cigar club. Recently I’ve been in Malaysia and fortunately our multi-talented and good-at-everything daughter Jackie has decided to play alto sax (she already has a killer singing voice, a quick ear, and way more musical talent than I ever had) so we’ve been going out on gigs together. I am getting back at the musical Thatcherites by performing Trane, Miles, Jug, Sonny, Rahsaan, Duke, etc. with her when she's at an age when I hadn't even heard of these guys. It rubs off; she can recognize Dexter on the stereo. We record everything we do in both audio and video. I’m trying to teach her to feel the music, to truly improvise and never play the same thing twice (do you ever feel exactly the same way twice?), to hear the solo inside her head, and to get in the spirit of the music when playing. Oh yeah, and to play long tones.

State of the Horn, One Player's View

Playing sax is a never ending learning process. Most of the players I like are way older than me – the recently passed Sam Rivers was close to 90, Fred Anderson was in his late 70’s when he left, Ornette and Sonny are now 80, Vonski is about 88 now and still going.

Since my school days the music in many ways has transformed from a vibrant, free, expressive art form to a stodgy, academic, ossified craft you learn in class by studying method books based on John Coltrane’s 1959 approach, an approach he himself rapidly advanced away from. So-called jazz can now be “graded” and there are “jazz competitions” with monetary prizes awarded. I've never understood how an art form founded in self expression could be treated as a competition like weight lifting or horse racing.

Ornette is back to being considered radical again more than 50 years after he established the mainstream. Learning jazz is now mostly “take a random mathematical pattern like 1-3-6-5, memorize it in every key, then play it as fast as you can”. Harmonic complexity is treated as the only value worth striving for; formulaically twiddling up and down chords at high speed is what makes you a good horn player. The more complicated the better. Memorizing solos, other people’s solos, is mandatory (but only those that slavishly follow chord changes, the kind of music the pioneers abandoned in the late 50’s, mainly because formulas can be replicated but creativity cannot). The conventional wisdom after 30 years of musical Reaganomics is that music is like speech – you imitate your mother to learn to speak, so you must imitate other musicians to play jazz. An inaccurate analogy – I learned to speak from my mother but my voice sounds nothing like hers, I never needed to ape her voice pitch, emphasis, and inflection to speak, and I never had to copy her exact words, grammar, and syntax to be understood. There is still a pocket of creativity in the music today but it is small and the giants are leaving us one by one. Much of what I hear labelled “jazz” is corporate pap and the word is close to becoming meaningless since many uncritical listeners confuse lounge music that incorporates a bit of syncopation and a blue note or two with the creative storm that stems from the tradition of Pops, Pres, Bird, Miles, Trane, and Ornette. Where I live it is difficult to hear a horn at all.

My Musical Biography, Part 2

Fast forward to college. Growing up in Terre Haute I didn’t hear any jazz (though I later discovered that Duke played one of his last road gigs at Mr. Boos on Third Street). 16 years old at Harvard where my classmates included Yo Yo Ma, who was already a recording artist, and Jerry Harris, who went on to play bass with Sonny Rollins. I liked music so I went down to WHRB in the ancient Memorial Hall basement and joined up. I didn’t know enough about music to get any on-air work at first so I began by running the boards in the control room. I was good at it and found a lot of work there, and eventually got on the air.

My exposure to jazz began at the deep end, with Coltrane and Dolphy, and I pretty much immediately lost interest in rock and such (although I have retained some fondness for hillbilly music). The radio station had a huge record library and WHRB had the custom of suspending regular programming during reading and exam periods in favor of “orgies” dedicated to individual artists or styles. I did a 24-hour Monk orgy at one point and we put Monk on the cover of the program guide that month. Once while I was spinning a Bird disc late at night Roy Haynes actually called me on the phone to tell me he was the drummer on that record! What really ruined me was taking A.B. Spellman’s Black Music course, which started with Jelly Roll and ended with The Art Ensemble, with Pops, Duke, the Count, Bean, Pres, Bird, Miles, Trane, Mingus, Ornette, Dolphy, and Cecil Taylor in between. Ornette and Albert Ayler are the mainstream of the tradition. I used to set up the sound system for class; once I sat some equipment down on A.B.’s peanut butter crackers and his famous retort was “Get off my cracker, cracker”. ROFL.

After a year or so of listening to records, hanging out with hard core fanatics, and hearing live music at Boston’s Jazz Workshop, I was compelled to play again. I got a Bundy alto in Terre Haute over the summer. By the time I was a junior and living in Dunster House we would jam on weekends in the basement piano rooms. There was a cat named Phil Gardner who could already play like Bird and I was a talentless near beginner in comparison. Senior year I took an independent music course and studied saxophone with Hankus Netsky from New England Conservatory on a study-exchange program. Hankus is now famous for leading the Klezmer Conservatory Band and at one point was head of jazz studies at NEC. In my first lesson he made me transcribe Miles’ solo from So What. Jeez.