...........................................Joan Discussing the Benefits of Joining the Madison Music Collective..............................
LOCAL
On March 2 Madison Music Collective members and guests met at Joan Wildman's house for the monthly listening session. As usual, we heard some very interesting music and discussion. While "Utopia", a duet by Sun Ra and Walt Dickerson, was still as fresh and innovative in 2008 as it must have sounded when it was recorded in 1978, Marilyn Crispell's private recording of her "Improvisation", from a few years ago, also managed to bend our ears in new directions with her consistent creativity. On the other hand, the soulful sounds of Abdullah Ibrahim's 1980's group along with the 1930's Czech big band of R.A. Dvorsky kept us aware of the long and diverse history of the music. Other artists who were presented and also much appreciated have been added to our discorgraphy page. (See the discography here for examples.) The pizza was even better than last time and we're looking forward to next month's session, which will be held at Ben's house on Sunday, June 1. reviewed by Joan Wildman
REVIEWS: CONCERTS
MMC PRESENTS: Discussion and Performance on Improvisation by Joan Wildman and Friends, 4/17/08
MMC co-founder and Professor Emeritus Joan Wildman presented an informative and engaging presentation on the art of improvisation. Performing on piano and synthesizer, she was joined by Emeritus Professor Richard Lottridge and Willy Walter (bassoons), Ben Karetnik (drums) and Laurie Lang (bass).
Joan began by dispelling any preconceptions of improvisation as something mysterious and inaccessible, reminding us that we all improvise in our daily lives. In fact, the first music was pure improvisation.
Joan also dispelled any preconceptions that improvisation is exclusive to jazz, pointing out that European classical music was rich in improvisation. Unfortunately, this tradition has been all but lost today, aside from a few European schools of organ improvisation. In the twentieth century, however, improvisation has emerged in different genres of American music, in particular, blues and jazz. She and other members of the group went on to discuss and demonstrate various styles of improvisation, based on the primary structural elements of music--melody, harmony, rhythm and form.
Melodic improvisation was first demonstrated by the two bassoonists. One played a written melody while the other improvised a countermelody. Joan described how a keyboardist in the 18th century would end a concert by improvising in counterpoint. Joan took on the challenge, improvising from her own melody in a contrapuntal style.
For a discussion of rhythm, Ben Karetnik provided a brief demonstration of the evolution of jazz drumming: (1) the early New Orleans sound, with an oversized bass drum and simple rhythms; (2) the Kansas City sound of Count Basie's drummer, Papa Jo Jones, with swing rhythms over an expanded trap set; and (3) bebop drummer Kenny Clarke with more cymbals and a more complex, interactive rhythmic style.
Joan introduced harmony by describing the "figured bass" of the Baroque era, similar to the chord symbols on a jazz musician's lead sheet. In the bebop era of the 1940's, musicians often lifted the chord progression from a composition to improvise new melodies. Joan demonstrated on piano with Fats Waller's "Honeysuckle Rose." First, she played the original piece in stride style; then she played Charlie Parker's bebop melody with the same chord progression, called "Scrapple from the Apple." This time, however, she improvised complex melodies and countermelodies with more intricate rhythmic structures. Joan showed how one harmonic progression could be the source for two totally unique improvisations.
Finally, Joan discussed form as a structure on which one improvises, but that is shaped individually by each improviser. Richard and Willy demonstrated their two unique perspectives on bassoon by improvising on a twelve-bar blues form. Then the entire group performed a Wildman composition in which Laurie Lang was featured in a bass solo to demonstrate how she would shape a melody. Joan contrasted this with a nineteenth century Romantic style of improvisation on piano.
The program ended with another Wildman composition in which everyone improvised. The mood was subdued and spacious, underscored by a slow minor bass pattern on Joan's synthesizer, described by Joan as "some weird sounds that I like." It gave the improvisers plenty of room to explore, allowing the audience to experience sounds and styles converging within the ensemble. Richard played a beautiful extended blues solo on bassoon, not traditionally a jazz instrument. The blending of the nontraditional instrumentation—bassoon and synthesizer, in particular--was striking! In conversations in the audience afterwards, the common reaction went something like: "I closed my eyes and wondered if that was bassoon way up there, or synthesizer...."
No matter if you were a musician or not, everyone learned something new about improvisation—about what it is, where you find it or how you do it. Joan and the other musicians showed us an expanded view of improvisation in a way that we can all understand, opening the door to wanting to find out more.
Joan Wildman is performing with many of the same people at the Isthmus Jazz Festival in early June, featuring new compositions and more improvisations.
reviewed by Jane Reynolds
MMC PRESENTS: Lecture and Video about Wayne Shorter by Dave Stoler. 3/16/08
MMC PRESENTS: Lecture and Video about Alec Wilder by Professor Robert Levy, 2/21/08
MMC PRESENTS: Concert featuring Madison pianists, Paul Hastil and Dave Stoler, 1/17/08.
REVIEWS: CDs
FOOD FOR THOUGHT: JOANNE POW!ERS TRIO: It is always difficult for “out of the mainstream” players to master a new musical language, but It is quite extraordinary for a group of players to develop their own vocabulary within that language to the extent that they can speak as a single voice. Yet, that is what often happens with the JoAnne Pow!ers Trio's new CD, FOOD FOR THOUGHT. JoAnne Pow!ers plays saxophones and cornet, Jennifer Pender is on bass and Madison Music Collective member, Paul Baker, plays drums.
The group manages to stay on message within each of the five selections, ranging in length from the 8+ min. "Improvised Explosive Device" to the 29+ min. "Low Profile". Except for the obvious timbre changes between the instruments, the story line remains unbroken as all three musicians trade ideas, expand or dismiss them with the same quiet urgency. They also use technical facility to good advantage, but always in a controlled manner. Bursts of 32nd notes might be followed by a slightly longer pitch which focuses on a timbre change, allowing a brief comment from another player. You can almost hear them listening to each other!
It is great to hear a group that has obviously spent much time in rehearsal together and cares very much about the music they play. I can hardly wait to hear what they do next!!
You can purchase the CD at the trio's website or at one of their gigs. (Check them out at the Escape Coffee Gallery, 916 Williamson on April 16.) reviewed by Joan Wildman
DISCOGRAPHY
The Madison Music Collective members hold monthly Listening Sessions. Check out some of the discography here.
ARTICLES/NOTES
Jane Reynolds, MMC member, is a pianist/composer, music educator and co-host with Steve Braunginn of Strictly Jazz Sounds on WORT-FM in Madison. Interviews with Malachi Thompson (1996), Marilyn Crispell (2004), Sonny Rollins (2005), McCoy Tyner (2006), Sonny Fortune (2006),
and Roscoe Mitchell (2002 and 2007) are the basis for “Musicians’ Perspectives on Creative Improvised Music,” which was presented on September 6, 2007, at the University of Guelph in Ontario, Canada, as part of the Guelph Jazz Festival Colloquium.]
Jazz improvisation is an art form of individual creative expression that, by its nature, is constantly evolving. As the music advances, it reflects the world we live in and shapes our culture, forming a connection between art and life. Creative jazz artists are the driving force behind this movement. Malachi Thompson, Marilyn Crispell, Sonny Rollins, McCoy Tyner, Sonny Fortune and Roscoe Mitchell offered their personal insights into the evolution of creative improvised music and the shape of jazz to come.
Artistic development is cultivated through the encouragement and guidance of musicians who act as role models, mentors and teachers, and by music collectives, teaching workshops, colleges and universities, which can act as incubators and springboards for creativity.
The Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM) was formed in Chicago in 1965 by a group of music artists to create an outlet for the development and performance of creative improvised music. Roscoe Mitchell noted that its principal co-founder, Muhal Richard Abrams, was a mentor to many of the musicians and provided a place where they could get together and formulate ideas. The musicians wanted to have control over their own destinies, so they set up networks with musicians in other cities to give workshops and concerts. Roscoe Mitchell referred to the AACM as a collective.
Malachi Thompson joined the AACM in 1966 at the age of seventeen, at the encouragement of Muhal Richard Abrams and Anthony Braxton. Fellow trumpet player and composer Lester Bowie, one of the AACM’s most dynamic leaders and member of the Art Ensemble of Chicago, was his most influential mentor. As Thompson described it, “When I came into the AACM, they were playing music that was a challenge to me. Another challenge was to compose original music for an ensemble and produce a concert. That’s what got me into being a leader and a composer. My early experience playing with the AACM helped shape the musician that I have developed into.” He added: “Experimentation itself is part of the tradition. If it weren’t for musicians like Miles and Ornette and Trane and members of the AACM, that wouldn’t be happening. Jazz musicians stand on the shoulders of the great masters in the jazz idiom.”
Marilyn Crispell was a contemporary classical pianist when she heard John Coltrane’s recording “A Love Supreme.” That served as the catalyst for her to begin studying jazz. As she put it, she felt a bridge between Coltrane’s music and contemporary classical music. In her pursuit of that connection, she attended Karl Berger’s Creative Music Studio in Woodstock, New York, where she met Roscoe Mitchell, Anthony Braxton, Leo Smith, Oliver Lake and others with whom she would later work.
Roscoe Mitchell had the good fortune to be invited to sit in with Coltrane. As Mitchell described it, ”Trane is a shining example that you can really do what you want to do in music, and he explained that all he’s really trying to do is hone his music down into a very clear message so that it can be widely understood. In some ways, that’s what I’m trying to achieve in my music. So I owe a lot to Trane and many other great musicians.”
John Coltrane took on the role of big brother and mentor when he invited McCoy Tyner to join his quartet in 1960. When Tyner was asked why he considered Coltrane a great teacher, he replied, “This is a hands-on art form where you learn by doing. I learned from night to night playing with him, from day to day talking to him. But playing with him was the greatest opportunity.” Tyner went on to say, “In Trane’s band, we also inspired each other. It was a group effort. You have to be a part of what is going on, but I also had to be an individual because that’s how these people that I admired became who they were.” Tyner and other creative musicians don’t seek to be followers or imitators. Their goal is to find their own voice to move the music forward.
Today, McCoy Tyner mentors young musicians who work under him. In a brief conversation with bassist Charnett Moffett after performing in a concert with Tyner, Moffett expressed humility in the challenge of keeping up with the elder master and gratitude for the opportunity to get the same hands-on experience that Tyner had with Coltrane.
Marilyn Crispell teaches improvisation workshops and has produced an instructional DVD entitled “A Pianist’s Guide to Free Improvisation: Keys to Unlocking Your Creativity” (Homespun Tapes in Woodstock, New York).
Roscoe Mitchell begins a three-year teaching appointment at Mills College in Oakland, California this fall. Mitchell has developed methods for helping the inexperienced improviser. He explained a technique which he calls scored improvisation: “One of the things I discovered was certain mistakes that inexperienced improvisers make. So I found that by giving them materials, it helped the musician to get on the road to the type of concentration that it really takes to develop strong improvisational skills.”
Hearing others in live performance is another important source for motivation and inspiration. Malachi Thompson’s first inspiration was at the age of eleven when he heard Count Basie's Orchestra in Chicago. As he observed, “There’s a difference between hearing music on a record or on the radio and a live performance. That live performance was the thing that made me pick up the trumpet.” Thompson’s experiences with the AACM later inspired him to create a 13-piece ensemble he called Africa Brass to feature new compositions and arrangements in the New Orleans brass band tradition. Thompson described the purpose behind the group: “I was going back to the origins of jazz, but trying to project the music into the future to demonstrate how there is a thread running through the jazz fabric, all the way from Buddy Bolden to what is happening now.”
In the 1960’s, Roscoe Mitchell hardly missed a concert. He recalled when there was a wide pallet to choose from, including John Cage, Sun Ra, Richard Teitelbaum, and the Art Ensemble of Chicago, and that there was an established audience for the music. Unfortunately, these opportunities have dwindled in the U. S. Mitchell observed that in Europe, where he has performed extensively since the sixties, there is a long tradition of exposing people to the arts from an early age. He had an interesting theory that perhaps the U.S. has simply not been around long enough to establish such a tradition. Mitchell is optimistic as he noted: “When most people come up to me, instead of saying ‘I enjoyed the music,’ they say ‘I need the music.’ So I think that we’re starting to come back around to that point in the circle where the music will be appreciated more.”
Sonny Rollins performs frequently in Japan to large, enthusiastic audiences. Rollins observed: “The people in Japan know the whole history. The interest in jazz is so overwhelming compared to what we experience in the States. Here at home, a lot of jazz people have a hard time getting work and being recognized.” He explained that one reason for this is that the American government realizes what a great tool jazz is, so information about the music and the artists is promulgated by U. S. agencies to other parts of the world, but not at home. When Rollins was in Madison, Wisconsin in 2005 for a performance in the new state-of-the-art Overture Center, he expressed disappointment at seeing empty seats in the concert hall, followed by outrage at the inadequate media coverage, which included his being bumped off the front page of a local arts calendar for a young alternative rock artist. Many disappointed people exclaimed days later that they had not heard about the concert, and Rollins expressed uncertainty about returning to Madison. He left the next morning for another tour in Japan.
Sonny Rollins was asked what he thought of opportunities for jazz artists today, to which he exclaimed, “Jazz is always alive. What’s not alive are the opportunities for people to play jazz or hear jazz. There are no jazz television shows and it is not heard too much on the mass media.” Rollins’ observations point out the sad fact that in the U. S., the airwaves are monopolized by commercial, profit-driven mainstream media, while jazz is for the most part relegated to public broadcasting and independent community stations. Additionally, in recent years, jazz radio stations have disappeared and jazz programming has diminished due to continued decreases in funding by governmental arts agencies. The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is also always looking for ways to marginalize or eliminate independent media outlets by imposing impossibly exorbitant fines for minor documentation errors or inadvertently broadcasting one of the seven forbidden words, and by supporting monopolies in the mainstream market. The FCC is on a mission to censor alternatives to the mainstream so as to perpetuate the status quo in opinion and in our culture, in the process generating a movement toward planned obsolescence of creative improvised music in the media.
McCoy Tyner expressed a concern of his when he exclaimed: “The black media doesn’t play this music necessarily from their culture. We’ve had our own unique contribution to the world with jazz and blues. It’s too bad our children don’t get to be exposed to that and realize how important it is.” Whenever Tyner has the opportunity, he performs in schools and universities where they know something about jazz, but where they haven’t experienced it enough. That is because the predominate mainstream media plays down to the listening audience and, in the process, “dumbs down” the culture. Because of this, there are many who consider jazz to be too intellectual, and they allow themselves to remain in the comfort zone handed to them. The mainstream perpetuates itself. One of the missions of the creative musician is to raise the audience up to a higher level, and it is the media’s responsibility to give them a voice to do that. Sonny Rollins has a simple philosophy: “If people have a chance to hear jazz and appreciate it, they do and they like it.”
Rollins believes that with the advent of compact discs, more young people are listening to jazz and there is growing enthusiasm for the music. Creative music artists, however, are increasingly finding that they must seek out recording opportunities that support their music, often smaller independent labels. Saxophonist Sonny Fortune left the commercialism of the Atlantic label to move to Blue Note because they offered him creative control, and there he recorded some of his best work. However, when he discovered a few years ago that these recordings were no longer available, he formed his own independent label, Sound Reason, as he said “...because one of the problems with art is the movement of it to the appreciator—how you get your product, your message, around to people.” He negotiated with Blue Note to release three of his recordings together on his label. The Trilogy is now available online at various websites, including his own.
That brings up a new resource for making music available to the public. Roscoe Mitchell observed that times are different now that we have the internet. Could it be that listeners are increasingly being diverted from clubs, concert halls and even record stores to the internet? What did McCoy Tyner think about reconsidering the dissemination of jazz in the future? “I think it’s a good idea”, he said. “Live performances you can’t beat because that brings something else to the table. But I think it’s important to use the technology that’s available to us today. Why not take advantage of it.”
The internet provides a readily accessible global source for the musician and the listener. Add to that the growing number of radio stations that are streaming on the web, while podcasts and YouTube are growing in popularity. The internet should not be considered a replacement for the mass media, but it provides greater accessibility for those independent media outlets struggling in their commitment to give a voice to creative improvised music. Live performance will always provide the primary link between artist and listener; but recordings, the media and now the internet play an increasingly important role in disseminating the music to a wider audience.
In spite of the struggles in getting the music out to the listener, improvisational music survives because it serves a purpose for the musician as a means of expression. The musician’s commitment to the pursuit of music and to always trying to get better is the driving force behind the perpetuation of the art form. As Roscoe Mitchell put it: “What I’m finding is that it takes a long time to be what I’m trying to be. I don’t feel I’ll ever learn as much about music as I’d like to learn in this one lifetime, but I’m grateful that some of the things I did think about are starting to present themselves in a clearer picture.” Mitchell has recently ventured into collaborating with computers, describing a program in which he can “...establish a rapport with the computer, gradually building a conversation and a language.” He believes that it’s time for the emergence of the super musician, who can move freely in the music in a new age of spontaneous composition.
Malachi Thompson proclaimed that the role of the creative musician is to push the music forward, to create the present in order to shape the future. As Roscoe Mitchell, Sonny Rollins, McCoy Tyner, Sonny Fortune and Marilyn Crispell persist in their commitment to fulfilling that role, they all remain certain that improvisational music will continue, because creativity and expression have a greater purpose in society and in shaping our culture. We need the music.