Falling Up continues to receive a lot of great airplay.  Crecent City Ditty just had its first spin on one of the world’s premier radio stations: WWOZ - the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Station!

Incredibly, every one of the eight tracks on Falling Up has received airtime on terrestrial radio.  JazzWeek  – the definitive Jazz  national radio airplay chart – has recently ranked the album 80th in the country for weekly airplay.

Falling Up also received recognition in the Nashville Scene’s 2011 jazz and blues roundup, including being one of seven albums on the “Local recording scene honor roll.”

Here’s to lots more excitement in 2012!

- evan

A quick look at the Meriam Webster dictionary reveals that the verb make has tons of definitions.  One can make the bed, make plans, or make dinner, to name a few.  Making the bed is essentially neatening, making plans is formulating, making dinner is creating.  One could also make their dog sit (force an action), make money (earn/acquire), or ‘make something of it’ (come to a conclusion).

Suddenly to make seems rather ambiguous.  Let’s think a bit more broadly – if you take the phrase making the changes out of the context of jazz and apply it to regular life, it suddenly seems like a rather profound task.  To make a change would be a single feat, to make THE changes is to overcome a very large hurdle.

So how does a person make the changes on a difficult jazz tune?  Just like in life where a large obstacle is successfully handled by addressing one small part at a time, an aspiring soloist must learn to navigate one chord at a time, and then the movement of that chord to the next chord and so on, before eventually being able to play the tune from top to bottom without stumbling.  With enough tunes under your belt, you become able to make the changes on tunes that you’ve never played before, relying on experience and the know-how.  It might not have been your greatest solo, but you were able to make the changes.

Life will undoubtedly throw impediments in front of every man that require careful navigating.  I’ve always admired people who are able to steer around obstacles, not just successfully but gracefully.  Musically, this would be the musician who not only plays great on a difficult tune, but makes it look easy.

If a friend of yours was having trouble dealing with a situation that required great attention, would you offer your help or would you shake your head and tell yourself that they can’t keep it together?  We’ve all known a person who seems to lead a comfortable life only to find out one day through an incident that in fact their whole life had been filled with turmoil and threatened to turn upside down on itself for years.  Maybe you always knew that person was carrying a facade, and now you are forced to ask ‘what if?’.

For some reason, in jazz there’s a tendency to dismiss the ability level of a player who can’t make the changes.  For reasons mostly related to pride, it’s not kosher to offer help to a musician who works jazz-titled jobs but can’t cleanly improvise over chord progressions.  Just because a musician can carry on the disguise of playing jazz to many, should those in-the-know wait around for their improvisational world to turn upside down?

Obviously the world does not come crashing down when a jazz musician fails to make the changes, but what is the ‘what if?’ for the jazz world?  Should we speak up on behalf of the great art form, challenging our colleagues to play the very best that they can play?  Does it denigrate jazz when a professional hacks apart a tune and calls it jazz improvisation?  Lots of food for thought.

Anyways, as I navigate the many changes happening in my life, I wanted to update you on a little bit of information.  First of all, my CD is finally off to the press and I’m very proud of how it’s come out.  Here’s a sample for ya:

Download audio file (The-Cosmonaut-melody.mp3)

Secondly, I’ll be out of town this weekend during the monthly NJW jam session.  But fear not, as I’ve left the jam in the exceptionally capable hand of Joe Davidian, one of my favorite pianists who makes the changes as well as anybody in the world.

Thanks for reading this far.  More to come soon-

evan

Before we pass any judgements, we must realize that context HUGELY affects our feelings for a work of art.  Imagine a picture of two solid-colored squares – on the wall of an elementary school hall, you might think “pretty easy” – on the wall of the MOMA, you might think “pretty brilliant.”  But that’s an oversimplification – to understand the squares, you need to know the title and some information about the artist’s background.  If you learn that the artist has also drawn highly detailed sketches of the human body, you might think that the squares are simple not by necessity of ease but for a purpose.  You might reconsider your feelings when learning that the name of the artist is recognizable.  While the squares may or may not cause an initial visceral reaction, your feelings for them will be influenced by the context.

Jazz – like modern art – has sounds that are not necessarily enjoyed by everyone.  Like all the great art forms, jazz has purveyors of modernism looking to challenge the listener’s notions of what is and isn’t music.  Context is certainly going to affect your feelings for those sounds.  Listen to this excerpt:

Download audio file (greatness-or-craziness.mp3)

If you heard that at the Village Vanguard, you might dig it.  If you heard it in Central Park, you might think someone disturbed found a saxophone.  Would your taste for the sounds change if I told you that the recording was of John Coltrane?

That sound snippet of Albert Ayler was unfair, because I removed the context of the entire composition and just gave you 15 seconds of intensive improvisation.  However, let’s say that we as observers have enough self-awareness to actually cut away the influence of context and judge “good” and “bad” solely on what our senses experience.  In jazz, where there’s “no such thing as a wrong note,” I think that the governing factor is voice.  What I mean by ‘voice’ is really twofold:

First off, the notion that there are no wrong notes in jazz is contingent on the ability of the player.  Take for instance, a B-natural on a C7 chord (spelled C E G B-flat).  Offhand the note will clash and it could sound like a mistake, but you can earn that dissonance by how you get to the B-natural or where you go from it.  Perhaps you’re implying a subdominant chord (G7) leading into your dominant. Or maybe you’re beginning to shape a tritone substitution (C#m7 to F#7).  This is probably way more technical than you’re interested in – the point is, a player can ‘voice’ that “wrong” note into a “right” one.  In the many saxophone lessons I took with Ralph Lalama, he always loved to hammer that point home (“it’s the voicings you m…..f…..r!”)  Ralph is not one for subtlety.

The second part of ‘voice’ that is important is the delivery of the player.  If a player phrases with confidence and generates a recognizable style of playing, their musical world will open up into endless possibilities.  Every note sounds with purpose and a player is free to play without constraints, following not the technical aspects of music but their inner voice.  This is SO much easier said than done, however, and the aural difference between those who have accomplished this Olympian feat and those who merely claim to is often extremely subtle.

There’s an oft-overlooked saxophonist whom I heard for the first time in 2006: Gary Bartz.  Gary was playing with the McCoy Tyner Trio in NYC and I was immediately blown away.  His phrasing, vocabulary, and delivery were all so incredible – I couldn’t believe that I had NEVER heard his name mentioned in a classroom at graduate school.  The most memorable tune of the set for me was McCoy’s ‘Blues at the Corner.’ I’ve posted a version from around the same time below along with a transcription of Gary’s first two choruses which start at 1:02 into the video.

Some very interesting shapes used by Gary Bartz on what for him is a G blues!

Interestingly enough, in an interview with Bret “The Jazz Video Guy” Mr. Bartz recently spoke about voice and how students in music school are going about finding theirs in a ‘backwards’ manner compared to how cats in his generation found theirs.

A great example of a recent music school graduate who does not in any way lack for voice is Nashville saxophonist Rahsaan Barber.  Rahsaan is a great technician and instrumentalist, but most impressive is that he has a fully developed voice.  In his carefully chosen words, Rahsaan always manages to convey that his playing is first and foremost guided by a strong inner voice.  I know this to be true because Rahsaan’s playing and sound are instantly recognizable (and if they’re not to you, buy his recent album!).

I’m very excited to announce that Rahsaan will be sharing his talents and insights at this month’s Nashville Jazz Workshop Jam Session, to be held on Sunday April 17th at FIVE pm (later start time than usual!).  I look forward to seeing you there!

-evan

One moment that we SHOULD try to freeze in time is this one. I recall seeing Esperanza play bass in Donald Harrison’s quintet at Newport in the summer of 2007 and being blown away by her playing and presence.  I didn’t know anything about her then and she didn’t sing on this gig, but her love and passion for music and performance were communicated as clearly as any artist I have EVER seen or heard.

Speaking of inspiring jazz singers, I’m very happy to announce the special guest for this coming Sunday’s jam session at the Nashville Jazz Workshop.  Our February guest is a brilliant interpreter, writer, and improviser, and I’m very excited that she’ll be sharing her gifts and knowledge with us.  Get excited for vocalist Sandra Dudley!

Download audio file (Oh-I-See-head.mp3)

Raises some interesting questions.  In the meantime, please keep coming out to the monthly jazz jam at the Nashville Jazz Workshop – the third Sunday of each month at 4pm.  Next one is June 20th!

- evan

In Your Own Sweet Way
Download audio file (in-your-own-sweet-way.mp3)

As I furthered my musical studies, I found that I preferred the playing of a number of John Coltrane’s contemporaries to that of Trane. Perhaps this was partly due to the fact that I had already transcribed a lot of Trane’s material from the late 50s, but in college and my time with Buddha’s Belly, I found the material of saxophonists like Stan Getz, Sonny Stitt, and most especially Sonny Rollins to be more magnetizing and more helpful to me as a student. Many detractors of Trane’s playing lament that his style in the mid-1950s, while beautiful and amazing in many ways, was very patterned. Listening to these other players, I discovered things like how to more effectively use standard vocabulary (Stitt), how to weave and connect ideas from chorus to chorus (Getz), and how to make simple ideas swing extremely hard (Rollins).

John Coltrane certainly has one of the most recognized sounds of all tenor saxophonists and jazz musicians. Unlike many of his peers however, John Coltrane was not immediately recognized as a genius. In fact, some early musical embarrassments are what led to him to become obsessed with practicing. Coltrane’s early obsession with practicing is evident in some of the easily spotted patterns that appeared in his solos. Examining Coltrane’s solos on tunes like ‘Lazy Bird’ from Blue Train or ‘Love For Sale’ from the Miles album ’58 Sessions, you can see that there are only a few places where he states a rhythmic idea or theme. Trane primarily relies on scales and diatonic ideas, often repeating himself or only slightly varying something he played earlier.

Lazy Bird
Download audio file (lazy-bird-alternate-take.mp3)

John Coltrane’s effective and virtuosic use of simple diatonic patterns is what led him in the direction of his more unique and complicated patterns. Seeing how effectively he could play with linear patterns, Trane began incorporating the same simple linear ideas into different harmonic patterns, particularly in ascending and descending major thirds. This same sort of patterned soloing is what led him to write the famous (and famously difficult) tunes such as ‘Giant Steps’, ‘Countdown’, ‘26-2’, and others.

Countdown
Download audio file (countdown.mp3)

However, after time Trane himself rejected his patterned approach to practicing and soloing. Abandoning the constraints that he had worked so hard to incorporate into his playing, Trane instead focused on playing freely and modally on tunes with little to no scripted chord changes, such as ‘A Love Supreme,’ ‘Ascension,’ and ‘Kulu Sé Mama.’ This coincided with the time in his life where Trane became deeply spiritual, which he incorporated into his songs and solos, leading to some marathon tunes of over 30 minutes and what some might term “speaking in tongues.” Here is a quote from John during that era in the early 1960s:

“Over all, I think the main thing a musician would like to do is give a picture to the listener of the many wonderful things that he knows of and senses in the universe…”

I’ve been thinking so much about Coltrane because this Sunday I am playing in Kyle Burnham’s band in “A Quasi Coltrane Tribute.” The ensemble is focusing on the later, modal tunes of Coltrane like Resolution, Impressions, and India. These tunes are often mistakenly thought of as easy because they are modal – based in one key with little to no chord changes – meaning young players can solo on them with just cursory knowledge of one or two scales. Having been dedicated to playing ‘within the changes’ for the last few years as well as turned off by amateur renditions, I’ve neglected to listen to this material properly in a long time. But delving back into this material has completely inspired me. John Coltrane was functioning at such an amazing musical and spiritual level that it’s very invigorating and uplifting just to hear, let alone attempt.

Resolution
Download audio file (resolution-part-2.mp3)

So I hope you will enjoy me in sharing this great man’s works this coming Sunday, November 30^th at 8:00 inside Café Coco. For those of you who live out of town, I’ll post some highlights on here once I get them.

www.myspace.com/kyleburnham

- evan