Also exciting is that this week Falling Up has officially ‘charted’ – reaching number 36 on Jazzweek’s Top 50 Jazz Chart for January 17th.  It’s the only album among the top 50 that is self-released!

And for future excitement, I just confirmed that I’ll be playing with Cassandra Wilson when she performs with the Nashville Symphony as part of the jazz series on March 2nd.  Time to practice!

- evan

I’ve heard and read various contradictory accounts about the events leading up to the performance of “Dimiuendo and Crescendo in Blue” at Newport in 1956.  The recent lack of success of Duke’s band; possible punishment for recent performance problems stemming from Paul’s alcohol and drug addictions; tensions among the ‘high-society’ patrons of Newport with the younger dancehall crowd…all of these factors may or may not have contributed to the folklore that now surrounds this 6 minute and 20 second solo.

As for the solo itself, there are many things which make it great besides its epic length and uncommon key (uncommon at least to many modern horn players).  Paul Gonsalves was one of the most unique voices on the tenor saxophone, but his style is often overlooked for some of the players that were deemed more “mainstream” in jazz.  I’m not looking to start any arguments about who decides what ‘mainstream jazz’ is any more than I’m looking to join the argument about what “jazz” is as a music and a term.  In analyzing the 27 choruses, a few things jump out at me.

1. Range – Paul never plays below an E (talking tenor here, so I’m speaking of an E-flat blues for a tenor player) and only plays up to high Gb, with the exception of one altissimo high G.  The majority of the solo occurs between his Eb at the near the top of the staff and his high Gb!

2. Confidence – Paul does not hesitate a single time in the 27 choruses.  When I started learning this solo in graduate school I don’t think that I could play a single chorus without hesitation at least once while navigating the uncommon key centers of an Eb blues.  In truth, this was probably caused by #3.

3. Ammunition – There is no question in my mind that Paul had worked out a number of ideas and licks for this solo.  Check out the 14th chorus if you don’t believe me!  In fact, I would go on to say that most of this solo is extremely effective lick-based playing, much like the great Sonny Stitt.  Now Paul and Sonny had different material, but the effective use and rhythmic development of riffs and themes to me is very similar.  The big difference in their sounds would be their harmonic language: Paul incoporates the major triads from a tritone away, giving a distinct flat-nine sharp-eleven sound to his dominant chords.  This is also known as the “Petrushka chord” from Stravinsky’s 1911 ballet.  Listeners often point to the first chorus where he opens with an A major triad (along with an E-flat) over the E-flat dominant chord as coming from far away.  However, a listen to Duke’s interlude two choruses before Gonsalves begins shows that his opening statement came right from the composers ears.

Download audio file (Duke-Interlude-Diminuendo.mp3)

Anyways, without any further ado, here are the 27 choruses of Paul Gonsalves’ most famous solo, written out in B-flat for tenor players.

Download audio file (Paul-Gonsalves-Diminuendo-solo.mp3)

- evan

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

The first reviews of Falling Up have arrived as well.  I’ll link them here but moving forward I’ll post all of that information on my press page.

If you are interested in purchasing a copy of the album, there are myriad ways to do so.  Falling Up is available on itunes, amazon, CD Baby, emusic, and a number of other internet sources.  If you’re going to buy a hard copy of the disc, I recommend doing it through paypal (cheaper for you, better % for evan) – just click on the link at the bottom of the music page.

Reviews

Something Else!

Midwest Record

Muzik Reviews

Radio Stations

WMOT  89.5 Nashville

WSKG Binghamton, NY

WUCF  89.9 Orlando

WCLK  91.9 Atlanta

KSDS  88.3 San Diego

KUVO  89.3 Denver

WWUH  91.3 Hartford

KKFI  90.1 Kansas City

WESM  91.3 Salisbury, MD

WSIE  88.7 Edwardsville, IL

WSHA  88.9 Raliegh, NC

Jefferson Public Radio – Ashland, OR

WEMU  89.1 Ypsilanti, MI

WAMC Northeast Public Radio

- evan

Teacher extraordinaire Greg Fishman calls the attempt of forcing licks into a solo the “Lobster Theory.”  When you order a lobster at a restaurant, you can’t choose it an hour ahead of time and hold on to it.  When you select your lobster it goes straight from the tank to the boiling pot to your plate.  Any extra time spent in between those steps will affect the freshness of the meal.

In the bigger sense of music-making, what using hip new vocabulary for vocabulary’s sake amounts to is selfishness.  You know when somebody talks to you and uses big words that they don’t fully understand just to make themselves sound smart?  The vocabulary usage is about the individual, specifically an individual with something to prove.

For a band to really play as an ensemble and not just a collection of players, there must be selflessness at every instrument.  Rhythm section players address this issue at a much earlier stage than horn players and singers (“solo” instruments) because of their natural roles as accompaniment.  This doesn’t mean that they can’t be guilty of trying to sound hip at the sake of the band’s sound and groove!

As an audience it’s natural to direct our attention to the flashiest players.  Certainly this is true in most things covered by the nightly news, whether talking about the latest celebrity scandal or watching sports highlights to see all the homeruns.  Sports fans trumpet the fun of having fantasy sports teams, but in so doing can miss the finer points of the games – the batter who moves the runner over from first to second in a tie game – the player who makes a key block to spring a run for a key first down.

In jazz, I’ve always had a difficult time describing in technical terms how specific drummers play.  As I’ve gained more experience, I’ve come to understand why I enjoy playing with certain drummers so much – it has nothing to do with flashy vocabulary or ridiculous solos (not that I don’t appreciate those) – it has to do with musicality.  To me, the ultimate drummer is one so good that you often don’t notice him/her.  Their playing simply makes the band better – the tunes make sense, the grooves always feel good, and the soloists don’t overplay because everything sits just right in the pocket. A good quote from W.B. Yeats: “Think like a wise man but communicate in the language of the people.”

Here in Nashville, the very top-call session guys at all instruments are folks who always play in tune, play with clean articulations, and know how to play inside of a groove.  Essentially, they are virtuosic players who are mature enough to play with selflessness.

Our featured guest at this coming Sunday’s Nashville Jazz Workshop Jam Session is a drummer who is as virtuosic as any that I’ve ever encountered, but every time I’ve played with him he makes everything flow with ease.  I hope that you can come out and hear the wise words of drummer Derrek Phillips.

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

After a couple of rehearsals and warm up show at Sportman’s Grille this week, the quintet had its debut performance last night at the Nashville Jazz Workshop.  I came home with a huge smile on my face still shaking my head my head thinking about how great the band played.  Matt White, Bruce Dudley, Jonathan Wires, Josh Hunt and guest Jeff Coffin all blew me away tonight – they have made music out of my tunes and it really showed in the concert.  This morning we head to the studio to lay it down for the album, and I’m ecstatic!

There’s still one more day to pledge and preorder a CD on kickstarter – if anyone needs convincing I’ve posted a track from the set tonight.  I hope you enjoy the music – thank you for your continued support!

Download audio file (None.Half_.All-5.8.11.mp3)

- 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

If you’d like to find out more about the project, including how you can be involved, please check out my kickstarter page.

Tunes from the Workshop – the Debut Album of Evan Cobb

thanks!

-evan

When I first watched the video, I immediately recognized the saxophone riff, but couldn’t remember from where.  That got me thinking about composition – some of the most effective and long-lasting music features riffs or tunes that get stuck in our head, no matter the context of the music.  For instance, I guarantee you recognize the opening melody of Mozart’s 40th Symphony.  Have you ever seen the 40th performed?  A chance, but not all that likely.  And yet you recognize the melody…how can that be?

This past Sunday afternoon at the Frist Center here in Nashville, saxophonist Jeff Coffin gave a free concert and lecture as part of the Jazz on the Move series entitled “The Art of Composition.”  Mr. Coffin spoke about all of the musical elements which can be utilized to make an effective composition. What really struck me about the presentation was that all of his tunes sounded familiar, even the ones that I hadn’t heard before.  I believe the reason for this is that Mr. Coffin’s compositions would often marry one or two slightly complicated elements – (i.e. a twisty melody or tricky metric meter) with simplicity in other elements (i.e. dynamics and articulations that clarify the phrase lengths).  The combination of a few complex elements with the simplicity of other elements made the composition sound clear and deceptively simple.

This was the final composition played by Mr. Coffin this Sunday.  Take a look and have a listen.

Download audio file (Mad-Hatter-melody.mp3)

As you already know, Jeff Coffin is world renowned for his saxophone playing.  When taking a closer look at his soloing however, we can see that his improvisations reflect the same ideals as his compositions: a combination of informed simplicity and just enough complexity to keep every listener guessing.  It makes sense when you consider the nature of improvisation as spontaneous composition.  Consider this quote from jazz icon Jimmy Heath, from an interview in the New York Daily News just yesterday.

“Improvisation is spontaneous composing, with a given structure,” he says. “The good improvisers will always have a pattern that they’ll repeat in different strata of the harmony. If you listen to people who are also writers, the way they play a solo is like they’re composing as they go along.”

Now have a listen and take a look at Jeff’s solo on The Mad Hatter Rides Again from his 2005 album Bloom.

Download audio file (The-Mad-Hatter-Rides-Again-solo-edit.mp3)

Which brings me to this coming weekend’s Nashville Jazz Workshop Jam Session.  The featured guest this month is also a saxophonist who is especially talented at crafting elaborate solos that seem composed, but start with “simple” riffs.  Like the Sexy Sax Man, he also has a history with horn section pelvic thrusting, as you can see at 1:40 into this video of the famous Gloria Estefan HBO concert from 1996.  Jokes aside, this saxophonist won a Grammy Award for his work with Arturo Sandoval and his toured the world in numerous professional settings many times over.  I hope you’re as excited as I am to hear the very talented Kenny Anderson!