Falling Up now available!

I’m very pleased to announce that Falling Up is now officially available worldwide.  By my count five of the eight tracks have already received air time on terrestrial jazz radio across the country.  I’ve compiled a list of stations that have been spinning tracks below – if you’re in the broadcast area don’t hesitate to call in and request a track!

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

Selflessness

As we work on developing our voice, one of the processes that occurs is that we grow our vocabulary.  As a saxophonist, I am always working on new shapes to portray distinct sounds and colors on specific chords.  The practice room is just the practice room however, and when I’m playing live I can only focus on playing with forward motion.  Trying to “squeeze in” a lick or shape that I’ve been practicing never works – it usually sounds contrived and interrupts the natural flow of the solo.  I’ve learned this the hard way over time, that you must separate the practice room from the performance.

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.

Making the Changes

There’s a funny term musicians use to imply that a soloist is adequately navigating the harmonic form of a tune: “making the changes.”  ‘The changes’ is quite obviously referring to the changing chords, but why is the word making the term of choice to describe the process of successfully improvising?

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:

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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

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  • Nashville Performer, Composer, & Educator Saxophone • Oboe • Flute • Clarinet