Has jazz run its course?

[Richard Barrett]

And what are those terms?

Well, challenging those on this forum and elsewhere who place pre-composition and improvisation on equal terms in jazz's evolution, I would say that it is the improvisational element that trumps all else where jazz is concerned. This is not to dismiss the compositional in old-fashioned terms of notes on score paper entirely, but to celebrate a form in which the interactive, whether between musician and musician(s) or musician(s) and audience, assumes a higher value than possibly in any other genre of music today, both in terms of its enactment of a principle that is at the basis of all life, and its practice.

... up to a certain moment, the "improvisational element that trumps all else" required a fixed framework of some kind as a starting point, but, once it becomes thinkable that any sound or combination of sounds can be regarded as potentially musical, that is, born out of and/or intended for a certain kind of listening which we define as musical, the framework was no longer required. One of the beautiful things for me about free improvisation is that musicians who've emerged from the tradition of jazz, those who've emerged from that of notated composition, and indeed those from almost any tradition at all, are able to animate and inhabit the music as equals.

[Serial_Apologist]

... up to a certain moment, the "improvisational element that trumps all else" required a fixed framework of some kind as a starting point, but, once it becomes thinkable that any sound or combination of sounds can be regarded as potentially musical, that is, born out of and/or intended for a certain kind of listening which we define as musical, the framework was no longer required. One of the beautiful things for me about free improvisation is that musicians who've emerged from the tradition of jazz, those who've emerged from that of notated composition, and indeed those from almost any tradition at all, are able to animate and inhabit the music as equals.

For me what is especially inrteresting is when this feeds back into the mainstream of the music, so to speak, thereby enriching it both idiomatically and from the practice point of view. Quite a number of "straight ahead" jazz musicians have mentioned to me how invaluable the experience of operating outside formal boundaries proved for what they have felt empowered to bring back to jazz with some sort of compositional framework, either expanding or departing from conventional outlines or devising alternative ones. I'm thinking of the German-born saxophonist Ingrid Laubrock, now living in New York, working with Anthony Braxton among others mainntaining exploratory pathways and married to drummer Tom Rainey, who started off playing straight ahead jazz in this country and periodically returns here to review earlier work with past associates who've moved on too; but Barry Guy comes most obviously to mind in the latter sense as far as this country is concerned, having been at it the longest as regards semi-structured large group performance. Some such as myself would go so far as to admit the period in Miles Davis's career, in the mid-sixties, when even standards could be opened to radical new angles of interpretation, reflecting Miles's capacity for identification at that time with his immediate associates' familiarisation with "outside jazz". I think the "excitement quotient" hinted at by others on this board has a lot to do with that point being passed - rather as when in listening to mature Schoenberg it no longer matters whether the music is "tonal" or "atonal" - beyond which it really becomes impossible to play those old standards in the old way without in some sense ignoring or failing to understand the significance of what has happened - and not just for jazz. Is it fanciful to infer some modernist principle at work here, that maybe links a jazz musician such as Evan Parker (pace, Evan) to a figure like Elliott Carter, who found himself unable to go back to composing neo-classical music once he'd passed a certain stage of development; or even the post-Orpheus works of Stravinsky? I'd like to think it's an enduring principle.

I hope this makes some sense!

[Richard Barrett]

Quite a number of "straight ahead" jazz musicians have mentioned to me how invaluable the experience of operating outside formal boundaries proved for what they have felt empowered to bring back to jazz with some sort of compositional framework, either expanding or departing from conventional outlines or devising alternative ones.

I agree. And even to bring back to standards... as I mentioned I was in Amsterdam playing with Evan a couple of weeks ago, and in the bar after the gig saxophonist Ab Baars (of the ICP Orchestra which had also played earlier on) and pianist Dave Burrell gave an unforgettable impromptu rendering of "Girl from Ipanema" which, although relatively spare and undemonstrative, showed exactly the kind of feedback from "outside" that I think you're talking about. It was really one of the things that made the evening worthwhile. As you say, Ingrid Laubrock is another example, as (continuing the Berlin theme) is Axel Dörner, whose expansion of the sonic range of the trumpet informs his (red-hot) bebop playing in all kinds of ways.

[Ian Thumwood]

Richard / SA

I concur with you both regarding just how far "outside" playing has informed current jazz. It isn't something that is limited to musicians with associations with the Improv scene but something I think is almost ubiquitous these days. The idea of improvising on a set of changes is gradually widening to fracturing the structures of tunes. The first time I noticed this was at a gig by Herbie Hancock, Mike Brecker, Roy Hargrove where they deconstructed "Stella by starlight" by using themes and motifs from the standard as a launch pad from which to improvise. Everyone who was sitting near me at the gig was mesmerised as you never quite knew the direction in which the music was going - the gig was actually billed as "New directions in jazz." Since this gig about 10 years ago, I've heard loads of musicians do this with Jason Moran being amongst the most successful. What I like about Moran is that he does this whilst still being deeply indebted to the music's heritage so that you may get a bit of stride or swing era piano thrown in as part of an outside improvisation.

Ingrid Laubrock is someone I can take or leave. I've heard her in concert and found her playing to sometimes be a bit cold despite the obvious ambitions. She is ok-ish on the last Mary Halvorson disc I bought but by no means the most compelling improviser on that set. Trombonist Jason Garchik takes that honour although Halvorson's playing fascinates as she always seems to be on a quest to defy convention.

The thing I like about more contemporary styles of improve is that the music is steering away from the more Spartan, serial approach and being more reliant on an expansive and less dissonant use of harmony. Herbie Hancock is the best example of this and , in my opinion, there aren't many other soloists who share his depth of harmonic knowledge. In his way, Hancock was a radical in the 1960;s as anything Cecil Taylor produced. Check out some of the freer peiece on the Blue Note albums With Bobby Hutcherson - a touchstone for where jazz is nowadays?

[BLUESNIK'S REVOX]

"While Hancock was attending Grinnell College in Iowa, he heard Chris Anderson perform and insisted that he take lessons from him. Herbie then moved back to Chicago to take lessons from Anderson (a man that Herbie called his “harmonic guru”)."

There is a wonderful "fragmented" piano solo take on You Tube by the late Chris Anderson of "There's a lull in my life". Anderson was something of a legend who coped with blindness and brittle bone syndrome while playing with just about everyone from the 50s onwards.

BN

[Richard Barrett]

There is a wonderful "fragmented" piano solo take on You Tube by the late Chris Anderson of "There's a lull in my life"

Just had a listen to that; beautiful. Towards the end he seems to be obliquely implying the changes rather than actually playing them, a highly subtle harmonic sensitivity is at work there. Thanks BN.

[Katzelmacher]

Handy Olympian statement to make when you find yourself involved in a a conversation about jazz with people who know slightly less about it than you do:

‘Of course, Jazz cease to develop with the death of Charlie Parker.’

[Quarky]

Handy Olympian statement to make when you find yourself involved in a a conversation about jazz with people who know slightly less about it than you do:

‘Of course, Jazz cease to develop with the death of Charlie Parker.’

The problem is not with Jazz; it's safe in the hands of the musicians and the younger folks.

The problem lies with old timers such as myself, who have "run their course", and no longer respond to basic elements of Jazz.

[Serial_Apologist]

The problem is not with Jazz; it's safe in the hands of the musicians and the younger folks.

The problem lies with old timers such as myself, who have "run their course", and no longer respond to basic elements of Jazz.

I would say it is not you, but the way in which constituents in the makeup not once seen as primary within jazz have been over-elaborated to the point at which the element of spontaneity essential to sustaining its "sound of surprise", and which keeps audiences attentive and on their toes, has to negotiate pre-elaborated arrangements of hyper complexity which call upon levels of intellectual input matching those of the composer with his or her calculator or computerised programmer. In the apparent name of measuring up to what modern classical music in its more rhythmically complex manifestations, in order to demonstrate that it can - that old thing if "is the best jazz as good as the best classical music?" - instead of leaving complexity to arise spontaneously out of the fabric of ongoing performance, it now has to confront a kind of obstacle race: the kind of thing Coltrane set himself in "Giant Steps" but carried to some sort of logical end-point in self-confuckstipation. The music in consequence has acquired an imbalance in the direction of intellectualisation, of needing to think every move in relation to the obstacles immediately ahead, and away from spontaneity. When listened to this has the effect (on me) of, so what? (no pun intended) - having taken from the best of what modern music offered, jazz is now ahead. This may be one of the consequences of jazz on the curriculum in high property value area schools. Is that what was intended for it. I don't think so? Big deal.

Oddly enough it was with the M-Base lot (Steve Coleman, Greg osby & co)that I think this process really began ,in the mid 1980s.

I felt this especially strongly in listening to the first example from Danielo Perez's Global Messengers on Saturday's repeat J to Z, when all of a sudden I stumbled on the main aspect of academic jazz which is making it opaque to the listening process. In "Giant Steps" 'Trane no doubt anticipated the way out after quitting Miles as consisting in a process of harmonic de-cluttering, from which the process of complexification proper to jazz authenticity (if it is to reflect the complexity of our times) can be encouraged by having the space it needs to grow, like a plant in naturally congenial surroundings. The "pressures of living" are then enough to dictate the nature and character of what emerges in the moment.