Jazz anti-heroes ~ a new philosophy for the jazz soloist?

[Ian Thumwood]

Delmark Records seem to be a label where there is a lot of interesting music going on and I have recently been playing guitarist Jeff Parker's "Bright light in winter" which was issued by this company. Parker has featured on a number of records by the likes of Fred Anderson and Nicole Mitchell that I have enjoyed to date but this trio under his own name asks an interesting question about how the listening perceives jazz. The liner notes refer to a masterclass Parker gave where he rejected the notion of a jazz soloist performing an "arc" whereby the solo reaches an emotional high point. Parker states that he is more interested in establishing a line and how ideas connect or even clash.

Reading this is a bit too philosophical for my interest but the music is intriguing. I love Parker's mixture of Jim Hall meets Derek Bailey and in a jazz context the ideas can work exceptionally well. The best tracks on this record are introspective but totally within a jazz tradition and a million miles away from anything ECM might issue. That said, I don't think I've ever heard a soloist so consciensciously discard the notion of building up to a climax and there are tracks like "Istvan" where nothing whatsoever is happening - the guitar gently strumming chords over a gentle bass and drums groove. Jeff Parker is like the antithesis of John McLaughlin. When the music works well, the results are compelling although I think he has been more original on the Anderson and Mitchell records where I would suggest he is radically re-thinking the instrument. The best tracks on "Bright light" are in Jazzrook territory.

Jeff Parker's approach made me think about whether you could class the likes of Lee Konitz in this still. I love both musician's work but perhaps Parker is a musician who has rejected the notion of the barn-storming performance for something more considered to it's logical conclusion?

[aka Calum Da Jazbo]

...hmmmm and how would we consider Rollins's exploration of a tune over a whole set at Scotts; certainly not a linear development featuring a high point and neither an eclectic or random noodling [achromatic or not]

..or Tristano who played at a very stable intensity throughout his harmonically overdetermined [to the point of automaticity] solos

checking out mr parker on utube

[Ian Thumwood]

Calum

I can't agree with you on that one!! For me, Rollin's in the archetypcal jazz improviser and his music is packed with structure. For me, that is his strength, Probably more than any other jazz soloist other than Keith Jarrett, he has the ability to construct a lengthy solo which is entirely structural. I think this has a lot do do with the fact that he uses phrases as building blocks and just stacks these motives one on top of the other. It is difficult to tell in there is a peak to his "arc" but i think you can almost put him in a category of his own. At his peak, he has produced some of the most compelling improvisation in the history of jazz.

Parker is another proposition. I feel that he is rejecting jazz orthodoxy - probably his desire to challenge the norm can be reflected in ths kind of company he keeps. I would have to say that I find Jeff Parker's playing far more compelling and original than the highly rated Mary Holvorson who I have been disappointed with whenever I have heard her. I really like Jeff Parker's "Jim Hall meets Derek Bailey" approach and it is refreshing that he seems to have pursued his own approach to jazz whilst undeniably having a "traditional" style. I'm really getting in to the current Chicargo scene and there is plenty of fresh and original jazz which makes a nice contrast to the more familiar names.

Here is another clip:-

[Serial_Apologist]

I think players from the freer end of the jazz spectrum are more likely to inhabit this kind of non-building area - the idea being that where one is is more important than where one is going, or maybe even the whole point. I can think of many examples - Marc Charig's cornet playing in 70s enselbles with Elton Dean, Keith Tippett and the like, where his few, long tones over fast tempos make lots of elbow room for themselves without detracting from the climax building tendencies of his colleagues, and in fact create tension by other means.

I find myself gravitating more and more towards this kind of playing. Were I to be gifted enough to come out as a jazz musician it would be the way I would go - where it not for my naff and unoroginal choice of note patterns and the way I space and place them. Age probably has something to do with it: what first atracted me in bop was the superabundance of notes within given spaces of structure; the first time I heard Miles solo, it was on a ballad, I thought, come on, get moving, I want my money's worth - a kind of return on capital principle I would find out to be totally antithetical to the kind of jazz I'd eventually go for, and more in keeping with the cutting sessions of Jazz at the Phil or whatever - American guys obeying to the principle of productivity. Confidence probably has a lot to do with being able to bring this sort of thing off successfully as well.

[Ian Thumwood]

SA

I'm not familiar with Marc Charig's work but, again, I think the choice of Miles is not strictly in line with the approach of Parker. There is a lot of structure and drama in Miles' solo's even if they were the antithesis of Be-bop. The trio album I initially referred do has tracks where the music often seems to drift and I feel many jazz educators would think that his approach was interely wrong. I have heard Anthony Braxton and some of his music hss this feel to it yet there is a jazz "edge" in Parker's playing that is totally lacking in the saxophonists and I suppose that this is why I dig Parker yet find Braxton uninteresting and univolving.

I does remind me of some of the comments that Lee Konitz made in the book "Conversations on the improvisor's art" which I think is an exceptional piece of insight. However, Konitz himself is heavily dependent upon Broadway repertoire for his work and is rather like a great Classical soloist in the fact that he restricts himself to repertoire. For me, Konitz and Rollins epitomise the absolute greatness of jazz improvisation and whilst you could say that both build their solos up like various types of brick bond (stretcher, Flemish, English, English garden, etc, etc) to create their art, Jeff Parker seems to be ignoring the idea of playing patterns and randomly producing something that still looks like a house even if the bricks are assembled in a more random distribution and the "architecture " of the solo is more left to chance. I don't think his route always works but I feel it makes him a compelling soloist who draws you in to whatever might (or might not) be happening. I'm a fan.

[Quarky]

Jazz Edge......

Please excuse my thinking aloud, but Jeff Parker is certainly within the musical plane that I usually occupy. But then I like Mary Holverson, Marilyn Crispell, Minimalism, Schoenberg's piano pieces, Shabaka Hutchings, Nick Luscombe:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b01s69xm/Late_Junction_Thursday_Nick_Luscombe/

...

But certainly an interesting question for this type of music as to what is good jazz ....more listening required I guess!

[aka Calum Da Jazbo]

i'll go with the notion that Rollins solos were packed with ideas Ian, but layered not so sure ...

Here is Balliett on how Rollins melded his chief influences, the tenor saxophonist Coleman Hawkins and Charlie Parker:

He extracted the muscle from Hawkins’ tone and left the velvet, lopped off Hawkins’ famous vibrato, and sharpened Hawkins’ method of melodic playing by making it parodic. He learned Parker’s teeming disregard of bar lines, Parker’s way with rhythm (the oddly placed notes, the silences, the avalanches of thirty-second notes), and Parker’s trick of mixing surreal melodic passages with tumbling bursts of improvisation. And over all this he superimposed a unique and witty garrulity that made his immensely long solos seem, paradoxically, like endless strings of epigrams.

NYRB article on Rollins: The Singular Sound of Sonny Rollins by Christopher Carroll