Amateur Hour - will the profession of musician go the way of the Blacksmith?

We live, in the arts at least, in the age of the amateur. Technological advances coupled with the ease of internet access, have flooded society with the work of amateur photographers, film makers and musicians.Nothing wrong with that in itself, people have always had fun with the arts as a hobby and hopefully they always will. Being involved in something artistic is so good for anybody. The problem these days is that the flood of material and the sophistication of the technology has blurred the lines between people who dabble and use software to help them look like they know what they're doing, and the people who actually know what they're doing. The torrent of Instagram/Photoshop/Garageband/Youtube type content online is testament to the fact that many people have a sense that they are professional standard artists, when to the professional eye, or ear, they clearly are not. The technology can make you look good for a minute, but as to producing anything high level over an extended period time? I don't think so.

Again, there's nothing wrong with people having a sense of hubris about their Facebook photos - in itself that kind of thing is a harmless human peccadillo. The problem these days is that the professional is being edged out by the flood of amateur content. The hubris has reached the point where the general public either can't tell the difference between high quality work and dabbling, or doesn't care. Professionals are finding it harder and harder to get paid for their work, and to be able to make a living at the arts discipline to which they've devoted years of their lives, and an incredible amount of work. Couple this lack of public discernment between high level work and amateur dabbling, with the reluctance of the public these days to pay for arts content, (especially music), and you have a perfect storm for the professional artist.

I've been thinking about these things for a while, but this post was brought on by a brief conversation I had recently with a part time musician at a performance by an incredibly highly skilled professional group. He said to me 'how can those guys play like that?' and went on to talk about them as if the reason for the gulf in class between him and them was because they were some kind of super-beings. I didn't get into it, because I didn't want to appear rude, and I was too tired at the end of the night, but my immediate mental response was that one very good reason why they could play so much better than he could was because they've devoted their lives to music, and he hadn't. Leaving aside the creative aspects, what we'd seen on the stage was at least partly the result of years of PRACTICE! 

There are certain musical things that can't even be approached unless you've devoted years of time and effort and thought to it, yet in this age of the amateur this aspect of being a high-level artist is becoming forgotten, or is not considered necessary. 'Why should I practice for years when I can use an app?', seems to be the kind of attitude displayed by many. My amateur musician friend thinks nothing of opening for true professional acts, and doesn't seem to see any reason why he shouldn't be up there with people who actually know what they're doing. He seems to think the only reason why he can't do what they can is due to some genetic disparity, and has nothing to do with the fact that he hasn't put in one hundredth of the amount of the work that the pros have.

Which is typical of the disrespect for craft that is so prevalent today

And is something which poses such a threat to the high-level artist. True professionals are competing with amateurs as never before, and trying to make themselves heard above the din of substandard content that floods the internet every day. Combine this with the death of mainstream media,  and the old way of publicising yourself, and the higher valuation given to the method of delivery of content (iPods, Kindle, Ipads etc), over the actual content itself (music, photographs, video etc), and an unwillingness to pay for good content, and you have a situation where the profession of high-level musician is under threat as a viable way to make a living.

It seems to me that unless something changes, the inevitable endgame of all this will be the disappearance of the high-level professional musician. Yes there will always be people playing music and writing music, but will they be any good? Probably not, since they won't have devoted any time to it, and why would anyone devote years of study and financial resources to something that nobody will pay you for? Will the profession of musician end up like that of the Blacksmith - once one of the most common trades in the world and now one of the rarest, maintained by a few very highly paid specialists? I can foresee a situation where there are just a few very highly trained jazz musicians, whom, if you want to hire them, will charge you a LOT of money. Listening to live jazz (or any music that takes a lot of skill and dedication to play), could become like eating in a Michelin-starred restaurant - something very expensive, only available to the well-heeled connoisseur. The rest will have to listen to the McDonald's of the music world  - low class dross, mass produced by amateurs costing little or nothing to produce or buy.

I hope I'm proved wrong, but at the moment it's only going one way - Amateur Hour is here, and looks like it's here to stay.

'I've Suffered For My Art, Now It's Your Turn!' (Jazz Musicians and Their Audience)

At a time when jazz is perhaps more economically challenged than at any time in the past, it’s not a bad idea for jazz musicians to have a think about their audience, and their relationship with it.

Jazz musicians and the audience - then and now

The presentation of jazz has changed tremendously over the course of its history – in earlier times jazz was seen, by its practitioners as much as by its audience, as another form of entertainment. I’ve just been reading Count Basie’s autobiography, and it’s clear from this that Basie’s initial ambition was to get into ‘show business’, and he began in Vaudeville, backing singers, dancers, comedians etc. Though his career mutated into that of one of the most respected bandleaders in the history of jazz, he never lost his image of himself as being an entertainer as well as a serious musician.

And this is generally true of most musicians of his generation and even later generations.  The beboppers were revolutionary musicians, and denizens of a counter-culture with its own codes and ways of being. They were also aware of themselves as artists, yet even they were very conscious of how they looked on stage – see if you can find any photos of Bird playing in public without a jacket and tie on. Even the iconoclastic Monk, when asked what the band should wear, replied, ‘Sharp as possible!’ And even the taciturn Coltrane, architect of the extended solo and someone with an apparent disregard for the staying power of an average audience, would insist on his band wearing suits whenever they played in a concert hall setting.

So up to the 1960s at least, jazz musicians were very aware of what they saw as their responsibilities to the audience at least in terms of presentation. Then something changed – the idea of musician as artist, and a rebellion against the idea of musician as entertainer, took hold in jazz.  Since the 1970s there have been many variations in how jazz musicians present themselves to their audience, but I think it's fair to say that in general, thoughts about the audience are not on top of most jazz musicians' agenda. Musicians have usually devoted most of their time to honing their craft and developing their art, and have been happy to let the chips fall where they may as far the audience is concerned. There is almost an unspoken belief that it's the audience's job to figure out the music, and the musician doesn't need to take them into account. It's the musician's job to play the music and the audience's job to listen - clearly demarcated roles, with no room for compromise.

The Big Questions

But now, when it's more challenging than ever before to make a living as a jazz musician, perhaps players need to ask themselves about their relationship to their audiences, not just for the sake of economics, but for the sake of their art too. Good questions for a jazz musician to ask themselves could be:

Why do people come out to hear live music?
How does my music feel?
How do my performances look?
Am I aware of a connection to my audience and is it important?

For some jazz musicians, even asking those questions is heresy, and is already moving into the area of showbiz.

But for me, there is no reason why an acknowledgement of the role of the audience, and an understanding of what might affect an audience, (and in what way), is any kind of sell-out, or dumbing down of your artistry. It's simply a recognition that music is played for people and there's a dynamic at play in live performance. An understanding of that dynamic should be important to the musician, since his or her success or failure, (both artistic and commercial), will depend upon a successful negotiation of that dynamic.

To take each one of those questions in turn:

Why do people go to hear live music?

Music used to always have a societal function - it accompanied something. A religious ceremony, a landmark in life (birth, marriage, death), a celebration, a ceremonial occasion. Since the advent of recorded music, this has changed utterly, and now the reasons people attend music performances are as many and varied as the music and the audience itself. On any given night, in any city in the world, you might have people listening to Shostakovitch in a concert hall, jazz in a jazz club, punk rock at a rock venue, and dancing to techno at a dance club. But could there be a common thread linking all of these people at these very varied performances?

Yes there is, and it's this: anybody who goes to a live music performance, wants to feel different when they leave the venue, than when they went in.

They want to feel something, experience something, take part in something or maybe have something done to them. They may want to be made happier, or given food for thought, or, in the case of dancing, have some kind of physical release. This is the reality - people do not go out and pay money in order to feel the same as if they'd stayed at home - they want an experience of some kind, a transformative experience, at least as far as their mood goes.

So the next obvious question for the musician, wondering if we do make people feel different, is  -

How does my music feel? 

As musicians we ask often ask ourselves how our music sounds, but do we pay any attention to how it feels? As a player, a good question to ask yourself is as follows -  imagining yourself as a stranger, coming into a performance of  your music - how do you think that the music you typically play, would feel to you, (the stranger)? Do you think it would make you feel good? I'm not talking about the technical intricacies of the music here, I'm talking about the vibe. What kind of feel and vibe does your music put out, and if you can identify that in your own mind, do you think this vibe is the one you''d like to communicate to others?

Connected to that question is the next one:

How do my performances look?

Now this is a question that is usally very low on the priority list of many jazz musicians. To even consider dressing up for a gig is often considered the worst kind of commercial/sell-out mentality. But the visual aspects of performance are very important to audiences. I'm not necessarily talking about how the band is dressed, (though a certain breed of musicians' proclivity for shuffling onstage looking like they just got out of bed, having slept in their clothes, probably doesn't do much for the audience's anticipation of what's to come), but how everything looks.

This may or may not include how the band is dressed, but will definitely include the band's demeanour on the stage, and how well the audience can see everything that's going on. In recent years, aware of how much music is consumed on Youtube, I started to film a lot of my performances. It's amazing what being at the viewfinder end of a camera does for your awareness of how things look, and one of the worst things to look at visually, is a big stupid music stand directly in front of the player, obscuring everything they're doing! There's nothing duller from an audience's point of view than seeing five people on stage looking down at music stands, or even worse, looking at music stands directly in front of their faces - visually it's the most boring thing possible.

I appreciate that in these days of little rehearsal time and lots of original music, music stands are a necessity, but some thought should be given to minimising the visual distraction of the stands, and keeping them as far from the audience's line of sight of the musicians as possible. Any chance of memorising the music, and getting rid of the stands should be taken, and any band that plays a standards gig, reading from music stands, deserves to be horsewhipped!

Am I aware of a connection to my audience, and is it important?

Is it important for you to connect to your audience, or do you feel that it's their job to connect to you? That's a subtle but important distinction. In the case of the former, there's a paramount desire on the part of the performer to communicate something to the audience, in the latter there's an assumption that the playing of the music will in itself be sufficient to nourish the audience. In the first instance the performer may pay attention to the aforementioned visuals, and make an effort to communicate with the audience verbally as well as musically. In the second instance such things as visuals and non-musical communication are not taken into consideration, or deemed important.

Whichever way you lean in your own dealings with the audience, I do think it's important to at least be aware of the audience, and at least have made a conscious decision as to what your relationship with them is.

It's a show!

My own view is that all performances are a show. No matter what kind of music you play, there's an element of the visual involved, and there are also 'performance' elements involved. No matter how much weight you may place on the music itself, the visual and performance aspects of the event will have an impact on the audience. Jazz musicians often forget that the majority of their audience are not musicians and have little or no knowledge of, or interest in, the technicalities of the music. To the general public, the atmosphere of the event is of tremendous importance, and everything that goes into the creation of an atmosphere should be of interest to the musician. We are dependent on people returning to our performances, so the effectiveness of what we do should concern us.

Miles Davis was famously, (or so it seemed), unconcerned with his audience, but this in itself became a show! Audiences enjoyed, (and expected), the famous Davis taciturn personality - the glowering, the pacing, the turning his back on the audience, became a show in itself. Jarrett's fussiness and demands for silence, irritating and pretentious as it sometimes is, does make for drama - when he walks on the stage there's a sense of something happening that goes through the hall. The Coltrane Quartet's visceral physicality in live performance was a show in itself. None of these performers had a typical showbiz connection to their audience but all of them provided a show nonetheless.

I think what's important, regardless of which approach you take to your audience, is that you should be aware that there, (hopefully!), is an audience there, and in all likelihood they have paid money to see you, and perhaps travelled a distance to do so, and taken time out of their lives to listen to your music. That deserves recognition. Recognition that the audience have a role to play in the performance of live music. Acknowledging the audience, at least in your own mind, can be a valuable tool to you in being able to take a more broad view of the message and impact of your music, and give you a more objective view of what it is you're doing, or trying to do.  I believe that acknowledging the importance of the audience will have a positive impact on your music.

If you think the audience are of no importance, then fair enough - but play at home! 

Six Reasons Why I Love Jazz

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Louis Armstrong's Hot Five - the real Jazz Age

I was recently reading all the hype about the new Gatsby film, and reading so much rubbish, (at least in the Irish papers), being written by journalists about the ‘Jazz Age’ - journalists who have NO idea what they’re talking about, bar what they read in Wikipedia. And this got me thinking about how while there's all this fuss and hyperbole being written about the ‘Jazz Age’, the music itself struggles so hard to be heard and to survive.  A very good point was made by a friend of mine (thank you Billy!), in which he observed that the people who actually created jazz would never have been allowed into the hotels and residences of Gatsby and his pampered idiotic ilk, unless as entertainers, in which case they would have been treated as servants.

And this got me thinking about the REAL value of this music – a music of honesty and beauty, with an incredible history – a music that is in a different universe from the one inhabited and illustrated by the vapid shenanigans of a bunch of rich airheads from the 20s. I began to think about the reasons why I love this music so much, and here are some of them…………

1)   It’s The Product Of An Amazing Human Story

There are three universal musical languages, music that is played and listened to everywhere: European classical music, rock music, and jazz. Classical music evolved through the church and later through an aristocratic elite, rock music by Post WWII, (mostly middle class), English and American baby boomers, and jazz emanated from a people who were an underclass, descended from slaves, and often existing in conditions that were not much better than slavery.

Afro-Americans were despised and abused by the majority population, denied basic human rights and were deprived economically. Yet this oppressed underclass gave mankind one of its greatest musical gifts. A music that was democratic, inclusive, powerfully emotional, a music whose message spread around the world with extraordinary speed, and spoke to people of all races and nationalities. In the history of human art, there has never been a story like this – a music that rose out of the worst social conditions, yet which was joyful, progressive, celebratory, and participatory, with a universal message.

Jazz is a unique human, artistic triumph, created in an environment of incredible adversity.

2)   Jazz music celebrates both the individual and the collective

Jazz is both a group music and an individualist’s music. To be able to play for the greater good of, and contribute to the ensemble, is an indispensible quality for any good jazz musician. To describe a player as someone who ‘doesn’t listen’, is the worst criticism one musician can give to another. To act as one is the ultimate aim of any band.

Yet at the same time individualism is not only highly prized, but expected, and celebrated. Jazz is a music that has evolved both through the work of great bands, andgreat soloists. To express yourself in an individual way is the sine qua non of all jazz musicians, and the history of the music is illuminated by great soloists on every instrument.

Jazz is both a collective music and a virtuoso music. To work for the collective, yet be yourself – what a wonderful combination of qualities, and, as a human being, what a wonderful esthetic to be involved in.

3)   Jazz is a Meritocracy

Playing jazz at the highest level is hard, and demands a lifetime of dedication practice and commitment. In such an environment only the best players survive and get to play the music – at least in the long term. Yes, like all music, jazz does have its fair share of bullshitters and charlatans – guys who know a little and can sound competent for a minute, as long as it’s in a certain musical environment that they can control. They then depend on various non-musical qualities to keep themselves in the limelight, (they’re usually good hustlers and self-promoters), but ultimately they will always fall away. Because jazz is about being a great player all the time, over a long period of time, in any situation. You can only control the situations you are in for so long, and ultimately if in the end, if you can’t really play, then you can’t sustain a career at the top table of the music.

And I really like that, because then ultimately the people who do the work and have the talent, get the careers. I’m not talking about amateur or part-time musicians here – I love when people play the music for pleasure alone. It’s the guys who can’t really play but pretend they can, and that they are worthy to play with the greatest musicians, that bother me. But happily, the charlatan thing where a musician who hasn’t done the work, but hires and uses great players to give themselves a patina of competence, doesn’t succeed in the long term. In the end the music will find you out (the real musicians will find you out on the first tune……), and that’s a good thing, because ultimately the music will be created and evolved by people who really care about it.

4)   Jazz is the broadest of broad churches, yet retains its traditions

Another seeming contradiction. Jazz music is omnivorous, and always has been.  It is accepting of all material as being grist to the creative mill. It is a music that grew from the combining of many elements to create a new music, and a new approach to making music. From the outset it has been relentlessly modernistic – the new thing being prized, both instrumentally and in the overall music. Armstrong, Ellington, Parker, Coltrane, Miles – those five names alone embody a huge reservoir of innovation and dedication to the idea of change. The inclusion of new elements has been in jazz since the outset, and here, in the first part of the 21^st century, jazz can cater for the widest possible tastes, yet still remain true to itself.

If you like swing, Brazilian music, Afro-Cuban music, electronica, extended form composition, instrumental virtuosity, lyrical simplicity, seriousness, playfulness, depth, bluesiness, mystery, orchestral writing, solo playing, funk, minimalism, density, sparseness, sad music, happy music, celebratory music, intense music – then there is something for you somewhere in the jazz tradition of the past 100 years.

There is no other music that encompasses the range of musical influences that jazz does, yet retains its own identity through its history,  rhythmic language, collective spirit, spontaneity, virtuosity, and improvisational traditions.

5)   Jazz musicians love music……..

That may sound self evident, but not all professional musicians love music, surprising as that may seem to the lay person. There are many professional musicians who are not particularly invested in music for its own sake. They may find it a convenient way to earn a living and they may even enjoy what they do for social reasons. Many professional musicians are certainly interested in the craft of music, and interested in the social aspects of being around music (who got what gig, - and why they shouldn’t have, anecdote after anecdote, who screwed up on this or that gig etc.), but they’re often not terribly interested in music as an art form. And some, (though not all of course), orchestral musicians are  clock punchers, working every week for their salary. Highly skilled of course, but ultimately not too invested in the music they play.

But I’ve yet to meet a serious jazz musician who was not ready to talk about music at the drop of a hat. If there’s one thing jazz musicians love, it’s talking about music – great recordings, the differences between one musician and another, their own philosophy of what they do, what they’re working on musically, asking what you’re working on musically, a great musician or recording they’ve recently discovered etc.

If you choose jazz as a means of earning a living, and are prepared for the long haul and hard graft that is required to make a living doing so, you have to love music! Love of the music is the reason people get into jazz in the first place, and the ones who remain in the profession of jazz musician have a passion for the music that is infectious. If you want to see a jazz musician’s eyes light up, start talking to him or her about music…..

6)   Jazz has produced some of the greatest music of all time

‘Hot Fives’, ‘Black Brown and Beige’, ‘The Savoy Sessions’, ‘Miles Ahead‘, ‘Shape of Jazz To Come’, ‘Blues and Roots’, ‘Five By Monk By Five’,  ‘The Bridge’, 'A Love Supreme', ‘ESP’, ‘Bitches Brew’, ‘Facing You’, ‘Birds of Fire’, ‘Mysterious Traveler’……………. etc. etc.

Armstrong, Ellington, Basie, Tatum, Parker, Dizzy, Mingus, Miles, Ella, Monk, Rollins, Trane, Ornette, Evans, Konitz, Jarrett, McCoy, Corea, Shorter, Hancock, Steve Coleman, Liebman, DeJohnette, Bill Frisell….. etc. etc.

Nothing more to say really.

In Praise of Complex Music

Previously I've been critical on this blog of music that is unnecessarily complex, music that is complex for its own sake, more concerned with demonstrating its own rhythmic technique than with delivering a message through music. And I'm still critical of that kind of technical posturing, but recently an incident set me off thinking about this idea of complexity and what value there is in it.

I recently underwent some acupuncture treatment, and having been needled up like a porcupine, I was lying there waiting for the needles to work their magic. I wanted to listen to some music while I was lying there and was going to listen to it on my iPod through headphones, but the Acupuncturist asked me if I'd like the music played through the stereo in the room. So she turned off the 'relaxation' music she usually plays, (which does anything but relax me!), turned on the iPod and left the room, leaving me to my music for about 20 minutes. When she returned to check the needles, a Dave Binney track was playing, in which Dave was taking on two drummers, and winning. She stopped, listened for a moment, and asked me incredulously, 'you find that relaxing!?' I said that yes, I did indeed find that relaxing - she shook her head, adjusted the needles and left the room. On my own again I started to think about this exchange and began to try to observe myself listening to the music in a bid to identify what it was I was listening to, and what kind of effect it had on me. What was I hearing that I found relaxing, but that to the therapist sounded like chaos?

As I lay there listening, I began to identify how I was listening to the music, what effect it was having on me, and what, if anything, was going on in my head. A lot of non-musicians at this point, (if any non-musicians read this blog!), are probably thinking that I was working out the technical details of the music, the time signatures, the harmony, the structure etc. But this was not actually the case - it's true I used to do that, but I gave it up a long time ago and only now do it if I need to analyse something for some particular purpose. It's true that as a musician one can find it hard to switch off the analytical machine completely, but as far as possible, when listening to recordings or concerts, I try to let the music wash over me.

So, there I was, listening to the music and trying to get a sense of what it was I was hearing and how it was affecting me. And I began to realise that what I was hearing was quite multi-layered - a sound here, a rhythm there, combinations of things, twists and turns in the lines, the rhythm section firing things up, a particular colour from the harmony. I tried to find a non-technical way to explain how I was hearing the music, and the best I could do was imagining being on a Gondola in Venice, (without the obligatory 'O Sole Mio' being sung in the background by a licensed bandit, otherwise known as the Gondolier), and floating down the canal and looking at the architecture of the buildings as I, (or they), floated past. In such a situation, you can see more than just the outline of the buildings; you can see the materials they're built from, the various indentations of windows and doors, lights behind curtains, shapes, proportion, half-glimpsed interiors, sunlight on the different surfaces - and all changing slowly as you float by. It's a complex collage of images which un-spools in front of you, but at the end of it you have a sense of what you've seen in a very rich and multi-layered way.

But this rich visual experience needs two factors in order for it to happen - the observed object needs to be multi-faceted, and the observer needs to have faculties to appreciate the different aspects of what's being seen.

And the same holds true for music.

Before I get into that, let me first qualify what I'm about to say - in all cases I'm talking about good complex music.  I'm not saying that complex is by definition good, or simple music is bad. I'm talking about good music which happens to be complex.

Complex music is different to simple music - it is multi-layered, it has a lot going on, the message it conveys is often ambiguous. A complex piece of music is analogous to a complex novel, play or film - its story may in itself tell a different story, what's on the surface may represent a deeper meaning, it may be structurally complex with many twists and turns, the ending may be very different to the expected one etc. In order for the music to have this multi-faceted quality, it must be complex.

In order to tell a more complex story the music must use more complex materials. More use of harmonic colour, more compositional structure, rhythms that are possibly polyrhythmic, more virtuosic playing from the performers. All of this, (and more), is necessary for the music to operate on more than one simple level. It will have a story to tell, but one which requires more narrative tools than the broad brush of the typical pop song. It may be a love song for example, but it will not be in the 'Yeah, I Love You Baby' mode of thousands of quick hits. Human life is complex and multi-faceted and this complex and multi-faceted music is required at times in order to tell these stories.

And in order to tell these stories you need listeners who are equipped to appreciate the intricacies of what unfolds in front of them. If the only buildings you'd ever seen in your life were one-room Portakabins, then Gaudi's Cathedral or a Calatrava structure may be beyond your comprehension. If the only kind of books you've ever read are holiday romances, you're unlikely to get very far with Joyce's 'Ulysses'. If the only movies you've watched were the Police Academy series, you're probably going to have trouble getting the inner meaning of Kurosawa's movies. Art on this level is unlikely to be immediately understood - it's not meant to be consumed immediately and discarded. It's meant to be thought about and experienced on many different levels and in order to be able to do that you will likely need some kind of development over a period of time in order to be able to appreciate all the subtleties.

In the same way that you can't leap from 'Janet and John Go To The Beach' to 'Finnegan's Wake', if you've been raised on a diet of Justin Bieber and Rihanna you're unlikely to be able to jump straight into 'The Rite of Spring'. You need time to develop the tools that will allow you to decode complex music. The usual way is through listening over a period of time to music of growing complexity, attuning your ear to the sheer variety of sound that is evident in this kind of music. You need to develop an ear where dissonance is not in itself automatically painful, where a wide range of dynamics within a single piece is intriguing rather than unsettling, where you can pay close attention to a piece of music that is over 5 minutes long and not get distracted. These are the kinds of tools you need to get the fullest experience from complex music.

And to get the fullest rewards - because rewards there are - good complex music is tremendously enriching for the mind, the body and the spirit. It is multifaceted and can be enjoyed on several different levels. You will get an experience from complex music that you won't get from one-dimensional music - that's what makes the journey and the effort worthwhile.

Now it could be that you couldn't be bothered engaging in the kind of long term investment that appreciating complex music requires, and that's fair enough. If you don't require more from music than what simple music can give you, then great. No problem. But don't try and tell people who do get enjoyment from complex music that they are snobs and elitist. There is a difference between those who enjoy complex music for itself, and those who might use it as a cultural stick to beat others with. If you choose not to go down the route of enjoying multi-layered music, don't make the mistake of condemning others who do. I feel no need to apologise for liking complex music, and I've written about it before here. I enjoy simple music too, but like complex music, it has to be what I would consider to be good before I can enjoy it. In the same way that I don't think complex music is automatically good, I don't think simple music is either.

And in many cases complex music can be enjoyed on a simple level too. I think of this as being like a tree; a tree can be seen as one large beautiful entity, but if you look closer you will see that this one large entity is in fact made of of a very complex series of smaller entities, and the tree can be visually enjoyed on both levels. The same could be said for a complex building like the aforementioned Gaudi Cathedral or the Taj Mahal.

And good complex music can encompass many forms and atmospheres, as in these three examples:

Here is Miles' great 'lost' quintet playing with complex abandon







And Yuja Wang playing two of Ligeti's extraordinary piano études







And finally the joy of Hermeto Pascoal's music - simple to appreciate yet very complex in construction





Miles, Ligeti, Hermeto - Coltrane, Bach, Weather Report, Sonny Rollins, Bill Evans, Stravinsky, Ravel, Monk, Ellington, Steve Coleman, Dave Liebman, Mozart, Keith Jarrett - hundreds of other great artists could be added to that list -  all artists who have produced sublime music in many different styles and atmospheres. With their music you can have the kind of wonderful multidimensional experience that you can only get from complex music. For the unfamiliar listener it can be puzzling and maybe daunting, but for the listener who is curious and prepared to meet it half way, its rewards are unending.

Tasteful? What's in a Word?

I just read a review of an album in which the critic described the rhythm section's playing as 'tasteful' I really hate when critics use that description of someone's playing, because to me it denotes several things.

First of all, when the word tasteful is used to describe the playing of the rhythm section, either individually or collectively, it tells me that the writer probably has no idea what to say about the them, and probably doesn't have enough knowledge of the intricacies of rhythm section playing to venture anything other than this bland phrase. It's a cop-out on the writer's part - a one-size-fits-all phrase to use when you've no idea how to differentiate the playing of one rhythm section player from another. It also implies an under-appreciation of how important the rhythm section is - the kind of writer who will  apply the 'tasteful' soubriquet to the rhythm section will usually have written extensively about the soloists in previous paragraphs and then, feeling they have to say something about the rhythm section, will describe their playing as tasteful. It's the same kind of lazy writing that trots out cliches like 'getting up close and personal with......' to describe an interview with someone.

If the rhythm section have had the good manners not to distract the writer from listening to the soloists, whom (ahem), after all are the most important members of any group, the critic will describe them as tasteful. Which brings me to my second point.

'Tasteful' can often be freely substituted by the word bland..... The kind of rhythm sections that are described as tasteful often are units that plod along, playing the right changes, keeping the time in an efficient way, doing nothing to frighten the horses. They have no identity and fulfill a function - they don't get in the way. Like good children, they are seen and not heard. Anonymous. In short, they are a terrible rhythm section. A rhythm section should always be adding to the music, not staying out of the way of it. This doesn't meant that they have to be incredibly active all the time in terms of amount of notes played (it depends on the context), but it does mean that whatever they're doing should be vital to the sound of the band, to the energy of the rhythm, to the forward motion of the music. It should be vital, not tasteful.

If a critic says that a rhythm section is 'tasteful' it usually means one of three things: 1) The critic has no idea about rhythm sections, how they work, or what to say about them. 2) The critic likes his or her rhythm sections to be of the 'seen and not heard/servant of soloists/Bebopper's Labourer kind. Or 3) The rhythm section is crap.

A final point in this mini-rant. What does 'tasteful' even mean in this context? Does it mean played with good taste? A subjective judgement if ever there was one...... Does it mean polite and well mannered? Or does it mean, appropriate to the music? For my money, the latter is the true definition of tastefulness. If a musician is playing in a way that is apposite to the requirements of the music he or she is being tasteful. Elvin Jones, rampaging through 'Transition' with Coltrane is the epitome of tasteful playing. Ron Carter, rhythmically and harmonically nudging and bossing Miles' band is tastefulness personified. Monk's comping behind Coltrane is an object lesson in good taste. Good taste is about doing the right thing in any musical situation, it is not necessarily only about being polite and self-effacing.

Poor Bill Evans is always burdened with that cliche by critics who see things in a very simplistic way. Because his music is lyrical and often on the quieter end of the dynamic spectrum, his playing is often thought to be 'tasteful' in the same way that a restaurant pianist's playing could be described as being tasteful. Quiet, not getting in the way, not drawing attention to itself. Well mannered. This does such a disservice to the depth and complexity of Evans' playing. Whenever I see a critic describe Evans' music as tasteful, I just can't take anything else they say seriously. This is a surface listener, a lazy writer, someone who really doesn't have the equipment to talk about the music in any depth.

If you are a jazz writer, please don't use this vapid cliche when describing someone's playing - do a bit of research instead, listen a little harder, tell us something worth knowing about the music you're describing instead of giving us some bland bromide that fulfills your word count but means nothing. 

In my opinion, describing someone's playing as tasteful is in the worst possible taste..........

Judgement! Competitions, Critics and the Jazz Meritocracy

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There’s been a lot of judging or discussions of judging in the online jazz world recently.

Ethan Iverson started one of the balls rolling with his questioning of the value and artistic merit of jazz competitions. This was prompted by the announcement of the impending Thelonious Monk competition, which this year focused on drums. The competition was subsequently won by Jamison Ross . People weighed in with varied opinions which ranged from outright support to outright opposition.

Then in another dust-up, the very strange jazz critic Brent Black launched an attack on George Colligan, ludicrously dismissing him as ‘second rate’. Needless to say this triggered an outpouring of scorn for Black’s opinion, and Black did himself no favours with a bitter, mean-spirited and puzzling tirade directed at Colligan’s gracious response.

And finally the Canadian pianist  Andrew Boniwell responded to Peter Hum’s review of his new recording with what might be best described as icy fury.

All of which made me think about this whole issue of our being judged by others, and indeed judging others ourselves. To what extent does the judgment of critics have an effect on musicians? What effect does winning a competition have? Or what effect does losing a competition have?

Seventeen years ago I was a  competition winner myself - the 1996 Julius Hemphill Composition Competition for this piece:

I must say I didn’t benefit immediately from winning, though it has to be said that competition was very small compared to the Monk Competition. Nor was it a stressful event for me, since there was no performance element involved, and no jury to look at out of the corner of my eye as I played. What winning did do for me was to give me a lot of confidence as a composer, and there’s no doubt that this kind of public approval of your work can have a very positive effect on you. On the other hand, If I hadn’t won it I don’t think I’d have been discouraged – I didn’t expect to win, and no-one was more surprised than me when I did.

But Ethan’s main point was whether such a competition would encourage individuality, or whether it would have the opposite effect, rewarding whoever was closest to the mainstream. The question is sometimes asked whether Monk could have even got into the final of the competition named after him? There's no doubt that if you have a panel of six judges, the winner will have to not only impress as many of them as possible, but also do whatever he or she can to alienate as few of them as possible. The more personal and idiosyncratic a performer is, the more likely they are to polarize the jury. There have been many famous cases of this in the classical world, the most celebrated of these being the Chopin competition of 1980 where Ivo Pogorelich, (a performer for whom the word idiosyncratic could have been coined), was eliminated in the third round, despite Martha Argerich calling him a genius. I have a feeling that a performer like Monk - a guy whose playing very much flew in the face of the prevailing pianistic orthodoxy of the day - would have had an equally polarizing effect on a jazz piano jury......

There's no doubt that in these difficult days for jazz musicians, anything that can help you to raise your profile is welcome, and winning something like the Monk competition is about as high-profile as it gets for jazz competitions. No doubt winning this competition will help Jamison Ross, but looking at his profile and bio, it's clear that he was already on his way - as were the 2nd and 3rd prizewinners, which confirms for me what I've believed for a long time - jazz is a meritocracy and always has been.

It's also a marathon rather than a sprint, and though something like winning a competition or getting a gig with a famous bandleader will definitely help, in the end it's the work you produce over a long period of time that will ultimately decide whether you succeed or fail. There are many examples of players who got a lot of press and attention at one time, maybe even a major record deal, and yet are hardly remembered these days. And I believe that this is because they ultimately didn't have something that could be sustained over a long period of time. They undoubtedly had some aspect of their music that was attractive for a while, (at least to the jazz media), but in the final shake-up it wasn't sustainable and didn't develop, and their star waned as a consequence of that. Jazz is quite Darwinistic in this sense and I think this is a good thing.

Jazz musicians have to deal with a lot of unfairness - the dice is loaded against them in so many ways - but within the jazz community I think, over a period of time, musicians achieve the status they deserve. I believe that if  you are a really great player, and you have something original and personal to offer, then sooner or later you will get recognition for that. 

Often you hear a story about this or that guy being a great player but never getting recognition, but as a general rule I don't buy it. If there's a truly great player who's not working, there's usually a reason for it - they're alcoholics, or junkies, or socially impossible, or difficult to deal with, or completely flaky, or recluses, or cripplingly shy, or something along those lines. I've yet to meet a truly great player who takes care of business but who's sitting at home forlornly waiting for the phone to ring........ 

Maybe New York is an exception to that rule, in that there are just too many musicians there, so someone can indeed be a great player but struggle to get recognition among the jostling crowds of other great players. But NY is different - a once a year gig at Small's under your own name and a 'tour' of Europe consisting of 6 gigs counts as being a success for a lot of people there.

But even in NY you can make a career for yourself if you're talented enough and have something to offer over the long term. In this way jazz hasn't changed - ultimately what's going to decide your status is your own playing. If you're a great player, you're immune from the slings and arrows of outrageous critics like Brent Black. His attack on George Colligan is toothless because Colligan's career demonstrates more than words ever can, the stupidity of Black's opinions. Someone who has played with a who's-who of contemporary jazz, including being a current band member of Jack DeJohnette's band has the ultimate imprimatur of the jazz world. His work and success is the the proof of his quality - this is the final arbiter of his quality and nothing that Brent Black can say can alter that. 

And jazz has always been like that and even though the jam sessions, that for many years were the proving grounds of aspirant jazz musicians, have ceded their Gladiatorial position as arbiters of musical ability, it's still true to say that the opinion of your peers is the one that is most important. Play well and you will eventually get the attention of established players, play with them and you will get the attention of the public and the media. I've lost count of how many times I first heard hitherto unknown (at least to me), great players when I went to see a band led by someone of real status - Mulgrew Miller with Woody Shaw, Terence Blanchard with Art Blakey, Gabriele Mirabassi with Rabih-Abou Khalil etc.

Yes it's nice to get a good review, yes it would be useful to be on the cover of Downbeat, yes it would be very helpful to win a major jazz competition. But ultimately what a jazz musician needs in order to succeed over the long term is the approval and admiration of his or her peers. Jazz has always been a meritocracy and it still is one. Competitions and critics may come and go, and you (or media admirers of yours) may talk a good game, but eventually you're going to have to shut up and show everyone the music. And thank heavens for that.

Down With Jazz! Bejayzuz!

It’s not that long ago that Ireland was to all intents and purposes a Theocracy, not unlike present day Iran. In a similar way to the contemporary Iranian state, right up to at least the 1960s, the country was under the thumb of a cabal of clerics who interfered with every aspect of the state and whose number one concern was the wielding of their own power.  They interfered in every aspect of Irish life and left a legacy of brutality and child abuse (such as in their schools and Reformatories), which Irish people are still having to deal with today. But disgusting as the institution of the Catholic Church was,  (and often still is), occasionally the behavior of some of the dimmer members of that church, through the stupidity of their actions, gave us a badly needed laugh at the Church’s expense. One such dimwit was Father Peter Conefrey.

Conefrey was the founding member and leading light of the ‘Anti-Jazz League’ in the 1930s – a movement he hoped would rid Holy Catholic Ireland of the corrupting effect of jazz. Coneferey was convinced that jazz (although what he thought of as jazz would certainly not be recognised as such by any jazz fan or musician), was destroying the morals of the young people with its unholy rhythms and lewd dancing. He managed to lead a march against jazz through a tiny town in Ireland and through his contacts get questions asked in parliament about why Irish music was getting displaced on the radio by this sinful jazz music. But under the thumb of the clergy though Irish politicians may have been, this was too ludicrous for even the most devout Irish politician and the movement fizzled out relatively quickly. There’s a fascinating documentary on it here

This coming weekend I'll be taking part in a festival called 'Down With Jazz' which humorously takes the anti-jazz movement as its theme, but has in fact the opposite intention of the idiotic Father Conefrey, in that it is celebrating Irish jazz.

Over three days sixteen bands will show the variety and quality of the music produced here in Ireland by the local musicians and it should be a great festival since there's never been a higher standard of jazz music being played in ireland than there is now.

I think it's fair to say that in western Europe, Ireland's jazz scene is the one that is least known outside of its own borders. Every other scene in western Europe - the French, Italian, German, and various Scandinavian scenes for example - all would be known through various famous practitioners who have gained international reputations and are well known everywhere. Musicians such as Enrico Rava, Martial Solal, Jan Garbarek, and John Taylor are known internationally and through them people know there is a scene in the countries in which they live. Ireland would not be known in the same way in the jazz world, and truth be told, up to recently, while there were some great musicians here, there wasn't enough of them to constitute a 'scene'

Jazz had a slow start in Ireland - there were jazz influenced jazz bands in the 40s and 50s, but the first real jazz musicians began to appear at the end of the 50s and into the 60s with players such as the pianist Noel Kelehan and the drummer John Wadham, both of whom were world class. There were other players around the scene who were good also, but the real breakthrough came with the appearance of Louis Stewart, the great guitarist who was the first domiciled Irish musician to get international attention. Before that the bassist Rick Laird had played with musicians such as Sonny Rollins and Wes Montgomery as part of the house rhythm section in Ronnie Scott's Club in London, and later went on the play with the Mahavishnu Orchestra. Due to his Mahavishnu stint and appearances on various 'Jazz Icons' DVDs, he remains Ireland's most famous jazz musician. However Louis Stewart broke the mould in that he was the first Irish jazz musician, living in Ireland whose work was recognised internationally and he performed with Benny Goodman and a host of other great musicians during his career. A phenomenal guitarist, he inspired a generation of Irish players (including me), and made them believe that this music could be played at the highest level by Irish jazz musicians.

My peers and contemporaries, who came up in the 80s, included some really great musicians, many of whom were determined to expand their horizons beyond Ireland, some by moving abroad, some by studying abroad, and all of whom were very interested in current trends in jazz. Many of us were interested in developments beyond the customary hard bop style of the Dublin jazz scene and the result of that was a broadening of stylistic approaches in the Irish scene and the founding of something that every other European country had - a jazz school.

It took a lot of time to get the full time courses going there, but when they did the school had a real impact on the development of the music in Ireland and aspiring jazz musicians now had access to the same training and information as their European and American counterparts, as well as getting to sit in classes with many visiting musicians of renown. All of this, with the addition of the rise, development and ultimate boom (and now bust!) of the Irish economy had an explosive effect on the jazz scene here. With the coming of serious money into the economy more musicians started to land up on irish shores and this is turn enriched the scene further. Recordings were made, tours undertaken and organisations such as the Improvised Music Company, (the promoters of this weekend's event), created imaginative events and programming.

And this weekend will show the variety and quality of what's currently on offer in Irish jazz at the moment - everything from electronic-infused improvisation to traditional jazz, from through-composed large scale compositions to standards, from duos to big bands. The Irish jazz scene has come of age and the festival is a great showcase for the many great musicians and bands now playing here.

Here's Phisqa, a group that is an exemplar of what effect the influx of overseas musicians has had - led by a Peruvian drummer, it features a South African saxophonist, an Italian guitarist, a Venezuelan pianist and an Irish bassist

More traditional fare will be on display too and I'm really looking forward to playing some standards with the truly world class saxophonist Michael Buckley

I'll also be playing a set with 3G - a family affair that features my brother Conor on drums and my son Chris on guitar.

Things have really changed for jazz in Ireland and hopefully this (sold out), festival will help to make more people aware of the musical riches the scene currently contains. As they might  say in Ireland, regarding this weekend's doings - 'if Father Conferey was alive today he'd turn in his grave.....'