Fusion ok - official

He’s probably not the first saxman that comes to mind as a jazz-rocker (Mike Brecker, Tom Scott, Wayne Shorter?), but Dave Liebman mounted a laudable defence of fusion in interview in the New York Times on Friday.

He says that when he gets the National Endowment for the Arts Jazz Masters Award in January, it will mark the establishment’s de facto validation of the fusion aesthetic, because few, if any, recipients of the award since its inception in 1982 have been as strongly identified with fusion and its challenge to mainstream jazz conventions.

His statement ought to provoke an interesting reaction from critics such as Gary Giddins who hold that fusion was an unfortunate temptation to which jazz musicians of good taste were driven by the privations brought about by the advent of rock.

Muted magic

Anthony Coleman as Satchel Mouth

It might seem odd, given that jazz is an aural experience, but Dan Pritzker has made a silent film of the Louis Armstrong story. Nature, and jazz, abhor a vacuum though, and showings of Louis in the eastern US, 25-31 August, are being accompanied by a 10-piece band led by none other than sometime Louis-reincarnation Wynton Marsalis. The screenings also feature pianist Cecile Licad, playing music by the 19th half-Creole New Orleanian virtuoso Louis Gottschalk.

Pritzker, billionaire son of Hyatt hotel founder Jay Pritzker, was to have made his directing debut with a film on Buddy Bolden but shelved that after taking inspiration from a showing of Charlie Chaplin’s City Lights accompanied by a live symphony orchestra in 2001.

The website describes the film as a “homage to Louis Armstrong, Charlie Chaplin, beautiful women and the birth of American music,” in which “the grand Storyville bordellos, alleys and cemeteries of 1907 New Orleans provide a backdrop of lust, blood and magic for the 6 year old Louis.” There is no news as yet of showings outside the US.

Jazz not fit for US

The headline might thrill the hearts of those who think Europe is now the crucible of jazz innovation, but it actually announces something rather more banal. It’s the kind of punning title that has prefaced reports on the imminent launch of the hybrid version of the Honda Jazz and reflects the fact that the new petrol/electric model is not to be sold in the US, where the car has been called the Fit since it appeared in 2001.

Another jazz car - the  Eureka Vintage

But why does Honda not use the name “Jazz” for the US model? One will look in vain for American embarrassment about the low origins of one of its greatest musical creations. It turns out “Fitta” was the original name for the car but that it was abandoned for Europe when Honda realised it was Nordic slang for female genitalia.

So no, Eurojazzophiles, America has not, as more hysterical commentators might have it, been struck through in the jazz address book. Europe has though, created its own unique jazz, albeit nothing grander than a compact hatchback.

Weather bird

Barry Harris - reluctant testee

Bebop guru Barry Harris, the man whom Joe Zawinul credited with igniting his individuality, is in London this week to hold his annual jazz piano workshops and play Pizza Express gigs.

Oddly, given his expertise, Barry has always declined to sit a blindfold test with JJ. To be fair, perhaps, like Mike Stern in a similar situation, he would prefer not to pass judgement on his fellow musicians. But one never knows - no explanation is ever forthcoming. It perhaps should be rememembered that both players are Americans and may have encountered in Leonard Feather's tests for Downbeat what Pat Martino, presented with the same proposal a few years ago, said was an experience he wasn't about to be repeating.

The story of Zawinul's creative ascendancy arises from an interview some years back in which Zawinul told me he ran into Harris on a Manhattan street and Harris said, in effect: "You play great bebop - you sound just like me." At which, said Zawinul, he vowed never to play bebop again and began developing the epochal style evinced by Weather Report.

Sonny's wild rose

Rollins and medal

Sonny Rollins was on Sunday the first jazz player to be awarded the Edward MacDowell medal. The 2010 award is for composition, although both Rollins and presenting critic Gary Giddins made the point that jazz players compose on the spot (and rightly so, since jazz solos are more often arrangements of prepared motifs than pure improvisation). The award has been made annually since 1960 by the MacDowell artists colony in New Hampshire that was founded in honour of Romantic composer Edward MacDowell (1860-1908).

The Rollins award is not entirely, or even at all, a demonstration of the classical establishment basking in the reflected demotic glory of jazz. As Rollins pointed out, he and MacDowell go back. He said: ‘Edward MacDowell’s spirit engaged me many years ago when, as a child, I was inspired by his composition To A Wild Rose. Later, I had the opportunity to make it a part of my repertoire, performing it on many occasions and eventually recording it.’

The award is perhaps a little curious since Rollins is better known as an improviser than writer. Wouldn’t Wayne Shorter, who matches the vintage equally well, have been a closer fit for his groundbreaking Blue Note compositions of the early 1960s?

But 2010 is Rollins' year. He'll be 80, Saxophone Colossus: A Portrait Of Sonny Rollins, the biography by Bob Blumenthal is issued (review by Bob Weir in October’s Jazz Journal) and he's touring to octagenarian acclaim around the world.

Swing to the left

Coltrane - captain of industry?

Outside of the obituarising and (as Philip Larkin might have it) critical whoring that constitutes much newspaper coverage of jazz, it made the national press last week when Eric Pickles, Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, revealed the spending in his department during the last year under Labour. The figures showed that £3450 was paid from public funds to Improwise, a company that offers to improve management practice by applying the “jazz model”.

According to its website, Improwise, led by “organisational management expert and jazz pianist” Alex Steele, holds workshops using a jazz quartet to show how, “over the course of a 3-minute jazz piece, you can witness the growth of a newly formed business team [and] observe the simultaneous design and manufacture of a bespoke product delivered to the customer in front of your eyes.” In language redolent of an MBA lecture it goes on to ask: “What can we learn from the jazz life cycle and apply to development and delivery of your products and services?”

Elements of jazz, such as its fondness for improvisation and its “high tolerance for uncertainty” are proposed as exemplars for organisational practice. Among those invoked as role models are Thelonious Monk and Miles Davis (examples, in their defence of the wrong note, of how to “embrace errors as new sources of learning”) and John Coltrane (one of the jazz innovators noted for “continually re-designing and re-building their products, driving future demand and markets”).

In jazz, it says, “you only do something the same way once”, but it doesn’t mention that most jazz “improvisation” amounts to a parade of practised patterns and that classical players, working from a score, interpret liberally. Nor is there any inkling that as much might be learned about improvisation from a team of gardeners presented with a empty plot. Jazz has no monopoly on creative thinking. It does, however, have an artistic mystique and left-wing cachet that makes it rather saleable to those in search of the exotic and politically correct.

Perhaps more significantly for private sector customers, the site says nothing of the fact that reliance on jazz has traditionally been a fine way to live on the breadline, go bankrupt and, latterly, live with a fat student debt - except, perhaps, for those who turn to more lucrative work such as selling the idea that business should model itself on this largely impecunious art form.

Eastwood on jazz

Clint Eastwood, jazz fan and director of Bird (1988) talks to Jamie Cullum for his BBC Radio 2 show on 7 and 14 September from 7-8pm. Amongst other things he bemoans the braininess of jazz from the late 1950s onwards, saying "Everybody started getting very serious and I think that's when it lost a lot of its spirit."

Farewell Lincoln & Leonard

The past week has brought the deaths of singer Abbey Lincoln (80) and jazz photographer Herman Leonard (87). Resident in New Orleans from the early 90s, Leonard lost thousands of prints in hurricane Katrina but luckily his negatives were kept elsewhere and preserved. Surprisingly for such a revered name, his first exhibition was not until 1988 in London and only subsequently in New York, where he had taken many of his famed photographs in the 40s and 50s.

Jack Parnell dies

Drummer and bandleader Jack Parnell, remarked around the mainstream press as the Muppets bandleader, died from cancer in Southwold, Suffolk on Sunday, three days after his 87th birthday. An obituary will appear in a later edition of Jazz Journal. Parnell also kicks off part three of Simon Spillett's survey of British rhythm sections, 1950-1970 in October's edition of JJ.

Brecon reckoned

The ed's querulousness takes another battering with the following comments from JJ reporters:

Bob Weir:

A year ago I urged caution in judging Brecon too soon under its new Hay festival management. After attending this year's wholly successul event (at least musically and socially - not sure yet about the financial outcome) I feel vindicated in doing so.

True, the glory days under Jed Williams's benign regime of multiple Brecon exclusives by the biggest and most creative jazz stars are over but that applies pretty well everywhere for UK festivals. The event is now refocused to what the programme describes as 'the essential home for the new generation of jazz superstars, and a byword for innovation and excellence'.

The organisation is now professional, efficient and friendly with an effective ticketing system, new venues with good sound systems and stage design, fewer late starts and only one last-minute cancellation.

A social gathering area in the grounds of Christ's College with much improved refreshment facilities remedies a long-standing deficiency. What matters most, of course, is the music and the 45 reasonably priced concerts ranging across most jazz styles but concentrating on the younger generation of innovative Europeans seemed to satisfy everyone at the festival. 

Nigel Jarrett:

Brecon very impressive by any standard. The organisers say ticket sales were up 50% on last year and audiences an average of 90% capacity. I had to run to get good seats at most of the gigs I went to. Phronesis were sold out. I have never seen an impro band with that many people attending. The guy next to me also had tickets for Acker Bilk.

Brecon beckoned

Further to my scepticism below, JJ's Bob Weir reports: 'I went up to Brecon yesterday on spec and was so impressed by its regeneration by the Hay Festival people that I will go again today and tomorrow.' Jazz Journal will carry a report in the October issue.

New sound of Brecon

WalesOnline reports a good interview with Brecon jazz festival boss Peter Florence who says the new Brecon is to be one without drunkenness (the old fest was 'an open bar with entertainment') and 'a platform for emerging international artists and a really progressive festival for jazz fans'.

The old Brecon fest was, actually, a bit more than 'entertainment' - a serious jazz festival programmed by a serious jazz enthusiast - and the mildly unregulated aspect was a strong part of the attraction.

Will this one match the combination of atmosphere and international talent that made Brecon one of the best festivals of the 80s and 90s? According to its website Brecon is now putting its faith in the 'new golden age of British jazz' embodied by Portico, Kairos, Get The Blessing, Gwilym Simcock and Kit Downes. Speaking as if fresh from a Britjazz marketing seminar, it says 'For the first time America and Europe are looking to Britain's emerging talent with respect and wonder,' and that these are the musicians with 'the power and the genius to re-establish jazz as a universal, popular and joyful part of life'.

Florence told the Western Mail: 'This is the new sound of Brecon and it's much more dynamic than what we have seen on the programme before.' One wonders if he is aware of such joyful precedents as this, from Brecon in the 90s, one among many dynamic events staged by the old regime.

C Jam Blues

Pop artist Mel C, formerly of the Spice Girls, sang at Edinburgh Jazz & Blues Festival yesterday, causing a frisson among newspapers who thought heresy might be afoot. She appeared at the invitation of keyboard player Peter Vettese, something of a Scottish jazz prodigy in the late 70s, who vigorously defended her part in an 'Evening With Peter Vettese'. His principled stand for musical freedom follows a successful career writing and playing top-selling pop with Mel C and others.

6 Music

The BBC's 6 Music claims to bring together 'the cutting edge music of today [and] the iconic and groundbreaking music of the past 40 years' but the website reveals no jazz, no classical, no foreign folk music. Do 6 Music's employees not listen to the corporation's own Hear And Now or Jazz On 3? Even the most modestly enterprising sounds from 60 years ago on Jazz Record Requests turn 6 Music's cutting edge into a stone-age hacking tool.

Amid the sentimental outrage that followed the threat to close the station earlier this year, one of the main arguments advanced in its favour was that it played different and interesting music, music you didn't hear elsewhere on the BBC, but it's all just more rock, isn't it? The only musical justice seems to be when the DJs in time-honoured fashion talk over music that deserves little respect. But then, why play it?

There's a fatal tendency in the media classes to assume that all relevant music is rock music (it's so vibrant and democratising, after all) and that all variation is found within it. From this narrow frame of reference all manner of advancement is proclaimed. When will England get over rock? Some of it was great but it wasn't that good. And England's parochial, narcissistic obsession with its deeply pedestrian indie rock product of recent years has afflicted many putatively innovative English 'jazz' players.