I caught the excellent Erik Deutsch Quintet Friday night at DC’s Velvet Lounge. And I was really pleased to see so many (40-50?) young folks there to hear this music (standing, no less) – certainly more than any other jazz concert I’ve attended in DC – even more surprising given that the musicians weren’t local. (Although pianist/leader Deutsch is originally from Potomac, I believe.) Probably a testament to good local press and a steady Friday night crowd at Velvet.
Some observations. I think young crowds aren’t always sure to how to receive purely instrumental music. This American Idol culture has made us so dependent on lyrics and the power of emotive (or over-emotive, IMHO) voices to ground us and provide “meaning,” and I think without words listeners get confused. Could there be a greater challenge for jazz – historically, a predominantly instrumental music – to overcome? What’s more, we don’t live in a particularly “listening-friendly” culture, at least not from a purely musical perspective. (Opinion, sure.) Anyone know the best-selling purely instrumental band in pop music history? (Here you go.) The fact that this is such an obscurity (their fairly tame hit song notwithstanding) is an indicator of how tough it is to get by on instruments alone. It’s almost shocking to consider how exclusively “vocal” popular music has been over the course of American history.
So in that context, it was interesting to gauge audience reaction. I first sensed a touch of hostility, as if it was going to be a drag to have to “pay attention” – which might distract from the actual focus of the evening – which for 20 or 30-somethings is of course having fun, chatting with friends, being social. Et cetera. But the easy virtuosity of this group – Deutsch is really a sick player – won folks over quick, and I observed lots of murmurs running along the lines of “oh man, they’re great!” Outside of jazz, the major colorative element in his compositions is probably funk, which during the 1970s brought layers of rhythmic complexity American pop music hasn’t seen before (or since, frankly). I hope I’m not coming off as elitist now, but the problem with funk (in addition to its primarily non-vocal focus) is that is tends to demand really well-trained musicians – a level which most pop musicians generally, for whatever reason, aren’t inspired to pursue. Don’t hate me for being biased-full, but jazz players tend to be the most well-rounded musicians from the perspective of music theory, ear training, and obviously improvisation. (Deutsch studied for over 10 years with legendary-within-the-community, Boulder, CO-based jazz piano guru Art Lande, who I’ve had a few lessons with as well. Art’s music is HIGHLY recommended for those interested in the Keith Jarrett/ECM/Brad Mehldau school of harmonically rich, exploratory piano work.)
Another really impressive element of Deutsch’s group is musical flexibility – which I intuited, and old friend/incredibly versatile reed player Michael McGinnis later verified – the idea that this group will play “to the crowd” depending on the performance context. (A phenomenon which occurs most dramatically in improvised music.) Listening to a few cuts from Deutsch’s excellent new CD really gave very little indication of the music the group played live – for one, Deutsch played an amplified electric Wurlitzer with control over loops, which filled the space much more than an acoustic piano might have. He has also toured in the trio of “jam-band”-influenced jazz guitarist Charlie Hunter. But listening to some further tracks online reveals a sensibility deeply rooted in delicately scored, exploratory jazz, yet at times touching the realm of the avant-garde. Deutsch recently referred to this as “cinematic chamber pop” – I’ll also call it “that Brooklyn Sound,” if you will.
And I hope to write more on this later, but there is absolutely something going on in Brooklyn which bears attention. Although I’m not an active musician on the NYC scene, I do feel I come at this from a sort-of-insider’s perspective. On the way to a post-gig party, I had a long, edifying recollective conversation with McGiniss, who I played with in a group called “Hee Hee She” at the Eastman School of Music, ca. 1997, initially formed to play the compositions heard on this brilliant recording. (HHS also featured the terrific Anna Dagmar on piano, now tearing it up as a NYC-based singer-songwriter. I really wish we’d recorded more, as these guys provided what still stands as one of the musical highlights of my life.) Mike touched on an awareness which, according to him, many NYC-based jazz musicians have about the goings-on at Eastman during the very years we happened to be there. An enormous amount of individualistic, technically-complex-in-a-vital way (damn Shane!), hysterically irreverent, commercially successful (even recently Grammy-nominated!), stunningly virtuosic and brilliant music continues to come out of musicians (a few of whom blog too!), who were involved (OK, who did I miss?) in the ESM jazz program during that fairly brief time period (roughly 1995-2000), yet the politics of the academy ultimately proved a completely overwhelming stumbling block – all of the most directly inspirational faculty members were summarily dismissed (or left of their own free will), and the program returned to its conservative, safe origins. (At least from what I’ve heard.) I remember certain old-guard instructors, cozy and cocooned in their academic careers (but from an artistic perspective, numbingly safe), offering stern admonitions that “no one will ever pay you to play like that!” (Cue ominous low piano drone.) But ultimately I think the music moves where it needs to move, and jazz doesn’t grow (or matter, frankly) when it’s more about developing the skills to dutifully play a lifetime of wedding gigs then about having something vital and urgent to say. Wasn’t it Charles Ives himself who said if you always had to depend on your “art” for your source of income, your expression will always suffer at the whims of the marketplace?
So I think what’s happening in Brooklyn – musicians including Erik Deutsch, but many others as well – poses a potential “way out” for jazz. A creative approach to music-making which I honestly don’t sense an awareness of in the extremely prevalent academic, textbook approaches to jazz – something having to do with living and sharing with a dedicated community, struggling, yet somehow maintaining a joy for making music – traits which the most vital jazz has always held. And yet importantly, not feeling bound up to “re-create” stuff that sounded better when it was first played in 1959. And I think this is true of new classical music as well – not surprisingly, many of the most forward-thinking jazz players I know are also well-versed in modern classical music. I think that what many modern classical chamber groups (e.g. Bang On A Can, eighthblackbird, the ESM-based Alarm Will Sound, and certainly Kronos Quartet, the spiritual forefather of ’em all), playing to packed houses in sleek, hip venues like NYC’s Le Poisson Rouge, stand as a more useful comparative model for the future of jazz than does the concert hall, which reeks of classicism, elitism, all those -isms that (for good reason) turn off potential audiences.
And you’ll hear me say this many times, but I don’t believe an approach to jazz which privileges a predominantly historical approach – the well-funded, corporate-sponsored “museum jazz” heard most prominently at Lincoln Center – does very much for the creative sustenance of the art. (Regardless of what a great job they do with marketing or how many tickets are sold.) The art – ever-changing, never predictable – will always move wherever it wants to. Jazz history unquestionably bears this out. But to maintain its vitality and relevance in a public sphere, to keep its heart/beat alive (metaphorically and figuratively), jazz needs to court new, young audiences eager to be reached with art that springs from their times, and in strict musical terms, also get them turned on by rhythmic density, fresh, challenging harmonies, and the thrill of improvisation which only jazz can offer. Without question Deutsch’s approach – and music made by others like him – offers a sustaining charge for that heartbeat. So czech it, peephole!
January 10, 2010 at 6:02 pm
Nice post, Jason.
All I’d like to add is that there are little pockets of these types of players springing up everywhere. While the sounds may differ, the approaches are similar enough to almost point to a “movement”.
Here in Seattle, there are a number of forward-thinking young musicians doing very cool things with the music, collaborating, and trying to find their own way through it all. Although the website isn’t very well developed yet, check out http://newseattlemusic.com to check out a few of the bands.
I’m sure there are other places where these communities are forming and cool things are happening. Anyone else care to share?
Jason
http://oneworkingmusician.com
January 12, 2010 at 1:23 pm
Sorry, this initial comment of yours for some reason went to my spambox, Jason.
It doesn’t surprise me what you’re saying – and by implying a “Brooklyn” sound” I didn’t mean to imply there wouldn’t be similar pockets of fresh approaches sprouting up all around the US. On this I turn to Jung and the collective unconscious – this stuff is bound to happen as forward-thinking musicians create and collaborate and energy transfers. And it’s terrific you guys are organizing out there – I’ll pass on the site to a friend of mine living in Seattle.
That said, living in DC I don’t get the same sense of a new energy – at least not yet. I see lots of conservatory-trainees here playing a lot of knockoff music, and a ton of old-schoolers playing smooth jazz, funk, and “R&B” style. And I stopped going to jam sessions a while ago – the energy was much more about that cutthroat, competitive showboating thing than about interaction and breathing. But who knows what could happen in the future – I do think this is why systematic change needs to happen within the academic system if jazz is to stay relevant, but it’s tough to imagine that happening for quite some time, so entrenched are attitudes right now. But as your website shows, perhaps all it takes is a few people to break out and get together. If you build it, people will come!
January 10, 2010 at 8:55 pm
It’s interested me to see how crowds at non-jazz clubs react to jazz, especially when it drops a chooglin’ beat and either starts in or ventures into less rhythmic passages. I saw Medeski Martin Wood and Scofield at the 9:30 Club and was getting really ticked when the crowd would get chatty (a pet peeve) — and inevitably this chattiness seemed to correlate to the swampier, more “out” passages throughout the evening.
And when I saw Ken Vandermark head up a trio and play Sun Ra at the Black Cat, his set (the only jazz set of the night) was equally poisoned with crowd noise. Pretty free.
Do we just respond to a regular rhythm more reliably?
January 10, 2010 at 9:32 pm
Good points, Mike. I think there’s a funny dichotomy going on here – jazz fans get cranky when audiences don’t show up, but when they do show up we want them to respect the music and not talk over it. I think most young music fans who go out to hear live music expect to be able to talk and socialize during the performance – which is more the norm in pop music, but not so in jazz. Anecdotally, I’ve had friends say “wait, are we going to have to pay attention?” when considering including a jazz club in their evening plans. And I don’t begrudge them this – people are busy and “being challenged” just isn’t a favorite Friday night activity for most working folk.
So I guess if given the choice between no one showing up at all (which happens ALL the time) and having people talk, I’ll take the former. That said, I think there’s a difference between “talking” and TALKING!!! and it peeves me how oblivious some people can be while attending live jazz. And I think it depends enormously on the vibe of the room: if 90% of the people are focusing and quiet, then DON’T be the jerk who’s yelling about his boss or whatever. But I also remember that some of the most vibrant jazz I’ve ever heard has been at parties where people are dancing, shouting and urging the musicians on, and this obviously would never happen in a sterile concert hall environment. My experience the other night was that jazz CAN and SHOULD at least attempt to work in a rock club-type environment, but it will require effort on both musicians – not to pander, but to play to the room – and audiences, to recognize that jazz ≠ karaoke or American idol and that if they’re not there at least partially for the music, they should take their loud conversations elsewhere.
Hmm… I think we’ve touched on a central topic in building jazz fans?
PS – I would imagine a venue like the Black Cat would be a strange place for free jazz – I think that audiences weaned on a steady diet of 4/4 time, and a limited I/IV/V harmonic palette DO expect that steady “beat” thing. It feels more dependable, I guess?
January 10, 2010 at 9:40 pm
I would MUCH prefer to play for a crowd that’s laughing, dancing and having fun than one that is sitting silently staring at me. The traditional jazz club model is the latter and really turns of younger crowds.
There’s a new club here in Seattle called Lucid (http://www.lucidseattle.com) that has expressly set itself up to be a club that plays jazz but caters to a younger crowd. I have all but stopped playing other rooms in town because the energy in the room at Lucid is so electric. Sure, there are people there who want to drink and socialize and talk. But this adds to the energy in the room.
This whole “sit there and be quiet while I play you all my tasty licks” mentality has all but scared off every perspective young jazz fans, save for a few hardcores and other musicians. What good does that do us?
Come. Talk. Laugh. Dance. Have fun. And enjoy the music!
January 10, 2010 at 9:56 pm
Jason…
Word, dude. I think that’s it in a nutshell. Jazz is serious music, but I bet we all agree that having fun is also VERY serious, right? This is the danger of treating jazz as “America’s classical music” because people think it has to be this reverent thing – which it CAN be (Coltrane, etc.) but doesn’t HAVE to be – jazz is an extremely flexible animal. Ultimately I think we ignore mainstream audiences at our own peril – on a subconscious level, people want to feel involved in the art of their time, and I imagine lots of folks hunger for more substance than what corporate media culture tries to spoonfeed them.
And I think DC needs a Lucid. (Or a Le Poisson Rouge. (That said, kudos to the bookers of Velvet Lounge for taking a chance on a jazz group like the one I wrote about in this post.)
January 10, 2010 at 10:05 pm
Amen!
Funny you should say “people want to feel involved in the art of their time”. I posted on a different site today about the same thing:
I recently saw the documentary film “Icons Among Us: Jazz in the Present Tense”. The most salient point was made by writer Paul DeBarros who observed that music only resonates with the mainstream when people feel that it has “something obvious in the present culture they can connect it with.” From the 20’s up through the 60’s, maybe 70’s, jazz has obvious connections to the culture of the time. Since then, most jazz has not had these connections. It’s either been a rehashing of what has come before it or an attempt to fuse it with other music. I like bebop as much as the next guy, but what does it have to do with 2010?
However, there are many artists out there these days who I believe are making an effort to connect the music to present culture. Many of them happen to be European. Many can be found at http://nextbop.com, a great site spotlighting many fine young musicians.
Until we as jazz musicians find those connections to present culture, our music will continue to be on the margins. I don’t necessarily think that’s a band thing, but that’s a subject for another time…
January 10, 2010 at 10:30 pm
Sounds fascinating, I’ll try to track film that down. And I strongly agree – “music only resonates with the mainstream when people feel that it has ‘something obvious in the present culture they can connect it with.'” This is why the Lincoln Center vibe of “conservation” ultimately may do more harm than good, at least in terms of allowing the art to develop and remain relevant. Miles Davis was the last jazz giant whose authority was unquestioned in the mainstream (he was also completely uninterested in “conserving” jazz), and I think once he died in 1991, Wynton sort of marched in with his preservationist agenda. Ever since, the jazz that gets mainstream press has been much more about re-creating an image and a sound, about being “marketable,” than about having something to say.
And I think the obsession with bebop comes from the schools. Bebop is the most left-brained sub-genre of jazz, meaning that it’s explainable and teachable and there are clear “rights” and “wrongs.” What classical conservatories do best isn’t surprising – they “conserve,” and for many conservatory administrators (who wouldn’t know Coltrane from Soul Train), jazz programs that mirror the way classical music is taught make perfect sense. I actually wrote about a bit this dynamic in an earlier post. Cookie cutter approaches to instruction obviously result in cookie cutter players; yet what’s even more unfortunate is how threatened, resistant, and downright hostile bebop players can be to newer forms of jazz. I’ve run into this attitude of “I worked really hard to memorize all these patterns, and if you didn’t that must mean you aren’t good enough!” Ah, but there are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy!
Fascinating conversation, guys. Feels like a jam session!
January 10, 2010 at 10:37 pm
Agreed. I’m really enjoying learning from this.
January 11, 2010 at 5:51 pm
I want to connect with as many people as possible, but improvised music without a 4/4 beat happening at least 50% of the time will almost always be on the margins. It is what it is. I also reject the notion that you can stratify jazz audiences based on age. I was attracted to and began playing jazz when I was 11 or 12 – I started playing it because I liked it, because I didn’t entirely understand it. I still don’t entirely understand it! Several of the most attentive audiences I’ve played for are young [and not necesarily exclusively audiences of musicians], and several of the worst audiences are ‘grownups’ or ‘adults’. Impoliteness cuts across age boundaries.
Bebop is maybe more relevant now than in any period since the bebop era. This is because we’re in an era where everything is relevant. Look at the year-end leaderboards for many of the popular names in jazz these days – almost 100% of those names have a fervent love of and devotion to bebop, though most of them aren’t, strictly speaking, playing BEBOP [though you could argue that everyone playing jazz of any sort is playing bebop]. Anyone who knows me knows that I’m certainly no bebop purist [most would find such a notion hilarious, in fact], but it rules a portion of my brain and it always will. and I welcome that. and this is true for 97% of the musicians I have the privilege to know and play with these days, many of whom play some of the outest shit you can think of.
in fact, I’d say that pandora’s floodboxgates have opened and there’s no turning back. We’re in a pluralistic era and it’s only going to continue to become more so. As always, there will be good and bad to come of this, but there will always be interesting music if you know where and how to look for it, because there will always be musicians trying to make sense of the information swimming in their brains.
This all based only on my experience, of course, and not necessarily apropos of anything in particular other than what came to mind after reading the above posts. I feel as grateful as you could possibly imagine to be a musician.
January 12, 2010 at 1:13 pm
Sage words, Miz Nitchell. I agree with you on the foundational nature of bebop in modern jazz – but I think there’s a marked difference in using bebop as a launching point for new sounds, and emulating it so much that the music becomes mere re-creation, which I do think is by-and-large how jazz pedagogy works. And I stand by the contention that it’s so ubiquitous because of the way it’s taught in schools, and the fact that it’s much easier to teach bebop (because of the clear “rights” and “wrongs”) than it is to teach, say Coltrane post-’65-style playing. (Perhaps a muddied metaphor given that Trane himself came out of bebop, but I digress.)
So I guess what I’m wondering is whether the schools – which like it or not, will produce the next generation of torch-carriers – will ever get hip on an institutional basis to newer forms of conceptualizing jazz and improvisation, or will still be making students 12-key Bird licks in 2030. A few years after ESM, Matt, I had another jazz-academic experience which was like a bucket of ice water to the face, and I realized how differently we were taught in that program, and how incredibly far outside of the mainstream that pedagogy in fact was. Yet it seems this very methodology was one which helped to encourage such vibrant, vital music as I referenced in my original post.
And I dig what you say about pluralism. I think jazz can be the ultimate pluralistic art form, if we let it be. Like Jason Parker said, it can be fun and dancy and laughter-inducing, and can swim amidst an endless current of influences. We just need to encourage the promotion of a public image which looks more like this than like a bunch of stuffed shirts regurgitating sounds from 50 years ago – like Jason said, no one gets excited about that and it’s frankly not relevant. IMHO. Anyway, I feel grateful to bear witness to what’s going on – and maybe I’ll even pick up my horn instead of just bloggin’ bout it!
January 12, 2010 at 3:29 pm
Yes, I’ve had similar jazz education experiences that were anathema to our shared ESM experience. I agree that it predominates – which is one reason I haven’t yet been super proactive about pursuing teaching jazz at colleges until recently. I will say that 12-keying Bird licks should remain a part of the program though – it just shouldn’t be the whole program. Indeed so much has happened [mid 90’s being part of history now, for instance!] that the approach should be continually revised. This could be done with a minimum of fuss, too – for example, keeping the same basic course structure of a program but just changing the innards, what actually gets discussed/taught.
Also – I reject the stuffed shirt paradigm as irrelevant in much the same manner as you and Jason do. But at this stage it’s really only a vocal minority. Granted, part of that minority has serious funding – Wynton, et al. – but there are dozens and dozens of players in NYC, for instance, who are playing ‘jazz’ of various sorts, who have fans, who are playing all over the place, who are about as far away from that model as you can imagine.
My point being, that while the revisionist/preservationist sub-group can indeed be very annoying, I view them as simply that: annoying. I don’t really see them as a threat. As I see it, the alternative public image that you and Jason are after is indeed happening and has been for a while. In fact, I’d say we’re in a particularly fecund time for that side of the spectrum. Which I guess is part of the point you were making with your original post celebrating Erik Deutsch!
anyway, time to practice. You SHOULD pick up your horn! 😉
January 12, 2010 at 3:27 pm
[…] in the art of their time. (Catch the interchange with Jason Parker and I on this dynamic in jazz here.) And I imagine these venues won’t shy away from programming groups who play Beethoven (I see […]
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January 18, 2010 at 2:42 pm
Great observations, Jay! And thanks for the shout-out to Hee Hee She. Those were formative times for me too. And I think about these aspects of performance/audience all the time. Especially now as I am straddling these genre worlds. Keep your blogs coming.
March 1, 2010 at 11:52 am
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