Archive for the ‘Dave Douglas (Artist Thoughts)’ Category

Creation Suite: New Compositions for Small Improvising Ensembles.

On Thursday there’s a FREE concert at LaGuardia Performing Arts Center [map] in which the Dave Douglas Quintet (with Donny McCaslin, Uri Caine, James Genus, and Clarence Penn) perform as well as the 11 participants in the Weill Music Institute Young Artists Workshop.

Friday at Zankel Hall [map] [tickets] is a concert dedicated to the Young Artist original works. Dave, Uri, Clarence will be hanging out and might play a little bit.

Young Artist Workshop participants and players:
Eden Bareket, Baritone Saxophone
Johannes Dickbauer, Violin
Philip Dizack, Trumpet
Sam Harris, Piano
Kristijan Krajncan, Drums
Chad Lefkowitz-Brown, Saxophones
Hui-Chun Lin, Cello
Rizpah Lowe, Harp
Nadje Noordhuis, Trumpet
Linda Oh, Bass
Dan Peck, Tuba

In the artist’s own words:

In this concert, you will hear original music written and developed by the players.

In a way, this idea is part of our own tradition—musician-composer-performers coming together to create a program of new music that includes the improvised voices of each player. The jazz tradition is where this concept has most recently flourished, and all the musicians on this stage are certainly educated and influenced by the great jazz musicians of the 20th and 21st centuries. But influence is a slippery thing, and you’ll certainly hear shades of all sorts of music on this program. The inclusion of many sources is not approached as eclecticism; rather, it seems to be the natural way that young musicians react to the profusion of musical languages and to the challenges of making personal and powerful music in the current age.

Tradition can be defined as an established method or style. The tradition present in this concert is not so much in the sense of a style, but in the practices of certain kinds of musicians.

Player-composers who improvise tend to learn from one another: writing music for each other to play, learning each other’s practices, listening, exchanging feedback, thinking about what the music means to them and where they fit into it. This music is neither all improvised nor all composed. The amount of improvisation varies from moment to moment and is developed collaboratively by the musicians as part of a charged process that is both intuitive and well considered.

In presenting this original music, the musicians situate themselves in a tradition of creativity—of collaboration, personal investigation, and making the most engaging music in a human and interpersonal context.

Tradition can also be defined as the transmission of customs or beliefs from generation to generation. With that transmission, ideas grow and change; new musical forms emerge with each generation. In preparation for this concert, the musicians shared their sense of musical custom and belief in the creation of a new body of work. We are thankful to the Weill Music Institute for giving us this opportunity to find out where tradition will take us next.

-Dave Douglas

This is all happening at:

Abrons Art Center – Link for tickets and map.
466 Grand Street
(at the corner of Pitt Street)
Lower East Side, NYC

Wednesday, January 13 is a benefit concert for the organization, honoring Wilmer Wise. Socializing begins at 6, concert at 7:30pm. Wine and refreshments will be served.

Wilmer will play a few solo pieces written for him by Jimmy Owens.
Brass Ecstasy tunes and Improvisations will follow, with:
Dave Douglas, John Zorn, Nate Wooley, Marcus Rojas, Vincent Chancey, Marshall Gilkes, and Clarence Penn.

Check out the rest of the week for more great music in this series called Forward Flight.

Wanted to say a few words about FONT, the organization. We’re a nonprofit, meaning all the money goes to music programs. Our work is to:
- Present as broad a range of music as we can in festivals throughout the year.
- Commission several composers for new music each year.
- Offer free educational programs for schools and for the general public.

This grass-roots support for emerging creative artists welcomes musicians who sometimes don’t fit in anywhere else. Nothing like this existed when I entered the scene–musicians supporting musicians. FONT has presented almost 200 trumpeters in all sorts of venues. Festival of New Trumpet Music has acted as an umbrella for funding ambitious new music projects by artists such as Bill Dixon. The organization also celebrates living masters and creative pioneers who have given so much of their lives to music and deserve the spotlight and acclamation of their peers.

Our commissioning series has included:
- 2006: Peter Evans, Cuong Vu, Du Yun with Micah Killion and The Practical Trumpet Society, Amir El Saffar, Jonathan Finlayson-Common Thread;
- 2007: Huang Ruo, Jason Palmer Quintet, Forbes Graham, Laura Andel with Taylor Ho Bynum & Gamelan Son of Lion, Nate Wooley with Paul Lytton and David Grubbs;
- 2008: Chris DiMeglio’s Imaginary, Nabaté Isles + 5, Reut Regev and the Brassix Ensemble;
- 2009: Nadje Noordhuis, Ambrose Akinmusire, David Sanford

Our Award of Recognition has gone to:
- 2008: Wadada Leo Smith
- 2009: Bobby Bradford

This is an all-volunteer organization (this year we hired our first part-time staffer, but with the hours required I’d say it still ends up being basically a volunteer position). As the director, I am deeply indebted to the hard work of Taylor Ho Bynum, Richard Johnson, and the ongoing support of Laurie Frink, Ted Daniel, Roy Campbell, Lewis ‘Flip’ Barnes, Jeremy Pelt, John McNeil, Mark Gould, Erol Tamerman, Mark Isham, and Wilmer Wise, all of whom have been intricately involved in making FONT programs happen. I am honored to be in the presence of so many people whose dedication to music compels them to contribute their time, energy, and resources in this way.

Join us to honor Wilmer and celebrate with everyone at the organization.

It’s complete and total war, my friends. Asked Jeff for his take on the comment thread and this was his response. I told him I had profound disagreements with much of this, and he replied that “It is a point of view to be discussed (as opposed to disgust).” Have at it.

The idea of practicing is to learn, not to perform. But, playing with a metronome insists that one performs, not learns! This makes it an anti-academically friendly device since the study of anything new is best done out of time, not in it! Example: try and learn a new language “in-time”!

Secondly, I almost have never met a player/teacher who didn’t confuse learning with art. They are not the same principles and do not require the same approach. This means that you don’t learn how to play the same way that you play. In academic practicing, one has no need to practice in metronomic time, no reason whatsoever. It is a popular belief and it is a myth. Most teachers do not separate learning from performing in their lessons which is why so many players really aren’t getting much better. Just realize that in art, every great player on every instrument who got their time and feel didn’t get it from a metronome.

And lastly, name any new experience anywhere that requires the learning of that thing in time. Even a child’s first steps, or cooking a new recipe, or one’s first driving lessons are all “out of time”. If this is so, and if everything that is learned is best learned out of time, then why do some musicians go against the same logic that applies to everything else? Metronomes have no history of helping one play in time because the moment that a conductor waves his baton, or the drummer plays his first beat, the entire metronome lessons is now negated, replaced by a HUMAN approach to time and feel. Here is proof! No musician in Africa, no musician in South America, no ethnic group anywhere in the world, no regional band, nobody anywhere on Earth learned how to feel music and play it in time by using a metronome. If just about everything on Earth does not require an in-time apprenticeship to learn how to do well, then why would a musician try to push a principle that has no precedence in anything else that is learned in-time.

Thanks for reading.

An ad from Metronome Magazine:

I’m not much on top ten lists. It was a great year for music. It was a great decade for music. All signs point to the ‘teens being an even more rich, vibrant and prolific decade. I was just paging through the new All About Jazz (NY print edition) and the number of names and styles and labels is simply astounding. Nobody is going to like all of it, some will question whether much of it even belongs there. But I think this freedom of expression and the resulting proliferation of music is cause for real celebration. It seems to get wilder every year. And I think the next decade is going to amaze us all. May you live in interesting times.

Ethan Iverson relates some great metronome stories over at DO THE MATH, and the conversation continues below in comments.

Keystone returns in 2010 with a new score for Spark of Being, an image-driven film by Bill Morrison, created in our collaboration at Stanford University. We’ll be running a trailer here in mid-January.

Festival of New Trumpet Music starts the year quickly with Forward Flight: a gathering of new brass music, January 13 – 16 at Abrons Art Center at Henry Street Settlement. Chamber music by Ornette Coleman for trumpet, string quartet and percussion; Brass Music of Charles Wuorinen, including NY Premiere of Brass Quintet played by Urban Brass; The Low Anthem; Rob Mazurek; Opsvik & Jennings; Anti-Social Music plays all-premieres; Meridian Arts plays David Sanford; Open Circuit with Taylor Ho Bynum, Itaru Oki, Herb Robertson, Franz Hautzinger, Jean Luc Capozzo. More info to follow soon.

Weill Music Institute Young Artist Concert at Zankel Hall on February 12: eleven musicians from around the world come together to create a new repertoire. I will write a piece for them as well, and workshop with them along with Uri Caine and Clarence Penn.

Banff International Workshop in Jazz and Creative Music runs from May 17 to June 5, 2010. This will be my eighth year directing this very special ‘music retreat.’ Music 24/7. This year’s faculty will include Ravi Coltrane Quartet, Jeff Parker, Donny McCaslin, Myra Melford, Matana Roberts, Ben Monder, Mary Halvorson, Giorgio Magnenensi, Matt Brewer, Michael Bates, Roberto Rodriguez, Clarence Penn, Darcy James Argue, Gerald Cleaver, and others. Application deadline is January 15, visit the site for more details.

Making summer plans? I have been invited again to the festival in Trentino, Italy called I Suoni delle Dolomiti. July 10, 2010 I will be playing atop Monte Bondone. The concert is free. But you have to make the hike to be there. This concert will not likely be streamed world-wide in real time… Be there! It’s fun.

Happiest tidings for the year end, and hope to see you all out there some time in the coming year.

Recently received this curious email out of the blue:

Hello. This is Jeff Berlin, the bass player. I am in the midst of a discussion about metronomes on Talkbass.com. I never felt that good time comes from practicing with one, and some disagree. One fellow mentioned Dave Douglas as someone who they feel acquired his sense of time from practicing with a metronome.

Could somebody please ask Mr. Douglas if this is true? It would mean a lot in this discussion to know the truth about this. Many thanks.

Jeff Berlin

P.S. If you don’t know me, please look me up on the Internet. Thanks.

Yeah, if you don’t know who Jeff Berlin is, look him up on the internet. Fantastic musician. And yes, TalkBass has plenty of forum threads like: “Show off your combos!” and “2009: A Year for Gear.” But also an incredible amount of interchange of great information on all sorts of musical topics.

Jeff’s question drove me back to something I wrote a while ago, The Practice of Ear Training. And I do talk about using a metronome to develop time playing. In the Banff thread last summer there’s also a report on Matt Penman’s rhythm classes on metronome ideas. I sent some thoughts over to Jeff and this is what he wrote back:

Hi Dave. Great stuff you’ve put down here. My take on all of it is that you regard a metronome as a tool for sub divisional ear training, not for developing a good time sense as so many young bass players seem to believe that you can get by practicing with it. I simply cannot think of a single name in all of jazz where a metronome played any part in the developed sense of time that these players exhibited throughout their careers.

There are some who regard this device as a source of good time and I reject this. But, I see that you embrace it as a great ear training device which makes sense to me. Am I correct in this assumption? To me, good time comes from experience on one’s instrument and knowledge of music which give reason to play in time. It is a result that happens later rather than earlier and supports my thinking that practicing is best done out of time, to regard and learn new information. Only then does one know what to play in a proper time feel.

I regard that everybody on every instrument acquired good time but never by using a steady click, since good time is not a metronomic reality. There are a lot of musicians in, say, Latin America who have great time and acquired it through playing and practice.

Would you agree with this? Thanks for responding because your opinion counts with me.

Take care Dave.

Jeff

For Jeff there’s a difference between having good time and having a good feel or time sense. And I definitely agree with that. But Jeff is pretty adamant about not working with a metronome — he says that in fact no great player developed their music by working with a metronome.

It’s a good question for the musos out there. Does a good time feel have anything to do with metronomic reality? I’ve laid my cards on the table on this topic. But how does practicing with a metronome or click help or harm in making music? Groove happens in collaboration with other musicians — does metronome practice have anything to inform that kind of playing? The use of time in classical playing, for example a string quartet, is very different to that of jazz, pop, or Latin music. Is a metronome a more or less useful device for practicing that kind of playing?

More basically, do you agree that having steady time is different from having good time?

Meanwhile, I hope you are all having a good time.

Sister Susan alerted me to this post by Dr. Pangloss at Prospect Magazine:

here’s a short piece by Brian Eno (one of my first heros in music – along with John Cage) that was retweeted by GreatDismal (aka William Gibson): The death of uncool.

“There’s a whole generation of people able to access almost anything from almost anywhere, and they don’t have the same localised stylistic sense that my generation grew up with. It’s all alive, all “now,” in an ever-expanding present, be it Hildegard of Bingen or a Bollywood soundtrack. The idea that something is uncool because it’s old or foreign has left the collective consciousness.

I think this is good news. As people become increasingly comfortable with drawing their culture from a rich range of sources—cherry-picking whatever makes sense to them—it becomes more natural to do the same thing with their social, political and other cultural ideas. The sharing of art is a precursor to the sharing of other human experiences, for what is pleasurable in art becomes thinkable in life.”

(although I don’t agree with what he says about classical not similarly bifurcating.)

I’d agree with the sentiment, and with the quibble.

Man, it’s been a blast playing with these guys every night. Doesn’t leave too much time for blogging. But tonight is off in Rome, we’ll play Casa de Jazz tomorrow and then continue to the last dates in Hungary and France. I’ll be home for a day and then playing Zorn’s Masada music in Milan with Chris Potter, Uri Caine, Greg Cohen, and Joey Baron. Then going to play with Jim McNeely in Portugal. Leads right up to Thanksgiving, and I’m thankful for this great season of music.

If you’ve seen any of the shows on this tour you know that it’s a bit of a new sound for the Quintet. Switching from fender rhodes to acoustic piano changes the dynamic of the group. But also the new music was written with a new approach in mind — somewhat freer but also more intricate rhythmically. We have also been playing quintet arrangements of the music on the new Big Band record, A Single Sky. Those tend to bring out another side of us, a sort of epic, long form music that forces all of us to think as a section. I can’t thank these guys enough for putting in 100% dedication and perseverance. And being hilarious travel mates.

When I started the Quintet around 2000 I felt the rhodes had been written out of the music somewhat, that there was a missing (and hence available) step in the music of the late sixties into the mid seventies. The music I was writing was starting from there as a jumping off point into our own thing. As I sat down to begin working on new music for the band in the wake of the complete live recordings at the Jazz Standard, I felt like the lay of the land was considerably different. The rhodes is everywhere now and it also feels like the music I’m hearing people play incorporates all of that post-sixties language and more. I’m inspired by a lot of the musicians I hear, and my hero, Wayne Shorter, continues to set an extremely high standard. The dynamics in that quartet are out of this world.

A lot of people ask me why I switched to acoustic piano in the band. To the extent that I even know, that’s some of what it’s about. We’re discovering the rest as we go.

Uri Caine, Matt Penman, Dave Douglas, Clarence Penn, Donny McCaslin in Tampere, Finland on Halloween, October 31, 2009. The acoustic piano brings a whole new sound into the quintet, and the new tunes are a blast to play with these friends. Travel has been challenging, but the music is opening up some new spaces. We have two weeks to go, hope to see you out there. Or at The Vanguard in December.

From the mail room:

It’s been a long time since we’ve talked. If you don’t remember, I sent in the question about collegiate practicing and music in general. Anyway, just a little update. After reading through what everybody said about the matter and talking to some of my local musician mentors, I really took a hard look at what was going on and decided it would be best for me to cut ties with some of the things that were creating my musical issues. As of now, I’ve been following (for the most part) the practice strategy at the end of Bill Dobbins’ “Jazz Keyboard Harmony” book, which if you haven’t checked out is quite interesting. I’ve seen so much improvement in every aspect of not only my playing, but my concept of music, composition, and overall passion which seemed to be deteriorating before this change.

On the subject of the Dobbins book, there’s a sentence in a part of the practice strategy of “Repertoire” that states ” Musical material only becomes useful after it has been committed to memory. How can we expect to be able to improvise strong melodic lines, if we have never taken the time to learn some strong melodies?” These two sentences hit me really hard and got me to thinking about all of the times I’ve gone to jam sessions or even concerts where guys are reading music. Then it hit me that this could be one of the biggest fundamental problems in the unpopularity of jazz, because people who have not taken the time to really get to know the music can take a real book out with their buddies and play very amateur versions of “Autumn Leaves” for 20 minutes. But on the other hand, as a composer, if I have a long through-composed piece, how can I get my group to the depth of the piece if it could be unfeasible to memorize? Then, I watched Pat Metheny Group’s “The Way Up – Live”, and the only guy using sheet music was Steve Rodby, and I’m not sure how much he was even using it.

As a composer, how do you deal with this issue? If the guys in the DDQ are reading, do you notice a big difference in their solos and communication as compared to when they have your material internalized? When you were playing with SFJazz Collective, how did they deal with those issues, because I see on the DVD you guys were reading sheet music. And on the topic of sheet music, do you feel that the current music education system is completely backwards by teaching kids to read music first before (if they ever) try to develop their ears?

A non-music major came up to me the other day and asked me if he should take classical or jazz lessons and I gave him this advice. By taking classical lessons, you’re going to learn how to read and interpret sheet music while playing your instrument with little regard for developing your ears. It would be like only being able to speak English while reading a speech, not being able to improvise a conversation like we are doing right now. If you take jazz lessons, you’ll mostly work on developing your ears, or vocabulary on your instrument and learn how to speak the musical language.

I would love to hear your thoughts on all of these issues, but I know since this email is 20 pages long it’s unrealistic hahaha. If you get some time to mull this over, or already have, it would be very beneficial to hear how a composer like yourself deals with these kinds of things on an everyday basis.

I’d agree with Dobbins about memorization being important. Not so sure about the “unpopularity of jazz.” But it’s a good point that players ought to make a stab at memorizing, especially when they are improvising with the materials. Standards, the meat and potatoes language of jazz, certainly need to be learned from memory to be played credibly.

Pat Metheny always surrounds himself with fantastic musicians. He and they clearly put in the work to make those through-composed pieces come alive. Steve Rodby probably just glances down from time to time as a reminder of where the piece is going next. But I also think that it is a developed skill to make deep music while reading. An important thing to be able to do. Think about how many actions are involved in playing music–there are probably an infinite number of things going on. So I’d say that looking at sheet music would be one more variable within that incredibly intricate, sophisticated and complex set of human actions.

Where I would diverge is in the comparison to classical (read “completely notated”) music. Memorization is just as important there. And being a great interpreter is not “like only being able to speak English while reading a speech.” Far, far from it. Great performers in any genre are personally committed to what they are doing, internalizing each movement. All musicians are involved in “developing your ears, or vocabulary on your instrument and learn[ing] how to speak the musical language.”

I guess what I’m saying is that, yes, memorization is a crucial skill. So is the ability to look at sheet music and quickly grasp what needs to be done and how to make real music out of it. Speaking for my own practice — after a lot of years of writing long involved pieces for my groups with lots of material, I find myself condensing my ideas and getting better at developing ideas that leave a lot of open space for the players. Part of that movement has to do with this very issue — not wanting bands to have to read a lot on stage. Even though great players are capable of playing well from sheet music, I find the music that I want to hear can be expressed in a much simpler way on paper, getting rid of extraneous notes and cutting to the core of the idea. I thank the players in my bands for inspiring that switch to a large extent. I still write long form pieces for some situations. A composer has to consider the performers and the intention of the performance in deciding how to present a piece to a group.

If composition is, in a basic sense, communicating a musical idea to others so that they can execute it, then the composer’s role in this discussion is a large one. Certain things can be easily memorized for performance. Others cannot. The composer must choose. The performer must also choose: What is the most effective way to perform this piece? That is a very individual choice that is up to each player to decide.

Glad to hear that you are happy with your progress, that’s the most important thing. Thanks for writing. I’m sure there are plenty of other points of view on this topic. I’d be glad to hear them.

To a lot of us the arts are a crucial part of life in and of themselves. To judge the arts in terms of economic value or contribution to society seems both to miss the point and to handicap the arguments in their favor. In public policy, however, lots of tough decisions have to be made, and every possible angle must be explored to sway decision-makers.

That’s why I think this study from the Center for Arts Education is so important.

In New York City, the cultural capital of the world, public school students do not enjoy equal access to an arts education. In fact, in schools with the lowest graduation rates—where the arts could have the greatest impact—students have the least opportunity to participate in arts learning.

This report takes the first ever look at the relationship between school-based arts education and high school graduation rates in New York City public schools. The findings, based on data collected by the New York City Department of Education (DOE), strongly suggest that the arts play a key role in keeping students in high school and graduating on time…

Analyzing data from more than 200 New York City schools over a two-year period, this report shows that schools in the top third in graduation rates offered their students the most access to arts education and the most resources that support arts education. Schools in the bottom third in graduation rates consistently offer the least access and fewest resources.

It’s nerdy, but you can find the whole study here. With statistics about the arts flying around, this study seems like a concrete way of judging the power of the arts in human life. You have to hope that this will spark some action in a positive direction.