Archive for the ‘Dave Douglas (Artist Thoughts)’ Category
This week I heard a recording of the music Nadje Noordhuis wrote for FONT this past June. What a beautiful sound and thoughtful composer. She says she’s recording it soon and I recommend checking that out if you can.
Ambrose Akinmusire shared the stage with Avishai Cohen — truly inspiring to see trumpeters playing TOGETHER. No competition, just music. Clearly pushing each other to new creative heights, playing original music and a few re-arrangements of music by Bobby Bradford. They say there’s nothing new under the sun, but when you see two creatively and technically gifted trumpeters side by side playing in two widely divergent styles it just drives home how many personal developments have taken place on this instrument in the past decade or so. Those developments are shot through all the music of our time, on all instruments, but hearing these two trumpeters it couldn’t be any clearer. Both of these guys are pushing new frontiers in terms of phrasing, intervallic leaps, and rhythmic interplay with the rhythm section. Most of all — leaps of imagination. Let it be said that the rhythm section was exemplary and constantly inventive – Vijay Iyer, Chris Tordini, and Marcus Gilmore.
On Friday Jeremy Pelt invited Eddie Henderson and David Weiss with the rhythm section of Marc Cary, Vicente Archer, and Gerald Cleaver. I’m not being sarcastic or ironic when I say it made me want to go home and practice. I love Jeremy’s sound and fluid facility. He has also been important to FONT as a board member, and every time he has a chance he highlights his hero Dr. Eddie Henderson, who played just as beautifully and lucidly as ever. They played some engagingly rearranged Bobby Bradford pieces and originals. It’s such a pleasure to hear a three trumpet gig that isn’t a high note fest, a rehash of old classics, or a battle of one-up-manship. Just pure music made now in our time.
Peter Evans and Nate Wooley joined me yesterday for a short performance and discussion of “extended techniques” for the trumpet. I’m putting that in quotes because we all had the same point to make that these kinds of things have been around a long time. Peter made a good point about Round Midnight being the first major bestselling example of extended trumpet techniques. Breathy, close-miked harmon mute with a lot of reverb and microtonal pitch bending? How bizarre!
That aside, there really are things these two guys are doing that have only developed in the last decade or so. Trumpeters like Peter and Nate, Greg Kelley, Axel Doerner, Ed Harkins, Franz Hautzinger, Jaimie Branch, and others (if you know of others I’m leaving out, please reply in the comments or send me an email) have started using split tones, circular breathing, slap tonguing and many other techniques as the basis for their music. Nate said a lot of the impetus for the work he’s doing comes from listening to electronic music and sound/noise music. That kind of makes sense when you hear his uninterrupted tones affected by sheets of aluminum flashing covering the bell–with your eyes closed you would be hard pressed to identify it as trumpet music. When asked why he started developing these sonic resources on the trumpet, Peter said he does it because it’s fun. It was fun playing with Peter and Nate, I hope we get a chance to do it again some time. The session was recorded and FONT will produce a transcript of the conversation and possibly some sound samples.
Bobby Bradford played a beautiful gig with David Murray, Marty Ehrlich, Mark Dresser and Andrew Cyrille last night. I’m going to hear the Octet tonight. Bradford is being given the FONT Award of Recognition (the recipient is chosen democratically by the membership each year) this evening, and it is hard not to get emotional in seeing this cornetist and composer celebrating with a great band in NYC. Sold out houses were there to cheer him on and the music was rich and powerful.
Bobby Bradford: I can’t believe interviewers are always asking me if I’m concerned about the future of jazz. I say “Don’t you listen to any records?”
Quote of the week. So far.
From the most recent guest post at NPR’s A Blog Supreme.
A Call To Arts
by Dave Douglas
It’s good to see arts and especially jazz philanthropy back in business, thinking about what to fund and how best to fund it and not so much about how to punishing artists who use government money to smear their bodies in chocolate or worrying about just how in particular they plan to use that crucifix. There’s a new director at the National Endowment for the Arts named Rocco Landesman who is more interested in putting on shows; The Doris Duke Foundation and Mary Flagler Cary are out with innovative initiatives; and the alphabets — MTC, CMA, AMC, NYFA, NYSCA — are all looking at ways of giving jazz and related music a place at the table. All I can say is, Thank You. Finally. At long last, we can sit down and have a decent fight over real pieces of the pie.
Helping artists and communities is more important than cracking down on profanity. I was reminded of this the other day when my drummer Nasheet Waits was sent to overweight/oversize baggage for the third time even though his cymbals are no bigger than most bags (smaller than many!) and weighs easily within the range of your average over-packed summer traveler. (I mean their bags.) The cymbals just look different. Nasheet displayed admirable poise, while I was about to explode with the kind of filth that would make Rahm Emanuel blush. It was probably just a better idea to get the cymbals on their way down through the baggage mill.
Arts are important to people’s lives. Vincent Chancey grew up in a foster home, and when his public school gave him a chance to play music he chose the weirdest looking instrument he could find. A French horn man was born, even though there’s nothing French about that horn, and even Congress wanted to change the name to Freedom Horn a few years back. But with just that smallest push, Vincent developed an idiosyncratic personal style on the horn that led to a career with Sun Ra, Lester Bowie and Diana Krall among many others. Now if we could just get him to put the thing down. Vincent’s son Bahij is headed to Yale in the fall, on a scholarship to study architecture.
In 1990 I wasn’t sure where I fit into a scene polarized by young lions, hardcore downtown avant-garde and a livelihood playing weddings, bar mitzvahs, jingles and brisses. That was the year I received an individual artist grant for composition from the National Endowment for the Arts (funding of individual artists was discontinued in 1996). It meant a lot, even if only that there was a societal value to the creative work that I really wanted to do. My musically inclined but somewhat conservative father was scandalized. (”My tax dollars are going to What?!?!”)
Are the arts controversy-free? Clearly my father didn’t think so. No, the arts aren’t all clean, but neither is life itself. Now there’s the Internet, keeping kids aware of all that’s going on around them in the world if you can get them to look away from the screen for more than a few seconds. If these initiatives have their way, when they do look away they will see arts in addition to schoolwork. It’s not safe looking at a computer screen all day, or perhaps being an artist, but there are other dangers out there, like swine flu, sexting, contaminated vegetables, Octomoms, municipal rackets marketing human kidneys, not to mention Town Hall meetings. A little controversial artwork is the least of our worries.
As part of Weill Music Institute, Carnegie hosts a workshop in small group composition and improvisation. This is an opening for twelve to fourteen player/composers to work in New York for a week, fully funded, and participate in two final performances. Click the link for application details – the deadline for applicants is September 15, 2009.
It will be a pretty hands-on, intimate forum to create new work. Aside from directing the workshop, I have invited the members of my Quintet to be a part of the workshop and performances: Donny McCaslin, Uri Caine, James Genus, and Clarence Penn will all be there. I’m working on new music of my own that will be workshopped as well. We’re looking for a small group of inspiring musicians to take part – please check it out at the link above.
Very interesting interview with Australian trumpet genius Scott Tinkler. Get yourself past the rather puzzling intro – Scott has some intriguing musical concepts he’s applying in his music. And he shares many of them here.
This is part of the series Jazz in the Digital Age at NPR’s A Blog Supreme.
Niches Brew: Musicians Creating a Way Forward
More and more folks in the music industry are singing the blues these days.
A critic lamented the lack of paid outlets for his writing and sheepishly admitted taking a gig with a jazz festival. A club owner sobbed over attendance and how the music is just not what it used to be (though he was still ornery enough to get snobby with those who did show). A booking agent grumbled that jazz audiences aren’t the same anymore and that he’s dealing with sub-par venues because they’re the only game in town.
If you were only to read the papers it would be easy to think the entire musical culture was about to collapse. True, times are tough, and not just in the arts. The economy’s struggling. Magazines, newspapers, and books: a combination of circumstances is cutting into their primacy. The good things they brought to the culture will be missed.
But looking a little deeper, this is a time of great opportunity. Not to be Pollyanna-ish about it, but new outlets are sprouting everywhere. It’s just that they’re different than the old outlets. They are in development, and many people comfortable with the old system can be impatient and dismissive of this alien intrusion.
An overdue link to American Music Center’s New Music Box. Wherein one reads Frank Oteri’s recent interview with Gunther Schuller, Molly Sheridan’s discussion with Cenk Ergün and Jason Treuting, and Counterstream Radio’s Make Your Own Rules: Notes on Composition from John Corigliano. These from among many valuable offerings.
Back in the day, musician Ian David Moss used to work up there. He’s now writing about arts and arts management (trust me, a more interesting topic in his hands than it sounds…) at Createquity. Here’s a link to a recent piece that’s stirring the waters:On Arts and Sustainability.
It’s worth a read, though this may give pause:
The Internet, by lowering the costs of distribution to negligible levels, has in fact democratized many aspects of participation in the arts as well as numerous other activities. But in opening up the gates to untold amateurs and semi-pros who had previously been shut out from public attention or supplemental income streams, it has simultaneously fostered an atmosphere of intense competition that makes it nearly impossible to succeed as a full-time professional.
Do you agree? And is that a good or a bad thing?
Maybe it’s a coincidence, but suddenly it feels like there’s wall-to-wall discussion of music, media, and digital information — how quickly it’s changing, how the change is making some professions obsolete, and how it’s opening new avenues of opportunity. If even the sports pages carry this story (What Did Shaq Just Tweet?), there must be transformation in the air.
We’re grateful for the independence we have at a company like Greenleaf Music. The freedom is fun. But we’re also aware of our interdependence. We couldn’t do what we do without the interest of you, the readers, customers, subscribers, bloggers, publishers, musicians, listeners. As we continue to grow, create, and support new music we become more aware that this is part of something larger than us. It’s independent of many of the pre-existing media structures. We’re thankful to be a part of it and we thank you for sharing it with us.
Dave has a guest post on solo trumpet recordings at Destination : out.
Here’s a sample…
Solo Tubes : A guest post by Dave Douglas
June 30th, 2009 · 4 Comments · Dave Douglas, guest postsWe at D:O are incredibly honored to be able to present the following guest post from composer, trumpeter, blogger, label magnate, and all-around brass advocate Dave Douglas. If you like what you read and hear here, be sure to check out Dave’s own wonderful recent work. Enjoy.
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It’s an unusual breed, the solo trumpet recording. Surprisingly, the music is not really for specialists (not that there are many specialists anyway). More to the point, so much of the music goes beyond specifically instrumental interests. Though it is extremely demanding physically, the challenge is really compositional
Tracks by Lester Bowie, Toshinori Kondo, Kenneth Gaburo, Arve Hendriksen, Bill Dixon, Nate Wooley, Greg Kelley, Rob Mazurek, Baikida Carroll are discussed.
Jazz on 3 will be broadcasting the Dave Douglas Quintet set at Cheltenham Jazz Festival on Jazz on 3 on May 25, 2009 (and for a short period after that, streaming on their web site). With Orrin Evans, Donny McCaslin, Scott Colley, Clarence Penn. Handwritten Letter, Law of Historic Memory, Earmarks, Blues to Steve Lacy, Invocation, Campaign Trail, War Room. Plus encore: Little Penn. Haven’t heard the recording, but the gig felt great.
UPDATE: For those who missed the stream on Monday, you can stream it for the next week here.
