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

They announced I was leading it so I asked, and got blank stares in return.

It was clearly the wrong question, so I followed up: Is it Standards? Is it Free Improvisation? Is it a reading of original compositions? Is it preformed groups getting up to play?

It is musicians who don’t normally play together ad libbing music of some sort. ‘Jam’ connotes enjoyment. ‘Session’ points toward informality.

In the event, we began by reading some fun and simple originals. Felt good, nice excitement, a fair amount of mistakes, but everybody getting to play something they liked. Next step, open the session up. It immediately became standards, with 8 to 10 players on stage, each piece lasting about 15 minutes, solos in the standard order. Concentration waned and people started wandering off to the bar. Even the players didn’t look like they were enjoying it. With the start of each new tune I felt a small burst of panic, like the next 15 minutes of my life were completely predetermined.

I admit, this is just one session and doesn’t stand in for the whole idea of standards jam sessions. But at this one I had to ask why these young gifted musicians were playing these songs. Did they feel they had to? Or that it was the only thing they had in common? I didn’t really get a clear answer, and most likely there wasn’t one. I asked if anyone had anything they would like to play. Out came more originals, and the fun, the risk, the edge, and total involvement returned. Relief. Music.

Of course a few nights later I heard two masters playing standards and had to give up my whole thing. It was completely their own and masterfully creative and exciting. That is indeed the music that one must learn to play jazz, but to perform it there has to be a deeper, personal relationship.

I’ve since talked to a few musicians who’ve pointed out that lots of players will disagree with me, that the bulk of players like to hang out at standards jam sessions. My idea of replacing the sessions with shared originals would meet with outcry from musicians of all stripes. I cede to them.

But what if we put the onus on the tunes we write? In other words, original jam session tunes have to be simple and compelling enough to be read, and grokked, from the bandstand. An emerging new repertoire of jazz standards that we can call our own.

Has anyone had any experience with that? Am I way out of line? Is there another way to keep standards sessions interesting? Or do I just need to chill out? And what about from the audience / listener’s perspective?

Thanks to everyone who came out to the show on Saturday. And thanks to everyone at Stanford Lively Arts and Stanford University for supporting this big new piece. Spark of Being is now alive. Coming soon to a theater and [choose you format] audio player near you. I’m thrilled to see this one walk out into the world.

Spark Of Being trailer.

The show will go on! After jumping through many hoops of security and aviation, I am back stateside. It feels great. Nothing kicks jet lag better than jumping into a rehearsal with Marcus Strickland, Adam Benjamin, Brad Jones, Gene Lake and David Slusser (covering for DJ Olive who is now a poppa). Because of being stuck overseas, tonight will also be the first time I see the final cut of Bill Morrison’s film. Can’t wait.

One of the most amazing things about this volcano crisis is that, for all the damage and money lost and upheaval for so many people, to my knowledge not one person has been harmed. Incredibly lucky that this has not turned out like so many of the other recent global disasters.

But it has brought out something else. Our propensity to look for cause and effect, to “connect the dots,” and to reason our way out of a jam. Maybe most of all to think we can find a solution to this situation which is so much bigger than ourselves. The scene here in Amsterdam was probably typical. Stranded travelers huddled together sharing travel horror stories and rumors about what’s happening. One guy I talked to at the bar had a plan the first night to rent a car and drive to Barcelona overnight (I have a feeling it would take longer than that, but anyway) and then get a plane ticket to Madrid and on back to the States. I have no idea if he did it. I hope so. But I woke up the next morning and the ash cloud had clearly overtaken northern Spain. Another guy told a long story about a buddy of his who hitched rides and made it to Calais, where he sneaked a seat on a train through the channel tunnel. I felt like an extra in a dystopian Terry Gilliam film. “It’s worse than nine eleven!” exclaimed a British guy I could hardly understand. Of course, there was no shortage of drinks going around so the problem could have been on my end. Then things started going in a more tinfoil hat sort of direction. People with theories proving (or disproving) global warming, el nino, and Man’s enraging of mother Gaia. It was kind of fun for the first night.

But it has worn on. Over the course of the week there were more and more people without a place to stay. I was in touch with musician friends all over Europe who were stranded or had gigs canceled. I was lucky, I had a roof over my head the whole time. And I have some friends to visit here. I got to have a lovely cup of coffee made by Misha Mengelberg. And Michael Moore and Jodi Gilbert serve a mean Balinese chicken. Thanks! Also some bands came by the Bimhuis (They were touring by bus!) and I got to hear John Scofield’s band and I’m going to hear Jim Hall tonight. That’s a rare treat.

And the flights are leaving now and I have a ticket in my hand that says tomorrow. Direct flight to San Francisco.

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.