INTERVALS:THE NEWSLETTER OF DAVID LIEBMAN
VOL.11#1-2003
HELLO TO ALL:
To all new readers, I welcome you to my newsletter which I have been issuing several times a year since 1993. I encourage first time visitors to go to my web site which offers in-depth articles, a list of available publications and CDs with sound clips, private photos and recordings of historic interest, information about my annual Saxophone Master Class, the International Association of Schools of Jazz (IASJ) and more. The address is www.davidliebman.com/lieb
Just to mention that if you don’t wish to receive this newsletter you can unsubscribe through the web site (if that is how you subscribed in the first place) or directly to me if this came as an e-mail. Some people may be on both lists, so if you receive two copies PLEASE go to my web site and unsubscribe since that will be the easiest way. I am always adding people whom I think would be interested but that assumption may be erroneous and I apologize if this is the case. (Also when transferring the text to e mail the format may appear uneven.)
FEATURE ARTICLE:BEYOND THE BOREDOM
As the years progress the lessons you learn are incremental. They are harder to define and highlight whereas when one was younger it was obvious that you had made a step forward in this or that manner. You can hear some differences over an extended period for sure, but in general learning how to recognize change when you are older is a unique challenge. Often it appears as a reminder of past lessons recast in a new light. This recently happened to me as a result of sixteen straight gigs with my group.
On this tour we played every night and nearly ten days in workshop situations. We must’ve moved the equipment in and out of the rental van fifty times while covering over three thousand miles throughout the midwest of the United States: Louisville, Grand Rapids, Indianapolis, Dayton, Cincinnati, St.Louis and more. In some of the cities I haven’t played there in thirty years. People in the know are duly impressed when I tell them what we did because it is almost impossible to put just three nights together in this country unless you are on the star level and flying between major venues. But with the help of my long time associate Mike Cherigo, who for years has been booking me whenever possible, coupled with my own contacts we were able to accomplish this last October.
What I am going to say here is obvious to the musician readers-that playing every night is amazing and revealing on a personal level as well as how an incredible tightness naturally occurs between band members socially and musically. Finally there is nothing to say to anyone in the band about the music, which is what I aim for and the way it should be. We spend the time casually not saying much until the bandstand when it is all business. Personally I love that attitude. Just as in the past when consecutive playing nights were more the norm, it is remarkable how the process is still the same in relation to the creative and technical flow which evolves over a given period of time. Of course this is my personal view but I think if it rings a bell for others as well.
The first few gigs are great because everything is new and fairly relaxed since you know that you are going to play again tomorrow. The excitement of having ideas flowing and most of all one’s instrument feeling like grease is fantastic. Then there is a lull somewhere around five to nine gigs where oddly nothing feels good and amazingly a certain kind of boredom sets in. You can’t stand what you are playing; you feel for some reason that your chops are not as good as you thought just a few days ago; most of all there is nothing new to play. The natural tendency is to blame the music (not interesting enough, let’s change it) or the band (they aren’t pushing as hard as I am). Both of these explanations are usually not correct and certainly not in this situation in October with my group. This is puzzling and can be disturbing because logically things should be improving.
When this happened to me in the past I would panic at first but eventually I remember saying to myself: “be cool, be patient, don’t push, play less, trust the other cats, etc., and it will work out”. This kind of “Zen-like” patience is not natural for my type of personality, be it now or twenty years ago. But soon enough it becomes clear that this is only a stage and things will change.
And it always does. The way I know that for sure is how after a break of a few days from the actual tour playing another gig or two I could concretely feel the lift of the entire previous two week period. One could almost measure the progress both musically and technically. Finally you could hear the differences from whenever the last period of extended steady playing occurred as subtle as it may be. This understanding is what prompts me to point out to students that a major aspect of what made the masters so great was their constant playing. The many stages a player goes through when “hitting” every night for several sets, three hundred times a year over possibly decades of time seems to be beyond description. Unfortunately the present generation will probably never experience this. At least I and a few others like myself enjoyed the tail end of that glorious period, due to our age and luck more than any other factor. There is no real substitute for this daily process. Certainly the classroom (jazz education) has filled that void to some degree in that students do get to play a lot in most programs. But the lack of steady playing opportunities is in my opinion the biggest detriment towards advancing the music beyond the surface, both for the artists and interested listeners. In a sense you are always warming up!! It is a pity that this is generally the state of affairs in this era with no remedies in sight as I see it. The reasons are many and far reaching, but in the final result a musician needs to have his or her body physically involved with an instrument on a steady basis, certainly at the beginning stages of development to go forward in any meaningful way as a performer. In any case we must try to do the best we can.
RECENT ACTIVITIES
MIDWEST TOUR
I want to mention another observation gleaned from the tour we did in October with the group. It was gratifying to see people who came to listen and especially the students of course. I am always pleased for any audience which shows up to hear what we do, so the following comments should be seen in that light. After all I don’t have any promotion machine or record company buzz to help in attracting people to the gigs. What is interesting is how musically conservative a good deal of the listeners appear to be. The music of the Dave Liebman Group is not what I would call avant-garde. It is intense, full of quick changes and surprises which demands close listening. We do let things go freely and spontaneously to be sure, but it is not really far out at all. My feeling was that for much of the audience our music was a mild shock. There is nothing startling in that but it is 2003 and the listeners seem to be mainly referencing the past. This is in light of the fact that most of my audience is students who are at that stage of development where though they should be listening to music of the past for learning purposes, their naturally young curiosity would suggest that music which is not mainstream also be on their listening agenda.
I believe this is so because of what is being fed to them by the jazz mainstream, be it record companies, the jazz press or what have you. By the way I am not referring to the kind of listener who comes up to me and remarks about how he heard me live years ago or on an old recording, all of which is complimentary. It’s that in general, being exposed to non-mainstream jazz for even interested listeners is limited by access and availability. They are just not used to hearing music that deviates from the norm. When we returned to New York and played Birdland, it felt comforting. This is in light of the fact that because of the prices in New York, the audience is actually more mainstream than elsewhere with less students present. I am not being negative or condescending, only observing the state of affairs as I personally observed it while on tour through the heartland of the U.S.
THE SEASONS
On the other hand, I must report how well received a concert was that I did at East Stroudsburg University near my home in Pennsylvania with the Manhattan Saxophone Ensemble along with percussionist Chris Hanning playing Gunnar Mossblad’s adaptation of the Seasons, a work I recorded in the early 1990s with Cecil McBee and Billy Hart. A rather abstract work depicting the change of seasons and based on a twelve tone row and its permutations, the recording was mostly improvised with textural concepts dominating the proceedings. Gunnar took my formats and expanded them, added some written elements and employed along with himself the multi reed talents of Dave Riekenberg, Steve Wilson and Tom Christensen, all playing the winds:flutes, oboe, bass and Bb clarinets and of course all the saxophones. The performance was enhanced by a digital slide presentation of photos depicting seasonal changes in Scandinavia as we played. We then recorded it at Bennett Studios in Jersey (owned by Tony Bennett’s son and absolutely state of the art). I will keep you informed as to the final outcome of that recording which I think will be very special. Though this music was rather abstract I think its brevity (a little over an hour) and the accompanying slide show helped the audience to enjoy it.
These two opposing views of audience reactions would seem to cancel out the previous comments above about my tour. This may be the case, meaning as usual that everything is relative and there are no absolutes. But it is always interesting to me to observe how the music I play is received and try to second guess the reasons. In the final result how one perceives music is inexplicable and beyond description.
MISCELLANEOUS
IN PASSING:MAL WALDRON AND BOB BERG
Deaths are never ordinary although it is the great equalizer among all human beings. When a master dies in his seventies after years of contributing through recordings, performances and immortal compositions, there’s a sense of peace and a sigh of inevitability we all are familiar with. Not that it is ok or easily acceptable, but we understand that a cycle is complete. Such was the case with pianist Mal Waldron who recently left us. But for saxophonist Bob Berg, it is an unmitigated tragedy. His death on a snowy day in Long Island by car accident is just plain pointless and sad, mostly for his immediate family but also for all of us who knew and admired his music.
I knew Bob from the very beginning of my living in Manhattan. Though we were from the same hood in Brooklyn, Bob was a few years younger than me. We started to hang in my loft on West 19th Street with the Brecker brothers, Steve Grossman, Bob Moses, Lenny White, Dave Holland, Chick Corea and others around 1968-69. In fact a fond remembrance of Bob is sitting on the floor of my loft with about twenty other cats discussing how to put together an organization to present our own concerts around the city. Bob, who must have been around eighteen or nineteen years old came up with the name, Free Life Communication. We eventually formed a co-op and over several years organized hundreds of concerts playing mostly free jazz. He was one of the original brothers of post-Coltrane saxophonists who successfully made their way in the jazz world. I remember his wonderful playing with Cedar Walton and Billy Higgins in the Eastern Rebellion Group and then of course with Miles Davis and his own music. He was a real New Yorker, tough on the outside, a pussy cat inside. Most of all he was a giant saxophonist who always played his butt off, raw and burning while “taking no prisoners” as we say; a real journeyman jazzman working everywhere all the time.
I was talking to Mike Brecker after the news and we both were thinking the same thing. With all the traveling we do, it is amazing that not more of us have met our fate on the road in one way. Some of us can recall a car accident in Europe involving the group Oregon which claimed percussionist Colin Walcott, but that was awhile ago. To be honest, we have a higher likelihood of accidents due to our prodigious traveling and mere percentages, but in Bob’s case it was not work related. His wife was injured and survived and from what I know it was just a local drive which though it was snowing anyone of us might take to get the newspaper or whatever.
Amazing-we all wake up the same every day and then……
Randy Brecker who played a lot with Bob wrote some beautiful words:
“Bob was a complex guy. His Father was Jewish,
his Mother is Italian. He
grew up in the turbo charged center of Bensonhurst. He loved his Caddy with the
huge Fins, a good Cuban cigar smuggled in by some of his friends, some 'yac',
and a lottaSinatra. Mid-life he met Arja, settled down, had two wonderful kids,
became a evoted husband and father, moved out to East Hampton, took up serious
fishing in between tours. He also loved the saxophone and jazz music, on which
he focused his formidable intellect. The combination of this intellect,
operating through the prism of his formative years and his daily lifestyle and
environment, brought us a conception which was passionate, yet without mercy. He
would play your back up against the wall, he would tear it and you up. You had
to fight back and be at the top of your game when you were on the bandstand with
Berg……he never verbally said it….he demanded it through his horn. That's what it
was like to play with Bob Berg throughout all these years......he made me play
better, he drenched me in his style...he seared my soul forever. This is what
I'll miss most about Bob...the unbelievable timeless, fearless, merciless yet
passionate sound of his saxophone. Yet I remain convinced that I'll still hear
it, day after day, year after year, every time I think of him...I'll hear it....
I know I will”.
ABBEY LINCOLN
It’s not often that I listen to my very old work, in this case thirty 30 years ago. On tour in Michigan a guy showed and then generously gave me a CD version which I hadn’t seen of one of the first records I made. I was on my first tour in Japan with Miles and a record producer placed me on a date with singer Abbey Lincoln, along with Al Foster and a Japanese bassist and pianist. I had known Abbey through one of my oldest playing partners, Bob Moses, as she was his adopted godmother and lived in the same building on Central Park West in the Big Apple. So I had been around her on occasion. Abbey is both physically and spiritually a beautiful woman with a really soulful vibe when she sings. It was great to hear that date from 1973 titled “People and Me” bringing back wonderful memories from the beginning of my career. I must say it is really a nice record. Now I know why people have commented to me about it over the years.
MILES AT MONTREUX
It seems that Miles Davis played the Montreux Festival in Switzerland a lot over the 70s and 80s. I was part of his first performance there in 1973 and remember how the people just sat not knowing how to respond. Finally by the end, after two searing sets, there was a decent reception as was the norm in those days. Miles was playing something so different from what he had been doing only a year or two earlier that people had little chance to keep up with him. The Miles in Montreux twenty CD boxed set is beautifully done and of course quite expensive, but it really does trace his evolution in the last years of his life.
KENS BURNS BOOK
I finally had a chance to read the Ken Burns book that accompanied the PBS series which elicited such a strong response from both the general audience and musicians last year. A coffee table book of great size, it isn’t quite the kind of thing you take on a road trip when flying. But being in the van on the aforementioned midwest tour afforded me the opportunity to read it slowly over two weeks. I must say that it is fantastic and everyone interested in jazz should check it out if only for the incredible photos included. It follows some of the main personalities like Armstrong, Bechet, Ellington, Morton and others through the years with revealing insights into the everyday culture and milieu going on at the time. As Burns said, it does reflect American history to a large degree for that period and particularly the difficult position of Afro Americans in our society. It reads like a movie with Louis Armstrong as the star of the show since everyone wanted to play like him. This is fascinating and informative reading which to be honest I didn’t expect.
THE JAZZ RECORD BUSINESS
Musicians who have been around for several decades like me are of course more aware of the present unfortunate state of the record business since we remember better days. Younger musicians are growing up from the start with alternative ways of exposing their music as a way of life so it is not as dramatic to them. But to my generation which lived by record deals, mostly from small independent labels where we were up front and personal with the owner, producer, press agent, photographer, etc., (all one individual usually), it is sad to see what appears to be a “slow dance on the killing ground”. The major labels have always been commercial marketplaces where for the most part you had to play by their rules and expectations. It was rare for anyone to stay long with a company except for Miles or others like him.
I recently had a bad experience with a company that I was about to do business with which has been around for a few years producing mostly young musicians of varied quality. The obvious idea was that I along with another respected older artist might bring a little “weight” to the label. Discussions to do something together went on for several years in one form or another, usually delayed by the company’s feeling that I should have no releases of any sort for an extended period to leave room for new product. This seemed reasonable enough since companies are concerned that an artist with a limited audience splits those potential buyers with competing releases (if available which is another problem in itself). Of course they don’t consider that recording is also a source of income, therefore the more the better on that level. Getting back to the story, with the combination of personal money as the main source of support for this company and the current sad state of record sales, especially in the U.S., they suddenly announced that they had to cut their losses stating “no new projects”, or so this is what I was told. When you hear that, the writing is on the wall sooner or later. However, in this case we were as far as having a recording date set, discussing repertoire and were in actual negotiation to the point of changing clauses on a long and unnecessary record contract in which the only people profiting are their lawyers. This is yet another potential discussion for another time though in my case I serve as my own legal consul.
Besides a blatant disrespect for me as an artist and human being by not honoring their commitment after leading me on and taking so much of my time and energy, I then became the focal point of the obvious frustration felt by the head guy and things got nasty. He accused me of spreading rumors that the company was folding when what I was doing was informing close business and personal contacts of my dismay and trying to make alternate plans. My primary goal was to record the group which was so tight after the exhaustive traveling described above. After all that was the focus of the tour in the first place. Money was not a factor in this case since the pay was negligible. Beyond personal disappointment it is an indication of the sad state of affairs of the record business. My several recordings released on the Arkadia label in the late 90s were fine at first, but the man in charge there turned out to be dishonest and eventually I had to settle in court concerning money due to me. I have a lot of recordings out and have had wonderful honest relations with many companies, almost all European by the way, so I am not complaining. But for the future of artistic music this is a very disturbing state of affairs. People say that eventually the internet will be the means of distribution and in some ways I would agree with that, although it still comes down to who is promoting and how much money is available, internet or not. But for the time being what the public gets in their local record shop (if any are left at all) or chain store is a small and not very true representation of music that is taking place in jazz these days.
In any case we did record a fantastic CD that I feel is my best in years and I will be looking for a label or self release. I could not waste an opportunity to document the work of my group after such a productive period. My feeling is that we were ready and had a body of music with a strong concept to present and to wait would’ve blown the opportunity. The guys in the band (Tony, Vic and Marko) were thankfully enthusiastic and encouraging, which I really appreciate, as was Kent Heckman of Red Rock Studios where I have down dozens of recordings in the past fifteen years.
Oddly enough I recently watched a video of the rock group Aerosmith’s recording of “Pump” fifteen years ago and in some ways they too had to deal with a lot of b.s. from record companies. In any case, this necessary evil of record companies seems to be on the way out and a replacement has not been figured out as of yet.
MY PHILOSOPHY OF EDUCATION
I want to direct interested readers to a specific article I wrote recently that is on my site. It is about 25 pages long and a complete summary of my philosophy of education with specific aspects of jazz described in detail. The thoughts have been expressed in other articles and in my book “Self Portrait of A Jazz Artist” but this is a pretty complete summary of what I have learned over the years about the educational process. Go to http://www.davidliebman.com/lieb/Feature_Articles/education.htm
DUO WITH MARC COPLAND AND TRIO WITH JOHN STOWELL AND DON THOMPSON
A double CD titled “Bookends” featuring pianist Marc Copland and myself has been released on Hatology (Switzerland) following our quartet recording of last year, “Lunar”. It includes some standards and originals and was done in a thousand year old church in Switzerland both with and without an audience. Marc is a beautiful, lyrical pianist with an uncanny harmonic sense whom I enjoy very much working with. You can get the record through hathut.com or marccopland.com
The Banff Institute is a famous artist’s colony in Canada where I spent several summers in the 1980s teaching in a pristine environment. For an anniversary celebration a few years ago I took part in a workshop and got a chance to record a few standards with a wonderful guitarist, John Stowell who lives on the West Coast and the incredible multi talented bassist Don Thompson (who also plays vibes and piano). I very much enjoyed this session in the mountains of Banff and the atmosphere on the tunes I play on is quite loose. The recording is called the “Banff Sessions” under John’s name on a label called Origin.
THE MAKING OF A LOVE SUPREME
Author Ashley Khan wrote “The Making of Kind Of Blue” several years ago which chronicled the session and events surrounding that famous recording, using studio notes, interviews and anecdotes. When he called me about two years ago to ask questions about Coltrane’s seminal recording, “A Love Supreme” I was really excited that a similar book would be released describing that incredible recording session. Well it is that and more because as in the Miles book, Ashley also does a biographical sketch. In this case he covers the spiritual and philosophical aspects about Coltrane that wonderfully balance the other excellent book on Trane (His Life and Music) by Lewis Porter. The two books together really give you the full story. The opening party for its release was at a club in New York where Ravi Coltrane played a wonderful set and Alice Coltrane joined him for one of the tunes from the Love Supreme recording. It was great to see Alice who appeared the same as she did when I last saw her in 1966. At the same time Verve has re-released the original recording with some extra tracks from the date as well as an alternate version of two selections with Archie Shepp and bassist Art Taylor added to the quartet personnel (Jones, Garrison and Tyner). Hearing this was interesting because it really has a different feel to it. Also Verve included the only recorded live version of the suite from the Antibes Festival in France in1965 which has existed on tape for years as a bootleg being passed among musicians. This set is one of the most powerful performances you will ever hear from any recordings of Coltrane clearly demonstrating how fast he was moving in that year towards “Meditations” and the free period to follow. The duo with Elvin Jones on “Pursuance” is beyond description. The tenor sax sounds like it is breaking apart on this cut and it portends the way Trane would play the horn for the next two years until his death. I also heard the new release of the great “Ballads” recording with out takes and several versions of some of the tunes. All in all what a fest for me to hear new Trane music for the first time over forty years after I first heard him live at Birdland. And as great art should be it sounds fresh today and assuredly will forever.
FROM A STUDENT ABOUT THE LIMITATIONS OF JAZZ
I have a survey with questions that I have been giving for the past twelve years to all my international students at the IASJ meetings and annual sax master classes. Besides biographical material and how they first got to music, etc., I asked questions about philosophical things and aesthetics. The idea is to get them thinking about some of the implications of being an artist. Since I have the advantage of seeing so many students from everywhere this seemed like an obvious thing to do over the years. The answers were collated after the first ten years and appear on my Feature Article page on my site (http://www.davidliebman.com/lieb/Feature_Articles/worldsurvey.htm). The following is a wonderful paragraph answering one of the questions: “What, if any are the limitations of jazz?” Following a thoughtful essay making the case that the best jazz can do in the world is to move people emotionally by the act of doing it, saxophonist Dan Stern writes (my paraphrase):
“Since it is a performance art if we have anything we want to say we must actually do it. Because we are very vulnerable to the market place we must prepare to be largely unrecognized and not influential. However, music is about creating something of beauty and since our language transcends the everyday, we have the opportunity of representing something that is not of the here and now but that is rarefied. The only rewards of this for us lie in the music itself and if that is enough, then as a musician you will only be limited by your imagination.”
JANUARY:Performances at the IAJE Convention in Toronto Canada with the Scott Gwinell Big Band and the Keilwirth Saxophone Section (Symulian, Watts, Braden, Smith); performances in Toronto with saxophonist Mike Murley at the Rex ; showcase for Justin Time Records with pianist Jeff Johnston; three nights at Birdland, New York City with the Saxophone Summit-Mike Brecker, Joe Lovano, Cecil McBee, Billy Hart and Phil Markowitz
FEBRUARY:Regatta Bar in Cambridge, Mass with Laszlo Godorny Trio featuring Jamey Haddad; performance with Phil Markowitz at Central Michigan University; tour of Holland with Erik Ineke’s Nimbus; performance in Holland with pianist Marc Van Roon
MARCH:The Dave Liebman Big Band for three nights at Birdland and the Deer Head Inn (Delaware Water Gap, Pennsylvania); performance and recording with the Budapest Jazz Orchestra (Hungary).
APRIL:performance with the Lehigh Valley Jazz Orchestra under the direction of Bill Warfield playing the premiere of “Water-Giver of Life” for big band featuring guitarist Vic Juris; performances in France with the group of pianist Jean Marie Machado.
Wishing you all the best for 2003 for good health and always safe travel.