Jazz Festival Season and the Aesthetics of Chance

Joseph Murphy | August 16, 2012

Festival
• n.
1 a day or period of celebration, typically for religious reasons.
2 an organized series of concerts, films, etc., typically one held annually in the same place.
– ORIGIN ME (as adj.): via OFr. from med. L. festivalis, from L. festivus, from festum, (pl.) festa ‘feast’.

indeterminate
• adj.

1 not exactly known, established, or defined. Mathematics (of a quantity) having no definite or definable value. Medicine (of a condition) from which a diagnosis of the underlying cause cannot be made.

Have we entered the era of over determinacy in jazz – where our expectations for uniformity and professionalism have obscured the elements of chance and surprise that have long animated the imaginations of listeners and served as a wellspring of creativity for musicians? A recent foray into the summer jazz fest circuit prompted just such a query in this veteran of jazz festivals.

It's official

My first jazz festival goes back to NYC and what was then called Newport in New York during the pungent garbage strike, Big Apple humid and hot, summer of 1973.(Although I was titillated by my first exposure to modern jazz at the 1969 Seattle International Pop Festival where Charles Lloyd held for th with his first great quartet with Keith Jarrett, Cecil McBee and Jack DeJohnette) After taking in a double bill of Weather Report and Return to Forever at Avery Fisher, drinking champagne on the terrace at Lincoln Center and absorbing some of the Citie’s style and manners, we spent the next afternoon at Wollman Rink where a percussion extravaganza anchored by Max Roach’s ten piece percussion ensemble “M’Boom” and featuring a parade of stick men from Elvin Jones to Tony Williams to Sonny Murray burning it down in order for a rapt and rowdy Central Park audience. While I left the park stunned by the power of Elvin Jones and the precision of Max, the experience of the festival was defined more so by the space of NYC and its ineffable combination of American gothic and urban intimacy - of the quality of risk inherent in each and every New York minute - as the music seemed driven by a current of energy unique to the City.

Which is to say that how one perceives any particular jazz festival depends largely on where one puts the emphasis in this two word phrase. As the Oxford Concise Dictionary definition suggests, whether one’s orientation is devotional or epicurean determines the qualifiers one places on its practice. Best? Largest? Most transformative or sensual or fun are all judgments for the ear and eye of the behearer.

This year your Jazz Everyone correspondent returned to the festival trail with a visit to the 33 rd Annual Festival International De Jazz De Montreal. FIDJDM is festival writ large and we are reminded that in number of stages, musicians and performances as well as Guinness certification that it is indeed the world’s largest. Certainly, when it takes twenty minutes to move a block amongst swarming throngs of Quebecois humanity massed in the Plaza de St. Catherine it’s not in doubt that size makes its stamp on all aspects of the proceedings.

So too with the programming, that defines jazz very widely to include the likes of James Taylor, Tangerine Dream, Liza Minnelli and Rufus Wainwright; high concept pop artists who fill the expensive - seats at the big theatres in the Place de Arts complex at the center of the festival. As one views the massive outdoor stages, interactive media kiosks and speaker towers that trellis the six block square area of the festival it also becomes clear that, despite underwriting that includes Montreal municipal, Provincial and National government sources, TD Bank (sponsor of festivals across Canada) and private underwriters that size requires the offset of such revenue generating sure things. So by want of physical design; the relatively compressed site area, continual music on multiple outdoor free venues and indoor paid concerts, the amenities of exchange marked by the sidewalk cafes lining the Rue de St Catherine – as well as high numbers of New England and NYC jazzophiles who attend annually - gives FIDJDM its deserved high cache’ as a festival par excellence, an aural amalgam of crossing currents worthy of Charles Ives ( perhaps ironically, not a fan of jazz, considering it ‘the competition’ in gaining European validation for a uniquely American compositional style) ) and a sensual montage on the promenade of Felliniesque sensuality. In my festival grazing over the years, only Monterey offers as high degree of intimacy of site and community of worshipers as Montreal. Bon Temps, indeed. If a festival is also defined by the cultivation of audience in place over time then clearly FIDJDM has primed the ears of festival goers to the high degree of professionalism that marks the range of operations from production to media relations. Such a familiar relationship is well recognized by performers as well with Bill Frisell stepping to the mic two songs into his John Lennon tribute at Club Soda to intone, “Jiet’aime” to the enthusiastic audience and Larry Coryell introducing his pieces in a halting but sincere French that expressed his longstanding appreciation for Quebecois audiences. As for those who would place the emphasis on the modifier before festival, however, one had to flexible in one’s expectations. Coming out of bassist Victor Wooten’s early evening set one of the critics on press row groused to me, “Viktor has got a great set of hands, but where’s the jazz?” We agreed that what we had just heard was a very good R&B revue – replete with a spit shine cover of Stevie Wonder’s “Overjoyed,” and a five string bass solo on “Norwegian Wood” – but was somehow lacking. We walked up toward the Place de Arts where he assured me that Invitation artist for the fest, bassist Stanley Clarke would deliver up the jazz goods with his own band. And so it came to pass that, having apparently vented his funk leanings the previous evening in trio with Marcus Miller and Viktor Wooten, Mr. Clarke left his trademark cat face Ibanez electric basses in repose in favor of the acoustic instrument and a repertoire marked by his own intricate and sumptuously melodic jazz work such as “No Mystery”, “Three Wrong Notes” (built around Bird’s “Confirmation”) and Mr. Clarke’s first employer, Joe Henderson’s, “Black Narcissus.” Stanley Clarke doesn’t merely play the double bass, he dominates it – bringing all the slapping, pull offs, triple stops and arpeggiated strumming brio of an impassioned flamenco stylist in combination with commanding control. If dynamic leading tones are your thing, Stanley has you covered. All was on display – as Mr. Clarke and his well-honed band proved out the trend of Invitation artists to bring their best in their final night. The encore on Mr. Clarke’s dedication to fellow Philadelphian John Coltrane – “Song for John” – was an eloquent and impassioned coda for the weeks featured performer.

Jazz/Art/Montreal 2012

If any crown jewel to be called ‘jazz’ was needed for this year’s edition of FIDJDM though I would have to award such honors to Wayne Shorter’s Quartet. Prior to the week, I had last encountered Mr. Shorter at a very different festival, San Francisco 95’, and in the company of a very different group of musicians from the black rock and second wave jazz fusion scenes. At that concert, after an opening set by tenor player Javon Jackson with Chris McBride on bass that meticulously and reverently detailed Mr. Shorter’s classic compositions from his years with Blakey and his own Blue Note recordings, the Shorter ensemble blasted through a jumbled, rhythmically incoherent set of his post Weather Report solo work. As I wrote at the time, “A living genius of improvisation, composition and the jazz saxophone, Mr. Shorter appears to be struggling to find his second act.”

Fast forward to June 2012 and that second act is well underway. With big eared players of outsized musical personalities and jazz ability such as Panamanian born Danillo Perez, stunningly fleet and flexible bassist John Pattitucci and the explosive yet subtly dynamic Brian Blades on drums, Mr. Shorter has found players of imagination and grounding that can hang with him from the inside/out. The inside, in Mr. Shorter’s case, being the template of the second great Miles Davis Quinter within which he found unprecedented harmonic freedom, subtly redirecting his compositional style toward the integration of classicized folk motif with the broad palette of redefined instrumental roles. The outside shows itself in a new rhythmic freshness – of counter rhythms and rephasing of rhythmic roles in the classic quartet format – that animates Mr. Shorters sometimes oblique/sometimes plaintive melodies.

Joni Mitchell has described her oft time collaborator as a “pictographic musician”. Cinephile Shorter certainly knows how to paint a picture in sound, with his melodies often seeming to sculpt out an image in space outside of the rhythmic. In the context of this group, however, Mr. Shorter might as well be setting a rhythmic motif with short staccato horn bursts than painting a melodic line. The resulting controlled counterpoint resolve with unexpected joining of Blade’s gathering press roll combustion or Perez’s shout stops. On the occasion of this performance, as was the case earlier in the week when the Quartet played Vancouver, the music was read – clearly a pre composed suite of repeated melodic motifs – but in both performances the gambits for moving through the work were somewhat different, shifting the lines to the front, rhythm to the back, and back again, gaming the piece through chance rhythmic variation. Throughout, Mr. Shorter stood against the curve of the piano, stating the motifs in elegant ascending lines ala Scriabin or minatory Wagnerian thrusts, but mostly listening to his players and tracking every foray into the music.

The Shorter group also framed what seemed a dominant trend at FDIDJM of seasoned and fully coherent working bands. From the above mentioned Stanley Clarke Band to Bill Frisell’s highly simpatico rock band with Tony Scheer, Kenny Wolloson and Greg Leisz that assayed the work of John Lennon with an ear for Lennon’s pastel harmonies to the tight and rambunctious Euro fusion trio backing the extraordinary Swiss harmonica player Gregoire Marratt, the traveled professionalism that evolves from steady work was on vivid display. Very few ad hoc or all-star type aggregations were in evidence, (with Marratt’s take on Stevie Wonder’s “Secret Life of Plants” it occurred to me, though, how the generative material for jazz has fully moved on from Gershwin and Arlen to Wonder and Lennon)

One exception that proved the rule – the rule being that working bands have a better chance att staying creative than ad hoc ensembles – was the “Ninety Miles” band – so named for the distance between the US and Cuba. It was to there that the leaders of this hybrid ensemble – vibraphonist Stefan Harris, trumpeter Nicholas Payton and tenor saxophonist David Sanchez – traveled to record their eponymously
titled work with a cadre of Cuban musicians. Harris, Payton and Sanchez are all players of impeccable jazz pedigree; certainly Harris, a kinetically sprung musician of great energy and outstanding technique, stands out as the foremost voice on his instrument of his generation. Payton, as is the wont of the New Orleans trumpet lineage stands and delivers with supreme confidence and articulation and Sanchez has
that smoldering burn of the Latin tenor sax tradition coupled with a deliberate burnished way of phrasing

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that adheres to the clave’ of the Cuban tradition with careful attention to line and feeling. The Cuban and Puerto Rican rhythm section – with the marvelous Ricky Rodriquez on bass – certainly knew what they were about as well yet the whole came across as far less than the sum of its parts.

While Cuban music demands special attention to form – be it son’ , danzon or rhumba – there’s no finessing of the feeling required that gives the music it power to communicate universally. Attempts to marry post bop modalities of jazz with authentic Cuban music are, accordingly, not always successful in bringing the feeling to the fore.

Such was the case with “Ninety Miles” - a product glistening with professionalism so distilled to abstract the jazz from the Afro Cuban and the Afro Cuban from the jazz. A dozen outstanding solos of profligate virtuosity somehow managed to lose the clave. and hence the soul of Afro Cuban music. The unpleasant The sound of surprise? Representation of the New York/Brooklyn nexus of musicians seemed scant for a festival in geographic proximity – players steeped in the ethic of surprise and the chance element in collective improvisation. Until recent years, Vancouver’s annual festival did an excellent job or seeking out the players making it new and bringing the improve fire while still bringing the big ballroom acts – Afro Pop and Afro Cuban – for dancing, while in NYC recent events such as the Vision Festival and the Undead Festival concentrate on the emerging and established avant - garde as does the Earshot Festival in Seattle that runs in the fall. it would be churlish to criticize FIDJDM for what it is not when numerous other events strive to fill the gap. Jazz lifers well know that jazz is a movable feast: venues, festivals and locus’ of jazz activity come and go, the most memorable performance is as likely to be in a very un festive dive on the Bowery or in someone’s living room or loft. Still it is intuitively undeniable that place informs performance. Festive and fostering of multiple levels of interaction and communication amongst the assembled, Montreal fulfills definition number two from above in exemplary fashion but may be leaving the religious devotees of surprise that comprise a festival’s primary definition behind.

joseph murphy