Ivan Lins, Leonardo Amuedo and Stefano di Battista

The sound track for the following video is from an Ivan Lins performance with the Metropole Orchestra that took place on May 14, 2006 at the Philharmonia, in Haarlem, The Netherlands. The full orchestra sits this one out leaving matters to Ivan, who performs the vocals and keyboard accompaniment, guitarist, Leonardo Amuedo and alto/soprano saxophonist, Stefano di Battista. The tune is Lins' Dinorah, Dinorah.  Ivan's music is not purely Bossa Nova, nor Jazz, in the traditional sense of those terms [whatever that means], but it swings like mad, thanks in no small part to the cookin' rhythm section of Aram Kersbergen on bass and Martijn Vink on drums. The solos by Leonardo and Stefano are quite accomplished and Ivan uses his voice like another percussion instrument at times to add even more movement to the piece. The audience literally roars its approval at the end. When it's happening, there's nothing quite like the sound of music captured in-performance.

Ted Gioia – The Jazz Standards – A Review

© -Steven Cerra, copyright protected; all rights reserved.

“THE JAZZ STANDARDS will be indispensable for any fan who wants to know more about a jazz song heard at the club, or on the radio. Musicians who play these songs night after night will now have a handy tome, outlining their history and significance which tells how pieces have been performed by different generations of jazz artists. And students learning about jazz standards now have a reference work to these cornerstones of the jazz repertoire.”

- Christian Purdy, The Oxford University Press

“In his latest book - The Jazz Standards: A Guide to the Repertoire – Ted Gioia talks about Jazz from the singular perspective of the music and not from the more accustomed standpoint of the musicians who made it.”

- the editorial staff at JazzProfiles

“lf you look up just one title in The Jazz Standards, before you realize it you will have spent an intriguing hour or two learning fascinating and new things about old songs that you have known most of your life."

—Dave Brubeck

I look forward to Ted Gioia’s next book about Jazz with the same excitement and anticipation that greets the arrival of the next recording by one of my favorite Jazz artists.

The guy can flat-out write, he’s a magnificent story-teller and he has a depth and a breath of knowledge about Jazz which rivals that of any writer on the subject.

I know his next book is always going to be good so I grudgingly allow him the necessary time to research it and write it because I can’t wait to read it.

In this regard, Ted’s The Jazz Standards: A Guide to the Repertoire - forthcoming from Oxford University Press in July/2012 – doesn’t disappoint.

In his writing, Ted has a “conversation” with the reader.

His style is never polemical or didactic like those academic treatises that only twelve other people on the planet can read, let alone, understand.

Be it specifically about Jazz on the West Coast from 1945–1960 or more generally about the entire history of Jazz, Ted’s writing is personal and he teaches you stuff about Jazz.

His approach is reminiscent of your favorite high school teachers; you really wanted to learn from them because they knew what they were talking about and they made the subject fun and interesting.

This is no less the case with Ted’s latest book - The Jazz Standards: A Guide to the Repertoire – in which he talks about Jazz from the singular perspective of the music and not from the more accustomed standpoint of the musicians who made it.

If you’ve ever wished for a “road map” through recorded Jazz tunes, this book is it.  It offers “… an illuminating look at more than 250 seminal Jazz compositions …, “recommendations for more than 2,000 recordings with a list of suggested tracks for each song, [each accompanied by] “… colorful and expert commentary.”

The reasons for how and why this book came together are clearly explained by Ted in the following excerpts from his Introduction.

“When I was learning how to play jazz during my teenage years, I kept encountering songs that the older mu­sicians expected me to know. I eventu­ally realized that there were around 200 or 300 of these compositions, and that they served as the cornerstone of the jazz repertoire. A jazz performer needed to learn these songs the same way a classical musician studied the works of Bach, Beethoven, or Mozart.

In fact, I soon learned that knowledge of the repertoire was even more important to a jazz musician than to a clas­sical artist. The classical performer at least knows what com­positions will be played before the concert begins. This is not always the case with jazz. I recall the lament of a friend who was enlisted to back up a poll-winning horn player at a jazz festival—only to discover that he wouldn't be told what songs would be played until the musicians were already on stage in front of 6,000 people.

Such instances are not unusual in the jazz world, a quirk of a subculture that prizes both sponta­neity and macho bravado. Another buddy, a quite talented pi­anist, encountered an even more uncooperative bandleader—a famous saxophonist who wouldn't identify the names of the songs even after the musicians were on the bandstand. The leader would simply play a short introduction on the tenor, than stamp off the beat with his foot... and my friend was expected to figure out the song and key from those meager clues. For better or worse, such is our art form.

I had my own embarrassing situations with unfamiliar standards during my youth—but fortunately never with thousands of people on hand to watch. I soon realized what countless other jazz musicians have no doubt also learned: in-depth study of the jazz repertoire is hardly a quaint his­torical sideline, but essential for survival. Not learning these songs puts a jazz player on a quick path to unemployment.

But no one gave you a list. Nor would a typical youngster of my (or a later) generation encounter many of these songs outside the jazz world—most of them had been composed before I was born, and even the more recent entries in the repertoire weren't part of the fare you typically heard on TV or main­stream radio. Some of these tunes came from Broadway, but not always from the hit productions—many first appeared in obscure or failed shows, or revues by relatively unknown songwriters. Others made their debut in movies, or came from big bands, or were introduced by pop singers from outside the jazz world. A few—such as "Autumn Leaves" or "Desafinado"—originated far away from jazz's land of origin. And, of course, many were written by jazz musicians themselves, serving as part of the legacy of Miles Davis, Thelonious Monk, Duke Ellington, John Coltrane, Charlie Parker, and other seminal artists.

My own education in this music was happenstance and hard earned. Even­tually "fake books" appeared on the scene to clear up some of the mystery, but I never saw one of these (usually illegal) compilations until I was almost 20 years old. When I first encountered The Real Book—the underground collection of jazz lead sheets that began circulating in the 19705—even the table of contents served as a revelation to me. And, I'm sure, to others as well. Aspiring musicians today can hardly imagine how opaque the art form was just a few decades ago—no school I attended had a jazz program or even offered a single course on jazz. Most of the method books were worthless, and the peculiar culture of the art form tended to foster an aura of secrecy and competitiveness. Just knowing the names of the songs one needed to learn represented a major step forward; getting a lead sheet was an unwonted luxury.

A few years later, when I started teaching jazz piano students, I put together a brief guide to the repertoire, listing the songs my pupils needed to learn and the keys in which they were normally played—a rudimentary forerunner to the work you now have in your hands. Still later, as I began writing about jazz, I continued to study these same songs, but from a different perspective. I now tried to unravel the evolution of these compositions over time, understand how different jazz artists had played them, and what changes had taken place in performance practices.

Over the years, I often wished I had a handbook to this body of music, a single volume that would guide me through the jazz repertoire and point me in the direction of the classic recordings. A few books were helpful in my early education into the nuances of this body of music, especially Alec Wilder's Amer­ican Popular Song (1972), but even the best of these books invariably focused on only a small part of the repertoire—mainly Broadway and Tin Pan Alley songs— and dealt very little with this music as it related to jazz. The book I needed didn't exist when I was coming up, and still doesn't. I wanted to delve into these songs as sources of inspiration for great jazz performances—a perspective that often took one far a field from what the composer might have originally intended. I wanted a guide to these works as building blocks of the jazz art form, as a springboard to improvisation, as an invitation to creative reinterpretation.

This book aims to be that type of survey, the kind of overview of the standard repertoire that I wished someone had given me back in the day—a guide that would have helped me as a musician, as a critic, as a historian, and simply as a fan and lover of the jazz idiom. To some degree, this work represents the fru­ition of all my experiences with these great songs over a period of decades. The compositions that were once mysterious and even foreboding have now become familiar friends, the companions of countless hours, and I have relished the opportunity to write about these songs and discuss my favorite recordings. Cer­tainly those readers familiar with my other books will note a more personal tone here, a more informal approach—one that felt natural to me as I delved into a body of work that has become, by now, such a vital part of my life….”

The Jazz Standards is a resource guide and a browser's companion to more than 250 of the most popular Jazz songs and includes a listening guide to more than 2 000 recordings. For each of these tunes, Ted “… explains their role in the art form, compares different performance practices, and serves as a tour guide to the historic recordings that define how these works are played today.”

To give you the “flavor” of the book’s contents, here are three examples drawn from Ted’s annotations about songs reviewed in The Jazz Standards that have always been among my favorite to play on.

Airegin [Sonny Rollins, composer]:

“The song first came to prominence via the 1954 Miles Davis project Bags' Groove, an album that is far less well known than the trumpeter's work from later in the decade. The album presented several songs destined to become standards, including three of Rollins's best compositions: "Airegin," "Doxy," and "Oleo."

"Airegin" offers the most interesting conception of the batch, with an opening that hints at a minor blues at the outset, then morphs into a lop­sided 36-bar form—an oddity, with 20 bars elapsing before the repeat, but then running only 16 bars before coming back to the top of the form—all packed with plenty of harmonic movement to keep things interesting for the soloists.

The opening chords look back to "Opus V," a piece by J. J. Johnson that Rollins had recorded back in 1949, while the second eight bars are remi­niscent of the bridge to Billy Strayhorn's "Day Dream." But the whole as con­structed by Rollins is distinctive and the work ranks among the most intricate of the saxophonist's better known pieces. Certainly "Airegin" showed that in an era when other jazz players were expanding their audience by moving toward either a cool melodicism or an earthy funkiness, Rollins was intent on writing songs that would appeal to other horn players rather than patrons at the jukebox.

"Airegin" did just that. Two years later, Davis resurrected the song for another Prestige session, and this time featured John Coltrane, Rollins's leading rival as reigning tenor titan of modern jazz. Davis made a surprising choice to substitute an 8-bar vamp over an F minor chord for Rollins's orig­inal chord changes during the second A theme; by doing so, he anticipated the modal approach that would come to the fore in his music later in the decade. The tempo is faster here, and the mood much more aggressive, with Trane serving notice that he could play this composition just as well as the composer.

Other prominent soloists followed suit. Phil Woods recorded "Airegin" on his 1957 session with Gene Quill, and periodically returned to the song in var­ious settings over the years. Art Pepper tackled it on his Art Pepper Plus Eleven….

The song has kept its place in the standard repertoire …. For two invigorating [and more recent examples], check out the treatments by Chris Potter and Michael Brecker, both from 1993.”

Love for Sale [Cole Porter, composer and lyricist]:

“Many songs have overcome nonmusical obstacles in gaining acceptance and popularity, but few tunes faced a stiffer challenge than "Love for Sale." For decades, radio stations refused to allow its lyrics on the air. The song, which made its debut in the 1930 Broadway musical The New Yorkers, is sung from the perspective of a Prohibition-era prostitute, and composer Cole Porter did not mince his words in presenting "appetizing young love for sale." Charles Darnton, the reviewer for the Evening World, accused the song of being "in the worst possible taste." The Herald Tribune called it "filthy."

Porter, perhaps in a mood of defensiveness, claimed that it was his favorite among the songs he had composed. "I can't understand it," he griped. "You can write a novel about a harlot, paint a picture of a harlot, but you can't write a song about a harlot." Perhaps most revealing: audience outrage subsided after the Broadway production shifted the setting of the song to Harlem, in front of the Cotton Club, and assigned the number to African-American vocalist Elizabeth Welch instead of Kathryn Crawford, a white singer.

“… jazz artists seldom turned to "Love for Sale" until the late 1940s and early 1950s. Billie Holiday recorded a definitive version, and her persona as a troubled diva who, by her own account, was working as a prosti­tute when this song first came out, gave her a kind of credibility that few singers would want to match. Despite her advocacy, singers long avoided this song. During this period a jazz fan was more likely to encounter the Porter tune in instrumental arrangements by Erroll Garner, Sidney Bechet, Art Tatum, or even Charlie Parker, who recorded it as part of a Cole Porter tribute project for the Verve label shortly before his death. …

Cannonball Adderley recorded a well-known version for his 1958 project Somethin' Else—a rare date that found Miles Davis working as a sideman. …

By the 1960s, the taboo associated with "Love for Sale" had faded, and it became entrenched in the repertoires of jazz players. And for good reason. The opening theme is suitable for vamps of all stamps, from Latin to funky, and the release offers effective contrast both rhythmically and harmonically. A tension in tonality is evident from the outset: this song in a minor key nonetheless starts on a major chord, and seems ready to go in either direction during the course of Porter's extended form. A composition of this sort presents many possibilities, and can work either as a loose jam or bear the weight of elaborate arrangement.”

Poinciana [Nat Simon, composer, Buddy Bernier, lyricist]

“In the jazz world, “Poinciana” is inextricably linked with Ahmad Jamal, whose successful reading of the composition from 1958 helped keep his album Ahmad Jamal at the Pershing: But Not for Me on the Billboard chart for more than two years. But the song long predates Jamal's interpretation, and was composed back in 1936. Glenn Miller performed it in the late 1930s, Benny Carter enjoyed a modest hit with "Poinciana" in February 1944, and Bing Crosby did the same the following month. Carter's version is especially interesting, with its strange groove, half Latin and half-R&B—a stark contrast to the pop-oriented approach Miller had adopted in his treatment.

Around this time, a number of name bandleaders embraced "Poinciana" and it shows up on live broadcasts by Duke Ellington, Jimmy Dorsey, Jack Teagarden, and other jazz stars of the era. … Other recordings that predate Jamal's success include versions by Erroll Garner, Lennie Niehaus, Red Callender, and George Shearing.

But Jamal eclipsed these precedents with a vamp-based arrangement that superimposed the pianist's unhurried phrasing over an insistent, appealing beat—so appealing that his "Poinciana" earned repeated jukebox plays and dance-floor loyalty at a time when modern jazz had largely abandoned these public platforms for crossover success.

Even after Jamal redefined "Poinciana," the song enjoyed a surprisingly varied career. It has been popular with vocal groups, as demonstrated in recordings by the Four Freshman and the Manhattan Transfer. It has appeared on albums de­voted to musical exotica, getting the full Les Baxter "bring-the-Third-World-to-your-bachelor-pad" treatment, and has also been adapted for big bands, Afro-Cuban ensembles, and easy listening orchestras. But I am still under Jamal's sway, and feel "Poinciana" is best served by small combo versions that avoid the mood music baggage and let the song swing. For three striking examples, check out Shelly Manne's fast romp in straight 4/4 walking time from his 1959 performance at the Black Hawk, Sonny Rollins's hot work on soprano sax backed by George Cables's electric piano from 1972, and Keith Jarrett’ s convivial trio rendition from 1999.”

Aside from just devouring the book from cover-to-cover, as I did, you can approach The Jazz Standards: A Guide to the Repertoire in any number of ways.

You can select one tune, read what Ted has to say about it and then immerse yourself in the example recordings the he lists in the accompanying discography.

You can take Ted annotations for one or more of the Jazz standards and add your own thoughts and list of favorites versions to it.

Or you can create playlists from Ted’s track suggestions and upload them to you favorite media player

Perhaps you might wish to get together with some of your Jazz buddies at a Jazz standards party in which you read and discuss Ted’s take on a tune and play your preferred versions.

I doubt that you will ever come across a book on Jazz that will give you more pleasurable reading while, at the same time, affording you an such interactive platform in which to experience its contents.

However, you approach it, The Jazz Standards: A Guide to the Repertoire is sure to become a constant companion to your Jazz listening.

Ted has his own website and you can find out more about him by visiting it via this link.

The nice folks at The Oxford University Press who are responsible for publishing the book can be reached here.

For those of you who may have missed it’s first posting of the JazzProfiles editorial staff’s Conversation with Ted Gioia About Jazz, we have brought it up again in the blog’s sidebar [left-hand or columnar side of the blog].

The Brussels Jazz Orchestra – Meeting Colours

© -Steven Cerra, copyright protected; all rights reserved.

“The music on this record is absolutely outstanding, both in terms of artistic content and in superior form of presentation: within the framework of Bert Joris’ beautiful big band arrangements.

As for the many new compositions included in this album, they represent Philip Catherine’s most recent and successful attempt to develop a new thematic composition language, without sacrificing his well-established and very personal form of musical expression both in writing and on the guitar.

Each new piece has a peculiar and strong musical personality. …

The Brussels Jazz Orchestra’s sound and performance are impeccable and always great and it is incredible how each arrangement, with the perfectly balanced dynamics of this great big band, enhances the beautiful melodies of the compositions. …”

- Adriano Pateri

The editorial staff at JazzProfiles plans to have a lot more to say about the Brussels Jazz Orchestra [BJO] in a future profile [perhaps, two] about this talented, musical aggregation.

Until then, you can sample the music of the BJO on the audio track to the following video tribute to the photography of the late, Helmut Newton which features his intriguingly beautiful portraits of many of the world’s famous actresses.

The tune is entitled On the Ground, one of twelve [12] composed by Belgian guitarist Philip Catherine for his meeting with the BJO entitled Meeting Colours, a compact disc that was recorded and released in 2005 on Dreyfus Jazz [FDM36675-2].

Trumpeter Bert Joris, one of the founders of the BJO, arranged all of Philip’s tunes for the band.

On the Ground is a medium tempo tune that “cooks,” or shall we say, “slow burns,” from beginning to end.

The melody is initially stated with Philip’s guitar voiced in unison with the trombones and blended in places with muted trumpets.

Philip’s solo begins at 1:42 minutes.

Be sure to checkout the shout chorus that Bert creates starting at 3:03 minutes with Philip’s guitar phrased an octave higher, but again, in unison with the band, especially the closing portion with the sax section from 3:53 – 4:23 minutes.

Peter Bernstein Plays Monk

© -Steven Cerra, copyright protected; all rights reserved.

“I’ve heard other guitarists play Monk and really stress the oddness and the angularity and to a degree I like what Peter did because its very counter to how most people would approach the [repertoire].

- Greg Scholl, president and chief executive of Xanadu/The Orchard

“To his credit, the translation goes almost unnoticed. What sticks out instead is Bernstein’s soulful affinity to the material and the dapper chatter of his partners, Doug Weiss on bass and Bill Stewart on drums.”

- AllAboutJazz website publicity department

“The way Monk approaches basic harmony is fascinating. He could be playing something within a chord with his right hand and strike one note with his left hand that was right in the middle of that chord. It’s the constant surprises.”

-Peter Bernstein, Jazz guitarist

You don’t often hear Monk’s music played on guitar.

One would suspect that this is primarily because Monk’s songs are physically scaled for the piano and its sharp intervals and tangled clusters don’t fall as naturally on a guitar’s fret board.

On the other hand, as guitarist Peter Bernstein observed: “There lots of space in Monk’s music and you don’t have to fill up all the space. And in his music the rhythmic element is already there – it’s already swinging.”

So it would seem that for a Jazz guitarist to play Monk’s music, one would have to complement the affinities while at the same time finding ways around the challenges it represents to the guitar.

Commenting about his Monk [Xanadu/The Orchard] CD, guitarist Peter Bernstein further explained to Eric Fine in his April 2009 JazzTimes article on Peter:

“‘Monk’s music is very sophisticated music and also very rooted and it has great strength in its simplicity. When I got into it, I found that certain voicings did lay on the guitar because of the spacing. It’s really not the sound of the piano … it’s the sound of Monk playing the piano.’

Even so, Bernstein struggled at times to translate the music to the guitar because of the instrument’s technical limitations.

‘I’ve always been frustrated as a guitar player harmonically,’ he said, ‘because you can’t play all the notes like a piano player can. The range is smaller, and it’s harder to play closer voicings on the guitar because you have to stretch between strings.'”

George Kantzer in his review for AllAboutJazz.com offered these thoughts about Peter’s accomplishments on his Monk CD:

“Thelonious Monk  never employed or recorded with a guitarist (save early bootlegged jam sessions with Charlie Christian and a big band with Howard Roberts) and his piano playing and arranging can hardly be called guitar-like. Hearing guitar play Monk's music is like hearing an orchestral version of a Wagner opera aria; it reveals a wholly different aspect of the music. …

And Bernstein is a graceful guitarist who polishes the rough pianistic edges Monk gouged into his tunes."

Summing it up, Bernstein said: “Monk has his own musical universe. For me he was the sound of New York – like home.”

The following video which was developed in conjunction with the ace graphics team at CerraJazz LTD and StudioCerra Productions offers a sampling of Bernstein Plays Monk on its audio track which is comprised of Peter performing Monk’s Brilliant Corners along with Doug Weiss on bass and Bill Stewart on drums.

Lester Young on Clarinet 1938-39

Kate McGarry – “Smoking My Sad Cigarette”

© -Steven Cerra, copyright protected; all rights reserved.

 “The positive and lightly quavering sound of Kate McGarry’s voice doesn’t send up any flares identifying her as a Jazz singer. But she certainly deserves that distinction ….”

- Nat Chinen, The New York Times

"...evocative lyricism, superb control and ample vocal and emotive range. Her voice would be iconic in any genre."

- Gary Fukushima – L.A. Weekly

“She is developing into one of the most dependable and refreshing singers in jazz"

- Bob Karlovits, The Pittsburgh Tribune

Someone should tell vocalists today—at least the ones we see on those TV talent hunts—that singing doesn't have to be some exercise in screaming self-annihilation, that beauty and style is more about composure and command. You could tell them, or you can hip them to … Kate McGarry.

- Mark Corroto, Allaboutjazz

If you are not familiar with Kate McGarry’s brilliant Jazz vocalizations, her singing on the following video will serve as a proper introduction.

On it, Kate sings Smoking My Sad Cigarette which was arranged by Gil Evans in 1957 and has never been previously recorded. She is joined by The Gil Evans Centennial Project Orchestra under the direction of Ryan Truesdell.

You can find out more about Kate and her forthcoming appearances on her website: http://www.katemcgarry.com/

A Chuckle from Clark As Told By Crow

© -Steven Cerra, copyright protected; all rights reserved.

One of the great things about hanging out with Jazz musicians is that you’re never far from a laugh.

Whether it’s a play-on-words in a song title, a nickname, or the telling of a yarn, Jazz musicians love a good chortle.

Playing Jazz takes a lot of concentration, and humor is a great way to relieve the pressure that builds up during a performance, a recording date or even a rehearsal, especially when reading through new music.

Whether you are a Jazz musician or a fan of the music, if you like the transformational feeling that laughter brings on, you can’t do better than a perusal of the funny stories in Bill Crow’s Jazz Anecdotes [New York: Oxford University Press, 1990].

Here’s an example.

© -Bill Crow, copyright protected; all rights reserved.

“Not having [trumpeter] Clark Terry tell this one robs it of some of its charm. You have to imagine the devilish look in Clark’s eye as he sings each song!

A guy walked into a pet store looking for a Christmas gift for his wife. The storekeeper said he knew exactly what would please her and took a little bird out of a cage. "This is Chet," he said, "and Chet can sing Christmas carols." Seeing the look of disbelief on the customer's face, he proceeded to demonstrate.

"He needs warming up," he said. "Lend me your cigarette lighter."

The man handed over his lighter, and the storekeeper raised Chet's left wing and waved the flame lightly under it. Immediately, Chet sang "Oh Come, All Ye Faithful."

"That's fantastic!" said the man.

"And listen to this," said the storekeeper, warming Chet's other wing. Chet sang, "O Little Town of Bethlehem."

"Wrap him up!" said the man. "I'll take him!"

When he got home, he greeted his wife:

"Honey, I can't wait until Christmas to show you what I got you. This is fantastic."

He unwrapped Chet's cage and showed the bird to his wife.

"Now, watch this."

He raised Chet's left wing and held him over a Christmas candle that was burning on the mantlepiece. Chet immediately began to sing, "Silent Night." The wife was delighted.

"And that's not all, listen to this!" As Chet's right wing was warmed over the flame, he sang, "Joy to the World."

"Let me try it," cried the wife, seizing the bird. In her eagerness, she held Chet a little too close to the flame. Chet began to sing passionately, "Chet's nuts roasting on an open fire!""

Blue

Medium tempo blues practically play themselves especially when the rhythm section just lays it down and stays out of the way, which is exactly what bassist Peter Washington and drummer Joe Farnsworth do on the audio track to the following video. The tune is entitled Systems Blue. Trombonist Steve Davis wrote it and performs on it along with Mike DiRubbo on alto saxophone, David Hazeltine on piano and, of course, Peter and Joe.

Jazz musicians like to open the first set of club dates or concerts with a medium tempo blues.  The easy tempo, simplified song structure [usually 12 bars which repeats once] and the groove generated all serve to get the juices flowing.


Smiles all round after listening to "the kids" making it happen on this one.


Jazz is in good hands.


Click on the direction arrows in the lower right hand corner to play the video at full screen and, should they appear, ads can be eliminated by clicking on the "X."

Memorializing Paul Desmond

© -Steven Cerra, copyright protected; all rights reserved.

Alto saxophonist Paul Desmond died on Memorial Day, 1977.

On this Memorial Day weekend, the editorial staff at JazzProfiles thought it might be appropriate to commemorate the 35^th anniversary of Paul’s passing with the following videos that feature his superbly unique alto playing in different musical contexts.

To ours ears, Paul’s sound is associated with everything that we find beautiful in the music.  His was a masterful command of the alto saxophone and his conception took the instrument to new heights, both figuratively and literally.

Paul’s music was like a good book: you could put it down and pick it up again anytime the mood suited you or you could stay up all night reading it. It was full of melodic “stories,” humor, and great depth of feeling.

Listening to Paul play was always a satisfying experience; and like the reading of that good book, one generally came away wanting more.

Stardust – Paul with pianist Dave Brubeck, bassist Ron Crotty and drummer Joe Dodge.

You Go To My Head – Paul with Don Elliott on trumpet and mellophonium, Norman Bates on bass and Joe Dodge on drums.

Chorale – Paul with Dave van Kriedt on tenor saxophone, Dave Brubeck on piano, Norman Bates on bass and Joe Morello on drums.

I’ve Got You Under My Skin – Paul with Jim Hall on guitar, Milt Hinton on bass, Robert Thomas on drums and strings and horns arranged by Bob Prince. [Click on the “X” to close out of the ads when these appear on the video].

Jazz Orchestra of the Concertgebouw - Henk Meutgeert/Riffs n Rhythms

It's great when the TV director knows the music and can focus on what's going on now and put cameras in positions to catch what's coming up next.

Jazz Orchestra of the Concertgebouw

From a concert performed by the orchestra on April 28, 2011 at The Bimhuis in Amsterdam, the composition is entitled Black, Whiter and Brown and features Peter Beets on piano, Joris Roelofs on bass clarinet, and Jan van Duikeren on trumpet with Martijn Vink booting things along in the drum chair.

Jimmy Giuffre and Scintilla Revisited

© -Steven Cerra, copyright protected; all rights reserved.

“It’s just one way and every man must go his own way.”

- Jimmy Giuffre, Down Beat, November 30, 1955

“Jimmy is an innovator and much has been written about his contributions to clarinet playing style and to Jazz composition, but this is secondary. It is the basic quality of his music, with its uncontrived simplicity and glowing inner feeling that sets Jimmy apart.”

- Gary Kramer, liner notes to The Jimmy Giuffre 3 [Atlantic 1254]

“the spirit of Jazz suffuses all of these performances …and important step in the long Giuffre musical odyssey …  they are simply marvelous, full of life brimming with ideas, and chock-full of rich, rewarding, imaginative writing and playing.”

- Peter Keepnews, liner notes to the PAUSA: Jazz Origins reissue of Giuffre’s 1950 Capitol LPs

“When one listens to Giuffre's music for what it is—and not for what one thinks it should be—the beauties of this rich and strange musical land­scape begin to emerge. Or rather, landscapes. For Giuffre never found a single musical Garden of Eden, a definitive style or format he could stay in for long. Like his more celebrated contemporary Miles Davis, Giuffre remains a musical chameleon, a distinctive stylist who constantly feels compelled to change his sonic setting.”

- Ted Gioia, West Coast Jazz: Modern Jazz in California, 1945-1969 [p.227]

Almost forty years after I first heard it, I tracked down Jimmy Giuffre and wrote him a letter about how much I enjoyed the music on his Capitol LP – Tangents in Jazz [T-634].

Jimmy was living in Massachusetts and I in San Francisco at the time. Because of  health issues, his wife Juanita helped compose his response. Juanita, a professional photographer, also kindly enclosed a portrait of Jimmy which he had autographed,

In my letter to him, I explained that I had been particularly taken with the four relatively short pieces on the Tangents in Jazz LP entitled Scintilla I-IV.

On the album, the four-parts of Scintilla are sequenced: Scintilla II, Scintilla I, Scintilla IV and Scintilla III.

On a lark, I had decided to re-track these four Scintilla parts and record them in consecutive, numeric sequence.

I had included a copy of a tape recording with the re-sequenced Scintilla I-IV along with my letter to Jimmy.

In his reply, Jimmy shared that this was the first time that he had heard this music in its original order since he wrote and recorded it in June, 1955!

He also explained that although Will McFarland’s liner notes to the LP indicate the four Scintilla pieces being played in numerical order, somehow when the album was being prepared for pressing, it was sequenced according to the Master numbers assigned to each track when they were recorded on June 6,7,10, 1955.

Interestingly, when Mosaic Records reissued these recordings as CDs & LPs as part of their The Complete Capitol and Atlantic Recordings of Jimmy Giuffre [Mosaic MD6-176], Mosaic also used the master track sequence instead of grouping the four Scintilla tracks as a consecutive, inter-connected musical “suite.”

The audio track in a video tribute to Jimmy with the four-part Scintilla suite in the original sequence  has been taken down due to copyright issues. But I was able to find a YouTube of the entire album with the original sequence interspersed in the correct sequence between other tracks on the Tangents in Jazz album. 

The video is followed by Jimmy’s “Questions and Answers” about the music on the album which form the original LP’s liner notes, excerpts from Will McFarland’s descriptions of Scintilla I-IV and a postscript on the album by Ted Gioia.

As an aside, I got to know Artie Anton, the drummer on these tracks, quite well as he was for many years a drum shop proprietor and drum teacher in near-by North Hollywood, CA. He always considered his playing on Jimmy’s 1950s Capitol recordings as “one of my most enjoyable times in music.” He would also declare to anyone who would spare him the time to listen to them that his “… playing on these cuts proves that the drums are a musical instrument [big smile – His]!.”

The puckish trumpet work is provided by the inimitable Jack Sheldon; also prominent on all these performance is the robust bass tone of Ralph Pena who sadly left us much-too-quickly at age 42 because of his involvement in a fatal car accident in Mexico.

“A top-level soloist and writer makes his most daring move to date: Jimmy Giuffre sets forth a bold new form for improvised music.

The music is revolutionary; yet its advent was a foreseeable, logical step in jazz maturation. Giuffre's new concept is con­troversial ; its evidence here is a must for serious jazz-followers, yet the range of its appeal is so unpredictable that its cham­pions could include bouncing dilettantes, hard-shell tradition­alists, even jazz-apathists.

Specifically, this music puts on view a quartet that functions without an audible beat — no walking bass, no riding cymbal; yet thanks to Giuffre's indomitable folksiness, this flouting of tradition results in jazz that out-thumps the music of most of his heavy-handed neighbors.

Jimmy answers some leading questions...

Q What is this music?

A Jazz, with a non-pulsating beat. The beat is implicit but not explicit; in other words, acknowledged but unsounded. The two horns are the dominant but not domineering voices. The bass usually functions somewhat like a baritone sax. The drums play an important but non-conflicting role.

Q Why abandon the sounded beat?

A For clarity and freedom. I've come to feel increasingly in­hibited and frustrated by the insistent pounding of the rhythm section. With it, it's impossible for the listener or the soloist to hear the horn's true sound, I've come to believe, or fully concentrate on the solo line. An imbalance of ad­vances has moved the rhythm from a supporting to a com­petitive role.

Q But isn't the sounded beat an integral part of jazz?

A The sounded beat once made playing easier, but now it's become confining. And to the degree that the beat was there to guide dancers, it is, of course, no longer necessary to con­cert jazz. I think the essence of jazz is in the phrasing and notes, and these needn't change when the beat is silent. Since the beat is implicit, this music retains traditional feel­ing; not having it explicit allows freer thinking.

Q Hasn't this been done before, particularly by you?

A Several of today's writers have dropped all sounded beat for contrast, but never for an entire work. I've written works completely lacking sounded beat, but the difference between this music and all previous work is the use of the drums. My previous attempts at this approach, while achiev­ing some of the clarity I sought, were always vaguely un­satisfactory to me until I realized the trouble: the drums, by their nature, cannot carry a simultaneous or overlapping line; when the drum is struck, any other note is obliterated, and attention is torn away from any other line. In this music, the drums' lines are integrated but isolated.

Q How is it possible to ensure this isolation during solos, when tacit is usually unpredictable?

A By writing rests in the ad lib parts, allowing the drums to fill. I strive to write the rests at natural phrase endings, holding restriction to a minimum.

Q But isn't there generally more restriction — don't the solo­ists have a good deal less freedom than before?

A In a sense, they have more freedom. No longer fed a stream of chords, or fighting a pounding beat, they are free to get a more natural sound out of their horns, and try for all sorts of new effects.

Q Didn't you have to select your musicians with extra care?

A Yes, I discussed my plans at length with each of them to make sure they were completely attuned to the project. Artie Anton, the drummer, has had wide band experience; from the beginning he was sympathetic to my new ideas. He is a skilled reader, as is Ralph Pena, a bassist with great sound, jazz feeling and a classical background, who has worked with many big bands and Stan Getz. Pena has re­corded previously with me, as has Jack Sheldon, an ex-Lighthouse trumpeter who has also recorded under his own name. Sheldon is a major soloist, and fits perfectly into my conception of the quartet.

Q This music is such a sharp departure; do you have any mis­givings about making the leap?

A This music is no novelty; it's the result of almost a decade of formal study, the culmination of all my thinking, writing and blowing. To me, it seems like sheer insanity to continue to play against that hammering beat. Classical music, once the rhythm is stated, assumed the freedom to move un­accompanied, and if jazz is going to continue to grow, it needs this same freedom.

Q New styles usually provoke extreme reaction; what sort of general judgment do you hope for?

A Early works in a new style necessarily grope; each new tune helps to expand and define the form; this album is not final. All I really ask for this music is an isolated judgment —for what it is, rather than for what it isn't. It isn't an attempt to compete with, or supplant other forms; I knew when I took the step that I must sacrifice a large segment of the usual jazz audience. It is, I think, jazz, and a swinging music, but those are ambiguous terms. Does it excite in­terest? Is it pleasurable? Does the interest hold up? These are the real questions.

Q You've been considered one of the great blowers with the very sort of rhythm you now flee; are you abandoning it for good?

A As a working musician, I must continue to play other music until the quartet works more steadily, and there are prob­lems — such as the extreme awkwardness of any turnover in personnel. I still enjoy playing with a stomping rhythm section occasionally, but my heart lies here; I believe in this music.

Will McFarland comments on the four Scintilla selections ...

Scintilla One — This bright brief opener, mostly ensemble work, serves both as an introduction to the album and as a basis for three subsequent sparkling variations. There is no improvisa­tion or development as yet, but extensions of the form are heard.

Scintilla Two — The ensemble plays the first eight bars of Scintilla One to introduce a development of that theme — minus extensions. This fast, tough, earnest variation is used as a basis for blowing; it's Giuffre's tenor all the way, very free.

Scintilla Three — Another variation on the root Scintilla, lighter and cute this time, stars the trumpet. Jack Sheldon's depth in running ideas is given plenty of leeway, and the clarinet comments from the middle-ground, half written, half spontaneous.

Scintilla Four — Climaxing the album, Giuffre unveils a stir­ring development and finale: the drums are fingered; there is imitation; all four players take a final four; all previous Scintilla material is recapitulated and used; a couple of canons, and the concert closes.

– Ted Gioia,  West Coast Jazz: Modern Jazz in California, 1945-1969 [pp. 235-36, paragraphing modified]

“Despite Giuffre's rhetoric, the pieces on Tangents in Jazz do swing. In many ways the listener is even more drawn to the rhythmic element of the music, by the way it moves from instrument to instrument, instead of resting solely with the "rhythm" section. On Tangents Giuffre was again joined by Pena, Sheldon, and Anton, and though none of them stretches out at length during the course of the album, each is very much put in the spotlight as Giuffre employs a wide range of compositional de­vices: call-and-response figures, two- and three-part counterpoint, unison and harmony lines, canonic devices. These take the place of solos in Giuffre's new conception.

As a filmmaker conveys a sense of momentum through a sequence of rapidly shifting camera angles, Giuffre's constant movement from one musical device to another achieves a similar effect. Part of the achievement of Tangents in Jazz is that, despite the leader's stated disre­gard for a "propulsive" beat, these pieces are constantly propelled, if not by a metronomic beat, certainly by Giuffre's constant changes in compo­sitional focus. If anything, Giuffre overcompensates on Tangents, avoiding lengthy solos and shifting musical gears with abandon. The result is a highly concentrated music—which may be pleasing to the listener, but also makes severe demands on the attention.”