"George Russell: The Story of an American Composer " by Duncan Heining

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

“Cycles and cycles within cycles are the meat of the matter. One could argue that jazz is a music based on cyclical motion, a strictly defined chorus, usually twelve or thirty‐two measures, repeated until a musical statement has been made. Cycles are fomented by radical evolutionary movements, each of which contains the seeds of its own destruction. One example: during the ferment of jazz activity in the '40s, when modern jazz, or bebop, was born, the intoxicating harmonic ingenuity of Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie blinded sympathetic fans from recognizing the anti‐harmonic implications of George Russell's modal composition, Cubana Be/Cubana Bop written for Gillespie's orchestra. In a day when Thelonious Monk's clattering minor seconds and rhythmic displacements were dismissed as the fumblings of a charlatan, Russell's work was appreciated as something of a sui generis novelty. 

Russell codified the modal approach to harmony (using scales instead of chords) in a theoretical treatise that he says was inspired by a casual remark the eighteen‐year‐old Miles Davis made to him in 1944: “Miles said that he wanted to learn all the changes and I reasoned that he might try to find the closest scale for every chord.’ His concept, published as the Lydian Chromatic Concept of Tonal Organization, is based on a perfect cycle of fifths generated by the Lydian mode, which sounds more complicated than it is. Russell was exploring relationships between chords and scales that would foster a fresh approach to harmony. Davis popularized those liberating ideas in recordings like Kind of Blue, undermining the entire harmonic foundation of bop that had inspired him and Russell in the first place.” 

- Gary Giddins, Visions of Jazz: The First Century

“However important Russell's theories are, they are even now not securely understood. Sometimes falsely identified with the original Greek Lydian mode, The Lydian Chromatic Concept is not the same at all. In diatonic terms, it represents the progression F to F on the piano's white keys; it also confronts the diabolic tritone, the diabolus in musica, which had haunted Western composers from Bach to Beethoven. Russell's conception assimilated modal writing to the extreme chromaticism of modern music. By converting chords into scales and overlaying one scale on another, it allowed improvisers to work in the hard‐to‐define area between non‐tonality and polytonality. Like all great theoreticians, Russell worked analytically rather than synthetically, basing his ideas on how jazz actually was, not on how it could be made to conform with traditional principles of Western harmony. Working from within jazz's often tacit organizational principles, Russell's fundamental concern was the relationship between formal scoring and improvisation, giving the first the freedom of the second and, freeing the second from being literally esoteric, 'outside' some supposed norm.

- Richard Cook and Brian Morton, The Penguin Guide to Jazz on CD, 6th Ed.:

“Simply, Russell examined the entire harmonic resources of Western music, saw and systematized an entirely fresh set of relationships that had always been present within the traditional framework and which, as it were, only awaited discovery. Far from being a constricting set of regulations, Russell's precepts made available resources whose full possibilities, in the composer John Benson Brooks's words, ‘may take as much as a century to work out’. And according to Art Farmer, trumpeter on many of these discs, the Lydian Concept ‘opens the doors to countless means of melodic expression. 

It also dispels many of the don'ts and can'ts that, to various degrees, have been imposed on the improviser through the study of traditional harmony.’ Of course, it is necessary to remember Schoenberg's words, ‘ideas can only be honored by one who has some of his own.’ [emphasis, mine] That is to say Russell offers no magic formula to transform mediocre soloists into good ones. But the gifted improviser is not the only one to benefit. These investigations led Russell to produce music that has strong individuality yet which is very subtle, that teems with invention but is absolutely consistent stylistically. And in the sheer variety of his thematic materials he surpasses all Jazz composers except Duke Ellington.”

- Max Harrison, Jazz Retrospect

“In 1953 he completed his Lydian Concept of Tonal Organization. The system is built on what he calls pan‐tonality, bypassing the atonal ground covered by modern classical composers and making great use of chromaticism. Russell explains that pan‐tonality allows the writer and the improviser to retain the scale‐based nature of the folk music in which jazz has its roots, yet have the freedom of being in a number of tonalities at once. Hence, pan‐tonality.”

- Doug Ramsey, Jazz Matters

“... [My conversations with George] provided a salutary lesson about the process and nature of shaping a biography. It could be a flattering process but also a threatening one. It could evoke positive memories and experiences but also equally negative ones half-repressed or happily consigned to oblivion. And it raised the question: Who owns a life? The subject? The biographer? The fans and other readers?

The story of someone in Russell's position extends beyond him. He cannot own it, or the manner of its telling, entirely. What our lives say about us, they also say about others and their potential. They talk about forces and themes much greater than us. Those themes are universal and cannot be owned by the subject of a biography.

I understood Russell's discomfort, both in terms of an understandable fear about what might be said about him and in terms of a feeling that he had somehow lost control of his own story. Someone else was walking around in his life and in his memories. He had not lost control of the themes that dominated his life or the external forces that might have shaped it; these were never under his control. Yet it was important to be sensitive to his discomfiture, to respect his feelings, and to maintain his confidence, in both senses.”

- Duncan Heining, George Russell: The Story of an American Composer

Here’s another in the series of fine books about Jazz from the publishers at Rowman and Littlefield. You can locate a complete listing of currently available titles in their Studies in Jazz series via this link. 

While it has to do with a Jazz composer-arranger, George Russell: The Story of an American Composer, Duncan Heining’s biography is listed under the publisher’s series on African American Cultural History and Heritage.

After reading it, I suppose it more properly fits into both of these categories.

Beyond classification, what is important about this well-researched and well-written book is the detailed analysis and explanation it affords of how George’s seminal The Lydian Chromatic Concept of Tonal Organization came to be and how this Concept “... influenced the development of jazz and many of its leading practitioners.”

Duncan explains how he approached his biography of George and why Russell’s achievements are significant in the evolution of Jazz in these excerpts from his Preface and First Chapter.

PREFACE

“George Russell is a unique figure in jazz. He is a theoretician, a composer of note, a working musician, and an educator. Long before his first record, The George Russell Smalltet—Jazz Workshop (1956), he had begun his life's work developing the Lydian Chromatic Concept of Tonal Organisation. One of a rare breed of thinker-musicians, he has had — through his ideas and music  —a remarkable influence on the development of jazz after 1950. From his early composition with Dizzy Gillespie of "Cubano-Be, Cubano-Bop," through the changes wrought by modal jazz as a consequence of his ideas, to his impact on the Scandinavian and European scenes, his achievements are among the most outstanding in the music.

His life story weaves its way through contemporary jazz intersecting with the lives of many of its most colorful characters. Charlie "Bird" Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, Miles Davis, John Coltrane, Bill Evans, Gerry Mulligan, John Lewis, Gil Evans, Charlie Mingus, and Carla Bley were not just Russell's contemporaries. They were his peers, his colleagues, and his friends. He touched their lives and music and, in turn, was encouraged by them.

This is a tale of a potential realized despite obstacles of birth, discrimination, ill health, poverty, and neglect. Russell's early life and career were acted out against the dramatic landscape of America's racial divide. It is an important part of American mythology that the United States is the land of opportunity — where, if you have it in you, you can and will succeed. Seen from certain angles, Russell's life would seem to bear this out. The truth is always more complex, however.

Though his struggle has often been more concerned with developing the Lydian Concept than with seeking recognition for his music, his success has come despite the American Dream rather than because of it. An African American child born in an inner city experiences a very different world from a WASP born with a trust fund in place, let alone the scion of an oil dynasty. To quote the novelist Ross MacDonald, "In a puritanical society, the poor and fatherless, suffering the quiet punishments of despair, may feel themselves permanently and justifiably damned for crimes they can't remember having committed."

From his adoption by Bessie and Joseph Russell, he was confronted by racism in his native Cincinnati and beyond. Some writers have found the whole circumstances of his birth and adoption "mysterious," and the story Russell was told about his origins has achieved an almost mythic significance in reference to his work. As will be seen, most interesting is what Russell made of his life and talents and where these came from in fact, rather than in fantasy.

By his twenties and despite suffering from two bouts of tuberculosis, he had established himself in New York within the core of the Jazz Bloomsbury [origin: an inner circle of literary innovators who lived and worked in this West End district of London] that gathered in Gil Evans's apartment on West 55th Street. It was in the course of a now-famous conversation with Miles Davis that the idea of an overarching musical concept was born. Asked what his musical aims were, Davis replied, "Learning all the changes." Knowing Davis knew the changes already, Russell realized he meant something else. "I felt that he was looking for a new way. Maybe a way that was more of a chord scale unity that would give him time so he didn't have to play complex changes but could have a lingering melody that stretched over a good period of time." And so a lifelong study began that would lead Russell to question the musical and philosophical basis of Western music and propose instead a system based on the relationships between scales and chords. The theory would lead jazz into modal playing and anticipated the jazz-rock of the sixties and seventies.

"Cubano-Be, Cubano-Bop," written in 1947 for Dizzy Gillespie and His Orchestra, fused Afro-Cuban rhythms with jazz. Generally accepted as the first avowedly modal piece in jazz, it was followed by "A Bird in Igor's Yard," written for Buddy DeFranco and His Orchestra. Considered by the record company to be far ahead of its time, the track wasn't released until 1970! Russell wrote and arranged for Earl Hines, Charlie Ventura, Artie Shaw, Claude Thornhill, and singer Lucy Reed and wrote for Teddy Charles, Hal McKusick, and Lee Konitz. But the Concept proved a demanding mistress. In fact, although he published his thesis in 1953, it wasn't until 1956 that Russell made his first record, Jazz Workshop, an astonishing album full of dense textures and rhythms.

Working on and refining his Lydian Concept, Russell put the principles of his theory into practice with his own music. A series of groundbreaking recordings followed that included Jazz in the Space Age, New York, N.Y., and six albums for the Riverside label, including the brilliant Ezz-thetics with Eric Dolphy. By then his Lydian Concept was acknowledged for its impact on the work of such seminal figures in jazz as Miles Davis, John Coltrane, and Bill Evans. Davis had by then released Kind of Blue and Coltrane was forging his own take on modality. The direction Russell had initiated had become preeminent in modern jazz.

By 1965 Russell had become increasingly alienated by both the aggressively political stance of the Free Jazz movement and by America's increasing involvement in Southeast Asia. Russell accepted an invitation to work in Sweden, and his influence there proved decisive for a new generation of musicians in Scandinavia and beyond, including Jon Christensen, Palle Mikkelborg, Terje Rypdal, Arild Andersen, and a very young Jan Garbarek. He also had a child by a Swedish woman, but despite his success in northern Europe he could not settle.

In 1969 Russell took up composer Gunther Schuller's offer to teach in the Jazz Department of the New England Conservatory. Since then, he has taught some of the most able and searching musicians. Players like Don Byron, Ricky Ford, and John Medeski have studied the Concept, and others, like Randy and Michael Brecker, studied Russell's ideas through his former student and musical colleague, Dave Baker. He has worked and recorded with his Living Time Orchestra for Blue Note, Soul Note, and Label Bleu, and has toured North America, Japan, and Europe. In some ways, he is more feted abroad than at home, but any disregard Stateside has not stood in the way of both Guggenheim and MacArthur fellowships. George Russell has written both short and extended works for jazz orchestras and groups. He has written ballets and choral works and his influence continues to be felt.

This biography will explain why George Russell is perhaps less well known and less highly regarded than his achievements deserve. It will examine a career that has been sustained over seven decades without any loss of artistic integrity and without the rewards sometimes received by lesser talents. So where does he belong in the jazz firmament? This biography hopes to restore some balance and will weigh Russell's gifts and contributions to jazz. And perhaps at the end, readers will agree that George Russell has earned his place in the pantheon.

CHAPTER ONE “From Such Beginnings…”

“George Russell was clearly upset. We were at Stone Mill in the Berkshires, where Jimmy and Juanita Giuffre live. Juanita had been married to George back in the fifties, and I was interviewing her for the biography I was writing on him. They had remained friends, and Alice and George Russell were staying with the Giuffres that weekend. Jimmy suffers from Parkinson's disease, so I was unable to talk to him, but I was looking forward to speaking with Juanita.

As I waited for Juanita to finish attending to Jimmy, Russell started talking about something that had happened in Cincinnati, when he was a young man just starting out as a professional musician. He'd told me the story before — and that was the problem. Now he did not want it in the book. It concerned a young white bassist whom Russell and his mother had befriended and who was severely beaten one night by two white men. By their dress — dark suits, white shirts, dark ties, and fedoras — and attitude, it seemed clear who and what these men were. Russell was convinced they were police officers. Sixty years later he was expressing his fears about how white citizens and officials in Cincinnati might react if they read this accusation.

For me, the story was pivotal in Russell's life. Not only did it indicate the cost for someone such as him of growing up as an African American in a racist society, it also revealed what it meant for him as an individual, as someone who was an unusually sensitive human being. But more than that, it explained how he finally came to leave the Midwest and head for New York. We talked and eventually reached what seemed a mutually acceptable compromise.

Reflecting later, I wondered what had disturbed Russell so much. I had just returned from Cincinnati bringing pictures from his life back in the Midwest. Photos from childhood taken at a school where he had been bitterly unhappy, including some of a childhood friend who had been in the same tuberculosis ward as he and who later died of the illness. A report card from a school where he had experienced discrimination and felt constantly worthless and undermined. These were all reminders of difficult times and of a place he had chosen to escape as soon as he could. It was not surprising that the issue Russell picked to express his discomfort concerned events that led to his leaving home. Maybe he was expressing the fear of being dragged back there in some way. As Alice Russell would later say when she and I talked about this, "George doesn't like to look back. He likes to go forward. He's happy to reminisce, but that's different. He just doesn't like to dwell on things that for him lie in the past."

The conversation provided a salutary lesson about the process and nature of shaping a biography. It could be a flattering process but also a threatening one. It could evoke positive memories and experiences but also equally negative ones half-repressed or happily consigned to oblivion. And it raised the question: Who owns a life? The subject? The biographer? The fans and other readers?

The story of someone in Russell's position extends beyond him. He cannot own it, or the manner of its telling, entirely. What our lives say about us, they also say about others and their potential. They talk about forces and themes much greater than us. Those themes are universal and cannot be owned by the subject of a biography.

I understood Russell's discomfort, both in terms of an understandable fear about what might be said about him and in terms of a feeling that he had somehow lost control of his own story. Someone else was walking around in his life and in his memories. He had not lost control of the themes that dominated his life or the external forces that might have shaped it; these were never under his control. Yet it was important to be sensitive to his discomfiture, to respect his feelings, and to maintain his confidence, in both senses.

For Russell, the Lydian Chromatic Concept of Tonal Organization had to be central to the book. That, rather than half-forgotten events from his past, was ultimately what mattered. To exclude it would be like talking about Einstein without relativity or Darwin without evolution or Freud without the unconscious. And as with Freud, Darwin, and Einstein, Russell did not invent — he discovered — and like them he used his discovery to explain to us how relationships within his area of study were different from how we had understood them previously. Like them, his ideas are not without controversy and remain the subject of debate. But ideas are advanced by discussion and disagreement only as long as the dialogue remains open.

This book is therefore concerned with how ideas are developed, disseminated, challenged, and debated. It is about influence, about the way that new ways of seeing or thinking often arise in special contexts where particular personal, creative, and professional relationships are present. Russell's thinking evolved through the complex interaction of his life and personality, his relationships, his environment, and wider social, economic, and cultural forces. In his case one of those wider forces is racism, both in its systematic, political sense and at the very personal level of individual experience.

But there are also themes that emerge about what is or is not jazz and where its place lies in modern culture. There are themes about influence and the transmission of ideas, both in terms of the influences on Russell himself and in terms of his influence on others and on the development of jazz. There are points to be made about who owns jazz and whether it is now a world music or still quintessentially an American or indeed African American music. There are questions to be addressed about education and jazz, and how jazz or any creative enterprise can be taught. And perhaps most important of all, there runs through all of this the history of a truly beautiful and remarkable art and the place of George Russell in its story.”

Duncan underscores George’s significance as both a theorist and a composer in the following concluding paragraphs to his biography:

“We are finally ready to evaluate Russell's contribution to jazz and music in general. The Concept presents teachers and students with a map of chords and their modes that allows improvisers and composers to explore complex harmonic, melodic, and chromatic ideas while remaining aware of their place in that musical universe. ….

In terms of his influence on jazz as a theorist, Russell is the only musician-composer to have produced a written and original body of ideas. Those ideas have had an impact on the development of modal jazz and on musicians from Miles Davis, John Coltrane, Eric Dolphy, Art Farmer, Dave Baker, Oliver Nelson, Steve Swallow, and others. Subsequent generations carry that influence forward in the continuing and extensive use of modes in

the music. ….

It may be that Russell as both theorist and composer will become more significant as jazz composers (and some, such as Mark Anthony Turnage and Gavin Bryars, from classical music) continue to develop a lingua franca that extends the combination of improvisation and composition in the music.

Anyone who remains to be convinced should simply listen to Russell's sixties sextet records. Whether it is Jazz Workshop, Ezz-Thetics, or Stratusphunk, this is as good as small-group jazz gets. What more is there to say? George Russell has been a jazz composer, Third Stream composer, theorist, drummer, pianist, bandleader, teacher, innovator, and pioneer. Many of the best and brightest of several generations of jazz musicians owe him a greater or lesser debt. ….”

The producer for the "Ezz-thetics" sessions was Orrin Keepnews and the band was:

George Russell - piano, arranger 

Don Ellis - trumpet 

Dave Baker - trombone 

Eric Dolphy - alto sax and bass clarinet (tracks 2,4, and 6 only) 

Steve Swallow - bass 

Joe Hunt - drums

Tracks:

Ezz-thetic [Russell]

Nardis [Miles Davis]

Lydiot [Russell]

Thoughts [Russell]

Honesty [David Baker]

Round Midnight [Monk-Williams]