Denny Zeitlin - Panoply

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

"The good thing about being famous," quipped the late Howard Gossage [an advertising innovator and iconoclast during the ‘Mad Men’ era who was also sometimes referred to as ‘The Socrates of San Francisco’], "is that you don't have to explain yourself." Though famous in two divergent arenas, jazz pianist-composer and psychiatrist Dr. Denny Zeitlin has been forced to "explain” himself since he first pursued his dual career.

"Some musicians I work with," he says, "feel threatened that I'm trying to psych them out; some are envious that I'm making a comfortable living as a psychiatrist while they're scuffling. Some doctors wonder, “What is he doing with this Jazz? — still a dirty word to some people. Some in both music and medicine doubt I can be good at something I'm not doing full time, and even get angry about it. But there are many who can see that the dual career enriches both my medicine and my music — which I know to be true — mainly in Europe where the pursuit of a double career does not seem as bizarre as in America. And it's always been a problem in America that you should be having fun with your work.

"On both sides there's been a tendency to suppose that I do psychiatry primarily for the money and music mainly for the fun. Actually, I get equal pleasure and fulfillment from each, and couldn't imagine not dividing my time this way. Also, music and psychiatry are not as afield as some assume. One of their many similarities is perpetual newness. I know a lot of doctors who become bored and burned out with their three-hundredth appendectomy, and many musicians drugged with recording repetitive jingles and schlock movie scores. Even though many psychological themes are common to many people, each individual's mode of experiencing and expressing is unique; and in music, I’ve been lucky enough to be able to pick and choose projects that are challenging and exciting."

Tall, athletic, bearded, and with a rabbinical cast, Zeitlin combines the seeming incompatibles of seething intensity and relaxed grace. Reflecting his diverse trades, his professorial speech is laced with staples of the jazz argot. A radio announcer's voice resonates with untempered enthusiasm for his multiple interests. This associate clinical professor of psychiatry has played the Newport and Monterey jazz festivals and has recorded nearly a dozen albums of his own works, as well as standards, all raptly acclaimed by jazz critics. In the recent Jazzletter poll of forty-two pianists, Zeitlin garnered as many votes as Count Basie, McCoy Tyner and Jimmy Rowles.”

Denny Zeitlin: "The Two Track Mind" by Grover Sales, 

May 1986 edition of Gene Lees’ Jazzletter.

The recent arrival of Denny Zeitlin’s latest recording - Panoply [Sunnyside SSC 1741] prompted me to dig out my copy of the above-referenced Jazzletter and the quotation used as an introduction to this piece by the late Grover Sales.

Of course, the circumstances of Denny’s career have certainly changed since these comments were made by Grover almost 40 years ago, but I sometimes wonder if the duality of Denny’s career choices as both a Clinical Psychiatrist and a Jazz pianist continue to play a role, at least in part, in shaping his way of “making” Jazz.

What I like best about Denny’s approach to Jazz is that I know he’s always going to give me an honest rendering; his compositions and improvisations are unmistakably his own. 

Art Tatum, Fats Waller, Earl Fatha Hines, Teddy Wilson, Bud Powell, Nat King Cole, George Shearing Lennie Tristano, Oscar Peterson, as well as, Denny’s contemporaries including Bill Evans, McCoy Tyner, Herbie Hancock Keith Jarrett and Chick Corea, all have an instantly recognizable “voice” on an instrument that’s not known for its individuality of expression.

And yet, it doesn’t take long before Denny’s unique style to manifest itself. He’s such an honest player who rarely falls back on licks and tricks and hardly ever repeats himself.

I’ve been listening to Denny’s music for a long time, having first become familiar with his work through three recordings that he recorded for Columbia in the mid-1960s under John Hammond’s supervision: Cathexis, Carnival, and Zeitgeist. Another of my favorite recordings by Denny on Columbia from the same period is Shining Hour: Denny Zeitlin Live at The Trident [a Jazz club that was based in Sausalito, CA just across the Golden Gate Bridge from San Francisco]. It was recorded in performance at the club in 1965.

I find his work to be as satisfying today as it was when I first heard it over 60 years ago because its always full of what Whitney Balliett described as an essential ingredient of quality Jazz - “the sound of surprise!”

This is no less the case with Panoply  which, if you are not familiar with the meaning of the word, means an array or a wide range of things. In this case, Denny uses the term to describe the fact that the new recording is made up of solo, duo and trio performances of his music.

He provides more details about this arrangement in the following “Note which” serves as the insert notes for the CD:

FOR THIS ALBUM, I WENT BACK THROUGH PERSONAL ARCHIVES OF UNRELEASED MATERIAL TO ASSEMBLE A PROGRAM FOCUSING ON MY THREE MAJOR MODALITIES THIS CENTURY: SOLO PIANO; DUO ELECTRO-ACOUSTIC FREE IMPROVISATIONS WITH GEORGE MARSH: AND TRIO WITH BUSTER WILLIAMS AND MATT WILSON. l'LL DESCRIBE THE PROGRAM BY MODALITY; BUT RATHER THAN SEQUENCING THEM IN THREE SEPARATE SECTIONS, I'VE ARRANGED A MORE INTERESTING JOURNEY. 

SOLO: ONLY ONE IS A GORGEOUS BALLAD BY BASSIST BILL LEE, WHO PERFORMED FREQUENTLY IN CHICAGO IN THE FIFTIES WITH PIANIST CHRIS ANDERSON, ON WHOSE ALBUM I FIRST HEARD THIS PIECE. CHRIS' UNIQUE HARMONIC CONCEPTION WAS A BIG INFLUENCE ON ME, HERBIE HANCOCK, BILLY WALLACE, HAROLD MAYBERN, ANO OTHER CHICAGO PIANISTS. CHEROKEE WAS FREQUENTLY SELECTED AT A BREAKNECK TEMPO AT JAM SESSIONS BACK THEN WHEN NEW PLAYERS STEPPED UP TO THE BANDSTAND. SINK OR SWIM. MY VERSION COMMEMORATES THAT VIBE. LIMBURGER PIE AND BEESWAX CRUST OCCURRED TO ME AS THE TITLE FOR MY COMPOSITION THAT MOVES THROUGH DIFFERENT FEELINGS, TIMES, AND TEXTURES. I HAVE NO IDEA WHAT IT MEANS. 

DUO: DRUMMER-PERCUSSIONIST GEORGE MARSH AND I HAVE BEEN MAKING MUSIC TOGETHER SINCE THE LATE SIXTIES, AND BEGINNING IN 2013 HAVE FREQUENTLY MEI IN MY STUDIO TO RECORD ELECTRO-ACOUSTIC SPONTANEOUS COMPOSITIONS. IT'S BEEN A MARVELOUS ADVENTURE, AND THE FIVE PIECES HERE, EXCURSION, MUSIC BOX. AMBUSH, REGRET, AND A RAFT, A RIVER SPAN A DECADE. 

TRIO: BUSTER WILLIAMS, MATT WILSON, AND I BEGAN WORKING AS A TRIO IN 2001, AND THE MUSIC HAS CONTINUED TO EVOLVE DESPITE INFREQUENT PERFORMANCES DUE TO THEIR BUSY TOURING SCHEDULES AND THE DEMANDS OF MY PSYCHIATRIC PRACTICE AND TEACHING. THE SELECTIONS HERE ARE FROM THE SAME 2019 GIG AT MEZZROW JAZZ CLUB IN NYC THAT PROOUCED MY SUNNYSIDE 2020 ALBUM, "LIVE AT MEZZROW." I WAS DOING ALL RIGHT, A GERSHWIN STANDARD, USHERS IN THE CD IN A RELAXED GROOVE. WEIRDO IS INDEED AN UNUSUAL FIFTIES BLUES WHICH SEEMS TO BE THE PROGENITOR OF WALKIN' WHICH APPEARED A BIT LATER. ALTHOUGH NOT REALLY CLEAR, THE TUNES ARE GENERALLY CREDITED TO MILES DAVIS. WE TAKE OUR TIME AND STRETCH OUT ON THIS, WITH A STATEMENT OF WALKIN' AT THE END. I SHOULD CARE IS ONE OF THE EXQUISITE STANDARD BALLADS, AND I HAVE FRESHENED IT WITH REHARMONIZATION AND MODULATION. JOHNNY COME LATELY, WRITTEN BY BILLY STRAYHORN, FINISHES THE ALBUM WITH UP-TEMPO EDGE AND AN EXTENDED FREE MIDDLE SECTION THAT EVOLVES INTO A RIVETING VAMP.”

In previous features about Denny’s music I’ve used the words “adventure,” “exploration” and “journey” to describe his approach to music and the resultant improvisations, because that’s what he essentially does: he uses melodies - either in the form of Jazz Standards or those from the Great American Songbook or some he’s written himself - as points of departure to reexamine, reimagine and/or reconstruct them using his mind and his emotions to create fleeting impressions in the form of extemporizations. 

You can get an idea of what’s involved in Denny’s process of Jazz creation and how monumentally complex it is to pull off well with a reading of the following observations by Ted Gioia [the paragraphing has been modified for added emphasis]:

"If improvisation is the essential element in Jazz, it may also be the most problematic. Perhaps the only way of appreciating its peculiarity is by imagining what 20th century art would be like if other art forms placed an equal emphasis on improvisation. 

Imagine T.S. Eliot giving nightly poetry readings at which, rather than reciting set pieces, he was expected to create impromptu poems - different ones each night, sometimes recited at a fast clip; imagine giving Hitchcock or Fellini a handheld camera and asking them to film something - anything - at that very moment, without the benefits of script, crew, editing, or scoring; imagine Matisse or Dali giving nightly exhibitions of their skills - exhibitions at which paying audiences would watch them fill up canvas after canvas with paint, often with only two or three minutes devoted to each 'masterpiece.' 

These examples strike us as odd, perhaps even ridiculous, yet conditions such as these are precisely those under which the Jazz musician operates night after night, years after year."

Is it any wonder, then, that Ted has entitled the book from which this excerpt is taken - The Imperfect Art: Reflections of Jazz and Modern Culture.

So if you are in the mood for 78.03 minutes of acts of creation performed at the highest level of musicianship with excitement and surprises looming everywhere, then look no farther than the music of Denny Zeitlin in general and the music on his latest CD Panoply in particular.

As a point in passing, if Grover Sales were writing about Denny and his music today, he might have to alter the title from “Two Track” to “Multi-Track Mind of Denny Zeitlin” as the influences have progressed to the point in which there’s a lot more going on than a duality of sources.