Kenny Clarke: No Flash, Man.

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

 “Of all the rhythm section instruments, the drums are the most difficult to learn from books and even records. With drums, you have TO BE THERE … one has to see and feel the music, more so than for other instruments whose techniques could more easily be assimilated by studying available recordings … .”

- Dave Liebman, Jazz saxophonist and composer

‘He had one cymbal; it wasn't very big. We used to call it the magic cymbal because when somebody would sit in on drums and use his set, it would sound like a garbage can. But when he played it, it was like fine crystal. He kept the cymbal level like a plate and played with a short, side-to-side wrist motion. It was a very graceful thing to watch.”

- Dick Katz, pianist

“Kenny Clarke virtually invented modern jazz drumming, as the first player to use the ride cymbal for timekeeping and the left hand and right foot for accents, as early as 1937 when he was with the Teddy Hill band.

One of the top figures in be-bop's development, he is responsible in some way, shape and form for the way every percussionist plays today.

- Dr. Bruce Klauber

“What he did made the most complex things sound simple. This was his genius. He was an absolute monster. I loved him to death.”

- Grady Tate, drummer

For those of you with a literary bent, the “Flashman” allusion in the above subtitle does not refer to the Rugby bully in Tom Browne’s School Days, nor to the fictional continuation in the novels by George MacDonald Fraser of what may have happened to Tom after he was expelled from Oxford in disgrace.

Rather, it refers to Kenneth Spearman Clarke, who is almost universally acclaimed as the father of modern Jazz drumming.

In Drummin’ Men: The Heartbeat of Jazz – The Bebop Years ,Burt Korall noted in summarizing a key element of Kenny’s style:

“… the Clarke-Boland Big Band albums – a laudable legacy – contains some of his most inspiring performances. Playing softer than most drummers in a large ensemble, feeding the surge, doing the work of the great accompanist he has always been, Kenny Clarke consistently proved that flash is totally irrelevant.

My early years in the World of Jazz drumming were pretty much as described by Dave Liebman in the opening quotation: full of observations and an incessant flow of questions to any drummer I could get within two feet of.

I mean, you gotta be young and very naïve [stupid?] to pump Stan Levey full of questions. Stan was a bear of a man who hated, and I mean absolutely hated, to talk about technique, basically because he was self-taught and very self-conscious of the fact that he was limited in “drum-speak.”

He shouldn’t have been because what I found out later from many other teachers who were a lot more conversant with the language of drums was that Jazz drumming can be learned, but it really can’t be taught.

Not surprisingly, as a young drummer, I was caught up in the flash associated with the instrument.

I mean, faster was better, louder was better. My motto became: “Play every lick you know in the first four bars of every tune.”

It got so bad that one night I inserted Art Blakey‘s famous press roll after the 4^th opening note of the ballad, Laura, coming down with a cymbal crash on the 5^th. It was a trio gig and the piano player got up and walked off the bandstand!

The man who saved me from myself and from inflicting any more of this kind of pain on others was Bill Schwemmer, a gracious and soft-spoken man, who somehow found himself in the role of my first drum teacher.

Bill was newly married and lived in a modest little house in Santa Monica.  I drove down to his place, set-up my drums and turned on the “flash.” After a few minutes, he signaled me to stop and to listen to an LP that he had on his turntable.

I didn’t touch the drums again that day.

The album was Walkin’ The Miles Davis All-Stars [Prestige P-7076;OJCCD-213-2].

After we had listened to the opening track, a 13:26 minute version of Richard Carpenter’s Walkin’, Bill asked me what I had heard in drummer Kenny Clarke’s playing and I responded that “He hadn’t played anything; he just kept time.”

Bill loaned me the LP and also his copy of Miles Davis and The Modern Jazz Giants [Prestige P-7150; OJCCD-347-2] and suggested that I try to spend as much time as possible listening exclusively to them.

He specifically suggested that I concentrate on Kenny Clarke’s ride cymbal beat.

Thanks to Bill, Kenny Clarke changed my life [and probably saved it, too, from irate piano players].

It was almost as though Bill had become a Zen drum master who had imposed a insoluble intellectual problem for me, kind of like the “What’s the sound of one hand clapping” or “What was your true nature before your mother and father conceived you” koans or riddles that Zen is famous for.

The quest to find a way to solve the riddle of Kenny Clarke has continually been with me since Bill Schwemmer first posed it and I have taken great delight over the years in finding how others have explained what makes Kenny’s drumming so special.

It does begin with Kenny’s ride cymbal beat which many have tried to copy, but very few have mastered.

Here are some descriptions of how other musicians perceived it, as well as, Kenny's special qualities as a drummer.

Jake Hanna [drummer]: “It sounds like a straight line—"1-1-1-1." But the skip beat is in there—but very light. The Miles Davis records with Kenny Clarke were the first things I heard where the rhythm section sounds as if it's airborne, Nobody's doing anything. Kenny puts his left hand in his pocket; the bass and piano also are into a sparse thing. And they're off the ground.”

Burt Korall [drummer, author]: “Clarke's right hand is truly blessed. Playing on a relatively small ride cymbal—very likely a seventeen-inch Zildjian—set flat, he makes magic with his wrist and fingers, and the time unfolds as naturally as a flower in spring.”

Dick Katz [pianist, author]: “I didn't really pay much attention to Kenny Clarke until one day in 1953 or 1954. I was riding in the car and a record came on the radio—a tune from one of the first MJQ albums. I damn near fell out of the car. I had never heard a cymbal beat like that in my life.

When we worked together at the Cafe Bohemia in Greenwich Village in 1955, I got a chance to see just how Kenny played on the cymbal. He held his arm straight, horizontal over the cymbal, and used this side-to-side wrist motion. The way he used his left foot also was quite unusual.”

Ed Shaughnessy [drummer, percussionist]: “A good deal of the time, Kenny closed the hi-hat lightly, four beats to the bar. accenting "2" and "4" slightly. He was very skillful. It took quite a bit of control of the left foot to make it work just right. Kenny's time technique was in direct contrast to what most of the other drummers were doing. They closed the hi-hat hard, on "2" and "4," to push the pulse along. What Kenny did was quite sophisticated—remember, it was the 1940s.”

Interestingly, Georges Paczynski begins the second volume of his prize winning Une Historie De La Batterie De Jazz with a feature on Kenny Clarke under the subheadings - L’Histoire de la Cymbal Ride and Un Art de L’accompagnement – two phrases which neatly sum up Kenny Clarke primary roll in Modern Jazz drumming.

Kenny Clarke’s approach to drumming was marked by “clarity, economy and unity of conception [Burt Korall].”  Kenny didn’t play the drums, he accompanied others on them.

Since so much of what was Kenny Clarke’s style of drumming was encapsulated, the editorial staff thought it might be fun to honor the memory of this pioneering musician with a series of short quotations by other Jazz players who worked with him over the years about his significance.

Perhaps, the place to start would be with the manner in which Kenny viewed his own approach to Jazz drumming.

“I never was a soloist. I thought it was stupid. I concentrated on accompaniment. I always thought that was the most important thing.  I stuck with that. And I think that's why a lot of musicians liked me so much, because I never show off and always think about them first.”

Jimmy Gourley [guitarist based in Paris for many years]: “I had a seventeen-year tenure with Kenny. He got a beau­tiful, musical sound on the instrument and played for the music, the soloists. He was the best drummer I ever heard or worked with. Just about everyone performed on a higher level when he was back there on drums. He locked in behind you, and his tempo remained unchanged from beginning to end. That's tough, believe me. You could count on him in every circumstance.”

John Lewis [pianist, on Kenny with Dizzy Gillespie’s 1948 big band]: “Clarke's head was really in the music, his senses very much alive. He hit hard with the band, enhancing its sound and impact. He danced and decisively punctuated on the bass drum. Openings in each arrangement were imaginatively filled. His conception and execution of what was central to each arrangement made for rare performance unity.”

As a participant in one of three influential Miles Davis Birth of the Cool sessions for Capitol, he played with a memorable nine-piece group—a miniature of the Claude Thornhill band—on Gerry Mulligan's "Venus de Milo," John Carisi's "Israel," John Lewis's "Rouge," and the Miles Davis-Gil Evans collaboration "Boplicity." Clarke's work on this project—and many others during this period—brought together, in appropriate ratio, intelligence, emotion, and instinct. He quietly gave the music a sense of design and swing.

John Carisi [trumpet player, composer-arranger]: “The most important thing that Kenny Clarke did was to involve himself in the color aspects of drumming. Another thing. Kenny’s time was really something; you could sit on it! Keeping your own time wasn’t necessary. You just stayed with him.”

Walter Bishop, Jr. [pianist, composer]: “His name was one that rang among drummers. I was impressed by the way he conducted himself on and off the bandstand. He was my role model when I was coming up. There was something classy and very likeable about Kenny, his deportment, his image. Bebop and all who played it were struggling with image.”

Rudy van Gelder [recording engineer]: “I benefited from his expertise. He was so subtle, delicate, musical. He just knew how to hit the drums to make them sound beautiful and make life great for me.”

Billy Higgins [drummer]: “I really liked the sound Kenny Clarke got out of his instrument. He was not only an accompanist, he integrated the drums into music.”

Benny Golson [saxophonist, composer-arranger]: “The thing that was outstanding about Kenny Clarke was his ability to swing at any tempo. There are many drummers who are good time-keepers – but it’s not the same thing. I can’t conceive of Kenny Clarke playing and not swinging. It was an intuitive thing.”

Benny Bailey [trumpet player]: “He was a neat, clean player and if you hear him on record, you know immediately that it’s him. There are not too many drummers who are that identifiable.”

Ray Brown [bassist]: “As a drummer he was totally distinctive – you can always recognize Klook [Kenny’s nickname] immediately; his style and his sound were as personal as a human voice.”

Donald Byrd [trumpet player]: “Kenny was the bridge between swing and bebop. He was the first bebop drummer and a fantastic musician. … Kenny was the drummer who turned everything around. And his time was impeccable.”

Joe Wilder [trumpet player]: “The thing that impressed me most about Kenny was that he was one of the first guys I heard play a drum solo in which you could follow the melody; you could hear by what he was doing that he always had the melody in mind, and you could always tell where he was in the tune.”

Ronnie Scott [tenor saxophonist and club owner who performed with Kenny in the Clarke-Boland Big Band]:  “It didn’t matter what the tempo was, he always swung. He had incredible poise and a marvelous sound. You can always recognize that cymbal beat.”

Horace Silver [pianist, composer-arranger]: “Way back when, during an intermission break I asked him – “Klook, how did you get your style, the unique way you play?’ And he said: ‘When I was living in Pittsburgh, as a young guy I used to practice all the time with this bass player who kept telling me to stay out of his way. That’s how I developed my style because he was always on my back about staying out of the way.

Kenny Drew [pianist]: “Kenny had a fantastic musical concept and was his own special kind of drummer. His swing and the lightness of touch were his own. He could make music swing like nobody else and he had a feel for the dynamics that gave a great lift to the music.”

Milt Jackson [vibraphonist]: "He was one of the most swinging drummers I ever met. He had a perfect concept of swing – and that’s what Jazz is all about. When he played behind you it was inspirational – he made you play the best you possibly could.”

Pierre Michelot [bassist]: “I worked with Kenny regularly over a period of fourteen years. When we played together we achieved a kind of creative complicity that made it so satisfying. He would have this marvelous smile on his face and he would give a little wink from time to time to indicate – On est bien, on est heureux; tout va bien. [literally “It is good; it is happy; all is well;” figuratively “It doesn’t get any better than this.”].”

Shelly Manne [drummer]: “I can always recognize him, in whatever company, just by the sound of his cymbal. A true master.”

Gigi Campi [producer and organizer/sponsor of the Clarke-Boland Big Band]: “Father Klook – I called him that because there was always a reassuring, paternal element about his presence. He was so well-balanced – both as a man and as a drummer. He became part of the drums when he sat behind them. To me he was, by far, the greatest drummer ever. I don’t know anybody who could play the cymbal like he did.”

Francy Boland [pianist, composer-arranger and co-leader with Kenny of their big band]: “He was very special.”

Grady Tate [drummer]: “What he did made the most complex things sound simple. This was his genius. He was an absolute monster. I loved him to death.”

Over the years, my main observation of Kenny was that he was able to cut through the murky process by which a drummer and the horn players build a bond of mutual trust.

The currency of this trust is listening.

Jazz musicians need to believe that their drummer understands what they are doing, and that their drummer will do what’s necessary to help their individual efforts make a difference.

The drummer needs to live in the music, listen and contribute so that it feeds back into how the horn players hear each other.

While it can be awe-inspiring to watch technically gifted drummers spin their magic on the instrument, when it comes to laying it in there and making it happen, no Jazz drummer has ever done it better than Kenny Clarke. No flash, Man, indeed!

The editorial staff at JazzProfiles is indebted to the following as the source for the above-referenced musicians quotations about Kenny: [1] the drummer world website, [2] Modern Drummer magazine, [3] Mike Hennessey, Klook: The Story of Kenny Clarke, [4] Burt Korall, Drummin’ Men: The Heartbeat of Jazz – The Bebop Years, [5] Georges Paczynski Une Historie De La Batterie De Jazz and [6] Downbeat magazine.

Bob Crosby, His Orchestra and The Bobcats – “The Best”

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

The big band era largely blossomed during the decade of the 1930’s bringing the Swing Era into existence.

The circumstances of the World War II [1939-1945], including the recruitment into the armed forces of many of the musicians who played in them, essentially ended the era of big bands. The economics of the postwar era also had a great deal to do with their demise.

But those who experienced the heyday of the big bands, never forgot the pleasure they derived from listening and dancing to them.

Everyone had their favorites: Benny Goodman, Glenn Miller, Tommy Dorsey, Artie Shaw, Harry James. Some fans were such avid followers that they even knew the names of who held down the 3^rd trumpet chair in their favorite band.

Every so often, a big band would come along that wasn’t a huge commercial success, but one that nevertheless developed a close following for the quality of its music.

Such was the case with Bob Crosby’s Orchestra and the small band embedded in it which he called – The Bobcats.

My Dad was one such Bob Crosby fan and when I discovered his stash of Decca 78 rpm’s of the band and asked him about them, he simply said: “You’ll like listening to them; they were The-Best-of-The-Best!”

Richard Sudhalter offers some reflections on why the Bob Crosby aggregations were thought of so highly in the following excerpts from his seminal Lost Chords: White Musicians and Their Contributions to Jazz, 1915-1945 [New York: Oxford, 2000, pp. 382-384, excerpted].

“Above all," [bassist] Bob Haggart recalled, "we were like a family. We worked together, socialized together. Thought musically together. Most other bands—well, to tell the truth, we didn't pay much attention to what everybody else was doing. To us most of the time, they just sounded as if they were trying to steal from one another."

Meet that wonder of the musical 1930s, the Bob Crosby Orchestra. In the whole colorful decade there wasn't another band like it, and in certain ways there may not have been another nearly so good.

For chronicler George T. Simon, they were an ensemble "with tremendous spirit, one filled with men who believed thoroughly in the kind of music they were playing and, what's more, who respected and admired one another as mu­sicians and as people."

Few bands, however brilliant, approached that degree of unanimity with any consistency. It extends beyond mere skill, beyond originality—even beyond a leader or arranger's inspired vision. Neither Benny Goodman's virtuosity nor the faultless precision of his orchestras ever quite transformed their efforts into the expression of a single collective will. Artie Shaw came closer, his various bands driven by the strength and singularity of his vision: but Shaw's musicians re­mained his employees. Much the same could be said even for Red Norvo's ex­traordinary 1937 band, breathing, whispering, exulting as extensions of both its leader's xylophone sound and Eddie Sauter's ensemble concept.

The Crosby orchestra had an extra dimension. It lives in such words as "en­semble," when describing tightly knit group acting, or "team," in the finest athletic sense; the idea of a collective entity, each component interacting con­stantly and creatively with the others to shape, to determine the whole. Gestalt, a single consciousness compounded of many.

In that rarified context only the Duke Ellington Orchestra comes to mind as in any way comparable. But an Ellington orchestra, any Ellington orchestra, as­sumed its finished shape through the leader's (and often Billy Strayhorn's) cod­ification of an ongoing fusion and fission among its individual members. The Crosby orchestra, by contrast, began with unanimous, shared dedication to a single stylistic ideal. Its name, most often popularly (and imperfectly) identified, I was "dixieland." But the word fails to describe either a stylistic predisposition or a rhythmic foundation, not to mention a wide palette of orchestral color and texture.

Better by far, and more accurate, to remember that the band led by Bing Crosby's younger brother was built around a core of New Orleans musicians, whose shared background and affinity determined its musical direction.

Historically, New Orleans jazzmen away from home shared a bond, a ca­maraderie, that seemed to transcend class, education, politics, even race. Meeting in New York, Chicago, or Los Angeles, they were often simply homeboys together, carrying their environment with them in a way that seemed to render differences among them irrelevant, or at least secondary. It may be that way with i musicians from St. Louis, Boston, or San Antonio, but not to that degree; and on the evidence it's anything but that with New Yorkers. …

Whatever it was, and by whatever name its music was known, the band had sparkle, spontaneity, and lift and left a legacy of distinctive records, which have easily withstood the shifting winds of musical fashion.”

Here is an audio-only track to help afford you with a sampling of the Bob Crosby Orchestra’s style of music.

Dave Holland 5tet - Metamorphos [1999]

The musicianship on display in this video by Dave Holland on bass, Billy Kilson on drums, Steve Nelson on vibes, Robin Eubanks on trombone and Chris Potter, making a rare appearance on alto saxophone, his original instrument, is awesome to behold. Program music based around tonal points, chromaticism, motifs and riffs and rhythms. It's the way a lot of young guys hear the music these days. Stick around for Chris' solo beginning at 9:14 minutes. Charles Mingus must be smiling. The tune is Prime Detective.

Bobby, Roger and The Animals

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

Ahmet Ertegun, one of the co-founders of Atlantic Records, was a big supporter of Rhythm and Blues music as well as a devotee of Rock ‘n Roll in its fledgling years.

His brother, Nesuhi, produced Jazz recordings for the Atlantic label including the Modern Jazz Quartet’s No Sun in Venice and Pyramid, John Coltrane’s Giant Steps and Coltrane Plays the Blues, and a host of other Jazz albums by Milt Jackson, Mose Allison, Jimmy Giuffre and Shorty Rogers, among others.

Ahmet always maintained that his involvement with the commercially lucrative Rock and R & B music enabled him to subsidize his brother Nesuhi’s less-than-profitable ventures into Jazz.

One of his most successful forays into Rock was Ahmet’s decision to record Bobby Darin’s Splish, Splash. It was a record that would sell a million copies for the then, virtually unknown Darin.

Ironically, almost 10-years later, Darin, now and internationally recognized celebrity, would leave Atlantic and establish his own label [Direction Records] over a dispute with Ahmet and Arif Mardin [who had become Bobby’s producer at the label in 1963] involving Bobby’s fervent wish to record the music from Leslie Bricusse and Anthony Newley’s Doctor Dolittle.

As recounted by Fred Dellar in his notes to Bobby Darin Sings Doctor Dolittle:

“Bobby Darin constantly re-invented himself. Initially, he'd been a teen idol, littering the charts with the likes of Splish, Splash and Queen Of The Hop. Then he opted to become the new Sinatra, fashioning songs such as Beyond The Sea and Lazy River for a whole new set of swingin' lovers. Once, Bobby even moved into R&B to cut an album of Ray Charles songs, using Ray's own back-up singers, while in 1966 he moved on yet again, linking with the contemporary folk field, and emulating the likes of Tim Hardin. After two critically hailed albums (If I Were A Carpenter and Inside Out) filled with material mainly penned by Hardin and John Sebastian, Darin decided that it was time for a change yet again. No-one was going to classify him, place him in some 'file under' category. It was time for a return to show-biz, a time to dust down the tux, head in a Hollywood direction. But, being Darin, it would not be a mere return to former glories. Nothing as easy as that. Instead, Bobby decided to create a whole album based around his interpretations of a film score. His choice for the project was Doctor Dolittle, a musical penned by Leslie Bricusse, who'd previously collaborated with Anthony Newley on The Roar Of The Greasepaint - The Smell Of The Crowd and Stop The World -I Want To Get Off, the latter a Broadway hit that ran for 555 performances.

Doctor Dolittle, a movie that co-starred Rex Harrison, Anthony Newley, Samantha Eggar and Richard Attenborough, featured a score that had taken Leslie Bricusse 18 months to write. During that period he'd discarded 10 songs and constantly reshaped others. Darin, who'd earlier recorded Bricusse and Newley's Once In A Lifetime, heard the score and loved it. His decision to record it as a complete album pleased Arthur C. Jacobs, the film's producer who claimed: "When Bobby came to us and said he wanted to do his musical impression of Doctor Dolittle, we were flattered but felt that the musical content of our production was out of Bobby's usual style. I mean, in one scene Rex sings a tender ballad When I Look In Your Eyes to a seal! How would that sit with a chap who whirred and whirled with Mack The Knife? Bobby's reply: 'Lead me to it'."

Others were even more incredulous that Darin should want to record the score, his album producer, Arif Mardin, advising him not to go ahead with the project. But, after working on a fine set of arrangements with Roger Kellaway, Bobby made that trip to Western Recorders and shaped an album that has stood the test of time. …”

Pianist-composer-arranger Roger Kellaway summed it up best when he observed: “Bobby was a sensation to work with. He had the knack of knowing exactly what was right for him.”

See what you think as Bobby sings Roger’s arrangement of Talk to the Animals in the following video made with the assistance of the ace graphics team at CerraJazz LTD and the production facility at StudioCerra.

Our latest montage is set in HD images, a format we’ve returned after a long absence.

"Striking Up The Band" with the Kenny Clarke - Lucky Thompson Quintet

The Blue Note in Paris, 1960. Lucky Thompson on tenor saxophone, Jimmy Gourley on guitar, Alice McLeod Coltrane on piano, Pierre Michelot on bass and Kenny Clarke on drums.

Having "Cheese Cake" with Dexter, Sonny, Butch and Billy

Bring a cup of coffee or tea and enjoy a slice of Cheese Cake with Dexter Gordon and Company.  If you are a Jazz fan, it truly doesn't get any better than Dexter Gordon on tenor saxophone, Sonny Clark on piano, Butch Warren on bass and Billy Higgins on drums. Dexter's Cheese Cake is based on the changes to tenor sax legend Lester Young's tune, Tickle Toe.

Brian and Barbara

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

I have no idea if trumpeter Brian Lynch and vocalist Barbara Casini know each other or have worked together.

I doubt it because Brian is based in New York and Barbara in Italy, but given the international and cosmopolitan flavor of Jazz in the 21^st century, it’s certainly is possible.

Where there is a relationship between the two, and what prompted this posting is that both have recorded terrific versions of the tune – You’ve Changed - Brian on his Bolero Nights, Venus Jazz CD [VHCD 1029] and Barbara along with the Jazz Orchestra of Sardinia, Paolo Silvestri conducting on Agora Ta, ViaVenetoJazz [CD VVJ 076].

Okay, I’ll admit it; I’ve got a thing for Bill Carey and Carl Fischer’s tune having featured two versions on a previous blog piece with interpretations by alto saxophonist Andy Fusco and the sublime, “Sassy Sarah Vaughan.

And early this month [July 7^th], I spotlighted [bloglighted?] the version that Hammond B-3 organist Eddy Louiss recorded along with Belgian Guitarist Rene Thomas and drummer Kenny Clarke for Dreyfus Jazz [Dreyfus Disques FDM-36501-2].

The song’s poignant lyrics assume autobiographical, heart-breaking proportions when one reflects on their long association with vocalist Billie Holiday. The themes of lost love, seeking love and unrequited love were a constant in Billie’s brief and turbulent life [she died in 1959 at the age of forty-four].

What intrigued us about Brian Lynch’s rendition of You’ve Changed is that it is done in the bolero style of Latin Jazz and has a corker of a solo by alto saxophonist Phil Woods. Brian also takes a fine solo as does pianist Zaccai Curtis.

And did you know that the island of Sardinia off the western coast of Italy has a fine Jazz orchestra? As you will hear on the following video, it does, indeed, and for Barbara Casini’s vocal version of You’ve Changed, the orchestra is under the direction of Paolo Silvestri who also wrote the arrangement.  Be sure and checkout the fine trumpet solo by Giovanni Sanna Passino beginning at 2:42 minutes.

Joris Roelofs: “The Kids Are Fine”

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

“All around they see not rivals but mentors. Gravitating to living masters and young gurus, they talk not of themselves but of the greatness of others. As a result, their sound is pure, their language is concise. Although perpetually young-looking, they are the opposite of naïve. Their groove is light and precise and the smile in their eyes maintains a near-constant  sparkle.”

- pianist Aaron Goldberg commenting on Joris Roelofs

It’s hard to imagine that someone who is only twenty-eight years old could already be so proficient in today’s Jazz world.

Such is truly the case with Joris Roelofs who was born 1984 in Aix-en-Provence (France), raised in Amsterdam (Netherlands), and plays saxophones, clarinet, bass clarinet and flute. He began to play classical clarinet at the age of six, and the alto saxophone at the age of twelve.

For one so young, Joris has a considerable list of accomplishments and associations.

He was a member of the Vienna Art Orchestra from 2005-2010. Joris also plays lead alto in the Jazz Orchestra Of The Concertgebouw in the Netherlands. He graduated in 2007 as a Master of Music at the Conservatory of Amsterdam. In 2001 Joris won the Pim Jacobs Price. In 2003 he received, as a first non-American, the Stan Getz/Clifford Brown Fellowship Award in the US, organized by the International Association Of Jazz Education (IAJE). The IAJE also honored him with a “First Level” price. In 2004 Joris received the first prize of the prestigious Deloitte Jazz Award in the Netherlands, a Dutch Award for young musicians who are just about to start their international carrier. In 2008 he was selected for the Thelonious Monk International Saxophone Competition.

Among others, Joris played with Brad Mehldau, Dee Dee Bridgewater, Christina Branco, Lionel Loueke, Joshua Redman, Chris Potter, Chris Cheek, Eric Harland, Lewis Nash, Aaron Goldberg, Greg Tardy, Ralph Peterson, Vanguard Jazz Orchestra, Pete King, Sonny Fortune, Greg Hutchinson, WDR Big Band, Ari Hoenig, Matt Penman, Alegre Correa.

He was recently asked by Brad Mehldau to perform with him at the Carnegie Hall in New York and Sanders Theatre in Boston. At age 16 Joris performed the famous clarinet introduction of Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue for a TV show with the Orkest van het Oosten, and in that same show was also featured as a soloist with the Jazz Orchestra Of The Concertgebouw. He also recorded as a special clarinet soloist with the Metropole Orchestra with Laura Fygi (2004). As a leader he performed several times at the North Sea Jazz Festival, Concertgebouw in Amsterdam, Smalls Jazz Club in NYC, among other places.

In October 2008 he did a European release tour with Ari Hoenig, Aaron Goldberg and Johannes Weidenmueller to promote his debut album Introducing Joris Roelofs. In 2009 and 2010 he did his second and third tour with Aaron Goldberg, Greg Hutchinson, Reginald Veal, Joe Sanders. Joris also plays in a trio with Jesse van Ruller and Clemens van der Feen, they released their album Chamber Tones and toured in Japan. Joris’ new CD Live At The Bimhuis will come out the end of August/2011. As a sideman Joris has been playing at a large number of international jazz festivals and jazz clubs, all over the world. He moved to New York City in March 2008.

Pianist Aaron Goldberg wrote these thoughts about Joris and Jazz in New York City for Introducing Joris Roelofs:

“New York remains an artist-magnet. The intrepid flow in from everywhere, their paint brushes or their saxophones on their back, often still searching for a place to sleep. Some show up with a point to prove, and they are usually the first to attract notice. On occasion others arrive with a different kind of special mission. Instead of a moral to teach or an agenda to push, these brave selves search for a lesson to learn. Tey are driven by the love of their art.

All around they see not rivals but mentors. Gravitating to living masters and young gurus, they talk not of themselves but of the greatness of others. As a result, their sound is pure, their language is concise. Although perpetually long-looking, they are the opposite of naïve. Their groove is light and precise and the smile in their eyes maintains a near-constant  sparkle.

Perhaps they have some metaphysical guardian, a Vajravarahi [Tibetan Buddhist diety that helps free one from suffering and gain enlightenment through meditations] to help uproot the ego?

Or maybe their meditations just focus on the truly important: line and melody, mouthpiece and embouchure, narrative and harmony, and the rest follows inevitably. These are the true faithful. From the inside they may see only detours, but their paths are straight and their bearing upright. From the outside they glow like the enlightened. More importantly, they are a joy to listen to. Joris Roelofs is one of the rare arrivals.”

With all of this by way of background, “The Kids” such as Joris, Aaron, bassist Matt Penman and drummer Ari Hoenig “are doing just fine” as you can hear for yourself on the sound track to the following video montage.

The tune is pianist Aaron Goldberg’s The Rules which is an excellent example of the kind of tension-and-release, repetitive phrases and sustained tones can create in Jazz. Aaron takes the first solo, followed by Ari on drums with Joris’s solo closing it out before the piece’s “surprise” ending.

[BTW, if the music of Lee Konitz, Warne Marsh, and Lennie Tristano comes to mind while listening to Joris' quartet, your memory is a credit to modern Jazz history].

Joris Roelofs recordings are available as audio CD’s and Mp3 downloads from a number of online retailers.