George Russell - The 1986 Jazz Journal International Interview

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

As regular readers of the blog may have noticed, mine is not an interactive blog. Or, to put it another way, I don’t place a lot of emphasis on communications with readers, not that I don’t appreciate each and every one of them.

I take this approach for a lot of reasons: [1] the blogging platform that I use is not conducive to exchanging messages; [2] I am not a Jazz “authority” per se and what I write about reflects my personal interests and is not intended to sway opinions or establish preferences; [3] it takes a great deal of effort to research and prepare these profiles which leaves me very little discretionary time for exchanging communications with readers.

However, occasionally messages do reach me such as the one that follows from Andy Wasserman and they serve as reminders that there is work to be done on my part in terms of further investigation to develop more in-depth profiles about the music in general and certain of its makers in particular.

In this case, the additional work in question concerns the arranger-composer and music theoretician George Russell whose pioneering work with modes as published in his Lydian Chromatic Concept Of Tonal Organization amplified their use in Jazz and in popular music as an alternative to musical scales and chords.

Although The Lydian Chromatic Concept Of Tonal Organization work has been available since 1953, sadly, as Andy points out in his correspondence, George’s methodology is still too little used as a cornerstone to Jazz education.

In the coming weeks the blog will feature interviews with and articles about George Russell that have appeared in Down Beat, Jazz Journal and Jazz Review as conducted or written by such eminent Jazz scholars as Dom Cerulli, Burt Korall, Phil Wilson, Bob Blumenthal and Stan Wooley. Hopefully, these posting will help contribute to a greater awareness and understanding of his work.

I have also re-posted to the blog’s sidebar, an earlier piece that I prepared on George and Jon Hendricks’ tone poem New York, New York which is the piece that Andy refers to in the following message.

“Dear Mr. Cerra, The article you wrote on George Russell and his "New York, N.Y." is the best article I've found on him and his music. I was his editorial assistant for 30 years, his substitute teacher at New England Conservatory from 1980-1982 when his Living Time Orchestra was on tour, had the honor of writing the foreword to the latest published edition (2001) of his "Lydian Chromatic Concept" and is one of only a handful of musicians he formally selected and certified to teach his work.

Everything you wrote is honest and true and much appreciated for its insight. I created a Tribute on my website to Mr. Russell that has recently been updated with the fact that I was first introduced to his music by a fellow Jazz musician who gave me the "New York, N.Y" album. Being a native New Yorker myself, I was changed from listening to that record. Out of respect for your copyright, I wanted to let you know that I put a credit to you and your Jazz Profiles site in a line of text on the page, with a link to your article on your Blog. Also wanted to make sure is OK with you that I also have a link within my site for the text only from your article copied/pasted into a PDF doc, with all copyright information intact. I did not alter a single word or make any edits. It appears alongside the link to your Blog for those people who might find that doc easier to read or more quick to access. If you feel that this additional version of your article is not in line with your copyright for this article, I'll remove it immediately.

Now that George Russell has been gone for almost 7 years, I'm still amazed at how little recognition he has received, and how almost every Jazz Department still ignores the importance of "The Concept." Your article is something I hope more people will read now that the links are on my site and it can help promote his legacy and your excellent writing. The link to the page I'm referring to is this: http://andywasserman.com/music-theory/george-russell-s-lydian-chromatic-concept Perhaps you and I can communicate further about George if you wish.

With respect, Andy Wasserman”

Let’s turn first to Stan Wooley’s JazzJournal International interview with George as it was written later in Russell’s career and contains a footnotes that cross-reference to his discography [JJI xxxix/10 (1986)].

You can locate more information about JazzJournal by going here.

“IT seems to me that the times now require going back. Much as how American music went back to discover its roots in gospel and country music, so too now, I feel, my music has to go back to the source. And Africa is that source.”

The speaker is George Russell who returned to the`source' in 1983 and wrote The African Game (1), a major work with which he made his Blue Note debut. The ambitious, nine-movement work also formed part of the concert programme on the composer's first ever UK tour earlier this year. The African Game is the latest work in a distinguished career which has spanned some four decades and extended the frontiers of modern jazz. An academic and theoretician, Russell published his Lydian Chromatic Concept Of Tonal Organisation in 1953, a work which pointed jazz in new directions and revolutionised the thinking of many important jazz musicians.

Russell was born in Cincinnati, Ohio on June 23, 1923 and became aware of jazz by listening to the bands on the riverboats as they passed through his hometown. He began playing drums while in the boy scouts and by the age of 15 had become proficient enough to perform in public. But during his late teens and early twenties, he was dogged by poor health and at 19 was admitted to a sanatorium with TB. It was while he was thus confined that he began to study arranging and during that same year wrote several charts for the local A. B. Townsend Orchestra.

In 1944, Russell joined Benny Carter's band on drums, only to be replaced soon by Max Roach. Carter continued to make use of Russell's talents to rehearse the orchestra and also encouraged his writing. This was typical of Carter who, during the forties, furthered the careers of many musicians who later went on to greater things.

`One arrangement I did for Benny,' Russell recalled, 'was New World which took me a long time to write. I rehearsed it with the band at the Downtown Theatre in Chicago and they all liked it but thought it was too advanced at that time. Anyway, Benny bought it from me. It was a strong band and a good one to write for.'

It is interesting to note that during the forties the Benny Carter orchestra nurtured two future musical theoreticians in its ranks - Russell and the enigmatic Bob Graettinger. Graettinger joined Carter on alto saxophone in 1946 and went on to achieve somewhat controversial fame later that same decade with compositions for the Stan Kenton orchestra fashioned from a system of colours and graphs.

Russell also arranged for Earl Hines' band during the mid-forties. `He was a very nice man,' Russell said. `Very encouraging and he liked my music. I wrote the numbers for Earl's opening show at the Eldorado Cafe in Chicago for which I got very good reviews in the Chicago Sun-Times. Earl was incredibly youthful and always smiling, right up to his last years.'

Impressed by what he had heard of the New York jazz scene, particularly the music of Thelonious Monk, Russell headed for the Big Apple. He was engaged to play drums with the Charlie Parker quintet when he was admitted to St Joseph's Hospital in the Bronx with a recurrence of TB and spent the next 15 months there. It was an event which could easily have ended a promising career, but it brought forth an idea which was to radically alter the course of jazz. His health restored, Russell developed the idea into his Lydian Chromatic Concept Of Tonal Organisation. He immediately began applying its principles to his compositions, the most important of which at that time was Cubana Be, Cubana Bop (2), premiered at Carnegie Hall in December 1947 by Dizzy Gillespie and his Orchestra.

The original composition did not include Latin percussionist Chano Pozo's now familiar contribution, as Russell explains: `I was on the bus with the band shortly after that New York concert and heard Chano Pozo doing these chants, so I suggested to Dizzy that we should feature Chano in the middle of the piece. Dizzy agreed and so we did it like that for the first time in Boston and then recorded it that way. Pozo was a very strong and forceful guy, and it was hard to get to know much about him. because he didn't, speak English all that well. He insisted on his royalties for Cubana Be, Cubana Bop and let you know you'd better come up with them too.  He was as very serious and a pretty heavy fellow who was later killed in a vendetta.'

The Gillespie orchestra recorded Cubana Be, Cubana Bop in New York on December 22, 1947. It remains to this day a remarkable piece of music, with its menacing intro leading into those glorious ensembles over which the leader's magnificent trumpet soars, eventually giving way to Pozo's electrifying chanting and drumming. `This was a great creative period in our history,' Dizzy Gillespie once said, .and Cubana Be, Cubana Bop was one of utmost adventurous pieces. It was just perfect and it's still right now.'

Russell's work was rather sporadic during the late forties - presumably perfecting his Lydian Chromatic Theory occupied most of his time. Then, in April 1949, clarinettist Buddy DeFranco fronted a studio orchestra which recorded Russell's A Bird in Igor's Yard (3). The juxtaposition of Charlie Parker and Igor Stravinsky in the tle is most apt because the composer has yawn from both these controversial musical pioneers. Whether Stravinsky ever borrowed from Russell is an interesting point for speculation but Parker regularly featured Russell's Ezz-Thetic when working with his string combo. The piece is better known as a result of the Lee Konitz sextet's recording of March, 1951, which has Miles Davis in the line-up (4), and Russell's own Smalltet version which he cut for Victor in March, 1956 (5).

In the early fifties, Russell dropped out of the scene in order to finish his theory. The work was eventually completed and published in 1953, when Russell was working as a sales assistant at Macy's department store in New York. Although the concept represents some 10 years of Russell's life, he never referred to it on stage during his UK concert tour.

‘Well, I don't like to brag,' he said. `I think it made contemporary music, and I don't mean just jazz, conscious of modes. It introduced modal consciousness in terms which no one was thinking about, certainly not jazz musicians nor, as far as I know, symphonic musicians. The Concept simply codified the modes and introduced chord-scale unity. In other words, for every chord there's a scale of unity and this gives the jazz musician greater resources.'

By the mid-fifties, many of the more progressively minded musicians became aware of the constraints that improvising within the chord sequence imposed upon them. The boppers had developed and extended this to the limit of its potential and further advances lay in other directions, one of which was the exciting new freedom and harmonic vistas opened up by Russell's theory.

`Miles (Davis) picked up on the idea first and he popularised it,' said Russell. ‘He used it on the piece called Milestones (6) which proved very successful and then came the Kind Of Blue (7) album which really established it.' Russell has great regard for Davis and concluded many of his UK concerts with a quite remarkable version of Davis' trumpet solo from So What (7) scored for the entire orchestra. `It pays Miles due respect for what he has contributed to me and other musicians,' Russell said.

The early sixties were a busy period for Russell but the majority of his activities centred around a sextet, presumably for economic reasons. `Yes, how did you guess?' he said. `It was impossible to have a big band at that time but this didn't bother me too much. The small group is always the laboratory out of which the big band concepts come, so all my big band albums were really written with a small band in mind.' During the three year period of its existence, the sextet's personnel included at various times such musical pioneers as Don Ellis, Eric Dolphy, David Baker, Steve Swallow and vocalist Sheila Jordan. Carla Bley, a student of Russell's during this period, contributed the occasional chart but in the main all the writing was done by the leader who also played piano with the group.

As a rule, record companies tend to shy away from bands with advanced or experimental ideas but this wasn't so with the Russell sextet. In all, six albums were released between 1960 and 1963: At The Five Spot (8), In Kansas City (9), Stratusphunk (10), Ezz-Thetics (11), Stratus Seekers (12) and The Outer View (13). Live concert performances, however, were few and far between during this time.

In 1963, Russell emigrated to Europe where he achieved considerable success and critical acclaim with a European version of his sextet. The group broadcast regularly on Scandinavian radio and even recorded a further two albums during this period: At Beethoven Hall (14) in 1965 with Don Cherry and Othello Ballet Suite/Electric Sonata No 1 (15) three years later with Downbeat according the latter a five-star rating.

Russell returned to the United States in 1969 and joined the staff of the New England Conservatory of Music in Cambridge, Massachusetts where he now resides. In the mid-seventies he stopped composing to work on a second volume of his Lydian Chromatic Concept which he completed in 1978. In the past many of Russell's compositions have been linear in construction with two, Ezz-Thetic (5) and Knights Of The Steamtable (5) almost Tristano-like in their concept. But over the last 15 years Russell has formulated a complex theory of polyrhythmic organisation for which he has this explanation:

'I can't imagine any piece based on African music that didn't reflect vertical form because the Africans were the innovators of this idea,' he explained. `In an African drum choir, one drummer is the rhythmic gravity while the others gradually layer sophisticated rhythms on top of this tonal centre. The whole isn't really evolving in a horizontal way, it's evolving in complexity and density. It's vertical energy, getting higher and higher, compounding.'

Russell uses vertical form extensively in The African Game, which he wrote over a period of six months in 1983. The nine movement tone poem formed the centrepiece on his UK concert tour with a 13 piece band billed as George Russell's Anglo-American Orchestra. In deference to the presence of the excellent Danish trumpeter Palle Mikkelborg. who was featured on the aforementioned So What, Euro-American might have been a more fitting title.

Originally commissioned by the Massachusetts Council On The Arts and the Swedish Broadcasting System, The African Game received its American debut on June 18, 1983 in Boston's Emmanuel Church by a 26-piece orchestra of local musicians and an African percussion ensemble called Olu Bata. It was this live performance that was recorded and now appears on Blue Note. The inspiration for the work is Africa where it is now generally accepted that the human race originated and evolved.

'Musically I think The African Game does reflect the earliest beginnings and might also project the ultimate outcome, as reflected in the rather dynamic crescendo at the end of the piece,' Russell said meaningfully. Like Cubana Be, Cubana Bop of some 40 years before, The African Game is a rhythmically strong work and, in addition to the five-man percussion ensemble, two bass players were also used on the date. Russell is particularly pleased with the outcome of the recording, too: `It was a live performance,' he said, `and it was flawless, absolutely flawless.'

Over the years, Russell's contribution to the development of 'jazz has never been fully recognised. During the forties and six¬ties he exerted great influence on the music and if The African Game is anything to go by, he looks like doing so again in the eighties and beyond.”

Discography:

(1) Blue Note BST 85103

(2) Dizzy Gillespie: Vol 2 RCA 731068

(3) Crosscurrents: Capitol Jazz Classics Vol 14 Capitol 5C052 80853

(4) Ezz-Thetics Lee Konitz Sextet Xtra 5004

(5) Ezz-Thetics George Russell Smalltet RCA PL 42187

(6) Milestones Miles Davis CBS 62308

(7) CBS 62066

(8) Decca DL 9220

(9) Decca DL 4183

(10) Riverside RLP 341

(11) Riverside RLP 375

(12) Riverside RLP 412

(13) Fontana 688 705ZL

(14) MPS MC 25125

(15) Soul Note 1014

No known recordings exist of New World or Ezz-Thetic by Charlie Parker with strings.

New Jazz Conceptions - When George Russell Met Bill Evans

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

Clarinetist Tony Scott provided Bill Evans with much late-fifties club work in New York. Scott had also landed a recording contract with RCA and Bill was part of a quartet the contributed four tracks to Tony’s showcase album, The Touch of Tony Scott.

On these quartet tracks, Evans delivered his most fully formed work to date, displaying several facets of his rapidly developing talent. 'Round About Midnight was notable for its reticence, Scott and Evans taking a refined view far removed from the rough-hewn original. Bill's classical training helped him layer the tone, the opening melody warmly projected, the accompanying chords touched in ever so lightly underneath.

On two other tracks he employed that artful, double-handed technique known as "locked hands," which he had been pursuing since his college days, each note of the melody played and harmonized by the right hand whilst simultaneously doubled at the octave below in the left.

In this manner all the harmony notes became sandwiched between two parallel lines an octave apart. Derived from close saxophone-section voicings, the technique was pioneered at the keyboard by Milt Buckner in the Lionel Hampton band and popularized by George Shearing in his quintet recordings.

However, on Aeolian Drinking Song, the last of the four quartet tracks, the aim was entirely different: to create single lines, either solo or in counterpoint, in the Aeolian mode — a scale from A to A on the white notes of the piano — based in this case on the note F. There was hardly a chord to be heard in the piece. In the first of several similar excursions in his early career, Evans met the challenge head-on. He was stark, deadly, and intellectually daunting.

This track belonged to a separate strand in the pianist's makeup and will be better understood in the light of a radical session that had taken place in the same venue some three months earlier. On that occasion, the seminal figure in charge was the composer and arranger George Russell.

The whole idea behind Aeolian Drinking Song was revolutionary and lay entirely outside the scope of the average swing musician. The one pianist on the scene in the summer of 1956 who was most likely to assimilate the idea and come through with flying colors in the execution was Bill Evans. His first recorded leap into that particular void had already occurred at the end of March, in a sextet led by the composer George Russell.

Down Beat magazine had announced that Russell, who had not been active in jazz since 1951 — when he had done "Ezz-thetic" and "Odjenar" for a cool Lee Konitz sextet nominally led by Miles Davis — was now writing for several forthcoming Victor jazz albums. Kenny Dorham was projected (prematurely, as it turned out) as the trumpeter, and Bill Evans was advertised as the pianist.

One hot day the previous summer, while recording The Singing Reed, Lucy Reed, who was an old friend of George Russell and his wife Juanita, called to say that she would love to visit with a friend called Bill. George suggested they all take a ride on the Staten Island ferry. His first impression of Lucy's friend was not encouraging — "plain looking fella, very quiet, very withdrawn" — and Russell felt that he was in for a tough time socially. This is going to be like pulling teeth all day, he thought.

Eventually they returned to the Russells' place at the Beechwood Hotel, where the stove, bed, ironing board, and piano were crammed together into one room. George was paying his dues working behind a lunch counter while working on his theoretical magnum opus, the Lydian Concept. As it happened, some of his arrangements had already come Bill's way in a concert with Lucy. The ironing board was moved onto the bed so that Evans could play, while Russell, expecting the worst, hovered at the door ready to make an excuse. Instead, "It was one of those magic moments in your life when you expect a horror story," he now recalls, "and the doors of heaven open up — I knew then and there he wasn't going to get away."

George Allan Russell was born in Cincinnati in 1923. He remembers singing in the choir of his African Methodist Episcopal Church, and he grew up to the sounds of Fate Marable's Kentucky riverboat music. Art Tatum spent some time in the city, and Russell sometimes heard him practicing. As a teenager he was impressed by Tatum's sounds, but he was equally struck by his first experience of modern symphonic music, a record of Debussy's "Fetes" from the orchestral Nocturnes. He never let go of that sound, and the amalgamation of jazz with European forms was crucial to his musical philosophy. Like Tony Scott, he came under the influence of Stefan Wolpe for a while.

In 1941, after failing the draft because of spots on the lung, Russell entered the hospital for the first time with tuberculosis. It was during subsequent extended spells in the hospital, and between drumming with Benny Carter's band, that he formulated his theoretical work, fully entitled The Lydian Chromatic Concept of Tonal Organization for Improvisation (for all instruments).

The concept exposes an existing principle rather than inventing something new; Russell's revelation is based on the conviction that the Lydian scale on, for instance, C (C D E F-sharp G A B) is more compatible with the tonality of C major than is the familiar C major scale. The logic of this, as explained in the book, is irrefutable, and Russell's thesis convinces not only theoretically but in the compelling brilliance of his own creations. "George composes things which sound improvised," Evans said. "You have to be deeply involved in jazz and understand all the elements to be able to do that."

Evans became exposed to this world soon after he settled in New York in 1955, and he quickly absorbed its language. (Like the French genius, Olivier Messiaen, George Russell stakes out his own vernacular.) Evans's active participation began the following year, soon after RCA began a new series of recordings called Jazz Workshop. One of the recordings, led by the alto saxophonist Hal McKusick, included a piece by Russell. Encouraged by McKusick, Jack Lewis, the artists and repertory man for RCA Victor, offered the composer his own record date in the series. Russell already wanted Evans, and Hal McKusick recruited the other musicians, including trumpeter Art Farmer, guitarist Barry Galbraith, and bass player Milt Hinton.

Three recording dates were set up and a series of intensive Sunday rehearsals, usually at Hinton's house in Queens, took place before each session. The bassist played his part as written, but Art Farmer told me that the other musicians "took the parts home from the rehearsals and tried to come to terms with them. All George Russell's music was taken very seriously by the musicians. That Victor album took a year to do."

There was a calm and quiet confidence about George Russell that inspired trust in his players. RCA Victor sessions did not come easily, but Farmer remembers that the composer never panicked or raised his voice — and everyone knew there would be no overtime pay. Afterward Miles Davis told Farmer, "Man, that was very nice work. It can't have been easy." Called The Jazz Workshop, it was George Russell's first big-break album as leader, and for the first time he could swap a penurious lifestyle for the relative comfort of a small apartment on Bank Street in the Village. Russell and Evans became good friends, George and his wife nicknaming Bill "the minister," he looked so unlike a jazz musician.

The melodic and harmonic world created (or discovered) by Russell was hauntingly original. Hal McKusick, who sounded thoroughly at home in the sessions, nevertheless declared that it was like learning another language. The album should be assessed in terms of music history, for though undoubtedly a jazz record, it is also a twentieth-century classic, to be considered alongside the wind chamber works of Stravinsky or Varese.

At the first session at Webster Hall in March, Evans turned in some solid work, firm of tone and with a spring in the fingers. Russell's most-played piece at the time was Ezz-thetic, a tortuous bop line on the restructured chords of Love for Sale. Bill's solo on it here gleaned from Bud Powell and Horace Silver but had a direction and purpose all its own.

Evans was not blessed with natural self-assurance, but by the time of the second session in October he had just completed his first trio album, New Jazz Conceptions, and his confidence was boosted as well by the presence of Paul Motian on Round Johnny Rondo, Witch Hunt, and, most of all, Concerto for Billy the Kid. The "Concerto" was his real opportunity, designed especially by Russell "to supply a frame to match the vigor and vitality in the playing of pianist Bill Evans."

At the start, in the two-handed octave passage over bucking-bronco rhythm, Evans played from the written score, but soon stretched out, fully exposed, on the chords of I'll Remember April. The precision of the fingerwork controlled the backing band, abetted by the alert Russell on the podium. This was one of the pianist's early tours de force, on a par with the more notorious All About Rosie, composed by Russell about a year later.

The musicians knew that they had a sensational performance of "Concerto" in the can, but Art Farmer recalls that either Evans or Russell was dissatisfied with some element, and it was decided to have another crack at it during the final December session. On that take Evans incorporated a quote from Thelonious Monk's Well, You Needn't. He had come under the wing of Monk, staying at his place once, just when he needed friends and contacts in New York City. He had no doubts about the quality of that eccentric genius's playing, and his favorite recording was the Prestige album from the early 1950s, mostly Monk originals in definitive versions. Evans particularly liked the humor in the playing. Later, in the sleeve note to the 1964 Columbia album Monk, he wrote: "Monk approaches the piano and... music as well, from an 'angle' that, although unprecedented, is just the right 'angle' for him."

The Jazz Workshop was the first of a handful of stunning collaborations between Russell and Evans. The pieces were superbly structured, at once compositions and settings. Evans himself always stressed the importance of form and structure in his own work, whether it be the overall framework of a number or the shape of a solo. He was in his element participating, and one wonders what other pianist working in this context could have accomplished what Evans did: creating such assertive right-hand lines unaided by left-hand comping, integrating the invention stylistically, and reading the written parts with such skill.

Art Farmer said, "The more difficult the music was, the more he made of it. He could deal with the weirdest chord changes and really respond to a challenge.”

The work of the pianist Lennie Tristano, with his cool approach to a line, permeated Evans's contribution to this music.

The influence of the older pianist on the younger is clearly audible: Tristano, the sonic architect and ascetic, argued for soundness of construction but shied away from romantic inflection. Evans, the passionate romantic, nevertheless identified immediately with Tristano's logical approach. Thus a satisfying amalgam was achieved as Evans pursued Tristano's long, snaking, but rhythmically bland lines, injecting them with cross-rhythms and oblique accents of his own, the execution controlled with tightness and panache.

Evans needed good tone and independent fingers, among other qualities, to meet the challenge of his next group of engagements. In 1957 Brandeis University appointed the composer Gunther Schuller as artistic director to its Festival of the Arts. While lecturing there, Schuller coined the term "third-stream" for the fusion of the European musical tradition with jazz. In this context the university commissioned one composition from each of six composers, three from jazz (George Russell, Charles Mingus, and Jimmy Giuffre) and three from the classical world (Schuller, Harold Shapero, and Milton Babbitt). Bill Evans, as a well-rounded musician, was engaged as pianist for the event.

George Russell's contribution, a suite in three movements called All About Rosie, was previewed on NBC-TV's Tonight Show a week before the festival. For the core of his fourteen-piece lineup Russell drew on the talents of four musicians who had been at the heart of The Jazz Workshop LP: Evans, Art Farmer, Hal McKusick, and Barry Galbraith. The piece went well, Evans in particular rising to its considerable challenge; the power of television led to hallowed references in jazz circles to a "legendary" performance by an unknown pianist called Bill Evans.

All six works were played outdoors on the campus on June 6; Schuller conducted, and Nat Hentoff introduced the composers and their pieces. It was cold and damp, the audience was restless, and the performance of this demanding music reflected the inhospitable conditions. Listening closely was a twenty-year-old Brandeis student, Chuck Israels. Afterward he played bass in a trio at a reception; his colleagues were an even younger pianist, Steve Kuhn, and the drummer Arnold Wise. Evans liked what he heard from the trio and chatted with the players, little suspecting that both bassist and drummer would feature in his own group within the next few years.

The concert program was repeated more successfully indoors the following morning, and it was soon recorded as Brandeis Jazz Festival for Columbia. In the third movement of All About Rosie, Russell spotlighted the pianist as he had in Concerto for Billy the Kid: in both pieces tempo and feel were the same, "Rosie" taken perhaps a notch up from "Billy." Again the band dropped out on cue to leave Evans's coruscating right hand exposed in solo, his choice of notes uncanny, the rhythmic verve bracing, his fingerwork relentlessly muscular. 

Aside from the brilliance of the playing, the most notable element was the assured integration of improvised and written material, credit due in equal parts to composer and performer."

Source:

Peter Pettinger

Bill Evans: How My Heart Sings

Brilliant Bill... Kirchner, That Is! [From the Archives]

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

Bill Kirchner’s distinctive approach to Jazz became even more unique on October 7, 2014 when he was joined by pianist Carlton Holmes, bassist/vocalist Jim Ferguson and vocalist Holli Ross for “An Evening of Indigos.”  

The music from this concert was released on October 16, 2015 on a An Evening of Indigos double CD [Jazzheads Records JH 1213].

The premise for this concert is contained in the following explanation:

"The mood at this remarkable concert was indeed indigo but far from monochromatic," remarks Dan Morgenstern in the package notes.

Kirchner also includes his own comments made at the New School that night in the program notes:

"Most concerts are, in a sense, variety shows. The standard idea in programming them is to come up with a multiplicity of tempos and moods, usually building to a climax. In this case, we're aiming to explore one mood, though in different facets. And to sustain that mood, we'll refrain from talking to the audience between songs. . . . Just let the music and emotions envelop you."

In essence Bill wrote seven originals, arranged six standards, and invited three of his musician friends to perform it with him in concert. What a bash that must have been.

Bill Kirchner’s music is compelling; it draws you in with its originality. By way of analogy, it’s like being in the hands of a master navigator as you explore the unchartered waters of the Amazon. Think “Jazz” instead of “Amazon” and you are ready to have Bill take your senses and soul on a voyage of discovery as he navigates the music into new and different sonorities and textures.

This is improvisational music such as you’ve never heard before: two hours of fun and adventure from the brilliant musical mind of Bill Kirchner and his well-chosen associates: Holli Ross, Jim Ferguson, and Carlton Holmes.

It’s impossible for me to improve on the insights, observations and words of praise from the many distinguished Jazz musicians, authors and other artists whose comments on the music from this concert make up a large part of the insert notes that are included with the double CD of the music.

So I thought it best to simply represent their comments “as is” within this posting along with other marketing materials that Bill sent along.

Acclaim from those who were there or who watched the video on YouTube:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SGgdHdpC_-E

"The mood at this remarkable concert was indeed Indigo but far from monochromatic.

There is much that could be said - about Bill's fine and varied compositions, the flawless work of his associates

but what lingers are the beautiful sounds he coaxed from his horn. I look forward to hearing them again!"

- Dan Morgenstern, author. Living With Jazz; NEA Jazz Master

"Achingly beautiful music by a great player and composer who proves that doing what you love can be done no matter what setbacks you face. An inspiration for all of us.”

- Marc Myers, JazzWax.com

“You are the warrior supreme.”

- Dave Liebman, saxophonist, composer, educator, NEA Jazz Master

"The concert is remarkable for its lyricism, musicianship, restraint, and the unity of the musicians. ....a concert of surpassing intimacy."

- Doug Ramsey, artsjournal.com/rifftides/

"When I heard of the concert of Bill Kirchner's music, I said to myself, 'I have to adjust my schedule so I can attend.' I am so happy I did, as the concert was a TOTAL joy to me. There were beautiful melodies, great emotion, and wonderful performances that took place on the New School stage. Bill has been having serious health issues over the past number of years, but he has not let that affect his composing, his performing, and his emotional projection. This concert was filled with surprises on the highest level. All the musicians taking part did a job that Bill has to be very happy with; they all performed their BUTTS OFF, all for Bill and the audience. Thank you, Bill Kirchner, for giving me a night to really remember."

- Jimmy Owens, trumpeter, composer, educator, NEA Jazz Master

"It doesn't get better than this. 'Since You Asked' is paralyzing."

- Marlyn Mason, actress/writer/filmmaker

"What a fantastic concert! The unity of mood, as you say, combined with an enchanting variety of musical and lyrical nuances, is unique. I've always appreciated Jim Ferguson, both as an instrumentalist and as a singer,

but his interpretations, here, touched me particularly: his 'Save Your Love For Me,' so different from the other versions I love (Etta Jones, Irene Reid with Oliver Nelson), and those marvelous songs of yours: 'Foolish Little Girl,' that has a deep

melancholy yearning a la Alec Wilder, and the adaptation of Yeats.

Your own playing is always so elegantly moving and profound and, I'm ashamed to admit it, I've just discovered here in Miss Holli one of the real contemporary interpreters."

- Luciano Federighi, musician/jazz writer

"Thank you, thank you, thank you. That is a beautiful document of what must have been amazing to behold in the flesh!

I can't imagine the collective thrill that your audience experienced. There were a number of moments when the sheer beauty of the sound was breathtaking. A rare treat to savor."

- Bill Bennett, jazz writer

"Thanks so much for making this real artistic and musical treasure available for us. The whole concert is touching and moving. And how the evening was sequenced is definitely a lesson from a master. Chapeau! as the French say! Perfect

interplay of all members of your group, i.e., the high artistry of how to listen. As a pianist I was especially fascinated by Carlton Holmes, whose touch and musical taste is another gem to listen to."

- Jurg Sommer, pianist/jazz writer

“You must have put an incredible amount of thought and preparation into it, and it shows. From the all-important choice musicians (who couldn't have been more sympatico) to the sequencing of the pieces, which couldn't have been any better.

The arc of the whole concert progresses beautifully, even though you're exploring the same pensive and lyrical mood throughout. It takes a lot of guts to reverse the usual 'variety' format of various moods and tempos and to ask that the audience partake of it as a whole, withholding any applause till the end (thus eliminating one of your pet peeves and mine - too much applause). Demanding this kind of attention span puts pressure squarely on the shoulders of the performers to create a spell and hold the audience, which you and the others clearly brought off."

- Steve Wallace, bassist/writer, wallacebass.com

"When Bill Kirchner enters with the theme, or variations on it, the tone of the evening becomes clearly set. There is drama in the lines: when building to a climax on changes, or at a turnaround, Bill invariably finds the expressive

color tone, and holds it for everything it's worth, projecting a very full and airy sound. Bill has developed a vocabulary that maximizes his sound, relying on careful note choices, vocal inflections, repetitive rhythmic patterns, and a grasp of the material that leads to good musical choices."

- Marc Steinberg, pianist

"Art is dangerous. It is one of the attractions: when it ceases to be dangerous you don't want it."

- Duke Ellington

"You can always simplify."

- Lee Konitz

"An Evening of Indigos," 2-CD Set by Saxophonist/Composer/Arranger Bill Kirchner, To Be Released October 16 By Jazzheads Records Recorded Live at the New School in October 2014 With Kirchner on Soprano Saxophone, Pianist Carlton Holmes, Bassist/Vocalist Jim Ferguson, & Vocalist Holli Ross September 8, 2015 Renowned as a renaissance man of jazz -- as an influential bandleader, sideman (on all of the saxophones, clarinets, and flutes), composer, arranger, record and radio producer, educator, writer, and editor -- Bill Kirchner is also one of jazz's most deeply soulful soprano saxophone stylists. He plays soprano exclusively on his forthcoming album An Evening of Indigos, a 2-CD package featuring Kirchner in the intimate company of pianist Carlton Holmes, a veteran of the leader's now-inactive nonet; Nashville-based bassist and vocalist Jim Ferguson; and longtime colleague Holli Ross on vocals. Jazzheads Records will release the set, Kirchner's fourth for the New York label, on October 16. Recorded on October 7, 2014 at a concert in the 200-capacity performance space at New York's New School for Jazz and Contemporary Music, where Kirchner has taught for the past 25 years, An Evening of Indigos presents the quartet in a set of seven Kirchner compositions and six standards. "The mood at this remarkable concert was indeed indigo but far from monochromatic," remarks Dan Morgenstern in the package notes. Kirchner also includes his own comments made at the New School that night in the program notes: "Most concerts are, in a sense, variety shows. The standard idea in programming them is to come up with a multiplicity of tempos and moods, usually building to a climax. In this case, we're aiming to explore one mood, though in different facets. And to sustain that mood, we'll refrain from talking to the audience between songs. . . . Just let the music and emotions envelop you." From the album opener "Theme for Gregory," Kirchner's "simple jazz waltz with some nice chord changes," through the closing Rodgers & Hart standard "He Was Too Good to Me," the musicians explore many hues of indigo. Several of Kirchner's collaborations with lyricist Loonis McGlohon are included, among them "Gentle Voice in the Night" and "I Almost Said Goodbye," featuring Ross, and "Foolish Little Girl," with Ferguson on vocals. The vocalists take turns on a medley of Antonio Carlos Jobim's "Someone to Light Up My Life" and "This Happy Madness," both with English lyrics by Kirchner's late friend Gene Lees. Another vocal medley pairs Bacharach-David's "Close to You" (previously recorded as an instrumental on Kirchner's 1999 nonet album Trance Dance) and Buddy Johnson's blues ballad "Save Your Love for Me." Also performed are Kirchner's (both words and music) "The Inaudible Language of the Heart," sung by Ross; his solo piano feature for Holmes, "Since You Asked"; and his musical setting of a poem by William Butler Yeats, "When You Are Old," sung by Ferguson. The bassist/vocalist and Kirchner duet on Bob Hilliard and David Mann's "In the Wee Small Hours of the Morning." Kirchner's concentration on the soprano, his favorite instrument, is not entirely by choice. In 1993 he suffered a major setback when he was diagnosed with a non-malignant but life-threatening tumor in his spinal cord. The tumor was removed after two major surgeries, but he was left with no feeling and only two working fingers in his right hand, a pronounced limp, and chronic pain. Forced to put aside his other reed and woodwind instruments, he gradually taught himself to play a soprano saxophone that had been redesigned and rebuilt to accommodate his disability. "There's an economy to it that's by sheer necessity," he says of his current soprano style. "It's said that we're all stylistically a product of our limitations. I'm as good an example of that as anybody I know. "It was kind of serendipitous that the only instrument that I can still play is the one I liked playing the most. I had to relearn ways of playing it, but not as much as you might think. I guess I just learned to play with fewer notes. I don't think that my conception of playing changed all that much. It's just sparer now, that's all." Born in Youngstown, Ohio, in 1953, Bill Kirchner started playing clarinet at age 7 and took up saxophone in junior high and flute in high school. While majoring in English at Manhattan College in New York in the early '70s, he studied music privately with saxophonist Lee Konitz and pianist Harold Danko. After college, Kirchner spent five years in Washington, DC, where he played and studied with arranger Mike Crotty and edited transcripts for the Smithsonian Institution's NEA jazz oral-history project. Kirchner returned to New York City in 1980 and has remained there ever since. His nonet was active from 1980 to 2001 and recorded five albums for the Sea Breeze, A-Records, and Jazzheads labels. His sideman credits include work with the Mel Lewis Jazz Orchestra, Anita O'Day, Mario Bauzá, and Tito Puente. His arrangements have been recorded by Konitz, Dizzy Gillespie, Patti Austin, and the Smithsonian Jazz Repertory Ensemble. He has annotated over 50 projects for Blue Note, Columbia/Legacy, Mosaic, and other labels and was awarded a Grammy for "Best Album Notes" for Miles Davis and Gil Evans: The Complete Columbia Studio Recordings in 1996. He edited the books A Miles Davis Reader in 1997 and The Oxford Companion to Jazz in 2000. He produced and wrote four NPR Jazz Profiles and hosted 131 Jazz from the Archives radio shows for WBGO-FM. And he presently teaches jazz courses at the New School for Jazz and Contemporary Music, the Manhattan School of Music, and New Jersey City University. "This night is one of the highlights of my career," says Kirchner of the New School concert. "To have one's music so sensitively and beautifully performed by Holli, Carlton, and Jim is a composer-arranger's dream. And the audience was with us all the way."   Photography: Ed Berger Web Site: jazzsuite.com Media Contact: Terri Hinte hudba@sbcglobal.net 510/234-8781 For order information go to www.jazzheads.com