The Jazz of Physics

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

“Science benefits from the same kind of leaps of intuition that a sax player makes when soloing.”

“Deep down, the book feels like an attempt by Dr. Alexander to understand how his passions for physics and jazz can coexist so intensely. It also makes clear that thinking deeply about music has helped him to think freely — and led him to some of his best academic research. But the connection is above all personal.”

- Dan Tepfer, The New York Times

“More than fifty years ago, John Coltrane drew the twelve musical notes in a circle and connected them by straight lines, forming a five-pointed star. Inspired by Einstein, Coltrane had put physics and geometry at the core of his music. Physicist and jazz musician Stephon Alexander returns the favor, using jazz to answer physics’ most vexing questions about the past and future of the universe.

Following the great minds that first drew the links between music and physics—a list including Pythagoras, Kepler, Newton, Einstein, and Rakim—The Jazz of Physics revisits the ancient realm where music, physics, and the cosmos were one. This cosmological journey accompanies Alexander’s own tale of struggling to reconcile his passion for music and physics, from taking music lessons as a boy in the Bronx to studying theoretical physics at Imperial College, London’s inner sanctum of string theory. Playing the saxophone and improvising with equations, Alexander uncovered the connection between the fundamental waves that make up sound and the fundamental waves that make up everything else. As he reveals, the ancient poetic idea of the “music of the spheres,” taken seriously, clarifies confounding issues in physics.

Whether you are more familiar with Brian Greene or Brian Eno, John Coltrane or John Wheeler, the Five Percent Nation or why the universe is less than five percent visible, there is a new discovery on every page. Covering the entire history of the universe from its birth to its fate, its structure on the smallest and largest scales, The Jazz of Physics will fascinate and inspire anyone interested in the mysteries of our universe, music, and life itself.”

- Annotation from BarnesandNoble.com

The following review of Stephon Alexander’s THE JAZZ OF PHYSICS [Basic, 254 pages, $27.50] is by Peter Pesic and it appeared in the May 6th [2016] edition of The Wall Street Journal. Mr. Pesic is the director of the Science Institute and musician-in-residence, St. John’s College, Santa Fe. He is the author of Music and the Making of Modern Science.

The love affair between music and science began in an ancient Greek blacksmith shop, where the legendary Pythagoras did the first experiments connecting ratios and sounds, such as the lengths of plucked strings and their pitches. The strange and wonderful connection between numbers and music has continued to be the subject of fascinated study to this day. (I wrote an entire book on it.) In The Jazz of Physics, Brown University physicist Stephon Alexander explores the analogies between jazz and scientific inquiry, especially its improvisational, free-form side.

Though relatively young, Mr. Alexander has structured The Jazz of Physics as an autobiography in stories, episodes from his life reflecting the music, ideas and people important to him. His trajectory makes one reflect on the aspiration of science to reach past the all-too-human contingencies of birth, race, sex and nationality. His Trinidadian grandmother made him practice Mozart, though he was “more interested in how music worked than learning to play others’ compositions.” He turned to hip-hop about the same time that he encountered the figure of Einstein: “I sensed I was like him, and not just because my curly Afro resembled his wild locks, but because I saw a loner who liked to play with symbols and ideas the way I liked to play with musical notes on paper to make my own songs and try to answer my own questions.”

Throughout his book, Mr. Alexander moves back and forth between the worlds of music (he became an accomplished sax player) and science. He keeps coming back to Einstein and to John Coltrane, whose complex musical diagrams he interprets with the same seriousness and excitement that he finds in equations. Coltrane, he notes, was fascinated by Einstein, who also played the piano. Coltrane’s playing and theories in turn deeply inspired Mr. Alexander. Coltrane’s “Giant Steps” haunts the book, as its young protagonist seeks to take his own steps in the worlds of music and physics. More familiar with the older milieu of physicists steeped in Beethoven, I was struck by how many of Mr. Alexander’s mentors were jazz buffs, feeling at home with improvisation and urging him to take similar leaps of intuition in his research. The mathematical physicist Christopher Isham told him to “stop reading those physics books. You need to develop your unconscious mind; that’s the wellspring of a great theoretical physicist.”

Mr. Alexander moved through a number of different scientific fields, including neuroscience and biophysics, before arriving at the work in theoretical cosmology for which he has become known. He gives an engaging account of his uncertainties and worries as he made his way in the highly competitive world of theoretical physics, seeking to acquire the “chops” needed to deal with the formidable mathematics of his day job along with those needed to solo on the sax after dark. Along the way, he describes his encounters with such jazz and rock greats as Ornette Coleman, Sonny Rollins and Brian Eno, as well as eminent physicists like Leon Cooper, William Unruh and Gerald Guralnik.

The counsel to improvise physics seems to have helped Mr. Alexander make his own mark on the field. A crucial physics insight came “as I was soloing with the equation of D-branes” — infinitesimal vibrating membranes envisioned by some versions of string theory — “on a piece of napkin, with jazz in the background . . . and a happy thought came to me: What if colliding D-branes could ignite the big bang?” After a few glasses of wine with another theorist, he was inspired: “In an ecstatic frenzy, I improvised my calculations, with a certainty that the equations would work out”; after a few months of work, he showed his work to his colleague, who said: “You nailed it!”

Mr. Alexander’s rhapsodic excitement is infectious but leaves one wondering how far a neat idea in physics can be compared to a dazzling riff. Human listeners may judge music to be beautiful, yet nature may remain unmoved by a very cool theory. Mr. Alexander is an ardent Pythagorean, a believer in the power of music and number to illuminate and even change the world. He points to Kepler and Einstein as exemplary practitioners of that visionary musical quest for the laws of nature, and he sees much promise in ideas about cosmology he considers guided by music.

For instance, he describes the way primordial sound waves shaped the early universe toward the galaxies and structures we now see. Music also provides him with analogies of harmony and structure that he finds useful in his own work.

Though he acknowledges that a theory “has to measure up to the truth,” Mr. Alexander is more interested in its beauty. He seems less concerned with the inevitable struggle to find experimental confirmation that dooms many attractive theories. Pythagoras, after all, found his truth in a smithy, not just in speculation.

Like the ancient original, I suspect a modern Pythagoras would be an improviser and innovator rather than a flawless executant of the old music. Too many classical musicians merely play the notes given to them without feeling the need to improvise and create them anew. Jazz requires the improvisational imagination of a composer, especially active curiosity and engagement with harmony (such as Coltrane’s charts display). Perhaps Mr. Alexander and his colleagues have found in jazz an inspiration that will help them sing a science that nature never heard before.

After reading Mr. Alexander’s account of primordial sound waves shaping the universe, I wonder how he felt when the gravitational waves from the collision of two distant black holes recently caused detectors in Washington and Louisiana to tremble in sympathetic vibration, swooping audibly from the deepest bass up to middle C. What would Coltrane have made of those black holes jamming in C?”

Charlie Haden: The Ineffable Beauty of the Jazz Bass [From the Archives]

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

“Charlie Haden has a large, warm tone, the subtle vibrato, richness, and manipulations of which are central elements in his improvisational vocabulary."

- Mark Gridley, The New Grove Encyclopedia of Jazz

“Charlie Haden once said “One of the prerequisites in musical improvisation is ‘knowing how to listen.’

I first heard Charlie Haden when he was playing with Ornette Coleman in 1959. Playing with Ornette required extraordinary resourcefulness, resilience and a quality of inner musicianship that could not be thrown off balance. Since then, Haden has worked with a wide range of challenging leaders and has headed his own distinctively original ensembles - notably his Liberation Music Orchestra.

He is an accompanist who truly supports - rather than trying to dominate - the soloist. And as a soloist, he too "sings." His solos tell a story rather than show how many notes he can play.

In a music that is composed of individualists, Charlie Haden has always been unafraid to listen ahead - and to listen as deeply as he can, to himself. And that is why - to use a phrase of Duke Ellington’s - Charlie Haden is ‘Beyond category.’”

- Nat Hentoff, Jazz author and critic

For the quiet man he was and the quiet instrument he played, Charlie Haden left a huge and lasting sonic imprint on the landscape of Jazz for over fifty years.

He seemingly worked with everyone, because every Jazz musician who heard his playing wanted to work with him. He left behind an incredible legacy of recorded music as a testimony to how much he and his playing were universally adored.

Charlie Haden’s name became almost synonymous with the natural beauty of the Jazz bass. Mention Charlie Haden’s name to a Jazz musician anywhere in the world and a smiling look of recognition would immediately form on the face of that person. No words, just a smile - and sometimes a nod.

After moving to Los Angeles in 1956 from Springfield, Missouri [he was born in Shenandoah, Iowa in 1937] to attend the Westlake College of Music, he worked around town with Dexter Gordon, Art Pepper and Hampton Hawes.

While giging at the Hillcrest Club in Hollywood, CA in 1958 with vibraphonist Dave Pike, pianist Paul Bley and drummer Lenny McBrowne, McBrowne introduced him to Ornette Coleman and that music changed Charlie Haden’s musical life forever.

“Ornette invited me over to his pad and started playing music that I'd never heard in my life.

"It was very exciting to me. There was a feeling there that I was sure was very, very valid. I was startled by his music because he wasn't playing on the chord changes—and in 1958, everyone was still doing that. To play with Ornette, you really had to listen to everything he did because he was playing off the feeling."

Haden played a crucial role on the seminal Coleman albums The Shape Of Jazz To Come (1959), Change Of The Century (1960), This Is Our Music (1961) and Free Jazz (1961), all recorded for Atlantic. He traveled to New York City to play a famous extended engagement at the Five Spot Cafe with Coleman.

In addition to his influential work with Coleman—whose quartet also included trumpeter Don Cherry and drummer Ed Blackwell—Haden collaborated with a number of jazz giants throughout the '60s and '70s, including John Coltrane, Alice Coltrane, Archie Shepp, Billy Higgins, Chet Baker and Joe Henderson. He was a member of Keith Jarrett's trio as well as the pianist's American Quartet with drummer Paul Motian and tenor saxophonist Dewey Redman from 1967-77.

In 1969, Haden commissioned pianist-composer Carla Bley to arrange music for a large cast of improvisers he called the Liberation Music Orchestra.

In 1976, Haden formed Old And New Dreams with Redman, Cherry and Blackwell to perpetuate Coleman's music as well as their own original material. The group was active until 1987.

In 1986, he formed Quartet West with saxophonist Ernie Watts, pianist Alan Broadbent and drummer Larance Marable (later replaced by Rodney Green). The group continued to perform until 2013.

Haden befriended Pat Metheny and played on the guitarist's double album 80/81 (ECM). The two collaborated frequently over the years, and both appeared on Coleman and Metheny's acclaimed 1986 album Song X and subsequent tour.

Haden can be heard on various live and recorded projects throughout the 1990s and 2000s with the likes of guitarists Metheny, John Scofield, Bill Frisell and John McLaughlin; drummers Ginger Baker and Jack DeJohnette; saxophonists Michael Brecker, Joe Lovano and Ravi Coltrane; trumpeter Tom Harrell; and vocalist-pianist Shirley Horn. He earned a reputation for performing intimate duo recordings and participating in small-group collaborations with such pianists as Hank Jones, Kenny Barron, Brad Mehldau, Ethan Iverson, Jarrett and Gonzalo Rubalcaba.

Haden's experience and influence reached far beyond the jazz realm. He was outspoken regarding the universality of his diverse musical associations, which included projects with pop artists Rickie Lee Jones and Ringo Starr, blues harmonicist-vocalist James Cotton, Brazilian guitarist Egberto Gismonti, Portuguese guitarist Carlos Paredes, Argentinian bandoneon player Dino Saluzzi and classical composer Gavin Bryars.

In 2008, Haden brought his personal history full circle to record Rambling Boy (Decca), which connected the music of his childhood to his present family, which includes his wife, vocalist Ruth Cameron; triplet daughters Petra, Rachel and Tanya; son Josh; and son-in-law Jack Black. The following year, Swiss film director Reto Caduff released a Rambling Boy documentary about Haden's life that was a major hit at jazz festivals and on the international film festival circuit.

Haden's most recent album releases include 2010's Jasmine (ECM), a duet with Keith Jarrett; 2011's Sophisticated Ladies (Emarcy/Decca) with Quartet West, strings and several contemporary vocalists; 2011's Live At Birdland (ECM) with saxophonist Lee Konitz, Mehldau and Motian; and 2014's Last Dance (ECM) with Jarrett. (See sidebar on page 34 written by Jarrett.)

The reactivated Impulse! label recently release a live album that was recorded during a duo performance by Haden and guitarist Jim Hall at the 1990 Montreal Jazz Festival.

Haden won multiple Grammys—one for his 1997 duet recording with Metheny, Beyond The Missouri Sky; another for his 2001 CD Nocturne, which included boleros from Cuba and Mexico and featured Cuban pianist Gonzolo Rubalcaba; and a third for his 2004 CD Land Of The Sun, which explored the works of Mexican composer Jose Sabre Marroquin with arrangements by Rubalcaba.

Among his crowning achievements were a Recording Academy Lifetime Achievement Award and a 2012 NEA Jazz Master Award. A longtime critical favorite, he was named New Star Bassist in DownBeat's 1961 Critics Poll and was elected to the DownBeat Hall of Fame in August 2013.

Upon receiving the news of his Hall of Fame induction last year, Haden expressed gratitude and elation to Ed Enright of the Institute for Jazz Studies and Downbeat.

"You know, for a while there I wasn't getting very much recognition," he said. "And I was thinking, I'm doing all of these different things, all these different kinds of music, Brazil and Portugal and Argentina and hillbilly music with my daughters, and doing all this different stuff that I don't think any other jazz people do. I thought maybe it was my political leanings that were keeping me from getting recognition. So all of these recent awards and honors have really made me feel good. I have a lot to be thankful for. And I want to make sure I give back to everybody."   

                        

Charlie Haden inspired legions of musicians who were fortunate enough to work with him, as well as those who received his encouragement: His colleagues attest to his quiet leadership, determination and love of a strong melody.

Pianist Carla Bley met Haden in the mid-1950s when he came out to live in Los Angeles. They worked together frequently, especially in the Liberation Music Orchestra.

"I was already in Los Angeles with Paul Bley, and Paul, being a connoisseur of bass players, immediately scooped him up," Carla recalled. "He had a very interesting and exquisite taste in all things. It wasn't just music. Although we agreed on a lot of music—he had certain chords, notes and composers. He'd get infatuated over furniture, and have to get the money to buy that piece of furniture. I couldn't see what he saw but I trusted that it indeed must have been beautiful. He had this sense of taste, very sure of himself at a young age.

"The way he played, he had an instantly recognizable style," Carla added. "He felt that way about the notes he played: This is the right note and no other note will do.' And he always called himself 'Whole Note Haden'; he played really slow and the notes were perfect and in the perfect place. He would play notes that weren't in the chord changes, but were so perfect that you waited for the chord change, and when the correct note came in, it was more thrilling than if it had been offered."

Haden formed Quartet West in the 1980s and its members included saxophonist Ernie Watts, who worked in the group for 25 years.

"Charlie had a beautiful, deep singing sound," Watts said. "It was very, very warm and very, very even all over the instrument. Besides that, he had so much harmonic knowledge and so much melodic knowledge from the years he was playing. He really was in touch with how things work with duration of time. A lot of times you don't count a bar — you feel the duration of time that it takes four bars to go by and he had a beautiful, intuitive nature of duration of time, in phrasing. When he played within a pattern or within a phrase, his time was totally on in a horizontal way rather than a vertical way.

"What made him a great leader is that he let everybody be who they were," Watts added. "We just all understood each other, understood the music and all loved each other and knew each other as people."

Along with Haden's groups, he also worked in duets throughout the 1990s, including with pianist Kenny Barron on such recordings as Night And The City (Verve, 1996).

"One of the things I loved about Charlie's playing, in addition to the sound, is he left a lot of space," Barron said. "And his playing was deceptively simple. With the bottom, it was just perfect. There was room for you to breathe, and there was interaction, too. It was a challenge: There was a lot for a pianist to do. You had a lot of space to fill, but that's a good thing. You had to learn how to not put too much in there. Not to fill it up, but using it. Charlie played just the right notes. I often say that he played 'b-a-s-e'; he really supplied the bottom, which made my stuff work."

After Haden's death, a more recent colleague, pianist Brad Mehldau, wrote:

"An untouchable, eternal hipness. A feeling of dance, with an element of danger. Sometimes, something like a polished diamond, precious to behold, unbreakable. Other times, just as remarkable: something like a sand sculpture or mandala—a beauty that is breaking apart and blowing away, disappearing even as you witness it.”

Another recent partner, saxophonist Joshua Redman, mentioned on his Facebook page, "Charlie had the biggest ears. He heard everything. He was right there with you every step of the way. And he took what he heard and helped you try to make something lovely out of it."

Bassist Ben Allison had been listening to Haden's music since he was a teenager and the elder bassist's "Sandino" inspired his own composition "Hey Man."  The two bassists encountered each other periodically on the festival circuit.

“As much as he’s a bass player, and the bassist’s role is to play the root of the chord—and he did—I felt his mind work throughout the harmonies in a way where he is not just consigned to playing root notes,” Allison said. "He was thinking of freely harmonizing whatever the soloist was doing. In Ornette [Coleman's] band, Ornette would spin out a melodic line and it would sound like Charlie would hear what Ornette was playing and find a note that would fit well with it. Charlie would have a deep tonality that wasn't necessarily tied to predetermined harmonies,

but was just the way he thought."

Pianist Keith Jarrett observed of his close friend and frequent band mate:

“People will always love his playing, but no one will ever imitate him. He was a rare, true original. Perfect intonation, the biggest ears, the warmest most captivating tone in the history of Jazz bass; and always musical. And I never had a better partner on a project for his honest input and deep understanding of our intentions in choosing the tracks for Jasmine and Last Dance. …  Charlie wrapped himself around the bass while he played it; inhabited it; made love to it. The bass really became the bass again in his hands.”

Charlie Haden died on July 11, 2014. He was seventy-six years old [76].

"Grit" and George Russell - The Dom Cerulli Interview

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

“George Russell would have “killed" Bird.”

- Miles Davis

In her new book Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance [Scribner, 333 pages, $28], Angela Duckworth, a psychology professor at the University of Pennsylvania, defines “grit” as a combination of passion and perseverance in the pursuit of a long-term goal.

The author, has spent the past decade studying why some people have extraordinary success and others do not.

Ms. Duckworth first realized the importance of grit as a teacher. Before she became an academic, she worked as a seventh-grade math teacher at a public school in New York. Some of her students were more inherently gifted with numbers than others. But not all of these capable students, to her surprise, got the best grades. Those who did weren’t always “math people”: For the most part, they were those who consistently invested more time and effort in their work.

Ms. Duckworth decided to become a research psychologist to figure out what explained their success. One of her first studies was of West Point cadets. Every year, West Point enrolls more than 1,000 students, but 20% of cadets drop out before graduation. Many quit in their first two months, during an intense training program known as Beast Barracks, or Beast. The most important factor in West Point admissions is the Whole Candidate Score, a composite measure of test scores, high-school rank, leadership potential and physical fitness.

But Ms. Duckworth found that this score, which is essentially a measure of innate ability, did not predict who dropped out during Beast. She created her own “Grit Scale,” scored using cadets’ responses to statements like “I finish whatever I begin” or “New ideas and projects sometimes distract me from previous ones.” Those who scored highest on the Grit Scale were the most likely to make it to the end of Beast.

It’s a similar story among the other groups that Ms. Duckworth writes about here, including spelling-bee champions and sales associates: Grit predicts their success more robustly than innate ability. And there is no positive correlation between ability and grit. A study of Ivy League undergraduates even showed that the smarter the students were, as measured by SAT scores, the less gritty they were.

Grit may be defined by strenuous effort, but what drives that work, Ms. Duckworth finds, is passion, and a great service of Ms. Duckworth’s book is her down-to-earth definition of passion. To be gritty, an individual doesn’t need to have an obsessive infatuation with a goal. Rather, he/she needs to show “consistency over time.” The grittiest people have developed long-term goals and are constantly working toward them. “Enthusiasm is common,” she writes. “Endurance is rare.”

As you read the following Dom Cerulli interview with composer-arranger George Russell, I think that you’ll agree that passion coupled with perseverance were critically important elements in his life’s work.

Despite years of adversity, George learned how to follow through in pursuit of his long-term goal. Without such enthusiasm and dedication, I doubt that The Lydian Concept of Tonal Organization would ever have been realized.

This interview of George Russell was conducted by Dom Cerulli in 1958. To his credit, Dom was one of the first Jazz writers to understand the significance of George’s breakthrough theory as explained in The Lydian Concept of Tonal Organization.

“A sleek, low Mercedes rocketed down Manhattan's West Side highway about 3 a.m. recently. At the wheel was Miles Davis, taking a break from work to check out his car. Beside him were two musicians who eyed the speedometer as it approached 75 miles an hour.

One of them said to Davis, “I don’t want to be a canned vegetable, you know.”

Davis' expression didn't change as he answered, “I’m in here, too.”

“I’m in here, too” is the tranquilizer that the composer, arranger, and music theorist George Russell uses to indoctrinate some of jazz' most gifted but skeptical musicians when they start to study the Lydian Concept of Tonal Organization with him.

“The jazz musician has a natural aversion to having a concept or theory imposed on him due, among other things, to the awkward struggle he has encountered in shaping the traditional European explanation of tonality to fit the needs of jazz,” Russell said.

“The jazz musician, to some degree, has had to learn traditional music theory only to break many of its rules in practice. Other theories have come along, but the jazz musician has made only a fractional use, if any, of them. Perhaps because they weren't a natural evolvement from the chord basis that underlies jazz and all traditional Western music.

“A theory of any kind demands obedience at first in order to master it. However, a really useful theory doesn't enslave one without making the period of servitude interesting and worthwhile and without eventually freeing its subscribers through its own built-in liberation apparatus.

“The theory which forces you to rebel against its concepts in order to find freedom is obviously not fulfilling the needs required of it.”

Russell, who will become 35 next month, was earning his living as a jazz drummer in a Cincinnati night spot at the age of 15. An early influence on his career was neighbor Jimmy Munday, who was arranging for Benny Goodman's band.

George toured to New York with Benny Carter when he was 20 and heard Max Roach with Dizzy Gillespie and Oscar Pettiford on 52nd St. “After hearing Max,” Russell said, “I decided that writing was it. I went back to Cincy and began to learn as much as I could about writing from the jazz writers around town. I learned a lot through trial and error with the house band at the old Cotton club.”

Benny Carter came through town, heard a thing Russell had done, and asked George to write it for his big band. “It took me five months and a trip to Chicago,” Russell recalled, “but I finally caught the band at a downtown theater, and they rehearsed it. Benny was very happy with it, and on top of that he paid me for it. I literally floated to the station with J. J. (Johnson) and Max that night, and I was launched on a writing career.”

Russell said he then wrote for a show and also did some writing for Earl Hines who was at the El Grotto in Chicago. This all was good experience.

“About this time,” he continued, “Robert Gay started talking Dizzy to me. I can't honestly say that I heard Diz at first, but someone played Monk's 'Round About Midnight, and it really jarred me. Little Diz (Gay), the late Henry Prior, and I left for New York almost immediately,

“Dizzy was about to form his first big band, and all the arrangers were trying out things. I was pretty shaky, so I took them my tried-and-true Benny Carter composition -

Diz liked it. But the next day, I became critically ill.”

Russell's illness kept him hospitalized for 16 months. The first five were strict bed rest. During this period of inactivity, he said he thought about music all his waking hours.

“I knew I had to make use of this time to educate myself,” Russell said. “From the scraps of advanced harmony I had gathered, I knew that my answer didn't lie in traditional theory. I had experimented scantily with polytonality before, but on the piano in the library of the hospital, I really began an intensive research into tonality. For its therapeutic value alone, it was great.”

Russell's search consumed 11 months. Toward the end of that period, the logic of the Lydian scale began to emerge. He left the hospital and accepted Roach's invitation to recuperate in his Brooklyn home, where Charlie Parker, Gillespie, Miles Davis, and John Lewis were frequent guests.

“Thanks to Max's piano and Mrs. Roach's monumental endurance, I continued to work on the research project for nine months,” he said.

Russell did no composing while working on the theory, but he detected a trend and decided to compose only what the theory could explain.

“I'd usually compose for a short period,” he said, “then run into a problem that couldn't be explained, and I’d have to retreat into research again for the answer. It was frustrating, but I'd always find the answer. And following each of these revolutions, I'd find that the theory was more manipulative and easier to handle. And it placed more resources at my disposal.”

During one of his composing periods, Russell collaborated with Gillespie on Cubano Be, Cubano Bop, and became tabbed a Latin jazz writer. He admits, however, that he's never believed much will come of the marriage of the two influences. During another cycle in 1949, his Bird in Igor’s Yard was recorded for Capitol by Buddy DeFranco's big band. The record became a sort of legend through Symphony Sid's constant playing of an acetate and through another test pressing owned by Gerry Mulligan. But Capitol never released it.

Russell also arranged Ezzthetic for Bird and strings, and although Parker played it many times in personal appearances, he never was allowed to record it. “Things were getting dreadfully commercial at that time,” Russell recalled.

He wrote some things for Charlie Ventura and then dropped out of circulation for about five years.

“I felt that there was no place for me in music at that time,” he explained.. “I devoted the years from 1950-53 to the production of a thesis, The Lydian Concept of Tonal Organization. I did practically no composing at this time. The theory had become an organic part of my life. It was a live, growing thing with a constantly expanding logical life of its own. It was demanding to be born as an organized, ordered method.

“I think for the first time I had some inkling of what I was going after: a concept with a soul, born out of jazz and its needs, yet embracing all music created in the equal temperament system. I finished the thesis in 1953.” Russell explained the system thusly:

It deals with the relationship between chords and scales. Its basic principle is that a major scale in its natural sequence, is composed of two tetrachords. The first of these tetrachords C - D - E - F in the C Major scale for example, resolves to the tonality of F; the E being the leading tone of this resolution. The second tetrachord, G - A - B - C, resolves to the tonality of C.

The Major scale thus possesses two tonics: the tonic on its fourth degree and the one on its tonic above (F and C, in that order). Viewed vertically as a harmonic structure, the C Major scale thus would tend to favor the tonality of F because its bottom tetrachord resolves to the tonic F.

Following this logic, the G Major scale, viewed vertically, would be more closely related to the tonality of C than the C Major scale. This is because the lower tetrachord of the G Major scale resolves to the tonic C while its upper tetrachord resolves to the tone (G) that is the dominant of a C Major chord. The Lydian mode of the G Major scale, (CD - E - FF - G - A - B), therefore can be called the C Lydian scale: the scale which in a vertical sense is most closely related to the C Major chord tonality.

This is proved to be true by proceeding from the tonic C upwards in fifths (the strongest harmonic interval of the overtone system) to the tone F4. The tones produced by this vertical structure will be those contained in the Lydian scale.

In order to obtain the tones of a major scale by this method, the sixth, fifth, (B natural - F sharp) would have to be altered a halftone, (B natural - F natural) thus interrupting the perfect symmetry of the fifths.

From this basic reasoning, an order of chords and scales and, finally, of all elements of tonality emerges that makes a very strong case for the Lydian scale being the more natural scale for modern music.

“From 1953-55, I composed experimentally with the theory,” Russell said. “Each insoluble new problem caused the concept to erupt. But following each eruption there came a new refinement of technique, a more secure grasp of more materials.

“The Lydian Concept of Tonal Organization evolved into the Lydian Chromatic Concept of Tonal Organization, a 12-tone concept based on the grading of the intervals on the basis of their close-to-distant relationship to a central tone. Such terms as tonal gravity (the attraction of the overall tonality to a tonal center) are introduced into the musical language by this concept.

“My cycles of composing became longer and longer in duration, to the point where they are no longer interrupted by besieging problems, and I am free to grapple with the more subtle elements of music, such as taste.”

John Lewis, who once roomed with Russell, was a constant source of encouragement. Last year, Lewis invited Russell to lecture on the Lydian concept at the School of Jazz in Lenox, Mass. The reaction was enthusiastic and stimulating.

Lewis told the students during a question-and-answer period that it seemed possible that jazz might well overthrow its traditional European explanations and produce its own. Russell was invited to become a faculty member for this year's semester.

A growing number of established and young jazz musicians currently are making their way to Russell's Greenwich Village apartment to study with him. At first, this posed a problem, he said, explaining:

“A couple of months ago Art Farmer said he wanted to study. Our first lesson was pretty shaky because, although I was prepared to teach composers, I didn't realize until that lesson that I had to devise some quick, direct, simple method of communicating this thing to improvisors.

“The composition course is fast, considering the ground it covers, but the improvisors, particularly the pros, don't have the time or inclination to study a theory unless it's quick — and it works.”

With these objectives in mind, Russell devised a chart that contains the complex of melodic resources, including polymodal, that the equal temperament system affords, and he indicated also the simple techniques used in handling these resources.

For every definable chord, the improvisor is provided with the parent scale of the chord, other logical scale choices, and is given all the possible polymodal resources available for the chord.

“There is even a technique allowing the soloist to stretch out,” Russell said, “so that he does not have to adjust to each passing chord.

“Art learned the theory in about five lessons, and is now utilizing the material on the chart in his own way in improvisation. All my students have mastered the theory in about six or seven lessons.”

Farmer said the Lydian concept “opens the door 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."

Trombonist Jimmy Cleveland terms the Lydian concept “the best method ever devised for the purpose of training and insight leading to the ultimate in improvisation.”

Russell admits that his influences include Gil Evans, George Handy, Gerry Mulligan, and the composers Alban Berg, Bela Bartok, Igor Stravinsky, and Stefan Wolpe, with whom he studied for six months. From a scientist friend, George Endrey, Russell learned that “even mathematics has a soul. Endrey gave me a scientific language without which I could not have begun to follow the logic of logic.”

What he terms his “most ambitious project so far," a work commissioned by Brandeis university, is due to be released shortly by Columbia Records [All About Rosie]. Russell also is working on several jazz albums, including one featuring Sonny Rollins, for Riverside.

One Sunday recently, Miles went to Russell's house for dinner. George explained some of his theory to Davis, and the trumpeter said, “George, if Bird were alive, this would kill him.”

Russell asked Davis how he meant that.

But Davis just grinned and sat down to dinner.”

Source:

Down Beat Magazine

May 29, 1958