Dr. Billy Taylor – Jazz Emissary

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

The late Jazz writer, Gene Lees, once said of pianist Billy Taylor: 

"With his knowledge of history, musical and otherwise, Billy quietly rejects the image of the early Jazzman as an uneducated autodidact, creating the music out of thin air and natural instinct - which he calls with a wry smile the 'noble savage' theory of Jazz genesis."

And Richard Cook and Brian Morton writing in The Penguin Guide to Jazz on CD noted:

"... Billy Taylor's talents as a piano player should be recognized more than they are. He played with everyone from Stuff Smith to Charlie Parker on 52nd Street.... Taylor's affinities are essentially bop, but his sensibility is akin to Teddy Wilson's: cultivated, gentlemanly, his improvisations take a leisurely route through his surroundings, alighting only on points which are germane to the setting, but managing to suggest a complete grasp of the material and the task at hand."

In The Oxford Companion to Jazz, Bill Kirchner [ed.], pianist Dick Katz stated:

"Pianist-composer-spokesman-author-educator Billy Taylor has done as much as anyone in Jazz history to promulgate an awareness, understanding and appreciation of Jazz to large audiences. ... Because of his public persona, his brilliant piano playing has sometimes been under-appreciated. ... The influence of his mentor, Art Tatum, is a prominent feature of his playing." 

Billy Taylor died in December 2010 at the age of 89.

Ten years later, it’s still difficult for me to imagine a Jazz world without him.

A pianist, who played in bands with all the greats of modern Jazz, led his own trios for many years and seemed to always be in one aspect of Jazz education or another, Dr. Billy Taylor was a true emissary of Jazz.

For many years, I remember having my morning coffee while watching the version of CBS’ Sunday Morning with Charles Kuralt as host that featured periodic visits by Dr. Billy interviewing a Jazz great, or explaining how his JazzMobile was created as a traveling bus to distribute books and records directly to children in the neighborhoods of New York to help familiarize them with the music, or performing with his trio or on solo piano to demonstrate something about Jazz.

Quiet, urbane and always with a smile on his face, Billy was the personification of a Gentleman and, as such, quite the opposite of the stereotypic Jazz musician with their arcane hip talk, disrespect and disregard for the general audience, sloppy dress and disheveled appearance.

With his passing at age 89 in December 2010, Dr. Billy Taylor left behind one of the most honorable of Jazz legacies.

His autobiography, The Jazz Life of Dr. Billy Taylor was published by Indiana University Press. It is co-authored by Teresa L. Reed.  It is a work that does justice to “... Dr. Taylor’s wide-eyed enthusiasm for Jazz and to his mission to further the music’s tradition and expand its audience.”

Eugene Holley, Jr. filed this review of the book in the August 2013 edition of Downbeat.

© -Eugene Holley, Jr./Downbeat, copyright protected; all rights reserved.

The ebullient pianist, composer, educator and author Dr. Billy Taylor almost single-handedly made jazz a thriving educational discipline, and presented it in the media with clarity and dignity — all of which comes across in the pages of The Jazz Life Of Dr. Billy Taylor (Indiana University Press). The North-Carolina-born, Washington, D.C.,-bred Taylor was a poetic and propulsive musician who recorded more than 60 recordings as a leader, who, before the term "multi-tasking" was invented, launched groundbreaking, pioneering parallel careers as an Emmy and Peabody winning radio broadcaster, variety show musical director and TV correspondent. He was also an acclaimed author of nine books, in­cluding Billy Taylor's Taylor Made Piano, and was a tireless spokesman, who coined the phrase "jazz is America's classical music." This concise and com­pelling autobiography was co-written with Teresa Reed, director of the School of Music at the Uni­versity of Tulsa. She began working with Taylor in 2006 and continued her work after his passing in 2010 at 89.

The most illuminating passages deal with Taylor's early life. Those looking for a clichéd, dark ghetto tale of black poverty and suffering in Taylor's reminiscences of growing up in the nation's capital in the 1920s and '30s will not find it here. Instead, Taylor — the son of a dentist and homemaker — proudly describes the D.C. mid­dle-class enclave he grew up in that produced a segregated yet thriving African-American busi­nesses, art venues, and role models in an age where ‘there was an equally significant artistic and cultural movement among our people that echoed the well-known achievements of the Harlem Renaissance." That refinement was evi­dent in Taylor's Dunbar High School, one of the greatest black high schools in the country, which boasted teachers like historian Carter G. Woodson and Taylor's piano teacher Henry Grant, who encouraged Taylor to "listen to Debussy etudes and [former pupil] Duke Ellington together so we could compare the similarities between their use of harmony.’

Teachers and mentors occupy a special place in Taylor's heart, from his piano-playing Uncle Bob to Undine Smith Moore, the classical pianist/ composer who urged Taylor to drop his sociology major at Virginia State to music. He graduated in 1942, and headed to New York a year later. There he jammed at Minton's Playhouse, secured sev­eral prestige-building gigs with Eddie South, Don Redman, Ben Webster and Cozy Cole, and be­came the house pianist at Birdland from 1949 to 1951. It was during this period that Taylor penned his first book, Billy Taylor’s Basic Bebop Instruction, where jazz education entered his life, which also included his wife, Theodora, and later his children Duane and Kim. ‘Those early opportuni­ties to speak and write about jazz foreshadowed' things to come,’ he writes.

In the ensuing decades Taylor would record a number of excellent recordings, including My Fair Lady Loves Jazz and It's A Matter Of Pride and even penned a soul-jazz standard, "I Wish I Knew How It Would Feel To Be Free." His profile as an educator and broadcaster also grew, as evidenced by his history-making stints as a disk jockey and program director on New York's WNEW and WLI8 radio stations, He also back as an educator through his role in co-creating Jazzmobile, the Harlem-based mobile performance venue that provided free jazz concerts and lessons to inner city youth. Taylor broke ground as musical director of "The David Frost Show," being the first Af­rican-American in that position, hosted National Public Radio's "Jazz Alive," and served as a cultural correspondent for “CBS Sunday Morning."

Though Taylor, who earned his doctoral de­gree at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst in 1975, approached his role as jazz educator, am­bassador and spokesman with verve, the book makes clear that his pianism, an astonishing, tech­nically impressive amalgam that spans all of the eras of jazz, was overlooked as a result. Still, Taylor did not mind so much — as he writes, ‘At the time, I knew that my involvement in these various efforts took away the precious hours that I would have liked to spend writing songs and playing the pia­no. Looking back, however, I have no regrets.’”

And, in this excerpt, the pianist recalls his move to New York City during the heady days of bebop. Just hours off the train at age 22, he began making connections with jazz greats that would change his life forever.

© -Teresa Reed./University of Indiana Press, copyright protected; all rights reserved.

“On a chilly Friday night late in 1943, I boarded the train for the big city, my pockets filled with the money I’d saved, my head filled with dreams, and my heart pounding a syncopated rhythm of nervous yet hopeful anticipation. New York was jazz heaven, and I couldn’t wait to get there and take my place. As the train moved farther and farther away from Washington, D.C., the bittersweetness of permanently leaving home and family gave way to blurry yet bright and enticing visions of the unknown. As soon as I could, I intended to head for Minton’s, the legendary Harlem club where the who’s who of the jazz world gathered to jam. Minton’s Playhouse was the regular stomping ground of people like Dizzy Gillespie, Charlie Parker and Thelonious Monk. Everybody knew that if you wanted to make it in music, Minton’s was the place to be.

When I first arrived in New York, I had arranged to stay for a short time with my mother’s older brother, my uncle Walker Bacon, and his family. So I got off the train, and contrary to Duke Ellington’s advice to Billy Strayhorn about taking the “‘A’ train,” I took the Lenox Avenue subway to 145th Street. I got off the train, and with my luggage in tow, I walked three very long blocks in the bone-snapping cold to the Dunbar Apartments in Harlem. I quickly greeted my aunt and uncle and told them I had to depart immediately to meet someone, which was part lie and part truth. I dropped off my bags and was swiftly out the door again. Having now relocated to this city whose lights, sounds and possibilities had beckoned to me, I was making a total commitment. I had no idea what lay ahead, but I knew that I’d arrived someplace where to dream and to dare were one and the same. There was no time to waste.

On that very first night as a resident of New York, I enrolled in the school of jazz known as Minton’s Playhouse. Upon arriving at the club, I introduced myself and joined the company of eager young musicians who, like me, craved a chance to display and hone their skills. The players who had already passed muster enjoyed the hard-won privilege of going on first. All of the rest of us were waiting in line to play after them, some guys sitting nervously while clutching their instruments, others furrowing their brows in apparent fear of following the guy ahead of him (the guy he never figured to be that good), and still others wringing their hands and glancing down at their watches as the minutes and hours ticked by. Tapping feet kept the pulse as we waited, listened and took it all in — new twists of harmony, melody and rhythm, new hot-off-the-press musical ideas to incorporate into the improvisations we each rehearsed inside of our heads. Despite its legendary status, Minton’s was the kind of place where the older guys considered it their role to scold, correct and encourage the youngsters, just as seasoned masters do to their apprentices. Anyone with a desire to play could walk into Minton’s, wait his turn to sit in with the band, and, if he had enough nerve and the right thickness of skin, get a jazz education par excellence from veteran musicians who taught by example and cared deeply about the music.

Excerpted with permission from The Jazz Life of Dr. Billy Taylor, by Dr. Billy Taylor with Teresa L. Reed. Indiana University Press, 2013.”

Order information about the book is available at www.iupress.indiana.edu.

Parker, Young and the Problem of Imitators - Lee Konitz: Conversations on the Imrpoviser's Art

© Copyright ® Steven Cerra, copyright protected; all rights reserved.

Jazz is not a style: it’s not back in a log cabin in Mississippi. We are urban musicians - we can’t go back there.

Jazz is not a ‘what.’ It is a ‘how,’ and if you do things according to the ‘how’ of Jazz, it’s Jazz.”

- Bill Evans, pianist, composer, bandleader

"I believe the true lover of jazz would prefer to experience the same emotions as the artist when an idea is first discovered," he wrote, later adding, "Improvisation, to me, is the core of jazz. Because I believe this, my style of piano is one shaped primarily by the material, or ideas which I am attempting to express— not by a system or a search for an identifying' sound.'"

- Dave Brubeck, pianist, composer, bandleader

"Paul Rubin: We've noticed that on some of your albums certain standards reappear and, also, that on other tunes the changes sound very similar.

Lee Konitz: You say, first of all, the changes, the tunes were similar? I don't know what you mean by that. PR: The chord changes.

LK: I know what you mean by chord changes, but what tunes I wonder did you have in mind?

PR: "I'll Remember April." There are other songs that sound like that one. One may even be called "April," but on a different record.

LK: Oh, they're all "I Remember April" but with different titles. Oh, I see what you mean. Well, that's simply a result of, I mean that's basically my repertoire, that few dozen tunes. And if I'm not setting up a special set of material for a record, I will choose those songs I like best and try 'em again, without the melody, say, just using the structure of the song,

Wayne Eustice: So you prefer having a limited body of material to play?

LK: If we have a little short confessional here [laughter], I keep thinking that it doesn't matter what tunes you play. The process is the same, and if it works then it's like a new piece, you know. And it is a fact that the better you know the song the more chances you might dare take. And so that's why Bird played a dozen tunes all his life, basically, and most of the people that were improvising—Tristano played the same dozen tunes all his life. And you know, it's amazing what depth he got. He wouldn't have gotten that otherwise, I don't think, in that particular way.

I think it's something similar to Monet painting the lily pond at all times of the day, catching the reflection of the light. I just feel with each situation I'm in, different rhythm sections or whatever, that "I'll Remember April" becomes just something else. And it is a very preferable point — that's the main thing. Everybody who knows that material knows that material pretty well — the listeners and the musicians. So they know, you can just nakedly reveal if anything's happening or not; there's no subterfuge. And that aspect of it is appealing to me, I think.”

- Wayne Enstice [WE] and Paul Rubin [PR] which appears in their book JAZZ SPOKEN HERE: Conversations with 22 Musicians [New York: DaCapo Press, 1994].

Spending time as I have recently in preparing blog features about pianists, composers and bandleaders Bill Evans and Dave Brubeck, I was struck by how often they allude to or outright declare that Jazz is a verb, a doing word, something you do to musical material. 

In other words, Jazz is a process: do things a certain way musically and it becomes Jazz.

The consensus of opinion in support of this point-of-view as expressed in the introductory quotations by Bill, Dave and alto saxophonist Lee Konitz is the centrality of improvisation in the making of Jazz.

Which brings me to Andy Hamilton’s insightful and interesting book: Lee Konitz: Conversations on the Improvisor’s Art [University of Michigan Press].

Often associated with the "cool" school of jazz, Lee Konitz was one of the few saxophonists of his generation to forge a unique sound independent of the influence of Charlie Parker. In the late 1940s, Konitz began his career with the Claude Thornhill band, during which time he came into contact with Miles Davis, with whom he would later work on the legendary Birth of the Cool sessions. Konitz is perhaps best known through his association with pianist and educator Lennie Tristano, under whose influence much of his sound evolved, and for his work with Stan Kenton and Warne Marsh. His recordings have ranged from cool bop to experimental improvisation and have appeared on such labels as Prestige, Atlantic, Verve, and Polydor. 

Above all, in whatever context, and to this day, Konitz has remained a Jazz improviser: each gig, each band, each tune is an opportunity to make something from nothing - an opportunity to create.

Hamilton’s approach to the book is to ask Konitz his opinions of musicians he has performed with and then ask these very same musicians what they think of Lee’s playing.

Crafted out of numerous interviews between the author and his subject, the book offers a unique look at the story of Lee Konitz's life and music, detailing Konitz's own insights into his musical education and his experiences with such figures as Miles Davis, Stan Kenton, Warne Marsh, Lennie Tristano, Charles Mingus, Bud Powell, and Bill Evans.

Or as saxophonist Dave Liebman explains it:  "An extraordinary approach to a biography, with the man himself speaking for extended sessions. The main vibration I felt from Lee's words was total honesty, almost to a fault. Konitz shows himself to be an acute observer of the scene, full of wisdom and deep musical insights, relevant to any historical period regardless of style. The asides by noted musicians are beautifully woven throughout the pages. I couldn't put the book down - it is the definition of a living history."

"Hamilton's work may well mark the inception of a format new to writing on Western music, one which avoids both the self-aggrandizing of autobiography and the stylized subjectification of biography."

-The Wire

"Meticulously researched, detailed and documented, this long awaited overview justly establishes Konitz as one of the most consistently brilliant, adventurous and original improvisers in the jazz tradition-a genius as rare as Bird himself." —John Zorn

Hamilton also asks Lee his opinion trendsetters in the music and how their influence affected others, how they felt about being imitated and what this dynamic does to originality in the improviser’s art.

The following excerpt is an example of one such question posed to Lee and involves his thoughts about:

Parker, Young and the Problem of Imitators

“During the 1950s, Konitz began to influence other saxophonists. The problem of responding to imitators is something that he felt as keenly as Charlie Parker and Lester Young, even if there have been fewer in his case. By the 1950s both Parker and Young had become the dominant influences on their respective instruments and had legions of admirers, a fact both found hard to deal with — tenor-player Brew Moore even claimed, "Anyone who doesn't play like Lester is wrong!" In many cases the imitators were white and enjoyed more commercial success. Lester Young was bitter about these imitators, and not just about their greater commercial success, commenting, "They're me. They are taking me. [And] I'm not even dead yet." Lennie Tristano condemned Parker's imitators in characteristically colorful language: "I'lf Charlie Parker wanted to invoke plagiarism laws he could sue almost everybody who's made a record in the last 10 years. If I were Bird, I'd have all the best boppers in the country thrown into jail!” Charles Mingus echoed the sentiment in his composition "Gunslinging Bird," subtitled "If Charlie Parker Were A Gunslinger, There'd Be A Whole Lot Of Dead Copycats." Konitz begins by describing how he got to know Charlie Parker when both were touring with Stan Kenton's "Festival of Modern American Jazz" in 1954.

Some time after I left the band, in 1953, Stan called me and asked me if I would come as a soloist, for a series of festivals. I said, "Great, who else is gonna be on?" He said, "Charlie Parker." I said, "What!" I never did find out the reason for inviting me and Charlie. But I was coming back to a very familiar situation, and playing with a band I knew, and Charlie was in new surroundings — and I don't think he was in great shape during that tour. The word got out that this young ofay was cutting Bird.

1 got to know Bird a little bit at that time, and he was really a very nice man. He was very considerate. My wife was having a child in New York and I was on the West Coast. He called me and said, "I think you need a friend at this time," and we hung out. Otherwise I never really got to spend a lot of time with him, unfortunately. He always told me that he appreciated that I wasn't playing like him, and I can believe that. I've had a few people trying to play like me. When I first heard Paul Desmond, I wanted to change my sound completely.

But almost everybody played like Charlie Parker. What must he have felt like, this man? Every place he turned was like looking in a mirror. How much he invested to get to that point — what else could he do? Maybe he decided that was enough, and gave it up at the age of thirty-four. Lester Young was very upset by imitators too.

It's a very strange feeling to hear someone playing like you, duplicating what you've worked on for years. Tristano refused to record for a long time, thinking that he would be imitated. He knew that people would be jumping on it and duplicating it quickly. 

Isn't it flattering?

Well it is, but then it gets down to the very basic thing about what you're doing. If someone's already picked it up, that means you've got to go on to new grounds, which is good in a sense. But it gets to feel a bit like a theft of a personal invention. There's no way to patent it! But you're doing it better.

Just the fact that someone is making a sound similar to me was kind of encouraging, and discouraging at the same time, that it was that accessible. I thought I had something unique. Imagine how Charlie Parker felt when they were really playing his notes, and every inflection. Sonny Stitt identified so much that he thought he invented it! That's a very intense psychological disturbance, I think, and obviously Charlie Parker couldn't deal with it ultimately.

You've not had too many saxophonists who are close to your sound. 

A few, not many today. These white players, Paul Desmond, Bud Shank, Gary Foster, the Swedish players Arne Domnerus and Rolf Billberg, were trying to get away from Bird too, so I was an example for them. I think Art Pepper liked my sound and concept to an extent. And, bless him, Gigi Gryce heard us too.

I admired Paul Desmond's playing, but I didn't really love it somehow. It felt very stylized, and kind of pretty — and he had a lot of girlfriends! In fact, when I first heard him I wanted to change my style more, to get away from whatever was pretty in my sound. I've been trying to eliminate "pretty" from my sound and expression. 

Did you feel that he was your closest imitator?

Well, he heard me, but I also thought there was some influence from Stan Getz, and Lester Young, and Zoot Sims. I kind of said, "Thank you," but figured that I had to keep going — if it was that obvious for them to be able to get it, enjoy, but let me find something that's new and personal for me. 

Hearing you last night [at Coventry in 2002), I wonder if in some ways you were getting more lyrical.

I'm hearing that, when I hear myself play, and it really pleases me. To me "more lyrical" means being as melodic as possible at the moment, but not schmaltzy-pretty. Melody is still my chief concern, with a strong rhythmic underline.”

I basically dislike what I call an ugly sound, whatever emotionality it can convey. I can listen to Ornette Coleman now, and not be offended by his tone, and Coltrane too. A lot of guys I still can't listen to. I like Monk's tune "Ugly Beauty" and I know there is such a thing, but I don't like my music to sound that raw!

To be continued with more of Lee’s views on Jazz and its makers and the views of musicians on Lee’s artistry.

Saint Petersburg - Jerry Goldsmith

The Phineas Newborn Jr Trio Jazz Scene USA (1962)

Phineas Newborn, Jr. with Al McKibbon on bass and Kenny Dennis on drums, with Oscar Brown, Jr. hosting on this 1962 episode of Jimmy Baker's "Jazz Scene USA."

Peter Bernstein - The Bill Milkowski Interview

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

Guitarist Peter Bernstein and author, writer and critic Bill Milkowski are two of my favorite Jazz people.

Imagine my delight, then, when I came across the following interview that Bill conducted with Peter for the June 2016 edition of Downbeat..

What was particularly appealing to me is that in their talk, Bill addresses many of the aspects of Pete’s playing and approach to Jazz that have been of interest to me for some time and which I attempted to treat in a previous feature on Pete that appeared on these pages way back when “the Blog was young.”

Drummer Bill Stewart’s comment about Peter’s use of space; Brad Meldhau’s view that what Peter plays never sounds arbitrary; Jimmy Cobb’s impression of Pete sounding like Grant Green; Milkowski’s description of Peter’s “warm, inviting and pure tone;” Peter’s own thoughts about what it takes to play in a solo setting: all of these comments resonated with me because I had long thought that these and other qualities are what made Pete’s style of playing so remarkable.

This is one of the most articulate interviews with a Jazz musician that I ever read which is a credit both to Bill for asking “all the right questions” and to Peter’s ability to articulate answers to them.

Peter Bernstein: The Craftsman - Bill Milkowski

“THERE IS AN UNCOMMON COMMUNION THAT HAPPENS WHEN Peter Bernstein takes his gorgeous-toned Zeidler guitar on stage. No matter what the setting—whether it's in the longstanding trio with organist Larry Goldings and drummer Bill Stewart, leading his own quartet, playing in Cobb's Mob (led by the irrepressibly swinging drummer Jimmy Cobb), playing solo or performing in guitar duos — Bernstein gracefully gets inside a tune and finds a different path through it

every night.

"Peter's playing has a lot of space and vowels in it," said Stewart, who appears on Bernstein's new album, Let Loose (Smoke Sessions), alongside pianist Gerald Clayton and bassist Doug Weiss. "It's easy to get things swinging or grooving with Pete. He doesn't just float over a rhythm section — he gets in the center of it all, time-wise. That makes things really fun for me. The way he plays melodies is a key part of the chemistry of our trio with Larry Goldings."

Another longtime colleague, pianist Brad Mehldau — who appeared on a string of Bernstein's Criss Cross Jazz albums in the mid-'90s and is a charter member of Cobb's Mob — described Bernstein's singular approach in his liner notes to the guitarist's 2003 album, Heart's Content: "Whenever I hear Pete play a standard, it never sounds arbitrary. He always seems to create a definitive version of a tune, one that intersects gracefully between an unapologetic affectation for the original song and his own personal musical choices for his arrangement."

Bernstein's playing is devoid of affectation and artifice. There are no six-string cliches dredged up while navigating his way through the Great American Songbook. Instead, he lets each tune speak for itself, treating the melody lovingly while sustaining a unique brand of relaxed rhythmic authority, a clarity of ideas, cleanliness of execution and remarkable sense of pacing.

"I liked Pete right away, when I first met him over 25 years ago when I was teaching at the New School," Cobb recalled. "Pete sounded like a guitar player I was particularly fond of, Grant Green. We eventually started doing little gigs around town and Pete was the one who suggested that we call the group Cobb's Mob. We worked a few gigs to start, and it's been 20 years or more now, man. We're very comfortable playing together. When I'm on the bandstand with Pete, it's all good."

George Coleman — who enlisted Bernstein for his recent album, A Master Speaks (Smoke Sessions) — concurred with Cobb's assessment of the 48-year-old guitarist's abilities on the bandstand: "The thing that is so great about Pete is his flexibility. He can play anything — blues, Latin, bebop, whatever you want. And he does some of those old songs that people his age shouldn't know, but he knows 'em."

Bernstein's sonic aesthetic — he plays with a warm, inviting, pure tone with his guitar plugged straight into the amp, sans effects — along with his irrepressible swing factor and his encyclopedic knowledge of just about every tune Thelonious Monk ever wrote (check his brilliant 2009 Monk tribute album on the Xanadu label), has made him in-demand among contemporaries like keyboardist Mike LeDonne, tenor saxophonist Eric Alexander and trumpeter Jim Rotondi. And a younger generation of guitarists, including Rale Micic and Rotem Sivan, is all too eager to engage in duets with someone they regard as a revered elder statesman, just as Bernstein once regarded his own mentor, Jim Hall.

DownBeat caught up with Bernstein a couple of days after he returned home to New York following a tour with Goldings and Stewart in Europe, where they had recorded a follow-up to 2014's Ramshackle Serenade for the Pirouet label.

A COMMON THREAD IN YOUR EXPANSIVE DISCOGRAPHY IS YOUR BEAUTIFUL SOUND. OBVIOUSLY, IT'S SOMETHING THAT'S VERY IMPORTANT TO YOU.

To me, that's what attracts people to all the great players in jazz. Their sound is like their personality. You hear Bird, you hear Lester Young, you hear their sounds, it's their character come to life. You hear masters like Jim Hall, Wes Montgomery, Charlie Christian, Grant Green, Kenny Burrell... and everything is wrapped up in their tone. Tone is a broad term; it includes the sound of one note but also the sound of their phrasing and also their thought process.

YOU HAVE A VERY WARM TONE, BUT IT PROJECTS WITH A LOT OF CLARITY. THE ARTICULATION IS VERY CLEAN.

I'm working on it. I'm glad I listen to a lot of trumpet players and saxophone players because you try to approximate their articulation, which you can't really do because it's a whole different process for making the sound. But if you have something in your head, maybe the technique can be more about what you're trying to play than about upstrokes or downstrokes or technical things like that. But it's really wrapped up in your flow of ideas. And listening to guys like Miles, they seem to play from their sound, where each note is a color, which allows for more abstraction in the music. Then there are guys who play really literal and just harmonically perfect. And you try to combine the two— you want to play with the abstract, where you're all about the sound, and yet you want to be able to express an idea very clearly, harmonically and rhythmically.

WHO ARE SOME OF THE MASTERS WHO EMBODY THIS QUALITY?

I got to play with Bobby Hutcherson at Dizzy's a few years ago, which ended up on a CD [2012's Somewhere In The Night on Kind of Blue Records]. I was four feet away from him, thinking, "How is this man just hitting metal bars with wooden sticks with cotton on the end and making such an expressive statement?" The instrument is just like ... it's him! He's imbuing it with his thoughts and feelings. That's a miraculous thing. The instrument itself disappears when you're talking about a master on that level.

Jimmy Cobb is another, for sure. He was 60 years old when I first met him and now he's 86, and he's still cooking! To be able to grow up as a musician — learning about time, how to phrase, how to swing — in the presence of this master. I mean, how lucky am I?

YOU TOURED WITH SONNY ROLLINS IN 2012 AND APPEAR ON HIS RECENT ALBUM, ROAD SHOWS VOL. 4: HOLDING THE STAGE. WHAT WAS THAT EXPERIENCE LIKE?

Getting to play with him and just be around him was a blessing. He's one of the originators of the language. Sonny taught us how to interpret tunes, how to stretch out ... all these things. Being on the bandstand with him, you can hear him thinking, you can hear that he's playing with an idea. That's so thrilling to me.

YOU STUDIED WITH JIM HALL. WHAT WAS HIS APPROACH TO TEACHING?

He was teaching a class at the New School when I went there. He had a bunch of guitar players in class and he would play with us, comp for us, and make us sound way better than we actually did. But it was incredible to be around him and see him make that sound, see how he can listen. And now when I teach I find myself saying stuff that he told me. Jim would say things like, "Playing music is its own reward; don't expect anything from music." Or he'd say, "You can put sounds out in the world and they can be from a positive place or they can be from another place."

Just being around him was inspiring... such a great human being. And he had a genuine interest in what his students were doing. If someone played something that interested him, Jim would stop the class and say, "Show us what you did there." That was kind of cool, He showed us that being a teacher is about being curious and learning as much as you can.

The best teachers I had made me think about choices I was making. They don't have to tell me the right way—they just have to make me figure out a better way. It's like they're telling me, "You know enough already to figure out the better way; don't be lazy and not take the time to figure it out," Jim was like that.

His approach was a very different approach from Ted Dunbar, who I studied with at Rutgers in the fall of'85. While Jim's approach was more abstract — he taught me, just by example, about the connection between musicianship and humanity—Ted's approach was much more methodical. He had books on the fingerboard, books on harmony. He has every chord you can play on the guitar in a book. He'd tell me, "Don't just be a guitar player that's in the world of guitarists. You gotta listen to the horn players and singers to learn about phrasing and listen to the piano players and arrangers to learn about harmony, and hang out with drummers and bass players to learn about rhythm."

Ted was very important to me in terms of showing me that every tune has something to teach you about music, something to teach you about the guitar. I only stayed at Rutgers for one year, but I got something from him that stuck with me for a long time.

TALK ABOUT YOUR AFFINITY FOR MONK'S MUSIC.

I love piano players in general but Monk always really spoke to me. For me, as a guitarist, it was about learning the intricacies of the music, learning what you can play and what you can't play. But I find with Monk, he was about not playing every note in the chord but finding which notes intervallically he wanted to bring out. And you have to reduce on the guitar. You can't play the Bill Evans type lush voicings with the cluster and then the triad; you can't grab all those notes, so you have to think about what to leave out. And that automatically puts you in that Monk zone, in a way, because he was conscious about not only what notes to leave out but how to play each note in a voicing. He would phrase each note in a chord, where he would bring out a certain note in a certain way, which is technique on a different level than just velocity and speed but more about control of the sound.

Ultimately, I found that a lot of Monk's stuff laid better on the guitar than you would've thought. Even in the original flat keys. Because the open strings give you those dissonant notes, which work so well with his music. I think if Monk had played guitar he would've loved open strings. He would've definitely made something of that.

YOUR ALBUM S0L0 GUITAR: LIVE AT SMALLS WAS A TRIUMPH. HOW DID THAT PROJECT COME ABOUT?

For me, playing solo is a brief excursion into the terrifying void of "Oh my god! It's just me out here." Which makes me appreciate the company even more when I get to play with people again. When you play solo, that's really about choices. How do you express the idea? For me, it's about what to leave out without leaving out the important stuff. ... I played solo at Smalls for the early set on Mondays, just trying to tackle my fears of playing solo. So [in October 2012] Spike [Wilner, the owner of Smalls] just decided to record it because he already had set up the mics for recording the set after me, which was Rodney Green's group. So my solo recording wasn't ever intended to be [an album] at all.

DO YOU HAVE A FEAR OF MAKING MISTAKES IN A SOLO SETTING?

It's not so much mistakes — it's just about trying to finish your thoughts and present something that has some shape, that's not just a guy playing some notes and chords. Playing solo really taught me a lot about trying to get inside the song, because if you just resort to blowing licks on the chords, it doesn't make any sense because there's no context for it.

It really made me approach that idea of, "Man, I gotta keep playing the song." Maybe I have one little chorus semi-worked out with some voicings I want to do to interpret the tune. Because once you start to get away from the song you really lose the focus. And with solo it's also about trying to control the flow — when you go into time, when you play rubato, having the courage of your convictions to go in a different direction with authority.

It's hard to do that by yourself. Every decision is on you. You can't react; you have to be proactive in a solo setting. So it's exhausting but it's a challenge that I enjoy.

YOU MENTIONED THAT YOU STILL SET ASIDE TIME TO PRACTICE. YOU'RE ON SUCH A HIGH LEVEL, WHAT IS THERE FOR YOU TO PRACTICE AT THIS POINT?

Anything and everything — from F blues to "Happy Birthday" in every key, to whatever comes to mind. It doesn't matter because, to me, when you're dealing with improvising there's always the challenge of finding new ways to express your thoughts. If you're on tour and you're playing some of the same tunes every night, if it was good last night, the idea is to not play it like that tonight. That's not acceptable. You can't just play the same notes as you did yesterday and pass it off like it's spontaneous — because it's not. You have to get into a place where you play a phrase and you build from that. You're telling a story. What's it about? The topic is the form of the tune, the harmony of the tune, where it moves and where it goes. But you're required every time to be off-the-cuff with it, not relying on some hip shit that worked for you last night.

The challenge is making up a new story every night, together with your bandmates. It's like a game of cards and we keep changing the rules of the game. But it's still the same deck of cards; it's still the same 12 notes. You're trying to express a thought and continue it, and that's a continuous challenge. So you keep practicing because you keep wanting to learn new forms, new material. Because it's just a deck of cards. You keep coming up with new games. And your knowledge of cards or music, your instrument, enables you to keep playing the game.”

Two-Part Contention

Swing Bells