Benjamin Herman: Soul, Funk and Blues Revisited … in Holland! [From the Archives]

Thanks to an undetermined YouTube glitch, the editorial staff at JazzProfiles in conjunction with the crackerjack graphics team at CerraJazz LTD and the production facilities of StudioCerra were forced to remake one of the videos in the following profile. In the process of re-inserting the video, we re-read the piece and thought you might like to have the opportunity to do so, too.

Benjamin is a brilliant talent and one of the more idiosyncratic figures of the European Jazz scene.

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

In order to bring him to your attention, should you be unfamiliar with his music, I wanted to say a few words about Benjamin Herman.

Benjamin is a young alto saxophone and flute player who resides in Holland. For one so young, he is an amazingly accomplished musician with a number of accolades to his credit.

Benjamin Herman was twelve when he started playing saxophone and was performing professionally at the age of thirteen. He has toured with large and small combos in the United States, Japan, Czech Republic, Italy, Portugal, Spain, Switzerland, South Africa and Russia, as well as appearing frequently at North Sea Jazz Festival.

At 21 he received the Wessel Ilcken Prize [named after a Dutch drummer who died in an accident at the age of 34] for best young jazz musician of the year in The Netherlands.

In 1991, Benjamin was invited to take part in the Thelonious Monk Competition, along with Joshua Redman, Chris Potter and Eric Alexander. Some grouping!

After graduating with honors at Hilversum Conservatory he studied with Dick Oatts at Manhattan School of Music in New York.

By 25 Benjamin had worked with almost every respected group and musician in The Netherlands, and had started initiating his own projects.

What is surprising and yet at the same time satisfying about Benjamin’s music is that so much of it is steeped in blues, soul and funk, qualities that one would expect to find in musicians reared in urban, Atlantic Coast US cities, or in rural southern US townships with a predominately sanctified Baptist church culture, but not in a musician raised in largely, cosmopolitan Holland.

The other noteworthy aspect of Benjamin’s approach to music is its humor, some of which is satirical almost to the point of being sarcastic at times.

One can get a sense of the qualities of character and personality that influence his music while reading the following insert notes which Benjamin wrote for his 1999 A-Records CD entitled Get In! [AL-73173].

[Does the title itself have an element of sardonic humor in it or is it just me?]

“I've been recording for A-Records and Challenge for around six years: two Van der Grinten / Herman Quartet albums, a third New Cool Collective record and another trio CD out soon, not to mention all the material in the freezer.

So when Angelo Verploegen [the CD’s producer] suggested a new so CD with me as the leader, I wondered what all the fuss was about.

It used to be big news when European musicians recorded in the States, but these days it happens all the time ...why couldn't he just give me the money for a well-earned vacation!

But I thought about it. and I knew one person who'd make the project worth­while. [Drummer] Idris Muhammad.

For years I've been telling drummers to play like Idris and check out his records. DJs are crazy about the guy: he's one of the century's most sampled drummers.

Modem music is full of his break-beats. He's the man who played New Orleans drum rhythms over the whole kit while keep­ing the groove authentic and funky.

Musicians from Lou Donaldson to John Scofield and from Curtis Mayfield to Puff Daddy have used his beats. There isn't a drummer who hasn't copied his style in some way or another. This was a once-in-a-lifetime chance to get to the source.

And Angelo set it up in a matter of weeks. But not just with Idris.

He managed to get another of my favorites. Larry Goldings. on Hammond. With Europe's one-and-only Thelonious Monk Award winner Jesse van Ruller on guitar, it looked set to be a swinging album.

As for the material. I just closed my eyes and imagined what the band would sound like. Ten days later. I had about 20 tunes from which I made a selection on the plane to New York. I wanted the album to sound as rough as possible. We played the tunes a couple of times and then started the tape.

Idris and Larry were onto it from bar one, giving every take an awesome drive. Larry is today's leading young Hammond player. The way he comments on the melodies and solos and works with Idris is phenomenal, building up each solo without ever losing the groove.

Time flew by and we were soon back in traffic, heading towards Manhattan. Next day we flew home and three weeks on, it still seems out of this world.

It certainly changed my attitude about this kind of project.

Angelo can call me anytime.

Benjamin Herman

May 1999. Amsterdam”

Benjamin’s attitude and approach come together in his music in such a way as to lend it an air of adroit arrogance.

Perhaps all of these affectations are just his way of being the 21^st century version of a hep cat, or a hipster or a cool-and-crazy-kind-of guy?

Although the beret and to goatee are gone, Benjamin retains the horn-rimmed glasses of the Bebop ear in many of his photos and he’s brought back the slim ties and narrow lapelled, three-button suits which we in fashion half-a-century ago during the height of the Soul/Funk/Boogaloo era [think Herbie Hancock’s Watermelon Man or Lee Morgan’s The Sidewinder].

As you can tell from some of the photographs contained in the video at the end of this piece, Benjamin is not camera shy and often affects exaggerated and, at times, startling poses, trying to broaden the appeal of what he does.

So what if he labels his CDs Pyschodixie for C-Melody Saxophone, or Lost Languages in Sad Serenades & Jocular Jazz or Blue Sky Blonde and writes songs with titles like Get Me Some Whiskey and A …., or The Itch or Inhale, Exhale, the guy swings like mad and is fun to listen.

Whatever his proclivities and affectations, Benjamin has an intense tone similar to that of Ernie Henry or Jackie McLean, a lingering power in his somewhat, off-center phrasing and an inventive style of soloing that leaves a lasting impression in the mind of the listener.

But it would appear that Benjamin’s first and lasting love is to lock into a groove and create melodies that are just brimming with “flavors” of blues and soulful funk.

All of the major characteristics of Benjamin’s music and his personal style are on display in the following video which was developed with the assistance of the ace graphics team at CerraJazz LTD.

The tune is another of Benjamin’s off-the-wall titles – Joe’s Bar Mitzvah – from his Get In CD with Jesse van Ruller on guitar, Larry Goldings on Hammond B-3 organ [Larry’s solo on this one is stunningly “bar mitzvar-ish”] and Idris Muhammad [who issues forth one of his better renditions of a New Orleans syncopated marching band beat] on drums.

In addition to his trio and quartet work, Benjamin has played a major role along with keyboardist and composer Willem Friede in the development of the New Cool Collective.

Originally an octet, the New Cool Collective has expanded to become one of the hottest big bands in Europe and is particular favorite among the young Jazz fans on the continent because of its style of music and the almost party-like atmosphere the surrounds its in-person performances.

Many of the NCC’s big band charts are riff-based arrangements which allow for plenty of solo space and use heavy back beats, sometimes with Latin and Rock overtones, that  make it easy for younger audiences to relate to them.

Here’s an overview of the New Cool Collective as drawn from its website.

“Following its initial gigs at the Club Paradiso in Amsterdam, the New Cool Collective made several festival appearances, including an appearance at the prestigious North Sea Jazz Festival. In 1997 the band toured Germany and Benelux. More dates followed in 1998 leading to an appearance at Amsterdam's Concertgebouw and a tour of the UK, taking in Leeds, London and the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. October 1999 saw the release of NCC's third CD, Big (Challenge, A-Records). In 2000 the album received an Edison Jazz Award [Dutch Grammy].

Invitations from abroad following the release of the album included concerts at Camden 'Mix' Festival (London) and Aberdeen Alternative Festival (Scotland). More recently, the band has toured South Africa, Russia, Germany and is a regular guest at the East London Jazz Café. New Cool Collective recently received the Heineken Crossover Award. New Cool Collective can currently be seen twice a month at Amsterdam's Panama nightclub. Their new CD, Bring it On, has just been released by Sony. The New Cool Collective is by far Holland's hottest big band.”

Many of Benjamin’s CDs as well as those of the New Cool Collective are available from several online retailers as Mp3 downloads which helps in offsetting the euro-dollar exchange rate.

If you have an interest in exploring Jazz in some of its current manifestations on the European continent, Benjamin’s and the NCC’s music provide an excellent starting point.

You can sample the New Cool Collective Big Band’s music in the following video. The audio track is Lalo Schifrin’s Enter the Dragon and its features Benjamin Herman on flute.

The Music of Bert Joris

Belgian trumpeter, composer-arranger and bandleader Bert Joris in four musical settings including a video presentation of the portrait photography of Helmut Newton.

Tom Harrell [From The Archives]

In conjunction with the recent posting about Tom Harrell by Gene Lees and Phil Woods, respectively, the editorial staff at JazzProfiles thought it might be fun to combine Parts 1 and 2 of an earlier feature on Tom which posted to the blog way back in May, 2009 so as to have a closer chronological sequence of writings available in the archives about one of the most creative and fascinating musicians on the contemporary Jazz scene.

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

“Tom Harrell has been called the John Forbes Nash, Jr. of Jazz. Against considerable odds, Harrell has successfully struggled with schizophrenia and become one of the most respected trumpeters and composers of the past 30 years.”

“I like to think of my music as a play of colors over a rhythm” he has said: “it’s like inviting the listeners to visit an art gallery to view an exhibition of various paintings. We express our feelings through timbres and colors within our world of sense, so as to then transcend them and enter the spiritual dimension”. -Tom Harrell in a press release interview with Francesco Martinelli for the forthcoming 2009 BargaJazz Festival, located in Italy’s Apuan Alps [Tuscany].

One of the reasons why the JazzProfiles editorial staff frequently sources Richard Cook and Brian Morton’sThe Penguin Guide to Jazz on CD is that every once in a while these guys nail it. To wit:

“Anyone who has seen Tom Harrell perform … will understand the transformative power of music. When not playing, he stands slumped and bowed, stock-still in what looks like mute agony. When it comes time to take a solo, it is as if an electric charge has passed through him. Harrell is one of the finest harmonic improvisers in Jazz today, a player with a fierce tone who is also capable of playing the most delicate ballad with almost unbearable feeling. [6th Ed.; p. 666, emphasis mine].

One night in the Spring of 2001, I experienced first-hand Tom Harrell’s powerful sensitivity when soloing on ballads. The venue was the new Yoshi’s Jazz Club in Oakland, California’s Jack London Square.

The occasion was a visit to the club to hear Hammond B-3 organist Joey De Francesco who had augmented his then, standing trio of Paul Bollenback [g] and Byron “Wookie” Landham [d] by bringing in Teddy Edwards on tenor saxophone and Tom on trumpet and flugelhorn.

The ballad in question was I Can’t Get Started and I almost winced when Joey called the tune as a feature for Tom as it had become so de rigueur as a part of every Jazz trumpeter’s repertoire that I usually passed over it in recorded version so as not to be burdened by another boring rendition of it.

Ever since trumpeter Bunny Berigan had made this tune a popular hit in the 1930’s it had become the acid test for all trumpet players in much the same way that Coleman Hawkins’ iconic interpretation of the ballad Body and Soul became the ultimate test for all Jazz tenor saxophonists.

But when Tom had finished three improvised choruses on I Can’t Get Started that beautiful spring night at Yoshi’s and wrapped his arms around his horn, and then his body before slumping into a trance at the corner of the stage, you could have heard a pin drop. When the solo finished, what everyone did hear was the collective exhale of all of us in the audience as a measure of relief from the stunned amazement of what we had just experienced.

In a “former life,” I had three years of personal experience working with adult, paranoid schizophrenic patients and their parents in what was then described as an alternative-to-hospitalization setting based around a milieu therapy treatment program.

In non-clinical terms this meant that we were treating these patients in a more open environment, with less reliance on powerful psychotropic drugs while trying to understand the benefit of social interaction in helping these seriously impaired individuals achieve some degree of stability in their condition.

In many ways, it was the most exhausting three years of my life as the work was always 24/7, the “highs” were gratifying, but they were usually offset by excruciatingly and very disappointing “lows,” and, of course, none of these patients ever got better.

With this as a personal background to measure Tom’s achievement against, what he has accomplished given the demands of performing Jazz at the highest levels is a triumph of simply staggering proportions.

Is it any wonder, then, how often fellow musicians and audiences are always deeply touched by Tom’s playing? Perhaps they both intuitively sense the struggle that Tom has had to undergo and endure to bring to them the beauty, passion and fire in his music.

In order to delve further into the phenomena that is both Tom and what makes he and his music so unique, the editorial staff at JazzProfiles has compiled the following, three interviews in an effort to explore how he creates his art in his own words.

The first of these was conducted by Charlie Rose and broadcast on August 20, 2003 during CBS television’s 60 minutes segment entitled A Beautiful Note.

We will then move forward to the editorial staff’s transcription of Josh Jackson’s WBGO Village Vanguard interview with Tom Harrell which took place on April 8, 2008, while Tom’s band was appearing at the club, and then conclude by taking a step backward with Like Night and Day, an article about Tom by Jonathan Eig that appeared in Esquire, December 1998 which is based in part on an interview that took place earlier that year.

While chronologically out of order, this sequence for the interviews and the article may provide a more coherent and comprehensive discussion of Tom’s approach to music.

Let’s begin with Charlie Rose’s 2003 interview with Tom.

© Charlie Rose/CBS copyright protected; all rights reserved.

Tom Harrell, named jazz trumpeter of the year three times by Downbeat Magazine, is known for the gorgeous, intricate melodies he composes.

Seeing Harrell play, it's impossible to believe that he suffers from paranoid schizophrenia - a mental illness so profound that it institutionalizes many of its victims.

Harrell overcomes it with music. Yet the moment he stops playing, his disorder seizes him. Voices materialize and threaten his sense of reality.

But while Harrell appears in full retreat from the world, the music prevents him from losing his place. And when horn returns to mouth, the voices vanish. It’s the only time you don’t see the signs of his illness. Correspondent Charlie Rose reports.

Take him away from the creative process and Harrell’s behavior changes radically.
In fact, the schizophrenia makes something as ordinary as having our soundman put a microphone on him an ordeal. But soon, the moment passes.

“As long as I take the medicine now, I can stay on an even keel, and then I'm able to function,” says Harrell, who communicates musically, not verbally - which is all his band members need to follow him during performances.

Still, they have all borne witness to his paranoia.

“I think we see it all the time. He doesn't announce it, say, ‘I'm sitting, I'm hearing voices,’ you know. They'll be sudden changes for no apparent reason,” says pianist Xavier Davis.

“But maybe someone mentioned someone or whispered something just out of earshot, and he heard that as something like, ‘Tom, get off the stage. You suck.’ You know, like just something that was never said. And so, maybe he’ll just take a short solo because he thinks people don’t want to hear him play.”

But Harrell wasn't always like this, says his older sister, Sue Abrahamson.

“He was good-spirited, creative,” says Abrahamson. “He had friends that he would do things with and hang out with. And seemed pretty normal.”

Normal, but with a genius IQ, Harrell starting playing the trumpet at the age of eight. When he went off to college at 18, his sister received a call that he had tried to commit suicide.

“That was the first sign that there were problems,” says Abrahamson.How could a seemingly normal little boy with a normal childhood travel from happiness to despair so suddenly?“

"We don't know what causes the illness,” says Dr. Eric Marcus, a New York psychiatrist and psychoanalyst. He’s familiar with Harrell's history and is an expert on schizophrenia.

"A paranoid schizophrenic is someone with schizophrenia whose major manifestation of illness is the hallucinated voice and/or belief that people are out to get him - that they are targeting him in some way,” says Marcus.

When Harrell was in his 20s, those voices ordered him to walk through a window after he had some orange juice.

I come in and I see blood all over the rug, and I say, ‘What happened,?’ And he said that when he drank the orange juice, the voices told him to go out the window,” recalls Abrahamson. “And so he had to break the window to get out. So that's how he got cut.”

The glass shattered, but it kept him inside.

Harrell's days are spent practicing and composing. He writes his scores by hand. The notes are neat, logical, orderly - not what you'd expect from someone locked in the vise of schizophrenia.

Because of his disorder, Harrell is tough to interview. But when the topic is music, he takes complexity in stride.

That's beautiful, how you can see the visual art. I mean it's great when the different art forms can influence each other. The visual arts and now the musical arts,” says Harrell, on the crossover between impressionist painting and jazz.

But when the talk turns to Harrell's illness, he becomes uneasy. He takes three medications that stave off depression, reduce panic attacks, and sedate him. Without them, he turns psychotic. Even with them, performing is an act of will.

“If I take the medicine, then the voices … I don't hear anything,” he says.

And if he doesn't take the medicine?

I don't know. It's just better if I do,” he says.

Marcus says it’s astounding that Harrell is able to reach the level of creativity he reaches as a musician.

Astounding, number one. Number two, heroic - in its most true form,” says Marcus. “He has to face demons that you and I can only imagine.”

But it's not only music that holds Harrell together. It's Angela Harrell, his wife of 11 years. Angela was researching a documentary for Japanese television on creativity and the brain, which led her to tape an interview with Tom.

“He started to talk. And then he said, ‘I better go back and practice,’ and ‘That tape is making me very nervous,’" recalls Angela. “He asked me to stop the tape. And then he started to get all flustered. And he said, ‘I don't belong in the music business. I better quit. I don't have the personality to be in the music business.’”

But from this unpromising beginning came marriage.

“I think I was drawn to him immediately,” says Angela. “He was intriguing. He was mysterious. And it was sort of like unfolding, you know, petal by petal. I wanted to know this person. But the more I knew about him, the more I got to like him … This purity of spirit. He's a beautiful person. There's nothing not to like about the guy.”

Although their devotion is mutual, getting pictures of them together is hit or miss. Tom wouldn't take a walk with Angela because, he said, somebody might see him.

Was there ever a moment during their courtship when Angela asked herself, “Wait a minute, what am I doing here?”

“I didn't have these thoughts until some of the problems occurred, some of the crises that we've experienced,” admits Angela.

Those crises included sudden disappearances, rapidly changing mood swings, a suicide attempt, and a toxic reaction to a medication that almost killed Harrell.

“Those are times when I've asked myself some of those questions,” says Angela. “But never, ‘What am I doing?’ But always, ‘What can we do, and is there hope?’"
She’s says that she’s always come to the conclusion that you can’t give up. "You just have to keep trying,” she says.

Trying is one thing, but succeeding is another. How to explain the mysterious explosion that blasts through Harrell's illness and transports him to the highest level of his art?

A clue may come from Harrell himself: "I don't know whether I'm playing the music or whether the music is playing me."

Harrell's latest CD will be released this September.


Josh Jackson’s WBGO Village Vanguard interview with Tom Harrell 4.8.2008

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

John Jackson [WBGO Announcer]: “Tom Harrell, thank you for being a part of our Live at the Village Vanguard Concert Series. It’s a real pleasure. I’m amazed Tom at hearing your music, you’re most recent recording has come out in January [2008], and it’s another recording that’s all Tom Harrell compositions, it’s the quintet that will feature here at the Village Vanguard; it’s the second record that you’ve done with this group in particular, and I just wonder how is it that you are able to churn this music out so consistently and so beautifully?”

Tom Harrell: “I try to keep it up everyday. It’s like anything else, you can achieve a flow if you do it all the time , so it’s like a door that opens everyday that I can turn to for inspiration of the music.”

WBGO: Tom, we should inform our radio listeners who may not be accustomed to hearing you speak that you have been diagnosed as a schizophrenic and you’ve been living with this condition now for nearly four decades. Is that correct?

TOM: Well, yeah, I guess I do have it; the scary part is there are times when it’s difficult to see reality as I have tenuous reality contact. It is a chemical imbalance so I take medicine for it. But the medicine works so I don’t have the extreme fear that I would have from the condition. In a way, it sort of forces me to be by myself because I don’t always know how to approach social situations. Society keeps changing very rapidly and modes of communication are changing, too. So it seems like I’m not always able to fit into social groups, but playing the trumpet itself kind of forces you into solitude in a sense because being an artist imposes a certain amount of solitude on the artist. Although music is probably the most social … [of the arts]. I was going to go into graphic arts but I was frighten by the solitude that was going to impose on me. But then I realized later that this was also the case with music as well, especially if you spend a lot of time composing. … But Ibsen does say that art is a “Garden of Solitude.”

WBGO: And in some sense, the artistic process, as you say, is a lonely one sometimes. It can be a lonely one in terms of being by yourself, but you are not necessarily alone. There’s a difference there, isn’t there?

TOM: Well yes, because you are always aware that you can bring it to other people and that you are doing something with the ultimate goal of sharing it with people so as I think of Buddha sometimes they said that he went into the mountains to meditate and found this beautiful thing within himself. He wanted to share what he found with other people. So musical composition is like doing that too. I think that ultimately it becomes like a religious experience because those idea that you have when you are by yourself come from somewhere beyond yourself that you want to share with others. Sometimes I hear something in my mind and I want to write it down and as I do this I become more and more inspired.

There are moments when you improvising, too, and you become aware of a sensation that Lester Bowie [Chicago Art Ensemble] once described as: “I play the trumpet, but sometimes the trumpet plays me.” Sometimes when I am playing the trumpet I get this magical feeling that the notes are coming from somewhere else. Sometimes when I’m playing, I might aim for something and then something else comes out. It shows the subconscious at work. Too me, I relate psychiatry and psychology to religion, in the sense that the subconscious is a way for God to speak to us, because it is our Life force. Our entire mind is a Life force and in a sense each person is like a universe. But we have what came before from our ancestors which includes all creation: everything from the beginning of the Universe to what we’ve experienced since we were born. Sometimes what we’ve experienced from out environment I have to fight with in order to be creative. Like the Bhagavad-Gita, in a literal sense is built around a battle between two armies, but it is also sometimes thought of as a symbolic representation of the battle that occurs in one’s mind between good and evil. So I am aware that I have an inner battle, but that’s part of shedding some of the negative aspects of your conditioning and try to be positive in your creativity.

WBGO: I’d like to talk about the process. Right now, Tom Harrell, you and I are sitting in a room in your apartment and there’s keyboards, piano, a drum set; what’s a day-in-the-life of you sitting down and writing music?

TOM: Right now [said laughingly], it’s mostly about playing music. Sometimes I have to sacrifice a certain amount of writing and piano playing to practicing the trumpet because it is such a difficult instrument. So I try to practice as much as I can, at least four hours a day, or even more.

If ideas come to me while I’m practicing, I’ll try to write them down, even if it’s only a fragment, but if I’m really working on getting my technique together right before a concert or a series of concerts, I might not even write down everything I hear. The trumpet basically comes first because I’m known mainly as a trumpet player. So I usually spend more time writing when I have long stretches between concerts. I get into a two-day cycle when I stay up all night and sleep in the next day. It takes away from my trumpet chops, but during these long breaks, I do try to write everyday. I have note books that I keep everything from fragments to ideas in.

WBGO: When you write for this quintet, do you write like Duke Ellington would write; do you write the part for that person?

TOM: Yes, I write for each individual. I try to find things that will make them excited. What makes it worthwhile for me is when the music comes alive while we are performing. That’s one of the beautiful things about Duke Ellington was that he wrote for each individual. That’s my basic motivation is to make people happy.

WBGO: That’s Prana. What is Prana?

TOM: It’s a Life Force. Its what keeps our lives basically moving. It’s part of Yoga breathing and I use it as a way to calm myself.

WBGO: I can imagine that for someone seeing you perform for the very first time, there could be a massive misunderstanding if they didn’t know something abput you before they came to the show. Because you seem to be completely engaged when the trumpet is in your mouth, and then when your solo is gone, you sort of move off to the side of the stage and are not making any kind of eye contact with any of the audience or the band members. Do you think that it is a massive mis-characterization to say that you are not engaged at that point?

TOM: I try to keep the engagement when I am playing, but when I’m not playing it is important, too. I mean that’s the whole reason for living. Long ago, I was introduced to the idea of keeping a groove going along with everything else in life that you are trying to do. I’m still trying to apply that idea. Someone once said: even when you are not practicing, you are practicing. While you are going for a walk you are learning about life; or reading a book – same thing. You can learn something everyday that could apply to your life whether it is musical or non-musical. As a musician, I tend to see everything in terms of music. But everything is related to cosmology and related to it.

WBGO: Tom, thanks for joining us.

TOM: Thank you; nice talking to you.

WBGO: We are looking forward now to hearing you and the quintet at The Village Vanguard.

“We have been criticized for pointing out that he has battled psychiatric illness for many years. It does not define him, either personally or creatively, but schizophrenia has been a shaping influence for much of his adult life. Schizophrenics never make any bones about it, and Harrell has even been known to joke about his condition, once commenting as he entered a hotel suite that there was a room for each of his personalities.” Richard Cook & Brian Morton’s The Penguin Guide to Jazz on CD [Loc. cit.].
As the years have moved along in Tom’s career, what was once quietly acknowledge and accepted among the community of musicians in which he performed, became a disclosed condition to the public in general through television interviews like the one with Charlie Rose on CBS’ 60 minutes and magazine articles such as the following one entitled Like Night and Day by Jonathan Eig which appeared in Esquire, December 1998.


© copyright protected; all rights reserved.
“TOM HARRELL, dressed all in black, stands in a dark corner of a crowded Chicago nightclub. Sometimes he prefers a closet, but tonight the corner will do. He's clearing the voices from his head, trying to stay cool. Don't worry, he tells himself over and over, be positive...believe in yourself...count your blessings....The banalities don't stick, but they help push aside the voices a bit, and now he is ready to go to work.

Harrell shuffles out of the darkness and onto the stage, where the four members of his band wait, and he begins shaking. His eyebrows twitch. His lips smack. He stares at the ground, trying hard not to make eye contact with his audience. He doesn't want to give the voices or the hallucinations a chance to pop back into his head. "I apologize for my lack of charisma," he once told a club full of people. As he raises his trumpet, the golden spotlight strikes stars on the horn's bell. Even as he puts the cold mouthpiece to his lips, his twitching never quite stops. He takes a deep breath, and for one frozen moment, all is quiet. Tranquility hangs on an unplayed note.

The trumpeter begins to blow, playing silky ribbons of sixteenth notes that rise and fall. Behind him, the band beats a latin-jazz rhythm. Then he tosses in a handful of slower, cloudier notes that curl and fade away.

Harrell is one of the finest jazz trumpeters in the world. He is also schizophrenic. Backstage after the set, he is impossible to talk to. He sits alone on a ragged sofa in a small dressing room. His wife, Angela, ushers me into the room and makes the introduction. I try small talk, but he is unable to speak. His head shakes, and his lips move as if he's trying to release trapped words.

"Jonathan plays the trumpet," Angela tells her husband, trying to break the ice.

I tell him that I would like to interview him at his home in New York.

He tries again to form sounds. Nothing. Fifteen seconds of silence pass, and I am tempted several times to fill the empty space with babble.

"Bring your trumpet," he finally says.

I arrive on a hot Friday afternoon in August, trumpet case slung over my shoulder. Harrell lives in Washington Heights, and his apartment has a gorgeous view of the George Washington Bridge, the Hudson River, and the Palisades. But on the day of my visit, as on most days, the curtains are drawn. The place smells of grilled steak, which Harrell eats, entirely without seasoning, at least once a day. He puts away his dishes and walks slowly out of the kitchen to shake my hand and lead me to a chair. Most of the walls are lined with dark wooden cabinets that hold Harrell's music. Each drawer contains the score for a different composition, and by a quick count, there are at least two hundred drawers.

After saying hello, Harrell vanishes for fifteen minutes, then suddenly joins me at a darkwood dining room table. He appears much as he did in the club: nervous, shaky, and reluctant or unable to communicate. He is dressed all in black, same as always, and he is even taller than I remembered. His shaggy hair and beard have begun turning gray. His lips are purple and moist, like thin slices of raw sirloin, and his pale-blue eyes match almost perfectly the clear sky beyond his curtained windows.

Even though there are no buildings within sight of the apartment, Harrell sometimes believes he is being watched. At other times, he believes his home has been bugged. Quite often, he hears voices. Tom Harrell did this to somebody. Tom Harrell did that to somebody, they say, and those voices sometimes hurl him deep into a ravine of guilt and depression. When the voices speak, or when visual hallucinations beset him, his shaking worsens. Angela advises me not to use a tape recorder during the interview and to be prepared to come back another day if he doesn't want to talk.

Tom Harrell was born in 1946 in Urbana, Illinois, and grew up in Los Altos, California. His father taught business psychology at Stanford, and his mother worked as a statistician. Tom topped his father's IQ of 146, and he early on showed extraordinary talent in music and art. By the time he was eight, he was writing and illustrating his own children's books, which revealed the work of a precocious, original mind. In one book, young Tom told the story of a little boy who goes to a doctor for treatment of a mosquito bite and gets diagnosed with 'scissor-birds, dog-turtles' and other animal hybrids that he invented.

It was his father's constant whistling and his impressive jazz record collection that inspired Tom to begin playing the trumpet. By the time he turned thirteen, he was jamming with professional bands around the Bay Area. When he was seventeen, he went off to Stanford, and it was at about that time that his parents and sister began to notice that the buoyancy was draining from his personality. He became surly and aloof, a social misfit, and, at one very low point, he tried to kill himself.

When he was in his early twenties, Harrell was diagnosed with schizo-affective disorder, which combines the paranoia of schizophrenia with the wild mood swings of manic depression, and he was given drugs to help control the condition. The medication slowed his speech, gave him headaches, and robbed him of sleep, but he was able to carry on as a professional musician, working his way from band to band.

Only in the world of jazz, where abnormal behavior has always been the tradition, could Harrell fit so nicely. After all, Charles Mingus spent time in the mental ward at Bellevue, Bud Powell did his own tour of psychiatric hospitals, the great Sun Ra thought he came from another planet, and Thelonious Monk probably did.

Harrell has recorded a dozen albums for small record companies. But in the past two years, since he signed a contract with the RCA Victor label, he's begun to gain recognition outside the hardcore group of fans who had previously followed his work. The readers of Down Beat recently voted him the world's best trumpet player. With his major-label releases, most recently The Art of Rhythm, even the mainstream press has begun to take note.

"Pure melodic genius," declared one discerning newsmagazine.

And the melodies are the genius's own. Harrell prefers his original compositions to standards, He warns listeners to work as they listen, to attempt to understand the feelings behind his songs.

The musicians who have worked with Harrell report some odd moments as well as magical ones. In an airport, if the hustle and bustle become too much for him, he might wander off to a quiet spot in a parking garage and blow his trumpet until the noises in his head hush. Sometimes he will hear a chord in the hum of the refrigerator or the engine of a passing jet and work the rest of the day writing a composition based on what he has heard. Once, on a cab ride in Los Angeles with bandmate Gregory Tardy, Harrell began weeping uncontrollably because he was struck by the beauty of a tune on the cabbies radio. Tardy can't remember the song, but he says it was some Top Forty pop number he had heard a hundred times and never paid attention to before.

Angela travels with Harrell and helps keep him from getting distracted. His need for intense periods of quiet concentration guides almost every moment of his life. When he has a gig, he won't leave his apartment or his hotel room until it is time to play. He sends Angela to do the sound check and bring him food. Harrell says he feels awfully alone at times. He sometimes thinks life would be easier if he were to work full-time as a composer and arranger, because he wouldn't have to face the pressures of travel and three-set-a-night gigs. But Angela and his band-mates account for almost all the human companionship he's got, and he can't stand the thought of being isolated.

Once, a few years ago, after his medicine caused a toxic reaction and nearly killed him, Harrell stopped taking it. The results were fascinating and frightening. His moods changed more quickly and furiously than ever, from happy to sad, confident to insecure. His posture improved, his tremors vanished, and he became something close to affable. He would buy bags of groceries and leave them in front of his neighbors' doors as anonymous gifts. On the bandstand, when his turn came to solo, he would stun his audiences by scat singing in falsetto. His emergent personality was wonderful, and it was terrifying. He would go for five-hour walks in the middle of the night, and he would frequently leave all the taps in the apartment running, in tribute, he said, to the Water God.

Harrell never quite looks me in the eye. He stares at his lap, hops quickly from one thought to the next, and raises his eyelids only briefly. At one point, he says he doesn't think he should go on speaking to me, because he feels tremendous guilt for not having been born black. Jazz is black music, he says, and it seems unfair for a white man to be celebrated for his work. He can't separate himself from these thoughts, and all my attempts to change the subject are in vain. He begins to cry, and he lets the tears roll into his beard. He excuses himself, and twenty minutes later he returns with a tall glass of milk and acts as if nothing had happened. He glances at my trumpet case and a book of music paper I have with me. "Do you compose?" he asks.

"No," I say. "But my teacher wants me to write a new melody based on the chords to 'Night and Day.' "

He looks at my weak attempt.

"Oh, this is really nice," he says. His voice is high and pinched in the throat, and my mind scrambles from one television cartoon character to another, trying to place it. "You have some nice ideas here,"

He is incapable of criticizing, except when it applies to himself, but we are off and running, at least, talking about flat nines and flat flat nines and some other nines I pretend to understand. He is most comfortable on the subject of music, about the lovely way Louis Armstrong used scat singing to show that words were not needed to communicate feelings, about how Miles Davis played many of the same rhythms as Armstrong yet cast them in darker colors, and about Charlie Parker's belief that great music is born when musicians forget their long hours of study at the moment of creation.

"You merge with the infinite and transcend your ego," he says, describing how it feels to play. He takes a long, shaky pause. "Sometimes it seems to flow without any conscious effort."

All music has the human cry at its base, he says, and even the saddest songs can lead people out of the darkness of depression. "I think the more emotion you experience, the more you can bring to the music," he says. "Some people say you don't have to suffer to play music...." He takes another long pause. "I don't know, but, umm..." His eyebrows begin leaping wildly, his mouth moves in silence, and his head shakes side to side so much I begin to think he's stable now and the whole room is moving behind him. "That's a really difficult question. You don't want to be self-destructive. At the same time, sadness is a part of everyone's life, and music can express the sadness people are feeling and bring them together. You shouldn't hide from your feelings.

"Sometimes, I guess when I get paranoid, it can make me distracted," he continues. "But sometimes, if I feel really depressed, it can give me humility, which makes it sometimes easier to concentrate, which makes it easier to transcend my ego. I may be drawn to worrying because it's a form of excitement."
When Harrell runs out of words, he takes me into his music studio, a sound-proof extra bedroom with double-paned windows and closed curtains. There are dozens of tubes of lip balm and hundreds of sheets of handwritten music scattered about. He sits at his keyboard and stares at a work in progress for trumpet and strings.

"Play it," Angela gently requests.

The opening chords are very sad. The music moves slowly, by half steps and subtle shades. The key signature is in a constant state of flux, like a chameleon moving from plant to wall, sunlight to shade. Harrell's spine curls into a question mark. He stares straight ahead at the lightly penciled notes, concentrating intensely as his milk-white fingers move slowly over the keys. I hear dark holes without bottom and chaos brought barely under the control of the composer's hand. This is the source of the strength in Harrell's music. He shows us the darkness and confusion, and he makes beauty from it.

Harrell is at peace now. When he finishes, he looks at me and holds his gaze.

"That was so sad," I say.

He smiles, for the first time.

"Thanks," he says. He takes a long pause. The twitching has almost vanished.

"Wanna do 'Night and Day'?" he asks.”

To be continued in Tom Harrell Part 2 – A Retrospective and The Recordings

[c] - Steven A. Cerra, copyright protected; all rights reserved.

“Phil Woods has no tolerance for either shallow musicianship or hyperbole about Jazz players. So when this highly respected alto saxophonist speaks of ‘genius and innovation’ in Jazz in the same breath, we’d best listen. You know it’s no jive.

His words almost take on a reverential tone when he speaks of Tom Harrell." ….– Ken Franckling

“His style mixes together the power of Clifford Brown with the lyricism of Chet Baker.” 
– Scott Yanow

If nothing more was ever said about the quality of Tom Harrell’s playing, this one sentence might stand as the definitive description of it. I can think of no other trumpet player in Jazz today who melds Brownie’s fire with Chet’s songfulness.

Before delving into Tom’s recordings, let’s begin with Constance Casey’s well-written retrospective of Tom’s career as a context in which to place them. Her essay is entitled Making Music That Catches The Wind: Premier Jazz Trumpeter Tom Harrell Outplays His Schizophrenia and it appeared in the May/June 2008 issue of Stanford Magazine, the same year that Tom took up an artist-in-residency at the university.Constance Casey, a former book editor of the San Jose Mercury News, is a New York City writer who regularly contributes to Slate.com.

© Copyright protected; all rights reserved.

“At the Iridium Jazz Club’s tiny tables are several groups of young Europeans on a pilgrimage to hear trumpeter and composer Tom Harrell. Some of his fellow jazz professionals, many graying, came early to get front-row seats. Toward the back are some lucky tourists who’ve walked the few blocks up from Times Square.

Burly sax player Joe Lovano takes the quartet’s first solo, then comes Harrell. With his horn up, he is a compelling figure: a gray-haired, ghost-pale man in black leather jacket and black jeans. From his trumpet comes a cascade of notes, impossibly high and impossibly fast, yet with each note articulated. He’s inventive, completely concentrated, playing with the audience’s expectations about where the tune will go next. Then, on a standard—“Body and Soul”—his playing turns slow and sweet, twining with Lovano’s sax.

Harrell usually plays and tours the United States and Europe with the intensively rehearsed quintet he leads. Tonight’s quartet plays together expertly even without rehearsal; they trust each other. Harrell and Lovano have played together for at least 25 years. Cindy Blackman, intense and glamorous, is on drums; Cameron Brown, with 40 years of recording behind him, plays double bass. For this week each will lay improvisations over Harrell’s compositions, and every performance will be distinctive.

Newsweek has called Harrell a genius, and Entertainment Weekly named his recording The Art of Rhythm its best jazz album of 1998, celebrating “Harrell’s arrival as a composer and as the premier trumpeter of his generation. (Sorry, Wynton).” Phil Schaap, curator of Jazz at Lincoln Center, says of Harrell, “He has it all—technique, lyricism, beauty and energy.”

But the sight of Harrell when he lowers his horn is also compelling. His head is bowed, his chest caves in, the hand holding the trumpet hangs limp. His face is without affect or reaction. Not everyone in the audience knows that he has schizophrenia; the disease was diagnosed when Harrell, ’67, was a Stanford freshman. For more than four decades he has struggled with the illness and with the debilitating side effects of the imperfect medications used to control it.

His appearance unnerves people, even as their hearts go out to him. He’s aware of the discomfort that disperses only when he is playing his shimmering music. He once apologized to an audience, “I’m sorry I’m not a more charismatic figure.”

It is, of course, a cliché to cite music’s power. We have all, as listeners, experienced its charms—been soothed by lullabies, excited by fast tempos, consoled by stately rhythms. We’ve read about countless performers who proclaim that music is their reason for being. It’s another thing altogether to hear this sentiment from Harrell, for whom music literally is transforming: “One of the first reasons I wanted to play the trumpet is that it healed me.”

There is no cure for schizophrenia, although generations of drugs developed during the past 20 years have made the disease more bearable for many. But it remains very hard for a schizophrenic to make a coherent life, much less construct a stellar career. In a typical year Harrell has between 80 and 120 performance dates in the United States, Europe, South America and Japan. His fellow performers report that he is remarkably dependable and considerate. His success is especially remarkable because he still experiences delusional thinking, hears voices and shies at noises, such as a camera’s click.

“His condition?” says Joe Lovano. “He knows how to deal with it. He’s a mature individual.”

When told about Harrell, neurologist Oliver Sacks, the author most recently of Musicophilia: Tales of Music and the Brain, was reminded of one of the most studied cases of schizophrenia in history, that of Daniel Paul Schreber, a German who died in 1911. Though institutionalized, Schreber was able to write a memoir in which he observed, “During piano playing the nonsensical twaddle of the voices which talk to me is drowned. . . . Every attempt at ‘representing’ me by the ‘creation of a false feeling’ and suchlike is doomed to end in failure because of the real feeling one can put into piano-playing.”

Harrell’s fellow musicians often mention the honesty of his playing, his authentic feeling. The intensity of his playing, along with the structure of music itself and the supportive cohort of musicians who work with him, seems to mitigate the disease’s hallmarks of disordered thinking and withdrawal from other people. Harrell also benefits from his marriage to Angela Harrell, a Japanese-born science and medicine writer whom he met 16 years ago when she interviewed him for a joint Japanese TV and Discovery Channel documentary on creativity and the brain. (“She called me,” he says, with a faint smile, to joke about her being forward.) She acts as his manager, booking performances and looking after his music publishing. Hundreds of his songs, orchestrations and arrangements are used by other musicians. His compositions have been played by Carlos Santana and Vince Guaraldi; young trumpet players up for a challenge buy the sheet music, Tom Harrell—Jazz Trumpet Solos Collection.“He could not do it himself,” Harrell’s agent Joel Chriss says. But well before having Angela’s logistical and business support—in the late 1970s—Harrell was established as one of the foremost musicians of his generation. As a teenager, he sat in on Bay Area jam sessions that sometimes included famed saxophonist Dewey Redman. After graduating from Stanford (where he played with the Band and the Stanford Symphony), Harrell toured with Stan Kenton’s band and Woody Herman’s Thundering Herd. In the 1970s he moved from big, brassy bands to more experimental music, playing with jazz pianist and composer Horace Silver. Silver was a pioneer in hard bop style, an extension of bebop that pulled in gospel, and rhythm and blues.

By age 30 Harrell was leading groups of his own. His 21 albums consist mainly of original works, with a few standards tucked in. Some of his most impressive pieces are experiments in the interplay of trumpet and voice. Early this year the French Orchestre National de Lorraine recorded a premiere of Harrell’s symphonic suite for singer Elisabeth Kontomanou. Another reason he gives for loving the trumpet is that he believes it’s the closest instrument to the human voice.

On the day we met, Harrell’s speaking voice, whether as a result of his illness or affect-dulling medication, was unmusical, a slow monotone. Our interview took place in a Lower Manhattan hotel room, with Angela sitting quietly nearby. Harrell spoke with eyes downcast, sometimes closed.

“Music always has a fantastic ability for healing. The sound is magic. Don Cherry once said, and Freud, too, by the way, that words themselves are magic sounds.” Harrell gives an almost imperceptible smile at mentioning Sigmund Freud second to Cherry, the late trumpeter.

He describes listening as a child to his grandparents’ 78-rpm recordings of Enrico Caruso arias and Aida by Giuseppe Verdi (certainly a composer who knew how to employ trumpets). He loved his parents’ Jazztone Records compilation of 1950s stars—Charlie Parker, bassist Slam Stewart and “the first time I heard Dizzy Gillespie.”

His father, Thomas W. Harrell, was a professor at Stanford’s Graduate School of Business known for his research on the personality traits of successful business people. (His son and daughter heard him whistle Big Band tunes around the house.) His mother, Margaret, was a statistician who co-authored many of her husband’s studies. Music historian Ted Gioia, ’79, MBA ’83, remembers getting a call “out of the blue” from Professor Harrell. “I’m not even sure he knew I had been a student at the Business School. He just wanted to talk about his son. . . . He was a proud father and relished the chance to hear how much jazz musicians admired his son’s talent.”

Harrell began to play the trumpet when he was 8 and was studying Russ Garcia texts on arranging a few years later. A friend’s father who played bass and drums sometimes invited the young trumpeter to play along. “It was a revelation to me,” Harrell remembers. “I started hearing the color of the walking bass line.”

Listening to the radio one day at age 13, Harrell heard a recording of Clifford Brown, the legendary trumpeter of the 1950s who died in a car crash at age 25. “I heard a celestial sound. It was, essentially, Gabriel.” Critics credit Harrell with some of the best of the Clifford Brown qualities—incredible speed, but with clarity and precision.

In his Stanford studies, he says, “I was interested in European classical music and its parallels to American jazz. Billy Strayhorn was classically trained. Dizzy Gillespie combined the rhythm of jazz with European harmony.” He minimizes the onset of his illness in those college years as, “I dropped out for a minute,” and, later in the conversation, “I had a sort of breakdown.” Calmly, he explains, “I was able to go back after I started taking medication for my illness.”

Harrell firmly rejects any romantic notion that mental illness is in any way of benefit to an artist, something that provides unusual insight. “It’s biochemical,” he says brusquely. “First of all, take the medicine.”

Despite recent advances, medication for schizophrenia remains far from perfect. When a drug damps down the demons, in most cases it also smothers spontaneity and creativity, and in many cases antipsychotics have weakening side effects. For decades Harrell took Stelazine, an early antipsychotic that partially controlled delusions and hallucinations but gave him unpredictable muscle contractions, obviously a terrible problem for a performer. Seven years ago he switched to Seroquel, which has common side effects of dizziness and sluggishness, but causes fewer tremors.

Some paranoid sensitivity remains. Harrell took offense at my question about whether he tended to be more solidly on the beat than many jazz musicians. He angrily left the room after remembering a long ago punning criticism by the late New Yorker jazz critic Whitney Balliett, who called him, “flat-footed, like a cop on the beat.” Balliett also called Harrell “brilliant,” but that’s not what he remembers. When I had introduced the question by saying I was not a trained musician, he thought I had called him untrained.

Angela said simply, “Tom, you’re being paranoid,” and Harrell returned, suddenly calm, to continue our conversation. “Rhythm is my weak point. I sound stiff to myself sometimes.” As if to stabilize himself, he added very firmly, “Dizzy Gillespie, the greatest trumpet player, admired my playing. That’s all I’ll ever need.”

The musicians who play with Harrell view his occasionally offbeat behavior sympathetically, almost fondly. They remember a time when they were alarmed that he seemed to have gone missing in an airport. He had retreated to a spot in the parking garage to play his trumpet. Some thought the playing was to settle himself; others that he was working on a composition inspired by jet noise.

Jazz is hard work: four hours a day of practice alone, or rehearsal. Harrell manages to surmount his difficulty in communicating verbally with his musical partners: If something is different from what he intends, he’ll play a voicing on the piano rather than explain in words. Harrell also is known for the meticulous preparation of his hand-written scores. Too often, sax player Lovano says, composers turn up with something messy. “When Tom brings in a piece of music, it’s completely written and he’s confident. He counts it off and we play it the first time all the way through.”

The untutored in the Iridium’s audience enjoyed the songs, including Harrell’s best-known “Sail Away.” The educated jazz audience responded to his improvisation; fans say he never plays something you’ve heard before. Someone once said the difference between composing and improvising is that a composer has as long as necessary to create 30 seconds of music, whereas an improviser has 30 seconds. Harrell does both. “I have more ideas now than I ever had,” he says.

He’s modest about his place in the pantheon of American jazz artists, demurs that he is “not a very analytical thinker. I’m playing my feelings.” As our conversation wound down he looked up at me and said, “I can catch the wind, something that is free, something that we all share.”

The next generation of trumpet players is grateful. Ambrose Akinmusire, winner of the 2007 Thelonious Monk International Jazz Competition, has seen Harrell in performance. “As soon as he picks the trumpet up, it’s almost like he was meditating. You see pure concentration. I imagine people would walk away with hope, knowing all he’s been through."

For a variety of reasons both personal and professional, for the better part of the 1970s, I essentially gave Jazz a miss.

As a result, I didn’t develop an awareness of Tom on record until I heard him as a member of the Phil Woods Quintet on two 1984 albums: [1] Integrity issued on the Italian Red Records label [CD 123177] in April of that year and [2] later in December, Heaven [Evidence ECD 22148-2].

Unbeknownst to me at that time was the fact that Tom had really started his career much earlier in big bands: first with Stan Kenton in 1969 and shortly thereafter with Woody Herman.

As Stuart Nicholson comments in his book about the resurgence of Jazz in the 1980s:

“Tom was featured on an arrangement of ‘A Time For Love’ and it was clear the 24-year old had in place tone, technique and flair for lucid melodic construction. Since then he worked with Horace Silver, appearing on five albums with him, and a remarkable roster of musicians including pianist Bill Evans, George Russell, Mel Lewis, Bob Brookmeyer, Lee Konitz and in 1980, he contributed some flugelhorn solos on Gerry Mulligan’s Grammy winning ‘Walk on Water.’” [p. 90]

From 1983 to 1989, Harrell’s “… gift for lyrical invention, economy of line, wholesome tone and the high regard of his peers” [Loc. cit] was such that Phil Woods decided to expand his standard quartet with Hal Galper [p], Steve Gilmore [b] and Bill Goodwin [d] into a quintet in order or to be able to work with Tom on a regular basis.

In The Penguin Guide to Jazz on CD: 6th Edition, Richard Cook and Brian Morton had this to say about Phil, Tom and the new quintet in Integrity:

“… any who have heard the group in concert will surely want this live record. Harrell had worked for some years as a freelance in search of a context, and with Woods he secured a precise focus: the material here is a connoisseur’s choice of jazz themes – including Neal Hefti’s ‘Repetition,” Ellington’s ‘Azure,’ Wayne Shorter’s ‘Infant Eyes,” and Sam Rivers’ ‘222’ – mediated through a clear-headed approach to modern bop playing. Harrell’s lucid tone and nimble, carefully sifter lines are as piquant a contrast with Woods as one could wish, without creating any clashes of temperament.” [p. 1579].

Fortunately and with great appreciation to Carl Jefferson its owner, Concord Records had the good sense to further document this superb band with three additional recordings: [1] Bop Stew [CCD-4345], Bouquet [CCD-4377], and Flash [CCD-4408 on which trombonist Hal Crook joins to make the group into a sextet].

Turning once again to Cook and Morton’s comments about these recordings they noted that:

“This was one of the great touring and recording bands of the 1980s. Harrell and Woods inspiring each other and the rhythm section inquiring and swinging. Woods didn’t need to change anything about his style, but it blossoms anew in counterpoint with Harrell’s lyrical fire, and each album is handsomely programmed and delivered.” [Ibid., p. 1580].

In 1994/1995, good fortune came into play again when Phil Woods in conjunction with Michael Cuscuna and Charlie Lourie at Mosaic Records formed an exclusive arrangement to issue a limited edition of 5,000 copies of The Phil Woods Quartet/Quintet 20th Anniversary Set [MD5-159] which contains four never-before-heard tracks with Tom Harrell from Phil’s private collection.
According to Neil Tesser who wrote the insert note booklet for this compliation:

“Bill Goodwin [who by this time had become Phil’s brother-in-law] said that one night ‘Phil called and started raving about how we had to get Tom into the band. He was going on about trumpet and alto, how he’d really been hearing trumpet and alto. The next day we offered tom the job.’ Since the band already had a slate of scheduled gigs at previously contracted fees, this meant a pay cut for all of them, in order to carve-out a fifth salary for Harrell. (‘We all love Tommy’s playing so much, ‘ Goodwin told me at the time, ‘ we’d do almost anything to get him in the band.’)
The band gave Harrell – who had freelanced in new York after stints with Woody Herman, Horace Silver and the Lee Konitz Nonet – a new and respected stage for his subtle musical brilliance. Harrell gave the band another source of superb original compositions; a translucent voice to complement Woods’ own; and a wholly different style of improvisation, based less on the spectacular peaks and grand gestures and more on solos of sustained construction. The force of his musicianship began to push the band into new and exciting areas, building on the structural integrity that had resulted from the addition of Hal Galper a few years earlier.

… Harrell opened up the band, and he retains unique significance in that regard, as the first of the ‘other horn players’ to join Woods on the front line.”

The ensemble work by Woods and Harrell is striking flawless and the unison-lines between the horns on Oliver Nelson’s 111-44 for example will leave you shaking your head at how magnificently well they are executed.

As these recordings also demonstrate, the Phil Woods Quintet with Tom Harrell was a Jazz Band for the Ages and it is a marked shame that it had to create its music in the Jazz obscurity of the 1980s.

I caught up with Tom’s recorded music once again at the end of the 1980’s, this time when he was a member and then became the joint leader of a quintet led by Swiss alto saxophonist and clarinetist George Robert.

This hard-swinging group was in existence from about 1987 – 1992 principally with a rhythm section made up of Italian Jazz pianist Dado Moroni, Reggie Johnson [b] and Bill Goodwin [d], when he was not touring with Phil Woods’ quintet.
Dan Morgenstern, the esteemed writer on the subject of Jazz and the Director of the Institute of Jazz Studies at Rutgers University, in his insert notes to the group’s first album Sun Dance [Contemporary CCD-14037-2] album wrote:

“In a varied program of uniformly excellent originals by Robert and Harrell , the band strikes a happy balance between ensemble and solo strength. Robert gets a fine, full sound from both his alto and soprano (he handles the latter with a fluency that reflects his clarinet training) and tells a story when he plays. So does Harrell, surely one of the most underrated and under publicized trumpeters of our time (and quite a flugelhornist, too).
And in his insert notes to the group’s 1989 recording entitled Lonely Eyes [ GRP 1002], Morgenstern expressed this view about the music and the musicians:

“The horns of the co-leaders are splendidly matched, both in ensemble and solo roles. Doubling and skillfully varied writing allow for a textual variety quite amazing for a small group. Harrell, who finally seems to be getting some of the credit long due him as one of the most original and consistently excellent creative improvisers of our time, plays trumpet and flugelhorn and gets his own sound, at once warm and brilliant, from both.”
Mainly thanks to the advent of the compact disc, a few years later I eventually caught up to two other albums that Tom had made in the 1985 for Gerry Teekens Criss Cross label Based in Holland.

The first of these was on pianist Hod O’Brien’s album Opalessence [1012] on which he formed a front line with baritone saxophonist Pepper Adams [their take on Clifford Brown’s The Blues Walk will immediately demonstrate why so many Jazz listeners think of Tom’s playing as part of Clifford’ legacy].

The second was a recording done under Tom’s leadership entitled Moon Alley [1018] about which Dan Cross wrote in his www.allmusic.com review:

“A strong recording in the post-bop tradition, Moon Alley illuminates the impressive writing of leader Tom Harrell, who has penned five of the album's seven compositions. Harrell tends to write in a manner which dictates specific parts for the rhythm section, letting the soloist stretch out over the static accompaniment. The playing is strong by all musicians on the date, and the album benefits from the youthful exuberance of saxophonist Kenny Garrett, who colors the music with smatterings of bent pitches and brief dissonances. Harrell at times reveals the influence of Kenny Dorham, though his sound on the open horn is somewhat harder and brassier than Dorham's. The recording of Kenny Barron's piano, captured by Rudy Van Gelder, gives Moon Alley a sound similar to that which dominated the 1960s Blue Note recordings, and at times, as on Harrell's "Blues in Six," the illusion is convincing." – Dan Cross www.allmusic.com”

A few years later, I encountered Tom again when Gerry Teekens, the owner and producer of Criss Cross, and pianist Mike LeDonne linked up for a series of recordings under his leadership with Tom appearing on two of them.

The first of these was 'Bout Time [1033] where Tom joins Gary Smulyan’s baritone sax to form a front line that is ably supported by pianist LeDonne, and Dennis Irwin and Kenny Washington on bass and drums, respectively.

In his insert notes to the disc, Peter Straub observed:

“The baritone-trumpet front line blends in a way that often sounds like more than two horns. Tom Harrell and Gary Smulyan sometimes remind the listener of the old Pepper Adams – Donald Byrd group, with that combination of authority and wit …. During his tenure with the Phil Woods quintet, Tom Harrell became one of the most significant musicians in jazz, always playing with the daring and nobility he demonstrates virtually everywhere on this album.”

The same group turned up on The Feeling of Jazz [1041] Mike’s next album for Criss Cross about which Scott Yanow had this to say on www.allmusic.com:

“Pianist Mike LeDonne's second recording is most notable for the outstanding and contrasting playing of trumpeter Tom Harrell and baritonist Gary Smulyan. While Harrell is lyrical and melodic, Smulyan is forceful and swings quite hard. With bassist Dennis Irwin and drummer Kenny Washington offering stimulating support, the three lead voices are in top form. LeDonne contributed three fine originals and, other than the standard "My Ideal," the other four songs (Duke Pearson's "Ready Rudy?," Duke Ellington's "The Feeling of Jazz," Buddy Montgomery's "Bock to Bock," and Wynton Kelly’s "Action") are all superior obscurities. Easily recommended to straight-ahead jazz fans.”

For the past fifteen [15] years or so, Tom’s recorded appearances have increasingly been with his own quintet, in both live and studio settings, and in a series of concept albums on which he not only performs, but for which he also wrote the music.

Issued in 1996 on RCA [09026 68512], Labyrinth drew a high rating and the following high praise from Richard Cook and Brian Morton in The Penguin Guide to Jazz on CD [6th Ed., p. 667]:

“… 'Labyrinth’ was Harrell’s real coming out as a major figure. Just turning fifty, he came to it with renewed fire. In a sense, the album takes him full circle, teaming him with players who were a part of the Criss Cross operation almost a decade earlier. Don Braden [ts] and Gary Smulyan [bs] have gone on to their own projects, and Steve Turre [tb] is now an established star as has Joe Lovano [ts]. Harrell writes all the tunes with the exception of ‘Darn That Dream’ which is an overdubbed duet with himself on piano …. The larger scale arrangements with horns, like ‘Majesty,’ ‘Sun Cycle,’ and ‘Blue to One’ take him to a new phase of musical organization, a sequence of shifting themes which often defy major/minor distinction and which resolve in the most unexpected ways."

In terms of concept albums, one of Tom’s best is The Art of Rhythm [RCA 09026 68924] which is accurately described in the following review again by Richard Cook and Brian Morton in their The Penguin Guide to Jazz on CD [6th Ed., Loc cit.]:

“What was becoming increasingly obvious over time is how ebullient and rhythmic a player Harrell is. … having heard this pungent set, one understands that he has learnt a good deal from Dizzy’s Afro-Hispanic experiments. … [This album] isn’t a soar-a-way, south-of-the-border-set. It might equally be subtitled ‘the art of color’ or ‘the art of arrangement.’

Never before has Harrell, who is the composer of all ten tunes, experimented more freely with instrumental combinations. The string and guitar writing, for both Romeo Lubambo and Mike Stern, is exquisite. He opens in gentle mode with clarinet [Greg Tardy], acoustic guitar and string trio on ‘Petals Danse,’ build in woodwinds elsewhere, but also allows himself a hefty dose of jazz horns on ‘Oasis (sharing solo space with Dewey Redman), ‘Doo Bop’ (a feature for Tardy’s tenor) and ‘Madrid.’

He leans heavily on flugelhorn, perhaps too much so, though Harrell has always been able to give the bigger horn the bite and attack of trumpet when so required. A wonderful, accomplished record from an important player. The success of ‘Labyrinth’ has given him considerable artistic leverage; here he used it to maximum effect.”

Jazz is always better in a “live” setting and Tom has a terrific album on offer in this regard with his Live at the Village Vanguard which was recorded November 15 – 18, 2001 [RCA 09026 63910]. C. Michael Bailey, writing in www.allaboutjazz.com, offered this review of it:

“A Jazz Prometheus, unbound...

…. On his first live recording, Harrell squirts out a treasure trove of new material supplemented with the single (and most appropriate) "Everything Happens To Me." The results are as uniformly fine as we listeners have come to expect from this master.

Here, Harrell leads a quintet in an assembly of characteristically Harrell-abstracts, mood pieces reflecting all matter of wakefulness. The nervous opener, "Asia Minor," submits an angular head that segues into a lyrically swinging flugelhorn solo by Harrell. His solo is supplemented with the tenor of Jimmy Green, who turns in a good solo of his own. The somnolent "Manhattan, 3 AM" provides a ministry for bassist Ugonna Okegwo, while Xavier Davis provides tasty comping on all cuts and exquisite solos on his duet with Harrell on the contemplative "Everything Happens to Me." "Where the Rain Begins" is a plaintive ballad composed by Harrell and his wife/manager, Angela. The piece showcases Harrell's superb grasp on the ballad playing with an open trumpet bell.

"Blues in Una Sea" is a bit of a Hard Bop throw back, sporting elements of the blues and those great Wayne Shorter melodies, circa 1962. "Design" was inspired by Ornette Coleman and results in one of the most spirited performances of the evening, complete with smart complexity and erudite observation. The closer, "Party Song" is a polished Lee Morgan Boogaloo, quietly funky, allowing all of the participants to have their say.

Live at the Village Vanguard is brimming with all of the smartness and attentive humor of the other Harrell recordings. That this Harrell recording is live simply makes it all that much better.”
Ever since their work together in the group co-led by Swiss alto saxophonist George Robert, Tom and Italian Jazz pianist Dado Moroni have remained close friends and a special fondness for appearing together on the summer European Jazz festival circuit.


More recently, this bond has also taken the form of Tom and Dado co-leading recordings for the Italian label aBeat. Of these, Humanity [#2 Signature Series AB JZ 051] is particularly noteworthy. Comprised entirely of six, exquisitely interpreted standards – The Nearness of You, Lover, I Hear a Rhapsody, Darn That Dream, Poinciana – and the title track original by Dado, Humanity is a "formidable disc which gives the listener an hour of music that is rich in intensity, lyricism and pathos.” [paraphrase of Maurizio Zerbo’s review of the disc on http://www.italia.allaboutjazz.com/].

The pure music that Dado and Tom create on this recording is beautiful articulated in the following statement by pianist Enrico Pieranunzi who requested “the privilege” of being able to write the insert notes for this recording:

“I like the title of this CD very much.It is a declaration, a good omen, a hope.And it is wonderful that the title refers to a Jazz CD.

There is really no music that is more ‘human’ than jazz, of this expression of the body and imagination that speaks to life as it is happening by improvising with sounds.Tom Harrell and Dodo Moroni tell their stories simply, authentically.

They sing their innermost being using so-called ‘mainstream’ language … but in the end this is not important.

What counts is the profound rapport there is between the two musicians, a silent and deeply felt understanding that spans the entire CD.

What counts are the thrills provided by tunes such as ‘Humanity’ or ‘The Nearness of You,’ as well as the other tracks, revealing a touching chance of beauty.

It is in cases like this that jazz reaches the point of being the most human of all expressions of art.”

To paraphrase Howard Reich of The Chicago Tribune in his review of Tom’s 2002 appearance at the Jazz Showcase, Chicago’s perennial Jazz club:

“To Jazz musicians, one goal towers above all others: originality. The artist who has something new and personal to say wins the admiration of his peer, while the player who sounds like nearly everyone else makes nary an impression – no matter how much flair or technique he might command.

On Tuesday night, trumpeter-composer Tom Harrell not only reaffirmed his status as one of the most gifted melodists in jazz but unceremoniously pushed into bold, previously uncharted territory

Harrell articulated the difference between genuine talent and an energetic impersonation of it, between great art and mere entertainment.

Though Harrell has been a popular headliner at the Jazz Showcase for years, his performance this time around transcended his earlier work, in part because he unveiled freshly minted compositions he has yet to title or record.

In these pieces, Harrell not only capitalized on his gift for inventing sinuous, idiosyncratic melodies but presented some of the most profound ensemble writing one can hear in live jazz today.”

If you are not familiar with Tom Harrell’s music, hopefully this piece will serve as an inducement to sample it for in doing so you will be placing yourself within the ambit of that rarest of occurrences - artistic greatest.