Osby and Turner

Hello again,

I'm back from a 5-day trip to Maui with my wife. It was a fantastic trip in a beautiful place, and I'm sure I'll be writing some music reflecting on my experiences. Fish, urchins, sea turtles, hiking, volcanoes, and tons of great food!

Youtubing this morning - I thought I would share a few videos and a few thoughts. First, check this one out: Franco Ambrosetti Sextet playing "Sidewinder" by Lee Morgan. Swiss trumpeter Franco Ambrosetti is sounding great here, and surrounds himself with a killing band: Greg Osby on alto, Mark Turner on tenor, Jason Moran on piano, Lonnie Plaxico on bass, and Billy Drummond on drums.

I want to focus on the former two sidemen, Osby and Turner. In my opinion, these are two of the most important saxophonists on the current scene. Both have an amazing technical mastery of the instrument and have developed personal, beautiful tones. Their approaches to improvising on the saxophone, however, are what I feel makes them such important figures in jazz today. Nobody else sounds like Greg Osby; he has found a way to filter the often angular melodic, rhythmic and harmonic content of 20th-century classical music through the jazz tradition. Like Eric Dolphy's playing, one can always hear a deep underpinning of "the blues" in Osby's improvisations, despite the far-reaching harmonic implications and often fragmented rhythmic phrasing. Similarly, Mark Turner's even-toned explorations hold a solid footing in the "feeling" of jazz, without using old material. Turner, a Tristano/Marsh/Konitz enthusiast, is a masterful architect, building an improvisation one step at a time and treating each note with care. His expansive range, balance of wide and close intervals, and extraoardinary use of space are unlike any other player.

I find it revealing and exciting to listen to these players in the context of jazz standards. While both of these saxophonists are notable composers as well, standards serve as a more immediate reference point to the listener and help us to more easily identify some of the players stylistic nuances. This is one reason I particularly enjoy the "Sidewinder" video posted above; listeners don't often get to hear Osby or Turner play this tune!

Here are a couple more examples of these masters playing standard tunes. Enjoy!

Greg Osby playing "Jitterbug Waltz"

Mark Turner playing "All The Things You Are"

Walk and Talk

From wikipedia.org:

"Walk and talk is a distinctive storytelling-technique used in film and television in which a number of characters have a conversation en route. The most basic form of walk and talk involves a walking character that is then joined by another character. On their way to their destinations, the two talk. Variations include interruptions from other characters and walk and talk relay races, in which new characters join the group and one of the original characters leaves the conversation, while the remaining characters continue the walking and talking."

I've been spending a lot of time thinking the past few days about different processes and/or means of composing for and playing with improvisational ensembles. An opportunity has arisen to start a new project with drummer Colin Woodford and bassist Emilio Terranova (and perhaps another horn or two?), and certain leanings of my good friend Colin toward the integration of language into music got me thinking: what if the driving force behind each composition and subsequent improvisation was generated by some manner of language? Pianist Jason Moran has produced some amazing work using pre-recorded voice in conjunction with his live trio (my favorite utilizes one side of a phone conversation), and Colin has put together several extremely entertaining "storytelling" pieces performed on his graduation recital this Spring at Calarts. My initial concept involves a little more distillation of the "language material", so that none of the original words or sound will actually overtly appear in the performance.

I've been toying with ideas of varied complexity: I would like most of the material to be concise in length and concept, to be developed mainly by the musicians in the group during performance. A piece could be written based upon something as simple as one word, or as complex as a paragraph from a novel or exerpt from a speech. Cool Hand Luke, anyone? For audio clips, the delivery will definitely be a focus in shaping a musical interpretation. For words written on a page, I am imagining creating grooves or textures based on the word choices, creating tone poems ("setting" the text without actually using it in performance), or a combination of both.

The wikipedia definition as it pertains to film and television shakes up some ideas as well; my flavor of improvisational music is definitely coming from a conversational place, and often times could be viewed as a "journey". Individual characters conversing as they travel through space and time to get from one place to another? Sounds like quite a concept to tackle in a musical arena, but the kind of challenge I could really wrap my brain around.

If anyone has ideas and suggestions, this early stage is a most welcome time to hear them. Additionally, I would love links to great quotes, passages, movie clips, etc. that make you feel something. Keep an eye/ear/(foot?) out for Walk and Talk stuff; I'll likely be using this blog as a notebook for ideas as well as a forum for suggestions, so pass this along to anyone who might be interested.