Monday, January 29, 2007

Dash it all

I was channel surfing a little while ago and briefly watched the most ridiculous piece of dialogue. It was a black and white British wartime-era melodrama, with two officers having a smoke in the Officers' Mess. Before I changed the channel again, the conversation went something like this:

"You know, Nigel, before all of this mess, I was an organist and a pretty good one, I daresay. I used to play organ at the cinema, but I always wanted to be a concert organist."

The other replied, "My dear boy, there are two types of people in this world, those who play organ at the cinema, and those who play Bach."

Tarantino it wasn't.

Later on, this stilted exchange got me thinking. I have the opportunity this year to play in many different groups and situations, more than ever before, and in a slew of differing styles. I could take on a lot of composing projects. Though few of them would be particularly lucrative (not a prime motivator in my musical life), most would be rewarding from a creative perspective, and I would definitely enjoy myself. I could have a chance to play many different instruments, and learn and improve on most of them.

On the other hand, I have a voice in my head (one of many) telling me to stick to one instrument, one style, and to really get proficient in that before having the audacity to take so much on. This is eminently sensible, yet also a convenient way to cop out, because one can never be simply "good enough", given the depth and tradition of jazz. Serious practice habits can easily breed perfectionist tendencies. Perfectionism gets in the way of success, always undermining it.

Some months ago I described myself as a musical generalist, a jack of all trades, master of none. I'm currently revisiting that concept, precisely because I now have all of these varied opportunities that I have been deliberately seeking out.

Coupled with that is my desire to increase my financial stability, which may entail a dayjob change in the near future. Uncertainty of what that may bring is making me think I shouldn't take so much on at this time. In fact, I've given a lot of thought as to how many of my current projects I'd be willing to give up, and which are non-negotiable. Could I pare it down to two? I could, with a great measure of regret for the others. One? I don't want to put myself in a position where I'd have to make such a choice. None? No way.

The next few weeks will be interesting as I work through all of this, hopefully finding some clarity along the way.

Wednesday, January 17, 2007

À propos of absolutely nothing musical...

I live in a joe lunchbucket neighbourhood in South Van. My daughter's school is a small, wonderful French immersion school. Everyone involved there knows it's a special place, something confirmed by former teachers I've run into who wish they were back there. It's a bit too far for us to walk every day, and involves crossing Knight Street, dicey at the best of times. When weather permits, we bike to and from school.

One of the kids at school occasionally gets driven to school in a Hummer. A bloody Hummer to get to elementary school! Christ on a pogo stick, is that really necessary, even if you're crossing Knight Street?

Sunday, January 14, 2007

Michael Brecker RIP

I've been pretty bummed out about hearing about his passing yesterday. I had to check it out several ways on the net just to make sure that it wasn't another malicious rumor. CBC reported it this morning, so that's official enough for me. But I still went to his website to see the absolute proof.

I've visited a terminal leukemia patient in the hospital. It's one hell of a way to go. I wouldn't wish it on anybody.

He'd been sick for two and a half years, and I hadn't heard anything for a while. The previous news I'd heard was that the experimental therapy had gone well and he was home practising. That was quite a few months ago, and just last week I thought about contacting Terry Deane for an update.

About a year ago I spent some time giving thought as to what constitutes a contemporary saxophone sound. There are so many styles and so many great players out there that I admire. Given my tastes that run to the avante garde, the field is even more wide open.

But for what I consider to be the mainstream, nobody embodied the contemporary tenor sax better than Mike Brecker. That he was a technichal master of the instrument is undeniable. He may well be the most influential saxophone player since Trane.

In the various student music festivals I've been involved with, I saw the emerging young lions announcing their arrival by playing (or trying to play) "that Brecker shit", not Bird, not Trane. It seemed to be to be the new benchmark.

I first heard him in the mid-seventies with The Brecker Brothers. As he started on his solo career ten years later, I bought his records. I didn't snap up everything that he released. At times the density and complexity of what he did overwhelmed me. Dexter was more my style for a number of years.

But one could not ignore the breadth of his work. Sometimes I preferred his work as a sideman, or an album where he didn't write all of the tunes. The McCoy Tyner cd Infinity remains one of my faves.

We added a couple of his tunes to our set lists, Midnight Voyage and El Nino, the former truly deserving to be considered a standard. I'd never play my Brecker shit with these tunes because frankly, I don't have any.

I bought a book of his transcriptions about a dozen years ago. I don't have a lot of books of transcriptions and the only one I've ever played cover to cover (with a nice slow metronome) was the Charlie Parker Omnibook. I had one of Dexter's (I could get the notes but never really get the feel) and one of Trane's (simply an exercise in humility). Brecker's book fell into the latter category. I pull those books out maybe once a year and they act as a benchmark. I generally find that I can play a bit more of the transcriptions, but the vast majority is beyond my grasp. That's really OK with me. I don't set out to try to imitate these guys, just to learn a bit more each time. I opened it up for about half an hour last night.

The thing about the Brecker transcription book is that it seems to be a vehicle for the enviable abilities of Carl Coan, the transcriber, who has gone to great lengths to notate what Brecker did in some of his solos. I really don't think that Mike really was planning on playing four groups of sixteeenth notes with a 13:2 ratio, or pickup notes of tenthtuplets or whatever. This is somebody elses scarily detailed interpretation of what he heard Brecker do. It makes it easy for an uninitiated player to miss the essence of Brecker's abilities, his command of the time, deep understanding of form and chord structure and the ability to impose shapes of notes, his own idiosyncratic lines, over the changes, regardless of what the changes were, yet they always sounded right.

And how many Guardala mouthpieces were sold to guys trying to emulate that unique sound? This of course fits into the category of "What reeds should I use to sound like Charlie Parker?"

I have often been of the opinion that Brecker's technical brilliance overpowered the emotional content of his playing. However in recent years, I felt that he was working on incorporating that more into his music. His last show here, at Cap College, was thrilling. That disease would probably have already been eating at his bone marrow.

Reading that he wrapped up his final recording project just two weeks ago, it will be most interesting to hear what he sounded like, with mortality clearly staring him in the eye.

Wednesday, January 10, 2007

Terminatrix

Last night my daughter came down with a mild version on the bug that Brian Nation has dubbed The Terminator. She didn't sleep well through the night, consequently neither did I. Then she was up early in the morning with the heaves - ahh, the joys of fatherhood.

I'm not so good at pulling those all-nighters as I used to be, so by late afternoon I was beat. I was stumbling to the bedroom for a nap and happened to look out the window. The outside light was pink due to the combination of a bit of a sunset effect and the street lights coming on. In my dazed state, I was sure I was looking at fresh cherry blossoms in the tree outside our bedroom window. Springtime already!

What a rube. Especially since I had been out earlier in the afternoon.

For any non-Vancouverites reading this, it was six inches of powder snow.

Thursday, January 04, 2007

Cross that one off...

This goal setting voodoo really does work! This evening I got an e-mail from Maria Schneider. Really. She doesn't want me in her band, nothing so trivial, she wants my financial contribution to her new cd project. I'm just happy her website marketing system remembered my name. Maybe a little quid pro quo would be in order. Perhaps I'll get my computer to ask her computer to fund my cd project.