Reviews and grants

How does it make you feel to get a good review of a CD? (You don’t know what a music CD is? Well, that’s going to become a thing pretty soon. But enough of that.) I’m not sure if reviewers count in the new world of internet influencers. No matter: It feels pretty okay to get a good review. Now getting a review in the first place is tough. A surprising number of musicians pay a publicist to get their new CD into the hands of reviewers and then there is also the understandable path towards achieving that goal by paying a noted reviewer to write some praise on your CD jacket. I’ve never paid a publicist to get my CD into the right spots so it’s been difficult but the results (see my website www.brokenreedsax.com to see them) have been gratifying.

Much much much better than a good review is being awarded a grant. That’s happened to me several times. Before I hit my seventh decade I received only one-off grants—paying for just one concert and not much cash. When I was 69 I won my first major grant, New Jazz Works from Chamber Music America funded by the Doris Duke Foundation, for years the only game in town for jazz. There was enough money to pay for several concerts plus a nice 9K commission. They’ve changed their regulations, but back in 2019 the grant winners were required to do a lot of confusing accounting work. I didn’t do very well with it and I hardly got better at it over time. It got my wonderful supervisor Gargi Shinde a bit annoyed. She told me that with my academic pedigree she didn’t expect so much incompetence.

But enough complaining. This was the first time in my life that I could pay musicians above-average fees. In fact, the grant required me to do so. Did it open the world to me? Scarcely. I thought it would be easy to get gigs with a self-funded group. A lot of venues just weren’t interested. As usual, the music wasn’t exactly the right stuff, and with my lack of fame they didn’t think they could get an audience. With Ms. Shinde’s connections I was given a concert at the Jazz Museum in Harlem with the proviso that I understand that it was not part of their programmed events—in other words, they didn’t really want me there!

Winning the grant was a tremendous confidence-builder. Here is was in the winners circle. Other grant winners that year (12 in all) included some world-famous artists like David Murray (The World Saxophone Quartet), Oscar Hernandez (Ruben Blades, Paul Simon) and Andrew Cyrille (Cecil Taylor, Archie Shepp). It was the first time that I appreciated the randomness of artistic success. Unless there’s some hanky-panky I don’t know about, a panel of judges selected our music without knowing our identity. New Jazz Works is one of the few blind grants in the art world. We won this on merit as judged by one panel of judges. Another panel might have passed on any of us—especially me. In the world of jazz my music is a bit like vanilla pudding in a jar of pickles.

Recently I won another coveted grant—the Jazz Road tour grant. At age 73 I’ve got to be one of the oldest grantees they’ve had. The Jazz road staff didn’t care how old I am; they never asked. In contrast to most other grant winners I designed a tour without any jazz spots—and in an area with almost none: Midcoast Maine. It was one of the most wonderful events in my life. Three of the six performances were in small libraries; one was in a large performance space and two were outside in incredible unseasonal weather. (88 degrees in Maine???) Now, I’ve done plenty of library gigs over several decades. All of them were in large-ish rooms set aside for events involving at least 25 people. But these libraries didn’t have rooms like these so we played with book stacks behind us, and the audiences were incredibly appreciative.

Who knows what will happen a year away when I’m 75!

A New Look

What do musicians do on stage? In small ensembles the audience is expected to savor the music as it is being heard. Unlike recording, the music “appears” without artifice and this is a wonderful thing. The audience is also enjoying the way the music is produced—bows sliding across strings and sticks and hands hitting drums and cymbals. And then the audience is also seeing how the musicians interact with each other as they signal with nodding heads and raised instruments and pointed bows. They see some musicians showing their own enjoyment and even rapturous joy as they play a passage of music. For example, they see a guitarist bending over backwards while playing a powerful high note or a saxophonist moving to the music or a pianist shaking his/her head in time to the music. Those body movements have long held my interest and that’s what I’m writing about next.

Some famous musicians move a lot and others don’t. With the ones who move, the body movements seem to be an integral part of the musical passage being executed. Lesser talents look like they’re faking it with all their contortions and brimming-over hip looks.

Several decades ago a dancer told me that my group presented little to look at. Here we were, four musicians with our heads in the sheet music playing our saxophones. As with several other wind instruments the mouthpiece freezes facial muscles and hand movements are likewise kept at a minimum. We can hardly bounce around or bob our heads because we have to pay attention to my demanding parts. So there’s not much to look at.

For musical reasons, since 2023 I have been writing passages marked “unlimited repeats” for long improvised solos. I instruct the soloist to slide away from his/her position behind the music stand and move in front of the three other saxophonists. As the solo is tailing out, the soloist moves back to the reading position. When I started doing this I think some of the musicians were half-thinking that it’s just to win over the audience and nothing more. But engaging in a little movement really brings out the best in a soloist. And the audience loves it. And in contrast to the jive physicality of many jazz performers it’s real and has a purpose.

Jazz Weekly review of Songs of Love and Passion

Reeds and voice create artsy moods as the Broken Reed Saxophone Quartet teams up with vocalist Kristin Slipp for a tad of swing and a jot of indie bohemia. Jenny Hill/ss, Charley Gerard/as, Jacob Teichroew/ts and Dimitri Moderbacher/bari create rich textures on their own on a stately and pretty “Love And Then It’s Gone” and an Old World “La Llorona” with Teichroew giving some warm tones on McCoy Tyner’s “Passion + Dance.” With Slipp on vocals, the team gets bluesy on the artsy “The Fear In Your Eyes” and sways to an R&B ish “Flutebone Song” and luminous “Real.” Hill steps out in the front harmonies with Slipp on “I’m In Love” while Slipp growls out “I Made A Mistake.” Part Ellingtonian sax section, part café’ bohemia.

The Saxophonist review of Songs of Love and Passion

Songs of Love and Passion reviewed by Jordan VanHemertFounded in 2002 by alto saxophonist and composer Charley Gerard, the Broken Reed Saxophone Quartet (BRSQ) is based in Brooklyn, New York. Songs of Love and Passion is the most recent offering from the ensemble. The record consists of twelve tracks, each based on a poem. The recording features vocalist Kristin Slipp, and The Broken Reed Saxophone Quartet (Jenny Hill, soprano; Charley Gerard, alto; Jacob Teichroew, tenor, Dimitri Moderbacher, baritone).Consisting mostly of Gerard’s music, which he chooses to call “alternative jazz”, Gerard’s music consists of crystal clarity in tonality and texture. Gerard’s music, as a whole, is incredibly evocative and dramatic, always taking a new twist or turn. However, these twists are not alienating to the listener. Jenny Hill contributes the only piece not written by Gerard, a clever play on passion, ending with a skillful and transparent arrangement of McCoy Tyner’s “Passion Dance.”The haunting purity of Slipp’s vocal is a perfect match for the counterpoint in Gerard’s compositions. The phrase lengths of are mostly symmetrical with clear cadences using functional jazz harmony. All of the members of the ensemble have very unique sounds befitting the material. These sounds make the counterpoint in Gerard’s arrangements clearer. This is particularly well_-articulated in “Between Breath and Death” where the text painting captures the lyric perfectly. Hill’s subtle soprano saxophone tone perfectly suits the text of this piece.“Love and Then It’s Gone” was a suitable start for this album. The ascending melodic figures that cascade through the ensemble seem to evaporate into the ether, which I quite enjoyed. Gerard’s poignant writing shines as the quartet performs “Real.” Slipp’s phrasing is enhanced by Gerard’s arrangement and the quartet’s dynamic subtleties. Especially impressive is the way in which the quartet matches the clarity of Slipp’s diction.The improvised solos on this record are intentionally sparse. However, in “Passion Dance” and “La Llorona”, we hear especially remarkable solos from the quartet. I admire the brevity of these solos. They are framed perfectly by the ensemble passages.Overall, I recommend this album to anyone who is looking for a unique chamber jazz experience with interesting writing and a unique instrumentation.

My Musical Adolescence

When I was a teenager I got into avant-garde jazz. While my peers listened to the Rolling Stones, I listened to Ornette Coleman, Cecil Taylor, Jimmy Giuffre's 1960s trios, and Albert Ayler. At the time, I found the music easy to relate to -- especially Ornette's. This was pretty unusual for a 15-year-old.Most people could readily hear that the avant-garde musicians were seeking to use dynamically powerful walls of arrhythmic hammering to create a seemingly endless climax beyond rationality. And they hated the music for it! They missed that there were elements of great melodic beauty, too. For me, it was a waiting game: I waited out the long passages of  incomprehensible musical explosions until the musicians played something that one could comprehend as melody, harmony or nice rhythm.When I was into avant-garde jazz my perception of music was much less advanced. In fact, I was only listening to the primary lines. Avant-garde jazz was based on musical interdependence, so the best way (if not the only way) to truly enjoy it was not to pay attention to the lack of coordination between the instruments. As I learned more about music I was able to hear music more like a 3-dimensional object. I could hear harmony and how musical lines could go together with a wonderful symmetry. Listening to avant-garde jazz became less enjoyable.Eventually, my musical interests changed, my avant-garde jazz records stayed in their jackets, and I never went out to hear avant-garde jazz groups anymore.There was one exception: I went to hear a famous American ensemble in Austria about ten years ago. I went with members of my saxophone quartet while we were on tour. I didn't buy into the aesthetic the group was peddling -- an appeal to the hip to bond together and love what the bourgeoisie would seemingly run from because of its fierce unloveliness. It was almost comical the way the four saxophonists abruptly turned from comprehensible musical phrases and harmonies to cacophony and then back again.The thrill was truly gone.

Constraints

A creative artist is faced with limitations. I can easily imagine how artists in all fields are affected by limitations, but it is as a composer and jazz musician that I really know about it: there's a budget that determines how many instruments are in the ensemble, the musicians you are working with are skilled in particular ways only, the instruments you are writing for have their own peculiarities such as the ranges that they sound the best in, and so on. But what is especially interesting to me are self-imposed constraints. It's like you're inventing a game with your own rules that you can choose to ignore. It's fun!

Weak jazz

Why do some jazz performances put me to sleep or make me irritable? Improvised solos using strings of even passages are mostly boring. Keeping a regular tone - no grace notes, no vibrato, no dynamics - makes me weary. Recapitulating the head with the same notes strikes me as uncreative. I’ll almost always prefer the soloist who plays with syncopation. Someone who plays with a sense of humor? S/he’s got my vote. Someone who changes up the texture by playing different rhythmic values or in a different range or with a different style.? Another vote from me.Improvisation is by definition arbitrary and unpredictable. Unless a soloist can keep my interest, I’d always prefer one chorus to 20. There are really not too many jazz players that can sustain a long improvisation. What about having a riff backing up a soloist? Too dated? I don’t think so. This is a sure-fire way to strengthen the music. Is it OK to use the same background figures for each soloist? Sometimes this kind of repetition works great. But I discovered that in one of my favorite arrangements - Eddie Durham’s 1937 arrangement of “One-O’clock Jump” for Count Basie - each soloist gets a different background figure.I guess dissonance is hip, and so is non-danceable meters. Do I care? Is unrelieved dissonance effective? I don’t think so. The self-serving composer Arnold Schönberg told his 1940 composition class “There is still plenty of good music to be written in the key of C major.” His own music was wonderful before he developed his own theory of unresolved dissonance and stuck to it.When you combine together relentlessly even passages, regular tone, unrelieved dissonance, little or no syncopation, no background figures and lengthy improvisation you get the musical equivalent of a browbeating. If you “don’t get it,” sometimes it isn’t because you aren’t hip enough.

Tom Olin

I just found out that Tom Olin died recently after prostate surgery. Tom played in the BRSQ for 8 years and contributed so much to the group. His music is on two of our CDs. Tom was an excellent musician and a great guy. I loved playing with him! My heart goes out to his wife Janet. We will be performing his compositions and arrangements at his memorial service on July 10 at the Musician's Union in NYC