My music is nearly always jazz-based, so I certainly don't mind having my string quartet music identified that way. But there is more to them than "just jazz!" String Quartet no. 3 is subtitled In Memory of Don Schott. Don was my lifelong friend and a super-talented drummer who I enjoyed playing with informally for nearly a decade before he died of lung cancer. Don had problems with drugs and alcohol, but his major demon was bipolar disease. After being hospitalized for a manic episode he had to be re-hospitalized to detoxed from alcohol. He woke up in his hospital room one night and realized that he had no interest in getting high ever again. He attended AA meetings regularly and, like most ex-alcoholics, he was a chain-smoker. Several years before he died, he managed with great difficulty to stop smoking. Alas, it was too late. Two years after he stopped smoking, he was diagnoxed with lung cancer. Two years after the diagnosis, Don died at the age of 61. The movements in String Quartet no. 3 consist of music Don and I played together as well as music that Don enjoyed playing on his second instrument, the saxophone. “Death and the Flowers” consists of 3 movements, each named after flowers that are poisonous or, in the case of Columbine, associated with death. As you probably remember, Columbine was the site of one of the first school killings. This music has a tragic side that rarely comes out in my other pieces. Jazz-based? Yes, I suppose so, although there are other influences as well.Violinists Andrea Vercoe, Sally McLain and cellist Jodi Beder have performed in Washington Musica Viva concerts over the last decade as well as in many Washington ensembles, while violist Karl Mitze is a newcomer. I hope you can come and join me for the premiere performances of these works for string quartets. I never thought I'd ever hear them! My son Dr. Adriel Gerard and his wife Caroline Hagood along with Washington Musica Viva are producing the concert.
Jimmy Giuffre
I studied with Giuffre privately for about 6 years on and off. I studied jazz sax and composition and occasionally, clarinet. Giuffre was the first teacher I ever had who told me to call him by his first name. Jimmy was not an especially warm person, and he insisted on doing things his way. Once I complained to him that he was spending too much time on embouchure. Jimmy said quietly, "There are a lot of other saxophone teachers out there you could go to." That was the end of my complaining. Jimmy believed in detailed study. We spent a lot of time working on phrasing jazz tunes. It was kind of cute that we took turns playing chord changes on the piano. He was a very rudimentary-level pianist. We taped all the lessons - kind of a rarity back then. Jimmy was the first (and one of the few) teachers who treated me as a colleague. Even though I was just a teenager, he considered me a fellow-musician. Jimmy emphasized the beauty of music rather than precision and skill. This had a huge impact on me. Jimmy was one of the few teachers who played with his students - a lot. This way I had his beautiful sound as a model. In some ways, the problem that we had was that he was from an earlier generation. He sometimes came off as an old-school hipster. He had no interest in, say, Frank Zappa. and in the late 60s he wasn't part of the current jazz-rock scene. In fact, he wasn't performing too much then and it wasn't very high quality, either. Despite his lack of warmth on a personal level, Jimmy was the sort of person who was there when you needed him. He was very helpful to me when I didn't have too much money. He gave me a free lesson once, and he let me sit in regularly with his NYU band. In his own way, he gave me a lot of confidence in my ability.Jimmy Giuffre's music is neglected in jazz history. Also neglected and nearly forgotten are his colleagues George Handy (1920-1997), George Russell (whose ex-wife Juanita became Mrs. Giuffre), John Benson Brooks, Teddy Charles and John Carisi - all first-rate jazz composers with big ears whose heyday was the 1950s.
Stravinsky and George Handy
When queried in 1964 by a New York Times reporter about the origins of the Elegy to J. F. K., Stravinsky described “a melodic-rhythmic stutter of my speech from Les Noces to the Concerto in D, and earlier as well—a lifelong affliction, in fact.” The comparison of his melodic writing to a stutter, perhaps offered as a slightly acerbic riposte to frequent critiques, in fact serves as a clever metaphor, for it links the fragmental, dislocated, and repetitive aspects of the composer's melodic style with underlying connective origins inherent in speech. from Gretchen G. Horlacher in Building Blocks: Repetition and Continuity in the Music of StravinskyGeorge Handy was an admirer of Stravinsky's music, and I hear a lot of these abstractions of melodic cells in the saxophone suites.
What Is Hip? lyrics
Tower Of Power – What Is Hip LyricsSongwriters: S. KUPKA, E. CASTILLO, D. GARIBALDI{ Band intro }So ya wanna dump out yo' trick bag.Ease on in a hip thang,But you ain't exactly sure what is hip.So you started to let your hair grow.Spent big bucks on your wardrobe.Somehow, ya know there's much more to the trip.refrain 1:What is hip?Tell me, tell me, if you think you know.What is hip?If you're really hip,the question, "Will it show?"You're into a hip trip.Maybe hipper than hip.What is hip?You became a part of a new breed.Been smokin' only the best weed.Hangin' out with the so called "Hippie set."Seen in all the right places.Seen with just the right faces.You should be satisfied, but it ain't quite right.Refrain 1refrain 2:Come on!Hipness is. What it is!Hipness is. What it is!Hipness is. What it is!Sometimes hipness is, what it ain't.You went an' found you a guru.In an effort to find you a new you,And maybe even manage to raise your conscious level.While you're striving to find the right road,There's one thing you should know,"What's hip today, might become passe'."refrain 1Think about it y'all.Refrain #2What is hip?Ahhhhhhhhh!What is hip?I'd like to know!What is hip?Is it in the style of your hair?What is hip?Is it in the clothes that you wear?What is hip?I'd like to know.What is hip?I'd like to know.What is hip?What is hip y'all? Hey!What is hip?Hey! Oh!What is hip?What is hip y'all?+D3What is hip?I wanna know.What is hip?Ahhhhhhh!What is hip?I wanna know what hipness is.
Caesuras
For the last year I have been struck by the logic of delineating musical phrases. There are several ways of doing this, depending on the music. When a phrase ends in a long tone, one can simply cut down the length of the held note to in effect insert a breath to indicate that one phrase is ending and the next is about to begin. One can alternatively insert a short pause, known as a caesura. Wanda Landowska, the first major harpsichordist of the 20th century and a fantastic pianist as well, wrote that "to allow air to circulate is like breathing a constantly renewed life into musical phrases; it gives them a relief indispensable to their comprehension. That is why all ancient treatises compare musical interpretation to eloquence. Nothing could be more annoying than those melodic lines that are never interrupted by the slightest breathing. They are comparable to an unpunctuated text or to extremely elongated spaghetti endlessly rolling with neither beginning nor end, but lasting forever!" (p. 376, Landowska on Music).
Layout headaches for the composer
The problem of performing music using sheet music are manifold. On the one hand, making music easy to see and follow cuts down on rehearsal time and produces better performances. Over the years I've been careful to add cue notes; arranged lines of music so that rehearsal letters are placed at the left of the page; made sure not to put too many measures on one line of music to keep chord changes from being cluttered; spaced drum parts to reflect the length of a musical phrase, and on and on. On the other hand, these layout strategies lead to more pages-per-part. Now the composer has to worry about the practicalities of dealing with a long part on a music stand. Occasionally I've changed notes to rests just so the musician can take the time to flip over the part or turn pages. Sometimes I wish that musicians had page turners so I wouldn't have to deal with the part layout at all. The Manhasset folder makes it possible to have 4 pages visible on the stand instead of the usual 3 pages. This is a great help, but it significantly clutters up the performance space and consequently pushes musicians apart. Moreover, the big folder hides the performers from audience views.
Bukowski Liked Mozart press release
Several years ago, Carl Banner of Washington Musica Viva commissioned Charley Gerard to convert Mozart’s violin sonata #25 into a jazz piece. Mr. Banner was intrigued by the bass note passage on the piano and thought, wouldn’t this work great as a “walking” bass part with a drummer playing along? At first Mr. Gerard was hesitant to reinterpret Mozart, especially since jazzin’ up the classics was at one time roundly condemned by the musical establishment. But after examining the work, Mr. Gerard saw the creative possibilities. Mr. Gerard retitled the work Bukowski Liked Mozart after writer/poet Charles Bukowski, America’s bard of the down-and-out. This is Mozart that would fit into a barroom setting. The work has gone through a change since it was last performed locally with violinist Kathy Judd, Executive and Artistic Director at Washington Conservatory of Music. There were new parts for bass and drums and the piano part was also altered, but the violin part unchanged. In the present work, the violin part will now be assigned to a saxophone, and there are several additional spots for jazz improvisation. In a way, this is not too different from the way Mozart’s works were performed in the 18th century when musicians inserted their own improvised lead-ins at key harmonic points, ad-libbed cadenzas and improvised between movements. Since the work ends with a series of variations, it was not much of a leap to add a few more variations in a style that jazz musicians would be accustomed to. Bukowski Liked Mozart will be performed at Twins Jazz on Dec. 5, 2013. The performers are: Mr. Banner, piano, Charley Gerard, saxophone, drummer Lennie Robinson, bassist James King and Dutch guitarist Syberen Van Munster. This group has performed at the Kennedy Center and the Czech Republic Embassy.Twins Jazz is at 1344 U St NW, Washington, DC 20009 www.twinsjazz.com
Irving Flores, Jr.
Judi and I caught up with Irving Flores, Jr., the son of the bandleader I worked for in Tampico, Tamaulipas, Mexico 36 years ago. We also met his wonderful girlfriend Lillian Johnson. What an amazing experience! Irving is an amazing jazz pianist with an impressive resume (see www.irvingflores.com). He currently lives in San Diego. We played together and the music was on a high level. After we ate an excellent dinner cooked by Judi, we reached Irving Flores, Sr. at his home in Puerta Vallarta. After speaking in Spanish, he told me in English that he loved me, and I said the same to him.It's almost a dream-like experience to reconnect with a family after over 3 decades. Irving invited me to San Diego to make a record and do a concert. Who knows? I might take him up on it.