DAVE HOLLAND - Interviews - 1973 & 1989

DAVID HOLLAND (1973) Song For The Newborn The group known as Circle consisted of Anthony Braxton (reeds), Chick Corea (piano), David Holland (bass), Barry Altschul (percussion) Bill Smith: Circle is the most recent group, of any permanence, that I know about that you have been playing in. Could you explain how such a group came to be? David Holland: We all came from very different directions. Anthony Braxton came from the Chicago school, with Cage's music and the theatricals that you spoke about the other day. And of course Chick came from quite a melodic Latin kind of thing and I came from England, with all that stuff that's going on there, and Barry was from New York, and had played with people like Paul Bley. There's quite a wide variety of viewpoints that came to me in the music which is why it has got such a lot of attention, and I figure that we had many different directions going on. Bill: Circle came about for all four of you when you were already living in the United States, then? Dave: The idea came when Chick and I were with Miles. We both wanted to leave the group. I didn't feel that there was anything more to be done with Miles, for my own taste, for what I wanted to do. Initially we wanted to get a trio together, and we did a gig down at the Vanguard, with Barry and Chick and myself, and Anthony turned up. He came to hear Roy Haynes who was playing there with his group. He came over to talk to us and so we got together a few days later and did a few gigs. We did a concert in Baltimore... the music was so strong... we did a lot of playing in the loft that Chick had and the first music we played was very experimental. We really just opened that up, we just broke down all the barriers and said OK, we'll just play with any sounds that we can find. We used things from the kitchen, and bellows and shouting and singing and whistling, we did all kinds of things, just to find out how far we could take it. And then it started to get more defined. We started to try and get a bit more precision into the music. Bill: Would it be difficult, David, for a group like that to survive economically anywhere in the world? Dave: Well, that particular group I think could have survived, had we stayed together. You see there were enough people who knew who the people in the group were, so we were assured of a certain number of people coming to hear us. With the right kind of handling of a group of that kind, and with enough traveling, you could cover yourself between albums that you might do. You could go to Europe for the summer, doing concerts over there, coming back to make it to a university, doing things like that. We had a very large following from young people, partly from the fact that they knew Chick and I from Miles, and had heard some of those albums, and wanted to come and find out what we were doing on our own. And the music seemed to appeal to them, it wasn't just the idiom that we were using, it was the feeling that we produced as a group. And this is something that I've noticed happened with the music, is that no matter what kind of music you play, it doesn't matter what the style, if the spirit is in the music, if there's really a spirit in the music, it communicates to people. The people sense that, and we really had a unified feeling going on for awhile, and people immediately caught fire because of it. They saw what happened on the stand which made them feel good just by virtue of the fact that they could see that kind of closeness and communication and love between people was possible. The music kind of represented that, and so that took them beyond the idiom that we were working with, whether we were using strange or common sound, it didn't seem to matter, it just could relate to the feel of it. So in that sense, I think survival means that, survival means flowing. Survival means doing, and I think Circle was doing and was flowing while it existed. Bill: There are a great number of people who refer to it as 'this music', there are a great number of people who simply do not even consider it to be music. Is there a reason why those people can't hear it? Dave: The evolution of music comes through many stages but first of all, you have to define what music is. Music is an organisation of sound of some kind. You have to invent some kind of system, or set of values by which you can hang your conceptions on. In other words you have to have forms to realize the ideas and inspirations that you get. But inspiration on its own is not enough, it has to be put into a communicable form whereby people can receive that inspiration. So the systems change, the form that you use changes as the music progresses. Initially, there were very fixed systems, like modes, which are very simplified systems of harmony. And then as it progressed to Bach, Beethoven and the composers of the 17th and 18th century, the music started to take on different characters, different colours, more contrasting colours, colours that sounded dissonant at that time, even though to our ears, now, in the 20th century, they sound quite consonant. As people had to re-educate their ears in order to hear the new relationships of dissonance and consonance, and as the music progresses more and more, what produced tension ten years ago, now no longer produces tension because it has become common place to one's ear. In order to create that same kind of tension now, you have to use something which is even further removed from the original consonant idea. So that might involve metal scraping against metal which would be a very dissonant sound. You would be using the element of timbre too, which has been the most important development in modern music texture, treating a melody, not just dealing with the sound and pitch of the note, but dealing with the coloration that you can give that note. I think people just need to be educated in hearing new relationships of sounds. I think the function of the artist is still keeping communication with his audience, but at the same time introducing new elements too. It's a question of almost a compromise between what one ideally hears as an artist, which is generally contrary to what the audience is hearing, and finding a way to communicate that element to them, in a way that they can understand, because art is only alive inasmuch as there are two sides to it. There has to be the artist and the audience. It's something which has to be ultimately shared up there. Bill: Do you need an audience to retaliate or relate to you on some level so that you can feel some kind of energy that will make you perform better? Dave: Yes. For instance the album that we did with Circle in Paris was a very special occasion for me. The group was at a particular high point, in fact we'd been very together with each other, we felt very close to each other, and while we were feeling this way, we found ourselves in an ideal situation, because the O.R.T.F. (French Radio) building in Paris was a very nice hall, and a very receptive audience that really wanted to hear the music. There was no question about it, that was a packed house. Before we even got on the stand every seat was full and there was this electric energy thing on the air! My own most intense experience in the concert was the solos I played. There was such a stillness before it started. I felt the energy just entering my body, and for that whole period that I played, I was just transported into another place. I think the audience contributed as much to that experience of the music as I did. It was something that we totally shared. So that energy is very important, I think. I'm not saying that music can't be created without an audience, because I have created it by myself at my house, but the element of there being somebody out there who's receiving what you're doing increases the flow, because the flow goes to them and back to you and to them and back to you and the whole thing just lifts itself up in that way. Bill: I was just having a thought when you were talking about energy lifting you up, and it occurred to me that there 's something very peculiar about a string bass that no other instruments have. One thing is that it doesn't have fret positions so you can play notes at any point in your scale values. There's no stop between any of them, it's a continuous note. Everything to do with the bass, which is very ancient and strings were the first sophisticated melody instruments. Dave: Would you mind me interrupting just a minute, because I think that the first sophisticated instrument was actually the wind instrument. I'm pretty sure that that would apply, because it would be a reed which somebody would pick up and blow or that they would hear the wind blowing through it and they would say ah, sound, wind, music, you know? They would use their breath, which I think is a really beautiful way of playing music. But I take your point about the bass though, for sure, I think the bass has got something. Bill: But blowing out into a saxophone, trumpet, etcetera... with a bass you caress it all the time, doing something you 're joining with it physically. Dave: Right. The thing of the finger and the string is something very special to string players. It's something that I get more and more involved in as I play longer and longer. There's something to do with pulling a string with a finger that's incredible. Are you familiar with a book called "Zen And The Art Of Archery"? Well, there's a feeling that he describes with the archer becoming one with the bowstring. That whole thing is what happens with playing string instruments, where the finger and the string almost become one with each other, the string yields to the finger, somehow, and the finger yields to the string. Bill: In the earlier histories of jazz, the bass played a role of almost a simple rhythm instrument, that played changes and single lines to support the rhythm section. And although there were people like Jimmy Blanton, Oscar Pettiford, Milt Hinton, Charlie Mingus, they're the ones that come instantly to mind out of that whole growing-up period, it isn't until somewhere in the late 50's, with Scott LaFaro - now I don't know if I'm placing too much importance on LaFaro's music - that there 's a very drastic change in bass playing. The bass becomes very much a fourth member of a quartet instead of something that was backing somebody. It seems to play more intricate lines, and although it's playing rhythm things, it's playing a lot more melody things too. Is Scott LaFaro the most important reason for that? Was he the first bass-player who gave that idea to younger bass-players? Dave: I think Scotty was a very important stage and I would never under estimate what he represented. But Scotty also had his roots, and he drew from other people like Mingus and Paul Chambers. Now Paul's approach to the bass was a very important step too, because you know that the way the bass would be playing four in a bar and there would be a little triplet drop, well right there is where the whole thing started for me. Scotty took that idea and said, well maybe I could even leave out more than that, and maybe colour a little more. One of the beautiful things about Scotty was that he was able to do that and still be a bass player. A lot of bass players, when they hear Scotty, felt the bass doesn't have to be a bass at all. And they just went out and played as much as they could over the top. I felt called to that too. And still do. But what Scotty had got together somehow was the ability to colour and to make the rhythm very, very free, but at the same time always giving you the feeling that he was there supporting in a very solid way. Bill: Would you like how bass players like Ray Brown and Red Callender play? Dave: Anybody who's found music must be quite a likeable person. As far as what I listen to, one of my first influences was Ray Brown. In England, the Oscar Peterson Trio was a very popular group. Bill: Everybody knows that the Prince of Darkness walked into a club one night and pointed at you and said "You're my bass player". But obviously you didn't start playing the bass the day before that. And I know you were a classically trained bass player and went to the Guildhall School of Music and you came through the whole thing formally. Were you always interested in jazz all the time you played the instrument? Dave: Prior to playing the string bass, I played bass guitar. I was listening mostly to popular music. And around that time in England there was a traditional jazz boom which I think over here they call Dixieland. I took off on all these people, and of course, as I was involved in pop music, I came across this music, and I listened to it, and I was very interested in the sound of the acoustic bass. I was getting bored with what I was playing on the bass guitar. I wanted more, and in fact there were points where I was considering doing something other than music. Music had always been there in my life, but I had never considered doing it for a living. It was something I just enjoyed doing. But anyway, when I heard the acoustic bass, I decided I would have to buy one, so I went out and bought this brand new plywood bass, all shiny and glossy. I practiced it a little bit, had some lessons with a local bass player, who I thank very much for his guidance, although he wasn't a great bass player, but he helped me. The rock group that I was with went to Germany and as I was still under 18 and couldn't work in German clubs I had to find some work during the summer. I had just started going to a jazz club in my home town of Waltham where I spoke to the tenor player. He was taking a band up to a place called Scarborough, which is a British resort area, and I went to play bass with the band. After that, I didn't want to go back to bass guitar. That was it. I played a lot that summer, practicing a lot, and got a job in London, and started studying the bass at the Guildhall. And my ambition then was to become a studio musician. I thought I enjoyed playing lots of different kinds of music so I decided I would study classical music. When I finally got to be a real musician I could really attend to business. I went to the Guildhall really with that in mind. I thought, I can play pop music, pretty well, play the bass guitar, and was sort of getting jazz together so the only thing left was classical music. I hadn't really listened to classical music very much until that time, and I really started to get into it. There was an experience I'd had at a concert that I did with a very large orchestra of "Symphonie Fantastique" by Berlioz. I was very moved by the whole spectacle of this gigantic orchestra and this very emotional piece of music that I had got very involved in doing. And at that point I said, Anything I do as an improviser can never live up to that, and therefore what I must do is give myself up to performing music of such great consequence. I was very much in love with Bartok and felt it wasn't even worth my trying to match his ability. Luckily I saw that no matter what I did, if it was mine and honestly offered, it didn't have to be a great work of art. If it was just real, then it was worth doing. As I came through that one, I wanted to play my own music more and more. Gradually I met more people; John Surman was a very important person that I met, because we played a lot of music together in London at that time. I had really firmly decided to play improvised music, because by this time I was also working with people like John Stevens and Evan Parker. I was playing some contemporary 20th century music in small chamber orchestras and was beginning to get an idea of just how far this thing could go, that I had got involved in. It was at this point, in my last year at college, that I was quite active in London. I was doing recordings, some studio work, I was at college, then playing with Surman, and I took a month at the Ronnie Scott club because Bill Evans was going to be there, with Eddie Gomez and Jack DeJohnette, and I had a gig in a supporting band backing a singer. During the last week that Bill was there, Miles came into the club, to see Bill and Jack, because they both worked with him, and offered me the job, and that was the beginning of that whole thing. I feel good about the way it developed. I didn't have too much anxiety during the development. I just enjoyed doing what I was doing, which I think is very important. I think too much weight put on the goal that you 're trying to achieve stops you from moving anywhere. Because one has to be living and experiencing what's going on now in order to learn, which is how we move to another place. So if you're sitting, just thinking about where you want to go to, you're not even here, you're in the future, thinking about where you're going to go. So I think it's very important for musicians, artists, for anybody to try and experience the now as much as they can, and not worry about the goals that they 're trying to achieve. Those goals will happen very naturally if you allow the flow to happen. Bill: Do you have some kind of singular spiritual values which you base your life on ? Is there some kind of religious order or something? Dave: No, I've given them all up. I've been involved in quite a few systems and there's some information that I learn from some of them that's very useful. But I learned that all systems have limitations, and life has no limitation. There immediately is the problem. So I don't reach conclusions any more. I think when you reach conclusions you stop living for a second. Bill: Because religions simply have a system which has boundaries. Some of the boundaries are just a boundary. And you don't learn anything from them, they just impede your progress? Dave: There's only one religion, I think, for each person, that' s their own. I think that each person has to have their own life. I'm not saying that systems don't have their place and their value. I think they act initially as the first few rungs of the ladder. Once you've got your head above it a little bit, then you can start to see and make your own life. They only get part of it. The music I would like to ultimately be able to play would be a music that would be constructed much as the Sufi stories are constructed. The Sufi are an Islamic group of people who say they're not a religion, but they are religion itself. All that means is that they've got the original teaching. One of the beautiful things about them is that they translate the teaching to suit the time. It 's not static. Their principle of teaching is very much through folklore, stories and little parables. It's very amusing, and reach people on every level. They can be laughed at, and then at what I presume is the highest point, you get spiritual enlightenment out of it. You get some kind of cognition. Things somehow fall together because of it. Suddenly your viewpoint has changed. The reality of things has changed because of it. Now I think that a music or an art form that could exist on those levels at once would be a very nice thing. Where it would have something for every stage of awareness for every person who would come. Bill: Do you think it's possible to make music that high? Dave: Yes. It must be, because we thought of it already. It's not beyond the conception of man, and therefore it's not beyond the reach of man. Bill: Like a universal music that has something in it that everybody can hear? That's an incredible ambition. A highly unlikely possibility, it seems to me. Dave: I would not say that. I think you have to say it's possible. I have to say it's possible because that's what I want. I should think the role of the artist is a sower of seed. He takes some kind of light which is given to him, which is put through him, and he distributes it, and he tries to distribute it to everybody, not exclusively, but inclusively. Because the only way to live for me is to be ever more inclusive. DAVE HOLLAND (1989) Jazz Educator Conference of the Birds Bill Smith: Although the preceding excerpt, from our conversation, took place some fifteen years ago, it illustrates that what has unfolded in Dave Holland's life was already in place in his head. My experience with him has continued over these years, and to hear his music from those times move through Miles Davis, into Circle with Chick Corea, Barry Altschul and Anthony Braxton, the marvellous quartet of Braxton, with his early friend Kenny Wheeler, Sam Rivers, the Stan Getz quartet, once again with Jack DeJohnette, and on into this period when he is the leader of his own bands, has been, to say the very least, an education in itself. I had not seen Dave for some time, and when I was invited to be a guest of the Banff School of Fine Arts, in the mountains of Alberta, I was delighted. For Canada, and possibly for anywhere, the Banff school is a unique situation, so we started off our conversation talking of the difference between what it was like studying music at the Guildhall in his youth, and now being here as the artistic director of the jazz workshops... Dave Holland: Well first off the Banff experience is very different to an institution, the way this school is run and the kind of emphasis that's placed, and I'm not just talking about the jazz program, but I would say the whole. Everything that I observe here is geared toward performance level study. Mostly people who are coming, work next to prominent and very creative people in their fields, and it's viewed more as an exchange of ideas rather than a school. It's a place where people can come and get advice on the work that they are actually involved in now. It's not something where you learn to play a C Major scale, but to try and get some inspiration for direction. Just to get some feedback about that. Compared to my experience the school that I went to was a classical music school, and the experience that I had in learning about improvisation was all from the opportunity to play with other people. The advice that I got from all the other musicians. Unfortunately, I think in jazz institutions for the most part, they fall short of creating that type of context for learning. I'm quite concerned about the direction that jazz education is taking in the schools, because it's tending to be a paint-by-numbers system, where you learn to fit the right lick on the right chord, and you become a jazz player and get your diploma. There is a lot more, as you know, to it, trying to draw out the creativity and individuality in the player, at the same time as giving them a foundation in the tradition of the music, and giving them something to build on. Because we don't want to see people just trying to do things in a vacuum, we are trying to present at Banff a broad spectrum of alternatives and ideas. It's not a program which tries to put forward one singular idea of what improvisation is, but rather present a broad spectrum of it. Bill Smith: It also seems to me that the standard idea of jazz education has created a clone-like situation, and has managed to stifle creativity. So knowing all of that, how do you decide, at the beginning, which people are allowed to come here to study? Dave Holland: It's a very difficult process actually, because obviously it's based on performance. Most of the people that come here send tapes to the Banff Centre, and at a certain point in the year, usually around March, l am sent a box full of tapes, and I sit down at my tape recorder and listen to them, and evaluate. With a lot of reviewing, over and over again, I try and decide based on certain criteria. People might disagree with the criteria I use, but I just listen for musicianship and their ability to play their instruments. To me, there are certain levels of requirement for that. But also I look for individualism in the players. At the same time, just for the sake of the program, we've tried to keep the main thrust of the program to do with the jazz tradition as we understand it to be. The lineage of jazz from Louis Armstrong through the great players, and to keep that as a general focus for the program, rather than to try and make it a world music, third stream, everything's included type of situation. Because I've been involved in a few things like that and I found that it diffused the energy a little too much. One of the things I wanted to do to make the program strong, was to have a central idea of what we're trying to do. Even though that centre can be interpreted in many, many different ways. We've had players from Cecil Taylor through George Russell through Anthony Davis, Anthony Braxton, and on the other side Dave Liebman... I've tried to be objective in terms of impartiality, presenting as many different views as I can, over the eight years I've been involved here. Bill Smith: I've talked to a number of student over the past few days, and there seems to be some confusion among some of them, considering that the teachers are you, Roscoe Mitchell and Muhal Richard Abrams, for example, than when they actually play in groups the music is sounding very conventional, and yet the musicians that have been teaching them are much more contemporary. Is this because of the workshop groups, or is it the students' mentality that makes this occur? Dave Holland: Basically I think most of us here, as teachers, are trying to deal with the students on their own ground. Rather than trying to impress upon them a single way that they should be going, we try to look at where they are at this point. How we can help them move on and maybe broaden their horizons. But these things don't happen in four weeks. So what we find mostly happens is that the people that come here as participants are already focused on certain things that they want to do, and what the program does is expose them to other ideas. The music that is played is not really standard repertoire, we don't hear fifteen versions of "Stella By Starlight" - it's a beautiful piece - but what we hear are their own compositions really. When you go to the Blue Room in the evenings to hear the students perform, most sets are original music, and this I think is great. Rather than trying to dissuade them from doing these things, I would rather let them have the opportunity to externalize these things that they want to do themselves. To me the learning process is helped by that, by them being able to bring out the ideas that they have and to look at them, to compare them to what they hear some of us do. Some of the ideas that are discussed in the classes are certainly personal ones of the faculty, and sometimes even contradictory, which we don't mind at all. I think it's healthy. So, they are exposed to our ideas, but to expect that in a few weeks they would quickly transform them into a performance is unrealistic. I'm happy with the results that we have, really. There are some participants that would like to work in different types of areas to what the majority want to work in, and these are people that we try to spend more time with, and discussions with, and try to encourage their own directions. Everybody has the opportunity to put together special projects, so nobody is denied the opportunity to do something their own way. Bill Smith: With the faculty itself, the actual people who are working here to teach the students whatever they can, it seems to me that most of the people have been very closely associated with you in the past and even played in bands with you. Is there a real purpose to why it's like this, and why it is not just a bunch of odd fellows? Dave Holland: Well again for the sake of unification. I think if you look at the music of Muhal Richard Abrams and then at the music of Kenny Wheeler, you see two quite different polarities. Now I just happen to be a musician who has chosen in my life, to play with a wide diversity of people, and I think that's one of the things I've been able to bring to this program, that I have been associated with quite different types of musical situations, and therefore have been able to call people up and say, 'look would you like to come and be part of this and have it work'. I see myself as a person that can bring people together, and I've tried to use that idea to make the program work. You know there have been musicians here that I have never worked with: Cecil Taylor, Anthony Davis, we haven't really worked together that much. Muhal and I have not worked together that much, we did some duet concerts a year or two ago, but I've a great deal of respect for him and we always have stayed in touch with each other in various ways. It's not a coincidence that that's the way, but on the other hand, let me say this: You can only do what you can do best, and I don't want to be everything to everybody. I'm trying to bring together the people that I've had positive experiences with, and that I feel can have a high quality communication with other people. Now that does not include every musician. As you well know, some musicians are great players but they are not great communicators. So I've tried to look at the music in the most objective way and I think you can see that the program does not reflect my single approach to music. It reflects some criteria that I believe are important, which is to have conceptualists here, people who are all leading people in their field, in the area they have chosen to work in, and people who have built on the tradition in one way or another, not people who have come from some other type of orientation. Bill Smith: One of the situations that has happened while I have been talking to the students is, because some of them are very young, and as youth are often very opinionated about who they are, that they have little or no real connection with the history of the music. They are not like you or me, who have spent years listening to all those records, reading about it, and being part of it, because they have not yet had time to do this. So is there somewhere in the period that they are here, some kind of connection with the history? Are there talks about how the history worked, records, films, books recommended...?" Dave Holland: Well actually, just to address that question of the young, you and I were also young at one point, and opinionated. and I remember when I was a nineteen year old musician, the music I was listening to was the immediate five years of what was going on. I was not much interested in Duke Ellington. To me it was "old" music. It was only after I had bought "Such Sweet Thunder", when I was about twenty or twenty-one, that I had a rude awakening to the fact that these players were tremendously creative and I started to fill in the gaps. I think we have the same phenomena here. You know, young people basically are looking at their contemporaries, and we have an extensive record library here, for a start. We also have a collection of jazz videos which represent people like Thelonious Monk and Coleman Hawkins, and we have talks about the videos, sometimes play them at discussions, and so on. I can't speak for every teacher, but I know a lot of them use as a reference point, people in the past. If we are talking about improvisation, the balance of improvisation and composition, we might use Duke Ellington as an example. Often I'm encouraging them to look at styles which have not been absorbed into the mainstream, and so I will say to the saxophone player, listen to Eddie "Lockjaw" Davis, or somebody like that. Somebody who is coming from a different point of view to the popular styles that were assimilated. So there is a reference point there. Bill Smith: How did you first become involved at all with the Banff Centre? How did you actually decide to be on the teaching staff anywhere? Why as a musician have you decided to go into education? I understand that you also teach somewhere else. Dave Holland: Yes, I'm teaching at the New England Conservatory in between touring. Well, the involvement here at Banff started in 1981. I came here with a pilot program that actually became the Creative Music Studio, or at least people that were involved with the Creative Music Studio. Karl Berger put together a collection of people that included Ed Blackwell, Lee Konitz, Sam Rivers, and others and we came up here and did about ten days around Christmas time. The following year we were invited back to do a two week program in the summer, and at the end of that I was approached by Michael Century to see if I would be interested in heading the program. At first, the responsibility was a little bit intimidating. I did not know whether I really wanted to take it on at that point. But the opportunity here seemed so special that I decided I would give it a try. I was motivated mostly for the reasons that we were talking about earlier, that I was concerned about the way jazz education had been going, and I thought, 'well if you're so concerned why don't you get up and do something, instead of complaining about it'. So I said, 'well, let me see if these ideas that I have, which I know some of the other musicians share, to create an environment for learning but one that encourages individuality and creativity, see if this works'. So that's why I took it on. The New England position was more that I had come to the end of a five year period of working with my quintet, and I wanted to have a period where I could do some research myself, and teaching is a great aid sometimes to externalizing your ideas, trying to make them clear. I saw it as an opportunity to do that, and I also have an ensemble up there that I have been writing music for. It's a way to get a quick feedback on music that you want to write. So it was a good experience. I have trouble, I must admit, with the situation of having the confines of the schedule, in terms of seeing everybody for one hour, and then the next person comes in. That's a difficult way for me to teach. I've been spoiled by the situation in Banff, and this for me is really the ideal kind of situation where we can create a forum for discussion. Bill Smith: Do a large percentage or the students come back to the school again? Dave Holland: We do get a lot of students coming back. I don't know what the percentage is, but I often find that the people come here the first time, and they don't quite know what they are going to get, what's going to happen, and many people feel that the second visit they can be more prepared and really get a lot more out of it by that type of preparation. Bill Smith: Have any or the students in your experience, in the eight years that you have been here, gone out into the real big world and actually become known musicians? Dave Holland: Oh yeah, of course. Renee Rosnes, from Vancouver, is one; Hugh Fraser was someone that came here earlier and he is now actually on the teaching staff. Many of the Toronto musicians seem to be active, people like Jim Vivian, Mike Murley, Stich Winston, also we get professionals. The ages, we talk about young players, and I guess the youngest we have here is often sixteen, but on the other end we have players coming here in their forties, too, people who are looking for some other ideas to put into their music. I would say the average age is probably around the mid-twenties, twenty-seven, something like that. But we have noticed that a lot of the musicians playing the jazz festivals this year are in fact players who were here at one time or another. Another one is Phil Dwyer. There are many people that do go on. It seems normal, I wouldn't say that Banff has to take all the credit for it, but it seems natural to me that somebody who is searching and curious and dedicated to the music, will come here because this is one of the sources that they can draw on. Then these people, will of course, because of their nature, go on to create some situation and visibility for themselves.