Bill Smith : imagine the sound

KENNY WHEELER - Windmill Tilter

2007-09-21T09:58:00.000-07:00

The 1st in a series of Interview/Essays of Canadian Musicians

That was some summer in London in 1966. The jazz scene, which I had left three years previously had changed so much. A new identity had occurred. The old heroes, who relied so much on the American system of jazz for inspiration, had been superseded by a new, original and vibrant music. In this period the information that was available in the international media, was acclaiming a flowering of a new jazz, an extension of Coltrane, Ornette Coleman and Cecil Taylor, but for the most part this same media was focusing on music that was coming from the United States. Not such an unusual situation considering the circumstances of all new attitudes pertaining to jazz. In Europe however a parallel force was occurring, the likes of Gunter Hampel, Willem Breuker, Peter Brötzmann, Peter Kowald, Misha Mengelberg and Han Bennink were redefining the concept of improvised music. In England a similar situation was developing, and like the Europeans they were beginning to process their new identity, that although inspired by the music of Albert Ayler, Ornette Coleman, Cecil Taylor and John Coltrane, was a decidedly non-American music. The trumpet player that seemed to be involved in a great number of these ensembles was Kenny Wheeler.

Kenny Wheeler was born in Toronto in January 1930, and as a teenager moved to St. Catharines, a small town close to Toronto. “It wasn’t long before I met some of the young local guys. Sounds like there was a lot of them, but there were maybe half a dozen. They were probably complete outcasts in St. Catharines, but the thing that they knew about was bebop, and at that time I was listening more to people like Buck Clayton (I still love that music) and they turned me on to Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, Miles… bebop.”

By 1952 Kenny Wheeler was ready to move on, so he headed for Montreal.

“It was wanderlust really I guess. I was supposed to go to Montreal, to McGill University to take a course which would make me a high school teacher. I just realised that I wouldn’t be able to make that. So I thought I can’t go back to St. Catharines with my tail between my legs, which I had done a few times. So I just (headed out), being very daring.”

The winter of 1952 saw Kenny Wheeler arriving in England for the beginning of a long career in music.

“I’ve lived there (London) longer than I’ve lived in Canada. At that time when I arrived, it was still the big band era in England, so that’s what everybody worked in. I was young, and you know you don’t care so much about things. I only had a certain amount of money, and I didn’t really know anybody. But I wasn’t worried. Now of course I would never dare try anything like that.”

Eventually in 1959 he began to perform with the famous England orchestra of Johnny Dankworth, and with that orchestra he would later compose his first major recorded work, “Windmill Tilter”. A suite based on the book Don Quixote.

“I went through quite a lot of the slightly more commercial big bands before that. The first one was Roy Fox, who was an American (more famous in the 1930s, who was residing in London), and Vic Lewis.

“The first thing I did, of course, was head for the local jazz clubs. The one I looked for was the bebop club (Club 7), which was the style of music I was into by then. I thought I was pretty hot, so I stupidly went up and asked to sit in. They let me sit in, but they never took any notice of me whatsoever. So that sent me into a shell for a long time. When my money ran out I got myself a day job. At Christmas time they used to take on a lot of extra people in the post office. Eventually I found out about a street where all the musicians used to go on a Monday afternoon, which was like a market place for work, called Archer Street. So I started going down there. I couldn’t believe this place, there were hundreds of musicians standing around, and jobs would come up. I got to talk to people and know who they were. Finally somebody said — Roy Fox needs a fourth trumpet player, would you do it. I said sure, I’ll do it.”

From those humble beginnings the career of Kenny Wheeler has taken a long and varied path, which included studies in counterpoint with Bill Russo, composition with Rodney Bennett and performance with almost every major English jazz artist, including bebop musicians of the calibre of Joe Harriott, Tubby Hayes and Ronnie Scott.

But my real experience with him begins in 1966. The Little Theatre Club was situated in Central London, up four flights of narrow stairs, a small bar in the lobby, and a performance space that often had as many musicians performing in it as there was audience. This was where the legendary Spontaneous Music Ensemble gave regular concerts, and introduced me to the amazing music that was developing in London. The band often included John Stevens, its organiser and drummer, saxophonists Trevor Watts and Evan Parker, guitarist Derek Bailey, trombonist Paul Rutherford, bassists Jeff Clyne and David Holland and of course Kenny Wheeler. In this period and indeed right up until now, he has been involved in a number of adventurous and original groups of artists.

Did it feel, in the sixties, that John Stevens and the others you were involved with were creating anew music form?

“I don ‘t think I was consciously aware of that at the time, for me it was something that was completely different. But it is different from American free music. It did have a different sound. I never heard any American player that sounded like Evan (Parker), certainly not then. I think he has influenced a lot of younger people.”

Evan Parker was to be one of Kenny’s long time associates, and due to Evan Parker’s more radical concept towards improvised music, I was curious about the public reaction to the two of them in performance together.

“I don’t think either of us ever thought about it, we just play together and usually enjoy it. Whatever the situation was. We even played on several lucky occasions, just duets together. It has worked out great. I suppose for those members of the audience who feel more comfortable with pigeon holes there would seem some unbalance. I must admit that most of the people that would come to hear us would be more interested in Evan than me, it wouldn’t be some of the more conventional people. Perhaps if they saw Evan’s name on the bill, they might stay away. You know what I mean.”

Evan Parker has also been involved with Kenny in the Globe Unity Orchestra, an orchestra that for several years has had a very high profile in new music circles in Europe, and in the winter of 1983 toured America and Canada.

In recent times not much has been said about this orchestra. Does it still exist? Do you still play in it?

“Yes, when we do work, but it seems rarer and rarer, the chance to work. We used to work quite a lot, maybe five or six times a year over a period of a week or two at a time. Which is quite a lot. But not anymore. It’s strange, because the last few years the band was as good if not better than it had ever been, and you know for 12 - 13 people to walk on a stage, with no music, and no preconceived idea about what they are going to do, it was getting so that a lot of the time it was coming off, and some really great music was being played. There was also a period when Alex Schlippenbach did use quite a lot of written material. He loves Monk.”

In the 60s another orchestra descended upon London to add to the power that already existed there. The orchestra, under the direction of pianist Chris McGregor, was called The Brotherhood of Breath, and originated from South Africa. England became a haven for them, away from the racist environment of Apartheid. Kenny Wheeler was one of the English musicians that played with them.

“I did a couple of gigs with the Brotherhood. They brought a lot of great energy with them to London, it was just a great period in London anyway, there were so many different kinds of music happening, but somehow it and the musicians were crossing over into different things. There wasn’t a barrier. There was the Brotherhood, there was the Little Theatre Club, there was John Stevens, there was John Surman, Mike Gibbs, somehow in a strange way it was all meshing together. At least from my point of view. I think it was also in that time a lot of people in the pop world were keeping an ear to what was going on in all this movement in the jazz world. If that is what you want to call it. Also the Brotherhood of Breath were a completely different musical culture which had arrived in London. It was quite different to what was already there, and it was gratefully accepted by everybody.”

Another major aspect of Kenny Wheeler’s life has been his association with ECM, which began in 1975 with the recording entitled “Gnu High”. A more recent example of his music for this label would be “Around 6” (ECM 1156), and this brings to light another peculiarity about working in Europe in comparison to North America. All six players are from different countries. Evan Parker (England), J.F. Jenny Clark (France), Edward Vesala (Norway), Tom Van Der Geld (Holland) and Eje Thelin (Sweden). How could such an eclectic group of people be assembled. How would you meet such a group of players?

“Europe is small compared to Canada, and you go through many different cultures in a short time of travelling, so you do meet a lot of players from all different countries and festivals.”

That’s still very active in Europe, the festival circuit, so that you can move about quite readily?

“Well, maybe I’m one of the lucky ones, but I seem to keep working.”

Is this one of the advantages of the Common Market, that your passport is open in every country. That you can travel freely?

“No — there never was, as far as musicians go, at least for English people going to Europe to work. You don’t need work permits like in Canada and America to move from country to country. So the Common Market didn’t really affect musicians. Maybe other kinds of people it did.”

One of the most fruitful periods of Kenny’s life, at least musically, was in the middle seventies, when he became associated with Anthony Braxton. A period that brought about the quartet of Braxton, Wheeler, David Holland and Barry Altschul. From 1974, for another two years he worked continually with Anthony Braxton on numerous projects, which took him all over Europe, to the United States and on several occasions back to his native Canada. Those years were for me, as Kenny himself describes, also my most fruitful. My family lived for one whole summer in Woodstock, NY, when that marvelous quartet was developing. Attended the rehearsals and the recording sessions of the great Arista records, and helped to bring that quartet to Toronto. Kenny has returned often to Canada in the last ten years, not only to perform with Anthony Braxton but also with my band, Ron AlIen, an orchestra project with young Toronto players, to make records for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC), and also recently with his old friend from those wonderful days some twenty years ago in London, Dave Holland, who is now the musical director of the Banff Summer School.

“I started teaching at Banff five years ago, Dave Holland asked me to come out there originally. For me it’s hard — I’m not a born teacher, but the students do seem to get a lot out of it… Quite a lot of the students come back again, some for two or even three years.”

Kenny Wheeler is a gentle man, reserved and serious about his art. That he has succeeded is sometimes a surprise, because he is not part of the world of musical hype, not in any way a hustler. He is, who he is, based entirely on talent. I leave you with a feeling for him as he talks of his first meeting with Anthony Braxton, that clearly illustrates my point.

“He (Braxton) came to London and brought some music, and I think he was quite impressed by the fact that I attempted to get through it, and made something of this black music, which was running all over the page. It was really hard music. I think he remembered my brave attempt so he kept my name in the back of his head.”

Information sources include Toronto writer Mark Miller, the Encyclopedia of Music in Canada and the quotes are from an interview on CKLN radio.

On the Road Again

2007-01-04T11:38:00.000-08:00

Toronto & Havana
Travelling with Colston and Essjay

It’s November, the weather conditions on the west coast unpredictable with frequent storms presenting the possibility of being stranded even before beginning, making it necessary to start the journey a day earlier than had been planned. I promised myself I would not do this any more, this travelling about the planet in search of music, it’s like a disease, a brain impregnated wanderlust, but here I am, still curious, still longing for pleasurable possibilities.

Aging brings about the unwanted deterioration of body parts, in this case an attack of Bursitis seemingly acquired at the previous day’s hanging of my photographic show of Jerry Pethick’s Time Top journey; a show running throughout December at Joe King Clubhouse back on the island. This painful condition (a fluid swelling above the knee cap) that induces hobbling, is a malady commonly called Housemaid’s Knee but is being jokingly referred to by intimates as Curator’s Knee.

The journey is a multi-functional affair, the first destination being Toronto for a family visit and to attend a book launch which includes David Lee’s The BATTLE of the FIVE SPOT - Ornette Coleman and the New York Jazz Field, a Master’s thesis dissertation, and Mark Miller’s collection of selected writings from 1980-2005 titled A Certain Respect for Tradition. And then on to the 23rd Edition of the Havana Jazz Festival.

Since GeoDubya introduction of colour coded paranoia and the country-wide undemocratic smoking ban, airports have taken on a tedious self righteous attitude, removing for me any joy that may have previously existed. By chance we meet songstress Jackie Zbirun, an old island friend, at the entrance to the Comox Airport, who is also travelling the first stage of our journey to Calgary where we will change aeroplanes and she will disembark. The purpose of her trip, it seems, is to sell, to a prospective customer, her daughter’s quarter-size violin — now of a certain value as it has been autographed by a famous personality — to be replaced by a size more suitable for her growing offspring. There is a kerfuffle at the security check, the officials confused by what could well be a weapon of mass destruction in the bottom of her bag. The suspicious object she is transporting is a pitch pipe, which seemingly none of the officials had ever seen before. “Let me demonstrate its purpose” sez Jackie. The officials step back, warily observing, as Jackie toots a simple tune, accompanying herself as she does with a lively little jig. Once through the security check the traveller is confronted with a bare bones waiting room decorated in the style of a McDonald’s; bland, lifeless, devoid of any personality, and serviced entirely by corporate mediocrity. The 50¢ bottle of water that has been confiscated can now be replaced, purchased from the Coca Cola sponsored coin operated machine for a mere $2.00. Hope you have the correct change.

The wait in Cowtown’s terminal is minimal, just time for a glass of wine and a cigarette. Ah, yes, in Calgary airport, unlike elsewhere in Canada, there are numerous lounges where it is possible to enjoy a relaxing smoke. How civilized. Even the cowhide decor of the bar, echoing imagined sympathy for my slowly rotting gamey leg, seems friendly. Perhaps it’s true that Alberta is an independent state and should be recognized as such. On to Hog Town. Such nicknames our cities have. Animals being led to slaughter.

We have double-packed our bags, two sets of attire, knowing as we do that Toronto will be at the beginning of its remembered winter and Havana balmy at the very least. Surprise! Surprise! The following day we awake to a temperature in Toronto of 15°C. The mail man, whistling away a happy tune, is sporting a cotton shirt and shorts. Quite unseasonable. We are ensconced in the house of an old friend on Brunswick Avenue just a few blocks north of the venue in Kensington Market where the Mercury Press book launch will take place; a hip, and to us new club named the Supermarket which in recollection was a Portuguese pool room where gentlemen of sundry generations could be observed lounging about its front porch; socialising, enjoying a cigarette, gossiping neighbourhood stories, or daydreaming villages back home.

Circumstances have concocted what could be considered a dream band from a past history: I have travelled, as noted, from the west coast with my sopranino saxophone, David Lee has travelled in from Hamilton to promote his new book and brought a bass, Arthur Bull journeying west from Digby Neck — here on some mysterious government business — has brought his guitar, and violinist David Prentice with previous knowledge of this unlikely gathering has come down from Flesherton to join the party. Shazam! — as Billy Batson would shout when he wanted to be transformed into Captain Marvel — and we have the resurrection of the Bill Smith Ensemble. And as if this were not enough we are joined by Stuart Broomer enlarging the ensemble with a second guitar. The out-of-towners congregate, with my two daughters, across the street from the club at a small Mexican family restaurant where we satisfy our hunger with a variety of fine spicy food and a couple of beers (each) and catch up on old times.

The Supermarket turns out to be a large venue with its back-half secluded from the main space by a set of sliding doors, creating an intimate room complete with a small stage, possibly suitable for fifty listeners. Perfect for a book launch. Each of the writers (six in all) are allocated seven minutes to promote their work, and when David Lee’s turn arrives he relinquishes his chat so that the band can perform a brief (seven minute) version of Ornette’s Beauty Is A Rare Thing. In keeping with his learned tome. The audience, for the most part, are overjoyed with the addition of this unexpected music; an acoustic old fashioned avant garde music rarely heard in these parts anymore, its practitioners having fled this metropolis over the past twenty years for more rural climes. The story, the whole evening, is a much bigger affair, so I’ll just stick with the musical interludes. Mark chose to read a piece on John Zorn entitled Shivers - John Zorn’s Naked City (1989):

“Note #5. To mix things that don’t traditionally match. The bass line of Roy Orbison’s Pretty Woman, for example, running under an atypically fractious version of Ornette Coleman’s usually serene Lonely Woman. Zorn dresses in that manner, too. His footwear comes in singles, not pairs. One white running shoe, one black. One red sock, one green.”

An inspiration for this rare gathering of musicians to conclude the evening with another Ornette tune. The sliding doors were then parted, opening up the whole space for the ensuing six hip-hop DJs to strut their stuff for the ever increasing younger crowd coming to dance. ‘Round midnight — time for us oldsters to retire.

The weather remains clement throughout our stay, no need to unpack our Eddie Bauer thermal long-johns or thick socks, a chance to wander about our home town, participate in lunch and dinner with family and friends, check out the used book shops, and casually prepare for the journey south to the Havana festival.

For the past half-century I have attended hundreds of jazz festivals, including almost every edition of the Vancouver event since its inception in 1986, so many that the novelty (is that the word?) or excitement is wearing thin. The repetition of the venues, traipsing every day from one to the other, and even to a certain extent the music, far too much to digest, is not so interesting as it all once seemed. Time for a change. With the assistance of Ginny Harrison, our travel consultant at White Rock Travel, we have discovered what is purported to be an all inclusive package to the Havana Jazz Festival where we expect to hear a variety of Latin-based music not usually a part of our auditory spectrum. The package includes transport on Cubana Air, all the transfers, airport taxes, accommodation, which includes a buffet breakfast, in the five star Hotel Nacional de Cuba, and a pass and transport to all the festival events. However we soon discover that once we leave the orderly uncluttered world of Canada and change to Cuban time all is not as it seems. Perhaps the makings of an absurd, mostly humorous Marx Brothers film produced by Karl and directed by Groucho, with us participating as bit-part players.

Hola Sun of Richmond Hill, “THE CUBA SPECIALISTS”, through whom we have booked this package, turn out to be an inefficient organisation. The aeroplane journey is long-winded, landing as it does first in Camagüey in central Cuba where the majority of passengers disembark, and after an hour stop-over continuing on to Havana. We are met at the Jose Marti International Airport by a representative of Havanatur, the official Cuban travel agency, to be shuttled into the city. As the bus trundles through the darkness, the guide — compulsory on every package tour — delivers his welcome speech, explains such details as the currency, safety, hustlers etc., and it soon becomes obvious that he has no idea that a jazz festival is taking place, even though this is the reason that all the passengers on the bus are visiting his city. By the time we arrive at our hotel it is 10 o’clock at night, too late to attend the Gala de Inaugaracion del Festival, and there is no representative in the lobby to supply us with our “included” festival passes anyway. No matter, the Nacional is a grand affair, built in 1930 and since rejuvenated to its former glory, the ghosts of its fascist history still wandering the passageways, from a time when it was linked to Italian American mobsters, the likes of Lucky Luciano, Santos Traficante, Frank Costello and Meyer Lansky, the chosen accommodation of the rich and famous including Hollywood legends Marlon Brando, Errol Flynn, Johnny Weissmuller, Buster Keaton, Clark Gable, Frank Sinatra and Ava Gardner, the writer Ernest Hemmingway, the Duke & Duchess of Windsor. Even my old nemesis Winston Churchill could be imagined waddling about the tropical gardens sucking on a fat pungent cigar. Dump the bags in our spacious room and investigate the sumptuous facilities, flop down in a comfy couch and relax our first night away sipping a mojito while listening to a trio of Cuban musicians at the outdoor Bar Galeria which looks out over the beautiful tropical gardens complete with strutting peacocks. Here we meet an English representative of Cubana Air who describes the Nacional as being a ***** hotel with *** star accommodation. Out there, past the edge of the gardens is the Malecón, the joyous sounds of singers could be clearly heard, and upon investigation we find that thousands of people are enjoying the opening celebrations of Fidel’s 80th birthday and the 50th anniversary of the arrival of the revolutionaries from Mexico to begin the overthrow of the American controlled puppet dictator Fulgnecio Batista. The stage at the Plaza de la Dignidad with its 138 flags crackingly flapping, honouring Cubans that have been incarcerated and murdered by the American’s, hosts a variety of artists giving us our first taste of the plethora of music yet to come.

Friday: The information package supplied by Hola Sun provides two contact numbers, both of which are discontinued, but with a little detective work we locate our Havanatur hostess — whose cell phone it seems is also out of commission — and by mid-afternoon manage to procure the elusive passes. At last we are set to attend our first concert at Teatro Amadeo Roldan. Or so its seems. The starting time is advertised as 5:30pm, and as we are running a little behind schedule we jump into one of the taxis that constantly pull up to the entrance of the hotel. After being driven around for about 15 minutes, up and down unknown streets, the driver purportedly receives a call over his radio informing him that he has to return to the hotel as our papers appear not to be in order. We are now late for the concert. Suspecting that the cab driver, in co-operation with the hotel door attendant, is into some tourist scam we exit his vehicle without paying, walk down to the main street and procure a cocotaxi, a small three-wheeled, two-stroke powered scooter that has the look of a large scooped out orange.

For the rest of our stay we will use these taxis on a regular basis, as the near to the ground experience, the up-close intimate view of kerbside culture adds to the thrill of being in this magnificent, albeit somewhat dilapidated, city. The driver is a chatty fellow, who informs us that the Opus Bar, one of the most popular bars in the city, is on the top floor of our destination. A disgruntled crowd is gathered outside of the theatre and we soon discover that the concert has been cancelled due to a power grid failure. Strike two. Never mind, we aren’t in a hurry, the temperature is a balmy 28°C, and the next concert, beginning at 8:30pm is just a few blocks away at Teatro Mella. Time to sample one of the legendary pizzas in the restaurant of the luxurious modern Hotel Meliá Cohiba.

What a grand old theatre Teatro Mella turns out to be, much like the remembered theatres of my youth, its Gaudí-esque interior complete with a meringue-shaped wrapped around balcony, the 1500 comfortable seats all but full of expectant fans. Unfortunately, although enamoured by its suitably seedy character, the smell of decay and the stench of the toilets wafting through the lobby soon become apparent. Plus we appear to have been followed on our journey by yet another deaf soundman whose intention, it appears, is to erase the subtle complexity inherent in this naturally rhythmic music. The names of the artists are unfamiliar as I have little or no knowledge of Cuban musicians, but judging by the opening band of Orlando Sánchez we are in for a treat, his brawny tenor saxophone overpowering the inadequate sound system, introducing us to the excitement that is generated by Cuban music, extending into daring forays often missing from the current batch of “schooled” retro-jazz players. The second treat was provided by bassist Jorge Reyes whose prodigious technique has been utilised by Arturo Sandoval, the Afro Cuban All Stars, Irakere, Roy Hargrove & David Murray. The third combination features a boring female singer. Time to head outside for a self-imposed intermission. The transport (guaranteed as part of our package) to return us to our hotel is waiting, engine running, even though it is only 10:30pm and the show is but half-way through. The driver is unwilling to wait. Oh well — it’s been a long day so let’s go “home” and once more lounge in the hotel garden with another mojito.

Saturday: We have awakened too late to attend the celebrations at the Plaza de la Revolution that have begun at an early hour to avoid the heat of the mid-day sun, and anyway the ailing Fidel has been replaced by his brother Raúl. So after a sumptuous breakfast we set off on foot to investigate the city. Beginning our journey with a casual stroll along the Malecón, a sea wall stretching the entire length of the city’s north side, protecting the coast from the occasional fury of the Straits of Florida, we head in the general direction of La Habana Vieja (Old Havana) which in 1982 was declared a UNESCO World Heritage site, and could be thought of as a 500 year old history lesson into Cuba’s glorious past, with its buildings and passageways, hotels and cafes, renovated to their former splendour, an illusion for the tourist trade. Just a step to the left into the surrounding dilapidated streets reveals the decay and squalor of the crumbling collapse of this once magnificent city, the disintegrating rutted and pocked streets, the facades and balconies of once grand dwellings, the homes of the hoi polloi, sadly in need of repair. It must be said though that these friendly people have a joyful air about them, healthy and happy, their smiles shining bright, clothing clean, neat and tidy, and unlike most Canadian cities, there is not a panhandler or bum in sight. Music is just about everywhere, not only in bars and cafes but in the street where groups of young people gather to sing, dance and accompany themselves with complex hand-clapped rhythm patterns. It is slowly beginning to become apparent that it is not necessary to search out the music at the jazz festival, that it is not a precious isolated commodity but the indigenous voice of the people.

There is still the curiosity of the pre-revolution American cars that abound, some in barely usable condition commandeered by locals as people’s taxis, and others called Gran Cars which are renovated and beautifully maintained for the pleasure of tourists. The city abounds in the noise and smell of automobiles, the left-over Ladas of the abandoned Russian occupation readily apparent, rattly old vehicles of every description, their honking horns the most apparent sound next to the plentiful music. 24 hours a day they sound, timed on an average of nine-second intervals, warning the lackadaisical wandering pedestrians walking about unconcerned, or when creeping from the side streets sidling into the constant stream of traffic; any excuse to participate in this cacophonous symphony.

The La Mina restaurant (which boasts more — although unseen — wandering peacocks) is situated on the edge of the charming park of Plaza de Armas, and has been recommended by a previous visitor. After we enjoy a delicious tuna salad and are entertained by yet one more superb band with the unlikely line-up of violin, flute accompanied by the customary Latin rhythm section, we return once again to the Teatro Amadeo Roldan for that evening’s concert.

This venue, the home of the National Symphony, is of a much higher quality than Teatro Mella, the decor modern and the sound system no longer an intrusion. First up is the spectacular Costa Rican quartet of pianist Luis Monge featuring the technical wizardry of clarinetist Vinicio Meza, repeatedly bringing the enthusiastic audience to their feet. “Swing en 4”, as the group was called, utilised a mixture of classical, folkloric and jazz forms to great effect, and could be conveniently described as a most energetic Latin chamber music ensemble. A palpable tremor of excitement was apparent as the brilliant pianist Hilario Durán was introduced, and although he has been a Canadian resident for the past decade, performing and recording with our very own Jane Bunnett, who in many ways is responsible for our awareness of Cuban music, his return to his homeland is obviously a special event. His importance, alongside Chucho Valdés and Gonzálo Rubalcaba, as one of Cuba’s most spectacular musicians, became immediately apparent as his trio launched into the first evidence of bebop with a composition by one of his old bosses — Dizzy Gillespie — with the appropriately titled jazz standard Hot House. Attired in a radiant white suit he led the energetic trio through a series of delightful compositions, the bassist and drummer joined at the hip, their collective ideology and joyful exuberance perhaps inspired by the socialist doctrine from which they evolved, contradicting the conditions observed in our walk-about earlier that day. Three strikes and you’re out would be a fair description of the Swiss band that followed, akin to suddenly falling down an open manhole, dull and predictable after the vibrant vivaciousness that had preceded them. Time to join the exiting audience for a beer in the roof-top Opus Bar.

Sunday: A change of pace is needed, time to participate in an action that takes us among the Cuban people, away from the tourist rigmarole, and what better way than to attend the opening game of the baseball season. Our five-star concierge is not a baseball fan, perhaps the only person in Cuba not interested in their national sport: “Ask a bellhop” she suggests. It’s like a code-word — baseball, even though we are unable to speak more than a few words in Spanish just uttering this word will open the door to all the information we need, the multi-lingual bellhop immediately informing us of the starting time and directing us to the Estadio Latinoamericano the 55,000 seat stadium known locally as El Latino. It a simple enough 45 minute walk south down Calzada de Infanta (Avenue of the Children), introducing us as we go to a number of neighbourhoods, skirting the University area, passing a bakery, a library, numerous local shops and cafes, and soon the huge stadium becomes apparent as we join the crowds streaming toward it. There are thousands of expectant fans, forty thousand in all, queuing up at the main entrance and before we can join them we are approached by an elderly gentlemen who accompanies us to one of the numerous policemen in evidence. After a short conversation — ah if we only understood Spanish — he then takes us to a tiny ticket wicket, almost invisible in the gigantic wall of the stadium, where foreigners can acquire a ticket for the measly price of 3 CUC’s (suitably pronounced coup). We are then directed to another less crowded entrance where another elderly gentleman takes over and leads us to our seats in the enclosure directly behind home plate. There are more foreign visitors among the chosen few, one sporting a tee-shirt with the logo of the Burnaby Fire Department. As with all opening games there is a grand show, young people bearing flags of the different provinces stretching from one base to the next, and then a mighty roar welcomes the two teams, the Havana Industriales attired in their blue shirts and Santiago de Cuba in red. The home team of “Los Azules” have a reputation similar to that of the New York Yankees in that they have fans from all over the country, and every one of their actions is greeted by raucous cheering and the sounding of horns. Such a grand spectacle with patriotic songs, revolutionary speeches, a minute’s silence for an unknown hero (if only we could understand Spanish), two dance troupes and the teams’ warm-up exercises accompanied by boisterous Latin music booming out from the stadium’s speaker system. Halfway through the fourth inning a flu bug caught from one of my grandchildren back in Toronto begins to overpower my energy, forcing us to leave, but all is not lost as we speed back to the hotel in one of the ever available taxis and watch the rest of the game on television. The Havana Industriales lost 6-2.

That evening’s concert is the closing event of the jazz festival (Gala de Clausura del Festival) once again at Teatro Amadeo Roldan, but as I am unwell Essjay sets off, with unwarranted optimism, on her own as transport to the event is guaranteed. She waits for an hour in the hotel lobby but the bus once again does not show.

In spite of all the chaos I cannot remember ever being at a “jazz” festival which generated so much genuine excitement, and for the second half of our stay we simply wandered about the city, visited art galleries, museums and parks, relaxed with a cool drink on one of the numerous patios of the grander hotels, and enjoyed the local music that was in abundance throughout Havana.

DEREK BAILEY (1930 - 2005)

2006-03-08T09:52:00.000-08:00

Christmas Day again. The e-mail from Martin Davidson simply read - "Derek Bailey died aged 75 in London in the early hours of December 25. He had motor neurone disease". I had been thinking of him, knowing that he was ill, but still the finality of this sad news came as a shock. He had for some time suffered from Carpal Tunnel Syndrome, crippling his hands to such a degree that he was forced to develop a whole new system of playing, utilizing his thumb to strike the strings. With his usual dry wit he titled his last recording "Carpal Tunnel".

My companion had cautioned me on occasion of the tendency to over familiarize, to use the description friend in much too casual a manner, and so I would be more inclined to describe my close-on 40 year association with Derek Bailey as a comrade in improvised music. In many ways I barely knew him: a luncheon once on a visit to London at a vegetarian restaurant on Greater Newport Street, which had, long ago in my youth, been the premises of Studio 51, the first jazz club I ever visited; the occasional letter, one suggesting that we both lived on islands, he in Hackney and me on Hornby; several meetings at various musical events, a rare e-mail, but little actual personal connection between us. Ultimately it was the music that had drawn us together.

As with all original artists his music required serious investigation, an attentiveness to the new details he was proposing, especially as the concept he was putting forward was relatively unknown territory. A concept that he would describe as non-idiomatic music. Improvisation, when considered in the environment of an evolving music has, in certain situations, not remained as a part of a process, such as in the traditional concept of jazz music, but has become the music in total. The reference point of playing tunes, which must be considered an art in its own way, has been shed, and in doing so has immediately made, for the listener, a more difficult task. The composition was always a recognizable familiarity that could readily attract the more simplistic portions of our mind. But it has always been improvisation that was the predominant strength of jazz music. Its musical structure has other rigid systems, or recognizable identities such as chords, time signatures, and the legendary idea of swing. In the process of Derek Bailey, all these elements were not separated, not ignored, but rather brought together in a most personal way and utilized, in the way history can be, into a unique and original art.

There has always been a system of judgement placed upon art that has introduced innovation to a previously occupied position, often hindering the acceptance of a new genius. Intimating that it is not yet a completed form, that there are not enough discernible historical directives on which to base an opinion, and suggesting that it can be a process that is simply self-indulgent. As it is completely based in new technical areas, far removed from previous improvised standards, there is no clear pathway to critical analysis. I found after continuous listenings, that Derek Bailey became a most unique phenomenon in that what he presented was very open and sensitive, a sharing of a personal idea that was never quite the same. Surely something that all intelligent people strive for. Because he presented each event as a situation that was not predetermined, the experience of listening became more focused on the idea of the system of structure he employed. There was the possibility of hearing his logical attitudes to improvisation as an infinitely detailed ongoing process, so successive recitals had the feeling of having occurred in a logical sequence. This indicated that there was indeed a quite clear structure, it just belonged to a new, more personal system of performance, a performance that because of its lack of connection with the past, required, on the part of the player, a most positive attitude, a necessity to be totally confident in the realization that what he had discovered was truly unique. In some ways, it is not possible to judge Derek Bailey’s music as it is totally improvised, so perhaps there is no good or bad performance, just different situations, and all you really have to do is be open to enjoy whatever you can take from it.

Although his early history includes dance bands, studio work, and theatre work with the likes of Gracie Fields and the comedy team of Morecambe & Wise, his reputation is as an improviser performing and promoting the concept of non-idiomatic music. From his earliest recording in 1965 with Tony Oxley and Gavin Bryars with the group they called Joseph Holbrooke (a 10-1/2 minute rendition of John Coltrane's composition "Miles Mode" on an Incus single) until the 2002 release of "Ballads" on the Tzadik label, he rarely if ever played tunes.

By 1966 he was visiting the Little Theatre Club at 23 Garrick Street in London's West End theatre district, a venue which was organized by drummer John Stevens. There he was able to develop his unique ideas with the likes of Trevor Watts, Paul Rutherford, Evan Parker, Dave Holland, Kenny Wheeler, Barry Guy etc., many of whom played in various combinations over the ensuing years as the Spontaneous Music Ensemble, the Tony Oxley Quintet & Sextet, the Music Improvisation Company and Iskra. In 1970 Derek Bailey, Tony Oxley and Evan Parker would form Incus Records, the first independent musician-owned record company in Britain. A 1974 series of radio interviews with musicians from various idioms, resulted in the publication, in 1980, of his influential book "Improvisation - its nature and practice in music". From 1976 until 1994 he organized his Company projects in London and various outreach locations — including Vancouver — where he invited a stylistically wide-ranging group of players to improvise together. A list too long to note, but including players that would normally be considered outside of the world of improvisation.

His devotion to pure improvised music led him down many and varied paths including interaction with American legends as conventional as Lee Konitz, as inventive as Steve Lacy and as avant garde as Cecil Taylor; the historic tap dancer Will Gaines, with whom he made a video, fusion jazzer Pat Metheny, noise rockers and anything else that tickled his fancy. There will never be another like him.

Recommended Recordings:
Spontaneous Music Ensemble (1968) – Karyobin – Chronoscope CPE2001-2
Tony Oxley Quintet (1969) – The Baptised Traveller – Columbia 494438
Anthony Braxton & Derek Bailey (1974) – First Duo Concert – Emanem 4006
Derek Bailey solo (2002) – Ballads – Tzadik TZ-7607

Anthony Braxton & Leo Records

2006-02-16T13:26:00.000-08:00

A Continuum

Anthony Braxton and Leo Feigin share a certain persistent determination to document creative music. Leo, as a producer releasing numerous important recordings, beginning in 1979, and Anthony documenting his own music any way he could, starting with “Three Compositions of New Jazz” on the Chicago based label Delmark in 1968. Much has happened for both of them in the ensuing years including a partnership that has continued for the past 18 years starting with the release of the 3 record set – “Anthony Braxton Quartet (London) 1985”. Since that time Leo has released no less than 30 CDs of Braxton’s music. When asked why he was so interested in Anthony Braxton's music he replied:

“I am convinced that Braxton is, first and foremost, a visionary, and only then a musician. When you deal with a visionary everything must be recorded. We, simple/ordinary folks, may not understand what he is doing, and the meaning of some of his works will become clear in about 30 or 50 years from now. So when I get the material for a release from Braxton I don't question the artistic merits of the work and I don't have to like it. I am convinced that his every work is important. That's why I see my task in presenting the material in the best possible way, to find the best writers to write liner notes, etc.”

“I am enjoying wonderful working and business relationship with Braxton. He is a person of great generosity and tremendous magnanimity, and I think we have a very good rapport. It's easy to work with him. We have many things to discuss and he always listens, and a horrifying thing for me is that he probably trusts me, for very often he gives me a free hand with his material.”

Leo Feigin was born in St. Petersburg, Russia and found his way to England via Israel in 1974, where he worked with the Russian service of the BBC — broadcasting, producing programs, and presenting a weekly jazz show. In 1979, a friend sent him a concert tape with music of the Ganelin Trio, which was smuggled out of Russia by a friendly tourist. And so the idea of creating the Leo label was conceived. As no one had heard of Russian new music Leo decided to start off with two other more "viable" recordings, the first by Chicago pianist Amina Claudine Myers and then saxophonist Keshavan Maslak. The third release was the concert tape from East Berlin, and so the Leo legend began, joining forces with other like minded labels such as Emanem, Ogun, FMP and Intakt.

My relationship with Braxton began in 1973, an important year for the jazz intelligentsia of Toronto. A small group of us, loosely associated with Coda Magazine, had become aware of the activities, through recordings being produced by the likes of Chuck Nessa, that were taking place in Chicago, activities that included saxophonists Roscoe Mitchell and Anthony Braxton. Both of them were performing solo saxophone in concert, an art form although not unknown in the jazz world — Coleman Hawkins, Sonny Rollins and Eric Dolphy had already recorded solo pieces — had not been presented as a complete concept. We had found a perfect venue, the 130 seat hall at the St. Clair Music Library, where we decided to present a series of solo concerts. The three artists were Anthony Braxton, Roscoe Mitchell and Dollar Brand (Abdullah Ibrahim). And so began an important personal epoch that would lead me along paths of investigation as yet not imagined. Initially there was no idea that we were involved in the direction that jazz would take, unaware of the importance of our actions, mostly it was a selfish desire to hear this new developing music live.

The primary reason that had induced Braxton to agree to play in this series, was that he was desperately poor and attempting to raise enough money for a return air ticket to Paris where apparently he and his fellow pioneers were more welcome. The concert in Toronto took place on June 16th. Fortuitously he was able to spend a week as my house guest, which allowed me time to interview him. The first major interview that I had ever done with an artist of such importance. The following year, on October 7th, in co-operation with York University we presented him with Richard Teitelbaum, Leo Smith, Roscoe Mitchell, Kenny Wheeler, Dave Holland and Jerome Cooper. From this visit came the Sackville recording “Trio & Duet”. The trio with Teitelbaum and Smith, and the duets of standards with Holland are currently available as Sackville SKCD2-3007. He visited Toronto numerous times over the ensuing years, with a variety of configurations.

The three recordings under consideration partially illustrate the scope of Braxton’s imagination, and eradicate any notions one might have that jazz music has stagnated into college-boy exercises. This of course will come as no surprise as it has always been obvious to modern jazz enthusiasts that his music was a natural extension of previous forms, his level of intelligence and perception unencumbered by populist rhetoric. One of his favourite words, continuum, fits this assertion perfectly.

It is no secret that he has been a massive influence on my life, both intellectually and musically, and that I have championed his music in Coda Magazine for much of the past three decades; but with this said I should point out that I have not always been enamoured by everything he has produced, his range of concepts often being outside my listening capacity. My preference, as I am still at heart a jazz fan, has been for his more “jazz inclined” — if that be the description — projects.

The 4 CD live set of “20 Standards (Quartet) 2003” (Leo CD LR 431/434) is the second project with this marvellous quartet of guitarist Kevin O’Neil, bassist Andy Eulau and percussionist Kevin Norton; its predecessor being “23 Standards (Quartet) 2003 (Leo CD LR 402/405). The chosen material is a jazz fan’s delight, with almost half of the compositions coming from popular show tunes penned by Jerome Kern & Oscar Hammerstein, Vernon Duke, Cole Porter, Irving Berlin and the like, and the remainder by jazz legends as diverse as Gerry Mulligan, Charlie Parker, Bill Evans, Dave Brubeck, Miles Davis, Paul Desmond and Eddie Harris.

I can’t help but allow history to influence my thoughts, that the quartets of Lee Konitz with Billy Bauer rise up as spectres, as half-century old sentiments; or the Bird-like flights of fancy that emerge when Braxton’s alto saxophone soars above O’Neil’s fleet spikey guitar, this young man’s technique laced with jazz slurs and inflections; or in the more gentle moments Jimmy Guiffre coming to mind, because it is clearly from this past that their music comes. However I should clarify that this is not a copyist homage, but rather a Braxtonian perspective taking from this past information and reassembling it in a most personal and original way. A continuum so to speak.

In recent years I have lost interest in much of what passes as jazz, in the pathetically lethargic recreations of the youthful imitators who have done little to expand the ongoing construct of its form, so it is wonderful to once again reclaim the energetic originality that was the beacon of American jazz music in this set of four exceptional CDs.

“Quintet (London) 2004” (Leo CD LR 449), presents one Braxton original - “Composition 343”, in two parts, with yet another group of “unknown” young players: Taylor Ho Bynum (trumpet), Mary Halvorson (guitar), Chris Dahlgren (bass) and Satoshi Takeishi (percussion). Once again it is recorded live, this time by the BBC (British Broadcasting Corporation) at the Royal Festival Hall.

As I’ve already said, I cannot help but refer to the past, and in this instance it is Braxton’s system of composition. From his very earliest recordings, from the late sixties on the Delmark label, it is apparent that he had already devised a compositional system to be developed and catalogued, and this recording in any number of ways harkens back to that system. Once again clarifying the idea of a continuum. Not only does the structure of “Composition 343” remind one of his earlier work, but the principles of improvisation employed by the players suggest that the tutoring of this new assemblage is also based in a developed procedure. Here we get an illustration of his uniqueness, his amazing ability to invent strength in any process he chooses, making each into a distinct project. As with the preceding CD that strength lies in the organization of the complete whole, the landscape being a movable terrain contained within the composition itself, and the ability of the participants to identify the signals that often only subtly insinuate themselves. The composition has the readily identifiable, somewhat peculiar sense of rhythm that makes Braxton’s music so personal, the sonic drama of a story unfolding with the characters in place, conversing with overlapping dialogue, making his intentions, after all these years, crystal clear. The improvisations, mostly collective, float out of the charts each time into a different territory, shape shifting, varying from gently abstracted sound poems to ferocious alto attacks, the energy changing pace but never flagging. Halfway through “Part 1” himself segues momentarily into a melodic, almost balladic song. With this group trumpeter Taylor Ho Bynum seems to occupy a prominent role, his muted horn talking, Bubbering as in a jungle band, with Lester Bowie and Leo Smith apparent heroes. Braxton also appears, once again, to have a penchant for brittle guitar textures.

At 49 minutes & 17 seconds “Part 1” ends abruptly with a reading of the composition and Braxton rapidly introduces the band members. Thunderous applause from what sounds like a very large audience. And then there is what appears to be a freely improvised encore. A bonus. More thunderous applause. What a difference a year makes.

The final recording in this dissertation, “TrioTone” (Leo CD LR 416) is once again a live performance from 2003, and is a co-operative trio project with Hungarian pianist György Szabados and Russian percussionist Vladimir Tarasov of Ganelin Trio fame. The latter was featured on Leo’s first Russian release. The three share a political stance when its definition is thought of as the support of particular ideas, principles or commitments. For Braxton the journey was a difficult one as the general attitude toward his music by the jazz press was negative, and it was apparent, even 30 years ago, that many detractors would come to him in his life. As for György Szabados and Vladimir Tarasov their music was developed in a world fraught with government control and political chaos.

In the two previous CD sets Braxton is surrounded by moldable youth, but here we have him working with his peers in a trio of international unity. All three of them of an age group that is hovering on each side of sixty. All three of them with substantial experience in a variety of music forms. Both of the Europeans are actively involved in composed music; Szabados who is an admirer of Bartok and his reinterpretation of Hungarian folk traditions has created the Royal Hungarian Court Orchestra as a format for that country’s evolving musicians. Tarasov is a regular soloist with the Vilniuis State Philharmonic, and in addition to composing music for film, theatre and orchestras, is a visual artist.

The first two of the five pieces are composed by Szabados, with the latter three being short collective explorations. “Trioton”, at 32’ 28”, begins with a delicate bell tone centering and gradually generates a rhythmic motion benefiting from the subtle contributions of Braxton and Tarasov, with the clear and relatively straightforward composed sections forming what could be described as a suite. The second half accelerates the content into an intense brawny power. “Black Toots” comes off as a sprightly, boppy, somewhat old fashioned sounding jazz tune complete with a dazzling sopranino solo and a very jazzy piano section. The first of the three improvised pieces has Braxton setting the stage with a gruff growling alto that his companions poke and probe at until they find their way into an abstracted reality; the second has the piano conjuring up a spatial melodic mood with Braxton at his most gracious, and finally the trio boogie-ing together with vague quotations from an imaginary standard into the final emphatic chord. Throughout this recording the trio bring to the music a level of listening, response and interaction that generates a rarely experienced intelligence.

I have chosen the above recordings to illustrate Anthony Braxton’s genius partly because they are all “live” events, giving the listener the possibility to experience what it may have been like to have attended these events. Nowadays with recording techniques at such a sophisticated level, the quality of sound is equivalent to that of a studio, and the musicians have the opportunity to capture their music in a more natural context, without the confines of a studio or the opinions of a producer hampering the result.

These three examples of Braxton are but a small selection from the 30 CDs that Leo Feigin has produced, and a complete catalogue can be discovered at www.leorecords.com

DAVE HOLLAND - Interviews - 1973 & 1989

2006-01-05T12:58:00.000-08:00

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.

20th Vancouver International Jazz Festival

2005-09-14T19:35:00.000-07:00

June 24th - July 3rd, 2005
Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada

The promotional claptrap of the public relations world is always off-putting, so to read that there are 1800 musicians participating in 400 performances at 40 venues for an audience of 507,000 people is certainly not the reason to attend this festival. Fortunately there is more to be heard than described by this simple-minded propaganda. Although the big name acts are local superstar Diana Krall and Cesaria Evora, the usual headliners with Dave Holland, Bill Frisell and Terrence Blanchard among them, and ten nights of get-down boogie music at the Commodore Ballroom — which interestingly enough had a night of David Murray with the Gwo-Ka Masters whose energy even the deaf sound engineer could not ruin — there is, among all this mostly routine fare, music of interest.

A series of three concerts featuring the clarinet began with another of Ken Vandermark's tribute projects. This time Free Fall — which claims in the program to reflect Jimmy Guiffre's music, a detail that eluded me — had Ken playing only clarinets. Expecting some relationship to the marvelous original Free Fall trio, there was a disappointment that this trio had none of the delicate beauty of its namesake. There were some terrific pieces, in particular "Still Life" dedicated to painter Willem de Koonig and "Past Soon" for pianist Bill Evans, both of which were rather simple melodic compositions that enabled the bell like spacial clarity of the trio to prevail. The third group of the evening (leaving the premier event for last) was the chamber music trio Queen Mab, which featured the bass clarinet of Lori Freeman with her companions, fellow Canadian Marilyn Lerner (piano) and Dutch violist Ig Hennemann, who performed at The Ironworks, a superb new club venue, situated in a slightly dangerous warehouse neighbourhood. This trio, with improvisation among its formalities, just sparkled, integrating the two concepts into a pliant mature exciting assemblage.

Lori Freedman had had a busy night as previously she, alongside Evan Parker, had been the reed section in François Houle's commissioned composition "Twenty", which was dedicated to Steve Lacy. Sitting in the balcony we were treated to the added delight of the visual display of the somewhat unorthodox orchestration which included musicians from many disciplines, and a perfect view of the very energetic conductor, Giorgio Magnanesi, whose mad professor hair-do and bright red stove-pipe trousers added to the hilarious musical riot that occurred. The music was loosely composed, seemingly in various combinations of improvising blocks, each grouping as directed, repeatedly producing brilliant music. A nice middle-class perfumed lady sat directly in front of me tried unsuccessfully to persuade her friends to leave. She had tried stuffing her fingers in her ears, then ear plugs and even a walkman, but nothing could shut out the joyful noise emitting from the stage. Eventually she alone left the building.

Over the ensuing ten days there were numerous stimulating events, but the difficulty of too much music obliterating previous details is a problem, so the choices have to be narrowed into selective listening. There are the free concerts that bracket the festival, outdoor events for the general public which for the most part are to be avoided. The one exception was the Dutch Orchestra Bik Bent Braam which could be imagined as loony tunes Count Basie, bonsaiing 26 small pieces, 2 for each member, to cue, in a personal manner, as they wish.

A series at Western Front, an old wooden building with superb acoustics, seem rewarding, featuring as they do informal improvising groupings. George Lewis with his partner Miya Masaoka, cellist Peggy Lee and flautist Michelle Mitchell, and the quartet of pianist Paul Plimley, Mark Helias, Gerry Hemmingway and Dutch violist Oen van Geel, both held much promise and had frequent moments of excellence, especially as individuals, although occasionally missing satisfying endings. The finest in this series of concerts however was a bass duet. The Marks Brothers. The two Marks — Helias and Dresser — having a long friendship, produced an intimate synchronicity, organized conversations joined at the "very" hip, their rhythmic and melodic structures projecting the joyfulness of their fellowship. Time for a new CD of these mates.

This festival is well known for its abundant Canadian content, especially from the superb local scene. Long time companions "singer" Kate Hammett Vaughan and guitarist Ron Samworth disguised as Cheap and T'audrey were introduced - "without further delay", causing Ron to comment — "shit, delays are half my stuff". They were definitely not Tuck and Patty. Following guitarist Tony Wilson about one day led me to a lunch-time concert with Saul Berson's mixed music quintet, an afternoon concert in duet with Dutch bassist Wilbert de Joode and another fine evening at The Ironworks with Dutch cornetist Eric Boeren's guitar band which also included Samworth. This club became a popular late night venue with an interesting array of local bands of all disciplines, among them a fine quartet under the leadership of NOW saxophonist Coat Cooke.

The second half of the festival introduced the British visitors, and one of the main reasons for us being in attendance was the wonderful Dedication Orchestra, with its program of material associated with the Brotherhood of Breath, from which a number of other projects were garnered. An evening of Evan Parker utilizing some of them, with local talent incorporated, in a series of trios and quartets; the UK Sextet led by Louis Moholo — a miniature Brotherhood, and finally the 23 piece orchestra in all its glory. This was an evening filled with fantastic memories of those wonderful Brotherhood tunes written by Dudu Pukwana, Chris McGregor, Mongezi Feza and Johnny Dyani: "MRA", "B My Dear", "Andromeda", "Blues for Nick", "Traveling Somewhere"… the cream of the British avant garde swinging like the clappers, catching the spirit of anthems from the homeland, with Louis, the only survivor, spurring them on. After this evening of potent ecstasy there was no room left in our hearts for more music, regretfully causing us to miss the opportunity of hearing the Roscoe Mitchell Quintet.

There were also a number of Outreach Programs featuring daily workshops with Dave Holland, Wolter Wierbos and Michiel Braam among the musicians, Bill Shoemaker conducting a blindfold test with Louis Moholo, a talk by Hazel Miller and a jazz journalists panel. A 10 day series of workshops at the Vancouver Creative Music Institute, which included in its faculty Evan Parker, Mark Dresser, Mwata Bowden, George Lewis and Miya Masaoka, introduced to 30 participants the possibilities of what can be achieved in improvised music under the tutelage of master musicians.

So There you have it the 20th anniversary of the Vancouver festival suitable for jazz casuals and aficionados alike.

An edited version of the above appeared in Signal to Noise - issue 39.