Fred Stride

Jared Burrows talks about band leader, composer, and educator Fred Stride.

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Contemporary Jazz Album Of The Year
Changing Seasons, Phil Dwyer Orchestra feat. Mark Fewer (Alma/Universal)
See Changing Seasons – Phil Dwyer In Conversation with Nou Dadoun

Traditional Jazz Album Of The Year
Verge, David Braid (Independent)

Vocal Jazz Album Of The Year
Le carré de nos amours, Sonia Johnson (Effendi/Sélect)

Instrumental Album Of The Year
Stretch Orchestra, Stretch Orchestra (Independent)

More info: Jazzblog

This week Karin Plato, well-known Vancouver jazz performer and educator, was moved to share some thoughts on Musical Openness for both Jazz and Classical Musics on her blog (available at http://karinplato.wordpress.com).  Here are her comments reproduced with permission:

There is something that I have been thinking about on the “surface” level for the past several days since hearing an interview with a beloved CBC radio host who is retiring after many years of being on air. This is a host for whom I have much appreciation. I have listened to, met in person and enjoyed speaking with her. Something was said in a final interview that has stayed with me for some reason. This is not a direct quote since I cannot recall the specific words but something to this effect was said:“classical music does nothing for me”. Yes, I know and agree that everyone has a right to have their own opinion about the music that they love. I also know that in my case I am lucky that the music I love today “came” to me after a somewhat slow start i.e. I did not like it when I first was exposed to it.

“Jazz” to me was a cacophony when I first heard it being played instrumentally in a live setting and on recordings as well. I couldn’t make sense of it and I certainly could not understand how my friends (classical musicians) were so enamoured with it. It was classical music that I loved and studied and it was the rock and pop music of my generation played on the radio that I was drawn to. Somehow over the years I did come to truly appreciate jazz in most of its incarnations and I continue to love and listen to classical music, folk music some pop and rock music and some world music. I am lucky to have had teachers and friends who kept suggesting various recordings and artists to listen to and to learn from. I’m glad I listened and that I decided to “work” on my listening and listening tastes.

I try to remember to keep an open mind and not to judge what I am hearing too quickly. The concern I have is that I am aware that both jazz and classical music seem to be failing at attracting larger audiences. I see this when I am attending some jazz concerts and classical concerts and of course I am aware that jazz clubs and venues come and go over the years with the poor club owners struggling to keep their business afloat. I observe diminishing audiences for classical concerts with fewer younger people attending.

Now, I see a new responsibility for myself as a musician and as a music teacher. I must assume that many people in the general population may feel as the radio host does, only loving or appreciating one form of music. I believe it is important to broaden ones horizons in the music that we listen to on recordings and at concerts. I believe that it is important at a cultural and community level to at least explore and experience some music and art that is not necessarily familiar or immediately appreciated by us as music lovers. That is not to say that all art or all music is good and deserving of an audience.  Certainly within each most genres the crème de la crème will rise? Is it naïve for me to think so? I hope not.

I hope that if I attend a jazz festival and listen to artists I have discovered on the radio and on recordings I have purchased that I will also then make an attempt to see new artists that I have not yet discovered; perhaps selecting a direction in the music that I am not immediately drawn to. The example would be deciding to attend an adventuresome jazz ensemble not playing traditional jazz, i.e. exploratory improvising jazz or “free form” jazz. It is my opinion that without expanding ones horizons in the area of music we purchase or go to see/hear, we cease to grow as listeners and might become stuck in believing that only John Coltrane is valid or Miles Davis or Brad Mehldau etc. and that classical music has “nothing to offer”.

As a music teacher I believe I must keep offering my students various forms of music to study and encourage them to give certain pieces some time before deciding whether or not they like it. Some may wonder why people keep playing and listening to the “old dead guys music” (classical music) but there is a reason that we do continue to study the music and perform it and work at the skills required to do so. The melodies, rhythms, excitement, emotional range, complex orchestrations, challenges in technical ability, dynamics and surprise elements are some of the reasons.

In jazz of course we have the world of improvisation, the re-invention in the moment that exists in playing in ensembles or even as a soloist. I believe great jazz musicians share some of the very same skills that classical musicians work at achieving. The “cacophony” I thought I heard in my early days of hearing jazz when I thought none of the musicians were listening to each other was in fact careful listening from each of the musicians. Perhaps I was overwhelmed with what I heard at the time and I had to learn to truly hear it and understand. Perhaps some classical music requires the same care and “practice” so that the music can make sense to the listener? I am not sure about this. I just think that both classical and jazz music are too important to be ignored or judged with a swift decision.

It is all music! It requires facility, commitment, artistry, interpretation, listening ability and endless practice to perfect one’s technical and artistic sensibility. Unfortunately one other thing that jazz musicians and classical musicians share is the fact neither is the “popular” form of music now-a- days.

I encourage people new to either genre to try a taste of jazz AND classical music. Try a few tastes in fact because, sometimes music could be an acquired taste. You might fall in love with a flavor you didn’t initially like at all…

Although Karin was reluctant to name the jazz radio host who prompted her to offer her thoughts, there can be little doubt (to any one familiar with retiring jazz radio hosts in Canada) that she’s referring to Katie Malloch, specifically to comments made in an interview with Michael Enright on the Sunday Edition available for listening here (she supplied the music for the interview which, as usual, is excellent).  I was also slightly taken aback at Malloch’s comment when I heard the interview but did wonder if it was made as a provocation to people who “don’t like jazz” rather than being a strongly held opinion.

Historically of course there have been many links between jazz and classical music: Woody Herman commissioned The Ebony Concerto by Stravinsky and Prelude, Fugue and Riffs by Leonard Bernstein (revived in a spectacular performance by The Hard Rubber Orchestra last year), Charlie Parker named his Yardbird Suite in homage to The Firebird Suite and George Russell responded with his composition A Bird in Igor’s Yard.  Eddie Lang and Charles Mingus both doing a Rachmaninoff Prelude. Through the Birth of the Cool and a wealth of Third Stream experiments, the cross-fertilization continued.

More recently, I’ve noticed a number of jazz performers who have taken inspiration from classical music, here’s a brief smattering.

The Bad Plus have performed their interpretation of Stravinsky‘s  The Rite of Spring at selected recent performances (unfortunately not at their Vancouver performance at the Rio last week):

Susanna Wallumrød (in Vancouver at the 2010 Jazz Festival as Susanna and the Magical Orchestra) has recently turned to interpretations of Henry Purcell (her most recent recording on ECM If Grief Could Wait has several), here’s an earlier favourite:

Phil Dwyer‘s recent Juno-nominated recording Changing Seasons is loosely patterned on Vivaldi.  On bassist Dave Young‘s most recent (also Juno-nominated) CD Aspects of Oscar,  he’s included some Bach interpretations (by way of Oscar Peterson).

Besides his many New York-based groups (including a long-standing duo with Lee Konitz), pianist Dan Tepfer has recently released an acclaimed take on Bach via his Goldberg Variations Variations in which each of the original variations (played straight) is followed by an improvised variation on the variation.  Here’s a taste:

And finally bassist and former Vancouver-ite Michael Bates has offered up his excellent recent Sunnyside release Acrobat: Music For, And By, Dimitri Shostakovich -

Not to mention Jacob Fred Jazz Odyssey doing Beethoven (their project entitled Ludwig), Chick Corea doing Mozart, Gerald Wilson paying homage to Claude Debussy, the list is seemingly endless.

Discuss in the Jazz Forum. (Katie Malloch, are you out there?)

The stated plan is to digitalize some recordings, but the timeline for disposal in one fashion or another does not allow anywhere near an adequate appraisal of the provenance or cultural worth of each artifact. Many of these recordings were rare to begin with and are impossible to acquire in any format today. Thousands were donated by erudite collectors and hosts. Album covers and liner notes will disappear.

(For more information, see: http://bit.ly/AFlvUi  and  http://bit.ly/AoAiRf.)

The quality of future radio and television broadcasts will be impoverished by this loss of both informational and music resources. Moreover, digitalized music does not accurately represent nor compare in quality to that etched in vinyl, which is why many musicians have resumed putting out vinyl releases.

The CBC, as our national broadcaster and historical purveyor of radio since its advent in this country, has an obligation to act as the protective custodian of these physical recordings.

Please sign a petition calling on the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation to stop its dismantling of this historic and invaluable collection and to resume its role as curator of this cultural heritage, for future generations.

http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/save-cbc-music-archives/

For further info see the VIFF website

Since its release last month, accolades for the Phil Dwyer Orchestra‘s release Changing Seasons have been seemingly unanimous. Writing for a large ensemble, especially incorporating strings is notoriously tough to pull off.  Most jazz projects with strings end up being star vehicles (like Charlie Parker or Clifford Brown “with strings”), head-butting exercises (Stan Getz or Ornette Coleman “versus strings”), sonic sweetening, or unnaturally forced third-stream amalgamations.  As a composer Phil Dwyer has managed to write an extended jazz orchestra piece which is not only an organic blending of all the members of the ensemble but profoundly democratic in its approach.

In fact, rather than being a star vehicle for Dwyer himself (whose talents on both saxophone and piano would certainly justify that role), the featured soloist is violinist Mark Fewer who straddles the jazz and classical world having performed with the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra (as concertmaster from 2004 to 2008), as featured soloist with the Hard Rubber Orchestra, is chair of the Schulich School of Music and who has numerous recordings of contemporary music.

Phil Dwyer was my guest on the A-Trane earlier this month and after taking pains to ensure that pianist Chris Gestrin was properly credited for his outstanding solo in the Spring movement of Changing Seasons, he expanded on his sister’s comment:

PD: Sometimes when I listen to it I feel the same way.  When I listen to it, I can hear the results of all those years of hard work and studying and trying to decode some of the mysteries of the great players.

The string session was just magic, one thing I try to do every time I write something is bring the lessons of the previous projects to bear on whatever I’m working on.  So over the last number of many years of writing for string players in different situations, you start to learn how to speak their language and what kinds of things they feel comfortable doing. The same concept as writing for horn players but they tend to be different things, you can write for a great string section but sometimes it’s rhythmic issues that creep in and stop it from sounding really integrated.  I got lucky or I’ve been paying attention because the first few times I wrote for strings there were definitely some things that I just didn’t know and I went on a mission to try to learn as much as possible.  It continues, not really a process that I can see an end to …

ND: Let’s back up a little bit, can you talk a little bit about how the session came about?

PD: The piece came about as a piece that I had proposed to [violinist] Mark Fewer, he thought it was a good idea and we went through a few early drafts in terms of what instrumentation it would be.  Eventually we worked out a partnership between the jazz program and the string program at McGill University.  We did a performance there almost exactly a year ago with a combination of McGill students, some teachers and some members of the freelance community.  It went well and it really gave us an idea of what went well in the piece.

So from November of last year to July of this year [2011], I did anything I could to make the recording happen. I tried to figure out where to do it and I’m really happy that we decided to do it [at The Factory studio] in Vancouver.  I was on the floor with a bunch of musicians that I grew up playing with, and some of them were my teachers when I was younger like [saxophonist] Tom Keenliside and [trombonist/composer] Ian McDougall.  The comfort level between the musicians was really high.  There were a few people I wanted to bring in as special guests, Walter White who has worked with Maynard Ferguson and Jazz at Lincoln Center came and played lead trumpet, [trumpeter] Ingrid Jensen came in and did a cameo solo on one tune, her husband Jon [Wikan] was playing drums and [saxophonist] PJ Perry came from out of town.  But out of the 38-piece band, 33 of them were Vancouver musicians.

ND: I was thinking with Ingrid Jensen’s solo spot, she drops into so many sessions and does one tune that just lifts the bandstand.  Like her performance on Transit with Darcy James Argue’s Secret Society or the Diva Jazz Orchestra or Maria Schneider – always comes in and nails it beautifully, and her solo on Winter is so wonderful.

PD: We did six takes of her solo and each take was better than the other one!  But the one that’s on the record is so great, she’s ridiculous!  By the way, you’ll notice that Winter is the longest track which is a tribute to Canadian reality but in the middle of it we go south!

ND: The recording is marked as recorded in association with The Hard Rubber Orchestra which I believe both you and Mark Fewer have collaborated with and of course, John Korsrud and a number of other hard rubbers play on the recording.

PD: The Hard Rubber organization and Diane Kadota were absolutely key in getting this done from an administrative standpoint.  I had a bevy of very generous private sponsors for a very expensive project – I was really lucky in knowing people that believed in what I was doing and I was able to tell people with an absolutely straight face that this was the best work that I’d done ever.  So now that it’s out and it’s getting really well reviewed, I think that everybody’s really pleased to be a part of it.

ND: You don’t really do that many projects as a leader, even the trio recording [Let Me Tell You About My Day] is a few years old now.

PD:  That’s almost ten years ago, I’m trying to be the least recorded as a leader ever!

ND: But on the other hand as a sideman, you’re incredibly well-recorded …

PD: Well that’s my thing, I could make records all the time I guess but I played on – I wouldn’t even know where to start counting – there are about 50 records that I could unreservedly recommend to people to listen to that have my playing on them.  I worked as a freelance sideman for so long in Toronto that I never really got that leader mentality. I worked as musical director jobs and that sort of thing but this project was just one of those things that popped into my mind and before I could even start thinking about all the reasons why if wouldn’t be possible, I was well underway!

If you’re looking at recording a 35 minute piece of contemporary art music for a 40 piece band, you wouldn’t have to think too hard to find reasons why not to do it.  But I’m sure glad that I hung in there, it was well worth it – I’m 45 years old, I joined the union when I was 16 and so 29 years into my career here I am …

ND: It’s funny this morning I was just thinking about the first time I heard your name, I started doing this very radio show back in 1986 at the old location of Coop Radio and you had recorded a cart for Coop Radio that I think I can still paraphrase as “when I’m at home I’m either practicing or listening to Coop Radio” and then you went off on some great long saxophone cadenza and I thought that sounds great, gotta hear more of this.  And you must have been all of 19 …

PD: Exactly, I did that for Les [Szabo] who used to do The Joint is Jumping [live from the Classical Joint] which I could get in Qualicum if I put my arm out at a 38 degree angle and held a wire coat hanger …

ND: and you probably still can … so how’s life in Qualicum Beach [on Vancouver Island] these days?

PD: Pretty nice, it’s kind of a sleepy town, it comes and goes – right now not so much time on the road but I’m enjoying that too, I’ve got a big two and a half acre yard and there’s always something to do out there. we have a big vegetable garden and we’re trying to eat out of the garden twelve months a year (ed note: Changing Seasons?).

ND: One of the things on my list (someday) is to come over to the Music and Culinary Arts Festival that you put on every year – is it on again for this year?

PD:  We’re trying to decide that right now – it looks like it’s going to be a pretty busy summer playing-wise so we’ll see.  Last year I did a few private camps for adult musicians that went really well, it was really fun.  We’ll probably do some version of it but two years ago, we did a month straight with about 25 concerts, had a hundred and twenty students and it was a big undertaking.  Looking after the administration myself, it’s a lot of work but a lot of fun, sure ate well though….

ND: Were you involved with the Bamfield Festival as well?  Some friends of mine went up to that and were talking about how wonderful it was – the setting and the integration between the chamber music and the jazz, the feeling that there no musical borders there at all, all put together so wonderfully.

PD: It worked well this year, more so than in previous years – right from the beginning this year, people were making plans to work together and I wrote an expansion of a piece that I’d written a few years ago that had almost everybody, I think about 25 out of 28 musicians, that was pretty fun.  But it’s an amazing spot, I just love the west coast!  I go out to Bamfield and I would live there …

ND: It sounds like there are more and more musicians who are based on Vancouver Island who travel for work but love to stay there, bassist Ken Lister who’s on the recording and a bunch of other folks …

PD: There are lots of well-known people that live on Vancouver Island but travel for work.

ND: So what’s upcoming on your calendar?

PD: I’m playing in Vancouver with my good buddy [drummer] Alan Jones and a bass player from Portland named Tom Wakeling (Wednesday Dec 7th at the Cellar also with Chris Gestrin, Brad Turner, and Steve Kaldestad) and Friday/Saturday (December 9/10) I’ll be at the Cellar again with my Great Canadian Songbook project (with Jillian Lebeck, Vince Mai, Dave Sikula, Andre Lachance and Joe Poole).

ND: Wonderful stuff, I know quite a few people who couldn’t get into the CBC show at the Jazz Festival last year because it was so packed so it’ll be great to have another opportunity to hear it live.

—

The Changing Seasons Suite really does mark a new stage in Phil Dwyer‘s development as an artist, an ambitious work that totally delivers on its promise.  As Phil Dwyer has described it, the theme running through the composition is change.  “Changing weather, changing climatic conditions, the changing economic structure of the world and some big changes in my own life.  It’s a call to acknowledge the fact of all these changes taking place and a query as to what are we going to do about it.”

In this case at the very least, the change is for the good.

—

This interview was condensed and edited from an interview on The A-Trane Radio Program recorded on Nov 4th 2011.

The full interview with excerpts from movements Spring and Winter can be heard here:

The A-Trane Friday November 4th 2011 3PM

The 2011 Vancouver Jazz Festival performance of Phil Dwyer‘s Great Canadian Songbook project is available through CBC’s Concerts on Demand, the full concert in audio and selected performances as video (under the Jazz tab).

As mentioned above, Phil Dwyer will be appearing at the Cellar in early December with two different ensembles, more information available at The Cellar website.

Changing Seasons by the Phil Dwyer Orchestra Featuring Mark Fewer, composed and arranged by Phil Dwyer is now available on the Alma Records label.

OCTOBER 21st & 22nd at CORY WEEDS’ CELLAR JAZZ CLUB

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