Jazz Dynamics

One of the things that impressed me the most after hearing pianist Ahmad Jamal's trio several years ago was the use of dynamics. The group could go from a whisper to a roar, often quiet quickly. It added an element that I often find lacking in many jazz groups both live and on cd.

Creative use of dynamics is another color in the musical pallete. So why do so many jazz musicians play like they only know two volume levels - on and off? I suspect a lot of it has to do with the way bands are mixed, both live and on record. Musicians often aren't in the loop - the mix is often the responsibility of the sound guy, who quiet often isn't the most musical person in the room. Groups today don't really worry about how they blend as a group naturally - because its all "in the mix". Most CDs are dynamically compressed (altered so that the loud parts quieter and the quiet parts louder) some so much so that the whole recording is all of one volume! Once you realize what's actually going on and what a good less, or moderately compressed recording can sound - it really becomes annoying.

IT'S KIND OF LIKE READING SOMETHING IN ALL CAPS!

That said there are some jazz artists today who understand the power of dynamics, and that quiet can be as intense as loud. Just looking through my top 10 list of 2007 a couple of the CDs stand out as excellent examples. Bill Charlap's trio is a great example of the creative use of dynamics in a small group which can be heard to great effect on his new live at the village vanguard cd. For a large group there is no one better at exploiting the dynamic range of a big band than Maria Schneider (though John Clayton comes close). Her new cd Sky Blue is likewise a fine example of that - she uses dynamics almost as another instrument in her arrangements. And while I wasn't specifically thinking about dynamics when I selected these two as part of my ten best CDs of 2007, I can't help but think it's not just a coincidence that they rose to the top partly because of their use of dynamics.

Update: Yoshi's pulls CD

Yesterday I mentioned the controversy surrounding a new 10th anniversary CD from the venerable Oakland jazz club Yoshi's - a CD that didn't include any music by black artists. Well, in today's San Francisco Chronicle, word comes that the club has decided to pull the CD, and is working on putting together a more diverse compilation. They had sold about 500 of the 1000 CDs printed, before they decided to pull them from their website and club store.

As I pointed out in my post yesterday, and as Peter Williams of Yoshi's explained in The Chronicle tooday, Yoshi's simply went through the Concord Records archives (a label formerly based in the Bay Area, and still with some Bay Area ties through the Fantasy Studios and archives) and selected tracks by Concord artists who had been recorded live at Yoshi's. Two additional tracks (Madeleine Peyroux and Robben Ford) were added from broadcast airchecks from San Francisco radio station KFOG.

In the same article Orrin Keepnews chimes in with the following insult to all of the artists on the CD:

"With all due respect to the venerable Marian McPartland, whom I love and have always loved, there's nobody on that record of major current importance," said Keepnews. "The club put out an anniversary record that was thoughtless and not very well put together. They limited themselves to material recorded live at the club. You have a half-dozen things here that don't have the making of a significant or representative record, regardless of what color anybody is.'

Questioning why a "Live at Yoshi's" CD would only include performances recorded at the club, makes one wonder what sort of relevance Keepnews has in today's record industry. Of COURSE they limited themselves to material recorded at the club - that was the concept of the album. And it's nice of Keepnews to insult musicians like Poncho Sanchez (jazz snobs will always look down upon any music that actually encourages people to dance) and Joey DeFrancesco as not being of "major current importance." (whatever that means - Keepnews must have a direct line to the jazz police).

Bottom line: Yoshi's should have tried to include recordings from other labels as part of their CD. But they went with Concord, and it just so happened that the artists on Concord who recorded at Yoshi's weren't as diverse as Yoshi's normal lineup. But Yoshi's lineup IS diverse, always has been, and I'm sure will continue to be.

However, in the jazz world, there are still problems of diversity in many areas. The world of institutionalized jazz education is much less diverse than jazz as a whole. There are several record labels that I can think of (mostly small ones though, as almost all jazz labels are small) that don't feature any, or maybe only one or two releases by artists of color.

When I'm on the air, I don't pay attention to the race of the musician in selecting what I play. On occasion I'll look back at a playlist, and I'll notice that it was a pretty diverse mix. Other times, I'll say "wow, in this hour, I didn't play any music by white musicians," or "wow, in this hour, I didn't play any music by black musicians," or "wow, in this hour I didn't play any music by Latino musicians." I think this is what happened with the Yoshi's CD. I think it was an honest omission, (not a mistake) but an omission, and given Yoshi's track record in booking diversity, I think they should be given the benefit of the doubt.

This matter does bring up a larger issue which needs to be addressed, however. At the same time that jazz is growing in popularity around the world, and in some ways is thus growing more diverse, here at home, jazz is losing its traditional African American audience. And are as many young African American musicians going into jazz? Do they have the same opportunities to participate in the jazz education system as white musicians? The situation reminds me a lot of the issues facing Major League Baseball, which is facing a steep drop in the number of African American players. Maybe this Yoshi's controversy, which is a little overblown, if you ask me, will shed some light on the more significant issues of race in jazz. It's a big, important, and complex topic, that warrants more discussion than I can provide right now, but I'll try to revisit it soon.

Jazz and Race - Yoshis 10th Anniversary CD controversy

California's premier jazz venue, Yoshi's at Jack London Square in Oakland, just celebrated its 10th anniversary at its current location, and released a CD to go along with the celebration. The CD has tracks by Poncho Sanchez, Marian McPartland, Joe Pass, Joey DeFrancesco, Robben Ford, and Madeleine Peyroux. Sounds good, right? The problem - no black artists. This has many in the Bay Area jazz community concerned, according to the San Francisco Chronicle (link). Yoshi's has apologized for the oversight. But then last week another issue came up: the Berkeley Downtown Jazz Festival, which presents music at a number of venues, didn't have any black artists performing at one of their venues, Anna's Jazz Island, though a number of black artists are performing at other BDJF venues.

I don't have time to weigh in too much on the whole issue, other than to make a few comments, first about this particular situation and then the issue at large.

1) I see that most of the artists on the Yoshi's CD have other commercially available "Live at Yoshi's" albums available. Peter Williams mentioned the recording rights issue with the Chronicle, and I imagine this played a big role in who wound up on the CD. However, just off the top of my head, Mulgrew Miller, Dee Dee Bridgewater, also have "Live at Yoshi's" discs. Both are African-American artists.

2) With the exception of Madeleine Peyroux and Robben Ford, all of the other artists on the Yoshi's 10th anniversary CD are affiliated with Concord Records. It might have been an issue where Concord was easy to negotiate with regarding these tracks, other labels weren't, and these tracks and artists were chosen accordingly.

3) I don't think anyone has any justification to question Yoshi's overall booking policy and artist lineup based on race. I've seen many other jazz venues which seem to present only white artists, but not Yoshi's.

4) I don't think it so much applies in the BDJF case, as they do have a diverse artist roster, just not at the festival events at Anna's Jazz Island.

5) I think this is a legitimate issue which jazz presenters and educators need to pay attention to. Maybe this incident will spark some further discussion on this issue in the jazz community, even if the criticism in these cases isn't entirely justified.

Abbey Lincoln's songs

Abbey Lincoln has a new record out, "Abbey Sings Abbey" with guitar-centric remakes of many of her most well know original songs. Some might say it's not really a jazz album, or at least the sort of jazz album we've come to expect from Abbey Lincoln over the past 15 years or so in her affiliation with Gitanes/Verve Records. Most of those were straight ahead affairs with the likes of Stan Getz, Hank Jones, Charlie Haden and co. This one is mining the musical terrain most often occupied by people like Cassandra Wilson, in a jazz/roots/folk sort of sound, with pedal steel, dobro/resonator guitar, accordion, etc.

Nate Chenin of the New York Times points out that this new setting makes sense, as Lincoln's songs often follow the verse-chorus-verse structure we associate with folk music. But to my ears, more than form, it's also Lincoln's melodies that have a strong folk element to them. They most often have very simple and predictable melodies, with a sort of "singsong" quality to them. They usually take one short melodic fragment, and then develop it through the song, either ascending or descending through the chords (Throw It Away, Down Here Below, Bird Alone, etc). If I could level one complaint at Lincoln's compositions, it's that they have a tendency to sound the same, to draw upon the same melodic ideas and similar chord progressions. In some ways, I think they work a better in this new context. The first time I played this new version of "Throw It Away" the phones lit up with people wanting to know who and what it was that played, so perhaps "Abbey Sings Abbey" will bring her talents to a new, larger audience. I know I appreciate her music in a different way now, after hearing this album.

The Joyce Hatto Scandal and Jazz?

By now, you've probably heard about the big Joyce Hatto scandal in the world of classical piano recordings. If you haven't, Newsweek has a nice rundown of the tale. Basically, Hatto's record label (run by her husband) sold and marketed other commercially available recordings by other pianists (without any permission) as Hatto's. Some tracks got a little bit of EQ here and there, a boost to the low end, some were cleverly stitched together in the editing process, others were resampled, to speed up the performance, without changing the pitch.

All of this got me thinking about if anything like this has gone on in the jazz world, and how might it be dealt with. The thing about this that amazes me the most is that thee vaunted classical critics who praised Hatto's playing didn't notice that it was someone else earlier. It took Gracenote's CD ID technology, which determines the names of your songs in programs like iTunes by scanning the lengths of the tracks on the CD, to figure it out.

Perhaps some of it is due to the sheer volume of material the critics and classical aficionados listen to, or perhaps it's that they don't really listen all that much after all. If a jazz artist released a CD that was someone else's work, I think (or at least would hope) that most jazz critics would pick up on it, and say "haven't I heard this before." Again we all know the jazz and classical worlds are different, but still, is jazz immune from such a scandal. I can foresee a future where something like this does happen in jazz, but perhaps in a different way.

We've already seen Concord Records market "Ray Sings, Basie Swings" an album that contains not a single note of music from Count Basie (modern day Basie tracks were dubbed in to cover up Ray's original backup band). Supposedly a new project (also from producer Greg Field) is on the way that brings Ella Fitzgerald (back from the grave, or at least the vault) together with new tracks recorded by the London Symphony Orchestra.

These recordings are very profitable for the record companies and estates. Finding new "gems" from the vault by big names, who are dead, and thus not producing new content, is one of the only sure ways to make big money in today's music business. While there seems to be an almost inexhaustible supply of vault material, perhaps someday, might we see fake recordings marketed as the "long lost work of jazz great XYZ" but which are in actual fact, mere modern recreations of such.

Uncertainty of the provenance of jazz recordings is also nothing new. Jazz discographies are notoriously murky on many early sessions. Experts often try to discern if that really is Cootie Williams on that track or did so and so take his place that night, etc. Likewise, many jazz musicians have made their mark imitating the work of others, sometimes so closely it's hard to tell master from pupil. It is entirely conceivable that jazz could one day face a situation similar to the Joyce Hatto case. Let's hope it doesn't come to that though. And if it does happen, let's hope jazz listeners are more astute than their classical peers.