The tremendous knowledge and insight shared by Lee Konitz in interviews, available in various print, audio, and video formats, provide invaluable study material for any improvising musician. As just one example, here is a short excerpt from a talk sponsored by Chamber Music America between Konitz and pianist Dan Tepfer.
Tepfer: "Some people will say, ‘Oh,
Lee Konitz plays sharp.’ But in fact, you are able to play more in tune than
anybody I’ve ever heard..."
Konitz: “Isn’t that a
nice thing to say?”
Tepfer: “…It’s exactly what
you just said: you will play sharp if you feel antisocial, but you’ll also play
perfectly in tune if you feel social. I just think the exclusivity of
intonation is something that almost nobody uses.”
Konitz: “Well, that’s the
fact, I think. Jackie McLean didn’t want to talk about [it]… I went into a club
where he was playing with Cedar Walton’s trio, and the pianist Larry Willis was
sitting at the bar in front of me, at the Village Vanguard. And Cedar played a
couple of tunes and then called Jackie up, and Jackie was sharp. I mean, no playing around, he was sharp. And so after a little while Larry turned back to me and he
said, ‘He can push it in or pull it out, but don’t leave it where it is!’
[Laughter.] And I tried to talk to Jackie afterwards—he didn’t want to talk
about it. That was it, that’s the way he heard it, and it’s the way I hear it:
sometimes it’s a little bit on the edge, sometimes… But some so-called critic,
reviewing a record, said, ‘I can’t stand listening to this man playing flat all
the time.’ [Laughter.] Jesus Christ, what could he say about the music after that.So [wagging finger] we
can’t depend on those guys …”
In his very nice new book on Charlie Parker's early years in Kansas City, Stanley Crouch briefly discusses Bird's novel approach to tone production on the alto saxophone and the mouthpiece and reed setup he used to achieve it. Crouch writes:
"From the start, one of Charlie's goals had been to refine his tone, to get rid of that goddamn vibrato and create a sound that was built for speed. To further his cause, he took a Brilhart mouthpiece---an uncommon brand at the time---and experimented with its shape, filing it down in an effort to control the sound even further. In doing so, he was ignoring the advice of older musicians, who warned him about the possibility of brass poisoning. Players such as Tab Smith, an alto player with Lucky Millinder and Basie, had gotten infections when the sharp edge of an altered metal mouthpiece cut into their lips as the played. As was his way, Parker listened, said nothing, and then went on with what he was doing. Parker became such a proficient reworker of mouthpieces that he was soon filing away on those of his fellow band members and of any other saxophone players who trusted his skill."
While this is the first I have heard of Bird working on mouthpieces, it certainly is not unthinkable that he did. From Earl Bostic (with his [apocryphal?] razor-blade baffle) to Jerry Bergonzi (who is known to have adjusted his own mouthpieces) to a contemporary young player like Matt Marantz (who has paying customers for his mouthpiece modifications), jazz saxophonists have long engaged in re-crafting their mouthpieces. There are however a few implausible elements to Crouch's claim. First, the Brilhart mouthpiece that Bird played was made from "Tonalin," a kind of plastic, so he would not have been at any risk of "brass poisoning." Bird does not seem to have played a metal mouthpiece on a regular basis until 1949. Secondly, while the Brilhart "Streamline" mouthpiece that Bird played was first manufactured in 1939, there is no evidence to suggest he played it until 1945, after he had left Kansas City. Instead, as saxophone technician Nicholas Trefeil documents, when Bird was with Jay McShann around 1940, he was playing an Otto Link "ResoChamber." The additional matter of precisely what it means when Crouch says that Bird "fil[ed his mouthpiece] down" and whether this is the best way to put it I will leave to the mouthpiece technicians.
In any case, it is well known from photographic evidence that Bird played many different mouthpieces, and it is not at all unlikely that he would have attempted to adjust them himself in pursuit of his idiosyncratic sound. A sound which was, after all, perfect.
In the current issue of Music Theory Online, RenéRusch analyses Brad Mehldau's solo performance of Radiohead's "Paranoid Android" from his album Deregulating Jazz. Rusch's discussion of "intertextuality" and "covers" in jazz neglects to point out that there is a categorical difference between an improvisatory jazz cover of a modern rock tune like "Paranoid Android" and the long tradition of jazz musicians interpreting American Songbook "standards" by Tin Pan Alley composers like Gershwin and Porter. The important distinction is that Broadway composers of the first half of the 20th century were strongly under the influence of jazz, the predominant popular music of the time, and that their compositions are therefore in a symbiotic relationship with the jazz performers that would use them as vehicles for improvisatory reinterpretation. Popular music of the past fifty years, including that of Radiohead, no longer bears this kind of relation to jazz. Perhaps it is this distance which intensifies the perceived feelings of anxiety and apprehension in Mehldau's performace of "Paranoid Android." These feelings should contrariwise be absent when the same artist approaches a standard like "All the Things You Are."
There is perhaps a higher proportion of milquetoast players on the alto saxophone than on any other instrument in jazz. Mike DiRubbo is decidedly not one of them. Here is the latest release from his working quintet. My brief review is reposted below:
"Mike DiRubbo is one of
the world’s foremost alto saxophonists, and this new release from his
actively working band demonstrates why. Like his forebears Charlie
Parker and Jackie McLean, DiRubbo plays the alto with tenor-like
toughness, as well as an immediately recognizable sound and highly
personal phrasing. In true modernist fashion, DiRubbo’s compositions and
improvisations survey new harmonic, melodic, and rhythmic territory
while simultaneously immersed in a knowledgeable and loving dialogue
with the tradition of jazz, blues, and swing. Few contemporary
recordings will match 'Threshold' for fierceness and authenticity of
feeling."
Philosopher Roger Scruton describes "Erbarme dich" from J. S. Bach's St. Matthew Passion:
"Here
all boundaries are weak, and the melody can be subdivided in countless ways, to
permit multiple elaborations in the course of the aria. Yet it involves melodic
thinking of the highest order. It is
neither a theme nor a tune, but an unbroken melisma, which throws out spores
around itself as it grows [italics mine]."
But couldn't he also be describing Coltrane's Interstellar Space?
The melismatic vocal line that traveled from western Africa to the American blues (which most likely shares a common ancestor with Bach's) becomes permeated harmonically with the rise of jazz and is apotheosized in this last recording by Coltrane. Here is another philosopher discussing Interstellar Space.
The brilliant video below documents Lee Konitz and Dan Tepfer on the road in Europe. Its musical focus is on Jerome Kern's "All the Things You Are" of 1939, a longtime staple in Konitz's repertory.
The timeless popularity of this tune among jazz players is often remarked upon. Common explanations for this include the step-wise descent of parallel thirds between the bass and upper voice, mediated by a progression of chords through the cycle of descending fifths. Also, the tune notably features chord roots on each of the twelve chromatic tones. The resulting harmonic saturation provides ample fodder for improvisers. I suspect that there is more to the story, however, as the kind of musical fecundity offered by "All the Things You Are" can never be so easily explained. One question that strikes me as more difficult than it would appear at first is that of the tonic: what key is this tune in? The obvious answer is A-flat, the key in which the song concludes. The opening phrase tonicizes A-flat (as well as C), and the next phrase tonicizes the dominant, E-flat (as well as G). As Milton Babbitt suggests, the bridge tonicizes G and therefore acts as an "extended leading-tone" to the tonic A-flat. The non-tonic opening is described by analysts influenced by Schenker as an "auxiliary cadence," which means, as Michael Buchler explains, that "from a Schenkerian perspective, [the] refrain opening [does not] actively participate in its overall fundamental structure." But does this interpretation underestimate the role of F minor? F minor is metrically accented, appearing as it does in bars 1 and 25, and is prepared in both cases by its dominant. Also, the first eight-measure phrase could be heard as a rather typical prolongation of F minor through its relative major (A-flat) to its dominant (C). This i-III-V prolongation is then repeated at the fifth in the second phrase. An F-minor hearing is bolstered by the hyper-metrical "strong-beat" bass descent of F-E-flat-D-flat-C, supporting melodic tones A-flat-G-F-E. If the bridge's G harmony represents an "extended leading-tone" to A-flat, could we not also say the same of the bridge's E harmony vis-a-vis F? If we posit an F-minor tonic, the G and E harmonies of the bridge could suggest upper and lower neighbor tones. Finally, the D-flat7#9-C7#9 riff used by performers like Charlie Parker as both "intro" and "outro" points strongly to F minor as a gravitational locus.
A-flat undoubtedly has a strong claim to the tune's tonic, as the last sixteen bars clearly outline vi-(I)-IV-ii-V-I in A-flat. But the first twenty-four bars seem to make more sense as prolonging an F-minor tonic, where the E major at the end of the bridge behaves as a third-related substitute for the dominant: i-V-v-V/V-VII-(V). (E major and F minor are of course also related by SLIDE transformation since they share the same third.)
Could a case be made here for the "double-tonic complex" as described by scholars like Robert Bailey and Deborah Stein? Developed as a tool for analyzing nineteenth-century lieder and other music, the double-tonic complex is characterized by, among other things, a sense of oscillation between the two equally-weighted tonics. Jazz performances of "All the Things You Are," with their repeating improvised cycles through the tune's harmonic form, certainly seem to oscillate between F minor and A-flat. This feeling of tonal ambiguity -- supported by both "auxiliary cadence" and "double-tonic complex" interpretations -- helps to illustrate the sense of the tune's lyrics. The lyrics are hopeful, longing, anticipatory, future-oriented. The tonic goal is continuously withheld, just as love is withheld in the song's lyrics. It is important to stress that jazz performances of American Songbook pieces resist categorization along the standard teleological lines of Western music theory due to their cyclic and thus perpetually unfinished nature.
