Somewhere in the middle of a notey solo on "Moment's Notice" last night I started thinking about the role of virtuosity in jazz. (For those unfamiliar with the tune: that is not a good time to start thinking about abstract concepts, because it can lead to "Did I really mean that phrase there? How about that one? Crap, where am I?"--but we can't always control what pops into our heads.)

Tunes like that often get me thinking along those lines, though, since their chock-full-of-chord-changes-ness tends to give one the sensation that he or she is being played by the tune rather than the other way around. (The solution, it turns out, is to learn the crap out of the tune until it feels as unconscious as a medium-tempo blues. Check back with me in another 20 years and I'll let you know how that's going.)

Coincidentally, the jazzoblogowebosphere offered two interesting posts on the same subject this morning--one from Peter Hum and a somewhat related take at Nextbop, both worth reading--exploring the role of technical wizardry in the genre. I don't claim to have any universal insight on the topic, but I have had an evolving thought process about it, which is tied in with my development as a player (as I suspect is the case for most players).

The short version: when I started getting serious about playing in my teens, I was focused on the high/loud/fast side of things, mainly because it came easily to me (or so I thought) in the early days. But by my college years I had started to reach the limits of that ease, and entered a long period of struggles with my instrument. I think this is true for many instrumentalists, and trumpeters especially. My chops became a harsh and fickle mistress which I could never count on from day to day. I fantasized about the sound my horn would make as it was slowly flattened beneath a steamroller into a large brass pancake more than I care to admit. I felt in those days that if I wasn't able to play to a certain level, it wasn't worth trying to make music at all.

Here's a clip of one guy who made me rethink this equation:

I know that Chet, and late Chet in particular, can be love-it-or-hate-it proposition, but I think you have to concede he's doing a hell of a lot musically with not a lot technically--and at a time when the technical side of the equation was giving me nothing but frustration, the idea that you could find something to say no matter how your chops were treating you that day was a revelation. I credit this approach with getting me through my years of wandering in the bad chops wilderness--if I felt like I needed to sound like Freddie Hubbard every night I never would've made it (in fact, that ended up causing problems for Freddie Hubbard himself in the long run).

Fast-forward ten years or so, and through a combination of good teachers, hard work, ad hoc self-psychology, second/third/fourth-guessing, and dumb luck, I've gotten to a point where I can count on my chops to be at least serviceable most of the time, which means that I find myself prone to forgetting the Gospel of Chet and giving in to the voices that say, "You waited so long to play high/fast/loud! Let it rip!" It's a good problem to have, and sometimes that's exactly what the musical situation calls for. (For example, I enjoyed playing a  Friday night gig recently at a noisy bar--when my wife asked how it went, I said, "They were loud, but I was louder.")

And chopsy playing can be great as a texture in itself (as Hum mentions in the article above)--I remember an older musician talking to me about the different strategies of building a solo--sometimes you start simple and build to complexity; sometimes you start sparse, build to notey and come back again; and sometimes "you come in doin' it and you keep on doin' it." That can be a hell of a lot of fun.

(Side note: in several reviews of my CD, the reviewers included points like, "He may not be a technical wizard, but..." and then went on to compliment my musicality or melodicism. It's a testament to how the jazz-as-technique meme is still ingrained in my head that my immediate response was, "What's wrong with my technique?!")

My long-term goal, though, is to get to the point where technique IS just a means to the end of being able to relax and let the music flow however it wants to.

Maybe not on "Moment's Notice," though.

This morning, NPR's A Blog Supreme featured a story about a wealthy music lover who has donated $2.5 million to Drake University's jazz program, to be used for a professorship and a new facility. Confronted by that number, I started to wonder if there might be ways to spend that money which would actually benefit the music and musicians more–like subsidizing 12,500 gigs at $200, for example.

It was with those numbers ringing in my head that I saw the even more staggering news that SFJAZZ has secured a $20 million donation for a permanent center in the City. (Think about it! $20 million! I wonder whether every single jazz album sale in the past 10 years even made that much money.)

First of all, genuine congratulations to SFJAZZ on the jazz center–that really is incredible, especially in this economy, in this country, in this culture. But again, as a thought experiment here–that money would pay for ONE HUNDRED THOUSAND $200 gigs. Just imagine for a second what kind of a rejuvenation any jazz scene could get from even a smidgen of that.

Why am I harping on the $200 gig?

Because having a gig–at a club, a bar, a cafe, restaurant or whatever–has been the backbone of jazz music for a century. Having a place to play–work through your stuff, learn the ropes and try out new things, interact with other musicians and the audience–is how musicians have honed their craft and the music has grown, evolved, and flourished since the days of Buddy Bolden.

Perhaps even more importantly, it's also the primary place where audiences have gotten to know jazz–been exposed to it, responded to it, thought about it, and for some percentage, become long-term listeners, without having to pony up a lot of dough or put on a suit. And in the Bay Area, the number of places to do that–especially if you're not a big name–gets smaller every year.

Although the number of healthy jazz venues has steadily decreased since the 70s, the past few years have seen an especially ugly series of closures, with Jazz at Pearl's, the Octavia Lounge, and Anna's Jazz Island disappearing in short order. While Yoshi's and SFJAZZ continue to be successful, it is largely through single shows or short runs of non-local acts. (At a cost of significantly more than a one-drink minimum, too.) Side note: I think that's great! I enjoy going to those shows, too. But it's very different than having a vital scene of regular working bands.

(And for some perspective on that $200–I'm talking about for the whole band. Doesn't seem like much, but I can count the number of jazz gigs I've had that paid that much on my two brass-stained hands. For example: when the Contemporary Jazz Orchestra, San Francisco's long-running Monday night big band, was laid off from its last regular gig, I'm pretty sure it was earning less than $200 per night. For a 19-piece band.)

Now, I'm under no illusions that the "good old days" of jazz could or should come back–tastes change, and just because people liked a certain kind of music in the past doesn't mean their kids or grandkids will like it, or the music that evolved from it, today (and to clarify, I'm not just talking about straightahead jazz–it's scary out there for pretty much anything not involving turntables).

But just imagine for a second what kind of an amazing scene could come about if next time, our hypothetical rich jazz patron decided to skip the giant hall, and invest in some GIGS.

BUT SERIOUSLY – OK, that was fun, but let's face it–this idea is, putting it charitably (get it?), impractical. Who decides which bands and venues would get supported? What about the places (and there are many) which wouldn't want jazz even if it was free? What about the huge backlash from audiences whose patience with jazz runs out after only, say, 50,000 gigs? These are real concerns. I'm just saying that maybe the next wave of jazz philanthropy might consider whether some intelligently-infused cash might look at ways to get the music back into the nightlife that was its 100-year workshop.

UPDATE: The president of Drake University (!) responds over at A Blog Supreme.

Part two here...

Originally written 6/7/2004.

The Rent
In lieu of drowning myself in the rampant hero-worship of someone whose greatest accomplishment was spending the Soviet Union into bankruptcy and scattering their still-deadly nuclear arsenal to the four winds, I'm going to imagine that all those flags are flying at half-staff for the inimitable Steve Lacy, who passed away Friday at 69.

If Sidney Bechet was the godfather of the soprano saxophone, Lacy was its best friend, and the man who brought that instrument into the modern era; he was also one of the dwindling few improvisers who truly transcended any instrument.

During the course of studying and appreciating his music, I started to believe that Lacy's use of this relatively obscure horn helped him to forge his own path through the wilderness of jazz in the fifties. While many other improvisers were content to follow in the footsteps of the avatars of their respective instruments—Charlie Parker on the alto sax, Coleman Hawkins and Lester Young (and later, Coltrane) on the tenor, Dizzy Gillespie and Roy Eldridge on the trumpet, etc.—Lacy’s choice of the soprano allowed him to avoid the competitive stylistic arms race and focus on developing his own individualistic sound.

Further removing Lacy from the growing trend toward post-Parker bebop orthodoxy was his devotion to the music of Thelonious Monk, who admonished his sidemen not to "play bebop on my tunes." And from the late 1950s to the present the listener can hear his mastery of the instrument increase and his personal vision mature, until he and the saxophone burned away, and all that remained was "the voice." When watching him perform, as with a select few other master improvisers, one got the impression that even if Lacy was standing on stage with no instrument in his hands, somehow the same sounds would be coming out.

My only conversation with him came at an overpriced, dingy basement of a jazz club in New York, during one of his all-too infrequent stateside visits—this was before he returned from his decades-long stay in Europe to Boston, which unfortunately coincided with my own move to the West coast, so I wasn’t able to take advantage of his increased U.S. performances.

Lacy was performing with his longtime trio—Jean-Jacques Avenal on bass and John Betsch on drums—and had just spent the past hour spinning webs and "scramblin' eggs" on his own compositions and a handful of Monk’s tunes.

As he left the stage and began to field questions and compliments from his many admirers, I waited for my opening and jumped in, aware that I was keeping him from a seat and presumably needed rest—so I hoped to be succinct.

I asked him if he ever gave private lessons during his time in the States; he told me that it was difficult since he never stayed long; but he recommended that I first work with his book, Findings, which he said contained most of what he would tell a prospective student anyway, and said, "when you finish working through that, let me know and we'll get together." (Four or five years later, I'm not finished working through it, and unfortunately it's now all I'll get.) Then he asked me what instrument I played.

"Trumpet," I said.

"Ah, trumpet. That's good." I hesitated for a second, then decided this might be my only chance to clarify this, and asked him why it was good. He smiled. "Well, because it's a discursive instrument—you know, it tells a story."

For an improviser, that’s really something to remember, amidst all the necessary technique and theoretical knowledge that goes into learning to play jazz—it tells a story. I ask myself this question as often as I can: Am I telling a story? Or am I just playing notes? Am I saying something, or just speaking words?

In the liner notes to his album The Rent, Lacy talks about the title composition, written in the 1990s for a departed friend (the critic Laurent Goddet). He explains, "the title 'The Rent' is a play on words. When Laurent died, it left a rent – a rent meaning a tear, a hole or a gap. And now, we pay the rent with it."

This really is a terrible loss.