I recently had the privilege of attending the International Jazz Composers’ Symposium, in my own backyard in Tampa. The Symposium consisted of various lectures, research presentations, guest artist encounters, new music reading sessions, and each evening was capped off by a concert featuring the music of guests artists Bill Hollman, Stefon Harris Ft. The Turtle Island String Quartet, and Jim McNeely performed by the composers conducting Chuck Owen’s Jazz Surge. It was the perfect chance to hang and meet other composers while experiencing and discussing each other’s musical tendencies, perceptions and struggles. The word camaraderie kept floating around amongst the various sessions and hangs in between and I think this best illustrates the overall success of event. The symposium was an opportunity for a bunch of composers to all turn on the hose and get theirs hands in the dirt and mud to assist each other in shaping our understanding of music and composition.

I would have to say that the new music reading sessions were definitely the crack of the symposium, with the notable highlights of Caitlin Smith and Lars Mollar. Each composition took you to a new place and opened new insights into things like the creative process, harmonic concepts, and most notably, or at least to me, melodic construction. Strong haunting melodies, you know the kind that you walk away singing for the next week, were not as prominent as I would have expected them to be at a jazz composers symposium. Immediately I started asking myself, is it me or what? In fact, bulls eye, it is me! When I write, and I assume it is the same with so many others, I tend to get so caught up in chasing after cool, hip harmony, and trying to shock listeners’ ears that I forget to write a good melody. A melody that at least ten people in the room will sing at some point in the next week. We write “songs,” not an epic adventures into the depths and bowels of human understanding of ordered sound. Fifty percent of the charts that I heard, I couldn’t have sang back to you after the reading was over. This is by no means a dig on the composers or the music but merely an observation of our (myself included) explorations of the music. Where is the melody in the grand scheme of things?

In the end, I left the symposium with more questions than answers or conclusions. But that is the beauty of what we do. To continue to ask questions keeps us reaching higher and higher for God knows what. I think group addiction, if there is such a term, (and if there isn’t…dibs) is the best kind!

What am I reading?

Modern Art and the Death of a Culture

By Hendrik Roelof Rookmaaker

So about 8 years ago, I attended a cultural festival at The Field Museum in Chicago and to my delight walked into a Steve Coleman concert. For each song he would play the bass lines to the bass player who would then pick it up, a counter melody to a trumpet player, gave the drummer and three African percussionists (sitting in for the evening) a clave, and off they went. It was my first exposure to such a free (and I use the term for a lack of a better one) and open way of creating music. The best part came in the question and answer portion of the concert when a woman stood up and thanked Mr. Coleman for holding to the older styles of jazz like Duke and Basie.

So what is M-Base? “An acronym for Macro - Basic Array of Structured Extemporizations…” I found this interesting as I search personally as a composer for new sounds and experiences in music. Having gone through two major educational experiences in music, I had two completely different experiences. Neither experience outweighed the other and I won’t go into detail about either, but I always found myself leaning towards conceptual learning as opposed to technical “shedding.” Coleman’s M-Base concept emphasizes conceptual development over technical development. This is always something that I have struggled with whether it is in my own playing or with students. But, when is it more beneficial to emphasize one or the other? I don’t think that we should disregard technical study as limiting and label it bad and I don’t think anyone could argue that technique is required to unlock the information held within each concept. We do however have a tendency to limit ourselves by focusing too much on technical studies.

Ultimately, I’ve come to understand through my musical studies, but more importantly through playing with other people that ultimately, unlocking the expressive nature of oneself through music is more important than anything. Coleman states that “what each person (the listener) hears depends on who that listener is..” The same could be said about the musicians. That which each musician plays depends on who that person is. I believe that coming to terms with that personal understanding of oneself can potentially unlock more musical ability than hours of shedding. But it probably takes years of shedding and playing to even come to this understanding of oneself. Well that sounds like we have come around full circle.

So dig this…