Still Fakin’ It

Take note of Ethan Iverson’s comment on the post regarding fake books below. He has more to say at Do the Math. The point made there that I think we all need to write on the back of our hands is this:

And more practically, those countless standards I learned from cheats have meant much less to me artistically and professionally than a far fewer number of compositions that I really got inside.

It’s always about depth and mindfulness, isn’t it? It’s like I tell my musicianship students, it’s not the number of minutes you practice, it’s how mindful you were when you were practicing.

(Of course, it wouldn’t hurt if you – mindfully – put in a whole lot of stinkin’ minutes…)

Fakin’ It

I feel guilty when I read Ethan Iverson railing against the use of fake books in jazz performance. I steal a nervous glance at the shelf of fake books in my office, and wonder, “are they really such a bad thing?”

Well, Iverson is quite correct that they really are a bad thing if they delude people into thinking that they are truly doing justice to a piece simply by unquestioningly rendering the chords and rhythms notated in the fake book. Lead sheets are only an aid, and a limited one at that – and often a hindrance. And the more mature the jazz performance, the more limited the utility of a fake book. And yet… for those of us whose relationship with jazz is on the aspirational side of the spectrum, rather than being fully formed professionals, an intelligently utilized fake book, coupled with study of recorded and live performances, can be a helpful resource, if for no other reason than giving some kind of ready reference to a large amount of material.

I think fake books were originally intended to provided gigging musicians with convenient access to a lot of pop material so as to please patrons on the job. I have a reprint of an old book that I have heard musicians more senior than I refer to as the “#1 book” – not in terms of excellence or popularity, “#1″ just being a generic title. (I say “reprint” because I have seen an even earlier version that was loose-leaf sheets in a binder.) The book was not legal – John Harbison has told me how it was the kind of thing that would be sold from out of the trunk of a car. (My first girlfriend gave me my copy, she claimed she just bought it in a music store, which seems improbable.) The newest songs in the book are from Rodgers & Hammerstein’s South Pacific (1949). There are three tunes on each page, including lyrics – the notation is pretty hard to read in a dim room! A fake book such as this one was not an unreasonable resource if you were requested to play “Did your Mother Come From Ireland” or “Shuffle Off to Buffalo”. (I speak from experience.) The problem is that most of us who had to play such tunes from such books were aspiring jazz musicians – and the fake book consciousness, so to speak, was still in place when volumes like the illegal version of The Real Book became available. Hence the renditions of  “Confirmation” offered with the same interpretative depth and care as performances of “Did Your Mother…” .

As for Iverson’s comments about the Ray Brown performance of “Solitude”, attention must be paid to his professional judgement, but I hesitate to fully endorse it. I have always been struck by how black practice of black music doesn’t necessarily correspond to how (many, though not all) white folks would like black music to be. I’m talking about choice of repertoire and decisions about harmonic and rhythmic framework, not matters of technical competency, ability to swing, etc. The one African-American teacher at my high school back in Cleveland would listen to well-performed but cheesy jazz-pop with appreciation, just as he would listen to Miles, and I don’t think it was because he couldn’t tell the difference. What I perceived as a conflict was perhaps my problem. The one time I saw Ellington perform (thanks to that same teacher who gave me a ride there), I was surprised at how much the pop side of his book, with a vocalist (forgive me, I don’t remember who), was the focus of the concert. I had gone there hoping to hear “Ko-Ko”, or “Chelsea Bridge”, not “Satin Doll”, no matter how impeccably performed. Even at that young age I (unwittingly) had certain Euro-American modernist ideals in place, the kind of thing for which Gunther Schuller is criticized. (I’m not saying Iverson has that problem! I am just saying that I suffer from that problem, and I know I need to keep that in mind.) I don’t mean to naively romanticize black musicians as though every record by every black artist is great. And maybe Ray Brown’s interpretation of “Solitude” is just bad, I don’t know the record, and Iverson’s opinion must be respected. But maybe a bossa nova version of the piece, with the “wrinkles” omitted, is actually part of the “folklore” of black music(s), more widely interpreted.

I am always annoyed by assertions that jazz is utterly un-notate-able, while European music is fully contained, so to speak, in the notation. Any serious attempt to perform the rhythmic subtleties of a Chopin mazurka, or to figure out the articulations to employ in a Bach suite movement will reveal how little is recorded in the notation of European music – about as much as appears in the rare good transcriptions of jazz improvisation that do exist. As for jazz performance, notation obviously occupies varying degrees of importance, depending on the medium, style, etc. Of course, notation infrequently plays a dominant role.  But it still has a place. And in the realm of us aspirational sub-professionals, notation, even the incomplete or half-incorrect notation in a lowly fake book, can still serve a purpose.

Now to work on my reharmonization of “Did Your Mother Come From Ireland?” using Maj 7 #5 chords…

Adding up Barber

Do the Math has posted comments on the Barber Piano Concerto. While the piece is not exactly K. 466, I don’t think it is as problematic as Iverson makes it out to be. He talks about the opening of the third movement as great movie music, and I was reminded of sitting with Steve Jaffe at a performance of some relatively obscure Copland orchestral music. I whispered to Steve, “This sounds like movie music”. He corrected me, saying “No, movie music sounds like this.” I think the same applies to the Barber.

Iverson has no patience for the episode at fig. 18 of the concerto’s finale – I wonder how he feels about the passage in the Bartok Concerto for Orchestra to which this episode is indebted – it is right out of the “game of pairs” movement. Is that just as weak?

Barber is at once overrated and underrated. His easier songs and the piano sonata are relied upon by myriad college students needing to check off the “20th century”, or “English language”, or, Lord help us, “contemporary” box on their senior recital program – used so often you would think he was considered the greatest American composer. (At least this was the case when I was an undergrad – maybe that has changed. I doubt it.) But in another perspective, he is insufficiently appreciated by those who prefer an edgier idiom. You really shouldn’t dismiss the guy. Joe Straus does not; there is an interesting take on the slow movement of the piano sonata in his recent book on Twelve-Tone Music in America, and it is nice to see Barber in a book with Wolpe and Martino, among many others.

Ives, Carter, Crumb and Reich are more important composers than Barber. (Update: read the comments for a discussion of problems with that sentence.) But I certainly wish I had written “Sure on This Shining Night”, or “Knoxville”, or the Piano Sonata, or the Adagio (and not just for the royalties!) or even the Piano Concerto.

A tale is told of Barber conferring with Szell after a rehearsal of the concerto. Barber was considering adding a whip* to the percussion in the third movement, and said to Szell, “make sure they bring the whip tomorrow.” Szell replied, “I don’t know, the orchestra didn’t play that badly.”

*Also called a slapstick – two pieces of wood, hinged and struck sharply together – it is the sound at the beginning of the Ravel G Major concerto.

Monk, Modern(ist), and Network

- Ethan Iverson’s observations on Monk in the context of the recent Martial Solal concert here in Philly share some points with my own thoughts.

- I’ve started reading Paul Griffith’s Modern Music and After. Customary brilliant writing, questionable vision of what’s important in the last 60 years of music. More comments soon.

-Network for New Music presents music from Japan, including works by Dai Fujikura, Takemitsu, and a Gene Coleman video. Friday, April 15 at International House here in Philly. Go to the Network page about this event for a link to a Red Cross site where you can make donations to help Japan.

End of the month miscellany

- The New York Philharmonic offers Mahlerian  video, audio and images in connection with their Mahler performances this season. Check out Alma’s reminiscence of attending a seance where Mahler was hit on the forehead by a floating mandolin. Inspiration for the mandolin part in Das Lied?

- NPR has concerts from this past August’s Newport Jazz Festival here.

- Ethan Iverson has re-posted his fascinating take on learning a program of 20th century piano music.

- a friend who keeps offering me ideas for operas has come up with the idea of adapting this. The title character should be assigned to what voice part?

Do the new math

Ethan Iverson’s Do the Math blog has been renovated and re-opened for business at a new address.

(looking for help on that summer math pack your teacher assigned? You can’t do better than this, this, and, for extra credit, this.)

Do the Noise

Time to visit Do the Math for an updated version of a post from a few years ago created to accompany readings/performances by Alex Ross and Ethan Iverson. The two are doing their show again, and Iverson has written fascinating stuff about a variety of 20th century repertoire that he will play. Important insights here for both jazz and classical practitioners.

Overton overtones

Yet another important post by Ethan Iverson at Do the Math, this time on Hall Overton, the fellow I mentioned below in connection with Robin D. G. Kelley’s book on Monk. Let me add a couple of points around the margins of the post:

-A good survey of the music of Miriam Gideon –  perhaps my favorite of the “mid-century classical music women geniuses” mentioned by Iverson – can be found on New World Records. I believe Gideon is best known for her vocal music, but this retrospective disc includes both vocal and instrumental pieces, including a very fine piano sonata. (Correction: The New World album has many fine pieces, but Gideon’s piano sonata is actually on a different disc, an older CRI recording, with Robert Black playing. Should not have relied on my memory of the contents of that disc! New World Records is handling the tremendous catalog of the late lamented Composers Recordings Inc., and has re-issued the more recent albums on CD. Their site seems to say that while earlier CRI recordings will eventually be put on CD, the old LPs are still available – though I would have to say I haven’t tried to order one. Ethan Iverson, who has been trying to track down the Gideon sonata score and recording, has written to New World about this. The score, by the way, is available through American Composers Alliance.)

-Iverson mentions attending a concert by Robert Helps playing Roger Sessions, a program also attended by, among others, Garrick Ohlsson and Alfred Brendel. Ohlsson, who is a wonderful advocate for Wuorinen, would be fantastic in Sessions, the Second or Third Sonatas in particular, rather than the more introverted First. But try to imagine Brendel playing Sessions; it’s hard to know what to think. The Schoenbergian side of the music would come to the fore?

- Myriad classical composers have worked as jazz pianists (as an example, find out about John Harbison’s recordings from the Token Creek Chamber Music Festival here), but I agree with Iverson that it is tough to come up with classical composers who played piano with jazz musicians of historic importance as did Overton and Mel Powell. There was a legend around my undergrad school that one of my teachers, the late composer Rudolph Bubalo, had played piano for Sarah Vaughan; no way of confirming that now, surely no recordings to document it. If you look beyond the piano for a musician performing on a truly high level in both classical and jazz worlds, the first composer you would bump into would be, of course, Gunther Schuller. A less well known example is the late Donald Martino, who was a good enough jazz clarinetist to have played with Bill Evans. I’d be interested to hear what Iverson would have to say about Martino’s quite superb piano music. Martino’s Fantasies and Impromptus is very high on my list of greatest American piano pieces. (Note that the link is to a disc that includes Robert Helps’s reading of the Sessions Third as well as Martino’s Fantasies and Impromptus.)