Jazz music of the Aughts

In thinking about my follow-up to The New Jazz Standards, I've been trying to establish a criteria for evaluating music and establishing rules (for lack of a better term) to apply to modern music as "standards". Today, I read this short article about jazz in the "Aughts" (Noughts? Noughties?) written by JazzHouston co-creator and administrator, Andrew Lienhard. He offers some wonderfully simple and well-stated insights to jazz music of the past decade. Here's a refreshing outlook on jazz music of the past decade:

...there's renewed focus on original music, especially among new artists. Most debut albums were as much a playing debut as they were a program of new compositions. The music is more complex too -- rhythmically, harmonically, arrangements, etc. But that complexity is not a means to an end as it was in the 70's and 80's. It's more of a base than a flavor. And there's much greater cross-pollination between mainstream genres. Hip-Hop entered the music, so did Indie Pop and Electronica. Case in point is the ubiquitous interest in covering modern pop music. Radiohead became the new Rogers & Hart.

I completely agree. Plus, I love lists, so this was a no-brainer to re-post. He's even got a "best of Houston" list!

Looking back at Terry Riley's "In C"

After listening to this RadioLab podcast on the anniversary of Terry Riley's minimalist work, "In C," my mind began to wander on the true purpose of music. You see, the whole point of "In C" (at least, to me) was the notion of inclusion. They point out in the podcast how difficult and dissonant classical music had become by 1964, making "In C" sound like a breath of fresh air. Now, I'll admit that I like minimalist music, but only to a certain point.  There's only so much repetitive patterns that I can stand.  Eventually, one longs for an actual chord progression.  And I'm not even the big fan of Terry Riley's work, but there's a concept and an execution about "In C" that I can get behind.  First of all, it isn't just a minimalist piece in the strict definition of that sub-genre of contemporary art music, it is also aleatoric.  To me, music should not be pretentious and exclusive, and aleatoricism seeks to destroy the conventions (and perceived stuffiness) of Western art music by adding in improvisational elements and (sometimes) audience participation.  John Cage's '4'33"' is a perfect example of this.

The impact and influence of "In C" is clearly far-reaching.  Just look at the work of Brian Eno and pretty much the entire electronic music constituency (especially dance music).  However, this really matters very little to me, the reason I like it so much is because it thrives on audience participation.  It's not even written for musicians!  Anyone can play a single note or two, or three. To most people, "In C" may now seem like an outdated notion of peace, love and understanding from the 1960s, but I truly think that in order to make a statement or get your voice heard, this is a key element to your development as an artist.  The truly greatest works of music (or art in general) usually communicate with their audience on a higher level than their contemporaries. This hasn't changed, either.  Look at today's technological breakthroughs in communication and the attempts of businesses to become more conversational with their clients.  It's the same motto and message: "Everyone is welcome, and everyone has a voice that should be heard.  We're listening."  This is the true achievement of "In C".  Once the concept is in your head, you won't forget it, and you're always welcome to participate.

Now, about those "serious" composers with their serious and difficult pieces of music: How many times do you think they're actually heard on a regular basis?  I don't mean to downplay the importance of composers like Schoenberg and Webern, they are very important to history and I personally enjoy certain pieces of theirs.

But I forget, how does the melody to "Pierrot Lunaire" go?  You can't remember, either?  Oh, who cares...

Improvisation

This is the definition of a great musician, jazz or otherwise.  Thanks, Seth.

It's far easier to mix up a Rubik's cube than to solve one.

People are often paid to enforce compliance. The job is to ensure that everything is in its place, that errors are zero, that things are delivered on time and as expected. The random event is a problem, something to be feared and extinguished.

A few people (not many) get paid to create a ruckus, to insert the random, to yell 'fire' and to shake things up.

Most people, though, the ones with great jobs, are in the business of dancing with entropy, not creating it. Take what comes, sort it, leverage it, improvise and make something worthwhile out of it.

The secret of dancing is that you must respect and admire your partner. Thus, entropy isn't the enemy, and the goal isn't for "everything to be all right."

Without random events, there is no dance.

There is no good, there is no bad, there's just what happened. Dance with it.

Original post here

Let it Snow, Caroling in the Heights on 19th Street

Well, it's been a week since (what just may be) our annual snowfall here in Houston. Personally, I enjoyed the day and took some time off to walk around in the snow while it lasted. A good friend and I even got together that evening to play Christmas carols and some other tunes on 19th Street in the Heights for their annual "Holiday on 19th" celebration. We a blast playing for strangers in the holiday spirit and attracted quite a crowd of singers and dancers. Unfortunately, the overall turnout was a bit down from its usual commotion. I guess people didn't want to risk it out there on the roadways. Oh well, better safe than sorry, I suppose...

I hope everyone had a great time nevertheless, and a wonderful holiday season. Merry Christmas!

The New Jazz Standards, Part I - History

A question I often get asked is, "What are the new jazz standards?"  In fact, I ask myself this question quite often!

If you're not a musician, or just unfamiliar with the term "standard" as it applies to jazz music, you might need some filling in. Standards usually refer to those songs written in the golden age of American songwriting, between 1920-1960.  Most of these songs are considered part of the Great American Songbook, consist of composers from Tin Pan Alley and the large majority were written for musical theater and movies.  Composers such as George Gershwin, Cole Porter, Richard Rogers and Jimmy Van Heusen are regularly associated with this field. Because these songs constituted the popular music of the day, they had a strong influence on the current musical trends of the time. Songs such as "All the Things You Are," "Summertime" and "Night and Day" are prime examples of this period. There are great lists of these compositions at the site JazzStandards.com (ranked by popularity) as well as Wikipedia (organized chronologically).

How then did we arrive at the term "jazz standards"?  It depends on who you ask.  Remember when I mentioned that these songs were the popular music of the day? Well, it's no coincidence that these popular tunes infiltrated other styles and genres, such as jazz music, which was still blossoming in the 1930s.  Also, most of these tunes were written in the jazz tradition that had grown in popularity in the previous decades. By the 1930s, many composers were interested in jazz music as a vehicle for the popular songs that they were employed to write for Broadway musicals.  This led to the development of popular songs having many jazz-influenced chords and harmonies, which in turn influenced jazz music to incorporate the popular songs into the repertoire of jazz music. It's a sordid mess, since jazz and popular music of the 1930s through the 1950s were so closely related.

However, during this same time period, there were some new compositions being written exclusively for the jazz idiom.  This is broadly defined when an instrumental tune is written first with the lyrics added later, or without lyrics at all. Although they have gained immense popularity over the years, they were originally written as instrumental vehicles for improvisation and NOT popular songs. A lot of Duke Ellington's works ("Solitude," "Caravan," and "Cottontail"), "Take the 'A' Train" by Billy Strayhorn, "'Round Midnight" by Thelonious Monk and "Take Five" by Paul Desmond fit this definition.  Each became widely popular despite starting out as jazz instrumentals.

This is why people differ on their definition of the term "standard" as it applies to music. To some, a "standard" is only one of those popular songs contained in the Great American Songbook. These people would also insist that a "jazz standard" needs to be exclusive to the jazz idiom and largely based on improvisation. Others, such as myself, put them all together. To me, if it's a popular song, instrumental or not, it's a standard.  Cole Porter's "I Get a Kick Out of You" deserves as much recognition as Wayne Shorter's "Footprints" to be considered a standard.  Of course, it must be from 1920-1960 to be really called a "standard" by my definition.

So what about after 1960?  Well, that's the whole point of this series of blog posts.  As music genres became more specialized from 1960 onward, it is harder to define what the future of the standard really is.  Before getting that far, though, I'll try to define in musical terms what a standard entails. I'll go beyond the historical significance of the topic and look into the theoretical qualities of the popular standards. Part II - Musical Analysis: for music theory geeks only!