The Jazz Scene of Today

[K-Bee]

Naturally, we all tend to rave about old and obscure jazz funk cuts and strange releases. Nothing wrong with that - I find it very interesting and educational. :)
However, I'd also like to turn the topic around and discuss today's jazz scene a bit, since I feel it's somehow being neglected around these forums.
Surely, I can't be the only one into the jazz music of recent years. There are just so many artist pushing the genre forward and I really enjoy listening to stuf by people like Roy Hargrove, Christian McBride, Uri Caine, Benny Green and Joey Defrancesco.
Obviously, many "older" artist are still doing business as well and newer stuff by Kieth Jarret, Chick Corea and the late great Michel Petrucciani are definetely worth mentioning.

Yes - acoustic jazz music is very much alive and kickin' in this world of samplemania and schmaltzy Kenny G clones.

Somebody around here must be following this kinda music besides me....what are your views and favorite artists in today's jazz music??

[QUINNY]

KBee: Sorry to disappoint you but I'm stuck in the '50s and '60s when it comes to most of my preferences in Jazz.

However, one of my friends who is a great pianist, is very much into Jarrett, Corea and Petrucciani and I've recorded many of their numbers with him and enjoyed them. I think the great trouble with many of today's players is that they don't have a distinctive enough 'voice' and everything more or less stopped with Miles Davis' Kind Of Blue album. I know that's not true, but I'm sure you get my drift. That album was a blueprint for much that has followed.

I'm lucky in that my local Jazz club (where I'm on the committee and do the P.A. at the gigs) is a good one for Modern Jazz and we get most of the best UK players there, along with the odd American/European.
This coming season we have people like Alan Barnes, Jim Mullen, Andy Sheppard headlining gigs along with some of the lesser known players like Matt Wates, Latin from The North, Clair Teale. I'm hoping that we'll get the James Taylor Quartet in the new year and we'll probably be getting Stan Tracey back along with David Newton and a few others.
O.K. maybe they're not exactly the most famous jazzers at the moment, but I get the impression that Jazz is more vibrant in Europe at the moment than in the U.S. The American players that we do get all rue the fact that there's no work for them 'back home'.

In fact, people like Mornington Lockett, Gilad Atzmon, Pete King, Lee Goodall and the like, are truly great sax players based in the UK who get very little recognition outside (OK maybe Pete king and Gilad Atzmon do) and we have some absolutely brilliant pianists. The aforementioned David Newton, John Taylor, Gareth Williams and almost anyone else who appears at Southampton Jazz Club. People like Jason Rebello are just about getting onto the world stage again (well the last I heard he was) and Courtney Pine is supposedly doing well. Guy Barker had an album or two on Verve and has been dropped, but he's a marvellous player when he doesn't overblow.
Unfortunately, image and gloss even sells jazz these days, so many truly wonderful players never get the recognition they deserve and others who are not so talented, but more interested in stardom do. Jamie Cullum must be a prime example. At the moment he's the hottest thing since.......listen to his singing and it's mediocre and his piano playing is less than inspiring.

On the dance front, I really like some of the stuff by Mr. Scruff (even though it's sampled) and who's that really zany Finnish/Norwegian guy?

[Forrrce]

I could happily discuss jazz all day, but it never gets past the jazz-funk stage (and seldom goes that far, even) on this page, therefore I think the jazzers are certainly in a tiny minority.

I myself am of a more '50s and '60s persuasion, therefore I'd probably be doing battle with Quinny alone! As for the 'scene', there's a ton of programmed rubbish released in the name of jazz which even its greatest ambassadors (like Blue Note) now trumpet, in a vain attempt to equate sampling jazz with playing it! The 'new jazz' scene (in these parts at least) basically involves 'players' of limited ability noodling over house arrangements of varying tempi. Maybe add a sample or two, or some crappy computerised Fender 'Rhodes and hey, it's jazz, isn't it? BULLSHIT!

As for current, real jazz releases, I have to admit that since the latter '80s, modern technology has not been kind to jazz. Part of the thrill for me is in the recording - this can stamp an identity pretty much in the same way the best players could. But for too long now, we've been washed down a river of super-clean, digital blandness. Cardboard drum kits, screeching altos, puny bass and toy pianos are what I hear, far too often. Ravi Coltrane's 'Mad 6' from last year is a progressive LP struggling to break free of a shitty, flat, haze of a recording. Nothing breathes, it's just...a mess. On the same hand, the most recent Joshua Redman was typical of the sound which basically hasn't changed for years. It's a sound which completely sucks the life out of the music, reducing it to a digital mush which could have been recorded at any time over the past fifteen years, with nothing to distinguish it from the other formula drivel within that timespan.

Jazz died ages ago, for the most part - I truly believe that many of its 'young lions' (with the exceptions of quite a few, the Russell Watsons, James Carters, Donald Harrisons, Cindy Blackmans, Roy Hargroves, etc) don't have a clue about emotion and simply aren't lean and hungry enough in their Playstation worlds. And with those who should know better, forcing it further from its roots in a vain attempt to keep it relevant and profitable to a cloth-eared, sample-driven public (very much to its cost) its true essence will be diluted beyond recognition in the near future.

[K-Bee]

You're tight quinny. A lot of people are still amazed by the fact that there may actually be life beyond "Kind Of Blue" or "A Love Supreme"and the general idea of classic artists being good and new being just copycats is very much alive and well among jazz listeners worldwide :( Needless to say, many of those "stuck up" listeners are truly missing out on some great stuff!
Many new artists are having very distinct solistic affectations (in fact, Andy Sheppard is a good example of this) - i guess it's just a case of persuading the averige jazz listener into trying something new.

On the dance front, I really like some of the stuff by Mr. Scruff (even though it's sampled) and who's that really zany Finnish/Norwegian guy?

Could that be either Jori Hulkonen or Bugge Wesseltoft? Both of these seem to be on everybodys fav list because of their tendiencies to fuse jazz and electronica.

Oh yeah - on the jazz dance front im very much into Nathan Haines, Teddy G and Kyoto Jazz massive at the moment.

[QUINNY]

I myself am of a more '50s and '60s persuasion, therefore I'd probably be doing battle with Quinny alone!

Forrrce: You'd probably knock me out with the first punch. I love jazz, but I'm not so into it that I know every artist and every line up on every LP they made. I'm very happy seeing bands live and with most of the accepted classic tracks. To me, the essence of Jazz is the live interaction between the players and the audience that can lead to heights never achieved on disc. I'm saying that as a recording engineer who's recorded lotsa live jazz.

[Forrrce]

[To me, the essence of Jazz is the live interaction between the players and the audience that can lead to heights never achieved on disc. I'm saying that as a recording engineer who's recorded lotsa live jazz.

That's a privilege very few have, Quinny, so how you hear the music will be coloured by this. Despite going to gigs on occasion, any audio alchemy I hear is on record or CD.

So what exactly is jazz? K-Bee, would your comments be directed at me, perhaps? There's a point at which something tangible stops being so, a point where it's not what it should be. I don't hold with the belief that jazz and hip-hop come from the same place and should therefore go hand-in-hand. That is a nonsense. Neither do I believe that the electronic bastardisation of a music built on feeling and emotion is 'jazz' either. You can't program a feeling, can you?

All that pretentious drivel by Bugge W., Marc Moulin (what happened?) Koop, etc. is for the same people who had Sade and Soul II Soul CDs on their coffee tables in the Thatcherite era. All style and no-content hogwash, bled dry of anything that could - God forbid - stir the soul. Why do I not hear anything with the fire of a Prince Lasha and Sonny Simmons LP nowadays? Why should music from 40 years ago still kick the ass of all that comes after it? Because it's JAZZ, that's why!!!!

By the way, Scruffy has a site. He makes some OK tunes, some jazzy, even...but don't tell me they're jazz!


http://www.mrscruff.com/

[QUINNY]

Forrrce: I may be a heretic in your eyes by writing this, but did you see The Michael Brecker Quartet from Brecon Jazz festival on BBC4 a week or so back?
In many ways, this epitomises what you and I are saying.

He is one of the icons of Jazz these days, but in essence except for the few odd angular runs this could have been almost any quartet from the late '50s/early '60s. I liked that. but at the same time there was nothing really new on offer. To be honest, I was more interested in piano payer Joey Calderazzo and Drummer Jeff 'Tain' Watts than Michael Brecker.
The rest of the festival (as shown on TV) except for Junior Mance (who's well past it now, shame) featured a real hotch potch of semi jazz and world music (which is now being touted as jazz to the higher brow 'conservatoire' audience, just 'cos it's different and sometimes has complicated voicings/heads).

Yeah, give ME real Jazz!!

[Forrrce]

Quinny,
For a while now, I have truly believed that jazz has nowhere to go, simply because, as I explained earlier, it's not 'itself' anymore when you push it too far.

I missed the concert in question, though I reckon I'd have exactly the same view as you, re. the outcome. Evidently, the foundations the greats laid down are simply too solid for future generations to tear up, though not for want of trying.

Even some of my favourite musicians (Shorter, Hancock, Bobby Watson) have failed to excite me with recent projects - the musicianship is finely tuned but, there's just something missing, a 'something' which has all but disappeared from jazz altogether. Even the titans sound like their next-door neighbours nowadays.

[QUINNY]

Forrrce: It's more or less true and accepted by me, except I still get a real buzz seeing live jazz, as performed in a small intimate atmosphere. I believe the essence, the life blood and sometimes that certain something is still there. True, there's not much technique wise that hasn't been done before (but then you see someone like Gilad Atzmon who can turn everything on its head) and most of the tunes and/or structures are reinventions, but it can still go to far off places. I just love it when someone starts a solo and sounds like he's totally out of it, like he's soloing to a totally different tune, only to reveal where he was headed for all the time some/many bars later. No other music can do that. No other music has that kind of excitement and it's different every time. Marvellous! Recorded jazz very rarely goes that far for some reason.

As I've written many times before. Go to a live jazz gig to see emotion, blood, sweat and real music. To see every sinew being stained, to see the absolute concentration, to see and hear the joy when something goes right is truly a wonderful experience. In London (one of THE Jazz capitals of the world) there's plenty of opportunity.

[Forrrce]

Unfortunately, Quinny, I don't place the same emphasis on live jazz as yourself. I'm sure that if I lived in New York, I wouldn't have time to do anything other than attend jazz gigs. However, I'm not that adventurous when it comes to new talent and more often than not, feel a bit let down when I do see people I really like perform.

There are no shortages of jazz gigs in London, but that's a bit of a problem - there's almost too much! Seriously, though, the best performances I know are, natch, on record. Maybe I'll always be chasing that rainbow, then...

Saw my drum teacher on TV the other night! The Open University showed a program I first saw a few years ago, called 'Jazz, Raga & Synthesizers' which featured Paul Hardcastle and his '19' hit, before moving on to an interview with Michael Garrick and John Dankworth. Cool footage of Mssrs. Garrick, D'Worth, Dave Green on bass and my sticks-man mentor, Alan Jackson, beavering away. The memories of 24 years ago came flooding back!

[QUINNY]

Maybe Jazz artists play more safely these days when they record.
Most Jazzers I know all say that they can never get the same feel in a studio as they can live. Mind you, most of the jazzers I know are not absolute top flight professionals.
I'm sure you realise just how much jiggery pokery goes on these days, even now in Jazz? It's soon gonna get to the stage where you won't be able to hear a Jazz CD release that has a complete solo take on it. They're all beginning to employ rock recording techniques now, including cut and paste. To me, that is really, really sad. That's why live music still appeals to me. What you see is what you get. It's for real including the flaws, which unlike those on record can't be analysed over and over again. I guess in that respect something that's recorded and passes muster, must be better than live.
Bet you never thought you'd see me writing that.

[Forrrce]

No arguments on the 'live' thing. I would cite most of what I like as 'live' in the studio and maybe I can't see the sweat, but if it's there I can hear it.

The classic Van Gelder sound is, for me, the sound of jazz. Today's techniques just can't cut it for the music.

[QUINNY]

Forrrce: Aah, but there's the rub!
Many Jazzers go on about trying to achieve the classic Blue Note or VGerve sound, but they're not willing to compromise and live with the inevitable liveness that those older recording techniques inherantly produce. they want closer sounds and be able to remix tracks afterwards. Those old recordings were down to several factors:
a) Top quality old mics (often ribbon mics) with relatively poor top end response
b) Analogue equipment with relatively high distortion levels
c) A largish, fairly live room to record in
d) A small number of mics to capture more of an overall ensemble sound
e) Precise placement of players and / or microphones
f) Straight mix to stereo or 3 track recorders.
g) Brilliant musicians, at the very top of their game. A good player will always sound a hundred times better than a mediocre one, using the same equipment and techniques.

One of the most satisfying recordings I 've ever done was a stereo pair of a live recording in a medium sized hall. I was the promoter of the gig and was kept busy with everything else. I had no time for placement, just stuck one mic in front of the trumpet player's music stand and the other in front of the saxophonist's. It was a great gig and the overall effect (though balance is lacking at times) is almost like back in the '50s. It was hard bop virtually all the way, with a large enthusiastic crowd. There is a certain edge to both the playing and the recording.

[Forrrce]

Whilst I'm well aware that the techniques, shortcomings and, ultimately, sound of yesteryear is lost forever, I maintain there's no reason for so much of today's recording to sound so bad! :D

One of my favourite LPs from recent years ('In The Now' by Lenny Kravitz's drummer, Cindy Blackman), has a chunky, fat, round and natural sound that's music to my ears. Old Rudy is still in the house - so's his knowledge of how to make a good recording. It's a great LP and if there were more like it around, I wouldn't be so critical of current jazz.

[QUINNY]

Forrrce: Just interested. Does Rudy record onto digital these days? Do you think his present day recordings sound better or worse than back in the '50s & '60s?
Of course, there are those who say the master's ears are shot now and he over EQs at the top end (and always has done).

I bought a Sony sampler CD a couple of years back and was gobsmacked by some of the recording quality and techniques. I thought "Jeez, this is one of the biggest record companies in the world, these are top players recorded in top studios and they end up sounding like this!"
Even little old me could do as good, if not a better job. At that moment I felt cheated.