J. J. Johnson: El Camino Real

J.J. Johnson (1924-2001) may as well have invented the slide trombone, because I don't know many that even hold a candle to what that man was able to make it do.  He spanned a career of over 50 years and was widely known as a performer, composer and a proprietor of bebop.

Following the swing era of the 1930's came a fast, uptempo solo-laden style known as bebop.  Artists like Thelonious Monk, Dizzy Gillespie, and Charlie Parker were busy making jazz so insanely fast so as to force their audience to stop dancing and start listening.  They played piano, trumpet, and saxophone respectively- all instruments that lend themselves to having fast fingers.

Alas, the trombone was kind of that odd kid on the block in the bebop club.  You know, the one who you rode the bus to school with in the 6th grade?  He always had messy hair and your friend swears he saw him eat a bug one time.  The trombone was like driving a Cadillac through a car wash when it came to the total technicality with which these beboppers bopped their bees.

#Wildlyimpractical

That is, of course, until J.J. Johnson stepped up to bat.

Mr. Johnson had an ear and a technical ability that has been equaled only rarely.  While he was playing with the Count Basie Orchestra, Dizzy Gillespie himself had this to say, "I've always known that the trombone could be played different, that somebody'd catch on one of these days. Man, you're elected." Eventually, Johnson moved on and began performing with combos across the globe and in 1954 setup with trombonist Kai Winding to form a combo that would produce a lot of trombone fruit goodies.

And totally BA album covers.

Johnson then sidestepped into composition, citing the challenges of being a black musician and the inequities offered to performers of different races.  He collaborated with Quincy Jones in California and began writing for soundtracks to various movies and television shows, falling into the style of the time with the studio orchestra sound that is ubiquitous with the 1970's.  Basically, adopting the tenets of West Coast Jazz and applying his own brand of arranging to the mix.

Johnson would return to performing in the late 80's but his health began to deteriorate through the 90's following a diagnosis of prostate cancer.  In 2001, he took his own life.

I have a theory about those among us who don't live in the same plane of existence as the general cattle herd.  Artists, geniuses, those that go above the curve to create a new art or reality that didn't exist before must constantly be in the moment of their craft. It's what essentially sustains them, and I suspect it's perceived both as a blessing and a curse.

This week's listening comes from a collaboration album from the tail end of his career where he arranged some of his favorite pieces into elaborate, lush and widely accompanied tapestries reflective of his time as a film composer.  It sounds like you're stepping into a 1970's sound stage with Starsky and Hutch at the wheel.  The Brass Orchestra in some ways represents the culmination of J.J. Johnson's gift to not only the trombone side of the world, but music in general.  

J.J. Johnson stopped performing in the mid-90's because he felt unable to present the talent level that he had grown accustomed to.  On his worst day, I'm positive he'd still outplay the hell out of trombone ants such as myself, but so consumed by his work he must have been that to produce an inferior product was unacceptable, if not heartbreaking.  It broke my heart to see it end the way it did, but I can't imagine the pain of fighting the disease coupled with the pain of losing something so precious.

Trombone had to be in the man's DNA.

See you next Friday.

-ED



Sources:
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/02/06/arts/06JOHN.html
http://www.jazzhouse.org/gone/lastpost2.php3?edit=981455192
http://jazzprofiles.blogspot.com/2008/08/jj-frank.html
http://tromboneforum.org/index.php?action=printpage;topic=43469.0
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8szlAP-E174

Pharrell Williams: Happy arr. Christopher Bill

Every so often I find a difficult time in choosing what to write about. It usually happens when I coincidentally get too busy to really devote any valuable time researching artists/composers/pieces for the blog and Friday rolls by at light speed and nothing's been done.

This entry was supposed to be about J.J. Johnson.

It also was supposed to be done by Friday.

If you're keeping score we're down by 2 and in overtime. This happened a lot when I was a teacher as you may be (or probably aren't) aware that teachers get squat when it comes to time to actually plan anything useful. Fortunately, there are those in our society who dictate what teachers are actually supposed to do without requiring them to think. But that's a topic for a much more cynical and jaded blog than this one.

Today we're "Happy" courtesy of Pharrell Williams (b. 1973) who is proclaimed by Wikipedia to be "an American singer-songwriter, rapper, record producer, musician, and fashion designer," which is an actual job title somewhere in the world.  

Williams released this single which became almost instantly a chart-topping hit worldwide. Accompanying the tune is a 24 hour music video, which www.24hoursofhappy.com purports to be the world's first 24 hour long music video. Basically, the song is looped continuously while a camera follows random people around, which sounds kinda fun.

In reality, it's somewhat like being stuck on "It's a Small World" for an entire day.

We feed on the boredom of small children.

Anyway, the song (like most top 40 stuff) is a little more than its deliciously catchy hook, and basically everything you'd expect from a tune called "Happy", just fun without much depth.

Much like this blog.

One thing I did pick up in listening to it was that Williams does possess a very lyrical tenor voice that just floats along in a wonderfully trombone-like tapestry.  I found myself thinking each time I heard it (which was a lot because Clear Channel and iHeartRadio won't stop playing a song until it's beyond dead) that this would be excellent fodder for a transcription for trombone ensemble.

It turns out I was right.

Enter Christopher Bill (b. ?), a trombonist out of New York who has grown in popularity by producing clever covers of top 40 hits and releasing them, performed by himself, onto YouTube.  His most recent one of Williams' tune has garnered a lot of attention on FaceBook and the like, however he has numerous on his website at www.classicaltrombone.com and here's the really cool part, the arrangements are 100% free.

Of course, there is a recommended donation.  After all, Mr. Bill is in fact a student at New York's SUNY Purchase Conservatory of Music and probably could use the scratch. To me, it's especially enthralling to see a classically-trained musician, let alone trombonist, using his talents to reach into the large audience share of popular music. Throughout my time co-existing with such types as "trombone jocks" and other titans of the performance factories of the world, I often noted their inherent disdain for anything less than your standard Hindemith or Mahler.  I think it does a disservice to musicians and music alike.

So, Mr. Bill strives (perhaps inadvertently, I don't know the guy personally) to establish some sort of bridge here between hither and yon. I am reminded of a recent FaceBook post I observed regarding a video of Britney Spears having some sort of lip sync meltdown.  I also think back to the Red Hot Chili Peppers and their so-called debacle at the Super Bowl and any other innumerable instances where a professional musician has been called out on using any number of digital aids.

There are many sides to this issue.

To dissect it a bit, we have to analyze the fact that live performance and recorded performance are two very different and very disparate animals.  What sounds good live, may not (and often doesn't) translate well to recording.  Since the wax cylinder, man has been trying to achieve that holy grail of audio medium that will reproduce live performance with such astounding quality so as to make God himself weep.

By the same token, transferring what sounds good on an album to a live performance is not always a feasible task either.  Often times when recording, you're dealing with numerous takes, isolation booths that split the group apart, different microphone placements that hinder mobility and that's all before it's processed through a digital audio workstation.  After that occurs you have literally millions of tweaks and effects that can be applied to adjust the sound of the track to absolute aural perfection, a process that can literally take months to complete.

Now in today's world, we are experiencing a blur of the digitally altered reality of the album track and the gritty analog of the real world.  More and more musicians are using digital effects in live environments and with that comes a sense that the performance is somehow more artificial than before.

Couple things:

Well, just the one thing I guess.

The music industry is by all intents and purposes a consumer-driven market.  If a song doesn't sell, or generate hits, radio stations don't play it because they won't attract an audience to pay their advertisers. That doesn't even get into ticket sales, but if no one listens online or over the air it's not going to be played at the super bowl.

Now, the whole RHCP unplugged thing was a result of nothing more than the environment.  When you're playing to a 100,000 seat stadium you are going to be playing hell with sound delay.  Since we live and operate in a medium within which sound travels significantly slower than does light, this becomes a concern in larger venues, especially when you factor in that somehow that mix has got to be set up to go live to 5 million viewers as well.

So, take your gritty analog live product, amplify the hell out of it through some crazy digital signal processing miracle to reduce the echo delay from the fact that your audience is sitting 100 yards from your speakers and then pile on the crap salad the fact that you've got to go live audio to the biggest audience in the entire history of mankind?

So what if Flea didn't plug his bass in?

In order to give you, the listener, the CD-ready product you demand and expect, there are sacrifices that have to be made.  It's up to you if it's worth the perceived sacrifice in musicianship and/or performance value.  I don't really know if it's right or wrong, because I'm more of the mindset of what matters at this point is the product.  Because our analog and digital worlds are colliding like two neutron stars, there's not a solid place to stand in order to make an accurate judgement of whether it's less musical for someone to play along to a track of themselves.  I would posit that so long as they made the track themselves, what's the difference?

Enter Mr. Bill and his charming YouTube videos.  In his "Happy" cover, he utilizes a digital looping device that he records each portion of the song about 4-8 bars at a time and then loops it in a very specific order under him playing new components that he adds intermittently throughout the track.  It requires no shortage of dexterity and timing to get it to work right.

Also, he has to actually play the trombone too.

Now, what you're hearing is anywhere from 0-100% of him actually playing while you're watching. But it's 100% him, just recorded.  And for that matter, you're watching him on a recording too.  So, what's the difference?

Now, you may be saying, "Well, the Chicago Symphony doesn't use digital effects when they play Brahms 4, so this guy is out of line."  OK, they don't.  But when they record Brahms 4, you can bet your ass there's an engineer that's editing the absolute pants off those tracks so that the final product will sound as immaculate as everyone says the CSO actually is (which is not a dig, the CSO is awesome).

My point is, if a piece of music or a specific performance means something to one person, then what difference does it make whether or not it's "real" or "artificial"?  If it means nothing to you, then it's no harm done if you don't listen to it, but all it takes is just making one person happy.

See you next Friday.

-ED




Sources:
http://www.classicaltrombone.com GO VISIT THIS MAN'S SITE RIGHT NOW!
http://www.24hoursofhappy.com
wikipedia.com
youtube.com

Clifton Williams: Symphonic Dance No. 3 "Fiesta"

Ok, so I'm a little behind the times with this.  A lot of stuff happened this past week and frankly, I didn't have time to sit down and devote my usually exhaustive researching skills to writing the latest entry. So, I elected to take a week off.

However.

This week marks a very important milestone in the history of Listening Friday on the web.  It is now officially one year since I first embarked on publishing my little LF assignments to the world (and mostly the Ukraine).  I can't say I have any remarkable or earth-shattering things to say about this other than...

Which is a lie.

So, Happy Birthday, ListeningFriday.com!  The actual birthday is March 18th, which also is Rimsky-Korsakov's birthday.  So there's that.  I guess we could do an entry about him.

But we won't.

Today is all about Clifton Williams (1923-1976) and a badass little piece he wrote called "Symphonic Dance No. 3 "Fiesta"".  Aside from generally being awesome for most of his life, the last professional position he held was on the faculty at the University of Miami where he worked with Alfred Reed and also taught composers such as W. Francis McBeth and John Barnes Chance (among others).

The San Antonio Symphony commissioned Williams to write a piece for their 25th anniversary and he created a five movement work that explored the many cultural influences that intertwine the fabric of the Southwest town.  The 5 dances are:No. 1: Comanche Ritual,  No. 2: Military Ball: The Maskers, No. 3: Fiesta (duh, try and keep up), No. 4: Square Dance, No. 5: New Generation.  Later, after these premiered, he went back and arranged 2 and 3 for concert band.  His former student (and equally prolific composer of wind band lit) W. Francis McBeth set the 1st movement for band, but wikipedia reports that Williams daughter is in possession of that manuscript.  The interesting movement now is that a lot of Williams' unpublished music is starting to be revealed and placed into print, almost 40 years after his passing.  Very cool from a composer that really had an understanding for composing for wind bands.

Plus, he rocks the goatee.

It is an interesting conversation to have, discussing the differences in the compositional worlds of band and orchestra.  John Mackie, a more recent and still very alive composer of several popular works for band, has a tremendously awesome blog entry detailing what it's like to be a composer caught between both worlds.  Here's an excerpt:

Band is loud. She’s not quite as pretty as Orchestra, and she’s a bit, shall we say, bigger-boned, but she has that truly “hot” aspect to her that Orchestra never had. And most importantly, Band loves what you do. Whereas it was like pulling teeth to get Orchestra to look at your new music (and if she looked, she was generally not impressed, often comparing you unfavorably to one of her many ex’s — like Dvorak), Band thinks it’s awesome. Band tells you things like “you’re special and perfect and I’ll appreciate you and your music like Orchestra never has, and never will.”

I would encourage you to read the full entry here. His blog is also pretty awesome in general, and probably more useful than this one at any rate.   Anyway, Williams was also caught between both worlds and became more successful in the then-burgeoning realm of concert band literature.

"Fiesta" is meant to evoke the emotions and sensory stimulation of a carnival-type atmosphere one might associate with the many...well, fiestas that occur in Mexican culture.  The lively street bands, the colorful costumes and parade floats, and of course bull fighting.

A blood sport to the core, the powerful image of the toreador taking on the massive bull evokes a lot of emotion and imagery (both good and bad) and Williams captures that in an immense brass section toward the middle of the work, precipitated by a solo trumpet herald.   This work reminds me of one of my favorite pieces of art, The Hallucinogenic Toreador by Salvador Dalí.  In this work, Dalí was inspired by a box of pencils he had bought that featured an image of the Venus de Milos on the front. Reportedly, he ran through the store, remarking to anyone who'd listen that there were two toreadors he was able to see within the visage of the goddess and thus this work was born.  Dalí himself was a big fan of bullfighting, growing up with it as a boy and thus he painted himself at a tender age, looking up toward the arena where the bullfighter blends into a mixture of Venus' (Venii?), gadflies and an expiring bull, while his wife's disembodied head floats angrily over the scene.

She didn't like the fights.

So I invite you to sit back, investigate some surrealism courtesy of Mr. Dalí and transport yourself to the Latin side of our continent with Mr. Williams.

See you next Friday.

-ED

PS.  I'll work on getting an entry for last Friday up later this weekend.  Pinky swear.



Sources:
www.wikipedia.com
www.youtube.com
http://ostimusic.com/
http://programnotes.wikia.com/wiki/Symphonic_Dance_No._3_-_%22Fiesta%22