Read OMN’s daily coverage of the Festival.
Opinion
Yes, it was smaller by half, but so is the economy. That we had a Portland Jazz Festival at all is a good thing. That they sold out seven of the eight major events says a lot for Portland. The only one that didn’t sell out was Dave Douglas at the Crystal Ballroom on Sunday night, ending the Festival.
Someone wondered if they had flip-flopped Pharoah Sanders and Douglas, with Sanders at night and Douglas in the afternoon, they might have sold them all out. That’s interesting speculation, but the truth is that there weren’t that many seats left at the Crystal.
Is Jazz Dead? Or has it moved to a new address? — A bogus question
I understand why it was chosen as a topic of discussion for the lead Jazz Conversation and as a sub-theme for the Festival. The question causes Jazz fans to become indignant, to point fingers and grumble, “Of course, it isn’t dead. What a dumb question.”
It is a dumb question and was written to sell books for Stuart Nicholson, the author who posed it. It is a naked straw man, but marketing is marketing. A little controversy sells, bogus or not.
So the straw man turned out to be the burning man of the Festival, set ablaze by the music, local and national and international. But it was still a straw man. It was an exercise designed to have a happy ending. That it did is hard to complain about.
Those Norwegians
Frode Haltli PJF photo by Fran Kaufman
I must admit that I was one of the multitude who said, “Say what?” when they announced that three Norwegian bands were going to be in the Festival. Three? Really? Norwegians? Puzzled looks all over town.
On second thought, this guy Bill Royston has brought in some amazing talent, musicians like Cecil Taylor and Ornette Coleman, folks we never ever thought we’d get to see in Puddletown. He had the balls to feature ECM throughout an entire Festival! Maybe we should trust him on this? But three bands from Norway?
While they did not provide my top three moments at the Festival, I noted this, “For first-time listeners to In The Country, there may have come a time after a tune or two when it dawned on them, ‘This is what ECM sounds like.’ The landmark label is known for (the teeth-gritting title) “Chamber Jazz.” It has documented many bands like the Norwegians in the Festival this year.
“What’s happy about the sudden realization that you’re hearing ‘ECM’ is that there’s an accompanying thought, ‘I never get to hear this in Portland.’”
On Festival Friday, Tim DuRoche wrote a story on OMN, Norwegian Would: Why Globalism is Good for Jazz in which he said:
…if we limit Jazz’s definition to Crouch et al’s monoculture, conservative, blues-based, swinging model then we do a disservice to the future of the music, and we choke jazz in the same way that Bush/Rove suffocated democracy, one of our other great ‘gifts’ to the world.
About Seim and Haltli, I wrote, “The audience stayed absolutely silent for the next 25 or so minutes as the two were a living example of the old ECM slogan, “The most beautiful sound next to silence.”
Holding the Norwegian’s performances in Norse Hall was cute and quaint and totally appropriate.
Whether or not they took you to the same place you go when you hear Fables of Faubus, or My Favorite Things, or a seductive Brazilian Bossa Nova or the brilliance of Dave Douglas is not the point. They took you somewhere you might not have ever been, and I don’t mean Norway.
That’s what this Festival has always been about.
Images that won’t go away
Pharoah Sanders
Pharoah Sanders at the Newmark. PJF photo by Fran Kaufman
- Dancing onstage, including that deep knee bend. We were all hoping he would make it to his feet. He did.
- Faking us out with two melodic pieces at the beginning of his set. The guy next to me grumbled, “He didn’t sound like this in the sixties.” I replied, “Well, maybe he don’t feel that way anymore…anyway COLTRANE sounded like that!”
- Hearing him playing out and knowing that he’s welcome to do any damned thing he likes.
- Wishing there had been a more skillful interviewer at the Jazz Conversation.
- Pharoah and Nancy King sitting together for the first time in fifty years over dinner at Typhoon.
- Devin Phillips, after playing with his idol, telling me he was going to, “Go home and sit on the sofa and think about what I just did.”
- The inevitable wonder if this might be the last time.
Mingus Big Band
Handy solos. PJF photo by Fran Kaufma
- That they could be so passionate and play so hard after having spent so much time and energy trying to get out of New York in a blizzard and arriving too late for a sound check.
- Sound person Shira Otchis of She Rock Sound who dialed them in on the fly.
- Seeing drummer Justin Faulkner for the first time. Yes, he bangs too much, and lacks subtlety at age 18, but am I going to argue with Craig Handy, Sue Mingus, Branford Marsalis and Pharoah Sanders, all of whom have him in their bands? No, I’m not.
Portland Jazz Composer’s Orchestra
Andrew Oliver conducts
- Dan Duval’s amazing composition, Jive Cactus, which followed no one’s rules.
- Sam Howard’s titanic, Mingus-like Courage Like a Mountain, which I didn’t realize was Mingus-like until I heard him talk about Mingus at the Jazz Conversation. I’m not sure he realized it either.
Dave Holland
- Walking the bass and conjuring the spirit of Leroy Vinnegar.
Foreground: Kikoski and Grant. L-R Nastos sax, Newton trumpet, Hunter trombone, Moore bass. PJF photo by Fran Kaufman
The Jams
- Darrell Grant holding things together, playing beautifully and swinging madly.
- The playing and singing of Amazing Grace for Dick Bogle, who passed away on the eve of the Festival.
- Robert Moore singing the lyrics to Blue Monk.
- Craig Handy bending over and reaching every soul with a lengthy alto solo.
- The young woman from Amsterdam who tried to decorate my hat with a toothpick.
- David Ornette Cherry dragging the room into singing Malinyea…and finally the room responding as it should.
- The Norwegians trying to figure out Witchi-Tai-To.
- Discovering players you’ve never seen anywhere else before, like saxophonist Julian Jacobs.
ETC.
- Hearing David Friesen’s Charles Mingus stories, including the one about the first time he met the man and Mingus kissed him on the cheek and told him how much he loved Friesen’s playing.
- Wondering why there was no place for Gordon Lee, Thara Memory, Nancy King, Glen Moore, Scott Steed, Mel Brown, John Stowell, Dan Balmer, Renato Caranto, Phil Baker, Reggie Houston and many other Portland Jazz virtuosi at this year’s Festival.
- Realizing what a hard-working bunch of folks there are who actually making the Festival function.
- Just being in audiences who love the music and all of us feeling the inspiration at the same time.
- Being just as thrilled by the OMN writers who covered the Festival as I was with the music. Jack Berry, Tim DuRoche, Don Campbell and Angela Allen gave us unprecedented, full daily coverage…previews, reviews, flavor and substance. I’m so proud. I’ve said this before, but quoting David Bromberg, “I always like to have a guitar player in my band who plays better than me.” I love my band.
- And those are just a few of the images that stay with me. My fingers are done wore out.
Dave Holland and his quintet perform at the Portland Jazz Festival
Bassist Dave Holland certainly wasn’t the only player to get the jitters when tapped by Miles Davis to join his band. But for Holland, one of jazz’s most venerable musicians, and one who continues to nudge his own music out past conventional boundaries, what Miles gave him more was the chance of a lifetime.
Holland, then 21, left England and began a career that would consume him for the next 40-plus years. Holland, who brings his stellar quintet (plus guest star Alex Sipiagin) to the Portland Jazz Festival on Saturday, Feb. 27, has had a dream run as a bassist, composer, arranger and bandleader. For one who’s given his life over jazz, he’s accumulated a curriculum vitae of depth, substance, and vitality, one build on his incessant push to keep his music fresh.
His resume runs like this: Current gigs with his quintet and the Dave Holland Big Band. Collaborations with ScoLoHoFo (John Scofield, Joe Lovano and Al Foster). Herbie Hancock’s all star quartet led by Wayne Shorter and Brian Blade.
And that’s just recently. Count among his former bandleaders Thelonious Monk, Davis, Chick Corea, Stan Getz, Joe Henderson, Anthony Braxton, Jack DeJohnette, Betty Carter, Hank Jones, Bonnie Raitt, John Hartford, and Lee Konitz. The list seems endless.
Throw in a few Grammy wins, some artist-in-residence stints, and launching his own record label, Dare2 Records after years with ECM, and you have the consummate journeyman musician, a dedicated bassist, and a torchbearer who works tirelessly to move the genre forward.
We caught up with Holland at his home in New York’s Hudson River Valley, after he’d just returned from teaching and performing in Boston.
Are you on the road or are you at home?
I’m at home right now. I was away last week in Boston doing an artist-in-residence position that I’ve got at the New England Conservatory. I’m home for a little while before I come out to Portland.
Where is home?
Well, the mid-Hudson Valley! A little bit north of New York. It’s a beautiful area.
In thinking about the sheer depth and breadth of your career, it seems to indicate that you’re somebody who is constantly pushing his own boundaries. What gets you out of bed every morning?
[Laughing] Sometimes my grandchildren. I don’t know. I love music. I decided to spend my life working as a musician and developing whatever talent I had and do the best I could. As that happened, I got more and more involved. I still have a great love for what I do and a curiosity about new things and new ideas that are going on in music and in other things. So, it’s just a part of who I am.
You’ve had such a diverse range of musical experiences. Do you see every one of them as an opportunity to grow as a musician?
I think that’s a general approach to life that’s good, to see each day as an opportunity. I certainly try and do that with music. And I’ve really had the chance, as you say, to have a wide range of musical experiences. I’ve been very fortunate to do that. It’s enabled me to look at music with a lot of perspective
I’m sure there are highlights in every phase or piece of your career, but do you have key moments that stand out – either as being intensively satisfying or that moved you forward as a musician?
Obviously the opportunity to join Miles Davis’ group in 1968 was a hugely significant moment for me. Not only was it an opportunity to join one of the great groups and play with one of the great masters, but also for me to move to America from England and begin my life here. It was a great opportunity on many levels.
Was it at all intimidating?
It certainly was. I was 21 years old. You try to calm your nerves a little bit and do as much and as well as you can. That’s all I could do. There was definitely a little apprehension about it, if it was going to work, or if I was going to make a good job of it and be asked to stay in the group or not. I’m glad to say it worked out.
Do you have one big take-away that you got from Miles?
Just the fact that he gave us all the freedom to explore our creative ideas and really exemplified a certain type of bandleader who leads by example and also has a clear idea of where he wants the music to go, but wants the musicians to also fill in the gaps and make the music theirs. Seeing how he did that and how little he did sometimes to have that happen was really great.
Is that how you run your bands?
I don’t want to compare myself to Miles, but I’m certainly trying to create the most creative context for everybody to work in in the group, and encourage everybody to bring what they’ve got to the table and have a chance to use it.
The venerable Holland has had a long and storied career. I’m not quite sure how frame this question, but do you play music for yourself or are you conscious of your fans, your record label, trends in the music industry…
Music is a shared experience. It’s like any other kind of communication. It needs somebody to complete it. And of course you play for the other musicians as well. You listen to each other. But the point of a performance is of course also to share it with an audience. I’m certainly aware of that when I’m playing and draw on it. It’s a great sort of energy and it encourages you to go further when you have an audience with you. It encourages you to reach further.
Have audiences changed over the years?
They change from country to country, and generation to generation. I can’t say that I’ve noticed a particular change in the amount of time I’ve been playing. I’ve played to lots of different kinds of audiences, and they have varied ways of approaching how they share their appreciation. Or not.
When you come to Portland you’re bringing your quintet, yes?
Yes, I’m bringing the quintet, it’s my regular group, and we’ve got a guest with us this time, Alex Sipiagin, who has been a regular member of a couple of the groups I put together, one with the big band and also a sextet, which was the last recording I did. Alex was in that band. So he’s joining Chris Potter [tenor sax], Steve Nelson [vibes] and Nate Smith [drums]. It’ll be a good time. We usually have fun.
Do you have particular goals or a musical mission with this group?
We’ve been together for much longer than I ever expected. This particular version of the quintet was formed in 1997. It’s got a long life. I’m just enjoying the continued creativity that the band shows. We’ve really formed some close relationships musically and personally in the group. It’s nice to connect up with those again and keep the journey going that we’re on together with the music that the band is playing.
The other thing I want to let you know is that we’ve got some exciting things coming up. I’ve augmented the quintet with three other players for an octet recording that we did last January in New York at Birdland. That recording is going to be out on March 23rd. Alex is one of the members of that group.
And the other thing is that there is a new website that’s gone up. Don’t know if you’ve seen it. Just went up last Monday, with a lot of new information. It’s at www.daveholland.com, of course.
What is it about the bass in particularly that excites you? Why that particular instrument?
You know, I don’t know what drew me to it. There was a sort of practical part to it. I was in a band that was three guitars, a drummer and a singer. We decided we needed a bass player and I thought I’d quite like to give it a try. And that happened. But as soon as I started playing it I enjoyed it. I just like the sound, the role it played. It connected with me in some kind of way. It resonated, you could say. That’s what often happens with an instrument that you suddenly find in your life. It’s the voice you want to have and the one you find you can express yourself on.
Once you made that connection, who were some of your bass-playing mentors that inspired you?
My first two influences were Ray Brown and Leroy Vinnegar. Some of the first recordings I heard were of Ray and some of the things he did with the Oscar Peterson Trio. And the other bassist was Leroy Vinnegar, out on the West Coast. He was a great bass player also. I had a couple of records of his that he’d done as a leader. Those two players helped me creating a foundation for my playing.
How do you approach your instrument in terms of accompaniment versus soloing? What kind of point of view or musical perspective do you bring to each of those?
As far as accompanying, the bass has a very traditional role in accompanying the soloists. That role has been expanded a lot over the years by different players and they have contributed to the development of the instrument. I’m obviously a product of that development to some degree and have tried to develop my own approaches to the instrument. That role of accompaniment has become much more elaborate and freer at times. The bass can often enter into a complicated dialogue, or involved dialogue, sometimes in music.
As far as a solo instrument, I see it just the same as any other instrument. It has its own characteristics, of course. It’s as expressive and has as much potential as any other instrument, for being a strong soloist. And that’s been proved by a lot of players.
Jazz is such an incredible language to learn and practice and perform. Do you have words of wisdom or encouragement for musicians coming up in jazz, in terms of vocabulary that you need to learn, or the value of the history of the art form, or how to be lively and conversant?
Really, you have to be at least as good a listener as you do a player, so you need to do a lot of listening, a lot of playing. Develop your ear, and what you can hear, and what your perception is of music when you listen to it. It’s really important. You have to also, if you’re going to take it very seriously, you’ve got to put in a lot of time and discipline, and do a lot of very repetitive things to develop yourself as a player. Obviously, specifically, with different players, different people, you need different things at different times.
If you weren’t lit up by music and jazz, what do you think you would have done for a living?
It’s impossible for me to say. Judging from my background, coming from the middle of England, working class, most people I know went into factory work or things like that. I loved music from an early age, and started playing in a band when I was 13, so I hardly had time to think about what else I wanted to do. I didn’t really have any other aspirations, other than to be a musician. I was really grateful that I had that option, because there wasn’t any else that fired me up in that way.
In such a long career, how have you seen the music business generally and the jazz scene specifically change over the years?
It changes every five or 10 years. Situations come and go, record companies come and go, and new conditions exist in the marketplace. Obviously the internet is a big factor right now and playing a big role in artists who want to take more independent control of their work. There’s much larger jazz educational thing happening now than there used to be. There was an education thing, but it was an education that you learned on the bandstand and with other musicians during the act of playing and talking and discussing. Whereas now you can go to school. When I was coming up, there were no jazz schools in England. I don’t know if there were any in America. It’s a phenomenon that’s developed in the last 50 years.
And that’s a good thing? Or not?
It’s a good thing if it helps musicians come together and gives them a chance to learn and play together, yeah, it’s a good thing. Anything has a negative side. Academics can be negative if they don’t encourage individuality and creativity. An education that teaches you the background of the music and also encourages you to look forward and come to some of your own conclusions and develop your own ideas, that’s an important thing.
Do have things in your life that you want to accomplish that you haven’t yet, either in terms of players you’d like to perform with, or musical endeavors you want to tackle?
You mean like writing another song? That’s about it. Play a good solo next time. I’ve got some projects coming up that I’m hoping will be fun and interesting.
What’s your mindset before you take a solo? Are you mindful of what you’re about to do or do you just let it happen?
It’s just a continuity … you’re in the music. At some point you’re playing a solo. You just stay in the music and play what you’re hearing and let it be as unforced and natural as you can. Let if flow. It’s a hard thing to answer.
It is, but I can hear it in some people’s playing, that they’re too mindful, they’re thinking about it too hard.
Yeah, but it’s like if you’re talking to me, if you start to think too much about what you’re saying to me, you stop being able to talk. As long as you can let the flow of your thoughts go without really thinking about the words you’re using, you don’t think about every individual word that you say. You have an idea, a thought and a concept that’s being expressed and the words are found by your brain that will express, somehow, or by your experiences and what you’ve learned. It’s the same with music. You learn your vocabulary, you learn the language of the music and you develop some personal ways of using it maybe, and then you just let loose.
Do you have diversions outside of music? Do you feel like you have to get away from music?
I’ve got plenty of things that I enjoy. I don’t feel like I have to get away from the music, but I certainly need more in my life than music. I need a life. I have a family. We have our own interests as a family, and things that we do together. I like to read, I like to watch films, I like to get out into nature. We live in a beautiful part of the country so nature plays a big part. I don’t think I want to be in the city full time.
Are you looking forward to coming to Portland?
Oh yeah, of course. Very much so. I like Portland very much. It’s got its own culture, it’s got its own feel. I’ve got some very good memories. I’ve been coming there for many, many years, and there are some friends that I hope to see. We’re really looking forward to it.
The Dave Holland Quintet appears Saturday night, Feb. 27, at the Portland Center for the Performing Arts/Newmark Theatre at 7:30 p.m. Tickets are $25-$55. Holland will also appear at noon on Saturday, Feb. 27 for “Jazz Conversations” with KMHD deejay Steven Cantor, at the PCPA ArtBar.
Oregon Music News is happy to be a Supporting Sponsor of the 2010 Portland Jazz Festival
RSS Feed
Facebook
Twitter
Newsletter