Standards - Freedom of Interpretation

Recently I admitted to myself that I enjoy playing old standards most of all, though I enjoy listening to classical music just as much. I might as well enjoy myself when I'm practicing. 

Just now I was thinking about the catchy song of the late 1930s, "Comes Love," composed by Sam H. Stept (whom I've never heard of), with witty lyrics by Lew Brown and Charles Tobias (also unknown to me), featured in a long-forgotten Broadway musical called "Yokel Boy." I decided to share it with some friends and looked it up on Youtube. There I found a cover by Joni Mitchel. She sings it in the saddest way, as if love were a disaster. The great Artie Shaw recorded it, sung by Helen Forrest, in a serious but not tragic vein. But long ago I had heard it in a much cheerier mood sung by Ella Fitzgerald with Louis Armstrong, welcoming love. 

So what's the right way to play it? I'm aware that Glenn Gould made some controversial performances of well-known classical pieces, claiming the freedom of interpretation automatically awarded to popular songs like "Comes Love." But he was Glenn Gould. Not too many classical musicians would dare to alter canonical works with the freedom he arrogated to himself, but in the performance of standards, jazz musicians are expected to do whatever they want. They can change the tempo, reharmonize a tune, and take it so far away in their improvisation that listeners would be hard put to recognize it if they didn't hear it at the outset.

Some of the standards I've been playing are challenging, like the Jobim song, "Chega de Saudad."  If you didn't grow up on them it's hard to play bossa rhythms the way Brazilians sing them. If you listen to different recordings of that song, in Portuguese and in English, by various performers, you hear the freedom of interpretation I love so much and find so hard to emulate. 

If I play Bach or Telemann on the flute, I feel obliged to play as accurately as I can, and I carry that over, inappropriately, to the playing of standards. In fact, I doubt that musicians of the eighteenth century would have felt the need to be 100% accurate. The notation of the rhythms of bossa songs and jazz standards is merely a suggestion, because standard notation isn't designed to convey the subtleties of those rhythms. I imagine that it was equally inadequate to convey baroque rhythms. Certainly composers didn't bother to notate dynamics, articulation, and ornamentation.

Maybe I'll play baroque music better if I keep playing jazz standards.

Two Movies About Musical Geniuses

 Recently I saw the documentary about Jon Batiste, American Symphony, an astonishingly talented and intelligent young musician, as well as the biographical drama film about Leonard Bernstein, Maestro. Both of the movies are focused on the protagonists' dramatic and sometimes conflicted personal lives. In the case of Jon Batiste, while he is skyrocketing to success as a musician, his wife, Suleika Jaouad, is struggling with leukemia, and, as the movie progresses, we don't know any more than he did while the film was being made whether she would live or die. Leonard Bernstein is shown as a bisexual man whose extramarital homosexual affairs come close to destroying the happy married life he simultaneously strove to maintain.

Both artists are incredibly versatile and energetic, extremely gifted and hard working. Bernstein's legacy is monumental. Batiste is likely to garner similar achievements. Their musical talent is backed up by extensive study. Batiste has an advanced degree from Juilliard. Bernstein studied conducting and piano at the Curtis Institute after his BA in music at Harvard. Neither man sprang full form from the forehead of Zeus. However, the films hardly touched on their education at all.

What does emerge from the films is the factor of ego, personality, drive, and showmanship. Not every super talented musician has the flamboyant ambition of Bernstein and Batiste. Very few people can withstand the pressures of careers like theirs. Without the more modest talents and ambitions of the musicians who play with them and others in their retinues, they would be unable to achieve what they do. Partly they are egomaniacs who thrive on adulation. But they are also infinitely generous of their gifts.

Improving with the Guidance of a Good Teacher

 Seven months have gone by since I added anything to this music blog. Not that the world has been waiting with bated breath for my words. During those months, I've been practicing flute regularly with the instruction and encouragement of my teacher, Vladimir Silva, who, until his retirement played with the Jerusalem Symphony Orchestra. During his entire career, he's also been a teacher, and he knows how to do it. He's been helping me work on my sound, mainly, but also on other important aspects of music. The lessons consist of warmup exercises and playing duets together.

For a few months we played the duets that Mozart wrote based on the Magic Flute and after that we worked on the six Telemann sonatas for two flutes. Recently we've been playing the first of the Mozart duets, K 156, originally written for flute and violin. Playing Mozart is an extraordinary experience. The more I work on the piece, which is a bit beyond my ability, the more I find in it. He is terrifically inventive, with one idea flashing after another. I have the feeling that I'm inside Mozart's mind while I'm playing, marveling at how his mind could have conceived of this wonderful music.

Especially in the first movement of the first duet, there are a lot of very fast passages. Working on them intensely and slowly and trying to get them close to the right tempo is better than playing scale exercises. The challenge is to keep my hands relaxed and to play with a full tone even when I'm struggling with the technical difficulties. The faster I try to play, the stiffer my fingers get, which is just the opposite of what should happen,

This is a matter of paying attention to a lot of things at the same time. Several of the books that I've read about musicianship describe a kind of detached involvement. The performer should be totally present in the music, yet she should also stand back from her playing. I have occasionally felt this happening and hoped to recover the feeling, but it's not something you can try to do,

Before I started taking lessons with Vladimir, I tried working on my own for nearly a year. My plan was to find my own voice. But it didn't work. I wasn't able to guide myself, and I was frustrated and lost motivation. Now, knowing that I have to prepare for a lesson, I invest a lot of effort.

Taking lessons from a man who is not exactly young, but who is still younger than I am, is nothing like taking lessons from a teacher when you're a kid. Vladimir and I have become friends, but that doesn't stop him from interrupting me while I'm playing and pointing out what I'm doing wrong (and sometimes right). I'm finding that the more I improve, the more I enjoy playing, even the warmup exercises. I'm getting close to producing a sound that I like on the flute, and that's reinforcing.

Should I regret that I didn't begin playing flute until I was in my late sixties? Probably not. Two of my friends were excellent flute players when they were young and got bored with flute and went over to piano. Maybe if I'd played flute for as long as I played clarinet and sax, by now I would be bored with flute and taking sax lessons.

Flute Insights: Relaxing and Concentrating - and Joy

 My teacher, Vladimir Silva, recommended a Youtube clip by Denis Bouriakov about bending notes on the flute, to increase lip flexibility, because in general I have a tendency to play with a lot of tension in both my fingers and my lips. Bouriakov knows what he's talking about (as does Vladimir). 

Along the way Bouriakov explained something about the tone of the flute that I hadn't understood. All along my teachers have emphasized getting a focused, intense sound on the flute, and I'm getting there. He explained what that means acoustically. 

If you don't have a focused tone, the overtones aren't in tune with each other or with the fundamental note. That's the definition of "unfocused." When you have a focused tone, they line up and reinforce each other. That's why it's important to practice producing overtones, and it's also why the note-bending exercise is important. Bouriakov advised not to try to get a "good" sound while you're practicing note-bending, but simply bringing the note down as low as you can. At the same time, if you listen to what's happening while you bend the note, you can hear when the overtones are aligned, as you get to that point, go past it, and return to it.

You can't bend notes if your lips are tense, and if your lips are tense, you will play out of tune.

Why is one tense when one plays? Because of fear. Fear of making a mistake. Fear of trying to play a note and not having it sound. Fear of not being able to play a run fast enough and evenly, accurately. How do you get rid of fear? 

Before a performance, even (maybe especially) amateur musicians are afraid of messing up. Musicians often face auditions, where their professional futures are at stake, as well as contests. In fact, every performance is a test - are they good enough? Confidence can overcome fear and tension. Overcoming tension builds confidence. Even more: joy.

Bouriakov is now the principal flutist of the Los Angeles philharmonic, whose musical director is Gustavo Dudamel. I've seen a few clips of Dudamel conducting. He projects enthusiasm for the music, and I'm sure he communicates it to the musicians in the orchestra.

If I can learn to relax, maybe I can liberate the joy I find in playing.

Jazz (and other music) in our Living Room

 Last night the Tal Gamlieli trio payed in our house. Tal plays bass, the drummer was Amir Bar Akiva, and the pianist was Chai Bar David, all three accomplished young men. They played a couple of standards (Autumn Leaves and Just Friends) but mainly music composed by Gamlieli. Each of the three was interesting on his own, and the three together communicated beautifully. I was sitting closest to Amir, and could pay a lot of attention to his creative drumming, far beyond keeping time.

Performing as a trio, a rhythm section, without a horn, places a burden on each of the musicians, both to come out and carry the music and back off to accompany it. I don't think anyone in the audience missed a saxophone or trumpet soloist.

We had an audience of about thirty, each of whom made a modest contribution to the musicians. I don't know whether they make more when they play in a club. But they didn't play for the money. They played because in an intimate setting like a house concert, they have direct contact with the listeners, who really listen.

Our living room isn't huge. We could pack in about thirty-five people before the pandemic struck. Until people started being vaccinated, we didn't have any concerts at all, but we resumed in the summer with a group that played modern Turkish music outdoors. Then we hosted a recital by the world class flautist, Idit Shemer and Shira Shaked, a fine pianist. Yesterday Tal and his trio played, and we hope to host more concerts over the coming year.

We own an excellent Yamaha baby grand piano, that pianists enjoy playing on. With a fairly large living room with great acoustics and a fine piano, what's more obvious than hosting recitals? We began doing it in the 1990s when a lot of accomplished musicians came to Israel from the former USSR. A pediatrician and serious flautist, Geoff Greenfield, began to organize concerts for them in people's homes, and we got signed up. Without being pushed by him, we would never have thought of it. Since then, in addition to the "Russians," we have hosted classical and jazz evenings, including one performance by a totally eccentric free jazz pianist. Before Covid, on several occasions, every chair we owned was filled by someone. People like to hear music in an informal setting, and musicians enjoy it.

I would have thought that flautists of the caliber of Idit Shemer and Ransom Wilson (who played here with the brilliant young Israeli pianist, Benjamin Goodman) would be above playing in our modest venue, but, on the contrary, they played here as if they were in Wigmore Hall or the Carnegie Recital Hall. Ransom Wilson wouldn't even take a penny for himself (being on the faculty of the Yale Music School, he didn't need the small amount he would have taken in at our house). He was an engaging presence and played sublimely.

Of course we don't take any money either, though we also don't pay the musicians ourselves. My wife always puts out a selection of cheeses and other delicacies at the end, and people mingle and tell each other how much they enjoyed the concert. It isn't easy to organize the performances, and more than once every month or two would be burdensome. But it's always a high point in our lives to gather friends, as well as people we haven't met, who heard about the concerts, and share fine live music with them.

On one or two occasions I have asked to play. When Geoff Greenfield gave a flute recital at our house, in the end I played a Telemann canonic duet with him, and when a young jazz quartet who call themselves Friendy played here, I took out my tenor and played "Tenor Madness" with them at the end of their performance. But usually the musicians are so great that I wouldn't dare join them. Last night, listening to Tal, Amir, and Chai, I ached to play with them. They are so good you couldn't help playing well with them alongside you. Maybe I should have been more forward and asked them.

I play in a saxophone quartet, and I hope we'll get good enough to perform in our house. We were on a decent level before Corona, but we couldn't play together for a long time, and we're finally getting back to it. But we're still pretty ragged. When we invite our friends to hear us, they don't have the same high expectations they bring to the other recitals. They may be forgiving, but we have our pride.

By Ear, By Heart, From Notes

Recently I've been doing an exercise that makes me feel sorry for anyone who happens to be listening. I pick a song that I know by heart. Recently I played Autumn Leaves, Pennies from Heaven, and I Could Write a Book on the flute. I start in the key the were written in and then transpose them, moving around the circle of fifths (C-F-Bb-Eb- etc.) until I cover all twelve keys. Things get somewhat difficult when I reach the keys with a lot of sharps and flats, and I occasionally have to stop and think - and LISTEN to myself.

My ear isn't so great, and my musical memory is also weak, so I often have to remind myself, let's say, that a melody moves up and spells a half-diminished chord (as in Pennies from Heaven), or shifts briefly into another key. But I'm sure this exercise is doing me good.

When I read music, I don't listen to what I'm playing in the same way as when I play by heart or by ear. By forcing myself to play in all the keys, I'm hearing better and moving my memory of the tune from my fingers to my mind. By listening to what degree of the scale the song starts on (Autumn Leaves is in a minor key and starts on the tonic; I Could Write a Book is in a major key, starts on the third degree, and jumps to the seventh before we actually hear the tonic note), I hope I'm training my ears to hear what key the song is in. With some songs, like Desafinado, you don't hear what key it's in until the very end.

Jazz musicians were (are still?) expected to transpose easily, because vocalists often required a lower or higher range than the original key of a song. I have read that Coleman Hawkins was often so bored with the standards he was playing on a club date, that he called them in unexpected keys, making things tough for the musicians he was playing with. It's more or less standard procedure to play Mack the Knife in a new key every chorus, moving up chromatically.

Happy Tunes

The late Arnie Lawrence, my musical guru, once said that he didn't like playing "I Can't Get Started," because the title and the lyrics are pessimistic. Arnie was definitely a man who found it easy to get started, which I'm not. But I don't share Arnie's aversion to that song, because it's also full of self-aggrandizement. Another song about having the world stacked up against you is "Everything Happens to Me," here sung with convincing self-pity by Chet Baker (his improvisation on the trumpet doesn't sound sad at all, by the way). I bet Arnie never played it once. Another song that seems to court disaster is "Comes Love," which is too cute to inspire sadness. This is Artie Shaw's version, a man to whom love came often enough.

The repertoire of standards also contains a bunch of optimistic songs, like "Happy Talk" from South Pacific, "I'm just a Lucky So and So," "What a Wonderful World" (which is played so often, it's beyond a cliche), and "Oh What a Beautiful Morning (a particularly corny version)." In general I'm fairly indifferent to the lyrics of the standards I play, aside from the title, which, I know, is an error. But in this historical moment, in the midst of a pandemic and a failing economy, it's not such a bad idea to sing something hopeful. When a song is happy, beyond its title, it carries you along.

A lot of Schubert's Lieder are pretty maudlin. Maybe you're supposed to feel good when you hear them: at least I'm not as miserable as him! And a lot of blues songs are also full of self-pity. But I've always been drawn to the peppy songs, like Louis Armstrong and his Hot Fives. It's inspiring that those oppressed black people were able to find and communicate so much joy in music.

Recently I've been working in several musical directions. With a pianist friend, I've been playing Piazzola pieces on the flute, and I've also been working on a pretty difficult set of flute sonatas by Locatelli. Piazzola tends to be a bit over the top, but it's great to be called upon to express so much emotion. Locatelli is inventive and decorative, fun to play (or it would be fun, if I could play up to speed). But the most fun for me is to sit down with the Realbook or something similar and play a bunch of standards. Just this morning I played "Oh What a Beautiful Morning" on the baritone sax and couldn't get over how brilliant Richard Rodgers was. Where the lyrics go, "and it looks like it's climbing clear up to the sky," the melody stays on the same note!

The other thing I do is play whatever I remember by heart, or just phrases, and then noodle around on the instrument. Sometimes I do something sort of technical, like playing all the pentatonic scales, but mainly I keep trying to connect my mind, my ears, and my instrument more and more closely. That makes me happy.

Horns

Sometimes I think that amateurs acquire equipment in inverse proportion to their skill. A mediocre amateur photographer might have a dozen cameras. An unskilled aspirant to gourmet cookery might clutter his kitchen with expensive pots, pans, knives, and other paraphernalia.
So it is that I own four saxophones and two clarinets, as well as an electronic wind instrument, plus a bunch of ethnic instruments, drums, and recorders. If I were really good, I would own, let's say, one saxophone and a back up horn, or a B flat and an A clarinet, and that would be enough.
There are of course experts who also collect the tools of their trade. I remember reading that Eric Clapton has a massive number of guitars, and I have heard that the virtuoso, versatile reed player James Carter owns an impressive array of instruments. So owning too many instruments isn't necessarily an indication that one isn't a skilled player.
My main instrument is now the baritone saxophone, a huge, heavy, clumsy instrument, which is such a pain in the ass to bring to places where I am expected to play, that I wonder how I ever got involved with it.
Gerry Mulligan was the first musician I ever heard of who played the baritone sax, but I wasn't a fan of his when I was first getting enthusiastic about jazz, back in the late fifties when most of the gods of jazz were still alive. Sonny Rollins and his tenor were what swept me off my feet.
Many years later, in Israel, a few years after I took up music again, and I had acquired a brand new Yanagisawa tenor, a friend of mine invited me to play a couple of times with a saxophone quartet that needed to include a second tenor on a couple of pieces, and I met up with a real live bari player. I was distinctly uninterested in the instrument and wondered why anyone would choose to play one.
However, in the late 1980s I was playing tenor saxophone in a short-lived amateur bigband, and there was no baritone player, and at the same time I heard of a musician who had decided to sell his baritone, so I decided to buy it. I overpaid for his mediocre quality Italian horn (a Grassi), but I got to like playing the instrument, and a few years later I decided to treat myself to a really excellent baritone (a Selmer Super-Action 80, for those who are involved in that sort of thing). My father had died, and I was sad. I needed something new in my life to perk me up, and he left me some money, so I could afford the instrument (good baritone saxophones are not cheap). And, it turns out, not-s0-good baritone saxophones are hard to sell. I was stuck with that Grasssi for quite a while.
As I mentioned, I own a bunch of other instruments, including a decent alto saxophone (Selmer Mark VII) and a classic vintage Conn tenor (my wonderfully generous cousins Lewis and Ellen gave it to me when Ellen's father grew too demented to play anymore), as well as a decent clarinet (my second clarinet is a Turkish metal G clarinet that is more of a novelty than an instrument that I can play), and I feel that I owe it to the instruments to play them now and then. What's a sadder object than a musical instrument that no one plays?
Individual musicians have their own personalities, which are expressed in their playing, and every instrument has its own personality. Not only does every type of instrument have a personality (trombones versus violas, let's say), but each individual acoustic instrument has a special character. So what comes out is always a blend: the musician's personality expressed through the instrument's personality. For example, Eric Dolphy, who played alto sax, flute, and bass clarinet, was always Eric Dolphy, but each instrument enabled him to express a different aspect of his protean musicality.
To step down from the Elysian Fields, where Eric Dolphy is still playing, I hope, recently I have been playing clarinet a little more frequently than in the past, and it's taking me a while to feel comfortable on the instrument, and I don't yet have a clarinet me. The lowest note on the B flat clarinet is a concert D below middle C, and the lowest note on the baritone sax is almost an octave below that. The clarinet is an agile instrument, the baritone sax is kind of elephantine. Their expressive potential is different.
The problem is that it's so much easier for me to play sax than clarinet, that I tend to avoid the challenge and settle back into the place where I feel comfortable. My music guru, the late Arnie Lawrence, used to say that you shouldn't keep doing what you're already good at, if you want to progress. That's something to keep in mind.