As I was saying last week, LOL, a few weeks ago I mentioned I was listening to “Friends Seen and Unseen” by the Charlie Hunter Trio (2004)… so tonight we finally discuss C.H., plus the Tord Gustavsen trio. Two very different artists, from different continents, both playing something we call “jazz” but coming from – and going to – very different places.
So if there’s any common theme to be gleaned by this pairing this week, it’s that jazz is a huge field where a talented musician can pretty much go anywhere he or she wants. There are plenty of borders to be explored between jazz and other musical forms as well, as tonight’s musicians prove…
Here’s your minimal factoid of the day regarding Charlie Hunter: He’s known for playing a specially-built eight-string guitar. The upper five strings are tuned to sound like a guitar, the lower three to sound like a bass. As he handles the instrument, it sounds like two musicians at work; if you heard the CD without knowing this you’d think “that’s not a trio, it’s a quartet.” And if that doesn’t confuse you, he’s also hooked up his instrument to specialized electronics, allowing him to reproduce the sound of a Hammond electric organ.
If this gives you a suspicion that this might be a musician who pushes the limits beyond what everyone else is doing, you’re right.
Charlie Hunter is one of the leading lights of a new generation of jazz musicians that came on the scene in the 1990’s. With his various groups, he’s opening a new generation raised on rock to try out jazz (from Hunter’s website):
“I think our music is an alternative to the suit-and-tie club that says you have to be well-to-do and super-intellectual to understand jazz music”, Charlie continues. “We don’t have that attitude. We play at places where people aren’t interested in pigeonholing instrumental music.” As a result, most Bay Area gigs were priced at no more than $5 and Charlie began exposing jazz to an audience that may otherwise have stayed away from it. “We’re jazz musicians, but we’re jazz musicians from their generation. That’s who we share aspects of a common life with and that’s who we are trying to reach.”
“We know the lineage of jazz and we’re completely in debt to it. We’ve built the foundation of our music on John Coltrane, on Charlie Parker, on Art Tatum and Thelonious Monk, all the way back through Louis Armstrong and Jelly Roll Morton to the turn of the century. We want people to know that this is the music that means the most to us. But we also want our audience to know that we are from the twenty something generation, that we share the same experiences as a lot of people our age. That’s what we want to communicate; that’s what inspires us. I am very proud of the fact that our audience is very diverse. There are a lot of women who come to our shows. There are a lot of kids-I mean teens and young adults-who bring their parents. And there are a lot of moms and dads who bring their kids, and that makes me feel like we’re doing something right.
Hunter stated playing at a young age, and bought his first guitar for seven dollars at age 12. He took guitar lessons with Joe Satriani before the latter became famous in his own right, and was just the neighborhood guitar teacher. Gigs with various bands around the Bay Area helped develop his style. An attraction to both the bass and guitar led Hunter to develop a seven-string hybrid that allowed him to play both parts simultaneously. He later added an 8th string, but not before taking off for Europe to hone his craft as a street musician.
Back in the states, he began his career in the Bay area, but the cost of living in the dot.com boom era and the opportunity to work with musicians at the next level enticed him to move to New York, where his career took off. He’s recorded over a dozen albums, in a variety of settings – duo, trio, quartet, quintet – and covering a variety of material and styles, drawing inspiration from the previous generation of jazz greats, but also from Nirvana and Bob Marley (from an interview on allaboutjazz.com):
AAJ: The fact that your music changes so much seems to say something about your listeners.
CH: Yeah, well you know I think that for anything you do, if you follow you’re true path–if you’re intention is to connect with the people that want to hear that–there are people out there who want to hear your music. There might not be five million, but there are people out there who want to hear what you’re doing, and will connect with your music. If you keep to your path you will eventually run into those people.
AAJ: Even if it’s different then the last project?
CH: Especially if it’s different because the audience, they keep up with me. They know what’s going on, and I’m not going to insult them or myself by playing with a band that I feel has already lived it’s purpose. I don’t want to have something out there like some ABBA reunion or anything. I want to keep the music fresh so that I’m always excited on the bandstand, and that translates into the audience being excited.
Want to hear for yourself? Here’s something you don’t see every day – three CD’s worth of free MP3 downloads, with downloadable cover art as well! Go get it!
And that album I was listening to? I enjoyed it (I don’t trouble you with the stuff I don’t like, LOL). You can hear clips on Amazon here; the consensus seems to be that this is an artist who has risen to the ranks of other great current jazz players like Scofield, Metheny, and Frisell. The allaboutjazz.com review is here.
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I mention the Tord Gustavsen trio this week for a very profound reason – it’s what happens to be in the CD player at the moment – then I had the brainstorm in the opening paragraphs…
This group is exploring a very different border than Charlie Hunter’s bands. When I first popped the CD in the player my reaction was to call it “tone poems for jazz trio.” I’ve toyed with the idea of calling small jazz combos the “chamber music of the 20th-21st century,” but I realized after hearing these guys that the allusion is totally inappropriate for most American jazz. It’s coming from someplace much too earthy for that rarified label. But in the case of the Tord Gustavsen trio, the label fits – the borderland they’re exploring, at last to my ear (and, to be fair, based on only one CD so far) is the borderland between jazz and classical music.
The CD is “The Ground”, and the group is composed of Norwegians Tord Gustavsen on piano, Harald Johnsen on bass, and Jarle Vespestad on drums. The biographies of the artists are available at the linked website. Interestingly, Gustavsen is completing a graduate degree in music, and a translation of his 45-page thesis proposal is available on line (the thesis itself is only available in Norwegian). The title is “The Dialectical Eroticism of Improvisation” and here is the first paragraph to give you a taste:
How does an improviser negotiate paradoxes involving the rationality of constructing musical structure and the “irrationality” of devotion and transcendence? How does he or she handle tensions between the intensity of the moment and the multidimensionality of the overall design of music over time? What are the relations between the need for controlling the music and the need for giving in to the music? What are the mechanisms of the sometimes paralyzing difficulties – and, on the other hand, of the possibilities for fulfillment and growth – facing improvisers in these dilemmas or fields of tension?
As you may have deduced, I liked this music but it’s not what I (perhaps naively) expected. I’m not sure how to describe it and do it full justice. I certainly expect to be listening to more, certainly to try and get my mind wrapped around what these guys are saying… the music is calm (daringly so, with nary a single peppy, uptempo number), serious, reserved, and to an American ear, formal. Many weeks ago I posed the question as to whether there is a difference between Canadian and US jazz, a different sound, a different sensibility, a clear sense that these are people saying something different. We never resolved that one, but I can answer that question, at least tentatively, for the Scandinavian jazz musicians I’ve heard – the answer is a resounding “Yes.”
And their label, ECM, claims that compared to others, they’re more influenced by American jazz than others (!! – I guess it’s relative, LOL):
Of the very many Norwegian artists that ECM has introduced over the years, Tord Gustavsen must count as one of the least “Nordic” in musical temperament. If the contemplative component of his music and its quietude still reflect Scandinavian priorities, the manner in which he has sought and located connections to early jazz – especially the blues, gospel music, and the nexus of Caribbean music and New Orleans jazz – is entirely his own. Tord Gustavsen is looking out at the tradition from a highly personal perspective, making sense of both his background as a Norwegian, and his enthusiasms as a jazz scholar and player.
It’s not that they’re playing classical forms, or in a classical style – there are the technical elements of jazz there, but used differently than a Charlie Hunter would. It’s the jazz of folks to whom the “American jazz canon” (to again use a much too lofty term) is foreign music. They don’t have rock or blues flowing in their veins in quite the same way, as far as I can tell. Not to say that’s bad; it’s just different, and so the jazz they produce is different, colored by their own experiences and musical / cultural background. These colors are pastel tints to an American, and there’s something in there of the shimmer of the northern lights and the hiss of wind blowing snow.
But judge for yourself; sound samples are available at their website.
Hard to put into words, but definitely worth listening to… like how you get a whole new perspective on watercolor as an art form when you go from looking at just Western watercolors to looking at Oriental watercolors as well.
Here’s what others have said:
“The Ground is uniformly beautiful, and the trio’s rigorously restrained playing is a complete marvel. I’ve already saved space at the top of my 2005 list for The Ground.” (JazzTimes, USA)
“.. a style full of implied meanings and inverted historical references. Contemplative but in no way spineless… this is a fine recording that rewards repeated listening.” (BBC Music Magazine, UK – * * * * for both sound and performance)
“Quiet, introspective jazz piano has rarely if ever been so flavorful or so, yes, compelling.
An artist to watch, Tord Gustavsen is one of the most intricate voices in jazz to emerge in many years.” (Stereophile Magazine, US – recording of the month May 2005)
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Exploring the Borderland
Any examples of pushing the limits, blending traditions, or other artistic endeavors on the borderlands you want to share tonight?