Music for life - OAE, Mozart & Sir Simon Rattle at the RFH

Tuesday 29th January. Orchestra of the Age of Englightenment conducted by Sir Simon Rattle. Royal Festival Hall. London. 

The last two and a half years my listening and playing have been a whirlwind start to a mighty voyage of musical discovery. Jazz, for me, is where my ears and soul are at right now. It's a journey that's simultaneously like coming home.

My musical life didn't start here.

The first piece of music I remember being able to name is the third movement of the Mozart's Symphony No 41. The minuetto allegretto. I probably heard this in the womb. It was, I'm told, my older brother's favourite piece of music when I was very small. Blame the Wombles, I do. By the time I was old enough to be paying attention to such things we had moved on to the "grown up" orchestral version as well.

My parents love Mozart. The famous late Mozart symphonies (38,40,41) have always been part of the fabric of my listening. There was a vinyl LP that had 40 on one side and 41 on the other. I can picture the dark green cover. I appropriated it and timed my homework to it. One of the first Compact Discs I bought (back when CDs were newfangled) was  Jane Glover conducting the London Mozart Players playing those two symphonies.

Amid the many stupid things I've done in my life, admitting to liking Mozart to my school peers was one of the dumbest. It became yet another stick they used to bully me. The vicious (supposedly inverted) musical snobbery of teenagers can be punishing. It's not cool. 

It didn't put me off Mozart. I'm not sure anything could. His music is an abiding love. 

I booked tickets for this gig 9 or so months ago. By the time it came to going I'd forgotten who was conducting and where I was sitting. So both Sir Rattle and the Choir were a surprise (I'm a muppet). Yes, in the choir you do not get an entirely 'balanced' sound. Especially not if you're sitting directly behind the Timpani. Do I care? No. I paid £9 and was closer to the orchestra than I would have been in the front row. And it was lovely.  Just blimmin lovely. The joy of 41 leaving with me a big grin on my face. The whirling joie de vivre of that minuetto. :oD. A concert that was like snuggling into a velvety, fluffy, dressing gown with a cup of tea. Right. Like a well done sum.*

This may all have started with those Wimbledon based recycling gurus (who were well before their time, environmentally). But their advice on many things holds good.

Womble to your partners
Young wombles were told
If you minuetto allegretto
You will live to be old.

Weeeheeehehehe

And so, also jazz. What can I say? I guess only that I choose to construe minuetto allegretto broadly.
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*Sylvia Plath "You're...."

Five lessons capoeira has taught me about jazz.

Lesson #1

When I'm asked what capoeira is, or what I think it is, I usually say this:

To me, it's a game played inside a groove.

I might expand on that and say it's a physical and musical game that combines elements of rhythm, song, fight, dance, acrobatics, and clowning.

There are two words for "play" in Portuguese. 1) Tocar (to play a musician instrument) and 2) Jogar (to play a game). You will have to bear with my rubbish written Portuguese.

Quando eu toco berimbau eu jogo capoeira tambem. 

When I play (meaning 1) berimbau, I play (meaning 2) capoeira as well.

Eu toco piano. Eu jogo jazz. 

Climb inside the groove. Play.

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Lesson #2

I was a total dunce at PE in school. I have  been learning capoeira for 10 years. I'm still crap at it. I just don't care. Every tiny little scrap of improvement has been hard won. I can't spin on my little finger or do back flips. There are basic moves I still struggle with. I have been immensely lucky in training with teachers who have not made an issue out of the slow speed of my progress. If you'd told me 10 years ago that I'd be able to do some of the moves I can now do. I wouldn't have believed you. Part of me still doesn't.

I feel like a musical dunce a lot of the time and I have to work, methodically and slowly at lots of aspects of learning jazz piano. I have to apply all the resources of intelligence and persistence I can muster. I have, at best, a gift for picking up information and concepts quickly. But the actual execution of jazz improvisation in real time. I am toiling at every scrap of progress.

Age 18 I stopped playing piano. I had failed a violin exam and after that barely scraped passes in piano exams. Stage fright blocking my way. If you'd told me, 18 years ago, that I'd learn to improvise one day. I wouldn't have believed you. Two and a bit years ago I started a jazz course. I thought I might be able to learn enough about chords etc to be able to play something simple from chord symbols. It simply didn't occur to me that I might be able to improvise. Not even in my wildest dreams, my most passionately optimistic fantasies. It was simply something other people did. Not me. I got lucky again. I'd found another remarkable teacher.

I am by no means a fluent, competent, confident improviser. But I have already traveled so far in that direction that it makes my head spin. It shakes loose something in the fundamentals of who I think I am. This is exciting, and terrifying.

What seems impossible is sometimes only improbable. With hard work the improbable becomes more probable. 

You do not have to be good at something to enjoy doing it. 

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Lesson #3

Pay attention to how far you've come as well as how far you have to go. We focus, in music especially, on how much more there is to learn. On other players who are 'better' than us, or more advanced. We worry about the "Grade we're on". We want to play like our heroes. It's good to keep looking forward and upwards to want to be the best you can. But it's like climbing a mountain. You get up a steep slope and find a plateau and then another ridge beyond which is probably another plateau. The mountain is endless.

From time to time turn round and look back. Look back at how far away the base camp is now. Pause. Enjoy the achievement so far. Take in the view. Then, and only then, turn your attention back to the climb.

Pay attention to what you can do today that you couldn't do yesterday, or last week. Even the smallest thing.

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Lesson #4

You think you know, because someone tells you, or whatever, what capoeira is. You set off on a journey towards that thing. When you get there you hear that it's actually somewhere else. And so on and so on. And everybody tells you something different. Your picture is a composite. So is everyone else's.

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Lesson #5

Sometimes the stars get aligned. You find yourself completely in the moment. There is no past. There is no future. There is only the now and you, and the groove, and the friend you are playing. You have left your troubles behind. You see opportunities you wouldn't normally see. You find yourself doing moves you didn't know you could do. You are more than the sum of all your parts.

It hasn't happened when I've been playing the piano, yet. But I can see it in other musicians. I can hear it. I can taste it. It is something that happens, sometimes, where groove and improvisation meet. It has many names.

One of them, is freedom.

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New Year’s Resolution #40,000,307: write your impressions of gigs and put them somewhere public they can be safely ignored.  

A recent BBC radio 4 programme asked the recurring question “Is Jazz Dead?”. The programme itself and a corner of the internet where I like to hang out responded with a fairly resounding “No!”

This is my tuppence worth, as a regular jazz audience member. From where I’m sitting, unless wellbeing is measured solely in terms of vast, in your face, commercial success, Jazz looks perky enough. Health, in the case of the arts, seems to require a balance be struck between solvency and creativity. If you were to measure jazz’s state solely in terms of creativity and commitment then, to quote many a pulpish portrayal of Frankenstein, “IT’S ALIIIIIIIIVE!”

To my ears, anyway. I cannot speak for yours.

In fact, Jazz may well be hanging out, having a pint and bringing some of the UK’s ablest musicians and most active composers to your local pub or small venue. Entrance often costs a mere £5 - £8. For less than a typical London cinema ticket you can have at once complex yet accessible music and a nice drink. Win. The downside is that I find the anticipation of walking into a pub on my own a smidge less than comfortable. The voice of propriety speaks loudly in my head: “nice gels do not go into pubic houses alone”. Yesterday, this non-hurdle nearly put me off. But I bravely ventured through the cold to The Salisbury on Green Lanes to see Compassionate Dictatorship.

I have now run out of blather. I now have to write about the music. Which is where I come unstuck. I must reiterate that these are my ‘impressions’. Forgive me if I descend into pretentiousness hereafter.

Perhaps it was the slightly scuffed red walls with broken flower fluted lampshades sprouting at intervals. Perhaps it was the glass of red wine. Perhaps it was the real fire and the cheery welcome from the gig organiser on the door. But the word that sprang to mind on the way home was amniotic. If one can have an amniotic groove? Surprisingly mellow given that the website promised everything up to and including rock wig outs. Amniotic infused with a sense that something much, much, filthier was being gestated. Filthy as in funkier, harder edged. I suspect this had a lot to do with the intricate subtlety of the drumming which broadened into even more intricate soloing. Bassist and bass, a partner dance, man and instrument. An arresting solo that opened with fading dynamics on a single note – reminiscent to me of the reverb on the opening chord of a thumping reggae* choon. That moment where your cervical spine lets go sending your head towards your feet, nodding. A solo that ran out of steam and into a wry smile just before the apparent finishing line. The guitar and tenor sax lines were melodic, grounded in, bouncing off, floating over the rhythm section, sometimes all of these verbs  at once. A moment of Balkan inflection, appropriately enough, on a tune that, according to the banter, told the tale of woe involving an Eastern European beat-boxer. An arrangement of a Joni Mitchell (I think, help, my memory of events less than 12 hours ago has faded). If I have a minor gripe then it’s that the saxophone microphone might have been underused. I wanted to hear even more of the lovely melodies. Overall a tight unit with no single player overwhelming the whole.

Compassionate Dictatorship: Jez Franks (Guitar, compositions), Tori Freestone (Sax, compositions), Jasper Høiby (Bass) and James Maddren (drums). 

http://www.compassionatedictatorship.co.uk/

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Added bonus 25% of the band is female. An instrumental jazz rarity. Yay! And yes, this was part of my reason for going. Because one thing I figure I can do about the small numbers of women instrumentalists playing jazz is to find out about their music, and if I like the sound of what I find out - go to their gigs and buy their CDs. Which in no way means I'm going to stop going to gigs with men or stop buying their CDs. Just that I'm going to take "women in jazz" as a jumping off point for exploring more often. 

* I hear this word in my mind in Brazilian Portuguese pronunciation as “heggae”. Just so you know.