Earconnector - jazz, new music and other urgent matters

Steve has undoubtedly made everyone play out of their skins! I thought I knew, say, Gene’s (Calderazzo), Dave’s (Whitford), Phil’s (Robson) playing pretty well but for example on ‘Filles’ the sounds blend in a way that still surprises me . The energy level in the rhythm section is astounding; wild, extrovert, muscular and yet totally attuned and sensitised to what’s going on. I remember Phil commenting when we listened back that he couldn’t hear what was guitar and what was Rhodes. Mike Williams’ solo on ‘Home’ is a real emotional moment, you can hear a magnificent calmness about his playing, it’s Lacy-esques in the way that everything is suddenly distilled to its essence.

I still see myself coming into the control room because of a technical problem with my head phones and thinking we needed another take and then being overwhelmed of what I heard back. Although there’s a lot of written material, stuff I would have been familiar with, Steve’s presence seemed to have transformed all that which had been pre-conceived. It was as if I had never heard this music before; or that only now it made sense.

Phil said afterwards in the pub that he hadn’t heard Steve ever doing anything twice. ‘What was the Lacy lick?’ he said. I don’t think many of us had previously much witnessed inventiveness of this magnitude, I mean Steve just had developed this incredible open and unique repertoire of melodic possibilities, and he’s so free with it, prodigal and rare/careful at the same time. In retrospect I think that Steve wouldn’t have approached a recording session that differently to doing a gig. It’s basically the same gesture, aesthetically and methodologically: improvisation really means being in the process and moment of playing, loosened from the constraints of supplying the correct, pre-conceived information at the correct time. It’s probably coming from what I suppose Evan Parker means when he says that ‘the only practising of improvising one can do is either to improvise or to think about improvising’. 

I need to change all the time, once something works well I start thinking about the next thing. I have total faith in music that hasn’t happened yet. I’m on a life-long learning curve without the conviction that more knowledge necessarily produces better music; typically, each piece contains a slightly new lesson, each recording date and concert solves something and immediately produces new riddles and mysteries, but I’m pretty much at ease with these kinds of Sisyphean tasks. Paul Bley, an early hero of mine, says ‘don’t make a record that’s already in the shop’ so I’m always looking for documenting the spontaneous, the current, the relevant irrevocable feeling around and inside me and outside my reach, even if that means always having to go back to square one, to the blank canvas.

I think that in the making of ‘London Ear’ we felt freer, we had experienced ‘New Memories’, and quite a few concerts where the music had started to open up more and more. I think the key is allowing things to develop through playing, playing, playing. We had done some big festivals (Cheltenham, Manchester) but still the more or less regular Vortex gigs and things start to happen mostly where and when you don’t expect it.    

‘London Ear’ is a simple melody written with Steve’s sound and inflection in mind. Originally, I thought it would be just Steve and the rhythm section but when I played the opening figure of the accompaniment on the piano I heard the trombones going in opposite directions. So I orchestrated it for low brass and one low (lone) ranging saxophone (I run out of trombones) and skipped the piano playing.

‘Filles de Kilimanjaro’ is all about the spaces happening between the phrases. Traditionally, you’d create momentum with a chord cycle implying tension and resolution contours.  Here though, the melodies and the silences move the music along without the strictures of a fixed length. It’s more like feeling the pulse. It’s like breathing in and out. On Miles’ original recording from 1968 Herbie Hancock improvises an accompaniment to an imaginary solo. I always loved that bit on the record. When it came to playing the piece with my band I pretended that this was all part of the melody. Essentially, I looked to take in the original texture as much as possible and to envelop all this in a new timbre.

‘Slow is the Colour of Love’ has melodies simultaneously that happen with irregularity and tentative-ness, without being led by anyone in particular, only getting assured eventually, when things simplify, lighten and open up for improvising. It’s a through-composed piece, unfolding slowly and without repetitions. ‘I believe in happiness but not that it lasts’ says Michelangelo Antonioni. I hope things aren’t already decided.  

‘Braving the Elements’ first of all was about football in the winter season (here in England we say the league isn’t won in September). Formally, the piece is inspired by Thelonious Monk’s ‘Epistrophy’ a masterpiece of musical economy. I don’t remember any verbal communication with Steve about how to play on the piece; he knew what the piece was supposed to be immediately, he knew where to find it and then he took it elsewhere! 

‘Blame it on my Youth’ is an old standard, which I first heard on a Keith Jarrett trio record. I learnt the melody first, then took it out of the 32bar context and composed a completely new background for it. I ended up needing only one chorus, and just a little cadenza at the end, which Claus delivered beautifully. This arrangement is dedicated to Mike Gibbs.

‘Blinks’ is so Steve! It is basically just a little intro and an 8bar stanza-like figure but there is so much music to it. The possibilities are endless. (‘We can do a lot of blinking’ he said.) I composed 12 small fragmentary variations, which are cued in and thrown in among the duet – ing of him with Gene. He had sent me a lead sheet through the post before. It had a picture of Edward ‘Kid’ Ory on it. 

‘The Touch of your Lips’ stays within song form, with its beautiful original melody by Ray Noble. I completed the arrangement at a time when an old cassette of Shostakovich’s piano preludes and fugues was stuck in the tape machine in the kitchen, so you hear the odd harmonic interference (I started in Bb and ended up in E) but I think the overall feel is ballad, pure and simple.       

‘Home’ is based on this little idea I had that whenever I change a root note I don’t change the upper structure of melody and harmony, and vice versa. So I bumped into this 18 bar sequence. I wrote it on my father’s piano, which seems a lot brighter and still somewhat cooler than mine here in London. The piece starts off with a magnificent Mike Williams solo, then has the whole band playing a composed improvisation, and finishes with the vibrant soul mate Claus.  

‘Marshmallow’ is a line by Warne Marsh, based on the song ‘Cherokee’. I have always been massively into the Tristano thing; it was one of the first jazz I heard and got truly hooked on. I love the way the bar lines disappear. This arrangement is pretty straight - forward, except for the last chorus when one half of the horns start chasing the other half. 

‘Filles de Kilimanjaro’ (reprise) was the first thing we did in the studio. Normal procedure for me used to be to do a take and then another one for safety or simply for choice. I had no idea that Steve would turn the second take into a completely new piece, leaving me with no safe choice but to include it among the other pieces.

The mystery in music; the invisible art, the poetics in sound…the kind of thing that, as Bill Evans says, can be saved from the day and offered, shared; something special, precious, non-functional. I don’t need music to express anger or to represent what’s wrong with life. I’d like it to be a place where one relaxes invigoratingly, feels love (and things like that).

For the most part, it’s the musicians that inspire to write. They really are the source of inspiration; they make it all come alive. The music in my head isn’t all that exciting. It’s just the raw material. But, of course, the basic material is the stuff I deal with every day. Practising, learning melodies, exercises, rhythms, copying & pasting little ideas, expanding the thought…I’ve come to appreciate this routine. It’s keeping me sane.

As you know I love ‘the masters of brinkmanship’ (as Lacy put it) and I think this goes far beyond music.   

  

"London Ear" is available from http://www.jazzcds.co.uk/store/commerce.cgi?product=HansKoller

More about Hans Koller on http://www.hanskoller.com/

You can listen to 'Braving the Elements' 'Slow is the Colour of Love' and 'Home' here