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I find myself caught between two different worlds as I learn piano. I love pop songs and rock, but I also love jazz. One day I want to learn a Beatles tune, and the next I want to be able to play harmonies like Bill Evans (which I'll never be able to do).

For me there's room for both, but I've often speculated about why jazz seems to no longer connect with a truly wide audience. I think it might have something to do with the transition of jazz in the 40's to (mostly) instrumental music that you can't dance to. I love the innovations of bebop and the emphasis on virtuoso playing and all the jazz that followed, but without a singer and/or a danceable rhythm jazz became a different kind of listening experience. Mass audiences want to either sing along to simpler melodies or else move their bodies and rock and roll and pop took over that role.

Hmm, I think he's onto something here. I think of myself as a pretty educated listener with wide-ranging and eclectic tastes, but when I listen to a lot of modern jazz I feel the musicians prioritize showing off their chops to other musicians over connecting with me as a listener.

This seems weird to me, since I like music which challenges my expectations. My general taste is for live music, or live recordings, as in in-person, interacting musicians, not studio/sample magic, and jazz retains that value. Perhaps part of why I love earlier jazz is because I strongly favor music with acoustic instruments, but I think it's also because it's good-time, reckless party music -- for its era, it was really pushing the boundaries, and dancing on the edge of chaos -- but dancing there.

I won't bother to dance to anything as predictable as most modern pop (my favorite dance band ever was the Art Ensemble of Chicago, if that says anything...), but there is some essence of danceability which I require for music to speak to me. If you were to limit me to a single genre of music, I would choose World acoustic indigenous musics, but I'd argue hard that early Black American jazz fit into that genre. And I think I'd choose this genre because it would give me the interesting tonalities and unusual rhythms and strange acoustic timbres that I crave, while also retaining the primal human connection to rhythm & dance.

Jazz, including jazz piano, is doing great in Albuquerque. We have the New Mexico Jazz Workshop, which does a huge amount of education and outreach in addition to sponsoring concerts. The Outpost Performance Space brings in world-class jazz and other performers, and hosts summer jazz festivals. High schools have superb jazz bands. My husband's Brazilian jazz band plays to enthusiastic, knowledgeable audiences. We have fine players coming out of the woodwork, and although it's hard, as always, to make a living, they all seem to be performing regularly and getting paid.

Geoff, I am completely mystified by your reference to a "colored jazz musicians club." The word "colored" has not been current for decades.... Your part of the country must be very, very different from mine. (Unless the jazz club was painted fuchsia or something.)

Elene

Elene- Buffalo is very segregated, but this particular part of buffalo is downtown almost into east side. It's been there for decades, I'm sure that's why the name stuck. It's a brick building with an almost mural like piece painted on the side with a piano and people jammin', it's actually pretty cool! I just live somewhat of a drive away from it.

and that's good to hear, the reason I posted this is because I want to go on a road trip to a very Jazz influence town or city, walk around, enjoy the local jazz music and such.

The four main species of jazz:
1. Jazz Stars.
2. Academia/Preservationists.
3. Small Clubs/Jam Sessions/The Streets.
4. Restaurant Jazz.

Having settled into what you would call a restaurant Jazz player I speak from that personal experience. I KNOW THIS TO BE TRUE

[QUOTE]HooDoo
{I've often speculated about why jazz seems to no longer connect with a truly wide audience. I think it might have something to do with the transition of jazz in the 40's to (mostly) instrumental music that you can't dance to. I love the innovations of bebop and the emphasis on virtuoso playing and all the jazz that followed, but without a singer and/or a danceable rhythm jazz became a different kind of listening experience. Mass audiences want to either sing along to simpler melodies or else move their bodies and rock and roll and pop took over that role.}

I think over the years looking back this is exactly what has happen. Unless you are a Jazz star most just want to relate to you and your music when you’re playing. Basically what we call background Jazz. Do we have to dumb it down? Or smooth it out? Play less challenging music? Or stay true to what we feel, hear, and know? Somewhere there is middle ground for folks like us. If you want to eat and pay bills playing music for a living learning on how to read an audience or the room you’re going to play is important. One of the most important things to remember is when you are hired to play music it is not about your talent it’s about fulfilling your contract or agreement with their needs be met first and then yours. Listen as best you can and try and determine what the customer really wants and if you can fulfill the requirements go for it.

[QUOTE] geoff preston
Jazz is pure emotion; every member of a trio to an orchestra has an important role in capturing the feel and the sound of the song.

When I first started playing music professionally my only concern was about me how does it sound, are me and the others cats hanging, are we getting it right? Not to mention the four to five choruses each member took during solos. Maybe if your Chick or Keith, or Herbie or of that caliber and you are in a concert setting you can and are expected to do that type of soloing with cutting edge changes and new material of fresh takes on older tunes. But if you are playing at restaurant while people are eating and trying to converse it doesn’t work. They get ear fatigue hearing all those solo’s and tired of trying to figure out just what the heck is that tune you are playing. I started playing in my own restaurant 10 years ago and we have quite a following and just about every time we play the place is pack. It took a while before I really started thinking about the audience and their needs. This year I decided to play Memorial Day Weekend everybody knows that in Phoenix by May 24th most folks are still trying to acclimate to the heat so I knew it would be slow. But I gave my best during season and felt this gig was for me. Well the Suns made the playoffs and game 5 was the same night and it was a ghost town in the restaurant that night. But I knew this was the perfect night for tunes like Speak no Evil, Dolphin Dance, FEE FI FO FUM, Windows and such and it was great. I was high on the music for a month after that plus since I always record I can always go back and relive a great night of music. By the way When Sonny Get’s Blue was the nicest sounding cut of the night on the recording and that was after we played the more modern tunes and threw everything but the kitchen sink it to those tunes. There is a very well know musician here in Phoenix and said I needed to start looking for and appreciate magical music moments because unless the whole night wasn’t the way I felt it should sound I WAS FRUSTRADED and this was coming out in my playing. Plus the audiences pick up on this or arrogance. No Jazz is alive and doing very well IN PHOENIX.

Every member of a trio to an orchestra has an important role in making sure your audience CAN RELATE TO YOUR MUSIC and if they can’t connect with you or the music well they just give up and don’t come back. Maybe that is what has been happening?
DPVJAZZ

Good post all around. I was actually thinking today of posting on this thread that there are two types: Restaurant Jazz and The Streets (I would have not thought of those words of course), but your four categories are better.



There is one direction of jazz that seems almost intentionally to be esoteric to the point of being emotionally inaccessible. A lot of Brad Mehldau is accessible but some of his pieces are computer-like and distant in this way.

Somebody recently posted some compositions on PW forums which had this same quality. Something in common with Bach but dynamically flat as if written by a computer. I can't imagine that style being played for an audience other than one made of quite musically literate listeners. I'm still undecided as to whether I like it a lot. I find it attractive just because it is new and different and breaks the mold.

Charleslang- I actually listened to him (Brad Mehldau) for the first time today, I love the drummer (there's youtube videos up of him covering a radiohead song, the drumming is "catchy"). But I'm not sure what you mean by "computer like". Also, I was watching on youtube videos of highschool jazz bands, and it was very out of control, I couldn't grasp the music (only in certain parts.) So you're saying nowadays the direction of jazz is emotionally inaccessible?

I agree!

It seems to me that at any given time there are several directions being played out, so I wouldn't commit to saying that the direction of jazz is toward the inaccessible. But there is definitely a kind of direction towards what feels like deconstruction (in the Derridaian sense). Just like deconstruction in philosophy is supposed to lead to a state of open doubt, or aporia, and a loss of confidence in any original meaning of the deconstructed text, this direction in jazz renders meaningless the charisma of older jazz forms. Here is the piece by Mehldau that first made me think this is so:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XPJYjVOH4GM

There appears to be a vibrant jazz scene in my part of the world. Close by cities of Victoria and Vancouver have many ongoing events and jazz festivals. Even the small community where I live has weekly jazz performances, with many artists coming to visit and numerous jazz musicians on island.
Last night I went to a very special performance of Adrian Iaies trio from Buenos Aries here on the little island I live on. Adrian on piano, shone with brilliance and his drummer Pepi Taveira, was amazing. Later this week we are having our own local jazz festival.

I wish I could share your enthusiasm Dara but from where I stand, the jazz scene out west is hurting pretty badly for musicians. I guess maybe as a spectator there may be some good opportunities to go out and hear jazz. But many of my musician friends from BC often lament how few gigs there are playing jazz and therefore get stuck playing a lot of insipid pop music gigs just to make a living. There's only one 'real' jazz club in all of Vancouver--the Cellar. It's one thing to have a place to go hear jazz regularly but a whole other scenario being a jazz musician trying to make a living.

AJF, in between one of his pieces in last nights concert, Adrian translated from his native tongue, into English, a rather humorous saying from his culture.

a musicians life is hard
but working is worse

His trio is playing tonight at the club you mentioned in Vancouver, the Cellar.
Anyone living in Vancouver, I highly recommend to catch this performance.

I think working as a musician in general is becoming much tougher. I've talked to older musicians from both LA area and my home country and they all told me how much better it was for them back then, and how they could actually make a good living playing music. A lot of them told me they were making more money 20 years ago then they are now.

I really don't think the quality and quantity of good players hasn't really changed.. in fact I wouldn't be surprised if there are more good players now then 30 years ago. One of the jazz club owner here said that the quality of musicians here are getting better and better, but performance situation is becoming more worse, and I am guessing that's how it's like for a lot of places right now.

Charleslang

Yea, that's a great point about jazz and post-modernism. I think jazz now day is much more fragmented, with now single defining movement. It's like it's going in 8 different directions at the same time. I kind of like the idea that a lot of the younger players are challenging what jazz is supposed to be. It's much more acceptable to do a jazz arrangement of pop songs than it was 20-39 years ago, and frankly I like it when people cover pop artists like Elliot Smith, because I grew up listening to that music.

As I live in Vancouver, I tend to agree. I know of several local jazz pros who have moved to Toronto and New York to find work. Honestly I am not a big fan of the Cellar, it's a cool little spot but they have made it too upscale. But I understand that is necessary to keep the business alive.

O'Doul's is a great place to hear jazz, but I wonder how much the musician can even make as the restaurant doesn't charge cover. Almost all the pros here supplement their income with teaching or pop based gigs.


If you are a diehard jazz fan you can find shows, but far less compared to Seattle where they have the Jazz Alley and tons more big name players go there simply because it's in the USA.

Top name jazzers rarely come up to Vancouver apart from the annual festival. I can only think of Diana Krall and Michael Buble ( who I consider mainstream) but they are from BC and Krall does alot of charity based shows here.

Keith Jarrett hasn't been here in close to 10 years, Wayne Shorter I'd love to see but he never comes. Branford Marsalis I saw in the mid 90's as a student but I don't think he's been back.

In reality being a full-time jazz musician is financial very difficult unless you achieve stardom.

AJF, how's the scene in TO right now? I know the Top O' the Senator and Montreal Bistro closed a few years ago. Wonder if it's as much of a struggle as in the West.

AJF
do you know either the cats known as Adam Arruda or Brian Chahley? As far as I know, they are the top of TO's young jazz talent.

I think it's perfectly evident why jazz isn't doing as well as it should be doing...
Alot of jazz musicians want to play SERIOUS jazz. Hard jazz. Modal jazz. Bebop. Hard bop. Stuff like that.

Most of the public just wants to hear Diana Krall, Rick Braun, and Kenny G.

sad, really...

Toronto is pretty tough right now. There's the Rex which pays decently and then there are a number of other places that range from zero paying ' door' gigs to a very minimal guarantee and a 'pass the hat' option (which I hate, it feels like begging)
There ARE a lot of clubs that are featuring jazz but very few that pay like the Senator did--or Montreal Bistro. Pay aside, they were just beautiful rooms to play in. I've been relatively fortunate because I've managed to get hooked up with a couple of bands that do some touring in US and Europe and I have a teaching gig at York University. If I were trying to make a living playing only in Toronto without the teaching to supplement income, I'd be seriously struggling to make ends meet.
That being said, I love what i do. I get to play and teach music for a living. How awesome is that? I guess it's all in how you choose to look at it all...

Yeah. I've played with both those guys. Adam is exceptional. He sounds like a young Tony Williams. Brian hasn't been in Toronto for a few years. Good player too. There are a few young horn players here who are really exceptional world class players. There's no shortage of monster players in Toronto--young and old. It's just a shame that Torontonians don't support live music like they used to.

Even Miles Davis said "don't call it jazz, call it music." He knew to capture the mainstream audience he would have to cater to them. Yet he played jazz harder than anyone.

Herbie Hancock's last few albums are pretty much all pop based, with him doing collaborations with guys like John Mayer, Pink, Seal, Sting. Even his River album, which won Grammy of the year had Norah Jones, Joni Mitchell, Tina Turner. OK it had Wayne Shorter too but unless you read the liner notes you wouldn't have known. His playing was toned down far more than his usual stuff.

That's just life in the music world now. Shows like American Idol makes stars out of Susan Boyle, and Lady Gaga is on every magazine cover, but the real talents are toiling away somewhere.

Wizard,
C'est la vie. I know it sucks.
AJF
Adam and Brian are both good friends of mine. I don't play jazz much-I'm more of a classical pianist, but I have a many friends in jazz. We jokingly argue about which scene is worse these days... Certainly both are suffering do to the recent extreme success of mass-produced pop music.
One close friend of mine, who is doing a degree down at Berklee in jazz guitar, is so fed up with the way he feels things are going (people having to dumb-down in order to get heard, basically), that he doesn't even want to try to do jazz professionally.

All he wants to do is become a back up guitarist for greenday, or some other joke band... and he loves jazz as much as anyone I know...