Recent shows and reflections thereupon
Posted on | December 5, 2009 | 2 Comments
As you can tell from the infreqent and cursory nature of my recent posting activity, things have been pretty hectic, and I’ve been doing a lot of travelling to Seattle recently to prepare for (and finally play) our big show last Thursday night at the Columbia City Theater. I’m back in Portland for a solid month now, and without too many gigs am finally settling down to do what I hope will be a decent amount of composing and practicing, as well as getting ready for the holidays. In this post, I thought I would just recap a couple of shows that I’ve been involved in recently, and share some of my recent thoughts about the Portland jazz scene in the process.
Last night was a really fun gig over at Jimmy Mak’s with the Sam Howard Band opening for the new Ben Darwish Group. I’ve recently been in the studio for a few days with the Howard Band (which is Sam, myself, Scott Pemberton on guitar, and Russ Kleiner on drums), and it was great to get out and play a show after working up all the music for the recording. We had a great time, though the audience was talking a lot. This was interesting actually – I certainly found it to be frustrating but at the same time, as Scott pointed out, “maybe they were just talking the whole time about how great we were!” It was an interesting lesson in engaging the audience though, which is a consistent difficulty in improvised music. It was also educational in relation to Thursday night’s gig in Seattle with the Kora Band at the Columbia City Theater, which was really a great success in many ways, and in which we managed to really draw the audience along with us as the set progressed.
Mark DiFlorio, the kora band’s drummer, and I had an interesting conversation about this very topic after the gig and he expressed a feeling that we succeeded that night in engaging the audience by a sort of magical blend of individual phrasing and group tightness – certainly I’ve been very happy of late with the progression of the group sound, especially since we commited our repertoire to memory in October, but there is, as I was alluding to above, some mysterious element in whether or not the audience is engaged in an improvised solo. Playing a solo with phrasing that is easily digestable by the audience is really a challenge, especially after jazz school tought many of us to play the “hippest” thing in a more technical sense, and seemed in some ways anyway to de-emphasize the importance of melodies that can be latched on to in jazz soloing. In fact, the other day I was speaking with John Hollenbeck, who graciously gave me a ride from Seattle to Portland after his gig up there at Earshot, and his response to the issue was: “The most important thing is just to keep in mind that you are ALWAYS playing a melody.”
I would also like to send some kudos over to Ben Darwish (whose new website is also killing by the way), for putting on a great show last night with his new group, featuring many of our finest local talents, Tim Willcox on sax, Bill Athens on bass, and Randy Rollofson on drums. Everyone really was playing at their best, and Ben’s tunes are always clever and fun to listen to. The group seems to have developed a band-specific vibe really quickly, as this was their first full show together. Ben has also been adding some tasty vocals in, which brings me to my final point, which I’ve been thinking a lot about recently. As I and many of my peers in town (and friends elsewhere, for that matter) are getting a bit older, I am really starting to see a positive progression in the direction of stylistic individuality. On one had, we have always all sounded in some capacity like ourselves, but certainly for me as I get farther away from jazz school and from my youthful brand of excitement, I feel that my playing, composing, and bandleading are finally moving in a natural direction based heavily on my tastes in music. It feels very logical to pursue as a player the types of music that move me as a listener, and I have been noticing a lot of this type of motion in the scene. Chris Mosley’s new album, for example, is quite a step from his previous one, which was great but certainly more in a jazz vein than his beautiful and atmospheric new release (which you should all check out if you haven’t heard it!). I had similar thoughts listetning to Ben’s new group last night. One of the things that I feel is great about being a musician today is this sort of ability to honestly pursue one’s musical interests to whatever end it may lead, and it’s great to see it happening right here in Portland.
I’m really looking forward to 2010, which promises to be a great year for many of my projects, and I’ll attempt to keep a bit more activity up here on the site as well. Meanwhile, before New Years, there’s still the Sextet/Reptet gig at the Doug Fir, a Duff’s Garage hit with Bridgetown, and a night of Zimbabwean music at Hip Bone Studios – more on all that coming soon!
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December 6th, 2009 @ 11:18 am
[...] be fun. We’re playing with the amazing Andrew Oliver Sextet (check out Andrew’s Blog here and his myspace page here). We’ve never played at the Doug Fir before, but have heard a lot [...]
December 9th, 2009 @ 10:36 am
Hey Andrew,
Been meaning to comment on this one for the last few days but my internet has been down. First of all, thanks for the compliments on my group. We still have a long ways to go but I also think that the vibe came together well for the first set. I was talking to Sam yesterday about the loud audience. It didn’t seem to bother him very much, but honestly, it ruined the set for me. I was about to get up on stage and say something, but at the same time, didn’t want to impose on Sam’s gig. Sam’s music, is by nature, slow music. I don’t think the audience was ready or patient enough to listen to an hour and a half of slow music. I would recommend constructing the set with that in mind or having some uptempo tunes to mix in. This has been something that Sam and I have disagreed upon in the past. Ultimately it’s up to him but I would also use the last gig as a learning experience. At the beginning of my set, I simply told people to shut up and that seemed to work nicely.
Thanks,
- Ben