While I was at the Banff workshop this last spring, there was a lot of discussion of bodily tension and relaxation.  I felt that this was particularly relevant to me, as I was still working through some tendonitis issues even at the workshop itself, though I have fortunately resolved them almost completely since then.  Nonetheless, many of the faculty discussed the inevitable issues of bodily injury as a musician, and as several months have gone by since then for the ideas to gestate, I have some new thoughts on the issue that I hope will spark some interest and/or discussion.

Bassist Matt Penman presented one of the most intriguing clinics of the workshop in which he discussed his intense metronome-based practice regimen and the importance of having good time.  It became clear in the course of the workshop that not only does he have phenomenal time, but he has an amazing ability to be relaxed while playing any style, tempo, or feel.  An important part of his practice regimen involved putting the metronome at its slowest setting and working on fitting between 1 and 12 notes evenly between each very slow click.  At the time, I could clearly see many benefits of this regimen in the development of a good time feel, but after watching him play at that week’s faculty concert, I began to realize that his amazing ability to remain calm and collected even in the most musically exciting moments was likely related to this type of practicing in which one is not only developing a strong sense of time, but also an ability to conceptualize everything based on the “least common denominator”, that is, breaking even the fastest tempos or most complex meters down to the simplest and slowest beat and conceptualizing everything else in relation to that slow pulse.

This is a concept which my long-time teacher and mentor Randy Porter emphasized to me many times when I was somewhat too young and excitable to really understand what he was talking about.  When I was at PSU, Darrell Grant presented it in a somewhat different way – he would often discuss the importance of remaining “one step detached” from what you are playing, so that you can conceive of the entire arc or shape of the solo you are playing while playing it, which can be, in my experience, one of the first things to go when I become totally invested in a solo.

Back to Banff, pianist/keyboardist Adam Benjamin, in his typical wisdom, summed everything up very nicely when he said: “You don’t have to have tension in your body to create tension in your music.”  For the past month or so, I have been trying to keep this in mind while playing.  I find myself almost unable to remain relaxed in musically tense and exciting moments, and the other day I realized that part of this tendency comes from physically tensing up while listetning to exciting pieces of music as well – obviously the intent of the music is coming across and affecting me as the composer/performer intended, but it is a strange quagmire to be in as a musician myself!

I do not have a definitive solution to this problem other than continued awareness of it, but I am certain that remaining more relaxed physically while playing is certainly an important element of progressing as a pianist, and more than that, I am fascinated by the contradiction between physical relaxation on the part of the musician and tension on the part of the audience, and the cerebral/phyiscal divide therein – the musician knows mentally what will create excitement and tension in the audience, but must execute it without him/herself becoming tense.

Anyone have thoughts on this?

Matthew Berrill, an Irish clarinetist who I met in Banff, decided to do a short “Northwest Tour” afterward, visiting Vancouver BC, Seattle, and Portland.  In Seattle, Chad McCullough put together a quintet to play some reflective music he wrote at Banff with me, Matt, a bassist named Devin, and John Bishop on drums.  We did a short recording session, the fruits of which I hope to share with everyone soon…when Matt made it down to Portland, we also had a mini-house concert in my backyard, which was amazing!  The lack of venues in Portland these days, and increasing number of fantastic players (Chris Lawrence, for example just moved here last month and is killin!), is leading me (and some others) to want to do something about it!  One solution are small house concerts, of which I hope the recent one won’t be the last – even the neighbors I thought we might be annoying were enthusiastic and stopped by!

Meanwhile, I am organizing the summer PJCE concert on July 10 – the first rehearsal last night was very promising – lots of great new music in a variety of styles, as usual.

I don’t really have a concise wrap-up of Banff events and subsequent thoughts, but hopefully I can craft one soon.  Meanwhile, Dave Douglas has a nice section of his blog on it here, and Adam Benjamin (who was on faculty the first week), has written a nice post today as well which is very wise and succinct and deals with many of the reasons that Banff seems to be somewhat more successful than many other endeavors in jazz education.

More to come, and more freqently, I promise!  Thanks for reading.

Many great things have happened this week – master classes with Hank Roberts and Edmar Castaneda were definately highlights as well as having the opportunity to play a gig with Don Byron at the Club last night, performing music he wrote for string trio and rhythm section + sax and clarinet – it was a great experience and great music.

On Wednesday, the EPIC sextet finally recorded in the studio – we put down some amazing tracks and some mediocre ones, but it was a great pleasure to get to record the material and hopefully we can move forward with a tour with that band next summer.

I have been hanging out with Marshall Gilkes, trombonist who is on faculty this week, quite a bit.  We had a nice session today with Pat, Tyson, and the 2 Chads (Chad Lefkowitz-Brown and Chad McCullough – who, amazingly, have the same birthday!)

Matt Berrill, an Irish clarinetist, is going to come down to Seattle and Portland to hang out next week – he has a couple weeks of vacation booked after the workshop.  Hopefully we’ll get to do some playing and maybe recording with him.

Matt, Chad McC, Tyson, and myself went on a fascinating hike last Sunday to a place called the Ink Pots.  These are freaky pools produced by cold underground springs that have a very high mineral content and are therefore various colors of blue and green.  It was a fascinating hike:

Our time here is nearly at an end.  I am very excited to go home, being somewhat burned out and overwhelmed with information and lack of sleep, but it has been a remarkable experience which has tought me many important lessons both musical and nonmusical and has given me the opportunity to meet and hang out with many great musicians from all over the world, many of whom I hope to connect with in the future.  When I get home I will post some more pictures, thoughts, and info on what has happened up here as well as continue to post my various thoughts/tirades/etc up here for your reading and (hopefully) thought-provoking enjoyment.

The first week was dominated by discussions of straight ahead and modern jazz contexts, this week has been much more focused on free improvisation and new composition techniques. This, I think, was an excellent decision on Dave’s part to program faculty with different specialties in each week – and I am very curious to see what next week is like!

My attempt to climb tunnel mountain daily failed, but I did fit it in 3 out of the 5 days. Here’s a view of Mt. Rundle from Thursdsay and a view of Banff from yesterday’s hike:

There were many many gigs this week.  As Dave mentioned the other day, we have all basically been going 24/7 for 2 weeks.  With a group of 60 amazing musicians, this produces a lot of music!  This week I participated in:

1.  Filles De Banff – a group dedicated to the vibe of the classic Miles Davis album “Filles de Kilimanjaro” featuring me, Tyson, Ron Hynes (Newfoundland) on bass, Chad McCullough (Seattle) on trumpet, and Eric Trudel (Baltimore) on tenor.  We played the Wednesday noon concert outside the Music and Sound Building:

2. Seventh Hell – A band which plays mostly really hard tunes in 7, with Tyson, Willie Wrinkle (Texas) on bass, Matthew Berrill (Ireland) on clarinet, and Miro Herak (Slovakia) on vibes.  We played a great show last night at the club, including a version of my rather diffcult and epic tune “Inattentive Attendant”.

3. The Sulphur Mountain Ensemble – Organized by Ben Dietschi of Toronto, this is a group with violin, viola, cello, bass, piano, drums, and sax.  We played a show last night as well at the club, which, though not particularly well rehearsed, came of very nicely.  Even the venerable Tony Malaby was impressed with our ability to pull it off with very little rehearsal (read: 45 minutes), which was very gratifying.

Speaking of which, Tony Malaby is an amazing musician and has provided lots of insight for me and many of us as to how to practice improvisation outside of a straight ahead context.  Before being a musician, he was a painter, and his concept is very visual: “While he plays the pointillistic ideas here, why don’t you float a cloud over it…” etc.

And before I head to town for some food (a relief from the dining hall, which is excellent, but one can only tolerate for so long), I wanted to mention that I have enjoyed getting to know Ron Samworth as well – a great Vancouver BC-based improvising guitarist who gave a workshop on how to cultivate a “local scene”, something I have been trying to do for some time in Portland with the Portland Jazz Composers Ensemble, among other projects.

And so it continues!  More to come.  Faculty concert tonight followed by a late night series of performances at the club, and much more next week.  I promise to post more frequently!

Angelica Sanchez and Tony Malaby’s clinic on open improvistaion yesterday was amazing, as was Ben Street’s discussion of accepting your own voice…more on all that later. For now I have to go shed this Slovak traditional tune that Miro (the vibes player) brought in….

Also we did our “Filles de Banff” performance at lunch yesterday, pictures coming later today and more info…

Opening were 2 student groups, one which was huge, and played very well together despite the massive amount of people (Dave details the instrumentation and setlists at his blog) – it reminded me of some of the stuff we have done with Sound for the Organization of Society, but perhaps a bit more tasty and less raucous – they did a great live improvisation to a film (perhaps another participant reading this can leave a comment with the name of the film? I don’t know what it was).

Anyway the whole evening was great, the faculty concert was inspiring and reminded me again of how professional these guys are and how much great music they can produce while remaining at least externally calm – though speaking with Matt Penman afterward he admitted being really excited “on the inside” – still they all have the ability to be precise and accurate and, as Adam Benjamin said, make the audience tense up and relax without tensing up and relaxing themselves.  Definatley another level altogether…

Afterward was a great hang in the music&sound building complete with a performance by SHITROCK, the newest student conflagaration:

Sunday myself, Tyson, Chad, Christian, and Olivier (2 Belgians) went up Sulphur Mountain.  It was an AMAZING and difficult hike with unbelievable views and we were able to take the Banff Gondola down for free, which was awesome!  Here are some pictures and a video to enjoy.

Today a whole new crop of faculty arrived, more news to come!!

They sounded really great and tight – the charts were intriguing in their density and the clear focus on the group rather than the soloist.  Then was a group led by the Portugese improvising viola player Jose Valente, which played some of his tunes and one by the Argentianian bassist Juan.  Despite a few difficulties, the sounds were very unique and the melodies were very beautiful.

After that we went back to Music & Sound and had what was the most classic session ever – 4 saxes, 2 trumpets, piano bass drums – but amazingly (even though we only played 3 songs in over an hour) everyone was killin’ and original, and was listening effectively – and the rhythm section (Texas bass player Willie Wrinkle and Swiss drummer (!) David Meier) were as or more swingin than anyone I have played with in years.  This place is amazing!

So, I’ll leave you with this picture of Dave Douglas and Josh Redman enjoying the scenery.  Off to lunch, then some rehearsing and a hike!

We had a raucous hang last night at Props Pub to celebrate Meredith’s birthday (she’s a violinist from Vancouver BC) – everyone was there, it was great to have so many musicians just hanging out in one place!  I am of course always a conniseur of a great hang…

Prior to that I played another club set with Jeremy Rose, an Australian alto player – his tunes are very tricky but rewarding to play  correctly (which I did about 50% of the time…)  Still, it was a fun gig and I learned a lot about my playing from doing it.  Was also my first time playing with David Meier, a Swiss drummer who is very precise and sounds great.

Adam Benjamin gave a fantastic workshop yesterday where he discussed this amazing cueing system he uses in the band Kneebody – they have about 30 musical cues of great complexity, which can be combined to signal things as extreme as “keyboard and horns drop out, bass and drums set up a new double-time groove in Ebmin”, etc etc.  Very interesting way of approaching what we tend to think of as a more intuitive form of group communication.  He also gave great advice such as “everyone should give a solo concert with only a pair of drumsticks” and asked us to complete this analogy “Light:Architecture::______:Music”.  Good food for thought there!

Well it’s time for another full full day.  Our combo was “supposed” to open for the main concert tomorrow night but the programming got changed.  This is actually a relief to me, although I am enjoying the combo, I don’t feel like we would have been prepared enough to offer a convincing performance.

I am continuing to contemplate what my playing will be like when I get done here.  Had a nice conversation with some people about that last night,

More pictures to come too, I promise!

Today has been good, Josh Redman gave a nice clinic on “telling a story” through music, and the ever-witty Adam Benjamin was as wise as ever with some great advice, which I will detail some of later.

Meanwhile, I have recovered from today’s hike up Tunnel Mountain with a huge dinner, and now it’s off to practice, 2 sessions, and a gig with Australian alto player Jeremy Rose at 10!!!

More to come….

10-12 combo rehearsal
12-12:30 rehearse for trio gig tonight
12:30-1:30 lunch
1:30-3 workshop with david gilmore
3:30-5 workshop with matt penman
5-6 practice furiously
6-7 dinner
7-8 small bit of relaxation
8 go to “the club”
9-10 play trio set at “the club”
10-11 sextet rehearsal
11-….. session with eric and lewis

This is what every day should look like!!!