Second Loves (i)

In college, I attended a masterclass by a very talented and increasingly well-known trumpet player not much older than I am now who had been a jazz major at a prominent U.S. conservatory, and who uttered something that will be with me forever: "When I finished college, I realized that I didn't really like jazz." Indeed, it could justifiably be called into question whether the music that was performed during this residency qualified as "Jazz" with a capital-J, yet this music was, besides being incredible, nevertheless inconceivable without its basis in jazz-conservatory training (not to mention being exceptionally fresh, and miraculously so, I guess, given that such training is often assailed for its potential to educate the individuality right out of its students).

This was an odd pose he was striking, disavowing jazz one moment while displaying an unabashed indebtedness to it the next (he might contend the accuracy of the latter description, but it was hard not to hear it that way, and this not in spite of how he prefaced his work but in fact most especially because of it). It's a pose that doesn't resonate with me any more today than it did back then, but having since navigated the post-college twenty-something years myself, I can at least say that I better understand the dynamics at play. I was barely 21 years old at the time of that masterclass, but my honeymoon period with bebop had already evaporated, leaving me bouncing between intense periods of study borne of fanatical devotion and despondent periods of non-study following an event or series of events which brought home to me just how stylistically limited an improvisor I had chosen to become. In the meantime, I was already noticing that while there were tons of other college-aged jazz players, tons of middle-aged jazz players, and more than a few senior citizen jazz players, I didn't ever seem to meet very many twenty-something jazz players. I only knew a few musicians who were 5 to 10 years older than I was, and like this clinician, most of them seemed to be after something eclectic which may or may not have entailed an overt jazz influence. Among this group, most were at peace with their past jazz study, but it wasn't unheard of to meet one who had disavowed it altogether as an adolescent phase. This wasn't a novel concept to me at this point; I just wasn't prepared to encounter it in the form a high-profile professional giving a university masterclass.

I'm now approaching the age this clinician was when those words were spoken, and a lot still has to change if I am ever to decide that I "don't really like jazz." Nonetheless, I say that his statement will be with me forever because it was the moment I realized that it's not just broken-down jazz-wannabe punk rock stoners with outsized inferiority complexes that say these kinds of things; they have, do, and will, but it can be soft-spoken, well-educated, profoundly gifted musicians as well, musicians who make music I would actually want to listen to, whether it's jazz or not, and who I might on a good day even be able to tolerate socializing with. That was something of a revelation, both for better and for worse.

Though I haven't disavowed jazz (or most any other music I've ever been smitten with for that matter), I have, in fact, gradually begun acquiring interests from outside classical music and jazz, interests which may be tremendously dissimilar to these styles on the surface, but which invariably contain deeper similarities. And having now more or less arrived at the dreaded age in question myself, I'm no longer limited to observing snapshots, but now have also witnessed trajectories, the before, during and after of it, as well as the litany of extra-musical priorities peculiar to this age that can, in some cases at least, drive the musical ones over a cliff.

I've frequently remarked to others that this is an age where musicians go one of two directions (leaving aside for a moment the dreaded third direction of quitting altogether), namely towards either lifelong learning or a lifetime of stagnation. By far the most insidious enabler of apathy is the incredible tolerance (enforcement?) of mediocrity that prevails at just about every turn among so-called professionals. A young freelancer can't help but notice how much lower the musical bar is at "money gigs" compared to even a second-rate college music department. Another is the frantic twenty-something race to petite bourgeousie domestic respectability, pitting canoe ownership against studio rental and wine tasting against score study in the high-stakes court of spousal approval.

Among those twenty-something musicians who, for whatever reason, continue to seek growth, a certain expansion of purview is almost inevitable. Yet a severe disconnect continues to exist between myself and many of those around me by virtue of the fact that, whereas I started with classical music and jazz and have been working my way out from there, most of them worked their ways to classical music and jazz from somewhere else. I say "continues to exist" because this was the source of even greater frustration when I was in high school and college. I used to entertain myself at jazz camps by picking out the students who came to jazz through rock just by hearing them (though hearing them was, of course, often superfluous as they usually were dressed for the occasion). Any given jazz jam I might have found myself at during those years seemed to follow roughly the same trajectory: a series of awkwardly played (sometimes awkwardly called) standards would prevail until some ballsy kid in a Green Day shirt had the guile to call "Chameleon," to which "Mercy, Mercy, Mercy" was the inevitable chaser, and suddenly everyone except for the faculty and I was having the time of their lives. Some of the people I work with now have seen me refuse to play "Chameleon." It's not so much that I dislike the music as that its symbolic status as the pivot tune in the jazz-rock cold war that defined my musical youth has more or less spoiled it for me for all time. (I have performed "Red Clay," though, because if you really want to be a dick, you can always insist on playing it in the original key.)

Suffice it to say, then, that when disavowal time rolled around, circa age 24, there were some surprises among my peers, but not many. There's selling out, and then are those who never had anything for sale in the first place. Once whatever social factor it was that compelled all those high school punk rockers to go to jazz camp every summer had evaporated, they gave up trying to infiltrate the jazz world for status' sake and went back to being who they really were (which I don't begrudge them one bit because it's better for all concerned in the long run). This is most definitely not the route that our mystery clinician took; I imagine he falls firmly into the group that simply continued discovering non-jazz music he liked rather than that which divests itself of all things uncool at the drop of a hat. It should be obvious to anyone who keeps up with these missives that I'm a jazzhead at heart, but recent years have presented (if not manifested) the possibility of going eclectic in ways I never anticipated. That this has been brought about by exposure to what is, in the grand scheme of things, an exceedingly tiny fraction of the non-jazz, non-classical music that's out there only adds to my suspicion that a more eclectic route is inevitable.

Sounds simple, but it's not. For one thing, there's a fine line between studied eclecticism and merely indulging a short attention span, this being the difference between true synthesis and mere reference or allusion. For another, there's the issue of authenticity, or bringing one's depth of knowledge of and experience in newfound musical interests up to speed with lifelong ones. Finally, much as it pains me to say it, there's the social aspect of all of this, and the reality that whether one's change of stylistic direction is studied or unstudied, unified or fragmented, authentic or allusive, sincere or calculated, assumptions will be made based on limited evidence, and otherwise sympathetic peers on both sides of the divide will think to themselves either, "He's no longer one of us," or "He'll never really be one of us." Even to someone like me, that can be a more powerful deterrent than the specter of taking time away from prior musical engagements, though the latter also poses an interesting conundrum.

Typecasting

The danger early on for me was being typecast as a percussion composer. I wrote a couple of little percussion pieces when I was still a student that began to get played a lot and are still played a lot, but I then realized that everyone was thinking of me as "Oh, he writes great percussion music." And so I purposely have said no for many, many years to any percussion ensemble request because I just don't want to be thought of as just that.

-Composer Christopher Rouse on Typecasting

I read those words several months ago and gave a cursory thought to those composers (including, I suspect, many "tuba composers") who have, in fact, not merely fallen into but actively cultivated such a typecast reputation as a way of ensuring performances and exposure from sources (like tuba players) eager to have anything they can get their hands on in the way of new music (note lower case). As a composer who could use some performances and exposure myself, I also had to snicker at the idea of turning down a commission of any kind, although I suppose it's more understandable from someone like Rouse who has had a great amount of success.

What only recently occurred to me, and hence reminded me of ths article, is that in my determination to prove the viability of the tuba in jazz, I have willingly contributed to my own typecasting as a jazz specialist. While this has no doubt yielded a smattering of success in this particular area, I've recently realized that the reason I have no opportunities whatsoever to perform classical music is that I haven't been trying real hard to find them. Viewing things in contrast to my jazz experience, where I've always been the outsider, it once seemed safe to assume that since my instrument was already a "standard" part of the orchestra, making things happen on the classical side would be easier. What I've since realized is that working without institutional support poses many of the same challenges to a classical musicians as a jazz musician, and that the time has come to apply the jazz model to my classical endeavors.

Since I first began playing professional (read: paying) gigs as a teen, a good 95% of those gigs have been non-classical. These have been mostly "money gigs," usually involving doing something not so near and dear to my heart, like being part of an ad hoc dixie-pep band for a football-themed US Bank regional conference. It's not easy to find a gig of any kind (let alone a paying one) playing my own music, yet "jazz" of almost any kind seems to be tolerated by quite a few bars and restaurants as peripherally related to the rock and pop that they normally host. This imputed similarity seems to me to be impossible without the counterweight of classical music dragging the stylistic center of gravity so far to the other side: what I do and what these venues normally host could not possibly be considered similar at all without there being something so dissimilar from both of them, something so demonized both aesthetically and socially in these circles, lurking out there beyond the pale. If you show up with a drum set, that's usually enough; show up with a stack of charts and music stands and refuse to go through the PA, and you start to draw negative attention to yourself.

For the last several years, my emphasis on playing jazz has led me to table any serious searching for alternative venues for concert music (an issue of great importance to me, if not only in theory) simply because this imputed similarity ensures that I at least have the option of performing at the established venues, if only infrequently, and this, being the path of least resistance, is the one I've taken. I do, however, take offense to the afore mentioned dynamic that makes this possible; I also have higher aspirations than to play in bars for the rest of my life, no matter what kind of music it is. Seeing that such venues likely wouldn't tolerate a "classical" presentation (though I look forward to duping them into it at some point just to see what happens), a renewed dedication to performing "classical" music necessitates a renewed search for appropriate places to present it, and (equally difficult) people to perform it with.

Though things are far from peachy in the Minneapolis jazz scene, there is at least a small network of accomplished players devoted to writing and performing their own music, as well as resurrecting works of the occasional forgotten genius, and making a good faith effort to find or make opportunities to present this work publicly. I can't say the same about classical music: the mention of getting a chamber group together to operate along these lines has been met more than once with, "When you have a [paying] gig lined up, let me know." The brass quintet in particular seems to be viewed by many as simply a cash cow project for the church and wedding circuits (for the record, if I ever get married, I want the Milo Fine Free Jazz Ensemble to play). The possibility that 5 brass players might "start a band" as an outlet for their own creativity rather than a business venture seems to be a remote one in these parts.

As an alternative to Greg Sandow's extolling of pop culture and Drew McManus' extolling of tuba players (flattered as we are, he obviously hasn't seen our dark side) as providing models for reforming the attitudes and presentation of classical music, I would humbly suggest that classical musicians look to the jazz world for a better model of vitality and viability. It's true, the saying goes that the best way to make a million dollars playing jazz is to start with 2 million; I'm not talking about money here. Money can do you-know-what with itself. I'm still waiting to meet classical players who put the realization of their artistic vision ahead of getting paid for playing their instrument any way they can. Certainly, there are plenty of non-classical players who fall into this trap as well, but there also seem to be enough high-minded ones to make up the difference.

To overcome this, I've decided that maybe I have to undo some of the typecasting that I've worked so hard to establish. Obviously, the idea, via Rouse, of refusing to play jazz anymore doesn't appeal to me at all (if Rouse really loved writing for percussion, he wouldn't/couldn't have refused commissions to do it). Instead, I've resolved to attempt to import just a little bit of the selfless devotion to art that is, in my limited experience, on display more often in jazz circles than classical ones. Once I'm typecast as someone who can't be typecast, I'll know I've succeeded.