Vol. XIX No. 5
February 2004
New Jazz Works Keep Things Current

By LOREN SCHOENBERG

Jazz is one of America's greatest contributions to the arts. Jazz also offers a window into American history. But no one becomes a jazz fan for those reasons. People become entranced with the music because of its rhythm and for its improvisatory nature. Jazz swings. When it doesn't, it is the exception rather than the rule. Jazz is fun. That does not mean it is only fun, or simply fun. What is it about a jazz performance recorded in Chicago in the mid-1920s that proves irresistible to listeners halfway around the globe some three-quarters of a century later? At the root of a jazz performance is the act of "playing," which, as the great Dutch historian Huizinga has shown, is one of the highest forms of human activity. Anything is possible in a jazz performance, and in the hands of true masters, the juggling act between the preconceived and the spontaneous creates a tension that makes each performance uniquely relevant to the moment of its creation. There is some new music being created at this moment that you will be able to hear on February 23 in the Juilliard Theater, written and performed by the students of the Juilliard Institute for Jazz Studies. The concert promises to be quite an event, given their talent and their desire to reflect their own experiences off of the classics of jazz's past.

In October, the Jazz Orchestra performed in Alice Tully Hall. (Photo by Peter Schaaf)
A lesser known fact that unites jazz and classical musicians is that improvisation is a prized creative tool of many of the great masters. Bach, Beethoven, Mozart, and Brahms were all known for their ability to weave extensive variations out of the slightest material. You can find vestiges of this in many of their works: for starters, in the improvisatory nature of the late Brahms piano works and in Bach's much vaunted Goldberg Variations, in which he bases everything on a harmonic progression in the same fashion that jazz musicians do.

One of the first great jazz musicians to emerge in the wake of Louis Armstrong was tenor saxophonist Coleman Hawkins. Hawkins started his musical career as a cellist and was said to have preferred to listen to classical music when at home; his recorded collection was legendary. An evening musicale at his Lincoln Center apartment frequently included listening to at least one opera and one extended symphonic work. But what makes this significant is the way that the compositional unity of the masters found their way into his improvisations. Hawkins spent the years 1934-39 in Europe and, during that period, carried Pablo Casals' recording of the Bach Solo Cello Suites in his suitcase. Even a cursory listening to Hawkins' 1939 recording of "Body and Soul" reveals a penchant for the chromatic highways and byways of Bach's compulsive harmonic mind. Like Art Tatum and Wynton Marsalis, Hawkins shaped a style that was informed by a myriad of influences into an indelibly American musical language.

The supreme example of the jazz vernacular in orchestral terms remains the music of Duke Ellington, who blended written music with improvisation in a manner that stressed unity above all, but also left plenty of room for the individual artists in his orchestra to express themselves. A great deal of his success was made possible by the fact many of his musicians stayed with him for decades, and grew to understand each other's musical personalities to a remarkable degree.

Although their term at Juilliard is only a few years, the chance to play with the same musicians repeatedly is part of what creates the Juilliard magic. Now that students have a chance to rub shoulders with fellow students for whom improvisation is a part of everyday musical life, one can only imagine what the future holds for all the musical genres represented at the School. While there have been a handful of renegades who have tried to sneak improvisation back into the world of classical music, for the most part, improvisation is not much of a factor these days in that world. And that's just one of many elements that have made the emergence of the Juilliard Institute for Jazz Studies so vital a component on the campus over the last few years.

The juggling act between the preconceived and the spontaneous creates a tension that makes each performance uniquely relevant to the moment of its creation.
For the "Current Events" concert, the department's director, Victor L. Goines, has decided to shift the Juilliard Jazz Orchestra's emphasis on the classics to an evening dedicated exclusively to the works of students in the program. It almost goes without saying that the term "student" in this context is slightly misleading to a lay audience, since a great majority of Juilliard students in all the disciplines have had (and continue to seek) extensive professional experience. What makes a concert like this so important an experience for both the performers and the audience is that there are no commercial constraints placed on the composers and they can give free reign to their compositional desires. This is where the emphasis on the classics—or the canon, if you will—plays such an important role. Having had the experience of learning exactly how it was that Duke Ellington, Eddie Durham, Billy Strayhorn, and Wycliffe Gordon arranged orchestration, form, and improvisation for a big band, these students now have an established foundation from which to start their own explorations. As Goines puts it: "In our program, we require our students to study the history of jazz music—and as a result, I feel it is just as (if not more) important for students to take the information that they have acquired in their studies and experiences and use it in a manner or style that reflects their own unique personality. That is the essence of what this concert is about."

Juilliard Jazz Orchestra
Current Events
Juilliard Theater
Monday, Feb. 23, 8 p.m.

For time and ticket information, please see the calendar.
At a little more than a century old, jazz is still a new music, and opportunities for it to grow and flourish in a setting such as this are vital to its continued relevance. The great history of The Juilliard School and the great potential of these students combine in a constructive step toward that goal. It is a pleasure to contemplate a concert comprised of entirely new music, written and performed by some of today's best and brightest talents. As Charlie Parker put it, now's the time!

Loren Schoenberg, who teaches jazz history, has been on the faculty since 2001.

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