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Jimmy Heath: At 80, Still a Breath of Fresh Air By LOREN SCHOENBERG
Even given the wide array of music at their disposal, it's hard to think of a more appropriate concert for the Juilliard Jazz Orchestra to mount than "Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow—The Music of Jimmy Heath." Although his status as a jazz legend is indisputable, it's still hard to fathom that composer, educator, and saxophonist Jimmy Heath is approaching 80 and has been on top of his game for almost 60 years. Part of this incredulity is due to Heath's eternally youthful and unassuming personality. By his early 20s, Heath had led his own big band (which included his buddy John Coltrane and which backed up Charlie Parker on one notable occasion), played with Dizzy Gillespie, and toured internationally. Recordings and jobs with the likes of Miles Davis followed, eventually leading to a series of acclaimed recordings with his own ensembles, ranging from quartets to big bands. And let's not forget that his compositions have been recorded by (to just scratch the surface) Dizzy Gillespie, Art Farmer, Cannonball Adderley, Clark Terry, Chet Baker, Miles Davis, James Moody, Milt Jackson, Ahmad Jamal, Ray Charles, J.J. Johnson, and Dexter Gordon. Heath has composed tributes to his mentors, including "Without You, No Me" for Dizzy Gillespie, "The Voice of the Saxophone" for Coleman Hawkins, and "Ellington's Strayhorn" for Billy Strayhorn. As an educator, Heath put his personal stamp on the jazz program at the Aaron Copland School of Music at Queens College, where he spent 11 years. And it was just several weeks ago when Wynton Marsalis's Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra played Heath's setting of President Lyndon Johnson's most famous speeches, "The American Promise," read by Glenn Close.
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| Jazz saxophonist Jimmy Heath |
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At the root of all of Heath's music is a mastery of musical rhetoric and logic that is in some ways Handelian, and that shares much with the work of one of his predecessors, Benny Carter. I had the honor of doing concerts and recordings with both of these gentlemen, and their modest, understated approach always brought out the best in their bands. Rehearsals never became abusive, a warm feeling of mutual respect flowed between all of the parties, and it was clear from everyone in the band that there was nowhere else they would rather be and nothing they would rather be doing than playing the wonderful music of this great American composer. The orchestrations are functional in the sense that they do no more than realize the melodic flow that has characterized Heath's improvisations. This comes as a breath of fresh air in a jazz orchestral world burdened with heavy-handed classical borrowings and effects gleaned from textbooks. Heath knows what works because he has spent more than a half-century listening with a composer's ear while either leading or sitting in jazz bands of all sizes. And in the mid-'70s, Heath studied the symphonic European orchestrational conventions while writing his Afro-American Suite of Evolution, but has always kept true to the idiom in which he is a definitive artist: jazz. This also goes for the chamber and symphonic music Heath has composed. Jazz finds its ultimate expression when its master improvisers have the ability to compose and orchestrate their musical vision. Heath's music is suffused with the same wit, rigor, and lack of sentimentality that he exhibits as a human being.
Juilliard is fortunate indeed to have this master musician within its portals. Among the awards given to Heath are a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Jazz Foundation of America; the Carter Woodson Foundation Award; the Living Legends of Jazz Award from the Afro-American Historical and Cultural Museum in Philadelphia; appointment to the board of trustees of the Thelonious Monk Institute and its Founders Award; the Queens College President's Medal; and an invitation to perform at the White House. (He was awarded an honorary doctorate from Juilliard in 2002.)
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Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow — The Music of Jimmy Heath
Juilliard Jazz Orchestra
Juilliard Theater
Wednesday, Jan. 19, 8 p.m.
Free tickets available in the
Juilliard Box Office.
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The upcoming concert means that the students in the Juilliard Jazz Orchestra will have the opportunity not only to rehearse with Heath, but to ask questions such as "What was it like going to France alongside Coleman Hawkins when you were 22 years old?" or "How did you deal with taking John Coltrane's place with Miles Davis just months after they recorded 'Kind of Blue'?" Coltrane once said of his friend: "I had met Jimmy Heath, who—besides being a wonderful saxophonist—understood a lot about musical construction. I joined his group in Philadelphia in 1948. We were very much alike in our feeling, phrasing and a whole lot of other ways. Our musical appetites were the same. We used to practice together, and he would write out some of the things we were interested in. We would take things from records and digest them. In this way, we learned about the techniques being used by writers and arrangers." There will also be the chance to engage in the seemingly more matter-of-fact daily chatter about reeds and life on the road and all the other issues that musicians deal with that is equally important in giving them an example of what a great artist is like up close and personal. This is a golden era for jazz when we can celebrate men like Jimmy Heath, who are still in their prime, and hear their music interpreted by a band whose median age is six decades younger chronologically—but certainly not spiritually.Loren Schoenberg, who teaches jazz history, has been on the faculty since 2001.
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