[ayWCZ7VT]

So this popped up on another thread. How would you reform jazz education?

[ayWCZ7VT]

Perhaps it is merely a business proposition, but I know that in my case, I purchased it and got a hell of a lot out of it. Is there any reason that this particualr business transaction shouldn't have been possible? Buying a CD or paying a ticket price is a business proposition.

Are you skeptical about the acreditation of only certain approaches that lend themselves well to being institutionalized?

Do you think it's bad for the art?

Quite a few players I went to school with are playing differently than we were 'taught' to. And it's not like we all had to play exactly the same.

I'm going to give some thought to this. It's unlikely I can be really unbiased about it. Post-secondary jazz programs have been very good to me. But, as usual, I'm curious about the operating principles, and I want to know why people think what they think.

Thanks Yodi.

Come on you others too, don't be shy! What's right and what's wrong with jazz in the colleges and universities...

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[ReneCM]

I don't know how you can understand be-bop without being thoroughly schooled in the blues, but for some reason, the curriculum STARTS with be-bop. We end up with players who know all about Sonny Stitt and Bird, and nothing about Johnny Hodges or Ben Webster... let alone Robert Johnson or Howlin' Wolf. I hear very little understanding of the blues in a lot of my peers (musicians under 25), and I know players.... young players who I think are great musicians... who play the snot out of their instruments and write great tunes, and whom I love playing with... who can't really have a conversation about Art Tatum or Errol Garner or even MONK!???! This is a serious deficiency, in my opinion. We have young musicians that are either unable, or for some reason UNSATISFIED with playing tastefully, or slowly, or playing old tunes... instead of being able to do everything, they can do 1 or 2 things, and stick to it as if that's the "only" thing.

I can't stand dogma... whether it be traditionalist dogma or modernist dogma. "Man, you must swing your 8th notes LIKE THIS...WE MUST COPY THE MASTERS... NOTHING AFTER 1955 IS WORTH ANYTHING" VS "Fuck all that OLD SHIT... ANYTHING BEFORE 1955 IS A WASTE OF MY TIME!" Both are boring, facist, and ultimately unneccessary and uninteresting concepts to me. There is, of course, a time and place for everything... you want to play a whole set of be-bop tunes because it feels right? I'm all for it. But I expect an openess from modern musicians... and an ability and a desire to try everything they can, in the hope of finding some musical common ground where you can really try to say something. I hold musicians like Brad Turner and Ross Taggart up as examples of this archetype. Sure, when they play, they have to make decisions about what they're going to include and exclude at any given moment... but when they play, they do it with such passion, and such a unique point of view, that WHAT they're playing becomes secondary to what they're SAYING. "Stylistic" considerations are really just boxes that they can step in and out of at will, if that's what the music calls for. Their personal voice is never subjegated.

At this point in time, "jazz" music should be about choosing your aesthetic for the moment, and running with it with intensity and a purpose. I don't think it's neccessary for everything to swing all the time. But, if you're going to swing, just like if you're going to funk, or if you're going to rock... you have to deeply consider what these things mean, and be versed and grounded enough in the music to know when something is and something isn't doing what it is that you want it to do (does that make sense?). The institution tends to impart the idea upon people that either "jazz swings all the time" or "don't even try to swing... it's all been done". The complexities of what makes the music great are not addressed.

Everything is put in boxes. "This is bebop"... and what is presented is a bunch of licks over II V I progressions with altered dominant chords. No, that is not be-bop. I'm sorry, there's a fuck of a lot more to it than that. Just from a musical perspective, to begin with. What about the way Bird and Diz would end tunes? What about the attention to dynamics they had? What about the sense of humour of somebody like Sonny Rollins? What about the importance of Thelonious Monk's rhythmic vocabulary to the development of the music (not once was Monk ever considered in my school years as anything other than iconoclastic and "strange"... not by anyone except for Blaine Wikjord, who told me to listen to Monk and try to play the drums like Monk played piano-- perhaps the best advice I ever got). What about the ability to play on a ballad and play deeply from the heart? Then there's the fact that the social elements of the music never EVER EVER get talked about. What about fucking slavery and segregation and racism and oppression and the concerted effort of the white establishment to imprison, murder, destroy, devalue and debase the efforts of African American artists at that time? I never heard ONE THING about Bird's institutionalization, or Bud Powell's shock therapy, or the fact that these people that we hold up on pedastals, that we lionize, could not walk the streets at night in mixed race company, with a white woman OR a man, without being called a nigger. Where is THAT in "jazz school"? Is everyone just afraid to address the fact that these are the real roots of the music?

Jazz is supposed to come from struggle... from the pain and also the joy of living a real life. Where are the students living? Are they locked up in practice rooms 'shedding Giant Steps while their older mentors are down the street playing? That's wrong. That's missing the point. And nobody ever stresses this to anybody. I was lucky enough to have picked it up honestly, by hearing the stories, by hanging out and by being lucky enough to have great teachers who knew the real deal, and told me about it. But most students don't have that. They get caught up in jazz nerdiness and snobbery, and they don't know that Cannonball loved the Beatles, or that Herbie was a classically schooled musician. They would rather watch a Will Ferrell movie than listen to a Lenny Bruce or Richard Pryor record. They don't know anything about the anti-consumerist, anti-war ethic of musicians like Charles Mingus or Eric Dolphy or Ornette Coleman. They don't know how to match a shirt with a tie. They learn about the value of things by attatching some sort of iconoclastic value to EVERYTHING, instead of finding about what makes it tick. Muhammed Ali... "oh yeah, he was that boxer that made funny jokes" Thelonious Monk... "oh yeah, funny hats and weird dancing, man.... whole tone scales"... George Carlin "7 words you can't say on TV..." The 1960's "hippys and acid and woodstock".... The Ku Klux Klan "white hoods and burning crosses...." Everything is geared towards consuming the aesthetic instead of understanding it.

And maybe that's OK. Maybe jazz school is meant to be a place where the technical and theoretical aspects of the music are stressed, to the detriment of all other concepts. Maybe the point is to lead the horse to water and let him decide whether or not they want to drink. The ones that drink will get that depth... the ones that don't... will not be musicians. Impossible to stress that to somebody that doesn't inheritly "get" it.

Sorry if that was self serving, incoherent, rambling, or pessimistic. It's not meant to be. Just my observations.

[Nfvzjvcl]

The river is one of the finest metaphors for tradition that I know.
Many provocative and profitable images spring forth.
I like it.

I'm one of those people whom John knows who didn't do formal music training. And I think it is clearly to my detriment. Jeez, I left school officially at 15, having been virtually absent for a whole year before while pathetically trying to gain status by pushing speed in Soho. In the tradition, this eventually qualified me to earn a Sociology BA at age 27. I would have liked to have benefited from the regular jazz education a lot of others got, but neither resources nor infrastructure were available to me. But I did do a shit-load of listening and repertoire development and visualisation practice in my head.

When I finally found folk here in Vancouver who, against their better judgement, I'm sure, were willing to give me performance opportunities, that's when I started learning fast. I guess I took the mentor route. I was lucky, that's all. Significant mentors included Dick Smith, Pat Coleman, Jerry Inman, Al Wold, Blaine Wikjord, Roy Reynolds, PJ Perry, Peter Sprague, Bert Seager, Linton, Bosco D'Oliviera, Tim Whitehad... and later, Michael Garrick, Jamie Aebersold, David Baker, Michel Camilo and Norma Winstone helped steer me right. Sorry if I've left anyone out. The most valuable lessons I learned - apart from ideas about theory and harmony that enabled me to communicate a little better - were all about approach and commitment.

My position is that you can't teach anybody anything - but it is possible to help people learn. Hence, whether it is formally institutionalised or not, it's up to the individual to take advantage of the opportunities available. Schools and colleges do just this. They not only (hopefully) put you in an environment where you can share your enthusiasms with a lot of like-minded people and do a lot of playing (which I sorely missed out on) but it can also put you close to those you have picked out as particular mentors. I think choice of mentors should guide choice of institution.

I ultimately favour the apprenticeship system in any craft or art.

When I had opportunities to make my own contribution through setting up workshops and courses (others more qualified delivered the content), we concentrated most on hearing and doing and developed loads of exercises to further that end. I was informed by what I thought I had missed out on.

I'm still learning. Every chance I get. It never stops.

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[Appenianags]

...since we're in a confessional mood here I'm going to take a page from Mister Lazzerinni's book and offer up a brief biographical sketch. This is primarily directed at Mr. Yodi, who seems to have gotten it into his head that I'm some kind of jazz snob.

Aside from a brief stint at VCC at age 22 (where I promptly dropped all courses that were in any way scary or challenging and slacked away in ensembles and private lessons with Fraser Macpherson only) I had nothing whatsoever to do with higher education until I was 37. Hell, I didn't even have anything to do with LOWER education. I took a hike from the public school system at age 13 (technically this makes you a truant but nobody ever came looking for me. I guess I fell through the cracks) because it was interferring with my preferred activities of growing my hair and smoking dope. I took up saxophone at 17 (I'd played clarinet in junior symphony from age ten) and started gigging in crappy little blues bands. Eventually this morphed into playing in strip clubs, then various night club acts and blues guys, some well known (like Albert Collins) others less so. I backed up oldies acts like the Coasters and The Drifters. I drifted and wandered. My early experiments with weed, speed and psychedelics turned into something much darker. And all through this I was a thoroughly average player, just enough chops to get by on the bottom-feeder gigs that I had.

Eventually it it dawned on me that I was bored rigid. The only thing that kept the gigs interesting were the drugs and alcohol that I consumed on them. And even that was getting to be...a problem. Sometimes Mr. Brain would send a message to Mr. Fingers, and Mr. Jack Daniels would prevent it from arriving in time.

I finally dealt with the dope and gargle issues (with a lot of help from Bill W. and his friends) and discovered that, sober, I really liked playing music. Since I'm the sort of person who's basically lazy and needs an agenda imposed from without (you hit the nail on the head there Yodi. I'm the very picture of the institutionalized man) I decided to go back to school. Some people can develop intelligent courses of study on their own. I'm not one of them. I have a tendency to kid myself about how well I'm doing, to spin my wheels down blind alleys, and to succumb to the sin of pride.

First I went back to VCC. This was a humbling experience since I was as old (and sometimes older) than some of the faculty, and my fellow student from my first go-round there, Alan Matheson, was now teaching there. I had a ball nontheless, and studied privately with David Branter.

After three years at VCC, I went to UBC, starting in 1994.Aside from Fred Strides big band, there was no jazz performance program there, but I still regard it as a very rewarding experience. I played fiendishly difficult classical repertoire, debuted a number of pieces written for various saxophones, and made friends and contacts I maintain to this day.

While all this was going on, I also started picking up work conducting various community bands and orchestras, ran a tuesday night jam session at Murphy's Pub (this went on for four years. I met and played with a huge cross-section of the Vancouver jazz community there) developed a private teaching practise, and began writing and selling articles to various publications. This is where the 'real-world-school-world' divide falls apart for me. I always had a foot in both, and I think many music students do. It's a financial necessity for some of us, and a career advantage for all of us. You wind up gigging with your teachers, or hiring them on your own casuals. I do this with my own students now. It's my way of 'paying it forward.'


Last fall, when I took three of my best students along with me to play an art gallery opening in New Orleans, the piano player said to me,"Man, I learned more tonight than in a year of combo 101 rehearsals." So, Mike, that'd be my major change to jazz school curriculum. Credit for 'wallpaper gig casual 101."

And maybe a "Phil Woods Touring 101" credit. You know, where you drive around in a bus for 12 hours, get out, set up, play, get back in the bus. Repeat for 3 months. Then the final exam has one question on it.

"Do you still want to do this for a living?"

[ayWCZ7VT]

Holy Moley. I sure feel guilty hearing about to all the influences I should have checked out. I tip my hat to you Morgan Childs.

Yes, I agree that the history of how this music emerged from black culture, and the civil rights struggle needs to be addressed in the ciricula. It's absence is something to be ashamed of.

For me, the part of university that I hated and resisted the most at the time has become precious to me. That would be the electives. I was spending all my time going to clubs, practising, gigging and doing sessions with people when I did my bachelor's. I showed up very grudgingly at the electives like sociology, a jewish studies course I flunked, astronomy, psych. But I think they planted a little seed in my mind, the idea that there was more in life. That there was a history of grand ideas, and that we all inherit them. That was something built right into the university system that was invaluable.

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[Garry Richardson]

This thread has a lot of important themes in it. Thanks for getting it going, Mike.

A few of my reactions, reading through the posts:


Several years ago, I attend a great lecture by Kenny Werner over at Cap. It left the faculty and administrators slack-jawed on several occasions. He played a couple of tunes as only he can, then the first words out of mouth were "Who here masturbates?" (only 3 trumpeters put up their hands) and then started into a fairly lengthy comparison of masturbation and improvisation. It was a great attention-getter, but it got some of the staff squirming. He eventually went on a bit of a rant about the institutions that teach jazz, including where he taught. He thought the whole idea of running students through a preset curriculum as it pertained to performing on an instrument was a load of shit. He asked what was the point of moving a kid through a load of scales if they couldn't really play just one. He felt better as a teacher to spend as long as it took with his students on one scale until they actually learned it, and only then move on. He continued to make quite a case. I think at this point, some of the teachers were wishing he had stuck to masturbation.

As someone whose pace of musical development makes Doheny look like a wunderkind, I couldn't have agreed more.



I did spend a couple of years as a music major at a small town university in Nova Scotia. My prof was a classical clarinettist who gleaned what he knew about sax out of Larry Teal's Art of Saxophone Playing, a good start, but it doesn't scratch the surface of how to really play the instrument. Sadly, I hear he's still there teaching the same way 29 years later - somehow Mike Murley survived him. The music faculty was at each others' throats. There was a ton of politics and infighting. I quit after my composition prof left for a calmer campus.

When I moved to Vancouver, I took an extend break from music for quite a few years. I took an office job downtown and rose rapidly through the ranks. When people asked me what I'd studied in university to do so well in business, I told them there was no better preparation for the nasty side of office politics than a couple of years studying music. Bitter? Perhaps.



Finally, a few years back, I had a chance to drive by myself from Atlanta to Mobile. I stopped at Tuskegee. I'd read about the Tuskegee Experiment, how the US Gov't had infected black sharecroppers and returning black veterans with syphillis, without telling them, just to see what would happen over 40 years. I stopped at Montgomery and saw the places where Rosa Parks drew the line, and where Dr. King started preaching. Then in Mobile, while wandering downtown, such as it is, I came across nondescript marker stating that this spot had been the site of Mobile's slave market. The concept that I could have been standing on the very spot where my wife's and my daughter's ancestors may have entered the Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave, was almost too much to bear.

Damn right institutions here in Canada don't teach about the struggle of the people who created this music that we all have embraced, but they should. It's shaped the music and had a profound effect on the lives of most of the musicians through its history. I guess that makes it kinda relevant.

[ReneCM]

Steve, you got everything right in your Kenny Werner story, except for one thing.

There was only 1 person who put up his hand after the "who here masturbates" question. It was bassist Sean Cronin, who had just sprouted his first chin hair the day before.

Mike... I was really just spewing some touchstones that were important to ME, and my development. When I started learning about the protest element of jazz music, a lot of things fell into place for me. I still think it's about a healthy balance of seriousness and having a great sense of humour too. Thats why I always love playing with you... you hear that right away in your playing.

But yeah, my main point was just that the "jazz history" classes I took in school didn't touch on the racial stuff at all. I mean, sure, Teddy Wilson was mentioned with Benny Goodman etc... but I think understanding, say, Coltrane's music as protest music is a valid and interesting angle, one that is worthy of study.

[Garry Richardson]

Thanks for the correction, Morgan. That makes Sean the only honest person in the room.

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[Garry Richardson]

Another anecdote - the first review I ever got was for a concert I played in Halifax many years ago. The critic totally missed the point of what we were doing, but worse, the review was riddled with grammatical and spelling errors. Anyone who read the Halifax Comical (Chronicle) Herald back then would be familiar with this aspect of the paper.

There were several letters to the editor from audience members and one from from a band member, taking issue with the review and pointing out the sloppy writing.

The next day there was a lengthy editorial, very indignant, going on at length that an artist should be prepared to take criticism if they intend to present their works in public. And how dare we respond by taking cheap shots at one of their writers, the poor ink-stained wretch! Thou shalt not criticize the critic. The irony of what the editor was saying was totally lost on him. (There was a typo in the editorial, but we chose not to point it out for fear of never getting another mention in the paper.)

I believe that the for the most part, the print media today still has that mindset.

[Garry Richardson]

I just caught the redundency in my third paragraph - I don't want to hear it from you wiseacres!

[Garry Richardson]

Redundancy. I shouldn't post anything before my third coffee of the day.

I was reflecting on that Kenny Werner lecture and there was another part of it that was so relevant that something like it should be on every jazz currriculum.

Kenny's timing and sense of arc is better than any of the many motivational speakers that I've seen. He was talking about about connecting head, heart and hands. He related his childhood experiences about being a misfit - short, unathletic, awkward, not a good-looking kid, the kid who stayed indoors practising while the other kids were out playing. He didn't fit in at school. He was a nobody until one day there was an occasion to play for some school event. The other kids listening got caught up in the moment and he became a somebody, someone who had a gift, the ability to create music. In that moment, he realized why he was a musician. It was better than sex, better than drugs, better than anything.

At this point in the Cap lecture room, you could hear a pin drop. Kenny had touched a primal emotion in us, a commonality. It was a beautiful moment. Morgan, please feel free to refute me or back me up on this.

I for one had a lump in my throat, but maybe it was because I was abusing myself at the time :>)

[clitlyphype]

I don't have a lot to offer this particular thread having never been to music school. But I did interview Charles McPherson last year and he a lot to say:

"What might be hurting jazz is ... that people are learning by way of academics things that might have been better for them to have learned in the field. On the stand. Academics: there's a dichotomy there. Education, there's a dichotomy that can happen. There are pros and cons. Because so much information is available for the young aspiring jazz student who goes to Berklee, who goes to these schools. The technology being what it is today, the information being available and accessibly today, makes it easy for just a whole body of information to be thrown right in front of the little player's face, and to be assessed, learned and practiced, and all the things you do. Now, that's a good thing in a way because it's information. The downside of that is is that there are lessons being learned when a young player has to learn how to eke out the right notes amongst the many wrong ones. There's a lesson learned in learning, in walking through the minefield of wrong notes and eking out the ones that are right and saying, "Oh! This is right, and I know it because I hear it. Aw, not this one." There are lessons in that kind of trial and error. Because what's happening is, everything you're learning, right or wrong, your brain is the only piece of meat you have that actually grows, that gains mass by experience. So when you're groping to find right notes out of the many wrong ones, there are lessons and there are [neural] networks being created in terms of association with your brain and your ear that are connecting up in this way. That's very valuable. So if you take these notes and just show them to a young player, "These are the right notes. Trust me." Okay, he might learn the right notes. But he will have been denied the experience of learning and creating his own private associations for finding out the right notes and having his brain say, "Ah! When I feel this way and think that way, I know that this note is right." And having those kind of associations. This is how genius happens."

"So what happens with education quite often, it does bring about a broad mediocrity where you are able to have many people do something fairly well. And that is a blessing if you say, well, before it was less than that. However, in terms of genius, and how that comes about, and what one does to nurture that, that's quite a different thing. So that might be more of what's wrong with a young player; not so much that he doesn't use heroin anymore. He doesn't learn how to play from going to some joint and watching the great piano player play and walking up to him and saying, "How do you do this?""

"So when the young player, you hear him today, quite often you're hearing a very pristine example of education. But a lot of times you don't hear the story. What kind of story is this person playing on this instrument? Now, you're using music as a medium, but what kind of story is he telling me? Basically quite often there's no story at all. You're hearing what F minor is to B-flat. You're hearing music; you're not hearing stories by way of music."

"There are thousands of people going to Berklee or Texas State or wherever. Before, years ago, you could categorize musicians by territories. You could hear a tenor player and say, "I can tell he's from Texas." Or you can tell this guy's from Philly. Why? Because they have a certain way of playing. So Philadelphia musicians had a certain way, and you could tell that they're from Philly. You could tell New York guys. You could tell people from Kansas City. The rhythm sections play differently. Now that's no longer the case because the guy from Kansas City goes to Berkley along with the guy from Philly. They both go to Berkley and learn the same thing from the same teacher. So the individuality and the idiosyncratic nuances that make this group, this territory of people, sound this way, and this other group sound another way, that's gone also. So what happens is, you have all the alto players sounding alike, all the trumpet players have kinda the same sound, every piano player's the same. So you've just got this Xeroxed, clone thing. So that's the down side. So to me, education, I guess the way you got to do it is really know what to take, how much of the educational thing to use, then when to say, "Okay, that's enough. Let me go this other route." So it's up to you to be discriminative and know how to take information and get the positives and then say, "Now let me get the rest of this information myself.""

"Now, even if you have little players who could be little geniuses possibly, they will be denied -- what we're talking about right now -- because it becomes a process thing. I talk to teachers about this. People who teach and jazz academics. And they understand what I mean. And there are some teachers that are saying, you know, "I'm gonna have to find a way to teach these people but also do it in a way that I can have a little bit of that old time thing." And with the accessibility of knowledge that we have at our disposal these days, for them to be able to access that, but also to know how to temper it. So we won't be just shuffling out a bunch of clones and every trumpet player sounds alike and all that. And people get hip to it, you know."

Here's the whole interview.