While I really hope not to sound cheesy or too philosophical again, I would still like to share a jazz concert moment.
One shouldn't dare to try to summarize the beauty of a good concert in too few words, I guess. But tonight would make it easy for me.
We're playing workshop concerts this week, presenting what we (at least should have) practiced over the last three months with a group of other students, coached by musicians known nationally and internationally (like Jorge Rossy, Adrian Mears, or Wolfgang Muthspiel, just to name a few).
(just an example: Mr Braff with two other great swiss jazz musicians)
One of these concerts tonight presented the music of Malcolm Braff. He's an incredible piano player, a rhythm wizard, and he plays the piano like a lion - as the listener, you're always a little scared that he might actually destroy the piano (and as a side note, he very successfully invents board games). His music is as down-to-earth as it's intellectual. The last piece of the concert was called "Together", the rhythm section playing "against" the horns, whose theme sounded like the salvation army playing after the invasion of spaceships leaving the earth sick and destroyed (maybe Cormac McCarthy comes to mind). At the end, instead of playing a ritardando, or the mandatory drum fill, the whole band just held the last note, and while the audience waited for the ending, ready to clap their hands, it just went on, and it slowly got louder, till the bandstand actually vibrated, and still they held it, people started shouting out, it was so loud and so intense, it sounded like the end of the world, and when it finally stopped, I just thought, two minutes longer, and the audience might have completely freaked out (like in "Das Parfüm").
The beautiful melody, seemingly simple and unostentatious, but actually going through all sorts of tonalities, against a busy rhythm, and this intense ending, touched me so much it made me cry.
To me, an experience like that is like an earth quake, things get into perspective, and I wander around in a blur for a few hours, and I'm always so thankful to be able to feel something like that. I can only hope that I'll maybe one day through my music be able to give that gift to someone else too.
Got philosophical again! Oh well. Good night, and good luck!
2011/01/24
2011/01/14
Firsts
Tomorrow, for the first time, the whole group I assembled is going to play together - for the first time, I'll hear my compositions played by eight people, two violonists and a violist included. For the first time, after this weekend, I'll have a recording in my hands, a recording of two of my own songs, written on the train from Bern to Basel and back.
I will have to deal with a recording engineer, microphones, the right places and seating arrangements, I will direct the whole thing musically and at the same time try to keep the whole bunch punctual, happy and more or less well-nourished.
And, for me the hardest thing of all, I'll have to will myself into a place where I'll feel self-confident enough to play what I can play, to see something in my head instead of just playing some "right notes" in my solos.
I know it takes a lot of experience, and maybe also a bit more looseness, to get at that point in an always rather stressful studio situation. I guess I'll get there someday. For tomorrow, I just hope I'll be so excited by the new sound that the music behind it will be stronger than my own nervousness. And if I'm not entirely happy by the result - well, then that's apparently what improvisers have to live with. There will always be a next time.
So, officially stated here: this weekend is about firsts - firsts are allowed not to be perfect. Let's see what I can get out of them!
I will have to deal with a recording engineer, microphones, the right places and seating arrangements, I will direct the whole thing musically and at the same time try to keep the whole bunch punctual, happy and more or less well-nourished.
And, for me the hardest thing of all, I'll have to will myself into a place where I'll feel self-confident enough to play what I can play, to see something in my head instead of just playing some "right notes" in my solos.
I know it takes a lot of experience, and maybe also a bit more looseness, to get at that point in an always rather stressful studio situation. I guess I'll get there someday. For tomorrow, I just hope I'll be so excited by the new sound that the music behind it will be stronger than my own nervousness. And if I'm not entirely happy by the result - well, then that's apparently what improvisers have to live with. There will always be a next time.
So, officially stated here: this weekend is about firsts - firsts are allowed not to be perfect. Let's see what I can get out of them!
2010/11/05
workin' on it
... on my bachelor project. it pretty much takes up most of my free hours, I'm organising players, rehearsals and recording dates and trying to arrange at full speed. While I have lots of ideas for pieces which I try to blend into songs (or whatever the word is for these little tunes), I find it very hard to concentrate on the whole. I know that I want a good concert, which means: I want to show solid and somewhat idiomatic jazz piano playing, but I want the sparks too, I would like to take first steps in the direction of my own personal voice, whatever this may mean.
I would like to include strings, which sounds a little off, doesn't it - I'm a pianist and I already have a guitar on board, too! But still - the sound of a string quartet is very different, and I hope to combine all of those instruments in a convincing way.
It is also very hard, in my opinion, to include meaning, without it sounding cheesy or naive - it would just be nice to be able to express something. I guess you can't play well without some kind of an urge, but how to communicate this to people in the audience maybe not used to jazz, is at the moment beyond me.
So, lots of questions, as always, which will maybe dissolve by time, and of course, while thinking can't hurt, too much of it most definitely can.
But it's really fun, too! It's a project, my first real grown-up musical project! Any tips from anywhere very welcome!
I would like to include strings, which sounds a little off, doesn't it - I'm a pianist and I already have a guitar on board, too! But still - the sound of a string quartet is very different, and I hope to combine all of those instruments in a convincing way.
It is also very hard, in my opinion, to include meaning, without it sounding cheesy or naive - it would just be nice to be able to express something. I guess you can't play well without some kind of an urge, but how to communicate this to people in the audience maybe not used to jazz, is at the moment beyond me.
So, lots of questions, as always, which will maybe dissolve by time, and of course, while thinking can't hurt, too much of it most definitely can.
But it's really fun, too! It's a project, my first real grown-up musical project! Any tips from anywhere very welcome!
2010/09/29
A Day In The Life- Appendix
I was wrong! My day didn't end with laundry or cooking. I got a phone call from my father, who invited me to come and eat cheese fondue - he was just coming back from a hike on a swiss mountain, 4000 meter or 13123.32 foot high, with two of my brothers. So I went home, ate lots of fluid cheese and looked at pictures of the day they'd had - try to think of the bluest the sky can be, and the whitest the mountains, add some sweat, homemade sandwiches and cool mammut outdoor wear, and there you go!
Every word of this is true!
For dessert we had some Ben and Jerry's, which is all the rage here now, so no, we're not lost in our little swiss ways. Don't you worry!
Every word of this is true!
For dessert we had some Ben and Jerry's, which is all the rage here now, so no, we're not lost in our little swiss ways. Don't you worry!
A Day In The Life
I'm in the library of the jazz school right now and doing something illegal, or frowned upon, or taboo! I'm writing. All around me, saxophones are blown, drums are being worked on, people are singing or humming or tapping or clicking. It's a maddening atmosphere. The air is full of promise, so many talented people, some playing all day long, or so it seems, some quickly pouring coffee down their throats before getting back to their mini-practise-labs.
This morning, in the train, I put a 15/8meter beat on my laptop, practised crossfading rhythms on my way to the bus, and in the bus listened to two songs by Avishai Cohen, at school I practised for a while, got carried away, and forgot a meeting with a teacher. Later, in a arctic-cold room, I listened to another teacher talking about some new assignment, we'll have to do five reharmonizations of tunes, play them, solo over them and record them. In ten minutes, I'll go practise some more, then I'll have my piano lesson, will look at the 15/8-beat again, listen to some more Avishai Cohen, maybe do some arranging on the computer on the train, and will be home at about 5pm. Then I'll listen to John Coltrane: Coltrane and Cannonball, will briefly write about it for another assignment. At 7pm sharp, I'll stop working, and slowly my feet will touch ground again: I'll have to do laundry, do some cooking and cleaning, and maybe later I'll see the Paraglider who is playing a gig tonight.
That's just for today, but days are rather similar. I'm often wondering not only about other people's lives, but also about their day-to-day routine, I mean: how exactly does a day go for a police man? Or a social worker?
This morning, in the train, I put a 15/8meter beat on my laptop, practised crossfading rhythms on my way to the bus, and in the bus listened to two songs by Avishai Cohen, at school I practised for a while, got carried away, and forgot a meeting with a teacher. Later, in a arctic-cold room, I listened to another teacher talking about some new assignment, we'll have to do five reharmonizations of tunes, play them, solo over them and record them. In ten minutes, I'll go practise some more, then I'll have my piano lesson, will look at the 15/8-beat again, listen to some more Avishai Cohen, maybe do some arranging on the computer on the train, and will be home at about 5pm. Then I'll listen to John Coltrane: Coltrane and Cannonball, will briefly write about it for another assignment. At 7pm sharp, I'll stop working, and slowly my feet will touch ground again: I'll have to do laundry, do some cooking and cleaning, and maybe later I'll see the Paraglider who is playing a gig tonight.
That's just for today, but days are rather similar. I'm often wondering not only about other people's lives, but also about their day-to-day routine, I mean: how exactly does a day go for a police man? Or a social worker?
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