How Small The Worlds

I'm going to risk a few generalizing statements today. Playing with people studying at another jazz school than I last week, and talking about plans for the (professional) future, I realized once again how strongly jazz musicians are influenced by their upbringing, meaning their educational environment. I guess it's human to orientate yourself, wherever you are, to the leading ideas.
In my jazz school there is a rather international vibe. A lot of the teachers have studied in Berklee, or Graz, and we have many masterclasses by jazz stars such as Mark Turner, Eric Harland, or Esperanza Spalding. The best students talk about their plans to study abroad after the bachelor's degree. There is idealism in every corner. People are talking about getting better, about bands, and cd projects, and getting reassured by the teachers who have led very interesting lifes. Discussions about money, about the future and about a job are very rare.
In the other jazz school, the leading subject seems to be different - I've found a more down-to-earth approach. Of course people talk about getting better and their cd projects, too. But a lot of the people put an end to their jazz studies after the bachelor. One statement that I've heard more than once is that with a master's degree in performance you don't have a profession, and with a master's in composition you'll just end up writing for carnival groups (called Guggenmusik in Switzerland). If you want to be a teacher, you will study pedagogy, but if not, you'd better try to find a job that guarantees some financial stability and practice your instrument on your own. I have never heard statements like these in my jazz school.
There are a lot of other differences. For example, a subject I will elaborate on a later date, in the city I live in there is a large jazz scene. Newcomers can play in lots of restaurants or small bars, gig that are neither paid well nor attended by many people, but still, there is often more than one jazz concert a night.  In the city I study in there are much fewer jazz locations, jazz concerts concentrate in one bar, open from wednesday to saturday.

I'm often astonished how quickly a rather self-orientated, self-sufficient subscene can build itself, and how quickly you find yourself believing that in there, you'll find the truth - not knowing that just a hundred kilometres away, there is a very similar subscene holding on to a totally different set of truths.
I guess I'm in a good position - studying there and living here!

Gwilym Is Not An Elb He's Just From Wales

Just one of these days!
I mean- it's great to have a job I really like, which gives me the faintest idea of being able to achieve something real. And I love to practise in the morning to get my share of crazy jazz stuff, and to go to work in the afternoon like a normal person. But I also love the (rare) days when I have no other obligations than to practise.
So that's how I find myself today: really bad weather outside, wearing a cozy jumper, checking out new jazz releases.

The reason for this entry is that I discovered Gwilym Simcock today, a name that instantly went into my "important-musicians-or-just-stuff-I-like-notebook. He is one of these new stars on the jazz firmament so easily checked out thanks to the internet. Just twenty-nine, he already recorded four albums, the newest of them will be released on August 10th. He has two trios, a quartet (with Steve Swallow), a quintet and a bigband, and is very active as a composer, for orchestras and choirs, amongst others. He has first studied classical music and then jazz, and still plays both. Apparently he is already rather well known and has won several important prizes. I'm sure that his is a name to keep in mind!

Audreys Fault

moving fast! the week of the wows.
a week ago, I was preparing for a cozy night at home with Audrey Hepburns movie Sabrina, eating junkfood and grinning, as I admittedly sometimes do when alone, with bliss. One hour into the evening, The Paraglider knocked on my door, told me he just came off the phone with his landlord who told him to move out (long story). Wow one.
Yesterday, I came home from a quick holiday with my girlfriends which was so much fun!!, and once again was really looking forward to the whole cozy night home idea, the same Audrey Hepburn movie and chocolate awaiting... when The Paraglider told me he was home. And how did I find him? In bed, with one elephant-sized foot and crutches, his first paragliding accident. Wow two.

Between being practical and nursy, cooking and going to the drugstore, and being scared to death once again of what could happen to paragliders besides a torn ligament, I managed to play the piano for one hour, the first one after my month of recreation. In these sixty minutes, I thought of nothing else, learned a standard (ironically: "This will be my shining hour"!) and wrote a little piece. Which I might call Audreys Fault. Because let's be honest: I'll never watch Sabrina, who knows what might happen next?!

Hello summer!

Only a short one for today: it's over! Exams, concerts (well, almost: one left for tomorrow!) ended today.
A warm welcome to the summer break: two and a half months in which one will have to plan, or at least start thinking about, the next big thing to come: the bachelor project. Which people to play with. Concerts to plan, so that all the nice people who support me so much through my doubt-and-irony-ridden days will finally see what I'm doing. A network to be built, so that after the studies there will be contacts and ideas left. Wow, sounds serious already!

But let's not forget: hello summer! long weekends with my friends, and two weeks in Germany with The Paraglider. It's gonna be grrrrreat (isn't this what the Kellogs Tiger says in the US?)!

And lo and behold: two cheesy summer quotes, just for the sake of it:

In the depth of winter, I finally learned that within me there lay an invincible summer.  ~Albert Camus

In summer, the song sings itself.  ~William Carlos Williams

A night at the opera, and: I almost did it!

I've just had a crazy week. Exam time is almost over, everything went well (very well even) until now. I am so unbelievably proud and happy - one week to go and I'll have finished my fourth semester as a jazz student. I did it! I did it, I DID IT! Now, and if only for practical reasons, deciding time is over. In one year, I'll have my bachelor of arts in jazz performance (just saying it out loud makes me proud, writing it down is even better!) One year. 32 weeks of lessons. Not so long any more, and stupid would I be, would I give up now. I'll still have to take one step after the other, and I'll still have to face doubts (appearing out of nowhere like whiny old-lady-ghosts). And: I won't know what the heck I'll do afterwards, how I'll face everyday life as a part-time jazz musician. But I guess I'll have my music degree after all!!

For christmas, The Paraglider had given me opera tickets for yesterday, "Der Freischütz" von Carl Maria von Weber. Me, almost presentable in a nice dress and boots, with drum sticks looking out of my bag, in the Zurich Opera House! Known for pretty conservative productions, nice old building, red carpets and balconies with a view over the Lake and the city - an evening out at the Zurich Opera is really quite the event. I loved it! The Paraglider and me did some pretty ignoble things like drinking out of the faucet in the toilet and ordering a McDonalds-menu not five minutes after the last curtain. And: it's forbidden to take pictures, but I still did it, rebel that I am.

The Paraglider has a natural ability to fit in environments like that, while I may for a second look like I do, but the next will with absolute certainty do something inappropriate. I know he has a great career as a cultural manager ahead of him, he really has all the potential!

the hairdrier gang

As I mentioned, I went to a performance for a master of arts in music and new media performance this week. What these people do is at least as crazy as what we jazz students do! 

Voilà, this is the setting before the perfomance. Before it started, my friend hung a small block of ice in the middle, and changed the light to blacklight. She had connected all the hairdriers to a mixing desk.
So, after a few words from her teacher, it began.
It was almost completely dark, except for all the teeth and white clothing which, due to the blacklight, put an extraterrestrial glow to the room.
Slowly, the hairdriers began to blow, like an orchestra - first only one, then two, then some together, sometimes all of them, sometimes only a few. You couldn't see stands or cables, only their heads. It looked unbelievable. Somehow, they started to look like creatures! Each of it had its own sound. At some point, the ice started to melt from the heat, and little neon green drops fell on the small table and were blown around, creating moving pictures. Out of many speakers hanging on the walls came sounds that swelled up to a climax, which together with the sound and the smell of the army of hairdriers, the melted ice, the neon colors and crazy white teeth of the people standing around, had an amazing effect, connecting almost all of the five senses.
I have never seen anything like it.
And I have no idea how someone could possibly grade this, or what thoughts and preparations led to it, all I know is that my friend is a wizard in audio engineering - and that apparently she did really good and the teachers were enthusiastic!

I really wonder what kind of career she will find. She's a dear friend of mine, and we have found it a relief to talk to each other about the similar problems or questions we encounter (or in her case encountered!) during art studies in the broadest sense. And I think we both have two sides: the one who is realistic and pragmatic, and the other who can go completely overboard, losing track of time and common sense when working with music.

Family reunion...

I saw my whole family yesterday, there were almost a hundred people, and I'm telling you, I had to fight for words. What just a day before seemed to me like the rock'n'roll, unconventional side of me lived out through jazz (the crazy music nobody cares for - "ooh, you know, I love jazz, I'm going nuts over some good old dixie"), appeared shallow and useless, when described to people who couldn't know less about what I'm doing. People who got married very young, had four children and that was it (not meant to sound condescending at all). When faced with one's own history, it can get really frightening, somehow one gets thrown back and has to look at oneself as others might, and although I'm happy (at least most of the time) about the road I chose to take, it's still hard to see that I'm so fundamentally different from almost everyone of them - people who are my family.

So that led to rather blue thoughts. Really bad day today.