The State Of Jazz At The End Of The 70s; Jazz Bursts Into Pieces

In the seventies, jazz entered a neo classical phase. From Archie Shepp to Martial Solal, the rereading of yesterday's repertoire became common practise. At the same time, with Lee Konitz, Dexter Gordon or Art Pepper, a young public rediscovered the figures of free jazz. Increasingly numerous references to classical music drew from a wide range of sources.

The radiant figures of Gil Evans (above, 1987, just before his death) leaves one hoping that jazz has a future other than the commercial.

Generally speaking, in the United States as in the rest of the world, young musicians claimed an encyclopedic culture in which classical, rock and world music went side by side. From jazz, musicians retained an impressive ability to absorb and appropriate outside elements.

Jazz Bursts into pieces 

Born at the start of the century, jazz must now take stock. are its newest incarnations indications of an art running out of breath or the sign of an expanding tradition? Those who ask this question ignore the fact that, around the world, different types of music outside the mainstream have been inspired by jazz: they constitute  fanfare for the century that is nearing its end.

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In some circles, the thirties are hot and jazz is fashionable. Its look is evoked in fashion design and black-and-white advertising photographs.
Its imagery pervades the movies, as the film industry exploits the stereotype of the jazz genius.
its impact is felt in rock and roll. In other words, the image and the legend of jazz still have power, even while today's improvised music tends to detach itself from it.

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Free Jazz: A Second Breath

Ever since Ornette Coleman's double quartet, many experiment attempted to organize the newfound freedom of jazz or cause the power of collective improvisation -at the core of large groups- to explode.
While Alan Silva worked on density of resonant layers by superimposing individual sounds, Sun Ra linked up with tradition of exoticism and fantastic, associated with the big bands of the thirties.

Sun Ra

Moreover, numerous musicians came together in associations to produce and distribute their own music, which was said to be hard to sell. One of these, the Chicago-based Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM), contributed to restarting the dynamism of free jazz just when the movement had begun to falter. Created in 1965 in Chicago by pianist Muhal Richard Abrams, the AACM pulled together a variety of figures who would be prominent in free jazz in seventies.

Muhal Richard Abrams

Lee Konitz (front), with Bud Powell, Miles Davis and Art Blakey
(photo: M.Fleiss)

Paul Desmond

While the Art Ensemble of Chicago played on light and shade and on dramatic organization of time, Anthony Braxton, an AACM member, referred directly to Eric Dolphy but also to such white musicians as Lee Konitz and Paul Desmond and to 20th- century classical composers as well. Particularly popular in Europe during the sixties, Braxton revealed the talents of many musicians, such as the trombone virtuoso George Lewis and the pianist Anthony Davis.

Anthony Braxton

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Evans, Mulligan and Davis

Whereas in some bands there was a very clear musical separation between the trumpets, trombones and saxophones,Gil Evans preferred the density and the richness obtained by fusing their varied tones in his arrangements. His orchestrations evoke the shimmer of colors and weight of fabrics.The seduction of the sounds took precedence, and his 'Moon Dreams' stretched itself out in dramatic torpor.

Gil Evans - Miles Davis in Studio, 1949

Among the other arrangers Miles Davis worked with for the occasion, all of them regulars at Gil Evans room, baritone sax player Gerry Mulligan was particularly innovative: he made deliberate efforts to break with the traditional eight measure form.When the harmonic structure still revered to this convention, he would shift his orchestration to the theme of 'Jeru' he called the sovereignty of the four-beat measure and rhythmic unity into question with isolated two- and three-beat measures.

Miles Davis nonet went against all the then current ideas about the lightweight quality of jazz. It seemed to demand the kind of listening one would expect Carnegie Hall, not a noisy club.

The alto sax player Lee Konitz, one of the principal soloists Miles Davis invited to the 1949 Capitol Records sessions, seemed an unlikely candidate for major role. He was to the bebop saxophone what Woody Allen is to American cinema: he had the pallor of an absentminded student, in sharp contrast to the exuberant faces of bebop. The same was true of his playing. He softened the aggressive virtuosity of Charlie Parker through the influence of the floating phrases of Lester Young and the pianist Lennie Tristano.

Gerry Mulligan in Live Performance 1940s

Tristano contributed a theoretical foundation to bop musicians discoveries and spread their ideas through his teaching. Emphasizing melody, harmony and rhythm, he streamlined bop's expressionistic aspects. The coterie of young white musicians he assembles, particularly sax players Lee Konitz and Warne Marsh, tempered bop's dazzling language by adopting airy resonances and vibratoless tones. Referring to the fugue and counterpoints of Johann Sebastian Bach, these musicians loved to do two part improvisations and, with Lennie Tristano, were responsible for the first free improvisations (without any written theme or even any agreed upon harmonic pattern).

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