Last Friday night I produced an evening of music with six guitarists and a rhythm section. It was one of those magical evenings where we played musical chairs and everything came together and made me glad—no thrilled—to be alive.
One of the many positives of the guitar camp I've been doing is having the opportunity to watch great players who have never played together before go at it. I watched Kurt Rosenwinkel and Julian Lage play for the first time… Nels Cline and Fred Frith for the first time. Neither had to discuss what they would play, they just started in. When four or six guitarists are all trading off with each other, making music on the spot with little or no rehearsal, fascinating things happen. On Friday, for instance, Max Light and Grant Gordy met. These are two of the best young players out there. What a delight to introduce them. Having been witness to dozens of wonderful concerts, I notice that the single most important element to success is the ability that each player has to listen, to be empathetic, to join forces with their music partners. “Listening” Is a big word, that is used as a catch all phrase. True listening is the art of being in the moment, all your senses attuned, your full self available and open. It’s a deep art.
There was an abundance of this last Friday. Steve Cardenas, Grant Gordy, Pete McCann, Brad Shepik, Max Light, and myself were joined by Jerome Harris on bass and Matt Wilson on drums. It was a tiny space over on the Upper West Side come, which worked to our favor, encouraging intimacy at low volumes. Steve and Brad played tunes by Carla Bley and Steve Swallow, Grant and I played one of his tunes and my arrangement of the Appalachian song Shady Grove, Max and Pete played a couple of standards, I played one of my tunes with Pete, etc., etc. We kept mixing things up. Somehow the combination of feel, tempos, original material and standards, all dovetailed wonderfully together. So much of it was the attitude of openness in all corners. Friendly in every way.
I don’t think it was the choice of material that made the evening special. It was the obvious delight each person took in partnering, smiles were everywhere, empathetic comping was everywhere, tasty, purposeful solos, great tone, flashes of remarkable dexterity mixing with patient and lyrical phrases. Jerome and Matt gave accompaniment that was more than accompaniment. The talents of my partners blew my mind! New York…We were all in dialog. It had been a long time since I saw Matt play up close. Rarely have I played with a more swinging, tasteful, melodic, and righteous jazz drummer.
One of the many special moments in the night occurred when three of us played together with no rhythm section. On both occasions the trios seemed to suspend all notion of who should play what when. Everybody was playing bass, chord, and melody at the same time, and yet not doing it at all, it was one big instrument. We never got in each other's way. This is not a given! Lord knows I’ve stepped on people far more than I would like to recall. The flow was constant, the piece I was in felt like it could go on for 20 minutes.
I was walking down the street today and I heard loud music from a parked car, some sort of pop tune that's stylistically prevalent today. I guess you could call it a mixture of R&B and rap. Mostly it sounded like robots were playing. Everything was obviously played by drum machines and synthesizers, and the voice was auto- tuned in a way that was utterly cartoonish. Obviously people like what they like, and I'm not going to sit in judgment of people's tastes. But it occurred to me how much better my life is because I love improvisation made with acoustic, or semi-acoustic instruments. Interacting in real time with like- minded players, especially on a tune with strong bones, has been enormously meaningful and sustaining.
Sure programming machines can be fun and altogether musical. But it's not the same. The type of back and forth we all had on Friday night was rich in heart, empathy, surprise, and beauty. And overtones! There's much talk today about the fear of AI in music. But when I was listening to what was coming out of this parked car I realized that AI in a fashion has been with us for years. The preferred sound for millions of pop music lovers is robotic. Humans have been back benched. Sure, it takes a human to program a machine, but a machine does not breathe, it does not sweat, it does not change in real time according to the input received by its partner. It’s predictable, and that’s what people like about it, I suppose.
The people I play with don’t like predictable. They travel into the unknown. The unknown is where reality lies. It's where who and what we think we are fall away, a sweet realm where the individual melts. The art of improvisation, if rightly used, crosses all languages, any barrier you can think of, color, race, nationality. It’s a blueprint for making peace. To truly improvise with another human being allows you to get to know them in a way that a year of conversation might not equal.
Perhaps this sounds a little heavy-handed. As if I think I have some sort of answer. I most certainly don't. But that's something that I value in improvisation. You abandon answers. You take chances, you have the type of conversation that you wish you could have over the dinner table. Boy, I felt grateful when it was all done.
It's really very simple. Not the learning of music which takes endless years. But the dialogue. You sit down, turn off the inner critic, open your senses, and engage in a perpetual hello.
And now! notice on 2 gigs…
For anybody who lives down in the Baltimore and Washington DC area, I will be doing a workshop at StageM music and Arts— tomorrow Thursday night, May 2nd. Then performing at Rhizome in Washington DC Friday. We'll have a wonderful guitarist who is a perennial camper, Cristian Perez, opening for us.
Info here:
5/2
5/3
https://www.rhizomedc.org/new-events/2024/5/3/joel-harrison-big-tent-americana-cristian-perez
Beautiful commentary, Joel. Wish I could have been there on Friday.