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Jan Garbarek: Deep Song
Il libro la traduzione di "Jan Deep Song" di Michael Tucker, pubblicato nel 1998 in Gran Bretagna. Si tratta di un accurato saggio sull'opera di Jan Garbarek, voce tra le pi influenti e originali del jazz contemporaneo. Il libro affronta tanto gli aspetti strutturali della musica del sassofonista e compositore norvegese, quanto i dettagli biografici, gettando luce sulla scena scandinava e sulle collaborazioni ed esperienze internazionali di Garbarek.
390 pages, Paperback
First published January 14, 1999
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January 3, 2022
There have been months and months when Garbarek has practiced relatively simple things, such as holding long tones, for anything up to six or seven hours a day. The result has been an extraordinary control of the dynamics of saxophone playing. Eberhard Weber said, Jan is “THE player of dynamics.” Jan “fractures familiar expectations.” “Above all, he’s singing. He’s not playing licks.” The music of Jan Garbarek is built upon silence. Jan has said what distinguishes his style is what he doesn’t play. Like Lester Young, Jan “had the courage to develop an entirely different sound”. “Music was the greatest meditation of all.” Jan was long a fan of Paul Bley (a hero of mine) and Jarrett for their lyricism. He especially closely studied the pre-bop sax players. Jan said, “It was Don (Cherry) who first got us interested in our own folk music, who made us realize how much there was to check out in our own backyard.” Jan didn’t add the soprano sax for years (1971 or 1972), until he found a rare beat-up old Italian soprano sax which he used for decades. A recording of Johnny Hodges on a curved soprano made Jan want to check the instrument out. Jan also has played overtone flute, piano, clarinet, and even bass saxophone (w/ Terje Rypdal on flute) on record/stage.
Jan is a self-taught tenor player. He meets Jon Christensen in 1965 at the Molde Festival when he was 18 and Jon was 23. It was there that Manfred Eicher first heard him play and was taken by Jan’s “singing” style. Jan liked Coltrane’s spirit coming through every note. Jan liked Shepp’s ability to go from rough to lyrical fast, even within a note. Jan liked Pharoah Sanders for his earthiness. The debt to Archie Shepp and Albert Ayler is also huge in Jan’s playing. Eicher had been a production assistant at Deutsche Grammophon. Eicher advised Ralph Towner to minimize piano on his brilliant Solstice record. “I play the old melodies in a quite untypical way.” Jan studied Palestrina part writing in the 70’s. One of my long-time favorite ECM songs to jam on with friends is the looping progression Witchi-Tai-To (Jan and other ECM artists recorded it), but here I learn Jim Pepper actually wrote Witchi-Tai-To as a peyote vision chant. Very cool… Then Don Cherry taught it to Bobo Stenson who taught it to Jan and then they recorded it.
Jan believes that just as the Black blues brought US it’s jazz vocabulary, so Europeans should draw on the vocabulary of their own folk music. Jan had wanted to chart this course. After studying Haydn and Mozart, Jan believed “that, by the 70s, too much jazz had become either too cluttered, or too abstracted from matters of melody: of light and shade.” Fun fact: Jan once played a gig with Ray Charles (in the late 60s). Jan is known as “one of the great melodists in jazz”. Jan’s “use of space.” “His ability to make the soprano sing like the human voice.” After hearing Coltrane, Ayler and all the tenor players, Jan “had the strength to come up with something that was his own, as an expressive even poetic instrument.” “The guy is a complete original and created that sort of Northern landscape area for others to explore if they wanted to.”
This book could be slow going during the barely connected high culture name dropping (Joseph Campbell, Beckett, Yeats, Matisse, etc.) detours, apparently because of the author’s day job as a teacher of poetics. Left without an editor, the author writes such "poetic" sentences such as: “To walk naked is not necessarily to perish on the sands of despair” (page 32). And what, pray tell, does that sentence have to do with better understanding Jan Garbarek? Being a rabid Jan fan, I had to read this book; I flew to Europe once just to see four Jan Garbarek concerts and even bought a Rampone Two Voices curved soprano just like Jan’s and then sold my straight Selmer sopranos. It was reassuring to read that two of my favorite composers are among Jan’s favorites: Chopin and Penderecki. good book on a terrific subject, but I wish there were more Jan interviews inside.
Jan is a self-taught tenor player. He meets Jon Christensen in 1965 at the Molde Festival when he was 18 and Jon was 23. It was there that Manfred Eicher first heard him play and was taken by Jan’s “singing” style. Jan liked Coltrane’s spirit coming through every note. Jan liked Shepp’s ability to go from rough to lyrical fast, even within a note. Jan liked Pharoah Sanders for his earthiness. The debt to Archie Shepp and Albert Ayler is also huge in Jan’s playing. Eicher had been a production assistant at Deutsche Grammophon. Eicher advised Ralph Towner to minimize piano on his brilliant Solstice record. “I play the old melodies in a quite untypical way.” Jan studied Palestrina part writing in the 70’s. One of my long-time favorite ECM songs to jam on with friends is the looping progression Witchi-Tai-To (Jan and other ECM artists recorded it), but here I learn Jim Pepper actually wrote Witchi-Tai-To as a peyote vision chant. Very cool… Then Don Cherry taught it to Bobo Stenson who taught it to Jan and then they recorded it.
Jan believes that just as the Black blues brought US it’s jazz vocabulary, so Europeans should draw on the vocabulary of their own folk music. Jan had wanted to chart this course. After studying Haydn and Mozart, Jan believed “that, by the 70s, too much jazz had become either too cluttered, or too abstracted from matters of melody: of light and shade.” Fun fact: Jan once played a gig with Ray Charles (in the late 60s). Jan is known as “one of the great melodists in jazz”. Jan’s “use of space.” “His ability to make the soprano sing like the human voice.” After hearing Coltrane, Ayler and all the tenor players, Jan “had the strength to come up with something that was his own, as an expressive even poetic instrument.” “The guy is a complete original and created that sort of Northern landscape area for others to explore if they wanted to.”
This book could be slow going during the barely connected high culture name dropping (Joseph Campbell, Beckett, Yeats, Matisse, etc.) detours, apparently because of the author’s day job as a teacher of poetics. Left without an editor, the author writes such "poetic" sentences such as: “To walk naked is not necessarily to perish on the sands of despair” (page 32). And what, pray tell, does that sentence have to do with better understanding Jan Garbarek? Being a rabid Jan fan, I had to read this book; I flew to Europe once just to see four Jan Garbarek concerts and even bought a Rampone Two Voices curved soprano just like Jan’s and then sold my straight Selmer sopranos. It was reassuring to read that two of my favorite composers are among Jan’s favorites: Chopin and Penderecki. good book on a terrific subject, but I wish there were more Jan interviews inside.
Displaying 1 of 1 review