The Joshua Redman Quartet includes the leader (front) on tenor saxophone and in back, from left,
Greg Hutchinson on drums, Aaron Goldberg on piano and Reuben Rogers on bass. / Arne Reimer
August 24, 2014
By Mark Stryker
Detroit Free Press Staff Writer
Tenor saxophonist Joshua Redman has been a star since he burst onto the jazz scene in his early 20s, winning the Thelonious Monk competition in 1991 and launching his prolific recording career in 1993. At 45, he remains a charismatic musician with broad stylistic interests, but with a blues sensibility and a fundamental allegiance to mainstream values of swing.
Local audiences will get a big dose of Redman’s talents at the 35th annual Detroit Jazz Festival, which opens Friday and runs through Labor Day in downtown Detroit. As the festival’s artist-in-residence, Redman will perform three times — teaming with the power trio the Bad Plus on opening night, leading his own animated quartet and folded into an ambitious large ensemble program for big band and choir in repertoire inspired by the 50th anniversary of the Civil Rights Act.
Redman — who only decided to become a musician after graduating summa cum laude from Harvard and deferring entrance to Yale Law School — is an especially thoughtful and articulate observer of the scene, and he spent 45 minutes last week talking about some of the issues facing contemporary jazz musicians. The conversation started from this premise: Where jazz was once far more connected to mainstream culture, the music has largely disappeared from television and general-interest media, losing its historical identity as a hip and even glamorous subculture.
Question: Is this a good or bad time to be a jazz musician?
Answer: It’s a good time if playing jazz is what you love to do, if it’s what you want to do. If it’s what you have to do. If it’s your calling, then anytime is a great time to be a jazz musician from a musical standpoint. To me, this music is a privilege and it’s a luxury. I don’t mean it’s like taking a vacation. It’s music that demands a tremendous amount of study and discipline and practice in order to just be proficient, let alone be creative and say something meaningful. But at the end of the day, we have a tremendous amount of freedom. We walk on the bandstand and it’s our responsibility but also our privilege to play what we feel like in the moment — that’s improvisation. That’s why people choose to be jazz musicians. Creatively, I think jazz is in a wonderful place. There are so many jazz musicians out there making interesting and original music.
From a business and economic standpoint, jazz is not in its heyday. I’m very fortunate. I came up in a time when jazz certainly wasn’t a popular music, but we were still slightly more connected to mainstream culture in terms of exposure. I also came up when there was an opportunity through recordings to build a career and receive promotion. All that has changed.
Q: What is the responsibility of the individual musician in this day and age?
A: I would like to say the responsibility of the individual musician is just to play his or her music as honestly, creatively, passionately and with total commitment as possible. Maybe I’m being overly idealistic, but I’d like to believe that’s still true. I’m not super clued in to the young jazz scene these days. I do hear about young musicians, and I play with a lot of them, but I don’t live in New York anymore and have my ear to the ground. But it does seem that the musicians who believe in this music and are committed to it find a way to have a life in the music.
Jazz musicians have to find a way to build their audiences, and they have to find a way to make that work in the new paradigm for information sharing and how music reaches people and new avenues for exposure. A lot of it is about social media. I guess that musicians have to find a way to make that work for them.
Q: What can be done to attract more casual music fans to jazz?
A: Jazz has evolved into a complex and sophisticated modern music, but we as jazz musicians have an emotional connection to the music, in some cases a spiritual connection. The music is serious but it’s also fun and passionate. A lot of jazz musicians are still trying to communicate on an emotional level that we would be if were playing other forms of music, whether it would be rock, or R&B, hip-hop or country. It would be helpful if people could be made to understand that.
These days there’s this popular notion that jazz is this abstract, esoteric music that’s played by jazz musicians for jazz musicians and doesn’t provide anything interesting or moving for average listeners. But I do think for a lot of people when they do go to jazz shows, even if they’re novices, come out feeling some sort of connection. Finding a way to get people in the seats and finding a way to communicate that to people is part of it.
The ecology of jazz has changed a lot over the last 40 years. When I came up, jazz education was important, and the vast majority of the musicians I played with went to music school, even though I didn’t. Now, all of them go to music school. But jazz education — which is a wonderful thing — can leave the sense of musical values shaped a little too much by the educational environment by playing jazz for other jazz musicians and your peers in educational institutions and not having the opportunity to get out there and just play gigs for people who aren’t musicians. A lot of times you can go to some of these shows, especially in the smaller clubs, and most of the audience is other young jazz musicians.
Q: Playing for an audience of regular folks and learning how to put over a ballad so that people get it — that has to be part of the answer to expanding audiences.
A: Yes. And all of the jazz musicians from what might be called the Golden Age, from the 1930s up through the ’60s and even the early ’70s, no matter how traditional or avant-garde they were, no matter how for-the-people accessible they were or how oppositional to that, they were all out there gigging in front of people night after night. They had to play in situations where people were listening, but also in situations where a certain amount of people were listening as background music or there was a certain amount of talking or lack of engagement. But they did it and found a way to communicate. Jazz musicians today are not put to that test. I don’t blame them, because there aren’t as many opportunities, but they have to find ways of putting themselves to that test if they want to develop an audience.
Q: Is part of the answer developing crossover languages like what pianist Robert Glasper has done in terms of assimilating hip-hop or what Esperanza Spalding has done in terms of creating a pop music influenced by jazz?
A: It’s definitely an answer, and it’s a wonderful answer if it’s true to that artist’s aesthetic and natural and genuine to them. You named two fantastic artists. Glasper in particular — his group is killing. They’re not playing acoustic jazz, OK? Glasper is a great acoustic jazz musician, but that particular group isn’t playing swing music; they’re playing groove music and music heavily influenced by hip-hop and electronica. But they’re doing it in a way that is completely in keeping with the jazz spirit and jazz attitude, which is very improvisational and creative. But it’s not the answer, because there are many jazz musicians who don’t want to be doing that. There should be a way for acoustic jazz to also reach people. ...
It’s so easy to make a record today, and sometimes it sounds to me like a lot of jazz musicians think, “I wrote these tunes and they’re really hip and I can play really well over them.” So it’s a demonstration of ability and proficiency within a certain vocabulary; it’s impressive, but I think there needs to be an attitude of: I’m here to deliver something. You can deliver a message that’s less on the melodic side — if there’s a certain energy in the music that has potential to connect. ...
I don’t feel that jazz, especially today, is entertainment music. It’s challenging music; it requires something from an audience; they have to work. If you’re willing to be an active listener it’s possible to be very moved by the music. But it’s not necessarily entertainment in the sense of instant gratification.
Q: There are people who think that playing music that swings or has a strong blues content is old-fashioned. I worry about the music losing touch with its African-American roots. Do you?
A: I think worry might be too strong a word, because I think there are still those who realize the importance of that and that on a certain level that is the heart and soul and lifeblood of the jazz. But I think you’re right: There are musicians who probably feel that’s old-fashioned, and there are certainly musicians who don’t in any discernible way refer to those roots.
We all have to make the aesthetic choices that are right for us, so I don’t single anybody out and say they’re wrong for not swinging or sounding bluesy. But I will say that’s one of the hardest things to do. The danger is taking swing and blues for granted. Like, “Oh, that’s some stuff cats did 50 years ago and, you know, I’ve checked out some John Coltrane and some Sonny Rollins and some Dexter Gordon and I’ve transcribed a few solos, but I’m doing something modern.”
I still think one of the hardest things to do is get up there and just play a medium tempo swinging blues. Just to swing with focus, with power and with relaxation — that’s an incredibly difficult thing to do. There may be some musicians who to be quite honest can’t do it and don’t want to spend the time learning how to do it, so they justify that by saying “OK, this is not modern.” But some of the more modern jazz musicians, even if they aren’t playing music that is technically swing music, the ones that are good have dealt with that and have that as a basis in what they do. And if they want up on the bandstand at a jam session and the band was playing “C Jam Blues” they could get up and take a smoking solo on that.
Q: To bring it back to audiences, there’s a reason why swing and blues have connected with audiences going back nearly a century: Those elements speak to deeply shared cultural values. Do African Americans have a special responsibility to support jazz?
A: I’m hesitant to demand of any audiences that they have a responsibility to listen to a music because it protects or upholds an aspect of their history or their tradition. I would like to think that audiences might naturally want to do that. But I think to get too into that — to say these audiences have a responsibility to check this music out — is shirking your responsibility as the artist. To the extent that responsibility exists, it’s a two-way street. The artists themselves have to recognize the importance of connecting with that audience and upholding certain values and a certain spirit that comes from that audience in that community.
I do feel there’s something special and unique about playing for audiences that are really engaged when you’re in the United States. There is a connection that’s special, and I think that has something to do with the fact that this is a music that comes from this country. Although it’s become a world music and, obviously, there are great jazz musicians from all over the world and it connects with audiences all over the world, there is a fundamental core of this music that comes out of an American experience.
I do feel there is something special about playing for American audiences, and then to take that even further, this is a music that in its origins is born out of the African-American experience and community. So I do feel that when I am playing for African-American audiences, there is something unique about that connection when it’s right.
Contact Mark Stryker 313-222-6459 or mstryker@freepress.com
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