Interviews with . . .

JAZZ . . . and other obsessions - Bruce Crowther's Website

Interviews with three of today's leading jazz artists:

Réne Marie - David Hazeltine - Donny McCaslin

RÉNE MARIE: Jump, and the net will appear

by

Bruce Crowther

 

 

A lot can happen in four years. Lives can evolve from secretive and sad to open and free. People can move from chains to change. Dreams can be followed, lessons learned, friends lost, dignity gained. Strongly entrenched beliefs can be blown to smithereens , personal barriers can be broken through again and again and again. In four years. In only four years.

Those eloquent word are René Marie's and they need no editorial comment, except perhaps to say that a 'lot can happen' is putting it mildly.

Go back to 1996, and outside of her family and friends almost no one had heard of her. Contrast that with today when she is widely known as one of the most astonishingly gifted jazz singers to grace the international stage.

Of course, in these days of media hype and million-dollar promotional campaigns, it is not uncommon for a singer to appear out of nowhere and take a place at the top of polls and sell CDs by the truckload. But René Marie's is not that kind of tale; indeed, her story is as different as can be.

 

Beginnings

She was born René Marie Stevens in Warrenton, Virginia, on 7 November 1955. Her parents, Lester Barbour and Daisy Stone Stevens, were teachers, initially teaching in a one-room schoolhouse. Both parents came from big families. 'My father had seventeen siblings, my mother had six - all girls. My maternal grandfather was an itinerant preacher and my mother and her sisters sang when he traveled. One of my aunts played piano, another became a jazz vocalist in New York somewhere, but due to her mental illness, we lost contact with her. Her daughter, however, is a professional vocalist on the west coast. My father sang in the glee club in college and loved to sing around the house, although no one else in my immediate family is a musician.'

That immediate family consisted of five brothers, Claude, Lester, Jr., Eric, Sam and John, and one sister, Lynn. René also sang around the house, enjoying music on radio and records by artists as diverse as Harry Belafonte, Peter, Paul & Mary, Paul Robeson, Odetta , Hank Williams, Sr., Mitch Miller and his Gang, and, later, Nina Simone, Roberta Flack, Cleo Laine, Sly and the Family Stone, James Brown, Genya Ravan, the Pointer Sisters, and Ella Fitzgerald and Sarah Vaughan.

When René was still a small child, her family moved to Roanoke, Virginia. She had begun taking her interest in music a stage further, learning to play piano and read music. Going one step further, as a young teenager she sang with an R&B band. 'It was just some local guys in the neighborhood. We called ourselves the Majestics. I met my future husband in this band. He played piano. We married when I was eighteen and we both became Jehovah's Witnesses. We quit doing music publicly as a result of that. I stopped singing for twenty-three years.'

'Everything was ready and so was I.' That last remark of René's sounds abrupt, and so it should, because it matches the abruptness of her departure from the world of music. The resumption of her story, twenty-three years later, is almost as abrupt. It is tempting to assume that nothing happened during those intervening years but of course that is not so. Indeed, much did happen, most importantly, she had two sons, Michael Croan, born in 1975 and Desmond Croan, born in 1978. And she also went to work part-time in jobs ranging from being a cashier at McDonald's, a waitress at a formal restaurant and cleaning offices and private homes for her husband's janitorial business before joining First Union Bank in Roanoke in 1991, where she eventually rose to a senior position. But throughout all these years, however much they might have been sublimated to the needs of survival, René's musical instincts were alive and feeding on her experiences of life. In time, the need to sing became stronger and in 1996 she had begun to nourish that need. She had started to sing at gigs with a trio for which she was writing charts and, by 1997, was rehearsing for a CD she planned to record.

'The 31st of December was the day we were to start the whole thing. I had contacted Flat 5 Studios in Salem, Virginia, set up the first couple of recording dates, picked out the tunes we were gonna do, arranged the charts, chosen the musicians. Everything was ready and so was I.'

But this rebirth of René's musical consciousness was not happening in a vacuum. And that meant that there would be repercussions.

 

I was scared as hell, but I left anyway

'My husband and I had been having serious marital problems for years and, at first glance, the music seemed to be making things worse. To be sure, the music was a catalyst for many things, not the least of which was my new-found courage to speak my mind. I was singing again after a self-imposed twenty-two-year hiatus and, instead of the meek, easily intimidated wife I had been, singing before audiences had opened my mouth in more ways than one. Just a few months before, with a copy of the book, Victims of Abuse Speak Out clutched behind my back, I had walked into the living room and, with chin defiantly in the air and in an unsteady voice, told my husband that I would no longer tolerate verbal abuse. He was to be as civil and decent with me as he was with friends and strangers or I would simply walk out of the room (or the house, if necessary) from then on. Though I trembled when I was called upon to do it, this worked well for me. Funny, but he didn't seem amenable to it at all. I didn't know what to do with this brazen courage that alarmed even me, but I was damned if I, a forty-year-old woman, was going to be cowered into silence any longer. Now that both sons were in college and it was just me and my husband at home, I dreaded being alone with him. But I dreaded that dread even more. So I spoke up. More and more. Louder and louder. Until I could finally hear myself.'

'And now it was December 30, 1997 and I was happily engrossed in my music charts, getting them ready for tomorrow when my husband walked into the room and gave me an ultimatum. He told me, "If you go to rehearsal tomorrow, don't come back home. If you want to keep living here, you will cancel tomorrow's rehearsal, the recording date and all engagements you now have. You will cancel them tonight - once and for all. And if you do go to rehearsal and come back home, you will have hell to pay."'

'I could not believe that this man, whom I had met at fifteen and fallen in love with when he was a brilliant and promising pianist, with whom I had gotten baptized and married at eighteen, who had such a fine, upstanding reputation in our community and congregation, was standing above me issuing an ultimatum with threatening consequences if I made the "wrong" choice. I knew things were bad and that they were coming to a head, but I couldn't believe it had come to this.'

'I made my decision to leave that night. And he was right - I did have hell to pay. And in the middle of hell, I panicked. I fought back and screamed at the top of my lungs and ran for every door that led outside, but he was stronger than me. After we had both calmed down, I asked him if he was through. "Yes", he replied. I got up, packed some of my things, ALL of my music and left. I was scared as hell, but I left anyway. I didn't know where this would lead, but I left anyway.'

'Four months later, it's April 1998. To avoid further harassment I had moved to Richmond, Virginia, and started living on my own and supporting myself for the first time in my life. The bank had helped by transferring me to Richmond. Between April and August, I drove from Richmond to Roanoke several times a month, sometimes in the middle of the week, to record and do gigs. We'd finish a session in the studio or a gig around midnight and I'd drive the 180 miles back to Richmond to be at work the next morning. I was exhausted but happy; completely engrossed in the project, in my job and in my new-found freedom.'

'In September 1998, the CD, Renaissance, was finally released. I drove to Roanoke, filled the back of my Subaru station wagon with 1000 CDs and, after much celebration and ballyhooing with my family and friends, went back home.'

'At first, I went through great pains to mail the CDs to booking agencies and every public radio station whose address I could get my hands on. I took them to local music stores, small boutiques, restaurants - anywhere they would be played and/or put on consignment. To be sure, the Richmond and Roanoke public radio stations were playing my CD and that was a big thrill to hear it for the first time on the radio. I remember calling my youngest son and screaming into the phone that they were playing my song on the RADIO-O-O-O-O-O!!!!! We both screamed like very happy idiots. Things were really moving ahead, it seemed.'

'Then, the velocity hit a big wall. I was mailing out so many CDs, but I wasn't hearing back from any radio stations and assumed they weren't playing the CD. And the few responses I did get from booking agencies were negative or were asking if I was willing to sing R&B, too. (No, I wasn't.) My responsibilities at work were increasing, demanding more and more of my time and energy. I devoted less and less time and effort to promoting the CD. I had stopped getting gigs with the fellas in Roanoke because it was just too far to drive for the small amount of money I would be making. And it was tough getting new gigs with the cats in Richmond because I didn't have time to look for the gigs or do rehearsals, etc. Oh, there were a few gigs here and there but they had unsatisfactory results.'

'So here I was with hundreds of CDs on my bookshelf, very few gigs and no band to call my own. I remember my sister, Lynn, coming to my apartment one day and seeing all these CDs on my bookshelf. She turned to me in wonder and said, "Girl, what are all these CDs doing on your bookshelf? Why haven't you been mailing them out?" I explained to her that I hadn't been getting any responses worth paying attention to. " Nobody's listening to it, anyway", I pouted. "Well, they sure WON'T be able to listen if you don't send them out!" was her response.'

'I talked to my mom and my siblings about the impasse and, though they were very encouraging and sympathetic, not knowing the music business, their advice was admittedly non-specific. It seemed the only way to move ahead with this was to sing full-time, but I wasn't making enough money singing to really do that and I hadn't saved enough money yet from working at t he bank to offset what I knew would initially be measly earnings from singing. On the other hand, my prospects at the bank looked very good and I was making more money then than I'd ever made before. The decision of what to do weighed on my mind and, not only that, it bothered me that I couldn't make up my mind. I was scared to go forward.'

 

Girl, you better quit your job and sing

In December 1998, René's brother, Claude, invited her to a MasterMind meeting at his house. MasterMind is a group of people who support each other in moving forward on personal priorities through encouragement, networking, exchanging information, ideas, etc. Claude had been asking René to attend for months but she had always turned him down. For some reason, she went that day. It turned out to be a pivotal decision in her life.

'I listened to the other members of the group talk about their goals and the obstacles they faced. Others piped in with advice, suggestions, well-placed questions. I liked the way the group was treating itself. When it was my turn, I told them just the bare bones - I wanted to be a singer, had a CD out even. At that, my brother Claude pulls out his copy of the CD and, to my embarrassment, plays it for the group. After exclaiming how much they liked it, I continued on. I wanted to make the change from working at the bank to singing full-time but didn't know how to do it. Felt I couldn't do it. Empathetic murmurs of understanding flowed from the women in the room as I spoke. Finally, one of them said, "Does your husband support you in your goal?" After I related the situation that led up to me moving to Richmond another one sympathetically stated, "It's hard to follow your dreams when you have young children at home." I informed the group that both my sons were adults.'

'Silence.'

'They looked at each other, then at me. At last, a group member named Kym broke the silence by nudging me in that forceful but playful way that black people have and saying emphatically at the same time, "Girl, you better quit your job and SING." We all laughed, but there it was - out in the open.'

'Girl, you better quit your job and sing.'

'We brainstormed how I could do it, but it all boiled down to not having enough money saved up in the bank to get going. My brother, during all this time, had started saying, "Jump and the net will appear". I argued the validity of what seemed like an irresponsible suggestion. It seemed doomed from the get-go. Like an act of faith. Ridiculous! "Would you do it?", I pressed him. He ignored me, as big brothers often do their little sisters. "Jump and the net will appear", he said to me over and over that night. And for the next week, every day he sent me an email that said only that one thing. My replies to him used every argument I could think of, but his response was always the same.'

'It didn't seem rational to just up and quit my job without reassurance of some kind. I'd been at the bank for more than seven years and during that time I had moved from being a customer service rep to training reps how to handle the most sensitive and valuable commercial customers for the bank. I'd developed a new training book and sessions, even trained some of the trainers. And now I was thinking of quitting. Then Claude called me on the phone and said he had talked to Mom and that, between her and the rest of my siblings if worse came to worst they'd see to it that I had a place to live and food to eat if I would just jump.'

'Just jump, Rene. Jump.'

'I was scared as hell. But I jumped anyway. Didn't know where I'd land, but I jumped anyway.'

'Why? Had I gotten a wonderful record deal, my co-workers wanted to know? No. Was I going on a national tour, they enthused? Uh, no. I was quitting my job because someone whose judgment I trusted implicitly had sent me an e-mail each day for the past week with one sentence only: "Jump and the net will appear."'

'I was scared, but I jumped; I turned in my two weeks notice at the bank.'

'What is it like to leave behind what feels like safety and security and willingly go off into the unknowable? To do something so far off the beaten path that even most of those I knew personally IN the music business hadn't done it? It's scary and exhilarating and scary and bold and scary and frightening and insane and scary. That's what it' s like. Let me tell you, I walked out of that bank on that last day and I felt like a ten-thousand watt bulb - powerful. I felt like a straight line - endless. Like a book with only blank pages - full of possibilities. It didn't matter that I was forty-three years old. It didn't matter that I was going through a divorce. It didn't matter that I drove an old car, that I literally didn't know where my next paycheck would come from. It didn't matter that I had just left a religion I'd been a member of for the past twenty-three years. I felt rootless and untethered and that felt GOOD. Scary, but GOOD. I was finally gonna do what I loved to do and spend as long as I wanted all day doing it.'

 

I know I've done the right thing for me

What happened to René next sounds more like Hollywood than real life. Only in Hollywood would someone do what René had just done and land on her feet. In real life, disaster strikes. But disaster did not strike René. Instead, the impossible happened.

'This is the real kicker. Remember that mantra Claude had been sending me? "Jump and the net will appear." Four days after I quit the bank, I became a believer in that. Here's what happened.'

'My last day at work was Thursday, December 31. The next day was New Year's Day, 1999. That Tuesday, I got a call from Theater IV, a theater in Richmond. They were in desperate need of a female vocalist to go on the road and perform with a group in a show called Songs From the Soul written by Billy Dye. The vocalist they had chosen earlier had to h ave emergency surgery on her throat and the theater had called the Richmond Jazz Society asking if they knew of anyone who could do it. B. J. Brown, the director of the Richmond Jazz Society, was a good friend of mine who had been instrumental in getting me connected with musicians and venues in and outside of Richmond since before I moved there. She knew I worked at the bank. But she didn't know I'd just quit my job three days earlier. Full of doubt as to whether I could do it, but having exhausted her list of available vocalists, she gave the folks at Theater IV my phone number. Of course, I was shocked and delighted to accept the job. I was to report to rehearsal the next day. But the amazing thing, the unbelievable, frighteningly truthful, really off the hook, humbling thing occurred to me only after I'd hung up.'

'None of the parties involved in this knew I had quit my job.'

'I went weak with the knowledge - if I hadn't quit my job when I did, I still would have gotten the call from Theater IV but I would have had to turn them down. I would have had to say "No". I had jumped and, Wham! The net appeared just like my brother said it would! The honesty and courage of the moment frightened me. Without the initial support of my mother and my brother Claude and the support and encouragement of all my family, I wouldn't have had the strength to do it.'

'Ever since then, I have trusted in my own gut, though with each decision I make I am faced with the same frightening visions of failure and "can't do it" in my mind, often up to the point where I am in the midst of doing the very thing I am so afraid of doing! When I move through the fear (I can never seem to leave it behind) and follow through on my intuition to do what feels right, those failures never happen. Then all my ensuing efforts seem nearly effortless and I become like a migrating bird that finds its air current and now flaps its wings only one third the amount of time necessary to get where it instinctively knows it wants to go.'

'Certainly there are obstacles and challenges and surprises, but they don't feel like failures to me when I know I've done the right thing for me.'

'So, it has been four years and I just cannot believe how far I've come. It seems like a lifetime ago, so much has happened - things I never dreamed of. Most of the time I feel like I've just stepped into great big piles of happiness and that I'm tracking it wherever I go. As an interesting aside, remember all those radio stations I was sending my first CD to? I found out after I started touring two years ago that many of those stations were playing the CD all along. I'd go to a city for a gig and have an interview at one of the stations and they'd show me the copy of Renaissance. I shake my head in sad amusement when I think of how little I trusted myself, how negatively I viewed things.'

'I didn't have a plan back then and I don't have one now. For me, it seems to be plan enough to really listen to my instincts and, after considering all the possibilities, do what feels right for me. Not what feels comfortable, but what feels right - there's a huge difference between the two. Because if I follow through on what feels right then the next several steps are already waiting for me. I didn't know this going in. But I know it now.'

 

 

It just takes knowing when you've had enough

These are not the only lessons René Marie has learned in the past four years. Like many singers before her - and many of her contemporaries today - she endured treatment handed out as though she were a second-class citizen. But she had had enough and, like too few singers before her, the time came when René did something about it.

'When I first started singing, I thought the romantic myth of "paying your dues" meant being mistreated or taken advantage of by club owners, managers, even fellow musicians. Thought I didn't have much of a choice or voice in the matter of the kind of sound I wanted, where the band was set up in the venue, how much I was gonna get paid, etc. There was this implied thought that I should be grateful for anything that came my way. But as I became more knowledgeable about how the "venue" owners, managers and waitrons think (making money is #1) I decided I wasn't as powerless as I had led myself to believe.'

'I decided that, yes, these owner s have businesses to maintain, but SO DO I. Maybe there's something about coming into the business at the ripe old age of forty, but there were certain things I just wouldn't put up with once I saw how things worked. I decided that I ain't no teenager, no star-struck twenty-something with big dreams, I ain't married to none of 'em and I don't have to take being treated like a necessary evil, relegated to the back rooms of their thinking and consideration. Why should such a potentially wonderful musical experience be marred by hassles in venues about noise from the customers and from the bartender? To quote Charles Mingus, "Isaac Stern (a famous classical violinist and contemporary of Mingus') doesn't have to put up with that shit." I would rather entertain in my own living room at home than put up with all that crap. Again, could be my age. But all I know is that slowly, little by little, I stopped tolerating it. And here's how I did it.'

Three years ago

'I was singing in a restaurant and the band (as usual) was right beside the bar that had a TV. The sound was turned down, but there was a football game on. Right in the middle of a ballad, a touchdown was scored and a table of ten folks - sitting right in front of the band, of course - jumped out of their seats, yelling and doing the wave.'

'This wasn't the first time it had happened that night, but I decided it would be the last time it would happen to me. I stopped in the middle of the song, gazing bemusedly at the familiar surroundings, this very restaurant where I'd started singing again after a twenty-three-year hiatus and had been singing twice a month for at least a year, and decided I didn't want to sing there anymore. Did I have another venue to replace it with right then? No. And I wasn't making any money t o speak of. But I knew I'd NEVER make any if I continued to put up with stuff like that. Without making a scene, I calmly put the microphone down, packed up my stuff and left. Significantly, the table of ten never knew I was gone. I politely told the friend of mine who had booked me there that I didn't expect to be paid because it wasn't about that. I didn't walk out with money in my pocket, but I still had my dignity intact. It was about keeping a steady course toward what I was trying to accomplish musically. When I freed myself from that type of treatment, it was like opening a clogged drain. It's amazing the improvisations you can accomplish when you can hear yourself. I had no trouble finding venues to replace it with.'

Two years ago

'One rainy day, drenched and huffing and puffing from bringing in and setting up my own sound equipment, I decided I wasn't going to do that anymore either. It was a difficult decision to make: Did I want to go through the extra hassle of setting up my own equipment every time I had a gig? What did that say to customers who saw me doing that? What did it tell the venue owners and managers? I didn't like the answers I was faced with. How could I request/demand higher pay if I was bringing in my own sound system and setting it up myself? I decided that night that my next professional step would be to sing only at venues that had their own sound system and sound engineer, i.e., clubs, concert halls and festivals. But how would I find these gigs? Did I have lots of those coming up on my calendar? No. Slowly, over time, I began to replace the old way with a new way of thinking. I didn't have anyone - musician, manager, booking agent - encouraging me to take these steps. It's how you see yourself in your worst moments - victim or victor - that can keep you down or turn things around. I also learned this: those who are not doing it will not encourage you to do it, either. But it can be done.'

'Another thing happened around that same time that reinforced my decision to choose my venues carefully: While still living in Richmond, I was having dinner with a friend in a restaurant that played jazz on their sound system. At first, we were the only ones there and, to my surprise, they were playing my CD when we walked in. Neither the maitre 'd, the bartender nor the waitress recognized me, which was just fine with me. Not long after we had been seated, a couple walks in, sits at the bar and starts talking to the bartender about the music they're hearing. With their backs to me, they never saw me, and one of them says to the bartender, "That's René Marie singing, isn't it?" The bartender says, "Yes, that's René. She's singing in concert at such-and-such a place this week." "Yeah," the customer replied. "I heard about that. But tickets are $20! Why should I pay $20 to hear her when I can just go to so-and-so's restaurant and hear her for free?" Admittedly, I was definitely in the right place at the right time to have heard that, but it underscored the validity of the direction I wanted to go. It just takes knowing (and trusting that feeling when you DO know) when you've had enough. Sometimes club owners, managers and booking agents will try to convince you otherwise. They will try to convince you that you are reaching too high too soon or too far or for too much. Yes, they will try to talk you right out of your dignity, try to convince you that you should take a loss for the love of the art. But no one should make that decision of when to do that except me. I learned the hard way that no one can take advantage of you unless you let them. And ignorance of the way things work - from their perspective and ours - is a sorry excuse. They will cry money problems, staffing problems, the economy, the war, etc. But my viewpoint is this: I run a business too. Why should I take a loss (musically, emotionally or financially) so that you don't have to?'

'I finally decided to start raising my fees for gigs. Yes, this meant that I was eliminating lots of venues. Yes, it meant my booking agent had to work harder to book me in those places. But again, what image was I projecting by accepting the same old excuses for low pay? This was a hard thing to do, and initially I waffled a lot and thought I was wrong to insist on more money but it has paid off. Once, my agent told me that the clubs weren't paying the prices I wanted. My answer to him? Book me in the clubs that ARE paying these fees.'

One year ago

'After playing a week at a venue on the west coast with first-call musicians of exemplary background, experience a nd reputation, I insisted on traveling with my own band from then on. Why? Because I got a very bad review. Now, ordinarily, I don't pay much attention to reviews. But this time, the critic was exactly right in most of his observations of the performance. This critic noted the haphazard intros and endings, the disjointed feel, the sense that everyone was trying to remember "what comes next?" But it wasn't my fault, it wasn't the fault of the musicians. It was simply the situation. The quality of the music is bound to suffer when the time to rehearse with a pick-up band is limited. You only have a couple of hours to rehearse, at most. Under such situations, the musician will play what he is hearing; i.e. what he played the last time he played this or that particular standard. Maybe he has a certain lick, chord or rhythm he favors for a certain song - and he knows he sounds good when he does it. Perhaps he doesn't particularly like your arrangement or maybe he just doesn't have it down absolutely right after on ly one rehearsal. Under these circumstances, a vocalist can only hang on for dear life and hope for the best. But I wanted the musicians to play what I was hearing, because having solid musicians playing your arrangements in a solid fashion can be likened to standing on solid ground - a vocalist can do nearly ANYTHING and it won't throw off the music because the musicians know the arrangement so well. You can go almost anywhere vocally and the instrumentalists will not only follow you, but be there to catch you when you come back. Otherwise your singing is tentative and fearful and distracted. Not that these musicians weren't great musicians. They were fantastic. But how much rehearsal can be accomplished in one afternoon before the gig? Not much, let me t ell ya. You can't expect them to want to rehearse four hours for a two-hour gig or two hours every day if it's a week long hit (they aren't getting paid but so much money, after all), so how much of the arrangements are they going to remember, even when the chart's right in front of them? Basically, they are a band for hire who may not ever perform with you again. They have no vested interest in making the music really happen over a two-four hour period. It's a job. Occasionally there are exceptions, but this had been my experience almost across the board. Most vocalists/soloists will tell you the same thing. What's the point in having arrangements to tunes that set your musical thinking apart from others if you don't have enough time to rehearse the damn things? It was folly to continue along this same line of doing things. Do I have to turn down gigs if they don't pay enough to offset the travel expenses for my band? Absolutely. Do I make less money because of this added travel expense? 'Deed I do. But it is my name on the marquee, my name in the review and my name on the CD. And it is a sacrifice I am willing to make voluntarily, not because of the pressure I get from a presenter or the manager of a venue to lower my fee.'

'And the question always facing us is this: How do I want to run my business? How do I want my "customers" to think of me and my "product"? Whatever your particular answer is, my advice to musicians is to keep this image of yourself fixed firmly in mind. Believe in this answer before even walking out your own door or talking on the phone to negotiate fees with a venue. Don't just know what you want - also know what you don't want. Know this before agreeing to a gig or a price. If you don't know the answer, you'll be too easily swayed by their reasoning and end up on the losing end almost every time. Hard as it may be sometimes to find another way, still I will find another way to do it or I just won't do it at all. It's become just that simple. I decided going in that, as much as I love to sing and compose and perform, I needed to be able to walk away from this if I don't experience MORE of a reward than I would singing and jammin' at home with friends. I want to blow my audience away when they come to hear me. I want them to have a life-altering experience and still be talking about it the next day. I want them to WANT to come back to hear me again and again, wherever I'm playing. Not because I'm at a certain venue (the venue owners want the customers to come back to their venue, regardless of who is playing the music), but because they want to hear ME. As far as I'm concerned, to consistently compromise almost all I stand for musically just to play in a venue and earn a few bucks means I've already lost.'

'I might as well go back to working at the bank.'

 

More songs to sing

Among those copies of Renaissance that René had sent out and which, for a while at least, she thought had done nothing but lie there gathering dust, was one that went to a newspaper in Washington DC. The reviewer there was Joel E. Siegel, who is also a record producer. 'He had just finished reviewing another singer's CD and knew that MaxJazz was a new label looking for more vocalists. My CD was on the top of a pile to be thrown away when Joel saw it and decided to give a listen to it. Coincidentally, I was going to have my first gig at Blues Alley in DC and I received a call from Joel informing me that he'd recommended my CD to Rich McDonnell of MaxJazz and that Rich was coming to Blues Alley that Monday night to hear me. Serendipity? Who knows? But MaxJazz's hometown is in St. Louis and Rich McDonnell just happened to be on the east coast for business that weekend.'

'For some time, René had been thinking of changing her last name. The title of her own CD, Renaissance, means to be re-born and a change of name would reflect this fact. At first she thought of using the name Stoan, a combination of Stevens (her father's surname), Stone (her mother's maiden name) and Croan (her married name). In the end, she decided to drop all these surnames and just make her middle name, Marie, her surname. She did this shortly before signing with MaxJazz.

René's first CD for MaxJazz, How Can I Keep From Singing?, took off. It was placed #1 on the Gavin jazz charts and her profile rose when the Association for Independent Music Critics assessed her as Best Jazz Vocalist in 2001 and again in 2002. In 2002, her second CD for MaxJazz, Vertigo, was received with great critical acclaim with JazzTimes magazine naming it Best Jazz Vocal CD of 2002 and the Academie du Jazz in Paris presenting René with the Billie Holiday award for best international jazz vocalist for 2002.

The following year's release, Live At Jazz Standard continued to garner attention and accolades.

As her audiences know, although René's repertoire is based firmly in the great standards of jazz and other forms of popular music, she brings to everything that she does her own distinctive, and sometimes daring, interpretations that revitalize songs that are in danger of overexposure. Additionally, her repertoire includes many of her own compositions. These songs not only demonstrate her strong sense of structure and form alongside a heartfelt love of melody, but they also vividly display her ability to transmute her life experiences into lyrics of rich emotional depths.

There are more songs to write, more songs to sing, more projects to undertake. 'During the next two years I plan to compose more, develop my publishing company, Stoan Publishing, Inc., and my touring company, Sound of Red, LLC. We hope to have our own team working for us and our own recording studio and label within the next two years.'

As the end of 2003 approached, René Marie had a new trio behind her: Takana Miyomoto, piano, Addae, soprano saxophone, Herman Burney, bass, Quentin Baxter, drums. She also had a new agency acting on her behalf, the Brad Simon Organization at 122 E. 57th Street, New York City, NY 10022.

She is facing the future with earned confidence. Looking back at what this remarkable woman has done in the past four years it is impossible to imagine that René Marie will fail in any of her self-appointed tasks. It is similarly impossible not to concede that she deserves all of her hard-won success, and more.

As for future challenges; however much they might daunt her at first, there seems little doubt that she will address them boldly and, when push comes to shove, she will remember and act upon that maxim that has guided her towards her present success:

Jump, and the net will appear

 

Visit René Marie's own site for details of current gigs and future plans.

In 2007 René relocated to Denver, Colorado, now a place favoured by musicians. She continues to tour and has recently visited the UK. Her repertoire now includes a show based on the life and career of Josephine Baker.

 

Through her outspokenness and commitment to the cause of her fellow African Americans, following an official function in Denver, René Marie was subject to virulent criticism and even death threats. Details of this, and the effect upon René Marie's career through 2009, and upon the lives of others, can be traced from her site. *

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

DAVID HAZELTINE: making it mean something

by

Bruce Crowther

'When I was about ten or eleven years old, my mother bought me my first jazz record. It was Jimmy Smith Plays The Standards, and I fell in love with jazz at that point'

Beginnings ...

'At first playing with these people it was just plain scary and intimidating.'

One of the outstanding jazz piano players in the world today, David Hazeltine grew up in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, where he was born 27 October 1958. Early in 2003, shortly before embarking upon a European tour with Jon Faddis, David took time to set down some comments on his career to date, and to where the future might lie for him. He also had much to say about the artists who have helped shape his musical thought and the life he leads in jazz.

He did not at first plan on a career in music. Through high school and later on in college, his eyes and mind were set on a career in electrical engineering, but beneath the surface other influences were at work. As a young child he had heard jazz through an older brother who was a fan, but it was not until his mother bought him a Jimmy Smith album that he began to take a serious interest in music, and in particular the organ.

'My first gig was when I was thirteen years old, it was a steady Friday and Saturday thing at an Italian restaurant on the west side of Milwaukee. It was solo organ and I played tunes and improvised on them, so technically it was my first jazz gig.'

When he was around fifteen, he switched to piano and during his high school and college days worked a lot of gigs and continued his practising and his classical music studies.

'It was only at the last minute, right before college started, that I decided to go to music school, instead of pursuing engineering, and I think I knew at that point that I was going to be a professional musician.'

David's switch from organ was prompted by the wide range of possibilities on the piano.

'There is the fact that just hearing one note on the piano doesn't tell me everything I'm about to hear. Stylistically, I think there are a lot more possibilities on the piano. All the variations in touch on the piano make it a much more interesting instrument for me.'

Thanks in part to his early start, but mainly due to his clearly apparent ability, at the age of twenty-one he became house pianist at in Milwaukee's Jazz Gallery.

'It was there that got a chance to play with Sonny Stitt, Pepper Adams, Chet Baker, Charles McPherson, Al Cohn, Lou Donaldson, Eddie Harris, a lot of great musicians who were at that time touring as singles with house rhythm sections. At first playing with these people it was just plain scary and intimidating but eventually I was able to relax and enjoy and absorb everything they were doing - or a lot of things that they were doing.

'I remember the first gig I ever did with one of these guys. It was with Sonny Stitt and I was very young and it was our first meeting of course and we were sitting upstairs from the Jazz Gallery. We had no rehearsal or anything, he just came in and we had to do it. Well, Sonny took out a cigarette and I pulled out a lighter to light it for him and my hand was shaking so bad. Sonny was so cool. He just kept his head down, then his eyes came up over his glasses and he just kind of looked at me, like "Wow! This could be interesting." But, you know, after just one set he was like my Dad. We went back upstairs and he was showing me tunes on the saxophone and he said, "Do you know this tune," and "Do you know that tune?" and I would say, "No" and he'd say, "Listen, I think you're going to like it." Then he'd play it for me and he'd improvise a chorus to show me how the changes went and we built a great relationship that way and went on to play a lot more gigs in the next few years before he passed away. I learned a lot from Sonny. Not just the obvious things, like tunes, and tricky changes, but on a more subtle level I learned the importance of being so much in command of the idiom that you can relax, groove and swing hard. You can have higher musical values than just playing the correct notes, or playing properly, or playing the hippest new thing. Probably the biggest lesson I learned in those years was the importance of musical maturity. What set those guys apart from the normal guys that I was playing with, was not only their mastery, but also their maturity, their choices, and the conviction with which they made these musical choices.'

Maturity ...

'I felt that I owed it to myself to participate in the real world.'

 

In 1981, encouraged by Chet Baker, David moved to New York City, so that he could be around those touring musicians with whom he had played as they swung through Milwaukee. Two years later, domestic considerations prompted a return to his home town but by 1992 he was eager to be back in New York.

'By this time I wanted to be a major player in the New York and international scenes. I was frustrated in Milwaukee, and I felt that I owed it to myself to participate in the real world and not waste my talent in a place like Milwaukee. I'd invested too much of myself in jazz to do that, so what's why ultimately I came back to New York and I've stayed ever since.

'At first, I had a little gig at the Star Cafe at 23rd and Seventh, it's not there anymore, in fact they gutted the whole building, but at the time I was playing a lot with Junior Cook there. Also, I played with Curtis Fuller, and for a time I was on the road with Jon Hendricks.

'More recently, I have played with One For All. Besides playing collectively, I have a special individual relationship with each guy in the band. We've played a lot together; and we've all played and recorded a lot with each other. Eric Alexander and I have recorded and worked together many times, as have Steve Davis, Jim Rotondi, Joe Locke and I. Also, I have a funk band with Jim and we play at Smoke every Thursday when we're in town.

'Long-term musical relationships are very important and I feel blessed to have had so many, especially since coming to New York. Jazz is a communally made music, and I think that the stronger, more long term and meaningful the bonds between the players are, the more profound the communal approach will be.'

 

Teaching and learning ...

'There is a great thrill in sharing musical ideas with someone.'

 

From the early years of his career, David has had a deep interest in and an intense commitment to the advancement of jazz culture and awareness. This has been manifested by his involvement in education. In Milwaukee, he was co-founder and direct or of The Jazz School, and the Program Coordinator of Jazz Studies, and later Department Chairman at the Wisconsin Conservatory of Music in Milwaukee. For a time, he was also an Associate Professor at Berklee College of Music. Latterly, he teaches privately in his own studio.

'I have been involved in music education since the first time I realized I didn't really know anything. That's when I got hip to Charlie Parker, and learned everything I could that he played. I was always itching to show it to somebody else because it was so exciting for me. I think that's been my motivation all along; the details of this music excite me so much I just want to share it with other people and that motivation comes before any financial consideration. There is a great thrill in sharing musical ideas with someone. In a way, it is kind of like when I'm performing. A similar kind of thing, although teaching is less emotional and more intellectually stimulating. And, of course, teaching is not just a one-way experience. When a student starts to get it, the challenge becomes trying to figure out how to make it better. I learn something from that. In fact I've learned things that I would apply to myself and my playing from figuring out how to make things better with students.'

 

Influences ...

'I like the things that they can do melodically and expressively ...'

 

Among many profound influences on David have been saxophonists, notably Charlie Parker, John Coltrane, Joe Henderson, Sonny Rollins, Cannonball Adderley and Eddie Harris.

'Melody is very important to me and I like saxophone players more than piano players. Definitely. I prefer to listen to horns. Playing the piano is what I've done and obviously there are many things I like about it, but I really like the freedom of a horn. I like the things that they can do melodically and expressively, almost like a voice, that a piano just can't possibly do. They have profound melodic rhythmic shapings to their lines. Guys like Parker and Coltrane and Rollins are my main influences. I've sat down and studied and learned to p lay, to improvise in their styles. They are, I think the most original. You know, after Charlie Parker it becomes a matter of who is most original in his approach to what he laid down. Because everybody plays more or less the voicings of Charlie Parker. I t's just a matter of what's been done with it as far as I'm concerned.

'The pianists who have influenced me the most are Art Tatum, Barry Harris, Bill Evans, McCoy Tyner, Herbie Hancock, Cedar Walton, Buddy Montgomery. They are the top guys for me.

'Tatum, for his harmony and his presentation of ballads, especially the rubato, impromptu-sounding intros. Amazing. Harris, for his flowing, melodic, effortlessly articulated, swinging melodic lines. Evans, well, it's so obvious, his voicings, his majestic touch, his Chopin-like approach to the piano. It's beautiful. Tyner, for his completely original approach, his fourth voicings, his angular, ultra-rhythmic improvisations. Hancock, for his beautiful musicality, his swinging and his almost impressionistic harmony. Walton, for his precisely articulated, Charlie Parker-like lines on the piano and his pretty voicings and his writing style, a true master of the idiom of jazz, in my book. Montgomery, for his incredibly unique shaping and phrasing in his improvisations. He approaches the piano melodically like a vibes player, which he is also, and you know Buddy is one of the most profound writers that I know, so in that way, compositionally, Buddy is also a very big mentor.'

 

Composing ...

'Some of the best improvisers were great composers.'

 

'You see, composing to me is very important and very gratifying. However, I should say that it doesn't come easy. I work hard at composing. I spend a lot of time doing it and am almost never satisfied with what comes out. It's only maybe years later after I've recorded the things and I go back and listen to them and think, That's not a bad tune. I get a lot of pleasure from playing things I've written after I've recorded them. Playing gigs, I get a chance to perform my written music and they become sort of like standards in my mind. They flow very easily and that's kind of a kick to think, Hey, I wrote that. But the process of doing it, when I actually sit down and record it, I'm never happy with what comes out right away. But I think it's also very important because our focus in jazz is always improvising and, you know, some of the best improvisers were great composers. In fact, even if they didn't compose a lot, their improvisations are almost like compositions. So composing is kind of like a blown up version of what happens when we're playing. Although, obviously, in composing you get to go over it and change it and correct it. When you're playing, it happens real fast, from moment to moment, so it's interesting to approach the music in a slower manner and that's something that very much appeals to me.'

 

Shaping the future ...

'I love the way my idols play and hope some of that love and respect comes out in my playing.'

 

Speaking of David's playing, Cedar Walton has said, 'His style has a deep-seated commitment to jazz history while communicating a wealth of "today's" ideas.'

This commitment, in particular to the great tradition of jazz piano playing, results in David's audience hearing an artist whose playing is not only highly sophisticated, but is also highly accessible.

'Two natural musical inclinations of mine are to feel good and to make it mean something. Maybe that's where the apparent contradiction arises. I think that music that feels good has some kind of joy. Even if it's melancholy, even if it's sadness, it can still be joyous at some level. That's my main underlying motivation. But right after that there is also another motivation - and I think maybe that's the engineering side of me - to want something deeper from my music, some intellectual satisfaction. I can't just play three choruses of a blues and satisfy myself intellectually. It's got to be interesting to me as well.'

Among the results of this musical policy have been a growing body of critical acclaim and an ever-expanding audience for his work, whether live or on record. It is not hard to understand why. Immediately apparent is the fact that, never, at any time, does he lose his great attachment to the melodic core of his artistry. Equally important, is David's consummate skills as a performer, skills that are underpinned by an unfailing sense of the needs of the music, an ability to swing at all times, a questing musical intelligence, and the enormous technical ability to bring off his ideas with understated flair and great aplomb.

Anyone who worries over the future of jazz need only listen to this immensely talented musician to know that this future is in safe hands.

Let David Hazeltine have the last word on how he sees his future:-

'It's tough to survive doing what I do. I would have to be successful enough to keep doing what I do and in so doing hope to contribute to this glorious art form.'

 

Recordings and links ...

Among David's recordings have been half a dozen as leader for Sharp Nine Records, including Four Flights Up, The Classic Trio Meets Eric Alexander, and The Classic Trio Volume II. Four for the Criss Cross label, the most recent being Good Hearted People. And three trio sessions, appearing on the Venus label in Japan, include tributes to Bill Evans, Waltz For Debby, and Horace Silver, Señor Blues.

For more information see David Hazeltine's own website, and also that of Sharp Nine Records.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

DONNY McCASLIN: Feeling the Spirit

by

Bruce Crowther

 

'When I play, I try to remember what this music means to me as a listener. When I hear something that really speaks to me on an emotional level - like, say, a solo by Lester Young - that is when I know what this is all about.'

The speaker is Donny McCaslin, who was born 11 August 1966, in Santa Clara, California. Although his parents, Don and Jeanina, were divorced when he was a small child, their continuing support and encouragement for his musical ambitions turned what might have been a divisive and disturbing childhood into a secure base for a musical future that has already brought international acclaim.

This conversation took place in May 2000, when Donny was touring Europe with the Brian Blade Fellowship Band.

 

The beginning . . .

'My father was a professional musician, playing vibraphone and electric piano, and he had a regular gig leading a small band that played at a shopping mall in Santa Cruz. I was living with my mother but I would see my father one day a week when he would pick me up and take me down to the mall where I'd help him set up the vibes and the piano. Then, because I was too young to walk around on my own in the mall, I would just sit there. He had a chair for me in the middle of the bandstand and I would sit and listen to them play for three or four hours.

'They played a combination of standards and Duke Ellington's music, that kind of American popular songbook. Songs like My Funny Valentine, Autumn Leaves, Take the "A" Train and Satin Doll. And also some Latin jazz, Cal Tjader-ish stuff. Afterwards we'd take down the instruments and then go play basketball and have dinner. That was how the day was spent and that was how I became exposed to music. But I didn't really start playing until I was twelve. That was when I made an impulsive decision and chose the tenor saxophone. Partly, I think it was because the saxophone player in my dad's band was a very charismatic guy. He had this wild, tie-dyed T-shirt and the people loved it when he played his solos. So, to me, at that age, this was very attractive and exciting. And it was great, because as soon as I told my father that I wanted to play he bought me a horn and I got into the beginners' orchestra at my junior high school. Dad arranged for me to have lessons with the saxophone player in his band, Brad Hecht, and it just kind of went from there. Dad would come over to my mother's place where we had a barn up behind the house and he'd take his electric piano up there, set it up and he would comp for me for hours.

'At this time I wasn't really studying music formally. I was in the band at school and I was taking private lessons once a week but that was pretty much the extent of it. When I finished junior high school I knew that there was a really great high school band programme in the next city, Aptos. So, although I lived with my mother in Santa Cruz, I used my father's address so that I could get into that particular high school and join their jazz band. The head of the band was Don Keller, who was a friend of Bill Berry who regularly works with high school bands in California. It was a great band. The book comprised a lot of Ellington charts, some of them originals that Bill had gotten when he was in the Ellington band. It was amazing. I was fourteen years old, I could barely play, and yet there I was, playing some of the greatest music ever written.

'I was also listening to records. I started with Charlie Parker and Sonny Rollins and John Coltrane and also Paul Gonsalves, who was a big influence on me at that stage, because we were listening to that music and playing those charts. Later, I also listened to musicians on other instruments. I love piano players, Bill Evans and Herbie Hancock, Thelonious Monk, Duke Ellington. I feel like I've learned a lot listening to piano players. Trumpet players, of course: Miles Davis, Freddie Hubbard, Woody Shaw and Clifford Brown.'

At the time he was growing up, not many of Donny's contemporaries were listening to jazz.

'I never listened to radio so I wasn't somebody who was always listening to pop music. At home I think I mostly listened to jazz but there were also certain pop bands that I liked. I grew up in California, so I listened a lot to the Beach Boys, a California band. And I remember I was fan of the hard rock band, AC/DC. I liked them a lot, and Chuck Berry and things like that. But once I got into jazz it just snowballed and I primarily listened to jazz around that time. And it was strange because sometimes I wouldn't even know the songs that my friends, who weren't musicians and were very engrossed in pop culture, were listening to.'

 

The Monterey Jazz Festival . . .

Donny's burgeoning talent attracted wider attention when he had the opportunity of playing at the Monterey Jazz Festival. This came about through a programme that allows high school students to audition for the Monterey Jazz Festival High School All Star Big Band. This band has been directed since 1981 by Bill Berry, who remembers that when he first met Donny, 'He was already an exceptional player. He was the first student to be selected to play in the band all four years of his high school career. Only two other students have done this in the past twenty years.' The band goes to Monterey about a week before the festival starts where it rehearses every day with Bill.

'As you can imagine,' Donny recalls, 'just being there was a great experience. We had passes and we could see everybody who was playing throughout the weekend. So for a fifteen or sixteen year old kid it was pretty exciting.'

Shortly after his first visit to Monterey, Donny appeared in a television programme about promising young musicians and, later, he toured Japan and Europe with all-star youth ensembles, developing a solid background and winning a scholarship to Berklee College of Music in 1984.

'That was where my mother helped me so much. She was great. People always talk about my dad, because of the music, but the scholarship to Berklee would only cover part of the tuition. So my mother worked at the problem, because we didn't have any money, and she became the chief fundraiser and she really deserves a lot of credit for helping make it happen for me.'

During his time at Berklee, Donny attracted a great deal of favourable notice in the Boston area. His influences and teachers at this time included saxophonists Joe Viola, Billy Pierce, and George Garzone, trumpeter Herb Pomeroy, and vibist Gary Burton who had also heard him some time earlier. During his last year at Berklee, Burton invited him to join his quintet, with which Donny played for four years touring North and South America, Europe, and Japan. He also played with Burton on an SS Norway jazz cruise. Reporting in the Los Angeles Times, Leonard Feather observed how 'McCaslin amazed the audience one night by virtually stealing the show in a saxophone jam featuring Phil Woods, Red Holloway, Flip Phillips, and David "Fathead" Newman.'

Recalling this occasion, Donny says: 'What happened was that I was with Gary Burton's band and we played maybe three or four times but they also had this saxophone summit one afternoon. I was invited to participate because I was playing saxophone in Gary's band. It was an inspiration to hear those guys and be around them for a week. It was really inspiring but in a situation like this it was terrifying too. I was on last, actually, and to go on after they'd played, and after they'd played so much beautiful music, was definitely a hard thing to do. But people were very happy with what I did. It was really very nice.'

 

New York in the 90s . . .

In 1991 Donny moved to New York City where he joined Mike Manieri's Steps Ahead, appearing on the group's album, Vibe, which includes two compositions he co-wrote. During the 1990s he performed with many bands, including the Mingus Big Band, Maria Schneider's Jazz Orchestra, the Gil Evans Orchestra, Lan Xang (a cutting edge original music group with David Binney, Scott Colley and Kenny Wollesen), George Gruntz's Concert Jazz Band, the Herbie Nichols Project, and the Newport Jazz Orchestra. In May 1996, he premiered Ken Schaphorst's composition 'Uprising', which was written for him, and which was subsequently recorded on Schaphorst's 1999 album, Purple. During the Spring of 2000, Donny toured European venues with drummer Brian Blades' Fellowship band, and also with trumpeter Tom Harrell.

Not that this heady company has made Donny forget where he started: 'My dad is still playing, he's got a trio. And every time I go home, I go and sit in when I get the chance. It's great, really wonderful.'

For his recording debut as leader, Exile and Discovery (Naxos 86014-2), Donny teamed up with pianist Bruce Barth, bassist Ugonna Okegwo, and drummer Billy Drummond. The set skilfully combines standards, 'Tenderly', 'Speak Low', established jazz songs, Benny Golson's 'Along Came Betty', 'Isfahan' by Ellington and Billy Strayhorn, Monk's 'Bye Ya', with unusual (and here unaccompanied) works such as Astor Piazolla's 'Etudes Tanguistiques', and some of his own originals. With several compositions already to his credit by the time of this album, Donny was seeking to expand this facet of his career.

'On my first CD there were three originals and then I have this CD coming out around August 2000 which is all originals except for 'September Song' and I'm going to do another record soon after that which will also be mostly originals. I guess in terms of writing, it's one of those things where I feel I can best express all the things that I have been doing so far. It's as if my writing is like the sum total of all my listening and studying and the influences on my playing.'

 

Update ...

Since this interview was conducted in summer 2000, Donny has been kept very busy. 'From fall 2000 until March 2002, I was touring with Danilo Perez and the Motherland Project. Since then, among the highlights was being featured at Lincoln Center in January 2003 on Maria Schneider's newly commissioned work for her Jazz Orchestra. We did two nights opposite Toshiko Akiyoshi's band. Also, I've been to Japan four times in the past year and a half with Monday Michiru's group that features Alex Sipiagin, Dave Kikoski, Jonathan B lake, Boris Kozlov and myself. And I played and taught at the Aarua Jazz festival in Switzerland this past April. Lastly, I've been playing at the 55 Bar in New York City once a month with my own group and that's featured such musicians as Adam Cruz, Ben Monder, Gene Jackson, Boris Kozlov, Gary Versace, Drew Gress, Jeff Ballard, Jon Hebert, among others. In terms of recordings, I'm featured on Danilo Perez's new disc that comes out in the fall of 2003, also, Luciana Souza's North And South, Maryann McSweeny's Swept Away, and Deanna Witkowski's Wide Open Window, which is on the Khaeon label. My own new CD, The Way Through, on Arabesque Records, has a release date of 7 October 2003.'

 

Bearer of the flame . . .

Audience response, the acclaim of reviewers and critics, and, perhaps most importantly, the respect and admiration of fellow musicians of all generations, make it clear that Donny McCaslin stands poised to be one of the flame bearers of jazz in the twenty-first century. A well-equipped, immensely talented musician with seemingly limitless technical expertise, he consistently proves himself to be much more than merely a gifted technician. Frequently, he impresses audiences with his organic improvisations and moves them with his emotionally expressive playing. Quite clearly, he is acutely aware of the danger of technique becoming the message and not the medium. 'When I hear someone play a solo that has a million notes, I know it's amazing but it also has to reach me emotionally. It depends on how the notes are played, in what spirit are they being played. Sometimes I hear people playing a lot of notes simply because they can and not necessarily because the music calls for it at that moment.'

Off-stage he is quietly self-effacing and genuinely modest about his remarkable achievements and he is clearly aware that in jazz there is always something more to be learned. On-stage, his combination of talents has given him striking self-assurance regardless of the company he keeps and to a considerable extent this is a result of his understanding of and respect for the music and musicians that have come before him. Although coming into jazz as recently as the 1980s, Donny is deeply conscious of the importance of the music's roots and of the work of the past masters of jazz.

'My father knows a lot of tunes and they are all from a certain era and being exposed to that an early age really helped to give me some sense of the history. It wasn't so much that he gave me records to listen to but he would just play all the standards that people had played for years and years. Initially, when I was young, I was drawn to stuff that was modern sounding but once I got a little older I could see that there were gaps in my own musicianship, that I was not really delving as far back into the history as early as I should. So I began doing more and more, really listening to Lester Young and Stan Getz and Coleman Hawkins and Ben Webster and Sidney Bechet. I feel that it is a necessary foundation for what I am going to do. I have learned a lot by studying the history.

'At one time, I played for a while in a band with a singer doing a Billie Holiday thing and they had a bunch of transcriptions of songs with Billie and Lester Young. This was really a great experience for me to do that. It forced me to play in that style. It wasn't a gig where I could just go and play my modern stuff. It would have been inappropriate, so really playing that way and listening to it was a good experience because it helped me to develop a stronger foundation on which to draw. The history is really important and I try to use it to help create a base so that whatever I have to deal with can come from that solid historic foundation.'

 

The future's past . . .

'Also, there is so much to learn from the musicians of the past. When I was thinking about my own sense of time and swing, I decided to really bear down on some of those older records and learn some solos the way those musicians were playing them. I really got into the way that Lester, Stan Getz, Wayne Shorter, and others played. Not just the notes that they were playing but the way that they played them. The vibrato, the time feel, laying back, pushing ahead, whatever, that's when I felt like I had really learned how to feel the time. Lester now, sometimes he plays stuff that's so simple if you look at it from a scholastic viewpoint or if you try to analyse what he's doing. When I went to Berklee, we would have to analyse solos but if you look at it only in a technical way it's misleading because it seems so simple. But when you listen to him play, he does so in a way that transcends the notes. This is because it's not really about the notes he's playing. It's so emotional, it's like he's a singer. The notes he plays are great, of course, just amazing, but when I listen to him it makes me realize that it isn't the notes that you play, it's how you play them. It's what you feel, it's the spirit, it's the emotion.'

 

 

Exile & Discovery (Naxos Records 86014-2) 1998

Seen From Above (Arabesque Records AJ 0151) 2000

The Way Through (Arabesque Records AJ 0160) 2003

 

 

 

More information can be found on Donny McCaslin''s own site.

 

-ooOoo-

 

AllAboutJazz Since their first appearance here on my site, the interviews with David Hazeltine and Donny McCaslin have been added to the AllAboutJazz website that is a must for all jazz fans. My October 2003 interview with outstanding jazz singer René Marie first appeared on AllAboutJazz and appears here in slightly modified and updated form. *

 

 

 

Bruce Crowther © 2003-10

Last updated January 2010