Catching up to Where Russell with Swinging Authority

C A T C H I N G U P T O The late Boston-based jazz composer oproduced some astounding r works for sextet and septet. Today’s writers of small-ensemble music, says the author, could still learn GE a lot from him. GE Joel Harrison By I have been listening to George Russell’s Cubano Bop,” written for Dizzy Gillespie. he developed called the Lydian Chromatic music lately. A recent New York City sym- Two other large ensembles compositions Concept of Tonal Organization. These RUSposium on his life piqued my curiosity, and brought him attention in 1957 and 1958,ELL ideas became his life’s mission; and the when I began to dig deeper I discovered a New York New York, which featured textbook he wrote may be what he is known trove of fascinating music. That I’d missed John Coltrane and Jon Hendricks, and All best for, partly because of his 33 years at so much of his work was dumbfounding. About Rosie, an astounding work based NEC, where many a student confronted his However, I find I am in good company. on an old children’s song, where whirling unusual approach. Abandoning Western Very few people seem to know the breadth counterpoint and astringent harmonies fly music’s traditional use of major and minor of Russell’s contribution to jazz. holographically over a joyous, gospel-tinged keys, Russell argued for development of The composer, who died last year, swing feel, sounding as modern today as it jazz around modes, or scales. Staying achieved early acclaim in the late 1940s did fifty years ago. Russell’s sound came within one scale and reducing complex with a big-band chart called “Cubano Be, about through a new harmonic approach chord changes offered the musician more 32 july/august 2010 George Russell in I999 GEo r GE Joel Harrison RUSsELLBy 33 Russell at the keyboard in I986. freedom to explore the melody of the piece. in the solos. Barry Galbraith’s guitar work It is said that Russell’s harmonic theories on Jazz Workshop is particularly well-crafted. are what gave rise to the modal jazz sound Russell wrote him into the ensemble in that Miles Davis pioneered in the late 1950s ways that had rarely if ever been done on seminal records such as Kind of Blue. with guitar. The interplay with the piano The early to mid-1950s was an era (either Russell or the astonishing Bill when the bridging of jazz and classical Evans) is one of a kind. music was much discussed, the dawn of russell’s harmony is never pre- the so-called Third Stream Movement. A dictable, often pantonal and handful of jazz musicians used to congre- 2 spiced with dissonance. It feels gate in Gil Evans’s apartment on West familiar yet mysterious, edgy, yet with an 55th St., as eager to decode Hindemith as austere beauty. The soloists do a wonderful Charlie Parker. Gunther Schuller, Miles job of developing these advanced ideas, Davis, Gerry Mulligan, John Lewis, Max rather than leaning on standard bebop Roach and others used Evans’s place as a vocabulary. The ensemble members play as kind of 24-hour workshop/clubhouse. though they know the music extremely well. Russell, as much as anyone, began to pro- the rhythm section crackles duce work that elevated concepts of jazz sition is still catching up to where Russell with swinging authority. This composition to new heights. Despite his left off. 3 music is not just for the brain; the body extraordinary work, Russell did not become I am particularly intrigued by music is involved, and the degree of rhythmic a formative figure for many jazz musicians, Russell wrote for sextet and septet between variation is unusual for the time. Russell though. Compared with contemporaries 1956 and 1964. Most of what any jazz creates swaths of thorny counterpoint and such as Miles and Coltrane, both of composer needs to know is locked into harmonic density and still invigorates the whom held him in high regard, Russell these masterworks. The albums Ezz-thetics, listener with dancing rhythm. This union was relatively unheralded. Critics were quite Stratusphunk, Live at Bremen, The Outer is at the core of what gives this great music enthusiastic about his early recordings, View, and Jazz Workshop contain marvels and all jazz its unique character. It’s inter- but the public did not catch on. By the of invention. Russell was not so much esting to note the 5/4 opening section of 1970s even most critics seemed to ignore creating a new language (as Ornette “Ye Hypocrite, Ye Beelzebub” on the Jazz his work. Coleman did) as he was adding breadth, Workshop recording. While not exactly One reason for this may be that Russell nuance, and complexity to existing norms. radical, it presages asymmetrical develop- refused to publish his charts, so live perfor- His formal concepts were many and varied. ments to come. mances of his music have been a rarity. short solos! Because he often uses a Also, according to Gary Giddins and others, a few particulars tHat set tHis sextet with three soloists, sax, trumpet, Russell’s music had a reputation, vastly music apart: 4 and trombone, the solos are relatively undeserved, of being overly academic and His written material, sometimes brief, not just in the studio, but live. The intellectual. The fact that he lived in through-composed, always con- solos seem tethered to the writing, never Boston, not New York, for so long may I tinues beyond the “head,” the arbitrary. I would trade most any Eric have been a factor. We can also blame main motif, into and through the Dolphy solo, especially the lengthy ones, Americans’ distaste for innovative music; solo sections. He thinks like a big-band for the pithy, incantatory blast of insight Russell’s performances in the U.S. were composer in small group settings. Back- Russell provides on Ezz-thetics. exceedingly rare. He achieved much more ground horn lines frame the soloist, tempos russell tends to compose and prominence in Europe, especially Scand- change as solo sections progress, counter- arrange episodically, again, like inavia (he lived in Sweden for five years point is added to a mid-piece melody, and 5 a classical composer, utilizing until 1968, when he was invited by the ending theme is not always a replica of surprising intro’s, interludes, tempo Schuller to join the NEC faculty). Our the beginning. These are practices that and meter changes, and unpredict- heroes in the jazz world tend to be the classical composers take for granted but able orchestration. The mood ranges soloists, the virtuosi, rather than the behind- that are often dismissed in jazz. All of this widely, an elliptical tone poem sitting the-scenes composers. His obscurity is a keeps the interest level high, while never beside a tuneful elegy, and then giving shame, though. In some ways jazz compo- interfering with the feeling of spontaneity way to an outburst of fast, furious groove 34 july/august 2010 music. Note, too, that he had a sense of In 1960 Russell produced Jazz in the Nature, and Vertical Forms. They are every humor. Each recording has a moment or space age, a six-movement suite for a bit as inspired as the works mentioned more that is sly, like he’s winking at us. 13-piece group that leapt away from con- above. no matter how far out his har- vention. It doesn’t sound like Ellington or Russell was one of the rare jazz composers mony got, russell was a master even Mingus, essentially defining its own who continued to write for and perform 5 melodist. Check out the tune Stratus- sound world. It is organized like a large with larger groups, despite a lack of per- phunk—you will be singing it all day. chamber music ensemble piece, influenced forming opportunities. He never wrote trio strongly by composer Stefan Wolpe, with or quartet music just so he could tour, let’s taKe a closer looK at two whom Russell studied briefly. The first where he would have been forced into the compositions: move ment starts with skittering, out-of- role of featured soloist, where the layers concerto for Billy the Kid, from Jazz time percussion and sounds akin to Varèse; of counterpoint, the three- or four-part Workshop (1956), begins with a buoyant, and then a brisk, ten-beat rhythmic cycle harmonies were sacrificed in favor of a almost ecstatic jazz-Latin vamp in which enters with bass and drums. Soon we hear more improvised, less notated, setting. an amazing amount of momentum is pianists Bill Evans and Paul Bley simulta- Listening to Russell’s oeuvre brings to generated from repeating hocket-like neously improvising together over the vamp, mind a nagging question. What needs to rhythms in the three horns, guitar, and using thoroughly modernist harmony. happen so that an individual might write piano. The tension builds and builds, and The piece goes back and forth between these music as complex as Russell’s, for a seven- then all the instruments suddenly coalesce two poles, “spacy” percussion and eruptions or a ten-piece group and be afforded the into a unison line that stops the piece of sound from the pianos, with the six-piece opportunity to perform this music multiple short. Suddenly we are thrust into an even horn section only rarely involved, mostly times without losing thousands of dollars? funkier Latin groove, and the piano begins commenting on the proceedings rather Then and now, jazz composers are forced a remarkably long line in octaves that is than leading the way.

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