UNL Jazz Ensemble Concert at Prague Spring 50

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04/12/2018 Added

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More information about Prague Spring 50 concerts at https://praguespring50.unl.edu/concerts.

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[00:00:10.036]Good afternoon, my name is Doctor Paul Harr.
[00:00:12.247]I'm the director of jazz studies
[00:00:14.200]and the director of this ensemble.
[00:00:16.420]This is the UNL Jazz Orchestra.
[00:00:18.810]On behalf of our students, faculty, and staff,
[00:00:21.040]we're really honored to be here to play for you today
[00:00:23.040]in these very unique circumstances.
[00:00:25.240]I was asked a few months ago when I was told
[00:00:27.840]about this wonderful festival that's going on
[00:00:30.160]and celebration, is there any way that we might
[00:00:33.353]be able to involve the jazz area and I said,
[00:00:36.853]well, what's the event?
[00:00:38.450]And my colleague, Mark Clinton, told me about this.
[00:00:41.410]I said, boy, the winds of fate
[00:00:42.910]have obviously brought us together.
[00:00:45.080]Because as you're well aware, the state of Nebraska
[00:00:48.430]has a wonderful Czech tradition, and in the world of music,
[00:00:53.140]well, the state of Nebraska Czech music, the name as I was
[00:00:57.370]taught to pronounce it, is Yanak, is synonymous with that,
[00:01:01.380]but we call him Janak, you know, doesn't sound good.
[00:01:05.480]Now, I'm gonna start calling you Yanak.
[00:01:08.513]It's so much nicer.
[00:01:09.880]And I was very fortunate a number of years ago to have
[00:01:12.620]Andrew Janak, if I may, come to the University of Nebraska
[00:01:16.740]as an undergraduate, got his music education degree,
[00:01:19.440]went on to do his Master's in composition at the wonderful
[00:01:22.780]DePaul Music School in Chicago, and I'm gonna have him
[00:01:26.200]talk about this process and what we're doing.
[00:01:30.177]But as it turns out, Andrew's compositions and his focus
[00:01:33.950]was bringing his Czech heritage to the jazz idiom.
[00:01:37.750]So what you're going to hear, we'll let him talk about it,
[00:01:40.320]but before we do because we understand that this
[00:01:42.920]is being webcast and he might get a chance to see it,
[00:01:46.040]we want to extend our condolences to our,
[00:01:49.642]I'm not going to be in the role of director,
[00:01:51.700]I'm gonna be in the role of sight reader
[00:01:53.510]and lead alto player.
[00:01:55.440]Simon Bessemer, our lead alto player,
[00:01:58.320]sadly lost his grandmother and is with his family
[00:02:01.598]and our condolences go out to him,
[00:02:03.550]but we hope you enjoy it and now
[00:02:05.700]we're going to turn it over to Andrew Janak.
[00:02:10.095](audience applauding)
[00:02:12.350]Hello, thank you everyone for coming out.
[00:02:16.750]As Dr, Harr said, it's really,
[00:02:19.018]it was great turn of fate that this all worked out because
[00:02:22.170]back in 2014, my final project for my Master's degree
[00:02:26.018]in jazz composition at DePaul was put together
[00:02:29.980]a set of Czech folk and popular songs
[00:02:34.371]that I then recomposed for modern jazz big band.
[00:02:39.017]I put on that performance in Chicago.
[00:02:41.652]They've been played a few times since, but this will be only
[00:02:44.220]the second time we've played all four of them all together.
[00:02:48.348]That process for me was taking music that I have heard since
[00:02:52.890]I was born and trying to find ways to keep the essence
[00:02:56.649]of it so that if someone who knew the tune,
[00:02:59.420]they'd still be able to recognize it,
[00:03:00.740]but then it could also stand alone as a jazz composition,
[00:03:03.798]that if someone had no idea what this tune was,
[00:03:06.080]they would still enjoy it and think it worked.
[00:03:09.920]The first tune we're gonna do is called
[00:03:11.770]Pisnicka Ceska by Karel Hasler.
[00:03:14.650]And it's gonna feature myself on tenor
[00:03:18.180]and Malachi Milian on guitar.
[00:03:34.693]("Pisnicka Ceska" by the UNL Jazz Orchestra)
[00:10:23.783](audience applauding)
[00:10:38.067]The next tune in the set is called Zbraslavska.
[00:10:42.993]It is originally composed by Jaromir Vejvoda,
[00:10:46.419]who is most famous as the composer of the Beer Barrel Polka,
[00:10:51.017]which at one time was the most popular song in the world,
[00:10:54.570]it's still played to this day.
[00:10:58.230]The original Czech lyrics were not about beer,
[00:11:00.500]but when it came to America,
[00:11:01.660]it became about beer, so that's not surprising, I suppose,
[00:11:04.760]but he also wrote a number of other wonderful songs
[00:11:10.490]and this is my setting of Zbraslavska.
[00:11:23.466]("Zbraslavska" by the UNL Jazz Orchestra)
[00:17:53.684](audience applauding)
[00:18:05.827]The next song in the set that we're gonna do here
[00:18:09.030]is entitled Morava, Krasna Zem.
[00:18:11.700]It is a traditional tune, there's no composer for this.
[00:18:14.627]It's a folk song about the Moravian section of the country.
[00:18:21.085]Originally, I've heard this done with Czech brass bands,
[00:18:25.680]kind of those in uptempo tune and triple meter.
[00:18:29.121]But for some reason I just heard the melody,
[00:18:32.250]thought it was really beautiful,
[00:18:33.990]that it could be translated into a much slower ballad,
[00:18:37.110]so this is gonna be kind of a ballad inspired by the writing
[00:18:40.710]of Maria Schneider, who I was thinking of when I did this,
[00:18:44.320]but I hope you enjoy Morava, Krasna Zem.
[00:19:19.901]("Morava, Krasna Zem" by the UNL Jazz Orchestra)
[00:29:17.498](audience applauding)
[00:29:30.420]The final tune of our set here is a song by the composer
[00:29:37.006]Blahoslav Smisovsky, entitled Falesna Frajarka.
[00:29:41.770]And I first heard this, once again, in a Czech brass band
[00:29:46.490]and it was a very energetic, uptempo arrangement,
[00:29:50.103]so I thought it would lend itself well to kind of
[00:29:52.440]an uptempo contemporary swing treatment of the tune.
[00:29:58.159]One thing I did with a lot of these songs
[00:30:00.450]is mess around with the different parts of the form,
[00:30:02.680]so a lot of them would be similar to a march
[00:30:05.270]where they had a main strain and then a trio
[00:30:07.320]as the second part and with this one,
[00:30:09.980]I like to put them out of order and put the different
[00:30:13.420]sections at different points throughout sprinkled,
[00:30:15.380]so it doesn't follow the original form,
[00:30:17.870]but it's something that people who know the tune can kind of
[00:30:20.010]latch onto, almost like a little bit of a musical joke.
[00:30:22.550]So, this is Falesna Frajarka, and we're gonna hear
[00:30:25.940]from Paul Harr on the alto, Malachi Milian
[00:30:29.590]on the guitar, and Andrew Ray on the drums.
[00:31:06.004]One, two, uh uh uh uh.
[00:31:08.255]("Falesna Frajarka" by the UNL Jazz Orchestra)
[00:37:03.710](audience applauding)
[00:37:09.266]How about a hand for the UNL Jazz Orchestra?
[00:37:14.056]And Andrew Janak.
[00:37:39.740]So, first let me tell you we were both
[00:37:42.872]sitting there and commenting good things.
[00:37:46.640]My name is Tony, Tony Ackerman.
[00:37:48.610]I'm an American guitarist and I've lived
[00:37:50.900]in the Czech Republic and played
[00:37:52.360]with my Czech partner here for 35 years.
[00:37:55.720]And first, I just wanna give you
[00:37:59.607]my greatest praise first to Andrew because Andrew,
[00:38:04.000]you wrote four pieces, each one of them so varied.
[00:38:06.950]You used very rhythmic styles, I mean, I was satisfied.
[00:38:10.600]My personal favorite was the third, the ballad,
[00:38:13.660]because of the wonderful harmony because of your solo
[00:38:16.790]which kind of took that harmony and took it
[00:38:20.100]somewhere totally else, I was really amazed by your playing
[00:38:23.900]in that one, so beautiful writing, varied.
[00:38:27.930]The band is perfect, luckily, we don't have
[00:38:31.656]to work with you in terms of making you
[00:38:34.993]a better band because there's no way to do it.
[00:38:37.620]Paul, one of the things that I was really impressed,
[00:38:41.690]I'm just kind of talking my impressions, that I was really
[00:38:45.050]impressed by the velvet sound of both the brass
[00:38:51.755]and the trumpets back there didn't bother me at all.
[00:38:55.900]Sometimes trumpets bother me, they didn't.
[00:38:59.981]You really, I mean, the people,
[00:39:03.270]I don't know how many, what you know here
[00:39:05.900]about big band music, but it's hard to master like this.
[00:39:09.460]It's hard to get big band music to sound not forced.
[00:39:13.530]It's hard to have this, big band has this difficult,
[00:39:17.696]you have to walk a fine line between
[00:39:20.180]total discipline and freedom, right?
[00:39:22.500]Because when you're back there playing
[00:39:24.599]the punch lines or the backgrounds,
[00:39:27.570]you have to be very disciplined and you
[00:39:29.464]don't get to express yourself very much.
[00:39:32.154]Sometimes the only people who can really
[00:39:34.330]express themselves are the soloists then
[00:39:37.180]and yet you guys found a really beautiful balance.
[00:39:41.630]So, great time playing and the drummers,
[00:39:45.600]this last one just sailed right through.
[00:39:47.790]Bass player, beautiful, I love your tone.
[00:39:50.060]So, I just have good things to say
[00:39:52.260]and guitar player, I'm jealous of your cleanliness
[00:39:56.440]and your dominance of jazz scales.
[00:40:00.170]So, it's really great.
[00:40:01.820]Can we give them one more round of applause, everybody?
[00:40:06.219](audience applauding)
[00:40:10.502]So, you deserve it.
[00:40:16.660]Well, I don't have much to add to what Tony said.
[00:40:22.270]I'm a Berkeley College of Music alumni,
[00:40:24.610]so I know what you play about and I know the canon
[00:40:28.800]and the standards and everything.
[00:40:32.159]But what amazed me is the way Mr, Janak, you know,
[00:40:37.968]changed the style for more having harmonies
[00:40:41.180]into the Maiden Voyage type of modal music,
[00:40:44.050]you know, modal playing, which I couldn't imagine
[00:40:47.502]could be done, you know, in the way.
[00:40:50.190]Although, as I studied when I was at Berkeley in 1976,
[00:40:56.070]you know, there was a Polish guy who came in from Zakopane.
[00:41:02.394]I don't know what he was doing at Berkeley because Berkeley
[00:41:06.242]is a jazz school and he was into folk music.
[00:41:09.962]And I realized after
[00:41:13.610]hours of talking to him
[00:41:15.750]that what he wanted to prove is that
[00:41:18.071]there is something, the link between the folk music
[00:41:21.970]of Poland and Moravia and jazz playing
[00:41:25.922]is Lydian tune, you know, Lydian scale.
[00:41:30.768]And here we see how beautifully, it works so beautifully,
[00:41:35.250]you know, because this is the actual bridge in between
[00:41:37.920]those two worlds who otherwise have nothing to do at all.
[00:41:41.280]I mean, the tradition is going somewhere else.
[00:41:43.410]And he's written some thesis on this
[00:41:46.080]and I didn't follow it anymore,
[00:41:47.610]but this is how it works in the real life, you know.
[00:41:52.180]So, thank you very much, it was beautiful.
[00:41:53.940]I wish I could play it that well.
[00:41:58.470]So, I wanted to have a discussion with you.
[00:42:01.610]I want you to talk a little bit, too because,
[00:42:04.900]and anybody who wants can take the microphone, but okay,
[00:42:09.362]following some free thoughts I had, now Martin and I
[00:42:13.509]are gonna play tomorrow night, our kind of music,
[00:42:17.920]which is also under the category of jazz, but there could
[00:42:21.450]not be two more different sounding musics, I can't imagine.
[00:42:26.190]I mean, I hope some of you will come tomorrow and if you do,
[00:42:29.060]you'll see there's a world of difference between them.
[00:42:32.670]So, what is it about jazz that's able to accommodate
[00:42:36.470]so many different styles and personalities?
[00:42:39.010]Jazz grew up as a music
[00:42:42.338]as a hybrid of different musics, right?
[00:42:44.870]In New Orleans, it was European music
[00:42:47.960]and African musics, slave songs.
[00:42:50.270]So, what is it about jazz you find, Andrew,
[00:42:52.410]let me ask you, why is jazz such a welcoming medium?
[00:42:56.359]Well, I think it goes along exactly with what you were
[00:42:58.680]talking about that the roots of it are a, you know,
[00:43:01.770]people say fusion jazz as a, you kinda be a bad word,
[00:43:04.610]like you think of jazz rock, but jazz itself has always been
[00:43:07.080]a fusion of different styles and so when I was taking on
[00:43:10.590]this project, part of it was I wanted to see just how
[00:43:13.622]far removed from the original style of these tunes I could
[00:43:17.883]go and still have the tune there and I just feel that
[00:43:22.288]even though jazz is still, you know, in the grand scope
[00:43:27.090]of music history fairly young, there's been pretty
[00:43:30.120]revolutionary changes over that short amount of time
[00:43:33.160]and as a jazz composer, that kind of offers you
[00:43:35.160]limitless possibilities with how you can set things.
[00:43:38.270]So, when I first gave this recital for my master's,
[00:43:43.028]one element I had was I played about a minute clip
[00:43:47.350]of brass bands playing the original songs and then we would
[00:43:51.760]play this and it was kind of funny just to see the look
[00:43:55.457]on peoples faces after, you know, after just a few bars
[00:43:58.330]of starting these new tunes and then, selfishly for me,
[00:44:01.580]it's kind of fun because most of my family members
[00:44:04.170]know all these songs, so it's almost an inside joke.
[00:44:07.550]So, my uncle is like, wow, I've never heard trumpets
[00:44:09.630]play that melody so high or wow, that was the second half
[00:44:12.930]of that tune, but that's not how we play it, but it's still
[00:44:15.790]there and I think that spirit of fusing things together
[00:44:19.670]and just trying to do something new with preexising material
[00:44:23.767]is just something that's always been a part of jazz
[00:44:26.120]and that's what I was trying to capture in this project.
[00:44:30.305]Thanks, You know, this conference is about 1968.
[00:44:35.892]And so much was happening in jazz, well,
[00:44:40.850]so much was happening every decade as far as I know,
[00:44:43.690]I haven't followed the last, but in 1968,
[00:44:46.822]let me just ask you, maybe somebody else in the group,
[00:44:50.410]what do you know about jazz in the 1960s?
[00:44:53.290]Who have you listened to, anybody wanna answer?
[00:44:57.730]This isn't a quiz, I really wanna know.
[00:45:00.263]I wanna know who you listen to.
[00:45:05.030]Yeah, go ahead.
[00:45:06.120]I mean, I was really, of that era,
[00:45:08.460]I'm really into the Miles Davis second quintet,
[00:45:12.240]you know, mid '60s and then right up to '68 was
[00:45:14.830]about the end of their acoustic quintet and then
[00:45:16.990]he started going towards more as electric music
[00:45:19.770]with Bitches Brew and In A Silent Way,
[00:45:21.450]so it's kind of a fusing of his old quintet
[00:45:23.140]and adding Chick Corea on keyboards and things like that,
[00:45:26.730]but that was a big influence on me from that time.
[00:45:29.210]I saw them in 1968 and I saw with both Chick Corea
[00:45:33.940]and Keith Jarrett playing together with Miles Davis,
[00:45:38.010]but go ahead because this is the point, late 1960s,
[00:45:41.841]with Martin, who started the first jazz rock group
[00:45:46.699]behind the iron curtain, took the world of Eastern music,
[00:45:52.133]Eastern European music somewhere else.
[00:45:55.430]Well, I do wanna skip backwards a little bit.
[00:45:58.290]I just wanna say that the influence or the kind of,
[00:46:01.795]you know, the theme, beautiful themes
[00:46:04.323]of Polish Slavic Moravian tradition which we have heard here
[00:46:09.405]were, although, more people are influenced by one of them
[00:46:14.584]is Jan Hammer, and Miroslav Vitous,
[00:46:18.120]and his brother, you know,
[00:46:19.270]who made the Junior Trio back in the '60s.
[00:46:22.152]I just, actually I showed a film
[00:46:24.620]on Miroslav Vitous recently.
[00:46:27.040]so I went through the archives, and it was beautiful,
[00:46:29.630]you know, entrancing, and they took it more traditionally,
[00:46:32.870]I mean you already do much more with the theme, so they
[00:46:36.995]stuck to the basic harmonies and the form and everything.
[00:46:42.127]And they were not the only ones, you know.
[00:46:44.804]There was Keith Jarrett was mentioned here,
[00:46:47.320]and Jan Garbarek did it enormously.
[00:46:50.340]And obviously all of the bands from Poland, you know.
[00:46:54.005]And from the Czech countries, it's just obvious,
[00:46:56.410]but you do it different way and very revolutionary way.
[00:47:00.738]You know, Andrew, you used the word revolutionary.
[00:47:04.027]And in the 1960s, so much revolutionary was happening
[00:47:08.180]in jazz, and when You just said 1968 was when Miles Davis
[00:47:12.564]turned from, he was so inspired, and people here might
[00:47:18.480]or might not know the jazz history of the '60s,
[00:47:21.220]but up until this wonderful innovative Miles Davis,
[00:47:25.500]jazz was a very complex and sometimes it very rarefied,
[00:47:30.000]and Miles Davis was influenced by rock music,
[00:47:34.210]which was really happening in the late 1960s.
[00:47:37.130]And the albums that you mentioned, Bitches Brew,
[00:47:39.550]In a Silent Way, they were key for both of us.
[00:47:42.360]So I never thought of it until you mentioned, 1968,
[00:47:46.531]we have so much happening in the culture of this country,
[00:47:49.850]so much in the music, and there goes Miles Davis,
[00:47:52.470]bringing back jazz, when I first met Martin, he said
[00:47:55.530]he loved how Miles Davis brought jazz back to the lifeblood,
[00:47:59.780]this underneath current, the lifeblood of the people.
[00:48:03.260]Do you guys ever listen to those Miles Davis albums
[00:48:07.130]of the late '60s of Bitches Brew and In a Silent Way?
[00:48:11.690]So, yeah.
[00:48:14.710]Could I actually ask a question for Martin?
[00:48:18.033]You mentioned that 1968 was when you're starting to form
[00:48:21.530]your own band, like first Czech band under the Iron Curtain,
[00:48:24.670]how did you go about listening to jazz and forming
[00:48:27.920]jazz groups in the Czech Republic during that time?
[00:48:31.656]Well the very beginning, I mean I,
[00:48:34.140]we started a bit earlier, in '65, I established the group.
[00:48:38.850]And we were into sort of free jazz,
[00:48:41.260]you know, for first two or three years.
[00:48:43.460]And then we went back to this kind of
[00:48:46.150]style which Miles Davis brought about.
[00:48:48.630]And we were so lucky, well first of all,
[00:48:51.650]there was not many albums, available in the country,
[00:48:55.740]but there's sort of radio stations around,
[00:48:57.990]so that was the source of the basic, you know, information.
[00:49:01.926]But we were, at the beginning, we were sort of lucky,
[00:49:05.450]that was the time, Etta was talking about sort of
[00:49:09.760]a little bit warming up around the '65, '66, '67, '68.
[00:49:14.925]And then it blasted even over the invasion
[00:49:18.546]and the real bloc, or the oppression came in 19,
[00:49:23.740]I think '72, was the cruel year when everything stopped
[00:49:28.530]and the border was closed again and all was gone.
[00:49:32.414]And so in those heydays, we had a chance
[00:49:35.900]to travel over Europe, we were pretty young,
[00:49:38.280]and we played with Chick Corea in Finland.
[00:49:40.730]We played with Cannonball Adderley elsewhere,
[00:49:42.820]and we did, we played with Bill Dixon in Luxembourg.
[00:49:46.520]And so we made a picture, and then,
[00:49:49.454]I went to stay a year to study in England in 1968.
[00:49:57.060]Actually I came back two days before the invasion.
[00:50:01.037]You know, so it sounds just like making it in time,
[00:50:04.820]you know, to see the Russian tanks rolling in.
[00:50:07.850]So that was the influence, you know.
[00:50:09.700]So we had, '68 was already the year
[00:50:12.250]where the things happened, you know, seeing Jimi Hendrix
[00:50:15.080]in London, I've seen the music go together,
[00:50:17.907]you know, the jazz with rock, you know.
[00:50:20.850]I was, the Isle of Wright festival, and well,
[00:50:24.370]everybody was coming from, and so this was another,
[00:50:26.860]you know, source where rock music came to me.
[00:50:32.450]I want to just,
[00:50:34.681]I had, Martin and I have a colleague, Milan Svoboda,
[00:50:38.924]you know, who is also a well-known jazz pianist
[00:50:42.120]in the Czech Republic, and I tech in university program,
[00:50:45.750]the NYU abroad program in Prague,
[00:50:47.790]and I invited him to talk to my students.
[00:50:50.380]And he brought one album.
[00:50:53.189]This was in fact, this album was Cannonball Adderley,
[00:50:57.010]the album that has Mercy, Mercy, but he said,
[00:51:02.490]in the late 1960s, I owned five albums.
[00:51:06.906]You know what albums are, right,
[00:51:08.510]they're the big black things that (laughs) yeah, right.
[00:51:12.200]And Martin's son was surprised when he,
[00:51:14.380]you can turn it around and it plays
[00:51:16.290]on the other side, okay, so those things.
[00:51:18.020]So he had five albums, and he said to my students,
[00:51:20.910]music majors, he said,
[00:51:23.237]"These five albums taught me more than all the music
[00:51:28.087]"you can hear on Spotify and iTunes and everything."
[00:51:31.150]In other words, there was limited resources,
[00:51:34.120]but from those resources, he was able to get everything.
[00:51:37.520]Milan Kundera, the great writer,
[00:51:39.130]said one band book in Czechoslovakia has more power
[00:51:43.798]than the million books in the Harvard Library,
[00:51:47.950]so that's a way to answer the question.
[00:51:50.802]I just, it goes through my mind that it's nice
[00:51:53.570]to add an information that some of the avant garde
[00:51:58.020]American jazz-rock or fusion music is influenced
[00:52:03.010]or came actually from Europe, you know.
[00:52:05.590]Let's take John McLaughlin as an example, you know,
[00:52:08.610]my most favorite beloved guitar player.
[00:52:11.130]And Mahavishnu Orchestra is something
[00:52:13.430]I can hear all the way through.
[00:52:16.280]And John, imitate, I know, yeah.
[00:52:18.932]I'm into this demolished courtyard,
[00:52:22.945]and Joe Zawinul, Joe Zawinul has a mother
[00:52:26.746]who comes from Bilsen, and his father,
[00:52:30.894]either Vienna or somewhere near, you know,
[00:52:34.760]Southbrook maybe, and obviously he went all the way
[00:52:38.983]across the ocean and made it here with music which,
[00:52:43.595]you know, carries the stamps of counterpoint,
[00:52:47.739]of European, you know, street music in a way.
[00:52:51.790]And yeah, (laughs)
[00:52:55.385]When I talk about Joe Zawinul, I'm always adding
[00:52:59.180]that I met him in the states in '76, you know,
[00:53:02.946]and he had four kids with I think three different women.
[00:53:08.194]And each of the kid had a different shade of skin,
[00:53:12.760]you know, from very black to very white, you know.
[00:53:16.125]So this is just a stupid joke.
[00:53:18.980]But Joe Zawinul was another idol or another source
[00:53:23.660]of music which gave me the way or showed me
[00:53:28.743]the way where to go, you know.
[00:53:31.710]When I came to study music in '76 to the states,
[00:53:35.220]I always wanted, before I wanted to be a Black,
[00:53:37.460]you know, musician, Black.
[00:53:39.460]Orsted Pedersen, whom I was following before.
[00:53:42.440]And only here, Michael Gibbs, who was my teacher
[00:53:46.410]at Berkley, just showed me the around there,
[00:53:50.700]but from the perspective of, you know, behind the ocean.
[00:53:54.050]So I've studied Penderetsky with him and Lutoslawski
[00:53:57.565]and all bunch of, you know, actually our music,
[00:54:01.248]but he opened the window, you know.
[00:54:04.390]One should travel long distances to see
[00:54:08.247]his own land and tradition, you know.
[00:54:11.228]Only then you learn what is so amazing, you know.
[00:54:14.973]And when I went to Berkeley, I felt sort of, you know,
[00:54:18.290]I was young and I felt very inferior,
[00:54:20.880]so I thought, they all can play,
[00:54:22.310]it's American, you know, music is at home,
[00:54:25.330]jazz is at home here, I just felt kind of weakish.
[00:54:28.670]And they said, ah, this is the guy from the land of Drozak,
[00:54:32.917]you know, who taught us all the music here, you know, so,
[00:54:36.110]from this onwards I just grew a little bit up,
[00:54:38.874]you know, with my arms, you know,
[00:54:40.780]I was given this kind of push, you know.
[00:54:43.680]Okay, Tony, it's your turn.
[00:54:47.056]I want to take this to a little bit different direction,
[00:54:51.390]and James and Marion, if I had been able to be
[00:54:55.694]on the organizing committee of this conference, I would have
[00:54:59.376]organized one session on liberation through music.
[00:55:03.618]However, we don't have a session,
[00:55:05.880]so we can talk about it right now.
[00:55:07.280]In other words, I want to ask you, this is a long,
[00:55:11.120]this is gonna be a long question without any answers,
[00:55:14.510]but do any of you know the name Joan Baez?
[00:55:20.540]You do, we do, we whose hair is white, knew.
[00:55:24.030]But okay, Joan Baez was what they called a folk singer
[00:55:27.340]in the early 1960s, and, you know,
[00:55:29.490]she was associated with Bob Dylan.
[00:55:31.570]And in the early 1960s, I was in, you know, the Boston area,
[00:55:37.046]which was a student, lots of students,
[00:55:39.920]and the folk music revival came through,
[00:55:42.570]and people using these folk traditions,
[00:55:46.770]but to sing songs of protest and songs of liberation.
[00:55:52.560]And Joan Baez sang just a day before I left, last Wednesday,
[00:55:59.070]day before I left for here, she sang at a big venue
[00:56:01.700]in Prague on her fare thee well tour.
[00:56:04.540]And one of the songs that she sang, she took a Czech,
[00:56:08.510]a song that was really sort of the anthem of the resistance
[00:56:13.270]to the 1968 invasion, Bratricku, by Karel Kryl.
[00:56:18.590]Does anybody here, does that ring a bell
[00:56:20.710]to anybody here in the audience for so?
[00:56:23.060]And the public was singing along with her,
[00:56:26.620]and I realized that, you know, music is a way of liberation.
[00:56:31.260]And jazz has been a way of liberation,
[00:56:33.810]it has been a way of liberation for incredible geniuses
[00:56:39.244]from a race that had been really oppressed to come through.
[00:56:43.160]And I think that one reason why everybody loved,
[00:56:46.350]even in the '20s and '30s Louis Armstrong, Ella Fitzgerald,
[00:56:50.260]was that they could feel that these people have taken music
[00:56:54.300]and made it, made us freer through it.
[00:56:58.920]So I wanna hear from, we're talking a lot,
[00:57:02.487]but does anybody here feel, feel something similar
[00:57:06.590]as you're playing jazz, or any kind of music?
[00:57:09.090]Does anybody wanna talk about music
[00:57:12.070]as a way of personal liberation?
[00:57:18.427]Yeah.
[00:57:19.520]Here.
[00:57:20.653]Thank you.
[00:57:24.293]I mean, in a lot of ways, within big movements in time,
[00:57:29.607]being able to look back at, you know,
[00:57:31.873]I would say like great wars, big wars, or big movements,
[00:57:35.590]and politically and stuff like that, we could say that
[00:57:38.310]there's also been musical styles that have been developed
[00:57:42.840]or musicians that were very prevalent at that point in time
[00:57:45.910]that really influenced a lot of people.
[00:57:48.777]Saying this during our period of time,
[00:57:51.210]where even the revolution of music is also included,
[00:57:55.460]or what it entails is kind of like the digital download age
[00:58:00.160]and stuff like that, and just the way that we communicate
[00:58:04.357]together as musicians is also changing in a way,
[00:58:06.950]and sometimes there's, well,
[00:58:09.458]there's the good and the bad with that.
[00:58:12.688]But I'd say even in this, if we're also talking about
[00:58:16.219]the political climate, that there's also a lot of liberation
[00:58:19.400]in terms of being a jazz musician at this point in time.
[00:58:23.320]And in a very unique way, even though there's
[00:58:25.330]a lot of people studying and doing what you're doing,
[00:58:28.560]whether they're at Julliard or just studying at home
[00:58:31.900]by themselves is that we're all starting
[00:58:34.800]to be able to be a little bit more connected.
[00:58:37.676]You know, and then one of the big ways of being able
[00:58:39.880]to do that is the internet and YouTube and stuff like that,
[00:58:42.880]and so even though that it may not be as personal
[00:58:46.726]as it was before, we're still being able to reach out
[00:58:49.090]to each other and in a bigger way, I think it'd be,
[00:58:52.926]I think we're getting closer to this next liberation
[00:58:56.186]of actually being able to come together again,
[00:58:58.720]and it's gonna be something quite fascinating, I feel, so.
[00:59:03.810]Another.
[00:59:05.927]Of course.
[00:59:08.520]Thank you, I have,
[00:59:11.100]well I don't know if it's fortune, it's just
[00:59:12.730]where I fell along in the timeline of history.
[00:59:17.140]Something that, Martin, that you mentioned,
[00:59:19.080]that I'm curious to get your perspective.
[00:59:22.678]I'm of a generation where we had records.
[00:59:27.036]And also digital downloads.
[00:59:29.332]And a lot of the people on the stage,
[00:59:31.739]the concept of having their favorite record, you know,
[00:59:35.195]my favorite Cannonball Adderley record I have on CD
[00:59:37.972]and I've downloaded it, but I'd still rather
[00:59:40.360]go home and put it on the turntable
[00:59:42.260]and hear the pops and I can count the pops.
[00:59:44.980]And then I know what's gonna happen.
[00:59:46.660]And then there's one big pop before the sound comes on.
[00:59:49.948]What I was taken by was, you talked about,
[00:59:53.099]you know, this flash point in history of '68.
[00:59:57.090]How one album could make a difference.
[01:00:01.220]Can you talk about how having, you know,
[01:00:05.070]we have access to anything we want at a thumb's fingertip,
[01:00:10.678]how not having access to that
[01:00:14.689]made your creativity and desire strong?
[01:00:23.430]I'm not quite sure that this is the connection that
[01:00:28.080]the excess of information can like diminish your creativity.
[01:00:33.789]But it's true that once you get hooked with certain type
[01:00:38.412]of music, like I did on John McLaughlin, you know,
[01:00:42.660]I mean I sleep from day to day, expecting what next he would
[01:00:46.701]want to say, you know, so I mean just would, I would be glad
[01:00:50.140]that the new, they would release a new composition,
[01:00:52.530]because I just want, I've just seen that he
[01:00:55.280]started something, but yet he didn't say the last word,
[01:00:58.750]you know, so that was maybe, this is something good
[01:01:02.366]on being hooked on one or two rails which you follow,
[01:01:05.320]like Chick Corea, Herbie Hancock, you know,
[01:01:08.130]John McLaughlin, and I had many raves, but,
[01:01:12.310]but even in the world which we are today,
[01:01:18.210]where the information is enormous and you can make
[01:01:22.779]clicking and knob, you know, get any music,
[01:01:27.150]you know, instantly, I think it's just, yeah,
[01:01:31.283]I think it would ruin, maybe it will not allow
[01:01:35.313]this kind of hunger for new stuff to happen, you know.
[01:01:39.610]Maybe there must be somewhat better idea.
[01:01:42.470]But I've got another one.
[01:01:46.266]What I think is that, in a way, we are witnessing
[01:01:51.810]a sort of fall or at least a weakening of the classical
[01:01:58.272]situation which we have had from past few years,
[01:02:02.280]like there's the audience here, and there is a group
[01:02:06.180]of genius, or less genius musicians here,
[01:02:09.326]or those are genius, (laughs)
[01:02:11.360]and the audience is clapping hands,
[01:02:14.200]and it's expecting what they will say, you know.
[01:02:18.047]This model is brand new, it has not been here before.
[01:02:23.282]And I'm very frequent traveler into Himalayas,
[01:02:27.994]so I'm going there and spending a lot of time
[01:02:31.170]in India, and in those countries,
[01:02:34.133]this model is not existing, you know.
[01:02:37.150]And I think it started, or it was born
[01:02:44.561]in the time of the German classic philosophy,
[01:02:50.850]where Schelling would call his guy on the stage
[01:02:58.450]das Genius, you know, he would all,
[01:03:01.012]was not a living man, but das Genius, a thing.
[01:03:05.840]And this Genius, the artist, would have a better,
[01:03:12.920]straighter, more firm, and higher quality perception
[01:03:20.118]of the being, of the universe.
[01:03:23.320]And from this arose this situation of the Genius being here,
[01:03:28.060]or genius we call it, and the layman being here.
[01:03:32.129]But in the other, in the other cultures like in India,
[01:03:35.206]the music is having a totally different role.
[01:03:38.800]I mean, you've got a raga for the morning,
[01:03:43.150]you can get raga when you, when your infant is born.
[01:03:46.316]You can have a raga when somebody dies, you know,
[01:03:48.917]and all the day and situation and your life, and the
[01:03:55.217]moments in your life are structured.
[01:03:57.510]And each, you know, to each situation
[01:04:00.540]a special music is ascribed.
[01:04:03.150]So you walk through India or Himalayas or Nepal,
[01:04:07.806]and you hear music all the time, you know.
[01:04:10.230]People say, you know, so it's not an artist
[01:04:13.730]and the public here, but it's everybody singing now.
[01:04:17.580]And I want to conclude this way, you know,
[01:04:22.480]thoughts with something
[01:04:26.386]which I maybe do not like, as later on, you know,
[01:04:31.120]the label and recording company that the situation
[01:04:35.130]which happens now that everybody can record his own music,
[01:04:38.877]you know, in the garage or anywhere, you know,
[01:04:41.070]with the cost of a computer and one mic.
[01:04:44.030]Maybe it's returning the situation
[01:04:47.113]to the pre-German philosophy situation where
[01:04:53.240]the music was atmosphere, a mural of life, you know.
[01:04:58.460]So maybe something would be good on it.
[01:05:00.700]Everybody says, you know, they steal music, we, you know,
[01:05:02.493]as a composer, I'm losing money and everything.
[01:05:06.030]So it's all bad things are being mentioned,
[01:05:09.370]but this is an optimistic thing.
[01:05:14.210]What's your name? Christian.
[01:05:16.349]This is what, I think Christian, this is exactly
[01:05:18.880]what you were saying in other words,
[01:05:21.070]that the connectivity that you're having through music
[01:05:24.200]is bringing it back to belonging to everybody.
[01:05:26.790]And exactly right, like what you're talking about,
[01:05:29.620]Schelling talked about it, he theorized it,
[01:05:31.840]but music kind of, the whole 19th century ideal
[01:05:35.440]of the genius composer, starting with Beethoven,
[01:05:38.040]going, and then, we have our geniuses in jazz,
[01:05:40.650]we have our gods, we have Charlie Parker
[01:05:42.600]and John Coltrane that we would bow to.
[01:05:45.040]However, maybe even if the quality
[01:05:48.299]and the incredible mastery of energy that these,
[01:05:52.510]quote, geniuses have, maybe it's not so common anymore.
[01:05:55.380]What's happened is it's spread out among everybody.
[01:05:58.100]And I mean, I'm just blown away that I can come from Prague,
[01:06:02.100]Czech Republic to the middle of Nebraska, or I don't know
[01:06:05.380]if this is the middle, but somewhere in Nebraska, (laughs)
[01:06:08.520]and hear a great jazz band, I mean that's part of what
[01:06:11.640]we're talking about, that probably would not have existed
[01:06:15.479]if we still just had our vinyl records,
[01:06:18.277]you know, you guys probably all got inspired
[01:06:21.480]not by your dad playing a vinyl record,
[01:06:24.360]or maybe you did, but because of what you heard,
[01:06:26.610]so I guess we have to accept the great things
[01:06:29.750]that are happening as well as what
[01:06:32.160]we old guys think of as the decadence.
[01:06:34.928]Yeah, I just wanna push a little bit these
[01:06:37.815]initial thoughts even higher just to say that the reason
[01:06:43.050]why those big thinkers of the German philosophy
[01:06:46.585]felt there's something more in the art, you know,
[01:06:50.180]which directional thinking cannot really deliver,
[01:06:54.390]that this is what we lucky people in music have.
[01:06:58.930]That we've got a medium which has got enormous power,
[01:07:03.490]you know, I mean just much more than explanation
[01:07:06.270]and literature and I mean the logos,
[01:07:09.350]you know, the Greek, the language.
[01:07:12.277]Because music is hitting something which is higher
[01:07:16.440]than the rational in our heads.
[01:07:19.310]So, Tony asked the question, what is special in music?
[01:07:23.641]So I feel this is it, you know.

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UNL Jazz Ensemble Concert at Prague Spring 50

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