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first recital in series

talking about jazz

In jazz, there is the phrase "paying your dues" - paying your due respects to those who have gone before. With this 8-recital series, my aim is to pay my due respects to some of the musicians and composers who have helped shape the jazz musician I am. However, I don't want the series to be a dry, historical document of dead jazz fashions and movements of a bygone age; my intention is to present selected music from the whole history of jazz to date - from the blues to bebop and beyond - and arrange it in a way that shows the versatility of the music. I want audiences to hear that a W.C. Handy composition from the early days of jazz can sound as if it had been written yesterday, given a suitable arrangement, and that an Ornette Coleman composition from the heady days of free jazz can sound as ancient and noble as tribal singing from darkest Africa.

The premiere of the opening concert of the series, "From The Blues to Bebop and Beyond: One Hundred Years of Jazz", took place, on November 8th 2007 in Dubai, UAE, at the Dubai Community Theatre & Arts Centre. I chose to present the first recital on solo piano for two reasons really - 1. I hadn't had the chance to rehearse with any of the handful of other jazz musicians in the city, and 2. I love the beautiful simplicity of solo performance and the attention to tiny details that materialise during performance that is possible in such a situation (see my 2 = 1 = 0 project for more of my thoughts on this matter).

Choosing the material for the series is proving to be an interesting task. The first recital needed to span a century of music and selecting pieces to represent each particular "age" of jazz proved to be quite difficult - what to leave out especially. Aside from the opening concert of the series, each of the seven other performances will focus on a specific "age". So, for example, the second concert in the series, "The Blues, Early Jazz & New Orleans", will feature two sets of compositions from the early part of the 20th century, but not neccesarily played in the style of that time. Looking back with hindsight gives one the opportunity to make connections through time that can link together music decades, or centuries, apart.