Day 1

Our collaboration kicked off to a great start with our mentors.  Oddly, we had not too much scheduled with them throughout the week.  But both of them seemed happy to share their experience with early jazz music. 

I myself was in for a surprise.  Both Giacomo and Peter view jazz as one gigantic, continuous thing; like one of my good friends likes to say, “it’s all jazz; it’s all music.” 

Peter made a fantastic distinction between “contemporary” and “modern” jazz.  The former is the jazz music that is happening right now; the kinds of sounds that most people (in their respective circles of today’s jazz music) are making.  The latter is relevant to anything being made that is contemporary.  For example, Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie’s work is still relevant today in that it informs the basis for today’s jazz language and vocabulary that jazz musicians study. 

This stance spoke to Peter and Giacomo’s perspective about jazz and how to play it: it’s all part of the same spectrum of this improvised musical art form.  Of course, there are ways to play certain time periods of jazz convincingly.  Roles of instruments vary from time period to time period.  But the spirit of the music has not really changed.  Because jazz is improvised music, to play with what you know best is most important.  Yet for early jazz, some guidance was needed in order to play our own stuff in a new way that fit our instruments.  (second-line roles; playing more argeggios, bluesy things, rhythmic repetition and repeated melodic statements, classical-era influences that inspired virtuosity). 

Both mentors were full of fantastic advice.  For instance, Giacomo made it easy for me to grasp how to play this music.  It’s mostly about how rhythmically strong the melodic ideas are, and not so much a flurry of bebop language.  I was trying very hard not to use any of that language, given, of course, that no jazz musician was really playing like that before the 1940’s.  But he basically said to just be “calm.”  The feel and rhythmic “pocket” is what matters most, and even more importantly, using one’s own improvisational vocabulary with convincing rhythmic strength.
Here, we talk a lot about endings.  So many times in a jazz setting, endings are not discussed beforehand--and honestly, not much is discussed on the bandstand in a typical gig!  Communication is key.  Giacomo says as much at 5:45.  

Day 2

For whatever reason, some of us didn’t quite know if we should use all of the time allotted to us in room 159 (9am-6pm).  We all basically figured that we could meet up on this day without our mentors present.  One of our colleagues did not show up; his reasoning was very interesting indeed when made apparent on Day 3…. 

That being said, the creative processes that were done this day were fruitful, lucrative, and exciting.  Each individual in this group added something very much of their own to a style of music we do not fully understand nor practice on a consistent basis.  I like to think that our study of early jazz music became more of a joy as we rehearsed it all together; truly, it did not feel like a chore, as it was more a labor of love.  After Giacomo and Peter’s ideas on this music—and how improvised jazz music in general is all pretty relevant.  Here in the video we display our learning process: playing through the tunes, discussing what needs to be played where, and how we are going to play it...basically, just rehearsing for a long period of time!  We are all used to rehearsing--it's just that this week was dedicated to rehearsing a style of music not so well known to us.

Day 3

One of our colleagues sent a long, slightly harsh email to another.  The former stated that he had already scheduled his week around when the mentors would be with us; i.e., they were not with us on Tuesday.  So very ironically, the email said that he had decided to learn everything on his own beforehand.  Very “CoLab”-orative indeed! He didn’t feel the need for coming in on Tuesday in order to work with us.  But the rest of us went through our heutagogical processes and continued to create arrangements of tunes that were given to us by our mentors. 

The day improved drastically—and no hard-feelings were felt when the rest of the band were all together—at Kansas Smitty’s in Hackney.  There we rehearsed in the space with Giacomo, and we showed him the fruits of our efforts from the previous day. 

The best part of this day was talking with Jack, one of the owners of Kansas Smitty’s.  He talked at great length about his years of being a musician, and about the London scene and how to navigate it.  He talked first about how Kansas Smitty’s was at first just a rehearsal space for Giacomo and his friends.  Slowly, and eventually, this basement of a bar in Hackney became a music venue with live music once a week.  Today, several years later, it hosts live music six nights a week. 

Jack’s speech to us was incredibly enlightening.  One of the best things he talked about was “enrollment;” about how to “enroll” people into your life.  It’s not good business to just go out to a videographer—for instance—and say, “I need a video of my band.  Make this, please”—and then that’s the end of the relationship.  Everyone wants something from everyone else…but the best way to go about this is to enroll people into your professional lives.  You can make them a part of your team.  That videographer can be come a professional teammate.  Maybe he might need a band to film at some point.  Maybe he knows people who can do artwork for your album cover.  Showing genuine interest in another person and what they do is the way to go about it—to only show interest in how a person can benefit you is not the way to do things. 

Day 4

The final day before our performance was spent with Peter.  He came down to KCC.  Some of the tunes were still a bit rickety, but we all had a general idea of our arrangements that we had put together on Tuesday.  The most interesting part of the day (besides the performance, of course) was the fact that Peter was now helping us “learn” the tunes: showing us versions of the tunes, suggesting what we could do—and yet, we had already come up with most of the arrangements and their details!  So occasionally, we had to tell Peter that we had already settled on doing certain things.  Some things were changed anyway…and that made things a little bit confusing.  The point of this quirky dynamic wasn’t the practicality issues insomuch as it was that the essence of our “CoLab-oration” was felt most intensely on Tuesday, when we were putting it together on our own…and yet here was our mentor who comes in two days later to upset that essence in an amusing way!

I will say that basic preparations did not take place beforehand; a sound-check, and putting together a set list, were main things that even a professional like myself am embarrassed to admit did not go through very well.  Nevertheless, we were ready to go, and our performance was great fun, well-attended, and full of joy.