[Dixielandjazz] Art & Music: Music-Vision or Vision-Music?

[Steve Barbone]

David Richoux <tubaman at tubatoast.com>

> http://michalevy.com/GIANT_STEPS_56.swf
> 
> Not exactly OKOM, but a wonderful (short) animation that interprets
> Coltrane's "Giant Steps" - the strange thing is, this is sort of the
> way I sometimes see jazz songs in my head as I play them!
> 
> I sure don't "picture" staffs and notes - the music is way to
> complicated for that.
> 
> Does anybody else on list have some other sort of music-vision thing
> going (or am I the only one?)

Hi David:

Here's a description of the relationship of reed man Ted Nash to Paintings
at the Museum of Modern Art in NYC. He's got a Vision-Music thing going.

Cheers,
Steve Barbone


Brush Strokes of Sound: Art That Keeps Changing

NY TIMES - By NATE CHINEN - February 17, 2007

One morning last July, the saxophonist Ted Nash took a spin through the
fourth- and fifth-floor galleries at the Museum of Modern Art. It was a
visit studded with small realizations, in the placid hour before crowds
arrive. Ann Temkin, MoMA¹s curator of painting and sculpture, was there to
answer questions, of which Mr. Nash had a few.

He also had his own ideas. At one point he compared the relationship between
Picasso and Braque, pioneers of Cubism, to the one between the saxophonists
Charlie Parker and Sonny Stitt, paragons of bebop. At Picasso¹s ³Demoiselles
d¹Avignon,² he paused.

³This is a famous image too,² he said, to which Ms. Temkin replied: ³This is
like our ŒMona Lisa.¹ ² Mr. Nash took a digital photograph. He had just seen
Picasso¹s house in Málaga by accident, he said, during a tour of Basque
Spain with the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra.

Now, seven months and many museum trips later, Mr. Nash is preparing for the
premiere of his ³Portrait in Seven Shades,² a suite inspired by pieces from
MoMA¹s collection. It will be the focal point of ³Jazz and Art,² a Jazz at
Lincoln Center concert Thursday through Saturday at the Rose Theater.

³There are so many parallels between the two art forms,² Mr. Nash said
recently at the museum, standing in front of ³Les Demoiselles² again.

³But the end result of the art is so different,² he added. ³A painting
exists forever, exactly how it is, and with jazz music, it changes all the
time. I love the idea that in the concert, we¹re going to have both things
simultaneously: a fixed piece of art that doesn¹t change combined with
something that¹s going to be changing.²

He could almost have been talking about his role in the Jazz at Lincoln
Center Orchestra, which has changed subtly but considerably since its
director, Wynton Marsalis, invited him aboard a decade ago.

Mr. Nash, 47, came to the band with a wellspring of jazz experience. He grew
up in Los Angeles, where his father, the trombonist Dick Nash, and his
namesake uncle, a saxophonist, nurtured his prodigious talent. Starting at
16, he held down jobs with a succession of first-rate big bands, including,
notably, after he moved to New York, the Mel Lewis Orchestra.

And Mr. Nash was a prominent member of the Jazz Composers Collective, a
confab dedicated to fostering original music, and the Herbie Nichols
Project, its best-known ensemble (oddly enough, a repertory band). Jazz at
Lincoln Center presented an adjustment. ³I felt a little bit out of place at
the beginning,² Mr. Nash said.

It didn¹t take long for Mr. Nash to lay claim to what Mr. Marsalis calls
³the wildcard chair² in the band.

³He plays, on a virtuosic level, all of the reed instruments,² Mr. Marsalis
said. ³He plays them all perfectly in tune, and he has a personality on each
one that¹s different. And he can read music unbelievably well.²
Video More Video »

For a time, though, Mr. Nash maintained a kind of dual citizenship: he was
playing more historical material at Jazz at Lincoln Center and more new
music with the collective. In 1999 he made a breakthrough album, ³Rhyme &
Reason² (Arabesque), for a jazz quartet and strings.

³That was really the first hint of what a great arranger he is, in addition
to being a composer,² said the pianist and collective member Frank
Kimbrough, who played on the album. (Mr. Marsalis sat in on two tracks.)

In some ways the ³Jazz and Art² commission sheds light on a different era.
Jazz at Lincoln Center has featured more new music every year, and not just
from Mr. Marsalis. At the same time, its institutional influence has grown,
so that it makes perfect sense for MoMA, whose board of trustees includes
Mr. Marsalis, to provide such broad access to Mr. Nash.

Meanwhile, the Jazz Composers Collective dissolved in 2005, essentially a
victim of its own success. All its members now have busy solo careers. Mr.
Nash himself has issued four albums since ³Rhyme & Reason,² while
maintaining his full-time commitment to Jazz at Lincoln Center.

³Portrait in Seven Shades² stretched that into an overtime commitment, as
Mr. Nash became absorbed with its concept and scope. The presentation will
be visual as well as musical, thanks to slide projections and a lighting
design coordinated by an outside director. During a recent MoMA
walk-through, Mr. Nash pointed out aspects of specific paintings as he
discussed the suite¹s seven movements, each inspired by a different artist.

³Les Demoiselles d¹Avignon,² as it turned out, inspired an exploration of
the structural aspects of Cubism. Starting with the idea that each plane of
a cube has four sides, Mr. Nash imbued his ³Picasso² with four tonal
centers, though its root is the standard flamenco key, E.

³Once we set up the Spanish feeling, it goes into this development of
thematic material that is layered in fourths,² Mr. Nash said, describing a
harmonic interval. 

Other sections were less formally constructed. ³Matisse² proceeded from Mr.
Nash¹s personal association of Matisse¹s late-career style with the ³playful
quality² of Thelonious Monk¹s music. ³Dalí,² conceptually prodded by the
melted clocks in Salvador Dalí¹s ³Persistence of Memory,² employs a
warped-sounding, asymmetrical time signature. ³Van Gogh² was as informed by
that painter¹s tormented life as by the ³very tranquil² composition of
³Starry Nights.² (The song, which is also Mr. Nash¹s first foray into
lyrics, features a vocal by Yola Nash, his wife.)

Chagall paintings like ³I and the Village² nudged Mr. Nash toward a chamber
piece for several guests: the violinist Mark O¹Connor, the accordionist Bill
Schimmel and the trombonist Wycliffe Gordon. The instrumentation closely
echoes that of Odeon, a band that Mr. Nash has featured on two acclaimed
albums. It is perhaps the clearest instance of his outside interests
entering the Jazz at Lincoln Center nexus, though there have been fleeting
points of intersection. (Mr. Gordon, for one, is an alumnus of both bands.)

Late last month, during the first rehearsal of Mr. Nash¹s new music at Rose
Hall, the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra breezed through ³Monet,² a
springlike waltz that called pastels to mind. Then it struggled with
³Picasso,² parts of which had been poorly transcribed. But even in rough
shape, Mr. Nash¹s Cubist exercise packed a punch.

³I love being able to push them,² he said of the band a few days later, at
home on the Upper West Side. He was listening to a rehearsal tape of
³Pollock,² which calls for an Abstract Expressionist scrabble, swinging but
atonal, among the orchestra¹s horn section.

Mr. Nash was done tinkering with his charts and looking forward to the
concert. He was also beginning to think about a private commission he has
received to compose a suite based on the seven chakras of the human body.
Not that he is loosening his focus on Jazz at Lincoln Center.

³More and more,² he said, ³I understand that I have an opportunity, and even
a responsibility, to bring more of myself to this organization.²