May 2000
Eye & Ear
Archive
Quartet Live
Chiaroscuro
2000
Reviewed By
C. Michael Bailey
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Bassist/Composer Sean Smith
By Janet Sommer
On bassist/composer Sean Smith's first CD as a leader, he has done something very few younger jazz musicians would attempt. Out of nine tracks, the first eight are original compositions. The ninth, "Drop Me Off In Harlem", is written by Duke Ellington, one of Smith's major influences. The CD, released in late 1999 on the Chiaroscuro label, is simply called "Sean Smith Quartet Live," and features Bill Charlap on piano, Ron Vincent on drums, and Allen Mezquida on alto saxophone. Mezquida also designed the front and back of the CD booklet, and the inlay card. In the regular working band, Russell Meissner plays drums, and Charlap is occasionally replaced by the guitarist Keith Ganz, depending on whether or not the room they're playing is large enough for a piano.
Sean's lyrical compositions have been featured on CD and in performance by artists Mark Murphy, Bill Mays, Phil Woods, Jon Gordon and others. His song "'39 Worlds Fair", apparently a favorite among pianists, has been recorded by both Bill Mays and Bill Charlap, on "Mays in Manhattan" and "Distant Star," respectively. And recently, the 34 year old composer had the honor of having his "Song for the Geese" recorded by Mark Murphy as the title track for his Grammy nominated CD on RCA/BMG.
In New York City, things happen randomly, or with seemingly random intent. When I walked into my office elevator last month and found Sean Smith with his bass and several other musicians, after not seeing him for about four years, I knew this was one of those things. Since I had recently heard one of my favorite pianists, Bill Charlap, speaking very highly about Sean's writing skills, I decided that maybe the time was right for us to talk about it a little. Although Sean is an excellent bassist, and has performed on over 30 CDs as a sideman, I really wanted to discuss his songwriting, and find out where it started, and how the creative process works for him. On a Sunday morning in late April, after late nights for both of us, we had a telephone conversation which started rather logically with the Quartet CD.
JS: The four of you sound great on this CD, really. You know, you sound like a group. But you have great players working with you too.
SS: That's what we were trying to do...We have a lot of history behind us. I think you're hearing an understanding of four musicians in respect to the music they're playing, with respect to the music that they're playing. What you're hearing is the understanding of four musicians in a band. Which of course I'm proud of, because I wanted to record something that did two things. It featured a group, and it also featured the music. Both were tied in. It featured the music, it featured the group. And the individuals in the group.
JS: As you compose these days, do you kind of keep that group in mind? Is that your...
SS: Oftentimes, yes.
JS: Do you think of parts for certain people for instance, or do you just think of the song as a totality, to be played by any kind of group?
SS: That's a good question, because... it depends. Sometimes I hear it specifically for us to play, sometimes I just hear a song for it's own sake and I write it. Sometimes I write it for the sake of the quartet. Because of the way I write, being a jazz songwriter, a lot of this music is interchangeable to play with other people. So, that option is always there, but, oftentimes I specifically think of the four of us playing some of the music I've written, or if I'm working on something currently, I'll think of it that way. But not exclusively, because you know, different things pop into your head and, you just write it for the sake of writing it sometimes. Sometimes down the road you find that it really will work great, even though you weren't thinking of it as one for the quartet, it still ends up working really well. And that's another thing of having these fine musicians around me, is that oftentimes I get very positive feedback from them, or they'll say, "I really think this is one you should use," where I was just going to try it, I didn't love it, and I was going to move on, and they'll say, "You really ought to play this one again, don't you think?" So, they help me be objective, which is hard to do... I trust their opinions, and they're very supportive of me, with their opinions about the music. I've learned things through that.
JS: Do you ever just say, "Okay, here's a tune I want to do" and the response is "I don't think this is going to work." Does that ever happen, Sean?
SS: Well, its interesting you say that... Sometimes I'll get less of a reaction for a tune that I was really looking forward to playing. I get a little less of a reaction, like, "Yeah, its good..." but I don't get the impression that they think we're really going to play it again, or keep it in the book, so to speak, as part of the repertoire. And then we play it another time, or two, and it starts to grow on everyone, and they say "Yeah! What a great tune..." Or sometimes that happens the first time we play it, sometimes it's an immediate reaction that people, these being musicians, specifically, at this point, hear it right away....as opposed to them playing it once and... you know, we all bring things to music and sometimes you're trying to play it and you have a harder time hearing it, because you're concentrating on playing it correctly. Oftentimes we'll just do it on the job, so you're under a little bit of pressure.
JS: So you're just reading it, these guys have not actually played it before the gig?
SS: Exactly. We might have talked about it, they might have played through it on their own, sometimes not, but sometimes yes. So, they might have a good reaction to it, they might have a lukewarm reaction to it... But if I feel strongly enough about the tune, and about us playing it, I might play it a couple more times and the second or third time I'll get a reaction like, "Yeah, you were right." Or "Yeah, I do hear it." Sometimes it takes a minute. And it's interesting because that's a musician's perspective, and you think of listeners, and this being original music, you think that you'd like to write music that people can hear the very first time you write it. You want the melody to be incredibly strong, and you want the form to be strong and definite, and of course the harmony is all a part of that. You want people to hear it right away... Sometimes, though, you realize if people hear you...if you're fortunate enough for them to hear you twice, or even three times, then they might say "You know that tune.... ?" They might start recognizing that same tune even though they were a little gray on it the first time they heard it. So, it's similar in that way. But ideally, I think most people that write music, at least this kind,
stylistically similar to me, would like people to react the first time. They'd like it to be strong enough for just a listener to say, "I like that tune," having never heard it before. That's a hard thing to do...
JS: You don't bow that much really, I noticed it on Secret Ballad, and I don't think you bowed before that...
SS: Exactly. I could probably feature myself, and on some compositions in the book, I do play arco. On this particular project, I managed to get one thing on there, which was Secret Ballad, which goes into Song Without a Lyric, as an arco feature. On any given night, I probably do two things with the bow, of one kind or another, sometimes three.
JS: That's almost rare though, for an acoustic bassist who is also a composer. I think a lot of times they tend to write features for themselves...
SS: When I write music, I just think of the music, and sometimes I think of the group playing it. When I wrote that tune, it was not a feature. I only happened to try it later on and discovered that it worked out well for me to play... I never really write stuff for myself, I just write music for the sake of music, and what falls in behind that, is what falls in behind that. That's very much how I write at this point. Occasionally, I'll break that rule and think of featuring the piano, or the alto saxophone, or less occasionally, the bass, but I usually don't think of it in those terms, I just think of the composition and then the tune usually calls to the orchestration, or the feature. I usually don't think of that stuff beforehand.
JS: What's the process of composition for you?
SS: I usually write at the piano. I don't know if you'll understand what I'm going to say, but I kind of write with my pinkies. Which is probably how some bass players write. Your pinkie on your left hand playing the bass note, and the pinkie on your right hand playing the melody. I don't mean that just literally, but I generally hear a bass note and a chord, a simple chord, and a melody. Really the bass note and the melody, I hear first. So, I'm writing from opposite ends of the spectrum. But then again, I'm a bass player, so I hear bass notes, I play a lot of bass notes, and I hear and play a lot of melodies too. As opposed to hearing a chord and a structure, and a form, and writing a melody over that, the melody usually gets written first, and that to me is most important. And along with that goes, hopefully, strong bass movement and then harmony, and then sometimes I fine tune the harmony, or change a note in the melody after singing it, and realizing that a note needs to be changed because my ear hears it a certain way. Occasionally I'll just write something on the bass, which is totally writing with your pinkies, because you're playing a bass note, and you're singing a melody.
JS: Do you literally sing the melody?
SS: Oftentimes, yeah. A lot of the time. I find that's how I fine tune something... I sing it in the car, in my head...I can't really help it, it just sort of happens. So, 'til it really gets written, that's what happens a lot of the time. In order for it to get figured out, and notated correctly... I'm sure other people do that too.
JS: Yeah, I think that the creative process is so individual and yet so universal, whether you're writing, singing, playing, doing poetry...
SS: Developing, painting...And it's the sort of thing, its a minor obsession, you can't put it down. It goes through your head, it goes through your head... you might be doing something else at the time, it's still going through your head. But there's something about that process which I love... Duke Ellington once said, at the end of his book "Music Is My Mistress," there was a mock interview, he was asking himself questions, and answering the questions. A lot of these questions were things that he had heard over the years and at this point in his life, he was a little chrotchety to some of the questions, and one of the questions, I love this very much, is "Duke, what's your favorite tune that you've written?" And most people, when they asked him that, wanted to hear him say one of the most popular tunes he wrote... and his answer to that was, "My favorite tune is the one I'm working on now, it's the new baby, or the one I just wrote. Or the one I'm writing tomorrow." In other words, it's the one that's in the process of composition... that's obsessing me. Even though he doesn't say that, he wrote over two thousand tunes, he was certainly obsessed many times. So, I was blown away with that, because... I'm not comparing myself by any means with Duke Ellington, but that's how I feel. I write something, once it gets settled, I move on to the next, when I'm supposed to, and I start thinking about that tune. You know, I don't really live in the past too much. That's why the other guys in the band are nice enough to support past compositions, and say, "When are we going to play this one again?" and I'll say, "Oh, yeah, that's right..." Or they'll say, "Have you thought about putting this tune in the book?" And it's seven years old... and I'll say, "Oh yeah. I appreciate it, I'll think about it..." Otherwise I might have just left it, because I just keep writing.
JS: So, how do you get your tunes out to other people, for instance the Mark Murphy "Song for the Geese?"
SS: I was very fortunate, years ago I was playing in a group which actually contained Allen and Bill, and we were playing at what was then the Village Gate, what is now a CVS drugstore...
JS: Yeah. As everything will become eventually... either a CVS, a Starbucks or a Duane Reade.
SS: Or some kind of a mall, if we're really lucky.
JS: A mall that contains all three of them...
SS: Yeah. It must have been about ten years ago, and we were playing at the Gate, and a mutual friend of all of ours, a fine pianist and composer, Bill Mays brought in Mark Murphy to hear us. That night, we played Song for the Geese, which was an instrumental piece... I didn't see Mark, or meet him that night, but I heard through Bill Mays that he liked that tune, and so it took a while to get a copy of the tune to him, with just the melody, and it took even longer to get Mark to write a lyric sketch, which he finally did, and then it took even longer to get that lyric sketch fine tuned. It took about a year, and then it took even longer to get the thing recorded, which was all his doing. Then it took a little while for that to come out, and it did.
JS: Yes, and was nominated for a Grammy.
SS: It was nominated for a Grammy, and ended up being the title track of Mark's RCA/BMG release.
JS: How did that make you feel?
SS: Well, it made me feel very good. It was funny... it's kind of hard to describe to people, especially relatives, y'know, the music business...understandably, they don't understand, but it sort of validated things when people saw on television, or in a newspaper, respectable periodicals like the New York Times and things like that, that your song, which is, at the same time the title track of the album, is in print as a nomination for a Grammy. It made me feel good, but at the same time, with perspective, it was Mark's project. So, I realized I was not nominated for a Grammy, it was Mark's project that was, and I kept it very much in perspective. I was hoping for Mark's sake that he'd win... I think it was his seventh nomination, and he told me that you get used to losing, over time. Nonetheless, he lost that one... but its beautiful, that whole project is very beautiful if you've ever heard it. There's something very special about it. It's a collection of a lot of different stuff, and Mark just sounds great. He sounds so great, and they really put in a tremendous amount of time and effort on it, probably the most time they've ever spent on any Murphy recording. I know they probably spent time on the Brazilian album, and maybe Bop for Kerouac, too, but the budget and the time allowed on this was probably even larger, and Mark was very happy about it, at least that's what he told me.
JS: Great. Good for him... You look at some of these musicians that have had to wait so long to get any kind of recognition, and I always think immediately of Mark Murphy and Sheila Jordan because although they've both had moments of actually getting somewhere, I just think of them both as incredible journeymen, in a way.
SS: Yeah, me too, they've been in the trenches. And they have times when the spotlights on them, and other times when they're just back in the trenches.
JS: Yeah, but they keep doin' their thing...
SS: They do exactly what they would normally do, if the spotlight were on them.
JS: Which is exactly what I find so admirable.
SS: Yeah, it's the mark of an artist. And its amazing, and I think it's admirable. I think of people like that, and what they're doing, and sometimes when things seem to get a little dry, and you keep working on what you're doing, you think of people that you really admire, and love, and it helps inspire you, and it helps keep you a little more stable. It helps you just keep going down the path that you're trying to go, and work on. So, I agree with you. Actually, he wrote some more lyrics to my music, and currently is working on a couple of others. We just spoke about a week ago about it, which is nice. And Barbara Sfraga recorded something...She's a very fine vocalist, she recorded something called I'll Call You, which is... there's actually a tune on the quartet record, called Song Without a Lyric. Mark heard that tune, wrote a lyric to it, and called it I'll Call You. He envisioned it totally differently than I wrote it, and that's something else that I really like is when you trust some of those folks around you, whether it's members of the quartet, or someone as brilliant as Mark Murphy, to hear something different, make a suggestion, and then it turns into this whole other thing which is very beautiful and you would never have envisioned it that way. So, its a very different rendition, its really a different song. I never would have thought of it that way. He was a guest on Barbara's record, and that was the tune he sang with her.
JS: So, if you had to make a distinction, would you consider yourself more a composer, or more a bassist?
SS: I consider myself more a musician. I truly believe that... even though while I'm writing, I'm not thinking, per se as a bass player. I have a bass in my hand, the instrument is not responding like a bass. It's a piano. I don't play the piano well, I'm pretty bad. When I play the bass, I'm not playing more than a two note chord, I'm usually not playing like, a chord and a melody... I don't think of myself so much as a composer, although it does spill over to the bass a bit, as an improviser. But, the distinction is, its all music. And I feel very strongly about that, I don't have one thing out of those two that is stronger. They're both equal, they're both a very important part of me, and they both rear their heads at different times, there is a time and place for both of them. They cross paths a lot, probably more than I consciously know. But, I'm a musician. And yes, a jazz musician, but a musician.
JS: How old were you when you started playing bass? Has bass been your only instrument?
SS: When I was in fourth grade I started playing the alto saxophone. I played that instrument very badly, for about nine years. I kid you not. There was literally no relationship to music with that instrument. I guess I was a musician at the time, I guess, but I just couldn't play the thing. Really, really bad...
JS: So, what made you stick with it for nine years?
SS: You know, my parents didn't want me to quit. I wanted to quit a couple of times, my parents didn't want me to quit. There is something to be said for that, because they didn't shame me into not quitting, it was very supportive in the way that they did it, but they didn't want me to give it up. I don't believe they saw any talent in it... I can't imagine the fact that they did, because there wasn't any as far as I'm concerned. They always let me practice, they encouraged me to practice, and of course it didn't help, but they didn't want me to quit playing the instrument. I started playing electric bass in junior high school, and I was better at that instrument, I really started enjoying that instrument. I didn't play the electric bass very well, I was not a very good electric bass player. But around that time I started learning about music, just a little simple theory... which I couldn't grasp while I was playing the alto saxophone. For some reason I started being able to grasp theory a little bit, so when I graduated to the acoustic bass, which was all a choice of my own, I became interested in it and decided I was going to try to play it well. I don't remember the exact reason, it was just sort of there and I was very, very interested in it.
JS: How old were you then?
SS: Probably when I was about in the tenth grade, even though I had played it in the orchestra beforehand, I was not interested in it. Until I discovered in tenth or eleventh grade that this was important, I wanted to learn how to play this instrument. And from that point on, I took a bass home from school, and then was able to buy one, a couple of months later, and was able to grow and improve on an instrument, where I had never really been able to do that. And hopefully I haven't stopped. That was probably around 1982 when I really started to think of that, and learn how to do it. I think I was in eleventh grade.
JS: Did you on to school?
SS: Right out of high school I went to the University of Bridgeport for about a year and a half, and then I actually completed my education, if you choose to look at it that way, at Manhattan School of Music. I was out of there about ten years ago. So, I actually did get a degree.
JS: Is that where you started composing?
SS: Y'know, it is. I never felt any pressure about writing music up to that point, and I had written a few little ditties, mostly because I was supposed to write them for different classes. Classical pieces. I was very fortunate to know people like Bill Finnegan, when I was up at University of Bridgeport when I was younger, who encouraged me to write. And I should say, I never felt any pressure like I had to write, it wasn't important to me at all. I could have cared less. At that point I started enjoying other people's original music, but I didn't feel it was necessary for me to do, at all.
JS: Right. And a lot of musicians never do.
SS: Yeah. Which is fine, it really is fine. But something happened in a class where I had an assignment to write something, and it was a composition/arranging class, and it was for a big band too, so that made it even harder, but the hardest part, to me, was having to write a composition. I asked if I could just take a standard, of sorts, and arrange that and not have to spend time trying to write a tune, because I don't do that. And he said, "How about this? Why don't you try to write something, and if you really can't, then we'll talk about what you just asked me later on, but try to write something, see what you come up with..." I was very doubtful, but I said, "Well, okay." And I sat down and I wrote a tune.
And it wasn't a bad tune, I didn't think it was a bad tune then, and I remember the feeling of writing it, that obsession, and that feeling during the creative process, even writing that first tune which sort of started all this. And a couple months later I graduated, got out of school, and I sat down at the piano and started to write something for myself, which I had never done. It was always an assignment, things like that. I started writing something, and it took quite a while, but that started it, and that was just about ten years ago, and in that time I've done quite a bit of writing, mostly because I've wanted to, and because I've been called to do it, you could say. I enjoy that creative process, even if the tune that I've ended up with isn't some kind of great tune, I've probably learned something during that time, I've completed something in that time, and I also was able to enjoy that creative process that we were talking about earlier.
JS: Do you ever write lyrics?
SS: I don't, I never do. Its funny, I feel absolutely no pressure about writing lyrics, but maybe at some point down the road, I'll write lyrics. Thats what a lot of people ask me. I'd like to do it at some point, but still, at the same time I feel no pressure about doing it. Maybe if its meant to happen, when its right, it'll happen. Thats sort of the way everything is going on, musically, in my life.
Even for a bass player, timing has played an extraordinary role in Sean Smith's life. And given the memorable and expressive compositions he continues to weave, and the number of contemporary musicians who are drawn to performing them, I have a feeling his music will continue to reverberate for quite some time.
The Sean Smith Quartet will be appearing May 19th, from 8:00 to 12:00, at the Deerhead Inn, Delaware Water Gap, PA., on Wednesday June 14 in the old office at the Knitting Factory, from 7:00 to 8:00, on Sunday May 21st at Saint Peter's Jazz Vespers, 5:00 p.m., and at the 92nd Street Y's Jazz in July series, July 18th at 8:00 p.m.
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