Quick Link Index

1. Introduction (home)
2. Miles Davis
3. The Coltrane Influence and "Meditations"
4. Highlights of Dave's Post-Miles Career and his Groups
5. Dave's Spouse and Cohort, Caris Vasentin-Liebman
6. About Saxophones and Reeds
7. World Music and Other Observations About Jazz
8. Looking Towards the Future

By Vic Schermer

David Liebman is, in a certain sense, the quintessence of modern jazz. Coming up towards the end of the bebop era, and right on through to the present, he has remained musically ahead of the pack, always pushing the envelope yet staying within the deepest roots of jazz-as-art. He has been performing on several continents for three decades, creating his own outstanding groups and playing with many others. He has over 220 recordings to his credit, many with his own groups, and involves himself not just as performer, but in every aspect of production. He is one of the foremost teachers and educators of jazz, with master classes, lectures, seminars, books, audio and video tapes, newsletters, etc. produced at a frenetic pace. Musicians come from all over the world to study with him at his home base in the Poconos in addition to his forays abroad. Dave literally eats, sleeps, and drinks jazz, and his incredible energy and enthusiasm is highly contagious, so he has directly or indirectly influenced countless thousands of musicians, listeners, and children towards a deeper and more sophisticated participation in jazz as artists, critics, and audience.

"Lieb's" total involvement in jazz really came through, when, on a picturesque fall day, the interviewer drove out to the town of Medford, New Jersey, where Dave and his wife and collaborator, Caris, were overnighting (at a Victorian style inn called the Main Stay, which could be heartily recommended to any visitors to the South Jersey region) to meet "Lieb" personally for the first time. "The Man" cordially invited the already awestruck interviewer in for a relaxing cup of coffee, and without a split second interval, began expostulating on the previous night's "gig" for young people with the Thelonius Monk revival group, Monkadelphia. Before the interviewer could turn the cassette recorder on, a complete lecture on jazz education and the philosophy and psychology of music had been delivered at a pace not unlike the barrage of 32nd and 64th notes that Dave delivers to astonished audiences with both his soprano sax and his recently reinstated tenor.

To meet Dave is to encounter a serious yet gracious person who comes across as a combination of your best high school chum and the CEO of a major corporation. He is cordial and friendly, puts you instantly at ease, and has instant recall of the sorts of facts that your best friend knows- like his favorite beach from forty years ago- which in this case was also the reviewer's (!), or where to get the best hot dog or egg cream. At the same time, he is totally alert at 9 o'clock in the morning, which is outrageous for a musician who just performed the previous night, monitoring with precision all the details of upcoming gigs, the trip to Europe to perform a work composed for him with the Dublin (Ireland) RTE Orchestra, the myriad activities of his International Association of Schools of Jazz, his wife's and daughter's whereabouts, and hundreds of other details obviously running, sifting, and sorting through his quick, all-encompassing mind. To paraphrase an old quote about the arts, "Jazz is the center of the music world; and Dave is the center of the jazz world." That is the indelible impression conveyed by this master of jazz music and inimitable conveyor of jazz knowledge.

A striking thing about Dave is that he talks just the way he plays- straight ahead and clipped, yet with subtlety and grace. He takes a topic, and just as with a tune or a phrase, goes way out beyond it to another "key," then- after a long divergence, back to home base, with everything linked together almost magically. So, here's Dave in his own inimitable "voice:"

VLS: First, the infamous 'desert island' questions-- If you knew you were going to be on a desert island, not incidentally with a good CD player [laughter], which 3-5 recordings would you bring with you?

DL: My first would be Coltrane's "Crescent." That for me is the top of the line, for a variety of reasons, one is because, especially the first two tracks- "Crescent" and "The Wise One," Coltrane plays as if it were a composed solo. They're just perfect. The sound, and the rhythm and the feel of the group, Jimmy Garrison, Elvin Jones, and McCoy Tyner.

I guess my all time favorite recording, that even surpasses jazz- I feel it's "out of category"- is "Sketches of Spain." To me it's a document of music. So those two would certainly be there. If I had to keep it to a minimum, I would spread out the artists, so probably next would be Bill Evans, "Sunday at the Vanguard," the classic "Live at the Vanguard: The Bill Evans Trio" because that's great, La Faro, Motian, yeah.

After that, it would be hard: it goes to Sonny Rollins, "Live at the Village Vanguard," 1957. Then there's Joe Henderson's records- I like "Inner Urge" a lot. Wayne Shorter, "Speak No Evil," Herbie Hancock, "Maiden Voyage," McCoy, "The Real McCoy". These are the records that mostly I listened to in my formative years. It's very interesting, because a lot of these records happen to have Elvin Jones as the drummer. I guess it's something about the feel of the way he plays that just attracts me a lot, no matter who's in the front line.

VLS: You were a member of Elvin's group?

DL: Yes, it was a dream to play with him of course, because he was, along with Coltrane and the group, in the 'sixties, where I really heard, as you know, the music that really inspired me. I'll tell ya, to get in his band, it was '71-'72, I couldn't believe it really- that I was playing with the actual guy who I was watching when I was fifteen, sixteen, with Coltrane at Birdland and the Half Note, etc. He was a major factor in forming me musically; and also spiritually he really is a very "complete" guy, He is the most open man that you can find. He's the guy who comes off the stage, talks to everybody in the audience, his wife has to remind him: "Go back and play!" He's like the "great African King," the king of the country, top of the line. For me at that point to be with him was a really great experience, and also, in those days, we still played clubs. We played a lot, man-hours spent on the horn were many- many more than now. And that was really a great proving ground for me to get it out of my system and find out who I really was. And the band was particularly great- Steve Grossman, the saxophone player, Gene Perla on bass, so we had a really nice unity and a great thing- and it was Elvin with the "young cats"- the first time Elvin was with another generation. So he was gettin' off on that, and we had a wonderful two or three years- it was great.

VLS: Did you go to Europe during that time?

DL: Oh yeah, we went to Europe, South America, everywhere...

VLS: Even now, you continue to do an extraordinary amount of work in Europe.

DL: I go fifteen to twenty times a year...

VLS: To return to the original question, which two or three musical scores or transcriptions, jazz or classical, would you bring with you to the "desert island?"

DL: For classical, I would take the Bartok string quartets, particularly the slow movements. I think that string quartet music is probably the most complete music there is. It's music in a nutshell. It's the orchestra down to its skeleton. It's the empathy of two to four musicians, which is neither too much nor too small, so one can really write in a way that accomplishes everything you can do in music. In that vein, there's the Beethoven late quartets, especially the C sharp minor, Opus 131 I believe.Then there's the Debussy and Ravel quartets- these are the works I studied to learn a little bit about strings for my composing for recordings. And jazz, I would have to take "live" Coltrane, any of the several recordings of "Impressions" which is the national anthem of modal music, in the Coltrane way. "Impressions" was a song he played many ways, many times, many different versions. There's a classic version from the record, "Impressions," which was released during his lifetime, but now, of course, there have been many "live" releases. It memorializes a certain way of playing that really was a main influence upon my particular style. VLS: You mentioned Bartok. When I listened to your recent recording, "The Return of the Tenor," on the tune "Secret Love," the thought that ran through my mind was that it was as though Bartok had taken up tenor sax [laughter]...

DL: I don't know what Doris Day [who recorded the hit version of "Secret Love"- ed.] would say to that [laughter]...

VLS: Was there something of Bartok on your mind when you recorded that?

DL: Not particularly, no. There's nothing about Bartok that affects me from an improvising standpoint, more from his orchestral writing.

VLS: How would you describe that style of deviating from the key or going into a different mode?

DL: Well, that's a big element of my playing. One of my books is completely dedicated to this- it's called "The Chromatic Approach to Jazz Melody and Harmony"- some of your readers will know it.

Very early, I got interested in the idea of dissonance, a lot of dissonance, and Coltrane was really one of the first to make it obvious in his playing that he was going in this direction in the mid- and late-'sixties. And even a standard tune- a very simple "la la la" type tune, nothing complex about it- I like to go away from the home key. I like to paint another picture. I don't know if it's Jackson Pollock or Picasso. I like to get away from what is there, and go to a place that refers to it in another way harmonically and rhythmically- and even melodically. So, in that particular recording [Return of the Tenor], because they're all standards, I took real advantage of that particular way of playing which is to take a standard- known material- and make it into that- for me, there's so much diatonic "in key" music that's so great- first of all classical music for four hundred years, up until the twentieth century, and then in jazz, from Louis Armstrong to Charlie Parker right up to Coltrane, there's so much amazingly beautiful, lyrical, wonderful diatonic music that has been created, that by my time of history, my time of coming up, it seemed to me that this was something that was really done to death. I would think that it serves both my time period and personally in the sense of trying to do something that isn't necessarily so stamped by the past, would be to try to play something outside the key and yet relate to the key in and out. It happens to be that Bartok, for example, was one of the composers of the twentieth century who was really one of the masters of that "in and out of key" type thing. he wasn't completely out of key- there were other composers- Penderecki, Ligeti, and so forth- but he was on that borderline. And I'm attracted to that thing of the tonality pulling you in, and skirting around it. And how you do it is the craft of the art.

VLS: And that is explained in your book?

DL: Well, it's explained in the sense that what I think was finally described after getting so many technical questions about "How do you play?" "What are you thinking?"- things we talked about over coffee this morning- what is the mind thinking when it's improvising? What are you thinking about in order to get out of the key? I sat down and said, wait, there must be ways that I'm thinking. I had to deduce that...

The point was that it wasn't that I came up that way playing, I did it instinctively. But then I sat down, and said, well look, if you were given A and B, how would you come up with C? I figured there were different ways of thinking that would make you play this way. The book is a philosophy, a workbook for and suggestions on how to think in order to play- quotes- "chromatically," with the eventual goal and desire to be of course "non-thinking" and hearing-- so you think in order to get used to, and you forget in order to be creative. That's the process of course, in general.

VLS: How can people purchase that book?

DL: All my books are on my Web site [See "Links" at end of interview]. My wife, Caris, is the distributor of these products that come from Germany. A whole catalogue is on the web site- also a lot of good stuff from other cats for beginning musicians.

VLS: It's almost definitional of David Liebman that you are extremely dedicated, not just to playing jazz, but to developing the whole enterprise: pushing the envelope, educating, teaching, encouraging and supporting other players. Was this a conscious decision on your part, or something which evolved spontaneously? Have you always had this multiple perspective on jazz? Were there any important influences in your development and your growing up, which set the stage for this highly dedicated, totalistic role in jazz?

DL: Well, my personality is "Type A," Virgo, organized guy. I'm truly that way, I was that way when I was younger, that part of my personality has a lot of energy, and has always been there. The educational aspect, which got heavier in the mid-80's, evolved from my situation at the time. I went from an incredible five or six year run with Elvin Jones and Miles Davis in the seventies as a young musician- I was in Downbeat Magazin, award winner, and so on- anyway, you have your little day in the sun, and then you have your "down period" for whatever reason- you're not as popular, etc. So I had to rev it back up in the eighties, and it seemed to me by the early eighties the way I was going, I was not going to be a "commercial" entity- first of all to be able to survive financially, and to be satisfied playing the greatest concerts, great tours, etc., etc. It wasn't going to be like that because of- I guess, the way I chose to play, or whatever. So- I had a choice- it's either do something else or find a way to supplement making a living. And I really wanted to find some way of doing it. So I realized I had good verbal aptitude, I could write, and I felt I could satisfy myself on the personal side.

I also had a need to find something that had a little more social effect than just being a musician, an artist. In other words, it's an ego thing, very self-centered, you're in there, you're the "King of the World" for a minute. But I was getting to that point in my life- the mid-thirties- I don't know what it was- it was also my parents- they said- "What are you doing for society- what are you doing for the world, my man? What are you giving back?" The "doctor/lawyer" part of the Jewish upbringing is not just making a good living, but it's also about serving, doing something of good. So I said, you know, I want to do something more. Also, in 1982, I had an accident, I had hepatitis, and I took the LSAT [Law School Aptitude Test], entertaining the thought of going to law school, but obviously I didn't do that. Then, in those next few years, I was really looking for a way to do something on a world level, Peace Corps type things, Save the Children, I got involved with a lot of things. Finally, I thought, well, look, the best thing I can do is turn on a talented kid who needs direction. So that was the way the thing became solidified. From there on, it was the mechanics. Write books- sitting home and getting royalty checks, what's better? Also, I had all these thoughts, all these lectures I had done over the years, that was my organizational bent, trying to get everything together, that was how the books came.

VLS: You broadened your professional scope quite self-consciously.

DL: And then finally, the culmination of the whole thing was this association that I formed, The International Association of Schools of Jazz (IASJ), there's a portion on my web site. I saw that there was so much jazz teaching going on everywhere, especially in Europe, and people were very unaware of each other doing it, so that there would be a lot of power in networking. I did it on my own initiative, put it together, and we now have schools in thirty-five countries. We're not UNESCO, but we are a United Nations of jazz schools. We meet twice a year, we have a magazine, and so on. It's a networking system. And that was something I wanted to do- have an effect on the world scene, on the world situation, and I'm still looking for other ways of doing that.

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