Seeking to answer the question, why speak of jazz at all, Ken's a working musician. His case is argued in performance.. Whereas under mass media influence especially Americans frequently, quickly, habitually seek to date some music without trying to listen, Ken's concern is to hear the music and render it audible.

Attempted modernisation can cripple, as can trying for a 1920s sound. The music winds up not being taken duly seriously, probably parodied, sent up or neutralised. There are a few bad moments of "doo-wacka-doo" on Wynton Marsalis's Unforgivable Blackness, and elsewhere that very different Jack Johnson set (which Ken admires) has on nasty harmonic crash between post-bop soloing and historical reconstruction.. Ken avoids reconstructions for history's sake, and walks the high-wire between Morton and the Silver Age, rather than taking jumps between platforms.

The new band is in what might be called the classic small big band format. Like Joe Lovano in his Tadd Dameron realisations (Dameron's music would also be an option for Ken's band), he has trumpet, trombone, three reeds, piano, bass and drums. The new Thad Jones realisations use the same line-up, playing music adapted from originals composed for big-band, small-band or even piano trio. The procedure is like that of working out a reduced big band score, by ear, trying to do the same things with different forces;. Even when scoring for forces close to those on an initial recording the ears have to do the work.

The necessary presence of solo improvisation challenges the arranger of older jazz. Copy period features, which some hearers if not listeners would expect, and the soloist is lost in imitative detail, or plain loses the place. The arrangements are in a real sense transcriptions, to help at least listeners and potential soloists hear. Ken's slogan is "re- interpret rather than recreate", find new ways to explore the music without losing the spirit of the originals. Musicians have to be themselves when soloing, and it's the rhythm section's job (says Ken the drummer) to smooth out stylistic differences between soloists.

The educational function of the band extends also to the arranger-composer. Between 1994 and 2002 Ken had the services of Jock Graham on alto saxophone. For Ken he was a luxury, with a magnificent tone, developed in a career beginning in with dance- band and big-band apprenticeship in the 1930s along with the ability to play anything from sight of a score. In only semi-retirement, Jock died recently aged 89, and the much younger veteran tenorist Jack Duff tragically didn't survive to play in 2002. These irreplaceables, when they go, demand rethinking of the whole band. Nw players aren't replacements but fresh potentials. For instance Martin Foster plays all the reeds, sopranino to the contrabass clarinet playable only on stilts. He and Dick Lee (another composer with a website) play several reeds, both with a marvellous jazz sound on clarinet. Keith Edwards plays tenor, the string bassist is Roy Percy, the newcomer on trombone (when not taken employed because of his high gifts) Phil O'Malley, with Billy Hunter on trumpet. Local authorities admire the sagacious selection from among the best available. The Grand (but not quite) Old lyrical Man and Fat Sam's veteran Tom Finlay plays piano.

Ken wasn't aware that Dave Burrell, pianist on the dates when Archie Shepp sowed his wildest oats, had more lately identified his greatest challenge yet, musically and pianistically, in Jelly Roll Morton. Morton was the difficult and valuable, pianistically. Ken has no reluctance to insist along with Dave Burrell that "joys" are needed (as Burrell is quited as saying in the notes to his Jelly Roll Joys CD. He also finds Morton's the most demanding music to score, and speaks of days if not weeks listening, playing through James Dapogny's piano transcriptions, to capture the inner voicings. Where Dick Hyman's Morton arrangements avoided numbers Morton made band recordings of, Ken takes some on, as well as things Morton recorded only as piano solos, or not at all.

Ken played me a demo CD, and after four very decent Morton performances there was a Buck Clayton number, to suggest range. On first hearing the Clayton seemed so entirely in the band's fingers is was startling to hear it was a new chart, recorded in one take after scarcely a play-through. Clayton's music is incredibly grateful to play. Morton's much more difficult.

comments powered by Disqus