Saxophonist and composer Paul Jones draws from influences as
diverse as contemporary hip hop, 20th-century minimalism and leading-edge jazz
on his second album as a leader, Clean. Both heady and heartfelt, Jones'
compositions may be sparked by a literary turn of phrase or the unexpected
passing of a close friend, always finding unique ways to overlay the emotional
onto the intellectual.
Clean (due out August 4 from Outside In Music) unfolds with
the evocative narrative flow of hip hop groundbreakers like Kendrick Lamar
while building on the unique architecture of minimalist pioneers such as Philip
Glass and Steve Reich. This singular music is realized with the help of Jones'
core sextet, a group of distinctive artists who are all leaders and composers
in their own right: alto saxophonist Alex LoRe, guitarist Matt Davis, pianist
Glenn Zaleski, bassist Johannes Felscher and drummer Jimmy Macbride. They're
joined at various times by a woodwind octet that brings together The SNAP Saxophone
Quartet and a chamber group (clarinetist Mark Dover of the Imani Winds, oboist
Ellen Hindson, bassoonist Nanci Belmont and cellist Susan Mandel) as well as
genre-blurring duo The Righteous Girls (flutist Gina Izzo and pianist Erika
Dohi.
The music on Clean was birthed at the picturesque Banff
Creative Arts Centre in Alberta, Canada, where Jones sequestered himself in
January 2016 to begin devising the follow-up to his well-received 2015 debut,
Short History. With the sounds of austere minimalist compositions ringing in
his ears and his love of hip hop reignited by the release of Lamar's landmark
To Pimp a Butterfly, Jones set to work finding ways to unite these seemingly
disparate passions.
"I used to listen to a lot of hip hop in high school,
and Kendrick's album reminded me of my love for the music," he recalls.
"One of the things that a lot of hip hop albums do that jazz albums don't
do as much is try to tell a story from start to finish. I wanted to try to do
that by using different song lengths and textures, and I thought that using
woodwinds in the style of Steve Reich and Philip Glass would provide
interesting sonic breaks between the jazz songs."
In challenging himself to find new sources of inspiration
for his music for Short History, Jones invented a method of assigning different
musical notes to each letter of the alphabet, then using different words or
phrases to generate melodic material. On Clean he developed that technique
further, adding a random number generator that gave a wider range of notes as
well as intervals. As mathematical and complex as that may sound (and no doubt
is), Jones never loses sight of the emotional core of his music, also dipping
into the well of personal experience to deepen these uniquely-devised melodies.
Nowhere is that more striking than on the brief
"Romulo's Raga," a dizzying chamber interlude sparked by the murder
of Romulo Herrera, the longtime chef at the well-known Cornelia Street Café,
where Jones worked by day. "Hearing the news of this incident was almost
incomprehensible to me," Jones writes in his liner notes. Composed in the
wake of the tragic news, "Romulo's Raga" became the leaping-off point
for several other chamber pieces interspersed throughout the album, including
opener "Ive Sn Th Gra Md," "It Was Brgh Cold," and "Im
Prety Uch Fkd."
Those aren't typos - each of those titles are borrowed from
the opening lines of classic novels, with each letter allowed to occur only
once. The first is a slight misquote from Allen Ginsberg's era-defining poem
"Howl" ("I've seen the [great] minds of my generation destroyed
by madness"), the second from George Orwell's ever-timely Nineteen
Eighty-Four ("It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were
striking thirteen"), and the last from Andy Weir's The Martian (you can
guess it). "I Am An American" is the first line of Saul Bellow's The
Adventures of Augie March, though with all those A's intact.
"The Generator," though a shimmering ballad in
execution, references Jones' "nerdy compositional method" explicitly,
as does, albeit in a more self-deferential fashion, "Alphabet Soup."
The technique serves two purposes: it takes care of the ever-present challenge
of coming up with new song titles while mandating a unique genesis for each
piece. "A lot of people just sit down at the piano and expect magic to
happen," he explains, "and we all end up coming up with the same
ideas over and over again. I wanted to find a way to get at different harmonic
and melodic ideas."
The process doesn't stop there, however. Though initially
generated by the letters in the two names of its title, "Buckley vs.
Vidal" bristles with the adversarial tension of the infamous televised
debates between the celebrity intellectuals. "Hola, Amigo" takes its
title from a sign spotted in Canada - with a phrase that no native Spanish
speaker would ever utter, suggesting, especially as it follows the ambiguous
"I Am An American," the fraught territory of cultural difference and
miscommunication - especially timely given recent political developments.
The album's title and its namesake track, while hinting at
the fastidious intricacies of Jones and his stellar ensemble, simply echoes his
own nickname from Maine's Camp Encore/Coda, where he is a faculty member. It's
humorously bookended by the jerky rhythms of "Dirty Curty," the less
appealing sobriquet of an old friend who went without showering for three
months - during which time he met the love of his life. "Centre in the
Woods" tips its hat to the scenery of the Banff Centre, while the frenetic
"The Minutiae of Existence" tallies the banal necessities of daily
life.
His unique blend of jazz, classical and pop music influences
unite Jones with a cohort of young innovators on the modern NYC scene. They
include artists with whom Jones has worked, including Matt Davis' Aerial
Photograph, Nicholas Biello's Vagabond Soul with Clarence Penn, R&B
singer-songwriter Eli "Paperboy" Reed, Leon Boykins and Jonathan
Parker. While a student at the Manhattan School of Music, Jones also had the
opportunity to perform alongside such greats as Randy Brecker, Dave Liebman and
Joe Lovano. He's also taught privately at CenterStage, Harrison School of
Music, Needham Music, PS-290, and the Rye Arts Center, and given master classes
at the Contemporary Music Institute in Zhuhai, China and the Gimcheon School of
the Arts in Korea.
www.paulthejones.com
www.paulthejones.com
No comments:
Post a Comment