Benjamin Boone Philip Levine Musicians and
poets have been inspiring each other for millennia, with collaborations in San
Francisco and New York between beat poets and beboppers during the 1950s a
particularly memorable recent chapter. On the forthcoming The Poetry of Jazz,
which Origin Records will release on March 16, saxophonist-composer Benjamin
Boone and Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Philip Levine make an invaluable
contribution to the jazz-and-poetry canon and set a standard for the genre that
will be hard to surpass in the future.
Fellow
professors at California State University, Fresno, until Levine's death in
2015, Boone and Levine performed their first concert together in March 2012;
that fall they decided to lay down some tracks. The Poetry of Jazz features 14
iconic poems by Levine set to compositions by Boone based on the music he heard
in their words and their author's delivery.
For the
recording sessions, Levine was in the studio with the musicians. "He told
me, 'Why the hell would I want to be in a room by myself? I do that enough
already! Have the musicians there and then that will be fun,'" Boone
recalls. "There were always musicians playing live with him. Phil did most
tracks in a max of two takes. 'Gin' was the absolute first take."
A highly
regarded composer who often sets text to music, Boone employs a vast and vivid
sonic palette in writing and arranging settings for Levine's words. He
recruited an impressive cast of California players, relying particularly on
drummer Brian Hamada, bassist Spee Kosloff, and pianist David Aus, who also
contributed compositionally.
In addition,
on the intimate "The Unknowable (Homage to Sonny Rollins)," Boone
evokes the inner struggle and beatific quest embodied by the saxophone
colossus's famous woodshedding walks on the Williamsburg Bridge, a search that
materializes in the thick, sinewy sound of Chris Potter's horn. Tom Harrell delivers
a strikingly beautiful statement on "I Remember Clifford (Homage to
Clifford Brown)," while the mercurial altoist Greg Osby darts and weaves
around "Call It Music (Homage to Charlie Parker)," about Bird's
infamous Dial recording session of "Lover Man." On Boone's poignant
ballad "Soloing (Homage to John Coltrane)," Branford Marsalis's
sinuous tenor lines bring to life Levine's comparison between his aging
mother's isolated existence and a Coltrane solo.
"I
wanted to record Phil's poems about Rollins, Brown, Parker, and Coltrane, as
well as his poems that created melodies when he read them," Boone says.
"We talked a lot about the relationship of music and the voice, and I told
him, I don't want to react word by word. The music and the poetry had to be
equal and symbiotic."
A lifelong
jazz fan who was born (1928) and raised in Detroit when it was a proving ground
for a brilliant generation of bebop-inspired improvisers, Philip Levine often
wrote about jazz and the musicians he loved in his verse. But Boone, an
award-winning composer, player and educator, wanted to dig deeper. He drew
inspiration not only from the subjects of Levine's poems but also from the
musicality of his language and his wry, emotionally restrained recitation.
Over the
course of his career Levine collaborated with musicians in a variety of
settings, but felt the results weren't always salutary, which made the
connection with Boone all the more satisfying. He observed that "[Boone's]
ability to both hear and 'get' my writing was astonishing... He can tell just
where the music needs to carry the moment or the language has to climb over the
instruments. His compositions seem to grow directly out of the thrust of the
language."
Benjamin
Boone Born in 1963 in Statesville, NC, Benjamin Boone grew up in an
intellectually stimulating family and could have devoted himself to any number
of pursuits. He concentrated on the saxophone and started improvising from an
early age, but was also interested in composition. "I learned a great deal
about science, literature, visual art, writing, history, politics, and music
from my four older brothers," he says. "So I've always gravitated
towards interdisciplinary projects like this one, where I can combine playing,
composition, literature, and oration to create an artistic statement that
addresses history and topics relevant today."
Boone traces
his fascination with the music of spoken language to a hearing issue "that
makes it hard for me to understand words," he says. "When I hear
people speak I hear it as music, a melodic line. This fascination with spoken
language allowed me to use Phil's voice as an instrument, which makes this
project unique."
Boone is
heralded as a performer and composer in both jazz and new music circles. His
compositions have been heard in 29 countries and on more than 25 albums and
have been the subject of multiple national broadcasts on NPR. He conducted
musical research in the former Soviet Republic of Moldova as a Fulbright Senior
Specialist Fellow and is currently spending a year in Ghana performing and
composing with African musicians as a Fulbright Scholar.
With The
Poetry of Jazz Boone has opened up a new literary and musical frontier, and
there's more in store. The album features the first half of the 29 poems he
recorded with Levine, who addressed his readers in his classic verse, writing
"if you're old enough to read this you know what work is."
No comments:
Post a Comment