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COURSE CORRECTION
This week, Sassy and I have enjoyed the hospitality of some friends who've generously provided lodging for us in their home while I play a few gigs in the area.
Their son (let's call him Freddie) is a very talented young aspiring jazz trumpeter.
Although I regularly give master classes on the road, and have done my share of classroom teaching, spending time with Freddie and his family over the past week has been a powerful reminder to me of what it means to be a serious musician and what an industry jazz education has become.
At the age of 16, Freddie has already taken advantage of more specialized training and travel opportunities than I had in my college years, and he's already twice the player I was in high school.
Freddie's days are so full that I'm actually hesitant to call him an "aspiring" musician. Not yet a high school senior, he's already playing professional gigs, studying advanced concepts and techniques, taking and teaching private lessons, listening broadly and living a decidedly music-centered life.
Freddie studies privately with two teachers: one for trumpet, another for jazz.
He's a veteran of jazz camp, Jazzschool, the Grammy band, SFJAZZ All-Stars, J@LC Essentially Ellington and Monterey NextGen.
He participates in a summer music mentoring program and leads sectional brass rehearsals for his school jazz ensemble. He's won awards in all the regional and national honors programs you've heard of and several that you haven't. And he's already performed on the most prestigious jazz stages worldwide: New York, Monterey, Montreux, North Sea, Umbria.
I never practiced like this kid, not even at Interlochen. He hits it hard for hours every day. Each morning I awaken to the sound of Freddie's horn, methodically working its way through James Stamp warm-ups, Clarke etudes, Clifford Brown turnarounds, articulation and lip flexibility exercises and chord scale after chord scale. Every afternoon he has a rehearsal or two with this or that band. Every evening he practices again.
When I was Freddie's age, my bedroom was a shrine to Lindsay Wagner and Spencer's Gifts. I had only just begun to take private lessons and didn't take them very seriously. I loved to play but hated to practice.
Freddie's room is a hardcore crucible of brass: his chair, music stand and horn are at the center, surrounded by stacks of lead sheets and method books. His walls are festooned with festival posters and images of great jazzmen. On his desk a laptop computer is open to an overstuffed iTunes library. Two speakers face the practice chair.
I spent a couple of hours trading riffs with Freddie, and am astonished by his proficiency on the horn and his familiarity with the nuances of the jazz language. He's already familiar with every classic recording I mention, and he seems to own nearly all the available Aebersold and music-minus-one collections of standards. He has a remarkably sophisticated ear for modern harmony and can toss off bebop clichés over complex changes at bright tempos. He listens to all the same jazz heroes I do, plus the latest recordings by Alex Sipiagin, Ambrose Akinmusire and Billy Buss. He already knows the tunes, licks and lore that I learned in my five years at Berklee.
The other night I invited Freddie to sit-in with me and the band on "Invitation." The audience was knocked out. He played a mature solo, including some very creative motivic development. After the set, Freddie was appropriately gracious and grateful, pausing to individually thank each member of the rhythm section. He even possesses enough charm to balance all that swagger.
After 30 years in music, I'm now at an age when I think it's important to pay it forward. It's been my belief that I have a responsibility to share what I've learned over the course of my life and career, and to mentor and encourage the next generation of musicians.
But if they're at all like Freddie, I don't have the time.
I need to practice.
— D.M.
TOMORROW NIGHT
...AND THE LIVIN' IS EASY
NEW WORK
AT HOME IN BAR OR BALLROOM
100 Years Ago This Week
San Francisco Bulletin
What's Not In The News
By Ernest J Hopkins
April 5, 1913 — In Praise of “Jazz,” a Futurist Word Which Has Just Joined the Language.
This column is entitled “What’s not in the news,” but occasionally a few things that are in the news leak in. We have been trying for some time to keep one of these things out, but hereby acknowledge ourselves powerless and surrender.
This thing is a word. It has recently become current in the Bulletin office, through some means which we cannot discover but would stop up if we could. There should be every precaution taken to avoid the possibility of any more such words leaking in to disturb our vocabularies.
This word is “Jaz.” It is also spelt “Jazz,” and as they both sound the same and mean the same, there seems to be no way of settling the controversy.
The office staff is divided into two sharp factions, one of which upholds the single z and the other the double z. To keep them from coming to blows, much Christianity is required.
“Jazz” (we change the spelling each time so as not to offend either faction) can be defined, but it cannot be synonymized. If there were another word that exactly expressed the meaning of “jaz,” “jazz” would never have been born. A new word, like a new muscle, only comes into being when it has long been needed.
This remarkable and satisfactory-sounding word, however, means something like life, vigor, energy, effervescence of spirit, joy, pep, magnetism, verve, virility, ebulliency, courage, happiness—oh, what’s the use?—JAZZ.
Nothing else can express it.
When you smile at the office-boy (time: 7:30 a.m.) as though you thought him nice, that is “jaz.” When you hit the waiter for serving you cold waffles, that is “jaz.” When you work until midnight, then get up and work until midnight again without cursing your boss, that is “jaz.” When you look upon a girl and she loves you, that is “jazz.”
Some of the utter usefulness and power of this wonderful word now begins to appear.
You can go on flinging the new word all over the world, like a boy with a new jack-knife. It is “jazz” when you run for your train; “jazz” when you sock the umpire; “jazz” when you demand a raise; “jaz” when you hike thirty-five miles of a Sunday; “jazz” when you simply sit around and beam so that all who look beam on you. Anything that takes manliness or effort or energy or activity or strength of soul is “jaz.”
We would not have you apprehend that this new word is slang. It is merely futurist language, which as everybody knows is more than mere cartooning.
“Jazz” is a nice word, a classic word, easy on the tongue and pleasant to the ears, profoundly expressive of the idea it conveys—as when you say a home-run hitter is “full of the old jaz.” (Credit Scoop [Gleeson].) There is, and always has been, an art of genial strength; to this art we now victoriously give the splendid title of “jazz.”
The sheer musical quality of the word, that delightful sound like the crackling of a brisk electric spark, commends it. It belongs to the class of onomatopoeia. It was important that this vacancy in our language should have been filled with a word of proper sound, because “jaz” is a quality often celebrated in epic poetry, in prize-fight stories, in the tale of action of the meditative sonnet; it is a universal word, and must appear well to all society.
That is why “pep,” which tried to mean the same but never could, failed; it was roughneck from the first, and could not wear evening clothes. “Jazz” is at home in bar or ballroom; it is a true American.
To conclude, just a few examples of its use.
“Miss Eugenia Jefferson-Lord, was clad in a pink pongee creation suitable for a rainy day, and of great jaz.” (Society Notes.)
“Our Harry, sighting true for once, swung the willow against the pill with all his jazz.” (Baseball account.)
“Though fatally shot, the unfortunate captain still had sufficient jaz to murmur ‘He done it’ in the ears of the police.” (Murder story.)
“All the worl’ am done gone crazy.
Yassah, sure it has;
How mah brain am reeling dazy,
Sighin’ for the ol’, ol’ jazz!” (Plantation melody.)
“And Saturn strode athwart the cedarn grove,
Filled with the jaz that makes Creation move!” (Paradise Lost.)
FROM THE ARCHIVES
On This Day
March 15, 1998
Four Pillars of Success in the Jazz Business
Workshop @ The Jazzschool
Berkeley, California
March 15, 1999
Dmitri Matheny Group
In-School Concert @ Gunn High School
Palo Alto, California
FROM THE ARCHIVES
March 14, 1984
Senior Recital
Interlochen Arts Academy
Interlochen, Michigan
March 14, 1999
Dmitri Matheny, Darrell Grant, Bill Douglass
Florio Street Concerts
Oakland, California
March 14, 2005
Music of Ornette Coleman
Sunday Woodshed
San Francisco, California
FROM THE ARCHIVES
On This Day
March 13, 1997
Dmitri Matheny Group
Voices & Images of California Art Launch
San Francisco Museum of Modern Art
San Francisco, California
Design by Brad Rickman
March 13, 1999
Dmitri Matheny Group
In-Store Appearance
Borders Books & Music
Emeryville, California
March 13, 2008
KCSM Jazz 91.1 FM
San Mateo, California
FROM THE ARCHIVES
On This Day
March 12, 2006
Calaveras County Arts Council Presents
Dmitri Matheny Nocturne Orchestra
Bret Harte Theatre
Angels Camp, California
March 12, 2009
Dmitri Matheny Group
Kuumbwa Jazz Center
Santa Cruz, California
FROM THE ARCHIVES
March 11, 1999
North Beach Jazz Festival
Scott Chernis Exhibit Opening
San Francisco, California
MAL DU PAYS
Remembering our beloved Doggie (later King) Diner at 10th & Mission in San Francisco, where the jazz warriors and even the late, great Tony Williams enjoyed 24-hour grease burgers. Gone but not forgotten. ~DM
FROM THE ARCHIVES
On This Day
March 9, 1999
Workshop @ Emeritus Institute with Alisa Clancy
San Mateo, California
March 9, 2000
UHS Jazz Band with Dmitri Matheny
Concert @ University High School
San Francisco, California
FROM THE ARCHIVES
March 8, 1987
True Colors Big Band @ Ryles
Cambridge, Massachusetts
March 8, 1997
In-Store Appearance
Dmitri Matheny Group @ Borders
San Rafael, California
March 8, 1998
Four Pillars of Success
Workshop @ The Jazzschool
Berkeley, California
March 8, 1998
Suicide in Bb
Bay Area Jazz All-Stars @ Slim's
San Francisco, California
March 8, 2003
Grant & Matheny
Napa Valley Opera House
Napa, California
FROM THE ARCHIVES
On This Day
March 7, 1995
Visions of Kerouac Premiere
Dmitri Matheny & The SOMA Ensemble
Yoshi's Nightspot
Oakland, California
March 7, 1999
In-Store Appearance
Dmitri Matheny Group
Borders Books & Music
Emeryville, California
March 7, 2007
Arizona Jazz Week
UA Studio Jazz Ensemble with Dmitri Matheny
Crowder Hall - University of Arizona
FROM THE ARCHIVES
On This Day
March 6, 1992
Pacific Blue
SOMA Quartet
Pacifica Community Center
Pacifica, California
March 6, 1995
Visions of Kerouac
Dmitri Matheny & The SOMA Ensemble
Eleven Ristorante + Bar
San Francisco, California
March 6, 1999
In-Store Appearance
Dmitri Matheny Group
Borders Books & Music
FROM THE ARCHIVES
March 5, 1999
Dmitri Matheny Group
In-Store Appearance @ Borders
Palo Alto, California
FROM THE ARCHIVES
March 4, 1999
Informance @ EC Cabaret
San Francisco, California
FROM THE ARCHIVES
March 3, 1995
Dmitri Matheny & The SOMA Ensemble
Visions of Kerouac
Kuumbwa Jazz Center
Santa Cruz, California
Dmitri Matheny, flugelhorn
Rob Scheps, saxophones
John Heller, guitar
Bill Douglass, bass
Alan Jones, drums
March 3, 1999
SFJAZZ Duos Series
Dmitri Matheny & Taylor Eigsti
Mark Hopkins Intercontinental Hotel
San Francisco, California
FROM THE ARCHIVES
On This Day
March 1, 1996
5/4 Magazine
By Joseph Murphy
Sometimes, in distinguishing stylists and recordings, it's the little things that stand out...more
March 1, 1996
JazzTimes Magazine
Dmitri Matheny Red Reflections
By Jim Ferguson
With the exception of drummer Alan Jones, who plays with David Friesen...more
March 1, 1998
Workshop @ The JazzSchool
Four Pillars of Success In The Jazz Business
Part 1, Publicity: Ann Dyer, Merrilee Trost, Jon Yanofsky
Berkeley, California
March 1, 1998
Concert @ The Jazzschool
Bill Douglass & Friends
Berkeley, California
March 1, 1999
Jazz at Pearl's
World Premiere: Savannah Panorama
Contemporary Jazz Orchestra
San Francisco, California
March 1, 2000
Monterey Herald
By Mac McDonald
I never thought I’d be listening to a Christmas album in the beginning of spring...more
March 1, 2000
Oakland Tribune
Flugelhornist Dmitri Matheny Pays Tribute To His Mentor, Art Farmer
By Christina Eng
Dmitri Matheny got his first instrument, a trumpet, when he was 9...more
March 1, 2003
Concert & Workshop @ The Jazzschool
Amina Figarova International Band
Berkeley, California
FROM THE ARCHIVES
February 28, 2003
Dmitri Matheny Group
Music at Kohl Mansion
Burlingame, California
FROM THE ARCHIVES
February 26, 2003
Amina Figarova International Band
Concert & Workshop @ The Nueva School
Hillsborough, California
FROM THE ARCHIVES
February 25, 1993
SOMA Quartet @ Harbor Village Restaurant
Presented by San Francisco Performances
San Francisco, California
FROM THE ARCHIVES
10 Years Ago Today
February 21, 2003
Amina Figarova International Band
Downtown Restaurant
Berkeley, California
ROAD FOOD
Last night: savory Ba Mee Hang
at Jamjuree Thai in Seattle.
Tonight: charburger & soft serve
from the Chubby Freeze in East Oakland.
Both meals equally satisfying!