The Great Diversity
(voir post précédent pour le texte en version originale - français)
David’s trio closed out its 2022 season in Poland, in a prestige-laden atmosphere. If smoke-filled clubs where patrons can order dinner and open-air festivals are still part of jazz’s legacy in the collective imaginary, it’s the rare occasion that a groundbreaking jazz group (what’s more, “composed of black musicians”) is booked in a comfortably bourgeois concert hall. Jazz, like crime fiction with which it’s often compared, is still today considered a minor genre, especially when it steps outside of the inner circle of its own classicism. It’s true that great classical concert venues the world over have welcomed the most innovative composers and performers of their time: Charlie Parker, Sarah Vaughan, Duke Ellington, Dizzie Gillespie, Thelonius Monk, John Coltrane, Don Pullen all played at Carnegie and/or at Salle Pleyel. And the late Sun Ra’s Arkestra will play Carnegie this February! But this is still
a small minority in the broader spectrum of offerings in these places of prestige where Bach, Mozart, Puccini or Stravinsky really wouldn’t be ashamed to find themselves in such fine company. The proud assurance of the Wroclaw concert hall, its acoustical perfection and vast space, its plush velvet seats all delighted the musicians of the Brave New World Trio and an audience of a thousand. I had been seated in the second loggia well above the stage, too far from the musicians for my taste. I like to listen from the wings, to take in the concert unseen from behind the curtains, to dwell alongside the musicians and to exchange words, glances, and kisses with David. Stage right or stage left, there’s no fourth wall backstage. I listen, watch, film, and record in full privacy from the stage and audience.
One week before Wroclaw we were at the Guimarães festival with the Octet. Since it’s difficult (and costly) to move, for a single performance, a ensemble of eight musicians from one continent to another, David chose his players among the best already in Europe. Each, with the exception of the trumpeter, had played with him on tour or in the studio in one country or another. And each[1] was in exile, if for different reasons: Americans and Cubans living in Italy, Portugal, Spain, Germany, or in the United States and who, for one night, found themselves in northern Portugal playing maestro Murray’s music.
Of all possible groups it’s the big bands that David prefers, from sextet to symphony orchestra. They provide the ideal framework, he says, for composing, arranging, and interpreting everything he hears. “If I can have a big band with 20 strings, it is the whole world for me. Or a sextet with 12 strings like I had for my Pushkin opera. I can realize
everything I hear!” It fascinates me that anyone can hear in their head the complexity of orchestral music, so many instruments each playing a different part at the same time to form a single whole… My art, the art of writing, unfolds a single line! With the goal of uniting sense, sensation, and sonority, but still, on a line.
I’m always trying to build bridges between music and literature. That utopic aim played a few tricks on me in a university setting, where the idea of territory has considerable weight. Venturing beyond those limits amounts to entering a minefield. All the same, I think the pulse of the world comes from transgression, from new words, from oxymorons, from dissonance. You only need read William Faulkner, Marguerite Duras, Aimé, Césaire, Boris Vian and Toni Morrison, or to listen to Erik Satie, Rahsaan Roland Kirk, Billie Holiday, Claude Debussy and, now, David Murray, so many virtuosi who each followed their own path.
[1] With the exception of Mingus Murray (guitar), who made the trip from New York.
photos: 1) David Murray Octet, Guimarães festival, Portugal 2) Writing and hotel room
translation: Derek Schilling
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