Paul Contos is a Bay Area treasure. I am thrilled to present his interview for The Lead Sheet. Beyond his musical expertise, he has this 'way of being' that we could all benefit from emulating. As director of the SFJAZZ All-Star Jazz Orchestra, he holds court over 20 high-school musicians with the finesse and ease of a yogi. He is able to reach these kids on their own level, or does he bring them up to his? He is super cool, in more ways than one. Laid back and relaxed with his 'cats', he continues to use (and introduce the students to) the colorful language of jazz, while also incorporating some of their language. He is super chill and they love it. Teachers out there reading will appreciate how difficult it is to keep control over a large group of teenagers - now imagine them all armed with instruments, some of them quite loud. Somehow, he makes beautiful order from chaos at each weekly rehearsal in the recently opened SFJAZZ Center in the Civic Center area of San Francisco.
Paul starts the interview himself with a governmental metaphor about the rhythm section of a classic jazz orchestra (at minimum, string bass, drums and piano). He says the bass is like the Supreme Court, the piano is Congress and the drumset is the President. The piano will try to introduce certain things, perhaps get overridden, but is mainly responsible for the variety of options that are floated within the fluid style of a lead sheet - a mini-orchestra within an orchestra. The drummer, as executive branch, sets the tone and spirit of the thing and has final say, all in real time. This makes alot of sense when you learn, as I just did, that the earliest jazz bands didn't even have music. If you've ever seen a lead sheet, you may appreciate some of the challenges these musicians face in terms of bringing a composition to life with precious little notation (if you haven't seen a lead sheet you can read about it here in a previous post entitled YOUR BRAIN ON JAZZ). It took me awhile to appreciate that with this type of structure, every jazz performance is unique, each solo building upon itself and the other instruments' musical suggestions. This is true even in practice. The true jazz musician never repeats a solo, never writes them down. But, they do pay homage to their forebears by introducing 'quotes'*, short, well-known, rift-based musical sentences from famous songs or performances. Often there's an element of humor. During a solo, I once heard a segment of Three Blind Mice. It catches you so off guard because musically it fits, then you make the connection and have a laugh. It's an experience you can't predict.
At the beginning of the season, Paul mentioned he had a feeling about this year's band, 2012-2013, that is was going to be great. Based on the fact that the SFJAZZ All-Star Jazz Orchestra came back from the Mingus Jazz Festival in New York City in January 2013 with a 1st place trophy and a pair of Outstanding Soloist Awards, then came back from The Next Generation Jazz Festival in Monterey, California in April with a 1st place trophy and another Best Soloist Award, and then won a coveted Downbeat Award (for a series of three recordings they did at the beginning of the season in November 2012), I'd say his intuition is strong. His first clue was the rhythm section, they have to gel and get along well: "the rhythm section sounded and felt good, like we know what it's supposed to be, we're swingin'." He knew he had a very strong saxophone section (his own instrument), and horns with serious skills. He tells them that he is always learning, from everyone and everything, including them. The more they listen to more and more music, the more they play and absorb the new concepts, the more they learn and improve their own deficiencies for necessary skills such as sight-reading. SFJAZZ offers frequent Master Classes, where they invite current professionals to come work with the group. He relays a memory where a trumpet player, having just attended a brass-focused Master Class, came back from winter vacation and had noticeably improved. When I hear that, I imagine the new connections being made in the brain, neurotransmitters firing, new space being allocated and written just for this new skill. There is a strong aspect of family about the group, bonding over learning, improving and then impressing! They have to be able to talk about strengths and weaknesses comfortably. "I expect them to know their material. I want to treat them as much as possible like professionals." Giving a compliment to the principal bass player, he says, "in two years, I can't remember him not knowing his material. I know I can count on his musicianship."
EDUCATOR Qs for Paul Contos
1. How do you find a balance between imposing your own ideas over the student's creativity?
"I think musically, the farther along a student is, the more I can offer. I can give our bass player, for example, a piece of music, but I won't tell him it's really hard. But, he'll play it and we can go off from there. I'll say, 'my heart responded this way when I got to the bridge**, but I don't know if that works for you, but you can think about this.' I tell him stories about things that made me think - why wouldn't that cause a sharp, talented student to think? I don't want you to sound like me, I want you to sound like you. And, that's easy to say, but there's truth in that. I don't want you to copy, I want you to explore. For me, it's always been, here are these little things that work for me, now do it in 12 keys." I ask if it's possible to really affect a student's inate style and he replies, "Oh yeah, it can happen. Especially, physically." New techniques, especially with trumpet, can really derail you. "That can happen with jazz mentoring, with heavy influence, maybe your teacher is very charismatic and has a very strong personality and then it just kind of completely closes down a student's individuality. I don't want to do that, I try not to do that. I want to give them the tools and I want them to find their own place."
2. A recent book about music education written by a neuroscientist, claims the following:
Practice + Parent Support = Musical Achievement
Assuming parent support includes lessons or school classes, do you see this statement as accurate?
Paul makes the analogy that parents who wish their children to love and benefit from the study of music plant the seed and care for that seed while it sprouts and flowers, being careful not to crush the flower. "It's a natural thing for parents to support their children. But, then you get into the question, 'does my child have talent?' and how do you measure that?" He continues, "and how do you teach such things? Much of what we're doing is teachable. But, there is that aspect of '...you're gonna take these lessons...'", he says in a mock-forceful voice, "and the kid says, 'I quit, I can't take this!' I didn't have that experience, I was fortunate, but some people did. Some people had a horrible teacher. I think supportive parents are important, but it also takes a supportive teacher, a teacher who speaks the truth, but speaks the truth in love, to draw that out of a student. There are jazz musicians who didn't have parent support, but who succeeded in spite of it." He continues on a personal note, "my parents weren't musicians, but there was always music in the house and they just loved music: the shows, musical theater. And, one of the things I remember from when I was really young, they took us to see Count Basie and Tony Bennett. I had started [playing saxophone] in 4th grade, my brother who was a couple years older started trumpet. We were like, 'I don't know what this is, but this is really cool!' I even remember when I was younger, crawling over to the old phonograph which was on the floor, and my dad was always playing Gershwin. Rhapsody in Blue, I remember, I heard that. That's been with me my whole life, so you know, I'm fortunate. We didn't listen to tons of Beethoven, but singers, caberet, jazz and as my brother got into it more...Miles Davis. When you find something really intriguing, you know. I think it's important for students to be intrigued with things, especially music they don't understand. If they have the drive, they can go out and seek it. Because of the rapidity of the learning process now, with all the YouTube videos and performances recorded, we can move faster. We were always searching for vinyl and that special recording.... It's marvelous. The world is their oyster. That's why these kids keep getting better and better. It'll be interesting in 10 years to see what these kids will do."
3. What is your approach to teaching a student a process as intangible and personal as improvisation?
"That mechanism has changed over time, it's morphed. I used to just teach the nuts and bolts of it: you gotta understand the basics of harmony, the chord is made up of these scales tones, this chord goes with this scale... I still do that and other teachers still do that, but I think over time, students have gained a quicker understanding of that than maybe in past times, but I think more for me, it's about the jazz language. Conversational jazz, it's about certain phrases, musical sentences (he sings a riff). I think I'm more concerned with rhythm and melody, not so much harmony. Hearing intervals between notes is more important than perfect pitch. You can recognize chord quality then, in terms of the jazz language. I play something and get students to play it back to me, call and response. It's still rote and mechanical but if the student is ready, we get to issues of the heart. What does that mean? It means different things to different people. Some don't want to expose their heart, but I do try to get to them there and get them used to doing the work. Just like language, we can recall. If you've listened enough and played enough, done the work, you can pull this out of a collection what I think of a a big cauldron. John Coltrane used to say we, all of us musicians share a big pool. Given the moment, and what the heart is feeling, and the mind, it's a wonderful symbiotic thing. The manual dexterity part and the physiology and the emotional part, it's just a wonderful activity."
"That mechanism has changed over time, it's morphed. I used to just teach the nuts and bolts of it: you gotta understand the basics of harmony, the chord is made up of these scales tones, this chord goes with this scale... I still do that and other teachers still do that, but I think over time, students have gained a quicker understanding of that than maybe in past times, but I think more for me, it's about the jazz language. Conversational jazz, it's about certain phrases, musical sentences (he sings a riff). I think I'm more concerned with rhythm and melody, not so much harmony. Hearing intervals between notes is more important than perfect pitch. You can recognize chord quality then, in terms of the jazz language. I play something and get students to play it back to me, call and response. It's still rote and mechanical but if the student is ready, we get to issues of the heart. What does that mean? It means different things to different people. Some don't want to expose their heart, but I do try to get to them there and get them used to doing the work. Just like language, we can recall. If you've listened enough and played enough, done the work, you can pull this out of a collection what I think of a a big cauldron. John Coltrane used to say we, all of us musicians share a big pool. Given the moment, and what the heart is feeling, and the mind, it's a wonderful symbiotic thing. The manual dexterity part and the physiology and the emotional part, it's just a wonderful activity."
4. What qualities have you seen in students that seem to predict future success in music?
Using the flutist/vocalist as an example, he says, "Star quality, great musicianship, so much already taken care of, she has a great feeling for jazz, she's an outstanding person, confident and cool." Another example with a lead sax player, "I can always count on him, I can count on him being balanced. He'll go with the way of the wind but won't bend to the point where I can't count on him. I can totally count on his musicianship. When I see that in a student of 16 or 17, it's just so wonderful. So wonderful, and it makes what I'm doing so fun and really enriching." He then turns to the lead bass player, "All I have to do is say, hey, I need you to do this...turn this groove upside-down and turn it around and right-side up and, it's like...oh, yeah, Paul, no problem. He's polite, respectful without being jive. I don't detect any phoniness in these kids." He continues his list, in addition to superior musicianship, confidence and balance, "It's about how you deal with everybody, you gotta have alot of empathy, be someone who embraces people, and someone ultimately who really enjoys music."
* Quote: A fragment of some other well-known tune thrown into a solo. A good quote is unexpected, incongruous and yet seems to fit perfectly.
** Bridge: The contrasting middle section of a tune, especially the 'B' section of a AABA song form. Traditionally, the bridge goes into a different key, often a remote key. Thelonious Monk once remarked that the function of a bridge is 'to make the outside sound good'.
Marcus, Gary F. Guitar Zero: The New Musician and the Science of Learning. New York: The Penguin Press, 2012.
Mauleon, Rebecca. SFJAZZ Discover Jazz Course 2, Musica Cubana: Jazz in Cuba and Beyond. San Francisco: SFJAZZ, 2012.
Using the flutist/vocalist as an example, he says, "Star quality, great musicianship, so much already taken care of, she has a great feeling for jazz, she's an outstanding person, confident and cool." Another example with a lead sax player, "I can always count on him, I can count on him being balanced. He'll go with the way of the wind but won't bend to the point where I can't count on him. I can totally count on his musicianship. When I see that in a student of 16 or 17, it's just so wonderful. So wonderful, and it makes what I'm doing so fun and really enriching." He then turns to the lead bass player, "All I have to do is say, hey, I need you to do this...turn this groove upside-down and turn it around and right-side up and, it's like...oh, yeah, Paul, no problem. He's polite, respectful without being jive. I don't detect any phoniness in these kids." He continues his list, in addition to superior musicianship, confidence and balance, "It's about how you deal with everybody, you gotta have alot of empathy, be someone who embraces people, and someone ultimately who really enjoys music."
* Quote: A fragment of some other well-known tune thrown into a solo. A good quote is unexpected, incongruous and yet seems to fit perfectly.
** Bridge: The contrasting middle section of a tune, especially the 'B' section of a AABA song form. Traditionally, the bridge goes into a different key, often a remote key. Thelonious Monk once remarked that the function of a bridge is 'to make the outside sound good'.
Marcus, Gary F. Guitar Zero: The New Musician and the Science of Learning. New York: The Penguin Press, 2012.
Mauleon, Rebecca. SFJAZZ Discover Jazz Course 2, Musica Cubana: Jazz in Cuba and Beyond. San Francisco: SFJAZZ, 2012.
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