Observations from the Road - by Adam Larson

I recently toured the Midwest with my trio from NY, covering Texas, Missouri, Illinois and Iowa. From September 30th-October 18th, the trio performed and presented masterclasses/clinics at a slew of venues ranging from my former elementary school to universities and of course a slew of jazz clubs along the way.

I've noticed that especially at the collegiate level, students are often inquisitive about how to actually make their art successful; how to sustain creating their art. I've said this many times in masterclasses but I'm pretty certain that most students in a performance based, jazz specialized degree, do not set out to go to school for 4-6 years, only to do something completely unrelated to that specialization upon graduation. Sadly, that is the trend more often than not. I'm sure we all know someone who has got dark on the "business" and decided that they can't make a living out of their path and chooses to follow a different career path. Are people not allowed to change their minds? Of course they are, but, again, I would be willing to bet that most people set out to make music their profession and I think that as young musicians we can be doing more to ensure that we have the best chance of succeeding in that desire, especially while one is in school. I equate practicing, performing and composing as muscles that we have to learn how to develop to become great musicians. One muscle that could definitely use some more attention is the music business muscle. The more we develop this muscle, the better we become at it and our longevity in this career path depends on it.

Contrary to popular opinion, tours CAN and do turn a profit. I can almost guarantee that without management and a lot of hype, a young musician will have a hard time making much on a tour after all the related expenses, by ONLY playing clubs. I've found that seeking out educational opportunities to present masterclasses at universities and high schools, has increased earnings for myself and my band members significantly. This past tour, we did 28 things in about 17 days. From those 28 things, I would say 60% were in some way educationally based and the other 40% were strictly performances. A major key to the band's success on this past tour was the willingness to look at any and all scenarios that would provide for extra funding and hopefully spread the music to a varied audience. For instance, on more than one occasion we presented "jazz for kids" performances at the elementary and jr. high level, which exposed an entire demographic to the music and also came with the added benefit of padding the days financial earnings.

Seeking out non-traditional venues to perform and showcase my music has been very rewarding and has helped establish a relationship that has ensured that when I come back through certain areas, I always have a place to work. I would encourage anyone looking to book tours and opportunities for themselves to get creative in their line of thinking. There are people out there who are interested in the music; it's up to us to actively seek them out.

Poetry, Lyrics and Music: Meditations and Concerns - by Lara Solnicki

Greetings, and welcome to my first blog contribution! 

I'm so pleased to have the Inner Circle Music blog as a platform for provocative conversation, and hopefully interactions on the subject of thoughtful music, perceptions of art as well as meditations on life as an artist in 2015. I'd love to hear from readers, and most especially from my fellow label mates, living around the world where tastes and trends will likely differ vastly! Please do feel free to chime in and agree, or challenge my ideas! Expect my usual exaggerated rants and flair for the dramatic! (Not very Canadian, I know!)

For those who don’t know me: I grew up in Toronto, Canada with a filmmaker father and high school English teacher/writer mother. My parents listened to classical music and opera, but not really much other music. My maternal grandmother was a pianist from a family of musicians−  her sister the renowned Canadian pianist Beth Lipkin. By the time I was in nursery school (3 or 4) I was obsessed with Tchaikovsky’s dying swan. My path to jazz was circuitous: I graduated in 2004 from the Glenn Gould School/Royal Conservatory of Music in Toronto, with a BA, Performance Diploma and half of an Artist Diploma in Classical singing and opera, and a minor in piano, before taking on a second art writing poetry in 2004. I ultimately moved into jazz and creative music in 2008, and began performing it in 2010.

The Dynamic Relationship Between Text and Music

This August 2015, I completed an experimental song cycle called "The One and the Other" with the generous support of a Toronto Arts Council Music Creation Grant. It was my first combining my experiences in poetry, as essentially equal to music in a musical setting.  The repertoire ranges from pure music with no lyrics (vocalise) to recited poetry with program music and includes several songs that actually combine recited and sung poetry. It’s been an amazing and challenging exploration, and the beginning of much more to come. 

Less interested in achieving polish, I was interested in exploring what I have come to perceive as an inherent struggle between text and music, where one leads and one follows. Setting poems really belongs to the classical tradition, not jazz at all. The language of jazz and popular music is essentially colloquial, and listeners are used to its informality. There’s no real reason or rule about this. Poetry belongs to a different tradition than music lyrics, and is denser and requires more concentration. When we expect an audience to perceive the text as poetry, we expect them to invest more into it because we are dealing with a cryptic art form where words are not taken at face value, and suddenly there are new considerations, like complex figurative language and oblique references to artistic movements− and how these considerations are contributing to the overall message of the poem, and also in this case− the music!

There’s really a lot to talk about (and work with) here; I’m not talking about poetic lyrics (Joni Mitchell, Bob Dylan etc.) When we are talking about poetry in music, one example would be in our interpretations of rhyming texts: if it’s a contemporary poem that uses rhyme, chances are it’s referencing the past for some reason, that reference contributing to the overall meaning of the song!  

These are aesthetic issues, but on another level, something that is glaring, and quite frankly concerns me, is that the unapologetic rawness of expression that has long been in poetry since the mid-twentieth century (let’s not even talk about visual art here), is not being matched in lyrics and musical texts, particularly in jazz. In the nineteen fifties, there was a kind of revolution in English language poetry, what’s known as The American Confessional movement. These writers wrote about taboo subjects. They were dark, and fascinating. Don’t be fooled by the name confessional, they had plenty of style and skill. The poems were elegant but the subject matter was unromantic. We owe a lot to these writers, particularly women. It’s unspoken and understood that contemporary poetry will bear the mark of the Confessional movement among others. But I’m afraid we cannot say the same with lyrics. 

To give this more historical context: George Trakl one hundred years ago described a landscape smelling of mold and decayed vegetation; to read Paul Celan (1920-1970) is to read a poet who never even utters his personal story of tragedy but all of his artistic choices themselves are soaked in this loss! This applies to exuberant writers too! Check out the Surrealists! My point here is that no matter what poets are writing about, they are expected to write from a very rich, honest and interior place. 

What I hear most often about lyrics are “lovely lyrics” or “beautiful”. I’m afraid such responses do not reflect much of the entire spectrum of human emotion and experience! Poetry does not have the luxury to hide behind beautiful sound. It’s naked in its intellectual, imaginative and emotional presence, so we have come to expect more from it than we do from lyrics. I think this is wrong.

To be blunt, until we raise the bar here, where with musical texts, people are actually expected to show more of their skin, their minds, reference tradition, and take RISKS, lyrics will remain stuck in mostly clichéd language and subject matter. It will not evolve.

Check out the new HD video of saxophonist and INCM artist Adam Larson's, composition entitled "Vanished Theories", from the his upcoming debut INCM release "Selective Amnesia". This track features Fabian Almazan, Matthew Stevens, @jimmy macbride and Matt Penman.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_bw9IINPwfI

Bring It Back Home - by Greg Osby

The absence of legitimate performance rooms and venues has made it necessary for artists to consider alternatives regarding where they may connect with a supportive audience. The marketplace is brimming with overwhelming amounts of talent, which makes finding a suitable room altogether even more challenging. Lately, I have found myself discussing this issue with a great deal of frequency to my friends who exist both in and outside of the business. One possible solution, that actually has worked very well in the past, would require a considerable amount of planning and effort from everyone involved. This is not a new idea at all...

At one time, it was very common that musicians would have "Rent Parties" (or House Parties) as a dual-purpose method of bringing attention to their work as well as generating an alternative income stream that would allow the rent and/or a few bills to be paid. I firmly believe that this concept needs to be reinvestigated and updated to fit the needs and requirements of modern artists. Given the overwhelming numbers of musicians in New York and any other metropolis, it is conceivable that rent parties, parlor parties or the idea of home concerts would serve as a viable alternative that would entertain, create momentum and to keep the bands tight and active.

A home concert allows the host to promote cultural events, work out a percentage split with the artists, serve food or light snacks, fulfill an obligation to developing musicians as well as the community, and is absolutely something to consider when legions of fully capable artists can not find venues that are receptive to their solicitations for bookings.

On some days it may even preferable to hear live music while sitting in a comfortable chair or sofa at someone's house or apartment, as opposed to the normals obstacles one faces when negotiating the cramped confines of even the most prestigious jazz clubs.

In fact, there's a lady in Harlem who holds regular (FREE) parties at her place every Sunday:

Harlem Sunday Home Concerts