Jazz Masters

Seeing McCoy Tyner and Wayne Shorter on successive nights at out Rochester Jazz Festival was a reminder that jazz music, as Wynton likes to call it, is our great American art form. More than that, too. Jazz is still alive, because these artists are still creative, still taking their music to new places, still challenging their audience, and not in the least bit content to rely on their reputations, or their exiting body of work.

McCoy is the Rachmaninoff of jazz, with his huge huge sound, his gigantic chords, and his unending cascades of music washing over the hall, carrying everyone off into a hypnotic trance. McCoy is no kid; he’s pushing seventy, but he plays with the energy and dexterity of a young man. Having said that, however, the most remarkable thing about his set was that his young bassist, Charnett Moffett, stole the show. Unbelievable virtuoso playing. Charnett is the son of the great Charlie Moffett, Ornette Coleman’s drummer for many years, back when Ornette was setting everyone’s brains on fire. And while Charnett plays a form of straight-ahead jazz, he plays it like no one I’ve ever seen. It was only a couple years ago that Stanley Clarke came to town with Al DiMeola and Jean-Luc Ponty and dazzled everyone with his playing. But unbelievable as it sounds, Charnett leaves Stanley Clarke far behind. Just an image in the rearview mirror. Setting an electrifying tempo for McCoy, his fingers seem to move at light-speed, but it’s his bowing, and more particularly his percussive use of the bow, striking the strings, making the bass seem like an other-worldly electric guitar, that is unlike any other playing. The overused term, awesome, is really the only way to describe this bassist, because the entire audience sat awe-struck, unable to believe they were actually seeing and hearing what was happening on the stage.

The great contrast between McCoy and Shorter is in their use of space. Or in McCoy’s case, really the absence of space. McCoy’s music has no empty space at all; it is continuous. It may vary in intensity, in texture, in volume, in tempo, but it continuously cascades down on the audience. No doubt this reflects the style of McCoy’s mentor, the great master of modern jazz music, John Coltrane, whose paying was incessant, and usually incessantly urgent. Shorter, on the other hand, having come of age in Miles’ great group of the mid-sixties, makes constant use of open space in his playing and in his compositions. Shorter’s music constantly interrupts itself; it stops and restarts; it pauses; it changes in tempo. And in a couple of the compositions he played tonight, the quiet spaces became a fifth musician on the stage, as much a part of the act as any of the players.

While listening to Shorter, I came to think of him as the Frank Geary of modern music. He has broken everything apart, but then put it all back together. But unlike the avant-guard players of the sixties, who merely broke the old conventions, and seemed to abandon many of the core qualities of great music, Shorter has reassembled his music in a manner that respects all the essential virtues of great music – the melody, the rhythm, the beauty of the playing. It’s all there. Only the difference is that it’s now all mixed up, inside out, and upside down. At first it seems jarring, or broken, or that it doesn’t fit together, but after only a second or two, one realizes that it all fits together. And not only that, it fits together perfectly, and beautifully. This was the most inventive music I’ve heard in a long time.
Shorter’s playing was complimented by a terrific rhythm section, all young guys, anchored by the fabulous Brian Blade on the drums. Brian plays a million miles an hour, but quietly, lightly, often barely skimming the surface of his drums. His playing never overpowered the group, and especially not Shorter. Same was true of the bassist, John Pattitucci, and the pianist Danny Perez. An interesting feature of this group’s playing is that they eschew the typical soloing style of jazz performances. Each of the musicians did perform what might pass as solos, but they were far more fluid, and never seemed to stand out from the group, more like the focus of the music just seemed to shift around the stage.

The big question in my mind is how come these wonderfully creative artists are both around seventy years old? Where are the young players who are willing to challenge their audiences, without worrying about record sales, or airplay? I worry that when Shorter, Rollins, Tyner, Charles Lloyd, and the rest of that generation retire, Jazz may slip into mediocrity, more concerned about its popularity than its artistry. Let’s hope not.