Featured artist:
DAVID BINNEY
We all
know what to expect from the big names in jazz – Keith Jarrett,
John Scofield, Diana Krall – which is why we’re never
surprised when we get what we expect. What truly surprises are
the concerts we attend without any expectation, or if we are familiar
with the artist, the performance wildly exceeds our expectations.
I still get goose bumps when I think of my first exposure to Michael
Hedges (1986) and Tommy Emmanuel (2004). For music’s travelling
junkies, discovering new music is half the fun.
At last
year’s 2006 Montreal
Jazz Festival, the two names that topped the surprise
list were the group The Bad Plus and Gabriele Mirabassi. This
year, that honour went to alto saxophonist
David Binney in a precious concert
that took place in the sound-friendly confines of Salle Gesù.
Binney’s
notice has been a slowly developing phenomenon, in part because
he doesn’t have a label (he’s his own mananger/agent),
and it has taken him 20 years of living, listening and playing
to carve out a distinct musical identity, one that now puts him
on most everybody’s listen list. That Binney depends on
word-of-mouth for promotion paves the way for his music to enter
the world vaccinated against the vicissitudes and venalities of
the market place, whose bottom line, it must be said, has been
undermined by the proliferation of file sharing software.
Since
Binney is beholding to only his own expectations, one of the first
things that strikes the listener about his writing is that it
features an unusual measure of set composition that suddenly appears
during the improvisational interludes. Binney isn’t intimidated
by the high-definition, articulations of melody. When he discovers
something that resonates, something that is so right it demands
to be preserved, Binney, on the spot, will spontaneously begin
to work at it until what is played becomes learned, which provides
for its repetition, which is the basis of composition. If it’s
one of jazz’s founding (tyrannical) principles that repetition
from one night to the next during a solo is a cop-out or an act
of sloth, Binney begs to differ, which is why we’re likely
to hear the same themes and set variations from one night to the
next -- all the way to the studio.
Binney’s
set music implicitly challenges the notion that improvised music
is superior to composition, that working long and hard to preserve
something diminishes it. When improvisation achieves perfection
or inevitability, isn’t it natural to want to hear it again,
note for note, which is why, on those rare but magical occasions,
we’re happy that a particular concert has been taped?
In jazz
workshops and academia, not enough attention is being paid to
the writing methods of Mozart and Bach, whose compositions, at
their outset, were entirely improvised. What distinguished their
work from the spirit of jazz was that the composers were able
to write down what their minds spontaneously created, at which
point it becomes composition. But at its inception, The Marriage
of Figaro, for example, like a jazz solo, was entirely improvised.
Mozart’s improvisations were so perfect he didn’t
have to work on them; Beethoven, on the other hand, was not happy
with his first drafts and revised considerably. To this day, Mozart
and Bach are without equal as the greatest improvisers and composers
who ever lived, a fact that continues to be overlooked by most
jazz musicians for whom being able to solo is the highest achievement
in music, but whose soloing almost always falls short of the standards
required of composition, which is why most of it thankfully disappears
into the oblivion category as soon as it’s played.
What
is absolutely novel and arresting in the music of David Binney
is the unique narrative space he's able to develop, a kind of
journey or quest that encourages listeners to get in touch with
what is noble and dignified in themselves -- those secret places
or selves that get stifled in the real world. Binney designates
the improvised sections as the means to get there, where the there,
unstable and formless at the outset, must be developed and deepened
so it can stand on its own. To be in the presence of that process
is a uniquely fulfilling experience, one that attracts us to the
man as much as his music. Listeners, for whom Binney is that space’s
founding architect, willingly accompany him on these sometimes
unnerving voyages of discovery for the promise of being introduced
to a music that radiates with life in all its complexity and contradiction.
For this singular achievement, Binney’s compositions can
be said to satisfy because they are simultaneously complete and
open-ended.
By daring
to confront human fragility on its own terms, Binney enters into
our vocabulary a music that ennobles human vulnerability, resulting
in elucidations whose emotive effects we usually associate with
the classical genre. For his Montreal concert, there were moments
when Binney was able to bring his music to the threshold of the
inexpressible, where sound is reduced, in its absolute plenitude,
to a tremor or shudder, often ineffably sad, and the listener
brought to a state of exultation and humility before the incomparable
fact that he exists when it could have been otherwise. There is
perhaps no better example of that gut and spirit wrenching attainment
than in Bach’s BWV 1016, Sonata for Violin and Piano with
Glenn Gould and Jamie Laredo, pt. 3, beginning at the 2 minute
13 second point.
Picking
and choosing from his last two CDs, Cities and Desire
and Out of Airplanes, Binney found ways to make his alto
sax sound round and muscular, and, when the occasion demanded
it, slender and delicate. It is to his credit that only in his
mid-forties, he has opened up a realm in jazz that draws some
of its inspiration from the emotive underpinnings of classical,
on top of which his quiet confidence allows him follow his instincts
regardless of where they take him, which is why listeners want
to travel with him and travel far. And if they are able to do
so, it’s in no small part due to the supernatural compliance
of Craig Taborn on piano, Scott Colley on bass and, for his Montreal
concert, the inimitable Brian Blade on drums.
If all
genres of music aspire to significance -- music capable of enduring
over time -- Binney is well on his way to making a significant
contribution. Given music’s precipitous descent into the
maelstrom of mono-tonality during the past 25 years and its deadening
effect on the ear, perhaps what is most surprising is that there
is an audience for the Binney sound and method, as if his vibe
fills a void where other musics, within and without jazz, have
fallen short, which is why his production is perhaps the single
most interesting event in contemporary jazz.
David
Binney 'live' HERE.
