Playing Jazz

[Richard Prowse]

I've just watched the Ken Burns jazz series. I haven't watched the last half hour yet, but I watched the first eleven and a half hours in three days. What sticks in my mind is the huge aray of styles - Louis Armstrong, Count Bassie, Bird, , Trane, Miles - all quite different, but getting to the same thing. It was also interesting how most of these guys often struggled to get work many times throughout their careers. I thought it was just a New Zealand thing. Jazz has a small audience Down here (NZ). Thanks to visits by Yankee jazz musicians over the wears we now have some very good players and young people are studying jazz at at least three different universities. Wellington is awash with jazz students.
There's a great story in the series where Andre Segovia supposedly asks Django if he has a transcription of a solo he just played. Django replies,
"No, I just made it up."
The series talks a lot about the risk taking in jazz and the strain it puts players under to live up to expectations - theirs and others. I think improvisation suits a certain type of personality - as does the accuracy required of classical music. I don't think the risk taking really bothers a jazz musician.
Jazz is indeed, as Bobby Shew once said, a noble calling. Well, I don't remember his exact words, but he said something like that.