Home for a while... working on charts and preparing for upcoming tours - Japan in April with Fritz Richmond and Tony Marcus. This will be a Jug Band Trio affair. There's quite an interest in Japan these days for the Fountain of Youth effect of Jug Band music. My goodness!... that's it!.. that's what I'll name the band when we appear next time with Eric and Suzy Thompson at the Freight and Salvage in Berkeley... "The Fountain of Youth Jug Band"! Ah!! Sounds wonderful!!
Where was I? So... after I return from Japan, I'm off to the East Coast for some New England-area gigs. Then off to Amsterdam where we rehearse for a tour of the Futuristic Ensemble performing music from the Private Astronomy album. This will be the tour to promote the album's release in Europe.
After that tour I'll stay in Europe to perform solo and, later in the summer, play with my old buddies Stephen Bruton and Bill Rich.
All for now. I'll try to update this before I take off for Japan.
(I've left the Private Astonomy liner notes on here)
PRIVATE ASTRONOMY
When one is young and keen, the finest features of our world come to the senses with ease. As a youth I was introduced to jazz through the record collection of a brother ten years my senior. Louis, Bessie, Duke, Jelly Roll, Jack Teagarden, Sidney Bechet, Jimmy Lunceford, Pee Wee Russell...and on and on... the pioneers of jazz music. After school, I would listen hours on end picking out the instruments... the clarinet, then the trombone, then the piano... remembering the licks, the names of the players, the labels: a young explorer in the sanctuary of my big brother's room.
Of all the musicians I listened to back then, none moved me more profoundly than Bix Beiderbecke. If the great jazz music of this era were assembled as a glorious stained-glass window, Bix's window would be the brightest of all... translucent like the rest, yet magically transparent to a new but oddly familiar exterior world. Over the years, many people have commented on the clarity and beauty of Bix's 'sound'. Yes, his bell-like tone on the cornet is certainly that. But I think there is more to it. What creates such a pure experience for the listener is Bix's beautiful sound combined with the fresh and effortless conversational logic of his constructions: that ear-catching opening statement, the variations and comments that follow, and the reasoned conclusions... then restatement, then further variations and comments and so on. We understand Bix, because he is talking to us.
In my house and in my father's world of rah-rah Ivy League grads, Bix lore was common fare. At parties, after guests were oiled up, stories came out about 'that night Bix came over to the frat house after the gig'. Everyone seemed to have a Bix story... about meeting him... drinking with him... seemingly a rite of passage. I remember Muggsy Spanier (legendary trumpeter) coming out to our house from the city and spending time with him in my brother's room listening to music. He told stories of how he used to kick his mute around the room when he practiced in order to put dents in it that would produce a special sound, and of his frustration with trombonist, George Brunies, '...wonderful player, but too damn loud!'. And he went on about Bix, shaking his head, still in mourning twenty years after.
Aside from his gift as a soloist, Bix's heart and mind were rapt in a new, 'modernistic' jazz influenced in great part by the works of Debussy, Ravel and other impressionists. Dreamy sounds.... a vision of the future. Although examples of this modernism can be found in the band arrangements of the orchestras in which Bix played (the Whiteman and Trumbauer orchestras especially) as well as some of the smaller groups in which Bix had a key role, the finest examples of his own compositional brilliance are found in his piano pieces.
There were five in all - transcribed with the help of his editor, Bill Challis. "In The Dark", "In A Mist", "Candlelights" and "Flashes" are original, impressionistic pieces with occasional jazzy parts. By contrast, "Davenport Blues" was distilled from his band recording of the same name and then expanded. It is jazzy throughout until the typical Bix chorale at the end. Of the piano pieces, Bix recorded only "In A Mist", and that only in part. Other than this one recording by Bix, these works are rarely heard.
The idea of rendering the piano pieces for chamber ensemble came to me in the early eighties, with sketches for "In A Mist" produced a few years later. I was prepared to find out that someone else had already arranged the piano pieces in this way, but by the mid-nineties, after some research, I became reasonably assured that my approach was singular. I then began work in earnest. The imagined textures already sounded so wonderful in my mind's ear. I became driven by an obligation to the muse ... an obligation to Bix, really.
For the ensemble, I chose a group of instruments that could span the large note range of the piano pieces and still evoke the spirit of Bix's musical world: a core of violin, clarinet, alto sax, cornet, trombone and baritone sax. After a few rehearsals and test recordings in the late nineties, in 2002 a project began in New York City to record the chamber arrangements. Shortly into the project, its scope was expanded. With the help of my producer, Dick Connette, attention was given to the greater body of Bix's recorded work and suitable songs were picked for band and vocal arrangements. An approach was adopted: we would leave Bix cornet solos alone, at least as solos for cornet ("Futuristic Rhythm" includes Bix's original solo performed by violin, soprano, alto and tenor sax). Additionally, if Bing Crosby sang a song with the Rhythm Boys on the original, then we would have someone sing it alone. Or perhaps, as in the case of "There Ain't No Sweet Man, That's Worth The Salt Of My Tears", where Bing sang it, we would have Martha Wainwright do the honors. If someone like Frank Trumbauer sang a song by himself, then we might do that with a vocal trio a la Rhythm Boys. And so it went. A terrific bonus of the process was the discovery and eventual use of interesting musical introductions found in some of the original sheet music (e.g. "Singin' The Blues" and "Futuristic Rhythm") which were absent from the original Bix recordings.
This album is meant to convey the spirit of Bix and his time. There are others far more qualified than I to authentically reproduce Bix's recorded work. Instead, what I have created, with the help of so many talented people, is a view... an impression; not only of his music (and perhaps his inner designs), but of the musical world in which he shone so briefly.
Geoff Muldaur
June 2003
"Private Astronomy" includes chamber performances of Bix's 5 piano pieces along with band and vocal arrangements. In addition to the arrangements, I sing a couple songs solo as well as join in with Loudon Wainwright and Greg Prestopino for Rhythm Boys-style tunes. Martha Wainwright sings a beautiful version of "Singin' The Blues" and a very 'hotcha' "There Ain't No Sweet Man (That's Worth The Salt Of My Tears)".
In May I headed to England to play some gigs and also to master the album at a wonderful spot in Devon in the Dartmoor area. My goodness... you could point to where everything you were eating was grown or raised. I may be a Devon lad at heart. I any case, after a few weeks in England, I headed over to Germany where I was able to spend my time with the good folks at Deutche Grammophon and perform at a few very nice venues. It was asparagus season. I had it coming out of my ears.
The Radio Bremen crew (my benefactors) took such good care with everything we did over there. There was a nice amount of time for concert and museum going as well... Bartok string quartets in Hamburg, The Berlin Philharmonic in Berlin as well as the Neue National Galerie and the Gemaldegalerie where I checked off a Vermeer on my life list.
Back from Germany in June I began working on my house... painting, carpentry, etc. There have been a few gigs to keep me greased up, but mostly just painting. I expect to be done by 2006. Oh, the tomatoes... pretty darn good.
I'll be preparing charts for live performances of the Private Astronomy material until rehearsals in New York in October. Fourteen musicians on stage to write for. I love it!
Take care,
Geoff