A sonic exploration and tonal analysis of contemporary creative music in a myriad of improvisational/composed settings, textures, and expressions.
Welcome to Sound Projections
I'm your host Kofi Natambu. This online magazine features the very best in contemporary creative music in this creative timezone NOW (the one we're living in) as well as that of the historical past. The purpose is to openly explore, examine, investigate, reflect on, studiously critique, and take opulent pleasure in the sonic and aural dimensions of human experience known and identified to us as MUSIC. I'm also interested in critically examining the wide range of ideas and opinions that govern our commodified notions of the production, consumption, marketing, and commercial exchange of organized sound(s) which largely define and thereby (over)determine our present relationships to music in the general political economy and culture.
Thus this magazine will strive to critically question and go beyond the conventional imposed notions
and categories of what constitutes the generic and stylistic definitions of ‘Jazz’, ‘classical music’, ‘Blues.’
'Rhythm and Blues’, ‘Rock and Roll’, ‘Pop’, ‘Funk’, ‘Hip Hop’, etc. in order to search for what individual
artists and ensembles do cretively to challenge and transform our ingrained ideas and attitudes of what
music is and could be.
So please join me in this ongoing visceral, investigative, and cerebral quest to explore, enjoy, and pay
homage to the endlessly creative and uniquely magisterial dimensions of MUSIC in all of its guises and expressive identities.
Saturday, August 4, 2018
Leroy Jenkins (1932-2007): Legendary, iconic, and innovative musician, composer, arranger, ensemble leader, producer, and teacher
Free jazz's leading violinist, Leroy Jenkins
has greatly expanded the options and range of sounds and possibilities
for stringed instruments in free music. His techniques have included
sawing, string bending, and plucking. Jenkins plays adventurous phrases and distorted solos, while including elements of blues, bebop, and classical in his approach. Jenkins often lists as influences a diverse group of violinists (Eddie South and Jascha Heifetz) and other instrumentalists (Charlie Parker, Ornette Coleman, and John Coltrane, among others). Jenkins began playing violin at eight, often at church in Chicago. He was another student of Walter Dyett at Du Sable High, where he also played alto sax. Jenkins
graduated from Florida A&M, where he dropped alto and concentrated
on violin. He spent about four years teaching stringed instruments in
Mobile, AL. Jenkins
returned to Chicago in the mid-'60s and divided his time from 1965 to
1969 between teaching in the Chicago public school system and working
with the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM). Jenkins was among the AACM musicians who left Chicago for Europe in the late '60s. While in Paris, Jenkins, Anthony Braxton, Leo Smith, and Steve McCall founded the Creative Construction Company. He also played with Ornette Coleman there. Jenkins returned to Chicago in 1970 and moved to New York with Braxton shortly after, living and studying at Coleman's New York home for three months. After working briefly with Cecil Taylor and Braxton, Jenkins played with Archie Shepp, Alice Coltrane, and Rahsaan Roland Kirk. But more importantly, in 1971, Jenkins, Sirone, and Jerome Cooper founded the Revolutionary Ensemble,
one of the decade's great trios. They were truly a cooperative venture,
with each musician contributing compositions and their performances
often resembling works in progress. All three played several instruments
during their concerts. The Ensemble
maintained its integrity while making albums that were aesthetic
triumphs and commercial flops for six years on various labels. After the
trio disbanded, Jenkins made several tours of Europe and led a quintet and a trio featuring Anthony Davis and Andrew Cyrille. During the mid-'80s, he served on the board of directors of the Composers' Forum and was a member of Cecil Taylor's
quintet in 1987, presenting many free music performances and written
numerous pieces for soloists, small groups, and large ensembles. Jenkins
also received a number of major commissions and grants during the '90s
for experimental and theater-based work and was in demand as
musician-in-residence for several universities. Jenkins
passed away in New York on February 24, 2007. A few of his Black Saint
and India Navigation sessions are available on CD.
Born in Chicago, composer and violinist Leroy Jenkins was one of the
most important musicians to emerge from the AACM (Association for the
Advancement of Creative Musicians), the legendary collective of which he
was a member until his death in 2007. Like many of the Association's
members, Jenkins studied under the legendary Walter Dyett at DuSable
High School, where he learned the alto saxophone.
He received a
music degree (in violin) from Florida A&M University, where he
studied composition and the classical masters of the violin.
Subsequently, he taught music both in Mobile, Alabama (1961-5) and in
the Chicago schools (1965-9). During the latter period, Jenkins joined
the AACM. He made his first recording with Muhal Richard Abrams, Anthony
Braxton, and Leo Smith in the sixties before achieving international
acclaim in Paris along with Braxton, Smith, and the Art Ensemble of
Chicago. In 1970 Jenkins moved to New York, where he founded the
Revolutionary Ensemble, the critically acclaimed ensemble which recorded
7 albums and toured North America and Europe.
When many of the
AACM musicians left during 1969, Jenkins went to Europe with Anthony
Braxton & Leo Smith. There, with drummer Steve McCall, they were
called the Creative Construction Company. He also played with Ornette
Coleman, whose house he & Braxton stayed at when they subsequently
moved to New York City.
Playing with Taylor (1970) and Braxton
(1969-72), he also worked with Albert Ayler, Cal Massey, Alice Coltrane,
Archie Shepp & Rahsaan Roland Kirk. Between 1971-7, he played in
his Revolutionary Ensemble, a trio featuring Sirone (Norris Jones) on
bass & trombone, and drummer/pianist Jerome Cooper. Thereafter, he
toured the US & Europe, led the Mixed Quintet (Jenkins and 4
woodwind players), a blues-based band called Sting, and again played
with Cecil Taylor.
Jenkins continually reinvented his own language
in music. His was an extraordinary bonding of a variety of sounds
associated with the black music tradition, while simultaneously bridging
with European styles. His intermeshing of jazz and classical influences
left critics wondering at his musical identity; however, as one San
Francisco Chronicle critic said, “Jenkins is a master who cuts across
all categories.”
Jenkins received a number of major commissions
and was in demand for experimental and theater-based work. Mother of
Three Sons, a dance-opera collaboration with Bill T. Jones, premiered in
Aachaen, Germany and had ten performances. The Rockefeller Foundation,
National Endowment for the Arts, Meet the Composer, and Mutable Music
awarded him numerous commissioning funds and grants to support several
new theater works. Among them are Fresh Faust (a jazz-rap opera), which
was performed in workshops in Boston at the Institute of Contemporary
Arts; The Negro Burial Ground (a cantata), performed at The Kitchen, New
York City; and The Three Willies (a multimedia opera), performed at the
Painted Bride, Philadelphia. He was also commissioned to create new
works for the Brooklyn Philharmonic, the Cleveland Symphony Orchestra,
the Albany Symphony, the Lincoln Center Out of Doors, and the Kronos
Quartet.
Among his recordings are 3 Compositions of New Jazz
(1968; Delmark); Lifelong Ambitions (1977; Black Saint; with Muhal
Richard Abrams); Space Minds, New Worlds, Survival America (1978;
Tomato); Live (1992, Black Saint); Carla Bley's Escalator Over The Hill
and Braxton's Three Compositions Of New Jazz.
Leroy Jenkins died on February 24, 2007, in Brooklyn, NY.
Leroy Jenkins, 74, Violinist Who Pushed Limits of Jazz, Dies
The
violinist and composer Leroy Jenkins, one of the pre-eminent musicians
of 1970s free jazz, who worked on and around the lines between jazz and
classical music, died on Saturday in Manhattan. He was 74 and lived in
Brooklyn.
The cause was complications of lung cancer, said his wife, Linda Harris.
Mr.
Jenkins grew up on the South Side of Chicago. He started playing violin
around age 7 and performed in recitals at St. Luke Church, one of the
city’s biggest Baptist churches, accompanied by a young pianist named
Ruth Jones, later known as the singer Dinah Washington. Mr. Jenkins
subsequently joined the orchestra and choir at Ebenezer Baptist Church,
directed by Dr. O. W. Frederick, who tutored him in the music of black
composers like William Grant Still and Will Marion Cook.
At
DuSable High School, Mr. Jenkins played alto saxophone under the band
director Walter Dyett, a legendary figure in jazz education. He then
attended Florida A & M University on a bassoon scholarship, though
ultimately he played saxophone and clarinet in the concert band and
studied the violin again.
After
college, Mr. Jenkins spent four years as a violin teacher in Mobile,
Ala. On returning to Chicago in 1964, he joined the Association for the
Advancement of Creative Musicians (A.A.C.M.) a cooperative for jazz
musicians determined to follow through on the structural advances of
Ornette Coleman, Cecil Taylor and others who were widening the jazz
tradition. In time, he became one of the most visible members of the
organization, which persists today.
Leroy Jenkins playing with the reunited Revolutionary Ensemble.Credit
Larry Fink, 2005
With
Anthony Braxton, Steve McCall and Leo Smith, he formed the Creative
Construction Company; the musicians in the group shifted to Paris, where
they and other members of the Association for the Advancement of
Creative Musicians built their international reputations in 1969 and
1970.
In
1970, Mr. Jenkins returned to the United States, at first living in
Ornette Coleman’s loft in SoHo in New York. He formed the Revolutionary
Ensemble, a trio with the bassist Sirone and the drummer Jerome Cooper;
the group lasted for six years and fused Mr. Jenkins’s classical
technique with a flowing, free-form aesthetic.
In
the mid-1970s, after years of cooperative projects, he became a
bandleader, and also wrote music for classical ensembles. He led the
group Sting, which played a kind of splintered jazz-funk, and made a
series of his own records for the Italian label Black Saint. He began to
work in more explicitly classical situations, often with old Chicago
colleagues like the pianist Muhal Richard Abrams. And he wrote music
performed by the Brooklyn Philharmonic, the Kronos Quartet and other
ensembles.
Mr.
Jenkins’s trajectory eventually led him toward collaborations with
choreographers, writers and video artists. They included “The Mother of
Three Sons,” a collaboration with Bill T. Jones’s dance company, staged
at New York City Opera in 1991; “The Negro Burial Ground,” a cantata;
“Fresh Faust,” a jazz-hip-hop opera; and “Three Willies,” a multimedia
opera. In recent years, Mr. Jenkins went back to smaller music-only
projects, including the trio Equal Interest, with the pianist Myra
Melford and the saxophonist Joseph Jarman; in 2004, he reunited with the
Revolutionary Ensemble.
In
addition to his wife, Ms. Harris, Mr. Jenkins is survived by a
daughter, Chantille Kwitana Harris-Jenkins of Manhattan; a sister,
Connie Dixon, and a half-sister, Judith Taylor, both of Los Angeles.
Correction: February 28, 2007
An obituary on Monday about the jazz violinist Leroy Jenkins misstated the date of his death. It was Saturday, not Friday.
A version of this article appears in print on , on Page B6 of the New York edition with the headline: Leroy Jenkins, 74, Violinist Who Pushed Limits of Jazz. Order Reprints|Today's Paper
We wrote recently about The Revolutionary Ensemble, and that post
will stay live for a while as we honor the memory of this great
American artist. We have been listening to a lot of Jenkins since
hearing the news of his passing; it was always poignant stuff, never
more so than today.
Leroy Jenkins has rightly been dubbed the father of
free jazz violin. But forget about the “free” part a moment, because his
true achievement was opening up the possibilities on the instrument for
all jazz players. His innovative playing blended the inflections blues
and jazz with bracing shards of atonality and rigorous classical
structures. In other words, he found new ways to conjure beauty. You can
hear this all over his work – but it’s most nakedly apparent in the two
tracks from his spellbinding Solo album.
And while Jenkins was a deep thinker who advanced
the cause of this adventurous music we all love, his music was also
profoundly emotional. The delicate and achingly mournful “Chicago” from
the Revolutionary Ensemble’s rare self-titled LP is one long, langorous
sigh. A sublime elegy. Pure goosebumps from the first note to the last.
Through his work with the still-neglected
Revolutionary Ensemble, Jazz Composer’s Orchestra, various AACM
projects, and as a solo artist, Jenkins cut a formidable swath through
the jazz world over the past 30 years as a performer and composer. The
brief “Through the Ages Jehovah” showcases some of his talents in
arranging and bandleading. During this deceptively simple gospel melody,
the players each begin to head in their own direction, quietly
dispersing without ever losing the thread of the tune.
Like 2/3ds of The Bad Plus,
Drew’s first and only time seeing Jenkins live was at the Dewey Redman
memorial show last month in New York. It was a solo turn, unadorned and
direct in approach, melancholy without melodrama, and deep without
apparent effort. It combined a woolly casualness and spontaneity with a
strong, rigorous sense of structure. It was beautiful.
Chilly was fortunate to see Jenkins perform several
times during various Vision Festivals. There was always a striking
contrast between the taciturn and professorial man and the startling and
emotional music coming from the violin. Jenkins was never a flashy
player and let his radical art speak for itself. The strongest memory
remains the Revolutionary Ensemble’s comeback show, where their bracing
and challenging music left the crowd largely baffled. It was clearly the
best show of the festival but not many others agreed. Afterwards, fans
crowded around a number of the evening’s other musicians, heaping
praises and chatting them up. Leroy Jenkins stood alone on the sidewalk
outside the venue. I thanked him for the terrific music and we shook
hands. Jenkins seemed pleased by the compliment but also quietly
confident in the value of his music, which like the best of jazz, will
endure.
Interview by Thomas Wilmeth with the late violinist and composer from 1979
In the fall of 1979 I had been interested in the current jazz
scene for several years, but nothing had prepared me for the far reaches
of the music universe that Leroy Jenkins explored one night in
Minneapolis. I was told that Mr. Jenkins would have a few minutes
before his solo concert at The Walker Art Center. I had heard his
latest album and looked forward to speaking with this unique artist, an
avant-garde jazz violinist.
If the music of the avant-garde is often purposefully formless, the same
cannot be said of Mr. Jenkins’ thoughts, which were focused and
articulate. He possessed an unhurried and reflective attitude, choosing
his ideas and words with care. Jenkins was patient with the
limitations of a young man from the Midwest that night. I think he knew
that I was trying and that I was sincere in my interest of jazz.
By 1979, Leroy Jenkins had been a professional musician for well over a
decade. He would continue to be a leader of the avant-garde for another
quarter century, until his death in 2007. The following previously
unpublished interview is a brief encounter with the artist on his
musical journey.
Tom Wilmeth: You have been associated in the 1970s with ensemble
performances. How long have you been giving solo concerts such as the
one you are giving tonight?
Leroy Jenkins: I’ve been performing concerts solo now for about two
years. Probably before that it was a little more . . . spaced. It was
now and then, but now they are coming a little more frequently. I do a
lot of them.
TW: So you are on the road quite a bit of the time.
Leroy Jenkins: With solos, yes. Or the trio that I use – piano, drums, and violin.
TW: I have to admit that I am not aware of many of your solo albums except the newest one on the Tomato label. [Space Minds, New Worlds, Survival of America, 1978] Have you made many solo LPs?
Leroy Jenkins: Yes. I have a recording on India Navigation a couple of years old [Solo Concert, 1977]. I also have a trio on Black Saint called Ai Glatson [1978]. And plus For Players Only is a JCOA recording [1975]. And then of course I recorded about five records with the Revolutionary Ensemble.
TW: That group broke up a while back . . .
Leroy Jenkins: It’s been 2 years ago now.
TW: Was it because people wanted to pursue their own interests, like your solo concerts?
Leroy Jenkins: Yes. It ceased to be a cooperative.
TW: It would be best for everybody to go their separate ways.
Leroy Jenkins: Seems like it.
TW: Your latest album – the first side is a lengthy piece and is the
title selection. You use Richard Teitelbaum on synthesizers. He was
here with Anthony Braxton not too long ago. Have you been associated
with Teitelbaum for very long?
Leroy Jenkins: Well, he’s on the New York scene. He plays with a lot
of my contemporaries and friends. He has sort of the same musical
sensibilities that I have and being that I was going to make records
dealing with the synthesizer-not necessarily electronics, but synthesizer – I could think of no better player than Richard.
TW: This may be an unfair question, but do you have any preference as
far as the acoustic side or the electric side of that album?
Leroy Jenkins: No, I don’t really. I planned them both as they were,
one to be one thing and one to be the other. I probably like both
sides.
TW: When you recorded that album, did you have any plans to tour with
either of those groups, or was that strictly a studio session?
Leroy Jenkins: No, no. I perform with Andrew Cyrille [drums] and
Anthony Davis [piano] regularly right now. They belong to my group that
I regularly travel with when I do trios and also George Lewis, the
trombonist. We play a lot together. Richard Titelbaum was the only one
that I got to play for me on the recording only. We hardly ever play
together.
TW: You spent some time with Ornette Coleman’s group . .
Leroy Jenkins: No. I never played with Ornette. I just lived at his
house when I first came to New York. He was very instrumental in
helping me out when I first came there. He sort of put me into the
mainstream of the music business. And of course I was influenced by a
lot of his musical discoveries.
TW: New York Times music critic Robert Palmer says that you play the violin like a violin and don’t try to make it sound like a horn. Could you comment on that?
Leroy Jenkins: Well, I’ve studied the violin and I think that
instrument has more . . . things that can be brought out other than just
the saxophone sound. I mean, I’m not necessarily playing any
particular type of music except improvised music. Of course it’s
necessary to be able to play the violin to get out all these different
qualities, effects, and techniques I bring out. And I was fortunate
enough to have a good background-good training.
TW: Speaking of improvising, being very important in your approach to
your instrument: Tonight when you go out, will you have set pieces in
mind?
Leroy Jenkins: Oh yeah.
TW: Pieces that you’re going to be improvising around.
Leroy Jenkins: Oh yeah.
TW: So it’s a . . .
Leroy Jenkins: Motifs, mostly. Some are melodies. Some are motifs. .
. . Then there are others . . . just an abstract improvisation.
TW: You are an individual, as there are not very many violin players
doing what you’re doing. In fact, there are very few violins in jazz
music. Do you have any opinions about Jean-Luc Ponty’s approach to the
violin?
Leroy Jenkins: Well, he’s sort of like . . . Well, I don’t relate to
him except that he plays the violin and people often mention him to me.
But I don’t relate to him because, you know, he’s not . . . well, we
are completely two different types of players and all. Hard to listen
to his music. I mean, his music is the type of music that I really
don’t listen to that much. It’s fusion, and the fusion stuff I don’t
really listen to.
TW: As you have found, I’m sure-the reason you have that name brought up to you so much is that there are so few violins . . .
Leroy Jenkins: Oh yes. I understand why they do it.
TW: Do you enjoy being out on the road or is this a necessary evil?
Leroy Jenkins: Oh yes – a necessary evil. You know, I sort of enjoy
it. The fact that I do have to make a living. And the fact that
somebody wants me. It’s a great feeling to be wanted. And yes, it gets boring a lot of times. Off the stage.
TW: Like exactly what we are doing now-talking to someone who is not
totally familiar with your career. I’m sure this gets old after so many
. . . .
Leroy Jenkins: Well, I’m in the business of education. Being the music
that I play . . . most people who know about it, they usually have been
educated by one of my contemporaries or myself. Or, they are the type
of person that has . . . who has their ears on the ground, so to speak.
And are really music lovers . . . who like good listening music and
good modern contemporary music. And so I understand that there are a lot
of people in this world that don’t know about me. I understand my
position in the spectrum of the music society, and I go along with the
problems and the good parts of it. So sure, I’ve repeated what I’ve
said-and I’m sure the questions that you’ve asked have been asked of me a
million times, but I’ve been a million places.
TW: Speaking of music that you listen to, if you are home do you ever
put on something like Air? Or what type of albums would you pull out?
Leroy Jenkins: Well . . . I don’t listen to records a lot. I listen to
radio a lot, mostly FM stations. I listen to traditional jazz. I
listen to all, all jazz. I listen to classical music. I sort of can
concentrate better on classical music because I’m not too involved in
it. Or let’s say bebop; I can sort of read and probably even write
music with it on. It’s background. Now, I wouldn’t dare listen to Air
or The Art Ensemble [of Chicago] or to [Anthony] Braxton. I couldn’t
concentrate.
TW: Is that because you can’t . . .
Leroy Jenkins: It’s because I’m too close . . . I’m too close to it. I
understand what’s happening. It’s very . . . a lot of feeling to it.
It’s really not the type . . . this music is like television. You have
to really . . . it demands your attention. Not only me, I mean
everybody. It demands your attention. It’s not the kind of thing . . .
it’s cerebral. It’s about listening, and trying to find out some
corners that may attract you or may remind you of something in your life
or may guide you to some point where you would like to be . . . or
where you wouldn’t like to be. You know, it’s not like music that has a
finger-popping effect, or that music that they say swings on 2 and 4.
This music swings, all right, but not the way it used to. There’s a
mental swing about it now-one that you feel, rather than pop your
fingers or pat your feet.
TW: So, correct me if I’m wrong here-you say that you put on the classical and the bebop because it doesn’t demand the attention that Braxton . . .
Leroy Jenkins: The classical does demand attention from people that are
really interested in it. But I mean it’s passé with me. And bebop is
also passé with me. I used to pop my fingers to it. I can put the
volume down low and listen to it. But not my music-I mean Braxton. I
can’t do it! You know, my ears are out listening for things. Because I
know there’s always something out there to be heard. No matter how
many time you hear it, with this particular type of music that we are
doing.
TW: As an educator, do you have roots in things such as Duke Ellington’s work?
Leroy Jenkins: Oh yeah. Oh yeah. I’ll probably be playing one of
Ellington’s tonight. I’m rooted in all the masters. Ellington, sure.
TW: So with Ellington you could put it on low and not worry about it,
you could also still turn it up and get something new out of it.
Leroy Jenkins: Oh yeah. But I mean it wouldn’t affect me . . . Well,
Ellington may be an exception. He’s so strong, you know? Ah, and he’s
so modern. It’s something that I respect greatly. I respect Bach.
Mozart. Those guys. Any great master. In the Master Class. I
respect them all. It’s just that they’re passé now. Where maybe some
stuff by [Philip] Glass or somebody like that, man, . . . it’s too disturbing !
TW: It makes you sit up and pay attention.
Leroy Jenkins: Sit up and Pay Attention! If I’m doing some [writing] I wouldn’t . . . I wouldn’t dare put on a Glass or Braxton record.
TW: Do you have any comments about the ECM label? It seems to be
bringing a new type, or a recently unheard type of music more
prominently to the states.
Leroy Jenkins: Well, the only thing ECM has been doing is that they
have a big distribution. That way they would get to more people. But
there were many other record companies before them. I mean he [Manfred
Eicher] happens to be lucky enough to have gotten Warner Brothers as a
distributors. And that’s why you can say he’s bringing out all these
people. These people were not brought out by ECM. They were brought out
to the general public, more or less, by ECM. There were other record
companies who introduced them to ECM.
TW: I don’t want to take up too much of your time. As I said earlier, I
know this gets old for you-an endless stream of people with
microphones.
Leroy Jenkins: Well, that’s OK! It’s part of the job. I mean it is a job . . . that I enjoy. You do
have access to people’s ears here. I just hope that the people will
enjoy what I do tonight and . . . maybe they can bring back somebody
else-one of my contemporaries, or even me again.
TW: Great. In some ways it comes down to what Gary Burton has said: So
much is ruled by the great court of public opinion: Is there an
audience? I mean, you are here tonight, obviously, because there is an
audience for your music.
Leroy Jenkins: Yeah! An audience! Some person who knows about the music wants to bring it to the people! That’s where it is! That’s how we are educated. That’s how we find out things!
Jazz on the violin? For Leroy Jenkins, that rare blend works beautifully
byAmy Duncan
New York
— In the world of jazz well-known violinists can be counted on
the fingers of one hand - Joe Venuti, Stephane Grapelli, Stuff Smith,
Ray Nance, and perhaps one or two others. And certainly in the realm of
new and experimental music, they're scarce as hen's teeth.
Violinist
Leroy Jenkins is one of those hen's teeth, and he's not exactly a
newcomer on the jazz scene. Although he has been hailed as one of the
most important figures in new jazz (he placed second in the violin
category in the 1982 Down Beat magazine jazz critics poll, just one slot
behind Stephane Grappelli), he is actually a longtime innovator and
participant in experimental music. Whether you want to call it jazz or
not, Jenkins sees himself as a creative musician and composer. ''That doesn't mean any particular type of music,'' he said in an interview at his studio here, ''because I just create music.'' Since his early involvement with AACM (Association for
the Advancement of Creative Music) in Chicago, Jenkins has worked in a
variety of contexts - from solo to sextet and beyond, ranging from the
Creative Construction Company (with reedman Anthony Braxton) to the
Revolutionary Ensemble (co-founded with bassist Sironecq and drummer
Jerome Cooper) to his Mixed Quintet (consisting of French horn, reeds,
and violin) to his current group, Sting. ''I had a real bad lull there for a
while,'' said the softspoken Jenkins, ''so I decided to advertise and
get a workshop going. I got four guitarists and a bass. So I started
writing for them right away. I wrote the music with the concept that the
electric guitars, with melodic lines, and single lines together , might
sound like horns, or trombones, or anything you wanted to imagine. So
we had a rehearsal and played it back on the tape and it came out just
like I said.'' Although people tend to lump his music under the
questionable umbrella of the avant-garde - a term which puts some
listeners off - Jenkins says his music is accessible and that people
naturally like it. He believes the fault lies more in presentation,
distribution, and advertising than it does in the nature or quality of
the music itself. ''After [John] Coltrane and Ornette [Coleman],
it wasn't swinging any more. It got too complicated. It got to be a
little ivory-towerish. The only people listening to it were
college-educated people and the middle class. The black community
certainly wasn't listening to it. They don't even listen to bebop -
they're listening to disco.'' In an attempt to broaden his
audience and understand what people look for in music, he ''hit the
streets'' and the discos to, as he describes it, ''Pick up on the
vibes.'' His current band, Sting, which he put together last June, is an
outgrowth of this desire and willingness to share his music. The group,
with its mostly string format - two violins, two guitars, electric
bass, and drums, with violinst Terry Jenoure adding vocals, could hardly
be described as ''avant-garde'' or ''esoteric,'' yet it's certainly not
old-hat or unoriginal. The music swings, even stomps at times, and one
is occasionally reminded of some of Charles Mingus's early rhythmic and
melodic eccentricities. Nevertheless, Jenkins did have his day
with the so-called ''new music,'' or avant-garde of the 1960s, that
rebellious foray into chordless, beatless, melodyless, yet nonetheless
often exciting cacophony. He reminisced: ''It was kind of exciting, the
so-called 'black movement' - it was a revolutionary spirit going on
there. But people weren't ready to accept it from a commercial point of
view, the record companies. Everybody would say, 'This stuff don't
swing' - even the beboppers would say it. They didn't like it, they
didn't understand it.'' The musicians who played this music were
ultimately ostracized from the clubs , so they had to seek out new
places to play. Many ended up in the lofts in New York - large
warehouses where the musicians themselves often lived and performed as
well. Others moved to Europe. Jenkins mused on the plight of the
creative musician - ''They are afraid because they don't know how
they're being accepted. On one side they're being honored, and on the
other they're being treated like dogs. But we have to deal with it. ''Even
the people I've played with before may put me down and say I'm selling
out because I'm doing Sting. My duty is to keep myself current and in
the race at all times. If you're not strong enough to survive all these
little idiosyncracies in the music, you should get out of it.''
Fresh Faust, a jazz-rap opera in collaboration with librettist Greg Tate directed by Dominic Taylor. Performed at Boston's Institute of Contemporary Art (1994).
The Negros Burial Ground, a cantata in collaboration with librettist Ann T. Greene and director Dominic Taylor. Presented by The Kitchen (1996) and workshopped at UMass Amherst (1995).[4][5]
The
Three Willies, a multimedia jazz opera that explores the stereotype of
Black men as "perpetual suspect". Created in collaboration with
librettist Homer Jackson and choreographer Rennie Harris (Philadelphia
show), director Talvin Wilks (New York show), and conductor/music
director Alan Johnson (New York show).
Premiered at The Painted Bride in
Philadelphia (1996),[6] New York premiere at The Kitchen
(2001). Public Panels were jointly organized with the New York
University Vera List Center for Art and Politics[7] and a
Digital Happy House on Race, Identity, and Media moderated by Christian
Haye. Produced by Providence Productions International, Inc. with the
support of Tyler School of Art at Temple University. Co-produced by The
Kitchen.
Coincidents, a multimedia opera in collaboration with
librettist Mary Griffin and visual artist Hisao Ihara. Jenkins and
Griffin use incidents from their personal family histories to illustrate
the fragility, flexibility, and resilience of individual identity.
Performed at Roulette Intermedium in Brooklyn (2012).[8]
Leroy Jenkins, who has died of lung cancer at the age of 74, was one of
jazz's boldest explorers of both the violin's and the viola's potential
in non-classical music. He belonged to a 1960s generation whose heroes
were the free-improvising saxophonists Ornette Coleman (who also taught
himself to play the sax-like violin) and John Coltrane. Unlike such older jazz fiddle virtuosi as the 1920s pioneer Joe
Venuti or the swing star Stephane Grappelli, later jazz violinists felt
released from classical standards of purity and western lyricism.
Coleman's playing drew on country hoedowns and blues as well as jazz,
but strayed way outside equal-tempered scales. Jenkins, and his more
widely acclaimed student Billy Bang, took a similar course, with the
classically trained Jenkins exploring voice-mimicking sounds,
20th-century art music innovations and sometimes the use of an electric
wah-wah pedal.
Advertisement
But
if Jenkins could subvert his instrument's traditional elegance with a
rough, percussive bowing attack and an abrasive tone, his improvisations
invariably had the balance and shape of a composer, which he also was.
He liked the mantra-like recurring phrase, subtly varied by small
alterations and sometimes closed or freshly galvanised by a staccato
flourish. His music looked back to the raw, unvarnished jazz violin
style of the 1930s pioneer Stuff Smith, but was as modern as Coleman,
Coltrane, saxist Anthony Braxton or Bartok. A radical in music and musical politics, Jenkins was at first drawn
to cooperative projects rather than band-leading. He was an early and
prominent member of Chicago's influential Association for the
Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM), worked from 1969 to 1970 in
the US and Paris with such farsighted improviser/composers as Braxton
and trumpeter Leo Smith, and helped sustain the powerful Revolutionary
Ensemble improvising trio for six years. From the mid-1970s, he
developed his own take on jazz-funk in the avant-fusion band Sting, and
then moved toward more contemporary-classical ventures, sometimes with
pianist Muhal Richard Abrams.
This development brought Jenkins many commissions and
opportunities for jazz-classical collaborations; his work was performed
by the Brooklyn Philharmonic and the Kronos Quartet, and his later
career saw partnerships with choreographers, writers and video artists. Born on Chicago's South Side, and encouraged by his pianist mother,
Jenkins learned the clarinet, alto saxophone, bassoon, violin and viola
as a child, and was playing in St Luke's, the city's biggest Baptist
church, by the time he was 10 - sometimes accompanied by pianist Ruth
Jones (Dinah Washington). He then joined the Ebenezer Baptist church
choir and orchestra, and played alto sax at DuSable high school. He
attended Florida Agricultural and Mechanical University on bassoon, but
worked as an R&B saxophonist out of college hours, and then became a
high-school violin teacher in Mobile, Alabama. Returning to Chicago in
the mid-1960s, he became involved with the AACM cooperative, soon
establishing himself as free jazz's most inventive violinist. In 1967 he
co-founded the Creative Construction Company with Braxton and Smith,
which migrated to Paris, where he also recorded with the Coltranesque
saxophonist Archie Shepp. On returning to New York, he initially lived
in Coleman's SoHo loft. Jenkins continued to perform with Shepp in the 1970s, and with
trumpeter Don Cherry and drummer Paul Motian, but it was the
Revolutionary Ensemble that saw some of his most sophisticated work of
that decade. As with Chicago's legendary Art Ensemble, the group's
materials were African-American music at its widest definition, and its
members (Jenkins, bassist Sirone and drummer Jerome Cooper) were
multi-instrumentalists who made a bigger and richer sound than the trio
line-up suggested. In the late 1970s, Jenkins worked as a player and composer with
pianist Anthony Davis (a classically inclined performer also fascinated
by gamelan music) and drummer Andrew Cyrille. The trio often suggested
links with the idiosyncratic piano virtuoso Cecil Taylor, but Jenkins
also confirmed enduring debts to the influence of saxophone players on
such scalding adventures as Brax Stone (dedicated to Braxton) and Albert
Ayler: His Life Was Too Short. Jenkins then formed Sting, following
Coleman's move to a free-electric music with Prime Time. Though he mostly suspended recording between the mid-1980s and the
early 1990s, he became active on the board of the Composers Forum, the
new-music pressure group in New York, worked as a soloist and stepped up
his composition output. He also worked in a typically uncompromising
quintet led by Taylor, in a duo with Art Ensemble saxophonist Joseph
Jarman and, in the late 1990s, in the trio Equal Interest, with Jarman
and pianist Myra Melford. Jazz
occupied Jenkins far less in his later career. He composed the opera
Mother of Three Sons as a collaboration with dancer Bill T Jones;
reworked the Faust legend with hip-hop overtones on 1994's Fresh Faust;
and followed it with "a cantata for the departed" called The Negroes
Burial Ground in 1996 and the opera The Three Willies. Yet he remained a dazzling violin improviser. The 1998 album Solo, an
unaccompanied set that visited such demanding modal and bebop
excursions as Coltrane's Giant Steps and Dizzy Gillespie's Wouldn't You,
demonstrated how creatively profound was Jenkins' grasp of orthodox
jazz structure, yet how eloquently he could live without it. He is
survived by his wife Linda and daughter Chantille.
· Leroy Jenkins, violinist and composer, born March 11 1932; died February 24 2007
Q: I think a lot of people who have admired your playing over the years have
bemoaned the paucity of appearances and chances to hear you in different
situations.
LJ: Yes.
Q: So we'll try to rectify that a little bit, and hear a number of situations
that you've documented. A CD with the electric band, Leroy Jenkins
Live, is out. A solo CD will be coming out in the near future on Lovely
Music.
LJ: Yes. I did it in Santa Fe. It's going to be called Santa Fe, in
fact. I did it at the Contemporary Arts Center there. That's typical of what
I do a lot. I play a lot of contemporary museums, alternative performance
spaces. I do quite a bit of that throughout America. Not too much in Europe,
but throughout America. In just about every little town and big town, you
have some . . .
Q: You're on the circuit.
LJ: I'm on the circuit somehow or another. That's true. Maybe not a whole
bunch a lot, but enough to kind of manage to keep the water a little below the
nose, you know -- since I'm an artist and you're supposed to have a nose in
the water all the time.
Q: You've also been getting some commissions for compositions, and I believe
we'll be hearing some of that material as well.
LJ: Right. I have. In fact, I started off around '86 or '87 with the
Brooklyn Philharmonic, and afterwards the Kronos Quartet commissioned a piece,
which is coming out on CRI -- not the Kronos version; the Soldier String
Quartet is doing it. So I'm just everywhere. Trying to be everywhere anyway.
What's cued up now is the Overture to my opera. The opera I wrote and had
played in Munich and in Aachen and in Houston, Texas and at the City Opera
here. So I've had about 25 performances in all. Anne Green wrote the
libretto, a very fine writer with whom I hope to collaborate with in the
future. Bill T. Jones directed and choreographed. The recording was done at
WDR in Aachen, Germany, which is a small opera house there near the border of
the Netherlands. I'm the soloist. The name of the opera is The Mother Of
Three Sons.
[Music]
Q: Over the years you've been involved in a lot of what I guess what one might
call cross-genre improvising. In the press these days, the idea of what are
the boundaries or definitions are starting to be thrown around by various
people.
LJ: Yes.
Q: Now, you are from Chicago, and started out as an alto saxophonist and
disciple of Charlie Parker in the 1940s, as you once described to me.
LJ: Mmm-hmm.
Q: What are your feelings vis-a-vis definitions of the music? Do you feel
that they are useful in any way? Do you feel they have any bearing on the
contemporary musical world?
LJ: Well, no. I think the only bearing it has is that it serves to split the
musical world. But I think it should be called "American music." Because
just about anything American in music has a bit of jazz in it, or blues. I
don't care. I mean, if you're talking about American music, you're going to
have a bit of jazz and a bit of . . . I mean, even the composers that were
aware, that tried to be aware that came to America from Europe, their music
changed. Stravinsky, all those guys. When they came here, the music was in
the air. So of course, they had to employ some of it. I mean, it's just hard
to miss or hard to ignore. So I think if we just cut out all the things and
just say "American Music," that would . . . Even the classical American music;
there are a few Classical writers who are familiar with jazz and sometimes
employ that in their music -- the writing part; not necessarily the
improvisation, but the writing. They hear that. I mean, they couldn't help
it, because it's just in America.
The different definitions have only served so far to confuse people. Even
myself. Really. I really don't know myself what I play, except American
music. Usually somebody in America, that's what they do . . . If you tell them
you're a musician, they say, "What kind of music do you play?" And sometimes
I really don't know what to say. The reason I don't want to say jazz is
because that might mislead them, because usually people think of jazz in a
one-dimensional way -- not that jazz is one-dimensional, but they think of it
like that. And I'm not like that. I mean, I'm spread out all over the place.
I'm an artist, and in order for me to survive, I have to play American music.
I can't deal with jazz per se.
Q: It seems to me that part of this debate, as it goes on, would say that you
as a violinist, if you're not dealing with, say, what Stuff Smith and Eddie
South and so forth and so on played, then you're doing something that's other
than jazz.
LJ: Mmm-hmm.
Q: That seems to me kind of limiting. But I'm wondering if you could talk
about some of the people, violinists and composers, who have really made you
take heed and been signposts for you in your development.
LJ: Well, I'll tell you, just about all the greats. I've been listening for
50 years maybe. Blues, pop, anywhere from Nat Cole to Mahalia Jackson to . . .
Well, Charlie Parker was the one that sort of said, you know, "I want to play
music."
He was my idol as a teenager, the great idol of my teenage
years, and he was the one that made me pick up the alto and become a part of
jazz. Before that, I was mostly a violinist who played teas and weddings and
things like that around Chicago. And I went to the Regal Theatre and saw all
the great bands -- Duke Ellington, Cab Calloway, Louis Armstrong. I saw all
those guys, too, but being that I was a violinist, I thought I'd never play in
a big band like that, because I never saw one -- except Ray Nance, he did a
little bit now and then.
Q: A Chicagoan as well.
LJ: Yes, he was a Chicagoan.
Q: Who came under Captain Walter Dyett's wing at Phillips High School about 15
years before you encountered Captain Dyett at DuSable.
LJ: Well, yeah, probably some way or another. If he wasn't as a student, he
probably gigged for him, because Captain Dyett had a lot of bands -- he had
outside bands after school. But I didn't really meet Ray Nance until I came
to New York. When I first came to New York I met him, because he was living
not too far from where I was, and I used to see him a lot.
Q: Particularly in the 1920s Chicago was full of black violinists, and there
was a lot of demand for them because there were many theatre and established
dance bands, like Erskine Tate, Doc Cooke, Charles Elgar and people like this.
LJ: That's right.
Q: Then when the bands began to dissolve because of talking pictures and the
Depression, there were all these strong violinists with no work.
LJ: Yes, that's true.
Q: Did you have good teachers?
LJ: Oh, yes. O.W. Frederick was my teacher. He was one of those violinists
you're talking about, that played shows and churches and teas and things like
that. He had a little orchestra. One of the reasons why I took lessons from
him is because I knew if I took them long enough, I'd get in his working
orchestra. He would play a lot of teas. We didn't make a lot, two or three
dollars, but that was a great prestige for me in those days to do that. So I
kind of like hurried up to try to be a good violinist so I could play in his
orchestra and play these different things, which I did. And maybe when
talkies came in and everything, Mr. Frederick had to go look for another kind
of way to work, and he started to teach and play teas and things like this.
Walter Dyett had also been a former violinist, and he also had to teach.
Because things started to change in Chicago. Talkies came in and they didn't
have to use musicians as much as they did. So a lot of the players had to
make allowances for that.
[Music:Electric Quintet, "A Prayer"]
Q: The AACM was a very important institution for you in your development as a
musician.
LJ: Yes, it was.
Q: Would you talk about your introduction to the AACM and how it affected the
course of your music?
LJ: Well, in 1964 I was still sort of pursuing bebop or whatever you want to
call it . . .
Q: On the violin?
LJ: On the violin, right.
Q: A thankless task.
LJ: Yes, it was. I mean, I was trying to find a voice. Let's say I was doing
that when I could, and trying to find a voice of my own in the meantime. What
happened is that my teacher, Bruce Hayden, who was a teacher I'd had at
Florida A&M, came to Chicago to work and play -- because he wanted to be in a
city and play. Anyway, one night he had a gig with Muhal, and afterwards
Muhal told him about the AACM and all that, and he came and told me about it.
They were having a concert one night by Roscoe Mitchell, and I went. So my
first introduction to the AACM was a concert by Roscoe Mitchell.
Q: In 1964?
LJ: In 1964.
Q: What did it sound like to you?
LJ: Oh, it was quite different. I mean, it was something I couldn't explain.
It was something I had never heard before. I liked it, but I didn't know what
they were doing. I remember during the intermission, my teacher, who I always
looked to to give me answers, instead was asking me what was it. And I didn't
know what to tell him, and of course, I knew he couldn't tell me. So we both
were quite befuddled as to what was happening. But we liked it. It was very
exciting, what they were doing. The instrumentation, two bass, two drums, a
tenor -- it looked a little lopsided.
Q: Do you remember who was playing with Roscoe?
LJ: I can't remember exactly, but I think Kalaparusha Difda was playing, and a
couple of drummers. I can't remember exactly . . .
Q: Alvin Fielder might have been one of the drummers.
LJ: Yeah, Alvin Fielder was one of the drummers. It wasn't Roscoe's regular
group, because in the AACM there were so many drummers, or this or that. So
every time a player, artist or composer was getting ready to do a concert, he
could just have his choice of all these different people. But I remember
Kalaparusha and Alvin Fielder. Anyway, that's been quite some time. But it
was very influential.
Muhal was working the door. That was the policy at the time; they would
always get another one of the brothers to operate the door to recruit. So I
went up to him and asked him about maybe coming around and joining it, and he
said, "Come around. Listen a couple of times before you play." Anyway, I had
my instrument in the back of my car; you know, in Chicago you drive, so I had
this car. So I put it in my trunk, and I went down without it. Then after a
while I could see that things were loose and I should just go back. So I went
upstairs and got my violin and came on down.
The guys immediately included me into the proceedings, which wasn't all the
time reading music. Sometimes it was just different improvisations strung
together under different instrumentations.
I mean, it was very experimental.
And Muhal was the director. Sometimes he would point to three of you, and
three would play, and then maybe one would play, and then maybe everybody, and
then everybody would fade into one. It was beautiful. I'd never heard
anything like that. They were orchestrating right before your very eyes.
Orchestrating improvisation. That's what it was like.
Boy, that was really something to me, even though I was playing in a little
more orderly fashion than I am now, or let's say a more traditional fashion.
These guys were squawking and squeaking and making sounds and doing different
things, and I was still playing little snatches of changes because I didn't
know anything else. Besides, in those days I didn't have an amplifier, so I
couldn't be heard that much, especially on the loud parts when everybody was
playing together. Anyway, I was still mystified and quite excited by the
prospects of it. You know, there were times I thought I didn't know if I
liked this music, or maybe these guys are a little crazy -- because they were
of their little enclave, so to speak.
But they were all together, and that was something unusual. I mean, in those
days where in Chicago drugs were prevalent and junkies were, too, to see
musicians clean like that and together and pursuing something was a revelation
for me. So I wanted to be around guys like that; you know, creative guys.
That was really the thing that attracted me.
There were times we went to clubs and to the jam sessions, and we'd walk in,
and all the beboppers would get off the stage because they didn't want to have
anything to do with us. And we'd get up there and we'd play. Usually we'd
just do a great noise; we'd start off in fortissimo and end in fortissimo!
And sometimes I would look at my fingers, but I couldn't hear anything -- not
myself; I couldn't hear me. But it was like a rage. And actually, when we
played like that, loud, I know a lot of people thought we were crazy, but
actually it became music. After a while, that loudness and that cacophony we
were playing started to make sense. You know what I mean? I imagine you'd
have to be in it in order to make sense out of it. I don't know. Maybe some
people on the outside didn't enjoy it. I think that's why we weren't so
popular in those days.
Q: You were having big fun, though.
LJ: We were having big fun, boy. We were running people out of those places,
clearing the bar!
Q: Making the club owners love you!
LJ: Yeah, they loved us. We used to clear the bar, boy; they'd get us out of
there.
What I liked about these guys is that they felt like what they were doing . . .
I wasn't fully won over at the time. When they walked in, Roscoe and Muhal
and Kalaparusha and Thurman Barker and Malachi and all those guys, they were
like confident that is what was happening, they exuded that confidence, it
came over to you -- I mean, you could feel it. So I sort of got caught up in
it. And after a little time with anything, you can sort of get an idea of
what's happening, and then after that start to do something with it, which I
did.
Before that I had been composing music, but mostly for school bands -- because
I was a teacher for about eight years before that. But this time I was
actually going to write music. Now, at the time, because we were trying to
wipe out that vestige for a little while, there was no bebop supposed to be
done. Like, sometimes Braxton and I would get together and play "Donna Lee,"
and Muhal or somebody would say, "No-no, no 'Donna Lee!'" They didn't want to
hear it. Nothing like that. In other words, we had to be completely closed
off from that. Because I'll tell you, everybody in that group had played
bebop one time or another -- everybody.
Q: Why was Bebop a stigma?
LJ: It wasn't a stigma at that time.
Q: Well, whatever it was, why was it frowned upon?
LJ: Well, because at the time, they had joined the enemy camp. They were like
the enemy. Because a lot of the big guys of bebop were putting it down.
That's how it was. Even though I was a former bebop, now I called myself, we
called ourselves making a step further, carrying this Music ahead -- you know,
doing the same thing they did. And of course, we were going to get the same
reactions they received, and probably from some of them, too. So they become
the enemy, so to speak, even though you love them, even though you respect
them -- which we did.
Q: You felt you had to do something else to get your own voice.
LJ: That's right. You have to get your own voice. We had to scream and
holler and say "Okay, we're here," and that's what we were doing. I think in
those days, when we were screaming and hollering . . .
Q: That was the '60s.
LJ: That's the '60s, boy. We were doin' it. I mean, after all, we were
testing the fabric of society. And we were black, and we wanted to be equal,
and all this was going down, they were killing our favorite presidents, they
were killing our leaders. We had a lot to shout about. There was no time for
regular orderly music then. We were supposed to shout and cry and stomp, and
that's what we were doing.
I mean, it's not like that any more, because we are not like what we were
then, even things maybe haven't changed that much. But we are just not like
that. We are older, more mature . . .
Q: You hooked up with the people who became the AACM before it actually was
the AACM, then the organization incorporated officially the next year, and you
became a registered . . .
LJ: A charter member, yes. I kind of lucked out. Because actually, Roscoe
and Malachi and Muhal and Joseph Jarman, those guys, they were there before
me. But I came in in 1964, just when they were chartering, so I got to be a
charter member. I was there all the time from '64 to '69; I was a full-
fledged workin'-hard member.
Q: At which time you went to Europe . . .
LJ: Yes, with Anthony Braxton and Leo Smith. Sometimes it was Anthony's
group, sometimes it was my group, sometimes it was Leo's group -- it was one
of those kind of things. But we were the first or second group of our type in
Europe in 1969, and we raised quite a bit of Cain.
Q: You and the Art Ensemble were over there at the same time.
LJ: Yes, they beat us over there by about a month.
Q: And it was also a time when people like Archie Shepp . . .
LJ: Archie Shepp.
Q: Lots of American musicians. Sunny Murray, Philly Joe Jones, Hank Mobley. .
.
LJ: Everybody was there. Philly Joe Jones was there. It was great. I played
with Philly Joe! I made a record with him. That was great.
Q: The 1970 date with Julio Finn . . .
LJ: Yeah. Oh, that was wonderful. We had great times over there. We were
like living the life of an artist. Braxton and I had a chateau. I mean, we
were like big-time. Country boys from Chicago, we weren't used to that kind
of thing.
Q: Conquering the Old World.
LJ: Right!
[Music: LJ with Jeffrey Schantzer, "Bluejay On The Fire Escape"]
Q: The Revolutionary Ensemble was the group with which you really entered the
public consciousness in the United States in the late 1970s.
LJ: And Europe. All over. It was a very important group for me. A very
important time for me, in fact.
By 1970, I was thoroughly indoctrinated into this music and knew exactly what
I wanted to do -- and I came to New York looking to do that. Luckily, I ran
into Sirone, the bass player, and later Jerome Cooper. So we got together and
practiced every day. In fact, we were rehearsing on 13th Street there every
day, five days a week, anywhere from 11 to 2 o'clock. I mean, we just hung
out. We just played and played, and my art of improvisation got tremendously
better, and the group got beautifully tight. And we did a little something,
created a little scene around New York, around the East Side, West Side and so
forth. We played a lot of places and we had a good time. We did quite a bit.
I think we were together maybe about seven or eight years.
Q: Now, you got together a little bit before the real influx of musicians to
New York from the Midwest and the West Coast.
LJ: Right. I was here in '70. I was the only one from the AACM here in 1970.
Q: And you participated in the first New York AACM concert, which was later
documented on Muse Records as the Creative Construction Company.
LJ: Actually, I got that together. I was working in connection with Kunle, who
was running an art shop, kind of an artifacts shop called Liberty House on
Bleecker Street. I was working there. I mean, he played Art Ensemble
records, played all the AACM records, he had rugs, different little artifacts,
incense -- it was a beautiful shop. And all the musicians hung out there. I
met a lot of musicians. Cecil Taylor came through there, Albert Ayler. I got
a gig from Albert Ayler. He came in one time; he was looking for a violinist.
He'd heard about me. My friend Moravia brought him in. So he said he'd like
to hear me and find out. So we said, "Well, we've got a place upstairs . . ."
Q: Albert Ayler had been using violins in his ensembles since the mid '60s.
LJ: Right. So we closed the shop, went upstairs and started playing. He
said, "Okay." So we had a gig. I did a gig with him in Springfield,
Massachusetts. And I was going to work a little more with him, but as you
know, he died around that time. I mean, he mysteriously died. It was kind of
mysterious at the time. Very frightening, too, at the time, because I was new
here, and when I heard that happened, I said, "Wow! Maybe I bit off a little
too much coming up here to New York."
Q: Ornette Coleman was playing a lot of violin then, too, and the Artists
House thing was very active.
LJ: Right. Ornette plays the violin backwards.
Q: How so?
LJ: Well, he has the G-string . . . I mean, he plays it left-handed. He's
self-taught, so his style is completely unique. Completely unique. Whatever
he does, you can believe it's not happening nowhere else. He's bad! I stayed
in his house when I first got here, for about three months or so, and I played
that violin. He had very good violins. He had very fine violins, in fact.
And I played his violins while I was up there, practiced a lot when I was
living in there. I was answering the phone for him when he got out of town,
stuff like that. But not only that, it was a musical thing, but I was able to
help a little -- because he was besieged, of course. I didn't realize he was
so famous until I got here, really, to tell you the truth. I thought all the
guys that were playing this kind of music were scuffling, you know. But when
I came here, I saw he wasn't. I mean, he said he was scuffling, but to me, on
my level, he wasn't scuffling. He had this great, beautiful loft . . . Oh, it
was just a great period. We used to hang out up there. Dewey Redman,
Braxton, Cherry, Blackwell, all those guys used to hang out with him. It was
a very nice period.
Q: Getting back to the Revolutionary Ensemble and the piece "Chicago," which
we'll hear performed by your electric quintet, whichyou've been working with
for ten years or so, on several recordings. Have you been able to function
with this band a fair amount?
LJ: Well, not really. I think the reason why I haven't is that I haven't been
in a position to really try as much as I could, because for the last four,
five, six, seven years, I've been doing a lot of composition, and it's kept me
kind of busy and it got me out of the performing thing. However, over the
years, I have been hitting three, four, five times a year with them. Of
course, I do a lot of different formats. But whenever I do make a tour like
this, where I can use the band, then I'll use this instrumentation.
Q: What is it about this instrumentation that appeals to you so much?
LJ: Well, the violin, I think, has to rely on electronics for the sound, as
far as the volume, to compete with the drums. The guitar, too. The
synthesizer just naturally has that sound. And then you have the electric
bass. The sounds are very clear. You don't have to do a lot of other things
to make the sound come out. Actually, we do it just to kind of get the
clarity, for the most part. I mean, when we get a good sound check, I think
the electronic instrumentation does this well. It gives it a kind of balance
without having to press for it. The violin that I'm using now is actually a
solid state violin, like a guitar. It's made out of the same kind of material
as a guitar; it's very shiny and everything, and it's solid state. And the
sound comes through the amplifier more than the violin.
Q: Is this the violin you're performing with in most situations now?
LJ: No, no. I still play acoustical.
Q: So with the electric band you're using it.
LJ: Yes. Or with a band where I have a lot of instruments that I have to sort
of blend with, yes, I use that.
Q: How long have violins like that been available? How did you get turned on
to them?
LJ: Well, they haven't been available that long. When I first came to New
York, I didn't have anything. I just thought I'd be able to play acoustical
violin. But I soon found out that it wouldn't be possible to do that and come
through. So I started using a pick-up. So I did that with the Revolutionary
Ensemble; I used an old pick-up that I kind of wrapped around my tail-piece in
some precarious way. Sometimes it would fall off. Then after a while Barcus-
Berry I think came up with one where it was in the bridge, it was more stable,
and it had a pretty good sound. It was a little heavy on the lower strings
and a kind of brittle. Then after a while, I guess ten years ago, maybe more
than that, the violin company that I'm now using, Zeder(?) Violin, they've
come up with this instrument . . .
Q: Where is that made?
LJ: It's made in Oakland, California. And a lot of violinists are using them.
Even some classical players are using them, because it has a very good sound.
It sounds like a violin, and you don't have to press as hard, and it sounds
very even from the top to the bottom.
Q: Will this make Stradivariuses obsolete?
LJ: Oh, no way. Give me a Stradivarius any time. I think if I had a
Stradivarius, I might be able to deal without amplification, because they're
so powerful, and I wouldn't have to kind of worry . . . Well, I probably would
maybe a little bit, because the decibel level of a Strad compared to what
we're doing nowadays, I don't think it would stand a chance.
[Music: L. Jenkins Electric Quintet, "Chicago"]
Q: A caller wanted to know to what degree your music is notated and to what
degree improvised.
LJ: I have never really measured it as such. But since improvisation is my
main point in music, I try to always employ it. I employ it in everything.
When I write music even for the classical people, I put improvisation in
there, and they usually scream like banshees.
Q: Still?
LJ: Still.
Q: How do you find the classical musicians now? I'd think they'd have some
orientation towards it.
LJ: Well, the reason why they don't have it is because when you say
"improvisation," that means to them jazz, so to speak, playing in 12-bar or
8-bar or something like that. That's what they think. But with me it's not
that. I mean, with the knowledge they have of their instruments, they could
improvise. But they just don't have the concept. All they have to do is just
try to play something that would match what's going down in the music at a
particular time. What I'll always do, if I'm writing for classical people,
I'll have a strain running through the improvised part for them to kind of
hang on to. I don't know what it might be, but it will be something that they
can hang onto and probably improvise off. Whereas if I write for a group that
improvises, I don't have to worry about that.
But answering that question, my string quartet, "Themes and Improvisation on
The Blues" for the Kronos Quartet, they're not into improvisation per se, but
they were able to do it because I always laid down something that they could
hang onto, that they could try to create some interest from that. The
improvisation doesn't have to be about bars or anything. It's about feelings,
about what you feel you can get out of what's going on. That's what
improvisation is about, trying to get something across at a particular time,
whether it be changes or non-changes. And it's not free either. Because what
I write is usually not free. It's usually contained in a certain amount of
bars or the idea that's behind it ends at a certain point.
Q: It's a defined segment.
LJ: It's a defined segment, yes.
Q: The next piece comes from a forthcoming solo violin recital for Lovely
Music. You recorded a solo violin concert for India Navigation back in 1978.
LJ: Yes, at Washington Square Church. I sponsored the concert and everything.
It was one of the most successful ventures that I had gone into up to that
time.
Q: Solo recitals were another aspect of the AACM, on every instrument.
LJ: That's right.
Q: When did you first have to do one?
LJ: Well, I'll tell you, I didn't do any until after Braxton. Braxton did
one. It was his idea at first to do this. You know that recording he did for
Delmark? He did this solo album [For Alto. I thought he was crazy when
he did it, boy, but it turned out so beautifully. It's a great idea. So as a
result of that, I went into it.
Q: Is this a pastiche of live performances, or was it taken from one concert
performance?
LJ: This is taken from one concert performance. And this particular piece is
called "Umm-Chop-Ta-Chum," which is the rhythm behind what I'm doing here.
Q: And this has the "Jehovah" theme which you've recorded in a number of
situations.
LJ: Yes, that's my theme. I like that.
Q: "Through The Ages, Jehovah," it used to be called.
LJ: That's it. "Through The Ages, Jehovah," that's what it is. And I should
have had that down on this current record, but I didn't. But it's the same.
A
composer's identity is everything. Debussy was a proud musicien
franc,ais; Leroy Jenkins is a proud American violinist-composer who has
established his identity by merging the European classical tradition
with different ethnic music, defying categorization in the process.
"Avant-garde" prefixes to either classical or jazz labels don't tell the
whole story. Jenkins feels these merely cloud the issue, admitting
"it's very hard to get untyped."
Tonight he brings a sampling of
his atypical compositions to the Kennedy Center with his sextet Sting.
The lineup of two violins, two guitars, electric bass and drums, the
most commercial enterprise Jenkins has headed, developed from a workshop
he held in his studio.
"I thought I'd get a lot of violinists,
but it turned out I got a lot of guitarists," he recalls. "The object of
the workshop was for me to write music like an exercise so they could
get a chance to improvise. By accident the guitars on some of the
sections I had written started sounding like trombones through their
amplifiers. Manipulation of the amps made the guitar strings sound like a
violin and a trumpet."
Sting has combined jazz, R&B, hip-hop and a smidgen of classical
influences. The group's move in a more serious direction will be
unveiled in the premiere of Jenkins' "The Journey," which, as the
composer describes it, contains "music that goes places." You
didn't grow up in Chicago during the '30s and '40s without the blues.
Jenkins was no exception. The music of Muddy Waters, Jimmy Rushing and
Louis Jordan was part of his household. So how did he get interested in
the violin?
"My aunt had a boyfriend who played the violin and he
came over and played for me," he says. "I liked it, and I asked my
mother to buy me one." Jenkins started at the age of 8, easing into the
classical repertoire for 50 cents a lesson from the Rev. O.W. Fredrick
at Ebenezer Baptist Church. His progress was swift, his dedication
total. He eventually won a full scholarship to Florida A&M. But not
for violin -- for bassoon. His high school didn't have a string program,
so he picked up the instrument along with the clarinet and saxophone.
In
college, it was music morning, noon and night. Jenkins played bassoon
in the orchestra, violin and sax in the jazz band, clarinet in the
marching band and sax for various R&B groups in joints around
Tallahassee to support himself. Most important, he studied all the
strings and composed. He credits his teacher Bruce Hayden with
"legitimizing my violin training" and instilling a sense of pride. Black
classical violinists in the late '50s, he points out, were rare in
Chicago. In the South, they were "unheard of."
A black
classically trained violinist with jazz experience and a desire to
unlock all the potential of music couldn't have chosen a better place
than Chicago in 1965. Jenkins, who had come home to teach, made contact
through Hayden with Muhal Richard Abrams, Anthony Braxton, Roscoe
Mitchell and the other charter members of the Association for the
Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM).
Jenkins moved to New
York in 1970, taking the excitement of Chicago with him. He worked with
the most experimental musicians -- Albert Ayler, Archie Shepp, Cecil
Taylor, for starters. His Revolutionary Ensemble (1971-77), a trio of
violin, string bass and drums, provided the first viable outlet for
composing, though he mentions that the instrumentation "only gave me a
skeletal idea of what I really wanted to write." Jenkins' Mixed Quintet
made up of flute, French horn, bass clarinet, clarinet and violin
expanded harmonic and improvisational horizons. Here, necessity was the
mother of invention. "I started to create my own ideas for ensembles.
Nobody hired me or commissioned me, so I had to dream up what I'd like
to hear and write for it."
Things have improved recently. In 1983, the Brooklyn Philharmonic
Orchestra, with Jenkins as soloist, premiered his Concerto for
Improvised Violin and Orchestra. The Mixed Quintet played the Houston
New Music Festival. And last November, the Kronos Quartet debuted his
"Themes and Improvisations on the Blues" for a Carnegie Recital Hall
string quartet program he helped sponsor in his capacity as artistic
director for the Composers' Forum.
And there's Sting. Jenkins
wants to record with them before the year is out. The only problem is
the name. He thought up Sting "as a philosophical metaphor for
awakening." Instead, he feels he risks confusion with the ex-Police man
whose modus operandi is now jazz-rock. "I think I'm going to have to
change our name to the 'gut pluckers,' or something like that."
Leroy Jenkins has been a pioneer and influential figure in the world of
improvised music for over three decades. He began his violin training
as a child, received a B.S. in Music Education from Florida A&M
University in 1961, and then taught music in the schools of Alabama and
Chicago. Having studied classical violin, he was also influenced by the
great jazz masters, and found a way to meld the two influences when he
joined the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians, a
pivotal Chicago organization which originated a vibrant new form of
creative improvised music. Moving to Paris in 1969, Jenkins toured
Europe with his first group: The Creative Construction Company of
Chicago, with Anthony Braxton and Leo Smith. In 1970, he came to New
York and formed another cooperative, The Revolutionary Ensemble, a trio
of bass, violin, and drums, which toured internationally to critical
acclaim, and went on to record five albums. He also developed his solo
compositions and premiered his first works in this format at a concert
at the Washington Square Peace Church in Greenwich Village. In the ‘70s
and ‘80s Jenkins received major support for music composition with many
grants and commissions for chamber ensemble, orchestra, dance, and
theater - from the National Endowment for the Arts, New York Foundation
for the Arts and the New York State Council for the Arts. During this
period, in addition to touring as a soloist and with various
instrumental groups under his leadership, his music was performed by the
Brooklyn Philharmonic, the Albany Symphony, the Cleveland Chamber
Symphony, the Kronos Quartet, the Dessoff Choirs, the Pittsburgh New
Music Ensemble, and the New Music Consort, among others. Jenkins also
toured and held residencies at many American universities including
Oberlin, Bennington, Harvard, Brown, University of Michigan, Williams,
and Duke. He was invited to be guest composer/ master teacher/performer
at organizations such as the Della Rosa of Portland,Tom Buckner's
Interpretations series in New York, the American Composers series at the
Kennedy Center, the Atlantic Center for the Arts, and the Atlanta
Virtuoso, and the First American Violin Congress (Artistic Director: Sir
Yehudi Menuhin) Jenkins serves on the Board of Directors of Meet the
Composer in New York and the Atlantic Center for the Arts, and as
Artistic Director and Board Member of Composers" Forum. He has sat on
many panels for music including the National Endowment, the Herb Alpert
Foundation, The Bush Foundation, The Pew Charitable Trusts, New York
Foundation for the Arts, and the New York State Council for the Arts. He
placed numerous times in critics" and readers" polls in Downbeat and
Jazz Magazine. In 1989 Jenkins was commissioned by Hans Werner Henze for
the Munich Bienale New Music Theater Festival to write the
opera/ballet, Mother Of Three Sons, choreographed and directed by Bill
T. Jones. It premiered in Munich and was later staged by the New York
City Opera, the Houston Opera, and was broadcast on German television.
He received a Bessie (New York Dance and Performance Award) “for the
lyrical, intricately constructed river of jazz and opera". In groupings
from solo to chamber orchestras, Jenkins has recorded 25 albums/ CD's,
nine of which have been reissued. His most recent touring group was
formed in 1999 (Equal Interest, a trio with violin, piano, and
woodwinds). The British Arts Council commissioned its members to write
pieces for the group and nine British musicians which were performed on a
ten city tour of England. Jenkins also tours with dancer Felicia Norton
(solo violin and dancer) and was commissioned twice by Lincoln Center's
Out of Doors Series for collaborations with choreographers Molissa
Fenley and Mark Dendy. Other recent projects have been a commissioned
piece for tenor, baritone, and brass quartet which was performed at
Merkin Hall as part of the World Music series in New York, in San
Francisco and at North Florida State University. In 1998, the Cleveland
Chamber Symphony performed and recorded Wonderlust, his piece for
chamber orchestra and two soloists. During the spring semester of 2001
Jenkins was been at the Other Minds Festival in San Francisco,
California Institute for the Arts, the Contemporary Museum in New
Orleans, the Chicago Jazz Festival, as well as international jazz
festivals in Portugal, Sardinia, and Canada. In the late 90's Jenkins
was commissioned to write several music/theater pieces with grants
for Artist in Residence at California Institute for the Arts. Most recent
appearances have om the Rockefeller Foundation. Fresh Faust used rap
artists and was presented in workshop at the Institute of Creative Arts
in Boston. The Negro Burial Ground, a cantata, was presented in workshop
at the Kitchen Center in New York. A later work, The Three Willies
(2001) was presented at The Painted Bride in Philadelphia and at the
Kitchen Center. Currently, with support from the Rockefeller Foundation
and the New York State Council of the Arts Jenkins is developing a new
theater/opera piece with a working title of Coincidents. The first
section was presented in workshops at The Kitchen Center in July, 2003.
In the fall of 2003 he was awarded a composition grant from Harvard's
Fromm Foundation to continue this project. In 2004 he was again
supported in his work on Coincidents with a Guggenheim Fellowship. He is
currently touring with the Revolutionary Ensemble and Equal Interest.
THE MUSIC OF LEROY JENKINS: AN EXTENSIVE VIDEO OVERVIEW, A CROSS SECTION OF RECORDINGS, MUSICAL ANALYSIS AND COMMENTARY, PLUS VARIOUS INTERVIEWS WITH LEROY JENKINS:
Kofi Natambu, editor of and contributor to Sound Projections, is a writer, poet, cultural critic, and political journalist whose poetry, essays, criticism, reviews, and journalism have appeared in many literary magazines, journals, newspapers, and anthologies. He has written extensively about music as a critic and historian for many publications, including the Black Scholar, Downbeat, Solid Ground: A New World Journal, Detroit Metro Times, KONCH, the Panopticon Review,Black Renaissance Noire, the Village Voice, the City Sun (NYC), the Poetry Project Newsletter (NYC), and the African American Review. He is the author of a biography Malcolm X: His Life & Work (Alpha Books) and two books of poetry: The Melody Never Stops (Past Tents Press) and Intervals (Post Aesthetic Press). He was the founder and editor of Solid Ground: A New World Journal, a national quarterly magazine of the arts, culture, and politics and the editor of a literary anthology Nostalgia for the Present (Post Aesthetic Press). Natambu has read his work throughout the country and given many lectures and workshops at academic and arts institutions. He has taught American literature, literary theory and criticism, cultural history and criticism, film studies, political science, creative writing, philosophy, critical theory, and music history and criticism (Jazz, Blues, R&B, Hip Hop) at many universities and colleges. He was also a curator in the Education Department of Detroit’s Museum of African American History. Born in Detroit, Michigan, Natambu currently lives in Berkeley, California with his wife Chuleenan.
Leroy Jenkins 
