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.
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'Rhythm and Blues’, ‘Rock and Roll’, ‘Pop’, ‘Funk’, ‘Hip Hop’, etc. in order to search for what individual
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So please join me in this ongoing visceral, investigative, and cerebral quest to explore, enjoy, and pay
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Saturday, August 10, 2019
Kenny Barron (b. June 9, 1943): Legendary, iconic, and innovative musician, composer, arranger, ensemble leader, producer and teacher.
SOUND PROJECTIONS
AN ONLINE QUARTERLY MUSIC MAGAZINE
EDITOR: KOFI NATAMBU
SUMMER, 2019
VOLUME SEVEN NUMBER TWO
HOLLAND DOZIER HOLLAND
(L-R: Lamont Dozier, Eddie Holland, Brian Holland)
A highly respected, immensely influential jazz pianist, Kenny Barron is a sophisticated improviser, composer, bandleader, and educator. Emerging during the hard bop era, Barron established himself early on as an in-demand sideman, working alongside his brother, saxophonist Bill Barron, as well as with such titans as Dizzy Gillespie, James Moody, Booker Ervin,
and others. Blessed with fluid technique and a nuanced sense for chord
voicings, he is the epitome of the modern jazz pianist, at home in
swinging straight-ahead dates and more forward-thinking settings. Since
the '70s, he has also dedicated himself to passing along his knowledge,
working as an instructor at the university level. Although often thought
of as a journeyman with numerous session credits, Barron is a virtuoso performer with many well-regarded albums under his own name.
Born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, on June 9, 1943,
he took on the piano at the age of 12, with a little help from Ray Bryant's sister, known today as the mother of guitarist Kevin Eubanks. Three years later, on the recommendation of his own big brother, saxophonist Bill Barron
(1927-1989), he joined Mel Melvin's rhythm & blues band. The
aspiring pianist gained more experience while working with drummer Philly Joe Jones and saxophonist Jimmy Heath, as well as multi-instrumentalist Yusef Lateef in Detroit. Lateef's album The Centaur and the Phoenix (1960) was Barron's first modern jazz recording project -- not as a performer (Joe Zawinul was the pianist on this date) but as composer and arranger.
His recording debut as an improvising artist, The Tenor Stylings of Bill Barron,
took place shortly after he moved to New York in 1961, and was the
first of many albums with his brother. A session in 1962 found Barron working with trumpeter Dave Burns, onetime member of sax and flute man James Moody's exciting bop orchestra. Moody himself played an important role in Barron's career, first hiring him to perform at the Village Vanguard, then bringing him into Dizzy Gillespie's band. Barron stuck with Diz and Moody until 1966, performing at clubs and festivals on both coasts and touring through France and England.
Barron's artistic balance of freedom and discipline would continue to bear fruit in the '70s as he worked regularly with saxophonists Chico and Von Freeman, John Stubblefield, Nick Brignola, and Stan Getz (with whom he toured extensively during Getz's twilight years). The stylistic range continued to widen as Barron sat in with violinists Michal Urbaniak and John Blake, drummer Elvin Jones, and singing trombonist Ray Anderson. He also delivered several of his own albums, including 1973's Sunset to Dawn, 1975's Lucifer, and 1978's Together with fellow pianist Tommy Flanagan. Also beginning in the '70s, Barron joined the faculty at Rutgers University, teaching piano and keyboard harmony.
By the turn of the century, Barron
had established himself as both a piano virtuoso and journeyman artist
who issued solo, duo, and large-ensemble recordings. In 2000, he
released the Grammy-nominated Spirit Song, followed quickly by the release of Freefall, featuring violinist Regina Carter, in 2001. Also around this time, he left his position at Rutgers and joined the faculty at Juilliard. Barron then moved to a quintet setting for 2004's Images. Four years later, he collaborated with West African guitarist Lionel Loueke on Traveler. Vocalist Claire Martin was the next beneficiary of Barron's deft accompanist skills on her album Too Much in Love to Care in 2012.
Kenny Barron's unmatched ability to mesmerize audiences with
his elegant playing, sensitive melodies and infectious rhythms is what
inspired “The Los Angeles Times” to name him “one of the top jazz
pianists in the world” and “Jazz Weekly” to call him “The most lyrical
piano player of our time.”
Philadelphia is the birthplace of many
great musicians, including one of the undisputed masters of the jazz
piano: Kenny Barron. Kenny was born in 1943 and while a teenager,
started playing professionally with Mel Melvin's orchestra. This local
band also featured Barron's brother Bill, the late tenor saxophonist. At
age 19, Kenny moved to New York City and was hired by James Moody after
the tenor saxophonist heard him play at the Five Spot.
He joined
Dizzy Gillespie's band in 1962, where he developed an appreciation for
Latin and Caribbean rhythms. After five years with Dizzy, Barron played
with Freddie Hubbard, Stanley Turrentine, Milt Jackson, and Buddy Rich.
In 1971 he joined Yusef Lateef's band. It is Lateef who Kenny credits as
a key influence in his art for improvisation. In 1973 Kenny joined the
faculty at Rutgers University as professor of music. He held this tenure
until 2000, mentoring many of today's young talents including David
Sanchez, Terence Blanchard, and Regina Bell. In 1974 he recorded his
first album as a leader for the Muse label, entitled “Sunset To Dawn.”
This was to be the first of over 40 recordings (and still counting!) as a
leader.
Throughout the 1980's, Kenny collaborated with the great
tenor saxophonist Stan Getz, touring with his quartet and recording
several albums, one of which was nominated for a Grammy (”People Time”)
Also during the 80's, he co-founded the quartet “Sphere,” along with
Buster Williams, Ben Riley and Charlie Rouse. This band focused on the
music of Thelonious Monk and original compositions inspired by him.
Sphere recorded several outstanding projects for the Polygram label,
among them “Four For All” and “Bird Songs.” After the death of Charlie
Rouse, the band took a 15-year hiatus and reunited, replacing Rouse with
alto saxophonist Gary Bartz. This reformation made its debut recording
for Verve Records in 1998.
Kenny Barron's own recordings for
Verve have earned him five Grammy nominations, most recently for “Spirit
Song” in 2000. Prior Grammy nominations went to “Sambao,” “Night and
the City” (a duet recording with Charlie Haden) and “Wanton Spirit” (a
trio recording with Roy Haynes and Haden.) It is important to note that
these three recordings each received double-Grammy nominations (for
album AND solo performance.) Barron consistently wins the jazz critics
and readers polls, including Downbeat, JazzTimes and Jazziz magazines.
He has been named Best Pianist by the Jazz Journalists Association every
year since 1997 and was as a finalist in the prestigious 2001 Jazz Par
International Jazz Award.
Throughout his career, Kenny Barron has
been the pianist of choice for some of jazz's greatest musicians. Now
at age 58, whether he is playing solo, with his Trio or his newest
ensemble, “Brazilia” (a quintet featuring some of Brazil's greatest
musicians), Kenny Barron is now recognized the world over as a master of
performance and composition.
Listen to this recent interview with Kenny Barron aired on Fred Kasten’s Jazz New Orleans show on WWNO
the night before Kenny’s recent appearance at Jazz Fest in New Orleans –
it’s an 8 minute or so mini-bio – followed by a full performance of his
tune “Sambao.”
Honored by The National Endowment for the Arts as a 2010 Jazz Master,
Kenny Barron has an unmatched ability to mesmerize audiences with his
elegant playing, sensitive melodies and infectious rhythms. The Los
Angeles Times named him “one of the top jazz pianists in the world” and
Jazz Weekly calls him “The most lyrical piano player of our time.”
Philadelphia is the birthplace of many great musicians, including one
of the undisputed masters of the jazz piano: Kenny Barron. Kenny was
born in 1943 and while a teenager, started playing professionally with
Mel Melvin’s orchestra. This local band also featured Barron’s brother
Bill, the late tenor saxophonist.
While still in high school. Kenny worked with drummer Philly Joe
Jones and at age 19, he moved to New York City and freelanced with Roy
Haynes, Lee Morgan and James Moody, after the tenor saxophonist heard
him play at the Five Spot. Upon Moody’s recommendation Dizzy Gillespie
hired Barron in 1962 without even hearing him play a note. It was in
Dizzy’s band where Kenny developed an appreciation for Latin and
Caribbean rhythms. After five years with Dizzy, Barron played with
Freddie Hubbard, Stanley Turrentine, Milt Jackson, and Buddy Rich. The
early seventies found Kenny working with Yusef Lateef who Kenny credits
as a key influence in his art for improvisation. Encouraged by Lateef,
to pursue a college education, Barron balanced touring with studies and
earned his B.A. in Music from Empire State College, By 1973, Kenny
joined the faculty at Rutgers University as professor of music. He held
this tenure until 2000, mentoring many of today’s young talents
including David Sanchez, Terence Blanchard and Regina Bell. In 1974
Kenny recorded his first album as a leader for the Muse label, entitled
“Sunset To Dawn.” This was to be the first in over 40 recordings (and
still counting!) as a leader.
Following stints with Ron Carter in the late seventies Kenny formed a
trio with Buster Williams and Ben Riley which also worked alongside of
Eddie Lockjaw” Davis, Eddie Harris, Sonny Stitt and Harry “Sweets”
Edison. Throughout the 80’s Barron collaborated with the great tenor
saxophonist Stan Getz, touring with his quartet and recording several
legendary albums including “Anniversary”, “Serenity” and the Grammy
nominated “People Time” Also during the 80’s, he co-founded the quartet
“Sphere,”along with Buster Williams, Ben Riley and Charlie Rouse. This band
focused on the music of Thelonious Monk and original compositions
inspired by him. Sphere recorded several outstanding projects for the
Polygram label, among them “Four For All” and “Bird Songs.” After the
death of Charlie Rouse, the band took a 15-year hiatus and reunited,
replacing Rouse with alto saxophonist Gary Bartz. This reunion made its
debut recording for Verve Records in 1998.
Kenny Barron’s own recordings for Verve have earned him nine Grammy
nominations beginning in 1992 with “People Time” an outstanding duet
with Stan Getz followed by the Brazilian influenced “Sambao and most
recently for “Freefall” in 2002. Other Grammy nominations went to
“Spirit Song”, “Night and the City” (a duet recording with Charlie
Haden) and “Wanton Spirit” a trio recording with Roy Haynes and Haden.
It is important to note that these three recordings each received
double-Grammy nominations (for album and solo performance.) His CD,
“Canta Brasil” (Universal France) linked Barron with Trio de Paz in a
fest of original Brazilian jazz, and was named Critics Choice Top Ten
CDs of 2003 by JazzIz Magazine. His 2004 release, Images (Universal
France) was inspired by a suite originally commissioned by The Wharton
Center at Michigan State University and features multi-Grammy nominated
vibraphonist Stefon Harris. The long awaited trio sequel featuring Ray
Drummond and Ben Riley, The Perfect Set, Live At Bradley’s, Part Two
(Universal France/Sunnyside) was released October 2005.
In Spring 2008 Mr. Barron released The Traveler (Universal France),
an intoxicating mix of favorite Barron tunes set to lyrics and newly
penned compositions. For his first vocal based recording, Barron invited
Grady Tate (who sheds his drumsticks for this special appearance), Tony
award winner Ann Hampton Calloway and the young phenom Gretchen
Parlato, winner of the Thelonious Monk International Competition for
Jazz. On “Um Beijo”, Mr. Tate’s warm, leathery voice balanced by Mr.
Barron’s poignant touch make for a beautifully textured conversation,
underscoring their longtime on stage collaboration. Another Barron
original, “Clouds” is a lush vehicle for Ann Hampton Calloway’s romantic
pitch-perfect yearnings matched with Barron’s trademark mastery of
subtlety. The dramatic “Phantoms” intertwines Parlato’s ephemeral
intimacy and syncopatic rhythms in an emotional escapade between
Barron’s haunting notes, the West African stylings of guitarist Lionel
Loueké, drummer Francisco Mela (who also adds a Cuban flavor to the
vocals) and the driving bass of Kiyoshi Kitagawa. The journey continues
with the aptly named “Duet” an improvisation with Benin-born Loueké who
also joins the trio for a rousing version of Barron’s “Calypso”. A
composer who relishes in the moment, Barron’s modern approach is
highlighted by alto saxophonist Steve Wilson’s open musings on
“Illusion” and “The Traveler” who also brings an urgency to the
fun-paced “Speed Trap”.
After a successful musical meeting of the minds with bassist Dave
Holland, the two masters decided to collaborate on a duet project to be
released on Impulse/Universal records in 2014 followed by a tour.
Barron consistently wins the jazz critics and readers polls,
including Downbeat, Jazz Times and Jazziz magazines. The famed Spanish
ceramist Lladro honored Mr. Barron with a Lifetime Achievement Award in
2012 and he was awarded an Honorary Doctorate from his alma mater SUNY
Empire State in 2013 and from Berklee College of Music in 2011. In 2009
he received the Living Legacy Award from Mid-Atlantic Arts Foundation
and was inducted into the American Jazz Hall of Fame and won a
MAC Lifetime Achievement Award in 2005. He is a six-time recipient of
Best Pianist by the Jazz Journalists Association.
Whether he is playing solo, trio or quintet, Kenny Barron is
recognized the world over as a master of performance and composition.
“An icon.” I’ve just used the word to describe 71-year-old
pianist Kenny Barron, and as we get up from a dimly lit but bustling
happy hour in Midtown Manhattan, he’s not buying it for a second. In
fact he scoffs at it, then drapes a tan overcoat over his rotund frame
for the walk back to Birdland, where he’s playing out the week in a duo
with Dave Holland. It’s October, about a week after the release of The Art of Conversation, the pair’s album for the recently revived Impulse! label.
But few in the jazz community would agree. Before you hear a note,
Barron’s career reads as iconic. A Philadelphia native, he learned jazz
through his saxophone-playing older brother Bill and took piano lessons
with Vera Bryant Eubanks (sister of Ray, mother of the Eubanks
brothers). He cut his teeth at 17 with Yusef Lateef, spent four years
with Dizzy Gillespie, and worked with Joe Henderson and James Moody
before beginning in earnest to build a solo career in the early ’70s.
Since then, Barron has led trios-currently with bassist Kiyoshi Kitagawa
and drummer Johnathan Blake-as well as quintets and sextets and the
all-star bands Sphere and the Classical Jazz Quartet. He’s a prolific
duo performer as well: Among others, Barron has collaborated with
violinist Regina Carter, vibraphonist Joe Locke and bassists Buster
Williams and (frequently) the late Charlie Haden. Stan Getz’s divine
final recording, People Time, was captured during a duo stand
with Barron in Copenhagen. As a sideman Barron is just as active and
consistent: He’s a veteran of hundreds of live dates and recording
sessions, including his work in Getz’s quartet from 1986 until the
saxophonist’s death in 1991.
The institutions around the music consider Barron a big deal, too. He is
an NEA Jazz Master, a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and
Sciences and a nine-time Grammy Award nominee. So does academia: He
spent more than a quarter-century teaching at New Jersey’s Rutgers
University; he’s since taught at Manhattan School of Music and,
currently, Juilliard, mentoring dozens of artists.
“Certainly he’s established himself as one of the leading piano players we have with us,” says Holland. “He’s a master.”
His scoff isn’t one of contempt but amusement. Calling Barron an “icon”
implies that he’s a celebrity, a household name and face-and in the
2010s such jazz icons are either dead or on TV. “I’m not that big a
deal,” he says.
That mastery is on fine display at Birdland. Barron, now in a gray
pinstriped suit, and Holland tackle Charlie Parker’s “Segment” with
gusto; the piano solo is an odyssey of hard-swinging, bluesy variations
on the theme. On Holland’s “The Oracle,” Barron begins in a delicate
ostinato, gradually applying more emphasis and embellishment until it
becomes a declaration of intent (and soul). He renders his own
Ornette-ish “What If” as a rhythmic collage: Uptempo bebop, bossa nova,
even eighths and rock backbeats all appear in Barron’s phrasing, which
he casts in textures that dart between intimations of Bud Powell and
Cecil Taylor.
Barron is renowned for his unerring time, his love of Latin and
Brazilian rhythms (employing them even in his bop-based playing) and a
harmonic confidence that often translates into derring-do. His touch is
the stuff of legend: high polish but also subtlety and sensitivity,
every note throwing a soft glow that you can all but see. “His touch on
the instrument is just really beautiful,” says pianist Aaron Parks, a
former student. “Such poise.” Then there’s his melodic conception.
Barron might develop a composition or improvisation through short riffs,
or spin long linear lines, but in both cases he maintains infectious
lyricism and precise logic. One can recognize a Barron piano
construction within two bars.
Powell is one of his greatest influences. (At the Piano, his 1981
solo recording, includes a dead-on impersonation in the tune
“Bud-Like.”) Greater still, however, is Tommy Flanagan, the graceful and
gregarious hard-bopper who died in 2001. “The touch that Tommy Flanagan
had, that was the touch that Kenny had in the very beginning,” says
trumpeter Jimmy Owens, a friend for 50 years. Indeed, listening to
Barron’s first recording, his brother’s 1961 Savoy date The Tenor Stylings of Bill Barron, one can hear the pianist applying Flanagan’s trademark descending phrases and dissonant chord voicings.
But three years later, Gillespie’s Something Old, Something New
found him experimenting with arpeggios and thematic abstractions like
those of Thelonious Monk. (The latter evolved into one of Barron’s own
hallmarks.) He kept developing. By the time of his own first album,
1973’s Sunset to Dawn, Barron’s style had matured. “Trying to
find my way!” Barron laughs, characterizing his early days. And how long
did it take to find it? “I’m still looking for it!” he exclaims. “I’m
serious! I’m closer-and I’m what, now, 71-but I’m still trying to find
it. Someone once said music is a journey, and it’s a never-ending
journey. And you don’t ever want to arrive. If you arrive, it’s over.”
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Michael J. West is a jazz journalist in Washington, D.C.
In addition to his work on the national and international jazz scenes,
he has been covering D.C.’s local jazz community since 2009. He is also a
freelance writer, editor, and proofreader, and as such spends most days
either hunkered down at a screen or inside his very big headphones. He
lives in Washington with his wife and two children.
To mark the 70th birthday of the magnificent
pianist-composer-conceptualist-educator Kenny Barron, who made it to the
big leagues of jazz at 18, not long after he moved to New York, and has
remained there ever since, I’m posting a pair of interviews we did on
WKCR — a Musician’s Show in 1991 and an appearance promoting a
week in a club in 2004. I’m also putting up the first of two interviews I
conducted with the maestro for a DownBeat profile—which leads this
entry—that I pitched and was given the opportunity to write in 2005.
Kenny Barron Downbeat Article:
The wall of windows behind the bandstand of Dizzy’s Coca-Cola Room
revealed a twilit tableau of Central Park treetops and the Fifth Avenue
skyline as pianist Kenny Barron, bassist John Patitucci and drummer Mino
Cinelu prepared to begin set one of the Kenny Barron Festival last
April. Barron put down his glass of red wine, cocked his head slightly
to the left, and began to play “Prelude To A Kiss.” He spun out flowing
rubato variations on the melody, imparting to his lines the joyous ache
of romance, then brightened the tempo and stated a kinetic Caribbean
beat as he painstakingly built the arc to ecstatic resolution.
As the sky turned indigo, and the lights of Fifth Avenue twinkled in the
distance, Barron sustained the Spanish tinge with discursive three-way
dialogues on “All Blues,” a tune he played frequently during a lengthy
‘70s stint with Ron Carter, and “Calypso,” a lively original that he
first recorded on a 1981 solo album for Xanadu. Then he parsed the
melody of Thelonious Monk’s “Shuffle Boil,” and embarked on a solo tour
de force, conjuring luscious voicings atop a rock solid stride to
complement the long, fluid, melodic lines he carved out with his right
hand, deviating slightly in tempo and inflection from a version that
appears on The Perfect Set, a new release on Sunnyside that documents an
April 1996 engagement at Bradley’s, the saloon that was then New York’s
sine qua non for piano jazz.
Thus inspired, Barron concluded the set with “Madman,” built on a fourth
interval theme constructed around a bass line he heard in his teens
from Hassan Ibn Ali, a famously eccentric Philadelphia pianist who
regularly came to Barron’s house to practice with his older brother,
Bill Barron, a tenor saxophonist with a taste for navigating the outer
partials. He channeled the into-the-wild-blue-yonder side of Bud
Powell, engaging in intense rhythmic dialogue with Cinelu; at the end,
he announced that this was his first public performance of the tune,
which he recorded in duo with Roy Haynes on Wanton Spirit [Verve] in
1995; he deviated from the record by adding a free, rubato coda.
The festival lasted three weeks, and Barron framed himself each week
within a different sonic environment. He shared the stage with Cinelu
for the remainder of week one, joined by bassist George Mraz and kora
player Abou M’Boop on nights three and four, and Mraz and guitarist
Romero Lubambo on the final two evenings. During week two, Barron
addressed hardcore, straight-ahead modern jazz, assembling a crackling
sextet, fueled by drummer Victor Lewis, to interpret his fire-to-romance
compositions. For the final week, Barron recruited Drummond and drummer
Grady Tate to form a Bradley’s style “classic” trio.
Throughout the engagement, Barron followed the imperatives of the
moment, resolving audacious ideas with the panache, in the words of
Victor Lewis, of “a cat who always lands on his feet.”
“The rhythms were all over the place,” Barron said of week one. “I don’t
think we played anything straight-ahead, which forced me to play other
things. We started with no preconceived ideas or notions, and the tunes
went whichever way they went.”
“What always surprises me about Kenny is his apparent nonchalance and
very casual approach, and yet the tiger within,” said Cinelu. In 1996
he and Barron collaborated on Swamp Sally
[Verve], a free-form electro-acoustic project on which Barron referenced
an exhaustively global lexicon of strategies and attacks.Swamp Sally is one of a string of Barron
recordings since 1992 on which French producer Jean-Philippe Allard
encouraged Barron—now a serial poll-winner and Grammy-nomintee, but then
typecast as a bop-oriented sideman supreme—to allow his imagination to
roam, and paved the way for him to assume his present stature as a
distinguished jazz elder. These albums include a kaleidoscopic duo with
violinist Regina Carter; two recitals of Barron’s Brazil-inflected
compositions, including Canta Brasil, a 2002
encounter with Trio de Paz; and several venturesome quintets and sextets
comprising diverse personnels and instrumental configurations, most
recently Images, with vibraphonist Stefon Harris, flutist Anne Drummond, and drummer Kim Thompson, all young stars on the rise.
Barron infuses each of these recordings with a spirit of spontaneity,
human warmth and dance-like grace that often eludes musicians who
possess his surfeit of technique.
“Kenny knows how to play inside the drums, and make the drummer sound
good,” says Danilo Perez, a keen student of Barron’s music. “He knows
how to syncopate—how to jab behind the beat for a swing feel, and jab on
top, pushing it just like a Latino. With the Brazilians, he plays the
subdivisions pretty much in their style. He’s a master of knowing what
to do at the right time, whomever he’s playing with.”
“I like music, and I like all of it,” Barron stated. “I don’t want to be
put in any kind of pigeonhole, even though I’m sure I am. Ideally, in
one set I can go through everything. One song might come out as straight
bebop, the next may go outside or be Brazilian. You don’t know what it
sounds like until it reveals itself, so to speak. I like not-knowing.
That’s the fun. Let’s see where it goes. I don ‘t think I need to go to
school and study Brazilian music for three or four years. I just need to
LISTEN to it, and respond whatever way I can.
“As you get older, you start to give yourself permission to make a
mistake. There’s another chorus coming! You can try it again. Whether
you make it or not, you’ve got to reach. Very interesting things can
develop through that process.”
* * * * * *
Barron bedrocks his predisposition for risk on a strong foundation in
the jazz tradition, which he absorbed first hand as a Philadelphia
teenager. “Bud Powell is at the core of what I do,” he said, citing
Horace Silver, Ahmad Jamal, Red Garland, Wynton Kelly, and McCoy Tyner
as other strong formative influences. At the top of Barron’s list,
however, is Tommy Flanagan. The infatuation began in ninth grade, when a
friend brought the 1956 Miles Davis-Sonny Rollins recording of “In Your
Own Sweet Way,” on which Flanagan sidemanned, for their art class to
paint to.
“I stopped painting,” Barron recalls. “It was so crystal clear, and the
touch was so light, so delicate. I fell in love with Tommy’s playing
right then and there. Nothing tugs on my heartstrings the way Tommy
could.”
Within several years, on Bill Barron’s say-so, Philly’s finest were
calling the youngster for cabaret gigs at Elks Clubs and Masonic Lodges,
as well as some less savory venues. “I remember an after-hours place
called the Northwest Club where I played with Jimmy Heath, Mickey Roker
and (bassist) Arthur Harper,” says Barron, who recalls playing until 3,
taking the last bus home, and waking up for 8 a.m. classes. “The rhythm
section had to play a show, and there wasn’t always rehearsal. I played
for singers, comedians, shake dancers and tap dancers—a lot of
standards, songs based on ‘I Got Rhythm’ and rhythm-and-blues. It
taught me how to listen and helped me with musical language. It prepared
me for New York, where I still had to do those kind of gigs. I didn’t
start working at Birdland right away.”
In point of fact, Birdland was the site of Barron’s first New York gig—a
Monday night in 1961 with his brother and Ted Curson. Not long after,
he hit the majors on jobs with Roy Haynes, Lou Donaldson, and James
Moody, In 1962, he married, moved to Brooklyn, and, on Moody’s
recommendation, joined Dizzy Gillespie. His four-year stint with
Gillespie kicked off a three-decade string of high-profile sideman jobs
with Freddie Hubbard, Yusef Lateef, Ron Carter, and Stan Getz, all
admirers of his consistent creativity and lyric gifts, and with Sphere,
the Monk-inspired collective quartet he co-founded in 1982 with Riley,
Charlie Rouse and Buster Williams. At Lateef’s urging, he earned a
college degree, and took a position at Rutgers in 1973, where for the
next thirty years he mentored young talent like David Sanchez and
Terence Blanchard, repeating his high school ritual of making early
morning classes after finishing the third set at Bradley’s a few hours
before. He moonlighted extensively, working with top-shelfers like
Moody, Bobby Hutcherson, Benny Carter and Frank Wess and playing duo in
various New York piano rooms. He documented his point of view on an
impressive series of albums for such independents as Muse, Xanadu, Enja,
Reservoir, Candid, and Criss Cross between 1975 and 1991. “Each bandleader I worked with had a different style,” Barron says. “For
example, Dizzy’s band was very tight and precise. I learned to keep
stuff in reserve, not play everything you know all the time. Yusef was
looser, the music was freer; you could play out, as far as you wanted to
go. Ron likes hills and valleys; I learned to use dynamics. Stan and I
shared a love for lyricism. We fed each other. He was one person who
could play a ballad and really make you cry.”
As documented on Bossas and Ballads: The Lost Sessions
[Verve], a 1989 quartet session that was not released until 2003, Getz
played Barron’s tunes—these included such present-day standards as
“Sunflower,” “Voyage,” “Phantoms” and “What If?”—and related to him as a
de facto co-leader. Still, Barron was not able to generate
consequential interest in his own projects—around 1985 he Barron formed
an incendiary quintet with Eddie Henderson, John Stubblefield, David
Williams and Victor Lewis to play his compositions—until Getz died in
1991.
“For some reason, the industry was late getting to Kenny,” states Lewis,
whom Getz employed throughout the ‘80s. “It was frustrating, because we
were all active members of the jazz community, we felt the group and
Kenny’s writing were special, and we couldn’t understand why we never
worked much. We did a tour of the West Coast, and Kenny took out a loan
to pay the airfare, to try to promote us.”
Perhaps one reason for Barron’s tortoise-like breakthrough lies in his
genial, understated personality, devoid of visible idiosyncracy. During
his sextet week at Dizzy’s Room, for example, Barron functioned as the
band pianist as much as a leader, comping enthusiastically for his
youngish front line—youngbloods Jeremy Pelt on trumpet and Dayna
Stephens on tenor saxophone next to veteran Vincent Herring—and soloing
when they were through. “I have to give cues,” he chuckled. “So it’s
easier that I take the last solo. I like to think of myself as a team
player, so I’m less interested in myself sounding good as much as the
group I’m with, whether as a leader or a sideperson.”
“Kenny has incredible ability, and yet he is never flashy about it,”
says Cinelu. “Which I guess frustrates everybody but him. He has a
special touch. It’s easier to get the message when you see a musician
who has a lot of obvious charisma and an obvious routine—who is very
visual, let’s say. Kenny is not that. Yet, his message passes. He’s one
of the great jazz pianists.”
It’s interesting to compare the gradual arc of Barron’s career to the
rapid ascent of such generational contemporaries as Herbie Hancock,
Chick Corea and Keith Jarrett, all Miles Davis alumni who broke ground
as young men and then, inspired by Miles, established themselves as
leaders by differentiating themselves from the jazz tradition. In
contrast, after apprenticing with Gillespie, Barron—who enthusiastically
abstracted form during tenures with Hubbard and Lateef—was never
willing to shed mainstream values.
“Things evolve the way they should,” Barron says. “I don’t know what
other choice I could have made. I was influenced by Herbie with Miles
and on Blue Note, like Empyrean Isles and Maiden Voyage, not so much the
electronic stuff. By Chick’s writing more than his playing; to me,
Chick in the ‘60s was still sounding a lot like McCoy. But I didn’t know
quite what to make out of Herbie. His stylistic influences were harder
to pin down, other than some he shared with Bill Evans, like French
Impressionism.”
“Kenny has a unique approach, a kind of blending of styles,” says
Mulgrew Miller, Barron’s partner on a dozen or so duo concerts in recent
years, following an initial mid-‘90s encounter at Bradley’s. “He’s
rooted in the bop language but takes risks you don’t necessarily hear
from people we call bop players. He wasn’t breaking down barriers like
McCoy or Herbie, but he’s always trying to reach past his limitations,
and he shares with those guys a command of the language of whatever area
he’s dealing with.”
In a manner almost unique in 21st century jazz, Barron’s tonal
personality encompasses the entire jazz timeline organically and
unaffectedly. In the course of a set, he’ll stride with a percussive
force and joie de vivre that would not sound out of place at a Harlem
Renaissance rent party or a Roaring Twenties Park Avenue soiree. He
channels the hard-boiled, warp speed attitude that marked the bustling
52nd Street bars and soulful uptown lounges where bebop flourished after
World War Two, and the nuance and polish of the trios that entertained
the bibulous mix of gray-flannel suits and tourists who patronized
midtown’s upscale grills in the ‘50s. He’s au courant with the
craftsmanship and sophistication of the American Songbook, and
interprets it without irony, on its own terms. The airy melodies and
surging rhythms of Brazil and the Caribbean dapple his compositional
palette, and he has an intimate relationship with the tropes of the
Saturday night blues function and Sunday church ceremonial.
“I like Kenny’s touch,” adds Billy Taylor, a friend since Barron’s
Gillespie days. “Whether he’s playing a bossa nova or wailing on
something with guys playing Art Blakey kind of things behind him, he has
the thing for that. To be able to change your touch that way is
remarkable. He’s curious, so he’ll take a gig playing ballads. That
gives him a chance to play beautiful songs that not everybody plays.
Then he works with a group that’s straight-ahead with a soul thing
happening, and he’ll go back to church with you. I used to hear him with
groups that, quite honestly, were not up to what he was capable of
doing at the time. He always found something in that group to take with
him. That’s the mark of a first-rate artist.”
It’s also the mark of a pragmatist, a man with responsibilities. Barron
intends to work as much as possible as he moves through his seventh
decade. Although his stated intention after retiring from Rutgers in
2003 was to eschew teaching for practice and musical exploration, he
soon received offers he could not refuse from the jazz departments of
Manhattan School of Music and Juilliard, where he taught a total of 10
piano students privately during the 2004-05 school year.
“My daughter’s getting married, and I’ve got a wedding to pay for,” he
says. What wouldn’t he do? “I’d probably hate playing Hawaiian music,”
he responds, perhaps with tongue in cheek.
Has he always been a practical person?
“Practical? Do you think I’m practical?”
Well, yes. Married for 42 years, Barron is a musician who sustained
creative edge while paying the bills and found a way, like Tommy
Flanagan, to maximize his value as a performer in the world in which he
functioned.
“I would be inclined to say it’s there,” he says. “Not that other people
haven’t helped me. Yes, I’ve been able to function and be consistent.
Work. Be married. Try to be in creative situations as much as possible.
Whatever the word for that is, yeah, I am.” [—30—]
* * * *
Kenny Barron (March 21, 2005):
TP: First, the editor wants me to write about the different groups.
When we spoke on the radio, you said that playing in different
situations all the time, which is what you do on your records, keeps you
fresh, keeps you thinking differently…
KENNY: Oh, it does.
TP: Have you ever done a three-week event like this, where you showcased a different sound over the course of an engagement.
KENNY: Actually, I have. I did at the Vanguard twice. It was the
same rhythm section every week, myself and Ben Riley and Buster
Williams, and each week we used a different horn player. One week we
used Vincent Herring, another week David Sanchez, I think Jesse Davis…
It was fun. TP: But that’s a different proposition. These are three different…
KENNY: Three totally different environments. True.
TP: The first week with Mino Cinelu… You called the record Swamp Thing. This is a pan-Latin, pan-Brazilian…
KENNY: Yeah, it’s a little bit of everything! Every two nights it’s
going to change. The first two nights it’s myself, Mino Cinelu and John
Patitucci. The next two nights John was unavailable, so George Mraz is
going to play bass, myself Mino and Abdou M’Boop, the percussionist, who
will also play kora. The last two nights will be George Mraz, Mino,
myself and Romero Lubambo. That will have more of a Brazilian cast.
TP: Have you played with Abdou M’Boop before?
KENNY: No, I haven’t.
TP: But you’ve played with Mino and Romero.
KENNY: True. But I haven’t played M’Boop. He came by here and
brought his kora, and it wasn’t quite what I expected it to be in terms
of how it’s approached, so I have to rethink how it’s going to be used.
But he also plays talking drums, so he’ll be playing percussion as
well. Kora is an interesting instrument, because once it’s tuned it has
to stay in a particular key. It’s not a chromatic instrument, it’s
diatonic, so you tune it to a particular scale and it stays there. If
you tune it to B-flat, you can’t play in A-flat. He can retune it, but
it’s a very time-consuming thing. He can’t do it between songs. TP: So you have to do the whole set in a particular key. KENNY: Well, the pieces that I’m going to use will all be in the
same tonality. If it’s B-flat, it can also be G-minor, which is the
relative minor of a B-flat. So it can be major and minor, but the notes
will always be the same. TP: Keeping that interesting will be a challenge. KENNY: Very much so. There’s a way to do it. We ran over some stuff here. TP: That will be the one premiere of this week. Let’s discuss each
of the people. Mino Cinelu is one of the great pan-diaspora
percussionists. He seems to have everything… KENNY: He can do almost anything. Well, he does. He does
everything. He has some very interesting equipment. He has a wave drum,
which produces all kinds of interesting sound effects and colors, and
I’m sure he’ll use some of that. On the recording, we also did some
all-acoustic stuff duo. We did a couple of concerts in Europe. TP: So you have a repertoire. KENNY: Yes, we have a repertoire. I don’t know that we’ll
necessarily be doing… Since we have bass player, we’ll try to expand it.
Because there was no bass player on the recording we did. TP: With Romero Lubambo, you had a project that had legs with Trio de Paz. But in this case, it’s George Mraz and Mino. KENNY: I’m sure we will do some Brazilian stuff, but we’ll do some other stuff as well. TP: You and Mino are the ones who are going to shift what you do to
suit each environment. This is an old question. But I’d assume that
your involvement with pan-African rhythms goes back to playing with
Dizzy. KENNY: To a certain extent, yes. TP: Did it precede it when you were in Philly? KENNY: Yes. Especially Latin music. More Latin music. This was
before bossa-nova and Brazilian music. But Latin music was always
popular in Philly when I was coming up. TP: Did you play Latin gigs? KENNY: I didn’t play that many, no. But I’d hear the records by
people like Joe Loco and Machito, Perez Prado. I listened to that music a
lot. TP: Was your peer group interested in it? KENNY: Not so much. It was something I liked to listen to. TP: How did it come to you? KENNY: I heard it on the radio, and said, “Wow, listen to that.”
There weren’t stations so much that played it. But there was a jazz
station that played it… I don’t know if you know Joe Loco. He was
Cuban, and he had a lot of hits on standards, but always with an
acoustic kind of group, trio or whatever. As I got older, when I moved
to New York, I started listening to Symphony Sid, who played a lot of
Latin music. That’s when I really… TP: Did you go to the Palladium at all? KENNY: No, I never went to the Palladium. Again, just listening to the radio. TP: When you came to New York, it was an efflorescent period for Latin music. KENNY: Yes. I came in ‘61. TP: Did it give you the same feeling as jazz? Did it add something to your palette? KENNY: I think it added something. I always found Latin music to
be very joyful. There’s always dance… It sounds kind of corny, but it
was happy, happy kind of stuff. It was fun. TP: That’s interesting, because it isn’t a quality that all your
contemporaries embodied in their playing. Certainly, modern jazz of the
early ‘60s in New York wasn’t so much about keeping a groove going. KENNY: No, certainly not. During that period, music started to
really become concert music. It got to be THAT kind of thing. I was into
that myself. I wanted to be SERIOUS. But that’s one of the elements
that I think Monk had, was humor, a sense of fun, playfulness in the
music. I think that’s often missing. We’re all so busy being serious, or
trying to show that we’re not really enjoying it. That’s what I loved
about Billy Higgins. Billy was always smiling. He loved what he did! And
that joyfulness, it showed. TP: It came out in his sound, too. KENNY: Yeah, it came out in the music, and it kind of infected everybody in the bandstand and the audience. TP: Did you and Mino first play together on that 1995 project? KENNY: No, that was really the first time. I first heard Mino in
Nice with Miles. We had a mutual friend who kind of thought it might be
interesting for us to play together. I started going over to his house,
and just talk about music… We became really good friends, which we still
are. His wife would fix these great meals, and we’d sit and talk about
music, and he has all this great equipment. Consequently, a lot of the
stuff on the recording we did in his music room. We also did stuff in
the studio, where I overdubbed this or that. TP: You’ve been very bold in your aesthetic choices. You won’t ever
let anyone put you in a bag. One recording you’ll do ballads with
Charlie Haden. Another one is wild duos with Mino. Then you’re doing a
new quintet with young players, with a flute up front, you’re doing your
take on post-bop with the sextet, a duo with Regina… What you’re doing
over three weeks characterizes the way you’ve presented yourself over
the past 15 years, when you began to do records with serious production
values. KENNY: I don’t want to do just one thing. The thing is, I really
like all kinds of music. I’d like to expand it even further, do some
other things. Another project coming up, and I don’t know if it will
come to New York, is I want to do some stuff with the Turtle Island
String Quartet. We’ll do something in November, but right now I don’t
think there are any concerts slated for New York. So that will be a
challenge for me, to play in that kind of environment. I don‘t want to
only do one thing. There’s too much to learn. TP: Certain people, when they go into Brazilian music or Latin
things, deeply study the idiomatic nuances of each idiom. That’s not
your approach. KENNY: No. I just listen to it, and I respond in whatever way I
can, so it’s organic. I’m not Brazilian, so I can’t be Brazilian. But I
love the music. So whatever I do, it’s going to be my personal take on
it, so to speak. TP: But with a lot of people, there might be a quality of
superficiality in addressing something without… It’s like someone
playing bebop without knowing the changes. Your personality comes
through. You always sound completely at home. KENNY: Yeah. I don’t know why. It just is. I think it’s because I
love the music. I don ‘t think it’s necessary for me to go to school on
it. I don’t think I need to go to school and study it for three or four
years. I just need to LISTEN to it. That’s all that’s necessary, is to
listen to it. TP: Was very Dizzy very much about breaking the stuff down for you in the early ‘60s KENNY: He didn’t do it for me. He was very helpful in terms of
showing me voicings, harmony. But I saw him do some stuff with Rudy
Collins, where he wanted a particular rhythm. So he told Rudy, “Do this
with your right foot, do this with your left foot; play this with your
right hand, that with your left hand; hit the cymbal here.” TP: Do you do that when you play with younger musicians? KENNY: I don’t like to do that. If I hire somebody, it’s for what
they can bring. My idea about leading a band is to let people do what
they do. That’s why you hired them. TP: With Romero, you told me that Trio de Paz played for a long
time at the Coffee Shop on 16th & Union Square East. I don’t know if
you made it a destination, or if it was by accident… KENNY: Well, the first time was totally by accident. My wife and I
were there shopping at the green market, and we said, “Let’s go get
something to eat.” We went in there, and there they were along with
Duduka’s wife, Maucia(?), who was singing. Then it became a destination.
So every Saturday we were in town, we went there to hear some music.
Then we met them and became good friends, and eventually it turned into,
“Boy, I’d sure like to play; let’s play something.” Then it turned
into, “Let’s do a record.” It evolved that way. We did some tours and
concerts. I’d like to do some other things with them, because I enjoy
playing with them a lot. TP: It sounds like all these projects evolve organically out of your life as a musician…or your life in general. KENNY: I think so. A lot of things just happen. If I hadn’t gone to the Coffee Shop, the whole thing would never have happened. TP: You would have heard about them eventually. But maybe not. KENNY: Yeah, or maybe not. You never know. But I would have missed a lot. TP: Have you played much with John Patitucci? KENNY: Only once, actually. But I love his playing. I have one of his records that I really love. It’s called Communion.
The first time we played was actually on a recording with a singer,
Cheryl Bentyne. I’ve always loved his playing. So I’m really looking
forward to this. TP: You and George have played together, but not that much. KENNY: When I first started working with Stan, we played together. A
couple of times, I’ve subbed for Hank Jones, and worked with George and
Dennis Mackrell. But I haven’t played with George in a long time.
Actually, on one of the very first gigs with the Ron Carter Quartet,
Buster Williams wasn’t available, he was in California, so George made
that. That was in the early ‘70s. TP: After Dizzy, you played a lot with Freddie Hubbard. Was that a fairly steady-working band? KENNY: It was a working band. We didn’t work as much as I’m sure
Freddie would have liked, but yeah, it was okay. We didn’t do long
tours. It was mostly around New York, working at Slug’s, and a place
called La Boheme, which was at 61st and Broadway, and the Coronet in
Brooklyn. TP: What else were you doing in New York after you left Dizzy? KENNY: One thing I did right after I left Dizzy was work with
Stanley Turrentine at Minton’s for five or six weeks. The rhythm section
was Herbie Lewis and Joe Dukes. That was great, working uptown in that
kind of environment. Six weeks back-to-back. TP: Dizzy’s time at Minton’s was long gone. KENNY: He’d gone past that. Financially, he was past that. But when
I left Dizzy, I more or less freelanced for a while, working with as
many people as I could. TP: The thing with Ron Carter began in the early ‘70s? The mid ‘70s? KENNY: Probably the mid ‘70s. Before that was Yusef Lateef. We
toured quite a bit, especially during the summer. Yusef was teaching at
the time at Manhattan Community College. He actually got everybody in
the band to start going to college. He encouraged everyone, “You should
go back to school.” So I did. It was a two-year school, and I got an
Associate’s Degree, and after that I went on to get a Bachelor’s Degree
from Empire State College, which is part of the SUNY. When I was going
to Manhattan Community College, and we were going on the road, I would
always tell my teachers, “I’m going on the road for three weeks; what
material will you cover in that three weeks?” They were always pretty
cool about telling me. I’d bring math. We had math, and I had never had
this kind of math before in my life. When I came back, I was ahead of
the class. TP: You didn’t allow yourself to be distracted. KENNY: No, I did the work. But I attribute that a great deal to
Yusef’s personality, because that’s the way he was. He was very centered
and very into doing what you have to do to make things work. TP: I’m sure the relationships between music and mathematics make the logic systems clearer. KENNY: You’d think so. But that didn’t necessarily happen. TP: Your involvement with Ron Carter was long-standing. KENNY: Yes. How that gig started, I was working at the Keystone
Korner with Yusef, and Ron was in town and came by. That’s how that
happened. It’s a question of being in the right place at the right time. TP: When did you first start to lead two- and three-horn ensembles? Your first record is ‘71, I think, forMuse. KENNY: There were no horns on that. It was basically trio. Sunset
To Dawn. On one tune, by Freddie Waits, Warren Smith said, “Why don’t I
play vibes on this.” So it’s a really fast Freddie Waits tune, “Alkefa.”
“I’ll play vibes on this.” he was incredible. But there were no horns. TP: When did you start? KENNY: One of the first times was at a place in the Bronx, the Blue
Morocco, where I used Bennie Maupin and Bill Hardman. It was the same
rhythm section, with Freddie Waits and Herbie Lewis. TP: Was that because of the gig, or was something in you wanting to… KENNY: No, that was just a gig. But in terms of starting to write
music and say, “Okay, I hear this for quintet,” probably happened first
when I had the quintet with John Stubblefield. The ‘80s. Wallace Roney
did the first record, What If. TP: Was that just percolating? A lot of pianists showcase their
instrumentalism and wind up playing trio. But you’ve built up a large
body of work for various ensembles. KENNY: I like being part of a team. One of the things I like is
that I can write for it. I find it difficult to write things for trio.
People do it all the time, but it’s more difficult for me. I have no
idea why. But it’s easier for me to write things for horns. You can
showcase harmony and movement and stuff like that. In that particular
group, it started as part of a grant. I had applied for a grant to write
some original music, so that was the band I chose. I’d been knowing
John for a long time, and Victor Lewis and Cecil McBee. I got the grant,
and did a concert at what was then Carnegie Recital Hall, and they made
a tape. It sounded so good I thought I’d like to record it, and I
talked to Enja Records. That was the beginning. TP: Does a song like “What If” come out of your trio experience? KENNY: No, for the quintet. I really heard it for those particular
people, for that group. When we first started playing as a group, the
music at the time—live anyway—was going to the left. It was starting to
go out. Which I loved! TP: That would be John’s propensity. KENNY: Yes. But again, it was organic. Nobody said, “Well, let’s
play out.” But it just started to move that way. One of our first gigs
was a place called Joanna’s [18th Street]. We did a set, and played two
tunes in an hour or something. But it never got boring, because the
music went in so many different places. We had such a great time. When
we did the record, there are considerations of time and length, so it
didn’t… TP: But subsequently on your ensemble records, you added different
flavors. Some had more of a pan-Caribbean-South American feel, some were
more hardboppish… KENNY: Right. I didn’t set out and say, “Okay, this record is going to be bebop and this one…” It just happened. TP: I suppose it speaks to the fact, again, that you’ve assimilated
so many musical languages. Is there ever an element where they’re
competing for space within you? A bebop side competing with the lyric
Brazilian side competing with the classic piano side… This is probably
an absurd question. But I find the tonal personality you express so
personal but also encompassing so many flavors. I’m sure it seems
totally organic to you because you’re living it, but I want to see if we
can pinpoint where it comes from. KENNY: I don’t know where it comes from. I don’t feel competition
in terms of different styles or different idioms. Ideally for me, in one
set of music, I can go through everything. What it is, I think each
tune kind of carries itself. Each song is a development in itself. One
song, if you play it, it may actually be straight bebop. That’s how it
might come out. The next song may go out. Or the next song may be
Brazilian. All in one set. TP: Do you know beforehand? KENNY: No, I don’t. It just happens. We may play a blues,
especially with the group I have now with Anne and Kim Thompson, and it
may go out! I kind of like that. I like not-knowing. That’s the fun for
me. Let’s see where it goes. TP: Do you think of the different styles as different styles? KENNY: Probably not. There’s 12 notes. There are only 12 notes. It’s just music. TP: What differentiates them? KENNY: It’s rhythm primarily that will make a difference. The way
you approach the rhythm, and phrasing. If you’re playing bebop, for
instance, there’s a certain kind of phrasing that works best. The
attack. If you’re playing R&B, or if you’re playing some funk, there
are certain kinds of voicings that won’t work so well. If the voicings
are too sophisticated, they won’t work. TP: The sextet you’re bringing in the second week has a new tenor player, Dayna Stephens. KENNY: I met Dayna in California at a clinic I did for a week at the
Monk Institute at the University of Southern California. He’s one of the
people who was there, and he really impressed me. When I was looking
for a tenor player, I thought about him, but I didn’t know how to get in
touch with him. Then somebody told me he had just moved to the New York
area. I think everybody will be very surprised. He’s a very good
player. TP: Everyone else you’ve played with… KENNY: Oh, yeah, for a long time. In different situations. Actually, I haven’t worked with Victor in quite a while. TP: New repertoire? KENNY: Some new stuff, and then some stuff that will be recalibrated or whatever. TP: Do you always recalibrate? KENNY: Not always. But sometimes just having a new player will make that happen. TP: Benny Golson discusses the art dearth writing, trying to make
three horns sound as big as possible. Is that a concern… Let’s put it
this way. What are you trying to put forth on this sextet than the
quintet? KENNY: In terms of instrumentation, the sound is heavier because
it’s three horns. And harmonically, with three horns you can do more
rhythmically and in the way you can use them. The different colors also
that you can have from three horns. Dayna plays tenor and soprano… TP: Like most young guys. KENNY: Yes, like most young guys. Those are different colors that
you can utilize. So for me, it’s about the harmonic movement that three
horns allows you. Eddie is only doing two days, and Jeremy Pelt is doing
the remainder. The third week is the trio, what they call the Classic Trio. Ben
wasn’t available, because he’s going to be in Europe with his Monk
Legacy. Well, he does get back in the middle of the week. But I wanted
someone close to Ben in style and age, and I called Grady Tate. Grady
does this tour I do every other year in Japan called 100 Gold Fingers,
and I’ve always enjoyed playing with him. He’s a very tasty, very
sensitive drummer. TP: What does the term “classic trio” mean to you? KENNY: I have no idea. TP: But does it mean something to you? Jazz? Classic? KENNY: It’s a trio. TP: Well, is it a trio that you play a certain type of repertoire and not another type of repertoire? KENNY: Well, that could be true. With a trio, I tend to play more standards and… Yes, that’s basically it. TP: Well, you probably have 800 tunes that you can draw from. KENNY: Yes. I remember we did this at Bradley’s one week with Ray
and Ben, no repeats. [18 sets] I have to think about whether to do that
again! But it might be fun. Not repeat any songs. That means there
won’t be any “arrangements.” You’re saying, “Oh, let’s do this song.”
But at the same time, I don’t want it to be a jam session. TP: So in a certain sense, the classic trio is closer than the
other formats to being what that idealized notion of what jazz is
supposed to be. It’s this older material, but you’re approaching it in a
totally spontaneous way. KENNY: Yes, a spontaneous way. So you won’t know what a song is
going to sound like until it starts to reveal itself, so to speak.
Again, that can be a lot of fun. Again, I don’t know if that’s what
we’re going to do, but it’s a thought. TP: So you’re telling me that you don’t go into any performing
situation with the whole arc of a performance planned out. There’s
always room for openness. KENNY: Oh, yes. TP: There are general outlines or motifs, and every night you’re approaching it in a different manner. KENNY: Hopefully, I’d like that to happen. Almost nothing is
planned, other than, “We’ll do this song.” But how the song evolves is
up for grabs. TP: That doesn’t happen as often as the commonplaces about jazz
would have you think it does, to actually approach a set with that
attitude. It’s kind of risky in some ways, because you have to get the
stuff out there, and a lot of people aren’t so interested in leaving
themselves open that way. KENNY: I like that. When you reach for something, you have to say
it’s okay if you don’t make it. But you’ve got to reach. We all have bad
days. But sometimes you have to reach for it and say, “Well, I didn’t
make it.” TP: Is that innate? Or did you learn to do it? KENNY: I think as you get older, you start to give yourself
permission to make a mistake. Because there’s another chorus coming! So
you can try it again. That’s one of the things that makes music
interesting for listeners sometimes, is to hear someone reach for
something, and maybe not making it, but trying it again. Sometimes very
interesting things develop in that process. TP: One reason why you don’t hear much chance-taking is that young
musicians go to school and study everything so thoroughly. That can be
at odds with what we’re speaking about. Now, you’ve been an educator for
thirty years. How do you address your students on this issue? KENNY: I put a lot of stress on being as creative and lyrical as
you possibly can. I’m not big on transcribing solos. I never have been
big on that. TP: Not even Bud Powell and Ahmad Jamal back in the day? KENNY: I said transcribing. I learned solos, but I learned them by
rote. By hearing them and then playing them. A lot of people are into
transcribing, but I find that when you transcribe solos, you only get
involved with the notes. There’s a lot of other aspects to a person’s
playing. So if I’m listening to Red Garland with Miles… When that record
Round About Midnight came out, I knew all those Red Garland solos. I
never wrote them down. But one the things that happens when you write
them down is you only deal with the notes. If you learn it by rote, then
okay, you get this person’s touch. It’s easier to emulate this person’s
touch, phrasing, all of that. TP: So Red Garland was one of the guys you got into your body. KENNY: Yeah. TP: Who were some of the other people? KENNY: I used to listen to Horace Silver a lot. I’m talking about
junior high school and high school. Tommy Flanagan, Wynton Kelly, Hank
Jones. They were all different. Wynton had this feeling, and a harmonic
concept that was unique. Red had this touch. Everybody had something
different to offer. TP: You’ve paid some explicit homages to Bud Powell, with that
piece “Bud-Like,” and “Madman” has certain qualities to it… It’s an area
that you seem to have a fondness for. KENNY: Oh, I do. Probably that particular style is at my core. I think Bud is really at the core of what I do. TP: Did you ever meet him in Philly? KENNY: No. I got to meet him once, when he was not doing well. TP: Did you ever meet Monk? KENNY: No. I saw him, but he was always such an awe-inspiring person that I would never go up and say anything. TP: Do you mean intimidating? KENNY: Yes. He was intimidating, actually. He was very big and… I
had just come to New York, and… So I never went up to say anything… TP: [Ben Riley’s story] You’ve been in New York since 1961. Initially in the East Village. KENNY: I stayed next door to my brother, 314 E. 6th Street, where
all the Indian restaurants are. It was a great block. A lot of musicians
lived there. I stayed at Vishnu Wood’s place. The rent was something
like $60 a month, and it was hard to make that. But it was just one
room. Across the street was Lee Morgan, Tootie Heath and Spanky DeBrest,
all Philadelphia people who had an apartment. Upstairs from where I
lived, Pepper Adams and Elvin shared an apartment. Reggie Workman lived
with Lee and Spanky, too. Ted Curson lived a couple of doors up from
them. TP: A real Philly enclave on East 6th Street. KENNY: That’s right. I could walk to the Five Spot and the Jazz
Gallery, which were owned by the same people. Coffee shops, like the Fat
Black Pussycat, Café Wha, Café Bizarre, all in the West Village. There
was so much music. I met Sonny Clark at the Five Spot. I heard Cecil
play duo with Clifford Jarvis at the Café Wha? TP: What does living in New York have to do with your embrace of so many vehicles of self expression? KENNY: Well, I think because it’s all here. Music from everywhere
is here in New York, and you can hear it all. Just life in New York in
general, especially during that time for me. I was young, and it was
exciting, and all the people whose records I would buy, I could go hear
them, I could talk to them, I could see them. Then other things as well.
I really got into Latin music then, mostly due to radio. But I really
got into it then. Everything is right here in New York. Just the
vibrancy of the city. It’s such a great city. TP: You’ve been in Brooklyn for how long? KENNY: Actually, I was in Manhattan only one year. I got married in
‘62, and I’ve been in Brooklyn ever since. The first place I lived was
on St. Marks and Franklin, and then I moved to Prospect Place and
Nostrand. TP: There was a fairly consequential scene going on in Brooklyn then. KENNY: Oh, there was a lot of music in Brooklyn. There was the
Coronet, the Continental, and quite a few other places. There were also a
lot of musicians. When I moved to Prospect Place, I discovered that
Cedar Walton lived around the corner on Sterling Place. Freddie Hubbard
and Louis Hayes lived around the corner in the same building on Park
Place. Wynton Kelly lived around there on Lincoln Place. Cecil Payne
lived nearby. There were a lot of musicians. TP: Were the Brooklyn audiences different at all than the Harlem audiences? KENNY: I don’t think so. One of the things that was happening
during that time is that the audiences for the music… If you went to the
Coronet to hear music or to play, you would see the same people all the
time. Neighborhood people came out to hear the music. That kind of
stopped in the late ‘60s or early ‘70s. TP: Did that impart a different flavor to the way you played? KENNY: I don’t know if it added a different flavor. But it was definitely inspirational. TP: For people in New York at the moment you arrived, you could
hear the whole history of the music, people who effect the outer
partials of what’s happening now, like Cecil or Ornette (whom you’ve
played with), or you could hear Willie The Lion or Ellington or Coleman
Hawkins. And you told me that you did. KENNY: Yes, I did. I remember working at the Vanguard playing with
Freddie Hubbard, and we played opposite Coleman Hawkins for two weeks.
Barry Harris was playing piano with him. I don’t remember who else was
in the band, but I know Barry was there. That was amazing. TP: A lot of younger musicians in the ‘60s were perhaps not so
embracing of the older forms, but it seems that even that is part of… On
the Live At Bradley’s record you played Blue Skies and Sweet Lorraine,
and a lot of tunes you’ll play with the trio are from that era. KENNY: Well, apart from bebop, I grew up listening to… Well, the
first person I heard do Sweet Lorraine was Nat King Cole. And I loved it
from that point. But it was a long time before I started actually
playing it. But you have memories of these things, and you say, “Oh, I
remember that song; let me start playing that.”
TP: But someone born after your generation probably wouldn’t have heard Sweet Lorraine on a jukebox. KENNY: No, they wouldn’t have. Or Canadian Sunset. I remember
hearing that on a jukebox. Eddie Heywood. And Jug also recorded it. TP: Someone like me heard it because I went out looking for it. But
it wouldn’t have been an organic part of my upbringing unless I was in
an extremely specific house or environment. KENNY: Right, it was all around. You’d go into a luncheonette, and
on the jukebox there you’d see John Coltrane, Blue Train or Moment’s
Notice, or Ahmad Jamal, Poinciana. Any jukebox. In a luncheonette, a
restaurant. TP: So those things come out in your sound. KENNY: Yes. That stuff was all around. You’re exposed to it.
People who are younger have to search for the music. You have to look
for it on the radio. You certainly don’t hear it on television…. Well,
you didn’t hear it on television then either. But you have to look for
it now. Plus there were certain experiences, playing situations we were able
to get as young players that aren’t available. They weren’t necessarily
“jazz” gigs. I used to play dances a lot. We called them cabarets. You
had to play standards. You had to play rhythm and blues. That’s what
that really meant: I Got Rhythm and Blues. A lot of songs based on that.
You had to play for singers. You’d have to play a show. A singer would
come up. “What key are you doing this in?” “I don’t know.” There wasn’t
always a rehearsal. If you played, you’d also have to play for a
comedian, tap dancers, stuff like this. You’d get to play all this… TP: You’d play a whole show. What was the club in Philly… KENNY: Oh, there were many clubs. Many. Sometimes they weren’t necessarily clubs… TP: The Masonic Lodge, the Elks… KENNY: Exactly. That kind of stuff. But I remember there was one
club in particular in Philly that was called the Northwest Club. They
had a lot of after-hours clubs. I remember working there one time with
Jimmy Heath, Mickey Roker, and Arthur Harper was the bass player. But as
part of the rhythm section, you had to also do this other stuff. You
had to play with the singer and the comedian. That was just something
you did. TP: That had to have been ‘59 or ‘60, if you did it with Jimmy. So you were 16 or 17. KENNY: Yes. TP: That prepared you for New York. KENNY: Yes. There are certain kinds of experiences you had. You
knew how to play for a show. You knew what to do, how to end songs and
things like that. TP: It’s a very rare musician under 45 who’s had had that experience. Although there are a few. KENNY: There are some. But it’s rare. TP: What did that do exactly? KENNY: Well, one thing, it taught you how to listen. It taught you
how to listen, and then it helped you with the language. Musical
language. It wasn’t enough just to know… Well, one thing is that you
have to learn songs. We used to play for what was called shake dancers,
kind of tame strip-teasers. They would dance to Duke Ellington,
Caravan… Exotic dancers. Jimmy Forrest, Night Train, a bump thing. Those
are the kind of things you learn. It really prepared you to come to New
York. Because it didn’t change that much once you got here. You still
had to do those kind of gigs. You didn’t come here and start working at
Birdland right away. TP: But you came here and soon started working with Dizzy. KENNY: Well, I came here in 1961 and started working with him in
November 1962. I graduated high school in ‘60, then I kind of laid
around Philly, and came to New York in the Fall of ‘61. Then I got
married in ‘62. TP: You grew up very young, didn’t you. KENNY: Well, I got married very young. TP: It wasn’t like a whole lot of time to “find yourself.” But maybe you did that later. KENNY: Well, still. TP: But a lot of people in that situation would take jazz as a job.
You’re always very open-ended within the function stuff you do. You
were a professional from 16-17-18. Music was a job, a livelihood from
that age, and there are a lot of functions you have to play. Some
things must have felt rote to you. Some people would allow their
imagination to be stifled in those situations, and many people have
allowed their imaginations to be stifled. Others settle on one kind of
sound and stayed with it—and evolved it, which is great. You’re not that
way. KENNY: I think one of the things that helped was having an older
brother who played, having friends… There was a drummer, for instance,
named Jerry. I used to go over to his house. He always had the latest
records. He built his own stereo system. We would sit there and listen
to the latest records. That’s the first time I heard Ornette, was over
at his house. “Wow, what is that?!” So I’ve always been into listening
and trying to hear new stuff. Trying to do it, too. That’s part of
growing. I didn’t want to become stuck. I never did. I don’t know if you
believe in astrology, but that’s part of being a Gemini. “Oh, let’s try
this.” I think that’s part of it. Just being exposed to other things is
is important. When I came to New York, my brother Bill had been
working with Cecil Taylor. He was really into avant-garde. That was his
thing. He loved that. He listened to Stockhausen and showed me 12-tone
row music and stuff like that. It made me listen, too. TP: You did a tune, didn’t you, called Row House? KENNY: Yes, I did, which is a 12-tone row. So again, there’s always something to learn, something to try. TP: What was it like playing with Ornette? KENNY: It was different. TP: Has there ever been a situation that didn’t quite work? KENNY: I wouldn’t say that situation didn’t work. But there’s
always hindsight. I wished I could have done this, wish I could have…
But it came out okay. I was surprised that he called me. Because I think
the whole idea was to recreate the group he had with Billy Higgins and
Charlie Haden, who were both there, and Wallace Roney to take the place
of Don Cherry. But one of his first groups had piano. TP: What I recall about the concert is that he took out his trumpet
and played a chorus, and summed everything up in that chorus. KENNY: I enjoyed it. Probably even more memorable than the gig were
the rehearsals, as he tried to explain his harmolodic concept. Which I
never really got. So I just played. TP: Lee Konitz told me that Charlie Haden told him, “We really play changes.” KENNY: On some of the earlier things, the stuff is so melodic, it
really sounds like they’re playing changes, or playing around changes.
There’s some stuff there you can hear on The Shape Of Jazz To Come.
That’s one of my favorites. Lonely Woman. You can hear harmonic
structure in all of his pieces. It’s not just willy-nilly. They’re
playing some stuff. [—30—]
* * *
Kenny Barron (WKCR, September 2, 2004):
TP: Sitting across from me, looking extremely cool and relaxed on
this beautiful day, after a subway ride, is Kenny Barron. Next week, he
enters the Village Vanguard with a sextet comprising Terrell Stafford,
David Sanchez, Vincent Herring, Kiyoshi Kitagawa, and Ben Riley. On
Wednesday, he starts his semester at Juilliard. On Thursday, he starts
his semester at the Manhattan School of Music. So it will be like old
times for Kenny Barron, who during the Bradley’s days, would leave at 3
in the morning, and go out to Rutgers the next day at 8 or so. You’ve
been doing this for a long time. KENNY: Yes, I have. And as you get older, you get tired faster! TP: Well, there are no 3 in the morning sets any more. KENNY: Not any more. Although I kind of miss it. TP: That’s the thing. You want to hang out late, but then in the
morning you feel sort of happy that you didn’t do it. But several years
ago, when you retired from Rutgers, I recall you saying, well, you
wouldn’t be teaching any more. You were going to devote your time
exclusively to music, and practice… KENNY: I did say that, didn’t I. TP: What happened? KENNY: Well, I got a call from Justin DiCioccio at Manhattan School
of Music, saying, “We would like you to come and teach?” and I said, “I
want this amount of money,” and he said, “okay.” And I only wanted a
certain number of students… TP: And he said okay. KENNY: Yeah. So it’s been working out actually. TP: And at Juilliard as well. KENNY: At Juilliard as well. Well, I guess from the beginning, I’ve
only had two piano students there. So this semester, starting this week,
I’ll have four. TP: This show is not about education. But what sort of students do you have? You’re not teaching them the basics. KENNY: Oh, no. They could almost teach me. I mean, some of them are
so incredible, especially in terms of technique, and they really
understand the language very well. Actually, it’s fun to teach them.
Because they really challenge me. They’re great students. A couple of
them have won some competitions. TP: It’s a truism by now that, given advances in jazz pedagogy and
education, that the technical level and proficiency of young musicians
today…they start younger and younger, and they can do more and more.
What things don’t they have? What do they need to get? KENNY: I guess the things they need to get, they’ll only get by
living. Experience. Experience and paying dues; as Ben Riley likes to
say, “having their hearts broken.” So they’ll have some stories to tell.
When you’re young and everything is fine, you don’t REALLY have any
stories to tell. TP: You yourself were 18 when you moved to New York. KENNY: Right. In 1961. TP: You moved to the East Village, I think. KENNY: Right. TP: Everyone was living on East 5th Street and 6th Street. KENNY: East 6th Street I lived on. TP: You were working, and then joined up with Dizzy Gillespie and
got your first college education on the road with Dizzy Gillespie.
Subsequently, in the ‘60s and ‘70s, you went back to school and got a
degree… KENNY: I did. I went to Manhattan Community College, and got an
Associate’s Degree from there. They had a program, part of the State
University of New York, called Empire State College, and I got my B.A.
from there. TP: I don’t want to put you in the position of looking back to the
good old days. But just step back to those days a bit and discuss the
climate then, and the attitudes of the musicians you were running with
when you came here from Philly. What was percolating? What was in the
air. KENNY: Well, there was a lot. The block I lived on was the block
where there are now a lot of Indian restaurants—Curry Row, they call
it. Sixth Street between 1st and 2nd Avenue. I lived at 314. I was
staying with my brother for a while, and then I moved next door with a
bass player named Vishnu Wood. Upstairs, for instance, lived Elvin Jones
and Pepper Adams. They shared an apartment together. Across the street
lived Lee Morgan and Tootie Heath, and a bass player from Philly who’s
passed away named Spanky DeBrest, and Reggie Workman also, and two doors
up from that lived Ted Curson. It was a great neighborhood. I could
walk to the original Five Spot, which was on the Bowery, and the same
guys, the Termini Brothers, also owned the Jazz Gallery on St. Marks. So
I could walk to all those places. All the coffee shops. I first heard
Cecil Taylor, for instance, at Café Wha in the Village. TP: On McDougal Street. KENNY: Yes. I heard him in that year, ‘61. I met Sonny Clark at the Five Spot. I first heard Kenny Dorham. TP: Was there a lot of collegiality? Were people supportive of each other? Was there a sort of give-and-take? KENNY: Oh, I think there was. I would have to say yes. Especially
among the musicians from Philadelphia. There was always a kind of
brotherhood, so to speak, among the musicians from Philly. TP: So even if someone was from Germantown and someone was from South Philly, once they get out of Philadelphia… KENNY: Oh, yeah. Well, even in Philly there wasn’t any kind of
neighborhood rivalry. You were a musician. You were one of the cats. TP: Prior to that, had you been working a fair amount on the Philly scene? KENNY: Some. I was doing a lot of local stuff, and occasionally I
would get to work in… When I was there, Philly had two major jazz clubs,
the Showboat and Pep’s. At some point I got to work there. One of the
highlights, I was still in high school, and I got to work there with
Jimmy Heath and Lee Morgan and Tootie and Spanky DeBrest. I was thrilled
to death. TP: This would have been shortly before you came to New York? KENNY: Yes, shortly before. TP: I seem to recall you mentioning to me that while you were in
high school, you’d play jam sessions, and catch the last bus home, and
get home at 4 or 5 in the morning, and then go to school. I may be
overstating the story… KENNY: Well, not a jam session… But that is true. I would be out a little late, and my mother would be very upset! TP: I’m sure there are exceptions, but young musicians don’t have
these kinds of experiences these days. Again, not to get you embroiled
into an “our generation had these things,” but do you see it as a
different quality by which the information is processed when it’s
processed in such a functional situation? KENNY: I don’t know. I guess there’s something to be said for both.
There’s something to be said for going through academia, and there’s
something to be said for just learning it organically, through the
streets. However you learn it, it’s great. But I guess one of the things
when you learn it on the street, so to speak… For me, I think it really
stays with you. You get more… This is hard to explain. There’s more
spirit involved. In school, sometimes you can over-intellectualize
everything, and everything becomes about scales… It becomes too
intellectual. TP: Philadelphia may be known as the City of Brotherly Love, but I
gather that doesn’t necessarily apply to the attitude of audiences when
you’re not doing things as you’re supposed to. KENNY: Oh, no. They’d let you know. You get embarrassed a few times, and you’ll work on your stuff. TP: What dicta did the older musicians tell you? Would people be quick to correct you on the spot? KENNY: Well, yes, they would. If I was interfering with what
everybody else was doing, yes, they would definitely be quick to point
it out to me. But if it wasn’t too bad, they would wait til after the
song was over or after the set was over, and pull me aside. But
generally speaking, they were very willing to share information and to
let me know: “Voice this chord this way” or “These are the right changes
here.” TP: So when you got to New York at 18, it was that, but on an everyday basis. KENNY: On an everyday basis. And you might say at a higher level,
too, in terms of the musicians who were here in New York. But it was
more of the same, yes. TP: I apologize for bringing you back 43 years on the third
question. So let’s step up to the present. Kenny Barron is performing at
the Village Vanguard next week with his sextet. You’re one of many
musicians of different generations who express themselves through
different configurations. I think you have two-three forms of sextet;
there’s one that’s sort of straight-ahead hardbop, another uses strings
and flutes, a Brazilian-tinged group, there’s trios, duos, the quintet
that you’re working with flute and vibes… Did this also happen
organically? How did it come about that you use so many modes of
expression? KENNY: I like different things. That’s basically it. With the
Brazilian project, for instance, I used to go to this place called the
Coffee Shop. [Union Square & 16th]. That’s where I first met Duduka
DaFonseca, Nilson Matta and Romero Lubambo. I just happened to be
passing by, heard the music, went in, introduced myself, and we talked.
Then I wound up going there every Saturday just to listen to them.
Eventually, I said, “Wow, I sure would like to play with these guys,”
and we figured out a way to make that happen. They were there for 12
years. TP: Were they doing a brunch gig? KENNY: Yes, every Saturday afternoon. TP: But your exposure to Bossa Nova goes back to the American
involvement in the idiom with Dizzy, who picked up on it fairly quickly. KENNY: That’s true. Actually, the group that started me really
listening to Brazilian music was Sergio Mendez, Brazil ‘65. I still have
that vinyl record that I bought in 1965.
TP: I’ll assume the group this week, to use the term in a totally generic way, a more straightahead, hardbop oriented thing. KENNY: Yes, it is more straight-ahead. TP: The three horns…if you were around in 1990, you’d call them
young lions, but now all are established tonal personalities on their
instruments. David Sanchez has been on a few of your records. KENNY: Yes. David actually was a student of mine at Rutgers. That’s
when we met. I was there when he auditioned, and I remember how nervous
he was. I don’t think he graduated. He left because he actually started
working. I ran into him a couple of years later at the Village Gate.
They used to do Monday nights where they’d invite a jazz artist with a
Latin band, and I was playing with Eddie Palmieri, and happened to turn
around, and David Sanchez was playing on the band. Although he wasn’t my student, Terrell was a student at Rutgers
University. Vincent I met a long time ago, and always loved his playing. TP: Kiyoshi Kitagawa has frequently played bass on your gigs. KENNY: Yes, frequently. That started at times when Ray Drummond
wasn’t available, and then Ben Riley actually told me about Kiyoshi. I
love the way he plays. TP: You and Ben Riley go back a couple of minutes, too. [MUSIC: “Um Beiju”; “Things Unseen”] TP: This was Kenny’s core quintet for about a decade. Eddie
Henderson and John Stubblefield, KB, Ray Drummond, Victor Lewis, and
Minu Cinelu… Perusing the recordings here, you’re the composer of all
but two tunes on Spirit Song – 8 or 10. You’re the composer of all the
tunes on Things Unseen from ‘95. On Images, the latest release, you
composed 6 of the tunes. And your compositions comprise the
preponderance of the material on many of your records. You’ve been
composing for a long time, and some of your songs and little melodic
hooks are part of the vocabulary now. You hear musicians quoting “What
If,” for example. However—and I could be wrong about this—people don’t
necessarily think of you first and foremost as a composer of the scope
and breadth that you demonstrably are. KENNY: Well, it’s funny, because I don’t think of myself as a
composer. I write tunes. It’s a work in progress. I’m still working on
trying to find things to write. I’d like to try to write something for a
larger group. TP: Aren’t you being unnecesarily modest here? Do you mean that
you don’t through-write? What to you is the difference between a
tunesmith and a composer? KENNY: Maybe what I mean is, the stuff I write isn’t terribly
complicated. For a lot of people, it’s not a composition unless it’s
difficult. The stuff I write is really very simple. And sometimes
that’s a good thing. TP: Do you write for personnel? KENNY: Generally, if I’m writing for a particular project, then I’m
writing for the people in the band who I’m going to be playing with. Not
necessarily for the instrumentation, but for those particular people. I
kind of know what they sound like, and I think I know what they’re
capable of. TP: Since the ‘70s, when you first recorded for Muse, your tunes
incorporate a lot of exotic scales, a lot of world rhythms—Brazilian,
Latin and African rhythms. You have a rather broad template, which
you’ve used for at least thirty years, and perhaps even going back to
your days with Dizzy. KENNY: I enjoy listening to all kinds of music. I enjoy trying to
incorporate various aspects of different cultures into the music, as
much as I’m able to. TP: Are you trying to find new material to improvise on? Is the goal always to find something to take off from? KENNY: As a jazz artist, I think ultimately it’s about improvising
and having a vehicle for that. But at the same time, I would also like
to get more involved in through-composing, really writing a piece all
the way through. I think it would be interesting to do. TP: Who are your models as a composer? Among your contemporaries
are some of the major people, and you worked with Dizzy Gillespie who
codified bebop composition. KENNY: Among my contemporaries, I love Wayne Shorter’s writing. Of
course, Duke Ellington and Billy Strayhorn. That goes without saying.
Some of those pieces they wrote, like Blood Count, Lush Life, they’re
really incredible. Bud Powell, things like Glass Enclosure and Tempus
Fugit. TP: For example, this week with the sextet… You occasionally
recycle or reconfigure compositions, but not too often. Usually a Kenny
Barron record presents a bunch of new pieces. Are there new things in
the book for the sextet next week? KENNY: Most of the things we’ve done before. I think we’re going to try two or three new things next week? TP: Are you a deadline-oriented composer, or is it a matter of when the spirit moves you? KENNY: If you give me too much time, I won’t do it! If I have three
months to write something, I’ll wait until the day before…or a week
before. It’s really just a question of developing a certain kind of
discipline, which I have yet to do; to just sit down and… I remember
sitting down with the pianist Hassan in Philadelphia, who I’d known
since I was a little kid, and he told me that he wrote a tune a day.
That’s 365 songs. TP: You must have at least 100 copyrighted. KENNY: Maybe a few more than that. TP: You haven’t exactly been a slouch… Having spoken of
composition, we’ll hear some blowing by Kenny on the piano, of which
there are ample recorded documents. This trio worked frequently at the
time; you could hear them every 3 or 4 months at Bradley’s. Am I
exaggerating? KENNY: No, you’re not. We were there a lot. TP: It’s a one-hour recital of ten tunes, and it reflects the
flavor of what your sets would be like. There are tuneful originals with
nice rhythmic feels, there’s a couple of Monk, a couple of great
standard songbook things, some soul tunes… [MUSIC: Sweet Lorraine, Alter Ego] TP: Lemuria would have done when the trio did a no-repeat week; a
week at Bradley’s without playing the same tune twice. That would be 18
sets. I think it happened around ‘91… Playing this music from Bradley’s:
You worked there a lot with this trio. It was a real locus for New
York’s piano community for about twenty years. KENNY: I think the first time I worked there, they had a spinet
piano. The first time I went there, I heard Bobby Timmons, who was there
quite frequently, and eventually I started working there. But I loved
working there. The ambiance, and like you said, it was a really great
hang. The last set sometimes would be full of musicians coming by from
their gigs. I remember one really memorable night. I think Tommy was
working there, and Carmen McRae was working at the Blue Note, and she
came by after her set, and I think she played almost the whole last set
at Bradley’s. She sat at the piano and sang and played. Only at
Bradley’s could you catch something like that. TP: What does it do to a musical community to have a gathering
place like that? There hasn’t been anything quite like Bradley’s since
1996. KENNY: For me, I felt very much at home there. I think most of the
musicians did. It was like home. You’d go in there, you knew
everybody… I never had to order a drink! Because the bartender knew
what I drank. He just put it right in front of me. TP: So even if you wanted to change for that night, you still had to drink it. KENNY: Yeah! [LAUGHS] I miss it. I really do miss it. TP: A more general question. Is there a New York piano school?
Obviously, we’re not talking about people born in New York, because the
majority of musicians who make their living here come here from
someplace else. But that being said, it seems that the overall sound
you’d hear at Bradley’s from one week to the next and from year to year
kind of crystallizes a New York approach to piano. But it’s unclear in
my mind specifically what that approach might be. So do you think of it
that way, or is that a bit too general? KENNY: It’s a little hard for me to think of a New York school of
piano playing. As you mentioned, everybody comes here from somewhere
else, and all those forces come into play. You’ve got people who come
from Detroit, like Tommy and Hank and Barry Harris and Kirk Lightsey.
But oddly enough, there is a Detroit sound. Especially with Tommy and
Hank and Barry and Roland Hanna, those guys had a particular sound. I
think whatever happens is just an amalgamation of everything that’s
happening around the country. Because everything comes here; everybody
comes here. TP: The last time you can really talk about an indigenous New York
sound might be the ‘50s, when you have people directly coming out of
the stride pianists, and Bud Powell and Walter Davis and Walter Bishop.
When you got here in the early ‘60s, what were most of the piano players
listening to? At the time, you got here is the same time Herbie Hancock
got here, it’s the same time Chick Corea got here… I mean, roughly. KENNY: Yes, it was around the same time. TP: Keith Jarrett got here then. You all arrive in New York with
diverse influences, but coming out of the same things that were in the
air. KENNY: I’m trying to think of what I was listening to when I came to
New York, the people I would seek out to listen to. For me, it was Tommy
and Hank, even though they were rarely in New York during that time. I
think they were always busy working, so I never got a chance to hear
them live that much then. People like Sonny Clark. I used to listen to
Erroll Garner. I never really got a chance to hear Bud, unfortunately. I
heard him one time, and he was really not himself. So it was kind of
sad for me to see. And Monk; I got to hear Monk. TP: As one of the founding members of Sphere, you played Monk’s
music extensively in the ‘80s, after he died. Did you get to know Monk? KENNY: No, I didn’t really get to know him. When I saw him a few
times earlier on, I was very young, and I was so much in awe, I would
not have approached him at all. Plus, he was a very awe-inspiring
looking figure. He was a very big man. I’m a kid. I said, “Wow.” TP: You didn’t know what he might say to you. KENNY: Right. But I certainly did listen to him. TP: And being with Dizzy Gillespie, I suppose that would be a
first-hand channel into the attitudes and tales of the music of the
generation before you. KENNY: Oh, sure. TP: Is that something you were very curious about at the time? I’m
asking in this context. For a lot of younger musicians who didn’t have a
chance to experience those lifeblood artists first-hand, didn’t get to
see Monk, didn’t get to see Bud Powell, maybe didn’t get to Dizzy—didn’t
even get to play in those bands, a lot of them. So for them, the notion
of being around New York in 1961, you’d think of it as a kind of golden
age. Here’s Coleman Hawkins. Here’s Monk. You can hear almost the
whole history of jazz on any given night in New York in 1961 or 1962 or
1963. KENNY: That’s true. TP: Was it that way to you at that time? KENNY: Yes, it was. It was that way to me at that time. I got to
hear, thankfully, a lot of people. I got to hear Willie The Lion Smith.
I got to work opposite… I was working with Freddie Hubbard at the
Vanguard, and we worked opposite Coleman Hawkins for a week. We played
opposite Cecil Taylor for a week. I heard some incredible music. And
I’ve been fortunate to work with a lot of great people. TP: Have you always had a very open attitude to music? Looking at
your discography in recent years, on the Bradley’s record you play
“Everybody Loves My Baby But My Baby Don’t Love Nobody But Me,” a ‘20s
Tin Pan Alley thing, which you play in the stride manner but in your own
style. Then with Minu Cinelu on the track we’re about to hear, you’re
prerecording fragments of material, recording electric keyboard bass,
using the latest technology. On another track, you explore intervals
that you might associate with Cecil Taylor or Hassan. There’ s a lovely
arrangement of Bud Powell’s “Hallucinations.” Really, your music and
musical persona seems to encompass very comfortably the whole timeline
of the music in a rather organic way. KENNY: I listen to a lot of different kinds of music, and I love and
appreciate a lot of different kinds of music. In terms of being open, I
think I’ve always been that way. I’ve always listened to all kinds of
stuff. I’ve always wanted to play as much as I could, all different
kinds of music. TP: We have a set of duos by Kenny Barron with different people.
First is “Mystere” with Mino Cinelu. A few words on how this recording
was set up. KENNY: We did a lot of stuff that you’d call preproduction, setting
up certain things—in his living room actually. He’s a whiz at the
computer, so he’d add different things with the computer. I know nothing
about that stuff, other than how to get my email. He did all of that.
Then in the studio, I opened up the acoustic piano on most of it. On my
solos, he added other things electronically and altered the sound on
certain things with the computer. So when I heard it back, it was
totally different. On quite a few tracks he altered the sound or added
things to it. But on the track you’re about to play, we did some of the
stuff in his living room, we came in and I overdubbed the piano solo,
and I also played keyboard bass. [KB-Cinelu, “Mystere”; KB-Regina Carter, Fragile; KB-Roy Haynes, “Madman”] TP: A set of duos concluded with a few signifying drumstrokes by Roy Haynes, concluding a piece called Madman, from Wanton Spirit. Was that your tune? KENNY: It is a tune, actually. I’ve never done it live and never recorded it since then. But I think I will start doing it. TP: You played Sting’s “Fragile” in duo with Regina Carter. KENNY: My wife was working at the time, and I went to pick her up,
but she wasn’t quite ready, so I went to a bar next door in Soho. I was
having a drink, and they were playing Sting singing this particular
song. I thought it was so beautiful! So I asked the bartender who it
was. I had no idea who Sting was. So I went out and bought the record,
and to my surprise, I liked the entire record, but that particular
piece, I really fell in love with. TP: In 1996, not too many people were working with computers to create the sounds you got on Swamp Sally.
And we’ve heard a very diverse selection of music, many colors and
scales and cultural reference. But almost all have been done for the
same label and the same two producers—earlier for Jean-Philippe Allard,
and more recently Daniel Richard, who produces you for French Universal,
no longer issued in the States by Verve, but currently by Sunnyside. It
seems to me that there might be some connection between having a
steady, familiar relationship with a receptive producer and the
venturesomeness of your output. KENNY: Fortunately, they are two producers who I really appreciate.
They’ve allowed me the maximum amount of freedom in terms of what I
wanted to do. “Go ahead!” Interestingly enough, the CD with Roy Haynes
and Charlie Haden, Wanton Spirit, was
actually a suggestion of Jean-Philipppe Allard. Because I never would
have thought of it. He said, “What do you think about recording with
Charlie Haden and Roy Haynes?” I said, “Wow, that could be… Yeah.” So
that’s how that one came about. TP: Charlie Haden has a similar relationship with him, as does
Randy Weston and Abbey Lincoln and Hank Jones and others. The ‘90s was a
prolific, fertile for all of them in terms of albums. But a lot of
musicians in your position, after more than forty years in the music
business, an established bandleader for at least thirty of those years,
and with a pedigree that includes Dizzy Gillespie, Ron Carter, Stan Getz
during the ‘80s… For all of that, you seem very willing to make music
with almost anything good that comes your way. It’s a very egoless type
of… Of course, you have your ego. And I don’t want to throw around
paeans to you here. But there’s a sort of openness to new experience
that seems to inform what you do.
KENNY: Oh, I do like to try new things, yes. They may not be NEW new,
but they’ll be new for me. So in that sense there’s certainly a sense
of adventure about it for me.
TP: What underlies that? Is it as simple as just trying to keep yourself fresh so as not to repeat?
KENNY: No, I think it really is curiosity. I’m not really concerned
about becoming stale or anything like that. Now, I should be! But it’s
really curiosity. I get inspired by a lot of different things. I’ll go
out and hear one of the cats or one of the young women playing today,
and I’ll get inspired. I’ll say, ”Wow, that was incredible.” So
inspiration comes from a lot of different places, and it inspires you to
try a lot of different things on your own. TP: Having seen you on nights-off or after a set going out to hear
people, I know for a fact that you do check out a lot of music. In your
quintet, everyone is under 35, and most of them are under 30. KENNY: The two young ladies, Kim and Anne, are 23. Stefon Harris is
just 30. Kiyoshi is older than you’d think. I was surprised when I found
out how old he was. But still, he’s younger than me. TP: What is the benefit to playing with so many people? Because
your sound is very identifiable always within whatever context you’re
in. I’m not really going to give you to someone on a Blindfold Test,
let’s say. KENNY: Well, what I get playing with all these different people is
that they make me play differently. Playing with some straight-ahead,
which I love to do, that makes me play one way. Playing with a good
singer makes you play another way. Playing with young people who are
really energetic, that energizes me. Playing with someone whose music is
a little more esoteric puts me in another thing. I like to think of
myself as a team player, so I’m less interested in myself sounding good
as much as the group I’m with, whether it be as a leader or as a
sideperson. Sounding good is more of my concern. TP: So if the group sounds good, you’re sounding good. KENNY: Essentially, yes. That’s very true. TP: Is that innate? Did you learn it from someone? A little bit of both? KENNY: Maybe a little bit of both. It’s a team effort. TP: Stepping back forty years ago, you were part of Dizzy
Gillespie’s group, from 18 to 22. What’s the most important lesson you
learned from that, apart from learning all those great tunes from the
inside-out and hearing him every night, and the stage presentation and
so on. KENNY: Well, those are among the things. I can’t say there’s any
one thing that was more important than any other. But it’s how to save
yourself, by which I mean that you don’t give up everything all at once
every night. You save some stuff. Keep some stuff in reserve. One of
the things I learned is not to play everything you know. That’s it. You
don’t play everything you know all the time.
TP: Why not?
KENNY: What for?
TP: You played a lot with Ron Carter in the ‘70s. The group was popular, lots of recordings and bookings.
KENNY: That was a really great band, with two bass players; Ron
played piccolo bass and Buster Williams the full-sized bass. Ben Riley
was on drums. Ron is a really good bandleader, because he knows what he
wants, and he knows how to TELL you what he wants and how to get it. One
thing I learned from playing with Ron is dynamics, how to use dynamics.
He’s very used to not playing at one level all the time—hills and
valleys in music.
TP: How about Stan Getz? Since he passed, some amazing recordings have come out of your collaboration.
KENNY: I guess the thing Stan and I had in common was a love for
lyricism. I think we fed each other in that way. I certainly learned a
lot from hearing him. He was one person who could play a ballad and
really make you cry.
TP: Is there anyone during the time we could call your
apprenticeship, which was a long one… You played steadily as a sideman
for thirty years, though for a chunk of that time you were a leader. Is
there anyone you wish you could have played with that you didn’t get to?
KENNY: Yes, a few people. Pre electronic days, I always wanted to
play with Miles. And Sonny Rollins is someone I always wanted to play
with.
TP: With Sonny, that could still happen. KENNY: One never knows!
TP: After you leave here, you have a rehearsal for next week. So
will this be the first rehearsal for this band for this program?
KENNY: Yes. And unfortunately, I don’t think everybody is going to
be there. People are still out of town. So we’ll muddle through.
TP: You mentioned that you have three new pieces. Are you a
stickler for rehearsal? Your bands always have a sound of elegance and
casualness that makes me think that you might be working them really
hard.
KENNY: No. I rehearse because it’s necessary. But I don’t LIKE to rehearse.
TP: The trios with Ben Riley and Ray Drummond, I’ll bet you didn’t rehearse.
KENNY: Oh, no, we rarely rehearsed. And many of the arrangements are
really just head arrangements. They evolved over the course of playing
them over a period of time.
TP: You said that your music is very simple, but it’s very
distinct. What do you think is the hardest aspect of playing your
compositions correctly? Is it the phrasing? Is there a certain
attitude?
KENNY: I don’t know. Again, I don’t think it’s difficult, but if
there’s anything, it’s playing with the right attitude. I certainly
don’t think the music is terribly difficult. If it’s anything, I think
it’s playing with the right attitude and the right feeling.
TP: Another one of your tunes that’s gotten some broader play is
New York Attitude. So maybe it’s the New York attitude. Not everyone has
it.
KENNY: Could be.
* * *
Kenny Barron Musician Show (WKCR, 2-13-91);
[MUSIC: K. Barron, “New York Attitude”]
Q: [ETC.] Kenny is from Philadelphia. I think that’s probably the first thing anybody should know.
KB: Right. From North Philadelphia.
Q: Neighborhoods are pretty important in Philly.
KB: Yeah. Well, there’s North Philly, South Philly, West Philly. They’re all different, too.
Q: You’re from quite a musical family as well.
KB: Yeah. Well, Bill was the oldest. There were five of us
altogether. Bill and myself are the only ones who became professional
musicians, but everyone else played the piano, two sisters and another
brother. They all played the piano.
Q: There was one in the house?
KB: Yes. There was always a piano there. My mother played also, so she was kind of the one who inspired everybody to do that.
Q: What kind of music was played in the house?
KB: It was usually Jazz, Rhythm-and-Blues — primarily. And Gospel Music on Sunday.
Q: What were your folks into? The big bands?
KB: It was strange, because my folks…my parents didn’t really listen to
the radio, or they didn’t seem to listen to music that often, other
than my mother, who as I said, listened to Gospel Music on Sunday. But
my brothers and sisters listened to lots of different kinds of music.
At the time, they had some really great radio shows, Jazz radio shows in
Philly. As I got a little older, by junior high school I was also
listening to, like, Doo-Wop groups and things like that. So I listened
to all kinds of music.
Q: You were also studying European Classical Music.
KB: Yes, I was studying Classical piano. I did that from the age of 6 until I was 16.
Q: Now, what was your first exposure to the world of Jazz in
Philadelphia? Did you sneak out when you were younger and go hear
groups in the neighborhood, or was it through your brother?
KB: Actually it was through my brother. He had a fantastic collection
of old 78’s, Charlie Parker and Fats Navarro, Dizzy, people like that.
So I used to hear those things all the time. I can remember being very
affected by one tune in particular; I’m talking about when I was maybe
ten years old. That was a piece called “Sippin’ At Bells.” I always
tried to find that piece and that record, and I couldn’t remember the
record label. Somehow or other, it really got to me.
Q: Bud Powell was on that, yes?
KB: I believe so.
Q: Of course, I’m sure your brother must have been practicing around the house.
KB: Oh yeah.
Q: It must have always been there.
KB: Yes, there was always music. His friends would come by. I’m sure
you’ve heard of the pianist Hassan from Philly. Well, he and Bill were
very close, so he used to come by the house quite often, and they would
spend hours playing and just talking together about music. So I would
be there listening and checking them out.
Q: Do you have any particular reminiscences about Hassan? He didn’t
have a lot of visibility outside of Philadelphia, and recorded only
once, albeit with Max Roach.
KB: One record, right. That’s right. He was unique as a pianist.
Eccentric. He just had a very unique style. Kind of Monkish. Of
course, at that time, when I was 9 or 10 years old, I knew nothing about
Monk. But he had, like I said, a very unique style. Later on, I found
out that one of his biggest influences was Elmo Hope, and not
Thelonious Monk.
Q: One of the compositions on that record, actually is dedicated to Elmo Hope, too.
KB: That’s right. Actually, I plagiarized a bass line from one of his
compositions from The Incredible Hassan on one of my records. I see
you’re taken aback! It’s funny, because only a few people knew it, and
they were all people from Philadelphia!
Q: I’ll bet. Who were some of the other people on the Philadelphia
scene who were important in the 1950’s, and particularly when you were
beginning to emerge and find your way?
KB: Well, there were people… There was a saxophonist, for instance,
named Jimmy Oliver, who was very influential on the Philadelphia scene
at the time. Jimmy Heath. I had a chance to work with Jimmy while I
was still in high school. Oh, and just the guys that I came up with;
there are people who probably aren’t that well known outside of
Philadelphia. A bass player named Arthur Harper…
Q: He played with J.J. Johnson…
KB: Exactly.
Q: I think he’s playing with Shirley Scott now.
KB: Yeah, exactly. He is playing in Philadelphia. He moved back to
Philadelphia, and he’s working there. But he was one of the guys that I
came up with who had a very big influence on me. He was a fantastic
bassist. We used to play together a lot, and talk about music.
Sonny Fortune, we came up together. So a lot of people were around during that time.
Q: I guess you were a little young to remember Jimmy Heath’s big band…
KB: Yes, that was a little before my time. But I often heard of it,
because Bill played in that big band, and I often heard him talk about
it. And there were some great people in it. I think John Coltrane…
Q: And Benny Golson…
KB: Benny Golson, right.
Q: [ETC.] Now, you’re on record as saying that the first record that
really grabbed you was a Miles Davis session from 1956 with Sonny
Rollins and Tommy Flanagan and…
KB: Yeah. Max. [sic: Art Taylor]
Q: …you were really into Miles Davis at that time. So we have a set of Miles from that period lined up for you…
KB: [LAUGHS]
Q: …by the miracle of radio. Was this one of your brother’s records, or did you hear it on the radio?
KB: No, actually what happened, I was in junior high school, and we had
an art class, and the teacher used to encourage the students to bring
in music to paint by, so to speak. So a friend of mine, a drummer, who
is now an English teacher actually, he brought in this record,
Collectors Items. The tune that they were playing that got me was ” In
Your Own Sweet Way.” I stopped painting, I was listening, and I was
“Who is this? Who is that?” Because it was just so clear, so crystal
clear, and the touch was so light, delicate. And I just fell in love
with Tommy’s playing right then and there.
Q: Well, we’re going to hear that in this set. But we’re going to
start with “All Of You” performed by the Miles Davis Quintet, with two
other Philly legends, Red Garland and Philly Joe Jones, on the famous
recording, Round About Midnight.
[MUSIC: Miles, “All of You,” “In Your Own Sweet Way.”]
KB: When that record came out, it had such an impact on the Jazz scene
that I was coming up with… One of the things that we could do, for
instance… I mean, I knew everybody’s solo on every tune.
Q: From the Round About Midnight record.
KB: Yes, from that record. I mean, I could do that as you were playing
it then! I mean, that didn’t make me unique, because everybody did
that then. I mean, that was one of the ways in which you learned about
improvising, was just through trying to imitate and learn solos, and
find out how they did it, what they did. It was a great… It’s still a
great learning tool, just to listen.
Q: At about the age of 14 and 15, who were the people you were following? Obviously Red Garland.
KB: Yeah, Red Garland. I also was listening to Horace Silver. I think
I may have been a little younger than that when he came out with Six Pieces of Silver.
For some reason, I remember at that particular time we didn’t have a
record player in the house. There was a luncheonette about five or six
blocks from the house, and they had on their jukebox “Señor Blues” and
“Enchantment.” And I went up to this luncheonette every day to play
that, play those two songs. Then when I found out that the drummer,
Louis Hayes, was 18, I mean, that really gave me a lot of inspiration.
Q: There’s hope for me yet.
KB: Yes. [LAUGHS]
Q: You were also listening to Ahmad Jamal at this time.
KB: Right. The Live At the Pershing album
came out at this time. Well, maybe a little bit later. But that was
also very influential. I remember I was laying in bed, getting ready to
go to sleep, and I had the Jazz station on, and the tune they were
playing was “Music, Music, Music.” And again, it was “Who is that?” It
was just so hip.
Q: Just encapsulate your impressions of Ahmad Jamal and Horace
Silver, their contributions in retrospect, now that you can look back
at it. They’re still doing it, actually.
KB: Well, that’s right. Still! I heard Ahmad a couple of summers ago,
and he’s still unbelievable. Actually, I appreciate him even more
now, now that I really know what he’s doing; not really know, but now
that I kind of understand what he’s doing.
I think Ahmad is like the consummate trio player. There’s just so much
space and so many ideas and he’s so creative in a trio setting. And his
technique is…I mean, it’s unbelievable technique. His touch… So he has
it all happening for him.
Horace was also a very big influence on my playing. He’s completely
different from Ahmad. Horace is a much more percussive player, and you
know, a little more out of the Bebop thing, but a great pianist and an
unbelievable composer. So just about every Horace Silver record that
came out, I would go and buy it, or find somebody who had it so I could
listen to it. Because I was as fascinated by his compositions as I was
by his playing.
Q: As are many musicians still.
KB: Yes.
Q: I think he’s one of the most popular fake-book…
KB: Yeah, that’s true.
Q: Were you engaged in teenage combos at this time? Were you working at all?
KB: Not working as such. But yeah, I did. I had a little trio. We
used to perform in school functions and things like that. It was fun,
and it was, again, a great learning device. While I was in high school I
met Arthur Harper. We happened to be… I was studying bass at the
time, and we happened to be studying with the same teacher.
Q: Who was?
KB: I don’t even remember his name. He was a Classical teacher. Mr.
Eaney(?). That was his name. Wow. He played with the Philadelphia
Orchestra. And I had my lesson at 10 o’clock, and Harper had his lesson
at 11, so I would see him, you know, when… I never knew how good a bass
player he was, and I guess he never knew that I played piano. Until
one day I happened to go to a jam session in West Philly. I was playing
bass, you know. So one of the guys, we later became great friends (his
name was Jimmy Vass, an alto player) but I had just met him this
particular day. He called “Cherokee.” And obviously, I couldn’t make
it! [LAUGHS]
Q: It wouldn’t seem obvious to us now.
KB: I’m talking about on the bass, now. I was playing bass. Then I
spotted Arthur Harper! And I had a pleading look in my eyes. He came
up and rescued me, and I sat down and listened to him, and all I could
say was “Wow!” I mean, he was such a good bass player. His time… He
was incredible.
[MUSIC: A. Jamal, “Music, Music, Music,” “No Greater Love,” H. Silver, “Señor Blues”]
Q: Did you discover Bud Powell around the time you first heard Ahmad Jamal and Horace Silver?
KB: Actually I discovered Bud later.
Q: Later.
KB: Yes.
Q: Monk, too.
KB: Monk, too — later. I guess I was so taken with Ahmad and also with
Tommy Flanagan that I kind of neglected to go to the source, so to
speak, which was Bud Powell. It’s hard not to come through him for
almost any pianist. It’s very difficult for any pianist who is playing
today not to have come through him, to have been influenced by him,
either directly or indirectly, one way or another.
[MUSIC: Bud Powell, “Glass Enclosure (1953),” “Hallucinations” (1950]
Q: We’ll move now to music emanating from Philadelphia in the late
1950’s that Kenny was involved with in one way or another as a young
musician.
KB: Well, I met Jimmy Heath: I was still in high school when I met him. He had done this first album for Riverside [The Thumper and Really Big],
for kind of a small big band, and he organized a group in Philadelphia,
kind of scaled it down. So I had a chance to play with him, and play a
lot of the music from that album — and it was really a lot of fun. A
couple of times he even used the big band.
Q: I take it he heard about you through your brother.
KB: Through Bill, right. And also through another saxophonist in town
by the name of Sam Reed, who I think had mentioned me to Jimmy. He was
very helpful, in terms of my career, even though he may not know it. I
remember one time Yusef Lateef came to Philly, had a matinee at the
Showboat, Monday, 4 o’clock, and his pianist missed the flight. So
Jimmy gave him my number, and he called me, and I went and played the
matinee — and that was it. He paid me. Then about three months later,
just after I graduated from high school, I got a call from him to come
to Detroit and work ten days in a place in Detroit called the Minor
Key. It was a great experience. First time on an airplane, first time
on the road. It was a great experience.
Q: And Detroit was quite a scene at that time.
KB: Yes, it was. Yes, it was.
Q: Did you meet most of the people then residing in Detroit?
KB: I met some, yeah. I met some people. The drummer was from
Philadelphia, though: his name was Ronald Tucker. The bassist was from
Detroit, I think he lives here now, or he may be back in Detroit now: he
was Ray McKinney, who comes from a very musical family. That was a
great ten days. And the music that Yusef was doing at the time was
really unusual. So it was my first time experiencing that.
Q: Of course he later became a big part of your career, some fifteen
years later, which we’ll be hearing later on in the course of the
Musicians Show. The other material we’ll hear on this set is a Philly
Joe Jones date from 1960 called Philly Joe’s Beat, which is your brother’s debut on record, more or less, a wonderful recording.
KB: Yeah, it is. It is.
Q: It features a lot of the Miles Davis arrangements, and other
things, done Philly Joe style. Now, did you know Philly Joe Jones at
this time, or was he too much out of town…?
KB: Well, he wasn’t in Philadelphia that often except to work. But
again, I got a chance to work with him when he came through
Philadelphia. It was the same sort of situation. He came through
Philadelphia, and his pianist wasn’t able to make it. So I got a chance
to do I think four nights with him, along with Arthur Harper, my
brother Bill was there, and trumpet player Michael Downs. We did four
nights at the Showboat in Philly. Again, it was pretty much the same
music that’s on this album, Philly Joe’s Beat.
[MUSIC: Jimmy Heath 10, “Big P” (1960); Philly Joe, “Salt Peanuts” (1960); J. Heath 10, “Nails” (1960)]
Q: Kenny participated in all of this music in one way or another around the time that the material was recorded.
KB: That’s true. That’s very true. I had a chance, again, to work
with Philly Joe, where we played pretty much the same music, and I had a
chance to work with Jimmy Heath during that time, and played a lot of
the music that was on that Really Big album.
Q: I’d say we’ve thoroughly covered the Philadelphia period. Now
we’re in 1962, and you’ve been to Detroit with Yusef Lateef for ten
days, and done some other things. But now you join Dizzy Gillespie, and
that lasts four years and really brings your name out into the wider
world of Jazz.
KB: Yes.
Q: How did Dizzy find out about you?
KB: Again through a recommendation. When I first moved to New York, I…
Q: When was that? When did you make the move?
KB: I moved to New York in 1961.
Q: Right out of high school?
KB: Well, I graduated in ’60. So I spent about a year around Philadelphia, and then I moved over here.
Q: What induced you to come up?
KB: Well, just the same thing that induces everybody. Just to be
around all these musicians and to be around all this music — and to
learn, you know.
But anyway, when I first moved here, I moved next door to my brother on
East Sixth Street, so I used to walk to the Five Spot a lot. James
Moody happened to be working there, and I sat in — and he hired me! We
did some gigs in Brooklyn, at the Blue Coronet in Brooklyn, and again at
the Five Spot.
Anyway, about a year later, I ran into Moody on Broadway. Moody had
gone with Dizzy, and I ran into him on Broadway. He said they were
appearing at Birdland, and he said, “You know, Lalo Schifrin is leaving
Dizzy; would you be interested?” And I had just gotten married, and I
needed a gig! [LAUGHS] You know? Plus, I mean, that’s such an honor.
So I said of course I’d be interested. So he said, “Well, come by
Birdland.” And I went by Birdland, and just talked to Dizzy. You know,
Dizzy had never heard me play, and he hired me.
Q: Without hearing you play.
KB: Without hearing me play. Just on Moody’s recommendation.
Q: Well, they have some history together.
KB: Yes, they do! [LAUGHS]
Q: Did you just go in cold? You must have had a rehearsal or two.
KB: No, actually we didn’t. Right after Birdland, the first gig was in
Cincinnati — and there was no time for rehearsal. So I remember after
checking into the hotel and going to the gig in a cab, Dizzy was running
down these things to me, talking certain tunes down. Then Chris White,
who was the bassist at the time, and Rudy Collins, the drummer, they
were also very helpful in pulling my coat to what was happening with
each tune and… The gig wasn’t a whole week, I don’t think, maybe just a
few days. So we managed to get through it. And by that time I felt a
lot more comfortable, after playing it a few times. So it worked out.
[LAUGHS]
Q: Apparently it did, because you did four years with Dizzy Gillespie.
KB: Right.
Q: A few words about Dizzy, and evaluating the experience.
KB: Well, I mean, what can you say? I think Dizzy’s a national
treasure. I mean, as a musician, as a human being, and his sense of
humor — I mean, that’s real; that’s not just on stage. I mean, that’s
real. He’s just a great human being, a great musician. And I learned a
lot musically, just being around him, how to save yourself… You know,
one thing you do when you’re young is, you play everything; you try to
play everything you know. But that’s one of the things, listening to
Dizzy, that you learn; you don’t have to do that all the time. Save
yourself for those difficult moments when you really have to do that.
And you don’t have to play everything you know at every moment.
Q: Dynamics.
KB: Exactly. I think that’s one of the biggest things I learned from him.
Q: You made several records with Dizzy, but we’re going to go back to
a recording by the great big band of the 1940’s, and listen to a
version of “Manteca”.
KB: Well, this is actually one of the first things I heard. I can
remember hearing this on the radio, this big-band version of “Manteca.”
And again, I was…whoo, I loved it. And I’ve never really liked big
bands that much, but there were a couple of things that really got me,
and this was one of them.
[MUSIC: Dizzy Big Band “Manteca” (1948); Monk (solo) “Blue Monk,” “Ruby
My Dear” (1971); Dizzy Big Band, “Round About Midnight” (1948)]
Q: Dizzy Gillespie and Monk are two musicians Kenny has been
associated with, although in very different ways. The public associates
you very much with Monk, I imagine, through your work with Sphere, and
also from recording a lot of Monk’s tunes on your albums. But you
didn’t really get into Monk, you said, until rather late.
KB: Yes, not until much later. Towards the end of high school I really
started listening a lot to Monk, and really began to appreciate his
writing and his playing. They are almost inseparable; they are so
similar. I mean, it’s very hard to imitate him, he’s such a strong
stylist and so unique.
Q: So what do you do?
KB: Well, you play yourself playing Monk. That’s the best you can do. I mean, you can do it tongue-in-cheek…
Q: I never got that impression from you, though, that you were ever doing Monk tongue-in-cheek.
KB: Well, there are certain things you can allude to, you know, about
his playing. The humor in his playing, the use of dissonance, his
touch, the percussive touch that he had. So you can allude to those
things just for flavor, but I don’t think that it would make sense to
really imitate Monk.
Q: Well, he really developed his own fingerings and his own personal language.
KB: Yes, as you say, his technique was very personal. I got to see him
live only a few times, and just to watch him would amaze me, looking at
his fingering, how he would execute. I mean, I’d think, “Is he actually
going to pull this off?” Of course, he always would.
Q: Walking the tightrope.
KB: Yeah, exactly. It was just so unorthodox. But I think his
approach and the way he did things is part of the uniqueness of his
music, what makes it all sound so special. Q: I guess “Round Midnight” was in Dizzy’s book when you were
performing with him, because I know you recorded that with him on one of
the Mercury albums.
KB: Yes, it was.
Q: [ETC.] Now we’ll take an interlude, and listen to some musical
offerings by our host this evening, Kenny Barron, in quintet and trio
format… [ETC.] I wonder if you’d elaborate on your speculative title
“What If?.”
KB: Well, it’s like always looking ahead and trying to find problems,
when there aren’t any. “What if this happens, and what if that
happens?” rather than just go with what is happening.
[MUSIC: KB Quintet, “What If?”, KB Trio, “The Courtship”]
Q: Now we’ll get back to influences, and we’ll hear something by McCoy Tyner, who had a major impact on you.
KB: Yes, he has. Well, on almost all players younger than him. I met
McCoy when he was still living in Philly, and his playing was quite
different then. After he joined Trane, it just really changed, and just
grew and grew and grew, so that he became a major influence himself.
But his playing when he was still in Philly was a little more beboppish,
a little more bebop influenced.
Q: He’s not really that much older than you. There’s about a five years difference.
KB: Yeah, something like that, five or six years.
Q: Which means a lot then, but…
KB: Well, at that time, at that time, at that stage, yeah, it can mean a lot.
Q: Who was he working with in Philly?
KB: Well, he used to work with people like Odean Pope, and also he used
to work with, like, Lee Morgan and people like that. Whenever someone
would come in from New York… I remember one time Kenny Dorham came in,
Kenny Dorham and Jimmy Heath, and the rhythm section was McCoy and Lex
Humphries, and I can’t remember who the bassist was…it might have been
Jimmy Garrison, I’m not sure. This was at a little small club that
didn’t last too long in Philadelphia, so whenever someone came through
Philly, McCoy would always be the pianist.
Q: Those are some high standards on the Philadelphia scene that you had to come up under.
KB: Oh, yes. That’s right.
Q: You couldn’t be messing around in Philadelphia.
KB: No. And there were some other good pianists there that no one ever heard of, who still live there.
Q: Well, now they’ll hear of them.
KB: There was a guy there named John Ellis, another pianist named Omar
Duncan. Hen Gates, who some musicians may know, is from Philadelphia.
Some others…the names escape me right now. But there are a lot of good
musicians.
[MUSIC: McCoy, “Inception” (1962)-DEFECTIVE]
Q: Coming up will be music by Freddie Hubbard and Yusef Lateef, and
in each instance we’ll hear one of Kenny Barron’s compositions. You
joined Freddie Hubbard immediately after leaving Diz, or…?
KB: No, it wasn’t immediately after, but maybe a year after I left
Dizzy. Freddie lived in the same neighborhood… Actually, at the time he
lived around the corner from me in Brooklyn, and I started working with
him. It was a great experience, because it was totally different from
working with Dizzy. Things were very, very structured with Dizzy, but
with Freddie it was a lot looser, and I was able to take a lot more
chances, to be a little more adventurous. It’s all part of the growing
experience.
Q: Which was very much in keeping with the times as well.
KB: Exactly. Exactly, because it was during the Sixties. I went
through several different bands with Freddie. One was a sextet, with
James Spaulding and Bennie Maupin, the late Frederick Waits, and a
bassist who is now back in California, Herbie Lewis. That was a really
good band. It was the kind of band that could shift gears. It could
play inside, outside. Then we had another band called The Jazz
Communicators, which never recorded, which was with Joe Henderson,
Freddie, Louis Hayes, Herbie Lewis and myself.
Q: Never recorded.
KB: Never recorded. So I’ve been through several different situations working with Freddie, and they were all great.
Q: I can’t recollect whether you’re playing electric piano or piano
on the track, but you did quite a bit of work on the electric piano over
about a 10 or 12 year period.
KB: Yeah, during that time I did quite a bit on the electric piano.
Q: Why were people concentrating so much on the electric piano then?
Was it because clubs didn’t have pianos? For experimentation?
KB: No, that was primarily for recording. I think what you have there
was the very, very beginning of the fusion thing. So a lot of record
companies, when you recorded, wanted you to use electric piano to add
other colors. Because the fusion thing could go in several different
directions. It could be used kind of for more avant-garde kind of
music…
Q: Color, texture…
KB: Yeah, texture and things like that.
Q: Freeing things up.
KB: Yeah. And also it could be used percussively for more R&B
kinds of things. So a lot of companies wanted the pianists to use the
electric pianos during that time. I think one year I won a New Star
Award or something from Downbeat, and I never had an electric piano. I
won the award on the electric piano, I mean; and I never owned one. But
I was using it a lot on recordings. Not at my request, but the
company’s request.
[MUSIC: Freddie, “The Black Angel” (1968); Yusef, “A Flower” (1976?)]
Q: Now, Yusef Lateef was the first musician with whom you went out on
the road, in 1960 or so, and you did five years with Yusef in the
1970’s. How much was the group working then?
KB: He was teaching himself at the time. So we worked primarily during
the summer. We would either go to Europe or out West, a California
tour, work our way out to California and back. So for about four or
five years that’s all we did. And again, it was mostly during the
summer, because he was teaching. And during that time, everyone in the
band also decided to go back to school, so everyone else was in school
as well, studying.
Q: That whole experience was very positive.
KB: Yeah, he had a very positive influence. Like I said, he influenced
everyone to go back to school. Well, he’s an amazing person. He just
has a very positive effect. I was in one of his classes, actually, a
harmony class. I remember one of the projects, everyone had to write a
large piece of music, so I wrote a string quartet. He said, “Well, it’s
nice that you wrote all this music. How can we get to hear it?” So
everyone in the class put money together, and we hired musicians, and
actually gave a concert to perform these pieces of music that we had
written for our term projects. And it really came out great. But
that’s the kind of person he was, who inspired you to do things like
that.
Q: Coming up we’ll hear the last issued record by Kenny Barron’s late
brother, Bill Barron. There’s one that’s ready for issue in the near
future. Your brother was the head of the Jazz Department at Wesleyan
University at that time.
KB: Yes..
Q: You recorded with him on just about every record under his leadership, I think.
KB: I believe so. Just about every one.
Q: You’ve mentioned, of course, your brother’s influence. Just a few words about your older brother, Bill Barron.
KB: Well, he was an incredible musician. I don’t want to use the word
“underrated,” but there it is, you know. In terms of the public, I
think he was. I think musicians knew and respected his work, you know,
as often I’ve heard… Especially people that he came up with. People
like Jimmy always spoke very well of Bill. And he was a really good
person, and very dedicated. He was very dedicated to music. I think he
spent most of his waking hours involved with music one way or another,
writing music, talking about music. He was also a very good composer.
He had some unique ideas about composition, very different ideas, and it
came through when he wrote. He was just a great player and a great
person.
[MUSIC: B. Barron, “This One’s For Monk” (1990)]
Q: A few words about the quintet working at the Village Vanguard this week.
KB: Well, I could speak volumes about them.
Q; Then we’ll do short stories.
KB: On trumpet is Eddie Henderson, who I think is one of the finest
trumpet players around today. He’s obviously a very intelligent person;
he’s a doctor…and a funny guy, too!
I guess what I love about everyone in the band is that when it’s time to work, they really hit very hard.
John Stubblefield is, you know, from Arkansas, so he’s got a certain
kind of grittiness in his sound. At the same time, he has that certain
other kind of thing that maybe Wayne Shorter…
Q; From that AACM background, there’s another…
KB: Yeah, exactly. And David’s background is West Indian, but he’s
been here for a very long time, and he’s worked with almost everybody.
He’s a current mainstay with Cedar Walton’s European trio, the trio that
he takes to Europe quite often, sometimes with the Timeless All-Stars.
He works a lot. He’s dependable… I’m talking about in terms of music.
I can count on him to be there, and to be imaginative, good sound, good
intonation, good time.
Now, I don’t know exactly what I can say about Victor Lewis. I mean,
Victor can function in practically in any kind of circumstance.
Whatever kind of music you want to play, he can do it for you, and do it
well — and enjoy doing it.
Q: And different every time. KB: Yeah, different every time. One of the things about having this
band, I don’t tell them what to play; I just let them bring whatever
they have, their own thing to it, and it works out better that way for
me.
Q: [ETC., THEN MUSIC]
[MUSIC: Moody/KB, “Anthropology” (1972); KB Trio, “The Only One” (1990)]
[-30-]
If you looked up the word ubiquitous in some cosmic jazz dictionary,
you’re likely to find “Kenny Barron” as its definition. Long considered
one of the finest jazz pianists of his generation, Barron has forged
celebrated collaborations as a sideman with such luminaries as Dizzy
Gillespie, Freddie Hubbard, Yusef Lateef, Ron Carter, Stan Getz, to name
but a few. Even with such a stellar résumé, this 56 year-old giant is hardly one
to rest on his laurels. Since his duet recording with Getz, People
Time, was released in 1992, Barron has embarked on a seemingly endless
series of collaborations and experiments, all linked by his unique
vision and deft touch at the keys. As a leader, his output has run the
gamut from Brazilian rhythmic exploration (1993’s Sambao) to
straight-ahead group interplay (1996’s trio recording Wanton Spirit and
the more densely textured Things Unseen, in 1997) to experiments with
form and technology (his collaboration with Mino Cinelu, Swamp Sally, in
1995). A stellar sideman himself, Barron has lent supple support to
hundreds of sessions, adding his distinctive colorings to the music of
both young lions (like Christian McBride) and old hands (Carter, Abbey
Lincoln, et. al) alike. Barron accomplished all this while maintaining a
professorship at Rutgers University and keeping a busy touring schedule
in the US and Europe. In the last year, he has also reunited with the stellar collective
known as Sphere, joining forces again with bassist Buster Williams,
drummer Ben Riley, and sax great Gary Bartz (who replaces the late
Charlie Rouse in the group), to continue the unique interplay forged
during their partnership in the 1980s. He has also stepped up his
involvement in Joken Records, the label he began in partnership with his
former manager, Joanne Klein. Jerry Jazz Musician interviewed Kenny Barron on November 28, 1999,
after a Sphere performance in Harrisburg, PA. Before the gig, Barron had
endured a long flight from Italy and the mother of all Thanksgiving
weekend traffic jams driving to the show.
_________________________
JJM: First of all, we appreciate you taking the time to talk to us. What were you doing over in Italy? KB: I did a few things. Actually, I was in Italy and Spain. I did two
concerts in Spain with a trio, two guys who live over there – Reggie
Johnson and Alvin Queen. And then I did a solo concert in Sicily, and in
Milan I played with a symphony orchestra. It was kind of nice. JJM: That’s interesting. Have you done that before? KB: Not that often, no. It was something that George Gershwin had
done quite a few years ago – “Variations on Four Hands.” They
orchestrated it for a full orchestra. That was very nice. JJM: What prompted Sphere getting back together again? KB: Mostly it was just people asking. They’d ask Buster or myself or
Ben, ‘You think Sphere will ever get back together?’ These were mostly
older people who remember the group – a lot of young people don’t
remember; they weren’t around. So we thought about it, talked about it,
and eventually said ‘Why not?’ Of course, the obvious question was who
would replace Rouse. We agreed we wanted somebody from our generation.
So we agreed on Gary; we asked him and he was certainly into it. JJM: What does Gary bring to the table that drew you to him? KB: He brings different colors because he plays different
instruments, number one – alto and soprano. He also brings a different
concept. The music is a little more energetic, because Gary is a little
more out of the Coltrane kind of thing. The music takes a different
shape. JJM: Is there a difference interplay when you’re onstage or in the
studio with a group like Sphere, in which you’re all pretty much equals,
rather than playing on somebody else’s date or playing as the leader of
your own ensemble? KB: It’s always different. I’m very comfortable in this situation,
and I’m obviously comfortable as a leader. When you’re a sideman,
sometimes you subjugate yourself to the leader’s musical vision, and
there’s nothing wrong with that. So sometimes you feel like you’re
holding back a bit; sometimes you are. It’s not your musical vision –
it’s someone else’s. That’s just something you have to deal with. JJM: When do you find time to compose? KB: I don’t usually, because I really don’t have time, unless there’s
a special project – a recording or something like that. It’s not
something I do every day, although I should. Usually, there’s something
special coming up – a recording or something – and then I’ll hunker down
and hit the pen and paper. JJM: Two of your recent records – Swamp Sally and Things Unseen – are
really challenging, really different pieces. One difference is, of
course, in the personnel – a difference between two people in the studio
and a larger ensemble. Did you approach writing for each project
differently, or were they simply collections of pieces you thought each
ensemble could bring something special to? KB: I had to approach them differently. Things Unseen is pretty
straightforward; Swamp Sally was done using computers, MIDI, and all
that stuff. A lot of that was done at Mino Cinelu’s house, in his living
room – “pre-production” it’s called [chuckles]. I had never worked that
way before, so it was a new experience for me. A lot of it was
overdubbed. JJM: There were a lot of different textures. KB: Absolutely. For me, it was fun. It was something I’d like to try
again in the studio. Not live, though, because I wouldn’t want to have
to carry all that stuff [laughs]. JJM: Do you still teach at Rutgers? KB: No, I’m retired. Retired as of May. JJM: What did you get out of teaching? What did it do for you? KB: I learned a lot. I learned a lot from the students there. Because
they will test you [laughs]. It was challenging. Sometimes they would
challenge me. They kept me on my toes; it helped me to organize things
in a sequential manner so that I could give it out in some sort of
logical way. JJM: You taught composition? KB: I taught jazz composition and arranging the last few years, but
mainly it was piano. When I first started, the first couple of years, I
taught classical theory. JJM: Could you discuss Joken Records – why you created it, where you intend to take it, and how involved you are in it? KB: I’m not involved in it as much as I’d like to be; time-wise, it’s
a bit too much. But basically, I started it ten years ago or more, to
give exposure people who I thought were deserving of some exposure. Not
necessarily well known people, but definitely people who were talented.
And then maybe some people who were out there but hadn’t had the
exposure they deserved. I recorded Ben [Riley]; Ben’s been out there a
long time and never had the chance to do an album of his own. Of course, the problem for me is finding the time to devote full-time
to that. Now that I’m retired I intend to devote more time to it. We’ve
got a Web site now, but in terms of doing advertising and really going
after it, I haven’t had the time until now. We’ve got a new record coming out right now, actually, by Jeannie
Bryson. It’s the first thing she did, actually. I like it better than
all the other stuff she did [laughs]. It’s a simple thing with a trio –
Victor Lewis and Ray Drummond and her pianist Ted Brancato. That should
be coming out in the winter – January or February. JJM: One of the other releases you’ve done is one by your brother,
Bill. What does it mean to release his music under your own banner? Do
you feel like something of a caretaker of his music?
KB: Well, when I recorded it he was still alive, of course, but by
the time I released it he had passed away. Actually, this is probably
the only record he ever did where he played standards. Every other
record he did under his own name, he recorded only his own music. When
we talked about doing this, I broached the subject with him – ‘Why don’t
you do a couple of standards?’ [laughs]. He did, and it worked out
well. It’s only been reviewed a few times, but the reviews have been
really good. I’m very happy about that. JJM: What’s next for you? KB: I’m going back to Italy in two weeks to do a two-piano concert
with John Hicks. Sphere starts Tuesday at the Vanguard, for a weeklong
engagement. I have a new record coming out in February, called Spirit
Song. I think it turned out pretty good – David Sanchez, Eddie
Henderson, Rufus Reid, Billy Hart, Russell Malone, Regina Carter. I’m
very happy with it. JJM: Why work so much? You’ve been pretty ubiquitous for a long time
now; you’ve done lots of different things with lots of different people.
You just mentioned you’ve retired from teaching; do you see yourself
slowing down a bit? KB: Nah. For what? Actually, I just took another teaching job, part
time, at the Manhattan School of Music. One day a week, five students.
But no – I don’t see myself slowing down. Slow down for what? There’s
time enough when the Big Sleep comes. I’ll sleep a long time then.
Summer is
traditionally the time when American jazz musicians go off to Europe,
hitting the festival circuit and picking up the paychecks. The exodus
means that groups often dissolve, or temporarily draft new members. This
can be a good thing, giving audiences a chance to hear new combinations
of musicians or to be introduced to younger players. At Fat Tuesday's
(190 Third Avenue, at 17th Street, Manhattan) the pianist Kenny Barron
has brought in a quintet that has two young new members -- Terell
Stafford on trumpet and Don Braydon on tenor saxophone -- replacing his
standard front line, the saxophonist John Stubblefield and the trumpeter
Eddie Henderson.
The changes have
worked out. Mr. Barron writes challenging material, and on Tuesday night
the two new players, in the high-level company of Mr. Barron, the
bassist David Williams and the drummer Victor Lewis, turned in a series
of solos that rarely fell into cliche. On "Voyage," the opening tune of
the set, Mr. Braydon, played familiar lines that suddenly veered away to
follow the movement of the chords as the harmony changed. And Mr.
Stafford, mixing melody lines with runs, navigated his way thoughtfully
through the harmonies; the two egged each other on like a mutual
admiration society.
They were helped
by the garrulous rhythm section, which in turn was helped by Mr. Lewis,
one of the great jazz drummers. Mr. Lewis, Mr. Williams and Mr. Barron
specialize in three-way conversations, and while Mr. Lewis regularly
changed textures behind soloists -- standard practice for decent
drummers -- his interactive speed seemed telepathic.
Mr.
Barron, as usual, brought everything from clusters and long glissandos
to snaking, complicated lines to his improvisations. On "Phantoms," a
repeating harmonic pattern, he crammed in chordal substitutions, filling
the piece with harmony that hadn't been there before. It got the band's
attention; not only were the members smiling at his inventions, but
together they turned in a near-perfect performance, moving from gentle
and smooth passages to jagged tumult and back.
The group's last show is tomorrow night.
A version of this article appears in print on , Section 1, Page 13 of the National edition with the headline: Review/Jazz; Kenny Barron's Summer Sound.
Of all the skills
a jazz pianist needs, comping -- supplying chords behind a soloist
while steering the rhythm section -- is probably the most overlooked.
Kenny Barron's comping never upstaged his quintet's soloists in the
first set Tuesday night as they opened a six-night stand at the Village
Vanguard, but his playing was a study in the uses of chord voicings,
rhythmic variety and quick response to solos. He made chords transparent
in one chorus, opaque in the next; he put a canopy of harmony above one
solo, smoothly undergirded another and gently prodded a third. His
comping transformed hard-bop pieces in conventional theme-solos-theme
form into suites of emotions, from suavity to torment to triumph.
It
didn't hurt that Mr. Barron is leading an expert quintet. Eddie
Henderson, on trumpet and flugelhorn, has a quicksilver tone and a
fleetness and ease reminiscent of Clifford Brown and Lee Morgan. He can
be frisky or pensive; one of his best solos, on a ballad, was intensely
private, barely moving above a whisper. John Stubblefield, on tenor
saxophone, works his way through warm, romantic statements to the edge
of free jazz, moving into Coltrane-like sheets-of-sound arpeggios and
dramatic but controlled squeals.
Behind
them, the rhythm section could swing, float and kick. David Williams on
bass juggled counterpoint and a harmonic foundation; as Victor Lewis on
drums sent rhythmic ideas ricocheting around the group, he unveiled a
spectrum of cymbal tones: a slowly expanding whoosh, a metallic rattle, a
brisk chatter. Together, the quintet had the light touch that reflects
alert listening from every player.
A version of this article appears in print on , Section 1, Page 74 of the National edition with the headline: Review/Music; Kenny Barron Quintet.
https://www.sfcv.org/reviews/sfjazz/kenny-barron-is-still-showing-how-its-done Kenny Barron Is Still Showing How It’s Done by Andrew Gilbert November 13, 2018 SFJAZZ Kenny Barron | Credit: John Sann For the final piece of Thursday’s concert, pianist Kenny Barron called all three of his duo partners onto the SFJAZZ Center’s Minor Auditorium stage for a loose but deliberate quartet version of his plaintive near-standard “Phantoms.” He’d been on stage for more than two hours, and he made it clear that there would not be an encore. “We’re not teenagers up here,” said Barron, 75, after a concert that made an incontrovertible case for the incomparable value of time-honed wisdom and decades-long musical relationships. The Philadelphia-reared pianist, composer, bandleader, educator, and NEA Jazz Master is more than a jazz institution. Since earning national attention as a 19-year-old wunderkind in Dizzy’s Gillespie’s mid-1960s quintet, Barron has been an essential voice in jazz’s progressive mainstream, frequently sought by his peers for his quick ears, beautiful touch, and elegant sense of structure.
No setting better showcases his gift for thoughtful, impromptu bandstand conversations than the duo, and his extensive discography is studded with albums documenting his one-on-one encounters, including guitarist Ted Dunbar, bassists Buster Williams, Ron Carter, Michael Moore, Dave Holland, and Red Mitchell, pianist Tommy Flanagan, and violinist Regina Carter, one of Thursday’s featured interlocutors. The concert opened Barron’s four-night residency at SFJAZZ, and was followed by Friday’s performance with Concentric Circles, a quintet featuring musicians a generation or two younger, Saturday’s showcase with rising female players Camila Meza, Hailey Niswanger, and Nikara Warren, and Sunday’s solo recital.
Kenny Barron with Eddie Henderson | Credit: Grason Littles
Thursday’s first encounter featured trumpeter Eddie Henderson, who joined Barron for a ballad-centric set on flugelhorn. Starting with a measured jaunt through Freddie Hubbard’s “Up Jumped Spring,” the long-time collaborators jousted with debonair wit, as Barron’s inquisitive right hand runs provided a bright foil for Henderson’s astringent melodicism. A master of the fading art of the apt musical quotation, the New York horn player slyly interpolated an ascending line from “Spring Can Really Hang You Up the Most” into one of his concluding passages. At 78, Henderson is in the midst of a well-earned run as an esteemed jazz elder, leading his own projects while also touring and recording widely with the all-star combo The Cookers. With Barron he eschewed fireworks, instead delivering a steady flow of lustrous melodies punctuated a couple of times by open-horn buzzes. From a stately interpretation of Billy Strayhorn’s “Isfahan” and Jobim’s “Trieste” to Duke Pearson’s “You Know I Care,” the set was a study in sumptuous melody and graceful pas de deux pirouettes that reached a moody epiphany during an extended take on Barron’s “Rain.” Kenny Barron with Terri Lyne Carrington | Credit: Grason Littles For sheer invention, novelty and variety, the set with drummer Terri Lyne Carrington was worth the price of admission alone. Opening with Barron’s “Seascape,” a tune that Carrington recorded at 16 with the pianist on her first session as a leader, 1981’s TLC and Friends, she spun a spacious mesh with both ends of her mallets. The duet on Eubie Blake’s “Memories of You” was particularly delightful with Carrington’s swirling brushes performing a soft-shoe routine amidst a melody that comes close to evoking a sense pleasurable longing that Brazilians call saudade. Barron’s “Calypso” turned into the evening’s liveliest piece as a Caribbean journey started and returned to Trinidad after a brief but intense stop in Havana with a forceful
montuno.
Regina Carter | Christopher Drukker
After Henderson and Carrington, Barron had already delivered a full-length concert marked by variety and drama. Violinist Regina Carter’s set felt like icing on a red velvet cake. Harkening to their acclaimed 2000 duo album Freefall
(Verve), they opened with a briskly swinging “Softly As In a Morning
Sunrise,” followed by bereft rendition of Billie Holiday’s abjectly
masochistic “Don’t Explain.” The jam session warhorse “Squatty Roo,” a
riff-based Johnny Hodges piece from 1941, offered an opportunity to cut
loose, with Barron weaving in a quote from “Eleanor Rigby” and Carter
employing her full palette of accompaniment techniques, playing soft
pizzicato fills, strummed lines, and sharply plucked accents.
By the time Barron brought everyone on stage for the last number, the
only thing missing was a solo piece by the maestro. Even with this
varied and inspired company, Barron was just as enthralling every time
his duo partners sat out.
A Los Angeles native based in the Berkeley area since 1996, Andrew Gilbert covers jazz, international music and dance for KQED's California Report, The Mercury News, San Francisco Chronicle, Berkeleyside and other publications.
The Kenny Barron Trio is led by its piano-playing namesake (right). (PHILIPPE LEVY-STAB)
The piano master, whose past
collaborators include Dizzy Gillespie, Buddy Rich and Ella Fitzgerald,
performs Friday with his trio at La Jolla’s TSRI Auditorium.
As one of the most gifted and prolific jazz pianists of the past
half-century years, Kenny Barron has made more than 50 solo albums. He’s
also been a key member in the bands of such legends as James Moody,
Buddy Rich, Ella Fitzgerald, Stan Getz, Freddie Hubbard and Lionel
Hampton, among many others.
But one of the most memorable early moments in this nine-time Grammy
Award nominee’s illustrious career came in 1962, when this
then-19-year-old keyboardist auditioned — or, rather, didn’t audition — to play in the band of bebop trumpet king Dizzy Gillespie.
Jazz at the Athenaeum presents the Kenny Barron Trio
When: 7:30 p.m. Friday, April 15
Where: TSRI Auditorium, 10620 John Jay Hopkins Drive, La Jolla
“There was no audition!” Barron recalled with a hearty laugh,
speaking from his home in Brooklyn. “Dizzy hired me solely on Moody’s
recommendation; he never heard me play until my opening night, the first
gig I played with Dizzy.” Did the then-recently-married young
pianist immerse himself in Gillespie’s demanding concert repertoire
before he joined the famed trumpeter’s band?
“No, I didn’t,”
replied Barron, 72, who performs here Friday with his trio at La
Jolla’s TSRI Auditorium. “He just hired me on the basis of Moody’s
recommendation — and the fact I was 19. He felt that, being married, I’d
be a more responsible kind of person. I didn’t use drugs. I was always
punctual. I was there to take care of business and learn as much as I
could.” Barron, who was named a National Endowment for the Arts Jazz Master in 2010, clearly learned well. He
has long been acclaimed as an unusually graceful and resourceful
pianist, composer and band leader in his own right. His formidable
technical prowess, improvisational ingenuity and unerring good taste
enable him to stand out in any setting, be it with jazz greats, string
quartets, such pop and R&B vocal luminaries as Roberta Flack and
Maria Muldaur, opera icon Kathleen Battle, or such pop-jazz mainstays as
George Benson and San Diego-bred singer Michael Franks. Along
the way, Barron’s recordings have been sampled on recordings by everyone
from hip-hop favorites De La Soul and Pete Rock to soon-to-retire EDM
star Avicii and house music mainstay Basement Jaxx. His supple piano
playing has also been featured in the scores to a number of films by
director Spike Lee, including “Do the Right Thing,” “Malcolm X” and “Bamboozled.”
“Sound like portraits”
Whatever the style, Barron’s ability to play exactly what is right
for any song at hand — no more, no less — makes him that rare pianist
whose eloquence is matched by his concision. His artful approach to
performing and composing have earned him praise from many jazz
luminaries, including former San Diego saxophone giant Moody, who died
here in 2010. In a 2007 Union-Tribune interview, an effusive Moody
declared: “I've worked with Kenny a lot and I’ve never heard him make a
mistake. He’s fantastic! And all of his solos sound like portraits.” Barron chuckled appreciatively as the comments of Moody, one of his biggest mentors, were read to him over the phone. “I’ve made a lot
of mistakes!” Barron said. “I mean, it was very kind of him to say
that, but I’ve made a lot of mistakes, and I’m still making them. But
that’s OK, because you grow from your mistakes.
“Moody was just the nicest guy. He was a sweetheart, and he was always
like that. I don’t think I ever heard him utter a cross word. Moody was
always wanting to learn new things, and he was always interested in
interaction. He’d often ask me, ‘How do you do this?’ When we were in
Dizzy’s together, he’d say, ‘Play these (chord) changes,’ and I would,
and he’d play over them. He was always interested in trying to stretch
himself.
“And Dizzy was very knowledgeable about music, and
willing to share. He knew a lot about the piano, so he could show me
voicings. He also knew a lot about rhythms, especially Brazilian
rhythms, and he was willing to share that information.”
Making musical statements
Does the Philadelphia-born Barron agree with Moody’s remark that his
piano solos “sound like portraits”? Does he strive to play in a
painterly manner in order to shade and texture his keyboard work?
“Not consciously,” he replied. “But I know the people who influenced me played that way, people like Tommy Flanagan and Hank Jones.
What I love about their playing is the lyricism and how they tell
stories. And that’s what I like to do, hopefully — not just play a
whirlwind of notes and scales, but to make statements, musical
statements, that include punctuation and all of that.
“My impetus
for making music hasn’t changed since I was 19. The idea, then and now,
is just to get better — not better than anybody else, just better.
That’s the motivating factor, just to play better tomorrow than I did
today and to learn something everyday.”
Barron was 18 when he
moved to New York from Philadelphia and joined drum dynamo Roy Haynes’
band. It was, he recalls, a musical trial by fire. “It was kind of like going in the deep end of the pool,” Barron said.
“Because,
even then, Roy was an unusual player. When we would trade (bars of)
four and eight (onstage), I would literally have to count in my head as
we played. A drummer like ‘Philly’ Joe Jones played very logically, and
you could feel where the downbeat — the ‘one’ — was. You couldn’t do
that with Roy. His playing would always be right, but it was always
tricky. So you’d have to constantly look where you were in the music,
and set your own time clock, so to speak.”
Perhaps due to the fact
that his musical skills are matched by his congeniality, Barron did not
encounter any strife during his tenure in the band of Buddy Rich. The
drum legend was notorious for hiring and firing musicians at will, for
both real and imagined infractions or missteps. San Diego-bred
jazz bass great Bob Magnusson — who was barely out of his teens when he
joined Rich’s big band — is fond of recalling the time Rich beaned a
trombonist in his band on stage, with a drum stick, when the trombonist
failed to watch in rapt attention throughout Rich’s nightly solo during
“West Side Story.” (”He was such a great drummer, he didn’t miss a
beat!” Magnusson said in a 1987 Union-Tribune interview.)
“Nothing
like that ever happened when I was in the band,” Barron said. The only
thing I can remember is, one night, we were playing at Buddy’s club in
Manhattan. It was May or June, so a lot of guys brought their prom
dates. Some of them got a little loud, so Buddy would kick them out.
They had to go!
“But I had no problems with him. I’ve heard all
kinds of horror stories, but he was very nice to me and it was
enjoyable. He did go through several different bass players when I was
in the band; he had a thing with bass players. The bass player he loved
the most was Anthony Jackson.” Barron’s current trio, with which
he’ll perform here Friday in La Jolla, features the excellent drummer
Johnathan Blake and rising bassist Kiyoshi Kitagawa. They are also
showcased on the pianist’s often sublime new album, “Book of Intuition,”
which was released March 25 by Impulse Records.
Not
coincidentally, his bands have long featured gifted young musicians, a
number of whom have gone on to achieve prominence on their own or with
other artists. A few examples include vibraphonist Stefon Harris,
drummer Kim Thompson (who subsequently joined Beyonc’s band), guitarist
Carlos Alomar (who would become known for his work with David Bowie) and
flutist Anne Drummond.
Is Barron’s desire to nurture young
musicians in his bands inspired by how he himself was mentored by Moody,
Gillespie and some of the other jazz immortals who took him under their
wings when he was an eager young pianist? “I like to do that,
when I hear a young person who can really play,” he said. “Because
somebody gave me that opportunity when I was young. So if I can pay that
forward, I love being able to do that.
“One of the things that is
different for young players now, unfortunately, is they cant get the
same experience I was able to get when I was young. The venues don’t
exist now. When I came up, there were all kinds of band crisscrossing
the nation. We'd go to the Jazz Workshop in San Francisco, and play
there three week, then go to Los Angeles and play at The Lighthouse for
three weeks. You can’t do that in the U.S. anymore.”
Barron’s
current tour is to promote “Book of Intuition.” He is already laying
plans for a new album, either with his trio, his quintet, or both.
Does he have a long-gestating musical project he hopes to bring to life?
“I
think it’s every piano player’s dream to do a recording with strings,
and I would love to be able to do that,” Barron replied.
“Each
time you sit down to play, you try and challenge yourself to see if you
can come up with something new. If it doesn’t happen, that’s okay, but
it’s the goal I always try to achieve.”
“That’s one of the great things about getting older,” legendary jazz pianist Kenny Barron joked to a sold-out house at New York’s Jazz Standard, as he searched for his reading glasses before launching into the Dizzy Gillespie tune “Bebop.” With longtime bandmates Kiyoshi Kitagawa on bass and Johnathan Blake on drums, Barron’s blistering version of the bebop classic would be impressive for a musician a third of his age. But considering the acclaimed pianist and composer just celebrated his 73rd birthday, his rendition was all the more mind blowing. He is quite simply at the top of his musical game.
For more than 50 years, the name Kenny Barron has been synonymous with touch, taste, and time. He’s that rare melding of groove and grace, a pianist who can silence a room with a gentle ballad, and then bring it roaring back to life with his singular sense of swing. Nobody in jazz has a more buoyant eighth note, an emotion the late keyboardist Kenny Kirkland seconded when he once told me, “Kenny Barron taught me how to play the blues!”
I was lucky enough to apprentice Kenny for four years at Rutgers University during the late 1980s and early ’90s; my musical conception hasn’t been the same since. Following the release of his acclaimed new trio album Book of Intuition (Universal), I sat down with my mentor beside a 9-foot concert grand at the new Steinway Hall in New York City to talk about a life spent in pursuit of musical mastery.
I read an interview with you recently where you spoke of a pianist you once knew back in your hometown of Philadelphia who told you, “Musicians should always be humble because music comes through you, not from you.”
The pianist you’re talking about was a friend of my family’s named Hasaan Ibn Ali. He and my brother [the late saxophonist and educator Bill Barron] were very, very close, and he was a little “left of center” in terms of his equilibrium. He was a little “out there.” But that was one of the things he said; that musicians should always be humble, because there’s a higher source for the music. And I really believe that. I was a teenager when I heard him say that, and it really made an impact on me.
I have memories from when I studied with you at Rutgers; I’d say, “I saw you on TV last night with so and so,” and you’d reply, “Cool. I didn’t see it.” You were never the one telling people of your latest achievements.
For me, it’s always been about making the gig. That’s really all it is. For instance, playing at Carnegie Hall for most people is a big deal. And I suppose it is. But for most jazz musicians, at least, it’s about making the gig, as in, “The gig is at Carnegie Hall? Ok, what time do we start?” That’s really all it is. It’s not about seeing your name up in lights. Hopefully, it’s about making the gig, and using that gig to improve as much as you can.
I would imagine that the people whom you looked to as beacons of inspiration were always trying to improve their art as well.
Oh yeah, and I can point to all of them, especially [jazz musician and composer] Yusef Lateef, who encouraged me to go back to school. He also encouraged me to write by playing my music and recording it. Other people influenced me as well. By watching them improve themselves, I would think, “Oh yeah. I want to do that. I want to get better each time I sit down to play.”
What was the music scene like when you were growing up in Philadelphia the 1950s and ’60s? Do you think the preponderance of music around you helped shape your musical identity early on?
Oh yeah, very definitely. For one thing, there were lots of little clubs where young players could work and play. Not for a lot of money, but they could hone their craft. There was a place I used to play a lot when I was in high school called the Sahara. There was also a place called Spider Kelly’s that I started working at when I was underage. I wasn’t even supposed to be in there! Philly also had a great 24-hour jazz station [WHAT-FM] that Joel Dorn was one of the DJ’s on. He would later become a producer for Atlantic Records. I also met a lot of my peers while I was in high school in Philadelphia—people like Reggie Workman, Arthur Harper and Sonny Fortune. Playing with those guys was incredible.
At one point we didn’t have a record player, and I had heard Horace Silver’s song “Señor Blues” from his album 6 Pieces of Silver on the radio. So I would go to this luncheonette that was about five blocks from my house, and put money in the jukebox to hear it. I would be there almost all day, playing it continuously. I remember the flipside of the record was called “Enchantment.” A lot of things were on jukeboxes back then. And they were hits like John Coltrane’s “Moment’s Notice” and others.
You also played R&B early on in Mel Melvin’s band.
Right. My brother got me that gig, and it was a great experience. You would play for dancing, and you would play for dancers. They would call them “shake dancers” or “interpretive dancers,” and they were scantily clad. You’d also play for singers and tap dancers and comedians. So it was a real variety show. I was always the youngest person in the band, and thankfully, a lot of the guys would have mercy on me and call out the [chord] changes to me when we were doing things I may have been unfamiliar with.
You studied piano with Vera Bryant Eubanks, the mother of famed guitarist Kevin Eubanks and the sister of pianist Ray Bryant. What kinds of things were you studying with her?
Mostly classical stuff, like Beethoven’s “Moonlight Sonata,” and pieces like that. Eventually, I wound-up studying with Ray Bryant’s teacher, who was an older woman who lived across the street form my house. Her name was Harriet Reed. The last piece I worked on with her was Edvard Grieg’s Concerto in A Minor for four hands. Although there was only one piano!
Were you working on any technique exercises with her, like Hanon or Czerny?
Yeah. I worked on Czerny. To my chagrin, I’m sorry that I didn’t continue with classical music.
What tips can you impart to pianists looking to get their “chops” in better shape?
Playing technical exercises would be one. But also I think it’s important to practice playing sometimes. One of the things I used to do was take a song like “Cherokee” and play it as fast as I could, alone without stopping, for 20 to 30 minutes. And whatever mistakes you make, you have to live with, because when you’re on the bandstand, you can’t stop to correct yourself.
Would you use a metronome?
No. I never used a metronome.
That’s crazy, because you are known for your rock solid sense of time.
Whenever I play with a metronome, it screws me up! [Laughs.] It’s like playing with a click track in the studio. It’s hard for me.
I read that you had planned to go to college at the Philadelphia Academy of Music, but at the age of 17, you got a last minute call to join Yusef Lateef on tour in Detroit. Did you get your college degree later on?
Yeah, due to Yusef’s influence. I went back to Manhattan Community College. At the time, he was teaching there. I had some classes with him, and I took math and English. When I went on the road with Yusef, I would always go to my teachers and say, “Look, I’m going to be out of town. What material will you cover during that time?” And they would tell me what chapters they would be covering. So when I came back, I would be ahead of the class. I was working every night while I was on the road.
What do you remember about those early days and gigs in New York?
When I first moved to New York City, I moved right next door to my brother Bill on East 6th Street, where all the Indian restaurants are now. It was a great block. There was a lot of music and a lot of coffee shops. I was within walking distance of [famed jazz venue] the Five Spot, so I could walk over there. The same people that owned the Five Spot owned a place on St. Mark’s Place called the Jazz Gallery. I could walk over there too, and I remember seeing Sonny Rollins, Freddie Hubbard, and even John Coltrane’s first group with [pianist] Steve Kuhn and [drummer] Pete La Roca there. And across the street, Lee Morgan and Albert “Tootie” Heath and Spanky DeBrest shared an apartment with Reggie Workman. And up the street from them lived Ted Curson, and upstairs from them lived Pepper Adams and Elvin Jones.
Soon after you moved to New York City, you were off touring with legends like Dizzy Gillespie, Freddie Hubbard, and countless others. Why do you think you were and continue to be so in demand as a sideman, and what qualities do you think make a good accompanist?
I think there are some non-musical things that help in terms of being reliable and showing up on time for the gig. But hopefully, I think talent has something to do with it. Also, I think being able to play different kinds of music is important. For instance, playing with Stanley Turrentine is one thing, but working with Ron Carter is another. Being able to play with all those different kinds of people and in different genres is a big plus.
You’re also known as someone that never plays to overshadow the leader or the song. You seem always to be playing to lift someone else up.
Oh yeah. I like to think of myself as a team player. It’s not about drawing undue attention to myself. It’s about making the music work. That’s when I have the most fun.
Do you have any words of advice for musicians about how to play better in ensemble situations?
I think it’s really just about listening and what makes the music work, not what makes you stand out. Because when you listen to a group, if the group sounds good, you’re gonna say the group sounds good. If the group sounds bad but you sound good, the group still sounds bad!
Your new album Book of Intuition is your first recording with your longtime working trio of Kiyoshi Kitagawa on bass and Johnathan Blake on drums. Why did it take so long to go into the studio with them?
That’s a good question! I guess because we were able to work without having a recording, it just never came up. Since we’ve played together for so long, when we went in to record, we recorded something like 20 songs over two days. And we chose ten for the album.
What is it that has kept this particular ensemble together for so long?
What I like about Johnathan is that he’s young and he’s got all of this energy. He approaches the music with a different dynamic, so to speak. For instance, when we “trade fours,” I literally have to count sometimes! But that’s good for me, because it makes me pay attention and be aware of where I am. I can’t just “lean,” like you can with someone who plays very logically. Also, he has this energy where he’s very loose and at the same time you know where he is when he’s playing time.
When I heard Johnathan Blake with you live, I thought he had the swing of an old jazzer, with the fire of a hip-hop drummer. And it seemed to keep you on your toes. Your solos were blazing!
That’s what he makes me do! And I love Kiyoshi because he has a beautiful sound, and he also takes lots of chances when he plays. He can throw you some curves. Again, he makes you pay attention.
What do you look for in bass players and drummers?
Good time, good taste, and fire. On occasion, when Kiyoshi and Johnathan aren’t available, I’ve used other players like Linda Oh on bass. I really like her playing. And on drums I’ve used Justin Faulkner, who plays with [pianist] Jacky Terrasson.
Your new album is decidedly heavy on original material. What was it that inspired you to start composing your own songs early on?
I think it’s important, because that’s your vision. My brother also encouraged me to write music. He moved to New York quite a few years before I did. After he moved there, I sent him some music. I sent him probably the first song I ever wrote, called “Helter Skelter.” And around three weeks later, I got a letter back from him saying “Yeah. I played it with the band and they loved it!” So that was big encouragement for me.
I loved the album you recorded with your brother Bill entitled The Next Plateau. He may have been primarily known as an educator, but his songs were great.
He wrote some different music. [Laughs.] He was a very intellectual player, and he was into Stockhausen, Webern, Schoenberg and 12-tone music. He loved Cecil Taylor, and he even worked with him for a while. Yusef Lateef was also a big influence in terms of me composing. Every time I would write something, he’d go “Let’s try it!” So that was a very good thing. And he would record a lot of my stuff, as did Dizzy Gillespie.
I always tell people, “Standards only got to become standards because somebody wrote them!”
Exactly.
Book of Intuition opens with your song “Magic Dance,” which starts with a supple, rubato, solo piano intro. The first thing I thought when I heard you play this live in New York was “No one has Kenny’s touch.” Who were the players you listened to that pointed you in this direction?
I’d have to say Tommy Flanagan and Hank Jones. Those were the people that really did that for me in terms of touch, and also [the Modern Jazz Quartet’s pianist] John Lewis. Just the way they touched the piano, and also their lyricism. They didn’t play a lot of notes, but whatever they played just made perfect sense. That’s the thing that drew me to them, and the thing I’m still aiming for.
Do you use the soft pedal on the piano a lot?
When I’m playing a ballad, yes. Also whenever I’m playing solo, because for some reason, it allows me to play stronger without being that much louder. So I tend to use it much more when I’m playing solo.
“Magic Dance” incorporates one of you compositional signatures—the use of Brazilian rhythms. Where did your affinity for them come from?
I think from working with Dizzy and Stan Getz. I think what really got me into Brazilian music was hearing Sergio Mendes’ Trio album Brasil ’65 for the first time. That group really got me interested in it, and then I began hearing other kinds of things like chorinhos and sambas. And I really love it. The harmony is subtle, the rhythms are very playful and joyful, and seductive too.
Your tune “Bud Like” also displays your strong rhythmic conception at the keyboard. There’s an inherent, almost “horn-like” motion that propels them forward. Where does that sense of swing come from?
I think part of it comes from people like Tommy Flanagan and Hank Jones. But I also love to listen to horn players, especially trumpet players. So I get a lot from them. And also part of that forward motion comes from “hooking up” with the drummer rhythmically.
I remember reading an interview with you where you said, “A drummer’s ‘one’ is the ‘and of four.’”
Yeah. It’s like, “One, two, three, four, umm.” That kind of gives you forward motion. And I utilize that.
“Cook’s Bay” has a terrific groove, very reminiscent of Ahmad Jamal’s version of “Poinciana.”
That’s by design! That song was inspired by a trip I took with my wife to Tahiti. We flew to Papeete, and then we sailed to the Tahitian Islands. One of the islands was Moorea, and you come into Cook’s Bay. It’s so beautiful and peaceful there.
Your song “In the Slow Lane” is all about groove and space. What do you think is hard about playing slow?
I guess trying to restrain yourself. That’s the hardest thing. Trying not to fill all the space up. Let it be empty for a minute. A lot of young people try to play everything they know all the time. But when you have a piece like this, you’ve got to leave space. It’s a very open piece without a lot of chord changes, so somehow you have to make it interesting.
It’s one where the silence is as important as the notes are.
Very true.
You cover a few songs by other artists on the album, including Thelonious Monk’s “Light Blue.” What is it about Monk’s music that has provided decades of inspiration for you?
I really love his writing. His compositions are like a thing unto themselves. They’re quirky, they’re interesting, and they’re not that easy to play. They’re challenging. Every time I play through one of his songs, I’m always saying to myself, “How did he think of that?”
“Prayer” begins with a duet between you and Kiyoshi Kitagawa on bowed bass. It’s a definite mood change on the album.
That song and “In the Slow Lane” were both written for a film called Harvest Moon, about a man who had a stroke starring [the late actor] Ernest Borgnine.
“Nightfall” is a fitting album closer and a tribute to its composer and your frequent collaborator Charlie Haden. What do you remember most about your work together?
We never really played things that were fast, so there were a lot of changing moods. Charlie had a beautiful sound on the bass, and a simplicity about the things he played.
Speaking of duets, I can’t help but mention People Time, the album you made with Stan Getz. To me, it still stands out as truly a master class in playing in a duo setting.
Well, it’s interesting because that was the first time I ever played duo with a horn player. Playing duo with a bass player is fairly easy, but playing duo with a horn player meant I had to be a lot more supportive. I had to figure out what I was going to do and how I was going to approach particular songs. And we didn’t rehearse for any of it!
Did your duo concerts and album with him come from playing a tune or two in that setting during full band concerts?
That’s actually true. We would play Benny Carter’s song “People Time” always as a duo, and somebody once asked Stan, “Why don’t you guys record duo?” So he thought about it and said, “Yeah, we’ll do it!” Our rehearsal was a gig in Boston at the Charles Hotel, with Stan saying things like, “Ok you know this song? What key do you do it in?” That was the rehearsal! The same thing happened when we went to Copenhagen. Stan just said, “Oh, let’s play these songs.” We had no idea how we were going to start or end the concert. We were flying by the seats of our pants. And that’s what I think made it interesting. I had to ask myself, “In this song, am I going to play stride or walk a bass line? What am I going to do?” These were decisions made in the moment. And that’s what made it fun.
But it also seemed like a pairing of like musical minds.
I think you’re right, because Stan and I both loved lyricism. He could play a ballad and make you cry.
In a salacious age of instant celebrity, what keeps you centered and striving toward continued artistic excellence?
Well, it was never my idea to play music for that reason. One of the things I tell my students about making this kind of music is, “If you’re looking for fame and fortune, you better try and be a rapper!” You do this music because you love it. Fame and fortune may be a side effect from it, but that’s not why you do it.
You played Fender Rhodes on some of your early solo albums. And it’s interesting, because there’s a resurgence of it now on work by people like Robert Glasper, Terrace Martin and others. Did you enjoy playing Rhodes?
For certain kinds of music, I enjoyed it. I don’t know if I’d use it to play straight-ahead jazz on, but I like using it to create certain kinds of effects and moods.
Are you listening to anything new these days that our readers might be surprised about?
I love [pianist] Gerald Clayton’s new record Life Forum. Obviously, I also listen to a lot of Brazilian music. But I listen to everything. On my iPod, you’ll find everything from James Brown to string quartets!
What has your career as a teacher taught you?
It taught me that I don’t know everything! [Laughs.] I’ve learned a lot from my students, because sometimes they have ideas that you don’t even think about. Students today are incredibly well-prepared. They play in odd meters like it’s nothing. That’s not something I grew up doing, going back and forth between seven and nine. There have been occasions where I’ve heard my students play and I’ve thought, “Damn, I wish I could do that!” So I’ve learned a lot from them. I had one student who was from Nicaragua, and when I wanted to learn about playing montunos, he was very generous with his knowledge.
You recently said, “Music is a journey, but you never want to arrive.” So is the goal the same as it ever was for you?
Yeah. You keep searching, and you try to find new things. They may not be new, but they’ll be new for you. So there’s lots I still want to do.
If you could impart some advice on the next generation of aspiring artists from your 50-plus-year career in music, what would it be?
One of the things I tell students is, if you’re going to play music, do it for the right reasons. And also, listen to all kinds of things, because you never know what you may be called to do. Even listen to music you don’t like sometimes, because there’s something you can gain from it. So be open and receptive, especially now. Being able to earn a living doing what you love to do really is the goal. For me, that’s success.
“Being able to look over the shoulder of a jazz piano master and watch exactly what he does is something all aspiring pianists crave,” says Dominique Peretti, the developer of Kenny Barron’s new iOS app Contrary Motion. “As a former music student doing software development for a living, I knew I had to make such an app with my hero Kenny Barron. “When I showed to Kenny the prototype I had coded, he immediately said he would be a part of it. He eventually came to my house in France and played the piano for a couple hours. As you can imagine, it was one of the greatest days of my life! I didn’t want the app to be only instructional: I wanted it to capture the feeling of standing just beside a pianist at a private concert. The app runs on iPhone and iPad, and more songs will be added to it in the coming weeks.” Find out more at contrarymotion.co.
Jazz pianist Kenny Barron 'gives back' to his hometown
by Kimberly C. Roberts
Entertainment Reporter
Jazz pianist Kenny Barron will perform at the Clef Club on Saturday. — Photo by Phillipe Levy Stab
Grammy-nominated
Philadelphia jazz pianist Kenny Barron, honored by the National
Endowment for the Arts as an American Jazz Master, comes to the
Philadelphia Clef Club of Jazz and Performing Arts, 736-38 S. Broad St.,
for one show only, Saturday at 7:30 p.m.
Barron
will take the stage with acoustic bassist Kiyoshi Kitagawa and drummer
Jonathan Blake, an alumnus of the Clef Club Music Education Program, to
present music from his latest album, the Grammy-nominated “Book of
Intuition,” as well as “a mix of standards and originals.
After
receiving piano lessons from his mother as a sixth birthday present,
Barron ultimately became a sought-after side man, playing with such jazz
greats as Philly Joe Jones, Roy Haynes, Lee Morgan, James Moody, Dizzy
Gillespie, Freddie Hubbard, Stanley Turrentine, Milt Jackson, Buddy Rich
and Yusef Lateef before forging an extraordinary career as a front man
in his own right.
“We
had an old upright in the house, so I’d go to the piano and just fool
around,” Barron recalled. “I had a good ear at the time, so I could hear
melodies on the radio or whatever, then go figure them out on the
piano, but I had two brothers and two sisters, and everybody played
piano. My oldest brother was a saxophone player — Bill Barron. He was
also very influential in terms of me becoming a professional player.”
Also
an esteemed educator, Barron, who taught at Rutgers University in New
Brunswick, N.J., for 25 years, as well as at the Manhattan School of
Music and the prestigious Juilliard School, will conduct a master class
under the Philadelphia Clef Club Artist-Residency Program at the High
School of Creative and Performing Arts on Friday.
“It’s
a way of giving back, and it’s also a way of perpetuating the music,”
said Barron. “Even if they don’t become musicians, they become
supporters of the music, and it’s important to have both.”
Having
participated at a benefit held for his accomplished colleague, Odean
Pope, Barron cites the Clef Club as a vital resource in the community
saying, “It’s an important venue. Philly used to have two musician’s
unions — a white one and a Black one, and I think the Clef Club was the
site of the Black musician’s union. It’s in the community, and it’s
giving back. It’s presenting the ‘real’ music, and I think that’s
important. You can go there and hear the music and talk to the
musicians.”
As Barron anticipates performing in his hometown, he urges fans and jazz lovers to “come out and support the music.”
“Whether it’s me or somebody else, just come out and support live music,” he said. “I think that’s terribly important.”
A Conversation with Kenny Barron and Benny Green (by Tom Gsteiger)
Kenny Barron and Benny Green played a series of duo concerts at
Marians Jazzroom from April 17-21, 2018 as part of Jazz Festival Bern,
in Bern, Switzerland. In this conversation, which took place on April
21, they mused on aesthetics, technique and other piano players. They
both can look back on illustrious careers as bandleaders and sidemen
(i.e. they both played with the great trumpeter Freddie Hubbard).
The interview was edited by Juan Rodriguez, longtime Montreal music journalist.
Tom Gsteiger: What are the main challenges when you’re playing duo?
Benny Green: For myself in this specific instance,
playing with Mr. Barron – well, he’s one of my favorite pianists of all
time and my favorite living jazz pianist. That means I have all the
recordings of his I can find. Although I’m trying to develop my own
voice he is a deep influence on me – conceptually, stylistically, in
terms of feeling, so playing with him my natural innate respect for him
means not being in his way. But Mr. Barron also reminded me that he
wants to feel and hear my piano too. So the big challenge for me is to
just go ahead and play and not simply step back and listen. Another pianistic challenge is the issue of not having a steady pulse
of quarter notes from the bass or ride cymbal and whether playing solo
piano or duo, how the swing element is negotiated. Mr. Barron has been
helping me to kind of liberate myself from a sense of being shackled, so
to speak, from specifically playing some sort of quarter notes in the
bass all the time, so that we can play the piano as we would in a trio
and not put ourselves in a solo or duo box.
Kenny Barron: One of the challenges is being
compatible with your duo partner. I’ve been in situations playing duo
where you’re just not compatible. That doesn’t mean you’re a good or bad
piano player, but some people are just not compatible, period. So
that’s the first thing, finding the right partner. Benny for me is
ideal. I’ve only had a few: Mulgrew Miller, Tommy Flanagan, and Barry
Harris. It was very easy to play with them.
TG: What makes them compatible?
KB: People feel things differently. When you feel
things closer to your partner that makes it much easier, in terms of
swing and how you feel pulse. If that’s close, it works.
TG: Did you prepare for this week here in Bern?
KB: Not at all. Benny took it upon himself to create a set list.
BG: I want to mention that I had the opportunity to
hear Mr. Barron and Mulgrew Miller play duo, and I had the impression
that there was no script to what they’d play, it was pure spontaneity.
To be completely honest, the reason I worked out some sets was for
myself because I don’t know that many songs …
TG: You know enough!
BG: Oh, that’s kind. I feel like those of us who
are on a path never know enough. We want to keep learning more. There
were a couple of Mr. Barron’s songs that I’ve been playing with my own
trio and solo. I investigated some others that we could play because
while Mr. Barron is an incomparable pianist he’s also a beautiful
composer and it would have been wrong of us not to play his music as
well as some standards that he’s recorded more than once.
TG: How did the music develop during the week? Did you talk about it after the concerts?
BG: I’ve been accused of being an “over-thinker.“
I’m trying to respect Mr. Barron in not over-talking things because
actually everything is so clear in his playing. I have infinite things
that I want to clean up, infinite things to improve, infinite things
that I want to edit out of my playing. But if I’m in the music, and not
in my ego, it’s very apparent that I shouldn’t have to ask a million
questions. I’m just grateful to be a part of this.
KB: I agree with that. There are things Benny is showing me, things I need to work on.
TG: But there’s an age difference of twenty years between you two…
BG: And there’s a difference of profound mastery on
his part. Regarding the age difference, a friend of mine once said, “It
ain’t your age, it’s your stage.”
TG: When did you become aware of Mr. Barron’s playing?
BG: The very first recording that got my attention as a teenager was by the trumpeter Freddie Hubbard called Super Blue.
It had Freddie and Joe Henderson soloing on a piece called ‘Take it to
the Ozone’ – and Mr. Barron took no prisoners! I didn’t realize I was
already hearing Mr. Barron quite often on a radio station, K-JAZZ, in
the San Francisco Bay Area. At that time they were playing a track by
Freddie from 1967, a piece written by the late great Dr. Billy Taylor
entitled ‘A Bientôt’ …
KB: Oh, wow …
BG: Yeah, a beautiful Bossa Nova. It was a hit on
the radio. And I didn’t know it was Mr. Barron. He was one of the very
first masters of the Bossa Nova. He was working with Dizzy Gillespie in
the early 1960s and I believe it was Dizzy who brought a lot of
Brazilian rhythms over … KB: Yes, he did, Dizzy and Stan Getz … BG: So Mr. Barron didn’t come into Bossa Nova after
the fact, he was right there laying the groundwork for us. Just the
sexiness of how that music breathes, he is a grand master. Admittedly,
as a kid I was more drawn to listening to someone solo than appreciating
what comping and accompaniment even is. Just as when Mr. Barron or I
hire a bassist or a drummer, we don’t look for the one who plays the
hottest solo, per se, we look for someone who can really groove and hook
up with the band. That’s why Mr. Barron has always gotten the calls,
besides the fact that he is a great soloist, it’s how he makes the music
feel. I place Mr. Barron appropriately on a short list, chronologically
speaking, consisting of Hank Jones, Tommy Flanagan, Cedar Walton, Mr.
Barron came next and Mulgrew Miller followed him. If you just look at
the record dates of their generation they’re the ones that got the calls
for the dates. Not because of politics, but because of how they made
the band feel. They knew how to give the music just what it needs.
Wynton Kelly was also a master of that.
TG: And when did you first meet Kenny Barron in person?
BG: I was born in New York City in 1963 but I grew
up in Berkeley, California, and moved back to New York in the spring of
1982. My first chance to actually shake Mr. Barron’s hand and introduce
myself was at a great club that we loved called Bradley’s.
TG: What were your main experiences as a sideman, Mr. Barron?
KB: The thing I try to do, as Benny mentioned, is
make the band sound good. I think my role as accompanist is not to draw
attention to myself, just to be there and support what’s happening. If I
hear the soloist play a little bit harder, then I dig in a little bit
more. If he’s playing really soft then I wouldn’t do that.
TG: You played with Freddie Hubbard, Stan Getz, Yusef Lateef …
KB: They were all important. They were all
different. Yusef played a lot of blues, he’s a hell of a blues player.
We used to do one song, called ‘Yusef’s Mood,’ and the drummer Tootie
Heath would play a shuffle. I remember when we played that it took me
back to when I was a kid playing in bars. Working with Freddie was
another kind of experience. Sometimes Freddie could lean left, you know,
but he was also a master playing ballads, so he taught me something
about that, too.
TG: Your brother Bill Barron, I think he was underrated …
KB: I think so, too. That may have been partly
because he was very quiet. Not shy, but quiet. He wasn’t a
self-promoter. He was different. He loved Cecil Taylor, and in terms of
composition he loved Schönberg. He had one book I remember called The
Schillinger Method. His approach sometimes was intellectual, he was
really into analyzing things. And he got me my first gig, a dance band,
and it was fun. I was the baby in the group.
TG: Cecil Taylor just passed away just recently …
BG: I love Cecil as well. I used to go hear him
numerous times at the Keystone Korner, with the alto saxophonist Jimmy
Lyons. Fascinating, so connected with his instrument. There was a sense
of form and shape to the sets. There would be one long played-through
improvised set and yet you could feel themes returning and it was a real
journey. After I moved to New York I discovered that Cecil was actually
a straight-ahead jazz fan. He came to hang out at Bradley’s and we had
many conversations. Beautiful man.
TG: So there’s not that strict a separation between the scenes?
KB: No, no. I mean I used to see Henry Threadgill
come out to hear me. And there are straight-ahead guys who move “out” to
hear them. Separation is sometimes in the heads of writers. A B-flat is
a B-flat, you know.
KB: Yeah, that’s him …
BG: And I love Duke Ellington’s statement: “There are only two kinds of music – good and bad.”
TG: And what makes good music good?
BG: How it feels to the individual. Beauty is in the ear of the behearer.
KB: Perfect!
TG: Why did you choose the piano as your instrument?
BG: And whatever so-called style or so-called genre
a person plays, humans – musicians or not – can feel sincerity. If
someone is playing with a feel it’s inviting. There’s no pretense if
someone isn’t trying to do something they don’t really believe in. So
when we hear Cecil Taylor he’s being pure, THE Cecil Taylor.
KB: I had no choice. I had two brothers and two sisters and my mother required it. On my sixth birthday I got piano lessons.
TG: But I think you’re happy with it?
KB: Now! I wasn’t then, I hated it. I wanted to be outside playing with the other kids. Eventually I did grow to love it.
TG: How?
KB: Well, through my brother. And I had good
teachers. One of them was Ray Bryant’s sister Vera, who was the mother
of Kevin and Robin Eubanks. She was in high school when she taught me.
Also, in Philadelphia there was a great jazz radio station. And my
brother had all these 78s, Bird, Dizzy, Miles, Dexter Gordon …
TG: What did attract you to that kind of music?
KB: I can’t really say what it was that attracted me to it, but I knew I loved it. I know that Horace Silver came out with Six Pieces of Silver.
At that time we didn’t have a record player and I would just run to
this luncheonette five blocks away from home to play the jukebox to
listen to “Senor Blues” and the flipside “The Enchantment.” Then when I
found out that the drummer Louis Hayes was 18 years old, it was like,
Wow, there’s hope!
BG: I really liked the piano as a child. Anytime
we’d go to someone’s house that had a piano I would just go sit there
and press the keys. We got a piano when I was six years old: My parents
told me they didn’t have specific aspirations that either me or my
sister, who is four years older, would become piano players. They grew
up in the Depression era and they said it was just part of good,
healthy, wholesome family values that you had a piano in your home. We
didn’t have a lot of money but they bought a beautiful used upright.
Once we got that piano I sat there every day just exploring. I asked my
parents for lessons, but because we didn’t have a lot of money they
wanted to hold off. A year went by and I was still at the piano every
day, so they got me my first teacher.
TG: How did you come to jazz?
BG: I heard jazz at home because my father played
the tenor saxophone in the style of Lester Young who was able to impart
such feeling with so few notes. And listening to jazz records, in
particular two records he played almost every day: a 1962 album by
Thelonious Monk called Monk’s Dream and a collection of Charlie
Parker’s 1947 Dial recordings with Miles Davis, Duke Jordan, Tommy
Potter and Max Roach, songs like “Scrapple from the Apple” or “Dewey
Square.” I was hearing those records every day; I didn’t know the music
was called jazz but I loved how it felt and also seeing my father’s
relationship with the sound, which wafted in air, and he would be
smiling and kind of moving – there was something very magical going on.
It drew me in as a kid. My father started to talk to me about it. The
first thing he said was: “I want you to understand that black people
created this music. That doesn’t mean that we can’t enjoy it, and some
people can even play it.” When he saw that I wanted to play this music,
he told me: “You’re gonna need to learn standard songs, you gotta learn
the history of the music, and I will help you.” My father played with
great feeling but couldn’t read music, so he wanted better for me. He
instilled in me an honest foundation of what jazz is.
TG: Is it important to study the tradition ?
KB: Oh yeah, very much so. Study the tradition and
listen. Listening is a forgotten art. Especially for a lot of younger
people who only go back to Coltrane.
TG: Or only to Mark Turner …
KB: Exactly. It’s important to find out who
influenced those people. It’s a matter of going back to the source, so
you go all the way back to Louis Armstrong. Important to know, not that
you want to play like that … I remember doing a gig with Sweets (Harry
Edison) and Lockjaw (Eddie Davis). They didn’t believe in long solos.
Two choruses! You had to figure it out, learn how to edit yourself.
Whatever you had to say you had to do it in two choruses.
BG: Milt Jackson said almost the same exact thing.
“If you ain’t got to it in two or three choruses it ain’t gonna happen.”
He said he got that from Charlie Parker. You’re asking about why it’s
beneficial to go back: When you hear someone who really has a voice, say
Joe Henderson, then you notice that he listened to Charlie Parker and
Sonny Rollins and John Coltrane but what he put together becomes wholly
Joe Henderson. That’s part of our study: How people embraced the
precedent that has been established and through the process of embracing
it realized themselves.
TG: Let’s talk about some piano players. Let’s start with Earl Hines.
KB: I was fortunate enough to hear Earl Hines. His
articulation was so clean because of his touch, and through that I think
he influenced a lot of people.
BG: Without a doubt Earl Hines is one of the
cornerstones of the music because of the far-reaching influence he’s had
on everyone – EVERYONE – who plays jazz piano. Whether or not they’re
consciously realizing what came through him. All the pianists in his
time had strong left hands but he did so much stylistically with his
right hand to influence Nat “King” Cole and Hank Jones, among many
others. Hank Jones has acknowledged that his initial piano influences
were Earl “Fatha” Hines and Fats Waller, and it’s really Mr. Jones who
put it all together for all of us in terms of modern piano, transcending
the piano from being primarily a solo instrument to being an ensemble
instrument, blending the piano with different instruments. We wouldn’t
have Bill Evans, for example, if not for Hank Jones making the
transition from Earl “Fatha” Hines to what’s considered modern
contemporary jazz piano. The whole thing we associate rightfully with
Bud Powell of left hand playing chords and right hand playing lines. My
father used to say everybody has a daddy. It didn’t actually start with
Bud – he distilled it like no one else had – but Earl Hines was the one
who began to do that, with his right hand playing lines like a horn.
TG: Next: Thelonious Monk.
KB: (laughs) Well, what can you say about
Monk? You can be influenced by him, but if you try to play like him it’s
kind of ludicrous. I may play a Monk song and I may allude to certain
characteristics of his playing but it’s always done tongue in cheek.
Monk had a great sense of humor. You can’t separate his writing from his
playing, they’re so similar. Monk was such a stylist, anything he
played, even standards, sounded like he wrote it. He influenced a lot of
people. I think of one young guy who was directly influenced by Monk
and Randy Weston, that’s Rodney Kendrick. BG: Monk’s feeling for time is the hippest thing.
And there is a sense of truthfulness, zero jivery in what he does, and
you sense it whether or not you’re a player – you immediately sense the
intelligence, you feel this hip swing. The sound he gets from the
instrument is wholly unique. Whenever I attempt to feel Monk – to really
pay attention to a recording or learn one of his songs – it engages my
mind like nothing else. His soul is imbedded with intelligence like no
one else. He is really a cornerstone of this music called bebop, not
only in feeling and attitude but also the aesthetic of it. It’s all
there in Monk. He’s good medicine, I’m grateful we have the recordings. KB: You know the singer Madeline Eastman? BG: Yeah. KB: She recorded a version of ‘Evidence.’ One of
the lyrics says: “Some cats take a lot of notes to say what they gotta
say, but Monk chose just the main events to play.” BG: Oooooh! That’s what everyone should learn: to
edit out the things that are extraneous. Yeah, there’s no waste of notes
with Monk. TG: Herbie Nichols. . KB: I confess I don’t know that much about Herbie. I
know Eric Reed recorded a few of his pieces and there were somebody
else who did a Herbie Nichols project.
TG: Frank Kimbrough, Ben Allison …
KB: Yeah, yeah. I’ve heard the Blue Note stuff –
it’s kind of “out there,” I mean leaning to the left. But he actually
earned his living around New York playing Dixieland. That’s how he paid
the bills. BG: What’s interesting is the way Herbie Nichols
has been preserved for posterity in recordings of him playing his
originals. The great alto saxophonist Lou Donaldson told me that he
played some gigs with Herbie Nichols and he said Herbie was a wonderful
accompanist. For Lou Donaldson to say that is high praise. But there’s
actually no documentation of Herbie Nichols’s comping for horns, but I
trust Lou Donaldson’s word on that. TG: Elmo Hope. KB: Ben Riley actually had a piano-less band that
played Elmo Hope’s music. That was after the quartet Sphere. He got a
lot of Hope’s music from his widow Bertha Hope. BG: Did they record? KB: No. There was a pianist in Philly, Hassan Ibn
Ali, who only did one record. I’ve known him since I was a kid, he and
my brother were very tight. People used to think his influence was Monk,
but he said: “No, Elmo Hope.” BG: The late great Billy Higgins told me
specifically to try to find anything I could where Elmo Hope and the
great drummer Philly Joe Jones are playing together. There are numerous
sessions; there’s that classic one with Donald Byrd, Hank Mobley, John
Coltrane, John Ore and Philly. Billy Higgins said: “They had a hook-up,
check it out.” Admittedly, I’m most enamored with him as a composer. But
I keep going back trying to understand what’s happening with his piano
playing because I’m told that he was very close with Bud Powell and Monk
early on, they were sort of running mates. I haven’t quite caught on to
the pianistic thing, and I’m not trying to beat around the bush as if
to say I don’t like it. That’s not the case – he’s incredibly musical,
as evidenced in the songs he’s playing – but the touch is not a
pianistic touch quite in the sense of Hank Jones. But some of my
influences have disparate styles; for example I both love Oscar Peterson
and Thelonious Monk, and their styles are almost opposite. Yet if I put
on either one’s records my toes are tapping and they draw me in. So
knowing that Elmo Hope is a great musician and writer … I like to listen
to records with the attitude that maybe there’s something I’m missing
and then I listen more closely rather than looking for things to write
off. TG: Seems like you listen to records a lot … BG: I’m a record nerd for sure. Some people from
the outside looking in will say Benny especially listens to so-called
Hard Bop, beginning with Bebop of the mid-1940s going trough around the
time just before Miles went electric 1968. It’s true, that’s the bulk of
what I listen to, only because there’s a lot of the essence of what I’m
trying to get to in my playing. That was really prevalent at that time,
there was less of a controversy of what swinging meant or what the word
jazz meant and the music didn’t have as many eclectic influences as it
does today. So there’s something very essential in the music that was
played then. KB: I am not a nerd. I listen more with the intent
of just really enjoying. But the same period of time, bebop, hard bop,
all the Blue Note stuff, I love this stuff, that’s what I grew up with.
But my listening tastes are eclectic. I listen to pop – good pop; on my
iPod you may find Anita Baker, Louis Armstrong and Ella Fitzgerald, and
Prince. I used to dance when I was a teenager. BG: It’s there in your playing – quite evident. KB: I would put Benny in the same category as a Kenny Washington, knowing the dates and everything … BG: It’s actually a certain generation. It kind of
started with Kenny, who is just a couple of years older than me, but he
was on the scene more than a couple of years before me. And the record
listening was kind of going through Christian McBride, Chris Potter,
that generation. The kids after that aren’t as deep into researching the
history as we were. I guess Kenny was a bit of a guru to us, he kind of
set the tone for us listening to records “too much,” if you will. Betty
Carter hated it. She grew up around the music, she didn’t have that
orientation of studying records, and she felt like we were listening to
records too much. But we wanted to really soak up that feeling. TG: Back to piano players. Andrew Hill. KB: Andrew is definitely different. He was very
quiet, but his playing was just so different. He did all those records
on Blue Note and then he kind of disappeared. And he came back. He is
definitely an Unsung Hero. BG: I love Andrew Hill. As a teenager I had all his
Blue Note records. I love his writing, his playing, he is immediately
recognizable and he really tells a story and imparts a vibe, if you
will, a real mood that’s really compelling and deep and reaches you in
another kind of place emotionally. He really takes you somewhere. My
favorite of all his Blue Note records is one called Judgement
with Bobby Hutcherson, Richard Davis and Elvin Jones. Oh my God, really,
really fantastic! I listened with Betty Carter in a car to a cassette
of the Joe Henderson album Our Thing with Kenny Dorham, Andrew
Hill, Eddie Khan and Pete LaRoca and I didn’t tell Betty who was playing
and Betty said, “The piano player sounds like he likes Monk.“ He came
with really interesting voicings which seem to have two notes in each
hand, such as a spread interval like a 5th, or a 6th or so. He would do
so much with that. It was like a color that he’d do just only with that.
He really had a voice, he was really saying something. I’m very
grateful that these recordings were made because the classic Blue Note
records era really documented the period when small group jazz,
particularly the quintet, was at a zenith, right up to Miles Davis’ Nefertiti and Sorcerer.
It represented a certain apex in the tradition that started with Dizzy
Gillespie and Charlie Parker having two horns in the front line. This is
not to say there haven’t been great things with quintets since then.
But it was very concentrated at that time. TG: Speaking of quintets, one of my favorite records is Live at Fat Tuesdays by the Kenny Barron Quintet with Eddie Henderson, John Stubblefield, Cecil McBee, Victor Lewis … KB: I had so much fun with that band. One of the
things I remember, we would play a song for twenty, thirty minutes, and
it would go in different kinds of directions. That didn’t happen on the
recording, but in live performance that’s how it was. One of the first
gigs we did was at a place called Joanna’s on 17th street. It was fun.
It went this way and that way. I would love to get back to that. BG: And we will love to hear it. KB: But at some point you kind of get afraid. BG: How so? KB: That’s hard to explain. Being young I didn’t care. But being older I should also not care. BG: I think that when anyone is improvising
unexpected things happen. And anyone can hear you, observe you and see
that you’re unflappable. In other words, whatever happens, you sense it
and let things go. It’s there in your playing, it’s so much in the
moment … KB: Maybe caring too much about the audience. But the Live at Fat Tuesdays record wasn’t that representative of what was happening with the quintet. We could turn on a dime. TG: There are some additional tracks on the CD version of that record. KB: Oh really! I haven’t heard that, all I have is the vinyl … BG: You have that stuff that’s been released from the Left Bank club in Baltimore with you and Freddie live? KB: I did hear it – this is producer Joel Dorn’s release. BG: There’s more and more jazz of that era that’s
actually being unearthed now. It’s amazing. And I’m really convinced if
one wants to do research – this is a nerd talking here – what I mean, if
I really want to hear Kenny Barron stretching out live with Freddie
Hubbard and leave no stone unturned, somewhere in some country I’ll find
someone who has a bootleg. You really have to go after it, it’s not
gonna fall out of sky and land on you. TG: How did you choose the musicians for the Fat Tuesdays quintet? KB: I don’t know. Just dudes whose playing I loved.
I met John Stubblefield in Chicago, his playing reminded me of Wayne
Shorter a lot. But he also played R&B – he played with Solomon
Burke. And Eddie Henderson I met through Freddie. Eddie was studying
medicine and he actually became a doctor. And Cecil McBee – his playing I
always loved, he’s a great bass player. And with Victor I did a record
with a French horn player named Tom Varner. We lasted for a while. BG: I heard you and Cecil McBee duo at the Village Gate Terrace. You played “Big P.” KB: The Jimmy Heath song? BG: Yeah, you sure did. There were more piano-bass
duo rooms in the 1980s. That’s the first time I heard Mr. Barron playing
in person at Bradley’s …. It was master class for us young pianists. We
listened to Kenny Barron or Hank Jones play three sets, mostly
standards, and just take notes. KB: With Bulldog [Ray Drummond], we played three sets, six nights. We did not repeat one song. So we called it ‘No-Repeat-Week.’ BG: Damn! Ray Drummond is like a pianist’s third hand. KB: Yeah!
ABOUT THE INTERVIEWER:
After a lot of autodidactic studies Tom Gsteiger started to write
about jazz in 1994 at the age of 24. Some years later he started to
teach jazz history, first in Basel and then also in Lucerne. He loves
real albums and hates downloading and streaming. He lives in Bern.
This new record actually marks the first time Barron has recorded in
the studio with this particular trio, and what better way to showcase
their road-tested chops and peerless unity than revisiting such deep
Kenny faves as the fiery “Bud-Like,” first recorded by the pianist on
his solo project in 1982, Kenny Barron at the Piano on the Xanadu imprint, and the Latin-tinged “Cook’s Bay,” from 2000’s Spirit Songon Verve. Another
reflection from the past comes on the upbeat “Lunacy,” teeming with
torrential rhythms and first being recorded in a quintet setting on
1988’s Live at Fat Tuesdays for Enja Records, who also released Barron’s 1985 masterpiece Scratch as well. The trio close out Book of Intuition with a gorgeous reading of Charlie Haden’s “Nightfall” in homage to the late bass master, whose 1996 duo album with Barron, Night and The City, is absolute essential listening. Kenny Barron will be returning to Newport this summer with his trio. And
just like he has since that Independence Day weekend at the side of
Diz, he will command that stage by playing with that perfect balance of
head and heart that has placed him at the vanguard of the jazz piano for
over a half-century. The Observer was lucky enough to catch up with Mr.
Barron with a quick phone call shortly after The Book of Intuition hit record stores on March 4.
You’ve played so many great jazz clubs in New York City over the years. But one that comes to mind as a fan is Sweet Basil.
Yeah,
that closed down long ago. It was Sweet Basil’s and then James Brown
bought it and did the booking. Then they changed the name to Sweet
Rhythm. And that lasted maybe two years before it started to go
downhill. Finally these folks who ran a soul food restaurant on Grove
St. called the Pink Teacup, they bought it and tried to turn it into
something real fancy and velvet rope, but it didn’t work out. It’s a
clothing store now.
Ron Carter’s 1977 album Piccolo, which features you at the piano, was recorded there. What do you remember about that show?
Well,
we had a lot of fun. The only drag was that the house piano was
atrocious [laughs]. It was really in bad shape. I think we were the
first band to play there, actually. But that piano was not in good
shape. There was a tuner on staff who tuned it after each set, but it
just wasn’t worth it. They eventually got a new one.
Well, it was better than the one at Sweet Basil’s [laughs].
The Book of Intuition is your second proper album under the Impulse! Label, but did you ever record for them in the past?
Not
under my own name. I think I did some recording for Bob Thiele, who was
the original head honcho at the label. I remember doing something with
David Murray and a singer named Teresa Brewer, who was actually Thiele’s wife for a time. I worked on a couple of Bob Thiele projects.
A producer, Jean-Phillipe Allard
from Universal France, they decided to reactivate the Impulse! Label.
And one of their first releases was that album I did with Dave Holland
[2014’s The Art of Conversation]. The trio happened when we were in Paris. And, again, Jean-Phillipe came to see us at this club called Le Duc des Lombards
and told me that he would really like to record this group. We have a
history, Jean-Phillipe and I, from when I was signed to Universal
France. He produced a few of my albums for them.
How long have you been playing with your current trio?
Well, Kiyoshi has been with me for about 20 years, and Jonathan for about 10. Actually, The Book of Intution is the first trio album we’ve recorded together.
What took so long?
Opportunity, mostly.
How did you go about choosing material from your extensive back catalog to revisit for The Book of Intution?
There’s
a lot of stuff I haven’t really played out before. I may have recorded
it, but I never really played it at a gig. But that happens sometimes.
You make a record and do this song or that song, and then you never play
them again. And that was something I wanted to explore. So it’s what we
did. And we’ve been playing them out, too, like “Dreams” from Stan Getz’s Voyagealbum and “Lunacy”, which I originally recorded with Sphere.
Did you go back and listen to a lot of your old albums? For “Bud-Like”, let’s say, did you go back to Kenny at the Piano and revisit it?
No,
I didn’t actually. I remember recording it as a solo piece. But then I
wondered how it would work with the trio. It was cool.
What inspired those two Thelonious Monk songs you play in the middle of The Book of Intuition?
Both are tunes that aren’t played that often. “Shuffle Boil”, Ben Riley turned me onto that song. And “Light Blue”
is a song I always loved, but I’ve never heard anyone outside of Monk
play it, which is why I decided to play it solo. I love the quirkiness
of the melody. It’s repetitious, but it has different harmonies. It’s a
piece I especially love.
Now this question is coming purely from a fan perspective, but as a listener I always felt a kinship between yourself and Vince Guaraldi…
Oh,
I knew Vince from San Francisco. I would go see him whenever I was out
there. He used to play a club in Marin County called The Trident. He
played there quite a bit.
Kenny Baron. (Photo: Courtesy Kenny Baron.)
Like Vince, there is a sweetness to your sound, especially in the trio format. From where does that derive?
My biggest influences are Tommy Flanagan and Mr. Hank Jones.
I first heard Tommy when I was in junior high school. And what I always
liked about Tommy was his touch. He had a very light touch, a delicate
touch on the keys. Plus, he was very melodic. And Hank Jones is the same
way. I also can’t forget Bud Powell and McCoy Tyner, who is from my hometown. He is two years older than me, but we are both from Philadelphia.
How is he doing, McCoy?
He’s
not playing as much as he used to. He’s been going through some stuff.
He’s still playing, but he’s a little more forgetful. But he’s still
McCoy, that’s what matters.
You toured with Stan Getz during his last couple of years. How was that time?
Stan
was cool. There were a lot of stories about the abrasiveness of his
personality. But by the time I began working with him, he had weaned
himself off all the substances which made him that way. He stopped
drinking, didn’t use drugs. He was great. He was playing really well
back then, too, and the crowds would still come out to see Stan.
Would you consider your appearance with Dizzy Gillespie at the 1963 Newport Jazz Festival to be your first proper gig?
Well, kind of. My first actual gig was with James Moody,
who played reeds for him and then Moody recommended me to Dizzy. It was
like going to school; a big learning experience. It’s definitely wild
to go back and listen to that set again. It seems like a lifetime ago.
A living bridge between multiple generations of jazz, 65-year-old Kenny Barron
is still consistently recognized as one of the most talented all-around
pianists in New York. He brings a quartet of young musicians downtown
to the Village Vanguard for a live performance broadcast on air by WBGO and online at NPR Music. As
a pianist, Barron sums a wide range of interests into his palette:
driving bebop, delicate ballads, bounding calypso and rhythms from
across Brazil. He brought them all to bear at the Vanguard, with pretty
harmonies and fast-flying chops alike. Barron called an uptempo take on
"Softly As In A Morning Sunrise" as an opener — as he began his 2001
duet album Freefallwith violinist Regina Carter. He then
launched into swaying Brazilian-inflected numbers ("Um Beijo," "New
Samba"), a lyrical ballad ("Blame It On My Youth"), underheard Monk
repertoire ("Shuffle Boil") and a favorite hard-swinging original ("And
Then Again," a blues). Along the way, excellent young sidemen
complemented him: The smoky-toned saxophonist Dayna Stephens, the
versatile, sensitive bassist Kiyoshi Kitagawa, and the rhythmically
adroit drummer Francisco Mela. Now a mentor
to young musicians, Kenny Barron was once the talented protege,
accompanying his saxophone-playing brother Bill Barron (over 16 years
his elder), and being tapped to join Dizzy Gillespie's combo before his
20th birthday. Over the next 45-odd years, Barron continued to work with
the finest players from every era; highlights include co-founding the
group Sphere, which interpreted music of Thelonious Monk, and
collaborating with Stan Getz over the course of several albums. Many
of New York's finest young jazz musicians know Barron both as a pianist
and a teacher. Under the encouragement of multi-instrumentalist Yusef
Lateef, Barron pursued a college education and earned a degree while
touring. In 1973, he began teaching at Rutgers University; he continues
to mentor top talent at the Manhattan School of Music and Juilliard. Having recorded over 40 albums as a leader alone, Barron is still producing fresh, original music. His latest record The Traveler arrives the week of his appearance at the Vanguard.
Kenny Barron (born June 9, 1943) is an American jazz
pianist, who has appeared on hundreds of recordings as leader and
sideman and is considered one of the most influential mainstream jazz
pianists since the bebop era.[1][2][3]
Biography
Born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, Kenny Barron is the younger brother of tenor saxophonist Bill Barron (1927–1989). One of his first gigs was as pianist with the Dizzy Gillespie quartet. Barron was briefly a member of the Jazztet around 1962, but did not record with them.[4] He graduated in 1978 with a BA in Arts from Empire State College (Metropolitan Center, New York City).
THE MUSIC OF KENNY BARRON: AN EXTENSIVE VIDEO OVERVIEW, A CROSS SECTION OF RECORDINGS, MUSICAL ANALYSIS AND COMMENTARY, PLUS VARIOUS INTERVIEWS WITH KENNY BARRON
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.
Kenny Barron | Credit: John Sann 
Kenny Barron with Eddie Henderson | Credit: Grason Littles 
