A CRITICAL LIGHT ON PROJECT JAZZ

 

Composer Mike Westbrook thinks jazz is finally changing toward his inclusive vision – 50 years after the crossover term ‘Third Stream’ was first coined. Westbrook is a long-time devotee of the approach, as DUNCAN HEINING reports.

 

 

‘AUDIENCE SIZE,’muses Mike Westbrook. ‘That’s all the talk’s ever about among some entrepreneurs in the business. They don’t talk about what happened, what people played, what sort of direction they’re following. It’s how many people came. It’s a sad situation, I think. It can’t be the only arbiter of success.’

 

Mike Westbrook OBE is neither cynical nor pessimistic after weathering the good times and the lean for over 40 years, but he wants to take the opportunity to nail a few bugbears. Preoccupation with audience size is one of them.

 

JazzUK was catching up with him because the West Country raised composer/bandleader celebrates his 70th birthday this year, and Westbrook’s eclectic work has not been featured in these pages in quite a while. Since the 1970s, he and his musical and life partner Kate, along with many musical friends, have criss-crossed the frontiers of Europe, beyond the old Iron Curtain and back. ‘Whatever battle’s going on, we’ve seemed to be there and affected by what’s happening’, Mike says.

 

From festivals sponsored by leftist councils in France and Italy to the way jazz and avant-garde music was revered in eastern Europe as a counterbalance to communism, Mike and Kate have seen it all.

 

‘We saw both sides of that’, Mike Westbrook agrees, ‘including the tremendous success of jazz in Poland, East Germany and Czechoslovakia - which happened because there was no pop. When the wall came down, the floodgates opened to American imperialist culture (laughs) and immediately there was McDonalds and all the big global institutions, and pop began to colonise that area which had been a wonderful haven for jazz. Those East German musicians lived like lords on the subsidies they got. Whatever the defects, just seeing it from an everymanmusician point of view doing a gig, these guys were respected, supported and their music taken seriously. We have to go to Kenneth Clarke to find a jazz fan in politics here!’. This thought occasions another big laugh.

 

From his early Concert Band records for Decca’s Deram label with musicians like John Surman, Mike Osborne, Harry Miller and Alan Jackson, Westie has gone from enfant terrible to elder statesman. Yet, the quality of the music has never dimmed. With the reissues of Citadel/Room 315 (1975) on BGO Records and Celebration on Gilles Peterson’s Impressed imprint, fans can trace a trajectory of themes - political, social and musical - through The Cortege (1982), London Bridge (1988) to the recent and brilliant Chanson Irresponsable. And those same concerns echo in the small-group works, whether it’s the duo with singer and brassplayer Kate or their trio with saxophonist Chris Biscoe, or various musical theatre ventures, like Platterback or The Ass.

 

Though Mike acknowledges the continuity, he points out the life of a musician doesn’t always lend itself to planning. ‘It’s a day-to-day project in Project Life. There’s no grand plan.’

 

Mike often refers to his early inspiration, Duke Ellington. ‘The Ellingtonian tradition is one of being involved,’ he considers. ‘If you want to play your music, you have to get your band together. You’ve got to think about where you’re going to put it on. You probably have to sell the tickets and put the posters up yourself. You do really learn the business from the ground up.’

For Mike, it’s to the composer/bandleader – jazz music’s ‘actor/manager’ – that subsidies should go.

‘You have to be involved in every area, not just the writing of the music,’ he remarks. ‘You think of the circles around someone like me or Django Bates or Stan Tracey. We’re involved with dozens of musicians looking to us for opportunities and exposure, and it’s a very creative kind of thing. We’re the people in the best position to make use of subsidy. We know how to do it. We employ the musicians. We don’t waste money because we
know what can be done and what can’t, and we have this passionate desire to hear our work played, so we’re not going to give up on the job.’

Westie celebrates his 70th with gigs in the West Country in March with his new Village Band Project, and with duo and group concerts involving Kate at the Vortex and St. Cyprian’s in London. Kate is also about to issue a solo album accompanied by accordionist Karen Street, for which Mike has written the music. ‘It’s called The Nijinska Chamber. Doing a whole album with one instrument and a voice is a whole new ball game for me.’

Another spring highlight is the performance of a ‘lost’ but rediscovered work, Wasteground Concerto, at London’s Guildhall School of Music. The piece was written for the National Youth Jazz Orchestra but never performed. ‘It was an elaboration on a tune called Wasteground and Weeds, which we do,’ the composer explains. ‘Someone uncovered the score recently. I’m hoping to combine it with some recent material, and work with the Guildhall Big Band.’

So, where is jazz headed now?

‘I feel there’s certainly a progression. There are projects one can do now that one wouldn’t have dreamt of. For example, the Chanson Irresponsable band, was a major step for me. I was doing these odd things for string quartets or classical groups, and my jazz things seemed separate. I thought that what I need was a framework in which I could bring all those things together. Now I can have a string quartet, a cracking rhythm section, a wonderful horn section. Soloists and vocals, but with a classical singer, who can do things that a jazz singer couldn’t or wouldn’t do. Combining things in different ways. So far, that 15-piece hasn’t had a lot of outings and maybe the world isn’t quite ready for it. But it’s absolutely what people talk about so much now – the crossover between different musical genres.’

Is this the Third Stream? The jazz that dare not speak its name? That term, coined by Gunther Schuller to describe jazz-classical crossovers almost 50 years ago, embraced the idea that jazz can and should explore its potential as a music involving composition,
but without losing its improvisatory character. Another recent project, Turner in Uri (about the painter Turner’s travels in Switzerland) takes the concept a step further combining a 30-piece brass band, choir and a small jazz group.

It’s been performed in Switzerland and Mike says ‘the hunt is on for suitable festival in Britain - but it’s just so big.’ For him (and for me, too), this is the direction for jazz that will allow it to continue to experiment and develop, without necessarily losing its fragile link with popular music.

The celebration of virtuosity is almost the raison d’être of jazz these days, but Mike wonders if that era is about to pass.

‘Is there still another age that will bring in a more compositional approach? I think jazz has to change, and my hope is that it would change in my direction, obviously. (Laughs) But there’s an awful lot more that can be done. Using songs and poetry, and improvising - whether it’s with bebop structures or sometimes classical ways of putting music together but with improvised solos. If I weren’t a composer but an improviser I might see it differently. But as a composer I have to take a broader view - bring in all the things that are important to me.’

 

This feature originally appeared in Jazz UK Issue 68 (March - April 2006)