Home : Plato's Words : November 2002

November 2002

In the middle of October I had the great pleasure of performing on the Sunshine Coast with The Cedar Groove Quartet. The Groovers are four Gibsons Landing based musicians who consistently get together once a week to play the music they love. They also perform on a fairly regular basis on The Sunshine Coast. It was a delight to get to know them and to make some music together. There they live in an idyllic setting far away from a city's relationship with road rage and pollution and constant traffic. They carry on with their lives as teachers, pharmacists, marathon runners and restaurant owners while finding time to pursue their love of jazz. The audiences there I have found in the past to be warm and receptive so of course the experience of going there was wonderful for me all around.

One of the big thrills for me in October was the chance to meet vocalist Nancy King and pianist Steve Christofferson when they came to Vancouver. A workshop had been arranged to take place at Capilano College but I was not able to attend. However, I was honored to meet them as they recorded a session for CBC the following day. Two of their recordings, Dream Lands and Dream Lands Volume Two are the result of recording at CBC and both recordings are beautiful, in my opinion. Those two musicians have created music together for a long time and are both such incredible improvisers that together the music simply unfolds with freedom and with daring and with swing or any other groove that they come up with together. They take a song that has been done before and they know all those familiar versions of the song and decide to "Steve-Nancy-a-fy" it and all of a sudden it is brand new again.

Nancy is one of my all time favorite scatting vocalists and I believe there are few vocalists who really hear the music as she does and who so naturally and proficiently can solo through the changes of a song. The solos leave your jaw dropping as you listen to a flow of lines and colors that her elastic voice and musical mind create. She has a stylistic growl that is hers alone as well as beautiful airy high notes and such a feel for swing. Line after line you realize you are hearing someone who can sing a lyric with deep feeling, who can really tell the story and then can simply leave that behind and wordlessly build the song to a new exciting climax.

I am not always a fan of scatting, at least not when it is done too much. Some of it leaves me thinking it is just a big "wank fest" to show off vocal range with little listening happening to the changes at hand. However, with Nancy that of course is not the case. Some scatting reminds me of the time in the classical world of music when sopranos would improvise cadenzas, which would go on, and on. These cadenzas were merely show off demonstrations of their vocal acrobatic ability and really had little to do with the song being sung thus what I call a "wank fest". I suppose the same thing can be said of improvising instrumentalists at times. Of course some people actually like to hear scatting in every song and believe that is the only time the vocalist is truly soloing alongside his/her fellow instrumentalists as they explore tunes together.

Perhaps the very nature of soloing is that everything is on the line as you break free from the written melody and attempt to create something musical and new as you solo over a tune. In essence in the spirit of jazz you freely improvise whatever comes to mind as you hear the framework of the tune laid out by your fellow musicians. The song's chords that they play are the base upon which you juxtapose your new melodies. Perhaps inevitably because we are human we will run out of melodic ideas or maybe we will be inclined to do more rather than less in our attempt to create an exciting solo. Never do I feel that Nancy King is being gratuitous in her scatting. Of course I realize that everyone has their own taste and opinion but my guess is that if you are a fan of scatting then you will love Nancy King.

I personally can barely stomach what I come up with in the soloing area of singing so consider myself a singer who improvises but does not truly take solos or at least very infrequently. Again in the area of "perhaps", perhaps one day if I learn to listen better I will feel differently about taking solos and will venture into the area of "laying it on the line" on a more regular basis. On the other hand maybe I will always feel inclined to leave the true soloing to those who naturally feel it is a part of what they do as jazz singers. I really believe there is a certain amount of trust in yourself that is required, a trust that you really have something to say as you step away from the words of the music into the land of syllables. It really is a lot of fun to do, that I will admit. Suddenly you become a horn or a guitar as you sing without preconceived ideas, simply allowing a stream of wordless melodies to be seemingly pulled out of you as you hear the musicians around you play through the song or even as you play the changes for yourself.

With someone like Nancy King it is simply a part of who she is and how she sings and man can she do it!

Steve, Nancy's musical partner in crime, is a beautiful pianist who also plays the melodica in their performances and recordings. The melodica with its melancholic sound becomes a lovely contrast when used in balance with the piano and voice. I really think you can hear joyfulness as Nancy and Steve make music together, a shared delight of taking a tune and then re-creating it together on the spot. They seem to fuel each other's ideas with the music making being a one way street with both of them luckily heading in the same direction. For anyone travelling down to the Portland area, that is where Nancy and Steve live and they perform weekly at a jazz club there called Jazz de Opus.

That's it from me for this month. Time to go to the music room and scat a few choruses of a tune where no one but my dog can hear me. Hopefully the dog won't mind if I am inclined to go on and on with my soloing and if I decline her offer to trade eights…

Karin