On Becoming A Great Jazz Soloist: You Know the Old Saying Such Sweet Thunder Music 2/9/17, 22:45

On Becoming A Great Jazz Soloist: You Know the

Old Saying
If youre so smart, why aint you rich? Easy. I chose love over commerce. Or
similarly, if you know so much, how come you were never a great soloist?
Fair question. Actually, no one has ever asked me that. Maybe people have
thought to ask it but didnt want to hurt my feelings. I cant say. I had a
career playing jazz trumpet for about 15 years and got to play with many
great leaders and sidemen. I stopped playing in my 30s for lack of practice
time. 15 years later I returned so that I could play a few gigs with Quincy
Jones and then led an octet for a year. After that I was again too busy as an
arranger and composer to keep up my practice routine.

In a sense this conflict between writing and playing doomed me from the
beginning. I enjoyed playing piano and trumpet as a child, but didnt really
know how to practice (nor did I know how to study for school). My sudden
interest in jazz came at the age of 12. Simultaneously I was learning how to
write Bach chorales from my piano teacher. I was immediately fascinated
with how harmony worked. Within a few years I was writing arrangements
for my high school big band.

It was obvious from my first arrangement (Well, You Neednt) that I had a
talent for writing. I was able to figure out what was going on in the charts I
loved on records and even more than that, I was able to apply what I
observed to similar situations in my own writing. I probably wrote (and
copied parts) upwards of 50 charts in high school. All this took time. It
wasnt uncommon for me to spend two or three hours per night writing.

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On Becoming A Great Jazz Soloist: You Know the Old Saying Such Sweet Thunder Music 2/9/17, 22:45

Naturally, this cut deeply into my practice time.

I recently read an article about a major league batting coach. His approach
is to have his players watch videos of themselves hitting. Instead of
watching for things they do wrong, he only has them watch successful
swings. The philosophy is to repeat success. This same approach can be
applied to any physical task. It wasnt until I was in my 20s that Jimmy
Maxwell turned me on to this. Until then, I was reinforcing mistakes and
bad habits. Once I was on a positive path, progress came quickly.
Unfortunately, I had wasted 15 very important years where my
musicianship vastly outstripped my physical ability to play the instrument.

Sometime during high school I visualized my future as an arranger and

composer. I was encouraged by my teachers and New York pros who heard
or played my music. I figured that Id just play trumpet until I got
established as an arranger. Unbeknownst to me, the music business was
changing. The days of singers coming to New York and recording albums
with big bands and studio orchestras were coming to an end. The upside of
this financial disaster was that I got to play jazz in my salad days. In a way
this was funny. My original teenage dream (which I believed to be
unattainable) was to be a jazz musician and play with my heroes. So here I
was living my dream, but feeling frustrated that my writing career wasnt
developing as fast as Id like.

Then there was the money issue. In many cases I could make more money
in one day writing than I could in a whole week of playing. Fortunately, as a
young, single guy in my 20s, I didnt need to make much to live on. A few
years later, I found myself married and then with a couple of kids. The

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On Becoming A Great Jazz Soloist: You Know the Old Saying Such Sweet Thunder Music 2/9/17, 22:45

business again was changing. This time synthesizers were replacing much of
my previous commercial work. Rather than learn to work with synthesizers,
I took on some adjunct teaching work in addition to writing assignments
that seemed to be thinning out.

Oddly enough, I think I may have been the first musician to play a live
concert with an acoustic instrument and a synthesizer. As a freshman music
student around 1968 I got to know David Borden, a composer in Ithaca, NY.
Borden was friends with Robert Moog, who invented the Moog Synthesizer
in his lab in Trumansburg, which is a few miles from Ithaca. Borden wrote a
piece for synthesizer and improvised trumpet where I walked around the
audience playing from different places.

By the time I started working at Lincoln Center, my playing career was

behind me, or so I thought. I wasnt that sad about it. In fact, Id always had
some ambivalence about playing. I was fine in high school and college, but
as soon as I graduated and returned to New York, I was thrown into bands
with the hottest young jazz players. On the strength of the charts I was
writing, I was talked into starting a rehearsal band to play my music with an
amazing collection of soloists, many of whom went on to become quite
famous. This was intimidating for me. Things didnt improve when I joined
the National Jazz Ensemble. Working with Tom Harrell, Sal Nistico, Greg
Herbert and Jimmy Knepper was like taking lessons every day. The last
thing I wanted to do was to solo.

The same held true while I played with other outstanding bands. I was
comfortable soloing in the context of Ellington and Basie charts where I
could function in a classic Swing Era style, but to be myself (whoever that

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On Becoming A Great Jazz Soloist: You Know the Old Saying Such Sweet Thunder Music 2/9/17, 22:45

was) in more modern arrangements required that I have a style.

I was under the false impression that I had to be able to play everything that
all my heroes playedhigh, fast, chorus after chorus of harmonically
inventive astounding trumpet virtuosity. It never dawned on me that the
things that I could, and did, play were enough. At least they never seemed
enough to me.

Once on a gig with the Lee Konitz nonet, my copyist, Bill Rowen, brought
another client of his, arranger Bob Freedman to hear the nonet at a
downtown club called the Tin Palace. I was a big fan of Bobs work. When
Bill introduced us, Bob complimented me on a solo I had just played. I was
a bit embarrassed and told him that I was barely holding my own in the
midst of such great soloists like Lee, Tom Harrell and Jimmy Knepper. Bob
then said that although they all played many more notes than I did, he
thought that my solo was the most musical of the entire set. I said, Thank
you, but I told myself that I was just doing some simple stuff that comes
easily to me. Because it was easy, I didnt value it. All I could think was, but
what about all the things that the other guys played that I cant do? I
wonder if anyone else feels that way. Fortunately, I never felt that way
about my writing.

Ive worked with hundreds of great jazz players over the past 50 years and
have gotten to know many of them personally. Ive had numerous
discussions as to how they learned to do what they do and what they think
about. Here are 13 common things Ive heard and deduced:

1. First, learn to play your instrument on a virtuosic level. Dont let your

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On Becoming A Great Jazz Soloist: You Know the Old Saying Such Sweet Thunder Music 2/9/17, 22:45

instrument hold you back.

2. Learn jazz language so that you speak like a native.
3. Learn to play everything you hear. You can only be as good as your ear.
There needs to be no time lag between your brain and your fingers. In
fact, you cant be thinking about the mechanics while you are playing.
That must be automatic.
4. Develop impeccable rhythm. When Ive worked with Clark Terry, Phil
Woods and Sal Nistico, each of them had such strong time and 8th
notes that the rhythm section had no choice but to follow them.
5. Have your own sound. When I hear Miles Davis, Clark Terry, Dizzy
Gillespie, Clifford Brown, et al I recognize who it is after just a few
notes.
6. Find your own style. Or better yet, let your style find you, and then own
it. As much as you might want to play in everyones style, be content in
who you are and work on making your playing better, not different.
7. Play with utter confidence. There is no room in jazz for insecurity.
8. Be hungry.
9. Embrace humor.
10. Be generous. Listen to the other musicians on the stand with you and
carry on musical conversations with them.
11. Study classical music as well as jazz. Listen, analyze and be inclusive.
12. Be forever humble. Never stop learning.
13. Set the highest bar for yourself. Only listen to the best music and aim
for that level. Clark Terry, one of the most humble and loving men Ive
ever known, once told me that he wanted to be the best trumpet player
ever. He wouldnt accept any less of himself. He then added, That is
what it takes to be great.

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