Photo by Randy Cole

The Montreal saxophonist Cameron Wallis is a quintuple threat, playing tenor, alto, soprano, baritone and C-melody saxophones on his new CD Calling Dexter.

But Wallis, a 33-year-old Winnipeg native, is single-minded in his pursuit of swinging, bop-based music at its highest level.

Below, in advance of his quartet’s Sunday night concert in Ottawa at GigSpace, Wallis delves into his priorities and the DIY approach with respect to the jazz business that’s gotten him this far.

1. Your disc is a very explicit shout-out to Dexter Gordon, Sonny Stitt and the joy of swinging. Can you elaborate on why you’ve chosen to interpret and compose jazz of this kind?

Bebop, Hard-bop and the earlier styles is the music that has been closest to my heart for last five or so years.  I wanted to make an album that reflected the music I listen to and am most influenced by on a daily basis.  To me, bebop is one of the most beautiful forms of musical expression, and also one of the most demanding from a performance point of view.  Jazz musicians, and I suppose critics, put a premium on innovation and moving the music forward, and compared to most other genres of music, jazz has evolved at a lightning pace.  None of the hundreds of sub-styles have disappeared, but if you consider that Bop’s heyday was what 10, maybe 15 years?  That’s just a tiny blip.  I feel there’s still a lot of space to explore and develop in that style, and like I said before, if executed at a high level, it’s hard to find a more exquisite form of musical expression.

2. Further to that, what thoughts and feelings do you have regarding the more straight-eighthy, odd-timey, originals-only jazz that is so attractive to many of your peers?

It is cliche, but to me there are only two types of music – good and bad.  The rest is simply a question of style.  I love music.  I love to play and compose and learn as much as I can whenever I can.  I make my living playing any style of music if I’m given the opportunity and feel like I can do it justice.  Having grown up in the 80s, I feel fortunate to have been exposed to so many genres.  What I value is honesty of intention, that it expresses something to me, and that it’s performed at a high level.

I enjoy and am in awe of much of the music that is happening these days, and I learn tons from hearing and playing with my peers.  Montreal these days is amazing because there are so many sax players of my generation who are all playing at an exceptionally high level and we all have a different approach to the music.  Al Mclean, Chet Doxas, Erik Hove, Alex Cote, Sam Blais are all guys who come to mind.  We are all friends and have a loving admiration of what we do.

There is a lot of “bad” music happening as well, but I think that comes with the territory of anything that is popular at the moment.  I think that the current trend in jazz lends itself more easily to poor performance.  You’ve got lots of grooves, modal harmony, “free” section and so on.  That can be a recipe for disaster if the musicians don’t have their shit together, where as in a style like bebop you cut it or you don’t.

From the stand point of my own playing I can tell you that when I was younger, like most young players, I was enthralled by all the “hip” new stuff and spent all my time listening and trying to play that way.  I think I felt an external pressure that if I didn’t, my music wasn’t valid.  As I matured I became less and less satisfied with the way I sounded and eventually I came to the conclusion that I was missing a foundation in my playing.  I started going backwards through the history of the music and began filling in the gaps.  It was an extremely humbling experience, but it was work that I felt needed to be done if I was going to legitimately move forward.  It has also been one of the most rewarding decisions I’ve ever made.  The further back I go, the more I understand, the better I play, and it explains so much about how the music has arrived at its current incarnation.

3. Please share with me your thoughts about the rhythm section. Of all the great pianists and bassists and drummers of Montreal, why choose Andre, Alec and Dave?  

Well, you need the right tools for the job so to speak.  In my opinion that trio is second to none, period.  All three are master musicians, and with regards to the style of music I’m presenting, their depth of knowledge and experience is bewildering.  They’ve been together for well over 20 years, and I’ve been listening to them play and grow together since I moved to Montreal.  Their level of performance and consistency is astonishing.  All three have been teachers of mine over the years, and that’s never really stopped.  Andre especially is a constant source of inspiration for the entire Montreal jazz community.  He’s a bottomless well of generosity and information.  If I tell him that I’m interested in the music of Don Byas for example, the next day he’ll hit me with 20 recordings.  I feel very lucky to play with these guys.  They provide such a strong foundation that it makes playing seem almost effortless.  It’s a very reassuring and freeing feeling to know that they’re there to support you and make you sound your best.

[Video break: Let's check out the title track from Calling Dexter, which is the music behind the Wallis interview in this clip -- PH]

4. Why play all five saxophones on the CD?

I like playing all the horns because I feel like it allows me to tap into a variety of personalities so to speak.  Tenor is my main horn so I think I sound the most like myself on it.  Also, due to the enormous history of that horn, it fills me at times with a feeling that I have something really big to live up to.  When I play the other horns I feel like I have more freedom to conjure different sounds and have fun with that.  Each horn also has its own different historical vocabulary.  When I play alto I most strongly hear Bird, Stitt, Cannonball, and Johnny Hodges.  On soprano I hear Sidney Bechet, Wayne and Trane.  Bari is Pepper Adams all the way, and the C melody is the most quirky and I like to channel Ornette and Eric Dolphy on that horn.

I’ve just always loved the saxophone, and the sound of the horn goes back to my earliest childhood memories.  In fact I’ve developed a bit of a financially unhealthy addiction to collecting horns. Anyway.

5. Tell me a bit about what was involved with respect to the DIY aspect of making the CD. Am I remembering right that there was a crowd-sourcing campaign to raise funds for it, and that the disc came out on your own label? Why did you do what you did with respect to the business side of the music, and what are the pros and cons of doing it in the way that you did?  

Yeah, I did everything on my own.  Initially, I just wanted to document this stage of my musical development, so I saved up some cash and hired the guys and the studio to do the session.  Then the music sat for almost a year because I wasn’t sure it was worth going further in debt to actually package the thing.  After a lot of research I decided to try the crowd-sourcing thing.  I was hesitant at the beginning because I didn’t want to come across as looking for a handout etc.  I eventually decided that since I needed a relatively small amount of cash to finish the project that I’d set up an indiegogo campaign, where I’d simply try to sell advance copies at a realistic price, and add some other perks, again at a fair price.  My feeling was that if I could sell enough copies in advance to cover the remaining costs of bringing the disc to market that it meant there was sufficient interest in the project.  If not than that would be cool too.  It ended up being a very positive and encouraging experience because I easily met my goal in about 10 days.

The reason I put it out myself was because the reality of instrumental jazz music is that the market is so small, that you’re only going to sell CDs at your shows or to fans who’ve been following you over the years.  There really isn’t anything that a Canadian label can offer you.  In most cases they demand a portion of your publishing, sometimes they want ownership of your masters, and in return they don’t / can’t offer anything substantial in terms of promotion or tour support, and then the project is locked in with them and ends up gathering dust at the local music store at best.  By doing it yourself the worst case scenario is that the CD suffers the same fate.

My philosophy has been to have the strongest web presence as possible -  specifically on YouTube and to have a good website.  I try my hardest to develop and maintain my local fan base and leverage as much as possible the relationships that I’ve made as a sideman around the world.  I just keep trying to chip away at things bit by bit and it seems to be paying off.  At the moment I’m in talks with a couple of US labels about licensing and distributing the CD.  I have no idea what might come of the talks, but at least I have the option to decide one way or the other.

The cons to doing it yourself are that it takes longer, you have a bit more of the financial burden, and it requires a thick skin and perseverance.  But what jazz musician can’t handle that?

Cameron Wallis plays Sunday, April 14, at 7:30 p.m. at GigSpace (953 Gladstone Ave.). Admission is $15.

A Message From The Dean (Cellar Live)
Kevin Dean Quartet

While the bulk of Cellar Live’s catalog naturally features Vancouver-based jazz musicians, the label shows its love for top-quality jazz from la belle province with the release of A Message From The Dean, the latest from Montreal trumpeter Kevin Dean. Of course, Dean’s CD is right in the wheelhouse of Cellar Live impresario Cory Weeds. Dean’s message is of the sophisticated, bop-based variety much-beloved by Weeds, and it’s an especially compelling one.

On his CD, Dean is joined, as he usually has been for 25 years now, by pianist Andre White, bassist Alec Walkington and drummer Dave Laing. In the late 1980s, Dean and White, as faculty members, gave McGill University’s jazz program its always-swing identity. Walkington and Laing, who were not that much younger than their teachers, were McGill students. The two Ottawa-raised musicians now teach at McGill. (Full disclosure: I was hanging out on the McGill jazz scene in the late 1980s thanks to Dean’s largesse, and I played with Walkington and Laing then. I play with Walkington, with whom I went to high school in Ottawa’s west end, even now.)

Dean’s disc consists of 10 originals that while rooted in bebop and hard-bop are neither museum music nor excuses for blowing. Yes, there’s a minor blues (the longer-form Flat Line) and two tunes based on standards (the hard-driving Gone By Morning is built on You Stepped Out Of A Dream, Pony Ride comes from I’m Getting Sentimental Over You). But these and the other Dean compositions display a high degree of flair and personality. Here’s Dean talking about his tunes; you can hear Flat Line in the background:

Other tunes attest to Dean’s breadth as a writer and player. The disc’s opener, Famous Last Words, begins as a plaintive ballad but switches into something of a swinganova. Ultra Sounds moves from a rubato reading to a muscular but lyrical 3/4 tune. Serengeti is a loping, evocative tune that reflects not only how deep into the harmony Dean can get with his melodies, but also the focused beauty of his sound.

The disc’s final stretch  reflects an interesting, and even mature, approach to sequencing. Rather than go out with a bang, Dean offers a concluding impression that feels ballad-filled and more than a little wistful, yet is still intense. The slow and refined Thank You Notes is the disc’s longest track, with classy solos by White, Dean and Walkington. The Big Parade sets its melancholy to a Latin beat. The disc-ender, Epitaph, is an intimate duet for Dean and White, just a minute and a half long. In vibe and function, it’s reminiscent of Epilogue, which Bill Evans recorded on Everybody Digs Bill Evans (and Live at Town Hall), as well as the album-closing Dorham’s Epitaph, which trumpeter Kenny Dorham, a prime Dean influence, recorded on his 1961 album Whistle Stop.  Dean’s piece is especially fitting, given that his disc is dedicated to his father, who died in June 2011. (Epitaph, however, like the rest of the CD, was recorded in 2010).

Throughout, Dean plays some of the most graceful trumpet you’ll hear in a month of jazz listening. His sound is warm and focused. His lines are flowing and inventive, melodically supple and rhythmically limber. Dean’s way of swinging not only drives; it dances too. White’s playing is rooted in Bud Powell when the music’s forthrightly bopping, but he has other tricks up his sleeve too, especially during his gorgeous ballad playing. He, Walkington and Laing, along with Dean, play with great focus and comfort, as you would expect given their innumerable gigs over the last two and a half decades. But experience alone doesn’t grant these musicians their finely developed sense of taste, which lifts A Message From The Dean into the top category of Canadian jazz.

Just Like That (Cellar Live)
Cory Weeds

Vancouver saxophonist Cory Weeds has chosen an unpretentious title for his latest collection of unpretentious music.

Just Like That is a quartet outing that extols bluesiness, bop, swinging and grooving.  It’s  “super straight ahead,” as Weeds calls it in his liner notes. As with Weeds’ previous CDs, Just Like That steadfastly features Weeds and his accompanists playing  in the box — and loving it. Indeed, with its heavy emphasis on the most standard of song forms and core jazz values, Just Like That can seem more workman-like than artisanal. Some would even call Weeds’ CD derivative, although I suspect that Weeds, deep down, celebrates derivation. And while you might say that in this go-around, Weeds too often falls back on familiar licks,  he might counter that he’s affirming tradition.

Joining Weeds on Just Like That  are three seasoned Vancouver players — pianist Tilden Webb, bassist Jodi Proznick and drummer Jesse Cahill — who came up together at McGill University in the 1990s, studying under Dean, White, and others. The Vancouverites play together like family, and the analogy’s no stretch since Webb and Proznick are married to each other, and Cahill is married to Proznick’s sister. The trio’s simpatico and deep, authoritative swing boosts Weeds’ CD considerably.

The resulting disc, for which Webb served as musical director,  is a polished, feel-good outing that keeps most of its themes riffing and simple. Ushered in by Proznick’s room-filling sound and groove, Webb’s titular opener is a happy boogaloo with the bluesiness and stop-time bits of that 1960s genre. Proznick’s Adanac is a bebop line built on the chords of Sonny Rollins’ Airegin (Airegin is to Adanac as Nigeria is to Canada). Everyone sounds assured and accomplished on this track, but it’s Cahill’s crisp, Billy Higgins-style drumming that makes me smile. Similarly, On A Clear Day gets high marks for the bounce of its two-feel groove that gears up to sunny swinging.

Two of the disc’s tunes written or co-written by Weeds are unabashed blowing vehicles. The Big H is a riff-based tune of the 32-bar D-minor variety, a la Black Nile or A Night in Tunisia. Rat Race is a riff-based blues, which sounds like Horace Silver wrote the first eight bars and Dexter Gordon wrote the last four bars. There’s more material to the pretty tunes Waltz for Someone Special and The Way She Was, which I think is Weeds’ best composition on the disc.

Percussion and chorused electric piano colour two tracks, Weeds’ riffy groove tune Noah’s Vibe and the disc’s closing cover of  The Stylistics’ You’re As Right As Rain.  The CD’s other cover, Have A Little Faith In Me, is a hard one to pull off, and I feel that Weeds; version doesn’t get deep enough into it.  I love that great John Hiatt song, but find Weeds’ take  lacks the grace and elation of the original — the tune’s climactic conclusion has been shorn off and replaced with a one-chord vamp geared for soulful blowing, and from Weeds,  some too-common licks and ornamentations make things feel too sweet, smooth and stock. (That said, the Bon Jovi version is much worse.)

Overall, I like the diversity and rhythmic drive of Weeds’ disc. The playing is spirited and swinging from all the musicians. Still, I think that Weeds could have set the bar a little higher for some his compositions, if not his playing here and there. Weeds has said on several occasions that he’s not out to reinvent the wheel when he plays, but that’s not what I’m saying. I just think this time out, he ought to have gone for a bit more imagination and ingenuity, even while he stayed within the idiom that he so dearly loves.

As It Happens (Pagetown Records)
Paul Rushka Quintet

After launching his career in Vancouver, bassist Paul Rushka relocated to Montreal a few years ago, to attend — where else? — McGill University where he completed a Master’s degree and is now working toward a Ph.D.

However, his first CD, As It Happens, finds him back in Vancouver, in the company of  long-time collaborators, to realize a set of eight lyrical, contemporary originals.

You might have gathered from the two discs above that McGill is Blue Note North. However, that stereotype oversimplifies the truth, and Rushka’s disc, if anything, strongly comes out of  Kenny Wheeler’s music. Of course, I’ve argued for awhile that a big swath of Canadian jazz is indebted to the great expat trumpeter and composer, who influences his homeland’s music even if he has lived in London for 60-odd years. To my ears, Rushka’s a prime example of someone under the sway of Wheeler’s appealing esthetic. The bassist’s affecting melodies, fine ear for sequencing harmonic colour and thoughtful, expansive arranging that makes diverse deployments of the musicians — all reflect Wheeler’s influence. Which is not by any means a bad thing.

That said, Rushka’s music is at the same time very much his own, with aspects that don’t spring from Wheeler’s oeuvre. For one thing, Rushka favours odd-meter and mixed-meter settings for his lyrical, loping creations, as in his 5/4 opener Evermore,  his 7/4 tune Everyday Truth and the 11/4 (or is that 6/4 plus 5/4?) Three Stripes (the first part of Rushka’s Captive Spring Suite). Also, As It Happens stands out simply for its instrumentation. Rushka’s quintet includes a unique front-line combination — the clarinet of James Danderfer and guitar of Dave Sikula, There’s a lightness to the band’s sonic palette as a result, although rarefied chamber-jazz moments notwithstanding ( I have in mind the clarinet-piano intro to Paola), Rushka’s band can also play flat-out too, as in the suite-ending With No Stops Along the Way, when drummer Joe Poole gets to roar.

Poole adds a lot of distinctive touches throughout the disc, and both Danderfer and pianist Jillian Lebeck are poised soloists who apply themselves to Rushka’s tunes with admirable naturalness and an absence of cliches. They, and the band as a whole, give me a sense that they’re going for the larger vibe that the original material’s capable of — they’re not only trying to impress while playing over cool chords. In this regard, the tune that might be best realized is the concise disc-closer Lost In A Dream, a fetching, less-is-more waltz that is no less substantial or moving than the more epic tunes that make up the bulk of As It Happens.

Get out your calendars, Ottawa jazz fans, and mark yourself down as busy on the dates below. You will be heading to Cafe Paradiso (199 Bank St.) to catch the likes of Theo Bleckmann/Ben Monder, pianist John Stetch, guitarist Vic Juris, trumpeter Jim Lewis and  saxophonist Kenji Omae at the appointed times.

Some details and videos, should you not be convinced:

Tuesday, Sept. 20 Friday, Sept. 16
John Stetch Trio
The Edmonton-raised, Ithaca NY-based pianist can be counted on for daring, distinctive music and imaginative reworkings of everything from Thelonious Monk pieces to TV show themes.

UPDATE: There’s been a bit of juggling since Paradiso provided the info the paper, and it appears that the date for Stetch’s show will change to Friday, Sept. 16, and that a Montreal band, Jazz at the Point, will play Sept. 20 at Paradiso.

Saturday, Oct. 1
Evandro Gracelli Farewell Concert
Brazilian guitarist Gracelli has given the Ottawa music scene a shot in the arm since he’s been here.

Thursday, Oct. 12
Theo Bleckmann/Ben Monder Duo
Surely two of the today’s most stunning contemporary improvisors, making unique, enthralling music. Best to reserve soon for this one, as Paradiso will likely be overrun with guitarists and vocalists wanting to see how it’s done.

Friday, Oct. 14
Diane Nalini Trio
Don’t let Nalini’s day job as an Environment Canada analyst fool you. She can really sing.

(If you want to know more about Nalini, why not read this interview I had with her?)

Saturday, Oct. 15
John Geggie/Jim Lewis Duo
The Ottawa bassist and Toronto trumpeter have been music in all kinds of formats for years. The duo will focus on their one-on-one rapport.

Monday, Oct. 17
LeBoeuf Brothers Quintet
This quintet features a young New York-based musicians including pianist Pascal LeBoeuf, a semi-finalist in this year’s Thelonious Monk International Jazz Piano Competition.

Friday, Oct. 21
The Kandinsky Effect
This groovy young Paris-based trio is apparently moving up in the world with its Paradiso gig

Friday/Saturday Nov. 11-12
Vic Juris-Roddy Ellias Duo
This gig is becoming a bit of a Paradiso tradition, but it’s a welcome one. Juris never fails to amaze at Paradiso, whether he’s playing with saxophonist Dave Liebman, or in a duo with Ottawa’s own Ellias. My review of their show last fall is here.

Tuesday, Dec. 27
Hum/Omae/Rud/Cepelinski/Walkington/Warren
I am, of course, conflicted giving you the lowdown on this one, but I figure any time you get saxophonists Kenji Omae, Nathan Cepelinski, guitarist Mike Rud, bassist Alec Walkington and drummer Ted Warren in the room, it’s blog-worthy, even if I, wearing my musician’s hat, am the instigator. The gig is a multi-function affair: We’ll mark the release of Kenji’s new CD, Not So Deep, and we’ll play some new music by me, in advance of our City of Ottawa-funded recording sessions the following two days.

The thought of putting videos featuring my own playing on the blog makes me blush. I’ll only mention that there are several on YouTube, variously featuring Kenji, Nathan, Ted, Alec, Mike, John Geggie and Jeff Asselin.

The club is nowhere near booked through till year’s end, so there may well be more must-hears in coming months. Stay on top of things by visiting Cafe Paradiso’s website.

I was prompted to seek out Alec’s input after spending many hours listening to almost 20 discs from musicians in their 20s. I was struck by how many tunes were, when you got down to it, devoted to vamping or something pretty close to vamping, and modally oriented with respect to harmony, but more in a pop-based way than in a Coltrane or Liebman way. Are these tunes the new AABA? Really good examples of such tunes come from such role models as Seamus Blake…

and Robert Glasper:

And here’s a little clip that involves Glasper — except that he’s sitting on the drum throne, passing that vamping magic on to some students:

Alec, who especially likes the Blake tune, says these kinds of sounds are definitely trickling down:

In the last few years I’ve seen what I’d call “episodic” forms become more popular as opposed to traditional song forms. There might be a short, say an eight-bar vamp with maybe four chords, often with some kind of rock feel or odd-meter groove. The soloist can blow on this for a while building, energy to a climax point at which time there could be a cue for another section. Then the next soloist can take over with another vamp with maybe a different groove or different harmony. In tunes like this, the tension is not built into the harmony, but is built up by the performers through repetition.These kinds of tunes can be fun to play and are fairly easy to write. One potential drawback is that if you play too many tunes like this in an evening it can get a little tedious.

(I certainly felt over-exposed to these kinds of tunes after listening to a stack of discs on which they were prominent. — PH) The way Alec tells it, the enthusiasm that some students have for these kinds of tunes means that they are less interested in other — older? — musical materials.

With this kind of composition, the trap to fall into is to feel that you don’t have to understand hamony and melody and just compose based on form and groove and energy. You’re missing out on some crucial components of music. Over the past few years of teaching composition, I’ve found that many students don’t know the tonal system very well. They don’t appreciate the harmonic language of major and minor. There is such a richness and variety of colour in tunes like say, How Deep Is The Ocean or Come Rain Or Come Shine even though these tunes stay in one key (ie. don’t modulate.)

t’s really coming from what they’re listening to. We’re trying to get them to understand music in a totality but not prevent them from expressing themselves. I remember a colleague made a comment once, like “I feel that I have so much that I can teach them…”  There’s a lot that they don’t necessarily want to learn.

What advice does Alec pass on to students?

Here a few things I try to get my composition students to think about:

When writing a song form, you have to think of phrasing, cadences and resting points within the structure. Where is the tension and release? Where is the climax? Does the climax in the harmony coincide with the climax of the melody?

Many of my students don’t realize at first that the blowing section of a tune doesn’t have to follow exactly the form of the head. I often get presented with tunes with long involved melodic statements with uneven phrase lengths, many sections, maybe a time change or two thrown in and then the soloist is expected to blow on the whole thing exactly as presented in the melody. It’s better to make the solo section easy to hear and feel. The rhythm section won’t get lost (hopefully!) and you’ll have more freedom to explore.

It’s bit lazy to think that once you’ve written the melody and harmony,  you’re done……  you’ve written the whole tune. You have to consider the performance, the overall impact of what you are trying to express.

When crafting a chord progression, especially when you’re thinking modal harmony, avoid too much of the same colour or mode. I get a lot of tunes with chord progressions like Dmin7- Emin7- Fmaj7- Gmin7. Too much of the same sound for my taste.

***

For more jazz composition-related posts, try:

Jazz composers’ roundtable
Compose yourself

Fortunately, I went to the right place to record — a newish studio space called Venturing Hill in Luskville, Quebec, about 40 minutes from Ottawa. Recording engineer Ross Murray and I had checked out several other options in Ottawa, but all seemed like they would make our lives more difficult. Studios with great pianos were nowhere to be found. Venues with great pianos, such as several of Ottawa’s churches, were far too reverberant and would have posed huge problems in terms of recording drums and saxophones. Venturing Hill, however, offered what we needed. The studio space is the high-ceiling, second storey of a horse barn, but it has been remade to Murray’s specifications, and indeed, the sound inside is great. What’s more, there were two grand pianos to choose from. The studio set-up allowed for everyone but our bassist, Alec Walkington, to play in the same large room, while Alec was in an isolation booth — I much preferred that to having all of us separated. I also liked the recording at Venturing Hills made the session seem like a bit of a getaway  — it seemed more cool to head out to the Gatineau Hills to record rather than hole up in someone’s basement studio in the suburbs.

I was also lucky that I had definitely chosen the right guys to record with. I have meaningful musical histories with saxophonists Kenji Omae and Nathan Cepelinski and bassist Alec Walkington, stemming from the fact that we all began our musical journeys in Ottawa (Thanks to the City of Ottawa for supporting the recording with an emerging artist grant, I should add here). Alec and I go back to playing in the same high school band in the early 1980s. While drummer Ted Warren was a ringer brought in from Toronto, he and I also go back, having played together at McGill University two decades ago.  They are all like-minded, absolutely top-notch players who made things easy for me.  And equally important for this recording newbie, they’re longstanding friends of mine. So at the very least, the hanging would be fun…

Four of us — the group minus Kenji — had played through most of my tunes a month earlier, at a concert at the First Unitarian Congregation of Ottawa. That show counted as one rehearsal — really the only substantial one we could get. As for Kenji, I had e-mailed him some charts and he applied himself as much as was needed in advance of our session. After our Sunday night soundcheck (which had been imperiled because of the day’s crazy windstorms), we were as ready as we needed to be to record on Monday.

I’d brought in 14 tunes for the two-day session, not expecting to get through all of them. In the end, we recorded 11, which will be more than enough to choose from. In hindsight, I wish we had gotten one or two that hadn’t been recorded — one more minor-key tune in the mix would have been nice — but that’s really a lesson from the experience. Let’s just say that I was too content to let the session unfurl on its own, rather than play stern taskmaster or master planner — and that’s in spite of me thinking the thing through as best I could during the previous six months.

We started slowly, with too many takes of the first tune, which was not even one of my harder tunes. I blame my own lack of experience. The other guys were pretty much hitting from the get-go, while I was feeling far less loose than I would have liked. On gigs, I rarely have problems getting into the zone where I play as contentedly and well as I can. But that mental state was eluding me when we started. It took me some time to forget that I was hearing myself and everyone else through headphones — the novelty of that caught me out, and paradoxically, I don’t think I was playing as much from a “listening perspective,” hearing what everyone else was playing and responding in the moment.

Over the course of six hours or so on day one, we managed to put five tunes down. At that point, I realized that I had also made things a bit more complicated for myself because, perhaps paradoxically, I had chosen to record my tunes rather than the standards that I’d been playing for years and years. It would have been easier to just go in and call Green Dolphin Street or Minority. Some of the tunes I’d brought in were very new — days old. Also, I have a tendency to write a little beyond what I can play easily. I suppose I’m  usually striving for harmonic material and grooves that are fresh (at least to me). However, there was never any question in my mind that I would be recording my songs — and that was re-affirmed for me when I heard New York saxophonist/composer Ted Nash speak in the summer about composing, as I described here. “We can make statements playing, but we can raise it to another level by composing something that is really another extension of who we are… we allow people to get a glimpse into our soul,” Nash said. I’d committed myself to a similar notion when going into the studio was just a fantasy.

When we returned on Tuesday afternoon, we recorded my toughest tune, at Ross Murray’s suggestion. Finally, after that, I felt more loose. As well, it took me that long to come to grips with the fact that after two takes of each tune, there wasn’t much more to be gained, and we barreled through a series of tunes. When we were done, it seemed to me like the two days in the studio had gone by in an instant — and yet I was exhausted all the same.

I came out of the sessions very happy, but still with the nagging feeling that I could have played better or directed things a bit better. The other musicians were happy with how things went, and offered some consolation, saying that it’s simply easier to be a sideman and to focus on executing one’s part rather than to be the leader. I was beset by all kinds of logistical concerns, from tracking the money in my bank account to cooking dinners for the band because we were somewhat secluded, and it did occur to me at least once, “I have to play piano well now? Dang! Haven’t I done enough already?”

Knowing what I know now, I wonder if I’ll be reviewing jazz CDs any differently in the future.

I think that compared to some other critics I know, I already have a bit more sympathy for musicians who are pouring themselves into their music. Now, with my session in mind, I’m pondering that question I’m so keen to ask of other musicians: “Did we make good music or bad music?” I think our motives were pure, we had a good rapport, we knew what we wanted to realize, and we certainly had fun. Hopefully that will translate into music that we and others will enjoy at some undetermined date, when the disc sees the light of day.

(Please bookmark this blog, which features new posts each weekday, at http://jazzblog.ca and follow me on Twitter at www.twitter.com/peterhum)