You'll Hear It: Full Album Deep Dives with Jazz Musicians - Is Innovation Really The Goal?

Episode Date: July 10, 2023

Adam and Peter discuss innovation as a concept. Is it truly the goal we are seeking?Have a question for us? Leave us a SpeakPipeCheckout courses from Adam, Peter and more at Open Studio🎹 Head over to our YouTube channel for a better look 👀.Follow us on Instagram

Hey, Adam. Yeah. Check this out. Okay. You like that? I love it. Is it innovative, though? Does that matter?

Oh, let's explore. I'm Adam Manus. And I'm Peter Martin. And you're listening to the You'll Hear a podcast. Music, advice, and discussion. Coming at you. Coming at you. I love it.

Yeah. I get nervous when I see a twinkle in my eye when I'm thinking of maybe making an addition, an amendment, an appendment. Well, an appendment. Here's the thing. In aperture. So we'll get, here's the problem, Peter, is your improvised taglines, sometimes they go on sort of the visual graphics, the representation of the show. Yeah.

And then a year, two years go by, and we're looking at it, you know, an email or a video that we put out. Yeah. And it's a whole different tagline. And we're like, wait, did we really say that? We did, yeah, we for like a month and a half. That's fun. It's like, you know, you're walking around. You take some pictures with your iPhone or Android, either one.

Yeah. And then a year later, you're like, why did I think? take that, but it kind of takes you back to that place a little bit, right? Of the summer 2020. Summer 2021. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But anyway, how are you? Pretty good, man.

How are you? Yeah, so I'm good. I'm a little bit, oh, you know what I just realized? Producer Caleb is in the house as he always is, but he does, look, he's looking at me like, why am I being, why am I being mentioned on this show? We should mention him because he doesn't have a camera. He does not have a Caleb camera. That came for a while, and it was very popular with our listeners.

Yeah. So that little joke there? Also popular with the viewers, though, but it went like the way of the dodo bird. Yeah. I think it was a hard thing to figure out logistically. Was it, though? Yeah, it's a shame because, you know. Leave something in the YouTube comments.

And please stick around to the end because we have a very special announcement about YouTube that we're going to say at the end of the show. But leave it in the YouTube comments, even if you're listening to this, if you want the Caleb Cam back. So, Peter, I think we need the Caleb Cam. I think we do need a Caleb Cam. We might have to invest in that. What, but Caleb Cam aside, which that would be, if we got a permanent Caleb can, yeah, Cam, that would be a bit of an innovation for this show. And I think, in the segue, that's what we're talking about today. Oh, you know, sorry. You're like, wink, wink,

where are you? Come on. Help me out, buddy. I can't do this whole thing by myself. Well, actually, one of our biggest episodes ever was you doing this whole thing by yourself. Turns out I can. Thanks, Peter, for your service. Right. We're talking about is, we are talking about is, innovation really the goal. Yeah. Yeah, we've had some really good discussions in the last couple weeks. We've had some interesting events happen in the last couple weeks around the show. And it seems to be just a popular topic ongoing for, especially in the jazz world. Like, is this current generation innovative? Is this record? Is this player? Are people innovating? What is innovation? Like, it almost seems more so than other genres, right? Are blues people sitting around?

No, blues musicians are not saying, is blue still? Is blue still? innovative. Like, no, is it still bluesy? Yeah. It doesn't really, you're right.

It doesn't seem to matter. Are they innovating? Prague rock, I think it is a matter of concern over there as well. I think probably classical music, it is a matter of concern because for each one of those things, their identity was innovation for so long. Yeah.

As all art does, and it's a natural sort of birth, living and death period of anything. Right. There's like areas of massive change that happen culturally. And then this is always sort of connected, I think erroneously, I'm going to say, but it's always connected to the

is jazz dead argument and thesis. Which I don't want to spend too much time. No, no, but I'm saying people will be like, jazz is dead because there's no innovation today, which I think is just sort of one of the ultimate or at least oft-repeated false narratives about the music. Yeah, it's just not

true, first of all, that there's no innovation. Oh, I like that. It just definitely, it's objectively not, it would be impossible for it to be true. Right. And, yeah, and the dead thing. Would our dear listeners be here with us talking about jazz if it was dead? I mean, first of all, I mean, if we really want to break it down, just the word jazz for me is a bit of a problem at this point. When we're talking about Paul White Man, we're talking about, we're talking about, who we talk about?

Dixieland Jazz, man. Yeah, like, it's too big of a word to be what you're talking about anyway, so it doesn't matter to me. It's a small word, it is a small word and a big word. So I don't want to get too far of that. And the other thing with interesting when we mentioned jazz is dead, we obviously, we obviously, often if we do a video talking about this idea, we get flooded with just comment. Like more people want to talk about this than actually want to watch us talk about it. Right.

So like you can have your discussion in the comments if you want to, but I don't think we really need to spend too much time about that because it's just not, it's not, it doesn't matter. And I think this is my point when I said like when you asked like, is it innovative what I played? And I said, doesn't matter because I think a riper discussion is can you sort of like, can you force your,

to be innovative as a player, as an artist, because that's what really this whole show is concerned of. It's like, well, first of all, let me just be clear. Like, artistic growth. Yeah. But just real quick, can you work on being innovative? And should you work on being innovative? Like, is that something you should spend your time thinking about?

Because I would argue that the most innovative musicians that I am aware of didn't think about it in those terms exactly. The most, like the people who made innovations were not concerned with where they stood in the way. where they stood innovation-wise. A player plays and innovator innovates, I think, as kind of a, as more of a byproduct of a creative spirit, right? It's not of an innovative spirit. That's correct.

I mean, who, yeah, and so I think to answer, yeah, so as we examine this, is it the goal, maybe, but it can't be the overt goal. Like, in other words, maybe it's the goal of the art form, which is nothing that anybody controls. roles anyway. There's no controlling that. There's no, yeah. So is innovation the goal of an individual artist?

I think that when that becomes that, and I've certainly experienced that, like, just on the micro level of like, I'm writing something. I'm just like, oh, that kind of sounds too bad. Let me try to innovate. I don't even say it, but I start to do that. It never gets anywhere when I try to do that. That's right. So this is my first key point.

So if you try to be an innovator, if you're like, okay, you know what? for this one, I'm going to be super... I'm going to put on my black turtleneck. I'm going to do something nobody's ever thought of before. I guarantee you're going to write something or play something completely derivative and void of any real human soul. Right. Because you're thinking, you're now trying to intellectualize your way to something that should be felt. Right.

Right. So if you really, in my experience and opinion, if you really want to innovate, the easiest way to do that is to be as open to as many things around you in the present as possible, and then to be as unblocked as those things are coming out of you as an artist. So to really try to put as little roadblocks between the things that are in your soul, whatever that means to you or in your musical mind, and get it to your audience as clearly as possible. Yes. And if you can remain open, especially as we age, it gets really hard if you've been around for decades,

as we have now. Especially if you've been around the block, going around the block. For sure. It's a constant challenge. I think it's easier when you're young and fresh, and you don't know a lot. to be innovative because you don't know really the rules of the game that well so you can be like I kind of know what's going on here let's try this and I that everything kind of seems innovative at that time too well this is because you don't have that catalog of like oops that's already been done this is a in Zen Buddhism is called beginner's mind yeah and we've talked about this before this beginner's mind is so valuable because it helps you to get out of you know what you might think of as cultural restrictions or thought patterns that you've got to gotten yourself into comparisons to other people, I should be this. When you're sort of younger or when you're starting out, you're not in a place yet. So you don't care about where you might

end up. And then you can kind of experiment. That's why so much innovation happens in that space of more musicians who are experienced enough to have some technical prowess and a point of view, but aren't rigid enough yet to be set in their ways and not looking too much to the past or not enough to the past. Like all of that stuff can happen. There is a sweet spot. You know, I'm using age as an example,

but it doesn't actually have to correspond with age at all, and it often doesn't. No. But it usually does, sorry, just because of life circumstances. Right. So I'm just a couple random people, mostly from stuff that I've been listening

to the last couple days popping in my head. I'm not trying to make any statement with this or whatever. but this idea of keeping the beginner's mind, you know, as it relates to being an artist and getting older, whatever, a couple people just came to mind. Manahum Pressler, who we just lost, an amazing piano, founder of the Bozard Trio, Herbie Hancock, who's very much with us, Wayne Shorter, who we recently lost. Beginners behind their whole lives. Yeah, and Igor Stripinski, this is a random list. But the reason these four, because these are all artists that played well into their 80s or 90s in some cases, composing, writing. improvising,

whatever it is. But like on a very basic level that I think is super important for this idea of innovation in the beginner's mind, you could see it, you could see the excitement, you could feel it,

you could hear it. It doesn't matter how you interacted it with it, but that kind of innovative spirit that was not, it was the opposite of trying to be like, I'm going to innovate something.

But the goal wasn't that, but the byproduct or the actual destination ended up being that more often than not with these artists as they played, as they had fun, as they invited the listener in. Right. What you're describing is a embodied experience that they're having. It's not an outcome-based reality. They're not saying, okay, we're going to do all this so that we can be innovative. That's death. That's not good. Right. And it's not to say that

people don't, it's not like you're either thinking that or you're not, you're succeeding or not, you're succeeding or not. I think a lot of us, I know myself, including, gets stuck somewhere in the middle where you're like, yeah, I'm not going to just think about, but you let little things creep in, you know, and I'm sure even Herbie Hancock that maybe creeps in every now, oh, we innovate or whatever, like nobody's perfect. And we don't, that's not the goal, right? It's not to be perfect with these things. But it certainly can't be like your main sort of destination point. Like you set your GPS, I'm going to go here. Like when you hear Wayne Shorter talk, and I would, I would think that everybody who's watching could all agree.

Yeah. Wayne Shorter, one of the most innovative people we've all had. the pleasure of sharing. Even people that hate his playing are going to be like, well, he was innovative. Yeah, one of those innovative people, we've all had the pleasure of sharing some time here in this life with, right? We've lost him sadly the last couple months. But he, you never hear him really talk about like, well, innovation is I'm trying to do. I'm, the goal was this. You know, there's more, he's almost always talking about experiences. Yeah. How his life is set up, you know, curiosity and delight, honestly. And that, I think, is a lesson for all of us. That if we can, can keep our minds wide open as wide open as possible, if we can really work on being as comfortable in our own skin as possible to stay curious, to stay open, and then to really let go of any results

or like our place in some kind of hierarchy, or our place in the innovative spectrum, and don't let that dictate what you do. Well, I can't play this because that's not innovative enough. That is going to be a tough road to go. Like that, you are not going to, It's going to be hard to innovate. Yeah.

Just at all. Because I think it'll come. I'm just remembering like Herbie Hancock. I remember hearing him play with Nancy Wilson at Carnegie Hall. It was Nancy Wilson's retirement concert. And they did a duet, a short thing together. And I'm even remembering more at the rehearsal what he played because I was like, I got a chance to stand right there.

And it was something very, I don't remember what tune it was. It was like a standard. And it was like, Herbie was definitely not thinking, I'm going to be innovative here. but yet there was so many cool little innovations even I mean he was just playing like very basic stuff the accompaniment to a great singer just a very simple way but he couldn't help it being innovative and interesting and engaged and you know like I mean so I think that yeah it's just something I mean it's like you're talking about Wayne shorter talking like he's never talking about innovation but what he even what he says when he doesn't especially when he

has a saxophone or the pen you know what he says is innovative well there's There's a problem with, I think, if you start talking about innovation or you think that your goal, it's because it's subjective. It's completely subjective. Yeah, somebody might have seen what Herbie did there and be like, see, he was innovative on headhunters in 1973. 100%. But that, he just sounds like a cocktail piano.

So I'm like, okay, well, maybe. Yeah, I mean, because it's just your opinion, man. Yeah. One of the reasons why I quit Facebook. Hey, man, get your hands off my opinion. Quit using Facebook very much is I got an argument with someone, I think it was the 20th anniversary of Radiohead's Kid A. which is an album, you know, I'm 44.

Of course I love that album. It's bright in my wheelhouse. I'm a jazz musician. It's literally sitting in your wheelhouse's wheelhouse. I moved to New York, like the week it came out. I couldn't have been more of like a seminal record for me. Let me ask you just one more follow-up question. We were excited when Brad Meldon might have covered some radio head.

Did that excite it? Oh, do you think, Peter? Do you think I might have been excited? Is that part of your wheelhouse? Brad Mildo and Robert Glasper covered that shit? Of course that was. No, but so I'm in an argument. talking about how innovative that album was

and then someone's like, mate, that's just boards of Canada ripped off. And then, and I was like, well, yeah, but I mean, you know, boards of Canada didn't exist in a vacuum. And then someone was like, yeah, actually that Boards of Canada you reference is a rip off of this. And then like, you could just keep going on back to the beginning of a drum somewhere. Like, you know what I mean? Like it's just one atom interacting with another atom.

But it actually just sounds like this. I mean, it's the same thing. Like we, you know, if we think about innovation, we think about people like Thelonious Monk, right? What was Monk's primary piano style? Stride. Stride. And Barrelhouse.

It was 30, 40, 50 years before the bebop he was making. Even ragtime. Monk had that ragtime stuff in his playing. That's decades and decades before, but it's not that he wasn't innovative. He took that and made something new out of it, you know? It's amazing. I was just looking at Dinah.

Oh, it's gorgeous. It's a solo monk, just straight, straight, try. But it's these little, it's because he, obviously, Monk, completely curious, in the moment open person, let himself come through in these things that he was open to when he was on this earth as a person learning how to play. And that's all we can do. And if he had even thought, like when he made solo monk, and he's doing diamond. I can't do stride piano because it's been done because I got to be innovative. Yeah. Yeah. But yet there's innovation in how he does that.

100%. Which he wouldn't worry about, you know. No, I think one more thing on that, you know, saying, oh, it's just this. I remember my dad, uh, Bill Martin saying, uh, the great. The great Bill Martin. He got a chance to hear Keith Jared at kind of a famous performance. I think I've talked about it on the pod before in Italy at Umbia. or one of the ones, but the main one that Keith Jared cursed out the audience and then refused to do the encore because somebody clicked the camera. Yeah. So he was actually there. Him and my mom were there. So I remember my dad saying like he's always been a big Keith Jared fan, but not necessarily more. I look at his records. He's got like Monk. He's got a lot of great stuff, great taste in jazz. But he's not one of these people that like Keith Jarrett.

it all day but he likes him. This is his first time hearing him live but I remember himself like hijacked the show outside of him cursing out and offending the Italian because he said some kind of anti-Italian stuff I guess but um my dad said well it was incredible he's like that trio was amazing he's like it was like they were playing like an amazing like hotel lounge trio I was like what do you mean and he's just like they sounded like the greatest like band you'd ever hear in a hotel lobby just so great and I was like but he really did that love it, but what he meant was like, he was affectionate about it. Yeah, he was just like, they're playing standards in the form of like, with a panel base and drum. No different than you might hear at the Roma hotel there. Yeah, that's right. Totally. Right. The wiki, wiki room at the holiday and by the airport or whatever. I love that's obvious your example. It doesn't exist. I want that gig. Okay. But it's just to say that like, no, you know, for a really, you know, astute listener, nor for the artist on stage, no one's thinking about innovation, but I bet some innovation went down. By the way, nonetheless. Your dad would know. I, you know, I share a bill with your dad once as a composer.

Really? Because he usually walks up from the table whenever the bill is there. He's rare to share. No, no, the trombones, the St. Louis Symphony. Oh, right. I think he wrote a piece for them. He did. Right. And I did you. They commissioned me to write something and we were on the same concert. But there was seven people at that concert. There was 27. Modern classical music for trombone?

Dude, it was, your dad's piece was incredible. And it was like, talk about innovative. Was it innovative? Oh, my gosh. It was like, you know, mine sounds like a madama song next to his. My sounded so poppy. It was crazy. It was great. That's funny. Okay, so somebody else that just jumped to mind was Jason Moran, who we don't talk about enough on the pod, who to me, like when you talk about Brad Meldow, Robert Glassberg.

He's delightful, Jason, and I think he's a great example of, like, he's one of the most innovative. Actually, if you were to say, who's the most innovative pianist of our generation? He might just pop to mind. Eric Lewis and him, yeah, for sure. But Jason Moran does not get up in the morning thinking about I'm going to innovate because he'll talk. I mean, like, I learned so much stuff from hanging with him about some of the oldest, oldest music pre, like, even what we think of as jazz, James Reese Europe, and that whole tradition. The dude is. He's steeped in the tradition, yet what comes out of the piano in his mind is so innovative.

I think him and Ethan Iverson is the same way. Obviously, a student of the game and his, you know, those bad plus records that he made in the 2000s were some of the most, I think, innovative stuff of that decade, for sure. I don't think you could, I don't know, but Jason Moran, that, I saw him several times, they were playing at the jazz standard. Remember that club? What a great club.

Did you ever play there? Yeah, yeah, I did a couple times too. I love it. And he, that was one of the best trio gigs I've ever saw. Torres Mateen and Ashide Waits. Oh, his trio. That's one of the best trials of the last,

they're definitely celebrated, but not enough, because talking about innovating. Man, and just like everything. But I can guarantee you that's not the goal. That is not the goal with that. The goal is to be open. The goal is to stay curious. The goal is to get to know yourself and trust yourself.

The goal is to be comfortable with what you have to say. To make your voice stronger. The goal is to not compare yourself with other people, but just let it fly. Yeah, yeah. Just get excited and let that, you know, share that with the audience, serve the music. Yeah. Man, if more musicians, instead of worried about innovating and is jazz dead, we're worried about like, how can I serve the music in the audience?

Yeah. This thing, first of all, It will continue to grow and we'll continue to audience. Nothing is dead. This is exactly it. There's the reason why you and you don't actually have to push for innovation, it happens whether we want it to or not. It would be impossible for it not because conditions change around human beings every single minute. And then that changes to every single day, week, month, year, decade.

Things are different from between now and the 90s, between now and the 80s, between now and the 70s. They just are. So we are different people making different things. It's going to happen no matter what. do not have to put some kind of false weight to it. Like, we got to really be concerned with this. We do not because it's going to happen. Kids are going to want to push back against what adults are going to do. Old men are going to complain about it. It's the cycle of life. It's been happening since the dawn of time. There hasn't been a generation that hasn't pushed back a little bit from

what the people older than have done. And then there hasn't been that older generation that haven't been complained about that pushback in some way. It's going to just keep happening. Got to accept it. Yeah. And I mean, as long as you have great artists, driving to do great things. And as long as our culture allows that, first of all, don't take that as a given. Because in my lifetime, we've seen in different parts of the world, in different countries. And even now, as we're speaking, suppression of art. Suppression of you can't forget about innovating.

You can't say this. Let me see your lyrics before you perform. You think that that can't come back or isn't happening somewhere. It is happening right now. So as long as we protect that, let's worry about making sure there's freedom and that arts are celebrate that we have music education. The innovation will come. Because even if we look historically, like within jazz, the biggest

innovations, a lot of times are caused by external random, not random, but like, the end of the World War II. That certainly had something to do with BOP. Cultural shifts. Cultural shift. Rock and roll, you know, influence on the music. The freedom of artistic expression is an interesting one because

that's also something that is constantly in flux and also just constantly, you know, in a cycle of, you know, repression, freedom, you know, liberation, all of this stuff. It's not like, you know, Beethoven just had, he can do whatever he wanted.

Like, he was, he was in very much a person of his culture. Yeah. You know, it's not like Art Tatum, he was free in a sense, but he's still in a culture that is kind of putting him in some boxes that he is trying to, you know, we're all trying to navigate just as humans with desires that we have that aren't just always

about, like, expression. So that's an interesting discussion maybe for another episode. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Well, this was fun. Agreement. Let's talk agreement. This was the big YouTube thing. We have moved from a should have, be nice to have to requirement phase of the gentleman and ladies agreement.

If you've made it this far. We were just talking about cultural oppression here. We're going to culturally impress you right now. Sorry. Oh, my gosh. But this is the good kind because this is free. It only takes you a second. Right now.

Good kind of cultural brush. You must. You must. Subscribe and like and leave a comment. No, we can be free but still. Look, what happens if you go out and you're driving around your city right now? Aren't you agreeing? There's an implicit agreement that you're going to abide by the laws of like stop at the stop sign.

Are you serious right now? Yes, I'm serious. We'll start this one over. No, no. No, but you know what I'm saying? Like you're implicitly agreeing that you're going to like be a part. I mean, do you can you? you speed? Can you drink and drive?

Of course, you have the freedom to do that. But it's not right. So can you not adhere to the gentleman in the ladies agreement? Yes, you could. But do you really want to you know, you want to be that person? You want to be that guy or that gal? Exactly. So all we ask is that you go to YouTube. The barrier

is so low. You know what I'm saying? Just go to YouTube, subscribe to the channel. What else do we want to do? Leave a comment if you want to say something. That's not even the required part. All you got to do is subscribe and show from love over there. This is go to YouTube and We'll know you're paying attention. Yeah.

If you, instead of putting agreement adhered to, put stopped at the stop sign. That'll be the code for today. That's the agreement. Because you just mentioned the stop sign of the traffic. But you know what? I don't want to be a hypocrite because I'm going to be honest. I roll through some stop signs.

Sorry, I do. Roll it back. We're doing this one again. Stop at the stop sign. Stop at the stop sign. That's for this episode. We'll know you watch it all the way to the end if you put stop at the stop sign. Oh, mercifully you're saying this is the end.

Mercifully, yes. You'll hear it. You know,