You'll Hear It: Full Album Deep Dives with Jazz Musicians - The State of Jazz

Episode Date: November 16, 2022

Adam and Peter talk about the current state of Jazz. Have a question for us? Leave us a SpeakPipeCheckout courses from Adam, Peter and more at Open StudioLet us know what you think by leaving a ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ review, or head over to our YouTube channel.Follow us on Twitter | Instagram

Hey, Adam. Yo. Do you know that we are audio only today? Ooh, just ear candy galore. No video. Exactly. You know, we've been told by our dear listeners that we look great on the audio podcast. It's really the preferred way to ingest the You'll Hear It podcast.

That's right. Exclusive. I'm Adam Anis. And I'm Peter Martin. And you're listening to the You'll Hear It podcast. Two pianists talking about music. Talking about music. We're going old school, Peter.

I know. I like this. Yeah. Yeah. Just me. I don't have to comb my hair or anything. I can just show up. And it's actually.

Maybe we should be video. We got people walking by. That's beautiful. This is great. But we thought it would be fun to reward our loyal. Look, this is our origins. It was audio only. That's true.

So this is exclusive for our audio podcast listenership. How many times can we say audio podcast? We got to make a habit of it or else we're going to forget and start mugging for the camera. So, all right, this is exciting. So what do you want to talk about audio only? Should we just listen to ECM records because we can get away with it? Right, right. You would think so.

Oh, is that your ECM records? This is my ECM chord. Yeah. Naval gazing. That's right. Shoe gaze. And then you got to end with like a... A little Stockholm soul.

Exactly. A little Stockholm soul. No, I thought what would be fun is if we just sort of talked about where we saw the state of jazz. Because I am not a fan. No, I am. I believe it's just north of Louisiana. Is that correct? Jazz.

The state of jazz. The state of jazz. Yeah. Well, no, because we've been doing this. I don't know if you know about this, Adam. We've been doing an ongoing series called O.G. I wouldn't know. I mean, I'm part of the episodes.

I'm just trying to see if you're on top of the thing. No, I'm here. No, we thought that, so we've done this. We've done four or five now. Okay. And we've been reacting to younger musicians, IG artists, although we're very fluid with our interpretation of what's in IG arts. Like water over rocks. That's right.

We definitely had, I think our latest one was Joey Alexander. I'm not even sure if he has an Instagram. We didn't even look at it. But it was just artists that have come up during the time. Most of them, maybe not Joey so much, on social media, at least a lot of their fan base. They got famous on social media. That's right.

In terms of, well, producer Caleb is taking advantage of their not being video going on. We can see what he cares about. It's video. That's right. Yeah. Yeah. It's all good. So, but the idea would be, I thought we could just talk a little bit.

You know, we're going to continue the series, I think. Well, we definitely are because we have some people on the list. We do have some people on the list. Yeah. It's been really interesting, such as, I'm going to blank now that you mentioned. I was going to say Joey Alexander of it. Request of folks that I've never heard. Like Justin Lee Schultz, we were talking about, some other folks like that.

It's been a fun discovery for us. It has been. You a little bit more up on some of these artists than me. I would say that would be maybe where we could start with our conversation about the state of jazz. Because I feel like. more than ever, like, wait, is social media dictating what is happening in the state of jazz? Yeah, how much can we glean from these IG artists, so to speak? Like, how much is that representative of the state of jazz?

It's like, are these, is Domi and J.D. Beck and Lewis Cole and Joey Alexander? Yeah. Are these, is this representative of the state of jazz? Or is it Smalls and Mesrose in New York? Or is it the London, you know, more underground? Acid Jazz, DJ scene. You know, there's a lot of folks have been mentioned in the comments.

And I'm not up on that. I was a few years ago when I was, well, actually, I was over there earlier this year, but I didn't get a chance to go to... Is it Amsterdam that's like popping off with a lot of great young players? Right. Because every time I go, I'm like Amsterdam. I know, I know, I know. So, I mean, not that anything,

I mean, I think one of the beautiful things about this music is that it has, it's spewing forth for many fountains. Gross. I do. It is. No, you know what it seems to me, though? Honestly, so it seems like there's these two camps, right? So, and they're not even, I'm sure, intentional camps.

But you do have the Domi, J.D. Beck, Lewis Cole, Jacob Collier, really, really forward-looking, you know, what you were calling video game, gamer music, you know, but like-chops forward. Chops forward, Jesus Molina. Yeah, a lot of Nord's. You know what I mean? Nord is courted that market. That must be a good. I know.

They must be like just handing out Nord's at Berkeley. But there seems to be that. But then there also seems to be, and let me know what you think about. this but you know the other the other what you might say IG artists that have it's really more of an organic IG more organic social media way this was now that there's no cameras peter's back to just make it to face I know he's like slouch back yeah um no you know there there's the whole other like more traditional camp i'm thinking like emette cohen right who that's not like an iG artist but he certainly has gained more of a name yeah on social media but he's definitely playing

a more traditional style than like Adomian J.D. Beck, he's certainly more rooted in the past. I would say like, you know, Cecil and Sullivan. Like that whole vibe, they're definitely rooted and they're getting more of, I don't think those three people specifically,

they're not as getting as much like flashy attention as like Thundercat or J.D. Back and Doe. But they are getting more attention from traditional media like NPR and the late show. You know what I mean and that kind of stuff? Like they're getting on sort of what we,

the places where we discovered new music when we were younger, they're sort of dominating that sphere with this sort of more traditional style. Yeah. It's definitely, it's not traditional in the sense that it's like a trad thing,

but it is more rooted in the, yeah, the true roots of the music. They're more... It is a little... No, no, no, no, more like the route that they've gone to learn it is more traditional. They're in New York, you know what I mean?

They're like, apprenticing and so they're... Yeah, but the actual music too, like, even if you don't know about them or what they like if you're just listening to their music and i would say this applies to joey alexander too agreed like it's easier to connect the dots from the lineage of the music of the artists from the 30s 40s 50 60 70s 70s 90s 90s 90s 9 you know two thousand like the stuff we talk about not that we're here to define what jazz and jazz isn't no it's harder with

lewis cole like you're like where is this coming from exactly i mean not that you can't hear influences yeah you know um from jazz drummers and whatever but the actual output of the music to somebody that's like, well, I came up, you know, listening to 60s miles, but then I got into, you know, Chick-Korea, return to forever. Like, there's a lot of different places. And then there's some sort of splintering out, but there's always been this kind of, I don't know, semblance of connection that I don't want to say what these IG artists is broken, but it's definitely different, you know, so it's a matter of like, which could be a great thing.

Like maybe that sort of goes into another direction and kind of becomes its own thing. where the music is presented primarily online in a way that the artist can craft it. And then when they go play it live, you know what's the first group I was aware of this? And I mean, maybe I'm just like totally behind the times on this is they kind of maybe inspired some of these IG artists was dirty loops. Did we talk about them at all? I think so. Yeah. They were, they might be the original IG.

Yeah. Jazzy artists. But again, again, it was like hard to define. Yeah. It was like the, it was like YouTube. Right. Maybe YouTube. So, but the thing with them.

And this is not to disparage them because I only heard them once that I recall live. But I remember seeing those first videos that they were really great and tight. And, you know, the singer, the keyboardist, super hip arrangements, you know, very fusion-y. But really great stuff. The bass player was great. I remember seeing them live at a jazz festival. And this is probably 10 years ago, eight years ago. And live, they were not nearly as good as they were on those videos.

Now, maybe I caught them on the wrong night. They weren't bad. I've seen videos, yeah. You know, but they were, it was a noticeable. I was like, wait, is this, how much of this was, not programmed, but just overdubbed and really worked out. And, you know, some bands are, I mean, most bands and in most kind of genres of music, they have a lot of trouble achieving live what they can do in the recording studio or in a video, which is fine. But traditionally, jazz has not been that place.

The music is more exciting, more interesting, more connected when it's consumed and played live. I remember being very skeptical of Jacob Collier because he came, he's like, I first came to my attention right around the dirty loops era. And I remember, and there's no disrespect to dirty loops because what they do, which is make those videos, they do it really well. And they can't pull it off as cleanly live, nor could anyone. I'm not sure Jacob Collier can either, to be honest. But I just remember being very skeptical, like, oh, everybody's using computers to move this shit around and make it perfect. And I don't like that. You know what I mean?

Yeah, yeah. And I'm still skeptical of that. You know, I still, I think this is, if we, if there was a theme to all of the OG racks to IG episodes we've done, at least for me, like in my head, it's like, I don't like all these computers moving shit around and making it perfect. You know what I mean? Right, right. I like that there's, I like that when I listen to some of my favorite records, I can hear people mess up a little bit. Right. The time shift a little bit. Yeah. And like, pull back. They make a manity. They make a note here and there. There's not, you know, we were learning Sam Rivers Beatrice.

And the very first A section, oh, I forget who's playing piano on that. But they played a major instead of a minor. It might have been Jackie Byer. Oh, baby Jackie. Yeah. But they played a major instead of a minor. Because that's what you would play at the end, right?

And then for the rest of the track, it's all minor. And I was like, they left that in. Nothing wrong. Make a mistake as long as you fix it. Yeah, you could hear Sam Rivers kind of not play there because you could, he was like, oh, okay. You know what I mean? Yeah, yeah.

Maybe you shot him a dirty look, who knows? But, like, I love that. Like, I love those little moments, you know? And yeah, and look, having said that now that I am thinking someone, I don't know if it made it into the video, but when we checked out at Jesus Molina, there was a live recording. I think it was like, oh, it was Spain, something at Berkeley, remember? That was very, like, well-executed live.

So I'm not saying that, like, and I think we're not saying that it's like they can't play live, you know, because that was really well done. But, you know, how is the music that people really appreciate from some of these artists? How is it presented? And there's nothing wrong with it. I mean, look, live music is different now. Like the way that people go to hear music, the possibilities of being, I mean, it's a beautiful thing that you can get your vision of music out into the world in different ways. So it's, we're very early days with all this stuff.

And it's all going to shake out in some way that I think ultimately will benefit people that want to hear jazz or improvise. music, black American music, whatever it ends up kind of being. But I mean, I'm very excited and bullish on it. It's just there's definitely, it's definitely harder. It's almost more obscured sort of what the state of jazz is for me now as I explore these other artists. But I'm interested to know where it's going. Me too, man.

Well, thanks for inspiring this audio-only episode, Peter. This is fun. We'll do it again soon. Yeah, maybe in like five minutes. All right. Until next time. You'll hear it.