Theme - solo - theme In jazz, compositions sometimes amount to just a breather before the fireworks of the next solo. But then sometimes they are the essence of the whole thing. The history of jazz is the history of its performers. The ideal is the very individuality emanating from the musician’s personal sound and inventive improvising in great jazz performances. Soloists’ and bandleaders’ innovations are put forward as the backbone of jazz, but a lot less is said about composers. What, then, is the real significance of compositions in jazz? That depends on the type of combo. A big band plays a number from a score that is of the essence. Small bands remember their theme snippets by heart and this weights the scales in favour of interplay between the musicians and improvisation. Style also matters. Traditional jazz respects compositions, whereas free jazz disposes of them altogether. In saxophonist Jukka Perko’s opinion you cannot argue that composed sections are more important than improvised ones or vice versa. “It’s the variation in the balance between them that matters. Musicians must understand the dialogue between them, because that’s where musical tension comes from.” What kind of composition, then, gives a musician the best scope for expressing himself? “One that permits different interpretations. Compositions that lend themselves to different versions by different musicians are a good basis for improvisation.” Musicians, of course, have different preferences. “One player is at his best when asked to play just anything. Another requires a frame that he can break or leave unbroken. It’s up to the individual.” In Perko’s opinion, there is in practice an agreed basis of some kind, even in the jazz styles where nothing is written in notation: “A composition implies an agreement or a proposal about how to play”. As for himself, he likes compositions with a strong identity. This includes all musical elements, such as rhythm, harmony, melody, dynamics and timbre, as well as lyrics and the story told by the piece. Economic realities I ask Perko why jazz musicians always stick to familiar combo formats of the type drums, bass, piano and a horn or two. New types of instrumentation and arrangement might perk up the music. “The traditional combo line-ups are of course the most popular. Moreover, we live in a world where the economic reality affects everything. This also influences performing groups. The average size of bands has even become slightly smaller”, he says. “It would certainly be nice to do gigs with different players and instruments in different pieces.” Still, sometimes you stumble across the odd concert or recording featuring string instruments, for example. “Among friends and acquaintances you may bring about cooperation transgressing the economic realities”. Jazz is a versatile medium Perko has the ability to connect music with more extensive presentations or contexts. He has introduced jazz in the poetry of Uuno Kailas, the tango interpretations of Olavi Virta, a number of beloved Finnish hymns and, most recently, the writings of Kahlil Gibran. “What, in reality, is jazz?” Perko asks. “When we talk about jazz we are dealing with an enormously wide range of music, including, at its extremes, forms that seem to have practically no common denominators.” Although he has written music for his own band, he does not consider himself a composer. “A composer is a person others can ask for a piece.” Nor does he have any passionate ambitions in that direction. “It’s all about accepting your own limitations and capacities. Occasionally I’ve had an order for something, but haven’t been able to deliver. There must be some mental block standing in the way.” Perko’s favourite compositions are the universally known jazz standards, which have formed a kind of intertextual stratum. “They don’t exist as mere compositions any more, they live on in all the versions by the great jazz musicians. The different interpretations are just as influential as the original composition.” “If I had to choose one above all the others, I would say it is All the Things You Are.” The great American composers Whereas Perko is an unbeatable interpreter and soloist, Kari Heinilä, as a composer and conductor, focuses on the content of musical works. For years he has been conducting the UMO Jazz Orchestra, Finland’s only permanent professional big band. “Ellington, Strayhorn, Mingus and Monk”, he replies when asked to name some of the most influential jazz composers. “The public at large conceives of Ellington’s music as ordinary swing, but he was an incredible visionary right from the beginning of his career. He could write three-minute single hits as well as more challenging works. One truly amazing piece is A Tone Parallel to Harlem. It contains no improvisation at all. It is a tone poem, one of the first all-composed fantasies for jazz orchestra.” Heinilä also mentions another of his favourite works: Charlie Mingus’s Diane from 1959. “John Coltrane created innovations the same year as a performer with his recording of Giant Steps, which as a composition is no masterpiece, but an etude-like basis for exploring his own playing. This very well illustrates what was achieved in the same period as far as performance and content are concerned.” Among the great names Heinilä mentions Gil Evans, who rose to fame along with Miles Davis. Although Evans was an arranger rather than a composer, he strongly influenced big-band music especially through his colourful orchestration. The legacy of the musical Why did tunes from American musicals become standard numbers in jazz? They still represent the good old “real jazz”, at least to most listeners. “As to their form, they are compositions with a strong character, catchy melodies and a short format”, is Heinilä’s definition. He believes they were simply suitable thematic elements to swing and bebop musicians. Sometimes just the chord sequences of the pieces were used, sometimes they were played as such. The AABA format of the musical tunes contains two contrasting moods, which facilitates the improviser’s task. “The composers were no fledglings either”, says Heinilä. “Quite a few of them were European emigrants, very often from Eastern Europe, who adopted Americanised versions of their names. They were classically educated late Romantics.” Are contemporary jazz composers, then, too deeply rooted in the American tradition? “There is nothing wrong with tradition, on the contrary. Without it, we wouldn’t be where we are. But you rarely hear anything completely new these days”. There is a lot of music around, but very little original stuff. Many jazz compositions are pastiches – they sound almost the same as some old, familiar piece. Finnish jazz composers According to Heinilä, there are not many regular composers of big-band music in Finland. Beginners might find it difficult to get on, at least with UMO, whose concerts are planned in a work-oriented way. The quality of the chosen works has to be first-class. Not to be forgotten, however, are bands like Jyväskylä Big Band that premiere many works by newcomers from the younger generation. At my request Heinilä lists our most influential current big-band composers. “If we consider the seasoned campaigners, Eero Koivistoinen and Jukka Linkola are very prolific. The late Jarmo Savolainen wrote strong character pieces, firmly rooted in tradition and with an easily recognisable musical language. An interesting name among the younger composers is Kari Ikonen, who applies very personal instrumentation. Heinilä concludes by mentioning Kirmo Lintinen, with whom he shares the responsibility for UMO’s artistic planning. New composers are coming up at the Sibelius Academy, but the Jazz Department’s composition course programme could be more popular than it is at present. Only a few have graduated. Outi Tarkiainen, who will soon conclude her studies, is so far the only student to choose composition as her main subject right from the start. Heinilä is, of course, himself a prominent composer. He has written music for jazz combo, big band, solo instruments and various chamber ensembles. One of his groups is the Albero quartet with its rather unusual instrumental line-up: flute, clarinet, cello and piano. “As a composer I have quite a conservative taste, although I believe many people rather think of me as a modernist”, he says. He wants clear elements and hierarchy in his own works. The compositional material may well be rather limited, but you must be able to vary it abundantly. On the big-band side there are too often compositions that don’t carry very far. They are incoherent, because everything possible has been squeezed into one piece.” Heinilä has tried to obscure the dividing line between composition and improvisation in his own works. To some people this has been a problem, as was the case when Seppo Kantonen gave the first performance of Heinilä’s Leitourgia for piano and chamber orchestra a couple of years ago. “A critic from a paper said it was the most interesting work of that night, but he didn’t like it that he didn’t know what sections were improvised”. Musicians and materials “If jazz wants to develop in any particular direction I think that musicians ought to have a more profound relation to the content, i.e. the compositions”, Heinilä says. “Jazz musicians aren’t necessarily too keen to get familiar with the musical content, but are more concerned with their own style of playing and try to fit it into different materials and situations.” Familiarity with the works on the musicians’ part prevents stylistic clashes. If you have adopted a certain style of playing, it does not necessarily suit every piece. Good musicians find the music that is right for them and identify the connection between interpretation and content. Notwithstanding his awareness of tradition, Heinilä would like to challenge one established tradition in jazz: the fact that everybody wants to play self-composed music in their own bands. This restricts all stylistic progress. At the same time there are lots of excellent compositions that nobody plays. “As performers the Finns have really come a long way and are in the international league, but as composers they are not on the same level as the instrumentalists. The music is rather naïve at times”, he grumbles. Personality and imagination are often lacking. “If you want to adhere to one particular aesthetic style very strictly, it means that everything will sound more or less the same.” “I hope I won’t offend anybody now – not everybody has to compose”.