Jazz's Classical Path: Whither Jazz or Whithering Jazz?
January 30 2011

Two classical discoveries buzzed the Pianobabbler's jazzmind this week.

One discovery concerns the new. One, the old.

The new: the music of the Ukrainian composer Valentin Silvestrov. Born in 1937, Silvestrov has a full catalogue of works for small to large configurations from solo piano to choir and orchestra, with much in between.

The old: bachtrack.com's Concert and Opera League Tables 2010, data-crunching of over 17,000 classical concert and opera performances across the world. From lifeless numbers we get a living snapshot of the which composers orchestras are playing, and listeners hearing.

The buzz of the new: in Silvestrov's music, the Pianobabbler has found proof of Arnold Schoenberg's self-abnegating saw There is much great music to be written in the key of C major.

Not that Silvestrov composes everything in C major. Rather, his music breathes with that key's simplicity, achieving a layered beauty that unfolds in languid spacious time, then refolds upon itself to weave bold assertions of melody and harmony. Beautiful but not honey'd. Smart but not cold. Warm but not shallow. Easy but not empty.

Listen, for example, to pianist Jenny Lin's ethereal recording named, after a Silvestrov composition, Nostalghia, or to the Münchener Kammerorchester and Christoph Poppen's Bagatellen und Serenaden.

The buzz of the old: orchestras are not playing, and people not hearing, much Silvestrov. Silvestrov? Heck, pretty much anyone born after 1900. In fact, if you were born in the 20th century, your music is mos' def not being played all that much, unless you happen to be named Stravinsky, Ravel or Mahler. Even then you'd trail behind the really dead-and-goners like Bach, Mozart and their gang.

Bachtrack.com's tables show that classical music, for all its today activity, truly lives yesterday.

The Pianobabbler's is not entering into the new versus old music debate here. I love nothing more than Bach and the boys (there aren't many girls.) I treasure our working orchestras. I love the classical tradition.

No, the Pianobabbler is returning here to a point he babbled about a few years back: how jazz has become a classical music (see Pianobabbler 35 and 36.)

Over the past 20 years a jazz orthodoxy has arisen. A right jazz, a wrong jazz, enforced by the music's institutionalization. Recreative, more than creative. Channelling the Coltrane and Miles past, instead of digging into the more laborious work of constructing the future.

Who is the Silvestrov of jazz? Who has created a new sound, but retained jazz's popular, accessible appeal?

What would the jazz equivalent of bachtrack.com's tables show? That jazzers are playing Gershwin and Ellington standards? Monk and Bill Evans and Benny Golson?

I don't have the answers. Jazz, like all music and arts, has fragmented. One struggles to know a fraction of what is really going on. A high noise to signal ratio.

At the same time, since jazz has become an orthodoxy. The Pianobabbler expects to hear from true jazz believers that the future has arrived, and is embodied in the person and sound of fill-in-name-here.

The answers may elude us, but the questions remain. And the question that swallows all others: Whither jazz?

Whither jazz? Long may the question linger. For, if we had the answer, jazz would have no future. Only an ongoing past parading through a desiccated present.

The Pianobabbler has babbled.

The Pianobabbler is a RonDavisMusic production. The Pianobabbler's blog posts appear weekly at pianobabbler.com. Please remember to leave your comments and thoughts below. Subscribe to the RSS feed. And subscribe to RonDavisNews by clicking on the Mailing List link, above right. And follow us on Twitter.

- Click here for bachtrack.com's Concert and Opera League Tables 2010

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