COURTESY OF ANDREA WIIDEMAN
Step out for an evening of jazz by award-winning trombonist Wycliffe Gordon.
Gordon’s spin a Those who attended the recent SRO performance of Wynton Marsalis and the Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra, owe it to themselves to check out trombonist Wycliffe Gordon and his band this weekend -- and be prepared for a little audience participation.
jazzy original
He plays his trombone in multiphonics
By Gary C.W. Chun
gchun@starbulletin.comGordon is an alumnus of both Marsalis' earlier working groups and the LCJO, but has been busy of late teaching at Juilliard School's new jazz program.
The quartet of Gordon, fellow Marsalis alumnus Reginald Veal on double bass, pianist Ray Gallon and drummer Alvin Atkinson Jr. will be playing a lively blend of reimagined jazz standards and high-calibre originals, much like the compositions assembled on Gordon's latest album on the Holland Criss Cross Jazz label, "What You Dealin' With."
Gordon is one of the few trombonists who utilizes the multiphonics technique in his playing, on album tracks such as "Bone Abstractions" and an interpretation of the Duke Ellington classic "Mood Indigo."
"I make an adjustment in the way I blow air into the trombone, where I play one tone and sing in another pitch. (The German avant jazz trombonist) Albert Mangelsdorff is the only other player that I know of that uses multiphonics," he said.
"It's just another playing device in music, like a trill or growling or glissando -- it's not meant to be some kind of gimmick. It can be compared to what a keyboard player does, when he plays a melody and walks a bass line at the same time."
THE personable Gordon, a Jazz Journalists Association award-winning trombonist for three years, recently tried his hand at film composing. He was commissioned to compose a new score for "Body and Soul," Oscar Micheaux's incendiary 1925 silent movie, that premiered the opening night of the LCJO 2000-01 season in New York.
"It was my first time scoring for film," he said from his Big Island hotel room last week. "It was a great experience, both tedious and relatively easy. While there was no music director to deal with, having total autonomy, I had to create 86 minutes of music to set mood.
"Also, the issues surrounding the film were ones I was familiar with, growing up in and around Southern churches," the 35-year-old Georgia native said. "(Paul Robeson) plays a charismatic preacher who also was a con man and, depending how you look at him, while he's not necessarily a murderer, in order to get his flock to follow him, he had to have had a good game or a con. This kind of depiction of who is good and who is evil generated a lot of controversy in the black community.
"And it's still able to cause a stir today -- in fact, when I couldn't originally get a member of the LCJO for the performance, I got someone from Michigan State to replace him, and on the last day of rehearsal, he quit because he thought the film was anti-Christian.
"While he only saw the film once, it took me three or four times to understand what Oscar Micheaux was trying to show in his film. I took it as any film or music that's a piece of art -- it represents their view of life, and the sad part of it was what he depicted was true." (A DVD of the restored film with Gordon's score will be released sometime in the future.)
Gordon's next film project is something dearer to his heart, the pleasures of grilled food. "Smokestack Lightning: A Day in the Life of Barbeque" is an hourlong documentary on Southern food and culture, and Gordon said "I had to write and play music to set the mood, like if the film was discussing Memphis barbecue at the time, I created music that was indicative of the Beale Street blues scene. It's all about different perspectives on barbecue, whether it's made in Kansas City, Mexico, South Carolina or Mississippi."
GORDON'S MUSICAL hero is Satchmo himself, Louis Armstrong. "He's been the greatest influence on me musically. As for my time with Wynton, he's been the source of many different things, from the wealth of musical information I received from him to playing with him that afforded me the opportunity to meet other great musicians. What influence he's had on me is his ability to be as great as he is."
While Gordon says the trombone is a hard instrument to play, he appreciates the horn's wide range of vocal qualities. And it's an appreciation reflected in the wide range of jazz music he and his band plays.
"I look at music the way Duke Ellington once described it, 'There's good music and there's the other kind.' I want to get away from categories and be aware of all kinds of jazz, whether it's ragtime, New Orleans, big band, bebop or avant-garde."
>> 7:30 p.m. today at the ballroom of the Koolau Golf Club, 45-550 Kionaole Road Wycliffe Gordon Quartet
>> 7:30 p.m. tomorrow at Orvis Auditorium, University of Hawaii at Manoa campus
Tickets: $20, $15 students, seniors, military and UH faculty and staff
Call: 956-3836
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