tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4916966280753281829.post-53155138750935837512008-04-28T05:37:00.000-07:002008-04-28T05:38:48.260-07:0028 April 2008<br />Mark Twain<br />United States of America<br /><br />Dear Mark,<br /><br />I want to talk about teachers. By teachers, I can mean both direct and indirect. There are those who teach us directly, through classroom or lesson or even pure discussion, and those who teach and influence us through their body of work, even though we may never have met them personally.<br /><br />The main reason I am writing this is because I just learned of the passing of Jimmy Giuffre. Jimmy was my jazz teacher at New England Conservatory and one of the most influential people on both my playing and writing. I worked with him both privately and in an ensemble where we played his arrangements. His writing style was superb, matched only by his artistry as a clarinet and sax player. The sound that I have is a direct result of his influence, and my writing and concept of instrumental color has also been heavily influenced by his work.<br /><br />The interesting thing is, strangely, that I was as influenced by his recordings as I was by his person. You knew that it was the same person, but for some reason, it hits you differently. Knowing his recordings from the 50s and 60s was very different then knowing him as a student in the 80s. He had evolved, but the concepts were the same.<br /><br />I think this is a great problem with jazz (and pop/rock) musicians where they get pigeon-holed into a style and can’t escape it. I knew Stan Getz very well; I also knew that he began to hate Bossa Nova because that’s all that people wanted him to play. This style made (or at least revived) his career in the 60s, and for the next 25 years he couldn’t escape it. Every time he would try something new he would be chastised by his audience. It’s the same for others, as well. Think about pop or rock musicians who were big during a certain era; they can never escape that. Their audience wants only what they know. And believe me, the artists are not happy about it…they are stuck in time.<br /><br />Jimmy kept evolving. His playing and writing style was unmistakable, but it evolved. He wasn’t stuck.<br /><br />In an earlier letter, I talked about the passing of Karlheinz Stockhausen and his influence on me. I never met him; I just knew of him through recordings and performances-including my own-of his music. I don’t know if I would’ve liked him as a person, but that doesn’t matter-the influence was there, and I felt his passing. John Cage was equally, if not more important, to me, but I knew Cage personally, worked with him. His influence was his personality, equal in impact to his music.<br /><br />I mean, I can state influences and ‘teachers’ all the way back to Josquin during the Renaissance, but even the ones we never meet I think have more impact on us if they are creating during our lifetimes. Charles Ives was my first great contemporary music and spiritual influence, but he died in the 50s. Others, like saxophonist Gerry Mulligan, was releasing recordings into the 1990s (he died in 1996); his influence on me was great, and yes, I felt the loss of him, even though we never met. He shaped my early love for jazz. As I said, I knew Stan Getz personally, but his influence wasn’t nearly as strong on me as Mulligan’s. Some, like Aaron Copland, only started to influence me after their death-strange that it took an event like an artist’s death to really become aware of them.<br /><br />Jimmy was the first of my ‘creative’ teachers to pass. I have had close classroom teachers pass, music theory or history professors, but not one that had direct influence on my creative evolution. It was his playing and writing that intrigued me as a Conservatory student, made me want to work with him when other students wanted to study with the newer, younger, ‘slick’ players. It was Jimmy’s sound that I admired and his control that I wanted to achieve. It was Jimmy’s concepts that I went to during my first post-Conservatory ‘Dark Period’ (early 90s), when I stopped playing saxophone for over a year and a half; I played only clarinet, and focused only on sound concepts-his sound concepts-one note at a time, always exploring the possibilities. During this period, I was also writing a lot; his recordings were one of the major influences here-they shaped my modern sound. I still use what I had learned during this time, and still practice this way and use these ideas in my writing-it has just evolved.<br /><br />I have evolved, as we all do. I hope that as artists, we keep learning and evolving. I know that there comes a point where we don’t need formal ‘teachers’ anymore, and that‘s natural. There is even a point when we do our best to even distance ourselves from our teachers to prove our individuality-I’ve gone through this, and I hope that I have grown out of it. Teachers can still come to us in many ways, not just formally. We just have to be open to the possibilities, and be willing to listen; they don’t even have to do what we do, but they will give us insight to ourselves and our creativity.<br /><br />I can only hope that I can do this for others, as my many ‘teachers’ have done for me.<br /><br />Thank you, Jimmy. Hope to see you next time around.<br /><br />Yours always,<br /><br />DemetriusDemetrius Spaneashttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04527904613791909714noreply@blogger.com