11/04/08 11:30Marc Johnson’s Homage to Bill Evans & Scott La Faro

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Marc Johnson’s Homage to Bill Evans & Scott La FaroBy Anil Prasad | March, 2008

Marc Johnson Salutes Bill Evans & Scott LaFaro On 'Something For You'

Few tribute albums are as heartfelt and imaginative as Something for You, pianist and vocalist Eliane Elias’s homage to jazz titan BillEvans. Created in collaboration with upright bassist Marc Johnson, Evans’s sideman from 1978 to his 1980 death, and Elias’s husband,the album explores well-known Evans compositions and standards infused with fresh arrangements and the occasional gorgeous Eliasvocal.

Johnson is firmly established as one of the world’s leading upright bass talents, an acclaimed bandleader and composer as well assideman. His many adventurous solo albums—including 2005’s Shades of Jade, 1999’s The Sound of Summer Running, and 1985’sBass Desires—are infused with world music, rock, and Americana influences. But his tenure with Evans still stands out in bold on hismusical resumé, having launched him into the public’s consciousness at age 24.

Says Elias, “Bill himself said his last trio with Marc and drummer Joe LaBarbera felt closely connected to his legendary trio with ScottLaFaro on bass and Paul Motian on drums—more so than any of the others. Marc played such an important role in the tribute projectbecause of his direct connection to Bill; he helped by unearthing previously unheard pieces, as well as informing everyone about howBill originally approached the material. Marc was also integral because of his amazing versatility and facility with his instrument, as wellas his gorgeous tone and intonation. Marc thinks compositionally when he plays. He has a way of opening things up harmonically forthe other players so you don’t feel locked in. He gives you options because of his great feel and where he places his notes, which isone of the key reasons I think Bill loved his playing so much.”

Describe the impetus behind the new Bill Evans tribute.Eliane wanted to come out with a piano-based project. Together, we started thinking about the Bill Evans tribute idea; Bill was such amajor influence on both of us. I rummaged around for material in mycloset and came across a bunch of Bill’s old practice cassettes thathe gave to me right before he passed away, including a few new compositions that were mostly complete. I was aware of one piece inparticular that he would play during soundchecks. So, Eliane transcribed it, put a lyric on it, and it became the opener track, “Here IsSomething for You.” You can hear Bill’s original practice version, too—we included it at the end of the record. Eliane also liked anothertune on the cassette that we called “Evanesque”; it’s a lovely piece that starts out in 4/4 and goes into 3/4.

A lot of the tunes were part of the repertoire you played with Evans. What was it like to revisit that material?It was an emotional experience. I’m grateful we were able to make this recording; I wasn’t fraught with the psychological pressure I feltwhen I played with Bill, which was one of my first professional gigs, so it was great to revisit the material with total emotional freedom.But beyond that, I didn’t previously think there was another pianist with the depth of understanding to enable a connection to this musicwith such a strong resonance. Eliane did an amazing job with this. She reveals the essence of Bill’s work through the prism of her ownartistry, and the result is sublime.

How did Scott LaFaro influence your bass approach?Scotty’s sound was unique and natural—so real and fluid-sounding. He never used a pickup, and you never heard any clicks or metalstring noise, because he used gut strings. He was also very melodic and inventive and had a real horn-like quality when he soloed.Next was his amazing fluidity and velocity on the instrument. After that, I went deeper into what he did, to understand his choice andplacement of notes as an accompanist. The things he did in between piano phrases and across the time were phenomenal and made adeep impression on me. It was a conceptual thing; he served as a melodic countervoice to everything else that was happening. Hewasn’t walking all the time in 4/4, yet he had a real groove with Bill and Paul Motian. When they played ballads, the groove would gofrom first gear to second gear and back to first gear with an implication of double-time and other meters. He played with ideas that wentover the bar line and obfuscated the one. His approach was truly creative and beautiful.

What was it about your playing that made Evans inclined to use you?I think it related to the fact that I had digested a lot of the bassists who came through Bill’s trio prior to me. They all engaged in a kindof dancing accompaniment that goes on between the piano and drums. His bassists could also be viewed as rhythmic instigators andconversationalists. The bass had to play the root function when necessary, but there was also melodic interjection and counterpoint.

With Bill, if the drummer was playing 4/4, there was no reason why the bassist had to be doing so, too. The bassist could playsomething different while also feeling the time and the form, and relating to the structure of the piece. So, there was a looser qualitythat finds bassists playing through the forms instead of obviously outlining the form. I already had this conception in my playing duringthe audition, and I think Bill heard that. At the same time, he was very aware of my youth and inexperience, but he also sensed mypotential. Having said that, after we made Affinity, our first record together in 1978, Bill said he was really happy with my work and that Iwas playing beyond my years.

How has your playing evolved since those days?I’ve pursued a constant distillation of bringing certain values to performance, like good intonation and time feel, and getting my melodicsolos and content to be clear and concise. In the beginning, I was playing a lot of superfluous notes. As I’ve progressed, my self-editingprocess has become better. I’ve also become a lot more effective at controlling the pulse and its subdivisions. My knowledge ofharmony has evolved, and I now play through harmony more gracefully.

You’ve said one of the biggest challenges you’ve faced is learning how to play free in the time. How did you overcome that?By getting grounded in the pulse, internalizing duple-against-triple meter, and getting an internal feel or clock for larger durations oftime. Let’s use Bill Evans’s arrangement of “Nardis” as an example. In order to get free in the time in that tune, it helps to really feel theform. It’s a 32-bar AABA structure of four groups of eight measures, where for the purpose of playing an unaccompanied bass solo, theA sections can be played in E minor over a pedal point using the open E string and the B section in A minor over a pedal-point usingthe open A string. That’s the large structure. Inside the bars live the permutations of the beat and choice notes to outline the harmony.Practicing keeping a pulse off the open string, I learned to move melodic ideas more freely, going from eighth-notes to 16ths, to triplets

11/04/08 11:30Marc Johnson’s Homage to Bill Evans & Scott La Faro

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Practicing keeping a pulse off the open string, I learned to move melodic ideas more freely, going from eighth-notes to 16ths, to tripletsto quarter-notes, and from that to dotted quarter-notes, back to 16th-notes, 16th-note triplets, etc. I also got a feel for how thesepermutations can reside within groups of one, two, four, and eight measures, and be able to go in and out of all of them easily andfluidly—sometimes resting or giving space, yet still really feeling the pulse and always being mindful of the larger 32-bar form.

Another thing was feeling the triplet inside the quarter-note. If you can feel the triplet, it’s going to help solidify your feel and time. Yetanother epiphany was learning to articulate different parts of the triplet, using accents to vary the triplet’s rhythm in a sequence of notes,and learning to articulate rhythm with the left hand as well as the right. In general, I like the time to feel like bouncing a basketball offthe floor. I like feeling the time rebounding; it’s the feel of the rebound that gives lift and allows the music to dance inside the time. It’sthe “and” beats and the “up” beats—the second or third part of the triplet—that generate that feeling of buoyancy. I was consciouslydirecting my attention to these things when I joined Bill’s trio in 1978. Sometimes the work was with the bass in the practice room, butsometimes it was internal during silent practice. For instance, when going for a walk, I would have my feet keeping pulse and the musicof my mind making counterpoint. Things really started to gel when I joined John Abercrombie’s trio with drummer Peter Erskine in 1983.Playing with Peter and John was very liberating. Peter’s time was so solid, and John’s playing was so labyrinthine, that it served as agreat playground to develop and solidify these concepts.

Your recent solo albums are very compositionally focused and balanced. Do you ever find yourself fighting the temptation toinclude full-frontal bass playing in your music?No, because my general philosophy is to make recordings that are complete and compelling to listen to. I’ll do whatever I have to inorder to make that happen. I’m never thinking, How am I going to put myself forward in this music? Rather, I’m looking at an overallpicture for the record and how the material and the players balance out to create a cohesive whole. It’s not an ego-less process, but it’snot about that to begin with. My goal is to present music that grooves—music that people will want to listen to again and again.

Scotty’s Bass

Marc Johnson had the unique opportunity to use Scott LaFaro’s Abraham Prescott bass—the same one he had used with Evans—onSomething for You. “The bass belongs to Barrie Kolstein, a wonderful luthier in New York,” Marc explains. “I was in his shop andmentioned that I was going to be recording a tribute to Bill Evans. Without missing a beat, he said, ‘Would you like to use Scotty’sbass?’ I was stunned for a minute, and then I became really excited about the prospect.” As it turned out, the bass was available foronly two days, as Kolstein was going out of town and didn’t want the instrument handled by anyone but Johnson. Marc used the basson “My Foolish Heart,” as well as “Re: Person I Knew”; the latter appears only on the Japanese edition of the album.

“It’s such a beautiful bass,” says Marc. “It was made in 1825 in Concord, New Hampshire. The top is made from a three-piece plate ofslab-cut fir, and the back is constructed from a two-piece plate of moderately flamed maple with an ebony inlay at the center joint. Thesides are made of matching maple. It has rolled corners on the bottom and very sloped shoulders on the top, which makes it very easyto get in and out of thumb position. I had the action set a little higher than Scotty would have, but it was eminently playable in everyway. It has a fat, warm, yet very clear sound, and when you hit a note, it rings forever. It’s also very even through each register.” Thescale length was slightly different from what Johnson was used to, however, so he used his own bass for most of the album.

“Scotty was such an iconic figure in the jazz bass world, so the instrument is a talisman of sorts,” Marc continues. “Just having it in theroom with me was very special. Scotty’s playing pointed me in a direction early on, and it helped me realize a direction for my life. I feltlike I owe him so much for where I am today. Having all of these feelings mixed up in the moment I had the instrument in my hands,playing a tune like ‘My Foolish Heart’ was an extremely deep experience. It was made even more intense by the fact that this was thefirst recording of the instrument since Scotty’s death. It conjured up all sorts of nostalgia and a kind of longing and reaching forsomething intangible. It transported me to a time in my life when I first experienced these feelings in response to the music. It was anamazing experience.”

WEB EXCLUSIVE: Marc’s Soloing Concept & His Xavier Jacquet Bass

Describe your regular bass.It’s a Xavier Jacquet made in France in 1840. The top is spruce and the sides and back are maple. I had the neck set out from thebody a little to make it easier to play in the upper register. I did that because the bass has wider shoulders than my previous instrument,so getting in and out of thumb position was a little more awkward. We’re only talking about millimeters here, but it’s enough to throw offyour location on the fingerboard. I also had the top regraduated by Paulo Gomes, a luthier in Sao Paulo. That modification opened upthe instrument and gave it more of a singing quality. Now, the bass has the best of both worlds in that it’s somewhere in between awonderful French bass and a great Italian bass. It has a clear and ballsy sound in the low end, which my earlier Italian bass wasmissing, yet it also has a nice, lyrical sound in the upper register.

Tell us about the setup you used to record your contributions for the album.We went for the most natural sound possible. We used a Neumann M 149 mic on the G-string side of the bass, 30 3/4" from the floor tocapsule, and about a foot away from the instrument. It was aimed at a point between the bridge and the F-hole. In addition, we used aSchoeps CMC5 mic between the bridge and the F-hole on the other side of the bass. It was positioned 41 1/2" from floor to capsule,and again, about a foot away. This enabled us to get some of the warmth and the bottom of the sound from the Neumann and the toppart of the sound for definition from the Schoeps.

What should young players keep in mind when trying to compose a memorable solo?They should start with small fragments, like a two- or three-note idea and just try to take that idea and move it around the harmony. Ifyou can begin to do that, your ideas will tend to create gravity of their own. Once you explore an initial idea based on small segments,it’s easier to build a solo that sounds like a few words and then evolves into a sentence, and if you’re really lucky, it becomes aparagraph. The keys to going further are understanding harmony, how chords are built, and what the chord and scale tones are. Onceyou have those components together, they serve as the building blocks for expression. But if you don’t know much harmony, you can stillcreate an interesting solo by varying what you do know rhythmically.

SELECTED DISCOGRAPHY

Solo albumsShades of Jade, ECM

11/04/08 11:30Marc Johnson’s Homage to Bill Evans & Scott La Faro

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Shades of Jade, ECMIf Trees Could Fly (with Eric Longsworth), IntuitionThe Sound of Summer Running, VerveMagic Labyrinth, Winter & WinterRight Brain Patrol, PolygramTwo by Four, PolygramSecond Sight , ECMBass Desires, ECM

With Bill EvansTurn Out the Stars: Final Village Vanguard Recordings, WarnerThe Paris Concert, Editions One and Two, Blue NoteWe Will Meet Again, WarnerAffinity, Warner

With Eliane EliasSomething for You: Eliane Elias Sings & Plays Bill Evans, Blue NoteEverything I Love, Blue Note

With John AbercrombieThe Third Quartet, ECMJohn Abercrombie, Marc Johnson & Peter Erskine, ECM

CURRENTLY SPINNING

Bill Evans, The Complete Village Vanguard Recordings [Riverside, 1961]“I listened to a lot of Bill Evans recordings in preparation for Eliane’s tribute CD, but I keep coming back to these performances. Theyare timeless and speak directly to the heart.”

Herbie Hancock, Inventions & Dimensions [Blue Note, 1963]“The playing is loose and open, yet compositionally focused. I especially like ‘A Jump Ahead,’ in which bassist Paul Chambers isestablishing the tonal centers for each upcoming event.”

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