In the dozen years that the SFJAZZ Collective has honoured jazz’s most significant composers by performing arrangements of their work, the all-star octet’s choices of annual honourees have usually been no-brainers.
Canonical artists such as Thelonious Monk, Ornette Coleman, Wayne Shorter and Herbie Hancock got the nod, and all was right with the world. But last year, the band decided to pay tribute to someone who, for all his global popularity, wasn’t part of the jazz tribe — none other than the King of Pop, Michael Jackson.
If jazz fans were skeptical, it was understandable. At the project’s outset, so too was the group’s pianist, Edward Simon.
“I was one of the ones that was proceeding with a lot of trepidation,” Simon said in a recent phone interview.
In the voting process to determine which musician the collective would focus on next, Simon didn’t cast his ballot for Jackson. “I thought it would be a dangerous proposition just to take on any pop artist,” he said.
But Simon has come around. The band, he said, has been able to be true to Jackson’s songs — including such hits as Rock With You, Smooth Criminal and Thriller — while presenting them instrumentally within arrangements that allow the octet to revel in its big, horn-heavy sound and stretch out improvisationally.
Audiences who have heard the Jackson pieces since the group began playing them last fall have reacted positively, Simon said.
A relative latecomer to Jackson’s music, Simon said he’s been struck by the a-ha moments of audiences latching onto pop hits from a snippet of bass line or a few bars of melody.
“Everybody recognizes the tunes, and people like to hear music they’re familiar with,” Simon said. “You can see their reaction. You can feel they’re with you.
“But this is different,” he continued. “It’s all played instrumentally, with some solos on it, with some jazz improvisation. So it’s a different kind of take on Michael’s music. So I think it’s kind of refreshing, I think, to hear it done by this band.”
The group was launched in 2004 by SFJAZZ, San Francisco’s equivalent of the Ottawa Jazz Festival, which now presents more than 300 concerts each year in the San Francisco Bay area and at its new concert hall, the SFJAZZ Center.
Over the years, SFJAZZ has recruited top-flight American jazz musicians to fill the band’s ranks. The collective has played twice before in Ottawa, with slightly different lineups at Centrepointe Theatre in 2011 and Dominion-Chalmers United Church in 2009.
The group that is to play Confederation Park includes saxophonists Miguel Zenón and David Sanchez, trombonist Robin Eubanks, trumpeter Sean Jones, vibraphonist Warren Wolf, pianist Simon, bassist Matt Penman and drummer Obed Calvaire.
Only Simon lives near San Francisco, and he only moved there almost two years ago from Florida with his wife and family. The other band members are scattered among cities including New York, New Jersey, Baltimore and Atlanta.
Being in the collective requires them to reunite twice a year in San Francisco to rehearse 16 substantial new pieces of music before going out on tour. “We just kind of jump right in to it. It is pretty intense,” said Simon.
Through its different iterations, the band has developed a large and recognizable sound for itself, with original songs and arrangements that can contain bar-raising complexities that require precise execution.
Simon said he likes the musical challenges that he and his peers throw at each other. “It’s one of the things that I really enjoy about being in the band,” he said. “It’s kind of nerve-wracking … when we first start rehearsing, trying to get all that stuff together.”
The preparation before the Jackson-themed concerts was “a bit smoother,” Simon said, because the band members didn’t get “too crazy” with their interpretations of Jackson songs.
“When we’re talking about pop music, there are very specific elements that really give the tunes their character,” he explained. “It’s much more produced. There are specific little riffs, there’s the bass line that has to be very specific, that people recognize, like for Thriller, for example. There’s specific grooves, and of course the melody. You can’t really alter it too much, is what I’m saying. You have to be very careful.
“But then at the same time, we don’t want to sound like a disco band, you know? That’s going to sound dated and cheesy, that’s not really what we do. So that was the challenge. How to bring that material, maintain its integrity, but bring it into our own realm and into today, so that it doesn’t sound cheesy, for lack of a better term.”
For his part, Simon arranged Jackson’s piece This Place Hotel, also known as Heartbreak Hotel. Simon said he was drawn to it by some of the tune’s harmonies, by its groove and bass line, and by its horn arrangement penned by Quincy Jones.
“I actually stayed fairly close to the original,” said Simon. However, in a first for the collective, he and drummer Calvaire made a track containing electric guitars and keyboard-produced textures that the group plays along with in concert.
Overall, the music of the Jackson nudged the collective to add more electric sounds to its previously all-acoustic sonic profile. “That has been one of the cool things about working with Michael’s music,” Simon said. “It has provided an opportunity to delve into that world a little bit more, because the band has that capability.”
Although the collective is in a sense widening its own musical embrace, Simon is not that keen on jazz festivals increasingly programming non-jazz acts.
“What can I say? I guess they’re just trying to get more seats filled. It’s kind of odd that they still call it a jazz festival, though. If you want to open it up to other genres of music, maybe it should just be a music festival.
“If you’re really going to be a jazz festival, just have some jazz music,” he said with a laugh. “If the audiences are going to be smaller, that’s just what it is.”
Simon’s own jazz credentials are impeccable. Born in Venezuela in 1969, he moved to the U.S. as a teenager and honed his jazz piano skills at the Manhattan School of Music. Leaders such as saxophonist Bobby Watson and trumpeter Terence Blanchard hired Simon for their bands in the 1990s, and as a leader, Simon has worked with the cream of his jazz generation, including saxophonists Mark Turner and David Binney, bassist John Patitucci and drummer Brian Blade.
The collective’s concert in Ottawa is a one-off special request by the festival for the band to play. More frequently nowadays, bands play a run of Canadian festival dates as part of a cost-efficient circuit.
Simon said that he’s pleased that this group will enjoy pride of place on the main stage, potentially playing for thousands rather than a few hundred indoors. “Cool, that’s great,” he said.
SFJAZZ Collective
TD Ottawa Jazz Festival
When: Friday, June 24, 8:30 p.m.
Where: Confederation Park
Tickets: ottawajazzfestival.com
SOURCE: Ottawa Citizen
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