Richmond Standards
One alarming trend that I've noticed in Richmond is the insistence of jazz musicians to play standards ALL the time. Its an interesting phenomenon, because it limits the musicians to Real Book tunes, but at the same time can help creative improvising in ways that are alien to many other areas (maybe even New York).
It all revolves around the local arts college VCU, and its jazz program. With its heavy emphasis on standards and limited historical perspective, students graduate ready to either teach, or play standards. The inferiority complex that can be used to talk about Richmond Arts can also be applied to music students, because they hardly ever view themselves as even capable of creating original music to improvise over. Its and interesting condition that seems to have led to some mixed results.
Even though the jazz gigs are always a mix of the same musicians, and even though they almost always play standards from the book, they almost always rip the shit out of these standards! So by only focusing on standards, they have pushed the level of improvising over these songs through the roof. I have talked to more than a few musicians that literally can't believe what we do here with standards...If only more Richmond musicians would develop original material. I seemed to be one of the few that was playing original music in a jazz setting, and part of the reason we started Patchwork Collective was to change this, and I'm glad to see that its slowly working. The tough part of this trend is that since people are only focusing on the language of Charlie Parker and early Trane, they are missing a whole world of possibilities for improvisation, thus limiting their choices severely.
This will change though, and I'm glad to say that the level of creativity in the scene has increased more in one year than I've seen in the past 7!
It all revolves around the local arts college VCU, and its jazz program. With its heavy emphasis on standards and limited historical perspective, students graduate ready to either teach, or play standards. The inferiority complex that can be used to talk about Richmond Arts can also be applied to music students, because they hardly ever view themselves as even capable of creating original music to improvise over. Its and interesting condition that seems to have led to some mixed results.
Even though the jazz gigs are always a mix of the same musicians, and even though they almost always play standards from the book, they almost always rip the shit out of these standards! So by only focusing on standards, they have pushed the level of improvising over these songs through the roof. I have talked to more than a few musicians that literally can't believe what we do here with standards...If only more Richmond musicians would develop original material. I seemed to be one of the few that was playing original music in a jazz setting, and part of the reason we started Patchwork Collective was to change this, and I'm glad to see that its slowly working. The tough part of this trend is that since people are only focusing on the language of Charlie Parker and early Trane, they are missing a whole world of possibilities for improvisation, thus limiting their choices severely.
This will change though, and I'm glad to say that the level of creativity in the scene has increased more in one year than I've seen in the past 7!
posted by Scott Burton at 1:29 PM
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