A Jazz Musician on Classical Music and Jazz

by Karl Nehring

In a recent review of a CD that paired the Duruflé Requiem with Four Lenten Motets by Poulenc (review to be found here), I appended an interview with the late jazz saxophone player Jackie McLean in which he spoke of borrowing chords from Poulenc and then going on to discuss the influence of classical composers on other jazz musicians. Those who have followed Classical Candor for any length of time may recall that we have offered occasional reviews of jazz releases, justifying those reviews with the argument that there is a sense in which some forms of jazz can reasonably be regarded as examples of chamber music.  One jazz musician who holds strong views about the relationship between jazz and classical music is the pianist Ethan Iverson (see photo), two of whose albums we have reviewed previously: Every Note Is True (see review) and his latest, which includes a formal piano sonata of his own composition, Technically Acceptable (reviewed here). 

 Iverson, who like many jazz pianists has classical training, recently caused quite a kerfuffle with a recent New York Times column about Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue with the provocative title, “The Worst Masterpiece,” which, as you might imagine, raised a few eyebrows.  Perhaps even yours?

While in Oslo on a European tour earlier this year, Iverson sat down for an interview with Norwegian journalist Filip Roshauw. Among other things the pair discussed the Gershwin controversy and delved into the relationship between classical music and jazz. With Iverson’s kind permission, I have included some key portions from that interview below. You can find the full interview at Iverson’s substack website, Transitional Technology (see TT 373 here). By the way, Transitional Technology is a treasure trove of musical knowledge of value to anyone with an interest in music – and not just jazz, but classical as well. Iverson is a delightful writer s well as a gifted musician; Transisitional Technology is well worth checking out by classical and jazz fans alike.

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Filip Roshauw: I thought I'd ask you about the title of the new album, Technically Acceptable. You’ve mentioned that it’s a quote from a book, but I wondered if it has more meaning than that?

Ethan Iverson: It's not a serious title. I want to make people smile! But if you want me to becomparatively serious for a moment, between the trio and the sonata, this is the set of tools that I’m going to be using from now on: Playing open and loose trio music on one hand, and writing serious formal music on the other. I am confident in my abilities in these fields. I’m technically acceptable.

FR: Does the idea of letting those two aspects live within the same album feel new to you this time around?

EI: Yeah, I think so. Of course, nothing's truly new. There's always a precedent. But as far as I know, no jazz pianist has put a sonata on a record on a jazz label like Blue Note.

FR: When I read the title, I was also reminded of something you mentioned somewhere. You wrote an article about Billie Holiday, and you considered the title “Billie Holiday: Technician.” And it seems that a lot of stuff that you've written is about assessing jazz from, I guess, a technical standpoint in some way. That it is music that can be explained in those terms. And the piece that you've chosen for this title is a deceptively simple, Count Basie-ish tune..

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EI: Well, that's right. A lot of the time, something simple on the surface is full of complexity underneath.  Many people think they've got Billie Holiday's number, but, actually, they don't have her number. The same goes for all great jazz. The composed melodies of Miles Davis’s Kind of Blue can be scratched out on a paper napkin, but there are so many other elements that make the album very sophisticated. Often there hasn't been enough of the proper terminology to describe those sophisticated elements, and as a writer and critic, I am trying to move that discussion forward. The song “Technically Acceptable” is a medium tempo rhythm changes tune in the Count Basie idiom. You're correct, that does not seem very hard. But I was talking to the great bass player Ben Street, and I mentioned I was taking that piece on the road to play with local rhythm sections. And Ben said to me,  "There's nothing harder than medium tempo rhythm changes.” 

FR: Let's talk about the idea for the Piano Sonata. Obviously you've composed stuff before, but what was the idea behind this specific piece?

EI: Longer formal composition started happening about a decade ago. I have worked a lot with the choreographer Mark Morris and his wonderful Dance Group, and Mark asked me to arrange a set of Beatles themes for Pepperland, the evening-length celebration of the album Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. We could only get rights to a certain number of songs, only six pieces, and we needed an hour show. So to fill up the time, I wrote some original compositions that were related to The Beatles or the idea of the swinging ‘60s.  Paul McCartney liked classical music, when they worked on “Penny Lane,” he told George Martin to put in the piccolo trumpet from Bach's Brandenburg Concerto. In fact, there's obviously a lot of European classical music references in the Beatles. So…well…even though I never did this before, I realized I should write a sonata allegro for Mark Morris’s dance. The composition went very quickly, and I really liked the result. After that, I thought, “What am I, a sonata composer now?” Apparently I was! During the pandemic I wrote six sonatas for diverse instruments plus piano. In fact, there were seven because one didn't go well and I withdrew it. So the Piano Sonata was actually the eighth full-length sonata, which meant I’d already done a certain amount of groundwork in terms of refining the aesthetic and learning how to shape a longer narrative. What I like about the Piano Sonata is that it sounds like me, meaning it doesn't sound that different than when I'm playing jazz. The frame is new, but the actual chords and melodies are kind of the same. When I've shown the Sonata to other people I trust, they all say, yeah, this is what you do. So it's not a big stretch. I don't have to suddenly think, what do I do now that I'm writing formal music? It's like I am just doing what I always do, and it just happens to be notated — which may make it more valid than it might be otherwise. 

FR: It’s hard not to think about the article you recently wrote in The New York Times about Rhapsody in Blue, “The Worst Masterpiece,” which in a sense is about how Gershwin’s piece became the road not taken in American classical music.

 

EI: Exactly! With my sonata, I am trying to say this is the road we could take. It's the 21st century, and we should all know all these idioms. 

FR: There’s been a lot of debate about decolonizing classical music or music education in the last years, and it seems like your point has been that jazz deserves a different place in all of this, that it needs to be defined and analyzed on its own merits.   

EI: My mentor Billy Hart says jazz is America's classical music. Billy gets that phrase from John Coltrane, who said that every culture has its classical music. And I know what they mean, and I respect that opinion. Still, at this point, for better or for worse, when we talk about classical music in casual conversation, we're talking about the European tradition. I love the European tradition. I'm a piano player, after all – all piano players love the European tradition. I don’t like the word “decolonizing” because that sounds like you want to shame people who love Bach, Beethoven, and Chopin — meaning, you want to shame me! Get out of here! Bach, Beethoven, and Chopin are truly great! But when you get to the establishment and the academy in America, someone like John Coltrane is definitely not considered to be as serious as someone like Gershwin or Aaron Copland. But honestly, Coltrane was bigger and better than either. I like Gershwin, I like Copland – I'm not against those guys. But in terms of some sort of absolute peak of an aesthetic, Coltrane was much, much greater. Coltrane is actually like Bach, Beethoven, and Chopin. My dream is that classical musicians, especially in America, could learn to be a little more humble and take John Coltrane more seriously. That goes for all of us: let’s take Duke Ellington seriously. Let's take Count Basie, Thelonious Monk, and Billie Holiday seriously. Let's use their techniques for our American music, regardless of what genre we call it. The specific issue of swing and blues is still not too well understood in classical circles. And that was part of my argument about Rhapsody in Blue, for I feel like it has obscured the issue of how hard black rhythm really is. Since it's a flashy, virtuoso number with a few big beautiful tunes, no one has to swing or even really play in steady tempo. It's got this sort of quick-change musical theater “bluesiness” to it. While it's good for what it is, at this point — a hundred years later! — I’m ready for the people on those classical concert stages to be able to dig in and really swing and really play some blues. It's about time. 

FR: But do you see any movement there? 

EI: There is some movement, but there could be a lot more. Look at all those people who were so upset about my piece! It just shows how I'm right. While foaming at the mouth, my critics don't see the obvious piece that's missing with rhythm, blues and frankly, black music. 

FR: It’s surprising that people became that upset. I mean, the title is well chosen, it’s a bit provocative, but I didn’t read the article as a diss on Rhapsody in Blue. Rather, it felt representative of how many people have perceived that piece, from Leonard Bernstein and onwards.  

EI: I had thought of that phrase, “the worst masterpiece,” when practicing Rhapsody in Blue in order to perform it in concert. One day I said to myself, somewhat in despair, “God, this is the worst masterpiece.”  Aha! That’s a good title, I've got to use it…Unfortunately, many read the title and did not consider the essay. If I had the chance to publish again, would I change the title? I don't know. 

FR: How did your jazz interest start?

EI: My parents weren't musicians or music fans. Music came in through the TV set. Early things I liked weren’t really jazz, but they were jazz-adjacent. The James Bond movies, what was that music by John Barry? The Pink Panther cartoon, what was that music by Henry Mancini? Vince Guaraldi’s Charlie Brown Christmas music. Stuff on Sesame Street or Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood. When I was ten years old or so, I started on a journey to find my first jazz records.

FR: Are you able to pinpoint what you liked? Was it the chords, the texture of the music, the rhythms?

EI: I don’t know exactly, but I can say this: Jazz is equally dependent on harmony and rhythm. Probably a lot of folk and pop music is rhythm first, and probably all European classical music is harmony first. But jazz is right in the middle. At a subliminal level, that reliance on both sides must have been part of my attraction in the beginning  — and it's still part of my attraction now.