The History of Jazz by Gioia Ted

Author:Gioia, Ted [Gioia, Ted]
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Published: 2011-05-08T16:00:00+00:00

MODERN JAZZ PIANO

As it is commonly told, the history of jazz piano mirrors the evolution of the music as a whole. Earl Hines is said to have developed a “trumpet style” in response to Armstrong’s innovations. The pianism of Ellington is praised for representing a microcosm of his orchestral works. The music of Bud Powell, we are told, translated the advances of Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie to the jazz keyboard. These generalizations, as clumsy as they are—and they are all too easy to criticize—still catch a broad truth. They rightly call our attention to the symbiotic relationship between the harmonic and rhythmic underpinnings of the music, epitomized in the work of jazz pianists, and the evolution of the monophonic improvised lines, best exemplified in the play of the horns. In this regard, jazz music is radically different from painting or literature or other mediums in which individuals work alone, in which the influence of others is felt at a distance, as part of a cultural context. With few exceptions, the nature of jazz performance requires group interaction of the highest level. And much of the irony of jazz is that, for all its celebration of the individual soloist, it remains a music of ensembles. The story of each major innovator in the music’s history—Armstrong, Ellington, Parker, Davis, Coleman—repeats this truism. There are no lonely geniuses in the jazz pantheon, for in this medium there is almost always the company of a band.

By the mid-1940s, a distinctively modern jazz piano style had developed. Its historical antecedents were surprising. A decade before, most knowledgeable listeners would have looked toward Art Tatum, or perhaps to Duke Ellington, for an indication of the future of jazz piano. Their music seemed to encompass the most forward-looking thinking in terms of harmony, rhythm, melody. As it turned out, the orchestral approach to the keyboard of a Tatum or Ellington was too thick, too textured to work in the context of a bebop rhythm section. Instead, the new generation of modern jazz pianists looked for a leaner, more streamlined approach. This new style, as it developed, came to emphasize the right hand, which played fast melody lines laced with all the chromatic color tones and rhythmic flurries found in a Parker alto solo. The left hand supported this linear approach with supple comping chords—often simple structures built with only two or three notes—that were almost as important for their rhythmic kick as for their meager harmonic implications. In this regard, the bebop pianists were closer in spirit to Count Basie, the unassuming antivirtuoso of Kansas City jazz, than to the more technically proficient stride and Swing Era players. True, the influence of the stride tradition could not be completely shaken off—in particular, Tatum’s triumphant mastery of the keyboard continued to haunt later players. Its influence lurked below the surface of even such committed modernists as Powell and Tristano— and was especially evident when these bebop piano titans played unaccompanied. Hints of the linear styles of Hines

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