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Salient. Newspaper of Victoria University of Wellington Students Association. Vol 41 No. 5. March 27 1978

Music

page 10

Music

Jazz it up

Roger Fox Big Band

Jazz at its best is a uniquely exciting music. With improvisation as a vital element, it has a spontaneity, and excitement, that is sometimes lacking in the performance of other music. Jazz allows each musician a chance to speak to the audience directly, with a personal voice, creating their own music on the spot. The music can reach such heights that the performer, and ultimately the audience can feel a sense of exploration and creative energy.

In one sense the 1860 Band who opened the concert are blessed. They are five brilliant musicians: a trombonist, trumpeter, electric pianist, bassist and drummer, who have been playing together night after night at the 1860 pub for years. They know each other, they can anticipate and change direction, cadence and build together perfectly.

Yes, the 1860 Band is tight. But in the terms of improvised Jazz this tightness seems suffocating. Each number seemed to be too carefully moulded into the same predictable format. The trumpet, and trombone, and even the keyboard in octaves or unadventurous paralleled thirds would bang out the melodic in unison. Then each player was given a chance to improvise, always returning to the united melodic line. It's tried and true jazz method, but it needn't be a straight jacket. The brief improvised solos seemed tailor-made; they never gave the impression of breaking new ground, they didn't excite me or, apparently, the musicians. It was just another professional night at the pub with the 1860 combo.

The one exception was guest guitarist Malcolm Winch, who arrived that day from up north to join the group. He's a brilliant musician with a natural feel for the music, and because he hadn't rehearsed much with the group before the concert, his playing was fresh and daring. It's a pleasure to hear such good melodic improvisation, spiky, leaping, building, dying and building again, using the whole finger board, and getting colour out of the electric guitar without relying on a battery of foot peddles and fancy devices.

In fact the electronic special effects employed by the rest of the group, such as synthesiser, octavoice, and tape loop only served to confuse and muddle the music. Partial blame must be levelled at the techniques of producing the sound. The Opera House has excellent natural acoustics. We don't need such excessive volume to excite us. At times definition was lost and the music was a deafening row.

I question the constant reliance and the cop out of using a driving rock rhythm under each number to make the music cook. Walking is a rest from running, and it doesn't mean walking can't take you somewhere, and even perhaps let you have a good look around along the way.

The second half of the concert featured the Roger Fox Big Band (formerly the Golden Horn Big Band) augmenting the original 1860 group with a wall of brass and reeds. "Time Piece", their opening number, was messy, but the second number, "Nemesis", was excellent. The arrangement was clean and varied, bouncy and well crafted. And we heard the Roger Fox Big Band at its best, rich and full. I felt myself bouncing in my seat, my feet tapping wildly.

Big Bands by nature cannot have too much improvisation, but slots are left in the notated arrangement for solos and some excellent solos were played.

At this point in the review I must apologise for not mentioning those musicians who deserve praise. People such as the bassist, the drummer and the sax soloists. But unfortunately no programme was supplied with their names.

The Roger Fox Big Band is worth hearing and Fox should be commended for his organisational skills, bringing together twenty or so fine musicians and moulding them into a precision group. The sound of brass, building full, rich and complex chords is, to begin with, thrilling. But after the first four or five numbers, even with the addition of a guest vocalist to add new colour, the texture of the arrangements hadn't sufficiently changed. My foot stopped tapping (it was exhausted) and my mind wandered towards home. It's up to Fox now to come up with some arrangement that can best exploit the full range of colourful possibilities that the big band offers, and to take a few more risks.

Jonathon Besser

Noh Reflection

Interview with a Japanese Composer

Recently Joji Yuasa, a Japanese composer in the contemporary style visited New Zealand on an exchange scheme with the Japanese government. He gave a series of lectures at the university, and Salient reporter Elton June was able to secure the following interview.

Salient: One thing I think we can say about Japanese electronic music is that there's plenty of silence and space as a parallel to the Haiku, Noh drama and brush painting. Has NZ an emerging style?

Yuasa: Yes, there's nature. You have a beautiful country.

S: Asian countries are relatively crowded. Do people come to your music as a breather, to escape . . . ?

Y: A consolation? It's not entertainment. It's more a reflection. It's not what you call getting away from it all. Music might change the people who are interested in listening to contemporary music and to find something new I think . . . rescue.

S:Stockhausen talks about progress and development of the higher mind, e.g. through intuitive playing.

Y: Yes, I'm in complete agreement with Karlheinz. And also John Cage. That openness.

S: Was Cage the originator of noise in music?

Y: Yes, he has had a great influence. Not only on me but on my friends also. But I think John Cage had a big influence from Zen and we have a common bond here.

S: I find the long homogeneous sections of, for example, your very first piece with white noise are very similar to avantegarde jazz and rock. Have you heard of Tangerine Dream?

Y: Yes, actually I heard them in Berlin. But they do it the easy way; The serious avantegarde is not the easy way.

S: Do students listen much to yours or other contemporary music?

Y: Young people do not compose electronic music. Almost no. Generally speaking, music education is quite conservative. Only Schoenberg. Not further. Ravel is quite highly estimated in the university. Teachers are very conservative but nowadays, students are not so content with that way. They have more curiosity than the teachers;

S: Is there much symbolism involved in the gestures?

Y: Yes. For myself the roots of culture are always very important and actually I have an interest in Noh theatre and some other ....

S:Zen? or me, yes. Not so much for others.

S: Is this the result of your training or did you pursue it later on?

Y: This is a very big question. I had to find what was my own way of thinking. For us, there is an equality of the old Japanese way and the European. We have to take the best of both.

S: Is there a global music evolving?

Y; Yes, But we have to keep our cultural ground.