Bill Charlap Tackles Leonard Bernstein

[DudeAsInCool]

In this week's Jazz column at Slate.com, David Yaffe takes a look at Bill Charlap's 'The Songs of Leonard Bernstein', and wonders why it took so long for the acclaimed composer to enter the jazz lexicon.

****

Here are a few excerpts:

"If pressed, you could probably hum a song or two from West Side Story. Leonard Bernstein's musical garnered a 1961 Best Picture Oscar and a permanent place in pop culture consciousness, resurfacing most recently when OutKast's Andre 3000 and Big Boi restaged Riff and Bernado's rumble scene in their video for "Roses." But Bernstein's score remains so daunting and impenetrable that, outside of orchestra pits, few musicians can play it. Bill Charlap is one exception, and hisSomewhere: The Songs of Leonard Bernstein might make you wonder why "Cool" and "America" didn't make it into the jazz canon sooner. Try being Charlap's left hand for just a few bars and you'll understand why."

"Bernstein wrote a symphony before he ever wrote a pop song, and even his simplest tunes were composed with a deliberate precision. Tony's emotions may be aswirl when he croons "Maria," but Bernstein orchestrates every modulation and interval with a painstaking grandeur. Such an exacting approach can hardly be replicated by jazz "fake books," the notoriously unreliable sketches of melody lines and chord changes that most jazz musicians rely upon. Fake books, as the name suggests, allow musicians to "fake" their way through a tune without needing to read music particularly well. These books are often cobbled together by unreliable copyists, and the sins of the transcribers are passed on from player to player."

"The simpler the source material, the less chance there is for error. On many classic occasions, fake books have helped jazz artists transfigure banal sources into canonized works, revered by fans and scrutinized by music students. When the John Coltrane Quartet recorded Rogers and Hammerstein's "My Favorite Things" in 1960, all they needed was a single treble clef melody line and a road map taking them from E Minor to F Sharp Minor and beyond. The groove they found was nowhere on the page."

ut when you're a Jet, you're a Jet all the way. Even riffing off Bernstein demands precision. The songbooks of Duke Ellington and Billy Strayhorn, Thelonious Monk, Charles Mingus, and Wayne Shorter startle and challenge anyone who tries to play them, but if you can make the changes, a good ear can compensate for scant reading ability. Making changes is no mean feat, of course—it requires a musician to create a spontaneous and original melodic idea based on mere chords. But the exacting intervals of Bernstein's "Big Stuff" and "Cool" take musicians to a place too dense for fake books. If you don't follow the score exactly as Bernstein wrote it, it probably won't sound like the same song."

"Of course, jazz musicians aren't supposed to adhere to scores. They're supposed to interpret melodies and fly into new, improvised territory. On Somewhere, you can hear that Charlap, supported by bassist Peter Washington and drummer Kenny Washington (no relation), has carefully read every note on every page. Unlike many of his contemporaries, Charlap, 37, is not trying to establish a breakthrough style or push new compositions into the glutted jazz landscape—the usual strategy of younger musicians, regardless of their compositional gifts. He's meticulously unpacking Bernstein's songbook, unearthing the harmonic and rhythmic treasures within."

You can read David Yaffe's full article at Slate.com:

http://slate.msn.com/id/2101523/