Live Review: Rob Schneiderman Quartet

Rob Schneiderman, piano
Bryan Lynch, trumpet
Todd Coolman, bass
Justin Brown, drums

SMOKE
NOVEMBER 8, 2007


Rob Scheiderman’s day gig is more esoteric than jazz could ever be. He’s a mathematician. It’s not just about jiggering numbers (or so he tells me). His specialty is topology, the study of spaces, and his work inhabits as many as nine spatial dimensions. To Schneiderman, who hails from the Bronx by way of San Diego, the attraction lies in the creativity you need to venture into uncharted territories in this exotic realm, and beauty of discovering and bringing back what’s “out there.”

This spirit of discovery is natural for someone who is also a musician. It holds out an enormous temptation, in fact, to try grappling with the cosmic question of possible affinities between music and mathematics. I’ll leave that to the expert—Schneiderman taught a course on music and mathematics this fall at Lehman College, where he is an assistant professor of mathematics.

Schneiderman’s other passion does speak volumes about what you will hear when you go to hear him. He has the daring to take us where no man has gone before and the sanity to bring us back in one piece. Schneiderman’s adventurous, can-do spirit means he’s not dependent on any single style (though Bud Powell clearly provides him with a center). He approaches very swinging material in an advanced way and makes “difficult” things sound natural. He segues comfortably between bop and bitonality. He moves through different material or songs without losing the groove. The result is that Schneiderman gets over with audiences and is also a very distinctive musician--fitting for someone who worked with Chet Baker and Eddie Harris.

When it comes to leading his own group, Schneiderman clearly feels that four dimensions is enough to generate interest. His quartet struck a nice balance among different parts. It pitted three more seasoned musicians, Lynch, Coolman, Schneiderman against newcomer Justin Brown. The older musicians were rooted in bebop, whereas Brown, who wore dreadlocks, had a beat that tipped into a suggestion of funkiness. Coolman, the highly sought-after New York bassist, has great notes, a great beat, and a take care of business attitude. Lynch, who is now one of the most accomplished trumpet players in jazz, is always lyrical and well put together.

Schneiderman’s original compositions blended well with those of jazz masters or standards. In the second set of the night, his own “Reunion” and “Juvenescence” were balanced against Bud Powell’s “Glass Enclosure” and “Buster Rides Again.” I believe it is unusual to blow on “Glass” (Powell performed it as a set piece), so it sounded very fresh and challenging in this performance. Schneiderman’s tribute to Eddie Harris, “Have You Heard Eddie Harris (Play the Saxophone) added funk to the mix. The standard “What is This Thing Called Love” served as a show-stopper ending the set.

I sat in during the third set. It was like sharing the cockpit of a well-conditioned Lear Jet. This was especially reassuring since my navigation was off (that is, my sightreading of untransposed, intricate bop heads after two glasses of wine, and an hour or two of hanging with Schneiderman’s piano peers in the audience, was limited). We played his “City Limits” and “Gravitation”, and Lynch’s “Tribute to Blue” (Mitchell). The standards “Beautiful Love” and “Cherokee” felt very much like they belonged in that company.

Signs of Life in Small Jazz Clubs

The jazz community, facing poor record sales and declining jazz rosters on major labels, is engaged in one of its periodic panics over the death of jazz. But I think reports of its life should be more greatly exaggerated. Those doing the reporting have only to look in the right places. In small intimate nightclubs dotting America’s urban landscape, jazz is teeming.

On any night of the week, one can hear people working hard at a challenging, specialized form of music for very little money. That’s a sign of an art form very much alive. Here in New York, the seats in these small establishments are filled, and not with cadavers or nonpersons. The average hack playing in that local dive has one major advantage over John Coltrane. (Hint: it’s not his or her high-speed internet connection).

Live performance does not simply enhance jazz. It’s central to it. Its experience cannot be captured and transmitted through electronic media, at least not until virtual reality lives up to its name. Discussions about the future of jazz ought to ask how live performance enhances that experience and appreciation of the music. And discussions on how to develop or revive the quality of urban life ought to take into account the contribution that performing arts—jazz not least—can make to the social fabric of the city.

The jam session and the nightclub are as much a part of the aesthetic blueprint of jazz as its far more noted genius for solo improvisation. It’s hard to imagine how Louis Armstrong or Charlie Parker could have emerged without having to combine constantly with other players and get feedback from an audience only a few feet away. Small venues that allow ad hoc combinations of personnel and intimacy with the audience still are—or should be—crucial testing grounds for young players.

When Armstrong and later Parker learned their craft, jazz cross-pollinated with many other kinds of performance and social activities, and thus it thrived. We need not get caught up in nostalgia for that day. But we in the jazz field could go beyond our preoccupation with the “notes themselves,” and ask how contemporary jazz of any style can be enriched by effective presentation in live performance—yet, let us unflinchingly call it entertainment. We also need to ask what concrete steps could be taken to support the demand for jazz out there and the venues that feature it.

The more upmarket jazz clubs, though they may feature jazz of high quality, hardly fulfill the mission of sustaining a culture of live performance. Since they rely on presenting established stars, they have become more like small-scale concerts or showcases than interactive venues. Upscale clubs therefore offer few opportunities for aspiring musicians and far less of the intimacy for the audience than nightclubs used to. Smaller, less expensive clubs like Smalls and Smoke here in New York are a livelier alternative—and they happen to be thriving. By the way, club owners Paul Stache and Frank Christopher of Smoke and Spike Wilner and Lee Yastremski of Smalls are not the dreaded mob types of Hollywood legend, but young entrepreneurs who should be supported and encouraged. The question is how.

If the aim is simply to get more music in more clubs, creating a more favorable set of economic incentives is essential. The onset of high real estate prices in the mid-1980s in New York City, for example, corresponds with the demise of a flourishing live jazz culture in the 1970s (ostensibly a time of jazz’ “stagnation”). Today, the speculative bubble in real estate makes it harder to open and operate a nightclub, but we should not sit and wait for the bubble to pop. Change will have to come from the top—from the movers and shakers of urban policy. In this town, that would be the Mayor, City Council and Department of Economic Development. Urban authorities should recognize that the arts directly enhance the economic base of the city. Performing arts draw people to cities. Studies have shown that as the arts and artists grow in an urban environment, so does the cultural diversity that in turn attract other professional classes to cities, raising rents and providing a highly skilled workforce. And jazz thrives in the sites for social interaction and personal connection with the arts that are the lifeblood of the urban experience.

An incremental shift in the tax burden on establishments could help. Several nightclub owners have told me that small reductions in their taxes would translate into a significantly lower door charge, just enough to draw many more customers past the threshold. Favoring establishments serving liquor might be controversial, to say the least. With some kind of official cultural sanction, though, there could be changes in the rent guidelines or tax laws to favor those that present music (or any performances designated by the community to have public value, for that matter). Landmark status for venues featuring jazz is not too farfetched in a city with unique historical associations with jazz. In a similar vein, zoning laws could be created or adjusted to allow more places close together in one set of city blocks. That would give audiences more action and more choices for their bridge-and-tunnel fees or late-night cab fare. Tours of the downtown area in the wake of the events of 9/11 might include access to live jazz performances of all kinds. (The Tribeca Arts Center features a “Lost Jazz Shrines” series that raises awareness of the rich history of jazz south of Houston Street.)

Positive changes could also be made within nightclubs. Jazz clubs could offer activities besides the consumption of alcohol and music: dinner, dancing, or indoor sports in adjoining rooms, for example. All of these activities might draw extra revenue: the trick is to find a mix appropriate for jazz, or the type of jazz the club features. There may be other venues for live besides nightclubs. Coffeehouses, private subscription parties, and benefits of all kinds offer the group and audience interaction without depending on the sale of alcohol.

Exorbitant door charges in midtown need to come down to attract more young people, and more of those who are curious about jazz but won’t pay fifty dollars to find out what they think. Venues that admit people below the age of 18 could be invaluable to jazz’ future. The “peanut galleries” that existed in nightclubs until the 1960s would not work with today’s understandably strict drinking age laws. An appropriate venue is a small afternoon concert, which is relatively easy to produce and compelling to fund with tax-exempt dollars. It could easily be conceived as a social occasion for youngsters as well as an educational one.

None of these changes can come about without a change in the public perception of jazz and the experience of live jazz in particular. The many celebrities who like jazz—mainly actors and sports figures—might be enlisted. But there’s another segment of the cultural elite that already has the podium to spread the word: critics. They rightly see their function as educating people about the nature of the music itself and its rich history. If that is so, the sense of being in a club—the spontaneity, unpredictability, excitement, variety and romance of the “hang” as well as the music ought to be a core theme. Some critics feel jaded with writing about the same old fantastic veterans over and over; if so, young up-and-coming musicians in small establishments are always making news. Will Friedwald built an intriguing story about his own participation in a jam session at Smoke on Monday nights, where he and all the other performers were diligent, earnest amateurs.

The most important change, and also the hardest to pull off, will have to come from the musicians playing in jazz clubs. They need to enhance the potential for drama and interaction implicit in jazz, and which can only be experienced in the intimate setting of a small establishment. It’s not just about producing sound—it’s a performance. The blend of appearances, actions and the spoken word, however minimal or supportive to the main purpose of playing music, can make the difference for average consumers of music.

Musicians and hard-core fans need to remember that their drive to pursue jazz was already set in motion long ago, but that newcomers must still be won over. Jazz club visitors sometimes arrive curious but are put off by the barrage of notes and polyrhythms they encounter but may not be quite equipped to tune in to. They are equally put off by well-meaning but misguided efforts to “educate” them that simply rehearse musical jargon or trot out examples from revered figures of the glorious past. Adding or augmenting the element of drama helps audiences feel that they’ve not only made a connection with the musicians as human beings, but taken in something meaningful about life in a shared, real-time experience.

I don’t want to, nor have the right to, prescribe in more detail what musicians should do to enhance the dramatic dimension in their performances. Active veterans like Cedar Walton or Dr. Lonnie Smith hardly need to be told how to create drama. Performance can take many shapes, but that has to be an artistic choice and spring from deeply personal motivations. I will make do with an anecdote.

In his book, Natural Selection, Critic Gary Giddins described a gig where Sonny Rollins was to perform with his group. The band came onto the stage fronted by a tenor saxophonist who looked like Rollins, but seemed to be shorter and more compact. It was really Yusef Lateef, unannounced. Rollins had let his fellow sax man play more than a few choruses before materializing. Then Rollins finally appeared behind the drummer, making musical comments at first, but gradually coming out front and giving the audience what they had come to hear. Rollins had put his own personality on display. He had been, as always, deeply inventive and spontaneous, yet somehow fully in control of the situation. He had created an unstable situation, yet resolved it in an intriguing and ultimately satisfying way. Yes, he blew some notes—but he also elevated the act of blowing into a larger public spectacle. That move is the soul of theatre, and it can help show doubters and neophytes how music can represent everyday life writ large.