applause – always a good thing?

There’s an interesting piece on the Guardian website today by renowned American classical music critic Alex Ross – I’ve had his highly recommended book, The Rest is Noise, for ages and tried to get into reading it a few times but always got distracted, should really get back on it… In this article, he’s talking about the etiquette for applause and audience response in the classical concert hall, and it got me thinking about the similarities and differences between classical and jazz audiences.

Ross briefly mentions jazz audiences in his article (”in jazz clubs… people applaud after each solo, as well as at the end of each number”), which obviously simplifies things a lot but I suppose is safe enough to be taken as a general rule. Sometimes, however, clapping by default after a solo is totally inappropriate. I was at a gig recently by a trio that was almost contemporary classical rather than jazz – even though the trio were world class musicians in their own right there was unfortunately not many in the audience (those that were there weren’t even there specifically for the gig as the concert was one small part of a larger event), the music was pretty quiet throughout, and the whole affair was quite intimate. After every single solo though, no matter what the wider musical context, the person next to me (not with me! Just happened to be sat next to me) decided to clap as loud and as forcefully as possible in order to rally the rest of the audience into joining them. As I say the gig was really intimate, the solos were thoughtful, melodic and reflective rather than animated, loud and technical, and having all the musician’s hard work in building up an atmosphere rudely cancelled out by this person’s instant rapturous applause really started to piss me off – I think the musicians were also not impressed as they seemed to be a bit awkward in acknowledging the rather muted, sheep-like applause…

The point of Ross’ article was that people should be allowed to respond to music whenever and however they feel most appropriate rather than having to follow in some sort of etiquette. In the same way that refraining from applause after a massive final cadence in the first movement of a Beethoven symphony feels strange, for example, surely being made to feel duty-bound to applaud after the quietest and most reflective improvised solo in a jazz gig is also inappropriate? Ross quotes the pianist Emanuel Ax, who I think sums it up perfectly – “I think that if there were no ‘rules’ about when to applaud, we in the audience would have the right response almost always.”

Posted by Ben on 09/03/2010 at 16:59 in misc and tagged , , , . Leave comments here.



jazz crimes

Take a look at this article from today’s Guardian – basically some guy in the audience at a jazz festival in Spain called the police to complain that a gig by a saxophone player called Larry Ochs wasn’t jazzy enough… And the police agreed! Check out the band’s music below.

This got me thinking about how difficult it is to classify contemporary music nowadays, as musicians bring together influences that are so wide ranging – from classical to rock to world and everything in between. I remember reading articles about the Portico Quartet recently, for example, where the authors and even the quartet themselves were bemoaning the fact that their records were classified as either ‘jazz’ or ‘world’ whereas in reality its somewhere in between.

When I’ve been promoting the Beats & Pieces Big Band, I sometimes find it difficult to describe exactly what the music is – I’d say its definitely jazz (but even then, what is jazz?! A whole other can of worms…) but in places its also rock, electronica, minimalist classical etc etc… And I also play many free improv gigs, at the Noise Upstairs or with Token Otter for instance; how would that music be classified?

To be honest I’m not really sure what the point I’m trying to make is, so I’m not too sure what I’m trying to say – just thought it was an amusing article that also raises lots of questions. So go on, discuss!

(Also for the record, I’d disagree with the Spanish Police and say Larry Ochs’ music was close enough to jazz. Kinda reminds me of Tom Arthurs’ Centripede group, based on this clip at least…)



UPDATE: I read this post by Kit Downes where he talks about the word ‘jazz’ as being a creative process rather than an end product… Kinda answers some of the questions I was posing above, and its a great read in itself.

Posted by Ben on 10/12/2009 at 20:22 in misc and tagged , , , , , , , , . Leave comments here.