UK Jazz Orchestra?

Last weeks’ Jazz on 3 programme featured a great set from the French state-supported Orchestre National de Jazz, playing music written by John Hollenbeck recorded live at the London Jazz Festival in November. You should really check it out on iPlayer while you still can (available until tomorrow night only!), not only for the amazing ONJ set but for a really interesting discussion between host Jez Nelson, Nick Smart (Head of Jazz at the Royal Academy in London) and John Cumming (director of Serious) on the subject of whether this model of a national big band funded by the taxpayer could/should be thought about in this country. During the debate (its about halfway through the programme), John picked us out as an example of a big band thats operating successfully at the moment and producing exciting music (very kind!) and as I’d been thinking about the issue for a while anyway I thought I’d get some of my thoughts down…

I think that the national jazz orchestra debate essentially boils down to a debate about finance, and whether a newly established national orchestra would be better placed to receive funding and therefore better able to support and promote both the outstanding existing repertoire of British large ensemble composers and help them to expand this catalogue with brand new commissions. It’s been well documented that jazz as a wider artform is underfunded when compared to classical music or opera for example (there’s plenty of posts on this on trumpeter Jack Davies’ blog), but I think that establishing a single focus point for large ensemble jazz funding in this country could be extremely dangerous… Although I’m not for a second suggesting that funding would be consciously diverted towards a national orchestra and away from smaller independent groups, it would be very easy for funding organisations to lend their support to this flagship ensemble and consequently increasingly difficult for them to help others.

During the Jazz on 3 debate, Nick Smart pointed to Kenny Wheeler’s band, and the fact that despite his legendary status across the jazz world he can only afford to get his big band together ‘when he is fortunate to live for another 5 years’ on a birthday tour. I saw Colin Towns’ Mask Orchestra at Ronnie’s in August, which was their first UK date for years. There’s been some great big band writing by British composers in the past couple of years – sets by Julian Arguelles (Momenta), Mark Lockheart (Days Like These) and Gwilym Simcock (Hamburg Suite) spring to mind – but they’ve all been commissioned and/or recorded in Germany, with publicly supported radio big bands. Instead of fighting for a well supported brand new ‘national’ ensemble, why not focus on creating a system where Wheeler, Towns, Arguelles, Lockheart and Simcock to name but five can afford to either gig their own existing bands more often or establish their own bands for their brand new works? (Obviously such a system would hopefully also work out well for us, but even if I didn’t run a big band myself I think I’d still feel the same).

The big bands in Germany such as the hr-bigband in Frankfurt or the WDR Big Band in Cologne are professional, full time ensembles supported by public broadcasters, the equivalents of the BBC (which incidentally no longer supports the band that still bears its name). As well as being paid for by their parent organisations, the German bands enjoy generous radio airplay and coverage and as such their projects are well promoted and therefore well attended; funding for rehearsal time and space and bums on seats for the gigs in turn means that they can spend lots of time rehearsing to do full justice to the music they perform. Would supporting regional ensembles in a similar fashion in England not be a much better way to support large ensemble music, rather than concentrating on a single national orchestra? (I’m restricting this to England rather than the UK as Scotland already has its own Scottish National Jazz Orchestra). Obviously Germany is a larger country than England so there is maybe a better argument for it to happen there, but regional orchestras and organisations to support large ensembles still exist and are producing amazing work, both in this country and elsewhere in Europe. The amazing Danish ensemble Blood Sweat Drum & Bass Big Band that I’ve written about on this site before is supported by the City of Aarhus, and in Finland the UMO Jazz Orchestra is supported by the City of Helsinki. Here, the Voice of the North Jazz Orchestra for example is doing an amazing job of promoting the work of both young and established British composers; its website lists recent gigs under the direction of Henry Lowther, Jason Yarde and James Hamilton. Hamilton’s own orchestra is ably supported by Jazz Yorkshire, as is (I think) Tommy Evans‘ new project, whose formation was commissioned by the Marsden Jazz Festival in 2010. Manchester’s very own festival has been at the forefront of commissioning brand new work for years, often on a large scale (Mike Walker’s Ropes project for example involved over 25 musicians), and was rewarded for this by being granted the power to administer its own funding through the amazing mjf originals scheme.

I accept the argument put forward by Nick Smart on the Jazz on 3 programme (where he also specifically mentioned the London Jazz Orchestra) that often these projects are a labour of love for both their leaders and musicians, and so often the musicians will be underpaid and the music under-rehearsed, which is by no means ideal for either musicians or music of this calibre. This is not just the case in this country though – Darcy James Argue has recently been blogging about the financial and organisational problems his own (internationally feted) Secret Society have to deal with to even just gig outside of New York City (read his whole blog post here, its a great read and highlights the difficulties the leaders of large ensembles face). But the very fact that these bands are still going strong is a testament to the continuing dedication and commitment of their leaders and members.

So to sum up; shouldn’t we be concentrating on building on the amazing work thats already going on by the groups I’ve mentioned above so that it becomes impossible for funding organisations to ignore (obviously even though their hands are often tied in the current economic climate) rather than responding to the difficulties these ensembles face by creating a brand new ensemble that will by default have an increased media profile, reputation and therefore audience base, making it more attractive to funders? Would that not be an unfair advantage compared to the rest of us? Obviously, all of the UK groups that I’ve talked about are at least in part funded by money thats ultimately trickled down from Arts Council England and/or the PRS for Music Foundation, which although they’re often the easy target are still doing amazing work supporting the arts in a difficult financial environment (of course along with other similar organisations), but in order to secure greater sustainable funding for our art we as jazz musicians need to find a way to build a case to put forward both to these organisations and to the powers that be in the Government who dole out their funds – a case that I do not believe would be strengthened by a National Jazz Orchestra.

NB: if you feel inspired to support large ensemble jazz by this post – maybe supporting our large ensemble jazz in particular…? – please consider buying our EP via the links to the right of this page, or if you’d like to make a donation instead there’s a yellow ‘donate’ button there too. Thanks!

Posted by Ben on 06/02/2011 at 23:37 in misc and tagged , , , , . Leave comments here.



now playing

Whilst exploring some other jazz blogs I thought it might be nice for me to try to blog about things other than shamelessly plugging Beats & Pieces related stuff all the time – on that note I thought I’d mention some of the things that I’ve been listening to recently, and this list features three big bands that you should definitely check out…

Some of you may know that my Efpi Records co-founder Sam Andreae is studying across Scandinavia at the moment, currently in Aarhus. He sent me back a CD of an amazing Danish band called the Blood, Sweat, Drum n Bass Big Band and I’ve been listening to it quite a lot… Check them out on myspace (Redrum/Asa Nisi Masa is particularly cool) or there’s a taster video of their live show below.

One of my biggest musical heroes is Django Bates, and I was really excited when I heard that he was releasing a live recording of Loose Tubes, the band that bred a whole generation of British jazz musicians including Julian Arguelles, Steve Berry, Mark Lockheart and Iain Ballamy, whose music up til now has only been available on second hand vinyl (I got mine on eBay…). That CD, called ‘Dancing on Frith Street‘ is now out (as of today in fact) and I’ve been playing it constantly since it arrived with me on Saturday due to the eagerness of HMV to deliver – cheers!

Also while browsing the London Jazz Festival programme it was a nice surprise to see that Darcy James Argue’s Secret Society are coming over from New York. I first heard about Darcy and his band about 18 months ago and their debut CD ‘Infernal Machines’ is great – you can also download full recordings of their live gigs from their website. Secret Society are playing at Cafe Oto on Thursday 18th November, see you there…

P.S. I couldn’t mention the London Jazz Festival without pointing out that we’ll also be playing… Sunday 21st November, 7pm, Spice of Life in Soho!

Posted by Ben on 27/09/2010 at 23:28 in misc and tagged , , , , , , . Leave comments here.



Maria Schneider and fan-funding

Saw via twitter (follow me @beatsnpieces!) that Maria Schneider has announced another opportunity to participate in the creation of her latest commission – if you’ve $125-$2500 burning a hole in your pocket then click here for details.

mariaschneider_feb10

I know that this type of deal (and ArtistShare in particular) was groundbreaking at first, and the model has since been adopted by countless other artists, but I’ve always been a bit uncomfortable with it. I think that this is because of the other ‘benefits’ you get if you sign up to donate money – for example, if you sign up for the $2500 Maria Schneider package she’ll phone you up 3 times to chat and update you on the commission’s progress. Fair enough as you’ve paid $2500 for the privilege, but it feels a bit to me like she’s just offering up just a bit too much of herself… Similarly for another one of the albums (I think it was Sky Blue) the top package included the chance to go birdwatching with her in Central Park.

I know that this ‘rewarding’ of investors probably goes in internally behind closed doors inside record companies all the time, and Maria probably does enjoy spending time with her fans, but still aren’t you kind of selling yourself rather than your music? I should stress that its by no means just Maria Schneider following this kind of model – there’s been plenty of other examples that I unfortunately can’t think of at the moment (I definitely read about an American metal band offering cookery lessons or a game of golf or something, thought it was Nine Inch Nails but can’t find it on Google so if you have any ideas as to who it was then let me know!).

While we’re talking about Nine Inch Nails, I think that they manage to do a similar thing without over-selling themselves. For example, you could buy their ‘Ghosts I-IV‘ album in a $300 package that included a hardback book, included the multi-track session files on data DVD and was signed by Trent Reznor himself. Limited to 2500 pieces at $300 each = lots of money. I do recognise though that Maria Schneider’s target market is probably somewhat smaller than NIN’s so this may not be possible for her.

At the same time, other jazz artists have also been funding their albums through donations from fans but in a slightly different way. Darcy James Argue’s Secret Society album was funded by donations, and indeed everything we do at Efpi Records is entirely down to donations from you (cheers!). I think that the difference is that people are donating to/investing in you rather than ‘buying’ you though. Whilst I am certainly very grateful for donations through the Efpi site (indeed transporting a band of 14 people to gigs without financial suicide would be impossible without income from donations), I imagine I would feel a bit uncomfortable about offering myself to someone in return for a few grand. And thats not because I’m miserable and don’t want to spend time talking to people about me or our music, indeed its quite the opposite and thats one of the things that I love doing! Its just the feeling of being paid to do it that I think would be a bit weird (to me).

Again I want to reiterate that this is in no way an attack on Maria Schneider, her music or her business model. Her music is amazing, and I had the good fortune to meet her briefly after her gig at the Barbican in 2008 when she was lovely. I’ve also bought at least 4 of her albums through ArtistShare (as well as the new Chris Potter Underground album) and much enjoyed the extra videos and content that I got through the site. I just thought I’d write a little bit about my feelings about giving people the opportunity to buy access to YOU (important to note that I’m talking about something different than paying for teaching) rather than your music in the hope that it would stimulate some discussion… Go!

Posted by Ben on 24/02/2010 at 15:13 in misc and tagged , , , , , , . Leave comments here.