Let's Call This

Let’s get this out of the way first: I don't think T.S. Monk could have won the Thelonious Monk International Jazz Drums Competition, which I covered here. But I think he’d be the first to make that disclaimer. (Well, one of the first.)

Monk fils, who served as an emergency feed of personal history and family lore during the logistically complex semifinals on Saturday — you’ll be grateful to learn that his father gulped Pepsi, smoked Camels and pinched pennies — gave the first performance at the finals on Sunday. His unaccompanied solo, played on an electronic drum kit, was OK, and, under the circumstances, the essence of chutzpah. But then this is a guy who had no qualms about starting an invocation, on both days, with “Let’s get ready to Drumble!” 

The drumble, as it were, came late in the game, well after the competition had been settled. As I observed in the paper, it involved a round robin of every member of the judges’ panel, along with Tipper Gore — and most importantly, Jamison Ross, whose strong, untroubled swing feel helped put him in the winner’s circle.

 

Since you’re reading this, I will assume you belong to the jazz-blog ecosystem, and have thus read some of the debate that preceded this year’s competition. Ethan Iverson, who pulled the pin out of the grenade, happened to be in D.C. last night, playing an album-release show with the Bad Plus. “After all my gloom and doom,” Iverson wrote, “I admit I kinda wanted to be there yesterday and tonight to check out the cats.” I wish he really had been there, though I suspect the experience would have bolstered, rather than disarmed, his core conviction. 

One could easily make the argument that Jamison Ross, who holds down gigs with Carmen Lundy and Wess Anderson, represents a conservative pick by the judges. I probably would have made that argument, had I only seen the semifinals. Justin Brown, whom you might know from the Ambrose Akinmusire Quintet and the Gerald Clayton Trio, played a mini-set so authoritative and inventive that I picked him for the winner: he was working within a given framework but thrillingly and unpredictably so. Colin Stranahan was more muted, but I heard a lot of artistry in the fluctuation that he brought to “Fall,” the Wayne Shorter tune.

There wasn’t space in the official record to mention some of the other semifinalists who caught my ear, and why. There was the taut precision of Abe Lagrimas Jr., who used his toms to sketch the melodic shape of “Body and Soul.” There was the youthful readiness of Oscar Suchanek, a junior at the Berklee College of Music, somehow the only person to work in an Afro-Cuban clave. There was the sophisticated textural assault of Kristijan Krajncan, who also brought two original compositions, both worth hearing again. 

But I had a pretty strong sense of who the finalists would be as soon as Mr. Ross closed up shop. (For some pertinent reflection on the predictive fallacy, see this post by Michael J. West, who caught the first half of the semis but had to miss the second, from which all three finalists were drawn.)

And what Ross did, quite simply, was make the band sound better, looser, more empowered. If I were Herbie Hancock, observing the finals, Ross would be the guy I'd enlist as a sub, even though his playing evinced only a shred of mystery and even less pure exploration. He's not a radical, not even an accurate reflection of what's happening in jazz drumming today. But of the 12 competitiors, he was the one who made every move feel both natural and consequential. I daresay Iverson would like the guy. The first-place finish was a feather in his cap, and a vote of confidence in his impending future — something I'm sure we can all get behind. 

Comments

[Nate Chinen]

thanks, Jeff and Alexander, for your comments. I've been thinking about your points. It comes as no surprise to me that Jamison Ross has more to show than what he showed at the competition. I wish I could have seen him from more angles over the course of the two days — but his strategy, if that's what it was, certainly worked. I wonder if he got any advice from anyone before heading in.

One thing I left out of the notebook, because it didn't really pertain to the drumming competition, was the fact that Ross included two "original" compositions, one on Saturday and one on Sunday. I use the scare quotes because the pieces were obviously built on tunes we know from Herbie Hancock and Tammi Terrell. Whereas some of the other original pieces we heard in competition, by Justin Brown and others, sounded genuinely new. Had the judges decided to evaluate the contestants as overall artists, we might have seen a different outcome. That's not to say Ross isn't an artist, by the way; please don't get me wrong.

I happened to be standing next to Jamison after the event just at the moment when Chris Dunn introduced himself. (Dunn is the Senior director of A&R at Concord.) The exchanged hugs and business cards, and Jamison promised to be in touch soon. Chris smiled. "I've got your info, you don't need to be in touch," he said. "I'll be in touch with you. This is going to be fun." Obviously it will be interesting to see what path Ross decides to take with his solo recording debut. As a critic, my hope is that he doesn't play to expectations, as he did (so monstrously well) in the competition. But that's why I'm not on the business side of this, right?

[Alexander Rocha]

Some people have pointed out more or less idiosyncratic contestants who have placed in the finals or won previous contests, but then suggested that the participants were dialing down some of their idiosyncracies (I don't want to say individuality, because I don't want to suggest that the more mainstream competitors aren't individuals) to fit a "mainstream" context. Perhaps, Jeffalbert, Jamison Ross approached the competition by imagining how he'd sub for Philly Joe Jones in the Miles Davis Quintet. Everyone seems to agree he does have magnificent feel.

I get why Ethan Iverson made his question about Monk - it's the obvious rhetorical move - and I think a lot of people missed the point a little bit when they said "hey, Monk could play a lot of piano!" and "he won competitions as a kid!" Yeah, but after 1945 or so Monk played Monk, uncompromisingly, willing to live and die with the respect of some of his peers and the scorn of others. I feel like the question could've been posed even more forcefully, though less ironically, about Ornette Coleman.

Does anyone really think there's any way Ornette could win the Monk competition on saxophone? Again, whatever else he can do on the horn (and I think there are fewer voices saying that Ornette can do a mean Charlie Parker impression, or whatever), Ornette does Ornette Coleman, uncompromisingly.

Some of jazz's most important innovaters have been powerful undeniable virtuosos who could and did play the standard language as it existed BEFORE they revolutionized it. That's not how Monk and Coleman (of equal importance in my estimation, if not greater) did or do it.

And yet at the end of the day, in a drum competition, maybe the guy who swings hardest should win, right? Good for Jamison Ross.

[Jeffalbert]

That's interesting. I have heard Jamison play a few times in New Orleans, and conservative isn't a word I'd use to describe him. Maybe that is what the competition setting will do.

He recently played with the trio called Troika at the Tuesday night series that I run, and they were far from conservative. They played a variety of grooves, a track with drum machine, and Jamison even sang some (and well). There is audio evidence of it here: http://openearsmusic.org/troika-audio-archive-4-september-2012/