Joyous Encounter

A conversation with Joe Lovano is an up-tempo labyrinth of people and ideas and generalized effervescence. Take, for instance, the beginning of our recent talk. I prompt him about how he builds a band, and over the next few minutes the following happens: friendships are the beginning place; it’s important to “play the right music with the right people”; Lovano’s pianist for his upcoming gig in Charlotte is Lawrence Fields, who was formerly his student at Berklee School of Music in Boston, where the faculty now includes luminaries Danilo Perez and John Patitucci, is from St. Louis, and studied with Lovano during an especially fecund time when trumpeter Christian Scott and bassist/vocalist Esperanza Spalding were also his students; before coming to Charlotte, he’s the artist-in-residence at the Detroit Jazz Festival, where he will present three different bands with different rosters and repertoire; the bassist in Charlotte in Gerald Cannon, who was Elvin Jones’s last bass player, and played in McCoy Tyner’s band also, which Joe also did starting in 1999.

We reach the center of the labyrinth: “you develop relationships with folks, and then you create a language together inside the music. Whatever tune you’re playing, you’re dealing with the inner structures of the piece–the harmonic sequences, the melodic invention, and then everybody’s spirit rhythm contributes to the feeling of whatever tune you’re playing. Then you can get into the music within the music.”

Now we start back out the labyrinth: within friendships you learn how to play together; for instance, Lovano’s main working band now is the Paramount Quartet, that has Julian Lage on guitar, Asante Santi Debriano on bass, and drummer Will Calhoun; the group just finished a week at the Village Vanguard, where they recorded a live album across two nights; their original recording was in Europe for ECM records, which came together in a “magical” way; their conception of the music being polytonal–”in all keys”--and polyrhythmic–”in all tempos”--with a theme to develop your ideas around, but the music is free, which Lovano calls not ‘free jazz’ but ‘jazz-free,’ where “you’re floating inside this swirling multi-key and multi-rhythmic idea to create some melody within”; and it all calls back to the canonical trio with Paul Motian and Bill Frisell, or to his work with Charlie Haden and the Liberation Music Orchestra, or Carla Bley’s music. 

And we reach the endpoint, breathless, with Lovano having carried us across fifty years of creative music in just a few minutes, to find that the end is another beginning. 

When Lovano appears in Charlotte this weekend as part of Jazz Arts Charlotte’s series “The Jazz Room,” he’ll have with him his “Joyous Encounter” quartet. The group calls back to Lovano’s 2004 recording of the same name, with pianist Hank Jones, bassist George Mraz, and drummer Paul Motian. “Playing with that quartet was a dream,” Lovano says, which is surely an understatement. Those three legends are all deceased now, but Lovano keeps the name and the spirit of the group alive. Some of the material is the same from the Joyous Encounter recordings, and some of the tunes are new. The ethos of it persists, though. The quartet remains multi-generational (which is important to Lovano’s groups) and aims for “the music swirling within the music.” And with this group, and his others, Lovano says he continues to grow and discover, fifty years into a legendary career. “It’s a journey that, you don’t know where it’s gonna take you, but every day, every time you try to breathe together, and create music within the music together, new things happen. All the time,” he says.

Jazz musicians have just a few words to work with. A tune title is a word or two, perhaps as many as five. Not all the titles work the same way. Some evoke a setting–think “A Night in Tunisia.” Others aim at a feeling, like Coltrane’s “Lonnie’s Lament.” Others are retort, like Monk’s “Think of One,” which sounds like a response to the question “what’s the name of this tune?” Yet others are obfuscation, title-as-resistance-to-titling, as in Mingus’ “The Shoes of the Fisherman’s Wife Are Some Jive-Ass Slippers.” Some are nonsense syllables, language as resistance to easy meaning-making, like Dizzy Gillepsie’s “Oop-Bop-Sha-Bam.” A title does something, even if it is not clear what it is doing. With just a handful of words, every sound counts. Just as it does in the music. 

In his book Epistrophies: Jazz and the Literary Imagination, literary scholar Brent Hayes Edwards thinks with jazz musicians about the ways musicians use words, and how words and music play together. About the game of naming a tune, Edwards say that “to take the ‘word’ of any title as a ‘very small aperture’ or ‘keyhole’ into the work, then, is not to take that language as programmatic–the definitive ‘anchorage’ of the work of art to a restricted set of meanings–but instead to allow the inevitable failure of language to allow the singularity of the work to emerge precisely as a product of its unnameability.”¹

Edwards is thinking specifically about naming songs, but the jazz world has a linguistic anomaly beyond song names. Inside the discipline, most bands fit within a single naming convention–leader’s name + number of players. So, Bill Evans Trio, or John Coltrane Quartet, or Miles Davis Quintet, or Maria Schneider Orchestra. Band names, the way every rock or soul band has a name distinct from its members, aren’t common. Lovano does not always play by those conventions. “Paramount Quartet,” “Us 5,” and “Soundprints” are among the names of his groups. Those words are a hint about what is happening in the music, I think. He regularly refers to the music as “collective.” While most musicians talk in similar fashion, rarely does the collective ethos get linguistic form. 

The most compelling name, to my ears, is “Joyous Encounter.” Perhaps I’m speaking from the inside of a typical middle-age existential crisis, and need to hear something different. But also, it’s kinda bad out there. We live in a moment with a fair amount of cultural despair, and no shortage of things to despair over. And 2004, when Lovano and Joyous Encounter were recording their first album, was still marked by the shadow of 9/11 and in the heat of two Bush-Cheney wars of choice. Not exactly a high water mark of happiness.

So I asked Lovano about the name. Why those words? “It’s coming from, it’s a joyous encounter to play together with those folks, and it’s a joyous encounter for everyone in the room. It’s about the love and passion of creating music together. It originated from my tune and the recording with Hank Jones, Paul Motian, and George Mraz. ‘Cause that was a joyous encounter, man! To play together and to make some music within the music [to reflect] who we are, not trying to recreate a way of playing that others have already covered, to be inspired by that and to try to find yourself inside this joyous fashion–that’s what it’s all about. 

“When you listen to Thelonious Monk, man, that’s a joyous encounter. For everybody in the room! Not just the players, but for everybody in the room. You’re in the audience most of your life. And sometimes, some of those same folks that you were in their audience, they’re in your audience all of a sudden. That becomes a joyous, incredible moment. That started to happen to me years ago, and that’s been [an] inspiration ever since.”

Lovano is still conscious about portraying that joy. It comes through on his records, and in his face, and by his horn. He still uses the name “Joyous Encounter” frequently for his quartets, he says. The name “not only gives an idea about repertoire, but it gives a feeling about how to try to play together.” 

I’ll be in this audience with Lovano in town this weekend, and I have an idea of how we’ll try to listen together.

Joe Lovano and Joyous Encounter play The Jazz Room in Charlotte this weekend, two sets each Friday and Saturday nights. Limited tickets still available through the Blumenthal Center for the Performing Arts. My thanks to Lovano for his generous gift of time talking with me.

Part Two Coming: Lovano and I closed this conversation with a little name association game. I named three North Carolina musicians, and he offered all sorts of reflections on them. I’ll try to get that out around the end of the month, following a few other pieces I have planned. 

Carolina Social Music Club this weekend: For readers in the North Carolina High Country, my band Carolina Social Music Club will be playing in Boone twice this weekend: 

One Last Note: From Joe Lovano, of course.