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| Geoff Gillette, Lorraine Feather, Carlos Del Rosario |
The great pianist and composer, Thelonious Monk, is credited
with the remark that "writing about jazz is like dancing about
architecture." But don't dash off and try to authenticate the quote. One, it'll
just take you down a rabbit hole, and two, whether or not he ever actually
uttered those words doesn't really matter. Because far too often, it's true.
It's true to the extent that the offending scribe is
violating a fundamental law: either he doesn't know the subject well enough to
write about it, or he doesn't know how to effectively express himself. Or both.
Obviously, the ideal writer on the subject of jazz, by
virtue of understanding the music, would be a professional jazz musician. Similarly,
based on an ability to express ideas, a professional writer would be the best
person for the task. But these skill sets are very rarely found in the same
person. Hence the uneasy marriage between writer and musician, and Monk's (or
someone's) snarky comment on it.
Jazz musicians have tended to stick to expressing their often
complex musical ideas through their performances. But writers have quoted
Shakespeare, tortured metaphors and squeezed the life out of countless
adjectives and adverbs in their attempt to describe the blue notes, chord
voicings, progressions, and swinging rhythmic patterns that characterize the
music. Unfortunately, no matter how sincere their efforts, attempts to define or
delimit jazz have always been reminiscent of the Indian parable about the blind
men and the elephant. (Jazz is like an elephant's trunk ... or its tail ... or
its ear.) And being hard to define, the
music is therefore hard to describe. You see the problem.
But it is a problem only because we enjoy talking about this
music so much. And the reason we do, is simple. Music truly is a universal
language, a polyglot, some form of which is spoken in every culture in the
world. Listening to jazz, and talking or writing about it, are ways of learning
how to speak the language more fluently, ways of more fully engaging our
culture and the world around us. In his autobiography, Music Is My Mistress (Da Capo Press, 1976), Duke Ellington said it well:
"What is music to you? What would you be without music? Music is
everything. Nature is music (cicadas in the tropical night). The sea is music,
the wind is music. The rain drumming on the roof and the storm raging in the
sky are music. Music is the oldest entity. The scope of music is immense and
infinite. It is the ‘esperanto’ of the world."
Thus the jazz journalist's paradox, wedged halfway between Monk's
comment and Ellington's.
Attachments
As luck would have it, while in the midst of pondering these
philosophically, morally confounding matters, the dark clouds parted for a
moment and a grandly appropriate opportunity fell from the sky, a singular chance
to connect readers directly with an important piece of music and many of its principal
creators.
Lyricist and singer Lorraine Feather had released her CD, Attachments (Jazzed Media, 2013), after skillfully
assembling many of the same stellar session players she has used for her two
recent, Grammy-nominated CDs, Tales
of the Unusual (Jazzed Media, 2012) and Ages (Jazzed Media, 2010)--i.e.,
guitarist Grant Geissman, bassist Michael Valerio, violinist Charles Bisharat,
drummer/percussionists Michael Shapiro, Gregg Field and Tony Morales, plus a
guest visit from saxophonist Bob Mintzer (on bass clarinet)--the sort of busy, in-demand
musicians who require a fair bit of coordinating to gather together and get
recorded in the same studio, at the same time.
More significantly, Feather had managed to reassemble the
same cast of musical co-writers with whom she had collaborated on those two
previous recordings, composers whose stylistic breadth and technical facility span
an ever-widening musical spectrum: Russell Ferrante, the versatile keyboardist/arranger
for the ambitiously metamorphosing band, Yellowjackets; Shelly Berg, monster
stride pianist and Dean of Music at the University of Miami; and Eddie Arkin,
veteran producer, guitarist and author of Jazz
Masters Series: Creative Chord Substitution For Guitar (Alfred Music, 2004).
Added to this bewitching mixture was J.S. Bach on one piece and Joey Calderazzo
on another. But it was her new collaboration with the extraordinary Dave Grusin
that caught my eye.
Grusin's addition to this gathering of
composer/collaborators signaled a new direction for Feather, which, if you are
familiar with Ages and Tales of the Unusual, and choose to view
all three recordings as a suite, is almost de
rigueur for the progression of the series--the recordings being like three chapters
in a book, each startlingly different from the last, but thematically
consistent with basic subtexts in the other recordings. Charles Bisharat's
addition for Tales of the Unusual presaged
the kismet of Grusin's arrival for Attachments.
When Lorraine Feather records a song, she chooses the
company she keeps carefully. She needs to. As a lyricist, first and foremost,
she writes the most profoundly thoughtful and emotional lyrics in contemporary jazz;
as a supremely gifted vocalist, she therefore demands music that translates one
of these poetic pieces into a form that is vocable and singable. While many
others have sung her songs (Julie Andrews, Patti Austin, Diane Schuur, Cleo
Laine, Janis Siegel), doing so requires a certain vocal dexterity and emotional
bravery. And as her own principal artist, her sophisticated lines necessarily demand
that she collaborate with composers and arrangers who possess the sensitivity to
compose for this wordsmith's famous turn-on-a-dime diction and agile voice.
So when I discovered that, one for one, all these co-writers,
including the somewhat elusive Grusin, were so enthused about the Attachments project that they wanted to
talk about it, I knew I was onto something good and rare. When I discovered
that her recording engineers (Geoff Gillette and Carlos Del Rosario), those
unacknowledged legislators of the music world, were equally enthusiastic about discussing the technical aspects of this
music, I leapt at the chance. It was apparent that the quality of the entire
recording was what all these musical wizards were jazzed about.
Dave Grusin
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| Dave Grusin |
Dave Grusin is one of those few fortunate jazz masters who
have climbed to the top of the twin peaks of both critical and commercial
success. In addition to co-founding GRP records in 1978 and producing some of
the earliest digital jazz recordings, he has won 12 Grammys, plus an Academy
Award in 1988 for the original score he composed for The Milagro Beanfield War. Hollywood discovered early on that he
could write blockbuster movie scores--the kind that make good films great, and
which are a genre of composing all of their own--and from that golden touch he's
produced the scores for The Graduate,
The Firm, The Fabulous Baker Boys, The
Heart Is A Lonely Hunter, Tootsie,
Heaven Can Wait, The Friends of Eddie Coyle, Three
Days of the Condor, etc. It's a long list.
When I suggested to Grusin that Feather compared favorably
to the great jazz lyricists and song stylists of the past, he responded by
saying, "I think your assessment about Lorraine as a lyricist and jazz singer
is right on. Besides having a tremendous grip on the craft, her ideas about
subject matter for lyrics are so different from most songwriters’, it puts her
in a category of her own, in terms of what she chooses to write about. Plus,
she has the free-wheeling stylistic sense of letting the piece go where it
needs to go ... maybe a little reminiscent of how Dave Frishberg or Blossom
Dearie would allow things to just 'happen.'”
While working together on an album project for singer Monica
Mancini, Feather approached Grusin with the radical idea of writing lyrics to a
piece he had composed for his outstanding soundtrack (all solo piano) of The Firm, ‘Memphis Stomp,’ a hyperkinetic,
rumbling boogie full of slippery syncopation. As Feather recalled, "I was
a little nervous about playing him my lyrics for ‘Memphis
Stomp,'" because I wrote a whole counter-melody and
a short vocalese section, and I was hoping it would seem musical to him."
It did. Grusin liked it quite a lot, in fact. "Working
with her on Monica’s album was a delight, and when she suggested a lyric idea
for 'Memphis Stomp,' as crazy as it sounded, I was into it," he said. "The version we did for her Attachments project is basically the
original piano part, with her special sense of where a vocal should lay in… and
with her consistent sense of 'story.' I’ve
learned that every one of her works has that element. It was much fun
re-visiting that piano part … in spite of actually needing to re-learn it!"
The other tune Grusin did with her for Attachments came from an idea he had one day as they were wrapping
up a rehearsal for "Memphis Stomp." He began playing J. S. Bach's
"Air on the G String," and asked Feather what she thought about the
possibility of writing words to it. The devastating lyrics she wrote for the
resulting song, "True," and her heart-rending delivery, would make
Bach himself weep--for joy, with grief, or from profound awe at the human
spirit, it's hard to say--and would certainly change the way he heard his own
composition the next time he listened to it. As Grusin explained, "the
Bach 'Air' is something I had done with Bobby McFerrin, who did it as a
vocalese. I told Lorraine about it, and played her the beautiful Josh Bell
recording. She went home and came back the next morning with this lyric--another
example of the genius that inhabits this woman. [N.B., Feather demurs on this
point, and says she hadn't quite finished it by morning.] We decided to add
Charlie Bisharat’s violin to this version, even though Lorraine’s vocal is the
original violin melody. I think the result is beautifully satisfying, without
too much alteration of the intent of the original.
"The other songs on Attachments
are all amazing examples of how she creates with incredibly talented writers … Russ
Ferrante, Shelly Berg, and Eddie Arkin.
They all have a great sense of ‘song,’ and sensitivity to Lorraine’s
stories. My hope is to do more work with
her, and continue to be amazed and inspired by her phenomenal abilities."
Shelly Berg
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| Shelly Berg |
Shelly Berg is a musical and educational force of nature. As
a pianist and arranger, he has worked with such a diversity of people that just
fitting all their representative genres into a single sentence is difficult: Arturo
Sandoval, George Benson, Natalie Cole, Chicago, Gloria Estefan, Bonnie Raitt,
KISS, Nancy Wilson ... After eight years spent chairing the jazz studies department
of the University of Southern California's Thornton School of Music, he moved cross-country
in 2008 and became dean of the Frost School of Music at the University of
Miami. His non-traditional teaching methods separate him from the dry,
stultifying musician mills, because he thinks music students should spend more
time practicing and playing, less time studying and thinking about it. He is a
brilliantly impulsive composer, and plays stride piano like a white Art Tatum.
But because he and Feather live at opposite corners of the
continental U.S. (she on an island north of Washington state's Olympic
Peninsula, almost in Canada, he in Miami and a boat ride from Cuba) the
question for curious minds is: how do you write songs together?
"It is a marvel to Lorraine and me that our songwriting
process goes very fast. We write two or three songs in one session of a
few hours. I don't come in with musical ideas worked out in advance, because I
don't want to become attached to an idea that doesn't resonate with Lorraine."
Feather commented similarly, that while working with Berg,
he typically doesn't get involved in composing until "the end of the
process, because I almost never see him. I always say this, but it blows my
mind how close we are and how well and fast we work together, no matter how
long it has been. As far as ‘The Veil’ goes, I had never intended to write the
lyric, and when we were finally going to get together, toward the ending of the
writing for the album, I had it in hand, so showed it to him and asked if he
thought it could be a song. He said he thought so, but wasn't 100% sure.
So ‘The Veil’ took a little longer. It had evolved in a way I hadn't heard
yet, when we got to the session, and now it's one of my favorites of ours.”
On the other hand, she says, "Because Gregg Field will
be the drummer when Shelly and I do a group piece, I think of something that
would be great to hear Gregg play, ‘I Love You Guys’ being a classic example, a
fast swing with a lot of fills. Shelly practically wrote it before I'd finished
reading him the words."
Berg says, "She often has rhythms in mind, and so I ask
her to speak the lyrics to me using the rhythms she imagines. Sometimes we
talk further at that point, but usually I dive into a chord progression or
intro figure that expresses the vibe of the song. As musical form emerges,
Lorraine will sometimes alter a lyric so it can fit into the form we are
constructing. I think our songs have gotten more complex over the years,
and are now becoming like miniature musical 'plays'."
"I Love You Guys," a song he and Feather
collaborated on for the Attachments
CD, is just such a musical play. In fact, it is almost a play within a play, a
heart-on-the-sleeve valentine and sweetly sardonic commentary on Life As A
Musician In Our Times. The arrangement's musical twists and turns mirror
Feather's lyrical layering of sarcastic tweaks, puns, inside musician jokes and
gig cosmology, played at a breakneck pace maintained by an all-time killer
rhythm section of Michael Valerio on bass, Gregg Field on drums, plus the
ever-ebullient rolling thunder and lightning of Shelly Berg.
In commenting to Berg about the recording, I told him that
after it opens with his totally out-of-the-box piano intro, "Gregg Field's
drums and Michael Valerio's bass fly along comically, like one of those
Keystone Cops car chases where the drivers are skidding around the corners and
narrowly missing the pedestrians, while the escaping pianist knocks over a
fruit stand and scatters a flock of freaked-out pigeons."
His response was, "I love your description of this
song! Right from the beginning I had an idea, which Lorraine loved, and
so we wrote to that concept. So often, musicians are overqualified, in
terms of technique and sophistication, for the music they are playing.
They play 'casual gigs' with watered-down standard songs, all the
while chomping at the bit to bust out with their real chops. We decided to
highlight that tension between the gig and the truer aspirations of the musicians.
So we began the recording with the 'out of place' piano solo that would be
either taboo, or pushing the envelope on most gigs. Throughout the song we
return to a riff in the rhythm section that would be from a stock arrangement
of a swing era song, and that riff is symbolic of the guys paying their dues on
the bandstand. The tempo is another key element. On most gigs, this
tempo wouldn't be used, because it can't be danced to. But jazz musicians
love to be 'on the edge,' and we wanted to convey that feeling. I
couldn't have had more fun with a song, and my tongue is still implanted in my
cheek."
Commenting on the maturing and transformation he has seen in
Feather, with whom he has been composing for several years, he said, "I
think Lorraine's recordings have become even more personal to her. Even
though almost none of her songs are autobiographical, they speak to the journey
of her life. There seems to be more at stake each time we write together,
in terms of the significance of what she wants to say. It is a real honor
to be her collaborator.
"Lorraine has had two Grammy-nominated CDs in a row.
This is no accident. She is one of the most profound and compelling
musical storytellers of our time. I hope the elusive Grammy win occurs with this
album. Attachments may be her most
brilliant recording yet, although I say that each time! As my life gets
more complex, I have less time to work with her, so my role diminishes.
This may be fortunate for her, because the songs she is writing with
Eddie Arkin, Russ Ferrante, and Dave Grusin are amazing."
Eddie Arkin
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| Eddie Arkin |
Eddie Arkin is Lorraine Feather's oldest friend and
songwriting partner. A composer, guitarist, producer and arranger who has
worked with a gamut of people that includes Stanley Clarke, Diane Schuur,
Nnenna Freelon, Lee Ritenour, Barry Manilow, Nancy Wilson and David Benoit, he
has been Feather's simpatico first-call collaborator since the beginning of her
songwriting career.
One of Feather's songs can involve an interconnected series
of lyrical adventures. Commenting on what this involves, she said: "Eddie
is great for a writing process that has a long trajectory and a lot of
sections. 'Attachments' was on the
complicated side to write--it evolved slowly from just a 'list' song about
someone's various lovers, to the other attachments in a person's life, and then
at the end, what I had first conceived as someone talking to himself or
herself, turned into an intimate conversation over drinks, and you realize that
one has been saying these things to another. I came up with my talking lines at
the end, "I don't know where you're going with this and I don't want to
talk about it," after the song was pretty much done, ran the idea by
Eddie and he liked it. If I have several ideas for a word or phrase, he will
always tell me right away which of them he would choose. He's especially
discerning that way. I'm also more likely to bring him a lyric I'm unsure of,
because if he doesn't think it would make a good song, he'll say so immediately."
Feather often begins writing a song by having her husband,
drummer Tony Morales, work out a groove and record it. As a lyricist, her
writing is so poetically conceived, with such precision meter and rhyming, that
she can use what Morales records for her to build the lyrical architecture of
the song. "On the Attachments album, he did this on four songs,"
Feather told me. "How it works is that either I ask Tony if he could play
something in a certain vein, like a slow shuffle featuring the toms, as if I
were singing 'Why Don't You Do Right?'--I requested this recently--or a samba
or rhumba or whatever, or I hear him playing something and get excited about it
and ask if he'd please record it. He'll loop it for a few minutes, and I'll
listen to that when I'm writing the lyrics."
When I asked Arkin how he utilizes these rhythm patterns
that Morales records, he said, "I’ll start by saying Tony is a terrific
drummer. What he develops are usually 2- or 4-bar loops that Lorraine writes
her lyrics to. This affects the composition in two ways. The most obvious is
that these grooves define and lock in the tempo. Secondly, depending on the
style of these loops, whether they’re Latin, jazz, hip-hop, swing, etc., they
will help define how the arrangement will unfold as Lorraine and I work on the
song.
"As our writing process begins, we almost always get
together in person and Lorraine will often speak the lyric in rhythmic phrases,
showing me how she hears the lyric against the groove. This is often our
jumping-off point, and we usually play around with the rhythm as I come up with
melodic ideas. What we always work out on our own, independent of these grooves,
is the length of the musical phrases and the differing rhythmic patterns within
these phrases.
"Interestingly, for all the sophistication in both the
music and lyrics of Lorraine’s and my songs together, the actual compositions,
almost all the time, follow quite traditional songwriting forms. For example,
“Attachments” is written in an “AABAC” form. The verses are twelve bars long--very
traditional, though not a blues--and the B and C sections are both eight bars
long, again very traditional. So, we expand these traditions by playing with
the rhythmic phrasing of the lyrics, and using sophisticated chordal harmony."
One of Feather's hallmarks is a unique ability to fearlessly
attack the diction of a lyric. Slow, medium, fast or crazy fast, she can sing all
the words and hit all the notes in her vocal range. I asked Arkin how this, a
skill few singers possess, affects the way he composes.
He said, "As we jazz musicians like to say, Lorraine
has “big ears” [referring to the aural attribute rather than the physical
attribute]. So this is an area where our collaborations can really take off.
Along with her razor sharp diction, Lorraine also possesses the ability to hit
intervals that are outside the normal diatonic or blues scale style of
songwriting. Thus, we’re free to come up
with melodies that are quite chromatic in nature, plus she’s really comfortable
singing the upper extensions of chords. And with the versatility of her voice,
I can write a melody in her lower register and all of a sudden jump as much as
an octave, and continue in her upper register with a smoothness as if she were
singing one continuous line. These elements allow us to create very dramatic
colors and constantly changing emotions.
At the same time, she sings with a softness that pulls the listener into
her story. Her voice is especially well suited to the depth and personal
characteristics of her lyrics."
"Hearing Things" is a quintessential Feather tune
with the kind of lyrics few other songwriters would write, even if they could, and
fewer yet would ever have the composure to sing convincingly. A song about that
emotional echo chamber in which one wants so much to simply engage with another
human being--but can't quite--it lights a candle in that dark place where one
is unable to easily distinguish between what is plausible and what is possible,
what is imagined or what is desired. The emotional miasm is an uncomfortable
place, but as the song ends it turns a completely unexpected corner as Feather's
voice is overdubbed in an eerie, Felliniesque chorus that hovers and floats instead
of fading, until it ends neatly and logically, like an exhalation. It is
musical terra incognita, and similar
to other compositions on this recording like "A Little Like This" or
"The Veil," Feather's lyrics seem to have gone deeper and become more
emotionally complex than ever before.
I asked Arkin, whose long collaboration with Feather has
seen many changes of direction, if the experience of writing with her has changed.
"As with any close relationship, be it a spouse, friend
or collaborator, we all hold out a fervent hope that as our hierarchy of needs
change, we can all grow and change together in some parallel way. Lorraine and I have been quite lucky in this
matter. We’ve been writing together for close to 30 years, going back to the
first major recording of one of our songs, “Big Fun” by Barry Manilow, for his
album Swing Street and the subsequent
CBS television special, Big Fun On Swing
Street. In those days, the music came first and then the lyrics, often [with
each of us] working our part out on our own. We continued writing all through
the 1980s and the beginning of the 1990s, at which time I became quite busy as
a TV composer, so songwriting took a backseat for me for the next ten years.
"As Lorraine began to write her own albums featuring
herself as an artist, our method of working changed. She came up with the lyrics first and we
started to sit in the same room, working out these tunes together, at least
until we had a substantial part of the song written. Then I would develop the arrangement more
until the next time we got together. I think sitting in the same room and
hashing these ideas out can only occur with two people who’ve worked together
for many years and have established a vulnerable and trusting relationship.
"I like to think of our collaborative efforts as
growing deeper with each new project. However, I’ve always felt that our
writing over the years has been quite emotional. What I love about it, and feel is quite
unique about Lorraine’s lyric writing, is that it covers the whole landscape of
the human condition. Besides the humor, wit, literary and poetic intelligence,
Lorraine’s lyrics are at the same time full of longing, yearning, comfort,
acceptance, sensuality, and even fear. So I like to think of our songs as an
ongoing development of our talent and skills that is hopefully growing deeper
with each new project.
"As for the song 'Hearing Things', it’s written in 6/4
time but does not have a waltz feel. The rhythm, as I learned later, is a
Peruvian style called a Lando. The accent is on beat 1 and 5, so it has the
feel of 1234, 12. I feel the music and the lyric of this piece create a very
mysterious, almost existential mood. Lorraine and I decided to have a chorale
at the end of the song, where the rhythmic feel becomes more waltz-like. Notice
how beautifully Lorraine’s overdubs blend on the different lines in the mostly
2-part but sometimes 3-part harmony."
When asked if he saw any other differences between Feather's
work on Attachments and her last recording,
Tales of the Unusual, Arkin said,
"I only see small differences between the two projects. Mainly from a
music and lyrics standpoint, there seems to be more of a spatial aspect to Attachments. There’s more instrumental
'blowing' or improvisation in this album, and I feel the compositions contain
more of what I would call positive and negative space, meaning more spread out.
I feel this album really breathes and the listener has more room to experience
the project as a whole. Also I believe the subject matter is more universal, [something]
most people can identify with.”
I asked Arkin if he ever employed a device that I sometimes use
myself when writing: which is, reading lines I have written out loud to myself,
in order to hear the sound of the words as opposed to the meanings of those
same words, in order to make adjustments when sounds or cadences could be at
odds with the sentence's meaning, potentially causing confusion for the reader.
In my case it would result in changing the vocabulary or grammar to suit the
communication; in his case, it would mean adjusting the composition to suit
Feather's lyrics.
"I do a similar thing to you, although my version is I
sing the lines to myself. It seems the choices I make as I’m composing happen
on a subliminal level, somewhat outside my conscious awareness and thought
process. If a melody works for me, it’s usually because it feels right
emotionally and seems to feel in sync with the lyrics. Some songs kind of compose themselves, while
others need rewriting or revisiting. Sometimes a change in a song will reveal
itself after a writing session, in sort of a visceral way, kind of like having
a splinter in your finger that will irritate you until you take care of it.
Changes in the writing process can take place by the piano, but often come to
me while I’m doing something completely unrelated, like taking a shower or
driving my car. Lorraine and I discuss the lyric before I start writing the
melody, so we’re usually in sync as to what the meaning of the song is about."
One of the outstanding songs on Attachments is the tune "159," a quirky, rhythmically
catchy song about a family sitting around their kitchen table while the drummer
son lays down the groove to "The Clapping Song" with his metronome
set to 159. The tune opens with bassist Michael
Valerio doing some fetching Slam Stewart-style scatting along with his swinging
bass melody that bumps right into the groove, which Feather says her husband
Tony recorded to assist her in writing the song's lyrics. It's a tune destined
to be one of those Lorraine Feather instant radio classics, so I asked Arkin
how the lightning-in-a-bottle composition had evolved.
"Lorraine wrote the lyric and Tony sent the groove,
which he called a 'jump swing.' With
this tune, I came up with a couple of 4-bar progressions before we got together,
ones that might work as a basis for building the song. When we met, Lorraine immediately picked the
progression you hear in the finished tune.
My idea, musically, was to pick something that was hypnotic or
trance-like, that had a certain subtle smoothness and an ostinato-montuno repeated bass line. The melody
came very quickly on this particular song.
"While working on '159' I happened to go to a jazz club
to see pianist Mike Lang play. Mike Valerio was playing with him, and much to
my surprise, he was featured singing--very well--on one of his original
tunes. I told Lorraine about his
excellent singing, and we both thought it would be cool to have him open '159'
playing a bass solo and scatting.
What I love about this track is that it grooves like crazy,
and yet never gets above mezzo forte,
so Lorraine [was able to] sort of glide above the track, using the lyrics much
like an added percussion instrument to punctuate the rhythm. "
The arranger's palette grew rapidly on this and her previous
CD, when Feather added Bisharat and his imaginative violin work. But her
regular troupe are increasingly willing to try anything, as demonstrated by
Valerio's scatting or Grant Geissman's magician's sense of guitar swing, or the
drummers' various approaches to exactly how to "fill" a request
(e.g., from Shelly Berg to Gregg Field, to "Throw another bucket of fish
on" a wild section of "I Love You Guys"). I wanted to know from
Arkin how the recording was influenced by writing with these personnel in
mind.
"I find Lorraine's CD to be a virtual treasure chest of
talent. There can be no better example of the phrase 'the whole is greater than
the sum of its parts.' On my compositions, the band consisted of Russell
Ferrante on piano, Grant Geissman, guitar, Charlie Bisharat, violin, Mike
Valerio, bass, and Mike Shapiro on drums. It's very rare indeed to find a group
of musicians so accomplished that they can play anything you put in front of
them, no matter how technically sophisticated, and at the same time introduce
ideas and embellishments to these charts that go far beyond the written
page. Simply put, their mastery and
creativity blow me away."
Russell Ferrante
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| Russell Ferrante |
Producer, arranger and multi-keyboardist Russell Ferrante is
the last remaining original member of Yellowjackets, the legendary fusion (and
beyond) band formed in 1978 that, among other things, was one of the seminal 1980s
aggregations to keep the flame alive along with groups like Weather Report, Chick
Corea's Elektric Band and the Rippingtons, but which unlike those bands, keeps
the flame alive still. The band's tastefully adventurous work is largely due to
Ferrante's guidance and vision as a composer. In addition to his work with Yellowjackets,
he has also written and produced records for a wide range of artists, including
Al Jarreau, Bobby McFerrin, Michael Franks, Diane Reeves and Sadao Watanabe.
Of the co-writers Lorraine Feather works with, Ferrante is
perhaps the most stylistically eclectic and likeliest to compose something not
immediately recognizable as his. His broad mastery of harmony and
orchestrational theory result in a fountain of compositional ideas that might bear
a strong resemblance to Rachmaninoff at one moment, Zawinul the next, Debussy
the next, and still remain uniquely his. Watching his instructional videos, you
get the feeling that you are listening to a musical scientist, a particularly
analytical intellectual who lives and breathes harmony, rhythm, melody, and
especially compositional narrative. Then there is his staggering pianistic
technique. He can play anything that he writes.
And he loves writing with Lorraine Feather: "I'm a huge
fan of Lorraine's lyric writing and singing. After working together for the
past twenty years or so, I think I've come to better understand her unique
musical world. It encompasses early American musical genres from blues, stride,
and swing to the present day. Her lyrics often suggest a mash-up of all those
eras! I, too, share a love for all those musical styles. Each style has its own
melodic, harmonic and rhythmic vocabulary. I think all of Lorraine's
collaborators have to speak those various musical languages in order to support
her lyrics in the most authentic way.
"The songs we've written together have been constructed
different ways. Early on, Lorraine would send me a lyric and I'd write the
music I thought best supported her lyric. Songs like "The Girl With the
Lazy Eye" were written this way. More recently, we've been brainstorming
together at my house, with both of us throwing ideas back and forth. Once we
settle on the direction for the song, I'll work on it on my own and send MP3s
for her input and direction.
"I guess in the simplest terms, you're always trying to
find a balance of heart and head. One studies music to gain a working
vocabulary, but then one has to move into the realm of the heart, to grasp the
emotional center of a lyric and find the best possible way to serve it."
Feather's Attachments CD
opens with a captivatingly earthy tune with a 19th Century American folk song
vibe. Even for one of their collaborations, it is very unusual. Feather had
said " 'A Little Like This' is in 7, so I knew Russ would come up with
something tasty and hypnotic for the accompaniment, and I thought he'd like the
rhythm I had in mind for the vocal. What he does rhythmically with Yellowjackets
is so sophisticated, but it never sounds contrived. I admire his deep knowledge
of time, though I would not attempt anything as complex as the tunes he does
with his group. We have adapted classical pieces that I knew he'd
sound beautiful on. There's something soul-satisfying about exploring the
hybrid world of jazz and classical music with Russ."
So I asked Ferrante how he frequently manages to compose in
an utterly different style, as he did on "A Little Like This," while
still keeping what he is writing tethered to her lyrics.
"That song was indeed a bit of a departure for us.
Lorraine's husband, Tony, had created a drum loop that was the starting point
for the rhythm of the song. I tried to create something that had a more open
feeling, almost a modal feeling. Again, all of Lorraine's collaborators have
diverse musical tastes, from folk music to orchestral music. It's fun and
challenging to step into those different music worlds. In a way, it's like an
actor playing a different role than the one most associated with him.”
On Feather's previous CD, Tales of the Unusual violinist Charles Bisharat was brought into
her heady mix of session players and created such an impact that he was issued
a permanent RSVP. His playing on Attachments
on "Anna Lee" or "A Little Like This" is so much a part of
the arrangement that it's hard to imagine it being any other way. One of the
most obvious uses of Bisharat's colorations is as a second voice paired with Feather's,
so I asked Ferrante how writing for Lorraine's voice worked in relationship to writing
for Bisharat's violin or another instrument.
"We always give Charlie lots of free reign in the
arrangements. He's more like a horn player in a jazz band, with lots of space
to create his own parts. I do write a few specific things for him that are part
of the arrangement, the same way you would write for any second voice,
employing harmonies and counter melodies to help move the arrangement
along.
"A voice has a more limited range than most other
instruments, so one needs to keep things in a certain area to best take
advantage of each singer's unique vocal qualities. Lorraine has a very solid
understanding of her voice. If we write anything that is in an awkward range
for her, she'll let us know!"
The arrangement Ferrante wrote for "Smitten With You,"
with the lyrics that fellow dog-lover Feather wrote for her rescue mutt,
Sterling, modulates deceptively from an odd little Prokofiev-sounding march
time, to a kind of balladic middle and back to the march, then out with a full,
almost big-band sound with Valerio's bass, Bisharat's violin and Bob Mintzer's
bass clarinet. It is such a melodically incongruous composition (for Feather) that
I asked him how the arrangement evolved.
"That was one of those instances where, together,
Lorraine and I landed on the initial feeling for the song. The beginning chords
just kind of spilled out. After that it wasn't as easy. I encountered several "Not
A Through Street" signs before hitting upon a treatment for the middle
section. Once that was in place, the ending evolved naturally from the
beginning with a slight tweak of the harmony and rhythm."
Carlos Del Rosario
Carlos Del Rosario is a singer, producer and engineer who
has been recording Lorraine Feather's vocals for over fifteen years. Such
stellar engineering captures as Feather's Ages
and Tales of the Unusual speak
volumes for what he does, in addition to the work he has done with Denise
Donatelli, Stephen Bishop, Arturo Sandoval, Yo-Yo Ma, and Judy Wexler.
I mentioned to Del Rosario that on 2012's Tales of the Unusual plus on her new Attachments CD, her voice sounds fuller
and clearer, and the overall sound of the individual musicians' performances,
separately and collectively, sound bigger, the aural space greatly expanded,
and asked him if he was doing something different with the file compression or
if there was anything else different in the way he was recording her.
"I've recorded her from her very first solo album using
the same microphone, a Neumann Tube U-67 and the preamp. I think the difference
you're hearing is really Lorraine. The growth she's made in the last few years
in her expression is just amazing.
"Geoff [Gillette] is solely responsible for the
recording of the band and I'm responsible for recording and editing of all of
her vocals. And we mix together. Yes, you're right about the compression. We've
been using less and less of it. And we are very conscious of the aural
space that you talk about, which gives each instrument the dynamic range
without trampling the other musicians, as you say.
I asked him if Feather's lyrics--which are so dynamically maneuverable,
from very soft or even whispered, to quick staccato attacks, hairpin turns and octave
leaps--involve anything special while mixing one of her vocals, or if the
lyrical content influenced the way he recorded it.
"No, the lyrical content doesn't really influence the
way I record her, although at the editing stage I may take a syllable or two
and EQ them differently or compress just those syllables alone to make them
come out."
Del Rosario has recently done beautiful multi-tracked vocals
on a couple of Feather's tunes, like "Hearing Things" on Attachments, even recording Michael
Valerio doing some sweet scatting, as mentioned earlier, so I asked him about
these new directions.
"Geoff [Gillette] recorded Mike's scatting live as he
played the bass. Yes, we are proud of the way it came out. I don't know if I'm
supposed to divulge this to anyone yet, but I just recorded a multi-tracked
vocal that's a lot more extensive than she's ever done before, on a piece that's
written and arranged by Eddie Arkin for the next album. This is something you
should look forward to!" [The album, slated to be finished over the course
of 2013, is entitled Flirting With
Disaster.]
The group of musicians Lorraine has been bringing together
for her last three albums have started to sound very coordinated, like a real
working band, so I asked him how that has influenced the experience of
recording them.
"You're right again. When she settled down with these
guys, her music became emotionally thicker and juicier. And that's definitely
reflected in the whole production. Each one of these guys has such a special
connection and understanding with her music, it shows so blatantly in their
performances individually and collectively. I don't record them myself, but I have
a hell of a lot of fun mixing.
"I've seen her evolve constantly and consistently as a
writer and vocalist. When we first met, I was a recording artist for Dave
Grusin's GRP label under the name of "Yutaka". I contacted her
because I wanted her to write some lyrics to my song. We hit it off right away,
and from then on she's been coming to my studio for the recording. As a
musician, I find her evolving astounding in her ideas, her literary abilities,
her vocal performances and of course that Lorraine Featherism that you find in
all of her compositions. She's a true one of a kind. I am so fortunate to get
to be a part of this team."
Geoff Gillette
Geoff Gillette has been recording music since the mid-1970s,
capturing for eternity a Who's Who list that includes B.B. King, Dori Caymmi,
Jon Hendricks, Yo-Yo Ma, Sergio Mendes, T-Bone Burnett and Flora Purim. Like Rudy
Van Gelder and the other great ones, he is the music world's version of the gentle
family doctor who is a master of the recording arts and sciences, empirical and
hard-nosed in doing what is needed to breathe life. In person, Gillette is the
warmest, kindest sort of gentleman, but as an engineer, he is a nuts-and-bolts
technician all the way. Since Edison got his patent, there has never been
anything natural about a sound recording, except in the end result. When I
compared Gillette's recordings favorably to Van Gelder's, he did just what he
should have: he ignored the compliment, and explained how it is that he (and
Carlos Del Rosario) recorded Lorraine Feather in such a way that listening to
her CD feels like sitting in the room with her and her band:
"There are a lot of elements adding up to why her
records sound the way they do, starting with the writers and the musicians
she's assembled. Lorraine has created a great team that has been fairly
consistent over the years, the newest great addition being Dave Grusin on the Attachments album.
"The recording process is usually done at Entourage Studio in North Hollywood, where I have recorded probably close to fifty records over the years. I know the room well. It's a great-sounding wood room with a vintage Neve console to record through. Recording through this particular piece of analog equipment makes a big difference. Then, of course, it's a matter of putting the right microphones in the right places. Lorraine's vocals are always recorded using a beautiful, restored Neumann U67 tube microphone.
"What is interesting about the way Lorraine makes records is that she'll do two or three songs at a time, and then several months go by before the next session, while she's working on the next songs. We hardly notice that we've done a whole record, when one day, Lorraine announces that the recording is done and it's time to mix.
"The good thing about the way we mix is that we take
our time, and are continuously revisiting each mix, listening on many different
systems and making notes and adjustments as we go. There are four of us
doing the reviewing: Eddie Arkin, Carlos, myself, and of course, Lorraine.
There's a lot of attention to detail, especially making sure we hear and understand
all of Lorraine's wonderful lyrics. We call this part of the process 'nit-picking,'
and we have some special techniques in balancing Lorraine's vocals with the
band. This multiple scrutinization adds up to a refinement that ends up with
everyone happy. What's great is that Lorraine always goes the full nine
yards in allowing this to happen. Mixing by committee seems to work very
well.
"Also, for the last two records, the mixes have been put through a Neve summing device which puts digital mixes back through analog, giving it an even bigger, warmer sound.
The final step is a good mastering with Bernie Grundman and voila, there you have it.
"One of my favorite things in life is making a Lorraine Feather record. I can't wait till we start the next one..."
Photo credits
Geoff Gillette, Lorraine Feather, Carlos Del Rosario: Eddie
Arkin
Dave Grusin: Andy Ihnatko
Shelly Berg: Jim Wadsworth Productions
Eddie Arkin: Timothy Teague
Russell Ferrante: Mitch Haupers
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