A Quote by Terry Teachout
In the early days of jazz, it was ensemble music: everybody playing all together. Nobody really stood out.
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I started out trying to play more straight-ahead jazz. I went to Berklee in the early '60s when it was a brand new school, and so there was no fusion music. There wasn't a lot of mixing together of different kinds of music at that time, so jazz was kind of pure jazz.
I really want to bring ensemble playing back to the forefront - not just for me, but for everyone in jazz. When you have a group, a true co-op group, you can really heighten the possibilities of all the treasures of jazz.
I never liked jazz music because jazz music doesn't resolve. But I was outside the Bagdad Theater in Portland one night when I saw a man playing the saxophone. I stood there for fifteen minutes, and he never opened his eyes.
There's something beautifully friendly and elevating about a bunch of guys playing music together. This wonderful little world that is unassailable. It's really teamwork, one guy supporting the others, and it's all for one purpose, and there's no flies in the ointment, for a while. And nobody conducting, it's all up to you. It's really jazz__that's the big secret. Rock and roll ain't nothing but jazz with a hard backbeat.
I never liked jazz music because jazz music doesn't resolve. But I was outside the Bagdad Theater in Portland one night when I saw a man playing the saxophone. I stood there for fifteen minutes, and he never opened his eyes. After that I liked jazz music. Sometimes you have to watch somebody love something before you can love it yourself. It is as if they are showing you the way. I used to not like God because God didn't resolve. But that was before any of this happened.
Even though I started playing the violin when I was four, my early chamber music experiences helped build a strong foundation for my solo work, as all music is a rich language and dialogue that is shared on stage, no matter what the size of the ensemble.
Everybody was on the same page. Nobody has really gone out there on a different musical journey. When we got back together again, we all wanted to do the same kind of music.
As a kid, I would listen to anything that had a live orchestra or ensemble playing, so that covered everything from show tunes to eclectic jazz things to film soundtracks to classical music. They're all inspiring to me.
I grew up in a home filled with music and had an early appreciation of jazz since my dad was a jazz musician. Beginning at around age three I started singing with his band and jazz music has continued to be one of my three passions along with acting and writing. I like to say jazz music is my musical equivalent of comfort food. It's always where I go back to when I want to feel grounded.
Jazz music should be inclusive. Smooth jazz to me rules out a certain kind of drama and a certain tension that I think all music needs. Especially jazz music, since improvising is one of the cornerstones of what jazz is. And when you smooth it out, you take all the drama out of it.
Jazz should be recognized as music of the people, based in a lot of accents and melodies. What is jazz but music that people danced to? Jazz has the dynamic thing. I don't think you have to be playing only Charlie Parker licks on your horn or whatever the new version of that is.
I think of myself as a jazz player, and my music as a natural extension of the jazz tradition. What I'm doing is completely free improvisation ('composing in real time') with nothing predetermined. I've had a lot of experience playing many different kinds of music and several different instruments, and since I tend not to waste anything, it all shows up somewhere in the music I'm playing now.
I was very lucky, because when I was at school, I had a great music teacher who would just take out these free-jazz records and play them for me. So it was in my early teens that I started to listen to jazz.
Truth of the matter is, jazz is American music. And that doesn't mean bebop. Jazz is really about improvising. All the music that's been created in America has been pretty much improvised... Whether it's hillbilly or rock n' roll for blues, it's basically jazz music... It's basically about another way of hearing what comes out of America.
I never started out to be an action actor. I was an ensemble actor. "Rocky" was an ensemble film. "F.I.S.T." was an ensemble. "Paradise Alley" was an ensemble.
When an ensemble is really tight or playing as one, it's a transcendental experience. It is spiritual. It goes beyond the ensemble. Ray and I and Robby and Jim were pretty tight, musically and spiritually.
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