Jazz for aficionados

Rok, with all due respect you could not be more mistaken in both your assertions and your assumptions. No one has suggested that classical music is better than jazz. Both are serious music and each demands different disciplines. The truth is that classical puts a level of technical demands on the player that jazz does not. Even Wynton, accomplished as he is, would not be able to consistently do what the principal trumpet in a major symphony orchestra is required to do. Likewise, Duke playing Scriabin wouldn't sound any more credible than most orchestras playing Mingus. In your eagerness to run to the defense of jazz you fail to see what one of the beauties of jazz is: the fact that great music can be made by a player with RELATIVELY limited (by classical music standards) command of their instrument. It is a music that not only allows a less structured approach to playing, but in some ways requires it. It is not harder to play jazz than to play classical. You obviously don't know just how hard it is (to use one example) to play one single note perfectly in tune and control it all the way from a whisper to a roar. Improvising at a high level is also very difficult and to compare the two disciplines in an attempt to proclaim one to be "better" is silly and, frankly, sophomoric.

Once again, one of the many reasons why learning a little more about music is extremely valuable. Nothing wrong with simply enjoying it and relying on what one likes best, but once assertions l like that are made some facts to back them up are needed.

Mapman, I think you have a great attitude about your choices for music. "Only two kinds, good and bad"

Acman3, I will offer some thoughts about old/new styles as you suggested when I have some time. Nice clip of Lockjaw and Griff, BTW. I first heard the two of them side by side as the two tenors in the Frany Boland/Kenny Clarke big band. Awesome players both.

@Schubert - Since the Minnesota Orchestra does not currently have any horn openings, at least that I am aware of, can I assume that you meant your comment to be a critical one on the quality of the current section??

@Rok - Frogman's reply to your post is absolutely correct. Again, I will try elaborating. As he said, classical music requires the very highest degree of technical proficiency on a consistent basis, far more than is required in jazz. This is NOT to say that classical players are necessarily better musicians, however - only that the ones at the highest level are far better players of their instruments, technically speaking. As Frogman said, even Wynton would not quite be able to cut the job of principal trumpet in a full time symphony orchestra, though he perhaps could have if he had gone that route when he was much younger, as he certainly had the talent.

Let me give an example. Sometimes there are French horn parts in big bands, and I am called upon at least a couple of times a season, usually more, to play that style of music in pops shows. Can I swing as easily as a full time big band trumpet player? No. But after a rehearsal (and there is usually only one), I can follow and pick up the style of the lead trumpet player to the point where only my fellow musicians onstage could tell that I don't do it all the time. Remember, the music itself is nowhere near as complicated as a large majority of what I play on a daily basis - the notes are no problem for me, it is simply a matter of getting the style down. Now - could one of those big band trumpet players perform a difficult trumpet part in say a Mahler symphony after one rehearsal? No way in hell, and you and everyone else in the audience would clearly hear it if the attempt was made.

I could even sit in with a big band, sight reading a horn part, and you could come to the concert, and I bet that you would not be able to tell that I didn't play with them all the time (though Frogman certainly could, LOL). I would just blend in with my colleagues, and you wouldn't notice (like you would if a big band trumpeter tried sitting in with an orchestral trumpet section).

Now one thing I could not do in the jazz setting would be to improvise a solo, so that big band would not have me take one. Well, I could try, I would certainly understand the chord changes, etc., it just wouldn't be very good, I'd be faking my way through. I could sight -read one that had been written out for me; but I couldn't improvise in that idiom on the spot. That's not something I am trained to do. But that is the only aspect of jazz playing that I would not be able to do, and I could actually learn to do it if I applied myself to it for a while (and I mean a long while, not a short time). There are a handful of jazz horn players out there that do it for a living, though, both currently and in the past. If you are curious, look up Julius Watkins, a great from the past. One of the best jazz hornists right now is a Russian guy whose name is Arkady Shilkloper; another is Tom Varner, who has been around longer.

Jazz is not inherently any more or less musical than classical is - it is a different type of music making, a different type of expression.

Great post, Learsfool; and thanks for being more diplomatic than I was. Rok, I was frankly taken aback by your comment. (of course,THAT has never happened before :-) I didn't expect a proclamation about the superiority of jazz from you who have extolled the genius of great classical composers (the ones you like, anyway). I will try it one more time (time to plant some seeds :-) :

You are an avid music lover and should be commended for that, but you are denying yourself a deeper appreciation and enjoyment of music (both genres) by the tendency to be absolutist about some of this stuff. Just a suggestion.

Food for thought:

I've known absolutely amazing players (instrumentalists) who are also terrible musicians.