How Much Was Improv?

James Hall (Academy Fellow, Class of 2010)

Several months into our year at the Trinity Forum Academy, the Fellows have more or less adjusted to the rhythm of life at Osprey Point.  Receiving crash courses in commercial cooking and cleaning, meeting our three faculty members, and adjusting to our household duties at Windrush, we are moving around the Point as people who know what they’re doing (or at least think they do).  As we meet the challenges of a reorganized curriculum, which combines adjusted staff roles with unprecedented collaboration from visiting faculty, a guiding principle for the Fellows has been improvisation: the spur-of-the-moment integration of numerous stimuli into a meaningful whole.

To those of us hailing from the world’s cultural capitals, Osprey Point can truly seem to be, as the Germans put it, am Ende der Welt (that is, the End of the World).  Though each of us will be steeped in literature and culture this year through ambitious reading assignments, opportunities to experience performing arts of an equally high caliber will be few and far between.  Hence our excitement in discovering that Monty Alexander, the world-renowned Jamaican jazz pianist and professing believer, would be performing at the Avalon Theatre in Easton, just a half-hour drive from our new home.  Thanks to the generosity of a Friend of the Academy, the Fellows of the class of 2010 were able to attend.

The Avalon Theatre, a one-time cinema that still bears the Art Deco facelift it received in 1934, seats only 380.  Jazz music is meant for an intimacy which cannot be experienced in the cavernous halls and sprawling amphitheaters defining much of the summer music festival experience.  Fortunately, The Avalon possesses the right mixture of size and acoustical warmth to keep the listening experience authentic.

I heard Alexander perform in 2006 at Vienna’s Porgy & Bess with the German HR Big Band—a barely memorable performance that tried too hard to compose around Alexander’s improvisations.  Consequently, my hopes for the concert at the Avalon were modest.  Given these expectations, it is no exaggeration when I say that Alexander’s trio blew me away.  Alexander expressed himself in a fluent blend of stride, blues, and bebop languages, quoting themes from the jazz canon with the frequency and conviction that characterizes the most experienced giants of the idiom.  The highlight of the concert, however, was not the virtuosity of any one musician, nor the group’s seamless interaction, but the overwhelming sense of shalom emanating from Alexander’s presence on stage.  One couldn’t help but feel empathy for the emotion displayed on his face and the passion that he coaxed, pushed, and sometimes pounded out of the piano.

As Alexander progressed through the program of jazz standards and original compositions, I realized that this was probably the most Christian jazz concert I had ever attended.  The further he got into the program, the more deeply the influence of Gospel seeped into his playing.  By the end of the concert, Alexander was throwing in renditions of such songs as Duke Ellington’s Come Sunday and Julia Ward Howe’s The Battle Hymn of the Republic.  The centerpiece of the event was Alexander’s original composition, Hope, a ballad of surprising harmonic crunch that makes a gradual thematic shift from despair to hope over 10 minutes of composed and improvised material.

The nature of Christian leadership in this type of music is thought provoking; by moving fluidly in and out of Gospel styles, Alexander included his trio members, who are likely not religiously inclined, in creating hymns of praise and thanksgiving.  Imagine setting a Bible before an unbeliever and not only hearing him read with fluency, but with deep conviction and love for the language.  This is one of the joys of the Christian jazz band leader:  to set a stylistic trajectory that moves collaborator and audience member alike toward the beauty of the Gospel.

For those of us grappling with the incorporation of seemingly disparate elements of theology, philosophy, and applied disciplines, there is much to be learned from Monty Alexander.  Throughout the night at the Avalon, he deftly blended jazz languages, unified the diverse voices of fellow musicians into cohesive musical statements, and displayed a palpable joy, effortlessness, and gratitude.  At the end of the concert, the question on many audience members’ minds was, “How much of that was improvised?”  Indeed, Alexander’s passion seemed too genuine to be premeditated, yet too excellent and structured to be improvised.  This spontaneous, exuberant precision is a posture to which any Christian leader can aspire.

James Hall joins the Academy following a stint in Austria, where he taught at the Institute for European Studies. While in Europe, he performed as a freelance trombonist, playing genres as diverse as hip-hop and opera in venues as varied as prisons and ballrooms. James composes his own pieces that blend his faith and music, including a recent opus based on C.S. Lewis's writings on self pity. He has also been involved with Renovatio, an evangelical think tank in Austria. James graduated from Lawrence University in 2007 with a degree in Trombone Performance and Religious Studies. He anticipates attending graduate school or returning to the life of a freelancer when he completes his time at the Academy.

0 Responses • Alumni, Features, Guest Speakers, Tue 19 Jan 2010