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| Paul Motian |
Influential American jazz drummer Paul Motian died November 22 at the age of 80. Best remembered as the drummer for the classic Bill Evans Trio of the early 1960s, Motian was also a member of pianist Keith Jarrett’s quartet in the 1970s, and in the 1980s began leading his own successful trio, featuring tenor saxophonist Joe Lovano and guitarist Bill Frisell.At the time of his death, Motian remained a significant figure in the jazz world. His 2010 album Lost in a Dream was among the best jazz releases that year. This past year saw the release of Motian’s The Windmills of Your Mind and the drummer appeared as a sideman on several other recordings.
Motian was born March 25, 1931 in Philadelphia to parents of Armenian
ancestry, who had emigrated from Turkey. He was raised in Providence,
Rhode Island, where he began playing drums at the age of 12. By the late
1940s, he had begun performing with a local big band.
Motian chose to join the Navy in 1950, during the Korean War, rather
than be drafted into the Army. He was able to study music at the Navy
School of Music in Washington, though he reportedly did not remember the
experience fondly later in life. The next few years were spent
performing in Navy bands. Discharged in 1954, Motian settled in
Manhattan’s East Village and began attending jam sessions with area
musicians.
The cultural atmosphere in which Motian was then immersed was a very
rich one. The jazz scene in New York was flourishing. Motian was able to
see many of the major groups and players of the period perform, an
experience which had an enormous impact on him. He studied the
performances of his favorite drummers. He was able to see the remarkable
quintet led by drummer Max Roach and trumpeter Clifford Brown. He saw
Philly Joe Jones with Miles Davis’s classic quintet and Art Blakey with
his band the Jazz Messengers.
New opportunities were also becoming available to young musicians
during the postwar period. Up and coming musicians were able to gain
greater access to music education. Motian, for example, attended the
Manhattan School of Music on the GI Bill, where he was able to study
tympani, xylophone and piano.
Motian first met the gifted pianist Bill Evans in 1954 when the two
toured as sidemen for clarinetist Jerry Wald, and later Tony Scott. When
Evans decided to form a new trio of his own in 1959, Motian joined him
along with a talented young bassist named Scott LaFaro. They made their
recording debut with the 1960 album Portrait in Jazz.
The trio, well known for the harmonic inventiveness of pianist-leader
Evans, was also notable for playing with a very loose and open sense of
rhythm and for placing a special emphasis on group improvisation.
Leaving behind the traditional roles of a rhythm section, LaFaro and
Motian were placed on equal footing with Evans. LaFaro improvised
counter-melodies on bass to Evans’ lead lines, while on drums Motian
began to experiment with the methods that would come to define him as an
artist. Rather than “playing time” with a steady beat, Motian
improvised longer or shorter rhythmic phrases, adding “color” and
texture to the performance, in a sense becoming another melodic voice in
the group’s improvisation. His playing was sensitive, even lyrical. He
was especially adept at playing ballads.
Motian always possessed a generous musical personality. In a 2006 interview with NPR’s Fresh Air, Motian said “I’m
not a showpiece drummer ... I feel like I’m an accompanist. It’s my
sort of thing to make the other people sound good, as good as they can
be. I feel like I should accompany them, and I should accompany the
sound that I am hearing and make it the best that I can—that I can do.”
The preoccupations of Motian, Evans and LaFaro, with their special
attention to harmony and group performance, and their relatively “cool”
sound, seem particularly bound up with new social moods taking hold
during the postwar period. A section of working class and middle class
youth, for whom the Depression and War years were now in the past, were
able, for a time, to see their living conditions improve. New
opportunities presented themselves and a certain confidence was felt.
The struggle for equality waged by the black population in the South
would have had a significant impact on these sensitive artists as well.
The trio’s finest music can be found on two highly regarded albums
recorded during a 1961 stay at the famed jazz club, the Village
Vanguard: Sunday at the Village Vanguard and Waltz for Debby.
Just ten days after these albums were recorded, in what would be a
major loss, Scott LaFaro was killed in a car accident. He was only 25
years old. LaFaro’s death left Motian and Evans devastated. After some
time, the two eventually chose to carry on with Chuck Israels succeeding
LaFaro on bass. Motian would eventually leave the group in the
mid-1960s.
From the late 1960s through the 1970s, Motian was a member of pianist
Keith Jarrett’s groups, first as part of a trio, then as a member of
Jarrett’s so-called “American Quartet,” along with bassist Charlie Haden
and tenor saxophonist Dewey Redman. The group fused together a number
of different influences, including “free” and straight-ahead jazz,
R&B and gospel, with varying results. The 1971 album Expectations may be the group’s most successful outing.
Motian released Conception Vessel, his first of many albums
as a leader, in 1972. The groups Motian led in the 1970s tended to fall
firmly into the “free jazz” camp, and also demonstrated a certain
political radicalization. One finds a number of songs envisioned as
protests against the Vietnam War. There are also many of the limitations
and missteps one might expect, including a recording of the Charlie
Haden composition “Song for Che.”
There are moving performances to be found, including a recording of the Ornette Coleman composition “War Orphans,” from Tribute
(1974). However, much of this material feels slight compared to
Motian’s earlier work with Evans, or the much stronger recordings of his
own later groups. Too much of it tries for a cohesive “group
improvisation” but only achieves a kind of simultaneous, but
disconnected, improvisation.
The drummer far surpassed these recordings when he formed a trio in
the 1980s with tenor saxophonist Joe Lovano and guitarist Bill Frisell.
This group proved to be one of the more interesting small combos in jazz
from the 1980s onward. The “freedom” and openness of rhythm and group
improvisation Motian began exploring with Evans and his free jazz groups
remained, but the excesses of the previous period were gone. Motian
also returned to performing standards from the “American songbook” and
the work of other significant jazz composers.
One of the trio’s albums in particular, Monk in Motian (1988),
deserves special notice. Motian had a special affinity for the music of
Thelonious Monk, with whom he had played some live dates in the 1950s
and again in the 1960s. Monk in Motian features ten of Monk’s
compositions performed by Motian’s trio at their best. The drummer and
band leader’s loose rhythmic sensibility was perhaps uniquely suited to
navigate the often surprising turns of Monk’s compositions.
In 1989, Motian began recording a series of albums of standards, each called On Broadway. The fifth and final entry into the series was released in 2009. On Broadway Volume One
(1989) features some of Motian’s strongest drumming, with the solos he
takes on Gershwin’s “Liza (All the Clouds’ll Roll Away)” being
especially memorable.
Motian formed the Electric Bebop Band in the early 1990s, comprised
of two saxophonists, two or more guitarists, bass and drums. This
unusual setting allowed Motian to explore the catalogues of Thelonious
Monk, again, as well as that of Tadd Dameron, Charlie Parker, Dizzy
Gillespie, and other leading bebop era musicians.
In recording Broadway standards and the classic works of bebop
musicians, Motian avoided a “neoclassicist” or purist approach. These
songs can sometimes feel like stale museum pieces. In Motian’s hands,
these works felt immediate and alive. They were performed by an artist
who felt deeply that these songs could still speak to an audience and
communicate something vital to them.
Motian continued to record and perform through 2011. Many of his recordings from the last decade, including the albums Garden of Eden (2005) and Lost in a Dream (2010) could be counted among his best work. This year also saw the release of Live at Birdland, a strong live recording by a quartet featuring Motian alongside saxophonist Lee Konitz, pianist Brad Mehldau and Haden.
In January, Concord Jazz will release Further Explorations,
another live recording by a trio comprised of Motian, bassist Eddie
Gomez and pianist Chick Corea performing a tribute to the music of the
classic Bill Evans Trio
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