Jazz rolls where rock can’t

MOSCOW — Playing at big rock ’n’ roll concerts may seem to be high energy and exciting. But to one musician who’s been there, the rock stage is a drag.

“Doing a rock ’n’ roll gig, making the record is cool, because you get creative. When you go on tour, playing the same tunes over and over the same as on the record ... after playing jazz — that’s very dull,” according to Branford Marsalis.

Marsalis played saxophone for the English rocker Sting for two years, recording, making a movie and touring around the world. Friday and Saturday nights Marsalis came to Moscow, Idaho, to play jazz.

“Sting’s a cool guy; I love him a lot. I definitely will work on his next record, if he asks me,” Marsalis said to a packed house of easily 400 students and others at a noon clinic Saturday.

It was all part of the Lionel Hampton/Chevron Jazz Festival, which concluded Saturday night.

Marsalis continues to play gigs with Sting, the last a couple weeks ago. But jazz is what he wants to play. And the quartet format is where it’s at for him.

“The interaction is what makes playing in a quartet so interesting,’’ he said.

His brain can separate the different players, to intertwine “streams and streams of melodies,’’ as they improvise.

Marsalis, unlike much of the audience, wasn’t pleased with the music Friday night. “The worst jam session times 10,’’ is what he called it, although he admits to a high standard.

It wasn’t that the music was unrehearsed; no one seemed to know what anyone else was doing, he said.

Playing with Freddie Hubbard was fun, and he had no problem playing in Hampton’s big band style. But he came to play, for real.

He wasn’t surprised the crowd didn’t notice the music being disorganized. “The larger the crowd, the easier the house.’’

Playing with Sting, he saw big crowds, which are no big deal. “Ninety thousand people don’t know music; if I make a mistake they aren’t going to know ... The only time I’m nervous is when there’s a great jazz musician in the house, because they know.’’

Saturday night he planned to play more of his own kind of music, with the drummer in his new band, Jeff Watts, the veteran pianist Hank Jones and bassist Dave Holland.

Marsalis played with his brother Wynton’s band for five years, as did Watts, but they have gone divergent ways with performance styles. Wynton tends to be straight-laced on stage, while Branford tends to be too strange in stage mannerisms to play together.

Then there is younger brother Delfeayo, who also played at the Hampton festival, for three nights. But Delfeayo plays trombone and Branford has no use for trombones in small combos.

So the idea of a Marsalis brothers band isn’t in the cards.

As far as getting along with Wynton, “the only argument we have is, he doesn’t want me to play with Sting. Fortunately for us, an extended family relationship is more important than a rock group.’’

He absorbed music growing up in a musical family, more than it passed on through his pianist father, Ellis. “I was exposed to a lot of fundamental things about music that most kids don’t get.’’

He also reiterated a theme of his brother Delfeayo’s, stated earlier in the festival.

“There’s no such thing as a talent that just came; it’s a skill that you have to work on.’’

Marsalis, 29, talked about arriving at New York in his early 20s, when the hot stuff of Michael Brecker drove him into a room to practice every day for six months. When he played with Sonny Rollins last summer, it was the same story over again. He had to go back and practice, everyone does.

‘I think there’s a period in your life when you have to submerse yourself, you’ve got to have tunnel vision’’ to concentrate on an instrument.

Marsalis gave a short demonstration of rhythm changes, showing styles of Buddy Tate, Wayne Shorter and Sonny Rollins, all with a smooth touch that indicated what practice can do.

He recommended horn players learn solos from off records and then begin to do their own treatment of the tunes.

‘Once I got the rhythm thing together I didn’t have to play the same notes all the time.’’

Marsalis doesn’t like to play the same thing every night.

This story was published in the Feb. 25, 1990, edition of the Lewiston Tribune.