Now in the nineties he is more prominent than ever. ![]() Motian became a prominent hard-bop stylist in the fifties, and yet has continued growing ever since, becoming a major innovator who helped to create the drumming styles of the sixties, and a brilliant bandleader and composer in the seventies and eighties. Most artists reach their prime in their youth and stagnate thereafter. Yet how many avant-gardists have been hired to play with swing era giants such as Coleman Hawkins and Roy Eldridge? How many jazz drummers Motian’s age can execute rock rhythms with an appropriate feel, and without altering their musical identity? How many drummer-bandleaders can claim to have composed several albums worth of strikingly original compositions? More importantly, what other modern jazz drummer, with the exception of Roy Haynes, can claim to have been a stylist and an innovator during several stages of jazz’s evolution? Journalists often lump him together with many of the avant-garde drummers of the sixties. I’ve heard him referred to as a legend by an audience member at one of his performances. Perhaps as a result of his uniqueness, Motian himself is impossible to pigeonhole. To hear Paul Motian play is to enter a highly personal world, a world as demanding of the listener as it is rewarding. The primitivism is, of course, deceptive the complexity, subtle. His music is a fusion of opposites: gentle and violent, acoustic and electric, structured and free, complex and primitive. Even today when musicians first hear Motian, they marvel over the uniqueness of his conception. Of course, before Paul Motian, drums were never played this way. As I listened, I thought, “this is exactly how the drums always should have been played.” In place of traditional timekeeping patterns were extraordinarily detailed rhythmic phrases alternating with carefully sustained brush strokes and deliberate silences, each phrase simultaneously a response to the phrase preceding it and to Jarrett’s piano improvisation, with Motian’s performance slowly rising and falling in complexity from the beginning of the piece to it’s end. I was a sixteen year old record store employee, and playing in the store was Keith Jarrett’s 1966 recording of “Margot” from “Life Between The Exit Signs.” As the music began I stopped in my tracks, struck by a conception of drumming more adventurous, more complex, and more musical than anything I had ever heard before. I have a vivid memory of the first time I heard Paul Motian. ![]() You may only use this file for private study, scholarship, or research.Backstage with Joe Lovano and Paul, late ’90s. œj w b D 9 Cm7 3 This file is the author's own work and represents their interpretation of the song. ![]() THE WIND (Keith Jarrett) p.2 Cm7 G7sus4 b Cm9 Cminor/B b Cm7(b 5) bb b & œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ b ˙ œ. You may only use this file for private study, scholarship, or research. bœ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ nœ œ ˙ E 7sus4 E 7 œ ‰ œJ A Maj7 Fm7 3 C7(b 9) b Fm7 b œ Œ ≈ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ ˙ Œ ‰ œ3 œ Gm7( 5) This file is the author's own work and represents their interpretation of the song. The Wind (Russ Freeman - Jerry Gladstone) (Keith Jarrett "Paris Concert" ECM 1988) # Transcription: 07 1996 bb 4 b & 4 j œ bb b & ˙ Fm7 bb ˙ b & Am7 A Cm9 ˙ œ œœœ ˙ j œ.
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