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The Composers and Arrangers 205
rhythmic spontaneity, the chordal improvisational base, the functional quality of the orchestration.
Whether these elements are compatible with jazz, whether it is important that they be compatible, whether jazz writing has reached a dead end and is consequently fusing with music in other fields, all are questions that have been endlessly debated among musicians. No answer is yet in sight.
Does jazz lose its identity by coming closer to the classic forms, as it has so often in the past five years?
Teo Macero answers: "It's losing its identity but gaining something too. I think when a person gets married, it's the same thing . , . another part of your personality develops. You're still an individual, but you evolve to a new kind of person.
"There are some excellent works that convince me jazz and classical music are coming together, and a couple more years would do the trick. . . . Mingus' Minor Intrusion has everything well thought out, is clear cut and has a real development of ideas. It has a classical approach, yet it's basically very jazz ... a recent piece for percussion by Teddy Charles had everything-feeling, warmth, the jazz Teddy blew, and he also had things written; and Bill Russo has done something to bring jazz and classical music closer in works like his Music for Saxophone and String Orchestra.
"I believe in synthesizing into one kind of music that which is associated with jazz (the feeling or spirit, the freedom, the frankness, the freshness) with the technique of 'serious' composition —12-tone technique, polyphony, polytonalities, polyrhythms, thematic development and heterophony."
At the opposite pole is the man who started it all, the arranger who first gave substantial meaning to the term "jazz orchestration'' 35 years ago, Don Redman.
"I don't think real jazz and classical music will ever mix," says Redman. "Real jazz will remain real jazz. Of the younger arrangers, I think people like Ernie Wilkins and Neal Hefti have the right spirit. And I don't think atonal music and jazz will ever mix, either."
Tlie real truth probably lies somewhere between the irreconcilable views of Macero and Redman. Some jazz of the future will |
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