The Lark: Vol 2, Issue 6, August 2022

WHAT A TREAT!: ALL THAT JAZZ

by Ruth Levy Guyer

The social hall at Temple Beth-El was filled with melodic tunes on Monday morning (July 25, 2022) as Clay Nordhill and his trio played jazz compositions of Charlie Parker, Billy Strayhorn, Irving Berlin, Antonio Carlos Jobim, and others.

Clay has been the instructor of the LLC summer jazz course for the past 5 years. (No) thanks to Covid, this was the first time this year that the 35 course members stepped out from behind their zoom screens to meet in person and to hear live music. If only every week could start off that mellifluously.

Clay was performing with one of his many guitars, a Gibson Arch from 1969 that was once played by a guitarist in Bob Seger’s rock band. Clay demonstrated how he uses the pedals to enhance and change and amplify the guitar sounds, producing reverb and delays. He had talked about these effects — as well as loopers, wahwahwah sounds, laser-like phaser sounds, and others — in class a few weeks earlier, but the in-person demonstration made those effects all come to life. Electrifying guitars had been vital for bringing guitars into the jazz world; up through the bebop era, guitars, which were all acoustic, were not included because they were not loud enough to be heard.

Mark, the drummer, described how the drum kit evolved: an assemblage of drums and cymbals of various sizes that, in marching bands, would have each been played by a different musician. He demonstrated how he uses each of his four limbs to produce the sounds and effects that he does. Mark is left-handed and, typically, left-handed drummers reverse the positions of their drums. But, because he learned to play drums through watching his drummer father and other right-handed drummers perform, Mark plays the way right-handed drummers do.

Clay had talked throughout the course about how melody, harmony, rhythm, form, improvisation, and style all figure into the beauty and uniqueness of jazz. During the concert, he pointed out what to listen for as the trio played explaining, for example, how sometimes players would introduce an unconventional time signature (say, 5/4) into a familiar piece. As the musicians then demonstrated that rhythm, we were able to follow it in their music more effectively.

A signature feature of jazz is improvisation. For those of us who only play jazz on our iPhones and computers and victrolas, how musicians interact and do this remains enigmatic. All three musicians talked about how they communicate, take chances while playing, and orchestrate a regrouping when a “mistake” has taken place. As to the concept of “mistakes,” Clay said that the more experienced musicians might actually make more mistakes than do beginners because they are willing to take more chances in their playing.

The bass player and singer of the trio, Sam, talked about his love for the upright bass and how there has to be a kind of merger of the instrument with the musician’s body; some performers physically drape themselves over their basses. The upright bass, unlike a bass guitar or other guitars, does not have marker frets, so positioning the left hand must be learned and then become intuitive and automatic — one of the wonders of muscle memory. Sam also talked about how he was always a singer from the time he was a small child, and how the way he learned to breathe while playing the tuba influenced his beautiful, breathy, melodic singing voice, which sounds so different from his speaking voice.

The performance ended with the classic 1938 tune “I’ll Be Seeing You in All the Old Familiar Places,” that we all know from Billie Holiday and Frank Sinatra and other well-known crooners.

As for seeing one another in “old familiar places,” it is possible to hear Clay and this trio, as well as Clay with other invited musician friends, in one-hour Monday night concerts each week throughout the summer at 7:30 in Wakefield outdoors at the Contemporary Theater Company. Clay hosts his musician friends — drummers (including his own father), keyboardists, brass musicians, singers, other guitar players. The musicians showcase the full range of jazz styles —bebop, fusion, blues, ragtime, hard rock, funk. Some LLC members are turning into groupies of these performances, which is why Wakefield is becoming an old and familiar place; the concerts are always fantastic and the garden setting is serene.

A second “familiar place” where you will be able to see Clay perform (and thus support LLC’s terrific jazz instructor) will be at PPAC in the winter. From September to June, Clay will be touring with the Troika production of Annie, where he will play a range of guitars, the banjo, and the mandolin. Sam, too, has just been signed on to the tour because the music director of the production was looking for someone who played upright bass and tuba, and Sam does just that, as well as sing. Clay’s girlfriend Jen will also be on the tour as pianist and co-director of music.