Rufus Reid on François Rabbath: "He's magical"

Rufus Reid by Jimmy Katz

The virtuoso double-bassist François Rabbath started teaching around the time he turned 50. Rabbath never had a teacher – he is entirely self-taught – and he didn’t want others to suffer and struggle as he did to master the mighty beast of the strings. 

His students have included members of many great symphony orchestras around the world and several renowned jazz bassists. Ray Brown was one of his students; so were John Clayton and Rufus Reid.

While researching Rabbath for a piece I was writing for the Minneapolis Star-Tribune, I came across these words:

In December 2002, Rufus studied with bassist extraordinaire François Rabbath, whom Reid considers “the synthesis of all music … I waited 25 years for this remarkable and life-altering experience.”

I spoke with Reid on June 26, 2014.

PLE: Thank you for taking my call.

Rufus Reid: No problem – talk my man François, that’s easy. We could talk for hours about that.

A lot of people don’t know who he is.

I’m shocked at that. Long before the bass community here in the United States knew about François, he was doing things. I remember seeing a program at his house, for a concert at Carnegie Hall with Ornette Coleman. He was – in a way, he still is – considered to be a renegade.

He’s been marching to his own drum. That’s why he’s accomplished what he’s done. Everything that he’s accomplished is because no one told him he couldn’t do it … His whole concept of playing the bass is because he never got with somebody who said, “You can’t do that on the bass.” His whole life is like that. He was always doing bizarre things that nobody else was doing … He’s someone who can play all the Bach cello suites as well as any cellist, if not better.

I’ve heard that he plays the Bach in the original key.

In the exact same key, not transcribed. Years ago, people would change the key so it would lay a little easier for the bass. But he wouldn’t go for that … One reason why François has written his own music is because almost everything bass players play is a transcription of a cello piece or a violin piece. Music hasn’t been written specifically for the bass.

Why is that?

I don't know. [Double bassist and composer] Edgar [Meyer] started writing a lot of music for the bass because I guess he didn’t want to be playing all these other well-known pieces. But not too many other bassists can play his stuff.

François wants people to play his music. It introduces technical things to the student that they never would have thought about before, and once they get those under their fingers, they begin to have more of a voice on the instrument … Have you talked with [composer and bassist] Frank Proto?

I haven’t, but I’ve been reading about him.

He’s written five concertos for François, some of them with orchestra. They were tailored for the way François plays, and they’re extraordinary pieces of music. So there is a breadth of new compositions coming out. I’m beginning to write a couple things.

You’re writing for large ensembles.

Yes. There’s very little new stuff that’s made for large ensembles. But more and more people are beginning to get into that.

[Note: Reid’s latest recording is “Quiet Pride: The Elizabeth Catlett Project,” released on Motema in February, 2014. Inspired by the sculptures of the late African American artist and civil rights activist Elizabeth Catlett, “Quiet Pride” is a five-movement, large-ensemble suite featuring 20 players.]

Francois Rabbath by John Whiting

When did you first become aware of François Rabbath?

I guess the first time I met him was at the International Society of Bassists [convention]. It was held in Los Angeles, which was probably 25 or 30 years ago, and he was a guest. I have a picture of [the two of us] on my wall in my studio, but I didn’t really know him at that time. He could barely speak English at that time, but it was awesome just to hear him play.

Several years later, I got an opportunity to go to Hawaii for a bass workshop, and he was there. I was around him for an entire week doing the workshops and teaching, and it was mind-blowing, the sounds and the things that were happening …When I wasn’t doing my thing, I was watching him do his thing. We became friends and we would play. I liked him because he improvised. He’s not a jazz player in the sense that I am, but he’s an improviser, and he sees music as music.

He made a record of jazz standards [“In a Sentimental Mood,” 2004]. No typical classical bassist would even think of doing something like that, much less recording it and putting it out as a project. The Japanese wanted him to do that and he did. I think it’s great. I don’t call him a classical player because that’s really not enough. He plays music on the bass. He can play all the standard classical repertoire and more.

[In 2002], I went to France on a tour, and when I finished I spent four days with him taking some lessons myself. It was like going back to school. I thought I could play. Got my butt kicked, and it was great.

Was that the extent of your studying with him, those four days in Paris?

Yes. Me and him … I’ll never forget my time there, that’s for sure.

I started out playing the German bow, and I had students who played both [the German and the French bows], and I began to feel inadequate about working with them because I knew that they weren’t doing well with the bow. I said, “Man, I gotta learn how to play this bow a little better.”

The French bow is how François plays. You turn the hand completely over the bow. The part you hold with the hand is much larger … At one time, there was this stigma that if you play the French bow, you can’t really play with any balls, like the German bow player. Or if you’re a German bow player, you can’t play with any finesse, like a French bow player. That kind of stupid stuff was going on.

I wanted to learn how to play both, and because of François’s ability to do both, he’s even introduced a kind of a hybrid bow that you can play either way. It depends on how the music is designed. But he’s such an open book, and so I went and studied with him.

I found a hotel that was about two blocks away, and I left my bass at his house, and I was just trying to get into his concept more. Because years ago, when we were doing the workshops, he told my wife, “Tell Rufus I really like the way he plays, but I can help him play better.”

You weren’t offended by that?

Oh, man! That was mind-blowing. Bring it on! I’ve always been kind of obsessed with the sound that I made, but when I got together with François, it was so much more refined … Just playing the open note, or playing one note, it was all about the sound, the placement, your relaxed body, and that intrigued the hell out of me, and still does to this day. It’s been years since I’ve been to see him, but I think about him a lot. I adapted my end pin [to be like his].

You mean slanted, or angled, instead of straight.

A few more jazz players are beginning to utilize that concept. John Clayton, for one … The bassist from Texas at Rice University, Paul Ellison – I’m sure you’ve heard that name. He took a year off to study with François …

Did his teaching change your playing?

Absolutely. I’m doing things technically that I would’ve never even thought of trying to do, because in the traditional stance I wouldn’t be able to get the sound without some weird contortions of the body. That’s where his concept comes to the fore.

The stance of the bass with the slanted end pin changes the center of gravity of the bass. Your body is more relaxed, and pretty much in the same position whether you’re playing way up in the upper register or down low. The playground – the fingerboard – is much more accessible. In the traditional stance, once you get really high up on the bass, the lower strings aren’t very easy to negotiate.

François plays all over the goddamn bass effortlessly, whether he’s in the upper register or lower register. The bow has more equity on all the strings.

What do you mean by “more equity”?

If you have the bass against the body in the traditional way of playing, you don’t get the same sound over the whole length of those lower strings. François can actually play scales all over all the strings and get a really robust sound, not a string sound … No matter where he is, his posture’s the same, and that makes the music come out with much more consistency. So that’s the concept.

I once saw a young musician, a girl maybe 10 years old – she’s probably 17 or 18 now. She had learned François’s concept with the bent end pin, and she was amazing.

A removable angled end pin
invented by French luthier
Christian Laborie
www.christianlaborie.com

So his concept is becoming more widespread?

Absolutely. At first, most people thought it was a fad. Anything new is a fad, and of course people are reticent to embrace it. Anything that goes against tradition, I don’t care what it is, people fight it. They’ve been fighting François for years. [They won’t] even give it up that he can play this way. But he got me. It’s not that I want to play like François, but his concept makes sense, and I’m happy. And people who hear me say, “You’re so relaxed when you play.” I can play for hours. And so I think about him. He’s with me all the time.

Actually, I thought about him a few weeks ago. I was just gonna call him up, but it was like 8:00 or 9:00 at night and I can’t call Paris then. I could probably wake him up, but I don’t want to do that. I like him as a gentleman, as an artist, and everything else. He’s really fun.

The first day I spent with him, my lesson was ten hours long, and I wasn’t ready to leave. After that, we would work all morning from 10:00 probably until about 1:00, then he’d say, “Let’s go have some lunch, but we’re not going to have any wine because we have more work to do.”

Even in Paris?

There’s a time to work and there’s a time to play. It was great.

You were almost 60 when you had those four days with him in 2002. How did it finally happen?

I was going on tour with pianist Kenny Barron in Switzerland, and we would be flying home from Geneva. François had gone to my wife [years before] and said, “Tell Rufus he’s got to come see me,” and my wife said “Now’s the time.” I set things up with François [in advance], left my trunk and big suitcase in Geneva, got a backpack and my bass, and got on a train to Paris.

[Earlier I had asked François], “How much do you charge for your lessons?” He said, “Give me what you can.” This is what he does for his students. I knew what I got for teaching and thought I had better at least double that. Thanks to my wife finagling files and moving money around, the money I earned on the tour with Kenny Barron was my lesson money.

You once called him “the synthesis of all music.” What did you mean by that?

He’s not a classical player, he’s not a jazz player, he’s not a pop player, but he’s played all those things. He was very close to Michel Legrand when they were younger in Paris. He played in the Paris Opera; he didn’t get that gig until he was 50. And then he was always trying to improvise. He’s not afraid of any kind of music, and he plays really modern music that is kind of hard to listen to sometimes. He can play beautiful melodies. He encompasses such a broad sense of just music, and that’s why I say that.

Is there anything else you would like to say about François Rabbath?

I love him. He really has helped me do what I do better, which I’m thankful for. I already thought I was doing a good job of it, but at the same time, when I got together with him, it was like – oh, that’s different. And I began to try to indoctrinate that into my own playing … I never tried to compete with him because I would be a fool to do that. A lot of people want to show how much technique they have, and there are some incredibly virtuosic people out there, but they don’t play music. They just play stuff … François is a true performer. He lights up.

You mentioned Paul Ellison a moment ago. He once called François “the personification of love.”

He’s a leprechaun. He’s magical. He’s a pied piper. I don’t want to be super-syrupy about it, but he exudes this aura that makes you feel good … I’m fortunate that I can call him a friend, and that he’s helped me do what I do, and he seems to respect me for what I do as well.

Jazz renaissance in the Twin Cities: How musicians are doing it for themselves

The Illicit Sextet is part of the new All Original Jazz Series
Photo by Andrea Canter at Jazz Central

Originally published at MinnPost.com on 11 April 2014. Used with permission.

Some days it seems like jazz in the Twin Cities is in sad and sorry shape. The Dakota in Minneapolis programs a lot less jazz than it used to. The Artists’ Quarter in St. Paul closed at the end of December; when a new venue opens in that space later this year (in August?) under the Dakota’s management, it will no longer be exclusively a jazz club featuring mostly area musicians. (Dakota owner Lowell Pickett told MPR’s David Cazares last week that jazz “will certainly be a part of” the mix at the new club, and local musicians will “certainly … be part of that”). Northrop reopened with no mention of the great jazz series it once presented. (The last we heard about that was in 2011, when then-director Ben Johnson sent a letter saying the series had been “postponed.”) Orchestra Hall reopened with occasional jazz performances but no jazz series.

But jazz in the Twin Cities has rarely been healthier, more alive and exciting than it is right now. It’s just happening in different places, in different ways, and increasingly at the initiative and under the control of the artists themselves. There’s less reliance on bookers and venues, more taking charge of everything from scheduling gigs to renting rooms, raising money, making records, getting grants, arranging tours and handling publicity and promotion.

Earlier this week, trumpeter Steve Kenny announced a new series that could serve as a poster child for jazz today. Starting July 10 at Studio Z, continuing Thursdays through Sept. 11, funded in part by a grant from the Metropolitan Regional Arts Council, the “All Original Jazz Series” will feature ten weeks of concerts by local jazz ensembles playing their own original compositions.

Kenny’s series follows guitarist Zacc Harris’s MRAC-funded monthly concert and workshop series “Jazz at Studio Z,” which continues Saturday, April 19, with the Cory Healey 4tet. Soon after the AQ closed, Jazz Central, a nonprofit performance-rehearsal-recording space owned and operated by drummer Mac Santiago and pianist Tanner Taylor, stepped up its game; it now features live jazz five nights a week, from small ensembles to big bands and vocalists. Last Sunday, bassist Chris Bates held a private concert at Creation Audio to celebrate his new recording, “Good Vibes Trio”; his official CD release is Monday night at Icehouse. Tonight (Friday, April 11) at Bethel’s Benson Great Hall, Jeremy Walker holds the CD release for “7 Psalms,” his self-made album of ambitious and beautiful original music, complete with jazz quartet, soloist and choir. Earlier this year, several Twin Cities jazz ensembles formed Shifting Paradigm Records to sell their music and boost their visibility locally and nationally.

“The closing of the AQ is not a requiem for our jazz scene,” Kenny told MinnPost on Wednesday. “The audience has to be a bit more savvy about the locations, more willing to look up where events are on given nights. But the gigs are still happening. The year after year increase in the quality of local jazz is palpable. Each year, the scene has better and better musicians … What’s happening now is as good or better than previous years. In a couple of months, every night of the week will have a compelling jazz performance at a good venue with compensated musicians and decent audience development.” Call Kenny an optimist, or call him a realist. Just don’t call jazz in the Twin Cities dead.

The Bad Plus's The Rite of Spring due out March 25

It's been three years since The Bad Plus first performed Stravinsky's "The Rite of Spring" at Duke Performances. Their version--stripped down for piano, bass, and drums, yet still authentic and full--was then called "On Sacred Ground: Stravinsky's Rite of Spring." The "On Sacred Ground" is gone and the recording is simply called "The Rite of Spring." Probably easier for people to remember and find (and for Sony Masterworks to market).

Until now, the only way to hear this remarkable performance was live (for example, at the Dakota last December) or online at WBGO's The Checkout, which still has a link to a recording of the debut performance at Duke. We're eager to hear this studio recording, where every effect and nuance of Reid Anderson's electronic intro should be clear, and all the notes. I'm tempted to buy new speakers.

Here's the press release.

New York, NY - Sony Music Masterworks has announced the release of Igor Stravinsky's The Rite of Spring, arranged and performed by The Bad Plus. The long anticipated recording arrives in stores and at all leading digital retailers on March 25th.

The Bad Plus - bassist Reid Anderson, pianist Ethan Iverson, and drummer David King - have a well-earned reputation for pushing the limits on what is expected of a piano-bass-drums trio. The past 14 years have seen the genre-smashing band creating a distinctive repertoire of inventive original music, along with a series of iconoclastic covers of such divergent artists as Nirvana and Neil Young, Aphex Twin and Ornette Coleman. Now, with The Rite of Spring, the trio takes on one of the most influential works of the 20th century, a complex score fraught with revolutionary experiments in rhythm and metre, tonality and dissonance.

In 2010, when commissioned by Duke Performances at Duke University and Lincoln Center Out of Doors to create an evening-length work, The Bad Plus were reminded of their previous attempt at tackling a Stravinsky score when they recorded "Variation d'Apollon," from the composer's 1928 ballet, Apollo, on their 2009 releaseFor All I Care. Emboldened by their past achievement, the group translated Stravinsky's notoriously demanding score for piano, bass, and drums. The trio holds fast to the original work -- its frenetic tempi, pounding percussion and jarring repetitions an ideal fit for a band well known for its rhythmic ingenuity. Electronic undercurrents in the opening movement - orchestrated by bassist Reid Anderson - are expertly used to conjure Stravinsky's insurrectionary orchestrations, bringing depth and counterpoint to the acoustic foundation. With their rendition of The Rite of Spring, The Bad Plus has managed to uphold the radical spirit of Stravinsky's modernist masterpiece while also furthering their own ambitious approach towards music, a remarkable feat that affirms the trio's preeminence as the one of the most adventurous and imaginative bands of the modern era.

March 2011 saw Duke's Reynolds Theater host the debut performance of The Bad Plus' audacious version of Stravinsky's score, dubbed "On Sacred Ground: Stravinsky's The Rite of Spring." The group performed TheRite 13 times in 2012, and then, in 2013 - the centenary year of The Rite of Spring's riotous 1913 premiere at Paris' Théâtre des Champs-Élysées - The Bad Plus toured "On Sacred Ground: Stravinsky's The Rite of Spring" to universal acclaim, including performances in Ireland, Canada, Israel, Norway and the Unites States. That same year also saw the trio accompanying the Mark Morris Dance Group at the annual Ojai North Festival for the world premiere of "Spring, Spring, Spring," choreographer Mark Morris' acclaimed new adaptation of "The Rite of Spring" ballet.

Known for their rigorous touring schedule, The Bad Plus has slated a wide array of international live dates through April, including two performances of The Rite of Spring alongside the Mark Morris Dance Group at University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign's Krannert Center For The Performing Arts slated for March 14^th and 15. They are also confirmed to perform the piece in May in Phoenix, and will soon announce more appearances. For complete tour information, please visit www.thebadplus.com/tour-dates.php.

The Rite of Spring was produced and arranged by The Bad Plus. It was recorded in June 2013 in Union City, New Jersey's Kaleidoscope Sound Studios alongside engineer Pete Rende; the Executive Producer is Darryl Pitt.

L to R: Reid Anderson, Ethan Iverson, Dave King
Press photo

Related: 

Talking with Ethan Iverson about Stravinsky and Sony (December 25, 2013)

Stravinsky gets the Bad Plus treatment (Minneapolis StarTribune, May 17, 2011)

More from the Ethan Iverson interview

The Bad Plus Play Stravinsky: A concert review in seven movements

The violin and the well-tampered clavier: Hilary Hahn and Hauschka at Aria

Hauschka and Hilary Hahn
Photo: Mareike Foecking

“Silfra,” the album released in 2012 by virtuoso American classical violinist Hilary Hahn and German experimental pianist/composer Volker Bertelmann, known as Hauschka, has become one of my favorites. But it’s not what we heard when the two performed live in Minneapolis. Like the album, the concert was almost entirely improvised. Like the album, it was thrilling.

The first concert in a new series called Schubert Club Mix (from the Schubert Club, a 131-year-old presenting organization known mainly for its classical International Artist Series), “Hilary Hahn and Hauschka: Silfra” was successful in every way. A partnership with the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra’s Liquid Music series, it drew a sold-out crowd of more than 500 people to Aria in Minneapolis, a unique event space in the Warehouse District, for 80 minutes of music they will never hear again.

Introduced by a mutual friend a few years back, the violinist and the pianist – Hauschka plays prepared piano, its sound altered by objects placed on or between the strings – hit it off, did some performing together, and eventually met at Valgeir Sigurösson’s Greenhouse recording studios in Iceland, where a lot of interesting roads seem to lead (Nico Muhly, Ben Frost, and Sam Amidon have all recorded there). They worked with Sigurösson for ten days, and “Silfra” was the result, 12 tracks of inventive, joyful, minimalistic, mournful, unpredictable soundscape. Hahn’s violin soars over Hauschka’s piano, itself a small orchestra of singing notes, bonks, clanks, rattles and buzzes.

At Aria, both musicians are curious, questing, hyper-alert, ready to take chances. It seems that Hauschka assumes the lead, laying down cushions of rhythm and sound for Hahn to play on. They are excited to be there, and happy, and relaxed before the crowd, willing to tell us something about themselves and their process. “My temperament is higher because I’m traveling for the first time to Minneapolis,” Hauschka says at the start, then wonders aloud at the vastness of our Midwest; he had played the Friday before at Cincinnati’s Contemporary Arts Center, and Saturday in Chicago at Constellation. Hahn had flown in that day from Miami, where she played a program of Verdi, Mozart and Prokofiev at the Adrienne Arsht Center the night before; she spent part of the day having her dress steamed.

Their collaboration is even more seductive live than on recording. He plays a repetitive figure on the keys; she takes short stabs and jabs at the strings. Melodies emerge, but only briefly. He thunders; she flies so high her notes almost pass out of hearing range. Moods shift from anxiety to melancholy to glee. They watch each other carefully and listen hard, responding in the split second, changing directions on a dime. They smile often. 

She tells us that her father was a student at St. Olaf College in Northfield, and she feels a connection to Minnesota as a result. He describes their working relationship: “We meet about three times a year over two years to play. We feel confident with each other. After two years, we go to Iceland to record … Tonight is the same. We meet, talk, and start playing. It is better than playing an album track a hundred times a year. When you do that, you end up thinking a lot about the mini bar.” 

She plays what sounds like a Celtic folk dance, homesick and wistful. He responds with a rumble from the low keys. Occasionally he reaches into the piano and moves things around. He adds a small box that makes a sustained electronic note, and both dance around it with their instruments. The music is immersive, hypnotic, beautiful and strange. It’s easy to wander off into your own imagination, then snap back and be surprised by where you are, in a three-story warehouse space of brick and stone, with outlines of past lives still on the walls. (Future concerts in the Mix series will also happen here.)

Hauschka's piano before the concert
Photo: Barry Kempton

An evening-length concert of prepared piano opens your ears to the instrument, because it is a real instrument, not a joke or a toy, and not (as some think) a crime against a perfectly good piano. A prepared piano is both keyboard and percussion array. It’s an instrument that offers randomness and spontaneity; the things inside it jump around and move, depending on what they’re made of and how they’re placed. (On the other hand, there's no doubt that Hauschka knows exactly what sound will result when he prepares certain strings in certain ways.) Chopsticks and skewers, ping-pong balls, rattles, shakers, clamps, clips, nuts, bolts, screws, bottle caps, erasers, plastic cups, bits of foil or leather, foam or clay, dental floss, rubber bands, small cymbals or tambourines, candy boxes, paper wads, sheets of paper, cardboard, forks, spoons, strings, copper … all create new timbres and pitches when keys are struck, or dampen the sound. A prepared piano is piano-plus, piano 2.0. More people should play it.

Toward the end, Hauschka does something dramatic and unexpected: he starts pulling things out of the piano and tossing them on the floor. He unprepares the piano while Hahn comps on her violin, softly hitting the strings in groups of four beats. Wooden sticks, bits of wood and tape, and other items are brought out and discarded. It’s like a phone booth full of clowns. Soon the piano is naked, but in a Rubenesque way, all solid flesh and curves. The Steinway emerges in full voice and deep, romantic chords on the slow, stately piece Hauschka plays while Hahn’s violin keens and shimmers overhead.

Just before the splashy encore, he quickly adds a few pieces of gaffer’s tape to the strings. “You didn’t have to work very hard to bring us back,” she says – not meaning that we were lazy with our applause, but that they wanted to return.

At the signing/meet-and-greet after the concert
iPhone photos by John Whiting

Related:

Hauschka Prepares the Piano (a video by Hilary Hahn)

How Hauschka prepares the piano (a video recorded at NPR)

Hilary Hahn and Hauschka Silfra EPK (the record label’s electronic press kit)

The Hilary Hahn and Hauschka: Silfra concert was performed Sunday, January 12, 2014 at Aria in Minneapolis, MN.

Seven lessons learned from Wayne McGregor | Random Dance

1. The human torso is a fifth limb, and it's made of bones and rubber.

2. An evening-length dance work can consist almost entirely of big, bold, sweeping, declarative movements, most performed with astonishing speed.

3. The human rib cage is a bellows.

4. Arms and legs are indistinguishable, and all are long.

5. Backs ripple. 

6. For some people, doing a split is like shrugging. This includes a standing/vertical split.

7. We thought we'd seen all the ways a body could bend, twist, stretch, expand and collapse, flex and fold. We were wrong.

Wayne McGregor | Random Dance by Ravi Deepres

Wayne McGregor | Random Dance performed "FAR" last night at the Orpheum Theatre in Minneapolis, part of the 2013/14 Northrop Dance series. "FAR" is named for "Flesh in the Age of Reason," a book by British historian and scholar Roy Porter, in which he explains how our understanding of the mind and body changed during the Age of Enlightenment. But you don't have to know a thing about that to be drawn in and fascinated by this dance. It's enough just to watch the bodies move.

"FAR" begins with dancers holding flaming torches while Cecilia Bartoli sings an aria, and ends with a woman lying motionless on the stage, alone in the dark. In between, dancers are solo, in pairs, in groups, sometimes as many as all ten at once, and the electronic soundscape by Australian composer Ben Frost pounds and hums and growls. The dancers are men and women, birds, beasts, insects, aliens walking toward us down the gangplank of their spaceship, against the light, like stick figures. Their movements are graceful and contorted, sinuous, sensuous, visceral and mathy, sometimes warm and familiar, sometimes strange and cold. And very fast. So fast you don't see an arm, but the wide, flesh-colored trail of an arm. Behind the dancers, a large panel of lights rises and lowers. The lights blink as we like to imagine the neural synapses do in our brains. Digital numbers count up and down rapidly. The lights shine like galaxies and single bright stars. The dancers swoop and glide, leap and crawl, jerk, shiver, tangle and separate. Is there a story, a narrative arc, a message? I don't try to find one. It's enough just to watch the bodies move.

Modern dance can be daunting, especially if you think you have to understand it to enjoy it. In that way, it's a lot like jazz. In "FAR," McGregor and his dancers do the heavy thinking and lifting, and for us, watching is enough.