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[caption id="attachment_53632" align="alignnone" width="525"] John Ludlow.[/caption]
By Emily J. Weitz
When John Ludlow returned to Bay Burger with his alto sax last week, it was a like a homecoming. He started jamming there seven years ago when he was still in his teens, stepping up beside legends like Morris Goldberg and Randy Brecker. Now, he’s got a booked summer schedule, with a standing gig at the Ram’s Head Inn on Shelter Island every Sunday. But he makes time to come back to his roots, to where it all began.
As the special guest of the evening, Mr. Ludlow selected the songs that he and the Thursday Night Live Band would play. Horace Silver and Duke Ellington were among the composers that kicked off the night. As always, after a few songs, band director Claes Brondal invited guest jammers up to play. In the audience that night was trumpet player Baron Lewis, a regular on the jamming circuit who plays with Ludlow at the Ram’s Head as well. For our monthly edition of Improvisational Conversations, broadcast on WPPB 88.3FM, I ushered Mr. Ludlow and Mr. Lewis into Bay Burger’s back room after the show, and we gathered around the mic to talk jazz.
Watching the two horns harmonize together and play off of each other, I was struck by the quality of listening that overtakes the musicians. We think of making music in terms of what comes out, but when it comes to jamming, what is internalized by the musicians is at least as important.
“That’s what it’s all about,” said Mr. Ludlow of the art of listening. “You feed off what the other musicians have done, and you build a certain momentum.”
Mr. Lewis compares improvising together to having a conversation.
“You have to listen so you have something to respond with,” he said.
Mr. Lewis, who started playing the trumpet in seventh grade, also brought along his flugelhorn, and he pulled it out late in the show. The varieties of brass, from sax to trumpet to flugelhorn, each evoke a different quality, feeling, and sound.
“The flugelhorn has a larger sound than the trumpet,” said Mr. Lewis. “There are a lot of similarities, but it’s a different sound color.”
I had never heard the term “sound color” before, and it go to the heart of what I was trying ask. Is it the musician that makes a saxophone sound like a sad sigh, or is the saxophone? If that same musician played the trumpet, would it have the same feeling?
“The trumpet has a round sound,” said Mr. Ludlow, “and the saxophone, because of the reed, is a more reedy sound. It’s a little rougher. But everyone’s got a different sound. Paul Desmond (saxophone) almost sounded like a trumpet at times – he had a round sound.”
Mr. Ludlow draws influence from Lester Young and Charlie Parker, but he’s also gathered so many others along the way. That openness and sense of learning is not only part of growing as a musician, it’s also the spirit of improvisation. It’s what actually happens during the jam.
“The goal is that nothing is in your head,” said Mr. Ludlow. “It’s a blank slate; it’s just reaction. That’s when you’re in the zone. It’s hard to get to that place.”
Mr. Lewis and Mr. Ludlow got there together many times on Thursday night, and the audience was right there with them. There’s an element of spontaneity, and a lot of play.
“I’m trying to read his mind based off the last phrase,” said Mr. Ludlow, “to see what note is coming next, and to try to harmonize that note. And maybe he doesn’t play that note and then it sounds off or different.”
That’s where the improvisation really imitates life – when it takes you to unexpected place and you just keep going. Or when uncertainty and curiosity guide you to new adventures.
“Maybe you don’t go the direction you might have thought you were going,” said Mr. Lewis, “and you adapt and change.”
The fun thing about the jam is that, for an evening, the audience gets to take that spirit of adventure and freedom and play, and to follow it through the music. that’s how a jazz musician becomes a tour guide, taking listeners on a journey.
“It starts with a motif,” said Mr. Ludlow. “An idea that comes out in the first or second chorus, and you shape it into different things and take it to different places. The molding of that motif is the journey. Then you take something from the last musician’s solo, the last thing they played, and you build on their motif.”
Lewis adds that any of the songs they play from the American songbook have storylines of their own, and those lyrics, even when they’re not communicated in words, should be communicated through the music.
“That’s part of our job,” said Mr. Lewis.
For Mr. Ludlow, coming back to the jam after a while away felt natural and easy, and he plans to come back again soon.
“The connection is immediate up there,” he said. “It feels good every time.”
