Metta Quintet begin their Spring Tour on April 9 in Los Angeles, followed by a series of dates, including one at the Harlem Stage on April 17. The band has hit the road in support of its internationally-flavored five-track record, Big Drum/Small World. Indeed, the vibrant and exhilarating new piece features commissioned contributions from composers from five different geographic regions of the world. It also contains some fairly remarkable musicianship, while exploring the expansive globalization of jazz.
Jambands.com sat down with the Quintet’s leader and drummer, Hans Schuman to discuss the exciting new work, but to also explore the New York City-based nonprofit organization, JazzReach. Schuman is the founder of that group, which features the Metta Quintet as its official resident ensemble. JazzReach is committed to national endeavors in art education, specifically in bringing an appreciation of the rich history of jazz to young audiences. Schuman is its Artistic Director, and in a world filled with self-centered solipsistic musicians, he humbly pursues his craft while finding a remarkable way to not only embrace the love of jazz, which is not only selfless, but also quite profound. JazzReach’s Metta Quintet, also features Marcus Strickland, tenor and soprano saxophones, Greg Ward, alto saxophone, David Bryant, piano, and Joshua Ginsburg.
RR: Tell me the story of the origins of JazzReach. Is the legend true that you inherited a Steinway piano, which you sold in order to create this organization?
HS: Yeah, right. It was my grandmother’s piano. She and my grandfather were pretty esteemed classical musicians. They both went to Curtis Institute of Music, and Curtis, I think they still do this, they used to give pianos to their piano majors. Subsequently, after she finished up there, she ended up teaching there. She taught Supplementary Piano to non-piano majors for about 55 years, and that was the piano she kept at home for basically all her life. So when she passed away, she left it to me. I was very reluctant to sell it because it obviously had sentimental value. If it fits in my apartment, I may not sell it, but if it doesn’t fit in my apartment, it is justification to sell it. And, so, it didn’t fit in my apartment, so I ended up selling it. It sort of had a rebirth because we sold it to a family that had a young boy who was really, really, really gifted young pianist. He was only about 9 or 10 years old, but he really was getting very very serious, and his family wanted to get him a really high quality instrument for him to grow on.
That gave me the startup dollars to get JazzReach off the ground, which essentially meant getting our 501©(3) not-for-profit status with the IRS and the articles of incorporation.
RR: Many musicians in any genre at that age would not be thinking of that angle. They would be thinking of their own career, and letting their own voice be heard through their instrument, or getting the right fit within the right band. What drove you to this goal, specifically helping children?
HS: I think it was just the observation…living in Brooklyn—I guess I had lived in Brooklyn for three or four years before I started the organization—and I was doing just as you mentioned, I was fresh out of Berklee College of Music, and I was really immersed into my own career and development as a musician.
But, then, I started to look around me, and at that time, it was when gangsta rap was really at its peak, and [the Notorious] B.I.G. was getting shot and killed, and Tupac was getting shot and killed. I was so passionate about jazz music, and recognized its capacity to reflect the very highest levels of human artistic achievement. In contrast to gangsta rap and popular music at that time, I just felt that jazz offered so much more in terms of having the capacity of reflecting better values. The value system of a jazz musician is to become as virtuosic as possible, and to fulfill their artistic potential and their artistic vision, and that requires a great deal of dedication and practice and tenacity.
The artform had produced so many icons, cultural icons, beyond musical icons. Jazz music had produced Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, Charlie Parker, Miles Davis, Thelonious Monk, and so many more. It occurred to me that young people were not learning about these artists. The genre, jazz music, in general, was not something that was being taught in most U.S. schools. It wasn’t included in Social Studies class, or U.S. History class, unless you had direct contact with somebody who was a fan, who really loved the music, I was concerned that young people had no access whatsoever. I guess with some degree of foresight, I felt that these legacies may get lost.
Again, the mission of our organization is to foster new audiences for the artform, and not necessarily to preserve the artform. I don’t think the artform needs to be preserved. I don’t think of the art form as being like this museum piece. I do think that the contributions of all of those artists I mentioned are so deeply profound that they should be carried on. I hope that Miles Davis will continue to have an audience in the same way that Beethoven still has an audience, even though those audiences are aging themselves. The legacy of all those artists—the music is so great that it deserves to be upheld, but I don’t consider that our job, or our mission. I very much embrace the art form as a living, breathing thing that is perpetually vital.
As an organization, and a founder and artistic director, I completely embrace everything that’s happening in the music now. We have a live educational program, which features compositions that we commission like the Big Drum/Small World project; that’s the music of the record, as well. That project’s objectives are to highlight and celebrate and emulate globalization of jazz—these great composers and artists who have come to the States from different countries with a great deal of passion for jazz, but also completely embrace their own cultural heritage. There are so many people from all over the world who are bringing their own vision, and their own artistic sensibilities to the music, and, as a result, the music continues to broaden and become a little bit more difficult to really define. I often say that jazz is as hard to define now as it is to define what America looks like now. In that respect, it continues to reflect our national character. I think that is obviously a quality that keeps the art form uniquely American.
RR: Jazz and improvisational music is a way of life and a way of thinking. At a very young age, I was someone that needed everything controlled and planned out, and when things didn’t work out, I’d get upset. As I got older, and more and more into the music that conveyed an improvisational attitude, I realized how much music opened up doorways on a philosophical level. Now, when you are dealing with young children, young musicians, who are learning about this music, is that way of life presented to them? Or, do you feel the music itself will provide the answers?
HS: Most of the time, and by most of the time, I mean maybe 85% of the time, our interactions with children are somewhat limited. We present these live multimedia programs that feature our ensemble, along with live narration and video projections, and those programs are typically presented at performing arts centers, and the school kids are bussed in. These are very specifically audience development programs. What we are trying to do is really get our young audiences an experience of live jazz because we feel like it’s really at its most vital when presented live. We also want to give kids the opportunity to leave school, and get on a school bus, and go on a field trip, and be in a really big, beautiful concert hall.
I don’t know if they have access…they aren’t really in touch with that—the demeanor of a jazz musician, which is to say that kind of ‘rolling with the punches, let’s see what happens, and life happens’. So, in other words, they’re not necessarily, they don’t have like an extensive time with our musicians to the extent that they can pick up on that kind of aesthetic, or that sort of improvisational value system, or the life and lifestyle of a professional improviser. Although, when we interact with student musicians, which is how we supplement those other programs, which means we are often taken into band rooms around the country, typically, our model is that we’ll offer up to three services a day, which means we can do two matinee performances at their theatre, and they can bring us to a school, or any other combination—one matinee and two clinics, or what have you. Depending on who the presenter is and what they want from us, we’re happy to go into the school and work with student bands.
I think when they are around us in that context, I often give our musicians an opportunity to speak and share some background on themselves, and let the kids know that we were once their age, and that we were in band rooms just like the one we were sitting in with them, and that everything at that age can seem really mysterious and a little overwhelming, so it really depends on the level of proficiency of each student band. Sometimes, we get kids who are far more advanced than their age. A lot of the time, it really depends on the band director and his or her degree of commitment and passion for, not only the students, but music itself.
If the kids are engaged, and they are really serious, and we have a sense that we can speak to them on a more mature level, we will. Oftentimes, we come across kids who are just sort of slouching in their seats, and holding instruments, and don’t really know what to make of us. But we do talk about improvisation and we try to make the concept of improvisation a little bit more accessible to them by saying that we improvise in our daily lives all the time. We just don’t know that we’re doing it. You’re driving down the street, and just remembered to go to the dry cleaners. Or, you just realized you are hungry, and you stop off at Burger King, or what have you, and you made a wrong turn, and you’ve got to turn around. Everything we do in our daily lives is improvised to a degree, so we try to introduce the concept of improvisation in a more universal or accessible way.
So, yeah, I think there’s a sensibility that I think musicians who improvise have where we’re constantly in the process of having to make lemonade from lemons. I think if they’re around us long enough they get a sense of…because, you know, it’s funny I’ve observed that a lot of musicians, a lot of my peers at least, we all have somewhat similar demeanors. We all sort of go through life…we just make do. We accept the fact that there will be good times and bad times and that life is often like weather systems. It may be cloudy for three days, it may feel like life sucks, and all of a sudden, the sun comes out and something good happens. It keeps us on an even keel.
I think those same scenarios present themselves on the bandstand, as well. You might have two or three really bad days where you feel like you sound like shit. You get through it and you realize, “This is just one day. I don’t know what’s going on. I don’t know why this is happening,” and then, the next week, you might have two or three gigs where you might feel great, and you might have arrived at some new artistic plateau, or something. You just never know what to expect. We only have so much control over how good we sound. We just have limited control.
I don’t know if you know that joke that says, “How do you make God laugh?” And the punch line is “Make a plan.” That’s kind of the way we all approach it. Mind you, due diligence—and by that I mean practicing every day, and being studious about your craft, and being disciplined—I think, obviously, better equips you to handle ups and downs because, they say, the devil is in the details.
RR: Absolutely. There is a lot of preparation and practice that goes into the essence of cool in jazz.
HS: Yeah, definitely.
RR: JazzReach has had multi-media educational programs geared towards specific grades, i.e. Duke Ellington for grades 3-6, and Miles Davis for grades 6-12. How do you determine the age for those particular programs?
HS: For me, it’s kind of an intuitive thing. I don’t have a background in education. I guess what it is is that I’ll consider the content and the objectives of the program—what are we trying to say? What are we trying to achieve? What are we trying to convey? What’s our point? Why are we here? Is it something that can be presented in an interactive way? Can this feature audience participation? But, then, you get into other areas, or other facets of the music. For instance, we have another program called Stolen Moments: The First 400 Years of Jazz, which is a lot of information crammed into an hour long program. It, literally, presents the entire history of jazz, using American 20th Century as a backdrop. You want to illustrate all the ways that the art form reflects all of its different phases, particularly as it relates to American culture.
In other words, we want the music to sort of reflect the post-Depression Era, the new Industrial Age, and the post-war era. You want to address the Civil Rights movement in a way that John Coltrane is related to that movement, and the way his music reflects that period in time. That’s obviously content and information that doesn’t necessarily resonant with 4th graders. They are not necessarily going to get it.
In other programs, I also have to take into consideration the performing art centers who are our partners. Often times, it is much easier for them to get elementary school kids out of class to go on field trips than it is to get the older kids to leave school. We tend to have a few more programs that target elementary school age, but as far as how we make it accessible, I literally try to go into the head of a 7-year old, or an 8-year old, and just think what would I think is cool? I also try to really make our scripts have more of a conversational tone, rather than a condescending lecture tone, like “this is the bass!” I don’t talk in that language, and our narrator doesn’t deliver it in that tone. It’s always on their level, but very conversational and very fluid and very fun.
I’m careful. Obviously, I have to pay attention to vocabulary, and making sure that I’m not using words that they may not know. It’s really about that. But, then, if I feel like we need to continue to broaden our repertoire of educational programs, I’ll give some thought to what else can we do? There are infinite possibilities. We try to create a new program at least once every two years. We introduced two programs last year—the ones you mentioned, Ellington and Miles Davis. Those were both commissioned. We actually didn’t intend on doing those type of biographical programs, but two different art presenters approached us around the same time, and asked if we would create programs around those two artists.
It was really fun to do, and the music was great, obviously, and two new programs were added to our repertoire, which was great. That was last year, and I am not quite sure what the next one will be. We’ll see.
RR: You were speaking early about the globalization of jazz. The new record, Big Drum/Small World features five compositions from five different geographic regions. Was there a sixth piece, from West Africa, to be included at one point?
HS: It’s funny. Lionel Loueke, who you may know, has been touring with Herbie Hancock for the last five, six, seven years, and has released a number of records on Blue Note, and I love his music. We commissioned him to write a piece for the Big Drum/Small World program. I said that we were creating two distinct versions of the program. One is for kids, and one will be for the main stage. The one for the kids will require an audience participation segment. He delivered his tune on time, and everything was great. He said something to me in passing, “The kids will really love playing this.” And I said, “No, it’s actually_our_ group that’s playing it.” He said, “Well, wait a minute. What?” And I said, “Yeah, the tune is really for our ensemble. It’s not a student band.” And he said, “Ohhh, man. I thought it was for the kids, man. I would have written something completely different for you cats, man.” And I said, “Can you write something else?” He said, “I’m really busy, but I’m going to try.” So, I bugged him for probably about seven or eight months, and he was on a whirlwind tour with Herbie Hancock, and I think he was trying to put his own record out at the time. He just became too overwhelmed and too busy to write another tune. In contrast to all the other music that was written, I didn’t feel that tune really reflected his true abilities as a composer. I didn’t reflect what he is capable of as a composer. Unfortunately, it was never delivered.
There was another tune that was commissioned by an Argentinean bass player named Pedro Giraudo, but that tune was delivered after we recorded the record. It’s hard to get all those guys in the same room, including getting the studio time, and an engineer, and, so, unfortunately, it was a timing thing. There are two tunes that conceivably we wanted to have on the record. It’s a relatively short record, but so is A Love Supreme, and that’s not a bad record.
RR: How did you select those global regions presented on Big Drum/Small World, and how did you select those particular five composer/musicians to contribute to the piece, including one Metta Quintet band member?
HS: A lot of it was being aware of all those guys and loving their music. [As far as Marcus Strickland, Metta Quintet tenor and soprano saxophonist’s contribution] we wanted to make sure that the U.S. was represented, and that we were still committed to the roots of the music. We wanted [Strickland’s “From Here Onwards”] to reflect and somehow be in line with the sound of American music.
It’s funny because there are so many great Latin musicians, but I didn’t want there to be like three guys from Latin America, so it was hard. There was Yosvanny Terry from Cuba [his track, “Summer Relief”] and Miguel Zenon from Puerto Rico [“Sica”], and they are very close to each other, and they are both Caribbean, but I do think that, first of all, they are both great artists, and they are both great composers. Also, their musical sensibilities and visions are so different from one another that I wasn’t concerned about their respective tunes sounding the same. It was sort of really trying to pick guys who are pretty well-known, at least in international jazz circles, but whose music I’m a fan of, particularly Miguel and Yosvanny.
We have the Middle East represented with Omer Avital [from Israel, his contribution, [“BaKarem”], and we have India represented [via Italy] with Rudresh Mahanthappa [“Crabcakes”], and we have Cuba, Puerto Rico, and the States. I think it is pretty broad and pretty diverse.
RR: And not sounding like an eight-course meal where the pieces don’t go together.
HS: Exactly. We wanted some creative cohesion.
RR: The band, itself, has been together for at least around ten years, right?
HS: Sort of different configurations. We’ve all been friends for a long time, but they are also people who I’ve spent a lot of time on the road with who have embraced our organizational vision, our organizational mission. I think they all share an understanding of how important it is to reach young people. These are people who are just exceptional instrumentalists, but they are also a pleasure to be with on the road. When I’m trying to find musicians, they are people who I want to be around. There is certainly that contingent of musicians who don’t like getting up early, or could care less about kids. They are just sort of in their ivory tower, and just want to nurture their own gift, and that’s about it—“don’t bother me.” That’s just not the type of musician that we need in our circle. There are just a number of characteristics and criteria: be a great person, be humble, enjoy being of service to young people and to communities, and be deeply committed to your craft and your instrument. They are all professionals. They show up on time. They’re not crazy. They’re not wild. They’re not out until 7 in the morning, and only just show up at our 7:30 lobby call for a show for young people, having been up all night. They are all really down-to-earth good people.
RR: Is it safe to say that you’ve personally come a long way from Tucson, Arizona?
HS: Sure. Yeah. It’s been an amazing…as most people are, you are always looking ahead. You always want to be where you’re not, so I don’t often rest on my laurels, or I really take time and thinking, “Wow, I really accomplished a lot.” I’m always thinking, “God, if we can only do this.” But, certainly, of course. I was a product of public school programs. I had music in my family. As I mentioned earlier, my two grandparents were classical musicians. I don’t know if I can go so far to say that it was in the blood, but it doesn’t seem unusual for me to go into music in that respect.
From high school, I went to the Berklee College of Music, and I was exposed to so much, and it was the first time I really had access to all of my heroes, and access to musicians who are my own age, peers who were very disciplined and very serious. That experience in Boston informed me about how much work really needs to be done, and how serious and committed one has to be to go into, particularly, jazz. Obviously, none of us are going into it for the money. But, there are certain artistic standards that you have to meet in order to have other musicians enjoy playing with you. In college, I got a lot of dirty looks from kids my own age: “Come on, man. Go fuckin’ practice.” But, that’s good. That’s inspiring. That’s motivating. So, it was great to be thrust into that environment with really virtuosic young people, who are just very, very disciplined.
Coupled with, what then were, two pretty great jazz clubs in Boston, and going there night after night after night, and getting to hear the greatest musicians ever. Elvin Jones, Tony Williams, Billy Higgins, Al Foster, Joe Henderson, Herbie Hancock, Wayne Shorter, Tommy Flanagan, and Milt Jackson–all these amazing icons of jazz music, and I was sitting two feet away from them. Four years of that goes a long way. 20 years in New York goes a long way, too.
RR: Let’s end up with your thoughts on the JazzReach Summer Institute.
HS: We haven’t actually presented the pilot program yet. It’s a pretty expensive thing. It’s pretty costly, so we are targeting our performing presenters, who we partner with during the normal presenting season, who might be dark in the summer time, and want to offer their community summer programming for kids. We are putting it out there. Nobody has bitten yet, but it is something that we want to offer to basically any community who feels like that they don’t really have great teachers available, or great programs to offer in the summer time. It’s a way that we are trying to expand the scope of our artistic programming, but it has yet to be piloted.
RR: And making JazzReach a 365-day (or, 366) per year program.
HS: Yeah. Yeah. That’s exactly right. We’ve been traditionally dormant in the summer time, and I don’t really like that.
