Free Jazz and The Branch Riodan Duo

My Explanation and Interpretation of Free Jazz
Free jazz is a subgenre of jazz music that was made popular in the 1950’s and 60’s by jazz musicians like Ornette Coleman, Eric Dolphy, Cecil Taylor, and John Coltrane. It completely abandones the uses of set chord changes and written sheet musc and relies heavily on the musician’s ability to improvise and take musical ideas in new and different directions. Aurally, free jazz may sound very atonal and dissonant, and at times polytonal or polyrhythmic that is a truly creative art form which can be interoperated in many different ways. Some feel that, in a way, free jazz music’s interpretation of a literary technique known as stream of consciousness, which shares many of the same characteristics and follows the same basic principle of thought and creativity.
As a big fan of free jazz myself, I believe that the best way to experience it is to go see it live and more than once. One of the most exciting elements of listening to free jazz is never hearing something played the same way twice. Ornette Coleman, one of the greatest jazz saxophone players and pioneers of free jazz, once stated that free “jazz is the only music in which the same note can be played night after night but differently each time.” Another aspect that attracts many people to free jazz is its certain unpredictability and escape from mainstream music. However, the same reasons that attract many people to the music turn others off. Due to its absence of melodic structure, free jazz is disliked by many music lovers, especially by those who are not musicians themselves. Despite many negative responses, free jazz has maintained large number of loyal followers over the years. Its presence exists primarily in large cities, such as New York, Chicago, San Francisco, and Seattle.

The Concert
On Wednesday, March 24, 2008, the Branch/Riordan Duo gave a small, intimate performance in The Brooks Center’s recital room 115. This young and exceptionally talented “free-jazz” duo is based out of Chicago, where they are a staple on the city’s jazz scene. The duo also manages to do a fair amount of touring and have played in most major cities and big college towns across the country. While touring much of the southeast this past winter, the Branch/Riordan Duo brought a very unfamiliar sound to Clemson University, known as free jazz. They received a wide variety of responses from the students and professors in attendance. As an active jazz musician and music student, at Clemson, I had been anticipating their visit since January, when it was booked. That afternoon, performers Jamie Branch, on trumpet, and Marc Riordan, on drum set/percussion, electrified the room with their interpretations of free jazz that made a strong impression on my own musical development.
Jamie Branch grew up in a Chicago Suburb where she found her passion for music at a very early age. Brach moved to Boston in 2001 following high school graduation to attend the prestigious New England Conservatory. It was at this time the trumpeter met fellow music student and jazz studies major, Marc Riordan, a drummer and native to the Boston area. While at NEC, the two surrounded themselves in jazz and studied with Joe Maniere, a world renowned professor and pioneer of microtonal music. They both openly credit Maniere as being their greatest influence, particularly in how he completely transformed their understanding and approach to music. Branch and Riordan continued to play together in various musical settings around Boston before fully engulfing themselves in free jazz. After the pair graduated from NEC in 2005, they left Boston and made the move to Chicago, due to its rich and deeply rooted music scene.
I couldn’t help but notice that the two musicians began to look a little confused and uncomfortable as the students came pouring in. The atmosphere of the room probably couldn’t have been more contradicting to the smoky jazz clubs and bohemian poetry lounges the duo was clearly used to playing in. Despite the strange time and location of the performance, and with an audience of diligent note-takers, the duo became very intense and focused once they started playing. Jamie’s horn sounded the first few notes, which I believe was a diminished arpeggio that was quickly followed by a bluesy mixolydian phrase in a totally different key, creating a very unconventional sound. The drummer soon began to tap on strange wooden blocks placed on the head of his snare drum. As the music intensified, it became evident that this was one of the fastest and most articulate drummers I had ever seen. Many people would think a trumpet only accompanied by drums would sound thin and weak, but somehow these two made it work. The notes coming out of the trumpet at times were hard to follow, but always resolved well. Branch played long and intricate phrases and made her instrument sound larger than life. As for the rest of the set, it followed no planned format. The key changed at least every two measures, there was no sheet music in front of them, and it was the most raw and creative sound I have ever heard in my life.
The one element of the performance that impressed me most was Branch’s use of microtones and microtonal scales. Microtonal music, according to Edward Burns, is “all music which contains intervals smaller than the conventional contemporary western semitone. The idea here is that the music contains microtones, i.e., very small intervals” (Intervals, Scales, and Tuning - In the Psychology of Music). This was the first performance where I was able recognized with use of microtones, and possibly the first time my ears were exposed to it, other than on a recording.
The Branch/Riordan Duo’s performance affected me on both musical and personal levels. My personal experience, which I set from the more technical and artistic experience, centered on my awe of their musical abilities. My focus was immediately drawn to their young ages in comparison to their advanced musical abilities, and then in comparison to my own. Beforehand, I learned that both performers were just barely older than me, which was very humbling. As they began to play, I quickly came to the realization that, while their level of musicianship was very conceivable to me, their skill level was at an overwhelming distance from my own. Their comfort and ease with the highly complex and improvised music was similar to what I would expect from a jazz musician with over 30 years of experience. As their set concluded, my first reaction was to go back to my apartment and start re-writing some of my own musical goals. During this performance it became clear to me that if I want to reach their level I have to amplify my intensity toward studying my instrument.
The reaction of the audience was exactly what I expected, what the performers expected, and probably what Monty expected, which stone cold silence, confusion, and an urgency to leave. However, this gave me the opportunity to stick around and pick the musicians’ brains. They couldn’t have been more nice and helpful. We sat around and talked for about an hour while I extracted a lot of useful information from them. The Branch/Riordan Duo was one of the best small performances I have ever attended and the experience forced me to raise the bar in my own musical journey.