Harmonic Possibilities (And The Sound Of Freedom)
Memoir Status
The memoir is still a work-in-progress as the author continues to “collect” memories and create new experiences. The author originally planned to end the memoir at 2009 with the idea of writing a second memoir from that time to the present. 2009 marked the close of the story cycle that culminated with the Millennium Park performance of Irving’s suite ‘Sketches of Brazil” in homage to his mentors Miles Davis and arranger/orchestrator Gil Evans. In the interim, in October of 2013 New York University’s Black Renaissance Noire Magazine. Irving read at the reception in NYC and his work received high acclaim.
Author’s Introduction
In October of 2010, during some European tour days off in Paris, France I decided to take a train down to Bordeaux to visit a dear friend and her family. I had first met the talented French painter, Sylvia Adjabroux about a decade prior to this. Back then in 2001, upon hearing my jazz-piano-playing for the first time, she commented that I seemed to “channel the styling of some European classical composer.” I told her that I wasn’t consciously aware of any particular classical influence on my work as a jazz pianist. She insisted, “Well I’m not sure who that composer-in-you is, or what meaning this has for you, but I’m certain it will eventually manifest.” I long held the notion that spontaneous musical expression didn’t come from me, but rather that it flowed through me from some unseen source. This is not so much unlike the concept of the muse in Greek mythology (from which we derive the word music). Sylvia’s words proved to be like the prophesy of a Greek oracle.
During this short October visit I played for her a video excerpt from the, then, recent 2009 Chicago-Millennium Park debut of my Sketches of Brazil suite with the 34-member Sonic Portraits Orchestra. I conducted from the piano before a record crowd of 12,500 receiving three standing ovations. With excitement Sylvia exclaimed to me, “This is what I was talking about ten years ago…” she continued, “But the French public only knows you from your jazz fusion work with Miles Davis. This progression to orchestral writing is like going from A to Z without any explanation. Your peers may understand and know the process of your evolution, but the average person has no idea. I am sure that an artistic, intellectual and historical autobiography written by you would be very well received here. We’d understand why Miles chose you and, it would be a great setup for the your Sketches of Brazil CD.”
This time, I decided to listen and to proactively follow the advice of Sylvia the Oracle. My writing began in 2011 as a historical autobiography. After deep reflection, recollection, research and discovery, parallel stories surfaced to suggest more of a narrative memoir approach. For me, recalling and writing these stories has given new meaning to my life as it relates to my nine-year collaboration with Miles. This journey has helped me to understand why I have not been at liberty to cut the umbilical cord from Miles, that is, until now. As a part of this process, I’ve endeavor to more fully integrate our time together while continuing to honor and remember him, as I become my own person and speak in my own musical voice.
“So what was it like to work with Miles Davis?” This is a question I’ve been asked repeatedly. Such a superficial question still leaves me clueless as to what a non-superficial response could possibly be. During recent performances in Poland I felt surprise and delight when a radio interviewer asked, “Do you dream about Miles?” This inquiry called up many related stories and memories. Eventually these recollections coalesce to encapsulate my empirical essence. So often the narratives of our lives are defined and framed by the questions asked. I’ve rarely been asked, “Why did Miles choose you?” or “What was it like for Miles to work with you?” So, in approaching this writing I conceded that perhaps many would find my nine-year collaboration with Miles Davis to be the most intriguing aspect of my planetary sojourn. Nevertheless, the intersection of our musical life paths relied on an incalculable sequence of events precipitated by choices and subsequent progressions, which if even one— had not happened, the pivotal collaborative body of published works by Miles and I would be nonexistent. Besides this, in actuality, there are specific artistic reasons why Miles sought me out as a composer, producer, keyboardist and musical director. These reasons point back to the life challenges that contributed to the artistic sculpting which shaped me. In this sense the what, how, when, where and why of all I had become by the time of my first meeting with Miles has as much to do with my own positioning as an offshoot of ancestral roots. Contemplation of such roots reveal how cumulative life experiences become indispensable in the formation of the apple we eat today. We take for granted that, not only did the fruit emerge from a specific seed, but that this seed came from the innumerable succession of trees that preceded it. Many indigenous cultures maintain a literal 2000 historical and spiritual connection with their ancestry. I examine aspects of my known ancestors via amazing stories springing from the orchards of my family lineages back to 1803. For me, these accounts—alone—are truly not any less intriguing or compelling than the stories in Alex Haley’s “Roots.”
In a larger sense, my memoir, Harmonic Possibilities is a distillation of my complex and often serendipitous musical development. As an, essentially, self-taught pianist and later as a composer and arranger, my early artistic evolution is analogous to the Moringa oleifera tree, which thrives in drought conditions to produce the most nutrients of any comparable food on earth. My initiation into music came via chance encounters and blossomed under hardship and limitation with little or no support amid the death of my mother. I describe in detail how, at the age of 13, my life is turned upside down by her untimely departure. Yet, fortunately this extraordinarily sad time coincided with and fueled my meteoric acceleration as a young student of jazz piano theory out of which my own pedagogical technique organically evolved over time.
After losing my mother in 1967 another major pivotal life event occurred. An annual summer vacation to North Carolina two-years later became an unexpected eight-year relocation from my home in Chicago. As the oldest I became the surrogate father of four of six siblings. My strictly religious maternal grandmother, Muh (formerly a banjo playing blues singer) sternly reared us in the small country town of Leaksville (now Eden, North Carolina). Significantly, we lived next door to the popular country preacher woman, my aunt Lettie Mae Perkins-Cohen whom as a teenager had played stride piano while touring with Bessie Smith. Just for fun, I was challenged to learn her style of playing. The mixed experience of Southern culture shock, intrigue about the red clay dirt of the land there and sadness around being separated from my father and two siblings (who stayed in Chicago) placed me in an emotional blender.
In retrospect, I emotionally re-parented myself through obsessive immersion in my music theory and practice, fighting circumstances to continue cultivation of the jazz roots planted earlier in Chicago. Continued growth in jazz proved to be a solitary unsupported path in the Bible belt where gospel and country music reigned supreme. While playing gospel music provided me with a good livelihood, it also, as by osmosis, formed the basis of my fluency and grounding in blues based idiomatic expressionism. Without being cognizant of this “other” dimensional overlay in my playing, I now recognize that the southern training ground unknowingly seeded blues and gospel into my jazz garden. This is something that I completely took for granted until I recently understood that European musicians culturally do not receive such stylistic exposure to and/or grounding in the quintessential vernacular of blues, gospel and spirituals. In North Carolina I daily walked and stood barefoot in the symbolic red clay of this music, as had Theloneous Monk and John Coltrane who were both born there and Dizzy Gillespie born in neighboring South Carolina. Additionally, my mother’s death and the subsequent move to the south made possible fortuitous music experiences and connections, which, twice, placed me within one-degree of separation from music legends Miles Davis, Ramsey Lewis, Earth Wind & Fire and other musical heroes. A series of synchronistic events ensued, and years later, upon hearing my composition, Space, over the phone, Miles is enthusiastically lured out of a seven-year hiatus and into our mutually rewarding nine-year collaboration.
While digging deep to summon back the emotionalism of my passage from normal family life to virtual orphanhood, it became clearer how the power of music serendipitously led to my unexpected prominence as a jazz composer, arranger and pianist. In fact, musical invention through cathartic processes became my therapy as a life-saving force that seemed to also make room for its own expression. The aphorism, “The same fire that melts butter makes steal stronger and gold more pure,” absolutely captures the transcendence of my uncongenial circumstances through music.
Another way to express my development from my perspective as an arranger is with the idea of voice leading (a system of harmonic progression). The esthetically informed selection of sequential chord voicing assures a smooth, non-abrupt transition from one chord to another. This is like walking upstairs one-step-at-a-time rather than lunging up two or three. Reflecting on the details of my life’s journey as movements of a continuously unfolding musical composition, I found that hardship often demanded that I find a way to climb five or more steps in one jump on a wildly winding staircase— in the dark. Each challenge introduced opportunities to master new harmonic possibilities and/or to make sense of the dissonance. Of course, this translated into new invention both figuratively (in terms of my adaptability to challenges often using music as a bridge) and literally (in terms of the resulting musical expansion). For many observers, that musical expansion transcended the limits seemingly imposed by my lack of formal training (on piano).
Fast forwarding to the two decades of my life after Miles, I eventually came to the conclusion that I’ve been significantly impacted and sometimes restricted by my specific categorization as having been an integral part of his latter electronic jazz fusion music legacy. During the 17-years after his death in 1991, I continued to reenact the role as a surrogate father in support of the projects of others. This I did at the expense of leaving little or no energy towards the creation of my own personal artistic legacy, particularly as a jazz recording artist. This observation circuitously leads back to the question, “Do I ever dream of Miles?” Yes, throughout these 17-years I experienced many recurring dreams about Miles. The dreams mostly found he and I talking and joking together backstage before a concert. I always woke up before the concert happened. I simply assumed the meaning to be more about our relationship than about the music. However, in 2009 as I neared completion of the score for Sketches of Brazil (which was my homage to Miles Davis and Gil Evans) the dreams shifted dramatically. This time I experienced a bizarre lucid dream. Prior to this my last lucid dream had happened about five-years before.
In this current dream Miles led me into a long spacious rehearsal room that narrowed slightly as we progressed. Large picture windows with open blinds looked out to a lazy summertime street corner in a small town (perhaps in East St. Louis… the hometown of Miles). It felt more as if I was consciously having an out-of-body experience outside of time/space reality, completely aware that I had a dream body sleeping somewhere. Miles introduced me to John Coltrane, Theloneous Monk and an indistinguishable drummer and bassist saying,
“I brought Bobby here from the future to inform us about
the new harmonic concepts he’s been working on.”
It felt like the mid-1940’s. The vividness of the burnt orange and yellowish decor and the details of summer scents commingled with cigarette smoke are still emblazoned in my memory… including the pearly feel of the ivory keys on the tall dark brown upright piano in the far right corner. The voice of Miles sounded clear without the raspy speaking tone he later became known for. The musicians were warmly receptive and attentive as I sat at the piano and played a series of chord progressions. They seemed to absorb the music into their being like a sipping a cool drink. Upon awakening I immediately harvested the movement of these progressions to inform my actual work in completion of a passage in the Sketches of Brazil score that needed expansion.
After the success of my Millennium Park performance of Sketches of Brazil, I ostensibly experienced a return of the recurring dream. But to my surprise, this dream continued beyond the dressing room conversations with Miles. I walked out to the stage with him and the other band members and we played an amazing concert as an acoustic sextet. This dream concert setting appeared to be a shopping mall atrium type of hall that went into infinity in both directions. We jammed in the middle of infinity. There was no audience that could be seen yet I sensed that all were “tuned in.”
In relationship to these dreams, while researching for the memoir, I was surprised to learn that every time Miles took a drug hiatus, he invariably sought to work with arranger Gil Evans on large ensemble orchestral based music. The last time Miles maintained sobriety is during our time together. He then constantly spoke to me about orchestrations with strings and exposed me to the compositions of various modern classical composers. He had been, again, pursuing Gil Evans to create an orchestral project; this time with current pop ballads. It was 1984 just after the successfully release of the album, Decoy, my first official work as a producer for Miles. Gil’s energetic unavailability at the age of 72 prompted Miles to ask him to mentor me as an orchestrator and arranger. Miles’ fascination and near obsession with more expansive symphonic music could be encapsulated in his 1987 words spoken to me as he worked on three oil large oil paintings at his apartment at the Essex House in New York:“When I die, I mean… if I die, I want them to play the introduction to Rite of Spring when they roll me down the isle.”
He had specifically asked me to turn on my Sony Walkman tape recorder to capture this statement. Four years later upon his death, Miles’ family blew off the request as being insignificant. I could not attend his funeral because the funeral of my stepbrother Andrea’s happened on the same day (he had been the victim of a fatal car crash). I knew that Miles died without the realization of his orchestral aspirations. I felt personal sadness over this. I also believed I didn’t do enough to persuade his family to honor his request to play the “Rite of Spring” passage. Additionally, not being able to attend the funeral meant that I didn’t have proper closure around his departure. There remained within me the feeling of unfinished business around all the above aspects of Miles’ unrealized ambitions.
While working on the memoir a chance encounter helped me to clarify the meaning of those dreams. When attending a local writer’s support group, a native of Columbia, South America told me that in his culture, “A deceased person only shows up in dreams to convey a specific message.” I revisited and re-analyzed the superficial conversations backstage with Miles that took place in my dreams. I thought, “Maybe these dreams never led to an actual concert because such a performance could only happen if incentivised by compelling new music to command expression. Perhaps I had much unfinished business towards the creation and realization of that music.” When viewing from this context, my Sketches of Brazil suite in homage to Miles and Gil would undoubtedly be that music. It certainly did represented work towards the intentional and literal fulfillment of Miles’ later orchestral ambitions. Upon deeper reflection on the dream “messages,” I eventually got that, during our time together, Miles had been actually preparing me to fulfill his symphonic aspirations.
I also now understood that Miles’ message to me in the transitional lucid dream manifested as an acknowledgement that I was on the right path in the development of Sketches of Brazil and so, consequentially, that dream music informed the direction of the work. I have a feeling that the 2009 concert itself on the 50th anniversary of the seminal recording of Sketches of Spain earned me a diploma from the Miles/Gil School of Cool as symbolized by the last dream where we actually jammed together in concert. Considering the 17-year process, it could be said that I’m a slow learner, but I would argue that the alignment of the many aspects around the 50th anniversary points to what astrologers would refer to as a very rare and auspicious grand-trine conjunction. Regardless, timing is everything, yet time, when viewed from the perspective of eternity, is entirely moot.
Harmonic Possibilities is a non-linear narrative of my life before, during and after my nine-year collaboration with Miles Davis. At times, mine is a mystical journey of sound healing and self-discovery. Passages with dialog bring the narrative to life as I relive many conversations as if they had happened yesterday. It is my hope that the reader feels gifted with a wide-angle view of the unique intersections that merge my life as a virtually orphaned kid from a large gospel music family, and the life-path of a reclusive jazz legend to transform our personal life stories. I share my personal process of translating emotion into music while perpetually asking the question, “What else is possible (both musically and in every aspect of life)?” Intrinsically embedded in my journey is a reaffirmation of the regenerative power of music as the key for navigating through the dissonant chordal progressions of life. I also came to appreciate the potency of music we played as “the sound of freedom”, that transformed lives.
Coming Soon: Excerpts from the forthcoming Memoir