Jazz across the water

The New School for Jazz and Contemporary Music bridges the geographical gap between here and New York offering artists from both locations the chance to connect.

By BARRY DAVIS
Martin Mueller 521 (photo credit: Courtesy: Martin Mueller)
Martin Mueller 521
(photo credit: Courtesy: Martin Mueller)
It is common knowledge that New York’s Israeli population has grown incrementally over the last decade or two in all sectors of the great American metropolis.
One of the main areas of cultural growth there, generated from this part of the world, has occurred as a result of the steep rise in the number of budding jazz musicians from Israel seeking to study, and thereafter play jazz professionally, in the Big Apple.
Most of those who opt to study the discipline in New York – as opposed to at schools in other parts of the States, such as Berklee College of Music and the New England Conservatory in Boston and the Eastman School of Music in Rochester, New York – enroll at the New School for Jazz and Contemporary Music on West 13th Street in Manhattan.
The New School has had a formative impact on the evolution of jazz in Israel, initially indirectly following the aliya of late US-born jazz saxophonist Arnie Lawrence in 1998, who set up a school in Jerusalem and influenced a couple of generations of players here before he died in 2005. Lawrence was instrumental in the founding of the New York establishment in 1986, and several leading members of the Israeli jazz community, including stellar bassists Avishai Cohen and Omar Avital, passed under his teaching wing.
More recently, pianist Amit Golan, who attended the New School along with current Stricker organizational director Michal Abramov in the late 1980s and headed the Stricker Center for Jazz Studies of the Israel Conservatory of Music in Tel Aviv before tragically dying last year at the age of 46, invested great effort in trying to establish a joint study program between his American alma mater and the institution he directed in Tel Aviv. Those efforts finally bore fruit two years ago when a four-year program of study was started between Stricker and the New School, with 20 Israeli youngsters continuing annually to the New York establishment to complete a bachelor’s degree in jazz after two years of tuition in Tel Aviv.
Martin Mueller, executive director and joint founder of the New School, came to Israel in June to take a closer look at how things are panning out at Stricker and to attend a number of concerts featuring students on the local jazz program. He is proud of how the New School has developed since its founding.
“Next year we are having our 25th year celebrations and we are working on a book to document the history of jazz at the New School. We have some big names that have passed through the school,” notes Mueller. The latter include leading artists such as pianist Brad Mehldau and pianist-organist Larry Goldings. “We have so much history to relate and I want to make sure some of the story is told.”
Mueller was effusive in his praise of the standard of jazz here, as well as the talent that finds its way through the portals of his own institution. “We have had some great Israeli musicians at the New School too, like Avishai Cohen and Omar Avital, and [trombonist] Avi Lebovich, who has taught at Stricker, but of course the other really important connection is Amit Golan. Amit was a wonderful gatekeeper for the spirit and this whole phenomenon of jazz from Israel.
He was a very important part of that. He always had this dream of bringing it [the New School quality of jazz] back to Israel.”
For his part, saxophonist and current Stricker jazz program director Erez Bar Noy admits to having had some reservations about taking the leap into New School territory. “Amit was very keen to get the joint program going and I felt that maybe we should start off with something more low-key. But Amit said we should go for broke.”
Considering the smooth cooperation that has developed between the two institutions thus far, Bar Noy admits Golan got it right. “I definitely saw that wrong,” he says. “The program with the New School is really proving its worth.”
MUELLER’S VISIT to Israel with several other New School staff members earlier this year was designed to allow the New York team to monitor progress here, as well as to perform a gig of their own. Bar Noy says he had no qualms about his charges meeting New School expectations. “The level of jazz here has gone up so much over the years. You can’t possibly compare it with where we were even just 10 years ago.”
The New School executive director says he has been aware of the surge in jazz here for some time. “Jazz in Israel has grown more from the performing arts high school level – especially Thelma Yellin [High School of Arts in Givatayim, where Golan also taught] – to the conservatories and after-school programs, which have sort of provided the fertile ground for this idea of this wonderful partnership [between Stricker and the New School].”
In fact, the New School has been a happy hunting ground for budding jazz artists from here for some time, and the Israeli presence there is constantly on the rise.
“Israelis make up around 15 percent of the student body, so they are the largest international population and we get people from all over the world,” Mueller notes. “But, you know, clusters bring clusters so, at one time, it was the Danish cats and then the German cats.” Mueller says that it is very much a twoway street, both culturally and in terms of learning.
“Students from outside the States get high quality music education but they all bring something else from their own cultures and how they made jazz their own, and married [what they learned here] to their own traditions and interpretations.”
It is not only the music that bridges the geographical gap between here and New York. Veteran American free jazz protagonist, saxophonist Dave Liebman once noted that for him, Tel Aviv is the New York of the Middle East and that he feels entirely at home when he comes here to perform. So, is there also something of an energetic nature that binds young Israeli jazz players with the creative drive in the epicenter of the jazz world? Mueller says he also gets that vibe.
“There is a very symbiotic relationship between the New York energy and Tel Aviv. I feel it too and, interestingly, Tel Aviv stands alone in Israel like New York does in the US. Of course there are lots of other great cities, but New York is special, and Tel Aviv, in a smaller country, has that same kind of energy. There’s nothing in Israel like Tel Aviv. And both cities are very cosmopolitan and progressive, and share a lot of the same values, so it is only natural that the artistic communities would relate and interconnect.”
THEN THERE is the Jewish factor. “There is the deeper connection of Israel through New York and all the Jewish American community, and all the roots that are there, and it is unlike anywhere else in the country.”
That also extends to the music, with many of the composers of songs that gradually achieved jazz standard status being Jewish. These include the likes of Harold Arlen, George Gershwin, Lorenz Hart, Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein.
As executive director of the New School for the past quarter-century, Mueller has helped the Israeli-American jazz synergy along. He is keenly aware of the different schools of thought within the local jazz community.
“You have these two genre camps right here in Tel Aviv. You have the straightahead guys and, of course, there’s Amit’s classic vision that jazz doesn’t go beyond [1950s hard bop trumpeter] Lee Morgan,” Mueller notes with a chuckle. “And then you get these guys who were influenced by the whole downtown scene.”
The “guys” to whom Mueller refers include the burgeoning contingent of jazz players who ply their craft on the freer side of the artistic tracks, such as reedman Assif Tsahar and pianist Daniel Sarid who, along with classical conductor Ilan Volkov, run the Levontin 7 club in Tel Aviv. The club recently hosted the launch of new free jazz record label Out Now Recordings run by Jerusalemite guitarist Ido Bukelman and now-New York resident Jerusalem-born saxophonist Yonatan Kretzmer. In fact, Tsahar was an influencing element on the New York downtown scene for some time, as one of the driving forces behind the avantgarde Vision Festival during his decade-and-a-half tenure as a New York resident.
Mueller says the institution he heads certainly embraces the more unfettered side of jazz exploration.
“We recently had an alumni panel with [straightahead jazz guitarist] Peter Bernstein and [Israeli saxophonist] Ori Kaplan [who has branched out into more Balkan-oriented music]. They had an interesting creative tension conversation. But that really does speak to the New School in terms of the open canon that exists there. That’s also very much in the spirit of Arnie [Lawrence]. We have built on a legacy of value and tradition that we embody, but we certainly have to let every artist take their own direction, find their own voice and, as a result, they are everywhere doing everything in wildly divergent artistic paths. There is sort of philosophical question about how far you can stretch the boundaries [of jazz] and I think we test that more than any other school, because of our open philosophy.”
THAT TRAJECTORY, through the genres, and incorporating an ever-widening circle of cultural and musical influences, is maintained at the New School even as the members of the original teaching personnel make way for younger blood.
“[86-year-old New School founder drummer] Chico Hamilton finally retired last year due to health reasons and [81-year-old pianist] Junior Mance is about to retire,” continues Mueller, “so it is a matter of the new generation taking up that mantle.” But is it a generation that still feeds off the roots? “It is, but again, it’s that elastic band and, since jazz has moved so deeply into the academy, it is part of our responsibility to find the means to connect to those original values without limiting the potentials of where art continues to move and transform. It’s a real interesting challenge.”
The generational transition presents all sorts of thorny issues. “You have to have new means for the other kind of artist to be effective and to bring their sum total of life and music in their own ways. They may not articulate in the institutional way but that is a value you have to keep in order to be a real jazz school and that’s getting harder and harder in terms of the student perception. They don’t understand those values as much as the generation that has moved on, and of course there’s also the normal lament of the ‘me generation’ and immediate gratification and entitlements.
That’s all there too.”
Mueller says the New School has an obligation to provide its students and potential students with the best possible path to developing their artistic talents, and to accommodate all approaches to the art form.
“There’s a lot of bad jazz education out there. If you’re only teaching a limited canon it’s going to be restrictive, and you’re going to end up with an academic museum piece.” That, he says, can necessarily lead institutions and their teachers into choppy waters. “You have to leave huge open zones and ensure you have flexibility, otherwise it squeezes the university of the streets out of the academy.
And, of course, jazz involves improvisation, and that can pertain to all levels.”
The positive flip side, says the veteran educator, is a healthier approach to life and society all around. “Look at the contemporary American culture frames, in terms of [TV reality talent shows] American Idol and Star Power; it’s all about ‘me.’ So these values of social community, which are at the root of where jazz lives, have been eroded. Jazz used to live in the club and in the home, and it was a total community, and that is all undermined by the economics of the market.”
THE ISRAELIS who have attended and are attending Mueller’s institution, and the ones who have embarked on the first stage of getting there as part of the Stricker-New School program, are leaving their mark not only on the New York school but on the global jazz scene as a whole. High-flying New York-based jazz PR executive and manager Kim Smith once surmised that Israelis in general are very driven to succeed, and this permeates through the Israeli members of the jazz scene too. It is a theory to which Mueller wholeheartedly subscribes.
“I think that when you grow up in a country like this, on the one hand I think there is a need to identify together, collectively, for common protection. On the other hand there is this great need for individual expression and, yes, there is this edge and drive, and living a bit on the edge of life and all the good and bad that brings with it. And there are all these symbiotic connections to America and New York, so Israel is a natural breeding ground for jazz to take root.”
Bar Noy sees the four-year joint program as a natural extension of that mind-set and, with the new academic year starting at Stricker this week, he is encouraged by the growth in the Stricker-New School synergetic relationship.
“The original idea was to have 25 students on the program each year,” says the Stricker director of jazz. “We had 25 students in the first year, then 19 in the second.
But this year we are starting with 32.
That’s beyond all expectations.” Mind you, that doesn’t necessarily mean that all 32 will make it to New York. “Some feel they have had enough after two years here, some take a gap year, and some stay on in Israel. There are all sorts of reasons for that.”
A strong relationship based on mutual trust has developed over the past two years, with Mueller and his cohorts happy to trust his counterparts in Tel Aviv to ensure that those who do make it over to Manhattan have attained the prerequisite standard of playing and understanding.
“There is an entrance examination for our students who move to the New School,” observes Bar Noy, “but that is only for the purpose of in-house information, and everything our students learn here is recognized for accreditation there.”
Bar Noy is full of praise for Golan’s initiative, for Abramov and for Stricker Conservatory of Music director Costin Canellis, who had some misgivings about the bilateral jazz ventures.
“It wouldn’t have happened with Michal. Amit brought the vision and Michal has amazing organizational abilities.
I understand why Costin had some reservations about the jazz program to start with. The conservatory comes from a European classical music tradition and Costin had to get used to the idea of jazz at the conservatory.”
Bar Noy is full of optimism as the first students on the four-year joint program make their way into the classrooms and rehearsals room of the New School. He says jazz here has never had it so good.
“[Internationally renowned Israeli pianist] Anat Fort and [acclaimed saxophonist] Daniel Zamir are starting to teach on our jazz program, and the standard of the students and jazz in general in Israel just keeps on going up and up. Stricker is, without a doubt, the leading jazz school in the country today. The school is all about jazz. We teach our students to play jazz, think jazz and breathe jazz. We do one thing and we do it very well.”
Mueller concurs. “Jazz doesn’t get so much support now in the States, and we have to keep these important values. That’s part of what drives me in my work, and I know that the teachers and, for that matter, the students at Stricker feel the same.”