Home » Jazz Articles » Interview » Erik Friedlander: A Little Cello?
Erik Friedlander: A Little Cello?
[Oscar] Pettiford’s tunes are very special. They have a clarity about them, a beautiful, almost Mozartian clarity.
—Erik Friedlander
Friedlander is very much the epitome of the modern-day cellist, but of late he has turned his eye to the past.
At the end of 2015 Friedlander released Oscalypso, his lyrical homage to
Oscar Pettiford
bass1922 - 1960
Jimmy Blanton
bass, acoustic1918 - 1942
Duke Ellington
piano1899 - 1974
Speaking of Oscalypso and the tradition of the cello in jazz ahead of a European tour, Friedlander said: "This is kind of reasserting the legacy we have, even though it's not vast. I wanted to do a jazz record that was more in the traditional vein and I just found the context that made sense. I just love Pettiford's music. It's beautiful."
Whilst Pettiford might not have been the first jazz cellist—that accolade belongs to
Harry Babasin
bass, acousticb.1921
Dodo Marmarosa
piano1925 - 2002
Friedlander's own relationship to Pettiford's music stretches back long before even Broken Arm Trio (Skipstone, 2008), a recording inspired by Pettiford's cello work and
Herbie Nichols
piano1919 - 1963
For this project Friedlander's cello is at the centre of a band featuring
Trevor Dunn
bass
Michael Blake
saxophone, tenorb.1964
The tour, which begins at the end of January in Romania, also takes in Germany, Belgium, Italy, Ireland and Austria. "I've been touring it around the States a little bit on the east coast but this is the first tour in Europe," says Friedlander. We're pretty excited."
The bulk of the tour set list will feature the Pettiford tracks Friedlander recorded on Oscalypso, with perhaps one or two surprises thrown in. Pettiford, for all his status as one of the giants of his instruments, was not a prolific writer. "He didn't write a lot of tunes," Friedlander relates, "maybe thirty tunes or so that we know of."
Relatively few perhaps, but less, so the saying goes, is often more. "Pettiford's tunes are very special," enthuses Friedlander. "They have a clarity about them, a beautiful, almost Mozartian clarity. Then there are these kind of sentimental tunes that are beautiful too."
For Friedlander, the beautifully melodious and lyrical veins that run through Pettiford's compositions seem a little at odds with a sometimes abrasive personality. "He had a tumultuous life, you know, getting into fights and drinking. Musicians were a little afraid to hang out with him because he had a nose for trouble, he'd get into fights on the subway. But none of that comes across in his music. All you get is the clarity."
What aspect of Pettiford's music first attracted Friedlander? "Mainly it was his writing and how he integrated the cello into his leadership role of the band, but his way of playing is impeccable. He's just got fantastic time and beautiful intonation, so just on a purely technical level he's quite impressive."
These are attributes that could just as easily describe Friedlander's playing, but one of the differences between the two cellists, stylistically speaking, was Pettiford's liking for fast tempi—hardly surprising given his position as one of the original beboppers and the musical fashion of his time.
"Nowadays we're used to extraordinary musicianship," explains Friedlander, "but in his day Pettiford impressed people even more because not only had he an ability to play fast tempi but he wanted to solo when a lot of bass players were there to kind of support the soloists. In Birdland, when they would finish a fast tune and get ready to play the head Oscar would say 'Wait a minute, the bassist's going to get some.'"
Pettiford left his mark in the bands of " data-original-title="" title="">Charlie Barnett,
Dizzy Gillespie
trumpet1917 - 1993
Woody Herman
band / ensemble / orchestra1913 - 1987
Friedlander's approach to Pettiford's tunes on Oscalypso combined elements of the non-conventional—a cello and saxophone front line and no chordal instrument—with the conventional: "In terms of arrangements I went with a kind of traditional approach." The upcoming European tour, however, offers Friedlander the opportunity to experiment a bit more. "On this tour I'm bringing some new arrangements that are a little more outside and a little more my own personal taste."
Choosing which of Pettiford's tunes to include on Oscalypso gave Friedlander food for thought: "I was trying to find tunes that told the best story in terms of sequence on the record, even though people hardly listen that way these days. Pettiford wrote a lot of medium-up tempo tunes and so I needed to find variety within the small gradations of tempo -tunes that had their own special quality. It kind of shows off his writing in a lot of ways."
At the same time as learning more about Pettiford's music, Friedlander research, for want of a better term, has revealed some interesting insights into the bassist/cellist of mixed Choctaw, Cherokee and African-American lineage, born in Okmulgee, Oklahoma in 1922.
"I found out that he perhaps had perfect pitch, which made a lot of sense to me because he plays with such perfect intonation," says Friedlander. "When he was coming up he was first like a kind of singer/dancer with his father Doc Pettiford's band. Then he became a pianist, which is maybe where he started getting his perfect pitch. Evidently he would yell at the saxophone section if they were out of tune or played off-beat when he was working with the big bands like Woody Herman or Charlie Barnett. I can't imagine he was too rambunctious with Ellington, who was like a god."
Perfect pitch may seem like every musician's dream, but Friedlander offers a different perspective. "Pettiford was probably a little tortured by intonation variances because perfect pitch is like a gift and a curse at the same time. You can't help but hear the pitch exactly the way you think it's supposed to be."
Even had Pettiford sought out other musicians with perfect pitch the frustrations might not have stopped there. "I've been in rehearsals with two people with perfect pitch and they don't hear the note the same way," Friedlander laughs. "It's close. It's really close, but it's not the same."
More revealing perhaps, is the notion that Pettiford felt himself to be somewhat short-changed by the industry. "I found out that Pettiford was quite tortured at not getting the recognition he thought he deserved," recounts Friedlander. "He was playing with Dizzy, he was splaying with Bird, with Monk, with Ellington and he was winning all the jazz polls but he wasn't getting the fees that Dizzy was getting. It's just kind of the nature of the business but you couldn't tell him that. He quit Dizzy's band on numerous occasions and finally one time left for good."
Just a couple of years before hooking up with Gillespie in 1943—a band co-led by Pettiford—Pettiford had almost given up playing bass, frustrated at his inability to make a decent living. "Yeah, he was going to quit," affirms Friedlander. "He wanted to be a doctor like his father."
Such a crisis of confidence, or disillusionment with the music business is common enough among musicians. Friedlander is no exception. "My career-confidence crisis was less a kind of moment, though many of them are like that too. For me, it was just trying to find my way and my place in the music world. My answer to the crisis was 'I'm going to be as relevant as possible' and that meant for me to do all kinds of work. I was playing in orchestras, I was playing on Broadway, I was doing recording sessions. I wanted to make a living as a musician and so I got just kind of too busy and I was becoming miserable because I was playing in situations that weren't creatively satisfying."
For Friedlander the solution lay simply in refocusing and "pairing away the work that wasn't meaningful to me." Pettiford's answer to his own crisis of confidence is more the stuff of jazz myth and legend. It's a matter of historical speculation as to what, or rather who, convinced Pettiford not to quit music and instead make his way to New York. Being discovered is the dominant version of events, though more than one version of the story exists, as Friedlander attests: "Three different musicians have the same story about having discovered Pettiford in Minneapolis."
The three in question were
Milt Hinton
bass, acoustic1910 - 2000
Howard McGhee
trumpet1918 - 1987
Chubby Jackson
bass, acoustic1918 - 2003
Regardless, in a short space of time Pettiford established himself in New York as one of the top jazz bassists. His well-documented adoption of the cello came about as the result of a broken arm, which meant he had to give up the bass while his arm mended. It's the sort of happenstance that can completely redirect a musician's career—as was the case with Pettiford—and something that Friedlander can relate to.
"When I was twenty I was a musician with some ability but not too much discipline and not a lot of focus. I was basically trying to figure what I was going to do with my life. I went to a club with a drummer friend of mine and she started talking with the drummer after the set—it was a
Stan Getz
saxophone, tenor1927 - 1991
Randy Brecker
trumpetb.1945
Friedlander admits to feeling "completely unqualified for this job" but his availability got him the gig recording with
Harvie S
bass, acousticb.1948
"It was complete happenstance that I ended up recording with Harvie S It was called Underneath it All (Grama-vision, 1982) and it was a great record. You could say that luck had a role in that for sure but I believe that you make your own like by being available for it by working as much as you can."
It was Friedlander's first recording date, setting in motion a thirty-five year career that, in addition to his own projects, has seen him collaborate with the likes of
John Zorn
saxophone, altob.1953
Cyro Baptista
percussionb.1950
Nels Cline
guitar, electricb.1956
Sylvie Courvoisier
piano
Dave Douglas
trumpetb.1963
Mark Feldman
violin
Wadada Leo Smith
trumpetb.1941
Uri Caine
pianob.1956
Had Pettiford not died so young he too may well have gone on to branch out stylistically and explore more experimental music. Friedlander has no doubt. "It would have been great had he lived but you're just met with the inescapable fact that he didn't. It's a shame. He had so many foibles, drinking issues and personality conflicts, but maybe he would have solved that staying in Copenhagen and living an expat's life, being honorred and respected."
Even the circumstances surrounding Pettiford's death are cause for dispute, which is evidence above all perhaps, of how surprisingly little has been written about Pettiford. "I've heard a couple of stories about him; riding a bicycle, getting into an accident, having a steel plate put in his head, getting into another accident, going to hospital and then dying there," says Friedlander. "There are some stories about a polio-like virus."
What we are left with as indisputable fact, however, is Pettiford's recorded legacy. In embracing Pettiford's music on Oscalypso Friedlander has met two challenges head on: "The challenge for me was just to express my love and respect for the music and to scratch an itch that I hadn't scratched in my whole career, which was doing a record of covers," Friedlander relates.
"I thought that to do record of covers of this man who I hold in such high esteem was a good way to break the ice on that. To show respect for the music and capture the spirit of that music but also convey my slightly more modern sensibility about how to arrange it."
Friedlander was born in 1960, the same year that Pettiford died. Jazz bass has come a long way in the half century since then and so too has the cello. The extent of the cello's growth excites Friedlander: "The real thing that has happened, the real impact, is the fact that really great cello players would stay with classical music but now you're getting really talented players taking jazz and improvised music to take a stand in life with. The growth has just been amazing."
Ernst Reijseger
cellob.1954
Hank Roberts
cellob.1954
Oscalypso may not be the only exploration of Pettiford's tunes that Friedlander undertakes but it will be a stylistic one-off: "If I did it again I would do it in a different way," the cellists asserts. "If you come to the gigs on this tour you my get a dose of what I'm experimenting with, which is to reimagine the tunes from the ground up in ways that are more modern at the same time as using some of that old style language. You know, I'm not sure I totally succeeded in every aspect of that but I'm still working on it."
Photo Credit: Angelo Merendino
Tags
erik friedlander
Interview
Ian Patterson
United States
New York
New York City
Oscar Pettiford
Jimmy Blanton
duke ellington
Harry Babasin
Dodo Marmarosa
Herbie Nichols
Trevor Dunn
Michael Sarin
Michael Blake
Charlie Barnett
Dizzy Gillespie
Woody Herman
Milt Hinton
Howard McGhee
Chubby Jackson
Stan Getz
randy brecker
Harvey S
john zorn
Cyro Baptista
Nels Cline
Sylvie Courvoisier
Dave Douglas
Mark Feldman
Wadada Leo Smith
Uri Caine
Ernst Reijseger
Hank Roberts
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