Mark Turner
The complexity of jazz is both its strength and its weakness, turning off many would-be listeners by the demands of difficult, challenging forms, while fascinating jazz fans with its open-ended dynamism. For many jazz players, the tension between having to entertain and wanting to push boundaries resolves itself into uninspiring styles: either simple, easy listenability or listless, unstructured exploration. Fortunately, there are exceptions. Tenor saxophonist Mark Turner plays with an even-handed intensity that puts a satisfying, swinging looseness to very intricate music. He will bring his unique jazz approach to Tokyo this month.
Turner is one of the freshest voices to emerge out of the downtown New York jazz scene that has played at Small's since the early 90s. Small's is an unique club geared towards musicians as much as customers. With no liquor license to draw in entertainment-oriented customers and with sets often starting past midnight when other gigs have finished, players convene nightly at Small's to jam together. With enough space away from demands other than musical, players can explore ways to define themselves in their own voices with like-minded musicians. Another of the better-known players within this shifting circle of collaborators is pianist Brad Mehldau who played the Tokyo Blue Note last month. Another, guitarist Kurt Rosenwinkel, with his own release "the next step" out last year, will join Turner this tour to provide his special chemistry to Turner's uncompromising, but very accessible jazz direction.
The interaction between Turner and Rosenwinkel is essential to the sound of Turner's recent release "Dharma Days." The back-and-forth exchanges of their guitar and tenor sax have the confident feeling of practiced intimacy. Rosenwinkel lays down shimmering layers of well-placed chords over which Turner's smooth tone sounds comfortably unrestrained. "I feel like I'm playing in a band," said Turner in a recent interview. "In a band you get a closer feeling. Of course, we have a shared aesthetic which intersects on crucial points, but mostly it's length of time." Turner and Rosenwinkel have been working together and supporting each other as different headliners since 1993.
Their synergetic sparkle can be heard on both Turner's "Dharma Days" and Rosenwinkel's "the next step." During extended solos, they anticipate each other's different directions and respond quickly to the other's clever, pointed hesitations. The resulting sound both pleases and intrigues with an array of unpredictable textures. "The combination of practice, playing and just clicking together is what makes the mystery, and makes it mystifying," explained Turner.
Recorded January 29 to February 1 of this year, the tunes on "Dharma Days" are built on long arpeggiated flows of notes over dense strata of electric guitar. The improvisations are less linear than on Turner's earlier releases such as the lovely "Ballad Session" and the looser "In This World," which both had a straighter jazz feeling. The new songs, however, are built around lithe, circling structures that never rush past the sounds and feelings that emerge. "There's more to listen to with these tunes. It's more about what's going on inside the music than just the fast energy of a melody," explained Turner.
Rather than the drawn out road race of many traditional jazz lines, Turner's playing attentively wraps dense moods around a central core of stately, interior calm. "‘Dharma Days' is getting closer to what I'm looking for," said Turner. "I wrote most of the music, so I have a lot more invested in it." At times, the music's subjective appeal is reminiscent of the mindful feeling of ECM chamber jazz. However, Turner consistently startles by never settling on a singular concept for long, juicing up the sentiments with mercurial Coltrane-like flashes. Rosenwinkel's guitar playing provides a central harmonizing force at times, while at others, pushes the edges with a sharpness of attack. Turner's warm tone and unaffected clarity of delivery on sax holds the compositions together over complex shifts in structures, time signatures and modalities.
On this tour, Turner and Rosenwinkel will be backed by collaborators Reid Anderson on bass and Nasheet Waits on drums, who provide the sensitive, tidal energy underneath the tunes on "Dharma Days. "We'll be playing a lot of the music from the new CD, but also Kurt's tunes, and maybe throw in a couple of our favorite tunes, like Nefertiti. I always like to play in Japan because I meet a lot of serious audiophiles!" he laughed.
Ultimately, though, the source of the serious concentrated nature of Turner's music, which should be intensified in their live gigs, is obvious. "It comes from working together with a band, from the time together," Turner emphasized. "I've been lucky in a sense," said Turner. "For the most part, I've been able to play what I've wanted with whom I've wanted." How many of us can say that?
(Originally published in The Japan Times June 2001)