a look under the hood of jazz

Applause from the audience greets pianist Christian Sands, who appears in the auditorium of the Conservatori del Liceu wearing a sweatshirt, a cap and a glass of coffee that he leaves on the floor, next to the piano that dominates the stage. “When I was young I wanted to be a skater, but I was very bad,” the precocious artist from Connecticut, nominated twice for a Grammy in a career that has led him to collaborate with saxophone player Bill Evans, Christian McBride and Gregory Porter.

That same night, and in the same place, Sands will perform at the Barcelona Jazz Festival, but first he has an appointment with the jazz students of the Conservatori, who have filled the stairs of the auditorium with the cases of their instruments and occupy the first ones. rows of the room, some sitting diligently, others lounging without mania. They are part of the public that attends the first of the master classes that, like every year, are held at the Conservatori starring the artists who participate in the aforementioned Festival, and who in this way open the hood of jazz to observe from within the gear that moves music.

In the middle of the afternoon, after hypnotizing the audience with a 10-minute piano solo, Sands begins his class by explaining how he improvised this piece based on what he saw on the way from his hotel to the Conservatori, through the streets of Raval, “people, falling leaves, pigeons, sounds, some skaters on a skate park…”. This material is the basis for a composition method that, drawing parallels with art, is defined as impressionist, and which consists of extracting sounds from images. “The leaves sound serious, the birds sound high”, sound images that are captured in a canvas formed by melody, harmony and rhythm, where the first two elements offer “a space to live”, while the rhythm “gives the character”.

This year there are 14 artists who have accepted the invitation to share their knowledge with music students, as well as with all those who have purchased a ticket for their respective concerts or, even simpler, anyone who wishes to attend after paying ten euros. . “The classes are part of the students’ calendar,” comments Maria Serrat, director of the Conservatori, who at the same time highlights the satisfaction of the artists for teaching the classes, “they comment that having contact with young people gives them a lot of energy.” In addition to Sands, Anat Cohen, Maria Schneider, Joe Lovano, Andrea Motis and Javier Colina, among others, have attended these classes, a first-class lineup that opens the door to the ins and outs of both composition and concert preparation with the patronage of the Ferrer Salat Foundation. And this month there are still the lessons of Antonio Sánchez (day 25), Paquito D’Rivera and Pepe Rivero (day 27) and Nduduzo Makhathini (day 28).

Melissa Aldana is another of the participants in the classes, where she explains her learning method consisting of transcribing solos by great saxophonists. “I didn’t learn to read music until I went to Berklee College, in Boston, when I was 18,” recalls the Chilean, who got her start in music thanks to her father, also a saxophonist. “What the students appreciate most is the human part, sharing, because we all come from the same place,” he later comments in the dressing room about his experience in sessions he has been carrying out for years. “At first it stressed me out a little more, but now it’s like sharing the real experience,” he confesses.

“I don’t have a specific method because I address people with a very varied level of knowledge,” says Christian Sands about his way of preparing classes. That’s why he likes to talk about the connection between the artist and the audience, “it doesn’t matter if you’re a novice or an expert, there is always a relationship between music and people.”

For Sands, live performance is the fundamental thing, “it teaches you everything else, it even changes the way you write.” Hence the importance of these master classes, which teach what is not always learned in the academy: “How do you speak to the audience? How do you present your music? How do you connect with the public? Because that’s what music is about, communicating with everyone, and that’s what I’m talking about.”

“Has anyone ever had a musical crisis?” Aldana asks her audience, young musicians who at first resist answering, although later they will overwhelm her with questions – more than a dozen – about how to find your own voice or what it means. leading a project: “You have to think about it carefully, because it involves a lot of extra-musical work,” the Chilean will respond, dressed in a tracksuit, cap and sneakers. Who cannot hide is the quartet of students who, welcomed by the applause and whistles of their classmates, take the stage to perform You and the night and the musicby Bill Evans. “How have you been feeling?” Aldana asks at the end of the performance, which she followed from the side of the stage, and everyone comes to the same conclusion: playing less (fewer notes, less baroque style) is the solution to combat nerves.

In Christian Sands’ class, a quintet of students performs Fried pies by Wes Montgomery until the American interrupts them when they were playing best. “It’s so you remember exactly what you should look for,” he explains. Before, he asked them to play thinking about the place where they would like to be, and he carried out an experiment in which he asked the audience what they had eaten and a color to, based on these elements, carry out an improvisation. “When you play, remember the stories that the music is associated with,” he advises students.

The other side of the classes is the impact they leave on the musicians who give them, “they have helped me learn to rehearse better, I know what to do with the musicians so that the music sounds really good,” says director Maria Schneider, one of the highlights of this year’s edition of the Jazz Festival, where he led the Clasijazz Big Band. For her part, Melissa Aldana highlights how these talks help her “understand what my process is and be able to explain it, talk about sound or time.”

Schneider thinks the same thing, who considers the classes a kind of therapy, like going to the psychologist, “I often feel like I’m talking to myself, and I think ‘Maria, follow your own advice, do what you’re telling them to do'” , he comments. Through these talks he has come to the conclusion that intuition is a mathematical process, “it is not free thought, we live in a mathematical universe where there is a lot of logic in intuition,” he explains.

Hence the advice he always gives to students, “to trust your intuition and your enthusiasm, because if you feel this emotion it means that there is something alive, touching you. Then you have to see the mechanical part that helps turn this into music, but enthusiasm is the first step, and if you examine it you will find mathematical proportions inside that will help you find your own voice, your groove.” A deep reflection that arose thanks to the classes, “they have forced me to analyze my way of working, without all these years of talks I would never have reached this conclusion.”