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The Renaissance Man
Branford Marsalis provides laughs and lessons while reflecting on his long career.
By Ed Hazell
Berklee.edu Correspondent
March 22, 2002
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Photo by Kim Grant |
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When Branford Marsalis '80 talks about music, he can make a large hall feel intimate. There were 800 people gathered in the Berklee Performance Center last month for a question-and-answer session with the multiple Grammy-award winning saxophonist. But it seemed more like an informal hang among a couple of friends than a big event. Marsalis, dressed in jeans and a sweat shirt, appeared relaxed and at home on stage at his alma mater. He refused to sugar-coat his opinions or gloss over the harsher realities of the music business. But he leavened his answers with disarming humor and spun stories that often emphasized the importance of critical self-evaulation and learning from experience.
Marsalis' remarkably varied career has spanned TV stardom as The Tonight Show band director, pop music with Sting and the Grateful Dead, hip-hop with his own Buckshot LeFonque band, and jazz. Students asked several questions about the stars he's played with and he had a funny or revealing story to share about all of them. A question about working with the Grateful Dead prompted a revealing and humorous analysis.
"There were two bands. There was the Grateful Dead and then there was the Dreadful Greats," Marsalis said. "It just depended on the night. When they were the Grateful Dead, they were a joy. When I was playing with Sting, I couldn't play anything jazz-like because it wouldn't work within the structure of the music. But with the Dead, I could play anything I wanted because they were so open and loose. When they were clicking it was great."
Marsalis always pulled out a bit of wisdom about music or the music profession from his stories. As he continued to talk about the Dead, he contrasted the way they played with what he hears in current rock music.
"They were really an improvisational rock band," he said. "It was something that was relatively common in the '60s and early '70s and something that is completely nonexistent now. Electronic rock music has a tendency to be rigid, all the parts are meticulous, like a machine, and there's not much deviation. It was nice to be in a band that had that much sway to it. It was hip."
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| Marsalis laughs while bassist Eric Revis and drummer Jeff Watts provide accompaniment. |
| Photo by Kim Grant |
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Knowing how to learn in the classroom or from experience was a point Marsalis made several times. Asked about his years at Berklee, he said, "I loved it. But my father was a person who told me all the time, 'I do not want you to go to school to get an education, I want you to go to school to learn something. If you do not ask questions and challenge your teachers, you will not learn anything.' So I was definitely not one of these 'teach me' kind of guys. I was an arrogant, cocky cuss; not that I thought I was a better player, because anyone who was here was already good. But whenever I heard a teacher say something wrong, I would say, 'I don't agree.'"
A question about his classical saxophone recordings prompted some harsh self-criticism. Marsalis emphasized the need to listen to yourself and work on problems areas in your playing.
"I'm always trying to figure out what I did wrong," he said. "On my web site, there was a classical guy who came on and ripped into me. And he was right. He listed the problems, that's what I liked about this guy! And I wrote back to him and said, 'Hey man, you're right. Thank you for illuminating me. This can be fixed. It might take two or three years, but this can be fixed.' He was absolutely right. You have to be your own worst critic."
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From left, Marsalis, drummer Jeff Watts, and Ensemble Chair Ron Savage. The three musicians studied together at Berklee in the early 1980s. |
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Photo: Kim Grant |
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After more than an hour of give and take with the audience, members of Marsalis' quartet began to appear on stage. Pianist Joey Calderazzo took some questions on how to comp for soloists and, like Marsalis, he also talked about learning and growing as a musician.
"In the last three years playing with this band, I've learned more than since I started playing," he said in a quiet, earnest voice. "A lot of that for me is I became teachable. I used to think, well this is what I do and if you don't like it, tough, fire me. I don't say that any more. I can listen to myself and say, this stinks, and that's the first step in learning."
Then Jeff "Tain" Watts '81 ambled onto stage and gave some amiable pointers about his practice methods in response to a student's question and told a couple of funny stories about working on Spike Lee's film Mo' Better Blues. But after bassist Eric Revis showed up, all four of them made their most telling points doing what they do best—making beautiful, modern, swinging jazz.
Please read more of Marsalis's comments from his clinic on the page titled "Straight Talk."
Ed Hazell is a freelance jazz writer whose work appears in the Boston Phoenix, Jazziz, and other magazines. He is the author of Berklee: The First 50 Years.
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