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Guitar Centered
A lesson on why jazz has nothing to do with music.
By Jason Roeder
Berklee.edu Correspondent
December 4, 2002
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Photo by Sarah Godcher |
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Luckily for jazz fans everywhere, Pat Martino's father talked some sense into his son. The younger Martino had wanted to play the trumpet. The older Martino said no way.
"'You'll ruin your lips, and you'll never kiss a beautiful woman,'" Pat Martino recalled his father saying.
So, Martino picked up the guitar. He thought that might impress his father, and it did—not to mention several generations of musicians. Since beginning his professional career as a teenager in the '60s, Martino has gone on to collaborate with jazz figures such as Sonny Stitt and Jimmy Smith, in addition to leading his own influential groups. At a recent clinic at the Berklee Performance Center, Martino discussed his longevity in the music industry, which has been remarkable considering the fact that he had to essentially relearn the guitar after losing his memory following brain surgery in 1980. He said it was important to see jazz as something beyond music and entertainment. It's actually a template for living.
"I realized something about jazz—it had nothing to do with music," Martino said. "It had everything to do with spontaneity and playfulness… jazz was a form of perspective, a way of seeing life itself."
If jazz is an introspective portal, then it's one that has to remain open. This means that learning doesn't end with a diploma.
"There is no graduation," Martino said. "The school is life. The true challenge is temperance and endurance, and to take note of the beauty of your identity."
Martino went on to stress that longevity is not the same as stagnation. A durable career as a musician requires experimentation and risk.
"To reduce an enemy to a friend is to look closer at what we fear in life," Martino said. "Don't stay away from what seems alienating to you…Time itself shall detail what is consonant and what is dissonant. If we expose ourselves to something too long, it will become dissonant…If we expose ourselves to something dissonant long enough, it will become consonant."
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| Martino speaks with students before his clinic. |
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| Photo by Emily Singer |
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Martino also talked about some of his rehearsal habits. He said that while preparation is, of course, important, his experience has shown him that in the real world, it has its limitations.
"I would get to the gig (with Sonny Stitt) and it would be 'Lush Life' in G-flat," Martino said. "Tomorrow, it would be in A…So I started getting away from depending on practice. I wanted to be free of mind, free of expectations."
And the key to doing so was developing an intimacy with the guitar that would enable him to handle his musical instrument like any other commonly used instrument.
"If you left your pen around, and there's another ball-point, you use that… Be able to reduce the instrument along the lines of any other utensil we use."
Martino may not know from experience, but that probably goes for trumpet players, too.
Jason Roeder is Berklee's Communications Editor/Writer.
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