SHORT COURSE
Brass Tacks: John D'earth's musical directionsby Laura Parsons
Where music ends and life begins is illusory for John D’earth, trumpet player extraordinaire and director of jazz performance at U.Va. "If you don’t live it, it won’t come out of your horn," he says, quoting his high school mentor, saxophone great Boots Mussulli.
D’earth has lived it his whole life. The co-founder of the Free Bridge Quintet and leader of the Charlottesville Swing Orchestra grew up in Massachusetts, where he began playing drums at 2 and taught himself trumpet at 8. He vividly remembers visiting an aunt and creating such a ruckus banging on her piano that his father came into the room. Rather than reprimand his exuberant young son, his dad simply closed the door, saying, "You play to your heart’s content."
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John D'earth
photo by Jen Fariello
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"To your heart’s content," D’earth repeats. "I never forgot that phrase."
As a teenager, D’earth contented his heart by studying with Mussulli, trombonist John Coffey and arranger Thad Jones, all the while soaking up the music of Miles Davis, Wayne Shorter and Chick Corea, among others. He later moved to New York, where he honed his skills under the tutelage of Carmine Caruso, Vince Penzarella and Richie Beirach and began collaborating with his future wife, jazz vocalist Dawn Thompson.
Since then, D’earth has performed on more than 50 albums and composed and arranged music for artists as diverse as the Dave Matthews Band and the San Diego Symphony Orchestra. He came to U.Va. in the late 1980s when the student-run jazz ensemble hired him as director.
According to D’earth, the biggest misconception about jazz concerns improvisation. "It’s 1 percent creativity and magic," he says, "and 99 percent work and rigor and working on yourself."
"Playing is really a social art," D’earth explains. "People think it’s something in the music that’s beautiful, but it’s not that. It’s the people playing the music who make it beautiful."
Although he recently completed a large orchestral piece, Concerto for Quintet and Orchestra, and released a new album, When the Serpent Flies, D’earth still holds down a regular Thursday night gig with the Thompson D’earth Band at Miller’s bar in Charlottesville.
"It’s R & D—research and development—night," he jokes.
"If you do meaningful work in music, you will change yourself," says D’earth, philosophically. "Real art changes you."
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LEARNING THROUGH LISTENING
D’earth recommends five jazz masterpieces that everyone should hear.
1. "West End Blues" by Louis Armstrong—"An archetypal statement. The opening cadenza, by itself, answers the question, ‘What is jazz improvisation?’"
2. "Every Tub" by the early Count Basie Band featuring Lester (Pres) Young—"The band swings as one and Pres presages Coltrane on this cut."
3. "Fine and Mellow" by Billie Holiday—"Jazz is about singing (wailing, crying, burning) through your voice or through your instrument ... that and ‘telling your story.’ ‘Fine and Mellow’ tells that story."
4. "You Don’t Know What Love Is" by Sonny Rollins on the album Saxophone Colossus—"Sonny is the master improviser. He can seem to reinvent music each time he plays, without sacrificing tenderness and lyricism."
5. "My Funny Valentine" by Miles Davis on Cookin’ and also on Live at Philharmonic Hall—"Miles’ trademark ballad, recorded several times in the course of his career. Each one is different, a new self-portrait by a master musical painter."
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JAM LESSONS
For those interested in learning to improvise musically, D’earth offers the following observations.
• "People often think that improvisation is 100 percent creativity," D’earth says, but "improvising is probably 1 percent invention, and 99 percent synthesizing the vocabulary. Improvisation is like language: The words, phrases and syntax conform to certain expectations."
• The most consistent obstacle that students face is self-criticism. "I have a great belief in acknowledging strengths," he says.
• The second-most common problem, according to D’earth, is when students think they already know all the answers. The right answer, he says, is "I don’t know."
• "Don’t listen to what comes out of your instrument," D’earth advises. "Instead hear the music in your head, vividly, and play along. When doing that, it is much harder to distract yourself with internal monologues."
• Finally, D’earth recommends this rule for music—and life: "When in doubt, leave it out."
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