10/02 - Jazz Ambassador Magazine by Rod McBride

Over fifty years in the making, this revised edition of the Lydian Chromatic Concept of Tonal Organization has existed, evolving from what has been described as an elaborate pamphlet in 1953 to a 1959 edition (mine has a technical appendix dated 1964) which resembles a thesis paper reproduced at a quick printer, into the massive, collegiate textbook reviewed here. During that time, the Concept, a complete reworking of Western music theory, has met with enthusiasm from the likes of Eric Dolphy, John Lewis and Jan Garbarek. Many of the modal concepts found in many jazz methods are directly descended from Russell's ground-breaking work-he may have been the first theorist in some four centuries to really think in terms of modes.

The Concept has also met with hostility or indifference by the vast majority of musical academics, finding perhaps its only home at the New England Conservatory through the graces of Gunther Schuller. Yet Mr. Russell has persisted, making this project his life's work, convinced that without regard to the acceptance of his ideas, their validity compelled completion of the project.

The foundations of the Lydian Chromatic Concept are not new, and are in fact rooted in Pythagorean overtone series adjusted to equal temperament, and Henricus Glareanus Dodecachordon (published some four centuries before George Russell took up a formal study of harmony). However, not long after Glareanus' work, Gioseffo Zarlino undertook to re-prioritize the Church modes, moving the Ionian mode (major scale in today's terminology) from the eleventh place to the first. Zarlino is believed the first to assert the m ajor/minor system most people have studied music theory under ever since.

The major/minor system served the styles of music between the sixteenth and nineteenth centuries (though Bach, for one, drew heavily upon the Church modes and rejected Zarlino's restrictive view). Different composers made up their own exceptions to the rules, thus defining themselves stylistically. By the time you get to Ravel, Gershwin, Varese, all bets are off. I once had a college theory teacher explain to me that "you learn the rules, then you decide which ones you want to break, and that's your style, the rules you break."

George Russell didn't have the handicap of a college education in music theory, but he did have the advantage of being personally involved with the musicians of early bebop: Dizzy Gillespie, Miles Davis, John Lewis. In studying the fundamentals of harmony in an environment in which the major/minor system was under an all-out assault in both popular and classical music, Russell began to get at the core of a system that explained, in objective terms, not only the comparatively simple music of Mozart or Brahms, but all music in equal temperament, from baroque to bebop, from Wagner to Ornette Coleman.

I've had my copy of the 1959 edition for almost fifteen years. I had read it sporadically, gleaning ideas here and there, skipping on when things got muddy. I had no guide to lead me though it, and it made numerous assertions without rigorously proving them. There is no such weakness in the current edition. A wide variety of music is interpreted through Russell's system, this first volume focusing entirely on vertical (chord/scale unity) thinking, with Bach fugues analyzed alongside Coltrane solos. The logical foundation of the system is laid out, piece by piece.

The first read-through, I kept jotting down notes, "But what about...?" I would put the book down with my mind racing, trying to argue that there was an implication that was left out, or a loose end. Inevitably, later pages, as if telepathically sensing my question, would explain what I hadn't understood. The biggest obstacles for someone with a solid theory background is learning to think of modes and their tonics in a different way, using some terminology unique to Russell and some which is similar or identical to terminology from traditional study (though not always with the same meaning they had in those traditions). It's a lot to take in, a lot to digest.

I'm sure that many potential readers of this book will ask, "What do I get for $125?" The cover price seemed high to me as well, though as I look at my library of music theory and method books acquired over the last twenty years, I can say that I not only have more than $125 tied up in them, but without the coherence thoroughness presented here.

What you get is a remarkably simple explanation of vertical harmonic and melodic relationships, very easy to understand. Comprehending and applying the Concept are different things however: it will take all the study you could put into it for a lifetime-no, actually it would take more than that. But at each step, it pays dividends, as you start to think in terms of chordmodes and see avenues through chord changes you hadn't suspected were there. Most of all, you don't get a book that's designed to help you sound like its author (I don't know any musicians who don't have a few of those laying around). It's a cloth-bound hardcover book printed on acid free paper, clearly written, professionally typeset. All of the rough edges of the 1959 edition are smoothed out and the gaps filled in. You get your money's worth.

The notion that there are twelve distinct chromatic scales rather than one, is for instance, hard to get your mind until you realize that these chromatic scales (Lydian Chromatic scales, to be precise) are built from seven vertical (chord building) scales, each with a defined relationship of consonance or dissonance from its respective tonic. You start with the Lydian scale, which any sophisticated improviser knows has the most resolved, unified sound with a major seventh chord. Then from that seven tone order you add other scales, all of traditional origins in Western music, to the nine tone order introduced by adding the Lydian Augmented and Lydian Diminished scales. Keep going, adding scales which introducing new "outside" tones until you've reached a twelve tone order with the Auxiliary Diminished Blues scale. This is relativity applied to music: there is no "right" or "wrong" note, only sounds which are more "ingoing" or resolved and sounds which are more "outgoing."

I admit the Concept appeals to me not only musically but in terms of my world view. As Russell puts it, "Freedom is not the absence of law, but rather the prevalence of a higher objective law superseding the existence of a plethora of lower, more subjective ones." This is Thomas Paine applied to harmonics. The higher objective law in this case is the law of Vertical Tonal Gravity.

The physicist Mitchell Feigenbaum used terminology to rate the toughness of a scientific problem: "obvious" things are things that a trained physicist, armed with a doctorate and appropriate resources could figure out given appropriate contemplation and calculation. "Not obvious," was reserved for things that might merit a Nobel prize. "Deep" is reserved for problems which are beyond "not obvious." Creating the Lydian Chromatic Concept from scratch, in my estimation is at least in the "not obvious" category of music theory. The fruit it yields, however, falls into the "obvious" column in that anyone who has a fundamental understanding of their instrument and can read music can, with enough time in the woodshed, get these things under their fingers and in their ears.

As a radical departure from everything you've been schooled in (if you've had formal harmony training), the LCCTO is likely to run through the classic phases of psychological turbulence everyone experiences when long-held notions are challenged: lack of comprehension, resistance, anger, and acceptance. If you're going to put the book down before the first three phases have run though you, it's not the book for you.

The 1959 edition has been borrowed from and expanded on by method book and theory authors such as Mick Goodrick, David Baker, Jerry Coker, Jimmy Casale, Gary Campbell and Jerry Greene. With the 2001 edition, applying basic exercises in patterns, chord building (both stacked and arpeggiated if you play a chordal instrument), nothing is missing.

Throughout it are anecdotes from Russell's career, working with and socializing in a circle of musicians who made some of the most dramatic creative leaps in Western music's history in a remarkably short period of time. The difference in harmonic sophistication in jazz from 1945 to 1960 is probably equivalent to the change European music went through between 1600 and 1900. George was right in the thick of it, composing for Dizzy Gillespie, working with Coltrane, Bill Evans, Eric Dolphy, and the book includes anecdotes that add interest and perspective to the theory presented.

As I study the LCCTO, it becomes less meaningful to me to think in terms of what "key" a song is in. Rather than looking at "I Should Care" as a song in C Major with a bunch of interesting modulations and turnarounds in it, each chord becomes its own universe with its own unique possibilities for building or releasing harmonic tension by playing more or less vertically "inside" the chord of the moment, looking at primary and secondary modal genres. A challenging way to look at it, but rewarding as well.

To some very advanced players, the Concept may seem to be a way of relearning what they already know "from the four chord." While there's some truth to that perspective (as I review my notes from studying with the great John Elliott, I see many parallels where the primary difference is terminology). This is not a book for an absolute beginner either, nor will it appeal to the Jazz Gestapo that asserts the only way to learn to play is to imitate your (or more likely their) favorite players. To the closed minded (I once heard a musician say that anyone who had to use the words "lydian chromatic concept" before they improvised was jive-though this same player held Eric Dolphy in high esteem, an interesting lack of consistency itself), the book is useless. For someone who wants to develop their own style of playing over chord changes or of composing music, the LCCTO offers a rich view of the possibilities and an organization to keep the vastness of those possibilities in perspective.

Dolphy enthused of the Concept that it "gives you so much to work with." In my case, I'm at a place where it gives me so much to work on. This is clearly not a book for everyone, it is as challenging as it is heterodox. But for the curious student of composition and improvisation, who has the discipline to work through it and the flexibility to learn to think differently, the Lydian Chromatic Concept is without peer.

Rod McBride, Jazz Ambassador Magazine
Used by Permission, © 2002, Kansas City Jazz Ambassadors. Inc.

The 80th Birthday Concert

by Dan Rose
7 November 2005

George Russell is one of those shadowy figures in jazz history. He's name-checked as an influence. He's credited with adding or even changing that history. However, he's seldom heard. Like most important shadows, the reasons for this obscurity are more than a little convoluted. Recurring illness dogged him early, forcing him into inactivity just when he might ascend.  His idea of jazz ain't easy to swallow; being a free thinker led him into the rarefied air of the contemporary composer and a tendency to combine the most disparate elements of the music. However, he's not the dogged avant-gardist the free-ist thinkers might want. His idiom is the unwieldy and out of fashion big band or large ensemble. In the end, he's known more as a theoretician and author, putting to paper ideas that would influence the likes of Miles Davis and Michael Jackson.

This release, a two-disc compilation of live tracks from his 80th birthday celebration, gives an overview of what many have been missing. It's a career-spanning event documenting Russell conducting his 20-years-plus big band project, The Living Time Orchestra. This shadow is alive and very much kicking.  Disc one starts sweet. Palle Mikkelborg begins with a wonderfully evocative solo trumpet. When the band joins slowly behind him, they create an impressionistic texture that is both soothing and rife with creative tension - no mean feat. Other soloists rise and fall behind him, either in dialogue with Mikkelborg or playing a propulsive riff in counterpoint. The whole, way too short tune displays a composer who is a master of using the full palette of his band, a composer who juggles dynamics and tension in a way that pulls at the listener and begs for repeated listening.

After a small speech (Russell sounds frail, though very much aware), the much lauded (well, as lauded as the criminally marginalized can be) “Electronic Sonata for Souls Loved by Nature” begins a little sour. After a humorous rap/chant a la Sun Ra, the tune goes all late period Miles Davis jazz funk. Just before the sonic ipecac can do its damage, we're saved by a quiet, electronic interlude. So gorgeous is this, all is forgiven.  Quiescence gives way to a running bass line, electronic scribbles, and varied atonal horn passages. There's a slow build and intensity, a bit free jazz meets Stravinsky. Bracing in the best way. Then the funk returns, though this time it's an engaging vamp. After a brief interlude into chamber jazz, a prog-like episode, and finally we're brought home with a meaty big band stomp (with some nifty atonality for spice). It's the long way home, with only one misstep.

Disc two starts with an even longer trek through jazz varieties. Here free jazz squiggle meets New Orleans romp, then moves into more big band funk, stops off at an ambient soundscape (with the incredible Mikkelborg dueting with Mike Walker's guitar) and takes several forays into big band swing and storm before exploding to a stop. In the space of 40 minutes, the past, present, and near future of jazz, particularly the large ensemble variety, is masterfully woven into one big, bright tapestry. The disc closes with a wonderful head scratcher. It's a piece built on a Miles Davis solo from his tune “So What”. Sounding little like the signature tune (hints appear here and there, like something stubbornly half remembered), Russell does what he does best. He finds textures and colors hidden to everyone but him and transcribes that to wide sounds. Remarkably, it seems to grow organically, more biosphere than big band gig.

Here are two discs crammed with ideas. Ideas mean little if the mind that crafted them is slight. If sometimes overreaching and a little too inclusive, Russell is anything but slight. He's both historian and history maker. To these ears, there are bits of that history I'd like to forget (see lowbrow jazz funk). That said, the level of creative imagination, musical sophistication, and sheer daring Russell seems to effortlessly evoke steals the breath. His band ain't too shabby, either.