Dialogue for Four Hands
By George Robinson
reprinted and abridged with permission from the author
A dialogue:
Two men - one Jewish American, the other African American - speak to one another through their hands, double bass to piano. This is communication on the most elemental level and yet, at the same time, the most elevated.
Listen to either of the two CDs of Jewish and black sacred music recorded by bassist David Chevan and pianist Warren Byrd ("Avadim Hayinu: Once We Were Slaves" and "Let Us Break Bread Together"), and you'll see what I mean.
It's an ongoing dialogue, with the two constituent elements constantly evolving.
"If you're trying to develop yourself harmonically and melodically, it really does feel as if you're having a highly technical and literate discussion," Chevan said in a phone conversation last week. "Sometimes listening to Warren I just feel, 'What a dummy I am,' because he's just got ideas coming out of his ears. He is awesome."
The feeling is mutual on Byrd's part.
"It's almost as though we grew up in the same family," the pianist said in a phone interview last week. "We're a lot like brothers. [As for the duet programs] it's mostly him, he's the one with the vision and I bring the fingers."
This highly amicable partnership began, as so many jazz collaborations have, at a jam session. Five or six years ago, Chevan had driven down from New Haven, where he still lives and works, to Hartford for an open session he had heard about. Although he wasn't able to get much time on the stand, he was very much taken with a younger pianist, a local talent, Byrd.
"He was open and warm," Chevan recalled. "We didn't get to play together that night, but I heard him play." And he made enough of an impression that when Chevan was looking for a pianist for the band he was forming, he called Byrd and invited him to join. Byrd, who is as playful in conversation as he is at the keyboard, recalled the invitation with a twinkle in his eye. "He asked me if I could get in line with his concept," the pianist said with a chuckle.
"I excoriated him. Concept? Concept? He retracted a little and asked me if I was somebody who was flexible and could play. I agreed and it's been fun ever since."
The two CDs of sacred music have deep roots for the duo. Byrd grew up with black church music, Chevan with traditional Conservative nusach. And each had found himself flirting with that aspect of his background in a jazz context.
Byrd recalled, "I've always messed around with the idea of using church music in gig settings. I was joking around at Foxwoods and I was playing 'Soon We Shall Go to See the King,' which is a famous processional song in the black church. [David] said, 'Hey I know that song' and the lightbulb went on. He said, 'Hey Warren, why don't we do the music of our respective backgrounds.'"
At that time, Chevan had been writing a lot of new tunes his band, and recalled last week that most of them had been in a modal vein. "What was coming out of my solos were ideas that came from my liturgical experience," he explained. "In the synagogue I grew up in the kids were expected to lead most of the services, so I had it ingrained in me. But it had never come out on the instrument. Some part of my psyche was pulling these things out. It's come in as a natural focus."
And the resulting CD, "Avadim Hayinu," was the natural result.
Byrd and Chevan were simultaneously excited by and reluctant to pursue this musical vein. On the one hand, the music itself was exciting, putting them in a comfort zone of familiarity while drawing on long unused ideas. But, on the other hand, there was the two edged sword of making records that could be read simply as a message, however well intended.
Byrd put it succinctly: "We could wind up being the poster boys for integration and getting along. I wanted to be about making music."
Chevan who is active in a Reform synagogue in the New Haven area, had another problem as well, albeit an easily solved problem. "I'm careful about the pieces we choose to play,@ he said. AIs this piece saying 'I love Jesus,' because I don't want to be saying that. But the title piece on the 'Let Us Break Bread Together,' that's making a statement about the need for a shared sense of humanity." Ultimately, the appeal of the musical ideas won out, but both men agree that the larger message is not only inescapable but appropriate.
Byrd is cautiously optimistic. "There's also the need to recognize that social issues in this country have been dealt with in the music business before they are dealt with on a mass social and political level. Maybe we can be a harbinger of a summit, a real summit of black and Jewish communities."
And the dialogue between the two men continues to grow.
"Dialogues don't stand still," Chevan cautioned. "There have been nights where we just won't see eye to eye. Dialogue is like that. We are deliberately bringing in this other agenda going on with the music. It's not always going to be agreement. On the other hand, when you get two people who respect and value each other it's going to be at a pretty interesting level."
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