This weekend, Cork will learn the David Amram formula - music that sounds composed but is created on the spot. It's accessible and fun, he tells Dave Sambrook
With only weeks until David Amram turns 75, you would think he had pretty much done it all. He has played and recorded with some of the greatest names in jazz, composed more than 100 orchestral and chamber works, as well as written operas, numerous theatre and film scores, and two books.
Described by the Boston Globe as "the Renaissance man of American music", Amram has collaborated with the likes of Leonard Bernstein, Jack Kerouac and Dizzy Gillespie. He's a multi-talented, multi-instrumentalist, and his expertise in a range of folkloric instruments from around the globe prompted the New York Times to label Amram "multicultural before multiculturalism existed".
Despite portraying Mezz McGillicuddy, a French horn-playing Irishman, in the classic 1959, Kerouac-narrated film, Pull My Daisy, and despite spending a large part of the 1970s playing at Mallachy McCourt's Bells of Hell, and in the back-room of the famous Lion's Head with The Chieftains and The Irish Rovers, Amram has never been to Ireland.
"I've been waiting to go to Ireland all my life," he says. "Given the Celtic influences that I've used on many of my compositions, it's something of a Mecca for me. With artists like my old friends McCoy Tyner, Roy Haynes, John Faddis and Ron Carter, the Cork Festival promises to be a fabulous seven-course banquet. I hope that my participation, if nothing else, provides a wonderful antipasto. I think my role will be as an ambassador for jazz, so that whatever music people come to listen to, I can express the philosophy of jazz - spontaneous music, created on the spot, but sounding composed, and all done in an accessible and enjoyable way."
A more approachable or qualified musical envoy would be difficult to find. The first thing you notice about Amram is the extraordinary accumulation of beads and chains around his neck which are an indication of both his creativity and eccentricity. He dresses smartly in a jacket and tie, but teams them with blue jeans. Having been raised in a musical family on a farm in Pennsylvania, it's not surprising that he is turned out like the veritable country gentleman.
"When I was six, my father bought me a bugle. The first time I played a note I felt something - I didn't know what - but something really special. My uncle, a merchant seaman, took me to hear the Philadelphia Orchestra with the great Leopold Stokowski conducting, and later Duke Ellington and his Orchestra. Because he had travelled all over the world, he made me aware of the fact that all kinds of music were part of the language. You may never be able to speak 30 different languages, but with music you always have a way of speaking and being spoken to."
At a time when segregation was still the norm in the US, Amram's family moved to a "checkerboard neighbourhood" of Washington DC. "I was invited to a kid's party where I met a man called Louis Brown, I didn't know it at the time but he was Duke Ellington's mentor. He invited me to play with him and his band. So here I was, this 12-year-old boy, sitting in with these fantastic musicians. I was encouraged to fit in to a different world where you take a chance, where you dare like a tightrope walker, where you improvise."
Two years later braces forced Amram to change to the French horn, which saw him relocated to the centre of the school orchestra. The upshot, he says, was that it enabled him to better appreciate all of the other instruments around him. Amram was one of the first to improvise jazz on the French horn, and his embryonic career saw him jamming with Dizzy Gillespie and Charlie Parker.
In 1952, having graduated from university with a degree in history, Amram was drafted into the army and stationed in Germany. He played with the Seventh Army Symphony and when his two years were up, he spent a year in Paris writing symphonic music during the day and playing jazz clubs at night. It was here that Amram made his first commercial recording with Lionel Hampton. Amram returned to the US in 1955 to study at the Manhattan School of Music, and the Charles Mingus jazz quintet he played in after-hours attracted a following which included Miles Davis, Larry Rivers and Jack Kerouac.
"In 1956 I was at a party and this man came up to me and said, 'Play with me'. He started reading something and I began playing. That was the first time I played with Kerouac and it felt exactly the same as when I first played with some of the great jazz musicians. The collaborations that followed developed into what became known as jazz/poetry. We shared the philosophy that formal works of art could be inspired by spontaneous collaborations celebrating the beauty of commonplace experiences."
Amram was chosen by Leonard Bernstein to be first ever Composer-in-Residence for the New York Philharmonic in 1966. He has appeared as guest conductor and soloist with major orchestras all over the world, and was recently appointed artistic director and conductor of the Renaissance Chamber Orchestra. In 2004 demand for Amram's recorded work saw the soundtrack for the film, The Manchurian Candidate, and his Holocaust opera, The Final Ingredient, released more than 40 years after he had composed them. James Galway doesn't intend to wait as long, with plans afoot to record the critically acclaimed flute concerto, Giants of the Night, which Amram wrote for him in 2001.
As well as working on his third book, Nine Lives of a Musical Cat, Amram is composing Symphonic Variations on a Song by Woodie Guthrie, and collaborating with Frank McCourt on Missa Manhattan, a work celebrating the myriad of cultures which have influenced New York over the past 300 years.
"I'm working harder now than at any stage of my life, and I find that each day I enjoy creating and sharing music more than ever. I hope I can inspire others to dare to dream the way I was encouraged, and to contribute something positive to make the world even just a little bit better for the future."
David Amram lectures at the Guinness Festival Club at the Gresham Metropole Hotel, Cork on Saturday
