Jazz is the most important art form to emerge this century. True. It is also one of the most popular. False. Surprisingly, for all its influence, jazz remains a minority music and nowhere more so than in the country which invented it, the US. Composer, jazz musician and teacher, Ronan Guilfoyle, who during the next few weeks will have new work performed at the Dublin Jazz Festival and at the National Concert Hall, attributes this to the fact that people remain wary of the fundamental musical truth upon which jazz draws - improvisation, which is itself an art.
"People just don't like the idea of something being improvised. It is as if it means there is something wrong with it. In the West we tend to think complexity is good. And for something to be good it has to be written down." We also tend to forget that in order to improvise a musician has to be more than merely very good. "We improvise a lot more than we think, even what we're doing now, every conversation is improvised, no one ever says the same sentence twice exactly the same way." While they appear a lot more relaxed than many of their classical counterparts, this relaxation does not conceal jazz players' intensity or commitment.
He may be exasperated about attitudes to jazz, even now when it seems to be enjoying a boom in Ireland, but Guilfoyle is too good-natured to let it show. Aside from his music, much of his success as a teacher and as a communicator lies in the apparent absence of dogma. He has described himself as "something of an evangelist for jazz" but, unlike many zealots, the inspiring Guilfoyle doesn't leave his listeners cowed by his beliefs. He seems the perfect teacher - intelligent and fair. He loves music in all its forms, is self-taught, was the 1997 winner of the Julius Hemphill prize in the US for composition, is as articulate as a statesman, comes untouched by agenda or gripe, and has a fairly precise sense of humour. "There are many misconceptions about jazz, largely due to men in straw hats and stripy blazers playing bad jazz, badly."
His informality means that he can impart vast amounts of information, some of it quite technical, without appearing pedantic. When he mentions a performer or a piece you are not familiar with, he doesn't express disapproval or feign shock, he simply says encouragingly, "It's good, check it out". He has a huge music collection, consisting of "about 1,000 records, 1,000 CDs, 1,000 cassettes. It is about 70 per cent jazz, 30 per cent classical but I also have a world music section".
Nor is he intimidatingly cool, defensive or preoccupied with his image. Guilfoyle speaks as freely about his hero, Bach, "the greatest improviser of them all", as he does about Miles Davis, Thelonious Monk or John Coltrane.
Guilfoyle admits he is not impressed by pop or rock: "About 20 years ago, I used to have a problem with it, but I feel pop is not really about music as such; it is about identifying with a peer group." He also realises that the basic concerns of much popular music differ from his. Later, he adds how it occurred to him during a Dire Straits tour that it took about 70 people to get four people on stage with three guitars and one drum set. "There is also the fact that the rock and pop industries involve so many people - agents, publicists and so on - who actually have nothing to do with music. I just don't believe in it."
Throughout Guilfoyle's conversation his strong sense of his musical evolution is evident, such as when he refers to having changed his mind about the great Louis Armstrong. "For years I always paid lip service, then I realised how good he was." Guilfoyle's musical range is wide, and he is always ready to explore further. Asked for his views on Lyric FM, he says: "Well, its success is there in the listening figures. It is very important and I think there has always been a narrowness about the music choice, whatever the music, on Irish radio. It is always difficult to tune into any station and hear a piece of music you haven't already heard." Baroque choral music is another favourite and he particularly admires counter-tenor, Andreas Scholl.
Now 41, Guilfoyle is an approachable character and continues to look like an exhausted thirtysomething, pale and otherworldly, with an unobtrusive beard and a black leather jerkin. He seems at home in his workplace, the Newpark Music Centre which is in the grounds of the well-known south Dublin comprehensive school of the same name. Before he begins his teaching year, Guilfoyle faces the world premiere next Tuesday of his Avian, an ensemble piece which features the German jazz trombonist Nils Wogram. As the title suggests, the piece was inspired by birds, but by their movement, rather than by their song.
As a boy, Guilfoyle had been briefly interested in birdwatching and, while the passion didn't last, he has remained fascinated by them. Earlier this year, while travelling by train from New York to Boston, he found himself watching birds moving across the New England sky. "I actually heard the music while I was watching them. It's the first time I've written anything that has come from something other than music. I was struck by their movements - so erratic, unpredictable, unfettered."
Guilfoyle has been teaching at Newpark since 1989 and has been full-time for the past four years. The centre offers the only full-time jazz course in Ireland. Entry is by audition, and he smiles at the misconception held by some that because it is jazz it is somehow easy, not quite serious and not really, real music. As he points out, Ireland is almost the only country in Europe without a jazz school and anyone studying music here does so through one tradition, classical.
Where did his love for music come from? "My father. He was a maniac about music. Absolutely loved it, but didn't play himself. He had speakers in the kitchen . . . the house was always full of music. His taste was very specific: post-war jazz, no swing, and nothing classical prior to 1880. So I had to discover Bach, Mozart and Beethoven later. We were raised on Debussy, Ravel, Sibelius, Bartok, Stravinsky, Prokofiev, Shostakovich as well as Miles Davis, Charlie Mingus, Charlie Parker."
Brendan Guilfoyle was an accountant, and he died suddenly at the age of 48 in 1975 when Ronan was 17, "before Conor [Guilfoyle's percussionist brother] and I had done anything. There were eight of us, four boys and four girls, and three of us have ended up working in music" and he mentions another brother, Daragh, an underground DJ in New York. "He is no ordinary DJ," he cautions. "There's a lot more to what he does than `and now here's one to get you all dancing'," and he agrees his young brother has become something of a guru.
The Guilfoyle family grew up in Dun Laoghaire, Co Dublin. "My mother, May, played the piano but I never heard her. She had stopped before we came along. She loves opera and goes to the Wexford Festival. I don't like opera, apart from Mozart." Both parents were from Dublin and his boyhood appears to have been a definitely urban one.
"I went to Marian College in Ballsbridge." Was he academic? He laughs, which says far more than words could. "I wasn't interested in sport either." For him it was always music - not that he studied it at school. Home was where he learnt it. By 18 he had left school with a pass Leaving Cert and was already working in a delicatessen when he bought his first bass guitar, for £49. Three years later he was performing. At 23, he taught himself to read music mainly because he considered it a useful thing to know. "I bought a whole lot of Bach piano music and the records and sat down with them." Before long he had met up with Louis Stewart and, in 1980, played with Ronnie Scott in his famous Soho club.
Making music for Guilfoyle is of the moment and he describes the collective quality about playing jazz. Unlike many musicians, he is able to define the emotion of music.
"It is about an expression of emotion. I would always consider a piece on the basis that it is expressing some kind of emotion. If it is expressing something then it has value." As for the experience of playing, he describes the best moments as those in which the player is almost removed from the act of playing.
"The instrument plays itself. Those are the best days. Afterwards, you remember arriving at this sense of remove but you don't recall the details. The worst concerts are when you can remember everything - where you went wrong, what you made a mess of . . . when I perform I try to get into this removed state."
Is there a conflict between relaxation and intensity? Guilfoyle seems more relaxed than intense. He disputes this and says that relaxation as a performer can be achieved through intensity.
"Heifetz had this relaxation," he says, and stresses that the greatest gift a musician can have, apart from talent, is enthusiasm. "That's why I love Yehudi Menuhin. He had this great enthusiasm. He also had humility. He loved to play jazz but he knew he wasn't that good at it." Guilfoyle thinks too many musicians make the mistake of thinking they can simply step out of the classical tradition they were trained in and play great jazz. "It's not that easy. A classical musician plays music as given; it may not always sound exactly the same, but it is the same music. Classical musicians are not trained to improvise."
While Guilfoyle the performer plays jazz bass guitar, Guilfoyle the composer is drawn towards classical. Both forms are evident in his music, as are other influences. "About 10 years ago, while investigating rhythmic music, I became very interested in Indian music." He also likes Turkish, Arabic and Cuban. In a work such as his Music for Clarinet and String Trio, which was commissioned by Dun Laoghaire-Rathdown Arts Council, anyone coming from a classical background will hear Bartok and Stravinsky as much as jazz, while there are also traces of Eastern music.
Nowadays he composes on a computer. but up until about five years ago, this was done on the piano. "My keyboard skills are lousy," he admits. Having previously composed a sonata for violin which was performed by RTE Concert Orchestra leader, Michael d'Arcy, Guilfoyle has now written a violin concerto which will premiere on October 8th, at the Concert Hall, again performed by Michael d'Arcy. "It is very virtuosic," he says. "I've never written a piece without a performer in mind. I don't write for posterity."
Teaching takes up most of his time. "I have no piece of paper saying I'm one, but I am a teacher and I enjoy it . . . Like many musicians, I teach more than I perform." He has been critical of the way music is taught in schools but is impressed by the new curriculum, which is a welcome improvement, if not before its time.
"The State system, with the new changes in the Leaving and Junior Cert, is a lot better - at least on paper - in that the curriculum itself looks interesting. It is also more realistic in that it recognises that most people who study music at school or take private lessons don't want a career in music. They want to play music for pleasure. It is the duty of the education system to equip people to enjoy music." Stressing the more open methods of teaching the range of music, he mentions that his daughter played electric bass for her Junior Cert music exam earlier this year. "She is interested in music; my boy doesn't seem to be so far."
He believes jazz should have wide recognition and is prepared to continue spreading the message. His ambition is for his music to continue developing. "And I want to play, yes, I'm obsessed with music." Like father like son.
The ESB Dublin Jazz Week runs from next Monday until Sunday, September 26th.
