Piping hot

Kitchana Lersakvanitchakul

The Nation

 "Jazz legend" is an overused description, but Benny Golson deserves it. If you are not among his  countless fans worldwide, you'll still know the saxophonist/composer's music through films like "M*A*S*H", "Mission Impossible", and "The Terminal" in which he made a cameo appearance alongside Tom Hanks.

  This year, one of the last living links to the golden age of bebop celebrates his 80th birthday with a new album, "New Time, New 'Tet" on the Concord Jazz label. But Thailand gets to hear him live, thanks to "Benny Golson: The Real Jazz Live in Bangkok 2009", at Aksra Theatre next week.

 "I first saw him perform at a concert at Chulalongkorn Auditorium more than 10 years ago," recalls Pratak Faisupagarn, jazz columnist and founder of the Supagarn School of Music. Then a few years ago I caught up with him in 'The Terminal', where Tom Hanks' character is desperate to track Golson down to complete his autograph collection of the great jazzmen. Golson plays his famous tune 'Killing Joe' in the film.

 "In 2008, I was at the North Sea Jazz Festival in Rotterdam in the Netherlands and Golson popped up out of nowhere. He wasn't in the advertised line-up, so the crowd got a bonus when he stepped onto the stage with Johnny Griffin [aka 'Little Giant', the world's fastest saxophonist]."

  "Despite being 80, Golson is still dazzling audiences with his music skills and humour. Hugely talented with a warm heart, he's a great example to any aspiring musician. Jazz fans should have a ball at his show this time."

  Golson's career spans a remarkable six decades, from his high-school days playing with John Coltrane to his years with Dizzy Gillespie's band, then Art Blakey's Jazz Messengers, Art Farmer's Jazztet and on through his continued success as a solo performer and composer.

 Laying down his tenor saxophone to pick up a pen, Golson has made major contributions to the world of jazz with such standards as "Killer Joe", "I Remember Clifford", "Along Came Betty", "Stablemates", "Whisper Not", "Blues March", "Five Spot After Dark" and "Are you Real?".

  "His ear-grabbing melodies are easy to listen to  but hard to play because of their complicated composition," says Denny "Den" Euprasert, dean of Rangsit University's Conservatory of Music and founder of the Denny & Friends Quintet. "They are on the jazz curriculum at Thai music conservatories.

  "His songs are kind of sentimental, especially 'I Remember Clifford' - my own favourite," he adds. "He also arranges. To my astonishment, he arranged HM the King's repertoire for orchestra for the show at Chulalongkorn. Fortunately, I still have his hand-written scores."

 Among Golson's compositions is the threnody "I Remember Clifford", completed in 1956 during his time with the Lionel Hampton band at the Apollo Theatre in Harlem. Golson wrote the tune as a tribute after hearing his friend Clifford Brown, a noted and well-liked jazz trumpeter who had done a stint in Hampton's band, had died in a car accident.

 "Golson was also close friends with John Coltrane, who was a big influence," says Polwit "Prince" Opapant, composer/saxophonist and assistant dean and lecturer at Silpakorn University.

 "Both Golson and Coltrane are categorised as 'hard bop' musicians," explains Polwit. "Technically, hard bop and cool jazz have fewer notes than bebop but hard bop has more grooves [rhythmical styles]. Improvisation is important to Benny Golson's style, feeding his original melodies and technique. He also has his own, unique sax tone, different from Coltrane's."

 "Benny Golson: The Real Jazz Live in Bangkok 2009" is at Aksra Theatre on August 27. Tickets at Bt2,500, Bt2,000 and Bt1,500 are available at Thaiticketmajor -- (02) 262 3456 and www.Thaiticketmajor.com.

BOX:

Know your jazz?

Hard bop was developed in the mid-1950s, partly in response to the vogue for cool jazz that became popular in the early '50s. Cool jazz, or West Coast jazz, emphasised the more European elements of the music, deriving to a great extent from the "chamber jazz" experiments of the Miles Davis Nonet, while hard bop was associated with the East Coast, bringing the church and gospel music back into jazz. Originally, the key distinction between bebop and hard bop was that the latter contains a more overt gospel and blues influence, both in rhythm and in harmony.