Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, January 8, 1993 TAG: 9301070055
SECTION: CURRENT PAGE: NRV-3 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
SOURCE: By SETH WILLIAMSON SPECIAL TO THE ROANOKE TIMES & WORLD-NEWS
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
MUSIC UNBOUND
When David Baker calls himself a "Renaissance man," it's not just self-promotion.The veteran musician, composer and jazz educator has blazed his own musical trail over the past six decades, a road that's taken him through the precincts of both jazz and classical music. And when a car accident cut short his career as a star trombonist, he started over at age 34 to become one of the few masters of the jazz cello.
Baker is the jazz composer in residence for both the Roanoke Symphony Orchestra and the Virginia Tech Department of Music. He'll teach master classes in Roanoke and at Virginia Tech next week; and an 8 p.m. concert Thursday at Tech's Squires Recital Salon will feature Baker's music performed by the Audubon Quartet, Joe Kennedy Jr., Victoria Bond and Baker himself.
Baker's tenure as composer in residence will stretch into early spring with a series of master classes and concerts. Other highlights of his visit will include an Art Sounds concert at Roanoke College's Olin Hall on Friday and the world premiere of a specially commissioned piece by the Roanoke Symphony Orchestra on March 23.
Though the Indianapolis native says his family wasn't musical, he attended the legendary Crispus Attucks High School, famed as the alma mater of jazz giants such as Wes Montgomery, J.J. Johnson, Slide Hampton and many others.
"I started out in junior high studying tuba and valve trombone and ultimately switched to trombone," Baker said.
"Indianapolis was a musical environment. In fact, jazz musicians sometimes call Indiana Avenue in Indianapolis the crossroads of America, not only because of all the great musicians who played there, but because of people who got stranded there, like the people who founded Ferguson Brothers, a black booking agency from the '30s to the '50s."
Baker, who still lives in his home state as chairman of the Jazz Department at Indiana University in Bloomington, became a phenomenal performer on the trombone, earning Down Beat magazine's new star award on trombone in 1962.
But a bad car accident in the early '60s threatened to take it all away.
"I was in the hospital for 18 months and they said I could never play again," Baker said. "My whole facial structure was altered by the accident. I've got a plate in my head. My mouth was wired shut for 90 days. It was horrible, man."
Although Baker got his trombone chops back sufficiently to play with the likes of Bill Evans and George Russell, he eventually concluded the doctors were right in saying he should give up brass instruments. Therefore, at the extremely late age of 34, he decided to learn to play cello in jazz style.
"In retrospect, I really question the sanity of anybody who would switch to the cello at age 34," said Baker. "And there are still days when I think to myself, `Man, what was wrong with you?'
"But it was a chance to really forge my own way on an instrument that has no track record in jazz. I wanted to forge a path for myself."
That's just what Baker did, demonstrating that the heretofore polite and well-mannered inhabitant of string quartets and symphony orchestras could do some serious wailing in the right hands.
Perhaps because he now played an instrument with a classical background, Baker soon became interested in crossing the boundaries that separated jazz from classical music. He produced compositions for such classical superstars as Janos Starker, Josef Gingold, Gary Karr, Ruggerio Ricci and the Beaux Arts Trio.
He wrote string quartets, sonatas, concertos and works for full symphony orchestras. His orchestral works have been performed by the likes of New York Philharmonic and the Louisville Symphony Orchestra.
"There was a time when those two things [jazz and classical music] were compartmentalized very rigidly," Baker said. "But I think there's been a disintegration of those categories. I recognize labels for what they are, a convenience; and I realize if they can't put a label on it at Tower Records they can't sell it.
"I'm not as hung up on this topic as Duke or Max Roach," said Baker. "But I really consider myself a Renaissance man. There shouldn't be any boundaries."
Thursday night's concert will demonstrate Baker's belief that boundaries shouldn't concern serious musicians. The Audubon Quartet and jazz violinist Kennedy will perform Baker's "Sonata for Jazz Violin and String Quartet."
Despite the title, the work doesn't adhere to the classical definition of sonata-form music, Baker says.
"Sonata simply suggests a collection of movements. It follows a four-movement plan, with movements of different tempo and mood and character."
In that concert, Roanoke Symphony Orchestra Music Director Victoria Bond will join Baker on piano as the pair performs pieces from Baker's latest compact disc, "Steppin' Out."
Baker says he has long admired Bond as a champion of new music. Which is why, though he is extremely selective about which commissions he chooses to fulfill, he jumped at the chance to write for the Roanoke Symphony.
"I know and respect her work so much," Baker said. "When she called, there was never any thought that I wouldn't take the commission. She started to say, `Will you write . . . ' and before she'd finished saying it, I'd already said `Yes!'
"I'm scoring the final movement for that piece now, and it's kicked [me] seven ways to Sunday. She asked me for something I've wanted to do for a long time. You see, almost all the works I've done on commission in the last 20 years or so have been for a specific soloist and a symphony or an ensemble, and that limits your performances.
"But Victoria said, `Write us a piece that will be self-contained, but a piece that's really a jazz-oriented piece.' "
Baker anticipates the work will have many more performance opportunities than those conceived for specific players.
Titled "Shades of Blue," the piece is a symphonic exploration of the blues and is scheduled for its premiere on March 23.
"Each movement approaches the blues in a different way," Baker said. "There's a boogie-woogie movement, a blues waltz, a slow movement which some people might not think is the blues, and a movement that's a straight-ahead, funky rotgut kind of blues. It's just been a ball, man."
Baker will conduct a two-hour master class at the Harrison Museum in Roanoke at 4 p.m. Wednesday for students in the Roanoke City Magnet School Jazz Band.
He also will teach a master class with the Virginia Tech Jazz Band on Thursday at 12:30 p.m. in the Squires instrument rehearsal room. Both master classes are free to observers.