High School All-Stars Alumni Interview: Aaron Bahr

As we bid adieu to 2014, we have a special December feature on alumnus Aaron Bahr, whose name you may recognize as our recent winner of the first annual HUT Foundation Alumni Commission Award. Aaron was a member of the High School All-Stars 2006-2008, and has been composing and performing with some of the greats ever since.  Click here to learn more about Aaron's commissioned piece, and read on to get more acquainted with this incredible young trumpeter and composer.

How soon after you starting playing jazz did you start arranging and composing?

"I’d say I became interested in composition maybe a year or two after I began playing. I recently went through a stack of old handwritten scraps of compositions from my early high school days -- mostly horrible, illegible, bad voicings, strange melodies, unresolved dissonances -- but a few were surprisingly okay. I can tell I was going for something, but just hadn’t learned the language properly. The process of writing those pieces was important for my own personal growth, though."

You went to two great music schools: Berklee College of Music for your undergrad and the New England Conservatory for your graduate work. Were there any ways that you felt the High School All-Stars program gave you an advantage going in?

"Absolutely! For one, auditioning for SFJAZZ added familiarity and comfort with the audition process, which was invaluable experience when it came to applying for schools. Secondly, the program is also a bit of a resume builder, which schools notice. But most importantly, playing with a group of amazing musicians on a weekly basis improved my own musicianship, both in terms of section playing (like reading and intonation) as well as improvising. I was in awe of what some of my fellow students were capable of, and was inspired to reach those levels and come to my own musical voice."

What's one of the most rewarding musical experiences you've had yet?

"This is a really tough question to answer, because there are just too many. A few were actually during my high school days playing with the SFJAZZ High School All-Stars. Getting to perform with Joshua Redman, Miguel Zenon, and Stefon Harris definitely comes to mind. If I were to choose my most rewarding experience though, it would have to be studying with Maria Schneider. During my Berklee years, I had the amazing experience of studying with the her several times over the course of a semester, culminating in a big band concert featuring a piece of mine, as well as three other student composers’ pieces. The things I learned from her are instrumental even today in what I value as a composer and my own approach to melodic development."

Can you tell us what to look for on your album, Prologue, that really shows how you are growing as a composer?

“Prologue features a four-part suite that was my most ambitious piece up to that point. I was experimenting a lot with harmony, using very dark colors with brighter, more vibrant colors, and seeing the way that they can either transition slowly from one to the other, or suddenly change in a more stark contrast. Melodically, I was trying to create something self-inclusive; the whole suite begins with a chorale which contains the melodic seeds of the entire piece. I sometimes feel like jazz compositions can feel like several pieces with nothing in common jammed together, that they lack some kind of common thread. The chorale in the beginning is the thread that holds together the suite."

Aaron being awarded the HUT Foundation Alumni Commission Award by Ravi Coltrane 

Be sure not to miss Aaron’s commissioned piece, “Kenny’s Song,” which will premier in the Miner Auditorium on March 22, 2015 at a specially recorded performance (tickets here). You can download Aaron’s CD, “Prologue,” on iTunes or order it online. You can also keep up with Aaron on Facebook and SoundCloud.

'A Love Supreme' 50th Anniversary

The iconic portrait… from John Coltrane’s 1962 session w/ Duke Ellington, taken by Bob Thiele. Thiele recounts:

"[Coltrane] wasn't smiling and he said, ‘Who took this picture?’ I figured 'My God, he’s going to kill me that these are so terrible.' But before I could say I took the picture, he said, 'This is the best picture of me, ever.'"

50 years ago today, John Coltrane's Quartet recorded A Love Supreme in just one session at Van Gelder Studios in Englewood Cliffs, NJ. We celebrate the 50th Anniversary of Coltrane’s iconic album all week long (12/10-14), paying homage not only to the recording itself, but Trane's lasting influence on all music. Curated by son Ravi Coltrane, the week features author Ashley Kahn (A Love Supreme: The Story of John Coltrane's Signature Album), saxophonist Joe Lovano, pianist Geri Allen, Turtle Island String Quartet, Steven Ellison, Nicholas Payton, Steve Coleman and Ravi himself!

You can find a wealth of news on the 50 year mark below:

50 Years Of John Coltrane's 'A Love Supreme' via NPR

Why John Coltrane’s ‘A Love Supreme’ Is Still a Musical Revelation via KQED

Sacred tributes in S.F. to Coltrane’s 'A Love Supreme’ via SF Chronicle

SFJAZZ Revisits A Love Supreme via SF Weekly

Details on A Love Supreme 50th Anniversary Celebration at sfjazz.org.

Celebrating 'A Love Supreme'

“During the year 1957, I experienced, by the grace of God, a spiritual awakening which was to lead me to a richer, fuller, more productive life. At that time, in gratitude, I humbly asked to be given the means and privilege to make others happy through music. I feel this has been granted through His grace. ALL PRAISE TO GOD.”

— John Coltrane —

Photo: Chuck Stewart

So wrote John Coltrane in the liner notes to A Love Supreme, the rapturous 1964 masterpiece whose intensity and transcendent power continues to speak to people around the world and inspire musicians and artists of all kinds. Five decades after the towering saxophonist recorded the devotional four-part suite at Rudy Van Gelder’s New Jersey studio with his classic quartet – pianist McCoy Tyner, drummer Elvin Jones and bassist Jimmy Garrison – the music Coltrane called “a humble offering to Him” is still a shattering and stirring thing to experience.

To celebrate the 50th anniversary in December of this epochal and enduring recording (released by Impulse! in February of ’65), SFJAZZ has programmed a week’s worth of special events sponsored by the Bernard Osher Foundation and curated by Ravi Coltrane, son of the late jazz giant and himself a superior saxophonist with a probing improvisational style of his own.

He’ll perform in four different settings in which all or parts of A Love Supreme will form the core of each concert. Coltrane leads a group with the great tenor saxophonist Joe Lovano on December 11, and his own quartet December 12 on a bill with the Turtle Island Quartet, the sensational improvising string ensemble that won a 2007 Grammy for its rich A Love Supreme recording. Coltrane performs again with various special guests the following night, and the next afternoon with the SFJAZZ High School-All Stars. He’ll also appear at a symposium December 10 with writer Ashley Kahn, author of the revealing 2002 book A Love Supreme: The Story of John Coltrane’s Signature Recording, and other speakers.

On December 14, the creative saxophonist and composer Steve Coleman, whose combustible music integrates free jazz, funk, soul and world music, performs with his explosive Five Elements band, exploring A Love Supreme his way.

A mostly improvised piece that ran 32 minutes on the original recording – Coltrane performed it live only once, in Antibes, France in ’65, two years before his death at 40 of liver cancer – the piece builds on a simple four-note motif: “a love supreme.” The saxophonist chants it verbally, multiple times, at the conclusion of the opening movement, “Acknowledgement,” which begins with the shimmering sound of a Chinese gong.

“It's the signal of something different. You don't hear that instrument anywhere else on any other John Coltrane recording,” notes Ravi in Kahn’s book. “A Love Supreme,” he says, is “not a tune on a record, it’s an offering to God.”

Joshua Redman absorbed this powerful music years before he began playing saxophone, stirred by its sheer passion and force. “I think that is the case for most people when they hear that record, whether they ever hear another lick of jazz or not,” Redman told an interviewer. “They may not have any understanding of what’s happening musically, the incredibly deep and complex musical issues that Coltrane is tackling, but the conviction and the intensity and the passion and the sincerity – the honesty – you feel these qualities, and that’s what makes it so compelling, what makes it one of the greatest jazz albums of all time.”

Early next year, two major artists closely associated with Coltrane will perform at SFJAZZ. The volcanic tenor saxophonist Pharoah Sanders, who came of age in Coltrane’s roiling free-jazz bands of the mid-1960s, performs in Miner Auditorium January 8-11. His spirited music encompasses late Coltrane, Moroccan grooves and the rocking R&B he played as a kid in Little Rock.

Then on January 18, Tyner, whose crashing chords and hypnotic solos were essential ingredients in Coltrane’s music from the modal period of My Favorite Things through A Love Supreme, returns with his prime trio. Joining him for a series of duets, solos and numbers with the trio will be two admiring fellow pianists: the brilliant Geri Allen and the elegant master Kenny Barron. Fifty years after leaving Coltrane to pursue his own path, Tyner still makes enduring, vital music.

— Jesse Hamlin