Every jazz musician inhabits a private inner world of amazing energy and light, where they live, dream and fall deeply in love with their unique craft while creating this extraordinary and improvised music. Through the years, some become masters of their instruments, and a selfless interaction with the world takes place, where they share what they learned and even help others find their own voice. This way, paying it forward becomes an act of brotherhood, a present for the future of jazz to behold.
Bass virtuoso John Patitucci believes in the goodness of heart that relies on the musical gifts of those willing and able to create powerful, deeply heart- rooted music. He spends a good amount of his time mentoring and teaching the skills he learned long ago, cherishing every experience as an opportunity to acquire an even deeper understanding of his own dexterity on the bass. This teacher is always a humble and valuable student himself, a constant work in progress. His reward is a worldwide-stage audience looking at him in awe.
Giants such as Wayne Shorter, McCoy Tyner and Chick Corea have bonded with his unique musical sensibility. A deeply spiritual man, Patitucci has found a gentle equilibrium between his faith and his appreciation of music; everything is part of a whole, and that whole is full of beautiful possibilities. His playing is both energetic and tender, with a technique that is as personal as his relationship with God, almost impossible to emulate.
This is a musician with a heart wide open.
All About Jazz: Tell us a little bit about your involvement with ArtistsWorks.
John Patitucci: They approached me a while back, early last year or something like that, about this new project that they are doing, this new concept. And I thought that it was very interesting to have a situation where people could study with you from anywhere in the world, in a way that was more complete and just so well thought out: the idea about creating a community with the knowledge of bass and creating not only a little academy where they can study bass with someone that they wanted to study with, who also had a particular view point, but also the students would get to know each other, too, and share the experiences and what they learned from it, and benefit from each other's questions. I have been teaching all my life, but not like this. This is a different concept because of the way that it is set up, being able to send a question about their instrument-filmed questions-to me, and I am able to film the response as well; all the answers are posted on the site, together with the questions, and anybody who belongs to the site can look at them any time.
AAJ: As far as teaching goes, like you said, you have been teaching for a long time; you were the artistic director of Bass Collective, you are also involved with the Thelonious Monk Institute of Jazz and the Betty Carter Jazz Ahead Program, and you were professor of Jazz Studies in City College in New York.
JP: Yes, I left City College in order to do a job for Berklee College of Music; I am now an Artist in Resident, withDanilo Perez and the Global Jazz Institute and also the Bass department. I have switched after 10 years teaching at City College, and I am now teaching at Berklee School.
Read full article on: http://www.allaboutjazz.com/php/article.php?id=43182#.UJenu7QlYhQ
0 Comments:
Post a Comment