MONTREAL
— A quartet of young men are setting up
instruments in a dark corner of Nyk’s Pub.
Outside the bar, a small group has gathered to
trade pleasantries and anecdotes about recent
gigs. Minutes later, cigarettes are extinguished
and the stragglers enter the bar, along with others
who have just made their way down from Rue Ste-Catherine.
They place instrument cases of varying size to
the side of the room and look for empty seats.
A few men remain standing and begin a conversation
with a tall, sharp-featured man who is plucking
at the strings of his acoustic bass.
The bass player is Alex Bellegarde,
host of Nyk’s weekly jam session, and one
of Montreal’s most respected young jazz
musicians. Every Tuesday evening since April,
Bellegarde and his band have played an hour-long
set at the bar. Their set starts at around 10,
but they stay well into the next morning, playing
with and listening to a steady stream of musicians
who come out to have some drinks, meet friends
and, if they’re lucky, create a few moments
of worthwhile jazz.
On this night there are about
40 people crammed into the pub.
“Yeah, this is about
the normal size we get,” Bellegarde says
as he looks around the bar during his break after
the house set. As it turns out, at least half
of the people are jazz musicians eager to take
out their saxophone reeds or plug in their guitars.
“I’m all about
getting as many people as possible just to come
out and hear the music,” Bellegarde says.
“It’s a great environment here. You
always have to be creative and spontaneous; you’re
not safe playing with your usual band.”
At a jam session, musicians
can get together to be spontaneous and creative,
check out their contemporaries, and work on their
chops in front of a relaxed and supportive audience.
It’s an institution
almost as old as jazz. It’s a sometimes
transcendent combination of artistry and sport
that has come to represent an elite club with
a rich history of making reputations and breaking
rules.
Stories abound of legendary
sessions where such giants as Sidney Bechet, Coleman
Hawkins, Lester Young and Charlie Parker made
their mark. The mythology is so vast that Robert
Altman based his 1996 film Kansas City
on a legendary confrontation between Hawkins and
Young.
Bellegarde says he tries to
foster the spirit of friendly rivalry that made
jams so popular and exciting in the music’s
heyday. Yet, he points out, there’s little
tolerance for showboating.
“If you’re really
a good player, there’s no need to be egocentric
about it. Sure, a jam involves playing well for
yourself, but it’s about the team as well,
not just playing a better solo than the guy beside
you. If I’m on stage, we deal with those
types of players pretty quickly.”
What jam sessions do encourage,
Bellegarde says, is that little extra spark of
creativity that is sometimes missing in more traditional
jazz venues.
It is said that Charlie Parker
created Bebop at a 1939 jam session in Harlem,
when he began experimenting with the tune “Cherokee.”
Although no one at Nyk’s
can make such a bold claim on this night, the
atmosphere of spontaneity is palpable. The first
song of the jam is a three-saxophone assault that
weaves together the melodies of the upbeat standards
“Oleo” and “Moose the Mooch.”
As Bellegarde urges the trio of lead players to
“just battle it out,” the bartender
can be seen pouring liquid fire between a pair
of martini glasses, coaxing some extra shouts
of approval from the audience as one of the sax
players begins his solo.
Even at jam sessions however,
experimentation has its limits, says Jon Lindhorst,
a tenor saxophonist who often plays at Bellegarde’s
jam, and leads a weeknight session at another
bar.
“When you’re playing
with people you don’t know all that well,
or who may not be the best players, you have to
find a common ground, which is usually the lowest
common denominator. So, you often end up playing
a lot of standards or blues, and too much experimentation
can make it a wank-fest.”
Terry Promane, the Acting
Director of Jazz Studies at the University of
Toronto, says “free” playing, which
is often glamorously associated with the creative
potential of jam sessions, generally proves more
successful in a structured environment such as
a music school, with musicians who are familiar
with one another’s styles and abilities.
“I think that really
good, really creative playing has a lot to do
with being able to interact on a relatively high
level with the musicians around you,” he
says.
In his experience, he says,
a majority of the musicians that regularly go
to jams are amateurs, who may not have the playing
experience to promote excellence in a pickup band.
“If you have people
that are just hobbyists trying to experiment,
then it sort of takes away from the magic of the
thing,” Promane says. “Of course,
nothing’s impossible if you have some really
good amateur players, but if I went to hear an
open jam and they started playing free, I’d
probably be out the back door.”
Lindhorst says this kind of
thinking is typical of the “tame”
Toronto jazz scene. However, it does appear that
many of the virtues traditionally attributed to
jam sessions — such as the opportunity for
creativity and the chance to meet other musicians
— are being reproduced in jazz-education
programs.
Bellegarde is the archetype
of the “street schooled” jazz musician.
The 30-year-old bass player didn’t go to
school to learn about music. Instead, he developed
his skills by going to jam sessions for years,
proving that, for some, the venue really can be
what novelist Ralph Ellison once dubbed “the
jazz academy.”
“I got my ass kicked
the first time I played at a good session,”
Bellegarde says. But eventually, through the lessons
learned and the contacts he made by attending
sessions throughout the city, Bellegarde even
became a protégé of famed Montreal
bassist Skip Bey.
This seems to touch on the
reason jam sessions remain relevant for musicians
like Bellegarde. Jams are typically open to any
jazz musician with the confidence to step up and
play. But at Nyk’s Pub, there’s an
unspoken rule: “If you can’t keep
up, you shouldn’t be on stage.”
In this sense, jam sessions
— including those that might end in embarrassment
for an unseasoned musician — can offer a
unique motivation for musicians to prove themselves
in front of their peers.
“I’m not at all
trying to disrespect the academic environment,
because I know a lot of great musicians who have
learned that way,” Bellegarde says. “But
there’s also something to be said about
street learning. And, if you’re open to
it, going to sessions can still teach you a lot.
“And,” he adds
after being handed a new chart by a guitar player
sitting at the next table, “nobody here
cares if you can play a tune in all 12 keys.”
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