Ron Carter Esperanza Spalding - Downbeat

77th Annual readers Poll
electric bass
Stanley Clarke
awake every second
By Ed Enright // Photo by Jos L. Knaepen
It’s Sunday afternoon at the Montreal Jazz Festival, and Stanley Clarke is enjoying a rare moment
of quiet while chilling in the Maison du Festival’s Galerie Lounge TD. He’d spent the
previous day and night rehearsing and performing with SMV, a supergroup featuring fellow
bassists Marcus Miller and Victor Wooten. Prior to that, Clarke played two compelling concerts,
one in a duet with pianist Hiromi, the other with the Harlem String Quartet. Tonight would
be the fourth and final presentation of Clarke as festival’s Invitation Series artist, this time with his
own quartet featuring keyboardist Rulsan Sirota, drummer Ronald Bruner Jr. and guitarist Charles
Altura—the group that won a Best Contemporary Jazz Album Grammy last year for its 2010 selftitled
album, The Stanley Clarke Band (Heads Up).
On electric and acoustic basses, Clarke is a true spectacle, a master
of the instrument whose mind-blowing technique allows him an
unprecedented artistic range. Since moving from his hometown of
Philadelphia to New York in the early 1970s, Clarke has reinvented
the role of the bass in jazz, transforming it into a propulsive, percussive
force and milking it for all its melodic potential. He brought the
bass front and center in the seminal fusion band Return to Forever
and never looked back, quickly emerging as a concert headliner who
could back up his crossover superstardom with fully formed classical
chops. This is Clarke’s sixth win in the Electric Bass category
of the Readers Poll—a category that began with a Clarke victory in
1974, the same year he released his first solo album, Stanley Clarke,
which is among the six titles included the box set Stanley Clarke:
The Complete 1970s Epic Albums Collection (Epic/Legacy).
Clarke is a force to be reckoned with, and having just turned 61
the night before, he’s earned the right to an occasional afternoon off,
like this one, to collect his thoughts. When asked how he’s stayed
focused during his busy stay in Montreal, Clarke casually references
the extensive work he’s done on movie soundtracks: “Once you’ve
written music for film and you’ve had to deal with million-dollar
budgets and deadlines, and really intense and smart directors and
producers, other things pale to that.”
After touring for almost two years with former Return To
Forever bandmates Chick Corea and Lenny White—who won a
Grammy and a Latin Grammy (Best Instrumental Jazz Album) for
last year’s two-disc set Forever (Concord)—Clarke’s plan for 2012
was to play in as many different ensembles as he could. In addition
to his quartet gigs and duet dates with Hiromi, he has gone out with
George Duke on the Clarke/Duke4: Bring It Tour and performed
with Corea and Jack DeJohnnette in celebration of DeJohnette’s
70th birthday. In July, he toured Europe with Stewart Copeland,
whom he’s known since before the drummer’s time with the globally
popular rock group The Police. He also played some dates this
year with the newest signee on his Roxboro Entertainment Group
label, 16-year-old pianist Beka Goshiashvilli.
Clarke says he was especially eager to play in Montreal with the
Harlem String Quartet. “From the age of 13 to 18, the musicians I
played with were mainly classical musicians,” he says, referring to
his years spent at the Philadelphia Academy of Music. “When you
rehearse music with classical musicians, it’s different than rehearsing
with jazz musicians. I brought in all this music that, to be honest,
would be quite difficult to just give to someone who’s not ready for
it. But these guys were just eating it up. Chick Corea told me about
these guys a couple years ago. He said their rhythm is just like ours;
they really play on the beat. And, they can improvise.”
The SMV show—which featured repertoire from the group’s
2008 CD Thunder (Heads Up)—presented challenges of its own for
the musicians involved. “The three of us have spent our lives taking
the bass and trying to do different and unusual things with it,” he
says. “And the first thing we thought about was, How are we going to
come together and have music that has melody, harmony and rhythm
and have it make sense sonically? We knew musically we could get
it—just look at the notes on paper—but sonically was another thing.
We spent a long time putting that together years ago, so I decided it
was probably a good idea that we get to the theater really early, and
by the end of the day we’d have it all together. With three basses,
man, you’ve got to be awake every second.”
Looking ahead to 2013, Clarke mentions a couple of recording
projects currently in the works. One is an acoustic bass album of
classical and semi-classical material that will include tracks with a
string quartet, a small string orchestra and some solo bass pieces.
His other new album project is a collection of themes from his film
and TV scores—a virtual part two of his 1995 soundtrack compilation
At The Movies. Clarke will also be in the studio producing new
50 DOWNBEAT DECEMBER 2012