Bill Dixon

BD, trumpet; for Places and Things add Steve Horenstein, tenor sax; Alan Silva, bass.
For someone who has such an impressive body of work, Bill Dixon has a surprisingly low profile on the jazz scene. His music is revered by a knowledgable few, contentiously discussed by some, and unknown by most.

To reconcile this, we asked our friend Oliver, a former student of Dixon s, for a remembrance or two:
Bill Dixon cut an impressive, charismatic presence across the Bennington College campus when I matriculated there on and off between 75 81. With his big beard, sheep-skinned fur collared winter coat, mongo eye glasses, and funky top hat, Bill could be found almost every day holding court with an ecelectic entourage of students and other faculty (an entourage which at times, I believe, included feminist firebrand Camille Paglia) around lunchtime in the campus commons as he expounded on everything under the sun with the voice of a New England patrician that countered his furry, very black countenance.
Though I was not a musician, I did take a class with Bill: Critique and the New Black Music, it was called, or something like that.

Bar none it was the most intense writing course I had, or could imagine having. It being Bennington College, there was but one other person in the class, which would essentially consist of Bill reading our feeble, semi-informed papers out loud back to us, stopping to make verbal comments, corrections, and/or just laugh at us in a weekly cringe-inducing session that would make even Borat sweat bullets. He insisted we carry dictionaries around with us and that if we ever (and I mean ever) heard a word we did not know the meaning of, we were to look it up immediately.

Funny thing: not only did my colleague and I become better writers we became writers.
Bill s annual student concerts were always a huge campus event seemed like the small performance space at an old carraige barn was always filled to the rafters as Bill conducted his latest, mini/micro/Mobious-shaped composition, always featuring an airy, elongated Bill Dixon solo the dreams stuff are made of  
Oliver is, as he mentions, an author in his own right, and we highly recommend his books ; The ; and . Carrying a dictionary around apparently has its benefits.

 
Recorded in the early-to-mid-Seventies and released on a small Italian label at the dawn of the new decade, Considerations 1 is an impressive sampler of Bill Dixon s work. Even within the relative obscurity of Dixon s catalog, it s overlooked due to its rarity. In Taylor Ho Bynum s yesterday (a coincidence the hive mind at work), this album doesn t even merit a mention.

 
Places and Things  is a haunting small group number with contributions from Dixon acolyte Steve Horenstein (who mostly just shadows Dixon s lines in the latter third of the piece), and remarkable work from Silva. It plays with and creates an unusually delicate sense of space and time, constantly expanding and then refolding in on itself. The interaction between the players is confident and rhythmically astute.

 Dixon expertly varies the intensity of his playing, often sounding like several instruments. For a piece that might initially seem formless, it actually progresses at a nice clip - its 12 minutes fly by surprisingly quickly, sustaining an oddly welcoming melancholy mood.  
The six minute trumpet solo  Long Alone Song is quite lovely and evidence of what THB notes as Dixon s desire to make his trumpet sound like an orchestra.

There s a richness of tone and expression here, but also a naked intimacy that comes from the format. In this week s New Yorker, Marc Fisher s article on WBAI legend Bob Fass (article not online, but there is some audio ) at one point cites Miles Davis s line on choosing not to play all the notes you could play, but to wait, hesitate, let space become a part of the configuration.  Though Dixon might blanch at the Miles reference, it s incredibly apt, as Dixon fearlessly embraces hesitation, and makes space an integral part of his musical framework.

Shrike is pure fun, a minute of skronk, proving that Dixon can do more than just bring the slo-core hush.  
Destination: OUT had the privilige of seeing Dixon play a transfixing duet with Henry Grimes at last fall. Dixon treated the trumpet with echo and reverb.

Occasionally he blew through the mouthpiece to create a rhythmic effect not unlike beat-boxing, which he then looped and layered with hushed, delicate, and breathtakingly lyrical trumpet tones. You could hear strong elements of hip hop and dub in the sound, all filtered through Dixon s strong jazz sensibility to create something new. Further proof that he continues to push his music forward into exciting realms.

What is it about septugenarians making some of the most vital music in jazz today? All hail the old masters  conquistadors!

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Keywords: Bill Dixon, Bennington College