Jazz trumpeter Tom Harrell, who plays Dublin next week, is an exceptional musician, made all the more remarkable by his battle with schizophrenia, writes Ray Comiskey
There's a paradox about Tom Harrell. To listen to this master of lucid lyricism perform is among the more satisfying experiences jazz has to offer, yet to see him on stage can be one of the music's more vaguely disquieting sensations. While this immensely gifted player, eyes shut tightly, pours out richly melodic, logically constructed music from his trumpet, there is no doubting his engagement with what is going on around him. Yet, when he is not playing, he simply stands in front of his band, remote and still. Seemingly self-enclosed, he remains rooted to the spot, arms at his sides, eyes still closed, acknowledging neither the applause of the audience nor the work of his colleagues.
Between tunes, there's no small talk - in fact, no conversation of any kind. He names nobody in his band, makes no announcements, calls out no tune titles, makes no attempt to charm the audience. All communication is musical. And the sheer beauty and considered warmth of what emerges is in stark contrast to the severity of its apparently withdrawn source.
Things are not quite what they seem, however. One of the most respected performers on his instrument in jazz, Harrell inspires loyalty and affection among his peers, as well as admiration for his talent. And there is nothing remote about that. He is, by any standards, an exceptional musician with a career to match.
What is also remarkable, though, is the fact that he has achieved this eminence despite having an incurable affliction with the potential to lay waste his gifts, both physically and mentally. Harrell suffers from schizophrenia.
First diagnosed when he was in college, it is kept in check by strong medication, which maintains the chemical balance necessary for him to function and keeps outside distractions at bay. It says as much for his strength of character as for his abilities as an artist that he has nevertheless constructed a career that would be the envy of most jazz musicians. And he's worked with some of the best: people such as the great alto saxophonists Phil Woods and Lee Konitz, and the poet of the piano, Bill Evans, as well as bandleaders of the calibre and stylistic diversity of Woody Herman, George Gruntz and Lionel Hampton.
He was born in Urbana, Illinois, in 1946. The family moved to California when he was five and he was brought up in Los Altos, California, close to Stanford University where his father taught. At eight, inspired by Louis Armstrong and Benny Goodman records in his parents' collection, he took up the trumpet and almost immediately discovered a facility for improvisation.
As a teenager, he studied with Konitz and another alto saxophonist who was to become a temporary icon of the flower power generation and the make-love-not-war naivety of the 1960s: the musical multiculturalist, composer and teacher, John Handy. But even before then, in his early teens, Harrell was proficient enough to play professionally around the San Francisco Bay area, on both trumpet and piano; the second instrument is a clue to another of his talents - he is a fine composer. When he graduated from Stanford in 1969, he had a degree in music composition.
He went straight into the major leagues, playing in the trumpet sections of the Stan Kenton and Woody Herman orchestras, a big band experience regarded as the equivalent, in jazz terms, of a university education.
Typically, as it turned out, he then went in a different direction, joining a Latin-jazz fusion outfit, Azteca, for a year, before doing what all good American jazz musicians have to do to prove themselves at the highest level of all - moving to New York.
Beginning in 1972, a four-year stint with the man now known as the hard bop grandpop, Horace Silver, followed, during which the inspirational, if highly competitive, ambience of the Big Apple gave Harrell the chance to hone his skill and imagination with the best.
Recordings with Konitz, Evans and especially Phil Woods, brought him to the attention of a wider jazz public, and he toured with Woods through much of the 1980s.
By then, his style had formed itself into an identifiable musical entity. His main trumpet influences were Clifford Brown and Blue Mitchell, both beautifully lyrical players, each with a gorgeous open tone, expressively malleable, and each capable of improvising long, flowing lines, logically constructed and sustained.
That he looked to such models is an indication of where his interests as an improviser lie. They also show that his roots are essentially in bop - Mitchell, in fact, was part of Horace Silver's quintet a decade before Harrell joined the group. But Harrell has also listened to and absorbed other trumpeters, among them Miles Davis and Freddie Hubbard, who didn't hang around that part of the jazz world for any length of time, once they had made use of what it had to offer. Neither did John Coltrane.
In common with many open-minded jazz musicians, Harrell felt the impact of the great tenor saxophonist's push into the unknown. And though he has never stretched the boundaries in the same way as the restless, unquiet, driven spirit that was Coltrane, he has never been content for long to use the language simply to stay on familiar ground.
As a result, there is a pull between the dazzling fluency he has and the musical intelligence that informs it, and the uncharted areas it may lead him into if it is not structured in some way. He's a considered, not a cold, player, pulled along by his flair for improvisation. As long as the material is interesting and challenging, and he can have his lyrical and by now very personal way with it, and, in the process, come up with something beautiful, he seems satisfied as a performer.
The key, though, is interesting and challenging material. While he is one of the finest ballad players in jazz - to hear him respond to a meaty old standard in this way can be unforgettable - he has been writing seriously since the mid-1970s. The result has been a reputation, among jazz musicians, as one of the best writers of his generation and, now, a band book for his current quintet, which contains many of his own compositions, has been published.
Phil Woods, who probably knows his capabilities as a musician better than most - Harrell worked in his bop quintet between 1983 and 1989 - summed him up accurately, if rather baldly. "Tom is the most complete musician in my experience," he once wrote for the liner notes on a jazz album. "I continue to be impressed by his total harmonic recall, his knowledge of the tunes of the past and his compositions reflecting the future."
The only thing he left out was beauty, but then, with Harrell, you tend to take that as read. When all is said and done, it is as a player that he is most widely admired and loved, one of those rare musicians capable of doing something special whenever he lifts the horn to his lips. It may not happen all the time, but whether it does or not, he raises the audience's level of expectation just by starting to play. And most times he lives up to it.
The Tom Harrell Quintet - Tom Harrell (trumpet), Jimmy Greene (tenor), Xavier Davis (piano), Ugonno Okegwo (bass), Quincy Davis (drums) - play the Space Upstairs at the Project next Saturday, as part of the ESB Dublin Jazz Festival Project Weekender 1