Byron's life and work

The joy of Bug Music seems to have taken even Don Byron by surprise. "It's some happy shit," he admitted in a phone call from Cambridge when he was in town recently to play at the Middle East. "In a way, it's a little too happy for me. I like to stay a little dark."

How does he account for the vitality of his re-creations when so many others have tried transcription repertory before him? "You listen to the records at deafening volumes and you try to get the correct notes," he deadpans. "The things that I'm proudest of are the Ellington transcriptions, because there are so many bad Ellington transcriptions around, like David Berger at Lincoln Center. That shit is so incorrect!"

Byron also credits his musicians with having a natural feel for the music's idiomatic details. "For the drummers especially, it wasn't any stretch to sound like that. Pheeroan akLaff always sounded like Sonny Greer [of the Ellington band] to me." As for the pieces themselves, he feels that, like Katz's work, it's music that's been "misperceived or forgotten." And that's where his feelings about ethnic identity and musical objectivity merge.

"I don't think there's anything novelty-ish about any of this music. Maybe it's a novelty for people to have a jazz musician [like John Kirby] looking at classical music. I don't think Mickey Katz's music is novelty music. I don't think Henry Mancini's music is novelty music. It's just not jazz to people who want to be purists about what jazz is and isn't." But even Byron's definition gets slippery. "There's hardly any improvisation in Raymond Scott's stuff, but you couldn't play it if you didn't know how to play jazz."

Byron further distinguishes his work from that of most repertory groups -- bands who specialize in transcription and historically accurate performance. "There's no `Take the A Train' [on Bug Music] or `Pitter Panther Patter.' Even for people who do repertory, this is way off the map." And those feelings extend to the musical way of life, whether it's playing free jazz or jazz repertory. "You know, for me, playing music is not a life path; it's just a thing I do. A lot of guys who play jazz repertory, it's a life path for them. Some guys who play jazz repertory, they drive '43 Buicks and think tubes are better than transistors and wingtips are better than sneakers. And they wear their hair slicked back like Robert De Niro in New York, New York." Likewise, "if I decide to play some free shit with [Anthony] Braxton, that's cool, but I'm not going to do what everyone else in the room is doing when I leave the room."

What is Don Byron's life path about, then?

"I think my life path doesn't have anything to do with music. It has to do with what I do when I'm not doing music, whether I rent a Godard movie today or a Bergman movie tomorrow. It's the Jim Thompson I just read, or the e.e. cummings, or the Toni Morrison. That's my life. The music shit is not my life. It's my work."

-- JG