The story of Art, like history, is largely a story of evolution.
Evolution and constant searching are hallmarks of our collective history and, as a subset, jazz music. You could say jazz is like the U.S. Constitution; personal freedom within a varied and evolving framework of rules and conventions.
And like the Constitution, jazz depends on its survival by each generations of musicians building something new on the foundations of the last. It's the forward motion, the evolution, that defines jazz. If it stops moving, it dies.
I recorded The Blues and the Greys, a CD of improvisations on the music of the American Civil War, twelve years ago and I've played this music off and on ever since. The Themes are never far from my musical thoughts and have become core threads in my playing. Civil War Diaries (and perhaps subsequent volumes) is designed to be only a snapshot of these thoughts. It's the way I felt about Civil War music on that night in that place with those people. On another night it would be completely different. This is what makes improvised music so damn much fun to play. It's never the same story twice.
For me, history is also about ghosts, and music is a nice way to talk to ghosts. We all walk among the ghosts of our past and cannot escape their murmurings in our blood. The ghosts are everywhere. - Bill Carrothers, August, 2005
If pianist Bill Carrothers hadn't found his way to music, he might have been a historian. Fortunately, Carrothers has found a unique way to combine both interests. Armistice 1918 (Sketch, 2004) was a remarkably broad-scoped concept piece that brought together his own thought-provoking compositions with imaginative reworkings of popular songs from the First World War. But that wasn't the first time Carrothers mined archival wartime music. The Blues and the Greys (Bridgeboy, 1997), the first release under his own name, put a distinctly personal slant on material from the American Civil War and established him as a fresh voice worth watching.
Despite widespread critical acclaim, Sketch's unfortunate dissolution caused Armistice 1918 to disappear all too quickly. The good news is that Philippe Ghielmetti, the man behind Sketch, is back with a new label, and its first release is Carrothers' latest, the solo piano Civil War Diaries. Recorded live in the studio in front of a small audience of invitees, Carrothers takes greater liberty with his source material than on The Blues and the Greys, extending it to create a powerful emotional statement about the moral ambiguities of war without uttering a single word.
All nine tracks can also be found on The Blues and the Greys, but in the true spirit of jazz—articulated with finesse in Carrothers' own liner notes—they have evolved considerably, and Carrothers' own growth as a pianist gives these new treatments even deeper emotional resonance. While the original version of "Tenting on the Old Campground is lyrical and elegant, here Carrothers turns it into a darker, more abstract piece that's disturbing rather than uplifting. Equally, "Weeping Sad and Lonely takes on a more brooding complexion. The familiar melody is there, but Carrothers turns it into something bleaker and more complex. Even though a more bittersweet and faithful reading appears two-thirds of the way through, there's a subtle undercurrent that keeps things unsettled and off-kilter.
Carrothers turns "The Yellow Rose of Texas into a blues that demonstrates his ability to combine roots in the jazz tradition with a wider harmonic outlook. Much as pianist/friend Marc Copland consistently finds ways to put a distinctly contemporary stamp on even the most overplayed of standards, Carrothers reinvents archival songs that are almost part of the collective subconscious into something wholly modern.
Throughout, the pianist's improvised extensions develop logically—there's no grandstanding here, nor is there the feeling that he's just applying what he knows. Instead, every tune—from the understated grandeur of "Bonnie Blue Flag to the slight dissonances of "Carry My Back to Old Virginia —is filled with a sense of discovery, where Carrothers may be as surprised at where the songs take him as his audience. They say jazz is the sound of surprise, and Civil War Diaries is defined by the unexpected. And when comparing the American zeitgeist of 2005 to that of 1997, Carrothers' reprisal of the material proves that art truly reflects the times in which we live. - John Kelman
Tracks
1. Tenting On The Old Campground
2. Weeping Sad And Lonely
3. The Yellow Rose Of Texas
4. 7th Cavalry March
5. Bonnie Blue Flag
6. Carry Me Back To Old Virginia
7. Kingdom Coming
8. All Quiet Along The Potomac
9. Dixie
BILL CARROTHERS piano
Recorded live in concert inside the studio on March 20, 2004
(Illusions) – ILL 333001 (France)