Happy birthday, Tony Scott
O clarinetista Tony Scott completa hoje 84 anos, oportunidade para lembrar o seu percurso e a sua obra.
Tony Scott nasceu em 1921, filho de pais italianos que emigraram da Sicília para os EUA. Com tradições musicais na família, o pai para além de barbeiro era guitarrista, tal como o seu irmão mais velho, e o tio era o Maestro Antonino Sciacca, Scott começou a tocar em autênticas jam-sessions familiares, imitando os Mills Brothers.
Entretanto, em frente ao espelho, imitava vocalmente o som de instrumentos que captavam os seus ouvidos, especialmente o clarinete de Clarence Hutchenrider.
O seu contacto com o jazz foi bastante tocante, como o próprio recorda:
The first time I heard jazz, I first heard freedom. I heard a big band playing in 1933. They were playing this melody like a big machine and this harmony, this sick harmony, and then all of a sudden this bird came out of this big machine ...it was like a big bush, a big tree, and this bird came flying out of the tree and it was a clarinet. that was a white band, you see. Through my brother who brought records home I started hearing Count Basie and the Duke Ellington. This was jazz; it was a life. Aos 20 anos, Scott ingressava na Juilliard School of Music, em Nova Iorque, e participava já nas míticas jam-sessions do Minton's Playhouse, com Kenny Clarke, Thelonius Monk Quartet, Dizzy Gillespie, Charlie Christian, Lester Young e Don Byas. Talvez por isso mesmo, tornar-se-ia um dos primeiros clarinetistas a tocar bebop, o novo som do jazz que nascia nos anos 40 com Charlie Parker e Dizzy Gillespie.
Scott recorda o seu primeiro encontro musical com Parker e o impacto deste músico em si:
I was sent to the Spotlite club by Ben Webster who had told me about ? "Bird?he is playing new shit". He started playing Cherokee. Now Byas could play fast, but Bird! My mouth dropped. He played so many notes up and down? all around? that it sounded like a hundred chickens going mad when a fox enters the coop? like Chinese music from the moon. I had never heard any kind of music like this in my life. And I was supposed to blow after him. I felt miserable?what the hell could I play after this musical mad man? I walked up on the stage to be near him and played in the style of B. Goodman but from that day on I wanted to play like Bird. Once when I came to him without my horn, he said, "Hey T, what are you waiting for, an engraved invitation?"Scott tocou e gravou com os melhores, incluindo Sarah Vaughan, Miles Davis, Buddy DeFranco, Ben Webster, Trummy Young, Earl Bostic, Charlie Ventura, Claude Thornhill, Buddy Rich e Billie Holiday. Como líder teve, nos seus discos, sidemen como Dizzy Gillespie ou Bill Evans.
A pouca popularidade do clarinete nos EUA, nos anos 50, finda que estava a época áurea do swing, acabou por votar Tony Scott a um injusto esquecimento por parte do público do jazz, pese embora tenha continuado a tocar, nomeadamente em jam-sessions com Charlie Parker, e tenha efectuado importantes gravações, como o disco "Sarah Vaughan in Hi-Fi", que protagonizou juntamente com Miles Davis, Benny Green, Budd Johnson, Jimmy Jones, Freddie Green, Billy 'Pickles' Taylor Jr. e J.C. Heard.
Mas, arranjar trabalho tornava-se tarefa difícil...
There was a time I didn?t have a single job on clarinet, I had to take all kinds of gigs to keep working. I decided that I would never make it as a clarinet player. Everybody was passing me by. No critics dug me. I was getting no publicity. Benny had had it for so long and then Buddy seemed to have it sewed up. I got pretty depressed. I wrote music and I decided I?d better learn the flute and try to prepare for a studio job.Em 1957, Scott partiu para a Europa, tendo trabalhado na Suécia, e actuado um pouco por todo o velho continente, voltando aos EUA em 1958, para partir depois para o Oriente, em 1959:
I saw a photo by verner Bishoff of a life-size Buddha sitting in a garden full of overground grass. The Buddha had a snail on its noise. I just looked at that photo and gasped. It was like the jazz scene. Deserted. Everyone has died and no one is left to nurture it. When the jazz scene became a cemetery, I tried to find a way to get out..Joachim Ernst Berendt, crítico da revista Down Beat, explicava, em Novembro de 1962, o percurso do clarinetista pelo Oriente:
A beginning was made by Tony Scott. He has improvised with gamelan orchestras in Bali, with koto ensembles in Japan, with Thai musicians in Bangkok, and with Chinese in Hong Kong and Formosa. But the beginning can only bear fruit if others follow it up. The jazz musicians who comes to Asia from the U.S. can be certain that many Asian musicians will help him.É edesta experiência que vão sair, na década de 60, dois discos emblemáticos e fundamentais na fusão do jazz com a música oriental:
Tony Scott - «Music for Zen Meditation» (gravado em Tóquio, em 1964)
Tony Scott - «Music for Yoga Meditation and Other Joys»
Scott voltaria aos EUA em 1965, para encontrar um mundo do jazz totalmente modificado:
Things change, and you find yourself on the outside. If there were just some places to jam, so you could get your horn out and blow without feeling that you're stepping on someone's toes or trying to play music that's someone else's private property - but now nobody says 'come and blow' which is bad?I meet guys who don't seem to know that other music exists besides their own? I seem to be among different nations. On 52nd St. everybody went to the White Rose or Reilly's bar for intermission to drink and talk and you always could look into the next joint and hear what was going on, Musicians don't seems to listen to each other anymore? You live nervous when you play jazz. I've been playing for 32 years. There's no pension. If your chops go, you don't even get a gold watch. At the end nobody says thank you because they don't owe you anything. We are all 'relics' The Five Spot has turned its front into a pizza counter. The Village Gate has taken up catering. Nobody's making it on jazz any more. I want to play in all kinds of styles. The old type of swing is like a log burning; the new, hard type is like setting gasoline afire. I'm going to stick around for a while, see and hear everybody, play with all kinds of musicians, and plug away at getting people to hear me. If it doesn't work out, I'll go overseas again and see the rest of the world.Seria o empresário Norman Granz (sempre ele) a tratar de reinserir Scott na cena do jazz, colocando-o a tocar no Festival de Jazz de Newport. No ano seguinte, o clarinetista começaria uma nova fase na sua carreira, misturando bebop com a música oriental e tocando durante 15 meses no The Dom club, em Greenwich Village, em Nova Iorque, com Horace Parlan, Henry Grimes e Eddie Marshall.
Além deste grupo fixo, vários músicos se juntariam ocasionalmente a Scott, tais como Keith Jarrett, McCoy Tyner, Jaki Byard, Harold Mabern, Paul Chambers, Richard Davis, Philly Joe Jones, Roy Haynes, Jack De Johnette, Mickey Roker, Pharoah Sanders, Lew Soloff, Randy Brecker, Kenny Dorham e Miles Davis.
Actualmente, tony scott vive principalmente em Itália, concretamente em Roma, dedicando-se à música e à pintura, arte em que se iniciou nos anos 90.
Para além destas actividades, Scott realiza também exposições fotográficas, exibindo as muitas fotografias que tirou ao longo dos anos a alguns dos maiores nomes do jazz com que teve a oportunidade de tocar. Da sua colecção fazem parte excelentes imagens de Billie Holiday, Mahalia Jackson, Count Basie, Ben Webster, Lester Young, John Coltrane, Errol Garner, Miles Davis, Milt Hinton, Dizzy Gillespie ou Philly Joe Jones.
A sua música, desde a passagem pelo Oriente, ganhou uma dimensão espiritual que a torna única e inconfundível no panorama do jazz.
Vale a pena conhecer e ouvir Tony Scott!
Fontes para este artigo: Site
All Music;
Site oficial de Tony Scott.
