SYMPHONIC JAZZ: the best of both worlds
I grew up in a musical family. Dad taught formal music composition at Mount Alison University. Mom loved jazz and dancing. I never imagined that one day I’d be playing my own jazz compositions with my own group and a symphony. I had privilege and a loving family. All the things I needed to fit in, but I struggled in school, didn’t play sports, and felt quite different from most of the other kids in Sackville, NB. All that changed at age 10 when my brother handed me a saxophone. Music saved me.
The act of freely creating and experimenting with sound let me find my voice. Listening to and emulating jazz became my new language, which my Mom called Anglo-Saxophone. Playing saxophone in jazz and punk bands opened my world up as a way to connect with people. When Symphony New Brunswick was launched in 1983, I was hustling to raise funds to get my band to Toronto for a national competition (we got there!). It didn’t even occur to me to dream that I could someday have my compositions played by a symphony orchestra AND have my own jazz quartet play on stage with them. My oldest brother was studying bass, maybe that was something he could do (he is!). Fast forward a few years, and I went off to McGill University and Montreal, and dedicated my life’s work to jazz and its values of improvisation, exploration, sharing, and “from the people” origins. I was very much my mother’s son.
After I became a father myself, I began to appreciate more clearly my own father’s classical music world, with its values like craftmanship, creative orchestration and larger formal architecture. In 2015, I began a Master’s at McGill, through the Jazz area, but I was seeking something outside of that, and was fortunate to be able to talk classically trained musicians into playing in a sort of chamber symphony that was my Master’s project, and evolved into my most recent Juno-nominated/ECMA winning album UNSTOPPABLE. In fact, I was on the bus heading to the Montreal airport to fly to the Junos in March 2020 when I got a call, “Don’t get on the plane - there’s some virus and it looks like things will be cancelled.” We all know what happened next… so many changes for so many people. For me, this led to coming home to New Brunswick, wondering “what next?” as touring was not an option, and so much else had changed.
When I began the conversation with conductor Mélanie Leonard, she invited my own quartet to play WITH the symphony. Holy smokes! At the same time: gulp. I didn’t have a process in place to fully realize this invitation to have these two ensembles come together in an authentic way I wanted. To be honest, I thought the orchestra needed to listen to some key jazz recordings and well, had to loosen up. My ideas about composing in formal “classical” settings were about expanding my own pre-existing Jazz compositions mixed my own kind of pursuit of virtuosity. Excellence. I later came to realise that improvisation, my principal “jazz” value, the very thing that provided the structure and propulsion for how I led my own jazz groups, was very much alive and kicking in theatre and contemporary “classical” music. We share the same values. It’s just sounds and looks different.
I’m grateful to my partner Mel McCarthy, Symphony New Brunswick director Peter Sametz, and my brother Andrew Reed Miller, for pointing out that everything I needed was right here in New Brunswick: the time, the space, musicians willing to be outside their comfort zones, THANK YOU, we just needed a willingness to listen to understand. To (safely) make mistakes together. And to create something new and meaningful.
This concert is built on relationships, possibilities, and tremendous respect for trying things “both ways.” I’m not promising perfection. I wish for a fun night of music and an authentic way for us being together. I’m truly thankful for this opportunity. Throughout 2023 Silvio Pupo, Adrian Vedady, Jon Bailey, my brother’s ensemble Resonance, musicians from Symphony NB, had the luxury of time with support from ArtsNB, The Canada Council for the Arts, Fredericton Playhouse’s InterMISSION artist residency to work the “chunks” of figuring out to work together in way that included the best of both worlds. I hope you enjoy Symphonic Jazz as much as we enjoyed creating it.
Joel Miller & Mel McCarthyP.S. I’m playing my own compositions onstage with Symphony NB and my jazz quartet!!!! AMAZING!!! I’m beyond grateful.