Friday, May 26, 2006

DEEP WITH THOUGHT
Saxophonist takes jazz to intellectual realms

By Paul Freeman
Daily News Entertainment Writer

Jazzman embraces music's challenges

ANTON SCHWARTZ, who grew up in New York City, moved to the Bay Area to work towards a doctorate in Artificial Intelligence at Stanford. He eventually decided to leave academia to create music that displays not only real intelligence, but also an irresistible emotional allure. "It just became clear that that's what I should be doing. And I haven't really looked back," Schwartz says.

Now based in Oakland, the sublime saxophonist has won acclaim at such prestigious sites as New York's Blue Note, Washington DC's Blues Alley and the Monterey Jazz Festival, as well as through NPR broadcasts.

Tonight at San Jose's Agenda Lounge, Schwartz plays with his trio: John Shifflett (bass) and Jason Lewis (drums), as part of the venues' summer jazz series.

"The most amazing thing about the venue is its longevity. It's not an easy thing to maintain a jazz spot for so long. So many places have come and gone over the years."

Having experienced the excitement of Manhattan jazz, Schwartz now enjoys the Bay Area music community. "On the scale of things, it's definitely on of the better scenes in the country. It kind of waxes and wanes, both in terms of the venues that are available and the musicians. The arrival or departure of a handful of musicians can really alter the scene here."

Though Schwartz also plays in quartet and quintet configurations, he loves the trio motif. "It's a little less spoon-fed. More raw. It's very easy to go in a lot of directions, to make quick turns. It's a very nimble format."

Schwartz first played clarinet, then switched to sax at age 14. "It eventually got under my skin. The repertoire for saxophone was more appealing to me. Also the saxophone is conical, rather than cylindrical, so you can push air through it in a very different way, giving it a more dynamic feel. To me, the tenor sax is a very human instrument."

He always appreciated the infinite challenges the jazz genre offers. "I think anything worthwhile in life has that property. The things that have really interested me, there's no end to how much you can develop, improve, grow and learn at them."

The music of John Coltrane, Joe Henderson, Wayne Shorter influenced him, then he studied with a couple of greats in New York: Warne Marsh and Eddie Daniels. Schwartz gradually discovered his own unique musical personality.

Mood for thought
For Schwartz, jazz is more than intellectually provocative. "It appeals to me on a visceral level, as well. It gets into my soul. I take that as the ultimate criterion. I'm very excited by intellectual ideas, and that certainly has a role in my music. But really, if it doesn't grab you in some nonintellectual way, I don't think it's worth making a big deal out of. So I hope that the stuff I record and perform is accessible in a direct way to people who are susceptible to such things... and I've found that that's not just the serious jazz aficionados."

His music seamlessly blends the emotional and the intellectual. "The two go together. That's something that's been true for me, even in my academic studies. The intellectual offers little excitement for me in the absence of some overriding aesthetic concern. It's the same in jazz. I totally lose interest in anything if it doesn't have some kind of magnetic appeal to it, some compelling draw to it that makes you want to smile and move your body."

In addition to interpreting classic material, Schwartz is an accomplished composer. In that realm, his knack for mathematics comes to the fore.

Getting "Mathy" With It
"There are a lot of different correlations between music and math. There's a large amount of problem-solving in composing. For me, at the beginning, composing has more to do with wide-eyed inspiration and then, later on, the process of refinement is entirely different and much more mathematical.

"You have to figure out how to work all the elements into a satisfying structure. In a good composition, many things have to happen simultaneously -- the melodic flow, the harmonic flow, the whole rhythm -- it has to somehow come full circle, to be a form that you can improvise on repeatedly. There are a lot of techinical challenges involved. That's where it definitely gets mathy."

On Schwartz's next CD, a quintet effort titled "Radiant Blue," due in August, nin of the 10 tunes will be original works, all structured in the blues form. He has three CDs currently available: "Holiday Time," "The Slow Lane," and "When Music Calls."

Schwartz teaches the next generation of musicians at Berkeley's Jazzschool, the Brubeck Institute and the Stanford summer jazz workshop. "That's gratifying, both in an immediate sense, because they bring a particular kind of energy which is personally very nourishing to be interacting with... and because you feel that you're doing something good in a bigger picture sense too."