This project will research and define new approaches to composition and improvisation in a jazz context, using techniques derived from the playing of traditional Irish fiddle player Tommie Potts (1912–1988). Coming from a family steeped in Irish traditional music, his father the influential piper John Potts, he played music from a young age but refused to play professionally, working as a fireman and public servant.
An autodidact, he developed an idiosyncratic solo style that covertly incorporated non-traditional influences, (e.g. classical music, popular music of the 50s), into his radical, explorative interpretations of Irish traditional music. These interpretations (or variations) subverted or broke with the formal, rhythmic and melodic conventions of the tradition, so much so that they could be considered new, original compositions, despite Potts' insistence on using the original titles. While these variations have a spontaneous feel, and resemble the approach of an improvising musician, research has revealed that Potts worked more like a composer, improvising the form of his variations spontaneously. Due to their radical nature, he almost always played solo, the music being impossible for others to follow.
Seeking to explore the unrealized potentials of this music, this project will reverse Potts’ process, embedding his traditional Irish musical language in the context of jazz and improvised music. Potts' music contains multiple points of departure for this work; the covert referencing of "non- traditional" music, the spontaneous improvisation of form, and of course the fundamental differences between jazz/ improvised music and Irish traditional music. In particular, the difference in melodic / rhythmic hierarchy will be explored - melody as the foundation of Irish traditional music, versus the importance of the rhythm section in jazz and improvised music.
On the side of jazz and improvised music, the formal and harmonic inventions of Henry Threadgill, and the harmolodic philosophy of Ornette Coleman will be two points of departure. Threadgill has developed rigorous new ways of dealing with intervals in composition and improvisation, and Coleman's harmolodics represents an autodidactic philosophy which allows for the existence of multiple value systems at once.
How can we find new ways to re-interpret the traditions of the past? What does it mean to be a “jazz” musician in Europe today? This research intends to find a way to work within and between traditions, incorporating these elements into a new music which allows for the musicians to move together in an improvisation of melody and form.