I when I was a young player in Hartford, Connecticut in the late 1970s and early 1980s there was a Sunday night session at the 880 Club on Maple Avenue. The house bassist was Joe Fonda. Joe was always gracious and supportive; he slid me some of the very first jazz gigs I ever played.
At that time in Hartford the top-call players included Nat Reeves (Freddie Hubbard, Jackie McLean, Kenny Garrett), Dave Santoro (Jerry Bergonzi, Dick Oatts) and Joe Fonda (Anthony Braxton, Archie Shepp, Marion Brown). A lot of the wilder playing went to Mario Pavone.
In short, there was no way for me to poach anybody's gig. No matter how good I thought I was, each of those players was clearly very far ahead of me.
Reading a book on jazz, where a few pages are dedicated to how competitive the jazz scene was in the days of Miles & Co. . . . A lot of the bars were in fact battle grounds . . . where cutting contexts were the order of the day, and could end a musician's career or aspirations. . . .
However, these days, most jam sessions I've attended (or played in) tend to be generally a much more sedate / friendly environment, without the pressure. . . .
So my question is - have we now diluted this competition where the kind of exchange that was seen at the jam sesssion of the time is no longer visible? That is musicians constantly one-upping each other's harmonic complexity and rhythmic ideas? Is competition amongst musicians still a thing, anyway, in jazz circles, and much less hostile that is used to be?
People have a natural tendency to conflate weather with climate. FWIW I try to avoid talking about "the jazz scene" -- there's countless local jazz scenes across the globe, and truth about one is random notes about another.
My son Dylan Sherry is a data scientist and very sound part-time saxophonist / woodwind player in Brooklyn, New York. When he visits us in Portland, Maine we head out to the Wednesday session at Blue, which is very supportive. Dylan says he hasn't found an open session like that in New York.
I think it falls under the banner of being 'performative' to fit a perceived notion of what it means to act like a 'jazz musician' on and/or off the bandstand in order to be considered 'valid.' Insecurity masked as ego.
It's easy to get sucked into a zero-sum mentality. I saw but did not grasp how musical aptitude is
merely one of the qualities which allows people to get, and keep, a gig.
I got over that about four seconds ago.
Oops, nope. Back to work!
