Jazz In A Modern Context
A Case Study into an Inspirational Figure of Mine and How that Relates to Me and My Career as a Musician and Educator
Completed in May 2009 as part of my Bmus Jazz (hons) undergratuate course
Percy Pursglove is trumpeter, upright bass player and jazz educator based in the Birmingham area. He graduated from the first year of the Birmingham conservatoire with a 1st class Bmus (jazz) honours degree which he started in 1999. He has been to New York and studied at the New School of Music (NSM) under the tutelage of renowned trumpeter Laurie Fink. He is now a lecturer in jazz, one-to-one trumpet teacher and ensemble coach at Birmingham Conservatoire. I chose Percy as my role model for a number of reasons, the main one being the proximity (in comparison to other role models of mine) of our ages. He still has a very long way to go in what has already been a very successful and promising career. As a result of which, a lot of the information I gained from him would be relevant to me in the not too distant future and thus I can use it to set my own realistic goals and targets.
Born into a musical family, of which his grandparents were musicians, Percy began his interest in music when he was quite young, starting to play the cornet at the age of 6. He gained most of his early musical experience through classical training and working his way up through the grades system. In his early teens he changed his instrument from the cornet to the trumpet and continued his classical training. He began to gain an interest in the genre of jazz by listening to music introduced to him by his friends. He soon joined the widely acclaimed Midlands Youth Jazz Orchestra (MYJO) and gained experience in sectional playing through their educational program, starting off in the training bands. During his mid teens, he began to work his way through the ranks of the band and was encouraged to expand his improvisational skills, participating in occasional small band projects put on by the ensemble. This drew him more to the music and led him to decide to make a career out of it.
His initial plans were to audition for the Birmingham Conservatoire classical course, but, knowing his interest in jazz, a friend had heard about the new course due to be starting the following September in an advert. He passed the information on to Percy who took an audition and gained a place on the fledgling course. Upon arriving at the conservatoire in 1999, he had gained most of his familiarity with the jazz idiom by playing in the MYJO big bands and through him listening to recordings. He had had only a light amount of small band experience. At the time he just wanted to make a living out of playing the trumpet and aspired towards session work and professional big band gigs.
Whilst at the Conservatoire, he received tutelage from Mike Williams, Jeremy Price and Hans Koller. This spurred him on in his playing and he quickly progressed. He took up a place in the National Youth Jazz Orchestra where he first met his friend and long time collaborator Andrew Bain with whom he performs in rhythm sections with regularly. Percy worked his way through the 4 year course and graduated in 2003 with 1st class honours, the first person to achieve this and until 2007, was the only person to do so. The autumn after he graduated he went over to New York and took an audition at the NSM for the postgraduate course. He got a place at the college and was awarded a ½ scholarship to start in January of 2004. Due to the short notice, he struggled to find funding to help pay the rest of the money for him to study. Eventually, after applying to enough charities and grant companies he managed to bring together enough money, which he topped up with his own cash, to go to New York.
In New York he studied under trumpeter Laurie Fink and started to put together the pieces that have made him a successful free lance musician. He met up again with Andrew Bain who was out at the same time. He saw a lot of music and took as many lessons as he could get, not just necessarily with the college tutors and worked his way on to the playing circuit. He played mainly with the Duke Ellington orchestra and had some other big band gigs. He played a set of concerts at the New York Town Hall with singer René Marie and also held a residency and The Knitting Factory club in a band with Greg Osby’s rhythm section.
After spending just under 14 months in America, Percy moved back to Birmingham and set out work as a freelance jazz musician. He quickly gained a place on the visiting tutor roster at Birmingham Conservatoire and started working alongside the people who taught and supported him throughout his undergraduate education. He stared to build up his network of gigs bagging regular slots with the Phat Chops Big Band, the BBC Big Band, the London Jazz Orchestra and many other high calibre ensembles. He started to build on his own solo projects as well as playing in other peoples and being virtuosic on both his instruments, he was in high demand. He created his own quartet with Dan Weiss and Thomas Morgan on drums and bass respectively and also joined a quartet playing acoustic bass formed by the pianist Hans Koller and saxophonist François Théberge which includes the prolific drummer Jeff Williams. Both these bands gig regularly and both are an output for Percy’s creative expression via his composition and improvisation.
In 2006 he in collaboration with Mary Wakelam and Sam Slater set up the ‘Cobweb Collective’, a promotion company and collective of musicians designed to give the young musicians of Birmingham, namely those from the conservatoire, opportunities for gigs and to bring them to the forefront of the Birmingham ‘scene’. The collective has since flourished and teams up regularly with the Birmingham Jazz charity and brings high profile musicians from around the world to perform in the city.
When I interviewed Percy I brought up the issue of becoming freelance and how having to earn a living affected him both when he was in New York (although he was still studying whilst there) and when he moved back to the United Kingdom. Mostly, whilst he was in New York, he found that gigs tended to be very poorly paid. Birdland, the world's most famous jazz club, only paid 50 dollars per musician which, at the time, roughly equated to just over 25 pounds Stirling. Some gigs he did in Brooklyn paid only 1 dollar per musician which wouldn’t even cover the subway fair to and from the gig. Subsequently it was impossible almost for the gigs to be about the money and he says himself that for him, it is almost always about the creative input of the music rather than money. Opportunities for pop gigs and session work have become less appealing to Percy as he has developed as a musician and his aspirations have changed over the course of his education and beyond. However he did say that should the opportunity arise and enough money was offered to make him think twice, he may find it hard to turn down. When he came back to England, he quickly started to subsidise his income with teaching and set up a picture framing business ‘just for fun’ but also helped to keep the money flow coming. Since his freelance career has boomed, he has managed to keep his finances ticking over with money from that and his teaching. This has allowed him to put money into renovating a house to hopefully sell on again and make a profit. When I interviewed him he said that he was ‘spreading himself quite thin’ doing a bit of this and a bit of that to keep the money coming in. This is with the ultimate goal in mind to become economically comfortable and to be able to sustain himself later on in his career so he can just focus on his music and creativity without having to worry about ‘survival’.
He has already started sowing the seeds and enhancing his profile to be able to move into this next level of his career. His quartet with Dan Weiss and Thomas Morgan which deals with his trumpet playing side whilst the quartet with Hans Koller, Jeff Williams and François Théberge is addressing his bass playing. He hasn’t recorded prolifically but has appeared on albums both as a bass player and trumpeter. He has, however, managed to keep this small discography full of high profile recordings. He has just finished recently recording an album with Hans, Jeff and François and has appeared as a side man playing trumpet with Neil Yates and on an album with Mark Dresser (a New York bass player). He has also provided the bottom end for Paul Dunmall on one of his albums. There is also a live recording of his quartet with Dan Weiss playing at Cheltenham Jazz Festival in May 2006.
Having not recorded as prolifically as he plays, it puts him in quite a privileged position that his notoriety has spread mainly by word of mouth and live performances. This is a good position to be in moving to the next stage of his career. In the interview, Percy remembered a quote that your career as a jazz musician doesn’t start until your 35. This is concept he finds very comforting with regards to how much further his career can progress from where he is at the moment. He has, however, never used it as an excuse to sit back on his laurels.
I have learnt a huge amount just from the short hour I had talking to Percy. It has consolidated in my mind a few things that, maybe, I wasn’t so sure about before. Especially with regards to what I’m going to do when I’ve finished college. The issue that came up quite a lot in our interview was my desire to go to America and study at some point in the future. Having now spoken to and discussed this with Percy, rather than study at one of the conservatories around New York, I should just go out there for 6 months to work and experience the ‘scene’. He said that you can get too wrapped up in the education part and end up sitting in a classroom all day rendering the fact that you go there to experience the ‘scene’ entirely pointless.
Percy has drawn me more towards the idea of teaching to subsidise my career. Not so long ago I was totally against the idea and had no desire to do teaching of any sort. However, in the last year or so I’ve gradually come around to the idea. At first it was kind of an acceptance, then, after talking to different people the idea began to appeal to me quite a lot more. In the interview, Percy said how it was inspiring that so many young people are into this music and that the teaching process can work both ways. In the past when I have had experience of teaching, I have been guilty of not thinking about the long term plan and have usually addressed it lesson to lesson. This is ineffective when essentially what you are trying to do is equip them with the tools they need to ‘teach’ themselves.
Bringing together all that I have learnt from this interview, I have been able to draw up an action plan for the next 5-10 years. I will complete my studies at the conservatoire and continue to build up my networking base around Birmingham. After I am finished, I will stay around Birmingham for at least a year. When I think I am ready, I will go to stay in New York for 6 months, getting a job and seeing and playing as much music as I can. I will use this time to assess whether or not I want to study there. I will come back to Birmingham and continue to build my networking base and get some teaching going. I would very much like to keep the band that I have at the moment playing after I have finished at the Conservatoire. I would like to keep it rehearsed and gig ready as much as possible so I can use it as an outlet for my composition. I would also like to keep my trio going as an option for function work.
Right now though I would very much like to focus on the issues I have to address, whilst I’m still at college. I will never have a better time to do it. Percy gave me some good advice and some equally good analogies. Firstly he told me to try and tame my butterfly mind and not think that there’s constantly something else going on. There isn’t anything else going on. ‘This’ is what’s going on. He also said with regards to me gaining more of a command over the foundation of the music to treat it like stepping stones, taking them one by one. He said that it was like clay pigeon shooting. It’s much harder to hit a moving target than a stationary one. Gradually it becomes possible to hit moving targets but first you need to be able to hit the stationary ones. All of this, really, equates to me needing to relax and not try to do ten different things at once. Don’t let myself become overworked by the unnecessary over activity of my own mind. Finally he left me with the crucial piece of advice ‘stop d*cking around and get your sh*t together!’ Get as much as I can out of the time I have at college whilst I still can because I’ll never have this kind of time to practise again.
Bibliography
Ear Connector – jazz, new music and other urgent matters – Percy Pursglove/Ed Johnstone Quartet (http://earconnector.co.uk/content/view/47/48/)
Cobweb Collective > People > Percy Pursglove (http://www.cobwebcollective.com/percypursglove/)
New Generation Arts – Percy Pursglove (http://2008.newgenerationarts.co.uk/artists/percy-pursglove/)
