Keith Jarrett, Shai Maestro, and Richard Linklater: Three Views on Art

Perhaps a somewhat unlikely trio

In the past week, I've come across three interviews where artists from vastly different experiences have shared wisdom on topics that I've been reflecting on lately. Rehearsing, workshopping, and philosophy of performance have all been on my mind. 

What's the best way to refine a composition? What do I see myself moving toward when performing? How should I collaborate with others on creative work? I thought I'd share what I came across:

Shai Maestro: On Overcomposing

I got a bit tired of this process where you go on stage, play a beautiful, well-executed song, have people clap, and then head on home. I’m searching for an experience that is more in tune with Wayne Shorter’s world. Where he is coming from, just exploring the unknown, it’s about being open to the moment—open to not even playing the composition.” 

— Jazz Speaks (interview by Harrison Wood)

Keith Jarrett: On Personal Voice

What happens is, your voice isn’t going to go anywhere. But if you try to possess it, by playing only the things you like, forever, you will then sound like all these other guys who became stylists, and everybody knows how good they are, and you don’t expect any surprises, certainly no big surprises. You don’t expect to be confronted with a new reality. Because you think you know who these guys are. So voice is like personality. And then after you have this personality, what you wanna do is get it out of there, in the sense of it being a conscious thing. Because you’re never gonna lose what you gained, but if you don’t take it further, you will just stagnate and you’ll be one of those guys that’s, well… “Remember how he sounded?” “Yeah, yeah, it was cool, it was good.”

— Do the Math (interview by Ethan Iverson)

Richard Linklater: On Rehearsing

On the first day of rehearsals, Linklater had assembled the actors and brandished his screenplay. "I told the cast, 'If we do this word for word, we're fucked.'" he recalls. This is the approach he's used in almost all his movies, even those he didn't write, and it's sometimes described, incorrectly, as improvisatory. Actually, Linklater avoids surprises on the set. He schedules a lot of rehearsal time—two solid weeks or so before production starts—and goes through each scene in an open-ended way, talking about character motivations and getting actors to riff. Most of the rehearsal time is spend rewriting the screenplay, line by line, drawing out and molding his work against performers' strengths and styles. 

"Often what I write is incredibly 'written,' pretentious, whatever," he says. "Then it's, like, How do we undercut this?"

— "Moment to Moment," Nathan Heller (The New Yorker)