PAUL MOTIAN:DRUMMER PAUL Motian was a towering figure in jazz – as a musician, band leader, composer and, in the second half of his long career, a nurturer of young talent. His death, aged 80, marks the passing of one of the most original voices in contemporary music.
Born in Philadelphia in 1931 to parents of Armenian extraction, Stephen Paul Motian (he preferred the pronunciation “mo-shun”, although his parents went by “mo-tee-un”) grew up in Providence, Rhode Island, getting his first drum kit at age 12.
Following service with the US navy in the Korean War, he studied music at the Navy School of Music in Washington. In 1954, like so many jazz musicians of his generation, he moved to New York – where he would remain for the rest of his life – and soon found work as a sideman for leading musicians of the era, including Oscar Pettiford, Zoot Sims, Lennie Tristano and Thelonius Monk.
It was, however, his association with pianist Bill Evans that would define the early part of his career. Beginning in 1954, Motian joined Evans and bassist Scott LaFaro in a group that would redefine the concept of the piano trio and produce a series of recordings that belong among the most influential jazz records ever made.
In particular, the trio’s live recordings from the Village Vanguard represent the apogee of the piano trio’s art, displaying levels of interaction and empathy between the players that fundamentally changed the role of the rhythm section in jazz. It was also the beginning of an association with the famous downtown New York venue that would continue for the rest of Motian’s life.
"In those days, the Vanguard was never that full," he told the Sunday Tribunein 2002. "One night with Bill and Scott, there were only three people in the club. Now it's packed and quiet and they clap when you walk on stage. That never happened in those days."
He went on to collaborate with other influential pianists, notably Paul Bley and Keith Jarrett, in whose so-called American Quartet Motian’s playing reached a wide international audience.
By the early 1970s Motian was beginning to compose his own music and 1972 marked the start of his career as a band leader.
In the following decades he would develop the interactive style he had hinted at with Evans into an entirely new approach to the drums, stripping away many of the mannerisms of bebop drumming. His subtle playing was instantly recognisable, eschewing technical trickery and never using two strikes where one would do.
“The drums and me are one thing. It’s part of me. From head to fingernails to the end of my toes, it’s all me. Whatever comes out, if I like it, it’s going to be good.” He also developed an uncanny ability to spot and nurture young talent.
Among the musicians who took their first steps onto a larger stage with Motian were guitarist Bill Frisell and saxophonist Joe Lovano. Their trio recordings, with no bass player, would prove hugely influential in describing a path for other musicians out of the instrumental conventions of bebop.
Motian never lost his profound sense of swing, though, and, beginning in 1992 he led his Electric Bebop Band, which re-excavated the classics of Parker, Monk and others, and became a hothouse for young talent, including guitarist Kurt Rosenwinkel and saxophonist Chris Potter.
Motian visited Ireland several times over the past two decades, working with promoters Note Productions and the Improvised Music Company. His trio with Frisell and Lovano played a memorable concert in Andrew’s Lane Theatre in 1992, at a time when few international musicians made it to Dublin.
The appearance of his Electric Bebop Band at Vicar Street in 2002 was a catalyst for many young Irish musicians.
In his seventies he grew weary of international touring and, after a heart operation, confined his activities to Manhattan. His muse never faltered and he was recording and performing right up to his death last week from a bone marrow condition.
His last engagement was in September at the Village Vanguard.
Saxophonist Greg Osby, who played with him that night, summed up his style: “He was an economist: every note and phrase and utterance counted. There was nothing disposable.” He is survived by his sister, Sarah McGuirl.
Paul Motian: born, March 25th, 1931, died, November 22nd, 2011.