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-Issue Number 200 |
Thursday, December 1, 2005 | Page
37 |
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Welcome
to the on line edition of the popular Tenerife free newspaper The Western
Sun. Click on the page pictures on the left hand side or the grid below
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David blows up a storm for the best in jazz
WHAT’S
the difference between a musical tramp and a virtuoso musician?Not much, if you are to judge by master jazzman David Williams.
When he blows his horn people listen – whether they like jazz or not. And they have listened to him with deep appreciation right round Europe and on luxury cruise liners.
That’s what makes 56-year-old David a musical tramp, working wherever and whenever he can, just like many a lesser muso who never had the same benefits of a classical education in his art.
These days he can be found playing for diners at El Rancho Grande Restaurant, Puerto Santiago. It’s something he does for love as much as for money. This soft-spoken but highly articulate man expresses himself best through his music, the enduring passion of his life.
But, though the love was always there, like every other musician, David has to eat. And it hasn’t always been easy. He’s seen bad times when, no matter how accomplished a musician may be, the work just isn’t around.
That’s when musos learn to tramp!
David was born to play. His father, a semi-pro trumpet player and singer with dance bands in the 1930s, first bought him a trumpet when he was discovered, at the age of three, taking his dad’s trumpet apart and trying to put it back together by hitting it with a shoe.
A year later, after the family moved to Bournemouth, the tot showed real promise with his ‘toy’ and began to study music seriously when he was seven. At the age of 14 he got into the much respected Royal Marines School of Music.
Invalided out with a back injury at the age of 17, he could not let go of the music and played in local bands at village hops while holding down a day job at Burton’s the tailors.
Those were the balmy days for musicians – until companies like Top Rank took over the dance halls in the late 1960s, turning dance halls that had all employed big dance bands, into bingo halls and discos.
It has left a bad taste in David’s mouth ever since.
“It was as if the whole of society was suddenly turned over to the younger generation in the form of pop culture and nothing else got a look in,” he says, sadly.
Thank God, then, for Herb Alpert and his Tijuana Brass, whose ’60s string of hits gave many a musician the chance to follow in his big band wake.
It kept them going but, despite the comeback of a few big bands, David regrets the fact that, in these days of synthetic music, there’s little encouragement for youngsters to take it up as a career.
That is why he is especially proud to have been asked to teach at the newly formed Aula de Musica Actual, Municipal School of Music in Santiago del Teide, on Saturdays.
He had spent most of his life travelling in search of work. It took him to Switzerland, Germany and Scandinavia, as well as on to the cruise liners working the Caribbean and the Med.
And it was one of those cruises that introduced him to the Canaries where he arrived in Puerto de la Cruz with a band and decided to settle in Tenerife, forming a quartet to work in the Galleon Restaurant there – seven nights a week with a Sunday lunchtime jam session thrown in for good measure.
They were good days, but Puerto lost its sparkle with the opening up of mass tourism in the south in the early 1980s. He went back to Britain and the cruise ships before deciding to give Tenerife another go – this time playing the big hotels in the south.
Then an old friend from his Puerto days invited him to teach at the music school and David jumped at the chance to teach brass instruments to youngsters from the age of seven, first on Saturdays only, but soon on a fulltime basis.
It was a life-changing experience. He found that here has been a big change in the education system when it comes to teaching music.
“These days some youngsters are more worried about the money than they are about commitment – although there are some gratifying exceptions,” he says.
“Still there aren’t many lunatics who will travel miles just to have a ‘blow’ as there were in my day.
“I hope I teach them not to apologise for what they do.
“To me jazz means freedom of expression.
“I don’t try and push them in any particular direction, but I do worry about the future. At the recent Heineken Jazz y Mas, (Jazz and More) festival there was more ‘more’ than there was jazz.”
David’s mobile interrupts the conversation. The ringtone is Bach’s Partida.
“All right,” David says when the call ends, “Bach is my hero.”
“What’s my real love? Anything that’s good. Carl Orff’s Carmina Burana, Mozart’s Mass in B minor, brass quartets, jazz bands, anything that comes from the heart.
“It’s just a pleasure for me to play trumpet. If I had my time again though, I’d go to university and learn to play early English brass music.
“I can’t master it. I’m 56-years-old and I’m still trying.”
Keep trying, David. And in the meantime keep us all entertained with your fabulous jazz set at the Rancho Grande restaurant in Puerto de Santiago on Thursday nights.
David will soon be heard gracing the airwaves with a new show on Power FM between 4pm and 6pm on Sundays, starting this coming Sunday. Tune in for a real lesson in how jazz should be played.
Van the Man on the way
Irish music
legend van Morrison, one of the most critically acclaimed singer/songwriters
in the world, is coming to Tenerife early next year.The Tenerife concerts take place on January 3 and 4, at the Auditorium in Santa Cruz and are part of a three-stop tour of Spain, with concerts in Madrid on the 13th and 14th and Malaga on the 17th and 18th.
The concerts are a vehicle to present Morrison’s latest work, a CD called Magic Time.
It marks Morrison’s 40th hit album and the 12 new tracks have been widely acclaimed as some of his best work over the last 20 years.
Van the Man has performed more than 50 concerts since last May. But, while he keeps going strong, he wears out a few of his support band in the process, earning himself a reputation for the constant changes behind him.
In the Spanish series of concert Morrison will be presenting his new band but the line-up has yet to be confirmed.