by Elizabeth Stanard

The Opportunity

ADA: Tell me about Creative Opportunity Orchestra.

TM: The Creative Opportunity Orchestra [CO2] was started up in the fall of 1979. It was initially a response from those of us that were at the time still fledgling jazz musicians not having a forum to play creative music to be a part of the evolution of jazz . There was sort of more of the A Team who had all the gigs in town, the veterans. They had the commercial gigs, the club dates. The kind of music that we wanted to play was more modern and more improvisational, and actually it was the City's funding process that inspired us to start. So then the aim became to establish a forum for composers and improvisers to create more large scale pieces that were not meant to be commercial, that were not dependent on selling alcohol, that were expecting people to sit in a concert and listen as opposed to visit over your music. And so little by little, we started doing it every year, our annual concerts, a little touring, recording. And there are now over a hundred members. I consider anyone who's ever rehearsed with us to be a member of the group, and to tell you the truth, I named the group for the benefit of the players. The name was to let the player know, "This is your creative opportunity. No boundaries! You can say what your ideas are."

Collaborative Improvisational Jazz

ADA: How do the nuts and bolts of collaboration work?

TM: Normally, it's piano, bass, drums, some kind of percussion or not, three woodwinds, two or three trumpets, two trombones and a tuba and me. During the rehearsal process each composer brings his or her point of view where everyone's influences and loves are very different, which is what I think gives the band its kind of excitement, and also makes it very difficult to pigeonhole. If you're in the group, your obligation is to give life to that other person's ideas through your creativity. It's very unusual to have a collaborative ensemble where everyone is invited to write. The fact is that there are hardly any organitions like it in the country. Most people don't have big groups, you have your colleagues that you're trying to create an environment of creative interplay with. That can be extremely fulfilling or frustrating, and it's immediate, it's different every time because of its improvisational nature. Jazz is able and willing to take, to fold in other influences and come up with a unique synthesis that I don't think is a bastardization, but it is instead something that is contemporary in itself. Sometimes the improvising may be open-ended, or it may be like a standard chord progression. What it does is it incorporates all of the things that one can imagine when you say the word jazz. It's a huge spectrum and those are all embraced. The point of the improvisation is to extend the ideas of the composition, not to just get out there and blow your licks. If the band sounds good and you feel real confident about the rhythm section and the sound is nice, it's so exciting to be playing. The cats are like listening to each other like YEAH, getting off on what everybody else is playing. And that's the moment that it's worth it.

Commercial Success

ADA: So what is it that prevents this kind of music from being a commercial success?

TM: Well, even when things are structured to be commercial, it's very difficult to make a living out of doing it. I think part of it has to do with there being a "star strata" in our culture. You're either a bohemian or a star. There's not much in between. There's no middle network infrastructure of touring, record sales, of promoters, of publicists -- there just aren't that many gigs! Getting lots of people motivated, which is what a commercial success is, to stand in line and buy tickets or to buy your recording, that's what that success thing is about. How does that happen? Somebody writes a bunch of glowing stuff about you. And people get excited and they kind of build up a thing. But it's kind of long-form music. It's not very accessible. There's lots of improvisation, some of it very dissonant. So it's very, very, very difficult, which is one reason why I've hung on to the organization of CO2 to try to give some forum for the music. The fact is it's not commercial because the commercial venues are not taking a chance on it. I think for the most part, business people are very close-minded and they tend to be bandwagon-jumpers. They want to get what already works for somebody else. They don't want to do something that is new. And so I think that's a big hurdle.

The Listeners

ADA: What sort of following do you have?

TM: I would say that actually we're always received very, very well. Whenever we play, people love it. And people like different pieces. I mean, you and she and I might sit in the audience and totally like and dislike utterly opposite pieces, which I think is fantastic. I love to see that kind of discussion and controversy in the audience. But because it's not an easy pigeonhole and because it's not always easy listening. I mean you can wonder off. But the pay-off is bigger if you pay attention, because the nuance and the impact will come to you. It's more people's experience that is keeping it from being more accessible. There's a lot that's very accessible. Some things are quite abstract.

We have a lot of other artists that are in our audiences, usually people that are very progressive minded, highly educated, interested and curious about the world, and widely culturally diverse. Usually it's people with a progressive ear that are interested in jazz with. Most of the people that really like straight-ahead or kinda toe-tapping jazz, they get bummed out that they want to hear that.

We are always attempting to reach new people, that's part of the whole game. The young people who are literate, curious about like to sit around and talk about philosophy or art or books or movies... I know beyond a shadow of a doubt that when those people hear the music, they get very turned on. I don't know exactly what's the best way to reach them. Why is it hard to get them to the concerts? For the most part, young people go to see other young people. And Austin audiences, when they're there, they're lovely. But they're very fickle about whether they come out. They might miss their once in a lifetime concert because their mother called just as they were leaving or the cat threw up or something.

[But] you [do] get the added little bonus of every now and then, [when] the guy in the grocery store or the drug store or walking down the street will say, "I saw you at...I'll never forget...It meant so much to me..." If somebody says something like that, it usually comes when I'm horribly depressed. And I take that and put it under my pillow and that helps me get up the next morning because it worked. It didn't get to work for 100,000 people! But that one person came to you and said, "I had an authentic experience with you during this time." And when you really come down to it, that's what it's actually about.