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Govert Driessen
Schools, streets, and bandstands made the sound of saxophonist
STACY DILLARD 22
PASATIEMPO I ????????? ??-??, 2013
isten to the involved post-bop music of Stacy Dillard, and it’s hard to believe he spent his time as a teenager listening to saxophonist Najee and other smooth-jazz artists. “I was also a fan of [hip-hop artist] KRS-One, even Tears for Fears,” he recalled in a phone conversation from his home in Brooklyn. “You don’t want to know all the stuff I was listening to.” Consider his sound — the saxophonist was heard in Santa Fe as part of bassist Curtis Lundy’s quintet last fall, and he has a handful of CD releases out (the latest is Good and Bad Memories on the Dutch label Criss Cross) — and it is hard to reconcile what you hear with his youthful jazz-fusion enthusiasm. The music embraces straightahead and progressive jazz. His tenor sound seems to spring from a variety of influences, some of which aren’t normally thought of together. At different times, he recalls Ornette Coleman and John Coltrane, two postmodernists that came at their music from different directions. At other times, he has something of Coleman Hawkins’ style in his play — not so much Hawkins’ spacious resonating tone but his ability to turn improvisations into rhapsody. On the other hand, he has something of Coltrane’s note-by-note phrasing, no matter how fast those notes are coming. Then there’s a sense of Coleman’s unique combination of harmony and melody — “harmolodics,” Coleman called it — that surfaces in the unpredictable intervals Dillard sometimes uses. Dillard also carries something of Coltrane’s spirituality in his moods and feel. His improvisations aren’t so much narrative as they are quests; there’s something in them that suggests a search. The one word most frequently used to describe his style is “mature.” Dillard’s approach to his instrument — he also, like Najee, plays soprano — is a product of both new- and old-school musical training. In an age when more and more jazz musicians are turned out whole by music academies and formal training, Dillard received something other than a conservatory education, gaining a working knowledge in high-school band classes and small college workshops. Much of his specialized training came on the bandstand after moving to New York City, where he’s been a sideman for a Who’s Who of band leaders. The streets served as rehearsal space. Raised in Muskegon Heights, Michigan, Dillard was more interested in sports than music as a student. But during the summer before his 16th birthday, he had an epiphany. “To this day I couldn’t tell you who I heard or what he was playing — I don’t know if it was alto or tenor — but I do remember how it made me feel. I was watching TV and there was this guy playing the horn and instantly I knew that’s what I wanted to do. So I asked my parents for a horn for my birthday. And they said, ‘Are you crazy? No.’ All my older siblings had played an instrument and then given it up so they kind of spoiled it for me.” Dillard concentrated on his other love: basketball. But he didn’t forget the horn. When he was 18 he saw an advertisement for instrument rental: 90 days for $90. “I was working at an electronics store and had some money, and I thought, here’s my chance. So I got it and just kind of ran away with it. Or it ran away with me.” While in college, first at Wright State University and then at Central State University (both in Ohio), Dillard heard the saxophonists that turned him away from smooth jazz: Sonny Rollins, John Coltrane, Wayne Shorter and, yes, Coleman Hawkins. “I was listening to everybody, hearing what they did, trying to figure out how they sounded the way they did.” Wynton Marsalis came to Central State, heard Dillard play, and encouraged him to look him up when he came to New York. Another great, the late pianist Mulgrew Miller, came to Dayton to work with a group of middle-school musicians, and asked Dillard to come in and help keep their sound moving. “These kids were young, but they were serious. Mulgrew didn’t want me leading the tunes; he just wanted me to play along. I was like the pace rabbit in dog racing. Something to chase.”