Playing With the Mind

The lights dim in a small, crowded jazz club as the buzz of conversation in the room is interrupted by a brief introduction over the public address system. The crowd applauds in anticipation, and a quintet of musicians enters the room.

Lagging a bit behind the others, trumpeter Tom Harrell finally reaches the stage, walking with a slow, awkward gait. Tall and slender, head hung down, chin nearly to his chest, he moves with arms dangling at his side, trumpet held loosely in one hand.

A few audience members look quizzically at this unusual figure, so unlike the familiar image of the hip, confident jazz musician. They whisper softly to each other, occasionally glancing in Harrell’s direction as the players pick up their instruments.

There is a brief moment of silence as Harrell takes his position at the front, nods to the musicians. Without a word of instruction, he grunts a count-off.

The rhythm section digs into a slow groove, and the saxophone player nods in rhythm with the time. But Harrell, except for a slight trembling in one hand, appears oblivious, standing in a position of near immobility, apparently disconnected to the point of inertia.

As his time comes to play, however, he slowly brings his horn to his lips and suddenly, without warning, fills it with a stream of music bursting with vitality and life. The contrast is astonishing, as he reels off a string of dazzling, hard swinging, improvised choruses. Then, just as suddenly, he finishes his solo, lowers his trumpet, and his body reverts to its rooted posture.

Almost universally admired by his contemporaries, Harrell has been described by both drummer Elvin Jones and saxophonist Phil Woods as a “pure genius,” and by tenor saxophonist Joe Lovano--a frequent musical associate--as a “poetic musician.”

But this “pure genius,” this “poetic musician” and much admired jazzman, has one other quality that makes him unique. He has suffered, for more than 25 years, from schizophrenia. And his life is one of the most remarkable stories in the long history of jazz.

On Tuesday night, Harrell brings his quintet to Catalina Bar & Grill for a six-night run in support of his new RCA album, “Labyrinth,” his 11th recording as a leader. He arrives on the wave of growing attention for his playing and his composing, which have matured dramatically in the last few years, raising him to the top level of post-Miles Davis creative jazz artists. Earlier this month, in down beat magazine’s annual jazz critics’ poll, he was voted best trumpeter, beating out the far more visible Wynton Marsalis by one vote.

*

But his journey to jazz prominence has not been easy, even though it began with considerable promise.

A prodigal musical talent as a child, Harrell, now 50, was a highly regarded trumpeter in the Bay Area while he was still a teenager. Found to be schizophrenic when he was in his early 20s, he has functioned in the mainstream since the early ‘60s with the aid of neuroleptic medication to deal with the typical schizophrenic symptoms of auditory hallucinations, disorganized speech and behavior and flattened affect.

For 20 years, Harrell performed with a strikingly wide array of major jazz artists. He toured with Stan Kenton and Woody Herman, worked with Horace Silver for five years and recorded and performed with Gerry Mulligan, Bill Evans (on Evans’ final album, “We Will Meet Again,” on Warner Bros.), the Mel Lewis Jazz Orchestra, Lee Konitz and Phil Woods. Since 1989, he has led his own groups.

Along the way, he has had to endure a variety of physical ailments, including a collapsed lung and an attack of Bell’s palsy, a debilitating--especially for a horn player--nerve disorder that can paralyze one side of the face for months. More indirectly, he continually experiences the sometimes fearful reaction of people who cannot see past his physical appearance, with the oddly somnambulistic affect produced by his medication.

“Tom’s never had any problems with his music,” says Angela Harrell, his wife of four years. “That’s always been there for him. But criticism and negative reactions are something else. Even with the medication, he hears so many critical voices inside his head that experiencing negativity on the outside, at the same time, can throw him into emotional overload.”

A conversation with Harrell is a singular experience. One of the common difficulties schizophrenics face is a feeling of verbal fragmentation. (In fact, Swiss psychiatrist Eugen Bleuler, who invented the term schizophrenia, did not intend for it to mean “split” personality, but “shattered” personality.) A typical manifestation is loosening associations--losing track of a thought in the middle of a sentence.

Harrell occasionally trails off in the course of an idea and sometimes is unable to converse at all. What eventually comes through, however, is not at all fragmented. His thoughts and ideas, like his music, are rich with a view of jazz that reaches into the heart of the creative process.

“In a sense,” he says, “a jazz improviser is like an orchestrator, because when you hear the music inside yourself, inside your soul, you choose how you express it to the world, to the universe. And it’s a spontaneous choice because jazz is a medium of the moment.

“You choose the instrument you want as the medium, the register you place the note in, what inflection you use, and, as you would when you’re talking, you have a choice of the tone you use. But this is all something that happens in the spirit of the moment, without being preconceived, with the colors of emotion coming out as a spontaneous celebration of life.”

Artists, of course, have always transformed all kinds of difficult psychological and emotional materials into art in a fashion that is both creatively productive and personally healing. For many, artistic expression has been their best friend since childhood.

Harrell is no exception. “Music,” he says, “is vital. It’s the thing that gives meaning to my life.”

And, for Harrell, the statement is not simply rhetorical. Music--in his case, playing and composing--provides a focus that tends to reduce his symptoms. His wife, for example, says that the symptoms of tardive dyskinesia--involuntary, sometimes bizarre movements of the mouth, hips and limbs associated with extended use of neuroleptic medication--diminish when he concentrates upon music.

“If he had his way,” she says, “he would probably play or compose 24 hours a day. He already has 300 compositions that haven’t been recorded. But as long as he’s focused on something that he wants to do, the symptoms seem to subside. Which is what explains the difference between the way he looks when he’s just standing on stage waiting to play, and the way he looks when he’s actually playing.”

Saxophonist Don Braden, who has worked with the trumpeter for more than two years, agrees with Harrell’s wife’s assessment, reporting that, on stage, Harrell only says three things: the lineup of tunes to be played, the count-offs for the tunes and the announcement of the player’s names.

“I can’t think of any time that he’s said anything else,” says Braden.

“But that quiet space that he goes into on stage,” he adds, “doesn’t happen when we’re recording or rehearsing, because he gets very cogent and focused when he’s discussing anything specific about the music.”

According to Braden, Harrell’s capacity to function so well as a musician and a leader evolves from the fact that he is a “creature of habit.”

“And I mean that in a good sense,” adds Braden. “He phrases a certain way, he writes a certain way, and you always know where he is musically.

“I’ve worked with a lot of trumpet players--Freddie Hubbard, Wynton, Wallace Roney--and the first thing you learn as a tenor-playing sideman is how to phrase with the trumpet player. With Tom, because of his consistency, there’s never a problem. Sure, he has his own way of doing things, his own habits. But he’s serious about making music, which is what really matters to me, and you just kind of get used to the other stuff.”

Harrell’s ability to link his consistency with a spontaneously creative imagination is one of the most singular aspects of his musical personality.

Pianist-psychiatrist Denny Zeitlin, who has written and lectured on the creative process in jazz, believes that the highest levels of achievement are reached when an artist can simultaneously bring together two different aspects of the creative process.

“The first is the more obvious,” says Zeitlin, “the discipline of craft, in which all the woodshedding gets brought to the focal point. The other discipline, which is less often talked about, is the ecstatic tradition, in which the goal is the loss of the positional sense of the self.

“The greatest moments of creativity--when you hear jazz players say, ‘Boy, I got to a different level last night’ or ‘Everything clicked’--are all ways of describing this sort of fusion of one’s craft and one’s ecstasy. It’s the amalgamation that brings about the greatest moments of creative expression, because it has all the passion as well as all the intelligence. And there’s a creative integration at the highest level when one person can allow him- or herself to enter that zone.”

But it is not a zone in which one ordinarily finds persons afflicted with schizophrenia, a disorder that is generally viewed as an obstacle to such high-level creative pursuits. Following through on an artistic idea usually requires a conceptualization, followed by the ability to see it through with discipline and a sense of continuity--qualities not common to the schizophrenic disorder. That Harrell is not only able to consistently conceptualize music, but that also he does so at the highest level of aesthetic achievement is, by most psychological standards, amazing.

His music has blossomed particularly well in the last few years since his signing with RCA and the release of “Labyrinth.” Harrell’s trumpet style reveals traces of influence from Dizzy Gillespie, Miles Davis and a less familiar source, the underappreciated Fats Navarro, as well as his first musical idol, Louis Armstrong. But his playing is too mature, too much an articulation of his own personality to fall into any individual musical tributary.

Not really a part--in age or in musical attitude--of the young lion trumpet group that includes Marsalis, Terence Blanchard and Wallace Roney, Harrell is nonetheless slowly, irresistibly, establishing his relevance as one of the significant jazz voices of the decade. His ballad work in a performance of “Darn That Dream” (in which he accompanies himself on piano) from “Labyrinth” and in duets with guitarist Jim Hall on “Skylark” (from “Dialogues” on Telarc) and saxophonist Joe Lovano on “I Can’t Get Started” (from “Live at the Village Vanguard” on Blue Note) is the stuff of improvisational brilliance--lyrical, imaginative, rich with inner emotions.

“Improvising is a very visual experience for me,” Harrell says. “When you hear melodies, the melodies have contours, and harmonies have visual implications, too, because they have colors. And the rhythms have visual qualities because they happen in time, which gives them emotional implications.”

“The thing that I believe that Harrell has going for him,” says Dr. Noah Young of the Tarzana Treatment Center, himself a well-regarded jazz bassist, “is that there’s something positive that happens with being a jazz musician. And it’s this: There’s a tremendous amount of safety in knowing that whatever your truth is--in terms of spontaneity and inspiration--it doesn’t have the opportunity to be judged until after you play. Because it’s your truth, it’s created in the moment, and then it’s over.”

Impressive as his playing has become, Harrell’s compositions have also begun to establish him as a potentially important jazz composer. His two RCA albums include programs almost exclusively dedicated to his works. For many jazz soloists, such a preponderance of originals could result in a quick case of listener ennui. But Harrell’s striking use of unusual instrumental timbres and his appealing sense of melody make nearly every track an enchanting event.

“I once had a great graphic arts teacher,” recalls Harrell, “who told me about the importance of being open to what he called ‘an odd moment.’ And that made me realize that, as a composer, you have to be open to the unguarded moments in yourself. So that’s a key element in how I approach composition--that, and something [the pianist] Danilo Perez once told me about the importance of moving the music forward.”

Harrell has been attempting to move the music “forward” practically from the time he was born, on June 16, 1946, in Urbana, Ill. His family moved to Los Altos, near San Francisco, in 1952, where he received his first trumpet at the age of 8--a choice driven by his affection for Armstrong.

“The first Armstrong records I heard were the Hot 5 and the Hot 7, and I’m really lucky that I heard that intense music at an early age. As soon as I heard Louis, I really wanted to play trumpet. The sound can be so sensual, but it can also be direct. It’s such a beautiful way to express melodies.”

A dialogue with Harrell inevitably leaves one with a feeling of awe at the rich, optimistic--even spiritual--life of a man who carries a far heavier load of problems than most people must bear. His discourse is constantly interlaced with upbeat, open-to-the-experience-of-life thoughts such as, “Music is mysterious because life is mysterious,” “Artistic expression reaches toward God,” and “Music needs emotion because people can hear emotion.”

“I mean, this is it,” Harrell says. “This is life. We all have this wonderful opportunity to express ourselves, and I feel really lucky to have been given the gift to do what I can do.

“To me, it comes down to this: The evolution of an artist and the evolution of a child are really the same thing--the flight to freedom of a bird.”

*

Tom Harrell will also appear with a trio in a free outdoor concert at the Museum of Contemporary Art, 250 S. Grand Ave., on Aug. 29 at 5 p.m.