Guerino Mazzola: A walking musical contradiction

The Jakarta Post ,  Jakarta   |  Sat, 05/27/2006 12:25 PM  |  Life

M. Taufiqurrahman, The Jakarta Post, Yogyakarta

Acid rockers the Grateful Dead have done it at the Great Sphinx of Giza; New Age instrumentalist Yanni has done at the Acropolis; jazz pianist David Benoit has accomplished it at India's Taj Mahal and China's Forbidden City.

Two years ago, Swiss jazz pianist Guerino Mazzola also did it at the Prambanan Hindu temple in Kalasan, Yogyakarta, when he made his first shot at performing under the shadows of world's greatest monument.

Next August, Mazzola will finally fulfill his dream of staging a show at one of the Seven Wonders of the World and will have a chance to outshine the musical greats.

The 59-year-old musician is expected to stage a show under the shadow of Borobudur temple in Magelang, Central Java, the world's largest Buddhist temple.

Performing at one of the world renowned heritage sites would be a glorious feat for lesser musicians, but Mazzola had the experience before when he staged a gig at an Aztec ruin in Mexico.

The planned Borobudur show -- slated for mid-August and to be the subject of a documentary film by award-winning Indonesian filmmaker Garin Nugroho -- will, however, be much more different.

""It (the Aztec site show) was nothing, it was a flop as I absorbed no energy from the historical site.

""The planned Borobudur show, however, will be different as we have studied the temple and the philosophy behind it and I hope I can absorb the energy from ancient times,"" Mazzola said recently over a dinner in Kotagede, Yogyakarta.

But even without Borobudur as a backdrop, Mazzola will likely deliver an electrifying show and in turn draw a large crowd, among them knowledgeable jazz fans.

Known as the ""Jackson Pollock of jazz"", Mazzola has peddled for years the so-called free jazz, a left-of-the-dial genre that champions musical exploration to the fullest and sets aside any pretention to producing market-friendly music.

A direct descendant of free-thinking jazz musicians like Ornette Coleman and John Coltrane, Mazzola has adopted a technique that gives primacy to speed, accuracy and dynamism, without abandoning sensitivity.

Together with drummer Heinz Geisser, Mazzola have given a new meaning to jazz improvisation, with each of their compositions being played in a different style at each show.

The duo has recorded several free-jazz CDs that have become a must-have for jazz lovers in Europe. Mazzola has recorded music with jazz luminaries such as Matt Maneri, Scott Fields and Rob Brown.

""Unlike classical musicians who follow the direction from a conductor, a jazz musician is a master of his own time and does not obey anybody,"" Mazzola said of his esthetic.

Casual fans, however, will be bewildered once they discover that Mazzola is also a professionally trained mathematician who graduated from the University of Zurich in mathematics, theoretical physics and crystallography.

Someone who worships free musical expression -- unbound by technical constraints -- he approaches his music with the precision of mathematical and physical theories.

He completed his PhD in mathematics and gained academic recognition in algebraic geometry and representation theory in 1980.

The next step was for Mazzola to apply his abstruse mathematical concepts, such as topos theory, to music theory.

""Music is a language that is very near to mathematics and there is a kind of convergence between the two,"" Mazzola said, before launching into a lengthy lecture about a new discovery in physical science that the elementary particles that moved in space floated around and vibrated like strings on a violin.

In spite of his verbose speech on mathematics that lent weight to his authority in physical science, Mazzola dressed so casually that he could pass for, well, a jazz musician.

It took him 15 years of training in classical music before he found out about jazz and became fascinated by it.

And jazz proved to be much harder and more painful road to take.

""I heard Errol Garner and was completely fascinated. I started listening to jazz and learned his technique for 10 years. When practicing, my finger bled and the keys were red everywhere,"" he said, referring to the American jazz pianist and composer that played the greatest influence on his playing technique.

He later found that the classical approach to piano was completely useless.

After growing tired of imitating his idol, Mazzola started to use his sense to guide him open up new musical terrain. ""After spending many years imitating others, you finally want to know what is inside you,"" he said.

The decision to embrace free jazz could have also sprung from his contempt of any authoritarian structure.

A former communist well-versed in Karl Marx's works, Mazzola abandoned Marxism and Communism after learning about its authoritarian tendencies.

When he was a postgraduate university student in Paris, Mazzola was also drawn to the Black Panther organization and protested against racism and the Vietnam war.

""Later, I learned about the abuse of authoritarian regimes that claimed to espouse Marxism, and decided to leave it behind,"" he said.

He also abandoned Christianity from learning that the church also showed a similar authoritarian tendency, as in the Grand Inquisition.

""I don't believe in God in a narrow sense. The only thing that I could agree about God is that He has constructed the world through music,"" he said, with a mixed expression between glee and solemnity.

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