“As a drummer he had it all: the sound, the touch, the ability to communicate and to react at the drop of a hat. “ Canadian drummer and writer T Bruce Wittet remembers Danish drummer Alex Riel.
Although he no longer walks among us, Alex Riel left us so much music it’s almost incomprehensible that one man might have been responsible. We’re looking at jazz royalty passing through the Montmartre, where Alex was house drummer, to start with. To be shy of twenty-years and to have the opportunity to play with Ben Webster, Dexter Gordon, Sonny Rollins, and Donald Byrd—this whipped him into shape. In addition, the exposure led to Alex Riel receiving the award of Danish Jazz Musician of the Year (1965). To celebrate, he launched his own band and cut a record. Musicians came and went, just as Alex’s home was part-stage, part-studio. His bio includes a diverse lot of prominent band leaders and accompanists: Archie Shepp, Abdullah Ibrahim (I’m old enough to have seen him as Dollar Brand), Charlie Mariano, Phil Woods Mike Stern, Mike Brecker. I’ll leave you with links where you can set the names straight.
Born in Copenhagen in 1940, Alex Riel was, we ought to stress out of fairness and in light of his recent passing, one of the most influential musicians in Europe. As a drummer he had it all: the sound, the touch, the ability to communicate and to react at the drop of a hat. He had some sort of a courtesy deal with Gretsch drums as well as with Paiste; indeed in he appears in the “little orange book” listing that company’s endorsers circa 1975. Those cymbals fit Alex’s style in that he went for a crisp tone on snare and darker, richer thing on toms. Similarly Paiste cymbals are known for their attack component and rich but not overpowering wash. If that company didn’t introduce the Flat Ride, a cymbal without a bell that promoted a quieter but more defined stick tone and an absence of wash. And Alex had the touch to play these instruments to their optimum qualities. One prominent aspect of his drumming is that it tended to cross lines that traditionally define music as incorporating melody, harmony, and rhythm. The band could be cooking and many a player might hiccup and lose his/her place but Alex was always intimately attached to the various components. One could follow his drumming closely and know exactly where they were in a song, simply because Alex nailed transitions, orchestrated with the drumset, and called out melody, even with his snare drum in the manner of Sonny Payne. He honed all these abilities and when Steve Gadd made his enormous dent in music, Alex, similarly adopted a few more toms, tuned them a little darker and perhaps with slightly less sustain. Again, he used the ‘new’ voicings to shadow melody and harmony. I just assumed that in later days he employed a double-bass drum pedal out of this grand, rolling bottom end he produced, but he may have simply worked his right foot hard and fast! The point is that he worked at his playing; he learned from new players and new trends and it kept his playing fresh and youthful, his energy pulsing.
One thing I noticed about Alex, especially the time I saw him live, was the way in which he could shift tones, timbres, and sustain to complement soloists. To say the least, Alex was one of the more restless among drummers and one who, although refraining from asserting his own agenda, certainly did his share of prodding and pushing soloists and, say, horn sections playing ensemble figures. Alex could mirror the figures on his left hand alone, all the while pushing the time on the right hand. One might think this as the lot of the bop drummer but Alex was considerably more aggressive in his nudging bands on to greatness. In doing so, his cymbals didn’t wash over everyone like a blanket. Everything was under control and when blasting, kept from bombast by his fine motor skills.
Above all, he was a man whose humour worked hand in hand with his technique to keep everything honest. It was almost humility we were seeing. Then again, you hear this stellar example of his answering the call on the video clip in which he’s working as an equal with Jimmy Heath and David Murray in ‘Tenor Madness”. One of the soloist, no names, is purring along and Alex reckons the cat ought to be on the prowl, he begins a regimen of rhythmical poking, slapping on snare, driving a little heavier on bass drum, until the soloist has become another entity, fired-up and ready for a brawl.
What I remember most is the cat’s eyes and the smile when warranted. Alex’s smile is legendary and even in situations, such as his filmed performance with Bill Evans, easily a crowning achievement of his career, he traded grins as much as fours. It’s no wonder he did the European tour with Bill Evans and Eddie Gomez. We’re approaching this milestone in a moment.
There’s so much to take home from a study of the clips available on his website, on youtube, and on his page on the great Drummerworld there’s never a dull moment. Although he wasn’t well-known in my native Canada, his considerable talents were on the crest of the wave in Europe. The one time I saw Alex live, at the Montreux Jazz Festival in Switzerland, he was playing outdoors and I was approaching a covered stage and a large crowd. And I stopped in my tracks. I knew this guy! Alex Riel was playing with some group I couldn’t identify if you put a pistol to my head, but there was no question it was him on drums. The moment I saw his eyes, “cat’s eyes” as I’ve always recognized them, having lived with a Siamese for twenty-years, his demeanour was set. No question who was the boss. Those cat’s eyes seemed to see through walls and create comfortable spackes, little enclaves among friends, where they were free to solo to the limit. You could tell that the each of the six players relied on Alex. In fact their eyes were glued to him. He was the one among them who most evidenced maturity and control. He could ride an up tempo swing/bop and lead; he wasn’t so much a follower. And then when everybody was on board, he could take the energy up another level or two and the audience was totally into it, wondering where he’d take them next. This guy was not merely hanging on, you know, like the old adventure movies where the protagonist and villain are both in mortal danger as the train approaches the tunnel (how appropriate in Montreux !). Alex, however, was driving and emphatically not a passenger. And here’s the thing: when a drummer can maintain that upscaled energy level and maintain consistency of groove, forcing the dynamic levels when necessary, he/she can unleash intricate, increasingly complex phrases, and get the room rattling like soldiers crossing a bridge. Somebody’s got to lead, even if it means breaking step, or the whole thing explodes. That’s my one and only time in the presence of Alex Riel but having seen my share of drummers by that time, it was obvious he was “one of the cats”. His kettle steamed and fussed and percolated and his hand was ready to up the heat or relax it.
Canada vs Denmark: Go West Young Man; Go Somewhere !
In Canada you might fly for half an hour and not see a soul down there, whereas in Denmark there’d be little red roofs, signs of life everywhere. But population-wise we’re looking at modest numbers in both countries. Both implore tacetly its most worthy jazz players to get out for a spell and return refueled. If not the jaded attitudes grow; the curmudgeons take root.
I have interviewed, very few if any can claim to even sniff the diversity and longevity of his activities. But in all serious musicians there’s a kernel of self-doubt, a momentary lapse of confidence. Could I make it out there?
Ironically, Alex was one who got out of the local stink simply by hooking up with musicians who hailed from America yet were known worldwide. Or more bluntly, the world came to him. I don’t think it’s an exaggeration to say that the Bill Evans tenure was a tipping point, or certainly the highest point, in Alex’s career.
As is usually the case with jazz musicians, rehearsals are scant but expectations remain as high as ever. Following his modest rehearsal time with pianist Bill Evans and bassist Eddie Gomez, Alex walked onto the soundstage and played as if he were born into the gig. As it turns out, in the late sixties/early seventies, drummer Paul Motian began to show his discontent. Of course, the death of bassist Scott LaFaro didn’t help. The hardest thing for the new guy is to jump in after a brief flirtation and a little more homework.
I don’t know whether it’s anything to be celebrated that I did the last major interview with Paul Motian. There’s not a lot of percentage in that and certainly no upgrades to business class. Paul told me that following LaFaro’s death, the main reason he wanted out of the Evans trio was that he felt it was becoming a cocktail jazz outfit. That pretty much stands on its own. The pianist gets more expansive while the bassist and drummer lose steam; they don’t take chances. When I watched footage of Alex’s rehearsals for a famous broadcast with the Evans trio, I was a little startled. I’ve been in the situation: I am not worthy; I am not worthy! But Alex Riel had his charts in hand, conferred with the band, didn’t load them down with questions, listened intently to Bill Evans. One passage, maybe it’s just me, is rich because of Bill Evans’ serious look as he explains a group of pushes, two beats juxtaposed against four if I remember correctly. I looked at Alex’s face and he was ready to signal the way those pushes ought to go but was a gentleman and let the leader explain. They launched into the tune and not only did Alex Riel sync with Gomez/Evans but he caught those pushes. And he starts amazingly busy out of the gate. I think the strategy served him well, given he was playing brushes and thus wasn’t going to step on anybody’s toes. Alex pulled off some difficult Roy Haynes style snare drum vs hi-hat closed with foot skirmishes. Good luck, pal! But he pulled it off and while Evans wasn’t jumping up and down, he wasn’t going to do that anyway! I think Alex taught him something: this Dane was down with it and was going to do his thing and reconcile it with the Evans thing. Things relaxed and there was a noticeable calm. Cranking up the broadcast mini-rehearsal and performance for Danish TV, it was remarkably brave, and ultimately musical, to see and hear Alex Riel joining as an equal, not an accompanist.
It’s difficult to overemphasize the importance of the Evans trio and of this gig for Alex Riel. He cut it like a knife cuts butter. I remember joining Marty Morell on his homestead (he moved to a farm and among other things, including mallets and kit) raised some healthy looking chickens. I think. I couldn’t tell but they surrounded my car, I remember saying, as if food always arrived in a VW 1976. I found Marty to be the closest to Alex and, indeed, their tastes were similar—in drums, in cymbal sounds, and in the use of brushes to tone down the level but retain the attack. Like Alex, Marty’s thing had been refined to work at pianissimo and nobody, least of all Evans, is going to complain when a drummer can trot out all his licks at pp as well as ff. It’s not as if Evans was beset by bad drummers when Motian left. Alex Riel takes his place as one of the better choices among a fine group of drummers. Alex demonstrated that thing that the best drummers of this world hold in the crucible. It’s a message: Do your thing at whisper volumes and let it travel the dynamic continuum consistently to an explosion, and there you have it. The world is your oyster.
He kept up his affable spirit and agile limbs until very near the end, surprising many colleagues who had no idea he was ill. There is something lost and, as they say about energy, it transfers on. What Alex Riel has achieved has not fallen on deaf ears and his style is alive already in those who’ve witnessed him at work and at play.
