Jazz and dance have a long history together. In fact, for much of the music's early history, the two were practically inseparable. From the ballrooms of the swing era to the Lindy Hoppers at the Savoy, jazz musicians played for dancers, and dancers responded to the musicians.
But over time, as jazz moved from dance halls into concert halls and clubs, the relationship changed. Audiences increasingly sat and listened, and musicians developed a language that could sometimes seem more concerned with impressing other musicians than moving an audience.
Pianist and composer Sean Mason has been thinking about that relationship. And on his new album, State of the Art, he decided to do something about it.
Rather than simply make music that people could dance to, Mason brought two movement artists, Reyna Nuñez and LeAndre Douglas, into the recording studio alongside bassist Felix Moseholm and drummer Domo Branch.
The dancers weren't there to perform for a camera. They were there to participate in the music.
He says, "When you put dancers in the room, all of that stuff actually goes away. Harmony, melody, and rhythm serve a function, and you can see it in the dancers. They're not abstract concepts anymore."
For Mason, this relationship between music and movement begins long before he enters the studio. Growing up in Charlotte, North Carolina, he was surrounded by gospel, soul, funk and R&B. He didn't begin playing piano until he was 13, and learned much of what he knew by ear, playing in church.
He eventually made his way to Juilliard, where he studied jazz alongside musicians who had been receiving formal training since early childhood. But Mason had already developed a distinctly physical relationship with music. And even today, when he's composing, he rarely begins at the piano.
"Usually when I write tunes, I'm either walking or I'm sitting on the couch, or I'm standing up in the living room, which is actually how I wrote the majority of this record ... clapping and singing the melodies,” he explains.
"If I don't feel it in my body, I don't sit at the piano and play it. I have to feel it in the body first."
Mason first worked with Nuñez and Douglas in The Jazz Continuum, a production by choreographer LaTasha Barnes that explored the connections between jazz music and social dance.
For State of the Art, he wanted to bring that relationship directly into the recording process.
The trio had performed the new compositions at Dizzy's Club in New York just two days before the recording session. Then they entered the studio with the dancers, recording each piece in no more than two takes.
The movement artists clapped, shouted encouragement, played percussion and moved around the musicians. Their footsteps and voices can be heard on the record.
And their presence changed the way the musicians played. "It definitely changes the way that we are, which then changes the way that we play,” he says.
This raises an interesting question about what a live record is. After all, Mason and his trio were performing together, responding in real time to two other people in the room. Those two people weren't exactly an audience, but they weren't exactly band members either.
Or perhaps they were. Mason describes State of the Art as a trio album, but acknowledges that, in a sense, it's actually a quintet recording.
And he hopes to bring some of that same energy to his live performances, although he acknowledges that traditional jazz clubs aren't necessarily designed for it.
"This music can be enjoyed sitting down but the music can also be meditated to, it can be danced to. There's a diversity of the way this music can be consumed," he notes.
And perhaps most noticeably, playing for dancers changed the way he felt.
“I was smiling while I was playing music. I wasn't thinking. I was just very present, and they were moving. It felt like I was at some kinda party or something.”
Sean Mason's new album State of the Art is out now on Taylor Christian Records and everyone is invited to the party.
