The comment was not meant to offend all female singers – just the rubbish ones! Over here (in the UK), bad singers are one of the worst offenders for the thoughtless ‘tribute’ show. I’m a piano player and work with some great female singers who get equally irritated with the types of people I’m talking about.

There are many great singers out there doing interesting and exciting things with standards and original music but, unfortunately there are also very poor ones getting gigs their ‘talent’ doesn’t merit because they do ‘tributes’ to the Great Amercian Songbook. You know the kinds of things – they’re normally call them ‘All That Jazz’ or something equally asinine.

Please don’t mistake my dislike of poor musicians churning out clichéd and unimaginative claptrap with misogyny simply because I highlighted female singers along with sax players as two of the most common offenders in this case.

Glasper, on his new album Double Booked, covers a Monk tune. Yet, he would every now and then quote “The Stakes is High”. It doesn’t sound like a hip-hopized jazz standard, but just the meshing of two important musical influences into one sound.

I guess what I’m trying to say is, playing “tribute” music (i.e. Miles, Coltrane, etc.) without putting your two cents into it isn’t what the cats would have wanted. Innovation, by the jazz tradition, is where it’s at. Learning some of the jazz repertoire is very important for growth, but I feel it’s important to not mix up the “practice” mindset with the “playing from the heart” mindset.

However, if a tribute is conceived because the musicians have a new take or fresh approach to bring to the music then great. E.S.T plays Monk was an album that not only blew me away but brought that group critical acclaim and let them make a name for themselves and it was a lot more interesting than 99% of the Monk tributes I hear.

I sympathise with the perception that festival bookers may constantly want tribute shows, but this is because they ARE easy to market. Our challenge, as jazz musicians is to make our original music as well defined, explained and attractive as these shows.

We need to pay attention to our whole package, not just the music so that we have something to talk about to promoters, bookers and journalists:

‘Do you want to book our band for you festival Mr Promoter, we play original stuff, it’s much more interesting than those boring tributes. What does it sound like? Who’ll come and hear it? Well, we don’t really sound like anyone else, it’s kind of hard to explain, you’ve just got to hear it…but anyone who likes good jazz will like it.’

That’s not exactly going to have them fighting for tickets is it?

On the other hand, a group like the Bad Plus, who describe themselves as ‘The loudest piano trio in the world’ have an angle that will get people talking. You may not like the sentiment, or even the music but you can’t deny that it’s more intriguing than the statement above.

There ARE far too many lame tribute projects around, there’s no doubt about that. From barely competent girl singers doing a tribute to ‘The Great American Songbook’ to the endlessly boring and predictable ‘Tribute to Charlie Parker’ sets – which usually consists of three alto players blowing in the normal way on standards, the ‘tribute’ concept is indeed overused.

Nevertheless, instead of putting all the blame on the promoters, maybe we should also be looking at the way we market our original music and trying to think about what would get people’s attention.

How many times do you do a gig of original material and think ‘What would make a journalist want to write about this show? What would make somebody who has never heard of me decide to come and see it? How can I make this interesting enough for local radio to want to interview me about it?

Until we start answering these questions, you can’t really blame venues and festivals for playing it safe with tribute shows because they are guaranteed to put bums on seats. If you believe your original music is more interesting than a tired tribute show then start shouting about it, make people want to come and see it and prove you can pull the same numbers as a tribute.

Otherwise, you’d better go and work up a set full of Monk tunes.

The argument that original music suffers when bands do tributes doesn’t apply here. A band like JPQ already have their own repertoire. By playing a tribute show they are honoring the music that came before them without losing their own identity. When it’s done that way, I think it can only be a good thing.

I like tribute shows, mostly because of the reasons you mentioned above, I don’t think it’s a cop-out in any way. Not only do they hold the potential to bring more people into the jazz community and raise awareness of the greats to non-jazzers, but they are a great way to work hard on a musical project, get somthing together, and get paid… dolla bill yall.