Insights into leadership don’t only come from business executives. In this interview, executive consultant Stefanie Smith asks jazz luminary Eli Yamin about evoking top creative performance from your players – within and beyond the musical realm. Eli has played with jazz masters for decades and tours extensively worldwide. Meanwhile, he has conducted hundreds of workshops at all levels: from kindergartener through corporate executives.
As musical director for the tour of Duke Ellington’s Sophisticated Ladies, he worked with director Mercedes Ellington. This year, Ms. Ellington led the band at the release party for his newest CD, Louie’s Dream, a tribute to the vision depicted in the enduring Armstrong hit It’s a Wonderful World.
Eli directs the Middle School Jazz Academy, the first of its kind. Artistic Director Wynton Marsalis explains the passion behind the program, “The Academy reflects our vision that this music can be appreciated by audiences of all ages, across diverse backgrounds. The kids are at an impressionable age. For me it’s just important that the kids play with an integrity and a belief in what they are playing.” He also leads the The Jazz Drama Program to foster personal and artistic growth through the power of music, which has enriched the lives of thousands of public school students.
Eli Yamin
Stefanie Smith: Let’s get right to the heart of the matter. What does a leader mean to members of a jazz ensemble?
Eli Yamin: Jazz is a unique art form because leadership shifts around the group even though there is one executive director. No matter what style or generation of jazz, there are always times when different musicians take prominence as the creative focal point. It’s understood in our culture of jazz that other ensemble members rally around that new focal point and support his or her vision in that particular moment.
What does it mean for a leader to give up that focal point?
Great jazz leaders have the flexibility and openness to integrate ideas coming from beneath them, above them, and around them. They allow room in their vision for other people’s visions. This is one of the great legacies of jazz that makes jazz so reflective of democratic values and the American culture and spirit.
There’s organizational value there as well. Please share some leadership lessons you’ve learned from jazz masters you’ve played with or studied.
I had the good fortune to play with Illinois Jacquet, one of the most famous jazz saxophonists of the 50’s, who played with the Count Basie Orchestra.
Illinois Jacquet loved to rehearse. He would have the entire band, sixteen of us, practice for five or six hours. Maybe with a ten minute break, maybe not. His style took endurance and patience.
He was rather dramatic sometimes. He liked to call people out and kind of mess with you. You never knew who was coming next. This is not necessarily a part of his style I want to emulate but it had its effect. It made us focus.
At a sound check he would tune up the band, almost like a high school band director, one instrument at a time. He was dealing with professionals who’d been playing for 20, 30, 40 years. Yet he’d tune the band up. I recognized over time it wasn’t just about tuning up the instruments. He was getting us to tune up our minds, and that’s very important to bringing unity to a group.
Reflecting now, I recognize his job was to get sixteen people to focus into the moment and share a commitment to the swing we were creating together. That’s a big task with everybody thinking about their insurance payments or their cars not working right or whatever – to come into a room and say, “Okay, it’s about this music right here, right now.”
Who is your greatest jazz hero?
Duke Ellington, without a doubt. I never met him. But I think about him almost every day. He led his band for 50 years, took it all around the world and survived longer than any of his peers.
What made Duke Ellington a legendary band leader?
Now, Duke Ellington as a leader was a totally different story than with Illinois Jacquet. Ellington was a fearless follower of his inner guide. He believed in his own creativity, and the creativity of those around him. He got to know players as individuals – what their soul wanted to say and what their heart had to express. He wrote parts particularly tailored for them. He didn’t have to tell you, “I want it like this.” You knew how to do it because that music was written just for you.
I know a drummer who played with Duke Ellington. When he first got with the band he asked Duke, “How do you want me to play this number? Can I get a recording of how your other guy did it?” And Duke said, “No I don’t want you to hear the record. I want you to play it like you play it.”
So from Illinois Jacquet we learn that rehearsing as a group makes for success: you need to tune up and focus. Whereas from Duke Ellington we learn that success starts with the individual talent and soul in your group.
Right.
What do we learn from both of them, and from other jazz legends?
There is a myth that success is based purely on natural talent, that some stars are just born that way. The truth is the jazz greats, including Louis Armstrong, worked very hard and got tremendous training.
Thinking about Duke Ellington or your own experiences, how do you balance bringing out the best creativity in individuals with maintaining cohesion and inspiring the best performance from the team as a whole?
You need a shared sense of values. In jazz we have particular traditions – the tradition of swing, the tradition of blues, the tradition of expressing your own individual voice. Any serious practitioner of jazz has thoroughly absorbed these values and understands that in a group situation sharing them is what the music is about.
Leaders have to bring the maturity to step back and say, “This is not about me. This is about my vision as a leader.” If you can have a vision that goes beyond who you are, people can get into that in a different kind of way than they could just to follow one particular person. The best leaders stimulate a group chemistry where everybody comes together, tunes themselves into a common purpose.
To me, what’s so inspiring here at Jazz at Lincoln Center is we have a leader, Wynton Marsalis, who’s a phenomenal artist with incredible credentials and accomplishments who articulates a vision for how jazz can be a force for positive change in American culture. That’s something all of us can believe in, whether we are new to jazz or have been in jazz for a long time. It’s up to each of us to find out how we can make an individual contribution to that effort.
Eli Yamin and Wynton Marsalis
So, the ideal jazz leader instills a strong sense of shared vision, yet allows room for individual unique talents to shine through within that?
Absolutely. Finding musicians that share a common purpose is more important than who they’ve played with or if they’re famous. A mentor of mine, Walter Perkins, used to say to me, “You can’t buy swing, baby sweets.”
You need the right people aligned with you to get the right results.
Right.
Eli, can you give examples of elements of jazz that apply to working in teams?
I give workshops with a management professor on how jazz can be a model for deepening your ability to manage, create and work on autonomous flexible teams. This is exactly what we have in a jazz band.
We have people with certain roles. The bass player’s got a certain role. The drummer’s got a certain role. The piano, the horn players, they’ve all got roles. You’ve got a tune so you’ve got a score that everybody’s checking in with and you have a certain aesthetic approach, whether you want it to be swinging or bluesy or real aggressive or more laid back.
So you have parameters, but within them everybody gets a chance to really have their voice heard and have an impact on the overall sound of the group.
Everyone gets a chance to have their voice heard. How do you inspire the pride, confidence, and creativity that enables people to bring a part of themselves to a goal?
You have to build trust because when people express themselves creatively they need to feel their contributions are meaningful to the group, and will be acknowledged. You have to create a safe space so people don’t feel they’re going to be judged or if they make a mistake that’s going to be held against them. So often we’re so quick to judge and once you judge, the opportunity for learning ends. That can be really devastating to feeling creative, and prevents the ability to be honest, passionate and giving.
My goal is always to keep things as open as possible for as long as possible so all possibilities can be explored before we settle on something.
An excellent model for leaders and managers.
Yes. There are so many people in the work environment who feel untapped, unappreciated. You never have that in jazz. There is none of this obscuring of talents. At some point everyone’s gonna get a solo!
As a coach, I help professionals understand how they are truly exceptional. We need to know our strengths to feel confident and project confidence. How do you evoke that with your students and with your band members?
I’ve been fortunate to have a lot of experience with a broad jazz repertoire. I make sure to play all different kinds of songs and see which musicians really resonate with which styles. Sometimes you can just see in a personality “Oh, I bet you that person is going to be good with a plunger mute, a Bubber Miler kind of Duke Ellington thing” or “This person has more of a Miles Davis kind of vibe so let’s try something and see if it suits him”.
It’s important to kind of try a lot of different styles, really notice, and listen to see who responds to what. Duke Ellington, my greatest hero, said, “I am the world’s greatest listener.” And that is such a key. To be a great leader is to be a great listener.
Eli, they say when you give, you receive. You give generously of your time and talent to give others opportunities to hear, learn and play jazz. How has this spirit of giving enhanced your artistic career and your life?
Well, there’s a quote: “When you teach you learn twice.” It’s such an incredible experience to be a teacher and to be in a community of learners. I started the Jazz Drama Program doing original jazz musicals for some of the toughest audiences like 500 seventh graders.
Eli Yamin, Middle School Jazz Academy
But feeling the response, seeing the joy on the kids’ faces, and seeing how much more self confidence comes out are incredible gifts to get back. These are the kinds of gifts teachers and leaders experience all around the world.
So on intellectual, personal and artistic levels you have found that empowering others is learning twice indeed. Well, Eli today we’ve learned a little about jazz and a lot about leading. Thank you!
Stefanie Smith leads Stratex (www.stratexcoaching.com), an executive consulting and coaching firm based in Manhattan, providing customized group workshops and private coaching programs to guide executives and their teams to reach the next performance level. Her blog: www.coachstef.com provides resources and advice for professional advancement. Her ebook: The Power of Professional Presence: Get Their Attention and Keep It! is available on Amazon.com, iTunes and BN.com.
To see and hear more about Eli Yamin: www.EliYamin.com