In case you’ve been in suspended animation recently, Lee Konitz, Brad Mehldau, Paul Motian and Charlie Haden are playing at New York’s Birdland this week. It’s like seeing the Fantastic Four come to life, and I do mean that in a good way. I saw Konitz at Iridium a few years ago with Matt Wilson, Bill Frisell and Gary Peacock. That appearance is among my top 5 concert experiences, closely followed by a  Konitz master class at the New England Conservatory.  

Yeah, yeah, I know Konitz repeats a lot of the same tunes… (see the oddly snarky New York Times review by Ben Ratliff)…

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/10/arts/music/10birdland.html

I don’t care. I’d happily listen to this crew play Solar all night. Think of it as listening to an extremely deep lecture at Princeton’s Institute for Advanced Study. If you are anywhere near New York… just go.

By Don Heckman

Los Angeles

- Dec. 8. (Tues.)  Dominick Farinacci.  Trumpeter Farinacci’s debut U.S. CD, Lovers, Tales and Dances, announced the arrival of an impressive new young jazz artist.  He makes one of his rare Southland appearances for one night only.  Vibrato Grill Jazz…etc.    (310) 474-9400.

- Dec. 8. (Tues.) Charles Lloyd, Joshua Redman, Exene Cervenka, Michael McClure, Kurt Elling, others.  A compelling line-up of artists have been gathered together for one of the most intriguing evenings in the Philharmonic’s  West Coast, Left Coast series: A Night of the Beats. Disney Hall.

- Dec. 9. (Wed.)  The Irish Tenors. Holiday Show.  What better way to celebrate the holiday season than with the soaring voices of the three Irish tenors singing holiday songs.    The Cerritos Center.   (562) 916-8501.

Bebel Gilberto

- Dsec. 9. (Wed.)  Bebel Gilberto with DJ Lara Gerin.  The daughter of  Joao Gilberto — who virtually invented the sound and the rhythm of bossa nova — and singer Miucha,  Bebel Gilberto has carved out an impressive career in her own right, bringing her contemporary, Brazilian-tinted  vision to international pop music.   Music Box @ the Fonda. (323) 464-0808.

- Dec. 9. (Wed.)  Flexible Reality.  The instrumentation alone makes this a fascinating musical ensemble.  The players — Richard Todd, French Horn, Charlie Bisharat,  violin, Frank Marocco, accordion, Michael Valerio and Abraham Laboriel, basses and Alex Acuna, drums – make it even better.  Red Carpet Jazz Serries.  Upstairs at Vitellos. (818) 769-0905.

- Dec. 9 – 13. (Wed. – Sun.)  Roy Hargrove Quintet.  Versatile trumpter Hargrove, who’s been leading a big band lately, shows up this time with his briskly swinging quintet.   Catalina’s. Catalina Bar & Grill (323) 466-2210.

- Dec. 10. (Thurs.)  Alan Pasqua, Peter Erskine, Darek Oles, Bob Mintzer.  The Pasqua/Erskine trio with the late Dave Carpenter was one of the Southland’s finest jazz ensembles.  With the excellent bassist Oles now in the group, the tradition of world class jazz continues, this time with the sturdy tenor saxophone of Bob Mintzer.  Red Carpet Jazz Series Upstairs at Vitellos. (818) 769-0905.

- Dec. 11. (Fri.)  Scotty Barnhart.  Trumpeter /educator Barnhart, a veteran of the Count Basie band, takes a break from his academic chores to jam with  with John Heard, bass, Roy McCurdy, drums, Andy Langham, piano.  Charlie O’s.  (818) 989-3110.

Molly Ringwald

Dec. 11. (Fri.)  Molly Ringwald and Plus 4. Yes, it’s the same Molly Ringwald who you remember from Pretty in Pink and Secret Life of the American Teenager.  And, yes, she can sing, too, having started from an early age with her jazz pianist father, Bob Ringwald.  Spazio.  (818) 728-8400

- Dec. 11 & 12. (Sat. & Sun.)  C.A.B. World class fusion from the guys who do it best, with Frank Gambale, guitar, Otmaro Ruiz, keyboards, Bunny Brunel, bass, Tom Brechtlein, drums.  The Baked Potato. (818) 980-1615.

- Dec. 12. (Sat.)  Bruce Forman Quartet.  Guitarist Forman brings strikingly new perspectives to the contemporary art of jazz guitar.  He plays with  Joe Bagg, organ, Pat Senatore, bass, drums tbd.  Vibrato Grill Jazz…etc.   (310) 474-9400.

- Dec. 12. (Sat.)  Jazz Compass.  Holiday Concert & Jazz Party from a collective of L.A.’s A-list players.  Featuring Larry Koonse, Clay Jenkins, Tom Warrington, Joe La Barbera, Bill Cunliffe.  Upstairs at Vitellos.  (818) 769-0905.

- Dec. 12. (Sat.)  Los Angeles Master Chorale.  Messiah Sing-along.   The annual must-do event for everyone who ever sang in a choir: the chance to join voices sith the extraordinary artists of the Master Chorale.  2 p.m.  Disney Hall. http://www.laphil.com

- Dec. 12 & 13. (Sat. & Sun.)  “Colors of Christmas” One of the annual holiday season’s most pleasant musical interludes, with Peabo Bryson, Sheena Easton, Jennifer Holiday and Maxi Priest.  The Cerritos Center.  (562) 916-8501.

Bill Holman

- Dec. 13. (Sun.) Marathon Jazz Party.  It’s an event to benefit the relocation of the L.A. Jazz Institute.  Three rooms of continuous music, from 11 a.m. to 11 p.m., with dozens of musicians — including the big bands of Bill Holman, Steve  Huffsteter, Med Flory, Kim Richmond and others — as well as raffles, auctions, door prizes, CD sales, etc.    Los Angeles Jazz Institute. LAX Marriott. (562) 985.7065.

- Dec. 13. (Sun.)  Holiday Jazz Vespers Service.  Eric Kertes and Friends, with Aaron Hernandez’s hip hop commentary on today’s world.  Free will offering.  Bring a can, box or bag of food for donation to Food Pantry LAX to help those in need.  Welcoming people of all faiths, and those with no faith.  Episcopal Church of the Holy Nativity. (310) 670.4777

San Francisco

- Dec. 8 & 9. (Tues. & Wed.)  Dan Hicks & the Hot Licks.  With special guest Bob Dorough.  “Holidaze in Hicksville”  Featuring Hicks’ holiday classics “My Main Man Santa,” “A Yule That’s Cool” and “Gonna Sit Right Down and Write Myself a Christmas Card.”  As well as Dorough’s “Blue Xmas” (written with Miles Davis.  (510) 238-9200.

- Dec. 10 – 13. (Thurs. – Sun.) Guitarist Mike Stern fronts a band of world class players, as adept with tradition as they are with fusion: trumpeter Randy Brecker, drummer Dave Weckl and bassist Tom Kennedy.  Yoshi’s Oakland. (510) 238-9200.

Ahmad Jamal

- Dec. 10 – 13. (Thurs. – Sun.)  Ahmad Jamal.  A unique jazz artist, pianist Jamal influenced Miles Davis’ view of phrasing, established himself as an iconic figure, and is still out there doing his thing.  Don’t miss the chance to hear and see him in action.  Yoshi’s San Francisco.   (415) 655-5600.

Chicago

-Dec. 10 (Thurs.)  The Chicago Jazz Ensemble and Jon Faddis continue the 11^th annual American Jazz Heritage Series with a program honoring the music of John Coltrane, Ornette Coleman and Miles Davis.  Special guests David Sanchez and Steve Wilson.  The Harris Theatre.  The Chicago Jazz Ensemble.  (312) 369-6270.

New York

- Dec. 8 – 12. (Tues. – Sat.)  Lee Konitz, Charlie Haden, Paul Motian, Brad Mehldau. Several generations of great jazz improvisers in an adventurous search for common musical ground.  Birdland.   (212) 581-3080.

- Dec. 8 – 13. (Tues. – Sun.)  Eddie Palmieri y La Perfecta.  A 73^rd birthday celebration for the master keyboardist of Latin Jazz,  leading his irrepressible La Perfecta.  The Blue Note. (212) 475-8592.

- Dec. 8 – 13. (Tues. – Sun.)  Dave Douglas Quintet.  Trumpeter and musical explorer Douglas works with ensemble equally capable of journeying into new territory.  With Uri Caine, piano, Donny McCaslin, sax, James Genus, bass, Clarence Penn, drums.  Village Vanguard.   (212) 255-4037.

Dec. 10 – 12.  (Thurs. – Sat.)  Red Hot Holiday Stomp.  A New Orleans perspective on some classic holiday favorites.  With Wycliffe Gordon, Victor Goines, Don Vappie, Herlin Riley.  Rose Theatre at Jazz at Lincoln Center.  (212) 258-9800.

Kim Burrell

- Dec. 10 – 13. (Thurs. – Sun.)  Tango Meets Jazz Festival.  The marriage of a pair of musical genres with a surprising number of common elements.  With pianist Pablo Ziegler and saxophonists Miguel Zenon (12/10 and 12/11) and  David Sanchez ((12/12 and 12/13).  The Jazz Standard. (212) 447-7733.

Dec. 11 – 12.  (Fri. & Sat.)  Kim Burrell, The divine diva of gospel brings the spirit of Christmas alive with her soulful, spiritual stylings.  The Allen Room at Jazz at Lincoln Center. (212) 258-9800.

As “Portrait In Jazz” is also the name of this blog, it obviously has to be the first jazz album to be reviewed here.

Portrait In Jazz (recorded december 28, 1959 in New York City) was Evans’ first album with his legendary trio, consisting of bassist Scott LaFaro, drummer Paul Motian and Bill Evans himself on piano. Although not as strong as the later recorded “Explorations” – according to my personal opinion -, it is still a wonderful piece of art, showcasing amazing interplay between the three musicians. Evans’ piano playing here is absolutely stunning (as usual), raising the bar for following jazz pianists with his versions of “Someday My Prince Will Come” or “Autumn Leaves”. An absolute must hear for any jazz lover!

It can be widely found in various music sharing blogs on the internet, for example here or here. Don’t forget to buy yourself a copy if you like it, it is well worth the buck!

Enjoy!

Dave Brubeck’s 1959 album Time Out is one of the landmark recordings in jazz history. For that reason alone, the 50^th anniversary of its release merits celebration. But, on a larger scale, Time Out represents a major development within American culture, one that was crucial to inducing the seismic shifts to occur in our country during the tumultuous 1960s that followed. While it is likely that such shifts would have occurred anyway, with or without Brubeck’s contributions, a strong case can be made that his group, and its most important work, helped accelerate progress on several fronts, advancing the cause of racial harmony while opening the door for later musical innovations.

It is further worth noting that Brubeck’s achievements represent, to a surprising degree, a triumph of conservative values: faith, family, hard work and self-reliance. His ideological compass has always remained pointed toward the California ranchlands of his youth—the kind of environment that was later famously embraced by President Reagan, who fully understood the symbolic value of his years of public brush-clearing and horse-riding. Reagan’s retreats to the ranch implied a desire to escape the Beltway’s rarefied air and reorient himself to the pioneer spirit which drove America’s development in its first century of existence. The simple beauty of such areas communicates an austere dignity that would surely impart perspective on the serious issues all Presidents must grapple with, and so it is make perfect sense that men as different in personality as George W. Bush, Richard Nixon and Teddy Roosevelt would embrace them.

For most of his early life—from childhood, through his years in the US Army and as a music student at Oberlin College—Brubeck existed firmly within the Tradition. Had he not caught the jazz bug early on, he might have ended up as a concert pianist working with symphony orchestras, or a composer of string quartets. He did eventually do a lot of work in these areas, but it was the worldwide acclaim earned as a jazzman that gave him the freedom to expand his musical horizons. Indeed, if his legacy could be summed up in one word, despite all his formalistic trappings, it would be “freedom”.

This legacy of freedom is being celebrated by Columbia Records, which recently reissued Time Out in a special three-disc package, on occasion of the 50^th anniversary of the album’s original release. Suffice to say that, if you have never heard this music, then you owe yourself the pleasure of doing so; likewise, people for whom this music is old hat will still find value in its enhanced sound quality and the wealth of bonus material, including photos, performance footage and eight songs recorded live at the Newport Jazz Festival between 1961-64. The highlight is an interactive tutorial in which Brubeck, now 89 years old, talks viewers through the melodies as he plays them.

The point of Time Out was to break out of the creative restrictions imposed on the jazz musician by strict adherence to the steady 4/4 beat that had characterized jazz since it first emerged from turn-of-century New Orleans. For the first 30 years of recorded jazz, that beat was maintained by the bass drum, replicating its role in the standard marching band, whose cadences and instrumentation were the basis of jazz early bands. Drummers of the 1940s New York scene, led by Kenny Clarke and Max Roach, shifted the burden of time-keeping from bass drum to the ride cymbal, which opened up the sound and set the standard for what modern jazz would sound like. (The upright bass, adapted from symphonic orchestras, evolved to replace the tuba as a rhythm instrument early on, and typically reinforced the 4/4 beat; its time-keeping role expanded in modern jazz, as the drummers went further beyond the beat, leaving its reiteration to the bassist.) By the early 1950s, all instrumentalists had unprecedented creative freedom in jazz, and the race to find the next great innovation was as competitive as the Space Race.

The introduction of long-playing (LP) records in 1948 quadrupled the amount of time available on an individual record, opened up song structures and brought a vaster range of material to the marketplace. Traditional American musical forms—jazz, blues, gospel, folk—predominated; rock was growing commercially, but did not become a creative force to rival the others until 1964.

The singer Ian Svenonius noted years back that the largest jazz groups are only a quarter the size of symphony orchestras, which are roughly 100 people; Swing Era bands could be half that size, while modern jazz groups of the ‘40s and beyond are usually between three and six people. Today, many artists do huge business as solo acts. Prince, for example, played all 27 instruments on his debut album and for years only used his bands for performances. Computers allow many pop singers and rappers to make albums without using any actual instruments at all.

Traditional European and early American music is labeled with the catch-all term of “classical” largely because of our nation’s record stores. It doesn’t seem to rankle so badly as certain artists who reject the idea of “jazz” as an organizational concept, maybe because the LP ensured that such music would remain in circulation as the country went more toward smaller (and logistically cheaper) groups. Most Americans today would know nothing of classical music if not for LPs and their CD reissues, particularly of the versions recorded in the 1950s and ‘60s. Likewise, although one can see top-notch jazz music anywhere in the world most nights, the closest that most jazz fans can usually get to experiencing serious big-band stuff is CD, or the occasional festival.

Brubeck, who studied with Darius Milhaud at Oberlin, did the industry a favor by wearing his classical affinities on his cuff-linked sleeve. His grounding in that tradition was the impetus to bust out of the 4/4. Max Roach had recorded an entire album, Jazz In ¾ Time, in 1957, and several songs on Time Out are rooted in ¾, as well as the standard 4/4. “Three to Get Ready” is in 3/4 and 4/4. “Kathy’s Waltz” starts in 4/4, then goes into 3/8, while “Blue Rondo ala Turk” starts in 9/8, with Desmond’s solo in 4/4.

Other tracks switch-up the rhythms more explicitly. “Everybody’s Jumpin’” and “Pick Up Sticks” are in 6/4. “Take Five” stays in 5/4 over its five-plus minutes, with Morello’s drum solo the definitive explication of that beat. “Strange Meadowlark” opens with a Brubeck solo running over two minutes with no set time whatsoever—a nod, perhaps, to the nascent free-jazz scene, or to Lennie Tristano, whose solo recordings “Spontaneous Combustion”, “Requiem” and “Turkish Mambo” anticipated much of this.

Take Five has no shortage of highlights, staring with “Take Five”, which is simply one of the greatest songs ever recorded. A masterpiece of dramatic tension, it was an instant classic when released as a single, becoming the first million-seller in jazz history; the album itself would soon follow. To this day, media references “Take Five” to invoke feelings of class and sophistication; it was famously used to launch Infiniti automobiles in America, with cool narration by British actor Jonathan Pryce.

The Dave Brubeck Quartet functioned as a unified whole, working together 16 years, yet each member has distinguished himself as a master of his own instrument. Bassist Eugene Wright is easily overlooked, as he played with little flash and almost no solos, but a close listen reveals how crucial his work was. He kept the group’s forward-reaching sound rooted in the fundamentals, which he learned from the best in hot spots like Kansas City and his native Chicago. Together, Wright and drummer Joe Morello comprised one of the all-time greatest rhythmic tandems, easily ranking up there with such towering twins as Walter Page and Jo Jones (Count Basie); Jimmy Blanton and Sonny Greer (Duke Ellington); Paul Chambers and Philly Joe Jones (Miles) Jimmy Garrison and Elvin Jones (Coltrane); Charlie Haden and Billy Higgins (Coleman); Mingus and Dannie Richmond; Scott Lafaro and Paul Motian (Bill Evans).

Naturally, a record built around rhythmic complexity puts special pressure on the drummer, and Morello attained legend status with his work on Time Out. His brush-work on “Everybody’s Jumpin’” anchors a brilliant piece that holds up just fine against its adjacents. “Take Five” is one of the rare examples of a major pop hit built around a drum solo; the other notable case would be “Sing Sing Sing”, an epochal Swing Era anthem by Benny Goodman (and a star-making vehicle for drummer Gene Krupa), recorded in 1937. Like Desmond’s earlier on the same track, musicians and students know their solos better than some know their best friends.

As for the leader himself, Brubeck’s playing is spare but efficient, each note pressed for maximum resonance. His solo on “Kathy’s Waltz” is strictly old-school, with hints of Ragtime, while those on “Three to Get Ready” and “Everybody’s Jumpin’” sound downright modernistic, with overt references to future label-mate Monk.

Ultimately, the real star of the album is alto saxophonist Paul Desmond (1924-1977), a fellow Californian whose musical partnership with Brubeck lasted over 30 years. His sound, which typically enters after a few bars’ introduction by Brubeck, dominates the quartet’s output. Desmond is often dismissed by purists for a coolness of tone that can sometimes border on the antiseptic, but the quiet intensity of his playing can be lost on ears trained to listen for strain, sweat and other signifiers of serious effect. If Desmond’s style sounds effortless, it is only because of rigorous practice. After his death, the author of “Take Five” left his split of royalties to the American Red Cross, which receives annual royalties in the low six figures.

1959 was a year of explosive growth in jazz, and Time Out was just one of at least three major events that year. Columbia also issued Miles Davis’ seminal Kind of Blue, which marked the emergence of a new approach to harmony based on modal scales; this gave the soloist—Davis himself, most notably, as well as collaborator Bill Evans—access to unprecedented emotional range, a major factor in the current perception of jazz as a “romantic” music. Due to the constant reissues over the decades, the prevalence of bootlegging and the pervasiveness of digital downloading, it may be impossible to determine which of these is, in fact, the most successful jazz album of all time; yet both helped shift the business model firmly toward the LP, which had only been around for about a decade at that point.

John Coltrane, who spent five years in Davis’ group, played on Kind of Blue, but his sideman work was soon eclipsed by the Atlantic Records release Giant Steps. After years of rigorous experimentation, 1959 saw the emergence of Coltrane’s mature sound, and he would go on to be, arguably, the last true giant of jazz music, a figure whose very name still inspires devotion that borders on the religious, over 40 years after his death. On the surface, it would be impossible to find two more different men, in terms of tone, technique and temperament, than Coltrane and Paul Desmond—but at the intersection of their styles, as heard on these three albums, one hears the future.

1959 also included major works by Ornette Coleman, who along with Coltrane helped bring Free Jazz to fruition, and Charles Mingus, who recorded three brilliant albums for Atlantic that year. Max Roach had already been first to record pianoless groups, and among the first to openly lobby for civil rights through his music; and Thelonious Monk, whose rhythmic and harmonic innovations made him, in essence, the father of modern jazz. The fact that all these men, with volatile personalities and deep-set musical tastes, all gave respect to Brubeck speaks to his chops and credibility.

Brubeck is rightfully lionized by the left for his role in helping to shape a world defined by JFK’s “New Frontier” and Lyndon Johnson’s “Great Society”. In generational terms, the Baby Boomers’ collective self-definition is rooted in the 1960s, for better and for worse, and jazz artists like Brubeck, Coltrane and Davis are thus regarded almost as highly as the rock bands that would ultimately dominate the American music scene.

 The primary beneficiary of the commercial growth of jazz music was the African-American community, which got its first taste of the free market and was soon able to alter the widespread perceptions of the white majority, and ultimately obliterate many vestiges of racial prejudice in this country. Jazz was the wedge that forced integration; as more and more of the top draws—Goodman, Krupa, Artie Shaw—integrated, and others insisted on playing for integrated audiences, bigotry took a backseat to box-office. By the time of Time Out, integrated bands weren’t exactly commonplace in the US, but they were hardly unusual. Norman Granz’ “Jazz At the Philharmonic”, for example, toured the country with all-stars of all races.

The other major beneficiary of jazz music’s global presence was the United States government, which quickly recognized the value of a uniquely American cultural export. Brubeck, who served briefly under Patton in the Army, would become a front-line soldier in a war of ideas, spreading his vision of musical and personal freedom around the world, often directly in collaboration with the State Department.

The arrival of Louis Armstrong in Europe in 1927 basically introduced jazz to the world; a handful of devoted critics and musicians had imported stacks of jazz records from New York for distribution in London and Paris. By the time Duke Ellington’s band made the same trip, in 1932, jazz had become its own cottage industry, with magazine and radio shows catering to the market, as well as the first generation of European jazz musicians. For the first time, America had a cultural product to compete with Europe, and in this realm we remained well ahead.

The assault on jazz by totalitarian regimes—first the Nazis, then the Soviet Union—only enhanced its appeal to youth across Europe, many of whom risked death to continue playing such music. By this point, the old world had produced its own masters like guitarist Django Reinhardt, while American musicians like Benny Carter and Sidney Bechet had emigrated (not unlike the Japanese who brought judo to the west). World War II brought hundreds of current and future jazzmen into Europe and Asia, either as combat troops or in some musical capacity. The music of the war years deserves its own category in the lineage, but by decade’s end American jazz had become the new music of choice not only throughout Europe, but also in Japan.

Like rock and rap, which came along later, jazz began as an indigenous form of expression within the minority community, then “crossed-over” to become the primary vehicle of white rebellion—a means of drawing cultural lines between generations. Jazz was viciously attacked by the mainstream in the 1920s and ‘30s; such criticisms read now as time-capsule pieces of hyperbolic calumny. By the 1950s, the US State Department saw fit to give jazz its ultimate stamp of legitimacy by backing some leading musicians on international tours conceived as propaganda for post-war America. It was a textbook example of how “soft power” worked in the nascent Cold War.

Penny Von Eschen’s excellent 2002 book Satchmo Blows Up the World: Jazz Ambassadors Play the Cold War (Harvard University Press) offers a definitive look at the program, organized in 1955 by Secretary of State John Foster Dulles and US Rep Adam Clayton Powell (D-NY), whose district encompassed the epicenter of modern jazz. Dizzy Gillespie’s second great big band took the first trip in March 1956, covering parts of Europe, Asia and the Middle East. According to the program’s website: “In 1956, 1960 and 1961, Louis Armstrong [toured] Ghana (then the British Gold Coast), Congo, Senegal, Mali, Sierra Leone, Liberia, Sudan, and the United Arab Republic. In 1963, 1970 and 1972, Duke Ellington toured the Soviet Union, Southeast Asia, and Africa.”

These musicians and others—including Carter, Coleman, Davis, Goodman, Mingus, Charlie Byrd, Lionel Hampton, Woody Herman, Earl Hines, Quincy Jones, Roland Kirk, Gerry Mulligan, Anita O’Day, Oscar Peterson, Clark Terry, Sarah Vaughn and Randy Weston—traveled to the far corners of the musical world before the program ended in 1978. Many such areas were suspicious of western interests, and sometimes openly hostile. George Wein, impresario of the Newport Jazz Festival, was enlisted for logistical support. Brubeck was, of course, a major attraction.

In 1958, his quartet toured Sweden, Turkey, Ceylon, India, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iran and Iraq. Brubeck’s gigs in Poland that year, repeated in 1970, are considered key moments in the spreading of jazz into the Soviet Bloc. Cadres devoted to “improvised music” began sprouting in Czechoslovakia, Germany, Poland and Hungary soon after, while at least one major group (the Ganelin Trio) made great jazz in Russia itself. He and Armstrong later collaborated on The Real Ambassadors, a musical and recording based on their experiences, in 1961-62.

The musicians and artists in Eastern Europe (with support from sympathetic parties in the west) drove the engine of progress away from Communism and became totems in the way Charlie Parker was for the Beatniks, or Coltrane was for the Black Power movement. Their records were being smuggled into the West long before the Iron Curtain finally fell, at which point those scenes exploded into the creative powerhouses they are today. When Brubeck and other older jazzmen appear in Europe today, they are held to a similar status as their own native masters.

Japan got its introduction to jazz from occupying American soldiers, and has never lost its taste. As domestic sales of jazz records slumped hard in the 1970s and early ‘80s, the Japanese (typically) provided a vital commercial lifeline, helping to keep it vital long enough for the resurgence driven by CD technology. CDs, of course, were invented by the Japanese, while companies like JVC, Polygram and especially Sony bought up all the major jazz catalogs (Verve, Mercury, Blue Note/Capitol, Columbia) to be reissued in their new format. Every American who values their native culture owes a debt of thanks to those Japanese who rescued all that music from likely extinction.

Leading the way among the reissues that began flooding the market, well past the point of cultural saturation, were Columbia’s valedictorians from the class on ’59, Kind of Blue and Time Out, each of which has been re-released in increasingly completist form at least a half-dozen times (including box sets), while their lead singles, “So What” and “Take Five” have become standards. Both retain almost all of its original freshness and potency, despite three generations of innovation that followed its release. In the case of Time Out, time itself has only burnished the luster of an album dismissed by many top critics upon its release; very few would bother to raise any objection now.

sdh666@hotmail.com

October 9, 2009

Sorry, Louie, but it must be asked; if it ain’t got that swing, is it still jazz? Yes, indeed it is. And it does mean a thing.

Think of jazz, the complete body of history and knowledge, as a set of quanta; styles, musicians, concerts, albums and writings, then find a way to plot those quanta in a chart. For example, plot an X-axis of the evolution of jazz styles through time, and then place the number of albums issued in each style on the Y-axis, and you’ll get a distribution something like this:

It’s rough, it’s generalized, but it illustrates the point I want to make, which is that jazz styles are distributed along a bell curve, with the styles that have had the longest history of propagation enjoying the greatest general success and thereby moving the bulk of the curve in one direction or another. This is an important way to look at jazz, because it’s a unique musical concept; it’s a social music which seeks a popular and (originally) dance-based audience, it’s a music which develops knowledge about what it can possibly do and keeps expanding and moving that forward through time, and it is a music the relies on improvisation for its existence and continued development. There are other musics around the world that have these characteristics, but no other which combines all three.

There’s a feedback loop built into that curve as well. Styles that musicians find the most attractive and fruitful will be played and produced more commonly (jazz is unpopular enough that musicians are still relatively unfettered to make music in the style they desire). Hard-Bop, arguably, is the most frequently produced style in jazz since it’s the most appealing to other musicians, and it certainly is the lingua franca, idiomatically, of the music since the mid-1950s. But jazz-rock and free styles have been hanging in there gamely over the last forty years, and enough musicians respond with their own variations of those styles to move the distribution along the curve forward through time. Of course, if a massive revival of Dixieland and Traditional styles happened and lasted for a century, the distribution would be moved back towards the left. It’s the styles at the edges that make the mainstream body of the music, and the mainstream idea of what that music is, move through tastes and concepts.

So, if it doesn’t swing, is it still jazz? Yes, indeed it is, it’s jazz to the right on the chart. But if it doesn’t swing, what elements does it have which identify it as jazz? This is an important and arguable question, and for the sake of this particular essay I define jazz in two inseparable ways; as a music with particular qualities and as a cultural concept. Jazz is a music which expresses an idea of rhythmic freedom within the limits of the rhythmic quality it presents, and which, through improvisation, allows for the possible expression of anything. Culturally, jazz is music created by racial and ethnic minorities as a way to place a sincere claim on American ideals and nationality and through which generations of new ethnic and racial minorities have assimilated into American culture and added their own voices to it (that is, until this past generation or so, which has used Hip-Hop as such a vehicle, an interesting story of Modernism vis-a-vis Post-Modernism which will need to be saved for the future).

Culturally, this story is pretty clear. Jazz began as a mixture of African-American work and worship songs, Spanish and French popular and dance music, and white marches, and was developed as an enduring music mainly by Blacks, Italians and Jews through the first half of the twentieth century. Musically, this definition requires refinement. “Swing” was created in jazz, but jazz itself didn’t swing for a decade at least. The earliest recordings of the music, from the Original Dixieland Jazz Band to King Oliver and even to Bix Beiderbecke, Jelly Roll Morton and Fletcher Henderson have tremendous rhythmic drive and life, and are certainly not stiff, but the beat is not yet what we think of as a jazz beat, that’s not there yet. What is there is the clear desire to lay down a tempo and a beat and then see how far it could be pushed and pulled away from the center while sill being coherent. It was a process of experimentation which arrived at “Swing,” like science develops theories from evidence. But once swing as a rhythm appeared, it was subject to the further experimentation of Be-Bop, which itself doesn’t swing in the classic sense (it’s almost too fast to swing) but still seeks rhythmic freedom (and led inevitably to free jazz). Hard-Bop swings fiercely, it reclaims that idea, but by mixing in flavors of funk and R&B it points the way towards jazz-rock, which doesn’t swing either.

This history of jazz shows that the rhythmic element of swing is secondary to the articulation of sounds, which is what really makes jazz sound like jazz. It’s the way a player attacks and shapes notes, independently and in relation to the other notes in a melodic phrase, improvised solo, and even walking bass line. While every player has a personal approach to articulation (compare the way Coltrane and Sonny Rollins begin the production of each note on ‘Tenor Madness’ for a good contrast), there is a combination of elements that makes a certain way of playing music into jazz; a vocalized approach to making notes, meaning a variation in the dynamics, inflection and shape of the beginning of each one; a rhythmic articulation that goes hand in hand with the vocalized one in that a line or set of chords has a rhythmic emphasis that the articulation conveys and reinforces; and a consistent placement against the prevailing beat, whether that may be playing in tempo slightly ahead of the beat, like Dizzy Gillespie, or doing the same well behind the beat, a la Dexter Gordon. This is a way to make music that is absolutely jazz even as it’s played over a straight eighth note beat – Dave Holland’s contemporary Quintet is strictly jazz over mainly rock and funk grooves – and separates the vocalized, jazz articulation of John Scofield from the more uniform attack and metronomic precision of Al DiMeola, who is playing rock guitar, not jazz, on those Return to Forever records.

Just as swing is actually not an essential feature of jazz, the same is (counterintuitively) true for improvisation; not all jazz is improvised. This is heard across the decades, whether it’s the ODJB or Stan Kenton or Mingus, but many of the non-improvised records were developed through improvising parts before the music was felt ready, and all the music retains the possibility of improvisation as an essential part of its aesthetic. It’s the difference between a rock group improvising riffs and putting together a song, then recreating that finished result again and again, and a jazz group doing the same and then building more improvisation in repeated live performances.

The fundamental idea is that jazz advances. Like a living person, it explores, learns, masters and grows. What is possible now is so because previous generations of musicians accumulated a body of knowledge which supports each new generation. A handful of jazz releases, most new (with one new to me), which swing hardly at all, demonstrate a broad and exciting range of possibilities and are all definitely jazz.

Paul Motian has been one of the great and most unique drummers in jazz for many decades. As he nears 80 years of age he continues to produce records which explore what is possible in the music and what is possible for himself as a musician. His new release on the Winter & Winter label is his fifth CD exploring “standard” American songs, his On Broadway series. The first three in the series were issued on JMT records from the late 1980s to early mid 1990s (now reissued on Winter & Winter) and featured a band based around the drummer’s trio with saxophonist Joe Lovano and guitarist Bill Frissell, playing sympathetic, straight-forward readings of songs from Gershwin, Cole Porter and other composers who wrote for the stage. The records swing, but swing is a relative term for Motian, who has developed a singular way of keeping time; he pushes the beat forward with a joyful aggression, and even though he often eschews the back-beat with what would seems a stiff emphasis on the first and third beats of a four beat measure, he does so with such a loose feel that it comes to sound both right and innovative. This new release, and the previous volume, continue to approach the same world of songs but in a very different manner. The core of the group is paired down to Motian and pianist Masabumi Kikuchi, though even he rotates in and out of tunes, along with various horn players and, on Volume 4, the singer Rebecca Martin.

Motian’s playing is also very different on these records, which tend towards slower, even almost still, tempos, with the band playing around a pulse that seems to be produced through moment-to-moment mutual agreement. The drums no longer keep time for the ensemble, instead they color the songs, comment on the solos and provide a bed of sound which stretches the canvas on which the instruments paint. Motian tosses brief rhythmic phrases off to bassist Thomas Morgan, and responds to Kikuchi with witty, quizzical gestures that have the sound and shape of scat-singing. It’s quite remarkable. The pianist is an exceptionally sensitive partner with a beautiful, limpid touch. He is comfortable both in the abstractions of Motian’s ‘Morrock’ and clearly outlining the harmony and structure of ‘Something I Dreamed Last Night.’ His rendition of ‘Midnight Sun,’ starting in dark pedal tones and moving via silent-movie piano type tremolos into the brightness of the major key portion of the melody, with Motian shuffling and Morgan plucking plangently, is a primer in how jazz doesn’t have to swing, or even have a tempo, and be absolutely extraordinary jazz. There are excellent contributions from saxophonists Loren Stillman and Michael Attias, with the latter’s mellifluous baritone especially notable. The horns offer a warm dialogue on the material, and the whole is a record that is quiet, but not reticent, free but judged with understated taste, and one of the most focussed and lovely jazz CDs of recent years.

There is a more familiar sense of time-keeping, but still no old-fashioned swing, on un monton de notas from Argentine pianist and composer Emilio Teubal, a recording with a sense of modern jazz which stands out from the crowd. Teubal, a recipient of a Meet The Composer fellowship, uses simple elements to create ensemble compositions that are more complex and involving than the standard legacy of Hard-Bop. He favors lyrical, lilting lines over a pulsating, sometimes heavy groove – bassist Moto Kukushima solely plays the electric bass – and there are rhythmic ideas and melodies from café music, New Tango and what seems to be folk music folded in seamlessly, which give the music a satisfying international quality, an Argentine returning jazz to America with new ideas. The title track is a multi-varied composition that sounds like a tour of the past and present of Argentine culture, at times rollicking, naive, rocking and mysteriously mournful. There is featured solo from cellist Greg Heffernan who plays with great clarity, strength and rhythmic force. The basic band is a quintet, with Franco Pinna on drums and saxophonist Xavier Perez and Felipe Salles, who are fine players, although Salles is following Chris Potter a little closely on this CD (Teubal features the two horns together on most of the compositions, but the liner notes don’t identify who can be heard in which channel). There is some deference to the standard, mainstream conception of jazz on ‘El amanecido,’ which is the only weak part of an otherwise completely enjoyable and satisfying record – Teubal’s own art and style are strong enough that he needn’t prove that he can fit into a mainstream conception. The opening track, ‘Ping Pong,’ does a lot with repetition over a solid ostinato, while ‘Before the outerspace’ wrings great power out of taking a long line and doubling it’s tempo, going from bluesy and funky to carnivalesque, and ‘Baguala’ is a sonorous ballad. Teubal clearly has a fulfilling idea of what he wants to do, it’s worth doing and he does it so well that he sounds like no one else. This is a CD worth seeking out, and a musician worth watching,

The same is true for Rob Mosher, whose The Tortoise with his large ensemble Storytime is not new but is new to me. Like Darcy James Argue, this is another formidably talented, fascinating Canadian jazz composer. What makes them similar is the quality of their ideas and execution, but they are refreshingly different in the approach to and goals for writing for a large jazz ensemble. His dectet mixes french horn and the leader’s double-reeds with standard jazz instrumentation, and his use of the darker range of the woodwinds, horn and flugelhorn gives the ensemble a rich, mellow quality. Mosher is writing complete pieces for the ensemble, and his voice is an absorbing blend of jazz sensibility, contrapuntal inner voices and a lyrical sonorousness from early twentieth century French music (in the liner notes, Mosher name-checks Debussy, Ravel, Bach, Gyorgy Ligeti and Wayne Shorter; I hear Milhaud in the way he brings lines together into chords, Charlie Haden’s Liberation Music Orchestra in the overall sound and Stan Kenton in the way solos emerge from the ensemble writing). His is an original voice, however, and the influences just give an idea of where he’s coming from. He offers witty, pithy takes on bossa nova and classic dance-band sounds on ‘The Sands of Maundune’ and ‘What Snowflakes Are Plotting,’ but that’s the closest he gets to the standard idea of jazz. This a serious jazz record though, and it wears its compositional methods lightly; it’s more sophisticated, more grooving and more pleasurable than the self-conscious third-stream experiments of the 1950s. The track ‘Sleepless Lullaby’ is an example of how the music works; it begins as a minor key lullaby, develops into contrapuntal chamber music, then a rich textured ensemble piece which channels the strengths of Milhaud’s “Creation du monde,” before transforming into a brief, powerful vocal chorus that has the effect of a protest song. That description may make the piece seem disjointed, but Mosher hangs it all on his melody while changing the setting and it all hangs together and is powerful. His music is attractive, with pithy and effective melodic material set against superb, imaginative, textured accompaniments which make what happens in each subsequent moment more interesting and more emotionally affecting. The centerpiece is the excellent ‘Twilight,’ with Nir Felder’s guitar sliding above and through rising woodwind textures in a dialogue that maintains forward momentum even as if seems to start, fail and start again. This is a strong, supple, beautiful and moving record from a talented composers and band-leader.

The final two records under review are related in that the leaders of each explore some similar directions and make up two-thirds of the group Fieldwork. Steve Lehman’s Travail, Transformation and Flow is a recent release, while Vijay Iyer’s Historicity comes out next month. Lehman and Iyer are on the vanguard of contemporary jazz, of what it is, where it’s going and what it could possibly become. There’s not a hint of swing in their music, but they each use rhythm ferociously. The saxophonist’s recording is his third on the Pi label, and the story they tell when put together through time is a sort of Hegelian dialectic in the development of a brilliant, searching musician. His Demian As Posthuman is a fascinating collection of truly edgy fragments, setting his keening playing against a variety of complex beats and pulses, themselves variously chopped-up, foreshortened and staggering. There is no concession to any kind of standard form; the short tracks state a focussed, severe idea and have done with it. There is very little development and no resolution. It’s intensely listenable. His following On Meaning adapts his ideas about time to a quintet, playing original material in more familiar forms and was one of the best releases of 2007. Like jazz through history, Lehman’s music shows the influence of pop music. But where before that meant that musicians took pop songs and transformed them through arrangement and improvisation into jazz standards, Lehman is learning from today’s electronically based pop music, especially the way software can produce beats and rhythms that are deliberately inconsistent, which start and stop the pulse, stagger and push forward at the same time. The difference in jazz is that there is a group of young drummers, especially the astonishing Tyshawn Sorey, who can play this type of music live, in the moment. Compositionally, Lehman is adapting ideas about form, structure and development from the exceptional music of Henry Threadgill. This means musical lines made in a tightly compressed range of notes, lines which turn back on themselves to repeat fragments before going on to repeat another group, and another. The emphasis is on rhythm, spare, stabbing harmonies, a bass pulse and improvisations that develop so seamlessly out of an instrument’s line that ideas of melody are secondary to the sheer excitement of the playing.

The new disc looks back a little and moves forward simultaneously. To this mainly horizontal process Lehman has added a harmonic idea from the cutting-edge of contemporary classical music, that of spectralism. Roughly, this is a method of using an analysis of the spectrum of pitches (essentially the overtone series), as a source for musical structures based on timbre. A struck note on a piano will generate a series of tones above that fundamental pitch, and those higher tones are an inherent part of the pitch’s frequency and also sound out of tune, as our ears have been conditioned by centuries of Western tuning which forces the placement of notes into predictable places within the octave. Applying spectral methods to instruments means fitting notes from the spectrum to the proper instrumental timbre, and produces a sound that is both tonal and surprising at the same time (this is a gross simplification, as the idea and technique are sophisticated and complex). Lehman orchestrates this by adding tenor sax, trombone and tuba to his quintet of alto, trumpet, vibes, bass and drums. The sound he gets has an exceptional affect; it’s transparent and full of wide open spaces with a powerfully low bottom which anchors the ear even as the stacked notes threaten to fly away from each other. Inside this open, vertical palette the music follows the approach from the previous record with stabbing, almost obsessive lines over pulsing, jittery beats and tempos. ‘Rudreshm’ alternates a short, intense line with equally short, intense solos, all frequently interrupted by a rhythmic, two-beat phrase by the ensemble. Lehman’s sound combines the beauty of Jackie MacLean with the neurotic energy of Charlie Parker, and there’s a case to be made that this is the contemporary equivalent of Be-Bop; it’s the first radically new experiment with harmony in jazz in decades, it has tremendous tension, energy and velocity, is exceptionally demanding in its virtuosity, is highly urban and is tremendously exciting. Once the ear acclimates to the method, the sound is quiet amazing, with tight voicings familiar from Hard-Bop, cleansing harmonies, hyper-funky rhythms and breathtaking solos from all; the centerpiece track “Alloy” sounds in part like a loving, imaginative and sophisticated updating of the entire legacy of the Jazz Messengers. Mark Shim especially shines on tenor, thinking and articulating at a pace and with a density of ideas which rivals the leaders brilliant musicianship. It’s impossible to predict what kind of influence this spectral approach will have on contemporary jazz, after all Kind Of Blue never sparked a broad modal movement, but like that classic record Travail, Transformation and Flow is a breakthrough of new thinking about the music and is still firmly jazz. It’s Kind of Blue for the twenty-first century.

Pianist Iyer has already produced, in collaboration with Hip-Hop artist Mike Ladd, a thrilling and important mix of the two genres with in what language?, a challenging masterpiece of music and politics. October sees the release of a new recording for him, this one in the classic piano trio format (with Stephen Crump on bass and drummer Marcus Gilmore). Iyer shares with Lehman an emphasis on contemporary ideas of rhythm in jazz. While he can play delicately and wistfully with the best, he generally favors a heavy left-hand ostinato coupled with a propulsive groove in the rhythm section. His series of records with saxophonist Rudresh Mahanthappa are updates on Keith Jarrett’s European quartet, with more rock and blues feel and in-your-face intensity and a similar use of powerful pedal tones as a foundation for some real wailing, like their massive cover of ‘Hey Joe,’ ‘Because of Guns’ on the excellent Blood Sutra. The new record is immediately recognizable as Iyer’s work, but has surprises as well.

The disc is stylistically expansive, it reveals new ideas in the pianist’s work and new details in his palette. He opens up the left hand more for wider-spaced chords and a greater variety of color, and he accompanies his right hand solos in a sparer, more antiphonal style. It is old-fashioned enough to feature a walking bass line, in the introduction to Leonard Bernstein’s ‘Somewhere,’ but there’s nothing old-fashioned about the results. The bass serves as an anchor for a completely out-of-time rendition of the melody, after which Iyer’s own piano bass line swamps that of Crump’s and the trio settles into an involving and quietly intense deconstruction and exploration of the tune. Iyer tests the song in many ways; he repeats fragments, subverts the melody, tries to break free and settles back into lushly re-harmonized cadences, which smoothly elide into a bass solo, then into a vivid sensation of the trio finding a groove in the moment and riding out the tune on top of it. While Iyer’s previous work has been extroverted up to the point of mildly, bracingly confrontational, the trio format lends itself to more introverted playing, more of a sense of private conversation than public rhetoric. Even the brash and propulsive cover of MIA’s ‘Galang’, with Iyer picking over a musical fragment, has the sensation of witnessing someone in a fascinating but inscrutable private act. Gilmore’s drumming is fabulous, his beat is so uplifting that he sounds like he’s raising up the whole group on his drums, giving the band a funky dance step. There are other covers as well, of Andrew Hill’s ‘Smokestack,’ Stevie Wonder’s ‘Big Brother,’ Ronnie Foster’s ‘Mystic Brew’ and ‘Dogon A.D.’ by Julius Hemphill. The use of such varied material is one of the things which gives the record such an expansive feel; Iyer has chosen music that means something to him in various ways and playing it means offering us his different ideas about these songs and musicians. And a musician with Iyer’s brains and soul is going to have interesting thoughts about each one, look at each tune in a different way, find something unique to explore in each one. Historicity has stunning playing and the electrifying quality of an artist who is both reaching inside himself and expanding his possibilities. It’s a record with power which will endure.

By Don Heckman

Los Angeles

- Aug. 25. (Tues.) Placido Domingo and Yo-Yo Ma and the L.A. Philharmonic. What a combination. Domingo conducts Tchaikovsky’s dramatic Symphony No. 5 and Ma plays Dvorak’s controversial, but compelling, Cello Concerto. Hollywood Bowl (323) 850- 2000.

- Aug. 25. (Tues.) Dana Bronson. Singer/pianst Bronson usually performs in cabaret and hotel venues. Here’s a chance for him to open up his repertoire in the Southland’s premiere jazz setting. Catalina Bar & Grill. (323) 466-2210

- Aug. 25. (Tues.) John Pisano’s Guitar Night continues to be one of the Southland’s most dependable jazz destinations. This week Pisano hosts guitarist John Chiodini, bassist John Hughart and drummer Enzo Tedesco, Spazio.

- Aug.. 25. (Tues.) The Sam Most Trio with organist Joe Bagg and drummer Mark Ferber. The veteran Most was one of the first jazz flutists, but he’s also an impressive exponent of the cool tenor saxophone style. Bar Melody. (310) 670-1994.

- Aug. 26. (Wed.) Dizzy Gillespie All-Star Big Band. Here it is — one of the Bowl’s major jazz highlights of the summer. In addition to the sizzling Gillespie band, the evening also includes the irrepressible James Moody, the irresistible Roberta Gambarini, the Roy Hargrove Big Band and Gordon Goodwin’s Big Phat Band. The Hollywood Bowl. (323) 850-2000

- Aug. 27. (Thurs) An Evening with Terence Blanchard. The trumpeter/composer discusses his new CD, “Choices,” his film composing and his educational work with Robert Santelli, the Grammy Museum’s Executive Director, before playing selections from “Choices” with his full band. The Grammy Museum. (213) 765-6800.

- Aug. 27. (Thurs.) Theo Saunders Sextet. Pianist Saunders has assembled a sterling ensemble to perform selections emphasizing his belief that a musician should “Play what you hear, not what you think you hear.” The group includes Zane Musa, alto and soprano saxophones, Chuck Manning, tenor and soprano saxophones, David Dahlsten, trombone, Jeff Littleton, bass and Tony Austin, drums. Vibrato. (310) 474-9400.

- Aug. 27. (Thurs.) Dewey Ernie-Ron Eschete 4-Tet. Ernie, a songwriter’s singer, has been placing all of his considerable story-telling skills at the service of American songs for decades. He’s in particularly supportive circumstances whenever he works with his long time associate, the versatile guitarist, Eschete. Steamers. (714) 871-8800

- Aug. 27 – 29. (Thurs. – Sat.) Pharoah Sanders Quartet. Sanders keeps the adventurousness of the 60s alive in a tenor saxophone style that nonetheless always expresses itself in utterly contemporary fashion. Catalina Bar & Grill. (323) 466-2210.

- August 28 – 29. (Fri. & Sat.) Liza Minnelli. The diva of divas makes her return to the Bowl after a recent induction into the venue’s Hall of Fame and the conclusion, in January, of her hit Broadway show. Expect the kind of entertainment fireworks that only Minnelli can trigger. The Hollywood Bowl. (323) 850-2000

- Aug. 28 & 29. (Fri. & Sat.) Sara Gazarek. The ever-adventurous Gazarek displays her boundary-less vocal skills in a pair of performances with the German group triosence and guitarist Vitally Zolotov. On Friday at Cafe Metropole. (213) 613-1537. On Sat. at Irvine Barclay Theatre. (949) 854-4646-

- Aug. 28 & 29. (Fri. & Sat.) The Jazz All-Stars: Patrice Rushen, piano, John B. Williams, bass, Ralph Penland, drums. The label might seem a little presumptuous, but not when it’s applied to players like Rushen, WIlliams and Penland. On Saturday night’s special guest, Billy Valentine joins the Stars on vocals. Spazio. (818) 728-8400

- Aug. 29. (Sat.) Ernie Andrews and Dori Caymmi. The Grammy Museum Jazz Bakery show. It’s accurately described as “Blues to Bossa” and no one can illuminate those categories better than Andrews and Caymmi. The performance is also another reminder that the Jazz Bakery is still alive and well, looking forward to opening in a brand new venue. The Grammy Museum. (213) 765-6800.

San Diego

- Aug. 28 & 29. (Fri. & Sat.) Strunz and Farah. They’ve been around since world music was more a generalization than a category, and the two-guitar duo continue to combine their Costa Rican (Strunz) and Iranian (Farah) roots into a mesmerizing two-guitar musical blend. Anthology. (619) 595-0300.

San Francisco

August 28 – 30. Outside Lands Music & Art Festival. There’s a ton of musical action for every taste in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park this weekend. Among the highlights: on Friday — Pearl Jam, Thievery Corporation, Tom Jones, Zap Mama; on Saturday — the Dave Matthews Band, Black Eyed Peas, The Mars Volta, Jason Mraz, Os Mutantes, Trombone Shorty; on Sunday — Tenacious D, M.I.M., Ween, Modest Mouse, Lucinda Williams, Robert Randolph. And many, many more. San Francisco Golden Gate Park Outside Lands Music & Art Festival.

New York

- Aug. 25. (Tues.) Sachal Vasandani, Billboard praised the young singer’s first CD as “a superb debut of distinctive originals and intelligent makeovers that teem with a fresh vitality.” His second Mack Avenue CD is due out in September. The Jazz Standard. (212) 576-2252

- Aug. 25 – 29. (Tues. – Sat.) Hank Jones Trio + Special Guests. The ninety-something Jones, still playing like a veteran youngster, demonstrates that he can trade riffs with anyone. He’ll be performing with Armand Hirsch (guitar 8/25-29), Terrell Stafford (trumpet, 8/25) Eric Alexander (tenor saxophone, 8/26) Joe Wilder (trumpet (8/27), Ravi Coltrane (tenor saxophone (8/28), Frank Wess (tenor saxophone/flute (8/29), George Mraz, bass. Willie Jones III or Quincy Davis, drums. Birdland. (212) 581-3080.

- Aug. 25 – 30. (Tues. – Sun.) Paul Motian, Joe Lovano, Bill Frisell. It doesn’t get much more stellar than this combination, and it will be fascinating to hear how these three creative individualists find improvisational common ground. (Their booking — for two weeks — also includes Sept. 1 – Sept. 6.) The Village Vanguard. (212) 255-4037.

- Aug. 26. (Wed.) Julia Dollison and Kerry Marsh: “The Music of Maria Schneider.” When Dollison and Marsh told Schneider they were planning to do vocal versions of her big band music, she thought they were crazy. But they persuaded her otherwise, and here’s an opportunity to hear their remarkable vocal transformations live. Jazz Standard. (212) 576-2252

- Aug. 28 (Fri.) Kendra Shank. With a talent that can find the beating heart of any song — whether it comes from the pop or jazz worlds or elsewhere — Shank is a singer who reveals something special in every performance. 55 Bar. (212) 929-9883.

Washington, D.C.

- Aug. 27 – 29. (Thurs. – Sat.) John Surman Quartet. With Jack DeJohnette, drums, Drew Gess, bass, John Abercrombie, guitar. Surman’s duo performances with DeJohnette have been extraordinary experiences. The addition of Gess and Abercrombie should make the encounters even more fascinating. Blues Alley. (202) 337-4141.

]]> http://irom.wordpress.com/2009/07/20/picks-of-the-week-july-20-26/ Mon, 20 Jul 2009 16:55:05 +0000 irom http://irom.wordpress.com/2009/07/20/picks-of-the-week-july-20-26/

By Don Heckman

Los Angeles

Patricia Talem

- July 21. (Tues.) Patricia Talem. The musical talent never seems to stop flowing from the rich, creative culture of Brazil. But the musically eclectic newcomer Talem, who is celebrating the release of her self-titled CD, is something special. Blessed with a warm, intimate, whisper in your ear voice, she uses it with the communicative qualities of a born story teller. She’ll be backed by the impressive skills of pianist Russell Ferrante, bassist Jimmy Haslip, guitarist Sandro Albert and drummer Marco DaCosta. Catalina Bar & Grill. (323)466-2210.

- July 21. (Tues.) Jon Mayer Trio. Mayer has been quietly delivering one classy performance after another for decades — from the intimate jazz of his own trio to deeply empathic backing for a wide range of other artists. This time out, he’s celebrating the release of his new CD “Nightscape,” backed by bassist Chris Conner and drummer Roy McCurdy. Charlie O’s. (818) 994-3058.

- July 23. (Thurs.) Mike Marshall, Darol Anger and Väsen. The strings will be flying in what promises to be a fascinating encounter between the bluegrass mastery of Marshall’s mandolin, Anger’s boundary-less fiddle and the nyckelharpa, viola and guitar of the dynamic Swedish trio, Väsen. The Skirball Center. (310) 440-4500.

- July . (Thurs.) The Squirrel Nut Zippers. It’s a real night for dancing on the Santa Monica Pier, with the retro jumping jive of the Squirrel Nut Zippers and the authentic big band swing of Johnny Vanus and the Big Band Alumni. All of it taking place on the 85th anniversary of the opening of the La Monica Ballroom. The Twilight Dance Series. (310) 458-8901.

- July 23. (Thurs.) Philip Glass and the Los Angeles Philharmonic, conducted by Michael Riesman, in the world premiere performance of a new arrangement of Glass’ score for Koyaanisqatsi: Life Out of Balance. The Music will be played in sync with a video projection of Godfrey Reggio’s 1982 wordless film, Koyaaniqatsi. The Hollywood Bowl. (323) 850-2000

The .

Roberta Donnay

- July 23. (Thurs.) Roberta Donnay Quartet. Donnay’s one of the real originals in the latest wave of female jazz vocalists. Although there are traces of Blossom Dearie in her sound and Madeleine Peyroux in her phrasing, Donnay transforms everything she touches into her own unique musical vision. Crowne Plaza Hotel. (310) 642-7500.

- July 25. (Sat.) The Mike Melvoin Trio. Is there such a thing as the “Mike Melvoin Songbook?” The veteran jazz pianist says, “yes.” And Mike, with the incomparable assistance of bassist Tony Dumas and drummer Ralph Penland, will sing and play its pleasures and its secrets. With scheduled guest appearances by Keith England, Theresa Russell and possibly others. Spazio. (818) 728-8400.

Gerald Wilson

- July 25. (Sat.) “Music and Monologues — Harmony and Humor.” An evening of fun, satire, hi-jinks and some pretty good music, too. Featuring Teresa Tudury, Vicki Juditz and Jonathan Solomon. Parlor Performances. Steinway Hall. (310) 476-6735.

- July 25 & 26. (Sat. & Sun.) The Central Ave. Jazz Festival. The Southland’s most authentic jazz festival — at last in terms of location — situated across from the Dunbar Hotel, at the center of what was once the heart of jazz in Los Angeles. On the schedule — Sat.: The CJS Quintet; Raya Yarbrough; The Eric Reed Trio; The Adonis Puentes Band; Bill Henderson. Sun: Jazz America; The Littleton Bros.; Kalil Wilson; Kamasi Washington; The Gerald Wilson Orchestra; The Jazz on the Latin Side All Stars. The Central Avenue Jazz Festival. (213) 743-8738.

San Francisco

- July 22 (Wed.) “A Musical Tribute to Buddy Montgomery.” Friends, former associates and admirers of the late vibist/pianist (who passed away in May) celebrate his memory. Featuring Marlena Shaw, Mary Stallings, John Handy, David Hazeltine, Brian Lynch, Jeff Chambers and many others. Yoshi’s San Francisco. (415) 655-5600.

- July 25 & 26. (Sat. & Sun.) “Hawaiian World Festival” reaches across the broad spectrum of Hawaiian music. Featuring the versatiel group Hapa, slack key and ukulele master Led Kaapana and singer/songwriter John Cruz. Yoshi’s Oakland. (510) 238-9200.

New York City

Charlie Haden

- July 21 – 26 (Tues. – Sun.) The Charlie Haden Invitation Series. Bassist Haden measures his considerable versatility against a world class line-up of pianists. With Ethan Iverson (Tues,) Steve Kuhn (Wed.), Kenny Barron (Thurs. & Fri,.), Paul Bley (Sat.) and Bill Charlap (Sun.). (212) 475-8592. The Blue Note.

- July 22 – 25. (Wed. – Sat.) The Lee Konitz Quartet. Konitz should be on everyone’s must-hear list whenever he’s in town. And even more so when he’s in the company of drummer Paul Motian and pianist Dan Tepfer. Birdland. (212) 581-3080.

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To contact Don Heckman with information regarding performers and/or performances for possible inclusion in Picks of the Week click here.

di Simona Maggiorelli

Klimt, Il bacio 1907

Tra originali “incursioni” nella musica classica, progetti di ricerca e di scrittura e un suo trio stabile, praticamente in ogni capitale del jazz, Enrico Pieranunzi ha trovato anche modo di tornare sulle strade del Nord Europa, per registrare Oslo un disco nato dalla collaborazione con il bassista norvegese Terje Gewelt. Un cd registrato nell’agosto 2008 negli studi dell’etichetta norvegese Resonant music che lo produce e che, con l’aggiunta della batteria di Anders Kjellberg, rinnova l’esperienza del primo incontro fra il maestro romano e l’allora trentenne Gewelt. «Tutto è cominciato nel 1990 quando andai per la prima volta in Norvegia- ricorda Pieranunzi -. Dopo alcuni passaggi in radio andai a suonare in un club per conoscere un po’ i musicisti locali. Gewelt racconta ancora di essere rimasto «scioccato» dal mio modo di suonare, così diverso dal loro. Quando ci siamo rivisti di recente è nato questo cd che è anche un curioso incontro fra Nord e Sud.
La sensazione, ascoltando il cd, è di una particolarissima sintonia fra voi.
Gewelt ha un bel suono ed è un basso da Trio con molta capacità di interagire con gli altri. Ma anche il  batterista è molto bravo.
I pezzi sono in parte suoi, in parte di Gewelt?
Lui ha scritto dei brani e ha chiesto anche a me di contribuire.  “Suspension Points” e “World of wonders” portano la mia firma.
Ma c’è anche una intensa suite, totalmente libera e improvvisata.
Amo l’improvvisazione integrale. E’ come creare in tre una breve pièce teatrale. Uno butta là una frase, un accordo, un motivo. Un altro lo riprende e lo sviluppa.  È liberatorio. Se suoni dei pezzi devi passare attraverso la mediazione dello spartito, che può essere frenante in situazioni così.  Nell’improvvisazione c’è un rapporto diretto fra il corpo e il sentire interno. Ti relazioni con la figurazione che l’altro lancia, la riprendi liberamente. Ti lasci andare all’altro,  con fantasia.
Dalla Norvegia ci aspetteremmo una musica un po’ cerebrale, molto fredda. Jazzisti come Jan Garbarek, invece, ce ne hanno fatto conoscere anche un lato  poetico.
Il jazz è una musica universale, ma all’interno ha molte differenze di colore e di calore. Vado spesso al festival di Copenhagen e i musicisti di là, ho notato, trovano me e altri musicisti italiani calorosissimi. Ma anche all’interno dei paesi scandinavi non tutto è  uguale. I norvegesi, per esempio, hanno una cifra più estatica. Hanno un rapporto speciale con la natura, con i boschi, con il mare, che è molto più duro del nostro. Il loro è una sorta di misticismo pagano.
Una cifra che si ritrova anche nella letteratura norvegese…
Sì, c’è una sensibilità forte, ma talora anche una certa deriva misticheggiante. Penso per esempio a un disco di Garbarek come Officium (Ecm). Anche se probabilmente fu il produttore Manfred Eicher a spingere in quella direzione. Lo ha fatto anche Keith Jarrett.
Come se il musicista dovesse avere un’ aura?
Come se, oltre che a un tono meditativo, il musicista in questi Paesi dovesse avere un ruolo da officiante. Una cosa che piace ai borghesi. Capita poi che qualche musicista ci creda davvero a questo ruolo. Allora per lui può essere anche un bel problema. Altri, invece, cercano di suonare attingendo al proprio sentire. Alla fine, però, per fortuna si suona. E quando si suona  si tace e l’unica cosa che conta è interagire con sensibilità.
L’importanza dell’«improvissar componendo» e del «comporre improvvisando» ci riporta al suo Pieranunzi plays Scarlatti (CAM jazz). Il 12 giugno lo ripropone in una cornice straordinaria: nella basilica dei Frari a Venezia, fra opere di Tiziano e di Bellini…
A Venezia porto nelle dita e nella mente quindici brani di Scarlatti, in scena poi decido su quali improvvisare.
Con questo progetto, che ha avuto grande successo, ha anche incontrato un pubblico nuovo?
Per fortuna ormai le divisioni nel pubblico sono molto sfumate, gli ascoltatori si sono fatti più recettivi verso generi diversi. Le stagioni classiche non includono più solo Brahms  o Beethoven, ma anche proposte più aperte al crossover. Che è sempre una bella sfida, anche se comporta qualche rischio. Quanto alle improvvisazioni su Scarlatti sono andate molto al di là delle mie aspettative. Forse perché per una parte del pubblico è stata una scoperta, essendo un autore purtroppo poco frequentato.
Il suo percorso nella classica continuerà?
Mi piace sperimentare filoni diversi, offrire sfaccettature nuove. Così con mio fratello Gabriele (primo violino del San Carlo di Napoli  e vincitore del premio Paganini ndr) e con un virtuoso di clarinetto come Alessandro Carbonari di S. Cecilia abbiamo formato un trio classico che suona musica dei maestri del ‘900, con alcuni elementi jazz e blues.
Dunque, ricapitolando, lei ha un trio classico e un trio jazz a Roma. Un trio in Francia e un altro, molto prestigioso negli Usa…
Eclettismo sulla pelle o se vogliamo assoluta poligamia. Mi piace cambiare, ogni musicista offre un colore, un tempo, un’intensità diversa. Ogni musicista si mette in rapporto diversamente con la mia musica.
Con un musicista come Paul Motian lei ha una lunga storia. Uscirà  un vostro nuovo lavoro?
L’anno prossimo uscirà un album che ho registrato lo scorso ottobre al Birdland.  Con Paul suoniamo insieme dal  1992 e volevo che nella registrazione dal vivo lui ci fosse, ha una forte identità  ma mi piace anche perché è un musicista scomodo: non fa mai quello che ti aspetti. Così, a tua volta,  sei costretto  a cercare il nuovo.
Il suo libro su Bill Evans ha avuto molte edizioni. Tornerà a sperimentare con la parola scritta?
A dire il vero ho un paio di progetti che mi piacerebbe sviluppare. Il primo riguarda ciò che accadde nel mondo dell’arte e della musica fra il 1890 e il 1910. Curiosamente sono accadute autentiche rivoluzioni in entrambi gli ambiti. Una piccola notazione: Debussy e Klimt sono nati e sono morti nello stesso anno. Una casualità. Ma è vero che fra loro ci sono molte assonanze. Sono due artisti che hanno cambiato il modo di fare musica e di dipingere.
Quella di Klimt in certo modo fu anche una rivoluzione antimoderna. Basta pensare che nel 1907 Picasso dipinge le Damoiselles e Klimt un quadro come il Bacio.
Indubbiamente la rivoluzione di Klimt fu meno drastica, meno rumorosa, di quella di Picasso, ma la sua ricerca segnò comunque un nuovo modo in pittura. Lo stesso si può dire di Debussy che non fu un’impressionista come si dice di solito. Semmai fu un simbolista. Ma soprattutto  cambiò la grammatica del comporre. Dopo di lui il discorso musicale non avrebbe più avuto quella certa prevedibilità razionale che aveva in Brahms. Debussy faceva una ricerca  in certo modo aperta all’irrazionale.
E il suo secondo progetto?
Mi piacerebbe saper raccontare in un libro le emozioni e il senso più profondo che hanno avuto per me certi incontri artistici, che poi non sono stati mai solo rapporti fra colleghi, ma anche umani in senso pieno.Solo per fare un esempio ricordo ancora fortemente quello con Chet Baker, la sua fantasia potente, spiazzante. Fin da giovanissimo avuto la fortuna di suonare accanto a dei giganti, – io  nato a Roma, che apparentemente nulla avevo a che vedere con il mondo afroamericano -, così vorrei poter restituire qualcosa di quelle esperienze, che mi hanno offerto spunti nuovi.
Incontri che qualche volta le hanno cambiato la vita?
Be’ sì, basta dire che io non sono nato compositore. Ero un musicista, la possibilità di comporre l’ho scoperta molto più avanti, dopo aver fatto incontri, scoperte.  Un’altra svolta c’è  stata  durante la lavorazione del film Il cielo della luna, nel rapporto creativo  con il regista mi sono aperto a un tipo di ricerca e a possibilità per me del tutto nuove.

da left Avvenimenti del 12 giugno 2009

Last night I heard Bill McHenry Quintet at the Village Vanguard. It featured Duane Eubanks on trumpet, Andrew D’Angelo on alto, Ben Street on double bass and Paul Motian on drums, playing mostly Bill McHenry’s original compositions, which were all very much about exploring. Amazing rhythm section: Ben Street and Paul Motian – always interactive in the music, playful and swinging. My first time ever to hear Paul Motian live. He is certainly in a class of his own, has a kind of broad sound, I figured. Later on I discovered he doesn’t like to take pictures with fans. Funny, it was my first time ever to ask someone – and got turned down immediately. Will probably never ask again… Yeah… I’ve always thought taking pictures with famous musicians is kind of stupid anyway

NY Subway is full of music (and rats)

My favorite part of the concert were the deep and poetic minimalist moments in one or two of the compositions, with three voices (tenor, alto, trumpet) moving round each other with great taste and style. Otherwise the concert was mostly quite a lot of fun, exploring,  outside playing and crazy moments  (with the alto player Andrew D’Angelo definitely being the really passionate one in the band) – having no harmony instrument around certainly gives a lot of space for going somewhere.  Ben Street was great, my first time to hear him live – amazing bass player.

Later on, on the way home,  I was walking down the street and heard music coming from… inside the street. Someone was playing “My Favorite Things” down there (in the subway).

Keith Jarrett: Treasure Island (Impulse! 0602517967182)
Keith is looking cool with his Afro, giant belt buckle and denim bells on the cover, and the music still sounds cool, too, re-released by Verve under the Impulse! Originals imprint.

This is Jarrett, pre-ECM, in 1974 with Dewey Redman on tenor, Charlie Haden on bass and Paul Motian on drum, plus Guilherme Franco and Danny Johnson on percussion, and Sam Brown on guitar for two tracks. Jarrett himeself plays soprano saxophone on one track.

The opener, The Rich (And The Poor), is one of those rocking Jarrett Afro-vamps that cropped up on his solo piano improvisations, here acting as a stable bedrock for Haden and Motian over which Redman can do his lyrical protest thing. After the tenor solo it moves up a gear and Jarrett runs up and down against some fun percussion, before Redman returns to state the free-time head, full of the kind of unexpected turns that characterised Jarrett compositions.

Blue Streak has a bass and  left-hand piano line worthy of Isaac Hayes and the Shaft soundtrack, and Redman is again on good form. The title track has Jarrett phrasing in a rock vamp manner much like he does during Koln Concert, and the mood vacillates between duo passages of Brown and Jarrett, and quartet plus percussion grooves. Somehow the ’70s come clearly into view listening to this – the beats, the guitar tone, everything seems to evoke those simpler times.

The only non-original is a tiny gem of a Yaqui Indian Folk Song, which Jarrett and Redman interpret with such graceful simplicity that the goosebumps can’t be stopped.

Elsewhere there are more great vamps (Le Mistral, Sister Fortune), free playing mayhem (Fullsuvollivus) and some tricky shifting time patterns (Angles (Without Edges)).

Rotate this on the CD player with Van Morrison’s Veedon Fleece and Joni Mitchell’s Court And Spark, which came out in the same year, and have a damned fine retro-summer.

Keith Jarrett é um dos mais inovadores e virtuosos músicos do Jazz ainda vivo. Já ouvi dezenas de discos dele em suas diversas formações, indo das geniais apresentações solo no piano, das gravações com seu trio preferido formado por Jack DeJohnette e Gary Peacock passeando por “standards” do jazz e com o quarteto europeu na década de 70. No entanto as gravações com seu “American Quartet” são tão criativas, experimentais, intensas e virtuosas que considero-as as melhores dentro da imensa discografia desse pianista.

Dentre estes discos, selecionei uma apresentação ao vivo do grupo, gravado no místico Village Vanguard em NY pelo selo Impulse!, em 24 de fevereiro de 1973.

O “American Quartet” estava em plena forma nessa apresentação, com o pianista Keith Jarrett , Dewey Redman (sax tenor), Charlie Haden (baixo) e Paul Motian (bateria) e conta com a presença do percurssionista Danny Johnson, amigo de Jarrett, que na verdade era artista plástico e não músico, mas junta-se ao grupo para essa apresentação.

De cara a primeira faixa, (If the) Misfits (Wear It) começa com o explosivo piano de Jarrett, quase hipnótico. Ele simplesmente sobra no piano. Após seu solo é a vez de Redman no sax tenor, aplicando uma interessante técnica de vocalização ao mesmo tempo que sopra o tenor. Ao fundo, Jarrett troca o piano pelo sax soprano, instrumento que sempre toca nos discos com o quarteto.

A segunda faixa leva o mesmo nome do disco. “Fort Yawuh” tem uma andamento mais lento, mas nem por isso falta a experimentação de novos sons, cheia de percurssão. Destaque para o belo solo de Jarrett e para o interessante som de Dewey tocando gaita de fole, instrumento que introduziu no jazz. A próxima faixa, “De Drums” tem uma base melódica bem interessante com o baixo de Haden e a bateria de Motian, repleta de percurssão. A quarta faixa é uma balada, “Still life, Still life”.

O disco encerra com a faixa ”Roads Traveled, Roads Veiled” que na época não foi adicionada ao disco original e posteriomente adicionada como faixa bônus. É a maior faixa do disco, com mais de 20 minutos onde os músicos embarcam em uma viagem sonora com muita improvisação. Dewey aparece em uma rara apresentação tocando clarinete junto a Jarrett no sax soprano, com belo trabalho de Motian nos tom-tom e Charlie Haden no solo de baixo.

Esse disco é uma referência e é obrigatório para adoradores do gênero. São 80 minutos de música da mais alta qualidade.

1. “(If the) Misfits (Wear It)” – 13:15
2. “Fort Yawuh” – 18:22
3. “De Drums” – 12:10
4. “Still Life, Still Life” – 8:38
5. “Roads Traveled, Roads Veiled” – 20:36

Keith Jarrett: piano, saxofone soprano, tamborim
Dewey Redman: saxofone tenor, gaita de fole, maracas
Charlie Haden: baixo
Paul Motian: bateria, percurssão
Danny Johnson: percurssão

“Monk in Motian” traz um seleto grupo liderado pelo baterista Paul Motian, com Joe Lovano no saxofone tenor e Bill Frisell na guitarra, executando composições do pianista Thelonious Monk. O grupo ainda conta com a presença da pianista Geri Allen em “Ruby, My Dear” e “Off Minor” e do saxofonista tenor Dewey Redman em “Straight, No Chaser” e “Epistrophy”. O álbum foi originalmente lançado em 1988 pelo selo alemão JMT, e relançado em 2002 pelo Winter & Winter. Chama atenção pela originalidade de se tocar Monk com guitarra e sax e menor presença do piano.

Faixas
1. Crepuscule with Nellie
2. Justice (Evidence)
3. Ruby, My Dear
4. Straight, No Chaser
5. Bye-Ya
6. Ugly Beauty
7. Trinkle, Trinkle
8. Epistrophy
9. Off Minor
10. Reflections

Pessoal
Paul Motian – drums
Bill Frisell – electric guitar
Joe Lovano – tenor saxophone
Geri Allen – piano (3,9)
Dewey Redman – tenor saxophone (4,8)

Baixar Disco

By Don Heckman

I’m willing to bet that anyone who was actually around in the sixties remembers the decade as a whirling kaleidoscope of people, events and  places.  Yes, I know the line – if you remember the sixties, you weren’t there.  But I was there, and I remember it well.  Or, at least, I thought I did, until I recently read a posting on Howard Mandel’s always-informative blog, “Jazz Beyond Jazz”

The posting is titled “Civil Rights – Jazz Document 1963.”  In it, Howard disputes an article in the entertainment section of the New York Times asserting that movies opened the way toward the election of the country’s first African American president.

Thad Jones

I maintain, writes Mandel, that the jazz community was in the forefront of the civil rights movement, and remains in the lead for demonstrating how all-inclusive meritocracies look, sound and work. A historical document highlighting the conjunction of jazz and the Civil Rights movement has come to hand — programs from two nights in 1963 when major players performed and major jazz journalists emceed a benefit for CORE (the Congress of Racial Equality) at New York City’s Five Spot Cafe, plus a letter of thanks to bassist Henry Grimes  participation.

Kenny Burrell

Mandel goes on to describe the remarkable assemblage of individuals who came together on October 20 and 27 – barely two months after the March on Washington  — in the now long gone jazz club at the corner of Third Avenue and St. Marks Place.

The extraordinary gatherings on October 20 and October 27 of musicians now regarded as jazz giants — among the most recognizable: saxophonists Ben Webster, Al Cohn, Zoot Sims, Booker Ervin, Eric Dolphy, guitarist Kenny Burrell, brass man and composer-arranger Thad Jones, pianists Bill Evans, Paul Bley, Sal Mosca, Horace Parlan, Billy Taylor (now Dr. Billy . .. ), Don Friedman, Dick Katz, drummers Roy Haynes, Ben Riley (misspelled “Reilly” — and other misspellings abound), Paul Motian, Joe Chambers, bassists Gary Peacock, Ronnie Boykins (of Sun Ra’s Arkestra), Ron Carter and vibist Bobby Hutcherson, singers Helen Merrill and Sheila Jordan — were likely prompted by the Civil Rights rally at the Lincoln Memorial on August 28 (occasion of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr’s “I Have A Dream” speech) and the September 15 bombings by the Ku Klux Klan of Birmingham, Alabama’s 16th St. Baptist Church, which targeted church-going children and killed four little girls.

I hadn’t read more than two sentences of the posting before it all began to come flooding back to me.  Because I was there.  More than that, I was a participant.

The CORE benefits’ emcees, continues Mandel, besides Dr. Taylor, who has  made his mark as a jazz television and radio broadcaster, educator and activist as well as pianist-composer-bandleader, were

• Don Heckman, then writing about music for the Village Voice, soon to go to the New York Times, and today, after a lengthy tenure with the now beleaguered Los Angeles Times, is a key blogger at The International Review of Music.
• Alan Grant, then WABC disc jockey behind the radio show “Portraits In Jazz” eventually retired with his wife to New Zealand but with his own Last.fm channel.
• Ira Gitler, a ’50s record producer and in ‘63 the New York editor for Down Beat, a jazz historian, author (with Leonard Feather of The Biographical Encyclopedia of Jazz and journalist these days teaching at Manhattan School of Music and often read in New York’s Jazz Improv magazine.

Dr. Billy Taylor

I don’t know why the event had somehow wound up in the distant corners of my memory.  Because, in retrospect, I remember it vividly – an extraordinary experience for a young writer just beginning to gain his footing in the big city.  There I was, emceeing the October 20^th program with Billy Taylor, introducing the likes of Ted Curson, Roy Haynes, Thad Jones, Kenny Burrell, Frank Strozier, Helen Merrill and more – many more.  Reveling in the transcendent togetherness that – in its own unique way – makes jazz the art form that most directly reflects the ideal of what America can and should be.

sheila Jordan

Carefully preserved somewhere in my memorabilia files, I have a framed letter of thanks from James Farmer, then the Executive Secretary of CORE.  Reminded of those two remarkable days in 1963, I will now dig through the boxes, find the letter and once again proudly hang it near my desk.  And I thank Howard Mandel for the jog to my memory that has allowed me to reclaim a treasured event in my personal history of the sixties.

Howard Mandel’s complete “Civil Rights – Jazz Document 1963″ blog can be read here: http://www.artsjournal.com/jazzbeyondjazz/2009/01/civil_rights-jazz_document_196.html.

This is a “must have” if you are a jazz fan. If you are an occasional listener or serious collector this boxed set is a pure joy to listen to. On a Sunday afternoon that started a 2 week gig for the trio, Orin Keepnews produced from a single Ampex tape recording machine setting on the stage, in the coziness of the Vanguard, come some very intimate music, at times you can hear glasses tinkling and parts of conversations which add a great since of reality. When you listen to this music you feel like you are there. This trio for a very short time was one of the best, their collaboration and interplay are some playing you won’t hear often. Recorded in performance at the Village Vanguard, New York City; June 25th. 1961

Para escuchar mientras trabajo esta tarde, he elaborado una lista en iTunes con temas de jazz que tengo en mi Mac. Los he seleccionado con dos criterios: que fueran standards (o casi) y que fueran moviditos. Creo que ha quedado una recopilación muy atractiva, tanto para aquellos a los que os guste el jazz como para los que queráis probar por primera vez

Los temas de Una tarde de Jazz están interpretados por estrellas clásicas y consagradas (Duke Ellington, Sonny Clark, Bobby Timmons, Milt Jackson, Stan Kenton, Dexter Gordon, Billy Cobham, Donald Harrison o Ron Carter), algunas menos conocidas (Jutta Hipp, John Klemmer o Elmo Hope), e intérpretes algo más actuales –aunque ya clásicos– (Gary Peacock, Jack DeJohnette, Keith Jarrett, Paul Motian, Lee Konitz o Kenny Barron).

Como siempre, haced clic en la portada del disco para descargar las canciones y la carátula (la foto de la villa de Palladio la hice hace ya muchos años en Vicenza). Podéis ver el listado de temas AQUÍ.

Que tengáis una feliz tarde de martes.

Bill Frisell : Electric guitar

Ron Carter : Acoustic bass

Paul Motion : Drums

This amazing trio released a fantastic CD a little while ago which I played endlessly and thanks to the wonderful Spencer  we now have the chance to hear them doing it all live. Quite unlike many of the other posts on this blog that feature Bill Frisell, it shows just how masterful his playing is these days.

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Veteran drummer/composer George Schuller’s Like Before, Somewhat After (Playscape Recordings), and the Yoon Sun Choi/Jacob Sacks Duo’s Imagination: The Music of Joe Raposo (Yeah Yeah Records), have each been named one of Jazz.com’s 50 Best Jazz CDs of 2008.

Schuller’s disc, his second with his longstanding group Circle Wide, pays tribute to the music of Keith Jarrett’s so-called American Quartet of the 1970’s, reinventing such notable tracks as “Common Mama” and “The Survivors’ Suite”, which was a Jazz.com Song of the Day this past June.

Jazz.com’s editor, Ted Gioia, discussed the record and its relationship to the legacy of Jarrett’s group on the site’s blog, writing that Schuller and his bandmates “get past the notes on the page, and into something deeper, an elusive transcendence that defies even this glib critic.”

Imagination is the second release from the New York-based duo of vocalist Yoon Sun Choi and pianist Jacob Sacks, and an innovative tribute to the music of prolific theater, film and television composer, Joe Raposo (1937-1989), whose timeless and instantly familiar songs such as “Bein’ Green” and “Sing” are used here as launching pads for experiments in texture, form and improvisation.

In his original review of the track, “Somebody Come and Play”, Gioia wrote, “I wish more singers would take chances like this, or bring along a pianist who, like Sacks, is such a daring accompanist. These two really go at it. I can’t recall the last time I heard a vocal recording in which the pianist challenged the singer so aggressively — and with such felicitous results. This is one of the best jazz vocal CDs of the year.”

Paul Motian : Drums

Joe Lovano : Tenor saxophone

Bill Frisell : Electric guitar

Great set from a truly great band during their yearly trip to the Vanguard. Beautifully recorded by NPR.

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