THE YEAR IN REVIEW: TOP 50 ALBUMS! READERS’ POLL RESULTS!
STANLEY JORDAN “MY SPIRIT TRANSCENDS GENDER”
JON BA BATISTE TISTE
FRED HERSCH
NICHOLAS NICHOL AS PAYTON
ARTIST’S CHOICE
ARTURO O’F O’FARRILL ARRILL
FEBRUARY 2016 • $5.95
+
REDUX A LOVE SUPREME REDUX
GEORGE CABLES CHRISTIAN SCOTT ATUNDE ADJUAH LOU REED & DON CHERRY DARCY JAMES ARGUE NRBQ’S TERRY ADAMS
LIVE at the DEER HEAD INN
™
PHIL WOODS Q U I N T E T LIVE at the
PHIL WOODS
DEER HEAD INN ™
Q U I N T E T Phil Woods Brian Lynch Bill Mays Steve Gilmore Bill Goodwin
logica call deli deligh ghtt for for the PHIL WOOD WOODS: S: “Itwas a logi Phil Woods Quintet Quintet, an old established �rm
(since 1974), to record for the new Deer Head Records label. It is a new label, but also an establi established shed �rm, �rm, the oldest oldest contin continuou uously sly operatoperating jazz club in the country try. I am remi eminded of a comm commen entt by my old old boss boss,, Dizzy Dizzy Gill Gilles espi pie. e. When When asked “How you doing, Birks?” he responded, "Wel "Welll I'm I'm not not gett gettin ing g wors worse! e!"" And And I can can hone honest stly ly say both old estab tablished �rms rms are not any the the wors worse e for for wear wear!! We hope hope fans fans of both both will will agre agree. e.”
FEATURED ARTISTS
Phil Woods
alto saxophone
Brian Lynch
trumpet
Bill Mays piano Steve Gilmore Bill Goodwin
acoustic bass
drums/cymbals
BRIAN LYNCH:
“It “It was was a spec speciial even evenin ing g indeed to record with the Quintet live at the hist histor oriic Deer Deer Head Head Inn, Inn, a site site that that has has immen mmense se resonance in the history of the group. Afte fter 23 year yearss in the the band band,, it’s stil stilll a thri thrill ll,, a hono honorr, and and a joyo joyous usly ly acce accept pted ed chal challe leng nge e to be on the band bandsta stand nd with with these these great great musi musici cian ans. s. I think think you’ you’ll ll hear hear on this this recording the the love and respect ect we all have for eac each other her manifest ested in sound, sound, in real real time. time. Grandm Grandmast aster er Phil Phil Woods Woods,, cats: cats: bravo! bravo!”” BILL MAYS:
“I’ “I’m thril thrille led d to have have been been a memb member er of the quin quintet tet over over the past past sever several al year yearss and espec especia iall llyy happ happyy that that I’ve I’ve had an oppo opportu rtuni nity ty to writ write e for for the the band band,, and and be part part of this this live live reco record rdin ing. g.”
DEER HEAD R E C O R D S
www.DeerHeadInn.com
“It’s been been an hono honorr for for me to "hit "hit it" it" with with these these guys guys STEVE GILM GILMORE: ORE: “It’ , and and all all theother theother gentl gentlem emen en that that have have pass passed ed throu through gh the the PhilWoo PhilWoods ds band bandss for for some some 40 year years. s. I'd I'd like like to thin thinkk that that in that that time time we'v we've e deve develo lope ped d a reco recoggniza nizabl ble e grou group p soun sound.And d.And to reco record rd for for a live live audi audien ence ce at the the Deer Deer Head Head Inn Inn , whic which h has has been been an inte integ gral ral part part of my lif life sinc since e the the late late 50’ 50’s , make makess it even even more more spec specia ial. l. My hat’ hat’ss off to the the mana manage geme ment nt of the the Deer Deer Head Head for for cont contin inuuing their their dedica dedicatio tion n to live live jazz that hopefu hopefully lly will will contin continue ue ad in-�ni in-�ni-tu -tum. m.” BILL GOODWIN:
Distributed Distributed by
Vectordisc Records www.vectordisc.com
“ The origins of this band revolve around the Deer Head Inn. Steve and I played here together in the early 70's with Johnny Coates and after Phil arrived in the area In late ‘73 we jammed here also.The group formed in early ’74 with pianist Mike Mellilo who we met (guess where) at the Deer Head. This new recording is the �rst with Bill Mays our latest pianist. I don't recall how many we have done with Brian since he has been in the band for 23+ years, joining in 92. Now we have come full circle with this recording of the longest running jazz group at the longest continuously operating jazz club in the country.”
JAN UARY/FE BRU ARY 2016 |
6 8 10
John Coltr Coltrane ane perform performss A Love Love Supreme Supreme at at the Antibes Jazz Festival in 1965. To read about the revelatory new multi-disc set focused on that masterwork, see p. 65
←
28
201 20 15: THE YEAR IN REVIEW
28
Top 50 CDs Our cr criititics cs ch choo oosse th thee be besst rel elea easses of th thee ye yea ar Readers Read ers’’ Pol Polll Thee an Th annu nual al ro roun undu dup p of yo your ur fa favo voririte te ar artitist sts, s, al albu bums ms,, fe fest stiv ival alss an and d mo more re
32
34
STANL ST ANLEY EY JOR JORDAN DAN
In th this is rev revea ealin ling g co conve nversa rsatition on,, th thee in inno novat vative ive gui guitar taris istt exp explai lains ns th thee pers pe rson onal al,, ae aest sthe hetiticc an and d ar artitist stic ic ch chan ange gess he he’’s ma made de in hi hiss lilife fe in re rece cent nt years—a year s—and nd how tho those se asp aspects ects of his bei being ng are esse essenti ntially ally one and the same me.. As he tells David R. Adler , “My sp spiri iritt tra trans nscen cends ds gen gender der.” .” 40 JON
JT Notes Editor Evan Haga introduces the Year in Review The Gig Nate Chinen’s favorite concerts of 2015 Solo Aidan Levy on how Lou Reed and Don Cherry invented a singular bran br and d of fu fusi sion on
12
OPENING CHORUS
12
22 26
Hearsay Monk Monk Institute Jazz Vocals Competition, Christian Scott aTunde Adjuah, Caroline Davis, Darcy James Argue’s Secret Society, Matt Mitchell, NRBQ’s Terry Adams, news and farewells Before & After Arturo Arturo O’Farrill Overdue Ovation George Cables
52
SOUND ADVICE
52
AudioFiles Brent Butterworth on the best AudioFiles consumer electronics products of 2015 Chops Top avant-gardists give a crash course in prepared piano
54 56
instruments, Gearhead The latest in musical instruments, accessories and educational resources
REVIEWS
65
65 76 78
CDs VOX Books
79 80
Jazz Directory Artist’ss Choice Fred Hersch writes about Artist’ great piano sounds
outside
BATISTE
Nate Chinen
detaililss th deta thee as asce cent nt of th this is me mega ga-t-tal alen ente ted d fe fest stiv ival al dra dr aw and me med dititat ates es on his fifirs rstt fe few w mo monnth thss as ba banndl dlea eade derr fo foilil to St Step ephe henn Co Colb lber ert— t—th thee so sortrt of gi gig g wh wher eree ja jazz zz ex expe pertrtis isee do does esn’ n’tt alwa al ways ys eq equa uall su succ cces ess. s.
46
NICHOLAS NICHOL AS PAYTON
In Ne New w Or Orle lean ans, s, Jennifer Odell un unco cove vers rs wh whyy on onee of ja jazz zz’’s be best st trtrump umpet eters ers—a —and nd fie fierc rcest est blo blogge ggers rs—w —woul ould d ma make ke a si sinc ncere ere shi shiftft towar to ward d key keybo board ardss dec decad ades es in into to hi hiss ca caree reerr.
VOLUME VOL UME 46 NUM BER 1
AT J A Z Z T I M E S . C O M
MP3s
promotions - jazz MP3s • JazzTimes Spins & Riffs, a free podcast hosted by JT publisher Lee Mergner • Free tracks from Don Braden, Alexis Cole, Rolf Sturm and other artists
EXCLUSIVE CONTENT articles - columns
JAZZ CONNECT CONFERENCE PROGRAM: P. 57
Cover image of Stanley Jordan by Manolo Nebot Rochera; cover inset of Kamasi Washington by Mike Park. Table of Contents image by Jean-Pierre Leloir.
2
J A Z Z T I M E S
•
J A N U A R Y / F E B R U A R Y 2 0 1 6
Artist’s Choice: Erik Friedlander on Oscar Pettiford; live Artist’s reviews: a very special tribute to Cecil Taylor in NYC, plus London, North Carolina, Dominican Republic, Belgrade and Panevo festivals; an interview with pianist Justin Kau�in; Weather Report song premiere; photos: Orquesta Buena Vista Social Club’s farewell tour; and much more
“Best service I’ve received from ANY store!” Robby, Vista, CA
Gretsch Drums Catalina Club
D E D U L C N I T O N S D N A T S D N A S L A B M Y C
Neumann U47 FET Collector’s Edition Sennheiser HD 800 NS Design NXT Omni Bass
Rivera Jazz Suprema 25
PreSonus Studio 192
Gibson Memphis 1959 ES-175
N E W!
Bose L1
Compact Roland JUNO-DS88
(800) 222-4700 Sweetwater.com
0% Interest
*
for 24 Months On purchases of select manufacturers’ products made with your Sweetwater Musician’s All Access Platinum Card between now and February 29, 2016 – 24 equal monthly payments required.
FREE PRO ADVICE
FREE 2�YEAR WARRANTY**
FAST, FREE SHIPPING
We’re here to help! Call today!
Total Con�dence Coverage™ Warranty
On most orders, with no minimum purchase!
*Offer applies only to single-receipt qualifying purchases. No interest will be charged on promo purchase and equal monthly payments are required equal to initial promo purchase amount divided equally by the number of months in promo period until promo is paid in full. The equal monthly payment will be rounded to the next highest whole dollar and may be higher than the minimum payment that would be required if the purchase was a non-promotional purchase. Regular account terms apply to non-promotional purchases. For new accounts: Purchase APR is 29.99%; Minimum Interest Charge is $2. Existing cardholders should see their credit card agreement for their applicable terms. Subject to credit approval. **Please note: Apple products are excluded from this warranty, and other restrictions may apply. Please visit Sweetwater.com/warranty for complete details.
NEW RELEASES INCLUDE
ROBERT GLASPER TRIO OUT NOW
KENDRICK SCOTT ORACLE OUT NOW
LIONEL LOUEKE OUT NOW
DETROIT JAZZ CITY OUT DECEMBER 4
CHARLES LLOYD & THE MARVELS OUT JANUARY 15
DR. LONNIE SMITH OUT JANUARY 29
GOGO PENGUIN OUT FEBRUARY 5
LOGAN RICHARDSON OUT FEBRUARY 26
VINYL REISSUES INCLUDE
MADLIB
JOHN COLTRANE
THELONIOUS MONK
WAYNE SHORTER
SHADES OF BLUE
BLUE TRAIN
GENIUS OF MODERN MUSIC
SPEAK NO EVIL
HERBIE HANCOCK MAIDEN VOYAGE
BlueNote.com
© Blue Note Records
EVAN HAGA
[email protected] PUBLISHER LEE MERGNER ASSO CIATE E DITO R JEFF TAMARKIN
[email protected] GROUP DIRECTOR, SALES & MARKETING KIM RIZY EDITOR
GRAPHIC DESIGNER PROOFREADER
LISA MALAGUTI NADYA SAGNER
CONTRIBUTING WRITERS
David R. Adler, Larry Appelbaum, Bill Beuttler, Shaun Brady, Philip Booth, Russell Carlson, Nate Chinen, Sharonne Cohen, Thomas Conrad, Owen Cordle, Brad Farberman, Colin Fleming, Andrew Gilbert, Fernando Gonzalez, Steve Greenlee, Don Heckman, Geoffrey Himes, Marc Hopkins, Willard Jenkins, Mike Joyce, Ashley Kahn, David Kastin, Aidan Levy, Matt R. Lohr, Christopher Loudon, Bill Meredith, John Murph, Jennifer Odell, Ted Panken, Britt Robson, Giovanni Russonello, Sam Sessa, Mike Shanley, George Varga, Michael J. West, David Whiteis, Josef Woodard, Ron Wynn CONTRIBUTING PHOTOGRAPHERS & ILLUSTRATORS
Greg Aiello, Ed Berger, Skip Bolen, Stuart Brinin, Enid Farber, Ken Franckling, Peter Gannushkin, Ronnie James, Ben Johnson, Jimmy Katz, R. Andrew Lepley, Alan Nahigian, Jan Persson, John Rogers, Nick Ruechel, Detlev Schilke, Chuck Stewart, Jack Vartoogian, Michael Weintrob, Michael Wilderman
CHAIRMAN & CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICER CHIEF OPERATING OFFICER VICE PRESIDENT BUSINESS OPERATIONS VICE PRESIDENT, DIGITAL STRATEGY DIRECTOR, INTEGRATED PRODUCTION ART DIRECTOR OPERATIONS MANAGER CIRCULATION OPERATIONS SPECIALIST CONTROLLER GENERAL STAFF ACCOUNTANT STAFF ACCOUNTANT STAFF ACCOUNTANT MARKETING ANALYST SALES ADMINISTRATOR PRODUCTION ASSOCIATE TECHNICAL PRODUCT MANAGER NEWSSTAND
JEFFREY C. WOLK SUSAN FITZGERALD COURTNEY CARTER HEIDI STRONG JUSTIN VUONO MICHAEL O’LEARY LAURA FINAMORE NORA FREW PEGGY MAGUIRE AMANDA GRUBBS TINA MCDERMOTT HEIDIE HOGAN CATHERINE PEARSON CASSANDRA PETTIT STEVE SANGAPORE MICHAEL MA NATIONAL PUBLISHER SERVICES
ADVERTI SING SALE S
SCOTT PERSSON
[email protected]; 617-279-0194 Contact JazzTimes advertising sales department for reprint information. JAZZTI MES E DITOR IAL OF FICE
10801 Margate Road, Silver Spring, MD 20901
Subscriptions 1-877-252-8139 | Foreign Subscriptions 1-903-636-1120 CORPORATE HEADQUARTERS
Madavor Media, LLC 25 Braintree Hill Office Park | Suite 404 | Braintree, MA | 02184 Tel: 617-706-9110 | Fax: 617-536-0102 JazzTimes (ISSN-0272-572-X) is published 10 times per year by Madavor Media, LLC., 25 Braintree Hill Office Park, Suite 404, Braintree, MA 02184, USA, Tel: 617-706-9110. Jeffrey C. Wolk, Chairman & Chief Executive Officer SUBSCRIPTIONS: 1 year
(10 issues), US $29.99, Canada $34.99, International $54.99, Digital Only $20.00
POSTMASTER: Send address changes to JazzTimes, P.O. Box 4300, Big Sandy, TX 75755-4300. Subscribers allow 4-6 weeks for change of address to become effective. Subscriptions ordered are noncancelable and nonrefundable unless otherwise promoted. Return postage must accompany all manuscripts, drawings and photographs submitted if they are to be returned, and no responsibility can be assumed for unsolicited materials. All rights in letters sent to JazzTimes will be treated as unconditionally assigned for publication and copyright purposes and as subject to unrestricted right to edit and to comment editorially. Requests for permission to reprint should be sent to the Permissions and Reprints Department. The title JazzTimes is registered in the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. Contents copyright © 2015 by Madavor Media, LLC. All rights reserved. Nothing can be reprinted in whole or in part without permission from the publisher. Printed in the U.S.A.
JAZZTIMES FOUNDER IRA SABIN
[ JT]Notes An Epic Crossover By Evan Haga
E
ach year, my main hope or our annual Critics’ and Readers’ Polls is always the same: that the results re�ect the year in jazz I’ve just experienced with some precision and sense o posterity. It’d be dishonest to say I’ve never been surprised by these results, but generally I eel vindicated—especially this year, and even with regard to our Readers’ Poll. Conducted in the wilderness o the Internet, that poll can miss its ideal o committed J readers thoughtully re�ecting on their avorite recent jazz records and concerts; instead, it ofen re�ects warring an bases and ancient, steadast allegiances to particular artists and aesthetics. But the cream rose to the top or the 2015 tally, rightully honoring jazz’s populist sensations. Pianist Joey Alexander’s precociously elegant musicianship—not to mention the almighty cheek-pinching actor—earned him Best New Artist. Vocalist Gregory Porter, in the heady midst o his rise as a theater-packing jazz-R&B star, nabbed Artist o the Year. Snarky Puppy, the turbo-charged unit working constantly to return usion to its crowd-pleasing roots, won Best Electric Group. Te Epic, the tripledisc set by saxophonist Kamasi Washington, won Best New Release, and thankully so: It’s a �nely played and programmed olive branch to the jazz-curious that leans on prime jazz and R&B history, not pop.
But I was �ummoxed to see that our writers also voted Te Epic into their No. 1 spot, mainly b ecause any cynicism I’ve heard about Washington’s snowballing stature has come rom a jazz critic, mysel included. “Te audacity o a three-hour debut!” I’d mumble at the bar. “What about Ravi Coltrane or Azar Lawrence or James Carter? Where are this guy’s ans when the Cookers play a gig? Why him, and why now?” As I’ve written beore, that’s a complex answer, and it requires more space to address than I have here. But at its core, rather than politics or even Washington’s hip-hop associations, are reasons o pure quality and good taste. Aro-centric modal jazz, soul-jazz and album-era R&B are Washington’s stockin-trade, and they stand as earthbound, instinctually satisying styles that are essentially trend-proo. Tey also dovetail conveniently with the very real vinyl resurgence: It’s not a coincidence that the youngest and most ervent audiences I witnessed at a jazz show in 2015 were there or Washington, headlining a estival, and Pharoah Sanders, playing a date at a small Brooklyn rock club. I Washington is the crossover artist o the moment, jazz is lucky to have him. Tink about it: A couple decades back, Kenny G ser ved that purpose. JT
CENTRUM
JAZZ PORT TOWNSEND
IMMERSIVE WEEKLONG WORKSHOP AND FESTIVAL JULY 24-31, 2016 John Clayton, Artistic Director
Register Early. Space is limited. Details at Centrum.org or 360.385.3102 ext. 109
6
JAZZTIMES
•
J A N U A R Y / F E B R U A R Y 2 0 1 6
Directed by John Clayton and featuring 35 faculty including Gerald Clayton, Jeff Hamilton, Wycliffe Gordon, George Cables, Dee Daniels, Matt Wilson, Terell Stafford, René Marie, Joe LaBarbera, Gary Smulyan, Sean Jones, Kendrick Scott, George Colligan, Taylor Eigsti, Tamir Hendelman, Christoph Luty, Harish Raghavan, Jeff Clayton, Chuck Deardorf, Randy Halberstadt, Clarence Acox, Dawn Clement, Jon Hamar, John Hansen, Eric Verlinde, Julian MacDonough, Chris Symer, Michael Glynn, Kelby MacNayr, Jake Bergevin, and more.
BLOOD SWEAT & TEARS Featuring Bo Bice
“When you’re at a Yankee game,” Colomby says, “you’re not going to see Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig. They’re not going to be there. But what you will see is a brand, the pinstripes, and they’ll be able to hit, score runs and play great defense. Because management’s obligation is to recruit the best players available and put the most cohesive combination of players on the �eld to represent the Yankee brand. So that when the Yankees win, and they’ve played magni�cently, no one’s going to say, “Where’s the Bambino: Where’s Mickey Mantle?”
“Blood Sweat and Tears was born from a sel�sh notion that we could combine the sophistication and musical skill level of jazz music with the energy and universal appeal of rock vocal music. Instead of incessant whiny guitar interludes, we would have improvised, spontaneous jazz solos. Horn arrangements were not an afterthought, they were fully integrated into the songs themselves, some written by band members and others that would come from many different resources. These are the ideas that formulated the concept of BS&T Over the years more than a hundred seventy �ve musicians have �owed through the ranks of the various iterations of the BS&T. The most commercially successful version of the band was in fact, our second line-up. What endures today is the evolution that concept… along with an amazing roster of the most talented and entertaining musicians we have ever had. BS&T has never stopped touring. It didn’t go away. You can call it a renaissance, or the newest version of… but it is simply Blood Sweat and Tears at its best”. — BOBBY COLOMBY
[the]Gig The Year in Gigs By Nate Chinen
None o this should be seen as an encroaching threat on mainstream jazz aesthetics, unless you subscribe to the idea that jazz should be a �xed language, which is to say a dead one. Looking over these gigs, what they share is a deep, tactile connection to the jazz tradition even as they reach or something else. I think back to a wintry conversation I had last year with Jack DeJohnette, the drummer, composer and NEA Jazz Master who appears twice in the tabulations below. “Te disciplines that we all went through,” he said o his peer group, “to acquire the reedom and ease with which we can communicate this music, are totally broad.” Amen to that, sir, and may it ever be so.
Made in Chicago provides a thrilling main-stage start to the Newport Jazz Festival’s Saturday program in August. Clockwise from drums: Jack DeJohnette, Henry Threadgill, Roscoe Mitchell, Muhal Richard Abrams and Larry Gray
←
One of the best shows I saw this past year was by an artist no one would �le under “jazz.” Tat in itsel isn’t unusual, or in any way unexpected: Like many a jazz critic, and I daresay most jazz musicians, my interests sprawlwell beyond the purview o this magazine. But something struck me about this show, a mid-March tour date by the reemergent R&B star D’Angelo, at the Best Buy Teater in imes Square. For lack o a
musician, but I can attest that as I took in his show, some o the same neurons were �ring, and some o the same emotions stirring, as when I experience a jazz gig o the highest order. I had a similar response to the most important hip-hop album released in 2015. Kendrick Lamar, the re�ective young rapper rom Compton, laced his urious masterwork, o Pimp a Butter�y , with the in�ection and insights o musicians
Looking over these performances, what they share is a deep, tactile connection to the jazz tradition even as they reach for something else. better way o putting it, it had some killer Jazz Adjacency—that elusive combination o ormal elasticity, in-the-moment spontaneity and cohesive intuition that we think o as jazz attributes, unless they coalesce in another area. D’Angelo’s music �rmly belongs to the lineage o unk and soul, even though his ace band, the Vanguard, includes jazz-trained musicians like drummer Chris “Daddy” Dave. I’m not going to strain here to claim D’Angelo as a jazz 8
JAZZTIMES
•
J A N U A R Y / F E B R U A R Y 2 0 1 6
like pianist Robert Glasper. It’s no secret that there’s a dialogue happening across these genre outlines; one o the gigs that didn’t quite make this list was by Glasper’s acoustic trio, whose current repertoire includes a track by Lamar. And one o the breakout jazz artists o the year, saxophonist Kamasi Washington, got a lot o his traction rom that Kendrick association, even though his heralded triple album, Te Epic (Braineeder), hunkers down more in an astral Young Lion mode.
MARQUIS HILL BLACKTET, TRIBECA PERFORMING ARTS CENTER, JAN. 31. Months afer winning the 2014 Telonious Monk International Jazz Competition, trumpeter Marquis Hill brought his dynamic band to town and showed what all the uss was about. I’ve already written in this space about Hill’s evolving potential; this was the moment when I got the message. STEVE COLEMAN AND FIVE ELEMENTS, THE JAZZ GALLERY, MARCH 6.
Tere were other, more momentous bookings in 2015 or Coleman, the visionary alto saxophonist and composer. Still, the two sets he uncorked here were simply, head-spinningly great: a cool �ash o mercury rom a band that lives or the tensions o each transaction. CHARLES LLOYD NEW QUARTET, VILLAGE VANGUARD, MARCH 15. A historic return, an exultant result: Lloyd, the luminous tenor saxophonist and �utist, hadn’t perormed at the Vanguard or more than 40 years when he knocked out this one-nighter, part o an anniversary celebration or the club. His New Quartet, with pianist Jason Moran as chie catalyst, modeled a kind o slangy enlightenment, ollowing the master’s lead.
O N I R E T R E F L U P O E H T Y B N O I T A R T S U L L I ; N A I G I H A N N A L A Y B O T O H P
IBRAHIM MAALOUF’S KALTHOUM, DIZZY’S CLUB COCA-COLA, MAY 25. Maalou, an astute Lebanese trumpeter based in Paris, brought an obsessive drive to his latest project, a suite-like, hour-long extrapolation o a single tune by the great Egyptian singer Oum Kalthoum. Tis perormance o the piece—with Mark urner on tenor saxophone, Frank Woeste on piano, Larry Grenadier on bass and Clarence Penn on drums—was a statement at once everish and suave.
ing orces, especially those involving abstraction o orm. He was working out some o those ideas in this set, with a new batch o tunes or a band eaturing pianist Matt Mitchell, bassist Chris Lightcap and drummer Nasheet Waits.
JACK DEJOHNETTE TRIO, SHAPESHIFTER LAB, OCT. 10. Te backstory
could easily have taken a ront seat here, given that DeJohnette’s trio eatured saxophonist Ravi Coltrane and bassist Matthew Garrison, whose athers worked in the John Coltrane Quartet. Remarkably, legacy was largely an aferthought in their sinewy, exploratory set, which preceded a recording session or ECM—the ruits o which, i we’re lucky, will be available in 2016. Onward! JT
MARIA SCHNEIDER ORCHESTRA, BIRDLAND, JUNE 2. At this point it’s almost rote to lavish praise on this pacesetting large ensemble and its composerbandleader. But Te Tompson Fields (ArtistShare), Schneider’s most recent opus, exceeds even her stratospheric standards—as did this billowing, evocative set.
2016 SUMMER JAZZ COLONY NEW DATES!!! June 25th-Jul
JACK DEJOHNETTE’S MADE IN CHICAGO, NEWPORT JAZZ FESTIVAL, AUG. 1. Te AACM celebrated its 50th
Our 2016 Summer Jazz Colony Welcomes
anniversary throughout the year, resulting in a lot o serious music, including this reprisal o the summit rom Made in Chicago (ECM), a concert album by drummer Jack DeJohnette. With Muhal Richard Abrams on piano, Roscoe Mitchell and Henry Treadgill on saxophones and Larry Gray on bass, it was a magisterial hour, ablaze with enigmatic insight.
KAMASI WASHINGTON AND THE NEXT STEP, BEARSVILLE THEATER, WOODSTOCK, AUG. 19. Jazz’s latest savior? I’ll leave that notion to the likes o GQ. My own take on Washington’s ascendancy allows or some ambivalence, but on this night, in a setting primed or good vibes, his tenor saxophone carried the impact o a heavy gale, and his band delivered on its churning promise.
CÉCILE MCLORIN SALVANT, JAZZ STANDARD, AUG. 25. Discernment isn’t ofen the �rst quality that comes to mind when discussing a jazz singer in her mid-20s. Yet this stunningly assured set by Salvant—which drew rom, and improved on, her �ne album For One to Love (Mack Avenue)—was as remarkable or its critical composure as or its strength and �air.
JON IRABAGON QUARTET, JAZZ STANDARD, SEPT. 2. Irabagon is a
2nd 2016
SFJAZZ Collective
As it’s Artists-in-Residence! Application Deadline is March 1 st
Become a part of the Brubeck Experience! Our programs choose only the best students.
BRUBECK FELLOWSHIP PROGRAM Open to incoming Freshmen! Artists-in-Residence Include Stefon Harris and Edward Simon
Application Deadline is January 31 st
Apply today at BrubeckInstitute.org
saxophonist drawn to the play o oppos J A Z Z T I M E S . C O M
9
Solo Rock & Roll & Free Jazz: Inside Lou Reed and Don Cherry’s Avant-Fusion By Aidan Levy
I
n November 1976, Lou Reed �ew to Los Angeles to headline the Roxy and the Santa Monica Civic Auditorium. At LAX, tenor saxophonist Marty Fogel happened to spot pocket trumpeter Don Cherry, the Los Angeles native known or his work with Ornette Coleman and Albert Ayler. Cherry had just recorded his �rst album with Old and New Dreams, a quartet o Coleman collaborators consisting o Cherry, saxophonist Dewey Redman, bassist Charlie Haden and drummer Ed Blackwell. Cherry was one o Reed’s idols. Tey possessed certain commonalities, including an explosive improvisatory energy and a brush with hepatitis. And ortunately or Reed, Fogel already knew Cherry. Fogel rented a basement practice space on Sixth Street in the Village, next door to Cherry’s wie Moki’s textile studio, though the Cherrys’ principal residence was in Stockholm, where they were raising their son, Eagle-Eye. “I’d see Don all the time, and we would say hello. But then one day in 1976, we had just arrived at the Los Angeles airport, just kinda hanging out, waiting or a limousine. And I’m standing by this phone on the wall, and Don Cherry comes walking up to where the phone is. We said hello and started talking, and then he lef,” Fogel says. “Ten we were getting ready to go, and I said to Lou, ‘Man, I just ran into Don Cherry out there!’ He says, ‘Go get him! Go get him! I love him!’” Reed invited him to play with the band, and the chance meeting led to an intermittent working relationship with the ree-jazz luminary or the next several years. Without rehearsing, Cherry played it by ear during a spontaneous set with Reed and the Everyman Band at the Santa Monica Civic, extemporizing over “Sweet Jane,” “Coney Island Baby” and “Charley’s Girl,” punctuating the rough-hewn style with an organic approach that demonstrated Reed’s avant-garde leanings, which had been dormant or years. Like Reed, Cherry could tell a riveting story, but he did it on the pocket trumpet or the doussn’gouni, a retless string instrument rom Mali that resembled a kora. Reed easily adapted his scat-like recitative chant or a jazz sensibility, taking a backseat to Fogel and Cherry, who used the basic chord structures as a kind o modal unk and took �ight. On “Walk on the Wild Side,” Cherry and Fogel mined the song’s playul character in a cutting session that sliced deeper than usual. Yet the experience inspired Reed to do with lyrics what Cherry had done with tonality. In 1979, the collaboration eventually led to Te Bells, blending jazz, disco and a deeply personal songwriting ethos, with no eye toward a potential market. Following a short European tour, Reed, the Everyman Band and Cherry went to Wilster, a hamlet in West Germany, to record the album in binaural sound at Manred Schunke’s Delta Studios. Te pastoral redoubt was a converted armhouse that included housing or the artists, a communal dining area and “a place to hang out and drink Johnnie Walker Black,” Fogel recalls. “And then there was the recording acility, which was really high-tech, but it was in the middle o arm country.” Te eclectic compositions included “City Lights,” with a nod to Charlie Chaplin; “Families,” a meditation on the dysunctional 10
JAZZTIMES
•
J A N U A R Y / F E B R U A R Y 2 0 1 6
“The Bells [is] great art,” Lester Bangs wrote, going on to call the album “the only true jazz-rock fusion anybody’s come up with since Miles Davis’ On the Corner period.”
American nuclear amily; and “Te Bells,” an atmospheric nine-minute ree-jazz collective improvisation. Nils Logren, in the midst o a solo career between the dissolution o Grin and joining the E Street Band, co-wrote three songs: “Stupid Man,” “City Lights” and “With You.” Te last eatured improvised interpolations by Fogel and Cherry. “I did a little horn arrangement or mysel and Don, and maybe there would be two beats at the end o the measure, and when we were rehearsing the tune, Don was playing this ree stuff in those two beats,” Fogel says. “I looked at him and I go, ‘What are you doing?’ And he said, ‘Whenever you get an opportunity to take it out, you’ve got to take it out.’ So that’s what we did.” Tis brinksmanship reached its intense peak on the title track, which developed during the sessions. “I was in the studio one night late, just playing the piano and playing part o ‘Te Bells’ that I had composed, and Reed came into the studio and said, ‘What’s that?,’ and I explained it to him. And he said, ‘Man, that’s really great. I want to record that.’” On the then-untitled track, nominally inspired by Edgar Allan Poe’s eponymous poem, Reed took Cherry’s cue and went as ar out as he could, improvising some o the lyrics in the studio. He even asked Cherry to quote part o Ornette Coleman’s “Lonely Woman” in the dense harmony o the title track’s spectral intro. Te time was ripe or a serious cross-genre experiment rom an artist on the more mainstream side o the aisle; the same month Te Bells was released, Coleman was the musical guest on Saturday Night Live. Tough not everyone understood or appreciated Reed’s oray deeper into jazz- and art-rock, Lester Bangs, despite their raught history, concluded that his career had �nally reached an apotheosis. “Te Bells isn’t merely Lou Reed’s best solo LP, it’s great art,” he wrote in Rolling Stone, going on to call the album “the only true jazz-rock usion anybody’s come up with since Miles Davis’ On the Corner period.” JT
Adapted with permission from Dirty Blvd.: Te Lie and Music o Lou Reed by Aidan Levy. Chicago Review Press, 2015.
OPENING
CHORUS
) )
Stay in tune
)
)
Inside 12 Hearsay Monk Institute Jazz Vocals Competition, Christian Scott aTunde Adjuah, Caroline Davis, Darcy James Argue’s Secret Society, Matt Mitchell, NRBQ’s Terry Adams, news and farewells
22
Before & After
Arturo O’Farrill
From left: Vuyolwethu Sotashe (third-place �nalist), Veronica Swift (second) and Jazzmeia Horn (victor) join honoree Quincy Jones and vocal-jazz stars Gretchen Parlato and Luciana Souza to bring the gala concert home
←
Lifting Every Voice DALLAS NATIVE JAZZMEIA HORN WINS THE 2015 MONK COMPETITION, WHERE QUINCY JONES IS FETED
BUT ONE OF THE MOST COMPLEX TO
said pianist Herbie Hancock, kicking off the Telonious Monk International Jazz Vocals Competition Finals, part o a gala concert held on Nov. 15 at the Dolby Teatre in Hollywood. Te 2015 Monk competition, the 28th overall, showcased 11 masters o this deceptively difficult discipline. Te �rst-place winner, whose prize includes a contract with Concord Music Group and $25,000 in scholarship money, was 23-year-old Jazzmeia Horn, a Dallas native and winner o the 2013 Sarah Vaughan International Vocal Competition. Horn’s road to the prize began on Saturday at UCLA’s Schoenberg Hall, where the semi�nalists showcased a plethora o styles, accompanied by unwavering support rom pianist Reginald Tomas, bassist Rodney Whitaker and drummer Carl Allen. Manhattan School o Music alumnus Christie Dashiell’s “I Can’t Get MASTER,”
12
J A Z Z T I M E S • J A N U A R Y / F E B R U A R Y 2 0 1 6
d” showed casual maturity, while nian Lena Seikaly, backed only by Whitaker, brought subtle sex appeal to “What a Little Moonlight Can Do.” Walter Ricci o Naples, Italy, whipped his requisite Monk tune, “Well, You Needn’t,” into a ast-scatting renzy, a vivid contrast to the bell-toned, pillowy vocals o Danielle Wertz, another Virginia native. Sirintip Phasuk o Stockholm impressed with sel-penned, world-weary lyrics or “Pannonica,” and Los Angeles resident Katie Tiroux surprised with her selection o Burt Bacharach’s “Wives and Lovers,” accompanying hersel on swaggering bass. Te day also offered burnished crooning rom Australia’s Liam Burrows, and Armenian-born Lucy Yeghiazaryan’s thrilling, gale-orce “I Can’t Give You Anything But Love.” Te three �nalists, who would perorm at Sunday’s gala, were selected by an esteemed panel o vocalists: Patti Austin, Dee Dee Bridgewater, Freddy Cole, Al
26
Overdue Ovation George Cables
Jarreau and Luciana Souza. Veronica Swif, a scholarship student at the Uni versity o Miami’s Frost School o Music, gave a master class on space and dynamics on “I Mean You,” and Benny Carter’s “Lonely Woman,” where she was accompanied only by Tomas, demonstrated her skill as an adept lyrical interpreter. Vuyolwethu Sotashe, �rst-prize winner at the 2014 Mid-Atlantic Jazz Festival Vocal Competition, owned the stage with his exuberant presence, and brought a breezy touch o his native South Arica to Abbey Lincoln’s lyric or Bheki Mseleku’s “Trough the Years.” Horn secured her �nalist’s berth with a boldly inventive take on Monk’s “Evidence,” her voice a sinuous saxophone one moment, a rat-a-tatting snare drum the next. Ten, her sensitive interaction with Tomas on Jimmy Rowles’ “Te Peacocks” maniested her skills as a thoughtul, deep-listening musician. Te ollowing night’s concert was a tribute to multi-hyphenate Quincy Jones, recipient o the Institute’s Herbie Hancock Humanitarian Award or 2015, and the songbook was packed with Jones compositions and arrangements. R&B star Ledisi stirred the blood with a ull-
Z Z A J F O E T U T I T S N I K N O M S U O I N O L E H T / R E G N I D N U M E V E T S
MARK GUILIANA BEAT MUSIC / MARK GUILIANA JAZZ QUARTET / MEHLIANA He weaves the time-tested fundamentals of jazz with modern electronic beats and takes music to places it’s never been before. Many are satisfied with playing music, while others are driven to redefine it—eliminating barriers and inspiring the creativity of a generation. Since 1883, Gretsch has been building the finest American-made drums for players who understand that in order to play “That Great Gretsch Sound,” you have to earn it.
GRETSCHDRUMS.COM/BROOKLYN
THE GREAT AMERICAN DRUM SET ™
OPENING CHORUS bodied take on “Everything Must Change.” rumpeter Arturo Sandoval joined �utist Hubert Laws or Jones’ brassy theme rom the V classic Ironside; turning the V dial, the Monk Institute Big Band unked up the Sanford and Son theme, with driving bassist Ben Williams and stinging guitar rom Paul Jackson Jr. Vocalist George Benson joined Austin or a risky give-and-take on “Moody’s Mood or Love,” and Cole effortlessly conjured the purest blues on “Let the Good imes Roll,” with a hardswinging solo rom tenor saxophonist Jimmy Heath. Cohost Seth MacFarlane shared a bright, easygoing “Come Fly With Me,” while Bridgewater, Sandoval and pianist Monty Alexander romped through Fats Waller’s “Honeysuckle Rose.” Hancock’s inventively ragmented chords cast an enchanted air over Jones’ arrangement o the pianist’s “ell Me a Bedtime Story,” and ellow pianist Justin Kau�in took Ray Brown’s “Gravy Waltz” to church. Jarreau, vocalist Gretchen Parlato and Monk Institute trustee Wayne Shorter, on soprano saxophone, gave an emphatic reading o Michael Jackson’s “Human Nature.” Bridgewater, Austin and Souza later teamed with Jarreau or a sassy, ast-break “Stuff Like Tat,” and the Brazilian vocalist rendered a lilting version o Ivan Lins’ “Velas,” backed tenderly by pianist Dave Grusin. Accepting the Hancock Award, Jones expressed gratitude that he was “born in a time when I could witness and play a role in the development o the only indigenous American art orm.” He
Hearsay invoked the spirits o lost comrades like Ray Charles, Clifford Brown and Charlie Parker: “Tese were the cats who were my Beatles and my Rolling Stones,” he said. Much as he honored the past, Jones also looked to the uture. “Music is coming back,” he assured the audience, and exhorted them to encourage young people to learn the history o the jazz artists who laid the oundation or all popular music in America. Te uture was also vividly present in the perormances o the three �nalists. Tird-place winner Sotashe brought old-school gentility to Billie Holiday’s “Lie Begins When You’re in Love,” intermingling the dreamy melody with keening lyrics rom a South Arican wedding song. Second-place �nalist Swif brought skilled melismatic effects and tremendous tonal command to “September in the Rain,” then presented an oeat, melancholy “Tis Bitter Earth.” Horn’s winning perormance included a yearning, eatherlight “Detour Ahead” and a version o “Moanin’” incorporating exhilarating scat pyrotechnics, straight-up gutter-blues growling and even a ew crisply potent verses o “Lif Every Voice and Sing.” Horn wiped away tears as she accepted her prize rom Concord President John Burk, then joined the ensemble or a concert-closing group rendition o the Jones-produced anthem “We Are the World.” It was an evening o artistry, celebration and joy ... and or Jazzmeia Horn, only the �rst o many more such evenings to come. MATT R. LOHR
Don’t Stream; Stretch CHRISTIAN SCOTT ATUNDE ADJUAH RELEASES A FULLY INTERACTIVE ALBUM
S
tretch Music (Introducing Elena Pinderhughes), the sparkling new Ropeadope album rom tr umpeter Christian Scott aunde Adjuah, is plenty orward-looking in itsel. It “stretches” jazz with its two-drummer lineup (including Joe Dyson’s novel pan-Arican kit) and its willingness to incorporate other genres, but is nonetheless Scott’s most tightly ocused album to date. But the Stretch Music app it gave birth to may prove downright revolutionary. Te app not only permits aspiring musicians to practice interactively with bona �de albums by established stars, it also provides a new possibility or musicians to derive income rom said albums. “Our app allows you to customize your practicing experience,” explains Scott, 32. “For instance, i you play trumpet, you can take the trumpet out and take the solo to the record, and play the melodies, whatever the trumpeter is doing. Any instrument that’s on the record, any channel, you can actually mute, you can ade it, you can [isolate] it, you can pan it rom lef to right and move it around, you can create looping. Let’s say you only want to play a our-bar passage [and] practice that. You can just loop a our-bar passage; you can slow it down, speed it up—and it stays in the same key.” “It’s basically like Play-A-Long 2.0,” he adds, reerencing the amiliar Jamey Aebersold educational books and recordings designed to accompany players learning to improvise. “But what [Play-A-Long] is generally, it’s just the rhythm section that’s playing. So you can impro vise over it, but you can’t mix and match or take out speci�c things.” 14
JAZZTIMES
•
J A N U A R Y / F E B R U A R Y 2 0 1 6
O L L A I D E N I H P L E D
Darren Hoffman, whose company utti Dynamics teamed with Scott to bring the app to fruition, offers a variation of Scott’s Play-A-Long quote when it is repeated for him a few weeks later. “[Bassist] Rodney Jordan said it was Jamey Aebersold on crack,” he says, laughing. Hoffman, 31, has come to a Manhattan hotel room, toting a freshly purchased Apple iPad, to demonstrate the $9.99 app (which runs on iPhones as well) and sketch out the history of how it came to be. Basically, Hoffman parlayed his studies in �lmmaking and jazz drumming (at Florida State and New Orleans University, respectively) into a series of grants to develop various aids to music education. Tese led to two particularly notable successes. Hoffman worked with Dan Moretti of the Berklee College of Music on Essential Grooves, a foundational interactive program for Berklee arranging classes, and with the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra to create a big-band program now used by 650 high schools. Both feature crisp visual images of the musicians involved, along with the audio bells and whistles now on Scott’s app. Scott, meanwhile, had recorded Stretch Music at Berklee’s new studio and was asking around for recommendations for an app collaborator. Drummer Charles Burchell, who had worked on Essential Grooves, steered him to Hoffman and utti Dynamics. (Burchell was recommended by Jason Marsalis, along with Scott sideman Dyson, when Hoffman approached his former drum teacher seeking New Orleans drummers living in Boston. Dyson had already returned to
New Orleans when the project got underway, so the gig belonged to Burchell.) Scott and Hoffman met in February, and the app was released in September. “In future versions there’s going to be the ability to record yourself,” says Hoffman. “But basically, as an aspiring trumpeter, if I’m 17 and I want to play like Christian, I can play alongside his whole band without Christian in the way. Or I can play along with him, and lower his volume a little bit, so that I can have that guide.” As Scott explained, aspiring musicians can do likewise with Elena Pinderhughes’ �ute or any of the other instruments in the band. And they can cue up sheet music for whatever parts they please. Scott’s app and its Berklee and JALC predecessors have earned rave reviews from students and educators alike. “Te one response we get the most,” says Hoffman, “is, ‘I wish I had this when I was a kid.’” Scott’s peers, meanwhile, began approaching utti Dynamics about collaborating on their own versions of the Stretch Music app even before its release. Scott promoted his app hard on his website and social media, and they recognized its other potential upside in this era of music streaming. “With Apple Music and Spotify, it’s hard to get anyone to focus on how important it is to purchase the music,” notes Hoffman. “So instead, why not offer something that you can’t get otherwise? It’s not just monetizing for the sake of monetizing it; it’s a deeper, fuller experience that you can’t get from streaming audio.” BILL BEUTTLER
J A Z Z T I M E S . C O M
15
OPENING CHORUS
Hearsay
Windy History SAXOPHONIST-COMPOSER CAROLINE DAVIS WEAVES CHICAGO’S JAZZ HERITAGE INTO AN INVENTIVE NEW PROJECT
O
n Nov. 5, alto saxophonist Caroline Davis brought what might be called the Chicago sound to the Jazz Gallery in New York, in a celebration o her sophomore album as a leader, Doors: Chicago Storylines (Ears&Eyes). With a quartet o pianist Julian Shore, drummer Jay Sawyer and bassist amir Shmerling, Davis explored the ull range o the saxophone with lithe maneuverings and a sof but round tone reminiscent o Chicago-born elder statesman Lee Konitz. But instead o soaring over the rhythm section, Davis’ instantaneous call-and-response opposite Shore’s rhythmic �ourishes re�ected the in�uence o collective improvisation established by the AACM and Chicago-rooted saxophonists Von Freeman and Steve Coleman. Still, rather than containing a geographically identi�able jazz aesthetic, the album asks whether Chicago, or any city, has a codi�ed sound.
16
JAZZTIMES
•
J A N U A R Y / F E B R U A R Y 2 0 1 6
“I do eel a sense o Chicago in my playing, but I couldn’t really categorize that or describe it. It’s just an essence that I eel,” says the 34-year-old saxophonist, sitting down recently in SoHo. Afer eight years in Chicago, Davis moved to Brooklyn in 2013. “It would be the same or New York, too, but I like presenting multiple perspectives so it’s not so clean-cut.” aking a documentarian approach to de�ning Chicago’s jazz scene, Davis’ album seamlessly intersperses harmonically daring compositions and evocative interstitials into a sound collage o oral histories, resulting in a raw portrait o the city where she cut her teeth. Inspired by Glenn Gould’s Solitude Trilogy , Davis spent a year conducting interviews with �xtures on the scene—Art Davis, Ron Perrillo and Bobby Broom are among the 13 musicians eatured—many o whom appear on the cover by Chicago-based collagist Jordan Martins. On “Golden Era,” the opening track, the iconic sound o the “L” train punctuates the overlapping voices. Recorded at Chicago’s ransient Sound, the album eatures a local quartet: guitarist Mike Allemana, bassist Matt Ferguson and drummer Jeremy Cunningham. It is undeniably the sound o Chicago, but not necessarily the Chicago sound. On “Chicago Sound?” pianist Joan Hickey insists that “there is a Chicago sound,” “very blues-based” and not “so much about ast tempos,” a perspective challenged by Broom’s assertion that “this music isn’t made anywhere—it’s wherever it is.” Davis ultimately concluded that more than the con�uence o history, politics and culture—including the jazz clubs—Chicago exists in the artists themselves: a tradition, a lineage and a scene that lives on in their stories.
Tese stories include the untimely death o bassist Carroll Crouch during a set at Chicago’s Bop Shop (the club’s owner ramed his broken bow); tenor saxophonist Lin Halliday’s idiosyncratic style and in-the-pocket groove; and, most signi�cant, the scene that coalesced around Von Freeman’s abled jam session at the New Apartment Lounge. Starting in the early ’80s until his death in 2012 at 88, Freeman perormed an unabated two-hour set every uesday at the gritty club, a storied jazz institution on Chicago’s South Side, ollowed by a jam session that extended into the wee hours. Te no-rills club’s jazz pedigree maintained a loyal ollowing. Allegedly, Gene Ammons had his �rst gig there afer his release rom prison, a tenor battle with Sonny Stitt; whenever Roy Hargrove or Roy Haynes were in town, they would come to Freeman’s uesday night session. Afer moving to Chicago rom exas to pursue a PhD in music cognition at Northwestern University, Davis quickly became one o Freeman’s “horses,” a term o endearment he used or eager up-and-comers. “He would give me such encouragement,” Davis says o Freeman’s unorthodox mentoring process. “He never said anything about my playing; he would just tell me to check out certain songs, like, ‘Did you check out Lester Young’s solo on ‘Shoe Shine Boy’ yet?’” In the spirit o intergenerational exchange, Allemana took part in the New Apartment Lounge jam throughout his 20s beore joining Freeman’s group in 1995, and eventually met Davis. “Caroline just grew really ast on the s cene. Her skill level, her approach, everything just blossomed,” Allemana says. Freeman’s teaching by example was instrumental to that growth. “Von never once made a set list or told me a chord. He rarely i ever told us the tune. I he did, it was in a veiled way. He’d say, ‘Tree Bs,’ and that meant ‘Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered.’” Tough the New Apartment Lounge has since shuttered, Davis carries on the
G N I M E L F Y L L E K
tradition on “Rounds: For the Horses,” in which she transcribed the pitch o a recording o Freeman saying, “Where my horses at?,” his ritual introduction to the jam, into a �ve-note moti. “Tere’s a melody section and a series o chord changes based on those �ve notes, so it’s all related to that pitch structure and comes rom that one phrase,” Davis says. Doors: Chicago Storylines echoes an approach Davis adopted or her do ctoral
dissertation, “Semantic Knowledge or Eminent Jazz Perormers,” or which she interviewed 50 proessional musicians to gather data on how semantic memory, or the retrieval o acts and associations, re�ected the ormation o artistic communities. “It turns out that the people who were closer to each other, musically speaking, listened to music similarly,” Davis says. “I you said, ‘Tis reminds me o Erroll Garner,’ the person you would
consider to be your musical partner would answer in the same way, almost exactly, which is ascinating.” Te album led to a similar conclusion, that more than shared geography, the Chicago sound emanates rom a deep sense o community. “I really think that community structure is so important to jazz musicians,” she says. “We’re such a tiny little piece o the world, and we need each other.” AIDAN LEVY
The Enemy Within IN BROOKLYN, DARCY JAMES ARGUE’S SECRET SOCIETY DELVES INTO THE CONSPIRACIST’S PSYCHE
Darcy James Argue conducts his “co-conspirators” at the Brooklyn Academy of Music’s Harvey Theater in November
←
I Z C I W O K F E L D E
n promo blasts, composer Darcy James Argue has always reerred to his bandmates in Secret Society as “co-conspirators.” It was perhaps inevitable that this tongue-in-cheek moti would blossom into an elaborately staged multimedia work inspired by conspiracy theories, “Real Enemies,” which ran Nov. 18-22 at the Brooklyn Academy o Music’s Harvey Teater. aking its title rom Kathryn S. Olm-
sted’s 2009 book Real Enemies: Conspiracy Teories and American Democracy, World War I to 9/11, Argue’s piece was co-conceived with writer and director Isaac Butler and �lm designer Peter Nigrini. Even on opening night, the execution was impeccable: Argue’s 18-piece band roared and whispered through 12 brutally dissonant yet ofen beautiul movements, with the leader standing in the middle o a large doomsday clock and the band
arrayed around him in a semicircle. Te unky, swinging, sometimes Latin-tinged music, the minimal choreography, the lighting and scenery (by Maruti Evans), even the band’s old-school suits, trench coats, edoras and aqua-tinted dresses (costumes by Sydney Maresca): All o it was unrelentingly creepy. Soloists im Ries (alto saxophone), John Ellis (tenor saxophone), Nadje Noordhuis and Matt Holman (�ugelhorns), Ingrid J A Z Z T I M E S . C O M
17
OPENING CHORUS Jensen (trumpet), Adam Birnbaum (piano) and many more took their virtuosic turns in the spotlight at roughly 4 o’clock and 8 o’clock. Argue, working idiosyncratically with 12-tone methods in his eeriest and most multiaceted piece to date, expanded yet again the textural and emotional vocabulary o the modern big band. Te political thrust o the piece was highly ambiguous or the �rst threequarters o the show, and this was perhaps a �aw. Above the band as a backdrop were 15 small square-shaped video screens �ickering with images drawn rom conspiracist lore: the ’80s crack epidemic and Iran-Contra, the JFK and MLK assassinations, UFOs, chemtrails, the moon landing and so orth. It was all catnip, o course, or the conspiracy theorist, who could well be ooled into thinking this was itsel a conspiracist show. But Argue and Butler do not endorse the theories; they were pursuing, in Butler’s words, “an inquiry into belie itsel.” Tere was an air o impartiality as the show explored irrationalism bred o rational distrust toward government— spurred by anticommunist dirty tricks, CIA experiments, campaign �nance
THERE WAS AN AIR OF IMPARTIALITY AS THE SHOW EXPLORED IRRATIONALISM BRED OF RATIONAL DISTRUST TOWARD GOVERNMENT—SPURRED BY ANTICOMMUNIST DIRTY TRICKS, CIA EXPERIMENTS, CAMPAIGN FINANCE BRIBERY, SURVEILLANCE AND THE LIKE. bribery, surveillance and the like. Ten, as the piece wound down, we heard a long voiceover in a sinister sci-� monotone, quoting rom Olmsted’s Real Enemies as well as Richard Hostadter’s landmark 1964 study Te Paranoid Style in American Politics. Here at last was a withering critique o “the paranoid,” a person in�icted with a “dread disease,” an unhinged belie that “history is a conspiracy.” On the surace these belies are amus-
Hearsay ing, but “Real Enemies” didn’t ully address their toxicity. In part this was deliberate. Butler has spoken about his omission o Te Protocols of the Elders of Zion, a ounding tract o modern Jewhatred: “I thought indulging in something that openly racist would derail the piece.” Tat’s probably true, though as a result the political context envisioned by “Real Enemies” seemed incomplete. Anti-Semitism has proved an integral part o the 9/11 ruth movement, or instance, and by now “truthers” attach themselves to every terrorist event as it occurs (recently asserting, without evidence, that the Paris attacks were conducted by Israel, or that Israel is unding ISIS). “Real Enemies” did touch on government’s use o conspiracy theories or disinormation; this is nakedly true today in the case o the Russian and Iranian regimes, whose English-language broadcast outlets (R and Press V, respectively) are sometimes oolishly cited and legitimized by people on the lef. Tese may be matters beyond the scope o a big-band concert, not to mention a review o one. But they’re deeply disturbing and thus vitally important. DAVID R. ADLE R
Slow Motion THE MUSIC OF PIANIST-COMPOSER MATT MITCHELL REWARDS PATIENT, PERCEPTIVE LISTENING
R
eacting to the hectic pace and shortened attention spans o the modern age, the Slow Movement has arisen across a wide swathe o disciplines to celebrate the merits o taking one’s time. In dining, it rejects ast ood and opts or locally sourced, homemade meals enjoyed in the company o others; in cinema, long takes and minimal action are avored over explosive blockbuster pacing. Pianist-composer Matt Mitchell, 40, doesn’t proess to be a proponent o the Slow Movement per se, but Vista Accumulation (Pi), his second release as a leader, could certainly be seen as sympathetic to its goals. His ambitious compositions sprawl out over two densely packed CDs, several o the tracks topping 15 minutes and only one clocking in un18
JAZZTIMES
•
J A N U A R Y / F E B R U A R Y 2 0 1 6
der eight minutes (and just barely). Like the best examples o Slow art, the impact o Mitchell’s music is ofen a result o its luxuriating in time, rom allowing his and his bandmates’ ideas to unspool at their own pace. “Sometimes you can take things into little corners that you wouldn’t necessarily arrive at without allowing yoursel that breathing room,” Mitchell agrees. “I don’t usually set out to write a long piece, but in general when I write I just indulge mysel. I eel like any composer ultimately does that, at least the ones I like. Tey completely indulge even their most seemingly crazy tendencies—or especially those.” Mitchell’s jazz education was undertaken simultaneously with a study o contemporary classical composers like
Morton Feldman and Iannis Xenakis, resulting in a blend that he jokingly reers to as “a jazz ront end with a creamy classical center.” Compared to some o the composers he admires, the pieces on Vista Accumulation are downright bitesized: Feldman’s Second String Quartet lasts about six hours, while John Cage’s “As Slow as Possible” is currently 14 years into a 639-year perormance at a church in Germany. But it isn’t simply a sense o scale that Mitchell has gleaned rom his avant-classical in�uences. His pieces combine the ormal rigor and structural complexity o those composers with the dynamic sweep and improvisational acuity o his jazz inspirations, a long list o mold-breakers that includes im Berne, Cecil aylor, Steve Coleman
S R E G O R N H O J
and Anthony Braxton. Troughout the new album, those concepts are held in a taut and electric tension that can be challenging but rewards the time spent to pierce its mysteries. Te richness o the writing is only deepened by the playing o Mitchell’s perceptive quartet: Chris Speed (tenor saxophone and clarinet), Chris ordini (bass) and Dan Weiss (drums). “I eel ree knowing that I can ollow through on my indulgence as I’m writing because they’re going to be able to handle it,” Mitchell says o the quartet. “It becomes about recognizing which o my musical imaginings, as they occur in my head, would be interesting i they interacted with those guys. It can be hard to �nd a band that’s willing to not just play music that’s pretty in volved but go the extra mile and throw themselves into it ully, and I think that’s what these guys have done.” In addition to his quartet, Mitchell leads Normal Remarkable Persons, originally a quintet with Berne, trumpeter Herb Robertson, saxophonist ravis LaPlante and drummer yshawn Sorey. Te ensemble expanded or a threenight residency at Brooklyn’s IBeam in early 2014 with the addition o drummers Ches Smith and Dan Weiss, who doubled on vibes and tablas, respectively, while Sorey added trombone to his arsenal. (Shane Endsley substituted or Robertson.) Te band’s three hour-long sets were recorded, and Mitchell hopes to release the results in the near uture. He also co-leads Snark Horse with his girlriend, drummer Kate Gentile, with a revolving membership including saxophonist Jon Irabagon, guitarist Ava Mendoza, trombonist Ben Gerstein and bassist Kim Cass. As a sideman, Mitchell can be ound in several o the most inventive and invigorating ensembles in modern jazz. He’s eatured on new releases by Weiss and saxophonist Darius Jones and is a member o im Berne’s Snakeoil, Rudresh Mahanthappa’s Bird Calls, John Hollenbeck’s Large Ensemble and the latest incarnation o the Dave Douglas Quintet. Tat last band is the most surprising; while Douglas is no stranger to adventurous experimentation, his music or the quintet has ocused on his more lyrical side. Inspired by the loss o his
← Matt Mitchell
mother and brother, the trumpeter has explored olk and spiritual melodies. “It took me a while to �gure out how to be mysel in that band,” Mitchell admits. “Not just to be mysel, but to be mysel in such a way that’s air to the music or everyone else in the band. We can go rom a tune that’s descended rom Filles de Kilimanjaro and then pull back into the spiritual thing. For me, the biggest challenge is how to play over something that’s church-y or gospel-y, and not do it in a Keith Jarrett way.” Mitchell cites Jarrett, especially the pianist’s American Quartet, as one o his touchstones. “I had to work him out o my system or a long time,” he says. While he had to put Jarrett’s recordings on the shel, he’s had no shortage o musical input. He grew up in Exton, Pa., listening to his parents’ rock records. While in high school he attended the Eastman School o Music’s summer jazz camp, where his neighbor in the dorms was Jason Moran. Mitchell went on to study at Indiana University and at Eastman, moving to Philadelphia in 1999 afer a single year in New York City, during which he landed an incongruous job playing on a dinner cruise ship. Mitchell
remained in Philly as his career took off, only recently moving back to NYC. In the length o its pieces i not its density o ideas, Vista Accumulation stands in stark contrast to Mitchell’s 2013 debut, Fiction. Tat album’s 15 pieces were written as etudes, each one setting the pianist a speci�c challenge in his daily practice, then reimagined as duet pieces or Mitchell and drummer/vibraphonist Ches Smith. When we spoke about that album at the time o its release, Mitchell reerred to the music as “napalm nuggets o psychotic-ness,” acknowledging the daunting complexity o these relative miniatures. But he’s quick to dismiss the of-proessed attitude that intellect and eeling are mutually exclusive. “Te notion that music that’s complex on a certain musical or technical level is thereore not emotional is accepted by a lot o people, but I undamentally don’t understand why that’s the case,” he says. “Music that’s complex always elicits an emotional reaction in me—all music does. o me, Feldman is incredibly emotional music, it’s just that the emotions are not so obvious. I think that’s why music and poetry exist, to describe those things.” SHAUN BRADY
J A Z Z T I M E S . C O M
19
OPENING CHORUS
Hearsay
Here Comes Thelonious NRBQ’S TERRY ADAMS FULFILLS A LIFELONG DREAM
B
y the time erry Adams had reached his late teens, even beore he ormed NRBQ—the beloved, i not particularly world-amous, hybrid-rock band he still ronts today—the keyboardist had already harbored an obsession with Telonious Monk or several years. So ofen did he turn up at Monk’s gigs, absorbing and studying his hero’s every move, that eventually Monk’s greatest champion, “the Baroness,” Pannonica de Koenigswarter, chatted him up. “She said, ‘From now on you’re on my guest list. Just tell me when,’” says Adams, who met Monk himsel on numerous occasions. “He’d be in such a great mood sometimes. I remember him sort o teasing me. He came over and said, ‘You know what’s wrong with the world today?’ I said, ‘What?’ He said, ‘eenagers are crazy!’” It’s taken him more than 45 years, but the once-crazy teen rom Louisville, Ky., has �nally voiced his debt to Monk via alk Telonious (Clang!), a mostly live album eaturing Adams, on various keys, backed by current members o NRBQ and other musicians. o his longtime, devoted ans, Adams’ decision to cut an album-length tribute to Monk should not come as a surprise. Although the acronym initially stood or New Rhythm and Blues Quartet, since day one NRBQ has been about eclecticism, their repertoire vacuuming up tunes and elements rom the worlds o honky-tonk country, pure pop, roadhouse blues and the various corners o jazz. Te band’s 1969 debut album, two years afer their ormation, opened with an Eddie Cochran rockabilly hit and then went directly to Sun Ra’s “Rocket Number 9.” Tat anything-goes philosophy has never wavered. “It would seem dishonest to me to sign up or one style o music; I’d bore mysel,” says Adams, the only original member still with NRBQ. “Tis is what’s right or me, and that’s what makes the players in the band special, that they’re guys who think like me. When I was a kid and I’d play records, I would play Link Wray and then I’d play Monk.” Now 67, Adams �rst heard Monk at 14 and began painstakingly transcribing his recordings. Trough the years, as he �gured out more o the intricacies and nuances embedded in Monk’s work, Adams would return to those transcriptions to edit. “Te Q” has, on occasion, tossed a Monk tune into its set, but alk Telonious marks the �rst time Adams has devoted an entire project to him. And he nails it. Afer all, like Monk Adams employs a quirkily physical approach to his instrument and an unorthodox relationship with melody and rhythm. For the one-night-only gig, recorded at the Flynn Space in Burlington, Vt., in April 2012, 20
JAZZTIMES
•
J A N U A R Y / F E B R U A R Y 2 0 1 6
Adams assembled a group o adaptable, virtuosic players and went in without expectations. “It was hard to put all that music together in that short a time and get out there,” he says. “I had the edge because I’ve been thinking about this or a lietime. But this was pretty new to them. I didn’t want to do so much straight jazz because we’re not really a jazz band, though we like to shoot at it.” Tey more than shoot at it; they breathe new lie into it. On the album’s opening number, “Re�ections,” Adams utilizes a synthesized pipe organ, accompanied by current NRBQ drummer Conrad Choucroun and Pete oigo, one o two bassists on the gig. (Te other is Pete Donnelly, o the band the Figgs.) Saxophonist Klem Klimek, multi-instrumentalist Jim Hoke and present-day NRBQ guitarist Scott Ligon �ll out the band or the show. On one alk Teloni ous track, “Monk’s Mood,” Hoke—who, along with oigo, also played on 1995’s errible, an earlier Adams jazz release that eatured Marshall Allen o Sun Ra’s Arkestra and trombonist Roswell Rudd—provides both chromatic harmonica and pedal-steel guitar. “Ask Me Now” eatures only Adams on piano and Ligon on Hammond organ. Te album’s �nale, “Ruby, My Dear,” is its sole studio track, eaturing the core band augmented by violins, French horn, harp and percussion. “Te arrangements are de�nitely my own,” Adams says. “In ‘Hornin’ In,’ I was thinking what it would sound like i Chuck Berry did it. ‘In Walked Bud,’ I’ve done that arrangement over the years, which uses no syncopation. Some o it goes to places the band hadn’t heard me play. Everybody [in the band] was on the edge o their seat right up until the time we did it. I can hear the reshness o it and the edge.” Although he took liberties with the arrangements, Adams was careul to maintain the essence o what made Monk the original that he was. “I know a lot o jazz musicians play Monk’s music [where] it seems as soon as the melody is over with, it can be anything,” he says. “I eel that an entire piece—improvisations, solos and all—should be coming rom the same place. It should sound like Monk.” More than a particular sound though, Adams says, “What I got rom Monk is that it’s really about endurance and not compromising. Tat’s what anybody gets out o him, i you think about it—believing in yoursel and being yoursel. I’ve had that with me a long time, and I’ve got to credit him with part o that.” And what would Telonious Monk have taken away rom alk Telonious? “Oh, I’m pretty sure he likes it,” Adams says. JEFF TAMARKIN
L L E D N A Y E V A D
Farewells Songwriter, producer, arranger and musician Allen Toussaint , one of the most in�uential artists in New Orleans music for more than 50 years, died Nov. 9, in Madrid, Spain. Toussaint suffered a heart attack following a performance at that city’s Teatro Lara; although he was brie�y revived, he died en route to Jimenez Diaz Foundation Hospital. He was 77. Toussaint’s compositions were covered by hundreds of artists. He was also an in-demand producer, arranger and session pianist, and recorded under his own name beginning in the late 1950s.
Gene Norman,
a jazz club owner and disc jockey who launched and operated the popular GNP Crescendo independent record label, died at his home in Hollywood, Calif., on Nov. 2. He was 93. Pianist, composer and bandleader Lee Shaw , who studied with Oscar Peterson, taught piano to John Medeski and worked with Dexter Gordon, Thad Jones, Chico Hamilton, Pepper Adams, Zoot Sims, Al Cohn and others, died Oct. 25 in Albany, N.Y. Shaw had suffered from lung disease. She was 89.
News from JazzTimes.com �
The Monterey Jazz Festival has announced that drummer, composer and producer Terri Lyne Carrington will be the festival’s 2016 artist-inresidence. She will work year-round with young musicians and established artists in performances and clinics at the Next Generation Jazz Festival, Summer Jazz Camp and Monterey Jazz Festival. �
The ASCAP Foundation and the Newport Jazz Festival have announced a new collaborative effort to bene�t rising jazz talent. The festival has agreed to feature a performance this year by one of the recipients of the ASCAP Foundation Herb Alpert Young Jazz Composer Awards. �
The Jazz Connect Conference has named Brice Rosenbloom as the second recipient of the Bruce Lundvall Visionary Award, created in 2014 in honor of the esteemed jazz record executive who was a champi on and advocate for so many jazz artists over the last four decades. The annual award recognizes an individual who has demonstrated extraordinary leadership and vision in expanding the audience for jazz. Rosenbloom will be honored at the conference, held Jan. 14-15 at Saint Peter’s Church in New York City. �
Snarky Puppy has entered into a partnership with their �rst-ever major-label home, Universal Music Classics. The arrangement sees UMC as the exclusive distributor of all releases under GroundUP Records, the label owned and operated by Michael League, the band’s leader, bassist, composer and arranger. �
Rudresh Mahanthappa, the 44-year-old alto saxophonist and composer, has been named one of 37 new United States Artists Fellows, an honor that comes with an unrestricted $50,000 cash award. USA is one of the largest grant-making organizations in the country.
OPENING CHORUS
Before & After By Aidan Levy
← O’Farrill in Havana in June 2013
ARTURO O’FARRILL ONE CONVERSATION ON ANOTHER
W
ith Cuba: Te Conversation Continues (Motéma), Arturo O’Farrill and the Aro Latin Jazz Orchestra continue a dialogue that began in 2014 with the Grammy-winning Te Offense of the Drum, but dates at least as ar back as 1947, when Chano Pozo and Dizzy Gillespie collaborated on “Manteca,” requently cited as the earliest Latin-jazz standard. O’Farrill’s release, recorded in Havana with Cuban and American artists, coincided with the normalization o relations between the U.S. and Cuba, beginning an ongoing discourse, both p olitically and culturally, toward what Gillespie envisioned as “universal music.” O’Farrill, 55, travels to Cuba regularly, and is currently composing a large-scale concerto that will eature Dr. Cornel West as a spoken-word soloist with the Aro Latin Jazz Orchestra. (Te work is scheduled to premiere in the spring at the Apollo Teater.) He is also planning a recording with his ellow pianist-bandleader Chucho Valdés that will unction as a tribute to their legendary athers, Chico and Bebo, respectively, and their in�uence on Aro-Cuban jazz. “You can understand why I get weird when people say, ‘Jazz is an American invention,’” O’Farrill says, sitting down in New York or his �rst Beore & Afer session. “You could spend an afernoon listening to 1930s Cuban piano, and it would not be enough. It just validates my whole rant and rave about how the thing we call jazz is really pan-American, pan-Arican. It’s a diasporic music.”
1. Orquesta Casino de la Playa “Dolor Cobarde” (rom Rumba Rumbero, Musica Latina Nostalgia). José Peña, trombone; Walredo de los Reyes, trumpet; 22
JAZZTIMES
•
J A N U A R Y / F E B R U A R Y 2 0 1 6
Liduvino Pereira, clarinet; Evelio González, alto saxophone; Alredo Saenz, violin; Ernesto de la Vega, guitar; Anselmo Sacasas, piano; Miguelito Valdés, bongos, congas, vocals. Recorded in 1937. BEFORE: Is that Benny Moré? Tat’s so great. It’s such a unny
sound. It almost doesn’t sound like a trumpet. It’s so Cuban. It’s either Peruchín or Bola de Nieve. It’s not? Wow. It’s kind o raw. And it’s de�nitely not Bebo. AFT ER: Tat’s really obscure. Te
only thing I even came close to was Bola de Nieve. Tis is beautiul. Te musicologist Ned Sublette, who wrote the seminal Cuba and Its Music , helped develop this playlist. Tis is apparently a very in�uential piano solo. And Sacasas actually had to adjust the mic to pick up the piano.
Te piano is very strong and very loud, which is rare or recordings rom 1937. It’s pretty amazing. Tat’s a real �nd. I was going to say Miguelito Valdés. But you know what, it’s a young Miguelito Valdés, because later on in his career, he really is a baritone. But what gave me the sense that it was Miguelito Valdés was the phrasing, because Miguelito has a �uid sound. Later on, i you listen to him sing, it’s very �uid. He’s also kind o a scat singer. He does the same thing Bobby Carcassés does with scat, using Yoruban words, very redolent o scat to me. Beautiul track.
N E T R A G D I V A D
2. Arsenio Rodríguez
AFTER: Tis is completely crazy. I should know this tune. ata Güines,
“Sandunguera (Guaracha)” (from Te Music of Cuba, Arsenio Rodríguez, Vol. 1: Recordings 1944-1946 , Black Round). Rodríguez, tres; Benetín Bustillo, Rubén Calzado, trumpets; Adolfo “Panacea” O’Reilly, piano; Nilo Alfonso, bass; Israel “Kiki” Rodríguez, tumbadora; Antolín “Papa Kila” Suárez, bongos; Marcelino Guerra, vocals, guitar; Pedro Luís Sarracent, vocals, clave; Miguelíto Cuní, vocals, maracas. Recorded in 1943.
Chico and Peruchín. You are reaching. Tat is inside.
BEFORE: Tat’s Bola
BEFORE: I’m going to say Gonzalo [Rubalcaba].
de Nieve. It’s not? Is this rio Matamoros? It sounds like a young Chocolate [Alfredo “Chocolate” Armenteros] on trumpet. AFTER: Tat was recorded there?
In Havana in 1943.
It’s beautiful. You can hardly hear the guitar. Tat’s really obscure. I’m going to go home and study these people. For me this is all education.
3. Miguelito Cuní con el Conjunto Chappottín “Pa’ Bachatear” (from Miguelito Cuní con el Conjunto Chappottín, Caribe Music Dos). Cuní, vocals; Cecilio Cerviz, Félix Chappottín, Pepín Vaillant, Aquilino Valdés, trumpets; Arturo Harvey, tres; Luis “Lilí” Martínez Griñán, piano; Sabino Peñalver, bass; Antolín “Papa Kila” Suárez, bongos; Félix Alfonso, congas; Udalberto Fresneda, vocals, rhythm guitar; René Álvarez, Conrado Cepero, vocals. Recorded between 1951 and 1953. BEFORE: Tey say the name of the pianist. Lilí Martínez has a really
distinct style. Tat’s why those other two pianists could not have been him. In some ways, Martínez is the real creator of modern Afro-Cuban piano playing, especially because he’s playing these octaves and tenths. Tere’s no one else who did that, and he was an extraordinary technician. Tat’s beautiful. Te exact recording date is unknown. For many pre-Castro records, that information seems to have been lost.
Of course.
4. Chico O’Farrill and His All-Stars Cubano
“Descarga Número Uno” (from “Descarga Número Uno/Descarga Número Dos,” Gema). O’Farrill, Alejandro Vivar, trumpets; Delahoza, trombone; Richard Egües, �ute; Osvaldo Peñalver, alto saxophone; Emilio Peñalver, tenor saxophone; Arturo Harvey, tres; Pedro “Peruchín” Jústiz, piano; Israel “Cachao” López, bass; ata Güines, congas; Walfredito de los Reyes, pailas. Recorded in 1957. BEFORE: I’m going to take a guess on the sax player. Is it Paquito
[D’Rivera]? Is that Bebo? It’s great. Is this Chico’s piece? I’m trying to �gure out who played piano. Is it Bebo? Peruchín! And Chico’s arrangement?
5. Rubén González “Fabiando” (from Rubén González , Areito, rereleased as Indestructible, EGREM). González, piano; Fabían García, bass; Roberto García, bongos; Guillermo García, congas; Gustavo amayo, guiro. Recorded in 1977.
AFTER: I should have known that.
Tis is a recording of a rhythm section González played with in Enrique Jorrín’s band, rereleased when the Buena Vista Social Club became popular.
I didn’t think it was Rubén because it sounds so young. It sounds quite adept and fast and really choppy and youthful, and the Rubén I’m familiar with is older and much more languid and reserved. It’s really nice to hear him play like this. It proves that we were all young once.
6. Irakere “Cuba Libre” (from Cuba Libre, JVC). Arturo Sandoval, Jorge Varona, trumpets; German Velazco Urdeliz, alto saxophone; Carlos Averhoff, tenor saxophone; Carlos Emilio Morales, guitar; Chucho Valdés, piano; Carlos Puerto, bass; Enrique Plá, drums; Jorge Alfonso, Oscar Valdés, percussion. Recorded in 1980. BEFORE: Tis sounds familiar. It’s Irakere, for sure. It’s Chucho. I know
I’ve heard this. I’m not sure where this is from. It’s not “Misa Negra,” is it? I even played this for a class. AFTER: Tere was an era when recordings all had that sound. I don’t
know if it was a movement away from reverb or toward it, but they have a very speci�c sound. I always feel like with Chucho, there’s a lot of stuff that is under his �ngers, and every now and then he goes dangerously close to losing control of what he’s playing, and he does it anyway. Listening to him get perilously close to losing control is so beautiful, because he never really does. He has such mastery over the instrument, it’s almost like he lets go of it and stops controlling it, but he still has so much keyboard prowess. Te thing I love about Chucho is that he leaves the language. He leaves the Romantic pianistic language and the Cuban language and just goes free. It’s almost like Cecil aylor. Like that stuff there, he’s not controlling it. Tat’s just his �ngers, but it’s still so beautifully done. And then he goes back to the language. He goes back to, like, Debussy. You know what I mean? It’s amazing. Nobody plays like Chucho. People try to, but they should know better.
7. Ernán López-Nussa “Countdown” (from Delirium, BMG). López-Nussa, piano; Jorge Perez, bass; Ramsés Rodriguez, drums; Inor Sotolongo, percussion. Recorded in 1998. BEFORE: Gonzalo? Is this recorded in Cuba? It’s not Gonzalo, and it’s
not Chucho. J A Z Z T I M E S . C O M
23
OPENING CHORUS “THERE’S A THING THAT’S EXPECTED OF CUBAN PIANISTS, WHEN JAZZ TOURISTS GO TO CUBA. THEY WANT TO HEAR THE HISTRIONICS AND THE VIRTUOSITY, AND BECAUSE IT’S EASY FOR THE PIANISTS TO DO IT, THEY’LL DO IT, BUT IT’S EXCESSIVE TO SOME DEGREE. IT DOESN’T ALWAYS MAKE MUSICAL SENSE.”
Before & After Omar González, bass; Ramsés Rodriguez, drums; Joel Hierrezuelo, percussion. Recorded in 2008. BEFORE: Is that Alredito? AFTER: Because o the nature o the track, I was going to say it was
Vince Guaraldi. It has a Vince Guaraldi vibe, and to me, sometimes as Cubans we revert to that language as i it’s the only place that we come rom, but it’s just not the only thing we can do. It’s got a little touch o Keith Jarrett. It’s great.
11. David Virelles AFTER: I know Ernán. He’s an amazing pianist. Te only time I’ve ever
heard him was in Cuba. His nephew, Harold López-Nussa, was just at the Blue Note or two nights, which is great.
8. Gonzalo Rubalcaba Trio “El Manicero (Te Peanut Vendor)” (rom Supernova, Blue Note). Rubalcaba, piano; Carlos Henriquez, bass; Ignacio Berroa, drums; Robert Quintero, congas; Luis Quintero, timbales, guiro. Recorded in 2000. BEFORE: Is this recorded in Spain? It sounds like Bebo, but I know it’s not.
I’ve heard this. Is it a young person? Is it Alfredito [Alfredo Rodríguez]? Is it Gonzalo? Gonzalito, but this is Gonzalo before he became Gonzalo. It’s funny, I saw a video yesterday of Gonzalo playing “Autumn Leaves” at the Mount Fuji Jazz Festival, and I compare Gonzalo from that era with what he plays like now, 15 or 16 years later. Gonzalo to me is a very interesting pianist. He easily has the chops of Chucho or anybody, but he’s not given to histrionics. Even when he is given to histrionics, he’s a cerebral pianist. I was going to say Ignacio, because there’s nobody who plays the drums like Ignacio. I remember this record with Carlos Henriquez. It’s a beautiful record.
“Sueño” (rom Motion, Justin ime). Virelles, piano; Luis Deniz, alto saxophone; Devon Henderson, bass; Ethan Ardelli, drums; Luis Orbegoso, congas, batajones, cajón. Recorded in 2006. BEFORE: Is it David Virelles? He’s unique. David Virelles is really
outstanding, and has really distinguished himsel as someone who has used the language o tradition and modernized it to where it’s come to be in the world o Steve Coleman. For me, he’s probably one o the most interesting musicians out there period, let alone Cuban pianists. He’s also one o the ew Cuban pianists who’s not scared o simplicity. He doesn’t show it on this track, but there are things o his that have space and reedom; this is not space and reedom. He’s bad. My hat is off to him. He’s a marvelous musician. It’s lovely and it’s modern, and it comes rom tradition and does everything that I think that jazz should. It’s got one oot in the next world, but it’s �rmly planted on terra �rma.
12. Fabian Almazan Trio “Sin Alma” (rom Personalities, Biophilia). Almazan, piano; Linda Oh, bass; Henry Cole, drums. Recorded in 2010. BEFORE: Tat’s Gonzalo. Roberto Carcassés?
9. Elio Villafranca/Arturo Stable “A Las Millas” (rom Dos Y Mas, Motéma). Villaranca, piano; Stable, percussion. Recorded in 2010-2011. BEFORE: Wow. Is it Elio? It sounds like Elio’s touch. He has a very �ne
use o the lef hand. Arturo Stable is a bad cat. [Tis music] represents the younger cadre o Cuban pianists, but Elio is in some ways more inormed by Aro-Cuban-ness than by virtuosity. He plays brilliantly, but it’s much less about the piano and much more about music. And all those older guys, starting with Peruchín, were really about the piano’s Romantic repertoire, and the great histrionic stuff that they learned. Te conser vatories in Cuba were very Russian, so they all played the hell out o the piano. Tey all come rom Rachmaninoff and Liszt. I’ve sat with Chucho and we’ve played Liszt or each other, so it’s part o the language. Tese younger guys did that and didn’t stay there. Tey’re much more in touch with their Aro-Cuban roots. [Elio is] a antastic musician, and also more inormed by contemporary jazz pianists. Tat harmonic language is much more a part o their vocabulary than it is or the older generation.
10. Roberto Fonseca “Lo Que Me Hace Vivir” (rom Akokan, Justin ime). Fonseca, piano; 24
JAZZTIMES
•
J A N U A R Y / F E B R U A R Y 2 0 1 6
AFTER: I’m not amiliar with his work. I know that he’s an interest-
ing pianist. Tat’s a great trio. I have to get hip to Fabian. Tis is de�nitely not your granddaddy’s Aro-Cuban, or even your granddaddy’s Cuban jazz. I like it because he’s got a beautiul, light touch. I you played this or a hundred people, they wouldn’t think this was a Cuban pianist. Tey wouldn’t think that—it’s just so rooted in modern jazz. I guess that’s why I like it. It’s more like the music I’m likely to make with a piano trio. It’s very light and airy.
13. The Pedrito Martínez Group “Conciencia” (rom Te Pedrito Martínez Group, Motéma). Martínez, percussion, vocals; Ariacne rujillo, piano, vocals; Alvaro Benavides, electric bass, vocals; Jhair Sala, percussion, vocals. Recorded in 2013. BEFORE: Tis is Pedrito. And Ariacne’s abulous. I’ve heard this.
She’s amazing. Pedrito’s just incredible. When people think o Pedrito, they think o real olklorically grounded music, but in act he’s a modernist and she’s a modernist. It’s so predicated on the groove, people tend to bring it to a very undamental place, but it’s not. She’s a orward-looking musician.
14. Jorge Luis Pacheco “Con el Pache Me Voy” (rom My Favorite Temes, pachecopiano. com). Pacheco, piano; David Faya Cordova, bass; Ivan Llanes, drums; Otto Santana Selis, percussion. Recorded in 2014. BEFORE: It’s not Roberto
Carcassés? Alexis Bosch?
AFTER: I know Jorge Luis Pacheco. Tis does not sound like him.
Let me hear the solo. He’s a very �ne musician. He’s given to a lot o virtuosic display that is such a trademark o Cuban pianists. I’ve known him or a long time. Let me listen to this. I guarantee he’ll break into 32nd notes. Tere it is! It’s unny; he’s a really scary pianist. I think there’s a maturation process that he’s going to go through, because technically he’s beyond gifed. It’s a hard road in a way, because Cuba has got so many great pianists that to distinguish yoursel as a pianist you have to be technically spectacular, and Jorge is. He’s phenomenal. Tere’s a thing that’s expected o Cuban pianists, when jazz tourists go to Cuba. Tey want to hear the histrionics and the virtuosity, and because it’s easy or the pianists to do it they’ll do it, but it’s excessive to some degree. It doesn’t always make musical sense, but it’s so impressive. For instance, some o my avorite Chucho is when he’s really just playing Cuban music without all the bells and whistles. It’s the same with Pacheco. When he plays timba, syncopation and groove, that’s impressive to me. Tirtysecond notes, not so much. Tat was nice, though.
15. Alfredo Rodríguez “Guantanamera” (rom Te Invasion Parade, Mack Avenue). Rodríguez, piano; Peter Slavov, bass; Henry Cole, drums. Recorded in 2014. BEFORE: Tat’s pretty. Tat’s good piano playing, too. Tat’s
control. Wow, that’s really good. Tat’s great. I have no clue, but it’s brilliant. AFTER: Is it Alredito? I’m really amiliar with Alredo, and [his
playing is] technically adept but there’s a sense o control about it. Obviously, [speaking o] the younger crew, all these pianists are phenomenal, but this is not just histrionics or histrionics’ sake. Tere’s a musical reason and there’s a constructed reason. Tere’s an architectural arc to why he plays like he does. Also, it’s inormed by jazz. It’s shaped by Cuba but inormed by contemporary jazz pianists. Oh, there go the histrionics. Eventually they come out, don’t they? It’s like trying to hide your crazy; you can’t hide it or too long. Tat’s also typical o Cuban pianism. A lot o people are mysti�ed by that, that need to overplay and overwrite, but I think they’re not understanding the idea that it’s an expressive orm as valid as playing any way. An entry point into music can be your technique, can be your culture, can be the genre that you’re surrounded by, can be your musical upbringing. Tey are all valid. And I think the thing that marks Cuban pianists is the act that they’re trained very well. Tey’re extraordinary musicians and extraordinary pianists, and I like when they take the limits o their extraordinary pianism and their Aroolkloric roots and understanding, and then join in the conversation with contemporary jazz pianists. Tat’s kind o the best o all possible worlds. JT
OPENING CHORUS By Ted Panken
GEORGE CABLES OWNER OF AN IDENTITY, WITH HINTS OF HERBIE
T
he notion that George Cables has received insufficient acclaim during his hal-century as a proessional jazz musician gave bassist Stanley Clarke pause. “It depends what view you’re looking at,” Clarke suggested at Manhattan’s Blue Note in November, a day afer reuniting with Cables and drummer Lenny White—once the rhythm section or Joe Henderson—or the �rst time in 44 years. “Younger people, normal people who don’t listen to jazz or the evolution o jazz, may not know who George is. I’ve played with a lot o piano players— Herbie Hancock, McCoy yner, Chick Corea—and George is right there. His touch and vocabulary always tell me it’s him. He always sounded like himsel.” On the bandstand an hour later, the trio received raucous applause rom a packed house consisting primarily o baby-boomer-and-older “normals” who barely responded when the emcee announced Cables’ name. Tat changed afer Cables, undaunted by the arena-level bass ampli�cation, expertly addressed Clarke’s “3 Wrong Notes.” On that barely disguised contraact o Charlie Parker’s “Con�rmation,” he sculpted a melodic path through the changes at race-car velocity, interpolating his own voicings and building an arc that climaxed with rhythmically assured 16- and 32-bar exchanges with White. During “On Green Dolphin Street,” which proceeded to a “Poinciana” beat, Cables showcased the �nely calibrated touch and harmonic savoir faire Clarke had reerenced. He reharmonized Henderson’s “Recorda-Me,” on which he toyed catlike 26
JAZZTIMES
•
J A N U A R Y / F E B R U A R Y 2 0 1 6
Overdue Ovation with the time, generating multiple choruses o resh ideas. Each declamation provoked proportionally louder applause, but you could hear a pin drop afer Cables completed his solo on “Helen’s Song,” an elegant, tender tone poem or his late soulmate, Helen Wray, that he �rst recorded in 1984, on a trio album with Clarke and drummer Peter Erskine or the Japanese market. In sum, Cables, who turned 71 our days afer the gig, displayed the same qualities that consistently inuse his 30-plus recordings as a leader. Te most recent o those is 2015’s In Good Company , the third date he’s completed or HighNote since he endured and recuperated rom a simultaneous liver and kidney transplant procedure in the all o 2007. Like its predecessors, Icons and In�uences and My Muse, In Good Company is a swinging, probing, endlessly melodic trio recital, on which bassist Essiet Essiet and drummer Victor Lewis navigate repertoire by Ellington/Strayhorn, John Hicks and Kenny Barron. Further corroborating Cables’ stature are dozens o highpro�le sideman recordings during the ’70s and ’80s with Sonny Rollins, Max Roach, Roy Haynes, Woody Shaw, Freddie Hubbard, Bobby Hutcherson, Dexter Gordon, Art Pepper, Philly Joe Jones and more. Ten, too, Cables has generated several dozen compositions that hold pride o place in the late 20th-century jazz canon. In recent years, Cables has heard his music illuminated as a member o the Cookers, the popular hard- and postbop all-star band organized by trumpeter David Weiss. Cables’ compositions, as the singer Sarah Elizabeth Charles puts it, “are honest and emotionally based as opposed to being overly intellectual, but at the same time, because o his knowledge as a player, come out in a way that’s subtly complex.” Charles recently collaborated with Cables on a project that will constitute his next HighNote album, due out in 2016. “Over the years people told me that my songs have strong potential or lyrics, and asked i they could write them,” Cables said in late October, at the New School in New York. (Tere he directs the Herbie Hancock Ensemble, in which Charles enrolled in 2011.) “Playing with Dexter reinorced my attention to lyrics, and as I got older and more mature they appealed to me more.” Te rapport between Cables and Charles strengthened when he heard her variations on Hancock’s “Drifin’,” rom Takin’ Off . Charles asked the young singer to collaborate on arrangements eaturing Janice Jarrett’s lyrics, written several decades ago, to his songs “I old You So,” “Blue Nights,” “Love Song,” “Ebony Moonbeams” and “Tink on Me,” among others. “George had boxes and olders and briecases �lled with handwritten charts that he played or me,” Charles recalls o their rehearsals. “He’d tell me the stories behind the songs, what inspired him to write them. He doesn’t write to impress. Years ago, he probably asked himsel,
Recommended Listening: Joe Henderson Quintet At the Lighthouse: “If You’re Not Part of the Solution, You’re Part of the Problem” (Milestone, 1970) Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers Child’s Dance (Prestige, 1972) The Cookers Time and Time Again (Motéma, 2014) George Cables Icons & In�uences (HighNote, 2014) George Cables In Good Company (HighNote, 2015)
Y E L P E L W E R D N A . R
maybe consciously or subconsciously, ‘What kind o player am I going to be and what is my identity as a musician?’ He took time to clearly de�ne that.” Cables began that process in the St. Albans sec tion o Queens. He started classical lessons at 5 and came to jazz afer graduating rom New York’s High School o Perorming Arts. While studying at Mannes School o Music at the New School, he independently immersed himsel in jazz language via close study, �rst and oremost, o Wynton Kelly, Herbie Hancock and Telonious Monk. He put their lessons into practice at jam sessions in his basement, attended by the likes o poet and pianist Weldon Irvine, drummer Billy Hart and saxophonists Dave Liebman and Steve Grossman, and with the Jazz Samaritans, a neighborhood combo that included Grossman, drummer Billy Cobham and bassist Clint Houston. Not long afer Cobham entered the Army in 1965, White, still in his teens, assumed the drum chair. “I thought George was the closest thing I’d get to playing with Herbie,” White recalled. “We played through a lot o different kinds o music together. George is a bit older than me, and he was up on things. All his contemporaries showed up in his playing, but he was always George Cables.” By 1968, Cables, Houston and White were getting local work as a rhythm section, including a stand with Woody Shaw and Booker Ervin at a club in Westbury, on Long Island, and another with Jackie McLean at Slugs’, where, in 1969, Cables debuted with Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers. In May o that year, he cemented his position in the big leagues when Sonny Rollins took him to Los
Angeles or an extended engagement. “Te eeling o swing and the touch was there,” Cables recalled. “I adjusted, adapted and learned how to use my voice. You can touch the piano a million different ways and get a million different sounds. Herbie opened doors or me. I loved his sound, and I’d sit at the piano and try to �gure out his voicings. His Blue Note records and the ones with Miles were real lessons. One day I was listening to something rom Takin’ Off , and I realized that he got the voicing I was looking or with two or three notes in his lef hand. Tat was so helpul to me. “I tell students that piano is a percussion instrument,” he continued. “My eeling about jazz is in the drum—not just that instrument, but the drum inside you. I try to hook up with the drummer one way or the other, play cadences with the dr ummer, do something to get us to eel each other so we can lock up. My approach to comping is to play the chords rhythmically so you create motion; you’re going rom one place to another, not just standing in one place and then another.” He intends to keep moving orward. “Te music I play has been around or a while, and I’ve certainly been around a while, but I don’t eel like my music is old old,” Cables said. “It’s maybe not exactly what many contemporary people are playing, but so what? Some things I might not like today, but maybe tomorrow I will. Tat’s the great thing about jazz. Its arms are wide open, and it’s welcoming to whoever you are, wherever you’re rom. ‘You want to learn this? OK, learn this. But don’t do it the way I do it. Do it your way. Be yoursel.’” JT
Galen Weston plugged in b l u a z z p r o d u c t i o n s
DOWNLOAD THE CD FOR FREE AT GALENWESTON.ORG
“...beautifully written and warmly performed…" JazzTimes “A guitar tour de force...” The Midwest Record “...Weston straddles a myriad of styles on his auspicious debut as a leader...with conviction and rare facility. Definitely a talent deserving of wider recognition.” Bill Milkowski
Contributor to DownBeat and Jazziz
Photo by Roger Humbert
J A Z Z T I M E S . C O M
27
year in review ’15
50
TOP
We calculated our top 40 new releases and top 10 historical/reissue recordings of 2015 based on year-end lists from our writers. They were asked to choose the 10 best new releases and �ve best historical titles—i.e., albums and box sets consisting primarily of music recorded 10 or more years ago. To see each voter’s ballot, log on to JazzTimes.com. CDs and box sets released between Nov. 5, 2014 and Nov. 3, 2015 were eligible. Some albums may have slipped through the cracks, however, as of�cial release dates shifted or weren’t available. Editorial excerpts and original blurbs by Philip Booth, Shaun Brady, Nate Chinen, Thomas Conrad, Steve Greenlee, Evan Haga, Aidan Levy, Matt R. Lohr, Christopher Loudon, John Murph, Britt Robson and Mike Shanley.
1.
The Epic (BRAINFEEDER) If Kendrick Lamar’s o Pimp a Butter�y was the perfect soundtrack to the fury simmering underneath the Black Lives Matter movement, then Te Epic provided the ideal B-side. With crackling rhythms and large-scale orchestrations that recall David Van De Pitte’s charts on Marvin Gaye’s What’s Going On, Washington’s sweeping three-disc debut puts forth a multifaceted beauty and an optimistic yearning. His searing, cathartic tenor saxophone improvisations caught the zeitgeist of young black America like few other jazz albums in 2015. J.M.
K R A P E K I M
28
KAMASI WASHINGTON
JAZZTIMES
•
J A N U A R Y / F E B R U A R Y 2 0 1 6
CRITICS’PICKS 2. MARIA SCHNEIDER ORCHESTRA
6. JOHN SCOFIELD
THE THOMPSON FIELDS (ARTISTSHARE)
PAST PRESENT (IMPULSE!/UNIVERSALMUSICCLASSICS)
Schneider has always drawn inspiration from the natural world and from her Midwestern upbringing, and on Te TompsonFields, the �rst album from her acclaimed orchestra in eight years, those elementscome together in a vibrantly pastoral, movingly impressionistic portrait of a vanishing landscape. S.B.
Members of a jazz generation that came ofagein the woolly ’70s, Sco�eld and Joe Lovano share a code of articulate gruffness, along with a startling capacity for lyricism. And unlike some other magical frontline partnerships in jazz, they seem to converge on a nearlyegoless plane. … [Te]balance of compositions, all Sco�eld originals, captures the speci�c breadth of this band, hitting every important mark. N.C.
3. RUDRESH MAHANTHAPPA BIRD CALLS (ACT)
Te in�uence of Charlie Parker has been apparent in Mahanthappa’s style as much for the way he attacks a song with an uncompromising blend of rapid force and lyrical �ow as for any speci�cs in harmony or rhythm. Tis album puts Mahanthappa’s enriched Parker scholarship on ingenious display, using different elements of songs from Bird’s catalog as inspirations, interpolations, excerpts and deconstructions. B.R.
4. CÉCILE MCLORIN SALVANT FOR ONE TO LOVE (MACK AVENUE)
Sly and sensuous, partial to featherlight �ights yet solid as oak, Salvant is preternaturally brilliant at synthesizing a century’s worth of in�uences—shades of Bessie Smith, Billie Holiday and Blossom Dearie are evident— while remaining her mesmeric self. And in pianist Aaron Diehl she has an ideally simpatico partner. C.L.
5. JACK DEJOHNETTE MADE IN CHICAGO (ECM)
“I come back to that word ‘continuum’,” said AACM cofounder Muhal Richard Abrams, at a release event for this all-star reunion of his organization’s alumni. Here, the term indicates a tradition that pairs tortuous 10-minute-plus tracks with an elliptical economy of language. DeJohnette, a kind of honorary AACM member, is nominally the leader, but the landmark free-jazz institution, which celebrated 50 years throughout 2015, deserves the credit. A.L.
7. CHARLES LLOYD WILD MAN DANCE (BLUE NOTE)
A continuous performance stretched over six sections for morethan 70 minutes, Wild Man Dance features the serene vigilance of Lloyd’s arching extendednotes, which soar in repose like a raptor combing thehorizon.But hismost distinctivestroke of inspirationis augmenting classic quartetinstrumentation with the virtuosic Greek lyra of Sokratis Sinopoulos and the dulcimer-like cimbalom of Hungarian Miklós Lukács. B.R.
8. STEVE COLEMAN & THE COUNCIL OF BALANCE SYNOVIAL JOINTS (PI) Te centerpiecehere is the our-part Synovial Joints suite, a 17-plus-minute-long work o escalating intensity and remarkable density.In all, it’s probably Coleman’s most ambitious project since Genesis & the Opening of the Way . But Synovial Joints is lessstilted and more lyrical, owing perhapsto itsshorterlength and different instrumentation (more strings, ewer horns andpercussion). B.R.
9. VIJAY IYER TRIO BREAK STUFF (ECM)
Break Stuff is about creative destruction— as well as “the break,” a phrase Iyer uses to describe “a span of time in which to act.” With his longstanding trio featuring Stephan Crump and Marcus Gilmore, Iyer reimagines tunes by jazz giants; recasts pieces from his 2013 large-ensemble project, Open City ; reconstructs material from his 2012 Museum of Modern Art commission, Break Stuff ; and trots out new tunes. Tey all intertwine so perfectly. S.G.
10. ARTURO O’FARRILL & THE AFRO LATIN JAZZ ORCHESTRA CUBA: THE CONVERSATION CONTINUES (MOTÉMA)
apping American and Cuban musicians, including his orchestra and guests, O’Farrill employs typically forwardlooking arrangements to celebrate a shared heritage, imagining Dizzy Gillespie and Chano Pozo engaging in an ongoing musical mind meld. On the four-part Te Afro Latin Jazz Suite and elsewhere, Afro-Cuban and jazz textures collide creatively, mixing, blending and behaving like twins born to different mothers. P.B.
11. TIM BERNE’S SNAKEOIL YOU’VE BEEN WATCHING ME (ECM)
For his third ECM release, saxophonist im Berne keeps his writing as rugged and unpredictable as ever. Combining epics and short sketches, You’ve Been Watching Me features tranquil moments as well as a sea of foreboding melodies. On his �rst album with the group, guitarist Ryan Ferreira brings a wider sonic dimension to this knotty, arresting music. M.S.
12. HENRY THREADGILL ZOOID IN FOR A PENNY, IN FOR A POUND (PI)
Saxophonist/�utist Treadgill has deployed Zooid as his ensemble vehicle or 14 years now, longer than his marvelous, indelible tenures with Air and Very Very Circus. Tis group is the most schematic and controlled o the three, yet it continues to blossom in new and exciting ways thanks to Treadgill’s unremitting maturity as a composer and conceptualist. B.R.
13. THE BAD PLUS JOSHUA REDMAN THE BAD PLUS JOSHUA REDMAN (NONESUCH)
Tere are none o BP’s calling-card deconstructions o pop hits here, and you don’t miss them; the original music, including songs by all the participants, is excellent and wideranging and defly arranged, in a way that underscores both the trio’s affinity or composition and the resher, more noticeably improvised terrain that Redman’s presence opens up. More than anything, this works because o shared dynamic tact. E.H.
year in review ’15
CRITICS’ PICKS
14. JOSÉ JAMES YESTERDAY I HAD THE BLUES: THE MUSIC OF BILLIE HOLIDAY (BLUE NOTE)
Tis tribute is entirely absent of �ash—no grandstanding, no posturing, not an ounce of excess. It is, pure and simply, James digging deep inside each lyric, exposing its universal truths. Abetting such effective clarity is oneof the �nest rhythm sections imaginable— Jason Moran, John Patitucci and Eric Harland—shaping accompaniment that’s at once understated and bursting with insight. C.L.
18. REZ ABBASI
17. CHRIS
LIGHTCAP’S BIGMOUTH
ACOUSTICQUARTET
EPICENTER (CLEANFEED)
19. KARRIN ALLYSON MANY A NEWDAY:
INTENTS AND
KARRIN ALLYSON
PURPOSES (ENJA)
SINGS RODGERS & HAMMERSTEIN
(MOTÉMA)
15. CASSANDRA WILSON
COMING FORTH BY DAY (LEGACY)
Toughit’s dishearteningto realize that even an artist as eminent as Cassandra Wilson hadto turn to PledgeMusic to fundher centenary saluteto Billie Holiday, it’s bestto set aside such state-of-things ponderings and focuson theoutcome. Which is, in a word,exquisite. It’s alsoclever, insightful and, thoughutterly respectful to Holidayas source and touchstone, strikinglyoriginal. C.L.
25. DAVE DOUGLAS
26. MATT MITCHELL
QUINTET
27. KURT ELLING
VISTA ACCUMULATION
BRAZEN HEART
PASSION WORLD
(CONCORD JAZZ)
(PI)
(GREENLEAF)
16. TONY BENNETT & BILL CHARLAP THE SILVER LINING: THE SONGS OF JEROME KERN (RPM/COLUMBIA)
Te Silver Lining represents both business-as-usual for Bennett and, poignantly, a re�ection on his own musical past. It’s a low-muss, no-fuss production that could easily have been conceived as an antidote to the recent spectacle of his Lady Gaga collaboration, or at the very least a recalibration. N.C.
Miles at Newport in 1958
33. SARAH ELIZABETH
34. AARON DIEHL
INNER DIALOGUE
SPACE TIME CONTINUUM
CHARLES
35. DAVE STRYKER
(MACK AVENUE)
(TRUTH REVOLUTION)
MESSIN’ WITH MISTER T
(STRIKEZONE)
←
TOP 10 HISTORICAL RELEASES: ←
1. MILES
DAVIS
AT NEWPORT 1955-1975: THE BOOTLEG SERIES VOL. 4 (COLUMBIA/LEGACY)
From Duke Ellington’s debonair introduction at Davis’ Newport Jazz Festival debut in 1955 to James Mtume’s jangling prologue to a 1975 recording of “Mtume,” this four-disc box is de�ned by radical change. Like the iconoclastic tru mpeter himself, each disc charts another phase in an evolutionary chain. Te Great Quintets, Bitches Brew and later electric Miles are all well represented. A.L.
2. ERROLL
GARNER
THE COMPLETE CONCERT BY THE SEA
(OCTAVE/LEGACY)
H T I M S . L N O N R E V
Tere’s no argument that Te Complete Concert by the Sea is anything but perfect. Garner is ebullient, and Eddie Calhoun and Denzil Best bring their “A” game. … Te 11 new selections show that whittling the concert down by half must have been a herculean chore 60 years ago. Every tune is a gem. S.G.
TOP
20. ROBERT GLASPER COVERED: THE ROBERT GLASPER TRIO RECORDED LIVE AT CAPITOL STUDIOS (BLUE NOTE)
28. FRED HERSCH SOLO (PALMETTO)
21. MYRA MELFORD SNOWY EGRET (ENJA)
LINES OF COLOR: LIVE AT JAZZ STANDARD
LIVE AT THE VILLAGE VANGUARD
23. CHRIS POTTER UNDERGROUND ORCHESTRA IMAGINARY CITIES
(BLUE NOTE/ARTISTSHARE)
29. JAMES BRANDON LEWIS
31. CHRISTIAN SCOTT ATUNDE ADJUAH
CHILDREN OF
STRETCH MUSIC (INTRODUCING ELENA PINDER- HUGHES) (ROPEADOPE)
THE LIGHT (MACK AVENUE)
38. ANAT COHEN LUMINOSA (ANZIC)
37. JOE LOCKE LOVE IS A PENDULUM
24. MIKE REED’S PEOPLE PLACES & THINGS A NEW KIND OF DANCE (482)
(ECM)
30. PÉREZ PATITUCCI BLADE
DAYS OF FREEMAN (OKEH)
36. CHRISTIAN MCBRIDE TRIO
22. RYAN TRUESDELL’S GIL EVANS PROJECT
50
39. LONDON, MEADER, PRAMUK & ROSS ROYAL BOPSTERS PROJECT (MOTÉMA)
(MOTÉMA)
32. TODD MARCUS
JAZZ ORCHESTRA BLUES FOR TAHRIR
(HIPNOTIC)
40. DAFNIS PRIETO SEXTET TRIANGLES AND CIRCLES (DAFNISON)
(MACK AVENUE)
3. WES MONTGOMERY IN THE BEGINNING (RESONANCE) Te champion archivists at Resonance continue their excavation of previously unreleased Wes material with this vinyl or CD set featuring recordings from the late ’40s and’50s, some captured in the guitarist’s native Midwest and others produced by Quincy Jones in NewYork. Troughout, Montgomery’s formative �re and ebullience contrast the matte-toned master narrator he’d become later.And Pookie Johnson pleads hiscase as a footnoted sax hero. E.H.
6. DAVID S. WARE/ APOGEE BIRTH OF A BEING
(AUM FIDELITY)
4. KEITH JARRETT/
CHARLIE HADEN/PAUL MOTIAN HAMBURG ’72 (ECM)
SWINGIN’ ON THE KORNER: LIVE AT KEYSTONE KORNER (ELEMENTAL)
Found treasure. A German radio concert recorded in 1972, rescued rom the shadows o history. Who even remembered that, long beore his Standards rio, Jarrett had another trio or the ages. Jarrett, Charlie Haden and Paul Motian are young enough to soar in ree air, and old enough to trust each other, trust the moment and subside into bare, heartelt incursions on silence. T.C.
Te music collected here ignores the cataclysmic shifs in jazz since Garland’s days with Miles Davis; i told these recordings had been made in 1957 instead o 20 years later, one wouldn’t bat an eyelash. But when musicians with this much skill and harmonic synchronicity tackle even the most amiliar standards, magic can happen. Swingin’ is both deeply pleasurable and vital to the restoration o Garland’s legacy. M.L.
7. THE JOHN COLTRANE QUINTET FEATURING ERIC DOLPHY SO MANY THINGS: THE EUROPEAN TOUR 1961
(ACROBAT)
5. RED GARLAND TRIO
8. THELONIOUS MONK
9. ABBEY LINCOLN
THE COMPLETE RIVERSIDE RECORDINGS
(RIVERSIDE/CONCORD)
SOPHISTICATED ABBEY: LIVE AT THE KEYSTONE KORNER (HIGHNOTE)
10. DUKE ELLINGTON & HIS ORCHESTRA THE CONNY PLANK SESSION (GROENLAND) J A Z Z T I M E S . C O M
31
’15 year ear in i review e
READERS’POLL Voting conducted via an online survey posted at JazzTimes.com. Winners are bolded; runners-up are listed below in order of number of votes. Voters were asked to focus on releases, performances and achievements that occurred between November 2014 and November 2015. Diana Krall Wall�ower (Verve) Cassandra Wilson Coming Forth by Day (Legacy)
• •
BEST GROUPS Acoustic Small Group/Artist • • • •
� Best New Artist: Joey Alexander
BEST OF ALL
•
New Artist • • • •
Joey Alexander Kamasi Washington Alicia Olatuja KeyonHarrold
Artist of the Year • • • •
Gregory Porter ony Bennett Diana Krall SnarkyPuppy
•
Historical/Vault/ Reissue Release •
•
New Release •
•
Kamasi Washington Te Epic (Brainfeeder) Various Artists Revive Music Presents: Supreme Sonacy Vol. 1 (Revive/Blue Note)
Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra With Wynton Marsalis Live in Cuba (Blue Engine) Snarky Puppy & Metropole Orkest Sylva (Impulse!)
•
•
Miles Davis At Newport 1955-1975: Te Bootleg Series Vol. 4 (Columbia/ Legacy) TeloniousMonk Te Complete Riverside Recordings (Riverside/Concord) TeMilesDavisQuintet Featuring John Coltrane All of You: Te Last our 1960 (Acrobat) TeJohnColtrane Quintet Featuring Eric Dolphy So Many Tings: Te Euro pean our 1961 (Acrobat)
cal Release
� Artist of the Year: Gregory Porter
Tony Bennett & Bill Charlap Te Silver Lining: Te Songs of Jerome Kern (RPM/Columbia) Cécile McLorin Salvant For One to Love (Mack Avenue)
Christian McBride Trio Robert Glasperrio Wayne Shorter Quartet Bill Charlap rio
Electric/Jazz-Rock/ Contemporary Group/ Artist • •
• •
SnarkyPuppy RobertGlasper Experiment JonBatiste& Stay Human Herbie Hancock
Big Band/Large Ensemble •
• • •
Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra Maria Schneider Orchestra Christian McBride Big Band Clayton-Hamilton Jazz Orchestra
� The Best Acoustic Group, the Christian McBride Trio, at the Best Festival, Newport, in August
Voca • • • •
roup
Take 6 Te Four Freshmen Te Manhattan ransfer NewYork Voices
BEST OF THE JAZZ INDUSTRY Record Label • • • •
Blue Note ECM Concord MusicGroup Mack Avenue
Jazz Book of the Year •
•
BillieHoliday: Te Musician & the Myth by John Szwed (Viking) Zappa & Jazz: Did It Really Smell Funny, Frank? by Geoff Wills (roubador)
G N I L K C N A R F N E K Y B E D I R B C M , T S I T R A E H T F O Y S E T R U O C R E T R O P , K E E M A C C E B E R Y B R E D N A X E L A
BEST MUSICIANS
Trumpet • • • •
WyntonMarsalis Ambrose Akinmusire Terence Blanchard Roy Hargrove
Trombone • • • •
Trombone Shorty Wycliffe Gordon Steve Turre Robin Eubanks
Clarinet • • • •
� Best Clarinetist: Anat Cohen •
•
• Gil Scott-Heron: Pieces oa Man by Marcus Baram (St. Martin’s) Miles Davis’ Bitches Brew (33 1/3) by George Grella (Bloomsbury)
Radio Program •
• • •
Jazz Night inAmerica (NPR/WBGO/JALC) Radio Deluxe With John Pizzarelli Jazz AferHours With Jeff Hanley (PRI) Te Checkout (WBGO)
Podcast E T T I M R E L E N E I R B , T T E M M A C N I R H T A C , I L L E N G A S A T S U G U A : T F E L P O T M O R F E S I W K C O L C
• •
•
JazzTimesSpins & Riffs A Noise From the Deep With Dave Douglas Te Jazz Session With Jason Crane
Jazz Festival • • • •
Newport Jazz Festival Monterey Jazz Festival Detroit Jazz Festival Winter Jazzfest (NYC)
Jazz Club • • • •
Village Vanguard Blue Note (NYC) Dizzy’s Club Coca-Cola Smalls
Anat Cohen Paquito D’Rivera Ken Peplowski Don Byron
Tenor Saxophone • • • •
Wayne Shorter Branford Marsalis Chris Potter Joe Lovano
Alto Saxophone • • • •
Phil Woods Kenny Garrett GaryBartz David Sanborn
Soprano Saxophone • • • •
Wayne Shorter Branford Marsalis Chris Potter Kenny Garrett
Baritone Saxophone • • • •
James Carter GarySmulyan Claire Daly Joe Temperley
Flute • • • •
Hubert Laws Charles Lloyd Nicole Mitchell Lew Tabackin
Violin • • • •
Regina Carter Jean-LucPonty SaraCaswell Mark Feldman
Piano • • • •
Chick Corea Herbie Hancock Brad Mehldau Kenny Barron
Keyboards (Electric Piano, Synth) • • • •
Herbie Hancock Chick Corea Robert Glasper BIGYUKI
Organ • • • •
Joey DeFrancesco Dr. Lonnie Smith Larry Goldings John Medeski
Guitar • • • •
Pat Metheny George Benson Russell Malone Bill Frisell
Acoustic Bass • • • •
Christian McBride Ron Carter Esperanza Spalding Dave Holland
Electric Bass • • • •
Marcus Miller Esperanza Spalding Stanley Clarke Victor Wooten
Vibraphone • • • •
GaryBurton Stefon Harris Bobby Hutcherson Joe Locke
Percussion • • • •
� Best Electric Bassist:
Marcus Miller
Female Vocalist • • • •
Diana Krall Cécile McLorin Salvant Esperanza Spalding Dianne Reeves
Composer • • • •
Maria Schneider WayneShorter Terence Blanchard Chick Corea
Arranger • • • •
Wynton Marsalis Maria Schneider John Clayton Billy Childs
Miscellaneous Instruments [4 Winners]
• • • •
BélaFleck (banjo) BrandeeYounger (harp) Scott Robinson (contrabass saxophone) Grégoire Maret (harmonica)
� Best Composer: Maria Schneider
Poncho Sanchez Pedrito Martinez Airto Moreira Bobby Sanabria
Drums • • • •
Brian Blade Jack DeJohnette JeffHamilton Jeff “Tain” Watts
Male Vocalist • • • •
Tony Bennett Gregory Porter Kurt Elling Al Jarreau J A Z Z T I M E S . C O M
33
A R E H C O R T O B E N O L O N A M
“ Y SPi PiRi RiTT NSCENDS ENDER” GUITARIST STANLEY JORDAN SPEAKS OUT ABOUT FREEDOM AND AUTHENTICITY ON AND OFF THE BANDSTAND
BY DAVID R. ADLER
T
o say that Stanley Jordan turned jazz guitar upside down when he came to prominence in the mid-1980s is almost a literal truth. Emulating the piano, his �rst instrument, Jordan developed a “touch style” of guitar by fretting with both hands on the neck, opening another contrapuntal avenue for the instrument and setting a new standard of excellence for solo performance. Today Jordan often plays guitar and piano simultaneously, in his own projects and with bassist Charnett Moffett’s NeTTwork, among other groups. His next album for Mack Avenue, which will follow Duets with Kevin Eubanks, is slated for release in 2016.
Lately Jordan has found an enthusiastic welcome on the jam-band circuit, sitting i n with the Dave Matthews Band, Umphrey’s Umphrey’s McGee and Phil Lesh and Friends. He remains active in software de velo pme pment nt an d music mu sic the therapy. rapy. An d al ong the way there’s been a profound personal change: Jordan has adopted an androgynous “femme “femme”” look that he’s spoken very little about until now. He’s reluctant to label himself but happy to relate how his appearance, one of many aspects of his multilayered identity, identity, has everything to do with his art. Currently based in Sedona, Ariz., Jordan, 56, is rarely home. “They tell me it’s nice,” he says.
After a three-nig ht run with NeTTw NeTTwork ork at Richard Bona’s new Club Bonafide in Manhattan, he took off to Russia. Soon he’d he’d be leaving for Luanda, Angola. But back in New York in early November to sit in with the Roots on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fal lon lon,, Jordan was available for a wideranging chat about his personal journey journey,, peppered with offhand references to Ohm’s law, Gödel’s completeness theorem, philosopher Ken Wilber, transgender activist Virginia Prince and more. In the end, Jordan’ Jordan’s story speaks to issues of gender and sexuality that go far back in the history of jazz yet oft often en go unac know led ledged ged..
J A Z Z T I M E S . C O M
35
ADLER: TELL ME A BOUT YOUR A FFINITY FOR TH E JAM BANDS. JORDAN: I’ve always felt really comfortable with
the jam-band scene. Long before before they called it that I used to play rock with my buddies, back in the ’70s.
WERE YOU PLAYING PLAYING TOUCH STYLE YET?
I was just starting to, in ’76 or ’77. Te whole concept of music as a happening, as a scene, going with the �ow, improvising, was happening not just in rock but in jazz, and that was a big in�uence for me. I saw Herbie Hancock, George Benson, Stanley urrentine—this was like 1970. I saw Prince Lasha, I saw the Charles Moffett band, and that’s when I �rst saw Charnett, when he was 8. Tis whole ide a that music is about freedom was a stamp on my psyche right from the beginning. YOU DID A VIDEO INTERVIEW INTERVIEW WITH LEE HAWKINS HAWKINS FOR THE WALL STREET JOURNAL ’S ’S WEBSITE, AND HE MENTIONED IN PASSING THAT YOU USED TO HAVE AN AFRO WHEN YOU STARTED STARTED OUT. OUT. IT’S THE CLOSEST I’VE SEEN ANYONE COME TO ASKING ABOUT YOUR APPEARANCE IN RECENT YEARS. CAN YOU YOU DISCUSS WHAT BROUGHT ABOUT THE SHIFT IN HOW YOU PRESENT YOURSELF?
Art and life work together mutually. I’ve always tried to approach my life as an artist, tr ying to create beauty. beauty. A lot of things that make art special are the same ingredients that are the essence of life. Ten there’s also the idea that great art puts you in the moment, which is what the sages from the East have been saying for thousands of years, that to grow spiritually you have to be in the moment. Part of the reason jazz has always attracted me is that it’s about making that amazing creative moment. And yet as I progressed on the professional side, I started to realize more and more that there are some limits to that freedom. Tere were unspoken rules. And I started to notice that just by naturally naturally being myself I was breaking some of those r ules and I was starting to get �ak for it. AS A PLAYER? PLAYER?
Jordan onstage at the Detroit Jazz Festival in September
←
36
JAZZTIMES
•
J A N U A R Y / F E B R U A R Y 2 0 1 6
Even in my dress code. For example, I had some experiences with “Papa” Jo Jones, who for a brief moment took me under his wing and was showing me around the city. It was a wonderful experience, but I remember one time he pulled me aside and kinda told me off a little bit. He said, “I wear a suit, you know, and if you’re gonna go with me you have to be respectable and wear a suit.” So, note to self, next time with Jo Jones, wear a suit. I didn’t even have a suit! [laughs [laughs]] [One night] I was playing [in my suit], and I was on break and someone came up to me and said, “I’ve seen you many times before, and I just have to
L A V I T S E F Z Z A J T I O R T E D E H T F O Y S E T R U O C
say, I really think you play better when you’re not wearing a suit.” [laughs [laughs]] I was devastated! What do you mean? Why can’t I be one of these Young Lions wearing the suit? I found out later that if you spend a thousand dollars on the suit and you get it tailored, then that’s a whole different thing. SO DID YOUR STYLE START EVOLVING FROM THAT POINT FORWARD?
When I did the live tracks that came out on Cornucopia [1990], copia [1990], I hired a stylist for that. I was �nally starting to explore the style aspect more freely. We had different looks: I had a really nice tailored suit, and then I also had a more hip look. Ten we did a change and I had some leather pants. I was starting to see that to really be true to myself, I could not be stuck in one mold. Tere’s no one image that really �ts who I am. Tat was the beginning of dealing with that. I’d always kind of known it. When I did Friends [2011] Friends [2011] I took that idea to another level. By then I had evolved a lot and started to appreciate my own diversity as a person. And I decided that on this album I was going to cover a bigger range of expression, all the different facets of who I am. So I wore different things in order to get into the head of the different songs. And I found that the experience was phenomenally successful. successful. If jazz is about expressing who you are, you gotta really deal with who you are. And who am I? Tere’s so many different facets. I’m a hippie, I’m a homeboy, I’m a girly girl, I’m an Ivy League academic, I’m a tech geek. [Ed. [ Ed. note: note: Jordan graduated from Princeton University in 1981.] I’m GQ, GQ, I’m Vanity Fair . I’m an athlete, I’m a teacher, I’m a healer. All these things are really real to me. I started out playing classical music, I come from rock, I come from jazz, and all these things I did when I was really young. I grew up at a time when things were very open and there were a lot of musical in�uences intermixing, different cultures and stuff. And there was this feeling that through music you could change the world. Tat became part of the reason why I play. SO WHEN YOU SAY “DEAL WITH WHO YOU ARE,” YOU’RE TALKING TALKING ABOUT MORE THAN GENDER.
I’m talking about on every level. One of the big complaints I got is that I couldn’t make up my mind what style of music to play. Tat was one of the big criticisms. I was like, “Well, who says that I’m even trying to make up my mind?” First, let’s let’s look at what my actual intentions are. I don’t �t into a mold that I’m aware of. I had to deal with that, and at the same time I had to transcend that. Because I had to realize that by manifesting the courage to be all these different facets of myself and overcoming the fear of the consequences of that—
“I’M COMFORTABLE IN MY SKIN FOR THE FIRST TIME. IT’S WORTH WORTH IT. … PEOPLE SAY S AY,, ‘I SEE YOU’VE CHANGED YOUR LOOK,’ AND I SAY SAY,, ‘YES, THE DIFFERENCE IS NOW I LOOK LOOK HAPPY. HAPPY.’” ’”
and it’s not over, I still have fear; this is a daily thing— but by overcoming that fear I feel like I can maybe do some good and actually accomplish something. HAS THE FEAR LESSENED IN RECENT YEARS WITH MORE AND MORE PUBLIC ACKNOWLEDGMENT OF LGBTQ RIGHTS? DO YOU FIND THERE’S MORE OF AN OPEN DOOR YOU CAN WALK THROUGH?
Yeah, I feel like there’ t here’s been a gradual change. And I also feel like in my own little corner of the world I’ve helped to create a change. Virginia Prince said people are hardwired for the truth. If you just put your truth out there you can trust that people are going to have to deal with it, and sooner or later they probably will. DO YOU REFER TO YOURSELF AS TRANSGENDER?
I don’t really know. I can’t give you a word for what I am. Te best label I can think of is “Stanley,” honestly. I’m pretty comfortable with that. And by the way, [President Obama]’s mother was named Stanley. A lot of people don’t know that Stanley can be a female name. Let me tell you about a really pivotal moment in my life. I was in this remote place where I �gured nobody knew who I was. And I passed by this dress shop. I saw all these great clothes, and I was like, “Man, look at the stuff women get to wear! My male stuff is just so drab and boring.” So I decided, “OK, I’m going in.” WHEN WAS WAS THIS?
Tis was around 2010. Tis was one of the triggers that �rst got me moving forward. So I went in there and I told them that I was shopping for my girlfriend, which actually wasn’t a lie because I found J A Z Z T I M E S . C O M
37
SO SHE’S BEEN WITH YOU THROUGH THIS WHOLE PROCESS. HAS IT CREATED ANY FRICTION?
All relationships require work and have their ups and downs. But I’m blessed that she supports and loves me for who I am. HAS THE CHANGE HAD A DIRECT EFFECT ON YOUR PLAYING?
R O J A M H T I E K , K C I W S E H C M O T : T F E L M O R F , S O T O H P O M O R P
An evolution in style: (clockwise from top left) Jordan on 1986’s Standards, Volume 1 and 1990’s Cornucopia , and in promo photos for 2008’s State of Nature and 2011’s Friends ←
her some stuff too. But I found this really pretty �oral brocade mini-dress with open arms. I got it back to the hotel and I put it on over my jeans and looked in the mirror, and, oh my God, it was a life-changing moment. Because this dress in combination combination with the jeans created a look that that was very feminine, on one one hand; there’s a feminine aspect of my body, and it kind of highlighted my curves. And at the same time, because the arms were open, it doubled as a muscle shirt, and it showed my upper-body development. And I saw both the male and the female elements blended really harmoniously. I was looking in the mirror, mirror, and for the �rst time— I was around 50—I saw me. It was not some partial version of me. It It was the fullest representation representation of of me that I had ever seen in my life. And in that moment I realized that my spirit transcends gender. ARE YOU INTERESTED IN A FULL TRANSITION, OR ARE YOU COMFORTABLE COMFORTABLE WHERE YOU ARE NOW?
I’m comfortable where I am now, and as far as the future, we’ll see. I like the body that I have, but what are the possibilities of what I can do with that body? It goes beyond the conventional thing that I’ve been led to believe. And this for me is a renaissance, a personal renaissance. YOU MENTIONED MENTIONED YOUR GIRLFRIEND GIRLFRIEND.. ARE YOU YOU STILL TOGETHER?
Yeah, we’ve been together for 10 years. 38
JAZZTIMES
•
J A N U A R Y / F E B R U A R Y 2 0 1 6
I feel like the expressiveness in my music has gotten gotten deeper and my ideas �ow more naturally because my heart’s more open. In order to be authentic I have to express the full range of the parts of my identity. identity. But it’s not like there’s this one look or that I’ve changed from Look A to Look B. It’s more like I’m free to go with the �ow. �ow. Like someone might wake up and decide, “Am “Am I going to wear the red striped tie or the blue-and-green tie?” It’s It’s the same s ame as everyone ever yone else, just with more more variation. I realized I had to to have more variation than the the norm to feel comfortable. comfortable. In jazz we have double standards. Te jazz world is very masculine, and it’s it’s not just that the leaders are usually male. Te energy of masculinity is really highly prized. Tat’s one of the reasons I got tired of going to jam sessions, because it’s testosterone overload. It’s all ego and no respect for the song, no concept of melody, no nuances. Tey play the head and it’s like,
“OK, we got that over with—let’s blow!” Whereas the older cats didn’t play like that. Tey had a relationship with the music. And that relationship is one o those s ort o eminine qualities that I eel has gotten lost. Te masculine energy is powerul and compelling, but I eel that jazz has come to overemphasize it. Tere is a lot o banging away at the instrument and showing off what you can do. Te eminine energy is more about being in relationship with the music and letting it guide you. It can be simple and beautiul— that’s not selling out. It can also be complex, but only because the ideas are �owing, not b ecause you’re trying to prove how smart you are. Finding my true balance has deepened my music. Both energies are good, so every musician should be ree to �nd the right balance or them. HAVE THERE BEEN NEGATIVE CONSEQUENCES IN YOUR CAREER?
Yeah, there’s been some. I NOTICED SOME IGNORANT COMMENTS ON YOUTUBE VIDEOS AND SUCH.
Yes, but usually when I’ve seen negative comments it was when my look was o, or I was having a bad hair day or something. You say that to women and they’re like, “Hey,
N E W
FROM
welcome to our world.” hey’re judged by how well the y pull o the lo ok. So i you’re going to enter into that world you’re going to deal with those same issues. Over time I’ve gotten better at really putting my look together, and people are seeing what I’m getting at. Tere’s an interesting positive consequence too: For the �rst time I can move through the mainstream world and not be eared. I mean, that’s a sad commentary. YOU MEAN AS A BLACK MAN?
Yeah, as a black man. People don’t ear me when my look is more emme. And I never really realized just how eared I was because it was so constant that I didn’t notice. Like i there’s a smell in the room, afer a while you don’t smell it anymore. At the same time, sometimes I see people pointing and laughing at me. So I’ve grown rom eared to jeered! But the thing you learn when you’re dierent is that mo st people don’t care. Yeah, there are times when I eel a little bit out o place. hat could include in musical situations. But what I ind is that I’m comortable in my skin or the irst time. It’s worth it. You win some, you lose s ome. People say, “I see you’ve changed your look,” and I say, “Yes, the dierence is now I look happy.” JT
JAMEY AEBERSOLD 20
by DAN HAERLE YEARS
by OLIVER NELSON
Body & Soul
Essential Jazz Harmony
Style & Analysis
Instrumentalists & Arrangers
Patterns for Improvisation Bass Clef Edition!
20th AnniversaryEdition
BOOK .......... $29.95
BOOK .......... $17.95
BOOK ......... $12.95
BOOK/CD ......... $30.00
More NEW jazz studies available now! • “Frank Trumbauer Sax Studies” - Original 1935 edition! • “Sax Solos Over Modal Classics” by Tony Dagradi - Etudes over Modal Standards. • “Jazz Guitar Harmony” by Zvonimir Tot - For all Guitarists. Available from your favorite music source or
www.jazzbooks.com • 1-800-456-1388
Effortless Mastery
JAMEY AEBERSOLD
JAZZBOOKS.COM
J A Z Z T I M E S . C O M
39
WITH HIS NEW ORLEANIAN CHARISMA AND ROOF-RAISING ENTHUSIASM, JON BATISTE HAS SETTLED COMFORTABLY INTO THE SOMETIMES PERILOUS ROLE OF THE TALKSHOW BANDLEADER
BY NATE CHINEN
J
ON BATISTE HAD ONE REQUEST, EARLY IN the courtship dance that led to his installment as bandleader for Te Late Show With Stephen Colbert on CBS. Batiste—the irrepressible young pianist and singer, and the engine behind the trademark phrases “Love Riot” and “Social Music”—wanted his new boss to meet his folks. So they went down to Kenner, La., just outside New Orleans, for some red beans and rice at the Batiste family home. During the trip, Colbert �lmed the online video snippet that would serve as an announcement of Batiste’s hire. (Naturally, it involved a beignet gag.) He also imparted a kernel of insight to his new collaborator about the nature of their upcoming gig. 40
JAZZTIMES
•
J A N U A R Y / F E B R U A R Y 2 0 1 6
Don’t think of the show as the brand-name commercial property of a massive corporate conglomerate, Colbert advised, even if that’s ultimately what it is. “Tink of it as the Joy Machine,” Batiste recalls him saying, eyes gleaming. “And we’re going to take it for a ride.” Batiste told this story at the 2015 Newport Jazz Festival, backstage in the stone r uins of Fort Adams in early August. Stay Human, his rangy band, had just played a typically jubilant set, and he sat wedged on a couch with its other core members, saxophonist Eddie Barbash and drummer Joe Saylor. Batiste was wearing a black V-neck -shirt with the name of his latest single on his chest— BELIEVE, in bold white letters—and he seemed the
T T O B B A N H O J
J A Z Z T I M E S . C O M
41
Batiste, on melodica, plays Pied Piper to the Newport Jazz Festival crowd in August; saxophonist Grace Kelly can be seen at right ←
picture of easy con�dence, neither heavy nor harried. Still, he admitted that there were a lot of unknowns about the workings of the new Late Show . At that point its highly anticipated premiere was �ve weeks away. ••••
IT WOULD BE A STRETCH TO SAY BATISTE
was an obvious choice for the Late Show gig, but the signs were there for everyone to see. A formerprodigyfrom oneof theleading musical families in New Orleans, he had spent the last decade makinga name for himself in New York. His youthfulpoiseas a pianist, and his masteryof a jazz language thatran all the way back to stride 42
JAZZTIMES
•
J A N U A R Y / F E B R U A R Y 2 0 1 6
and ragtime, earned him acclaim early on. I �rst saw him in concertduringhis �rst year atJuilliard, as a featured gueston a Jazz atLincoln Center concert withWynton Marsalis. Unlike Marsalis—also the product of an important jazz family in Kenner—Batiste doesn’t feel a burden of responsibility to jazz as an art form. While he proudly identi�es as a jazz musician, he’s obviously not hung up about the sanctity of the style. “We come from the same place, with a very similar background,” he said, “but culturally there’s a world of difference between us.” He pointed out that Marsalis went to Juilliard at a time when its curriculum and identity were
N A I G I H A N N A L A
strictly classical. Batiste, by contrast, met Saylor and Barbash in the school’s resident jazz program. Batiste had a bit o a reputation, even in a comparatively more relaxed era at Juilliard, or his inormality and overwhelming sense o play. He recalls striding the halls with his melodica, a toylike wind keyboard, improvising melodies. Eventually, partly as a corrective to the antiseptic experience o the academy, he began bringing his peers into unusually close proximity with their audiences, ofen purely as a surprise. His 2011 EP My N.Y. was made entirely in the New York City
subway system—not on the platorm, but on actual moving trains, mere inches away rom the nearest startled listeners. (Tis was another advantage o the melodica: mobility.) Soon aferward Batiste and Stay Human began to rally behind the term “Social Music,” which pointedly makes no claim on any particular genre. Batiste described it to me as “a declaration,” a sel-de�ning banner he could wave. “You gotta stand or something ,” he said. When Stay Human released its only studio album so ar, on Razor & ie in 2013, Social Music was the obvious title, and a natural talking point. Te idea came up during Batiste’s appearance on Te Colbert Report , in the summer o 2014. But a unny thing happened during the interview: Batiste, identiying himsel �rst and oremost as an improviser, made a crack about Colbert’s reliance on his script. Colbert, instantly accepting this as an invitation and a challenge, engaged Batiste in an intimate, playully tense repartee. Te moment crackled nicely. “As soon as that interview was over,” Colbert later recalled, on the Late Show Podcast , “I went, ‘Damn, I think that’s a guy I could actually spend a ew years onstage with.’” And then there was the musical perormance: Stay Human, attacking Batiste’s buoyant anthem “I’m From Kenner,” ended up leading Colbert and the studio audience out into the street, or a basic-cable Love Riot. It was a moment o unplanned euphoria that lef a clear impression on Colbert. “I loved your positive message,” he told Batiste, on that podcast. “I loved the mastery you and your band had, and the joy that you brought to it. You were the �rst people that ever took our audience outside. Wasn’t a long time beore you and I had a conversation about it. It started rom the moment when you said, ‘I like to improvise.’ One o my avorite interviews I ever had.” ••••
BATISTE AND STAY HUMAN PERFORMED
three separate times at the 2015 Newport Jazz Festival, i you count their appearance at a ancy undraising gala. Tey also appeared the previous weekend at the Newport Folk Festi val. Seeing the band in these different settings underscored Batiste’s highly
developed intuition with an audience. No two sets were alike, despite some commonalities, and in each case the band had people more or less eating out o their hands. At the Folk Festival, Batiste tailored the set list and his delivery to an ideal o perormance you’d associate with the estival’s lodestar, Pete Seeger. He introduced “St. James In�rmary,” which appears on Social Music, by saying: “Very much a part o the olk tradition, this song is over 100 years old.” Later, playing some unaccompanied piano, he segued rom “Blackbird,” the olklike Paul McCartney ballad, to “Home on the Range,” the Western anthem. Te show ended, o course, with Batiste and his bandmates parading through the crowd. Batiste’s afernoon set at the Newport Jazz Festival was similar in substance, but with more emphasis on solos among the band. He had augmented his ranks with a horn section, including Sam Crittenden on trombone and Grace Kelly on saxophones. Te same expanded lineup appeared in an evening concert at the Newport Casino, with even more virtuosity and polish. Tere was no trampling through the aisles in that show, but still an abundance o �air. It was virtually impossible to eel ungrateul about these perormances. Te joy and commitment o the band were contagious. Yet I lef thinking about the high degree o difficulty Batiste would ace on television, where it wouldn’t be possible to routinely pull his Pied Piper routine. Te last time a musician rom Kenner held a late-night gig, it was saxophonist Branord Marsalis, Wynton’s older brother, and it didn’t go so well. I can recall eagerly tuning in to Te onight Show With Jay Leno or any taste o Marsalis’ impressive band, and never eeling satis�ed. As it turned out, neither did Branord, who resented his obligations as a sidekick and lef the show afer three grudging years. Te dynamic was better with guitarist Kevin Eubanks, though his yuk-yuk chemistry with Leno was strictly transactional, no more nuanced or natural than the blinking “APPLAUSE” sign hanging somewhere in the show’s Burbank studio. Te gold standard or bandleader-host simpatico would have to be the long run that keyboardist Paul Shaffer had with J A Z Z T I M E S . C O M
43
DON’T THINK OF THE LATE SHOW AS THE BRAND-NAME COMMERCIAL PROPERTY OF A MASSIVE CORPORATE CONGLOMERATE, STEPHEN COLBERT ADVISED, EVEN IF THAT’S ULTIMATELY WHAT IT IS. “THINK OF IT AS THE JOY MACHINE,” BATISTE RECALLS HIM SAYING, EYES GLEAMING. “AND WE’RE GOING TO TAKE IT FOR A RIDE.”
Batiste and Stephen Colbert have quickly developed an intelligent, ef�cient comic rapport ←
David Letterman, in the previous Late Show and beore that, on NBC’s Late Night With David Letterman. Shaffer maintained a perectly calibrated rapport with his host: wry but not detached, in on the joke but not smug, always ready to pounce. Batiste, the sort o guy smart enough to know what he doesn’t know, asked Shaffer out to lunch soon afer he got the gig. “Well, o course, we don’t know how much reedom the show will really give him,” Shaffer told me, speaking o his successor days beore the new show aired. But he was sanguine about the potential that Batiste was bringing to the table. “He’s a natural at everything else,” Shaffer said. “So the only challenge will be �tting into the ormat o the show.” ••••
EVERY LATE-NIGHT TELEVISION TALK SHOW HAS A FORMAT.
Tey’re airly rigid, and not so different rom one another. 44
JAZZTIMES
•
J A N U A R Y / F E B R U A R Y 2 0 1 6
Watch any episode o Te Late Show With Stephen Colbert and you’ll recognize the beats, along with the template. So it’s mostly in the area o tone and texture that Colbert, who stepped into Letterman’s shoes afer nine brilliant years as host o Te Colbert Report on Comedy Central, has carved out his niche. His bandleader is a big part o that. Te show opens each night with Batiste out ront, his lanky rame in a tailored suit, hyping the audience in the elegant Ed Sullivan Teater. Ofen you see him with his melodica—“ace piano,” Colbert likes to call it—reeling off boppish phrases. A
Bill Charlap Saturday, June 18 at 7:30pm
scrim-like curtain rises, and out walks the show’s grinning host, amid the thunderous cheers and rave-up clamor o the band. He and Batiste exchange a high-�ve, a bro hug or some other amiable physical contact. Tere’s a mini-monologue beore the band kicks in with the show’s theme song, a Batiste ditty with a staccato hook and a pop-gospel chord progression. Tere isn’t room or a lot o jazz on the show; that’s just the nature o the gig. But during the snippets that bracket a commercial break, you’ll ofen hear the band play something remarkably �uid, or crisply dynamic. Batiste rotates among piano, synthesizer and melodica, his rapport with the band, especially Barbash, effectively popping off the screen. Stay Human haven’t pushed into the area o viral online sketches, like the Roots on Te onight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon, but their energy is palpable, and it �ts into the peppy, airtight mood o the show. Batiste himsel, on the other hand, is unny. He has a loose-limbed, unreserved way o dancing, like a unky Gumby, and he savors the effect o a provocative line issued in blank-aced deadpan. In many ways he has adapted to his television pro�le by inhabiting a character, much as Colbert did on Comedy Central (and still does, to a lesser extent, on CBS). Tere’s an awkward, unanswerable question worth posing about the racial dynamics o the show—why does the invariably white late-night host always end up hiring an Arican-American bandleader, and why does the bandleader have to be so damn happy?—but none o that mitigates the repartee between Colbert and Batiste, which eels genuine, and rarely overplayed. One evening, about two months into the show’s run, Colbert welcomed Batiste over to the guest chair to set up a video about their visit to New Orleans. “Tanks or being my bandleader,” he said. “You guys having a good time over there?” “Yeahhhh,” Batiste replied, settling into the chair. “It’s a good job, man—it pays well.” Colbert, about to say something glib, is obviously caught off guard by the line. “Good to know, man,” he says, laughing, recovering. “But obviously you do it or the love.” “I love it, man,” Batiste �res back, still looking serious. “I love money.” Te New Orleans segment happens to be charming: Colbert and Batiste go or a stroll on Frenchman Street, parse the meaning o “the hang,” and improvise along to the bleating warning o a reversing utility truck. But the more important test had already happened in the moment, beore a live audience, with neither party quite sure o where the interaction would go. Colbert had another word o advice or Batiste during that trip. As Batiste remembers it, they were about to part ways, sitting in the driveway o his parents’ house. Tis insight had supposedly been passed along rom Johnny Carson to Conan O’Brien, who had passed it on to Colbert. It was: “With a show like this, you’ll use everything you know.” Repeating it, Batiste gave out a low whistle. “I said, ‘Tat’s deep, man. Tat’s deep.’” JT
JAZZ ALL YEAR LONG!
Michael Feinstein: Sinatra Centennial Celebration Sat, Dec 12 at 8pm
Michel Camilo Solo Piano
Sun,Apr 17at 4pm & 7pm
Dorthaan’s Place Jazz Brunches Sundays at 11am and 1pm at NICO Kitchen + Bar
Rufus Reid Trio
Jan 24
The Antoinette Montague Experience
Bobby Sanabria & Quarteto Ache’
Mar 6
Freddy Cole Quartet
Feb 14
Apr 10
Arts Education Jazz Auditions: Instrumental • Vocal Wells Fargo Jazz for Teens and Brick City Jazz Orchestra January 23 from 10am-2pm Visit njpac.org/arts-training for details.
The American Song series at NJPAC is presented, in part, through the generous support of the Blanche and Irving Laurie Foundation and David S. Steiner and Sylvia Steiner Charitable Trust.
NEWJERSEYPERFORMINGARTS CENTER O N E C E NT E R S TR E ET, N E WA R K, N J
For tickets & full schedule visit njpac.org or call 1.88 8.GO.NJPAC • Groups 973.2 97.5804
J A Z Z T I M E S . C O M
45
HOWTHE POLARIZING TRUMPETER, BANDLEADER AND BLOGGER NICHOLAS PAYTON FOUND HIS WAY TO THE PIANO BENCH —AND TO A NEW CONCEPT OF TRIO MUSIC By Jennifer Odell 46
JAZZTIMES
•
J A N U A R Y / F E B R U A R Y 2 0 1 6
S I R R A H U M I S A K . L
J A Z Z T I M E S . C O M
47
In his controversial 2011 blog post
With the formidable rhythm tandem of bassist Vicente Archer and drummer Bill Stewart, Payton multitasks on trumpet and keyboards at Dizzy’s Club Coca-Cola, October 2014
←
48
JAZZTIMES
•
J A N U A R Y / F E B R U A R Y 2 0 1 6
“On Why Jazz Isn’t Cool Anymore,” trumpeter Nicholas Payton asserted, among other things, that he’s “not the same dude” he was a decade and a half ago. “Isn’t that the point?” he asked. “Our whole purpose on this planet is to evolve.” Tat pronouncement hasn’t attracted as much attention as some of his other sentiments: “Jazz is an oppressive colonialist slave term,” for example, or its followup, “I play Black American Music,” which yielded the hashtag #BAM. But it resonates deeply, both in light of Payton’s evolution as a cultural critic and his changing focus from the tr umpet toward the piano bench, where he’s settled in as a leader in recent years. At the moment, Payton, 42, is settled into a booth at the New Orleans seafood haunt Frankie & Johnny’s, near his home in the city’s Uptown neighborhood. Clad in a Saints cap and a -shirt featuring the
R E T N E C N L O C N I L T A Z Z A J / G N O L U M U S E C N E R W A L
logo o the band rumpet Ma�a, Payton considers what compelled him to veer off the path that earned him a Grammy and decades o critical acclaim. On a basic level, he explains, it was a pragmatic move. But there’s also another advantage. Afer becoming increasingly adept on keys over the past ew years, he began playing trumpet with one hand and either Fender Rhodes, piano or organ with the other, essentially converting his trio into a quartet at will. It’s a skill that has opened up a whole new realm o musical possibilities while expanding
On 2014’s Numbers, eaturing Payton almost exclusively on Rhodes alongside the Virginia-based quartet Butcher Brown, he lef as much space as possible or interpretation, compiling pieces o music he’d already written but not yet used into 12 soulul, open-ended tunes designed with the idea that listeners might play along to the music. Letters ollowed the next year, reuniting Payton with his main trio bandmates, bassist Vicente Archer and drummer Bill Stewart, in a context blending hardbop motis with swinging grooves and
In 2001 Payton released Dear Louis, an album he describes as “a arewell to the idea that I needed to uphold someone else’s idea o traditions.” It wasn’t a de�ning eature o the album, but Payton contributed some Rhodes to the record, as well as �ugelhorn and vocals. “I’ve always loved the Rhodes. In act, growing up in the ’70s, most o the music that I heard around me was Fender Rhodes, and that was the piano o choice then. A lot o clubs didn’t have acoustic pianos,” he says. “It just has such a warm, lush sound. You have to work really hard to
“AT A CERTAIN POINT [PLAYING KEYBOARDS PLUS TRUMPET] WAS JUST A TEXTURAL THING FOR ME,AND ALSO A WAY TO BE MORE A PART OF THE MUSIC THE WHOLE TIME,” PAYTON SAYS. “PLAYING A MELODY, TAKING TRUMPET SOLOS AND STANDING ON THE SIDE OF THE STAGE FOR A MAJORITY OF THE SHOW … JUST FELT BORING AFTER A WHILE.” his voice within the context o his band. “Te cumulative effects o opening that door add so much vibrancy to what I’m able to express,” he explains. “I didn’t set out to do it as a gimmick or some kind o parlor trick, even though it does have that type o entertainment value, perhaps. I set out to do it out o just … unction. I want to play these things that I want to hear. It’s easier or me to do that than to try to coax someone else to do it.”
L
ike his blogging, which touched a nerve in the music community when he divorced himsel rom the notion o “jazz,” rede�ning his artistic output in terms o “BAM,” the Rhodes and trumpet/keyboard combo add weapons to his arsenal o expressive devices. Te results are re�ected in three strong albums, #BAM: Live at Bohemian Caverns, Letters and Numbers, each o which built on its predecessor, adding new depth and dynamics to his repertoire. “When I play trumpet and piano or keyboards at the same time, there’s so much that hasn’t been done,” he explains. “o be at the cusp, at the vanguard o expanding technique or a voice that doesn’t have much o a recorded history? Tat’s a whole other realm. … It’s a new rontier.”
shades o unk and R&B. Te disc also ound Payton perorming at the top o his game on acoustic piano, organ and Rhodes, which he occasionally used to accompany himsel on trumpet solos. Payton’s committed himsel to exploring new musical terrain or the better part o his career, which had already been proli�c and wide-reaching, stylewise, despite his relatively young age. In that sense, his latest shif eels like a natural progression. Initially branded a traditionalist— “unairly so, but OK,” he concedes—Payton experimented with electronic effects and lyric-writing in the late ’90s, leading a band called the ime Machine that drew on unk motis and an R &B sensibility. At that point he’d already snagged a Grammy or his 1997 release with Doc Cheatham, and was consistently putting out tight and �ery orays into hard bop. By 1999’s Nick@Night , the trumpeter elt more con�dent in his grasp o what he calls “a certain tradition o straightahead,” and started experimenting with less orthodox instrumentation. “I was hearing something else, keyboardwise,” he recalls, “so that’s why I have the harpsichord and the celeste, which are sort o like Rhodes and clarinet.” He was also pretty much ready to break out o the Young Lion mold.
make it sound ugly. And it has a great sustain. It has more sustain than a piano. And in a lot o contexts, I think it blends better with instruments than a piano.” Payton’s arrangements on Dear Louis updated the tradition associated with Louis Armstrong, imbuing classic tunes and solos with a contemporary eel. In subsequent work with his B-3-centric band Soul Patrol and the hip-hop- and groove-soaked Sonic rance, Payton continued to push the music orward without compromising the traditions that helped birth it. Sonic Trance also eatured more o Payton’s multi-instrumental capabilities. While trumpet remained his primary ocus, Payton played keys, �ugelhorn, bass and drums, underscoring his growing interest in developing a wider palette rom which to express himsel. Still, he was sticking to trumpet in perormance settings.
T
hat started to change in the months afer the 2005 levee breaches that devastated New Orleans. With musicians scattered across the country, venues struggling to stay open and power �ickering on and off across the city, the New Orleans music scene was suffering. Payton wanted to help remedy that, so he proposed playing a series o ree late sets J A Z Z T I M E S . C O M
49
“[PAYTON'S] NOT FOCUSING ON WHAT PEOPLE CONSIDER HIM TO BE FAMOUS FOR,” DRUMMER SHANNON POWELL SAYS. “COMING FROM NEW ORLEANS, IF YOU GET FAMOUS DOING ONE CERTAIN THING PEOPLE EXPECT YOU TO DO THAT THE REST OF YOUR LIFE.” at the club Snug Harbor on weekends. “Tat’s when I started playing trumpet and piano at the same time,” he recalls. It’s also when he came to terms with the difficulty o what he was trying to do. “One o those nights, some guy [pointed out] I was playing in two keys at the same time. And I had never thought about it; I was just doing it. Ten I started thinking about it and it kind o ucked me up. I had to relearn what I was doing instinctually,” he says. “At a certain point it was just a textural thing or me, and also a way to be more a part o the music the whole time. … Playing a melody, taking trumpet solos and standing on the side o the stage or a majority o the show … just elt boring afer a while.” Drummer Shannon Powell, who’s known and worked with Payton since he was a kid, remembers being astounded by his expertise on trumpet and piano at the Snug gigs. “Nicholas is a guy that constantly practices and sheds,” says Powell, who proudly claims he gave Payton his �rst proessional gig, at the Famous Door on Bourbon Street, with singer, banjoist and guitarist Danny Barker, when the trumpeter was a young teenager. “I can hear some improvement every time I hear him play. Tat’s the way Wynton is. Tey’re both constantly shedding and trying to perect their craf.” Tough Payton’s played trumpet since age 4—“something about the instrument spoke to me,” he says—he’s played multiple instruments or most o his lie, just as he’s explored various styles o music. His ather, the acclaimed bassist Walter Payton, alternated between bass and sousaphone, and worked with players ranging rom Lee Dorsey to Aaron Neville to Ellis Marsalis to the Preservation Hall Jazz Band. Te piano that Walter shared with Nicholas’ mother, a classically trained pianist, maintained a central position in the amily’s home and remains a strong 50
JAZZTIMES
•
J A N U A R Y / F E B R U A R Y 2 0 1 6
As a 24-year-old trumpet phenom, with Jon Faddis sizing him up, Payton pays tribute to Dizzy Gillespie at the Abrons Arts Center in Manhattan, January 1998
←
source o musical memory or Nicholas, who used to sit b eneath it when musicians like Marsalis and Proessor Longhair would work their magic on its keys. “Tis cat Eddie C ollins would come around,” Payton recalls. “Te late, great Ed Frank was another. He had one hand. He played with his right hand but he never missed [his lef]. Seeing guys like that really impacted me.” He was also drawn to Herbie Hancock, whose sound, touch and chordal voicings, among other elements, continue to in�uence Payton. “He’s one o those rare, quintessential-type pianists. You can put him in any context with anybody and he’s going to sound like himsel. But he’s also going to uplif the music and ser ve the music,” Payton says. His bandmates over the years get that what he’s doing runs much deeper.
“I’ve been struck or years by Nicholas’ ability to play multiple instruments— drums, bass, etc.—at a high level,” keyboardist Kevin Hays writes in an email. “He’s such a remarkable musician and seems to be able to absorb any music he hears very quickly.” Hays worked with Payton regularly rom the early 2000s through Into the Blue, rom 2008, which marked a turning point with regard to Payton’s instrument o choice as a leader. Prior to the session, Payton set up Pro ools in his house and recorded demos o the material on each instrument. “here are people who can play an instrument, but they might just be playing a line or a written-out part. He’s adding some kind o lavor to it, too,” Vicente Archer says. “He’s hearing where the music can go. Hearing those demos,
N A I G I H A N N A L A
it was like, ‘Wow,’” he continues, laughing. “I don’t know what I’m supposed to do here.” Archer was one o multiple associates who suggested Payton record an album by himsel. It seemed like “a novelty” to him, Payton says, until he developed the idea or the vocal R&B project Bitches , much o which was based on lefover demos rom Into the Blue. Bitches came out in 2011, the same year Payton launched his “BAM” campaign, which heightened the exposure o his writing online. By then he was leading rom the piano bench regularly and working toward launching his own label, BMF, now Paytone. All those elements indicated that he sought a greater degree o control in both his artistic expression and in the way others de�ne it. “He’s not ocusing on what people consider him to be amous or,” Powell points out. “Coming rom New Orleans, i you get amous doing one certain thing people expect you to do that the rest o your lie. People have a tendency to want to categorize musicians.”
A
rcher agrees that Payton has more control o the music these days. “We’re very elastic with the music, [with] orm and harmonically,” he says. “It gives the songs even more o a breath o resh air each time we play.” In terms o artistic evolution, Payton is still open to new ideas and vocabularies. He recently completed work on Textures, an album created entirely with the sofware program Logic—no live instruments—that he recorded alongside the visual artist Anastasia Pelias, who painted while he worked, each artist riffing on the other’s compositions. Payton remains involved with more conventional music as well, having produced, played on and written most o the arrangements or singer Jane Monheit’s upcoming tribute to Ella Fitzgerald. As or the resistance he’s encountered while challenging public and critical expectations—and there’s
been plenty—recent recognition o his skill as a keyboardist has helped mitigate early complaints. “I guess I could have said, ‘Fuck it,’ and acquiesced to p eople’s expectations. But to me, you don’t ever get p eople to accept
your artistry i you’re willing to cave because they want you to ollow suit with whatever they expect you to do,” he muses. “You have to be willing to make sacriices or the shit you eel strongly about.” JT
ANNOUNCING COMPLETION OF
Y H P A R G O T O F R E B R A F D I N E ©
THOMAS CHAPIN, NIGHT BIRD SONG a music documentary by EMMY Award-winning �lmmaker STEPHANIE J. CASTILLO Destined to be among the jazz greats, sax and �ute master Thomas Chapin was taken from us at the pinnacle of his meteoric rise in 1998 at the age of 40. Through this moving and engrossing 2 hr. & 30 min �lm, his passionate life and incandescent music can now be known by audiences all over the world.
Welcoming inquiries and invitations to showcase THOMAS CHAPIN, NIGHT BIRD SONG Contact Stephanie at
808.383.7393 •
[email protected] View the trailer at www.thomaschapin�lm.com J A Z Z T I M E S . C O M
51
Sound advice
AudioFiles
Gear of the Year THE BEST AUDIO PRODUCTS OF 2015 By Brent Butterworth
TO NON-AUDIOPHILES, SPENDING $15,900 ON A PAIR OF SPEAKERS SEEMS CRAZY. BUT AUDIOPHILES I’VE SPOKEN WITH CONSIDER WILSON AUDIO’S SABRINA A BARGAIN.
M
any audio enthusiasts complain about the recent trend toward elite gear priced in the middle �ve �gures, but 2015 saw a welcome renaissance in affordable audio. While the year did feature many extravagant, extraordinary new components, it also witnessed the launch of the best $299 headphones ever created, as well as terri�c lines of speakers priced in the low three �gures. Here are the eight products from 2015 that most impressed me, including everything from a $69 Bluetooth speaker to a pair of loudspeakers costing nearly $16,000.
Schiit Audio Modi 2 Uber digital-to-analog converter Te $149 Modi 2 Uber might be the least expensive way to bypass your computer’s subpar audio circuitry to get true high-end digital sound. With circuitry designed by Mike Moffat—for decades, one of the world’s most revered digital audio engineers—plus USB, optical and coaxial digital inputs, the 5-inch-wide Modi 2 Uber can turn computers, Vs and streaming boxes into true high-end audio sources.
Logitech X300 Bluetooth speaker Te $69 X300 lacks the sprightly design and snazzy features found in many Bluetooth speakers, but it’s got it where it counts: in audio quality. Te X300 delivers a satisfying, full sound that captures the subtleties of string bass, the dynamics of drums and the snarl of saxophones better than any 6-inch-long speaker I’ve ever heard. Don’t take a business trip without it.
RBH EP3 in-ear headphone Te in-ear headphone from 2015 that really stands out for me costs just $129—or maybe even $99, depending on how long RBH extends its introductory price. I �nd the EP3 to be perhaps the most neutral, natural-sounding in-ear model I’ve heard in its price range, thanks partly to its non-resonant ceramic earpieces. Te EP3 includes Comply foam tips in two sizes, ensuring a good sonic seal and a comfortable �t.
52
J A Z Z T I M E S
•
J A N U A R Y / F E B R U A R Y 2 0 1 6
HiFiMan HE400S headphone Te $299 HE400S is the best value in audio to day. When you hear the HE400S’ superspacious sound and natural, uncolored tonality, it’s hard to justify paying more … or settling for less. Tis openback headphone does little to block outside sounds, so it’s a dicey choice for travel or commuting. But it is comfortable, and sensitive enough that you can get great sound even when plugging it straight into your cell phone.
Parasound Halo integrated ampli�er
Wilson Audio Sabrina speaker o non-audiophiles, spending $15,900 on a pair o speakers seems crazy. But audiophiles I’ve spoken with consider the Sabrina a bargain. It’s an updated, one-piece version o the WA/Puppy, the model that made Wilson Audio the RollsRoyce o the speaker world. While it’s smaller and more affordable than most Wilson speakers, it’s also more practical—and in a typical living room, may sound better than the 6-oot-tall behemoths or which the company is now best known.
ELAC Debut B6 bookshelf speaker Audio engineer Andrew Jones’ new line o speakers or German company ELAC is more expensive than the low-cost models he had been designing or Pioneer, but a step up in quality and crafsmanship. Reports rom 2015’s audio shows gushed about the clear, potent sound o the $279-per-pair Debut B6, and the speaker’s beautiul design and betterthan-expected �nish make it welcome in stylish, highend homes.
Te $2,495 Halo integrated amp has everything you need or great sound except a computer and speakers. Built in are a 32-bit/384-kilohertz digitalto-analog converter that accepts PCM and DSD digital signals; a phono preamp that works with moving-magnet and moving-coil cartridges; and a traditional Class AB ampli�er with 160 watts per channel o power. It even incorporates a subwooer crossover, something ound in scant ew high-end audio products.
Polk Audio T50 tower speaker While the $258-per-pair 50’s look says “plain black box,” the sound is something else entirely. Te 50’s single 6.5inch wooer and dual 6.5-inch passive radiators pump out enough bass to handle Billy Cobham’s most intense kickdrum hits, yet the clarity o midrange and treble is more than adequate to convey Lady Day’s sofest phrases. Combine these speakers with an old stereo receiver and you’ll have amazing sound or next to nothing. JT
Sound advice
Chops
By Shaun Brady
Piano String Theories THREE OF TODAY’S EXPLORATORY KEYBOARD MASTERS OFFER A CRASH COURSE IN PREPARED PIANO
T
here’s an inherent playulness to utilizing extended techniques on the acoustic piano. Getting your hands inside the instrument, sticking items on or in between its wires, or drumming the sides o the piano are approaches that avantgarde composers and perormers share with mischievous children. It’s not surprising, then, that many pianists don’t wait until their �rst encounter with John Cage or Henry Cowell to attempt such experimental approaches. Benoît Delbecq, now well known or integrating contemporary classical techniques and prepared piano into his jazz vocabulary, �rst started messing around under the hood o his great-grandmother’s piano at the age o 8. “My parents soundprooed a little room in the basement and put the piano down there,” Delbecq recalls. “I ound a curved brush they used or radiators and realized I could play on the strings directly. So I asked my mom or a piece o elt and sewed it onto the brush.” While he’s long since ormed a more rigorous conceptual basis or his preparations, Delbecq explains that maintaining that kind o childlike imagination is important or starting to develop mastery o extended techniques. “Te discovery o a new sound is like having a new toy to play with,” he says. Over the years, Delbecq has used everything rom that �rst radiator brush to saxophone reeds, tacks and twigs to alter the sound o his piano. According to Kris Davis, who began exploring extended techniques ater studying with Delbecq in Paris, �nding the proper materials to create the sounds you’re looking or is as important as every other aspect o orming your voice. “You experiment and �gure out what works or you,” says Davis, who uses clothespins and hollowed-out erasers. “You can identiy a person’s sound by their materials and the way that they’re used, so itcanbe a slippery slope totry tocopy someone’s sounds and materials.” Sylvie Courvoisier, a master o using extended techniques in the contexts o jazz and 54
JAZZTIMES
•
J A N U A R Y / F E B R U A R Y 2 0 1 6
Sylvie Courvoisier looks under the hood
←
improvised music, said that in the beginning it’s difficult not to copy what you’ve heard beore. “When you [start to] learn jazz, you play clichés. But I think you have to play clichés in order to �nd your own vocabulary,” she says. “You re�ne that and �gure out what you want to play. Extended piano is just another possibility, another color. I like when it’s integrated with regular piano playing, like a horn player using multiphonics.” Delbecq recommends starting out with cut-up pieces o rubber eraser placed between the strings, a cheap and harmless method o preparing the piano. “It will be random in the beginning,” he says, “but very soon you’ll �nd that i you put it at the halway point o the string you’ll have a certain overtone quality. Paper is nice and can get you to harpsichordlike sounds, and i you want to have a snare effect you can have a little metal box with pencils or nails standing on elt. It’s endless.” While each o these pianists is adept at playing solo, collaborating with other musicians is o course essential to jazz and presents its own challenges. One is the time and labor necessary to ully prepare a piano. Delbecq stresses the importance o
planning a set list so as not to end up with long silent stretches while you toil inside the piano, or using simple items that can be quickly added or removed. Another hurdle is volume, since extended techniques ofen involve quieter sound levels. “Te sound has the dynamic o chamber music, so i you play with a drummer you might not be heard at all. It’s absolutely pointless unless it’s a drummer who’s sensitive to the circulation o sound on the stage,” Delbecq says. Experience is always an important teacher, and Courvoisier has learned the hard way what not to use on her instrument. “With my own piano, I made some mistakes where I hurt the piano,” she laments. “Never touch a damper; they’re super-ragile. I you use your hand, you shouldn’t leave it on the copper strings too long because you sweat and it makes marks on the strings.” Te damage can be more than aesthetic, as Delbecq stresses: “As long as you don’t distort the strings with metal that’s too hard or the copper strings, you can try many things. But I see young players use a hi-hat cymbal in the copper strings, and that is going to change the pressure on the soundboard and the tuning will go, or can actually cause damage. I sometimes use screws, but only when the piano is crap.” O course, there’s always the potential or embarrassment when placing objects inside a piano that were never designed to be there. “Tings can all out o the piano, and depending on what you’re going or, that can either be really cool or a disaster,” Davis says. “I use clothespins, and sometimes they pop out and you have to make something out o that.” While all the interviewees encouraged listening to both jazz and classical pianists who work with prepared piano, Courvoisier stressed hearing—and just as important, seeing—these techniques played live. “Te main thing I can advise is to go to concerts, hear different pianos and be inspired by other musicians,” she says. “You can see what they’re doing, and you can ask questions. It’s the best way to learn.” JT
R E G G E O H E U Q I N O R É V
Chick Corea & Béla Fleck
Keb’ Mo’ The Manhattan Transfer
Mavis Staples
Spend 10 jazz- and blues-filled days and nights in the Greater Reading area! Over 120 scheduled events, plus great shopping and dining in one area, make the 25th annual Boscov’s Berks Jazz Fest your perfect spring getaway. For tickets, call Ticketmaster toll free at 1-800-745-3000 or visit www.ticketmaster.com to order online.
Take 6
Joey Alexander
Boney James
CHICK COREA & BÉLA FLECK • THE SUMMIT: THE MANHATTAN TRANSFER & TAKE 6 • KEB’ MO’ WITH SPECIAL GUEST GERALD ALBRIGHT • MAVIS STAPLES • BONEY JAMES FOURPLAY: BOB JAMES, NATHAN EAST, HARVEY MASON, CHUCK LOEB • PHIL PERRY & HOWARD HEWETT • NAJEE FEATURING CHANTE MOORE, NICK COLIONNE THE RIPPINGTONS FEATURING RUSS FREEMAN • JOEY ALEXANDER TRIO • GOSPEL ACCORDING TO JAZZ CELEBRATION: KIRK WHALUM, DONNIE MCCLURKIN, JONATHAN BUTLER, KEVIN WHALUM, JOHN STODDART, DOXA GOSPEL ENSEMBLE • JACKIEM JOYNER & SELINA ALBRIGHT • KEIKO MATSUI • BWB: RICK BRAUN, KIRK WHALUM, NORMAN BROWN • MICHAEL LINGTON FEATURING TAYLOR DAYNE • JAZZ FUNK SOUL: CHUCK LOEB, EVERETTE HARP, JEFF LORBER • ROBBEN FORD • JAZZ MEETS JAMES: NICK COLIONNE, KIM WATERS, ERIC DARIUS, MARION MEADOWS, JEFF BRADSHAW, JEANETTE HARRIS, JAY ROWE • BRIAN BROMBERG BAND WITH THE BERKS HORNS FOUR80EAST FEATURING MATT MARSHAK, ART SHERROD • POPA CHUBBY • PIECES OF A DREAM • GREG ADAMS & EAST BAY SOUL • DAVID BROMBERG BIG BAND BLIND BOY PAXTON • KIM SIMMONDS & SAVOY BROWN • ERIC MARIENTHAL • ANDY SNITZER • GERALD VEASLEY & FRIENDSFEATURING BOBBY LYLE, NELSON RANGELL, CHIELI MINUCCI • THE MUSIC OF DAVE BRUBECK: BRUBECK BROTHERS QUARTET AND THE READING POPS ORCHESTRA • CRAIG THATCHER BAND & FRIENDS • THE ROYAL SCAM SHERRIE MARICLE & FIVE PLAY • LIVE AT THE FILLMORE: TRIBUTE TO THE ORIGINAL ALLMAN BROTHERS • ZOE’ • DAVID P STEVENS & DEE LUCAS • ERICH CAWALLA QUARTET FEATURING BENNIE SIMS, CLIFF STARKEY, MARKO MARCINKO • DEVON ALLMAN BAND • PHILADELPHIA FUNK AUTHORITY • THE ORIGINAL GROOVEMASTERS & FRIENDS • UPTOWN BAND FEATURING ERICH CAWALLA & JENIFER KINDER • BLITZ DYNETTE • GREG HATZA & TIM PRICE ORGAN QUARTET • DJANGOHOLICS ANONYMOUS AMY HELM & THE HANDSOME STRANGERS • KUTZTOWN UNIVERSITY JAZZ ENSEMBLE I • U.S. NAVY BAND COMMODORES • U.S. AIR FORCE RHYTHM IN BLUE JAZZ ENSEMBLE BERKS HIGH SCHOOL ALL-STAR JAZZ BAND AND CHORUS • STOLEN MOMENTS: THE FIRST 100 YEARS OF JAZZ FEATURING JAZZREACH’S METTA QUINTET AND MORE!*
* LINEUP AS OF 11/20/15 SUBJECT TO CHANGE
Follow us on Twitter @berksjazzfest
Sound advice
GearHead Novation MoroderNova Synthesizer We’re not going to lie: Tis synth’s inspiration, Giorgio Moroder, is not what we reer to as a “jazz guy.” A monumental �gure in the development o synthpop and electronica, he’s best known or his disco hitmaking with Donna Summer and a string o trailblazing ’80s �lm soundtracks. But with current jazz so indebted to the electronic sounds o ’70s and ’80s pop, R&B and experimental music, this compact, versatile instrument might be the perect complement to your vintage Rhodes. With Novation’s MiniNova as its core, the model ships with 30 preloaded synth patches— endorsed by Moroder—that anyone with an ear or pop radio o the past our decades should recognize. Other eatures include 256 onboard sounds; player-riendly controls including oversized pitch and modulation wheels; essential effects like distortion, chorus/phase and delay; and a vocoder. $449.99 online. us.novationmusic.com
Promark Select Balance Drumsticks Somehow, drum manuacturers are still managing to reinvent and innovate the common stick. Case in point: Promark’s Select Balance series, a brilliantly simple two-pronged idea that responds to the basic demands o different musical styles. Te “Forward Balance” sticks have a “ront-weighted eel,” with a 2 1/4-inch taper, better or the headlong thrust o country, punk, metal and the like. Te “Rebound Balance” sticks, with a 3-inch taper and a “rear-weighted eel,” are your option or groove-based music like jazz and R&B, and situations requiring more interplay with the rest o the ensemble. Various weights are available, all in hickory with a teardrop wood tip. From $7.95/pair. promark.com
Godlyke Pivot-All Plugs & Cables How’s this or bandstand bummers: You �nish a great set on your elecaster- or Les-Paul-style guitar, lean the ax against your amp and orget that your cable has a straight plug— breaking the input and sending your prized six-string to the repair shop. Godlyke’s new Pivot-All plugs and cables pre vent this tragedy by rotating and locking along a 180-degree axis. Tink about it: No more awkward straight plugs sticking out o your Jazz Bass; no more expensive reverb units teetering atop your vintage combo amp because that unit can’t be stacked on top o a protruding plug. And stompboxes will �nally sit �ush on your pedalboard. Te plug (no cable) sells or just $19.95 online. Plugs-with-cable are available in several lengths and end combinations; those eaturing two Pivot-Alls range rom 4 inches ($47.95) to 30 eet ($139.95). godlyke.com
Tru Tuner Rapid Drumhead Replacement System Jazz drummers don’t break drumheads with the requency o, say, metal guys, but it can happen, and you better pray you’re not gigging at Smalls or recording with Rudy Van Gelder when it does. ru uner’s Rapid Drumhead Replacement System can pre vent that panic: It’s a durable polycarbonate disc that aligns with a drum’s tension rods, allowing you to screw or unscrew a head in one ell swoop using 10 custom-designed keys. Te adjustable System accommodates most common lug patterns, on drums ranging rom 8 to 16 inches. $74.99 online. trutuner.com
D’Angelico EX-SD Bass Te rebirth o the D’Angelico brand has been one o the more heartening stories in the musical-instruments industry over the past ew years. While offering guitars approaching the elegant, American-handcrafed archtops the company built its name on, D’Angelico has smartly expanded its line into quality oreign-made, affordably priced instruments—including basses. Te �ame maple EX-SD bass eatures a chambered solidbody that decreases weight and increases resonance without the eedback problems associated with straight hollowbodies. wo Kent Armstrong pickups provide a spectrum o tones, and a short scale length will help guitar-trained players bridge the gap. A retless version is also available. $1,299 street price. dangelicoguitars.com
Z Z A J 6 1 2 0 T C E N N C O E R E N C E F N C O
M A R G P R O
E D I G U
N A L I T I O O C D R W A R O F Z Z H E J A T & S E Z Z T I M A J Y B N T E D E S E R P
CONFERENCE THEME: FRESH HORIZONS! JANUARY 14-15, 2016 SAINT PETER’S CHURCH, NEW YORK CITY
JAZZCONNECT CONFERENCE THURSDAY, JANUARY 14 8 a m – 4 p m
(Narthex Gallery) 9 am – 3:30 pm
(Narthex Gallery) 9:30am – 10:30 am
PANELS NEW CHALLENGES TO IMPACT SOCIAL MEDIA
(Sanctuary on LL1) JAZZ IN THE MAINSTREAM MEDIA
; (Living Room on LL1)
; (Sanctuary on LL1) THEMUSIC OF MILESAHEAD: CREATING THE SOUNDTRACK FOR THEDON CHEADLE FILM
(Living Room on LL1)
STREAMING SERVICES: HOW DID WE GET HERE AND WHERE ARE WE GOING?
(The YorkTheatreon LL2) 10:45 am– 11:45 am
PANELS THESTATE OF THEALBUM IN 2016:CDS, DIGITAL DOWNLOADS & STREAMS
2
JAZZ CONNECT CONFERENCE PROGRAM
SCHEDULE OF EVENTS 2016 JAZZ AND THE POLICY STATE OF THEUNION
10 am – 3:45 pm
SPECIAL INTEREST WORKSHOPS & MEETINGS 2pm–3pm WORKSHOP: THE JAZZ AUDIENCE INITIATIVE: FINDINGS ANDNEXT STEPS
(The York Theatre) 3:15pm - 4:15pm WORKSHOP THE JAZZ AUDIENCE INITIATIVE: FINDINGS AND NEXT STEPS
(The York Theatre) 3:15 pm -4:15 pm PUBLICISTS ROUNDTABLE
4:30 pm – 5:30 pm JAZZ JOURNALISTS ASSOCI ATION MEMBERSHIP MEETING
(The York Theatre)
PRESENTED BY JAZZTIMES & THE JAZZ FORWARD COALITION (The York Theatre on LL2) 12:15 pm -1:45 pm KEYNOTE AND STORIES OF INSPIRATION
(Sanctuary on LL1) 2 pm – 3:30 pm
PANEL (Presented by the Music Business JAZZ & THE MUSIC BUSINESS TODAY: THE GOOD, THE BAD & THE UGLY
(Sanctuary on LL1) 3:30 pm – 5 pm RECEPTION HOSTED BY NPR MUSIC
Jazz Night in America Jazz Night in America (Living Room LL1)
JAZZ CONNECT CONFERENCE PROGRAM
3
JAZZ CONNECT CONFERENCE (Sanctuary on LL1)
5 pm – 6:30 pm ASK THE EXPERTS NETWORKING SESSION
Created & Produced by Jana La Sorte (Ambassadora) (Sanctuary on LL1)
FRIDAY, JANUARY 15 8 am – 2 pm (Narthex Gallery) 9:30 am – 3:30 pm
(Narthex Gallery) 9:30 am -10:30 am
THE YOUTH MOVEMENT
(The York Theatre on LL2)
PANELS NEW EDUCATION MODELS FOR ARTISTS
AND ORGANIZATIONS TO ENGAGE COMMUNITIES
JUKEBOY JURY
(Presented by JazzWeek) (Living Room on LL1)
10:45 am – 11:45 am
PANELS SPOTLIGHT ON NORWAY
Consulate General) Øyvind (Sanctuary on LL1) WHAT’S YOUR MARKETING PLAN?
(The York Theatre on LL2)
CHORD & MAJOR EARPHONES –Gino Rosaria, renowned Jazz pianist
Five models, each featuring a distinctive tonal ” that will absolutely take your breath away.
BOOTH 2590
7519 Pennsylvania Ave Sarasota, FL 34243 | (941) 444-5166 www.sedoaudio.com |
[email protected]
6
J A Z Z C O N N E C T C O N F E R E N C E P R O G R A M
Dealer inquiries accepted
SCHEDULEOFEVENTS2016 CHARTING SUCCESS (Presented by JazzWeek)
(Sanctuary on LL1)
MAMMINA
& ROLF STURM
www.jenna-rolf.com
1:45 pm – 4:45 pm
LISTEN
1:45 pm
PLENARY SESSION (Presented by ASCAP)
SCREENING OF “JACO”
3:45 pm
(Living Room on LL1)
Jenna
PANEL
REMEMBERING JACO (Sanctuary on LL1)
ww w.w at er st re et mu si c. org ww w.c er va nt es gu it ar s. co m
Schedule subject to change.
10 am – 3:45 pm
SPECIAL INTEREST WORKSHOPS & MEETINGS 2 pm – 3 pm
3:15 pm -4:15 pm
JAZZWEEK WORKSHOP: THE ABCS OF JAZZ RADIO PROMOTION -
JAZZWEEK WORKSHOP: GROWING THE JAZZ RADIO AUDIENCE
(The York Theatre) 2 pm – 3 pm
JAZZ VOCALIST S ROUNDTABLE: SINGERS & SONGWRITERS: WHAT MAKES A SONG A STANDARD? (The Music Room)
(The York Theatre)
JAZZ CONNECT CONFERENCE PROGRAM
7
It goes with your commute
JazzTimes. It goes with you. T EN ISSU E S f o r o n l y
$ 2 4.
9 5
jazztimes.com | 1-877-252-8139 Use promo code SBAJTJF
Reviews
CDs
65
Books
76
78
Vox
� Before his performance of A Love Supreme at the Antibes Jazz Festival in 1965, Coltrane practices in his hotel room while absorbing recordings of Albert Ayler
JOHN COLTRANE A LOVE SUPREME: THE COMPLETE MASTERS (Impulse!/Verve)
Veteran jazz ans probably do not ofen listen to A Love Supreme, saxophonist John Coltrane’s unathomably important 1965 album o passionate, spiritual jazz. Tey internalized the LP, perormed by rane’s “Classic Quartet”—pianist McCoy yner, bassist Jimmy Garrison, drummer Elvin Jones and the leader on tenor—long ago. But now there’s a reason to revisit. In honor o its 50th birthday, the
album has been reissued as part o an essential new set titled A Love Supreme: Te Complete Masters. A two-CD version includes the album, a pair o mono reerence masters and all the lefover takes and overdubs rom the sessions; a three-discer tosses in a live reading o Supreme—the sole one we have, also rom ’65—by the same personnel as on the album. (Both editions eature a new liner essay by Ashley Kahn.) Most o the music here, including the epic gig, has already been released, but the tracks we haven’t heard beore are intriguing, and the experience o hearing all o A Love
Supreme in one program is staggering. I you haven’t listened to this masterpiece in a while, what better way to dive back in than by going all the way? As ar as previously unreleased material, there are nine tracks here. Te two mono reerence masters, “Pursuance” and “Psalm,” sound nice and raw. Te take o “Psalm” beore rane overdubbed alto sax is cool to have, i unnecessary. And the two tracks where the leader adds the album’s amous chant—“A love supreme/A love supreme”—to the end o “Acknowledgement” are interesting because the lines only wound up appearing near the beginning o the song. But the real score o the set is the our extra takes o “Acknowledgement” rom the second and �nal day o the sessions, when the band became a sextet also eaturing bassist Art Davis and tenor saxophonist Archie Shepp. (wo other takes o “Acknowledgement” rom this day and with this lineup were previously released.) One take �nds the group playing a little bit and dis cussing how to count the song. Another is halted afer less than a minute o music. But then there are two ull sextet takes o “Acknowledgement” where one can really envision the opening cut rom A Love Supreme with two bassists and two tenor saxophonists. (One wonders i rane had at any point planned to re-record the entire album with Shepp and Davis. Te album as we know it had been recorded on day one.) ake 6 is a bit too meandering to be tr uly potent, but take 4 makes a strong case or this sextet that never was. rane and Shepp share the sax space beautiully. Te bassists sound great together. And the group sound seems to be saying something about unity and community and collaboration rather than the well-established theme o A Love Supreme, inner spirituality. Speaking strictly musically, too, there is something new on takes 4 and 6: Both pieces eature a bouncy variation on the iconic “Acknowledgement” bassline, which according to cultural memory matches the “A love supreme” chant. Who was John Coltrane i not an improviser? BRAD FARBERMAN J A Z Z T I M E S . C O M
R I O L E L E R R E I P N A E J
65
Reviews HARRY ALLEN FOR GEORGE, COLE AND DUKE (Blue Heron)
enor saxophonist Harry Allen’s discography is �lled with tribute albums, to personal heroes ranging rom Billy Strayhorn to Zoot Sims, Antonio Carlos Jobim and Henry Mancini. wo o the heroes on For George, Cole and Duke have already been subjects o album-length homages by Allen—2000’s Harry Allen Plays Ellington Songs and the ollowing year’s Cole Porter Songbook—and he’s been to the Gershwin well numerous times beore. Tis is music with which Allen is comortable and deeply intimate. He plays it with authority and elegance, and while he’s not exactly breaking new ground with his interpretations, he gives it his heart and soul. Sometimes that’s all you need. For this set, Allen teams with pianist Ehud Asherie, bassist Nicki Parrott and Chuck Redd on drums andvibes, with Little Johnny Rivero supplying percussion on three tracks. Parrott also sings. On a drumless reading o the Gershwins’ “How Long Has Tis Been Going On?” she �oats, silkily, above Redd’s vibes and Asherie’s piano, relinquishing the reins onlybrie�y to Allen’s Getz-likesolo. On “Mood Indigo,” one o the Ellington standards, she straddles the line between blues and pop naturally, a trace o Billie in her sensual delivery. Most o the recording is strictly instrumental though, and although this isn’t a group bent on breaking into deep grooves, they can muster up both the seriously swinging (“In a Mellow one,” “Shall We Dance”) and midtempo exercises that leave ample space or each player to open up (“Tey All Laughed,” “Always rue to You in My Fashion”). Tere are no liner notes rom Allen explaining why he grouped these particular composers on one single volume, but it all coheres. Guess he just likes ’em. JEFF TAMARKIN
HERB ALPERT COME FLY WITH ME (Ada)
More than 50 years have passed since Herb Alpert burst onto the international music scene with his ijuana Brass and proved, quite literally, instrumental in presaging the smooth-jazz movement that he’s still a vital part o. As one o the most admired music titans o that past century, his 66
JAZZTIMES
•
J A N U A R Y / F E B R U A R Y 2 0 1 6
success with the JB is dwared by his achievements as a mogul (coounder o A&M), educator and philanthropist. Yet, at age 80, he remains at heart a passionate trumpet player. Tere was a lengthy period, starting around the turn o the century and stretching or nearly a decade, when he went quiet. Ten, with 2009’s Anything Goes, began a welcome renaissance. Now �ve albums in, he delivers by ar the �nest session o his career resurgence. Tis is Alpert’s �rst postmillennial disc without his wie, singer Lani Hall, nor does he himsel add any vocals. Te ocus is squarely on his playing, which, noticeably ragged on a couple o previous releases, has regained most o its clarity and vigor. Tough he disbanded the Brass in 1969, its breezy in�uence is still evident, particularly on zesty treatments o “On the Sunny Side o the Street,” “Night Ride” (one o �ve Alpert originals) and the Sinatraassociated title track. But Come Fly With Me is ar more inventive than nostalgic. Alongside such regular session-mates as bassist Hussain Jiffry, drummer Michael Shapiro and keyboardists Eduardo del Barrio, Bill Cantos and Jeff Lorber, he experiments with a spectrum o rhythms and textures. Cleverest among them: his reggae-laced takes on “Got a Lot o Livin’ to Do” and the loping “Walkin’ all”; the programming-driven (courtesy o son Randy) panache o “Sweet and Lovely” and “Windy City”; and the calypsocharged “Cheeky.” Most sublime: his slowchugging, crepuscular “ake the ‘A’ rain.” CHRISTOPHER LOUDON
RAOUL BJÖRKENHEIM ECSTASY OUT OF THE BLUE (Cuneiform)
Critics have heaped lavish praise on guitarist Raoul Björkenheim’s curious brand o improvised jazz, and understandably so, even i commonly drawn parallels (Ayler, Coleman, Coltrane, Mahavishnu, Hendrix, Fela, et al.) only serve to underscore the audacious yet ultimately elusive nature o his music. Out of the Blue, the second recording by his stellar Finnish quartet eCsaSy, will help burnish the band’s growing reputation or creative synthesis and spontaneity. For more than �ve years now, Björkenheim has ruitully collaborated with eCsaSy’s renowned drummer Markku
Ounaskari, bassist Jori Huhtala and saxophonist Pauli Lyytinen, while exploring a multidimensional sound that embraces expansive soundscapes, Nordic/noirish vignettes and jarringly kinetic interludes (and that’s the short list). On this session, nothing is more engaging than “Quintrille,” with its sleek harmonies, bluesy phrasing, impassioned soprano sax and ebullient rhythms, or as prooundly Zen as “A Fly in the House o Love,” an excursion resonating with exotic tones and colors. Te Hendrix connection comes into sharp ocus on “Uptown,” beore Björkenheim yields the �oor to Lyytinen, who engages in some muscular sparring with the ever-resourceul Ounaskari. Another highlight, and another dramatic shif in mood, comes when the ensemble threatens to derail “Roller Coaster” with high-pitched interplay and high-spirited propulsion. A ull account o the album’s rewards, though, demands close scrutiny: Out of the Blue is clearly the sort o recording that offers new discoveries and resh perspectives with each spin. MIKE JOYCE
JOE CASTRO LUSH LIFE: A MUSICAL JOURNEY (Sunnyside)
Up until now, historians considered pianist Joe Castro (1927-2009) noteworthy or two reasons: He was the �rst Mexican-American jazz bandleader to achieve any great ame, and he was the consort o tobacco heiress Doris Duke, the wealthiest woman in the world during her lietime—worth approximately $1.3 billion when she died in 1993. It turns out, however, that Castro was also an important chronicler o the ’50s and ’60s West Coast jazz scene, a act that has only come to light with the release o this six-CD set, assembled rom his tape library. In 1953, all that cigarette money helped Duke buy a Beverly Hills mansion ormerly owned by actor Rudolph Valentino and equip it with a rehearsal and recording studio or Castro. Loose jam sessions recorded there and at Duke’s Somerville, N.J., arm make up the bulk o this box. Te �rst disc, recorded in 1954 and eaturing Buddy Collette on �ute and clarinet and Chico Hamilton on drums, is the biggest revelation: three long, episodic pieces that seem completely improvised, although one suspects Castro had some back-pocket motis ready whenever inspiration �agged. Intriguing as this early taste o the reeorm is, it’s hampered by poor audio quality.
Te much-better-sounding disc three, rom 1956, offers the most enjoyable music here, matching up Castro’s laser-show piano with Oscar Pettiord’s astonishing bass playing and Zoot Sims’ and Lucky Tompson’s meaty tenor work. Te rest is an odd grab bag o rather elementary ’60s big-band sessions and several more ’50s jams, a ew o which don’t eature Castro at all. (Te great eddy Wilson occupies the piano bench or one whole disc, and it’s most pleasant to hear his bouncy aplomb set against the cool brilliance o Stan Getz on �ve cuts.) Despite its unevenness, Lush Life opens a surprising and valuable door into the history o West Coast jazz. MAC RANDALL
N O T T I B U E I H T A M
JOEY DEFRANCESCO TRIP MODE (HighNote) Joey the Aggressor has emerged with this album. With new guitarist Dan Wilson and new drummer Jason Brown, the organist’s trio harkens back to—as liner-note writer Mark Ruffin points out—the Larry Young-Grant Green-Elvin Jones triumvirate o the late ’60s. Tis trio isn’t just burning, it’s hammering, thumping, thundering and laying down a proound hardcore groove. Te title tune, which opens the album, sets the pace in terms o blitzing organ runs, volcanic drum eruptions and �ery guitar spurts that develop into �eet, organized lines. Tis kind o tough, jam-session sensibility also inuses Wilson’s “Who Shot John” and DeFrancesco’s “In Tat Order” and “raffic Jam” (somewhat reminiscent o Eddie Harris’ “Freedom Jazz Dance”). But with the organist’s “Cuz U No,” the pace changes to a slow, swaying blues, evoking the emotional momentum inherent in gospel-ueled church services. Amen! Additional perormances eature DeFrancesco on piano and trumpet and as a vocalist. On all o these—his “Arizona Sunrise,” “On Georgian Bay,” “What’s Your Organ Player’s Name” and Ray Noble’s “Te ouch o Your Lips”—bassist Mike Boone is added. DeFrancesco’s Miles Davis-in�uenced brass work has improved to the point that you might be ooled into thinking the trumpet is his primary instrument—as on “What’s Your Organ Player’s Name,” reminiscent o Davis’ electric period, with its backbeat, muted trumpet runs and organ unk. On
“Te ouch o Your Lips,” DeFrancesco’s singing has style, class and eeling. His piano playing is strong too, and considering his prowess on the organ there’s no reason to think otherwise. Tis is a �ne album throughout, but the biggest impression comes rom the aggression and soul o the new trio. OWEN CORDLE PETER ERSKINE DR. UM (Fuzzy) Dr. Um offers journeyman drummer Peter Erskine an excuse to play unk and usion and “all that [stuff] you’re so good at and people love while still being Mr. well-respected
legit jazzman,” as related in the liner notes. Tat aptly summarizes the scope o this project, on which Erskine collaborates with keyboardist John Beasley (the two co-produced the album) and British electric bass virtuoso Janek Gwizdala. Te three, joined by narrator Jack Fletcher, tenor saxophonist Bob Sheppard, guitarists Jeff Parker and Larry Koonse, and percussionist Aaron Seraty, play electric jazz that’s musically ertile but not �ashy, and handily demonstrates their gifs as groove-makers and improvisers. Erskine and co. indeed sound relaxed and inspired, and not bound by allegiances to genre or album concept. Erskine contributes three o the 10 tunes, starting with “Hawaii Bathing Suit.” Te tune, cut rom the same
DR. LONNIE SMITH EVOLUTION (Blue Note)
Dr. Lonnie Smith, one o the godathers o the jazz organ, returns to the record label that cemented his status as a B-3 king in the 1960s. Now, 45 years afer his previous session or Blue Note, Smith has issued not only what might be his own greatest album but one o the �nest contributions to the jazz-organ canon. Evolution is a tour de force consisting o seven mostly long tracks in decidedly different styles. Tis is an album that showcases the many sides o organ-based jazz. “Play It Back,” a 14-minute clinic in greasy ’70s unk, reads like an amped-up homage to Jimmy Smith. Te �rst keys are played not by Smith but by crossover pianist Robert Glasper, inorming us immediately that this is not your grandpa’s organ-jazz record, though the main riff is straight-up “Root Down.” I the rhythms o Evolution seem particularly inectious, that’s because there are two drummers, Johnathan Blake and Joe Dyson, delivering them on our o the seven tunes. Tat’s partly what makes the reworking o Smith’s “Arodesia”—eaturing saxophonist Joe Lovano, whose debut arrived on Smith’s 1975 album o the same name—so banging. extures constantly move. Lovano shows up again on “For Heaven’s Sake,” which despite its smooth-jazz proclivities is the most romantic slice o organ jazz you’ve heard in years. A traditional organ trio, with guitar and drums, tackles Telonious Monk’s “Straight, No Chaser,” and here Smith offers a long, juicy solo that pulls no punches and serves no gimmicks. “alk About Tis” is more modern, with grooving beats, unky horns and J.B.’s-type chants. An unconventional treatment o “My Favorite Tings”— with a super-long, super-quiet intro— takes its sweet time (11 minutes) developing, and Smith ends with a 10-minute version o his African Suite that emphasizes Arican rhythms and John Ellis’ superb �ute playing. Just when you think you’ve heard everything that organ jazz has to offer, Dr. Lonnie Smith evolves. � “What
might be his greatest album”: Dr. Lonnie Smith
STEVE GREENLEE
J A Z Z T I M E S . C O M
67
Reviews
cloth as his old band, Weather Report, has a spritely sax-keyboard unison head atop a simmering calypso-ish groove, and breaks into an open section or tenor, drums and congas, ollowed by Beasley’s twisty keys solo and a brash tenor outing on the outro. Erskine’s “Little Fun K” is, yeah, a little unky, its stair-stepping main theme, mellow keys and Parker’s liquid bluesy lines hinting at Steely Dan. And the leader’s sprawling “Northern Cross” bene�ts rom some o the same elements, as well as the tones and textures once heard in Weather Report, and a brie passage o Erskine’s stillinventive rhythmic derring-do. Erskine toasts Joe Zawinul, Weather Report’s coounder, on the latter’s atmospheric, noir-ish “Bourges Buenos Aires” and “Speechless.” Beasley contributes the perky grooves and zigzagging usion phrases o “Lost Page,” the laidback, soultinted “Okraphilia” and, unexpectedly, a stately Mahler arrangement. Koonse shines on Vince Mendoza’s “Sprite,” a lush ballad in the Metheny mold, and Beasley showcases his organ chops on Gary McFarland’s quirky “Sage Hands,” also eaturing Sheppard. asty stuff. PHILIP BOOTH ORAN ETKIN
OSCALYPSO (Skipstone)
REIMAGINING BENNY GOODMAN
(Motéma)
More than 75 years removed rom his breakthrough, the late Benny Goodman remains the most important clarinetist in the history o jazz, and one o its most successul bandleaders. Yet today, despite that vaunted status, he is ofen overlooked, something Oran Etkin aims to remedy with this new collection. It’s a decidedly different path or Etkin—whose previous outing, 2014’s Gathering Light , explored in�uences rom Arica, Asia and his native Israel—yet an obvious one as well: Etkin, who plays standard and bass clarinet and saxophone, expresses in his liner notes a longtime affinity or Goodman, who too was the son o Jewish immigrants. Te “reimagining” o the subtitle is key here: Etkin and his core band—pianist Sullivan Fortner, vibraphonist Steve Nelson and Matt Wilson on drums—have no interest in mimicking the sounds and aesthetics o the ’30s and ’40s. Te Louis Prima-composed “Sing, Sing, Sing,” the Goodman staple that closes out the album officially (although it’s ollowed on the CD
JAZZTIMES
•
JEFF TAMARKIN
ERIK FRIEDLANDER
WHAT’S NEW?
68
by an unlisted “Moonglow”), spends nearly hal o its three-plus minutes avoiding the amiliar theme altogether. Fortner, Nelson and Etkin lay out a simple, quasi-classical melody and chase each other’s tails with it beore Wilson’s tom-toms goad the others toward the tune proper. Rodgers and Hart’s “Where or When,” elegant, easygoing and drumless, and “Dinah,” with its ractured rhythm, are worlds apart rom anything Goodman might have conjured, although Jelly Roll Morton’s “King Porter Stomp” will eel comy to the retro crowd with its ragtimey cheer. Another two tracks, “Why Don’t You Do Right” and “Afer You’ve Gone,” each eaturing the vocals o rising star Charenee Wade, are polar opposites temperamentally: Te �rst clip-clops along haphazardly, paying little regard to convention; the second is standard lights-down-low blues. It’s questionable whether Goodman would have elt either arrangement. But by the time the hour-long program concludes, Etkin and crew have accomplished their task o using Goodman as a catalyst or both rediscovery and envisioning.
J A N U A R Y / F E B R U A R Y 2 0 1 6
Erik Friedlander �rst honored Oscar Pettiord in 2008 with Broken Arm Trio, a collection o originals inspired by Pettiord’s rediscovery o the cello afer his busted wing became an obstacle to perorming on the larger bass. Oscalypso goes a step urther by exploring nine Pettiord compositions, and it is Friedlander’s �rst-ever record o cover songs. Where Broken Arm Trio stayed true to its title by eschewing arco on its pizzicato-stitched, olk-oriented are, Oscalypso enriches classic bebop with lush unison lines and traded phrases between Friedlander’s bowed and plucked cello—akin to the glides and splats o a trumpet—and the horns o saxophonist Michael Blake. Teir harmonizing head arrangements stand out, rom the spooky intro to “Bohemia Afer Dark” to the closing track, “Sunrise Sunset.” Not everything works. Friedlander’s rendition o “ricotism,” perhaps Pettiord’s most renowned piece, eels a little stiffer in the unison passages than the Lucky Tompson and Ray Brown versions. And while affecting, the ballad “wo Little
Pearls” is more doleul and less beautiul than Pettiord’s de�nitive take. But there are numerous triumphs here. Friedlander transorms the big-band tune “amalpais Love Song” into chamber music with a �amenco tint via his imaginative arrangement and nonpareil cello work. ropical �ourishes likewise come to the ore on the appropriately named “Oscalypso,” and in the tango embedded in “Sunrise Sunset.” Te toe-tapping buoyancy o vintage bebop is showcased on the blues-inused “Pendulum at Falcon’s Lair,” and in the ’50s �ashback that “Cable Car” inspires. Friedlander’s amiliarity with his rhythm section is crucial, to his adroit interplay with bassist revor Dunn and to where and when drummer Michael Sarin opts to emphasize pulse or atmosphere. Along with Blake as an invaluable oil, they have enabled him to make a modern, adventurous bebop record ronted by a cellist who takes no prisoners. BRITT ROBSON
ANTONIO HART BLESSINGS (JLP)
Afer hearing Blessings, soul-jazz ans o a certain age will likely �nd themselves counting their own. Ten again, even the uninitiated may be similarly inclined. Beginning with a wonderully evocative take on Jack McDuff’s “Rock Candy,” saxophonist Antonio Hart underscores his ties to vintage organ-jazz combos with the help o three kindred spirits: keyboardist Bobby Floyd, guitarist Yotam Silberstein and drummer Steve Williams. Gratitude may be the album’s prevailing theme, as its title suggests, but soululness is its core trait, a common thread that runs through a smart selection o original compositions and a mix o jazz and pop standards. Hart, on soprano and mostly alto saxophone, never puts a wrong oot orward as player or composer, but some perormances nevertheless stand out, owing to his now robust, now piercing tone and his harmonic assurance. It’s a good thing, too, because a lesser talent would have a hell o a time negotiating the tricky hard-bop intervals that requently arise—witness Hart’s angular “Up and Down”—or �nessing Frank Foster’s “Shiny Stockings” with such Basie-like aplomb. Indeed, on the latter,
Hart’s reverberating alto sounds like a reed section unto itsel. Still, Blessings is a team effort, with ample room or everyone involved. Organist Floyd, naturally, is responsible or stoking the �res much o the time, but he also contributes to the album’s subtle charms. Te same is true o Silberstein, who contrasts minor-key lyricism with popping blues riffs and swirling patterns o 16th notes, and Williams, who adroitly shades ballads when he isn’t stirring the pot with tumbling rhythms and jabbing accents. Small wonder Hart is eeling thankul these days. MIKE JOYCE CHARLES LLOYD & THE MARVELS I LONG TO SEE YOU (Blue Note)
In 2015, afer 25 years with ECM, where he created one o the lasting bodies o work in modern jazz, Charles Lloyd moved to Blue Note. His �rst Blue Note release, Wild Man Dance, was well received. His second will initially cause concern in some quarters. “Charles Lloyd & the Marvels”? Vocal tracks with Willie Nelson and Norah Jones? WF? Everyone can relax. I Long to See You is mostly gorgeous. Jazz musicians tend to make their best records with their regular bands. Lloyd’s masterworks are albums made with his working quartets, like Forest Flower on Atlantic and Canto and Te Call on ECM. Te new venture called the Marvels is Lloyd’s long-term bassist and drummer, Reuben Rogers and Eric Harland, respectively, plus two guitarists, Bill Frisell and Greg Leisz. Tis ensemble, even i it proves short-lived, sounds inevitable, preordained. Tere is high-level unconditional jazz here, like two Lloyd staples rom the ’60s, “O Course, O Course” and “Sombrero Sam,” and “Barche Lamsel,” a rapt 16-minute inner search. But the most striking pieces are popular and olk tunes. Te Marvels can transorm a song just by playing its melody. Bob Dylan’s “Masters o War” dramatically rises and alls. Frisell is just right or Lloyd. His version o lyricism is ragmentary and oblique; Lloyd’s is �owing and aspiring. Te two overlay beautiully. On “Abide With Me” and “All My rials,” Frisell’s �ickering, lingering tones deepen Lloyd’s spell. Te yearning sustains o Leisz on pedal steel deepen it urther.
Te two overdubbed vocals are harmless. On “Last Night I Had the Strangest Dream,” Willie Nelson’s voice is quavery but his message is strong. And what’s not to like about Norah Jones breathing in your ear on “You Are So Beautiul”? Te desert island track is “Shenandoah,” dead slow, Lloyd on tenor saxophone sofly crying high while Frisell and Leisz array glittering light all around him. “Shenandoah” will make you sit very still in your chair. THOMAS CONRAD
JOE MAGNARELLI THREE ON TWO (Posi-Tone)
Te “three” are the horn guys—Joe Magnarelli on trumpet/�ugelhorn, Steve Davis on trombone and Mike DiRubbo on alto saxophone—and the “two” are organist Brian Charette and drummer Rudy Royston. Like several o his previous leader releases—this is his 11th in all, and second or Posi-one—the disc places Magnarelli at the heart o a muscular, workmanlike quintet or which skill and �air take precedence over jumping through �aming hoops. You may not come away rom Tree on wo exclaiming that you’ve just heard the uture o jazz, but you’ll know that what you did hear was music played superbly by seasoned pros. Magnarelli mixes things up—original band-member compositions brush up against music by Debussy, Coltrane and Cedar Walton; organ-dominated segments coexist peaceully with blasts o �ery horn power. On the �rst o two rane tracks, “26-2,” it all comes together sensationally. Successive alto, trumpet and trombone solos claim just enough space to establish the expressiveness and quality o chops beore Charette drives it home with the kind o dazzle you always want to hear rom a B-3. Right beore that one, Magnarelli’s “NYCJ-Funk” is all about groove: deliberate, smooth and hip—music to strut to. Troughout there’s the indelible stamp o swing. Even at their most understated (Davis’ “Easy,” Coltrane’s “Central Park West”), these are �ve players who never lose the pace. And when they do crank into overdrive—as on Magnarelli’s title track and “Paris”—you can eel the steam rising. Give much o the credit or that to Royston, whose rhythmic potency is matched by his ability to seamlessly slide into nuance. JEFF TAMARKIN
PETE MCCANN RANGE (Whirlwind)
On Range, his �fh recording as a leader, longtime New York guitarist Pete McCann pushes his compositional gifs beyond their outer limits. Te aesthetic gambits packed into these 10 originals don’t always make or casual listening, but the resultant album is nevertheless an intriguing, largely rewarding experience. “Dyad Changes” solidly exempli�es McCann’s exploratory spirit. In�uenced by the work o 12-tone pioneer Anton Webern, the track melds a relentless, hard-chopping beat with minor-key space-unk rom Henry Hey on Fender Rhodes. “Numinous” extends the serialism, McCann’s sparse acoustic notes interlaced with Hey’s eerie unresolved phrases and subtle cymbal ades rom drummer Mark Ferber. Pirouetting Indian-style rhythmic patterns grace the shadowy “Seventh Jar,” while “Bridge Scandal,” inspired by New Jersey’s recent “Bridgegate” controversy, �nds McCann cutting loose with some straight-up rock shredding while alto saxophonist John O’Gallagher wails with brash insistence. On “Mustard,” the album’s most stylistically expansive offering, McCann interjects jagged clusters o abstraction into a nimble melodic statement rom O’Gallagher and Hey (here on organ). From there, Hey solos soulully, McCann lets �y with his bluesiest phrases o the recording, and the bridge unexpectedly evokes the brassy good-time vibe o a late-night talk-show band. It’s when McCann taps into this vein, populist yet still musically vital, that Range is at its most listenable. Te bold purity o O’Gallagher’s tone gives “Kenny,” a tribute to the late trumpeter Kenny Wheeler (a McCann mentor), bracing edges, and Ferber’s light-tripping elegance drives the laidback propulsion o “Rumble.” For much o the album, bassist Matt Clohesy �ies under the radar, but he is showcased to strong effect on two ballads, the broodingly bittersweet “Mine Is Yours,” with McCann and Hey subtly embellishing the contours o Clohesy’s deep-toned solo, and “o the Mountains,” an echoey, acid-country wisp o desert ambience. MATT R. LOHR
J A Z Z T I M E S . C O M
69
Reviews
JOE MCPHEE/JAMIE SAFT/ JOE MORRIS/ CHARLES DOWNS TICONDEROGA (Clean Feed)
Ticonderoga has an irresistible backstory. Jamie Saf and Joe Morris discovered a mutual love or John Coltrane’s much-maligned 1966 album Live at the Village Vanguard Again! Proclaiming Alice Coltrane his avorite
pianist, Saf wanted to make a record inspired by the album. Morris contacted Joe McPhee, who happened to have been ront and center at the Vanguard gig 49 years ago, and Charles Downs, who as Rashid Bakr had drummed or Cecil aylor, William Parker and other titans o the New Ting. Te quartet convened at Saf’s studio in upstate New York and banged out our collective improvisations. It comprises a dense hour o music in the classic Clean Feed mode o dynamic
intensity and re�ective eruption. Te participatory ocus is sharp indeed. Saf unplugs all his keys and gadgets and channels his inner Alice. His rainbow swirls are a glissando o pure ivories, and his occasional orlorn passages o harplike ragility inevitably swell into cantering block chords to run with the herd. McPhee likewise downsizes his arsenal to a rane-ish complement o tenor and soprano saxophone, on which he blows a usillade that gathers Coltrane’s lyrical shards but doesn’t orget to include the unremitting wail o Pharoah Sanders, who was the Vanguard gig’s primal heat. Morris orsakes his guitar or the rumble o the bass, which burrows clean through grooves. He is deprived o the lengthy soloing accorded Jimmy Garrison at the Vanguard, but is a orce o nature on “Leaves o Certain” and a vibrant presence throughout. Downs deploys his expertise at reraming cacophony into more recognizable rhythmic waves. Te quieter moments on Ticonderoga eel like preludes, or drainage. Vanguard Again! was derided because it was such a revelry in sound. Te our musicians here cherish the differences in abric, and the abiding warmth, in the sheets they create. BRITT ROBSON
WES MONTGOMERY ONE NIGHT IN INDY (Resonance)
It is early 1959, which means it’s still going to take a touch o time or Wes Montgomery to ramp up the ol’ retboard chops. But how warming this live session must have been on a cold Indianapolis night. Te circumstances o the date have a charm to them that ollows when buddies get together to share records and host the occasional band, as was the case here. Tis one eatures an unknown bassist who has an accord with Montgomery, even i he can’t stroll out as ar musically. For that there is pianist Eddie Higgins. One could even say that Higgins’ pianistic orays inormed Montgomery’s attempts to diversiy his hard-bop sound. On “Ruby, My Dear,” Higgins is a Minton’s-riendly pre-dawn blues poet, transorming 12-bar structures into waves o indigo that build conversationally, conessionally, like dark colors unburdening themselves o what it’s like not to be bright. Montgomery’s guitar then offers its version o this same bluesy 70
JAZZTIMES
•
J A N U A R Y / F E B R U A R Y 2 0 1 6
mulling, a growth spurt in balladic vein. “You’d Be So Nice to Come Home o” is amiliar as the eventual Boss Guitar brand o Montgomery strutting, but it is “Stompin’ at the Savoy” that provides the sort o “aw, come on” virtuosity that Montgomery could drop on you out o nowhere. riplets like �ashes o light all but strobe, and note clusters shake with vibrato. You get the sense that this is the number or that buddy who was most enthusiastic about having Mr. Montgomery stop by. He must have received many back claps. COLIN FLEMING
NAJEE YOU, ME AND FOREVER (Shanachie)
Even during smooth-jazz’s ’80s and ’90s commerical peak, Najee’s skills as an improviser allowed him to rise above the pack. Tose chops are on strong display on You, Me and Forever , his 16th original release as leader, and the saxophonist/�utist’s sheer prowess helps the program overcome its sometimes pedestrian composing.
Te album crests with the opening track, the New Age-in�ected “Air,” Najee’s lyrically energetic �ute borne alof by RaShawn Northington’s punchy electric bass and a sharp piano solo rom Rod Bonner. “Fly With the Wind,” with Najee on tenor sax, boasts an earworm o a melodic line, and the �ute gets another showcase on a vaporous reading o the Jobim standard “Wave.” Guest vocalist Chuck Johnson’s graceul passion ignites standout track “Biggest Part o Me,” and the somberly beautiul “Butter�y Girl”
MICHAEL MUSILLAMI TRIO ZEPHYR (Playscape)
Zephyr successully achieves its modest ambition. Pride, released in 2014, was a two-hour extravaganza that abetted guitarist Michael Musillami’s trio with rugged, notable guests (Kris Davis, Mark Feldman, Jimmy Greene), containing a live disc revitalizing old Musillami numbers and a studio disc that culminates with a our-song suite. By contrast, Zephyr sticks to the longstanding trio o Musillami, bassist Joe Fonda and drummer George Schuller. For their eighth release in 13 years, they impulsively entered the studio afer a short tour in the spring o 2015 and laid down a hal-dozen personal but unpretentious Musillami originals. Te trio interplay is spare and spacious, seasoned with Musillami’s compositional imagination but girded with vamps and a slightly unky lilt that is more straightorward than much o his previous output. Te disc is ramed by remembrances dedicated to his ormer bassist and riend, Dave Shapiro (the three-way call-and-response “Loops”), and to Dawn Hochsprung, the mother o his son’s wie, who was killed in the shootings at Sandy Hook Elementary, where she was principal (“Remembering Dawn”). A ballad or his daughter, “Francesca’s Flowers,” is a ragile tone poem. “Zephyr Cove” and “Paci�c School” are musical meditations on landmarks rom his childhood. Tis material is well suited or Musillami’s guitar style, which meshes the amiable liquidity o Southern rock (think Dickey Betts) with the more cerebral delicacy associated with Jim Hall. Fonda and Schuller are typically astute, sensitive and simpatico. Te absence o grandiosity, especially in light o its ofen emotionally charged inspirations, makes Zephyr a pleasant encounter.
THE UNIVERSITY OF THE ARTS
THINK OUT LOUDER. MUSIC
MUSIC BUSINESS
2 Weeks
2 Weeks
July 11 - July 23
July 11 - July 23
3 College Credits
3 College Credits
SCHOOL STUDENTS
Tis summer, join students from across the globe and see firsthand how our unparalleled location and acclaimed teaching staff make us the nation’s most dynamic summer arts program. UARTS.EDU/SUMMERINSTITUTE
BRITT ROBSON
J A Z Z T I M E S . C O M
71
Reviews
entwines Najee’s �ute with Dean Mark’s crystalline acoustic guitar to heartwarming effect. But a number o tunes, particularly in the back hal, are not as memorable. “Signature” eatures authoritative tenor rom Najee but under-mixes guest vocalist Frank McComb, never allowing him to take ownership o the song as he should. Another vocal guest, Andrea Wallace, boasts a pleasingly breathy tone, but “Give It All We’ve Got” doesn’t give her distinc-
tive enough lyrics or the track to make an impression. Likewise, both “Spectrum” and the title track are well perormed and pretty, yet they evaporate rom the mind as they’re playing. Fortunately, the disc ends on a high with “Jannah.” Acoustic bassist Seth Lee joins Pieces o a Dream’s James Lloyd, on acoustic piano, to lay down slick patterns over which Najee, on soprano sax, busts out his most inventive improvisations o the album. Not all o You, Me and Forever deserves to last, but its best tracks ce-
Sometimes
Choose
Van Gogh
Platinum
Versa-X
Covered by one or more U.S. Patents. Additional patents applied for. See website for details.
72
JAZZTIMES
•
J A N U A R Y / F E B R U A R Y 2 0 1 6
www.rovnerproducts.com
ment Najee’s stance as one o smooth’s integral artists. MATT R. LOHR THE NECKS VERTIGO (Northern Spy)
Australians the Necks have released 15 albums o expansive improvisation, many o them devoted to one extended piece that �ows along or upwards o 60 minutes. In that regard, record number 16, Vertigo, presents a streamlined perormance by the trio, since it ades out afer 43 minutes. At the same time, they use the shorter length to toy with their usual minimalist approach. Te group wondered what would happen to their perormance i it were augmented by a musical drone, and several such sounds rise and all throughout the program, providing a ramework or the loosely constructed soundscape. In the opening seconds, a low, metallic drone ades in, cuing a clatter o percussion and strings rom drummer ony Buck. Te drummer’s brie explosions appear regularly throughout the piece, calling to mind both Han Bennink and the contents o an overpacked closet alling to the �oor. While bassist Lloyd Swanton can only be heard intermittently, pianist Chris Abrahams’ activities shape most o the perormance. At times, simple, repetitive acoustic piano melodies combine with the percussion to evoke rainall. Tis ades into organ and synthesizer washes that summon up Brian Eno. A clear delineation between sections arrives around the 20-minute mark, when all o the above ades and Abrahams meanders on electric piano. Te closest thing to a sense o direction comes so on afer, when Swanton adds intermittent low notes and Buck, presumably, makes a thunk noise that sounds like a knie hacking into cabbage. Eventually the proceedings start to sound like a blend o noises in a busy actory—whirring machines, squeaking doors, natural reverb—coming together in an unnatural symphony. Tings never get downright abrasive, but the simplicity o some portions can be unsettling. MIKE SHANLEY
WILLIAM PARKER/ RAINING ON THE MOON GREAT SPIRIT
(AUM Fidelity)
When bassist William Parker’s group Raining on the Moon released its 2007 album Corn Meal Dance, the sextet lef another album’s worth o material on the table. Parker had considered issuing a two-disc album at the time but ultimately went with one. Eight years later, on Great Spirit , we get the rest o the session. Tis music could easily have been plucked �rst. Tis is a unky, swinging, soulul band that lifs the soul. Parker, alto saxophonist Rob Brown, trumpeter Lewis Barnes, pianist Eri Yamamoto and drummer Hamid Drake may create the music, but singer Leena Conquest (why isn’t she better known?) is the band’s center. Her rich, soothing and bluesy vocals, delivering lyrics that are both spiritual and socially conscious, keep the musicians rooted in song, even when the tracks stretch out toward 10 minutes. “Bowl o Stone Around the Sun,” “Doson Ngoni Blues” and the beautiul title cut are the kinds o soul-stirring blues-derived pieces we’ve come to expect rom ROM, but they are resh and inspired nonetheless. “Feet Music,” on the other hand, is a bit o a shocker—an insistent chord-andbass pattern and Aro-Cuban rhythm providing a backdrop or powerul, graphic lyrics about slavery (“I’ve been raped, mutilated, castrated”). Te tension o “Prayer-Improv” is gorgeous, with Conquest’s soothing vocals draped over chaotic ree jazz played by musicians who seem to be warring. “Song (or Whitney Houston)” is the one track that was recorded later, in concert in 2012, and it eatures just Conquest and Yamamoto in a goosebumps-worthy perormance. Te �nal track, “Potpourri,” captures the instrumentalists jamming at session’s end. It’s no less interesting. STEVE GREENLEE
musicians who perorm on Turning Towards the Light are notable recording artists and bandleaders in their own right, who not only share an inquisitive spirit but clearly communicate on an intuitive level: Rez Abbasi, Damon Banks (on bass guitar), Marco Cappelli, Nels Cline, Liberty Ellman, David Gilmore, Joel Harrison, Jerome Harris (on guitar as well as bass guitar and lap steel), Miles Okazaki, Marvin Sewell and Ken Wessel (on guitar and banjo).
Also setting the ensemble apart is an intriguing repertoire. Devised by Rudolph, the renowned and ceaselessly probing percussionist/orchestrator, the 13 compositions here reveal his lielong embrace o music worldly and otherworldly, along with echoes o signi�cant in�uences—Ornette Coleman, Sun Ra, et al. Granted, Rudolph’s liner notes toggle between the instructive and inscrutable. (“Te orchestra orbits up into a kind o improvisational playing
O n P ub li c R d io S ir iu sX M & iTu ne s
ADAM RUDOLPH GO: ORGANIC GUITAR ORCHESTRA TURNING TOWARDS THE LIGHT (Cuneiform)
Guitar orchestras are not all that uncommon around the world, but Adam Rudolph’s ensemble is decidedly unlike any other. For one thing, the 11 J A Z Z T I M E S . C O M
73
Reviews
WEATHER REPORT THE LEGENDARY LIVE TAPES 1978-1981 (Legacy)
It’s no great insight to suggest that Weather Report was primarily a studio band. Te legendary usion ensemble was too reliant on electronic instruments and innovative production techniques to quite come off on the stage, even as they attained arena-rock status during the Jaco Pastorius-Peter Erskine years. In act, their 1979 live album, 8:30, was heavily edited and overdubbed beore release. Now we learn that there are soundboard-quality documents o Pastorius-Erskine Weather Report (1978-81) in concert, primarily rom Japan and the U.K. and recorded on Erskine’s cassette machine. At �rst glance, the very act o t heir studio primacy, and the lack o the visual spectacle the band used onstage, makes Te Legendary Live apes 1978-1981 mainly a piece or diehards and collectors. But there are some real discoveries to be made rom listening to this our-disc set, or better and or worse. In the “or better” category, we get to hear unaccompanied solo pieces by saxophonist Wayne Shorter, bassist Pastorius and drummer Erskine. (Coleader/keyboardist Joe Zawinul’s eature comes in a mostly-piano duet with Shorter on “Come Sunday”; percussionist Robert Tomas gets lef out.) Shorter’s, eaturing him on soprano sax and captured via an audience recording, sounds like a rhythmically lopsided classical recital. Erskine and Pastorius have two solos each. Both o the ormer’s perormances overkill the chops, though his use o timpani on the 1980 solo is intriguing. But Pastorius’ solos are set highlights, particularly the imaginative and spacious 1978 spot in Osaka (on which he quotes his �rst album’s “Okonkole y rompa”). Ten there’s the simple matter o energy and immediacy. Te miking and acoustics o a live concert mean constant prominence or Pastorius and Erskine, reaffirming what ofen got lost in the studio—that Weather Report could swing like hell. A 1978 read o their signature hit “Birdland,” sped up and without studio gloss, hits hard as well. Te in-concert intensity can even propel them at times past their records: A 1980 rendition o “Brown Street” and 1978 takes on “Black Market” and “A Remark You Made” are superior to their studio counterparts. However, the set also portrays the worst o Weather Report’s (and usion’s) excesses. A medley o “Badia” and “Boogie Woogie Waltz” and a long jam on “Madagascar,” both rom 1980, vamp mindlessly on one chord, and a 1979 workout on Pastorius’ “een own” hews close to a bad hip-hop record. Te latter also exhibits a trait that appears throughout the music, including the aorementioned “Sightseeing” and an undated take on “Fast City”: warbling, wavering notes that could either be a bug or a eature. Zawinul’s techno-gimmickry always made or wild sounds (witness the warped arrangement o Ellington’s “Rockin’ in Rhythm,” both on the Night Passages album and in the undated perormance here). Yet on these documents it can be hard to tell what we’re hearing: Are they experiments with dense, unstable harmonies, à la Andrew Hill? Or just the pitalls o outdated synthesizers and 35-year-old tape? Finally, the same miking and acoustics that put such a wallop into these perormances can also have the opposite effect. Zawinul ofen gets short shrif by way o the other musicians’ volume, and on “Tree Views o a Secret” he’s nearly wiped out entirely. And “Forlorn,” treated as a quiet ballad, loses any subtlety at Osaka in 1980. As good as the highlights o these discs are, they contain very little, aside rom those ew record-besting perormances, that listeners can’t �nd on Weather Report’s studio albums. Tus the �rst impression is correct: Te Legendary Live apes 1978-1981 is the stuff o collectors and WR anatics. (Pastorius anatics as well, with his solo eatures and a brilliant melodic-yet-unky turn on a medley o his “Continuum” and “River People.”) Te music is impressive and insightul but not essential. � “Real discoveries … for better and for worse”: MICHAEL J. WEST Weather Report in 1978
74
JAZZTIMES
•
J A N U A R Y / F E B R U A R Y 2 0 1 6
we call VOCUM—Virtuosity o the Collective Us’M. Ambiguous ternary periods appear and swirl.”) But the perormances, or all their curious episodes, ultimately seem o a piece, with improvisations and exchanges streaming throughout. Needless to say, the instrumentation, which includes all manner o effects, makes or resonating weaves and shifing dynamics. Te album’s highlights, however, almost always eature inspired pairings. Prime examples include the blues-in�ected “Lambent,” which defly showcases Cline and Gilmore; the semi-acoustic ode “Sol Sistere,” which pairs Cappelli and Okazaki; and the hypnotic excursion “Solar Boat,” copiloted by Abbasi and Harrison. MIKE JOYCE ROTEM SIVAN TRIO A NEW DANCE (Fresh Sound)
On A New Dance, guitarist-composer Rotem Sivan and his musicians, bassist Haggai Cohen-Milo and drummer Colin Stranahan, weave 10 tracks o such hushed, bittersweet warmth that their intricacies may sneak up on you. Sivan’s singular combination o impressive technical agility with a disarmingly delicate tone results in a sound mellow enough to make pleasant background music. But or the patient and attentive listener, real rewards can be ound here. Sivan’s gifs as an instrumentalist are most vividly displayed on his rendition o Monk’s “In Walked Bud,” one o three covers on an album otherwise consisting o originals. He leads with dense, Asian-in�ected single-note clusters; evolves, with Cohen-Milo’s guidance, through pointed, bluesy stings; then eases into an impressionistic run where his guitar mimics the distinctively echoey vibe o a Fender Rhodes. Te varying shades o Sivan’s style are eloquently re�ected on his muscular approach to the jittery patterns o “Fingerprints,” the midnight cool o his touch on the title track, and the beaming, eyeswide-open innocence o his lines on “One or Aba” and the shimmering miniature “Sun & Stars.”
Y R A R B I L A I D E M E V I H C R A L U N I W A Z E H T F O Y S E T R U O C
Cohen-Milo’s sound, lean yet authoritative, meshes skillully with Stranahan’s marching trills and unsettled cymbals to intensiy the moody gravity o “Yam,” and the bassist’s introductory melodic statement on the standard “Angel Eyes” almost swoons with the pain o loss. Stranahan constantly embellishes his tight rhythmic beds with perectly timed snare pops and cymbal bursts, as on the pensive “I Wish You Were Here.” Daniel Wright’s gossamer guest vocals, ideally wedded to Sivan’s sof, spidery harmonies, render the ethereal “Almond ree” a highlight, and Oded zur’s arrestingly wheezy tenor sax draws weary pathos rom album-closer “I Fall in Love oo Easily.” zur’s blowing here is at times so muted you can hear his �ngers pressing the horn’s keys more than his notes. MATT R. LOHR
DAVID S. WARE/APOGEE BIRTH OF A BEING (AUM Fidelity)
Te late David S. Ware was a ully ormed musician by the time he made his �rst recording as a leader, Birth of a Being , in 1977. He was already blowing gale-orce winds through his tenor saxophone on that recording, and his ideas were every bit as orceul then as they were on his greatest albums recorded two decades later. Birth of a Being —made with pianist CooperMoore and drummer Marc Edwards, a trio they called Apogee—has been out o print or 30 years. AUM Fidelity’s Steven Joerg has corrected that wrong with an expanded, two-CD set that reissues the original Birth of a Being on disc one and adds �ve unreleased tracks, including a second version o Birth’s best song, “Prayer.” his is pulse-quickening music that never lets up. Ware picks up where John Coltrane let o, employing his spiritual approach and taking his force majeure to the next level. CooperMoore roughs up the piano with atonal phrases, and Edwards thrashes about, ignoring any sense o rhythm. “Prayer” has a bare structure—the chords lurk beneath the surace, as does some semblance o a melody— but it is quickly abandoned in avor o a sound sculpture made with Ware’s
long, loud notes and signature squeals and squawks. “hematic Womb,” with its machine-gun drumming, and the 25-minute, two-part A Primary Piece are brash, diicult listens. Only at the end o disc two is there a reprieve rom chaos: Cooper-Moore’s perormance o the spiritual “Ain’t Gonna Let Nobody urn Me Around” on the ashimba, an 11-note wooden xylophone he designed; and a sevenminute, untitled, unaccompanied and unusually restrained s olo by Ware. STEVE GREENLEE
VARIOUS ARTISTS DETROIT JAZZ CITY (Blue Note)
Not only is the title o this album great ( pace Kiss), but so is the concept behind it, as cooked up by Blue Note Records president and Detroit native Don Was. First, compile a mix o new and old recordings to remind listeners how many great jazz players have come rom the Motor City. Second, donate all proceeds rom the compilation to Focus: HOPE, an organization that aids the poor and struggling in southeast Michigan. You can’t ault it idealistically, and aesthetically it hangs together pretty well too. Recent Was-produced tracks alternate with classic Blue Note cuts
throughout, a choice that emphasizes nify connections. Bassist Marion Hayden opens the program with a blow-down-the-doors version o “ Te Uncrowned King”—whose composer, pianist Kenny Cox, takes the spotlight next on “You,” a tasty selection rom his 1968 debut. Elvin Jones’ delightul take on “Reza,” rom the same year, is ollowed by Spencer Bare�eld’s “Ghost Dancers,” which eatures the highly Elvin-ian ury o Sean Dobbins on drums. And so on. Each piece here is ruled by its rhythm section, which isn’t surprising when you consider the players involved on the vintage stuff: Jones and Jimmy Garrison; Cedar Walton, Ron Carter and Joe Chambers (on Joe Henderson’s “Mode or Joe”); Herbie Hancock, Butch Warren and Billy Higgins (on Donald Byrd’s “French Spice”). As or the new material, Bare�eld’s guitar, James Carter’s soprano sax and the late Marcus Belgrave’s �ugelhorn all sound superb, but Hayden, Dobbins and pianist Mike Jellick dominate every track they appear on with their beautiully measured aggression. Te album closes in amusing and poignant ashion, as 86-year-old Sheila Jordan sings the story o her musical lie on “Sheila’s Blues.” Her �rst album was released 53 years ago—on Blue Note, o course. MAC RANDALL
BOB MINTZER
Signed copies of Bob Mintzer Big Band CD
GET UP!
available at bobmintzer.com Please contact: MINTZER MUSIC CO. t: 914.469.5988 w: bobmintzer.com
Please visit the new bobmintzer.com for big band arrangements, books, cd’s and an all new blog.
Professor of Jazz Studies at USC GRAMMY award-winning big band leader Member of YELLOWJACKETS Available as soloist in quartet or with big band
J A Z Z T I M E S . C O M
75
ReviewsVox by Christopher Loudon
unencumbered—tracks like “Do You Really Need Her,” “You Have No Idea” and “Where Prisoners Drown,” the encroaching gravel in his voice adding considerably to their heartelt pathos. Each is a �ne reminder that an artist as gifed as Connick is best appreciated without all the ornamentation.
ELLA FITZGERALD
“Her grandest outing to date”: Emilie-Claire Barlow
←
EMILIE-CLAIRE BARLOW CLEAR DAY (Empress) Tough Diana Krall remains Canada’s most celebrated jazz vocalist, Emilie-Claire Barlow, now 11 albums into a career o steadily escalating prowess, nips ever closer at her heels. Barlow’s voice is lighter and brighter than Krall’s, her range wider and her interpretive expressiveness ully as acute. Like Krall, Barlow started out ocusing almost exclusively on standards rom the American and Brazilian songbooks but has started o late to include more contemporary covers. While her last studio album in English (she also records extensively in French), 2010’s Te Beat Goes On, concentrated solely on ’60s pop hits, Clear Day explores a wider palette. With backing rom the 70-piece Metropole Orkest, plus Barlow’s �ve regular bandmates augmented by nine other players and backup singers, it’s also her grandest outing to date. Occasionally, that vast sea o sound can become a bit overwhelming. Most noticeably on “On a Clear Day You Can See Forever” and “Midnight Sun,” Barlow struggles against towering, crashing waves. But those are exceptions. Te dozen remaining tracks (�ve o which are absent the Orkest) are more temperately arranged. She adds newound depth to such varied selections as Lennon and McCartney’s “Because,” Coldplay’s “Fix You,” Van Morrison’s “Sweet Ting,” Joni Mitchell’s “I Don’t Know Where I Stand,” Queen and David Bowie’s “Under Pressure” and a dramatically slowed “Feelin’ Groovy.” Most impactul are the album’s quietest track, Brad Mehldau’s 76
JAZZTIMES
•
J A N U A R Y / F E B R U A R Y 2 0 1 6
dark-cornered “Unrequited,” and its knottiest, Pat Metheny’s multi-shaded “It’s Only alk.”
HARRY CONNICK JR. THAT WOULD BE ME (Columbia) Musically speaking, Harry Connick Jr. has shaped a remarkably chameleonic career over the course o three decades: jazz singer and pianist, pop crooner, Hollywood balladeer and Broadway belter, all liberally spiced with distinct Cajun and country in�uences. So it’s hardly surprising that Connick asks in the liner notes or Tat Would Be Me, his 26th studio release as leader, “Where to now?” Te answer, apparently, is “everywhere.” He raps, he scats, he pounds, he growls, he purrs. He plays piano, organ, drums, trumpet, trombone, French horn and sax. He wrote most o the arrangements and all 11 songs. While such dexterity is genuinely impressive, this eruptive tour de force emerges more as a jumbled, grandi-loquent mélange. Connick bookends his playlist with “(I Like It When You) Smile” and “Right Where It Hurts,” the sort o overproduced, oversaturated pop meant or arenas. He props up the album’s center with “You Don’t Need a Man,” a high-strutting empowerment anthem that would eel right at home with Shania wain in Vegas. “(I Do) Like We Do,” “Songwriter” and “(I Tink I) Love You a Little Bit” are pleasant i rather jejune conections. Ten he turns around and delivers prooundly thoughtul—and blessedly
LIVE AT CHAUTAUQUA, VOLUME 1 (Dot Time) Te late 1960s weren’t the best time to be a jazz vocalist. As rock’s Age o Aquarius dawned, such major names as Mel ormé, Sarah Vaughan and Carmen McRae suffered signi�cant downturns. Ella was no exception. Her long, career-de�ning association with Verve ended in ’66. She then bounced rom label to label, her stops at Capitol, Reprise and Atlantic as underwhelming as they were brie. All o which makes this 49-minute set, rom western New York’s abled Chautauqua Institution Amphitheater in July ’68, so potentially valuable. Her backing trio—pianist ee Carson, bassist Keter Betts and drummer Joe Harris—is merely serviceable. But Ella is in superb voice and orm, arguably at the apex o her showmanship: Loose, easy and playul, her lyrical adlibs and interpolations are adorably clever. Te 11-track playlist alternates between in Pan Alley classics (“It’s All Right With Me,” “Midnight Sun,” “Te Lady Is a ramp”) and a tasteul assortment o contemporary pop tunes, including “Watch What Happens,” “For Once in My Lie” and “Goin’ Out o My Head,” plus a magni�cently scatted, sixminute “One Note Samba.” Sadly, what could’ve been a lost gem—vital evidence o the brilliance that her studio output then lacked—is marred by audio quality so distractingly dreadul it makes the disc almost unlistenable. inny and oggy, with Ella ofen drifing off-mic, it sounds as i it were captured on a hand-held cassette recorder rom several rows back. And perhaps it was.
STACEY KENT TENDERLY (Sony) Tough Stacey Kent was born in the States and has been based in England or almost her entire career, she’s developed deep musical passions or France and Brazil, ofen singing in perect French and �awless Portuguese. (It’s worth noting here that Kent received
R E T S B E W E V E T S
presented by
in collaboration with
France’s Ordre des Arts et des Lettres in 2009.) enderly , Kent’s 11th studio album, harkens back to her salad days beore all the multilingual �nery, ocusing almost exclusively on American standards. Still, she can’t help adding some exquisite Latin �air, having legendary Brazilian guitarist Roberto Menescal as her principal accompanist and including Menescal’s lilting “Agarradinhos” among the dozen tracks. While Kent’s sessions have always tended to be gentle and pensive, enderly ’s sof elegance is particularly understated. On “Agarradinhos” and the closing “I I Had You,” Menescal provides sole support. Bassist Jeremy Brown joins him or the balance o the album, with tenor saxophonist Jim omlinson (Kent’s husband and longtime producer) tiptoeing in on six tracks. Troughout, Kent’s voice remains one o the most appealing in jazz—so pliant, so enticingly smoke-tinged, so warmly expressive. As the name suggests, tenderness prevails: “Te Very Tought o You,” “Embraceable You,” “Tat’s All,” “Tere Will Never Be Another You,” “I I’m Lucky” and the title cut are crafed o gossamer and silk. Even “In the Wee Small Hours o the Morning” emerges more ruminative than orlorn. I there’s a standout, it’s “No Moon at All,” with Kent’s reading, alternatively noirish and kittenish, cunningly trimmed by omlinson as he switches to alto �ute. CHIARA PANCALDI I WALK A LITTLE FASTER
(Challenge)
She hails rom Bologna and is a bit older, 33, than her photos suggest. She studied with her countrywoman Roberta Gambarini and Sheila Jordan, cut her vocal-jazz teeth as hal o the duo Dobra Voz and released her �rst solo album, Te Song Is You, on Italy’s small Dodicilune label in 2012. A year later, pianist Cyrus Chestnut happened upon Chiara Pancaldi and, enraptured, offered to host her Stateside debut at Dizzy’s Club Coca-Cola beore suggesting they team in studio. With bassist John Webber and drummer Joe Farnsworth rounding out the sterling rhythm section (and trumpeter Jeremy Pelt as special consultant), I Walk a Little Faster is the dynamic result. Pancaldi’s crystalline soprano is a degree or two warmer than Gambarini’s, her interpretive instincts just as sharp and her modulation exemplary. With many singers
or whom English isn’t their �rst language, �nding the emotional heart and soul o American standards can be challenging. While Pancaldi’s accent is clearly—and rather cozily—discernable, nothing is lost in translation (though Lerner and Loewe’s tricky “abso-blooming-lutely” in “Wouldn’t It Be Loverly” does manage to stump her). Te Chestnut-anchored trio opts throughout or understated elegance. Tough each player contributes several virtuoso solos, particularly on a blazing “Get Out o own,” Pancaldi remains the central ocus. And whether gently unolding a sensuous “Show Me,” unleashing a passionate “Wild Is the Wind” or caressing the charming Carolyn Leigh-Cy Coleman title track, she never ails to excite and impress.
Z Z p A J a m c
T H 6 1 G D I 0 2 A E A y R l T H J u S A g n i m C o
For Jazz Educators, College Students and Music Lovers
Get educated, challenged and inspired with �ve days of hands-on clinics, lectures and jam
CAROL WELSMAN
sessions by leading jazz musicians from Chicago
ALONE TOGETHER (Welcar)
and around the country. Visit http://bit.ly/1LJ0ZbO or scan the QR code to get camp updates.
Tough Carol Welsman’s lengthy career has been liberally dotted with �ne albums, she reaches a lofy new plateau with Alone ogether . It’s a well-traveled route. Many o the past century’s oremost jazz and jazz-in�uenced pop singers didn’t �nd their sweet spot, their de�ning sound, until middle age—Fitzgerald, McRae, Sinatra, ormé and Bennett among them. As with those masters, Welsman’s interpretive and stylistic maturation evinces a seeming effortlessness, an organic oneness with each song. Welsman’s �owering extends to her scat skills, lightly but winningly exercised across a lithe “Day by Day,” and her def navigation o the Eddie Jefferson vocalese masterpiece “Disappointed,” based on Charlie Parker’s “Oh, Lady Be Good” solo. With stellar support rom bassist Ruus Reid, drummer Lewis Nash and trumpeter Wallace Roney, joined by guitarist Jay Azzolina on our tracks, Welsman divides the rest o her elegant playlist between sturdy chestnuts and less-amiliar standards. Highlights among the latter: a shimmering treatment o Frank Loesser’s romantic Cuban travelogue, “Sand in My Shoes,” winningly accented by guest percussionist Steven Kroon, and “Killing ime,” Carolyn Leigh and Jule Styne’s heartrending ode to post-breakup loneliness. Least known among her 11 selections is “Te Blues Are Out o own,” a hip delight, crafed by the late (and underappreciated) singer-pianist Joe Derise, that Welsman resurrects with jubilant verve. JT
Jazz Institute of Chicago 410 S. Michigan Ave, Suite 500 Chicago, IL JAZZINCHICAGO.ORG promoting and nurturing jazz in Chicago since 1969
Napoleon Revels-Bey “New Mo Swing Ensemble” “Al Andalusia to Dizzy– Jazz & Caribbean Music Project” Engagement and Development for the 21st Century Community Programs to promote and unite the arts with social responsible organizations. Developing and fostering long life learners, youth, young adult, educators, after-school providers, parents and parent organizers with community programs that include seniors, veterans, libraries, places of worship, Civic organizations, and resource coordinators, agency partners, social workers, investors, private, and corporate funders, business, and banking institutions.
www.revels-bey.com PO Box 13, Uniondale, New York 11553-0013 516.565.9404
[email protected]
J A Z Z T I M E S . C O M
77
Books
Crude Elegance SAXOPHONIST TIM BERNE AND ARTIST STEVE BYRAM OFFER A LIMITED-EDITION ARTIFACT OF THEIR INSPIRED, STEADFAST COLLABORATION
Aesthetically synonymous: Steve Byram (left) and Tim Berne
←
W
trademarked aesthetic. But he maintains his hen alto saxophonist and own Screwgun imprint, which he launched composer im Berne was thinking about cover art in the ’90s. Te label’s �rst 11 releases came or Fulton Street Maul , in cardboard covers adorned with Byram’s his 1987 debut or Columbia, he noticed work; now comes Spare, a limited-run book/ the cover o a classical album, Olivier CD that pays tribute to Berne and Byram’s Messiaen’s Turangalîla-Symphonie, sitting enduring collaboration. Byram’s musical in�uences ran toward in the office o the record company’s art rock, and it took him a while department. “It had this to grasp Berne’s avant-jazz. weird, Cubist-looking “I asked him, ‘Why the hell drawing/painting,” Berne recalls. “I said, ‘Wow this did you come to me to do a is great! Who did this?’” cover?,’” Byram recalls. “He Steve Byram, the artist said, ‘I thought that you’re doin question, was considing the same thing I’m doing, ered the staff renegade, or rom an art standpoint.’ Tat’s pretty deep—a musician being as he puts it, “the weirdo able to see that. It took me a art director.” By then he ← long time to �gure out that, had already racked up The Spare book/CD set to a certain extent, we are apdesign credits or Beastie Boys’ Licensed to Ill and Slayer’s Reign in proaching things in the same way. I’m sitting Blood LPs. Berne knew Byram’s aesthetic down and composing and making stuff up as would complement his music. I go along, within a kind o structure.” Te saxophonist’s relationship with CoTe two had talked about doing a book lumbia ended afer a second album, but he or years, but it came to ruition in early 2014, when Berne decided to release a has sustained a partnership with Byram or Snakeoil disc independent o ECM. “Te over three decades; at this point, Byram’s way I work is I’ll throw out these ideas abstract drawings and primitive letterand i I say it, it’ll happen,” Berne explains. press designs are virtually synonymous with Berne’s unique music. Berne now “And i I keep bringing it up, I get sort o records or ECM Records, whose noirish, disappointed in mysel, so I say, ‘OK, I’ll atmospheric artwork presents its own do it.’” He missed the hands-on element 78
JAZZTIMES
•
J A N U A R Y / F E B R U A R Y 2 0 1 6
o the early Screwgun releases, and wanted to bring that style o cardboard packaging back. Unortunately, the letterpress company Berne used previously was out o business. Trough a little online research, he ound Dexterity Press in Connecticut, whose owner coincidentally had worked on the early Screwgun discs while apprenticing or their previous printer. “Tere are a ew good things that happen because o the Internet, and this is one o them,” Berne says with his trademark wryness. But just as the disc was ready or public consumption, ECM released Snakeoil’s You’ve Been Watching Me last spring. Not wanting to oversaturate an already limited market, Berne and Byram had a backup plan. “We thought, we’ll hide the CD in the book, and the book will be the ocus,” Berne recalls. “And it’ll be this weird multimedia thing that, in a way, will address this issue o how you sell CDs [nowadays]—hard copies as opposed to digital.” Spare is available exclusively online at screwgunrecords.com. Measuring 6 by 9 inches and spiral-bound, it eatures 100 pages o Byram’s drawings interspersed with photographs Berne has taken on tour. Byram collected the photos and curated them within his own work. Out-o-ocus images seen through car windshields and airplanes, random shots o bandmates and abstract imagery spill across the pages. Sometimes Byram’s scribbled �gures sit opposite Berne’s photographic studies o light, while at other times both pages are devoted to one artist. A paper sleeve glued to the inside back cover holds the disc. “Snakeoil” doesn’t appear anywhere, but the names o Berne, Oscar Noriega (clarinets), Matt Mitchell (piano) and Ches Smith (drums/percussion) are listed. (It’s worth noting that Berne says ECM gave the OK on the release.) Te band tackles two pre viously released compositions and two newer ones, stretching out over Berne’s topographic writing. Te disc’s live sound gives the quartet an immediacy that causes it to evoke Berne’s in�uential band Bloodcount. Limited to an edition o 500, the artiact ul�lls the duo’s earliest intentions. “We wanted to do stuff that didn’t look like mainstream record [art]. We wanted it to look cruder, or lack o a better word,” Byram says. “We wanted the book to be in that spirit too. Spiral binding is not really elegant, although I would argue that it has a certain crude elegance to it. Crude elegance, I think, has been the aesthetic that I ollowed.” MIKE SHANLEY
I K S O H S R O S E W Y B M A R Y B / E N R E B
jazzdirectory instruments
instruments
instruments
(800) 876-8771 (607) 865-8088
[email protected]
buy/sell jazz lps/cds
Clarinettes & Saxophones Online now at
www.ligaphone.com and coming soon to a store near you
acoustics & audio
study/instruction Dr. Stanley Cowell Pianist, composer, educator
advertising
For your next concert, tours, events
CLASSIFIED AD INFORMATION:
[email protected] (301) 717-0088
Email Scott Persson at
[email protected]. You can also mail ad copy along with check or credit card information (name on card; account number; expiration date and 3 digit security code) to JazzTimes Classi�ed Advertising Department, Madavor Media, 25 Braintree Hill Of�ce Park, Suite 404, Braintree, MA 02184
recordings
recordings VOCALJAZZ ARTIST/CLINICIAN LISA KELLY
J A Z Z T I M E S . C O M
79
“A real eye-opener”: Ellington in New York, c. November 1946 ←
ARTIST’S CHOICE
G R E AT P I A N O S O U N D S BY FRED HERSCH All of the recordings I have selected below are united by their pianists’ use of tone and touch, and all of them have been profoundly in�uential in the development of the piano in jazz.
Duke Ellington
“THE MOOCHE” Ellington Uptown (Columbia, 1952) When I heard this track in my late teens, it was the �rst instance o me becoming aware o a pianist’s sound. Afer the statement o the main theme, there is a second theme that eatures an amazing clarinet duet between Jimmy Hamilton and Russell Procope, and what really got to me was Ellington’s comping in this section. He plays a series o ascending, stabbed two-note �gures that seem to be carved out o thin air, completely masterul and adding a wonderul compositional element. As I began to listen more to Ellington’s work through our decades, I realized that he always had a certain sound —on various pianos, stereo or mono, live or in the studio—and so I began to see that one’s sound is in one’s body, one’s ears and one’s imagination. A real eye-opener.
Bill Evans Trio
“ALL OF YOU” Sunday at the Village Vanguard (Riverside, 1961) In the early ’60s, Bill Evans, deep in his heroin addiction, had a liquid, clear and expressive piano sound. His ability to phrase right-hand lines that were shaped with the lef hand (with true voice-leading) changed jazz piano orever. By moving the lef hand up the keyboard, a good octave or so above the beboppers and postboppers, it gained clarity and made it possible or bassist Scott LaFaro to emerge as a strong melodic and rhythmic voice; and drummer Paul Motian could imply the time rather than overtly state it. Tis was one o the great piano trios. (See the next selection or another.) On this track, the way Evans uses both hands together creates a beautiul, suspended and unique sound-space. For me, the only other time he had a sound and vision this special was on his triple-tracked studio album rom 1963, Conversations With Myself .
T T O B B A N H O J , S S E R G N O C F O Y R A R B I L E H T F O Y S E T R U O C / B E I L T T O G . P
Ahmad Jamal
Thelonious Monk
“EVERYTHING HAPPENS TO ME” Thelonious Alone in San Francisco (Riverside, 1959) Monk’s piano sound and his impeccable sense o time were used to create music that is as much about the space around the notes as it is about the notes themselves. o me, his phrases seem almost sculpted out o the musical space around them. I have never thought o him as lacking technique (which is simply using what is needed to create what you want) nor as a “banger”—his touch is �rm, percussive yet extremely expressive. He was a direct descendanto Earl Hines and Ellington in this way. When you hear him play this tune, with its sad-sack lyrics, he really seems to be singing the song through the piano and through his own experience.
Art Tatum
“SOMEONE TO WATCH OVER ME” Piano Starts Here (Columbia, 1968) For sheer lushness o piano sound, nobody ever came close to Art atum: rich, round and �awless, whether in the studio (here) or live (which I like better, as he tended to stretch out more in a casual situation, such as the amous live house-party recordings rom L.A.). Tough some may �nd his improvising lacking in spontaneity, he came rom the more ormal lineage o James P. Johnson and had similarities to his peer Fats Waller in respect to his orchestral approach to the piano. He had his own vocabulary, as all the greats did, and still dazzles decades later. His playing o this standard shows everything that made him the piano god he was. JT
“BUT NOT FOR ME” At the Pershing: But Not for Me (Argo, 1958) Ahmad Jamal is the master o piano tone. He had it all going on when he was in his 20s on the classic trio dates with bassist Israel Crosby and drummer Vernel Fournier, many recorded live at various Chicago nightspots including the Pershing and Jamal’s own club, the Alhambra. Tough dismissed by some critics at the time as a “cocktail pianist,” he used space and
M A I L L I W : P O T M O R F
80
the entire range o the piano—in combination with extremely clever arrangements and a killer groove. From these trio recordings, I discovered how one can use the highest octave o the piano, with a pearly sound, to great effect. Tis track demonstrates all o these qualities in abundance. Most o Jamal’s early trio albums have now been rereleased in inexpensive box sets, and are a must or anyone who plays in a rhythm section.
JAZZTIMES
•
J A N U A R Y / F E B R U A R Y 2 0 1 6
Pianist-composer Fred Hersch is an eight-time Grammy nominee whose most recent album is Solo (Palmetto). Visit him online at www.fredhersch.com.
L A T I G I D E V I S U L C X E R S E D A E L R A T I G I U R D O R O T F N E T N C O S U N O B
Actor and musician Jeff Goldblum and Herbie Hancock at the Monk Institute all-star gala on Nov. 15; Dolby Theatre, Los Angeles ←
Z Z A J F O E T U T I T S N I K N O M S U O I N O L E H T E H T F O Y S E T R U O C / R E G N I D N U M E V E T S
2015 MONK COMPETITION
Z Z A J F O E T U T I T S N I K N O M S U O I N O L E H T E H T F O Y S E T R U O C / R E G N I D N U M E V E T S Y B S O T O H P
← Clockwise from above: Billy Dee Williams, George Benson, Patti Austin, Herbie
Hancock, Al Jarreau, guest of honor Quincy Jones, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and Dee Dee Bridgewater at the gala concert (from left); Concord Music’s John Burk with competition �nalists Vuyolwethu Sotashe (third place), Jazzmeia Horn (victor) and Veronica Swift (second) (from left); Seth MacFarlane croons Sinatra-style
Z C I W O K F E L D E Y B S O T O H P
Darcy James Argue leads his large ensemble, Secret Society, through “Real Enemies” at the Brooklyn Academy of Music’s Harvey Theater in November. This collaboration between Argue and �lmmaker Peter Nigrini, writer-director Isaac Butler and designer Maruti Evans was a startlingly original multimedia investigation into the psychology of the conspiracy theorist.
←
