New DTM page: Interview with Jim McNeely.
There is a lot there but it is hardly comprehensive -- I didn't even ask Jim about any of the European big bands or Phil Woods.
During the final edit, Bob Brookmeyer passed, so Jim inserted a thoughtful note in the middle of the interview. At the end, the Darcy James Argue listening sessions from early last year are reposted.
Nate Chinen's NY Times obit and further links.
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Jazz history would be written a bit differently if Sam Rivers hadn’t taken the young teenager Tony Williams in hand and began playing him records of European modernism. (To the end of his life, Rivers could do a credible imitation of the Second Viennese School at the piano, which he would perversely contextualize with some Randy Weston-ish vamps.)
Like any natural avant-gardist, Williams ran with that intellectual information. The innovations of Billy Higgins and Ed Blackwell with Ornette Coleman were less European-based, so for a few years Williams was just about the only drummer playing swinging time without a form while surrounded by complex harmony.
Williams honored his teacher by recommending him to Miles Davis. The Japan gigs are interesting to listen to, but the place to hear the Rivers-Williams hook-up is not with Miles. A collection of meta hard-bop, Fuchsia Swing Song, has more of the real vibe, although according to Rivers himself those were older tunes.
Bill Frisell remembers:
When I was in high school (late 60s) I started trying to figure out was "jazz" was. Back then, in Denver, at Woolworth's and Wallgreen's you could get Riverside and Blue Note albums ("cut outs") for 79 cents. The first one I ever got was Wes Montgomery's first trio record. I think one of the next records I bought was Sam Rivers Fuchsia Swing Song. I had no idea who he was at the time. The cover looked cool and I think by then I may have heard of Ron Carter and Tony Williams. Jaki Byard. What a band. All those amazing tunes. A few years ago you couldn't even get this album on CD in the US. I had to get it in Japan. I love this album. I was just listening to it minutes before I received your message. Extraordinary music. Soon after I got this one I went out and got A New Conception where he plays all standards. "I'll Never Smile Again"...there's that moment where the form get's suspended and he switches from tenor to soprano and then they all come back in. Man alive. I listened to these 2 albums a LOT! And then on to the stuff with Dave Holland and Barry Altschul. Oh man. I don't know what to say. We are so lucky he was here.
I had a similar profound experience with Tony Williams’s Spring, which along with the predecessor Life Time documents the most avant-garde Rivers-Williams collaboration. Full credit to fiery virtuoso Gary Peacock as well. Everyone thinks like they can play like this today, but honestly the originators, Rivers-Peacock-Williams, still set the bar. It’s deeply swinging -- not just a learned swing, but a folkloric swing -- but can unselfconsciously go in any direction with an unplanned atonal map.
Spring was superbly recorded by Rudy Van Gelder on August 12, 1965. I had it very young, on vinyl, but hadn’t listened to my CD copy in years. Hearing it again now reminds me of why I play jazz in the first place. It’s perfect music.
On “Extras,” Wayne Shorter and Sam Rivers improvise a bit of counterpoint before Shorter burns through a motivic swinging eighth-note abstraction. After Peacock’s intelligent solo, Rivers enters with a sing-song cry and the music quickly moves through a few different feels. These unplanned and intuitive moves are totally natural. The two tenor “solos” (they are actually two different trios) are very different but equally successful.
“Love Song” is the only tune the album with a chordal structure for improvising, where Rivers, Peacock, Williams and Herbie Hancock try their hand at some 5/4. I believe this is the first jazz five that doesn’t obviously state the meter in every bar like "Take Five.” Incredibly, they aren’t worried about getting lost, but just somehow wander comfortably through the five and a few bars of three. The form isn’t always correct, and therein lies the magic of all this era’s music with Williams and Hancock: they just don’t care if they get lost for a minute. It’s a way of playing that happened for a few years in the sixties before being banished from the straight-ahead vernacular. It’s too bad it’s gone, but I doubt we would have had it at all without Sam Rivers showing Tony Williams a thing or two.
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I’ve also re-listened carefully to the two later Rivers-led albums I loved in high school: The Quest, a rawly-recorded, totally free date with Dave Holland and Barry Altschul; and Contrasts, a high-end Manfred Eicher production with a few forms featuring George Lewis, Holland, and Thurman Barker.
The first comment is: Holland and Rivers is a classic combination. The bassist really needs a wild-card saxophonist like Braxton, Rivers, or Steve Coleman to bring out what I really love in his playing. Next: I want to hear gigs in 2012 with Altschul, Barker, and Lewis --- the last where he just plays great trombone, not enmeshed in electronics or large-scale scores. For that matter, I'm ready to hear Holland on a free-form hit again, he hasn't done enough of them lately. Finally: For me, these records take off when Rivers plays tenor saxophone, not soprano, flute, or piano.
Live, I’m sure all the instrument-switching was fun, but to make truly excellent records, Rivers needed to play the big horn, of which he will always be in the canon as one of the greats. On a bootleg from 2000, his last working trio with Doug Matthews and Anthony Cole performs his most familiar work, “Beatrice.” Rivers shows that he still play changes like a demented angel. Aw, man! Couldn’t you have made one recent record of tenor trio playing obvious tunes? It would have been instantly immortal.
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I don’t know the rest of Rivers’s extensive output all that well. In particular, I haven’t explored his big band writing enough. Like some AACM music, it seems very “process” oriented rather than committed to delivering a finished “product.” That’s a mode of behavior I have yet to really understand when more than four people are onstage, but then again I’ve never had the privilege of being involved in any of those scenes as a participant. I certainly leave room for Rivers’s large ensemble music suddenly ringing all my bells someday.
I expect a DTM guest post on Rivers to land in the future but wanted to throw up something quick this week. For now, I’m really enjoying re-listening to the above records along with Black Stars, which has one of the great recent tenor solos on the first track, “Foot Under Foot.” I’m so glad that Jason Moran, Tarus Mateen and Nasheet Waits got Rivers for this significant disc. Jason and Nasheet keep having the right idea: alongside Lonnie Plaxico they worked with Bunky Green for the stunning Another Place and now Tarbaby has Nasheet with Oliver Lake (and Orrin Evans and Eric Revis). Losing Sam Rivers is yet another wake up call to pay attention to who we have left.
2011 just blew by. For TBP, it was the year of the collaboration: we worked with Aaron Greenwald, Cristina Guadalupe, and Noah Hutton for On Sacred Ground: Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring at Duke University; Jim McNeely and the hr-Bigband for an evening of TBP rep in Germany; Joshua Redman was our star saxophonist on stage at the Blue Note and at Saalfelden; “The Badwagon” with Jason Moran, Tarus Mateen and Nasheet Waits sent out a message of anarchic beauty from the main stage at Celebrate Brooklyn. MMDG’s Violet Cavern came back, better than ever, for a run in Seattle.
There’s also a TBP album of new originals in the can: It’s definitely one of our best records, coming out fall 2012. And the Billy Hart quartet with Mark Turner, Ben Street and me recorded an album for ECM, All Our Reasons, due out early 2012.
In full research mode, I talked Buster Williams and Ben Riley into playing a couple of nights (boy, I sweated that one) and also tried out a little east coast tour with Corcoran Holt and Steve Williams. There were also delightful hits with the quartets of Sam Newsome and John McNeil. More from all of these new(ish) relationships in the future (I hope).
I was surprised when two virtuoso classical pianists, Anthony DeMare and Jenny Lin, simultaneously asked for arrangements of Sondheim (“Send In the Clowns”) and Bernstein (“Tonight"). Both rude deconstructions have been premiered and are scheduled to be recorded.
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The three best original DTM posts were on Igor Stravinsky, Bud Powell, and Paul Motian, although perhaps I’m even more proud of the straightforward Mickey Rokey interview. Appearances by Lawrence Block and Branford Marsalis were also satisfying.
I turned “pro” by writing liner notes for the Brad Mehldau, Larry Grenadier, Jorge Rossy box and a Thelonious Monk solo DVD, These were important assignments I took seriously. With the trio I tried to bring Larry and Jorge to the fore; with Monk I watched over and over, more astonished each time.
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You can hear some Monk in that version of “It’s Easy to Remember” with Larry and Paul I bootlegged for the Motian post. Astonishingly, Guillaume Hazebrouck of Frasques transcribed the piano part. His sardonic comment was, “Next time avoid playing sextuplets or quintuplets in low register.” Guillaume must have very good ears indeed.
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There’s also some Monk in last year’s “Xmas Card,” a fragment I still like quite a bit. What can I say? Monk is my main man.
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Speaking of burying music on blogs, both Kyle Gann and Matthew Guerrieri recently put up jazz-influenced bon-bons, a movement of Every Something Is an Echo of Nothing and "Overchoice Rag." The future awaits!
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One of the best things about the blogosphere is how we can honor our fallen. When someone like Bob Brookmeyer died in the past, there was one or two short obits in major publications and that was it. Now, anyone knowledgeable has a platform to weigh in. I’ve seen several nice things about Brookmeyer so far and expect to see more. Jim McNeely will be the guest soloist on DTM at the top of 2012.
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As we all know, jazz blogs (and jazz Twitter and jazz Facebook) enjoyed a fair amount of controversy this past year. Fortunately, only light jabs were landed. After all, no one wants to take it into the ring for real. Sarah Deming's Joe Frazier memorial suggests what that is actually like.
Added to the blogroll: Nicholas Payton and Angelika Beener. Early on at the old address I complained about the lack of black jazz bloggers. That hasn’t been true for several years now, thank god. As Stanley Crouch always says, Victory Is Assured.
Help towards that victory is coming from Ted Panken’s corner: I found his posts on Barry Harris and McCoy Tyner tremendously informative.
And Willard Jenkins keeps holding it down at The Independent Ear. If you like DTM, make sure you broaden your horizons by going over there and checking it all out. The Walter Bishop Jr. poetry is just too much: I bow before it, simultaneously laughing and crying. Try No. 5, "Owed to Bird." Hell yeah.
Presumably this is old news to DTM readers, but just in case: I think that jazz needs to think about race. As cool as we all are in our postmodern society, there still is room to grow. A painless yet perspective-giving elixir is AFRICAN RHYTHMS - The Autobiography of Randy Weston; Composed by Randy Weston, Arranged by Willard Jenkins. If you still need a stocking stuffer for your jazz fan, get this book. (More accolades here.)
As for my own stocking, forget it. I have enough books and records for a lifetime already.
However, if you insist...I admit I'm patiently waiting for tapes of Weston and Ed Blackwell performing together in Africa to become commercially available.
Um, Willard? Can you expedite this, please?
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Martin Porter is also added to the roll. He reviewed the recent Chick Corea/Herbie Hancock duo gig from a musician’s perspective. This is most helpful: now I have a pretty good idea of what went down. Sounds like it was better than that boring double LP from back in the day. (I’ve looked in vain for some blog review of the previous night of Chick Corea and Marcus Roberts, which a qualified authority told me was incredible.)
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All this internet activity is great, but iMac is already our Big Brother. Let’s at least give it the silent treatment once in a while. Jeremy Denk offers some relevant thoughts.
My own little protest against every kind of entertainment becoming digital was shamelessly displayed in my Chicago hotel room.
I encourage everyone to have the same New Year’s resolutions that I always do: turn off the computer, go to more live shows.
See you in 2012.
Last night TBP opened at the Jazz Showcase in Chicago and will be there through Sunday. I wrote about the Showcase and the Jazz Record Mart last year.
Yesterday I bought a few CDs at the Mart:
Jazz from Keystone, Thunder and Rainbows This is the only trio record with Kenny Kirkland and Jeff Watts. It's good but I wonder if any of those mid-90 nights at Zinno's were taped. I think I have this already -- I've certainly heard it a few times -- but I don't remember this title and packaging.
Bill Easley Sextet, Easley Said Easley is just a name to me, as is Bill Mobley, but I'm interested in the year, 1994, and the rhythm section Donald Brown, Ron Carter, and Billy Higgins. There really aren't enough records of Ron and Billy together, and I keep wanting to learn more about Brown. George Coleman is on it too, a musician I keep circling warily. I'm not always a fan but not too long ago I finally heard the Elvin Jones trio stuff with Wilbur Little and was shocked. You cannot play more saxophone than Coleman does on the post-Coltrane blues "By George."
Charles Sullivan, Re-Entry This is finally reissued, it used to be hard to find. According to Kenny Washington, this has some amazing Billy Hart on it. Buster Williams is on it too: anything with Buster and Billy together is going to be incredible.
Composed and Performed by Alexander Berne is a three CD set, The Soprano Saxophone Choir, The Saduk, and The Abandoned Orchestra. I hung out with Berne a bit about 20 years ago but we've lost touch. I didn't even know he had any records out. This is from 2010. Looking quickly around I discovered this thread with biography. Hey, Alex! How the hell are you?
Benny Golson, This is for You, John Recorded at the same time as Cedar Walton/Ron Carter/Jack DeJohnette, which I listened to a little bit with Walton in our interview. I checked this out first, of course. I assumed it was a jam session but it's actually a carefully arranged set list organized by Golson. The presence of Pharoah Sanders is fascinating! He and Jack really go to town -- amusing to hear Cedar's comping in the middle of the madness. Pretty awesome, really. Golson's fabulous liner notes explain how each piece relates to his old friend John Coltrane. I don't accept Coltrane tributes easily but this one is cool.
Starlicker, Double Demon Nice that it's a band! I've heard of Rob Mazurek, John Herndon, and Jason Adasiewicz -- and even met some of them on tour -- but hadn't listened to anything yet. The first track clarifies why they would choose this unusual instrumentation. Busy rock drums, clear harmony from the vibes, smeary trumpet. Very hip. Later on tonight I'll keep listening. I've always got to buy some local music.
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After the Showcase, we continue with some nice traditions
23 Minneapolis, MN -- Dakota Jazz Club
25 Minneapolis, MN -- Dakota Jazz Club
26 Minneapolis, MN -- Dakota Jazz Club
27 New York, NY -- The Village Vanguard
28 New York, NY -- The Village Vanguard
29 New York, NY -- The Village Vanguard
30 New York, NY -- The Village Vanguard
31 New York, NY -- The Village Vanguard
01 New York, NY -- The Village Vanguard
04 St. Louis, MO -- Jazz at the Bistro
05 St. Louis, MO -- Jazz at the Bistro
06 St. Louis, MO -- Jazz at the Bistro
07 St. Louis, MO -- Jazz at the Bistro
08 Wichita, KS -- Adobe Venue
Actually, we've never been to Wichita before. See you there.
Stanley Crouch is 66 today! It’s too bad everyone can’t spend an evening hanging on his every word as he goes from jazz to the renaissance to race to Harold Bloom to Ralph Ellison to everything else.
All of Crouch is worth reading, but my standard recommendation is The All-American Skin Game, or The Decoy of Race, a sensational collection of wide-ranging essays full of poetic vigor. Tarantino tapped Stanley to accept his Best Director award at the National Board of Review awards after reading "Eggplant Blues: The Miscegenated Cinema of Quentin Tarantino." I can understand why: It’s some of the best film criticism I’ve seen.
Like his mentor Ellison, Stanley sees all Americans as Americans first, other ethnicities second. Still, all good American art has race in it somehow, and no one talks about this more eloquently than Stanley. Of course, one of the major influences in the African-American experience. (Stanley would say Negro experience, but I'm not quite there yet.)
Stanley’s time here has been full of extraordinary occasions. Eventually a talented biographer will fashion an essential story from his life, a life that -- perhaps even more than his great writing -- is his wild and wooly art.
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When the emphasis on traditional values stormed jazz in the 80’s, Stanley was a major force. Ironically, at this point, Stanley knows more about avant-garde jazz than many of the musicians who followed the Young Lions’s lead. After all, Stanley was there: he heard Archie Shepp and the Art Ensemble of Chicago at their height. He adores Jimmy Lyons and Julius Hemphill. And he recommends all drummers check out Sunny Murray on Albert Ayler’s Witches and Devils.
I’ve been thinking about the scope of Stanley’s interests since learning that Adrian Ellis is stepping down as Jazz at Lincoln Center’s executive director. I met with Ellis once and thought he was a really good guy, although that didn't stop me from tweaking JALC’s nose in “Can White Cats Play Jazz?”
In response to my DTM interviews with Wynton and Stanley Crouch, the heads of JALC invited me to a meeting last year. I immediately demanded that JALC give avant-garde masters more gigs, arguing that they are under an ethical responsibility to present and document the music at its best, even if it wasn’t going to fill seats or be popular with staff. And plenty of older avant-garde masters need the gigs! Crouch loves Bobby Bradford: why the hell hasn’t Bradford been celebrated at JALC?
My demands haven’t been met yet, but these things take a while. After they read this blog entry maybe I’ll get another phone call. (UPDATE: Adrian Ellis emailed to say, "We are working on it, honest!")
I got an email from Yulun Wang of Pi Recordings last night:
Seth Rosner and I recently had a really good meeting with Adrian Ellis to discuss possibilities for JALC to widen the purview of their programming. Your name came up as someone with whom they recently had a very similar conversation. Adrian was quite encouraging, saying that they have for some time been internally discussing the possibility of converting one of their existing spaces into a venue for alternative programming.
Wang and I are both worried that with Ellis stepping down, any momentum to get more avant-garde music a hearing at JALC will be lost.
I finally worked at JALC for the first time last week, in Billy Hart’s quartet with Mark Turner and Ben Street at Dizzy’s. It was really great: the staff were sweethearts and the soundmen were pros. It’s fabulous that JALC is there. (The day that Stanley Crouch met Rudy Giuliani and asked that New York have a major home for jazz will be a good chapter in that biography.)
Props to Will Friedwald of the Wall Street Journal for reviewing several jazz gigs a week, old-school style. Friedwald wrote of our gig, “This is some of the deepest, heaviest, most profound music I've ever heard at Dizzy's—in fact, were it not for the Christmas wreaths on the bandstand, I might have thought I was at the Vanguard or some venue even further downtown.”
That’s a dream pull quote, although I’ve regularly heard some really profound music at Dizzy’s -- Cedar Walton, Frank Wess, Mulgrew Miller, others. The point is that the Billy Hart band played experimental music every set, and the reviewer noticed. It’s only going to help JALC the more they open their doors to all kinds of jazz.
As JALC looks to find a new executive director, let them know on blogs and in print that it is both their ethical responsibility and in their best interest to program new music.
I admit that Christopher O'Riley is a good friend of mine. But even if he was a stranger, I'd be knocked out by his collaboration with Matt Haimovitz, Shuffle. Play. Listen. This two-CD set is packed with astonishing cello-piano music. Alexandra Gardner does a nice job parsing the second disc comprised of O'Reilly's vivid transcriptions of rock and fusion. But I'm here to tell you the "classical" side is now one of my favorite records.
Leoš Janáček's Pohádka has a marvelous atmosphere, veiled and mysterious. The score is almost underwritten: the performers have to be fully invested in each cryptic utterance. (I've got to listen to more Janáček.) Bohuslav Martinů is from a similar school and his Variations on a Slovak Folksong begin with a rather bluesy piano statement. In Stravinsky's familiar Suite Italianne Haimovitz and O'Reilly have the right kind of blustery lyricism. I just adore the way "wrong" notes only occasionally peek out during Igor's mostly conventional harmonization of old Italian tunes.
The unquestionable highlight of the disk, however, is O'Riley's arrangement of Bernard Hermann's score to Vertigo. I know the soundtrack well, and am astonished by how well it works as a recital piece for virtuoso cello and piano. Chris sent me a nice note about it:
I've been doing pretty literal transcriptions of much of the Psycho music for solo piano, and so doing Vertigo was a natural consequent. Again, the real stretch had two-fold origins/ramifications: Matt and Luna were instrumental in exacting how much technical boundary-stretching was worth the eventuating sound-result, and how much could be reorchestrated vis-à-vis different octaves; and I, in turn, when things like the tumultuous and necessarily section-based kineticism of say, "The Nightmare" presented obstacles, it was again just a matter of stacking up Bernie's already suggestive and comprehensive mode-set.
In line with the title of the album, the Vertigo suite is spread out, "shuffled" between the longer classical pieces. However, after you import to your Mp3 player, there's nothing to stop you from enjoying a playlist of just Vertigo.
Shuffle. Play. Listen. is on Oxingale Records, Haimovitz's own label. Among many other fine releases I recommend the moving interpretation of Bach's solo cello music. All of O'Riley's records are great, too. But if you can find it, his older Stravinsky recital on Nonesuch is simply sensational.
Both Matt and Chris play the standard rep as well as it can be done. They both also challenge the notion that classical music is only for the landed gentry. In the future they will be hailed as trailblazers.
Everywhere I go people ask me about Nicholas Payton!
Ultimately, I have to defend him, at least on matters of race. Almost all Americans love American music but only a small percentage consider the social ramifications: American music owes its charisma to those brought here as slaves. Even though Civil Rights happened, inequity remains.
Some of my favorite late-‘50s and '60s jazz has an important political element. This aspect is covered in the thrilling essay “Jazz and Race, the Big Elephant in the Room” by Atane Ofiaja.
Perhaps this current internet ferment could spark some powerful music. The avant-garde must be included, though. You gotta have the avant-garde when making some seriously provocative jazz. Maybe it’s already happening -- the politically aware ensemble Tarbaby (Oliver Lake, Eric Revis, Orrin Evans, Nasheet Waits) is going into the studio right around now. Brooklyn Circle with Stacy Dillard, Diallo House, and Ismail Lawal is still bewildering the terrified populace every other Saturday late night at Smalls.
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I addressed an earlier Payton tweet in the incomplete statement that I still stand by, “From the Ground Up.” This essay angered some on Twitter but I’m not aware of any longer blog posts taking me to task. However, Angelika Beener (one of those who got mad) has indirectly responded with this profile of Kris Bowers. Almost all the names in the piece are new to me; I’m looking forward to checking them all out.
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I’ll be even more excited to check out any of these young musicians if they jettison the old leader-centric model in favor of bands.
I like Nicholas Payton’s music best when he is a superb jazz trumpet player in a jam session. He shines on some 2002 YouTube videos with Kenny Garrett, Dave Kikoski, Christian McBride, and Roy Haynes. It's not just Payton: Everyone in this quintet is a leader of near-miraculous skill, brought together for the elder statesman behind the drums.
But in a way this is also a missed opportunity. Although they might have needed a younger drummer, this could have been a collective that stayed together, argued about arrangements, brought in only their best compositions, split the money evenly, and forged a band sound that evolved from high-echelon jam session to something instantly identifiable by everyone everywhere.
That was something the second generation Young Lions really missed: collectives. Collectives are not just good artistically, they are good economically. You stay together and build your career. If there are no gigs, you take one for the team and wait it out until next month.
On my previous sally, I neglected this important point, but it came to mind when reading Dwayne Burno’s comments on George Colligan’s post, “Much Ado about Nicholas Payton.”
Like Payton, Burno likes to put it out there, and I support him for doing so. A previous endorsement is buried in my own comment thread from a few months ago. (“As I've said before: OK, you are pissed about some older black musician bitching about young white players knowing nothing about real jazz? Fine. First, play a medium up blues duo with Dwayne Burno and sound completely comfortable. After that, let's talk.”)
Late in the firestorm of that amazing thread on Colligan’s blog, Burno says: "Anyone that knows, knows my name is high at the New York list and I fall within the top ten to fifteen calls and have since age 19 (1989)."
Burno is right about this. He’s a top call cat.
But what does that mean anymore? Sure, that meant something profound in the era of Paul Chambers. But now? In his interview with Colligan, Burno says, "I wholeheartedly believe the music industry fucked up everything within the music and mostly through the 'Young Liars' movement. This created or exacerbated the schism between the generations which has remained and will never go away."
I interpret this to mean that there are too many young leaders. So if you are a young "top call," you go from one like-minded leader to another, making music even a die-hard fan like me can’t easily identify on WBGO.
Rather than be a "top call," Burno should be in a band of equals. I’ve always admired George Colligan’s first record from 1995, Activism, with Burno and my hero Ralph Peterson. Perhaps it’s even a modern classic. I’m sure there are plenty of good reasons why this trio didn’t stay together or make any more records. But if they had been at it since, loving and fighting each other all the way, in 2012 their music would be insane.
I’m done buying records of top call cats treating each other as sidemen. It’s time for “top calls” to be “the only call.” If anyone in the band isn’t available, then: no gig.
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It’s true that the jazz industry wants leaders. Not only that, once that leader gets off the ground, they demand fresh projects. Sam Newsome’s pointed “Are We Selling Our Music Short in an Effort to Work?” has an amazing story about an early interaction with a record label.
It’s not just Sam. I guarantee that every successful leader has had their team beg them for new bands and projects in order to get press and gigs.
Maybe that model used to work a little bit. Now, with so few gigs and almost no print press that means anything, that model is irrelevant. I’d love it if some of Bowers’s generation followed a different model used by successful new rock bands: get the fans first. Record labels and tours will follow.
Of course, there’s no real money for anyone for years. Everyone has to pitch in to make it happen. You gotta have a band.
Lit blog discovery: Existential Ennui. Nicholas Jones and I share a lot of the same tastes in genre fiction. Indeed, his wallpaper seems to be mostly Donald E. Westlake! The next time I'm in England I'm going to try to look him up and compare notes (my assessment of the canon is here).
Two posts stand out. Jones found Anthony Price and interviewed him, a real coup. I like Price quite a bit and have considered re-reading them all in order. The Price books are most thrilling in their detailing of British military history. Besides the familar Other Paths to Glory I recommend The '44 Vintage and The Old Vengeful. Avoid Our Man in Camelot, a misguided attempt to set the action in America.
And "Doctor Who and the Target Novelisations" is a mirror image of my own experience.
After a while I started noticing the names of the authors of these short novels, and then determining which of those authors I preferred (Terrance Dicks was by far my favourite). What I was doing, without really knowing it, was developing critical faculties....
... triggering a lifelong interest in serialised writing – fiction, nonfiction, novels, TV, comics, columns, diaries – and writers of serials.
Jones suggests that he wouldn't be a blogger without the Target books. Perhaps DTM also owes a debt to Terrance Dicks...
("SF Televideo Celebrations" reveals some of my history with Who.)
Keystone Korner: Portrait of a Jazz Club by Kathy Sloane. I'm too young to have been in the legendary San Francisco jazz club (it closed in 1983), but like most fans I have several great live albums made there. Photographer Kathy Sloane was a regular, and her loving collection of candid shots is paired with a diverse collection of interviews and essays by writers, musicians, and scenesters. It's not a whitewash -- some of the stories are gritty -- and the photos are swinging!
The Keystone was Todd Barkan's pride and joy. Wynton Marsalis was canny to install Todd at the JALC's Dizzy's Club Coca-Cola, for Barkan has always brought a different, non-corporate feel to the Time Warner Center. His florid introductions are legendary, and I was looking forward to what he had to say about his old sparring partner Billy Hart this week. Unfortunately he's out sick at the moment. Most know that he was recently in a bad car accident. He's recovered from that but still not done. Todd said it was fine to reproduce last week's email:
I do not know if you heard about the fact that the bebop health gods threw me another near-fatal curveball a week ago the day after Thanksgiving, and I have been in the hospital since then. It turned out that the metal pins and plates that were used for my emergency surgery in February were seriously infected, and they just nearly killed me with their evil staphlocockeyedness last week, over nine months after we all thought was totally recuperated from the hammering I took on the West Side Highway on February 13th.
Had to undergo emergency surgery to take all the metal and bone grist out of my leg, and now have vac machine attached to my leg to take home, where I will continue with another five-six weeks of intensive antibiotics choruses. An eternal learning experience at the very least. As Jimmy Scott likes to say, "Ain't no use kickin' it, baby, you'll just get a broken toe." God willing and the creek don't rise, I should be able to recover within a couple of months, but "this was definitely not in my contract." Just trying to make the world safe for a little bebop.
I just spoke to Todd. He is home, doing very well, and expects to be back at work mid-January. Before then, regular patron's of Dizzy's should read Portrait of a Jazz Club to realize how much history he has been a part of.
Rifftide: The Life and Opinons of Papa Jo Jones as told to Albert Murray, edited by Paul Devlin. Another essential jazz book. The final time I saw Paul Motian I gave him this volume and he was thrilled: like any drummer of his generation, Paul adored Jo Jones. A few years earlier I had asked him about Jo Jones vs. Gene Krupa. Paul growled, "They are pretty fucking different!" To this day, Krupa owns more real estate than Jones, a classic example of institutional racism.
In Rifftide we hear plenty about what it really meant to be on the sharp end of racism. It's so important to read and remember these stories when attempting to parse today's racial minefield.
Kudos to Paul Devlin for taking on this monumental project, which began with gaining Albert Murray's trust, followed by listening and transcribing boxes of tapes made from 1977 to 1985. But that was still only step one of the venture. Devlin writes:
A tremendous amount of cutting, pasting, and shuffling was required to get this text into its present form. Every tape contained every topic in the seven chapters. The profiles of various people in “People I’ve Rubbed Elbows With” were spread out all over the tapes (in more or less full form; they were not stitched together). The largest challenge was finding ways to put like with like.
Rifftide is an easy, fun read that I'll keep returning to.
No Such Thing as Silence: John Cage's 4'33" by Kyle Gann. As I get older, I have less and less to do with experimental music. But I'll always have a soft spot for the composition that turns any moment into a symphony. Since reading Gann's terrific little book and telling others about it, I've been amazed by how many of my peers still question the validity of 4'33'. To me, it is obviously a great work. Have a listen yourself, right now:
(...)
Gann contextualizes Cage with not just musicians but also artists, philosophers, and general 20th century history. I learned an awful lot from No Such Thing as Silence.
John Lewis on "A Night In Tunisia" at 2'50."
Jimmy Rowles on "Limehouse Blues" at 12'25."
Recently I criticized contemporary conservative jazz. These two solos exlempify the kind of thing I miss today. More young musicians without a natural experimental bent should cop this vibe.
There's no Bud Powell, no McCoy Tyner, no Bill Evans, no Herbie Hancock, no Brad Mehldau, no avant-garde, and no "going for house" here. But there is pure improvisation in both hands -- you can see Lewis and Rowles surprise themselves -- a magnificent instrumental technique, and a placement of swinging phrases in the deepest part of the beat. They also only need a chorus or two to make their point.
Next masterclass is Tuesday, December 13, from 7-10, $20. Email ethan.teaches(at)gmail if interested.
The Billy Hart Quartet with Mark Turner, Ben Street and me is at Dizzy’s this coming week, December 6-11.
Through the 14th, The Stone is curated by Tim Berne. Among many other promising gigs, there’s a Berne group with Baikida Carroll (!) on Wednesday and Chris Speed with two thirds of TBP on Friday. That trio is part of Dave King’s five-night NYC residency (he's also w. David Torn, Matt Mitchell, and the full Trucking Company), which you can read more about here.
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“Do the Math Live” was a blast. Corcoran Holt is steadily getting better known thanks to his natural charisma and strong beat. But veteran Steve Williams has been out here a minute and the word is taking too long to spread. Steve can play anything but I especially recommend him for those willing to be schooled in a traditional and authentic swing feel. Steve is a major artist, criminally under-appreciated, living in New York and accessible right now.
The mini-tour was covered on the blogs. DC Adventurer photographed the masterclass as well as the gigs. Could I have really said that “playing classical music requires less soul than playing jazz?” I didn’t mean that, of course, but I do think that jazz instantly creates more natural emotional investment for the player, simply because we can’t read it off the page.
The Belle of Cowbell, Ruth Deming, AKA mom-in-law, was the guest of honor in Philly.
Oonaballoona was at Smalls and we had an amusing interaction. Maybe someday I’ll learn your real name...
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It's really, really, really, nice when your gig is written up on a blog. Let's see, what gigs did I see in November?
Bill McHenry w. Orrin Evans, Eric Revis, and Andrew Cyrille. Two sets on the last night of the Vanguard; the first one in particular was Just Incredible. It's a collection of musicians who don't agree on the same canon and is all the stronger for it. This band must continue. When I told Cyrille the last time I saw him at the Vanguard was with Mal Waldron and Reggie Workman, he replied that was the last time he had played there, almost 20 years ago. What?!? Maybe now he can take over some of the holes in the calendar left by Motian.
Orrin was also with J.D. Allen, Gregg August, and Rudy Royston the following week, but didn't comp very much for some reason, even on the heads. It was kind of like hearing the J.D. Allen trio with some burning piano solos edited in. Nice hit, but I can't understand the way they played the bridge of "If You Could See Me Now." Tadd Dameron is turning in his grave!
(Orrin, by the way, has long been one of my favorite pianists and he is playing better than ever. Don't sleep on Orrin Evans!)
The Darcy James Argue and Danijel Zezelj collaboration Brooklyn Babylon was a success. My favorite section was "Building" with a hocketing, irrational, pounding horn antiphony under Ingrid Jensen's vivid trumpet. Zezelj's visuals were stunning. I expect Brooklyn Babylon to last.
Frank Wess led a solid mainstream group at Dizzy's. The best thing was his incredible ballad performance on "A Time For Love." I enjoyed a post-gig chat with Michael Weiss, who gave me some tips on the chord changes to "I Should Care."
Wess joined Jimmy Heath for some gentlemanly octogenarian tenor battles out in Flushing with Jeremy Pelt, Barry Harris, Paul West, and Tootie Heath. It is extraordinary to see Barry and Tootie together, I wish they had a regular gig.
Ian Bostridge and Thomas Adès gave a terrific recital at Carnegie Hall. Adès is one of my favorite classical pianists as well as a composer I insist on acquiring every recording of. Unfortunately, he only played "Darknesse Visible" once: As far as I was concerned, he could have played it a dozen times in a row.
New DTM page: "The Paradox of Continuity."
(The content of this post has been moved to "The Paradox of Continuity.")
The last two months I've done a lot of blogging.
Bud Powell
Mickey Roker
Johannes Brahms
Nicholas Payton “institutional racism” (+ forum)
Franz Liszt
Fred Hersch
Crime Books (one, two)
Fake Books (one, two)
Butch Ballard R.I.P.
Roger Williams R.I.P.
Walter Norris R.I.P.
Samuel Barber
9/11
Steve Jobs
Jazz Critics
Jim’s Journal
Nerd pride
Enough! See you again around Dec. 1.
If you dig the blog and live in D.C. or Philly, come out to the gigs w. Corcoran and Steve listed below.
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TBP makes a record next week. Nice review of some of the new tunes at Groove Notes.
Masterclass. Due to a fire, my rehearsal studio moved and got more expensive. For a while I’ve been fooling with a free masterclass, but now I’ve decided to start charging to offset the cost of the room. $20 for a three-hour session. Tentative first date is Monday Nov. 14 at 7 PM in downtown Brooklyn. Email ethan.teaches(at)gmail if interested, and if enough people can make it I’ll send out a blast with address and procedure the weekend before. (Only emails about the class will get responses.)
Nov. 20-23 Do the Math “Live” mini-tour. I wrote the following press release
ETHAN IVERSON
CORCORAN HOLT
STEVE WILLIAMS“Do the Math” Live
Is there anything new yet to be discovered in the common-practice tradition? Although Ethan Iverson is best known for being one-third of The Bad Plus, once in a while he rummages through standards and jazz tunes. This kind of gig aligns with his blog/webzine Do The Math.
Corcoran Holt and Steve Williams are seasoned players who balance professionalism and mystery. Both are originally from Washington D.C.
November 20, 8 PM -- Atlas Performing Arts Center, Washington D.C. $20 (atlasarts.org)
November 21, 7 and 9 PM -- Chris’ Jazz Cafe, Philadelphia. $15 (Benefit concert for New Directions Support Group) * (chrisjazzcafe.com)
November 22 and 23, 8:30 and 10 PM -- Smalls, New York City. $20 (smallsjazzclub.com)
---Corcoran Holt is currently working with Kenny Garrett, Steve Turre, Wycliffe Gordon, Terrell Stafford, and others. His extensive list of prior collaborators can be seen at corcoranholt.com.
Steve Williams (Wikipedia) is best known for a 25-year association with Shirley Horn. He has also recorded with Joe Williams, Clifford Jordan, John Hicks, and is currently playing with Joe Lovano and others. His first album as a leader, New Incentive, was released in 2007.
In addition to The Bad Plus, Ethan Iverson performs in the Billy Hart quartet with Mark Turner and Ben Street and Buffalo Collision with Tim Berne, Hank Roberts, and David King.
* All profits for the Philadelphia performance will be donated to New Directions Support Group.
which I admit is not up to the standard of John McNeil’s press release about Jorge Roeder, Adam Nussbaum and me at Cornelia Nov. 25-26
This Quartet is making its second appearance at the Cornelia Street Café, this time for two nights.
Security will be tight since a rather bloody riot broke out during the band's first appearance here in September. Some survivors reported that it was like the Arab Spring combined with the Ice Follies. Many others felt that the first engagement's madness was exactly like the Running of the Bulls in Pamplona, only with everyone wearing giant vegetable suits.
Suffice to say we expect no violence this time because there will be a strong police and SWAT team presence.
For their part, band members seemed confused by the fans' violent reaction. "I mean, come on, man," said McNeil, "we're just playing some damn tunes, you know?"
Dec. 1-3 TBP with Mark Morris Dance Group in Seattle. We haven’t done “Violet Cavern” in several years, it will be fabulous to re-visit. The pairing is “Festival Dances,” which Alex Ross wrote about last summer.
I always liked hearing a taste of Norris's romantic harmony with Pepper Adams, Chet Baker, George Mraz, and others. His best things were ballads. A long station in Europe seemed to suit him; surely countless local musicians learned some of the secrets of '50s-era Hollywood voice-leading when gathered around his warm voice.
Paradoxically, Norris is best known to Americans as the pianist on Ornette Coleman's first disc of not-quite free jazz, Something Else! (I have written extensively about this album already.) But today, check out Walter Norris dealing with the romantic language. The style of "Ad Astra" with Adams suits him perfectly. "A Child Is Born" with Mraz is perfect, too.
