4 Drummer Ray LeVier has chops. His Web page includes video of a drum clinic near his home in New York’s Hudson Valley that places his virtuosity beyond question, as do his heavy beats behind singer-songwriter KJ Denhert. But on his postbop-oriented leader debut, Ray’s Way (Origin), LeVier epitomizes understatement; he takes no solos, save for a series of one-bar breaks on one track, and comps so subtly that even the bass (played by François Moutin or Ned Mann) frequently dominates him. “I wanted it to sound like a band, not a bunch of hired guns,” says LeVier. “I didn’t want it to sound like a drummer’s album, but like an album.” Hardly standard operating procedure for a drummer-as-bandleader, but LeVier’s entire musical career has defied conventional wisdom. Shortly after discovering his instrument at age 12, he suffered extensive third-degree burns when his sleeping bag caught fire during a campout. The accident deprived him of most of the fingers on his left hand, causing his doctors to believe that he’d never play drums again. LeVier didn’t accept that answer: He asked his mother to bandage a drumstick to his hand and beat the skins even when it aggravated his injuries. “The skin was like tissue paper,” he recalls, “and my hands were bleeding. But I kept at it and just kept trying to figure out a way. So I was walking through a parking lot and I found what I think was a hockey glove—no fingers. And I said, ‘Well, why can’t I just stick my hand in this, and duct tape the stick to my hand?’” The trick worked, and began a series of innovations in his technique. LeVier had his thumb surgically reset to provide a fulcrum for the stick, but if it slipped from his grasp he couldn’t catch it. “I was just sitting there one day and happened across a rubber band, and I said, ‘Wow, maybe this’ll work.’ So I put it around the butt end of the stick and on my hand: voila! If the stick started to slide out I would just let go and the rubber band would pull it back in.” Even more effective, he later found, was an adhesive commonly used for wigs, which held the stick in place but still allowed him to put it down if he needed brushes for the next tune. LeVier’s goal in these experiments was to be a rock drummer. When he began studying with Sol LaRocca, a veteran of Teddy Wilson and Junior Mance’s bands, he was stymied by the teacher’s approach. “He scared the crap out of me!” LeVier laughs. “I didn’t have time for these rudiments; I was going to be a rock star!” But when college neared and he began to regard drumming as a serious career, LeVier turned back to LaRocca. “One of my best teachers,” he says after the second go-round. “He really did miracles for me.” LaRocca also won his student over on jazz. By the time LeVier arrived at New Jersey’s William Paterson University, he’d decided to major in jazz performance. Since finishing college, LeVier has been a successful freelance musician, and has also worked in the funk-fusion project Berkana with guitarist Nat Janoff and bassist François Moutin. His most frequent gig, however, is with Denhert, whose music is a rootsy mix of folk, rock, jazz and soul. “We play a club in New York called the 55 Bar, have been there every other Saturday for 10 years now,” he says. “She’s also doing a lot of touring, and we’ve been playing the jazz festival in Umbria, the summer and winter versions, for the last four years.” The job has kept LeVier so busy that it’s only now, at 39, that he’s recorded his debut with Ray’s Way. “I guess life has a way of moving very fast,” he says. “You get busy with doing your gigs and living your life, and although it’s something I always wanted to do I put it on the backburner.” The disc actually began several years ago in a trio session with guitarist Mike Stern and bassist Ned Mann; encouraged by his wife, Nury, and all who heard it, LeVier recorded a second session with Stern, Moutin and saxophonist Dave Binney, then finished with a larger band including Moutin, Binney, vibraphonist Joe Locke, guitarist John Abercrombie and soprano saxophonist Federico Turreni. Ray’s Way has a fusion-ish sound, thanks to Abercrombie’s solidbody guitar and LeVier’s own rockish style. “That’s kind of where I came from,” he remarks. Fusion drummers, he adds, have been a particular inspiration. “To me those were the drummers that had a real grasp on things, the ones that can play different styles from different worlds, but make it sound good.” LeVier is inadvertently describing himself along with his mentors. His ability to master drums across genres testifies to his perseverance as well as his talent. true 10607 2009-04-17T14:59:24-04:00 false 24585 174 true 139 2009-05-01T00:00:00-04:00

Drummer Ray LeVier has chops. His Web page includes video of a drum clinic near his home in New York’s Hudson Valley that places his virtuosity beyond question, as do his heavy beats behind singer-songwriter KJ Denhert. But on his postbop-oriented leader debut, Ray’s Way (Origin), LeVier epitomizes understatement; he takes no solos, save for a series of one-bar breaks on one track, and comps so subtly that even the bass (played by François Moutin or Ned Mann) frequently dominates him. “I wanted it to sound like a band, not a bunch of hired guns,” says LeVier. “I didn’t want it to sound like a drummer’s album, but like an album.” Hardly standard operating procedure for a drummer-as-bandleader, but LeVier’s entire musical career has defied conventional wisdom. Shortly after discovering his instrument at age 12, he suffered extensive third-degree burns when his sleeping bag caught fire during a campout. The accident deprived him of most of the fingers on his left hand, causing his doctors to believe that he’d never play drums again. LeVier didn’t accept that answer: He asked his mother to bandage a drumstick to his hand and beat the skins even when it aggravated his injuries. “The skin was like tissue paper,” he recalls, “and my hands were bleeding. But I kept at it and just kept trying to figure out a way. So I was walking through a parking lot and I found what I think was a hockey glove—no fingers. And I said, ‘Well, why can’t I just stick my hand...

2009-04-23T12:25:03-04:00

4 The sun had just gone down when Arve Henriksen ducked into a coffee shop. “It’s freezing cold in Oslo now,” the Norwegian trumpeter said, laughing. “It’s quite nice, actually, the winter here.” Accompanying him on this mid-February evening was his girlfriend, Trio Mediaeval’s Anna Maria Friman, who makes several appearances on Cartography, Henriksen’s latest full-length and his first as a leader for the ECM label. One of the tracks on which the Grammy-nominated chanteuse can be heard is “Recording Angel,” a moody, post-Miles number that includes a sample of a Trio Mediaeval soundcheck. The performance, recorded by Cartography’s co-producer Jan Bang, is used as the foundation for one of Henriksen’s sparse improvisations. “This shows the ongoing process while we were working on this record,” Henriksen said of Bang’s tendency to create songs out of a variety of audio sources. “Jan did it and brought it into the session when we were in the studio.” Bang, who co-produced Henriksen’s 2004 release Chiaroscuro and worked on trumpeter Jon Hassell’s new album Last night the moon came dropping its clothes in the street, also provided the spark that got the record off the ground. “The process started about two-and-a-half, three years ago, [with] Jan Bang bringing in some sketches,” Henriksen said. “We had been working together for a long time and he would just occasionally bring in some new ideas.” In addition to Bang’s electronic blueprints and two live tracks recorded at the Norwegian Punkt festival, Cartography also features “Before and Afterlife,” a spoken word and trumpet piece that was conceived, in part, by David Sylvian. The British singer-songwriter first collaborated with Henriksen on Snow Borne Sorrow, a 2005 full-length by Sylvian’s group Nine Horses, and then asked the trumpeter to contribute to a 2006 installation piece called When Loud Weather Buffeted Naoshima. “When we were working [on Cartography], I remembered he also sent me a file for this art magazine thing,” Henriksen said. “And he asked if he could use some of my trumpet phrases on a new song that he was making. … That’s the second track on the new record.” If this patchwork doesn’t exactly suggest the usual ECM production—that is, a Rudy Van Gelder-style session helmed by Manfred Eicher—that’s because Cartography was completed before Henriksen knew who would release it. “Jan had a recording session in France together with Jon Hassell,” Henriksen said when asked how the album ended up on the long-running German label. “So Jan just mentioned this [to] Manfred and he wanted to listen to it and liked it … and wanted to release it. But the process before that had been … to release it, actually, on another label: the Rune Grammofon label.” It’s hard to say which would’ve been a better fit. The genre-defying Norwegian indie released Henriksen’s first three albums—Chiaroscuro, 2001’s Sakuteiki and 2007’s Strjon—as well as the entire output of his jazz-rock outfit Supersilent. But ECM has a long history of supporting Norwegian artists who take unorthodox approaches to improvisation. Henriksen sees himself as a part of this tradition. “Jan, of course, and [co-producer] Erik [Honoré] and myself, we are very fond of sounds,” he said. “That’s mainly the approach in many of my projects—also Supersilent. And that goes for many of my colleagues in different bands here in Norway. We’re fond of the classical music, fond of the medieval music, fond of most different kinds. We just want to bring it in and see what can be achieved, musically, by doing that.” Henriksen’s liberal outlook might put him at odds with the core American jazz audience, which, thanks to ECM, will have a much easier time finding Cartography than the trumpeter’s previous records. But, truth be told, he doesn’t see himself in an American light. “The Norwegian jazz scene has always been sort of a melting point of many different things,” he said. “And you have to look at the Norwegian scene with some sort of European eyes, because it’s not American jazz.” In other words, don’t expect a Wynton Marsalis record—or even the kind of music that Miles Davis was making in the ’70s. Cartography is much closer to Davis in spirit than in sound, as evidenced by Henriksen’s eagerness to work with Bang and Honoré, producers who attracted him because of their experience with radio-friendly forms. “They have been working with a lot of pop artists here in Norway,” Henriksen said of the pair. “That’s the reason I chose them to produce it, because it would give me a glimpse of another world.” Interestingly enough, the collaboration resulted in one of his least otherworldly recordings. Henriksen eschews the heavy processing of Strjon and Supersilent’s recordings, opting instead for the simple sound of trumpet played over rhythms that are almost subliminally soft. “It was the work of Erik and Jan,” he said, in typical humble fashion. “They have maybe managed to make me play less notes and more simple, maybe. And hopefully this is a stronger output from my trumpet playing.” true 300 2009-04-20T10:04:56-04:00 false 24594 174 true 139 2009-05-01T00:00:00-04:00

The sun had just gone down when Arve Henriksen ducked into a coffee shop. “It’s freezing cold in Oslo now,” the Norwegian trumpeter said, laughing. “It’s quite nice, actually, the winter here.” Accompanying him on this mid-February evening was his girlfriend, Trio Mediaeval’s Anna Maria Friman, who makes several appearances on Cartography, Henriksen’s latest full-length and his first as a leader for the ECM label. One of the tracks on which the Grammy-nominated chanteuse can be heard is “Recording Angel,” a moody, post-Miles number that includes a sample of a Trio Mediaeval soundcheck. The performance, recorded by Cartography’s co-producer Jan Bang, is used as the foundation for one of Henriksen’s sparse improvisations. “This shows the ongoing process while we were working on this record,” Henriksen said of Bang’s tendency to create songs out of a variety of audio sources. “Jan did it and brought it into the session when we were in the studio.” Bang, who co-produced Henriksen’s 2004 release Chiaroscuro and worked on trumpeter Jon Hassell’s new album Last night the moon came dropping its clothes in the street, also provided the spark that got the record off the ground. “The process started about two-and-a-half, three years ago, [with] Jan Bang bringing in some sketches,” Henriksen said. “We had been working together for a long time and he would just occasionally bring in some new ideas.” In addition to Bang’s electronic blueprints and two live tracks recorded at the Norwegian Punkt festival, Cartography also features “Before and Afterlife,” a spoken word and trumpet piece that...

2009-04-23T12:24:36-04:00

4 Gongs ring out, loud and long, followed by the boom of timpani and the sparse rattle of percussion. Then, from the rear of Philadelphia’s Painted Bride Art Center, out of view, several horns begin an achingly dissonant rubato theme. Soon the players emerge from the darkness, continuing the music as they march slowly through the black-box theater, finally joining the half-dozen musicians already onstage. John Hollenbeck, switching from melodica to drum set, kicks off a driving beat as the players fall into tempo, adding to a powerful unison line that crests and then draws to a conclusive finish. The piece, “Paterna Terra” (“fatherland”), is a journey in itself. But it’s just the first of Hollenbeck’s offerings with a band he has dubbed the “Philly 12.” This concert, in early March, was the culminating event of Hollenbeck’s “Big Ears” residency at the Painted Bride. In coordination with Lenny Seidman, the Bride’s music curator, Hollenbeck chose 12 musicians from a pool of local applicants. He wound up with a vibrant cross-section of Philadelphia’s improvised-music community: alto saxophonist Bobby Zankel, tenor saxophonist Bryan Rogers, soprano sax/clarinetist Aino Söderhielm, trumpeter Bart Miltenberger, trombonist Brent White, violinist Katt Hernandez, guitarist Matt Davis, vocalist Venissa Santí, pianist Matthew Mitchell and bassist Brian Howell. Hollenbeck reserved the drummer slot for himself, but Patricia Franceschy and Gabe Globus-Hoenich, both classically trained on percussion and mallets, added much to the group’s sonic identity. The idea behind “Big Ears” was simple: throw Hollenbeck, one of New York’s leading lights, together with a group of Philly-based artists he doesn’t know and then see what happens. If the effort helped shed light on the vital yet underexposed creative music scene in Philadelphia, all the better. “I tried not to have any expectations, and I didn’t want anyone else to have expectations,” Hollenbeck says. Nonetheless, there were certain goals in mind. First, the drummer spent a week in January with the Philly 12, workshopping ideas, doing rhythmic exercises and getting acquainted musically. Then the Bride hosted Hollenbeck’s Grammy-nominated Large Ensemble in a bravura performance on Feb. 28, followed by a second week of residency with the Philly 12. By this point, the workshops evolved into rehearsals. Hollenbeck brought in written music—older repurposed material as well as brand new—and started devising a concert program. “This was probably the most differing group of improvisers I’ve ever been in one room with, including school,” said Hernandez, whose work involves in-depth study of microtonality. But according to Zankel, who has played with everyone from Hank Mobley and Jymie Merritt to Cecil Taylor, “The commonalities were hugely greater than the differences.” Indeed, some of the Philly 12 already had strong bonds as members of Zankel’s Warriors of the Wonderful Sound, Davis’ Aerial Photograph and other groups on the cutting edge of the Philly scene. Hollenbeck was assertive in the leader’s role, keeping the music free and loose even as he focused carefully on dynamics, articulation and stagecraft. In several pieces, one heard a latticework of overlapping rhythms, set against richly harmonized melodic clauses often unrelated to the main tempo. The bit-by-bit rhythmic consensus-building of the residency had borne fruit. “Forced Empathy,” a frenetic repeating theme with improvised breaks, contained within it a slow conducted interlude called “Getting Chilly.” Santí handled spoken-word parts with poise on “The Bird With the Coppery, Keen Claws” (based on verse by Wallace Stevens). Later, she cued the horns through the crosscutting melodic bursts of the finale, “Jazz Envy.” Four players gathered in front for “Domino,” a stark experimental piece involving open call-and-response segments and a choreographed round robin of solos. As the four exited in a line, the remaining players struck up “Saudade,” a flowing modern-jazz tune with eloquent solos from White, Rogers and Davis. “You have to find a place where everyone can be included,” Hollenbeck said on a rehearsal break. “I wanted people to be comfortable, but I also wanted moments of, ‘God, I’ve never done this before, I have no idea what I’m doing.’” The trick was to render those moments all but undetectable, to merge comfort and discomfort in the arc of a compelling performance. Rogers and Miltenberger stoked the fires again when “Drum Conversation,” Hollenbeck’s detailed orchestration of a 1953 Max Roach solo, exploded from mid-tempo to double-time swing. “Tarak,” a serene drone-based piece with a voiceover by 7-year-old Tarak McLain (from National Public Radio’s “This I Believe” series), changed the pace dramatically. But the voice sequencing from Mitchell’s laptop, and another dramatic procession around the room, didn’t sync up as smoothly as intended, one of a few ambitious technical details that made the show run long. “John’s compositions have a modular element to them,” offered Hernandez at a post-gig reception. “They have these moveable pieces that allow this or that much space between sections. It’s like motivic tone painting, which was a really interesting thing to interact with and think about.” Reflecting on the whole experience, Zankel said, “If I had to describe John in two words—and this is a point where I feel a real kinship with him—he’s a ‘melody man.’ For all he knows about rhythm and tonality and orchestration, I think the bottom line for him is melody, and that’s a profound approach to music.” true 247 2009-04-20T10:08:03-04:00 false 24595 174 true 139 2009-05-01T00:00:00-04:00

Gongs ring out, loud and long, followed by the boom of timpani and the sparse rattle of percussion. Then, from the rear of Philadelphia’s Painted Bride Art Center, out of view, several horns begin an achingly dissonant rubato theme. Soon the players emerge from the darkness, continuing the music as they march slowly through the black-box theater, finally joining the half-dozen musicians already onstage. John Hollenbeck, switching from melodica to drum set, kicks off a driving beat as the players fall into tempo, adding to a powerful unison line that crests and then draws to a conclusive finish. The piece, “Paterna Terra” (“fatherland”), is a journey in itself. But it’s just the first of Hollenbeck’s offerings with a band he has dubbed the “Philly 12.” This concert, in early March, was the culminating event of Hollenbeck’s “Big Ears” residency at the Painted Bride. In coordination with Lenny Seidman, the Bride’s music curator, Hollenbeck chose 12 musicians from a pool of local applicants. He wound up with a vibrant cross-section of Philadelphia’s improvised-music community: alto saxophonist Bobby Zankel, tenor saxophonist Bryan Rogers, soprano sax/clarinetist Aino Söderhielm, trumpeter Bart Miltenberger, trombonist Brent White, violinist Katt Hernandez, guitarist Matt Davis, vocalist Venissa Santí, pianist Matthew Mitchell and bassist Brian Howell. Hollenbeck reserved the drummer slot for himself, but Patricia Franceschy and Gabe Globus-Hoenich, both classically trained on percussion and mallets, added much to the group’s sonic identity. The idea behind “Big Ears” was simple: throw Hollenbeck, one of New York’s leading lights, together with a group of Philly-based artists...

2009-04-23T12:23:52-04:00

4 I don’t want to hug the tar baby …” With these words, sampled and spliced into a hip-hop montage, Tar Baby’s eponymous debut begins. The voice belongs to the late Tony Snow, press secretary for the Bush White House, who used the term from the Br’er Rabbit folk legend as a metaphor for getting lured into a rhetorical trap. It’s vaguely provocative—some would say racially charged—and yet the members of Tar Baby don’t intend the band name as a political statement. As tenor saxophonist Stacy Dillard puts it, “The name is based on musical experiences and observations.” Bassist Eric Revis elaborates: “In the story, the tar baby is something you don’t want to attach yourself to. And it seems to me there are elements of jazz that a lot of people don’t want to attach themselves to: the idea of swinging, playing with conviction, with reckless abandon. Everything now tends to be very pensive and ‘interesting.’ An exercise in the math of music. None of us are about that.” For drummer Nasheet Waits, Tar Baby speaks to the need for musicians to engage the full sweep of jazz tradition, not focus narrowly on what’s current. “The best players have a firm sense of history,” he says. “That’s why they’re able to walk their own path. There’s a cultural message that I think is being lost today, with the younger generation not referencing certain elements that are key to making jazz strong, making it what it is.” Although Tar Baby found a home on pianist Orrin Evans’ Imani label, the band is a co-led collective, with Evans, Revis, Dillard and Waits at the core. J.D. Allen, also on tenor, has since decided to focus on his own work as a leader. But the three Allen compositions on the disc, including the mysterious title track, will remain in the book, and Allen is still spoken of as an honorary member. “It’s not a parochial view of a group,” says Waits, noting the two guest appearances by vocalist TC III. “We’re always open to change. The band can always augment itself, and that was the vision.” After the opening intro, the quintet offers a heated, to-the-point reading of Don Cherry’s “Awake Nu,” a clear statement of interest in the free-jazz continuum. Revis and Waits have explored these modalities in a trio with the iconic Peter Brötzmann. And yet Tar Baby’s sound is largely tonal, wide in range, from the dark, loosely flowing 6/8 of Allen’s “Being in Nothingness” to the agitated funk motifs of Evans’ “Iz Beatdown Time” and the shuffle groove of “Psalm 150-2,” by Philadelphia organ legend Trudy Pitts. Revis’ tricky, swinging “O,” named for Evans, might call to mind the Branford Marsalis Quartet, in which Revis has played for years. Another version appears on Laughter’s Necklace of Tears, the bassist’s new album, also featuring Evans and Dillard. “The tune pretty much describes Orrin,” Revis offers. “It’s ‘simply complex,’ you know, with this earth-visceral thing but also this sophisticated thing that’s in there.” Asked about his and Allen’s respective approaches on tenor, Dillard cuts to the chase: “The one playing crazy is me. The one with the sweeter tone, that’s J.D.” Both saxophonists hail from Michigan, but Dillard, the youngest of the group at 31, wasn’t aware of that connection when he first heard Allen, an experience that “took me onto a whole different page musically,” he says. When Tar Baby formed, he recalls, “they suited me up, took me in like a little brother, and here we are.” Tar Baby comes in at a concise, perhaps even brusque 33 minutes, yet it seems very much a rounded and complete narrative, harking back to pre-CD days when albums were necessarily shorter. “Some of the greatest music ever made in jazz is like three minutes long,” Revis contends. “I think that phase [long tunes, long albums] served its purpose, but we’ve gone through the exploration thing. Now, at least for me, it’s time to start whittling all this stuff down and getting to the essence of something.” Bolstering the point, Waits fondly recalls the advice of an old mentor: “Get to your shit quick.” That’s not to say the band won’t stretch when the live setting calls for it. At New York’s Winter Jazzfest in January, Tar Baby sounded more exploratory and supple—more like a band—than Jeff “Tain” Watts’ star-studded quartet across the street with Branford Marsalis, Terence Blanchard and Christian McBride. Another Tar Baby studio effort is under discussion. “I’ve been at the drawing board quite a bit and I’ve got material ready,” confides Dillard. Waits plans to contribute as well. “We all have equal input,” the drummer says. “There’s strength in numbers, that’s our motto. It’s all about ‘us’ and ‘our.’” true 247 2009-03-25T10:46:15-04:00 false 24390 138 true 139 2009-04-01T00:00:00-04:00

I don’t want to hug the tar baby …” With these words, sampled and spliced into a hip-hop montage, Tar Baby’s eponymous debut begins. The voice belongs to the late Tony Snow, press secretary for the Bush White House, who used the term from the Br’er Rabbit folk legend as a metaphor for getting lured into a rhetorical trap. It’s vaguely provocative—some would say racially charged—and yet the members of Tar Baby don’t intend the band name as a political statement. As tenor saxophonist Stacy Dillard puts it, “The name is based on musical experiences and observations.” Bassist Eric Revis elaborates: “In the story, the tar baby is something you don’t want to attach yourself to. And it seems to me there are elements of jazz that a lot of people don’t want to attach themselves to: the idea of swinging, playing with conviction, with reckless abandon. Everything now tends to be very pensive and ‘interesting.’ An exercise in the math of music. None of us are about that.” For drummer Nasheet Waits, Tar Baby speaks to the need for musicians to engage the full sweep of jazz tradition, not focus narrowly on what’s current. “The best players have a firm sense of history,” he says. “That’s why they’re able to walk their own path. There’s a cultural message that I think is being lost today, with the younger generation not referencing certain elements that are key to making jazz strong, making it what it is.” Although Tar Baby found a home on pianist Orrin Evans’...

2009-04-17T12:21:03-04:00

4 In devoting an entire album to Thelonious Monk’s repertoire, Peter Bernstein joins the small number of guitar players who have accepted such a challenge. Bernstein, however, hardly considers the release to be a definitive work. Achieving such a benchmark, he said, would require a lifetime of concentration on the composer’s music. Sitting at a Starbucks blocks away from his apartment in New York’s Washington Heights neighborhood, Bernstein said he’s had little time to think about the release of Monk (Xanadu/The Orchard), which features a dozen well-known compositions. “I haven’t listened to [the album],” Bernstein admitted in early February, just days after returning from a month-long national tour with the Blue Note 7, an all-star band paying tribute to Blue Note Records’ 70th anniversary. The tour is scheduled through April. Instead of focusing on the recording, his seventh as a leader, Bernstein spends the bulk of an interview discussing Monk’s compositions. “It’s very sophisticated music,” Bernstein, 41, said, “and also very rooted, and [it] has great strength in [its] simplicity, too. When I got into it, I found certain voicings did lay on the guitar because of the spacing. It’s really not the sound of a piano—it’s the sound of Monk playing the piano.” Even so, Bernstein struggled at times to translate the music to the guitar because of the instrument’s technical limitations. “I’ve always been frustrated as a guitar player harmonically,” he said, “because you can’t play all the notes like a piano player can. The range is smaller, and it’s harder to play closer voicings on the guitar because you have to stretch between the strings.” Greg Scholl, president and chief executive of The Orchard, chose Bernstein to record the inaugural album for the reformed Xanadu Records, a bop label that operated from 1975 to 1999. Xanadu’s catalog features roughly 130 albums, including reissues originally appearing on imprints like Signal, Manor and Sittin’ In. Monk, released Jan. 13, features a trio that includes bassist Doug Weiss and drummer Bill Stewart, although three tracks spotlight Bernstein performing unaccompanied. Bernstein’s readings of tunes like “Brilliant Corners,” “Monk’s Mood” and “Ruby, My Dear” highlight the lyricism rather than the uneven aspects. Scholl, who produced the album, appreciated Bernstein’s approach. “I’ve heard other guitarists play Monk and really stress the oddness and the angularity,” Scholl said, “and to a degree I like what Peter did because it’s very counter to how most people would approach the [repertoire].” Indeed, Bernstein remains unique among his peers: He plays only one guitar (and owns but two archtops); he eschews effects pedals and other sonic equipment; he aligns himself with a jazz guitar tradition rooted in the 1950s and 1960s. Bernstein looks beyond the guitar for inspiration, a penchant he attributes in part to studying with guitarist Ted Dunbar in 1985. “He was the one who told me [to] learn about harmony [by hanging out] with piano players and arrangers,” Bernstein said. “And if you want to learn about phrasing, hang out with horn players and good singers. And if you want to learn about rhythm, hang out with drummers and bass players. Don’t be a guitar player that hangs around other guitar players.” Bernstein’s passion for jazz guitar began in 1982 when the use of effects had reached a saturation point, particularly with regard to the chorus pedal. Bernstein went in the opposite direction, pursuing a style focused entirely on producing a clean, unembellished tone. “Everybody was playing … through chorus [and creating] heavily processed sound,” Bernstein recalled. “And the guys that I loved had a touch on the instrument. “So that was a conscious decision not to play with chorus,” he said. “I just wanted to deal with the music, and develop a relationship with the instrument that was just the instrument, that would come from my hands. “I think that effects are great,” he added, “and if you can use them to enhance your personality, it’s a great thing. But people can also sound the same when they turn on the same pedals.” Guitarist Jim Hall admires Bernstein’s commitment to the straight-ahead school of jazz guitar, a style less pervasive today. “It’s quite different from somebody like Bill Frisell,” said Hall, one of Bernstein’s mentors. “[Bernstein] just is really intense and white hot all the time. I love it. I’m really glad he’s there, and he’s moving ahead in his own way. With so much going on with electronics and all kinds of gadgetry, [Bernstein has] found his voice and … to me that’s what the rest of us are all trying to do.” true 10608 2009-03-25T10:52:29-04:00 false 24391 138 true 139 2009-04-01T00:00:00-04:00

In devoting an entire album to Thelonious Monk’s repertoire, Peter Bernstein joins the small number of guitar players who have accepted such a challenge. Bernstein, however, hardly considers the release to be a definitive work. Achieving such a benchmark, he said, would require a lifetime of concentration on the composer’s music. Sitting at a Starbucks blocks away from his apartment in New York’s Washington Heights neighborhood, Bernstein said he’s had little time to think about the release of Monk (Xanadu/The Orchard), which features a dozen well-known compositions. “I haven’t listened to [the album],” Bernstein admitted in early February, just days after returning from a month-long national tour with the Blue Note 7, an all-star band paying tribute to Blue Note Records’ 70th anniversary. The tour is scheduled through April. Instead of focusing on the recording, his seventh as a leader, Bernstein spends the bulk of an interview discussing Monk’s compositions. “It’s very sophisticated music,” Bernstein, 41, said, “and also very rooted, and [it] has great strength in [its] simplicity, too. When I got into it, I found certain voicings did lay on the guitar because of the spacing. It’s really not the sound of a piano—it’s the sound of Monk playing the piano.” Even so, Bernstein struggled at times to translate the music to the guitar because of the instrument’s technical limitations. “I’ve always been frustrated as a guitar player harmonically,” he said, “because you can’t play all the notes like a piano player can. The range is smaller, and it’s harder to play closer voicings...

2009-04-03T10:42:00-04:00

4 It’s a Wednesday afternoon in New Orleans and trumpeter Kermit Ruffins is holding court at his corner bar, Sidney’s Saloon. He’s awaiting the delivery of some nutria—large rodents found in Louisiana’s coastal wetlands—and a couple of raccoons that he’ll cook up and offer to anyone who happens by. In the year since he acquired the spot on the fringe of his beloved Treme neighborhood, it has become headquarters for community events, Saints games and celebrations of all kinds. That’s because in this city, the always-affable Ruffins is more than a trumpeter, vocalist and bandleader. He is New Orleans. “It will be the biggest nutria party in years and years,” Ruffins exclaims with his usual enthusiasm. “We love coming out here on any given day and throwing the biggest barbeque ever. It starts with like four people and then the text messages start going and cell phones start ringing.” True to his personality, Ruffins makes his latest CD, Living a Treme Life (Basin Street), personal. Every selection has a story behind it and a reason for its presence. “I wanted it to be real, real neighborhood-ish, and at the same time pick some tunes that reach out to the world,” he explains. Having started his career in 1983 with the ReBirth Brass Band, Ruffins, 44, kicks off the album with two classic brass-band numbers, “Didn’t He Ramble,” complete with the dirty slide of Troy “Trombone Shorty” Andrews, and “I Ate Up the Apple Tree.” “When I was thinking about the Treme back in the day, those two songs came to mind right away,” Ruffins says. He smiles at the memory of the late 1970s and early 1980s, when the Dirty Dozen Brass Band ruled the streets and tore up “Apple Tree” at the tiny (and now infamous) club, the Glass House. “We were hooked on the Dozen,” he acknowledges, referring to himself and the other members of the ReBirth. Ruffins knew he had to include “I Can See Clearly Now” on the disc after hearing it performed during the Democratic National Convention. “I started playing it at my very next gig,” he recalls. For many, sharing the experience of election night with Ruffins at Sidney’s Saloon was a given. He and his band, the appropriately dubbed Barbeque Swingers, set up on the sidewalk in front of his club while giant pots of oil bubbled in preparation for a fish fry. As the sun went down, “I Can See Clearly Now” became the anthem of the night as folks hugged each other in anticipation. Though the menu changed from fish to red beans on Inauguration Day, a similar scene blossomed. Again, the audience rose to its feet as Ruffins, with a smile apparent in his voice, sang the familiar “It’s going to be a bright, bright, bright sunshine-y day.” “I knew I was going to throw two big parties. I’ve never been so excited in my life,” Ruffins says. It’s easy to imagine people from other parts of the country wondering what the rock ’n’ roll classic “Hi-Heel Sneakers” has to do with New Orleans. Because it was played and recorded by the much-beloved Anthony “Tuba Fats” Lacen and the Chosen Few, all of the city’s brass bands perform it in recognition of the big man. Just a few days before the nutria party, the ReBirth Brass Band bounced the tune down the street with the Treme Sidewalk Steppers Social Aid & Pleasure Club parade. After four hours, the procession headed “home” to Sidney’s Saloon where it would disband. Ruffins arrived back in New Orleans just in time to video the Sidewalk Steppers’ entire parade. “I couldn’t miss that,” proclaims Ruffins, who had been in Baltimore playing a private party for writer/producer David Simon. Ruffins is working with Simon as a consultant and actor on his new HBO series, Treme, which begins shooting in the spring. “I get to play myself,” Ruffins says. The trumpeter penned three originals for the disc, including two signature swinging numbers, “Good Morning New Orleans” and “Hey Naa.” Ruffins’ horn holds a certain sweetness of tone as he opens the finger-snapping “Good Morning.” Onboard is an all-star rhythm section with drummer Herlin Riley, pianist David Torkanowsky and bassist George Porter echoing the feel-good flavor. “Hey Naa,” a phrase that’s now heard all over town, carries a similar vibe. true 35 2009-03-25T11:02:33-04:00 false 24392 138 true 139 2009-04-01T00:00:00-04:00

It’s a Wednesday afternoon in New Orleans and trumpeter Kermit Ruffins is holding court at his corner bar, Sidney’s Saloon. He’s awaiting the delivery of some nutria—large rodents found in Louisiana’s coastal wetlands—and a couple of raccoons that he’ll cook up and offer to anyone who happens by. In the year since he acquired the spot on the fringe of his beloved Treme neighborhood, it has become headquarters for community events, Saints games and celebrations of all kinds. That’s because in this city, the always-affable Ruffins is more than a trumpeter, vocalist and bandleader. He is New Orleans. “It will be the biggest nutria party in years and years,” Ruffins exclaims with his usual enthusiasm. “We love coming out here on any given day and throwing the biggest barbeque ever. It starts with like four people and then the text messages start going and cell phones start ringing.” True to his personality, Ruffins makes his latest CD, Living a Treme Life (Basin Street), personal. Every selection has a story behind it and a reason for its presence. “I wanted it to be real, real neighborhood-ish, and at the same time pick some tunes that reach out to the world,” he explains. Having started his career in 1983 with the ReBirth Brass Band, Ruffins, 44, kicks off the album with two classic brass-band numbers, “Didn’t He Ramble,” complete with the dirty slide of Troy “Trombone Shorty” Andrews, and “I Ate Up the Apple Tree.” “When I was thinking about the Treme back in the day, those two...

2009-04-03T10:41:48-04:00

4 Joshua Redman didn’t set out to make a double-trio record, but once that notion entered his head, the tenor and soprano saxophonist knew he would have to go ahead and give it a try. The result, Compass (Nonesuch), doesn’t so much pick up where 2007’s critically lauded Back East left off as it takes the trio concept to another place altogether. Where Back East featured Redman working out amidst a number of bass-drum configurations—and augmenting them with guest saxophonists Joe Lovano, Chris Cheek and dad Dewey Redman, who passed away before the album’s release—Compass loses the additional horn players but ups the ante on the standard trio model by featuring, on several tracks, two bassists and two drummers playing with Redman simultaneously. After he wrapped up touring behind Back East, Redman says from his home in Berkeley, Calif., he experienced what he calls “a burst of compositional productivity, which is very rare for me. I wrote 10 or so tunes for trio in a very short time, like in four or five days. “Initially,” he says, “my conception was to find one trio—one bass player and one drummer—and just record these tunes and maybe release them as an album. But obviously things got a little out of control.” Redman made plans to cut the new tunes with bassists Larry Grenadier and Reuben Rogers and drummers Brian Blade and Gregory Hutchinson—all except Hutchinson had been among the cast on Back East. Then, a couple of months before the sessions were scheduled to begin, the idea hit: “What would it be like to do some stuff with everybody together?” Says Redman, “I went through this process of rejecting the idea as dangerous and probably foolhardy. But my instinct kept bringing me back to it. I had never done this before and I’d never been part of [anything like it] before. We had a couple days of recording laid aside, so I said, ‘Let’s take another day and start the session off with everybody together,’ with no expectation that anything was really gonna come out of it or that anything would end up on the record. The reason we scheduled it like that was so that we would try some of these tunes in the double trio on the first day, but if we didn’t feel like they worked out, we’d have the next two days to redo them in the individual trio format.” Of the 13 tracks on Compass, Redman wrote most solo, Grenadier and Blade contributed one each, and the opener, “Uncharted,” is an improvisation credited to the four who play on it, which is everyone except Blade. For the straight trio tracks, Redman rotated the personnel so that each musician got a chance to play in that format with every other at some point during the sessions. That leaves five tracks featuring the entire crew, including the album’s sole interpretive piece, “Moonlight,” based on Beethoven’s “Moonlight Sonata.” What makes the double trio tracks on Compass work, aside from the abilities and distinctive voices of the musicians themselves, is the decision by Redman (who also produced) and engineer James Farber to place one bass and drum team on the left side of the mix and the other on the right. The split keeps the jams from jumbling up and provides something of a surreal listening experience as the approaches by the two side-by-side rhythm sections shift radically and repeatedly. “With all that sound, all these instruments occupying the same sonic spectrum, there was a real importance in each instrument having its space in the recording,” says Redman, “but at the same time, having everybody together. I tried to provide a very loose roadmap. I thought about different ways in which we might utilize this configuration so that every tune we tried like that would not be everybody playing at the same time. So on one tune I had the conception of bouncing things back and forth between the two rhythm sections or having one combination play at one time and the other combination play at another time and then build them up to everyone playing together. “I relied on the instincts of the other musicians, and the mutual respect and trust that we had, to craft it as we went along. That was really the key: everyone embracing the concept. I think everyone had a certain sense of space and the importance of space in this context. We didn’t want a sense of separation, but a sense of place.” That idea of place and space is essential to the album, hence its title. “Compass,” Redman says, “refers to going on a journey and the sense of travel without a clear map, or even a clear sense of where you’re heading. The compass is what we use to orient ourselves. So I think, especially with the double trio, there’s a sense of sailing off into the unknown, a sense of adventure, but at the same time the importance of navigating through that.” true 10422 2009-02-24T16:28:43-05:00 false 21261 137 true 139 2009-03-01T00:00:00-05:00

Joshua Redman didn’t set out to make a double-trio record, but once that notion entered his head, the tenor and soprano saxophonist knew he would have to go ahead and give it a try. The result, Compass (Nonesuch), doesn’t so much pick up where 2007’s critically lauded Back East left off as it takes the trio concept to another place altogether. Where Back East featured Redman working out amidst a number of bass-drum configurations—and augmenting them with guest saxophonists Joe Lovano, Chris Cheek and dad Dewey Redman, who passed away before the album’s release—Compass loses the additional horn players but ups the ante on the standard trio model by featuring, on several tracks, two bassists and two drummers playing with Redman simultaneously. After he wrapped up touring behind Back East, Redman says from his home in Berkeley, Calif., he experienced what he calls “a burst of compositional productivity, which is very rare for me. I wrote 10 or so tunes for trio in a very short time, like in four or five days. “Initially,” he says, “my conception was to find one trio—one bass player and one drummer—and just record these tunes and maybe release them as an album. But obviously things got a little out of control.” Redman made plans to cut the new tunes with bassists Larry Grenadier and Reuben Rogers and drummers Brian Blade and Gregory Hutchinson—all except Hutchinson had been among the cast on Back East. Then, a couple of months before the sessions were scheduled to begin, the idea hit: “What...

43320 2009-03-12T13:51:41-04:00

4 Where will 10 years of violin lessons, a Sinatra cassette and a business degree get you? For vocalist/pianist Tony DeSare, it was enough to take him to the very top—literally. The violin lessons began when DeSare was 8. He discovered the Sinatra tape, a collection of seminal Capitol hits that opened up a whole new world of music for DeSare, when he was 14. The degree was earned in the mid-’90s at Ithaca College. Like so many eager twentysomethings armed with a biz diploma, DeSare headed for Manhattan. And, in 1998, he did land on Wall Street, but not as a trader or analyst. Having decided, against the protests of his Ithaca professors, to aim for a career as a crooner and piano player, DeSare found himself an agent and was immediately granted a gig at Windows on the World, high atop the World Trade Center. “It was,” DeSare recalls, “a one-nighter that really didn’t pay anything, but it was my first official New York City appearance and it made me realize what I was up against to try and make a career of this.” After three months of “stuffing envelopes” as a temp, DeSare earned a spot with the band at another Manhattan high mark, playing five nights a week in the 44th-floor lounge at the Marriott Marquis in Times Square. He then won an understudy role in the off-Broadway production of Our Sinatra (another up-and-coming singer-pianist, Peter Cincotti, would follow him in the cast), strengthened his Sinatra connections by playing at the reopened Jilly’s of New York, found a friend and mentor in comedian (and celebrated Sinatra impersonator) Joe Piscopo, cut a demo with Bucky Pizzarelli and, in 2005, found his way onto the Telarc roster. DeSare’s first two Telarc releases, 2005’s Want You and 2007’s Last First Kiss, revealed a performer who, blending the best qualities of Michael Bublé and Harry Connick Jr., can swing like Sinatra or Bobby Darin on hipster anthems like “Baby, Dream Your Dream,” “Come on Strong” and “We’ve Got a World That Swings,” but is equally comfortable with material from the Carole King, Dylan and Prince songbooks. Of the quasi-retro vibe that pervades DeSare’s work, he says, “People often ask if I’m trying to bring back a certain era or if I think I was born too late, but this is simply a specific way of putting across music that has lots more room for exploration. It’s not retro. It’s a statement about 20th-century American pop, but it also points forward, making the case that different takes are possible on songs the people might otherwise not have thought could survive the transition from the rock-pop ’80s to a big-band swing arrangement.” DeSare’s latest album, the recently released Radio Show, extends his era-shifting skills by crafting a faux radio program, complete with deejay intros provided by Piscopo, that follows a circuitous route from the 1940s to the ’80s. “I got the idea about a year ago,” he explains. “I love the [Sinatra/Darin] style of music and there are many talented people doing it, but what I felt hadn’t been done yet was to take a cue from hip-hop recordings that use elements from different musical sources to put together a show. I’m not a huge fan of hip-hop or rap, but I respect the originality of those artists and their drive to do something new. They really build a show and make each CD a flowing experience. I started wondering how that could be done in this genre, and it got me thinking that most people know these songs from hearing them on the radio. So the idea became to build the album around a radio experience and take the listener on a journey, almost like you’re on an hour-long drive, switching stations and looking for your favorite songs.” Radio Show travels from such Great American Songbook classics as “Get Happy” and “All or Nothing at All” into the rock era, finally landing in the ’80s with distinctively clever covers of Phil Collins’ “Easy Lover” and New Order’s “Bizarre Love Triangle” (on which DeSare is ideally paired with Jane Monheit). In addition to these inventive interpretations, the album demonstrates DeSare’s continuing growth as a songwriter. Blessed with a remarkable ability to construct tunes that rival the best of Sammy Cahn, Jimmy Van Heusen and Cy Coleman, DeSare says, “There’s a tendency among people who write in this style to try and write something that’s retro-sounding, and to try and recreate the lingo of another era. But I approach it from a modern perspective. So when I write a song like ‘A Little Bit Closer’ [from Radio Show], I’m doing it from my perspective as a child of the ’80s. I’m not afraid on my songs to use current references like ‘turn off your phone’ [from “Let’s Stay In” on Last First Kiss] or Abercrombie & Fitch [on “If I Had Drew” from Want You]. Also, if I’m going to include an established standard written by a great songwriter on a CD and the next track is a song written by me, my strict standards demand that my song be able to hold its own in context.” With three albums under his belt and his audience rapidly expanding, DeSare says he’s “finally starting to feel my power as a singer and performer, and I want to see how far it can take me. “I simply want to share my music with people who want to hear it. Whether that ends up being Radio City Music Hall or a 50-person club, that’s OK, as long as I get to do this for as long as I possibly can.” true 204 2009-02-24T16:31:03-05:00 false 21262 137 true 139 2009-03-01T00:00:00-05:00

Christopher Loudon profiles young jazz singer Tony DeSare and his latest project that salutes the magic of radio AND the Great American Songbook.

42960 2009-03-13T07:23:30-04:00

4 In September of 1999, author, critic and Black Rock Coalition co-founder Greg Tate had the notion to form a new band that captured some of what he calls “the extreme kind of Stygian darkness and gnarly, Abyssinian, evil-sounding vibe and crusty, Jurassic, tectonic funk of Miles Davis’ Dark Magus and Agharta bands.” A volatile outfit comprised of three guitars with rhythm section, Burnt Sugar played its earliest gigs at alternative-rock emporiums like CBGB, featuring Tate wailing away on his ax with Pete Cosey-like abandon. Evolving over time into a sprawling ensemble that took its cues from Sun Ra, the Art Ensemble of Chicago and Parliament-Funkadelic, as well as Jimi Hendrix and electric Miles, Burnt Sugar the Arkestra Chamber has now expanded to 15 to 20 musicians with a four-piece horn section and a full complement of vocalists. And auteur Tate has traded his guitar for a baton, following in the footsteps of “conduction” maestro Lawrence “Butch” Morris. “I’ve been watching Butch do the conductions since the first one he did at [Manhattan arts space] the Kitchen back in 1985, which came out as a live recording, Current Trends in Racism in Modern America [Sound Aspects],” says Tate. “Of the hundreds of conductions that he’s done in New York, I’ve probably seen about 30 or more. So I’ve been a huge admirer of Butch’s work and his ability to just pull music out of musicians in the moment, to create symphonies in the moment.” The epiphany that caused Tate to take up the baton came to him at a gig with Morris at the now-defunct Cooler in Manhattan’s meatpacking district. “It’s funny, because it wasn’t anything at the concert that made this indelible impression on me—it was what happened before the concert. I brought a big Peavey amp to the gig and took that heavy-ass thing down all those stairs with a guitar and bag of effects, got set up and came back upstairs for air. And as soon as I hit the street I look up and Butch is getting out of a cab, and he’s just got this little pool-cue case with his baton in it. And I was like, ‘Huh! Wouldn’t I love to do that!’” On Making Love to the Dark Ages (LiveWired), the latest recording by Burnt Sugar the Arkestra Chamber, Tate wields a baton along with a laptop and occasionally his trusty guitar. The results range from his expansive meditation on slavery, “Chains and Water,” full of free-blowing conversations between the horns and soulful vocals supplied by dynamic singer Lisala, to the electric Miles-ish groover “Love to Tical,” to the dreamlike, ambient, Eno-meets-Teo soundscape “Dominata,” which incorporates his audacious laptop experiments, to an intriguing mashup of Tate’s funky “Thorazine” with the Ron Carter-Miles Davis composition “Eighty-One” (from E.S.P.). Tate’s ensemble comprises such high-caliber players as keyboardist Vijay Iyer, bassist Jared Nickerson, trumpeter Lewis “Flip” Barnes, alto saxophonists Matana Roberts and Avram Fefer, baritone saxophonist Paula Henderson, guitarists Ben Tyree and Rene Akan and vocalists Lisala, Karma Johnson, Abby Dobson and Justice Dilla X. Special guest guitarist Vernon Reid explodes with ferocious metal-esque abandon on “Love to Tical.” Says Tate of the Living Colour founder, “Vernon’s like a damn Ferrari, man! He can start where most guitar players climax, and then he keeps on taking it out from there. In the midst of an improv piece you just call on Vernon and ... bam! He’s setting land speed records.” Other special guests in this rotating cast of characters on Making Love to the Dark Ages include violinist Mazz Swift, trombonist David Smith and tenor saxophonist V. Jeffrey Smith. “Throughout the band there are definitely people who approach their instrument with more of an orchestral approach than a genre- or idiomatic-based approach,” says Tate. “I think they’re coming at it like painters and poets and scions of Bernard Herrmann or [Ennio] Morricone. People of different instruments in the band think of bringing those kinds of sensibilities. They’re colorists, really.” While the band has recently taken to performing radically re-imagined covers of tunes by everyone from Hendrix and Chaka Khan to Grace Jones, Michael Jackson, Iggy Pop and Joni Mitchell, Tate’s spontaneous conduction and the ensemble’s adeptness at pure improv remain the ensemble’s focus. “It’s really great having cats that when you want them to just go crazy, just paint the sky red, and bam—they’re there. And then they can just pull it all the way in and interpret really classic pieces of material, too. You know, it’s kind of a real powerful piece of machine we’re driving.” To commemorate the 10th anniversary of Burnt Sugar the Arkestra Chamber, Tate is remixing and remastering the group’s first recording, Blood on the Leaf, which is due out in September. true 21 2009-02-24T16:33:52-05:00 false 21263 137 true 139 2009-03-01T00:00:00-05:00

In September of 1999, author, critic and Black Rock Coalition co-founder Greg Tate had the notion to form a new band that captured some of what he calls “the extreme kind of Stygian darkness and gnarly, Abyssinian, evil-sounding vibe and crusty, Jurassic, tectonic funk of Miles Davis’ Dark Magus and Agharta bands.” A volatile outfit comprised of three guitars with rhythm section, Burnt Sugar played its earliest gigs at alternative-rock emporiums like CBGB, featuring Tate wailing away on his ax with Pete Cosey-like abandon. Evolving over time into a sprawling ensemble that took its cues from Sun Ra, the Art Ensemble of Chicago and Parliament-Funkadelic, as well as Jimi Hendrix and electric Miles, Burnt Sugar the Arkestra Chamber has now expanded to 15 to 20 musicians with a four-piece horn section and a full complement of vocalists. And auteur Tate has traded his guitar for a baton, following in the footsteps of “conduction” maestro Lawrence “Butch” Morris. “I’ve been watching Butch do the conductions since the first one he did at [Manhattan arts space] the Kitchen back in 1985, which came out as a live recording, Current Trends in Racism in Modern America [Sound Aspects],” says Tate. “Of the hundreds of conductions that he’s done in New York, I’ve probably seen about 30 or more. So I’ve been a huge admirer of Butch’s work and his ability to just pull music out of musicians in the moment, to create symphonies in the moment.” The epiphany that caused Tate to take up the baton came to him...

42970 2009-03-04T11:30:35-05:00

4 It’s undoubtedly an understatement when Donald “Duck” Bailey refers to the Philadelphia music scene of his youth—the Philly of John Coltrane, Lee Morgan, the Heath Brothers and so many others—as “exciting.” But it’s probably just as much of an understatement when the next word the 75-year-old drummer uses to describe that period is “prejudiced.” He believes, however, that the one atmosphere fueled the other, with innovation being born of hardship. “The times, unfortunately, brought out that musicianship,” Bailey said over the phone from his home in Oakland. “Whatever happens in the world, musicians or poets will say something about it. Now, people are at least trying to get along better, so the music has changed. I don’t like what happened before, but I like the way the music felt before.” Though his name may not be as instantly recognizable as those of his more renowned peers, Bailey played an essential role in the feel of that music. He assumed the drum chair in Jimmy Smith’s trio in 1956, when he was only 22 years old. His nine-year stint coincided with the organ legend’s fruitful period with Blue Note, which made Bailey a key player in defining the sound of the modern organ trio. He spent the following decade in Los Angeles, where he worked with a number of musicians including Carmen McRae, Hampton Hawes, Blue Mitchell and George Benson. After five years in Japan, Bailey settled in Oakland in 1982, where he continues to play on an almost daily basis, frequently performing on the street in a tourist-frequented section of town. He says little about these intervening decades, partly because he considers his years with Smith the highlight of his career, and partly due to memory issues brought on nearly a decade ago, he says, by a traumatic divorce and medical problems. Bailey is getting at least some long-overdue attention via his forthcoming CD, to be released March 17 as the third volume of Talking House Records’ “Blueprints of Jazz” series, which shines the spotlight on several lesser-known innovators. For his session, Bailey enlisted tenor saxophonist Odean Pope, beside whom he spent his teenage years studying and playing at YMCA dances. The two had lost touch for decades, but their shared formative experiences apparently forged quite a bond, as they make for a fierce, muscular pair throughout. Pope brought along two fellow Philadelphians to round out the quartet, bassist Tyrone Brown and pianist George Burton. Trumpeter Charles Tolliver also appears on two tracks, including the ballad “Blue Gardenia,” on which Bailey lays down the sticks and picks up his second ax, the harmonica. The jarring change in instruments is just the last of many surprises on the record, which finds a drummer noted for his soul-jazz grooves charting an edgier course. “I wanted to try to highlight dissonant music in a more melodic fashion,” Bailey said of the disc, which does find him skirting the fringes of straightahead jazz, swinging hard but charged with a raw inventiveness. He cites Tony Williams and Thelonious Monk as influences, but perhaps the chief architect of this approach for Bailey was the obscure pianist Hassan ibn Ali, a figure shrouded in mystery who recorded only one session, with Max Roach and Art Davis, but who Bailey insists casts a very long shadow. “All the great musicians who came out of Philadelphia had some association with Hassan ibn Ali,” Bailey explained. “And my opinion is that whatever advancements they made, he played a big part in them. When Coltrane started playing outside, I knew that Hassan had something to do with that. I met him when I was very young, and I was really scared of him. I’d never met a person that looked or acted like him. But he approached the music in a different kind of way, and he allowed me to have certain kinds of freedom I couldn’t get with other musicians.” That freedom led Bailey to this more dissonant approach to playing, which in turn allows him to express the full range of his emotions through the kit. “You have sweet melodies to play for lovers, you have a certain kind of music to play for war, and if I blend dissonant music with melodic tones I’m able to interject my feelings about life. If there’s no room for me to play dissonance, then I don’t feel as comfortable.” Despite the social changes that have occurred over his half-century in the music business, Bailey still finds plenty of fuel for his own impassioned playing in the day’s headlines. Speaking back in September of last year, the morning after John McCain gave his acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention, he was alarmed at what he saw as the event’s hypocrisy. “There’s an election coming up, and all this stuff about the flag and liberty is played out, but it’s not true for a lot of people,” Bailey said. “Barack came out and made this statement about change, and now the Republicans came out and took his words, like they started it. That in itself makes me feel a little upset and I want to jump on my drums and play a little different. Because of the fact that I’m a musician, I’m not going to be violent. I have the opportunity to do whatever I have to do in love or anger from the drum chair.” true 10613 2009-02-24T16:42:39-05:00 false 21264 137 true 139 2009-03-01T00:00:00-05:00

Jimmy Smith's former drummer helped define the modern organ trio

42977 2009-03-20T10:44:27-04:00

4 During an interview last fall, cellist Erik Friedlander ran through several pizzicato techniques that figure prominently into his latest album, Broken Arm Trio (SkipStone). Sitting in his apartment in New York’s SoHo neighborhood, Friedlander plucked the cello strings like a bassist, fingerpicked like a guitar player and created a tremolo effect using just one finger. During a casual conversation afterward, Friedlander’s cello rested horizontally on his lap like an oversized guitar. While pizzicato plays only a minor role in the cello’s centuries-old repertoire, Friedlander believes spotlighting the instrument in this manner makes it accessible and also compelling for jazz listeners. “I really believe it’s an exceptional jazz voice,” he said earlier at a nearby café. “Not [in] the modern jazz that I’ve been part of in the last 15 years, but in the jazz of the past. The minute you pick up the bow,” he added, “I think … the cello becomes [a] different instrument, something that’s taking jazz into some other new, modern territory.” Friedlander graduated in 1982 from Columbia University, and initially concentrated on classical music and studio work. Peter Sanders, a cellist with the New York City Ballet Orchestra, recalled Friedlander’s strong technique in a telephone interview. “There were things that he was doing that I literally couldn’t do at the time … such as working on various violin études, which were pretty advanced for a cellist,” said Sanders, who performed with Friedlander throughout the 1980s. “I didn’t at that point know any other cellist delving into that kind of a technical approach.” Friedlander’s jazz career blossomed in the late 1980s. He received exposure performing alongside trumpeter Dave Douglas and composer John Zorn, leaders of New York’s experimental downtown scene. Friedlander later incorporated pizzicato while touring with pianist Myra Melford’s The Same River, Twice band. “[Previously] I brought my classical bias—pizzicato is something you do only rarely,” said Friedlander, 48. “[But] in [Melford’s] band there was no bass … so I was playing pizzicato like crazy, and it was natural for me to continue to do that in the solos. It was a great experience and I remember thinking, Wow, [pizzicato] is really something I know how to do. I got to research this more … and find out what the possibilities are.” He concluded that the cello benefits from pizzicato. The brightness and intensity produced by the bow blend poorly with instruments such as the saxophone, guitar, piano and bass. “It brings with it a very hot, emotional sound,” he said. “Although it’s the same range as a tenor sax, it has none of that suaveness. With pizzicato it’s a different thing. It has that cool; it has a little more reserve. It’s still got all the warmth, but it also has a little less of that in-your-face intensity and complexity that allows it to be a really great jazz instrument.” Friedlander documents his pizzicato work on Melford’s The Same River, Twice (1996) and on Block Ice & Propane (2007), a collection of solo performances that draws inspiration from the road trips that Friedlander’s family took each summer while accompanying his father, acclaimed photographer Lee Friedlander, to his assignments. Broken Arm Trio celebrates Oscar Pettiford, the great bop-era bassist. Pettiford began doubling on cello in 1949 after breaking his arm. Pettiford tuned the cello in fourths like a bass and never incorporated the bow; even so he became one of the first jazz musicians to showcase the instrument onstage and also on the album My Little Cello. “Even though he wasn’t really a cello player [in the classical sense],” Friedlander said, “he did a lot more than many [cellists] did by first of all writing new music … and then creating an interesting group with French horn and saxophone. I feel like he’s really a forefather of being creative with the cello.” Pettiford suffered from chronic back pain and had an uneven disposition, but Friedlander characterizes his music as sunny and optimistic. Broken Arm Trio conveys this sensibility. The tracks are short, and the chemistry of drummer Mike Sarin and bassist Trevor Dunn heightens the interest. “Hop Skip” has a bluesy flavor, and “Big Shoes” swings. “Spinning Plates,” “Knife Points” and “Cake” feature lively syncopated patterns, while Friedlander’s pizzicato work on the more subdued “Pearls” and “Buffalo” suggests a classical guitar. Dave Douglas attributes Friedlander’s originality to his careful study of the cello’s history, and his willingness to tackle a broad spectrum of music. “I think what you’re hearing in Erik has developed out of a lot of different gigs that he’s done with a lot of different people: pop music and avant-garde and jazz and world music,” Douglas said by phone. “So I think the reason that it’s sounding so rich is that he’s gone so many places with it.” Friedlander said the cello’s place in jazz is still a work in progress. He enjoys the challenge. “You cannot just pretend it’s a jazz instrument. It’s not,” he said. “[But] we’re not tethered to any tradition besides classical. So [cellists] can be in any kind of music and make a statement.” true 10608 2009-02-24T16:44:48-05:00 false 21265 137 true 139 2009-03-01T00:00:00-05:00

Eric Fine speaks with cellist Erik Friedlander about his Broken Arm Trio project.

42984 2009-03-18T09:02:25-04:00

4 Perhaps it was inevitable that vocalist Kate McGarry develop a keen appreciation for quietude and a sense that she’d “always been drawn to the space of silence between the notes.” Growing up on Cape Cod as the sixth of 10 siblings (seven girls and three boys), in a raucous household filled with music of all stripes, McGarry’s formative years provided limited tranquility. The massive McGarry brood was regularly confused for another large and multitalented Irish-Catholic clan. “We often got mistaken for the Kennedys,” she says with a laugh, “because we lived about a half-mile around the bay from their compound and attended the same church. The Kennedys had their own pew right up front at St. Francis Xavier, but my parents would march us right up front and seat us in their row!” After graduating with a degree in music from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst in 1985, McGarry escaped the confinement of East Coast life and headed for the wide-open space of California to “spread out and really be able to work on my craft.” There, she focused on learning from instrumentalists to hone her singing skills. “I was exposed to Keith Jarrett and Bill Evans and Miles Davis,” she explains, “and fell in love with the fact that there weren’t words and that the melodies were so free. And I appreciated the way they interacted with the harmonic structure. It was uncharted territory, and I was able to hear their ‘voices’ without being distracted by a storyline. Also, I studied with Archie Shepp while in college. He is an orator on saxophone, telling such impassioned stories, and so rooted in the blues. His was one of the first really strong voices I heard that wasn’t from a vocalist.” Though she admits spending several years as a strident, card-carrying member of the jazz police, ultimately her love for folk music—and her love for the man who would become her husband, guitarist Keith Ganz—diluted her jazz purism. “Keith’s guitar playing has so many facets,” she says. “He’s been influenced by wonderful folk elements and a fingerpicking style that has nothing to do with the Jim Hall school of jazz, so to speak. We were perfectly suited to walk down that path together and see where the intersecting lines were. The first album we did together was Mercy Streets [in 2005], and we found so many places where, just naturally, the lines blurred and you were hearing jazz harmonies but singing and playing with more of a folk influence. It all went into a big melting pot.” Though McGarry’s belief that “it is in the silences that the secrets of the songs reveal themselves” has been evident on all of her albums (including her work alongside Peter Eldridge, Luciana Souza, Theo Bleckmann and Lauren Kinhan as part of the sterling vocal collective Moss), her latest release, the aptly titled <em>If Less Is More … Nothing Is Everything</em> (Palmetto), brings it into sharpest focus. “I guess,” she says, “if there’s a theme in my life it is that what is left unsaid is the real thing [and is] what’s most important. Where words leave off, there’s just an experience of wholeness or completeness or whatever the emotion is. It can even be deep sorrow or suffering or grief. There’s something about silence that makes it a more potent communicator than sound. “So having silence be a member of the band is vital. All the people on the album [including Ganz, organist-pianist-accordionist Gary Versace, bassist Reuben Rogers and drummer-percussionist Clarence Penn, plus guest percussionist James Shipp and guest vocalists Jo Lawry and Eldridge] have the same feeling. We’d find as we were playing that there were these great, empty stretches and everyone felt so comfortable not filling them in. Artistically it is what I hope for most: that space be respected and cherished, and I really feel it was throughout the album.” Among the heady mix of originals and covers that fills If Less Is More … are stunning readings of “Let’s Face the Music,” “You’re My Thrill” and the Cars’ “Just What I Needed,” plus a transcendent interpretation of Crosby, Stills & Nash’s “You Don’t Have to Cry.” Perhaps, though, the most heartfelt of the album’s 10 tracks is a powerfully optimistic version of Dylan’s “The Times They Are A-Changin’” that McGarry dedicates to President-elect Barack Obama. “I go back and forth about whether music should be partisan,” she says, “but about four months or so before we went in to record the album, the primaries had just begun and I heard him speak. He said we have to reinvest in our children’s education in the arts, insisting that he wanted his own children to be fluent in the arts. I thought, ‘Wow! This man must be so evolved to be thinking this way.’ We haven’t had anyone like him since Martin Luther King. It gives me great hope that we’re ready to rise to a new level where we’re truly civilized and genuinely care for each other. So many people are scared of that, but I think we’ll get there.” true 204 2009-02-12T15:05:46-05:00 false 21147 136 true 139 2009-01-01T00:00:00-05:00

A songstress who beieves in the less-is-more philosophy

42494 2009-03-18T12:39:04-04:00

4 Of all the recording projects Gene Perla has overseen during his distinguished 40-year career as a musician, producer and record label owner, none has taken a more curious and surprising route to completion than his newly released CD, Bill’s Waltz (PM). It all began as a simple but intriguing notion: In 1986, Perla decided to orchestrate the propulsive force unleashed by drummer Elvin Jones, relying on MIDI technology and the assistance of percussionist Don Alias. But the project has evolved into a full-blown orchestral session that features Hamburg’s NDR Big Band. Its 10 performances are vigorously underpinned by recordings that Jones made over 20 years ago, and colored by a series of multifaceted arrangements recently devised by Perla and, in one instance, by his friend (and Lehigh University teaching colleague) Bill Warfield. How did the music get from there to here? Even now Perla marvels at the project’s odd trajectory, how it morphed, after two decades on the shelf, into something entirely unexpected. But one thing is certain: The original MIDI concept stemmed from Perla’s close association with, and great admiration for, Jones. Speaking from his home in Easton, Pa., Perla recalls first getting a chance to play with the legendary drummer at the old Five Spot in Manhattan circa 1965. At the time, Perla, in his mid-20s, was a less-than-proficient pianist. “I got up the nerve to ask to sit in,” says the New Jersey native. A few minutes later, Jones was asking Perla to call the tune. “I said, ‘Nothing too fast.’ And he said, ‘Me neither!’ Of course, I club-fingered my way through it.” Perla later switched to electric bass and snared a breakthrough gig with Jones in Boston in 1968. Not long afterward, Perla heard that Jones was referring to him as the “white guy” who made the electric bass sound like an upright, “which is what I’ve always attempted to do. That’s when I think I got into his frontal lobes.” In 1971, Perla got the call to join Jones’ band, and played with the group for two and a half years nonstop. Throughout the tenure Perla was fascinated by Jones’ innovative attack and remarkable power, dexterity and imagination—the sheer force of his genius: “Those wild things he played, like no other drummer had [before], or has since,” says the bassist. Perla often heard Jones speak of his desire to perform more often in a big-band setting, along the lines of his occasional work with Gil Evans and Duke Ellington. Perla, however, came up with the idea of using Jones’ performances as the basis for MIDI-fashioned orchestrations. In 1986, he went into a Manhattan studio and recorded a series of mostly original pieces with Jones, accompanying him on Fender Rhodes electric piano. The drum tracks were isolated and, to Perla’s ears, nothing short of astounding. Unfortunately, for numerous reasons, nothing came of the session—that is, until Perla finally concluded that he’d “better get going on this or otherwise the project might outlast me.” Jump forward to 2006: At a gig in Switzerland, Perla got a chance to show drummer Danny Gottlieb (“a huge Elvin fan”) the progress he was making on the MIDI project. Impressed with what he heard, Gottlieb suggested that Perla might want to collaborate with the NDR Big Band. “My initial response was, I don’t know; do I want to do this?” Perla recalls. “Much of the MIDI stuff was more intricate, more aligned to what Elvin was playing. A lot of the stuff I wrote for the big band flows over the top of Elvin’s playing. The original idea was that Elvin was the orchestration, and all I was going to do was write notes to support his rhythm.” Still, Perla took Gottlieb’s advice, and he’s glad he did, despite the recording, editing and mixing challenges that ensued. Holed up in a Paris flat for a month, he wrote nine charts, including one for the album’s opening and title track, an evocative salute to pianist Bill Evans. (Warfield, meanwhile, arranged the album’s delightful take on “I’m Popeye the Sailor Man.”) Though not well versed in crafting big arrangements, Perla was confident that his gift for harmonizing would serve him well. Besides, he points out, there was no lack of role models. “If there’s one fellow I feel a real kinship to, it’s Thad Jones,” says Perla. “The way Thad’s shoulders would rock—for me, that was the beat. And his arranging: how the fullness of horns and the punctuations of the rhythms and the wide scope of going from tender excursions into loud, fiery bursts. To me, the guy had it all together.” Not surprisingly, Gil Evans is another guiding light. “I thought, if I ever get the opportunity to write for a big band again, I would go the Gil Evans route,” says Perla. “This time I would say I went Thad’s way, but I wasn’t trying to copy his orchestrations or his sounds or anything. I was really coming off Elvin’s drums.” And how successful was he? Suffice it to say that Gottlieb, drummer Jeff “Tain” Watts and other notable Elvin enthusiasts were quick to give Bill’s Waltz ringing endorsements. true 110 2009-02-12T15:43:06-05:00 false 21149 136 true 139 2009-01-01T00:00:00-05:00

Of all the recording projects Gene Perla has overseen during his distinguished 40-year career as a musician, producer and record label owner, none has taken a more curious and surprising route to completion than his newly released CD, Bill’s Waltz (PM). It all began as a simple but intriguing notion: In 1986, Perla decided to orchestrate the propulsive force unleashed by drummer Elvin Jones, relying on MIDI technology and the assistance of percussionist Don Alias. But the project has evolved into a full-blown orchestral session that features Hamburg’s NDR Big Band. Its 10 performances are vigorously underpinned by recordings that Jones made over 20 years ago, and colored by a series of multifaceted arrangements recently devised by Perla and, in one instance, by his friend (and Lehigh University teaching colleague) Bill Warfield. How did the music get from there to here? Even now Perla marvels at the project’s odd trajectory, how it morphed, after two decades on the shelf, into something entirely unexpected. But one thing is certain: The original MIDI concept stemmed from Perla’s close association with, and great admiration for, Jones. Speaking from his home in Easton, Pa., Perla recalls first getting a chance to play with the legendary drummer at the old Five Spot in Manhattan circa 1965. At the time, Perla, in his mid-20s, was a less-than-proficient pianist. “I got up the nerve to ask to sit in,” says the New Jersey native. A few minutes later, Jones was asking Perla to call the tune. “I said, ‘Nothing too fast.’ And he...

42508 2009-03-04T11:46:26-05:00

4 Saxophonist Tim Ries turned some heads back in 2005 with The Rolling Stones Project, which featured jazzy interpretations of Stones staples like “Satisfaction,” “Gimme Shelter,” “Street Fighting Man” and a greasy organ trio rendition of “Honky Tonk Women” with Larry Goldings on Hammond B3 and the Stones’ Charlie Watts himself on drums. Some hardcore jazz folks were startled, but who better to interpret those familiar tunes than a member of the Stones’ horn section? A graduate of North Texas State and a former member of the Maynard Ferguson Big Band, as well as a participant in large ensemble recordings by Joe Henderson, Bob Belden, Dave Liebman and Maria Schneider, Ries had already distinguished himself as an accomplished composer and distinctive soloist on both tenor and soprano saxes before getting the call 10 years ago from Mick and the boys to join “The World’s Greatest Rock ’n’ Roll Band” on tour. “It really came out of the blue,” Ries recalls. “I knew the guys in the Stones’ horn section—trombonist Mike Davis, trumpeter Kent Smith and saxophonist Andy Snitzer. At some point Andy decided to leave the band and go out with Paul Simon. So they called me and I said yes.” Ries flew to San Francisco for his first rehearsal with the Stones, and he came prepared. “I actually made myself a little Real Book of 80 Stones tunes,” he recalls. “I wrote the charts out and then shrunk it down to a little pocket-size Real Book that I carried with me to the audition.” Needless to say, he passed with flying colors. “At some point as we were playing, Keith Richards came over to me and said, ‘Can’t you at least make one mistake like the rest of us!’ And I knew then that I had the gig.” On his superb 1999 septet outing for the Criss Cross label, Alternate Side, Ries hinted at things to come with a jazzy interpretation of the Jagger-Richards tune “Moonlight Mile.” The Rolling Stones Project, recorded with a core group of drummer Brian Blade, guitarist Ben Monder, bassist John Patitucci and pianist Bill Charlap, along with such special guests as John Scofield, Bill Frisell, Norah Jones, Sheryl Crow and fellow Stones Watts, Richards and Ronnie Wood, was a fully realized concept that met with much acclaim. Now Ries takes it up a few notches with his wildly ambitious followup, Stones World: The Rolling Stones Project II. A massive undertaking involving 72 musicians recorded in 10 different countries, it’s a world music extravaganza that took Ries two years to complete. “The first one was fairly simple. This second one, on the other hand, was fairly exhausting and heavily funded by my children’s college education.” Essentially recorded on off-days during the Stones’ A Bigger Bang world tour, this adventurous two-CD set (recorded for Ries’ own Tames Music Group and licensed to the Sunnyside label) features an array of musicians from around the world recording on their home turf, including Portuguese fado singer Ana Moura (“No Expectations,” “Brown Sugar”), Japanese vocalist Minako Yoshida and guitarist Kazumi Watanabe (“Baby Break It Down”) and the North African Tuareg band Tidawt (“Hey Negrita”). Stones drummer Charlie Watts appears on a lightly swinging jazz-waltz rendition of “Miss You” recorded in Paris; Richards provides his signature guitar licks on a soulful rendition of “Baby Break It Down” recorded in Tokyo; and Mick Jagger blows some mean blues harp alongside Ronnie Wood’s lap-steel guitar work on the entrancing “Hey Negrita.” Salsa pioneer Eddie Palmieri appears with his band on a churning Latin-jazz rendition of “Under My Thumb,” Indian tabla master Badal Roy underscores the 15/8 groove on “Angie,” and a rousing flamenco version of “Jumpin’ Jack Flash,” charged with Spanish guitars, singers and dancers and underscored with cajon and palmas, was filmed in the studio and is viewable on a second enhanced CD. The globetrotting continued in Rio de Janeiro, where Ries recorded a soaring 6/8 version of “Lady Jane” with Brazilian music icon Milton Nascimento. Back home in New York, he presided over a radical reinvention of “You Can’t Always Get What You Want” that is fueled by Jack DeJohnette’s drumming and tweaked by Bill Frisell’s atmospheric guitar work. And “Salt of the Earth,” sung in seven languages by vocalists from Mexico, Israel and Germany, features a cameo appearance in the choir by Tim’s 12-year-old daughter Jasia. Says the saxophonist of the strong world music direction taken on Stones World, “I’ve been listening to flamenco and fado and Brazilian music for 30 years. This is stuff that I love and listen to at home all the time. And being out on the road with the Stones gave me the opportunity to find this music and record it where it lives indigenously. Luckily, most of the time, the musicians that I sought out in each city were able to do it. And pretty much every time it was a first take.” Maybe Ries can always get what he wants. true 21 2009-02-12T15:46:28-05:00 false 21150 136 true 139 2009-01-01T00:00:00-05:00

Saxophonist Tim Ries turned some heads back in 2005 with The Rolling Stones Project, which featured jazzy interpretations of Stones staples like “Satisfaction,” “Gimme Shelter,” “Street Fighting Man” and a greasy organ trio rendition of “Honky Tonk Women” with Larry Goldings on Hammond B3 and the Stones’ Charlie Watts himself on drums. Some hardcore jazz folks were startled, but who better to interpret those familiar tunes than a member of the Stones’ horn section? A graduate of North Texas State and a former member of the Maynard Ferguson Big Band, as well as a participant in large ensemble recordings by Joe Henderson, Bob Belden, Dave Liebman and Maria Schneider, Ries had already distinguished himself as an accomplished composer and distinctive soloist on both tenor and soprano saxes before getting the call 10 years ago from Mick and the boys to join “The World’s Greatest Rock ’n’ Roll Band” on tour. “It really came out of the blue,” Ries recalls. “I knew the guys in the Stones’ horn section—trombonist Mike Davis, trumpeter Kent Smith and saxophonist Andy Snitzer. At some point Andy decided to leave the band and go out with Paul Simon. So they called me and I said yes.” Ries flew to San Francisco for his first rehearsal with the Stones, and he came prepared. “I actually made myself a little Real Book of 80 Stones tunes,” he recalls. “I wrote the charts out and then shrunk it down to a little pocket-size Real Book that I carried with me to the audition.” Needless to...

42515 2009-03-04T11:45:52-05:00

4 Mary Halvorson’s music is best described as “slightly off.” Indeed, that’s how she herself describes it: “I would say about my compositional style, and I think it’s true for my guitar playing as well, that I like to have things that are slightly off. Chords that aren’t complete chaos, but also aren’t completely straight. I like unexpected twists, something that might make it a little unusual without being completely abstract.” The Brooklyn-based, 28-year-old electric guitarist and composer’s résumé bears out her fondness for idiosyncrasy. Her unique playing style—brittle, knotty and abrasive—has earned attention in the avant-garde community and work with ensembles led by Anthony Braxton, Taylor Ho Bynum and Trevor Dunn. Halvorson also has two duos, the rock-oriented People with drummer Kevin Shea and an acoustic project with violist Jessica Pavone. In October she released her first recording as a leader, the bewildering Dragon’s Head (Firehouse 12), with her trio featuring bassist John Hébert and drummer Ches Smith. It’s also the first recording on which all compositions are Halvorson’s. “I really wrote for these specific musicians,” she says. “It’s a project I’ve been thinking about for a long time but was waiting to figure out the right people. I’ve been playing with Ches in various projects for years, so he was an obvious choice, but then when I met John I sort of formed an idea in my head.” She learned Hébert’s sound not by playing with him, but by listening to him play live and on record. “I wrote the first six compositions on the album without ever having heard the band. Then we played a gig and worked out the rough edges, and I wrote the rest of pieces after I knew what the band sounded like.” If this seems a roundabout path to organizing and composing for a band, Halvorson’s development as a musician was similarly roundabout. A native of Brookline, Mass., she began playing the violin as a child, but switched to guitar in the eighth grade when she discovered Jimi Hendrix. “I went out and bought a black-and-white Stratocaster so I could be like Jimi,” Halvorson says. “Then I got a Hendrix tablature book. Before I played or took any lessons I’d learned how to play a bunch of his songs. That was my first introduction to guitar.” The switch to jazz came because her first instructor happened to be a jazz player, and because Halvorson coincidentally discovered her father’s record collection at the same time. “Miles Davis, John Coltrane, Thelonious Monk; those were the things my dad had,” she says. “And then I got into Dolphy, Mingus and Ornette. Then I went on to Wesleyan University and met Anthony Braxton.” Ironically, though she would later study with Joe Morris and be influenced by Derek Bailey and Sonny Sharrock, none of the music that turned her toward jazz guitar was, in fact, jazz guitar. Though she began performing within the small arts scene around Wesleyan in Middletown, Conn., it wasn’t until 2002, when she began studying at the New School in New York, that Halvorson really found her voice. “I figured out a lot, just by figuring out what I didn’t want to do,” she explains. “I realized pretty quickly that I didn’t want to play straightahead jazz. So in response to that I was able to figure out what I did want to do.” She soon began playing in a trio with drummer Mike Pride, and in 2004 joined Braxton’s 12+1tet, in which she still plays today. Despite the formative influence of cerebral, deliberate composers like Braxton and Eric Dolphy, Halvorson describes her approach as intuitive. “If I start to overthink things, they don’t work,” she says. “I usually don’t think of larger forms first; I kind of write as I go. I’ll start and just keep going. But I don’t necessarily have an overarching structure in mind. I might, but I usually don’t.” The results are dynamic, dissonant labyrinths such as Dragon’s Head’s “Sank Silver Purple White” and “Old Nine Two Six Four Two Dies.” The unusual titles are another extension of Halverson’s intuition: “I just numbered them initially, but wanted to give them actual titles,” she explains. “So I started scribbling stuff down as I was falling asleep—whatever nonsense popped into my head. I didn’t think too much about the meaning. I’m sure there is one, but I don’t know what it is.” If she composes on instinct, though, Halvorson’s compositions are also geared toward the musical instincts of her bandmates, Smith and Hébert. “They’re both amazing musicians,” she says. “We know each other’s music and playing styles pretty well. I think I would have to try pretty hard to make something they couldn’t follow.” Sometimes, it seems, being slightly off is right on the money. true 10607 2008-12-10T14:10:10-05:00 false 20904 129 200812 true 139 2008-12-01T00:00:00-05:00

Mary Halvorson’s music is best described as “slightly off.” Indeed, that’s how she herself describes it: “I would say about my compositional style, and I think it’s true for my guitar playing as well, that I like to have things that are slightly off. Chords that aren’t complete chaos, but also aren’t completely straight. I like unexpected twists, something that might make it a little unusual without being completely abstract.” The Brooklyn-based, 28-year-old electric guitarist and composer’s résumé bears out her fondness for idiosyncrasy. Her unique playing style—brittle, knotty and abrasive—has earned attention in the avant-garde community and work with ensembles led by Anthony Braxton, Taylor Ho Bynum and Trevor Dunn. Halvorson also has two duos, the rock-oriented People with drummer Kevin Shea and an acoustic project with violist Jessica Pavone. In October she released her first recording as a leader, the bewildering Dragon’s Head (Firehouse 12), with her trio featuring bassist John Hébert and drummer Ches Smith. It’s also the first recording on which all compositions are Halvorson’s. “I really wrote for these specific musicians,” she says. “It’s a project I’ve been thinking about for a long time but was waiting to figure out the right people. I’ve been playing with Ches in various projects for years, so he was an obvious choice, but then when I met John I sort of formed an idea in my head.” She learned Hébert’s sound not by playing with him, but by listening to him play live and on record. “I wrote the first six compositions on the...

35712 2009-03-04T11:48:11-05:00

4 When cultures clash, there is typically friction, but occasionally unexpected harmony. Musically speaking, vocalist Charmaine Clamor orchestrated the latter when she combined her two greatest loves—the traditional kundiman of her native Philippines and American jazz standards—to create a hybrid she calls “jazzipino.” Born in the tiny village of Subic-Zambales and raised by music-loving parents, Clamor recalls “waking up almost every morning to opera, classical, jazz and kundiman, which are the Filipino equivalent of torch songs. Being exposed so young to so many types of music made me very open to the idea of using my voice to produce different sounds. Some people tell me I have a classical sound when I sing Filipino songs, others say I have a distinct jazz sound.” At age 16, Clamor moved with her parents to Los Angeles, a transition she says was “very difficult. It was the first time I’d ever been out of the Philippines, and I didn’t know what to make of all the huge buildings and the mix of cultures—American, Mexican, Persian, Armenian—that I’d never been exposed to before.” Sadly, discrimination reared its ugly head, “both because I was Asian and because I was a woman. Some of it was subtle, some of it was more overt.” The experience made Clamor realize the importance of taking pride in one’s ethnicity and appearance. “[Y]ou must become proud of your indigenous physical attributes,” she says. “When I was growing up in the Philippines, the image of beauty was light skin and a pointy nose, so I never thought I was beautiful. Being dark in the Philippines is considered unattractive. It is shameful that any woman, there or here, should be made to feel inferior.” Such strongly held sentiments would help define Clamor’s musical journey. First, though, she felt it necessary to train for a more practical career. “When you’re an immigrant in this country, you strive for economic stability,” she explains. “At the time, I was very interested in physical therapy, but all the way through university and then grad school, I was always singing on the side. After I finished my degree, I finally had the courage to pursue a professional music career.” Four years ago, Clamor began gigging around L.A., subsequently recording Searching for the Soul, an album of American standards. After the disc’s release, she began what she calls “an organic transition [by] taking the soulfulness of kundiman and blending it with the swing of jazz. I asked my musicians, we tried it, and the audience—both Filipinos and non-Filipinos—loved it.” So for her sophomore album, the anagrammatically titled Flippin’ Out, she split the difference, augmenting covers of “I Hadn’t Anyone ’Til You,” “Candy,” “Be My Love,” Nina Simone’s “Sugar in My Bowl” and U2’s “With or Without You” with a five-part “Filipino Suite.” To lead off the disc, she shaped a cheeky reinterpretation of Rodgers and Hart’s “My Funny Valentine,” re-dubbing it “My Little Brown Pinay.” The lyric reinforces her advocacy of self-love and the celebration of differences among races, and the song has made her realize that “I’m not alone in this journey. Since it came out, a lot of dark-skinned women have shared their similar experiences with me.” While planning her third album, the recently released My Harana, Clamor had “a deep hunger to explore Filipino music further. I wanted to present the harana songs to my audience, because they are just so beautiful, and also because this is the first time ever that a woman has recorded these songs. Harana is courtship through music. It existed during the Spanish regime in the Philippines, right up until the 1950s. When a man fancied a woman, he went to her house at night and serenaded her with a guitar and sang these heartfelt, passionate songs. But a woman would never, never do that to a man. Here in America it would be more typical for a woman to initiate such a connection, but in our culture it was, and still is, considered a social taboo.” Clamor spent six months researching the album, which spans multiple languages and eight different Filipino dialects. Her goal, she says, was “to cover as many different regions of the Philippines as possible. I had a coach for each of the dialects because I wanted to make sure I was pronouncing them properly and also wanted to interpret them with absolute integrity. And we incorporated some indigenous instruments, so I wanted to make sure they were the right instruments for each region.” Clamor’s admirable efforts to bring her native music to a wider audience, while presenting it in ways never before considered, earned her a place on the Filipina Women’s Network’s list of the 100 Most Influential Filipino Women in America. She met with the other 99 honorees in Washington, D.C., and was “high for about a week. To be with so many inspiring women was incredible, and they were very supportive of what I’m doing.” Currently working on a jazzipino follow-up to Flippin’ Out, Clamor says there is also “talk of a musical play based on the music of My Harana.” Ultimately, her goal is to “give the world a little taste of what we have in the Philippines and, in doing so, to allow my countrymen to have pride in our music and our languages.” true 204 2008-12-10T14:20:04-05:00 false 20906 129 200812 true 139 2008-12-01T00:00:00-05:00

When cultures clash, there is typically friction, but occasionally unexpected harmony. Musically speaking, vocalist Charmaine Clamor orchestrated the latter when she combined her two greatest loves—the traditional kundiman of her native Philippines and American jazz standards—to create a hybrid she calls “jazzipino.” Born in the tiny village of Subic-Zambales and raised by music-loving parents, Clamor recalls “waking up almost every morning to opera, classical, jazz and kundiman, which are the Filipino equivalent of torch songs. Being exposed so young to so many types of music made me very open to the idea of using my voice to produce different sounds. Some people tell me I have a classical sound when I sing Filipino songs, others say I have a distinct jazz sound.” At age 16, Clamor moved with her parents to Los Angeles, a transition she says was “very difficult. It was the first time I’d ever been out of the Philippines, and I didn’t know what to make of all the huge buildings and the mix of cultures—American, Mexican, Persian, Armenian—that I’d never been exposed to before.” Sadly, discrimination reared its ugly head, “both because I was Asian and because I was a woman. Some of it was subtle, some of it was more overt.” The experience made Clamor realize the importance of taking pride in one’s ethnicity and appearance. “[Y]ou must become proud of your indigenous physical attributes,” she says. “When I was growing up in the Philippines, the image of beauty was light skin and a pointy nose, so I never thought I...

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