4 Kat Edmonson tells a story about her <I>American Idol</I> experience. She says she made it as far as Hollywood, but that was the end of the line; the judges said she lacked star power. Man, did they ever get that one wrong. The tiny Texas-born singer recently brought her evocative style to Scullers Jazz Club in Boston, along with a five-piece band that was anything but just backup. They opened the evening with pianist Kevin Lovejoy’s inventive arrangement of “Summertime,” one of Edmonson’s favorite tracks on her recent CD, <I>Take to the Sky</I> (Convivium). To get a feel for her style, close your eyes and imagine being in a smoky jazz café during the ’50s, listening to the girlish voice of someone like Blossom Dearie. Add a touch more sophistication and arching, original phrasing and you have a contemporary version of a classic songstress. Edmonson covered many cabaret standards, all artfully arranged by Lovejoy and accompanied by a muscular band that included Lovejoy’s brother Chris on percussion, John Ellis on sax, J.J. Johnson on drums and Danton Boller on bass. Each classic, from “Just One of Those Things” to “Night and Day,” received an ethereal vocal and instrumental treatment. Not to be stuck in a Cole Porter rut, Edmonson put a new spin on John Lennon’s “(Just Like) Starting Over.” With just bass and sax behind her, she made Carole King’s “One Fine Day” all her own. And although she claimed that they were still working out the kinks in their version of Dylan’s “Don’t Think Twice, It’s All Right,” the audience’s ovation said otherwise. Ever since she filled in as a last-minute replacement at the Tanglewood Jazz Festival in early September, Edmonson’s career has taken off. She said she loves being on the road, so if you’re lucky enough to find her in your area, run—don’t walk—to reserve your spot. true 17476 2009-11-13T14:55:14-05:00 true 25320 true 43 2009-11-13T00:00:00-05:00 2009-11-13T00:00:00-05:00 Scullers Jazz Club, Boston, Mass.; Nov. 10, 2009

A promising young vocalist stuns at a renowned Boston club

2009-11-13T14:57:26-05:00

4 When it comes to the handful of jazz concerts folded into the Hollywood Bowl’s summer season, themes are usually the name of the game. In 2009, Latin and Brazilian jazz filled the air one night, smooth jazz another, and, on a warm August Wednesday night, the pendulum turned to big-band jazz. It’s a medium familiar in this “room” (17,000 capacity), following a few blissfully fertile summers when the Clayton-Hamilton Jazz Orchestra was the Hollywood Bowl’s in-house jazz ensemble, under the employ of the Bowl-hosting and programming Los Angeles Philharmonic. For this evening, though, the big band subject was presented in a diversified, three-views-of-a-medium context. In the headliner slot was the Dizzy Gillespie All-Star Big Band, with still-vibrant vets James Moody and Jimmy Heath sounding hale and musical, and with mid-career trumpeter Roy Hargrove—whose own big band was also on the bill—subbing as director for the absent Slide Hampton. Opening the show, and representing the sturdy Los Angeles big-band contingent, was Gordon Goodwin’s Big Phat Band. Goodwin’s bright, punchy and slick group taps into L.A.’s healthy population of accomplished players, who tend to work the studios by day and eagerly take on intricate big-band charts in groups like Goodwin’s. As strong and taut as this band is, Goodwin’s Bowl program took some strange and distracting turns, with dubious arrangements of Herbie Hancock’s “Watermelon Man” and a jazz-tilted redecoration of Gershwin’s “Rhapsody in Blue” (heard recently in its orchestral form at the Bowl, with Herbie Hancock and classical wunderkind Lang Lang at the pianos). The oddest twist, or novelty, of the night came with the introduction of a ghost soloist, being Art Tatum, whose version of “Yesterdays” was digitized and played on an unmanned Yamaha Disklavier-equipped grand piano. Goodwin built his snug chart around Tatum’s treatment, in a posthumous arrangement. What might have seemed like a clever gimmick felt a bit morbid, not to mention antithetical to the live, in-the-moment spirit of jazz. What would Art say? Hargrove’s band, in contrast to the Goodwin outfit, abides by a looser vibe, both in execution and structure. The group often keeps to an elastic, modal-vamp format for solos, punctuated and dictated by Hargrove’s guiding hand. As for Hargrove’s horn playing, he kept his own solos surprisingly out of the spotlight, instead showcasing the fine players in his ensemble, including the trumpet section (Frank Greene, Greg Gisbert, Tanya Darby and Darren Barrett). Hargrove did play a lustrous flugelhorn solo, in and around vocalist Roberta Gambarini’s version of “Ev’ry Time We Say Goodbye,” before the set veered in Cuban and funk-lined directions—other stylistic inclinations in Hargrove’s quiver, here brought to the large palette of a big band. The new, revived Gillespie band—with a recent album out on Half Note—mixes a handful of alumni with other sharp players, with executive director John Lee at the center on bass (a bass guitar, which sounds out of character in this format, and was jacked up too high in the Bowl mix). The Hollywood Bowl dipped into the book of Gillespie classics (“I’m Beboppin’ Too”), though there seemed a distinct dearth of Dizzy-ness in the chart department. Kenny Dorham’s “Una Mas” was highlighted by a short, sparkling solo by drummer Willie Jones III, a proud product of Los Angeles. Also in the song mix were Hampton’s chart on Monk’s “’Round Midnight” and a rather anti-climactic closer of Ellington’s “In a Mellow Tone” (with a wild, anti-mellow solo by pianist Cyrus Chestnut). Other standout solos came from trumpeter Claudio Roditi and alto saxist Antonio Hart. In the final rub, the musician who may have come off the best in this generally enjoyable but also uneven evening was Roberta Gambarini, the Italian sensation whose Ella-esque bravura and polish translates beautifully to a big-band setting. She scats with a fluidity and fearlessness rare on the current scene, and in a back-and-forth scatting dialogue with Moody and Hargrove, the instrumentalists were gruffly charming but out of their league. She and Hargrove were mediating, returning forces and faces, helping to smooth out the proceedings. true 34 2009-10-18T21:19:06-04:00 false 25223 true 43 2009-10-18T00:00:00-04:00 2009-10-18T00:00:00-04:00 Hollywood Bowl, Los Angeles, Calif.; Aug. 26, 2009

Roberta Gambarini shines at all-star L.A. show

2009-10-21T14:11:52-04:00

4 Considering how Ornette Coleman was so ardently dismissed by some critics and colleagues when he arrived in New York 50 years ago, it must’ve been extremely gratifying for the 79-year-old jazz revolutionary to receive a hero’s welcome upon entering the spacious, sold-out Rose Theater for his Jazz at Lincoln Center debut. With his son Denardo on drums, Tony Falanga on upright bass and Al MacDowell on electric piccolo bass, the Ornette Coleman Quartet exhibited rare chemistry in a 90-minute set that ran the spectrum from Ornette classics like “Peace,” “Lonely Woman” and “Turnaround” to the anthemic “Dancing in Your Head” and newer material like “City Living” (from 1996’s <i>Sound Museum: Three Women</i>) and “Sleep Talking” (from 2006’s <i>Sound Grammar</i>). Though his slow walk during his dramatic entrance was noticeably labored, Coleman continues to play with the same pungent tones, incredible fluidity and remarkable vocalizations that have marked his career since his early days in Los Angeles. They opened in kinetic fashion with a new Coleman composition, “Following the Sound,” which was fueled by Denardo’s fast-paced backbeat and underscored by MacDowell’s sophisticated fingerstyle chording and arpeggiating on piccolo bass (an electric four-stringed instrument that has roughly the same range as the first four strings of a guitar). Ornette wafted over the pulsating groove with long keening tones on his white alto sax, blowing in halftime over the fray. He very quickly shifted from sax to violin (Jascha Heifetz he’s not) and then moved on to some arresting trumpet playing (as in, someone should arrest him for putting that horn near his mouth). The poignant ballad “Sleep Talking” opened with Falanga’s beautiful bowed basslines over Denardo’s sensitive rubato pulse on the kit. With MacDowell once again arpeggiating—in this band he comps pianistically behind Ornette, or shadows him with single-note lines and doubles the leader with tight unison lines, à la Don Cherry—Ornette entered the subdued proceedings with his bracing alto sax voice, perhaps one of the most recognizable in all of jazz today. On a rendition of the uptempo swinger “Blues Connotation,” Falanga provided the surging momentum with his insistent walking basslines on upright while MacDowell chorded and Ornette wailed. A word here about Denardo’s drumming: Granted, he’s no Billy Higgins or Ed Blackwell in the swing department, but Denardo does bring an edge to this band with his idiosyncratic time feel and unpredictable bass drum accents. And he does have the ability to propel the quartet with raw rock power, as on more visceral, slamming numbers like “In All Languages” and the frenetic “City Living,” or the new “9/11,” which Denardo fueled with a heavy, John Bonham-esque groove. Neither Higgins nor Blackwell can do that. On an exhilarating rendition of “The Sphinx,” the two bassists combined to create the forward momentum of a runaway train. Denardo kept the train on the tracks with his own swinging pulse as Ornette soared over the top in his inimitable fashion, summoning up his Texas roots with wailing blue notes. The new “Taking the Cure,” a racing number that seemed to speed up as the piece developed, was highlighted by the close interaction among Falanga’s bowed bass, MacDowell’s rapid single-note lines on the electric piccolo bass, and Denardo’s urgent free-jazz flurries. Following that frenetic romp, the quartet settled into a sublime rendition of “Peace,” a blast from the past that elicited audible sighs from old-school Ornette fans in the audience. Another new number, “Out of Order,” was based on a descending chromatic theme played in crisp unisons by the whole band. Denardo played with a fierce attack on this edgy tune as Ornette remained the calm center in the midst of all the swirling energy, like the eye of the hurricane. Falanga’s flawless arco work on the upright was showcased on a beautiful solo rendition of a Bach suite, which gradually developed into another vehicle for Ornette’s freewheeling improvisations, fueled by Denardo’s heavy-footed, Ginger Baker-styled backbeats. “City Living” had a jaunty head that was catchy enough to be a ringtone, while their rendition of “Turnaround” had the relaxed vibe of an after-hours blues jam (with Ornette incorporating a riff from Rodgers & Hammerstein’s “If I Loved You” into the fabric of the piece). Denardo alternately held an understated shuffle here and erupted into drumming flurries that sounded like his kit was falling down the stairs. They finished their set with rocking renditions of “Dancing in Your Head” and “Song X” before returning for an encore of “Lonely Woman,” a haunting and enduring melody that stands as Ornette’s answer to Monk’s “’Round Midnight.” Six years ago, at an opening reception for Harmolodic Studios on 125th Street in Harlem, Ornette debuted his trio with Denardo on drums and Tony Falanga on bass. Shortly after, Greg Cohen was added as a second bassist to make the group a quartet. MacDowell, a member of Ornette’s Prime Time band of the late ’80s, would later replace Cohen, and then a third bassist, Charnett Moffett, was added on upright (with distortion and wah-wah pedal) to make the quartet a quintet. The band has since been scaled back to a quartet, and now the roles are so well delineated that this current edition of the Ornette Coleman Quartet operates like a well-oiled machine. true 21 2009-10-06T10:32:15-04:00 false 25141 true 43 2009-10-06T00:00:00-04:00 2009-10-06T00:00:00-04:00 Sept. 26, 2009; Rose Theater, Jazz at Lincoln Center; New York, NY

JALC’s season opens with an avant-garde beacon

50810 2009-10-19T16:25:03-04:00

4 Aside from its ever-deepening historical significance as the world’s oldest continuous jazz festival, and the health and breadth of its programming, the Monterey Jazz Festival’s hosting Monterey County Fairgrounds boast a unique cultural microclimate. Repeat festivalgoers witness the gradual stylistic evolution of premier jazz artists, most of whom have come across the continent from NYC for this early fall tradition. At this year’s MJF, for instance, the most daring piece heard was Jason Moran’s festival-commissioned piece, “Feedback,” a prime example of this artist’s conceptual range and taste for invention. A few years ago, Moran’s trio, Bandwagon, played a few sets in the small Coffee House Gallery—one of now seven different stages around the fairground property. This time, Moran, an increasingly respected and commanding figure on the current jazz-piano scene, migrated 100 yards to the vastly larger Arena stage. Capping off a set which included live and sampled allusions to Billie Holiday and Jaki Byard, Moran’s new 20-minute “Feedback” drew its central concept from a site-specific source—recordings of feedback from Jimi Hendrix’s historic show at the Monterey Pop Festival on this very stage back in 1967. Moran’s piece gamely mixed feedback sounds from then and now—waving a microphone in front of a Marshall stack to match drummer Nasheet Waits’ feedback-like scraping of cymbals—and fervent work on both grand and electric pianos. If not a complete success, musically, Moran’s “Feedback” fulfilled the all-important role of experimenting with new ideas and composite blends. A critical charge and challenge for general manager Tim Jackson—whose stint at the head of the festival has turned it into one of America’s finest jazz institutions—is the delicate balancing act between tending tradition and pushing into jazz’s future. The veteran core audience isn’t necessarily a chance-taking bunch, as seen in the flow of audience members sent to the exits during Moran’s explorations, but there is a willingness to sample what’s new and risky on this property. Just after Moran’s compelling set, for example, the spotlight went to old favorite Dave Brubeck—now 88 and still playing like he means it—who made one of his countless visits to this stage (starting with the very first Monterey festival, in 1958). After being granted an honorary Berklee degree by longtime Monterey festival supporter (and neighbor) Clint Eastwood, Brubeck and his quartet were to ostensibly pay 50th-anniversary tribute to the classic album <i>Time Out</i>. The band mostly avoided that album’s song list, however, apart from the <i>de rigueur</i> math-problem-ditty, “Take Five.” Following that set on Sunday night—a program dubbed “Three Generations of Pianists”—Chick Corea blended his more straightahead side with his proto-fusion side, opening with “On Green Dolphin Street” and closing with “500 Miles High,” in a not entirely communicative trio setting with old Return to Forever bandmates Stanley Clarke and Lenny White. The latter two aren’t on par with Corea when it comes to giving credence and musicality to conventional jazz turf. Traditional stylistic credence galore came gushing out of the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra, paying a visit to the festival and showing once again what a prize big-band entity it has become. In a set of intriguing new arrangements of old tunes by the mostly 1960s-based likes of Lee Morgan, Kenny Dorham, Lou Donaldson and early Wayne Shorter, the JLCO served up a clean-machined performance, and leader Wynton Marsalis offered some especially hot solos, with technical polish and creative fervor in his pocket. In another history-nodding set late on Friday night, following the young dynamo bassist-vocalist Esperanza Spalding, Conrad Herwig’s Latin Side All-Star Band cooked up spicy and tight new Latin-ized arrangements of tunes from other classic jazz projects celebrating the big 5-0: Miles Davis’ <i>Kind of Blue</i> and John Coltrane’s <i>Giant Steps</i>. Guest soloists Joe Lovano and Randy Brecker, on tenor sax and trumpet, respectively, helped keep the heat on high in a set that extended well past midnight. In between, a Monterey Jazz Festival All-Stars throw-together (with pianist Kenny Barron, violinist Regina Carter, guitarist Russell Malone and vocalist Kurt Elling) tried to find a common groove and collective identity, with spotty success. It could be said that the MJF’s programming is lean on the left-field or intellectual jazz front, but Jackson is careful in addressing that end of the spectrum as well. This year that creative bent came through in a captivating showing from Vijay Iyer’s trio in the Coffeehouse venue where Moran once played (that room tends to host the smarter, more venturesome stuff). Also heard in that room was the dazzling up-and-comer Jonathan Batiste, on piano and the unjustly neglected melodica. Another wowing young voice in the festival was the stunning trumpeter Ambrose Akinmusire, a tasty virtuoso whose on-the-mark band included pianist Gerald Clayton. On this weekend, Lovano was the artist-in-residence, and proved to be an ideal example of an artist whose tastes and skills tend to go broad and curious. Most adventurously, his own new double-drummer band, Us Five, here with Spalding on bass, beautifully shook up the Dizzy’s Den venue, moving in directions both groove-strong and artfully loose. Elsewhere over the weekend, Lovano was a critical third voice in bassist John Patitucci’s wonderful new trio, alongside the endlessly fascinating and hubris-free drummer Brian Blade. The saxophonist also sat in with Herwig. But the greatest and most memorable surprise of the entire weekend came virtually by accident. Pianist Hank Jones had to cancel his spot in a quartet set opening Saturday night’s arena show. John Scofield—in town to play with his “Piety Street” New Orleans-meets-gospel band and as a guest with Soulive—happily filled the spot, making for a poetic powerhouse group with Lovano, Patitucci and Blade. What transpired, on short notice, was pure magic, undoubtedly because of deep internal liaisons new and old. Blade and Patitucci have, of course, long shared rhythm-section seats in Wayne Shorter’s current quartet. Lovano was an important part of the great Scofield quartet of the early ’90s, and their rapport remains deep and palpable. While not in the MJF 2009 master plan, this new “Sco-Lo-Pat-Blade” band (they’ve got to go on meeting like this) made for the weekend’s most bedazzling and memorable sneak-attack highlight. Jazz festivals, like jazz itself, can be like that: subject to—and embracing of—last-minute changes, where epiphanies sneak through the door. And lest we forget to pay due praises in this rather nervous moment for festival sponsorship, Verizon continues to be this festival’s guardian angel. Note to would-be corporate sponsors of the jazz festival scene: Join the party! This music is good for you, smartens up our citizens, and the j-word continues to be a beacon of American cultural pride, even if Joe America is mostly indifferent. true 34 2009-10-06T13:58:41-04:00 false 25142 true 43 2009-10-06T00:00:00-04:00 2009-10-06T00:00:00-04:00 Sept. 18-20, 2009; Monterey County Fairgrounds; Monterey, Calif.

Versatile programming (and a surprise Sco-Lo set) at the world’s oldest continuous jazz fest

50299 2009-10-10T10:51:45-04:00

4 There was a bit of trepidation in the air before the 31st Chicago Jazz Festival kicked off on Friday, Sep. 4. The star power that had graced last year’s event (which began with a pre-festival performance by Sonny Rollins and concluded with a Sunday night set by Ornette Coleman) was largely absent for this year’s event, presented by CareFusion, the same company that “rescued” Newport’s annual celebration. Few feared for the festival’s artistic integrity, but the question was unavoidable: Could that ever-delicate balance between accessibility and critic-pleasing adventurousness still be maintained? Credit the festival’s planners for plunging fearlessly, and early, into the lion’s den. It took both imagination and courage to slot The Trio—AACM veterans Muhal Richard Abrams (piano), Roscoe Mitchell (woodwinds) and George Lewis (trombone and occasional synth)—for the second set in Friday’s opening-night lineup at the Petrillo Music Shell, sandwiched between the jubilantly swinging but relatively straightahead Jeff Parker Quartet and the superficially eclectic pop-jazz chanteuse Madeleine Peyroux. Interweaving musical and emotional colorings with unerring synergy, Abrams and his cohorts surged forth with a power that belied the lack of drums; rather than try to create a pulse, they alternately played as if suspended over time, then plunged through time instead of riding atop it. The result was a drive more propulsive than many conventional traps-anchored ensembles might have been able to summon. Perhaps predictably, Chicagoans provided many of the festival’s high points. Nicole Mitchell and her Black Earth Strings produced a provocative blend of European-derived counterpoint and Africanist call-and-response (fugue meets ring shout), resulting in a music of resonant spiritual and aesthetic power. Tenor sax titan Fred Anderson, celebrating his own 80th birthday (which occurred back in March), showcased his legendary tone—gnarled and burly one minute, almost overpoweringly forceful the next—as well as his always-fertile imagination, which on this night seemed more unbound than ever. Chicago’s living musical heritage was also celebrated by William Parker and his ensemble, The Inside Songs of Curtis Mayfield, who paid tribute to the late Chicago soul man. Mayfield was known for serving up serious-minded personal and political statements in deceptively easy-to-digest pop flavorings; Parker and his group reversed that approach, stripping Mayfield’s conceits to the bone to reveal the militancy and anguish buried within. Vocalist Leena Conquest delivered Mayfield’s lyrics with clarion-toned ebullience while Amiri Baraka declaimed and signified alongside her, as assaultive blasts from the horns and nasty funk fusillades from bassist Parker and drummer Hamid Drake heightened the intensity even further. Here’s just a bit of the vocalists’ exchange: Conquest: “People get ready, there’s a train a-comin'…” Baraka: “There’s a storm a-comin’!” Conquest: “Freddie’s dead...” Baraka: “All we know, he was sellin’ skag and blow—but that ain’t as bad as bombing Iraq!” By re-imagining Mayfield’s music and message so radically, this ensemble invoked his spirit and paid tribute to his genius with far more eloquence than a standard “greatest hits” tribute could have ever done. Archie Shepp’s set was billed as a tribute to Ben Webster; in that spirit Shepp showcased several Ellington and Strayhorn chestnuts (“Don’t Get Around Much Anymore,” “Chelsea Bridge”) along with a few of his own signature compositions. His trademark combination of romanticism, caustic wit and cerebral abstraction sounded undiminished, although—at least for this set—he seemed inclined to hew more faithfully to the songs’ melodic and harmonic structures than he once did. He recast “Steam,” his well-known homage to a cousin who was murdered while in his teens, as a soft-edged, almost autumnal meditation on tragedy and fate; he stretched the contours of “Burning Bright” somewhat further, breaking melodic and harmonic constraints to ascend into swaths of pure sonic texture. His tone, here and elsewhere, remained mostly declamatory—the old whispering-in-tongues gruffness seems no longer to be a part of his armamentarium. Shepp finished with a bluesy rave-up, allowing everyone plenty of solo space and inviting audience participation. It was a celebratory finale that may have nonplussed veteran fans who remembered the often-confrontational firebrand of yore. Abrams, this year’s artist-in-residence, composed the festival’s closing number, the extended tone poem “Spiralview,” which was performed by a jazz orchestra assembled by veteran Windy City trumpeter Art Hoyle. Dedicated to President Barack Obama, it celebrated community-building: Instrumentalists in various combinations—and, eventually, the entire ensemble—put forth ideas that seemed first to be independent of one another, if not in conflict, then slowly merged into coherence. The piece ended on an unexpected, brief sonic stab, as if Abrams had intended to conclude with a question mark or an ellipsis and let the listeners fill in the rest. The crowd, believing the music was over, began to head for the exits, only to be lured back by a rollicking blues finale that eventually dissolved into one last, tumultuous collective improvisation. That note of uncertainty left a few listeners grumbling, but it seemed appropriate. Even after 31 years, the Chicago Jazz Festival can’t afford the luxury of contentment or surety. It must continue to question, to seek the unknown, to take chances with the untried and the unimagined, if it is to maintain its reputation as one of the foremost jazz events in the world. true 323 2009-10-01T12:05:20-04:00 false 25090 true 43 2009-10-01T00:00:00-04:00 2009-10-01T00:00:00-04:00 Chicago, Ill., Sept. 4-6, 2009

Windy City talent makes up for diminished star power at this 31st edition

50684 2009-10-06T10:39:08-04:00

4 As a body of jazz lovers with decidedly left-leaning tastes soaked up the second-annual Angel City Jazz Festival, it was hard not to dwell on what this inspired new festival <I>wasn’t</I>, as well as what it was. Spread out over two long afternoon/evening sessions in the outdoor Ford Amphitheatre, one got a clear sense of delineation and contrast to the other long-standing jazz festival entity in Los Angeles, the wildly uneven Playboy Jazz Festival. That festival takes place each June, literally just across the 101 Freeway from the Ford, in the more expansive Hollywood Bowl. Make no mistake, Angel City is tilling a fertile musical ground very much on the other side of the aesthetic perspective than the Playboy, and praises be to the Southern Californian jazz muse for that. This feisty and balanced new festival, started by former club owner Rocco Somazzi and now run with the help of L.A.-based Cryptogramophone Records founder and violinist Jeff Gauthier, offers a valuable forum for artists working in the creative and not necessarily commercial spectrum of jazz, from Southern California and far beyond. In a real sense, the star of the 2009 show was Dave Douglas & Brass Ecstasy, one of the most intriguing projects of the jazz year and a striking nightcap on opening night. Paying tribute to Lester Bowie’s Brass Fantasy but taking it in his own direction, Douglas led his game brass mates—trombonist Luis Bonilla, French horn player Vincent Chancey, tuba player Marcus Rojas and drummer Nasheet Waits—through a set including songs by Hank Williams and Otis Redding and tributes to Enrico Rava and Fats Navarro, all assembled with a supple sense of invention and respect. Sunday’s program opened up with another tastefully oblique tribute-based project, Plays Monk, in which clarinetist Ben Goldberg, bassist Devin Hoff and drummer Scott Amendola explored lesser-traveled Monk (i.e. “Let’s Cool One” and “Skippy”) in a lesser-heard instrumental context. As if placed as a symmetry-making bookend, the festival’s closing set was another tribute project, Bennie Maupin & Dolphyana. A “local” musician for many years, reed player Maupin has been working with an intriguing group of Polish musicians recently, but at this festival the subject was Eric Dolphy, in a tribute group featuring the fine (and underrated) vibraphonist Jay Hoggard. Also in the group were bassist Darek Oles, drummer Billy Hart and flutist Nestor Torres. Before Maupin’s set, pianist Motoko Honda briefly improvised while <I>butoh</I> dancer Oguri beguiled, in the festival’s token nod to culture beyond music-for-music’s sake. From Japan and NYC came the Satoko Fujii Four, in which the dynamic pianist-leader guided her charges—bassist Mark Dresser, drummer Jim Black and trumpeter Natsuki Tamura—through an hour-long suite, alternately free and structured. From the opposite end of the jazz-style spectrum, the festival’s greatest mainstream set came from Larry Goldings' all-star organ trio with drummer Bill Stewart and guitarist Peter Bernstein. Disguised as a garden-variety variation on the organ-trio format, the players moved inside and out, attitude-wise, and made good music by any measure on such themes as Goldings’ “Asimov,” “I Should Care” and Sonny Rollins’ “Why Don’t I?," in honor of Rollins’ 79th birthday that day. Seattle’s Wayne Horvitz dropped down for a set with his chamber-esque, drummer-less Gravitas Quartet, a surprisingly new- and hip-sounding variation on the chamber-jazz notion. That group featured the nicely integrated forces of Horvitz on grand piano, trumpeter Ron Miles, Vancouver-based cellist Peggy Lee and bassoonist Sara Schoenbeck, a wonderful and flexible Los Angeleno musician who has been working her way into left-field jazz settings, including Anthony Braxton’s 12(+1)tet. Horvitz knows what he’s doing and where to take this unconventional quartet, whether through his own incisive compositions or re-workings of Elliott Smith. Unfortunately, prior commitments kept me from catching two of the more promising L.A.-based acts in the festival line-up—Billy Childs’ Jazz-Chamber Ensemble and a solo piano set by one of the city’s more compelling (and, just recently, more exposed) pianists, Larry Karush. But Jesse Sharps’ The Gathering, featuring vocalist Dwight Trible, filled an important regional-historical niche by representing the ongoing legacy of the late Horace Tapscott, whose ’60s-spawned Pan African Peoples Arkestra continues on under Sharps’ guidance. The Gathering, like the Arkestra, stirs up Africa-inspired themes and spirits with mid-’60s-esque modal vamps and license to engage in exploratory soloing. A certain family crest was in place this year, belonging to the longtime L.A.-jazz-scene-making Brothers Cline, being twin brothers Alex (drums) and Nels (guitar), the latter suddenly zooming up several cultural circles at once as the Wilco guitarist who nonetheless keeps up his rep as a progressive jazzer and noisemaker. Alex’s six-piece Band of the Moment, opening the Monday afternoon session, proved keyed into the idea of the moment, and stretching said moment into electro-jazz voodoo passages. While Alex dedicated his music to Edward Vesala, prog-rocker Hugh Hopper and Joe Zawinul, all of whom passed away in recent years, a strong wind of mid-’70s Miles Davis also blew through the amphitheatre, especially as Alex offered the dub-mix gesture of cutting out abruptly, à la Miles’ “Rated X.” When brother Nels brought out his pliable project called the Nels Cline Singers, we got another strong taste of the memory of Zawinul—one of the greatest jazz musicians ever to have called Los Angeles home. Zawinul’s “Boogie Woogie Waltz,” with brother Alex and drummer Black adding to the percussive welter, closed a dazzling set. Earlier, the “Singers” offered a rangy set including Ornette Coleman’s “Congeniality” and “Coming On” (dedicated to its composer, the great 75-year-old trumpeter Bobby Bradford, long one of L.A.’s most valuable and underrated players). For this occasion, Nels invited a kindred spirit, guitarist Jeff Parker, to join the ranks, and the guitaristic pairing proved an inspired one. Along with an easy versatility moving between jazz, rock and free playing, a Chicago bond connects the guitarists, in that Parker is in the Windy City cult favorite Tortoise and Nels is now a proud Wilco company man. Los Angeles has desperately needed a jazz festival to counteract the bad taste left by the Playboy party. Could the Angel City Jazz Festival be the one? Time and logistics will tell. As of festival number two, the pieces seem poetically and spiritually in place. true 34 2009-09-25T12:51:37-04:00 false 25076 true 43 2009-09-25T00:00:00-04:00 2009-09-25T00:00:00-04:00 Ford Amphitheatre, Los Angeles, Calif.; Sept. 6-7, 2009

“West Coast jazz” means musical daring at this L.A. fest

50530 2009-10-03T12:34:24-04:00

4 Vibraphonist extraordinaire Joe Locke has dipped his toes in Brazilian waters before, and he’s done it with Trio da Paz, the native combo featuring Duduka Da Fonseca on percussion, Nilson Matta on bass and the ebullient acoustic guitarist Romero Lubambo. They’ve hooked up at Dizzy’s Club Coca-Cola in August for three straight years, and they’ve traveled together. Their one joint recording, <i>Live at JazzBaltica</i> (MaxJazz), was recorded at the German festival in 2007. On that album’s two Jobim tunes, Locke is conspicuously absent. Nor will you find Locke dipping into Jobim on any of his own CDs to date. But he’s surely ready to record Jobim now. During opening night of a six-night engagement at Dizzy’s, billed as “Music of Antonio Carlos Jobim & Stan Getz,” Locke jumped into Jobim’s familiar “Wave” with both feet—and a blur of four mallets—sending up a spray of dazzling music that could send timid musicians scurrying for the shore. That was mere prelude to the cyclonic intensity Locke loosed upon Milton Nascimento’s “Vera Cruz.” Lubambo had no immediate retort—had he attempted one, it might have capsized under the wave of applause that surged in Locke’s wake—but he built to a powerful rejoinder in less time than I anticipated. Playing with a gilded tone, guest tenor saxophonist Harry Allen was clearly the Getz factor in the combo. Indeed, hearing Allen’s gossamer tenor on “Wave” served as reminder that vibraphonist Gary Burton, surely one of Locke’s seminal inspirations, was part of Getz’s distinctive bossa-nova sound in his <i>Getz au Go Go</i> days. Although Getz does not appear to have recorded “Vera Cruz,” Allen vividly evoked the master with a Getz-like honk at the top of his solo. That same smooth tenor sound cropped up later when Allen took the spotlight for that lovely <i>Sesame Street</i> anthem by Joe Raposo, “Bein’ Green,” with a phrase or two on loan from Ben Webster and perhaps a sprinkling of Paul Horn, an alto player who was beguiled by Jobim in his early days. With two CD titles of her own paying tribute to Jobim—and plenty of concert and recording history with Da Paz—Maucha Adnet was the predictable choice for layering on a vocal dimension at Dizzy’s. Locke escorted her onstage, where Lubambo introduced her for a Jobim trifecta that included “Caminhos Cruzados,” “A Felicidade,” and “Agua de Beber.” Adnet has the purity of sound that we associate with Brazilian vocalists without being wedded to the virginal blankness personified by Astrud Gilberto. Not only were Adnet’s sambas more personable, she even permitted herself some vocalese! The Getz/Gilberto memories were perhaps strongest in “Agua de Beber,” with Locke laying out after his magisterial work on “Felicidade.” Allen and Adnet joined Locke in the dressing room as we finally had a taste of how Trio da Paz sounds on its own. “Baden,” Matta’s homage to Brazilian guitarist Baden Powell, began appropriately with a tender intro from the bassist. After Da Fonseca deftly shuffled in and Lubambo took over the lyrical lead, the composer returned to the forefront, doubling the time in another heartfelt bass solo. Lubambo kept the intensity there for his second solo, his best of the set, before the arrangement circled back to its bittersweet beginning. From there the set built smartly to its climax. After Allen’s return for “Bein’ Green,” Locke rejoined the group for Lubambo’s ferocious “Bachião,” the longest track on the <I>JazzBaltica</I> album. The vibraphonist messed with some reverb effects announcing the line and then got down to serious business, wailing and flailing wildly. Da Fonseca, who had lurked in the background until now, seemed to be chomping at the bit as Matta soloed, but Locke and Lubambo went at it head-to-head before Fonseca added to the full-throated percussive barrage. The arrangement subsided briefly into a controlled cruise before massing for one last ensemble assault. They followed that the only way they could, by bringing Adnet back for the iconic “Girl From Ipanema.” The songstress shuttled between Portuguese and English as the Gilbertos did back in 1963, tossing in some vocalese to bridge the gap and handing the tune over to Allen midway through the second chorus. The rest of the English came later when Adnet returned for an outchorus. Only in the last eight bars did she revert to Portuguese. She didn’t stay there long, playing with that seductive farewell in all three of her languages—Portuguese, English and a longing vocalese. Adnet warmed up the Brazilian beach, but it was Locke in his solo that made it blaze between her vocals, reaffirming that he is ready to stamp Jobim into his discography. The souped-up versions of “Wave” and “Ipanema” that I heard at Dizzy’s would be great places to start. No further rehearsals required. true 11252 2009-09-24T19:36:25-04:00 false 25075 true 43 2009-09-24T00:00:00-04:00 2009-09-24T00:00:00-04:00 Dizzy’s Club Coca-Cola, Jazz at Lincoln Center, New York, N.Y.; Aug. 25, 2009

Brazilian vibes from a master vibraphonist

50537 2009-09-25T12:51:54-04:00

4 In recent years, programmers have been exploring ways to add classical twists to the annual Tanglewood Jazz Festival. It’s an idea that can work given the setting, the longtime western Massachusetts summer home of the Boston Symphony Orchestra. It worked well in 2008 when the weekend highlights included Boston pianist Donal Fox’s “Scarlatti Jazz Suite Project” and trumpeter Terence Blanchard’s “A Tale of God’s Will” performance with 35-piece orchestra. This year, the effort to expand and strengthen that bridge between jazz and classical had mixed results during what was a very strong weekend overall, both in the range of programming and the performances themselves. Paquito D’Rivera brought a new slant to the traditional Friday night Latin evening, which in the past has often had a dance-party atmosphere. In his weekend highlight performance, D’Rivera offered a great blend of jazz and classical in his three-part concerto, “Conversations With Cachao,” which featured Robert Black on bass. During his solos, which alternated beautifully with D’Rivera on alto sax and clarinet, Black sometimes used his double bass like a percussion instrument for dramatic effect. Also strong was D’Rivera’s “Panamericana,” a work that he described as his tribute to all of America, “from Alaska to Tierra del Fuego,” with exotic instrumentation that included Cuban <i>bata</i> drums, Colombian harp and <i>bandoneón</i> from Argentina. The band’s take on late Cuban bandleader Orestes López’s <i>danzón</i> arrangement of Astor Piazzolla’s “Oblivion” segued into Piazzolla’s “Libertango.” To make the Tanglewood synthesis complete, D’Rivera’s own “To Brenda With Love” wound down the evening, fittingly, with a Bach coda. Saturday’s matinee at Seiji Ozawa Hall featured John Pizzarelli and Jessica Molaskey’s syndicated program, “Radio Deluxe,” which they normally tape at their home in New York. It made its Tanglewood recording debut after a seven-year run of Marian McPartland’s “Piano Jazz” in the same time slot. The stage was set up like a living room/studio space, complete with four large, stuffed chairs. As daughter Madeleine sat reading a Harry Potter book and occasionally joining the conversation, Pizzarelli couldn’t resist telling the band, which included father (and fellow guitarist) Bucky Pizzarelli, “Don’t play loud, she’s reading.” Anecdotes about the late Les Paul preceded a John and Bucky duet on “It’s Been a Long, Long Time.” Young violinist Aaron Weinstein and tenor saxophonist Harry Allen, a longtime Pizzarelli collaborator, were showcased beautifully on “Joe and Zoot,” a tribute that John wrote for Joe Venuti and Zoot Sims. Much of the two-hour taping focused on the American Songbook, with Molaskey spotlighting works by Vincent Youmans. Kurt Elling joined the party to perform “Polkadots and Moonbeams” before he and John Pizzarelli tore into an extended, scat-filled version of “Oh, Lady Be Good!” Elling even added to the afternoon’s frequent good humor. After a woman in the back of the hall yelled, “I love you, Kurt,” Elling retorted, “I think it helps that I haven’t sung yet.” Saturday evening’s show was mixed. Violinist Regina Carter, accompanied by accordion, kora, bass and drums, skillfully performed jazz versions of folk songs, from Cameroon, Madagascar and other African countries, that will be included on her forthcoming CD, <i>Reverse Thread</i>. Given the Tanglewood focus, some were surprised she didn’t include anything from her classical repertoire. Still, her performance stood strong, given the disappointment that followed. “Dreaming the Duke” is a project that paired jazz singer Nnenna Freelon and operatic soprano Harolyn Blackwell with a jazz band and string quartet, with arrangements and musical direction by Mike Garson. While the singers were perhaps looking for common ground in Ellington’s wide-ranging oeuvre, they rarely found it. With its “Duke’s greatest hits” approach, the set had the feeling of a work in progress, in need of cohesive arrangements and more attention to continuity. There was no focus on Ellington’s thematic suites that had classical tinges. That said, Blackwell was strongest on “Solitude.” While “Come Sunday” fared well as a Freelon-Blackwell collaboration, the full set did not fulfill the weekend’s jazz-classical expectations. Sunday’s performances were first-rate. Pianists Kenny Barron and Mulgrew Miller shared the stage on matching concert Steinways, blending their talents on an unplanned range of tunes that included “Isfahan” and “Just in Time.” Their set offered a fascinating exercise in deep listening while they traded melodies and support. The 43-year-old Vanguard Jazz Orchestra, originally the Thad Jones-Mel Lewis Orchestra, followed with more than an hour of robust and swinging big-band jazz. Jon Faddis’ quartet led off Sunday evening with a celebration titled “The Majesty of the Trumpet,” featuring special guests Sean Jones and Wallace Roney. Together they paid tribute to the Louis Armstrong-Dizzy Gillespie-Miles Davis legacy, though Davis got shortchanged by time constraints with just one tune, “Milestones.” Faddis dominated the Armstrong portion—complete with a raspy vocal emulation on “What a Wonderful World”—and all three trumpeters were featured at great length in the Gillespie segment. Bassist Dave Holland closed the festival with his relatively new octet performing music from his forthcoming recording project, <i>Pathways</i>. The music was brawny and adventurous, with every member getting substantial solo space. “Shadow Dance” was a tremendous showcase for alto saxophonist Jaleel Shaw and drummer Nate Smith. The festival’s Jazz Café tent, up the hill from Seiji Ozawa Hall, continued its important role in showcasing new and emerging talent. These performances included five free pre-concert sets for main-event ticketholders. Kat Edmonson is a sweet-voiced Texan who sings at the intersection of Norah Jones and Blossom Dearie. She shared a number of chestnuts and more recent pop-based standards, winding down with a highly re-arranged version of “Fever,” which started out smoky but built to a feverish conclusion. Her band demonstrated a great sense of dynamics in the spare, painterly support of pianist Kevin Lovejoy and empathetic accompaniment of saxophonist John Ellis. Her set featured creative re-arrangements that made every tune sound fresh and original, such as a slow meditative version of John Lennon’s “(Just Like) Starting Over” and the Cure’s “Just Like Heaven.” Other tent performers included Russian pianist Evgeny Lebedev, violinist Ben Powell, pianist and singer Michael Kaeshammer and contemporary saxophonist (now there’s a Tanglewood first) Benny Reid. The weekend’s first half felt like this was also an unadvertised comedy festival. D’Rivera’s set was peppered with a series of immigration jokes, and John Pizzarelli offered many family-based one-liners, most of them concerning the foibles of his father. After mentioning that it was 83-year-old Bucky’s first performance since a recent surgery, the younger Pizzarelli quipped, “The gall bladder couldn’t make the gig.” true 76 2009-09-22T01:20:37-04:00 false 25069 true 43 2009-09-21T00:00:00-04:00 2009-09-21T00:00:00-04:00 Lenox, Mass., Sept. 4-6, 2009

Classical-jazz fusions abound at this Massachusetts fest

50474 2009-09-24T19:37:31-04:00

4 As it was mentioned before nearly ever set throughout Labor Day weekend, this year marked the 30th anniversary of the Detroit International Jazz Festival, which has become the largest free jazz festival in the United States. The country’s economic crisis has taken its toll on festivals this year, as a <i>JazzTimes</i> feature indicated in the September issue. To combat the problem, audiences here were encouraged to “Invest in the Fest” by dropping donations in the boxes around the festival. Larger donations bestowed contributors with titles like “Guardians of Jazz” ($600 and up), “House Band” ($300) or “Session Players” ($30-50). While the Motor City’s event had one less stage than in previous years, that still left five stages, all in relatively close proximity to one another, with three just a quick jaunt across Hart Plaza, the spacious park along the Detroit River with two amphitheaters built into the ground. That gave diehard fans the chance to scurry between stages as one act finished a set and another got ready at a different stage. When performers include Chick Corea, Wayne Shorter or the Heath Brothers, the steady movement from stage to stage makes sense. In addition, the Detroit Marriott at the GM Renaissance Center adjacent to Hart housed nightly jam sessions and a media location, so the four-day event had a conveniently located homebase. The festival framed itself with the title “Keepin’ Up with the Joneses,” a nod to Pontiac, Mich., native sons Hank, Elvin and Thad Jones. Pianist Hank is the only surviving brother, and he was celebrated with a Jazz Guardian Award from the festival and proclamation from Detroit Mayor Dave Bing. Other Guardian awards were given to trumpeter Marcus Belgrave, saxophonist Ernie Rodgers and the festival founder/honorary chairman Robert McCabe. Another theme that flowed through the festival could have been “Creativity Continues at 90,” since no less than three star performers have either started or are approaching their ninth decade. Jones may be 91 but he acts 30 years younger. On Friday night at the Chase Stage, after he accepted his award, the pianist put his talent on display during Wes Montgomery’s “Twisted Blues”—no simple, old-man blues, but a line that requires sharp skill. He continued to shine through takes of “Au Privave,” where he pounded the theme with clarity in the piano’s middle register, and more delicate moments like “A Child Is Born,” written by his brother Thad. Longtime partner George Mraz joined him on bass and Carl Allen—a ubiquitous player all weekend—sat in on drums. Dave Brubeck is actually a little more than a year shy of 90, but rounding up won’t hurt. The pianist didn’t show any signs of the illness that forced him to cancel engagements earlier this year. His quartet began their Saturday afternoon set with a 15-minute medley of Ellington themes, and the leader’s piano sounded as sprightly as ever, with his left hand jumping around the keyboard during “C Jam Blues.” Brubeck’s sons Chris (trombone) and Danny (drums), fresh from their set across the plaza at the Absopure Waterfront Stage, brought their bandmates over to sit in for rollicking versions of “St. Louis Blues” (done like a tango), “Blue Rondo à la Turk” and the obligatory “Take Five.” By set’s end, the elder Brubeck stood and watched the band solo as often as he played, but he told the audience, “You’ve inspired me today.” Bandleader Gerald Wilson, 91, was on hand to premiere “Detroit,” a six-part piece for big band that was commissioned for the festival and released this month on Mack Avenue Records, a festival sponsor. His voice may be a little softer and he may walk a little slower, but Wilson showed his determination by tossing his music stand to the side during the opening segment and getting so caught up in the music’s force that he began screaming during the final piece. The ensemble, which consisted largely of local players, captured the nuances of the composition. At various points, “Detroit” quoted Benny Golson’s “Along Came Betty” (an intentional reference in “Cass Tech,” according to Wilson), borrowed an altered blues change from Ellington (“Blues on Belle Isle”) and evoked Charles Mingus in the two-part fast/slow piece “Ms. Gretchen.” This last piece paid tribute to Gretchen Valade, the fairy godmother of the festival. Valade, who is also a chair at Mack Avenue, ensured the future of the festival three years ago by starting a $10 million endowment for the event. Before she could be honored with the song, she and Detroit City Council President Kenneth Cockrel Jr. ran onstage and presented Wilson with a Spirit of Detroit Award. Although the timing seemed to have been scripted, Wilson seemed genuinely touched. “Ms. Gretchen saved my career and gave me a whole new one,” he said. In addition to the old—and distinguished—guard, the under-70 crowd made a good showing as well. Among the highlights, Sean Jones’ quintet nearly blew down the Absopure stage with an impromptu version of “Resolution,” which tapped into the same power of the Trane original. Bennie Maupin’s Dolphyana balanced a combination of Eric Dolphy tunes and the leader’s pensive originals. While the mix sounded unbalanced until the last tune, the intriguing textures created by Maupin (bass clarinet, tenor), Nestor Torres (flute) and Jay Hoggard (vibes, marimba) managed to come through. T.S. Monk’s group recreated his father’s groundbreaking Town Hall concert, giving this writer goosebumps when they nailed the too-rarely heard “Off Minor.” Perhaps the most anticipated performance came, however, with the Wayne Shorter Quartet’s Sunday night set. It marked the first time in three months that the group has played together, since pianist Danilo Perez suffered a rupture in his left Achilles tendon. For nearly 90 minutes they played without a formal break between songs. Shorter chose his melodies sparingly, letting Perez, bassist John Patitucci and drummer Brian Blade set the scene before he entered and alternately wove himself into the sound or sent it down another path. It’s worth noting that these four players seemed to pack more volume than Wilson’s entire big band, especially Blade, who had a look of joy plastered across his face for almost the entire set. true 207 2009-09-16T21:37:13-04:00 false 25060 true 43 2009-09-16T00:00:00-04:00 2009-09-16T00:00:00-04:00 Sept. 4-7, 2009; Detroit, Mich.

The largest free jazz fest in the U.S. celebrates its 30th

14393 2009-09-22T01:22:49-04:00

4 After decades of moving ever-forward and conjuring up new bands and projects, jazz keyboard great Chick Corea has been retracting into the past of late. Last year, he revived the long-dormant, mid-’70s version of Return to Forever, the rockier and more widely popular—and critically questioned—model with guitarist Al Di Meola, bassist Stanly Clarke and drummer Lenny White. That hot-selling RTF ticket was quickly followed (and overlapped) with a long-awaited teaming-up with fellow fusion pioneer John McLaughlin, in the Five Peace Band, for a tour and an album. What a multi-thousand-strong audience at the Hollywood Bowl caught recently in the Bowl’s “Jazz at the Bowl” series was a time-tripping extravaganza that ran deeper into history than both of these recent revamp projects. The rambling program called, with deceptive simplicity, “Corea, Clarke & White,” found Corea going back to even earlier incarnations of the RTF machine, with notable visits from old friends. Fittingly, Corea’s archival sampler plate of a program kicked off with “500 Miles High,” from his first, subtler 1972 <i>Return to Forever</i> album on ECM. Old Corea ally and ’70s fusioneer Jean-Luc Ponty showed up to dispense his silken chops on Corea’s “Armando’s Rumba” and then Ponty’s own catchy instrumental “hit,” “Renaissance.” For many, the real star guest of this show was guitarist Bill Connors, the original player in RTF, and an intriguing instrumental voice on the themes of Corea’s “Señor Mouse” and “Space Circus.” Whereas Di Meola brings more machismo to his playing, stating his riffs with brash, declarative panache, Connors—even when playing with a distorted tone—comes from the opposite, more introspective school. He asks questions with his playing rather than stating his case with exclamation points. The ever-flexible and chameleonic virtuoso Corea can go both ways, towards introspection and hubris, but Connors’ presence here seemed to bring out the more sensitive side. They’ve got to go on meeting like this. Chaka Khan showed up for a few songs towards the set’s end, reprising her role as a vocalist of mostly jazz-standards fare on the 1982 <i>Echoes of an Era</i> album, organized by Lenny White and featuring Freddie Hubbard and Joe Henderson. At the Bowl, she started out by navigating the serpentine lines of Corea’s “High Wire—The Aerialist,” faring fluidly on jazz turf. By most casual accounts, the most tingle-inducing surprise guest of the evening was Corea-admirer Stevie Wonder, who played harmonica and sang in duet on “I Loves You, Porgy” with Khan. Wonder then returned for an obligatory encore of Corea’s “Spain,” sounding fine on keyboards and happily swapping riffs with Corea. Oddly, the main section of the concert closed with a tune from Khan’s songbook, “Through the Fire,” diffusing the already pushed-and-pulled sense of musical identity of the evening. The song did remind us of the hearty doses of jazz vocabulary Khan has always managed to shoehorn into her R&B songbook, from Rufus onward. If Corea’s memory lane-hugging jaunt had a smorgasbord effect, opener John Scofield’s set was all about a focused idea. The guitarist is presently in the thick of his fascinating special project with a New Orleans focus, grounded in the soulful album <i>Piety Street</i> (Emarcy). Scofield’s current band, featuring the multi-talented singer-pianist Jon Cleary (a Crescent City-obsessed Englishman), sounded righteously good and gospel-y in the mass outdoor sanctuary of the Hollywood Bowl. As Scofield projects go, this one—a product of his sideline fascination with rootsy corners of American music—has little “jazz content,” per se. Cleary, bassist Roland Guerin and drummer-vocalist Shannon Powell laid down N’Awlins and gospel sounds with minimal “crossover” colorations attached. Even so, Scofield is a sneaky jazzer in whatever context we find him in, going deep down the middle while simultaneously circling around the edges with harmonic detours flavored by his jazz ethos. true 34 2009-09-13T12:55:20-04:00 false 25050 true 43 2009-09-13T00:00:00-04:00 2009-09-13T00:00:00-04:00 Hollywood Bowl, Los Angeles, Calif.; Sept. 2, 2009

Classic fusioneers with some very special guests

42683 2009-09-16T21:48:03-04:00

4 To mark its 30th anniversary, the Montreal Jazz Festival—a favorite among critics and musicians alike—got a significant facelift. Most conspicuous is the Maison du Festival, a new permanent headquarters for the festival that contains the press room, an audio-visual archive (containing 30,000 albums, 300,000 photographs and high-definition videos of past festival performances), a gallery-exhibit space (where photographer Herman Leonard had a show up of his jazz portraits from the ’40s and ’50s), a ground floor restaurant and adjoining terrace, rehearsal rooms for bands and an intimate 350-seat cabaret-style venue called L’Astral. A major multi-million-dollar renovation project, this seven-story facility, housed in the historic Blumenthal Building, is located in the heart of the downtown entertainment district (Quartier des Spectacles), just steps away from the festival grounds. Another new addition this year is the impressive Place des Festival, a sprawling new plaza that was inaugurated on opening night by Stevie Wonder in a free outdoor concert that drew upwards of 150,000 people. All of this recent expansion represents a dramatic new leap in the continued growth the festival has experienced since its inception in 1980. “These significant gestures were made in order to protect and preserve the festival in its place so we can organize the events there forever,” said festival artistic director Andre Menard. “So we are very happy that the government agreed to help us.” Wonder’s performance on opening night was joyful and just a bit bizarre. Throngs of fans stood in a steady rain—some with umbrellas, most just soaking up the inclement weather while dancing in the streets—to see the American music icon perform a tsunami of hit songs from “Signed, Sealed, Delivered I’m Yours” to “Sir Duke,” the gorgeous ballad “My Cherie Amour,” the reggae-fueled “Master Blaster,” the catchy “Do I Do,” an energized “For Once in My Life," the ultra-funky “Superstition” and a dozen or so others (but sadly, no “Living in the City,” perhaps his most emotionally stirring masterpiece in his staggering repertoire). Due to the tragic passing of Michael Jackson, Wonder’s two-hour set, normally a very tightly choreographed and professionally executed show, was uncharacteristically loose and brimming with emotion. The concert began with Wonder strolling out onstage with his daughter Aisha to eulogize the King of Pop while tossing in a few choice words for “the vampires who are going to be coming out with their books and things about Michael.” Throughout his set, Wonder would strangely halt his band, sometimes in the middle of a song, and cue the soundman to pump a particular Michael Jackson tune through the PA system as the soul icon sat by and clapped along to “The Way You Make Me Feel” or “Shake Your Body Down to the Ground” and others. This continued through Wonder’s set, which made it feel like part live concert, part CD-listening party. And at times while singing his own tunes, Wonder would insert Jackson’s name into the lyrics, as on his genuinely moving rendition of “I Just Called to Say I Love You.” The biggest surprises of the evening came when Wonder’s crack 14-piece ensemble turned in faithful renditions of John Coltrane’s “Giant Steps,” Chick Corea’s “Spain” and Miles Davis’ “All Blues” (with Stevie starting on harmonica before switching to a persuasively swinging piano solo). The marathon set ended with the entire band lining up along the edge of the stage to clap along to recordings of the Jackson Five’s “ABC” and “I’ll Be There,” along with Michael signatures like “We Are the World” and “Man in the Mirror.” On that latter tune, a tear could be detected (on the massive HD screens set up onstage and throughout the festival grounds) trickling down Stevie’s cheek as he sang and clapped along with the crowd in the rain. On the jazzy side of the tracks, alto saxophonist Lee Konitz turned in a revelatory set with the experimental Brooklyn-based trio Minsarah (pianist Florian Weber, bassist Jeff Denson and drummer Ziv Ravitz). Together they turned in loose yet telepathic renditions of the same vehicles that the 81-year-old alto sax master has been improvising on for more than half a century—“How Deep Is the Ocean?,” “Stella by Starlight,” “All the Things You Are” (which he has dubbed “Thingin’”) and his own “Subconscious Lee” (a chops-busting variation on “What Is This Thing Called Love?”). After one of three stream-of-consciousness extrapolations on a familiar theme, Konitz and company received a wild ovation, to which he mischievously responded, “Thank you very much. You have great taste.” Wayne Shorter’s Quartet hit an ecstatic peak in a rousing set with Geoff Keezer subbing for regular pianist Danilo Perez and drummer Brian Blade summoning up his usual thunder alongside rhythm-mate John Patitucci on bass. French trumpeter Erik Truffaz, the Invitation Series guest for the first week of the festival, performed on three consecutive nights in the intimate Gesu space (the festival’s best-sounding venue) with three wildly different ensembles. The bands commemorated the recent and simultaneous release of three new CDs on Blue Note/EMI, each recorded in a different part of the world and bearing the name of the city where it was recorded. The first night featured the gifted trumpeter in the Zen-like calm of his Indian-flavored Benares band. With Apurba Mukherjee on tablas, Malcolm Braff on piano and special guest vocalist Indrani Mukherjee adding an exotic color to the mix, Truffaz created a delectable fusion of East and West with a decidedly ambient feel to the proceedings. The second night, Truffaz appeared in an atmospheric though somewhat more provocative setting with Mexican electronica artist Fernando Conaro (a.k.a. Murcof). This collaboration, from their CD <i>Mexico</i>, was technologically hip though fairly sedate, tending toward smooth-jazz sonically while being imbued with far more upstart ideas in the mix. The third night was the charm. With powerhouse drummer Philipe Garcia (from Truffaz’s dynamic fusion quartet) and the incredible human beatbox Sly Johnson, Truffaz tapped deeply into his electric Miles side with a trickbag of effects on his trumpet, including distortion, wah-wah and various looping devices. Johnson was not only a marvel at creating walking basslines and accurately imitating turntable DJs with his deeply resonant voice, but also proved to be a profoundly soulful singer, as he demonstrated on persuasive renditions of “Come Together” and “Nature Boy.” But the real sparks flew when Johnson went toe-to-toe with Garcia on some intense drum exchanges, with Sly perfectly emulating the kit with just his voice and a handheld mic. Amazing! Another highlight of the festival was the Miles From India extravaganza in the spacious Theatre Maisonneuve. With alto saxophonist Rudresh Mahanthappa acting as master of ceremonies for the evening (“I was appointed the spokesman because I’m the only one in the band who can pronounce all the Indian names,” he professed), this sprawling East meets West ensemble tackled several tunes in the Miles Davis canon (a concept devised by producer Bob Belden, who was conspicuously absent, for last year’s Grammy-nominated <i>Miles From India</i> on the Times Square label). Also conspicuously absent was guitarist and Miles alumni Pete Cosey, who had played with a scaled-down version of the group the previous month for a weeklong engagement at the Iridium nightclub in midtown Manhattan. In fact, there was no guitar at all, an odd choice given the importance of that instrument (and John McLaughlin’s slashing presence in particular) on such electric Miles landmarks as <i>In a Silent Way</i>, <i>Bitches Brew</i>, <i>Jack Johnson</i> and <i>Live-Evil</i>. A battery of three powerhouse drummers—Lenny White, Ndugu Chancler and Vince Wilburn—propelled the proceedings while saxophonists Mahanthappa and Bill Evans and trumpeter Nicholas Payton brought the jazz quotient. Electric mandolin marvel U. Shrinivas and khanjira master V. Selvaganesh (both from Remember Shakti) elevated the proceedings with their dazzling virtuosity while tabla master Badal Roy (who originally appeared on 1972’s <i>On the Corner</i>), electric sitarist Hidayat Khan and flutist V.K. Raman brought the sub-continental flavor. The twin keyboards of John Beasley and Miles alumni Robert Irving III helped shaped the set, which included such Miles staples as “It’s About That Time,” “All Blues,” “Blue in Green,” “Spanish Key” and “Miles Runs the Voodoo Down.” An all-star aggregation led by bassist-composer Dave Holland and featuring tenor saxophonist Chris Potter, pianist Gonzalo Rubalcaba and drummer Eric Harland provided some more highpoints of the festival in their concert at Theater Maisonneuve. Their dynamic set, which included brilliant renditions of Holland’s “Step to It” and “Veil of Tears” along with Potter’s “Minotaur,” Harland’s “Treachery” and Rubalcaba’s “Otra Mirada,” also marked Rubalcaba’s last appearance with the group (the piano chair was subsequently taken over by Jason Moran). The two-tenor lineup of Joshua Redman and Lovano backed by bassist Reuben Rogers, drummer Gregory Hutchinson and pianist Sam Yahel created their own fireworks in Gesu with exhilarating renditions of Lennie Tristano’s “Wow” and the rousing “Blues Up and Down,” an earthy two-tenor battle made famous nearly 50 years ago by Johnny Griffin and Eddie “Lockjaw” Davis. They also turned in a tender rendition of Ornette Coleman’s gorgeous ballad “Kathelin Gray” and encored with a profoundly moving interpretation of the Coleman Hawkins tenor sax anthem, “Body and Soul.” Another treat was the solo guitar performance by Russell Malone as part of the festival’s Guitarissimo series at Cinquieme Salle. Malone blew through a set of standards with typical finesse and remarkable facility, revealing touches of Barney Kessel, Tal Farlow, Joe Pass and Chet Atkins along the way. He then surprised all the guitar aficionados in the house with a sweet vocal rendition of “Someone’s Rockin’ My Dreamboat,” which was originally recorded in 1941 by the Ink Spots (though Malone attributed the number to a Bugs Bunny cartoon he remembers watching as a kid growing up in Albany, Ga). One sad note to report on this year’s festivities was the sudden passing of Len Dobbin, Montreal’s most knowledgeable and passionate jazz expert, who had been a ubiquitous figure at the festival since its inception. The writer, radio personality (notably with CKUT) and keeper of the flame suffered a fatal stroke at the Upstairs jazz club, which he often referred to as “the office.” His business card read “Len Dobbin, Friend to Jazz since 1948.” He was precisely that, and more. Just two days before he passed on July 8, Dobbin had shared with me a copy of an article he had published a few years back in <i>Menz</i>, a Canadian men’s magazine. It was a 10-page photo spread of shots that a much younger Dobbins had taken in the ’50s and ’60s of Art Blakey, Carla Bley, John Coltrane, Bill Evans, Wynton Kelly, Kenny Dorham, Miles Davis, Sheila Jordan and others at such Montreal clubs as Casa Loma’s Jazz Hot Room, the Penthouse, Tete de l’Art and Monument National. The article, entitled “The View From Cool,” contained Dobbin’s own recollections of meeting and photographing these great jazz artists back in the day. He was understandably proud of the piece and circulated copies to interested parties. I was pleased that he autographed my copy and I’ll cherish it now along with memories of hanging out with Len in the pressroom and talking about the music we both love. true 21 2009-07-27T13:23:45-04:00 false 24969 true 43 2009-07-27T00:00:00-04:00 2009-07-27T00:00:00-04:00 Montreal, Quebec, Canada; June 30-July 12, 2009

Stevie Wonder, Lee Konitz, Miles From India and more at this acclaimed Quebec fest

4879 2009-07-28T10:22:21-04:00

4 Perugia, with its predominance of medieval and baroque design, is an unlikely locale for a festival of all-too-American, all-too-modern jazz music. The small central Italian city should, instead, be the setting for a period film on the life of Scarlatti or some long-forgotten Papal intrigue. And yet its most important civic event each summer is Umbria Jazz, a 10-day extravaganza of musical greats from across the world—special emphasis, of course, on the United States (being jazz’s homeland) and Italy (being Umbria’s). During that time even Perugia’s most picturesque scenery was occupied by the music; Corso Vannucci, its grand thoroughfare, was filled daily with a street parade by the aptly named Funk-Off and appreciative mobs, not to mention the guitar- and saxophone-wielding buskers who serenaded café patrons with “Pent-Up House” and “Impressions.” Meanwhile, at either end of the plaza sat large stages to accommodate the daily schedules of free music, highlighted by the jump-blues burlesque of Britain’s surprisingly authentic King Pleasure & the Biscuit Boys and Chip Wilson, a New Orleanian guitar aficionado whose fingerpicked acoustic and high, gravelly voice imprinted his haunting American folk and roots music on the evenings at Giardini Carducci. This year’s crown jewel was a series of six concerts by the AACM Great Black Music Ensemble, a 20-strong band drawn from the members of Chicago’s legendary avant-garde music organization. Each performance showcased a different AACM composer (save trombonist George Lewis, whose music both opened and closed the series). Lewis’ sets were extraordinary but exhausting in their sheer density and unrelenting violence; most enjoyable was the diorama for multi-reedist Mwata Bowden, which also included a feature for the ensemble’s phenomenal vocal section (singers Dee Alexander and Saalik and Taalib Din-Ziyad, plus pianist Ann Ward and flutist Nicole Mitchell), the ensemble’s most consistently interesting section. Elsewhere were rare opportunities to see Wynton Marsalis and Cecil Taylor in the same program. Marsalis brought the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra to the outdoor Arena Santa Giuliana in a replication of his January concert for Barack Obama’s presidential inauguration at Washington, D.C.’s Kennedy Center. With a repertoire of originals and standards (typically varied, though heavy on Thelonious Monk), the orchestra once again demonstrated the trumpeter and leader’s keen eye for talent—although its featured guest, 19-year-old Italian saxophonist Francesco Cafiso, is gifted yet still rather green. Taylor, on the other hand, was not green at all: The 80-year-old pianist was featured in solo performance at the ornate neoclassical Teatro Morlacchi, roaring, coaxing, prodding and slamming his way through six lengthy compositions. Each included a surprising quotient of lyricism; conventional notions of listening fly out the window with Taylor, so it’s difficult to know whether the avant-garde titan has mellowed with age or this writer has simply become acclimated enough to hear more nuance (or both). Certainly the pianist was as intense as a blizzard, and as mesmerizing. Interestingly, one of the two highlights of the festival was not a bandleader but a sideman for two others. Rosario Giuliani has worked as a leader before, but at Umbria the alto saxophonist worked for both Italian pianist Enrico Pieranunzi, in concert at Teatro Morlacchi, and American vibraphonist Joe Locke on a live-audience recording session at Oratorio Santa Cecilia. Exhibiting a full, rich tone, Giuliani has also developed a sound that is entirely his own—equal parts lyricism, muscle and downright passion. He showed his bottomless well of emotion in ballad features for both combos (“With My Heart in a Song” for Pieranunzi, “Beatrice Rose” for Locke) and sometimes even managed to steal the other musicians’ spotlights with his unbridled energy (particularly in Pieranunzi’s quintet, where his frontline partner was the superb but more restrained trumpeter Flavio Boltro). Giuliani is a major figure in Italy and parts of Europe but deserves recognition as one of the top alto saxophonists worldwide. The other star of the festival was Roy Haynes, leading a trio with pianist David Kikoski and bassist John Patitucci at the Morlacchi on a stopover during their European tour. Though Kikoski is a substitute for regular trio member Danilo Perez (sidelined from travel by an injury), the ensemble had such gleeful chemistry that Haynes chuckled audibly as the pianist comped the theme on Kikoski’s own “Inner Trust.” They were tight and inspired on the closing afternoon of the festival; Kikoski stretched the harmonies to the breaking point with monster chords and arpeggios, and did Monk proud with his aeronautic dissonances on “Trinkle Tinkle,” while Patitucci went thoughtful and conversational—and attained as close to perfection as I’ve yet heard in a bass solo on Pat Metheny and Lyle Mays’ “James.” As for Haynes, the excitement of his famous snap-crackle snare can obscure just how musical the drummer is: Surely if an award were given for the world’s singing-est ride cymbal, Haynes would take it every year, and the kettle-drum sound of his mallets on the toms in “Easy to Remember” is not easily forgotten. He even managed to state the melody on his kit in several tunes, positively glorying in the triplets of the encore “Blues on the Corner.” One does not have to go to Umbria Jazz to see Roy, of course—but if the festival brings forth this kind of zeal from its performers, by God, we should all start booking reservations for next year. true 10607 2009-07-27T17:35:02-04:00 false 24970 true 43 2009-07-27T00:00:00-04:00 2009-07-27T00:00:00-04:00 Perugia, Umbria, Italy; July 10-19, 2009

Modern jazz takes hold of an age-old city

47835 2009-09-13T12:59:11-04:00

4 Although she is an Atlanta native who resides in Denver, it’s fair to say that René Marie has a special relationship with the Spoleto Festival and the city of Charleston, S.C. She has been a high-profile attraction at the annual performing arts festival for two of the past three seasons, and she recorded her most recent album, <em>Experiment in Truth</em>, on the College of Charleston campus, where most of Spoleto’s jazz concerts are staged. There’s really no mystery surrounding Marie’s affinity with the Port City, since the member of her backup trio with the most seniority, percussionist Quentin Baxter, is a Charleston native—and, as the diva informed us during her 2009 concert at Gaillard Auditorium, the 28-year-old Baxter was the catalyst in bringing the other two members of the combo aboard, pianist Kevin Bales and bassist Rodney Jordan. After some persistent lobbying, Marie confided. Over and over, Marie expressed contentment with her current trio, even dedicating a hard-rocking version of Mentor Williams’ “Drift Away” to her guys. Confidence, contentment and serenity were not the attributes you might have expected from the singer who had ignited nationwide controversy with her conflation of the “Lift Ev’ry Voice” lyric with the melody of “The Star-Spangled Banner” last July 1. Marie’s performance of her idiosyncratic “National Anthem,” preceding the Denver mayor’s annual State of the City address, raised more than a few conservative hackles. Although she sang her anthem remix—at the climax of her “Voice of My Beautiful Country” trilogy—there was nothing confrontational or defiant in Marie’s tone. From the time she walked onstage, Marie professed a deep love for her country, and her mellow, luxuriant rendition of the traditional “Shenandoah”—pure and silken as Roberta Flack in her prime—bolstered her claim irresistibly. Her intro was semi-spoken, and Bales’ work at the keyboard, as she glided along the melody for the first time, was more like an alternative stream than an accompaniment, Debussy-like in its delicacy. This was not the last of Marie’s newfound equanimity. She welcomed the audience into a couple of dreamy tunes. We learned the chorus of Marie’s “Colorado River Song,” and then we whistled it, giving the concert a momentary marshmallow-roast intimacy. When Marie segued from Jimmy Van Heusen’s “Imagination” to the Holland-Dozier-Holland “Just My Imagination” of Temptations fame, the audience once again chimed in. But we weren’t done with serenity until Marie sang her own setting of the “Serenity Prayer.” Counterpoised with all this smiley, campfire fare was the edgy, gritty songwriting we expect from the artist who, at Spoleto in 2007, railed against the constraints of record producers just before breaking out on her own label later that year. “O Nina” was a prime example of the material Marie hadn’t been permitted to put on disc until she cut her own <em>Experiment in Truth</em>. Two things that bring the best out of Marie are longform musical explorations and lyrics with an activist bite. A sizzling tribute to the fearless spirit of Nina Simone, “O Nina,” is both, conjuring up Marie’s liberating experience of discovering Simone’s music as a teenager. The song also serves as a launching pad into Simone’s most recognizable rep—including choice snippets from “Four Women,” “Strange Fruit,” “Mississippi Goddam,” “Young, Gifted and Black” and “I Loves You Porgy”—while the arrangement leaves plenty of space to accommodate Baxter’s pulsating African drumbeat under Bales’ majestic soloing. “This Is Not a Protest Song” has seen a couple of recorded incarnations, on Marie’s <em>Truth</em> album and on a single whose proceeds are entirely directed toward the Colorado Coalition for the Homeless. They disagree <em>slightly</em> on the title, with the album enclosing “Not” in parentheses. Be assured, then, that this review relies upon the song list Marie provided to us after the concert via Spoleto jazz director Michael Grofsorean. Written as a show of solidarity for Marie’s homeless brother, the song pleads for tolerance—and a helping hand—toward a homeless brother, an unwed mother and an abused wife in successive stanzas. Coming immediately before the Simone tribute, the resemblance between “Not a Protest Song” and Simone’s “Four Women” may have eluded some in the audience, but it was inescapable upon further reflection. Jordan initiated the righteous arrangement and had a deeply affecting bass solo before Marie’s final refrain. Musically, the most adventurous cut was Grace Slick’s “White Rabbit,” tucked into the program right before “Drift Away.” Freer and fleeter than “Shenandoah,” the “Rabbit” arrangement had Bales reaching down into the piano’s strings at the beginning while Marie emitted weird, disjointed vocalese. Gradually, the two evolved into regular 4/4 time and Slick’s lyric, but the kaleidoscopic nature of the chart persisted after Marie and Bales synchronized. In all, six of the 10 numbers on Marie’s set list haven’t been issued on disc, a hopeful harbinger that a new CD is nearing the assembly line. “Shenandoah” and “White Rabbit” will be major additions to Marie’s canon, and her fans will certainly savor the “Imagination” medley and “Drift Away” if they’re included in the package. “Serenity Prayer”? Not so much. The remaining song, Dave and Iola Brubeck’s “Strange Meadowlark,” had the audience clapping rhythmically to Bales’ blues-drenched solo. The Brubecks and the critics will likely have a similar reaction once Marie and her new label bring this version to market. Photo by William Struhs true 11252 2009-06-15T19:27:37-04:00 false 24927 true 43 2009-06-15T00:00:00-04:00 2009-06-15T00:00:00-04:00 June 5 at Gaillard Municipal Auditorium, Charleston, S.C.

The provocative vocalist performs unreleased material at South Carolina festival

49067 2009-07-14T12:29:10-04:00

4 The Umbria Jazz organization is known for its big festival in Perugia, Italy (every July since 1973) and its New Year’s festival in Orvieto. But Carlo Pagnotta’s jazz empire also sponsors events in places like Australia and Macedonia and Japan and New York. In early May, Umbria Jazz presented four recitals on the stately Neo-Georgian premises of the Italian Cultural Institute on Park Avenue in Manhattan. Pianists Danilo Rea and Enrico Pieranunzi played solo concerts on May 5 and 6, respectively. On May 7 and 8, Roberta Gambarini sang, accompanied by pianist Renato Sellani and bassist Neil Swainson. The appearance of Rea was much anticipated because, of the three most important living Italian jazz pianists (Stefano Bollani and Pieranunzi are the others), he has received the least exposure in the United States. Whereas Bollani and Pieranunzi record for labels with international distribution (ECM and CAM Jazz) and have played often in the United States, Rea records for small independent Italian labels and travels infrequently outside of Europe. But what he did at the Italian Cultural Institute on May 5 is something only Danilo Rea can do. The closest comparison may be Keith Jarrett. Solo concerts by both Jarrett and Rea are all about the relationship between a master pianist and a keyboard, and the exhilarating creativity that can occur when that relationship is fully surrendered to the moment. Like Jarrett, Rea erects vast spontaneous improvised solo piano suites. Like Jarrett, Rea acknowledges preexisting music in the course of his real-time free inventions. The difference is how they use “standards.” Jarrett’s solo concerts are usually entirely improvised, while with his trio he “plays” tunes from the Great American Songbook, however radically and discursively. Rea does not “play” standards; he embeds them (or, more often, fragments of them) into his improvised solo performances. And for Rea, standards might be songs by Joni Mitchell or Gershwin, but are more likely to come from the operas and popular songs of Italy. At the Italian Cultural Institute, he began with a ringing portrayal of the aria “Nessun Dorma” (“No One Shall Sleep”), from Puccini’s <em>Turandot</em>. But it quickly evaporated and was replaced by a distantly related Rea interlude that became Gino Paoli’s “Senza Fine” (“Without End”), a pop hit in Italy in 1961. What is unique about Rea is how his monumental improvisations flow naturally and seamlessly into and out of the compositions of others and make a new statement. (He even landed, for 16 bars or so, on “Something’s Coming” from <em>West Side Story</em>.) What he plays has nothing to do with a “medley.” Songs emerge in the flow as allusions, as objective correlatives, as memories glimpsed in the unfolding of a highly personal creative process. An American audience might not recognize an intermezzo from Pietro Mascagni’s <em>Cavalleria Rusticana</em> or a popular song by Fabrizio de André, “La Canzone di Marinella,” or even a theme by Ennio Morricone from the film <em>The Mission</em>. But in every case it is apparent when Rea has arrived at one of his markers, and when he has broken free again. He ties everything together with proprietary branch logic. It is a design imagined one time only. It includes startling dynamic swings from pianissimo to fortissimo and back again, and a huge range of tempos and moods. Sometimes the passion of the search leads him to hammer and sweep across the keyboard, yet even such moments resolve in lyricism, which is Rea’s deepest loyalty. Improvised music like Rea’s requires creativity on the part of the listener. Most Rea recordings are not easy or inexpensive to obtain in the United States. One that approximates the experience of a live Rea solo concert is <em>Lirico</em>, on the respected Italian label Egea. It is available for 14 euros at <a href=http://www.jazzos.com>Jazzos</a>, and U.S. orders get a 15% discount. true 209 2009-05-11T21:18:03-04:00 false 24821 true 43 2009-05-11T00:00:00-04:00 2009-05-11T00:00:00-04:00 May 5 at the Italian Cultural Institute, Park Avenue, Manhattan

A little-known Italian master makes his mark

2009-06-15T19:32:14-04:00

4 Fifteen years after the end of apartheid, Cape Town, South Africa continues to operate in dichotomies. Cosmopolitan waterfront property flush with shops, swank hotels and luxury car dealerships provides posh distractions from miles of scrapheap townships; the coarse mountain landscapes, between which lie some of the best wineries on the planet, are indescribably beautiful distractions from the myriad problems affecting the poor communities—the AIDS pandemic, crime and rampant unemployment, to name a few. A dual economy furnishes tourists—even Americans—with an exceedingly generous exchange rate. The 10th anniversary edition of the Cape Town International Jazz Festival, held April 3 and 4 in and around the impressive Cape Town International Convention Centre, also worked in stark contrasts. Moments of hearty swing and heady ensemble cohesion juxtaposed pop and some unabashedly smooth fare falling under the umbrella of “African jazz,” a term that uses the “j” word to connote specific cross-pollinations like <em>marabi</em>, <em>mbaqanga</em> and <em>kwela</em> (à la “Latin jazz”) but is more often a catchall. At a press conference, the genre’s Grand Poobah, Hugh Masekela, argued that “South African music” might be a more appropriate locution. (“The name ‘jazz’ has been used loosely, and has been imposed on every kind of music that is not classical or religious,” he said.) At that same press conference series, a festival producer offered a sentiment to make Stanley Crouch brawl: “Jazz crossed the Atlantic and now it’s coming back to where it started.” As one American colleague pithily observed, where’s Wynton when you need him? But nomenclature be damned: This fest was fun, organized, well produced and solvent—a sellout for the fifth consecutive year, in fact. (Going against the grain of worldwide economics, organizers plan to expand and sponsor fests throughout the continent. Their reasoning? “When things are tough, we party.”) The Convention Centre itself impressed, a spotless if sterile multi-venue complex with areas designated for close listening, goodtime revelry and everything in between. It even included space for a photo exhibit on Miriam Makeba, the vocal matriarch who passed in 2008. Where many festivals promise new discoveries, Cape Town offered an alternate universe, with edges sharp (the flautist Magic Malik, who worked in cryptic, cinematic Eurojazz cool) and dull (the Stylistics, whose performance evoked evening PBS programming). The swift jaunts between theaters and outdoor stages exacerbated the urge to check everything out, and gave even the indoor theaters a constant feel of coming and going—fine if you’re the one doing the venue-hopping, not so fine if you’re looking to achieve a Village Vanguard level of meditation. The most party hearty area was Bassline, an outdoor setup featuring hip-hop and electronic acts that eschewed hip-<em>pop</em> and crunk in favor of a transcultural scope, jazzlike suavity and melds of turntables, samplers and live instrumentation. Pete Philly, an Amsterdam-raised MC who embodied confidence and intelligence, worked alongside Perquisite, a beatmaker who doubles on cello. Jazzers-turned-electronica-duo Goldfish combined house urgency with live sax and upright bass. Saxophonist Rus Nerwich, a South African Jew whose body of work includes jazz interpretations of Holocaust-era ghetto folksongs, presented a genre-swapping large ensemble called the Collective Imagination. Mos Def, aided by Robert Glasper’s Experiment band, recasted John Coltrane’s “A Love Supreme” mantra for a heretical extended chant: “A love supreme/A sound supreme/A vibe supreme.” On the other outdoor stage, live funk was delivered in varying degrees of tenacity, with Shakatak, who are as mawkish as they were in 1985, and Incognito’s surprisingly gutsy live sound. All those contemporary fusions seemed forced compared to the Glasper Experiment’s own set on the more serious-minded Molelelekwa stage, where the Blue Note keyboardist and his NYC comrades turned DJ culture into a live-band affair, adding jazz-earned chops and fusion’s electricity and expansiveness. After a delayed start and some messy sound out of the gate, a lengthy first jam interpolated Chick Corea’s “Paint the World” and Herbie’s “Butterfly” after twisting shades of the Headhunters and Weather Report into “Fuck the Police”—not the N.W.A. tune (that one uses “tha”), but the single by late producer J Dilla, a lodestar figure for Glasper and hip-hop’s crate-digging left-field. Filling out the band was Chris Dave, a drummer who divided his sound among Tony Williams, Buddy Miles and hip-hop’s <em>boom-bap</em>; Casey Benjamin, a saxophonist who also played keytar and vocoder (too much by set’s end); and electric bassist Derrick Hodge. In addition to Glasper, the producers gathered a solid cross-section of American talent, even if another A-list working band (or two) wouldn’t have hurt. Dianne Reeves, who might be scientifically incapable of anything less than an august performance, commanded a packed house at the college-theater-sized Rosies venue, moving from a faithful rendition of “Solitude” through a cogent, virtuosic revision of “A Child Is Born” and the convincing folk-blues “Today Will Be a Good Day.” On the very funky “Testify,” the dazzlingly versatile guitarist Romero Lubambo proved he’s internalized not only the lessons of Jobim and Gilberto, Hall and Burrell, but also those of Jimmy Nolen and Steve Cropper. Per usual, Reeves’ apex came not during her numbers but between them, with a rubato scat soliloquy that turned into a sung narrative about meeting Nelson Mandela. The crowd, already excitable, hit a fever pitch. Al Foster was on hand with his working quartet featuring Eli Degibri, an artfully authoritative tenorist who developed under another Miles Davis alum, Herbie Hancock. Foster reined in his own technique beautifully, toying with swing in a way that was kinetic but never overpowering. His group was clearly inspired, even if some choices in repertoire—“So What”—weren’t. Anticipation mounted throughout the week for trumpeter and flugelhorn player Hugh Masekela’s 70th birthday performance on the large arena stage Kippies. Over the noisy din of thousands of chattering and cheering Africans, Masekela worked his horn, handheld percussion and the audience tirelessly, turning his event into an impassioned communal milestone. While he is capable of blowing straightahead, Masekela continues to explore his amalgam of worldbeat and R&B with polite choruses of bright flugelhorn. There’s an irony underneath Masekela’s music and so much Cape jazz: It’s a consistently jubilant, lilting music with few changes, often buffed to a smooth-jazz luster, but it streamlines pertinent dialogue regarding domestic issues, spirituality, national and continental pride and politics. “Unlike the United States where they sing mostly about love, we sing in Africa about the quality of our lives,” Masekela said at his press conference, the most fearless and insightful of all the media events. During his time with the press, Masekela, who is viewed, like many of Africa’s cultural exports, as a combination artist-sage-politician-ambassador, stressed the importance of SA artists not relying on governmental support. “To a certain extent,” he said, “the political community [in many African countries] fears the arts because it’s always a commentary on the quality of our lives.” He was also adamant about black South Africans not taking their freedom for granted. “After we became free, the world figured, well, they’re OK, and they forgot about us. But we forgot about us, too,” said Masekela. “We didn’t continue with the same kind of energy, and we expected miracles to come out of our freedom. And we became complacent. My warning word, actually, to the South African communities is … if you’re not vigilant about your freedom … they will take it away from you while you are sleeping. And in the morning when you wake up, you will find yourself right back where you were before you were free. … If you don’t believe what I’ve said, look at Zimbabwe and you’ll see what I mean.” Just don’t expect that brand of well-placed vitriol in the sonics of his music. In historical and cultural contexts, his birthday performance, which included songs from his new album, <em>Phola</em> (Four Quarters), was astounding. Watching Masekela and thousands of men and women who suffered under apartheid chant “I’m an African!” is an indelible memory. But for the jazzhead in search of improvisational furor, or anything beyond vamps, a concurrent set featuring Dave Liebman’s quartet was too tempting. Liebman’s performance, a polar opposite of Masekela’s in its concentrated intensity, was the closest this festival got to a modern jazz ideal. “Dimi and the Blue Men,” which Liebman explained was written after a 60th birthday trip to the Sahara, presented probably the keenest meeting of postbop and world elements heard all weekend. Closing interpretations of Ornette (“Lonely Woman”) and Trane (“India”) reiterated how comprehensively he knows that turf. Throughout, guitarist Vic Juris’ hard angles, flinty tone and ambient volume swells proved how being hip and an active clinician are not mutually exclusive. (You could say the same for Liebman.) Not to say all the African artists were incapable of jazz you might witness in an American club; they often were. The drummer Maurice Gawronsky led a hard-swinging unit in a hard- and postbop mold, featuring a young powerhouse trumpeter, Feya Faku, who must really dig Freddie Hubbard. Saxophonist McCoy Mrubata, who was celebrating his 50th birthday, took to mighty modal flight; Mrubata’s trumpeter, Marcus Wyatt, evoked Dave Douglas, and his guitarist, Louis Mhlanga, combined an Afropop lexicon with conventional funk and Hendrix-isms (like an extended backward-tracked solo). The loop-happy bassist/leader Carlo Mombelli and his Prisoners of Strange played intriguing if self-consciously esoteric avant-groove music. On a “jazz safari” through the middleclass township of Bridgetown, the composer/guitarist Mac McKenzie played Bach and speedy chord-melody arrangements of standards on a hollowbody. McKenzie, a wiry, spirited man who exudes a zany sort of charisma, proved as ambitious a conceptualist as anyone who played the festival. (This township music tour, hosted by a company called Coffeebeans Routes, was unrelated to the fest and paralleled the blues tours of Mississippi—an earnest quest for “authenticity.”) He is currently composing for string quartet and previously fronted the Genuines, an ’80s-era punk act that imagines Bad Brains playing traditional South African <em>goema</em> music. Dig this <a href=http://www.coffeebeans.co.za/music/genuines_goema.mp3>MP3</a>: They’re a curiosity-seeking hipster’s dream. Another guitarist stunned early on at the festival, and while he probably isn’t capable of McKenzie’s Joe Pass-ish picking, he made for this writer’s highlight. Dr. Philip Malombo Tabane, whom world-music types might recall from a Nonesuch release in the late ’80s, was at once razor sharp and rustic, combining traditional African melodicism with the showmanship of R&B and rock ’n’ roll and the scribble-scrabble runs of jazz guitar’s out-est free improvisers. Wearing snakeskin trousers, he manhandled his Gibson hollowbody with an insatiable sense of discovery, coaxing sounds by hitting the strings with a drumstick, wiping them with his sleeve, and placing the guitar directly on the stage and attacking it with either his foot or like a pianist at a keyboard. His set was full of composed themes with elastic forms that expanded and contracted whenever he wanted them to. In the tradition of Chuck Berry or John Lee Hooker or Dylan, Tabane’s accompaniment—drummer Thanbang Tabane Malombo, percussionist Given Mphago and electric bassist Zakhele Ntuli—simply followed his whims. His Blood Ulmer-esque atonal assaults lasted however long he liked. He returned to lovely, uncluttered motifs whenever the mood struck him. Even if it wasn’t jazz proper, it was certainly a sound of surprise. <strong>HOW TO GET THERE</strong> South African Airways: Visit <A HREF=http://www.flysaa.com>flysaa.com</a> for schedules to Cape Town and Johannesburg. true 292 2009-05-08T18:49:08-04:00 false 24816 true 43 2009-05-08T00:00:00-04:00 2009-05-08T00:00:00-04:00 Cape Town International Convention Centre, Cape Town, South Africa, April 3-4, 2009

A diverse array of sounds in an equally eclectic and beautiful city

2009-05-12T09:45:56-04:00

4 This <em>Perspectives</em> series, held April 26-29 at Carnegie Hall’s Zankel Hall and Stern Auditorium, showcased Indian tabla drum virtuoso Zakir Hussain in four diverse settings. “I conceived of this series as moving from the traditional into the new, from where I’ve begun to where I’m heading,” said Hussain in the program notes. Renowned for his versatility in collaborating with everyone from John McLaughlin (in Shakti and Remember Shakti) to George Harrison to Pharoah Sanders, Jack Bruce, Bill Laswell, Henry Kaiser, Yo-Yo Ma, the Kronos Quartet and Mickey Hart of the Grateful Dead, Hussain has continually pushed the envelope on his instrument while remaining indelibly tied to the North Indian classical tradition. He celebrated both aspects of his playing in these four stunning concerts. Opening night at Zankel Hall paired Hussain with Pandit Shivkumar Sharma, India’s greatest living exponent of the <em>santoor</em>, a Kashmiri folk instrument that has 86 strings and is played like a hammered dulcimer. Together they created vibrant, mesmerizing ragas and <em>talas</em> that developed slowly and eloquently, gradually building to ecstatic peaks of dazzling virtuosity. Night two brought the Masters of Percussion featuring Hussain’s former Shakti bandmate Thetakudi Harihara “Vikku” Vinayakram on <em>ghatam</em> (or clay pot), Giovanni Hidalgo on congas and Steve Smith on drum kit. Here the nuance and eloquence of the previous night gave way to sheer fireworks between the four percussionists, each of whom is also a bit of a showman as well as a world renowned virtuoso. Hussain opened the proceedings with an engaging solo presentation in which he thrilled the audience with the rhythmic intricacies and tonal possibilities of his remarkable tabla playing while also demonstrating his adeptness at <em>konokol</em>, a South Indian vocal technique similar to scatting that expresses a system of rhythms through speech. To illustrate the conversational aspect of konokol singing, Hussain cleverly provided a narrative of a jealous woman confronting her boyfriend/husband about his indiscretions, then portrayed both sides of the argument in the standard syllables of konokol. The audience was able to better understand the rapid-fire call-and-response nature of konokol singing after being presented with Hussain’s down-home example. Smith, a one-time drummer for the rock supergroup Journey and founder of the world-class fusion band Vital Information, as well as a sideman in Steps Ahead, demonstrated his own adeptness with konokol singing (with a head set microphone) while simultaneously playing the rhythms in unison on the kit. Utilizing softer, foam-filled Tala Wands, which he specifically designed for the Vic Firth stick company for playing at low volumes on the kit, he was able to cook on a low flame and blend in beautifully with the dynamic of the group. A longtime student of Indian music, Smith began incorporating bits of konokol into his stage show with Vital Information a couple of years ago. Judging by the impressive command he displayed at this Masters of Percussion concert, he has made huge incremental leaps in his studies of konokol. Hidalgo, the Puerto Rican conga master who has previously played in Dizzy Gillespie’s United Nations Orchestra and with salsa giant Eddie Palmieri, had hands ablur in his dynamic solo presentation with four independently tuned congas. And the 77-year-old Vinayakram nearly stole the show with his energetic approach to playing his bulbous clay pot. With fingernails, palms and fists, Vinayakram explored all of the tonal possibilities of his unique earthen instrument while emphatically tossing his white ponytail from side to side as he played, like a rock guitar hero in the heat of shredding. After each of these solo performances, the four masters returned to the stage in the second set to engage in some fiery, conversational exchanges that culminated in exhilarating trading of eights, then fours, then twos, eliciting a rousing standing ovation from the crowd. On the third night, Hussain joined forces with two kindred spirits and fellow virtuosos, banjoist Béla Fleck and double bassist Edgar Meyer, to premiere as-yet-unnamed material from an upcoming trio recording scheduled for an August release (which also includes a triple concerto with the Detroit Symphony Orchestra). Like the Fly trio (saxophonist Mark Turner, bassist Larry Grenadier, drummer Jeff Ballard), these three profoundly deep musicians can easily shift roles. Meyer might bow beautiful, flowing melodies while Hussain covers bass lines on his deep-toned tabla and Fleck comps on his banjo, or Hussain might play melodically on his tablas on top of ostinatos provided by Fleck and Meyer. This remarkably interactive and contrapuntal trio developed affecting, thoughtfully composed themes in a delicate, almost chamber-like setting that also allowed plenty of room for improvisation. The flood of ideas cascading from Fleck’s banjo seemed limitless. His playing throughout the set was marked by uncanny precision, effortless streams of arpeggios and creative use of harmonics, showing virtually none of the glisses, slurs and pull-off techniques generally associated with the bluegrass instrument. But then, Fleck has long ago gone well beyond the bluegrass genre in his mission to push the envelope on his instrument, whether it’s in his duets with Chick Corea, in collaboration with violinist Mark O’Connor, with his own upstart Flecktones (darlings of the jamband circuit) or his recent collaborations with master kora, <em>djembe</em> and </em>kalimba players from Africa on the new <em>Throw Down Your Heart</em> (Rounder Records). Thoroughly delightful, this unlikely triumvirate of Fleck, Meyer and Hussain has come up with a winning formula that should convert legions of new fans when they go out on tour later this year. For Hussain’s finale, held on the 90th anniversary of his famous father’s birth (Indian tabla master Ustad Alla Rakha, who passed away in 2000), the <em>Perspectives</em> series moved from the more intimate and acoustically perfect Zankel Hall to the cavernous and more acoustically problematic Stern Auditorium. And problems ensued from the outset with Sangam, the extraordinary trio featuring Hussain on tablas, Charles Lloyd on saxes and Eric Harland on drums. The three had previously played together at Zankel Hall in a memorable 2006 JVC Jazz Festival appearance. But in Stern Auditorium, a notoriously difficult space for dealing with drums or electric instruments, Harland’s powerful drumming often drowned out Hussain’s brilliantly complex tabla work. At Zankel the previous night, you could hear every tone, every nuance, every fingernail scratch on the head of Hussain’s tablas as if listening to a crystal clear stereo mix with headphones on. That was hardly the case this night in Stern Auditorium. Sound problems aside, Sangam’s set ran the gamut from peaceful meditations to dizzying crescendos with 71-year-old Lloyd, the shamanistic figure on stage decked out in white linen suit for the occasion, alternately blowing on flute, alto sax, tenor sax and <em>tárogató</em> (a Hungarian version of a clarinet). They opened with the drone-oriented “Guman,” with Lloyd exploring an introspective, pastoral theme on piano. At some point Harland, who began playing coloristically on the kit with mallets, walked over to the piano, sat down on the bench beside Lloyd and engaged in some four-handed keyboard work with the renowned saxophonist while Hussain offered some plaintive singing on top. As this opening incantation progressed, Lloyd left the piano to sit at Harland’s drum set. He gently communed with each of the drums, using fingertips instead of sticks, before picking up his flute. Harland then began pedaling a single, droning bass note on piano while aggressively pounding the wooden top of the instrument with his fist, occasionally forearming the keys like a cross between Cecil Taylor and Ray Nitschke. For “Aura,” Harland returned to the kit and commenced playing what looked like a large metal wok while Hussain held down a bass groove on his deep-toned tabla and Lloyd played an impassioned alto sax. And for “Sangam,” Lloyd switched to tenor sax and summoned up an intense late Trane vibe against Harland’s churning 12/8 pulse on drums. Surprise guest Jason Moran joined the trio for “Tales of Rumi” (with Lloyd on tárogató) and the calming “Ramanujan,” on which Lloyd conjured up a sublime “Dear Lord” vibe. Both pieces also showcased some daring call-and-response between Hussain’s tabla and Moran’s harmonically provocative piano work. Vocalist Shankar Mahadevan, who delivers songs with dramatic, almost theatrical flair, next came out with his Remember Shakti bandmate, mandolin virtuoso U. Shrinivas, to join the group for “Maa,” with Lloyd shadowing Mahadevan’s vocals on alto sax. They ended the set in sublime fashion with “Hymn.” Following that more subdued first set, fireworks flew in the second set with the current members of Remember Shakti (sans John McLaughlin) partaking in a series of extended ragas that showcased the individual members’ staggering virtuosity. Ghatam master Vinayakram, a charter member of Shakti from the ’70s, joined the group on “Naina Roochi.” Then another surprise guest, banjo ace Fleck, joined the crew for spirited renditions of the loose and highly interactive “Shrinivas Jam” and “Kirwani,” both of which involved some incredibly precise, near-telepathic exchanges of eights, then fours, then twos between all the players. They built to a frenzied crescendo on “Radhay Rani,” with 77-year-old school showman Vinayakram nearly upstaging his colleagues. It was a fitting, high-energy ending to an extraordinary set, putting an exclamation point on Hussain’s four-night Carnegie gala. true 21 2009-05-04T12:29:02-04:00 false 24789 true 43 2009-05-04T00:00:00-04:00 2009-05-04T00:00:00-04:00 Charles Lloyd, Bela Fleck and others dazzle in a 4-night series

Charles Lloyd, Bela Fleck and others dazzle in a 4-night series

2009-07-27T13:24:52-04:00