4 There is immense power and careful logic in the music of Thelonious Sphere Monk. But you might have such a good time listening to it that you might not even notice. That, of course, would be your problem, not his. Monk was an architect of feeling. His tunes were slick, inhabitable little rooms that warmed the heart with their odd angles and bright colors. Somehow he knew exactly how to make you feel good—and I mean <I>exactly</I>, as if it were medicine, or gastronomy, or massage, or feng shui. The idea that music that feels good might require craft, discipline and hard work runs contrary to prevailing wisdom about Monk. Many people still harbor a false and uncharitable image of an untutored, unpolished, intuitive savant. But close attention to Monk’s music reveals the result of decades of purposeful experimentation, discovery and refinement. The groove was paramount: “When you’re swinging, swing some more,” he’d say. For this very reason, his critically maligned Columbia years are actually my favorite; the groove is so deep, anything seems possible. Monk’s sense of time alone was legendary. He could play with or against the beat but his inner pulse was always strong and centered. The complex dialogue between his two hands on the stride-piano selections demonstrates this, as do his microexpressive treatments of standards. And the rhythmic permutations of “Straight, No Chaser” or “Evidence” or “Criss Cross” or even “Jackie-Ing” reveal a mischievous rigor, grounded in a lifetime of polyrhythmic experience. And you can’t ignore his shocking sonorities, the economy and clarity of his melodies, the specificity and care lavished on every last detail. His was an elemental approach to composition: He worked not with pre-given notions of melody, rhythm and harmony, but with the fundamentals of sound, time and perception. Everyone knows that Monk composed brilliant, beloved songs, but less noticed is how well Monk could orchestrate and arrange. “Deceptively simple,” goes one accurate description of how shrewdly he would guide your ear. Never resorting to obvious ensemble strategies, he found a surprising variety of timbres and combinations within the small-group format to keep the listener engaged. Even in a quartet or quintet, he would trick you into hearing a continuous melody from a hocketed composite of multiple instruments. Sometimes he’d flip things around and the horns would comp for the piano. Or he would use a second horn for fleeting, subtle shading of a melody—“so smooth you probably missed it,” to borrow an old Q-Tip lyric. At the piano, Monk had his favorite sounds—to call them mere “voicings” or “chords” misses the point. Every one is a discovery, a hard-won jewel, found deep in some terrain where no one else was looking. With every sound he took a stand, defying you with its funk, throwing down the gauntlet with each astonishing, pungent invention. You wonder why more people don’t make discoveries like this, until you realize how difficult it is. These chord-jewels of his were palpable, physical objects. By this I mean that they took advantage of the physics of sound; they were resonant. Sympathetic vibrations could fill in the space that a lesser pianist would stuff with more notes. Spreading out voices in a chord across multiple octaves allows each pitch to resound. Cecil Taylor once spoke in reverential tones of Monk’s “different combinations of notes in different registers,” as if that quality were somehow the key to it all. And indeed, this is how sound works: Overtones of a low fundamental start out sparsely in the lower octaves, and become gradually denser as you climb up to the high register. Monk displayed intimate knowledge of this physical law, and he put it to the test. The minor seventh and the flatted fifth, two of Monk’s most often-used extensions, are the piano’s versions of the seventh and eleventh partials of the harmonic series, respectively. (Remember, the ubiquity of the flatted fifth in jazz could arguably be attributed to Monk himself.) He would also combine the minor and major seventh of a chord (a.k.a. the seventh and fifteenth partials), the natural and flat ninths (i.e., the ninth and seventeenth partials) and other “forbidden” combinations that actually sound good and make physical sense. A close study of Monk’s playing reveals this spectral quality of his chords, this clear perception of higher harmonics in the sound of the piano. In order to activate these higher partials, he had to play with a little more force than the average pianist, to get the instrument ringing and shaking. In this sense harmony and tone were integrated concepts. This is why I call them “sounds” rather than “chords”; they are not theoretical constructs but vibratory experiences—actual, specific sensations—and they feel good. When Monk played someone else’s music, he would recast it in this sonic language. His versions were the result of painstaking labor. Each harmony was seemingly rebuilt from scratch, chosen with care and worked over, and every ornament, filigree, run and fill carefully considered. And yet the playing was also full of risk. You can’t help but notice the <I>liveness</I> of it, the sense of possibility and discovery, the chances taken and the rewards reaped. That risk lies somewhere in the dialogue between rhythm and improvisation—in the sustained buoyancy of pulse that is his signature, and in the real-time melodic invention that forms a counterpoint to it. Monk’s heroic balancing act of groove and self-expression—the sheer human drama of it—is, for me, his most profound legacy. But in truth there is an endless amount to learn from Monk. I always keep his music close by, and I think about him every day. I hope you will, too. <I>Vijay Iyer is a pianist and composer based in New York. His most recent album is Historicity (ACT). Visit him online at www.vijay-iyer.com</I>. true 19868 2009-12-13T22:28:17-05:00 false 25443 179 true 107 2010-01-01T00:00:00-05:00

Pianist Vijay Iyer examines the modern-day legacy of Thelonious Monk

13203 2009-12-18T12:05:54-05:00

4 In 1956 Herbie Nichols wrote, “Sometimes I burst into laughter when I think of what the future jazzists will be able to accomplish,” citing Hector Villa-Lobos, Igor Stravinsky, Paul Hindemith, Dimitri Shostakovich, Walter Piston and Béla Bartók as his own inspirations. I first read the liner notes to The Prophetic Herbie Nichols as a teenager, and I wondered then if I might be able to participate in this “future.” Nichols must have smiled the very next year when Gunther Schuller, Milton Babbitt, Harold Shapero, George Russell, Charles Mingus and Jimmy Giuffre recorded Modern Jazz Concert, the first full-fledged combination of European high-modernism and American jazz. The name “Third Stream” was coined by Schuller to describe this new music. In the late ’50s and early ’60s, John Lewis and the MJQ, Ornette Coleman, Eric Dolphy, Bill Evans and other great jazz musicians participated on canonical Third Stream recordings. I like those records a lot, but the limitation of the Third Stream movement was actually foreshadowed by Nichols himself in those same liner notes. Nichols name-drops Stravinsky, et al., but he is actually more passionate about how Denzil Best, Art Blakey and Max Roach get the drums to “sound” right for jazz. None of the late ’50s/early ’60s Third Stream music interfaces with drummers on any level but that of a cool handshake. To be fair, serious drumming would have interfered with an understandable need to be careful with the charts. That’s problem A: How do you fit real, grooving drumming into the context of harmonically advanced and rhythmically disjunct modern classical music? The next question is the one of improvising within the style. Bob Brookmeyer always correctly complains about how the style of his sophisticated big-band music is abandoned when the soloist starts improvising. And Brookmeyer’s music, while harmonically advanced, is still tonal jazz, not 12-tone or even really atonal. That’s problem B: How do you bridge the gulf harmonically between really modernist classical music and what a normal jazz musician can improvise? An important critical exploration of this topic is “Jazz and Classical Music: To the Third Stream and Beyond” by Terry Teachout in The Oxford Companion to Jazz. With the non-modernist exception of Gil Evans and Miles Davis on Sketches of Spain, Teachout concludes that the hybrids are usually more interesting than successful. I think he’s more or less right, at least as far as the modernist canon goes. (Jazz-classical blends like Donald Lambert’s version of Grieg’s “Anitra’s Dance,” Uri Caine’s Mahler or any piece composed by John Lewis are in another non-modernist category.) I have heard excellent Stravinsky and Webern performances by Dave Douglas and Bartók successfully covered by Richie Beirach and others—but almost never with grooving drums. And without drums, would a jazz musician really want to play it every day? I hardly know all the examples. One to be admired is saxophonist Patrick Zimmerli, whose underrated 1990s output as a composer featured 12-tone designs of an intricacy unrivaled in the history of improvised music. His piece “The Paw” won the first-ever Thelonious Monk composition competition in 1993 adjudicated by Herbie Hancock. There was no question of Zimmerli playing with a house band: He had to fly his well-rehearsed group of pianist Kevin Hays, bassist Larry Grenadier and fiery drummer Tom Rainey down to play it. The record they made must come out someday. I worked with Zimmerli in the mid-’90s. One piece he showed me was the two-page “Semi-Simple Variations” of Milton Babbitt, which became our sign-off theme when we played a duo gig. Last year I was invited to perform at the release party for The Rest Is Noise: Listening to the Twentieth Century, the recent book by New Yorker critic Alex Ross. I played pieces by Ives, Schoenberg, Bartók, Shostakovich, Webern, Gershwin, Jelly Roll Morton and, yes, Milton Babbitt’s “Semi-Simple Variations.” To get ready, I had to practice this repertoire furiously while on the road with The Bad Plus. One day at soundcheck, Dave King started playing drums along to “Semi-Simple Variations.” It actually sounded—surprisingly—not so bad. Twelve-tone funk? Well, that’s not really so far from, say, Tim Berne’s world. Reid Anderson joined us and we played it some more. With bass added, it seemed totally legit. Huh. Could we learn some other modernist classical pieces to include on For All I Care, our new record of covers with vocalist Wendy Lewis? Maybe if we added real drums and were careful about how much we improvised we could make them work. Years ago, Reid’s answering machine featured the striking slow movement from Stravinsky’s Apollon Musagete. (After leaving messages for Reid a few times, I got the score and recording.) And what about my absolute modernist hero, György Ligeti? One of his piano etudes, “Fém,” is based on an advanced African Pygmy rhythm, so adding drums would be easy, right? (Actually, this was the hardest one of the three to learn.) This is how we made the arrangements: We love the melody of Stravinsky’s “Variation d’Apollo” so much that we wanted to play it twice as long as the original. And why bother improvising when there is already such supreme beauty to enjoy? One of TBP’s signature styles is an acoustic version of modern electronica (we cover “Flim” by Aphex Twin). We tried infusing “Variation d’Apollo” with our “homemade electronica” feel, and it was a success. “Fém” is an example of György Ligeti combining the maniacal excess of Conon Nancarrow and the rhythmic folklore of the Pygmies to make a new kind of piano etude. Reid and I have too much respect for the authenticity of Ligeti’s sophisticated atonal harmonic language to improvise on it. It is simply a feature for Dave, including drum breaks. On one of our versions of Babbitt’s “Semi-Simple Variations,” we play it completely straight, but on the longer version we broke down and improvised a little bit. It sounds good, but sadly it is not in the 12-tone language. Someday there will be musicians comfortable improvising together in the pure 12-tone language, and on that day, somewhere, Herbie Nichols will laugh. true 11327 2009-02-24T16:24:59-05:00 false 21260 137 true 107 2009-03-01T00:00:00-05:00 The Bad Plus’ pianist examines the classical-jazz paradox

The Bad Plus’ pianist examines the classical-jazz paradox

43215 2009-04-13T09:04:44-04:00

4 A few decades ago, when jazz started becoming known as “America’s classical music,” the theory ran that a shift in the public’s perception of the music would help put the idiom on the road to the kind of legitimization signified by institutional awareness and support. At the time it was a heady proposition, but there’s no denying that all these years later the idiom’s public face has changed both for better and worse, as a great many musicians have put jazz’s original populism behind them and moved successfully from clubs and recording studios into academia. One of the signs that jazz’s image makeover has taken hold arrives each fall with the speculation surrounding the announcement of the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation’s annual fellowships. Several members of the jazz community have been awarded the $500,000 “genius” grant since Max Roach was first tapped in 1988, an addition that introduced jazz-based creativity into an interdisciplinary field of innovative biologists, mathematicians, community organizers and scholars like Susan Sontag. At first, the jazz awardees were similarly unimpeachable—movers and shakers who, like Roach, had spent entire careers staring down controversy while irrevocably changing the face of the idiom (Cecil Taylor, Ornette Coleman, Stanley Crouch). As the new millennium approached, however, the seeming arbitrariness of some picks began to seem more like provocations themselves. For every George E. Lewis—the trombonist whose 2002 grant was a harbinger of the scholarship he now presides over as director of Columbia University’s Center for Jazz Studies—there were headscratchers like tenor saxophonist Ken Vandermark and pianist Reginald Robinson, awardees whose genius designations (in 1999 and 2004, respectively) sent a collective “Huh?” rippling through the jazz world. In selecting this year’s fellow, Marsalis Music alto saxist Miguel Zenón, the foundation has once again wandered into questionable territory—which isn’t to say that the Puerto Rico-bred journeyman’s abilities as a musician and composer are suspect. At 31, the Berklee grad has been getting some of the biggest jobs on the international jazz circuit, as evidenced by his standout role in bands such as the SFJAZZ Collective, Guillermo Klein’s Los Guachos and Charlie Haden’s Liberation Music Orchestra and Land of the Sun ensemble. But interestingly enough, Zenón’s sideman work is not mentioned in the bio/citation posted on the MacArthur Foundation’s Web site. Rather, it is as a one-of-a-kind conceptualist, a musician “who is expanding the boundaries of Latin and jazz music” that he was chosen—an exaggeration instantly betrayed by the facts on the ground. It is indeed true that Zenón’s music forgoes “the Afro-Caribbean sound that characterizes most Latin jazz” [translation: less congas], but it takes little more than a passing listen to hear that his synthesis of postbop and island hillbilly fare (called la música jíbara or jíbaro music) isn’t terribly unique. In several places, Jíbaro, Zenón’s 2005 disc, recalls the music of Wayne Shorter, a living legend whose genius credentials are indisputable. My guess is that Zenón’s selection is an attempt to recognize jazz’s continued vitality, by lauding a youthful up-and-comer who clearly has a bright career ahead of him. Although the foundation places no restrictions on the grant’s use, the great hope is that the windfall, doled out over five years, will be the catalyst that furthers each recipient’s development. But even with that criterion in mind, it’s hard not to see Zenón’s award as premature, especially since jazz is an idiom where genius has been as well-documented as it has been neglected and overlooked. Put another way, the historic record suggests that it might take more than a cash infusion to turn Zenón (or any musician of his generation, for that matter) into someone as influential as, say, Shorter. By the age of 31, the elder statesman had made his way into one of most influential quintets in jazz history—after he’d done time as music director of Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers and written pieces like “United” and “Lester Left Town.” Interestingly enough, my first thoughts upon receiving the news about Zenón’s award ran elsewhere, to the seemingly tireless efforts of his sometime employer, Charlie Haden. It’s hard to imagine a living musician more deserving of the genius title. The bassist’s big break came while working with a future MacArthur fellow (Coleman), and in the meantime his work has been so varied and high-caliber that calling him a visionary is almost an understatement. Most startlingly, the public’s general indifference to jazz has not only left him unfazed, but has also inspired him to dream up accessible projects that do not compromise the groundbreaking principles he cut his teeth on. If there’s any hope for Zenón to make good on the foundation’s largesse, it will undoubtedly come from close proximity to a true master. true 11245 2008-12-10T13:50:32-05:00 false 20902 129 200812 true 107 2008-12-01T00:00:00-05:00

A few decades ago, when jazz started becoming known as “America’s classical music,” the theory ran that a shift in the public’s perception of the music would help put the idiom on the road to the kind of legitimization signified by institutional awareness and support. At the time it was a heady proposition, but there’s no denying that all these years later the idiom’s public face has changed both for better and worse, as a great many musicians have put jazz’s original populism behind them and moved successfully from clubs and recording studios into academia. One of the signs that jazz’s image makeover has taken hold arrives each fall with the speculation surrounding the announcement of the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation’s annual fellowships. Several members of the jazz community have been awarded the $500,000 “genius” grant since Max Roach was first tapped in 1988, an addition that introduced jazz-based creativity into an interdisciplinary field of innovative biologists, mathematicians, community organizers and scholars like Susan Sontag. At first, the jazz awardees were similarly unimpeachable—movers and shakers who, like Roach, had spent entire careers staring down controversy while irrevocably changing the face of the idiom (Cecil Taylor, Ornette Coleman, Stanley Crouch). As the new millennium approached, however, the seeming arbitrariness of some picks began to seem more like provocations themselves. For every George E. Lewis—the trombonist whose 2002 grant was a harbinger of the scholarship he now presides over as director of Columbia University’s Center for Jazz Studies—there were headscratchers like tenor saxophonist Ken Vandermark...

2009-03-02T00:28:05-05:00

4 Saxophonist Tim Ries has a song called “What Happened to Ya?” with lyrics that cite a lack of political resolve among the aging ’60s generation. Some would extend this critique to the jazz community itself, arguing that protest jazz—what Archie Shepp once called “fire music”—has fallen by the wayside, and today’s musicians are as disengaged as anyone else. A close look at jazz expression in the Bush era reveals this to be false. Appearing late last year in Philadelphia, the cradle of liberty, Ries prefaced his song with an admonition: “We’re in dire straits in this country.” Not only is he far from alone in that view; he’s far from unusual in stating it publicly through music. Albums released in recent years with a political thrust include Charlie Haden’s Not in Our Name, Doug Wamble’s Bluestate, Bobby Previte’s The Coalition of the Willing, Chris Washburne’s Land of Nod, Ben Allison’s Cowboy Justice, World Saxophone Quartet’s Political Blues, Terence Blanchard’s A Tale of God’s Will (A Requiem for Katrina), Kenny Werner’s Lawn Chair Society, Andrew Rathbun’s Affairs of State, Vinson Valega’s Awake and the Vijay Iyer-Mike Ladd multimedia projects In What Language? and Still Life with Commentator. You could say this is a small percentage of CDs overall, but the list is partial, and today’s politicized mood isn’t evident from recordings alone. When Barack Obama delivered his landmark Philadelphia speech on race, saxophonist Matana Roberts responded on her blog with an impassioned “Dear White America” letter—just one sign of the jazz blogosphere becoming a political as well as a musical arena. The medical travails of saxophonist Andrew D’Angelo and the late bassist Dennis Irwin sparked an outcry (reported in the New York Times by Nate Chinen) over musicians’ lack of access to health insurance. And soon after the 2007 demise of Tonic in downtown Manhattan, a coalition called Rise Up Creative Music and Arts was formed to oppose gentrification and agitate for subsidized performance spaces, art in the schools and affordable musicians’ housing. Pressing practical concerns like these, and the cumulative outrages of the Bush years, have bolstered a view that was put to me pithily in an e-mail from Gregg Mervine, leader of the West Philadelphia Orchestra: “Jazz is people struggling to live and preserve their integrity on the outskirts of the modern world, expressing the cry of horror and injustice that they, unlike the rest, can’t seem to digest.” It’s a feeling widely shared, from the grassroots to the highest rungs of achievement. Pianist Danilo Pérez sums up his still-evolving tenure with the Wayne Shorter Quartet as “eight years of the total opposite of what’s been happening with the government.” Yet in Shorter’s case there’s no overt message; the politics are implicit in the freedom of the music, in keeping with Ralph Ellison’s notion of jazz as democracy. As Shorter recently told me, “I’m trying to do music that echoes the need for human beings to say, ‘Hey, it’s time for us to evolve.’” In the wider pop world, if you look at the influence of will.i.am’s pro-Obama “Yes We Can” video (featuring Herbie Hancock), or the clarifying force of Kanye West’s post-Katrina attack on Bush, or the launch of the Russell Simmons-associated Hip-Hop Team Vote campaign, or the numerous singers and bands (Bruce Springsteen, R.E.M., Arcade Fire, Elvis Costello) who lined up to endorse candidates during primary season, it’s fair to ask: If this is a fearful, defanged, apathetic period in music and the arts, what would an activist period look like? True, we may not be reliving the ’60s, but we’re not in a true political wilderness. And it’s easy to paint the ’60s in romanticized tones. Years ago at the CMJ Music Marathon, singer-songwriter Robyn Hitchcock told a panel that he doesn’t write political lyrics, and someone shouted, “Well, start!” Hitchcock fired back that no one tells him how to direct his creative energies. The exchange spoke to a perennial tension between individual will and communal striving (or coercion), but what struck me most was the heckler’s tacit assumption: that if Hitchcock suddenly started to address politics, he’d say something the heckler wants to hear. The appalling grind of the Bush years has only deepened this idea: that protest comes in one flavor, and artists are doing their jobs if they’re preaching to the choir. It’s also taken for granted that a radical stance is always a progressive one. Amiri Baraka, jazz’s favorite firebrand, argues that Stanley Crouch has “a backwards view politically,” and yet one of them (guess which) boasted to JazzTimes in an @Home profile that he reads Lenin and Mao every day. Who’s backward? For that matter, the last time I visited Sistas’ Place, the Brooklyn jazz club and cultural space, there was a large poster of Zimbabwean tyrant Robert Mugabe on the rear wall. Sistas’ Place has close ideological ties to the December 12 Movement, a fringe group that does Mugabe’s propaganda bidding in the U.S. So here we have a jazz organization aligning itself politically, not to help the beleaguered people of Zimbabwe, but to shill for their oppressors. And no one objects. (The club’s representatives did not respond to a request for comment.) In sum, political engagement in jazz is a great thing, except when it’s not. Jazz may be, at its core, a vital avenue of dissent, but jazzers don’t have privileged access to political wisdom. Critics, when reviewing political work, can do better than to lean on the empty crutch term “thought-provoking.” Of course, the jazz world only mirrors the strengths and weaknesses of the broader left with which it identifies most readily, and this is one of many reasons it’s important to push hard for an Obama presidency. (For one thing, he’s reported to be a jazz devotee since junior high.) Not only could Obama start to clean up Bush’s mess; he could also change the political temperature and help foster a new culture of liberalism. In the creative arts, the vogue for radicalism may never fade. But with effort and luck, come 2009 we all might need to find new licks to play. true 247 2008-07-09T18:21:54-04:00 false 19420 125 200808 true 107 2008-08-01T00:00:00-04:00

Saxophonist Tim Ries has a song called “What Happened to Ya?” with lyrics that cite a lack of political resolve among the aging ’60s generation. Some would extend this critique to the jazz community itself, arguing that protest jazz—what Archie Shepp once called “fire music”—has fallen by the wayside, and today’s musicians are as disengaged as anyone else. A close look at jazz expression in the Bush era reveals this to be false. Appearing late last year in Philadelphia, the cradle of liberty, Ries prefaced his song with an admonition: “We’re in dire straits in this country.” Not only is he far from alone in that view; he’s far from unusual in stating it publicly through music. Albums released in recent years with a political thrust include Charlie Haden’s Not in Our Name, Doug Wamble’s Bluestate, Bobby Previte’s The Coalition of the Willing, Chris Washburne’s Land of Nod, Ben Allison’s Cowboy Justice, World Saxophone Quartet’s Political Blues, Terence Blanchard’s A Tale of God’s Will (A Requiem for Katrina), Kenny Werner’s Lawn Chair Society, Andrew Rathbun’s Affairs of State, Vinson Valega’s Awake and the Vijay Iyer-Mike Ladd multimedia projects In What Language? and Still Life with Commentator. You could say this is a small percentage of CDs overall, but the list is partial, and today’s politicized mood isn’t evident from recordings alone. When Barack Obama delivered his landmark Philadelphia speech on race, saxophonist Matana Roberts responded on her blog with an impassioned “Dear White America” letter—just one sign of the jazz blogosphere becoming a political as well...

2009-03-02T00:27:05-05:00

4 I’m convinced that no genuine success occurs except as a natural expression of the human heart’s search for meaning. Yes, there are plenty of “successful” people who make a lot of money or have achieved high corporate positions, who run organizations or have won elective office, who are clueless when it comes to understanding what life is all about. The fact is, that kind of success is only half of the equation. Our drive for titles and money is too often based on a desperate need to prove ourselves to others, rather than the passion to live a life in a way that draws on our true values and talents, enlarges our spirits, and allows us to be who we need to be to live rich, satisfying lives. For me, jazz is one of the most powerful metaphors I’ve ever found for living an extraordinary life, but that won’t mean much to you unless you understand very clearly how I define the term. Jazz isn’t just the music, it’s the feeling the music gives you. That feeling is the result of an ability to recognize potential in simple things and ordinary situations, and then, through improvisation, conviction and skill, turn that potential into something remarkable. (A gifted jazz musician, for example, can make a complex masterpiece out of a tune as simple as “Mary Had a Little Lamb.”) Jazz is a state of mind in which possibilities for innovation and discovery are revealed to you, and you are able to tap into deep reserves of commitment and passion. Even though I’ve never played a note of music in my life, I think I know what jazz performers feel: They don’t play from a formula or from any conventional wisdom; they take risks, they stretch, they explore, always looking for new opportunities, and always trusting their talents and their instincts to bring them home. I believe that life demands the same ability to trust and improvise. When a jazz artist launches on a solo, he takes a frightening leap of faith. Every note, every phrase, every bit of color and texture he or she brings to the music is a risk that could backfire and make the player look like a fool. He could play himself into a corner. Worse, he could play himself out and find he had nothing to say. It’s a terrifying kind of free fall, but it’s the only reason any real musician plays jazz—to find something new in the music, to find something new in himself. And that is true in every one of our lives. Artists and audiences alike, all of us have moments like this, moments of revelation and insight, epiphanies that seem to stop time, when we remember who we are and what we want our lives to be. In my experience, these moments tend to be brief and elusive. The pressures and distractions of our everyday concerns quickly overtake them. “Practical” considerations call our attention to other things; we lose touch with these moments and spend our days sleepwalking, thinking about the tasks and to-do lists of our lives, mistakenly assuming they are the same thing as life itself. We need to look in the mirror once in a while and remind ourselves of the truth: that we really are alive, man! Our life is happening now! It’s like we’re dreaming and we have all the time in the world. I am convinced that you cannot hope to live a great life, a life that achieves your fullest potential, until you wake up to he fact that life is tangible, immediate and precious. If we don’t embrace the reality that our life is what is taking place in this moment, our life will never be entirely our own. Jazz, my kind of jazz, won’t let you forget that; it won’t let you settle for a life built on conventional standards of achievement or someone else’s definition of success. Jazz for me is a state of mind in which I’m reconnected, with conviction and clarity, to the things that matter most to me. It is a bottomless source of energy and inspiration, that reminds me, in simple human terms, why I need to do what I do, and gives me the will and the stamina to keep doing it, despite setbacks and obstacles. It shows you how to develop the strengths, values, vision and commitment you need to make your most personal dreams come true. It teaches you how to sing the song of your life, and to build a life that is genuinely and successfully your own. At the Manchester Craftsmen’s Guild, we don’t teach students to become artists; we give them experiences that open their minds to the possibility of a fuller, richer life. At the Bidwell Training Center, we don’t put folks on the road to success; we teach them the skills and values that a successful life is made of. The sense of accomplishment and empowerment, those kinds of learning experiences offer our students the first glimpse of what a good life might feel like. That’s the clarity we’re after, that’s the root of making the impossible possible. It’s also the root of greatness. Real success, genuine success, can’t be chosen and chased down. You assemble it, moment by moment, out of the dreams you choose to follow and the values and passions you share. true 10414 2008-06-19T18:51:59-04:00 false 18483 121 200802 true 107 2008-01-01T00:00:00-05:00

I’m convinced that no genuine success occurs except as a natural expression of the human heart’s search for meaning. Yes, there are plenty of “successful” people who make a lot of money or have achieved high corporate positions, who run organizations or have won elective office, who are clueless when it comes to understanding what life is all about. The fact is, that kind of success is only half of the equation. Our drive for titles and money is too often based on a desperate need to prove ourselves to others, rather than the passion to live a life in a way that draws on our true values and talents, enlarges our spirits, and allows us to be who we need to be to live rich, satisfying lives. For me, jazz is one of the most powerful metaphors I’ve ever found for living an extraordinary life, but that won’t mean much to you unless you understand very clearly how I define the term. Jazz isn’t just the music, it’s the feeling the music gives you. That feeling is the result of an ability to recognize potential in simple things and ordinary situations, and then, through improvisation, conviction and skill, turn that potential into something remarkable. (A gifted jazz musician, for example, can make a complex masterpiece out of a tune as simple as “Mary Had a Little Lamb.”) Jazz is a state of mind in which possibilities for innovation and discovery are revealed to you, and you are able to tap into deep reserves of commitment...

2009-03-02T00:26:26-05:00

4 When it comes to jazz legacy, that oft-used and misused l-word, the Monterey Jazz Festival has an unusually bountiful supply. That fact rang clearly in the cool late-night air of the Monterey Fairgrounds arena on the closing Sunday night of its 50th annual festival in September. Sonny Rollins, one of many artists here who were present at the inaugural 1958 festival, served up one of his robust performances, capping off a stellar musical weekend. Earlier that evening, alumni from festival number one included Monterey regular Dave Brubeck, with fellow first-festival visitor Jim Hall sitting in. Elsewhere during the weekend, the ’58 reunion guest list included vocalist Ernestine Anderson and vibraphonist Buddy Montgomery, who revisited the festival where he and his brothers, guitar legend Wes and bassist Monk, launched their career with the group called the Mastersounds. More disarming on the list of ’58 visitors was Ornette Coleman, who had been on a bill with Ben Webster and Coleman Hawkins here, just before he headed to NYC and stunned and awakened the jazz world. Coleman’s set on Sunday afternoon in the arena was an ecstatic festival moment, even though the timing seemed strange, his loose and liberated sound following the tight, polished sound of youthful big bands. Coleman’s current three-bass project, despite the seeming oddity of instrumentation, has an uncanny ability to touch listeners, and beyond just the diehard Ornette-philes. For the record, this set had a stronger impact than Ornette’s appearance with the electric Prime Time in 1994. That billing came soon after current director Tim Jackson took the reins, and vastly upped the then-staggering festival’s artistic credibility. While it claims status as the world’s oldest continuously running jazz festival, Monterey was not the first. Festival founders Jimmy Lyons and sagacious scribe Ralph Steadman lifted the idea from Newport and transplanted it westward to the sprawling and agreeably rustic (or loveably funky) Monterey County Fairgrounds. Newport broke its continuity over the years, but Monterey has prevailed, and various European festivals followed in its shadow beginning in the early ’60s. Personally speaking, the Monterey festival has had a strong emotional pull for me, as a fellow ’58 baby. For Californian jazz lovers, there is the matter of regional, proprietary pride casting a glow over Monterey, clearly the best in the west. Other West Coast festivals have distinguished themselves, including the mighty—though drawn-out and tourist-unfriendly—San Francisco Jazz Festival, celebrating its 25th anniversary this year. Seattle’s Earshot Festival and the Portland Jazz Festival have demonstrated venturesome programming, and the Vancouver Jazz Festival belongs in the upper echelon of the international festival circuit. But Monterey is a beast of its own devising, with tricky, broad parameters and a surprising success rate, especially in the Jacksonian years. When I started making the pilgrimage to Monterey in the mid-’80s, the festival’s musical integrity was sagging. Then, it verged on irrelevancy, at least as an indicator of the myriad facets which make up jazz’s diversity and richness. That changed with the baton passing to Jackson, who has managed the feat of balancing multiple constituencies of audience tastes and the festival’s own heritage, while also carefully folding in sounds from jazz’s cutting edges. This year’s festival opened with a respectful nod to the recently belated Joe Zawinul, as Zawinul’s “In a Silent Way” and “Walk Tall” kicked off the set by the Anthony Wilson Nonet. The irony is that Zawinul felt the chill of Monterey’s indifference for years. His classic band Weather Report never played here, an omission that seems almost culturally criminal. Zawinul finally showed up with the Zawinul Syndicate in 1998, and brandished a defiant, chest-thumping bravado as he faced the crowd at set’s end, standing tall while the curtain closed on him. Too little mention was made this year of the passing of Max Roach, who had last visited here in ’94 with his innovative percussion group M’Boom. Drummer Benny Barth did pay respects to the great, dedicating “Hot House” to Roach. As for the festival’s most poignant set, the honor goes to artist-in-residence Terence Blanchard’s “A Tale of God’s Will (Requiem for Katrina),” with a chamber orchestra fleshing out the eloquent sonic banquet of Blanchard’s tribute to his battered, proud hometown. Veteran L.A.-based big-band leader Gerald Wilson, who first played Monterey in 1963, has been commissioned to write special pieces for the festival. This year’s theme-and-variations model, “Monterey Moods,” is similar to 1997’s “Theme for Monterey.” In this case, Wilson comes from different arrangemental/compositional angles on a simple 10-measure theme, with accents designed to accommodate the mantra “Mon-ter-ey.” Needless to say, boosterist spirit was in the air, and more than usual, at this 50th bash. One of Monterey’s most celebrated boosters is jazz-loving director-actor Clint Eastwood, also a longtime neighbor. This year, Eastwood was given an honorary degree from the Berklee College of Music in a mock-academic ceremony onstage on Saturday night. Diana Krall gave him his degree and a kiss, and Eastwood shrugged, “I think the only reason they gave me this is because I know the difference between an A sharp and a B flat.” Eastwood also shared a panel discussion with independent-minded director John Sayles, on the subject of music-film liaisons and attitudes. Life continues boldly after 50 for Monterey, now in a forward-looking and outreach-minded phase. They’re launching a new record label, issuing both archival recordings and new projects, and the Monterey festival brand goes on tour with both the ongoing Next Generation Jazz Orchestra and the road-ready Monterey 50th Anniversary All-Stars, featuring Blanchard, James Moody, Benny Green and Nnenna Freelon, coming soon to a city near you. For this habitual festgoer’s money, the highlights of the 50th party came on the first night, unseasonable downpour notwithstanding. Opening the arena roster was a remarkable quartet assembled and commissioned for the occasion, with Chris Potter, Dave Holland, Gonzalo Rubalcaba and Eric Harland. On evocative, ink-still-wet originals, they played with the elusive, magical blend of exploration and assurance that represents this festival at its finest. Later that night, around midnight in the Coffeehouse Gallery, keyboardist Craig Taborn issued some of the freshest piano-trio notions from either side of the Mississippi. Hearing both these projects, the clearly imparted message was that in the best jazz, of whatever era or stylistic badge, legacy mixes in with the living, breathing creative impulse. true 34 2008-06-25T14:34:13-04:00 false 19023 115 200711 true 107 2007-11-01T00:00:00-04:00

When it comes to jazz legacy, that oft-used and misused l-word, the Monterey Jazz Festival has an unusually bountiful supply. That fact rang clearly in the cool late-night air of the Monterey Fairgrounds arena on the closing Sunday night of its 50th annual festival in September. Sonny Rollins, one of many artists here who were present at the inaugural 1958 festival, served up one of his robust performances, capping off a stellar musical weekend. Earlier that evening, alumni from festival number one included Monterey regular Dave Brubeck, with fellow first-festival visitor Jim Hall sitting in. Elsewhere during the weekend, the ’58 reunion guest list included vocalist Ernestine Anderson and vibraphonist Buddy Montgomery, who revisited the festival where he and his brothers, guitar legend Wes and bassist Monk, launched their career with the group called the Mastersounds. More disarming on the list of ’58 visitors was Ornette Coleman, who had been on a bill with Ben Webster and Coleman Hawkins here, just before he headed to NYC and stunned and awakened the jazz world. Coleman’s set on Sunday afternoon in the arena was an ecstatic festival moment, even though the timing seemed strange, his loose and liberated sound following the tight, polished sound of youthful big bands. Coleman’s current three-bass project, despite the seeming oddity of instrumentation, has an uncanny ability to touch listeners, and beyond just the diehard Ornette-philes. For the record, this set had a stronger impact than Ornette’s appearance with the electric Prime Time in 1994. That billing came soon after current director Tim...

2009-03-02T00:26:48-05:00

4 Hard to believe, but Iraq was once seen as “an island in a sea of instability.” In Satchmo Blows Up the World: Jazz Ambassadors Play the Cold War, Penny M. Von Eschen discusses how Iraq changed, and how American jazz musicians practically witnessed it. Dave Brubeck played Baghdad in 1958, just weeks before Abd al-Karim Qassim deposed King Faysal II. In 1963, mere months after Duke Ellington came through town, Ahmad Hassan al-Bakr, the mentor of Saddam Hussein, toppled Qassim’s government. The rest is history, one might say. But the tale of American and Iraqi cultural exchange continues, under vastly different circumstances. This summer, in the northern city of Erbil, the Houston-based nonprofit American Voices launched the Unity Performing Arts Academy in Iraq. Its inaugural run began on July 14, oddly, the 49th anniversary of Qassim’s coup. With support from the U.S. Embassy and the Iraqi Ministry of Culture, the academy flew in American and European faculty to provide 10 days of free instruction in jazz and classical music, dance (including ballet and hip-hop) and theater. The program attracted over 300 students: Arabs from Baghdad as well as Kurds from Erbil, Suleimaniya and other districts in what is known as Iraqi Kurdistan. One goal was “to provide an oasis of calm” in a war-torn region, although Iraqi Kurdistan is comparatively calm as it is. In the words of a Kurdistan Regional Government branding campaign, this is “The Other Iraq,” free of the carnage and lawlessness plaguing the other provinces. And yet it is no paradise. The area has seen violent anti-corruption protests, acute fuel shortages, border tensions with Turkey and Iran, even the occasional car bomb. Look south, however, and it’s clear that things could be worse. To a remarkable degree, Kurdistan has recovered from Saddam’s genocidal Anfal campaign of the late ’80s. But while most Kurds welcomed their tormenter’s downfall, their hard-won gains may wind up threatened by the current war and its aftermath. No one expects music instruction to resolve the crisis. But in these situations, nourishing the arts and culture is hardly unimportant. If American Voices has fostered a bit of amity between Iraqis and Westerners, Arabs and Kurds, Shiites and Sunnis, Muslims and Christians, it has accomplished much. Since its inception in 1993, American Voices has offered programming throughout Eastern Europe, the Middle East and Central and Southeast Asia. “We try to introduce American culture to parts of the world isolated by ideology, geography or conflict,” says executive director John Ferguson, a classical pianist. While jazz makes up roughly 25 percent of a typical program, it can spark some of the most substantive interactions. “People who have close contact with traditional music take to jazz very easily,” Ferguson notes. “That’s been our experience in Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan and western China. The Kurds, too, come from a folk tradition that is improvised and very spontaneous.” There were two jazz instructors in Erbil. Dr. Gene Aitken, recently inducted into DownBeat’s Jazz Education Hall of Fame, taught for over a quarter-century in Colorado and is now based in Singapore and Bangkok. Germany’s Werner Englert has run American Voices clinics for the last five years in Taiwan, Kyrgyzstan and elsewhere. The two had never worked together before. They landed in Iraq with donated instruments, several complete sets of Jamey Aebersold Play-A-Longs and a readiness to improvise not just the music, but the pedagogy as well. “It was absolutely the experience of a lifetime,” Aitken exclaims. There were roughly 50 jazz students, ranging from 15 to 50 years of age. “They had barely any previous exposure to jazz,” Aitken says, “but they had quite a thirst for information, and the progress from day one to the end was tremendous. I’ve never encountered anything as meaningful.” One class was a big band with percussion, guitars, woodwinds and even a lute-like saz. Aitken adds, “We were able to take standard arrangements and make them work pretty well.” In a brief ABC News clip about the academy, one could hear the group riffing on “Cantaloupe Island.” After the long days of classes and workshops, there was a gala performance by a “Unity Orchestra” that combined personnel from different cities around the region. This had never happened before in Iraq. Audio problems didn’t diminish the event’s significance. “At the end,” recalls Englert, “there was a lot of celebration and tears, deep emotions on all sides.” American Voices left the students with plenty of Aebersolds and other materials, hoping to encourage further study. “There is talk of forming a jazz NGO [non-governmental organization] in Suleimaniya to continue the work there,” Ferguson says, “and we will keep working toward follow-up visits in Erbil.” Much like the Cold War jazz tours, the American Voices initiative is open to all manner of political interpretation. The White House, eager to promote “good news” out of Iraq, may spin it as a vindication of current policy. Others may dismiss “cultural diplomacy” as part of the apparatus of occupation. Islamist militias, who view all music as a sin, hardly need to be polled on their view of American jazz and dance. Caught in the middle are everyday Iraqis, trying to better their lives. American Voices is standing by them. As jazz enthusiasts and fellow citizens, we owe this organization thanks. true 247 2008-06-26T15:05:07-04:00 false 19096 110 200710 true 107 2007-10-01T00:00:00-04:00

Hard to believe, but Iraq was once seen as “an island in a sea of instability.” In Satchmo Blows Up the World: Jazz Ambassadors Play the Cold War, Penny M. Von Eschen discusses how Iraq changed, and how American jazz musicians practically witnessed it. Dave Brubeck played Baghdad in 1958, just weeks before Abd al-Karim Qassim deposed King Faysal II. In 1963, mere months after Duke Ellington came through town, Ahmad Hassan al-Bakr, the mentor of Saddam Hussein, toppled Qassim’s government. The rest is history, one might say. But the tale of American and Iraqi cultural exchange continues, under vastly different circumstances. This summer, in the northern city of Erbil, the Houston-based nonprofit American Voices launched the Unity Performing Arts Academy in Iraq. Its inaugural run began on July 14, oddly, the 49th anniversary of Qassim’s coup. With support from the U.S. Embassy and the Iraqi Ministry of Culture, the academy flew in American and European faculty to provide 10 days of free instruction in jazz and classical music, dance (including ballet and hip-hop) and theater. The program attracted over 300 students: Arabs from Baghdad as well as Kurds from Erbil, Suleimaniya and other districts in what is known as Iraqi Kurdistan. One goal was “to provide an oasis of calm” in a war-torn region, although Iraqi Kurdistan is comparatively calm as it is. In the words of a Kurdistan Regional Government branding campaign, this is “The Other Iraq,” free of the carnage and lawlessness plaguing the other provinces. And yet it is no paradise. The...

2009-03-02T00:26:50-05:00

4 One of the functions of the annual conference held every January by the International Association for Jazz Education is that it effectively unites a community. For that hectic three-day schmooze-athon, 8,000 or so people from all over the globe gather to speak the international language of jazz and revel in their shared knowledge of syncopation, flatted fifths and all things swing. It’s a network of folks bonded by their understanding of jazz lore and their appreciation of Bird, Monk, Miles, Mingus, Max and Trane. It’s a comforting thought to know that you belong. Like one big extended family, it has its share of eccentric aunts and uncles, troubled siblings, black sheep cousins and revered elders. And when bad news hits, we grieve together—like a family. On the morning of Saturday, Jan. 13, the last day of the conference, we were all drawn a little closer together by the crushing news of the passing of Michael Brecker and Alice Coltrane. Most were well aware of Michael’s valiant struggle over the past year and a half with the dreaded disease MDS (myelodysplastic syndrome) and his ongoing search for a bone marrow donor. Throughout last year’s conference in New York, Michael’s manager, Daryl Pitt, tirelessly operated a donor-screening table outside the Exhibit Hall. News of Alice Coltrane’s passing the night before, on Friday, Jan. 12, was, in some ways, more shocking. On Saturday, Jan. 13, Roy Haynes had made the announcement during his interview session with Christian McBride. To those of us who’d seen her in concert just a couple of months earlier in Newark, she looked radiant in orange flowing robes, beaming her beatific smile as she addressed the audience before starting her set of soul-stirring music. Haynes, who replaced Jack DeJohnette for an inspired performance with Alice in San Francisco, sounded shaken as he delivered the sad news of her passing to the assembled IAJE attendees. I remained blissfully unaware of both deaths until later that afternoon, when I arrived at the conference around 3 p.m. The first person I encountered was vibraphonist Mike Mainieri, Brecker’s longtime pal and colleague going back to their hippie days together in the sprawling ensemble White Elephant. In 1979, they joined together in Steps, which morphed into Steps Ahead in the ’80s. Mainieri, whose wife, harpist-vocalist Dee Carstensen, is currently suffering from liver cancer, was devastated by the news. I spied him standing alone in the lobby, and could see the grief in his face. “Mike passed away this morning,” he muttered in somber tones. His words fell like bricks and I walked around in stunned silence all afternoon. I had just communicated with Brecker the week before, when I sent him a copy of saxist–clarinetist Andy Statman’s Awakening From Above, thinking that the healing vibrations of that collection of sacred Jewish music would lift his spirits. On Jan. 3, Brecker sent me an e-mail that read: “Hi Bill, thanks for the Andy Statman CD. He is amazing. I really enjoyed it. And thanks for thinking of me. I’m still at home fighting the battle. All is well though...lots to be grateful for. I hope you are fine and lotsa love, Mike.” Ten days later, he was gone. That Saturday evening, the IAJE conference concluded with a rousing, cathartic performance by Charlie Haden’s Liberation Orchestra before a packed, enthusiastic crowd in the Hilton Grand Ballroom. With short notice, IAJE organizers put together a brief memorial to Alice and Michael before the concert began. Their images were projected on two giant screens on each side of the stage as the tender refrain from Herbie Hancock’s poignant “Chan’s Song” (the touching theme from Bernard Tavernier’s ’Round Midnight) played underneath. On the original soundtrack, Bobby McFerrin sings the fragile, plaintive melody. Mike’s tenor takes over that role on this moving rendition with accompaniment by Hancock, DeJohnette, Pat Metheny and John Patitucci. An emotionally distraught Haden took to the podium just prior to the set to speak about his two fallen comrades. “This is gonna be hard for me,” he told the congregated mourners. The house felt the weight of his loss. Haden had just played with Alice only two months earlier at triumphant concerts in Los Angeles and San Francisco. He recounted to the audience how he told her she was looking a little thin. Michael, of course, was an old friend and collaborator of Haden’s. He told the story of first seeing the tenor sax phenom back in the mid-’60s: “I was a judge at the Intercollegiate Jazz Competition at Notre Dame and I voted Michael the best musician in the competition. I heard him play and was really impressed with his musicianship. He was Michael Brecker even then!” Last summer we were all encouraged by seeing Michael triumphantly stroll onto the stage of Carnegie Hall when he sat in with Hancock, DeJohnette and Ron Carter on “One Finger Snap” during the JVC Jazz Festival. He played his ass off in typical Brecker-ian fashion, raising our spirits and giving us hope that he was indeed on the road to recovery. Michael did manage to put the finishing touches on a final studio recording (as-yet-unnamed and scheduled for a May release on Heads Up) just two weeks before succumbing to leukemia. At a private funeral service held on Martin Luther King Day, Randy Brecker spoke eloquently about his younger brother. Alice had also finished her final work, the ambitious Sacred Language of Ascension, before she died on the evening of Friday, Jan. 12, from respiratory failure. Her elevation service was held on Jan. 27 at her Sai Anantan Ashram. The family of jazz was diminished by this double dose of sorrowful reality. We grieved together and will continue to honor them, but we all must carry on. As Dave Liebman put it, “This is the time for the community to pull together and keep the faith.” Amen to that. true 21 2008-06-23T15:25:00-04:00 false 18693 112 200704 true 107 2007-04-01T00:00:00-04:00

One of the functions of the annual conference held every January by the International Association for Jazz Education is that it effectively unites a community. For that hectic three-day schmooze-athon, 8,000 or so people from all over the globe gather to speak the international language of jazz and revel in their shared knowledge of syncopation, flatted fifths and all things swing. It’s a network of folks bonded by their understanding of jazz lore and their appreciation of Bird, Monk, Miles, Mingus, Max and Trane. It’s a comforting thought to know that you belong. Like one big extended family, it has its share of eccentric aunts and uncles, troubled siblings, black sheep cousins and revered elders. And when bad news hits, we grieve together—like a family. On the morning of Saturday, Jan. 13, the last day of the conference, we were all drawn a little closer together by the crushing news of the passing of Michael Brecker and Alice Coltrane. Most were well aware of Michael’s valiant struggle over the past year and a half with the dreaded disease MDS (myelodysplastic syndrome) and his ongoing search for a bone marrow donor. Throughout last year’s conference in New York, Michael’s manager, Daryl Pitt, tirelessly operated a donor-screening table outside the Exhibit Hall. News of Alice Coltrane’s passing the night before, on Friday, Jan. 12, was, in some ways, more shocking. On Saturday, Jan. 13, Roy Haynes had made the announcement during his interview session with Christian McBride. To those of us who’d seen her in concert just a...

2009-03-02T00:26:36-05:00

4 There can be no doubt that jazz has made me a better person than I would have been without it. The music inspires my passion to participate fully and richly in life. And the jazz greats I’ve known, from Miles Davis to John Coltrane to Louis Armstrong to my dad, have inspired me to be disciplined, ambitious, caring and dedicated to my community. But jazz has also made me a better basketball player. Now, if that statement motivates a bunch of young basketball hopefuls to rush to their computers and download classic jazz tracks onto their iPods, then I’m pleased. Because the values I learned from jazz to apply to basketball are values that apply off the court as well. Many people unfamiliar with jazz think the music is all about the solo riffs. A single player suddenly jumping to the front of the stage, the spotlight shining brightly on him, while he plays whatever jumble of notes that pop into his head. But really, jazz is just the opposite. True, there are magnificent solos, but those moments aren’t the point of jazz, they are all part of the larger musical piece. Each person is playing as part of the team of musicians; they listen to each other and respond accordingly. When the time is right, one player will be featured, then another, and so on, depending upon the piece. Indeed there is improvisation, but always within a musical structure of a common goal. Same with basketball. When you play basketball, everything is timing, just as with a song. You must be able to instantly react to the choices your teammates make. You must be able to coordinate your actions with your teammates’ and you must understand when you need to take over the action—when to solo—and when to back off. The timing of group activity is a major part of basketball, as it is with jazz. A team of basketball soloists, without the structure of a common goal, may get TV endorsements for pimple cream, but it doesn’t win championships. Many athletes listen to music while they train, whether it’s jogging, lifting weights or just stretching. The type of music depends upon what motivates that individual. For me, jazz not only motivated me, but also helped me perfect my footwork on the court. Unlike some other types of music, jazz has a unique combination of being explosive yet controlled, measured yet unpredictable. The exact virtues necessary for effective footwork while in high school. Before every Saturday practice, I would listen to Sonny Rollins for a little motivation. Then I’d hit the gym floor with his music in my head and in my feet. Jazz has also provided a valued source of camaraderie with other players. During my career with the NBA, some of the loneliness of those long road trips was eased by sharing my love of jazz with other players that were jazz enthusiasts, including Walt Hazzard, Spencer Haywood and Wayman Tisdale. Wayman was also a bass player and released a few records himself. Most of the other guys also enjoyed pop, rhythm ’n’ blues and reggae, but I stayed pretty faithful to jazz, listening to other genres only if jazz wasn’t available. I was also excited on those occasions when a jazz great sang the national anthem before one of our games. Cab Calloway, a major jazz star from the Harlem Renaissance, sang the national anthem several times at Warrior games in Oakland. Grover Washington Jr. performed it, and Earth, Wind & Fire have played it both at the Forum and the Staples Center. My favorite jazz instrumental version of the national anthem is Wynton Marsalis’ performance at the 1986 Super Bowl XX. My favorite vocal version by a jazz singer was sung by Al Jarreau. I don’t know if hearing a jazz artist perform the national anthem made me play any better, but I like to think so. “The memory of things gone is important to a jazz musician,” said Louis Armstrong. “Things like old folks singing in the moonlight in the backyard on a hot night or something said long ago.” The memory of things gone is important to all of us, because the more we know about the past—our personal past as well as that of the rest of humanity—the better we can choose which direction to go in the future. In the large scope of things, that Kareem Abdul-Jabbar likes jazz is pretty insignificant. But what isn’t insignificant is the impact jazz has had on African-American history as well as American history. The men and women who created and refined the jazz sound during the Harlem Renaissance had America dancing and moving to a sound it had never heard before. And they had white Americans appreciating black artists as they never had before. Certainly we are not obligated to listen to jazz just because it has historical significance. All the jazz greats from the Harlem Renaissance such as Duke Ellington, Count Basie and Louis Armstrong would be horrified if they saw children being spoon-fed jazz as if it were some bitter-but-good-for-you medicine. I feel the same way. I hope that through your exposure to the history of jazz and through my history with jazz, you’ll be curious enough to play a few tunes by the artists discussed. But if you don’t, jazz will endure. Because, in the end, jazz isn’t about musical theory or historical significance or even personal memories. It’s about toe-tapping. It’s about head-bobbing. It’s about wanting to get up out of your chair and move your body just because you’re alive and the world is fat with possibilities—and because it just feels so good to swing. true 10427 2008-06-20T16:17:05-04:00 false 18583 113 200703 true 107 2007-03-01T00:00:00-05:00

There can be no doubt that jazz has made me a better person than I would have been without it. The music inspires my passion to participate fully and richly in life. And the jazz greats I’ve known, from Miles Davis to John Coltrane to Louis Armstrong to my dad, have inspired me to be disciplined, ambitious, caring and dedicated to my community. But jazz has also made me a better basketball player. Now, if that statement motivates a bunch of young basketball hopefuls to rush to their computers and download classic jazz tracks onto their iPods, then I’m pleased. Because the values I learned from jazz to apply to basketball are values that apply off the court as well. Many people unfamiliar with jazz think the music is all about the solo riffs. A single player suddenly jumping to the front of the stage, the spotlight shining brightly on him, while he plays whatever jumble of notes that pop into his head. But really, jazz is just the opposite. True, there are magnificent solos, but those moments aren’t the point of jazz, they are all part of the larger musical piece. Each person is playing as part of the team of musicians; they listen to each other and respond accordingly. When the time is right, one player will be featured, then another, and so on, depending upon the piece. Indeed there is improvisation, but always within a musical structure of a common goal. Same with basketball. When you play basketball, everything is timing, just as...

2009-03-02T00:26:30-05:00

4 By now, JazzTimes readers may be familiar with the case of bassist Tarik Shah, who is awaiting trial on charges of conspiring to support al-Qaeda. It is a stretch to include Shah “among the top 1% of jazz bassists on the scene today,” as it says on his support website (tariksfriends.faithweb.com). But Shah, 43, is a mainstay of the Harlem jazz community who has worked with the likes of Abbey Lincoln, Betty Carter, Ahmad Jamal and many others. He was initially charged in tandem with Rafiq Sabir, a 51-year-old doctor from Florida. But the current indictment has been expanded to include a total of four defendants. Shah is formally charged in three of the indictment’s six counts. He is alleged to have “agreed to provide, among other things, martial arts training for jihadists….” He is also alleged to have conspired with Abdulrahman Farhane, 52, a Brooklyn bookseller of Moroccan origin, “to transfer money … to locations overseas to purchase weapons and communications equipment for jihadists in Afghanistan and Chechnya….” In the New York Press, Howard Mandel reported that “Shah’s jazz-world friends are mostly stunned and don’t know what to think, but believe in the premises of U.S. law”—most importantly, the presumption of innocence. Such was my state of mind while attending a pretrial hearing in New York on February 17, in the courtroom of U.S. district judge Loretta Preska. A side door swung open, revealing a temporary holding cell for the defendants. One by one they were led in, wearing dark blue prison garb and handcuffs. First was the young and charismatic Mahmud Faruq Brent, 31, of Maryland, accused of aiding the Pakistani Kashmir militants of Lashkar-e-Taiba. Then came Sabir, followed by Farhane. Last but not least was Tarik Shah, looking gaunt and bemused. The gallery was full of friends and relatives, mostly observant Muslims, some calling out “Allahu Akbar” and other greetings. Margaret Davis, the New York-based avant-jazz promoter, has spearheaded Shah’s support campaign, sending regular e-mail updates and calling for the jazz community to attend these hearings in force. Very few turned up. No trial date has been set but at a March 17 hearing the defendants were ordered to appear before Preska for another hearing on Oct. 30, according to a report in the Miami Herald. Meanwhile, Shah remains in the Special Housing Unit of the Metropolitan Correctional Center, in solitary confinement. Anthony Ricco, who was representing the musician at the time, refers to this as “a disgrace.” (In March Joshua Dratel agreed to join Shah’s defense team). Sabir’s attorney, Edward David Wilford, argues that solitary confinement weakens the will of the defendants to participate in their trial and thus violates their Sixth Amendment rights. He has filed a motion to remedy the situation, noting that terrorism suspects who are deemed a “security risk” before trial are typically transferred to the general prison population upon conviction. (Incidentally, Shah has turned down a cooperation offer from the government, although details of that offer could not be obtained.) “None of the men are charged with directly planning or taking part in terrorism,” wrote Julia Preston in a recent New York Times dispatch. It is inaccurate, however, to state that Shah is “not actually charged with committing a crime,” as Margaret Davis has maintained in her e-mails. Conspiring to aid a terrorist organization is indeed a crime, albeit one that the government has yet to prove in court. Urging us “to stand with Tarik Shah in solidarity as well as for freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, and freedom of religion,” Davis misconstrues the matter. Of course we should defend those freedoms, but strictly speaking, they’re not at issue in this case. If, as Davis argues, Shah was merely “meeting and talking with others of his choice,” it was a most unfortunate choice, for Shah was meeting and talking with an FBI informant posing as an al-Qaeda recruiter. (That person has since been revealed as Mohamed Alanssi of Yemen, who attempted suicide by self-immolation near the White House in late 2004, a tale well beyond the scope of this column.) According to the FBI’s preliminary 18-page complaint, Shah held meetings, placed calls and took trips in pursuit of nefarious goals, and there is audio and video to prove it. But he appears to have done much of it at the prompting of Alanssi, a pretend terrorist. “Is this good detective work or just entrapment?” asks my colleague Forrest Dylan Bryant, a jazz writer from the Bay Area. That is what the jury will have to decide. Meanwhile, we’re left to sort out the implications. Lingering in the courtroom after the February hearing, Anthony Ricco told reporters: “These cases are political. Convictions in these cases are very important to the government, because it allows them to justify billions of dollars spent in the war on terror.” That may be true, but it does not mean that all terrorism cases are invalid. Shah’s trial, to be sure, unfolds against a backdrop of profiling, unjustified detentions, officially sanctioned torture, warrantless wiretapping and all the rest. Still, there is a difference between presuming Shah’s innocence and proclaiming it. One thing is certain: This is a poor way for a jazz bassist to make headlines. In the cold eye of the legal system, of course, Shah’s profession is a matter of indifference. The question is to what extent it should color our judgment as well. true 247 2007-06-07T14:05:44-04:00 16794 102 200605 true 0 107 2006-05-01T00:00:00-04:00

By now, JazzTimes readers may be familiar with the case of bassist Tarik Shah, who is awaiting trial on charges of conspiring to support al-Qaeda. It is a stretch to include Shah “among the top 1% of jazz bassists on the scene today,” as it says on his support website (tariksfriends.faithweb.com). But Shah, 43, is a mainstay of the Harlem jazz community who has worked with the likes of Abbey Lincoln, Betty Carter, Ahmad Jamal and many others. He was initially charged in tandem with Rafiq Sabir, a 51-year-old doctor from Florida. But the current indictment has been expanded to include a total of four defendants. Shah is formally charged in three of the indictment’s six counts. He is alleged to have “agreed to provide, among other things, martial arts training for jihadists….” He is also alleged to have conspired with Abdulrahman Farhane, 52, a Brooklyn bookseller of Moroccan origin, “to transfer money … to locations overseas to purchase weapons and communications equipment for jihadists in Afghanistan and Chechnya….” In the New York Press, Howard Mandel reported that “Shah’s jazz-world friends are mostly stunned and don’t know what to think, but believe in the premises of U.S. law”—most importantly, the presumption of innocence. Such was my state of mind while attending a pretrial hearing in New York on February 17, in the courtroom of U.S. district judge Loretta Preska. A side door swung open, revealing a temporary holding cell for the defendants. One by one they were led in, wearing dark blue prison garb and handcuffs....

2009-03-02T00:25:25-05:00

4 In his keynote address at the recent National Critics Conference in Los Angeles, Norman Lear drew laughs with a reference to On Bullshit, the best-seller by Princeton philosopher Harry Frankfurt. But the message from Lear, the visionary sitcom writer, activist and co-owner of Concord Records, was serious. Artists and critics, he argued, are socially and politically vital because they "know how to cut through the ideological foghorns and B.S., illuminating piercing human truths." It is refreshing when that's the case, but artists and critics are as capable of doling out B.S. as they are of exposing it. One of the subtopics floated during the conference was "how to review work that is socially/politically based." During the Bush years we've seen no shortage of politically inspired jazz-Dave Douglas' Witness, Maroon's Who the Sky Betrays and Charlie Haden's new Not in Our Name (with his resurrected Liberation Music Orchestra) are just a few examples, all part of a jazz-protest tradition that takes us back, arguably, to Louis Armstrong. Obviously, there is no one jazz standpoint on current events, nor is there one way to respond to political art. As journalists, reviewers, listeners and fans, we bring our own baggage to the work in question, and the best we can strive for in our reactions is openness, fairness and informed intelligence. With some political artists, however, dispassionate comment is all but impossible. Take, for instance, the Israeli-born, London-based saxophonist Gilad Atzmon. A staunch anti-Zionist, Atzmon is the darling of Britain's Socialist Workers Party-in fact, a return guest lecturer at the SWP's annual Marxism conclave. But read Atzmon's political writings (at gilad.co.uk) and you'll find a sensibility about as progressive as Idi Amin's. There Atzmon writes: "[W]e must begin to take the accusation that the Jewish people are trying to control the world very seriously.... American Jewry makes any debate on whether the 'Protocols of the elder of Zion' [sic] are an authentic document or rather a forgery irrelevant." He has also written: "To be a Jew is to be a victim and to enjoy your symptoms. To be a Jew is to believe in the holocaust [sic], to be a Jew is to believe in a historical narrative constructed around endless merciless sagas of persecution and harassment.... The victim strategy is the latest and most sophisticated form of Jewish supremacist segregation." It's little wonder that Atzmon has helped to distribute Paul Eisen's The Holocaust Wars, a Holocaust-denial tract. Oliver Kamm, a columnist for the Times of London, has been waging a campaign against Atzmon on his blog (oliverkamm.typepad.com). Fierce critics of Israel are also weighing in. Sue Blackwell, an anti-Zionist activist in Britain, has removed all links to Atzmon from her Web site (sue.be). Ali Abunimah and Hussein Ibish, no friends of the pro-Israel lobby, have denounced Atzmon's fellow traveler Israel Shamir as an anti-Semite (Atzmon's site features a prominent link to Shamir's). Members of the Alliance for Workers' Liberty and Jews Against Zionism have condemned the SWP for giving Atzmon a platform. Given this, jazz reviewers and fans face a conundrum. Atzmon's music-a passionate hybrid involving oud, various reeds and percussion, Middle Eastern vocals and traditional jazz instruments-is quite worthy. But how to discuss it without misconstruing or naively accepting Atzmon's dubious politics? Not always are the stakes this high-after all, there's no need to mull over Scientology every time we review Chick Corea. But Atzmon's obloquy is another matter. Jazz writers have fared rather badly in their assessments. Profiling Atzmon in the September 2003 issue of this magazine, Stuart Nicholson did what journalists generally should: He wrote in a level-headed, objective voice. The resulting portrait was restrained, respectful and woefully incomplete. Elliott Simon, reviewing Atzmon's 2003 disc Exile for AllAboutJazz.com, was entirely hoodwinked, characterizing the saxophonist's message as "a plea for understanding among Israelis and Palestinians...." Atzmon's message is the opposite: "[W]e must help the Palestinians become as armed as their Israeli enemy," he has written. In a lengthy discussion board on AllAboutJazz.com, one participant rebuked Atzmon mildly for his "anger," but also wrote: "Oh, I certainly find it refreshing to hear such views coming from someone with roots within the Jewish community of Israel." Another offered this pearl: "There are many narratives in this world, and non [sic] has more justification more [sic], more validity or more right than any other." A contributor in London replied, "I couldn't agree more," ending the exchange. Atzmon and others of his ilk are counting on this sort of gullibility and confusion. The plight of the Palestinians is real, but Atzmon has crossed the line into anti-Jewish bigotry, and it's disappointing to see how few in the jazz world have noticed. Stephen Graham, editor of Britain's Jazzwise magazine, told me that Atzmon is "a popular draw on the live scene." Exile was voted album of the year at the 2003 BBC Jazz Awards, and Atzmon's latest, musiK: Re-Arranging the 20th Century, was in the running this year. The praise for his music isn't unwarranted-though it has obscured the political issues raised by his work. Writing recently in Slate about Jean-Michel Basquiat, Lee Siegel drew a useful distinction between political and "politicized" art. The former, he argued, tends to highlight the ambiguous and the unresolved, while the latter "invokes political categories [and] stays imprisoned within them...." Atzmon's work is nothing if not politicized, and that is his right. But critics also have a right to respond as they see fit. On that score, one would hope for a bit more tough-minded skepticism. true 247 2007-06-07T14:05:44-04:00 16035 95 200510 true 0 107 2005-10-01T00:00:00-04:00

In his keynote address at the recent National Critics Conference in Los Angeles, Norman Lear drew laughs with a reference to On Bullshit, the best-seller by Princeton philosopher Harry Frankfurt. But the message from Lear, the visionary sitcom writer, activist and co-owner of Concord Records, was serious. Artists and critics, he argued, are socially and politically vital because they "know how to cut through the ideological foghorns and B.S., illuminating piercing human truths." It is refreshing when that's the case, but artists and critics are as capable of doling out B.S. as they are of exposing it. One of the subtopics floated during the conference was "how to review work that is socially/politically based." During the Bush years we've seen no shortage of politically inspired jazz-Dave Douglas' Witness, Maroon's Who the Sky Betrays and Charlie Haden's new Not in Our Name (with his resurrected Liberation Music Orchestra) are just a few examples, all part of a jazz-protest tradition that takes us back, arguably, to Louis Armstrong. Obviously, there is no one jazz standpoint on current events, nor is there one way to respond to political art. As journalists, reviewers, listeners and fans, we bring our own baggage to the work in question, and the best we can strive for in our reactions is openness, fairness and informed intelligence. With some political artists, however, dispassionate comment is all but impossible. Take, for instance, the Israeli-born, London-based saxophonist Gilad Atzmon. A staunch anti-Zionist, Atzmon is the darling of Britain's Socialist Workers Party-in fact, a return guest lecturer at...

2009-03-02T00:24:57-05:00

4 The December 2001 issue of JazzTimes raised a host of pertinent questions regarding the packaging of female musicians and the obstacles anyone encounters who does not fit the music’s longstanding heterosexual-male norm. It was a pleasure to see the analysis move beyond the base line “we don’t get enough gigs” theme that usually begins and too often ends such discussions. I found myself wishing that the dialogue could continue, and that more voices could be included. One place where many of the issues will no doubt be revisited is at Women and Jazz, the March 19 panel discussion that begins a week devoted to jazz women at SFJAZZ’s Spring Season 2002. The San Francisco Jazz Organization held a similar colloquy on jazz and race last year, where the most insightful of the many participants proved to be Dr. Angela Davis of U. Cal-Santa Cruz. In a particularly eloquent response to the question of whether or not jazz is “black music,” Davis, a longtime voice of African-American liberation, pointed out the error of always looking at jazz within a black/white dichotomy, while ignoring both gender and the way in which issues of global capitalism are defining our whole notion of haves and have-nots. “What does it mean to talk about ‘black music,’” she asked, “when discussing an artist such as Toshiko Akiyoshi?” As the moderator of this year’s SFJAZZ panel, Davis should be able to pursue her suggestion that jazz might be best viewed as a language, one that transcended the borders of its native community long ago and remains open to a world of further transformations. In that regard, I hope her panel grapples with three specific issues that crossed my mind as I read the articles in the December JT. Jazz, gender and society. Like racism, sexism is not a problem confined to the jazz world. What we see within our “neighborhood” is, much of the time, just a reflection of how it is everywhere else. I raised this point recently during a television news segment, when a local anchor asked me if Jane Monheit would have gotten so far so quickly if she had not been attractive. My answer was to wonder whether an aspiring news anchor stood any chance of employment if he or she were not sufficiently telegenic. Whatever the playing field, in our culture looks count. Which is why I, for one, would not be as quick as Lara Pellegrinelli to dismiss Grandassa Models, as she does in the December issue, the reputed employer of the woman Lou Donaldson ogles on the cover of Good Gracious! Grandassa was also the source of the female head shots that adorn other Blue Note albums from the period such as Donaldson’s The Natural Soul and Big John Patton’s Oh Baby. At a time when Miles Davis had to demand that white women not be used on his LPs, these covers might be more worthy of celebration as a blow for civil rights. Should sex sell? Which brings us to the question of whether sexy cover art should be used to sell a jazz album. On this topic, I would call my position pro-choice. In other words, if the artist in question is comfortable with such packaging, as Lavay Smith clearly is from her conversation with Sean Daly in the December JT, who am I to say she is wrong? More generally, how do any limitations on the manner in which a musician presents him- or herself mesh with a music that is supposed to be about self-expression? We also should not assume that attractive women on album covers will only attract a male audience. Joel Dorn claims that the fashion-mag outtakes he used for the covers of 32 Jazz’s successful anthology series were selected to attract female purchasers, and that other labels that copied the approach made a major mistake in using photos closer to what one would find in Playboy. In any event, it would be helpful if those of us who write about music got back to reviewing how an album sounds, rather than how it looks. Is jazz too macho? Perhaps the most valuable article in the December issue was James Gavin’s on homophobia in jazz, a topic that should not be ignored when gender is the topic as it will be in San Francisco. Women are not the only ones who feel on the outside in the jazz community, which has traditionally been unhesitant in creating art to protest racism and political oppression yet rarely has placed as much focus on issues of feminist, gay and lesbian rights. I used to say it couldn’t be so when women told me that they considered certain jazz uninteresting because it was “too macho.” Women can play long, aggressive solos that verge on endurance tests just as easily as men, I used to answer; but that is really less important than whether the full range of human emotions, including those that have accurately or inaccurately come to be labeled as “feminine,” are part of the music’s ongoing discourse. According to Wayne Shorter, Miles Davis used to dismiss clubs as “locker rooms” and consider that something was wrong when an audience was predominantly male. But then Davis is often credited (as are Lester Young and Billie Holiday) with the androgynous ability to capture both masculine and feminine moods in his playing. This may be the ultimate challenge for jazz musicians, regardless of their gender or sexual preference, who seek to be complete artists. true 50 2008-08-13T16:05:46-04:00 false 19988 57 200204 true 107 2002-04-01T00:00:00-05:00

The December 2001 issue of JazzTimes raised a host of pertinent questions regarding the packaging of female musicians and the obstacles anyone encounters who does not fit the music’s longstanding heterosexual-male norm. It was a pleasure to see the analysis move beyond the base line “we don’t get enough gigs” theme that usually begins and too often ends such discussions. I found myself wishing that the dialogue could continue, and that more voices could be included. One place where many of the issues will no doubt be revisited is at Women and Jazz, the March 19 panel discussion that begins a week devoted to jazz women at SFJAZZ’s Spring Season 2002. The San Francisco Jazz Organization held a similar colloquy on jazz and race last year, where the most insightful of the many participants proved to be Dr. Angela Davis of U. Cal-Santa Cruz. In a particularly eloquent response to the question of whether or not jazz is “black music,” Davis, a longtime voice of African-American liberation, pointed out the error of always looking at jazz within a black/white dichotomy, while ignoring both gender and the way in which issues of global capitalism are defining our whole notion of haves and have-nots. “What does it mean to talk about ‘black music,’” she asked, “when discussing an artist such as Toshiko Akiyoshi?” As the moderator of this year’s SFJAZZ panel, Davis should be able to pursue her suggestion that jazz might be best viewed as a language, one that transcended the borders of its native community long...

2009-03-02T00:27:28-05:00

4 The Afro-Semitic Experience is a multicultural jazz band that performs a mix of gospel, klezmer, spirituals and Jewish and African-American liturgical song. Our group played at a museum in Connecticut just days after the attacks upon the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, and we thought this event could be a setting in which we would share our music as an act of reflection and healing. As we performed an arrangement of “Shalom Aleichem,” a traditional Sabbath melody based upon Ahavah Rabo, an ancient synagogue scale, I noticed a number of people walking by and shaking their heads in disapproval. A few people came by and started to speak with the band members while we were still playing. As the piece ended, the museum director and an assistant approached me. They told me that they had received complaints about the “inappropriateness” of our music. A few audience members felt that we shouldn’t be playing music that sounded like “that” and that in doing so we showed disrespect. I came to understand that “that” was the Arabic sound produced by the Ahavah Rabo scale. I asked the museum officials if they wanted us to stop. They said that if we wanted to continue they would support us; they suggested that I speak to the crowd and try to explain our music to them. I realized that we were at something of a cross-roads: whatever I said would either get us run out of town on a rail or save us from such a fate. I tried to convey the spirit behind our music. I spoke about my grandmother who had escaped the pogroms of Poland and come to America where she could live freely as a Jew. I spoke about the messages and traditions behind the melodies. I tried to explain that our music celebrated peace and humanity. Yes, I got a bit righteous—but it was one of those moments where I had to lay it on the line. We continued playing and still got flack. During our break one man came up to me and said, “Look buddy, this may sound harsh, but this is not a good week to be talking about brotherhood.” He told me that we should stop playing. Troubled, I gathered the band for the second set. We received still more complaints when we played the klezmer standard “Ma Yofus,” another piece with the distinctive Ahavah Rabo scale. I decided to pull a chart that some of the band had never seen before, an Israeli song, “Shir LaShalom (Song for Peace),” a song, not incidentally, sung by Yitzhak Rabin only moments before he was assassinated. Before we played I read a translation of the lyrics as loudly, slowly and clearly as I could over the PA system: Let the sun rise and give the morning light, The purest prayer will not bring us back. He whose candle was snuffed out and buried in the dust, A bitter cry won’t wake him, won’t bring him back. Nobody will return us from the dead dark pit. Here, neither the joy of victory nor songs of praise will help. So sing only a song for peace, don’t whisper a prayer, It’s better to sing a song for peace with a big shout… We then played the song, and I’ve never heard the band sound better. The challenge of a difficult audience, along with the challenge of interpreting a song that some of us had never played before, brought us to a new level. We played this piece in a way that goes beyond description. It’s why I am a jazz musician: to be able to connect with other players and with at least some of the audience in this transcendent manner. For the remainder of our performance, I knew that there were people who were not into what they were hearing, but they knew better; they kept quiet. But after the concert we were well received. There was an audience who wanted to hear us and wanted us to keep going. What occurred at this event exemplifies the fear that is present all over America. There is a fear of anything that is remotely Middle Eastern in nature, be it Arabic or Jewish. What happened to our band was relatively benign, but it left me worried. I worry about my Arab friends and I worry about the return of anti-Semitism and racism in America. If discrimination takes place in the U.S.A., then those responsible for the World Trade Center and Pentagon attacks have succeeded in their mission. Patriotism and fear are understandable and natural responses to these attacks. But there are people who allow patriotism to become bigotry, and that leaves me worried. true 328 2008-08-29T16:06:24-04:00 false 20063 54 200112 true 107 2001-12-01T00:00:00-05:00

The Afro-Semitic Experience is a multicultural jazz band that performs a mix of gospel, klezmer, spirituals and Jewish and African-American liturgical song. Our group played at a museum in Connecticut just days after the attacks upon the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, and we thought this event could be a setting in which we would share our music as an act of reflection and healing. As we performed an arrangement of “Shalom Aleichem,” a traditional Sabbath melody based upon Ahavah Rabo, an ancient synagogue scale, I noticed a number of people walking by and shaking their heads in disapproval. A few people came by and started to speak with the band members while we were still playing. As the piece ended, the museum director and an assistant approached me. They told me that they had received complaints about the “inappropriateness” of our music. A few audience members felt that we shouldn’t be playing music that sounded like “that” and that in doing so we showed disrespect. I came to understand that “that” was the Arabic sound produced by the Ahavah Rabo scale. I asked the museum officials if they wanted us to stop. They said that if we wanted to continue they would support us; they suggested that I speak to the crowd and try to explain our music to them. I realized that we were at something of a cross-roads: whatever I said would either get us run out of town on a rail or save us from such a fate. I tried to...

2009-03-02T00:27:30-05:00

4 Jazz may have been born in America, but more than ever it is the music of the world. From its inception more than a century ago, jazz thrived in a spirit of multiethnic inclusion—the “gumbo” that Ken Burns refers to in his controversial documentary, Jazz. Back in the late 19th century, the seeds for a new type of music were sown out of a cultural melting pot of musicians from diverse ethnic backgrounds: African, Western European and Caribbean, just for starters. The resulting clash or confluence of multicultural elements sparked an incendiary period of musical discovery that is coming full circle at the dawn of the new millennium. While the first half of the 20th century is less notable for its “world” influences in the development of jazz, the second half offered up a kaleidoscopic brew of world-jazz adventures. Visionaries such as Yusef Lateef, Duke Ellington, Dizzy Gillespie, Don Cherry, John Coltrane, Randy Weston, John McLaughlin and Joe Zawinul introduced us to the limitless possibilities that exist for infusing Jazz with ingredients from the diverse music cultures of the planet. Yusef Lateef is perhaps the most important and least acknowledged of this group. Listen to his recordings from the ’60s, including Jazz Round the World (Impulse!), Psychiemotus (Impulse!) and The Blue Yusef Lateef (Label M/Atlantic) to gain a more vivid aural picture of how this gentle giant seamlessly added sensuous seasonings of African, Middle Eastern and Far Eastern scales and instruments to his emotionally charged, blues-based pieces. Now, the influence of the global melting pot is stronger than ever. Musicians from far-flung countries such as Vietnam, Peru, Korea and Pakistan, among others, have brought their rich cultural heritage to bear on the constantly evolving tapestry of jazz. And there is no turning back. Nguyên Lê, a Vietnamese musician living in Paris, on his Tales From Vietnam (ACT), has incorporated traditional Vietnamese songs and instruments into a jazz-fusion mélange with highly sophisticated arrangements that in some abstract way remind me of Gil Evans. Guitarist Alex de Grassi and Chilean multi-instrumentalist Quique Cruz have successfully married Andean-based instruments and forms into a Jazz context with their Tatamonk (Tropo). Since 1987, San Francisco-based Asian Improv Records has documented the innovative and often epic works of Asian-American musicians who have blended traditional instruments from China, Japan, the Philippines, Korea and India into jazz-based explorations. My own musical journey has been inspired by so many of these world-jazz trailblazers and the indigenous music cultures that broadened their vision. Early exposure to Trane, Miles Davis, Lateef and Sun Ra was immediately followed by immersion into the classical and folk music traditions of the non-Western world. Since then, the myriad rivulets and tributaries that have revealed themselves through this process have enabled me to strive to break down borders and hopefully open up new vistas for the listener. Sadly, while there is so much to celebrate with the expansion of our jazz horizons, there is ongoing resistance from jazz fundamentalists who bristle at the thought of mixing the colors and intonation of non-Western instruments with the more traditional jazz instrumentation. They would rather exclude these alien influences in order to prevent contamination of the “swing” and the sound to which they have grown all too accustomed. A look at the radio dial bears witness to this largely unacknowledged bit of myopia. Jazz radio, where it exists at all, tends to turn its back on the jazz/world blends for fear of losing its core constituency. Opportunities to hear any of these hybrids are rare indeed. Happily, in the San Francisco area, there are two radio voices in particular who have dared to bridge this gap. Jesse “Chuy” Varela, music director for KCSM (a 24-hour Jazz station) and JazzTimes contributor, intersperses culturally diverse expressions into his daytime show. Recently, I heard Varela play a piece in which Indian tabla master Zakir Hussain was playing walking bass lines while saxophonist George Brooks soloed over the top. Dore Stein, creator of his genre-blurring Tangents radio program (currently on KALW in San Francisco) has exposed his listeners to a vast array of jazz/world hybrids for over a decade. It is my hope that more will follow in their path. Openness and adventure are two of the key ingredients that have conspired to make jazz so riveting and satisfying. It’s not about staying mired in preexisting formulae; it’s about thinking outside the box, seeking new elements from the vast musical universe and blending in new ways that move this music forward. Wasn’t that the idea in the first place? true 227 2008-09-04T13:57:56-04:00 false 20114 51 200110 true 107 2001-10-01T00:00:00-04:00

Jazz may have been born in America, but more than ever it is the music of the world. From its inception more than a century ago, jazz thrived in a spirit of multiethnic inclusion—the “gumbo” that Ken Burns refers to in his controversial documentary, Jazz. Back in the late 19th century, the seeds for a new type of music were sown out of a cultural melting pot of musicians from diverse ethnic backgrounds: African, Western European and Caribbean, just for starters. The resulting clash or confluence of multicultural elements sparked an incendiary period of musical discovery that is coming full circle at the dawn of the new millennium. While the first half of the 20th century is less notable for its “world” influences in the development of jazz, the second half offered up a kaleidoscopic brew of world-jazz adventures. Visionaries such as Yusef Lateef, Duke Ellington, Dizzy Gillespie, Don Cherry, John Coltrane, Randy Weston, John McLaughlin and Joe Zawinul introduced us to the limitless possibilities that exist for infusing Jazz with ingredients from the diverse music cultures of the planet. Yusef Lateef is perhaps the most important and least acknowledged of this group. Listen to his recordings from the ’60s, including Jazz Round the World (Impulse!), Psychiemotus (Impulse!) and The Blue Yusef Lateef (Label M/Atlantic) to gain a more vivid aural picture of how this gentle giant seamlessly added sensuous seasonings of African, Middle Eastern and Far Eastern scales and instruments to his emotionally charged, blues-based pieces. Now, the influence of the global melting pot is...

2009-03-02T00:27:34-05:00

4 American jazz musicians have considerable exposure in Europe, the breadbasket of jazz, with well-funded tours and media coverage. If they are lucky, however, they will evade the growing anti-American sentiment among European critics, which is coalescing into the ideological front of a new Jazz War that could make the Siege of Lincoln Center seem like a picnic. Readers of the Dec. 2000 issue of JazzTimes got a glimpse of this emergent doctrine in Stuart Nicholson’s essay “The Sound of Sameness: Why European Jazz Musicians No Longer Turn to America for Inspiration.” The British critic then retooled his riffs for the June 3 New York Times article “Europeans Cut in With a New Jazz Sound and Beat,” which again coupled his disdain for what he perceives as dry-rotting American jazz hegemony and his boosterism for European artists of varying stripe and merit. Ironically, this brand of chauvinism poisons the case for the vitality of European jazz, as it is mired in specious arguments sprinkled with rhetorical low blows. Nicholson claims in his JT piece that European jazz had, until recently, been “held in check for almost two decades” by unnamed, presumably American forces—The New York Bebop Cartel? Covert Jazz Operations at the CIA? Harvey Pekar?—but now, “the momentum for innovation” in Europe “has become irresistible.” A triumph of European will or the crumbling of Jazz Fortress America? In JT, Nicholson donnishly argued the latter, huffing about American jazz’s narcissistic “preoccupation with its past,” its “failure to acknowledge” the globalization of the art, and “its apparent unawareness” that it has relinquished its “stewardship” and “traditional pathfinding” roles. Nicholson really hits his stride, however, when he castigates American jazz supremacists, who have long regarded European jazz “with the same kind of tolerant smile they reserve for Japanese baseball.” Unaware that slur-tinged polemics discredit him and those he champions faster than you can say Ichiro Suzuki, Nicholson led his Times piece with the same baseball line. Unfortunately, this polarizing media crusade obscures the market issues that should rightly outrage European musicians and jazz advocates: the disproportionate share of prime European festival and concert tour slots that go to the creatively challenged Americans European critics ardently pan; and Europe’s jazz trade deficit with the U.S. The ire of Europeans would be more productive if it was focused, for example, on bureaucracies like the Arts Council of Great Britain, a major underwriter of the recent, month-long “UK:KC,” a celebration of British music, dance and theater at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts that included no British jazz artists. Europeans should be equally incensed at the festivals throughout the U.K. and the rest of Europe receiving government funding to load up on what Steve Lacy wryly calls “the menu” of American headliners served up by a very real, entrenched, European agency establishment. European jazz advocates also need to understand the disconnect between jazz creativity and a UPC-ed U.S. market. If the sound of Soundscan has replaced the sound of surprise Stateside, that’s an expression of market forces, not the state of the art. Creative European jazz is as equally disadvantaged in such market conditions as its American counterparts, but it won’t overcome these obstacles with chauvinist tracts. European jazz is better served by producers like ECM’s Manfred Eicher, who will endure the convulsion of changing his U.S. distributor so that a Tomasz Stanko album is released in the same timely fashion as a Keith Jarrett title. It will be interesting if Universal—ECM’s current U.S. partner—will release the titles in Gitanes’ excellent Jazz In Paris series led by underheralded midcentury European artists, like Rene Thomas, in addition to those by Louis Armstrong. European jazz is also well served by those governments who subsidize jazz artist travel to and within the U.S., though increased coordination between cultural officers and their counterparts in trade promotion and other bureaus could result in combined public and corporate sponsorship, yielding more frequent and more extensive tours by European artists. Every European artist who wants a high U.S. profile should study the organization behind George Gruntz, whose Concert Jazz Band tours garner so many sponsors that it takes a set and a half of between-tune acknowledgements to cover them all. Integrating European jazz artists into the American jazz consumer’s consciousness will require more than one committed multinational conglomerate-associated label, a handful of earnest cultural attaches or a host of would-be heavyweight corporate sponsors. It will require first, if not foremost, accurate information, something European critics themselves have historically been inconsistent in delivering: Joachim Ernst Berendt’s sole reference to pianist Bobo Stenson in the sixth edition of The Jazz Book IDs him as Norwegian, not Swedish. Critics on both sides of the pond need to place European musicians in their own traditions: Stenson—who is quoted in Nicholson’s JT essay, and whose ECM album War Orphans was included in his sidebar of recommended CDs—is habitually placed in the shadow of Bill Evans, even by top-notch European critics like John Fordham. Americans need to know how Stenson diverged from earlier Swedish stylists like Bengt Hallberg, how he compares with contemporaries like Per Henrik Wallin and how he set a benchmark for subsequent improvisers like Sten Sandell. Paradoxically, a detailed historical context can get an American listener beyond “European” and even “Swedish” to the work itself. True, precious few Europeans have become so familiar to the American audience that their nationalities have all but been forgotten. It’s taken Dave Holland decades of U.S. residency, playing with everybody from Miles Davis to Anthony Braxton, to get beyond being automatically IDed as British (nowadays, the only folks who make a fuss about Holland being British are the British). Practically all European musicians can therefore expect to be labeled as such for their entire careers. However, the way “European” is ultimately translated by the American audience, particularly by young listeners, depends upon how it is intoned by Europeans. If “European” merely identifies the cultural orientation of music, then Americans, by and large, will keep their ears and minds open. But, if “European” is identified with a corrosive, exclusive point of view like Nicholson’s, whose Nordic-centric map of Europe ends at the Italian and Spanish borders, Americans are going to turn off faster than you can say the name of another ECM artist, Gianluigi Trovesi. true 28 2008-09-04T15:40:10-04:00 false 20117 50 200109 true 107 2001-09-01T00:00:00-04:00

American jazz musicians have considerable exposure in Europe, the breadbasket of jazz, with well-funded tours and media coverage. If they are lucky, however, they will evade the growing anti-American sentiment among European critics, which is coalescing into the ideological front of a new Jazz War that could make the Siege of Lincoln Center seem like a picnic. Readers of the Dec. 2000 issue of JazzTimes got a glimpse of this emergent doctrine in Stuart Nicholson’s essay “The Sound of Sameness: Why European Jazz Musicians No Longer Turn to America for Inspiration.” The British critic then retooled his riffs for the June 3 New York Times article “Europeans Cut in With a New Jazz Sound and Beat,” which again coupled his disdain for what he perceives as dry-rotting American jazz hegemony and his boosterism for European artists of varying stripe and merit. Ironically, this brand of chauvinism poisons the case for the vitality of European jazz, as it is mired in specious arguments sprinkled with rhetorical low blows. Nicholson claims in his JT piece that European jazz had, until recently, been “held in check for almost two decades” by unnamed, presumably American forces—The New York Bebop Cartel? Covert Jazz Operations at the CIA? Harvey Pekar?—but now, “the momentum for innovation” in Europe “has become irresistible.” A triumph of European will or the crumbling of Jazz Fortress America? In JT, Nicholson donnishly argued the latter, huffing about American jazz’s narcissistic “preoccupation with its past,” its “failure to acknowledge” the globalization of the art, and “its apparent unawareness” that...

2009-03-02T00:27:34-05:00

4 A quick stroll down the shopping malls of cyberspace is enough to confirm that at the moment we are not enduring a dearth of jazz history books. Like mayflies in permanent hatch they seem to be in a state of constant renewal, as one disappears several more come along to take its place. But the latest entry into a very crowded field, Jazz: A History of America’s Music, is not simply another jazz history. It is the book that accompanies the Ken Burns film documentary Jazz. Already The New York Times has reported advance sales total 200,000. Clearly plenty of people will be shaping their understanding of jazz, many for the first time, not only from the TV series but from this book tie-in, co-written by Burns and Geoffrey C. Ward. It presents jazz as a sepia-toned history rather than a living, still-vital art form, echoing themes expressed by Albert Murray in his book Stomping the Blues. Indeed, there is an interview with Murray in the book, where he speaks of how “art has to do with security against chaos,” (so effectively dismissing free jazz). Murray’s vision of jazz sets in place a set of values that attempt to define jazz in terms of past verities. A “blues” sensibility and swing become central tenants in deciding what is and what is not jazz, as does restoring its primal relationship to dance. That senior creative consultant Wynton Marsalis and advisory board member Stanley Crouch buy into Murray’s vision is well known; Jazz even says so. As Francis Davis points out in a prescient review of the television series in Atlantic Monthly, in Jazz “What we are getting the party line.” Marsalis, he points out is, “Against anyone whose music, improvised or not, he suspects of being tainted by European influences and deficient in the blues.’ Thus Bill Evans, the most influential pianist since Bud Powell, is effectively excised from the ledger since to Marsalis and Crouch he smacks of Debussy. “Evans single-handedly synthesized the first 60 years of jazz, from 1900-60 plus 260 years of classical music. He was America’s Chopin,” says Jack Reilly, former chairman of jazz studies at the New England Conservatory and now adjunct professor at Rowan University. And although Gil Evans is mentioned, it is only elliptically, and like Bill, it is through his role with Miles Davis. Yet it is difficult to see how the Evanses true role in jazz could possibly emerge, given the invective Crouch has heaped on them in the past. In particular his essay “Sketches of Pain” for The New Republic refers to the famous Miles Davis Birth of the Cool sessions as “essentially lightweight”; Jazz asserts it “didn’t represent the birth of anything.” Dismissing the experimentation that emerged from Gil Evans’ much admired writing for the Claude Thornhill Orchestra, Crouch says “[Davis] was not above the academic temptation of Western music.” Of Davis’s seminal albums Miles Ahead, Porgy and Bess and Sketches of Spain, Crouch lambastes Gil for his “pastel versions of European colors” that amount to no more than “high level television music” that are ‘given what value they have…by the Afro American dimension that was never far from Davis’ embouchure, breath, fingering.” Jazz simply implies these albums are very lightweight fare, “With Miles Davis playing softly on the turntable almost anyone could ‘get over with a kiss’.” In a book swimming with metaphors, Gil and especially Bill become metaphors themselves, since, as Gene Lees has pointed out, the fact that any “white musician could have a major influence on jazz simply does not fit the political agenda,” or indeed the kind of revisionism now under way. “The book is nothing more than an important political extension of Marsalis’ ‘Our Music’ agenda,” says Reilly. “It’s blatant slight-of-hand jive under the rubric of Ken Burns’ Jazz. At worst it will reignite racial tensions and undo whatever progress we’ve made since the ’60s.” Jazz is good in showing the relationship of a nascent jazz to the African-American experience and how the music was shaped by it into the ’60s, at which point the book tries to put the genie back into the bottle, and return the music to an elite company of great jazz giants to establish the music’s timelessness, an American classical music that transcends the present. While few, if any, would dissent from the view that jazz is indeed America’s classical music, surely it is right to look at the terms in which it is being appropriated, creating an orthodoxy where a “third line” of participants are deemed to lack “idiomatic authenticity” and where the role of many jazz musicians is increasingly becoming those of custodians of a music within clearly prescribed parameters who express impatience and intolerance with the contemporary, even denying its place in the narrative of jazz history. Orthodoxies create insiders and outsiders, and the kind of jazz orthodoxy that now seems to be looming looks likely to create more outsiders than insiders. Even worse, we are on dangerous ground indeed if jazz becomes a battleground to right the wrongs of racial injustices down the ages. The joy of jazz is that it is a truly democratic music, and what is now in the wind seems anything but that. true 191 2008-09-15T16:09:04-04:00 false 20327 46 200104 true 107 2001-04-01T00:00:00-05:00

A quick stroll down the shopping malls of cyberspace is enough to confirm that at the moment we are not enduring a dearth of jazz history books. Like mayflies in permanent hatch they seem to be in a state of constant renewal, as one disappears several more come along to take its place. But the latest entry into a very crowded field, Jazz: A History of America’s Music, is not simply another jazz history. It is the book that accompanies the Ken Burns film documentary Jazz. Already The New York Times has reported advance sales total 200,000. Clearly plenty of people will be shaping their understanding of jazz, many for the first time, not only from the TV series but from this book tie-in, co-written by Burns and Geoffrey C. Ward. It presents jazz as a sepia-toned history rather than a living, still-vital art form, echoing themes expressed by Albert Murray in his book Stomping the Blues. Indeed, there is an interview with Murray in the book, where he speaks of how “art has to do with security against chaos,” (so effectively dismissing free jazz). Murray’s vision of jazz sets in place a set of values that attempt to define jazz in terms of past verities. A “blues” sensibility and swing become central tenants in deciding what is and what is not jazz, as does restoring its primal relationship to dance. That senior creative consultant Wynton Marsalis and advisory board member Stanley Crouch buy into Murray’s vision is well known; Jazz even says so. As Francis...

2009-03-02T00:27:44-05:00