Jazz Beyond Jazz

The June issue of Down Beat magazine (subtitled "Jazz, Blues & Beyond") features my cover story about trumpeter Freddie Hubbard, who has enjoyed a blazing and extended artistic youth, but at age 70 is now somewhat chastened, struggling with challenges to his chops while eager to reaffirm the legitimacy of his reputation. 

In a renewed effort to keep readers abreast of good listning, J-B-J introduces Matt Miller, who has some recommendations for places to go, comin' right up. Matt is a 23-year-old tenor saxophonist, graduate of the New School Jazz and Contemporary Music program, who writes for AllAboutJazz-New York and Jazz.com, besides contributing here.

Talk about a legendary career: Chicago saxophonist and clarintest Franz Jackson, who died at age 95 on May 6, spanned American vernacular music from the Roaring '20s to the postmodern present. He began as a 16-year-old professional with stride and boogie woogie pianist Albert Ammons, starred as a featured soloist in the the hottest Depression Era big bands, entertained WWII troops under USO auspices, popularized Midwestern neo-traditional "jass" in the '50s and '60s and kept playin' in essentially uncategorical situations up until a couple of weeks of his demise.

This week highlights a happily frequent dilemma for the avid listener in New York: too many good choices of exciting, exploratory, street-smart and unbounded American music -- "the real blues, the new blues," as Albert Ayler called jazz-beyond-jazz back in 1964. All on Friday, May 9:

• The Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians  (AACM) celebrates favorite son George E. Lewis's epic new book with high class talk and promising improv;
•  Miles Davis alumni meet Southeast Asian virtuosos at Town Hall to attempt Bob Belden's arrangements from the fascinating cd Miles From India,and
•  urban-ethno percussionist Adam Rudolph and nu-jazz electronica trumpeter Graham Haynes will balance a similarly ancient/future sound. 
• There's much more. Jazz-beyond-jazz bustin' out all over; it must be spring. 

Oleg Kireyev, born in Bashkiria (aka Bashkortostan, more on which follows), is a dynamite soprano and tenor saxophonist who smiles broadly when he asks audiences to chime in with Mongolian throat-singing and quick-tonguing techniques. In New York City, a small group of listeners at Symphony Space complied, giving Kireyev's Feng Shui Theatre quartet, making its Stateside debut, a sweet welcome.

It's jazz-beyond-jazz, alright, when Wynton Marsalis composes a work for gospel choir and the Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra, in honor of the 200th anniversary of the Abyssinian Baptist Church in Harlem. But I must admit that I am neither drawn to hear such work nor qualified to comment on it. Having experienced Marsalis' previous large-scale religiously oriented works All Rise and In This House, On This Morning, I have developed some unshakable expectations and prejudices about such endeavors -- it's just not my cuppa tea. So I sought someone with fresh ears, more affinity for the material and less bias to report on the grand event. Meet Monica Hope seen here singing Duke Ellington's "Come Sunday" at a memorial service for the bassist Walter Booker, Jr. 

Another victim of global economics? Or of flawed leadership? The 40-year-old International Association for Jazz Education has announced its bankruptcy, following an ill-attended conference in Toronto and unexpected departures by its executive director and president. "Industry of jazz" players are shocked, shocked! 

Way out northwest last weekend for the Experience Music Project's 7th Annual Pop Conference, I also visited Earshot Jazz fest and concert producer John Gilbreath doing his weekly late night show "Jazz Theater" on KEXP.org.