It's odd that of all the nuances of expression jazz can convey, the thrill of victory and celebration of success is hard to find among the music's classics. Barack Obama's heartening win of the presidency prompts me to search out joyous music, but I can't think of a movement akin to the bells ringing in Tchaikovsky's "1812 Overture" in the repertoire of Miles, Ornette, Cecil or Coltrane, Mingus, Monk, Bird and Diz, or Ellington, Basie and Goodman. The crowning last chorus of Armstrong's "Tight LIke This" comes to mind, though the satisfaction … [Read more...]
hail Studs Terkel, Jazz Age Chicagoan
October 31, 2008 by
A talker and listener, actor-dj-writer-oral historian, good humored realist and pragmatic idealist, Studs Terkel (1912 - 2008) stands as an American cultural patriot, who enjoyed as rich if not untroubled a life as genuinely democratic artist might hope for over the course of the 20th century -- earning Roger Ebert's thumbs up as greatest Chicagoan. Studs was hugely enthusiastic about music, loving blues as well as jazz, gospel, rootsy folk, the Great American Songbook, the soundtrack of the labor and Civil Rights movement, classical stuff … [Read more...]
Globalism in the Azores
October 30, 2008 by
Globalism held its head high at the tenth annual Ponta Delgada Jazz Festival last week. Five nights of concerts performed by an international coterie of improvisers in the superb acoustics of a nicely modernized old center-city theater for a stylish, educated audience didn't seem a cultural far cry, though they were held in the capital of the Azores, the mid-Atlantic archipelago 700 miles from mainland Portugal. … [Read more...]
Jazz masters in the Azores
October 21, 2008 by
My focus shifts to the mid-Atlantic: for the next week I'll be hearing newly honored NEA Jazz Master Lee Konitz, pianist Joachim Kuhn, the Hot Club of Portugal Septet, reedist Marty Ehrlich's Rites Quartet and a band led by NYC multi-instrumentalist Daniel Carter at the 10th annual Festival de Jazz de Ponta Delagada -- where I'm also delivering a talk on "Jazz Now -- and It's Future" (during which I will tell all). Ponta Delgada is the largest city in the Azores, islands 700 miles west of Lisbon with a lengthy history as a port between Europe … [Read more...]
Colbert & Coleman: Name that tune
October 16, 2008 by
A reader asks: "Could you please post the name of the [Ornette] Coleman song sampled for that sketch" on Steven Colbert's Comedy Central show of October 9?Colbert pulled one of his trademark reverses, ridiculing the vast emptiness of smug superiority by goofing on a 10-second snatch of the Pulitzer Prize-winning musician's live recording Sound Grammar. Research suggests the excerpt Brother Steve C swung along to so sillily before remarking, "God, that's unbearable. Ergo it must be good!" was from the first track on the album, "Jordan" (named … [Read more...]
Live in New York, it’s jazz beyond jazz
October 14, 2008 by
Presentations of jazz that break all sorts of bounds, pushing far beyond stale conventions -- jazz beyond jazz -- are so prevalent in Manhattan that the energy expended just being on the scene can leave me too drained to report on the good stuff. Five shows in the past month -- Dee Dee Bridgewater's Mali project at the Blue Note, Myra Melford's new quartet at Roulette, Richard Bona and Lionel Loueke in the Allen Room of Jazz at Lincoln Center, James "Blood" Ulmer with Vernon Reid's neo-blues band at the Jazz Standard and an evening … [Read more...]
Colbert’s tin ear
October 10, 2008 by
Steven Colbert plays a pointed dance on the funny-bone, but misled his "nation" unintentionally at least once last night in the segment "Who's Not Honoring Me Now." At 12 minutes into the show, he sniffed at the MacArthur Foundation's award of a $500,000 fellowship to saxophonist Miguel Zenon, tongue-in-cheeking "Never give money to a jazz musician -- they'll just blow it on heroin and berets." Then he listened to a moment of Zenon's mellifluous style, boppin' along to it. But: "It's not genius level jazz if it sounds like music," Colbert … [Read more...]
Jazz time-out of the year?
October 1, 2008 by
A major international jazz festival right now in Washington D.C.? How odd: Is it the End of Times? Are we fiddlin' while Rome burns? Or could it be a new beginning? Ignore the credit crisis, the vp debates, end-game positioning by the One and the Other, Rosh Hashanah and Eid, Cubs and White Sox both in the playoffs -- here's the under-promoted but highly impressive fourth annual Duke Ellington Jazz Festival, Oct. 1 - 7! Balancing Kennedy Center concerts with "jazz in the 'hoods" (club and arts center gigs mostly but not only NW), … [Read more...]
Alaska Airlines to the rescue: Portland Jazz Fest revived
October 1, 2008 by
The Portland Jazz Festival, pronounced dead on September 8 due to the pullout of Seattle-based title sponsor Qwest Communications, now rises from its ashes on the wings of Alaska Airlines and an advisory board of local businesses and individuals. According to a press release issued today by PDX Jazz, the fest's umbrella organization, "the 6th Annual Alaska Airlines Portland Jazz Festival presented by The Oregonian A&E will take place, as scheduled, Februrary 13-22, 2009." The 10-day fest's theme will be the 70th anniversary of Blue Note … [Read more...]
Berklee College, Boston: a jazz education mecca
September 29, 2008 by
Young people flock to Berklee College in Boston expecting practical education in the most under-capitalized of arts: jazz and related forms of contemporary popular music. With some 4000 enrollees pursuing BA programs in composition, film scoring, production and engineering, music business/management, songwriting, performance, etc., Berklee is by far the largest of 160 institutions in the U.S. and another dozen internationally offering degrees and/or certificates in jazz studies, as detailed in the current (October) issue of Down Beat.Berklee … [Read more...]
