My new CityArts column is about the wave of conducted orchestral improvisation currently sweeping New York City  -- with Karl Berger's Stone Workshop Orchestra and Lawrence Douglas "Butch" Morris's Lucky Cheng Orchestra wrapping up their lengthy Monday night runs, Elliott Sharp reconvening Carbon at Roulette, Greg Tate's Burnt Sugar: The Arkestra Chamber at Tammany Hall in a benefit for the Jazz Foundation of America, Adam Rudolph's Organic Orchestra also in the mix and "soundpainter" Walter Thompson in discussion with aforementioned Dr. Morris … [Read more...]

Christopher Buckley's New York Times Book Review frontpage piece on And So It Goes, Charles J. Shields' biography of Kurt Vonnegut, is as lazy a bit of evaluation as it's possible to pick up a paycheck for. I can't tell from it anything about Shields' book, and nothing about Vonnegut's many novels, either. (See "jazz" content at post's end). How does Buckley -- whose comic novels I've enjoyed (esp. his first, The White House Mess) - - spend his 1500 words about a 500-page life of one of America's best-selling fabulists of the late 20th … [Read more...]

Drummer Paul Motian died November 22 at age 80. He was a unique sound organizer and constant actor on the jazz scene in New York City for nearly 60 years. He spoke to me for Down Beat in 1986 -- an interview I offer in slightly different form below. Of course it doesn't account for 15 more years of music, much of which has been stellar. But Motian's voice -- onrushing, exacting, broken occasionally by his barking laugh, may come through: Drummer Paul Motian, like many a jazz player, lives in the eternal present. "When there were bohemians, I … [Read more...]

The holidays are the best of times and the worst of times for hearing music in New York City. Hosting friends and family, or being a guest on a visit, is great, until it pales. That’s when we look for entertainment options, and going out for jazz seems like the most sociable, something-for-everybody activity. The main stages typically book artists who will please casual as well as hard-core audiences. This year these big draws are two. Maria Schneider, whose orchestra has its annual residency at the Jazz Standard, and multifarious pianist … [Read more...]

Onstage at the Japan Society before concertizing with Otomo Yoshihide, Christian Marclay told a crowd, "You're going to see us do some things you'll think are interesting, but you have to understand how shocking it was to do this in the '80s, when people treated records as something precious." And thereby Marclay, famous recently for his Venice Bienalle-winning film/video/time mosaic "The Clock," posed the question looming over his performance in duet with Yoshihide, hailed for 20 years as among Tokyo's "most adventurous sound creators." Is … [Read more...]

A blues-belter with a beautiful big voice and cred in the rockin', bawdy, electric tradition, Shemekia Copeland brought a funky good time to the elegant Allen Room of Jazz at Lincoln Center last Thursday night (and probably Friday, too), backed by a a tight four-man band, carrying a slew of fresh and catchy songs. It's unusual to hear a woman in her early 30s be so powerfully plain-spoken, whether with a wide smile ("I'm a wild, wild woman, and you're a lucky man")     or haunting shiver ("Never Going Back to Memphis" from her … [Read more...]

Composer and improvising keyboardist William "WATIV" Thompson -- Mississippi-born, New Orleans-based and an Iraq war veteran who I profiled for NPR in 2005 (podcast below) when he was posting laptop computer music he created in Bagdad during free time from his counterintelligence duties -- made his first visit to New York City last week. I met him for coffee near New York University, saw him the next night at le Poisson Rouge hearing electronics innovator Morton Subotnick and the night after that took him and his companion along with my NYU … [Read more...]

Reedist Bennie Maupin, whom I interviewed in the Jazz Talk Tent at the Detroit Jazz Festival in 2006, says "One thing about Detroit, you learn how to make money." Another thing he recalls from his youth: "There's a lot of noise here because of the factories, and early on I listened to things that were basically noise. Now I incorporate those elements into my music in certain ways." Maupin has made beautiful recordings under his own name recently, but is probably still best known for playing bass clarinet throughout Miles Davis' Bitches Brew … [Read more...]