My NPR profile of Anthony Braxton, composer-performer-philosopher-educator, aired on Weekend Saturday Edition this morning — and he says some wonderful things. Braxton offers a free sampler of his music with very different examples from across the decades of his career. I have a lot of interesting material on Braxton from an interview during a visit I made to Wesleyan University, and will look for other platforms for it. ‘Til then, “friendly experiencers” are welcome to the multiple posts I’ve placed at JazzBeyondJazz and on Youtube.
Archives for 2011
Funky freqs and other blues derivations in NYC
There’s not enough hard-core blues ‘n’ funk in New York City — that’s the premise of my new City-Arts column, prompted by the Free Form Funky Freqs (Vernon Reid, Jamaaladeen Tacuma, G. Calvin Weston) performing at the Stone two Fridays ago.
If this kind of power trio (or quartet — whatever) is happening somewhere I haven’t heard about, please let me know! Must have great blues/rock guitarist, very imaginative and active bassist plus drummer with swing and drive.
Occupy Wall Street Blues
Videographer Michal Shapiro sings a blues Occupy Wall Street protesters and so many other Americans will relate to — with guitarist Arnett Brewster (aka Bruce Arnold) and Woodrow T. Greenwich (aka Dr. David Schroeder, director of NYU’s Jazz Studies program) accompanying. See and hear “Up the Spout” —
Complete disclosure: I wrote liner notes to the Brewster/Greenwich cd Great Houdini, and Michal is a member of the Jazz Journalists Association. Furthermore, I admire the low-key, semi-organized encampment and earnest, inquiring discussions I witnessed Saturday at the Occupy Wall Street site. Contrary to pundits’ critiques, the point the protesters are making is pretty clear (more articulate and accurately aimed than the inchoate frustration and rage of the Tea Party’s big Washington demonstration) and anyway, it’s up to our political leadership to figure out how to get the U.S. out of the mess unregulated financial manipulations have created. Nobody should expect policy answers from a blues.
Anthony Braxton’s new music at Wesleyan & Roulette
Mentoring women musicians as well as men distinguishes Anthony Braxton among avant-garde composer-performers. That’s not the only unusual aspect of the career of Braxton, a 66-year-old composer, improviser, philosopher, educator and multi-instrumentalist who just celebrated a four-night festival overview of his work at Roulette music and dance space, new to Brooklyn. But it’s a significant one. He discusses such mentoring in a new eyeJAZZ video I’ve posted at Youtube.
Braxton says he’s not to a jazz musician nor a classical one, but rather a “creative musician” who has spent his life in uncategorizable spaces. You can hear what you think — there is a free sampler of his music at his website. But the breadth of programming at Roulette — which included debuts for small ensembles, solo piano, an orchestra, 12 vocalists performing two acts from his new opera Trillium J, works with movement and electronics — certainly bears this out.
Having emerged as an iconoclastic and virtuosic multi-reeds player from Chicago’s AACM — Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians — more than four decades ago (check out his 1968 albums Three Compositions of the New Jazz and 73-minutes of solo sax dedications, For Alto) Braxton has earned an international following by creating an unmistakable personal approach to sound and culture. He has collaborated with an extraordinary array of other major talents (Chick Corea, Dave Holland, Sam Rivers, Kenny Wheeler, Tete Montoliu, Gunter Hampel, Jeanne Lee, Archie Shepp, Derek Bailey, Andrew Cyrille, Max Roach, Dave Brubeck, Lee Konitz, Pat Metheny, Richard Teitelbaum, Fredrick Rzewski, Ursula Oppens, Julius Hemphill, Oliver Lake, Marianne Schroeder, Gerry Hemingway, Mark Dresser, Mark Helias, Ray Anderson, Woody Shaw, Marilyn Crispell, Fred Frith, Tyshawn Rosey, Kyle Brenders, John Lindberg, Garrett List, Hank Jones, Larry Polansky, David Rosenboom, ROVA Saxophone Quartet, Giorgio Gasilini, Misha Mengelberg, Han Bennink, Ran Blake, Marion Brown, Lauren Newton, Steve Lacy, Evan Parker, Nicole Mitchell, Mary Halvorson and Taylor Ho Bynum, besides his AACM compadres Muhal Richard Abrams, Wadada Leo Smith, Joseph Jarman, Douglas Ewart, Henry Threadgill, Steve McCall, Roscoe Mitchell, Thurman Barker, Malachi Favors, George E. Lewis, Leroy Jenkins — and I’ve barely scratched the surface). He has recorded prolifically and challenged diversely constituted ensembles to expand on arts across boundaries, systematically and with reference to everything from Sousa to Paul Desmond and Frank Sinatra to Dinah Washington, including the world’s ritual music and concepts of post-tonal Western classicism. Indeed, he rules out nothing as an area of potential interest, being as fascinated by absurdist science fiction as Wagner, Berg, Stockhausen and Xenakis.
Such breadth of investigation, experimentation and ambitious accomplishment is characteristic of the AACM school – now comprising multiple generations of brilliant individualists who have developed musical ideas each of their own, aware of, related to but not beholden by the others, typically in departure from preconceived conventions, assumptions and limitations. That’s the way Braxton continues to evolve, even after 27 years in academia (22 as a professor at Wesleyan University in Middletown, Connecticut, and five before that at Mills College, Oakland). See his mission statement!
Braxton has been awarded Guggenheim and MacArthur fellowships along with other honors, but he’s also suffered slings and arrows of odd criticism — that his work is overly conceptual and intellectual, “not black enough,” that he’s goofy (Why was a drug pusher given his name in an episode of The Bill Cosby Show?). His music is unusual, oh yes, and so it’s often puzzling, challenging — but well worth delving into. An American original who believes “there’s never been another country like the United States of America . . . We should be proud of our country” and hopes that after our current phase of turbulence the U.S. will “unleash it’s creativity as it did in other turbulent eras, like the ’30s and the ’60s,” he’s also a patriot. Thanks to Roulette for providing a beautiful restored theater to hear some of the deepest and most surprising music of the year to date. More Braxton, more!
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Roulette: “old” new music/dance space moves to central Brooklyn
My new column at CityArts-New York is about Roulette, the new music/new dance performance space, started in downtown Manhattan but moved to a coolly refurbished theater near a major Brooklyn transportation hub. Roulette’s in first season in this new home is thick with Chicago-born, -raised  and -emigrated “creative musicians” — Anthony Braxton, Henry Threadgill, George E. Lewis, Wadada Leo Smith, all early members of the AACM (Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians). Which makes perfect sense, as their decades old but still biting, exploratory, expansive, original, intellectual and always impassioned works inspired Roulette stalwarts John Zorn, Marty Ehrlich, Elliot Sharp and Adam Rudolph (all performing this fall).
The AACM has also born the latest younger generation of surprising composer-improvisers — Taylor Ho Bynum, Mary Halvorson, Tyshawn Sorey, Steve Lehmann, Matana Roberts, Liberty Ellman among others. Some of them appear in the AACM-New York concert series at Community Church of New York, instituted by the group’s founding guide, pianist-composer-improviser and NEA Jazz Master Muhal Richard Abrams.
I visited Braxton — Roulette’s throwing a four-day celebration of his defiantly unique but highly systematized music October 5 through 8 — a couple weeks ago at Wesleyan University, where he’s taught for 22 years, and video’d him with his ensemble class. The shooting and editing’s a bit rough, but you can take a look if you like.
Braxton and Wadada Leo Smith, now a key figure at California Institute of the Arts and in December having 70th birthday concerts at Roulette, were among the first AACM members to be embraced by American institutions of higher learning. Currently drummer/percussionist Thurman Barker teaches at Bard College, reeds virtuoso Roscoe Mitchell holds a prestigious chair at Mills College in Oakland and flutist Nicole Mitchell has just taken a new university position in San Diego. AACM precepts — open-ended but precisely described in George E. Lewis’s exemplary book A Power Stronger Than Itself: The AACM and American Experimental Music — are ever more identified with what must be studied and what can be done.
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Brooklyn
Congrats to Dafnis Prieto, MacArthur fellow
Cuban-born, New York-resident drummer-composer Dafnis Prieto has been named a 2011 MacArthur fellow, an honor attended by $500,000 to do with as he pleases, doled out $100K a year for five years.
Congratulations to Dafnis — who’s only been in the U.S. since 1999, when at age 25 he emigrated and joined reedist-composer Henry Threadgill’s ensemble. See what he does as a soloist and bandleader in Youtube clips.Â
Other jazz-oriented MacArthur fellows of the past five years are violinist Regina Carter, pianist Jason Moran, alto saxophonist Miguel Zenon and alto saxophonist-composer-record company principal John Zorn, all of whom have used the funds for personal yet well-received projects of the sort that require support beyond what the consumer music market provides.
The fellowships were established in 1981, and first recognized jazz-oriented musicians in ’88, when both pianist Ran Blake and drummer Max Roach were honored. Subsequent support of musicians of vernacular traditions has been irregular, but George Russell, Cecil Taylor, Steven Feld, Ali Akbar Khan, Steve Lacy, Ornette Coleman, Meredith Monk, Trimpin, Ishmael Reed, Octavia Butler, Ken Vandermark, Bright Sheng, George E. Lewis, Reginald Robinson, Edgar Meyer and Jonathan Lethem are recipients, and I admire all of them.
Multi-disciplinary across the arts and sciences, MacArthur Awards are unusual not least of all for the large cash grant going directly to recipients rather than being filtered through layers of bureaucratic organization. You can’t apply for it, very few are ever going to get it, but the benefits spill over to everyone interested in new and effective thinking. In a culture where artists and scientists routinely scuffle (at least compared to business people, sports stars and media celebrities), such patronage is an insufficient but welcome and widely beneficial corrective.
NYC new music post-9/11 to fall 2011
“The decade that followed 9/11/2001 has been marked by jazz and new music makers’ determination not to be deterred from what the Taliban and Tea Party alike may consider marginal activities, if not outright affronts to God’s dominion,” I write in my latest CityArts column. “Whether the city suffers attacks from abroad, natural disasters or economic collapses caused by the financial services sector that thrives in our midst, the minds of composers and the bands of improvisers play on.”
An excerpt from the article regarding Amina Figarova’s September Suite (written in advance of her performance on 9/11 at the Metropolitan Room) has already been published here — I attended that show by Figarova and her sextet, and found the music beautifully played, very affecting. But read the column for mention of a couple enduring jazz/new music campaigns taking their next steps this autumn: the biggest news being Roulette‘s rich season of concerts by uncompromisingly exploratory in a brand new space,  and the celebration by resolute Arturo O’Farrill (pictured above) with three special programs at Symphony Space of the tenth year of his Afro-Latin Jazz Orchestra.
The Azeri-Euro-Ameri-jazz 9/11 suite
Pianist Amina Figarova, from Azerbijan via Rotterdam to Astoria, Queens, composed September Suite in response to 9/11/01 — one of many works by musicians of all leanings and backgrounds created in response to the violent events of a decade ago. She and her sextet with Belgian flutist Bart Platteau, her husband, give the New York premiere of this piece on September 11 at the Metropolitan Room to cap a 7-city, mostly Midwestern tour. I reflect on post-9/11 jazz and new music in my upcoming CityArts column while looking at the season ahead, but it isn’t published until 9/14, so here’s an excerpt relevant to those searching for a beyond-jazz way to mark the 10th anniversary of attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon.
Few musicians in the wake of the Bush era’s early calamities set their sights on reverse jihad, but many produced works based on dramas they experienced or observed. One such was pianist-composer Amina Figarova.
Born in Azerbijan, educated in the classics at the Baku Conservatory, by the late ’80s Amina was converting to jazz — I met her backstage at the first Moscow Jazz Festival in 1988. Going to Rotterdam for further  studies, she reappraised her direction; signed up for a foreign exchange year at Boston’s Berklee College; met, married and settled in Holland with Belgian flutist Bart Platteau, returned to the U.S. in ’98 for the Monk Institute’s summer jazz colony in Aspen.
Since then, the Amina Figarova Sextet has established an admirable concertizing/recording career, playing the Newport, Chicago and Detroit Jazz Festivals, among other major stages. They’ve worked they way up — in the early ’00s I stumbled on them during Jazz Fest in New Orleans, gigging in a sleazy tourist bar on Bourbon Street. Bart and Amina love America, and last spring moved from Rotterdam to Astoria, Queens. They traded in a nice house near a university for a ground floor apartment with a terrace on a yard, a living room big enough for a 9-foot-plus Bosendorfer with eight extra low keys and a lively social circle of creative bohemians from all over. On the tenth anniversary of 9/11, as the ending date of a mostly Midwest, seven-stop tour, Figarova’s sextet performs the New York premiere of her September Suite at the Metropolitan Room. It’s sure to be a resonant event.
Amina was visiting friends in Brooklyn on 9/11/01, and was so disturbed by the destruction she awoke to that she refused to watch the endless video replays. However, a little later a BBC documentary caught her attention with its story of a 9/11 widow and her daughter struggling with the WTC death of their husband/father. Viewing their trials as a passage through stages of grief, Amina sat at her piano and conjured the dark bass line of “Numb,” first of her suite’s nine movements. She likens that theme to pure evil.
Actually, Figarova is incapable of composing or performing music that evokes evil, violence or ugliness – she and Platteau live in a world where beauty is measured with purposeful nuance. In September Suite her flute-tenor sax-trumpet front line, crisp piano comping and probing or delicate solos with bass-drums support depict tension unto strife, sorrow met with compassion, denial running its brisk course, the bittersweet solace of memories, the urge for revenge but no unleashing of rage, attempts at reconstruction, the enduring pain of loss, tentative recovery of life’s promise and arrival of new maturity.
The Suite is not programmatic; it can be listened to and enjoyed without reference to 9/11. But the fact of that day is part of it, not to be dismissed or forgotten. September Suite on record returns to where it began, with “Numb” reprised in only slightly recast (sadder? wiser?) form.
We’re older, I’m sure — but sadder and wiser? Or heedless as ever? What music will you listen to on 9/11?
Congrats to Sonny Rollins
Saxophonist supreme Sonny Rollins turns 81 today, and was announced as recipient of 2011 Kennedy Center honors. He really deserves it: he’s been a beacon of robust, smart, honest American music for more than 60 years. Surfing for clips, I found this of “Alfie’s Theme” from 1982, but there are many good ones from earlier and later in his career.
Bret “the Jazz Video Guy” Primack has done heroic work documenting the Man — check out their collaborative video biography. But as a sampler of his recordings, I recommend these five fine Sonny Rollins tracks, which may not be the typical critics’ picks, but are among my favorites. It’s easy to think of 50 or maybe 500 others.
“Strode Rode” — From Saxophone Colossus (1956). A hard-bop tribute to athlete and actor Woody Strode, who portrayed characters of integrity in John Ford westerns, and elsewhere. Rollins’ quartet is driven by drummer Max Roach.
“Love Is A Simple Thing” from Sonny Rollins/Brass-Sonny Rollins/Trio (1958). Sonny’s huge tenor sound soars boldly over a large ensemble of all-stars (Nat Adderly, Clark Terry, Ernie Royal in the trumpets; Roy Haynes drums and Henry Grimes, bass; Ernie Wilkins, arranger/conductor).
“Just Friends” from All The Things You Are: Sonny Meets Hawk  (1962). Coleman Hawkins, first and foremost tenor saxophonist in jazz, was Rollins’ near neighbor and idol while he was growing up on Sugar Hill in Harlem. Together, their interaction is master/acolyte. Hawkins goes first, Rollins comes on obliquely and continunes, jagged. Herbie Hancock on piano.
“Jungoso” from What’s New? (1962). Just Rollins, growling, propelled through 10 minutes by Candido on congas and Bob Cranshaw, who is still Sonny’s bassist.
“Isn’t She Lovely“Â from Easy Living (1977). Composer Stevie Wonder couldn’t have hoped for a more exuberant rendition of his celebration of a new daughter. Tony Williams, drums; George Duke, keyboards. The album boasts two other especially dynamic tracks: “Arroz con Pollo” on which Rollins plays soprano sax — take that, Kenny G! — and “Hear What I’m Saying,” plus Rollin’s beautiful interpretation of the title track.
One piece that will bear repeated listening by jazz aficionados for eons is about to be released: “Sonnymoon for Two,” in the 21 minute exchange Sonny’s had with Ornette Coleman backed by bassist Christian McBride and drummer Roy Haynes, from R’s 80th birthday concert at the Beacon Theater in NYC. It’s on the album Road Shows Vol. 2, dropping Sept. 13.
Foundation to run the Chicago Jazz Fest?
The Labor Day weekend free Chicago Jazz Festival had multiple musical high points, like Mike Reed’s   Myth/Science Assembly, yet Chicago Tribune critic Howard Reich believes the fest is old and creaky, in dire need of reinvention, under a new, fest-dedicated Foundation. With new mayor Rahm Emmanuel facing an immense budget shortfall, Reich may be right that something has to be done to convince City Hall the Fest should continue . . . but are his prescriptions the way forward?
Essentially Reich recommends separating the Jazz Festival from the City, which has been its producer for 33 years (the non-profit Jazz Institute of Chicago is responsible for programming). He doesn’t call for privatization, but for a “Chicago Jazz Festival Foundation,” whatever that would be. An appealing idea at first glance, however: This would very likely end up replacing “free” from “ticketed” at a time when cultural institutions that have historically been for everybody are increasingly charging large $, putting the arts out of reach for impoverished and even middle-class citizens. Chicago has no basis for creating a non-profit jazz-oriented foundation, and has had bad recent run-ins with privatization, as outgoing mayor Richie Daley leased the city’s parking meters to a private firm, a deal that’s locally considered outrageous. Turning the fest over to some stand-alone entity, for-profit or non-profit, is a highly dubious way to go.
And it’s not likely possible, anyway. Reich points to the San Francisco Jazz Festival and Montreal Jazz Festival as models, but neither of them are starting up in the constricted financial context of 2011 and both exist in very different public/private spheres than Chicago’s. Who would provide the money for a publicly beneficial Chicago-wide festival? Reich thinks the Chicago Jazz Partnership, major sponsor of the Fest and a collaboration of The Boeing Company, Kraft Foods, Chicago Community Trust, J.P. Morgan Chase Bank, United Airlines and some philanthropies, could provide seed funding. Maybe so — and perhaps Reich is staking out a position for the Chicago Jazz Partnership to take over responsibilities.
But ask George Wein, producer of the 56-year-old Newport Jazz Festival, how he got Natixis Global Asset Management to be chief sponsor this year. It ain’t easy. Big funders are scarce. The Detroit Jazz Festival survives because philanthropist Gretchen Valade endowed it with $10 million. Any wealthy Chicago jazz fans out there?
Reich proposes, I believe more assiduously, that the Fest embrace and be extended further into Chicago’s thriving though factionalized musical community, along the lines of Chicago’s City-sponsored World Music Festival. Since the Fest’s mid-week club tour is a unique feature of Chicago’s events, carrying listeners throughout the city on trolleys to clubs they would probably otherwise not visit for a modest one-entry-to-13-venue price ($25 average), and is extraordinary fun, I endorse the thought. Thing is, the Chicago Jazz Festival already does that, having this year had fest-related events in the Mexican neighborhood of Pilsen and the South Asian community, too.
Fact is, the Chicago Jazz Fest isn’t how it’s been because no one wants it better, but because resources, financial, organizational and otherwise, are thin. It’s a great accomplishment that the Jazz Institute and City collaborate on what they’ve got now. Not to say it’s the best of all possible worlds and there should be no improvements. Reich has carped for years about the acoustics of the Petrillo band shell; the sound mix isn’t very good, and that’s the mixing engineer’s issue — better mixing engineer? Better mikes and/or speakers? — not so much the locale’s. Reich far prefers the new Frank Gehry designed Pritzker Pavillion, which is indeed a nice open air venue, but holds at best half the audience that Petrillo accommodates. And we don’t want to limit the number of Chicagoans and visitors who can enjoy this vibrant, locally-focused programming, do we?
About that programming, my favorites (many videos from the Fest and other sites — but not by me — linked below) included:
- Cassandra Wilson singing “The Man I Love,”
- Tenor saxophonist David Sanchez joined by vibist Stefon Harris in a powerhouse set,
- Octagenarians Ira Sullivan (multi-instrumentalist, on tenor and soprano saxes, flute and trumpet) and pianist Willie Pickens, together, proving how jazz remains a vitalizing practice for all ages,
- Trumpeter Orbert Davis leading his Chicago Jazz Philharmonic in a successful meld of idiomatic fire and classical forms,
- Pianist Geri Allen strong, imaginative and focused on compositions by Eric Dolphy and Mary Lou Williams in company with Trio 3 (alto saxist Oliver Lake, bassist Reggie Workman, drummer Andrew Cyrille),
- Violinist Zach Brock, brilliant in several settings,
- Dave Liebman, Joe Lovano and Ravi Coltrane as Saxophone Summit (w/Cecil McBee, bass; Billy Hart, drums; Phil Markowitz, piano) heroically reviving the emotionally charged, deep sound of John Coltrane’s late works
- Trumpeter Maurice Brown‘s Chicago/New Orleans band, full of youthful wit
- Trumpeter Roy Hargrove quieting the entire audience with a beautiful rendition of the ballad “You Go To My Head” and his alto saxist Justin Robinson expanding on Charlie Parker’s inspiration
- The Occidental Brothers Dance Band International (Greg Ward, alto sax) bringing Afro-beat to the fest — welcome, though no one danced,
- Alto saxist Ernest Dawkins urging President Barack Obama in lyrics to fight back against GOP opposition.
And there was more. In Chicago as elsewhere — on Labor Day weekend, before and beyond — jazz lives.
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Chicago jazz fest: taking audiences into neighborhoods
The Chicago Jazz Festival began Wednesday night with a club tour — busses the Chicago Trolley Company’s open-air vehicles carting hundreds of ticket-holders on interlocking routes stopping at music-rooms throughout town. Of five venues on the South Side, City Life Cocktail Lounge was my favorite. Singer June Yvon has held a weekly gig there for 19 years, and delivers bluesy, swinging, funky standards such as “What A Difference A Day Makes”  a hit for both Dinah Washington and Esther Phillips, with experienced conviction, scatting and dramatizing the lyrics, too. I video-taped her and plan to produce an eyeJAZZ clip, but my friend Marc PoKempner‘s photo captures the tone of the place and her set. Click on the image to see it large.
Tonight (Friday) in downtown Millenium Park: guitarist Bobby Broom with organist Chris Forman in a band that plays regularly at the Green Mill, featuring guest alto saxophonist Bobby Watson, followed by the Saxophone Summit of Joe Lovano, Dave Liebman and Ravi Coltrane. Saturday and Sunday afternoons, local stars who have world-class talent (ragtime composer Reginald Robinson, hard-edged alto saxophonist Edward Dawkins — pictured at left — and trumpeter Orbert Davis in several configurations) perform near sparkling Buckingham Fountain.
Come evening the action moves across the Jackson Street to the Petrillo bandshell, for bills headlined by Cassandra Wilson (trumpeter Maurice Brown, Trio 3 + Geri Allen, Obert’s Jazz Philharmonic Chamber Ensemble), and Roy Hargrove (drummer Mike Reed’s Myth/Science Assembly, multi-instrumentalist Ira Sullivan’s 80th birthday celebration, tenor saxist David Sanchez w/vibist Stefon Harris). If you’re in the area and dig jazz, this free festival is where you want to be. If you’re not, get to one of the other couple dozen jazz events across the U.S. this weekend (and please please please Tweet about WHO you heard and WHERE you heard them, using #jazzlives).
Call for Tweets! hashtag #jazzlives from Labor Day jazz fests
The #jazzlives Twitter hashtag campaign broadcasts on WHO was heard live-in-person and WHERE throughout the fast-growing social mediaverse. Over Labor Day weekend, with some two dozen jazz fests and parties throughout the States and neighbors, the audience for live jazz can use hashtag as a free and easy way to get the word out that there is a jazz audience by composing clever, info-packed messages of 140 words, raising jazz buzz.
Since contacting Labor Day jazz, blues and roots fests I recognized in a post last week, the Franklin Jazz Festival outside Nashville, Tennesee, the Tony Williams Scholarship Jazz Festival outside Philadelphia and the Jazz On The Mountain festival in Whistler, British Columbia have written to say they’ll have MCs urge from the the stage that audiences tweet using the #jazzlives hashtag. #Jazzlives works well when bands tell their audiences to Tweet about them, too. “Didja like us? Tweet and tell the world — spell our names rights, say where we are, and add #jazzlives.” Tweets (and facebook “likes”) are the new word-of-mouth, considered the most effective kind of recommendation that exists.
The #jazzlives hashtage is two years old, having been established in reaction to the National Endowment for the Arts survey of arts audiences’ participation reporting that jazz audiences in particular are aging and diminishing. Anecdotal evidence — the on-the-ground accounts from places that surveys sometimes overlook — suggested that new audiences may be thriving somewhat more than might be realized, in locales that are not where old audiences have traditionally collected.
The idea behind #jazzlives is that more social media-savvy listeners will get the message to send a message that they’re out here, loving jazz, and expect to be acknowledged whether they fit former categories or not. So far there have been several thousand hashtags, from every continent — not a viral reaction on the web in terms of quantity of Tweets, but impressive considering the geographic range from which they come.
Again, the #jazzlives hashtag protocol is simple. If you’ve got a Twitter account, when you hear jazz live Tweet WHO you heard and WHERE you heard them, plus whatever else you’ve got to say and the hashtag (for “#” — the number sign or hashmark) #jazzlives. Please do not post about recordings or radio, no notifications about birthdays or deaths or album releases or upcoming gigs — that information is collected elsewhere on Twitter and befogs the #jazzlives results. When you want to see who’s listening to what, and where they are, go to your Twitter account and search #jazzlives. There is also a #jazzlives widget which you can add to your website, if interested. Leave a comment on this blog and I’ll get back to you with details about it.
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Online video Charlie Parker Jazz Fest, day 2
Hurricane Irene wiped out both days of NYC’s annual Charlie Parker Jazz Fest — but not the show of Archie Shepp, Anat Cohen, Gerald Clayton and Madeleine Peyroux available via YouTube. Here’s a dry, speculative approximation of what we missed (see yesterday’s post for the virtual fest with Toots Thielemans, James Carter, Tia Fuller and Cecile McLorin Salvant).
- Pianist Gerald Clayton and his trio would have opened with something propulsive (thanks to bassist Joe Sanders, drummer Justin Brown) as in 2009 at the Berlin Jazz Festival:
Although it’s early in the afternoon for guests, would that pianist Hod O’Brien show up to duet with Clayton on “Close Your Eyes.” (Ella Fitzgerald did a definitive vocal version, but in Chicago Gene Ammon’s bold tenor rendition is the favorite). To end, Clayton essays “Con Alma” by Dizzy Gillespie (I like the trumpeter’s 1954 version with four Cuban percussionists).
- Clarinetist/saxophonist Anat Cohen is up next, with her quartet. Maybe she’d come on slow and sensual, as when she played “Body and Soul” at the 2010 Litchfield Jazz Festival.
Cohen also plays lovely soprano sax, as in a studio duet with guitarist Howard Alden on Billy Strayhorn’s “Isfahan.”
Of course, the composition was originally recorded by Duke Ellington’s Orchestra as part of his Far East Suite.
Cohen really gets down on “After You’ve Gone” (from the 2010 Newport Jazz Festival)
so she finishes with that (Jason Lindner on piano).
- Madeleine Peyroux is a controversial (at least to me) choice to program at a festival dedicated to bebop diety Charlie Parker and music in his wake. Now established as a singer-songerwriter, Ms. Peyroux began her career busking in Paris with a set list of covers exploiting
the aspect of her voice which most resembles Billie Holiday’s (and maybe Edith Piaf’s).
Ms. Peyroux could have introduced sly wit by segueing into her version (still in Holiday voice) of “Walkin’ After Midnight,” one of Patsy Cline‘s countrypolitan hits, following up with “Lovesick Blues,” which goes back to the last-of-the-blackface minstrels Emmett Miller, and closing with “Dance Me to the End of Love” (composed by Leonard Cohen).
.
Such would be her appropriately bluesy jazz stand.
- Archie Shepp‘s jazz bonafides need no justification — he emerged in the early 1960s as a tenor saxophone protegé of John Coltrane. In recent years, Shepp has struggled with problems affecting his embouchure, taking a toll on his intonation. But he’s a smart man who studied drama in his college years; he knows how to build to a climax. He’d start strong — as he did in 1978 on this tune (which I ought to know the name of, but don’t — that’s Clifford Jarvis playing drums).
Addressing the inexorable passage of time, Shepp could dip into “Things Ain’t What They Used To Be,” by Duke Ellington — which he record in an iconoclastic 1961 session led by pianist Cecil Taylor. Taking a cue from the news, he delves in “Lybia” — as he played it in 1975 accompanied by Charles Greenlee, trombone; Beaver Harris, drums; Dave Burrell, piano and David Williams, bass.
No performance of Shepp’s these days is without his piercing composition “Steam” about the gang-related Philadelphia street shooting of his 15-year-old cousin. Shepp sometimes plays this on piano intoning the lyrics himself, but the version recorded on the album I Know About The Life features vocals by Joe Lee Wilson, who died July 17, 2011.
For his finale, Archie plays Charlie Yardbird Parker’s “Confirmation.”
Makes for a cool afternoon fest, right? But you haven’t heard the end of it ’til you see and listen to Coleman Hawkins and Bird himself, on a video that purports to be from 1950 —
Hard to top Bird et al (Hank Jones, piano; Ray Brown, bass; Buddy Rich, drums), virtually. But live music trumps recording, and there are nearly two dozen jazz fests, coast-to-coast, over Labor Day weekend. So there’s a chance — grab it! And Tweet about WHO you hear, WHERE you hear ’em, plus the hashtag #jazzlives.