Archives for 2012

Jayne Cortez, a no-nonsense poet who often declaimed her incisive lines of vivid imagery tying fierce social criticism to imperatives of personal responsibility with backing by her band the Firespitters, died Dec. 28 at age 76 (according to NYT obit, age 78). Her deep appreciation of American blues and jazz was another of her constant themes; her son Denardo Coleman played drums in the Firespitters, with whom she recorded six albums.

An activist in the Civil Rights movement, organizer of Watts writing and drama workshops, founder of the Watts Repertory Theater, Bola Press and co-founder of the Organization of Women Writers of Africa, Ms. Cortez was also taught at Rutgers, Howard, Wesleyan and Eastern Michigan universities, Dartmouth and Queens colleges and was a muse to the avant garde. Her husband sculptor Melvin Edwards is well known for his series “Lynch Fragments” and “Rockers.” When Ms. Cortez was a teenager in California, musicians including Don Cherry hung out at her family’s home because she had (as Cherry said) “the best record collection,” and through them she met Ornette Coleman, to whom she was married from 1954 to ’64 and with whom she kept in contact. Members of the Firespitters such as guitarist Bern Nix and bassist Jamaaldeen Tacuma, besides Denardo, played in Ornette’s electrically amplified band Prime Time.

Born in Arizon, raised in Los Angeles, Ms. Cortez was drawn to the arts at an early age. She painted and played cello besides keeping journals, graduated from an arts high school but was unable to go to college due to financial problems. She is sometimes said to have inspired Coleman’s composition “Lonely Woman,” originally titled “Angry Woman” — but the adjectives that seem (in my limited experience) to best describe Jayne Cortez are independent, inquisitive, precise and determined. Rhythm, repetition and pointed rhetoric characterize her poetry, as when she asked, “If the drum is a woman/Why do you beat your woman?”

If the drum is a woman
then understand your drum
. . . your drum is not invisible
your drum is not inferior to you
your drum is a woman
so don’t reject your drum
don’t try to dominate your drum
. . . don’t be forced into the position
as an oppressor of drums
and make a drum tragedy of drums
if your drum is a woman
don’t abuse your drum.

In 2000, I was honored to be invited by Jayne Cortez to sit on a panel for an international symposium she was helping to organize at New York University titled “Slave Routes: The Long Memory.” Sometime later, while writing Miles Ornette Cecil – Jazz Beyond Jazz, I ran into her coming out a Manhattan drug store and we chatted briefly. I mentioned that my topic was the avant-garde, and she immediately responded that “the avant-garde is that in art which didn’t exist before. It’s always hard to introduce, because the avant-garde has to make a place for itself where there wasn’t one, where there wasn’t anything.”

Deeper, deeper, deeper/Higher, higher, higher. Always reaching and urging us to, too, intending encouragement as much as challenge. Thanks, Jayne Cortez, for ideas, spirit, words and music.

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Checking out new recordings is the motivation of much jazz journalism, though at top-10 time having so much new stuff can be a bedevilment, if not a curse.

Here’s a baker’s dozen of my favorites from among the 11-some-hundred sent by record labels, publicists and, increasingly, the artists themselves. They reward multiple listenings, so I keep learning about them.

Maghostut Trio – Live at Last (RogueArt) — In  Oct 2003, five months before his death, Malachi Favors Maghostut,  the profoundly sure bassist who co-founded the AACM and anchored the Art Ensemble of Chicago, recorded with reeds player/pianist Hanah Jon Taylor and drummer Vincent Davis. In sessions in a Madison, Wisconsin studio and the original Velvet Lounge, the musicians are vivid and unflagging, treating Charlie Parker’s “Au Privave” and Little Walter’s “My Babe” with the same high, rough regard as three collective improvisations, Taylor’s “Electric Elephant Dance” and Favor’s own “Beware of the Wolf.”

Steve Lehman Trio – Dialect Fluorescent (Pi) — Wow, can Lehman play alto sax! His rip-roaring yet silver-surfaced tone, flash-finger facility, far-reaching harmonic ideas and intelligent intensity are met with equal presence by bassist Matt Brewer and drummer Damion Reid. The three transform the unlikely “Pure Imagination” (from the first Willie Wonka movie), as well as Coltrane’s “Moment’s Notice,” Jackie McLean’s “Mr. E.” and Duke Pearson’s racy “Jeannine,” Lehman’s hottest feature. These are of a piece with five of his original themes; they all have multiple levels of interactivity in dynamic, transparent sync.

Jacob Garchik – The Heavens/The Atheist Gospel Trombone Album (Yestereve) — A refreshing appropriation of church-rockin’ motifs for cats of all and no religious denominations. A light filter of sceptical secular cosmopolitanism highlights ironies as well as similarities in everybody’s love of swinging, throaty, amassed sounds. Every sound is by Garchik, overdubbing ‘bone, baritone horn, sousaphone and slide ‘bone. Ingenious, solid.

Frank Wright Quartet – Blues for Albert Ayler (ESP-Disk) — Hot as lava, guitarist James  Blood Ulmer and drummer Rashid Ali slam with sax-and-flutist Frank Wright, a childhood friend of Albert Ayler, and bassist Benny Wilson during never-before-released tapes of a 1974 gig at Ali’s Alley in Soho. Nobody told them they couldn’t play like this — no-holds-barred, gritty, loud,”free,” devil-may-care — so they do.

Living by Lanterns – New Myth/Old Science (Cuneiform) — A double quintet of  emergent Chicago and NYC individualists  who are also swell collaborators and interpreters. They transform 700 hours of unused Sun Ra archival tape into a broad and multi-faceted program that gets off into space, yet enlightens this world. Alto saxist Greg Ward, cornetist Taylor Ho Bynum, tenor saxist Ingrid Laubrock, cellist Tomeka Reid, guitarist Mary Halvorson and vibist Jason Adasiewicz, with solid yet shifting rhythms laid down by bassist Joshua Abrams, drummers Tomas Fujiwara and Mike Reed, who also adds electronics. Inside/outside, like Ra.

Jon Irabagon’s Outright!– Unhinged (Irabragast Records) — An audacious jazz orchestra with strings, Theremin, berimbau, banjo and found objects besides the usual brass, reeds and rhythm, all connecting one way or another with tenor saxophonist Irabagon. Fine playing, rangy within contexts; quick change-ups lead you-never-know-where, and humor leavens the serious fun.

Hafez Modirzadeh – Post-Chromodal Out (Pi) — Alto and tenor saxist Modirzadeh has developed a unique microtonal practice, based in part on Persian (Iranian) dastgah modal music and inspired to universality by Ornette Coleman. He delves deeply into it with capable Iraqi-American trumpeter Amir ElSaffar, pianist Vijay Iyer (who plays a specially tuned keyboard), bassist Ken Filiano and drummer Royal Hartigan, plus guests on Filipino Kulintang (gongs), Persian santur (hammered dulcimer) and electric guitar. At first exposure the sound is — ?!?! — but grow accustomed to the tuning and it takes you away. . .

Wes Montgomery – Echoes of Indiana Avenue (Resonance) — This is the best record of the year that could have been issued in 1958, rich with swinging, melodic vitality. All previously unissued material that the guitar god Montgomery recorded in his hometown, with support from his brothers and cronies. Such music used to be a neighborhood staple; maybe jazz will become so local and groovy again.

Harris Eisenstadt — Canada Day III (Songlines) — Drummer Eisenstadt’s calm, precise yet color-filled compositions for a quintet of matured NYC pros who’ve learned to play together closely over three albums and several tours. Chris Dingman, vibes; Nate Wooley, trumpet; Matt Bauder, tenor sax; Garth Stevenson, bass and Harris, lifting everyone.

Ron Miles – Quiver (Enja) — If Boulder-based trumpeter Miles were m0re widely heard, he’d be more widely appreciated, as he and we deserve. With guitarist Bill Frisell and drummer Brian Blade, Miles is thoughtful, lyrical and a touch raucous, too. It’s a live performance of originals, a blues, Ellington and Mancini tunes. 

REISSUES:

Preservation Hall Jazz Band – The 50th Anniversary Collection – As it was and how it is.

Spectrum Road (Palmetto) — Works of Tony Williams’ Lifetime, not really a reissue but a high-energy revisitation by guitarist Vernon Reid, keyboardist John Medeski, drummer Cindy Blackman and Lifetime’s original bassist Jack Bruce. I’m glad this material gets new life.

BEST VOCAL ALBUM

Neneh Cherry and The Thing – The Cherry Thing (Smalltown Supersound) — Tenor sax terror Mats Gustuffson leads the trio The Thing, Neneh Cherry is one fearless singer, and repertoire includes tunes by the Stooges and Suicide as well as by Don Cherry (Neneh’s stepdad) and Ornette. Brace yourself.

BEST DEBUT CD:

Ryan Truesdell, Centennial: Newly Discovered Works of Gil Evans (ArtistShare). Beautiful large ensemble music expertly performed.

ALSO:

Calvin Weston – Of Alien Feelings (Imaginary Chicago); Positive Catastrophe (Taylor Ho Bynum and Abram Gomez-Delgado nonet) Dibrujo, Dibrujo, Dibrujo (Cuneiform); Guillermo Klein Los Gauchos, Carrera (Sunnyside); Henry Cole and the Afrobeat Collective, Roots Before Branches (self-produced); Art Ensemble, Early Combinations (Nessa); Sylvain Leroux Quatuor Créole (Completely Nuts); David Fiuczynski, Planet Microjam (Rare Noise); Sam Rivers, Dave Holland, Barry Altschul, Reunion: Live in New York (Pi); Wadada Leo Smith & Louis Moholo, Ancestors (Tum); Kurt Elling, 1619 Broadway, The Brill Building Project (Concord); The Thirteenth Assembly (Bynum, Halvorson, Pavone, Fujiwara), Station Direct (Imprec); Mary Halvorson Quintet, Bending Bridges (Firehouse 12);  Nicole Mitchell and an ARCHE New Music Ensemble, The Arc of O (RogueArt); Wayne Escoffrey, Only Son of One (Sunnyside); Organ Monk, Uwo in the Black (self-produced; I wrote the liner notes, but recommend this honestly, wholeheartedly); Pharoah Sanders, Early Pharoah (ESP); Steven Feld, Jazz Cosmopolitanism in Accra  (VoxLox).

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Things may be somewhat up-for-grabs at the National Endowment for the Arts, with chair Rocco Landesman  stepping down at year end (NEA Senior Deputy Chairman Joan Shigekawa will serve as the agency’s acting head), but assuming the show will go on I urge Reggie Workman (b. 1937, Philadelphia) receive a 2014 NEA Jazz Masters Award.

Workman is an oak of a bassist who has helped sustain, secure and advance jazz before and since the revolution started by John Coltrane. He’s been a messenger of jazz with many of the music’s leading lights (including Art Blakey), an instrumentalist who erases distinctions between tradition and the avant-garde, and has worked across genres, often in multi-media situations. He hasn’t often led recording sessions, though his 2000 album Summit Conference (with reedist Sam Rivers, who tragically was never officially recognized as a Jazz Master; pianist-composer Andrew Hill, who learned of his NEA honor just prior to his death in 2007, and drummer Pheeroan akLaff) is a fine one (I may have written the liner notes). He’s also been an invaluable mentor and professor at the New School for Jazz and Contemporary Music. Among many worthwhile contenders, Reggie is outstanding.

The Jazz Masters induction ceremony on January 14, 2013 is the NEA’s next high profile public event — and has been announced as a free webcast, televised live starting at 7:30 est from Dizzy’s Club Coca Cola (in NYC’s Jazz at Lincoln Center). Wynton Marsalis will emcee, and several already inducted Jazz Masters, as well as 2013 honorees Eddie Palmieri, Mose Allison and Lou Donaldson, will perform. Though in 2011, under Rocco Landesman’s watch, the Jazz Masters’ program was decreed completed, it was revived later that year at the insistence of the House Appropriations Committee. Anyone may nominate a musician for a Jazz Masters Awards — the process is detailed at www.NEA.gov and deadline for nominations of a 2014 NEA Jazz Master was last October 12.

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Eddie Palmieri is a new NEA Jazz Master — to be inducted Jan. 14 in a ceremony at Dizzy’s Club in Jazz at Lincoln Center, to be webcast live. He is, contradictorily, the spark-plug/conservator of the Americas’ indefatigable Afro-Caribbean music. He turned 76 yesterday (Dec. 15), celebrating with a a “career retrospective” featuring his jazz band and dance ensemble at JALC’s Hall. Here’s Palmieri’s portrait with his timbalero José Claussell, taken last night by Sánta István Csaba, a Budapest-based photographer currently visiting New York City.

Palmieri has been a leader in America’s “Latin” music since the early ’60s — a composing and arranging pianist, a dramatic improviser, a hard-touring and often recording artist, a progressive political voice — but one who consciously harkens back at least a decade earlier, to the musical era from which he sprung. For his concert’s first Rose Hall set on Friday, 12/13  Palmieri opened with an impromptu and intimately moody (if hastily resolved) piano solo, then brought his congos-bongos-timbales-bass clavé section and alto sax, trumpet, trombone horn line (plus upright bass) together for the title track of his slinky, intricate 2005 album Palmas. He introduced a composition dedicated to Thelonious Monk incorporating unusual-for-Latin off-kilter hesitations; he played startling dissonant chords and unexpected chromatic modulations under section writing that required full engagement and vigor from trumpeter Brian Lynch, trombonist Conrad Herwig, saxist Louis Fouché; he drew energy from his drummers. This was some jazz hot.

For his second set, Palmieri added vocalist Herman Olivera, trés virtuoso Nelson Gonzalez (and his son as a backup singer/rhythmist),  exciting ‘boneman Jimmy Bosch — to delve into the 1950s’ rhumba-mambo-cha-cha stylings of Tito Rodriguez, Machito and Tito Puente. This orchestral popular dance music may have become formalized in the past 50+ years, but remains as multi-layered and compelling as ever, if played well. Palmieri and Co. played it well, though this repertoire left a bulk of Palmieri’s career unasserted. His charanga innovations and collaborations with Cal Tjader, boogaloo funk, dynamic electric (pre-Santana) jams, grandiose self-referential works, and ethnomusicological interpretations were missing. Yes, he’s a Jazz Master — but what’s he thinking up now?

I’ve written about Palmieri several times on this blog, including this an enthusiastic review of his 2009 JALC debut with his  neo-charanga ensemble La Perfecta II.

Here’s my posting when Palmieri’s Jazz Masters Award was announced — plus notes on the rest of the distinguished class —

And here’s the post from last year with my nomination of him for the NEA Jazz Master honor. Which begs the question — Who next?

See my nomination tomorrow.

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Drummer/composer/pianist Jack DeJohnette, an NEA Jazz Master, is the sole jazz-associated artist among 54 fellows selected by United States Artists (not a governmental organization) from 438 applications to a grants program initiated by United States Artists in 2006.

USA fellows received $50,000 in unrestricted funds. Citing “cutting-edge thinkers and traditional practitioners from the fields of architecture and design, crafts and traditional arts, dance, literature, media, music, theater arts, and visual arts,” USA also rewarded the well-established choreographer Trisha Brown, novelist Annie Proulx, playwright David Henry Hwang and banjoist Tony Trishka.

United States Artists started with $22 million seed money from the Rockefeller, Ford, Prudential and Rasmuson Foundations, and has raised $51 million from individual patrons to underwrite specific artists’ awards. In 2010, United States Artists established USA Projects, to allow “any accomplished artist in the country to post projects and raise funds from friends and fans,” accepting donations as small as $1, presumably without the restrictions or fees connected with such crowd-funding sites as Kickstarter.

Since 2006, jazz-related artists receiving USA Fellowship have included Bill Frisell with Jim Woodring, Don Byron, Jason Moran, John Santos, Muhal Richard Abrams, Henry Threadgill, Cyro Baptista, Lionel Loueke, George E. Lewis, Uri Caine, Guy Klucevsek, Greg Tate — as well as Cajun fiddler Michael Doucet (of BeauSoliel), sarod master Ali Akbar Khan, oudist Rahim AlHaj, Evan Ziporyn (reedist for Bang on a Can All-Stars and gamelan composer), Ella Jenkins (“First Lady of the Children’s Folk Song”), and pipa player Wu Man.

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The Enjoy Jazz Festival in south-western Germany two weeks ago culminated in an unexpected celebration of jazz’s deep traditions, led by formidable saxophonist Archie Shepp and serene reeds explorer Yusef Lateef. It was a fitting end, also, for an international symposium titled “Lost in Diversity: A Transatlantic Dialogue on the Social Relevance of Jazz,” held at the Heidelberg Center for American Studies at Ruprecht Karls Universität Heidelberg (est. 1386), which

convened musicians, scholars, journalists and presenters to forge new links in a network that’s developing to defy many boundaries, not least of which is the ocean between the U.S. and Europe.

During a week in which headlines of German newspapers and tv news broadcasts continued to hail the re-election of Barack Obama, the value and significance of improvised music born of America’s minority and marginalized populations but now embraced world-wide became increasingly clear. Information on ambitious plans for the second International Jazz Day (April 30, 2013). produced by UNESCO with assistance from the Thelonious Monk Institute of Jazz, further emphasized that jazz (if you dislike that term, supply the synonym of your preference) is being adopted globally for the promotion of peace, education and productivity.

If that seems like a far cry from the intentions of the jazz art form’s founding musicians, you must not have heard Shepp-Lateef (with the remarkable support of bassist Reggie Workman, pianist Mulgrew Miller and drummer Hamid Drake), or attended Enjoy Jazz’s productions of lightning-and-thunder drummer Billy Hart’s quartet, or keyboards master Herbie Hancock, who played grand piano and up-to-the minute electronics, solo. And you certainly missed the modest but penetrating “piano lectures” by Vijay Iyer and Alexander von Schlippenbach, delivered at the Lost in Diversity conference for an inquisitive audience gathered in the University’s hallowed Ault Aula, a fantastically ornamented representation of 19th century German “historicist” interior design.

That space, which all but imposed an aura of hushed awe for tradition and authority via its elaborate woodwork and mural of pageantry, was the site of tensions expressed by Shepp and Lateef, who decry the term “jazz” for 20th century-emergent African-American improvised music, and jazz globalists as represented by Iyer (born and raised in upstate New York by parents who had immigrated from India) and von Schlippenbach, a founding member of the post-WWII German musical avant garde. Lateef, who calls what he plays “autophysiopsychic music” began his lecture by reciting the many negative associations listed by Webster’s dictionary for the word “jazz.” Shepp, perhaps the most explicitly political musician to emerge in the 1960s from the direct  influence  of John Coltrane, is also firm in his position that what’s called “jazz” should be referred to as something greater and specific about its basis in African and African-American music practice. He spoke after von Schlippenbach had concisely related his story of involvement in jazz in 1960s Germany, and when asked about European jazz Shepp (currently based in Europe) responded dryly, “What is that?”

Iyer’s talk, complemented by his brief, introspective recital, concerned liminal issues of personal identity, stylistic choice and creative purpose. His entire presentation was in stark contrast to Herbie Hancock’s unexpectedly plugged-in display. After opening his concert in the splendid Feierabendhaus (Ludwigshafen) venue operated by Enjoy Jazz’s sponsor BASF with an abstracted rendition on a concert grand of Wayne Shorter’s “Footprints,” Hancock turned to electric gear including his keytar, Korg equipment and a bank of connected laptops which provided loops and backdrops for his performance of “Cantaloup Island” (adopting the arrangement by UK dj/acid jazz group Us3), “Future Shock” and “Chameleon.” The crowd, predominantly middle-aged, had anticipated more acoustic music. Which is what they got, in full force, from drummer Hart’s group with pianist Ethan Iverson, tenor saxophonist Mark Turner and bassist Ben Street.

These concerts were the nightly attractions for participants in the academic symposium. Over the course of two days, we presented and listened to papers reflecting some current thinking about jazz (or synonym). Among those: Daniel Fischlin of University of Guelph “Improvisation, Community and Social Practice project gave a paper “The Fierce Urgency of Now: Improvisation, Rights and the Ethics of Co-Creation,” concerning perspectives of diverse communities partaking of improvisational (not only “jazz”) values and strategies, and improvisation as an engine of agency, resulting in the imagination (if not construction) of new social relations. Eric Porter, professor of American Studies, History and History of Consciousness at the University of California, Santa Cruz described the tenacity despite complexities and ambiguities of New Orleans’ second line tradition. Wolfram Knauer, director of the Jazzinstitute Darmstadt, examined the relevance of the German academical concept of “social relevance” in relation to jazz as it occurs, is understood or applied functionally in general society.

Ted Panken, Brooklyn-based jazz journalist, compared the organizational similarities and aesthetic directions of Jazz at Lincoln Center and the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (he quoted AACM eminence Muhal Richard Abrams as saying the comparison was “a stretch”). Christian Dalgas, project manager of the Copenhagen Jazz Festival, outlined that major fest’s activities. Rainer Kern, director of the Enjoy Jazz festival, talked on “Jazz and the City.”

Novelist/musician/dj Thomas Meinecke did a turntable lecture, playing snippets of lps that demonstrated the piquancy and breadth of the jazz impulse. My remarks were on the topic of “Motivations in U.S. Jazz” — and I shall post the essay w/slide show I put together elsewhere on this blog.

Most heartening was the information by Tom Carter, president of the Thelonious Monk Institute of Jazz, about the continuation of International Jazz Day, which in 2013 will launch with an ambitious event in Istanbul, intended to acknowledge societal developments in the Middle East, to reinforce jazz’s accessibility to that region, and further globalize jazz via simultaneous concerts, workshops, educational initiatives and celebrations to be planned and promoted everywhere possible.

During his remarks opening the “Lost in Diversity” symposium, its organizer Christian Broecking explained that

“lost” was meant to be understood as the way Kurt Weill applied it in his musical “Lost in the Stars” — rapt, engrossed. entranced, ecstatic. Upon attending the participants’ presentations, we were certainly aswim with ideas. But the week’s ultimate impression came from the music, of course, especially the two-tenor finale, which Enjoy Jazz’s Kern had been angling for over the course of three years, in hopes of repeating the 2005 success of Ornette Coleman in Ludwigshafen, which resulted in the Pulitzer Prize-winning, live-in-concert album Sound Grammar. Shepp and Lateef are, after all, among the most highly regarded exemplars of the purist approach to “jazz,” complementary yet contrasting in their personal demeanors and sound. Reggie Workman (who must be considered, on the basis of his lifelong career and accomplishments, a Jazz Master) with Mulgrew Miller and Hamid Drake comprised a surpassingly capable support system — a necessity if the strengths of the horns were to be highlighted, and their differences bridged.

Indeed, that’s what the rhythm section did, while Shepp, wearing suit and fedora, served as MC, blew tenor and soprano saxes and called the set tunes, Lateef perched on a stool, his passel of instruments — tenor, wood and tine whistles, flute, oboe — at hand.  The five started with a freely unfolding improvisation, moved on to a bright Shepp composition for one of his daughters, then “Steam,” on which he sang as well as played about his young cousin, shot dead in Philadelphia’s streets. They took up Ellington’s “In A Sentimental Mood,” returned to fulfill a “prepared,” improv built upon a pre-recorded backdrop, then took on another Shepp song, “Ujamma” — at the end of which the pa system suddenly blew out. A 15 minute intermission was called for, while the Feierabendhaus staff scrambled to diagnose and repair the problem.

When electricity, quintet and audience returned, it was everyone had tuned up their intensities a notch. Shepp, who after surgery in the 1980s which affected his embouchure has had a woolier sound, wailed with urgent, creative intensity, and sang a lusty straightforward blues. Lateef performed an exquisite oboe version of “C.C. Rider” and sang a keening spiritual. Mulgrew Miller sparkled and Hamid Drake swung, while Workman was the hub of connection,

lending nuanced pulse and tone precisely where most needed. He and Miller kept in notable eye-contact during the encore demanded by an audience ovation — Ellington’s “Don’t Get Around Much Anymore.” Again, Shepp gave all his lusty if untrained voice to the lyric, plus rapt attention to the collective improv meant to bring the song to its close — though Lateef seemed more interested in lingering over the phrases.

Somehow magically, miraculously, the five musicians ended together as one. Much more, the audience roared. We were all lost — caught up, breathless, in awe — of the spontaneous group doings, which gave a lift to all involved. Growls, flares, flashes, smears, flubs, bombs, boasts, sighs, understatements, grooves, bust outs, blendings: players and listeners alike, enlivened by the sounds. And so many sounds, emitted by such a breadth of individuals. Brilliant diversity being its own reward, relevance was readily recognize to have been fully attained.

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A lot of jazz joints are “dives” — in basements — but since Hurricane Sandy it’s not flood waters keeping cellars like the Village Vanguard, the Jazz Standard, Fat Cat, 55 Bar (Sat: open with candlelight), Cornelia Street Café and Smalls closed. There’s simply no electricity.

So they, like every other music venue below 26th St. (including the Blue Note, which hopes to be back Saturday, with Chick Corea and Stanley Clarke; Village Bistro, Arthur’s Tavern, the Metropolitan Room, the Jazz Gallery, Jazz at Kitano — which is on Park Ave. at 38th St., but the phone is off the hook — the Stone, Zinc Bar, Bar on Fifth) are dark. And Con Ed won’t predict when the lights will go on. Downtown Music Gallery, the important record store in a cellar in Chinatown, is “bone dry,” according to an employee, but expects no restoration of power for five to ten days. (Open as of Sat. noon! Free performances of Brit guitarist Philip Gibbs scheduled for 6 pm and and 7 pm Sunday.)

Of course it’s an incomparably greater disaster for the estimated 20,000 residents of Hoboken, across the Hudson River, who’ve been stranded in their apartments without power for four days and counting. It’s even worse for folks all over the East Coast who’ve lost homes to the storm and (it doesn’t go without saying) for those injured, fatally or not, and their families.

But jazz in NYC has served as a healing force after catastrophes such as the 9/11 attacks. Back then musicians performed  with something approaching a holy imperative to summon and soothe a community, though the Twin Towers smouldered. (The JJA ran a post-9/11 panel discussion at the New School Jazz performance space on the jazz response, which I moderated with panelists including author Ira Gitler, pianist Vijay Iyer, professor Farah Griffin, journalist Larry Blumenfeld and ECM publicist Tina Pelikan– a transcript is archived.)

For those who need their music fix, the show does go on. Jazz at Lincoln Center, on the 5th floor of the Time Warner building at 60th St. and Broadway, is operational, with Dizzy’s Club  featuring trombonist Wycliff Gordon “and friends”; alto saxophonist Rudresh Mahanthappa’s Indo-Pak Coalition with guitarist Rez Abassi and percussionist Dan Weiss is at Miller Theater (Columbia U. campus). Jane Moneheit is at the 92nd St. Y, with guest fiddler Mark O’Connor. Birdland, in midtown, has Lee Konitz Quartet and on Sunday Arturo O’Farrill’s Afro-Latin Jazz Orchestra; Iridium in midtown re-starts Nov. 2 with blue-eyed soul singer Robbie Dupree. Smoke, at 106th and Broadway, has keyboardist Orran Evans Quintet with trumpeter Jack Walrath and tenor saxist Joel Frahm, and Cleopatra’s Needle between 92 and 93rd and B’way goes ahead with its scheduled performers, including Lou Donaldson’s drummer Fukushi Tainaka leading a quartet on Saturday.

In Brooklyn, Barbés has gone ethno-world-folky (but has Mr. Ho’s Orchestrotica, a vibes-led quartet Sat. night). Puppet’s, which had a long run in Park Slope, has closed  🙁 and that’s really too bad. Zebulon has guitarists Nels Cline and Elliot Sharp dueting tonight (Thurs. Nov 1), then a sequence of acts I’ve never heard of. The Brooklyn Conservatory of Music has an all-star Brooklyn Jazz Wide Open concert Saturday, Nov. 3.  Sistah’s Place has cancelled programs due to Sandy, as has Issue Project Room, but Roulette (with an intriguing “Cage and Kubera” concert Sunday at 5 pm — Roscoe Mitchell premieres a soprano sax solo piece)g, I-Beam and Douglas Street Collective are sticking to plans.  The decentralization of Manhattan’s new music scene, stimulated  by high real estate values, has advantages, after all.

This week it will be hard to get into Manhattan if you’re not there already. Busses are available (reportedly, SRO) to cross the bridges from the outer boroughs, where some subway lines are running, as are Manhattan’s subways north of 34th St. But most venues are in the blackout zone, further downtown.

Con Ed is under considerable pressure to get the grid back online. May the re-opening of clubs begin this weekend. Let the sounds be celebratory, as the storm has passed.
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NEA Jazz Masters pianist Randy Weston and alto saxophonist Lou Donaldson, both 86, played the same room as two astonishing 12-old prodigies — trumpeter Geoffrey Gallante and organist Matthew Whitaker (see their video clips, below) — at the Jazz Foundation of America‘s annual benefit Loft Party Saturday night  (Oct 27),. It proved again that America’s improvised, vernacular art form appeals to kids of the 21st century as to 70-year world-class professionals. Entertaining a suitably diverse, all-age audience, these musician spoke same language, held the same values, had the same aims: playing with rhythm and energy, for others and for self-satisfaction, too.

The Loft Party is always a hoot. I’ve been the volunteer mc at the “Jazz Loft” several times (this year my colleague Dan Ouellette did the same for the “Blues Loft” and actor Danny Glover was the man in the “Montreux Loft”). This year some 1100 attendees listened, schmoozed, flirted, noshed, drank and milled about the 13th floor of a Manhattan West Side studio building with grand views of the city, river and shorelines. Partiers (tickets: $281 each) got close to a festival’s worth of top players, who donated their services. (I stand corrected: From a JFA DIrector: “Performers do NOT donate their services…they might if we asked, but it’s our policy not to ask anyone to play for free, part of our philosophy of creating and perpetuating PAID gigs!”) Some $400,000 was raised to support JFA programs for musicians in need of medical care, housing assistance, career counseling and sometimes employment opportunities. The Jazz Foundation’s beneficiaries and constituency are usually thought of as ill or elderly, but Saturday night healthy, bright kids stole the show.

“What do you like about jazz?” I asked Matthew Whitaker. who lives with his parents in Hackensack, after his soul-infused 40 minute set at the Hammond B-3, supported by adult guitarist Matt Oestreicher and drummer Ralph Rolle.

He thought a moment, then blurted, “Everything!” He’d played a tribute to his favorite older organist, Dr. Lonnie Smith; a vibrato-drenched, slow drag “Misty,” very fast “All Blues ” and a splashy “St. Thomas.” Being blind and credible on drums as well as keyboards, Matthew can’t help recalling Little Stevie Wonder. He’s jammed up a mean version of “Higher Ground,” but for idiom-cred, check out his rendition of “Killer Joe.”

I put the same question to Geoff Gallante, whose parents had brought him up from Alexandria, VA for the loft party. He wore a snappy black suit and fedora, white shirt with open collar and turned-up sleeves. “What do you like about jazz?”

He came up quickly with the obvious answer: “It’s cool! It’s fun!” I echoed him: “If it isn’t fun, it isn’t jazz!”

Geoff had sat in for a couple of choruses with charming chanteuse Madeleine Peyroux (she sang “Careless Love,” a variant on “St. James Infirmary” and “I Hear Music”) with bassist Barak Mori and keyboardist Sam Yahel on the bittersweet Charlie Chaplin composition “Smile,” which was his choice. He’s got a focused tone, his own relaxed ideas, can phrase over bar lines — in all, sounds natural yet sophisticated in the vein of Harry “Sweets” Edison. Currently in seventh grade, Geoff mentioned that he started with classical music (all music lessons start with “classical” training) but likes jazz better. Will he keep on with it? “For sure, why not?” was his reply.

The “jazz” in the jazz loft was broadly defined, embracing indi-rocker Ken Stringfellow (“I’m honored to be here, since I hardly every play in this idiom,” he said), alto saxophonist Darius Jones‘ probing, esoteric Mae’bul Quartet and conscience-of-Haiti singer-songwriter-guitarist Manno Charlemagne. The blowout set was Weston’s. He seems looser and more profoundly ebullient every time I see him, and led super-physical bassist Alex Blake, urgent saxophonists T.K. Blue and Bill Saxton plus drummer Vincent Ecton in his African Rhythms Quintet.

Donaldson was no slouch though; with guitarist Randy Johnston (who was inspired to not one but two Chicago South Side-style solos), organist Akiko Tsuruga and drummer Fukushi Tainaka, laid down the line on what jazz is: hard-swinging blues, bebop a la Charlie Parker, funkification through generous application of r&b/gospel ploys. These days Uncle Lou sings a bit: He did “Last Night I Had the Craziest Dream,” recounting in his final chorus dismay at the evident ascendency of Mitt Romney and relief when, on waking, he finds Barak Obama is still president. Ovation ensued.

When not onstage, both Gallante (who performed in another loft with reedist Carol Sudhalter) and Whitaker sat in the crowd, soaking in the vibe and sounds of their elders. Other rooms’ attractions included saxophonist James Carter’s Organ Trio, Rebirth Brass Band, guitarist Elliot Sharp’s Terraplane, guitarists Bern Nix, Stew Cutler, Ladell McLin and Manu Lanvin, Melvin Van Peebles (who sang with a group he called Laxative because “they get sh*t done!”), percussionist Henry Cole, blues diva Sweet Georgia Brown with organist Greg (Organ Monk) Lewis and pianist Junior Mance.

In one Jazz Foundation of America initiative, under-employed instrumentalists pay teaching visits to grade schools, formalizing the in-person, oral tradition exchange of knowledge and dedication Randy Weston and Lou Donaldson had provided to Matthew Whitaker and Geoffrey Gallante, among others, at the gala community event. Such programs obviously pay off. Drummer Taylor Moore is another fresh, sharp player, a protegé of a Jazz Institute of Chicago’s Jazz Links Ensemble and the Ravina Jazz Scholars project of the Chicago Public School System. Trumpeter Roy Hargrove blows in front of her at an unplanned jam. Where there’s jazz talent, there’s a future.

howardmandel.com

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