April is Jazz Appreciation Month (so named by the Smithsonian Institution), culminating on the 30th with International Jazz Day (a project of UNESCO, organized by the Thelonious Monk Institute of Jazz) -- and both those initiatives are endorsed by the U.S. Conference of Mayors. So the Jazz Journalists Association has launched a major media campaign called JazzApril in support of local jazz scenes taking advantage of JAM and IJD to raise awareness of the jazz resources all around us, and today posted bios + photos of 25 JJA "Jazz Heroes," … [Read more...]

It was a big deal in Stockton, CA last Friday, when Wynton Marsalis led his Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra at the 12th annual jazz festival produced by the Brubeck Institute at University of the Pacific.  The ticket holders' line to enter the nicely restored Fox movie palace -- now the Bob Hope Theatre, in the center of otherwise near-dead downtown -- stretched around the block. The marquee was bright, and under it flowed well-dressed attendees of nearly all ages and many colors, quite festive mere days before they'd hear whether their … [Read more...]

One-of-a-kind American master musical artist Cecil Taylor turns 84 today, March 25, and deserves our culture's gratitude. His life has been one of relentless, intense, sweeping creativity, which has driven global developments in composition, improvisation, performance, attire and contemporary lifestyle to a much greater degree than has been much acknowledged --  although Taylor does have many staunch proponents and has received high honors. On piano, solo or in duos, trios, bands, with orchestras, he has consistently and constantly … [Read more...]

Ornette Coleman turns 83 today -- and is celebrating it privately. That's unusual, as he has thrown great parties, often full of live music (at his former Harlem Studio and one year at Joe's Pub), always attended by fabulously interesting people -- like the one last year for his 82nd birthday, Friday, March 9, 2012 held at his loft in Manhattan's West 30s. I was pleased to be invited (I've blogged about OC's birthday before), and wrote the following in afterglow. Some 100 individuals, many involved with jazz and/or other highly creative, … [Read more...]

Dr. Donald Byrd was a trumpeter with an ear for the vernacular and fresh talent. Jayne Cortez was a radical poet -- both esthetically and personally. Butch Morris was a jazz cornetist, composer, conductor and conductioner. Let's celebrate the lives and creativity of all three. Strangely, reports by a nephew of Byrd's death at age 80 on February 4 have remained "unconfirmed."  Morris, having died January 29 at 65. was memorialized Thursday night, Feb. 7 by speakers including Amiri Baraka, Avery Brooks, David Murray. Henry Threadgill and … [Read more...]

Photos of celebrants of composer-conductor Lawrence Douglas "Butch" Morris at a memorial held in Angel Orensanz, a renovated former-synogag in the East Village, by Sánta István Csaba. Writings for and about Butch by Steve Dalachinsky. Conduction # Infinity (Out of Reach but Never Out of Touch) 1. Butch: his mischievous smile > stern look > open laugh > dapper apparel > a real dandy > like back in the days when > his midrange slightly twanged voice > everything I’ll say is clichéd pompous emotional … [Read more...]

Greg Tate, author-essayist as well as guitarist-leader of the Butch Morris "conductioned" band Burnt Sugar the Arkestra Chamber, looked for his evidently unpublished liner notes to the planned 25th anniversary reissue on CD of Morris' Conduction #1, Racism in Modern America, a work in Progress. He couldn't find them. Tate emailed : "hey man those notes are lost in the clouds over here but the 1997 VIBE article  I did on Butch could be copacetic. . ." So here that is, in Google Books so a bit hard to navigate, but on page 60 if you … [Read more...]

The Orpheus Chamber Orchestra came to play with saxophonist Wayne Shorter's quartet at Carnegie Hall Friday, Feb 1, and -- though conductorless -- showed the cohesion and verve that will make a jazz-with-symphony program a triumph. If Shorter's writing and improvisations had matched their readiness, the night could have been truly historic. This orchestra, celebrating its 40th year and proud of its radically democratic ethos, in the first half of its evening's program used clarity and pacing to give wistful, introspective nuance to Charles … [Read more...]

My maybe unpublished 25th anniversary liner notes for Conduction #1, Current Trends in Racism in Modern America, A Work in Progress, by the late Butch Morris with all-star improvisers, recorded 28 years ago today (Feb 1, 2013) and sonically as relevant as ever.  [The cast is: Frank Lowe, tenor sax; John Zorn, alto sax and game calls; guitarist Brandon Ross; harpist Zeena Parkins; cellist Tom Cora; turntablist Christian Marclay; vibraphonist Eli Fountain; pianist Curtis Clark; percussionist Thurman Barker; vocalist Yasunao Tone and Butch, of … [Read more...]

Lawrence Douglas "Butch" Morris, one of the most brilliant and musically generous of artists who emerged from New York's East Village in the 1980s as an experimental cornetist, composer of melodies and settings, and instigator of the burgeoning act of Conduction (a term he copyrighted), died January 29 of cancer at age 65, and the world mourns. Besides my "appreciation" for National Public Radio, heartfelt writings have been posted in the New Yorker blog by cornetist Taylor Ho Bynum, in the Wall Street Journal blog by Vipal Monga (who … [Read more...]