Archives for June 24, 2005

I first heard Rick Trolsen in New Orleans (Never The Big Easy, please, unless you want to be considered a tourist cornball unduly infuenced by bad movies; calling it The Crescent City is okay). He was in Al Belletto’s big band. I loved his unreservedly tromboney solos. Trolsen is not a young hot dog trombonist harboring an inner trumpeter yearning to be free, but a mature one who loves the instrument for itself. Since I have long been hooked on Brazilian music, it came as a double surprise and pleasure when Trolsen’s wryly titled Gringo Do Choro showed up one day while I was in the throes of a troublesome part of the Desmond book. I knew that if I put it on, I’d lose the writing battle, so I set it aside. When I finally got around to the CD, it made me even happier than I had anticipated. Trolsen recorded it in 2003 in Rio de Janeiro with eight Brazilian musicians of whom I have never heard, not surprising since it seems that one out of three Brazilians is an accomplished musician. His immersion in New Orleans is plain to hear in his samba improvisations, and he blends the north-south elements with verve, humor, saudade and the feeling of abandon common to both musics.
The repertoire includes pieces by Trolsen, Clare Fischer and assorted Brazilians including Anontio Carlos Jobim and Jacob do Bandolim. Bandolim loved the mandolin so much that he took the Portuguese word for it as his last name. Henry Lentino, who is on the album, kept his own name but plays the Bandolim beautifully. The package has Trolsen’s fine introductory notes, observations on the songs by Marcia M.A. de Brito and a great cover shot of the trombonist playing with Central Rio below and, in the distance, Sugar Loaf swathed in fog. You are unlikely to run across this in your corner one-stop. You can go to Trolsen’s web site to find out where to get it, or call (504) 368-8130. Many albums on artists’ own labels are premature, self-indulgent and boring. This one is generous of spirit and entertaining.
Luscious Lu (Okay, so it’s a corny subhead, but it’s not wrong)
Luciana Souza, a Brazilian turned New Yorker and new U.S. citizen, is one of the best singers in the world. She performs with equal facility and mastery in Brazilian music, American songs and classical music. She has sung Osvaldo Golijov’s “Pasion” with the New York Philharmonic and scatted with cutting-edge young jazz players in Greenwich Village. She wins critics polls (Last week, the Jazz Journalists Association’s Female Jazz Singer of the year award) and Grammy nominations. She is just beginning to reach the general acclaim justified by her talent and charisma. Souza’s musicianship is deep and wide. The half-step modulations she improvises over Romero Lubambo’s guitar in the tag ending of “Amanha” on her Brazilian Duos are astonishing. Her second volume of duets is, if anything, even better than the first. On North And South she stretches the phrasing of “All Of Me” with assurance, subtlety and control of the time so that although her approach is daring, she maintains respect for the song’s integrity. With the Maria Schneider Orchestra in Concert in the Garden her wordless vocalising is an integral element of the ensemble in Schneider’s title composition, the “Choro Dancado” section of “Three Romances” and the masterpiece of the album, “Buleria, Solea y Rumba.” In other words, Schneider uses Souza as an instrument in the orchestra. Souza executes the demanding parts flawlessly and, evidently, without effort.
Schneider Triumphant
With Concert in the Garden, Schneider reaches a plateau in her notable young career. The CD won four Jazz Journalists Association awards last week and a Grammy in the spring. The student of Gil Evans and Bob Brookmeyer is more clearly than ever an original voice in composition and orchestration. Her writing is integrated with the abilities of her musicians in ways that nurture the individualism of soloists like trumpeters Ingrid Jensen and Greg Gisbert, tenor saxophonists Rich Perry and Donny McCaslin and pianist Frank Kimbrough. Schneider is one of a few musicians also breaking ground on the business side of jazz recording. She made the album under the auspices of ArtistShare, formed to give artists control, more of the money they earn and a chance for their audiences to participate in and support the creative process. Guitarist Jim Hall has also joined AristShare and has released his first independent album, the brilliant Magic Meeting. Hall is preparing for ArtistShare a duo album with pianist Geoff Keezer. Bob Brookmeyer has joined ArtistShare, and Ingrid Jensen told me the other day that she is signing up as well. Assuming that it can matintain its integrity, the organization seems a bold step away from the convolutions, exploitation and abuses of the traditional recording industry. Schneider’s album is available only from her at ArtistShare. It is an indication of the way the world is going that the ArtistShare website offers neither a physical address nor a phone number. Sorry about that, troglodytes.

The latest on tenor saxophonist Bill Perkins’s solo methodology: critic and historian Larry Kart responds to musician Charlie Shoemake’s pondering the other day on the nature and origin of Perkins’s harmonic choices.

I understand what Charlie Shoemake says up a point, but then I don’t understand it all, at least not as it applies to latter-day Perkins, who seems to me to have become one of the more harmonically oriented players on the planet — a man whose melodies were in effect being generated by a series of (no doubt to some considerable degree self-invented) substitutions. Not only that, it also seems fairly clear to me that the obliqueness and, at times IMO, the awkwardness of Perkins’ latter-day harmonic thinking amounted to an attempt on his part to make obliqueness in that realm trickle over into the realm of rhythm,where Perkins apparently felt that he was far less fluid, hip, you name it than he would have wanted to be (witness his statements about how he felt about the rhythmic nature of his own playing versus that of Richie Kamuca when they were running buddies).
If I had to take a guess, I’d say that the model for latter-day Perkins was Thelonious Monk, in whose music every significant harmonic event (especially as rendered in pianistic terms) also was a significant rhythmic event (“the piano is a drum”). The problem here, at least for me, is that generating that kind of simultaneous harmonic/rhythmic friction and making it work in “language” terms over the long run is a heck of a lot harder to do on an essentially linear instrument like the tenor saxophone. One tenorman these days who seems to be doing, or trying to do, this is Rich Perry — whose playing to my ear bears some some resemblance to that of latter-day Perkins (at least in terms of underlying principles) and who, for what it’s worth (given Shoemake’s identification of Joe Henderson as a key harmonically oriented/knowledgable player), was so heavily influenced by Henderson when he was coming up that he was known as “Little Joe.”

Larry Kart’s new book is Jazz In Search Of Itself.

The trombonist and singer Eric Felten chimed in the other day on the proposition that listeners deserve the break of being given something familiar to hang their ears on before the improvisation starts.

I enjoyed your post on the question of writing new tunes, versus playing something recognizable. Jimmy Knepper once told me that the main reason he wrote new tunes for his albums was so that he would get the royalty taste rather than the Gershwins or Victor Young getting it. Thus his boppish “Spotlight Girl” instead of “Stella by Starlight.”
When one thinks of the great eras, and styles of jazz, each has a distinctive repertoire that immediately comes to mind, songs that every musician of the era would be able to play if they were called on the bandstand. Was there a swing era player who didn’t know “Lady Be Good” or “Moonglow” or “Undecided”? Bop players who didn’t know “Scrapple from the Apple?” Hard boppers who didn’t know “Moments Notice?” Or anyone since who doesn’t know the essential tunes from the Miles canon? But this came to a screeching halt sometime in the sixties or early seventies.
For all of the revival of jazz performance in the 80s and 90s — and for all the tunes written on all those records — I can’t think of a single song that has entered the jazz repertoire in the last 25 years. It isn’t that there haven’t been any good songs written, just that no one has picked one up and repeated it. One would think that, with the tremendous success of Norah Jones and the fact that several of the songs on her first record were jazz-inflected, we would see a slew of players treating “Don’t Know Why” as a new standard. But if that’s happened, I’ve missed it.
Why? I’m not really sure, but perhaps it’s because very few players today listen to the records being made by their contemporaries. I know I’m guilty of this myself — when I go to the record store, there’s always a Basie record or some such that I don’t have that I’d like to pick up. Maybe it’s that there just haven’t been enough distinctive, compelling tunes written. But I’d be interested in your thoughts on why the jazz repertoire seems to have stopped with the compiling of the Real Book (hmmm, and maybe that might have something to do with it…).

Hmmm, indeed. I’d be interested in Rifftides readers’ thoughts.
Back when I was first attempting to play jazz, someone gave me a three-ring binder full of surreptitiously photocopied lead sheets with lyrics and rudimentary chord symbols. “Learn these, and you’ll be okay,” my mentor said. The degree of okayness that ensued is still up for debate. But I digress. That book was a fake book. The difference between it and The Real Book is that The Real Book is legal.
It has been a long week, full of blogging and travel, with more travel to come. My intention is to post again on Monday, but if I slip, put something you like on your CD player, Ipod or Garrard AT6, and wait for me, please. If you don’t know what a Garrard AT6 is or was, ask your dad. Or his dad.
Have a good weekend.