Archives for August 29, 2005

The worst of Katrina has passed New Orleans. Now, flooding is the big concern. With dozens of news organizations and hundreds of bloggers covering the storm and the city’s agony, there is little point in my attempting to add much from this distance. Monitoring tells me that my alma mater, WDSU-TV, is doing a good job of continuing updates, as is The Times-Picayune.
Here’s a recent entry from WDSU’s web log:

11:52 a.m.: Evacuees Huddle In Hallways At Chalmette H.S.
People who took shelter in Chalmette High School are now huddled in the hallways because the windows have blown out. The building has sustained significant damage. There are reports that the water is 10-feet deep near the high school and is rapidly rising. — WDSU.com Web Staff

And here’s one from the Picayune‘s Jon Donley in a NOLA weblog :

NEW ORLEANS IS SINKING…I DON’T WANT TO SWIM
9:34 – Reports of widespread flooding now, although not at the doomsday scenario levels. But we’ve got several hours to go before we’ve seen the worst past. Scanner traffic is busy with calls of rising water, including 18 inches and rising against the levee in the French Quarter. Dispatchers questioning officers on the scene, trying to determine if there is a break in the river levee, or if water is pouring over the top. Independently, NOLA has received a flooding alert for the French Market area.
Fairly heavy street flooding in front and behind the Times-Picayune . . . water appears about knee deep, whipped by the steady wind into whitecaps and breakers. Water is hubcap deep on the furthest vehicles in the employee parking lot, and rising quickly.

For a guide to other blogs on the Katrina situation, check the list at About Last Night.

With Katrina veering only slightly east, moving fast and staring New Orleans in the face, I’m worried about my friends there. We spent eight years in that amazing city and went through many hurricanes. We were there in 1969 for Camille, the one that’s being compared with tonight’s monster storm. I covered Camille. WDSU-TV was the only station in town with auxiliary power through most of it. I was on the air for something like thirty-six straight hours broadcasting to those who had electricity, hadn’t fled and were watching television. There was a surpisingly large number of them.
On average, the city is three feet below sea level, a massive dish. Camille hit the Gulf Coast considerably east of the city. When a cameraman and I went there a couple of days after the storm, we were stunned by the extent of the devastation in that relatively unpopulated area. I just now looked at the film we made, shaking my head at what would have happened if Camille had made a direct hit on the city.
It doesn’t seem possible that New Orleans will be as lucky this time. Everyone from Mayor Ray Nagin to President Bush has urged people to get out to higher ground. Reports are that many Orleanians, unable to accept that this really is the big one, have decided to stick it out. Some of them, apparently, are observing the old tradition, defying nature by hunkering down in their homes and throwing hurricane parties. How I hope that none of them are the folks I know and love.
Terry Teachout and Laura Demanski have set up as part of their Arts Journal About Last Night a clearinghouse of bloggers sending reports from the city or from where they have sought safety. If you are concerned about or interested in what seems certain to happen to New Orleans, I suggest that you check in with Terry and Laura, along with your traditional news sources.

David Liebman, the perpetually searching saxophonist, has been playing festivals all over the world. He emphasizes that he is not complaining, but he is disturbed by the reaction of people attending those high-priced events.

If anything concerning the question of communication is at all relevant, it is for me about the degree of successful interaction between band members. Doing this to the best of our abilities is the mechanism for demonstrating our respect for the audience. Miles used to say when he turned his back, it was to play to the band so they could hear him better.

(Just to be sure we are on the same page, I am obviously talking about the kind of audience that is there to hear jazz by design, not by mistake. In other words, opening for the Rolling Stones for example is just not relevant to this discussion.)

…Therefore when I look out and “vibe” the audiences I have encountered this summer ranging from Los Angeles to Rome to down the road from where I live, it amazes me that so many people can just sit there and not react at all. It seems the bigger the gig and the higher the fee, the more tepid the reaction.

To read all of Liebman’s essay. go to his newsletter, Intervals.

Nearly three years ago, I reviewed in Jazz Times a CD that pianist Kenny Barron recorded with bassist Ray Drummond and drummer Ben Riley at Bradley’s, the lamented Greenwich Village club.

Barron takes “Solar” at a fast clip that does nothing to suppress his development of original melodic ideas or inventiveness in voicings. There’s not a cliche to be heard. Drummond aces another solo, Riley and Barron exchange eights and the three go into a long tag ending that culminates in a densely harmonic Latin vamp. It is an exciting performance.

To read the whole review, go here.
Sunnyside Records has issued a second volume of performances from Barron’s 1996 Bradley’s engagement and subtitled it, “The Perfect Set,” a claim with which I have no argument. On a solo version of Thelonious Monk’s seldom-heard “Shuffle Boil,” Barron’s harmonic and rhythmic wizardry includes what sound like references to the crippled cadences of stride masters like Donald Lambert and James P. Johnson. The trio follows with a fourteen-minute workout on Monk’s “Well You Needn’t” that took my breath away the first time I heard it…and the second. The title of Barron’s “The Only One” alludes to Monk. The melody line and the improvisation have Thelonious written all over them.
It was not an entirely Monk evening. Barron’s “Twilight Song,” a ballad tinted with Latin accents, and a quarter-hour exploration of “You Don’t Know What Love Is” complete the perfect set. There are few improvisers whom I care to hear play anything for fifteen minutes. Kenny Barron is one of them.
Not incidentally, the beautifully recorded piano on which Barron performs is the Baldwin grand that Paul Desmond willed to Bradley’s. Since the club’s demise, it has been on loan to The Jazz Gallery, a nonprofit club in Lower Manhattan. On page 310 of The Public and Private Lives of Paul Desmond, you will find a picture of Renee Rosnes sitting at it. You didn’t think I’d pass up a chance to plug the book, did you?