Archives for September 2012

If you’re keeping up with the adventures of the Brubeck Brothers Quartet in Russia, read Chris Brubeck’s latest blog post, an account of the BBQ’s good will mission to a country town. The band held a concert for the citizenry and, in return, heard some of the locals, including “extremely sturdy Russian women playing the melody of “In The Mood” with their balalaikas.”

You’ll find Rifftides posts about the Moscow leg of the BBQ tour here and here.

Everything else in life has not quite come to a standstill while I race the deadline for the Dizzy Gillespie project mentioned in the “Sweet Lorraine” post of September 20. It only seems that way.

Researching Gillespie’s “Brother K,” his tribute to Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy, I encountered a 1985 video known to few, if the low number of YouTube hits is reliable evidence. Robert Farnon conducts Dizzy and The Royal Philharmonic Orchestra not in one of Farnon’s own celebrated arrangements, but in a setting for the piece by the under-recognized Mike Crotty. The volume could be higher; you may want to crank up your speakers.

More to come.

Responding to the Brubeck-Desmond item in the previous exhibit, David Evans writes:

Thanks for sharing that! Desmond always kills me.

It takes tremendous strength and control to play with such a beautiful sound and such balanced phrasing. It sounds easy, but believe me, it’s not. Classical dancers make it look easy, too, like they are effortlessly floating around, but it takes great strength and toughness to create that illusion.

And Desmond’s solo construction is always so compelling. The development of a motive engages the listener–we recognize a phrase as it emerges again in a new tonality farther down the line–it brings us along, in a friendly way, through the song form. There’s the creation of an expectation, the asking of a question, then there’s the satisfaction of an answer…or a little twist, and it’s satisfaction with a surprise…
Most of all, I love it when he addresses two or more contours simultaneously–a melodic line and its counterpoint–it takes some sleight of hand on a monophonic instrument, but there it is. There’s a lovely melodic utterance–it lingers shining in the air while he resolves some inner voices for a moment–then he’s back to the melodic voice and it feels like he never left it. I would love to hear Desmond playing unaccompanied, that compositional skill on clear display as he spins an entire orchestration singlehandedly.

To me, Jim Hall is the other towering, beautiful contrapuntalist–certainly that’s why I love the Desmond/Hall RCA box set so much.

Thanks for this post!

Mr. Evans teaches tenor saxophone at Lewis And Clark College in Portland, Oregon, and plays it with Dave Frishberg, Chuck Israels, Retta Christie and Phil Baker, among others. Here he is a couple of years ago with Mr. Baker in a guest shot on Lynn Darroch’s program Bright Moments on KMHD-FM.

The following item ran on Rifftides more than five years ago, with a link to video that later disappeared from the web. The clip has been restored. In light of recent discussions about the blues theme that frequently appeared when the two men played together, even after the Brubeck Quartet dissolved in 1967, the item is worth presenting again. This time, the video is on your screen. The picture quality is bad. The quality of the sound and the music is good.

June 29, 2007 By Doug Ramsey

Dave Brubeck and Paul Desmond in duo were one of the great treats of the seventies even as Desmond contended with the lung cancer that was soon to end his life. Someone caught one of their reunions on tape–a short blues performance culminating in the “Audrey” or “Balcony Rock” melody that they favored for more than a quarter of a century.

Happy Sunday.

Rifftides reader Svetlana Ilicheva (pictured) responded from Moscow to yesterday’s post with an account of a later Brubeck Brothers Quartet concert during the band’s visit to Russia.

In addition to what Chris Brubeck wrote about his first concert at the Igor Butman club in Moscow and his panegyric to the US ambassador in Russia, I would like to add a few words about their concert in the Tchaikovsky Concert Hall on September 17.

I was invited to this concert at the last moment so was a little late and didn’t hear what the lady from the US Embassy said but was in time for the BBQ first number together with one of our best symphony orchestras, Russian National Orchestra (The chief conductor is one of our best musicians, Mikhail Pletnyev), conducted this time by Joel Revzen (US). It was “Blue Rondo a la Turk,” arranged by Darius Brubeck. The cheerful piece got the public worked up and was met by hearty clapping. The orchestra left the stage and the BBQ, joined by RNO member Maxim Roubtsov (flute), with a lot of pep played a piece by their pianist Chuck Lamb. Then the RNO brass quintet appeared on the stage and together they played “Dunes at Dawn” by Chris Brubeck. The combination was highly successful and Chris’s bass sounded quite interesting against the background of very good performance by the quintet (flute, oboe, clarinet, basoon and French horn). It was so thrilling to watch how the classical musicians were playing the field playing jazz (Excuse my playing on the words. I am afraid it is just the lack of vocabulary). It looked as if they all were really having a good time. Chris called them “crazy” musicians. By the way, he began almost all the numbers with a few words, sometimes joking, fluently translated by a young girl interpreter.

The first part of the concert ended with Chris’s Concerto for trumpet, trombone and orchestra, “The Blues and Beyond” (Russian premiere), with quite an impressive solo by trombone (Chris Brubeck) and trumpet (Vladislav Lavrik, RNO). The orchestra was superb, as usual.

The second part was dedicated to Dave Brubeck, selected compositions arranged for the orchestra, jazz quartet and soloists, with Igor Butman as a special guest, and ended with famous “Take Five” with an extremely long solo by Dan Brubeck. It seems everybody here knows “Take Five”. It was met with loud clapping and whistles! I wish Paul Desmond had heard it.

I like Mike DeMicco (guitar) very much and the pianist, Chuck Lamb, was also quite good. The concert created a very positive and cheerful mood.

The only question left is why the BBQ planned to give a concert at the old Russian town of Efremov (aka Yefremov). Why exactly this town, I wonder.

After she submitted her report, Ms. Ilicheva sent a message asking, “Are you quite sure my account is worth posting now? It may not coincide with Mr. Brubeck’s impressions…”

Yes, I’m sure. For his insider’s perspective, see Chris’s latest blog entry.

Chris Brubeck reports from Moscow about the Brubeck Brothers Quartet’s Russian tour. He last played there a quarter of a century ago as a member of his father Dave’s quartet, when the country was the Soviet Union. Chris writes on his blog that at the BBQ’s first concert of the current trip, the US Ambassador to Russia, Michael McFaul, introduced the band…

…in fluent Russian, right before our 2nd set. What he said in essence was that although he was the official Ambassador from the United States, hearing excellent jazz music with a very international audience was the best way to share our American culture and build bridges between countries. He said that we were the real Ambassadors. He probably had no idea, but this is the name of the recording and musical my parents wrote with Louis Armstrong as the star….The Real Ambassadors. I felt like some kind of giant clock had come full cycle as Michael McFaul (pictured on the right with Chris) arrived at the same conclusion as my parent’s musical, which was famously performed only once at The Monterey Jazz Festival back in the early 60’s. Back then it was considered controversial ….. but not today.

Chris, his drummer brother Danny, guitarist Mike DeMicco and pianist Chuck Lamb have four more days of concerts in Moscow, Samara, Efremov and St. Petersburg. To read about their adventures in Russia and their impressions of the country and people, follow Chris’s blog.

Here are the title song and two others from Dave and Iola Brubeck’s The Real Ambassadors, featuring Louis Armstrong, Carmen McRae and Lambert, Hendricks and Ross.

Here’s another shot from the visit to smoky central Washington State, where the wildfires are intensifying today. Now, firefighters are coming down from Canada to help in the battle to contain the blazes. The landmark in the hazy distance is Saddle Rock. You may recognize it as the skyline feature on the cover of Poodie James.

For a thorough roundup of Washington fire stories and pictures, go here. For a good song with “smoke” in the title, listen to Django.

Django Reinhardt (guitar) and Stéphane Grappelli (violin), with the Quintet of the Hot Club of France, 1935

Heading for a reunion and coming into the picturesque valley that holds Wenatchee, we saw little of the hundreds of acres of apple trees that have made the area famous. Clouds and walls of smoke obscured them. For days, dry hills in Eastern Washington State have been under attack by wildfires. A postcard in the hotel room shows the valley on a clear day.

This was the view from the same hill looking south across town at noon today.

Governor Chris Gregoire has banned agricultural and other outdoor burning and signed an emergency declaration for all counties east of the Cascade mountains. People in some areas have been told to stand by for possible evacuation orders. Firefighters have come into the area from throughout the Pacific Northwest. Helicopters are dumping thousands of gallons of water on the fires. There is no rain in the forecast. So far, no houses have been lost to the fire, but in no sense are people breathing easy. Health officials declare the air quality hazardous. If you spend much time outside—not recommended—smoke gets in your eyes, your throat, your hair, your clothing. It’s best to stay inside and listen to Clifford Brown.

In the wake of Ornette Coleman and the post-“Giant Steps” developments pioneered by John Coltrane, many listeners to free jazz heard anger and unrest. Through the tumult, though he was in the heat and hurly-burly of the movement, Marion Brown (1931-2010) managed lyricism, logic and quiet beauty. He was an alto saxophonist who never attracted the recognition accorded peers like Coleman, Coltrane, Archie Shepp and Cecil Taylor. Nonetheless, the impression he made lasted, and now the leader of the state where he spent much of his life has given Brown official recognition. Governor Deval Patrick of Massachusetts is the son of another important avant garde saxophonist who was Brown’s contemporary. On New England Public Radio’s Jazz Music Blog, Tom Reney posted an extensive account of what led to the governor’s decision and of Brown’s life and career, some of it based on Reney’s friendship with the musician. Here is an excerpt.

Marion moved to New York during a period of intense foment in the jazz world and there began his long association with the avant-garde. Ornette Coleman loaned him an alto saxophone, and in 1965 he made his recording debut with Archie Shepp on Fire Music. That same year he appeared on John Coltrane’s Ascension, a recording so emblematic of the sonic force of free jazz that Marion said, “You could use that record to heat up an apartment on a cold winter day.” He acted in Leroi Jones’s (Amiri Baraka) play “The Dutchman,” and of his time with the autocratic Sun Ra, he said, “You played your instrument, and he played you.”

Tom Reney tells of Brown’s heroes and of the dedication that drove him to seek an advanced degree.

But while he served in adjunct or artist-in-residence capacities at Bowdoin and Amherst and Brandeis, a tenured gig proved elusive. Brown was a man for whom one naturally wished a more substantial measure of income and security.

The piece ends with the recording of a touching 1992 performance. To read the whole thing and hear Marion Brown, click on this link.

Paul Desmond had political convictions. He occasionally indicated but rarely went on at length about them. Iola Brubeck knows that and called our attention to an opinion piece by Chan Lowe, and his accompanying editorial cartoon, in today’s Florida Sun Sentinel. Here’s one line:

If the note wasn’t needed, he didn’t play it. He played silence. I say “played,” because his silences could be as eloquent and pregnant with meaning as his bare-bones riffs.

To see how that relates to the Sun Sentinel’s take on one of the day’s major news stories, follow this link.

Things are popping around here on several fronts, sending the development of blog posts to the back burner. The good news is that the Rifftides staff has come across film of Hampton Hawes in action with three of his peers. The quality of the new print outshines that of a previous web version. In visual and audio clarity, it may not be in the same league as 2012 digital videos, but it takes you from a 1970 Los Angeles sidewalk into a club where four major musicians are at work. This was Shelly’s Manne Hole, where we find the proprietor on drums and Hawes on piano, with bassist Ray Brown and the drastically underappreciated tenor saxophonist Bob Cooper. They play a blues initiated by Brown, and then “Stella by Starlight” and “Milestones.” You may want to pour yourself something pleasant and settle back. This voyage into the past lasts a half-hour

By the time Hampton Hawes’ third trio album appeared, his piano playing had me in thrall. I was so taken with the LP’s cover that I traced its portrait of an alligator transported by music, inked in the outline, colored the gator with an Asparagus green Crayola and framed the copy. I have been carting it around from place to place ever since.

My copy of the LP wore out long ago, but Concord Music, the inheritor of Contemporary Records, is keeping Everybody Likes Hampton Hawes in digital circulation. That’s a good idea because Hawes (1928-1977) combined something of Bud Powell’s intensity with a natural blues sensibility and an individual way of phrasing that could make a standard song sound as if he’d thought of it first. In addition, engineer Roy DuNann managed to sculpt sound to achieve the feeling of a performance in the intimacy of the listener’s living room. DuNann did his magic in Contemporary’s studio, which was the company’s shipping room. Here’s Hawes in a track from that lovely album, with Red Mitchell on bass and Chuck Thompson playing drums, January 25, 1956.

In his autobiography, Raise Up Off Me, Hawes wrote with passion and humor about the wonder of making music and about the torture he inflicted on himself. It is an important book about the jazz life.

I have never known who the alligator artist was. If you know, please send a comment.

Grégoire Maret (e-one)

Grégoire Maret divides his time between his mother’s native United States and Europe, where he was born in the land of his Swiss father 37-years ago. For more than a decade, Maret has been in demand for his harmonica playing by performers who occupy distinctly different precincts of music, among them Herbie Hancock and Pete Seeger; Youssn’Dour and Jimmy Scott; Bebel Gilberto and Sting. After years as a sideman on other peoples’ records, Maret has released his own CD. Among his guests and supporting cast are the venerable Toots Thielemans in a harmonica duet with Maret, vocalists Cassandra Wilson and Gretchen Parlato, bassist Marcus Miller and drummer Jeff “Tain” Watts. Maret’s attractive compositions alternate with others by Pat Metheny, Milton Nascimento, Ivan Lins, Stevie Wonder and George Gershwin.

Thoroughly produced, much of the album has a vaguely—often more than vaguely—modern Brazilian ethos. When the relaxed atmosphere, sometimes enhanced by wordless vocal backgrounds, invites contemplation or nodding, Maret’s virtuoso passages and the active rhythm sections generally keep things interesting. Ms. Wilson’s languid vocal on “The Man I Love” is a highlight, even unto a little game of audio peek-a-boo with Maret. The following video does not include Ms. Wilson or the strings on her track, but this is the arrangement, and it allows Maret a thorough exploration of the Gershwin classic. His colleagues here are Frederico Peña, piano; James Genus, bass; Clarence Penn, drums; and Levon Maret, percussion.

If next time around Maret were to harness up a tough rhythm section and tackle a fast blues or, say, something by Bud Powell I, for one, wouldn’t mind. In the meantime, Grégoire Maret is a fine even-tempered companion.

At the Ystad Jazz Festival in Sweden last month, scheduling caused me to miss a concert by the young Swedish singer Hannah Svensson and her guitarist father Ewan. Someone who did not miss it took along a camera and posted videos on YouTube. Svensson père, if that is an appropriate designation in Sweden, is a seasoned guitarist with senses of timing, swing and appropriate chords that create effective accompaniments. She is a singer with control, intonation and lyric interpretation that make her worth following. According to her website biography, Ms. Svensson is 26 and from Gothenburg on Sweden’s west coast. She had been a piano student for several years when at 17 she heard Eva Cassidy recordings and decided to become a singer. Here are father and daughter in a song also included in the Svenssons’ recent album.

Iola Brubeck, whom Paul Desmond described as “the incomparable, regal Iola,” sent a comment about the Rifftides 2012 Crop Forecast. She included the words of a choral piece by her husband, whose name is Dave. To see her comment, Mr. Brubeck’s lyric, photographs of ripening fruit, and to listen to Wayne Shorter and Eric Satie (not together) go here.

The massive Detroit Jazz Festival happens over Labor Day weekend. Because it collects an astonishing array of major musicians and presents them in outdoor performances at no charge, it is a festival I have long meant to attend some day. Rifftides reader Larry Peterson has gone several times. He sent a message about Wayne Shorter (photo by Jarrad Henderson) that made me wish this had been my year.

Walking to a concert of Duke Ellington’s Sacred Music from Hart Plaza, where Kenny Garrett failed to capture my interest, I asked a guy wearing a Media pass if he might be Mark Stryker, and he was. I introduced myself as the person you urged him to meet a few years ago when I was headed to the Detroit festival.
Then we talked about the performance Wayne Shorter’s Quartet gave last night. Only a short while before I ran into Mark, I had begun to wonder if the performance had ruined my prospects for ever enjoying another concert, because the experience of listening and seeing the playful, joyous interaction of the players was so amazing, thrilling, and satisfying.

 Mark was also thrilled. He referred me to his review of the concert.

And I, in turn, refer you to the column by Mr. Stryker, the music critic of The Detroit Free Press, who wrote that Shorter’s group performed,

…the most thrilling and transcendent set of music that I have heard in 17 years of attending the event.”

To read Mark’s entire account, click here.

As an indication of the reaction, interaction, close listening and mutual support that Mark and Larry observed, here’s a sample of the Shorter quartet in 2010 at Jazz à Vienne, France.

In the United States this is Labor Day, since 1894 a national holiday that celebrates working peoples’ contributions to the nation. Although the calendar says that summer doesn’t end until September 21 this year, many Americans consider that Labor Day marks the close of the season. This three-day weekend, they pile into their automobiles despite four-dollars-a-gallon gasoline. They range through the land to camp out, have picnics, visit lakes and ocean beaches, and watch fireworks. This being an election year, some seek out rallies and listen to candidates. It is also a day when many working people go to work because the stores that employ them have huge Labor Day sales. The irony.

There is no official song for this holiday, although Pete Seeger’s “Solidarity Forever,” Tennessee Ernie Ford’s “Sixteen Tons” and Dolly Parton’s “9 To 5” always get Labor Day airplay. From 1962—when the average price of a gallon of regular gas was 31 cents—here is the unofficial Rifftides Labor Day song for 2012. Cannonball Adderley introduces it. His sextet has Nat Adderley, Joe Zawinul, Yusef Lateef, Louis Hayes and Sam Jones.

Happy Labor Day.