[contextly_auto_sidebar id="5JaPY4EuOTgKJQzRDmJq9iKTEWZtZtT7"] SHE's not just my favorite new jazz singer in many moons, but someone who points the way forward for the music. That's the sense I've gotten from the young, classically trained vocalist Cecile McLorin Salvant, who played the other night at Catalina's and whose album, WomanChild, is a knockout. Part of what I like about her is the … [Read more...]
Returning to Charlie Haden, Jazz and Transcendence
TODAY I have been trying to move on to other things, but can’t get the memory of last night’s Charlie Haden/ Liberation Music Orchestra concert out of my mind. There are too many things to contemplate here, but let me offer a few stray thoughts. Overall: While this night was by no means perfect – there were minor technical problems early on, the musician most of us had come to see was in such … [Read more...]
Celebrating Charlie Haden
TUESDAY night in Los Angeles will see both a celebratory and a sad occasion: The jazz titan Charlie Haden – the lyrical bass player, free-jazz pioneer, crucial collaborator to Ornette Coleman and others, father to a four Los Angeles indie rockers, founder of CalArts jazz program – will lead his Liberation Music Orchestra at REDCAT. It has special music since this group – which Haden began in 1969 … [Read more...]
The Genius of James Booker
IT'S long been something of a cliché to talk about what a head-spinning musical and cultural melting pot New Orleans is. But there’s no other way to frame the protean New Orleans pianist James Booker (1939-‘83), who is very near the top of my list of most individual/ accomplished musician who very few people know about. His musical vocabulary was an odd blend of bordello and concert hall: He … [Read more...]
The End of Jazz?
THIS year -- soon drawing to a close -- has gotten me thinking about the American songbook in a major way. Part of this is because of the publication of Ted Gioia's wonderful The Jazz Standards -- which has shown up on a number of year's best lists, and through which I have whiled away many hours.Another is the notorious Atlantic article, "The End of Jazz," which is both a review of the book and a … [Read more...]
Why Jazz Happened
THE history of an art form is more than just the biography of its exemplars. But you wouldn’t know it by reading most histories of jazz. (I’m speaking here of some books I really like, by the way.) A fresh, engaging new book by Marc Myers, a Wall Street Journal contributor, tells the story so differently than the way we normally hear jazz history that reading it is a kind of unfolding revelation. … [Read more...]
The Roots of a Jazz Pianist
EVEN as a lover of the jazz standards, when a solo piano disc arrives with all the obvious, shopworn numbers -- "Round Midnight," "All the Things You Are" -- I'm not in a rush to play the damn thing. (Unless it's by, say, Thelonious Monk or Randy Weston.) So I was knocked out by the nuance and mystery the pianist Kenny Werner summons in his new recording -- called Me, Myself and I -- of mostly … [Read more...]
The Jazz Standards
Music history looks different when you track it not by groups or musicians, eras or styles, but by the songs themselves. That’s part of the fun of Ted Gioia’s new book, The Jazz Standards, which looks at more than 250 songs --. He pays special attention to their origins, the varied way jazz artists have interpreted each one, and a handful of the finest versions of each. (There are a few technical … [Read more...]
Playboy Jazz Festival
ONE of the best things about Los Angeles -- hands down -- is the Hollywood Bowl, and it's become a sign of the coming of summer for a lot of us.Today I wrote an advance on the 2012 Playboy Jazz Festival, including interviews with several of the musicians who'll play there.There's a range of good and bad here, as there always are at big jazz festivals. One thing that continues to confuse me, … [Read more...]
The Roots of Tony Bennett
THIS week my Influences column looks at the great crooner Tony Bennett. I figured that his Italian background and Frank Sinatra were important to him, but I was surprised to hear Leonardo da Vinci and Art Tatum, the most ornate and technically accomplished pianists in the history of jazz, as major inspirations. (His Sinatra anecdote, by the way, is one of my favorite things I've heard this … [Read more...]