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Jazz Beyond Jazz

Howard Mandel's Urban Improvisation

“Supermusician” Roscoe Mitchell’s paintings revealed!

January 25, 2023 by Howard Mandel Leave a Comment

Roscoe Mitchell -- internationally renown composer, improviser, ensemble leader, winds and reeds virtuoso who has pioneered the use of "little instruments" and dramatic shifts of sonic scale in the course of becoming a "supermusician . . .someone who moves freely in music, but, of course, with a well established background behind . . ."* reveals his equal freedom in another medium in his first exhibition, "Keeper of the Code: Paintings 1963 -2022," which opened Jan 20 (closing March 23) at the Chicago gallery Corbett vs. Dempsey. A … [Read more...]

Armstrong in Chicago 100 years ago sparked jazz

December 30, 2022 by Howard Mandel

Lest we forget: In 1922 Louis Armstrong arrived in Chicago from New Orleans, with his wife Lil Hardin, mentor King Joe Oliver and colleagues such as the Brothers Dodd (clarinetist Jimmy, drummer Baby) kick-starting jazz into the most spontaneous, joyful, virtuosic, collaborative art form the U.S. has yet produced. The Jazz Institute of Chicago celebrated this anniversary throughout 2022 -- here are four brief articles Kent Richmond and I co-wrote for the JIC JazzGram, telling the story with playlist embedded. … [Read more...]

Electroacoustic improv, coming or going? (Herb Deutsch, RIP; synths forever?)

December 29, 2022 by Howard Mandel

As the year ends/begins, I'm thinking electroacoustic music is a wave of the future. But maybe it's been superseded by other synth-based genres -- synth-pop, EDM, soundtracks a lá Stranger Things. Is Prophet, the just released 1986 weird-sounds bonanza from Sun Ra with his Arkestra exploiting the then new, polyphonic and programmable Prophet-5 synth, timeless or passé? In February, I saluted Herb Deutsch, co-inventor of the Moog synthesizer, on his 90th birthday. Deutsch died on December 9, with synthesizers ever more present in music … [Read more...]

I saw Jimi Hendrix three times

November 27, 2022 by Howard Mandel

On the 80th anniversary of Jimi Hendrix's birth (11/27/42), memory and legacy of America's unsurpassed guitar-artist (written 2011): I'm bouncing around in the back seat of a pal's car with a couple other high school wannabes, cruising through our leafy-green, cushy but staid Chicago suburb, when the most amazing music comes roaring out of the dashboard radio. We're not going fast – have no urgent destination -- but the music shakes us up. We've never heard anything like it before. Few have. It's early summer 1967. A crude, siren-like, … [Read more...]

JazzBash! Immersive virtual Awards event plus!

September 9, 2022 by Howard Mandel

I daresay the JazzBash! on Sunday, 9/11 is the first ever virtual hybrid Awards party/live Jazz Cruise auction/online concert from six U.S. cities/conference of activist panelists/bar with storytellers and presenters, live improvised painting, exclusive jazz photography exhibits and more -- in immersive environments depicting noted jazz sites through which attendees -- musicians, critics, the general public -- can roam at will, by cursor. Thanks to the genius of SyncSpace.live, the Jazz Journalists Association (of which I'm president, … [Read more...]

Who plays the saxophone? And why?

August 31, 2022 by Howard Mandel

I love the sound of a saxophone, or rather the broad range of sounds available from this family of reeds instruments. Breathy, vocal-like, smooth, light, penetrating, gritty or greasy, able to cry and/or croon (sometimes both at once), it strikes me as capable of the most personal of musical statements, although that's probably a projection based on my imagination set free listening to these horns, mostly in the context of jazz, for more than half a century. But in some ways the sax seems a throwback. By the time I started actively … [Read more...]

Listening to Coltrane’s “Ascension,” and what I’ve done. . .

July 21, 2022 by Howard Mandel

Yesterday's Concert dropped a podcast in which I offer guidance in listening even to challenging jazz recordings such as John Coltrane's ambitious, gnarly Ascension. And semi-shameless self-promotion: Music Journalism Insider has published a comprehensive career interview with me. For Todd L. Burns' invaluable, subscription-supported newsletter/platform about music journalism, I lay out at his request the steps that got me to my present point -- writer/editor/radio producer/president of the Jazz Journalists Association, board member … [Read more...]

Appreciating Charnett Moffett as a solo bassist

April 14, 2022 by Howard Mandel

Saddened that bassist Charnett Moffett has died of a heart attack at age 54, I post this appreciation -- also serving as a profile -- written in 2013 to annotate his solo bass (!) album The Bridge, which he described as "my most personal and challenging release so far." Solo bass records are rare, and might seem to appeal mostly to bassists and bass aficionados. But on The Bridge Charnett Moffett, the charismatic bass virtuoso with an impressive past and equally brilliant future, has proven here -- without benefit of a band -- … [Read more...]

Happy 90th to electronic music pioneer Herb Deutsch

February 9, 2022 by Howard Mandel

Herb Deutsch, the trumpeter-pianist-Theremin player-composer-Moog synthesizer co-creator and jazz inspired improviser turns 90 today, February 9, 2022, and a hearty Happy Birthday to him! In celebration, Moog Music has produced a video interview with this emeritus professor of Hofstra University, where he taught composition and electronic music, as the first of a series titled Giants. He's been less often mentioned in the story of the revolution in musical possibilities wrought by physical architecture for generating and processing … [Read more...]

Holidays with music, in person or not

December 24, 2021 by Howard Mandel

Despite my avowed abhorrence of Christmas music, I enjoyed maestro Kurt Elling leading his hometown quintet in a holiday-themed performance at Chicago's City Winery last Sunday. My entire evening -- accompanied by best friends, and including the surprise discovery after the Winery show of a heartening young trumpeter at the Hungry Brain -- was a reminder that hearing music in person with others is a key experience, even if the potential for spreading disease makes us stay home. [What I've been listening to at home: Favorites of … [Read more...]

Jazz Autumn: Returns, galas and even awards

October 31, 2021 by Howard Mandel

If all "jazz" shares a single trait, it's that nothing will stifle it. Adjusting to covid-19 strictures, Chicago (just for instance) in the past two months has been site of: A stellar Hyde Park Jazz Festival;Herbie Hancock's homecoming concert at Symphony Center;audiences happily (for the most part - no reported incidents otherwise) observing appropriate covid restrictions in intimate venues where I've been -- including Constellation, the Jazz Showcase, Hungry Brain and Fitzgerald's; a heartening multi-kulti success -- Japanese taiko … [Read more...]

In praise of Donald Newlove

September 2, 2021 by Howard Mandel

I was knocked out on first reading of Sweet Adversity (1978), by Donald Newlove, who died Aug. 17 at age 93. It's about co-joined twins who love Louis Armstrong, play jazz in the 1930s and arrive New York's Lower East Side in the early 1960s, where one of them sobers up. Besides the unique story, it's the novel's language that dazzles -- intricate, high-spirited sentences that conjured unusual images and ringing perceptions in a continuous, unpredictable stream. It's hilarious, delirious and heartbreaking, a classic American serio-comedy … [Read more...]

City of Chicago, music promoter

August 29, 2021 by Howard Mandel

Lollapalooza 2021 had some 385,000 attendees (without significant Covid-19 outbreak, fortunately) but featured little of host Chicago's indigenous talent or styles. And that's just wrong, declared Department of Cultural Affairs and Special Events commissioner Mark Kelly, launching the month-long Chicago in Tune "festival" at a reception August 19. Here's the still-evolving event calendar of hundreds of local music performances -- of every conceivable genre, free and ticketed, outside or in, most requiring vax proof and/or masks -- … [Read more...]

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Howard Mandel

I'm a Chicago-born (and after 32 years in NYC, recently repatriated) writer, editor, author, arts reporter for National Public Radio, consultant and nascent videographer -- a veteran freelance journalist working on newspapers, magazines and websites, appearing on tv and radio, teaching at New York University and elsewhere, consulting on media, publishing and jazz-related issues. I'm president of the Jazz Journalists Association, a non-profit membership organization devoted to using all media to disseminate news and views about all kinds of jazz.
My books are Future Jazz (Oxford U Press, 1999) and Miles Ornette Cecil - Jazz Beyond Jazz (Routledge, 2008). I was general editor of the Illustrated Encyclopedia of Jazz and Blues (Flame Tree 2005/Billboard Books 2006). Of course I'm working on something new. . . Read More…

About Jazz Beyond Jazz

What if there's more to jazz than you suppose? What if jazz demolishes suppositions and breaks all bounds? What if jazz - and the jazz beyond, behind, under and around jazz - could enrich your life? What if jazz is the subtle, insightful, stylish, … [Read More...]

@JazzMandel

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Interviews & Articles

ESP Disks — origins of jazz beyond jazz

Reviewing a sleeping giant, ESP Disks before its early '00s revival  Howard Mandel c 1997, published in issue 157, The Wire It was a time before psychedelics. Following the seismic cultural disruptions of the mid '50s, rock 'n' roll had hit a … [Read More...]

William Parker, my DownBeat feature from 1998

Howard Mandel c 1998/published by DownBeat, July 1998, under headline Beneath the Underdog (the editor's reference to Charles Mingus's autobiography): There's an anchor for New York's downtown free jazz and improv "wild bunch": his name is William … [Read More...]

Matthew Shipp, my feature for The Wire, 1998

[contextly_auto_sidebar id="IFeXJPobvykRyuU4dU68FilRPv0EE8oC"] This is a complete version of the feature on pianist Matthew Shipp I wrote for The Wire, published in February, 1998 Is this the face of New York's jazz avant now? Pianist Matt … [Read More...]

Rashied Ali (1935 – 2009), multi-directional drummer, speaks

A 1990 interview with drummer Rashied Ali, about his relationship with John Coltrane. … [Read More...]

On The Corner program notes, Merkin Hall concert 5/25/09

Miles Davis intended On The Corner to be a personal statement, an esthetic breakthrough and a social provocation upon its release in fall of 1972. He could hardly have been more successful: the album was all that, though it has taken decades for its … [Read More...]

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