Archives for 2008

Freddie Hubbard, the AACM and me in Down Beat

The June issue of Down Beat magazine (subtitled “Jazz, Blues & Beyond”) features my cover story about trumpeter Freddie Hubbard, who has enjoyed a blazing and extended artistic youth, but at age 70 is now somewhat chastened, struggling with challenges to his chops while eager to reaffirm the legitimacy of his reputation.Â

The issue also contains my review of musician and educator George E. Lewis’s epic history of theÂ AACM (Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians — here represented by his friend Douglas Ewart’s quintet). I’ve posted my writer’s edition of that report, as it was trimmed just a little for length,Â

Also — introducing Matt Miller’s recommendations for music in New York City — comin’ right up.Â

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Comin’ right up — introducing Matt Miller

In a renewed effort to keep readers abreast of good listning, J-B-J introduces Matt Miller, who has some recommendations for places to go, comin’ right up. Matt is a 23-year-old tenor saxophonist, graduate of the New School Jazz and Contemporary Music program, who writes for AllAboutJazz-New York and Jazz.com, besides contributing here.

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Franz Jackson, seven-decade jazz master

Talk about a legendary career: Chicago saxophonist and clarintestÂ Franz Jackson, who died at age 95 on May 6, spanned American vernacular music from the Roaring ’20s to the postmodern present. He began as a 16-year-old professional withÂ stride and boogie woogie pianist Albert Ammons, starred as a featured soloist in the the hottest Depression Era big bands, entertained WWII troops under USO auspices, popularized Midwestern neo-traditional “jass”Â in the ’50s and ’60s and kept playin’ in essentially uncategorical situations up until a couple of weeks of his demise.

Among Jackson’s recent high visibility gigs were his turn at the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival of 2007, and also last year’s “Tribute to Fletcher Henderson” commissioned by the Jazz Institute of Chicago for the Great Black Music Ensemble, performed at the Frank Gehry bandshell in Millenium Park, where he sat amid creative musicians less than half his age, not revisiting the past but rather carrying it forward.

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Where’s TiVo for live performance?

This week highlights a happily frequent dilemma for the avid listener in New York: too many good choices of exciting, exploratory, street-smart and unbounded American music — “the real blues, the new blues,” as Albert Ayler called jazz-beyond-jazz back in 1964. All on Friday, May 9:

TheÂ Association for the Advancement of Creative MusiciansÂ Â (AACM) celebrates favorite son George E. Lewis‘s epic new book with high class talk and promising improv;
Â Miles Davis alumni meet Southeast Asian virtuosos at Town Hall to attemptÂ Bob Belden‘s arrangements from the fascinating cd Miles From India,and
Â urban-ethno percussionist Adam Rudolph and nu-jazz electronica trumpeter Graham HaynesÂ will balance a similarly ancient/future sound.Â
There’s much more. Jazz-beyond-jazz bustin’ out all over; it must be spring.Â

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Jazz in the Ural tradition

Oleg Kireyev, born in Bashkiria (aka Bashkortostan, more on which follows), is a dynamite soprano and tenor saxophonist who smiles broadly when he asks audiences to chime in with Mongolian throat-singing and quick-tonguing techniques. In New York City, a small group of listeners at Symphony Space complied, giving Kireyev’s Feng Shui Theatre quartet, making its Stateside debut, a sweet welcome.

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Wynton’s Abyssinian Mass by guest blogger

It’s jazz-beyond-jazz, alright, when Wynton Marsalis composes a work for gospel choir andÂ the Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra, in honor of the 200th anniversary of the Abyssinian Baptist Church in Harlem. But I must admit that I am neither drawn to hear such work nor qualified to comment on it. Having experienced Marsalis’ previous large-scale religiously oriented works All Rise and In This House, On This Morning, I have developed some unshakable expectations and prejudices about such endeavors — it’s just not my cuppa tea. So I sought someone with fresh ears, more affinity for the material and less bias to report on the grand event. Meet Monica HopeÂ seen here singing Duke Ellington’s “Come Sunday” at a memorial service for the bassist Walter Booker, Jr.Â

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Jazz educators go south

Another victim of global economics? Or of flawed leadership? The 40-year-old International Association for Jazz Education has announced its bankruptcy, following an ill-attended conference in Toronto and unexpected departures by its executive director and president. “Industry of jazz” players are shocked, shocked!Â

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Seattle radio play

Way out northwest last weekend for the Experience Music Project’s 7th Annual Pop Conference, I also visited Earshot Jazz fest and concert producer John Gilbreath doing his weekly late night show “Jazz Theater” on KEXP.org.Â

Listen to Ornette Coleman’s “Law Years” and a track from his concerto grosso “Skies of America,” as well as Miles Davis’s “Freedom Jazz Dance” remixed by Nas and “Black Satin” from On The Corner, interspersed with our conversation, for two weeks, as archived. Gilbreath interviewed author, Black Rock Coalition co-founder and Burnt Sugar guitarist-conspirator Greg Tate (who wrote the preface to my book) right after me.Â

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Serious about pop

Who presents and supports the articulation of ambitious thinking about American vernacular music? The Experience Music Project/Science Fiction Museum (Seattle’s answer to NYC’s American Museum of Natural History?) holds its seventh annual Pop Conference April 10 – 13, with dozens of scholars, journalists and musicians giving 20-minute run-throughs of their specialities on panels regarding the overall theme “Shake, Rattle: Music, Conflict and Change.” I’m among the presenters, offering “Jazz Beyond Jazz: Breakthroughs and Coalitions” in a discussion moderated by Nate Chinen, music reviewer for the New York Times, columnist for Jazz Times. The panel is unfortunately (in my view) titled “Freedom Then.” What about now?

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jazz clubs in transit

It’s a sad day when an established stage for national and local jazz closes, as JazzWest.com’s Wayne Saroyan reports will happen to Jazz at Pearl’s in San Francisco’s North Beach (right across the street fromÂ City Lights BooksÂ ) at the end of April.Â One such closing does not signal a trend; small independent venues come and go. San Francisco does have its newly openedÂ Yoshi’sÂ in the historically fascinatingÂ Fillmore district.

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Ornette at Town Hall and in Japan

Further Ornette sightings: the prophet of life-beyond-conventions returns on Friday to New York’s Town Hall, where he’s suffered and triumphed throughout his career.

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Out To Lunch in the zone

A one-time-only revisitation of the late Eric Dolphy‘s masterpiece at Merkin Concert Hall in NYC fulfilled the promise and hope of jazz repertory concerts, and proved the enduring, enriching quality of jazz-beyond-jazz compositions.

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Political poetry in Bed-Stuy

“They want the oil/but they don’t want the people,” Jayne Cortez declaimed over and over again, her inflections expressing frank assessment, sheer disbelief, scathing cynicism and many nuances in between, without ever stipulating who “they” or “the people” are. She didn’t have to, we all knew. It was Saturday night at Sistas’ Place, a storefront coffeehouse in the black Brooklyn neighborhood Bedford-Stuyvesant, where poetry reflects the inseparability of the personal and the political.

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