Jazz Beyond Jazz

Howard Mandel's Urban Improvisation

Archives for 2011

Virtual Charlie Parker jazz fest (online video)

Fearing Hurricane Irene, New York City has suspended public transportation and cancelled everything — but not my  online video Charlie Parker Jazz fest,

a humble audio/video standin for the live sets scheduled but not-to-be in Harlem and the East Village, Saturday and Sunday, Aug 27-28.

Monday, Aug. 29 is the 91st birthday of the immortal alto saxophonist, called “Bird” (short for “Yardbird”), who legendarily died of the fast life in 1955. He and associates including trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie — with whom he plays “Hot House” in one of only two filmed performances – developed the musical language that soloists in jazz, blues, better rock/pop and improvisational music have built on ever since. You can hear bits of Bird and Diz’s influence (fellow bop originators included Thelonious Monk, Bud Powell, Miles Davis, Charles Mingus, Max Roach, Kenny Clarke, Roy Haynes, Tadd Dameron, Charlie Christian) — dramatic, daringly harmonized pitches, slurred phrases of irregular lengths, acidic rather than sweet sound, rhythmic complexity —  in all the acts who were to be at the scratched fests. Such as —

  • Vocalist Cécile McLorin Salvant, from Florida, doesn’t have a record out yet, but she won last fall’s Monk Institute competition and her sets as shown on YouTube are entertaining, steeped in classic blues. She could have kicked off the Bird fest at Harlem’s Marcus Garvey Park with a rousing old call to gather like this hit for Bessie Smith in 1927 — Irving Berlin’s “Alexander’s Ragtime Band” —

Then Ms. Salvant might have moved into sunny early (1935) Billie Holiday territory with “Miss Brown To You,” or bop-redolent repertoire such as All The Things You Are, which she delivers with Sarah Vaughan panache and which Bird recorded in 1945 and again in Toronto with an all-star combo, as captured on Jazz at Massey Hall (1952). I don’t know what she would have done to end. Something bold like her scat moment onstage with Al Jarreau, Dianne Reeves, Kurt Elling, Dee Dee Bridgewater, guitarist Kevin Eubanks, finale of the Monk competition she won?

  • Alto saxophonist Tia Fuller & band up next. An exciting member of a new generation of women jazz leaders, Tia is featured on tours with Beyonce, and has learned something about presentation, check it out. She’d likely start with a tune such as “Breakthrough” from her album Healing Force, which she played at the 2010 JJA Jazz Awards:

And maybe she’d end with Bird’s “Billie’s Bounce,” (her version starting at 2:55 after a tv news interview from 2008).

  • James Carter, next up, is a ferocious reeds virtuoso to whom the entirety of jazz history is a living thing. Carter does typically dynamic things with “Night in Tunisia,” Dizzy Gillespie’s exotic bebop theme recorded by him with Bird at Town Hall in 1945, performed by Carter with trumpeter Nicholas Payton . . .

For all his bluesy roots, Charlie Parker harbored some dicty musical aspirations — and accomplished one, to play with orchestral backing, on two sessions compiled as Bird With Strings (and reeds). Carter takes on movie soundtrack ballad  “Laura”  which Bird recast (arranged by Joe Lipman) in the concert Eastwood After Hours at Carnegie Hall.

Carter doesn’t end with ballads, though — he tears up blues like “Walk the Dog” with his organ trio, as at Madison Square Park just a year ago. . .

  • Jean “Toots” Thielemans, harmonica soloist, guitarist, whistler and songwriter, jammed with Charlie Parker at a session in Paris in 1949. He wa to have headlined the Charlie Parker Jazz Fest and might have eased in using the bop’s standard “How High The Moon” (Ella Fitzgerald , with the Gillespie Orchestra, scats it). Suprise guest! Popular, soulful altoist David Sanborn joins Toots on sopranino sax (closer to the harmonica’s register than soprano or alto) for “Little Suede Shoes” which Bird recorded in 1951.

Of course, Thielemans won’t leave without playing his signature piece, the jazz waltz “Bluesette”.

And that’s all for today’s Charlie Parker Jazz Festival, quite sufficient to lead to finding a Bird favorite — like “Now’s The Time,” with (as I write in my book) the first mature solo Miles Davis committed to record in 1945. Tune in for tomorrow’s virtual online video Parker fest with Gerald Clayton, Anat Cohen, Archie Shepp and Madeleine Peyroux.

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Labor Day Jazz & Blues fests coast-to-coast; how many listening?

Jazz and blues festivals occur in America coast-to-coast over Labor Day weekend — how many listeners will the music engage?

Capacities vary: free multi-day fests in Chicago and Detroit attract tens of thousands each, and the free Memphis Music & Heritage Festival; River Front Jazz Fest in Stevens Point, Wisconsin; Franklin Jazz Festival outside Nashville, Tennessee;  Big Muddy Blues Festival at Laclede’s Landing near St. Louis’ Gateway Arch, and 23rd Annual DC Blues Festival at Rock Creek Park’s Carter Barron Amphitheatre in Washington add many more. A conservative crowd estimate for these seven productions would be, oh, 400,000.

Large-scale ticketed jazz/blues events during the holiday include:

There are also specifically promotional events like the Grand Hotel’s Labor Day Jazz Weekend in Mackinac Island, Michigan; the Jazz It Up Wine and Food Festival at Allair Village, New Jersey, and the light outdoor terrace acoustic sets promised by Chaddsford Winery in Chester, Pennsylvania. There may be an Uncommon Jazz Fest in Augusta, Georgia — that’s unconfirmed — but there’s definitely a Curacao North Sea Jazz Festival in the Caribbean. Throw in the Monterey Jazz Festival, Sept. 16 – 18; Indianapolis Jazz Festival, September 17; the first University City Jazz Festival, six miles from St. Louis on September 24. The Angel City Jazz Festival (LA) runs from Sept. 22 through Oct. 2. Total number of attendees for all this music might, I suppose, top 700,000.

Points of comparison: The three-day, eight-stage pop-rock fest Lollapalooza held in Chicago in early August sold out  270,000 tickets at $90 per day, $185 and up for the whole thing. Monterey’s one-day tickets this year cost $66 to $132, depending on which day, and that well-established fest typically draws somewhat less than 50,000 people over three days. The two-week Montreal Jazz Festival currently boasts of having a total audience of 2.5 million.

Few of these numbers are verifiable — several are based solely on my past experience and informed speculation — so they are of limited value to anyone interested in the size of the jazz audience. Hard quantitative data on the jazz audience is patchy, as the “Literature Review of Research on Jazz Audiences” and other reports from the Jazz Audience Initiative makes clear. Similarly, the National Endowment of the Arts’ 2008 survey of arts participation, which put the percentage of the U.S. adult population that year attending jazz performances at 7.8% (that’s 23.4 million).

In a nation of some 300 million people, an audience of even 5 million for live jazz at festivals (and also, one might assume, jazz on radio, tv, cds, the internet, in clubs, etc.) isn’t very impressive. Ok, there isn’t currently a massive consumer base for jazz; we’ve known that a long time. Are people who’d like to see a larger jazz audience going to dwell on the view our numbers are low, or figure a couple of million folks enjoying jazz occasionally — with maybe a third of them doing it all over, in a few days, to celebrate the end of summer — is a good thing? And seize what could be an annual opportunity to invite friends and neighbors, saying “Hey, come join us. The music’s fine and it’s ours”?

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Trademark “Miles” image? Estate sues jazz club

The Miles Jazz Cafe, a low-key, off-the-mainline music loft in midtown Manhattan, is being sued by the estate of trumpeter Miles Davis for copyright infringement, citing use of the musician’s silhouette as “free-riding on the goodwill associated with the Miles Davis marks” in a way “likely to mislead the public.”

The perpetually photogenic Davis was represented by a silhouette on album covers of his early 1960s Columbia albums Seven Steps to Heaven, Sketches of Spain and Quiet Nights. Compare the logo of the bare-bones third-floor room run by Satoru “Miles” Kobayashi, who says the late jazzman urged him to take the name in a dream, with that famous image or other pictures of MD holding his horn.Same trumpeter? Hard to tell.

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Jazz audience surveyed, segmented

The jazz audience can be described by its parts: hip, participatory young artist/musicians, less experienced and cost-conscious but willing social butterflies, mid-aged and older cultural omnivores and dull-but-desirable comfort seekers, according to a segmentation study sponsored by the Jazz Audience Initiative.

Some of this has been reported by NPR’s A Blog Supreme as “Actually Useful Information About the Jazz Audience” (thanks, Patrick Jarenwattananon), but these categories which the study used to characterize the varied behavior of the music’s purported audience slivers for discussion at a “jazz leadership” convening last week by Columbus, Ohio’s Jazz Arts Group have not previously been publicized.I was privileged to be in the room as Alan S. Brown, researcher and

principal of WolfBrown, the segmentation study’s author, presented a chart-packed slide show breaking out research findings for the benefit of a powerful if incomplete cross-section of U.S. jazz organizations. Also at the meeting: representatives from Jazz at Lincoln Center, Monterey Jazz Festival, Manchester Craftsmen’s Guild Jazz, AllAboutJazz.com, Chamber Music America, the Jazz Education Network, Jazz St. Louis, University of Michigan’s University Musical Society, Ohio State University’s Wexner Center for the Arts as well as the Jazz Artists Group’s flagship Columbus Jazz Orchestra and Ben Cameron, program director for the arts of the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation, which has funded the Jazz Audience Initiative at the level of $200,000 over 21 months.

The study itself, described by project director Christy Farnbauch as a foot thick if it were to be printed, will instead be posted in its entirety online in an estimated six weeks; some of the pie charts and figures showing that the jazz audience is a fractious and/or many splendored thing were unveiled at a town-hall meeting at the Association of Performing Artists convention in New York City last January. Data compiled by sampling ticket buyers of a bulging handfull of major jazz venues plus “potential” jazz fan/ticket buyers living in Central Ohio arrive at several conclusions which seem intuitive once they are expressed, yet easier to label than act upon. Among them:

  • Audiences prefer to hear jazz in small venues affording opportunities to socialize
  • Jazz has entry points from other musics (classical, rock, blue grass) so booking jazz bands with other ensembles playing in different genres is a way to attract otherwise disengaged audiences
  •  Some listeners enjoy and participate in “contextualization” (such as pre- and post-concert discussions) but others don’t, or prefer to lurk silently
  • Jazz fans are most motivated to buy tickets when the musician is someone they want to hear . . .
  • Young audiences defy genre or style restrictions (so they claim) and just like whatever they like
  • People are most receptive to music recommendations from friends or family, tend to like what they’ve heard recently, and are exposed to a lot of newly released music on the radio . . .

Yes — but the point of this convening was to urge attendees to consider the finding’s implications especially in regards to jazz presentation, and to come up with suggested practices with the twined goals of growing and deepening the jazz audience, and selling tickets to specific jazz events. A glimpse of the data reveals how at odds those goals might be in the minds of traditional presenting organizations, since the fresh and energized jazz audience wants kinetic experiences in intimate settings especially if access is cheap (or better yet, free), while the established yet dwindling crowd isn’t all that esthetically adventurous but enjoys a nice night out on the town and has the money to pay for it.

For an enterprise like the Columbus Jazz Orchestra, a paradox revolves around its investment in a swing-oriented though stylistically flexible big band, performing a popular but paid-ticket outdoor series at the Columbus Zoo and also a concert series at two relatively large historic, refurbished theaters. Programming tries hard to appeal across a spectrum of Columbus’s 787,000 population; in 2011-2012 there are shows focused on banned and controversial tunes, on guest artist Kevin Eubanks, on winter holiday favorites, on the music of Ray Charles, on a collaboration with a ballet company, a commission for trombonist Wycliff Gordon, the ’20s sounds of the Cotton Club, “the legends of Soul” and the Harmony Project (a choir). They broadcast some concerts on WOSU, the Ohio State University’s classical fm station.

But to enlarge and improve the audience experience and sell more tickets should the Columbus Jazz Orchestra produce more off-site events featuring unaffiliated musicians or imported groups of non-big band style? Can it partner more with classical, hip-hop or blue grass ensembles, have more multi-media collaborations, offer enlightening (no-charge?) meet-ups and talks before big deal concerts or after them — in person or online? Should it incentivize ticket sales with two-for-one deals, coupons for extra values, hosted jam sessions, “compromised” curatorial standards? If these moves get the CJO into the mix, will that mix support it?

Some of the larger jazz institutions — the Monterey Jazz Festival, say, or Jazz at Lincoln Center — can ignore the report’s findings, as they operate under unique conditions. However, the problem for the small venues — whether non-profit or frankly commercial — that have the hot action rising audiences want is that their rents are going up, overhead for musicians’ travel and lodging puts out-of-towners out-of-price-range, old forms of marketing and promotion have failed while new forms are not yet in place. Jazz clubs, never very stable businesses, are drying up by the dive-full. They can’t produce off-site, they don’t have $ for enrichment programs, they might do alright from food and booze charges but not if they get serious about the music — unless they have independent funding sources like John Zorn’s The Stone in Manhattan, or ongoing funding campaigns like Philadelphia’s floating Ars Nova Workshop or schedules that appeal to well-heeled patrons who want nostalgia or traditionalism, draw a lot of tourists  (like Preservation Hall in New Orleans) or have favorable circumstances like being located inside a hotel (the Cafe Carlyle in NYC, Scullers Jazz Club in Boston).

There’s no one-size-fits-all prescription for “solving” the puzzle of attracting the right audience for every venue, and the survey’s categories are useful only to identify that there are several audiences within the amorphous community that identifies itself with jazz. Data can be interpreted in many ways, and the more people see the Jazz Audience Initiative’s survey results, the more discussion will ensue.

Experienced jazz fans will recognize the segmentations and tensions between them from past eras. Here are the flappers who liked “hot jazz” and the businessman who preferred Paul Whiteman’s bounce. Swing players vs. beboppers vs. moldy figs — the cool school compared to hard bop a la the Jazz Messengers — “free jazz” fighting neo-conservatism. The mostly male hipster musicians and mostly female social butterflies should find each other and popularize certain informal, dark venues — until they mature enough to settle together and tend their recording collections (plus the kids), then eventually become old folks who just want to hear what they liked when they met. Having survey distinctions about what each segment’s preferences are may help presenters narrow in on what they need to do to get those segments to their jazz offerings. Until all the Jazz Audience Initiative’s data is offered for all comers to peruse, the wise jazz presenter will depend on their ears to the ground.

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Newport Jazz Fest via NPR #: day 2 my live reviews

11:55 am — JazzBeyondJazz attends the Newport Jazz Fest today, Aug 7, by listening on NPR, and reviewing as here it happens (tweeting #newportjazz). Ten performances are scheduled over 7 hours, and I won’t listen to everything, but will chime in with info and responses to the music and the broadcast (and I invite comments, discussion, even disagreements!). I did it yesterday and had some fun, so here goes . . .

12:05 — Starting with Randy Weston‘s trio, NOT live today but as they ended the Newport jazz fest last night. Weston sounds in a particularly lighthearted, quick-fingered mood and why not? At age 85 he’s gotten a Guggenheim for his future work, issued a well-received autobiography and a new album, The Storyteller; he’s in vigorous good health and plays at the top of his genre. Left hand rocksteady, right hand doin’ what he wants it to, “free” in the manner of Monk, elegant a la Ellington, with plenty of nuance in engagement with percussionist Neil Clarke and slap-bassist Alex Blake.

12:30 I do wonder, though, why the NPR broadcast touted as “live now from Newport” isn’t that, but instead has pre-recorded sets (edited, too, right?) on air, in a sequence different than the way things are going at Fort Adams State Park. I can imagine this gives the radio producers more control, but it renders tweets using the hashtag #newportjazz a mish-mash of reports from the (wet) field about the music in real-time with comments about what we’re hearing on the audio webcast. Does this confuse anyone else?

12:40 “That’s the Aug 6 2011 version!” exults Weston of his trio’s rendition of “High Fly” — “I never heard it that way before, either. I don’t know what those guys are going to do!” Yeah, that’s a beauty of jazz, inherent in the art form’s DNA. And another defining gene is the blues, which the pianist’s play now. For the classic piano blues: Otis Spann, , Speckled Red, Jay McShann, Jimmy Yancey.

12:50 Hiromi — also pre-recorded, though Josh Jackson promises James Farm coming next will be for-real live. She’s working Gershwin’s “I Got Rhythm” changes — left hand demonstrating full independence from her right, which I’ll call “sprightly.” If she slowed down just a fraction, the feelings might seep from these notes, but instead she pounces on the idea and presses it forward. Ah, now she states the melody — and hammers fast as if it’s “The Flight of the Bumblebee.” Am I impressed? Uh, not so much. But she’s good. . .

1:01 James Farm. I’ve been waiting for this, haven’t heard the praised CD, and I like Joshua Redman in general. Pianist Aaron Parks underwhelmed me at the PDX Jazz Fest (Portland OR) a couple years ago, bassist Matt Penman sounds solid, drummer Eric Harland is propelling this. Hurrah for pro-active drummers! The link between Parks and Redman seems palpable as the saxophonist picks up a phrase the pianist plays, Parks subsides while Redman expands upon it, at first unaccompanied, and when piano, bass and drums return they eddy around while the tenor works, evidently attempting to set up another song or episode — ah, now they fall in line with him. Sort of like Keith Jarrett’s American quartet with Joshua’s dad Dewey Redman, if DR had been more in the lead and if Paul Motian were a different kind of drummer than he is/was (I like him fine the way he is/was, just sayin’).

1:20 Whoa! Now Joshua and Harland are building to a climax, bursting with energy, and the quartet is united leading to an end as if it has no choice. I like the way they play, but can’t say the material is doing much to make it memorable. Ok — if it works to launch Josh like he’s rocketing, that chord pattern must be doing its duty. There’s a sing-song quality, no? to most of this book. Yes, melodies are hard to compose, though melodic ideas unfurl from a gifted improviser’s imagination and instrumental accomplishment ’cause that’s the task is about. (1:47 pm)

Harland drums-dance. Rimshots, tom and snare-rubbing? Dynamite drummer.

2:08 pm – In 1960 Charles Mingus established a Newport Rebels rump-fest, recording with Max Roach, Eric Dolphy, Roy Eldridge and Jo Jones, and George Wein quietly funded it as well as his main shows. So great to hear the Mingus Big Band on the radio, at a fest, or at the Jazz Standard on Monday nights (spelled by the differently-instrumented Mingus Orchestra and smaller Mingus Dynasty).

3:15 — Server hosting me at ArtsJournal went down, but I’ve been enjoying Avishai Cohen, jaunty trumpeter who started set with “Art Deco” by Don Cherry — there I was complaining about no melodies written these days, and here’s one (albeit 20 years old) well worth keeping in mind (though damn, the album it’s from, of the same name, is out of print, can’t buy Cherry’s version on Amazon or iTunes. Reissue, please — also features Texas tenor saxman James Clay).

Dig Cohen’s strolling, relaxed but with it approach; how hard it is for a trumpeter to carry off a trio performance, sans chordal instrument. Like he’s in the upbeat line with Armstrong, Dizzy, Clifford Brown, Cherry, Lester Bowie, Taylor Ho Bynum — very companionable, and Drew Gress, bass; Eric Harland (just heard w/James Farm, equally appropriate though from a different point of view here) are fine accompanists. Sister Anat Cohen showing her rangy stuff, reminiscent of Alvin Batiste . . . Avishai says his latest record is a tribute to Ornette Coleman, it’s probably in my waiting-to-be-heard stack and I’ll have to pull it out right after this afternoon’s over. Yes! with Avishai, Anat, Drew and Eric now a firm quartet! That’s some jazz. . .

3:27 — Mario Castro Quintet — from Berklee College of Music, but students or faculty or both? Trumpet/sax front line, finessed arrangement. Mature ensemble, but earnest.

3:53 – Josh Jackson interviews Rudresh Mahanthappa who explains his history with inspiring fellow saxophonist Bunky Green, coming up . . .
Eager for their Apex set . . .

3:59 – Ravi Coltrane quartet w/ Drew Gress, E.J. Strickland drums and Luis Perdomo, piano. When I’m at a festival, I can be immersed in the sound for hours without serious break (unless the music turns awful). At the radio, I’ve got to be dropping in and out, but gladly I’ve got desk work to do. . . At hour four the music’s beginning to blend into itself. However, Ravi is going to blow on Bob Dorough’s “Nothing Like You,” so let that distinguish these minutes from what’s come before . . .
Gee, they cut away from Ravi to hear Charles Lloyd w/Zakir Hussain — CL casting an exotic air though he treats the tarogato (Hungarian origin, maybe this one’s Turkish?) like a soprano sax he needn’t keep in tune.

4:45 As Lloyd plays flute, there’s a pianist with Sangam? Zakir singing? This sounds exceptional if you’ve never heard bansuri flute. Why don’t I buy the sanctity of this act?

4:54 – a pre-recorded set by John Hollenbeck’s Large Ensemble. JH employs repetition derived in part from minimalism; there’s a steady-state pulsing pedal point underneath here, gradually shifting to another pitch and –

4:57 -and some tape/live mix up. . . I guess it’s back to Hollenbeck on a tenor solo, with those vibes ringing and voice (?) crooning along, on is it “Witchita Lineman” stretched out?
5:11 – Too much Kenton for my taste. Large, alright, but stolid. No we’re not going to hear any swing in this. Blue either. “Man of Constant Sorrow,” sung by Theo Bleckmann and Mate McGarry. Studied, oddly arranged — organ behind TB. The band pumps a lot of air. Tony Malaby, Uri Caine. . . fine players. This’ll make me a Philistine but one can’t like everything, can one? In fact, I’m getting positively annoyed by the war whoops and noise.

5:30 – Miguel Zenon w/wind ensemble arranged by Argentine Guillermo Klein. The composition bears some resemblance to Hollenbeck’s due to the cyclical riffing. Zenon is a splashy horn player, and the drummer here splashes along with him on cymbals, like waves crashing through the massive ensemble. I like better than the ambitious writing the tune at 6:10, also florid but based on showing off more of Zenon in a typical combo setting, Perdomo comping.

Alto, alto, alto – this broadcast will conclude with Apex, which earlier I was looking forward to but now am concerned about. Streaming scads of notes in the high-pitched register. After Zenon’s cadenza demonstration of horn skills, further demonstrations of skills aren’t what I’d like but rather a focused, intentional collaboratively-arrived-at music that shakes the ground. The fast bass run under Zenon now is doin’ it, the rhythm-against-rhythm, the swelling winds and dissonant piano clusters, all surrounding and buoying MZ . . . and the drums, the drums. You can’t have a good jazz band without a good drummer — a good drummer can make a middling jazz band a much better one.

6:30: Patrick ABlogSupreme Jarenwattananon explains we’ll hear only first part of the Apex set. Which will do just fine — from Rudresh Mahanthappa’s first melismatic call the sax timbre is richer even that what Miguel’s. This tune’s from Kinsmen, RM’s album pre-Apex, in which he went back to India to perform with Carnatic saxist. . . Bunky can do anything,though, playing himself with Indian inflections included. Throw in heaping amounts of Coltrane — who’s playing piano, that’s not Vijay Iyer is it? And is this Eric Harland again on drums? No need for 20 musicians if five can drive like this. But what, is the broadcast gonna end on a bass solo???? That’s what they call, in Newport, a cliffhanger. . . No! More sax, please — We’re jazzlovers.
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My live reviews, Newport Jazz Fest via NPR broadcast #newportjazz

I just got the bright idea of live/remote coverage of today’s music at the Newport Jazz Fest – tweeting briefly but fleshing out comments here and on Facebook — wherever people respond. Follow me @jazzbeyondjazz or #newportjazz and hear the broadcast: http://t.co/acrBBnq

I’ll start at 2:45 pm – with Regina Carter’s Reverse Thread performance — and probably quite at 5, before the New Orleans finale — unless it’s really fun and working out —

To kick things off: two profiles of fest-producer George Wein, produced by eyeJAZZ.tv participants over the past couple months:

Thanks to R.J. DeLuke:

Thanks to Susan Brink:

Catching the end of Joey DeFrancesco, who was that singer? Oh, Joey D himself? Rollicking stuff,

“Eddie Palmieri just about knocked the walls of the fort down” — wish I’d heard that! Palmieri is Mr. Energy, and gets so excited, and conveys it. More info on those side sets: like, the size of the ensemble? What made this gig special?

Ok, here comes a Regina, pre-recorded (and tweets say Wynton’s currently on the mainstage — what are we missing. “Live” is not quite live, then. . .

Celtic touch from the accordion (bandoneon?) and Regina’s pizzicato + the kora brings to mind Bela Fleck’s Africa project. Everything converges. . . Tightly arranged, but now she’s bringing out the saw edge, fiddle-aspect — more of that, please! Dig in and go! — (what an impatient listener I am . . .) Nice dance music, bare feet in the dust. . . and she touches on the gypsy edge —

That first was a Amadou and Mariam piece — now, “Friendship.” The kora is one of the most beautiful instruments, a harp with a glistening edge, typically underlay by flowing bass register counterlines. The sea-chanty accordion and keening, long-bowed violin phrase; nimble bass playing, too — no one in each other’s way, a transparent weave of strings and breathy squeezbox reeds. . . I imagine this goes down very easily, also, in Fort Adams Park, set on a rocky prominatory, usually a nice breeze (though few trees/little shade except from the stage . . .
— Now, Regina quotes “My Country ‘Tis of Thee” and the accordion suggests a penny whistle — Regina quotes a tango, and the accordion gladly dips into that rich stream — “friendship” across the waters, the continents. . .

“New for N’Awlins” — this is a bit more set-up, but are those spoons and rubbaboard in the background? Clickety-clack percussion, cuts the accordion sauciness, (single note accordion lines, has anyone here heard of Leon Sash? Art Van Damme? Block chords — has Joey D. suddenly returned to the stage? Rockin’ Dopsie’s influence passes through, too) . . When Regina returns, can’t you hear the Western Swing?

Whooops! Sound drop out! Hate that! Is it only over the online broadcast? ‘Cause turning on WBGO quickly, there’s a signal —

The music’s all different, though. In full swing, so to speak, but I need to get acclimated: A sweet voice singing unfamiliar language, staggered saxes behind her and the drumming seems worth focusing on (oh, of course, it’s Tyshawn Sorey drumming, and Steve Coleman, alto saxophonist/innovator), piano wending throughout . . . many lines to follow, and they double back on each other . . .

Now Steve Coleman stands alone, putting forth a theme — and his people fall in behind . . . brooding, Middle Eastern hints . . .and here’s what Coleman does that’s so fascinating — the offbeat synchronicity of accents driving forward. Colllective improvisation, thick and fast, expanding and contracting only to spring forward… use of riffs turning tight, and after climactic full grip, subsiding as if into the air.

With barely a moment – Mostly Other People Do The Killing. NPR’s on-sight commentator Andy Beanstock (sp?) unfamiliar with this quartet, talking over the end of Coleman (why?), enthused about “having this many jazz people in one place” (duh, that’s a jazz fest for ya). These guys have been around for several prominent records with spoof covers but solid + playing. The band I’m most sorry I haven’t heard live yet. I’ve caught saxophonist Jon Irabagon in person, but not Peter Evans and from what he’s done on record, I’ll dig being in a room while he’s blowing, feeling him move the air.

The quartet rolls as a team through episodes, loose and together like acrobats disguised as clowns. Clowns in suits. Scary smart ones.

Ambrose Aminmusire, trumpeter with quintet — another rising star I haven’t heard live yet, so yet again, thanks NPR for making it easy! Trumpeter of the Year and Up and Coming Artist of the Year in the 2011 Jazz Journalists Association Jazz Awards — an unusual double win. Starting with his “slow jam,” as NPR/the Checkout host Joshua Jackson describes it. Does ruminative work at Newport? Does quiet? Last time I was there (for the fest’s 50th anniversary) the answer was: If you sit close and concentrate. Or if the power coming from the stage is so intense it can be restrained without fear of getting talked-over. Outdoors, sunshine is hard on jazz, the nightmusic.

Coincidentally, last night I watched the scone great Miles Davis quintet — Herbie Hancock, Wayne Shorter, Ron Carter and especially Tony Williams — on DVD from German concerts circa fall 1967. Those gents went straight for a high level of improvisation, immediately upon hitting the stage, and created this stretching-from-the-inside style that Akinmusire’s approaching with his ensemble — (“Regret No More” was the name of that tune they just laid out; a rather abstracted mood from it, consoling not celebratory). It’s not conviction that’s lacking here; maybe just experience. The Davis 5 seemed like serious adults, though Williams was 22 at the time, Hancock 27. Ok, Akinmusire was born in ’82, how has he ever had three week stints of four sets a night?

Modernism, and today’s jazz milieu. Ambrose’s ensemble is working hard, both the tenor saxophonist and drummer contributing high points. Saxophonist Walter Smith III is running through and past what he knows, and that element of exploration — search — is one of jazz’s most exciting dimensions, especially when it results in find. Finding what’s new or distinct, different, even if it’s only a corner or niche, post Coltrane/Rollins/Ayler/(Fred Anderson and Kidd Jordan might be on the list, Von Freeman for his unique intonation, Dewey Redman, Joe Henderson, Rahsaan Roland Kirk, John Gilmore, Eddie Lockjaw Davis, Jimmy Forrest, Frank Foster?)/Shorter is a huge challenge to any saxophonist.

Vladimir Chekasin – VilniusJazz32nd

Have Jimmy Heath, Joe Lovano, James Carter, David Murray, Michael Brecker for sheer technique, Chris Potter, Tony Malaby, Ernie Watts, Joshua Redman, Ravi Coltrane, David Ware, Peter Brotzmann, Ken Vandermark, Larry Ochs, Vladimir Chekasin, Charles Gayle, Roscoe Mitchell achieved it? Let’s search their repertoires and identify the genuiine acccomplishments. There are some, but it is an ongoing quest. There will be a new music, someday. Maybe tomorrow. Tune in again, I’m taking a listening-only position vis a vis Grace Kelly & Phil Woods, Wynton, the New Black Eagle band, Trombone Shorty, and whatever else Newport has in store. But I think I’ll try this exercise — live tweeting/blogging to a radio broadcast — again tomorrow.

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Radio Days: Newport Jazz fest on NPR

National Public Radio does jazz fans worldwide a huge service today (Sat., Aug 6) and tomorrow, broadcasting live from the Newport Jazz Fest. See the complete schedule and listen at NPR.org if your local station’s not carrying the feed.

Regina Carter promotional photo

I’ll be tuned in from 2:45 pm EDT for violinist Regina Carter’s African-referent Reverse Thread and plan to keep listening through powerhouse alto saxophonist Steve Coleman’s Five Elements, the rampant quartet Mostly Other People Do The Killing and emergent trumpeter Ambrose Akinmusire’s set, ending at 5 (but the show starts at 2 with organist Joe DeFrancesco and continues after Akinmusire with paired alto saxophonists Grace Kelly and Phil Woods, then a New Orleans lineup: the New Black Eagle Jazz Band, Wynton Marsalis’s quintet, and Trombone Shorty). Tomorrow (Sun., Aug 7) master pianist Randy Weston’s African Rhythms Quartet starts at noon, and the final set is by blazing alto saxists Rudresh Mahanthappa and Bunky Green.

George Wein – Newport Jazz Festival

Being at the site of Newport is fun — but hotels are expensive, restaurants after the fest always crowded, if you drive there the traffic is a hassle, so I’m quite content to attend to the music from home. Yes, there are two stages at the fest, but NPR promises that music it doesn’t air today and tomorrow will be accessible on its website starting next week. This is why radio was invented! Thanks, Guglielmo Marconi! And thanks, George (Newport Jazz/Folk Fests) Wein!

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Saint Agnes Varis gave $ to jazz, opera & Democrats, dies age 81

photo from Jazz Foundation of America

Agnes Varis, a major progressive philanthropist funding the Jazz Foundation of America, Jazz at Lincoln Center and the Metropolitan Opera while fighting for reduced health care costs through perscription of generic drugs and supporting a broad array of Democratic and women’s issues, died of cancer July 29 at age 81. She was officially honored as “Saint of the Century” by Lieutenant Governor of Louisiana Mitch Landrieu at the JFA’s annual benefit concert “A Great Night in Harlem,” at the Apollo Theater in 2009.

According to the New York Times, Dr. Varis was pre-deceased by her husband Karl Leichtman in 2009, and leaves no immediate survivors. But hundreds of jazz players, newcomers and devoted audiences have been touched by Dr. Varis’ generosity. Her donations to the Jazz Foundation in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina set up a Jazz in the Schools program employing elder musicians; it’s currently said to involve 350 of them in 17 states, including 120 in New York City playing free concerts in schools, nursing homes and hospitals. Her annual gifts to JALC (in 2010, $3 million) have led its fundraising efforts annually, paying for infrared lighting systems, a new stage and recording facilities. She underwrote tickets to the Met for senior citizens among other costs, reportedly to the aria of $21 million.

At birth, Agnes Koulouvaris was the youngest of eight children of Greek/Jewish immigrants; she attended Brooklyn college, studying chemistry and English. By profession, she turned into a hands-on businesswoman whose company Agvar Chemicals and Aegis Pharmaceuticals has, according to Bloomberg News, annual revenues between $50 million and $100 million. By conviction, she was a political activist, a “role model [and] mentor,” according to the Jazz Journalists Association’s citation of her as a recipient of its 2009 “A Team” Award, who “worked to break down barriers for women in business and in politics, having, for instance underwritten a women’s campaign school run by the Eleanor Roosevelt Legacy Committee to train and encourage women running for elected office in New York State.” She gave support to services for battered women in Bergen county, and helped provide medicines to service workers who lost jobs as a result of the attacks of 9/11.

Among Dr. Varis’s many positions, she was Trustee of Tufts University and member of the Board of Overseers at the Cummings School of Veterinary Medicine, Managing Director of the Metropolitan Opera, a member of the board of Jazz at Lincoln Center and the Jazz Foundation, and a member of the President’s Committee on the Arts and Humanities. Her greatest efforts went towards reforms of prescription drug policies, which put her in direct philosophical conflict as well as business rivalry with Merck, Pfizer and other giants of the pharmaceutical industry behind the powerful lobbyist group Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA).

Among organizations she founded, one of the earliest was “New Jersey Business Executives against the Vietnam War.” Dr. Agnes Varis told Manuela Hoelterhoff of Bloomberg News she was motivated to “doing good.” Saint or not, the woman was clearly on the side of the angels.
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Remember the Swing Era: Is poverty good for jazz?

William Powell in "My Man Godfrey," 1937

Jazz the music will survive the wounds America has self-inflicted in the guise of deep cuts in government spending when economic growth has already slowed to a crawl. Jazz — as well as blues, rap, hip-hop, soul, bluegrass, chamber music and most rock ‘n’ roll — is fairly cheap to produce, given workers (musicians) who will accept pennies for hours spent doing what they love. So the devil’s advocate is moved to ask: “Are hard times good for jazz?”

Artists and audiences will suffer along with everyone else across genre preferences except, I guess, the societally maladjusted superrich — though they too may find the continental U.S. less, er, pleasant, with fewer environmental protections, food and water inspections, police and fire departments, worse roads and airports, increased unemployment, less healthy/less educated employees (who won’t be able to afford to buy whatever they’re selling) and more need of body guards. A lot of money can be a buffer against a lot of ills, but it won’t filter the air we all breathe, the future we’ll all share. And with greater income disparity between the wealthy and the rest, conflicts will not abate; they’ll escalate and multiply.

But remember the Great Depression, aka the Swing or Big Band Era? Or more likely reading about it, hearing its stars? The orchestras of Ellington, Basie, Goodman, Shaw, Waller, Lunceford, the Dorseys, Glenn Miller and many more gave the huddled masses something to dance about. Great voices/soloists including Louis Armstrong, Coleman Hawkins, Lester Young, Billie Holiday, Bing Crosby, Charlie Christian, Ella Fitzgerald, Fred Astaire, Judy Garland, Woody Guthrie, Leadbelly, Fats Waller and so on emerged from the hoi polloi — seldom the swell’s class — to express themselves, conveying life beyond toil and trouble even while looking that stuff dead in the eye.

Whether the Swing Era is dated, as Gunther Schuller has it in his book of the same name, as starting in 1930 or as Wikipedia says 1935, launched by Goodman’s breakthrough three-week stand at LA’s Palomar Ballroom, the period encompasses both the lowest years of the 20th century in the U.S. and those producing the most enduring achievements of our popular arts (besides music, also songwriting, standup and slapstick comedy, fiction and the movies). Not that widespread depression is a must have for the creation of entertaining diversions — there was hot jazz throughout the Roarin’ ’20s prior to the stock market crash in ’29; there was cool jazz and an unprecedented explosion of other pop forms from the post-WWII late ’40s through the early ’70s, when the U.S. withdrawal in expensive defeat from Vietnam and a disgraced Republican president’s resignation let to national exhaustion (not to say “malaise“). But in the Swing Era, when the possibilities of big, fast money earned from bootleggers and their best-heeled customers evaporated with the bursting of a financial bubble and the legalization of booze, musicians seemed to feel liberated rather than oppressed, and set themselves to making life a bowl of cherrys, and meaning a function of swing.

I’m spitballing here, haven’t done any research, don’t know if there is statistical supported argument that upbeat music and sweeping entertainments really proliferated during the era of the breadlines, the dustbowl, hoboes riding the rails and Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s stabs at Keynesian fiscal stimulation policies (which worked, when steadily applied). Yet the extravagant fantasies of Busby Berkeley musicals, the anarchy celebrated by the Marx Brothers, the escapism

approved by The Wizard of Oz and determination winning over travail in Gone with the Wind: is that the kind of stuff smugly self-satisfied people would favor? During the ’20s, ’30s and ’40s success in popular music was one of the few vehicles for personal survival, if not sure upward mobility — and strangely enough it proved to be that again in the late ’70s/early ’80s, when urban youth without ways out of deteriorated city centers re-purposed discarded turntables and scratched records in service of a musical movement that reflected life as they knew it, not just what they saw on tv. Maybe in the 20teens Americans will be thrown back on their own imaginations and easily accessed devices, to come up with some new music that boosts spirits, overcomes obstacles, soothes grief.

Necessity is the mother of invention — who said that? an ancient Roman — and when things are bleak, you gotta shake ’em off. (When things are ok, maybe the time’s right for more esoteric, self-reflective, edifying pursuits.) In the USA circa 2011, there are many under-employed musicians, and here’s betting in 2012 unless corporations start hiring, the recording industry revives and some genius develops a business model for the Web’s legion of content providers there will be even more. If those young players, smart people with sharp ears who want to have fun, connect their expressive energies to the rhythmic zeitgeist, they might attract eager multitudes who have just a dollar or two to spare on live performance rather than purchases from the iTunes store (because their old Macs are broken, and Steve Jobs won’t discount Apple products).

"Forgotten man" Godfrey wins scavenger hunt for rich, endearing brat Carole Lombard

It might be too late for us oldsters who can no longer crash on pals’ sofas over the course of protracted bus tours, whose disposable income is reserved for expensive medicines and treatments not covered by our costly health insurance plans, who haven’t the spark that can make living joyously without do-re-me seem like a lark. But we’ve had our glory years. Look what they got us — defeated while partying, victims of no-nothingism, bigotry and capital run amok.

Maybe a new generation won’t mind being burdened like citizens of a third world country, juggling multiple temp jobs to cover basics with verve leftover to blow passionately into the wee hours. Maybe there will be enough trust fund babies and derivatives brokers to finance a gutsy new style that rallies both them that’s got and those who don’t.

But no, I take it back: poverty and strife aren’t good for anything, war’s worst of all. And as Billie Holiday sang, the ones who worry about nothin’ are the children who’ve got their own.

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UNESCO names pianist Herbie Hancock “goodwill ambassador”

Pianist Herbie Hancock has been appointed a “goodwill ambassador” by UNESCO. The 71-year-old multiple Grammy winner, Chicago-born child prodigy, Miles Davis’ keyboards man ushering open-form improvisation, electronic instruments and studio procedures into the past half-century of jazz-based music and talent scout with global interests joins an international coterie that currently includes Nelson Mandela, Pierre Cardin, Claudia Cardinale, Forest Whitaker, Jean Michel Jarre and royal personages from Belgium, Jordan, Morocco and Thailand.

A composer, interpreter, performer, soloist and bandleader of serious, sophisticated and also commercial crossover success — one of the rare musicians who is both artist and entertainer, leader and accompanist, classicist and innovator — Hancock will “use music to cross cultural boundaries and promote literacy and creativity among youth around the world.” He calls for April 30 to be recognized as “international jazz day” and will lobby for UNESCO to cite jazz on its World Heritage List of “936 properties forming part of the cultural and natural heritage which the World Heritage Committee considers as having outstanding universal value.”

Hancock’s evergreen-hip, vamp- and ostinato-based tunes such as “Watermelon Man” (written in 1962, re-arranged in ’73), “Chameleon” (issued in ’73, basis of garage jam sessions ever since), “Rockit” (the ’83 injection of hip-hop turntablism to the future-funk mix, marketed with an eye-grabbing video) and “Cantaloupe Island” (from the 1963 recording, Hancock and trumpeter Freddie Hubbard sampled to make US3’s “Cantaloop” a dancefloor smash in ’93) have intrigued musicians as well as listeners over four decades. So has his virtuosic, spontaneous pianism, which runs the gamut: cool-to-the-point-of-minimal, inquisitive, expansive and engaged, rhythmically energized or rhapsodic, post-modernly self-conscious or really, truly, freely free (hear him with Miles at the Plugged Nickel, 1966.

Hancock’s 1998 album Gershwin’s World is an excellent example of his range. It includes his performance of Gershwin’s Concerto for Piano and Orchestra in G, second movement and Prelude in C# Minor with soprano Katheleen Battle, alongside renditions of “St. Louis Blues” with Steve Wonder playing harmonica, “Embraceable You” sung by Joni Mitchell, a piano duet with Chick Corea and a couple of relatively straightahead tracks for a combo with saxophonist Wayne Shorter, his collaborator of nearly 50 years. But even that recording skips several of Hancock’s interests.

Besides popularizing the Fender Rhodes electric piano on Davis productions Filles de Kilimanjaro and In A Silent Way, Hancock introduced synthesizers (at first programmed and played by Dr. Patrick Gleeson) to jazz with his Mwandishi band. He’s worked with Latin percussionists (“Watermelon Man” was originally a hit for Mongo Santamaria). He’s had a longtime interest in Brazilian music, recording with Milton Nascimento, on video with Gal Costa and Antonio Carlos Jobim. River: The Joni Letters was only the second jazz recording ever to win the Grammy nod for Album of the Year, in 2008.

My desert island choice of Hancock’s music is Maiden Voyage, released in 1965. Discovering it when I was 16 led me to his just-previous Emperyan Isles and many subsequent recordings by Shorter, Ron Carter and Tony Williams (his colleagues in Miles’ great quintet), Hubbard, Bobby Hutcherson, Sam Rivers, Dexter Gordon, and more. In this clip he wades in gradually, is bouyed by Carter (bass) and Willians (drums), then welcomes Hubbard and saxophonist Joe Henderson.

Hancock has been in the front line of modern jazz piano evolution, following from Duke Ellington, Thelonious Monk and Cecil Taylor to Andrew Hill, Joe Zawinul, McCoy Tyner, Paul Bley, Mal Waldron, Chick Corea, Keith Jarrett. On Crossings and Sextant he entered synthesized spheres only Sun Ra had dared before. He’s said his early adoption of multiple keyboards and processors was informed by his college studies of electrical engineering.

Hancock’s understanding of jazz-funk-fusion and openness to producer Bill Laswell’s hip-hop beats, and most recently his song collections with casts of famed singers, have kept him in the public eye. So have his mid ’80s PBS/BBC video show Rockschool, his movie work (Blow Up, Death Wish, Round Midnight), his chairmanship of the Thelonious Monk Institute of Jazz, his sponsorship of emerging talent like guitarist Lionel Loueke and trumpeter Ambrose Akinmusire. Wynton Marsalis first recorded for Columbia Records in Herbie Hancock’s band.

I dig Hancock’s lesser-known Village Life, a duet with Senegalese griot Foday Musa Suso, and recommend Gershwin’s World and River. His current album, The Imagine Project, is ultra multikulti, with collaborators Dave Matthews, Céu, Pink, John Legend, The Chieftains, Los Lobos, Tinariwen, K’Naan, Anoushka Shankar. It appeals to a different crowd than that to which the pianist played on his just concluded European tour featuring tenor saxist Shorter and bassist Marcus Miller, Davis’s late-career electric bassist and producer.

In September Hancock has several California dates with his his piano-guitar-bass-drums quartet, and in November he’s scheduled three Pacific Northwest performances with orchestras of George Gershwin’s Rhapsody In Blue. He is also the current “creative chair for jazz” of the Los Angeles Philharmonic. His activities as a UNESCO goodwill ambassador are not yet posted. Presumably he’ll keep doing what he’s been doing, even more selflessly and world-wide.

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Free funk electric bassist gets $60k Pew Fellowship

Jamaaladeen Tacuma – photo supplied by artist, no copyright infringement intended

Jamaaladeen Tacuma, free-funk electric bass virtuoso, protege of Ornette Coleman and one of the dancingest musicians on the planet, has been named one of 12 Philadelphia artists receiving $60,000 fellowships from the Pew Center for Arts and Heritage. Two other musicians are also 2011 Pew fellows: electronic music improviser Charles Cohen and exploratory folk/rock/goth guitarist Chris Forsyth.

The Pew’s level of financial support is comparable to the Herb Alpert Award ($75k) though not as much as the MacArthur Fellows Program ($500k over five years), more than a Guggenheim Fellowship (reportedly averaging around $43k in 2008) and more than the National Endowment for the Art’s Jazz Masters each receive as lifetime achievement prizes ($25k).

While Alperts, MacArthurs, Guggenheims and foreign prizes such as Denmark’s JazzPar (discontinued in 1984) have in recent years been bestowed on assertively experimental, innovative and avant-garde improvisers — and Tacuma can stand as an equal among them — he is still a surprising grant recipient. On the face of things, a 55-year-old electric bassist with the verve to get people on their feet might seem too “pop” for foundation money. However, Forsyth and Cohen are uncommon award winners, too. Pew fellows do not apply but are selected through a nomination process.

Tacuma’s latest album demonstrates the breadth and depth of his interests: For The Love of Ornette is self-produced, only available through the artist’s own means of distribution and fun to listen to, dramatic and varied, but far from the formulas of pop music. Ornette is (of course) Ornette Coleman, the internationally acclaimed American iconoclast, mentor/inspiration to Tacuma (among legions of others), subject of a suite on the album and featured throughout the album playing alto saxophone. He is the very prophet of “free jazz.”

“Fellas, can you hear me?” Coleman says to Tacuma’s ensemble of seven, opening the title track of Tacuma’s album. “Forget the note and get to the idea.” That’s a characteristic dictum of the “harmolodic” world-view Coleman has pro-offered and Tacuma has practiced some 35 years, since the relentless “freely” improvised electronic funk rave-up Dancing In Your Head, released in 1977. There are other worthy contributors to For the Love of. . . including Tony Kofi on tenor saxophone, Wolfgang Puschnig on flute and the double-reed hojak, and Yoichi Uzeki playing piano, Coleman’s concept dominates this album.

What “free” means in this context is that music isn’t ruled by rules — categories, conventions, constraints — but is foremost an expression an individual’s personal views and truths, in conjunction, usually, with other individuals’ equally unique statements. Furthermore: All those individuals (participatory listeners included) can come together through collective improvisation.

Jamaaladeen Tacuma talks about himself

The logical basis of harmolodics is often doubted by musicians trained in Western classical style, though its precepts as articulated by Coleman uncover zen-like wisdom in allusion and contradiction, and would appear to be applicable across many performing arts. Tacuma may have an inherent inclination to realize harmony, melody and motion as inseparable elements of lively musical self-expression — Coleman took him as a harmolodic natural when they first met, and relied upon him for his electrically-infused projects from 1976 through ’87. They have not recorded together for 24 years.

In the ’80s Jamaaladeen released several albums of his own with infectious rhythms, hot licks and classical accents from winds and string sections. Readers of my book Miles Ornette Cecil – Jazz Beyond Jazz and articles over the years (even before I was managing-edited Guitar World, 1982 – 83) know of my enthusiasm for Tacuma’s bass playing and upbeat, direct immediacy. He’s one of those rare and valuable people who bring bounce to life, apparently possessed with bold, joyous engagement. He seems to have been overlooked by the jazz press and public over the past decade (perhaps because he lives in Philadelphia, heading his large family). If so, it’s the press’s fault — he’s been busy, popular at festivals in Europe, recording with an array of collaborators ranging from phenomenological atonalist Derek Bailey to black rockateer Vernon Reid, opera singer Wilhelmina Fernandez to Belgian Arabic hip-hop stylist Natacha Atlas.

Tacuma’s foundational, rubbery, striding sounds give a lift to almost every situation, and he puts himself into some odd ones, seldom sounding predictable, never dull. Here’s hoping the Pew Award gives him a bit of financial security and an extra infusion of energy he’ll pass on to the rest of us.

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Beyond music in the waters off the City

Take a night-time jazz cruise with saxophonist Avram Fefer, guitarist Joe Cohn and rhythm in New York Harbor on Wednesday nights for respite from NYC – I detail it and other unusual musical staycations for July in my new City Arts New York column. If you’ve got 10 minutes, check out my dark video of Avram and Joe’s quartet and the Statue of Liberty.

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This weekend it’s into (across) the Harbor again, for an electronic music lecture/dem, car-less biking and ocean breezes on Governor’s Island. Or listening to a favorite Lovin’ Spoonful song (avec musique concrete).

eyeJAZZ report embedded

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