Archives for 2012

G. Calvin Weston – Artist-supplied photo, credit sought — no copyright infringement is intended.

Guitarist John McLaughlin‘s Mahavishnu Orchestra was the highest-flying of any ensemble emerging from Miles Davis’ jazz-rock initiative in the early 1970s, establishing a previously unapproached standard of virtuosity, improvisational excitement and commercial success for all-instrumental electric bands to follow. Drummer G. Calvin Weston‘s Treasures of the Spirit quintet playing music of McLaughlin’s MO at the 92nd St. Y Tribeca in NYC last night (Feb 10, 2012) heroically addressed the complexity, speed and power of unique, difficult, enduring and compelling repertoire – a feat rarely attempted but inspiring to hear when musicians nail it, as Weston’s cohorts did.

With electric guitar Bill Berends, violinist Marina Vishnyakova, electric bassist Elliot Garland and keyboardist David Dzubinski addressing roles originally performed by McLaughlin himself (usually on a double-necked instrument), Jerry Goodman (still active, he’s been in the Dixie Dregs among other genre-confounding groups), Rick Laird (now Richard Laird, photographer) and Jan Hammer (composer for “Miami Vice,” Cocaine Cowboys, innovative computer animations and the first commercial tv network in Eastern Europe), Weston pounded out gloriously fast, muscularly emphatic rhythms to propel “Hope,” “One Word,” “The Dance of Maya,” “Open Country Joy”, “Triology,” “Dawn” and “Meeting of the Spirits” — multi-part compositions originally recorded on The Inner Mounting Flame (released in 1971), Birds of Fire (’72) and The Lost Trident Sessions (recorded in ’73, not released until 1999).  If it seems odd for a drummer to reprise material written for a frontline of electric guitar, violin and keyboards (including synth) plus electric bass, know that the original Mahavishnu Orchestra was driven by Billy Cobham, a contributor as essential to the group’s sound and prodigious four-year-run (reportedly 580 concerts during that period) as McLaughlin himself. (In fact, drummer Gregg Bendian also has an ambitious Mahavishnu Project -Redefined , which coincidentally had a booking scheduled for tonight (Feb 11) in New Hope, PA — postponed due to icy roads in the region).

Obviously Weston digs Cobham. He showed up in Tribeca with a vast array of tom-toms, cymbals, a gong and double bass drums, akin to the kit Cobham eventually employed. Weston’s beats were true to Cobham’s models: solidly struck, whip-snap fast and precisely fulfilling the unconventional time signatures derived from Indian tabla practices which gave the Mahavishnu Orchestra its distinctive motivation. But Weston has his own shtick, too. Among his skills:

• ferocious press rolls on his snare, but also with his two feet on the kick pedals;
•  independence yet also paired coordination of his four limbs;
• ability to throw in fills and accents where there wouldn’t seem to be time to put them;
• mastery of the different pitches/timbres of all those cymbals and toms;
• control of dynamics so that there’s always a notch up-the-scale to go,
• and with bassist Garland an instinct for bringing the lowdown funk out of Mahavishnu material initially intended for seeking a transcendent spiritual plane.

Weston directed all the action from his seat in the manner of drummer-bandleaders like Art Blakey and Jack DeJohnette. At 52, he has enviable reserves of energy. He turned what had been advertised as two sets into one long one, throwing punches for two hours continuously like a determined boxer who doesn’t hear the bell tolling that he can rest between rounds.

Although the Mahavishnu Orchestra was brilliantly conceived to flow from classically-stated themes to raging collective jams, soft, folkish or raga-like passages to competitive call-and-response episodes, it was the bodacious end of its sonic spectrum that most engaged listeners in the ’70s and has wowed us ever since. Not that the MO was just loud, though it was indeed loud. The MO was on fire, with neatly shorn, pale, earnest, white-clad young McLaughlin, a disciple of Sri Chinmoy (who gave him the name “Mahavishnu” after the Hindu creator/destroyer/preserver of the universe) at its center, engaged yet serene. He excelled at articulating strange scalar lines and bent notes in upper octaves at speed-metal tempi, while violinist Goodman bowed quickly also in top registers and Hammer bent or pushed pitches where newly developed synthesizers had never gone before.

Berends, Vishnyakova and Dzubinski worked the same angles to nearly the same affect. There were minor, easily forgiven fluctuations of intonation, and by definition they weren’t the originators of the MO vision, so the question sometimes arose: Whose music is this? Weston’s Treasures of the Spirit last night was not so visually imposing as its predecessor: The players wore street clothes, and Berends bears a resemblance to Penn Gillette wearing a pirate bandana, rather than McLaughlin the handsome Yorkshireman pure as snow aspiring to eternal bliss.

Well, it’s no longer 1971, and the shock of hearing musicians reach with hedonistic rock fervor for the holy unattainable is gone for good. The small crowd at the Y, a multi-use facility with excellent performance space but off the nightlife track, seemed to be predominantly men who remember hearing Mahavishnu in their youth and have not gotten over it (like me). That’s unfortunate, because this music — not just its imagery and mythology —  as Weston & Co. put it forth should appeal to ravers of all ages, anyone looking to pump it up.

G. Calvin Weston’s other associations are certifiably hip: He’s recorded and toured with Ornette Coleman’s amplified double quartet Prime Time, been in the Lounge Lizards, the Free Form Funky Freqs with Vernon Reid and Jamaaladeen Tacuma and on the Get Shorty soundtrack. In each context he strives for the personal satisfaction of making music live, immediate and interactive as possible.

If Treasures of the Spirit has a flaw, it’s that the band sometimes moves less than persuasively through the pastoral, contemplative moments McLaughlin planted in his pieces for introduction, punctuation and contrast to the urgency Weston wants to convey about time passing inexorably, now. Time is moving fast, there’s no way to stop it and we don’t exactly catch up by reaching back 40 years to remembered pleasures. But revisiting, restoring and reviving music that was born years ago but has lost no vitality doesn’t feel like a desperate attempt to recapture an era so much as a statement of faith in the value of that music then and in the present. Jazz — fusion-manifestations included — is made in the moment and if the sounds fit those who play it and hear it, they are indeed treasures of the spirit. I came home from G. Calvin Weston’s show enriched by people out here collaboratively lifting earthy rhythms and searing melodies to the open sky.

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Jose Reyes of the online listening station Jazz Con Class has posted  a Q&A with me about “free jazz” and “the avant-garde” — which he proposes as two distinct subgenres of jazz, tied to the 1960s. 

John Coltrane meets Don Cherry in "The Avant-Garde"

New things — innovations — thinking outside the box — breaks from conventions and the continuum of progress (evolution) — these issues are regards jazz, among other art forms, has long fascinated me. It’s the topic of my book Miles Ornette Cecil – Jazz Beyond Jazz and the inspiration of this blog. So I spin out more of my pov about these matters in response to Jose’s questions, and I hope you’ll enjoy them while listening to the playlists he’s set up — but comment on the Q&A discussion below, or on my Facebook post of this blog posting.

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Broderick Crawford as populist pol Willie Stark in Robert Penn Warren’s All The King’s Men – Law&Liberty.org

Of 10 American novels critic Terry Teachout posted yesterday that he wishes he’d written, only All The King’s Men by Robert Penn Warren similarly appeals to me. I can imagine hunkering down as Penn Warren did, dryly but fiercely etching the sickness of American populist politics, which we’re seeing swirl at its sickest this very  primary season. It would be work, for sure, but at a white hot energy — which I’d think would be hard to sustain, but so satisfying to bring to completion.

Falcon, meet Bogart – IMDb.com

I haven’t read all Terry’s other choices (but of course Gatsby), and as he says his whimsical exercise is based on personal taste. Would it have been fun to write Gatsby? Maybe for F. Scott Fitzgerald, but not for me. I’d rather have dreamed up the terse treachery in Dashiell Hammett’s The Maltese Falcon, the flat-out funny of Max Shulman’s Barefoot Boy With Cheek, the kaleidoscopic enormity of
Pynchon’s Gravity’s Rainbow.

I’d have enjoyed penning “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow” and “Rip Van Winkle” (not novels, I know, but then neither is “The Tell-Tale Heart”; the three of them together = a novella, so I’ll claim them) and Sirens of Titan and would be proud (of course) to have authored Huck Finn. Tropic of Capricorn is another I could, when I read it, fantasize that someday I might come up with with something like. Octavia Butler’s Wild Seed is excitingly vivid and visionary — just think of spending time conjuring flawed but fantastic immortals in paranormal conflict. Elmore Leonard’s Killshot — Elmore always has fun when he’s writing, you can tell. And maybe Alan Lightman’s Einstein’s Dreams, though I have nothing like the grasp of time and space (physics, right?) I’d have had to have for that.

I admire a gazillion other American novels (and many foreign ones, too), but couldn’t have turned out The Turn of the Screw or Moby Dick or The Scarlet Letter or An American Tragedy or Invisible Man or Miss Lonelyhearts or Donald Newlove’s fantastic Sweet Adversity (much less his latest, Kindle-only, 1000+ page Starlight Photoplays) or Robert Coover’s The Origin of the Brunists or Naked Lunch or even Portnoy’s Complaint — but gee, if I could! Just one of the not-so-simple Dr. Suess classics, W.R. Burnett’s iconic Little Ceasar or James Cain’s Double Idemnity (the Amerian Crime and Punishment) or Christopher Buckley’s The White House Mess or gosh, Carl Haissen’s Tourist Season — sitting at the keyboard, knocking any of those out — that would be a kick. I don’t know if John Burdett’s Bankok trilogy counts as an American novel, exactly, or if Mezz Mezzrow’s Really the Blues is a novel, though it’s ultra-American. Like The Freelance Pallbearers, My Life and Hard Times and (back to Twain) No. 44, The Mysterious Stranger or Algren’s The Devil’s Stocking or The Wizard of Oz. To dwell within such books while they’re unfolding, that must be what novelists live (and die) to do.

Well, I’m not too shy or superstitious to admit I still harbor novelistic ambitious. I’ve got a complete draft of a fast-paced, hiply talkative crime novel (if anyone’s interested, leave a comment below), notes for a long work on an underground movement in a dystopian future and a couple old, extremely fanciful chapters of a backwards odyssey in the ’60s, if it had been completely different. I intend to shape all these up, finish them, publish them. True, novels take time, but they make time for the writer and the reader — that suspended bubble of the moments (hours, years) spent writing and reading. I’m sure it’s time well spent, ’cause look at what worlds they depict, so easily accessed and fully inhabited, how wondr’ously eternal yet marvelously new they are every time I open the covers. For sure the kind of novels a person likes – loves — say a lot about the person. A poet, not a novelist, said it: “I am large, contain multitudes.” Not to be grandiose –when I feel that way it’s from reading all these novels. . .

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Alto saxophonist and staunchly original composer-bandleader Tim Berne’s new album — his 41st, but first on a label as internationally prominent as ECM since he put out two scorchers for Columbia in the mid ’80s — has the strange title, Snakeoil, meaning b.s., originating in the sale of quack medicines. This must be part of Berne’s self-deprecating, somewhat detached and perhaps sardonic temperament. But then he’s always been a bit of a lone wolf, going his own way, as I write in my newest column in CityArts-New York, just before he embarks on a rare 11-city US and 9-city European tour (starting at Regatta Bar, Boston on Feb 16, the Rubin Museum of Himalayan Art Feb 17).

Tim Berne, right; Oscar Noriega, left – artist provided photo

There’s nothing fraudulent about Berne, it must be said from the start, any of his past music or this particular album, which is another (his 41st) uncompromising demonstration of what musicians come up with when they think for themselves about beauty — which seems to be his chief concern. Berne’s tone on alto, to begin with, is exacting while ranging moodily from plaintive clarity to steely assertiveness. His compositions are not slick or glib — they are rather long, multi-dimensional and demand genuine engagement of all the musicians involved, rewarding most those listeners who pay full attention, free of suppositions, to the sheerly sensual fluctations of of sound and the players’ interactions. With no bass, rigorous-as-chamber-quartet attention to detail and the patented ECM sonic treatment delivering the tonal richness all the instruments (besides Berne’s sax, Oscar Noriega’s clarinet and bass clarinet, Matt Mitchell’s grand piano and Ches Smiths’ traps and other percussion), the composer’s concept and ensemble’s realization are presented with utmost honesty.

This is how the music is meant to sound, you become convinced, how the musicians hear it in their minds, so pressing they have to get it into the air (and they’re enormously lucky to have it so documented). Their music, for all its obvious framework, also seems to spring from them spontaneously – Noriega’s clarinet, in particular, has episodes of venturing forth all but unaccompanied, toeing a thin line of naked uncertainty that lures the ear along in suspense ’til he connects (gasp! — how?) with a resolutely structured (though still far from conventional) part of the song.

Berne’s efforts have always been for serious contemplation. I don’t know of any of it you (or at least I) could dance to, but the alternative to rockin’ rhythms and ecstatic riffs has its compensations. Follow these pieces and you slip through dark woods, roam the lip of a cliff looking down a ravine, removed from any referents to easy pop culture, the way things dully always are, the usually inescapable context of urban life.

Snakeoil has a Nordic quality, as do many ECM records — meaning they’re more cooly incisive than hot and heedless. Well, over the course of a 35+ year career, Berne has evaded the traps of predictablity, being tamed or de-toothed, and that’s an achievement to be admired, in part because it’s so hard for musicians coming up today to emulate. On the other hand, Berne is not now and has never been withdrawn, musically. He plays well with others: Bill Frisell, Hank Roberts, Herb Robertson, Tom Rainey, Craig Taborn, Michael Formanek, David Torn and Chris Speed have been among his most reliable collaborators, and represent an enlighted circle. He also gets them to play well with him.

That’s a rare strength for a lone wolf, but then you’ve got to figure that a survivor of 35+ years independence in an art form already as out in the territories as jazz is by Darwinian precepts and definition an alpha. He doesn’t bite, but he suffers no foolishness either. It’s tough being an outsider, trying to get heard. But dig, Snakeoil aint’ hardly about selling.

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Organist Greg Lewis, wearing a monk’s robe, plus guitarist Ron Jackson and drummer Damion Reid, tore up with full respect the knotty compositions of the late great Thelonious Monk last night at 55 Bar in Greenwich Village. About a dozen people heard them over a 90 minute period (they played a full set, took a break and performed one more extended tune before turning the stage over to guitarist Mike Stern) but it was one of the most enjoyable sets I’ve caught for months.

Playing a Hammond C-3, which he explained was a B-3 restored and put into a (somewhat) more easily transportable cabinet, Lewis demonstrated complete mastery of Monk’s penetratingly insightful, somehow intuitive melodies and startlingly flexible rhythmic structures. While the music of Monk has become iconic for jazz modernists as Bach’s is for classicists of the Western European tradition, generating tribute albums from talents as disparate as Wynton Marsalis and Hal Willner, Lewis’s interpretations capitalize on the reedy sustain of his instrument to highlight the “ugly beauty” (Monk’s term) in the songs’ often close-interval riffs and “wrong is right” (another Monkism) chords.

Lewis improvised excitingly, opening up “Little Rootie Tootie,” “Evidence” and “Think of One” among other tunes with dazzling fast finger runs and emphatic clusters, sometimes quoting other Monk songs in the midst of the one his trio was addressing. Jackson’s thick, clear tone and flowing solos admirably matched  Lewis’s interpretations and Reid, a last-minute sub for the trio’s usual drummers, was also fully aware of the repertoire’s quirks, adding his own intense energy. Mentioning he’s recently performed and/or recorded with saxophonists Steve Lehman, Steve Coleman and Rudresh Mahanthappa and trumpeter Nicholas Payton, Reid is in demand and his playing showed why.

Lewis’s album Organ Monk made my 2010 best of the year list, and I’m still listening to it (he’s recorded a followup, which awaits final mixing and release). A native New Yorker whose father David Lewis was a jazz pianist, Lewis plays Harlem venues including Showman’s Lounge and the Lennox Lounge where pretensions gain no traction but expressive soulfulness is prized. He claims organist Larry Young as his main instrumental influence; Young (1940-1978) was arguably the last organist to reframe his instrument’s potential (on both his own albums and with Tony Williams’ Lifetime). Lewis takes the advanced keyboard technique and free-thinking Young espoused (and others including Joe Zawinul, Don Pullen, Andrew Hill and John Medeski have each in their own ways have demonstrated) to compositions which boast distinct integrity, retaining the bluesy drive and church-redolent atmospherics of the first generation jazz organists (post-Waller and Basie, Wild Bill Davis and Milt Buckner leading to Jimmy Smith). And Lewis with Jackson and Reid (on the Organ Monk record, Cindy Blackman drums) are impassioned. All of which added up to breakthrough music, enriching and fun, jazz and beyond jazz.

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Who should be the next NEA Jazz Masters? With last night’s triumphant and deeply moving webcast of the NEA’s 2012 Jazz Masters induction ceremonies came welcome news the annual fellowships for these major American artists will continue — at least the financial awards of $25,000 per Master. More significant to many jazzers than the $ is the official government validation of the lives and careers of men and women which typically require substantial sacrifice and determination to create lasting, enriching marks. So who should the next honorees be?

Here’s the criteria for the Jazz Masters fellowships, and process of nomination, directly from the NEA’s website:

The NEA Jazz Masters Fellowship is a lifetime achievement award. The criteria for the fellowships are musical excellence and significance of the nominees’ contributions to the art of jazz. The Arts Endowment honors a wide range of styles while making the awards. There is also a special award given to a non-musician, the A.B. Spellman NEA Jazz Master Award for Jazz Advocacy, which is awarded to an individual who has made major contributions to the appreciation, knowledge, and advancement of jazz.

Fellowships are awarded to living artists on the basis of nominations from the general public and the jazz community. The recipients must be citizens or permanent residents of the United States. An individual may submit only one nomination each year, and nominations are made by submitting a one-page letter detailing the reasons that the nominated artist should receive an NEA Jazz Masters Fellowship. Nominations submitted to the Arts Endowment by the deadline are reviewed by an advisory panel of jazz experts and at least one knowledgeable layperson. Panel recommendations are forwarded to the National Council on the Arts, which then makes recommendations to the Chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts. Nominations remain active for five years, being reviewed annually during this period.

Lobbying may well help move the jazz experts’ advisory committee — the Jazz Institute of Chicago spearheaded a 10-year effort to get Jazz Master status for tenor saxophonist Von Freeman, who seemed to be at a disadvantage for having performed all but exclusively for decades in Chicago (where he anchored a thriving South Side scene and style, generating dozens of proteges, Rudresh Mahanthappa and Steve Coleman among them). But note that an individual can only make one nomination per year.

Remembering that Sam Rivers is one instance of an artist who should have received the designation, I’ve got my own list of deserving nominees — it starts with Eddie Palmieri – and wonder who’s on yours.

Eddie Palmieri in action – photo from artists’ management – credit sought – no copyright infringement intended

Let me know in the comments section, and let the NEA know by preparing a one-page letter explaining your nomination, in anticipation of a deadline for nominations being announced.

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The glory of living American jazz musicians filled Jazz at Lincoln Center last night to celebrate the 30th annual National Endowment of the Arts Jazz Masters fellowships — and some of the best news was the vitality of the music they played (webcast audio by WBGO and Sirius Radio, video at arts.gov).

Sheila Jordan, NEA Jazz Master – photo credit sought – no copyright infringement intended

But of equally significance immediately was spread of the word that the Jazz Masters program will indeed continue into the future in regards to financial awards for selected Masters, for sure.  As for celebratory ceremonies and productions such as the concert, press activities, luncheons and fellowship attending the 30th annual Jazz Masters awards, the future is less clear.

Here are some highlights of what I saw and heard:

• Bobby Hutcherson, 72 and hooked to oxygen, sitting back from his vibes for brief rest between each chorus, ending his duo with pianist Kenny Barron improvising one of the most utterly spontaneous yet finely struck of final cadences.
•  Frank Wess, turned 90 Jan. 4, blowing a tenor sax tribute to long gone but never forgot Lester Young, with young Benny Golson (83 on Jan. 25, 2012) fast on his tail.
• Irrepressible class of 2012 Jazz Master Sheila Jordan, 83, playfully getting an audience to sing along with her, “Bird!” and returning to scat with ’12 JM Jimmy Owens playing flugelhorn on Ornette Coleman’s jaunty “When Will The Blues Leave?” — driven by ’12 JM Jack DeJohnette, tethered by long-ago-named JM bassist Ron Carter, and with Ornette himself (a JM of course) listening from a front row.

This was music full of fun, a sense of possibility and jauntiness — nothing old fashioned about it, though sure enough a blues.

A few minutes earlier Owens had played a touching unaccompanied flugelhorn solo on “Nobody Knows the Trouble I’ve Seen,” which he dedicated to the late Dr. Billy Taylor — having first lambasted New York City’s jazz performance clubs for reneging on promises purportedly made to a jazz musicians’ pension fund. His blunt indictment might have seemed out of place at a fete of lifetime achievement, had not Jack DeJohnette in his acceptance speech cited today’s turbulence as like that of the ’60s when he began his jazz career, and had ’12 JM Charlie Haden, who stayed home for medical reasons, not earned a rep for similar truth to power with protests that got him arrested in Portugal, and that resulted in his classic Liberation Music Orchestra album.

Wynton Marsalis, named an NEA Jazz Master along with his father Ellis and brothers Branford, Jason and Delfayo in 2011, sat in the trumpet section of his Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra, backing the performing masters as necessary and delivering substantially swinging versions of big band works by Count Basie and Benny Carter. There was an ostensible bridging of generations in this Jazz Masters concert, as young up ‘n’ comers Grace Kelly, Kris Bowers and Ambrose Akinmasure with older Masters Phil Woods, Wess-Golson and Liebman/Carter/DeJohnette, respectively. Altoist Kelly could aspire to Woods’ naturalness, Bowers seemed more Monk- than Basie-like, and Akinmasure didn’t make a strong impression, though Liebman did, squeezing sardonic squiggles out of his soprano saxophone as if putting his reed under the most intense pressure.

There were other nice moments, like Hubert Laws’ rippling low notes against Ron Carter’s upright bass. Some nice moments of speech — as when Stanley Crouch, presenting the award who, like Von Freeman, wasn’t attending for health reasons, spoke of empathy as the essence of jazz.

The Jazz Masters ceremonies, including press conference and photoshoot, luncheons, rehearsals as well as the two and a half-hour concert performed by Masters and Wynton Marsalis’s Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra, are the occasion of an amazing gathering of living, aging yet still active jazz masters. At a photo shoot before the concert, Randy Weston, Ahmad Jamal, Muhal Richard Abrams, Annie Ross, Toshiko Akiyoshi, Lee Konitz (seemingly recuperated from a medical crisis last summer), Jimmy Scott (wearing one perfectly white shoe, one sneaker, and in a chair), Paquito d’Rivera, Candido, Laws, Carter, Jordan, Woods, Coleman, Sheila Jordan, DeJohnette, George Wein, George Avakian, Gunther Schuller, Dan Morgenstern, Yusef Lateef, Jimmy Heath, Joe Wilder, Roy Haynes . . .  They posed for a formal portrait, then broke and let in NEA officers and about half the music photojournalists in the tri-state area (Jack Vartoogian, Norm Harris, Alan Nahigian, Mitchell Seidel, Frank Stewart, etc.) It was most entertaining.

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photos from NEA Arts.gov unless otherwise credited

The National Endowment of the Arts, formally inducting its 30th class of  “Jazz Masters” with a concert at Jazz at Lincoln Center January 10 2012 that is being webcast live on WBGO Jazz 88.3FM  and SiriusXM Satellite Radio’s Real Jazz Channel XM67, (starting at 7:30 pm ET) has announced that Jazz Masters will again be named and receive honoraria of $25,000 in 2013.

Although this blog reported last February that the NEA 2012 budget had cut out the Jazz Masters program, as well as awards for American Folk Heritage and Opera artists, “the program will continue awarding $25,000 fellowships annually,” public affairs specialist Sally Gifford responded to our query via e-mail. In July (2011), also as reported here,  the House Budget Committee directed the NEA to restore funding for the Jazz Masters and the Folk Heritage initiatives — though not the opera grant. However, there has been no public announcement of that directive being implemented until now. “Details about the 2013 NEA Jazz Masters celebration will be posted on arts.gov as soon as they are available,” Ms. Gifford’s email continued.

Including the 2012 inductees — bassist Charlie Haden, drummer Jack DeJohnette, vocalist Sheila  Jordan,  trumpeter Jimmy
Owens and saxophonist Von Freeman

photo by Michael Jackson

— the NEA has endorsed 124 jazz musicians and activist-supporters as genuine “Jazz Masters.”

Masters are nominated by the general public, but selected by a small panel of experts convened by the NEA. Most recently, Jazz Masters designations and the financial gift have been by some monetary support for their tours and educational activities.

Jazz Masters are profiled with brief videos and audio interviews produced and posted by the NEA.

My favorites of the new classes’ recordings:

Charlie Haden: Closeness Duets (w/ Ornette Coleman, Alice Coltrane, Keith Jarrett,  Paul Motian); Liberation Music Orchestra (little big group agit-prop! thanks to Carla Bley et al)

Von Freeman: Have No Fear (just the way he sounded, brimming),  Lester Leaps In (classic Chicago cast: pianist Jodie Christian, bassist Eddie de Haas, drfummer Wilbur Campbell);

Sheila Jordan: Portrait of Sheila (1963, early flowering of her genius)  Jazz Child , my how she’s grown!

Jack DeJohnette New Directions (w/ Lester Bowie, John Abercrombie, Eddie Gomez); Song X (Pat Metheny with Ornette Coleman), The Blessing (with Gonzalo Rubalcaba and Charlie Haden)

Jimmy Owens: Jimmy Owens (1976, when he was baaaad),  One More – Music of Thad Jones (all star small group, great arrangements of swell tunes, warm tribute, 2005)

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Josef Skvorecky’s The Bass Saxophone is one of a handful of fine novels identifying the extraordinary powers of jazz as an art form, a process, a heritage — which makes it more than something to listen or dance to. Several obits for the Czech writer (d. Jan 3, age 87) who was long exiled in Canada have failed to mention his admiration and understanding of this American gift to the world, but the Atlantic Monthly gives him his due.

Like Milan Kundera and Vaclav Havel, Skvorecky infused his depictions of a jazz-inflected cultural underground in opposition to tyrannical, absurdly bureaucratized government with sly, corrosive humor. Not surprisingly, he also wrote detective stories and  essays on literature, politics, jazz and the movies, including one that links Kafka to jazz (which I haven’t read but shall immediately).

Josef Skvorecky – Halligonia.ca

Hats off to this author, who translated Dashiell Hammett into Czeck and took it upon himself to become a publisher of other dissident writers. Skvorecky demonstrated how the arts produced in the 20th century urban U.S. have relevance far bey0nd our borders, which should remind we who live here not only that those arts have been pretty significant, but that they remain so in the present and for the looming future, both abroad and right at home.

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The New Year starts bang! with performing arts presenters, artists and the journalists who cover them convening —  GlobalFest world music and  Winter Jazzfest musicians’ showcases — the NEA Jazz Masters fête  and shortly thereafter the  Chamber Music America conference, all in NYC. As pres of the Jazz Journalists Association, I’m happy to announce a four-session mini-conference on Media for Audience Development taking place (free to the public, registration requested) within the larger Association of Performing Arts Presenters convention Jan. 6 – 8 at the midtown Sheraton Hotel and Towers, followed by a panel on Social Media in Practice at the Chamber Music America conference (at the Westin Hotel in Times Square) on Jan. 14.

The JJA sessions are rather different from the  day-long DIY Crash Course, which seems to be oriented as an overview of the jazz industry for artists, being presented by JazzTimes magazine on Jan. 5 in collaboration with APAP just before its convention (same site). The JJA is focusing on how presenters and artists — not only or necessarily in jazz — can/should use media. See my guest posting on the APAP blog for details about what the JJA is doing and why we think it’s necessary.

But in a nutshell: There’s no reaching and building audiences unless presenters and artists collaborate with journalists who are media experts (or at least, professionally proficient) to deal with how people get their information and form their interests in the arts now. Large audiences are out there — think of Oprah’s reach. Too mega for most of us, but there’s something about the relationships her vast audience  assumes with her. Relationships, now better than ever fostered through media, is what audience-buidling is about. So what can we learn about that, what will we share, how can we work together?

Sorry, Oprah’s not scheduled at the JJA, APAP or CMA meetings. However, a stellar cast of panelists, guest speakers and moderators have been lined up, including —

• • Michael Geller, executive director of the American Composers Orchestra on commissioning video portraits of programmed composers;
  •  Josh Jackson, producer for NPR and WBGO of  The Checkout  on social media postings to a developed fan base;
  • John Seroff of GreenHouse Publicity and
  • Scott Mehinick of Improvised Communications/JazzDIY — both regarding pr now
  • Jo Ann Kawell of Ozmotic Media and the JJA’s eyeJAZZ initiative re online media 2.0
  • Susan Brink of Unexpected Venues and the JJA’s eyeJAZZ initiative;
  • George Moorer, producer/director & Greg Thomas, former host,  Jazz It Up! tv;
  • Jeremy Robins, filmmaker-educator who created the ACO’s composers’ portraits;
  • Michal Shapiro, Huffington Post videoblogger;
  • Yvonne Ervin, editor Hot House, exec director of the Western Jazz Presenters Network, vice president of the JJA;
  • John Gilbreath, Earshot Jazz (Seattle);
  • Doron Sadja of Roulette (Brooklyn);
  • Marguerite Horberg of Portoluz (Chicago);
  • Giovanni Russonello of CapitalBop.com (Washington D.C.);
  • Mark Christman of Ars Nova Workshop (Philadelphia);
  • Daniel Maurer, editor of The Local East Village;
  • Steve Smith, music editor of Time Out New York.

The assumption of the Media for Audio Development mini-conference is that artists, presenters and media adepts (journalists, content providers, etc. who spread word, sound, image and

Jazz Journalists Association

thought throughout far-flung spheres of culture) all crave more engagement with more of the public. We believe that if we’re in contact they’ll attend our events, support our productions, learn about and maybe join the ongoing discussion about the arts in our lives, which now using new technologies can have greater reach and inclusion than every before. The audience and us are one, of course. And those new technologies which we’re almost all using? Right now they are are asserting irreversible influence on every art form. if not changing the nature of art itself.

Becoming our own media-makers – putting video spotlight on the arts – what works and what doesn’t – hyperlocal and global platforms: these programs are free to all but space is limited so registration is requested (and does not by itself admit anyone into the APAP convention conference). Questions? President@jazzjournalists.org.

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