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We’re past April Fools Day  so I can safely say “Happy JazzApril” —  a shorthand hailing Jazz Appreciation Month (April, so designated in 2001 by the Smithsonian), culminating in International Jazz Day (April 30, first celebrated  in 2012 by UNESCO as advised by the Thelonious Monk Institute of Jazz).

These officialized jazz occasions — IJD with an all-star concert to be webcast live from Osaka, Japan, JAM with US gov’t sanction, and both events endorsed by the U.S. Conference of Mayors — are good opportunities for jazz enthusiasts to trumpet the music’s vitality and vivacity to people who don’t pay it much attention but ought to and would probably like it if they did. The Jazz Journalists Association, over which I preside, has encouraged and enabled grass roots supporters and organizations especially in the US and Canada to use JAM and JazzDay as pegs upon which local media can hang coverage of local jazz activities, including, for instance, the celebration of local “Jazz Heroes” — people the JJA deem “activists, advocates, altruists, aiders and abettors of jazz.”

Here are 24 such Jazz Heroes based in 22 cities — announced yesterday:

Check out these Heroes bios and affiliations. They’re our neighbors, these are their networks, and everyone’s doing good even for those who aren’t into jazz (because like jazz or not, it’s good for you).

For those who are into jazz, JazzApril is a call to let that fact be known. There’s strength in our numbers if those numbers are made manifest. The vast population all ages, ancestries, genders and/or genre-preferences who love jazz — of any kind, of any era — must not overlooked, ignored, underestimated, underfunded, disregarded, ridiculed or forgotten just because our jaunty and improvisational, bluesy and hard-bitten, lyrical and persevering  music is commercially marginal, being more substance than flash.

It’s important to assert this because jazz truly is the American musical art form, cultural mirror and conveyance of genuine expression, though you wouldn’t know it from most media coverage. Due to unfortunate economic and sociological factors jazz is now without much infrastructure other than what high school and college music education programs offer and what a mere dozen arts institutions (but many more elbow-grease-fueled nonprofits) provide. It has no high powered  broadcast platforms beyond a few score staunch radio outlets ( thanks, NPR! Thanks, college stations!). Other than musicians themselves, only the hardiest independent record labels and prestigious remnants of  proud old catalogs keep releasing jazz records. The jazz performance “circuit”  comprises stubbornly unaffiliated, privately run clubs scattered everywhere, modest gigs in community centers, schools and private parties and the like, plus (glad for this) a year-long calendar of festivals.

It’s all ok — we can embrace jazz’s contextual reality. We can also wear our jazz. at least on our avatars. JazzApril offers graphics from the JJA, JAM and Jazz Day that anyone/everyone can use, put on as a tag, twibbon, t-shirt. coffee cup proclaiming jazz is here and now, just as it was hot or cool back when.

Yes, jazz is still America’s indigenous creative, artistic, entertaining, progressive, questing, collaborative sound, forbearing challenges, bringing light to dark times — one gift to the world American’s needn’t be apologetic about. Want to make friends? Talk about  jazz. It’s worked for me in Yerevan, Amman, Dakar, Banjul, Guelph, St. Petersburg, Veradero, Tampere, not to all over our country.

What’s happy about April? April = Spring = Hope. Hope springs eternal — jazz  results. Jazz abides,  jazz survives, jazz evolves, jazz thrives. Internationally now, but let’s not take jazz for granted right here where jazz started. Let’s not forsake how it started — with folks just foolin’ around. Let’s do more of that. Let’s have fun with jazz. Happy JazzApril!

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Butch Morris, left, with Henry Threadgill; photo credit sought, no copyright infringement intended

Composer-reedist Henry Threadgill created a stunning tribute at WinterJazz Fest 10 in New York City last night to honor his great friend Lawrence Douglas “Butch” Morris, who died just short of his 66th birthday on January 29, 2013. The nearly hour-long piece had two movements — a long, complex, multi-layered improvisation based on Threadgill’s score of shifting intervallic cells, and after a brief pause, a wrenching,  climactically exultant tutti that distilled his characteristically angular and disjointed yet coherently emphatic expressivity, and over powerful drumming reached to the sky.

Henry didn’t play, he conducted — but made no attempt at Conduction, the revolutionary alphabet of hand gestures Butch invented and codified to enable ensembles of any instrumentation to engage in meaningfully directed spontaneous composition. Instead, he waved members of his “Ensemble Double-Up” — pianists Jason Moran and David Virelles, alto saxophonists Curtis Macdonald and Roman Filiu, cellist Christopher Hoffman and tuba player Jose Davila (both of Threadgill’s ongoing band Zooid), and traps drummer Craig Weinrib — to the fore of a mass of sonic detail, which was unfortunately muddy in the large, open, chairless hall of Judson Church, long a center of artistic experimentation and righteous political activity.

Threadgill’s music — from ensembles including his early trio Air, seven-person Sextett, electrified Very Very Circus,  Society Situation Dance Band, lyrical Make A Move and dynamic Zooid — has seldom been easy (as if that’s a desirable attribute). The man himself bubbles with energy, edgy humor, a questing nature and occasional fits of pique, all attributes evident in his imaginative enterprises. Ensemble Double-Up’s members worked heroically to realize his vision, which in the remembrance’s first episode teemed with life akin to an urban milieu: richly individualized voices in fast-flowing contrast, at cross-purposes and arriving at occasional fleeting harmonies.

Henry Threadgill’s Ensemble Double-Up, Judson Church, WinterJazz Fest 10; photo by Susan Brink

Weinrib, behind baffles, slashed at his cymbals and struck unrestful polyrhythms. Davila pumped a deep bottom in tandem with Hoffman, most often plucking pointed accents. The saxists both managed to blow in the unique vein Threadgill has discovered for himself, Maconald somewhat plaintively and Filiu rather more bluntly. Virelles and Moran, among the most accomplished of exploratory jazz pianists under 40, played clusters, runs, dissonant chords, and suffered most from the room’s acoustics; I longed for more body and tone overall.

Threadgill’s ouevre has never been simply about melody or changes. Instead, it is intended as to convey the adventure of diving into the unknown and unexpected. That’s something Butch Morris responded to strongly in his compadre’s efforts, and something he himself was interested in, though he tended to take a different, less determinedly bristling approach, which Threadgill, now 69, deeply appreciated.

photo credit sought, no copyright infringement intended

The two had much in common and in complement. Both came to musical maturity in community-oriented, musician-run collectives, Butch in Watts with Horace Tapscott’s Pan Afrikan Peoples Arkestra and bassist Charles Moffett’s rehearsal big band, Henry with Chicago’s Association for the Advancement of photo credit sought, no copyright infringement intendedCreative Musicians (AACM). They were both Viet Nam veterans — and joined forces with  fellow vets under the leadership of violinist Billy Bang on the album Vietnam: The Aftermath. They first recorded together in David Murray’s 1980s octet, which included such  like-minded improvisers as trumpeter Olu Dara, trombonists Craig Harris and George Lewis, bassists Fred Hopkins and Butch’s brother Wilbur, drummers Steve McCall and Edward Blackwell, pianists Don Pullen and Anthony Davis. Both were sociable, yet cherished privacy and could be verbally elusive as well as witty. On a personal level, they simply clicked. The two lived much of the time within a few blocks of each other in the East Village, shared a lot discussion of musical ideas, late night hang outs and laughs.

Indeed, to know Butch Morris, as cordial and charming as he was original and astute, was to laugh with him, delve into broad ranging discussions, and love him. Many attendees at this concert were players, dancers, writers and aficionados personally touched by Butch, who likely had collaborated with him. Some wept openly, and at the end everyone cheered the uncompromised intensity of feeling Henry Threadgill evoked, throwing his arms into the air,  commanding his musicians’ focus to simultaneously mourn and celebrate a man whose memory sustains artistic ambitions, and whose legacy of Conduction, songs and his tender cornet playing should not be forgotten. Threadgill’s remembrance of Morris was so resolute and moving that I found myself unable to listen to any more of the couple of dozen exemplary bands performing in multiple venues as WinterJazz Fest 10 continued to 3 a.m. Better to walk through bustling Greenwich Village, breath the misty air and, as brought to the purpose by Henry Threadgill, recall.

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I’m interested in the jazz beyond “jazz” —  a genre very subjectively defined as exciting, enticing, sooo real recorded music to my ears. This list of “Best of 2013″ follows from the format critic Francis Davis designed for the NPR Music Jazz Critics’ Poll, with one significant difference. 

Francis asks, reasonably enough, that contributors to his poll refrain from voting for albums on which they’ve labored in some professional capacity. But I’d be remiss not to say I think two of

last year’s best records were Organ Monk’s American Standard and Jamie Baum’s In This Life, both of which I wrote on professionally, as well as the “historical” album of Jaki Byard/Tommy Flanagan duets The Magic of Two, the debut of The Puppeteers, and Op Der Schmelze LIve by the quartet of Klaus Kugel, Roberta Picket, Robby Glod and Mark Tokar, Charnett Moffett’s The
Bridge and Christian Howes/Richard Galliano’s Southern Exposure.  Last year I didn’t mentioned Amina Figarova’s Twelve in my bests, but I’m not serving readers or listeners if I disqualify a recording I honestly think is rewarding just because I worked on it. 

Best vocal album: Cecile McLorin Salvant, Womanchild – Astonishing debut of a fabulous singer – Ms. Salvant is a knowing heir of Ella, Sarah, Billie, Bessie but entirely herself: daring, engaging, dramatic, entertaining. May she have a long career. Aaron Diehl’s trio plays precisely perfect support. 

Another excellent debut: Jonathan Finlayson, Moments and the Message – A smart, incisive trumpeter, chops steeled by 16 years of close collaboration with Steve Coleman, and 
a sound of his own, on original compositions with a tight ensemble that shows “freedom” isn’t random, chaotic or unplanned, but rather open to ideas and willing to try hard challenges.

Most intriguing historical album: Miles Davis Quintet, Live in Europe ’69: The Bootleg Series vol. 2 – The mercurial trumpeter barnstorming with his never-officially recorded band – Shorter, Corea, Holland, DeJohnette – shifting repertoire and interpretive approach from sophisticated late ’60s to explosive early ’70s. Three cds and a dvd of a 45-minute concert in Berlin.

Best “Latin jazz”: I dislike this category because its definition is inoperable — what’s ‘Latin’? and what’s not? Nilson Matta’s Black Orpheus: The Bossa Nova Tribute is neither Afro-Cuban nor Caribbean; it features Brazilian-American all-stars and associates with personalized new approaches to the unforgettable sambas written by Antonio Carlos Jobim and equally notable Luis Bonfa.

Beyond Category production: The Road To Jajouka, A Benefit Album by The Master Musicians of Jajouka led by Bachir Attar — Guests including Ornette, Zorn, Flea, Laswell, Sirius Quartet, DJ Logic, Mickey Hart, Lee Renaldo in new performances and remixes featuring the wild winds, strings and percussion of Morocco’s Rif Mountains.

Greatest loss of the year: Lawrence Douglas “Butch” Morris (February 10, 1947 – January 29, 2013). Butch was the father of Conduction, a systematic hand language for directing ensembles of any makeup through spontaneous compositions. He was a cornetist, too, yes — and a universal charmer, who made everyone he came in contact with feel like a specially valued friend. I’m also sad to learn of the deaths of drummer/composer/Decoding Society leader Ronald Shannon Jackson, venerables Frank Wess, Yusef Lateef, Marian McPartland, Jim Hall and Chico Hamilton, and at the end of Dec ’13 too young bassist Dwayne Burno — an admirable player, firm and gentle man.

Best trend: The continuing development of large, heterogenous improvising ensembles, a movement in which Butch Morris was a significant actor, but which also includes Karl Berger’s Creative Music Orchestra, Adam Rudolph’s Go: Organic Orchestra, David Murray’s Blues Big Band, Walter Thompson’s Soundpainting orchestra, Bill Horvitz’s Expanded Band*, Michele Rosewoman’s New Yor-uba* (*see below), the Revive Big Band, J.A. Deane brilliantly conducting a chamber group filled with brass players at Roulette during the Festival of New Trumpet, and ongoing ensembles such as Darcy James Argue’s Secret Society, Ryan Truesdell’s Gil Evans Project and the Maria Schneider’s Orchestra.

Repeated listening favorites:

Amir ElSaffar, Alchemy – High-concept jazz should actually sound good, as do these originals by virtuosic, nuanced trumpeter ElSaffar, with dedicated collaboration from pianist John Escreet, tenorist Ole Mathisen, bassist Francois Moutin, drummer Dan Weiss. Infusions of deep Middle Eastern traditions into clear compositions drawing on blues and Blakey-like bebop structures.

Douglas Ewart/Yusef Lateef/Roscoe Mitchell/Adam Rudolph, Voice Prints – Ewart is a lesser known hero of the AACM, maybe because he’s worked across disciplines as an instillation artist, sculptor, educator and shaman besides (as here) breathing life into winds, reeds, glass didgeridoo, bells. He convened estimable elder reedist Yusef Lateef, ever-probing Roscoe Mitchell and worldly percussionist Adam Rudolph for four comprovisations live from the Walker Museum, Minneapolis. Exploratory improvisation which moves intuitively through mostly quiet, uncharted interactions.

Myra Melford, Life Carries Me This Way –I’m immensely proud of having produced pianist Ms. Melford’s first recording, the solo One For Now of 1986 on the Nisus cassette label (good luck finding it!). But in 27 years her skills and scope have grown immeasurably. She is committed to full expression through lyrical, dynamic, flowing lyricism.

Michele Rosewoman, New Yor-uba – Pianist Rosewoman has created the masterpiece she’s envisioned for 30 years, an extended, loving and fully informed evocation of the Santeria orishas, bata drums prominent with her committed jazz octet and a couple of guests. Two discs is a lot of music to absorb, and doubly rewarding.

Other pleasures: drummer Harris Eisenstat’s Golden State with flutist Nicole Mitchell, bassoonist Sara Schoenbeck and bassist Mark Dresser. 

Nicole Mitchell, Engraved in the Wind — unaccompanied flute, lots of imagination.

Guitarist Kenny Wessell Quartet, Weights and Measures – Funky yet pretty, subtly swinging, harmolodically influenced and tuneful, nice moods.

Bassist/composer Gregg August, Four By Six — Quartet and sextet tracks with coming-up players worth hearing: soprano saxist Sam Newsome, pianist Luis Perdomo, drummers E.J. Strickland and Rudy Royston, tenor saxist JD Allen, alto saxist Yosvany Terry, trumpeter John Bailey.

Guitarist/composer Bill Horvitz Expanded Band, The Long Walk — West Coast large ensemble performs carefully wrought original compositions by farseeing guitarist Bill Horvitz, celebrating his late younger brother Philip. Wayne Horvitz, also a sibling, plays piano. Full of feeling and even wisdom. 

Marty Ehrlich, A Trumpet In The Morning — New York large ensemble takes on an orchestral piece by a brilliant saxophist/composer who (unfortunately) doesn’ take any solos here. Or is there one lurking. . .  

More notable reissues: Tito Puente, Quatro — Master timbalest and bandleader’s lively albums of 1956 – ’60, plus out-take and alternates (released late 2012).

Chick Webb and Ella Fitzgerald, Decca Sessions 1934 – ’41 — A time capsule, eight cds from the swing orchestra that launched the most beloved of American singers.

Paul Bley Trio, Closer – The flinty, witty pianist, tinkers concisely with melodies by his ex-wife Carla Bley, Annette Peacock and Ornette Coleman, accompanied by bassist Steve Swallow and drummer Barry Altschul; from 1965 when this music — spare, ironic, inconclusive — was truly new. From ESP Disk, a label that took enormous chances, many of them still paying off (controversies acknowledged), and continues to do so.  

Art Hodes, I Remember Bessie – Recall or be introduced to Hodes, the raggy Chicago blues pianist who lived through Bessie’s era, revisiting it 50 years later.

. . . I still haven’t listened to a lot of the 1100-some albums l received for review in  2013, which wasn’t an easy year for artists on the commercial margins, overlooked by patrons and philanthropists. Thanks to musicians who stay in pursuit of enlivening, sensuous sound.
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I’ll never forget (I hope) Yusef Lateef’s flute wafting out from the stage of  the 1973 Ann Arbor Blues and Jazz Festival . . . Or his head-shaved, suited image on the cover of the boldly-named album 1984 (released in 1965, and not as dark as I’d expected) . . . Or his galvanizing spontaneous duet with percussionist Adam Rudolph at the 2010 NEA Jazz Masters concert at Jazz at Lincoln Center . . .

Indeed, Dr. Yusef Lateef enjoyed and shared with all who’d listen a fabulously creative, accomplished life to age 93, ending 12/23/13. He’d made music professionally starting when he was 18 in Detroit, and early on became a seeker and experimenter, eventually a scholar, philosopher and educator based at University of Massachusetts, Amherst.  I’m grateful to have encountered him in person, although I’ve respectfully disagreed with his indictment of the term “jazz” as defaming an art and discipline that he took to be humankind’s noblest expression. He acknowledged that he was from the jazz tradition, and I believe the many jazz people as high-minded as he was long ago saved the j-word from being saddled with negative connotations.

Lafeef called what he did “autophysiopsychic music . . . from one’s physical, mental and spiritual self, and also from the heart.” However his activities were categorized, whether his recordings were found in  hard-bop, soul jazz, New Age or world music bins — he always put his all into his efforts. Decades back, I was entranced by Lateef’s use of extended techniques, narrative solos and reed instruments from North Africa, the Middle East and Asia into relatively straightahead “jazz” formats, including Cannonball Adderley’s sextet.

Voice Prints, recorded in 2008 but just released, with Lateef making what I like to call jazz beyond jazz in a free-flowing collective quartet with percussionist Rudolph and fellow reeds and winds shamans Douglas Ewart and Roscoe Mitchell, is on my Best of the Year list.

Enjoy Lateef in duet with Adam Rudolph . . the two began working together in 1988.

and also with the estimable pianist Ahmad Jamal.

In November 2012 I saw Lateef sing the blues, play oboe, flute and tenor sax in the estimable company of saxophonist and vocalist Archie Shepp, bassist Reggie Workman, pianist Mulgrew Miller and drummer Hamid Drake at the Enjoy Jazz Festival, at the BASF Festsaal/Kammermusiksaal in Ludwigshafen, Germany. That concert was attended by all us cats presenting papers at the University of Heidelberg’s Lost In Diversity symposium on the “social relevance of jazz” (Lateef and Shepp addressed this topic, too, as did Alexander von Schlippenbach and Vijay Iyer), and a record of it may be  forthcoming. Provocative and serene, secular yet infused with an overarching faith, always bluesy but often transcendent — such were the sounds of Yusef Lateef.

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In the past 6 weeks I’ve heard a lot of live music  — though just a patch on what I’d like to have gotten to. In reverse chronological order:

• Sunday night 11/24: Adam Rudolph improvisationally conducting five flutists from his Go: Organic Orchestra at The Stone, then adding in his Moving Pictures septet. Earlier in the eve: trombonist Roswell Rudd blowing “I Dreamed I Saw Joe Hill” over a chorus of union member singers, as well as with the cast of his Trombone For Lovers cd (Cajun fiddler Michael Doucet, guitarists Gary Lucas and Rolf Sturm, singers Bob Dorough and Fay Victor, brassy Steve Bernstein and John Medeski soulin’ on organ at (le) Poisson Rouge.

• • • • Last Thursday: The Billy Strayhorn Orchestra, led by alto saxophonist Michael Hashim, @ Miller Theater, NYC — A rare presentation (thanks, Center of Jazz Studies, Columbia University), including “world premieres” of heartbreakingly lyrical, Ellingtonian yet ultra-original jazz tone poems, suitable for dancing but detailed as any concert music. Strayhorn’s sumptuous arrangements of “Bloodcount” and “Chelsea Bridge,” a cubist version of “Take the ‘A’ Train” and “The Intimacy of the Blues,” a distillation, were played impeccably by a big band of aces who haven’t worked together in six years.
      • Jamie Baum Septet +, In This Life cd release party, Jazz Standard — Flutist-composer Baum found inspiration for her strongest writing yet in trips to India and Katmandu, monkeys in the forest, the singing of Nusrat  Fateh Ali Kahn. Easy to be be swept up in but hard to play, these pieces benefit from the virtuosic attentions of trumpeter Amir ElSaffar, guitarist Brad Shepik, pianist John Escreet, reedist Douglas Yates, French horn player Chris Komer,  bassist Zack Lober and drummer Jeff Hirshfield.
      • Aaron Neville with Charles Neville, tenor saxophone, and band, Tribeca Performing Arts Center. Singer Neville is a tough-looking guy with an angelic voice, undimmed at age 73. He fronted a compact, supportive band (Charles played tenor) delivering classic r&b, gospel-tinged ballads and his still-great hit “Tell It Like It Is.” I took students from my NYU class in “Rock, Soul, Salsa 1950 – 1980” and they all dug it. His new cd is My True Story, but I prefer the tunes on Soul Classics.
      • Morton Subotnick w/Lillevan, From Silver Apples of the Moon to A Sky of Cloudless Sculpture, at Roulette, Brooklyn. I’ve written about Subotnick on this blog and produced an NPR piece about his Pitch Painter iPad app.

Mort continues to transfix with improvisations extrapolating samples of his recorded works in unlimited dimensions using software/hardware from Abelton. Lillevan is a visual artist whose screened projections complementMort’s unpredictable unfoldings to enhance the event. There’s future in this music — hear it now.

• • • • • • Jazz and Colors, Central Park, NYC — bari saxist Clare Daley 2 Sisters Inc. trio (with fellow barist Dave Sewelson and bassist Dave Hoftstra), alto saxist Yosvany Terry, Jamie Baum’s Sextet, guitarist Joel Harrison’s band and 26 other ensembles performed outdoors, spread through as sylvan a setting as Manhattan provides. Wandering around amid the foliage and sounds was fun.

• • • • • • • Pianist Erwin Helfer w/guest singer Katherine Davis, saxophonist John Brumbach — Blues and boogie specialist Helfer is an old
              

              Erwin Helfer and me
              photo by Marc PoKempner

              friend; in the ’80s I produced his album On the Sunny Side of the Street, and Maybe I’ll Cry, Mama Estella Yancey’s last recording, on which he was accompanist. He’s a warm, funny, well-informed and generous keyboardist, well matched by tenorman Brumbach. Davis sang a truly salacious Bessie Smith lyric. At Katerina’s, a cozy bar with good food, Chicago.

            • Multi-reedist Steven Lugerner‘s quartet with trumpeter Russ Johnson, pianist Myra Melford and drummer Michael Sarin, at Constellation, drummer Mike Reed’s large Chicago venue. Lugerner’s concise compositions were like transparent knots — complicated though all parts were visible and the threads could be followed, culminating in a piece that abstracted the seven plagues Moses called down on ancient Egypt.
          • M.C. Schmidt, Wobbly — electronic music jam by Californians @ Experimental Sound Studio, Chicago. Supposedly in quadraphonic sound, but the small seating area was filled so I listened from the hall. Interesting sounds, another demonstration of unpredictable improv. Nice to know ESS exists.

• • • • • • Sun Ra turns 100 — Sun Ra Arkestra under direction of Marshall Allen, Allen Room, Jazz at Lincoln Center, NYC. Ebullient, ragtag celebration of the prophet of Afrofuturism, exciting all the nice folks in the beautiful concert hall looking out on Columbus Circle.
          • Orrin Evans’ Captain Black Big Band, Sun Ra tribute, Dizzy’s Club Coca-Cola, Jazz at Lincoln Center, NYC. Same terrific night as the Arkestra, pianist Evans’ band was much tighter on repertoire derived from Ra’s, which had his spirit at heart. JALC did not quite lift off, but might if more cosmic tones for mental therapy are presented.

• • • • • • • • Michele Rosewoman’s New Yor-uba 30th annniversary, Roulette, Brooklyn. Just before recording her syncretic jazz/Santeria two-cd masterpiece, pianist Rosewoman brought her

large ensemble with bata drums to the stage. Quite a full program, a strong, nuanced, lovely celebration of Cuba steeped in three decades of Ms. Rosewoman’s dedication and refinement, and an even longer, deeper history of tradition.

America’s rich with music. We’re soooooo lucky, with much to be thankful for.

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Two celebratory benefit jazz concerts in New York City this weekend: tonight (11/22) a tribute to alto saxophonist Arthur Blythe featuring his fellow altoist Oliver Lake, poet/cultural critic Amiri

Baraka, tubaist Bob Stewart and guitarists Kelvyn Bell and Vernon Reid, among others at Shapeshifter Lab in Brooklyn; Sunday (11/24) starting at 4 pm a 78th birthday show for trombonist Roswell Rudd at (le) Poisson Rouge, where keyboardist John Medeski, slide-trumpeter Steven Bernstein, singers Bob Dorough and Fay Victor, guitarists Gary Lucas and Rolf Sturm, and Cajun fiddler Michael Doucet (of Beausoleil) plus many more will attest to the honoree’s musical breadth. Rudd is expected to play. I don’t know that about Blythe.

Black Arthur, as he used to be known, whose plummy tone and bouncy phraseology brightened many recordings from the “neo-gutbucket” school of the 1980s — including those he led himself — is battling Parkinson Disease; proceeds from the $15 ticket charge will help defray his medical expenses, and funds are also being collected online. His most fully realized work may be the vibrant and richly melodic Lenox Avenue Breakdown with flutist James Newton, guitarist James “Blood” Ulmer, drummer Jack DeJohnette and, yes, tubaist Bob Stewart among his collaborators. He’s always sounded only like himself, from his debut with pianist Horace Tapscott (The Giant is Awakened, out-of-print and priced by Amazon at $349.99) through his times with Chico Hamilton, Lester Bowie, Gil Evans, and the World Saxophone Quartet. Blythe’s most recent album as a leader,

Rudd, recently  diagnosed with a serious medical problem, might also be described as a neo-gutbucketeer or avant-garde tailgater. Emerging in the 1950s from Eli’s Chosen Six,Yale University’s Dixieland band and the coterie of experimentalists (including Steve Lacy) who gathered around pianist-composer Herbie Nichols, he’s gone on to be a principle of the New York Art Quartet, to play with and arrange for Archie Shepp, to solo on “We Shall Overcome” in Charlie Haden’s Music Liberation Orchestra album, and in the  past  decade has created an enormous ouevre, collaborating with musicians from Mali, Mongolia, Benin and Puerto Rico (the cuatro master Yomo Toro). My favorite of his albums is the Jazz Composers Orchestra Plays Numatik Swing Band, but that’s never been issued on cd and is a collectible on vinyl. Rudd’s 2013 album, Trombone for Lovers, includes Medeski, Bernstein and Dorough in its cast.

Rudd and Blythe are American artists with scads — scores? hundreds? thousands? — of fans and well-established international reputations. I don’t know what health insurance they’ve  bought over their long, productive careers (Rudd has held teaching positions at Bard College and the University of Maine, and for 30 years assisted musicologist Alan Lomax in his Cantometrics and Global Jukebox projects, so maybe, just maybe, he’s received  employee benefits) but their budgets are stretched by their current illnesses. Help them out with donations, and give these musicians a listen. They’ve both given invaluable gifts of music to the world, be it attuned.

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Boston — historically stuffy but blue-blood liberal, devoted to higher education, high finance and professional sports — is now doubling down on itself as a world-class jazz city. Berklee College of Music, nearly 4500 students strong and  an economic engine onto itself, is generating energy that enlivens Boston’s  neighborhoods, drawing in general audiences with such outreach events as the Beantown Jazz Festival, the free street fair held last weekend. JazzBoston, a non-profit grassroots  organization, has announced that its 2014  “Jazz Week,” celebrated during April, which is Jazz Appreciation Month, will start on Patriot’s Day, April 21, when the Boston Marathon is run, and climax on International Jazz Day, produced globally by UNESCO, on April 30.

“Previously  we’ve avoided programming during the Marathon,” JazzBoston executive director Pauline Bilsky told Boston media representatives and jazz presenters at a meeting at Berklee College of Music’s Café 939 (which, full disclosure, I co-chaired as president of the Jazz Journalists Association; the Berklee Internet Radio Network was another co-sponsor). “This year we realized that more than ever the  Marathon will be a patriotic celebration. There’s no music more American than jazz. We think these two celebrations belong together.

“We also hope to work with the new Mayor to produce a public celebration of International Jazz Day that puts Boston on the map. Why shouldn’t Boston be up there with cities like Paris, Istanbul, New Orleans,  and New York?”  Those cities were central sites for UNESCO IJD activities on April 30 2012 and ’13.

Though this city has traditionally been better known for its prohibitive “blue laws” rather than its entertainment industry, Boston has been a birthplace, rearing grounds and teaching home of important American musicians since the Revolution (cf., William Billings). Renown for the Boston Symphony Orchestra, est. 1881, it has also been home to modernists Roy Haynes, Cecil Taylor, Sam Rivers, Jaki Byard, Gunther Schuller, Tony Williams, Ran Blake, George Russell and Gary Burton, who attended Berklee in the early ’60s and served on its faculty for 30 years.

Although not alone in great Boston developing advanced instruction for musicians interested in popular and practical genres — New England Conservatory, Brandeis University and Wellesley College have highly regarded programs, and MacArthur Award recipient pianist-composer Vijay Iyer has just been appointed Professor of the Arts at Harvard — Berklee attracts the top  professionals to address its students directly. When I visited the school on Thursday, Sept. 26, pianist-producer Patrice Rushen addressed the freshman class, advising all students to “Commit and contribute.” Faculty currently includes violinist Darol Anger; bassists Victor Bailey, Eugene Friesen and Dave Clark; pianists Joanne Brackeen, Laszlo Gardony, Helen Sung and Francesca Tanksley; saxophonists Bill Pierce, Frank Tiberi, Alan Chase, Walter Beasley, George Garzone, Stan Strickland and Joe Lovano; guitarists Garrison Fewell, David Gilmore, David Tronzo, Mick Goodrick and Dave Fiuczynski; rumpeter Tiger Okoshi, oudist Simon Shaheen, MC Raydar Ellis, singer-songwriter Livingston Taylor, vibist Victor Mendoza, electronics designer Neil Leonard, drummers Yoron Israel and Ralph Peterson Jr. Percussionist Terri Lynn Carrington teaches at Berklee, and was music director of the sprawling, Berklee-sponsored Beantown Jazz Fest.

Beantown Jazz Festival thoroughfare

While that one-day fest attracts something like 20,000 Bostonians of all stripes and dots to stroll several blocks, bookended by portable stages and lined with food and other vendors’ booths, it is a tough place to actually hearmusic. Young ensembles with veteran guests — like pianist Matt Savage with alto sax sage Bobby Watson — competed for listeners’ ears with a large stage set in an adjacent field. Noise (not necessarily music, not necessarily jazz) blared from the vendors’ booths. A proud, loud drum ensemble rolled back and forth through the crowd in the street, producing random audio chaos like ballbearings tossed into gearworks.

This need not be. A few simple regulations on the vendors’ use of amplification, a designated area (somewhat removed from other music-makers) for the drum troupe to pound all it wants, and better placement of stages and speakers to mitigate the bleeding of one act over to another would go a long way to enhancing the efforts of musicians who deserve to be heard, and if heard could be enjoyed. Temporary seating areas, if not folding chairs at stage-side, would be nice, too. As it is, people stand mosh-pit style or sit on stoops and grass.

We can hope JazzBoston will take those kinds of issues into account as it designs programming for its 2014 Patriot/Marathon Day activities. So far no details of programming beyond the date have been disclosed, and no discussion has been broached with the Boston Athletic Association, organizer and manager  of the Marathon. But at the JazzBoston/JJA/BIRN meeting attendees floated such ideas as  having jazz stages featuring local musicians set along the Marathon course route, special radio programming, coordination of artists from the city’s music education institutions into public venues, and media outreach using online as well as traditional platforms to snare the attention of folks who don’t currently have any contact with jazz at all — by definition, a potential market.

JazzBoston, organized in 2006, had the largest booth space at the Beantown Jazz Festival, where volunteers conducted videotaped interviews of local musicians and activists. It publishes an ongoing calendar of  area performances and is sustaining a campaign in support of local jazz radio which has grown to embrace the introduction of JazzBird, an app curating and distributing  “live-hosted” programs of online radio from around the world. In collaboration with the JJA, over the past three years the organization has nominated and consulted in the selection of “Jazz Heros.” It also supports Riffs & Raps® jazz-in-community centers and multi-generational, family-appropriate jazz presentations run by Bill Lowe and Arni Cheatham (a “Jazz Hero”).

JazzBoston’s Jazz Week partners in 2013 included  Berklee College of Music, Boston Public Library, Greater Boston Convention and Visitors Bureau, the New England Conservatory, MassJazz, Massachusetts Office of Travel and Tourism and in 2012 the Consulate General of Japan. As tens of thousands of runners take to the Marathon course next April 21, and people across America reflect on the anniversary of last April’s devastating Marathon bombings, jazz may be a salve to the soul and/or a sound of celebration. At the JazzBoston/JJA/BIRN meeting, it was reported that both candidates for Mayor of Boston have pledged to rescind Boston’s notoriously burdensome entertainment licensing laws, which would be a boon to producers and presenters, musicians and audiences, too.

The impulse to play is irrepressible. Last Thursday I heard a quartet  led by pianist David Bryant and tenor saxophonist Tom Hall at the Outpost, a simple room in a yoga studio in Cambridge’s Inman Square. There were only five people in attendance, but the musicians (John Turner, bass; Eric Rosenthal, drums) put their all into improvisations that built on the freedoms and responsibilities proposed by innovators such as Ornette Coleman, with whom Bryant studied and worked. On a long walk of Massachusetts Avenue back toward Boston’s Copley Square, music poured out of bars and restaurants. Young people were out carousing, and carousing calls for music. I heard djs, reggae, a cover band playing classic rock. It felt like ground zero for the up ‘n’ coming audience. Those smart kids from Berklee and their friends from MIT, Boston U, Tufts, Emerson College, Harvard, etc. seem open and ready for anything. Why shouldn’t they like jazz?

PS: My friend Gordon Marshall is a Boston blogger who writes about rock as well as improvised, jazz-related music. In connection with doubling down, I’ve posted some of his music-inspired poetry.

howardmandel.com

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