Today — April 14 —  is the 80th birthday of one of America’s greatest musical game-changers, Morton Subotnick, the man who:

• co-founded the San Francisco Tape Music Center;
• envisioned and developed the electronic synthesizer as a tabletop orchestral palette;
• created Silver Apples of the Moon, the first  composition intended specifically for the long-playing vinyl record and home listening;
• as first director of multi-media at the Electric Circus, effected the birth of techno and electronic dance music;
• advanced electronic audio projection/placement and improvisatory interaction to a high art;
• has worked and re-worked Jacob’s Room, a dark opera (sometimes, mono-opera) concerning the absolute isolation of individuals in the universe;
• produced “Making Music,” highly popular software to teach musical concepts to children, and
• last year released Pitch Painter, a $3.99 iPAD app that lets even toddlers  compose by choosing instruments from the world over and tracing lines on a screen.

Subotnick is one of the most continuously innovative musicians on the planet, still. He performs, lectures and teaches, and has been getting up at 5 a.m. daily to write a book for M.I.T. Press. He’s candid and articulate about his remarkable 60 year career (he was a child prodigy clarinetist, soloing with symphonies while still in his teens), clear and detailed in his memories (he’s been friends and sometimes collaborator with inventors, composers and artists including Stan Brakhage, James Tenney, Ramon Sender, Donald Buchla, Allan Kaprow, and new music vocalist Joan La Barbara, with whom he’s been together for 33 years). He’s quite fit. He performed the entirety of Silver Apples of the Moon at Moogfest 2012 (today he does that using digital files and Abelton Suite), and has installed a prototype of Pitch Painter in the Human Origins hall of the American Museum of Natural History in Manhattan.

I’ve been able to spend some time with Subotnick over the past year, in an attempt to produce a radio profile for NPR, which I hope will be broadcast within the next week.

Here’s what happened when Mort let me play with Pitch Painter (click to hear audio file). Besides that fun, Mort brought up two ideas in conversation that won’t make it to my radio script, yet stay with me.

One is his dictum that “The appropriate feeling to come from listening to electronic music is awe,” by which he means electronic music has the power of a force of nature, a sound that generates wonder, rather like listening to a waterfall.

The second is his speculation that in the 21st Century, time will be the new frontier. Perhaps not for manipulation — he’s not suggesting that a time machine is about to be invented — but he believes there will be an understanding that all time eras exist simultaneously . The example he gave me was that the clash between Western culture and Osama ben Laden, for instance, was a clash of epochs, and that ben Laden actually lived with a worldview akin to that of the West’s Middle Ages, which would not possibly countenance the West’s digitally-directed 21st Century. Yet both do

Subotnick’s music since Silver Apples (1967) includes many electronics works — Sidewinder, Touch, The Key To Songs, The Wild Bull, Until Spring, A Sky of Cloudless Sulpher, Gestures: It Begins With Colors (with La Barbara), Until Spring — often including live video mixes, films and dancers. His work  has never sounded like anything else, like anyone else’s. The simplest, over-arching description I can offer is it bubbles with complex, visceral joy. Exception to the joy and it’s a big one: Jacob’s Room. But take a look at the beautiful German production —

If you’ve got an iPad, download Morton Subotnick’s Pitch Painter (via the iTune store). Share it with kids — or else they’ll grab it from you. Tell them who to thank. Happy Birthday, Morton Subotnick.

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Second week of Jazz Appreciation Month:

• • pianist Edsel Gomez talked  in my NYU “World Music” class of working with Malian musicians on Dee Dee Bridgewater’s extrafine Red Earth project;

• Ralph Simon, producer of late lamented Postcard Records and soprano saxist, had a private with me consultation on resuming jazz activities;
• Bassist Charnett Moffett at Birdland, midtown, for a showcase of The Bridge, his new solo recording on Motema Music, for which I wrote liner notes;
• Immediately thereafter:  Gamak (Rudresh Mahanthappa, alto sax; Dave Fiuczynski, electric guitars; Francois Mouton, upright bass; Dan Weiss, traps kit) at le Poisson Rouge on the Village;
• Then 6 train uptown to Café Carlyle for trumpeter/singer Bria Skonburg‘s set with quartet backing of Sean Cronin, upright bass & vocals; Dalton Ridenhour, piano;  Darrian Douglas, drums;
• Sampled some new recordings: Ross Hammond Quartet Cathedrals and John Ehlis Ensemble Along the Way, among the worthies;
• Consulted on Jazz Hero parties in Austin for Dr. James Polk, blues jazz pianist; Schenectady for Tim Coakley, veteran Sat. night radio jock, area drummer  and copy editor; Philadelphia for Jim Miller, drummer/educator and one-man record label Dreambox Media; San Francisco bay area for Sunny Buxton (KCSM, ex-Pearl’s jazz club) and Randall Kline (director SFJazz);
• Organized the Jazz Journalists Assoc’s Int’l Jazz Day party, co-hosted by the Louis Armstrong House Museum — on April 30, 2 pm at the Langston Hughes Community Library and Cultural Center, Corona, Queens — unveiling newly discovered Louis Armstrong tapes from 1961, Freedomland Amusement Park, the Bronx with discussion by archivist Ricky Riccardi and dean of jazz journalists Dan Morgenstern.

Edsel Gomez, who I’d run into by chance at lunch during JazzApril week 1, spoke candidly to my class about the challenges and rewards of music-directing an ensemble mixing traditionalist Mali griots with the American pros of hot singer Dee Dee Bridgewater’s band. He said the Africans were meticulous preservationists; that it had taken him several days of rehearsal to win their trust; of how he learned to use the piano to extend the harmonic limits of their mostly pentatonic scales of their koras and balafons, and of the extreme wealth he’d seen touring North Africa, juxtaposed with widespread poverty. A superb pianist, Edsel made the funky instrument in my classroom ring orchestrally through his version of “Afro Blue,” written by Mongo Santamaria and sung by Dee Dee on her Red Earth tour (which lasted on and off for three years). He mentioned his fascinating background, too: Growing up in Puerto Rico playing in salsa bands, arriving at Berklee School of Music when he was 17, away from home the first time, speaking mostly English suddenly, having to make his way; 10 years living in Brazil, then his return to the U.S. His next gigs are in the Chick Corea Festival scheduled for May at Jazz at Lincoln Center.

I annotated at least a couple of the albums Ralph Simon organized and co-starred on in the ’90s (notably Magic Club: Music for the Millenium, with collaborators including Paul Bley, Gary Peacock, Julian Priester, Bruce Ditmas, Alan Pasqua). Upon the label’s sale and evident demise several years ago, he retrained himself as a family therapist, but now he’s got the jazz itch again. Simon believes there’s talent still to be encouraged, recorded and enjoyed from the jazz era Ken Burns skipped over (that would be from the death of Coltrane, 1967, to the rise of Jazz at Lincoln Center, circa 1987) and is eager to discover some of the new talents I mentioned who have emerged while he’s been engaged elsewhere. Simon’s considering, plotting, gathering forces. . .and I told him times are tough for selling jazz albums, but yes, we want good new ones. . .

Holding a crowd playing solo bass ain’t easy. Tell it to Charnett Moffett — who has worked with Wynton Marsalis, Ornette Coleman, Stanley Jordan and McCoy Tyner, among others — has his program down and his chops way up for the widely-drawn repertoire he plays. Completely exposed in this setting, he demonstrated a virtuosic manner of weaving the rhythm, melody and harmonic extensions of songs by Sting, the Beatles, Monk, Mingus, Ellington et al. into performances that throbbed and glistened. The crowd seemed to like it; I did, too, otherwise I wouldn’t have written the notes or introduced him from the bandstand.

Wow is the right term of the Mahanthappa-Fiuczynski front line — they are two of the fiercest lyrical hard-blowers now. Fuze plays double-necked guitars, sliding microtonally around the unfretted one, picking unbelievably fast and intricate figures with rock-star alacrity on the fretted. Rudresh pours his breath through his alto in impossibly long lines, with exquisite sighing inflections as well as a righteous burn. Mouton and Weiss both dug in, too. My colleague Bill Milkowski, sitting with me, said ‘They sound like Prime Time,” and I answered, “Prime Time from Hawaii,” due to the slack-key/surf’s up qualities; there were nods to the Grateful Dead and Mahavishnu Orchestra, not to mention Fuze’s old outfit the Screaming Headless Torsos. Wow they were smokin’. I’d go again.

The Jazz Journalists Association having nominated Bria Skonberg for the 2013 Up and Coming Artist Award, I wanted to check her out, and I’m glad I did. She’s a bright young woman from British Columbia who sings and plays trumpet, shares patter with her bassist and occasional vocal partner Cronin, and has put together a program called “Brass and Belles” that revives Valaida Snow’s “High Hat, Trumpet and Rhythm” as well as “Let’s Call the Whole Thing Off” (a la Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Armstrong) and “September Song” (referring to Sarah Vaughan with Clifford Brown). These selections are lively, and if some of her horn playing seems more studied than spontaneous, when she loses herself in a giddy version of “Old Black Magic” (from Keely Smith with Louis Prima), she wins grins. Pianist Ridenhour was at his best on a blues, and drummer Douglas is fresh to NYC from New Orleans, as one could hear from his backbeat.

I’ve received more than 50 cds potentially for review since April 1 (more than 100 since March 14), plus a couple of dozen links to music for downloading, and have sampled them spottily, which isn’t a good way to get into new music. The good way, without doubt, is to sit down, relaxed, and let the sounds roll over you. My present occupations make such quality time a rare luxury, but after previewing guitarist Hammond’s Cathedrals (with Vinny Golia on reeds and flute; Steuart Liebig, bass; Alex Cline, drums/percussion) and guitarist Ehlis’s Along the Way (quartets to septets with a strong cast, including John Tchicai on tenor sax for his last recording) I intend to get better acquainted with them.

And I’ll at least dip into new music by the big band Swingadelic (Toussaintville), guitarist Marc Ribot’s trio Ceramic Dog (Your Turn), guitariasts Gilad Hekselman (This Just In) and Philip Gibbs (with vocalist Mossa Bilder and Karl Berger on vibes, After the Storm), drummers Jaimeo Brown (Transcendence) and Kendrick Scott (Conviction), flutist Nicole Mitchell (Engraved in the Wind and Aquarius), pianists Peter Madsen (Soul of the Underground), Aaron Diehl (The Bespoke Man’s Narrative), Laszlo Gardony (Clarity), Uri Caine with Han Bennink (Sonic Boom), Edward Simon (Trio Live in New York at Jazz Standard), Steve Kuhn (The Vanguard Date) and Jacky Terrason (Gouache); trombonist Reut Regev (Exploring the Vibe), Quest (Circular Dreaming), pianist Eli Yamin with clarinetist Evan Christopher (Louie’s Dream for our Jazz Heroes), bassists Robert Hurst (Bob A Palindrome) and Joshua Abrams (Unknown Known), tenor saxist Norbert Stein (Pata on the Cadillac), alto saxist Miguel Zenón (Oye!!! Live in Puerto Rico), Monika Roscher Big Band (Failure in Wonderland), reedsman Ben Wendell with keyboardist Dan Tepfer (Small Constructions), singer Cécile McLorin Salvant (WomanChild), and many more (I’ll mention duo pianists Tommy Flanagan/Jaki Byard’s The Magic of 2, drummer Yoron Israel’s Visions, The Music of Stevie Wonder and drummer/percussionist Kahil El’Zabar Quartet’s What It Is! with the caveat that I wrote the liner notes for all three, so I’ve already devoted hours to studying — and enjoying — those productions).

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An elder of African-American culture, a master improviser, a heroic performer, recording artist and educator, a genius who denounces the term “jazz” (but is an NEA Jazz Master) and reviles all the “vulgarity” which has traditionally been associated with the music but has never abjured blues, grit and funk — multi-reeds specialist Yusef Lateef at age 92 earned the reverent attention of a full house at Roulette in Brooklyn on April 6.

Performing a set of more than an hour’s length with only percussionist Adam Rudolph and a bit of pre-recorded material to support him, Lateef sang, recited poetry, played oboe, flute, small wind instruments and tenor saxophone with a directness and wisdom that has no match today. Looking serene and elegant, he engaged in free-form sound painting in which each phrase, intonation, squawk and whisper of overtones seemed to be meaningful. Dr. Lateef (he received an Ed.D. in Education from University of Massachusetts/Amherst in 1975,  his dissertation on Western and Islamic education and earned a Ed.D. in Education from the University of Massachusetts Amherst in 1975, and taught there) remained seated throughout his appearance, and does not have the hearty tone and fullness of breath of a younger man but the honesty of his music was unwavering. He sounded by turns solemn, rude, plaintive and gruff;  his poetry spoke of the dominion of Providence;  his message was to love live, to avoid moments that are without love and to hold off despair. The most affecting episode of this concert, which was uninterrupted until by a standing ovation before the duet’s encore, was Lateef’s vocal call to “cross the river.” He sees the other side and is, evidently, unafraid.

What better perspective can a man of his age gain? He must be — and should be — proud of his accomplishments, as he has expressed himself fully, expanded upon the potentials of his heritage and brought musical pleasure to many people, worldwide. Although trumpeter Don Cherry is often called the first “world musician” (meaning he absorbed melodies from everywhere, and responded to the fundamentals of music so as to collaborate with anyone, anywhere), Lateef was introducing reeds instruments from foreign lands to audiences of Cannonball Adderley’s sextet in the late 1950s, when Cherry was still emerging from Los Angeles (in company with that other musical universalist, Ornette Coleman). Yusef Lateef embraced Middle Eastern and Eastern musical ideas, incorporated bells and recording studio collage in his practice, has written novellas and essays as well as reflective, imagistic poems, has brought spirituals like “Wade in the Water” (made famous by the Fisk Jubilee Singers in 1901) into jazz repertoire. His breadth was demonstrated by the concert’s first half, in which his compositions for string quartet (no. 2, from 2012 — a world premiere), saxophone trio (“Elan Vital” dating from 1998, a New York premiere) and piano (“Autophysiophysic variations,” also from 2012, also a world premiere) received scrupulous performances by the Momenta Quartet; soprano saxist J.D. Parran, altoist Marty Ehrlich and baritonist Alan Won, and Taka Kigawa, respectively.

Devoted as their interpretations were, no one was more attuned to the Master than Adam Rudolph, who has been his duet partner for 25 years (they have also recorded several albums, including In the Garden with Rudolph’s Go: Organic Orchestra, and Towards the Unknown). On congas, an array of hanging cymbals, a Gnawan guembri and a fat, resonant clay jug, Rudolph accompanied, echoed and sometimes anticipated Lateef with remarkable empathy. He listened raptly, responded imaginatively, never overshadowed the 0lder man. Their interactions were intimate and exemplary.

If Lateef could not or perhaps didn’t want to reel off volcanic eruptions of sound, as he has in the past, he still created some stunning phrases, their impact emphasized by the silence they marked as a broad brushstroke defines a bare canvass. As a seer, Lateef was in no rush,was not constrained to blow loudly, and offered no upbeat panacea to the 600 some attendees, who had come for what they got: the truth distilled by a man who has spent his long life exploring, studying, experimenting with and shaping sound, mostly as a product of exhalation. To breathe music, from the guts and heart, strikes me as a wondrous thing. Praise and peace to Yusef Lateef, who calls his music “autophysiopsychic,” with the directive that “it should be the goal of every musician to combine their theoretical knowledge with their life experience, and to offer to and accept knowledge from their personal source of strength, inspiration and knowledge.” Amen.

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I’m as sad as any Chicago-born & raised movie fan about the death of Roger Ebert, who I saw regularly in the Chicago Sun Times/Chicago Daily News offices when I was a copyboy there in the ’70s, but to whom I never spoke. And I take umbrage at the characterization of him as a “middle-brow” — because Ebert was not that, rather the best kind of populist critic, as the New York Times obituary suggests.

“A critic for the common man” is the Times headline. “His opinions propelled film criticism into the mainstream of American culture,” writes Douglas Martin. “Not only did he advise moviegoers about what to see, but also how to think about what they saw.”

That’s correct: Ebert did go mainstream as no movie critic had before him in such a big, smart way. If he did not deliver the aperçus of Kael, Sarris, Ferguson and Farber, perhaps it was because he was doing the Chicago thing of writing plainly, swiftly and without pretentions. This is a skill lost on critics who are from their outset pretentious.

Ebert’s thinking was not “middlebrow,” however, nor were his instincts and taste. He loved movies, the very movie-ness of them, but was much more than an “earnest enthusiast,” as Terry Teachout has described him. The Chicago Daily News nightlife/jazz/theater/movie critic/feature writer Sam Lesner, back in the day, was an earnest enthusiast — honest but with little genuine insight, flying opinions from the seat of his pants. Chicago Tribune theater critic Claudia Cassidy at the time was, by contrast, an outright elitist; knowledgable, yes, but self-absorbed, wielding her influence despotically. Ebert vis á vis his writing seemed like a regular guy, on the level with metropolitan daily newspaper readers. All the better to reach them with his on-target responses to an art form meant for everybody.

Ebert was far from unsophisticated, though and could analyze Bergman, Fellini, Antonioni and Godard with comprehension equal to anyone’s. He also had a finely honed sense of irony and — more rare yet — the guts to put it to the test, writing Beyond the Valley of the Dolls, one of the first intentionally trashy, highly referential movies intended to be enjoyed for its surface luridness as well as its sub-themes, in the way Quentin Tarantino has brought to an art.

Ebert, even in collaboration with director Russ Meyers, was no Tarantino. Maybe he would have been if he’d grown up in L.A. and video stores had been available to lounge about in for minimum wage. Instead he grew up amid the cornfields surrounding University of Illinois (Champaign/Urbana) and as a kid worked on a grade school newspaper, edited his high school newspaper, and according to the Times at age 15 earned “75 cents an hour covering high school sports for The News-Gazzette in Champaign.” Originally hired by the Sun-Times as a feature writer, he became the paper’s movie critic at age 24. I bet he felt like he’d landed on one comfy throne.

His movie reviews were always crisp and clear. He liked being entertained, but abjured unearned or false sentimentality. He was into action, adventure, comedy, lighthearted musicals and gripping drama. Violence didn’t bother him unless it was transparently pornographic, a point he made clear in his screenplay for Beyond the Valley of the Dolls, which spoofs everything including itself.

I haven’t watched that flick in many a year, and don’t recommend it for intellectual study or even dorm-room debate, such as Django Unchained, Pulp Fiction and Reservoir Dogs can stand up to. But I admire Roger Ebert for having conceived a movie that was knowingly trashy — what we called “camp” — and seeing it produced, distributed, reviewed (often scathingly), then returning to his desk at the Sun Times to resume writing about other movies. That in itself demonstrated to me the gumption he so heroically showed in fighting to be himself every inch of the way as his illness progressed. I never spoke to Ebert, but he spoke to me. And what he said was as meaningful as anything written by others in more high falutin’ prose or precious style.

P.S. — Roger Ebert died on the 100th birthday of Muddy Waters, another Chicagoan (born and raised, though, in the Mississippi Delta) who plied his art in a straightforward, hard-hitting way. The debt of contemporary pop music to people like Muddy remains unpaid, acknowledged among the cognoscenti but no longer assumed by casual listeners. Too bad for us: Muddy and his peers laid down the bedrock upon which Elvis, the Stones, the Beatles and subsequent American rock built. Same as Ebert, who modeled how most people today think and talk about the movies. Both thumbs up to them both.

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Jazz in NYC and vicinity early in Jazz Appreciation Month: Since Monday, April 1 I’ve —

• heard the all-star Monterey Jazz Fest on Tour band at the Blue Note Jazz Club, and
• singer Imani Uzuri w/band there, too;
• learned about the James Moody Democracy in Jazz Festival (sponsored by TD Bank) at the New Jersey Performing Arts Center (NJPAC, Newark), and NJPAC’s upcoming jazz season;
• joined representatives of the Central Brooklyn Jazz Consortium on the steps of City Hall in Manhattan
• had lunch with pianist Edsel Gomez and Alex Webb, chair of judges of the UK’s first Jazz FM Awards and the writer of a musical about Café Society which he hopes is coming to a theater off-Broadway next year.

The musical highlight was beyond doubt Dee Dee Bridgewater tearing it up with bassist Christian McBride, pianist Benny Green, drummer Lewis Nash, trumpeter Ambrose Akinmusire and tenor saxist Chris Potter — that’s the Monterey Jazz Fest on Tour — starting with Louis Jordan’s classic “Let the Good Times Roll” and ending with Horace Silver’s “Filthy McNasty.” Before Ms. Bridgewater got onstage, the rhythm section was fine all on its own — Benny Green is a swift, dazzling two-fisted pianist who imbues songs such as “Taking a Chance on Love” with more varieties of mood than most mortals can imagine.

Bridgewater is a powerhouse, and a veteran — she slowed down for a touching version of “A Child is Born,” the lovely ballad written by Thad Jones, who was her mentor when she first entered the local scene via the Thad Jones-Mel Lewis Orchestra in the early ’70s.

Imani Uzuri, who filled the Blue Note for the first set Monday night, is by comparison a beginner. She sang material from Gypsy Diaries, her second self-produced CD,  with the game support japanese shinobue flutist Kaoru Watanabe, sitarist Neel Murgai, cellist Marika Hughes, “world percussionist” Todd Isler and her co-producer Christian Ver Halen on acoustic guitar. She’s got a great voice but could profitably expand into more challenging material.

In Newark, NJPAC presents outstanding jazz in a hall that rivals Carnegie for beauty and acoustics. The programming of the second Moody Festival, a seven-day event starting next November 4 with a concert by tenor saxophone wiseman Jimmy Heath at Bethany Baptist Church is impressive, including a celebration  “in words and music” of the 50th anniversary of Newark author Amiri Baraka’s important book, Blues People on at the Newark Museum on November 5.

NJPAC’s season from next fall through spring 2014 is promising — curated by bassist McBride (he’s everywhere, and deservedly so: great sound, fantastic facility, hearty spirit), brilliant pianist Bill Charlap (who performed a brief medley of Ellington, Gershwin and Richard Rodgers songs — they are the composers of focus in the concerts he’s put together), Dorthaan Kirk (Rahsaan Roland Kirk’s widow, a JJA “A Team” award winner and NJ jazz community icon, long affiliated with WBGO which partners on the series with NJPAC) and Larry Rosen, co-founder of GRP Records and more recently producer of the Jazz Roots traveling concert series. The complete schedule is described in a press release here. But the big fun at that event was hearing a combo of teenagers, including 9th graders on alto sax and piano, play a rousing short set that included Moody’s “Last Train to Overbrook.” These were students of an obviously outstanding northern NJ program called Jazz House Kids, established by Melissa Walker (who has just been named a “Jazz Hero” by the Jazz Journalists Association) and in this case coached by saxophonist Don Braden and guitarist Ron Jackson. Those are terrific jazz adults, but these kids obviously had talent and were deep into swinging hard-bop, conjuring grown-up solos.

The Central Brooklyn bunch (with a couple of Manhattanites for seasoning) was quite hardy, standing in a chilly, stiff wind while members spoke about the importance of jazz in their lives — mostly for the

benefit of several photographers in attendance, since the area in front of the City Hall steps was blocked off to the general public by police, who subjected everyone allowed to enter to metal detector searches. They also forbade instruments, though Jenny Hill held her soprano sax protectively in her arms, and Jeff King pulled out his tenor to blow one chorus of Sonny Rollins’ “Tenor Madness.” Others present: bassist Larry Ridley, drummer Newman Taylor Baker, CBJC media man Bob Myers. Which shows what a determined bunch (we) Brooklynites are.

It was a delight to have a burger and brew with Alex Webb, a multi-talented gent (author songwriter, ex-journalist, broadcaster, university lecturer in music and events management), just passing through New York and wowed by the edge of the jazz he’s been hearing at Smoke and Dizzy’s Club — and to spend some time with Edsel Gomez, one of whose gigs is musical director for (full circle) Dee Dee Bridgewater. We simultaneously lamented and celebrated the states of the worlds of jazz, journalism, contemporary music more broadly and scholarship. Among the pleasantries was Edsel’s interest in my “World Music” class at NYU; he promised to come on Monday to audit, and when I pressed him agreed to show some things on the rickety piano, which will certainly inform as well as delight my students.

This does not include my actual work: Investigating with that “World Music” class some of the ways music gets “popular,” advancing the JJA’s JazzApril and Jazz Awards initiatives.

The month has just begun.

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April is Jazz Appreciation Month (so named by the Smithsonian Institution), culminating on the 30th with International Jazz Day (a project of UNESCO, organized by the Thelonious Monk Institute of Jazz) — and both those initiatives are endorsed by the U.S. Conference of Mayors. So the Jazz Journalists Association has launched a major media campaign called JazzApril in support of local jazz scenes taking advantage of JAM and IJD to raise awareness of the jazz resources all around us, and today posted bios + photos of 25 JJA “Jazz Heroes,” nominated by grassroots activists in 25 cities which will have parties to celebrate them, ask officials to proclaim their endorsements, and generally make noise to show that jazz is everywhere, in April and all year long.

JazzApril is no joke — while launched in cooperation with the Smithsonian and the Monk Institute, it’s an independent project of the JJA, the brainchild of or organization’s media director and Ozmotic Media principal JoAnn Kawell, and has come together quickly due to the efforts of jazz devotees from Boston to Austin, Gainesville to Seattle (and Ottawa, too). It’s a pro bono initiative, and experiment in social media.

Can a small cadre of professional jazz journalists, self-motivated presenters and loyal fans make a visible wave on Facebook and Twitter to reach beyond the jazz audience as we know it, building on our friends’ and followers’ interests?

Can jazz support organizations such as JazzBoston, Jazz from Bloomington, the Jazz Institute of Chicago, the Western Jazz Presenters Network, Philadelphia’s Jazz Bridge, Cleveland’s Tri-C Jazz Festival,  the Tucson Jazz Society, and the Jazz Society of Oregon keep their focus local while connecting for a common good?

Will the Media Network of print and online publications (shout outs to JazzWest, Capitol Bop, the Latin Jazz Network, NextBop, London Jazz News, EJazz News, Hot House Magazine, JazzColumbus, New England’s The Arts Fuse, Jazz Yorkshire, JazzTokyo, the World Music Report, and New Zealand’s John Fenton), bloggers and broadcasters, and sponsors/supporters ranging from Brother Thelonious Ale to Mack Avenue Records to Montclair NJ’s wonderful community education non-profit Jazz Kids grow larger and more effective?

Hey, it’s only April 1 (beware the ides and IRS). 30 days has this month (which will end with a triumphal jazz mega concert webcast live from Istanbul, but before that comprises jazz celebrations galore, probably one near you). We’ll find out.

Want to help? Share facebook posts from the jazzjournalists page, put the twibbon on your icon, tweet using #jazzapril #jazzday #celebrateJAM – implement any of the simple, free or cheap ideas from the JazzApril site for businesses, organizations, educators, journalists and broadcasters, musicians, local governments and community partners. Document with photos, videos — make 30 second videos like public service announcements using your phone showing people (musicians? and listeners too) endorsing local jazz and Jazz Appreciation Month. Let me know what you’ve done. Jazz it up!

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It was a big deal in Stockton, CA last Friday, when Wynton Marsalis led his Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra at the 12th annual jazz festival produced by the Brubeck Institute at University of the Pacific.  The ticket holders’ line to enter the nicely restored Fox movie palace — now the Bob Hope Theatre, in the center of otherwise near-dead downtown — stretched around the block. The marquee was bright, and under it flowed well-dressed attendees of nearly all ages and many colors, quite festive mere days before they’d hear whether their city could enter bankruptcy. Stockton’s had the highest foreclosure rate in the country after the 2008 mortgage crisis, city services have been cut back, residents have fled, poverty’s become noticeable, crime’s on the rise . . .

But it was a clear, promising spring night, and all worries were suspended. Dave Brubeck, the iconic jazz pianist/composer/bandleader who died last December at age 91, grew up on a ranch outside Stockton, attended the school when it was still called College of the Pacific, met his wife Iola at the campus (a wall plaque commemorates the occasion), and personified the kind of can-do, confidently outgoing spirit we like to think of as quintessentially American. People in Stockton don’t give up, they hunker down. Wynton Marsalis is possessed of that, too — accepting the challenges and responsibilities of being an artist in the limelight, almost always being on, making time everywhere for extra events like the hour-long public question-and-answer session he did here with honors students who he addressed spontaneously, candidly, seemed to personally enjoy. His concert with the Orchestra, the last stop of a six-week tour, was hallmarked by other qualities Brubeck shared and would have admired: integrity, virtuosity, direct address plus a measure of daring.

Dave Brubeck was a largely self-taught proponent of jazz that engaged minds as well as bodies (swinging in odd meters, for one thing). He embraced civil rights (purposefully leading an integrated quartet through the segregated south), helped erase the lines separating  jazz from “serious” music, and reached across international boundaries (frequently on State Department tours, he played for Reagan and Gorbachev when they negotiated the INF treaty that cut back nuclear arms in the late 1980s). He co-composed and recorded at least two of the most enduring, instantly recognizable  jazz instrumentals — “Take Five” and “Blue Rondo a la Turk” — ever. Wynton Marsalis is a Juilliard-trained and Art Blakey-mentored Pulitzer Prize-winning composer and founder of America’s most prominent and arguably productive all-purpose jazz establishment, a CBS News correspondent and familiar figure at the White House among other ceremonial sites. He specializes in taut trumpet phraseology, ingenious melody twists, lip smears, mute work and other vocalisms during his well-placed solos, directing but not showboating during long sets that feature originals by his younger bandmembers as well as classics from jazz masters past.

In Stockton, “Blue Rondo” was performed in an arrangement by 30-year-old trombonist Chris Crenshaw that took full advantage of the fast-paced line’s trills and rills, breaking for a solo with suitably Middle Eastern references by alto saxophonist Walter Blanding, Jr. Other particularly strong statements came from trumpeter Kenny Rampton, alto saxophonists Sherman Irby and Ted Nash, pianist Dan Zimmer and bassist Carlos Henriquez. From the band’s enormous book of charts, Marsalis also choose complex, balanced, stylistically-appropriate versions of Duke Ellington’s “Symphonette,” Thelonious Monk’s “Light Blue,” Chick Corea’s “Windows,” Eddie Jefferson’s “Moody’s Mood for Love” and Brubeck’s “In Your Own Sweet Way.”

Marsalis and the LCJO were climactic — earning a standing O, inspiring happy buzz at a post-show reception jammed with the Brubeck Institute’s loyalist local supporters — but the Institute, which has a mission of using music for “Impacting society through the arts . . . [s]erving as a Catalyst for Social Change” built up to it with lectures by eminent (yet down-to-earth) composer-educator Gunther Schuller, 87 and a longtime Brubeck friend; gigs at the Take Five club by resident players (including the Institute’s executive director, deft pianist Simon Rowe); an intense, smokily lyrical concert by trumpeter Tom Harrell’s quintet, and experiments with street fairs that offered low-key showcases free to all comers. A fest partnership with San Joaquin Delta College resulted in a reception at an art gallery exhibit of jazz-related paintings and sculpture. A tasty Syrah and ballyhooed Zinfandel from nearby Lodi vineyards were served.

The night after Wynton, Brubeck’s longtime manager Russell Gloyd conducted his San Francisco Choral Artists and the Institute’s Brubeck fellows (studying on full scholarship) in a performance of Dave’s sacred but non-sectarian songs, followed by Dave’s sons Chris, on trombone and electric bass, and Dan, a powerful drummer, upholding their proud family name with an easily enjoyable, upbeat quartet set. At that event a new scholarship was announced in the name of their mother Iola  — Dave’s seemingly serene, elegant widow, very much in presence. Three journalists brought in to see all this (author/educator Ashley Kahn, presenter-broadcaster-author-blogger-educator Willard Jenkins, and me) were also treated to an introductory tour of the Brubeck Collection, a treasure trove of professional and personal papers, ephemera, audio documents and videos getting first class preservation and online access treatment. The U of Pacific library has the archives of Paul Desmond, Brubeck’s complementary alto saxophonist, and the archives of naturalist John Muir, too.

The Brubeck Institute has a very small staff. Besides Simon Rowe, whose resumé charts an Australian-born pilgrim’s progress of steps between small but significant jazz ed programs, there is only associate director/guitarist/educator Nick Fryer and do-everything staffer Melissa Riley. Which proves how much impact a focused cadre can have on a city’s core culture.

Both Simon and Nick played at Take Five, a bustling ex-banquet room that the Brubeck Institute gave birth to, but they were not alone. Alto saxophonist Patrick Langham (director of U of P’s Jazz Studies program) was another Take Five leader; singer Janiece Jaffe, a friend of Rowe’s from Indiana, was scheduled one night and sat in on another, gamely improvising a song out of three random words supplied upon request from the audience); pianist Joe Gilman, a Brubeck Institute artist-in-residence, led students in his commissioned suite based on Norman Rockwell’s paintings of “The Four Freedoms,” and drummer Brian Kendrick, jazz studies faculty at San Joaquin Delta was there regularly. The Stockton schools may be generating much of the Stockton jazz scene — a knowledgeable observer estimated 1/3 of the sell-out crowd for Wynton at Bob Hope Theatre had driven up for the event from the Bay Area — but what’s wrong with that? There was nothing particularly academic about the music going on, and the people listening, eating, drinking, schmoozing and flirting at Take Five could have been anywhere jazz is played. Indeed, that’s the Brubeck Institute’s point, derived from its hero’s own experience: Jazz is right for people everywhere. When the bank account is low, the heart is aching and/or times turn odd, jazz — which I’m guessing Wynton Marsalis might agree is personal expression that expands on deservedly-respected traditions of blues and swing — is a balm, a spark, an idea maybe leading to a new answer. “Take Five,” for example. No jive.

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One-of-a-kind American master musical artist Cecil Taylor turns 84 today, March 25, and deserves our culture’s gratitude. His life has been one of relentless, intense, sweeping creativity, which has driven global developments in composition, improvisation, performance, attire and contemporary lifestyle to a much greater degree than has been much acknowledged —  although Taylor does have many staunch proponents and has received high honors.

On piano, solo or in duos, trios, bands, with orchestras, he has consistently and constantly presented challenges to himself and everyone in his attendance with the scope, density and impassioned lyricism of his unique and inimitable sound. I hate to keep writing so grandiosely of Taylor’s music, but that is indeed how it has struck me since I first stumbled into an audio revelation, awed by a flash of understanding of the unprecedented architecture — no, calculus — of Unit Structures, still radical intellectually and emotionally, 47 years after its recording in 1966. That whole story is in my book after which this blog is named: Miles Ornette Cecil — Jazz Beyond Jazz.

I have been an ardent listener to Taylor since my teens (an unusual condition then as now), and have been compelled to get ever more curious and absorbed in what he has done and does, without ever being able to say that I have grasped it.  I have favorites among his recordings, but even those I consider less fulfilling have their fascinations. It has been too long now since I’ve heard him — last time, he was interpolating remarkably gentle, lingering passages of pianistic poetry amid the percussive flurries and octave bounding throw-downs for which he’s famous. The lion in winter — that was the theme of my 1995 profile of Cecil Taylor for The Wire, the estimable UK magazine (for which I’ve just written about Karl Berger and the 40th anniversary of Creative Music Studio — see the May issue). Here it is, to honor a lion two extraordinary decades more experienced, exploratory, accomplished.

Cecil Taylor at 65? The small, exquisitely spry man with greying
dreadlocks and penetrating gaze, this man of cosmopolitan intelligence,
expansive thought and unrivalled intensity, this artist long outcast
though lately much honoured, has the air of a lion in early winter.

Onstage at a solo concert at Lincoln Center’s Avery Fisher Hall in New
York back in March, he was robed in splendour and mesmerising in
performance. He knew so many ways to approach, press, caress and pummel
the piano’s keys, so many methods of chasing an idea through music’s
labyrinths, so deep an understanding of his (and our) moment and its
celebratory potential that one dared hope this is what aging is about:
mastery and the courage to deny it in the push ever onward.

That’s what Taylor has achieved in a musical life spanning some 40 years, more than 50 recordings, and the globe. The amazing technique he has constructed has never been an end in itself – his lightning speed, revolutionary finger work, utter control over vast dynamics, and his distinctly personal vocabulary involving myriad echoes, cross-references and reflections all seem to be at the service of an all-consuming quest.

His musical energy – though it may sometimes have seemed
self-aggrandizing – has focused on intellectual, aesthetic,
philosophical, spiritual, mystical and mythological investigations at
the core of all enduring artistic endeavours. From Jazz Advance, which
Taylor issued on his own Transition label in 1956, to the new FMP trio
release, Celebrated Blazons, Taylor has made enemies of polite
conventions, standard operating procedures, received opinions and
discouraging words. In the process he has gained many fascinated
followers – including this writer, who sat on a floor in Taylor’s
sumptuously furnished Brooklyn brownstone earlier this year, listening
while he conjured pearls of wisdom and offered them with evident
satisfaction.

*

Taylor has spent the last six months living in New York. It’s the
longest period he has stayed in the city in eight years. For much of the
90s he has been living and performing in Europe and Asia. In 1990 he
received a grant from the German government to stay, compose and perform
in the country for a year. A year and a half ago he went to Japan to
perform with Min Tanaka and do other concerts. A few months after that
he took his band to perform at the Miro Museum on the island of
Mallorca. Taylor had met Miro at the Foundation Maeght in 1969; the
artist gave each member of Taylor’s group at that time – Jimmy Lyons,
Sam Rivers and Andrew Cyrille – an original lithograph (“Same design but
different colors for each,” says Taylor) and he left it in his will
that the pianist should be the first to play at the museum when it was
completed. “We’ve had a very interesting artistic career outside of this
country,” says Cecil.

Is it the kind of career he envisioned for himself?

“You never know. You just try to prepare yourself, and there are
political or economic signs in any culture or civilisation that give you
a clue as to where you’re going to be placed in that milieu. You just do
the work, then the opportunities come about that allow you to see what
you have achieved in your time.

“You know, when you see a really great artist, all time stops. The
largesse of their spirit lights you inside, your inner sensibilities, so
you recognise this is a vision, a spiritual presence, that can only
further your own development as an artist. Empires fall, but the highest achievements of empires are really what the artists create within them. Some art work transcends the dominance of empires.

“When you attempt to build through composition – and when I use that
word I mean a kind of architecture by using sonorities to create the
three dimensions – there is a commitment, and the commitment comes from sources you’re not even aware of. Since it is not intellectually
accountable, then it must be a repository of one of the greatest forces
of nature that come to realisation within oneself. Since we are, after
all, human beings who are co-existing with plants and animals, mountains and rivers and streams, perhaps one of the purposes of our life is to achieve the nobility of that moment through transcendence in which we
return to the point of our beginnings.

“So poets who perhaps attempt to levitate – the process to achieve that,
the thing that all poets have in common, the internal material – is the
development of the senses to respond to the particular media you’re
working in. And since that kind of work has no basis in commercial
reality, then the activity must be about developing those monuments to
the flowering of the senses. When you’re talking about dealing with
that, the next level would be the transcendent one, which, if it is
achieved, is the purpose for one’s living. And it has ramifications in
terms of one’s humanity.

“Of course, I can only speak for myself, but music, which in many ways
saved my life, led me to literature, to dance, to architecture, finally
to people. So if you make a commitment to one, you begin to see there is
no single art, and if you get into different kinds of art they nurture
you. If you’re fortunate, they lead to an expansion of your knowledge.
And it’s like a river or an ocean, it continues to move. So that one’s
life is more rewarding as one is allowed to get older. There is a deeper
joy, and because of the joy there is an understanding.”

Is that what he tries to communicate to audiences? “There are two things
we start to realise when we get older: that there is a duty to serve –
the inner self, but also to serve those who would be listening – and
that the reason one serves is because one wants to express the joy of
living, and so it becomes a celebration of life. The parameters of that
go beyond the viability of that which is commercial.”

Even disregarding the question of commercial viability, some people are
unprepared to confront the complexities and possibilities in Taylor’s
music. How does he respond to this? “There are generations of listeners
who know the music that they know, and they are quite cognizant of all
the levels of music that they’re into. Indeed, I’ve found many times
friends who I’ve known over the years had a very interesting perception
of music which always fascinated me because they weren’t musicians but
it seemed to me they grasped in their own way a fullness of the dynamics
within the sound structures that was always appealing and enchanting
because it was arrived at through their love, and that love furnished
them with insight that could not be denied. On many occasions I’ve found
myself reacting to a poignant sound the same way they did.”

Are there limits to his musical interests? “I’m interested in only one
thing: music that is good. Definitions of music should perhaps be left
to those who really love it. That doesn’t necessarily mean musicians. I
mean, Stevie Wonder wrote incredible music at one time. Aretha Franklin
was an incredible musician and did extraordinary work, and then we get
to men like James Brown and Marvin Gaye, who certainly were without
peers, for me at least, in that division of the music. All of the music
that I love, there are common touchstones to it, you see.”

And is he part of that musical continuum? “Oh, I don’t question that.”

*

Many of Taylor’s works, particularly the mid-60s albums Unit Structures
and Conquistador, seem to be so much about planes, architectures… “I
find I get more gratification out of looking at an architectural drawing
than I do most musical scores. The point being that for me there is not
much mystery in looking at a musical score, because the process becomes
pretty much the same. If you look at one, you know the procedures. The
point is really: does music exist as a note, or does it take its point
of beginning, its genesis, from someplace else? One of the distractions
has been this idea of written music. It divides the senses, though some
people might say it increases the options. But I mean if you look at a
piece of music – notes – that means your eye must be directed outside
the body.

“There’s always been this wildly inaccurate way of describing people who
play by ear. What other way is there to play? One can add things to it.
But there seems to be a bit of misconception about what constitutes
musical literature. What is this mythology about composition? What is
the body supposed to be doing while one is performing?”

Does he have a rigorous practice routine? “I don’t know if I’d call it rigorous. There are certain procedures one must exhibit, and it’s a matter of preparation. One gets up in the morning, then one must work at developing the mind. There are certain things one must study in order to write words, then there is usually at least an hour spent doing various exercises for the body. Then the most glorious meal of the day, for me,
which is breakfast. I might mop floors. See what the telly is saying. And then one composes, one practises, and one has achieved a state of highness. That’s the way I enrich my life.”

How often does he practice?

“Every day is different. This is a very intense time because I’m
preparing for something specific. But after all, it is my life’s work.
It’s a heightened time now, a time of spiritual intake. I practise to be
able to perform.”

*

Taylor is an avid consumer of the performing arts. What has he seen
recently that has excited him? “In the last two or three months? I went
to see the originator of the Butoh at the Japan Society, a very
interesting gentleman, 87 years old, who was incredible. About two weeks
ago I went to see Abbey Lincoln at the Blue Note. There are many riches
one can take part in, and that is a nurturing experience, too.

“I like the voice. The voice was either the first or the second
instrument. Certainly Lena [he has a photograph of singer Lena Horne on
the wall] is a very interesting performer. I first saw her in the stage
when I was 12; she had just done Cabin In The Sky and Stormy Weather,
and remembering how Lena looked in Hollywood films – but to see her on
stage, it was amazing. I can still remember when she came out the
audience gasped. See, there are no margins when you’re really dealing
with something so close to perfection. Certainly Marvin Gaye was a man
who fully transcended boundaries, in terms of his continuous
development. I have many favourites.”

Taylor’s favourites in his own constituency of black free jazz (or at
least the music that has developed out of what was called black free
jazz during the 60s) include Bill Dixon, Sunny Murray, Don Cherry, Butch
Morris, Reggie Workman, William Parker, Charles Gayle. “These people are
all extraordinary,” he says. “It would be interesting if the corporate
moguls who determine who attains visibility were clever enough to be
open to the expansion of their economic field.

“But I think that those who determine what is commercially viable are on
a different plane. That’s not what I’m interested in, and when one
realises finally the nature of the ingredients that go into that kind of
mentality, you realise what it is that has given you the most joy, and
you continue to do that. And that brings development in your own mind
and feeling. When one realises that, that’s when generation begins. The
important thing is to realise that no matter where you live, the world
is available.”

Taylor refers to those musicians who had an early or long and profound
influence on his work as “my nurturers”, and goes on to cite Benny
Goodman’s pianist and arranger Mary Lou Williams, arranger Gil Evans and
percussionist Max Roach, with whom he recorded the 1979 Historic
Concerts (recently reissued on Soul Note). He calls Roach “one of the
finest percussionists the world has ever known.” Did he absorb specific
rhythmic impulses from working with Roach?

“I think the manifestation of rhythm is the reason that life begins.
Rhythm never stops. It is perhaps – at least – one of the most vital
aspects and one of the compositional grids that shapes the nature of a
culture’s music.” What about melody? “There are different kinds of
melody. If you hear Coptic or mbouti [pygmy] melody, or kabuki, you
realise it’s unbounded. Same with harmony. The organisation of vertical
structures is in ongoing change.”

Would he like to have an influence on younger musicians? “I don’t have
any aspirations there. For those who would be interested, if I can
assist them in any way… The first obligation is to the music, and the
hopeful development therein, and that is part of the personal legacy
that goes into the continuum. The thing that has shaped my particular
attitude is people like Duke Ellington, Fats Waller, and certainly
Billie Holiday. That which has saved us – we are responsible to it and
we cannot defame it by doing less than we feel is our all.”

And those who don’t walk it like they talk it?

“As one grows older one becomes more understanding of it all,
and then one understands it is not easy, but it is so worthwhile and brings so much joy. One can only hope that those who are not will eventually see that if it is not a noble pursuit, then it is not worthy of human effort.

Does he ever get frustrated about documentation of his work, or the lack of it?

“No. No… One of the things you realise is you just do the work,
and you prepare for the most beneficial events in relation to the things
that happen. For instance, those 12 CDs that I did with Jost Gebers of
FMP – what is that popular song, “The Best Is Yet To Come”? One becomes
aware of good fortune, that spirits have been kind enough to endow you
with the ability to continue working, and the personal sense of
fulfilment, and the want to continue. It is enough. That which is
external to that perhaps could be Machiavellian. What is important is
that when light is thrust out, it has no parameters. And when the time
is right, when it is to happen, these things do happen.”

It feels like I’ve caught Taylor in a mellow mood. “I’m under the
spirituality of all this work I’m doing. I’m very excited by it; I try
not to think too much about it. Now I’ll get up, make a soothing tea,
and get back into it again.”

Does he still get stage nerves? “The most difficult time for me will be in the limousine going to the concert. Of the beneficial things that spirituality has given me, the concept of ritual – which is very much a part of my performance – is the one which takes the effervescence out of the stomach.”

This article first appeared in issue 124 (June 94).

© 1998 The Wire.

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Ornette Coleman turns 83 today — and is celebrating it privately. That’s unusual, as he has thrown great parties, often full of live music (at his former Harlem Studio and one year at Joe’s Pub), always attended by fabulously interesting people — like the one last year for his 82nd birthday, Friday, March 9, 2012 held at his loft in Manhattan’s West 30s. I was pleased to be invited (I’ve blogged about OC’s birthday before), and wrote the following in afterglow.

Some 100 individuals, many involved with jazz and/or other highly creative, determinedly individualistic pursuits, came to eat, drink, hobnob and bask in the generous presence of America’s #1 advocate of free imagination at play. Coleman is the Texas-born, bluesy and worldly saxophonist-trumpeter-violinist, composer, improviser, bandleader, prophet of the unified field music theory harmolodics (which he now calls “sound grammar”), idealist and oracle.

Shortly past 8 p.m. a smartly dressed young woman, guest-list on clipboard, stands inside double glass doors of a non-descript office building, checking off attendees. A strapping lad, late-teens/early 20s, points to the elevator up – he’s Ornette’s grandson. His father Denardo, Ornette’s son, is 55 and has been a drummer for his father since he was 10. Denardo is the party’s host, welcoming us in as the door of the elevator opened directly into a loft designed for circular flow.

The loft has lots of open space, seating scattered throughout, all surrounding a kitchen area, behind which are closed off rooms. Coats go on metal rack in the hall alongside those private rooms, leading to the bathroom. There’s a pool table, its felt covered by plastic in protection against spills. Massive bold paintings line the walls, including one that was the cover for Coleman’s album Body Meta. 

Linda Goldstein, sometimes Ornette manager and always Bobby McFerrin‘s, is here. Percussionist and improv orchestra conductor Adam Rudolph – who I know from his ’80s Chicago band the Mandingo Griot Society and more recently his NYC improvising Organic Orchestra, is talking to a singer who introduces herself as Sherry Joy. Larry Blumenfeld, jazz journalist with his wife Erica Zelinksi, who has been general manager of the Lincoln Center Festival is getting a photo of Sam, their son who’s three or four, with Ornette himself.

Ornette, in a conservative business suit, gets on his knees to be at Sam’s level. His deeply etched, shy but open, kindly face catches the light; his eyes, which seem to see through everything and everyone, are shaded by angled brows and eyelid folds. He smiles weakly. He doesn’t much like being photographed, though he’s been subject of dozens of fascinating photos. He does like kids and people behaving with natural ease, so the photo is taken.

I show Ornette my Korg Monotron, a palm-sized ribbon synthesizer, capable of making any sound from a single sawtooth sound wave. But when I click it on what comes out isn’t loud enough, doesn’t project. Ornette says “That’s really something,” looks away. I adjust its controls, without improvement – nothing impressive coming out. Portrait photographer Carol Friedman asks how many sounds are loaded in the Monotron. None. It generates one wave and enables its frequency modulation and filtering.

Pianist JoAnne Brackeen, tall, thin, her streaked wave of grey curls a crown, admires my turquoise African batik shirt. I admire her waist-length jacket of long-haired fur. Chantal Phaire, artists manager, joshes with us. The loft is filling up. Bassist Tony Falanga, a classical player in Ornette’s most recent quartets. Keyboardist David Bryant, of Ornette’s ’90s band Prime Time (the second iteration) with Tom Hall, a saxophonist/professor at Brandeis and author of Free Improvisation: A Practical Guide — both down from Boston. Guitarist Kenny Wessel, also of Prime Time as well as Adam Rudolph’s orchestra and Karl Berger’s Creative Music Studio workshops at the Stone – is here with his wife Diane, anthropologist-turned-school teacher. Teaching school requires all her anthro chops, she says. I say hi to composer Carman Moore.

I get some spiked red punch. “It’s very spiked”, I’m told, “and hang onto the glass” — which is glass — “for refills.” Hello to Skotto – owner of a Chelsea gallery for contemporary African arts, his inaugural show 20 years ago was curated by Ornette. Dan Melnick, Absolutely Live concert and festival producer, stops in in on his way to Carnegie Hall, where he’s putting on a 10 p.m. show featuring vocalist Gretchen Parlato and guitarist Lionel Loueke.

Ornette Coleman, photo by Michael Jackson

On a sofa in the corner, Muhal Richard Abrams, eminence of the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM), NEA Jazz Master and composer-pianist of distinction, sits with his wife Peggy, daughter Richarda and AACM pianist-organist-singer Amina Claudine Myers. James Jordan, Ornette’s cousin, producer-consultant and ex-music program director at the New York State Council on the Arts, who’s with his wife, turns to me: “This is the only place I get to see all the folks together.” Jayne Cortez, poet, bandleader and cultural activist — Ornette’s  ex-wife and Denardo’s mother – sits aside Muhal, too. Her husband, sculptor Melvin Edwards, is circulating.

Author Quincy Troupe – poet and Miles Davis co-writer, with his wife Margaret; they run a weekly Harlem literary salon. Other side of the room — Stanley Crouch, critic/author. My pal Ashley Kahn, author of books on Miles Davis’ Kind of Blue, John Coltrane’s A Love Supreme, a history of Impulse Records, hanging with Jason King, artistic director of Clive Davis School of Recorded Music at NYU. Brent Hayes Edwards, prof from Columbia University’s Center for Jazz Studies joins their conversation. Arriving: guitarist Brandon Ross, turtablist and artists’ manager Velibor Pedevski (aka, DJ Hardedge), ethnomusicologist of Soundscape fame Verna Gillis with free jazz trombonist Roswell Rudd (see their Kickstarter campaign for Rudd’s upcoming Trombone for Lovers recording and Verna’s “tactile manifestation” Kick Butt  Ball.

Rudd tells me about a Tibetan store in the upstate town of Rosendale, and how it’s among several towns in the area that have regenerated themselves as arts communities, with theater for local productions, etc. I tell him whenever I’m feeling U.S. politics have become completely hopeless I listen to the Charlie Haden-Carley Bley Liberation Music Orchestra album of 1969, wherein Rudd takes a hearty ‘bone solo on a rendering of “We Shall Overcome” that emerges from a tone poem or the chaotic Democratic National Convention police riots of the year before. He says I ought to tell Haden, he’ll be thrilled.

In comes vibist-pianist-educator Karl Berger with his wife Ingrid Sertso, a vocalist. Berger has said that when they first heard Ornette’s record The Shape of Jazz To Come in the early ’60s, the couple left their native Heidelberg to find him, and within a few weeks coincidentally ran into Ornette’s trumpeter Don Cherry at a café in Paris. Berger subsequently recorded with Cherry and emigrated, setting up the Coleman-inspired Creative Music Studio in Woodstock, NY. Later this month he and Ingrid revive their CMS Workshop Orchestra, which had an eight-month weekly run at the Stone. This time they’ll do every other Tuesday night, at the Jazz Gallery.

Guitarist Chris Rosenberg – Kenny Wessel’s partner in Prime Time, which usually had two guitarists, two electric bassists, tabla (hey, where’s Badal Roy?) and drums, maybe keyboards and Ornette — explains he’s now teaching at the Manhattan School of Music and has taken up painting, with watercolors and acrylics. Bern Nix, unique guitarist in Ornette’s first convening of Prime Time, is recovering from several months of poorly diagnosed health issues. He’s with videographer Susan Yung. Nix calls the party a meeting of “Harmolodics Anonymous.” His joke is that once exposed and enlisted in Ornette’s point of view, musicians often find themselves commercial outcasts. It’s really that they’ve become so open to the basics of sound that they have little patience for conforming to state conventions. Harmolodics is a conflation of harmony, motion and melody into a mutually reinforcing system that justifies and resolves collective improvisation while upending traditional Western music precepts. Many well-educated musicians can’t get with harmolodics at all.

But Charnett Moffet, occasionally Ornette’s bassist and son of the late Charles Moffett, another of Ornette’s drummers, talks about his all-solo, short tracks project upcoming from Motema Records. Ornette’s frequent upright bassist Greg Cohen is here, too – he tends to be timekeeper while Tony Falanga solos, arco or pizzicato. And Mari Okubo, whose pure and silvery voice embodies Ornette’s lyrics and prevails within harmolodic arrangements on Cosmic Life, a 2004 album she gives to me to take home. Iranian saxophonist So Sa La (aka Sohrab Saadat Ladjevardi) also gives me his CD, Nu World Trash. It’s dedicated to The New Iran and has shout outs to Sato Hironobu Sensei, Salif Keita and Ornette.

Butch Morris, who has developed the spontaneous improvised ensemble art he calls “conduction,” shows up with his longtime friend saxophonist David Murray and Murray’s wife Valerie, plus guitarist-singer James “Blood” Ulmer. Ulmer, described by Ornette three decades ago as naturally harmolodic, just did a two-night stand with a big band convened by Murray at Iridium jazz club in midtown. Mingus Murray, David’s guitarist-son, early 20s, is here, too – he was in the big band, adding rhythm accompaniment a la ’70s funkateers, filling in after Blood’s quirky lead-and-wander lines. He wears silver shoes with pointy toes.

Photog Alan Nahigian, who I’d seen at Iridium and the next day told me I’d missed the better second set, points me back to Muhal, saying he’s talking about Blood and the blues. Muhal, South Side of Chicago born-and-bred, asserts, “Blood is the blues. He just is it. I told him that. The blues is like the neighborhood, you know, that we all grew up in. We grew up with the blues, everybody did, with it and in it. I wouldn’t know how to get home without it.” Jayne Cortez nods in emphatic confirmation.

Recently retired producer Robert Browning of the World Music Institute & his wife/partner Helene mention they’ve been going through the WMI’s mostly audio archives, looking for ways to make the music and in some cases video available. Symphony Space, where some of the WMI concerts occurred, has an app that can be the platform for some of the audio. Has Robert heard of Wolfgang’s Vault? Has he been in touch with Ornette’s former Artists House producer John Snyder, who is issuing musical master class videos from special performances of New York University’s jazz program?

The food: passed hors d’ouevres of garlicky vegetarian stuffed mushrooms and spicy turkey meatballs. A platter of complicated tuna (salmon?) salad. Deviled eggs. Hushpuppies.

Ornette’s sometimes electric bassist Albert McDowell says he’s been running a recording studio. Chris Walker, another ex-Ornette electric bassist, explains he’s been Al Jarreau’s music director for umpteen years. Drummer Warren Benbow, who’s lately stirred up a Facebook group discussion on East Coast Drummers, says hi, goes over his past (including his stint with Blood), and says he’s playing more r&b, less hard-core jazz now. Valerie, David Murray’s wife, mentions the project they’ve pushing for the summer isn’t the Ulmer big band, but his tour as music director with Macy Gray – one track of which has been released, but I miss the title. Maybe “Love Lockdown“?

Guitarist Vernon Reid of Living Colour, Defunkt and Ronald Shannon Jackson’s Decoding Society – all Ornette Prime Time spinoffs — has a camera with a wide-angle lens. He’s produced Blood Ulmer’s last several albums, playing second guitar in Ulmer’s blues combo, and has also delved into Tony Williams’ Lifetime material in a quartet called Spectrum Road with all-stars John Medeski (organ/keyboards), Cindy Blackman, drums and Jack Bruce, Lifetime’s original bassist/singer. Reid talks with producer Brian Bacchus about the power of the sheer truth in a lyric Donny Hathaway sang in “Someday We’ll All Be Free,” free of melodic embellishment or interpretation but full of Hathaway’s belief in the words.

A steam table is groaning with rice & red beans, greens, a clam-mussels & chicken stew; there are red velvet (chocolate) cupcakes and later a b-day cake white and chocolate layers interspersed. Is that sharp-nosed, dark-skinned older woman Ornette’s sister? Here’s Danny Kapillian, concert producer with his wife and seven-year-old son in an Indian brocade yarmulke. Saxophonist James Carter gives me a surprise backrub.

Bassist Henry Grimes and his wife Margaret Davis Grimes are here. Guitarist Marc Ribot is talking about his upcoming gig at Village Vanguard, with Grimes and drummer Chad Taylor – “both are so intuitive.” Lidija Pedevska-Redman, widow of Dewey Redman, Ornette’s longtime co-saxophonist, asks about my daughter — she is  Velibor’s sister, and Velibor has a daughter Rosie’s age. Trumpeter Graham Haynes is standing nearby. I recall Graham played with Dewey, Charlie Haden and I think it was Jack DeJohnette at that Ornette birthday party at Joe’s Pub. Poet Amiri Baraka is in conference, laughing, with Jayne Cortez. Music reporter Vivian Goldman walks up,  with a plate of red velvet cake.

I can only hear snatches of background music, mostly recognizing Ornette’s recordings with Prime Time. Antoine Roney and his wife attend with their young son — is he 10? I’m told by some of the musicians this boy is a drum prodigy. Radio show host Phil Schaap is here. And there’s a bearded, long-haired gent who looks familiar. I ask Ashley Kahn if he knows his name.

“I know I’m in a jazz party when everybody asks me who Steve Earle is,” Ashley replies.

It’s late. The punch was spiked. I’m going home. I’ve talked to almost everyone, and they all love Ornette. We’ve all had a happy Ornette birthday, hope he has, too, and hope he’ll have many more.

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Dr. Donald Byrd was a trumpeter with an ear for the vernacular and fresh talent. Jayne Cortez was a radical poet — both esthetically and personally. Butch Morris was a jazz cornetist, composer, conductor and conductioner. Let’s celebrate the lives and creativity of all three.

Strangely, reports by a nephew of Byrd’s death at age 80 on February 4 have remained “unconfirmed.”  Morris, having died January 29 at 65. was memorialized Thursday night, Feb. 7 by speakers including Amiri Baraka, Avery Brooks, David Murray. Henry Threadgill and William Parker at Angel Orensanz, a semi-refurbisshed abandoned synogag in the East Village.  Jayne Cortez, as engaged a person and artist as one can imagine in 21st Century America, was celebrated on Wednesday Feb. 6 by her family and wide-ranging friends in an event at Cooper Union Hall. Sánta Istán Csaba photographed that event with awe for the warmth and spirit of the people filling that historic place, and also the memorial for Butch, likewise full and rich with spirit.

Byrd was best known for hard-bopping with bari saxist Pepper Adams when they’d just both come from Detroit to New York in the late ’50s, for mixing gospel doo-wop with soul jazz for Blue Note Records and mentoring Herbie Hancock, among others, in the ’60s; for producing the proto-hip–hop Blackbyrds (they were his best jazz ed. students) starting in 1973, and has been sampled by Gang Starr, Public Enemy, A Tribe Called Quest, The Pharsyde, Nas and others ever after. An NEA Jazz Master, he was appointed Artist in Residence at Delaware State University since September 2009.

I’ve posted a lot about Butch Morris recently, and will put up Sánta’s photos with appropriate writings by Steve Dalachinsky next. He was a friend whose musical contribution will, I believe, continue to be implemented and inspire new works, perhaps worldwide. David Murray told of Butch, sitting at a café in Italy in the ’80s, was seized by Seiji Ozawa, who enthused about how Morris had brought “a new, up-to-date energy to the baton” and claimed “all the conductors” in the classical world were talking about him. I also posted here some appreciation of Jayne Cortez when I learned she’d died, but below am pleased to post photos from the event which depict, I think, some of the feelings of some of her many thoughtful and talented admirers.

Jayne Cortez’s Firespitters is represented in Sánta’s image here only with a frontline of David Murray, Bill Cole and Roy Campbell; the band included also Denardo, drumming; Bern Nix, guitar; Albert McDowell, bass. Firespitter bassist Jamaaladeen Tacuma was in the audience. There was also music by a band comprising trombonist Craig Harris, altoist T.K. Blue, tenor saxophonist James Carter, McDowell and Denardo; a reading by Robin Kelley, and a very gracious, brief talk from Jayne Cortez’s husband, sculptor Mel Edwards. Many musicians were in the audience, along with writers and other artists from America and Africa. Donations contributed in honor of Jayne Cortez should be made out to OWWA and sent to: The Organization of Women Writers of Africa (OWWA); P.O. Box 652, Village Station; New York NY 10014.

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Photos of celebrants of composer-conductor Lawrence Douglas “Butch” Morris at a memorial held in Angel Orensanz, a renovated former-synogag in the East Village, by Sánta István Csaba. Writings for and about Butch by Steve Dalachinsky.

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Conduction # Infinity (Out of Reach but Never Out of Touch)

1.

Butch: his mischievous smile > stern look > open laugh > dapper apparel >

a real dandy > like back in the days when > his midrange slightly twanged voice >

everything I’ll say is clichéd pompous emotional > rubbed in ashes at times > such elaborate performance we produce sometimes for no one > the wind > trees > the rushing water > walking on hot coals to emit a portrait of pain > among the last & first budding flowers & weeds > his baton / those lighter than air dancing shoes > gentlemanliness > his overall attire that gruff little me admired so much > his NEATNESS > those dancing shoes those dancing shoes > that held him firmly in place > he passed the way neighborhoods pass yet always sustain their quality > personality > somewhere in the brick > the way seasons pass & are replaced always by hosts of new  hustlers > new lovers> & he one of the last of the real of the real > a unique lover of the unique & loved by all > the unique & mundane alike > come again next fall > winter > spring > summer > come again in storm & dust > those dancing shoes that I wanted so much > last of the real of the real > dancing on indifferent waters . . .

2.

it’s warm grey > a partial of a bridge floats between 2 buildings > bare trees blanket the river > a lifetime’s profound effect inspires the music’s language > qualities > progress >

shared experiences on & off the bandstand > intelligence > compassion > passion > courage > contact > appreciation > special > gifted > interpersonal > shrewd > sharp always zeros in on feelings & strengths > brought out the best in all > presence > worked with nurturing > worked til the end > gave as he danced in those special shoes > baton wave(r)ing >  all for the flight the stage the flow the all the legacy for the future to be taken > remarkably dignified > professional > though sometimes lost his cool > always taught with his presence > treated all as equals > a prime element of conduction > open direct validation > hey I’m with the band I’d feel sometimes > those dancing shoes that held him in place rooted to the NOW > truly always in the instance > makes you get it > get what he gets > the essence of the process > challenging > demanding > draining > gotta get it right > you knew when he knew he got it right > that smile the body relaxing > though he never felt secure > gave more than enough > but when he felt he failed or that he didn’t go far enough you saw it on his face & when he succeeded you saw it on his face > that smile > the baton relaxing > worked with every type of person > instrument in completely unique ways developed a new concept of world music taking it far beyond that simple term > far beyond the world creating a world of worlds > a clinician bridging 2 worlds 3 worlds endless worlds > how he made the musicians & instruments react/interact > musician & instrument becoming one > helped folks connect with their inner voice > understand & tap into their strengths > mixing their personal languages with his > travelling around the world like running up & down stairs > room heart mind journey commitment > the work always first > well maybe not always >

nothing can stop this force even up to the end > radiates > a special relationship with everyone > heartbreaker with the skill to be a real human being > & so CHARMING >

a charmer a lover > the more one let one self go the more one understood the concept he put forth both audience & orchestra > world traveler dandy handled his illness  positively privately maturely > a mature guy this Butch > a child a dandy a flirt > the band became his family as did his friends & his audience > we all became his lovers of sorts > this perfectionist who rehearsed performed demanded > he left me his extra food coupons in Marseilles & a drawer full of vitamins too > & when I finally got the process his concept what conduction was wow I was up there with him expecting laughing scowling relaxing tensing up getting frustrated or getting HIGH > he was a one of a kind > his contributions will live on > he will & does have imitators but not duplicators > disciples even > filled with exploration > fiery dancey > shoes I want those shoes that dignified presence on the dance floor > as I said he was a hard task master but when he got the results he wanted everyone knew it everyone felt it everyone got it > transcendent > like dancing on different waters > bridging > expanding > building > a life partially hidden by the seasons > like dancing on different waters > last of the real of the real > spirit genius > genuine > scraping the sky with his wand > wandering into the void a partial of a bridge suspended between 2 buildings sunset a lifetime blanketed by a river of trees .  .  .

— Steve Dalachinsky, c 2013

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Greg Tate, author-essayist as well as guitarist-leader of the Butch Morris “conductioned” band Burnt Sugar the Arkestra Chamber,n looked for his evidently unpublished liner notes to the planned 25th anniversary reissue on CD of Morris’ Conduction #1, Racism in Modern America, a work in Progress. He couldn’t find them.

Tate emailed : “hey man those notes are lost in the clouds over here but the 1997 VIBE article  I did on Butch could be copacetic. . .” So here that is, in Google Books so a bit hard to navigate, but on page 60 if you loose your place.

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The Orpheus Chamber Orchestra came to play with saxophonist Wayne Shorter‘s quartet at Carnegie Hall Friday, Feb 1, and — though conductorless — showed the cohesion and verve that will make a jazz-with-symphony program a triumph. If Shorter’s writing and improvisations had matched their readiness, the night could have been truly historic.

This orchestra, celebrating its 40th year and proud of its radically democratic ethos, in the first half of its evening’s program used clarity and pacing to give wistful, introspective nuance to Charles Ives’ Third Symphony, Camp Meeting. It tossed off Beethoven’s energetic Overture to The Creatures of Prometheus, his only ballet, with complete self-assurance. And it dug into the glossy, silken hues that Shorter wrote for its accompaniment of his four compositions, including the world premiere of “Lotus,” as if eager to prove that genre-crossing is a strong part of its game.

Yet for an orchestra to engage with jazzers, the jazzers must be responsive, too. While Shorter, who turns 80 next August, seems physically robust, working hard against the resistance implicit in his instrument the soprano sax, he has become an oblique frontman and disappointing soloist. His collaborators await his leadership while  at least some of his listeners hope he will burst forth with the dynamic lyricism that has marked his best efforts over the past 50 years. And while Ben Ratliff has written in the New York Times that Shorter is “generally acknowledged to be jazz’s greatest living composer,” his strictly linear approach to writing for large ensembles is essentially melody-dominated homonophy, in stark contrast to the multi-dimensionality that Beethoven took for granted and Ives exploited to touching and/or rousing affect.

I have been a big fan of Wayne Shorter’s music since the ’60s, but that was a long time ago. Back then his classic Blue Note albums Juju, The All Seeing Eye and especially Speak No Evil were at the  top of my playlist. His compositions such as “Footprints,” “E.S.P.,” “Iris,” “Orbits,” “Dolores” “Masquelero,” “Nefertiti,” “Pinocchio,” “Fall,” “Limbo,” “Vonetta,” “Paraphernalia” and “Water Babies” graced Miles Davis’ recordings and/or set-list (as “Children of the Night,” “Tom Thumb” and others had been in Art Blakey’s book for the Jazz Messengers). His collaborative work with Freddie Hubbard, Lee Morgan, Tony Williams,  McCoy Tyner always enhanced their albums, whether with tunes or the steady-focus “spontaneous composition” of his solos and the rich depths of his horn (he then played tenor sax exclusively). His brilliance continued to find outlet in Weather Report, in the Herbie Hancock-led quasi-Miles Davis reunion band V.S.O.P. (no Miles, but Freddie Hubbard gave his all to that project)  and occasional guest appearances, including Steely Dan’s Aja, Joni Mitchell’s tribute to Charles Mingus Chair in the Sky and Carlos Santana’s The Swing of Delight. I gave five stars in a DownBeat review of Shorter’s masterpiece Native Dancer, with Brazilian vocalist extraordinaire Milton Nascimento, upon its release in 1975.

But when Shorter left Weather Report in 1985, he seemed to enter a period of struggle, or exploration. High Life, his 1995 release, was, I thought, his best work in a decade (he hadn’t recorded under his own name for seven years), filled with intriguing songs. The elaborate orchestrations, including an orchestral ensemble and electronics, highlight his soprano playing, which had developed the characteristic uppermost register piping sound he’s continued to employ. Indeed, having all but dropped the tenor completely, Shorter is probably known to a generation of listeners mostly for that sound, which he seems to always be squeezing as if to break an incontrovertible range barrier.

Since 2000, Shorter’s music has been made in company of his quartet members: pianist Danilo Perez, bassist John Patitucci and drummer Brian Blade. They’ve released three albums from live performances, including just this weekend Without A Net. I’ve heard it once, and it’s the band at its best, very energetic and interactive, evidently flowing with intuition, often daring and successful in maintaining precarious balance. Sample it at NPR Music.

That said, this is far from my favorite band. Perez, an impressionist, seldom touches on bluesiness, old school swing or what I think of as edge, leaning instead towards a pastoral classicism. Patitucci has a soft, warm and deep tone, which was audible even through the layers of harmony supplied by Orpheus in concert, more than any other of the quartet players responsible for their blend. Blade is likely the most aggressive jazz drummer now at the kit, always exploding, always on top of what’s happening so as to define it. He keeps close tabs on Shorter, calculating his every phrase-length and punctuating them with emphatic, declarative bombs. If Wayne would step forth with confidence, inspiration and command before this crew, Blade’s dynamism might make sense. But to my ears, he’s much too much by way more than half. It’s like Blade’s wanting the whole band to match his volume, but Wayne is just too passive to make such a move.

Shorter also has come to blow ever fewer notes, of increasingly limited imagination. For a saxophonist who came up in thrall to John Coltrane, and fulfilled the prolix role when in Miles’ deservedly hailed ’60s quintet, his minimalism borders on renunciation. He frequently seems to be looking always for just the right opening to present itself, which he can fill with a pitched stream that comes to him in a lightning strike of unselfconscious impulse. But the kind of rush that Sonny Rollins (going on 83) still can tap and sustain is not currently part of Shorter’s technique. Instead, he hops up the scale from time to time, and down it occasionally, too — usually hitting the same pitches. On Friday he only let lose longer, presumably improvised phrases once or twice. They were beauties, and some devotees believe these are exquisite brush strokes, the distillations of his genius creativity. Am I being greedy to expect much more?

Shorter’s writing for Orpheus was structured and detailed; perhaps his main interest now is in the composition of these long, fleet lines he prepared for the orchestra. Those lines had momentum and a variety of twists and turns — sometimes supporting the quartet, sometimes seguing in or out of activity as if in a moment of confusion or free play. What they lacked was countermovement and development of multiple facets that would become greater than any  one of the parts. Shorter, who has been, after all, a career-long virtuoso of the single-note line, gave the orchestra attractive and light textures, like silk or chiffon, which might knot up or be draped unevenly. But he didn’t afix these textures to shapes of their own that could unfold in substantive contrast to what he or his fellows played.

The scores for Shorter’s compositions “Pegasis” (originally penned for a collaboration with the Imani Winds), “The Three Marias” (from his 1985 album Atlantis, a Brazilian-inflected line  adapted for Orpheus by Patitucci and Perez, it was the  most gratifying of Shorter’s pieces here), the world premiere of “Lotus” and “Prometheus Unbound” (an expansion of “Capricorn II” from the 2003 studio album Alegría) kept the members of Orpheus busy. For a large ensemble holding themselves together without a baton to watch, their cohesion was remarkable — I could feel them as an aggregate tighten up at the music’s demand, or loosen when less tension was more fitting. If Shorter, Perez, Patitucci and Blade remained apart from — above? beyond? — the chamber orchestra, it was their own decision. And my criticism is surely a minority report — the audience in not-quite-full Carnegie Hall applauded the entirety of what amounted to a concerto grosso avidly, awarding Wayne Shorter & co. the usual standing ovation. Here is Emilie Pons’ blog posting on the show.

You’ll soon be able to hear and judge this music for yourself. Shorter’s quartet and the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra recording pieces from their Friday program on Saturday, for eventual release on Blue Note Records. I hope the Carnegie Hall concert was a tune-up, and that in the recording, lightning did strike. Any remaining gap between jazz improvisers and large “classical” ensembles deserves to be bridged. We are past due for agreeing that jazz is equal, if different, to music stemming from Western European symphonic traditions. We are eager, once the gap is closed, to hear great orchestras mixing it up with great jazz bands for a synthesis that’s fresh, new, flexible and promising.

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