Jazz Beyond Jazz

Howard Mandel's Urban Improvisation

Fred Anderson, Chicago jazz hero, appreciated

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Fred Anderson ©Jim Newberry, Chicago Tribune

As a teenager in pursuit of the avant garde, I took tenor saxophonist Fred Anderson, who died June 24 at age 81, as a hero upon first hearing him in 1966. It was at a Unitarian Church-run coffee house in downtown Evanston near Northwestern U., and attention clearly had to be paid to the long, fierce, unreeling, knotty improvisations Anderson delivered in an ever-more hunkered-down posture as the evening went on.

There was an unremitting sense of urgency, sincerity and humility to what he was saying on his horn, spelled by startling outbursts from his pained-looking trumpeter, Billy Brimfield, and support from some rhythmically free-flowing bass and drummer (I forget who).  There was nothing showy about Fred, though he was a large man who wore a skullcap. He was old to me then — 36 or 37. I bought Song For, Joseph Jarman’s album brilliantly employing Anderson’s standing band as soon as Delmark released it that year, too. I heard him many times in the 15 years that followed, at various concerts produced by the AACM (Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians) of which he was a co-founder along with another of my musical heroes, Muhal Richard Abrams. Fred was never less than totally involved in what he was doing, which was forcing air through a bent tube to shake the earth we walked on and the culture we breathed. (Photo left by Jim Newberry, thanks to Thrill Jockey records.)

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Miles’ beyond jazz, today and tomorrow

Miles Davis is still at it — in Prospect Park, the Highline Ballroom, (le) Poisson Rouge, Carefusion Jazz Festival’s Carnegie Hall concerts, also overflowing the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, as per my City Arts – New York column and enriching the glorious Festival International de Jazz de Montreal (June 25 – July 5).

Though he died of exacerbated living at age 65 in 1991, the influence of Miles’ trumpet and his breakthrough “directions in music” vibrates through urbane international cultural as strongly now as ever. Bitches Brew, which launched a jazz-rock revolution, and Tutu, his most ambitious late-period album, are inspiring high visibility concert performances that are exciting in their own rights, unveiling a potential future rather than reviving the past.
This Miles wave isn’t nostalgia-based: it’s a wake-up call for a world short on  sharp melodies, harmonic exploration, rampant rhythm, full-force interaction. Audiences I’ve encountered seem eager to hear again or for the first time Miles’ many modes — from aching fragility to hippest cool to surrealistic phantasmagoria to imperious swagger, all conveyed with surprising, original lyricism.

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Why of the Jazz Journalists Assn’s Jazz Awards

Why give Jazz Awards? See
my new column in City Arts re the event Monday
6/14 at City Winery in NYC, produced by the Jazz Journalists Assoc. 

HM-and-Kurt-Elling-jazz-awa.jpg(Full disclosure: I’m deeply involved — as left, last year presenting Kurt Elling his statuette for Best Male Vocalist, photo by Enid Farber. See us this year, streaming live video online at www.JJAJazzAwards.org, with satellite parties in Albuquerque, Berkeley, Chicago, Portland, Seattle, Scottsdale, and tweeting using the hashtag #jjajazzawards)

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Robert Johnson on speed

Musicologists are convinced blues icon Robert Johnson’s recordings as released are 20% faster than he performed in two solo sessions in 1936 and 1937. It’s unclear whether they were sped up intentionally (to push their excitement, which seems hardly necessary) or accidentally at some point in the chain between microphone and pressing plant. What is obvious is that since only 11 of the 41 existent Johnson takes were issued by Vocalion on 78 rpm discs during his lifetime (and one posthumously), his complete documented repertoire of 29 tunes issued on two Columbia Records lps, King of the Delta Blues Singers (1961) and King of the Delta Blues Singers, Vol. 2 (1970) and finally 41 tracks, alternates and all, released on a best-selling 2-CD boxed set, Robert Johnson The Complete Recordings by Columbia in 1990, we have probably never heard what the blues’ most influential singer-guitarist actually sounded like.

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World’s music in NYC parks

Caribbean music is big — and free — in the city’s parks this summer; my City Arts column details some of the best shows. There’s also music from Africa, Turkey, Syria, Brazil — almost everywhere, as well as the good ol’ USA. I’m off to teach my NYU class about “World Music,” a nebulous concept, so can’t report all the dates and places here/now, but check out calendars for Summerstage, River-to-River Festival, Celebrate Brooklyn, the BAM Rhythm & Blues Festival at Brooklyn’s Metrotech Center, and any of the other presenters mentioned in the piece. Global sounds are, by definition, everywhere.

Swing stops: Japanese jazz mag fails

Swing Journal, the magazine promoting American jazz in Japan since the end of WWII, ceases publication with its June issue. According to editor-in-chief Takafumi Mimori, “We will make efforts to revive it somehow,” but the monthly publication known for its photography, articles by U.S. as well as Japanese commentators and previously robust support from electronics firms and instrument manufacturers has suffered a serious decline of advertising revenue.

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Hank Jones, reigning jazz pianist, dies, age 91

A moderate modernist with beautiful touch and exquisite taste, Hank Jones was a beacon of  gentle authority, genuine modesty and jazz grace at the keyboard. Oldest brother of the more unruly trumpeter-composer Thad Jones and drummer Elvin Jones, Hank epitomized balance, consistency and flexibility. It was a joy to be in his company, whether listening to him or speaking with him. I was lucky to interview him in tandem with pianist Geri Allen — generations apart, but both from the Detroit area —  as published in my book Future Jazz, and to sit with him at length again in 2009 for Down Beat. Here’s a photo by Enid Farber from the 2009 Jazz Journalists Association Jazz Awards of Hank with the picture of himself by Kris King that won the Award for Photo of the Year. Hank Jones with his (Kris King's) photo enid 09.jpgWhat follows is my (long) article from my 2009 interview — with links to Amazon of some of his best albums, in case you’re moved, as I hope you will be, to hear him play . . .

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Tremé, the musical

Lovers of jazz, jazz beyond jazz, jazz before jazz are all watching Treme, right? The HBO series about New Orleans three months after Katrina sets a new standard for celebrating America’s roots music where this should happen — on tv.

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Jazz lofts as they used to be

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Thelonious Monk photo by W. Eugene Smith for promotional use

Composer Steve Reich said, “Without John Coltrane, there
would be no minimalism.” The topic was Hall Overton, the man who arranged Monk’s music, treating jazz as contemporary “classical” composition. The occasion was a panel discussion sprung from an exhibit at the NY Public Library of the Performing Arts about the Jazz Loft hosted by photographer W. Eugene Smith from 1955-1964 (this is Smith’s shot of Overton with Monk in the Loft).

Read about it in my new City Arts column.

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Central Brooklyn Jazz Festival goes to roots, future, justice

My column in City Arts highlights the 40-event Central Brooklyn Jazz Festival, taking place throughout April “from Flatbush up Fulton Avenue through the neighborhoods of Fort Greene, Clinton Hill, Bedford-Stuyvesant and Ocean Hill to Bushwick . . . the area that gave birth to Max Roach and Randy Weston some 80 years ago.” It’s booked with lesser-known yet highly active African-American jazz musicians; on Saturday I talk about “Where is Jazz Going?” at Medgar Evers College (2 to 6 pm) in distinguished company.

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