Jazz Beyond Jazz

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Tesser on top 10s

Neil Tesser blogs about best of the year roundups on Chicago Music Examiner.com — and is added to the blogroll. A gifted writer and broadcaster, an incisive cultural critic, Neil has been a close colleague of mine starting in Chicago in the ’70s (remember them? Most readers, maybe not). We’ve worked simultaneously for the Chicago Reader and Down Beat, among other publications, and WBEZ-FM when it was an NPR jazz station, on the Chicago Jazz Festival programming committee and even co-frontlined a Critics Band (both playing reeds, highlight of our set was a segue from “Pipeline” into “Afro Blue.” It’s good to have him in the blogosphere. 

Jazz best lists of 2009

Chicago Trib cultural critic Julia Keller decries year-end “best of” lists for their “chilly, retrospective nature,”for  their by-definition 12-month perspectives trumping spontaneous enthusiasm, and for their reinforcement of consensus. Nonsense. Here are three opportunities to see what jazz critics are recommending as 2009’s hot recordings, and there’s some consistency, but most of the choices are highly individualistic and certainly reflect musical currents of right now — 

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House kudos to Miles’ Kind of Blue. So what?

At age 50, Miles Davis’ album Kind of Blue has been officially and unanimously hailed by the US House of Representatives. Rep. John Conyers (D-Michigan) sponsored H.Res 894, which on Tuesday passed 409 to 0, recognizing the “unique contribution” of the 37-minutes of modal improvisation trumpeter Davis and his stellar sextet recorded on March 2 and April 22, 1959. The honor is richly deserved, and if you have to ask why, spend some quality time with the music. To learn more about it, I recommend Ashley Kahn’s well-researched book of “the making of Miles Davis’ masterpiece.”

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That’s not jazz, Spaniard tells saxophonist

Larry Ochs’ Sax & Drumming Core may not be al gusto for everyone, but should Spain’s Civil Guard decide whether it plays “jazz”? At the Sigüenza Jazz Festival a disgruntled purist demanded his ticket money back claiming he was subjected to “contemporary music” rather than jazz fitting his definition; pistol-packing cops backed him up (which makes me wonder what they thought of last week’s concert by Digital Primitives). Read the Guardian account here.

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Best beyond “jazz” CDs of 2009

My 10 top CDs of 2009 blow past conventions to enrich jazz, blues, new and unusual music. They’re chosen from almost 1000 I received for review — an abundance of fine releases since November 2008, the full year following Barack Obama’s election to president.

Maybe it’s coincidence that fresh thinking, spirited energy and practical creativity runs high  at this moment in history — or maybe it’s that 2009’s challenges require musicians like everyone else to find new answers to the tough questions: how to find joy amid gloom, work to harmonize and stand independently, keep the beat and take time out, too. The following CDs (most also available as MP3 downloads), are pleasures from the past 12 months I recommend for their surprises and soulfulness. Listed in no particular order — 

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Far downtown weekend adventures

Far out improv, high concept contemporary composition, new jazz scholarship and “cut loose” music from Guadeloupe flood Lowest Manhattan (all the way to Staten Island) this weekend. The folks who bring us the Vision Festival stage 28 hours of multidisciplinary improvisation starting tonight (Friday) at 6 p.m. at Clemente Soso Velez Cultural Center; Mode Records throws itself a benefit marathon concert featuring Philip Glass, John Zorn and Robert Ashley, among many others on Saturday at Abrons Art Center; jazz scholars convene for The Louis Armstrong Symposium at College of Staten Island also Saturday starting at 9 a.m., keynote by Dan Morgenstern) and the Destination Guadeloupe Festival climaxes with Gwo-ka drumming, “gwanda jazz” and zouk at S.O.B.’s on Sunday (bands from Guadeloupe are also there and at Zinc Bar tonight and tomorrow).The possibilities show again the breadth and depth of music made and presented in NYC.

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Wynton le Chevalier Marsalis

A survey in my latest City Arts column of the music of trumpeter-composer Wynton Marsalis, in the jazz spotlight for 25 years. Founder and artistic director of Jazz at Lincoln Center, educator, activist, humanitarian, winner of a Pulitzer and multiple Grammies, Wynton stands tallest in my book when he just plays jazz.

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Winners and their blues

Winners of this blog’s first Blues Lyric Contest are suitably troubled — and all get Wynton Marsalis and Willie Nelson Play the Music of Ray Charles DVDS to ease their weary minds. All have expressed regrets they can’t get to  Jazz at Lincoln Center concerts of Wynton and the Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra celebrating for Mary Lou Williams’ centennial or  alto saxist Maceo Parker, so sadly those tix go wanting. But that’s the blues for ya. . . 

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