Howard Mandel's Urban Improvisation
(slightly corrected version)
Conductor of improvisation Lawrence Douglas “Butch” Morris is an East Village charmer, now-too-infrequent cornetist and internationally-known instigator of large ensemble music made spontaneously in real time by free-from-convention individuals. During a radio interview for the NPR show News & Notes, Butch identifies himself as a jazz musician not by superficial “style” but by inherent lineage, values, procedures and preferences.
Five unusually sunny days and a sumptuous solo performance by Cecil Taylor before at least 2000 absorbed listeners marked the first weekend of the fourth annual Portland Jazz Festival. Deconstructions by musicians and critics of the words “swing,” “jazz,” “sound” and “music” demonstrated this was a high ol’ time. What should we call it? Propulsive compositional improvisation?
jazz-beyond-jazz fans (that’s yours truly!) exult in Ornette Coleman, Myra Melford’s Be Bread, the Bad Plus and the overall Portland Jazz Festival
Listeners who like their music strong, fresh, mysterious, challenging might share pride in pianist Herbie Hancock’s Grammy Award for River: The Joni Letters — but some snipe it celebrates moderation more than creativity. What’s your take?
The commercial record industry may be in free-fall, but fresh cds continue to arrive in hopes of review, in undaunted quantity. From the year’s first month, these get my attention.
The move-to borough’s expanding scene: on a Saturday night the “creative music community” has a choice of alluring concerts.
Uri Caine is a musician, period — writing it down or making it up on keyboards as he goes along, as the gig or commission demands.
Rare articles on John Coltrane, Charles Gayle and Matt Shipp — by me — have just been posted online by The Wire, an always-worth-reading UK publication that covers jazz beyond jazz and some music beyond even that.
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Primaries, Mardi Gras and Chinese New Year align — look who’s coming to the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage fest!
A day in Philadelphia demonstrated hard-core support for music stretching genres thrives, and a young audience seems ripe for such attractions.
It’s uniquely Chicago culture – the “can-do” attitude of a committed hardcore jazz community encouraging new music now. The independent nonprofit Jazz Institute of Chicago throws an absolutely free and musically world-class one day Jazz Fair in the depths of frosty January.
Chicagoans won’t be deterred — like other northerners, they shrug off January and find meaning by escaping their caves. At least, I hope so, heading into my hometown for the Jazz Institute of Chicago’s annual winter Jazz Fair at the beautiful Cultural Center.
Merkin Concert Hall nipped and tucked, 14 pianists astride keyboard genres drew an overflow audience from 2 pm to 9 on Martin Luther King Day — free of charge, and this jewel-box holds only 450, but the acoustics are swell, and so was some of the music.