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JazzApril begins (no joke!)

April is Jazz Appreciation Month (so named by the Smithsonian Institution), culminating on the 30th withÂ 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, Â 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,Â 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 andÂ 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 andÂ 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!

Marsalis in Stockton, the Dave Brubeck Institute and Take Five

It was a big deal in Stockton, CA last Friday, when Wynton Marsalis led hisÂ Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra at the 12th annual jazz festival produced by the Brubeck Institute at University of the Pacific.Â Â 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.Â 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 cityÂ could enter bankruptcy.Â Stockton’s hadÂ 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 Â 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 armsÂ in the late 1980s). He co-composed and recorded at least two of the most enduring, instantly recognizable Â 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 referencesÂ 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.”

Gunther Schuller – photo by Dominick Reuter

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 andÂ 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 Â — 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 naturalistÂ John Muir, too.

The Brubeck Institute has a very small staff. Besides Simon Rowe, whose resumÃ© charts an Australian-born pilgrim’s progress of steps betweenÂ 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.

Simon Rowe, piano; Patrick Langham, alto sax;
photo by Greg Savage

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.

Celebrate Cecil Taylor, birthday 84

Cecil Taylor by Mick Canterella (mick@mickphoto.com)

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 — Â although Taylor does have manyÂ 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,Â 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. Â 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 highestÂ achievements of empires are really what the artists create within them.Â 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 fromÂ 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, mountainsÂ and rivers and streams, perhaps one of the purposes of our life is toÂ 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 heÂ 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 itÂ rigorous. There are certain procedures one must exhibit, and it’s aÂ matter of preparation. One gets up in the morning, then one must work atÂ developing the mind. There are certain things one must study in order toÂ write words, then there is usually at least an hour spent doing variousÂ 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.Â And then one composes, one practises, and one has achieved a state ofÂ 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,Â but it is so worthwhile and brings so much joy. One can only hope thatÂ 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 lackÂ 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 mostÂ difficult time for me will be in the limousine going to the concert. OfÂ the beneficial things that spirituality has given me, the concept ofÂ ritual – which is very much a part of my performance – is the one whichÂ takes the effervescence out of the stomach.”

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

Â© 1998 The Wire.

Happy birthday 83 — and 82 — Ornette Coleman

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 â€“ 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.Â

Linda Goldstein, sometimes Ornette manager and always Bobby McFerrin‘s, is here. Percussionist and improv orchestra conductor Adam Rudolph â€“ 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 â€“ 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 TimeÂ (the second iteration)Â 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 â€“ 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 â€“ 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 Â ex-wife and Denardo’s mother â€“ sits aside Muhal, too. Her husband, sculptor Melvin Edwards,Â is circulating.

Author Quincy Troupe â€“ 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 Â 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 BleyÂ 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 cafÃ© 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 â€“ 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 â€“ 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 â€“ 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 â€“ 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 â€“ 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 wifeÂ Margaret Davis GrimesÂ are here. Guitarist Marc RibotÂ is talking about his upcoming gig at Village Vanguard, with Grimes and drummer Chad Taylor â€“ “both are so intuitive.” LidijaÂ Pedevska-Redman,Â widow of Dewey Redman,Â Ornette’s longtime co-saxophonist, asks about my daughter — she isÂ Â Velibor’s sister, and Velibor has a daughter Rosie’s age. Trumpeter Graham HaynesÂ 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, Â 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.Â 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.

Dr. Donald Byrd, RIP; Jayne Cortez memorial photos

Jayne Cortez image with singer; photo by SÃ¡nta IstvÃ¡n Csaba

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

Strangely,Â reports by a nephew of Byrd’s death at age 80Â on February 4 have remained “unconfirmed.” Â Morris, having died January 29 at 65.Â 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. Â 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. SÃ¡nta IstÃ¡n 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 forÂ 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 SÃ¡nta’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 cafÃ© 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.

Randy Weston performed with T.K. Blue; photo by SÃ¡nta IstvÃ¡n Csaba

Denardo Coleman, son of Jayne Cortez, and their family; photo by SÃ¡nta IstvÃ¡n Csaba

Quincy Troupe, poet; photo by SÃ¡nta IstvÃ¡n Csaba

Roy Campbell, trumpet; Bill Cole, shenai; David Murray, tenor sax; photo by SÃ¡nta IstvÃ¡n Csaba

Amiri Baraka, poet and political activist; photo by SÃ¡nta IstvÃ¡n Csab

Craig Harris; photo by SÃ¡nta IstÃ¡van Csaba

David Murray; photo by SÃ¡nta IstÃ¡van Csaba

Jayne Cortez’s Firespitters is represented in SÃ¡nta’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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Words and images for Butch Morris

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 SÃ¡nta IstvÃ¡n Csaba. Writings for and about Butch by Steve Dalachinsky.

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

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 Iâ€™ll say is clichÃ©d 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 newÂ Â 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 . . .

itâ€™s warm grey > a partial of a bridge floats between 2 buildings > bare trees blanket the river > a lifetimeâ€™s profound effect inspires the musicâ€™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 >Â Â 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 Iâ€™m with the band Iâ€™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 didnâ€™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 illnessÂ Â 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 . Â . Â .

— Steve Dalachinsky, c 2013

Tate’s notes to Morris Conduction #1 lost, here’s his Vibe article

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 Â 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.

Wayne Shorter & Orpheus Chamber Orch: Prometheus, promising but self-bound

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 Â 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 “generallyÂ 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, TheÂ All Seeing Eye and especiallyÂ Speak No Evil were at theÂ Â 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, Â 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)Â Â and occasional guest appearances, including Steely Dan’s Aja,Â Joni Mitchell’s tribute to Charles MingusÂ Chair in the Sky and Carlos Santana’sÂ The Swing of Delight. I gave five stars in a DownBeat review of Shorter’s masterpiece Native Dancer,Â 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.Â 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 Â 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 Â adapted for Orpheus by Patitucci and Perez, it was the Â 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 AlegrÃa)Â 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.

Current Trends in Racism in Modern America, A Work in Progress by Butch Morris

My maybe unpublished 25th anniversary liner notes for Conduction #1, Current Trends in Racism in Modern America, A Work in Progress, by the late Butch Morris with all-star improvisers, recorded 28 years ago today (Feb 1, 2013) and sonically as relevant as ever.Â

[The cast is: Frank Lowe, tenor sax; John Zorn, alto sax and game calls; guitarist Brandon Ross; harpist Zeena Parkins; cellist Tom Cora; turntablist Christian Marclay; vibraphonist Eli Fountain; pianist Curtis Clark; percussionist Thurman Barker; vocalist Yasunao Tone and Butch, of course, conductor. I understand that I’ve made a mistake about the multi-media/theater-installation piece “Goya Time,” which J.A. Deane, one of Butch’s longest and closest associates, calls Conduction #3 in his from-up-close tribute.]

Butch Morris: Current Trends in Racism in Modern America

When a full house of ardent downtown music followers flocked to the old Kitchen, a performance loft on Broome Street in Manhattan’s artsy Soho district on the cold night of February 1, 1985 to hear “Current Trends in Racism in Modern America” by Lawrence Douglas “Butch” Morris — I don’t recall if it was advertised as “Conduction No. 1” — no one knew what to expect.

Butch Morris conducts David Murray band featuring trombonist Craig Harris, at Sweet Basil, circa 1987.
Photo by Lona Foote

At that time, as now, Butch was an inspired and productive presence on a diversified music scene populated by intersecting circles of extreme individualists. Where he fit in exactly was hard to discern, which is how he seemed to want it. He’d been actively performing solos, during which he might turn his cornet around to blow into its bell or upside down to get sounds by tinkering with its valves. He’d participated in flamboyant theatrical pieces, half-happenings/half performance art, such as “Goya,” wherein crowds circulated throughout a gymnasium-like space, prodded by actors costumed as if for the Spanish Inquisition, watching some dozen painters at work on canvases emulating “The Naked Maja,” while he himself led an ensemble sequestered in a sanctuary off a side-hall. He was also known for his collaborative relationship with David Murray, the tenor saxophonist and bandleader with whom Butch come to New York City from California just about nine years before.

Rather than being a full-bore, fire-breathing, high-energy expressionist like Murray, though, Morris went for nuance, suggestion and subtle colors in his instrumental performances, using space or silence like a sculptor. He had composed several lovely melodies, some of which David took as repertoire for his variously-sized bands, but Butch preferred to stay at the edge of the frame rather than in its center, or as the title of his first album (from 1979) put it, “in touch . . . but out of reach.”

All the while, as Morris has written in the liner notes to the extraordinary album Testament: A Conduction Collection, he was thinking of a way to “further develop an ensemble music of collective imagination — not in any way to downplay a soloist, but to have the ensemble featured at all times.” His doctrine was that “collective improvisation must have a prime focus, and the use of notation alone [is] not enough for the contemporary improviser.” From those precepts he had come up with the concept and term “conduction,” to signify both “conducted improvisation” and “the physical aspect of communication and heat.”

Both those phrases — conducted improvisation and the physical aspect of communication and heat — may be taken to describe not only to Butch’s musical concept but also current trends in racism in modern America, in 2010 as in 1985. Is it unrealistic or exaggerated to say that “trends” in day-to-day relations among Americans thinking and acting upon racial considerations are the results of behavioral improvisations of each individual so caught up? But also that individuals’ responses to issues of race are inevitably channeled, guided, conducted by social policies and historical forces? Certainly we acknowledge that physical aspects of “communication and heat” have fueled attitudes and assumptions regarding “race” since the founding of America and probably long before. Therefore, Butch chose a topic for Conduction No. 1 that was a perfect reflection of his musical method.

Butch Morris conducting Steve Coleman (left) and David Murray (right)l, at Sweet Basil.
Photo by Lona Foote.

In this music, as in American race relations, individuals’ actions matter, but are simultaneously subsumed into a larger ensemble sound, a field of social projections. Particular individual and social reactions may be requested or even ordered, but not completely specified or successfully executed. To believe it’s possible to exert total control over an outpouring of music or advance of history is both illusory and by definition dictatorial. Those who live in the present, whether musicians and/or citizens, do what they can and what they will. Those who observe the activity from a point removed, be they social scientists or listeners, will choose or shift focus on the individual or the group, but will always have to contend with innumerable, mutable factors and will often be unsure whether individual or group best rewards or most requires attention.

Despite these conundrums, and though we don’t know what instructions Butch gave the ten all-star downtowners he assembled to enact his work, it’s tempting to describe Current Trends in Racism in Modern America programmatically, to create a story for it. Part One: A starting whistle springs a door open on a vast soundscape of scattered gestures and mutterings, which accrue more detailed density if not cohesion (and least of all, unity) as we plunge on. A single expression or two — John Zorn’s squawk against Frank Lowe’s talk-like phrases, for instance — give rise to an eruption of contentions, which is followed by a calm that’s soon beset by minor, then growing, irritations. Balm comes from the quietly riffing tenor sax and web of harp, marimba, resonate vibes. All chime in until a community debate develops, one voice (instrument) after another coming to the fore. A descending figure is established, and a beat box rhythm blares. Marimba and vibes fade on a whine that might be electrical, or crickets. Guttural efforts are swamped by dreamlike textures, which thicken until silence briefly falls.

Thereafter everything becomes more percussive, forceful, disassociated — random? Game calls squeal, rail and mew over piano chords from another planet. Is that crowing? The tenor sax calls out insistently and the cello echoes it, leading to another crescendo, an imposing, march-like backdrop, a pointilistic foreground, sweeping winds, repetitions which summon both concurrence and dissent. Dissension breeds expansion, an inclusion of more different sounds, some on the surface, some ringing and throbbing deeply, some tangling or spinning out. The affect is oceanic. We can only go with this flow, though it comes to no conclusion, simply cycling on and on . . .

Part Two, two-thirds shorter, is ostensibly more shaped by the conductor than Part One. Episodes stand out as if composed, not improvised. Isn’t that Butch’s intent, to blur the practices and question their intrinsic opposition?

But I stop there, because it’s foolish to impose any literal interpretation on a Conduction, better to dive in, opening your imagination to your immediate, personal responses. The music sounds different every time, anyway. Though recorded, it doesn’t seem frozen, probably because we aren’t listening from a fixed perspective ourselves, being always in flux.

In the history of improvisation, this is itself an achievement — perhaps the next radical step after Ornette Coleman’s very skeletally structured Free Jazz, recorded in 1960. What changed in the 25 years leading to Current Trends In Racism In Modern America? What’s changed in the 25 years between Conduction No. 1’s performance and this reissue of it? How will this music sound in another 25 years? We each have our own answers, but need direction to reach any reasonable consensus. In his music, Conduction No. 1 and elsewhere, Butch Morris won’t force his own views on us, but helps modern America and the world beyond hear what we each might have to say. — Howard Mandel, c 2010

Butch Morris, musical artist and friend, mourned widely

Butch Morris approved of this poster

Lawrence Douglas “Butch” Morris, one of the most brilliant and musically generous of artists who emerged from New York’s East Village in the 1980s as an experimental cornetist, composer of melodies and settings, and instigator of the burgeoning act of Conduction (a term he copyrighted), died January 29 of cancer at age 65, and the world mourns.

Besides my “appreciation” for National Public Radio, heartfelt writings have been posted in the New Yorker blog by cornetist Taylor Ho Bynum, in the Wall Street Journal blog by Vipal Monga (who directed the film on Butch’s Herculean 44 NYC performances Â in 28 days,Â Black February: Music is an Open Door), and many others, listed below. WKCR, Columbia U’s radio station, is running a memorial broadcast as I write.Â Ben Ratliff’s obituary in the New York Times was highly respectful and comprehensive, too.

But the feeling is we’ve all just scratched the surface, because Butch was an elegant and radiant man, who made everyone he met feel special to be in his presence — the very essence of “personable”. And he was equally an original, insightful, incisive, determined and significant creator of beauty, who never stopped being curious about the nature of sound and the potentials of people expressing themselves interactively, in words, dance, theater, visual arts, conversational as well as music.

For 20 years I lived down the block from Butch, who had an apartment across the street from the building where John Zorn, Elliott Sharp, Anthony Coleman and a gang of other down-to-earth yet fearless, inspired genre-challengers resided or passed through. It was always cool fun to meet Butch in the street, or hang out with him over a drink, coffee or just on a bench in Tompkins Square Park. When my then-wife composer-vocalist Kitty Brazelton was invited for a weeklong retreat at the creative colony of Omi in upstate NY, I went along with our young daughter Rosie, and Butch was there (also pianist Marie McAuliffe, trumpeter Ingrid Jensen and multi-instrumentalist Daniel Carter). Those days and nights were a blast. Butch was the one with the presence of mind to quickly and efficiently scoop a fallen bat out of the swimming pool then dispose of it while our hostess and everyone else foolishly skittered around.

Wayne and Bill Horvitz, Shelly Hirsch, J.A. Deane, Tom Cora, Myra Melford, Alva Rogers, Jim Staley, Jason Hwang, Christian Marclay — throughout the ’80s and subsequently Butch was involved with all of them and many others in collaborations. His longest-lasting musical relationship, though, was with his great friend David Murray. Last April the two of them showed up together at Ornette Coleman’s birthday party, and enlivened the end of that evening. Butch had roomed with David in an apartment above the Tin Palace on the Bowery when they’d first come to NYC from California. They’d met in the early ’70s, in the rehearsal band drummer Charles Moffett ran in Oakland. Butch credited Moffett with introducing him to the use of hand signals for conduction (I never heard him put any musicians down, and he had an enormous range of references, but I’ll mention his particular interests in Gil Evans, Don Cherry, Cecil Taylor, Michael Tilson Thomas). Butch and David wrote tunes together, which were played by David’s quartets, quintets, octets and big band (which Butch conducted), often at the Greenwich Village club Sweet Basil. Their heroic coterie included Henry Threadgill — another of Butch’s very closest pals — Oliver Lake, Craig Harris, Julius Hemphill, Olu Dara, Ted Daniels, Vincent Chancey, Steve Coleman, Fred Hopkins, Diedre Murray, Franke Lowe, Steve McCall, Makanda Ken McIntyre, Don Pullen, Rod Williams, Curtis Clark, Billy Bang, Graham Haynes and Butch’s older brother Wilber, among many others. My friend Lona Foote took photos obsessively of those groups, often focusing on Butch. She died in 1993, but her photos retain some of the luminosity of those days. I need to have more of them scanned and eventually posted. Enid Farber and Barrie Karp have put together portfolios of images of Butch, too — Barrie shared hers with Butch while putting them together in the past few months.

He was immensely photogenic, even when illness afflicted him last Â autumn. Prior to that, Butch was always jetting off to residencies in Italy, Istanbul, Japan, Berlin, London, Amsterdam, etc.Â where he would teach his practice of hand-signals for spontaneous composition and lead ensembles in concerts, many of them recorded and issued by small and independent labels (his first 50 Conductions, performed from 1985 through 1995, are inÂ Testament: A Conduction Collection,Â a 10 cd-boxed set from New World Records). I was at the Kitchen on February 1, 1985 for the performance of the gnarlyÂ Conduction #1, Â Current Trends in Racism in Modern America (a work in progress).Â I wrote liner notes for one of its reissued editions, but I don’t think Butch was satisfied with them. Why should he have been? He had much more encompassing perspective on both conduction and topic than I did.

I was smart enough to get to his performances including the mixed-media extravaganza “Goya” during which painters worked, actors in Inquisition-era costumes roamed about a large hall and Butch led players who had gathered in what seemed to be a chapel; to his concert launching the performance series curated by his friend (and mine) Jeanette Vuocolo at the Whitney Phillip Morris on 42nd St. across from Grand Central Terminal; to his all-flutes-plus Arthur Blythe Conduction in the community gardens of the East Village and on the bandstand during a Charlie Parker Jazz Festival, and to the particularly exotic Conductions 25 and 26, Akbank whereÂ ney virtuoso Suleyman Ereguner’s ensemble of Sufi musicians joined percussionist LÃª Quan Ninh, vibraphonist Bryan Carrott, trombonist/electronics manipulator Deane, harpist Elizabeth Panzer, pianist Steve Coleman, pocket trumpeter Hugh Ragin and guitarist Brandon Ross (another Butch regular) under his baton. I’ll never forget the climax of that one. It seemed like they’d conjured up the Grand Bazaar, then uprooted it and swirled it into space.

It was my professional pleasure to write about Butch for the Village Voice and DownBeat, The Wire and Swing Journal — pieces I cobbled together for a chapter in my book Future Jazz — Â and to interview him for NPR about Billy Bang’s Viet Nam: The Aftermath, for which he conductedÂ a band of brothers who’d all served in that atrocious war, as Butch had. Of course I never felt I captured or related the entirety of what Butch had to say. No article was so capacious, no radio piece long enough to include all the insight, wit and sensitivity he brought to a topic. And though I can write of my deep affection for this man, a warmth and admiration which I know is shared by a vast and far-flung community of people who knew him personally and also includes many who didn’t but caught a glimmer of his aura in his sounds, I yet cannot come close to giving words to all the dimensions of him and his life. As Vipal Monga has written, we were lucky to know him. We who knew him even a little will not forget him. We will listen to his music, yes, but we will think of his conversation, his stance, his clothes, his voice, the way his cigarette smoke curled up, his easy repartee with restauranteurs, wait-staff and bodega owners, his other friends, his ex-s, his son, his laugh, his scowl, his deftness, his brightness and we’ll want to be with him again.

Butch memorials, etc.

NuBlu, at 62 Avenue C, where Butch conducted a loose band of funakteers, have dedicated Sundays in FeburaryÂ to Butch and in honor of his 28-year performance projectÂ Black February.

Press:Â JazzTimes, Doug Ramsey’sÂ Rifftides, Peter Cherches’ blog, NPR’s A Blog Supreme, thee Chicago Reader

Video, sent by Wayne Horvitz: Betting with Butch.

Radio: Friday, Feb 1, starting at 12 am (midnight Thursday),Â WPFW radio,Â at 89.3FM andÂ www.wpfw.org, two-hour broadcast “His Friends Called Him Butch,” including excerpts of a conversation held in his NYÂ apartment in 1989,Â and George MasonÂ University professor Dr. Thomas Stanley, who did his dissertation on Butch MorrisÂ and hisÂ conduction process, sharing his thoughts. Also:Â www.battiti.rai.it,Â http://www.rai.tv/dl/RaiTV/popup/player_radio.html?v=03&plr=w,Â –National Italian Radio program Â directed by Pino Saulo, included Butch playing cornet, Wayne Hortvitz and J.A. Deane in “spiriti materani” (1990), a commissioned work inspired by the small city of Matera, internationally renowned for its “Sassi” (stones), from a prehistoric settlement suspected to be among the first by humans Italy.

NEA’s Jazz Masters Live program gets farther, still farther to get

The National Endowment for the Arts is not in its essence a presenting organization. Its annual productions of ceremonies inducting new Jazz Masters, like the one at Dizzy’s Club in Jazz at Lincoln Center on January 14, Â are special projects, probably stretching the Endowment’s resources of staff, finances, time and energy.

Jazz Master Gerald Wilson, right, conducts a young ensemble through Jazz Masters Live event – NEA Arts.gov

I commented in myÂ last postÂ that media attention to this event is unfortunately much less than it deserves, and suggested threeÂ ways outreach, hence notice, might be improved, which I’ll return to below. But meanwhile,Â I left out an entire important piece of the NEA’s jazz initiative, which David Fraher of Arts Midwest detailed in a comment to the blog —

Thanks, Howard, for this insightful piece on the importance of the NEA Jazz Masters ceremony to the jazz community. I agree, the work of these incredible artists ought to be celebrated more broadlyâ€”not only to recognize their contributions to this art form, but also to help build future generations of jazz enthusiasts. I do want to share some information on a National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) initiative (managed by Arts Midwest) that tries to do just that â€“ NEA Jazz Masters Live.

NEA Jazz Masters Live is a national program that provides grants ranging from $7,500 to $15,000 to jazz festivals and nonprofit presenting organizations to support performances, master classes, clinics, lectures, and workshops featuring NEA Jazz Masters. While Arts Midwest has been managing this program (or its predecessor NEA Jazz Masters on Tour) since 2005, in just the past four years, weâ€™ve awarded 50 grants totaling just under $1 million to organizations located across the United States. These engagements have featured more than 40 Jazz Masters and have reached more than 130,000 individuals, including more than 7,200 youthâ€”that essential and often overlooked jazz audience that you rightly identify in your article.

While many of these events have been large performances or festivals, some of my favorites have featured more intimate opportunities to connect with the artistsâ€”panel discussions featuring Dan Morgenstern and a film screening featuring Herbie Hancock in Burlington, VT; a small performance by Chick Corea to K-12 students in Shelburne, VT; a vocal workshop with Sheila Jordan in Healdsburg, CA; Kenny Barronâ€™s open sound check for high school jazz band students in San Francisco, CA; jam sessions between Jimmy Owens and a student jazz quintet in Cleveland OH; masterclasses featuring Jack DeJohnette, Randy Weston, Paquito Dâ€™Rivera in areas such as Baton Rouge, LA and Hartford, CT; and open rehearsals and Q & A sessions with Ellis Marsalis in New Orleans, LA.

These events, and countless others featuring Jimmy Cobb, Benny Golson, and Jimmy Heath in places such as Detroit, MI; Stonington, ME; New York, NY; Washington, DC; and Moscow, ID are beginning to meet that important need that you, the NEA, and Arts Midwest seeâ€”a need for more opportunities to engage with this art form and to honor these American legends. If you or your readers want more information on this program, please visit http://www.arts.gov/national/jazz/jml8.html.

The Jazz Masters Live program is obviously a Federally-financed plus towards spreading our jazz culture farther — Â in-person exposure of students to Jazz Masters is invaluable, and the all-year-’round sustenance of JMLive activities is another good thing. But I still think America is losing out on a great opportunity if the Masters’ induction ceremonies isn’t exploited for its full media potential. The outreach areas I identified previously were:

Make the event more public and media-friendly,
Show that jazz is relevant to young audiences, and so are jazzâ€™s elders
Collaborate with commercial producers who know how to put on a really big show, promoted where people go to get their information now.

Banjo master Twain

Not to give away all my advice, I’ll expand on those ideas only by suggesting that presently available, inexpensive and interactive media could be employed to advance the Jazz Masters a whole lot more.

Many Masters, not just the new ones, assemble on the day of the investiture for a luncheon hosted by BMI — how about an hour or two between lunch and the 5 pmÂ photo op to have any the Masters who volunteer to do so sit for exchanges with remotely-based press and/or public over Skype?
How about if, in advance, testimonials to the Masters from some of the hot players of the moment (i.e. Esperanza Spalding, Robert Glasper, Miguel Zenon, Chris Botti?) be collected Â rolled out on via the NEA’s social media platforms, building interest from, say, January 1 to the event date?

If that seems overly promotional for theÂ production — well, why isn’t a promoter producing the event’s broadcast with corporate underwriting?

Isn’t it enough for the NEA to select the Masters, reward them with honoraria, help support their subsequent Live appearances — must this government office also be expected to stage a show that will draw a broadcast audience comparable to, say, the Kennedy Center honors or the Mark Twain Prize for Humor?

How to recognize NEA Jazz Masters

NEA Jazz Masters sit together, Jazz at Lincoln Center Jan 14 2013; photo by SÃ¡nta InstvÃ¡n Csaba

There is no Golden Globes, Emmies, Oscars or highly hyped Grammys for jazz. So the National Endowment of the Arts’ Jazz Masters award is, as acting NEA chair Joan Shigekawa said at ceremonies crowning its 2013 inductees onÂ Jan. 14, “the greatest honor the nation can bestow” on veteran creators of America’s world-beloved vernacular yet “classical” music. You’d think there’d be a lot of media brouhaha, generating publicity that gets jazz high in the day’s trending topics, especially with past Masters and the new ones all together for a night of music at Dizzy’s Club in Jazz at Lincoln Center, one of the most glamorous venues in the U.S. of A. See it now: theÂ live-streamed six-camera shootÂ is now archivedÂ on the NEA’s websiteÂ www.Arts.Gov.

Mt. Rushmore of Latin Jazz Masters: from left, Eddie Palmieri, Candido Camero, Paquito d’Rivera;
photo by SÃ¡nta IstvÃ¡n Csaba

But no. Despite the presence of musical artists — artists! — Roy Haynes, Muhal Richard Abrams, Lee Konitz, Sheila Jordan, Dave Liebman, Paquito d’Rivera, Candido Camero, Jimmy Heath, Annie Ross, Randy Weston, McCoy Tyner, Ahmad Jamal, Joe Wilder, Jimmy Owens, Chico Hamilton, David Baker, Ron Carter, Jimmy Cobb, Kenny Baron, Wynton, Branford and Jason Marsalis all in one room! Along with their newly invested peers Eddie Palmieri, Lou Donaldson and Mose Allison! In what centuries hence might be considered the historic occasion upon which several of them played together! — the sum total of coverage three days after the event comprises exemplary accounts by Nate Chinen in the New York Times and Larry Blumenfeld on his blog at ArtInfo, tweets mostly generated by the NEA itself, NPRMusic (which collaborated in live broadcast with WBGO and Sirius XM broadcast it, too) and others involved in the production, very little notice on Facebook, and aÂ post by the NEA’s own blogger Rebecca Gross that’s already been superseded by a lengthy “postcard” from newly retired NEA chair Rocco Landesman. Oh yes, the issue was raised byÂ Peter Hum in the Ottawa CitizenÂ and Anna Silman inÂ The New York ObserverÂ that newly named Jazz Master “advocate” Lorraine Gordon of the Village Vanguard, who couldn’t attend due to illness, has not endorsed the “Jazz for Justice” initiative of Local 802 of the American Federation of Musicians to gain pension contributions for musicians who gig in New York’s clubs.

Sheila Jordan and Randy Weston laugh it up;
photo by SÃ¡nta IstvÃ¡n Csaba

There was a photo op, at which freelancers including SÃ¥nta IstvÃ¡n Csaba, the Transylvanian cum Budapest photographer who’s supplied images to JBJ all week, first captured a formal portrait and then were free to grab candids. No story in the Wall Street Journal (though Blumenfeld, a frequent freelancer for it, said he had pitched the Masters hard), nothing up yet on the websites of JazzTimes or DownBeat (though representatives of both jazz mags attended the black-tie investiture dinner) nor on JazzCorner or AllAboutJazz, nothing noted in network or cable tv news, no notice in mainstream periodicals . .

What can the NEA — or anyone — do to gain attention to the Jazz Masters, and maybe more for jazz? How about:

making the event even more public and media-friendly,
doing something to show jazz is relevant to young audiences and so are jazz’s elders, and
collaborating with commercial producers who know how to put on a really big show, promoted where people go to get their information now?

“All Blues” — Paquito d’Rivera; Ron Carter; Dave Liebman
photo by SÃ¡nta IstvÃ¡n Csaba

Let’s face it, JBJ readers: the 2013 NEA Jazz Masters may be revered by us fans, but they’re not exactly household names throughout greater America. Mose Allison’s a genuine hipster from the ’60s, slowed at age 85, performing intermittently, though his most recent new album TheÂ Way of the World (2010)Â wasÂ produced by rootsy-folkie pop-rocker Joe Henry, and has been favorably reviewed. Palmieri is quite active at Â 76, in December playing a dazzling if incomplete “Career Retrospective” concert Â at JALC with Latin jazz and dance ensembles. Donaldson, 85, tours constantly with his guitar-organ-drums combo, deploying the salt and vinegar tone and confident swagger he’s perfected over 60 years. Although there was some very fine music performed during the Jazz Masters ceremonies — an especially hot rendition of Miles Davis’ “All Blues” by Liebman on soprano sax, d’Rivera on clarinet, Carter, Barron and Cobb (who recorded the original in 1959) — most of the performances were most appreciable by listeners steeped in the finer points of jazz tradition, but not so much by those who would be moved by its gregarious edge.

Howard Mandel with George Avakian;
photo by SÃ¡nta IstvÃ¡n Csaba

This year’s Awards presentations, which Landesman directed in 2011 would not occur at all but was reinstated in July of that yearÂ at the express command of the Congressional budget committee, suffered some austerity cuts. Rather than the large scale affair held in JALC’s Rose Hall, an 1100 seat theater to which tickets were given free on a first come/first served basis to whoever requested them, this year the site was Dizzy’s with 100 some seats to accommodate living Jazz Masters, their guests, some JALC figures and very few invited others. Regular folks were urged to hold Jazz Masters parties in locations of their choice — one such was in D.C. at Twin’s, presented by Capital Bop; no specifics on others.

At Lincoln Center, most of the press was ensconced in a side room to watch the live stream of the ceremony being held some 30 yards and perhaps six walls away. It was not endearing that no food or beverages were served there but soft drinks. JALC program director Jason Olaine wisely took it on himself to make a wine run, otherwise this scribe and others would have been dryly and disagreeably watching our heroes sit, dine, speechify and perform on a screen, volume down low, out of touch. If the press must be sequestered, what about giving us computers on which we could report the event live on blogs, Facebook or Twitter, or makes the space a newsroom to which we could usher Masters and other significant parties for quickie interviews?

Muhal Richard Abrams, David Baker and Jimmy Heath;
photo by SÃ¡nta IstvÃ¡n Csaba

With advances in Skype and similar technology, this room could have hosted an open q&a session with journalists from remote localsÂ after the formal photo session. There were fascinating glimpses of unexpected musicians’ inter-relations there, for instance when Muhal was chatting with Baker and Heath, or Randy Weston stood looming over Sheila Jordan.

Of course, the clever, well-connected and plain lucky jazz journalist will get to the action. I was very pleased to have a few moments with George Avakian, one of the designated Jazz Masters Advocates — as record producer to Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, Sonny Rollins and Miles Davis, among others, and the man who invented the reissue, the album of thematically connected songs (when they were being issued on 78 rpm discs) and the liner-note.

As far as the ceremony was concerned, what I most wanted to be upclose for Â was the presentation of the Award, acceptance and performance by Eddie Palmieri. So when I realized he was almost due onstage, I ducked from the journalists’ holding pen into a side hall that led into Dizzy’s, and stumbled upon Palmieri himself waiting in the wings his son Eddie the 2nd. Palmieri is one of my personal favorite music-makers, I nominated him in this blog for the Jazz Master award, I’ve written about him for DownBeat and The Wire and produced an NPR feature about him, he knows my name and face — years ago I even took him to hear McCoy Tyner in Chicago’s Modern Jazz Showcase — and he was getting a run-down from his son about what to say when he accepted this honor, what to play solo immediately after.

“Mention Uncle Charlie,” Eddie the 2nd told Eddie the 1st, referring to his older brother who was also a Latin and jazz keyboardist (and who died in 1988). “Talk about McCoy, who’s giving you the Award. You don’t have to say much, or play long.”

The 1st — composer, arranger, bandleader, visionary, luminary Sun of Latin Music — nodded in agreement, but was obviously still nervous, and looked at me worriedly. “I’m not a solo pianist ” he said, “You know that. I think I’ve been set up.”

“No, Eddie,” I told him, “I saw you here at Lincoln Center last month, you played a solo and everybody dug it. Just play your ideas, it’ll be great. I can’t wait to hear it. You’re great at this, everybody is excited to hear you.”

Eddie Palmieri embraces McCoy Tyner;
photo by Frank Stewart (thanks to NEA)

He went out onstage, talked about his brother Charlie, also name checked Tito Rodriguez and Tito Puente, then described at length the first time he heard John Coltrane’s mid ’60s quartet, and how McCoy Tyner changed his life with a fabulous long soloÂ . Then the Sun sat down and threw himself into a glorious, spontaneous rendition of a composition he announced as “Iraida,” named after his wife. It began with curious, dissonant chords, developed into comforting, lyrical passages, broke away for a brief percussive rave, dawdled in time, digressed for a spikey line I know as “Revolt/La Libertad Logico” and ended in triumph. I was sitting nearby, talking with Joanne Robinson Hill, widow of Jazz Master pianist/composer Andrew Hill, when I felt a clap on my shoulder. I turned, there was Eddie: Â “You’re pep talk really helped me,” he said.

Most wonderful moment of my career in music journalism? Certainly among the most gratifying. To be even that much of a part of a performance by an NEA Jazz Master. . . That’s why I’d attended the ceremony, and that’s why I think the NEA ought to develop its jazz program so it doesn’t all revolve around this once-a-year celebration of excellence, so its continuous promotion of Jazz Masters and jazz itself gets the audience the Masters and jazz deserve and will reward.