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Chicago Jazz fest images, echoes

Roscoe Mitchell onscreen, presiding over The Art Ensemble of Chicago,
Pritzker Pavillion Millennium Park Chicago, 8/30/19
photo (c) Marc PoKempner

The 41st annual Chicago Jazz Festival has come and gone, as I reported for DownBeat.com in quick turnaround. I stand by my lead that the music was epic — cf. Marc PoKempner‘s beautiful image of the Art Ensemble of Chicago at Pritzker Pavillion, facing east towards Mecca just before their African percussion-driven orchestral set.

And epochal, yes: the Art Ensemble is 50 years old, as discussed in my radio piece for NPR’s Here and Now). Such longevity is remarkable for any jazz or improvisational unit but the more so as the AEC in its current incarnation is resolutely looking ahead, with younger players (Nicole Mitchell, Tomeka Reid and Christina Wheeler among them) taking the responsibilities of fallen members (co-founders Lester Bowie, Malachi Favors and Joseph Jarman now all deceased).

There was grumbling re the AEC set as having abandoned favorite themes and leaning towards surviving founder Roscoe Mitchell’s involvement with Western classical compositional and vocal traditions. I say hooey.

Of old repertoire “Dreaming of the Masters” ended the performance, and “Chi-Congo” was a charged percussion episode, organized by longtime AEC drummer Famadou Don MoyÃ©. There was little-instrument play, as introduced into jazz by the Art Ensemble, and so a broad dynamic range. Roscoe Mitchell focused on bells as well as his sopranino saxophone, blowing uninterrupted streams of notes. Two excellent trumpeters, Hugh Ragin and Fred Berry, supplanted by trombonist Dick Griffin, stood in for Lester Bowie; three bassists (Junius Paul, Jaribu Shahid and Sylvia Bolognese) were required to fill the pulsating role Malachi Favors originated.

AEC in action: from left, Roscoe Mitchell, Dick Griffin, Dudu Koate, Jaribu Shahid, Baba Attiba, Dee Alexander, Famadou Don MoyÃ©. Photo (c) Lauren Deutsch.

I admit, however, that my DownBeat report underplays the immense contribution of local musicians to the popular and aesthetic value of the Chicago Jazz Fest. It’s understandable the jazz-mag-of-record concentrates on nationally touring acts comprising well-known artists, but in fact this festival has its greatest impact immediately and down-the-road by presenting players from the extraordinarily energized current scene.

Several — including singer Dee Alexander, saxophonists Geoff Bradfield, Ari Brown, Rajiv Halim, Greg Ward and John Wojciechowski, trumpeters Russ Johnson, Rob Mazurek and Pharez Whitted, guitarist Mike Allemana, pianist Miguel de la Cerna, bassists Clark Sommers and Anton Hatwich, drummers Dana Hall, Avreeayl Ra, Mike Reed and Charles Rumback — showed up in more than one group, demonstrating flexibilities and abilities to attend to specific materials.

Reed’s obscurely named Jazz Institute of Chicago 50th Anniversary band actually brought together composers represented in his newly published Chicago “real book,” The City Was Yellow. (I wrote some artists’ bios for this volume, whose profits go to Jazz Institute of Chicago music education activities, but the greater value is the lead sheets of some 50 tunes written between 1980 and 2010). But that was only one of several deliberate celebrations of Chicago’s jazz past folded into its present.

Robert DeNiro as Al Capone, under the Chicago Cultural Center’s Tiffany dome

To walk into the Chicago Cultural Center (setting for key scenes in Brian dePalma’s The Untouchables), for instance, on a Thursday morning to the sound of trumpets is to be swept back 100 years, to the arrival of first generation New Orleans jazzmen eager to expand their audience. To hear the Fat Babies play classic jazz, as they do every Tuesday night at Al Capone’s long ago speakeasy the Green Mill, is to catch an old style imbued with new life. When Ernest Dawkins leads current members of the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians in a tribute to the Art Ensemble’s late Jarman, drummer Alvin Fielder and Saalik Ziyad, who died unexpectedly, very young, the conjunction of time is crystalized.

When guitarist George Freeman, 92, jokes with harmonica master Billy Branch, 67, with an enthusiastic contingent of Southport Records principals behind them, the continuity of distinctly Chicago music is manifest. When players in their 20s such as vibist Joel Ross, the Collier brothers (saxophonist Isaiah, bassist Micah and drummer Jeremiah) and drummer Isaiah Spencer, or a bit older like pianist Richard Johnson, saxophonists Sharel Cassity and Juli Woods, multi-instrumentalist Ben Lamar Gay, trumpeter Jaimie Branch, etc. take over the stage, tomorrow’s arrived.

The fact that a jazz festival happened 10 days ago doesn’t mean it’s over. People are still living with the reverberations. Those fading sounds have something to say about what comes next. In fact, thanks to WDCB-FM and WFMT’s connection to a global radio network, recordings live from the 41st Chicago Jazz Festival of Freddy Cole, bassist Christian McBride’s New Jawn, and the Art Ensemble of Chicago will be heard, in coming months, throughout the world.

Transcending Toxic Times with street poetry & music

My DownBeat article about Transcending Toxic Times, the compulsively listenable, critically political album by the Last Poets produced by electric bassist/composer Jamaaladeen Tacuma, includes a lot of quotes from my interviews with him and poet Abiudon Oyewale.

from left: Baba Donn Babatunde, Jamaaaladeen Tacuma (in front), Umar Bin Hassan, Abiodun Oyewole

I reproduced some of the searing imagery/lyrics on the recording, and provided background on how these men have been calling out American mendacy and hypocrity for half-a-century, as black street seers emerging in the late 1960s — before poetry jams, signifyin’ djs or rappers — backed by African-American percussion. But there’s more to tell.

Jamaaladeen Tacuma at Ornette Coleman’s birthday party;
photo by SÃ¡nta IstvÃ¡n Csaba

Firstly: Tacuma, who positions the declamatory truths amid truly music, often ebullient and genre-defying settings performed by his core collaborators, most of whom are Philadelphians, may still be best known for adding profound buoyancy to my hero Ornette Coleman‘s electrically amplified band Prime Time. But he’s been a recording artist under his own name since an inspired string of 1980s albums for Gramavision (now only Renaissance Man, second of five, is available as an import, but it’s a good one).

He’s backed vocalists from Wilhelmenia Wiggins Fernandez to Nona Hendrix, and recorded with James “Blood” Ulmer, Vernon Reid, Marc Ribot, Derek Bailey, Kip Hanrahan, Jerry Gonzalez, John Zorn and Arto Lindsay among a host of others. But when Jamaaladeen was working with Prime Time, he was simultaneously grounding poet Jayne Cortez’s unique Fire Spitters (with other Prime Time members including Ornette and Jayne’s son Denardo and the late guitarist Bern Nix). Cortez’s fierce declamations and clear-eyed perspective had a major impact on the bassist at a young age, and initiated his interests in creating music in interplay with words.

Since then, he recorded with Amiri Baraka, the Roots and Ursula Rucker, too. His own spoken project Brotherzone has continued for 20 years. All this experience informed how Tacuma approached Transcending Toxic Times.

“As a producer,” Tacuma went on, “you have to really get inside of the project, and that project shouldn’t be about you, it should be about the artist. So I familiarized myself with the material, I familiarized myself with them, I knew their live show, so when I cut our raw music, I knew the length of time the poems took, and I made sure we were within the time frame. I knew the tunes, I knew the pieces, I knew the rhythms, so when I did the music I made sure their recitations would fit just like a glove, right on top of it.”

With assistance in all things from his wife Rahima, Tacuma has produced the Outsiders Improvised & Creative Music Festival in Philadelphia for the past five years (I wrote for DownBeat about the 2018 edition). To clarify the origin of Transcending Toxic Times, Rahima sent me this information:

David Murray brought Jamaaladeen into the 40th Anniversary tour of the Last Poets in 2008. This happened before the Tongues on Fire date, which was a Black Panthers Tribute concert in 2010.
The 40th Anniversary was monumental event and the tour was arranged in collaboration with the filming of The Last Poets: Made in Amerikka by Claude Santiago. It marks the reunion of The Last Poets, accompanied by veritable musical legends like Ronald Shannon Jackson, Robert Irving III and Kenyatte Abdur-Rahman besides Jamaaladeen. Nearly 40 years after their separation, the members of this legendary group — the founding fathers of today’s hip-hop, rap, and slam — came together in Paris for a one-time concert at the 2008 Banlieues Blues Festival. This was significant since it was the first reunion ever and included all living original members of The Last Poets: Abiodun Oyewole, Babatunde, Dahveed Nelson, Felipe Luciano, Jalal Mansur Nuriddin, Umar Bin Hassan. Only Gylan Kain was unable to attend.
From 2008-2011 he did several tours in Europe with Abidodun, Umar and Babatunde. During this time Jamaaladeen began to form the musical ideas that come later during the first sessions. In 2011 when Jamaaladeen received the Pew Arts & Heritage Fellowship he used the money to start the production. He self-produced the project without any label funding. The Pew Grant was a vital component of the productions.

Besides all that, Jamaaladeen is one of the best dressers in musicdom. The verve of his clothing matches the vitality of his music. Perhaps paisley jackets can help us transcend toxic times.

Dr. John, Back in the Day and Blindfolded

Dr. John the Night Tripper — Mac Rebbanack, New Orleans’ musical fabulist, dead June 6 at age 77 — dazzled me at one of the first rock shows I recall attending, at Chicago’s Aragon Ballroom circa 1969.

Dr. John, Vienna 2011, photo by SÃ¡nta IstvÃ¡n Csaba

I was then enthralled by Gris-gris, his murky, obscure and carnivalesque debut album, having never heard anything like it (and I still haven’t — thanks perhaps to the great, less- heralded producer Harold Battiste). I was thrilled to Blindfold Test Mac for DownBeat in 1984. He came to listen in my grubby East Village apartment. Years later he rented the front flat on the floor of another EV building I lived in.

During my teenage listening I dug Dr. John’s croaking voice and scary stories, the background singers wailing on “I Walk On Gilded Splinters” (whatever that meant — their chorus has always

sounded to me like “Dear Operator” but there is no agreement at various internet posts about those lyrics),the sweet, dirty swing of “Mama Roux” and the swirling “danse” instrumentals with harpsichord, mandolin, flute or warped guitar leads, sudden otherworldly screeches, clattering drums.

At the Aragon back in the day, where I believe he headlined after sets by singer Tim Buckley with band and Linda Rondstadt with the Stone Poneys, Dr. John stood with guitar strapped on, “singing” and occasionally dipping into a satchel of “gris-gris powder,” dusty stuff (it didn’t seem to be either spiked or toxic) to toss on those of us standing close. The ensemble was motley; I remember another guitarist, dressed like a stereotype of Injun Joe in overalls, no shirt and a tall, broadbrimmed black hat sitting on the stage lip, and a small possibly Mexican electric bassist. I don’t recall the keyboard player or drummer, but there were two wasted-looking backup singers, one dark-skinned and shapely, the other lissom and pale unto pallid.

I followed Dr. John’s career through his immediate followup albums: Babylon which struct me as weird but not as mellifluous; The Sun, Moon and Herbs which was disappointing; redemption with Gumbo, and his emergence as an important member, promoter and preserver of the Crescent City’s glorious line of piano players.

That’s the role he wore well for the rest of his life and it fit just fine, though the New York Times obit reports he made his fortune writing jingles. Of his later recordings I recommend Dr. John: The Best Of The Parlaphone Years. And I’ll never forget stepping into the hall one day to get the mail and seeing in the vestibule, ringing his bell, those two backup singers from Gris-gris come to visit.

Black Chicago music fest producers: The costs of “free”

Chicago offers, surprisingly enough, many opportunities to catch exciting, accomplished and emerging music across genres, with oodles of concerts free of charge, meaning they have to funded by others than attendees. Our extraordinary summer events season launched last weekend with the city-sponsored, all-free 34th Annual Chicago Gospel Festival in Millennium Park and I’m psyched for the 36th Annual Chicago Blues Festival next weekend (planning to somehow dart off to the Printers Row Lit Fest, simultaneously at the opposite end of the Loop) as well as the Jazz Institute’s free three-day Birthday Bash June 28 to 30 (which is the day of the fifth annual Chicago Mariachi Festival) and summer’s end 41st annual Chicago Jazz Festival.

But this article at TheTriibe.com reports on a panel of South Side summer event presenters — specifically the Chosen Few Picnic and Festival and the Silver Room Sound System Block Party — whose successes have led to more financial challenges, without (they say) sufficient support from participating businesses, despite their event-generated profits. (Thanks to my editor Philip Montoro at the Chicago Reader for sending this around.)

Digging Our Roots videos, speakers inspire engagement

Billy Branch watches Sonny Boy (Rice Miller) Williamson II. Photo by Alan Frolichstein — Billy Branch watches Sonny Boy (Rice Miller) Williamson II;
photo by Alan Frolichstein

Nearly 100 Chicagoans (maybe some visitors?) watched Muddy Waters, Howlin’ Wolf, Junior Wells, Buddy Guy and other heroes of the blues on videos at the Cultural Center Thursday night (5/23/19), with harmonica star Billy Branch and WDCB program host Leslie Keros telling stories and participated in lively interplay with knowing attendees. It was the fifth Digging Our Roots: Chicago’s Greatest Hits “listening session” this spring, co-presented by the Jazz Institute of Chicago and Jazz Journalists Association.

Full disclosure: I sit on the JIC board, am president of the JJA, curated and moderated this series. Let that not invalidate this report! Because since cold last January, our once-a-month, free, public music show-and-tells have drawn a steadily growing, diverse and highly engaged audience to both revisit and discover anew jazz/blues favorites of the distant and recent past, pointing to culture of this city now.

I don’t say that to brag, just to confirm that small budget, low cost, all-ages-and-sophistication-level presentations can raise the profile of local musicians and journalists working together, expose successful (entertaining!) if perhaps forgotten artists to awe and encourage younger music lovers, and generate fine content for posting, such as Mashaun Hardy does for the Jazz Institute’s social media streams by video streaming portions of the proceedings, live — like below:

The economical nature of the production is thanks to the Cultural Center (overseen by the Mayor’s Department of Cultural Affairs and Special Events) providing space and staff, as well as the amazing banquet of video performances online (we watched clips selected by the panelists, including this dynamite performance by Billy Branch and Lurrie Bell with an early version of their band Sons of the Blues).

The Jazz Institute provides promotion online and a staffer or two who help with production, harvest attendee’s email address and sign up new members. I contribute my efforts on behalf of the JJA, and have enlisted members as speakers.

For instance, in April photographer/writer/visual artist and saxophonist Michael Jackson joined tenor saxist Juli Wood to celebrate the Chicago Tenor Tradition represented by Gene Ammons, Johnny Griffin and Von Freeman (pianist Michael Weiss, at the Jazz Showcase that week with saxist Eric Alexander to celebrate Grif’s birthday, sat in). John McDonough, a longtime writer for DownBeat and the Wall Street Journal, created a medley of historic versions of “King Porter Stomp” for a presentation of Jelly Roll Morton’s classics in February with roots Americana pianist Erwin Helfer performing two of Jelly’s tunes.

Veteran broadcaster Richard Steele, just hours back from a tour of Cuba in company of trumpeter Orbert Davis, talked with saxophonist Eric Schneider about the collaborations and careers of Earl “Fatha” Hines (with whom he’d toured) and Louis Armstrong. Ayana Contreras, producer for WBEZ and Vocalo Radio, provided in-depth commentary about the jazz influences and nuances of Curtis Mayfield, Minnie Riperton and Earth Wind and Fire in the March Digging Our Roots, which climaxed gloriously: as keyboardist Robert “Baabe” Irving III played EWF vamps on the Cultural Center’s piano, audience members started singing along, Maggie Brown (Oscar Brown Jr.’s daughter) rushed to the stage, grabbed a mic and started wailing — dancing erupted! It was grand.

At the May session, Branch spoke admiringly of the musicianship of his elders he had known, especially including Sonny Boy Williamson II, as slyly understated harmonica man Rice Miller called himself while touring from the Mississippi delta to the capitols of Europe, having appropriated repertoire and reputation of John Lee “Sonny Boy” Williamson, who had hit records but was murdered in 1948. Keros introduced an excerpt of a film of Maxwell Street, Chicago’s fondly remembered outdoor market at which Blind Arvella Grey, guitarist Robert Nighthawk, Big John Wrencher (don’t the names summon their images?) held forth.

One fan corrected my impression that Bill Broonzy was playing from his own doorstep — actually the clip was from a film shot by Pete Seeger. Another suggested that the way to return blues to popular music today is have a deejay/producer grab it for presentation to the EDM audience. Apparently that gent was unaware of previous attempts to turn that trick, such as the Elektric Mud Cats — Chuck D and Common with guitarist Pete Cosey — doing a number on Muddy Water’s “Mannish Boy.”

The next Digging Our Roots session, at 6 pm on Saturday June 29, highlights Chicago’s singers, starting with Dinah Washington, Oscar Brown Jr and Johnny Hartman. The panelists are Aaron Cohen — former DownBeat editor and author of the forthcoming Move On Up: Chicago Soul Music and Black Cultural Power — and singer Bobbi Wilsyn. The venue changes to the Logan Center, in Hyde Park on the edge of University of Chicago campus, which is hosting two free days of Jazz Institute programming, noon to 10 pm, as a 50th anniversary Birthday Bash reveling in the breadth of JIC and our local scene’s concerns and activities.

As part of the JIC’s year long 50th engagement and fundraising campaigns, a series of jazz movies programmed by the Chicago Film Society kicks off Monday, May 27 with Mickey One (starring Warren Beatty, directed by Arthur Penn, with music by Stan Getz, shot in Chicago) at the Music Box. Further flicks include Ornette: Made in America, Spike Lee’s Mo’ Better Blues and Les Blank’s Always for Pleasure.

The drift is: Mutually beneficial partnerships for free or modest-fee events featuring local celebs at readily accessible venues can advance the mission of medium to small not-for-profit arts groups (like the Jazz Institute and the Jazz Journalists Association). Knowledgable people who have insights into pre-recorded media can offer curious listeners and viewers an interactive experience (all Digging Our Roots sessions included q&a time) that bonds most everybody present, like any successful performance. I’m thrilled to present music I love to anyone who’s got the time and inclination to enjoy it and hope to continue this series in autumn in Chicago.

Billy Branch, Leslie Keros, Howard Mandel;
photo by Alan Frolichstein

Might I suggest Digging Our Roots-like programs as a model for arts journalists and arts organizations spotlighting arts-near-us, contemporary or historic? All you need is a public space, time, date, and speakers able to be enlightening about great content. That last is the main thing. We’re lucky here to have such enduring jazz and blues.

2018 jazz, blues and beyond deaths w/ links

Cecil Taylor, March 15, 1929 â€“ April 5, 2018, photo by SÃ¡nta IstvÃ¡n Csaba

Not a happy post, but a useful one: here are the hundreds of musicians and music industry activists who died in 2018, as compiled by photographer-writer Ken Franckling for the Jazz Journalists Association. Ken scoured local newspapers, the Jazzinstitut Darmstadt newsletter, AllAboutJazz.com, Wikipedia, the New York Times, Legacy.com, Rolling Stone, Variety, JazzTimes.com, blogs, listserves, Facebook pages and European publications. Links to their fuller biographies or obituaries are provided where possible.

Legacies of Music Makers

The deaths of multi-instrumentalist Joseph Jarman, best known as the face-painted shaman of the Art Ensemble of Chicago, and Alvin Fielder,

re-conceptualizing drummer, remind us that artists’ contributions to music extend beyond recordings and awards. Read my essay at NPR Music, commissioned by Nate Chinen of WBGO, on the enduring legacies of Jarman and Fielder, both founding members of the still thriving Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM) NY and Chicago).

Extraordinary Popular Delusions, Chicago free improv all-stars

Jim Baker, keys& synth; Brian Sandstrom, bass; Steve Hunt, drums; Ed Wilkerson, saxes, didgeridoo, oud, Mars Williams, reeds and toys — photo by Marc PoKempner

Keyboardist and synthesizer specialist Jim Baker has led the collective quartet Extraordinary Popular Delusions playing every Monday night in obscure Chicago venues for the past 13 years. My article on EPD, which features saxophonists Mars Williams and Edward Wilkerson Jr. (they switch off), multi-instrumentalist (bass, guitar, trumpet) Brian Sandstrom and percussionist/drummer Steve Hunt — all of whom have extensive creative music experience — was published today in the Chicago Reader — which I last wrote for in the 1980s.

Brian Sandstrom, bass and distorted guitar; Jim Baker, analog synth; Steve Hunt, drums.

Photos here by Marc PoKempner, from the free-form improv ensemble’s current regular gig, in the upstairs loft of the Beat Kitchen (they start around 9 pm, usually end by 11). No cover, no minimum (they put out a tip jazz), no limits — same as their interactive performance as part of painter Lewis Achenbach’s Jazz Occurrence at the Apple Store on Michigan Avenue, 6 pm. on January 24. See you there?

Labor Day jazz fests, starting with Chicago’s

Twilight, Millennium Park bandshell lawn; photo by Marc PoKempner

TheÂ 40th annual Chicago Jazz Festival, four days free to all of unfettered, usually joyous music held in beautiful downtown Millennium Park,Â started last night with stars of of the local scene celebratingÂ Â “Legends and Lions”.Â Add “Ancient to the Future”Â to set the tone for a weekend of exciting, civically-supported music here — and similar outpourings of jazz and blues — America’s vernacular musics — are offered throughout the U.S. this Labor Day weekend.

A quick search turns up music fests in the next days from Augusta, Georgia (Labor Day Jazz Weekend â€“ Candlelight For A Cause (August 31 â€“ September 2, 2018) to Stevens Point, Wisconsin (the Riverfront Jazz Festival, Sept 1 and 2), from JasAspenSnowMassÂ and the Vail Jazz PartyÂ (Aug 30 – Sept 3) to Pensacola, Florida’s Gold Coast Summer Fest – Jazz Edition.

I’ve blogged about Labor Day jazz blowouts before, and most I previously cited still exist. The Bedford, Texas Blues and Barbeque FestivalÂ is happening, for instance, as is theÂ Big Muddy Blues FestivalÂ on three stages over two days at Lacledeâ€™s Landing near St. Louisâ€™ Gateway Arch. The Grand Hotel of Mackinac Island continues its Labor Day Jazz WeekendÂ promotion. The DC Blues Society’s 29th annual Blues Fest is in a new venue, the Wunder Garten, on Labor Day itself.

There have beenÂ a few suspensions (Memphis) or transformations (Tanglewood in the Berkshires discontinued its festival, but Sept 1 will present the Wynton Marsalis Quartet featuring Ellis Marsalis, his father). New York City’s estimable, two-neighborhoodÂ Charlie Parker Jazz Festival was last weekend — but New York City, like Chicago and some other cities can fairly be said to always be jazz festing, so there are good options there or in New Orleans,Â L.A., Seattle, Portland OR, Austin, NashvilleÂ . . .

Orbert Davis – Gary/Chicago Crusader

In Chicago the City’s Department of Cultural Affairs and Special Events kicked it’s support up a notch for the 40th festival, which has traditionally been curated by a committee of the Jazz Institute of Chicago. DCASE improved the run-up to this year’s main events by offering financial support to venues that last week offered shows free-of-cover.* DCASE commissioner Mark Kelly also added Wednesday night to the previously scheduled four-day fest, having Orbert Davis of the Chicago Jazz Philharmonic organize a calvalcade program of trumpeters (Art Hoyle, Bobby Lewis), vibists (Stu Katz, Joel Ross, Thadeus Tooks), saxophonists (Ari Brown, Pat Mallinger), pianists (Bethany Pickens) and singers (Kurt Elling, Tammy McCann) hailing past heroes such as Louis Armstrong, Lionel Hampton, Von Freeman and Fred Anderson, Willie Pickens and Eddie Jefferson.

The Detroit International Jazz Festival, Chicago’s rival, likewise highlights its jazz history and connections –Â Alice McLeod Coltrane’s works performed by her saxophonist son Ravi; turns by saxphonist Tia Fuller, violinist Regina Carter in a 25th anniversary reconvening of the women’s quartet StraightAhead, fusion bassist Ralphe Armstrong, a Curtis Fuller-dedicated jam session, Joan Belgrave singing, a band representing Detroit-based record company Mack Avenue (and also out-of-towners: Esperanza Spalding, Teri Lynne Carrington, Dr. Lonnie Smith, Omar Sosa, Eddie Daniels, Pat Martino and so on).

Not to say Chicago is without “special guests” from elsewhere: singer Dianne Reeves, pianist Kenny Barron, orchestra leader Darcy James Argue, pianist Barry Harris with alto saxophonist Charles McPherson and fund saxist Maceo Parker are among the imports. Even so, headliners including Elling and Ramsey Lewis and the tribute to Muhal Richard Abrams are Chi-centric. Which is just fine, as the current talent is comparable to any based anywhere.

*I caught solo pianist Craig Taborn at Constellation; French horn player Vincent Chancey’s quartet with bass clarinetist Jason Stein, bassist Joshua Abrams and drummer Mike Reed at the Hungry Brain (Reed runs both the Brain and Constellation; he booked a “Dog Days” series across the two, which are a block distant from each other). At the Green Mill, Jeff Lindberg’s Chicago Jazz Orchestra played the finale of it’s summer Mondays, and Patricia Barber’s regular stand was full but as usual. At the Jazz Art Record Collective, alto saxist Greg Ward and trumpeter Russ Johnson played the front line of Miles Davis’ high-energy Live/Evil with appropriate fire, while keyboardist Rob Clearfield, guitarist Matt Gold, bassist Matt Ulery, percussionist Quin Kirchner,Â drummer Makaya McCraven all surprised me — Arthur Wright sketching throughout, Harvey Tillis taking photos. .Â ).

Hear some jazz and blues! BBQ and kiss summer goodbye.

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“In C” for performance on any laptop, thanks to LUTE

Terry Riley’s 1964 ingenious, joyful and warm composition “In C” can now be performed by anyone with a laptop, regardless of their previous musical or technological experience. On Sunday 8/12/18, the Loyola University Technology Ensemble (LUTE) organized a participatory concert of the sublime communitarian piece — which comprises 53 brief melodic figures, to be played in loose succession and synchronization, usually to the steady pulse of ringing Cs played on the piano to keep the beat –Â at Access Contemporary Music‘s third annual Thirsty Ears Festival.

LUTE has created a performance app, which is free to download and open-source, self-explanatory and very easy to use. It includes Riley’s original directions as well as the notation, but every phrase is available by clicking a button to make it sound, and another to advance to the next (or previous) melodic cell. Participants can individually (and instantaneously) select among about 40 pre-set voicings that replicate instruments, synthesizer patches and common sounds; move the figures up and down among three octaves; shift them by an eighth note, or slow to half-time.

According to Riley, any number of people can perform “In C” (though he suggests 35 as optimal)Â using any instrumentation. Besides the classic original recording from 1968 released by Columbia, there are a dozen versions of “In C” on Youtube, including one by New York City’s Bang on a Can chamber ensemble and a lusciousÂ version from Mali. Every performance is different, but it’s hard for anyone making an honest attempt to fail at establishing the composition’s spritely spirit, intriguing layers and gradual changes.

A handout provided by LUTE (which is directed by David B. Wetzel and Griffin Moe) explained, “‘In C’ is an exploration of a musical process and an opportunity to listen and explore various combinations and musical interactions as the piece unfolds . . . In our version we wanted to see what would happen if everyone in the ensemble played an instrument that required no particular skill to operate, leaving the players attention fully available instead to the task of listening and collaborating with others.”

Using the app turned out to be a delightful experience. I was among about a dozen laptop “players” contributing our sounds to this afternoon event in the airy chapel of All Saint’s Episcopal Church (simultaneously on a stage outdoors pianistsÂ Matthew Hagle andÂ Ariella Mak Nieman playedÂ Faure nocturnes, Chopin Ã©tudes, and pices by Bach, Haydn, Brahms, Tchaikovsky and Debussy; an all-ages audience roamed around two blocks of vendors and sponsors’ tables). Since I hadn’t brought an auxiliary speaker, I had to listen hard just to hear what was coming from my MacBook Air. Indulging my customary

contrarian jazz-oriented sensibility, I kept trying to smear the figures across the pulsating time-frame, or fit them into off-beat spaces for syncopated or time-delayed effect.Â I hope that didn’t disturb other participants, or betray Terry Riley’s concept, and I don’t think it did. “In C” is marvelously capacious music, rewarding to hear and even more so to be part of. With LUTE’s app, you might enlist friends to sit for a bit and give it a spin.

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Synth and-sushi bar, Chicago (future jazz, present tense)

K-rAd and his Euro-rack at Sushi Dokku; photo by Marc PoKempner

K-rAd freely improvised and spontaneously composed an original, pulsing, burbling, chiming, floating and ripping, multi-layered, deep and flowing funky-bassed, percussion-lively suite over about three hours last night (7/25/18), using his elaborate, sound-unboundÂ Euro-rackÂ synthesizer setup to stir, smooth and spice social interactions in a seemingly unlikely Chicago venue for such a thing.

DownÂ an alley, through a back door (see the bright red arrow) down in a basement ofÂ Sushi DokkuÂ in Chicago’s fashionable W. Randolph Street dining district, a small crowd of not-necessarily music-seeking patrons seemingly in their late 20s sat at booths or a horseshoe bar sipping sake, picking at small plates, chatting, flirting, a couple necking. They were clearly easy, maybe pleased and perhaps somehow moved by the electronic music, which filled the room actively, vividly. This wasn’t subtle Eno-esque ambiance, more like Terry Riley’s mirrors onÂ Rainbow in Curved Air reflectingÂ shards of guitar-keyboards fromÂ In A Silent Way with James Jamerson‘s loping Motown dance lines underneath and marimba, gongs, super-fast figures, anything else of sonic possibility liable to bubble up or flash forth any moment. Often yet not always there was a perky, steady beat and streaming sequencer figures but no other recurring structure to speak of, hence no expectations, and no guidelines (words, “melody,”Â song form, defined harmonic field) for listeners to grab onto.

Attendees may not, however, have been trying to grab on or listening at all, so much as being in their own space, oblivious if still possibly influenced by their sonic surroundings. Put me in mind of the mythic days (before my time) when big, showy Hammond B-3 organs ruled at neighborhood corner taverns. As such, this solo synth show, orchestrally even more grandiose, felt like future jazz, present tense.

under Sushi Dokku, photo: Marc PoKempner

K-rAd aka Chris Grabowski is the expert soundman of the Green Mill, a jazz haven — his deft attentions have served not only an elite of U.S. musicians but also the Mill’s every-night, all year ’round audience. He understands the ebb and flow dynamic between performer and audience, but wasn’t doing anything specifically to shape his soundtrack beyond his own impulse/whim. “It nice to play here,” Grabowski said, “they seem to like it,” with a sweep of hand encompassing everyone in the joint, and he’s happy it’s a regular gig — he’s here every other months (“Someone else doing modular things on off-months, I think.”). It doesn’t advertise, though.Â K-rAd can most easily be found on Facebook, but is modest about upcoming appearances there, too.Â

He kept an eye on the room while focusing mostly with his ears on the waveforms coursing, modulating, filtered and reverberating at his fingertips’ not very dramatic patch, button-push and dial (sorry I didn’t take an inventory of Grabowski’s equipment, which he mentioned took more than two years of acquisition and construction, but it may be proprietary information, anyway). The nearly palpable physicality of electronic music, as I heard it, made the air kind of tingly. (But then, I’ve been spending a fair amount of time lately obsessed with a Korg Minilogue). My pals and I split a shrimp tempura, a flight of assorted sakes and can of Kikusui Aged Funaguchi. Yes, I’d go back.

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Cecil Taylor, dead at 89, as celebrated when he’d turned 80

Cecil Taylor in 2014, photo by SÃ¡nta IstvÃ¡n Csaba

The brilliant, challenging, perplexing and incomparable pianist/improviser/composer Cecil Taylor died April 5, 2018, at age 89. Here’s what I wrote of him to celebrate his 80th birthday:

Cecil Taylor, unique and predominant, 80 years old 3 27 09

Cecil TaylorÂ is the world’s predominant pianist by virtue of his technique, concept and imagination, and one of 20th-21st Century music’s magisterial modernists. A figure through whose challenges I investigate the avant garde inÂ Miles Ornette Cecil — Jazz Beyond Jazz,Â he turned 80 on March 25 (or maybe on the 15th), and tonight, Saturday, March 28, “Cecil Taylor Speaks Volumes”Â — and presumably performs solo — Â at Merkin Concert Hall.

Taylor belongs to no school but his own yet has influenced and generated a legion of followers on piano and every other instrument, too. HeÂ identifies with the jazz tradition, many of whose most ardent adherents have regarded him since his 1950s debut insultingly, incredulously, quizzically, disdainfully, reluctantly, regretfully or not at all. But he does not limit himself, or his defininition ofÂ the jazz tradition: he draws from all music’s history and partakes of the whole world’s culture.

He hasÂ earned significant critical acclaim —

“…Cecil Taylor wants you to feel what he feels, to move at his speed, to look where he looks, always inward. His music asks more than other music, but it gives more than it asks.”Â – Whitney Balliett

— and an international coterie of serious listeners, yet he has been ignored, feared or rejected by most people. Many pianists with more conventional approaches to their instrument, composition, improvisation and interpretation enjoy greater acceptance and financial reward.

Jazz, at least, has tried to come to terms with Taylor, whereas America’s contemporary classical music world, to which he has has just as much claim of status, has shown not a bit of interest. Taylor embraces atonality but bends it to grandly romantic purposes; he is a master of polyrhythms, counter-rhythms, implicit and suspended time, which he deploys in lengthy, complicated yet spontaneous structures; he is a bold theorist and seldom acquiescent, though frequently collaborative. There is simply no other musician like him, although he has a few peers — with most of whom he’s concertized and recorded.

It seems inadequate to merely wish Cecil Taylor “happy birthday.” How should we celebrate?Â Here,Â from Ron Mann’s 1981 documentary Imagine the Sound, is a fine clip of the Maestro.

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Is NYC (still) capital of jazz?

The early January concurrence of the Jazz Connect conference, the annual convention of APAP (Association of Performing Arts Presenters), Global Fest and Winter JazzFest makes a good case forÂ Manhattan being the capital of jazz-and-beyond.

Shabaka and the Ancestors, London-South African band breaking out via Winter JazzFest at (le) Poisson Rouge; photo by Jati Lindsay

It’s inarguably true that creative sound-organizing with improvisation and rhythm is world-wide, and our native version — jazz and its derivatives –Â thrives throughoutÂ inÂ the US, even in placesÂ it’s overlooked. And the record biz centralized in NYC, which fed this music’s market segment from the ’20s into the ’00s, is a blipÂ of its past. But still, New York City . . .

The annual Jazz Connect conference ranÂ Jan. 5 and 6, with some 1000 musicians, their managers, agents, labels, publicists, presenters, broadcasters and critics filling meeting rooms and even the chapel of St. Peter’s Church. Produced by the Jazz Forward Coalition (Peter Gordon of Carmel CA’s Thirsty-Ear Records, director) in partnership with JazzTimes (principally viaÂ Lee Mergner, publisher of the Braintree MA-based magazine and website) with special assistance fromÂ Don Lucoff of DLMedia (of suburban Philadelphia and the PDX Jazz Festival in Portland OR), Jazz Connect is the sole US get-together for jazz professionalsÂ who aren’t educators (they met the same weekend, this year in New Orleans, via the Jazz Education Network (JEN)).

I must have schmoozed with half of those at Jazz Connect, including friends and associates from Albuquerque (Tom Guralnick of the Outpost), Austin (pianist Peggy Stern, splitting her time in Kingston NY), the Bay Area (promotions and public relations specialist Marshall Lamm), Baltimore (writer Geoff Himes, JJA board member Don Palmer), Boston (Berklee student and JazzBoston newsletter editor Grace-Mary Burega),Â BoulderÂ (Peter Poses, dj at KRFC), Columbia MO (Peter’s brotherÂ Jon Poses, ofÂ the We Always Swing jazz series), Â Honolulu (Stephanie Castillo, filmmaker, director of Night Bird Song about the late Thomas Chapin), Los Angeles (Zev Feldman of Resonance Records), New Haven (musician and writer Allen Lowe), Richmond VA (broadcaster Josh Jackson),Â Rochester NY (Derrick Lucas, Jazz90.1), Paris (journalist and radio show host Alex Dutilh), Pittsburgh (journalist Mike Shanley),Â Portland OR (Matt Fleeger of KMHD), Seattle (Earshot’s John Gilbreath), Tucson (Yvonne Ervin; the Charles Mingus Festival and Memorial Park in Nogales, AZ is among her manyÂ works), Washington DC (Rusty Hassan of WPFW,Â Â Willard “Open Sky Jazz” Jenkins, NEA jazz specialist Katja von Schuttenbach), Wilmington (writer Eugene Holley),Â Ypsilanti (WEMU’s Linda Yohn) —

— and of course many New Yorkers (journalist/educator David Adler, producer Todd Barkan, singer E.J. Decker,Â Jim “JazzPromo Works” Eigo, Barney Fields of HighNote/Savant Records, Albany/Nippertown jazz journo J Hunter, baritone sax star Howard Johnson, Jeff Levenson of Half Note Records, Village Voice and JazzTimes writer Aidan Levy, Jason Olaine of Jazz at Lincoln Center, pianist Roberta Picket (hanging out with saxophonist Virginia Mayhew),Â Mark Ruffin of Sirius/XM Radio, singer Kendra Shank, trumpeter-producer David Weiss, pianist-educator Eli Yamin, . . way too many to name) and fellow Chicagoans (saxophonist/AACM chair Ernest Dawkins, Hot House presenter Marguerite Horberg,Â writer/radio producer Neil Tesser) . . .

Many attendees, after hours ofÂ concentrated schmoozing, went directly to play or hear music, at one of the couple dozen venues detailed in the admirably comprehensive performance calendar of The New York City Jazz Record.

Harlem party — Wayne Escoffery holding his tenor sax. Photo by Alain Biltereyst.

On the Thursday night I went with fellow Jazz Journalists Association members Angelika Beener and Ted Panken to hearÂ L.A.-based pianist-composer-arranger John Beasley‘s star-studded Monk’estra at Dizzy’s Club in Jazz at Lincoln Center — beautifully detailed, original expositions of centennial celebrant Thelonious Monk‘s indestructible melodies (chatted with heir/drummer T.S. Monk there, as well as alto saxist Ted Nash — hear his Presidential Suite (Eight Variations on Freedom) and Jazzweek publisher Ed Trefzger)– then cabbed to the Harlem apartment of Azerbijian-born pianist-composer Amina Figarova and her husband flutist Bart Platteau, originally from Belgium for a party/jam session thatÂ included tenor saxist Wayne Escoffery, pianist Bertha Hope, bassist Ark Ovrutski, guitarist Roni Ben-Hur and 15-year-old singerÂ Alexis Morrast giving lustrous voice to “My Funny Valentine.” Talked at length to Jim Wadsworth, presenter at Cleveland’s Nighttown, and photographer Gulnara Khamatova, one of the photographers for Winter JazzFest.

Friday Jan 6 was the first night of the WJF marathon, performances from dozens of new and emerging artists/ensembles from 6 pm to 2 pm simultaneously in 13 downtown venues. The clubs and concert hallsÂ are no longer grouped all on or near Greenwich Village’s main drag Bleecker Street — they’re now dispersed as far east at NuBlu on Ave. C, as far south as Bowery Ballroom at the edge of Chinatown, and west to S.O.B.’s on 7th Avenue South. Getting everywhere might be possible by bike, scooter or Segway but I ping-ponged only from 13th Street, where buildings of the New School offered variously sized stages, to (le) Poisson Rouge and Subculture on Bleecker, 10 blocks down.

My aim was to hear music not likely to be in Chicago soon, and I started with trombonist/composer/conductor Craig Harris‘ Breathe, which collectedÂ some 35 players to embody the JazzFest’s stated mission toÂ “explicitly support social and racial justice by presenting socially engaged artist who have urgent andÂ beautiful musical messages to share.”

Singer Alexis Morrast, photo by Alain Bilteryst

Harris did this in a suite-like structure by featuring soloists – first up, Zusaan Kali Fasteau on ney — and spontaneously conjuredÂ backdrops, sometimes drawing from his established compositions (the finale has been recorded as “Lovejoy”). Individualistic expression was implicit in this plan, a diversity of personal statements that did not detract from overall unity of purpose. Closeup portraitsÂ projected behind the ensemble emphasized the humanness of those imperiled by racial discrimination — which is everyone.

On the advice of publicist Matt Merewitz, I hurried to Subculture for trombonist Jacob Garchik’s Ye Olde, with guitarists Mary Halvorson, Ava Mendoza and Jonathan Goldberger, plus drummer Vinnie Sperrazza. Garchik has earned his reputation as a skilled and wittyÂ composer-arranger. In this very loud setting, he outlined minimalisticly short riffs familiar from rock/r&b/pop classics, freeing the guitars to rampage wall-of-sound style. Mendoza is a find, and Ye Olde, which seeemsÂ highly tourable, mayÂ appeal to audiences that aren’t used to or interested in “jazz” per se. Maybe even for some who are. I stayed for a tune by singer Somi, accompanied by a quartet fronted by guitarist Liberty Ellman — also not for me.

Craig Harris conducts Breathe; photo by Gulnara Khamatova

Back in New School land, I caught trumpeter Paul Smoker with pianist Uri Caine, bassist Mark Helias and drummer Clarence Penn reeling a far abstraction back into its basis in the standard “All the Things You Are,” and then a highlight: Chicago drummer Mike Reed’s Flesh and BoneÂ septet, with wild spokenwordsman Marvin Tate, alto saxophonist Greg Ward, bass clarinetist Jason Stein, cornetist Ben Lamar Gay, tenor saxist Tim Haldeman and bassist Jason Roebke showing how high energy blowing can be framed by riffs and rhythms for fun in balance with frenzy. Hot stuff — look forÂ Flesh and Bone’s album in March-April. Nightcap was Arturo O’Farrill’s quintet with saxophonist Roy Nathanson, new-to-me trumpeter Billy Mintz, bassist Brad Jones giving a lot of juice toÂ Monk music.

Shabaka Hutchings at (le) Poisson Rouge, photo by Jati Lindsay

Saturday began at ECM Records‘ stage, with bassist Michael Formanek’s quartet of alto saxophonist Tim Berne, pianist Craig Taborn and drummer Gerald Cleaver. Their interactions struck me as densely detailed, kinetic and self-referential. Hastening through slush to (le) Poisson Rouge, I caught Shabaka & The Ancestors, based in London, rooted in South Africa, and poised to emerge from their North American debut opening a sold-out show for Pharoah Sanders as next to enjoy the new audience popularity of, say, Kamasi Washington. Tenor saxist Shabaka Hutchings has a big yet essentially easy-going affect, matched and poked by altoist Thunzi Mvubu, with Siyabonga Mthembu providing vocals, often wordless. There was an appealing aspect of chant to their tunes, which flowed from calm to intensity and back; rhythm by bassist Ariel Zomonsky and drummer Tumi Mogorosi was strongly African in tone — authentically so, never outlandish. Subsequently I’ve listened to they album Wisdom of Elders,Â distinguished by warm, swinging soulfulness, the addition of a trumpeter and a fine keyboardist Nduduzo Makhathini, and spare useÂ of electronic effects.

As I’d written a DownBeat record review of Cuban pianist Harold Lopez-Nussa‘s El Viaje and wasÂ only six snowy blocks from Subculture,Â I wentÂ to hear him live. His trio hadÂ his brother Ruy Lopez-Nussa on drums and electric bassist Julio Cesar Gonzalez — “Lopez-Nussa always has the best bassists,” connoisseur of Cuban cultureÂ Ned Sublette remarked before they went on, and by referenceÂ to Gonzalez, he’s right. The three were spirited, but theirÂ material seemed anodyne — a reaction which tells meÂ I’ve heard enough music. And having spoken inÂ passing with folks including percussionist Adam Rudolph, drummer Hamid Drake, guitarist Kenny Wessel, Kent Devereaux (ex-Cornish Institute, now president of New Hampshire InstituteÂ of Art), Seattle music journalist Paul deBarros, writer Bill Milkowski, composer-orchestra leader Darcy James Argue, ECM publicist Tina Pelikan, storyteller Mitch Myers, former film producer Bill Horberg (now working with Karl Berger’s Creative Music Studio), photographer Alan Nahagian, Tom Greenland (author of Jazzing: New York City’s Unseen Scene) and Vancouver Coastal Jazz festival’s Rainbow Robert, among others, I was exhausted soÂ called it quits early, missing much. Didn’t even try Sunday for Globalfest, the showcase of international acts eager to tour our country, at Webster Hall. By then I was eager to fly home.

The capital is, after all, where people come togetherÂ for business. It’s not necessary to live there. I lived in NYC for more than 30 years, and it’s fun to return but I don’t miss beingÂ there daily now. Is it the capital? Despite its considerable challenges — costs of travel, accommodation, transportation, meals, at the very least — Â no other placeÂ seems so hospitable for the gathering of jazz people. Yet we are everywhere, and it’s vital we listen to what surrounds us.

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