Harris Eisenstadt, the subtle and substantive drummer/percussionist/composer, celebrates two decades of investigations and his recent projects at The Stone in NYC Sept. 1 through 6 with a circle of collaborators whose excellence seems to preclude their commerciality. That ain’t right, as Eisenstadt and the distinctly creative musicians in his ensembles (including Canada Day and Golden State, both on the Stone residency schedule) make music that’s intriguing and melodious. Why originality, a broad and deep musical vocabulary plus ease with form doesn’t grab listeners immediately is a question that’s never been satisfactorily answered.

Eisenstadt’s got rhythm, a natural sense of how time flows, how to express and enhance pulses swinging, rocking, grooving or in clavé. But rather than relying on inherent talent, he’s studied in West Africa and Cuba, and for the first set Wed. 9/2 he’ll perform Lucumi repertoire associated with the syncretic Santería religion on batá drums with John Amira, one of his teachers, and Lorne Watson.

Harris is, however, much more than a beat man. He loves to construct multi-layered, richly harmonized pieces for groups made up of such inspired improvisers as saxophonists Tony Malaby and Matt Bauder, trumpeter Nate Wooley, trombonist Jeb Bishop and vibraphonist Chris Dingman. He explains some of his thought and processes in a video about Canada Day, perhaps his signature band:

(Bassist Jason Roebke joins Bishop, Malaby and Eisenstadt in Old Growth Forest, playing two sets 9/1; bassist Adam Hopkins joins Bauder, Wooley, Dingman and Eisenstadt 9/3 celebrating the release of Canada Day IV at 8 pm, and Bishop, flutist Anna Webber, tubaist Dan Peck fill out the Canada Day Octet for a rare convening that night at 10).

He also enjoys experimenting with instrumentation, writing for the new music band Tilt Brass which features slide trumpet with alto, tenor and bass trombones (for the 10 pm set on 9/2). Mivos String Quartet gives the world premiere of his composition “Whatever Will Happen That Will Also Be” at 10 pm on 9/5.

Eisenstadt is daring enough to switch personnel mid-gig: Golden States plays two sets on 9/4, the first with clarinetist Ben Goldberg and cellist Marika Hughes joining Harris and improvising bassonist Sara Schoenbeck (his wife), the second with violinist Sam Bardfeld replacing Goldberg and cellist Chris Hoffman taking over for Hughes. He readily engages with open improv, performing with the fervent West Coast-resident (ex-New Yorker) reeds virtuoso Vinny Golia on 9/5, and with Adam Rudolph on percussion, Sylie Courvoisier on piano at 8 pm, James Hurt at 10 on 9/6.

Turning 40 on Sept. 4, Eisenstadt may be considered at the top of his game, but he’s continuously reaching for more. Now’s the time to see and hear him — so you’ll be ready for what else this steadily productive musician will arrive at and offer.

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Marc PoKempner may be best known for his photos of pre-presidential Barack Obama, Chicago’s reform mayor Harold Washington and the blues — but his jazz photography illuminates what we hear by refreshing how we see it.

Here are some of his complex compositions in bracing color from the Pritzker Pavilion stage in Millennium Park, incorporating “The Screen” that blows up live video of the events, such as performances in the city’s current free-admission Made In Chicago: World Class Jazz series (programmed for the past 11 years by the Jazz Institute of Chicago, as it has the free Chicago Jazz Festival (coming right up, September 3 through 6).

Alto saxophonist Steve Coleman‘s sterling performance Aug. 6 was the culmination of his three-week Chicago residency (yet another Jazz Institute project)  during which he and colleagues from his octet set down to show what they do and invite others to join in at South Side school rooms, community facilities and the co-presenting University of Chicago’s Logan Center for the Arts. Coleman, b. 1956, grew up here and became a professional under the street-wise guidance of saxophonist Von Freeman; since 1979 he’s been an East Coast resident and world-traveller, prolific, exploratory, well-connected as well as independent and highly influential. In 2014 he was financially rewarded with prestigious and generous fellowships from the MacArthur, Guggenheim and Doris Duke foundations, but money needn’t change everything. Coleman is proceeding artistically as he has for some 35 years.

For Made in Chicago, with bandmates trumpeter Jonathan Finlayson, tenor saxophonist Maria Grande, guitarist Miles Ozaki, bassist Antony Tidd (sometimes spelled by Chicagoan Mark Harmon), drummer Sean Rickman and frequent associate Chicago guitarist and project co-coordinator Mike Allemana, Coleman wove layers of melodic lines over synchronized, syncopated, shifting, cyclical rhythms. It was quite possible to get lost in the depths. The saxophonist-composer is not, however, purposefully obscure, and launched the summer’s weekly park concerts playing bebop standards his own way, as well as chant-like riffs that tugged and tumbled with irresistible back-beats and one piece I think was a semi-classical air from an early 20th century operetta. Mesmerizing.

On Aug. 13 Greg Ward, a Chicago-bred rising star alto saxophonist a generation younger than Coleman, assembled a crack ensemble to play his swirling version of Charles Mingus’ Black Saint and the Sinner Lady, an album from 1963 originally imagined for dance. Onye Ozuzu‘s choreography for a troupe of physically diverse but all highly energized and dramatic movers seemed inspired and perfectly attuned to/interactive with the music. This performance was well-documented — but it should be repeated, and will travel well. Ward lives in NYC now; Ozuzu teaches at Chicago’s Columbia College.

PoKempner’s vision is also vivid and informative in the most straightahead settings. Fireburning veteran alto saxophonist Gary Bartz helped celebrate Charlie Parker Month at the Jazz Showcase, delighting in the Chicago all-stars who he’d had one rehearsal with: Pianist Willie Pickens, bassist Larry Gray and drummer Ernie Adams. See the interplay, hear the moment?

 

 

 

 

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Where will a new jazz audience arise? How about China? Not only have plans been announced to open a Blue Note Jazz Club in Beijing — since 2012, Hong Kong-based entrepreneur Jason Lee has helped pave the way by booking big name and somewhat lesser-known instrumentalists for tours reaching into “second tier cities” (populations between three and seven million) across the vast country. Lee’s most recent import was Billboard chart-topping, oft-Grammy nominated, 25th-year-of-career-celebrating contemporary jazz saxophonist Dave Koz.

“I don’t know if I’ll ever fully recover from my first time in mainland China,” says  Koz, who performed five concerts in nine days last May in front of crowds averaging about 1000 — and helped establish a Guinness World Record for the Largest Saxophone Ensemble ever convened to perform, with 1867 uniformed student players blowing on “Auld Lang Syne.”

“It was an adventure, to say the least,” the 52-year old Koz continues. He seems to be an adventurer by nature, having among other distinctions been a syndicated radio and television show host, running his own cruise company and leading The Emeril Lagasse Show band (Dave Koz’s Kozmos). “We operated with the pioneer spirit – saying ‘Whatever we encounter, we’ll face it with a smile.'”

He reports that the tour with his Los Angeles-based quintet, support staff of three and Chinese guest artists was almost all smiles. “I had no expectations because I’d never been there and had no deep information about what to expect in advance,” he says. “In two or three cities it became clear to us — and we said to each other — that we were the first American jazz musicians ever there.”

Like many jazz musicians, Koz is a seasoned traveler. He cites no hardships, speaking only of good food and warm encounters with generous local people. His troupe eased into action attracting some 300 attendees to a free promotional q&a session in Tsinghua University with the help of Du Yinjiao (“Mr. Du”), chairman of the China Saxophone Association and organizer of widespread sax “clubs” advancing adoption and appreciation of the instrument. A player of the entire sax family who guested on tenor at most of the tour’s stops, Mr. Du is, according to Koz, “a soft-spoken man, probably in his early 50s. I got to know him through the music.”

Their first date was 400 miles southeast of Beijing, appearing for an audience of about 1000 in a banquet hall in Zhaoyuan (considered a “third tier” city) in Shandong. Then Koz and co. flew 500 miles southwest to Zhengzhou, Henan for the daytime sax convention and evening concert for 1000 at the Grand Theater; 300 miles almost due west to Xian, Shaanxi for an auditorium packed with another thousand listeners; 450 miles north by northwest to Yinchuan, Ningxia for a slightly smaller (900) audience in another auditorium; 275 miles south by southwest to a blues and jazz club/restaurant holding some 250 people in Lanzhou, Gansu, and about 1000 miles from that center of China back east to Beijing.

Koz been turned on to this opportunity by guitarist Chieli Minucci of Special EFX, which Lee brought to China in 2012.Ramping up  efforts he’d begun around 2000, Lee introduced Lee Ritenour to the country in 2013, and John McLaughlin in 2014. He’s also brought over saxophonist Antonio Hart and violinist Christian Howes, and scheduled upcoming tours for tenor saxophonist Sean Nowell, pianist Lynne Arriale and guitarist Nir Felder.

“Jason was our promoter representative over there,” Koz says. “His operating strategy was to go in from a saxophone perspective, instead of promoting me as a pop or jazz artist. The saxophone is incredibly popular all across China.  At least 50 per cent of the audience was saxophone-playing kids and their parents. It’s a great shot in the arm to see how the youth are embracing the instrument. People have a little money now; it’s an ancient country but feels brand new, too. People have means where they didn’t have it before. For young adults having kids, their socialization requires that the kid take up musical instrument. It may be violin, guitar, piano, but most often the choice is a sax.”

Koz has just issued Collaborations: 25th Anniversary Collection, an anthology of performances with notables including Stevie Wonder, Herb Alpert, Rod Stewart, Luther Vandross, Stevie Nicks, Keb’ Mo’ and Barry Manilow. In China his collaborators besides Mr. Du included mainland player Dong Yao and Simon Wu, a younger (mid-30s) player from Shanghai.

“They have their own style of playing,” Koz acknowledges. “Chinese music has a different vibe. The saxophone is obviously not indigenous to that region – and interestingly, the basic tuning is different. Wu and Du play the Chinese tuning that’s not A = 440; their standard is a little sharper. Their music feels very authentic – they are very emotional players, putting a lot of heart into it, so the music feels intense and deliberate. We did some Western and some Chinese music together. To do so, I tried to get in their heads, and vice versa.”

It was at least as daunting to meet the regiment of saxophonists with whom he performed in Zhengzhou.  “I didn’t understand what was happening until I saw it,” he recalls. “Nearly 2000 sax players, all wearing matching outfits and laminates with my picture on it! Because of our coming to town they were going to try to set a new Guinness World Record playing a song together –- and they did! This is one of the sweetest things I’ve ever experienced. They played a Chinese song as well as ‘Auld Lang Syne,’ and produced a sound never heard before with that many sax players. It was beautiful, it touched me so deeply that something like this would take place in front of me. And a lot of those kids came to our show that night.

“In the U.S. we’ve seen it all, done it all – things have to be so shocking to register — but to be surrounded by kids and in China, with everything new, being discovered, there’s an innocence and simplicity in that. Throughout, Mr. Du and Simon Wu were always observing us, as if taking notes. They were embracing Western culture to learn about what might stick.

“Of course they have their own rich culture, thousands of years old. And communication could be difficult. There was not a lot of English being spoken, and much as I try to learn languages when I travel, I found Mandarin just about impossible. That said, there’s no doubt in my mind that mainland China will be a place many, many American artists will go to play. They’ve spent a long time listening to Western music -– Kenny G is bigger there than sliced bread. They’re listened to a lot of other American sax players, too, taking from them what they feel good about, adding their own flavors for a sound that feels right in the pocket for that market.

“It’s such a difference — such a huge country with such a huge population, four or five billion — that there are regional differences, just like here. But there are great opportunities everywhere. It wasn’t all easy. There were days we didn’t know if we were going to have a show because of unexpected issues arising about the venue or the equipment. Still, overall, we had a great, great time. And people knew my music! I never expected that. Kids knew my music, seven- and eight-year-olds! That was mind-boggling.”

Having established a base for Koz, Jason Lee is eager to have him return. “We’re talking about maybe go back once a year,” the saxophonist says. “We did something similar in Japan, and got great results from the effort. Once we started to go, in 2004 or 2005, it became an open door for us and we’ve developed a wonderful relationship with audiences in the country. This May trip also took us to Jojakarta, Indonesia, where I’ve been going for 20 years. They have the Java Jazz Fest there in March annually. It’s one of the biggest fests on the planet, attracting all young people for entertainment by international acts.

“It’s amazing to see how popular our music is outside the U.S.,” Koz muses. “What we encountered was sometimes inspiring, sometimes difficult, sometimes otherworldly. But that’s the beauty of music: that it can take you around the world.”

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An outpouring of media tributes has followed my hero Ornette Coleman’s death at age 85 on June 11. But many commentators writing of his music — including good ones like Marc Myers in Jazz Wax and Ben Ratliff of the New York Times — have focused mostly on Coleman’s breakthrough recordings from 1958 and ’59, overshadowing music from the last 45 years of his life. This is unfortunate, considering Ornette was an artist of ever-evolving and expanding creativity. So here are ten albums — not in chronological order – offering ready entry to enjoyment of Ornette’s later music. Apologies if they’re hard to come by.

Soapsuds, Soapsuds – Ornette plays tenor not alto in duets with Charlie Haden, and their complementary lines are easy to follow. Some may remember the dryly satiric late ’70s tv soap opera “Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman” — its theme is elevated here.

Science Fiction — Two warmly beautiful vocals by Asha Puthli, the funk-spoof “Rock the Clock” and sturdy Coleman compositions “Street Woman,” “Civilization Day,” “Law Years” (lawyers?), arranged for larger ensemble but also featuring characteristically inspired, alternatingly beseeching and merry Ornette playing his alto.

Skies of America — Not much counterpoint in the only available version of Ornette’s symphony, but his orchestral themes are stated clearly and he blows over/through it all.  Currently on cd paired with Science Fiction in one package.

Of Human Feelings — OC embraced the electric guitars of rock/soul/pop in the early ’70s, and again ignited negativity from conservative listeners – even those who’d come to like what he’d done 20 years before. This album is full of short, snappy r&b tunes, OC is right outfront and the grooves are infectious.

In All Languages — Trying to respond to those fans who could dig his acoustic quartet but didn’t get amplified Prime Time — and vice versa — OC had both ensembles play the same set of catchy songs.

Song X — A strong and empathic collaboration initiated by guitarist Pat Metheny, eager to connect to OC, which he does (plus Jack DeJohnette, drummer-Haden and Ornette’s drumming son Denardo). The ballad “Kathelin Gray” is no-problem listening, which probably can’t be said of the explosive “Endangered Species.”

 Friends and Neighbors — Best sound quality for Coleman’s quartet with tenor saxophonist Dewey Redman, Haden and drummer Ed Blackwell having a house party — tricky but memorable lines in “Long Time No See,” plus a community sing-along on the title track.

New Vocabulary — Controversy has been stirred as the Coleman family has sued the musicians who recorded and issued in limited form what now now stands as Ornette’s last Regardless of the serious issues about whether they had a right to put this out, their setting his nakedly human saxophone sound is 21st century fresh and complimentary. This album may be the best place for listeners currently in their teens or 20s to start listening to Ornette Coleman.

Tone Dialing — featuring OC’s later Prime Time cast — includes a harmolodic interpretation of a Bach prelude and a circa 1995 rap.

Naked Lunch — Film composer Howard Shore created an appropriately creepy score for David Cronenberg’s film of William Burrough’s book (well, not really the book . . .but that’s another story). Ornette performs sparingly, but Shore places his contributions perfectly, and I’ve always suspected the entire score tracks Ornette’s own structure of Skies of America – which was performed by the London Philharmonic Orchestra, same bunch heard here. Well, who knows?

Why is Ornette’s later work being overlooked? It’s often the case in every art form that critics get mired in debating initial reactions to work so innovative at the time of its release that it inspires extremely negative reactions from established authorities. Those reactions set the narrative — but later, we ought to be able to toss them off. Roy Eldridge, Charles Mingus, Max Roach and Miles Davis were among those who expressed their dismay at Ornette’s sound and concept. They all held rock solid opinions that for various reasons they weren’t eager to subject to examination of first principles. Perhaps some of them were threatened by what Ornette’s supporters (and his own album titles) proposed in 1958-’60 as revolutionary.

Those first albums, Something Else!!! and Tomorrow Is The Question! (from Contemporary Records), followed by The Shape of Jazz to Come, Tomorrow Is the Question Change of the Century and This Is Our Music (’60) on Atlantic, did indeed make a radical break with tired and inhibiting song form and process conventions. They also delivered buoyant and/or wrenching themes and energized, syncopated rhythms, and don’t sound all that weird today.

Those whose listening and critical thinking matured after those innovations were proposed might have accepted all that music with little hesitation — after all, ’60s psychedelic rock like that recorded by Jimi Hendrix, Cream, the Jefferson Airplane and even the Beatles took daring liberties with form and content. They shocked, challenged and entertained vast audiences; their ideas were incorporated into subsequent rock/soul/pop, sometimes watered down but that’s how ideas are assimilated into our culture. This is why it’s safe to say all jazz musicians (and many in other forms, like punk, rap/hip-hop, Western-marketed “world music”) arriving after Ornette were influenced by him, whether they know it or not.

By all means, listen to early Ornette. As a completist, I find Something Else!!! and Tomorrow Is The Question! worthwhile if problematic. On the former, Pianist Walter Norris tried but didn’t quite get OC’s intentions; on the latter, bassists Percy Heath and Red Mitchell and drummer Shelly Manne clearly aren’t as comfortable with his style as Haden and Blackwell or Billy Higgins are on the Atlantic albums that soon followed.

Prior to any of those efforts, pianist Paul Bley had recognized Coleman’s unique gifts, and hired his whole band. Bley eventually issued two loose, live recordings of the West Coast combo with Ornette, Haden and Higgins, now available (probably also unauthorized) as Live at the Hillcrest Club. The performances aren’t polished, but anyone who doubts Ornette could play bebop must hear his version of Charlie Parker’s “Klactoveesedstene.”

That is the first evidence that Ornette Coleman’s sound ideas, drawing on tradition but using all he perceived and could accomplish to free jazz from unnecessary shackles would indeed change the century, leading to much of what we hear now.

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Sad news this morning: Ornette Coleman died at age 85. Triumphant news: Ornette Coleman returned music to its free-from-cant basics, emphasizing emotional communication and intuitive human interactions over any other elements in the dynamic, multi-faceted, immediate art form.

I included several interviews with Ornette — whom I consider the most fascinating and broadly insightful man I’ve met — in my book Miles Ornette Cecil — Jazz Beyond Jazz. I’ve written about Ornette several times on this blog. My obituary commissioned by National Public Radio can be heard here. Below is my review of what may have been Ornette’s final public performance in NYC, in June 2014 — published by The Wire.

Ornette Coleman (left) in Prospect Park with Henry Threadgill, David Murray and Antoine Roney;                    photo by Emilie Pons

Ornette Coleman is contemporary music’s great and radical idealist, for a half-century demonstrating how the whole world might harmonize by people expressing their innate individuality, even as he hews to his roots in the cry of the blues. On a muggy mid-week night at Brooklyn’s Prospect Park bandshell, the elite of hardcore saxophonists plus performers straddling art, pop, high tech and humankind’s primal roar convened in a concert called Celebrate Ornette!, attesting to the breadth, depth, efficacy and appeal of a concept that over the last half-century Ornette has called free jazz, harmolodics and sound grammar, yet seems simply a natural, intuitive way of playing.

Denardo Coleman and his father at 2014 birthday party; photo by Sánta István Csaba

Organized by Denardo Coleman, Ornette’s son, drummer and keeper of the flame, the show proved historic from its start, as 83-year-old Sonny Rollins, white-haired and stooped but verbally vigorous and emphatic, hobbled onstage to hail 84-year-old Ornette as a globally important musician and humanitarian, citing his credo “It’s all good!” Here was the living icon of jazz’s continuous lineage – the man who recorded with Coleman Hawkins as well as Miles Davis, Charlie Parker, Thelonious Monk and John Coltrane – proclaiming the supremacy of jazz’s ultimate iconoclast, the outsider who broke all rules while retaining the style’s essence. It was as dramatic a moment for devotees (count me among them) as when Ornette jammed with Sonny at the latter’s birthday show four years ago, the last time Rollins, now beset with respiratory problems, played publicly in New York City.

Walking with help from his grandson, Ornette edged out from the wings, humbled by the crowd’s roar, wiping his bright eyes. After receiving a rousing official commendation from the Brooklyn borough president, Ornette spoke: “Life is all we have,” he said, “so why don’t we all get together to help each other and make things happy? It’ll turn out like you will never forget it.” He took a seat. The music began.

Denardo’s Vibe, a newly established band of guitarist Charlie Ellerbee and electric piccolo bassist Albert McDowell (both from Ornette’s ’80s ensemble Prime Time), Ornette’s most recent upright bassist Tony Falanga and tenor saxophonist Antoine Roney, was to serve as foundation for an unprecedented parade of guests refreshing Ornette’s indelible if infinitely adaptable compositions, starting with “Rambling,” “The Turnaround” and “Blues Connotation.” First up was Red Hot Chili Peppers’ hyper-active electric bassist Flea and alto saxophonist Henry Threadgill, placing harsh notes so they’d stand out from the bottom-heavy din.

When tenor saxophonist David Murray joined them, Ornette called for his white alto sax, and soon Murray, Threadgill and Roney were blending on a riff through which Ornette’s wail rose, rough but commanding. Stage right, Savion Glover came on to tap dance, exuberantly physical and pouring sweat. Threadgill left, but pianist Geri Allen appeared, with trumpeter Wallace Roney Jr., her son, launching long, clear lines. Ornette beamed beatifically.

Joe Lovano with Ornette (Stanley Crouch seated between them) at 2014 birthday party; photo by Sánta István Csaba

Soon saxophonist Joe Lovano was onstage with them. He and Murray, Ravi Coltrane, Branford Marsalis (at one point in playful duet with pianist Bruce Hornsby) as well as Antoine Roney continued to blow various combinations at intervals throughout the evening, each saxophonist accepting the responsibility Ornette modeled to listen fully to the others as they used their virtuosic though idiosyncratic techniques to forge something new. Coltrane was particularly inspired on sopranino during one episode, in another Murray squealed roller-coaster phrases over Lovano’s fierce pumping of a motif of Coleman’s classic “Lonely Woman.” Throughout it all, Denardo driving Vibe set tempo, density and energy level changes.

Ornette at his 84th birthday party with Joanne Brackeen and Joe Lovano. Photo by Sánta István CsabaThroughout it all, Denardo driving Vibe set tempo, density and energy level changes.

Not only saxophonists or jazzers provided highlights. Patti Smith, her own band rustling behind her, recited a surreally imagistic poem that linked Ornette the child (and his parents) to Ornette the man. Guitarists Nels Cline of Wilco and Thurston Moore of Sonic Youth improvised a duet based on contrasting timbres [Cline later told me this was a version of a Coleman composition]. Laurie Anderson performed on electric violin against feedback loops her late husband Lou Reed had created for Metal Machine Music, with John Zorn chirping frantically on alto sax and Bill Laswell trolling the lowest range of electric bass. James Blood Ulmer, the first guitarist with whom Ornette recorded, sat in on “Theme from a Symphony” (aka “Dancing in Your Head”) with Marsalis, Laswell and Antoine Roney, and remained when two of the Master Musicians of Jajouka arrived to increase the overtone

Henry Threadgill and Ornette Coleman at 2014 birthday party; photo by Sánta István Csaba

quotient using double-reed raitas on Ornette’s explosive “Song X,” the finale in which everyone (except Threadgill, Smith and her group, Anderson, Zorn, Cline and Moore) raised an orchestral storm.

During the three-hour event, the audience of approximately 4000 ignored the threat of rain and an eventual misty drizzle. The crowd was all ages, races and genders, peppered with notable musicians, producers, critics and fans. The congregation had been called and eagerly convened, to celebrate, yes, but not worship Ornette – rather to bathe in the variety and joy of unfettered interaction he’s encouraged. His message: Spontaneous collective improvisation is the key human activity – past, present and future – productive and enriching as we listen closely, trying to help to each other. Amen.

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Bob Belden, the saxophonist-composer-arranger who died of a heart attack May 20 at age 58, was an enormously gifted, brave, original and productive musician. Last February he led his band Animation on a four-day performance tour of Iran, the first American to do so since 1979 — and videos he created with Bret “Jazz Video Guy” Primack, one of which I’ve embedded below, provide clear examples of his individualistic, iconoclastic point-of-view.

I admire and enjoy Belden’s album Miles From India, and several of his other jazz-related re-interpretations of popular and classical works (the music of Prince, Puccini’s Turandot), but his most personal work is Black Dahlia. I interviewed Belden about that production for DownBeat in 2001, and reproduce the article below.

Profoundly Real — Bob Belden traverses the edge of his personal emotions with Black Dahlia.

Bang – you’re dead! And now flashback, relieve your life as you’ve approach this death, which is an inconceivably savage one. Hear how you fell from childhood innocence through calamity and strife to what seemed like a gateway to your dream world, then lost is all in one drastic and elastic last moment of tortured consciousness. Can immortality be secured by victimization? If so, yours is a romantic tragedy, depicted in a jazz drama of operatic grandeur, realized by a cast of blazing soloists amid a 65-piece orchestra.

To know the plot and names of the actors of Bob Belden’s Black Dahlia (Blue Note) doesn’t spoil the suspense or listening thrills of this long-anticipated recorded event, a concept album composed, produced and (mostly) conducted by a reformed Wunderkind who’s gratefully found a new lease on life. But brace yourself.

“It’s not one of these ‘I want to make you feel good’ records,” Belden says bluntly. “In my music, people are able to express their feelings about life. It’s not the greatest thing all the time.”

At first glance, Belden isn’t an obvious guide for a walk on the wild side. He appears to be a ruddy South Carolina-born, raised and transformed New Yorker in his mid 40s, riding well if not high, neither tough guy nor pussycat, not rich by on the scene. He’s lived and worked for the past 18 years out of a small Upper West Side Manhattan garden apartment cluttered with books, scores, tousled loft bed and dresser, chair-on-wheels up close to a not-fancy computer/tv/audio console, shelves of CDs arranged by label catalog number, writing surface and phone. He’s a candid yet practical composer/arranger/producer/saxophonist/historian who in the past 18 months has composed his first independent film soundtrack, embarked on a second, and earned a Grammy nomination (for Re-Animation Live! with trumpeter Tim Hagans, his 11-record partner).

Yet Belden has also survived a serious health threat, a near-fatal car crash and now the release of his most personal, ambitious and cherished work, CD opus No. 15 by his own count.

“Do you think you’re her, the Black Dahlia?” is the obvious first question. “And is your sonic Los Angeles of 1947 a metaphor for New York in 1999?”

“Yeah,” he says tentatively, as if he’s considered saying no. “1999 is a year I’d rather forget but I’m not going to be able to. I can’t talk about it for publication . . .essentially, I was exhausted. Put it this way: The music has a lot to do with you coming to this place searching for your dreams and making great choices or some of the most terrible choices that will haunt you for the rest of your life. Because everything is on the edge here. And L.A. in the ’40s was like that – hiding behind blues skies and palm trees, but on the edge. What happened to Elizabeth Short was not a common thing to happen to a human being. It was a one-of-a-kind kind of hurt. Her circumstances were unique.”

Black Dahlia is Belden’s first attempt at an original musical drama. It’s a 56-minute through composed narrative in which Hagans, tenor saxophonist Joe Lovano, pianists Kevin Hays, Scott Kinsey and Marc Copland, trombonist Conrad Herwig and drummer Billy Kilson, among others (including Belden himself) expand on themes eliciting the brief, obscure existence and vicious, infamous murder of Elizabeth Short. A Hollywood bit player of the decadent 1940s, her body was found brutally mutilated, sliced in two at the waist and horrifically “posed” in Leimert Park in 1947. Posthumously dubbed “the Black Dahlia” by Los Angeles’ police investigators and tabloid press, Short’s never-solved case has inspired novels, true crime books and movies, including James Ellroy’s The Black Dahlia, John Gregory Dunne’s True Confessions and John Gilmore’s Severed.

Belden doesn’t care much about the crime, nor is he concerned with the crime’s aftermath. Instead, he’s interest in the human who suffered he. He’s touched by her travails, the calamities that could befall anyone, and considers Short a figure like Alban Berg’s heroine in the opera Lulu, “a contessa who goes slumming and ends u disemboweled by Jack the Ripper.

Short was no contessa. Indeed, her Depression-era childhood and limited Hollywood credits stand in bleak contrast to Belden’s experience as a proud alumni of the University of North Texas, the saxophinist who took over Joe Lovano’s chair in Woody Herman’s last great touring Herd. Since making New York the base of his activities in the early ’80s Belden has become an acclaimed all-around music professional. He’s in jazz for the long haul, having started playing piano at age three. He studied music through high school and college, graduating to positions as a commercial session-meister, a&r man at Blue Note Records, reissue producer/annotator and contracted arranger stealing studio time to cut tracks for his own speculative projects. But the end of the ’90s, the decade in which he firmly established himself, Belden had pursued the highs that come with constant creative engagement, coped with the lows that follow creative release and reached an obsessive state on the cusp of breakdown.

“In 1994, ’95, ’96 I was in the studio 150 days a year, maybe close to 200, plus took two trips to Japan, a couple to Europe, was on tour with my ensemble, playing . . .and add that to what I did when I was home, writing so many arrangements. Toward the end of that time I was doing a session every other day, or a reissue, or liner notes, or whatever I could. Jazz musicians complain about starving, and I didn’t want to starve. I was a musician 24-7, which was great, but I was mostly making my living doing other people’s music, which led to some frustration.” Radical revisions of the works of Sting, Carole King, Prince, Lennon and McCartney, “The New Standards” and the Italian masters Vivaldi and Puccini notwithstanding, Belden recorded little music he calls his own – composed, not arranged/orchestrated – for a dozen years, excluding two ensemble dates on Sunnyside Records.

“Eventually everything collapsed,” he confesses. “I’d been working so hard. All I did was work – all day, all night, I was constantly working. I’d gotten to that point because I like to work. I’m a workaholic, still am, but all I thought about was music. Nothing else mattered. That was it.

“Then it happened, on May 29, 1999, at 12:20 pm, on a highway in South Carolina. Oh man, I have pictures.” He shuffles some snapshots. “These are the skid marks, this is where we went off the road, where we landed, flipped a couple of times. The other car’s skid marks, the back of my car, his bumper. I was driving. Thank God Toyota makes a good car. My mom was 79 at the time; it was terrible that she had to go through that, but great that she wasn’t hurt, either.

“They say in a car wreck things flash in your mind. No, what happens is you start thinking about everything in your life that led to that moment, and why you lived. You could have died, why did you live? If you survive, you know how quickly things canhappen. Everybody goes around just living their day, and when you have an accident you stop and think.What if we had gone faster, if we had been in another part of the road where there were trees in the way, if we had not crashed in a place where a guy who was moonlighting was a Navy medic? He saw what happened and ran out to help us. Looking at these little, coincidental things you see how fragile day-to-day existence really is.

“After the accident I could barely walk. I didn’t feel very good. It was a hot summer, and I was really shaken up. It was a struggle for me to do little things. I had started working on this Black Dahlia thing in ’95, ’96, filling notebooks with scraps of music for it, keeping it around. I got back into writing it, finishing it up, because I had to. I couldn’t do anything else.”

He pulls out manuscripts of hasty notes, lead sheets full of corrections and rewritings, a folder with an outline of the entire piece in early stages.

“This is from just after the accident and my handwriting is shot, as you can see,” he apologizes. “But most of the stuff on my record is organized around the melodies, the themes. The way I treat them goes back to Strauss and some weird Wagner, where characters have melodies and parts of these melodies merge with part of other characters’ melodies, and transform.

There are certain motifs of Elizabeth Short’s melodies that appear throughout the entire album, all 12 pieces, because she appears in everything, she’s part of everything, it’s her story. Yet there are also little themes that are different. ‘Danza D’Amor,’ for instance, Lovano’s feature, uses fragments of the main Dahlia theme, but the improve is based on this moment in the beginning of ‘Genesis’ [Black Dahlia‘s first track]. It’s just a taste, but I use it because it ties the beginning of her life into this crucial phase, where she’s trying to fall in love.

“The ‘Danza’ melody keeps moving forward, and when it gets to the main theme, it becomes totally dark. I see this music as dark colors – blues, purples, reds. This woman became a complete night creature, a wholly different person; she freaked out. You’ve seen movies, especially black and white ones, where if they want someone to look evil they make ’em look ‘evil’? The end of ‘Danza D’Amor’ is the sound of a person having evil overtake their body and mind.”

The subject of evil leading to murder is unusual but not unique in jazz repertoire. Think “Mack the Knife,” though that Brecht-Weill song, whether sun by Ella Fitzgerald or Louis Armstrong or Bobby Darin is a public view of the killer rather than a portrait of the victim from her own perspective. It’s arguable whether or how well Belden inhabits his chosen point-of-view; what’s undeniable is his mastery of the flowing, hour-long symphony that also stands as 12 distinct, complete tracks, 53 seconds to eight-and-a-half minutes in length, with varied melodies, developments, treatments and exciting performances.

Belden’s writing knowingly uses soundtrack strategies and glories grandeur, as befits his subject: the bad and the beautiful, deep shadows from harsh sunshine, the irrevocability of fate. He’s been influenced by directs and composers both, and specifically cites Jerry Goldsmith’s soundtrack for Roman Polanski’s Chinatown, the “Gothic big band” styles of Dizzy Gillespie and Stan Kenton, and the perfection with which Gil Evans set soloist Miles Davis, particularly on Miles Ahead. But Belden’s his own auteur here. His ace players, interpreting his scores for one-time only recording, serve him well.

“The whole date was done without rehearsal, and the orchestra was finished after two three-hour sessions, “Belden says without conceit. “My method has always been show up at the date, put the music in front of the musicians, turn the tape machine on. Go over the tune, run it down, record it just to hear it, and play it! If it doesn’t sound right, do it again, change it.”

Where is Belden while this is going down? Conducting. “I produced an orchestral record for the Hollywood Bowl orchestra, and working with Michel Legrand a few years ago I saw how he conducted, feeling the music, so I conduct my music that way, too.” And also playing – as in his aching tenor passages in Black Dahlia‘s finale, “Elegy.” “You have to play your horn, solo in front of your band,” he says. “That’s more meaningful than just writing. You get to understand what the soloists want, what they need, as one of them.”

Empathy with Elizabeth Short on the one hand, with his musician colleagues on the other – does that make Belden the omniscient observer, a god coolly observing an innocent’s self-destruction? “Oh now,” he says, astonished at the suggestion. “In something like ‘Dreamland,’ I’m just more like a tourist, one of the people around this woman, who’s evidently found herself where she’s always dreamt of being. I’m a witness, I guess, but I don’t will this to happen to her. I just see it happen.

“You look at musicians, some of them come to the city and get caught up in things that go way beyond them because this is a terrible place sometimes. Tragedy is part of our daily life. It’s part of the fact that most people live in sorrow. Because they so much love the moments of happiness, and those moments are always buffeted by indifference or complete depression.”

Belden, for all his current hearty disposition, retains the compassion he earned through crisis, and hopes Black Dahlia will be respected for expressing it. “You’ve got to distinguish between easy sentiment and heart-felt emotion,” he insists. “Some cats can’t take real feeling in music – ‘Schmaltz!,’ they call it, ‘Saccharine!’ I bet the criticism leveled at my record will come from people who won’t understand that all I want to do is get into your heart.

“I don’t want to impress you with technique, with a lot of notes on the page, or claim that because of those notes the music is profound. Human life is profound enough as it is. This is a story, and as music, it’s about something abstract: exciting air molecules to create what we call sound, and then getting a human emotional response to that.

“Jazz music can tell a story. The idea that melodies can do that has been around since the mid 1870s, back to Wagner. And when conceptual albums started getting very popular, that wasn’t a big deal to me, either, because if you study classical music you learn that operas, tone poems, symphonies are all like concept albums, with ideas that thread through the entire piece. I studied composition. I was into that idea. I’m affected by that element from the European tradition that frightens a lot of people, but allows me to work on music for the rest of my life and not be bored. Why can’t jazz, if you mix enough composition and improvisation and atmosphere, tell a story?”

Then should we “read” Black Dahlia like a book? “The listener, I hope, will feel it first,” Belden says, “because the music is sad. It’s filled with feeling. All through the piece, I hope, you’ll be drawn in as if you’re hearing a story, and then maybe you’ll go back to the liner notes and see that is a story. Then you may want to actually read the story while the music goes by.”

Bob was a friend — I’ll miss him.

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Too much jazz in Chicago this week to write at length about it all, but also too much to ignore:

• Congrats to Joe Segal, proprietor of the Jazz Showcase forever, at various spots, inducted as an NEA Jazz Master. I owe Joe Segal big time, as he encouraged my 17-year-old interests in jazz and even let me in free to hear jazz masters of the years gone by, especially tenor saxophonists Eddie “Lockjaw” Davis, Johnny Griffin, Dexter Gordon, Jimmy Forrest, Coleman Hawkins. . .and Sun Ra. This had me coming back for more. . .
  

  Joe Segal at the Jazz Showcase, in front of his hero Charlie Parker

• Such as Dee Alexander, at the Showcase last week, where she did an exemplary Billie Holiday tribute set — ever hear “Gloomy Sunday” sung in a club? – backed by her hot and responsive trio featuring pianist Miguel de la Cerna, bassist Junius Paul, drummer Youssef Ernie Adams . . .
  

  Dee Alexander at Joe Segal’s Jazz Showcase; photo by Marc PoKempner

   

• Then a change of pace: Consider the Source, subversively subtle (once you get past the high volume and dazzling light show) a self-described “sci fi-Middle Eastern-fusion” rock instrumental power trio starring double-necked guitar wiz Gabriel Marin, super-bad bassist John Ferrara and odd-meter-adept drummer Jeff Mann, on Saturday last blew the roof off the Bottom Lounge, especially raising the bar during a sit-in with Grateful Dead-inspired headliners the Werks. . .

• Tatsu Aoki, avantbassist who unites Asian-American traditional music, Chicago AACM extrapolations and blues traditions, was honored on Sunday as a “Jazz Hero” by the Jazz Journalists Association (thanks to Neil Tesser for setting this up at Elastic Arts, and getting a proclamation hailing Tatsu signed by Mayor Rahm Emmanuel). In celebration played a strong set with his daughter on taiko drums, tenor sax Ed Wilkerson, baritonist Mwata Bowden, drummer

Avreeal Ra and percussionist Coco Elysses. Other Chicago Jazz Heroes in the house: Bowden, former pres of the Chicago AACM; Jazz Institute of Chicago exec director Lauren Deutsch (who took the photo at right), and jazz connector/consultant Jim deJong. Aoki’s Miyumi Project performs tonight (Friday) at the Hilton Orrington Hotel in Evanston for free, thanks to a Northwestern University Asian-American Studies program.

• An AACM 50th anniversary weekend began Wednesday at The Promontory in Hyde Park with Mike Reed playing cardboard box and steel tongue drum in duo with imaginative cellist Tomeka Reid, joined by dancer Ayako Kato. I have a bias against interpretive jazz dance, but Ms. Kato was very compelling, moving with swift, taut detail, working within and from the music for an uninterrupted 40 minutes.
• Second act at The Promontory: robust singer Saalik Ziyad led Epoch Zed, a latest-generation sharp AACM-ish quintet (collaborators to watch: reedist Fred Jackson, vibes and electronics Preyas Roy, drummer Vincent Davis). Ziyad sheepishly offered the originality of his vocalese lyrics to Charlie Parker’s “Donna Lee” as an apology for playing “old” jazz at an AACM event – there’s a proscription against that!
• Third up: tenor-soprano-flute-electric wind instrumentalist Hanah Jon Taylor, in from Madison WI, very bracingly blowing over bassist Yosef Ben Israel and drummer Dushun Mosely . . .
• Also tonight, Friday, pianist Adegoke Steve Colson and his wife Iqua, a vocalist,  celebrating their 40th year “in the moment” at International House, U of Chicago — longtime AACM stomping grounds — with trumpeter Rasul Saddik altoist Ernest Dawkins, bassist Darius Savage and drummer Mosely . . .
• Saturday 4/25: Solo pianist Marilyn Crispell performs in Chicago for the first time in nine years, at Constellation (Mike Reed’s place), but earlier in the day (11 am to 1 pm) members of Samana, the all-women ensemble that formed in the 1990s to establish AACM feminism (historically, an oxymoron?) reunites for a performance/master class at the Logan Center, U of Chicago . . .
• Sunday: 50 at 50 is a cross-generational (not the usual, or easy thing) AACM mega-concert at Mandel (no relation) Hall at U of C, 7 to 9 pm. So I’ll have to watch Game of Thrones on HBO on Demand. In the afternoon, 1 to 3 pm, flutist Nicole Mitchell and violinist Renee Baker conduct a Creative Music Summit at the Museum of Contemporary Art, discussing their upcoming commissions, among other issues.

Monday rolls around and Chicago blues pianist Erwin Helfer with compatriots tenor man John Brumbach and singer Katherine Davis do their weekly gig at Township near Logan Square, and there’s a fantastic straightahead jam at the neighborhoody Serbian Village, anchored by pianist Tommy Muellner’s trio with bassist Kelly Sill and drummer Phil Gratteau . . . and the week stretches on. . .

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Bernard Stollman, record producer of Albert Ayler, Paul Bley, Ornette Coleman, the Fugs, Sun Ra and many other iconoclastic musicians of the 1960s up to now on his ESP Disk ur-indie record label, died April 19 at age 85.

I had the pleasure of interviewing Stollman — as well as Marzette Watts, Milford Graves and Frank Lowe — about ESP for The Wire in 1997, and have posted the resulting article in my sidebar “Interviews.”

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I’m pleased to have interviewed Ann Meier Baker, who was appointed last October as the National Endowment for the Arts’ director of Music and Opera – a position that includes responsibilities for the U.S.’s federal support of jazz, such as the induction of NEA Jazz Masters, celebrated with a live-streamed concert at Jazz at Lincoln Center on April 20.

Ms. Baker follows Wayne Brown, who left the Endowment after 16 years to become president and CEO of the Michigan Opera Theatre in Detroit, Michigan. She took up her post in January 2015, arriving from Chorus America, where she’d been president and CEO;  before that she was founding director of National School Boards Association Foundation. She began her professional career as a member of the United States Air Force Singing Sergeants. She’s a relative newcomer to jazz, but has eagerly dived in. The following interview has been lightly edited for clarity.

HM: Have there been any articles about you since your appointment to the National Endowment for the Arts?

AMB: There were a few before I arrived, and since then I don’t think any. You are the first.

HM: That makes me happy. May I ask: What is within your job’s purview?

AMB: I have a broad portfolio, my area being music and opera. In the music categories that includes jazz, orchestra, chamber music — a real variety of genres – as well as opera. So the sphere that I’m working in is exciting and quite wide-ranging.

HM: And how does the NEA’s music program support this world of music?

AMB: The NEA’s grants go to organizations. Organizations put forward projects, applying for the grants we offer, and we consider those. We also work with a number of service organizations that have perspectives and suggestions about what kinds of organizational support their genres need, so we solicit information and make decisions about programming that might be supported on the basis of it.

HM: The jazz world no longer has a service organization. Does that put jazz at a disadvantage at the NEA?

AMB: I was sad to see the jazz organization go out of business a few years ago [the International Association for Jazz Education ended its corporate existence in 2009, and the Jazz Alliance International last reported to the IRS in 2006] but I was recently at the Chamber Music America conference, and saw a number of jazz musicians at that conference. So they [CMA] are one of those service organizations, with members doing the great work in the field, and they can point us to that exciting work, as well as serve as a conduit for information we want to share. I know that you’re involved with an association of jazz journalists, so that’s another service organization to the jazz field.

HM: Actually the Jazz Journalists Association is a service organization for people in media, doing journalism, rather than for jazz creation or presentation itself. Of course, we do believe in supporting what’s good for jazz and help to connect the dots as much as possible.

AMB: So yes, your organization has an important place in effort to unify the field.

HM: At one point there was NEA support for arts journalists, with institutes for classical music critics, dance and I think theater critics, too.

AMB: Yes, and I believe there was also program that addressed the critical field widely [in 2014 NEA supported arts journalism through four grants presented through its initiative Art Works].

HM: The NEA’s grants to individuals in the 1980s, which were project-based, were very productive. Is there any thought of reinstating such grants?

AMB: Reinstating grants for individual artists would have to be congressionally mandated.

HM: Have you seen any shifts of emphasis at the NEA in the time you’ve been there?

AMB: Well, there’s been no shift in my first two months of work, but I’ve seen a lot of exciting projects funded through the grants program. A couple which come to the top of my mind are the American Jazz Museum in Kansas City to support the 18th and Vine Jazz and Blues Festival, which will shine a light on Jazz Master Ramsey Lewis, and one for the Eugene Symphony for a residency of Jazz Master Branford Marsalis, which includes a lot of jazz education-related programs, so there’s a wide range of opportunities for students there. [To see other relevant NEA grants, go to https://apps.nea.gov/grantsearch/ and fill in keyword “jazz”]

And the biggest focus of my attentions coming into the position has been the NEA’s Jazz Masters program, taking place on April 20. We have four new Jazz Masters — Carla Bley, George Coleman, Charles Lloyd and club-owner Joe Segal, who I bet you as a Chicagoan know a lot about.

HM: Yes, I do. Joe Segal was the first person to ever let me into a jazz show for free, when I was a teenager. He always encouraged me in my jazz interests, and I spent a lot of time at his Modern Jazz Showcase in its various locations.

AMB: We’re going to present a ceremony of 90 minutes at Jazz at Lincoln Center, including music, some of which will be by these masters.

HM: Is Carla Bley bringing her orchestra?

AMB: No, but we’ll have an excellent house band and there are special players all lined up.

I think it will be an extraordinary concert. I was amazed and pleased to learn that last year’s NEA Jazz Masters concert was streamed 30,000 times, in 102 different countries. As in the past, there will be video tributes to the Masters during the ceremony, which will live on the NEA’s website for general access after the event is over. Prior to the event, in the afternoon leading up to it, we’ll have a luncheon for the Masters which will also include a lot of the formerly named Masters, which gives us an opportunity to knit their community together. We feel that’s important. I’m eager to meet these talented men and women, all in one place.

HM: I saw a movement recently on Facebook, actually started by a member of the Jazz Journalists Association, noting that there haven’t been a large proportion of women recognized as Masters, and urging that people bombard the NEA with nominations of women.

AMB: Nominations for the Jazz Masters honor come from the public and the jazz community, so please do that – bombard away!

HM: How has your background prepared you for your NEA position?

AMB: Most of my career has been with national organizations in the arts, with a little hiatus to work with an educational organization for a few years. I started as a singer, then was associated with the League of American Orchestras, and since that time I’ve worked with different organizations across different disciplines. You’re talking to a person who is an expert in getting advice, learning and putting together initiatives that can advance the mission of whatever organization I’m working with.

As far as the specifics of jazz go, I’m still learning but I’ve immersed myself in this music, and I’m having such fun getting up to speed.

HM: Have you had much previous contact with jazz?

AMB: Well, my earliest introduction to jazz was through a neighbor, Joel Siegel, who was manager of Shirley Horn. No, not the television movie critic, although this Joel Siegel reviewed films, too, I think for Washington City Paper. He lived nearby, and used to invite me to dinner parties where jazz musicians would be among the guests. That was wonderful.

HM: Do you think there’s anything about jazz that distinguishes its challenges or circumstances from the other disciplines in your portfolio?

AMB: Having to knit together career by playing in many different ensembles is certainly one of the things that creates pressures much different than those common in the life of a symphony musician or other kind of musician. The jazz business model has been different over the years, and has undergone a lot of change recently. We’re hearing from jazz musicians that touring opportunities aren’t what they used to be, and that so many people self-manage now that they’re spending time doing things like booking, self-promotion, dealing with touring and maybe recording logistics that it makes it hard to find the time to actually work on the music itself.

HM: Have you been to the Jazz Masters events before? And do you think the Jazz Masters program as it’s presently constituted gets the most bang that’s possible from the ceremony and awards?

AMB: This is first time I’ve been live in the room at a Jazz Masters concert. I’ve watched the previous streams, though. My personality is such that I always want what I’m engaged in to have more impact. I’ll be attending on April 20 with that in mind. We really want to get every inch of value out of this program. Besides the pleasure of the NEA having a relationship with Jazz at Lincoln Center that allows this kind of concert to happen, I enjoy the fact that there have been 136 Jazz Master awards presented over the past 33 years. The program has touched on, has acknowledged, an impressive number of people, and I think all the work has been done so far is great.

HM: Is it unusual for the NEA to have such a relationship with Jazz at Lincoln Center, which after all might itself be applying for funding? And does the Jazz Masters program being at Lincoln Center again reinforce the notion that New York City is the capitol of jazz?

AMB: The NEA has a lot of cooperative agreements with organizations that partner with us. We are enriched by working with partners who can expand our impact in various ways. When you see the list of different grants the NEA has provided, I think you’ll notice a broad range of geographic localities that we’ve reached. It’s true, there’s great jazz happening everywhere. The city limits of New York City do not represent the border of jazz. As far as outreach of the Masters program goes, the diversity of the Masters themselves and the webcast help us. It doesn’t matter where you live, you can tune in to enjoy the webcast. But I’ll also mention that the 2016 concert will be in Washington, D.C. For the 50th anniversary of the NEA, we’re trying to put as much spotlight on the agency’s work in the nation’s capitol, right here, as we possibly can.

HM: The Jazz Masters ceremony being moved to April, from January – was that to take advantage of Jazz Appreciation Month?

AMB: Yes. I was at the kickoff of JAM at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History just the other night, and enjoyed it very much. We moved our concert to April not only because of the weather in New York in January always jeopardizes transportation, but more so because we want to extend the visibility of jazz during JAM. The 2016 Jazz Masters ceremony will be in April, as well.

HM: Is there anything you’d like to say that I haven’t asked you about?

AMB: That’s a good question. I just want to say that I’m tickled to be in a position where I can contribute to the jazz in this country, and jazz to come – I have a big appetite for being as contributive as possible to our culture, in which jazz is so deeply embedded. I recently heard Jason Moran do his tribute to Thelonious Monk at the Kennedy Center, which he ended by walking through the audience, and his band following him, forming a circle, jamming in the midst of the crowd. I was thinking ‘Wow, how lucky am I that I can contribute to what’s going on here.’ I’ve heard Wynton Marsalis, I’m a big fan of Esperanza Spalding – there are many players now doing so much good work . . .

I don’t know if this has been the practice in the past, but I consider myself one of the most consultative people on the planet. You can count on the fact that I will ask you for ideas and recommendations, too. We have peer review panels, and jazz leaders are invited to be part of them. I anticipate crossing paths with a lot of people doing the real thing, making jazz itself.

I’ve been a music education director, though that’s not the hat I wear here at the NEA. I was raised by a public school music teacher who thought music was good for you, and a lot of music is great for you. I grew up in a noisy household with my mom teaching music and my dad an elementary school principal. Every conversation at our dinner table was about the arts and education – concerning urban schools in particular — so these kinds of concerns are in my DNA.

I’m sorry you won’t be able to attend the Jazz Masters concert, but I hope you’ll be watching it online.

HM: Oh yes, I will be. I may even live tweet it.

AMB: That would be grand. The hashtag is #NEAjazz15.

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Four stellar jazz-beyond-jazz musicians — orchestra composer-leader Darcy James Argue, trumpeter Etienne Charles, saxophonist Steve Lehman and scholar-composer/improviser-electronics innovator-trombonist George E. Lewis, all practiced stretching the definition of “jazz”without breaking it — have been named 2015 fellows of the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation, among 175 “scholars, artists, and scientists [a]ppointed on the basis of prior achievement and exceptional promise . . .chosen from a group of over 3,100 applicants.”

The “prior achievement and exceptional promise” of these fellows is clear from their musical accomplishments, and also certified by previous honors. Argue was on April 2 announced as a recipient of the Doris Duke Performing Artists Award (it should be noted that Guggenheim fellowships are not given to “performing artists,” but the Foundation “understands the performing arts to be those in which an individual interprets work created by others”). Lehman is also a DDPAA recipient, in the class of 2014. Lewis has received a MacArthur Fellowship, an Alpert Award in the Arts, aUnited States Artists Walker Fellowship, and fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts. Trinidad-born Charles was given a 2013 Caribbean American Heritage  Trailblazer Award.

The size of the monetary Awards to Guggenheim fellows, according to the Foundation “varies and will be adjusted to the needs of Fellows, considering their other resources and the purpose and scope of their plans.” As reported in Wikipedia, “The average grant in the 2008 Canada and United States competition was approximately US $43,200,” but in 2012 (according to Blouinartinfo) it was approximately $37,000.

Such funds can go a long way to underwriting ambitious projects. These fellows launch ambitious projects. Work away, gents. I’m far from alone in being eager to hear the creative results.

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Six musicians identified with jazz have been named 2015 Doris Duke Performing Artists receiving $275,000 each, and 24 “Jazz Heroes” have been certified by the Jazz Journalists Association after nominations from local jazz communities across the U.S. Are comparisons between these two very different lists of honorees instructive?

The Doris Duke Performing Artists are AACM co-founder-composer-pianist Muhal Richard Abrams, trumpeter-composer Ambrose Akinmusire, innovative big band composer-arranger Darcy James Argue, alto saxophonist-composer-bandleader-MBASE founder Steve Coleman, Afro-Cuban alto saxophonist Ysovany Terry and Okkyung Lee, an improvising cellist noted for her works with noise and a “body of work demonstrating irreverence for genre boundaries and a penchant for collaboration.”

The Jazz Heroes are a diverse lot: Music educators, philanthropists, producer-presenters, communicators, musicians who put something extra into audience engagement, a poet and a dentist to treats jazz musicians at greatly reduced fees. They receive no cash award, but are celebrated by their friends and neighbors at public festivities and with official proclamations throughout Jazz Appreciation Month running up to International Jazz Day — what the JJA calls JazzApril. The Heroes are listed below, with numbers corresponding to their thumbnails in the photo collage.

Just to be clear: I’m president of the Jazz Journalists Association — which received funding from the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation via the Mid Atlantic Arts Foundation in 2013 for our eyeJAZZ jazz-news video initiative. And I know that there is enormous difference in intent as to what the JJA and DDCF are trying to accomplish. Our organization is interested in encouraging grassroots jazz activists to use media to spread buzz about the music. DDCF is dedicated to providing “deepened investments in the artists’ personal and professional development and future work.”

Certainly that must be a worthy endeavor. Foundation and institutional patronage of the arts in the U.S. is a highly contentious issue and the history of it has not favored jazz. Ornette Coleman’s 1967 Guggenheim fellowship is usually cited as the first such prestigious and generous honor for jazz composition, and the National Endowment for the Arts started its Jazz Initiative acknowledging Jazz Masters as well as funding jazz projects with grants in 1982. Today, the MacArthur Foundation, the Herb Alpert Foundation, US Artists and DDCF bestow funds of varying degrees of largess upon jazz people and other music creators (also practitioners of other disciplines) through processes of private nomination and panelists’ selection.

The funding can have profound affect — I just attended DDCF Performing Artist Myra Melford’s week-long residency at The Stone, at which my presence and more importantly that of her collaborators, as well as film and audio recording and public relations services were made possible by the grants she has received. Myra’s 12 sets of performances by 10 different ensembles over six days were abundant with beautiful music. She received coverage in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, TimeOutNewYork, The New Yorker and the LA Times, and generated interest from other venues in having her perform for them. DDCF’s investment paid off in significantly raising her profile and we hope in the near future exposing her enriching music to larger, more widespread audiences. This is all a good thing.

But I am remain naggingly troubled by the idea of artists such support in this way. Grants like these seem to elevate an elite class with certified status. On the one hand, it’s great
that people doing exemplary if not necessarily commercial work are recognized and rewarded. On the other hand, these grant programs select one talent suitable to receive up to, say $275,000 (new DDPAs Abrams, Akinmusire and Steve Coleman already received Doris Duke Impact Awards, but those $80,000 grants are deducted from their DDPA funding), when $275k might also, for instance, be split among 11 artists who’d receive a still generous $25k each.

Does the idea of rounding up of a coterie of even the greatest artists for financial support while overall funding for the arts in the U.S., whether from commercial entities, public or private ones remains so indeterminate bother anyone else? What do you think, you who are supportive in so many ways of jazz and new arts — you who are just as likely as anyone else to be qualified to be a Jazz Hero?

1. Ann Arbor MI: Don Chisholm
2. Baltimore: Charles Funn
3. (SF)Bay Area: Avotcja Jiltonilro 
4. Bloomington IN: Monika Herzig 
5. Boston: Mark Sumner Harvey 
6. Chicago: Tatsu Aoki
7. Madison: Howard Landsman
8. Memphis: David C. Bradford, Sr
   

   Yvosany Terry – Mark Tavern Management

9. Memphis: Jack N. Schaffer
10. New Brunswick NJ: Virginia DeBerry
11. New Orleans: Dr. Michael White
12. NY Capital Region: Lee Shaw 
13. New York City: Kim A. Clarke
14. Philadelphia: Mark Christman 
15. Pittsburgh: Dr. Nelson Harrison
16. Portland OR: Mel Brown 
17. Santa Cruz CA: Tim Jackson 
18. Seattle: Mack Waldron 
19. South Florida: Nicole Yarling 
20. St. Louis: Don Wolff 
21. Tallahassee FL: Carole & Stan Fiore
22. Washington D.C.: Charles Fishman 
23. Woodstock NY, Dr. Bruce Jay Milner

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When saxophonist Steve Lehman performs, I try to hear him whatever the setting. His octet, concertizing in Philadelphia for Ars Nova Workshop Saturday, March 21, plays richly microtonal yet melodically entrancing and rhythmically propulsive, synchronized music — partaking of a concept called “spectralism” — that brings to mind both Dolphy and Messiaen. In a sax-bass-drums trio, Lehman , honored in 2014 with a Doris Duke Performing Artist fellowship, is the complete, compelling post-modernist. He has genuine affection for and comprehension of what’s been blown by Charlie Parker and Lee Konitz as well as Jackie McLean and Anthony Braxton.

Lehman’s duet with pianist Cory Smythe at Constellation in Chicago on March 7 was unlike any Lehman concert or recording I’d heard before, including a playful yet serious exploration of his instruments’ sonic possibilities as just one aspect of several interactive spontaneous compositions. Each of the pair’s eight or ten separate pieces (who was counting?) incorporated immediate choices and reactions within specific, well-defined frameworks. Variety was something the duettists had thought hard about, resulting in penetrating entries into some refined concepts. I didn’t take notes, so now my details are a bit fuzzy. But —

Some pieces included pre-created digital sounds triggered by one or the other of the musicians as separate projections or fields which either/both responded to or at least took in to account, so the effect was like the ensemble being a trio or quartet. In others pieces, Lehman and Smythe started from acoustic precepts or properties, like SL blowing an alto sax with its mouthpiece off, both of them trading in extremely staccato phrases, CS continuously sweeping the keyboard as a starter or foundation for extrapolation. That Lehman is an exciting and technically virtuosic soloist in relatively straight-ahead jazz contexts — here he plays “Jeannine” — was never far from my mind while listening to him, although no bebop or swing components were obvious in what he did. That Smythe, a member of the International Contemporary Ensemble (ICE) could create complex streams of simultaneously fresh and idiomatic piano music, maneuvering with considerable “freedom” but using a vocabulary completely devoid of blues references or inflections, surprised and impressed me.

Both musicians spoke candidly about their work to the audience after the show, which was produced by the Illinois Humanities Council. I pressed Smythe on his forays being derived so exclusively from Western European “classical” piano traditions, and he responded with modesty, “Dozens of pianists do that now.”

“Dozens,” I asked. “Like who?”

He offered some names — Craig Taborn, for one — but in my recent listening, Smythe is unique. That is not to say that he, akin to Steve Lehman, does not have like-minded peers. But if they’re truly like-minded and actually peers, they must be every bit as well-educated and broadly informed, original and individualistic as Smythe and Lehman, those attributes being basic to their musical identities.
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