Alto saxophonist Greg Osby debuted a sextet with vocalist, electric guitar and vibes at the Village Vanguard, and pianist Lafayette Gilchrist brought an unusually horn-heavy band from Baltimore into (Le) Poisson Rouge, opening for guitarist Vernon Reid‘s rockin’, scratchin’ Yohimbe Brothers. Is this the shape of jazz to come?
Sony owns America’s music
What’s it mean that the back catalogs of record companies documenting 100 years of American music are now wholly owned by the Japanese Sony Corporation, which has bought out Bertelsmann, its German partner in the four-year-old behemoth music corporation Sony BMG?
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Giants on earth
Johnny Griffin, tenor saxophonist, b. Chicago 4-24-28, d. at his home in the French countryside,  7–27-08 — such bare facts don’t say much about the music this man could wring from his instrument, back when jazz giants entertained the earth. From his pro emergence at age 15 in 1945 well past the mid ’60s, when Griffin relocated to Europe due to tensions in the U.S. and civilization abroad — he stood fast and tall for vigor and rigor, sophisticated lyricism and humor, impassioned drive, true blue grit, the spirit of collaborataion  — attributes audiences shouldn’t take for granted.
Odd noise music alert, Brooklyn
A concert sponsored by The Onion — so expect to be amused, Wednesday July 30, starting at 6:30 pm, free in a tent by the Brooklyn waterfront:Â
- John Zorn’s “Cobra” — an intricate musical game performed best by quick-witted improvisers with a handle of tactics governing the Avalon Hill board wargames of the ’60s — is being performed by an internation cast of a dozen such specialists (Zorn will be prompter, something between a card dealer and referee) –Â
- Followed by The Theremin Society, three specialists in the no-touch sound controller invented in the 1920s and used ever since mostly for eerie soundtrack effects –Â
- Finally Jonathan Kane, here being promoted as a bluesman with his band February, but I remember a performance piece in which he tap danced amplified big beats, and the hype is he’s also a montrous loud punk/minimalist drummer.
Hear here! BBC jazz awards show online ’til July 30
P.S. to yesterday’s musings re the BBC Jazz Awards: the Guardian’s blog posting on the Awards show (which featured performances by Return to Forever, Tommy Smith, singer Ian Shaw and Jeff Beck with Jamie Cullum and Kyle Eastwoood jamming on “Let The Good Times Roll”, plus presentations by Sir George Martin, among others) mentions that this event can be heard (free, online) through midnight Wednesday, July 30.Â
BBC honors Return to Forever and UK homies
An international wrinkle on jazz awards: The British Broadcasting Company on Monday night announced 11 winners of the BBC Jazz Awards, Reunited fusion quartet Return to Forever won for “lifetime achievement,” bassist Charlie Haden received the “international award,” Sir John Dankworth and Dame Cleo Laine were given the “gold award.” But who are these other honorees with little reputation in the States. Are they better known throughout Europe? What are we missing?
iPhone + Pandora = open sesame
According to Slate
(formerly, Salon’s) tech writer Farhad Manjoo, reviewing the
iPhone makeover and cool third-party programs that optomize its
potential, the expense and hassle of securing the new device is worthwhile
if only for mobile access to Pandora.com. The personally-programmed radio site has captivated me, too
— Pandora’s Music Genome Project reliably
streams known and unknown music I like — jazz-beyond-jazz — on my B **tches Brew “station”
in surprising juxtapositions and successions.
Virtually free, nearly boundless music exploration at one’s fingertips!
Newport by bus
As an enclave of the newly gilded during the Gilded Age, the town of Newport, Rhode Island was  somewhat privileged by its relative isolation. The easiest ways to get to this promontory during the 1890s may have been by making a fortune in railroads, or by yacht — the old town (dating from 1639) has long been considered sailing capitol of the U.S. In some circles, though, it’s better known as home to the Newport Jazz Festival starting in 1954.
In its early years the Newport jazz fest broke some race, class and entertainment barriers, but during the past decade it’s become cost-prohibitive for New York jazz fans who can hear most of the acts without leaving town and paying exhorbitant rates for the weekend’s lodging. So this year, the festival fights back with chartered buses offering day trips starting in and returning to Manhattan or Brooklyn for a single fee that includes price of the entry ticket.Â
What every infant should hear
So Boston Globe staffer Jeremy Eichler has enlisted his infant son Jonah as a test subject for early musical perception and education. Why limit the kid’s choices to Mozart and Schoenberg? How ’bout some good ol’ American prime Louis Armstrong, introducing the concepts of improvisation and swing?Â
David Byrne’s building about music, and chimes
Do-it-yourself public sound installations are serendipitous surprises: Former Talking Head David Byrne wired the Battery Maritime Building to emphasize its haunted house groans and creaks, and it’s further improved by human agency. A few hundred yards away, chimes are planted amidst the shrubbery. Leap on them.
Return to Ever?
Loud, fast and chopsy — that was the definition of “jazz-rock fusion” assumed by panelists (including me) in a Jazz Journalists Association Jazz Matters public panel discussion of “Fusion at 40” held in conjunction with the headline appearance of Return To Forever at the Ottawa Jazz Festival.
RTF — introduced by pianist Chick Corea in 1974 to comprise guitarist Al DiMeola, bassist Stanley Clarke and drummer Lenny White — is a banner act at jazz fests most everywhere this summer. This lineup is together for the first time since 1983, its tour promoted as a 25-year anniversary and accompanied by a two-cd retrospective album (Return To Forever The Anthology) which has gangstered much jazz magazine coverage. RTF meets the loud, fast and chopsy criteria, sorta. But the supergroup was born several minutes past fusion’s finest hour, and its members’ collaboration honestly shows their age.
Jazz, secure, shrugs off “joke” threat
“We’re doing everything we can to eliminate jazz from American culture,” a promoter for Live Nation Artists, the world’s dominant pop music production and marketing firm “joked” to Florida councilmen considering a proposed upcoming music festival. Jazz responds with a can’t-be-bothered shrug.Â
Too hip to be rattled by ignorant, idle, defensive — and of course, revealing – threats, the greatest living musicians are basking in hard-earned recognition and producing inspiringly energized, not necessarily mellow music. Undeterred by Live Nation-like commercial disdain, jazz festivals are thriving throughout North America under nominally non-profit organizations run by a coterie of canny impresarios. Jazz clubs — not only in NYC, I saw it in Chicago, too — are hosting eager audiences, maybe because the cheap buck has lured international tourists. But the buck’s not cheap Canada, which is also promoting jazz. Jazz is always endangered, but right now it’s in high bloom.Â
Prophecy fulfilled: the future now at jazz fests
“Music that we’re playing now is just the blues of all of
America, all over again, it’s just a different kind of blues. This is the
blues, the real blues, it’s the new blues, and people must listen to this music
because they’ll be hearing it all the time. Because if it’s not me it’ll be
someone else that’s playing it. The majority of the younger musicians I’ve
heard in New York, they’ve begun to play this way because this is the only way
left for musicians to play. All the other ways have been explored, in the time
past.”Â
So sayeth tenor saxophonist Albert Ayler in December 1964 — a clip I used in my latest NPR audio piece about a Swedish documentary film on Ayler currently touring U.S. arthouses. He believed unbound, exploratory and free (yet focused) improvisation was the sound of the future. Typically depicted as a wild-eyed radical whose mysterious death 38 years ago came at the crux of his brief but ecstatic career, Ayler is being proved right by the explosive energies that seek to turn America’s vernacular music transcendent — at jazz festivals this week and next in New York City and beyond. It’s the only way left for musicians to play!