• Home
  • About
    • Jazz Beyond Jazz
    • Howard Mandel
    • Contact
  • AJBlogs
  • ArtsJournal

Jazz Beyond Jazz

Howard Mandel's Urban Improvisation

Revered jazz elders, deceased: portraits by Sánta István Csaba

As a generation of jazz elders leaves our world — some hastened by the pandemic — their faces as photographed by Sánta István Csaba become even more luminous, haunting, iconic.

Guiseppi Logan, multi-instrumentalist (May 1935 – April 2020)
Henry Grimes, bassist (Nov 1935 – April 2020)
Pianists Geri Allen (June 1957 – June 2017) and
McCoy Tyner (Dec 1938 – March 2020)
Wallace Roney, trumpeter (May 1960 – March 2020)
Lee Konitz, alto saxophonist, improviser (Oct 1927 – April 2020)
Bucky Pizzarelli, guitarist (Jan 1926 – April 2020)

Originally from Transylvania and currently living in Turin, the northern Italian area with heaviest covid-19 infections, Sánta reports that he is healthy, employed at the reception desk of a nearby school, and has recently been honored with a Hungarian Press Photo Award. However, with the lockdown, that Awards ceremony has been indefinitely postponed.

International Jazz RIPs, 2017

Photographer-writer-author Ken Franckling has painstakingly compiled a compendium of more than 400 jazz artists and associates from around the world who died in 2017, with links to obituaries of most of them. Posted at JJANews.org.

Muhal Richard Abrams – © Santá István Csaba

It’s a striking document and useful resource, though Franckling says, sadly, “The list seems to get depressingly longer each year.”

Maybe that’s because jazz itself — at least as so recorded and promoted — is now more than 100 years old and the

Roswell Rudd ©Santá István Csaba

post-WWII generations that gave the art form its fervent audiences and inspired players for the past 70 years are inevitably thinning.

But as Franckling depicts in his recent book Jazz in the Key of Light, energy and brilliance yet abound. My own 2017 experiences

Willie Pickens, photo by Marc PoKempner

of jazz in schools, nightclubs, festivals and grassroots events across the country, in Europe, Asia, South and Central America, in general media manifestations and the stubbornly independent underground suggest the music is everywhere, really, if often overlooked and underfinanced.

That said, I’m going to miss a lot of those creative artists who died during the past 12 months — especially Muhal Richard Abrams, Geri Allen, Nat Hentoff, Bern Nix, Roswell Rudd and Willie Pickens, all of whom I’ve often listened to, enjoyed and learned from.

Luckily, as their unique expressions and ideas have been documented, we will be able to summon something of them, spirits and thoughts, again and again. A primer —

    • Muhal Richard Abrams,  Mama and Daddy Compositions with improv take surprising turns, as played by aspontaneous, multi-hued ensemble.
    • Geri Allen, Eyes in theBack of Your Head The pianist’s themes launch intuitive explorations by a quintetfeaturing her one-time husband trumpeter Wallace Rooney and a mentor, alto saxist Ornette Coleman.
    • Nat Hentoff and Nat Shapiro, Hear Me Talkin’ To Ya Lovingly collected and edited oral history anecdotes from great players of the ’30s to the ’60s. The Nats heard them talkin’, and made sure we could, too.
    • Bern Nix, Body Meta A guitarist variously quizzical, humble, contrary and lyrical, contributing most memorably to Ornette Coleman’s peerless electric Prime Time.
    • Roswell Rudd, Numatik Swing Band The trombonist tenderly blustered and moaned across a spectrum of styles, Dixieland to Tuvan, always as himself; his 1973 Jazz Composers Orchestra suite is joyful, vivid, playfully rough and tumble, modernistic fun.
  • Willie Pickens It’s About Time The Chicago pianist was under-recored as a leader, just this full of warmth and drive plus three albums of religious and Christmas music. There’s also a duet with Marian McPartland, an album with Elvin Jones on tour, and his contribution to Eddie Harris’ hit version of “Exodus.” Time rewarded.

howardmandel.com

Subscribe by Email or RSS
All JBJ posts

Midnight (EST) deadline, blues contest entries

Prizes of Jazz at Lincoln Center tix for this weekend and dvds of Wynton Marsalis with Willie Nelson for the best blues lyrics or prose poem will be determined at 12:01 tonight (11/11/09). Several stunning (!?!) efforts have been received — via the comments box below — but I’m not publishing any of them until all the tries are in and the winners have been chosen. Is it hard to write a blues lyric? See my examples from yesterday, or search the web for classics, which are plentiful. Three to five choruses fitting a standard 12-bar blues form, or a bluesy prose poem of 100 to 150 words are what I want to see — alto sax soulman Maceo Parker playing in the elegant Allen Room, and Wynton leading the Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra in music by Mary Lou Williams, with featured soloists Geri Allen and Geoff Keezer are first prizes; second and third are dvds of Wynton and Willie (with guest Norah Jones), autographed by Mr. Jazz at Lincoln Center himself. 

Submit your blues now! Don’t delay and cry like this – 

[Read more…]

Paeans to Hank Jones

My profile of pianist Hank Jones, who turned 91 on July 31, is in the August issue of Down Beat and excerpted here. Space limitations disallowed any of the resounding shout-outs I asked for from a bevy of musicians to make the print edition: No such problem on the web! So read what several pianists with styles of their own, and one of Hank’s most admiring collaborators,  have to say about an eminently modest but extraordinarily accomplished gentleman. 

[Read more…]

Howard Mandel

I'm a Chicago-born (and after 32 years in NYC, recently repatriated) writer, editor, author, arts reporter for National Public Radio, consultant and nascent videographer -- a veteran freelance journalist working on newspapers, magazines and websites, appearing on tv and radio, teaching at New York University and elsewhere, consulting on media, publishing and jazz-related issues. I'm president of the Jazz Journalists Association, a non-profit membership organization devoted to using all media to disseminate news and views about all kinds of jazz.
My books are Future Jazz (Oxford U Press, 1999) and Miles Ornette Cecil - Jazz Beyond Jazz (Routledge, 2008). I was general editor of the Illustrated Encyclopedia of Jazz and Blues (Flame Tree 2005/Billboard Books 2006). Of course I'm working on something new. . . Read More…

@JazzMandel

Tweets by @jazzbeyondjazz

More Me

I'll be speaking:

JBJ Essentials

Archives

Return to top of page

an ArtsJournal blog

This blog published under a Creative Commons license