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Jazz Beyond Jazz

Howard Mandel's Urban Improvisation

Electroacoustic improv, coming or going? (Herb Deutsch, RIP; synths forever?)

As the year ends/begins, I’m thinking electroacoustic music is a wave of the future. But maybe it’s been superseded by other synth-based genres — synth-pop, EDM, soundtracks a lá Stranger Things. Is Prophet, the just released 1986 weird-sounds bonanza from Sun Ra with his Arkestra exploiting the then new, polyphonic and programmable Prophet-5 synth, timeless or passé?

Herb Deutsch (glasses) with Robert Moog and his synthesizer

In February, I saluted Herb Deutsch, co-inventor of the Moog synthesizer, on his 90th birthday. Deutsch died on December 9, with synthesizers ever more present in music creation of all sorts, and a notable if slow trend towards electro-acoustic improvising ensembles, which he pioneered. Is the trend taking hold? Or a thing mostly of the past?

As I wrote in February:

[Deutsch’s] recordings collected on From Moog to Mac sort of a best-of, with “Jazz Images, a Worksong and Blues,” (1965 — credited as the first composition for a Moog) featuring bluesy piano and (overdubbed?) horn intersected interwoven with thick and thin electronic lines, unnaturally long fades, whirling sirens, white noise, delays and maybe backward tape. A Christmas Carol (1963) his prescient mix of found sounds, spoken word and haunting ambiance, was a contemporaneous response to the Alabama church bombing that killed four young girls and also drew profound comment from James Baldwin, John Coltrane and Dr. Martin Luther King. Deutsch’s composition still has power . . .

To celebrate that aspect of Deutsch’s work, here’s a view-list of mixed acoustic instruments and electronics, old and new, analog or digital, in-studio or live.

XXXX – Michael Wollny with Emile Parisien/Tim Lefebvre & Christian Lillinger

“The Prophet (abridged)” — by Sun Ra

“High Speed Chase” — from doo-bop — Miles Davis

“Patriots” — Zawinul Syndicate

from Streaming — Muhal Richard Abrams, George Lewis and Roscoe Mitchell

“Raindance” from Sextant, Herbie Hancock (with Dr. Patrick Gleeson)

Evan Parker ElectroAcoustic Ensemble

“Message” from Leave the City — Music Electronnica Viva

“OBA” from Human Music — Jon Appleton and Don Cherry

“Babel” from Avant-noir — Lisa Mezzacappa

“You Know, You Know” — Jan Hammer with Mahavishnu Orchestra (John McLaughlin)

Jazz Autumn: Returns, galas and even awards

If all “jazz” shares a single trait, it’s that nothing will stifle it. Adjusting to covid-19

Ari Brown greets fan at Hyde Park Jazz Festival; photo by Michael Jackson for Chicago Reader

strictures, Chicago (just for instance) in the past two months has been site of:

  • A stellar Hyde Park Jazz Festival;
  • Herbie Hancock’s homecoming concert at Symphony Center;
  • audiences happily (for the most part – no reported incidents otherwise) observing appropriate covid restrictions in intimate venues where I’ve been — including Constellation, the Jazz Showcase, Hungry Brain and Fitzgerald’s;
  • a heartening multi-kulti success — Japanese taiko drums and shamisen hooking up with Brazilian percussion trio and guitarist, Ukrainian bandura improviser, string quartet, jazz rhythm team all led by brassman Orbert Davis in the Chicago Jazz Philharmonic‘s return to in-person (as well as streamed, and free of charge) performance;
  • the fourth annual Afro-Futurism weekend at Elastic Arts;
  • An AACM 55th Anniversary concert by the Great Black Music Ensemble at the Logan Center;
  • the Jazz Institute of Chicago staging a “projection promenade” featuring performers in front of large-scale digital photo exhibits, in three lots along south side Cottage Grove Avenue.

Most of those events were free of charge to attendees (not the jazz clubs of course, but prices haven’t risen and are low by, say, New York City standards), simply required advance registration, and have benefitted from generous arts support from the City of Chicago, which has truly stepped up to bat in terms of channeling funds to small and dispersed organizations as well as major central ones. As I understand it, commercial enterprises as well as not-for-profits have received financial support.

Kudos to Mark Kelly, who has just retired as director of the City’s Department of Cultural Affairs and Special Events (DCASE) for energetic, creative responses to the challenges of his tenure — pandemic included. But it should be made clear that the efforts mentioned above resulted from efforts of many actors across a broad and deep, if under-heralded, local artistic ecosystem. And I barely scratched what’s happening here, just glossing over music highlights, not addressing the Film Fest, Humanities Fest, Lyric Opera’s MacBeth, re-opening of Steppenwolf and other theaters, the Art Institute’s Kertész exhibit, and so on.

Guess I’m sounding boosterish. Be that as it may, financial insecurities are ever-present for arts

presenters, non-profit or commercial, and so fundraising events continue, sometimes in unusual formats. Another for instance: The Jazz Institute, of which I’m secretary of the board, holds its annual fundraiser November 4 — and all the world is invited to attend free of charge.

It’s wholly virtual, offering insiders’ perspectives and on-site videos hosted by reedsman Rajiv Halim and vocalist-educator Bobbi Wilsyn, singer Meagan McNeal, trumpeter Corey Wilkes and more. Of course donations are strongly encouraged; it takes ever more cash to produce music free of charge in Chicago Park district facilities city-wide, to run Artists-in-Residence programs in local schools, a high school big band competition, and after-school programs (which have graduated successive waves of exciting new musicians). But the JIC will be happy if you simply tune in to watch fresh videos of the student jam sessions held at the Jazz Showcase; Awards being presented to Chris Anderson of the Fulton Street Collective loft venue and Joan Colasso, director of the Timeless Gifts Youth Program; a tour of local jazz shrines with voice-over by Maggie Brown (daughter of Oscar Brown, Jr.). Check it out. Get acquainted.

Will it raise a sou? We shall see. The distinctly different Chicago Jazz Philharmonic, co-led until just recently by trumpeter Davis and his business partner Mark Ingram, held its all-online, not-cheaply-ticketed virtual gala back in June with Kurt Elling as a collaborative guest (Rhapsody Snyder was introduced as new Executive Director on the webcast), and announced income from it of $85,000, $10k over its goal. So yes, these can be important sources of unrestricted funds.

Orbert Davis leads Chicago Jazz Philharmonic in Chicago Immigrant Stories III, with Tatsu Aoki (shamisen) and his daughters playing taiko drums and flute, and (not in this photo) Geraldo de Oliveria with Dede Sampaio and Luciano Antonio; and Ivan Smilo, bandura and vocals. Photo from CJP

Speaking of which — >>DIGRESSION WARNING<< — congratulations to all 52 jazz and improvised music practitioners receiving support of between $25,000 to $40,000 for creative residencies from Jazz Road, a South Arts initiative funded by the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation and The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. This round reaching many artists I’ve long admired, including Chico Freeman, Ernest Dawkins, Mars Williams, Josh Abrams, Adegoke Steve Colson, Craig Harris, Elio Villafranca, Nasheet Waits, Kip Hanrahan, Michele Rosewoman, Meg Okura, Jamaaladeen Tacuma, Melvin Gibbs and Jason Moran. Congrats also to pianist Kris Davis, eminent composer, saxophonist and band-leader Wayne Shorter, and pianist Danilo Perez (a principal in Shorter’s long-running, now suspended quartet), named Doris Duke Performing Artists ($275,000 comes with this honor).

Not to overlook rare recognition (not from the Jazz Journalists Association) for music journalists. The 52nd annual ASCAP Foundation Deems Taylor/Virgil Thomson Awards for outstanding print, broadcast, liner notes and new media coverage of music honored (among others) Daphne A. Brooks for “100 Years Ago, ‘Crazy Blues’ Sparked a Revolution for Black Women Fans,” published in The New York Times; Fat Possum Records and No Sudden Movements for their release of the documentary Memphis ’69, with performances by Sleepy John Estes, Bukka White and Fred McDowell; Ted Gioia for his appreciation of jazz critic Whitney Balliett, “The Music Critic Who Tried to Disappear,” published by City Journal; Frank J. Oteri of New Music USA’s New Music Box for the podcast, “Valerie Coleman: Writing Music for People” and John Kruth for his article, “Ceremonies Against the Virus: Bachir Attar of the Master Musicians of Jajouka,” published by the online journal, Please Kill Me. Monetary awards of $250 to $500 accompany this recognition. As a two-time Deems Taylor Award-winner, I can attest to its value as an uplift.

City of Chicago, music promoter

Lollapalooza 2021 had some 385,000 attendees (without significant Covid-19 outbreak, fortunately) but featured little of host Chicago’s indigenous talent or styles. And that’s just wrong, declared Department of Cultural Affairs and Special Events commissioner Mark Kelly, launching the month-long Chicago in Tune

Mark Kelly, photos © Lauren Deutsch

“festival” at a reception August 19. Here’s the still-evolving event calendar of hundreds of local music performances — of every conceivable genre, free and ticketed, outside or in, most requiring vax proof and/or masks — running on through Sept 19, in every city neighborhood.

Chicago, Kelly asserted, has never officially or adequately embraced and supported (he didn’t say it — but allow me: or exploited for publicity’s sake) its homegrown music communities comprising artists and audiences of boogie, blues, jazz, gospel, r&b, house, hip-hop, rap, folk, rock, Mexican mariachi, Polish polka band, Latin jam sessions, singer-songwriter performance, contemporary composers, virtuosic instrumentalists and improvisational ensembles.

At his direction DCASE had planned 2020 as “The Year of Chicago Music” and responded to Covid-19 shutdowns by extending that initiative into ’21. Yet the shutdowns continued, and the matter of sustaining or improving the lot of Chicago music writ large was for Kelly, a one-time jazz drummer retiring from his position in October, becoming more urgent.

So in an unusual effort to broadly stimulate the existing musical ecosystem (not incidentally, a potential tourist draw) and project our brand in the class of New York, New Orleans, Nashville, Austin, Detroit while also productively de-centralizing it — his department in the administration of Mayor Lori Lightfoot has coordinated partial-to-full underwriting and promotion of grants to artists and shows in dozens of venues and public spaces across this third-biggest (by area as well as population) U.S. metropolis.

Included are the ARC Music Festival in Union Park (September 4 & 5), Pitchfork Music Festival Chicago in Union Park (September 10–12), the punk Riot Fest in Douglass Park (September 17–19) — and “Music Lives Here,” a public art initiative installing graphic markers at 50 musically noteworthy sites. The City’s own production centerpiece: over Labor Day weekend an evening each, free of charge in Millennium Park, for jazz, blues, house and gospel, a necessary adaptation of Chicago’s former multi-days fests.

As a native and as a music journalist, I subscribe to the notion that Chicago has a unique and highly significant place in the past and ongoing development of American if not indeed world-wide music. The case for this is well known, so I won’t detail it here.*

However, for all the glories of sounds come from Oz-on-the-Lake in just the last 100 years, say, including its eminence in commercial endeavors like music publishing, jingle production and harp manufacture and establishment of prestigious institutions including the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and Lyric Opera, in the aftermath of the late 1960s consolidation and relocation of major record labels to Los Angeles and New York City few sizable business structures have emerged (pace JAM Productions) to loudly, systematically advance the cause of local music either throughout or beyond the city’s limits.

There are feisty independent labels such as Aerophonic, Alligator, BluJazz, Delmark, International Anthem, Southport, and The Sirens (of course with dislocations across the music industry, they, too have struggled). We have worthy non-profits — the Jazz Institute of Chicago, Chicago Jazz Philharmonic, South Side Jazz Coalition, AACM, Hyde Park Jazz Society, Hyde Park Jazz Festival (2021 program live/in-person Sept 25-26), Elastic Arts, Experimental Sound Studio and Hot House among them — and dedicated performance locales including the Jazz Showcase, the Green Mill, Fulton Street Collective, Constellation and the Hungry Brain, Rosa’s Lounge, Kingston Mines, Buddy Guy’s Legends, Andy’s, Winter’s, Promontory, Space, Fitzgerald’s, Epiphany, City Winery, concert halls such as Symphony Center and the Harris Theater, special series programmed at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Du Sable Museum, Navy Pier and the Shedd Aquarium. For decades we’ve had immersive multi-stage, week or weekend-long free of charge festivals celebrating Chicago jazz, blues, house and gospel in downtown’s Grant and Millennium parks, continuing if pared down next weekend on the Frank Gehry-designed stage of Pritzker Pavillion.

Roscoe Mitchell-Famadou Don Moyé Art Ensemble of Chicago Large Ensemble, Sept 2019, Pritzker Pavillion; photo ©Marc PoKempner

This year’s reduced iterations of those fests amount to three hoursfor each genre on one of four days Sept 3 to 6. Jazz night Sept. 4 (programmed with the Jazz Institute, the board of which I sit on) features our righteous elder statesman saxophonist Ari Brown, trumpeter Marquis Hill and vocalist Lizz Wright with their bands. Among ancillary events catching my eye, produced independently of the City but underwritten in some measure with tax dollars, is the Rockwell Blues and Jazz Street Stroll, scheduled for mid-day Sept 4, organized by Delmark Records to showcase several of its artists.

Municipal endorsement and underwriting for both profit- and not-for profit spaces nurturing creativity seems to me a very good thing at this moment. Infusing Chicago with music, hearing for ourselves what we have, enjoying it as much together as is safe and wise, letting each other and the world at large know what this place, in all its variety, sounds like at this time — I find those worthy goals. We’re facing a Covid-19 surge with indoor masked mandates imposed again (including for kids about to re-enter the schools) and continued gun violence, among other ills. Music won’t fix those problems, but may help us live with them.

Photo-journalist Marc PoKempner attended one Chicago In Tune show last Friday: Saxophonist Ernest Dawkins leading the Live the Spirit Residency Tentet in “Redefining Frederick Douglass,” at Douglass (Frederick and Anna) Park. He reported the crowd was small but ardent, the music intense and Khari B‘s readings of Douglass’s oratory powerful.

from left: Alexis Lombre, Ernest Dawkins, Steve Berry, Junius Paul, Corey Wilkes © Marc PoKempner
Spoken word artist Khari B, reeds player Kevin King © Marc PoKempner
Crowd with social distancing at Douglass (Frederick and Anna Park, © Marc PoKempner

So much more is yet to come, including a homecoming concert on Sept. 2 at Symphony Center by the great Herbie Hancock, age 80, pianist/composer/Grammy winner, “creative chair” for jazz of the Los Angeles Philharmonic, namesake of the formerly-known-as-Thelonious Monk Institute of Jazz, UNESCO Goodwill Ambassador and face of International Jazz Day. I’ve adored his music since the mid ’60s– from his Maiden Voyage through the ’60s with Miles et al to his experimental, exploratory Mwandishi albums like Sextant,

hip-scratch-funk-nuts “Rockit,” tributes Gershwin’s World and River: The Joni Letters. I won’t miss it.

But best about this all is that Mark Kelly said Chicago In Tune would not be a one-off, but only the beginning of the City’s turn to identifying music as key to our culture for our own benefit. Considering the Chicago-steeped legacies of an enormous and highly diversified creative contingent (my can’t-help-it-must-cite list is below, merely a scratch at what’s happening or happening here), it’s high time.

*Quick list, off the top of my head, roughly chronological, by no means comprehensive, focused on the deceased and hugely influential Chicago-born or associated music makers: Jelly Roll Morton, Johnny and Baby Dodds, Louis Armstrong, Lil Hardin, Earl Hines, Bix Beiderbecke, Eddie Condon, Alberta Hunter, Benny Goodman, Gene Krupa, Thomas A. (aka “Georgia Tom,” when he developed proto-rock “hokum” with Tampa Red) Dorsey, Lionel Hampton, Mezz Mezzrow, Jimmy McPartland, Bud Freeman, Jimmy and Mama Estelle Yancy, Big Bill Broonzy, Sonny Boy John Lee Williamson, Mahalia Jackson, Milt Hinton, Art Hodes, Dinah Washington, Nat “King” Cole, Eddie South, Steve Allen, Mel Torme, Capt. Walter Dyett, Johnny Griffin, Sam Cooke, Muddy Waters, Howlin’ Wolf, Little Walter, Otis Spann, Willie Dixon, Junior Wells, Otis Rush, Magic Sam, Paul Butterfield, Mike Bloomfield, Hound Dog Taylor, Magic Sam, Koko Taylor, Big Walter Horton, Cary Bell, Carmen McRae, Wilbur Ware, Richard Davis, Ralph Shapey, Shulamit Ran, the Staples Singers, Ahmad Jamal, Eddie Harris, Malachi Favors, Andrew Hill, Wilbur Campbell, Barrett Deems, William Russo, Sir Georg Solti, Sun Ra, Marshall Allen, John Gilmore, Phil Cohran, Muhal Richard Abrams, Fred Anderson, Jodie Christian, Lester Bowie, Joseph Jarman, Leroy Jenkins, Ann Ward and other distinguished members of the AACM, Ira Sullivan, Nicky Hill, Oscar Brown Jr., Lee Konitz, Hal Russell, Willie Pickens, Geraldine de Haas, the Chi-Lites, Jerry Butler, Curtis Mayfield, Earth Wind & Fire, the Freemans (Von, George, Bruzz, and living Chico), John Prine, Steve Goodman — sorry, going on and on but as a native son, I can’t help it — Gene Chandler, the Shadows of Knight, the Buckinghams, the Flock, Minnie Ripperton, and among the living: Mavis Staples, Jeff Tweedy, Wilco, Tortoise, Kanye West, Liz Phair, Common, Chance the Rapper, Jennifer Hudson, Orbert Davis, Julian Priester, Rufus Reid, Amina Claudine Myers, Roscoe Mitchell, Henry Threadgill, Anthony Braxton, Thurman Barker, Wadada Leo Smith, Douglas Ewart, Mwata Bowden, Ari Brown, Steve Coleman, Foday Musa Suso, Adam Rudolph, Hamid Drake, Robert Irving III, Thaddeus Tukes, Joel Ross, Ben LaMar Gay, Makaya McCraven, Isaiah Collier, Michael Zerang, Billy Branch, Lurrie Bell, Jimmy Johnson, Dee Alexander, Kurt Elling, Miguel de la Cerna, Ernie Adams, Dana Hall, Avreeayl Ra, Bobby Broom, Nicole Mitchell, Erwin Helfer, Myra Melford, Jim Baker, Edward Wilkerson Jr., Mars Williams, Brian Sandstrom, Steve Hunt, Ken Vandermark, Dave Rempis, Fred Lonberg-Holm, Savoir Faire, Pat Mallinger, Cameron Pfiffner, Paul Wertico, Tomeka Reid, Mike Reed, Margaret Murphy Webb, Rudresh Mahanthappa, Amir ElSaffar, Brad Goode, Mike Allemana, Nick Mazzarella, Maggie Brown, Fareed Haque, Howard Levy, K-Rad, Greg Ward, Joanie Pallatto and Sparrow, George Fludis, Erin McDougald, Josie Falbo, Zvonimir Tot, Tatsu Aoki, Chris Foreman, Geoff Bradfield, Matt Ullery, Josh Abrams, Josh Berman, Augusta Reed Thomas, Rachel Barton Pine, Victor Garcia, Katie Ernst, Kahil El Zabar, Ernest Dawkins, Rajiv Halim and a zillion others.

Whatever happened to International Jazz Day?

April 30 — yesterday — was celebrated as the sixth annual International Jazz Day with a global webcast from Havana, hosted by Will Smith, headlined by pianist Herbie Hancock and including a couple of dozen top notch musicians from the U.S., Russia, Cameroon, France and Korea as well as Cuba. Did you know?

Advance publicity and followup coverage has been but a dot on the attention focused on IJD last year, when President Barack Obama hosted a splendiferous Jazz Day in the White House. Considering the leader of the regime replacing Obama’s administration, it’s no surprise our government did not note the event — though after all, it represents one of the most successful exports, cultural or otherwise, ever coming from America.

As explained by Irina Bokova, director-general of UNESCO which produces IJD in organizational collaboration with the Thelonious Monk Institute of Jazz, “Jazz is great music because it carries strong values. Jazz is about freedom, about dignity and civil rights. . . Through jazz, we improvise with others, we live better together, in dialogue, in respect.” So maybe it’s better to keep the music at arms length from the current political heavies. After all, the U.S. no longer has voting rights in UNESCO, since we are $300 million in arrears for our dues since 2011, though Obama and John Kerry, his Secretary of State, in 2015 urged Congress to restore funding the United Nations Organization for Education, Science and Culture, now 70 years old.

Regardless of political issues, the music performed in the beautiful Gran Teatro de la Habana Alicia Alonso (billed as the oldest theater in Latin America) exemplified jazz’s virtues and reinforced the importance of Afro-Cuban influences on jazz, which we commonly think of as born in that Caribbean capital, New Orleans. Opening with a renditions of Dizzy Gillespie’s “Manteca” (co-written by Cuban conguero Chano Pozo and big band arranger Gil Fuller), the concert had multiple highlights including Esperanza Spalding’s bass obbligato to  Youn Sun
Nah’s smoldering vocal on
“Besame Mucho” (which also featured an affecting solo by violinist Regina Carter), electric bassist-vocalist-bandleader Richard Bona’s lively number, Cuban vocalist Bobby Carcasses’s scat chorus, a tribute to Cuba’s native changui style (from the province of Guantanamo), electric bassist Marcus Miller’s role in diverse combos, and the extraordinary Cuban pianists Chucho Valdes and Gonzalo Rubalcaba duetting on and beyond “Blue Monk.” Congrats to music director John Beasley, who sat with me in 2013 for an NPR interview about what’s involved putting this all together.

IJD 2017 event map

IJD events were this year held in 190-some countries on all seven continents. The star-studded global webcast has been, of course, the most prominent event right along, though its advance planning is evidently so complex that announcement of where it’s taking place seems to come later and later. This year the information that Havana was the site didn’t come until April 10 — short lead time for many news organizations. As I write this post, neither DownBeat nor JazzTimes has a report from yesterday. Nothing in the New York Times, Washington Post, the LA Times or the Guardian. There’s bit from the PRNewswire published by Market Watch, a note on the blog of KNKX (Seattle) and an overview on eNews Channel Africa which mentions the attendance at the concert of Miguel Diaz-Canel, Cuba’s vice president of Cuba’s State Council and a rumored potential successor to President Raul Castro, scheduled to leave office in February 2018

With Irina Bokova’s second term as UNESCO director-general coming to an end and our federal support (even by lip service) of the initiative dim compared to Obama’s warm welcome of it in 2016, one might worry that IJD will lose crucial support.   Let’s hope not, as it has indeed been a beacon of enlightened international creativity and collaboration. Herbie Hancock, in his closing remarks, vowed we will see an IJD again next April 30. Eager for details! Tell us where sufficiently in advance and we’ll spread the word.

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Big fun news: Santana weds Blackman, Herbie & Wayne play

The rare notable jazz wedding to celebrate: Beyond-jazz, rock & Latin guitarist Carlos Santana to drummer Cindy Blackman, who’s had a

nicer couple.jpeg

Artists’ promotional photos

great recording year, issuing Another Lifetime, her smashing tribute to the late Tony Williams) and driving Organ Monk, Greg Lewis’s trio album that made my top 10.

Santana’s best albums after the first one always have had a outward reach — Abraxis, Caravanserai, his spiritualized rave up Love, Devotion and Surrender with John McLaughlin and organist Larry (Khalid Yasin) Young, and 1990’s Swing of Delight, featuring ex-Miles men Herbie Hancock and Wayne Shorter (who made music at the wedding), Ron Carter and, yes, Tony Williams. Carlos and Cindy — play hard and prosper!

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Video for fans of Sonny Rollins & harmolodics

Too good to not post: Ornette Coleman was surprise guest with Sonny Rollins at his fast-become-famous Beacon Theater 80th birthday party on September 10 (backstage there was birthday cake shaped like a saxophone, made of marzipan). Note SR’s quote at about 10 minutes in of “I’ll Take Manhattan,” which he certainly did. [[As of 9/15/2010 this video has been removed from Youtube by it’s “user.” Research will follow. 

 And next is  another priceless clip I’ve never come upon before, from the early ’60s, of Sonny with trumpeter Don Cherry — Ornette’s brilliant partner — young Henry Grimes on bass and drummer Billy Higgins. 

 thanks to whoever made these public, though in the future — PLEASE get artists’ agreements to film and make public . . . And the embedding is disabled, but here’s Don Cherry playing Monk’s “Bemsha Swing” with Herbie Hancock, Ron Carter and Billy Higgins, from New Orleans circa 1986. 

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Miles’ beyond jazz, today and tomorrow

Miles Davis is still at it — in Prospect Park, the Highline Ballroom, (le) Poisson Rouge, Carefusion Jazz Festival’s Carnegie Hall concerts, also overflowing the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, as per my City Arts – New York column and enriching the glorious Festival International de Jazz de Montreal (June 25 – July 5).

Though he died of exacerbated living at age 65 in 1991, the influence of Miles’ trumpet and his breakthrough “directions in music” vibrates through urbane international cultural as strongly now as ever. Bitches Brew, which launched a jazz-rock revolution, and Tutu, his most ambitious late-period album, are inspiring high visibility concert performances that are exciting in their own rights, unveiling a potential future rather than reviving the past.
This Miles wave isn’t nostalgia-based: it’s a wake-up call for a world short on  sharp melodies, harmonic exploration, rampant rhythm, full-force interaction. Audiences I’ve encountered seem eager to hear again or for the first time Miles’ many modes — from aching fragility to hippest cool to surrealistic phantasmagoria to imperious swagger, all conveyed with surprising, original lyricism.

[Read more…]

Eddie Palmieri sets Jazz at Lincoln Center afire

Eddie Palmieri, the genius and prophet of Afro-Caribbean jazz, showed Herbie Hancock, maybe Wynton Marsalis and certainly the roaring audience at Jazz at Lincoln Center’s Rose Hall a thing or three last weekend. His band La Perfecta II, reconstituting the instrumentation and compositions for mambo, cha-cha and pachanga dancing Palmieri introduced in 1961, blew the lid off the joint as I’ve heard no other band do since it opened in 2004, establishing Latin music’s clavé rhythm for all time at the core of what Marsalis likes to call “the house that swing built.” 

Swing they did, La Perfecta, swing hard, with style, precision and vengeance much more driving, cool and fiery than anything else taken for swing today. If only the Rose Hall seats could have been pushed aside for dancing. Swing, swivel, dip, cut, twist, step, shift, glide, gesture — faster, faster, faster — in perfect syncopation with the polyrhythmic percussion, the riffing trombones and trumpet, the steely-plucked trés and full-bodied but sparely applied flute.
Palmieri at the piano – age 73, dapper in suit and yellow tie, busy cueing his horns, supporting his elegant yet impassioned male singers, goosing the tempo kept by his deft young bassist and veteran conga player, breaking into unpredictably funky or classical, flowing or staggered keyboard solos — is probably the last surviving bandleader in America today who makes “swing” transcend its historic import to render big band virtuosity, intensity and density at highest speeds more immediate than tomorrow’s pop. His music isn’t  contemporary, it’s immediate, and thus timeless.
He expands on an extraordinary American idiom — check out this clip from a Fania All-Stars session of Palmieri, the “Sun of Latin Music” with fellow keyboardists Larry Harlow and Papo Lucca, Johnny Pacheco playing flute and Ismael Quintana singing lead: 

[Read more…]

Herbie enriches Joni

A decade ago, pianist Herbie Hancock established his “New Standards” initiative, aiming to wed sophisticated improvisation to a contemporary American pop songbook (post-Berlin, Gershwin, Porter, et al). At last, after several disastrous attempts, he’s justified such a project with River: The Joni Letters — infusing well-known high art pop songs by inimitable Joni Mitchell with the depth of lyrical, inspired jazz.

[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…

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