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Jazz Beyond Jazz

Howard Mandel's Urban Improvisation

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

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

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

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

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

under Sushi Dokku, photo: Marc PoKempner

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

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

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

Cecil Taylor in 2014, photo by Sánta István Csaba

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

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

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

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

He has earned significant critical acclaim —

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

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

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

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

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Jazz and beyond projects with 2018 NEA funding support

Given all the noise, the National Endowment for the Arts’ $25 mil for arts, literature and education announced Feb. 7 may have been overlooked. But these funds and the projects they support, nationwide, should be noted. From more than $3 million going to initiatives strictly labeled “Music” (exclusive of “Musical Theater” or “Opera”) here’s my subjective selection of 50 grants referencing “jazz” and beyond.

The largest amounts among them go to Carnegie Hall to celebrate

Philip Glass’s 80th birthday ($85k and there’s a second grant on this theme, of $30k to the Pacific Symphony in Irvine CA ); to the Kennedy Center to present NEA Jazz Masters ($65K — I just heard Jazz Master pianist Randy Weston perform there, new arrangements of circa WWI music of James Reese Europe, a worthy program), and to the New Music America Foundation, ($60k to support the estimable and invaluable website NewMusicBox.org).

Most of the grants are far less. I believe there’s enormous return to the public on $10,000 to $15,000 spent on underwriting festivals, concert series, unusual performances, installations and education programs in communities from Northville, Michigan to Lorman, Mississippi, Woodstock NY (and Manhattan, Chinatown, Brooklyn) to Minneapolis-St. Paul, Chicago, Oakland, LA, Toledo, Juneau, Pittsburgh, Sioux Falls, Ann Arbor, Santa Cruz, Louisville, Phoenix, and so on.

Sound investments, each one of these events (and many more supported by the NEA — really, see what good our taxes do, so cheaply. By comparision, $25 mil is the “relatively miniscule” (Time magazine, Jan 3 2018) amount just approved to fund development of a new road-mobile, ground-launched cruise missile, which Time reports is prohibited by Cold War agreements.

Oh, never mind. Here’s an entr’acte, then the grants.

  • Akropolis Quintet Inc. (aka Akropolis Reed Quintet) $10,000 Northville, MI To support “Together We Sound,” a festival of contemporary music by the Akropolis Reed Quintet.
  • Albany Symphony Orchestra, Inc. (aka Albany Symphony) $15,000 Albany, NY To support the American Music Festival.
  • Alcorn State University $10,000 Lorman, MS To support musical performances and an educational workshop at the Alcorn State University Jazz Festival.
  • Bang on a Can, Inc. (aka Bang on a Can) $50,000 Brooklyn, NY To support the Summer Festival of Music, a performance series and residency program for emerging composers and contemporary music performers.
  • Berklee College of Music, Inc. $25,000 Boston, MA To support musical performances and related educational and outreach activities at the Berklee BeanTown Jazz Festival.
  • Cabrillo Festival of Contemporary Music (aka Cabrillo Music Festival) $25,000 Santa Cruz, CA To support the Cabrillo Festival of Contemporary Music.
  • Carnegie Hall Corporation (aka Carnegie Hall (CH)) $85,000 New York, NY To support a concert series celebrating the works of composer Philip Glass (see also Pacific Symphony).
  • Chicago Jazz Orchestra Association (aka Chicago Jazz Orchestra) $10,000 Skokie, IL To support a tribute concert to NEA Jazz Master Nancy Wilson.
  • Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra $40,000 Cincinnati, OH To support Classical Roots, a series of concerts and recitals in celebration of African-American musical heritage.
  • Columbia University in the City of New York (on behalf of Miller Theatre) $30,000 New York, NY To support artist fees and production expenses for the Composer Portraits and Pop-up Concerts at Miller Theatre.
  • Creative Music Foundation, Inc. (aka Creative Music Studio) $10,000 Woodstock, NY To support a series of concert performances featuring jazz and poetry.
  • Cuyahoga Community College Foundation (on behalf of Tri-C JazzFest Cleveland) $20,000 Cleveland, OH To support musical performances and educational activities at the Tri-C JazzFest jazz festival.
  • Da Camera Society of Texas (aka Da Camera of Houston) $25,000 Houston, TX To support presentations of chamber music and jazz with related educational activities.
  • DC Jazz Festival $35,000 Washington, DC To support musical performances as well as educational activities and audience engagement events at the DC Jazz Festival.
  • Earshot Jazz Society of Seattle (aka Earshot Jazz) $25,000 Seattle, WA To support musical performances and other activities at the Earshot Jazz Festival.
  • East Bay Performing Arts (aka Oakland Symphony) $10,000 Oakland, CA To support Notes from the African Diaspora, a concert performed by the Oakland Symphony.
  • Eighth Blackbird Performing Arts Association (aka Eighth Blackbird) $25,000 Chicago, IL To support the Blackbird Creative Lab, a training program for instrumentalists and composers.
  • Elaine Kaufman Cultural Center-Lucy Moses School for Music and Dance (aka Kaufman Music Center) (on behalf of Merkin Concert Hall) $15,000 New York, NY To support the Ecstatic Music Festival at Merkin Concert Hall.
  • Festival of New Trumpet Music, Inc. (aka FONT Music) $10,000. New York, NY To support the Festival of New Trumpet Music.
  • Healdsburg Jazz Festival, Inc. (aka Healdsburg Jazz) $20,000 Healdsburg, CA To support musical performances at the Healdsburg Jazz Festival 20th anniversary celebration.
  • Hear Now Music Festival $10,000 Los Angeles, CA To support the Hear Now Music Festival.
  • Hot Summer Jazz Festival (aka Twin Cities Jazz Festival) $10,000 Saint Paul, MN To support free musical performances at the Twin Cities Jazz Festival.
  • Hyde Park Jazz Festival $15,000 Chicago, IL To support concert performances, commissions, and other activities at the Hyde Park Jazz Festival.
  • Jazz Bakery Performance Space (aka The Jazz Bakery) $25,000 Beverly Hills, CA To support concerts and educational activities featuring NEA Jazz Masters.
  • Jazz Foundation of America, Inc. (aka Jazz Foundation of America) $15,000 New York, NY To support curated musical performances as part of the Gig Fund program.
  • Jazz Gallery $25,000 New York, NY To support performance opportunities and a professional development program for emerging jazz artists.
  • Jazz House Kids, Inc. $45,000 Montclair, NJ To support free musical performances and related family-oriented activities at the Montclair Jazz Festival.
  • John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts (aka The Kennedy Center) $65,000 Washington, DC To support a series of concerts featuring NEA Jazz Masters and other legendary musicians.
  • Juneau Jazz & Classics, Inc. (aka Juneau Jazz & Classics) $15,000 Juneau, AK To support musical performances and educational activities at the Juneau Jazz & Classics Festival.
  • Kerrytown Concert House, Inc. (aka Kerrytown Concert House) $12,500 Ann Arbor, MI To support the Edgefest experimental music festival.
  • Kuumbwa Jazz Society (aka Kuumbwa Jazz aka KJ) $15,000 Santa Cruz, CA To support a jazz concert series.
  • Living Jazz $10,000 Oakland, CA To support a musical tribute honoring Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
  • Louisville Orchestra $15,000 Louisville, KY To support guest artist fees and travel for the Festival of American Music.
  • Manchester Craftsmen’s Guild (aka MCG Youth & Arts) $12,500 Pittsburgh, PA To support a jazz concert series featuring artists and orchestras of various styles.
  • Monterey Jazz Festival $35,000 Monterey, CA To support performances, commissions, and related educational and audience engagement activities at the Monterey Jazz Festival.
  • Music at the Anthology, Inc. (aka MATA) $10,000 New York, NY To support the 20th anniversary MATA Festival of new music.
  • Music From China, Inc. (aka Music From China) $10,000 New York, NY To support a commissioning and performance project of contemporary Chinese music.
  • Musical Instrument Museum (aka MIM) $12,500 Phoenix, AZ To support a program for foster children and foster families that offers access to the Musical Instrument Museum along with attendance at musical performances and participation in workshops and other educational activities.
  • Natural History Museum of the Adirondacks (aka The Wild Center) $10,000 Tupper Lake, NY To support The Wild Center’s commissioning of an outdoor music installation by composer Pete M. Wyer.
  • New Music USA Inc (aka New Music USA) $60,000 New York, NY To support new music through online resources at NewMusicBox.org and newmusicusa.org.
  • Outpost Productions, Inc. (aka Outpost) $25,000 Albuquerque, NM To support musical performances, educational and related audience engagement activities at the New Mexico Jazz Festival.
  • Post-Classical Ensemble, Inc. (aka PostClassical Ensemble) $30,000 Washington, DC To support a vocal and choral performance project celebrating the contributions of African-American composer, arranger, and baritone Henry Thacker “Harry” Burleigh (1866-1949).
  • San Diego Symphony Orchestra Association (aka SAN DIEGO SYMPHONY) $20,000 San Diego, CA To support a music festival exploring the connection of rhythm and beat in the human experience.
  • Savannah Music Festival, Inc. (aka Savannah Music Festival) $40,000 Savannah, GA To support the annual Savannah Music Festival.
  • South Dakota Symphony Orchestra (aka SDSO) $12,500 Sioux Falls, SD To support Phase III of the Lakota Music Project.
  • Third Coast Percussion NFP (aka Third Coast Percussion) $10,000 Chicago, IL To support a pilot program of cross-genre collaborations with underrepresented artistic voices.
  • Toledo Orchestra Association, Inc. (aka Toledo Symphony Orchestra) $10,000 Toledo, OH To support the orchestra’s music festival celebrating the contributions of African-American musicians.
  • University of Chicago (aka University of Chicago, UChicago, UofC) $25,000 Chicago, IL To support the presentation of a performance project highlighting the music, influences, and legacy of Hungarian-born composer Gyorgy Ligeti (1923-2006).
  • University of Northern Colorado $20,000 Greeley, CO To support musical performances and educational workshops at the UNC/Greeley Jazz Festival.
  • VocalEssence $35,000 Minneapolis, MN To support the annual WITNESS choral performance project celebrating the contributions of African Americans.

I hasten to repeat — this is a selection out of hundreds of NEA supported programs. Jazz, new and unusual music are also funded, if indirectly, in grants categorized as going to dance, folk and traditional arts, local arts agencies, media arts, museums, presenting and multi-disciplinary works. Every state from Alabama to Wyoming as well as the District of Columbia got funds. Support continued funding for the NEA.
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Hyde Park Jazz Fest, summer’s last dance (photos)

Chicago’s Hyde Park Jazz Festival in the first days of fall (Sept. 23 & 24th) which were unusually hot, is an exceptional event, curated for creative artistry, local and otherwise, drawing a highly diverse crowd

Late afternoon jazz dance. All photos by Marc PoKempner unless otherwise credited.

to a fair that mixes popular and specialized performances at a range of boutique venues.

Produced by an independent 501c3, the 11-year-old Hyde Park Jazz Festival receives some support from the University of Chicago’s Office of Civic Engagement, and has co-founders in principals from the Hyde Park Jazz Society but relies for funding on grants it applies for on its own and solicited individual giving. The fest occurs mostly on the U of C campus, which strives to be more inviting to its surrounding black residential neighborhoods than it’s been for decades. The efforts seems to work — a racially integrated crowd of several thousand, skewing middle-aged but including students (the term had just started) and families with kids, attended, all free of charge ($5 donations were encouraged). Some set up discreet tents, inflatable loungers or camp chairs within hearing distance of the outdoor stages at either end of a pedestrian mall on the Midway, socializing while taking in sun and street food. Others took refuge in the darker, cooler venues of the Logan Center for the Arts, the DuSable Museum, the Smart Museum or the Little Black Pearl art and design center on 47th St. 

Hyde Park Jazz Fest audience in the Midway.

No way to be everywhere, hear everything. My idea of fun.

Beckoned, walking to the site, by the muted trumpet of Marquis Hill in drummer Makaya McCraven’s band with rare, pleasing vibes-guitar duo (Joel Ross and Matt Gold, respectively) and in-demand bassist Junius Paul. Glanced in on Thelonious Monk’s biographer Robin D.G. Kelley‘s talk, hustled to the premiere of the Bamako*Chicago Sound System, flutist extraordinaire Nicole Mitchell’s collaboration with Malian kora player Ballake Sissoko,

Bamako*Chicago Sound System, Nicole Mitchell sixth from left, Ballake Sissoko farthest right

balafon virtuoso Fassery Diabaté and singer Fatim Kouyaté with Chicago vocalist Mankwe Ndos,bassist Josh Abrams, percussionist Jovina Armstrong and former Chicagoan guitarist Jeff Parker.

Amina Claudine Myers

This was swaying, tuneful music, superficially light as a breeze but with transparent, undulating layers of activity. I presented Ms. Mitchell with the Jazz Journalists Association’s 2017 Jazz Award for Flutist of the Year — it is her eighth consecutive such honor — and she accepted it mirthfully before the performance. As always, her personal improvisations are melody-rich, and she performed one solo that was genuinely edgy, pushing her instrument and the song’s formal limitations, too. See Lauren Deutsch’s photos of Nicole Mitchell for apt visualizations of her music. The cross-cultural ease of Bamako*Chicago Sound System’s ensemble is heartening.

A few blocks away, at the Hyde Park Union Church, Amina Claudine Myers performed gospel songs from her childhood on piano. I only heard part of the performance, I think she played organ and sang, as well. Myers, a foundational member around 1965 of Chicago’s Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians is still active in its New York chapter, though she’s less well-known than many of her AACM cohort. Her experience with her spiritual material is undeniable, and of course it imbues jazz.

Ben Goldberg, clarinet

Clarinetist Ben Goldberg, from the Bay Area, cast a secular if similarly ethereal ambiance in the Logan Center performance penthouse (9th floor looking towards the Lake) when night came on. He considered compositions of Thelonious Monk, 100th birthday boy/immortal genius. Almost a third of the full house cleared out after the second long episode in which he thoughtfully deconstructed such compositions as “Work,” “Ask Me Now,” “Mysterioso” and the hymn “Abide with Me.” Said Goldberg, “I understand, solo clarinet is not for everyone,” and when the room had re-settled, added, without rancor, “The lightweights are gone.” His evocations of Monk’s themes, phrase by phrase, started at high point of understanding and went up from there.

Bill McHenry and Andrew Cyrille, photo by Dennis McDonough

I missed a lot — hometown favorites Ari Brown, Dee Alexander, Tomeka Reid, too many others — but happily heard drummer Andrew Cyrille and tenor saxophonist Bill McHenry in a large hall in International House. A broadly-informed, highly skillful and imaginative drummer, Cyrille is still most associated with his 1960’s – ’70s collaboration with pianist Cecil Taylor, documented on the two masterpieces Unit Structures and Conquistador!, although prior to Taylor he’d supported Coleman Hawkins and Mary Lou Williams, among others. It’s less often recalled that he recorded what may be the first all solo drums album, What About? in 1971 (and another, The Loop, in ’78), the historic four-drummer album Pieces of Time (with Kenny Clarke, Famadou Don Moyé and Milford Graves in ’84), has

Andrew Cyrille concentrates on tom-toms with his mallets; photo by Dennis McDonough

led and recorded several distinctive ensembles from the ’70s through last year’s The Declaration of Musical Independence featuring guitarist Bill Frisell, synthesist Richard Teitelbaum and bassist Ben Street, as well as Trio 3 with reedsman Oliver Lake and bassist Reggie Workman, and this duet project with McHenry (recorded as Proximity).

I’ve known Cyrille personally since profiling him for DownBeat in the ’80s. I traveled with him briefly in the Soviet Union, invited him to address Jazz Journalists Association meetings at the New School Jazz program (where he’s taught for decades) and do lecture-demonstrations at my NYU classes. His distinctive strengths are embedded in the extraordinary range and responsiveness of his sensibility.

Cyrille can wield and drive a slashing attack or underlie a passage with sustained but muted drama. He is always structurally and compositionally aware, so purposeful, but he’s also quite willing to go with a collaborator’s flow. He tunes his drums carefully, yet will play anything — I’ve seen him stand from behind his kit, put his sticks to chairs,

Andrew Cyrille, NYC, 2012, photo by Sánta István Csaba

stands, tables, the wall and the floor until he returns to his stool without having missed a beat. He is a jazz master, if not yet acknowledged as such by the National Endowment of the Arts nonetheless known to fans of improvised music worldwide. Here he’s playing a snare with his teeth or tongue, like Jimi Hendrix and Buddy Guy mouthing guitar strings.

McHenry is a fine match, exploring horn motifs steadily, methodically, free to do anything/go anywhere but hewing to his own clear logic. Together, they exemplified a balanced partnership intent on physically generating and shaping sound.

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Jazz community upends Englewood’s bad rep

The 18th annual free Englewood Jazz Festival in south side Hamilton Park last Saturday (9/16) affirmed the best of Chicago’s grassroots culture,

Dancing at Englewood Jazz Festival. Photos by Marc PoKempner, unless otherwise credited

promoting an opposite image of this challenged neighborhood as a dangerous place — unless one fears powerful, creative music that speaks as directly as dance rhythms to its family of listeners.

Produced on behalf of the Live the Spirit Residency by saxophonist Ernest Dawkins — current AACM Chicago chairperson, Park District music teacher and every-Sunday star at Norman’s Bistro, who led a terrific little big band (12 pieces, not 18) and jam

Wallace Roney, l; Emilio Modeste, tenor sax

session with singer Carolyn Fitzhugh — the fest also starred Chicago’s down-to-earth diva Dee Alexander with her ace group (pianist Miguel de la Cerna, bassist Junius Paul, drummer Ernie Adams) and East Coast-based trumpeter Wallace Roney, whose three very young sidemen (his 13 year old nephew Kojo on drums; tenor saxophonist Emilio Modeste) proved up to his music’s hard, fast demands.

The afternoon-long program was emceed by WDCB‘s music director/morning show host Paul Abella and station manager Dan Bindert (Dee Alexander has a show now on ‘DCB, too). It drew some 1500 folks skewing late middle-aged, who sat on lawn chairs and blankets and a few rows of low bleachers. We drank bottled water and herb tea, bought barbeque, considered shea butter, t-shirts, costume

Ernest Dawkins conducts Live the Spirit Residency Big Band at 18th Englewood Jazz Festival

jewelry and baked goods from local vendors. About half a dozen uniformed police officers hung around, available and amiable, untroubled and untroubling. Dawkins gave them a shout out from the stage. The biggest problem was the vegan food never arrived. The Englewood Jazz Festival was a lark in the park.

Yet the Live the Spirit Residency Big Band’s soloists took it seriously, their music consistently tight and urgent. Trumpeter Pharez Whitted isn’t to be messed with — he was also playing that night as he had the night before at the Green Mill in pianist Willie Pickens‘ quintet, masterful on ditties like “Salt Peanuts” and “Giant Steps”. Here he was paired with trumpeter John Moore, whose open attack and muted sound, too,

Ernest Dawkins and Howard Mandel

reminded me of late, little-heralded Billy Brimfield, trumpet partner of late, deservedly-heralded saxophonist Fred Anderson. Decades ago, performing at a coffee house in Evanston, they introduced me into jazz’s serious nature.

Pianist Alexis Lombre thickened and detailed the ensemble’s blend (she’s going to appear solo and with her trio at the Jazz Institute of Chicago’s upcoming Gala — she’s emerged from the JIC’s Links program). Baritone saxophonist Dudley Owens called up phrases from the deep, his bandmates answering with contrapuntal riffs which Dawkins brought to focused climaxes. Tenor saxophonist Kenneth Lethridge burst out from the ensemble irrepressibly on a hot, bold arrangement of the evergreen “Summertime.”

A story teller called Shake-A-Leg spoke then, chillingly, of the first atom bomb’s charge — and the players went down front to propound on congas and barrel drums.

Ernest Dawkins and Mark Ruffin

They knew and summoned ancient, timeless rhythms. We could have been in New Orleans, Havana or Lagos — as everywhere, these beats stirred anyone alive to move. (My photojournalist pal Marc PoKempner adds he was quite disturbed that his so-called colleagues mobbed the troupe for shots, oblivious to blocking the audience’s views.)

Next, Maestro Dawkins presented Sirius/XM jazz director and producer Mark Ruffin and me with engraved plaques, hailing our “inspiration and many contributions to jazz in all its forms.” (trumpeter Orbert Davis, on the road, was also so honored). I’ve received Awards before and have helped present many, but was unusually touched.

Howard Mandel and the Spirit of Jazz Award; photo by Dennis McDonough

Mark and I are nearly Englewood home-boys. His parents ran a record store, where he worked as a kid, in an adjacent neighborhood. I grew up about 3 miles due east, absorbing the spirit of our city and nation’s music from the radio, tv, my parents’ records, my friends and sounds of the streets. Ruffin and I have known each other for decades — he credits me with giving him his first paying job in radio, producing a half-hour interview with needle drop of pianist Judy Roberts for Jazz Chicago, a series I co-produced with JoAnn Kawell circa 1979 under Jazz Institute auspices, aired on WBEZ.

He has since then racked up extensive experience in jazz radio, print journalism and presentation — he was an emcee of the Chicago Jazz Festival this year, and he’s produced Grammy-nominated albums. Orbert Davis, you should know, is the co-founder and director of the Chicago Jazz Philharmonic, with extensive educational and performance activities including collaborations with musicians in Cuba. I’m doing what I do — writing this blog, liner notes, articles, working on books, stoking the Jazz Journalists Association, hearing music, reading about it, fiddling with it, serving as a board member of the Jazz Institute of Chicago.

As Ernest Dawkins and the rest of the musicians know, and so do such as PoKempner,  Ms. Kawell, Hot House curator Marguerite Horberg,

information technologies innovator Ivan Handler, photogs Dennis McDonough and Kent Richmond, writer Davis Whiteis, among my friends who were attendance, and also the JIC board members there, some of them involved with the Hyde Park Jazz Society and the Hyde Park Jazz Festival Sept 23 & 24, as well as all the other good folk who turned out at Hamilton Park, the spirit of jazz is infectious, demanding and self-renewing. You catch it and it catches you; it carries you along, we’re happily swept away, and here we are: Englewood.

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My Q&A for Blues@Greece & Spirit of Jazz Award

Jazz, blues, American literature and where I’d go for a day in a time machine are topics I address in an email interview with Michalis Limnios who blogs at Blue@Greece. I post this item out of sheer vanity, reinforced by my being presented with a Spirit of Jazz Award tomorrow (9/16) by the Englewood Jazz Festival, taking place from noon to 6 pm on Chicago’s South Side in Hamilton Park, not far from where I grew up.

Performers include saxophonist and organizer Ernest Dawkins, singers Dee Alexander and Carolyn Fitzhugh, the Live the Spirit Residency Big Band and trumpeter Wallace Roney. This one-day free fest is the important date between the Chicago Jazz Festival and the Hyde Park Jazz Fest (where I’ll present the Jazz Journalists Association’s Flutist of the Year Award to the great Nicole Mitchell, appearing with kora player Ballake Sisoko in the debut of their Bamako*Chicago Sound System).

I’m thrilled to stand for this Spirit honor with fellow recipients trumpeter-composer-Chicago Jazz Philharmonic leader Orbert Davis,and Sirius/XM jazz director-record producer-journalist Mark Ruffin, who credits me with giving him his first paying job in radio about 40 years ago).

But back to ME: Here’s the pull quote Mike used from my response to the heady question, “What is the impact of Blues and Jazz on literature and on the racial, political and socio-cultural implications?”

Your not-so-humble blogger, photo by Marc PoKempner

Mark Twain was at the font of the American vernacular style the blues and jazz gave impetus to, and we can put Walt Whitman, Stephen Crane, Jack London, a few others there, too. Then read the fiction of Dashiell Hammett, Ernest Hemingway, Henry Miller, Jack Kerouac, Ishmael Reed, Chester Himes – “hear” the rhythms and snap of their language, the sounds of people meeting in the streets and taverns of modern cities – that’s jazz and blues.

Asked “How has the Blues and Jazz culture influenced your views of the world and the journeys you’ve taken?”

Jazz has helped me learn to be adaptable and has heightened my sensitivity for responsiveness. It’s encouraged me to savor life in all its dimensions, and swing with it, try to make it work for me, dance lightly and gracefully, with power when advisable. It’s taught me about changeups I can use in my writing.

Where I’d go in a time machine?

Room 305 of the Savoy Hotel, Chicagon on February 15th, 1943, to overhear Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie hash out the basics of what became bebop for their first recording. Or back to Soldier Field, Chicago on August 15, 1965, to hear John Coltrane with Archie Shepp, McCoy Tyner,

Jimmy Garrison and Elvin Jones at the DownBeat Jazz Festival (Gerry Mulligan, Woody Herman, and the Thelonious Monk Quartet were also on the bill). I was there!”

 

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Youssou N’Dour on stage & screen, PoKempner photos

Photo-journalist Marc PoKempner‘s images from the Chicago Jazz Fest, as featured in my previous post, and these from Senegalese superstar Youssou N’Dour’s rousing who two weeks earlier, exhibit how he’s dealing straightforwardly and creatively with the screen backing musicians at the Pritzker Pavilion of Millennium Park. Giving us eyefuls to enjoy.

Here’s what we can see — as PoKempner proves, without post-production; the double images are the videographers’ superimpositions — when visually-conscious, kinetic performing artists are video’d and magnified in near-real time, presumably so audiences far from the stage can better appreciate their costumes, moves, expressions and expression.

Dazzling effects, new visions when those moments are captured in the snap of a photograph, too.

The colors and rhythms of these image seem related, naturally, to those of the elegant, graceful, melliflous singer-composer-bandleader-politician’s lastest album, Africa Rekk.

His songs on it include “Goree” (for the island off Dakar from which slaves embarked to the Americas), “Be Careful,” “Exodus,” “Conquer the World,” “Food for All” and “Money, Money.” One can discern his messages simply from the way Youssou N’Dour and troupe looks, dancing, playing, singing. PoKempner’s photojournalism takes us there.

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Jazz on Millennium Park’s big screen – PoKempner photos

How’s that for brass? Jon Faddis presents the trumpeters of the Chicago Jazz Festival Big Band (from left: Chuck Parrish, Pharez Whitted, Tito Carrillo, Victor Garcia)

A 40-by-22½-foot LED screen is a dominating feature of the stage in the Pritzker Pavilion of Chicago’s Millennium Park, difficult to ignore though many try. Photographer Marc PoKempner does the opposite in his shots from the 39th annual Chicago Jazz Festival: he uses what he (and everybody else) sees to create striking images, in the best tradition of artists in his medium.

Guitarist George Freeman (age 90) with fellow guitarist Mike Allemana, organist Pete Benson, drummer Mike Schlick

 

A smaller but not less intense screen at the Claudia Cassidy Theater of the Chicago Cultural Center, where drummer Ignacio Berroa led a band of students demonstrating points in his talk on “The Evolution of Afro-Cuban Jazz.”

 

Boom Tic Boom, demonstrating the welcome trend of gender-diversified ensembles: bassist Todd Sickafoose, pianist Myra Melford, violinist Jenny Scheinman, leader and drummer Allison Miller, cornetist Kirk Knuffke, clarinetist Ben Goldberg.

 

Kirk Knuffke magnified, visible in detail to the crowd in the grassy field. The sound is amplified — why not the sight?

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Chicago Jazz Fest expanded review & Deutsch photos

My DownBeat review of the 39th annual Chicago Jazz Festival held over Labor Day weekend in and spilling out of Millennium Park, highlights the best I heard — including the specially organized big band

The Chicago Jazz Festival Big Band, led by Jon Faddis, in Dizzy Gillespie’s Centennial Celebration, at Pritzker Pavilion of Millennium Park, 89/31/17 (all photos on this page copyright Lauren Deutsch)

led by trumpeter Jon Faddis, making big fun from his mentor Dizzy Gillespie‘s fresh-as-fire arrangements dating 60 to 70 years back. (Gotta wonder what a music fan raised on the past decades’ pop, country and rap but who never heard anything like this would make of the power of 16 players so synced in rhythm, tune and spirit, partying with sound).

Lauren Deutsch’s photos depict that set splendidly — (and thanks in large part to her work over the past 21 years as executive director of the Jazz Institute of Chicago, the fest retains its essential community DNA).

To expand: The huge screen backdrop is good for attendees in the grassy field and back rows of seats, but can dwarf those onstage. Faddis was able to make this presentation, lasting more than an hour, seem intimate and simultaneously made for tv (astute camera work from the City’s staffers helped).

Jon Faddis, eyes open

A large man in dark clothes, Jon was at ease talking with his horn under his arm, and equally so lifting it to pierce the limits of hearing at key points in the hard-driving, wildly colorful compositions from the era when swing bands went bebop over Afro-Cuban beats. Gillespie was a pioneer of drawing on Afro-Cuban, Caribbean and South American elements and on the flagwaver “Manteca” Faddis’ silvery upper register is so amazing we might forget what a swift and sensitively musical mind he has. But like Gillespie, that’s the real crux of his creativity, his high notes and wit, willingness to be silly and ability to spontaneously inspire a dozen or so virtuosi simply aspects of it. To me, Faddis’ best and most personal playing was his all-but-recklessly fast, nimble, nuanced, shapely, melodically developed solo on “Tanga,” based on one of Gillespie’s later career combo recordings.

Victor Garcia on flugelhorn, Jon Faddis admiring

One man’s solo doesn’t a set make. Faddis demonstrated generosity as well as geniality joshing with Victor Garcia, an up’n’coming Chicagoan in the brass section, creating a running joke that had a handsome musical payoff, gaining Garcia extra attention for his flugelhorn feature.  (More or perhaps less incidentally, the very first solo of this show, on “Night In Tunisia,” was performed by Audrey Morrison, Jazz Studies Director at the Music Institute of Chicago, a mature white woman.)

New Yorker Antonio Hart, a last minute sub for his mentor, saxophonist Jimmy Heath (91, he had a medical issue)

Alto saxophone Antonio Hart soloing on “Things to Come” by Dizzy Gillespie

was a standout, tearing through “Things to Come,” Gillespie’s warning from 1946, in alto sax language that took the freedoms claimed by of Charlie Parker through the changes wrought by such as Coltrane, Pharoah Sanders and Albert Ayler. Chicago tenor saxophonist Pat Mallinger of Sabretooth, the hardbitten, longtime midnight Saturday to 4 am Sunday attraction at the Green Mill, showed his stuff, as did trumpeter Pharez Whitted.

The rhythm section, however, was this orchestra’s solid core: Dr. Todd Coolman, understated but unwavering bassist and professor (former director) of jazz studies at Purchase College (SUNY), where Faddis also teaches; drummer Ignacio Berroa, who arrived in the US from his native Havana as a refugee/alien during the 1981 Mariel boatlift, was hired by Gillespie for his quartet and stayed until the trumpeter’s death in ’93,  plus Chicago pianist Willie Pickens, at age 86 undiminished in ideas and agility.

Willie Pickens

Just days earlier I’d heard Pickens in command of entirely different repertoire, accompanying Gary Bartz. He sweeps stylistically from Bud Powell’s fast single note lines to the more spacious, all-octaves approach of McCoy Tyner, and his infectious momentum connected with the clavé rhythm of “Manteca” irresistibly.

This all made for a thrilling first night for a jazz festival, and set a high bar for all the acts who followed.

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War for laughs: Marx Brothers, Strangelove, Chaplin, Lehrer

My father taught me at age 8 to trust the Marx Brothers’ for trenchant social commentary. Here’s Groucho, Chico, Harpo and Zeppo in Duck Soup.

On the night of my 17th birthday I sat in a theater, alone, watching the incomparable Dr. Strangelove, or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb . . .

Thanks to Peter Sellers, Peter Bull (still Russian ambassador?), Stanley Kubrick, Terry Southern and Peter George for a great one-sided phone call. No confidence there will be such diplomatic efforts.

Dr. Strangelove was on a double bill with The War Game, directed by Peter Watkins. Nothing funny about it.

 

Musical Interlude: “War” from the Hypnotic Brass Ensemble, globetrotting sons of the late Chicago music visionary Celan Phil Cohran. Seems to be calling for peace.

One last laugh? The Tramp as der Fuhrer.

Ha. Ha ha ha. Ha.

Encore: the ever pertinent Tom Lehrer.

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Great new jazz photography — Dee Kalea’s campaign

Dee Kalea of Creative Music Photography is old school, in that she’s created black and white images of jazz musicians in performance, closeup, usually one-to-a-frame.

Ornette Coleman by Dee Kalea, Creative Music Photography

The passion she’s captured, however, is timeless. How she became alert to the precise moment of creative rapture, and intimate with the music beyond the musicians themselves, is a story she tells best herself, in her intro and slide show for the Indegogo campaign she’s mounted to raise funds for printmaking, support of public presentations and archival preservation of her work.

Here’s its start — Dee claims Ornette Coleman as her stepfather, a childhood and youth surrounded by musicians as family friends. Contribute to her campaign! It’s drawing to a close. . .

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Great new jazz photography #2: Lauren Deutsch’s Made in Chicago portfolio

Occidental Bros Dance Band International: Nathaniel Braddock, guitar; Makaya McCraven, drums, Joshua Ramos, bass, Greg Ward, alto sax.

“Made in Chicago” is true of the photography of Lauren Deutsch, and also the name of the four-day-long collaborative jazz festival she’s organized in Poznan, Poland for the past 12 years as artistic director (formerly with Wojceich Juszcsak) on behalf of the Jazz Institute of Chicago. The theme of this year’s fest was “Freedom.”

The photos here of Chicago-based musicians (click to enlarge), in which Deutsch tries to capture the sound of the music through camera movement, were taken in May 2017.

Alto saxophonist Greg Ward

Singers Dee Alexander and Grazyna Auguscik, first time working together  as Let Freedom Sing: Love and Freedom to the Ends of the Earth

Ben LaMar Gay, cornetist

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Great new jazz photography: Marc PoKempner portfolio from New Orleans

Photos of musicians making music — visualizations stirred in the photographers by watching sounds manifest — are exciting, and as different in style as the photographers and musicians themselves. Marc PoKempner ‘s portfolio from New Orleans of the Preservation Hall Jazz Band with Cuban drummers at the Music Box Village, a non-profit community arts garden, is the first of a series of great new jazz photos I’ll post over the next few days.

Ronell Johnson (trombone), Branden Lewis (trumpet)

Alexey Marti (drum), Ronell Johnson (trombone), Shannon Powell (drum), Damas “Fanfan” Louis (drum), Tanio Hingle (bass drum), Kyle Roussel (melodica), Kerry “Fatman” Hunter (snare drum), Ben Jaffe (tuba)



Clint Maedgen (sax)

Kerry “Fatman” Hunter (snare drum), Kyle Roussel (percussion), Shannon Powell (drum), Damas “Fanfan” Louis (drum), Charlie Gabriel (sax), Ben Jaffe (tuba)

Ronell Johnson (trombone), Tanio Hingle (bass drum) Charlie Gabriel (sax), Kerry “Fatman” Hunter (snare drum) Ben Jaffe (tuba)

Check back for photos by Lauren Deutsch, Dee Kalea, Sánta István Csaba, Michael Jackson and we’ll see who else. . .

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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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