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Jazz Beyond Jazz

Howard Mandel's Urban Improvisation

Audio-video jazz improv: Mn’Jam Experiment, w/teens

What’s really new in improvisational music? Where else can innovation go? Mn’JAM Experiment — singer Melissa Oliveira and her visual/electronics/turntablist partner JAM — are daring to mix high-tech audio-with-video media in live performance, and as they say, it’s an experiment, in a direction that live performance seems sure to go.

Mn’JAM, photo by Charlotte Steunebrink

Grounded in jazz fundamentals (call and response, in-the-moment interactions, individualized expression, rhythmic drive, repertoire; she went to Berklee, he to New England Conservatory) they use screens, loops, layers, cut-ups, self-crafted as well as appropriated items, abstraction, distortion and familiar themes — and they’ve made it all portable, so they tour and teach worldwide, recently out of Melbourne.

Their performance last week Chicago’s Old Town School of Folk Music proved Mn’JAM’s essential ingredients of multi-track looping and rapid-fire yet intentional manipulations of images that are wedded to percussive, sometimes pitched, also malleable sounds can be rapidly understood, enjoyed and adopted by young players. Members of the School’s Teen Collective had a two-day workshop with Mn’JAM, then performed well, I’ll say rockin’, at the School’s estimably international Wednesday night community-donation series (which is funded in part by the European Union). These teens, 13, 14 and 15, added their own solo and backup voices, electric guitar, bass, keyboards and traps parts to the act — as Mn’JAM has on their 2017 DVD/CD album Live With A Boom (still, much of that album’s musical material is significantly more complex than what these forces tried).

Teen Collective members, from the Old Town School of Music — JAM at far right. Photo by Devin Sebastian Bean

While Melissa records stacks of vocal loops cleverly metered for polyrhythmic effects, over which she sings and which she can distort or add to using a Korg Kaossilator, JAM triggers images ranging from GIFs, pictograms, geometric figures to accompany, complement, lead (or ignore) her. He, too, manipulates source material, starting with a bank of let’s call them visual-sonic gestures, typically totaling 60 — consider bank a keyboard, different for each of the duo’s tracks (which they compose separately but collaboratively), which he can change with color, overlays, stretching/mirroring/dividing/warping functions by hand-drumming and table-spinning. The visual display can be — is — quirky, surreal, hypnotic, distracting, sometimes simultaneously. (They’re into moire patterns.) Melissa, sings affectingly in Portuguese, and rather more cooly in English, but still slices, dices and swirls her phrases, isolating key elements of “Body and Soul,” for instance, or offering a hot version of Bill Withers’ “Use Me.”

In the training sessions (I’ve attended two Mn’JAM conducted for adults), the two musical artists quite openly discuss and demonstrate their equipment and techniques, designed and devised to offer vast opportunities for creative composition, spontaneous variation and sensory overload, including considerations of what can be carried, used to greatest affect, replaced/repaired/modified on short notice. Having formerly been based in Amsterdam, Oliviera (she says she’s half-Portuguese, half-Australian) and JAM (persistently “all Portuguese”) have done a TedX SPJain Sydney, Talk, performed at the 2017 Cairo Jazz Festival and in India, in 2016 traveled extensively in China, Japan, Macau and Hong Kong.

They acknowledge a couple of other ensembles are trying to unite image and audio, but intend their own processes of combination to more immediate, organic and as much as possible analog — they abjure using a click track to sync music and image — and identify themselves, in the best sense, with jazz. So they keep experimenting, and explaining what they’re up to with weekly YouTube clips. Pretty cool.

2018 jazz, blues and beyond deaths w/ links

Cecil Taylor, March 15, 1929 – April 5, 2018, photo by Sánta István Csaba

Not a happy post, but a useful one: here are the hundreds of musicians and music industry activists who died in 2018, as compiled by photographer-writer Ken Franckling for the Jazz Journalists Association. Ken scoured local newspapers, the Jazzinstitut Darmstadt newsletter, AllAboutJazz.com, Wikipedia, the New York Times, Legacy.com, Rolling Stone, Variety, JazzTimes.com, blogs, listserves, Facebook pages and European publications. Links to their fuller biographies or obituaries are provided where possible.

Legacies of Music Makers

The deaths of multi-instrumentalist Joseph Jarman, best known as the face-painted shaman of the Art Ensemble of Chicago, and Alvin Fielder,

re-conceptualizing drummer, remind us that artists’ contributions to music extend beyond recordings and awards. Read my essay at NPR Music, commissioned by Nate Chinen of WBGO, on the enduring legacies of Jarman and Fielder, both founding members of the still thriving Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM) NY and Chicago).


Extraordinary Popular Delusions, Chicago free improv all-stars

Jim Baker, keys& synth; Brian Sandstrom, bass; Steve Hunt, drums; Ed Wilkerson, saxes, didgeridoo, oud, Mars Williams, reeds and toys — photo by Marc PoKempner

Keyboardist and synthesizer specialist Jim Baker has led the collective quartet Extraordinary Popular Delusions playing every Monday night in obscure Chicago venues for the past 13 years. My article on EPD, which features saxophonists Mars Williams and Edward Wilkerson Jr. (they switch off), multi-instrumentalist (bass, guitar, trumpet) Brian Sandstrom and percussionist/drummer Steve Hunt — all of whom have extensive creative music experience — was published today in the Chicago Reader — which I last wrote for in the 1980s.

Brian Sandstrom, bass and distorted guitar; Jim Baker, analog synth; Steve Hunt, drums.

Photos here by Marc PoKempner, from the free-form improv ensemble’s current regular gig, in the upstairs loft of the Beat Kitchen (they start around 9 pm, usually end by 11). No cover, no minimum (they put out a tip jazz), no limits — same as their interactive performance as part of painter Lewis Achenbach’s Jazz Occurrence at the Apple Store on Michigan Avenue, 6 pm. on January 24. See you there?

Luminous PoKempner pix of Sun Ra’s celestial music

Marshall Allen, ageless 94, leads the Sun Ra Arkestra

If you liked Black Panther, listen to the music that introduced and embodies Afro-Futurism. Photojournalist Marc PoKempner captured a bit of the celestial magic of the Sun Ra Arkestra (est. circa 1954) during its November touchdown in New Orleans’s Music Box Village. This picturesque venue is an assembly of little houses which MPoK says “each has some sound producing capability – bells, chimes, horns, drums.” (Above: Marshall Allen, Arkestra leader since 1995. All photos here Marc PoKempner copyright 2018).

Arkestra at the Music House Village. (This wide angle shot looks best in larger display. Either “un-pinch” or use “Command” and the + sign to open image, view HD details.)

Marc continues, “It’s next to the bridge on the upper side of the Industrial Canal, surrounded by a fence made of recycled corrugated metal.  Since last time I was there, they’ve added loads of interesting lighting, and smoke generators that add to the magical atmosphere – perfect for the Arkestra.”

Vincent Chance, who plays French horn in the Arkestra (and elsewhere), commented, “The concerts there were pretty amazing. The audience was knocked out by both shows, we played two days there and had two days before to familiarize ourselves with the instruments from their installations.” Preparation is good for liftoff!

Tara Middleton, Arkestra vocalist (successor to the great June Tyson)

Sun Ra was a visionary who gifted the Earth with his sensibility, forevermore. During winter holidays and times of social crisis — or really, whenever — traveling the spaceways with his sounds and messages in mind is recommended as an enhancement, inspiration, provocation and/or escape.

Tyler Mitchell bass; DM Hotep, guitar

John Szwed’s biography Space Is The Place: The Life and Times of Sun Ra is recommended for further reading about the singular bandleader/composer/arranger/poet/entrepreneur/satirist/philosopher, named by his Earthling parents at birth Herman Poole Blount. I’ve written about him, including liner notes for the Complete Performance resulting from his meeting with John Cage, and a 1991 concert at Inter-Media-Arts. Still, my favorite of Sun Ra’s many albums is Secrets of the Sun. The Omniverse being one, start anywhere.

Hear it now.

Labor Day jazz fests, starting with Chicago’s

Twilight, Millennium Park bandshell lawn; photo by Marc PoKempner

The 40th annual Chicago Jazz Festival, four days free to all of unfettered, usually joyous music held in beautiful downtown Millennium Park,  started last night with stars of of the local scene celebrating  “Legends and Lions”. Add “Ancient to the Future” to set the tone for a weekend of exciting, civically-supported music here — and similar outpourings of jazz and blues — America’s vernacular musics — are offered throughout the U.S. this Labor Day weekend.

A quick search turns up music fests in the next days from Augusta, Georgia (Labor Day Jazz Weekend – Candlelight For A Cause (August 31 – September 2, 2018) to Stevens Point, Wisconsin (the Riverfront Jazz Festival, Sept 1 and 2), from JasAspenSnowMass and the Vail Jazz Party (Aug 30 – Sept 3) to Pensacola, Florida’s Gold Coast Summer Fest – Jazz Edition.

I’ve blogged about Labor Day jazz blowouts before, and most I previously cited still exist. The Bedford, Texas Blues and Barbeque Festival is happening, for instance, as is the Big Muddy Blues Festival on three stages over two days at Laclede’s Landing near St. Louis’ Gateway Arch. The Grand Hotel of Mackinac Island continues its Labor Day Jazz Weekend promotion. The DC Blues Society’s 29th annual Blues Fest is in a new venue, the Wunder Garten, on Labor Day itself.

There have been a few suspensions (Memphis) or transformations (Tanglewood in the Berkshires discontinued its festival, but Sept 1 will present the Wynton Marsalis Quartet featuring Ellis Marsalis, his father). New York City’s estimable, two-neighborhood Charlie Parker Jazz Festival was last weekend — but New York City, like Chicago and some other cities can fairly be said to always be jazz festing, so there are good options there or in New Orleans, L.A., Seattle, Portland OR, Austin, Nashville . . .

Orbert Davis – Gary/Chicago Crusader

In Chicago the City’s Department of Cultural Affairs and Special Events kicked it’s support up a notch for the 40th festival, which has traditionally been curated by a committee of the Jazz Institute of Chicago. DCASE improved the run-up to this year’s main events by offering financial support to venues that last week offered shows free-of-cover.* DCASE commissioner Mark Kelly also added Wednesday night to the previously scheduled four-day fest, having Orbert Davis of the Chicago Jazz Philharmonic organize a calvalcade program of trumpeters (Art Hoyle, Bobby Lewis), vibists (Stu Katz, Joel Ross, Thadeus Tooks), saxophonists (Ari Brown, Pat Mallinger), pianists (Bethany Pickens) and singers (Kurt Elling, Tammy McCann) hailing past heroes such as Louis Armstrong, Lionel Hampton, Von Freeman and Fred Anderson, Willie Pickens and Eddie Jefferson.

The Detroit International Jazz Festival, Chicago’s rival, likewise highlights its jazz history and connections –  Alice McLeod Coltrane’s works performed by her saxophonist son Ravi; turns by saxphonist Tia Fuller, violinist Regina Carter in a 25th anniversary reconvening of the women’s quartet StraightAhead, fusion bassist Ralphe Armstrong, a Curtis Fuller-dedicated jam session, Joan Belgrave singing, a band representing Detroit-based record company Mack Avenue (and also out-of-towners: Esperanza Spalding, Teri Lynne Carrington, Dr. Lonnie Smith, Omar Sosa, Eddie Daniels, Pat Martino and so on).

Not to say Chicago is without “special guests” from elsewhere: singer Dianne Reeves, pianist Kenny Barron, orchestra leader Darcy James Argue, pianist Barry Harris with alto saxophonist Charles McPherson and fund saxist Maceo Parker are among the imports. Even so, headliners including Elling and Ramsey Lewis and the tribute to Muhal Richard Abrams are Chi-centric. Which is just fine, as the current talent is comparable to any based anywhere.

*I caught solo pianist Craig Taborn at Constellation; French horn player Vincent Chancey’s quartet with bass clarinetist Jason Stein, bassist Joshua Abrams and drummer Mike Reed at the Hungry Brain (Reed runs both the Brain and Constellation; he booked a “Dog Days” series across the two, which are a block distant from each other). At the Green Mill, Jeff Lindberg’s Chicago Jazz Orchestra played the finale of it’s summer Mondays, and Patricia Barber’s regular stand was full but as usual. At the Jazz Art Record Collective, alto saxist Greg Ward and trumpeter Russ Johnson played the front line of Miles Davis’ high-energy Live/Evil with appropriate fire, while keyboardist Rob Clearfield, guitarist Matt Gold, bassist Matt Ulery, percussionist Quin Kirchner,  drummer Makaya McCraven all surprised me — Arthur Wright sketching throughout, Harvey Tillis taking photos. .  ).

Hear some jazz and blues! BBQ and kiss summer goodbye.

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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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Women in jazz journalism on gender issues, in NYC MLK weekend

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. weekend ’18 was a big one for jazz in NYC with the first Jazz Congress at Jazz at Lincoln Center, a glorious Winter Jazz Fest, artists showcases at the conference of APAP (the Association of Performing Arts Presenters) and diverse independent venues — but not least of all the first ever (?!?) panel discussion of gender issues by four women who are professional jazz journalists (documented to vlogger Ms Michal Shapiro).

Above, Jordannah Elizabeth

Michelle Mercer

Michelle Mercer, of NPR and DownBeat’s Hotbox reviewing section, author of books on Joni Mitchell and Wayne Shorter, moderated a candid 90-minute session with Jordannah Elizabeth (Amsterdam News, Ms. blog, author, lecturer and educator; ethnomusicologist, educator, writer and radio producer Lara Pelligrinelli, and Natalie Weiner, associate editor of Billboard, podcast co-host and writer on sports as well as jazz.

Lara Pellegrinelli – NewSchool.edu

Natalie Weiner – WBGO.org

“Women in Jazz Journalism” was the morning opener of three discussions in a daylong Jazz Media Summit, free to the public, at the Jazz Gallery on January 13, produced by the Jazz Journalists Association. Some 60 people attended the discussions, many participating — including WBGO’s director of content Nate Chinen, singer Joan-Watson Jones, cellist Akua Dixon, flutist Andrea Brachfeld, Capital District media activist Susan Brink, saxophonist Roxie Coss, public relations expert Carolyn McClair and veteran jazz journalists such as David Adler, Steve Griggs, David Grogan, James Hale, Willard Jenkins, Ashley Kahn, Jimmy Katz, Jim Macnie, Bill Milkowski, Russ Musto, Don Palmer, Ted Panken, Greg Tate, Neil Tesser.

The Jazz Congress, Jan 11 and 12,  produced by Jazz Times magazine (as it did the Jazz Connect Conference this congress has replaced) and Jazz At Lincoln Center –  drew some 400 attendees from the international cadre of music makers and sustainers for intense schmoozing, a keynote speech by Kareem Abdul Jabbar, and also panel discussions. The Winter JazzFest Marathons on Friday and Saturday nights featured more than 50 performances in almost a dozen venues, from 6 pm to after 2 am. Both events to be covered in my next post. For now, consider the works of women in jazz journalism.

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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.

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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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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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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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