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Jazz Beyond Jazz

Howard Mandel's Urban Improvisation

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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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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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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Butch Morris’s workbook for spontaneous composition published

The deathbed wish of composer-cornetist Lawrence Douglas “Butch” Morris (1947-2013) was that his detailed documentation of Conduction®, the method he devised to enable spontaneous composition for ensembles of literally any type employing codified hand-signals, be published in hardcover. This has come to pass. On April 24 and May 1, events in New York City will launch The Art of Conduction, an elegant workbook from art-world publisher Karma with photos of Morris and his text, making his innovative work available for use by anyone/everyone, regardless of previous musical background.

After his untimely demise a core coalition of friends and admirers of Butch (I was both, initially as a journalist, eventually as a neighbor, sometimes hanging out) as well as his son Alexandre rallied to produce his book, and they are celebrating its limited-time availability (small print run, reprinting not assured). The book, 224 pages of writings, photos and illustrations, will debut April 24  (5:30 pm) at Tilton Gallery on Manhattan’s upper east side, introduced by its editor Daniela Veronesi, professor of linguistics at Free University of Bolzano, Italy, and Alessandro Cassin, who guided it into print. Butch’s great friends saxophonist David Murray and trombonist Craig Harris, with bassist Melissa Slocum, will be there to perform Harris’s “The Original LA Dawgs” (Butch Morris was born and raised in Long Beach. Harris employed basic techniques of Conduction® in his piece “Breathe,” performed at 2017 Winter JazzFest).

On May 1, guitarist Brandon Ross, cornetist Graham Haynes, bassist Stomu Takehishi and sound designer Hardedge will perform at 5:30 at Karma Gallery in the East Village –Morris’ old stomping grounds — where Black February, Vipal Monga’s film about Butch will be shown,

Veronesi and Cassini again on hand with the book. At 9 pm at the cozy club NuBlu Ross and Haynes will join the NuBlu Orchestra, which Morris conducted in two recordings (two, big fun both). Poet Allan Graubard, whose writing appears in The Art of Conduction, will read at both May 1 events.

I’m quite proud of having written the preface to The Art of Conduction — that essay caps my coverage of Butch Morris going back to a Village Voice article in the 1980s, pieces in DownBeat and Ear magazine, two NPR reports and a chapter in my book Future Jazz. To provide further context for Butch and the book, here are some excerpts from that chapter, which also involves David Murray and Henry Threadgill, another of Butch’s running buddies (2016 Pulitzer Prize for Music winner-Threadgill’s 2017 album Old Locks and Irregular Verbs is his stunning tribute to Morris).

Threadgill, left; Morris, right. -WNYC

Murray and Morris met in California in ’71, as youngsters in drummer Charles Moffett’s rehearsal band. Morris was then playing cornet in the era’s open-ended jazz idiom, though his sound had the coloristic sensitivities of a lyrical rather than technique-oriented, brassy virtuoso.

Morris picks up his horn less frequently in the ’90s, but when he does he’s apt to spin the instrument backwards and jam its mouthpiece into its the bell, or turn it upside down to whistle across the holes at the bottom of the valves. He’ll try anything his curiosity suggests. He’s manufactured music boxes to showcase one of his jewel-like tunes; he enjoys the high-wire exposure of an acapella cornet concert; he’s played brass duets with J. A. Deane on electrically modified trombone and recorded atmospheric trios with keyboardist Wayne Horvitz (who uses advanced electronics) and drummer Bobby Previte.

Conducting David Murray (right) big band w/ Steve Coleman (seated) – Sweet Basil’s, Greenwich Village, circa 1984, photo by Lona Foote

However, since the early ’80s, Butch Morris has liked best of all to hone a role he created for himself: improvising conductor. Audiences may now recognize him best from behind. His hair, thinning at the crown, rises in front to a dramatic peak; his thin shoulders tense; his left hand, and the baton in his right, lift to focus the attention of the musicians before him. He stands ready to make music from a few scribbled measures—or none at all—the quick wits of his players and what appear to be charade gestures, the syllables of his language of conduction.

Morris didn’t pull the concept of conduction fully formed out of the thin air; he’s got a conventional jazz musicians’ background. He grew up in Watts amid music; his father, a career Navy man, had swing and big band records and liked to visit Johnny Otis’s club in their neighborhood. His mother helped him at the piano. His older brother Wilbur (now a bassist for David Murray and with his own quartet, Wilberforce), was originally a drummer who kept up with bop, ’50s funk, and the new(er) thing. Butch’s sister brought home Motown singles. At dinner together the family listened to a radio show that offered “bebop to boogie, rhythm and blues and rock ‘n’ roll.”

He followed the public school music curriculum, and benefitted from dedicated teachers with high standards, including saxist Charles Lloyd who taught a music appreciation class. . . Morris made the school orchestra and after-class sessions; he wigged out on the Miles Davis-Gil Evans version of Porgy and Bess, and “before I got out of high school I’d taught myself flute, french horn, trombone, and baritone horn—I was still playing trumpet in the marching band, orchestra, and studio band, too—while at home I taught myself the mechanics of piano. . .”

from left: Craig Harris, trombone; Roy Campbell or Graham Haynes cornet?; Jack Jeffers? tuba?; Edward Blackwell drums?; Ken McIntyre alto sax, Butch Morris conducting, David Murray, tenor sax; photo by Lona Foote

[After serving in the US Army as a driver in Germany and medic in Viet Nam] Morris got involved with Horace Tapscott, whose influence in the black community of Watts parallels that of Muhal Richard Abrams on the South Side of Chicago. “It had crossed my mind when I was in the service that I was creating a personal way of improvising,” Morris remembers “and I had to find the environment in which I could improvise best. I wasn’t a bebopper, I wasn’t a post-bopper and I wasn’t a free-bopper, so I had to create the environment. My development of it didn’t start until later, but in his band Horace used to make little gestures that meant certain things for us to do that weren’t on the page, and I started to think about how that could be expanded.

“In ’70, ’71 I decided this is it. I started putting music down on paper, calling up cats, and saying, ‘Come on, let’s rehearse,” and they’d say, ‘Oh, I can’t, groan’—and I’d go physically get the cat because unless I did I was never going to hear how these ideas of mine sounded.” As he became serious about music, he wearied of Los Angeles. “Sooner or later you come to grips with working and whether you have something to offer or not. You go where you can work and be recognized.” Morris went north.

“When I was in college, studying conducting in Oakland, and I asked my teacher ‘How do you get the orchestra to go back to letter B?’ and she said, ‘You don’t do that,’ I knew I had a profession. But basically, I got the idea of conducting improvisation from Charles Moffett,” the Fort Worth-born and -bred drummer best known for his association with Ornette Coleman. . .

“Charles would lead his ensemble rehearsals with no music, he would just conduct, with a relatively underdeveloped vocabulary of gestures. I knew it could be taken further. Now, Charles is an energetic cat and what he did was musical, man. It was like: You—play. Now you—do what he’s doing.’ But he would never talk to us, it was all gestures. And I thought, ‘Damn, this is some interesting music. This is great. I’m going to pursue this.'”

. . . His emergence as a jazz conductor dates to the debut of David Murray’s big band, which the late Public Theater producer Joseph Papp encouraged to form in ’78. Initially helping Murray compose and orchestrate for that concert, Morris soon stepped in front of the big band to “create music on the spot” with a gestural vocabulary he used to satisfy a desire for instant decision-making that few jazz arrangers have ever been able to indulge. . .

“I see all my activities working together, but it takes a while,” says Morris, who sports a wispy Fu Manchu goatee. “First of all, change, diversity and variety are central to my nature, and secondly, I use them for my livelihood.

“I compose whatever my little heart desires,” Butch claims. “But I’m not meandering. I’ve got a goal: My whole idea is to create music for improvisers. I like to bring together people who might not necessarily play with each other, or who play in different styles and improvise in completely different ways. I rarely write, that is, notate, everything. I get tired of playing the same arrangements so I constantly re-arrange tunes to figure out their other harmonic and tonal possibilities. I’d hate to work with a band for three years and always play the same charts. I mean, even [Duke Ellington’s] ‘Take The A Train’ varied over the years. . .

at the Akbank Festival in Istanbul, Butch conducted an ensemble including ney virtuoso Sulieman Ergüner and his ensemble of Sufi musicians

“There’s a history for improvisers, a body of common knowledge among jazz musicians,” Morris states. “There’s a whole repertoire of songs that have been used as a basis for improvisation, like the blues. We can just call a key, and it doesn’t have to have a name—we can make music, right? Well, if I point to you, and you’re an improviser, and as part of my vocabulary you understand that when I point to you you’re supposed to improvise—that’s a beginning. You play until I ask you to stop. And if I hear something that you play that I want you to repeat or develop, I have a gesture I’ll give you for that. If I want you to continue on that same frame on a longer curve, I have a gesture for that. If I want someone to do or emulate something that you’re doing, I have a gesture for that. It continues to grow, my vocabulary for improvisers.

“I have to figure out how to get the best from an improviser, put them in that light, then start to push them in another direction and see how flexible they are. A lot of improvisers are not flexible. They know how to improvise in a particular style, but they don’t venture too far from that style. . . .

“Through my gestural vocabulary the improvisers and audience start to hear the music happen. You don’t just hear the music happen, you start to hear it happen, and then all of a sudden, it happens.

Having taught his vocabulary to the clique of jazz improvisers David Murray drew on (some of whom have become aspiring composers themselves), after the big band’s concert at the New York Kool Jazz festival of ’85 Morris determined to concentrate on less tune- and solo-oriented, more suite-like and ensemble applications of his gestural direction, involving instrumental combinations of his own design. On February 1, 1985, at the Kitchen Center for Music, Video and Dance, he created what he considers a historically important “full conduction, which is an improvised duet between ensemble and conductor based on subject matter, in which the conductor works out his gestures and relays them to the ensemble, and the ensemble in turn interprets the gestural information.”

I’ve written at length about Current Trends in Racism in Modern America, A Work In Progress, “my first attempt to have a full conduction in the United States,” Morris called it, proudly. And that’s not the point here: The Art of Conduction is.

Butch Morris from Long Beach always took a long view. When he was around 40, he said, “If I’m not reaching for something as powerful as my heritage has been—” he considered Ellington, Fletcher Henderson, Count Basie and Jelly Roll Morton among his predecessors as improvising, composing, conducting instrumentalists—”then it’s not going to be meaningful in the long run. I want to create something as powerful as my heritage, and something very magical at the same time.”

Morris’ music had the magic, as its recordings preserve (most abundantly on Testaments, a 10 CD set 16 highly varied full conductions, with Butch’s extensive written commentary). Now we’ve got a book that crystalizes his concept – his bid to contribute powerfully to our heritage.

It is a difficult and remarkable thing to sustain much less extend the works of an innovative artist beyond their lifetime, requiring the desires and resources of their survivors, beyond any perceivable valuations of the artist’s output. Morris’s devotees have invested themselves in his legacy out of a lot of love but The Art of Conduction is no vanity project. Morris conceived his book — which he carried with him in the form of notes that he worked on constantly — to be functional, not to be gazed upon but used, to make and change music (theater, dance, poetry, too). So add Conduction® as codified by Butch Morris to your skill-set. What you do with it will be your own. It may be ordered  in individual or bulk quantities at orders@artbook.com.

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Spring break with Budapest jazz, photos

I went to Budapest for spring break — to introduce a photo exhibit by my Transylvanian-born friend  Sánta István Csaba and help jury the 10th annual Müpa Budapest Jazz Showcase/Talent Exchange, held in the modernist musem and multi-theater complex on the east bank of the icy Danube Feb 3 – 5.

Viktor Tóth played alto briefly to open the photo exhibition – (and Saturday night at the Budapest Jazz Club) – photo by Janos Posztos Müpa Budapest

As I wrote in my  DownBeat article, the sound of the 12 sets I heard was jazz as we think of it now — virtuosic horns, piano/keyboards and/or guitar, upright or electric basses and drums; vocalists singing standards, spicing up r&b grooves, toying with electronics; popular rhythms addressed through personal perspectives.

There was a faint aura of the music of the Roma — gypsies — in the air, emanating not only from the quartets led by pianist Gyula Balogh and drummer Toni Snétberger, with members from that community. It was hard to define — no overt Django Reinhardt, figurations or repertoire, but a tinge of darkness and interiority in those bands, and what I imagined was witchy wailing by singer Petra Kész with her performance art-like trio Cymbal Rush (video of that show below).

On walls, from left: Anthony Braxton, Chico Hamilton, Charles McPherson . . . Carla Bley, Charles Lloyd, Frank Wess. Photos by Sánta István Csaba

Still, as in the Saturday night jam session at the Budapest Jazz Club – a very cool hangout which advertised Jeff “Tain” Watts, Joe Lovano and Steve Coleman as coming attractions supplementing local groups, the vibe was familiar from my travels in Armenia, the Azores, Berlin, Cuba, Denmark, Gambia, Italy, St. Petersberg, Tampere, Trinidad, Ukraine as well as the States. Whatever a community’s resources, there are commonalities in the jazz world everywhere, this capital of Central Europe most definitely included.

Second grouping of Jazzonance portraits in Müpa

The singing in English, allusions to Monk (as I took the approach of alto saxophonist Gábor Baris’s Version), reverence for Coltrane (especially by alto/soprano saxist Tamás Ludányi) and interest in Herbie Hancock bleeding over to pop stars such as J Dilla (by drummer David Hodek, grooving with American pianist Paul Cornish and bassist Joshua Crumbly) and Betty Wright (smoldering singer Janka Vörös’ finale), with Santa’s 2.5 x 2 meter closeups of U.S. jazz masters on the walls  –“Jazzonance” was Müpa’s exhibit title  — and companionable journo/jurists from Sofia, Slovenia, London, plus Budapest-based freelancer Kornél Zipernovszky and the generously great Hungarian guitarist Gyula Babos – let me feel almost at home, while refreshed by particular differences.

Such as the architecture — 19th and 20th century glories, variously preserved, restored or abandoned. Proud museums, palaces and six-story apartment buildings with ground-floor retail shops and cafés, on concentric circular boulevards. The Gellert Hill Cave, thermal baths and church in St. Ivan’s grottos. Trams running up each side of the river, the Danube’s bridges rebuilt since Nazi destruction in WWII. The old market, stalls hung with paprika-colored sausages, an instructive display of wild mushrooms tucked in a corner.  The Castle District of hilly Buda, overlooking the plain of Pest.

Past winners of the Talent Exchange in the Gala Concert finale, singing and blowing on a swinging arrangement of Lerner and Loewe’s “Almost Like Being in Love” backed by the Franz Liszt Academy of Music’s Senior Big Band, directed by Attila László. Photo by Sántá István Csaba

All contrasting with but complementary to the Jazz Showcase/Talent Exchange (wherein some of the Hungarians travel to perform at London’s 606 Club, and others are booked into events via the Hungarian Jazz Federation, part of the European Jazz Network). Müpa’s decade-old program struck me as an effort rooted in an artistically sophisticated city, one cognizant of its complex, conflicted past and evidently eager to thrive in the present, the better for whatever’s to come.

Muhal Richard Abrams, portrait in Jazzonance exhibit by Sánta István Csaba

As usual, creative music with drive and feeling seems to well up as a significant if not essential ingredient in a culture, with such ambitions embraced towards those very ends. The basics of individual expression amid group collaborations performed for the entertainment and enlightenment of general audiences have been well established here. The integration of attractive, useful ideas coming from myriad sources is, at least superficially, high. I had just a quick visit, and no doubt experienced a mere slip of what’s happening in Budapest. But I liked what I heard and saw.

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Is NYC (still) capital of jazz?

The early January concurrence of the Jazz Connect conference, the annual convention of APAP (Association of Performing Arts Presenters), Global Fest and Winter JazzFest makes a good case for Manhattan being the capital of jazz-and-beyond.

Shabaka and the Ancestors, London-South African band breaking out via Winter JazzFest at (le) Poisson Rouge; photo by Jati Lindsay

It’s inarguably true that creative sound-organizing with improvisation and rhythm is world-wide, and our native version — jazz and its derivatives – thrives throughout in the US, even in places it’s overlooked. And the record biz centralized in NYC, which fed this music’s market segment from the ’20s into the ’00s, is a blip of its past. But still, New York City . . .

The annual Jazz Connect conference ran Jan. 5 and 6, with some 1000 musicians, their managers, agents, labels, publicists, presenters, broadcasters and critics filling meeting rooms and even the chapel of St. Peter’s Church. Produced by the Jazz Forward Coalition (Peter Gordon of Carmel CA’s Thirsty-Ear Records, director) in partnership with JazzTimes (principally via Lee Mergner, publisher of the Braintree MA-based magazine and website) with special assistance from Don Lucoff of DLMedia (of suburban Philadelphia and the PDX Jazz Festival in Portland OR), Jazz Connect is the sole US get-together for jazz professionals who aren’t educators (they met the same weekend, this year in New Orleans, via the Jazz Education Network (JEN)).

I must have schmoozed with half of those at Jazz Connect, including friends and associates from Albuquerque (Tom Guralnick of the Outpost), Austin (pianist Peggy Stern, splitting her time in Kingston NY), the Bay Area (promotions and public relations specialist Marshall Lamm), Baltimore (writer Geoff Himes, JJA board member Don Palmer), Boston (Berklee student and JazzBoston newsletter editor Grace-Mary Burega), Boulder (Peter Poses, dj at KRFC), Columbia MO (Peter’s brother Jon Poses, of the We Always Swing jazz series),  Honolulu (Stephanie Castillo, filmmaker, director of Night Bird Song about the late Thomas Chapin), Los Angeles (Zev Feldman of Resonance Records), New Haven (musician and writer Allen Lowe), Richmond VA (broadcaster Josh Jackson), Rochester NY (Derrick Lucas, Jazz90.1), Paris (journalist and radio show host Alex Dutilh), Pittsburgh (journalist Mike Shanley), Portland OR (Matt Fleeger of KMHD), Seattle (Earshot’s John Gilbreath), Tucson (Yvonne Ervin; the Charles Mingus Festival and Memorial Park in Nogales, AZ is among her many works), Washington DC (Rusty Hassan of WPFW,  Willard “Open Sky Jazz” Jenkins, NEA jazz specialist Katja von Schuttenbach), Wilmington (writer Eugene Holley), Ypsilanti (WEMU’s Linda Yohn) —

— and of course many New Yorkers (journalist/educator David Adler, producer Todd Barkan, singer E.J. Decker, Jim “JazzPromo Works” Eigo, Barney Fields of HighNote/Savant Records, Albany/Nippertown jazz journo J Hunter, baritone sax star Howard Johnson, Jeff Levenson of Half Note Records, Village Voice and JazzTimes writer Aidan Levy, Jason Olaine of Jazz at Lincoln Center, pianist Roberta Picket (hanging out with saxophonist Virginia Mayhew), Mark Ruffin of Sirius/XM Radio, singer Kendra Shank, trumpeter-producer David Weiss, pianist-educator Eli Yamin, . . way too many to name) and fellow Chicagoans (saxophonist/AACM chair Ernest Dawkins, Hot House presenter Marguerite Horberg, writer/radio producer Neil Tesser) . . .

Many attendees, after hours of concentrated schmoozing, went directly to play or hear music, at one of the couple dozen venues detailed in the admirably comprehensive performance calendar of The New York City Jazz Record.

Harlem party — Wayne Escoffery holding his tenor sax. Photo by Alain Biltereyst.

On the Thursday night I went with fellow Jazz Journalists Association members Angelika Beener and Ted Panken to hear L.A.-based pianist-composer-arranger John Beasley‘s star-studded Monk’estra at Dizzy’s Club in Jazz at Lincoln Center — beautifully detailed, original expositions of centennial celebrant Thelonious Monk‘s indestructible melodies (chatted with heir/drummer T.S. Monk there, as well as alto saxist Ted Nash — hear his Presidential Suite (Eight Variations on Freedom) and Jazzweek publisher Ed Trefzger)– then cabbed to the Harlem apartment of Azerbijian-born pianist-composer Amina Figarova and her husband flutist Bart Platteau, originally from Belgium for a party/jam session that included tenor saxist Wayne Escoffery, pianist Bertha Hope, bassist Ark Ovrutski, guitarist Roni Ben-Hur and 15-year-old singer Alexis Morrast giving lustrous voice to “My Funny Valentine.” Talked at length to Jim Wadsworth, presenter at Cleveland’s Nighttown, and photographer Gulnara Khamatova, one of the photographers for Winter JazzFest.

Friday Jan 6 was the first night of the WJF marathon, performances from dozens of new and emerging artists/ensembles from 6 pm to 2 pm simultaneously in 13 downtown venues. The clubs and concert halls are no longer grouped all on or near Greenwich Village’s main drag Bleecker Street — they’re now dispersed as far east at NuBlu on Ave. C, as far south as Bowery Ballroom at the edge of Chinatown, and west to S.O.B.’s on 7th Avenue South. Getting everywhere might be possible by bike, scooter or Segway but I ping-ponged only from 13th Street, where buildings of the New School offered variously sized stages, to (le) Poisson Rouge and Subculture on Bleecker, 10 blocks down.

My aim was to hear music not likely to be in Chicago soon, and I started with trombonist/composer/conductor Craig Harris‘ Breathe, which collected some 35 players to embody the JazzFest’s stated mission to “explicitly support social and racial justice by presenting socially engaged artist who have urgent and beautiful musical messages to share.”

Singer Alexis Morrast, photo by Alain Bilteryst

Harris did this in a suite-like structure by featuring soloists – first up, Zusaan Kali Fasteau on ney — and spontaneously conjured backdrops, sometimes drawing from his established compositions (the finale has been recorded as “Lovejoy”). Individualistic expression was implicit in this plan, a diversity of personal statements that did not detract from overall unity of purpose. Closeup portraits projected behind the ensemble emphasized the humanness of those imperiled by racial discrimination — which is everyone.

On the advice of publicist Matt Merewitz, I hurried to Subculture for trombonist Jacob Garchik’s Ye Olde, with guitarists Mary Halvorson, Ava Mendoza and Jonathan Goldberger, plus drummer Vinnie Sperrazza. Garchik has earned his reputation as a skilled and witty composer-arranger. In this very loud setting, he outlined minimalisticly short riffs familiar from rock/r&b/pop classics, freeing the guitars to rampage wall-of-sound style. Mendoza is a find, and Ye Olde, which seeems highly tourable, may appeal to audiences that aren’t used to or interested in “jazz” per se. Maybe even for some who are. I stayed for a tune by singer Somi, accompanied by a quartet fronted by guitarist Liberty Ellman — also not for me.

Craig Harris conducts Breathe; photo by Gulnara Khamatova

Back in New School land, I caught trumpeter Paul Smoker with pianist Uri Caine, bassist Mark Helias and drummer Clarence Penn reeling a far abstraction back into its basis in the standard “All the Things You Are,” and then a highlight: Chicago drummer Mike Reed’s Flesh and Bone septet, with wild spokenwordsman Marvin Tate, alto saxophonist Greg Ward, bass clarinetist Jason Stein, cornetist Ben Lamar Gay, tenor saxist Tim Haldeman and bassist Jason Roebke showing how high energy blowing can be framed by riffs and rhythms for fun in balance with frenzy. Hot stuff — look for Flesh and Bone’s album in March-April. Nightcap was Arturo O’Farrill’s quintet with saxophonist Roy Nathanson, new-to-me trumpeter Billy Mintz, bassist Brad Jones giving a lot of juice to Monk music.

Shabaka Hutchings at (le) Poisson Rouge, photo by Jati Lindsay

Saturday began at ECM Records‘ stage, with bassist Michael Formanek’s quartet of alto saxophonist Tim Berne, pianist Craig Taborn and drummer Gerald Cleaver. Their interactions struck me as densely detailed, kinetic and self-referential. Hastening through slush to (le) Poisson Rouge, I caught Shabaka & The Ancestors, based in London, rooted in South Africa, and poised to emerge from their North American debut opening a sold-out show for Pharoah Sanders as next to enjoy the new audience popularity of, say, Kamasi Washington. Tenor saxist Shabaka Hutchings has a big yet essentially easy-going affect, matched and poked by altoist Thunzi Mvubu, with Siyabonga Mthembu providing vocals, often wordless. There was an appealing aspect of chant to their tunes, which flowed from calm to intensity and back; rhythm by bassist Ariel Zomonsky and drummer Tumi Mogorosi was strongly African in tone — authentically so, never outlandish. Subsequently I’ve listened to they album Wisdom of Elders, distinguished by warm, swinging soulfulness, the addition of a trumpeter and a fine keyboardist Nduduzo Makhathini, and spare use of electronic effects.

As I’d written a DownBeat record review of Cuban pianist Harold Lopez-Nussa‘s El Viaje and was only six snowy blocks from Subculture, I went to hear him live. His trio had his brother Ruy Lopez-Nussa on drums and electric bassist Julio Cesar Gonzalez — “Lopez-Nussa always has the best bassists,” connoisseur of Cuban culture Ned Sublette remarked before they went on, and by reference to Gonzalez, he’s right. The three were spirited, but their material seemed anodyne — a reaction which tells me I’ve heard enough music. And having spoken in passing with folks including percussionist Adam Rudolph, drummer Hamid Drake, guitarist Kenny Wessel, Kent Devereaux (ex-Cornish Institute, now president of New Hampshire Institute of Art), Seattle music journalist Paul deBarros, writer Bill Milkowski, composer-orchestra leader Darcy James Argue, ECM publicist Tina Pelikan, storyteller Mitch Myers, former film producer Bill Horberg (now working with Karl Berger’s Creative Music Studio), photographer Alan Nahagian, Tom Greenland (author of Jazzing: New York City’s Unseen Scene) and Vancouver Coastal Jazz festival’s Rainbow Robert, among others, I was exhausted so called it quits early, missing much. Didn’t even try Sunday for Globalfest, the showcase of international acts eager to tour our country, at Webster Hall. By then I was eager to fly home.

The capital is, after all, where people come together for business. It’s not necessary to live there. I lived in NYC for more than 30 years, and it’s fun to return but I don’t miss being there daily now. Is it the capital? Despite its considerable challenges — costs of travel, accommodation, transportation, meals, at the very least —  no other place seems so hospitable for the gathering of jazz people. Yet we are everywhere, and it’s vital we listen to what surrounds us.

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Jazz warms Chi spots: Hot House @ Alhambra Palace, AACM @ Promontory

There are good arguments for building venues just for jazz. But speaking of arts communities in general: Most are moveable feasts, fluid, transient, at best inviting to newcomers to the table.

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Kahil El’Zabar, Harrison Bankhead and David Murray at the Alhambra Palace, produced by HotHouse; photo by Marc PoKempner.

It’s demonstrable that when jazz players and listeners alight at all-purpose spaces such as Chicago’s Alhambra Palace, where Hot House produced the trio of saxophonist David Murray, bassist Harrison Bankhead and percussionist Kahil El’Zabar  on Monday, Dec. 12, or The Promontory in Hyde Park, where flutist Nicole Mitchell, cellist Tomeka Reid and multi-instrumentalists Maia led ensembles in Voices Heard: Expressions of Visionary Black Women on Saturday, Dec. 10 — we bring the empathetic attentions that lend the moment’s sounds memorable significance, wherever those moments take place.

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Janis Lane-Ewart, AACM curator and Minneapolis radio personality, and singer Dee Alexander at Promontory for Voices Heard (your blogger over Dee’s right shoulder). Photo by Lauren Deutsch.

Promontory, a 300-capacity room with copious table seating and bar space (plus in the summertime, an open-air veranda), features all sorts of events — local DJs and r&b groups, Latin dance nights, family holiday shows, homemade crafts fairs and acts typically ranging from local rappers, djs and r&b stars to off-beat touring choices such as Average White Band. Voices Heard (produced by a coalition of the Jazz Institute of Chicago, the David and Reba Logan Center for the Arts and the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians, funded by the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation), however, was a special two-day fest of talents too often and too long overlooked.

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Mankwe Ndosi and Tomeka Reid, photo by Lauren Deutsch.

On Saturday, keyboardist and vocalist Amina Claudine Myers, one of the very first AACM members 50 years ago, improvised a warm, beguiling set with Mitchell. Vocalist Mankwe Ndosi and cellist  Tomeka Reid performed uproariously, using loops and other effects; the first ever AACM band of women, Samana, reunited with Maia emphatic on vibes; Mitchell on flute; Coco Elysses playing tympani and percussion; Shanta Nurullah on bass and mbira; singers Rita Warford, Africa Brown and Ugochi Nwaogwugwu, and baritone saxophonist/digeridooist Mwata Bowden as an honorary male member. The group spun out a long collaborative take on a theme by Maia (who also plays harp).

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Hot House shows commence after the audience stands and joins hands. Photo by Marc PoKempner.

In both cases, the audiences comprised familiar coteries of friends and associates. This is nice for those of us who know each other, but suggests the challenge facing these musicians and presenters in attracting new listeners. In both cases the music, familiar or not, offered rewards.

At the Alhambra, a spacious facility with Arabian Nights decor in its main serving and meeting rooms, balcony and bars, El’Zabar was in particularly strong form on djembé,traps set and mbira, bassist Bankhead sensitive to each nuanced fluctuation of drum accents and volume, world-traveling Murray at home with his companions but also lifting their game with his own assertive energy.

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Kahil El’Zabar, photo by Marc PoKempner.

At Promontory, the black women in creative music made their statement that music isn’t the performance province of only one sex, and of course it values elders as well as youngsters.

Every time that point is made it’s a victory for all and a step towards attracting people who may have previously felt shut out; now they’re specifically acknowledged and invited in. Both these venues were, at least for the length of the concerts, transformed from accommodating if somewhat impersonal halls into clubhouses welcoming devotees. Whenever spirited artists entertain their followers in flexible performance spaces, the events and attendees leave their impressions, ghostly vibes that subtly attune the sites for whoever comes next and later.

Thanks as always to my good friends Lauren Deutsch and Marc PoKempner for their lustrous images.

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African roots, Middle Eastern extensions in Hyde Park Jazz Fest

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Randy Weston in Rockefeller Chapel, photo by Marc PoKempner

Pianist Randy Weston, a magisterial musician at age 90 inspired by jazz traditions and its African basics, and trumpeter Amir ElSaffar, who has devoted himself to incorporating the Middle East’s modal, microtonal maqam legacy into compositions for jazz improvisation by members of his Two Rivers Ensemble, were highlights of last weekend’s 10th annual Hyde Park Jazz Festival. Both acts brought influences from afar back home.

The two-day fest in the neighborhood soon to host Barack Obama’s presidential library focused on local performers familiar to Chicago’s south side audiences — such as pianist Willie Pickens, alto saxist Greg Ward and singer Dee Alexander — performing on outdoor stages at the ends of a four-block long stretch of the Midway Plaisance (essentially, 59th St) girding the University of Chicago campus. I was busy at the nearby Logan Center the premiere of “Chicago’s Record Man: A Conversation with Bob Koester,”commissioned by the HPJF I co-directed with Matt Mehlan (who was out video-shooting other acts). There were also sets scattered around in venues as far off as the Little Black Pearl art and design center on 47th St., almost two miles away, the DuSable Museum (where trumpeter Orbert Davis’ Sextet had listeners to overflowing for a tribute to the late Freddie Hubbard), and other University facilities.

At 11 pm on a blissfully temperate fall Saturday night, Rockefeller Chapel, a studiously non-denominational example of “Collegiate Gothic” architecture with a 200 foot high tower, matched the grandeur of Weston’s rumbling bass motifs and sparkling right hand melodic variations. Although the vast hall’s acoustics tend to minimize if not blur piano notes, Weston knew how to play it: sparely, with selective emphasis, taking time to let pitches ring and fade. His music flows like a slow but steady river, and staples of his repertoire including “Blue Moses,” “Little Niles,” “Berkshire Blues” and “African Sunrise” (commissioned in 1984 by the Chicago Jazz Festival for Weston to perform with an orchestra including Dizzy Gillespie) seemed ageless, ancient and enduring.

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Two Rivers Ensemble, from left: Tareq Abboushi, Zafer Tawil, Ole Mathisen, Amir ElSaffar, Nasheet Waits, Carlo DeRosa; photo by Marc PoKempner

Several hours earlier a few hundred people came in from the sunny afternoon to the Logan Center performance hall to hear ElSaffar and his Two River Ensemble. A Chicago native who grew up seriously studying Western European classical and American vernacular music, ElSaffar, now 39, began researching his Iraqi ethnic heritage in 2002, spending two years abroad to learn maqam vocal techniques and santur (hammered dulcimer) that are now central to his compositions and concept.

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Nasheet Waits, Amir ElSaffar at santur, Carlo DeRosa; photo by Marc PoKempner

What he’s accomplished is remarkable. He’s affected a genuine absorption and adoption by his sextet members of Arab practices about harmony, ornamentation, intonation and rhythmic cycles in high contrast to American music’s familiar conventions. Simultaneously he’s managed to open those Middle Eastern elements to the expressive freedoms of spontaneous and often urgent improvisation.

In practice what this meant was ElSaffar and tenor saxophonist Ole Mathisen played tight, repetitive, minorish riffs in near-unison over the synchronized string and sometimes hand drum parts of Zafer Tawil and Tareq Abboushi, while Nasheet Waits drove the entire band from his traps, modulating volume nicely, and Carlo DeRosa supplied virtuosic bass lines.

On occasion ElSaffar sat at his santur, striking ping-like tones. At their concert climax Mathisen was wailing with all the fiercely garrulous grit of an Old Testament prophet, while ElSaffar flailed with delicate strikers at the wire of his small, trapezoidal instrument. It was difficult to hear the hammered dulcimer’s sound — ElSaffar said he couldn’t hear it onstage — but the entire band’s fervor, grounded and moving on interlocking rhythms, was palatable. The Two Rivers Ensemble offered unusually new music and the seasoned Hyde Park Jazz Festival audience, ready for something more that simply pleasant background swing, stayed with the adventure, by the end gratified with risks and rewards, just as jazz intends.

 
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Thomas Chapin on film, with TromBari in Normal IL

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from left: Jim Pugh, Ricardo Flores, Glenn Wilson, Armand Beaudoin at The Normal Theater; photo by Jeff Machota

Glenn Wilson, a terrific baritone saxophonist and flutist based in Normal, IL, is also a major mensch. Last Saturday, at the end of Normal’s Sweet Corn and Blues festival, he organized a free concert and screening of Thomas Chapin: Night Bird Song, a comprehensive documentary about his friend, the usually exuberant alto saxophonist, flutist and composer who died of leukemia at age 40 in 1998.

I was invited to lead a post-screening discussion with director Stephanie J. Castillo, who Skyped in from Brooklyn to The Normal Theater. Hear our discussion here.

Bloomington-Normal are twined cities of some 130,000, home to State-Farm Insurance as well as Illinois State University and Illinois Wesleyan University, where Wilson is newly appointed jazz director. It’s about 125 miles southwest of Chicago. Wilson makes the relatively fast drive up and back frequently, sometimes to play on a Monday night at the Serbian Village. But his connections with Thomas Chapin go back to the late ’70s, when as students at Rugers’ Livingston College they were both in professor Paul Jeffrey’s band. Both joined Lionel Hampton’s touring outfit in the 1980s. They stayed close. Wilson treasures Chapin’s music.

Dorothy Matirano and Trombari section

from left: Dorothy Matirano, Ricardo Flores, Adriana Ransom, Armand Beadoin at The Normal Theater; photo by Walter AlspaughChapin’s music.

In 2012, 14 years after Chapin’s death, Wilson re-arranged and recorded several of pieces from Haywire, Chapin’s 1996 album for his trio supplanted by a second bass and cello. Wilson’s versions are heard on The Devil’s Hopyard by TromBari, the ensemble he co-leads with trombonist Jim Pugh. At The Normal Theater, TromBari — featuring violinist Dorothy Martirano, cellist Adriana Ransom, bassist Armand Beaudoin and drummer/percussionist Ricardo Flores — performed finely detailed yet hard-swinging parts that opened to rugged solo and group improvs. They did a rousing set before the theater darkened for the 150-minute version of the film (which Castillo is currently editing down to 90 minutes — she also has a four hour “director’s cut”) and returned for a brief blowout during an intermission. About 150 Central Illinois music devotees, some from as far away as Champaign (55 miles) and Peoria (40 miles), gathered for the event focused on a musician who had never toured the region and whose many, varied albums recorded for small independent labels are rare and/or out-of-print. Thomas Chapin’s sister and brother-in-law drove from Chicago — the same trip took me about three hours — in order to see Night Bird Song on a big screen for the first time.

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Stephanie J. Castillo via Skype; Mandel (l) and Wilson in foreground.

Night Bird Song, like Wilson’s evening-long, grant-supported screening/show, is a labor of love. Castillo, an Emmy-winning film-maker, was Chapin’s sister-in-law, but knew little about his music or the downtown New York scene he enlivened until after his demise. Having done deep research, she has made a thorough job of tracing Chapin’s musical life from its earliest glimmerings through his posthumous album releases, including interviews with such of his important collaborators as bassist Mario Pavone, drummer Michael Sarin and saxophonist Ned Rothenberg and great live performance footage.

Here’s Chapin, age 26, blowing the blues while Hampton, 84, bounces behind his drums.                                

Here’s Chapin highly charged at the Knitting Factory, winning over fans in Europe, spellbinding at the Newport Jazz Festival. Here’s Chapin in his down time, floating like a smiling angel with full appreciation of the world about him, whether he’s in gritty Manhattan, on beautiful beaches or in East Africa, where he was suddenly stricken with his fatal disease.

Sad though it was and is that Thomas Chapin died so young, possibly on the cusp of a career breakthrough, it is heartening that friends like Wilson, Pavone, the Knitting Factory’s Michael Dorf, Festival Production’s Danny Melnick and of course Castillo herself have created such a rich and engrossing portrait of the artist. A film of this sort — which won the Best Story award at the Nice International Filmmakers Festival last May, and which will be shown at the Monterey Jazz Festival on Sept. 17 — provides significantly more proof of its
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subject’s life, spirit and times than, say, a DownBeat article or a Wiki entry. Rather than being about a salacious, outlaw sort of jazz figure, it focuses on a man who lived to make music he could proudly claim was “pure.” I remember Thomas onstage, and in person — he was typically aglow with delight. See Night Bird Song when it’s near you for exposure to a man’s sweetness and soulfulness, the likes of which inspires people such as Glenn Wilson and his TromBari colleagues to keep working, teaching, playing beautiful sounds for everyone who will listen.

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A Great Migration suite from trumpeter Orbert Davis: Audio interview

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Orbert Davis – Shilke Music

Orbert Davis — trumpeter, composer and leader of the Chicago Jazz Philharmonic, has been
commissioned by the Jazz Institute of Chicago to write and perform a suite about the Great Migration for the 38th annual free Chicago Jazz Festival. “Soul Migration,” for octet, will be heard Sept 1 at 8 pm in Millennium Park’s Pritzker Pavillion.

With the composition in progress, Orbert spoke about it with me at his home studio, demonstrating with some synthesized samples and even improvising a theme. Thanks to Collin Ashmead-Bobbit for recording the interview, excerpted here.

https://www.artsjournal.com/jazzbeyondjazz/wp/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/Orbert-Davis-on-Soul-Migration.mp3

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MCA-Chicago’s Terrace concerts, acing outdoor presentation

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Hear in Now: Tomeka Reid, Sylvia Bolognesi, Mazz Swift. Photo by Marc PoKempner

Chicago’s Museum of Contemporary Art has aced outdoor music presentations with its Tuesdays on the Terrace series, most recently featuring the string trio Hear In Now performing strong yet sensitive chamber jazz. Drawing a thoroughly diversified crowd to enjoy fresh, creative music in open space on a summer afternoon for free (food and beverages extra) shouldn’t be difficult, but it’s the kind of programming New York’s Museum of Modern Art tried off and on for decades, seldom conquering the format’s challenges.

Cellist Tomeka Reid, violinist Mazz Swift and bassist Sylvia Bolognesi held rapt an audience sitting in folding chairs directly in front of their tented stage, another block of seating on the far side of a stairways in use throughout the two sets, 5:30 to 8 pm, and people at tables on a level above the musicians. Another coterie of attendees was spread across grass on the street level of the MCA’s “backyard” — sound was decently amplified into that space, but no one seemed constrained from socializing, and their conversations did not bleed up into the main music area.

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Kerry James Marshall’s “Untitled (Painter),” 2009

People were also invited to enter the Museum itself, especially to view the powerful retrospective of Kerry James Marshall’s paintings — explosive, subversive and celebratory visions of black America. All together, the outdoors music and indoors exhibitions provided a welcoming ambiance for visitors old, young and in-between, black and white and other.

Marshall’s visions could easily be taken as counterparts of Hear in Now’s music. The painter and the players are all masterful (the retrospective is titled “Mastry”) and multi-layered. Ms.s Reid, Swift and Bolognesi plucked and bowed transparent but dense and busily detailed narratives — that is, pieces that seemed to go somewhere, purposefully. Each of the women plays precisely, virtuosically and with guts. They took chances, seeming to revel in surprising each other, never smug and indeed nearly giddy with pleasure in their collaboration. All three contributed framework compositions upon which to expand, Swift sometimes singing along with her fiery arco work. A version of one of H.T. (Harry) Burleigh’s spiritual-inspired songs was singularly affecting. Their concentration and satisfaction transmitted directly to their listeners — players and witnesses seemed united in one experience, always the goal of performances.

However, the achievement of that goal by institutions offering serious music out-of-doors must not be taken for granted. MOMA started presenting its Summergarden series of concerts in its sculpture garden in the 1960s — a wonderful Milt Jackson-James Moody album was recorded live there in ’65, the same year Sonny Rollins led an all-star band in the garden through There Will Never Be Another You. Rollins returned to record The Solo Album in 1985.  In the ’90s I went to Summergarden performances by John Cage, Butch Morris and Henry Threadgill’s ensembles, among others, but

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Joel Sachs conducts at MOMA’s Summergarden, 2015. Photo by Scott Rudd.

MOMA’s amplification system did not deliver evenly throughout the walled space, traffic commotion on adjacent 54th St. was typically disruptive,there was often a stiffness in the presentation and an abiding sense that MOMA was concerned its free offerings might be too popular, the sculpture garden not big enough to handle all comers and those attendees potentially unruly, too. Perhaps these problems were solved for the four Sunday night Summergarden concerts MOMA produced this year.

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MCA rear view, grass and terrace. Stage is usually set up on the upper level, at left – Lawndale News (no copyright infringement intended)

The MCA’s physical situation has some advantages, not least of them being its terrace’s distance above busy Chicago Avenue running along side. Traffic noises still threaten — Hear in Now at one point dealt confidently with an ambulance siren cutting through the air by continuing to press its group sound, enfolding the whine.

I can’t say how this works at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) which has won ASCAP/Chamber Music America awards for its adventurous programming, but one thing is clear: People love the musical and social opportunities these museums provide. Local artists and citizens from anywhere meet at these cool places for happy occasions. Applause for the musicians and the presenting institutions, too.

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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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