Here's writing I worked hard on last year, published in slightly different form as a "Global Ear" column in The Wire (UK) December 2019. Rafael Arriaga's photos (unless credited otherwise) are a fit complement, as is Jazzamoart's painting, "El Bop de los Alebrijes." El Bop de los Alebrijes, © Jazzamoart The Harmonipan players, khaki-uniformed men and women grinding away for spare change on out-of-tune, ill-repaired 100-year-old portable German organs in the midst of Mexico City's car-jammed boulevards, were the most surprising element … [Read more...]
Last glance 2010: great performances and best beyond jazz
There's not much time left, so here are three of my best memories of live music over this crazy year, and a couple handfuls of favorite recordings that promise to be listenable for quite a while forward -- … [Read more...]
Miles’ beyond jazz, today and tomorrow
Miles Davis is still at it -- in Prospect Park, the Highline Ballroom, (le) Poisson Rouge, Carefusion Jazz Festival's Carnegie Hall concerts, also overflowing the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, as per my City Arts - New York column and enriching the glorious Festival International de Jazz de Montreal (June 25 - July 5). Though he died of exacerbated living at age 65 in 1991, the influence of Miles' trumpet and his breakthrough "directions in music" vibrates through urbane international cultural as strongly now as ever. Bitches Brew, which … [Read more...]
Live in New York, it’s jazz beyond jazz
Presentations of jazz that break all sorts of bounds, pushing far beyond stale conventions -- jazz beyond jazz -- are so prevalent in Manhattan that the energy expended just being on the scene can leave me too drained to report on the good stuff. Five shows in the past month -- Dee Dee Bridgewater's Mali project at the Blue Note, Myra Melford's new quartet at Roulette, Richard Bona and Lionel Loueke in the Allen Room of Jazz at Lincoln Center, James "Blood" Ulmer with Vernon Reid's neo-blues band at the Jazz Standard and an evening celebrating … [Read more...]
Jazz time-out of the year?
A major international jazz festival right now in Washington D.C.? How odd: Is it the End of Times? Are we fiddlin' while Rome burns? Or could it be a new beginning? Ignore the credit crisis, the vp debates, end-game positioning by the One and the Other, Rosh Hashanah and Eid, Cubs and White Sox both in the playoffs -- here's the under-promoted but highly impressive fourth annual Duke Ellington Jazz Festival, Oct. 1 - 7! Balancing Kennedy Center concerts with "jazz in the 'hoods" (club and arts center gigs mostly but not only NW), sophisticated … [Read more...]