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Howard Mandel's Urban Improvisation

Appreciating Charnett Moffett as a solo bassist

Saddened that bassist Charnett Moffett has died of a heart attack at age 54, I post this appreciation — also serving as a profile —

Charnette Moffett, from video of The Bridge

written in 2013 to annotate his solo bass (!) album The Bridge, which he described as “my most personal and challenging release so far.”

Solo bass records are rare, and might seem to appeal mostly to bassists and bass aficionados. But on The Bridge Charnett Moffett, the charismatic bass virtuoso with an impressive past and equally brilliant future, has proven here — without benefit of a band — that his music can touch anyone who loves music, regardless of instrumentation or genre.

Alone with his upright bass, Moffett has created an engaging hour of organic, richly detailed and fundamentally physical sounds. He lays down 20 concise and immediately enjoyable performances, exploring motifs that have had true resonance for him throughout his formidable career.  He establishes his links to the lineage of iconic jazz bassists, and demonstrates his personal, advanced techniques for this heaviest of stringed instruments, the tether that, since its invention, has bound melody, harmony and rhythm together. He gives himself unstintingly to this project and, so doing, renews himself. 

In fact, this is Charnett’s process: He has never stopped growing throughout the three decades he has been at the heart of bravenew music. Receiving his first bass (a half-sized one) at age seven, recording that year– and then touring Japan with the Moffett Family Band–Charnett

has been at the ‘bottom’ of things (pun intended) from the beginning of his musical life. His father Charles was a drummer with Ornette Coleman, and so as a youngster Charnett was always around jazz royalty. He auditioned for Charles Mingus when he was nine.

He attended The High School of Music and Art (the “Fame” high school), Mannes College of Music and Juilliard, which he left at age 16 to hit the road in the band of Wynton Marsalis. In his 20’s he worked steadily with guitarist Stanley Jordan, the all-star Manhattan Jazz Quintet and legendary drummer Tony Williams in addition to recording under his own name for Blue Note. He’s been a collaborative sideman in quartet with Ornette and Denardo Coleman and Geri Allen, with Art Blakey, Harry Connick Jr., McCoy Tyner (for five years), Bette Midler, David Sanborn, Branford Marsalis and, most recently, Melody Gardot. Even when he’s been in a supportive role, Charnett’s focused and energetic solos have frequently inspired audience ovations.

The Bridge casts him as the beneficiary of musical wisdom passed along by such eminences as Ray Brown, Charles Mingus, Paul Chambers, Scott Lafaro, Stanley Clarke, Ron Carter, Bobby McFerrin and Sting, and he does this lineage proud. 

Moffett launches his CD program with “Caravan”, the Juan Tizol song that Duke Ellington made famous (with bassist Jimmy Blanton, among others). This was his feature with the Manhattan Jazz Quintet, a group that he joined when he was 17 and remained a key member of for 25 years. He follows it with the Beatles’ “Eleanor Rigby,” repertoire from the opposite pole of the pop music continuum, famously covered by his former musical comrade Stanley Jordan. Here Charnett offers a singular interpretation that evokes the original’s poignancy and includes a counterline Paul McCartney, the tune’s main composer, might envy.

“Black Codes from the Underground” is a composition from Wynton Marsalis’s now-classic album of the same name, which first positioned Charnett among his â€˜Young Lions’ peers, including not only the Marsalis brothers but also pianist Kenny Kirkland and drummer Jeff “Tain” Watts. The piece holds special memories for Charnett: he played it live at the Grammys in 1986, which was, of course, an enormous thrill for a teenager at an early point in his career. One of the glories of this track is Charnett’s embrace of the entirety of his instrument: the slap of wood as well as the throb of fiber and ringing tone. Then there is his fierce attack, and that indestructible repeating riff, reprised from the original rendition, which has earned jazz-hit status.

Charnett became a fan of Sting when Branford Marsalis and Kenny Kirkland joined his band, and cites the lyrical “Fragile” as a Sting composition that reflects how he himself feels about some of the difficult passages of life. Next is “Haitian Fight Song” by Charles Mingus, which Charnett took as a chance, as he says, “to utilize my own style, rather than to emulate his, and to pay my respects.”

Moffet’s “Kalengo” spotlights the age-old Western European classical technique of bow-tapping in alternation with conventionally bowed and plucked passages. â€œThe song is inspired by Chick Corea, but has an open harmonic structure and concept about modulation during improvisation that I learned from Ornette,” explains Charnett. “Bow Song” is another conjunction of influences: “It’s classical in orientation”, he acknowledges, â€œbut it was really inspired by Paul Chambers’ version of â€˜Yesterdays’ from his album Bass On Top, one of my favorites.” 

The idea of pairing the early 19th century Negro spiritual “Joshua Fought the Battle of Jericho” with 21st century Adele’s “Rolling in the Deep”– “the oldest song on the record with the newest,” as Charnett mentions â€“ came from Mary Ann Topper, the co-producer of The Bridge, who was also a key figure in Charnett’s ’80s career breakout. â€œSkip Hop,” says the bassist, “is about having some fun. I remember a gig I did with Ornette in Belfast, where the musicians were playing bagpipes, and it was really swinging. It was an Irish jig … and I just slowed down the tempo for ‘Skip Hop.’ By the way,” he adds, â€œMoffett is actually an Irish name!”

It was also Ms. Topper who urged Charnett to record Thelonious Monk’s “Round Midnight,” “Well You Needn’t” and “Rhythm-A-Ning” as a medley. “That was challenging, but it came out nicely,” the bassist comments. “The Slump” which seems positively buoyant, was composed by Tony Williams, with whom Charnett toured and recorded in the late ’80s; “The Slump” was his feature with Williams’ band. “Oversun” is Charnett’s easy-does-it evocation of the self-contained call and response vocal gambit of one of his favorite musicians, Bobby McFerrin. “Swinging Etude” is another nod to Ornette Coleman: “Like McCoy Tyner, Ornette has been one of my most significant teachers,” Charnett asserts, and indeed, Tyner’s tour-de-force “Walk Spirit, Talk Spirit” comes next. It was Charnett’s feature while playing with the iconic pianist. 

“Truth” first appeared on Nettwork, Moffet’s 1991 Blue Note/Manhattan Records production. It demonstrates his remarkable ability to depict harmony, melody and rhythm as one entity, rather than as separate though intertwined strands. On this album’s title track, “The Bridge (Solo Bass Works),” Charnett takes his instrumental mastery and unique concept even further, having been inspired to imagine what Rimsky-Korsakov’s â€œFlight of The Bumblebee” might sound like on the bass. See our man working up this track in the studio by putting this CD into your computer and viewing the video included as “enhanced CD” content [click link on photo above].

By this point in the program we’ve heard the threads that run through every Moffett musical interpretation: muscle leavened by tenderness, vitality tempered by humility, daring matched by accomplishment. These qualities are again present in his rendition of Nat “King” Cole’s “Nature Boy”as well as in the snappy “Things Ain’t What They Used To Be,” a tribute to the late, great Ray Brown, who borrowed the Ellington song to use as his own theme. They are likewise found in the one over-dubbed track on The Bridge, “All Blues,” which makes reference to Paul Chambers, Miles Davis and Ron Carter, and in Charnett’s concluding original, “Free Your Mind,” which offers a taste of his unique deployment of electronics with the upright bass, a powerful effect in his live performances.

“‘Free Your Mind’ also previews Moffett’s Spirit of Sound album, recorded prior to The Bridge and scheduled for subsequent release. “Spirit of Sound, features my family band with a number of guests from the Motéma family,” says Charnett. “It represents the newest expression of my ensemble vision to date, whereas this solo project is my most personal and challenging release so far.”

Charnett’s 20 performances on The Bridge revel in the breadth of his creativity and musical identity, as indelible as the thrum of his thumb. “I wanted to do something that would express who I am, carry on the tradition of the greats who preceded me, and also contribute to the art form by challenging myself to construct my own standard of solo-bass excellence,” he states. “I think it’s imperative that an artist work in such ways.”

And so, thanks to this gifted bassist, we have it all: The connection between joy and effort, ambition and fulfillment, the past and the present. Complete even when totally alone, Charnett Moffett isThe Bridge.

Charnett Moffett’s most recently released album New Love (2021) features Jana Herzen, his wife, guitarist, singer-songwriter and founder of Motéma Music. Condolences to her and all Charnett’s family, friends and admirers.

Four months of jazz adaptation, resilience, response to epidemic

In early March – only four months ago – I flew between two of the largest U.S. airports, O’Hare and JFK, to visit New York City. I stayed in an East Village apt. with my daughter and a nephew crashing on her couch.

The Jazz Standard (DoNYC)

We ate barbecue at a well-attended Jazz Standard performance by drummer Dafnis Prieto’s sextet, and the next day I went to a celebration of Ornette Coleman’s birthday, his demise five years ago and his ongoing spirit, hosted by his son Denardo at the Coleman’s midtown loft.

Noted improvisers David Murray, Graham Haynes, Craig Harris, Kenny Wessel and a gang from Philadelphia including Jamaaladeen Tacuma, Charlie Ellerbee and Bobby Zankel were there, bumping elbows instead of shaking hands or hugging, because of what we’d heard about Covad-19.

Ornette Coleman, seated, birthday party, 2014 —
Denardo Coleman behind him in blue shirt
photo by Sánta István Csaba

Afterwards, Denardo called it “the last great party on earth.”

At the event we were all a little nervous but still together. Within five weeks one guest, 84-year-old bassist Henry Grimes, had succumbed to complications brought on by the disease exacerbating previous conditions.

Henry Grimes, photo by Sánta István Csaba

By then — mid-April — with the world-wide coronavirus pandemic sweeping through jazz and every other U.S. performing arts sphere as an ill wind, musicians and jazz support organizations had hastened to batten down the hatches.

The Jazz Standard, like all other clubs across the country, was closed; concerts, tours and soon summer festivals were cancelled; record release promotions were scrubbed or postponed. That’s pretty much how it’s remained.

Some individuals – pianist Fred Hersch being a leader among them, having begun in late March to perform a “Tune of the Day” solo, free-of-charge on Facebook – quickly turned to live streaming from their homes or studios, with tip jars or donate buttons pinned to their platforms’ pages.

Catching on, ambitious live-streamed shows were mounted. For instance, Jazz at Lincoln Center’s April 15 gala “Worldwide Concert for Our Culture” and the International Jazz Day Virtual Global Concert sponsored by UNESCO in partnership with the Herbie Hancock Institute of Jazz were tent-pole events meant to proudly and loudly proclaim that jazz is here to stay, unbowed. Then attention turned to addressing those in distress – which, given the economic slowdown accompanying the health crisis, may be just about everyone.

So the Jazz Foundation of America scheduled its #TheNewGig, a Musicians’ Emergency Fund Concert fundraiser in mid-May with stars including Wayne Shorter promising to make appearances from afar, and videos from the JFA archives of Sonny Rollins, the Herbie Hancock Sextet and the Count Basie Orchestra, among many others. The JFA (disclosure: I’ve been a supporter almost since it’s start) also set up a Covid-19 Relief Fund as did the Recording Academy’s affiliated charitable foundation MusiCares.

BandCamp, the DIY musicians’ favorite platform for tracks and album sales, continues to designate days on which they renounce fees so the entirety of payments for recordings go to the music-makers.

Taking matters into their own hands, players have sought and some have offered tutorials on how to live-stream, how to teach music online and how to hold virtual fundraisers, among other potentially productive efforts. JazzOnTheTube, a website and list-serve reaching some 30,000 subscribers daily, has published several useful, free ones. From early March on, there have been an increasing number of such demonstrations of the jazz community taking care of itself and its own.

One such is the Jazz Coalition, organized to provide juried $1000 commission grants to members’ nominees from all over the globe. Having quickly raised more than $70,000 from individuals contributing at least $100 or whatever they can to the cause (disclosure: I chipped in), the Coalition’s burgeoning membership has come from all sectors of the jazz ecosystem, including booking agents, publicists, record company representatives, producers, presenters, educators and journalists as well as internationally renowned musicians. Everyone is intent on making sure we and our hallowed, ever-relevant, genuinely essential jazz culture survives. On May 21 the first 48 grantees were announced.

Many Jazz Coalition constituents have their own endeavors to guide income to the musical freelancers (aka, independent contractors, seldom qualifying for unemployment assistance) who typically depend on gigs booked one-at-a-time, at best a few months in advance. Such freelancers still suffer the disadvantage of not know what venues will open on what schedule, or if and when they do, audiences will brave infection to gather and listen.

The alternative is found in the myriad webpages like Jazz at Lincoln Center’s listing players’ online performances scheduled on platforms like Zoom, Facebook and Twitch.tv. Chicago’s jazz radio station WDCB has its Virtual Concert Calendar, alt.weekly Dig Boston is doing it. . . . I stopped researching when it became clear there are too many of these to name, and none is actually comprehensive. How could any single such listing be?

I’ll note, however, that Fred Hersch has migrated from Facebook to Patreon to produce weekly 15-to-20 minute “custom content”. Other thoughtfully curated streaming series:

  • Live From Our Living Rooms;
  • Act4Music;
  • The Jazz Gallery’s Lockdown Sessions, and other streams;
  • WBGO’s The Checkout Alone Together series;
  • Jazz i Norge;
  • Experimental Sound Studio’s Quarantine Concerts;
  • HotHouseGlobal, on which I mc’d a program called “Chicago Experimental” in mid-May, and on June 18 produced the 2020 Jazz Journalists Association Jazz Awards Winners Live-Streaming Party, with almost 30 all-stars in small groups candidly discussing current events, feelings and activities, interspersed with music highlights from JJA galas of the past. Without false modesty, I believe this document will be a rich source for future jazz scholars.

Also, harpist Brandee Younger and bassist Dezron Douglas have been doing a weekly Friday 11am brunch set from their apartment. 

Although the web empowers us to tune in to live-streams from wherever they originate, many such schedules, events and support opportunities for musicians, too, are locally focused. Billboard magazine’s resource guide for music professionals helpfully lists some potential avenues of support, which might help with rent, mortgages, health care or mental health counseling, state-by-state.

The National Endowment of the Arts (which postponed its annual celebration of Jazz Masters, to have taken place in April for the first time at SFJazz), has also created a page on its website listing resources for artists and arts organizations, It offers valuable information for freelancers, but still the NEA’s funding continues to flow mostly to non-profit presenting groups rather than individual artists.

For-profit jazz-presenting businesses — the clubs, concert halls and festivals – that have ongoing expenses like rent and personnel despite having no customers may have been qualified to apply for Federal, state or municipal loans or grants, though what was made available seems unequal to the need. In the light of this, small performance spaces that previously considered each other as rivals have banded together in the National Independent Venue Association (NIVA). Cooperative groups of former competitors may be a winning concept during this period. Together, they (we) can leverage numbers and strengths to lobby for necessary attentions and assistance, hoping performance can flourish in such spaces again.

That’s wished for in part because the live-streaming format isn’t perfect. A sense of genuine presence is unavoidably missing even for solo performers, despite its projection of a strange intimacy.

A musician’s face, especially a horn player’s, may be visualized on screen much closer to the viewer/listener than it would be even in the tiniest club; scrutiny, given the typical one-camera set-up, becomes intense. I’ve seen drummers video themselves from a vantage just an inch beyond their floor toms or ride cymbals, which puts an auditor as close to the struck surfaces as the drummer her/himself. Pianists, bassists and guitarists typically favor fuller-body shots, but they, too, tend to be as near as the other end of the bench or the next chair.

For groups, a latency lag of indeterminate moments requires musicians trying to connect through uplinks from their own rooms to anticipate each other even better than they ever have before. Won’t this necessarily affect the already subjectively collective projections of swing and groove? Click tracks audible to remotely deployed players through their headphones (but not to the rest of us) have been employed, as by the Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra on “”Quarantine Blues” posted April 24, to address the issue,

and some platforms tout themselves as having less delay — though any of the connections in a live-streamed internet production can affect data flow. Demand for real synchronicity remains significant, and I predict this problem might be solved before there’s a vaccine to fight the pandemic.

There are other, complicated procedures for reducing the time lags. Some home-made music videos exhibit terrific editing, imaginative arrangements and choreography, such as the virtuosic vocal turn by Jacob Collier on Cole Porter’s “Fascinating Rhythm.”

Creativity is rampant. Everyone is digging in, seeking ways forward, trying out new ideas, sharing what they’ve learned. Yet while musicians and fans alike await the re-opening of jazz clubs (perhaps even more than they long for the return of larger, ostensibly more prestigious venues), beyond an occasional burst of irrational exuberance there’s general agreement that re-openings should depend on virus control. Few are over-eager for in-person attendance.

One of my favorite local venues, iconic Chicago saloon the Green Mill, jumped the gun on June 6 and 7, holding street concerts that attracted socially un-distanced, erratically masked audiences. City officials visited on June 8 to issue a warning against doing it again.

Saxophonist Eric Schneider, guitarist Andy Brown outside the Green Mill, June 7, 2020;
photo by Harris Meyer

The club had already been dark for five weeks, and media coverage might have helped the Mill to offset the cost of a fine, though none was forthcoming anyway. And the issue was rendered moot when Mayor Lori Lightfoot allowed Chicago to enter “phase four” of a five-stage re-opening plan. The Mill welcomed musicians, staff and customers inside on June 26, though at 44% capacity, with no vocalists or horns allowed.

It hasn’t been and probably never will be easy to completely transform jazz, which thrives on live, close collaborations, into something satisfying to hear or watch on phones’ or tablets’ screens. Yet jazz people are by definition improvisers. We’ve always faced hard times with creativity, buoyed by resilience. Our music is adaptable, a healing force, and it won’t be quieted.

Henry Grimes wasn’t the first jazz death attributed to the coronavirus. That distinction belongs to Marcelo Peralta, an Argentine-born multi-instrumentalist/composer/arranger who lived in Madrid (March 5, 1961 – March 10, 2020, as reported by Mirian Arbalejo in the Jazz Journalists Association series of international articles JazzOnLockdown, which I edit). Nor, sadly, will Grimes, Guiseppi Logan, Wallace Roney, Mike Longo, Bucky Pizzarelli or Lee Konitz be the last.

Their music will endure, however, as will jazz itself. Thanks to its African-American origins, its roots in the blues, it’s openness to every other influence and its profound sense of rhythm, the sound has withstood insults, suppression, under-financing and the distractions of glitz. Today it can be found everywhere, its tenets welcoming everyone who wants to freely sing or play how they truly feel (as Ornette Coleman, among a century’s worth of prophets and icons, would put it), for our own enrichment and the pleasure of others. Don’t despair. Jazz will surely outlive the damn virus.

Transcending Toxic Times with street poetry & music

My DownBeat article about Transcending Toxic Times, the compulsively listenable, critically political album by the Last Poets produced by electric bassist/composer Jamaaladeen Tacuma, includes a lot of quotes from my interviews with him and poet Abiudon Oyewale.

from left: Baba Donn Babatunde, Jamaaaladeen Tacuma (in front), Umar Bin Hassan, Abiodun Oyewole

I reproduced some of the searing imagery/lyrics on the recording, and provided background on how these men have been calling out American mendacy and hypocrity for half-a-century, as black street seers emerging in the late 1960s — before poetry jams, signifyin’ djs or rappers — backed by African-American percussion. But there’s more to tell.

Jamaaladeen Tacuma at Ornette Coleman’s birthday party;
photo by Sánta István Csaba

Firstly: Tacuma, who positions the declamatory truths amid truly music, often ebullient and genre-defying settings performed by his core collaborators, most of whom are Philadelphians, may still be best known for adding profound buoyancy to my hero Ornette Coleman‘s electrically amplified band Prime Time. But he’s been a recording artist under his own name since an inspired string of 1980s albums for Gramavision (now only Renaissance Man, second of five, is available as an import, but it’s a good one).

He’s backed vocalists from Wilhelmenia Wiggins Fernandez to Nona Hendrix, and recorded with James “Blood” Ulmer, Vernon Reid, Marc Ribot, Derek Bailey, Kip Hanrahan, Jerry Gonzalez, John Zorn and Arto Lindsay among a host of others. But when Jamaaladeen was working with Prime Time, he was simultaneously grounding poet Jayne Cortez’s unique Fire Spitters (with other Prime Time members including Ornette and Jayne’s son Denardo and the late guitarist Bern Nix). Cortez’s fierce declamations and clear-eyed perspective had a major impact on the bassist at a young age, and initiated his interests in creating music in interplay with words.

Since then, he recorded with Amiri Baraka, the Roots and Ursula Rucker, too. His own spoken project Brotherzone has continued for 20 years. All this experience informed how Tacuma approached Transcending Toxic Times.

“As a producer,” Tacuma went on, “you have to really get inside of the project, and that project shouldn’t be about you, it should be about the artist. So I familiarized myself with the material, I familiarized myself with them, I knew their live show, so when I cut our raw music, I knew the length of time the poems took, and I made sure we were within the time frame. I knew the tunes, I knew the pieces, I knew the rhythms, so when I did the music I made sure their recitations would fit just like a glove, right on top of it.”

With assistance in all things from his wife Rahima, Tacuma has produced the Outsiders Improvised & Creative Music Festival in Philadelphia for the past five years (I wrote for DownBeat about the 2018 edition). To clarify the origin of Transcending Toxic Times, Rahima sent me this information:

David Murray brought Jamaaladeen into the 40th Anniversary tour of the Last Poets in 2008. This happened before the Tongues on Fire date, which was a Black Panthers Tribute concert in 2010.

The 40th Anniversary was monumental event and the tour was arranged in collaboration with the filming of The Last Poets: Made in Amerikka by Claude Santiago. It marks the reunion of The Last Poets, accompanied by veritable musical legends like Ronald Shannon Jackson, Robert Irving III and Kenyatte Abdur-Rahman besides Jamaaladeen. Nearly 40 years after their separation, the members of this legendary group — the founding fathers of today’s hip-hop, rap, and slam — came together in Paris for a one-time concert at the 2008 Banlieues Blues Festival. This was significant since it was the first reunion ever and included all living original members of The Last Poets: Abiodun Oyewole, Babatunde, Dahveed Nelson, Felipe Luciano, Jalal Mansur Nuriddin, Umar Bin Hassan. Only Gylan Kain was unable to attend.

From 2008-2011 he did several tours in Europe with Abidodun, Umar and Babatunde. During this time Jamaaladeen began to  form the musical ideas that come later during the first sessions. In 2011 when Jamaaladeen received the Pew Arts & Heritage Fellowship he used the money to start the production. He self-produced the project without any label funding. The Pew Grant was a vital component of the productions. 

Besides all that, Jamaaladeen is one of the best dressers in musicdom. The verve of his clothing matches the vitality of his music. Perhaps paisley jackets can help us transcend toxic times.

Jazz Congress, Winter JazzFest, shape of jazz to come

The first Jazz Congress co-hosted by Jazz at Lincoln Center and JazzTimes magazine Jan 11 and 12, 2018 and the 14th annual Winter JazzFest Marathon produced in downtown Manhattan Jan 12 and 13, offered contrasts and prompted crosstalk. It wasn’t like these were conventions of different parties, but different narratives were going down.

The Congress’s sessions included JALC managing and artistic director Wynton Marsalis speaking on race and jazz, women in jazz announcing “yes, we’re here,” and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar keynoting about his love of the music. It was a schmooze fest for managers, publicists, presenters, musicians, writers, photographers, recording company execs and die-hard fans, who enjoyed themselves in JALC’s comfortable and scenic spaces.

The WJF produced by Bryce Rosenbloom’s Boom Collective presented some 100 concerts in 11 venues, showing rather than telling who’s doing what in the marketplace of rhythmic-driven vernacular songs and improvisation. It was flush with fervor, attended by folks with obviously wide-open ears.

Here’s Marsalis despairing that black people don’t support jazz, that the young are ashamed of the swing beat, that black music is willfully ignored by music  conservatories, that white people can’t dance. Pianist/writer Ethan Iverson mostly nods in agreement, announcing that jazz is black music but we’re all Omni-Americans (the late Albert Murray’s admirable assertion).

Jazz And Race: A Conversation – Jazz Congress 2018 from Wynton Marsalis on Vimeo.

No single clip can encompass the creative/political/sonic thrust of 2018 WJF — which after Marathon weekend continued another five days, with star-heavy tributes to Alice Coltrane and Geri Allen, for instance — but here’s a taste from the WJF appearance of singer Jose James at le Poisson Rouge, revisiting Bill Wither’s 1972 folk-rock-r&B hit “Use Me” (which Esther Phillips covered that same year,

and the Portuguese-Australian-Netherlandquintet Mn’Jam Experiment has more recently, with improvised video). A purist might disavow any of these three versions as jazz. Whatever. I like it.

The best WJF sets I heard were —

  • an artfully conceived and unusually well-realized melding of spoken word with unconventional music in “Art and Anthem: For Gwendolyn Brooks,” by WJF artist-in-residence flutist Nicole Mitchell, with pianist Jason Moran, poet Erica Hunt, singer Shana Tucker, bassist Brad Jones and drummer Shirazette Tinnen in brilliant ensemble (Rashida Brumbray also did some emphatic dancing);
  • hot new vocalist Jazzmeia Horn, advancing the approach of Betty Carter, at the commanding center of her tough, blowing band (and with two Grammy nominations for her debut album A Social Call;
  • scabrously sarcastic and nobly tender songs of resistance by Marc Ribot, playing a beat-up old acoustic guitar and ukelele, with loose accompaniment from powerful tenor saxophonist James Brandon Lewis, acidic altoist Briggan Krauss, supporting singer and flutist Domenica Fossati;
  • a 1:30 am – 2:30 am hit by ultra-charged electric bassist Jamaaladeen Tacuma’s Brotherzone with electric guitarist Ronnie Drayton and drummer Darryl Burgee, members of the original ’70s Last Poets and their protégé, poet Wadud Ahmad.

Pace Wynton Marsalis, who truly does travel the spaceways trying to stir up mainstream audiences for “jazz” and has been singing his downbeat tune for a while, here was considerable evidence “jazz” is healthy, provided we allow “jazz” to be defined by people interested in (as well as artists exploring) what its variable parameters suggest it might be. “Jazz,” our most immediately engaged of art forms is, from my experience at WJF, my usual perspective in Chicago and global correspondence, responding with openness, daring, unbowed energy and spirit to  social, economic and technological developments in real time, virtually everywhere.

The acts I cite above and others at the Marathon — flutist Jamie Baum’s Septet introducing new material; the Sun Ra Arkestra interacting with its 40- 

year-old soundtrack on the Ra-on-film spectacle Space Is The Place; a clangorous attempt by out-jazz/black rock trio Harriet Tubman plus ringers to update Ornette Coleman’s iconic suite Free Jazz — as a matter of course featured multi-racial/religious/ethnic/gendered personnel. Exception proving the rule: saxophone terror James Carter’s Electrik Outlet, four guys who didn’t get the memo re: backing off on sexual innuendo.

 I walked the Marathon route from the New School’s Tishman Auditorium to Subculture on Bleeker and Lafayette, in New York University territory, and everywhere were audiences of wide age span and diverse ancestry. Perhaps not as many, not as young or diverse, not as easily drawn in as we of the hardcore would like, but it’s not a scene in downturn, either — except maybe financially. Which is, of course, a catastrophe, since even jazz musicians (and jazz journalists) have to eat.

Of course, this was Manhattan during a special week in musical presentation, facing an international audience. The convention of the Association of Performing Arts Presenters — those who book artists for your elite venues — was going on, and globalFEST, and other showcases like the club Birdland’s multi-night stand of Vijay Iyer’s sextet of heavies from his critically hailed ECM album Far From Over were scheduled with this in mind. True, ching-ching-a-ling swing as established in the 1930s was not the predominant WJF beat. But I did hear drumming — by Tyshawn Sorey, Matt Wilson, J.T. Lewis and Ms. Tinnin, check ’em out — that swung hard, informed by Art Blakey, Max Roach, Dannie Richmond, Tony Williams, and others of the tradition.

Jamaaladeen Tacuma, photo by Mitch Myers

I prefer music that takes its momentum from the bottom up, rather than float moodily and ethereally, so that’s what I pursued. There were probably WJF sets that didn’t grip or groove, but everyone I heard was thinking about form and substance, and hoped to engage listeners rather than assume their attentions.

There was music at the Jazz Congress. The JALC’s rotunda stage, with floor-to-ceiling windows viewing Columbus Circle and Central Park, had student groups mostly serving as backdrops. But then the Congress was meant to be a venue for bringing up if not working out issues affecting the music’s current ecosystem. The emphasis was on hot topics and casual bump-intos.

So I heard NPR and DownBeat contributor Michelle Mercer moderate a panel on “Women in Jazz” (as distinct from the one she moderated for the JJA’s Jan. 13 Jazz Media Summit on women in jazz journalism). On it, trumpeter/teacher/activist Ellen Seeling explained what it’s taken to get Marsalis’s Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra to institute blind auditions and published notification for jobs. Trumpeter Ingrid Jensen and writer John Murph commented on their work lives, being mostly positive but reporting fulltime awareness that biases about gender, race, sexual orientation, class, etc. might affect professional relationships. Drummer Terri Lyne Carrington, honored by the Congress with its Bruce Lundvall Visionary Award, spoke of mentoring middle school girls learning to play jazz as well as later — and perhaps even earlier — students.

Abdul-Jabbar, beloved for his basketball prowess and unforced charm, in his keynote address (starting in this video at 42 minutes in), told of loving the music. Nothing new there, but he got a standing ovation. There were also presentations by producers of the NPR/WBGO/Jazz at Lincoln Center radio-and- video show Jazz Night in America and independent programmers forums organized by JazzWeek. It’s good to see people from all across the US — Randall Kline of SFJazz, John Gilbreath of Earshot Jazz in Seattle, Tom Guralnick out of Albuquerque, Terri Pontremoli from Cleveland’s Tri-C Jazz Festival, Mark Christman of Ars Nova Workshop, Philadelphia as well as colleagues from France (journalist/broadcaster Alex Duthil), Zurich (Intakt Records producer Patrick Landolt), Toronto (Jane Bunnett and Larry Cramer), London (John Cummings), Bremen (Peter Schulze of JazzAhead!), and lots of East Coast-based associates.

The Jazz Congress replaced the Jazz Connect conference formerly run by JazzTimes and the Jazz Forward Coalition. Coalition principals such as Don Lucoff (DLMedia, PDX Jazz/Portland OR) and Peter Gordon (Thirsty Ear Records) addressed the Congress, too. A good time was had. And then to hear music in New York City! With jazz of the WJF calibre available to record and tour, listenership could grow, if the sector figured out a business model. For all the talk at the Congress, little of it focused on tapping new income streams. At the JazzFest, the plan was, “We’ll play, you’ll come.” Yeah, if folks find out about it, and the show’s not too far from home.

howardmandel.com

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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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Ornette Day, bits of wisdom with video clips

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White sax, Denardo Coleman – Blue Note Jazz Festival

Ornette Coleman’s birthday is today, and his son Denardo has invited everyone to a walk with him from noon to three in Woodlawn Cemetery in the Bronx, where his father, the prophet of Harmolodics, is interred near Duke Ellington, Miles Davis, Max Roach, Celia Cruz — a very good neighborhood.

In Ornette’s honor here are excerpts of his talk from my book Miles Ornette Cecil — Jazz Beyond Jazz. Also, how I came to love his music, and two videos: a choice “free” solo performance with a rare piano episode (from Berlin, 1972) and a prime example of collective collaboration (with bassists Albert McDowell, and Tony Falanga and Denardo on drums) interpreting “Lonely Woman,” the Coleman classic, from Jazz a Vienne, 2008.

On feelings in music:

“I was out at [anthropologist] Margaret Mead’s school, and was teaching some little kids how to play instantly. I asked the question ‘How many kids would like to play music and have fun?’ And all the little kids raised up their hands. I asked, ‘Well, how do you do that?’ And one little girl said, ‘You just apply your feelings to sound.’ I said, ‘Come and show me.’ When she went to the piano to do it she tried to show me, but she had forgotten about what she said. So I tried to show her why all of a sudden all her attention span had to go to another level, and after that she went ahead and did it. But she was right: If you apply your feelings to sound, regardless of what instrument you have, you’ll probably make good music.”

What is “harmolodics”?

“When you’re dealing with an instrument and a melody, if you’re playing a melody and you don’t have everything in your mind that you can do with that note — what some people call improvising, which I now call the harmolodic theory and method, which has to do with using the melody, the harmony and the rhythm all equal — I find that it’s much easier when a person can take a melody, do what they want to do with the melody, then bring his expression to yours, then combine that for a greater expression. But there are not many people that I’ve been able to teach how to do that because I haven’t been working with a lot of people. But the people who I have worked with, they know how to do that.”

On singularity and the afterlife.

“I’m no different than anyone else. I’m no better and no worse, and I’ve just been born in America and come to understand that the one thing that’s true about human beings is that there’s something everyone’s inspired to do and to become, and there’s so many choices as to how you can get there. Because obviously the graveyard is not the graveyard. It can’t be. Something existed before that, so where’s that? Isn’t that true? Something existed before the graveyard, so where is that? It’s not real estate.”

Ornette’s sound grew on me gradually . . .

I hardly noticed it happening, but eventually I heard the music he’d recorded as meaningful, the information he cast speaking shedding light on intangible but nonetheless real things: feelings, nuances of relationships, psychological states, motes in the air, qualities of time. I suspected I projected a lot of the meaning I perceived onto his sounds, but maybe not – his sounds gave rise to notions I came up with no other time, listening to no other source.

What I was perceiving seemed like a gift, so I didn’t think about whether or how it was really happening; Ornette played his music without seeming to worry about it overmuch, after all, and I noticed he got those around him to do the same. It seemed natural that musicians who were good musicians – musical musicians, who hadn’t sacrificed innate musical impulses to the grind of making a living or any other struggle – could and should be able to do just that: play. Anybody, really, could do it if we listened to each other. That is the basic idea about music, wasn’t it? Music is to be played.

Celebrate harmolodically.

howardmandel.com

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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 — 

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If videos of Sonny are removed, will the legend grow?

Gone from Youtube are two brief but vivid excerpts from Sonny Rollins’ 80th birthday concert at the Beacon Theater on Sept. 10 — one showing the great tenor saxophonist in duet with percussionist Sammy Figueroa, the second documenting the surprise, climactic contributions of Ornette Coleman to the set, and Rollins’ inspired improvised responses. 

What a shame! — from at least one perspective. Or should those visuals never have been made public without the artists’ permissions? 

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Video for fans of Sonny Rollins & harmolodics

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

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

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

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Sonny the sax king

At age 80, Sonny Rollins is indisputably the greatest living jazz tenor saxophonist, proved last night throughout a 2-hour set at New York’s sold-out Beacon Theater in which harmolodic sage Ornette Coleman sat in, backed by drummer Roy Haynes and bassist Christian McBride, on “Tenor Madness.”  “Sonnymoon For Two”. Rollins was hunched and hobbled when he came onstage, but once he started blowing he stood upright and blasted his big bold sound with energy that brooked no diminishment of strength or inspiration, bending only to fire another fussilade of freshly wrought invention as if from his guts. 

Guest brassman Roy Hargrove paced Rollins melodically on “I Can’t Get Started” and one of Sonny’s vamp-based songs; Jim Hall had to tune up his guitar while starting to interact with Sonny on “In A Sentimental Mood,” but found his place, and Sonny’s standing band w/ guitarist Russell Malone, elec. bassist Bob Cranshaw, drummer Kobie Watkins and conga-player Sammy Figueroa was better than solid — but it was the Old Man himself who kept raising the stakes with gruff, hearty, spirited, virtuosic roars and runs. 

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Italy here I come

The Siena Jazz Workshop has me present my book Miles Ornette Cecil – Jazz Beyond Jazz (buy it for your Kindle!) Sunday, July 25 at 10 am (yes, in Siena, Italy). Can you suggest unmissable music in Tuscany (or Vetirbo through July 31?siena square.jpeg

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Happy Birthday Ornette Coleman, roots avant-gardist


Composer, conceptualist and multi-instrumentalist Ornette Coleman, b. March 9 1930, is widely known for “free jazz” — which is routinely depicted as the most abstract and daunting music to emerge from the U.S. But this overlooks Ornette’s deep roots in blues from the Southwest and his fealty to the freedom of expression, mobility and individuality that has made the U.S. great.

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Breadth-of-jazz radio WKCR fetes Ornette, Bix

Next week WKCR-FM 89.9 www.wkcr.org, promises all-day music of Ornette Coleman and Bix Beiderbecke, linking the “free jazz” iconoclast (turning 80 Mar 9) to the Roaring ’20s jazz-mad kid cornetist/pianist (who would be 107 on March 10, if he hadn’t drunk himself to death at age 28 in 1931). Mark your calendars now!

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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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