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Jazz Beyond Jazz

Howard Mandel's Urban Improvisation

“Supermusician” Roscoe Mitchell’s paintings revealed!

Roscoe Mitchell — internationally renown composer, improviser, ensemble leader, winds and reeds virtuoso who has pioneered the use of “little instruments” and dramatic shifts of sonic scale in the course of becoming a “supermusician . . .someone who moves freely in music, but, of course, with a well established background behind . . .”* reveals his equal freedom in another medium in his first exhibition,

Roscoe Mitchell, 1/20/2023, photo © Lauren Deutsch

“Keeper of the Code: Paintings 1963 -2022,” which opened Jan 20 (closing March 23) at the Chicago gallery Corbett vs. Dempsey.

A crowd of avant-gardists was in attendance at a dry but nonetheless spirited two-hour reception, impressed by the vibrancy of Mitchell’s nearly three dozen works, mostly on canvas, ranging in size from 4″ x 4″ to 4′ x 4′. Present and past members of the AACM (Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians, the collective Mitchell helped establish with Muhal Richard Abrams, Anthony Braxton, Amina Claudine Myers, Wadada Leo Smith, Henry Threadgill and others in mid ’60s) where there, such as Mwata Bowden, Junius Paul, Mike Reed (of Constellation, the Hungry Brain, Pitchfork, the Chicago Jazz Festival programming committee), Tomeka Reid and Kahil El Zabar — along with colleagues Angel Bat Dawid (clarinetist/pianist/vocalist of International Anthem’s The Oracle), cornetist Josh Berman, pianist-synthesist Jim Baker and drummer Michael Zerang.

Aaron Cohen (co-author of Gentleman of Jazz, Ramsey Lewis’ autobiography slated for May publication), author-educator Paul Steinbeck (Sound Experiments: The Music of the AACM and Message to Our Folks: The Art Ensemble of Chicago), Chicago Reader writer Bill Meyer, Hot House presenter-producer Marguerite Horberg, keeper-of-the-Fred-Anderson-flame Sharon Castlewitz and

Roscoe Mitchell with Angel Bat Dawid, photo © Lauren Deutsch

photographer Lauren Deutsch (also former executive director of the Jazz Institute of Chicago) as well as gallerists John Corbett (a prolific author, School of the Art Institute of Chicago professor, past Berlin Jazz Fest artistic director) and Jim Dempsey (formerly of SAIC and the Gene Siskel Film Center), stood listening raptly to Mitchell, amid tables and racks of gongs, hand percussion and horns, poerform with his Sound Ensemble — multi-instrumentalist Scott Robinson and baritone Thomas Buckner — and flutist extraordinaire Robert Dick as a guest.

The music — freely improvised — was hushed, suspenseful, most attentive to timbres, tensions, contrasts, comparisons and interactions of sounds (Sound is the title of Roscoe Mitchell’s groundbreaking debut recording). It was not melodically or rhythmically driven, but haunting in its passage.

As mentioned on its website, “Creative music has always been a feature of the gallery’s activities. In addition to having its own record label, CvsD is proud to represent Peter Brötzmann and the estate of Sun Ra.” Multidisciplinary and cross-displinary aspects of ‘creative music’ are, of course, principles that date to “Ellington, Armstrong, Matisse and Joyce” (cf. Jazz Modernism, by late Northwestern University professor Alfred Appel Jr.).

Mitchell, an NEA Jazz Master, United States Artists (Doris Duke Charitable Foundation) awardee, and holder of many other honors, is a Chicago native, now 82. He remembers being entranced by crayons and drawing as a child. His first adult works in the exhibit, vivid and leaning into direct if crude technique, have appeared as album cover art, first in 1967 for Numbers 1 & 2, the debut recorded meeting of Mitchell with trumpeter Lester Bowie (under whose name it was released, due to contractual obligations), reedsman and poet Joseph Jarman and bassist Malachi Favors, all original members of the Art Ensemble of Chicago. Drummer Famadou Don Moyé joined them in 1970, during the band’s sojourn in Paris.

But Mitchell deliberately suspended his painting practice in the early ’70s in order to concentrate more on music creation. The result is documented on nearly 100 albums with a vast array of collaborators and content — the most recent being The Sixth Decade: From Paris to Paris featuring the Art Ensemble co-led by Moyé (the AEOC’s only other surviving founder) with newer enlistees — for instance, Moor Mother.

Upon retiring in 2016 from his position as Darius Milhaud Chair of Composition at Mills College in Oakland, CA and returning to his Wisconsin home, where he had pandemic down-time, Mitchell picked up his brushes agin. The majority of the Corbett v. Dempsey show come from these extremely productive

past six years of practice, depicted in the gallery’s installation of several videos shot by Wendy Nelson, Mitchell’s wife.

Self-taught regarding visual art — though he says he’s looked at “everyone,” Mitchell’s current style demonstrates extraordinary concentration for detail, a fecund imagination, surprising juxtapositions of colors and geometric elements, connections to or suggestions of African art, masks, Chicago’s Hairy Who and COBRA groups, local street portraitist Lee Godie, Van Gogh and even Ivan Albright. There’s a playfulness, demonstrated for instance by several works that make sense any direction they’re hung. African-American themes that emerged from CvD’s recent Emilio Cruz exhibit and the Bob Thompson retrospective at University of Chicago’s Smart Museum (at which Corbett spoke) contextualize Mitchell’s painting, too.

It has not been unusual that AACM musicians or other exploratory instrumentalists have painted: Muhal, Wadada and Braxton all represented themselves visually, as has Ornette Coleman, Marion Brown, Miles Davis, Oliver Lake and oh yes, Pee Wee Russell. But the dry, incisive humor (several paintings can be hung any-side-up), habit of defining parameters then stress-testing them, commitment to and follow-through on unusual ideas, re-sizing of details and main themes, seems uniquely characteristic of this artist, this individual: Roscoe Mitchell.

*”I believe that the super musician…this is what I would like to be, you know. The super musician, as close as I can figure it out, is someone that moves freely in music. But, of course, that’s with a well established background behind you. The way I see it is everything is evolving. . . . So, the super musician has a big task in front of them because they have to know something about all the music that went down because we are approaching this age of spontaneous composition. And that’s what it is. Really good improvisation is spontaneous composition. The thing that you have to do is get yourself to the level where you can do it spontaneously. If you are sitting at home composing, you’ve got time. You can say, ‘Oh, maybe I’ll try it this way, or maybe I’ll try it that way.’ But you want to get yourself to the point to where you can make these decisions spontaneously.” — Roscoe Mitchell, “In Search of the Super Musician” by Jack Gold-Molina, January 8, 2004, AllAboutJazz.com.

How Charles Lloyd stays marvelous

Bill Frisell (l) and Charles Lloyd- David Bazemore Photo

During the 50 years since his breakthrough album Forest Flower (released in February 1967, recorded live at the Monterey Jazz Festival the summer before) — comparable in some ways to The Epic success of Kamasi Washington – saxophonist-flutist Charles Lloyd has been unusually popular for an adventurous jazzman. He showed how he’s done that, accomplished a long career while expressing himself freely, with his on-tour Marvels at Chicago’s Symphony Center Friday night (4/21), and it’s worth unpacking.

Lloyd, 79, and his empathic, considerably younger quintet (guitarist Bill Frisell and pedal steel guitarist Gary Leisz are in their mid 60s; bassist Reuben Rogers and drummer Eric Harland in their late 30s) play instrumental, mostly improvised, sometimes dense and abstract music. At Symphony Center the ensemble was spontaneous and artistic, its members entertaining each other as well as the visibly diverse audience, casting a spell that entertained the merely curious as well as deep-dyed fans, across age and races.

from l: Tomas Fujiwara, Mary Halvorson, Jason Roebke, Tomeka Reid

The crowd (perhaps 1800 in a theater holding 2500) responded with such an ovation — and the musicians themselves seemed so delightfully energized — that an encore turned into a full second set, with guitarist Mary Halvorson, who had been in cellist Tomeka Reid’s quartet that opened the show, sitting in. (Reid, in full bloom with record releases and residencies, is a hometown favorite — just celebrated by the Jazz Journalists Association as Chicago’s 2017 Jazz Hero, and yes, I had a hand in that. She, Halvorson, bassist Jason Roebke and drummer Tomas Fujiwara performed original compositions that resolved their quirky lines and turns with satisfying repetitions). So here are aspects of Lloyd’s presentation and performance that have worked for him for decades, and might be considered for adoption or adaptation.

  • Play with the best. Lloyd learned this early on — perhaps from his first nationally-known employer, drummer Chico Hamilton, who always hired distinctive sidemen (Buddy Collette, Jim Hall, Paul Horn, Eric Dolphy, Fred Katz, Gabor Szabo, Larry Coryell). Lloyd proved he understood by assembling a band with then-obscure pianist Keith Jarrett, drummer Jack DeJohnette and bassist Ron McClure — whose careers were all launched by Forest Flower, too. Lloyd expects the contributions and interactions of his band members to follow from his leads and set up his solos. He selects them for imagination and deftness; they respond quickly, supporting his moves, free to pursue their own paths through grounds he’s laid out. His sidemen get it: in conversation backstage, Harland vowed that he only sounded good because the rest of the band made music so well. Over the years Lloyd’s collaborators have included pianists Michel Petrucciani, Bobo Stenson, Don Friedman, Cedar Walton, Jason Moran, Brad Mehldau and Geri Allen; drummers Billy Hart and Billy Higgins; bassists Dave Holland, Cecil McBee, Marc Johnson, Palle Danielson, Robert Hurst, Buster Williams and Larry Grenadier; guitarist John Abercrombie and percussionist Zakir Hussain. That’s a roll call of great listeners who play, each with something to say.
  • Choose memorable material, old and new, then mix it up. Lloyd inserted familiar if seldom performed melodies such as Beach Boy Brian Wilson’s “In My Room” (the saxophonist toured and recorded with the Beach Boys), Ornette Coleman’s “Focus on Sanity” and “Ramblin’,” and his own “Sombrero Sam” (from his album Dreamweaver, which preceded Forest Flower) in his set as if to punctuate his looser modal episodes. The bold themes caught the ear (and gave the players interesting basis from which to stretch); the sketchier passages drew us into deeper meditation. In the encore, as Halvorson’s flurries of trebly, pearl-dry notes sparkling amid the sustained and pitch-bent tones of Frisell and Leisz and rhythm section pulsations, a field of tones unfurled like the introductory alap of a raga unfurled, implying to me the Beatles’ “Within You Without You.” Lloyd didn’t state that theme, but I recalled how he turned “Here, There and Everywhere” into a quasi samba on his ’67 album Love In. He ended the Marvels’ concert with a seriously sensuous rendition of “Prelude to a Kiss,” which Duke Ellington composed in 1938.
  • Have fun, don’t fear rhythm. Lloyd kept the music moving, aided immensely by Rogers and Harland, of course. Jazz bass-and-drums teams today are often busy and seldom rigid — they want to be able to turn immediately to any option, so they may lay down a grooving backdrop rather than establishing and emphasizing one identifiable beat (unlike most hip-hop, say). Onstage but off-mike, Lloyd was unobtrusive but attentive to the set’s overall rhythm — percussion accents, ensemble tempos, flowing pace — at Harland’s side shaking rattles when he felt the need. Sensing his players’ climaxes as they came on, he’d step out from behind them to pick up his tenor and blow. Playing his alto flute on what I’ve id’d as “Sombrero Sam,” he swung his hips like a cool beatnik at a dance club. Being in the moment, unselfconscious, with the music, Lloyd inspired his musicians and listeners alike to do the same.

Not everyone can project the natural, perhaps innate feeling for jazz of Charles Lloyd. He’s had a singular background, which can’t be duplicated.  Claiming African, Mongolian, Cherokee and Irish ancestry, from age nine he showed interest in jazz and pursued his opportunities, hearing swing-to-bop on the radio (Lester Young’s airiness survives in Lloyd’s sound and phrasing), working in commercial r&b/blues bands. Hometown associates included trumpeter Booker Little, pianist Phineas Newborn and tenor saxophonist George Coleman, now also an NEA Jazz Master.

Arriving at University of Southern California when he was 20 to study with a Bartok specialist, Lloyd fell in with Ornette Coleman’s circle and joined Gerald Wilson’s Orchestra. In bands led by Hamilton (in ’60) and Cannonball Adderley (’64), he observed progressive ideas presented in accessible formats, and pursued the search for new/ancient “world” music pioneered Yusef Lateef and John Coltrane. He was 30 during the Summer of Love,  and Forest Flower was a breezy, lyrical, high energy album embraced by hippies, promoting him quickly, internationally. That very year his quartet made an unprecedented tour of the Soviet Union — and from there to now, some down time but also many great steps in between. ((For more info, check out Josef Woodard’s biography Charles Lloyd: Wild Blatant Truth.)

Charles Lloyd, in a sunny mood

Lloyd’s basic orientation has held. He has his own voice, amalgamated from many sources, filtered through his experience, perspective, personality, preferences and perhaps whims, but hewing to fundamental dictums. Perform with the best available collaborators, even if you have to discover them yourself. Select songs people will remember — and you don’t need to have composed them all. Play the music, from within, keeping in mind that there are listeners you want to attract and satisfy. Keep the music moving. Live long and with a little bit of luck prosper. Don’t take your too seriously, and yet. . . Emerging from dressing rooms after the performance, Lloyd commented dryly on the multiple nominations (Lifetime Achievement in Jazz, Musician of the Year, Mid-Sized Band of the Year, Tenor Saxophonist of the Year) he’s received for 2017 JJA Jazz Awards: “Maybe I have some potential.”

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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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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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