Archives for 2007

I asked bassist Bill Crow what he remembered about the Gerry Mulligan Sextet concert that is the subject of the next exhibit, posted yesterday. Here is his response:

I was delighted to see and hear the sextet again. That was such a good band. I had forgotten about the large orchestra behind us. I think it was a concert, but it could also have been a TV show. We went over on the Andrea Doria (the year before it sank) to Naples, then played Rome, Milan, Bologna, and Genoa, and then a small Mercedes-Benz bus took us to Paris, where we were one of the acts on the bill at the Olympia Theatre for three weeks. On our off nights they ran us out to Lyons, Rouen and Roubaix for concerts in movie theaters. We returned home on one of the Queens, and the sextet finished the album we had begun before we left, played a couple of more nightclubs on the circuit, and then Gerry and I had a disagreement in Providence and I left the band.
He called me again later when he formed the quartet with Art Farmer, and I left that group when they went to California. I rejoined when the Concert Jazz Band came back from Europe and Conte (Candoli) and Buddy Clark left to go home to California. Stayed with the quartet with Brookmeyer until I left after another disagreement with Gerry in Chicago, and that was the end of my time with Mulligan groups. It was a great experience, and I was glad to go on and do some other things.

You will find a link to Mr. Crow’s web site in the Other Places section of the right-hand column. It is always worth a visit.

As noted in this Rifftides post last November, Gerry Mulligan remarked more than once that of all his achievements, the sextet he led from 1955 to 1958 gave him the greatest satisfaction. No wonder. His sidemen in the front line were tenor saxophonist Zoot Sims, valve trombonist Bob Brookmeyer and trumpeter Jon Eardley. The rhythm section was Bill Crow on bass and Dave Bailey on drums.
If it was generally known that film existed of the sextet, the fact eluded me until about a week ago. As if from out of nowhere, three videos of the Mulligan Sextet popped up on YouTube. They were filmed in Rome in 1956. We see the sextet in front of a sizeable orchestra complete with strings. The orchestra is not identified and does not play; its members are an appreciative audience.
In most appearances, on at least one tune Mulligan played piano in his engagingly rustic style, as he does here in “Ontet.” Click on the following links to see and hear living documents of a remarkable band:
Bernie’s Tune
Ontet
Walkin’ Shoes
After being too long out of circulation, all of the audio recordings of the Mulligan sextet are available in a boxed CD set. To find it, go here. The set is also available here. It is called The Fabulous Gerry Mulligan Sextet. The hyperbole is justified.

We are pleased to report that Rifftides has been nominated in the 2007 Jazz Journalists Association awards program as Best Website Concentrating on Jazz.

Nick Moran, The Messenger (CAP). I mentioned Moran’s guitar playing nearly two years ago in one of the first Rifftides postings. The piece was about a visit to The Garage in New York’s Greenwich Village. It included this observation:

Moran is a good young guitarist with a lyrical bebop bent and an alert harmonic faculty. He would benefit from self-editing, but it’s a rare young improviser who would not.

Perhaps because the occasion is a recording, not a jazz club performance, Moran’s solos here are shorter and crisper. It is good to hear him again with Ed Withrington. In this case, however, Withrington’s keyboard is a Hammond B-3, giving the group the fashionable organ trio sound but less of the crisp interplay with Moran that I heard when Withrington was on piano and the group had a bassist at The Garage. Withrington supplies bass lines with his foot pedal. Drummer Andy Watson has a chattery style and a nice feel for snare and cymbal accents.
The repertoire is nine pieces by Moran. Combined with the instrumentation, the uniformity of compositional style produces a restful, if moderately enervating, listening experience. That may be precisely what Moran was aiming for, but this listener would have welcomed relief in pace and atmosphere, perhaps by way of a familiar standard or two or more of the adventurousness the group displays in the final track, “Shorter Steps.”
I’ll be following Moran’s development with interest.

Have you ever wondered why Buddy Rich was called the world’s fastest drummer?
Go here.
Have a good weekend.

Rifftides correspondent John Birchard sent a link to this remarkable video with the comment, “It ain’t jazz, but it is certainly extraordinary work.”
Amen. The playing by an unidentified cellist is extraordinary, too.

The tenth edition of The Commission Project’s Swing ‘n Jazz event in Rochester, New York, was a canny three-day blend of fund-raising, concertizing and education. Initiated fifteen years ago by Ned Corman, the project sends musicians into schools across the country. As I wrote last year in explaining Swing ‘n Jazz,

It is a piece of a cultural mosaic that, for its variety and vitality, would be remarkable in many larger cities. TCP’s mission description reads that it shall foster “creativity through music education by bringing students together with professional composers and performers in schools and communities nationwide.” Swing (as in golf) ‘n Jazz is built around a tournament attracting well-heeled contributors who provide the money that keeps the nonprofit TCP running. Some of the musicians swing both on the stand and the links. But, mostly, they work with students and those who educate students, to improve understanding of how to make jazz.

For all of that posting, go here.

Again, trumpeter Marvin Stamm was the music director. He and Corman assembled a playing-teaching staff that included well known national musicians. Clarinetist Paquito D’Rivera, bassists Jay Leonhart and Mike Richmond, drummers Akira Tana and Rich Thompson, guitarist Steve Brown, trombonist Fred Wesley, trumpeter and composer Paul Smoker were among the volunteer faculty. All of the musicians donate their time and talent. They include a galaxy of performers from the Rochester area, many of them seasoned professionals who teach at the Eastman School of Music and other higher education institutions.

A major concert for the public on Saturday night involved nearly all of the two dozen or so musicians. Smaller fund-raising performances on Friday and Sunday evenings, both at country clubs, entertained donors and prospective donors who keep the nonprofit TCP afloat. At one, called Bassists’ Night Out, Leonhart was in charge of eight bassists accompanied by Brown on guitar with Tana and Thompson alternating on drums. Four of the bassists were the veteran music educator Malcom Kirby, Sr., and his three adult children Caroline, Elliott and Malcolm, Jr. Mike Richmond, Jeff Campbell and Aleck Brinkman also played. The evening may have been bottom heavy, but it was light hearted, especially when Leonhart did a couple of his celebrated songs accompanying himself. I’ve heard him do “Nukular” a half-dozen times, and it still affects me deeply. Unfortunately, President Bush was on his way to Prague to speak of things nuclear and couldn’t be in the audience.

Because they were all scheduled at the same time, I could attend only one of the six Saturday workshops held in Rochester schools. It was at the School of Arts, a part of the Rochester public school system. The perfomers and faculty were Stamm, D’Rivera, Brown, Leonhart and Thompson. In the course of the morning, they played three pieces and coalesced into a chamber group of rare balance and musicality. It was an ad hoc gathering of artists who developed immediate sensitivity to one another.

From the first piece, Cole Porter’s “I Love You,” the quintet melded into a blended perfection that bands seldom achieve short of weeks playing together. In “Morning of the Carnival,” Stamm, D’Rivera and Brown had a mutuality of spontaneous thematic development that sometimes happens in jazz at the highest level. D’Rivera, a brilliant clarinetist, reversed a phrase of Stamm’s and Brown echoed one of of D’Rivera’s, all within the parameters of Luis Bonfa’s ravishing melody. When the solos began, D’Rivera increased the intensity, then Brown imparted a blues feeling. Stamm began his improvisation outside the harmonic pattern of the piece and flowed through his solo with melodic inventiveness and lack of apparent effort that could almost lead one to believe that the trumpet is easy to play. Leonhart bowed his solo, vocalising in unision. He and D’Rivera collaborated in a chorus of counterpoint. Then, harkening back to the idea Stamm had planted, they all joined in a chorus of free playing before sliding back into the closing statement of the melody.

“That was fun,” D’Rivera said. This group should definitely record.

Their singleness of mind and purpose extended beyond the music into discussion with the audience. “What do you think about when you’re improvising,” a youngster asked.
“Motivic ideas,” Steve Brown said. “To me, it’s all about conversation with other people.”
That led, over the course of the morning, to a chain of related ideas.

“It’s an amazing physical, mental and emotional process,” Jay Leonhart said.

“You must listen to all kinds of music,” D’Rivera said.

“If all you know is rock, which is loud music, what you would play in reaction in this setting would not be appropriate,” Thompson said.

“If you don’t listen to this music, to jazz, no matter how much technique you have, you can’t play this music,” Stamm said. “It’s like speech. You learn to speak by ear. You accumulate vocabulary. If you listen to the right music, your phrasing will develop.”
“How do you balance theory and natural musicality?” an older member of the audience asked.
“There is no conflict between intuition and technique,” Stamm said.

“But,” D’Rivera said, “You must read music. You think you can get by on your great ears? Play me Beethoven’s 9th Symphony.”

“The audience knows when you’re communicating,” Stamm said. “You can’t be condescending to the audience.” On the importance of subduing peformer’s ego for the benefit of the music, he returned to Brown’s thought about music as attentive conversation. “There’s no one up here who isn’t ready to give it up for the others.”

That is a music lesson that goes beyond music.

By way of “All the Things You Are,” the quintet demonstrated its point about listening and conversing, and the workshop ended, two hours of wisdom through teaching and playing by five musicians who were uncommonly effective in both areas. It was a small, memorable example of what The Commission Project achieves.

School systems under budget pressure eliminate music and arts programs first. That has been the case for a couple of decades. It is damaging the United States and it is an indictment of priorities and values in our society. The Commission Project is doing something about that failing. It deserves substantial help. I have seen the program in action two years running, watched the light go on in young minds. Go to the TCP web site and learn where you can send support. The Commission Project is a national program. It is based in Rochester, but there is no reason that most of its financial support should come from there. Your help will be welcome. The children need it.

The eminent trumpeter and early morning runner Marvin Stamm responded to the recent Rifftides post about T.S. Eliot and television.

I couldn’t agree with you more. you are right on the money – 4:00 am or no. Beautifully written!
I will take issue with you regarding Stewart and Colbert. Sid Caeser, Jackie Gleason, George Gobel, et al, were a different ilk. Unbelievably brilliant, but in their way, with what they do. So, too, in my opinion, are Stewart and Colbert. They are just very different, doing what they do in very different times. Wouldn’t it be great to see how Caeser, and the others would do today!

If Caesar were around, anything he might do would be fine with me. As you watch this sketch with Caesar and Nanette Fabray, keep in mind that it was done live before an audience, not on videotape. You don’t have to know much about television production to admire not only the obvious genius of Caesar and Fabray but also the skill and timing of the director and cameramen, who were wheeling enormous RCA studio cameras on massive carriages.

The young veteran broadcaster Jason Crane podcasts from his interesting site The Jazz Session. During my visit to Rochester, he was kind enough to ask me to join him for an extended conversation about jazz, news, Rifftides and other things. To hear it, click here.

Flying east, two experiences melded into a thought around a phrase. Forty-six years and ten days ago, Newton Minow spoke at the annual meeting of the National Association of Broadcasters, the organization of people who ran television and radio in the United States. Minow was the chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, which regulates broadcasting. Today broadcasting seems to regulate the FCC, but that’s not my point. Here’s the section of Minow’s speech that contained the phrase.

When television is good, nothing — not the theater, not the magazines or newspapers — nothing is better. But when television is bad, nothing is worse. I invite you to sit down in front of your television set when your station goes on the air and stay there without a book, magazine, newspaper, profit and loss sheet or rating book to distract you — and keep your eyes glued to that set until the station signs off. I can assure you that you will observe a vast wasteland.

A wasteland. The waste land. Hardly an original construction. It’s in the bible, and it’s in an eighty-five-year-old poem.
My flights from Seattle to New York City and New York to Rochester constituted an agreeable first experience on Jet Blue. That airline is still often called an upstart, although its startup was years ago and it is quite successful, give or take the occasional snowstorm snafu. One of Jet Blue’s points of pride is its seat-back television sets featuring forty-one channels transmitted to the plane from a satellite. In preparation for a book group discussion later this month, my plan for the trip had been to read T.S. Eliot’s The Waste Land, along with an analysis of that nearly impenetrable1922 poem. After an hour-and-a-half of Eliot, I was ready for something simpler, so I watched television. Full disclosure: I made my living in television news for twenty-five years, but life is full of other pursuits, and I rarely watch TV.
I agree with Minow’s first line about television. When it is good, it is magnificent. At the time of his speech in 1961, color television was six years old. So was the TV version of Gun Smoke. Video tape was even younger. Viewers could still see live drama on television. The Andy Griffith Show was brand new, years away from perpetual reruns. The Huntley-Brinkley Report and the CBS Evening News were fifteen minutes long. They delivered the news of the day; the misdeeds of people famous for being famous were not on the menu. The Twilight Zone and Alfred Hitchcock Presents were among the prime time dramas. All of those programs were, to apply Minow’s strict standard, good. Yesterday on Jet Blue’s seat-back console, I found nothing of those programs’ quality. Nothing. That includes newscasts from the BBC and CBS. It includes the prime time series, which were uniformly centered on fiery deaths, incest, in-your-face adultery, summary executions at close range and, for comic relief, now and then a car chase. The Daily Show and the Colbert Report showed flashes of wry intelligence, but little that matches the penetrating wit of Sid Caesar, Steve Allen, Ernie Kovacs, or even of George Gobel.
The shows devoted to standup comics were beneath criticism. These people claim to be descended from Lennie Bruce? Give me a break.
Eliot’s The Waste Land is a difficult poem. It is packed with references and allusions to the bible, Greek mythology, Chaucer and Fraser’s The Golden Bough, among other sources reflecting his classical scholarship at Harvard. He tried to explain parts of it in a series of notes, some of which merely muddied the waters. Some critics say that the poem is Eliot’s effort to purge himself of the desolation he felt when he contemplated the state of humanity following World War One. In any case, its forecast is of a world whose prospects are for further moral and spiritual decay.
I tend to be an optimist. Nothing I saw on Jet Blue’s screen last night encouraged me, but a long time ago I decided not to let television define the world. On the return trip, I’ll ignore the seat back monitor and read a book.

The Rifftides Staff is off to the The Commission Project’s Swing ‘n Jazz X. I will send reports from the road when possible. In the meantime, please enjoy browsing the archives, which reach back to the beginning of this endeavor, nearly two years ago. That may seem a short time to YOU.

Time out of the writing crunch to hear successive Jessica Williams concerts was time well spent. Williams has taken a liking to The Seasons and returned there with her new trio for two evenings. On Saturday,Williams, bassist Doug Miller and drummer John Bishop played a Duke Ellington program. The repertoire, except for the infrequently heard calypso “Angelique,” was made up of sixteen of Ellington’s most familiar pieces. She opened with “C-Jam Blues,” closed with “Take the ‘A’ Train” and included “I Got it Bad,” “Do Nothing ‘Til You Hear From Me,” “Satin Doll” and…well, you get the idea. A routine Ellington lineup, perhaps, but Williams’ piano playing and her interaction with Miller and Bishop were far from routine.
Williams employed all of her virtuosity; the improbably long fingers executing piston keystrokes, the extended crossed hands passages, the stride left hand, the tremolos, the polytonality. Still, what captured the crowd was the swing, warmth and humanity of the music. Following a distracted start on “Prelude to a Kiss,” Williams called a halt and got sympathetic chuckles from the audience when she said, “If you can forgive others, you can forgive yourself.” She started the song again, soloed with passion and comped like a guiding angel behind a Miller bass solo that was a highlight of the concert. Williams’ concept for the evening was to program it as if the trio were playing for a dance. Indeed, she encouraged people to dance in the area between the front row of seats and the stage. Three couples did, rather tentatively, during “Mood Indigo,” but one of them told me later that the listening was so good, dancing was a distraction. That’s an interesting switch on the old complaint “Why don’t you play something we can dance to?”
Sunday, Memorial Day eve, Williams premiered a new composition, “Freedom Suite,” not related to the 1958 Sonny Rollins piece with the same name. She dedicated the six-movement work to veterans who died in all US wars from the American Revolution to Iraq and Afghanistan. Prefaced with a flag ceremony by women volunteers from a Veterans of Foreign Wars unit, the suite began with an other-worldly piano introduction to Miller’s bowing of “Taps,” its resonance supported by Williams’ impressionistic chords and the shimmering swell of Bishop’s cymbals. The movement called “Night Patrol” surged with modal intensity through piano and bass solos into a Bishop drum solo over an insistent pedal point.
Introducing the “Final Wish” section, Williams said, “I finished writing this one at 3:30 or 4:00 o’clock this morning. I wanted it to be perfect–and so far, it is.” She showed Bishop the bass part she had written for Miller, explaining the varied rhythms she wanted through a series of eight-bar sections. Bishop nodded and smiled, and with only that discussion for a rehearsal, the trio played the piece for the first time. It remained perfect.
Leaning into the piano, Williams stroked the strings like a harpist, setting up insistent three-four time that supported the dirge of the final movement, “Lament.” By way of her virtuosity through an unaccompanied solo that at times suggested an affinity for early McCoy Tyner, she managed to express optimism as well as sadness before Miller and Bishop rejoined her for a final statement of the theme.
This is an initial impression of a work I want to absorb further. We may all have that opportunity. The concert was recorded and could appear on a CD. If that happens, I’ll let you know.

A contributor with the internet handle Astrotype just sent YouTube five videos taken from a 1966 Dave Brubeck Quartet concert in Germany. If you’re thinking of Paul Desmond on this thirtieth anniversary of his death, you may remember him even more kindly as you listen to a “Take Five” solo unlike any other I’ve heard from him, and a four-minute Desmond rumination on the minor blues of “Koto Song.” Brubeck, Desmond, Wright and Morello were in great form, collectively and individually. Rebutting critics who loved to rail against Brubeck, Desmond often praised his friend’s sensitive accompaniments. This version of “Take the ‘A’ Train” offers evidence for the defense. It also has Morello and Brubeck in a spirited, and well photographed, exchange of four-bar phrases.
For Astrotype‘s menu of five Brubeck videos from the German concert, three new ones of John Coltrane and four of Thelonious Monk, go here, and you’ll be glad you stayed home this Memorial Day weekend. Isn’t this more fun than being in a traffic jam?*
*For Rifftides readers in other countries, this American form of expression reaches its fullest flower on the weekend set aside to honor those who have fallen in war. Millions of us pile into cars and trucks (also known as SUVs) and park on the roads and freeways, honking horns and swearing oaths in remembrance.

You needn’t be a demon sight reader to enjoy Rifftides reader Andy Wiliamson’s blog called Jazz Licks. Wililamson transcribes phrases from solos, mostly by saxophonists (he is one). He posts the transcriptions and provides audio clips so that you can read along with the licks as you listen to them. You can check out licks by Stan Getz, James Carter, Wardell Gray, Hank Mobley, Joe Henderson, Miles Davis and others by going here.
Even if your music reading development stopped after the first John Thompson piano book, you won’t have much trouble following the lines. Warning: this may prompt you to seek out the records. It could get expensive.

Sonny Rollins has returned home from Stockholm, where he was awarded the Polar Music Prize of the Royal Swedish Academy. Terri Hinte, publicist nonpareil, traveled with him and alerted us to the web site that carries photographs of Mr. Rollins and his co-winner Steve Reich receiving their prizes from the king of Sweden. The site also has a section of pictures of the beautiful people who attended, a history of the prize and its previous winners, and a forty-seven-minute video. I wish you better luck than I had downloading the video.
Each year, the winners are chosen from disparate fields of music. Pairing Rollins and Reich has a nice symmetry; two of the most daring musicians in their not-so-disparate bailiwicks. A collaboration between them could have more potential than if there had been one between the 1995 winners, Mstislav Rostropovitch and Elton John, or between the Russian conductor Valery Gergiev and Led Zeppelin last year. The 1993 winners were Dizzy Gillespie and the Polish composer Witold Lutoslawski. What a joint project that could have been.

We’re heading into Memorial Day weekend, the thirtieth anniversary of Paul Desmond’s death.

Musically, what I remember about Paul is how hard he could swing in that really understated way. He had the most amazing time feel in his playing. People never really talked about that part of his playing. He could really swing. There’s a lot to Paul Desmond besides that beautiful sound and those beautiful melodies. He was a really strong cat.
–Don Thompson
I more or less said that found him the best company of anyone I’d ever known in my life. I found him the most loyal friend I’ve ever had in my life. I found him the most artistic person I’ve ever known in my life. I said that his leaving will make this planet a smaller and darker place for everyone.
–Jack Richardson recalling his speech at Desmond’s memorial service.

Both quoted in Take Five: The Public and Private Lives of Paul Desmond
Last year around this time, I was also in the grips of nostalgia and sentimentality.

Posting will be scant and seldom this week. I am still cranking on a flurry of assignments that must be completed before I take off for the Swing ‘n Jazz fiesta in Rochester, New York.
One of the pieces is for the next George Mraz CD, which involves the remarkable Czech singer, violinist and actress Iva Bittova. This piece of video has her with the Stampa quartet in what appears to be the St. Nicholas Church in Prague, performing two Janacek songs. I have listened extensively to Bittova and watched several of her videos. She reminds me of no one as much as Elis Regina, the Brazilian marvel who died several years ago. The comparison is not of idiom but of musicianship and irrepressible spirit.

A message from Rubén González:

I´m reading regularly with pleasure Rifftides from Rosario, Argentina…

Sr. González includes a link to his web site and the story of his encounter with jazz in Dublin, Ireland. His account is in Spanish and English and includes video of three Irish musicians named Buckley playing, and playing well.

News releases from publicists come in waves by snail mail, e-mail and that ancient technology the fax machine. By rough estimate, at least half concern the latest CDs, concerts or club appearances of legends:

…the legendary _____________(fill in the blank)

…a legend of the (piano, drums, bass, trumpet, oboe ____________(fill in the blank).

Let’s consult a dictionary. The one in the answers.com dictionary will do; it essentially agrees with the definitions in the Random House and Webster’s dictionaries and adds an interesting usage note.

leg·end (lÄ•j’É™nd) n.
1.

a. An unverified story handed down from earlier times, especially one popularly believed to be historical.
b. A body or collection of such stories.
c. A romanticized or popularized myth of modern times.

2. One who inspires legends or achieves legendary fame.
[Middle English, from Old French legende, from Medieval Latin (lēctiō) legenda, (lesson) to be read, from Latin, feminine gerundive of legere, to read.]
USAGE NOTE Legend comes from the Latin adjective legenda, “for reading, to be read,” which referred only to written stories, not to traditional stories transmitted orally from generation to generation. This restriction also applied to the English word legend when it was first used in the late 14th century in reference to written accounts of saints’ lives, but ever since the 15th century legend has been used to refer to traditional stories as well. Today a legend can also be a person or achievement worthy of inspiring such a story–anyone or anything whose fame promises to be enduring, even if the renown is created more by the media than by oral tradition. Thus we speak of the legendary accomplishments of a major-league baseball star or the legendary voice of a famous opera singer. This usage is common journalistic hyperbole, and 55 percent of the Usage Panel accepts it.

I’ll try to keep the wisdom of the Usage Panel in mind the next time I read a news release or a liner note about some 23-year-old singer who is a legend. If she’s a female singer, she is, of course, a legendary diva.
There’s no perbole like hyperbole.