Archives for 2007

Please note that in the right-hand column under Doug’s Picks are five new recommendations. At the end of the Picks selections, you have the option of going to the Picks archive for previous CDs, DVDs and books.
Have a good weekend.

The classic Dave Brubeck Quartet (Brubeck, Desmond, Morello and Wright) frequently opened their concerts with Billy Strayhorn’s “Take The ‘A’ Train.” At a 1966 concert, German television caught back-to-back performances of “‘A’ Train” and Brubeck’s “Forty Days.” They have surfaced on the Daily Motion web site. Audio quality is good, black and white video quality acceptable. Camera work and direction are excellent. The lengthy clip–nearly sixteen minutes–provides a reminder of the Brubeck rhythm section’s finely attuned empathy, of Paul Desmond’s melodic ingenuity and of his imperative to make each solo a fresh statement. To see and hear the video, go here.

To jazz fans, Annie Ross will always be a third of the nonpareil singing group Lambert, Hendricks and Ross. But she left L-H-R in 1962. Ever since, she has been up to her ears in a variety of music and entertainment ventures. Will Friedwald caught up with the indefatigable Ms. Ross in New York and talked with her about her kaleidoscopic show business life and current singing career. She told Will about Bob Weinstock of Prestige Records asking her in 1952 if she could write lyrics to a group of instrumental solos.

I took the records home to my little one-room flat and the one that caught my ear was Wardell Gray’s “Twisted” — that suggested a whole mess of things to me.

Ross’s recording of “Twisted” became a jazz hit and led to her teaming with Dave Lambert and Jon Hendricks. To read more about Annie Ross In Friedwald’s New York Sun column, go here.

Lionel Hampton International Jazz Festival
Moscow Idaho
2/25/07
After presentation of student winners, Saturday evening’s final concert began with one piece by pianist Benny Green, bassist Christian McBride, guitarist Russell Malone and drummer Jeff Hamilton–the festival house band–who then accompanied James Morrison. Morrison began “Don’t Get Around Much Anymore” on trombone with a long, exhibitionistic acapella cadenza that subsided into a melodic first chorus. As he built intensity in his improvisation, the rhythm section urged him on. Green’s comping led the charge. The others dug into the developing groove. The swing that Hamilton generated during Green’s, Malone’s and McBride’s solos was irresistible. Morrision reentered on trumpet, taking the horn boldly where no man but Maynard Ferguson had gone before. After making several orbits, Morrison landed in the low register with an expansive tone and a few quiet phrases. His welcome dip into lyricism raised a question: if he can play that tastefully, why doesn’t he allow his more thoughtful self out in public more often?
Before intermission came two quintets with identical instrumentation, the same pianist and different personalities. Trumpeter Roy Hargrove kicked his group into a fast modal piece that sizzled with excitement and a sense of risk-taking that characterized most of the set. In an unnamed Latin tune (Hargrove made no announcements), alto saxophonist Justin Robinson played an impressive, if busy and slightly repetitious, solo. Hargrove followed with a lesson in the use of space to make a solo breathe without losing anything of intensity or rhythm. Gerald Clayton inflected his piano choruses with bebop figures that melded into the Latin groove. Bassist Joe Sanders and drummer Montez Coleman had a rhythm fiesta, Coleman’s explosive accents kicking the time along.
Hargrove played “Fools Rush In” on flugelhorn, creating a highlight of the festival. If I had entertained doubts that he finds his truest expression on the larger horn, this performance would have erased them. His chorus of pure melody led into a lovely solo by Clayton. Then, with his cashmere sound, Hargrove improvised a chorus in long tones and a few fluid runs, caressed the final eight bars of Rube Bloom’s melody, added a held note and ended with a sweet afterthought of a tag. Simply beautiful.
Clayton stayed on stage to play in the Clayton Brothers Quintet led by his bassist father John and his uncle Jeff, one of the few alto saxophonists who takes Cannonball Adderley as his primary model. His Cannonball leanings predominated, but in the ballad “That Night,” Jeff Clayton introduced a bit of Johnny Hodges sensualilty. Trumpeter Gilbert Castellanos and drummer Obed Calvaire completed the group. Castellanos, one of the bright lights of Southern California’s jazz scene, played brilliantly in the front line with Jeff Clayton and helped to remind the audience that the post-bop tradition of Art Blakey and Horace Silver is alive. In a piece called “Gina’s Groove,” Gerald Clayton summoned up Silver’s infectious style. His father, a protégé of Ray Brown, continues the Brown institution of solid time and a fat sound. An exemplar of the bow, in the course of the festival he played several masterly arco solos. In “Last Stop,” the senior Clayton’s arrangement emphasized ensemble dynamics, not a lost art in jazz, merely a rare one.
The concert and the festival wrapped up with the Lionel Hampton New York Big Band backing three guest vocalists. Roberta Gambarini gave a commanding performance of Benny Carter’s “When Lights Are Low.” Dee Daniels, who applies gospel soul to everything she sings, did “Our Love Is Here To Stay,”complete with a just-us-girls suggestive monologue. John Pizzarrelli, guitar in hand, sang and played three songs from the Frank Sinatra tribute album he made with the Clayton-Hamilton big band. For Pizzarelli’s set, the Jeff Hamilton Trio served as the rhythm section with the Hampton Band. Pizzarelli sang with his usual boyish charm and verve. On “You Make Me Feel So Young,” he played an intricate solo and negotiated a tricky guitar part with the ensemble. He achieved serious swing in his guitar/voice unison improvisation on “Yes Sir, That’s My Baby.”
For the penultimate number, the Hampton band played–what else?–“Flyin’ Home,” with solos all ’round. Doug Lawrence tore it up with a tenor saxophone solo that would have had Hampton grinning ear to ear. Finally, things quieted and the live band accompanied the recorded Hampton singing “What A Wonderful World” as a digital slide show on huge screens illustrated the history of the Lionel Hampton festival from 1984 to that very evening. It was an emotional remembrance of Hamp and a retirement sendoff for Dr. Lynn Skinner, the founder and director of the festival from its beginning. The new festival regime will be headed by John Clayton.

The Hampton festival’s core purpose is the development of young jazz musicians. Students from several states converge here to play in big bands and combos, vying for group and individual honors. Nearly 400 youngsters competed in the final day’s events. Before the professionals played on Saturday evening, we heard student winners in several categories.
In competitions across the country it has become predictable that Seattle’s Roosevelt and Garfield High Schools will be among the top big bands. Indeed, they often place one-two. In Moscow, Garfield, under director Clarence Acox, edged Roosevelt, under Scott Brown, for first place and performed in the big hall. Then, fifteen winners in the Outstanding Student Instrumentalist category lined up across the stage in front of a rhythm section. Each played two choruses of “C-Jam Blues.” There was a tie in only one category, between alto saxophonists John Cheadle of Garfield and Logan Strosahl of Roosevelt. The two played together in middle school, but went to separate high schools, each developing impressively. Results in all categories of student competition are posted on the Hampton Festival web site.
Music students from middle schools, high schools and colleges all over the United States and abroad flock to the the Hampton festival and to the jazz education components of other institutions. Undoubtedly, a number who come here and to The Centrum Port Townsend Bud Shank workshop, Jamey Aebersold’s camps, programs of The Commission Project and at least a dozen other such ventures are simply enjoying pleasurable school activities. An appreciable percentage of them, however, plan careers in music. Many of them would like to be professional jazz musicians. Given the low receptivity of the public to jazz, and the resulting economic reality, it is certain that there will not be enough work to provide a living to more than a lucky few. Except during the big band era, that has always been as true in jazz as it is in, say, the classical chamber music business.
Still, here is a puzzle. Thousands of children go through jazz education programs in the schools and colleges. One presumes that they develop knowledge and appreciation, perhaps even love, of the music. These programs have been flourishing for a long time, twenty or thirty years. Why hasn’t that resulted in an expansion of the audience for jazz clubs, concerts and record sales? Let’s suppose that the widely publicized estimates of jazz CD sales as three percent of the total are low. Even if those sales were five percent, shouldn’t the jazz education movement of the past few decades have stimulated greater demand? Do the kids go home from these programs, revert to rock, hip-hop and rap, grow into adulthood and never pursue the higher interests to which they were exposed? I don’t have the answers to these disturbing questions. I don’t know that there are answers, but this is a fertile area for a PhD candidate in economics, business or music searching for a thesis topic or a reporter who can talk his editor into a long investigative project.
As always, comments are encouraged and welcome.

The Seasons Performance Hall has launched its own CD label with a Jessica Williams solo piano recital on the hall’s nine-foot Steinway. Go here to read about Jessica Williams Live At The Seasons and listen to one of the tracks. Full disclosure: I wrote the liner notes, which are reproduced on The Seasons page at the link above.

Lionel Hampton International Jazz Festival
Moscow, Idaho
2/25/07
In the packed ballroom of the University of Idaho’s student union building, The members of the festival’s house rhythm section were answering questions. Jeff Hamilton, Benny Green, Christian McBride and Russell Malone now and then played to illustrate a point. A young woman asked what they do to prepare when a soloist is going to perform with them. Following a brief reply concerning repertoire and key signatures, Hamilton asked the questioner what her instrument is. She told him that she is a vocalist.
“And what would you sing with a band?” Hamilton asked.
“A standard, probably. Maybe “Autumn Leaves.”
“Come on up and sing it,” he said.
As the singer made her way to the stage, several hundred audience members took a deep breath. She huddled with the musicians for a moment, went through the find-a-key exercise with Green, agreed on C-minor and sang one chorus of “Autumn Leaves.” In French. In tune. With great poise. She got a big hand from the audience and the musicians.
In a brief conversation with her at the end of the workshop, I learned that her name is Kathryn Radakovich and that she is a student at the University of Idaho.

Later, I’ll have a report on the final concert of the Hampton festival, the changing of its artistic leadership, and a few thoughts on jazz education and the future of the jazz audience. At the moment, the hotel’s checkout deadline is looming. I’m packing up and hitting the road following an intense and interesting four days in Moscow.
As promised, I’ll also be catching up, by way of mini-reviews, with some of the CDs that have accumulated in the past few weeks.

Lionel Hampton International Jazz Festival
Moscow, Idaho
2/24/07
At this jazz festival doubling as a music education experience for young people, there are as many as a dozen events in every hour of the day. They are scattered across the University of Idaho campus and the town of Moscow. It is impossible to sample more than a smattering of them.
Example: At 3:00 p.m. on Friday, the schedule listed workshops by The Four Freshmen; Roberta Gambarini and Tamir Hendelman; the Estonian saxophonist Lembit Saarsalu with the Russians Leonid and Nik Vintskevich on piano and saxophone; a lecture by Penny M. von Eschen about Benny Goodman and Duke Ellington in the Soviet Union; and eight workshops for student vocal ensembles or soloists.
The current Four Freshmen are the latest in a line of successors to the original vocal quartet founded in 1947. I dropped in on their workshop to see whether I had an accurate impression from their recordings that they have more musicianship than previous editions of the Freshmen. I did not come away with a definitive answer. The hour contained more repartee than music. Bob Ferreira, Vince Johnson, Brian Eichenberger and Curtis Calderson, are raconteurs who have perfected a style of casual interactive standup comedy that was a big hit with the audience of mostly teenagers. Few of the students’ questions or the Freshmens’ answers dealt with issues of musical substance. For the most part, the group’s singing was standard Freshmen four-part harmony with Eichenberger’s lead on top. The songs we heard were from the vintage Freshmen repertoire or patterned on the classic style. Calderon’s cornet playing was impressive for his range and lyricism. Ferreira’s drumming, Johnson’s bass playing and Eichenberger’s guitar work did a functional job of support at the workshop and at their concert that night. Except for Calderon, they played no extensive instrumental solos. The group was entertaining, with more to offer than nostalgia, but I did not find an answer to my question about musical depth.
The evening concert filled the massive Kibbie Dome. It opened with a pre-show performance by the Sacramento pianist Jim Martinez in a group that featured vocalist Julia Dollison. In his notes for her CD Observatory, my artsjournal.com colleague Terry Teachout described Dollison’s voice as “warm, airy, dappled with summer sunshine, technically bulletproof from top to bottom.” I heard her for the first time at this festival. I can only agree enthusiastically with Terry. I look forward to hearing more of Ms. Dollison.
Next came a succession of student vocalists, winners in their divisions of the educational branch of the festival. It is wonderful that the festival arranges for its student participants to perform before large congregations. The experience is important in their development. Last night’s singers ranged from adequate to unfortunate. All but one indulged in scat singing. I am lobbying for passage of a federal law that public scatting by amateurs and professionals alike will be allowed only after ten years of extensive education culminating in a rigorous examination for a license to scat, with a fee of $500. Isn’t there challenge enough in learning to sing a lyric melodically, in tune, with appropriate interpretation, phrasing and feeling?
Next came the house band–Benny Green, Russell Malone, Christian McBride and Jeff Hamilton. They played “Have You Met Miss Jones?” with all of the qualities mentioned above, and swung like crazy. Still swinging, they accompanied, in order, the Russian tenor saxophonist Igor Butman, trombonist Bill Watrous and the Australian brass phenomenon James Morrison. Each seemed determined to exhaust every technical capability of his instrument and to leave no note unplayed, no space unfilled. Morrison, not content to break altitude and speed records on trumpet and trombone, added to his arsenal a borrowed euphonium. Following Morrison’s featured spot, Butman and Watrous came back on to join him and his euphonium in a rendition of Sonny Rollins’ “Tenor Madness” at warp speed. Butman led off the solos with a chorus that evoked Rollins. After that, came the deluge. In the immortal words of Louis Armstrong, “Chops was flyin’ everywhere.” The three technical monsters outdid themselves and one another, culminating with an exchange of four-bar phrases, then twos, ones and finally nones, improvising simultaneously with a ferocity that had the audience on its feet. Morrison was in danger of exploding his friend’s euphonium. Along the way, Green and Malone soloed, choosing contrast rather than competition. They did not damp down the swing, but introduced welcome breaths of air into the proceedings.
After intermission and before the Four Freshmen, Jeff Hamilton’s trio with pianist Tamir Hendelman and bassist Christoph Luty worked their intricate, propulsive magic. Hamilton is a drummer’s drummer, a musicians’ drummer, a peoples’ drummer and the all-purpose workhorse of this festival. Green is spelled occasionally by Hendelman, Monty Alexander, Kuni Mikami and other pianists, but Hamilton, Malone and McBride spend virtually of their waking hours playing in concerts and workshops, showing no visible or audible signs of exhaustion.

Lionel Hampton Jazz Festival
Moscow, Idaho
2/23/07
Here’s a quick update on highlights of a few of the dozens of festival events since the last posting.
Last night’s concert ran past midnight. It was dedicated to the late bassist Ray Brown and featured colleagues who achieved fame as sidemen in Brown’s bands. Pianist Benny Green’s trio with bassist Christian McBride and drummer Jeff Hamilton set a high standard with an explosive performance of Brown’s “Buhaina Buhaina.” My notes say, “Hamilton likes to swing.” The more intense the rhythm became, the broader grew Hamilton’s smile. He smiled constantly.
Lynn Skinner, the retiring founder of the festival, introduced Roberta Gambarini by quoting Hank Jones from a phone call earlier in the day. He said Jones had called Gambarini, “the finest vocalist I’ve heard in the past 60 years.” Then, with McBride, Hamilton, guitarist Russell Malone and her empathetic piano accompanist Tamir Hendelman, she demonstrated what led to that exalted level of praise. Gambarini is deceptive; she makes perfection in every department–swing, intonation, diction, control, coloration, taste, intepretation of lyrics–seem easy. Earlier in the day, at a vocal workshop, Gambarini gave a good-natured exhibition of the kind of over-the-top vocalizing that in jazz circles too often passes for singing. Toward the end of last night’s concert, Jane Monheit also sang. I don’t think that she attended Gambarini’s workshop.
In two sets, one with a quartet, one with a trio, pianist Monty Alexander achieved the power, drama and propulsion of his work with Brown thirty years ago. He reached a climax of hard, happy swing in the reunion of his trio with Hamilton and bassist John Clayton. Their “Battle Hymn of the Republic” had the musicians in the backstage bistro area riveted to the big monitor screen and cheering along with the audience when Alexander’s roaring performance ended.
At the after hours jam session, the student alto saxophonist Grace Kelly from Massachusetts sat in with a group that included veteran guitarist John Stowell. I know of no explanation other than genius for this slender fourteen-year-old girl’s attainment of maturity in her art. She has mastery of the instrument, passion, profound swing, and judgment that one would expect in a player with twenty years of professional experience. The other jam session surprise was a vocal by guitarist Malone. With Miss Kelly and Stowell playing obligato, he sang an engaging “I’ve Grown Accustomed To Your Face.” The roomful of close listeners demanded an encore, which they did not get. “No more,” Malone announced, waving them off.

Local wisdom has it that the population of Moscow, Idaho, doubles during the week of the Lionel Hampton Jazz Festival. Half of the temporary immigrants seem to be Russian musicians and others from the former Eastern bloc. At the opening concert in the University of Idaho field house, we heard satisfying sets by pianist Leonid Vintskevich and his saxophonist son Nik, who plays soprano and alto. They performed as a duo and with a strings orchestra, playing pieces written by Dr. Lynn Skinner, the founder and executive director emeritus of the festival. Tenor saxophonist Lembit Saarsalu, from Estonia, also played at a high level.
Saarsalu and the Vintskeviches followed the unusual solo guitarist Enver Izmailov, who taps the instrument’s strings, in the manner of Stanley Jordan. He developed the approach in Ukraine never having heard or heard of Jordan. Izmailov’s virtuosity encompasses jazz techniques, blazing speed and harmonic ingenuity, but his artistry is deepened by his incorporation of folk elements and effortless use of time signatures native to his part of the world. Izmailov is a master musician and a master entertainer.
After hours at the main festival hotel there was a jam session that featured a changing cast of Russian music students attending the festival to participate in workshops. None of them looked older than seventeen. All of them played at or near professional level–an impressive element of the festival’s Moscow-to-Moscow exchange program. They are among hundreds of jazz students from elementary, middle school and high school programs who descend on the Hampton festival to learn from and sometimes play with the corps of professionals who come here to impart their knowledge.
The concert’s Nat King Cole tribute brought together Nat’s brother Freddy with Monty Alexander, a pianist profoundly influenced by Nat Cole; drummer Jeff Hamilton, bassist Christian McBride and guitarist Russell Malone. Benny Green was on piano in the rhythm section for a set by three trumpeters, Claudio Roditi, Terell Stafford and Vern Sielert. All were splendid in Lee Morgan’s “Sidewinder” and in Sielert’s arrangement of Kenny Dorham’s “Lotus Blossom,” but Roditi left the most memorable impression with his uncomplicated, heartfelt “Body and Soul” in the ballad medley.
I’ll be writing at length about the festival in a Jazz Times article to appear in a spring issue, and I’ll be posting more here in the next few days. It is snowing now, I have no proper cold weather gear, and have to hitch a ride to the next concert. Later

To his amazement and, apparently, that of his doctors, my brother had recovered enough to be checked out of the hospital today and sent home. Going into major surgery a week ago, his situation was touch and go. Thanks to all of you who expressed concern. He knows and is grateful.

Thanks to Bill Reed, aka Dr. Chilledair, for alerting us to recent video of Pinky Winters performing. The occasion was a concert during her December tour in Japan. You may recall that in the Rifftides review of her new CD recorded in 1983, I emphasized that she is singing beautifully these days. To hear and see proof, go here. Mr. Reed, in addition to his blogging activity, produces Ms. Winter’s CDs.

No, not that Moscow, the one in Idaho. I’m off later this morning to the Lionel Hampton International Jazz Festival. In its fortieth year, the twenty-second under his name, the festival goes on without Hamp, worse luck, but with an array of peformers including Benny Green, Jeff Hamilton, Christian McBride, Terell Stafford, Tamir Hendelman, Roberta Gamborini, Russell Malone, John Pizzarelli, a number of Russians and “some great surprises,” according to the advance publicity. For the first time, the four-day shebang is under the artistic direction of bassist John Clayton, who has developed a subsidiary career doing this kind of work.
I’ll be writing about the festival for Jazz Times and, of course, for Rifftides. The first postings from Moscow may not be for a day or two.

A benefit is scheduled for next week to help pianist Larry Willis, who was burned out of his home last month. The January 7 fire in Upper Marlboro, Maryland, destroyed the living quarters of the house he shared with a friend. Willis is one of the great journeyman pianists in modern jazz. His resumé includes work with Jackie McLean, Stan Getz, Cannonball Adderley, Blood Sweat & Tears, Branford Marsalis, Carla Bley and Steve Swallow, Roy Hargrove, the Fort Apache Band and David “Fathead” Newman. These days, he leads his own trio.
When I asked Willis his plans, he said, “To reconstruct my life, to find another place to live, and to replace the things I lost–my clothing, my music and my important documents. They were all destroyed in the fire.” The origin of the blaze is undetermined. Willis said he thinks that it was in the old house’s wiring. He was at home when the fire broke out but escaped unharmed.
The benefit, called “Pianists Play For Larry,” will be in New York City at St. Peter’s Church, Lexington Avenue at 54th Street, at 7:00 pm Monday, February 26. Among the pianists scheduled to perform are Randy Weston, Geri Allen, Don Friedman, Bertha Hope and Jean Michel Pilc. A $20 donation is suggested. Larger ones are encouraged.
Blue Fable
As the benefit was announced, High Note records released Willis’s new CD Blue Fable, which reunites him with a childhood friend and early musical partner, the bassist Eddie Gomez. The album also features alto saxophonist Joe Ford, trombonist Steve Davis and drummer Billy Drummond. It opens with Willis, Gomez and Drummond locking into a version of Thelonious Monk’s “Rhythm-a-ning” at a fast pace that does nothing to impede complex interaction among the three players.
Despite “Nardis”‘s and Gomez’s long association with Bill Evans, Willis only hints at his Evans influence and makes the piece his own. His treatment of the ballad “Never Let Me Go” is true to the melody and full of harmonic innovation. A highlight–perhaps the highlight–of the CD, it includes a stunning Gomez solo. The four tracks with Davis and Ford are in the tradition of post-bop quintets in the Art Blakey, Freddie Hubbard, Max Roach mold. Both men are impressive, Ford with his unusually spacious alto sound, Davis for his inventiveness within the Curtis Fuller tradition. Willis’s “Prayer For New Orleans” adds a rich element of spirituality to this fine CD.
It is doubtful that royalties from the album will go far toward allowing Willis to rebuild his life. If you are within walking, driving or flying distance of midtown Manhattan, you might keep in mind the benefit for him at St. Peter’s.

A message came in yesterday from a Rifftides reader who did not identify himself except to write, “I am going to be 25 in July and I consider myself not to be like most young people who at my age are probably getting their news from Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert.”
The anonymous correspondent said that he had read last September’s posting about Katie Couric’s debut on The CBS Evening News. He went on…

I found it to be fascinating, it turned up when I was doing a search for any information about the program’s new theme music by James Horner. I collect news theme music packages made for television, and as an aspiring musician myself I have been working on things very similar to that music which has been used for news programs. Do you think that this often-times bombastic and urgent sounding music has basically added to the sensationalization of TV news? It’s bad enough that newscasts often report stories having to do with celebrities of questionable morals or display shocking video to be replayed over and over again. I would like your opinion on this.

I thought no one would ever ask.
When I started doing television news, most newscasts had no theme music. Huntley-Brinkley on NBC used the first few bars of the second movement of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony. The CBS Evening News with Walter Cronkite had some kind of perfunctory opening and closing music, but I can’t for the life of me bring it to mind. Sometime in the 1960s, theme music became de rigueur. The use of music going into commercial breaks during newscasts soon followed. After the discovery that news could be a major profit center and consultants began flourishing, music in newscasts metastisized. It is far from the worst thing about what most television news has become, but it has helped to devalue news and erase the line between news and entertainment.

My brother is flat on his post-operative back, tethered to his hospital bed like a docked freighter, tubes going into every natural and created orifice. A nurse circumnavigates the bed checking monitor screens for vital signs, adjusting catheters, smoothing sheets. Then, heading for the door, the nurse says over his shoulder, “I’ll be back.”
My brother replies, “I’ll be here.”
He’s doing better. This concludes the current series of medical reports. Enough, already.

I left my hometown hospital after sitting with my brother in the intensive care unit for several hours. He is sedated up to his eyeballs, thank goodness, but seemed to know that I was there. Well, he knew that someone was there. The doctors tell me that the operation–a risky one–went well. We are all hoping that the recovery will be as successful. Many of you sent good wishes and prayers. Thank you, from all of us.