Archives for September 2011

Tomorrow, the Rifftides staff plus one will hit the road to Oregon. The first stop is Portland, where we’ll hear Dave Frishberg and Rebecca Kilgore at the restaurant called Touché. In this album, they concentrated on Frank Loesser. Advance word is that at the Touché, they will tackle some of Irving Berlin’s more obscure songs.

Then, we head southwest to Newport, a coastal town of about 10,000 whose main occupations are in tourism, fishing and wood products. It is the home of the other Newport jazz festival, the small, intimate one. Among the musicians at Newport Jazz 2011 will be the Jeff Hamilton Trio, Terell Stafford, Holly Hofmann, Mike Wofford, Monty Alexander, Hassan Shakur, Anat Cohen, Howard Alden and Kristin Korb. To see the full list and schedule, go here. I look forward to again hearing the PDX Jazz Quintet, aka PDXV, and my first exposure to the Weber Iago/David Valdez Chamber Jazz Project. I’ve been asked to say a few words now and then in the course of the weekend. Schedule permitting, I hope to work in a bit of blogging.

There is confirmation that slightly more than a month after he celebrated his 90th birthday, trumpeter Uan Rasey died late last night. Heard on the sound tracks of dozens of motion pictures, Rasey was acclaimed as one of the most gifted trumpet artists of the twentieth century. André Previn, who was Rasey’s colleague in the MGM studio orchestra in the 1940s and ’50s, offered a birthday accolade typical of those who knew and worked with him:

He was not only the best trumpet player working at the film studios in Hollywood, but also a kind and good friend.

For a summary of Rasey’s career and to hear one of his most celebrated solos, go to this Rifftides piece posted on his birthday, when 40 trumpeters appeared outside Rasey’s house to serenade him with “Trumpeter’s Prayer.” His grandson, Tristan Verstraten, told me this evening that his grandfather died peacefully in his sleep at Woodland Hills Kaiser Hospital in Los Angeles, where he had been taken after his heart and kidney problems worsened. Three of his children were with him.

Recalling Rasey’s spirit and character, Mr. Verstraten told this story:

When he was 89 years old, he learned that his seven-year-old granddaughter Taylor had no way home from school because her mother had been delayed. Rather than let her wait, possibly for a long time, he called Access Paratransit. Blind and in his wheelchair, he got into the Access van and traveled three miles to the school. When he got there, he wheeled himself into the school, found Taylor and took her home in the van. Then, when they got to the house he fixed her a meal, and when Taylor’s mom got home, she found the two of them partying, having a great time.

There will be no funeral service, Mr. Verstraten said, but a celebration of life, “a shindig,” will be scheduled in a couple of weeks.

On the heels of the announcement that he will be a Kennedy Center honoree later this year, Sonny Rollins appeared on the Tavis Smiley Show on PBS. He discussed his career, his philosophy and why he feels that the Medal of Arts is not going to him alone.

“It’s the people who came before me,” he told Smiley. “When I accept this honor, it’s for Count Basie, who got one. It’s for Duke Ellington, who didn’t get one. It’s for Lester Young, who didn’t get one. It’s for Thelonious Monk, who didn’t get one. So, I’m standing up there and I say, ‘Thank you for this honor, thank you. I appreciate it. But I understand that I’m them. We’re talking about this music now. I appreciate it for everybody who bled and died and suffered and still made this great music come about.’”

Here’s the video of the entire 24-minute segment.

This is short notice—sorry about that—but on his Jazz Northwest at 1:00 pm PDT today, Jim Wilke is presenting the Jeff Hamilton Trio with Tamir Hendelman and Christof Luty. Wilke recorded them this summer at the Port Townsend Centrum Jazz Festival. To hear Hamilton and company, go here and click on “Listen Live.” If you are in the Seattle-Tacoma area, you can listen on KPLU-FM at 88.5 If you miss the broadcast, the program will be in Wilke’s archive at this address.

Rifftides reader Svetlana Ilyicheva writes from Moscow:

Maybe it will interest you (I learned about it about a week ago myself):

In summer 1967 there was an international film festival in Russia. An American actress, Sandy Dennis, came to Moscow escorted by her husband bari saxophonist Gerry Mulligan.* Gerry was immediately taken to the Youth Cafe, a” hotbed” of jazz in Moscow. (BTW, Leonard Feather wrote about this cafe in his book). A jam session was arranged where Gerry had to play alto, as they hadn’t found a decent baritone and borrowed a brand-new golden Selmer from one of the sax players. If you click the link and scroll the text until you see the photo of Gerry (а dark figure close to Gerry is a popular Russian sax player, Alexei Kozlov. The photo is from his collection). Just above the photo you will see an MP3 of a recording where Gerry played with KM-Quartet. (As the recording belongs to the collection it is not allowed to be downloaded). It had certainly been a glorious moment for the Russian jazzmen of that time.

The recording above the one I described is that of “KM-Quartet” with Vagif Sadikhov at piano, whose 65th birthday is going to be celebrated by the Moscow jazz community and whose talent was appreciated by many a jazzmen ( Benny Green, Johnny Griffin among them).

Here is the link: http://jazzru.wordpress.com/2011/09/13/vagif-sadikhov-65/

The unique recording belongs to the collection of the late Arkady Petrov, musical expert, one of the elders of Russian jazz journalism and the first Soviet Jazz broadcaster.

*(Mulligan and Sandy Dennis were together for more than ten years but never married—DR)

Frank Driggs, a tireless jazz researcher and historian who collected photographs familiar to millions, died this week at the age of 81. In the 1950s as a producer for Columbia Records, Driggs oversaw the organizing and reissuing of historically important recordings by Billie Holiday, Fletcher Henderson, Duke Ellington and Gene Krupa. In 1991, he won a Grammy for Robert Johnson, The Complete Recordings, the recorded work of the seminal blues singer and guitarist. He began documenting the history of jazz at the Institute of Jazz Studies at Rutgers University when Marshall Stearns was its director.

As a collector, Driggs gathered more than 100,000 photographs that he cataloged primarily in his head. He was able to retrieve them when academic institutions, publishers and authors needed them. Photographs from his archive fill the book Black Beauty, White Heat, which he co-authored with Harris Lewine. Several of the photos in my biography of Paul Desmond are from the Driggs collection. His friend and associate Donna Ranieri told The Associated Press that Driggs was found dead of natural causes in his apartment in Manhattan on Tuesday.

Tomorrow is the first day of fall in the northern hemisphere. Coincidentally, Emil Viklický, who lives in an eastern precinct of the hemisphere, recently alerted me to new video of a performance last spring at the Prague Castle. Vaclav Klaus, the president of the Czech Republic, hosted a tribute to Miles Davis. It was a concert in the Jazz na HradÄ› series that the president initiated, with Viklický’s help, at the Czech counterpart of the White House.

The musicians are Viklický, piano; Jon Faddis, trumpet; Jaroslav Jakubovic, baritone saxophone; Tom Barney, bass; and Lennie White, drums. The tune is—what else?—”Autumn Leaves.” Following the performance, a bevy of beautiful Czech women presents flowers to the musicians, President Klaus goes on stage to offer his thanks, and White speaks for the band. It’s a class act, all the way around.

For another performance from the same concert, and background about Klaus’s concert series, go here.

Pat Metheny and Larry Grenadier and a truckload of equipment are on a 26-city tour. They warmed up the other night with a first stop at The Seasons Performance Hall in Yakima, Washington. The tour will end in mid-October with a week at the Blue Note in New York City.

The equipment played a major role in Metheny’s and Grenadier’s two-concert evening at The Seasons, but their most satisfying moments came when they dialed down the amplification, ignored the panoply of digitally driven instruments occupying the back of the stage and achieved the intimacy that Metheny said was his goal for the music. His solo on the piece that began the second concert, “All the Things You Are,” ranks with the best playing I’ve ever heard from him. His final chorus of ascending chromatic figures was an expression of sheer joy.

The guitarist’s name and reputation were the draw that nearly filled the hall twice. It may be that Grenadier was unknown to most of the audience when they walked in. By the end of the evening, the energy, musicianship and power of his bass playing made it unlikely that they will forget him. Introducing Grenadier, Metheny said, “He’s the only one I’d do this kind of tour with.” Grenadier managed to retain the woody acoustic essence of his instrument despite excessive amplification in a hall with near-perfect natural sound properties. The melodic inventiveness of his solos often matched Metheny’s. His rhythmic drive supplied consistent excitement. The blues groove of “Soul Cowboy” led Metheny to exquisite subtlety in his single-note lines. The nuances continued in his quiet accompaniment of a Grenadier bass solo that moved some listeners to audible “Yeahs” and a few indiscreet whoops.

Exotica reigned in the first concert with Metheny’s unaccompanied performance of “The Sound of Water” on an elaborate custom instrument. George Van Eps used to call his guitar a lap piano. Metheny could fairly describe his 47-string guitar as a lap orchestra. Darned if he didn’t approximate the sound of water.

After speaking about his long love of music-making through electricity—”My first instrument was a wall plug”—Metheny announced that he and Grenadier would indulge in pure improvisation. They began as a duo but were soon joined by an illuminated device that flashed and sounded gongs in rhythm. Then with swift drama, the road crew lifted black covers off an astonishing array of equipment—an accordion, a marimba, a glockenspiel, sets of cymbals, a bass drum, a conga drum, a snare drum, ranks of jugs filled with varying levels of mineral water, and a few things it was impossible to see from the cheap seats. It was the orchestrion, or Metheny’s computerized variant of it, controlled through solenoids actuated by his guitar and several foot pedals.

Well, it didn’t work too well at the first concert. At the second, all of the synapses of the electronic brain were firing and we got a wild few minutes of rhythmic and visual display complete with echo, looping repetition, a percussion fiesta and accordion sounds that sometimes approximated trumpets. In one section, as Metheny wailed away, Grenadier used his bow to set a bass riff. It was fascinating and funny, a kind of musical vaudeville. When it ended, Metheny said, “That’s impossible to explain, so we’re just gonna keep playing.” And they did. In the course of the evening, they visited several of Metheny’s greatest hits, among them “James,” “Bright Size Life” and “Farmer’s Trust.”

What Metheny said would be the closing number turned out to be a highlight of both concerts. It was Dizzy Gillespie’s “Con Alma,” with no orchestrion supplements, fine solos from both musicians and a tag ending in which they anticipated one another beautifully. There was an anonymous-sounding Metheny solo encore, but it was the pure music of “James,” “Con Alma, “All the Things You Are,” “Autumn Leaves” and a few other pieces that lingered in the mind as the orchestrion entertainment extravaganza faded away.

In this video from the 2009 Umbria Jazz festival in Italy, Metheny and Grenadier play the kind of music they made in the quieter moments at The Seasons. If you don’t understand Italian, you may want to fast-forward to 1:15

If you’re interested in knowing more about the orchestrion, go here for Metheny’s explanation and demonstration.

In his newest column, Mr. P.C., the jazz advice columnist, tackles the controversial issue of jazz as a disappearing resource. In answer to a question, he offers possible solutions, including this one:

But conservation alone won’t be enough; we must turn to alternative, renewable sources of jazz. These, of course, are colleges and conservatories, which efficiently convert tuition dollars into vast numbers of jazz performers and composers able to crank out low-grade jazz in tremendous quantity. There’s no end to the number of programs our planet can accommodate, and no limit to the number of notes their graduates will produce.

To explore the problem further with Mr. P.C., you can find him on All About Jazz, but if you go to his Facebook page, you get the bonus of a realistic drawing of him consulting a troubled musician. In the column he also addresses a drummer’s counting habit and the dilemma of a musician’s wife looking for a way to communicate with her husband.

We have it on reasonably good authority that under the name Bill Anschell, Mr. P.C. moonlights as a pianist. You may see a resemblance to the man in the drawing. Here, soprano saxophonist Brent Jensen accompanies Anschell, and vice versa.

For an account of a previous Anschell-Jensen encounter, go here.

Steve Cerra (pictured), the proprietor of Jazz Profiles, found himself desperate for material and put me in an unaccustomed position——on the answering end of an interview. The results are posted on his excellent blog, which you can reach by clicking here. If you make it through that piece, you’ll arrive at Steve’s news posts about Ernestine Anderson and Carmel Jones.

When we posted the Rifftides observance last month of Bill Evans’ birthday, a reader suggested that we follow up on the anniversary of his death, which was September 15, 1980. Here is Evans with his last trio—Marc Johnson, bass; Joe LaBarbera, drums—playing the piece he wrote in memory of his father.

The new batch of Rifftides recommendations covers CDs by one saxophonist inspired by Paul Desmond, another inspired by his native land and a bassist who is simply inspired. We also suggest an intimate DVD performance by Gerry Mulligan and a book about the life of the woman who inspired “Pannonica,” “Nica’s Dream” and “Nica’s Tempo.” Please scroll down the right-hand column to Doug’s Picks. Temporarily, due to digital circumstances I have yet to fathom, they are also immediately below in the main column.

Graham Collier died last night at home in Greece. A British composer, author and bandleader on the forward edge of modern music, Collier was 74. Early reports are that he succumbed suddenly to a massive heart attack or stroke. From the announcement by Birmingham Jazz:

Graham Collier had a major influence on British jazz, being one of the first contemporary jazz composers to write extended works for a large ensemble, and one of the first jazz people to receive commissions and tours funded by the Arts Council. He also played an important role in the development of the Loose Tubes Big Band of the 1980s which came out of a big band workshop that Graham ran at the time. He also established the Jazz Course at the Royal Academy of Music in London and and many of the key jazz musicians of the 2000s are graduates of that course.

For a Collier biography and discography, click here.

One of his seven books was a Rifftides recommendation in 2009:

Graham Collier, The Jazz Composer: Moving Music Off The Paper (Northway). The title reads like that of a textbook, but this evaluation of the art is accessible to any layman with ears. Contradicting conventional wisdom about some composers, Collier nudges Thad Jones from his pedestal, for instance, and shrugs off Bill Holman with minor praise. He puts in perspective Ellington’s habit of borrowing and praises Gil Evans nearly without reservation. Whether or not you agree with Collier, he backs his positions with evidence and references and makes readers think hard about what they listen to. This is an important book.

From around the same time, here is my review of a Collier album released in 2009:

Graham Collier, directing 14 Jackson Pollocks (GCM). Long before he wrote his recent book, Graham Collier’s music made it plain that Duke Ellington, Charles Mingus and Gil Evans were profound influences on his work. Collier followed Ellington’s and Mingus’s lead in fashioning pieces with his soloists in mind rather than the common concept of arrangements into which a leader could plug whatever soloist was at hand. As for Evans, I must say that I heard in Collier’s earlier recordings more of the Evans of “La Nevada” or “El Matador” – roiling, abstract patterns under soloists — than of the tonal tapestries in, say, Sketches of Spain. I still do. Collier amalgamated his inspirations into an orchestral style that coalesced at a moment in the late 1960s when musicians and listeners in Great Britain were ready to expand their ideas about what constituted jazz.

Collier was his own bassist for years before he concentrated entirely on composing, arranging and leading. Among the members of his bands were adventurous players including saxophonists John Surman and Art Themen, trumpeters Kenny Wheeler and Harry Beckett and drummer John Marshall. In directing 14 Jackson Pollocks, Collier reaches distillation of the notion that the orchestra, the written music and the improvising soloist comprise a trinity, each element inseparable from the other. The music makes obvious what the CD title means, unless you don’t know who Jackson Pollock was.

The two-CD set consists of music recorded at concerts in London in 1997 and 2004. Themen, Marshall and the astonishing Beckett are among the players, along with pianist Roger Dean, bassist Jeff Clyne and others who long since absorbed Collier’s ethos of individual independence amidst collective dependence.

The music has something in common with the free jazz that emerged in the United States in the sixties, but where free jazz often fell by the weight of its pretensions of liberation from guidelines, Collier’s coalesces around his frameworks. His composing and arranging dictates, or suggests, shape, harmonic character and rhythmic direction of the solos. He infuses much of his music with wry humor at which titles like “Between a Donkey and a Rolls Royce” and “An Alternate Low Circus Ballad” can only hint. In any case, humor is only an element In Collier’s work, important but minor. He produces serious music that makes demands on its listeners and gives generous compensation to those who welcome it on its terms.

At the bottom of the opening page of Collier’s website there is a link to a 13-minute audio montage that can serve as an introduction to his music.

Collier titled a 2007 composition “From Acorns” for Derby Jazz, an organization that promotes development of jazz in the British city of Derby. Collier conducted a band of young musicians with two guest soloists, his colleague the veteran trumpeter Harry Beckett and pianist John Bailey. Collier constructed the piece so that some of the inexperienced youngsters were required to improvise free solos. In discussing the music, he synthesized some of his forthright philosophy about how jazz should be made and—at the end—how it should be supported.

Graham Collier, RIP. At Rifftides, we shall miss his e-mail messages and his resolute comments. The many recordings he left mean that we won’t have to miss his music.

Dick Bank has produced a dozen albums led by or featuring the pianist Jan Lundgren. He sends a communiqué about a Lundgren performance in tandem with Bengt Hallberg, a fellow Swedish pianist 34 years his senior. In the bebop years, Hallberg was a favorite pianist of visiting players including Stan Getz, with whom he was featured on Getz’s influential recording that introduced “Dear Old Stocklholm” to American listeners. Many commentators consider Lundgren the successor to Hallberg in touch, harmonic acuity and melodic invention. Mr. Bank writes:

Friday, September 9 at 7:30 at the venerable Konserthuset in Stockholm,

Together Again For The First Time!

Bengt Hallberg and Jan Lundgren.

The Konserhuset is sold out (1200 capacity). They’ll be playing tunes like “All the Things You Are,” “Lover Man,” “Sweet Georgia Brown” and “Sophisticated Lady,” plus original compositions for two pianos.

Jan is quite thrilled about it. Hallberg is the last living icon from the golden years of Swedish jazz. He will be 79 on Tuesday (same day as Mel Tormé and Dick Haymes and the day after Jesse Owens!

Jan previously recorded with Swedish jazz legends Arne Domnérus and Putte Wickman. Finally, he is paired with Hallberg. Sadly, it won’t be recorded.

It was ten years ago that Jan and Pete Jolly recorded Collaboration, which critic Alun Morgan called, “The best two-piano album, both technically and musically, ever produced.”

For more information about the event, go here. If you happen not to read Swedish, there’s an English translation option. If you read neither, Konserthuset makes available translations from Afrikaans to Yiddish. What, no Zulu?

Digging with their usual efficiency, the Rifftides staff has discovered that although the concert will not be recorded, Lundgren and Hallberg have made a two-piano album. It seems to be available at this website.

If you have forgotten or never heard the liquidity of Hallberg’s work, there is a prime example from 1953 in his accompaniment and solo in this recording by Clifford Brown and Art Farmer with the Swedish All Stars. The first trumpet solo is by Farmer. The other players are Lars Gullin, baritone saxophone; Ã…ke Persson, trombone; Arne Domnérus, alto saxophone; Gunnar Johnson, bass; and Jack Norén, drums. The tune is “Falling in Love With Love.”