Archives for 2017

A name pops up and triggers memories. Among the October 22 birthdays listed in today’s JazzWestCoast listserve was that of John Neves. Not widely known elsewhere, Neves was treasured in Boston as a standout bassist with a big sound and an untutored harmonic gift. He played for 13 years in Herb Pomeroy’s big band and taught at the Berklee College of Music. After Neves died in 1988 at the age of 57, Pomeroy said of him, “John was an exceptional musician, an instinctual player.” Pianist Hal Galper expanded on that, telling the Boston jazz historian Richard Vacca,

He played completely by ear. He didn’t know any theory. Sometimes if you asked him to play a chorus of blues in F, you had to give him the F first. And once you gave him the F, he could play anything under the sun. He was amazing.

Rarely recorded, Neves made a Savoy album with the vibraphonist John Rae and worked on occasion with Gerry Mulligan, Jaki Byard, Marian McPartland, Maynard Ferguson and George Shearing. He was in the rhythm section of the album that Stan Getz and Bob Brookmeyer recorded in 1961 as a reprise of their early 1950s collaboration. From that album, here is “Minuet Circa ’61.” Brookmeyer, valve trombone and composer; Getz, tenor saxophone; Steve Kuhn, piano; John Neves, bass; Roy Haynes, drums.

Dizzy Gillespie was born in Cheraw, South Carolina, 100 years ago today. Aren’t you glad? On an anniversary so auspicious, the Rifftides staff debated whether to attempt some sort of omnibus review of the career of a man so vital to the development and creative expansion of jazz. No, we decided, let’s keep it simple and remember him in a milieu that he loved.

We’ll hear Gillespie in 1960 in the company of five of his peers: J.J. Johnson, trombone; Stan Getz, tenor saxophone; Victor Feldman, piano; Sam Jones, bass; and Louis Hayes, drums. The occasion was a Jazz At The Philharmonic concert in Stockholm, Sweden in 1960. They play “Blue N’ Boogie,” which he wrote in 1945. It’s one of many Gillespie compositions that enriched and continue to enrich the jazz repertoire.

Anthony Smith, Masters of The Vibes (Marimba Productions, Inc.)

Smith’s book includes a timeline that traces the history of the vibraphone, which early in its life began to be popularly known to its players and to listeners simply as vibes or the vibes. The greater part of the book consists of Smith’s transcribed conversations with 34 vibes players—famous ones like Terry Gibbs, Gary Burton, Charlie Shoemake and Warren Wolf, and newcomers including Yuhan Su, Joel Ross and Jake Chapman.

As for that timeline, in 1918 the Leedy company patented an instrument called the vibraphone. They began manufacturing it in the early 1920s. Lou Chiha, a vaudeville performer known as “Signor Frisco,” used it in his novelty act. His popular recordings of pieces like “Aloha Oe” and “Gypsy Love Song” brought the unusual metal keyboard instrument to prominence. If you have forgotten or never knew the joys of surface noise on early 78-rpm recordings, the YouTube contributor who calls him-, her- or itself “acousticedison” gives you plenty of it as you hear Chiha play “Gypsy Love Song.”

The poet Richard Wilbur died over the weekend. He was 96. A former poet laureate of The United States and the winner of two Pulitzer Prizes, Wilbur was praised and criticized for the consistency of form in his poems, which were beloved, and sometimes condemned, in the poetry world for being orderly and following classic styles; sonnet, terza rima, couplet, et al, but—to my knowledge—never free verse or blank verse.

When I first read it decades ago, this poem became a favorite among Wilbur’s work.

 

MIND

Mind in its purest play is like some bat
That beats about in caverns all alone,
Contriving by a kind of senseless wit
Not to conclude against a wall of stone.

It has no need to falter or explore;
Darkly it knows what obstacles are there,
And so may weave and flitter, dip and soar
In perfect courses through the blackest air.

And has this simile a like perfection?
The mind is like a bat. Precisely. Save
That in the very happiest intellection
A graceful error may correct the cave.

©Richard Wilbur, 1963 The Poems of Richard Wilbur

National Public Radio’s obituary of Wilbur includes two more of his finest poems. He is worth knowing.

 

Of course, you are not superstitious about Friday the 13^th; it’s all of those silly other people. Thelonious Monk must not have been worried by it, or he wouldn’t have named a composition after this notoriously risky day. Its performance was one of the highlights of his celebrated recording made at New York’s Town Hall in February of 1959.

The other musicians in the ten-piece ensemble were Donald Byrd, trumpet; Eddie Bert, trombone; Robert Northern, French horn; Jay McCallister, tuba; Phil Woods, alto sax; Charlie Rouse, tenor sax; Pepper Adams, baritone sax; Sam Jones, bass; and Art Taylor, drums. The arrangement is by Hall Overton. The order of solos is Rouse, Monk, Woods and Byrd.

Grady Tate died on Sunday at his home in New York City. He was 85. His wife Vivian said that he had dementia. In demand for years as a drummer, he was encouraged by Peggy Lee to begin singing publicly and launched a new career as a vocalist. Tate’s professional debut was with the organist Wild Bill Davis in 1959. In the decades that followed, he worked with major jazz artists including Duke Ellington, Count Basie, Oliver Nelson, Ella Fitzgerald, Blossom Dearie, Lena Horne, Wes Montgomery, Stan Getz, J.J. Johnson, Zoot Sims and dozens of others. When he was in Ms. Lee’s rhythm section for a 1968 New York club engagement, she invited him to sing. Soon, he was loved as a singer by listeners around the world who may have known nothing of his prominence as a drummer.

Among Tate’s collaborations were those with the singer and songwriter Nancy Harrow. He was prominent in her albums Maya The Bee, The Marble Faun and Winter Dreams: The Life and Passions of F. Scott Fitzgerald. Here, he sings “My Lost City” from the Fitzgerald album.

Rifftides readers may recall that three years ago I was asked to spend a few days in Los Angeles interviewing Bill Holman for a documentary about his life and music. The dean of living jazz arrangers is 90 years old, still at the helm of his big band and the idol of arrangers around the world who continue to benefit from his example. The film, produced by his step-daughter Kathryn King—a seasoned information and video pro—is unfinished because its budget is underfunded. Ms. King has reinvigorated her financing campaign.

As I wrote in 2014 after returning from my participation in the filming,

That is how many arts projects are accomplished these days when they don’t have the backing of big investors. As one who in his television days wrote and produced a number of documentaries, I was impressed with the skill and savvy of Ms. King, her director Gil Gilbert and their helpers. She has put herself on a tight schedule to complete the funding. I wish her well. It should be self-evident that Bill Holman’s accomplishments and his enrichment of America’s culture—and the world’s—need documentation.

I hope that Rifftides readers who cherish Bill Holman’s indispensable contribution to the music will give serious consideration to Ms. King’s plea for support. This video has her message.

This is the 100th anniversary of the birth of Thelonious Monk. I’ve never given it much thought, but if you’re astrologically inclined it makes sense that he was a Libra. From the beginning, some fellow musicians and close listeners recognized Monk’s unique abilities and piquant musicality. Those less receptive, or unwilling to hear out of the mainstream jazz boxes of the late 1930s and early forties, were amused or puzzled by Monk’s way with the piano. It took years for many to embrace the peculiarities that his genius and personality transmuted into one of music’s most endearing personal styles. There are—thank goodness—hundreds of recorded examples of his unclassifiable artistry, and dozens of videos.

At the Berliner Jazztage in 1969, Monk played a masterly unaccompanied set, then was joined by the stride pianist Joe Turner, bassist Hans Rettenbacher and drummer Stu Martin. As if that weren’t enough of a treat, the video includes a bonus: Sarah Vaughan beautifully intoning a Beatles song that was at the top of pop charts in the 1960s. She follows the Monk segment, accompanied by Johnny Veth, piano; Gus Mancuso, bass; and Eddy Puci, drums.

May our half-hour visit with Monk and friends in Berlin get your weekend off to a fine start.

The time when most recordings came from a handful of major labels is long past. As I have observed—with only enough exaggeration to make the point—now, every 18-year-old tenor player can be a record company. He or she can take advantage of technology and economies of scale that make it possible to record, package and market an album at a tiny fraction of what it cost in the days when the major labels ruled the record business.

One result is that new jazz recordings stream into Rifftides world headquarters without letup. There is no way to review even a small percentage of them, but here are mentions of three fairly recent ones that caught the staff’s attention.

 

Cécile McLorin Salvant, Dreams And Daggers (Mack Avenue)

With three distinguished albums and a Grammy award (for For One To Love) to her credit, Ms. Salvant went into New York’s Village Vanguard about a year ago for an engagement. The resulting in-person performances with her trio, just released, are interspersed with four studio recordings featuring a string quartet. The result is a collection in which she sings several established pieces and a few original compositions and leaves little doubt that she is moving into the rarified category occupied by such vocal heroes as Ella Fitzgerald, Sarah Vaughan, Anita O’Day, Peggy Lee and few other singers. Her speedy short version, with just bass and drums, of the 1922 pop song “Runnin’ Wild” alone would be enough to certify her control, confidence and musicianship. She goes beyond technique to reaffirm the width and depth of her emotional interpretation in ballads that include Noel Coward’s “Mad About The Boy” and—especially—in a coruscating reading of the Gershwins’ “My Man’s Gone Now.”

Pianist Aaron Diehl, bassist Paul Sikivie and drummer Lawrence Leathers comprise no small part of Ms. Salvant’s artistic success. Their accompanying is crucial to it, and Diehl continues in his early thirties to prove himself a pianist who has solo gifts that could put him into the jazz piano hall of fame, if there is one.

Perhaps repeated hearings of the Vanguard audience’s whooping, hollering ovations get to be a bit much, but that’s the response that Ms. Salvant inspired, so there it is—on the record.

 

Anat Cohen Tentet, Happy Song (Anzic)

From her first unaccompanied clarinet notes in the joyous title tune
through Malian musician Neba Solo’s concluding “Kenedougon Foly,” Ms. Cohen and her tentet have a multi-faceted good time. Chances are, listeners will, too. With its warmth, roominess and range, her clarinet dominates the album’s aura of good feeling, but there are also infectious solos from trumpeter Nadje Noordhuis, trombonist Nick Finzer, baritone saxophonist Owen Broder and guitarist Sheryl Bailey, among others. Ms. Cohen and her Israeli homeland pal, arranger Oded Lev-Ari, produced the album.

Levi-Ari’s clever touches include an amusing interjection of “Salt Peanuts” into his adaptation of “Oh Baby,” a 1924 Owen Murphy piece first recorded by Bix Beiderbecke. He achieves tongue-in-cheek eeriness in the introduction to “Trills and Thrills.” After the spookiness, the piece transmutes into a full-bodied ballad tinged with the blues. It has an intense clarinet solo by Ms. Cohen. The three parts of “Anat’s Doina” encompass dance-like klezmer passages and a resourceful use of Victor Goncalves’s accordion and Robin Kodheli’s cello to enhance the Middle Eastern atmosphere. Further high points: the irresistible thrust of samba feeling in Egberto Gismonti’s “Loro;” Levi’s arrangement of Gordon Jenkins’s classic “Goodbye” and Ms. Cohen’s respectful treatment of the melody; the purity of Finzer’s trombone high notes and Ms. Noordhuis’s flugelhorn in Ms. Cohen’s “Valsa Para Alice.”

There’s a lot going on here—in the playing and the arranging. Repeated hearings disclose layered subtleties. Happy Song enriches Anat Cohen’s substantial discography.

 

Logan Strosahl Team, Book I Of Arthur (Sunnyside)

Alto saxophonist and composer Logan Strosahl and his longtime associate pianist Nick Sanders continue their rewarding adventures. This time they have expanded well beyond the duo format that brought them attention as YouTube regulars, and beyond the sextet of their previous Sunnyside album, Up Go We. In an imaginative examination of the King Arthur legend, Strosahl’s fascination with the mythology of early Britain combines with his knowledge and love of Elizabethan and pre-Elizabethan music. His seven-piece band and the narration he wrote for Jullia Easterlin meld ancient lore, fanciful creation and powerful uses of jazz and classical music—modern and ancient—into an absorbing, demanding work. The work is packed with Arthurian elements: King Arthur, Uther Pendragon, Sir Ector, the Battle of Bedegraine, King Bors, King Ban. I was hoping for Gwiniverre, but maybe she’ll show up in Book II or III.

“Proof: The Round Table” is an instance of Strosahl’s grasp of harmony and polyphony as narrative tools employed apart from actual narration. “Epilogue: Dance” has a pixieish spirit that might have brought knowing smiles from Gerry Mulligan and Igor Stravinsky. This music rewards concentration, an open mind, a sense of fun and willingness to hear outside the box. Indeed, outside several boxes.

From Hollywood comes an announcement by The Wallis Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts that on October 15 the Harlem Quartet will perform at the center. The ensemble from upper Manhattan specializes not only in the usual suspects among classical composers for string quartet—Schubert, Grieg, Debussy, Barber, et al—but they also regularly perform pieces by Leonard Bernstein, Antonio Carlos Jobim, Chick Corea, Billy Strayhorn and Dizzy Gillespie. The best classical musicians have long had the technical ability required for jazz, but it often seemed that asking them to learn to improvise, much less to swing, was akin to suggesting that they practice blasphemy.

That conviction has softened to the point that there are several string quartets with jazz repertoires, among them the Turtle Island quartet, Germany’s Modern String Quartet, the Take Five String Quartet in Singapore, South Africa’s Soweto String Quartet and in California, Quartet San Francisco.

Here’s the Harlem Quartet with Gillespie’s “A Night In Tunisia.” Left to right in the video: Imar Gavilán and Melissa White, violins; Felix Umansky, cello; Jaime Amador, viola. Whoever posted this on YouTube didn’t give it much volume. You may need to turn up your speakers.

For details about the quartet’s Hollywood concert, go here. For more about classical music and improvisation, see this post from the Rifftides archive. It involves Andre Previn and the Vienna Philharmonic and, separately, a jazz pianist sitting in on a folkish jam session in a Scottish pub.

 

Speaking of that cooperative venture with pianist Bill Mays (weren’t we?), on his website Bill posted the answer to a problem that may have stumped some Rifftides readers. Here is his solution:

Ah, technology…when Doug Ramsey and I recently made our concert, A Brief History Of Jazz Piano, available as a free “digital download” a few of you folks (including my 100-year-old aunt) were stymied as to how to “do it”. Sorry for any confusion. Here’s how: if you click HERE you’ll be taken to Dropbox. Click on one of the music files. You’ll be able to listen immediately online; OR, to download the music to your computer look in the upper right-hand corner and click on “Open” “Open in iTunes.” A few minutes later the music will have downloaded onto your computer. 

It is unlikely that computer virtuosos Ryan and Trenton at Efcom, the Mac Store, used wrenches and screwdrivers to revive the Rifftides headquarters computer. Still, whatever tools and methods they employed, their magic brought the machine back to life much sooner than the estimate of several days. They made it possible for us to blog again. The gratitude of the Rifftides staff could not be adequately  expressed using mere words, so we looked for a way to do it with music. The staff found the bass clarinet virtuoso Oran Etkin waiting patiently at YouTube with his friends, ready to lend a hand. Here he is with Lionel Loueke, mouth sounds and guitar; Curtis Fowlkes, trombone; Nasheet Waits, drums; and Ben Allison, bass, in Etkin’s composition titled—happily for us—”Gratitude.”

Rifftides will return to normal operation—whatever that is—as soon as we complete a massive office cleanup.

Increasingly, radio and television newscasts include stories in which anchors interview correspondents in the field. That is part of a pattern: reduced news budgets, smaller staffs and greater dependence on the survivors of newsroom cuts. Anchors, of course, also conduct interviews with newsmakers, hundreds of them a day across the broadcast spectrum. Listeners accustomed to English spoken properly may be nonplussed, even irritated, when interviewees begin their answers with “So——.” It happens in approximately 65 percent of responses (that’s a staff estimate; the percentage may be higher). Whether the person being interviewed is a sixth-grade dropout in a homeless shelter, a United States senator or a reporter whose job description assumes familiarity with the language, spoken English is being “So-ed” to a faretheewell. One popular explanation, or excuse, is that the responder to a question is buying a second to think of an answer. For President Ronald Reagan, “Well—” was the crutch. Others prefer “Uh—”. The sixth-grade dropout may be excused. Professionals who make a living with the language should not be.

“So—” had not become ubiquitous when Rifftides first brought you the poet Taylor Mali’s video examination of some of the turns English usage had taken. This was in 2009.

Whaddaya think—as a good Brooklynite might ask—has English usage improved in eight years?