Heading for a reunion and coming into the picturesque valley that holds Wenatchee, we saw little of the hundreds of acres of apple trees that have made the area famous. Clouds and walls of smoke obscured them. For days, dry hills in Eastern Washington State have been under attack by wildfires. A postcard in the hotel room shows the valley on a clear day.

This was the view from the same hill looking south across town at noon today.

Governor Chris Gregoire has banned agricultural and other outdoor burning and signed an emergency declaration for all counties east of the Cascade mountains. People in some areas have been told to stand by for possible evacuation orders. Firefighters have come into the area from throughout the Pacific Northwest. Helicopters are dumping thousands of gallons of water on the fires. There is no rain in the forecast. So far, no houses have been lost to the fire, but in no sense are people breathing easy. Health officials declare the air quality hazardous. If you spend much time outside—not recommended—smoke gets in your eyes, your throat, your hair, your clothing. It’s best to stay inside and listen to Clifford Brown.

In the wake of Ornette Coleman and the post-“Giant Steps” developments pioneered by John Coltrane, many listeners to free jazz heard anger and unrest. Through the tumult, though he was in the heat and hurly-burly of the movement, Marion Brown (1931-2010) managed lyricism, logic and quiet beauty. He was an alto saxophonist who never attracted the recognition accorded peers like Coleman, Coltrane, Archie Shepp and Cecil Taylor. Nonetheless, the impression he made lasted, and now the leader of the state where he spent much of his life has given Brown official recognition. Governor Deval Patrick of Massachusetts is the son of another important avant garde saxophonist who was Brown’s contemporary. On New England Public Radio’s Jazz Music Blog, Tom Reney posted an extensive account of what led to the governor’s decision and of Brown’s life and career, some of it based on Reney’s friendship with the musician. Here is an excerpt.

Marion moved to New York during a period of intense foment in the jazz world and there began his long association with the avant-garde. Ornette Coleman loaned him an alto saxophone, and in 1965 he made his recording debut with Archie Shepp on Fire Music. That same year he appeared on John Coltrane’s Ascension, a recording so emblematic of the sonic force of free jazz that Marion said, “You could use that record to heat up an apartment on a cold winter day.” He acted in Leroi Jones’s (Amiri Baraka) play “The Dutchman,” and of his time with the autocratic Sun Ra, he said, “You played your instrument, and he played you.”

Tom Reney tells of Brown’s heroes and of the dedication that drove him to seek an advanced degree.

But while he served in adjunct or artist-in-residence capacities at Bowdoin and Amherst and Brandeis, a tenured gig proved elusive. Brown was a man for whom one naturally wished a more substantial measure of income and security.

The piece ends with the recording of a touching 1992 performance. To read the whole thing and hear Marion Brown, click on this link.

Paul Desmond had political convictions. He occasionally indicated but rarely went on at length about them. Iola Brubeck knows that and called our attention to an opinion piece by Chan Lowe, and his accompanying editorial cartoon, in today’s Florida Sun Sentinel. Here’s one line:

If the note wasn’t needed, he didn’t play it. He played silence. I say “played,” because his silences could be as eloquent and pregnant with meaning as his bare-bones riffs.

To see how that relates to the Sun Sentinel’s take on one of the day’s major news stories, follow this link.

Things are popping around here on several fronts, sending the development of blog posts to the back burner. The good news is that the Rifftides staff has come across film of Hampton Hawes in action with three of his peers. The quality of the new print outshines that of a previous web version. In visual and audio clarity, it may not be in the same league as 2012 digital videos, but it takes you from a 1970 Los Angeles sidewalk into a club where four major musicians are at work. This was Shelly’s Manne Hole, where we find the proprietor on drums and Hawes on piano, with bassist Ray Brown and the drastically underappreciated tenor saxophonist Bob Cooper. They play a blues initiated by Brown, and then “Stella by Starlight” and “Milestones.” You may want to pour yourself something pleasant and settle back. This voyage into the past lasts a half-hour

By the time Hampton Hawes’ third trio album appeared, his piano playing had me in thrall. I was so taken with the LP’s cover that I traced its portrait of an alligator transported by music, inked in the outline, colored the gator with an Asparagus green Crayola and framed the copy. I have been carting it around from place to place ever since.

My copy of the LP wore out long ago, but Concord Music, the inheritor of Contemporary Records, is keeping Everybody Likes Hampton Hawes in digital circulation. That’s a good idea because Hawes (1928-1977) combined something of Bud Powell’s intensity with a natural blues sensibility and an individual way of phrasing that could make a standard song sound as if he’d thought of it first. In addition, engineer Roy DuNann managed to sculpt sound to achieve the feeling of a performance in the intimacy of the listener’s living room. DuNann did his magic in Contemporary’s studio, which was the company’s shipping room. Here’s Hawes in a track from that lovely album, with Red Mitchell on bass and Chuck Thompson playing drums, January 25, 1956.

In his autobiography, Raise Up Off Me, Hawes wrote with passion and humor about the wonder of making music and about the torture he inflicted on himself. It is an important book about the jazz life.

I have never known who the alligator artist was. If you know, please send a comment.

Grégoire Maret (e-one)

Grégoire Maret divides his time between his mother’s native United States and Europe, where he was born in the land of his Swiss father 37-years ago. For more than a decade, Maret has been in demand for his harmonica playing by performers who occupy distinctly different precincts of music, among them Herbie Hancock and Pete Seeger; Youssn’Dour and Jimmy Scott; Bebel Gilberto and Sting. After years as a sideman on other peoples’ records, Maret has released his own CD. Among his guests and supporting cast are the venerable Toots Thielemans in a harmonica duet with Maret, vocalists Cassandra Wilson and Gretchen Parlato, bassist Marcus Miller and drummer Jeff “Tain” Watts. Maret’s attractive compositions alternate with others by Pat Metheny, Milton Nascimento, Ivan Lins, Stevie Wonder and George Gershwin.

Thoroughly produced, much of the album has a vaguely—often more than vaguely—modern Brazilian ethos. When the relaxed atmosphere, sometimes enhanced by wordless vocal backgrounds, invites contemplation or nodding, Maret’s virtuoso passages and the active rhythm sections generally keep things interesting. Ms. Wilson’s languid vocal on “The Man I Love” is a highlight, even unto a little game of audio peek-a-boo with Maret. The following video does not include Ms. Wilson or the strings on her track, but this is the arrangement, and it allows Maret a thorough exploration of the Gershwin classic. His colleagues here are Frederico Peña, piano; James Genus, bass; Clarence Penn, drums; and Levon Maret, percussion.

If next time around Maret were to harness up a tough rhythm section and tackle a fast blues or, say, something by Bud Powell I, for one, wouldn’t mind. In the meantime, Grégoire Maret is a fine even-tempered companion.

At the Ystad Jazz Festival in Sweden last month, scheduling caused me to miss a concert by the young Swedish singer Hannah Svensson and her guitarist father Ewan. Someone who did not miss it took along a camera and posted videos on YouTube. Svensson père, if that is an appropriate designation in Sweden, is a seasoned guitarist with senses of timing, swing and appropriate chords that create effective accompaniments. She is a singer with control, intonation and lyric interpretation that make her worth following. According to her website biography, Ms. Svensson is 26 and from Gothenburg on Sweden’s west coast. She had been a piano student for several years when at 17 she heard Eva Cassidy recordings and decided to become a singer. Here are father and daughter in a song also included in the Svenssons’ recent album.

Iola Brubeck, whom Paul Desmond described as “the incomparable, regal Iola,” sent a comment about the Rifftides 2012 Crop Forecast. She included the words of a choral piece by her husband, whose name is Dave. To see her comment, Mr. Brubeck’s lyric, photographs of ripening fruit, and to listen to Wayne Shorter and Eric Satie (not together) go here.

The massive Detroit Jazz Festival happens over Labor Day weekend. Because it collects an astonishing array of major musicians and presents them in outdoor performances at no charge, it is a festival I have long meant to attend some day. Rifftides reader Larry Peterson has gone several times. He sent a message about Wayne Shorter (photo by Jarrad Henderson) that made me wish this had been my year.

Walking to a concert of Duke Ellington’s Sacred Music from Hart Plaza, where Kenny Garrett failed to capture my interest, I asked a guy wearing a Media pass if he might be Mark Stryker, and he was. I introduced myself as the person you urged him to meet a few years ago when I was headed to the Detroit festival.
Then we talked about the performance Wayne Shorter’s Quartet gave last night. Only a short while before I ran into Mark, I had begun to wonder if the performance had ruined my prospects for ever enjoying another concert, because the experience of listening and seeing the playful, joyous interaction of the players was so amazing, thrilling, and satisfying.

 Mark was also thrilled. He referred me to his review of the concert.

And I, in turn, refer you to the column by Mr. Stryker, the music critic of The Detroit Free Press, who wrote that Shorter’s group performed,

…the most thrilling and transcendent set of music that I have heard in 17 years of attending the event.”

To read Mark’s entire account, click here.

As an indication of the reaction, interaction, close listening and mutual support that Mark and Larry observed, here’s a sample of the Shorter quartet in 2010 at Jazz à Vienne, France.