First thing:

Have you noticed that half of the answers to questions and half of reports (statistic not scientifically confirmed) on radio and television news and interview programs begin with, “So…”

News Anchor: For the latest on White House reaction to those discouraging employment figures, here’s correspondent Ralph Glutz.

Glutz: So, Robert, the President chooses to see the glass half full…

Interviewer: Coach, did you ever dream that the outcome of a contest against your old rival would be determined by a weird shoestring catch in the bottom of the ninth?

Coach: So, that’s what makes baseball such a great game, y’know?

Are these superfluous uses of the word a way, in uncertain times, of appearing to avoid commitment? Or are they, indeed, superfluous? Why have they suddenly proliferated? What part of speech is “so” when it precedes an answer or a statement— adjective, adverb, pronoun, conjunction?

I suppose it’s preferable to, “Uh,” and it goes nicely with another omnipresent advancement in articulate English usage, witness the waiter who asked my table full of beer drinkers the other day, “So, ‘sup?”

Second thing:

From time to time, the Rifftides staff likes to tap the wisdom of Mr. P.C., the dispenser of advice to jazz musicians who find themselves out of touch with fine points of behavior on and off the bandstand. In his current column, Mr. P.C. addresses a matter of language that relates to economic resourcefulness and well-being.

Dear Mr. P.C.:

When people use big words to describe their music, is that supposed to make it better? Like I know a bassist who says he’s “contextualizing” his music. Why does he do that?

— Bassist Uses Lofty Language

Dear BULL:

He’s practicing Grantspeak, of course. Here’s the story: A few decades ago, granting agencies grudgingly started funding jazz projects. But how can their panelists judge the applications when they know nothing about jazz music?

Well, what they ARE comfortable judging is intellect, so they depend on jazz artists to put it on full display. That’s why savvy applicants like your bassist friend keep their eye on the prize and practice at every opportunity. In fact, if you’d stuck around a little longer you might have even seen him go from contextualizing to “re-contextualizing.” Extra credit!

Although grantors were the original targets of Grantspeak, its use has become more widespread. Other people in positions of power in the jazz world — especially presenters and journalists — have proven equally susceptible to its charms. And it’s even starting to influence artists, not only in their music, but also in their interactions:

Andrew: “Hey, Bob, what’s happening?”
Bob: “You know, just shedding, trying to keep my chops up. How about you?”
Andrew: Actually, in my new multidisciplinary song cycle, based on a contemporary reading of recovered scripts from the earliest matriarchal societies, I’m re-examining the relationship between soloist and ensemble, looking for ways to evoke a more egalitarian, communal paradigm.”
Bob (embarrassed): “Cool. Um, guess I’ll go practice Stablemates.”
Andrew (silently): “Heh, heh, heh.”

People ask where jazz is heading, BULL, and I can answer definitively: Grantspeak is the future! Not only as a descriptive language, but as a quasi-paradigmatic, non-idiomatic re-contextualization of jazz itself. Buy your thesaurus now, before you and your music are left behind!

To see all of Mr. P.C.’s June column, visit his Facebook page.

A friend traveling in New York tweets,

Waiting for a train in Grand Central, remembering when there were lovely benches in the ‘waiting room’.

It’s hard to believe that there is now standing room only for commuters and people watchers in Grand Central Station. But whether an observer is upright or seated, the magnificent old terminal is one of the world’s prime spots for studying members of the species, as noted in this Rifftides archive piece from three years ago.

June 19, 2009

At Grand Central Station, I plop into a chair in a semi-circle of what look like overstuffed maroon leather armchairs, a hard plop; the chair is molded plastic. One of New York’s great free shows is underway in the lower concourse, with a cast of thousands. It’s the evening commute to the northern suburbs. Many of the commuters are running. The picture here doesn’t do justice to the activity and energy of the place.

“Attention, please. The 5:36 express for Tarrytown, leaving on Track 6 in one minute.”

A young woman runs by in Dolce and Gabbana jeans. I can tell that they are Dolce and Gabbana because a shiny silver badge on the waist band announces the fact. Hey, if you’re going to wear 400-dollar pants, why keep it a secret? Her lower body is clad in high fashion and she looks great, but there’s discomfort in her expression. Those tight jeans were meant for striking poses, not running. If she could afford 400 bucks for pants, she could take a limo to Scarsdale. One in five people (ratio not scientifically confirmed) is on a cell phone. Many of them are running.

“I just called to tell you I can’t talk. I’m running for the train.”

“I missed the 5:10. I’ll be 20 minutes late. Pick me up. ‘Bye. Gotta run.”

An old woman in short grey hair, a boxy grey suit and mannish brown shoes walks by with a three-year-old boy by the hand. The boy’s other hand is in the hand of a girl of about six. Surrounded by the streaming crowd, the children look bewildered, fearful. The woman is forging ahead, determined and grim. Grandmother? Governess? Kidnapper?

A number of the young women are wearing shower shoes, as they used to be known. Later, they were called zoris. Now, the acceptable term is flip-flops. As the girls run, the footwear neither flips nor flops. The sound is flap, flap, flap, flap, flap. I wonder if they wore those things all day at work or shopping in Manhattan. Wouldn’t their feet get dirty? A drastically short woman in tight capri pants and four-inch heels speeds by. She has what my father used to call a hitch in her getalong, and her sound is clack, de-clack, clack, de-clack, echoing through the concourse.

Five people standing together at the top of the ramp in front of the Oyster Bar break into applause. I look for what inspired them. Nothing is evident, but they seem delighted. It probably wasn’t the extremely tall Hassidic gentleman strolling toward his track with dignity, a tall black hat and a briefcase the size of a small trunk. I wonder if he’s from the diamond district, carrying a load of samples to a wealthy client in Bronxville.

A sign of the times: I see elderly men in suits—more than a dozen in a few minutes—clutching briefcases, wearing their weariness on their faces, slumping toward their trains. Did they expect still to be working at their ages, still catching trains?

A young man slips into the big maroon chair next to mine. His afro is stuffed into an enormous knit cap puffed into the shape of turban. His gold ear ring is fashioned to look like a small horseshoe. He eats a half-pint of yogurt or cottage cheese, then promptly falls asleep. His head slowly leans until it is parallel to his right shoulder. The clack de-clacking, flap-flapping, departure announcements and general hubbub do not interrupt his nap. As I leave, I hope he doesn’t miss his train.

The woman to my left gets up at the same moment I do. I say to her, “It was a great show, wasn’t it?” She looks startled, then laughs and says, “Yeah…if that’s what you want to call it.”

I do.

Rifftides reader Svletlana Ilicheva writes from Moscow about a concert earlier this week at the Tzaritzino National Park. Called “Classics And Jazz,” the program included four prominent American saxophonists of the same generation who have banded together as the Axis Saxophone Quartet.

Ms. Ilicheva reports:

The quartet consists of Joshua Redman, Chris Cheek, Mark Turner and Chris Potter. They played their own compositions. Especially I like those by Joshua Redman, they sounded like poems. Instead of sitting comfortably at some distance on the grass I had been standing for an hour and a half in the front row close to the stage and couldn’t tear my eyes away from these amazing musicians. At some moments I was on the verge of tears – they were so good! (Chris Potter’s solos were just superb).

This video from the concert, uploaded by eugenejazz, gives a generous sample of the Axis Saxophone Quartet’s music, with rear screen projection of the band and scenes of Muscovites enjoying the concert.

The Russian website jazz.ru has a report about the concert. The text is in Russian. The two performance videos are in the universal language of music. There is also one brief news conference statement by Redman. To go to the jazz.ru page, click here.

Thanks to Ms. Ilicheva for letting us know about this impressive instance of jazz diplomacy.

In a meeting of east and west, April’s Ballard Jazz Festival in Seattle brought together New York pianist Orrin Evans with Human Spirit. Led by trumpeter Thomas Marriott, alto saxophonist Mark Taylor and drummer Matt Jorgensen, the Seattle quintet is attracting international attention, in part because of this album featuring Evans as a guest.

Jim Wilke, who doubles as recording engineer and radio host, captured Human Spirit’s Ballard performance and will feature it on KPLU’s Jazz Northwest on Sunday. The program airs at 1 PM PDT on 88.5 FM in the Seattle-Tacoma area. Listeners elsewhere in the world will find it streamed at kplu.org. As usual, after the broadcast KPLU’s website will make a podcast available.

Ballard is a section of Seattle with a seafaring history and a fishing economy. Parts of it are yuppified without serious damage—so far—to its quaintness and historical character.

Wilke provided a description of the Jazz Walk:

The Ballard Jazz Walk is part of the annual Ballard Jazz Festival and includes a dozen or more venues featuring live jazz, all within walking distance of each other in old Ballard. Over 70 musicians played during the jazz walk and the music and people spilling out of the small clubs along the street provided a very festive atmosphere. The festival is produced by Matt Jorgensen and John Bishop with production coordination by Chad McCullough and supported by the Ballard business community.

Wondering how trumpeter Ambrose Akinmusire is doing in the wake of the (justified) fuss over his 2010 album When The Heart Emerges Glistening, I did a bit of web surfing and discovered that he’s doing fine. Among the evidence was video of an intergenerational concert led by the 77-year-old French film composer and saxophone and clarinet adventurer Michel Portal. The occasion was the 2011 Monte Carlo Jazz Festival in Monaco. Portal’s fellow arsonists in this performance of his “Citrus Juice” are Akinmusire, pianist Bojan Z, guitarist Lionel Loueke, bassist Scott Colley and drummer Nasheet Waits.

*la·gniappe (lan-yap), noun

Chiefly Southern Louisiana and Southeast Texas . 1.a small gift to a customer by way of compliment or for good measure; bonus. 2.a gratuity or tip. 3.an unexpected or indirect benefit.

Bobby Shew played a one-nighter Saturday evening in his brief tour of the Pacific Northwest. The gig at Tula’s in Seattle launched in slight confusion over the introduction the rhythm section played to the first tune, Victor Young’s “Beautiful Love.” It did not match what Shew had in mind. He halted the proceedings and offered the packed house a wry explanation, “This is jazz. You don’t have to know what you’re doing.”

There was a brief conference that consisted mainly of head nods. Pianist Bill Anschell, bassist Phil Sparks and drummer Matt Jorgensen started over. Nationally known members of Seattle’s jazz community, they and Shew set about belying his claim about the unimportance of expertise. Playing flugelhorn, Shew and his accompanists locked up in a close relationship that continued through three sets. When “Beautiful Love”ended, Shew said, “Nice rhythm section, huh?” In support and in solo, all three were in splendid form all night long.

Among the highlights:

• Shew’s dancing trumpet solo on “Fungi Mamma,” a sunny Caribbean piece by his late friend and frequent big band section mate Blue Mitchell.

• His interval leaps and depth of tone in a passionate treatment of Billy Strayhorn’s “Lush Life.” Shew spoke about his love for ballads. “People think it must be easy to play them because they’re slower,” he said. “No, you just get in deeper trouble.” If there was trouble, it wasn’t audible.

• Intriguing playing by all hands on Randy Aldcroft’s multifarious “Breakfast Wine,” a piece Shew told the audience he has played hundreds of times. “I keep finding surprises in it.” It was the title tune of a 1985 Shew album that is in serious need of reissuing.

• “Darn That Dream” as a medium-fast bossa nova nudged along by the subtleties of Jorgensen’s canny Brazilianisms.

• Trumpeter Thomas Marriott sitting in for three tunes. On “Just Friends” Shew’s exchanges of four-bar phrases with his former student morphed into a chorus of simultaneous improvisation so logical that it sounded like written counterpoint.

Around midnight, most of the audience had drifted away. A handful of Seattle musicians lingered at the bar. Shew took “Body and Soul” at a medium clip and the flugel far, far above the staff with lyricism and no sense of strain or sacrifice of tone. Finally he brought Marriott back to the stand to end the evening transacting serious blues business; several choruses of “Walkin’” with passionate solos by all hands. When it ended, the band stood grinning at one another as if they had achieved something.

They had.

No video or audio is available from Shew’s evening at Tula’s, so we’ll settle—gladly— for “Breakfast Wine” from that 28-year-old out-of-print LP.

(Photos of the rhythm section and Marriott from eyeshotjazz.com)

The latest post in Steve Cerra’s Jazz Profiles concerns first-rate musicians who are well known only where they live. Sometimes, Steve points out, that is because they don’t get a break. Sometimes, it is because they want to stay put.

“Every town has one,” he writes. “Whether it’s Pittsburgh, Cleveland, Reno or Seattle. Somewhere in these cities, there is an exceptional Jazz musician who is mainly known only to those familiar with the local Jazz scene.”

Cerra’s case-in-point is the late pianist Jack Brownlow (pictured). Here is some of what he wrote:

People who can play the music, flow with it. Their phrasing is in line with the tempo, the new melodies that they super-impose over the chord structures are interesting and inventive and they bring a sense of command and completion to the process of creating Jazz.

These qualities help bring some Jazz musicians to national, if not, international prominence. Deservedly so. It’s not easy to play this stuff.

We buy their recordings, read articles about them in the Jazz press and attend their concerts and club dates.

But throughout the history of Jazz, be it in the form of what was referred to as “territory bands,” or local legends who never made it to the big time or recorded, or those who only played Jazz as a hobby, word-of-mouth communication somehow managed to inform us of the startling brilliance of these locally-based musicians.

Such was the case with pianist Jack Brownlow who for many years was one of the most highly regarded Jazz musicians in the greater-Seattle area.

For Cerra’s account of the first time he heard Brownlow and to watch the video presentation he created to accompany one of the pianist’s most lyrical recordings, visit Jazz Profiles.

If you enter “Jack Brownlow” in the Rifftides search box at the top of the page, you will find a number of posts about him or mentioning him. This one has a story portraying the Bruno anyone who ever knew him will recognize.

One night in the early 1970s when the Half Note of blessed memory was still in downtown Manhattan and had yet to develop midtown pretensions, Roy Haynes was playing drums with Al Cohn and Zoot Sims. Dave Frishberg was the pianist. I think the bassist was Victor Sproles. In the closing tune of a late set, Haynes played a ferocious solo that went on for 20 minutes and was too short. The patrons and the other musicians were spellbound by the intricacy, control and rhythmic wit of his playing. Soaked and smiling, to a roar of approval Haynes came down off the stand behind the bar.

As he walked over to my stool, I asked, “Feel better?”

Haynes locked eyes with me and said, emphatically, “I felt good to start with.”

At 87, touring with a quartet of musicians less than half his age, he still feels good. As indicated in this Rifftides post from February, his inventiveness, power, drive and affirmativeness are undiminished. Here he is last year at the San Sebastian Jazz Festival in Spain. Haynes, David Kikoski and bassist John Patitucci play McCoy Tyner’s “Blues on the Corner.”