Rifftides

Doug Ramsey on Jazz and other matters...

Thanksgiving, 2018


This is a national holiday in the United States, important ever since the newly arrived Pilgrims and the native Wampanoag gave thanks in 1621. To Americans observing it, the Rifftides staff sends wishes for a Happy holiday. To readers in the US and around the world: thank you for your interest, readership and comments, which are always welcome.

To those who treasure memories of Vince Guaraldi’s Peanuts holiday specials from your childhood—or maybe your adulthood—this may be familiar.

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone.

Recent Listening: Eden Bareket

Eden Bareket, Night (Fresh Sound New Talent)

New York City is still the jazz capital of the world. For about a century, young musicians have gone there from nearly every country to be in the midst of the growth and ferment of music that is in a constant state of change and challenge. The baritone saxophonist Eden Bareket is relatively new to the city. Bareket was born in Buenos Aires, grew up in Israel and has been a New Yorker since 2013. The trio featuring him, his bassist brother, Or, and Chilean drummer Felix Lecaros is in growing demand as a unit, and its members get frequent calls for assorted individual gigs on the New York scene. In command of the baritone sax from its lowest register to the altissimo range, Bareket’s new album Night also demonstrates his scope as a composer. All of the pieces are his except Matti Caspi’s “Lost Melody,” which Bareket arranged. “Baccatum” illustrates his touch as a composer, the solo abilities of all three, and the group interaction that enlivens every track. In addition to the CD version, they recorded it in a YouTube video.

Let’s hear it for musical internationalism.

It Became A Lazy Afternoon

This afternoon it was 30 degrees out there, with a piercing breeze. Drivers were unruly, aggressive, rushing. The line at the gas pump was slow. I returned home, shivering, to a greeting from my wife. “It’s a lazy afternoon,” she said.

Suddenly, the afternoon became lazy, with a long lunch, a leisurely hour conquering two crossword puzzles and inspiration to look up Shirley Horn. There she was, waiting to reinforce my new mood, which could not be derailed by the irrelevant out-of-focus album covers posted by a YouTube contributor with her video. Close your eyes. Enjoy a perfect interpretation of a beautiful song. Ms. Horn accompanies herself on the piano. Buster Williams is the bassist, Billy Hart the drummer.

That is from Shirley Horn’s 1986 album Steeplechase album Lazy Afternoon.

Weekend Extra: Listening With Hal Galper

I don’t often post video of people talking. The best way to understand music is to listen—often—intensively—with concentration—without preconceptions. Today, we have a departure from  the Rifftides policy of letting the music speak for itself. Hal Galper is a pianist known to many of you for his work with Phil Woods, Chet Baker, Donald Byrd, Cannonball Adderley John Scofield. He is the leader of his own trio and has been in the bands of so many other consequential players that it would be impossible to list them all.

Mr. Galper is a teacher. Several of his instructional videos are online. In the one below, the subject is practicing. His observations can be valuable to musicians. They can also provide laymen with information that can improve the quality of their listening. To get the drift of what he suggests here, it is unnecessary to have technical knowledge beyond the basics of what music is made of.

For more of Hal Galper, playing and talking, browse this youtube selection. Thanks to Bret Primack, the Jazz Video Guy, for making the clip available.

Weekend Listening Tip: Celebrating George Cables

Jim Wilke sent details about the program he has prepared for his next Jazz Northwest broadcast.

The program will be a broadcast of the complete concert “Celebrating George Cables” from McCurdy Pavilion during Centrum’s Jazz Port Townsend the last weekend of July. Pianist Cables has been a favorite for many years at the festival and the jazz workshop during the preceding week. Whether in the classroom, on the main stage or in an intimate club, he is a favorite among fans and the other musicians.

Joining George in this concert of his music will be other members of the faculty, each an international star (pictured below left to right), Dan Marcus, Jeff Hamilton, George Cables, Stefon Harris, Terell Stafford, Jeff Clayton, Tim Warfield . Mr. Cables provided special arrangements for this all-star septet.

Jazz Northwest will air on Sunday afternoon at 2 PM Pacific Time on 88.5, KNKX, and stream at knkx.org. After its broadcast, the program will be archived and available for streaming at jazznw.org

(Photos: Jim Levitt)

Charlie Haden And Brad Mehldau Duo, At Long Last

Charlie Haden & Brad Mehldau, Long Ago and Far Away (Impulse!)

Charlie Haden (1937-2014) combined the solid tonal qualities of his bass playing with an audacious sense of harmonic adventure. Those qualities were ideal for the departures of Ornette Coleman’s quintet in the late 1950s. After his time with Coleman, Haden continued to employ the contrasting aspects of his musicianship throughout his life up to, including and beyond his remarkable Quartet West recordings. After hearing, by chance, the 23-year-old pianist Brad Mehldau in 1993, Haden arranged for a 1996 engagement at the Jazz Bakery in Los Angeles with Mehldau and alto saxophonist Lee Konitz. The next year, the three recorded together for the Blue Note label. Finally, in 2007 at the Enjoy Jazz Festival in Mannheim, Germany, Haden and Mehldau played for the first time as a duo. After years of delays, Long Ago And Far Away comes from the recording of that concert and finds the two beautifully interacting and supporting one another.

Mehldau scuffles a bit introducing the melody of the opening Charlie Parker blues “Au Privave,” but after that the two settle into tight interaction and mutual support in five beloved standards from the great American songbook, plus a beguiling version of David Raksin’s rarely performed “My Love And I.”

To these ears, that is the most effective performance of the Mannheim concert, but Haden and Mehldau are satisfying at nearly the same levels of emotion and collaboration in the Jerome Kern title tune, Irving Berlin’s “What’ll I Do,” Matt Dennis’s “Everything Happens To Me” and Sam Coslow’s “My Old Flame,” written in 1934 and still a goldmine of harmonic clues that Haden and Mehldau follow to new riches. It is gratifying to have this commemoration of their empathy.

The album booklet includes enlightening essays by Mehldau and Haden’s wife, Ruth.

Hargrove Bonus: Roy & Art Farmer

Thanks to all of the Rifftides readers who sent comments on Roy Hargrove’s passing. In response, here is a video that may provide a bit of consolation. The European production company Zycopolis provides neither a date nor a location of this performance, and no identification of the musicians. The opening title card seems to indicate that the club was the New Morning in Paris. Clearly, the other trumpet player is Art Farmer, who died in 1999, so this was probably slightly more than ten years into Hargrove’s regrettably short career. As for the players, the Rifftides staff huddled and agreed that Ray Brown is the bassist, Jackie Terrason the pianist and Alvin Queen the drummer. The piece is Dizzy Gillespie’s “Ow.” The scene after the music ends illustrates Hargrove’s and Farmer’s pleasure in working together

Radio Tribute To Hargrove

New York City jazz radio station WKCR announces that it will devote tomorrow’s broadcast day to  music of Roy Hargrove. The trumpeter died on Friday at age 49. The Hargrove programming will began at 2 a.m. Eastern time. For details, go here.

Roy Hargrove, 1969-2018

Trumpeter Roy Hargrove died of a heart attack in New York yesterday at the age of 49. Hargrove was one of a coterie of young musicians who came to prominence following the sudden superstardom of fellow trumpeter Wynton Marsalis in the 1990s. Record companies scrambled to find their own Marsalises. Hargrove became famous not long after he was graduated from the Booker T. Washington High School for the Performing Arts in Dallas, Texas. His technical accomplishments, youth, personality and attractiveness brought him a contract with RCA’s Novus Records. By his early twenties he had won two Grammy awards.

His longtime manager Larry Clothier told NPR News that Hargrove had been undergoing years of dialysis as treatment for kidney failure. In a 1996 piece that I wrote for Texas Monthly, I quoted Clothier’s recollection of a 1987 jam session in which Hargrove sat in with Marsalis at the Fort Worth jazz club Caravan of Dreams.

Marsalis had heard Hargrove earlier and told Clothier, “Man, I heard this little kid today that’s gonna be a bitch. No, that’s wrong, that kid’s a bitch today.”

Clothier described Hargrove at the jam session.

He was like this, Clothier says, drawing his head into his shoulders and casting his eyes to the floor. Wynton said, “You want to play something?” and he sort of shrank and looked down and nodded. And I thought, man, this kid’s scared to death. But when it came time, you could just see him draw himself up and expand. And it was like Wynton said. He was a bitch.

That spring, Clothier persuaded other jazz stars at Caravan Of Dreams to let Hargrove sit in. Among them were vibraharpist Bobby Hutcherson, pianist Herbie Hancock and alto saxophonist Frank Morgan. Hargrove listened at the back of the stage while Hancock, bassist Buster Williams and drummer Al Foster soloed. Herbie and the guys were still struggling with this piece Buster had written,” Clothier says. “They thought Roy had decided not to try, but he stepped up to the microphone and played the hell out of it. Herbie almost fell off the stool ‘cause Roy had it and they didn’t.”

Like many trumpeters, Hargrove had a side love affair with the trumpet’s mellow cousin the flugelhorn. He excelled at summoning the flugel’s depth and warmth, as in this performance conducted and introduced by trombonist Slide Hampton at the Internationale Jazzwoche Burghausen in Wackerhalle, Gemany in 2007.

At this writing, funeral arrangements for Hargrove have not been announced.

Roy Hargrove RIP.

Weekend Extra: Kenny Werner’s New Solo Piano Album

Kenny Werner, The Space (Pirouet)

Rifftides listeners are not likely to need instruction about how to hear Werner’s music, but it may be helpful to keep in mind the liner-note quote he takes from his 2013 book Effortless Mastery.

We do things from our conscious mind or we do them from the space. The conscious mind is small and fearful. From the space, we are in the moment, content with what is. From the space we make decisions without doubt, we celebrate the mistakes. I’m still learning how to be that free and detached in life. But in music, for decades I have received what comes to me from the space with joy and delicious gratitude.

The listener who is fully who open to Werner’s playing is likely to also feel joy and delicious gratitude. For sixteen minutes in the title piece that opens the album Werner caresses a magnificently tuned and recorded piano. The dynamics of his keyboard touch, and his harmonic conception, hew to the principle of freedom that he outlines in the paragraph above. He follows with two more of his own compositions, a calypso-flavored piece credited to Keith Jarrett, the Ralph Rainger-Leo Robin classic “If I Should Lose You,” Michel LeGrand’s “You Must Believe In Spring,” plus “Taro” and Kiyoko,” by album producer Jason Seizer. One suspects that Seizer deserves equal credit with Werner for the album’s immaculate sound quality.

Three years following his brilliant trio album The Melody, Werner has released a solo collection that, if anything, establishes him even more solidly among the masters of modern jazz piano.