In response to yesterday’s Rifftides post, music critic Mark Stryker (pictured) of the Detroit Free Press sent a message that included a column he wrote earlier this year. With his permission, we bring it to you.

Very nice piece on Billy Childs’ new album. I’m anxious to hear it. Billy just wrote a Violin Concerto that was premiered by Regina Carter and the Detroit Symphony in January. I wrote a short preview/profile of Billy in advance of the performance. There’s no link, but I’ve copied it below.
By Mark Stryker
Detroit Free Press
Pianist and composer Billy Childs’ musical tastes were forged as a teenager in the early ’70s, when musical fusions were as ubiquitous as bell-bottoms. Progressive rockers like Emerson, Lake and Palmer, Gentle Giant and Yes covered classical compositions and wrote 20-minute works from a stew of influences. Jazz groups like Weather Report and Chick Corea’s Return to Forever walked an electric-acoustic fault line, creating ambitious marriages of funk, jazz and rock. Conductor Michael Tilson Thomas and the London Symphony recorded with jazz-rock guitarist John McLaughlin. Leonard Bernstein wrote a mass that had everything in it but the kitchen sink.
“It was an era of inter-genre respect, curiosity and tolerance,” says Childs, 52. “It shaped my desire to mix genres.”
Childs’ fusion aesthetic underscores his new Concerto for Violin written for the Detroit-born jazz star Regina Carter and co-commissioned by the Detroit Symphony Orchestra. DSO music director Leonard Slatkin will lead the world premiere starting Friday as part of the DSO’s annual Classical Roots celebration of black composers and performers.
An elegy in two movements, the concerto draws its emotional inspiration from the Iraq War and the loss of innocent life. Essentially a classical score, the piece also leaves room for the soloist to improvise in a jazz-inspired idiom.
Childs made his name as a jazz pianist with trumpeter Freddie Hubbard, vocalist Dianne Reeves and others, but he has increasingly been defined as a composer for orchestra and chamber ensembles. Since 1992 his résumé has filled with commissions from the Los Angeles Philharmonic, Dorian Wind Quintet, Los Angeles Master Chorale, American Brass Quintet and others. He won a 2009 Guggenheim Fellowship for composition. Childs still works as a pianist, arranger or producer; lately he’s been on the road with pop-jazz trumpeter Chris Botti. But the projects closest to his heart are his classical commissions and his Jazz Chamber Ensemble, a sextet with piano, bass, drums, harp, guitar and saxophone (doubling clarinet and flute), augmented at times with strings and winds.
Childs is as comfortable channeling the 20th-Century modernism of Hindemith, Bartok and Stravinsky as he is the contemporary post-bop of Corea and Herbie Hancock. The streams flow together on the 2005 CD “Lyric” by the Jazz Chamber Ensemble. Though some of the music slips into a generic pastoralism, the best works balance perfumed melody, impressionist harmony, detailed counterpoint, intuitive form and improvisation. The 9-minute “Into the Light” unfolds in three sections that suggest a continuous crescendo. Rippling piano provides a ground for singing flute and violin lines, with strings, guitar and harp underneath. There are Ravel-like interludes for string quartet and a piano improvisation over Latin rhythm that ascends to even greater intensity when the ensemble returns with new material.
“A lot of times when people know both classical and jazz worlds really well, when they create it’s either one or the other,” says Carter. “But with Billy’s writing it’s become one. It’s like a bilingual child who has created his own language.”
Carter had been smitten with Childs’ writing for years, dating to a concert she heard in which Reeves and an orchestra performed his arrangements. Carter was struck by his challenging writing for strings and the way he married strong rhythms and grooves with emotion. She asked Childs to write a piece for her, but it took years for him to work it into his busy schedule. Carter and Childs share the same manager, who approached the DSO about commissioning the piece; the work fits seamlessly into Slatkin’s agenda of championing sophisticated fusions of classical and vernacular music. The University of Notre Dame, Oakland East Bay Symphony and Boston Pops are co-commissioners.
Born in Los Angeles, Childs was surrounded by R&B, pop and jazz at home. Piano lessons at age 6 didn’t take, but he became obsessed with the instrument at 14 while attending boarding school. Returning home to finish high school, he began intensive formal study of classical piano, jazz piano, arranging and theory. Heroes as diverse as Corea, Keith Emerson and Hindemith shaped Childs’ desire to work on a broader canvas. So rather than attend an elite jazz school, he studied classical music as a composition major at the University of Southern California. Still, he had enough vocabulary as a jazz pianist to tour briefly with trombonist J.J. Johnson at 19 and start working with Freddie Hubbard a year later.
Stylistic crossbreeding has become viral today, but Childs knows he’s part of a jazz-classical continuum that stretches back at least as far as Scott Joplin’s ragtime opera “Treemonisha.” The line continues through Gershwin and Ravel, mid-century “Third Stream” composers like Gunther Schuller and John Lewis and the fusions of Childs’ youth. “We’re in that tradition, but this is our twist on it,” he says.
“I try to combine the genres at an organic level. I don’t like to ask an instrument to do something that has not traditionally proven to be comfortable. If I use a string quartet, I’m going to write idiomatic string quartet music. If I have a drummer, I’m not going to notate every note for the drummer to play. I try to make it the responsibility of the composition to pull off the marriage. I might have a motif in the string quartet that repeats and then someone will improvise over that. Or I might have a fugue but assign it to the bass, piano, guitar and drum set so drums are intrinsically involved.”
In his earlier works Childs consciously used traditional classical structures like sonata form and theme-and-variation, but now he allows each work to create its own form.
“The hardest part for me — and the most important part — is coming up with really good, strong melodic material. A good melody will draw a listener in and make the piece interesting, and a solid structure will engage the listener for a long period of time.

The staff thanks Mark Stryker for loaning Rifftides his work.

Billy Childs, Autumn In Moving Pictures: Jazz Chamber Music, Vol. 2 (artistShare).
There is a long history in jazz of strings in small-group chamber music. In a 1935 concert, Artie Shaw played a piece that he composed for clarinet and string quartet. It brought him attention that helped lead to his first big band. Ralph Burns integrated strings, flute and French horn with his piano, Ray Brown’s bass and Jo Jones’ drums, for his exquisite 1951 collection Free Forms. Later highlights of the genre were Gary McFarland’s album of subtle chamber music with pianist Bill Evans and The October Suite from 1966, with McFarland’s compositions and strings arrangements for pianist Steve Kuhn. Along the way there was distinguished music with small string ensembles by Jack Weeks and Clare Fischer for albums by Cal Tjader, Fischer’s own Songs For Rainy Day Lovers (included in this CD), Manny Albam’s writing for the piano of Hank Jones and the Meridian String Quartet, and violinist Harry Lookofsky’s magnificient 1959 Stringsville with Hank and Elvin Jones, Bob Brookmeyer and Paul Chambers.
Add to that distinguished list Autumn In Moving Pictures, the new CD by pianist Billy Childs. Childs is a pianist and composer whose talent far outstrips the recognition he has received for his own work and his associations with Freddie Hubbard, J.J. Johnson, Yo Yo Ma, Eddie Daniels and a galaxy of other musicians. He melds his rhythm section with saxophone or clarinet, harp, guitar, and, on some pieces, winds and the Ying String Quartet. The album’s nine tracks amount to a suite inspired when Childs found himself amidst the blazing beauty of fall in New England. Knowing of that stimulation, the listener may easily conjure images of turning leaves, crisp air, rainfall and – in the case of a track inspired by a William Carlos Williams poem – a red wheelbarrow.
However, without reference to what they are “about,” Childs’ inventions support themselves by dint of compositional craft and the musicianship of the players. The sonorities and harmonic fullness he achieves in blends of the instruments have much in common with French impressionists of the Twentieth century. He dramatically establishes that influence in the opening piece, “The Path Among the Trees,” with Brian Blade’s cymbal splashes and brushes on drums providing urgency, and guitarist Larry Koonse in a handsome solo. Childs’ writing for a passage of the string quartet alone is elegiac, giving way to urgency underscored by the insistency of Blade’s drumming. He uses Carol Robbins’ harp to carry most of the first chorus of the theme of Bill Evans’ “Waltz for Debby” before his piano slips in to finish the chorus and he introduces Bob Sheppard’s clarinet, Koonse’s guitar, Scott Colley’s bass and Antonio Sanchez’s drums. He develops a kaleidoscopic treatment that involves solos by individual instruments, combinations of intersecting lines, counterpoint, quick climaxes, changes of tempo and, finally, a peaceful – perhaps autumnal – piano resolution of the theme on a triad.
“Prelude in E-minor” is not Chopin’s, but a composition by Childs that returns to impressionism, with the harp prominent and specific references to Ravel. “A Man Chasing the Horizon” is full of vigor, with Childs bluesy in a section that highlights interaction among him, Sanchez and Colley before the strings and Sheppard enrich the ensemble and raise the intensity. Childs takes full advantage of the harmonic possibilities implicit in the familiar melody of Fauré’s “Pavane.” There is magic in his voicings around the French horn in the piece’s final ensemble. The 16th-note pitter-patter of “Raindrop Patterns” is the purest programmatic expression in the album. In this instance, even not knowing the title, listeners might think of rainfall or, during Sheppard’s impassioned soprano saxophone solo, a storm. “The Red Wheelbarrow” features reflective guitar by Koonse, who shines throughout the CD, as, indeed, do all of the musicians.
The publicity material sent with the album goes to pains to present this music as a successor of the third stream and fusion movements of the second half of the last century. If that marketing approach persuades people to listen to it, there is no harm done. If it drives away listeners put off by those labels, that’s a shame. Childs’ work needs no label. Of the two categories of music defined by Duke Ellington, this falls gloriously in the first: good.
Until this album materialized, I was not aware that Childs had made a Volume 1 of Jazz Chamber Music. It is called Lyric. I look forward to hearing it.

Hear Ye! The latest selection of Doug’s Picks is posted in the center column. It includes recommendations of new and old music on CD, a DVD documentary about a revered figure and a stimulating — even provocative — book.

No doubt there is marvelous jazz being broadcast all over the world this weekend, but here are two instances that we know about. One program is hosted by Jim Wilke on the west coast of the US, the other by Bill Kirchner on the east coast. Both are available to Rifftides listeners through the magic of digital communication.
The blurb from Wilke’s publicity juggernaut:

A surprisingly inventive duo plays spontaneous improvisations on Jazz Northwest on Sunday April 18 at 1 PM PDT on 88.5, KPLU. Pianist Bill Anschell and soprano saxophonist Brent Jensen have found each other molto simpatico when freely improvising on standards. Astute listeners as well as players, the two musicians often sound as if one mind is guiding ten fingers as they dissect familiar music in the course of playing it, examining and comparing fragments before reassembling a song. On this concert recorded at an Art of Jazz Concert at The Seattle Art Museum, the duo plays music ranging from Fats Waller to Thelonious Monk and several familiar standards.

On the web, go here at the appointed hour and click on “Listen Live.” Here are Anschell and Jensen playing Thelonious Monk’s “Ask Me Now.”

For a Rifftides review of an Anschell-Jensen concert last fall, go here.
Bill Kirchner describes his broadcast:

Recently, I taped my next one-hour show for the “Jazz From The Archives” series. Presented by the Institute of Jazz Studies, the series runs every
Sunday on WBGO-FM (88.3).
Born in Rio de Janeiro, Claudio Roditi (b. 1946) is one of Brazil’s foremost jazz exports. A resident of the United States since 1970, he has become equally renowned for his interpretations of straight-ahead jazz and Brazilian music.
We’ll hear Roditi on trumpet, flugelhorn, piccolo trumpet, and vocals on several albums under his leadership. Among his cohorts are trombonist Slide Hampton, pianists Mulgrew Miller and Helio Alves, and drummer Duduka da Fonseca.
The show will air this Sunday, April 18, from 11 p.m. to midnight, Eastern
Daylight Time.
NOTE: If you live outside the New York City metropolitan area, WBGO also
broadcasts on the Internet at www.wbgo.org.

In this video, Roditi plays his rotary valve flugelhorn with fellow Brazilians Helio Alves, piano; Leonardo Cioglia, bass; and drummer Duduka da Fonseca. Filmed at the Rising Jazz Stars studio in Beverly Hills, California, they play “Bossa pra Donato.”

Have a good weekend.

The Jazz Journalists Association has announced the nominees in its 2010 awards competition. Darcy James Argue (pictured) did not come from out of nowhere, but the young band leader, composer and arranger has moved up fast and made a big impression. Argue is nominated for the first time, in five categories. For a complete list of the nominees, go here.
Rifftides is flattered to be in the running for blog of the year. We are in fast company. Here are the nominees:
The Gig, Nate Chinen
A Blog Supreme, Patrick Jarenwattananon
Do The Math blog and webzine, Ethan Iverson
JazzWax, Marc Myers
Rifftides, Doug Ramsey
The awards will be presented June 14 in New York.

Ashley Kahn’s profile of Bruce Lundvall in The Wall Street Journal captures the Blue Note label president’s importance as a developer of talent and identifies his partial retirement as a marker of what is happening to the business of recorded music.

To many, Mr. Lundvall’s exit from Blue Note’s day-to-day operations, officially announced earlier this year, symbolizes the forced transition of an entire industry. Rocker-songwriter (Richard) Marx says: “I know Bruce has been very frustrated in the changes that have eliminated this thing called ‘artist development.’ The way the industry is heading, it’s really not the kind of thing that Bruce would want to be a big part of anyway.”
Mr. Lundvall’s words express as much: “This is the most challenging time I’ve ever seen in what used to be called the record business, now the digital music business. People download and don’t want hard copies of music. Jazz and classical buyers will probably help keep the physical formats going for a long time, but the idea is to try and monetize the digital world. It’s not easy to make a lot of money in this business anymore.”

Kahn’s article is titled, “Dr. Yes Will Hear You Now.” To find out why and read the whole thing, go here.

Music for voice, flute and guitar is rare in any idiom. In jazz, it is singular. When flutist Hubert Laws, singer Tierney Sutton and guitarist Larry Koonse performed together at a fund-raising event last fall in Los Angeles, the creative spark that materialized pleased and intrigued them. They made room in their busy musical lives for further collaboration. The three artists’ individual prominence alone would make this cooperative group worth notice. But last weekend in one of their rare concerts, it was merit, not the novelty of a troika of stars, that verified the value of the idea.
In the perfect acoustics of The Seasons performance hall in Yakima, Washington, Sutton, Laws and Koonse held a near-capacity audience in thrall from their opening “Pure Imagination” to the encore, “You Must Believe in Spring.” The intimacy of their blend, interaction and regard for one another was evident. Introducing “All The Things You Are,” which flowered into spontaneous counterpoint, Sutton said, “This is sort of like chamber music, isn’t it?”
“That’s exactly what it is,” Laws said.
Koonse began a stately “Ill Wind” with a slow chorus leading into Sutton’s vocal supported by obbligato from Laws. Chamber music, yes, and art song as effective as Schubert or Wolff. If the ballads were redolent of music from the romantic period, the up-tempo pieces had the bite of bebop. In “‘S Wonderful” Sutton made effective use of melisma at warp speed. “Joy Spring” had Sutton and Laws in a wordless unison chorus, then Sutton nailing Jon Hendricks’ ingenious lyric, followed by Laws’ blistering piccolo solo, Koonse chording his solo, and Sutton and Laws wrapping it up in an exchange of fours. Other highlights: the groove intensifying through “Lullaby of the Leaves;” Sutton’s beautiful reading of Gene Lees’ lyric to Bill Evans’ “Very Early;” Laws’ evocation of Ravel as Sutton sang Alan and Marilyn Bergman’s words to Dave Grusin’s “A Child is Born;” the empathy of Koonse and Laws in their duet on “Stella by Starlight.”
Throughout, the trio listened, tuned and adjusted to one another. The sense of mutual appreciation on stage was palpable. The concert ran a good half hour past its scheduled conclusion. No one seemed to mind. Near the end, as she was introducing “Cherokee,” Sutton told of placing third years ago in a Thelonious Monk vocal competition. Of the unnamed first and second place winners she said, “They’re not doing a gig tonight with Hubert Laws and Larry Koonse.” The three will continue to go their own ways, Sutton leading the Tierney Sutton Band (“I’m here tonight with their permission,” she said), Laws and Koonse traveling the world to perform. They say that they will appear together as often as possible and that they will record. That is something to look forward to.

The few precedents of music for voice, guitar and flute seem to be outside of jazz. Igor Stravinsky came close to the combination with “Four Russian Songs” for voice, flute, guitar and harp, as did the contemporary American composer Daniel Asia with a series of “Sacred Songs” for voice, flute, guitar and cello. The operatic soprano Victoria de los Angeles recorded a group of Sephardic songs from the Spanish renaissance with flute and guitar accompaniment. “Pure Land,” a setting by the Serbian-American composer DuÅ¡an Bogdanović, is for flute, guitar and poetry of Patricia Capetola. It appears not to have been recorded. Brazilian guitarist Laurindo Almeida arranged pieces by Fauré and Schubert for voice, flute and guitar. Here is Fauré’s “Pavane” played by Almeida with mezzo-soprano Salli Terri and flutist Martin Ruderman.

In conversation with a casual listener who said he wanted to know more about jazz, I mentioned that the creation of melody in improvisation is not limited to what are generally considered melody instruments. I said that some drummers play melodic, even lyrical, solos.
“What do you mean?” he said, clearly puzzled. I tried, rather clumsily, I’m afraid, to explain that through combinations of phrasing, dynamics and tone control, a drummer who is so inclined (not all are) can create trains of musical thought as cogent as those of a horn player. I mentioned a few names, beginning with Jo Jones. They meant nothing to the man. I didn’t think he was buying my proposition. I promised to look for an example and alert him.
For my acquaintance, and for anyone else interested, here’s a case in point. Joe LaBarbera is one of the contemporary masters of melodic drumming. In the 1979 video clip below, he is featured with Bill Evans’s last trio. Marc Johnson is the bassist. LaBarbera solos with wire brushes and with sticks, and exchanges phrases with Johnson. Concentration on not only LaBarbera’s rhythm but also, to borrow Lester Young’s term, his story-telling, may help our friend grasp the concept.
One further thought before you click on the play button: in this year before Bill Evans died, he more and more often returned to the muscularity that characterized his playing in the late 1950s and early ’60s. In this version of a tune that he loved, that strength is apparent.

Cycling is in full, if often chilly, swing. Fruit trees and wildflowers are blossoming. On today’s 30-mile expedition through the back country heights, I came across this field in bloom and didn’t want to keep it to myself.

“Hello To The Season,”( to quote the title of a piece from Gary McFarland’s Point of Departure with Richie Kamuca, Jimmy Raney, Willie Dennis, Steve Swallow and Mel Lewis). I thought that this exquisite 1963 album had long since lapsed into unavailability. But this web site claims to have it as a CD. If that is true, run, don’t walk, to order it while it’s still around. At any moment, it could disappear again.

I have no idea how Sharkey Bonano (see the April 9 item below) felt about Art Farmer’s playing or, indeed, whether he was aware of Farmer. They were from different eras and different styles. My guess is that Farmer’s lyricism would have appealed to Bonano, whose own playing carried a trace of Bix Beiderbecke DNA.
In this video from a 1966 program on the Dutch TV station NCRV, Farmer collaborates on “Just Friends” with alto saxophonist Lee Konitz and the Swedish trombonist Ake Persson. The rhythm section is pianist Pim Jacobs’ trio, with Stu Martin on drums. We don’t see the bassist, but most likely he is Ruud Jacobs, his brother’s more or less constant sideman during this period. The date was under Oliver Nelson’s leadership. Near the end of the performance, we catch a glimpse of Nelson and his tenor saxophone.