Nick Moran, The Messenger (CAP). I mentioned Moran’s guitar playing nearly two years ago in one of the first Rifftides postings. The piece was about a visit to The Garage in New York’s Greenwich Village. It included this observation:

Moran is a good young guitarist with a lyrical bebop bent and an alert harmonic faculty. He would benefit from self-editing, but it’s a rare young improviser who would not.

Perhaps because the occasion is a recording, not a jazz club performance, Moran’s solos here are shorter and crisper. It is good to hear him again with Ed Withrington. In this case, however, Withrington’s keyboard is a Hammond B-3, giving the group the fashionable organ trio sound but less of the crisp interplay with Moran that I heard when Withrington was on piano and the group had a bassist at The Garage. Withrington supplies bass lines with his foot pedal. Drummer Andy Watson has a chattery style and a nice feel for snare and cymbal accents.
The repertoire is nine pieces by Moran. Combined with the instrumentation, the uniformity of compositional style produces a restful, if moderately enervating, listening experience. That may be precisely what Moran was aiming for, but this listener would have welcomed relief in pace and atmosphere, perhaps by way of a familiar standard or two or more of the adventurousness the group displays in the final track, “Shorter Steps.”
I’ll be following Moran’s development with interest.

Have you ever wondered why Buddy Rich was called the world’s fastest drummer?
Go here.
Have a good weekend.

Rifftides correspondent John Birchard sent a link to this remarkable video with the comment, “It ain’t jazz, but it is certainly extraordinary work.”
Amen. The playing by an unidentified cellist is extraordinary, too.

The tenth edition of The Commission Project’s Swing ‘n Jazz event in Rochester, New York, was a canny three-day blend of fund-raising, concertizing and education. Initiated fifteen years ago by Ned Corman, the project sends musicians into schools across the country. As I wrote last year in explaining Swing ‘n Jazz,

It is a piece of a cultural mosaic that, for its variety and vitality, would be remarkable in many larger cities. TCP’s mission description reads that it shall foster “creativity through music education by bringing students together with professional composers and performers in schools and communities nationwide.” Swing (as in golf) ‘n Jazz is built around a tournament attracting well-heeled contributors who provide the money that keeps the nonprofit TCP running. Some of the musicians swing both on the stand and the links. But, mostly, they work with students and those who educate students, to improve understanding of how to make jazz.

For all of that posting, go here.

Again, trumpeter Marvin Stamm was the music director. He and Corman assembled a playing-teaching staff that included well known national musicians. Clarinetist Paquito D’Rivera, bassists Jay Leonhart and Mike Richmond, drummers Akira Tana and Rich Thompson, guitarist Steve Brown, trombonist Fred Wesley, trumpeter and composer Paul Smoker were among the volunteer faculty. All of the musicians donate their time and talent. They include a galaxy of performers from the Rochester area, many of them seasoned professionals who teach at the Eastman School of Music and other higher education institutions.

A major concert for the public on Saturday night involved nearly all of the two dozen or so musicians. Smaller fund-raising performances on Friday and Sunday evenings, both at country clubs, entertained donors and prospective donors who keep the nonprofit TCP afloat. At one, called Bassists’ Night Out, Leonhart was in charge of eight bassists accompanied by Brown on guitar with Tana and Thompson alternating on drums. Four of the bassists were the veteran music educator Malcom Kirby, Sr., and his three adult children Caroline, Elliott and Malcolm, Jr. Mike Richmond, Jeff Campbell and Aleck Brinkman also played. The evening may have been bottom heavy, but it was light hearted, especially when Leonhart did a couple of his celebrated songs accompanying himself. I’ve heard him do “Nukular” a half-dozen times, and it still affects me deeply. Unfortunately, President Bush was on his way to Prague to speak of things nuclear and couldn’t be in the audience.

Because they were all scheduled at the same time, I could attend only one of the six Saturday workshops held in Rochester schools. It was at the School of Arts, a part of the Rochester public school system. The perfomers and faculty were Stamm, D’Rivera, Brown, Leonhart and Thompson. In the course of the morning, they played three pieces and coalesced into a chamber group of rare balance and musicality. It was an ad hoc gathering of artists who developed immediate sensitivity to one another.

From the first piece, Cole Porter’s “I Love You,” the quintet melded into a blended perfection that bands seldom achieve short of weeks playing together. In “Morning of the Carnival,” Stamm, D’Rivera and Brown had a mutuality of spontaneous thematic development that sometimes happens in jazz at the highest level. D’Rivera, a brilliant clarinetist, reversed a phrase of Stamm’s and Brown echoed one of of D’Rivera’s, all within the parameters of Luis Bonfa’s ravishing melody. When the solos began, D’Rivera increased the intensity, then Brown imparted a blues feeling. Stamm began his improvisation outside the harmonic pattern of the piece and flowed through his solo with melodic inventiveness and lack of apparent effort that could almost lead one to believe that the trumpet is easy to play. Leonhart bowed his solo, vocalising in unision. He and D’Rivera collaborated in a chorus of counterpoint. Then, harkening back to the idea Stamm had planted, they all joined in a chorus of free playing before sliding back into the closing statement of the melody.

“That was fun,” D’Rivera said. This group should definitely record.

Their singleness of mind and purpose extended beyond the music into discussion with the audience. “What do you think about when you’re improvising,” a youngster asked.
“Motivic ideas,” Steve Brown said. “To me, it’s all about conversation with other people.”
That led, over the course of the morning, to a chain of related ideas.

“It’s an amazing physical, mental and emotional process,” Jay Leonhart said.

“You must listen to all kinds of music,” D’Rivera said.

“If all you know is rock, which is loud music, what you would play in reaction in this setting would not be appropriate,” Thompson said.

“If you don’t listen to this music, to jazz, no matter how much technique you have, you can’t play this music,” Stamm said. “It’s like speech. You learn to speak by ear. You accumulate vocabulary. If you listen to the right music, your phrasing will develop.”
“How do you balance theory and natural musicality?” an older member of the audience asked.
“There is no conflict between intuition and technique,” Stamm said.

“But,” D’Rivera said, “You must read music. You think you can get by on your great ears? Play me Beethoven’s 9th Symphony.”

“The audience knows when you’re communicating,” Stamm said. “You can’t be condescending to the audience.” On the importance of subduing peformer’s ego for the benefit of the music, he returned to Brown’s thought about music as attentive conversation. “There’s no one up here who isn’t ready to give it up for the others.”

That is a music lesson that goes beyond music.

By way of “All the Things You Are,” the quintet demonstrated its point about listening and conversing, and the workshop ended, two hours of wisdom through teaching and playing by five musicians who were uncommonly effective in both areas. It was a small, memorable example of what The Commission Project achieves.

School systems under budget pressure eliminate music and arts programs first. That has been the case for a couple of decades. It is damaging the United States and it is an indictment of priorities and values in our society. The Commission Project is doing something about that failing. It deserves substantial help. I have seen the program in action two years running, watched the light go on in young minds. Go to the TCP web site and learn where you can send support. The Commission Project is a national program. It is based in Rochester, but there is no reason that most of its financial support should come from there. Your help will be welcome. The children need it.

The eminent trumpeter and early morning runner Marvin Stamm responded to the recent Rifftides post about T.S. Eliot and television.

I couldn’t agree with you more. you are right on the money – 4:00 am or no. Beautifully written!
I will take issue with you regarding Stewart and Colbert. Sid Caeser, Jackie Gleason, George Gobel, et al, were a different ilk. Unbelievably brilliant, but in their way, with what they do. So, too, in my opinion, are Stewart and Colbert. They are just very different, doing what they do in very different times. Wouldn’t it be great to see how Caeser, and the others would do today!

If Caesar were around, anything he might do would be fine with me. As you watch this sketch with Caesar and Nanette Fabray, keep in mind that it was done live before an audience, not on videotape. You don’t have to know much about television production to admire not only the obvious genius of Caesar and Fabray but also the skill and timing of the director and cameramen, who were wheeling enormous RCA studio cameras on massive carriages.

The young veteran broadcaster Jason Crane podcasts from his interesting site The Jazz Session. During my visit to Rochester, he was kind enough to ask me to join him for an extended conversation about jazz, news, Rifftides and other things. To hear it, click here.

Flying east, two experiences melded into a thought around a phrase. Forty-six years and ten days ago, Newton Minow spoke at the annual meeting of the National Association of Broadcasters, the organization of people who ran television and radio in the United States. Minow was the chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, which regulates broadcasting. Today broadcasting seems to regulate the FCC, but that’s not my point. Here’s the section of Minow’s speech that contained the phrase.

When television is good, nothing — not the theater, not the magazines or newspapers — nothing is better. But when television is bad, nothing is worse. I invite you to sit down in front of your television set when your station goes on the air and stay there without a book, magazine, newspaper, profit and loss sheet or rating book to distract you — and keep your eyes glued to that set until the station signs off. I can assure you that you will observe a vast wasteland.

A wasteland. The waste land. Hardly an original construction. It’s in the bible, and it’s in an eighty-five-year-old poem.
My flights from Seattle to New York City and New York to Rochester constituted an agreeable first experience on Jet Blue. That airline is still often called an upstart, although its startup was years ago and it is quite successful, give or take the occasional snowstorm snafu. One of Jet Blue’s points of pride is its seat-back television sets featuring forty-one channels transmitted to the plane from a satellite. In preparation for a book group discussion later this month, my plan for the trip had been to read T.S. Eliot’s The Waste Land, along with an analysis of that nearly impenetrable1922 poem. After an hour-and-a-half of Eliot, I was ready for something simpler, so I watched television. Full disclosure: I made my living in television news for twenty-five years, but life is full of other pursuits, and I rarely watch TV.
I agree with Minow’s first line about television. When it is good, it is magnificent. At the time of his speech in 1961, color television was six years old. So was the TV version of Gun Smoke. Video tape was even younger. Viewers could still see live drama on television. The Andy Griffith Show was brand new, years away from perpetual reruns. The Huntley-Brinkley Report and the CBS Evening News were fifteen minutes long. They delivered the news of the day; the misdeeds of people famous for being famous were not on the menu. The Twilight Zone and Alfred Hitchcock Presents were among the prime time dramas. All of those programs were, to apply Minow’s strict standard, good. Yesterday on Jet Blue’s seat-back console, I found nothing of those programs’ quality. Nothing. That includes newscasts from the BBC and CBS. It includes the prime time series, which were uniformly centered on fiery deaths, incest, in-your-face adultery, summary executions at close range and, for comic relief, now and then a car chase. The Daily Show and the Colbert Report showed flashes of wry intelligence, but little that matches the penetrating wit of Sid Caesar, Steve Allen, Ernie Kovacs, or even of George Gobel.
The shows devoted to standup comics were beneath criticism. These people claim to be descended from Lennie Bruce? Give me a break.
Eliot’s The Waste Land is a difficult poem. It is packed with references and allusions to the bible, Greek mythology, Chaucer and Fraser’s The Golden Bough, among other sources reflecting his classical scholarship at Harvard. He tried to explain parts of it in a series of notes, some of which merely muddied the waters. Some critics say that the poem is Eliot’s effort to purge himself of the desolation he felt when he contemplated the state of humanity following World War One. In any case, its forecast is of a world whose prospects are for further moral and spiritual decay.
I tend to be an optimist. Nothing I saw on Jet Blue’s screen last night encouraged me, but a long time ago I decided not to let television define the world. On the return trip, I’ll ignore the seat back monitor and read a book.

The Rifftides Staff is off to the The Commission Project’s Swing ‘n Jazz X. I will send reports from the road when possible. In the meantime, please enjoy browsing the archives, which reach back to the beginning of this endeavor, nearly two years ago. That may seem a short time to YOU.

Time out of the writing crunch to hear successive Jessica Williams concerts was time well spent. Williams has taken a liking to The Seasons and returned there with her new trio for two evenings. On Saturday,Williams, bassist Doug Miller and drummer John Bishop played a Duke Ellington program. The repertoire, except for the infrequently heard calypso “Angelique,” was made up of sixteen of Ellington’s most familiar pieces. She opened with “C-Jam Blues,” closed with “Take the ‘A’ Train” and included “I Got it Bad,” “Do Nothing ‘Til You Hear From Me,” “Satin Doll” and…well, you get the idea. A routine Ellington lineup, perhaps, but Williams’ piano playing and her interaction with Miller and Bishop were far from routine.
Williams employed all of her virtuosity; the improbably long fingers executing piston keystrokes, the extended crossed hands passages, the stride left hand, the tremolos, the polytonality. Still, what captured the crowd was the swing, warmth and humanity of the music. Following a distracted start on “Prelude to a Kiss,” Williams called a halt and got sympathetic chuckles from the audience when she said, “If you can forgive others, you can forgive yourself.” She started the song again, soloed with passion and comped like a guiding angel behind a Miller bass solo that was a highlight of the concert. Williams’ concept for the evening was to program it as if the trio were playing for a dance. Indeed, she encouraged people to dance in the area between the front row of seats and the stage. Three couples did, rather tentatively, during “Mood Indigo,” but one of them told me later that the listening was so good, dancing was a distraction. That’s an interesting switch on the old complaint “Why don’t you play something we can dance to?”
Sunday, Memorial Day eve, Williams premiered a new composition, “Freedom Suite,” not related to the 1958 Sonny Rollins piece with the same name. She dedicated the six-movement work to veterans who died in all US wars from the American Revolution to Iraq and Afghanistan. Prefaced with a flag ceremony by women volunteers from a Veterans of Foreign Wars unit, the suite began with an other-worldly piano introduction to Miller’s bowing of “Taps,” its resonance supported by Williams’ impressionistic chords and the shimmering swell of Bishop’s cymbals. The movement called “Night Patrol” surged with modal intensity through piano and bass solos into a Bishop drum solo over an insistent pedal point.
Introducing the “Final Wish” section, Williams said, “I finished writing this one at 3:30 or 4:00 o’clock this morning. I wanted it to be perfect–and so far, it is.” She showed Bishop the bass part she had written for Miller, explaining the varied rhythms she wanted through a series of eight-bar sections. Bishop nodded and smiled, and with only that discussion for a rehearsal, the trio played the piece for the first time. It remained perfect.
Leaning into the piano, Williams stroked the strings like a harpist, setting up insistent three-four time that supported the dirge of the final movement, “Lament.” By way of her virtuosity through an unaccompanied solo that at times suggested an affinity for early McCoy Tyner, she managed to express optimism as well as sadness before Miller and Bishop rejoined her for a final statement of the theme.
This is an initial impression of a work I want to absorb further. We may all have that opportunity. The concert was recorded and could appear on a CD. If that happens, I’ll let you know.

A contributor with the internet handle Astrotype just sent YouTube five videos taken from a 1966 Dave Brubeck Quartet concert in Germany. If you’re thinking of Paul Desmond on this thirtieth anniversary of his death, you may remember him even more kindly as you listen to a “Take Five” solo unlike any other I’ve heard from him, and a four-minute Desmond rumination on the minor blues of “Koto Song.” Brubeck, Desmond, Wright and Morello were in great form, collectively and individually. Rebutting critics who loved to rail against Brubeck, Desmond often praised his friend’s sensitive accompaniments. This version of “Take the ‘A’ Train” offers evidence for the defense. It also has Morello and Brubeck in a spirited, and well photographed, exchange of four-bar phrases.
For Astrotype‘s menu of five Brubeck videos from the German concert, three new ones of John Coltrane and four of Thelonious Monk, go here, and you’ll be glad you stayed home this Memorial Day weekend. Isn’t this more fun than being in a traffic jam?*
*For Rifftides readers in other countries, this American form of expression reaches its fullest flower on the weekend set aside to honor those who have fallen in war. Millions of us pile into cars and trucks (also known as SUVs) and park on the roads and freeways, honking horns and swearing oaths in remembrance.