Woodard and Haden: Conversations With Charlie Haden (Silman-James)
Interviews transcribed from tape recordings and transformed into print are often boring substitutes for writing. With judicious editing, however, the technique can be illuminating. Journalist Josef Woodard’s many chats with bassist Charlie Haden (1937-2014) provide valuable insights into what fueled Haden’s musical tastes and goals and the social conscience that was inseparable from his music. Woodard draws out Haden on child stardom in his family’s western band, his key role with Ornette Coleman and the emergence of free jazz, and events beyond. “…I heard Ornette play,†he tells Woodard, “and I said, man, that’s what I’ve been hearing.†Among other areas of his packed musical life, Haden discusses his Liberation Music Orchestra, pianist Keith Jarrett, the importance of Carla Bley, the creation of Quartet West and his collaborations with Pat Metheny. The book’s laudatory forewords are by Bill Frisell and Alan Broadbent.
The introduction of the compact disc in 1982 made analog sound delivered by phonograph records and landline telephones obsolete—didn’t it? If not, then the advent of iTunes in 2001 and the iPhone in 2007 replaced analog forever—didn’t they? Damon Krukowski makes a persuasive case to the contrary, that analog is a natural part of us, and necessary to cultural health. A musician (Galaxie 500, Damon & Naomi) and audio researcher, he writes, “CDs arrived on the consumer market like any other hi-fi marketing scheme…For those of us happily wallowing in our LPs, it sounded like a pitch designed to part bored businessmen from their money.†It was, of course, much more than that, as he concisely explains. Exploring signal, noise, headspace, volume pumping, system latency and other audio phenomena, Krukowski presents in 224 pages a convincing argument that the world has and needs analog sound.
For more than half a century the German piano virtuoso Joachim Kühn has made it all but impossible to categorize his music. He, bassist Chris Jennings and drummer Eric Schaefer begin his eclectic new album with Ornette Coleman’s title composition and end with Gil Evans’ 1957 masterpiece “Blues For Pablo.” In the course of the program Kühn plays The Doors’ “Riders On The Storm” and “The End,†Gershwin’s “Summertime,” Kryzyszstof Komeda’s brooding
“Sleep Safe And Warm†from the score of Rosemary’s Baby and “Sleep On It†by the techno-digital-reggae-new-wave band Stand High Patrol. Kühn the composer contributes three pieces, including “Machineria,†which is not as mechanical as its title suggests. Indeed, his keyboard touch and interaction with Jennings and Schaefer give it the warmth of a slow boil. For a review of this trio in live performance, 
Producer-Director Adam Kahan includes biographical facts throughout his film about Kirk (1935–1977), the most prominent jazz multi-instrumentalist of the late twentieth century. Friends, family members and Kirk bandsmen talk about his creativity, his determination and the blindness and blackness that were at the center of his life. The testimonial interviews provide facts, but what make this film a gripping, occasionally riotous, experience are sequences of the phenomenally gifted musician in action. The Jazz And Peoples Movement that Kirk founded led him to The Ed Sullivan Show with sidemen including Charles Mingus, Roy Haynes and Archie Shepp. “Wonderful…wonderful…wonderful,†Sullivan says with little conviction when Mingus’s “Haitian Fight Song†ends. The appearance did not result in greater receptivity to jazz on network TV. Ingenious animation by Måns Swanberg illustrates several Kirk voiceover clips, including the one about receiving the name Rahsaan in a dream. 
When the venerable Chicago jazz entrepreneur Bob Koester opened a new record store last fall, he initiated a live music policy by bringing in Outset, a quartet formed in 2013 by tenor saxophonist Dan Meinhardt. Koester, the founder of Delmark Records and the Jazz Record Mart, has for decades kept a close ear on rising young Chicago players. His choice of Outset for the opening of Bob’s Blues & Jazz Mart indicated faith in the band’s achievement and potential. This album substantiates both. Outset’s instrumentation of saxophone, trumpet, bass and drums recalls the influential quartets of Gerry Mulligan and Ornette Coleman. With adventurousness approaching iconoclasm, Outset leans more toward Coleman than Mulligan, but its personality is its own, even in a trademark piece like Thelonious Monk’s “Epistrophy.†Interaction and empathy among Meinhardt, the impressive young trumpeter Justin Copeland, bassist Tim Ipsen and drummer Andrew Green keep the proceedings interesting. In addition, Meinhardt’s pieces—among them the ballad-like “New Rain,†the quixotic “Bixotic†and a blues called “Wayneishâ€â€”suggest a composer of substance. This is band to keep an ear on.
On this observance of Martin Luther King’s birthday, we recommend an album that John Coltrane made at the height of the 1960s civil rights movement in the southern United States. He wrote “Alabama†following the bombing of Birmingham’s 16th Street Baptist Church in September, 1963. Four young girls died in the attack by white racists. Dr. King called it, “one of the most vicious and tragic crimes ever perpetrated against humanity.” “Alabama†is the emotional centerpiece of a major album by Coltrane’s nonpareil quartet with McCoy Tyner, piano; Jimmy Garrison, bass; and Elvin Jones, drums. Live At Birdland also contains superior versions of “Afro-Blue,†“I Want To Talk About You,†“The Promise,†“Your Lady†and “Vilia.” Coltrane recorded it during an engagement at the celebrated New York City jazz club Birdland. It is one of the key achievements of his career. 
2013 when he visited Villengen, Germany, the home of the former MPS label, he hit the jackpot—recordings by pianist Bill Evans that had been kept under wraps since they were made in 1968. Evans, bassist Eddie Gomez and drummer Jack DeJohnette had recently triumphed at the Montreux Jazz Festival. In DeJohnette, Evans had a new drummer who was uniquely in tune with what album annotator Marc Myers calls the pianist’s “percussive poet†phase. By this time Gomez had been with Evans for two years. Compatibility verging on ESP is tangible in their duo performances, notably “It Could Happen to You.†But it’s the three-way conversations that pull the listener most deeply into the music. DeJohnette’s firm, understated percussive asides in this “new†album inspire some of Evans’s best playing. 
The venerable organist’s doctorate is a figment, but his musicianship and ability to mold combos of any size into formidable units are even more real than when he moved from piano to organ in the 1950s. In this return to the Blue Note label after nearly half a century, Smith gives monumental trio performances of Thelonious Monk’s “Straight No Chaser†and Richard Rodgers’s “My Favorite Things.†In septet and sextet collaborations with his former saxophone sideman Joe Lovano, he tears it up in “Afrodesia†and his composition “For Heaven’s Sake.†Among the other guest artists in this inspired album are pianist Robert Glasper, saxophonist-flutist John Ellis, drummer Jonathan Blake and the impressive young trumpeters Maurice Brown and Keyon Harold. It’s an intergenerational fiesta. The good “doctor†is in top form, as funky and—when the funk subsides a bit—as subtle as ever. 
They forged their empathy when Mehldau was the pianist in saxophonist Redman’s quartet in the mid-1990s. In encounters over the years since, they have honed their rapport to a remarkable degree. These duo recordings from six cities on their 2011 European tour find them knitting together improvisational lines in Redman’s “Melsancholy Mood,†sparring with vigor in exchanges of 2-bar phrases during Thelonious Monk’s “In Walked Bud†and issuing blazing bebop pronouncements in Charlie Parker’s “Ornithology.†They rhapsodize through the Mehldau originals “Always August†and “Old West.†The height of their inventiveness comes despite—or perhaps because of—the extremely slow tempo of Hoagy Carmichael’s “The Nearness of You.†Reflecting on that incomparable melody, they create a mood deepened further by Redman’s unaccompanied tenor saxophone musings, which at the end prompt the audience to emerge from the reverie and deliver an ovation.
Legacy follows the 
The Austrian Guitarist Muthspiel is the leader, but he and his sidemen are so wrapped together in the music on Rising Grace that they might have been billed as a collective. Trumpeter Ambrose Akinmusire, pianist Brad Mehldau, bassist Larry Grenadier and drummer Brian Blade share with Muthspiel a commitment to lyrical expression that is apparent from the title tune through ten pieces, all but one composed by Muthspiel. Toward the end of Mehldau’s “Wolfgang’s Waltz†concentrated moments of mutual invention have Muthspiel and Mehldau intertwining guitar and piano lines as Grenadier and Blade elevate the swing while coloring the background. A tribute to the late trumpeter Kenny Wheeler has equally compelling interaction. Brilliant throughout, Akinmusire makes a showpiece of “Superonny†with blues feeling, daring interval leaps, a military allusion, a whinny and a growl. Rising Grace deserves the attention it’s getting.
As he awaits news about a second kidney transplant, health problems haven’t affected Cables’ fleetness and lyricism at the piano. Most of the compositions here are new, although his celebrated “Think On Me†dates to 1968 and “The Dark The Light†to 1975. “Think On Me†has a new lyric by Sarah Elizabeth Charles, who also wrote and sings words to four other Cables pieces. Her voice is light and sweet. She phrases well and sings in tune. Supported by the regular members of his trio, bassist Essiet Essiet and drummer Victor Lewis, Cables is joined on some of Ms. Charles’s numbers by saxophonist Craig Handy and percussionist Steven Kroon. Handy’s shining solo moment is on “For Honey Lulu.†With the trio, Cables adopts the harmonic structure of a certain omnipresent John Coltrane piece and dances through what he calls “Baby Steps.â€
Much of guitarist Frisell’s early exposure to music was by way of the sound tracks of motion pictures and television programs. His versions of some of that music show up on several of his albums. When You Wish Upon A Star takes his fascination a long step further. It contains nothing but his interpretations of music from screens large and small, going back to 1940 for the title track. Most of the pieces, however, are from his formative years in the 1950s and later. The themes played by his quintet include works by sound track heroes Mancini, Mandel, Morricone, Raksin, Barry, Hermann and Rota, with Dale Evans (“Happy Trailsâ€) and Frisell himself (“Tales From The Far Sideâ€) added for good measure. The band is Frisell, vocalist Petra Haden, violist Eyvind Kang, bassist Thomas Morgan and drummer Rudy Royston. They blend, contrast, surprise and amuse. Concentrated listening is rewarded.
During the decades he spent developing Indiana University’s jazz studies program, David Baker (1931-2016) became one of the most honored educators in his field. His student bands produced top-level players like trumpeter Randy Brecker and guitarist Dave Stryker, guest soloists on this album. Tenor saxophonist Rich Perry of the Maria Schneider Orchestra is another. The true stars, however, are Baker the master arranger and the members of the 22-piece band. Many of these outstanding soloists are IU alumni. In his teaching years, Baker wrote arrangements that made up 
Tom Harrell, 
Collaborators since their student days at the New England Conservatory nearly a decade ago, pianist Sanders and saxophonist Strosahl are dedicated to tradition and improvisation. Making the two qualities inseparable, they take listeners on an excursion through music as old as the dance rhythm of the Allemande, as new as the adventurism of Strosahl’s genre-busting title tune and as familiar as “Stardust.†It makes programming and musical sense when they go from their daring “Be-Bop Tune†to the 14th century composer Guillame Machaut, then to the quintessential 20th century composer Olivier Messiaen. Strosahl’s “Mazurka†leads into lilt and lyricism in Willard Robison’s “Old Folks,†with echoes of Charlie Parker. Sanders’ nostalgic “R.P.D.†finds the two mostly in sober unison and in a plaintive minor ending. With his two faces, the ancient Roman god Janus looked back and ahead—as does this intriguing namesake album.
Cecil Payne & Duke Jordan, 
In her first album for a major label, Bria Skonberg achieves consistency that in the past she sometimes obscured in forced vocal mannerisms. Her trumpet work, based in traditional jazz and swing, includes surprising bebop touches. She has unfailing agility and good tone. With and without a mute, her growl and wa-wa work shows familiarity with Bubber Miley, Rex Stewart and the Ellington brass tradition, nowhere more than in Sidney Bechet’s “Egyptian Fantasy.†Pianist Aaron Diehl, bassist Reginald Veal and drummer Ali Jackson are the first-class rhythm section, joined occasionally by vibraharpist Stefon Harris. Like Skonberg, Evan Amtzen is a native of British Columbia transplanted to New York. He enriches the proceedings with his tenor saxophone and clarinet solos and ensemble work. Of Skonberg’s five original songs, crossover potential of the 16-bar “Wear and Tear,†could take it a long way. 
After sideman work, then membership in cooperative groups with Cyrille Neville, Devon Allman and others, in 2012 the St. Louis blues guitarist and singer Mike Zito formed his band, The Wheel. Few dedicated jazz listeners also keep up with developments in the music that grows out of country blues pioneers like Blind Lemon Jefferson, Robert Johnson and Tampa Red—and such later urban performers as Ma Rainey, Bessie Smith and Big Bill Broonzy. Over the past century, hundreds of blues artists in Memphis, New Orleans, Dallas, Chicago and dozens of other places have forged personal blues styles. Zito is helping to extend the tradition. Here, he and The Wheel play “Bad News Is Coming.†The sidemen are Jimmy Carpenter, tenor saxophone; Scott Sutherland, bass; and Rob Lee, drums.