I did not attend Sonny Rollins’ Carnegie Hall concert last month and had not heard or read much about it until a review by Francis Davis in the current issue of The Village Voice. Davis calls it “this year’s be-there-or-be-square event” and gives it a thorough going-over, reporting the good and the better; unsurprisingly, there seems to have been no bad. Rollins, who is seventy-seven, performed with his current band. He also played with a pianoless trio, as he did at Carnegie Hall fifty years ago. The bassist this time around was Christian McBride, four decades younger than Rollins, the drummer Roy Haynes, five years older. Here is a section of Davis’s review.

For me, the mock-aria from South Pacific–an unlikely vehicle for anyone but Rollins–was the evening’s glory. He and Haynes didn’t exactly trade fours on it for 10 minutes running, and they didn’t exactly not; their exchanges followed the rules of conversation, not metrics. Analytical rather than discursive or ecstatic, Rollins treated the melody to an endless series of variations, slowing down his vibrato and dropping into a subtone to summon up the ghosts of both Enzio Pinza and Coleman Hawkins, all the while moving in and out of tempo within phrases shaped to Haynes’s elegant brushstrokes. Even those who might have wished for conventional improvised choruses had to agree that it was magic.

Davis reports that Rollins has a new CD in the works incorporating recently-discovered trio tracks recorded at the 1957 Carnegie concert with new trio performances. To read all of his Voice review, go here.

The Rifftides staff directs your attention to the right-hand column, where you will find a new batch of Doug’s Picks.

Here is a bit of Terry Teachout’s review of Poodie James in Contentions, his CommentaryMagazine.com column.

I’ll cut to the chase: Poodie James is a very good book. Not only is it handsomely and lyrically written, but Ramsey’s snapshots of small-town life circa 1948 are altogether convincing, and he has even brought off the immensely difficult trick of worming his way into the consciousness of a deaf person without betraying the slightest sense of strain. I especially like the scene in which he tells us how it feels for the title character to “listen” to Woody Herman’s big band at a local dance:

A man with a big smile walked out holding a clarinet. The musicians sat up and brought their horns to their mouths. The man raised his hand and brought it down. The force of the sound hit Poodie and traveled through his chest as a tingle…. Poodie wondered if the dancers got the same sensation from hearing the music that he did from feeling it, radiance in the belly, warmth around the heart.

I wish I’d written that.

Well, I am flattered that Teachout wrote that. To read all of his review, go here.

The Seasons Fall Festival wrapped up over the weekend in Yakima, Washington, with concerts that featured two Bill Mays trios. James Moody also starred, performing at eighty-two with the wisdom of age and the energy of a teenager.
Friday night, it was Mays, piano; Marvin Stamm, trumpet and fluegelhorn; and Alisa Horn, cello – the Inventions Trio. Their recently released CD is superb, but their collaboration has taken on profundity and polish since they made the recording two years ago. Their reworkings of Rachmaninoff, Borodin and other classical composers, their treatment of standards and new pieces by Mays and Stamm, had the audience enthralled. Mays’ six-part suite inspired by the Delaware River’s run from the mountains to the sea was a journey encompassing grandeur, nostalgia, folksy humor including a hoedown, and avant garde audacity. It also incorporated spoken segments of regional reminiscing that disclosed the musicians’ unsuspected talents as vocal actors.

Inventions Trio
For years, Stamm and Mays have performed as a duo exploring the possibilities in classical themes. The addition of Horn, the young cellist, has resulted in a group capable of a remarkable store of textures. She has extensive classical training and rich technique, but is relatively new to jazz. Under Mays’ and Stamm’s tutelage, she has learned to swing when she’s bowing, and to play pizzicato a la Oscar Pettiford, Percy Heath and Ron Carter. It was a joy to witness the passion she brought to the performance. Mays and Stamm are jazz and studio veterans whose discipline and versatility make possible this group’s demanding chamber music. They achieve complexity without sacrificing swing or zeal. They are a pleasure to watch as well as to hear. Few groups have as much fun making music as this trio.

Wilson, Mays, Wind
One that does is Mays’ trio with bassist Martin Wind and drummer Matt Wilson. Two years ago they inaugurated the former Christian Science church as a performance hall. Their appearance at The Seasons has become an autumn event, and they were as astonishing as ever. One of the great piano trios of the day more than lived up to their reputation. With Wilson aboard, there is always bound to be a surprise. In 2005, it was his action-theater piece having to do with free range chickens and the chant, “Set them free.” Last year, he crafted a musical setting for Carl Sandburg’s poem Choose and conscripted the audience as a Greek chorus. This time around, Wilson debuted a composition inspired by a swimming party the night before in his hotel pool, possibly involving minimal clothing. He called it “Yakimaquatics” and introduced it with a drum solo that incorporated the breast stroke, the backstroke, the butterfly and the crawl, all executed with rhythmic exactitude and leading into a melody with a harmonic pattern possibly influenced by Pat Metheny. Fun and games out of the way, Mays, Wind and Wilson dug in. It was a fine first half.
Following intermission, the Mays trio became the rhythm section of the James Moody quartet. Moody had his famous flute along, but it never left the case. He stayed on tenor saxophone through the set, except when he was singing or telling uproarious stories. In a pre-performance discussion, he spoke about the harmonic education he received early in his career from Dizzy Gillespie and Tom McIntosh. In concert, he demonstrated the extent to which that harmonic sense has progressed in the past sixty years or so. Applying chord extensions on top of chord extensions, he danced through “Woody’n You” and “Giant Steps” with dazzling mastery. If the audience had Coleman Hawkins in mind when Moody began “Body and Soul,” his ingenious creation of new melodies and his audacious expansion of the chord pattern brought them thoroughly up to date.
Mays, Wind and Wilson were in swinging lock step with Moody throughout the concert, but their participation went far beyond accompaniment. They gave the old master nudges that inspired him to explore beyond what in more routine settings is often a polished bag of phrases and devices. Clearly, he was pleased with the collaboration. When Mays was soloing, Moody stationed himself in the curve of the piano, listening intently. When Wind was bowing one of his virtuosic arco solos, Moody edged nearer. When Wilson soloed, Moody stood beaming at him.

James Moody
Of course, he did “Moody’s Mood For Love,” singing his own famous solo and, in split throat-tones, the piano solo from the original 1949 recording. Earlier, he said that audiences never let him get away without doing it, so he builds it into his every appearance. The Moody concert was a rousing and entertaining conclusion to more than a week of stimulating music.
I once wrote (in Jazz Matters: Reflections on the Music and Some of its Makers):

Like every art form, jazz has a fund of devices unique to it and universally employed by those who play it. Among the resources of the jazz tradition available to the player creating an improvised performance are rhythmic patterns, harmonic structures, material quoted from a variety of sources, and “head arrangements” evolved over time without being written. Mutual access to this community body of knowledge makes possible successful and enjoyable collaboration among jazzmen of different generations and stylistic persuasions who have never before played together.

The Moody concert was a demonstration of that truth. I overheard the rehearsal. It went more or less like this:

Moody: Do you know “Woody’n You?”
Mays: Yeah, we know that.
Moody: “Giant Steps?”
Mays: Sure.
Moody: How about “Invitation?”
Mays. Yep
Moody: Okay. We’ll be cool.

And they were.

While a bunch of us were standing around waiting to be seated at a restaurant following Saturday night’s concert at The Seasons (see the previous item), the conversation turned to singers. Jo Stafford came in for prominent and enthusiastic mention. The next morning, I was checking out Marc Myers’ Jazz Wax blog and found this link to a wonderful Stafford performance from 1947. The band is identified as that of her husband, Paul Weston, but it doesn’t look like Weston conducting. The only player I recognize is the phenomenal guitarist George van Eps.
The singing is perfection. But then, it’s Jo Stafford.

The British Columbia newspaper Peace Arch News has a report about the success of Libros Libertad, the publisher of Poodie James.

With five books released so far – and as many on the way by year’s end, the imprint is rapidly gaining stature and credibility with its up-market style paperbacks.
Poodie James, a novel by veteran U.S. broadcaster Doug Ramsey has already become a break-out hit, selling out its first printing. The Passage of Sono Nis is a definitive collection of works by internationally respected author J. Michael Yates – who is also senior editor for the company. And well-known jazz writer/lyricist Gene Lees (“Yesterday I Heard The Rain,” “Quiet Nights of Quiet Stars”) is readying a novel, Song Lake Summer, for release by Libros Libertad.

To read the whole thing, go here and click on the “entertainment” tab.

One of the finest jazz pianists in the world is barely known in the United States. His many CDs are on Japanese, Spanish and Scandinavian labels that sometimes show up in US stores despite their limited distribution in this country. Jan Lundgren visits the US infrequently, usually to record for foreign companies. His most recent tour was last month’s series of concerts in Japanese cities. When I mention Lundgren to musicians and canny jazz listeners who keep up with developments in music, I often get blank looks. After I persuade them to seek out Lundgren’s work, they respond with enthusiasm.

Jan Lundgren
My first encounter with Lundgren’s playing was in the mid-1990s when I was preparing to write notes for Bill Perkins’ Perk Plays Prez. Perkins and producer Dick Bank wanted a pianist who could play Count Basie and Teddy Wilson to Perkins’ tenor saxophone evocation of Lester Young–without apeing Basie or Wilson. Bank brought in Lundgren. The young pianist more than filled the bill. He had already earned the enthusiasm of Lou Levy, always tough in his evaluations of other pianists, and of another exacting old pro, alto saxophonist Herb Geller. Bank recruited Lundgren for Geller’s You’re Looking at Me.
Some of Lundgren’s Fresh Sound (Spain) and Marshmallow (Japan) CDs are available at this address. His most recent trio collection is sold in the US by Eastwind, a distributor with an internet retail operation. Swinging Rendezvous (Marshmallow) includes Lundgren’s long-time bassist Jesper Lundgaard and drummer Alex Riel, Scandinavian veterans who have played with a cross-section of the best European and American musicians. It is a trio of rare swing and cohesion. Their workout on Thelonious Monk’s “Well, You Needn’t” is a masterpiece of common intent, interaction and reaction. Lundgren supports his improvisational wizardry with speed, precision, dynamic mastery and a sense of romance. He is a modern bebop pianist at the highest level. If you think that “modern” and “bebop” constitute an oxymoron, listen to Lundgren.
All but one of the CD’s 11 pieces were written by major jazzmen, among them Monk, J.J. Johnson, Mal Waldron and Oscar Pettiford. The exception, the folk ditty “Billy Boy,” is so closely associated with Red Garland that many people no doubt think Garland wrote it. Lundgren tackles two pieces by Wynton Kelly, Paul Chambers’ ebullient “Whims of Chambers” and “Third World” by Herbie Nichols. He and Lundgaard interpret the elusive harmonic nuances of Nichols’ music so effectively that he makes me wish the trio would take on more of Nichols’ eccentric compositions. Indeed, interpretation, not imitation, is what Lundgren practices. Waldron, Nichols, Kelly, Bud Powell, Bill Evans, Bengt Hallberg, Oscar Peterson and other predecessors inspired Lundgren, but he has absorbed and melded their elements into a style that Japanese and Scandinavian listeners have taken to their hearts. It may be that now is Lundgren’s time in the United States.
Go here and here for Rifftides reviews of previous Lundgren CDs.

Veteran journalist Ed Stover reviews Poodie James in today’s Yakima Herald-Republic.

Ramsey’s journalistic writing style carries the story along. It’s a good story, too, a page-turner that offers up romance, attempted murder, a Snidely Whiplash rascal of a mayor, a Dudley Do-Right police chief, a noble bum, a nosy reporter and a whorehouse. Set in the late 1940s, there is even a visit by President Truman.
Finally, there is Poodie, the loveable little junk collector who becomes the target of the wrathful mayor. Put it all together and you have a book that has become a best-seller for Libros Libertad, the Surrey, British Columbia-based literary small press that published the novel in early August.

To read all of Stover’s article, click here.
I’ll be doing a signing and reading tomorrow, Saturday, at 2 pm at Inklings Bookshop in Yakima. If you’re in the neighborhood, please drop by and say hello.

Last evening, fortunate listeners at The Seasons Fall Side-By-Side Music Festival heard the world premiere of a work that has everything it takes to become a staple in the classical piano trio literature. It was composer Daron Hagen’s Angel Band Trio #4, played by the Finisterra Trio. Based on humble themes in the Appalachian gospel song “Angel Band,” through its six movements the trio blooms into a big chamber piece graced with a melding of peculiarly American melodic strains, dissonant conflict and satisfying resolution. It is a modern statement rooted in tradition, soaring on rhythm, shot through with gripping harmonic patterns and saturated in emotion.
Hagen (pronounced like the first name of the ice cream), found his inspiration for the work in the story of Joyce Strosahl, a former concert violinist and the matriarch of the family that founded The Seasons. The trio was commissioned by three of her sons. The Finisterra Trio–pianist Tanya Stambuk, violinist Kwan Bin Park and cellist Kevin Krentz–poured themselves into the piece with a passion that left the audience in a state of mild shock at the end of the volatile rondo movement and brought them to their feet when the final notes faded.

Daron Hagen
The evening began with a discussion among the composer and the members of Finisterra, shepherded with his usual skill, knowledge and good humor by composer and conductor Bill McGlaughlin, the host of public radio’s St. Paul Sunday. During the conversation, Krentz, who was headed for a career as a singer before he ended up as a cellist, accompanied himself by strumming his instrument and sang “Wayfaring Stranger,” the inspiration for a previous Hagen work, Wayfaring Stranger, Piano Trio #3. He, Park and Stambuk then played the evocative second movement of that piece, setting up the performance, of the new work, which was a triumph for the composer and Finisterra.
For a description of Angel Band Trio #4, go to this page of Hagen’s web site. To see the schedule for The Seasons Fall Festival, which runs through Saturday, October 6, click here.
Saturday night at the Capitol Theater, McGlaughlin conducted the Yakima Symphony Orchestra in the premiere of his Béla’s Bounce. That’s a whimsical name for a serious work that reflects on what might have happened if Béla Bartok and Charlie Parker had met when they were living in New York in the early 1940s. The references to Parker’s “Billie’s Bounce” are subtle and integral to the piece. McGlaughlin incorporates Bartokian uses of strings and percussion with deep understanding of Bartok’s methods, but not in imitation. It’s a delightful work. Béla’s Bounce and Angel Band Trio #4 deserve to be on CD, and soon.

Karrin Allyson
The other guest artists for the YSO concert were McGlaughlin’s wife Karrin Allyson and her quintet. Allyson sang with her customary charm, musicianship and irrepressible energy, occasionally spelling pianist Joe Chindamo at the keyboard while he played accordian. Chindamo, an Australian new to me, was impressive as an accompanist and in solo. His piano chorus on Leonard Bernstein’s “Some Other Time,” alluding to Bill Evans, was a highlight of the evening. Bassist Jeff Johnson, guitarist Dan Balmer and drummer Todd Strait frequently beamed as they luxuriated in the surroundings of the full orchestra playing McGlaughlin’s arrangements. Allyson included several Brazilian pieces, mainly by Antonio Carlos Jobim. She has an affinity for samba and announced that she has a Brazilian project in the works. Let us hope that it includes a recording. Allyson and her band perform again tonight, sans symphony orchestra, at The Seasons.
Between Allyson sets, McGlaughlin conducted the YSO in three movements of Stravinsky’s The Firebird. First, in his Philadelphia Scots accent, he regaled the audience with a summary of the legend on which Stravinskly based the work. “Apparently the firebird had a voice just like a bassoon,” he said. Ninety-eight years after its premiere, The Firebird still sounds revolutionary. McGlaughlin was obviously pleased with the performance the musicians gave him. At a gathering later, I overheard him tell Brooke Creswell, the orchestra’s music director and regular conductor, “Who’d have thought to find such a band in Yakima, Washington.”

Pardon my pride, but less than a month after seeing the light of day, Poodie James has gone into a second printing. Thank you.

For further information (how to order, for instance), click here.

Those of you who have become addicted to Carol Sloane’s blog, SloaneView, may have been concerned — as was I — that she had posted nothing for more than a month. I just spoke with her and learned that she is fine and that her husband is recovering. It was a near thing. Here is one line from Sloane’s new posting:

Labor Day, 6 AM: My husband Buck wakens me to complain of chest pain.

To read the whole story, go to SloaneView.
Get well, soon, Buck.

Rifftides reader Don Emanuel writes from Gillingham, Kent, in England:

There is a fascinating six-part thing on YouTube (obviously from a British TV programme) by Dick Hyman on a brief history of jazz piano, which I managed to miss when it was originally broadcast.

I missed it, too. As far as I know, it did not run in the US. Hyman long ago established himself as a wizard at replicating other pianists’ styles. He could easily have done the program alone, but the writer and musician Russell Davies serves as the low-key host and interlocutor. In what was an hour program, Hyman and Davies take us in eight- to ten-minute segments from Louis Moreau Gottschalk in 1855 to Cecil Taylor six minutes ago. Along the way, Hyman demonstrates the innovations of at least a baker’s dozen of the players who formed the jazz piano tradition.
Don’t be put off by the cornball title of the program, The Honky Tonk Professor. The show is serious and seriously entertaining. To save you the trouble of roaming around the YouTube site, rounding up the segments, the Rifftides staff has assembled links to the six parts. Just click on them, one at a time.
Part One
Part Two
Part Three
Part Four
Part Five
Part Six
Near the end, Davies asks Hyman to play in his own style, “if you can remember who you are, after all that.” Hyman remembers, and plays brilliantly, as always. I’m sorry not to be able to see the hour as a continuum, but YouTube‘s digital load limits dictate breaking it into segments. If it is available on DVD, I haven’t been able to discover where. Mat Domber, the major domo of Arbors Records, reports, “We are working with Dick on a 5 CD History of Jazz piano along the same lines as the broadcast, only expanded.”
To hear Hyman as Hyman, rather than as a team of Doppelgängers, I recommend this trio CD with guitarist Howard Alden and the late bassist Bob Haggart.
I am grateful to Don Emanuel for calling the Hyman program to our attention. Rifftides could function without help from its readers, but not nearly as well. Your comments and tips are always welcome.

The Seasons Performance Hall opens its Fall Festival tonight with Miguel Zenon’s quartet. The nine days of music-making include James Moody, Bill Mays and Marvin Stamm with Alisa Horn, Matt Wilson, Martin Wind, Karrin Allyson, David Friesen, the world premiere of a new classical work by Daron Hagen played by the Finisterra Trio and, as the promoters say, much more. For full information, go here. If you are in or near Yakima, Washington — or can get there — you’re in for an exciting week in a world-class concert hall.

Jessica Williams is in love with Glenn Gould and doesn’t care who knows it. Here’s an excerpt from the latest entry in her blog, The Zone:

One night I was on a popular video sharing site (YouTube) and decided to watch and listen to Glenn Gould. I was dumbstruck. His music entered me and stayed there. It wasn’t what he was playing, it was the way he was playing it. I had never heard Bach played with such fullness and passion and gentleness. He caressed Bach, where most pianists play Bach like robots. They make it sound so mechanical. I know it was the way I was taught. To play the two and three part Inventions, one had to sit up perfectly straight, force your hands to emulate little claws, and play tic-toc tic-toc like a metronome. Like a machine. Hating math as I did, I certainly didn’t take to Bach. It wasn’t MUSIC to me.
I found Miles and Trane shortly after that, and spent the next fifty years believing that I hated Bach and all those “dead guys”.

There’s more to the affair than that. From passion for Gould, Williams builds an essay that challenges what she sees as a massive general fault in the cultural establishment, including many listeners.

When one improvises within the style of the early masters (read “dead” to detractors) one is also improvising within a style. The style, the rules, the framework are different. But it’s no less real, and, if done by one knowing the vocabulary, it is VALID. It is true art, true music.
There is a disease afflicting art and music, and it is not new. It is becoming more common, though. It is the need to put every single creation into a box, have a pre-made label handy for any contribution, and to dismiss, out of turn, anything that falls outside of one’s “tastes”… this is the elitist and critical view of our age, and it is destructive to children, to educators, to parents, to everyone.
It shows itself in our politics, our medicine, our science, and, most notably, in our ART (or lack thereof).

Regardless of whether you agree, it is a stimulating and provocative essay. To read the whole thing, go here.
YouTube has many videos of Gould. This one of the young Gould practicing a Bach partita is a good way to start.
Williams follows her essay with the transcript of a long interview; Jessica questioning Jessica. Here’s how it begins:

Q. What pianists do you like to listen to?
A. I like pianists who are musicians first. One of my favorites is Charles Mingus. His album Mingus Plays Piano on Impulse! is one of my favorite piano albums, period. And when I lived in Oakland, CA, I’d go down and hear Buddy Montgomery play piano. He was a vibist, but I loved his piano playing too. He played music. He didn’t just play piano.

It is difficult to say with certainty that Tatum’s Ultimatum is Williams’s most recent CD; she issues CDs the way the MacArthur Foundation issues “genius” grants (one of which she deserves). But it is new, and it is stunning. Despite its title, the solo album is not so much a tribute to Art Tatum or an evocation of his style as an exposition of the “fullness and passion and gentleness” that she admires in Gould, executed in some passages at supersonic speed with timing and accuracy that do recall Tatum.
One of her admirers who is also a world-class jazz pianist told me recently, “I think Jessica is the cleanest fast pianist I’ve ever heard.” She may also be one of the wryest. Humor is an essential component of her work. If you don’t believe it, listen to her romp through — of all things — Sidney Bechet’s “Petite Fleur.” Even the dour Bechet would have smiled at her flourishes, her swing, the role reversal of her hands, her rhythmic displacments and reharmonizations. And Artie Shaw, who grew to hate “Begin The Beguine,” could not have resisted William’s version, if only for the joy of its suspended ending. Except for her “Ballade for A.T.” all of the pieces in the CD are standards, including a “trio” version of “Ain’t She Sweet” with Williams providing the synthesizer bass and drums, which seem anything but synthesized.

A man may write at any time, if he will set himself doggedly to it. — Samuel Johnson

That’s what I’m doing, with reasonable doggedness. I’ll be back soon, continuing a survey of recent CDs.