This morning’s cycling expedition took me through a part of the countryside I don’t often explore. Now that I’ve found attractions like this, I’ll head out there more often.
Catching Up: Logan Strosahl & Nick Sanders
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Eight years ago, when Rifftides was young, I posted this item from New York following one of the last conventions of the lamented International Association of Jazz Educators.
January 19, 2006
It is impossible to predict the course of an artist’s career, but here’s a name to file
away: Logan Strosahl. He is a sixteen-year-old alto saxophonist with the Roosevelt High School Jazz Band from Seattle, Washington. Strosahl has the energy of five sixteen-year-olds, rhythm that wells up from somewhere inside him, technique, harmonic daring with knowledge to support it and—that most precious jazz commodity—individuality. If he learns to control the whirlwind and allow space into his improvising, my guess is that you’ll be hearing from Logan Strosahl.
After that, Strosahl was graduated from Roosevelt High, entered the New
England Conservatory in Boston and earned his degree. Attracted to the jazz capital of the world, as jazz artists have been for nearly a century, he moved to Brooklyn in New York City. There, he teams with a fellow NEC graduate, pianist Nick Sanders. Like Strosahl, Sanders is gaining increasing attention. These days, most young musicians at the outsets of their careers make their own publicity. Strosahl and Sanders advertise themselves through a free-subscription series of videos posted on YouTube. Each installment is preceded by a spiel.
In this Dizzy Gillespie composition, Strosahl finds altissimo notes that may not have occurred to Charlie Parker. He and Sanders take improvisational counterpoint a step or two beyond Dave Brubeck and Paul Desmond.
Sanders issued his first trio album, Nameless Neighbors, in 2013. Sunnyside will release Strosahl’s Up Go We in mid-2015. For more music by Nick Sanders and Logan Strosahl, go here.
For several previous Rifftides posts mentioning Strosahl, go here.
Newport (Oregon) Report
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The Oregon Coast Jazz Party titled one segment “Saturday Morning Chamber Jazz.†In the event, most of the weekend celebration had the character and intimacy of a chamber music festival. The proceedings began with flutist Holly Hofmann—the OCJP’s music director—walking on stage alone, playing “Strike Up The Band.†Chorus by chorus, musicians who were to perform over the two and a half days joined her to improvise on that piece and a good old blues in F.
Pictured left to right: a Rifftides staff member introducing  pianist Randy Porter, bassist Nicki Parrott, guitarist Mimi Fox, drummer Chuck Redd, clarinetist Ken Peplowski, trumpeter Byron Striping, tenor saxophonist Harry Allen and Ms. Hofmann. In the course of the opening jam, pianist Mike Wofford, bassist Tom Wakeling, drummer Todd Strait and singer Dee Daniels also contributed.
For the most part, rehearsals consisted solely of Green Room discussions about tunes and keys. In a series of mix- and-match encounters, musicians from both coasts of the US and places in between relied on the common language shared by first-rate players—harmonic knowledge, swing, and the ability to stimulate and surprise one another.
Through the weekend, all of that worked to a remarkable degree, thanks to the talent of the players and singers, Ms. Hofmann’s organizational ability and the skill of the volunteer stage crew and audio staff, whose work is at a professional level. Here, following on the two-tenor saxophone tradition of Dexter Gordon and Wardell Gray, Al Cohn and Zoot Sims, Sonny Stitt and Gene Ammons, we see Harry Allen and Ken Peplowski with bassist Wakeling and drummer Redd. Mike Wofford was at the piano, a fount of harmonic ingenuity, as he was in several settings during the festival.
In his set, Stripling alternated between meaty swing-to-bop trumpet inventions and the entertainer persona he has built on the example of Louis Armstrong. Flowery and exhibitionist in a long virtuoso introduction to “I Found a New Baby,†he then shifted to quiet exposition of melody for “In a Mellotone,†with references to the minimalist style of Harry “Sweets†Edison. When Dee Daniels joined him, they traded vocal choruses and scatted energetically on “Every Day I Have The Blues.†Nicki Parrott was the bassist. In her own opening night set, Ms. Daniels sang a moving version of “All The Way” from her recent album, introduced her funky and amusing 16-bar song “Midlife Crisis,” and brought on Peplowski to play a clarinet obbligato behind her restrained “Lover Man.” Her vocalese variations at the end of the song brought an ovation.
Not all was unrehearsed. There were two regularly constituted small bands. Pianist Benny Green’s trio with bassist David Wong and drummer Rodney Green played two concerts.
Green paid homage to some of the pianists whose examples helped shape his style, beginning with his version of Cedar Walton’s “Something in Common.” He moved on through Horace Silver’s “St. Vitus Dance” and a massive approach to McCoy Tyner’s “Fly With the Wind.” He caressed Fred Lacey’s “Theme for Ernie” and took Thelonious Monk’s “52nd Street Theme†at a supersonic tempo. In the Monk piece, the substance and continuity of his improvised piano line at burnout speed astonished the audience as well as his fellow musicians crowding the wings backstage. Rodney Green, using wire brushes in his solo on the piece, was remarkable in his inventiveness. Wong’s big, centered, tone, firm time and melodic solos were a revelation throughout both of the quartet’s sets.
From Portland, pianist Darrell Grant’s quartet MJ New saluted the Modern Jazz Quartet in a program of pieces from the MJQ repertoire and two of Grant’s compositions. In John Lewis pieces including “Versaille†and “Django,†his classic arrangement of “Autumn in New York,†and Milt Jackson’s “Bags’ Groove,†the group’s combination of tonal delicacy and insistent swing captured the aura of the MJQ. Still, Grant’s originals “An Elise Affair†and “Bach to Brazil,†were highlights. In the collegial spirit of the weekend, clarinetist Peplowski sat in on “All The Things You Are.†He and Stripling joined Grant, vibraphonist Mike Horsfall, bassist Marcus Shelby and drummer Carlton Jackson on the set’s finale, “Bags’ Groove.†Horsfall, like Grant a yeoman figure in the impressive Portland jazz community, is an original vibist, far from being a Jackson clone.
Mimi Fox began her set unaccompanied with a full-bodied workout on Chick Corea’s “500
MilesHigh,” shifted down into “Darn That Dream,” then brought on Mike Wofford for a  piano-guitar duet performance of Paul McCartney’s “She’s Leaving Home” that was rich in complex harmonies.  Wofford stood by while she explored “Have You Met Miss Jones” alone, then rejoined her. Now, having promised surprises, Ms. Fox called out Ms. Hofmann, Tom Wakeling and Chuck Redd for Jobim’s “Triste.” The ingenious modulations in her solo raised eyebrows on stage.  Introducing “Willow Weep For Me” and instructing Redd to set up a funk beat, she announced, “I’m not sure this is going to work.” It worked.
Based in Portland and known internationally, Rebecca Kilgore, teamed with Harry Allen. She and the tenor s
axophonist performed several pieces from their album 
demonstrated throughout the set that her phrasing and note substitutions tap more deeply into the essence of jazz than some singers’ multiple choruses of scatting. Nicki Parrott joined her to sing “Two Little Girls From Little Rock” from the motion picture Gentlemen Prefer Blondes. Afterward (right), they relaxed in the Green Room as Holly Hofmann strolled by.
The exception to the general chamber music aspect of the festival was Chuck Redd’s appearance on vibes with the Swing Shift Jazz Orchestra. The big band from Eugene, Oregon,  is populated by avocational players, including music teachers, but has the polish of a professional group.
With Doug Doerfert conducting, Redd featured music from the book of the Terry Gibbs band that thrived in Los Angeles in the late 1950s and 1960s. A thoughtful vibraphonist, Redd plays approximately half the number of notes the excitable Gibbs might employ, but he generates excitement nonetheless. The arrangements that Al Cohn, Bill Holman, Bob Brookmeyer, Manny Albam and Marty Paich wrote for Gibbs are undated for their age—indeed, for any age. Redd’s soloing and interaction with the band were evidence not only of rigorous rehearsal but also of empathy on the stand. Peplowski, an inveterate sitter-in and a raconteur with a standup comic’s timing, joined them for a guest shot. For many, however, the apogee of the set came when Redd and Horsfall shared the vibraphone in a riotous duel. They ended up dancing around one another to trade shorter and shorter phrases on alternate ends of the instrument. It was a fine bit of spontaneous show biz, effective not only as visual shtick, but as joyful music.
Thanks to Nancy Jane Reid for her fine photography.
Listening Tip: Kirchner And Friends, In Person
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For those in or planning to be in New York City next week, here’s a live listening tip from soprano saxophonist, arranger, composer, bandleader and jazz educator Bill Kirchner. He writes,
On Tuesday, October 7, at 8 p.m., I’ll be doing one of the most unusual concerts of my career, sharing the stage with three wonderful artists. Here are the details:
Bill Kirchner, soprano saxophone
Holli Ross, voice
Jim Ferguson, voice, double bass
Carlton Holmes, pianoAbout 2/3 of the songs will be my original music, with lyrics by Loonis McGlohon, William Butler Yeats, and myself. Also, songs by Bacharach/David, Jobim/Lees, Buddy Johnson, and others.
The concert will be in the jazz performance space at The New School, where for years Kirchner has taught platoons—maybe regiments—of students preparing for careers as professional jazz musicians. The idea of his appearing with the richly gifted Tennessee bassist and singer Jim Ferguson makes me wish that New York and the west coast were a few thousand miles closer together. For full information, go here.
Apology
In the previous exhibit, I failed when I attempted humor—or something resembling it—in characterizing Holly Hofmann’s artistic direction of the Oregon Coast Jazz Party. I apologize to Ms. Hofmann, whose leadership of that festival I admire, and to anyone else who may have been offended.
That Newport Party
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In a few hours, the Rifftides staff will be hitting the road—a lot of roads—to the Oregon shore of the Pacific Ocean. The occasion is our first visit in a 
couple of years to the Oregon Coast Jazz Party. The compact weekend fête was once known as the Newport, Oregon, Jazz Festival. Strong hints concerning copyright law and possible legal remedies suggested the practicality of changing to a title that did not include the name of the town in which the festival is held.
Whatever it’s called, the affair put together by flutist and festival field marshal Holly Hofmann brings together musicians from across North America. Some of the concerts feature working bands; others, players and singers assembled by Commander Hofmann because she thinks that they’ll sound good together or, possibly, because she wants to see what will happen. It’s in the tradition of the late Dick Gibson and his Colorado jazz parties. Ms. Hofmann invites artists who know the jazz language, though not always one another, and if sparks fly they are more likely to give illumination than burns.
The cast this time includes pianists Randy Porter and Mike Wofford, plus Benny Green with
his trio; tenor saxophonists Harry Allen and Ken Peplowski; trumpeter Byron Stripling (pictured); bassists Tom Wakeling and Nicki Parrott; guitarist Mimi Fox; drummers Chuck Redd and Todd Strait; 
and singers Dee Daniels and Rebecca Kilgore (pictured). Pianist and composer Darrell Grant will lead his quartet in a salute to the Modern Jazz Quartet. Ms. Hofmann is reported to be confining her performance this year to an opening night cameo.
For more about the event, go here. If you find yourself on the central Oregon coast this weekend, the festival could offer relief from your round of fishing trips, lobstering expeditions and golf. I’ll be taking a notebook and plan on posting a report or two.
On the off chance that you won’t be in Newport, here is compensation for your disappointment, the husband-wife team of Ms. Hoffman and Mr. Wofford with their quartet in Billy Strayhorn’s “Johnny Come Lately.” Bob Thorsen is the bassist, Richard Sellers the drummer. They were recorded at The Athenaeum in Pasadena, California.
Monday Recommendation: Dee Daniels
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Dee Daniels, Intimate Conversations (Origin)
Accompanied only by Martin Wind’s forthright bass lines, the singer sets her story-telling course with the imperishable 84-year-old “Exactly Like You.†She and Wind are so convincing again in “I Wish You Love†that this listener found himself wishing for an entire album with just the two of them. However, Daniels is equally effective accompanying herself on piano and coloring “All The Way†with blues feeling as Wycliffe Gordon provides wa-wa trombone commentary. There are other closely held partnerships with clarinetist Ken Peplowski, pianist Cyrus Chestnut, guitarist Russell Malone, electric keyboardist Ted Brancato and tenor saxophonists Houston Person and Bob Kindred. Her and Person’s “A Song For You†may make you forget Leon Russell. Daniels is a superb vocal actress who understands phrasing, vibrato, gospel and the blues. She conducts 10 conversations that are compelling, dramatic and, yes, intimate.
Recent Viewing And Listening: Charles Lloyd
Charles Llloyd, Arrows Into Infinity (ECM)
Charles Lloyd, Manhattan Stories (Resonance)
The steadfastly independent saxophonist and flutist Charles Lloyd stepped out of the limelight more than once, but even when he was inactive his recordings remained in demand. Lloyd is drawing renewed attention because of a film about his life and music, and an album of previously unreleased performances from a fertile early period of his career.
His million-selling 1966 album Forest Flower and the rock generation’s embrace of his band propelled Lloyd to a level of popular success 
rare among jazz musicians. Yet, a decade later he retreated to practice, meditate and vanquish drug addiction in idyllic surroundings on the northern California coast. In the 1970s he had stints with The Beach Boys and other rock groups and took time for academic study, but little was heard again from Lloyd in jazz until the early 1980s. His fascination with the teenaged French pianist Michel Petrucciani lured him back to public performance. They formed a quartet reminiscent of Lloyd’s mid-1960s band. The partnership inspired Lloyd to a new plateau of vigor, enthusiasm and daring. When he had launched Petrucciani’s career, he again disappeared into his haven in Big Sur. Illness put him in the hospital, and recovery from surgery kept him out of circulation for much of the 1980s. Allowed by his doctors to play again late in that decade, he began recording for ECM, expanding his considerable discography by more than fifteen albums for the German label, as of this writing.
The new film is called Arrows Into Infinity, after a phrase that Lloyd speaks at the beginning of the film and again, Zen-like, near its end when he discusses his philosophy of creativity. The visual artist Dorothy Darr— Mrs. Llloyd—and Jeffrey Morse produced the documentary with continuity that allows for side trips and surprises. They begin with Lloyd in his twenties or early thirties, telling an interviewer,
Am I screaming sometimes, am I bitter? Hell, yes, I’m bitter. I mean, I’ve got an insane amount of dues that I’ve paid.
The film follows the sweep of the 76-year-old’s career from its beginning when he was a teenager in his hometown of Memphis, Tennessee. Under the spell of Lester Young and Charlie
Parker, he grew up influenced by pianist Phineas Newborn, Jr., who was six years older. As a teenager, he played with trumpeter Booker Little, alto saxophonist Frank Strozier and pianist Harold Mabern, fellow Memphians who also went on to substantial careers. He was in blues bands, including Howling Wolf’s and B.B. King’s, but when Swing Journal editor Kiyoshi Koyama asks him about his tenor sax sound, he answers that it came from Young, whom Billie Holiday nicknamed “The President.â€
I can play strong, but I like something about the ballads and the tenderness that Prez had. It affected me.
Lloyd attracted fans well beyond the teens and twenty-somethings seduced by Forest Flower who packed San Francisco’s Fillmore Auditorium when he appeared. The admirers included many of his contemporaries in post-bop music, among them pianist Herbie Hancock, who says in the film,
He had his own sound. Nobody ever sounded like Charles Lloyd. He just captured a certain element that was flowing, almost like a flowing river, cascades of sound that almost had kind of an environmental aspect to it.
In the course of the film, the viewer is treated to extended performances with Cannonball Adderley; Lloyd’s path-finding first quartet with Keith Jarrett, Cecil McBee and Jack DeJohnette, including bits of a concert performance so successful that it made them persona non grata in the Soviet Union; Lloyd and Petrucciani playing in the Big Sur house; Lloyd and his new quartet with pianist Jason Moran; Lloyd with the Indian tabla master Ustad Zakir Hussain; in duet with his old Los Angeles pal drummer Billy Higgins; an all-star encounter with Gerri Allen, John Abercrombie, Marc Johnson and Billy Hart. We seem him play pool but, unfortunately, not music, with Ornette Coleman.
Affinity with the natural world, implied in Hancock’s description, is a current through much of the film. We feel water’s importance to him when we see Lloyd and Dorothy Darr on the 
sand as the Pacific pounds into Big Sur’s beach and monumental rocks, and again in a sequence of Lloyd and Petrucciani on a bluff overlooking the ocean. We hear it as he talks about his birth when the Mississippi River was at record flood stage in Memphis.
Near the end of the film, now in his seventies, bitterness subdued, Lloyd accepts the rewards of experience, even painful experience.
There’s some that say, the closer we are to the light, the longer our shadow is behind us. And, we can’t really lug that thing with us. We have to know that it’s there and integrate it into our life and our work.
About his music, he says,
It might not be fully understood by everyone all the time, but people come to me and say they get something from it, or not. But for me, it’s the last night of the play, and they can boo or applaud. I have to sing my song, in whatever manifestation. However it’s given to me is how it’s going to come through.
Here’s a promotional preview of the film:
In the Darr-Morse documentary, Robbie Robertson of the rock group The Band mentions an album that brought Lloyd praise and attention a year before the Monterey Jazz Festival version of “Forest Flower†became a best seller. Of Course, Of Course (1965) was one of three studio LPs that Lloyd made for Columbia. It featured guitarist Gabor Szabo, bassist Ron Carter and drummer Tony Williams. With seven original compositions by Lloyd and two standards, it has remained an underground favorite, often hard to find. In the liner notes, producer George Avakian wrote, “…it is rare that one musician can cover so much ground so effectively—from explosive, hard-driving blowing to ballad playing of extreme sensitivity and downright voluptuosness.â€
Now, Resonance Records has released a two-CD set of 1965 performances that have the qualities Avakian lauded, plus the excitement of a band playing for receptive audiences. One disc is from a concert at New York’s Judson Hall, now defunct; the other from a gig at
Slug’s Saloon, a lamented lower East Side Manhattan bar that during its eight years of existence was noted for informed, appreciative and often raucous patrons. The energy flowing between band and audience, particularly at Slug’s, is a vital component of the music. The drummer is Pete LaRoca Sims, who equaled Williams’ energy but whose work had its own polyrhythmic character. Lloyd and Szabo met in Chico Hamilton’s quintet in their California days and developed a symbiotic relationship. In their improvising here, the two generate counterpoint and polyphony so unbounded, and at the same time so logical and orderly, that it makes much of what was being touted as free jazz in the sixties seem puerile posturing. Their single-minded interaction is stunning in two versions of the Szabo piece called “Lady Gabor†featuring Lloyd on flute, and a performance of Lloyd’s landmark composition “Sweet Georgia Bright.†Sims has a long story-telling solo on “Georgia.â€
Lloyd’s way with ballads, praised by Avakian as voluptuous, is evident on his “How Can I Tell You‗not to be heard again on record for 30 years—and the early moments of “Dream Weaver,†later prominent in the repertoire of his Jarrett-McBee-DeJohnette quartet. This “Dream Weaver†evolves into another prime example of the empathy between Szabo and Lloyd. “Slug’s Blues,†evidently devised on the gig, finds Lloyd in the deep tonal region of his tenor, then ranging into stratospheric harmonic adventuring that might have caused his old blues boss Howlin’ Wolf to raise an eyebrow. Carter shows in his solo that by ’65 he was one of the masters of the instrument. His tone, propulsion and hand-in-glove rhythmic relationship with Sims are central to the success of this collection.
Following John Coltrane’s rise to stardom in the “Giant Steps†era, it became a knee jerk reaction among critics to peg new tenor saxophonists as Coltrane disciples. Sometimes, the critical term of art was “clone.†Lloyd, Wayne Shorter and any number of other tenor players who emerged in Coltrane’s wake were victims of such tribal Newspeak. To conclude that Shorter and Lloyd were copyists required failure to listen. After half a century, this important recording provides new evidence that from his early years, Charles Lloyd was Charles Lloyd.
For a brief Rifftides review of Lloyd’s quartet at the 2014 Ystad Jazz Festival in Sweden, go here.
Compatible Quotes: Autumn
No spring nor summer beauty hath such grace as I have seen in one autumnal face.
—John Donne, The Autumnal
But then fall comes, kicking summer out on its treacherous ass as it always does one day sometime after the midpoint of September, it stays awhile like an old friend that you have missed. It settles in the way an old friend will settle into your favorite chair and take out his pipe and light it and then fill the afternoon with stories of places he has been and things he has done since last he saw you.
—Stephen King, Salem’s Lot
And I rose
In rainy autumn
And walked abroad in a shower of all my days…
—Dylan Thomas, Collected Poems
The autumn leaves blew over the moonlit pavement in such a way as to make the girl who was moving there seem fixed to a sliding walk, letting the motion of the wind and the leaves carry her forward. […] The trees overhead made a great sound of letting down their dry rain.
—Ray Bradbury, Farenheit 451
Autumn Comes
In most of the Northern Hemisphere, this is officially the first day of fall. In a weblog devoted primarily to jazz, it seems fitting to welcome the advent of the new season with music. The pleasant problem is that there are so many wonderful recordings of songs with autumn themes, it’s impossible to choose just one. So, here are three.
Nat Cole, 1948
Woody Herman, 1948
Johnny Hartman and John Coltrane, 1963
Have a pleasant autumn season or—if you’re in the Southern Hemisphere— a happy spring.
Monday Recommendation: Ali Jackson
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Ali Jackson, Amalgamations (Sunnyside)
In this appropriately titled collection, the irrepressible drummer and 13 colleagues from the Jazz At Lincoln Center Orchestra and elsewhere combine in groups as small as two. Jackson’s precision and drive stimulate trumpeter Wynton Marsalis, pianist Eldar Djangirov and saxophonists JD Allen and Ted Nash, among others. Performances include the laconic “Done Tol’ You Fo’ Five Times†in which trombonist Vincent Gardner and electric pianist Jonathan Batiste supply Mumbles-ish vocalise. Marsalis blazes through the chords, but not the melody, of “Cherokee†accompanied by Jackson’s brushes and Carlos Henriquez’s acoustic bass. Nash shines in a refractive alto saxophone solo in Joe Henderson’s “Inner Urge.†On tenor sax, Allen and Djangirov glide through Cole Porter’s “I Love You.†Throughout 11 pieces, Jackson is a dynamo—reacting, interacting, inspiring all hands.
The Way Kenny Wheeler Worked
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Anne Braithwaite alerted me to Kenny Wheeler’s account of how he prepared when he was searching for inspiration. The trumpeter and composer died this week. See yesterday’s Rifftides post for details.
The story came from Ken Schaphorst, chairman of the Jazz Studies Department at the New England Conservatory in Boston. Mr. Schaphorst told me this afternoon that in the fall of 2002, Wheeler gave a master class at NEC. Famously shy, nervous about speaking in public, he wrote out his talk. Mr. Schaphorst said,
“It was on October 1, 2002. He read from a notebook. So I asked him at the end of the class if I could make a copy of it. And he was happy to share it.
This is what Wheeler told the students.
The process I go through to write or compose a new melody is this—I get up about 7:00 and don’t wash or shave or anything, but put on a bathrobe or dressing gown and take a couple of biscuits, a tea, and sit at the piano which is an old slightly out of tune upright. Then I play through some 4-part Bach Chorales. After that I try, with my limited technique to play through some Bach 2 or 3 part Inventions or maybe Preludes. Then I fumble through some more modern music such as Ravel, Debussy, Hindemith, Bartok or maybe the English Peter Warlock.
And then begins the serious business of trying to compose something. This consists of improvising at the piano for anywhere from 1/2 hour to 3 or 4 hours or even more. What I
think I’m looking for during this time is something I’m not looking for. That is, I’m trying to arrive at some semi-trance-like state where the improvising I’m doing at the piano is kind of just flowing through me or flowing past me. I don’t mean at all that this is any kind of a religious state but more of a dream-like state. And then, if I do manage to arrive at this state, then I might play something that catches the nondream-like part of me by surprise. It may only be 3 or 4 notes. But it’s like the dream-like part of me managed to escape for a second or two from the awake part of me and decided to play something of its own choice. But the awake part of me hears that little phrase and says “What was that? That’s something I didn’t expect to hear, and I like it.” And that could be the beginning of your new melody.
But there is no guarantee that you will reach this semi-dream-like state. After many hours you may not get there. But you might take a break, or you might have a little argument with your wife, and go back to the piano a little bit angry and bang out a phrase in anger which makes you say ‘Wait a minute! What was that?’ There doesn’t seem to be any sure way of reaching this state of mind where you play something that surprises yourself. I just know that I can’t start the day all fresh at the piano at 7:00 and say to myself ‘And now I will compose a melody. It seems I have to go through this process which I described.
Ken Schaphorst adds:
He goes on to describe one of his pieces (“Gentle Piece”) in great detail as well as how he arranged it for big band.
Dave Holland played the bass introduction, Kenny Wheeler was the trumpet soloist, Duncan Lamont the tenor saxophonist. John Taylor, Wheeler’s close friend and colleague, was the pianist. “Gentle Piece†is from Wheeler’s Music For Large and Small Ensembles on the ECM label.
Kenny Wheeler Is Gone
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Kenny Wheeler, a Canadian who became a towering figure in British music and an icon of jazz musicians around the world, has succumbed to a long illness. He was in a London nursing home for several months and was moved recently to the hospital where he died. He was 84.
Wheeler’s brilliance as a composer and arranger, dating from from the 1960s, came to be generally acknowledged fairly late in his career. From the 1968 suite based on Don Quixote that he wrote for the John Dankworth Orchestra, here is Wheeler’s “Don the Dreamer.” He is the flugelhorn soloist, with solos by Chris Pyne on trombone and Tony Roberts on tenor saxophone.
Wheeler was idolized early on by his contemporaries for his technical command of the trumpet and flugelhorn and for the musical and emotional content of his solos. He played his best known composition, “Everbody’s Song But My Own,†at the Tavazsi Festival in Budapest, Hungary, in 1992. His band, known as the Kenny Wheeler Group, included John Taylor, piano; Palle Danielsson, bass; John Abercbrombie, guitar; and Peter Erskine, drums. There is a 39-second stage pause following the festival announcer’s introduction. Taylor’s introductory choruses and the solos, particularly Wheeler’s on flugelhorn, are worth waiting for.
For previous Rifftides posts about or mentioning Kenny Wheeler, go here.
Report From Russia: Ðрфа и джаз (Take Five)
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Rifftides reader Svetlana Ilyicheva (pictured right) brings us up to date from 
time to time on musical events in and around Moscow. Her latest report concerns an organization founded by and for jazz listeners, and one of its concerts by an unusual group.
Recently, the Moscow ‘Jazz Art’ Club celebrated the closing session of its 20th concert season. The club has presented nearly 1,500 weekly concerts, to say nothing of its vocal festivals and fascinating jazz cruises. There is much for the club to remember and be proud of, but the proudest fact about it is that it has had lots of devoted regulars from the very moment of its founding in 1994. Its president for all those years has been the devoted jazz lover and writer Alexander Eydelman.
The Jazz café Esse (seen here during an earlier
concert) was full for an unusual, exotic, program called Harp & Jazz. The leaders are 29-year-old multi-instrumentalist and composer Anton Kotikov and harpist Maria Kulakova. With them are Evgeniy Stepanov (bass guitar), Ilya Verizhnikov (percussion) and, as special guest on violin and vocals, Anna Chekasina, the daughter of Vladimir Chekasin of the renowned Ganelin Trio.
The program was very skilfully compiled, with gradual introduction of instruments. First Maria performed “Misty” and the sounds of the harp intensified the romance of this evergreen magic tune by Erroll Garner. The concert included jazz standards, original pieces and virtuosic solos by Kotikov on saxophones, flute and even duduk (an Armenian wind instrument). The audience met all of that, and the delicate and precise work by the rhythm section, with enthusiastic cries, whistling and hearty ovations. A great master of benevolent whistling is the perpetually re-elected vice-president of the club, Rafael Avakov. Among the pieces was one that has become a favorite of Russian audiences, as it has around the world.
The acoustic harp, as a rule, is used in orchestras and chamber ensembles to perform classical and academic music. In the jazz world, the interesting sound of this noble instrument is considered exotic and is seldom used. Alice Coltrane comes to mind. Saxophonist Kotikov and harpist Kulakova created the Harp & Jazz project at the music school where they teach. The school is named for the composer, conductor and educator Mikhail Ippolitov-Ivanov (1959-1935). The project is unique in Russia. In concert, the instrumental lineup varies from duets by sax and harp to the full ensemble. The band plays at a variety of clubs and concert halls in Moscow. Ms. Kulakova sometimes employs the Celtic harp beloved by Russia’s many folk-rock fans. Nonetheless, the instrument also gets a lively response from jazz fans and the public at large.
The Harp & Jazz Project is working on a debut album and preparing a program for their tour of Sicily in November.
—Svetlana Ilyicheva
For other videos by the Harp & Jazz Project, go here, here and here.
Losses: Jackie Cain, Joe Sample
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Following a long illness, Jackie Cain died Monday afternoon in her New Jersey home. She was 86. She and Roy Kral combined their talents in 1946. They incorporated the spirit of bebop in their work with Charlie Ventura’s sextet, capturing the public imagination with “East of Suez†and “I’m Forever Blowing Bubbles.†Recorded with Ventura at a concert in Pasadena, California, in 1949, the records received widespread radio airplay in the days when that was still a route to jazz stardom. Following their marriage, the duo steadily gained popularity as Jackie and Roy, a collaboration that lasted until Kral’s death in 2002. The Ventura sextet also brought other young musicians to prominence. Here are Jackie and Roy in Pasadena with Ventura, tenor saxophone; Boots Mussulli, alto sax; Conte Candoli, trumpet; Bennie Green, trombone; Kenny O’Brien, bass; and Ed Shaughnessy, drums.
Jackie and Roy’s success as a team overshadowed Ms. Cain’s ability as a soloist. The purity of her voice, her flawless intonation, the intelligence and musicality of her phrasing, made her one of the finest jazz-oriented vocalists of her generation.
Jackie Cain, RIP
Private funeral services have been scheduled for pianist Joe Sample in Houston, Texas, on Saturday. He died of lung cancer in a Houston hospital on September 12 at the age of 75. There will be a wake and public viewing from 6 :00 to 9:00 p.m. on Saturday at the Our Mother of Mercy Church.
Sample’s career began in Houston, his home town, when he and friends formed a band at first called The Swingsters, then The Nighthawks. In 1961, when he was 22, it became The Jazz
Crusaders. By 1972, the quintet had become increasingly oriented toward popular music and dropped the word Jazz from its name. They collaborated with Diana Ross, Joni Mitchell and Ray Charles, and toured with Charles Tom Scott’s L.A. Express and The Rolling Stones. As The Crusader’s pop audience grew, jazz listeners continued to cherish the band’s early work melding soul and funk elements with hard bop. From the Jazz Crusaders’ album recorded at The Lighthouse in 1968, here is Sample’s unorthodox setting of The Beatles’ “Eleanor Rigby.†The band: Sample, piano; Stix Hooper, drums; Buster Williams bass; Wilton Felder, tenor saxophone; and Wayne Henderson, trombone.
Joe Sample, RIP
Monday Recommendation: Mark Turner
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Mark Turner, Lathe Of Heaven (ECM)
The tenor saxophonist bases the CD’s title on an Ursula K. LeGuin sci-fi novel in which dreams seem to change reality. Her story line turns on unclear perceptions, but Turner’s music is unambiguous in its extension of modern mainstream jazz tradition. Though the harmonized lines he plays with trumpeter Avishai Cohen bear intimations of Miles Davis and Wayne Shorter, Turner’s compositions and the
emotional unity of the quartet’s playing, particularly in “Sonnet for Stevie,†have individuality rooted in his fealty to maintaining the purity of the blues. Without being depressing, the music has an attractive atmosphere of melancholia. The interaction of Turner, Cohen, bassist Joe Martin and drummer Marcus Gilmore approaches ESP. This splendid collection is Turner’s first album as a leader since his Dharma Days of 2001. It’s high time.
Three Listening Tips And A View
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Tip 1. Jim Wilke’s Jazz Northwest program on Sunday will broadcast the tribute given pianist and composer George Cables at this summer’s Centrum Jazz Port Townsend festival on Washington’s Olympic Peninsula. Mr. Wilke recorded the concert in July. For years, as performer and teacher, Cables has been an integral part of the festival and its jazz workshops. From Mr. Wilke’s announcement:
Three pianists, Geoffrey Keezer, Benny Green and Dawn Clement take solo turns playing compositions by George Cables, and guitarist Anthony Wilson also contributes a piece associated with George Cables. The program ends with the master pianist playing one of his own compositions.
L to R, Green, Clement, Keezer, Cables, WilsonGeorge Cables honed his craft as a sideman before beginning his own career as a leader and soloist. Among the many influential leaders he played with are Sonny Rollins, Joe Henderson, Bobby Hutcherson, Freddie Hubbard, Woody Shaw and, perhaps most notably, Dexter Gordon and Art Pepper. He has recorded on dozens of albums and CDs, the most recent being his own Icons and Influences (HighNote).
Jazz Northwest will air at 2:00 PM PDT on Sunday on KPLU, 88.5 FM, and stream on the internet at KPLU.org.
To whet your appetite, here is Cables in concert last fall with bassist Abraham Laboriel and drummer Dennis Mackrel, playing “I Should Care.â€
Tip 2. Later on Sunday, WBGO-FM in Newark, New Jersey will broadcast the last of Bill Kirchner’s contributions to its Jazz From The Archives programs. The station is dropping the long-running series at year’s end. Here is some of Mr. Kirchner’s preview of the show.
I’ve decided to focus on my proudest achievement in 45 years as a professional jazz musician: the music of my own Nonet, which was a working, touring,
 NYC-based band between 1980 and 2001. The Nonet recorded five albums–one of them a 2-CD set. The band included some of NYC’s finest jazz musicians and, I daresay, developed 
a unique identity. All of the three reed players “doubled†extensively on woodwinds, the two trumpeters doubled on flugelhorns, and the bass trombone provided a rich “bottomâ€; all this combined with a versatile rhythm section. As critic Larry Kart put it: “A musical coat of many colors, Kirchner’s Nonet sounds at times as though it were twice its actual size.â€
The program will air this Sunday, September 14, from 11 p.m. to midnight, EDT on 88.3 FM in the Newark-New York City area. WBGO also broadcasts on the Internet at wbgo.org.
Tip 3. This is one to put on your calendar for next Friday, and Fridays
thereafter, from 9 to 11 am EDT. Jason Crane (pictured), whose program The Jazz Session has been an internet pleasure for several years, now does a radio version of the show. It will be on the Pennsylvania State University radio station known as The Lion. That’s at 90.7 FM for those who listen in the State College, PA, area. Others may hear it on the web at http://thelion.fm.
View. After living in major metropolitan areas most of my adult life, I must confess to now and then missing their excitement, variety, hustle and surprises. For the most part, I’ve liked everywhere we’ve been, even Cleveland in the early 1960s. We left before the Cuyahoga River caught fire. I wasn’t overly bothered by the Los Angeles Traffic, New York’s grumpiness, the New Orleans humidity or San Francisco’s August fog. All of those places had plenty of compensations. Occasionally, I wonder what I’m doing in the agricultural hinterlands of the Pacific Northwest.
Then my friend Vig takes me for a ride. Vig is my bicycle, full name Vigorelli Bianchi. We come to the top of a rise, I look off toward the foothills of the Cascades, and I stop wondering.
Have a good weekend.
Gerald Wilson And Harmony
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In the September 8 Rifftides post about this week’s passing of Gerald Wilson, I mentioned his enhanced harmonic palette and its importance to modern jazz arranging (Photo courtesy of Gordon Sapsed). It is one aspect of the Wilson craftsmanship that continues to influence those who write for big bands. When I was working on the essay that accompanies the Mosaic box set of his Pacific Jazz recordings, Mr. Wilson and I discussed his development of eight-part harmony. He applied it to the piece he
wrote in honor of the Spanish bullfighter Santiago MartÃn, known as El Viti (born in 1938).
“El Viti was a great matador,” Gerald says, “different from any other I ever saw. He never smiled, and he was tough. I tried to trace a picture of him, as it gets down into a unique part where his stuff in the ring would get wild but not overbearing. It was a place for me to use my eight-part harmony. You’ll hear the brass playing it, with two different times going at once. You know, I invented eight-part harmony.”
Here, the muted trumpet is by Wilson, the only instance of his playing with his band on a recording. Anthony Ortega is the alto saxophone soloist.
Again, from the Mosaic notes:
Multi-part harmony in modern classical music starts with Debussy and Ravel and reaches monumental proportions in Bartok, Stravinsky, Ives and Scriabin. I asked the composer and orchestrator Jeff Sultanoff about the use of eight-part harmony in jazz, and about Wilson’s role in it.
“As Gerald defines it,” Sultanof said, “it means that in an eight-part brass section, all parts are different, no doubling octaves and such. He was probably the first to do this, although other arrangers had tried similar things. I can think of Pete Rugolo as an immediate example, but he did not start doing it until about 1946, whereas Gerald claims he was doing it as early as 1945. I can also think of Ellington and Strayhorn who did not voice ensembles in the ‘standard’ way. There are isolated examples of it in Eddie Sauter and Bill Finegan’s work, but I don’t recall anyone doing it on a regular basis before Gerald.”
In 1966 Duke Ellington recorded Wilson’s arrangement of “El Viti,†also known in the Ellington book as “The Matador,†in the Verve album of Côte d’Azur Concerts. It was one of 16 arrangements Wilson supplied Ellington over the years.
At Côte d’Azur, Ellington used the piece as a showcase for trumpeter Cat Anderson. Here, as the band plays, film from the bullring shows El Viti at work.
On his Jazz Profiles blog, Steve Cerra revisits his comprehensive post about Gerald Wilson. It reproduces a substantial portion of my notes, but not the descriptions and analyses of “El Viti†and the 94 other tracks in the Mosaic box. To read Steve’s post, go here.
The Wilson Mosaic CD box set is long out of print. Copies may be found for upwards of 400 American dollars on Amazon and eBay, but Amazon offers an MP3 version for considerably less.
A personal aside: A few years ago at the Monterey Jazz Festival, friend Orrin Keepnews and I wandered into the Turf Club, the artists hangout not far from the main stage. There was Gerald in his baseball cap and his irrepressible smile, sitting with his wife. He waved us over, and we four sat chatting, laughing and sipping for nearly an hour. The good feeling lingers from the last time I spent with that remarkable man.
Gerald Wilson, 1918-2014
Word has come that Gerald Wilson died today in Los Angeles. A swing era 
trumpeter, he became the pioneering leader, composer and arranger of a modern big band that was a significant presence for more than sixty years. Wilson enriched the language of large ensembles by employing expanded harmonic structures. He was noted for, among other things, his colorful music inspired by Mexican bull fighting. For an obituary, see Don Heckman’s article in today’s Los Angeles Times.
In a post to come, I will have reflections on Wilson’s considerable contributions. In the meantime, here is the best known of his bull fighter series, “Viva Tirado,” this version featuring Joe Pass as guitar soloist, Carmell Jones on trumpet and Teddy Edwards playing tenor saxophone.
Gerald Wilson, 96, RIP