Pianist Keith Jarrett is one of the four new NEA Jazz Masters who will accept their awards at Lincoln Center Monday evening. In its advance publicity, the National Endowment for the Arts says that Jarrett has a “talent for playing both abstractly and lyrically, sometimes during the same song.” True as that assessment is, it doesn’t begin to describe the brilliance of his work when he is at his peak of inspiration, as in the most recent recording with his trio—one of five albums he released last year—or when he’s in full flight in one of his celebrated solo concerts. Nor does the news release touch on Jarrett’s relationship with his audiences, whom he says are vital to the success of his live performances. However, if his listeners misbehave by, say, coughing or hoisting a camera, he may dress them down in anger—or walk off the stage.

In this short pre-ceremony interview provided by the NEA, Jarrett discusses what he expects of audiences, the three decades of his trio with Gary Peacock and Jack DeJohnette, his spontaneous wordless vocals, and how he came to jazz in the first place.

Here is Jarrett with his standards trio in a 1993 Tokyo performance of “I Fall in Love Too Easily” that demonstrates not only their celebrated cohesiveness but moments of Jarrett’s magnetism when he is playing unaccompanied.

Oh, what the heck, it’s the weekend. You have plenty of time. Here they are again with as delightful a performance of Sonny Rollins’s “Oleo” as I’ve heard since the 1954 original with Rollins and Miles Davis.

Jarrett, saxophonist Anthony Braxton, bassist Richard Davis and saxophonist-producer-educator Jamey Aebersold will receive their awards in New York in a ceremony that will be streamed live on the internet at 7:30 p.m. EST Monday on the arts.gov and Jazz at Lincoln Center websites.

There has been disagreement for more than forty years about whether the saxophonist, composer and sometime pianist Anthony Braxton is a jazz musician. With many others, he long insisted that the music he wrote and played was not jazz, but in 1993 he told author Cole Gagne…

…even though I have been saying I’m not a jazz musician for the last 25 years; in the final analysis, an African-American with a saxophone? Ahh, he’s jazz!

Maybe that concession is part of what led the National Endowment for the Arts to name Braxton one of the four NEA Jazz Masters for 2014. He, pianist Keith Jarrett, bassist Richard Davis and musician-entrepreneur Jamey Aebersold will receive their medals and their $25,000 awards on Monday evening. In a moment, we’ll hear one of Braxton’s controversial early recordings. But it may be helpful to first see and hear him discuss his approach to music.

In 1969, when he was 24, Braxton recorded, on one of his arsenal of saxophones, For Alto, a two-LP album of unaccompanied performances. Braxton dedicated three of the album’s pieces to John Cage, Cecil Taylor and Leroy Jenkins, indications of his leanings away from the mainstream of jazz and toward the unfettered expression musicians were pursuing in the wake of Ornette Coleman’s, and Taylor’s, emergence. Here is “To Pianist Cecil Taylor.” You will see schematic drawings of roughly the kind Braxton has included in most of his album packages through the years. It may take this video a few seconds to come up on your screen.

The NEA Jazz Masters ceremony, attended by the glitterati of the arts world, or at least of New York’s jazz community, will be streamed live from Lincoln Center. It will be on the web at 7:30 p.m. Monday on the arts.gov and Jazz at Lincoln Center websites.

The 20014 NEA Jazz Masters will receive their awards in a ceremony at New York’s Lincoln Center Monday evening, January 13. The four recipients are pianist Keith Jarrett, saxophonist Anthony Braxton, bassist Richard Davis and— in the jazz advocacy category—publisher, recording executive and musician Jamey Aebersold. They will be the 32nd group in the jazz community to be so honored since the National Endowment for the Arts established the recognition program in 1982. The affair will include performances by young musicians cited by the NEA as rising stars, among them vibraharpist Warren Wolf and bassist Yasushi Nakamura, There will be appearances by several former medal winners including Jimmy Heath, David Liebman, Roy Haynes and Annie Ross. The ceremony will be streamed live on the internet at 7:30 p.m. on the arts.gov and Jazz at Lincoln Center websites.

Over the next three days, Rifftides will post sketches about and performances by the new Jazz Masters, beginning with Davis. The bassist was a powerful presence on the New York jazz scene in the 1960s and ‘70s and remained in demand in clubs and studios there even after 1977, when he moved to the Midwest and a professorship at the University of Wisconsin. To give you an idea of the scope of Davis’s abilities, here are two brief segments from my notes for his 1972 album The Philosophy of the Spiritual:

If you were watching a few seasons ago when the National Educational Television network broadcast a Boston Symphony Orchestra concert of Igor Stravinsky conducting some of his works, you saw the maestro emerge from the wings and bow toward a bassist added for the special occasion. At the conclusion of the concert, Stravinsky paused as he left the stage to put his hand on the bassist’s shoulder, a tribute to the slender, elegant black man many musicians consider the world’s greatest bass player. He is Richard Davis.

The following Monday night, Davis was jammed between the saxophone section and a wall of the Village Vanguard, Max Gordon’s funky little wedge-shaped basement in New York. The Vanguard is a far cry from Symphony Hall, but it’s Valhalla to aficionados of the Thad Jones-Mel Lewis Orchestra…

Davis was the bassist for the Jones-Lewis band from 1966 to 1972, which many musicians, listeners and critics believe to have been the orchestra’s peak years. During that time, as a freelancer he was in constant demand for concerts and recording sessions with artists as varied as Earl Hines, Eric Dolphy, Frank Sinatra and John Lennon. I’ve always been partial to the photograph above of Davis playing his lion-headed bass at the recording session for Phil Woods’ Musique Du Bois (1974). The dream rhythm section was Davis, pianist Jaki Byard and drummer Alan Dawson.

From The Philoslophy of the Spiritual, here he is (left channel) with fellow bassist Bill Lee (right channel), pianist Chick Corea, guitarist Sam Brown, drummer Sonny Brown and Frankie Dunlop adding subtle percussion touches.

Next time, we’ll consider NEA Jazz Master Anthony Braxton.

New York’s Winter Jazzfest opens a five-day run tomorrow, celebrating its tenth year featuring musicians who operate on the leading edge of the music. The atmosphere of adventurism does not necessarily indicate that the artists are all young revolutionaries. Among the dozens of seasoned players appearing in clubs and concert halls throughout Manhattan will be Gary Bartz, Craig Handy, Miguel Zenon Don Byron, Matt Wilson and Jason Moran. For their Wednesday Town Hall concert, Moran and fellow pianist Robert Glasper plan a four-hand tribute to the 75th anniversary of the Blue Note label’s first recording session, which featured Albert Ammons and Meade Lux Lewis.

Relatively new jazz scene arrivals playing the festival include Darcy James Argue’s big band, guitarist Mary Halvorson, singer Gretchen Parlato, saxophonist Sharel Cassity, pianist Aruan Ortiz and a vocal ensemble called Roomful Of Teeth, which ties with the band Mostly Other People Do The Killing in the festival’s intriguing-name sweepstakes. At post time, the festival’s website listed one hundred groups. To see a schedule and lists of performers and locations, go here.

New York is the still the jazz capital of the world. For residents of the Apple or visitors, this looks like a splendid—if exhausting—way to survey the state of the music. The event is packed with young and youngish artists making waves that excite fans their ages and younger and frustrate many older listeners who have rigid convictions about what constitutes jazz. There is a wide range of musicians and styles, but the prevailing direction is forward, not back.

In what may or may not serve as a preview of Mary Halvorson’s appearance at the Winter Jazzfest, here she is with her quintet in one of National Public Radio’s Tiny Desk concerts. Halvorson, guitar; Jonathan Finlayson, trumpet; Jon Irabagon, alto saxophone; John Hebert, bass; Ches Smith, drums.

The passing of Saul Zaentz yesterday at 92 brings to mind the crucial part he played in expanding Fantasy Records from a vital, colorful, but minor independent label into a pop hit-maker and a major repository of jazz recordings from the late 1940s on. He is being remembered in obituaries around the world as the producer of Amadeus, The English Patient, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest and other major motion pictures. For a thorough review of his life and career, see this piece in The New York Times.

Zaentz’s importance to jazz was as the head of Fantasy. When the label’s founders, the brothers Max and Sol Weiss, decided to sell the company in 1967, it went to Zaentz, their longtime right-hand man. Under Zaentz and Fantasy president Ralph Kaffel, the label’s star hit-maker was Creedence Clearwater Revival, a rock band that became a massive success and sold millions of albums. The profits the band’s recordings earned for Fantasy set up Zaentz not only to form the Saul Zaentz Company and get into film production, but also to buy the catalogs of the Prestige, Riverside, Contemporary and Pablo labels.

For several years, Fantasy owned one of the world’s richest concentrations of mainstream jazz recordings. Until Zaentz and Kaffel sold Fantasy to Concord Music in 2004, they maintained the integrity of that catalog. In the past ten years, Concord has branched into pop, rock, soul, hip-hop and other areas of popular music. Uncompromising jazz has assumed a smaller role. Much of the jazz catalog that Concord acquired from Fantasy is now available only as digital downloads.

That catalog contained essential recordings by a roster that included Thelonious Monk, Dave Brubeck, Miles Davis, Woody Herman, Art Blakey, Cal Tjader, Vince Guaraldi, John Coltrane, Bill Evans, Count Basie, Art Pepper and Duke Ellington, among dozens of key jazz artists. Merely sampling the highlights of the former Fantasy catalog could take hundreds of hours of listening. In remembrance of Saul Zaentz, from that precious lode we have chosen one track from an album by a Fantasy artist whom he championed long before the multimillion-seller pop hits and the Oscar-winning movies.

Thanks, Saul.

Al Porcino, a powerful lead trumpeter for several big bands, died on New Years Eve. He was 88. His wife said that he succumbed to complications following a fall in his house in Munich. Porcino had lived in Germany since the late 1970s, frequently augmenting American bands touring in Europe, as well as leading his own large ensemble.

After debuting in 1943 with Louis Prima when he was 18, Porcino played with swing bands led by Tommy Dorsey, Georgie Auld and Gene Krupa. He made the transition into the bebop era with Woody Herman’s First Herd and went on to work with Stan Kenton and Chubby Jackson. Porcino rejoined Herman and Kenton in the 1950s. Following his move to Los Angeles in 1957, he co-led a band with Med Flory and played lead with Terry Gibbs. He was frequently employed for the sound tracks of motion pictures and toured with singers including Frank Sinatra, Peggy Lee, Mel Tormé and Judy Garland. He also recorded with the Bill Holman band and with Count Basie.

In the late ‘60s and early ‘70s, Porcino had extensive stints with Thad Jones and Mel Lewis. From Danish television, we see and hear him playing lead in Jones’s “Central Park North.” Solos are by Jones, flugelhorn; Snooky Young, trumpet; Jerome Richardson, soprano sax; Lewis, drums.

Porcino’s fame was primarily as a commanding lead player who teamed with the drummer to drive a band. He occasionally improvised on recordings, including with Charlie Parker, but according to The Biographical Encyclopedia of Jazz, his own favorite recorded solo was from early in his career, 16 bars in this 1946 Gene Krupa recording of Sibelius’s “Valse Triste”.

Finally, here’s Al Porcino reuniting with Med Flory and leading their reconstituted big band at a Los Angeles Jazz Institute concert in 2008. Flory has the alto saxophone solo. The sound is of less than prime digital quality, but Porcino’s piquant personality comes through loud and clear

Well, maybe piquant wasn’t the right adjective. Al was rather mild in that clip. If you want the full-bore Porcino, listen to this interview with Don Manning of KBOO-FM in Portland, Oregon. It was probably in the early 1990s. Warning: Before you play the interview, be sure that children and other impressionable people are out of the room. “Strong language” doesn’t begin to cover it.

There seems to be a Ray Charles aura abroad in 2014; several Rifftides readers have called my attention to a remarkable 1974 performance by Charles, his band and the Raelets. The headline on the clip reads, Ray Charles Plays the Slow Blues in Madrid.

“Slow” doesn’t begin to describe the tempo. At roughly 30 beats to the minute, a 12-bar chorus takes about a minute and a half. But that’s not the point. The point is the depth of Charles’s distillation of blues feeling. Be sure to stay for the other-worldly coda that he coaxes out of his Fender-Rhodes.

The acoustic pianist behind Charles was Ernie Vantrease. The guitarist is not identified.

The Rifftides staff wishes you a Merry Christmas, a splendid holiday season and happy listening.

The bonus winter scene is of the magnificent Mount Adams in southwestern Washington State, about 60 miles away and easily visible from Rifftides world headquarters.

The roll call of distinguished jazz artists leaving us seems to grow longer by the day. Now comes news of the passing of Yusef Lateef, who died today at his home in Massachusetts. He was 93. As a youngster in Detroit, Lateef mastered several reed instruments and early in his career became a respected performer, composer and educator. He was an inspiration and model for a generation of young Detroit musicians who in the 1950s moved to New York and themselves became influences in the burgeoning jazz scene of that decade. Lateef was an early innovator in what became known as world music, melding his deep understanding of and emotional connection to the blues with concepts derived from his study of Middle Eastern music

In addition to performing and recording prolifically with his own groups, Lateef had tenure with two enormously influential leaders—early in his career Dizzy Gillespie’s 1940s big band, in the 1960s the Cannonball Adderley Sextet. In this 1963 clip, we hear Lateef playing oboe with the Adderley group; Adderley, alto saxophone; Nat Adderley, cornet; Joe Zawinul, piano; Sam Jones, bass; Louis Hayes, drums. Cannonball named the piece for John Coltrane, his former colleague in the Miles Davis Sextet.

Mark Stryker, the music critic of The Detroit Free Press, has covered Lateef for years and written extensively about him. For Mr. Stryker’s summary of Lateef’s career, please go here. But before you do, don’t miss this astonishing 1972 performance by Lateef on tenor saxophone with Kenny Barron, piano; Bob Cunningham, bass; and Albert “Tootie” Heath, drums. Heath also plays wood flute. Following the performance is a brief disquisition in French.

To hear and see more from that Lateef quartet, go here and here.

Thanks to the YouTube uploader known as uvisninewnew for providing those Jazz Harmonie videos.

We have word from Herb Geller’s family that the venerable alto saxophonist died on Thursday in a Hamburg, Germany, hospital. He succumbed to pneumonia. Geller had been under treatment for the past twelve months for a form of lymphoma. He turned 85 in November. As noted in this Rifftides post last June, Geller remained not merely active but energetic until fairly recently, performing in clubs and at festivals throughout Europe. He had lived in Hamburg since 1965. Until his mandatory retirement at age 65 he was a key soloist with the NDR Big Band, then spent much of the next 20 years touring and recording in a solo career.

Geller’s long residence in Europe gave him steady and reliable employment with a superb government-sponsored orchestra but kept him less visible than contemporaries like Phil Woods, Lee Konitz, Bud Shank and Paul Desmond who remained based in the US. Nonetheless, during his period of greatest US activity, when jazz burgeoned on the west coast, Geller was one of the busiest and most respected alto soloists of his generation. He was born in Los Angeles and began playing the saxophone when he was eight years old. Among his band mates at Dorsey High School in Southwest L.A. were fellow saxophonists Eric Dolphy and Vi Redd and the drummer Bobby White.

After he heard a performance by Benny Carter when Geller was 14, he decided to become a professional musician. Carter and Hodges were his early models, their influences soon leavened by the impact of Charlie Parker. Geller worked with a cross section of the major players in Los Angeles, recording copiously with, among others, Bill Holman, Shorty Rogers, Andre Previn, Quincy Jones and Chet Baker. He recorded three albums as a leader for Emarcy Records at a time when the label was riding high in the jazz world and was on hundreds of albums in the fifties. Among them, he recorded with Dinah Washington, Max Roach, Clifford Brown, Bill Holman, Clark Terry, Maynard Ferguson and Kenny Drew. Geller said in a recent conversation that of the thirty or so albums he recorded under his own name his favorite was You’re Looking At Me. That 1997 Fresh Sound CD had a rhythm section of the young Swedish pianist Jan Lundgren and two Los Angeles stalwarts, the late bassist Dave Carpenter and drummer Joe LaBarbera. Lundgren became one of Geller’s favorite collaborators.

During the 1950s Geller’s first wife, Lorraine, was one of the premier jazz pianists in Los Angeles. The two frequently recorded together. She died in 1958 at the age of 30. Here are the Gellers in 1955 with a “Cherokee” variant called “Arapahoe.” Red Mitchell is the bassist, Mel Lewis the drummer.

One of Geller’s collaborators in his latterday playing expeditions around Europe was the pianist Roberto Magris. Following a lengthy introduction by the emcee and a bit of onstage preparation, we hear him play “If I Were a Bell” with Magris, bassist Nikola Matosic and drummer Enzo Carpentieri at the 2009 Novi Sad Jazz Festival in Serbia.

Herb Geller, RIP

(revised 12-23-13)

John Snyder, who produced some of Jim Hall’s best albums, sent a comment on Hall’s passing. It appears with the dozens of other observations sent by readers following the Rifftides remembrance posted on December 10, but the staff decided that the poetic eloquence of Mr. Snyder’s tribute stands on its own. We reproduce it here, followed by a performance from Jim Hall Live, the 1975 Hall trio album with bassist Don Thompson and drummer Terry Clarke recorded at Bourbon Street in Toronto and produced by John Snyder.

Jim left not only music behind when he finished the gig, he left an aesthetic, a “way”, a path. It was the way of the individual heart, of unencumbered truth, of listening and honesty and the responsibilities of self-expression. Even in his absence, his music breathes with life and selflessness, innocence and humor.

Jim had more than ten fingers; it’s just that he just didn’t use them all. He knew that guitar playing often obscured the heart of the player and I think that’s what he meant when he said to his student, “don’t just do something, sit there”. There are fantastic instrumentalists in this world and it has always been thus, but there are only a few whose music and expression transcend the instrument and it becomes transparent, rather like the architectural drawings of a Frank Gehry building. Necessary and important, they and the technique they manifest disappear into the awe we feel inside the aesthetic experience they create.

Jim was kind and funny and he loved irony. He fought with himself and won, he lived his life on his own terms and had no cynicism or bitterness about the music business that provided him with the occasional opportunity to share his music with us. He was always grateful for those opportunities and always made the most out of them. He loved the people he played music with (or had really good stories about them) and he loved the people he played for.

Jim added to this world and to the lives of those his music touched. How will we miss our friend, who will be remembered for as long as there is music? With joy, with thankfulness and smiles on our faces.

Steve Cerra, the proprietor of the endlessly interesting Jazz Profiles blog, has posted a new piece about Take Five: The Public And Private Lives Of Paul Desmond. In it, he says that the book would make a good Christmas present, a suggestion that I wouldn’t dream of challenging. Steve observes that any stocking the book might stuff would have to be huge. That was true in the days when Take Five existed only as a hard cover volume. Now, it is an eBook, meaning that the recipient’s stocking can be the size of a Kindle or a bunch of digital 0s and 1s.

To read Steve’s embarrassingly flattering assessment of the biography, with extensive excerpts, go here. To find out how to obtain the eBook version, go here. Many thanks to Mr. Cerra for his kindness.

Try as I might to ignore requests to vote in polls, I don’t seem to be able to say no to Francis Davis. This year, the eminent critic persuaded 136 people to take part in his annual critics poll, which he has moved to the website of National Public Radio. He asked writers, broadcasters, bloggers and others to name their choices for the best jazz recordings of the year. The results are in.

The overall winner, hands down, is Wayne Shorter, 80 years old and, evidently, indefatigable. In his introduction to the poll results, this is some of what Mr. Davis has to say about Shorter.

It says a lot about his enduring hold on jazz listeners that over a half century into his career, the descriptive phrases most commonly put in front of Wayne Shorter’s name — along with “the great saxophonist and composer” — remain “the elusive” and “the enigmatic.” The inside tray card to Shorter’s Without a Net, the runaway Best Album winner in this year’s NPR Music Jazz Critics Poll, pictures him from the back, in spotlighted silhouette. It’s reminiscent of the cover of 2002’s Footprints Live!, where only half of his face was visible in the mirror of a navigator’s compass. Both poses are evocative of his solos, his tunes and his persona, all of which routinely invite us to fill in the blanks.

For the August Rifftides review of the Shorter album, go here.

Here is the poll’s list of the top 10 finishers.

1. Wayne Shorter, Without A Net (Blue Note)
2. Craig Taborn Trio, Chants (ECM)
3. Charles Lloyd & Jason Moran, Hagar’s Song (ECM)
4. Cécile McLorin Salvant, Woman Child (Mack Avenue)
5. Steve Coleman and Five Elements, Functional Arhythmia (Pi)
6. Tim Bern’s Snakeoil, Shadow Man (ECM)
7. Dave Douglas Quintet, Time Travel (Greenleaf)
8. Terence Blanchard, Magnetic (Blue Note)
9. Darcy James Argue’s Secret Society, Brooklyn Babylon (New Amsterdam)
10. Mary Halvorson Septet, Illusionary Sea (Firehouse 12)

The other categories are Reissues, Vocal, Debut and Latin. To see those results and a list of the top 50 choices, go to the NPR Music site. For what it’s worth, this is how I voted.

Best New Releases

1. Keith Jarrett, Gary Peacock, Jack DeJohnette, Somewhere (ECM)
2. Wayne Shorter, Without A Net (Blue Note)
3. Eddie Daniels & Roger Kellaway, Live in Santa Fe: Duke at the Roadhouse (IPO)
4. Dave Holland, Prism (Dare2)
5. Bill Frisell, Big Sur (Okeh)
6. JD Allen, Grace (Savant)
7. Dave Douglas, DD/50 Special Edition 50th Birthday Recordings (Greenleaf Music)
8. Ivo Perelman, Matthew Shipp, Whit Dickey, Gerald Cleaver, Enigma (Leo Records)
9. Steve Turre, The Bones of Art (High Note)
10. Rudresh Mahanthappa, Gamak (ACT)

Reissues

Jeremy Steig, Flute Fever (International Phonograph)
Lester Young, Boston 1950 (Uptown)
Woody Shaw, The Complete Muse Sessions (Mosaic)

Best Vocal Album

Cécile McLorin Salvant, Woman Child (Mack Avenue)

Best Debut Album

Chad Lefkowitz-Brown, Imagery Manifesto (Lefkowitz-Brown)

Best Latin Jazz Album

Mark Weinstein, Todo Corazon (Jazzheads)

This is the 77th birthday of Eddie Palmieri. The pianist, composer, arranger and bandleader moved with his family to New York from Puerto when he and his older brother Charlie were children. By the time Eddie was eight, he and Charlie were performing in talent contests. Both became major figures in the Latin jazz movement. As a teenager, Eddie Palmieri worked with experienced Latin bands, including that of Tito Rodriguez. At fourteen, he had his own band. In the early 1960s, his Conjunto La Perfecta became one of Latin music’s most influential ensembles. Palmieri’s La Perfecta II continues as a primal force in the music that is sometimes called Nuyorican.

Palmieri recorded two classic collaborations with his equally influential Latin jazz peer Cal Tjader. Here, thanks to a YouTube contributor named Ted Nelson, is “Pecadillo” from Tjader’s and Palmieri’s 1966 album El Sonido Nuevo. Palmieri, piano; Tjader, vibes; Barry Rogers, trombone solo.

The other joint effort by Palmieri and Tjader, Bamboleate—equally rewarding—seems to have gone out of print as a CD or LP, but is available as a digital download.

Feliz cumpleaños, Sr. Palmieri