In response to the previous exhibit, Rifftides reader Svetlana Ilyicheva writes:

Spring is in full swing in the suburbs of Moscow too.

The calendar claims that we are two days into spring. There seems to be some mistake. This is what the dawn disclosed this morning. That gardening shed isn’t going to see much action today.

This Blossom Dearie album also has other songs about spring. They’ll help us through an unexpectedly wintry day.

This series of brief reviews calls your attention to recordings that captured the Rifftides staff’s interest and may capture yours.

Chris Brubeck’s Triple Play: Live At Arthur Zankel Music Center (Blue Forest)

As Triple Play, Chris Brubeck, harmonicist Peter Madcat Ruth and guitarist Joel Brown have had fun for more than 20 years. Brubeck plays piano, bass and trombone. They all sing. It’s a jazz band, or a blues band, or a folk group. It’s all of those. In this alternately raucous and tender July, 2011, concert, the repertoire includes pieces by Fats Waller, Robert Johnson, W.C. Handy, Paul Desmond and Chris’s 90-year-old father Dave, who makes a surprise appearance in the middle of “Blue Rondo a la Turk” (the crowd goes wild). The elder Brubeck stays to play, among other things, a gorgeous unaccompanied “Dziekuje (Thank You),” back his son’s blowsy trombone on “Black and Blue” and get off some sparkling single-note lines on “St. Louis Blues.” Brown’s clarinetist father, a stripling of 85, sits in convincingly on several pieces. Ruth plays what is likely the first jaw harp solo ever on “Take Five,” and caps it with a wild harmonica coda. It’s all great fun, which is yet to be declared illegal in jazz.

Allen Lowe, Blues and the Empirical Truth (Music & Arts)

In a comprehensive sense, Lowe’s is a blues band. Three CDs with 52 tracks make the case for the tireless composer, saxophonist, guitarist and author’s Truth—that the blues in all its variety and malleability is the core of jazz. Lowe demonstrates using musicianship that employs intimacy, bombast, comedy, suggestiveness, wryness, profundity and a healthy dose of concepts that have developed in jazz since the advent of Ornette Coleman. Characters as diverse as Buddy Bolden, Pete Brown, Dave Brubeck, Davey Schildkraut, Lennie Tristano, Bud Powell, Elvis Presley and the Carter Family inspire some of the pieces. Lowe has the stimulating help of trombonist Roswell Rudd, guitarist Marc Ribot, pianists Matthew Shipp and Lewis Porter, and a few of Lowe’s fellow adventurers in the Portland, Maine, jazz community. This is a provocative and valuable collection.

Daryl Sherman, Mississippi Belle: Cole Porter in the Quarter (Audiophile)

The pianist and singer deepens her relationship with Cole Porter, forged in years of playing his piano at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel in New York. Porter wrote the title tune for a movie in 1943, but it was rejected and has never before been recorded. The Quarter is the French Quarter in New Orleans, which is where Sherman recorded this collection of 13 Porter songs. Some are among his best known (“Get Out of Town,” “Let’s Do It”), some less often performed (“Ours,” “Tale of the Oyster”). Sherman gives all of them her beguiling phrasing, interpretation and vocal sunshine. When she accompanies herself or solos, she finds substantial harmonies. When her only accompaniment is Jesse Boyd’s bass, her intonation never falters. In this drummerless trio, Tom Fischer solos on tenor sax or clarinet.

Marianne Solivan, Prisoner Of Love (Hipnotic)

Solivan has attracted an impressive coterie of fans among New York’s musicians. They include Christian McBride, who plays bass on her first album and Jeremy Pelt, who produced the CD and has a trumpet solo on “Moon Ray.” In his liner notes, McBride emphasizes Solivan’s musicianship, which is apparent in this collection of standards. She applies it with reserve and taste, concentrating on melody and the meaning of lyrics. She refrains from scatting, the downfall of young vocalists who want to be hip. Her skill with “Prisoner of Love,””Day Dream” and “I Guess I’ll Hang My Tears Out to Dry” establish her hipness credential. Betty Carter’s “I Can’t Help It,” and “Social Call,”—forever associated with Ernestine Anderson—endorse it. Pianists Xavier Davis and Michael Kanan appear with Solivan, as well as guitarist Peter Bernstein, bassist Ben Wolfe and drummer Jonathan Blake. It’s a fine debut.

Please return to Rifftides soon for more reviews as we attempt to catch up with the never-ending flow of jazz releases.

Mark Cantor (pictured, right), the preeminent jazz film archivist, has established a web channel of clips. If the first batch is an indication, the collection has the makings of a bonanza for viewers interested in the music and in the convoluted history of jazz in motion pictures and on television.

As an example of the choice moments Cantor has posted: just in case you didn’t see Sweetheart Of The Campus when it came out in 1941, you missed a rare movie appearance by Leo Watson and the Spirits of Rhythm. Watson (pictured, left) developed his infectious scat singing style before the term was in general use. He influenced later scat specialists including Ella Fitzgerald and Eddie Jefferson. He worked with Gene Krupa and made appearances on records with Artie Shaw, Slim Gaillard, Benny Goodman, Vic Dickenson and Billie Holiday. In his YouTube commentary on the clip, Cantor writes:

Teddy Bunn accompanies on guitar, and that is either Wilbur or Douglas Daniels on tipple to the left; they were both in the group, but I don’t know which of the two made the film gig. The string bass looks like Wilson Myers to me, but of this I am not certain.

As for the bandleader who introduces the Spirits of Rhythm, yes, he’s that Ozzie Nelson.

Cantor has also posted film or TV performances by—among others—Punch Miller, The Lighthouse All-Stars, Adrian Rollini and Lambert, Hendricks and Ross. Surely, L-H-R knew about Leo Watson. To see Cantor’s collection so far, go here.

Nat Cole was born March 17, 1917. He did not appear to be Irish, but his birthday falls on St. Patrick’s Day. What better excuse to remember a great musician? Cole did not record many Irish songs, but there is one in his 1946 collaboration with Lester Young’s trio. We begin our Nat Cole birthday observance with Lester Young, tenor saxophone; Cole, piano; Buddy Rich, drums, and “Peg ‘O My Heart.” In an anomaly that only the person who posted this on YouTube could explain, the video continues for about 20 minutes after the four-minute piece ends, so unless you’re in love with the fuzzy representation of the album cover, you might want to bail out when the track is through and move to the next section.

Cole became one of the most popular singers in the world—we’ll get to that toward the end—but he remained a pianist whose touch, harmonic depth, melodic creativity and swing set an example and standard for dozens of others, including Oscar Peterson, Bill Evans, Tommy Flanagan (not Irish) and a legion of their successors. Here is Cole in 1957 on his television show, with two versions of “Tea For Two.” Athough the difference could be in dubbing speed, the first one seems to be in A-flat, the second a half-step up in the more challenging key of A (I don’t have perfect pitch; I have a piano).

Now, Nat King Cole and his trio plus Jack Costanzo on conga drum, with the Bobby Troup song that kept Cole on hit parades, juke boxes and the radio for years and will no doubt be on the web and digital downloads for decades more.

Now and then, the Rifftides staff calls your attention to recordings selected from the stacks of more or less recent arrivals. Comments are brief, in an effort—no doubt doomed—to catch up with worthwhile releases.

Dutch Jazz Orchestra, Moon Dreams: Rediscovered Music of Gil Evans & Gerry Mulligan (Challenge)

Languishing in the stacks, this 2009 album called to me. I’m glad it did. It features arrangements that Gil Evans, in his mid-30s, and Gerry Mulligan, in his early 20s, wrote for the Claude Thornhill band in the late 1940s. Their work from that period anticipates what they, John Lewis and John Carisi created in 1949 and ‘50 for the nine-piece Miles Davis band later indelibly labeled Birth Of The Cool. Impeccably played by a fine Dutch repertory big band, the pieces include Evans’ chart on “Yardbird Suite” and his medley of “Easy Living,” a stunning “Moon Dreams” and “Everything Happens to Me.” There are buoyant Mulligan arrangements of “Rose of the Rio Grande,” “Joost at the Roost“and “Poor Little Rich Girl.” Sixty years later, all sound remarkably undated. In another 60, Evans’ treatment of “Lover Man” will still be fresh. If The Cool was born with the Davis band, it had a rich gestation period with Thornhill.

Wadada Leo Smith’s Mbira, Dark Lady Of The Sonnets (TUM)

Smith suggests imagery for each of the five pieces. If you are capable of envisioning 60,000 Zulus dancing on the surface of a lake in “Zulu Water Festival,” fine, but you need not hear this as program music. It may be best to let it wash over you and discover what your mind develops in response. Like all of Smith’s recent work, this transcends the category of free jazz with which the trumpeter and composer is usually identified. It is no surprise that the formidable percussionist Pheeroan akLaff, a longtime colleague, works hand-in-glove with Smith. Min Xiao-Fen, born in Nanjing, is a surprise. A collaborator with John Zorn, Jane Ira Bloom and Björk, she makes remarkable music with the pipa, an ancient Chinese stringed instrument, and with her voice. She and Smith occasionally play carefully crafted unison lines that have the precision of electricity. Her singing on the title track is haunting. The three players alternately blend with and highlight one another. Space is an essential element of their music. Smith calls the trio Mbira, the name of an African thumb piano, although there is no African thumb piano on the CD. Consider it part of the mystique of the music, which in his notes Smith says is in “a creative contextualization defined in the contemporary music language.” That language encompasses the blues. A pronounced blues sensibility washes through and beneath the surface of the playing, which manages to be at once contemplative and daring.

Phil Dwyer, Changing Seasons (Alma)

The composer and orchestrator Phil Dwyer allows Dwyer the tenor saxophone virtuoso a solo in the “Summer” section of this beautifully realized album. He gives fellow Canadian Ingrid Jensen a trumpet slot that is integral to the success of “Winter.” Most of the solos, however, are by Mark Fewer, a dazzling violinist who glides lyrically through Dwyer’s seasonal suite. The work may have been inspired at least in part, as any music with such a theme must be, by the example Vivaldi set 250 years ago. Clearly, though, Dwyer’s experience in modern jazz and classical music provides the basis for the pieces. He integrates a full string section and a big band in what amounts to a violin concerto blended into a concerto grosso. He and Fewer, who is not only the featured soloist but also conducts the strings, get what could have been an ungainly machine to swing mightily in the “Winter” section. In an unusual achievement for our length-obsessed CD era, the suite runs 35-and-a-half minutes, but it is so satisfying that it’s hard to imagine why it should be longer

Anthony Wilson, Seasons: Live At The Metropolitan Museum Of Art (Goat Hill DVD and CD)

Wilson’s album appeared at about the same time as Dwyer’s. Aside from subject matter and titles, they could hardly be more different. John Monteleone, an American guitar maker respected by his fellow craftsmen and revered by guitarists, created four magnificent archtop instruments named for the seasons, then commissioned Wilson to write a suite for them. Wilson engaged fellow guitarists Steve Cardenas, Chico Pinheiro and Julian Lage to perform the work with him in concert at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. Fittingly, the Monteleone guitars—subtly tinted and illustrated by the luthier—will be on display at the museum through July 4th as works of art. Each of the guitarists is featured in a movement of the seasonal cycle, with the other three playing Wilson’s often-intricate ensemble accompaniments. Cardenas begins with the moody “Winter;” the young Brazilian Pinheiro dances through the samba “Spring;” Wilson celebrates “Summer” with an Ozarks twang; Lage has the central part in “Autumn’s” harmonic complexities, wrapping up the 32-minute suite. The DVD has the suite, masterfully photographed and directed at the concert, a documentary about Monteleone making the guitars and Wilson writing the music, and an extensive slide show. The CD has the suite, each of the guitarists in a solo feature, then all of them together in a ‘round robin on Joni Mitchell’s ”The Circle Game.” This is a remarkable guitar chamber music experience.

More reviews coming soon, listening and contemplation time permitting.

In a new venture, Washington, DC, Rifftides correspondent John Birchard (so that’s what he looks like) is combining his broadcast experience, devotion to jazz and fascination with the internet. The former Voice Of America newscaster has posted his first installment of a webcast he calls Cyber Jazz Today. It is an hour program in which he plays music, speaks briefly but cogently about it and, in a valuable wrinkle, provides glimpses of the future. John writes:

I have come up with a weekly feature for the show, “Jazz Goes to College” (remember the Brubeck Columbia album by the same name?), in which I single out a college-level music school for recognition. It runs a couple of minutes, includes comments on programs, faculty and a name or address where interested parties can contact the school . I also am encouraging the schools to provide me with CDs of the students performing. So far, having started with Berklee, I’ve gotten enthusiastic responses from Manhattan School of Music and the U of North Texas. The first show, with the Berklee feature, incorporates two cuts from Berklee students from their latest student-produced CD “Octave”. I will have two from the Manhattan School next week and two from North Texas’ big bad One O’Clock Lab Band the following week.

To hear John’s maiden voyage, go here and click on “Enjoy The Show.” While you’re at the site, investigate the FAQ section. A sample:

Q: Did John Lewis of the Modern Jazz Quartet invent the fugue?
A: No, but he did invent the tuxedo.

Despite that, Rifftides is adding a Cyber Jazz Today link in the right-hand column under Personal Jazz Sites. Bon voyage, John.

John Gilmore (1931-1995) was a tenor saxophonist highly regarded by leaders in a wide stylistic range. He worked with Earl Hines, Buster Smith, King Kolax, Miles Davis, B.B. King, and Charles Mingus, among many others. Gilmore was equally comfortable playing mainstream tenor with fellow Chicagoan Red Saunders and exploring the planets with Sun Ra. During his time with Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers in the first half of the 1960s, Gilmore’s front-line partner was trumpeter Lee Morgan. Blakey, bassist Victor Sproles and pianist John Hicks were the rhythm section. Here, Gilmore is featured on a ballad introduced by host Humphrey Lyttleton in a 1964 BBC 4 broadcast.

For the last 30 years of his life, Gilmore was on the leading edge of the avant garde as a pillar of the Sun Ra Arkestra. He attracted a following for solos that incorporated long stretches of upper register playing in the extreme falsetto range of the horn that led one internet commenter to observe, “I think the tea is ready.” Still, his core of musicality had the power to lead John Coltrane to name Gilmore as a major influence. Here, Gilmore talks about why he devoted himself to Sun Ra’s music. Then, we see and hear him solo with Ra’s band on “’Round Midnight” by Thelonious Monk, whom Gilmore had just claimed was superseded by Ra.

Following Sun Ra’s death in 1993, Gilmore became one of the band’s leaders. If you are interested in hearing and seeing one of his altissimo episodes with Ra, click here. To hear Gilmore in a splendid series of choruses on “But Not For Me” in 1960, go here.

For all of his activity and regard by his colleagues, I have been able to find no evidence that Gilmore recorded as a leader, except for co-leader credit with Clifford Jordan for the classic 1957 Blue Note two-tenor album Blowing in From Chicago.
(John Gilmore photo at top by Michael Wilderman, jazzvisionphotos.com)

I just discovered that my novel Poodie James is now available from Amazon on the Kindle e-reader for a ridiculously low price. If a reader hadn’t asked me about that, I wouldn’t have investigated and wouldn’t have known. But, then, I’m only the author. Harrrumph.

The book, of course, is also still available as a book.

Attention, producers: No one has snapped up the movie rights.

Wes Montgomery, Echoes of Indiana Avenue (Resonance)

It is part of jazz lore; when Cannonball Adderley heard Wes Montgomery in Indianapolis in 1959, he was so impressed that he insisted his label, Riverside, record the guitarist at once. Orrin Keepnews of Riverside took Montgomery and his trio into a studio. After a dozen critically acclaimed albums for Riverside, Montgomery signed with Verve, then with A&M. By the end of the 1960s he was one of the few jazz artists—and one of the last—to become a pop star. He achieved that while, in his few years of life, establishing himself as a major role model for guitarists.

Producer Michael Cuscuna, who over the years has preserved so much timeless music in his Mosaic and Blue Note projects, got wind that there were tapes of Montgomery in his pre-Riverside days. After Cuscuna heard them, he looked for a company that would understand the tapes’ significance and treat them accordingly. Resonance was the company. Echoes of Indiana Avenue finds Montgomery in 1957 and 1958 in performances about evenly divided between studios and clubs. His brothers, pianist Buddy and bassist Monk, are with him for a “Straight No Chaser” that discloses not only Wes’s advanced blues conception but also his skill as an accompanist able to provoke hard swing.

With pianist/organist Melvin Rhyne and drummer Paul Parker, who would be with him on his first Riverside records, we hear the Montgomery who got Adderley so excited. There are splendid versions of “’Round Midnight,” “Nica’s Dream,” and “Darn That Dream” with Rhyne and Parker. Pianist Earl Van Riper, bassist Mingo Jones and drummer Sonny Johnson have spirited give-and-take with Montgomery in club performances of “Take the ‘A’ Train,” “Misty” and a medley of “Body & Soul” and “Don’t Blame Me” (incorrectly identified in the notes as “My Old Flame”). The first piece in the album is a tasteful treatment of “Diablo’s Dance” by Shorty Rogers, a hero of west coast jazz. The last is a club performance of down-home country blues guitar so funky that many in his audience can’t—and don’t—restrain themselves. It is like no other Montgomery on record.

The 21-page booklet attached as an integral part of the CD package has essays by Cuscuna; jazz historian Dan Morgenstern; Buddy and Monk Montgomery; trombonist, cellist, educator, Indianapolis native and Montgomery contemporary David Baker; guitarist Pat Martino and critic Bill Milkowski.

Wes Montgomery made an enormous impact on music in his 43 years. This CD lets us hear that he was fully formed before most of us knew he existed.

It is not Rifftides policy to embed promotional videos, but this one offers information and entertainment that earns a one-time suspension of the rule.

Because nature insists on taking its course, there has been much here lately about people who have passed on. Inevitably, there will be more.

It is time to affirm life. I encountered video of alto saxophonist Miguel Zenon doing just that last summer as he toured Spain. Because of the surrealistic opening minute or so and the sideways camera perspective throughout, I nearly talked myself out of showing you this, but the excitement and content of the performance carried [Read more…]

Rifftides reader Ted O’Reilly writes:

Wasn’t there a Warhol cover for a Johnny Griffin Blue Note?

A brief search discloses that, as we might expect of one of Canada’s leading jazz broadcasters, Mr. O’Reilly is correct. The album was The Congregation, recorded by the tenor saxophonist in 1957 with Sonny Clark, piano; Paul Chambers, bass; and the excellent, under-recognized Kenny Dennis on drums. Here is Warhol’s cover, and the title tune mining a vein that in the second half of the 1950s yielded several 16-bar pieces oriented—a la Horace Silver’s “The Preacher”—toward gospel and soul music.

The Rifftides staff did not chop off the upper two-thirds of the saxophonist’s head in the illustration. That’s how Warhol drew it.

He did stranger things.

There are many paintings for which Andy Warhol is far better known than the few album covers he made in his salad days. Nonetheless, those covers—like everything he produced, from images of soup cans to those of Marilyn Monroe—are collectors items going for phenomenal prices. I just saw a website offering a mint copy of the Prestige Trombone For Three album for nearly $900 US, plus shipping from Sweden. Since the album is available in CD form with a non-Warhol illustration for about a hundredth of that price, we may assume that most of the tab applies to the cover. And a nifty cover it is.

The music inside was on a 16-rpm long-playing vinyl disc, a product line Prestige dropped shortly after for lack of demand. It included three sessions led by, respectively, J.J. Johnson, Kai Winding and Bennie Green. Here is a track from Green’s 1951 date. “Tenor Sax Shuffle” has trombonist Green as leader with the visceral tenor saxophone duelers Eddie “Lockjaw” Davis and Big Nick Nicholas; Rudy Williams, baritone saxophone; Teddy Brannon, piano; Tommy Potter, bass; and Art Blakey, drums. It was originally issued as a 78-rpm single, which is how we have it here.

Warhol’s other prominent jazz cover art gig was for the 1956 Blue Note album entitled Kenny Burrell.

The guitarist had Kenny Dorham, trumpet; J.R. Monterose, tenor saxophone; Bobby Timmons, piano; Sam Jones, bass; and Arthur Edgehill, drums. The piece is Dorham’s “Mexico City.” If it seems to you that it resembles Bud Powell’s “Tempus Fugue-it,” that’s because it does.

Like the trombone album, the Burrell is no longer available with the Warhol cover. Its tracks are included in this Kenny Dorham CD.

While I was on the road came the sad news that the Southern California jazz community lost two of its stalwarts days apart. The irrepressible tenor saxophonist Red Holloway died last Saturday at a nursing home in Morro Bay on the central California coast, not far Cambria, where he moved more than four decades ago. He was 84. Pianist Mike Melvoin died February 22 at the age of 74.

With Cambria as his base, Holloway played far and wide with Clark Terry, Sonny Stitt, Horace Silver and many other leading mainstream figures. He frequently appeared and recorded with Cambria’s other name jazz artist, vibraharpist Charlie Shoemake. Among those with whom Holloway worked earlier in his career, were Lionel Hampton, Eugene Wright, Jack McDuff and blues artists including Willie Dixon and B.B. King. He was a favorite colleague of singers, among them Joe Williams, Carmen McRae and, recently, Jackie Ryan. Here is Holloway playing “Now’s The Time” in 1995 with Massimo Farao, piano; 
Lady Bass (Lindy Huppertsberg), bass; and 
Bobbie Durham, drums.

Mike Melvoin died of cancer in a Burbank hospital. In addition to his role as one of the busiest jazz pianists in Los Angeles, he had a parallel career in motion picture and television studios as a player, composer and arranger. His studio work included recordings as dissimilar as those of Frank Sinatra, John Lennon, Diana Ross and the Beach Boys. In the 1980s, Melvoin became the first jazz musician to be elected president of the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences (NARAS). He worked to maintain the integrity of the academy’s Grammy awards at a time when nonmusical factors were beginning to carry increasing weight. In recent years, he tried to reverse changes in academy rules that eliminated Grammy categories concentrating on instrumentalists. In 2011, he said, “Everyone who has ever played an instrument has had the possibility of receiving recognition from the Grammys gutted. That cannot and will not stand.” So far, however, it has.

Here is Melvoin in December at a celebration honoring his 50 years in music. His companions are tenor saxophonist Pete Christlieb, bassist Jim Hughart and drummer Ralph Penland.

Mike Melvoin and Red Holloway, RIP

MARSALIS AND CALDERAZZO

Parts of Brandford Marsalis’s and Joey Calderazzo’s Sunday concert of saxophone-piano duets suggested the atmosphere of a 19th century recital somewhere in middle Europe. The beauty of Calderazzo’s “La Valse Kendall,” Marsalis’s “The Bard Lachrymose” and the short “Die Trauernde” of Brahms encouraged quiet reflection. These are jazz musicians, however—two of the most adventuresome—and a complete afternoon of stately salon music wasn’t in the cards. The impression they left the capacity crowd in Portland’s Newmark Theater was of good friends enjoying the rewards and risks of spontaneous creation.

Some of the music was from their 2011 album Songs Of Mirth And Melancholy. Calderazzo’s “Bri’s Dance” was, among other things, a reminder of the richness of Marsalis’s soprano sax tone, which is wide and nearly without vibrato. It was also an occasion for Calderazzo to unleash the Bach in his left hand and lead into a round of give-and-take exchanges with Marsalis that gained in both rhythm and precision as the action unfolded. Their performance of “Eternal” was at least as long as the 18-minute one on the 2003 Marsalis quartet album of that name and gave, if anything, an even more intimate tug on the emotions. Calderazzo’s loping 16-bar composition “One Way” has the character of something Sonny Rollins might have thought of in his “Way Out West” days. Marsalis’s tenor playing on it had that playful spirit

In a decidedly non-middle-European interpretation of Frank Loesser’s “I’ve Never Been in Love Before,” Marsalis took a tenor saxophone side trip through a quote from Ellington’s “Rockin’ in Rhythm.” Whether it was a convolution in the quote or something else that initiated a skipped beat, they collided in an oops moment that caused them to laugh as they suspended motion for a split second to put the time back in place. A tag ending led Marsalis into a repeated phrase that worked into a bit of “Jumping With Symphony Sid.” When the bout ended, both men seemed amused. Soloing in an earlier, unannounced, piece, Calderazzo’s left hand toyed with variations on stride patterns while his right fooled around with boldly reharmonized suggestions of “Cheek to Cheek,” bringing a wry smile from Marsalis.

Introducing his composition “Hope” as their encore, Calderazzo said that since the death of tenor saxophonist Michael Brecker in 2007, “Branford is the only one I want to hear do this.” On soprano sax, Marsalis alternately soared and subsided into quietness that had the audience holding its breath until the last long note died away.

BRUBECK INSTITUTE JAZZ QUINTET

The Brubeck Institute of the University of the Pacific in Stockton, California, sent a contingent to Portland. Simon Rowe, the institute’s new director, was in charge, but the front men were the current edition of the institute’s quintet. From the Marsalis-Calderazzo concert I hurried a few blocks to Portland State University’s Lincoln Hall to hear them. When I arrived, they were in the midst of free playing that seemed to have the odd mixture of wildness and self discipline required to make unstructured music succeed and—important point—they were having a good time. More important point—so was the audience. Audiences don’t, always, when they are listening to free jazz. I wanted to hear what made San Francisco Chronicle critic Jesse Hamlin describe this student group as “sensational” after they played a few days ago at a concert in memory of San Francisco drummer Eddie Marshall.

When they tackled “Blue Rondo a la Turk,” I got an idea about what excited Hamlin. Dave Brubeck’s famous 1959 tune is in 9/8, a time signature that used to make grown men cry but is now part of the water that young jazz players swim in. They took it fast and negotiated the complicated ensembles without a flaw. When the piece made transitions to 4/4/ time for solos, everyone improvised well, even daringly. I could quibble that in the heat of the moment a soloist or two packed in an oversupply of notes, but that is not a temptation unique to young players. Soloists of all ages and levels of experience succumb to it. Each musician stretched himself in a piece that in its blowing sections, after all, is just a good old blues in F. There was some outrageous and enthusiastic chance-taking. As far as I could hear, it all worked. It was their final number. I would like to have heard more, but based on the evidence of one performance of “Blue Rondo,” indications are that the Brubeck Institute Jazz Quintet is worthy of their namesake. You may care to take note of who they are on the likelihood that you’ll come across their names again: Alec Watson, piano; Tree Palmedo, trumpet; Bill Vonderhaar, bass; Rane Roatta, tenor saxophone; and Malachi Whitson, drums.

Listening to those young investments in the future of music was a fine way to end a good five days at the Portland Jazz Festival.

TIRTHA

In music, as in much else, Portland welcomes the eclectic and the exotic. Saturday, the ninth day of the Portland Jazz Festival gave listeners much to welcome at the Crystal ballroom. In that bastion of eclecticism on the edge of the Pearl District, Vijay Iyer, an American pianist of Indian heritage, joined with Prasanna, a South Indian guitarist, and Nitin Mitta, a tabla player whose background is in classical music of North India. They call their group Tirtha, which translates as “feeling.” Many of the pieces they played were from the 2011 album of that name. The record brought additional attention to Iyer, who was already being heralded as a rising star of his instrument.

Iyer, Prasanna and Mitta do not fuse jazz and Indian elements—a la John McLaughlin’s Mahavishnu Orchestra or his later band called Shakti—so much as intertwine and transform them. Perhaps the presence of the piano is what makes the difference, but I rather suspect it’s the fact that Iyer is the one playing it. When Prassana was developing a sitar-like solo, Iyer and Mitta were likely to be churning complex contrapuntal lines beneath him. Prasanna and Mitta did the same for Iyer. Not infrequently, the three improvised collectively, listening closely to one another and reacting to the subtlest changes. The piano is a percussion instrument, and Iyer frequently used it as if it were an extension of Mitta’s tabla, echoing or amplifying the drummer’s patterns. During Iyer’s piece “Falsehood” when he played a passage that evoked a “Maiden Voyage’ mysticism, Mitta responded with 32nd-note ripples across the surfaces of his drums, emulating melody.

The music had the feel of jazz, including riffs, bebop phrasing over bluesy chords or classical Hindustani drones, and humor. By their appearance, many in the audience looked as if they had first-hand knowledge of Indian music. Prasanna grinned slightly as he injected an unlikely quote from “My Favorite Things” into a solo that had much of the character of a raga. Deadly serious about what they were hearing, no listeners I could see betrayed even the trace of a smile. Perhaps puzzled by all those somber visages, after one piece Iyer said to the crowd, “This is American music.” It is. That does not mean that it is not also Indian music. It is music.

FRISELL

Bill Frisell’s second main stage concert of the festival began with a solo recital. Introducing his fellow instrumentalist, Portland guitar hero Dan Balmer stressed that Frisell’s originality equals his technical ability and his appeal. Frisell demonstrated. He employed the controls at his feet to set up a continuous overtone as the background for a folksy melody with chordal movement suggestive of “Amazing Grace.” As the overtone faded after a few minutes, Frisell introduced dissonance. By the time he ended the piece, it had grown in harmonic interest and structural complexity without losing the simple charm he gave it at the start. It was a microcosm of the Frisell modus operandi.

In the course of the unaccompanied set, Frisell explored variations on “I Got Rhythm” and two pieces by Thelonious Monk, “Epistrophy” and “Crepuscule With Nellie.” He announced the names of none of the selections. He played a song that swung from phrase to phrase like country gospel; one that ended with a cascade of sparkling notes; one marinated in pedal tones; and a piece that suggested a full orchestra complete with counterpoint across horn and string sections. Frisell’s stage persona is quiet and shy, but he wears red slippers, and socks with bold horizontal stripes.

Back for the second set, Frisell said, “I feel safe now because I have my friends with me.” The friends were his colleagues in the 358 Quartet, cellist Hank Roberts, violist Eyvind Kang and violinist Jennie Scheinman. They played music from the album Sign Of Life, beginning with “It’s a Long Story.” The piece, with its phrase from the sea shanty “Blow The Man Down,” established the folk-like character that underlay much of the music and is deceptive. This is contemporary chamber music rich in classical influences. Those influences include minimalism found in composers like Steve Reich, Arvo Pärt and John Adams.

The music is also jazz. “Old Times” morphed from something akin to a hoedown into a blues tag ending, then into what sounded like free playing, though at that point the quartet was reading. In another piece (again, no title announcements), Frisell, Scheinman and Kang set up an irresistible groove under, in and around a Roberts pizzicato solo that gained force as the ensemble dug in. Winding down, Kang’s viola gave a whiff of the Scottish highlands. He and Scheinman both soloed spectacularly during the course of the set. With this music, it’s best not to look for labels. One of the striking aspects of the group is the fullness of the ensemble sound. It is electronically assisted, however subtly, by Frisell’s amplified guitar, but much of the power comes from the swing he implies in his accompaniments.

Following a standing ovation (the Portland festival audience does not restrain its enthusiasm), Frisell and the 358s paid tribute to John Lennon with a medley of “Strawberry Fields” and “All We Are Saying.” Its highlights were a funky Frisell sequence employing guitar distortion and considerable quartet volume that tailed off into quietness, leaving a hush before the theater broke out in applause and cheers.

PORTLAND JAZZ QUINTET

In one of the festival’s sidebar events, the Portland Jazz Quintet appeared at Ivories Jazz Lounge. Led by trumpeter Dick Titterington, the band formerly known as PDXV (I miss that name) has become increasingly impressive. Its repertoire contains pieces written by band members and arrangements of others by mainstream pioneers including Joe Henderson, Nat Adderley, Kenny Dorham and Harold Land. I arrived in time to hear the final set by Titterington, saxophonist Rob Davis, pianist Greg Goebel, drummer Todd Strait and bassist Scott Steed subbing for Dave Captein. They tackled John Scofield’s “Dance Me Home,” Adderley’s “Work Song” and “Dat Dere,” and two by Goebel, “Sunny in Berlin” and “Three For Insurance.” Titterington was impressive in his feature of the set, “Red Giant,” Dick Oatts’ tribute to the late Red Rodney. They closed with Henderson’s “Our Thing,” the demanding line executed at top speed, the ensemble precision typical of this band, the solos satisfying. The PJQ is dedicated to hard bop and does it extremely well. For a Rifftides review of a previous, collaborative, venture by the band, go here.

Events are packed tightly, often simultaneously, in the schedule of the Portland Jazz Festival. If a listener selects one performance, others—sometimes several—must go by the wayside. Missing Roy Haynes did not seem an option.

Three weeks short of his 87th birthday, on Friday evening the drummer played, danced, kibitzed and kidded with his Fountain Of Youth band. Even friskier and fuller of wry fun than usual, Haynes played the leader as MC. At the Newmark Theater, he engaged the audience in banter and conducted mock interviews with the members of his quartet, snatching the microphone away when they attempted to answer. He roamed around periphery of his drum set, giving it strategically placed whacks, thumps and heel kicks. He tap-danced. He made sure that we admired the scarlet lining of his impeccably tailored jacket.

The fun and games did not distract Haynes from the main order of business, which was to play in the way that has put several generations of drummers in awe of his time and technique. Decades ago, someone described his style as Snap, Crackle and Pop. The description stands. Before the music got underway, Haynes asked what people wanted to hear. Someone asked for Thelonious Monk’s “Green Chimneys.” Pianist Martin Bejerano pieced out the quirky line, bassist John Sullivan and Haynes joining in the experimentation until the novelty wore off and Haynes launched the quartet into a piece that sounded as if it might have been based on a phrase from “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star.” Then, alto saxophonist Jaleel Shaw played a long unaccompanied cadenza that became an an introduction to Rodgers and Hart’s “My Romance.” Shaw (pictured with Haynes) caressed the song slowly and it infused with intimations of Cannonball Adderley and Sonny Stitt. A crystalline solo by Bejerano and a powerful Sullivan bass solo sustained the mood.

The first of several virtuoso Haynes solos began with a soft, steady bass drum pulse. Several minutes of the pulse went by before he initiated mallet strikes that grew into a polyrhythmic flurry, then a storm that subsided slowly. “I bet I can’t do that again,” he told the audience. He left the drums to confer with his sidemen. Agreement reached, heads nodded, he returned to the set to give a rocket launch to John Lewis’s “Milestones.” Shaw (pictured with Haynes), exuberant, worked into his solo a succession of bebop quotes without being clichéd about it. Sullivan’s selection of firmly intoned bass notes and his solid time had much to do with the success of the performance. In a long exchange of eight-bar phrases between Shaw and Bejerano, Haynes inserted accents by way of snaps, pop, crackles and cymbal splashes, while intensifying the smooth flow of the time, at top speed. Haynes took a break to play a game with the microphone, tapping it on his chest and saying, “My heart has a beat…my heart has a beat…my heart has a beat,” then, to Shaw, “My heart has a beat. Is that all reet?”

“James,” a piece by Haynes’s collaborator Pat Metheny, appeared and reappeared through the rest of the set, subsiding to resurface several times and take over what seemed to be other themes. Along the way, Haynes produced prodigious solos. After he dropped a stick, he walked around the set to retrieve it and used the occasion to contrive a solo using the stick on everything he came near, including the floor and the microphone stand. It was one more instance of his easy adaptability and insistence on living in the moment. Back on his stool, he soloed using mallets, switched to sticks and doubled the time, grinning.

Given a standing ovation, the band returned for an encore with Haynes poppa-de-popping away under Shaw, who was impressive on soprano saxophone. Shaw incorporated a passage with liquid movement and intensity reminiscent of Sidney Bechet that worked fine in the post-bop setting. Whatever the piece was when they started, it soon became “James.”

SHORT TAKES

A midnight jam session at the Mission Theater started promisingly with pianist Ezra Weiss, bassist Tom Wakeling and drummer Alan Jones, stalwarts of the Portland jazz community. Guitarist Matt Shiff sat in impressively, as did Todd Strait, a busy drummer this week what with his work in Chuck Israels’ and Dick Titterington’s bands as well as participation in jam sessions. Shortly before I left, things began to unravel a bit as sitters-in materialized. I got a sense of the drift when Weiss asked if there drummers in the house. A boy who looked 16 but may have been older volunteered, “I play drums, but not jazz drums.” Evidently impressed with his honesty, Weiss nonetheless said, “Uh, I think we’ll hold out for someone who plays jazz drums.” I was hoping he’d give the kid a shot.

Whether for a jam session or not, if you are ever in Portland, the Mission Theater is worth a visit. Built in 1891, it has had a life as a church, a Longshoremens Union hall, headquarters of an acting company and now a theater pub. The building’s architecture inside and out evokes old Portland, and the acoustics are superb.

Earlier in the evening at the Crystal Ballroom, I caught much of the first set of guitarist Bill Frisell’s concert of the music of John Lennon, Speedy West and Jimmy Bryant. Frisell accompanied by Greg Leisz on steel guitar, Tony Scherr on bass and longtime Frisell sidekick drummer Kenny Wollesen, played western swing to a ballroom floor jammed with listeners. The music would have been perfect for cheek-to-cheek roadhouse dancing, if only the people had been able to move. Frisell loves that kind of music and plays it with as much soulful feeling as West and Bryant ever did. The Crystal, another historic landmark, is a magnificent space whose walls feature big terra cotta medallions depicting the history of the performing arts. I didn’t hear The Lennon portion of Frisell”s program, but there would be another opportunity. We’ll have a Rifftides report on that later.

More than two decades ago in Paris, Dee Dee Bridgewater began to make Billie Holiday’s music and mystique a part of herself. In the years since, she has expanded, refined and intensified her Holiday role while firmly establishing her own persona. Bridgewater’s tribute to Lady Day filled the Newmark Theater in downtown Portland last night. She demonstrated to the Portland Jazz Fesival audience that she is capable of an uncanny Holiday impression. She briefly employed it to comic effect as a way of emphasizing that imitation is not the point of her Holiday vehicle; music is.

Bridgewater’s musical skills went hand in hand with her ability as a superb actress. She used pieces from Holiday’s repertoire as points of departure to create distinctive jazz interpretations. The songs—well more than a dozen—included “Them There Eyes” taken fast and so laced with energy that it skirted the edge of mania; an amusing revival of Holiday’s first recording with Benny Goodman, “My Mother’s Son In Law,” and a “Strange Fruit” whose message she delivered with anguish so profound that it that sent a chill through the crowd. Pointedly, the house announcer introduced the evening as a performance by the Dee Dee Bridgewater Quintet. The group label is apt. She is the lead instrument in the band, which has all the interaction of a finely attuned bop group, with the sidemen enlisted in just enough schtick to help warrant calling the event a show. Bridgewater is pictured here with bassist Kenny Davis, whom she featured on several pieces, as she did tenor saxophonist Jimmy Greene, drummer Kenny Phelps and her long time musical director, pianist Edsel Gomez. They all soloed extensively and well

For all her acting, which is natural and unforced, the primary impression Bridgewater creates is of a jazz vocalist with unerring time and intonation who gets to the heart of a song. Following a standing ovation, she returned to the stage to sing a non-Holiday song, “Amazing Grace,” alone. On the final chorus, she invited the audience to sing along, but she gave it so much power and feeling that few had the temerity to join in.

A sizeable number of concertgoers circled down the winding stairway of the Portland Center for the Performing Arts to the Art Bar. The space has a bar, a restaurant and a three-story ceiling crowned with a sculptured dome that is itself a work of art. There, two hometown favorites who are also international successes appeared in one of their collaborations. For their duo gigs, it is Dave Frishberg’s policy to serve only as pianist with Rebecca Kilgore, not as a singer of his own famous songs. During the course of their two long, satisfying sets, someone on the margins of the room called for “Peel Me a Grape.” “Don’t know it,” Kilgore said. Frishberg gazed at the ceiling.

She knew plenty of other songs, many of them from albums the pair have made together. Someone—I think it was I—commented that people who attended the upstairs and the downstairs events had the pleasure of hearing in one evening two jazz vocalists who sing all but unfailingly in tune. At one point there was a missed harmonic signal. Kilgore veered slightly, but her sonar immediately locked her back onto the path. The repertoire included a few songs from Why Fight The Feeling, their album of Frank Loesser songs, among them “The Lady’s in Love With You” and “Can”t Get Out of This Mood,” the latter sung with languor that Kilgore seems to employ more frequently these days in her ballads. However, she has lost none of the sunny feeling she brings to up-tempo pieces. A spontaneous medley of “It’s Only a Paper Moon” and “Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea” was saturated with it.

Frishberg is often thought of as a pianist primarily influenced by stride and traditional players, but the internal rhythms he creates in his solos can hint at bebop and sometimes enter it outright. That was true in his solo last night on “Lover Come Back to Me” and in the following piece, with a complex chorus he built on Artie Shaw’s “Moon Ray.” In “My Heart Belongs to Daddy,” he briefly led Kilgore into tango territory. They took “There’s No Business Like Show Business” slow, giving it a plaintive quality that probably never occurred to Ethel Merman. Finally, Kilgore and Frishberg performed “What a Little Moonlight Can Do,” giving a nice Billiie Holiday symmetry to the evening that had begun hours before in the Newmark.