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Back from Sweden jet-lagged but unbowed after 10 time zones and 16 hours in the air, the Rifftides staff is alternating work and naps, some voluntary. (Pictured: above the Baltic Sea.)

Over the next couple of days, I’ll give you brief impressions of performances in the final days of the Ystad Jazz Festival.

An economy-size pianist with massive technique, Hiromi Uehara performs using only her given name, a la Eldar or Madonna. With skill that evidently knows no limitations of speed or control, she dazzled a capacity Ystad audience in a repertoire that included several pieces from her 2010 solo album Place To Be. From time to time, she employed fists, forearms and elbows, but there was nothing random about her unorthodox style; no unintended dissonance. Although she has played around the world, this was her first appearance in Sweden.

Hiromi slid into “I Got Rhythm,” hinting at the tune before giving the piece a power infusion that took her to the edge of mania and recalled no one so much as Mel Henke (1915-1979), another pianist who specialized in entertaining keyboard displays that verged on the athletic. Introducing “BQE,” she said it was inspired by trips on New York City’s crowded Brooklyn-Queens Expressway. Descriptive music, “BQE”’s cleverness and adroitness were in spirit akin to Raymond Scott’s cartoon scores and certain pieces by his quintet. I must stress the unlikelihood that Hiromi, who was born in 1979, was directly influenced by Scott’s or Henke’s mid-century recordings, but it’s not impossible for a woman so eclectic. In “Old Castle By a River in the Middle of a Forest,” Hiromi reached into the piano, strumming strings and rapping the keyboard to create an atmosphere of mystery. She introduced harmonies that might have been influenced by Brahms or John Lewis’s “Django,” possibly by both. She worked several variations using those chords, but when the piece ended, the impression was of display, not the story-telling of first rate improvisation.

The shade of Errol Garner hovered over Hiromi’s invention on the Pachalbel Canon. After an amusing interlude of swirling glissandos in her right hand while the left played calypso, she channeled Garner’s insistent rhythmic comping to a rewarding conclusion and a standing ovation. Her encore was an unannounced 16-bar piece that swung hard and included a solo in which she used one hand on the keys while the other muffled the piano’s strings. All 10 fingers—or was it 20?—back on the keyboard, face wreathed in smiles, she manufactured a long vamp with a tremolo ending that brought the audience to its feet for another ovation. The rhythmic clapping laced with a few unreserved Swedish shouts and whistles lasted at least five minutes, but the crowd’s demand for a second encore was in vain.

In a hallway after the concert, I heard a prominent festival musician tell a colleague, “I play the piano, but holy _____!”

Next time: reviews of further Ystad concerts, including one by a rather different pianist, Benny Green.

TOMASZ STANKO

Resplendent in houndstooth jacket, tight jeans and two-tone buckle shoes,Tomasz Stanko took to the stage and attached a wireless microphone to his trumpet. He offered a half smile to the welcoming audience, nodded to his colleagues and launched into the first of four unannounced pieces that took the Ystad Jazz Festival into the rarified atmosphere of Stankoland, where adventure is the rule. Inspired by free jazz, Stanko achieves creative independence within musical forms, however flexible those forms may be. He heads a quartet of young men who delight in taking chances. They needn’t worry about outpacing their leader in spontaneity and risk; in middle age, he is the chance-taker-in chief.

In Ystad, Finnish drummer Olavi Louhivuori whipped the band through the hour-and-a-half set with the energy of an uncoiling cobra and independence of limbs that might be the envy of an octopus. There was remarkable visual contrast between the dervish Louhivuori, his calm fellow Finn Alexi Tuomarila at the piano, and the Polish bassist Slowomir Kurkiewicz, who has the demeanor and power of a friendly bear. Supporting Stanko, they provide the carpets of rhythms that he rides on forays into and beyond the upper atmosphere. Stanko’s fund of trumpet resources ranges from a low register tone rich as warm honey to shrieks of split notes at the top of the horn. He can be lyrical one moment, demonic the next.

Little that Stanko plays could be called typical, but here’s what happened in one piece: It began with bowed bass and a vaguely Middle Eastern piano and trumpet melody. Louhivuori executed swirling drum patterns as Stanko swooped and darted above Tuomarila’s chords. Kurkiewicz shifted to plucking the strings for a bass solo, the tempo moved up, trumpet and piano did a moment of call and response before executing a tricky unison line, then Stanko was off, alternately drifting and darting for several minutes on shifting currents generated by the rhythm section. Tuomarila soloed at moderate length with free ideas served by controlled technique that reflected his conservatory training. Following a chattering drum solo and a second, short, bass solo, the unison melody line reappeared. Piano and trumpet added a new theme in the form of a phrase repeated several times, and the piece slowly dissipated into silence.

After the last tune, a volunteer in a festival tee shirt presented each of the musicians a large red flower as the audience rose and began the insistent call for more that seems to be a trademark of this festival. The encore, in ¾ time, had a folkish quality whose chord voicings were somehow evocative of Bill Evans. The solos by Stanko and Tuomarila offered assurance, rather than the stimulation that had been characteristic of most of the concert. It was an instance of Stanko’s gift for making difficult music accessible.

MARE NOSTRUM

Hearing Mare Nostrum with half an ear, a listener might think that the group is providing pleasant incidental music in the background. Beneath the trio’s often placid surface are life, movement and an intriguing melding of jazz and classical traditions with the Scandinavian, French and Italian sensibilities of its members. In the care of Jan Lundgren and Richard Galliano, piano and accordion have the harmonic and expressive resources of an orchestra. A daring and deceptively relaxed improviser, trumpeter and flugelhornist Paoli Fresu contributes tonal variety and shares Galliano’s and Lundgren’s crafty interaction. Since their first recording as Mare Nostrum, the three individual stars have deepened their relationship and their music.

Seeing them perform, a listener familiar only with their record began to understand the closeness and interactivity of their music. In the group’s namesake piece written by Lundgren, Fresu sat, foot entwined around calf, intent on Lundgren’s solo as if searching for clues to what he might play when it was his turn. Throughout the concert, Galliano and Lundgren paid similar attention to one another and to Fresu. Fresu’s “Principessa” (sp) and “Valsa di Retorni,” Galliano’s “Chat Pitre” and “Liberty Waltz,” Lundgren’s Vårvindar Friska” and “Love Land” all benefited from mutual interest in which group results seem to matter as much as individual solo performance. That is a phenomenon not unknown but relatively rare in small group jazz that is primarily a soloist’s art. Comparison with the Modern Jazz Quartet comes to mind.

Among the highlights: in “Love Land,” the fleetness of Fresu’s undiluted bebop solo on flugelhorn; the ensemble’s unity in Quincy Jones’s theme from “The Getaway,” with the composer looking on from his box seat; the audience’s palpable concentration during variations on Ravel’s “La Mer l’Oye;” the encore, “I Wish You Love,” in which the group generated a blues atmosphere and surprising tempo changes.

Perhaps because he was playing in his own town, but equally likely because was playing so well, Lundgren’s solos generated sustained applause. Anyone witnessing Galliano’s virtuosity is unlikely to walk out making accordion jokes, and anyone truly listening to Mare Nostrum is unlikely to think of what they do as background music.

One of the premier events of this festival was the appearance of a pair of world-class Swedish pianists separated in age by 34 years. One is a cultural hero of his nation. The other is reaching that status. 46-year-old Jan Lundgren, artistic director of the festival and a resident of Ystad, greeted Bengt Hallberg, 79, onstage for a concert back to back on 9-foot grand pianos. Hallberg was the pianist on the legendary 1953 record sessions that this festival’s honorary guest, Quincy Jones, arranged for Clifford Brown, Art Farmer and a group of Swedish all-stars. He was known then, and has been since, for harmonic resourcefulness, the fine shadings of his keyboard touch and a stunning melodic gift.

In terms of those facets, Lundgren has been correctly identified as Hallberg’s successor. However, to describe his current relationship to Hallberg as that of student to master—as a reviewer of the Friday concert did—is to dismiss Lundgren’s growth and development over the 18 years since his debut. One of the leading jazz pianists of his generation, he has demonstrated his individualism in his own trios as well as with such major figures as Bill Perkins, Herb Geller, Benny Golson, James Moody, Putte Wickman and Arne Domnerus.

Having worked together several times since Back To Back, the album that established their occasional partnership, Hallberg and Lundgren have achieved an easy camaraderie that flows through their music. Hallberg’s touch is firmer than it used to be, possibly in compensation for a hearing difficulty, but it is still the envy of pianists everywhere, for reasons evident in the opening “All The Things You Are” and the Hallberg original “Autumn Walk.” They alternated two-piano pieces with solo performances, one moving to a throne-like chair at the rear center of the stage to listen to the other. In his first solo turn, Lundgren created a medley of Ellington’s “Prelude to a Kiss” and Quincy Jones’s “The Midnight Sun Will Never Set,” which he dedicated to its composer, sitting in a box seat nearby. Hallberg alone played his composition “Back-Inside,” which had a melodic affinity with popular ballads of the 1920s and ‘30s—”Blue Turning Grey Over You” came to mind—but a subtle modern harmonic sensibility.

Lundgren’s second individual medley began with “’Round Midnight” and ended with a “Yesterdays” in which he managed to strongly hint at Art Tatum without being an imitator. Together on “Autumn Leaves,” Lundgren and Hallberg conjured up counterpoint filled with contrary motion that made the performance a standout moment in a standout concert. That led the audience to a standing ovation and the rhythmic clapping that demands an encore. Following the presentation of sunflowers, the pianists played the Bach “Siciliano” and, after a second standing ovation, a rip-roaring blues.

As the schedule attests, Sweden’s Ystad Jazz Festival is programmed tightly. Over a quick lunch, Iouri Lnogradski of the Russian magazine Jazz.Ru observed that it would be technically possible for a listener to attend everything, but at the price of exhaustion. Rather than sprint from site to site sampling, one must choose. Here are reflections on two events.

Thursday evening, Eliane Elias and her quartet illuminated the Ystad Theater with performances of modern music of her native Brazil and the jazz of the United States, her alternate home for the past three decades. Elias exhibited the seamless style in which she has developed as a superb pianist in the Bud Powell tradition who also sings expressively. With her husband Marc Johnson on bass, guitarist Rubens de La Corte and the propulsive Brazilian drummer Rafael Barata, she opened with a Gilberto Gil song whose title I may have misheard as “Lachada de Bacisa.” Title aside, the vitality of the set opener put the capacity audience in her corner. Elias further endeared herself to them a few bars into “Isto Aqui O Que È” when she raised her hand, halted the band and said, “Let’s start over. Too fast.” Satisfied with the new tempo, she and the quartet demonstrated the rhythmic unity that has made them one of the tightest working bands of the day.

Both facets of Elias’s talent shone in “They Can’t Take That Away From Me.” Her unaccompanied piano introduction, at once rhapsodic and rhythmically insinuating, led into a vocal in English etched with a trace of what remains of her Brazilian accent. The quartet gave the piece a tag ending that flirted in passing with “The Girl From Ipanema” and highlighted the subtle connection among the rhythm section, particularly between Johnson and Bata. The leader gave “So Danco Samba” a solo opening—long and laced with chord treatments reminiscent of Powell—that set up a fast quartet performance. No hand went up this time. Grins and exchanges of glances made it clear that this was the right tempo. A highlight of the set was the title tune of Elias’s current album, “Light My Fire,” combined in a medley with her composition “Incendiado.” She was taking us, she said, from a request for combustion to full involvement.

The late concert Thursday brought together Swedish trumpeter Anders Bergcrantz with American tenor saxophonist Billy Harper and drummer Victor Lewis in an international power quintet that also included Bergcrantz’s fellow Swedes Robert Tjäderkvist and bassist Mattias Swensson. The temporary Ystad night watchman (see the previous item), Bergrantz left his nocturnal assurances on the tower of St. Mary’s Church and led the band through more than two hours of music guaranteed not to let even the most jet-lagged listener doze off.

Bergcrantz had played with Lewis and with Harper, but the three had not worked together until the Ystad festival. In the backgrounds of the two Americans veterans are bands led by Stan Getz, Gil Evans, Woody Shaw, Thad Jones-Mel Lewis, Carla Bley, Jessica Williams, Max Roach and Randy Weston, among many others. In addition to a panoply of European stars, Bergcrantz has performed with Richie Beirach, Russell Malone and the Lionel Hampton All Star Big Band. He and Beirach are featured soloists in Iphigenia, a new work by his wife, the composer Anna-Lena Laurin. In a conversation the afternoon of the performance, Bergcrantz, Harper and Lewis remarked on the single-mindedness they discovered in rehearsal. They talked about sharing a desire to make what Lewis called “emoting music” and writing new compositions that would help achieve a dialogue.

In the event, again at the Ystad Theater, they reached their goal, and then some. Lewis and Swensson hooked up in the kind of symbiosis that drummers and bassists hope for, creating with Tjäderkvist carpets of rhythm and waves of momentum on which Bergcrantz and Harper rode in extended solos. The energy and muscle were reminiscent of collaborations in bands like Shaw’s, Freddie Hubbard’s and Art Blakeys. Among the highlights: Lewis’s thunderous opening drum announcement of his “Seventh Avenue,” subsiding to a flurry of sticks on rims before a transition to the drum heads; Bergcrantz’s ballad “Fountain of Youth” with its repetition of one note setting up a beguiling melody and the dramatic spontaneous joint solo of Lewis and Swensson; Bergcrantz’s spacious tone throughout, regardless of speed or range, and his and Harper’s force in solo. If there was a shortcoming, it might have been the cumulative effect of concentrated intensity. On the way out, I overheard a listener say, “Man, that was too much music.” Well, consider the alternative.

More later about music heard and that to come.

The Quincy Jones ABC/Mercury Big Band Jazz Sessions (Mosaic)

Preparing for my public conversation with Quincy Jones (two items down), I’ve been reading his 2001 autobiography, chatting with people he knows and listening to his music. The inventiveness, sparkle and audacity of Jones’ arrangements in the 1950s and early ‘60s gave his music freshness that was notable when he was in his twenties. Now that he’s nearing 80, these works of his youth are still among the most vital big band recordings of an era in which Count Basie, Woody Herman, Duke Ellington and Stan Kenton were going strong. Jones’ inventive scoring of his compositions, including “Stockholm Sweetnin’,” “The Midnight Sun Will Never Set” and “Hard Sock Dance,” is matched by his settings of standard songs, and pieces by contemporaries like Horace Silver, Benny Golson, Ernie Wilkins, Bobby Timmons and Bill Potts.

As for execution, Jones put together a band whose various versions had some of the best players of the day, among them Clark Terry, Zoot Sims, Freddie Hubbard, Phil Woods, Budd Johnson, Ã…ke Persson, Buddy Catlett, Urbie Green, Julius Watkins, Les Spann and Patti Bown. Stranded in Europe by the failure of “Free And Easy,” a stage production they were a part of, his musicians sacrificed to stay together and tour the continent, reflecting their loyalty to Jones, his music and each other. When the band is at its best in these five CDs—which is most of the time— it is easy to hear what inspired that spirit. Brian Priestley’s booklet notes are a valuable telling of the band’s story.

Jones moved from leading a big band into wide success in scoring for film and television and in pop music production. This set is a reminder of how much he accomplished when he concentrated on jazz.

Pop music too loud and all sounds the same: official

(London, July 26, 2012)—(Reuters) Comforting news for anyone over the age of 35, scientists have worked out that modern pop music really is louder and does all sound the same.

Researchers in Spain used a huge archive known as the Million Song Dataset, which breaks down audio and lyrical content into data that can be crunched, to study pop songs from 1955 to 2010.

A team led by artificial intelligence specialist Joan Serra at the Spanish National Research Council ran music from the last 50 years through some complex algorithms and found that pop songs have become intrinsically louder and more bland in terms of the chords, melodies and types of sound used.

So, it’s official. I had my suspicions. Note that the period of the study began with 1955, the year of “Rock Around the Clock.” To read the whole story, go here.

In a few days the Rifftides staff flies to Europe to report from the Ystad Jazz Festival on the southern coast of Sweden. Organized by pianist Jan Lundgren in 2010, the festival has developed into one of Europe’s most important music events. Among the US contingent August 2-5 will be Benny Green, Dee Dee Bridgewater, Eliane Elias and Kurt Rosenwinkel. Billy Harper and Victor Lewis will play with Swedish trumpeter Anders Bergcrantz. Dozens of Europe’s brightest stars will perform, including Bengt Hallberg, the dean of modern Swedish jazz pianists, in a two-piano concert with Lundgren. Tomasz Stanko, Richard Galliano, Paolo Fresu, Arild Anderson, Tommy Smith and Claire Martin are among other major artists set for the festival.

Ystad is one of Sweden’s best known small cities because of its beauty, its long history and, in modern times, because it is the headquarters of Kurt Wallander, a fictional detective who to millions has become real through novels and a successful BBC television series. If I catch a glimpse of Wallander, I’ll try to get a picture.

Quincy Jones is the festival’s guest of honor. His long involvement with Sweden dates back to classic recordings he produced and arranged in 1953 with Clifford Brown, Art Farmer and a group of Swedish all-stars, including Bengt Hallberg. Lundgren and the festival organizers have asked me to appear with Mr. Jones in a one-hour conversation at the Ystad Konstmuseum on August 4—something to which I look forward. To see the festival rundown and roster of artists, go here and click on “Programme.”

An e-mail announcement from the trumpeter Brad Goode:

This Thursday, July 26th:
THE BRAD GOODE JAZZ TRIO
Brad Goode trumpet
Bijoux Barbosa bass
Todd Reid drums
6:30 -9:30 pm
TREPPEDA’S ITALIAN RISTORANTE
300 2nd Avenue
Niwot, CO 80544
303.652.1606

I realize that few Rifftides readers will find themselves in the tiny Boulder, Colorado, suburb of Niwot tomorrow. If you are in that area of the Rocky Mountains, however, and make it to Trepedda’s Italian Ristorante, hearing Brad Goode will be worth the trip even if you have to drive all the way from Boulder or Denver.

But that’s not the point. The point is that Goode’s bass player is named Bijoux Barbosa. I’m always intrigued by euphonious appellations, as Cuthbert J. Twillie called fine-sounding names. But, I wondered, who is Bijoux Barbosa—and can he play? A web search answered the first question. He’s Brazilian. His real first name is Eduardo. He studied in his hometown of São Paulo, has been in Colorado for 15 years and has worked with Herbie Mann, Brian Lynch, Ron Blake, Jaleel Shaw and Ron Miles, among others.

Whether he can play, you may judge from this brief duet with tenor saxophonist Eric Trujillo at the Mi Vida Strings shop in Denver. The piece is Chucho Valdez’s “Mambo Influenciado.”

Given the list of performance credits above, it is clear that Bijoux Barbosa is far from unknown, but he was new to me. Perhaps he is to you. I’ll be keeping an ear out for him.

Jessica Williams, Songs Of Earth (Origin)

Williams, the Triple Door’s Steinway and the Seattle theater restaurant’s audience collaborate on yet another album of solo pieces by the pianist. The audience gets credit because their attentiveness, appreciation and courtesy help establish the atmosphere in which Williams creates seven pieces comprising a collection unlike any other in her vast discography. You can almost hear the audience listening.

For all of its suggestions of preconceived form, Williams must have spontaneously generated much of this music in performance. Its calm and thoughtfulness are illuminated by moments of surprise in which she seems to be discovering and disclosing facets of herself. That is what the best improvising performers do, and few pianists do it with more magnetism than Williams.

The keyboard touch that gave her previous Triple Door album its title is a marvel throughout this CD. The attribute equally in evidence in “The Enchanted Loom,” which has the vigor of a tribal dance, and “Montoya,” in which she suggests Spanish romanticism not only of the great Flamenco guitarist but of the era of Falla, Granados and Mompou. In John Coltrane’s “To Be,” Williams captures the mysticism of the version Coltrane recorded a few months before he died but also gives the composition—a sketch, really—more earthly substance, and vastly more whimsy, than did the five instruments on the Coltrane recording. The emotional high point comes in “Joe and Jane,” described by the pianist in her articulate liner notes as a “sorrowful psalm” to men and women who serve in the armed forces. The performance has elegiac qualities combined with down-home earnestness that reminds me of church music I’ve heard in the rural southern US.

In my review two years ago of Touch, I wrote:

People in the jazz community, particularly pianists in awe of Williams’s consistency, creativity and constant growth, often discuss why so many critics and the business side of jazz seem deaf to her brilliance. Whatever the reasons, they must be sociological, political or cultural. They cannot be musical…

Based on her playing here, I renew that expression of puzzlement.

COINCIDENTALLY, Her new album appears as Jessica Williams faces surgery and major expense for a long and persistent spinal problem. She has launched an appeal for help. You will find details on her website.

Of the many places where I’ve lived, from Choteau, Montana, to Iwakuni, Japan, to San Francisco and New York (mentioning a few), New Orleans is the most unusual, the one most often on my mind. “This is really a banana republic, you know,” my friend Bill Corrington once told me. He loved the city as much as I do, and he wasn’t the only one to invoke that metaphor. Most people know about above-ground cemeteries, jazz funerals, streetcars, beignets and the madness of Mardi Gras, to mention obvious facets of Crescent City culture.

Unless you’ve lived there, perhaps it’s impossible to know the mixture of laissez faire, stubbornness and gaiety that characterizes Orleanians, regardless of background. All of that came flooding back when I read Keith Spera’s story in the Times-Picayune about the lying- —er—standing-in-state of Lionel Batiste (photo by Marc Pelletier). The bass drummer in the Treme Brass Band was one of the Batiste clan that has provided New Orleans so many fine musicians. He died on July 8 at the age of 80. To identify him as a New Orleans character would be to drastically under-describe his personality. Here’s a paragraph from Spera’s story.

In a send-off as unique as the man himself, Mr. Batiste wasn’t lying in his cypress casket. Instead, his body was propped against a faux street lamp, standing, decked out in his signature man-about-town finery.

Yes, his body. To read the whole thing, click here.

Now, for a taste of what made Uncle Lionel distinctive in a town packed with rare characters, here is a performance captured by videographer Beate Sandor in 2009. Uncle Lionel sits in at Snug Harbor with Charmaine Neville and the band led by Wendell Brunious. Lionel doesn’t appear until 6:36, but you don’t want to miss what comes before. Brunious makes the introduction. This makes me want to go “home.”

Lionel Batiste, RIP.

For all of the excitement with modes that McCoy Tyner generated with John Coltrane and still achieves in long his post-Coltrane career, I have always been partial to Tyner’s way with standard songs and jazz originals with standard changes in albums like this and this.

That aspect of his playing is brilliant in this video from the 1987 Mount Fuji Festival in Japan. Ron Carter is the bassist, Joe Chambers the drummer.

Ethan Iverson featured that video recently in his Do The Math blog. Jim Harrod, moderator of the Jazz West Coast listserve, found it through Ethan. I found it through Jim. Thanks, guys. Networking works.

Have a good weekend, everyone.

National Public Radio’s series “Mom And Dad’s Record Collection” recently featured Ravi Coltrane, who has followed his father as a tenor and soprano saxophonist. John died when Ravi was two years old. Most of his son’s early musical memories stem from records his pianist and harpist mother Alice played when he and his siblings were children. He told NPR’s Robert Siegel:

I remember my mother playing lots of symphonic music. Specifically, my mom was a great admirer of Igor Stravinsky. Her favorite pieces were The Rite of Spring and, more so, the Firebird Suite.

To hear Siegel’s five minutes with Ravi Coltrane, go here and click on “Listen Now.”

To see and hear Stravinsky, at 82, conduct the thrilling final moments of The Firebird, click on the arrow:

An outfit called Find The Best has established an online guide to jazz clubs. It could be useful to Rifftides readers planning to travel or, for that matter, who are looking for places to listen in their hometowns. The site lists location, meal policy and cover charges, which range from second-mortgage territory to zero—$85 cover for The Fox in Tampa, Florida; nothing for Vibrato in L.A.’s exclusive Bel Air section—go figure. At any rate (heh, heh), they include clubs as far-flung as Brattleboro, Vermont; Honolulu, Hawaii; and Tirana, Albania. For now, at least, we’ll add the site’s url to the blogroll in the right column as “Jazz Clubs.” Let the staff know if you find it useful. To do so, click on “Contact” on the blue strip at the top of the page or use the “Speak Your Mind” box below.

Monarch butterflies are passing through on their migration south. This morning, one rested on a maple leaf outside our window.

His or her majesty was no object of pity, but it seemed to call for a performance of that most famous of all butterfly tunes (are there others?). Here’s the late Dave McKenna.

Alternate version for two pianos, Count Basie and Oscar Peterson.