Indholdsfortegnelse for December 2016 i JazzTimes

The most poignant moments of the Jazz Foundation of America’s 2016 “A Great Night in Harlem” fundraising gala, held at the Apollo on Oct. 27, didn’t come from any of the hugely influential and/or celebrity-famous musicians who performed. Not from Dr. John, the winner of the inaugural Hank Jones Award; not from McCoy Tyner, the foundation’s Lifetime Achievement recipient; and not from John Mayer, playing spot-on jump-blues licks in his reformed trio featuring bassist’s-bassist Pino Palladino and drummer/music director Steve Jordan. The presence of Bruce Willis, whose durable blues-harp playing bested his singing by a wide margin, was certainly worthy of a Facebook post, but it didn’t come close to the brightest spots. The true peaks tended to be spoken statements of gratitude. Drummer Phil Washington, a quintessential working musician…

It’s one of those random showbiz moments that history tells us had to happen just the way it did: Ella Fitzgerald was a shy 17-year-old on Nov. 21, 1934, when she was called upon to prove herself on Amateur Night at the Apollo Theater. Looking out nervously at the crowd, she decided not to dance, as she had planned, but to sing instead. After a tentative start, she soon owned the audience. A year later she was fronting Chick Webb’s band. Now her face adorns a United States postage stamp. The only dancing that took place at “100: The Apollo Celebrates Ella!,” the multi-artist tribute concert held at the Harlem landmark on Oct. 22, was done by the actor Kevin Spacey, here to represent Frank Sinatra, with whom Fitzgerald recorded…

South Korea has become known for exporting not only consumer products of all kinds (Samsung, Kia, Hyundai, et al.) but also the musical sensation of K-pop, whose artists sell millions worldwide. However, most Americans might be surprised to learn that the country has also produced a large number of professional jazz musicians on the U.S. scene and has established a respectable jazz scene of its own—including numerous jazz clubs in Seoul, a glossy magazine (MM Jazz) and at least two major jazz festivals. In October I attended the Jarasum International Jazz Festival, which is like a Korean jazz version of Bonnaroo—a large music festival attended by over 100,000 people and held over three days in a park and campground about 37 miles northeast of Seoul, near a small town called…

In 1964, an exotic new voice sprang up in vocal jazz—an airy, humming contralto with pianissimo highs, guttural lows, a hushed, prayer-like intensity and a sense of swing that made phrases glide. Morgana King’s breakthrough hit, “A Taste of Honey,” used Shakespearean English to evoke a woman who dies over lost love. Employing operatic flourishes and the melismatic wail of Sephardic music, King reinvented the tune so lavishly that it was almost unrecognizable from what its composer, Bobby Scott, had written. “I want freedom to fly, freedom to take people on a passage,” she explained recently. “I like to take my babies”—her musicians—“and say, ‘Come with me; we’re gonna go to the Wizard of Oz!’” At the 1965 Grammys, she vied with the Beatles for Best New Artist. Critics debated…

Miles Davis alum John Beasley has stepped into the role of music director for a diverse slate of projects—from tours with Steely Dan and Queen Latifah to the Thelonious Monk Institute gala, International Jazz Day and American Idol—and though the job varies project to project, there are some constants. “We help pick material, show order, musicians, sometimes sound [engineers], and rehearse the band,” Beasley says. The job is part arranger-conductor, part logistics and all stress. “You’re trying to help management, the artist, the tour manager, the record company,” he explains. “Everybody’s got their say about what should happen and why, so you’re getting a lot of different information from people and you have to make it work.” Most important, he hires the best band possible. “You have to hire people…

Dedicated jazz fans are no doubt aware of the names of the music’s finest producers, but they’re probably far less knowledgeable as to what jazz recording production actually entails. A new book by author and academic Michael Jarrett, Pressed for All Time: Producing the Great Jazz Albums From Louis Armstrong and Billie Holiday to Miles Davis and Diana Krall (The University of North Carolina Press), attempts to address that question through a vast, chronologically arranged collection of interviews. The answer, as explained by studio icons like George Avakian, Creed Taylor, Teo Macero, Bob Thiele and Bill Laswell, among others, is that a producer does everything. Throughout the course of a single LP, he or she can act as a financier, arranger, psychologist, surrogate spouse or sibling, yes-man, rehearsal musician or,…

Bosphorus Jazz Master Series Cymbals Given the name of this new series, handcrafted in Turkey by Bosphorus’ cymbal masters, you can probably already guess what the aim is sound-wise: focused, articulate, crystalline. As far as playability, the cymbals’ higher profile means added control, and the 19-, 20-, 21-, 22- and 24-inch cymbals can function as crashes or rides. Fourteen-inch hi-hats are also available, as well as 20- and 22-inch China cymbals. bosphoruscymbals.com Roland Blues Cube Tone Capsules As if Roland’s Blues Cubes weren’t brilliant enough already—the warmth and earthiness of a favorite tube combo with the dependability and functionality of a modern solid-state box—the series can quickly be modified via Tone Capsules. Recent highlights of the line include Capsules by jazz-blues virtuoso Robben Ford and NYC-based funk-fusion shredder Oz Noy…

”I LIKE GOOD MELODIES AND GOOD STORIES, ESPECIALLY WHEN I CAN RELATE TO THEM. LIKE DINAH WASHINGTON’S ’LET ME BE THE FIRST TO KNOW.‘ THAT STORY HAPPENED TO ME. I’M STILL GREAT FRIENDS WITH THAT PERSON. BUT EVERYBODY KNEW [THE RELATIONSHIP WAS ENDING] BEFORE ME.” In late September, Catherine Russell, 60, bustled into the little French restaurant in Greenwich Village exactly at the stroke of 2 p.m. Just back from a weekend concert at a jazz festival in Bogota, Colombia, she had come to talk about her latest album of classic jazz, blues, standards and R&B, Harlem on My Mind (Jazz Village). She is grateful for, if a bit surprised by, the midcareer surge that has taken her from in-demand, first-call backup singer to rock and pop stars (Steely Dan,…

Not long after the 2011 release of his third album as a leader, Tree of Life, the Cuban-born, New York-based drummer and composer Francisco Mela asked bassist Gerald Cannon to give that disc a listen. Cannon complied. But when asked what he thought about the music, Cannon, Mela’s bandmate in the McCoy Tyner Trio, didn’t respond the way the drummer had hoped. He merely commented that it was “interesting.” “I understood right there that it wasn’t something he really liked,” says Mela, 48. “So I told him this is the way that I write. He said to me, ‘Mela, you should write a jazz album.’ And I was like, ‘What?’ And he said, ‘These are interesting compositions, but it’s not jazz.’” At this juncture, we should acknowledge in the interest…

On May 11, 2014, Norah Jones took the stage at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., during “Blue Note at 75,” an all-star concert celebrating the rich history and robust health of jazz’s most iconic record company. The singer-songwriter and pianist—a Blue Note artist since the start of this century, signed by the late Bruce Lundvall when she was just 21—performed a solo version of the Hoagy Carmichael standard “The Nearness of You,” the last song on her 2002 debut, Come Away With Me: by far the label’s biggest mainstream-pop success, with more than 26 million copies sold worldwide. Jones, now 37, then sang another ballad from that album, Jesse Harris’ Indo-blues shuffle “I’ve Got to See You Again,” playing it for the first time with a diamond-standard jazz band:…

Remarkably, two decades have passed since Madeleine Peyroux burst onto the jazz scene with Dreamland, introducing a singular voice that the critic Nate Chinen later aptly described as “a small, distinctive thing with all the weathered charm of a flea-market antique.” Then Peyroux disappeared, not returning to the studio until 2004 to commence a series of albums that, mirroring her quixotic charm, has established her as one of the most arresting singers of her generation. This past September, on the eve of the release of her Impulse! label debut, Secular Hymns, Peyroux, now 42, spoke with JT about everything from her peripatetic evolution and biggest musical influences to the shaping of the new album with her stellar trio-mates, guitarist Jon Herington and bassist Barak Mori. JAZZTIMES: WOULD YOU…

AZIZA AZIZA (Dare2) Chris Potter on saxophone, Lionel Loueke on guitar, Dave Holland on bass, Eric Harland on drums … go ahead, call Aziza a super-group. That would be a very ’70s thing to do, and this, at least on some levels, is very ’70s music. In its energy, its complexity and its adventurousness, it brings to mind several other supergroups that coalesced in the wake of Miles Davis’ electric transition: the Tony Williams Lifetime, Weather Report, Return to Forever and the Mahavishnu Orchestra. The thrilling “Blue Sufi,” written by Potter, is a perfect case in point. A series of dizzying unison riffs with a pronounced Indo-Arabic flavor, played in alternating measures of 7/8 and 6/8, leads to a long, furious improvisation section in which the musicians, while clearly still…

Music history has more than its share of outcasts and eccentrics. Its annals are also filled with tales of thwarted careers and glorious resurrections. And, sadly, there are endless examples of artists bilked by unscrupulous advisors and handlers. Vocalist Jimmy Scott, arguably the finest balladeer of the past century, his influence felt well beyond the jazz milieu, checked all those boxes. Scott, who died two years ago, just a month shy of his 89th birthday, never attained mainstream stardom, yet he ranks among the most respected “singer’s singers,” his long list of acolytes and admirers stretching from Nancy Wilson to Madonna, Frankie Valli to Lou Reed. His story, a twisted saga of personal and professional struggles, dogged perseverance against towering odds and ultimate—if relative—triumph is so fascinating, so singular, that…

THREE YEARS HAVE PASSED SINCE THE L.A.-BASED TIERNEY SUTTON BAND released the stunning Joni Mitchell tribute After Blue. Now, the most egalitarian outfit in jazz—vocalist Sutton, pianist Christian Jacob, bassists Trey Henry and Kevin Axt and drummer Ray Brinker—is back with a vengeance, shaping the score for Clint Eastwood’s Sully, the saga of miracle-on-the-Hudson pilot Chesley Sullenberger, and a new album, The Sting Variations (BFM), again saluting a masterful contemporary singer-songwriter. JAZZTIMES: HOW DID THE EAST-WOOD ASSIGNMENT HAPPEN? TIERNEY SUTTON: Clint called me and said, “Can you come down to Warner Brothers next week?” He’d mentioned something in passing at a private concert we’d done for him about two months earlier, about how he might use Christian and me on a project he was doing. I had no…

On Oct. 8, closing a triple bill early into the weeklong 2016 Stockholm Jazz Festival, the pianist Bobo Stenson allowed me to understand jazz’s best-known solo piano performer, Keith Jarrett, with a fresh and meaningful perspective. Stenson, perhaps Sweden’s most important jazz export at age 72, flowed through one sterling melody after another, tinged with deeply felt undertones of gospel and R&B and the bittersweet, romantic soul that descends from Bill Evans. It was concert-hall-caliber music played in a nightclub—a terrific and acoustically capable one, called Faschingand it somehow took Jarrett’s playing out of relief and immersed it into a generation of brilliantly affecting melodists that includes Stenson, Steve Kuhn and others. The set was a reminder to not be satisfied with institutional knowledge and collective wisdom, to look beyond…

Approaching the age of 77, Andy Bey is one of New York City’s best-kept secrets. Those who know, know, but he’s not one for self-promotion or career building. His albums, like 2014’s Pages From an Imaginary Life, are filled with down-tempo treasures, yet they arrive at an irregular pace. He resists almost all invitations to tour. Local gigs pop up with minimal announcement, the vocal maestro most often accompanying himself on piano in small venues that sometimes seem incongruous relative to his stature and talent. A marked exception was a two-set evening at the Greenwich Village piano bar Mezzrow this past January that was immediately followed by the winter’s worst snowstorm—a forecast that did not dissuade a dedicated 30 or so fans from filling the small room. Choosing standards and…

When John Beasley met Dianne Reeves in 1981—the two were part of Sérgio Mendes’ touring band—he never anticipated that he would one day lead a big band dedicated to the music of Thelonious Monk, or that he would lead a big band at all. But on Aug. 18, Beasley’s MONK’estra celebrated the release of MONK’estra, Volume 1 at Jazz Standard, in New York, where special guest Reeves rendered “Ask Me Now,” with lyrics co-written by Beasley and his wife, Lorna Chiu. For the 56-year-old Los Angeles-based keyboardist, composer, arranger and music director, forming the band was a decision that unfolded organically over a period of decades, and developing the music for Volume 1 took years. (The reaction to Beasley’s project has been much swifter: His label, Mack Avenue, has already…

KAY LYRA JUST A SILLY GAME (Sunnyside) Brazilian vocalist Kay Lyra boasts an impeccable pedigree. Her father is Carlos Lyra, who, alongside Antonio Carlos Jobim, is recognized as bossa nova’s co-father. Her late mother was the American model, actress, writer and occasional singer Kate Lyra. Her husband is composer, arranger, guitarist and singer Maurício Maestro, whose career ignited a few years before Kay was born in 1971. Lyra is a household name in Rio, and fans worldwide recognize Carlos’ stellar work. But Kay, with two previous albums under her belt, remains largely unknown to Stateside listeners, a gap the Sunnyside label now hopes to fill. Though Kay is credited as producer, Maestro maintained overarching control, serving as musical director and arranger, coordinating all the sessions, playing on 12 of 13…

BRIC JAZZFEST MARATHON Comfort shouldn’t go overlooked by music-festival producers but it often does, in and out of jazz. Stacking headliner-caliber performers isn’t enough; people should want to exist in the given space for an extended period of time. This isn’t to say that jazz festivals need to start offering spa treatments or food branded by celebrity chefs, but attention to ambiance is welcome. Vibe means something. The three-night 2016 BRIC JazzFest Marathon, held at the multipurpose BRIC House in Brooklyn in mid-October, was an enjoyable, easy place to be. BRIC JazzFest launched last year and is helmed in part by the forces behind NYC Winter Jazz Fest. That annual bonanza is the BRIC event’s most natural analogue, though Jazz Fest, while brilliantly programmed, can require far more force of…