Indholdsfortegnelse for June 2018 i JazzTimes

Obituary: Cecil Taylor Cecil Taylor, an iconoclastic pianist who was among the architects of free and avant-garde jazz, died on April 5 at his home in Brooklyn, N.Y. He had turned 89 on March 25. A cause of death was not disclosed. Even within the idiosyncratic tradition of avant-garde jazz, Taylor’s music was unique and often confounding, comprising relentless percussive onslaughts of atonal clusters and complex, shifting rhythms on the piano. British jazz writer Val Wilmer famously compared his piano attack to “88 tuned drums.” For three decades Taylor was regarded as primarily an underground figure, an eccentric genius known only to cognoscenti of jazz and contemporary art music. He finally cemented his status as an internationally lauded musical giant in the 1980s, and went on to receive great institutional…

Kevin Mahogany Featuring Randy Travis “I Believe She Was Talkin’ ‘Bout Me” from Another Time Another Place (Warner Bros., 1997) In the mid-1990s, the late Kevin Mahogany had a high-profile recording contract with Warner Bros. that enabled him to snare the popular country artist. On this Mahogany original, the two singers playfully portray rivals for a woman’s affection. Over the years, Mahogany explored all sorts of rootsy American styles, including soul, blues and doo-wop. Travis, on the other hand, has stayed in his neo-traditional country lane, at least so far. Charlie Haden Family & Friends Rambling Boy (Decca, 2008) With this concept album, Haden returned to his very early roots in country music. The bassist began performing country as a 22-month-old singer in his family’s group in Shenandoah, Iowa, on…

The John Zorn Interview, by Bill Milkowski The downtown scene in New York City has witnessed its fair share of great venues come and go over the years. The latest loss, or change, occurred in March, with the shuttering of the original Stone, an East Village venue launched in 2005 by saxophonist-composer John Zorn. A new Stone has risen at the New School’s attractive Glass Box Theater, at 55 West 13th Street, and it has thus far retained the first venue’s eclectic, experimental and artist-centric focus. From its beginnings, the Stone was built on a curation model that gave the musicians who performed there free rein. At first a single artist curated a full month; later that shifted to weekly residencies, but musicians were always encouraged to play in a…

Profile: Sonny Rollins When Sonny Rollins’ Way Out West was released by Contemporary Records in 1957, it got plenty of attention, and not just for its sharply funny cover photo featuring the saxophonist as a mock-cowboy. The album was a departure for Rollins in two major ways: He was teaming with players (bassist Ray Brown and drummer Shelly Manne) he’d never worked with before, and, for the first time on record, he wasn’t using a pianist. The more harmonically open sound of a “strolling” trio—in other words, a sax/piano/bass/drums quartet with the piano player taking a permanent stroll—would in subsequent years become a favorite option for Rollins and for many of his disciples as well. In a recent conversation sparked by Craft Recordings’ special 60th-anniversary reissue of Way Out West,…

THE HAPPENINGS: MUSIC OF HERBIE NICHOLS (K2B2) When this chamber-jazz trio album was recorded in 2013, it was intended as a tribute to one man: pianist Herbie Nichols, who died (in 1963, age 44, of leukemia) decades before his idiosyncratic writing style was appreciated by a wide audience. Just before its belated release, the album was dedicated to a second, newly departed musician: trombonist Roswell Rudd, who played a crucial role in bringing Nichols’ many unrecorded compositions to light in the early 21st century. Sadly, cellist/bassist Buell Neidlinger’s death in March of 2018 now makes The Happenings a memorial to three late jazz greats. A fine memorial it is, too—and it should be emphasized that little in the music itself could be called sad. Indeed, a joyful vivacity characterizes all…

DOGON REVISITED (Passin’ Thru) Saxophonist and flutist Salim Washington’s music is characterized by a deep-running tranquility. Emotions are never forced; rather, they’re cultivated inside the listener. “Self Love/Revolutionary Ontology,” for instance, includes several free tenor passages, stoked with fury yet surpassingly gentle—no shock-screams or honks. The song eventually settles into a Spanish-tinged movement with an undercurrent of funk, followed by an extended multiphonic saxophone squeal as bassist Hill Greene maintains the melodic and chordal foundations. Here, as elsewhere, drummer Tyshawn Sorey transcends the timekeeper role, adding seasoning and texture to Greene’s straightforward impetus, prodding and goading, responding with angular, juxtaposed offshoots. Time seems to shift, dissolve, re-manifest and change direction, yet it never ceases to move forward. “New Invasion of Africa,” on which Melanie Dyer recites Amiri Baraka’s scathing takedown…

Three times during a two-hour concert at the Brooklyn Academy of Music on April 18, Abdullah Ibrahim sat alone at the piano, gently coaxing melodies from the keys that were by turns rhapsodic and elegiac. Each time, the South African bandleader’s wanderings incorporated strains of the same simple, hymn-like tune, familiar yet maddeningly difficult to identify (at least for this writer, although it shared traits with both “Edelweiss” and “O Little Town of Bethlehem”). Each time, the other seven musicians in his band, Ekaya, gradually appeared from the wings, adding their voices to his reverie. And each time, Ibrahim’s direct contributions would then lessen, until entire pieces would go by in which he played barely a note. But as he bobbed his head back and forth, breathing heavily or mouthing…

Singer and pianist Nina Simone was one of six artists inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame on April 14 at Cleveland’s Public Auditorium. Part of the class of 2018, Simone was inducted along with more conventional rock acts Bon Jovi, the Cars, Dire Straits, the Moody Blues and ur-rocker Sister Rosetta Tharpe, and her induction segment included speeches by Simone’s brother, actor and musician Samuel Waymon, and R&B star Mary J Blige. R&B singer Andra Day, backed by the Roots, and R&B/hip-hop artist Lauryn Hill performed songs associated with Simone in tribute. Acclaimed rapper Q-Tip, of A Tribe Called Quest, will teach a new course on the musical and cultural relationship between jazz and hip-hop at New York University this fall. Sharing instructional duties for the seven-class…

David Murray credits his notoriously tireless work ethic to his father, who made his way from Nebraska to Los Angeles at age 15 without even the money to pay for a train ticket. He ended up serving a stint in the Navy and working a variety of jobs to provide for his family, from garbageman to circus acrobat, and instilled the same drive in his son. “My father was the kind of guy who, if they asked him if he could do brain surgery, he’d say, ‘Yeah, sure!’” Murray joked over lunch at a Philadelphia bar in March, the day after a freewheeling set at South Kitchen & Jazz Parlor. “Never say you can’t do something, because you can learn—and you can learn fast.” Murray carried that drive from Pomona…

MICHAEL WOLLNY TRIO Oslo ACT Music actmusic.com ESBJÖRN SVENSSON TRIO Live in London ACT Music actmusic.com PJ MORGAN The Transparency Project 1DMV Music Group - June 2018 itunes.apple.com SARAH MCKENZIE PARIS IN THE RAIN Impulse! itunes.apple.com KANDACE SPRINGS Black Orchid EP Blue Note BlueNote.com TERENCE BLANCHARD Live (feat. The E-Collective) Blue Note BlueNote.com THE NELS CLINE 4 Currents, Constellations Blue Note BlueNote.com DR. LONNIE SMITH All In My Mind Blue Note BlueNote.com DAN ROSE, KIYOSHI KITAGAWA, TONY MORENO STRINGS ATTACHED Enja Records itunes.apple.com FRED HERSCH Open Book Palmetto Amazon.com MATT WILSON Honey and Salt Palmetto Amazon.com NELLIE MCKAY Sister Orchid Palmetto Amazon.com TED NASH Ted Nash Quintet Live at Dizzy’s Club Coca-Cola Plastic Sax Records tednash.com ORNETTE COLEMAN Ornette Coleman: The Atlantic Years Rhino Rhino.lnk.to/OCTAY10LP ROYAL STOCKHOLM PHILHARMONIC ORCHESTRA E.S.T.…

Carl Allen Signature Drumsticks by Vater Allen’s diamond-sharp sense of swing has elevated sessions by Freddie Hubbard, Jackie McLean, Benny Green, Art Farmer, Christian McBride and so many other elite jazzers. Vater understands this and has honored the still-unsung drummer with a new Player’s Design stick, made of American Hickory and measuring 16 inches in length and a bit over 7A, with a pointed, long tip. $18.25 list. vater.com Jazzin’ the Blues Book Pick up a copy of this Mel Bay book for your favorite promising young piano student who is just getting into jazz and blues. Written by Vince Corozine, with input from Charlie Freeman, Jazzin’ features instruction on 15 original blues tunes—a versatile array of grooves and vibes, from barrelhouse stride to jazz-blues. Recordings of 40 examples are…

THE GENIUS OF EDDIE JEFFERSON (Resilience) In an accompanying press release, Allan Harris compares his deep dive into Eddie Jefferson’s groundbreaking oeuvre to “taking a master class at MIT.” No question that navigating the tricky, rapid-fire, street-smart wordplay of vocalese—an art form Jefferson is widely credited with creating and of which he remains the undisputed champ, even 39 years after his untimely death—is a daunting endeavor. But although he’s best known for his buttery tributes to Nat “King” Cole and Billy Eckstine, Harris ranks among the most dexterous singers around, and he proves fully up to the challenge. Indeed, it’s intriguing to hear these 10 gems—mostly vocalese, plus such covers as “Memphis” and Duke Pearson’s “Jeannine”—rechanneled from Jefferson’s vocal grit to Harris’ rich baritone. Befitting so notable a project, Harris…

STAREBABY (Pi) What can you expect from drummer Dan Weiss’ heavy-metal-inspired quintet Starebaby? An eviscerating, exploratory edge, yes; utter mayhem, no. Weiss brings the same exacting standards to Starebaby that were previously evident in his Indo-jazz hybridizations and sui generis large-ensemble projects. The eight doom-laden tracks presented here are incredibly powerful, but they rarely come off as demonstrations of pure force for the sake of it. Weiss is too precise an architect and thinker to let might simply have its way. That’s obvious from the start, as Ben Monder’s quietly absorbing guitar ushers in “A Puncher’s Chance,” a mixture of the weighty and curious that plays to the pugilist’s mindset with its offkilter attacks. “Depredation” likewise deserves its name, with queries and comebacks aplenty serving as prelude to a main…

Cecil Taylor, who died on April 5 at the age of 89, invented a singular school of the jazz avant-garde that never wavered in its audacity, even as the pianist garnered cultural acceptance and institutional accolades over his marathon career. He also gained the respect and admiration of generations of musicians, who saw him as a model of artistic integrity and commitment. Collected here by Michael J. West are five of their testimonials. STEVE COLEMAN Cecil hired me for his big band around 1982. The thing that influenced me the most was the rehearsals. The performance is over in an hour or two, but Cecil was doing these six-hour rehearsals to get there. First of all, there was no music. Everything was done by ear. At first I thought this was crazy;…

Feature: A tribute to pianist Geri Allen, by Nicole Mitchell Nicole Mitchell isn’t kicking back at all after a heady 2017, during which she performed several world premieres at the prestigious Ojai Music Festival and made two of the year’s most audacious and acclaimed albums. A singular flutist, composer, bandleader, educator and aural provocateur, she is set to soar even higher than she did on those two dynamic recordings, Mandorla Awakening II: Emerging Worlds and Liberation Narratives, the latter an inspired collaboration with the poet Haki Madhubuti. At press time, Mitchell’s Artifacts trio with drummer Mike Reed and cellist Tomeka Reid is scheduled to perform in May at the Spoleto Festival USA, in South Carolina. In August, the Syracuse-born, Anaheim-raised Mitchell will do a one-week residency at the Stone in…

“WE HAVE A LOT OF YOUNG PEOPLE COMING UP AFTER THE SHOWS AND SAYING THEY REALLY HAVE NO WAY TO PLAY A CD—AND SOME OF THEM DON’T EVEN KNOW WHAT IT IS,” SAID JANA HERZEN, PRESIDENT OF MOTÉMA MUSIC. The rise of the Internet has inspired premature proclamations of the death of newspapers, TV, radio … and, of course, the CD. Recently, streaming services such as Spotify, Apple Music and YouTube have reduced the CD to near-insignificance in mainstream music. “In 2000, CD’s best year, 943 million units were shipped. By 2016, that dropped to 99 million,” said Ted Green, a tech industry consultant and the editor of the tech marketing website Strata-gee.com. But in jazz, where the audience is more accustomed to physical media, the story is different. According…

AFTER BACH (Nonesuch) To play the music of Johann Sebastian Bach well, a knack for sonic alchemy is required. One must be able to make swirling waves of chordal density—the original sheets of sound—feel both propulsive and calm, a deep grounding that’s simultaneously an invitation to travel the world. On this disc, Brad Mehldau gives himself further challenges: to transpose works meant for harpsichord to the piano, whose blockier notes contrast with the former’s radiant numinosity, and to respond to those works with pieces of his own. Mehldau’s light touch, which feels like the quiet revival of a sleeping musical power, is evident on Prelude No. 3 in C# Major, from Book I of The Well-Tempered Clavier. Bach was not a pastoralist, but Mehldau imbues something of the empyrean. We…

Profile: Roxy Coss In creating my new album, The Future Is Female, I’ve thought a lot about women and the role they play in the lineage and trajectory, the past and future, of society and of jazz. It’s made me realize how little I still know about the women in the music. If I’m a part of this musical lineage, I need to know who paved the way for me. Some of these artists changed jazz—not just for women, but changed it, full stop—and some took fearless political stands that have allowed me to even exist in this music. Nina Simone “I WISH I KNEW HOW IT WOULD FEEL TO BE FREE” Silk & Soul (RCA Victor, 1967) Last year, when I was working on my album, I learned Nina’s…