Indholdsfortegnelse for May 2016 i JazzTimes

Just as a cinephile might consider projection options for the home theater he or she will never be able to afford, I’ve spent far too many train rides daydreaming about a dedicated listening room that exists only in the Land of Oz. Fellow jazz obsessives, you know the sort: audiophile turntable that could be traded for a used car; speakers positioned in their thoroughly tested sweet spots; hardwood shelving built into the walls, packed with vinyl and CDs organized by record label; an Eames lounge chair with matching ottoman. As with most things, reality hasn’t measured up. I live among modest gear in a cramped Queens apartment stuffed to the gills with CDs and books, plus a storage unit whose rental payments have eclipsed the value of its contents 1,000…

IN HIS NEW BOOK, EVERY SONG EVER: TWENTY WAYS TO LISTEN IN AN AGE OF MUSICAL PLENTY (FSG), veteran New York Times jazz and pop critic Ben Ratliff offers a series of essays that conjure new ways to absorb and think about music during a time when seemingly all the world’s recordings are a stream away. Traversing a strikingly wide range of genres and eras, Ratliff urges music fans to bridge their listening via big-picture concepts like repetition, speed, sadness and virtuosity. In this excerpt from a chapter on improvisation, he finds surprising but engaging connections between solos from progressive-jazz icon Eric Dolphy and Jimi Hendrix. I am listening to Eric Dolphy’s alto saxophone solo on “Stormy Weather” from 1960, recorded with one of Charles Mingus’ groups,…

Bassist Christian McBride has been named artistic director of the Newport Jazz Festival. McBride will work with longtime director George Wein—the only director in the event’s 62-year history—as the festival’s music curator and eventually succeed him. Current associate producer Danny Melnick, a veteran of Wein’s organization, will become producer. Jazz at Lincoln Center has announced its 2016-17 season. Among the scheduled performances are several jazz-related centenary celebrations featuring the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra with Wynton Marsalis. The subjects of these programs include the first-known jazz recording, Dizzy Gillespie, Ella Fitzgerald, Thelonious Monk and Buddy Rich. Also announcing its 2016-17 season is the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C. It will feature three distinct performances in honor of Fitzgerald; a 90th birthday concert for Jimmy Heath; the D.C. premiere of Wayne…

In late February, during an interview for another magazine, I asked the saxophone colossus Sonny Rollins a question about jazz and the pop mainstream—basically, how much crossover is too much? “I came up in the golden days” he said, gazing across his living room in upstate New York at the photographs of Lester Young, Art Blakey and Louis Armstrong on the opposite wall. “But when Miles changed and did more rock things, I was in favor of that, of people doing whatever they can do. I played with electric guitars, Fender Rhodes piano. I was also reviled for that. But I always felt music was open, and you should be able to do anything” Rollins, whose credits include the Rolling Stones’ Tattoo You, acknowledged the high price of purism today.…

JAZZ AT LINCOLN CENTER ORCHESTRA WITH WYNTON MARSALIS THE ABYSSINIAN MASS (Blue Engine) You can’t accuse Wynton Marsalis of thinking small. Commissioned to compose a piece for the 200th anniversary of Harlem’s Abyssinian Baptist Church in 2008, the artistic director of Jazz at Lincoln Center responded with a two-hour suite for 15-piece big band and 70-voice choir. Taking the traditional structure of an African-American Baptist service as its framework, The Abyssinian Mass mirrors the liturgical ambitions of Bach, Mozart and Beethoven—filtered, as you’d expect, through the stylistic sensibilities of Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington and Miles Davis—and adds a clear message of inclusion. Many lines are repeated multiple times by the chorus, but this one is key: “Everyone has a place in the House of God.” (Yes, even atheists and agnostics.…

Rather than evoking these drum heroes in portrait, Weiss takes an almost forensic approach, designing complex ensemble maneuvers in response to the briefest scraps of recorded evidence. “The American drummer is a one-man percussion orchestra.” This insight is often attributed to Max Roach, who spent his career putting its message to the test. Unless my research has misled me, the actual quote comes from a 30-year-old radio interview, collected in Ben Sidran’s invaluable book Talking Jazz: An Oral History. Roach’s phrasing in the original context is slightly different, conveying a larger point that his instrument is a uniquely American invention. “When you look at percussion across the world—Africa, Europe, the Middle East, the Far East, South America—the drummers don’t play with their feet ” he adds, reckoning that the drum…

›› When is a wealth of listening options too great? How can engaging with recorded music in the age of the cloud be dangerous? There’s no such thing as too many listening options; it’s a gift, what we’ve got now. There are only new ways to approach all that music, so that we can weigh it and navigate it and see what it has to teach us. ›› Is having the enthusiasm to listen to a very wide range of music a kind of gift? A virtue? A sign of intelligence or patience? You know how all those gospel songs say, “It’s already done”? I think that most people already have the enthusiasm to listen to a wide range of music and maybe even the gift. Listening to music just…

It isn’t just Joe Locke’s daunting virtuosity on the vibraphone that makes his work so compelling—it’s his overflowing passion for music itself, the demonstrative joy he invests in every phrase, even every silence. His latest release, Love Is a Pendulum (Motéma), features a smoking core quartet but explores new sonic terrain with guests including saxophonist Donny McCaslin, vocalist Theo Bleckmann and steel pan player Victor Provost. Readying himself for the last of four nights at Dizzy’s Club Coca-Cola with the all-star Dexter Gordon Legacy Ensemble, Locke, who turned 57 in March, was able to hide out in a back office for an hour and rap about the following vibes-centric tracks. 1. Peter Schlamb “REL” (from Tinks, Peter Schlamb). Schlamb, vibraphone, keyboards; Karl McComas-Reichl, bass; Sean Mullins, drums, beats. Released in…

One of the greatest living jazz clarinetists and a smart, soulful tenor saxophonist, Ken Peplowski is also a bandleader who upholds time-honored jazz values without being preachy or pedantic about it. Peplowski’s fluid, enthusiastic attitude toward the tradition can be heard on his most recent album, Enrapture (Capri), featuring his quartet with pianist Ehud Asherie, bassist Martin Wind and drummer Matt Wilson. In an eclectic program guided only by Peplowski’s enthusiasms, Ellington, Lennon, Herrmann, Fats Waller and more are treated with the same elegant respect for melody and swing. This conversation between the clarinetist and JT publisher LEE MERGNER took place in January during the Jazz Cruise, looking out over the harbor of St. Croix. LEE MERGNER: When we ask artists about their first musical instrument, clarinet is right up…

When it comes to a musician’s practice regimen, there are two—and perhaps only two—things that everyone seems to agree on. First, practice is absolutely necessary. Second, musicians should do it as often as possible. What precisely those things mean, though, gets complicated. How much is “as often as possible”? What exercises and concepts are absolutely necessary to practice, and how best to go about it? And how do these things change as one’s career advances, or as one gets older? All of these answers depend, of course, on the individuals—their personal styles and unique paths of musical development. But those paths do tend to begin in the same way. “When I first started, when I was 15, it was an obsession ” says bassist Kris Funn, 35. “I would do…

Vocalist Ernestine Anderson, whose six-decade career earned her four Grammy nominations, died March 10 in Shoreline, Wash. She was 87. Anderson, who last released a new studio album in 2009, was described by Time magazine in 1958 as possessing a “voice, sweet and strong above the rhythm section, [that] curls around the lyrics like a husky caress.” Anderson recorded her first album in 1956 and cut well over a dozen albums for Concord Records beginning in the 1970s. More recently she recorded for the HighNote label. Last year, that imprint released the acclaimed vault recording Ernestine Anderson Swings the Penthouse. John Chilton, a British musician, author and composer, died Feb. 25 after a brief illness. Chilton, a trumpeter, was known as leader of the Feetwarmers, which performed every Christmas for…

At a certain stage of a European tour by the Count Basie Orchestra in the spring of 1976, the band’s newest member, trombonist George Lewis, hired on a recommendation from his parents’ South Side Chicago neighbor, trumpeter Sonny Cohn, decided to inject some Dadaistic levity into his nightly feature, a three-chorus solo on a fast blues called “Hittin’ Twelve ” “My solo was silent, like John Cage, just gestures ” Lewis, 63, recalled in his office at Columbia University, where he was hired in 2004 as the Edwin H. Case Professor of American Music. “Now, you have to be somehow in your own reality to think that would go through and that you wouldn’t be fired the next day—which I was not. Soon after, while we were waiting for a…

“ What is remarkable about Ratliff . . . is his musical intelligence and his almost singular breadth of knowledge and sympathy for all kinds of music.” —August Kleinzahler, The New York Times Book Review “ Every Song Ever . . . break[s] things down not by genre but by sound, making unlikely musical connections and encouraging listeners to think about what they’re hearing with fresh ears . . . [It] is a jumping-off point for a more active, limitless type of listening . . . [and] serves as a guide, revealing new ways to look at old favorites and spurring on explorations into songs unknown.” —Ryan Dombal, Pitchfork…

Although jazz has a reputation for being a serious—often too serious—art form, it also has a rich tradition of onstage cutups, from Louis Armstrong and Dizzy Gillespie to Cannonball Adderley and Clark Terry. Here are some contemporary musicians who have also honed serious comedic chops. And no, we can’t tell you why there is only one woman. We’re still waiting for the Amy Schumer of jazz. DEE DEE BRIDGEWATER A vivacious presence and a gifted physical comic, the singer is a mistress of the double take and sexual innuendo. Also a gifted stage actor, it doesn’t hurt that she can do just about any voice or accent. LOU DONALDSON The 89-year-old saxophonist always works the crowd with a few of his sidesplitting pet stories, including his timeless take on ED…