Indholdsfortegnelse for November 2016 i JazzTimes

THE FINAL 15-PLUS MINUTES WERE DEDICATED TO THE THIRD MOVEMENT IN MCCOY TYNER’S “ENLIGHTENMENT SUITE,” THE THRUSTING “INNER GLIMPSE,” WHICH MORAN PLAYED WITH THE NEAR-RECKLESS ENTHUSIASM THE TUNE’S COMPOSER HAS PERFORMED IT WITH; IN THAT GRITTY, GORGEOUS MCCOY TRIO WAY, THE BAND SEEMED AT POINTS TREACHEROUSLY CLOSE TO BECOMING UNHINGED. Like the bebop architect that gives the Charlie Parker Jazz Festival its name, there is something profoundly, quintessentially New York about the annual admission-free August event. The multi-day fest deftly employs the city’s world-renowned local resources, but there’s also a brand of interest and empathy in the audience that seems singular. An example of this took place on Aug. 28, as the festival came to a close in Tompkins Square Park in Manhattan’s East Village. Headlining that Sunday was a…

On Aug. 24, the Hollywood Bowl in Los Angeles hosted the first, and to date only, scheduled live performance by Mega Nova, a jazz-rock “supergroup” featuring pianist Herbie Hancock, saxophonist Wayne Shorter, guitarist Carlos Santana, bassist Marcus Miller and drummer Cindy Blackman Santana, with support from percussionist Karl Perazzo. Whether this titanic gathering will appear together again remains to be seen, but if this was indeed a once-in-a-lifetime event, it’s fitting, if unsurprising given this talent, that the result was once-in-a-lifetime music. The evening kicked off with a set from Stax Revue, an old-school R&B outfit fronted by organist Booker T. Jones. The ensemble presented a crowd-pleasing array of tunes made famous by the stalwart Memphis soul label, including the zesty, island-flavored “Soul Limbo” and Booker T.’s own hit “Green…

This past summer the daily news cycle was ablaze with stories of violence and murder and outrage, pushing issues of civil-rights to center stage. In the first week of July alone, reactions to the fatal shootings of two more African-American men—Alton Sterling in Louisiana and Philando Castile in Minnesota—in what should have been routine, nonlethal police interactions, were burning up the Internet. Then, on July 7, five policemen were killed in Dallas, and for a few days it seemed everyone, everywhere, was holding their breath, wondering if a racial powder keg was about to explode. Everywhere included Europe, where in the midst of the summer jazz festival season many American musicians were on tour—one eye on their show and travel schedules, the other on all that was happening back home.…

It’s something to see: A fired-up young sideman blossoms into one of the most multifaceted and restlessly evolving artists of our time at age 36. It’s hard to tally just the most recent accomplishments. In February at the Ojai Festival in California, Sorey, on piano and drums, premiered a work commissioned by the International Contemporary Ensemble (ICE) called Perle Noire: Meditations on Josephine, a Josephine Baker-inspired song cycle in collaboration with famed opera director Peter Sellars, soprano Julia Bullock and poet Claudia Rankine. Another ICE commission is now in the works. Meanwhile, Sorey’s Alloy trio with pianist Cory Smythe and bassist Christopher Tordini has played weeklong stints at the Village Vanguard. In late July, the same trio premiered a work commissioned by the Newport Jazz Festival that Sorey plans to…

NILS LANDGREN WITH JANIS SIEGEL SOME OTHER TIME: A TRIBUTE TO LEONARD BERNSTEIN (ACT) It is a rather perfect storm: a sterling quartet led by Swedish trombonist and vocalist Nils Landgren, paired with the 17-piece Bochumer Symphoniker across a dozen Leonard Bernstein gems, arranged and conducted by Vince Mendoza, augmented with guest vocals by the Manhattan Transfer’s Janis Siegel. But it is also, befitting Bernstein’s unpretentious genius, a tasteful and elegant one. Landgren begins and ends grandly, opening with a 42-second snippet from West Side Story’s “America,” a multi-track trombone solo that suggests a glorious dawn over Manhattan, and closing with a majestic rendering of “A Simple Song” from Bernstein’s MASS: A Theater Piece for Singers, Players and Dancers, commissioned by Jacqueline Onassis for the 1971 opening of Washington’s Kennedy…

Last December, drummer Matt Wilson was preparing for a gig in St. Louis, Mo., with his group Christmas Tree-O, when he logged into Instagram and noticed that his friend and former drum student Mike Pride was also in town. Pride was on tour with a trio led by bass clarinetist Jason Stein, opening for Stein’s stepsister, Amy Schumer. Wilson reached out about a post-show musicians’ hang, but much to his surprise, Pride brought Schumer and her crew to Wilson’s concert at Jazz at the Bistro, where the A-list comedian jumped onstage to crack some jokes while Wilson drummed. Schumer even sat down at the kit herself, and a video of the impromptu session made headlines on TMZ and other celebrity websites. None of it would have happened if Wilson hadn’t…

THE UNIVERSITY OF THE ARTS SCHOOL OF MUSIC GRADUATE ENSEMBLE LIKE NO ONE ELSE (UArts) This recording, by a 2014-15 quintet at Philadelphia’s University of the Arts, features new music written by the graduate students in the ensemble: vibraphonist Dimitris Angelakis, tenor saxophonist Tal Shtuhl and trumpeter Daniel Nissenbaum. The band also includes bassist Ryan Kuhns (an alumnus and faculty member) and drummer Conner Saltzer (an undergrad). The session consists of seven originals sandwiched by five solo interludes highlighting the different instruments. Angelakis contributes three tunes: the funky “WR,” the classic-sounding, swing-rooted “Nostalgia” and the pensive “Like No One Else,” which evokes the feel of “Softly, as in a Morning Sunrise” before it shifts into an exuberant party mode. The airy brightness of his vibes tends to dominate the ensemble…

At one point during the 2016 Detroit Jazz Festival, toward the end of a tribute to the late pianist Kenn Cox, a telling request was made onstage: “Stand up if you’re a product of the Detroit Public Schools system.” Most of the members of the band, consisting almost entirely of local stalwarts like the brilliant trombonist George Bohanon, stood up quickly. It wasn’t the flashiest occasion in a festival that can deliver big, special moments, but it signified plenty: a historically robust music tradition created by a powerful working class; a culturally profound place with communities that thrive despite foundering institutions; a deserved sense of civic pride in a city whose reputation is unjustly maligned. The admission-free festival, which takes place over Labor Day Weekend in and around Hart Plaza,…

When you’re watching a set and thinking, “I’ve never heard Brian Blade play better,” well, the jazz stars have aligned and all portents look promising for a great weekend of music. In this case, the aligning stars consisted of saxophonist Joshua Redman, cornetist Ron Miles and bassist Scott Colley, in the West Coast debut of the new collective quartet Still Dreaming. Inspired by the great Ornette-adjacent quartet Old and New Dreams with Dewey Redman, Ed Blackwell, Charlie Haden and Don Cherry, Still Dreaming helped to open the 59th Monterey Jazz Festival with loose-limbed grit and capering grace, as Blade made every tune feel like it was designed for dancing. Joshua joked at one point that the project “is a tribute to a tribute band, which is kind of postmodern,” but…

Catching up with Snarky Puppy’s leader, bassist Michael League, is not easy these days, especially during the European summer festival season. The challenge is a result of the group’s increasing popularity: Between June and the start of September their tour took them through a dozen countries, performing almost 30 shows. In just a few years, the Brooklyn-based ensemble has become a major headliner at festivals focusing on jazz, R&B, rock and other musical styles, supported by a growing reputation for delivering high-energy performances that bring the fun and funk, and draw generation-bridging crowds. At this career point, they are as busy as they want to be. Coordinating a live Before & After with League—his first for JazzTimes—before a concert in Italy was complicated further by problems peculiar to this past…

Moog Model 15 Synthesizer App Although Moog is best known for its definitive analog synthesizers, the company’s digital game is coming on strong. Case in point: the Moog Model 15 App for iPad, iPhone and iPod Touch, a modular synth and learning tool that recreates the otherworldly sonics and iconic controls of Moog’s history-making modules for a touchscreen interface. Included are 160 one-of-a-kind presets, a real-time looping recorder, MIDI capabilities, tutorials and fluid zooming and panning (the result of the app utilizing Apple’s Metal technology). $29.99 online. moogmusic.com NS Design NXTa Active Series Basses Think of NS Design’s new NXTa Active Series instruments, including versions of the company’s popular Omni and double basses, as musical hybrid vehicles. In other words, you get active-pickup performance—go straight into any amp with no…

In a scene from the documentary Chops, the camera fixes on the young drummer Jamison Ross. Driving the rhythm with subtle strokes using brushes, he helps his high school band smooth the rough edges from Duke Ellington’s “Across the Track Blues.” In a voiceover describing the moment, he says, It takes a unity, it takes a certain togetherness to get to the level of Ellington.” Directed by Bruce Broder, the film shadows the big band at the Douglas Anderson School of the Arts in Jacksonville, Fla., as they prepare for Jazz at Lincoln Center’s Essentially Ellington Competition & Festival in 2006. Ross, who also won the 2012 Thelonious Monk Institute International Jazz Drums Competition, and is now a club and festival draw, said such contests motivated him and his high…

More and more, live DJs are infiltrating the jazz ecosystem. Their roles are vital in shaping the artistic vision of festivals and concerts, in providing more rhythmic texture and sonic color in live and recorded performances, and in curating and recontexualizing jazz’s history and evolution. Buzzed-about events featuring DJ sets, including concerts under the Revive Music banner, helmed by the New York-based impresario Meghan Stabile; the Art of Cool Festival, in Durham, N.C.; the DC Jazz Loft series, presented by the website CapitalBop; and keyboardist, producer and DJ Mark de Clive-Lowe’s traveling CHURCH parties, attract youthful, sizable audiences that would perhaps be less inclined to attend traditional jazz gigs. “I like to throw parties. People want to dance, and the typical ‘jazz’ venue and festival setting don’t invite or allow…

“WHEN I GOT TO OHIO STATE, I DIDN’T MAKE ANY OF THE ENSEMBLES. I WAS ONE OF THE BETTER PLAYERS IN MY HIGH SCHOOL, BUT ONCE I GOT TO COLLEGE, THE WHOLE THING CHANGED.” Few musicians on the current scene have as much perspective as John Fedchock. Now 59, he came of age during the development of jazz-studies pedagogy, thrived in one of the last generations to learn in the big-band tour bus, and later helmed his own renowned large ensemble. (Fedchock’s New York Big Band can be heard on 2015’s Like It Is, released just five months after his small-group outing Fluidity.) In this conversation with JT publisher Lee Mergner, recorded on the Jazz Cruise last winter, Fedchock discusses his lengthy career and his thoughts on education. LEE MERGNER:…

2016 DETROIT JAZZ FESTIVAL…

IN A TAPING FOR JT’S SPINS & RIFFS PODCAST, drummer and bandleader Matt Wilson, 52, sat down at the New School, in Manhattan, to talk with JT publisher Lee Mergner about his latest album, Beginning of a Memory (Palmetto), featuring Big Happy Family, a collection of artists who’ve played with Wilson over the last 20 years. The album is dedicated to the memory of Wilson’s wife, Felicia, an educator and violinist who died of leukemia in 2014. Here are highlights from the conversation, edited for space and clarity. IT WASN’T JUST FELICIA’S DEATH THAT YOU LIVED THROUGH. YOUR FAMILY ALSO LIVED WITH HER ILLNESS FOR A LONG TIME. For almost five years we were dealing with all the ups and downs. But I learned a lot.…

At any jazz festival with an international reputation, it’s a balancing act to maintain the global reach of prestige acts without compromising the local character of the host city. Not so at the 38th annual Chicago Jazz Festival, which took place over Labor Day Weekend, from Sept. 1-4, in Millennium Park. The festival confounds the tradition of center and periphery in the jazz world—a model that has artists developing their style in regional incubators before testing their mettle in New York—making a strong case that in today’s overcrowded market, the center cannot hold. And yet perhaps it’s better that way. Chicago’s architectural diversity—Louis Sullivan, Mies van der Rohe and Frank Gehry, who designed the sinuously chrome proscenium of the Jay Pritzker Pavilion, where the festival takes place—served as an apropos…

More than 2,000 years and at least 1,000 miles, mostly desert, separate the site of the Temple of Dendur in Egypt and modern Addis Ababa. But it still felt fitting and historic on Sept. 9 when Mulatu Astatke took the stage in the temple’s current home at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. As the recognized “father of Ethio-jazz,” Astatke has built his career on merging the ancient with the modern as well as the African with the American. According to the introduction offered by Astatke’s musical director, British saxophonist James Arben, the concert marked the first time that Astatke had played in New York in a decade. That would make the show, presented by the World Music Institute, his first appearance since his 2006 U.S. tour with Boston’s Either/Orchestra, which…

MILES DAVIS QUINTET FREEDOM JAZZ DANCE: THE BOOTLEG SERIES, VOL. 5 (Columbia/Legacy) Miles Davis’ haunting rasp “Teo … play that … Teo … Teo … Teo … Teo … play that,” closing “Gingerbread Boy” on your worn-out vinyl copies of Miles Smiles, was only the tip of the iceberg. To celebrate the 50th anniversary of that second studio album from the Second Great Miles Quintet, Sony/Columbia/Legacy has released Freedom Jazz Dance as Volume 5 of their acclaimed Bootleg Series. It is a fascinating glimpse into the creative process of this legendary unit and especially its leader, as the three-CD set includes session reels (rehearsals, partial and alternate takes), remastered final takes and—most tantalizing—much in-studio banter. We experience the band shape and develop the six tunes from the original project, recorded…

In May, the jazz-education non-profit Jazz House Kids held its annual “[Inside] the Jazz Note” program at Montclair State University in northern New Jersey. Part educational summit and part fundraising gala, the two-day event culminates with an in-depth discussion and performance featuring Jazz House Kids’ artistic chair, bassist Christian McBride, and a renowned guest artist, plus the organization’s premier ensemble, the Jazz House Big Band. For 2016, the guest was trumpeter, composer and Jazz at Lincoln Center Artistic Director Wynton Marsalis. Between duets and tunes with the big band, Marsalis and McBride engaged in a wide-ranging conversation, covering topics related to education, philanthropy and Marsalis’ storied career, with the deep yet easygoing rapport and mutual respect of longtime friends. Here we present highlights of that dialogue, edited for space and…

Fundación Educativo de Jazz (Fedujazz) resides in a light-blue, Spanish-style stucco building that sits back from the beach in Cabarete, Dominican Republic. A nonprofit organization that provides free music education to youths ages 7-18, Fedujazz attracts children—most of them living in profound poverty—and teachers from all around the tiny country. But on this Friday in November of 2015, Boston is in the house. Hayden Farrar sits in a classroom with a Fender bass on his lap, working out basslines with similarly appareled kids. One room over, pianist Toni Vaquer is demonstrating blues technique. Next door to that, guitarist Yago Santos is playing lead lines. But Fedujazz’s youngest pupils—all of whom start out on recorder, deciding later on a primary instrument—get to work in a tent in the backyard with Marco…

When you hear the words “celebrity product endorsement,” what do you think of first? Beyoncé going on a world tour backed by Pepsi, perhaps, or Robert De Niro doing ads for American Express, or Michael Phelps getting his mug on a box of Wheaties. Those are the big ones—ultra-high-profile deals that can be worth millions of dollars. As we’re all aware, in some cases painfully, the jazz world doesn’t have such visibility, and it certainly doesn’t traffic in such lofty figures. But for those very reasons, the principal type of endorsement deal you’ll find in jazz—musicians forging partnerships with instrument manufacturers—can be of critical importance, both to the players and to the companies that make what they play. For the companies, the reward is clear: brand exposure. Having a noteworthy…

U.S. COLLEGES & UNIVERSITIES ALABAMA Auburn University 217 Goodwin Hall, 320 W. Samford Auburn, AL 36849 Primary contact: Dr. Mike Pendowski, 334-844-3164, mjp0023@auburn.edu Jacksonville State University 700 Pelham Rd. North Jacksonville, AL 36265 http://music.jsu.edu/Jazz/Default.htm Primary contact: Andy Nevala, 303-859-3589, andy@andynevala.com University of Alabama School of Music PO Box 870366, Tuscaloosa, AL 35487 http://music.ua.edu/departments/jazz-studies/ Jazz contact: Chris Kozak, 205-348-6333, ckozak@ua.edu Wallace State College 801 Main St, Hanceville, AL 35077 www.wallacestatehanceville.edu Primary contact: Ricky Burks, 205-352-8277 X277 ARIZONA Arizona State University School of Music PO Box 870405, Tempe, AZ 85287 www.music.asu.edu/jazz Jazz contact: Michael Kocour, 480-965-5348, Michael.Kocour@asu.edu Chandler-Gilbert Community College 2626 E Pecos Rd., Chandler, AZ 85225 www.cgc.maricopa.edu Primary contact: Randy Wright, 480-732-7290, randy.wright@cgc.edu Jazz contact: Ted Goddard, 480-857-5182 ted.goddard@cgc.edu Mesa Community College Music Dept. 1833 W. Southern Ave., Mesa, AZ 85202…