Innehållsförteckning för September 2017 från JazzTimes

On the occasions when I’ve solicited feedback in this space, I’ve been consistently impressed with the thoughtfulness and depth of feeling in those responses. But none of my queries have inspired such obviously heartfelt messages as my request, in the March 2014 column, for readers to send me their “Mahavishnu moments”—their fondest memories and bolts of inspiration related to the music of guitarist John McLaughlin’s era-defining jazz-rock outfit, the Mahavishnu Orchestra. Despite today’s vast thoroughfares of digital information, jazz fandom remains a regional affair; most major cities, and some small ones, have a system of venues, festivals and musicians unmistakable from the one down the road, and that holds true in a lot of correspondence I receive. But the Mahavishnu emails were different, at once more uniform yet from more…

The very beginning and very end of Buena Vista Social Club: Adios provide contextual bookends that reinforce the finality of the film’s central saga—namely, the glorious union and astounding global success of a collective of aging Cuban musicians made suddenly famous by a 1997 album and ’99 documentary. Moments in, a radio announcement informs the island’s people that their leader of five decades, Fidel Castro, has died. Nearly two hours later, we see the American who restored relations between the long-estranged nations, President Barack Obama, meeting with Castro’s designated successor, his brother Raúl. The injection of politics into the documentary, directed by Lucy Walker, is neither gratuitous nor underplayed. Rather, it’s crucial to the understanding of just how remarkable it was that the Buena Vista Social Club happened at all,…

Geri Allen, an intrepid pianist-composer and dedicated educator whose approach was ideally balanced between jazz’s cutting edge and the blues-centered jazz of her Detroit upbringing, died June 27 in Philadelphia. The cause was cancer. Allen had recently turned 60. Allen’s discography includes nearly 20 albums as a leader/ soloist and a wide variety of collaborations and sideperson work, including recordings with Betty Carter, Ornette Coleman, Steve Coleman (whose M-Base Collective Allen became an important part of), Charlie Haden and Paul Motian, Oliver Lake, Charles Lloyd and others. Her most recent recording as a leader was 2013’s Grand River Crossings: Motown & Motor City Inspirations (Motéma). Last year, Motéma released Perfection by the “power trio” of Allen, saxophonist David Murray and drummer Terri Lyne Carrington. Bern Nix, a guitarist who applied…

It’s 2 p.m. Eastern, load-in time at Jazz Standard in Manhattan. Charnett Moffett, who’s playing the club tonight to celebrate the release of his latest album, Music From Our Soul (Motéma), walks in the service entrance wearing dark clothes and a floppy white hat much like the one Bob Denver sported on Gilligan’s Island. He’s lugging two basses, one electric and one acoustic upright, and he looks a little bedraggled following the commute from his home just outside of Philadelphia. As soon as he’s set the equipment down by the stage, he takes a seat and pulls two tuning forks out of his pocket. First he lightly taps them together. Then he places them by the openings of his ear canals for about 30 seconds, closing his eyes, inhaling deeply…

AS A TEENAGER OF THE 1950S, SINGER ANN RICHARDS FELL IN LOVE FROM AFAR WITH THE TOSCANINI OF BIG-BAND JAZZ, STAN KENTON. He was 6-foot-4, silver-haired and old enough to be her father; she was a raven-haired bombshell, voluptuously endowed both physically and vocally. Her goal of meeting him paid off spectacularly. He hired her to sing with his orchestra in 1954, and the next year he married her. In 1961 came the Capitol album Two Much!, on whose cover they stand side by side. Kenton dismissed skeptics: “Of all the singers we’ve had with the band,” he declared, “she’s the best musician.” Richards had broken the mold set by Anita O’Day, June Christy and Chris Connor, Kenton’s famous “cool school” of husky-voiced, emotionally withholding singers. Her tone was as…

Sometimes even the most charismatic artists find themselves in a situation where winning over an audience is far more difficult than anticipated. Such was the case at the 2012 Playboy Jazz Festival, when Christian McBride’s big band was scheduled for a set between Sharon Jones and Sheila E. “The female James Brown goes out there and leaves the audience in an absolute frenzy, and then here we come with our jazz big-band stuff,” McBride recalls. “And people knew that Sheila E. was about to come on, so in my own paranoia I’m scared they can’t wait for me to go off. I’m thinking, ‘Oh gosh, I’m dead. What do I do? Put my bass down and start breakdancing? Light it on fire like Jimi Hendrix?’ That was one of the…

There is at least a slight news-of-the-weird element to Loneliness Road (RareNoise), the recent album from the trio of pianist Jamie Saft, bassist Steve Swallow and drummer Bobby Previte: The program features three vocal performances by punk architect Iggy Pop, who wrote original lyrics for prerecorded tracks and overdubbed his offerings in his hometown of Miami. It’s surprising, sure, to hear the Stooge’s artfully downcast croon punctuate a creatively swinging and lyrical piano-trio set. But it’s certainly not without precedent. Pop, 70, is a wide-ranging appreciator whose path from garage-band drummer to cosmopolitan rock-and-roll sage has intersected jazz and blues with fascinating results. What appears here is a taste of that history, with talk of the new release, his two eclectic chansons recordings, 2009’s Préliminaires and 2012’s Après, and the…

If you have a passing knowledge of how the publishing industry works, you are likely to cock a cynical eyebrow when pondering if a memoir such as Good Things Happen Slowly: A Life in and Out of Jazz, by the notable pianist-composer Fred Hersch, would have ever gained release with a major if it didn’t heavily involve splashy subjects like AIDS and sex addiction. Which is a shame and an aspersion on an industry that could do well with more books of this one’s insight and candor. Essentially, this life-as-gay-man-in-jazz document is reducible to two major strands: what it was like to grapple with sexuality and illness for large chunks of that life, and how Hersch came to master a post-Bill Evans form of pianism that channeled aspects of personal…

On June 12, the National Endowment for the Arts announced the recipients of the 2018 NEA Jazz Masters Fellowship—the nation’s highest honor in jazz—during Pat Metheny’s performance at the Kennedy Center as part of the D.C. Jazz Festival. The honorees are guitarist and composer Metheny, pianist and composer Joanne Brackeen, vocalist Dianne Reeves and club owner and producer Todd Barkan. Each receives a $25,000 award and will be honored at a tribute concert on April 16, also at the Kennedy Center, in recognition of their lifetime achievements and contributions to jazz. For more information, visit www.arts.gov/honors/jazz . The Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, part of the New York Public Library (NYPL), has acquired Sonny Rollins’ personal archive containing materials that document the sax great’s life…

B&S MBX3 Heritage Trumpet This adaptable, full-toned B-flat trumpet features a hand-hammered gold-brass bell with a French bead at the rim, plus a redesigned bore, a reconfigured lead-pipe for improved accuracy and playability, a new approach to the third-valve slide stop, and top caps whose “fast thread” allows for rapid unscrewing of the valve. Available in clear-lacquer, silver-plated, vintage and brushed-gold-lacquer finishes, $2,850-$2,900 online. b-and-s.com DigiTech FreqOut Frequency Dynamic Feedback Generator Pedal With so many current jazz and avant-garde improvisers showing a keen interest in sonic weirdness, expect to be seeing and hearing this new DigiTech stompbox often. Essentially, it allows the user to create all manner of amp feedback without cranking the Marshall to 11—it doesn’t even require distortion—and can also shape unruly natural feedback. Downtown skronkers, your ship…

Despite his stature as one of today’s most revered jazz vibraphonists, Steve Nelson’s discography as a leader is criminally small. Still, it’s a potent one built on experience playing with a long list of jazz luminaries, including Kenny Barron, David “Fathead” Newman and, perhaps most significant, Dave Holland. Along his journey from his hometown of Pittsburgh to New York City, Nelson crossed paths with another significant jazz figure, the late pianist, composer and bandleader Mulgrew Miller, who became his kindred spirit. Nelson salutes Miller on his charming new disc, Brothers Under the Sun (HighNote), on which he leads a crackling quartet featuring pianist Danny Grissett, bassist Peter Washington and drummer Lewis Nash through 10 compositions, six of which were penned by Miller. JT recently spoke to the vibraphonist, 63, about…

Lisa Fischer has long been considered a singer’s singer. She won her first Grammy Award in 1992, for her R&B hit “How Can I Ease the Pain,” and in the years since she’s become a first-call backing vocalist, sharing the stage with the Rolling Stones, Tina Turner, Sting and, for more than two decades, the late Luther Vandross, among others. The 2013 Oscar- and Grammy-winning documentary 20 Feet From Stardom reminded audiences of her prodigious vocal skills and helped revitalize her career as a solo artist, and Fischer and her working band, Grand Baton, are now staples of the festival, club and theater circuit. We caught up with Fischer, 58, in May, on the last day of her sold-out weekend at Blues Alley in Washington, D.C. Her perceptive comments were…

Aaron Parks’ eyes are the first thing one notices when meeting him. They are large, widely spaced, electric blue and remarkably expressive. “Great to meet you!” he tells JT at ECM Records’ offices in midtown Manhattan, with a bear hug for good measure. Sure, it’s a boilerplate greeting. But those eyes say he really means it. The 33-year-old’s piano stylings are equally expressive, if not more so. On Find the Way, his new ECM album with bassist Ben Street and drummer Billy Hart, he puts dark underpinnings into the chords; like chiaroscuro in a Caravaggio painting, they throw his melodies’ bright whimsy and humor into relief. Original compositions like “First Glance” aren’t just clouds on the left hand, sunshine on the right, but a sophisticated balance that nonetheless makes the…

BILL EVANS ANOTHER TIME: THE HILVERSUM CONCERT (Resonance) With so many previously unissued trio recordings by Bill Evans crowding shelves and “the cloud,” it’s fair to ask whether another archival discovery adds anything of real significance to the piano icon’s legacy—particularly since the latest, Another Time: The Hilversum Concert, comes on the heels of two other Resonance sets from 1968, Live at Art D’Lugoff’s Top of the Gate and Some Other Time: The Lost Session From the Black Forest, as well as Fantasy’s On a Monday Evening, from 1976. The answer, in this case, is a decided yes, for completists and non-completists alike. Aside from Verve’s Bill Evans at the Montreux Jazz Festival, which won a Grammy in 1969, and a few rarities, Some Other Time and Another Time are…