THE GIG

Dream Music

Playlist, Feb. 28

Paul Motian, Freeway, Xiu Xiu, Good for Cows 

Joe Lovano’s Us Five

Village Vanguard, Feb. 24

Production Junction

  A few years ago I had the idea to take a look at the issue of jazz record producers. I made some calls, attended sessions, and wrote several drafts of a big-picture piece. It sat a while, because it was an inside story written for an outside perspective. I just couldn’t make it compelling for a general-interest readership. 

Good thing we still have jazz magazines. This month an updated version of the piece appears in Down Beat; here’s the digital edition, for all you non-subscribers. I was happy DB decided to run it, as my byline hasn’t been in those pages since early in the last decade. 

I’d be curious to hear thoughts on the piece. My inbox this morning included a note from Marco Valente at the Italian jazz label Auand Records; I won’t quote from it here, because it may be going into the next DB. But the basic point was a philosophical alignment with the Pujol school of producing (or non-producing), rather than the Eicher school. (If those names make no sense to you, read the piece, Jack.)  

So what do you think, jazz internets? Is there still a role for the conventional jazz producer? Or have the artists themselves -- like Christian Scott, above -- more than picked up the slack? 

Digging Out

Jazz Listings

Feb. 26 to March 4

Team Moran

Add one more win to the track record of Team Moran: pianist Jason Moran was just included in TheGrio’s 100, a Who’s Who of African-American achievement compiled by MSNBC.com. He’s one of the only jazz musicians featured (Wynton Marsalis is in there too). The video above outlines a bit of Moran’s back story, and concludes thus:

“Young people wishing to get into the music are often just looking for something that is closer of a reflection of themselves. And hopefully my generation is continuing to kind of give people enough of a reflection of what can be possible within the jazz umbrella.”

Moran’s new album, Ten, drops on Blue Note in June, two days before his gig with Ron Miles and Mary Halvorson on this thing.

Herbie Fully Loaded

  

I’m coming a bit late to this expansive post on Wayne Shorter, Herbie Hancock, sacred cows and polemical critics at the Bad Plus blog, Do the Math. (Did I leave anything out? You bet I did. Read the damn thing for yourself.) I feel as though I’ve done this a lot already, but congratulations to Ethan Iverson for a piece that feels both passionate (in its feeling) and dispassionate (in its fairness). It’s good criticism, made all the better by the open-forum commentariat.

One undercurrent in the post -- about the deference shown to Hancock and Shorter by critics, perhaps partly for fear of mass indignation -- rang familiar, amusingly and scarily so. There isn’t a jazz critic working who hasn’t marveled at the vitriol generated by Peter Watrous’s notorious takedown of Shorter’s High Life. To adapt a phrase from Iverson’s assessment, it was a drowning-kittens moment. (I agree, by the way, that we need this kind of criticism even, or especially, when it runs contrary to our own baseline judgments.)

Something About Mary

Photo courtesy of Peter Gannushkin / DOWNTOWNMUSIC.NET

The adventurous BBC radio series Jazz on 3 has a new segment up on guitarists Mary Halvorson and Masayuki Takanyagi. I interviewed Halvorson for the broadcast; an excerpt of our conversation pops up at around 43:45. But I’m sure you will want to listen to the two live sets that bookend the interview clip, featuring her trio with drummer Ches Smith and bassist John Hébert. You may also want to stick around for some archival recordings of Takanyagi, a figure in the Japanese noise and free-jazz continuum who died in 1991. Bonus points if you settle in and listen to the whole segment at once. (It’s longer than the average feature-length film. Go BBC!) 

Mortal Stories

Critics’ Choice: New CDs

Jack Rose, “Luck in the Valley”

Cape Zorn

Masada Marathon

Abrons Art Center, Feb. 18

In Residence

Kneebody

45 Bleecker, Feb. 17 

Jazz Listings

Feb. 19 to 26

Lofty Viewing

 

Today marked the opening of an exhibition at the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts, featuring photographs and archival audio from the Jazz Loft Project. I haven’t been able to make it yet, but I’ll be headed there soon. (The show is up until May 22. No excuses!) 

Meanwhile, my sincere congratulations to Sam Stephenson and his staff and supporters at Duke University’s Center for Documentary Studies. A year ago I wrote about one aspect of their findings. More recently I posted a squib under the same header as this one, after seeing Stephenson in the unlikely medium of morning television. 

 There’s a lot more to be said about this project, and about the depths of W. Eugene Smith’s unruly archives. A lot of it can be read on the project blog, including first-person reminiscences, archeological musings and assorted other flotsam. (It’s good flotsam.) I’ll venture to say Smith would be proud, in his own furtive way.