THE GIG

After Tonight

Sidekick No More

Kevin Eubanks Starts His Post-Leno Life

Related: Late Shift / Postscript

Paid Engagements

Jazz Listings

May 28 to June 3

Keep the Faith

Bon Jovi

The New Meadowlands, May 26

Space: Still the Place

 

Sun Ra would have turned 96, in earth years, last Saturday. Marshall Allen, who has led the Sun Ra Arkestra for some 15 years (and played in its ranks for more than 50), turns 86 today. According to recent custom, Allen and the band will perform a birthday gig, in their hometown of Philadelphia, under the aegis of the Ars Nova Workshop. In honor of all of this, here is a piece I wrote for a Style magazine in Philly last year, which provided me with a pretext for interviewing both George Clinton and Maurice White for the first time.

There are worlds, and there are worlds. For the visionary composer, keyboardist, philosopher, bandleader and intergalactic traveler known as Sun Ra, the planet was a way station, and music was both a vessel and a channel. Throughout his earthly career, which roughly spanned the second half of the last century, he engaged an impossibly broad-spectrum sweep of musical ideas: big band swing and bebop along with future-sound electronics and ancient African rhythms, funk and free jazz, psychedelic grooves and Bizarro doo-wop, and much, much else besides. “It was a universal music,” attests George Clinton, the Parliament-Funkadelic mastermind with an intergalactic angle of his own. “There’s no box you can put it in, except that it makes you feel good.”

 So is it any wonder that in the 16 years since Sun Ra’s departure, his influence has rippled across so many borders of culture and genre? When soul-punk dynamo Janelle Monáe declares herself “an alien from outer space,” or hip-hop trickster Lil Wayne rants about being a Martian, they’re riding a wavelength best exemplified, if not generated, by the potent precedent of Sun Ra. And those are just the more flagrant manifestations of a process that reaches meaningfully into the worlds of rock, techno and electronica, along with avant-garde jazz and new music. “He never got as much recognition, even posthumously, as he should have,” says Jeff Parker, the guitarist for Tortoise, the acclaimed Chicago post-rock band. “But the influence, man, it’s everywhere.”

Letters to a Young Critic

 Frank Alkyer, Down Beat

Like most folk who do what I do, I’ve been approached by aspiring young music journos with some variation on the question: So how do I get into this racket? This happens a lot when I visit college campuses, and lately my response has involved some combination of research (i.e., listening, reading) and enterprise (pitching, bloggery).

But mostly what I say is: write. If you want to be a writer, you should be writing. Obsessively, thanklessly. When this advice meets with a distant, glassy stare -- rather than a glint of recognition, which is far rarer -- I feel like I’ve identified a hobbyist rather than someone bound for the profession, if such a word can still be said to apply. 

I bring this up by way of introduction to a terrific series compiled by Jason Gross, at PopMatters.com. The premise: more than 100 qualified people have been asked to provide a response to the question above. For anyone with even a passing interest in music criticism, the results make for compelling reading.

Respondents have been sorted alphabetically; so far we’re into Di. My hope is that a few jazz journalists have made the cut. We’re already past Davis (as in Francis) and Crouch (Stanley), which is too bad. Perhaps Giddins is up in the next round? Maybe Ratliff turns up later? No offense to Frank Alkyer -- the publisher of Down Beat, pictured above -- but it would be a disappointment not to have the voice of a prominent jazz critic in the mix. Still worth checking out, though.

Update: The series hits Gary Giddins, Howard Mandel

Fainting Spells

Critics’ Choice: New CDs

Crystal Castles, “Crystal Castles”

Still Alive

Pearl Jam

Madison Square Garden, May 20

Cats and Dogs

Matt Wilson Quartet Plus Strings

Iridium, May 19

 

Jazz Listings

May 20 to 27

RIP Hank Jones

The passing of pianist Hank Jones lit up the jazz Twitterverse this morning, and for good reason: at 91, Jones was one of the last surviving masters of his momentous peer group, and still playing with extraordinary grace. I last heard him just a year or two ago with tenor saxophonist Joe Lovano, his partner on an excellent series of Blue Note albums (find them here, here and here). Here’s the NYT obit.

My first encounters with Jones were naturally on record: albums by Ella Fitzgerald and Charlie Parker. When I finally had the chance to see him about a dozen years ago, I was struck most by his correctness, a quality that suffused everything from his chord voicings to his posture and attire. But as Gary Giddins noted in 2007: “Jones’s playing isn’t all that genteel: mannerly, yes, but at the core resolute and spare.”

Giddins’s take is one of several that I posted earlier this morning. Also see: Ben Ratliff, Howard Mandel, Peter Hum, David Adler.  

And by all means, see the clip below, which features Jones in good company, backing Coleman Hawkins, Charlie Parker, Lester Young, Sweets Edison, Flip Phillips and Ella Fitzgerald, in a rhythm section with bassist Ray Brown and drummer Buddy Rich. (Ah, YouTube.)

They, Claudia

Critics’ Choice: New CDs

The Claudia Quintet, “Royal Toast”