THE GIG

Only Smoke

Critics’ Choice: New CDs

Jane Monheit, “Home”

Wilderness Hearts

Photo courtesy of Peter Gannushkin / DOWNTOWNMUSIC.NET

Playlist, Sept. 24

Henry Threadgill, Black Mountain, John McNeil-Bill McHenry, Flying Lotus, Grant Stewart, Bloody War

And Dream of Sheep

Angela Jimenez for The New York Times

Hello Earth! The Music of Kate Bush

Le Poisson Rouge, Sept. 22

Update: Hear the entire concert courtesy of WQXR

Challenge Within

Antonio Sanchez Quartet

Jazz Standard, Sept. 21

(Marsalis) Family Matters

Now online: this month’s column, about the NEA Jazz Masters, the Marsalis Family, and what I believe to be a certain lapse in judgment. I should note that I filed my copy to JazzTimes on Aug. 10, a few weeks before the hullabaloo caused by saxophonist Phil Woods, who announced his boycott of all future NEA Jazz Masters events. (Peter Hum covered this well over at Jazzblog.ca.)

When the Woods grievance hit the airwaves, I piped up on Twitter that I disagreed with his actions but had to acknowledge that he had a point. In response, guitarist-composer Anthony Wilson wrote this (I’ll collapse his serial installments into one statement): 

People Like You

The Bad Plus

Bowery Ballroom, Sept. 15

Stellar Regions

Jazz Listings

Sept. 17 to 23

Ev'ry Little Star

Jon Irabagon Trio

Cornelia Street Café, Sept. 14

Own What's Yours

Choice quote from the Marc Cary blindfold test (Before & After) in the new JazzTimes, conducted by Larry Appelbaum:

[Betty Carter] was a trouper. She would ride with us in coach. It taught me a certain cohesiveness you have to have. Abbey [Lincoln] would ride in first class and we’d be in second class and she would come back and tell us how terrible first class was. She’d complain that they took the silverware out of first class and she had to use plastic cups -- oh, and how you all doing back here? Betty wasn’t like that. They both understood the business. I learned the etiquette of being a jazz musician from Betty. From Abbey, I learned you have to own what’s yours.

(I don’t think, by the way, this casts aspersions on Abbey Lincoln. It’s just a different look. Obviously both singers were truly great.)

Like Sonny

The epic birthday extravaganza has come and gone, and I’m sure we’ll continue to see commentary from those who were lucky enough to be there. Some detailed early responses came, blogospherically, via Jason Crane & Howard Mandel, among others. I avoided reading those until after I had filed my own review, but was glad to catch up later. Likewise with a blog post by Marc Meyers, who also did an excellent job coaxing reminiscences from Rollins in a WSJ preview. [Update: See also Fred Kaplan at Stereophile.]

 Space constraints in the official review meant that I had to elide a few things, and shortchange others. I would have liked to devote more than a passing nod to Roy Hargrove, for instance: his sober caress of “I Can’t Get Started,” his feinting aggression on “Rain Check.” On some other night, this would have been a bigger part of the story.