THE GIG

Past Futures

Christian McBride & Inside Straight

Village Vanguard, Nov. 29

Closer Than They Appear

New Music, Nov. 29

Taylor Ho Bynum Sextet, "Apparent Distance"

Best Thing I Never Had

A Pair of Pop Queens Flaunt Winning Hands

New Concert DVDs from Beyoncé and Adele

Know When to Run

Roy Haynes: In His Own Hip Way

JazzTimes, November issue

Psalm

There have already been many fine and touching tributes to Paul Motian, the master drummer, composer and bandleader, since news of his death rippled through the world yesterday morning. This morning I drove up the Palisades Parkway through a cold mist, listening the whole way to WKCR's memorial broadcast. I think it still hasn't really hit me that I'll never hear the dark clang of his ride cymbal in the Village Vanguard again.

I reviewed Motian often over the last decade; in recent years there were times when I had to stop myself from covering a gig because he'd just been reviewed, in another context, only a week or two earlier. I'm not going to link to anything right now, though, and my present thoughts on Motian -- as an adamantine creative force, a professional enigma and a shaper of the musical dialect for generations of younger players -- hardly feel adequate to the task. I hope it won't seem like a failure of purpose, or insufficient respect, but I'm going to cede the floor to others who have managed, in personal or critical terms, to articulate this loss to the jazz community, especially in New York. 

• Ben Ratliff, responsible for the best writing on Motion over the last decade, wrote the NY Times obituary. See also the Times profile that later became a chapter in Ratliff's book The Jazz Ear.
• Ethan Iverson, who is quoted in the Times obituary (and from whom I heard the news), offers his reflections here. "It's Easy to Remember" will slay you, if you really listen, as you should.
• Hank Shteamer does right by Motian's magical, "phantomizing" time feel in a blog post. I agree that certain of his musical values will surely live on.
• John Rogers, a photographer who was very close to Motian, wrote a beautiful tribute at A Blog Supreme. 
• Finally -- this one had to go last -- Peter Hum has collected reminiscences from a number of musicians, including Joe Lovano, Chris Potter, Marilyn Crispell and Frank Kimbrough. They're all linked off a main post, which also has some choice YouTube footage. 

Snowed In

New Music, Nov. 22

Kate Bush, "50 Words for Snow"

Notes on a Mad Hatter

Chick Corea is going to be an easy man to find this month. He’s in residence at the Blue Note through Nov. 27, with a cavalcade of collaborators. (On Mondays he’ll rest, ceding the stage to some good jazz singers.) The booking seemed like a good excuse to reflect on Corea’s many-sided musical personality, which I did over here.

My personal history with Chick Corea’s music goes back almost as far as my active engagement with live jazz: as I’ve noted in JazzTimes and elsewhere, I had my head turned around by an Akoustic Band concert in 1990, in Honolulu. (An aside: pianist Robert Glasper once told me that the first jazz album he really paid attention to was Alive, the document taped during this tour. He had it on cassette.)

I’ve had occasion to see Corea many times since: in several different trios, and with Origin, Béla Fleck, Remembering Bud Powell and the Five Peace Band. (There are others I must be forgetting.) A few years ago I went to Austin to cover the Return to Forever reunion, observing rehearsals for a couple of days, taking in the big debut and then airing my thoughts, including some mild reservations.  

Others have their own reservations about Corea -- I know of at least one prominent musician-blogger who decidely isn’t a fan -- and others still are hyper-specific about which iteration of the artist’s music they prefer.

Everybody digs Now He Sings. But there are those who get especially fired up by Crystal Silence or No Mystery or Three Quartets, and those who prefer the laser-etched contours of the Elektric Band.

I’m interested in this partisanship, which certainly exists with other jazz artists, but usually not in an accessible present tense. So lemme ask you, dear reader: which version of Chick works best for you, and why? What’s the album to beat? If you’re hitting the Blue Note this month, which night, or nights, will you be going? And if Chick is just not your guy, I want to hear from you, too. Have at it, below.