THE GIG

Roscoe Mitchell's Day Off

If you're reading this, you probably know it's a busy time for jazz. So I'll keep this brief. On Sunday evening at 6 p.m., I'll be moderating a conversation with saxophonist, composer and AACM heavyweight Roscoe Mitchell, at Settlement Music School in Philadelphia. The talk (which is free) will precede an 8 p.m. performance by his Sound Ensemble (which isn't). It's part of a weekend-long Mitchell residency, within a larger AACM series, presented by Ars Nova Workshop. 

Roscoe Mitchell is, of course, a fiercely individual thinker and creative force, and while I haven't yet had the honor of interviewing him, I have heard him speak on a few occasions. The most memorable of these was during a symposium in Guelph, Ontario, in 2005. That was for a 40th-anniversary celebration for the AACM; during the same weekend, Mitchell also performed with the Art Ensemble of Chicago and in duo with Pauline Oliveros. (I wrote about it in JazzTimes.) 

Incidentally, the other night I was at the Vision Festival speaking with Yulun Wang of Pi Recordings, which has released albums by the Art Ensemble as well as Mitchell's collaboration with two fellow AACM stalwarts, pianist Muhal Richard Abrams and George Lewis. The subject of AACM commemoration came up, and I naturally mentioned the classic John Hughes film Ferris Bueller's Day Off. Yulun didn't know what I was talking about, which led me to believe that this bit of trivia might not be as well-known as I'd thought. 

A few years ago this movie was on TV and I caught a little detail in the Chicago parade scene above. Look at the banners that go by during Matthew Broderick's slow ride on the float. It's hard to make out in this grainy YouTube transfer, but they read "AACM 20," next to an image of a bassist -- Fred Hopkins? Anyone have the DVD? Anyone?

This makes sense, as the movie was filmed in 1985, when the city of Chicago would have been celebrating the AACM's 20th anniversary. So we have serendipity and location shooting to thank for the only mention of the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians in a top-grossing Hollywood movie. (Of course I'm not counting the Anthony Braxton cameo, as a blackjack dealer, in Ocean's 12.)

 No, I do not plan on discussing this with Roscoe Mitchell. 

While we're on the subject of jazz commemoration, though, I should also note that tomorrow, Saturday, marks the 15th annual Jazz Journalists Association Jazz Awards. It's at City Winery, and I believe tickets are still available. In addition to the bestowing of awards, the event will feature performances by Randy Weston, Wallace Roney, Gregory Porter, Jane Bunnett and others. I'll be there. How about you?

Anyone? Anyone? Bueller? ...Bueller? ...Bueller?

Nonlinear Realities

Part Three of a year-end email conversation with David Adler, Chris Barton, Shaun Brady and Jennifer Odell (Jump to: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 )

From: Shaun Brady

Dear Nate, Chris, Jen, and David:

A happy holiday of choice or lack thereof to each of you. Can’t think of better company to be huddling around a virtual Yule log with.

 Nate, you led with the seeming lack of narrative to this year’s jazz developments, but perhaps it’s the absence of story that is the story. My year-end blizzard of list-making and poll-taking also involves film, and many of this year’s slots are taken by works that are at least ambiguous if not downright opaque in their storytelling. So why shouldn’t our music of choice reflect this non-linear reality? You and Chris both raise the specter of those perennial arguments about what we’re allowed to call jazz or whether the genre still has a pulse, but it seems that even within the more expansive definition that I think we all subscribe to, the boundaries -- between jazz and rock, inside and outside - are being blurred in increasingly thrilling ways.

 

Take those guitarists who made such an impact this year, for instance. Nels Cline’s output was nothing if not sprawling, from the epic landscapes of Dirty Baby to the deliciously skronky excesses of Inititate, which deserves its spot on my Top 10 jazz CDs list but may equally deserve the top perch on a 2010 rock wrap-up. Once upon a time there was such a thing as an instrumental hit -- classic rock radio can still be counted on for regular spins of “Frankenstein” or “Hocus Pocus” -- and if we still lived in that world, Wilco may well be opening for the Singers these days.

  Mary Halvorson snagged the first slot on my list this year with Saturn Sings, a prime example of a new generation of jazz that has the lessons of rock burned into its brains, revealing itself through an emergent pop sensibility in compositions, band interaction, a certain aggressiveness, without having to strive consciously for so-called “fusion.”

None of this, of course, would please the Crouch-Marsalis faction, the latter represented this year by Jason’s “Jazz Nerds” screed, a somewhat more nuanced argument than that usually associated with his rearview-fixated older brother. If the Marsalis name is too tainted by the tired old “Jazz Police” arguments, a similar line in the sand between “emotional” and “intellectual” approaches in other camps. As its members will eagerly point out, the provocatively-named Tarbaby is meant to provoke just such a discussion, one involving tradition, swing and race that pianist Orrin Evans delights in provoking.

 You can add Evans (pictured at top) to that list of pianists who dominated the year, by the way. Besides the fine sophomore Tarbaby disc, he released Faith In Action, a tribute to mentor Bobby Watson, and assembled his Captain Black Big Band with the bandleader’s equivalent of spit and chewing gum. A recording is on the horizon, but here in Philly we got to watch the band evolve in real time through a months-long residency last winter at Chris’ Jazz Café, from a raucously skin-of-their-teeth ensemble to a still-raw but cohesive ensemble. Evans is also a dedicated exponent of the dying art of the jam session, having hosted several in the city in a willful attempt to recreate the conditions in which he came up (under, I should add, the guiding presence of pianist Sid Simmons, a sad addition to the year’s obituary list).

But an equal part of Evans’ output this year comes through his intentional provocations on Facebook, in which he has, among other no-punches-pulled rants, called out musicians playing what he refers to as “metrosexual jazz” (roughly equivalent to Jason Marsalis’ “Nerds”). Though his voice doesn’t have quite the reach, if you’re looking for the outspokenness of a Miles or Kanye in today’s jazz, Evans is as good a place as any to start. 

Nate, it’s been about two years since your JazzTimes column regarding Facebook, and how friending musicians offers an ethical quandary for a critic. I’m wondering how you weigh in on that debate now, and how everyone here handles it, as the site has become an increasingly interesting locus for conversation, debate, and sharing of thoughts, videos, et cetera. I haven’t built the wall around my Facebook that you wrote about, Nate, though I see your point and think it might be ideal to maintain separate professional and personal identities (advice I haven’t taken, as the thought of checking two separate Facebook profiles horrifies my antisocial soul).

As I glance over at your Twitter feed, I notice that mine is the sole name amongst our round-tablers who lacks an “@” symbol next to his name, and it’s true -- I’m a curmudgeonly holdout on the Twitter front. So for those of you who dwell within the jazz Twitterverse, how that has impacted the real-time conversation for you, and are you dealing with similar moral minefields there?

I mentioned some of the advantages of being in Philly with regards to Orrin Evans, and I’ll also take up your suggestion to celebrate the decade of Ars Nova Workshop. David and Nate especially, you know how much bleaker the jazz landscape would be here without Mark Christman’s efforts, and as other programmers have come and gone it’s especially impressive that he’s stuck to it for so long. Beyond simply bringing the avant-gardist du jour, ANW’s programming has gotten increasingly inventive, especially via its Composer’s Portraits series, which early this year saw Ken Vandermark, Trevor Dunn and Karl Berger all presenting unique Don Cherry-inspired programs.

Sorry, Chris, didn’t manage to sample a bottle of Bitches’ Brew, despite Dogfish Head’s brewpub being as close as I get to beach in Rehoboth, Delaware these days. Maybe I’ll go hunt down a bottle as I pass the baton.

-Shaun

Year-Ender: All of the Above

Part One of a year-end email conversation with David Adler, Chris Barton, Shaun Brady and Jennifer Odell (Jump to: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 )

From: Nate Chinen

Joe Kohen for The New York Times

Dear Chris, Shaun, Jen and David,

Well, here we are, closing the lid on another year in jazz, and I can’t decide what narrative to impose. Was this a time of mortal reflection, with the departures of Hank Jones, Abbey Lincoln and James Moody, among so many others? Or a season of triumph, as we observed the endless vitality of Sonny Rollins, Ornette Coleman and Roy Haynes? Was this the year that proved, with a horde of hard-charging younger talent, that jazz is -- in the words of a certain upstart summer festival -- not dead, but Undead? Or was it just another 12 months of hustling, out in the clubs and concert halls, and in the cloistered spaces where we do our solitary listening? Maybe Option E, for all of the above?

Whatever it was, we tracked and chronicled this year in real time (or, as our social-media metabolism might have it, hyper-real time), and I’m wondering how it looks to you now, with a wisp of hindsight. So to keep up a tradition of sorts at The Gig, I’ve asked you all to engage in a bit of year-end banter. Thanks for joining me -- this should be fun.

At this point you’ve probably sent in your ballots and compiled your lists, and it’ll be fascinating (to some of us, at least) to see where consensus forms. My Top 10 will be posted later this week, so for now I’m going to change the subject slightly. I recently appeared on BBC radio to air my conviction that pianists came out in full force this year. It would have been startlingly easy for me to construct a Top 10 of just pianistic efforts. Others might do the same for guitarists, or drummers. 

But consider: Geri Allen, Vijay Iyer, Benôit Delbecq and Matthew Shipp each released a provocative solo disc. Keith Jarrett took the duo route. For trios, try Fred Hersch, Dan Tepfer, Frank Kimbrough, Delbecq again, Kris Davis, Russ Lossing, etc. Larger concepts? Try Myra Melford, Randy Weston, Danilo Pérez, Brad Mehldau. And then there were Jason Moran and Ethan Iverson, each with a band commemorating a decade of strong, unmistakable work.  

About that commemoration: we like anniversaries and round numbers. It’s a way of organizing time, reselling material and sifting winners out of the historical mess. (We jazzbos are not alone in this.)

There was nothing perfunctory or contrived, though, about Ten, the album released this year by Moran’s Bandwagon, or Never Stop, the one put out by Iverson with the Bad Plus (above). In both cases you heard the cumulative weight and wisdom of the last 10 years, and a clear sense of intelligent artists taking the measure of their art. 

A similar sense of purpose lit up several other commemorative moments this year. (I refer you to the aforementioned Rollins and Haynes.) Shaun and David, I’m sure you both paid close attention to the 10th anniversary of Ars Nova Workshop, the nonprofit Philadelphia presenting organization run by my friend Mark Christman. (More on that in a future post, perhaps.) We commemorate because we care.

And, in some rare cases, because we can make a lot of money. (I’m using the Royal We, in case there was any doubt.) Remember Bitches Brew? Perhaps you know that it turned 40 this year. Perhaps you noticed the all-out promotional push, the shiny new product, the unreleased live footage, the licensed Dogfish Head brew. I never said I was opposed to all of this, by the way.  

 

Why bring up Bitches Brew? I’ll blame Kanye West. (Stay with me here, people.) In the musical world beyond jazz, which most of us also cover in one form or another, this is shaping up to be Annus Kanyebilis, with his new-school media strategy a proven success and his recorded opus landing rave upon rave. No one in pop was more compelling to watch this year, whether you believed you were witnessing aesthetic genius or riveted by a car crash. At times West himself seems unsure about which is which; you all saw the Runaway movie, I presume.

     Thinking about how West conquered every room he entered this year, I drew the only parallel that seemed really apt: to post-Bitches Miles Davis, another frequently bedeviled African-American sound-sculptor drawn to aggressive reinvention, unbridled ego and rococo indulgence. This parallel doesn’t entirely flatter either artist.

But jazzfolk often complain about how their music gets left out of the mainstream conversation. Miles would have none of that, for better or for worse. If the timing had worked differently, I suspect he might have put in a cameo on My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy, even if that title is more Mingus-esque in syntax and scope. Look at how much steam can still be generated by Bitches Brew, all these years later. That level of cultural cachet seems to be precisely what West is reaching for. 

Speaking of reaching, I believe this exhausts the air in the room, for now. I gladly pass the baton to Chris, out in Los Angeles. Take it in any direction you like, good sir, but just answer me this: was the Nels Cline Dirty Baby premiere as unmissable as it seemed? (Sub-question: how hard should I be kicking myself, still?)   cheers to all, Nate

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.”

Berne Notice

 

Programming Note: I’m in Philadelphia this weekend, taking part in an Ars Nova Workshop Composer Portrait series on alto saxophonist-composer Tim Berne. Originally I was scheduled for a pre-concert talk on Friday, but my jury service has shuffled the deck a bit. So now it’s 6:30 p.m. Saturday. I’ll be speaking with Steve Byram, the influential graphic designer who has worked closely with Berne for years.

One reason I was booked for Friday: that’s when Berne and the Collide Saxophone Quartet (with guitarist Marc Ducret) will perform music from The Sevens, a 2002 release on New World Records. I wrote liner notes for that release -- note: the link goes to a PDF -- and somehow, reading now, they don’t make me cringe. (Not much, at least.) I now heed a general house-policy prohibition against liner notes, but I’m glad I had the chance to tackle these.

Back to this weekend. Saturday looks to be every bit as engaging, with one set apiece by Berne’s new band, Adobe Probe, and Philadelphia-based pianist Matt Mitchell. I haven’t heard the music for either of these settings, but I did enjoy a recent interview conducted by David Adler for the online magazine of the Philadelphia Music Project.

Where, you might ask, is Steve Byram in all this? Pretty much everywhere. And I expect our conversation to range from visual aesthetics to musical details, encompassing the considerable overlap therein. Here, warm up with an image gallery at Screwgun Records. 

(Unrelated Byram-Berne image.)

Super Nova

Ars Nova Workshop, the leading jazz and new-music presenter in Philadelphia, launched a stylish new website today. It’s content-rich, as these things go: blog, archives, audio. And I’m struck by how effectively this design highlights the scope of the organization, an independent nonprofit now entering its 10th season.

I claim no objectivity here: Ars Nova founder Mark Christman was a groomsman in my wedding. (The brooding image above ran as part of a recent piece by David Adler, in the Philadelphia Weekly.)  Mark’s obsessive seriousness about the music is what fuels the machine. In recent years I’ve heard about many more of his shows than I had the opportunity to attend. But I was there for the first one: Chris Speed’s yeahNO, at the Plays & Players Theater. When I heard last week’s sad news about Joe Maneri, my thoughts quickly turned to an Ars Nova show from a few years back, featuring Joe and his son Mat.

Ars Nova’s fall season kicks off next Friday with the Mary Halvorson Quintet, whom I’ve covered here. Scan the calendar and you’ll notice a good number of events worth traveling to see: a Don Cherry composer portrait, for starters, and a series called “Anti-Jazz: The New Thing Revisited” (with the Sun Ra Arkestra, the Art Ensemble of Chicago, and Bill Dixon with the Exploding Star Orchestra). In the interest of full disclosure and, yes, self-promotion: I’ll be taking part in a Q&A preceding this Tim Berne event in December.

Here are photos from this year’s Newport festival (that’s Jen Hope, Mark’s better half, in the middle) and last year’s NFL playoffs (we’re on my couch watching his Eagles steal victory from my Giants).