THE GIG

So That Life Can Endure

Richard Termine for The New York Times

Bill McHenry Quartet

Village Vanguard, March 20

Occupy Jazz?

Part Five of a year-end email conversation with Angelika Beener, Aaron Cohen, Joe Tangari and K. Leander Williams. (Jump to: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 )

From: K. Leander Williams

Hey cats. Happy Holidays and all that...

 Cheers to Nate on yet another smashing roundtable. Here’s me trying like hell to maintain the high level of discourse thus far.

 As Nate said up front, I actually asked for the end slot because these days I’m not as engaged with the community as I was when weekly assessments were my gig. What I’ve found surprising is that I’m not quite as out of the loop as I’d initially surmised, and to be absolutely honest, that frustrates me somewhat. The controversies don’t seem to have changed much since I started doing this for a living in the early ‘90s, and even at that time they were tired. I mean, Miles Davis went electric in 1969 or so, right? What his bands did brilliantly was followed by a whole lot of electrified music the punk fan in me doesn’t have much use for, but that’s not really the issue here.

 The bigger point may be that jazz’s popularity has been in decline since maybe the late ‘40s; well before I got here it felt a lot like an economy in freefall — and yet we still haven’t hit bottom. (Think Sonny Rollins at the Kennedy Center, with Jason Moran waiting in the wings.) The difference, thanks to music schools, is that there are tons more jazz-identified folk sharing that pie. Is Esperanza Spalding this generation’s Grover Washington, Jr. or George Benson, jazz-educated but poised to reach folks well beyond the community? Is Robert Glasper? When Glasp hit the Blue Note in February, Kanye and Lupe Fiasco sat in. 

 So, to me, as much as the discourse aboveground turns on the moves of NARAS, Spalding and now Nicholas Payton, those years I spent regularly scouring the scene remind me that somewhere below the radar there’s always music in which sheer creativity and invention trump the symbolism and optics of a Grammy nomination, a superstar guest cameo or the latest “jazz-is-dead” screed. Who’s making that music? Where can it be found? Actually, the better question these days might be, where can a general-interest audience read/hear about it? For all the activity in cyberspace, my sense is that the realities of “search-engine optimization” (SEO) are particularly merciless in regard to any newness that lacks outsized marquee status. Once Spalding starts trending, we end up with 50 articles, blog posts, whatever, that say the equivalent of, ‘Yay, our girl’s a maaaaddd fly bassist and she bested the Bieb, but, um, isn’t that record kinda so-so?’ Meanwhile, there’s next to nothing on the conceptually-gifted unknowns toiling in the trenches, unless, of course, they’ve written it themselves? Hmmm... self-promotion as a way into (or in Payton’s case, out of?) the canon. Let’s see how that shakes out.

 At the risk of turning into the bummer patrol, there’s another jazz survival mechanism that crystalized for me near the end of the year. It came by virtue of a weird juxtaposition: The announcement that Jazz at Lincoln Center was building bridges to luxury hotels in Qatar (y’know, over there near the Arab Spring), while scores of the people we’ve come to call “the 99%” are out in the streets worldwide attempting to “occupy” everything. I’ve wondered about the symbolism of it ever since. I happened to be downtown at the Occupy Wall Street protests just weeks before the J@LC announcement, on the day that hundreds of local musicians, many union-sponsored I think, marched in solidarity with the happenings in Zuccotti Park. (Yes, my heart swelled when at one point some random brass band spontaneously broke into Thelonious Monk’s “Well You Needn’t.”) I’m not mad at J@LC’s initiative (like them, I’m fanatic enough to want jazz to be heard everywhere), but it certainly made me wonder if jazz’s premier option was to become the music of the 1%. That kinda puts me in mind of the days of swing at restrictive country clubs and the like, but from a musician’s standpoint it’s probably better than waiting on the .001% who actually purchase jazz product.

 All this said, there were a few things I caught live this year that blew me away, though I can’t say they represent trends of any kind.

 Marc Ribot’s Sun Ship Ensemble with Mary Halvorson, Chad Taylor and Henry Grimes. In theory it was a twin-guitar Coltrane tribute, but that was merely the jumping off point. Sonically, the music was raucous, more other-planes-of-there than sheets-of-sound. It’s also where I finally understood the growing Halvorson cult. She was on fire that night. I don’t know how to say it delicately, but I generally tend to feel that jazzers of her generation need to spend more time improvising on melodies they didn’t write. I’m well aware that might be the geezer in me talking. (Holy shit, am I the oldest cat in this roundtable?!? Geez, that never used to happen.)

 Matt Shipp and Darius Jones. Still haven’t heard their duo disc Cosmic Lieder, but no matter (hint, hint to Aum Fidelity’s resident new papa Steven Joerg... actually, I’m kidding; I never asked for a copy). When I caught Jones earlier in the year with the trio on his other 2011 disc, Big Gurl, it was kinda lukewarm, but at the Jazz Standard he had a soothing effect on Shipp’s key shifts, which in turn brought out the warmth in Jones’ alto.

 Double bill: Robert Glasper Trio + Vijay Iyer Trio. Wrote about it.

 Bill McHenry Quartet with Orrin Evans, Eric Revis and Andrew Cyrille. The set was fantastic, but like Aaron said, it was bittersweet for me as well. I knew Paul Motian was in the hospital, but didn’t know details. That was the night Lorraine Gordon of the Village Vanguard used the word “dying” to describe his condition. Paul and I had had a several funny conversations since I first interviewed him for Down Beat in the early ‘90s, so I was doubly sad that I’d missed his last gig in town with pianist Anat Fort in September — basically, because I didn’t wanna brave the rain, I think. Yeah... hindsight...

A Windy City Reply

Part Two of a year-end email conversation with Angelika Beener, Aaron Cohen, Joe Tangari and K. Leander Williams. (Jump to: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 )

From: Aaron Cohen

Hi Everyone,

First off: thank you, Nate, for inviting me to take part in this roundtable. All of you are writers who I admire a great deal, and I’m humbled to discuss these issues with you. 

To tell the truth, I didn’t read Nicholas Payton’s blog postings until you brought it to my attention. I do have trouble keeping up with jazz blogs (except for this one) — editing a jazz magazine all day, you can imagine I’d want to read SOMETHING else by the time I get home. Anyway, his first posting was rather poetic (he clearly thinks about the rhythms of his phrases), but I really don’t get caught up in whether or not jazz is/isn’t dead, whether or not this or that person is/isn’t really a jazz musician. I’ve been hearing all that since I started getting into the music when I was in my teens (back in the 1980s). I just never found that discourse particularly interesting — it never enhanced, nor detracted from, my enjoyment of the music and it never broadened my understanding of the culture surrounding it. I can say that there is a lot of good and great jazz being recorded now — I receive at least 100 CDs a week (of varying quality, to be sure), and with only having room to review around 35 new releases a month, one can imagine all the work that I am unable to adequately cover. Meanwhile, I’m busy catching up with as many live performances as I can. Here in Chicago, I can find something interesting to see and hear at least three nights out of the week. So I didn’t feel that Payton’s postings infuriated or excited me in any way.

Anyway, to get back to the discussion of Esperanza Spalding, she is a great bassist and a talented singer/conceptualist. I wish she would play bass more, as that’s what I feel she is best at, but I’m also aware that had she stuck just to being a bassist, she would not be the crossover star that she is. (Yeah, I would’ve been one of those who would’ve advised Nat “King” Cole to stick the piano, where he was brilliant, rather than sing, since I preferred Billy Eckstine). As far as whether or not her success is because she has transcended jazz, or will bring more attention to jazz, I just hope that whatever attention she does receive will somehow encourage more funding for music education. Glad that she continues working in Joe Lovano’s group. And I also hope that she does collaborate with Janelle Monae (my wife and I love her). 

As far as any siege mentality that jazz may be going through, or any sort of issues involving inclusion, exclusion or insularity, I think that may be more of a New York thing. Here in Chicago (where I’ve lived my whole life, except for college in Wisconsin), we tend to feel slighted in general. Really, controversy about [insert name of Manhattan jazz musician or institution here] matters to Chicagoans about as much as New Yorkers care about [insert name of Chicago jazz politics here]. 

So I’d rather just concentrate on music/musicians who I like, and this year has been filled with great, great stuff. I was fortunate to see Bill McHenry’s quartet at the Village Vanguard a few weeks ago, and they were terrific (though, sadly, that was also when I heard about Paul Motian’s condition, and his death was the worst jazz story of the year). I was also fortunate to see a number of longtime favorites representing different generations throughout 2011: whether it was Sheila Jordan (at Chicago’s Green Mill) or the Jimmy Heath Big Band (at New York’s Blue Note) or Eric Reed (at Chicago’s Jazz Showcase). I also was fortunate to steal away from the DownBeat booth at the Chicago Jazz Festival to catch Trio 3 + Geri Allen. Still and all, best concert I saw this year would’ve been Aretha Franklin’s first full-length post-surgery gig at the Chicago Theater in May. She infused every note with pure joy of being alive. 

As I mentioned in the post above, with 100+ records coming in my mailbox each week, there are so many great ones. Let me first mention the current wave of young Chicagoans — Nate’s colleague Ben Ratliff has been giving much deserved attention to vibist Jason Adasiewicz, and his Sun Rooms’ disc, Spacer (Delmark), is inventive and much fun, as is bass clarinetist Jason Stein’s The Story This Time (Delmark), which brings a sense of joy and energy to the otherwise abstract Lee Konitz-Warne Marsh school. Wonderful compositions on Claudia Quintet’s What Is The Beautiful? (Cuneiform). Darius Jones’ Big Gurl (Smell My Dream) and his Cosmic Lieder with Matthew Shipp (both discs on Aum Fidelity) really caught me off guard. And there were a number of solid recordings from so many people I had been unaware of just a few years ago: Walter Smith III’s III (Criss Cross) and Tyshawn Sorey’s Oblique-I (Pi) come immediately to mind. So many musicians I’ve liked for a few years now are still cranking out thoughtful stuff live and on disc: Vijay Iyer, Matana Roberts, Jeff Parker, Russell Malone...

 So, it’s all my way of saying, 2011 is ending with jazz in fine shape in terms of its creative end. There are only a few problems that can’t be easily dismissed, and these are economic: the inadequate funding for music education in the public schools is the most difficult. It’s also shameful that cities continue to use public financing to assist politically connected, large-scale, for-profit ventures rather than help make life easier for non-profit arts organizations and smaller scale music venues. This goes on in Chicago, and I’m guessing it’s also true in New York, New Orleans and elsewhere. But I’ll let my co-panelists weigh in here.

Best,
---Aaron

Speak to Me

So Many Musicians Inspired by Paul Motian

Keith Jarrett, Bill McHenry,

Marc Copland and John Abercrombie, Dan Tepfer

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

Mehldau Meets Motian

 

“His playing is just so incredibly wide open, like a wave. He’s from that generation, man: the Big Beat.” -- Brad Mehldau on Paul Motian, speaking to Lorraine Gordon

When I’m catching a gig at the Village Vanguard (but not reviewing), I try to catch the first set on Sunday: a venerable tradition, and usually a good hang. Tonight I had plans to hear tenor saxophonist Bill McHenry with a quintet featuring alto saxophonist Andrew D’Angelo and the sagacious drummer Paul Motian. As it turned out, there was added incentive on this particular evening: pianist Brad Mehldau joined the band, along with bassist Larry Grenadier.

Hard to believe, but this was Mehldau’s first-ever encounter with Motian, as he confirmed after the set. After witnessing their profoundly intuitive interaction, I dare say it won’t be his last. The sound of these two musicians together made all kinds of sense. There was some accommodation going on, to be sure, but there was also a good deal of unforced chemistry.