THE GIG

Angel Faces

Chad Batka for The New York Times

2011 NEA Jazz Masters Awards

Frederick P. Rose Hall, Jan. 11

What Was This Thing?

[10/21/10: Updated with Audio]

George Wein is at Dizzy’s Club Coca-Cola this week, with the renewable resource known as the Newport All-Stars. The occasion doubles, belatedly, as a birthday celebration. (“This is my 85th October, and I’m glad to be here,” Wein quipped at the start of Wednesday’s early set. “But the truth is, I’m glad to be anywhere.”) It also serves as an intergenerational experiment, by purposeful design. 

Before I go any further: full disclosure, etc. Now, you may know that Wein has recently taken a keen interest in younger musicians, stopping by the Jazz Gallery or the Stone or various points in Brooklyn to hear what’s what. This week he decided to welcome a slew of guests he’d encountered on the scene. During the set that I caught, it was Rudresh Mahanthappa, who is 39. (The late set featured Miguel Zenón, another alto saxophonist, a handful of years younger than that.)

Sleepless in Seattle

The Seattle jazz scene, insofar as such a thing can be responsibly encapsulated, is the subject of this feature in Arts & Leisure, due out in print this weekend. A few days ago I also sat down for a conversation with Ben Sisario, for the NY Times Popcast (via the ArtsBeat blog).

My focus was on the high school, collegiate and post-collegiate level, where I see real changes taking place. (The photo above is from a scene depicted in the piece: Riley Mulherkar earning some comically expressive respect from a certain fellow trumpeter. Shaky video here.) I won’t expand much further on my basic thesis, since it’s all up in the piece. But some additional context might be nice. Shall we?

Direction Nowhere

Forty years ago this month, Miles Davis opened for Neil Young at the Fillmore East. I wrote about their intersection a while back for an EMP Pop Conference, and now the piece has finally been released into the wild, thanks to the intrepid online magazine At Length. 

One animating idea in the piece is the power of unknowing. At one point in Shakey: Neil Young’s Biography, by Jimmy McDonough, Young offers probably the single best analysis of Crazy Horse:

Riders, Passengers

 

I’ve blobbed before in this space about Highway Rider, the new Brad Mehldau album, produced by Jon Brion. Chances are, you already know that it’s their first collaboration since Largo, which was released in 2002. I wanted to take the opportunity to not only tackle the new release but also revisit the implications of the older one, which has come to mean a lot more than it did on first arrival. So that was the explicit angle of this piece, in the current Arts & Leisure section. 

One thing that struck me, as I dug around, was how deeply Largo resonated with younger musicians. I had expected it, but not quite to this extent. Marco Benevento (above), has a track on his next album -- Between Needles and Nightfall, due out in May -- that explicitly invokes the Mehldau-Brion hookup. (It’s a waltz, sun-warped and bittersweet.) Benevento told me he heard the rough mixes for Largo during a lesson with Mehldau, describing that moment in the language of a convert. “It’s really just been a total inspiring thing, very much like a calling: ‘Yes, this is the direction where your heart is wanting to go.’” (You can hear the results of that conviction right here.)

Another pianist, Frank LoCrasto, caught my ear a few years ago with his debut, When You’re There. If you can track it down, listen to “Overture/The Rathskeller/Interlude,” which clearly evokes Brion. Or check the piano solo that follows Becca Stevens’ vocal on “Gathered Impressions” -- trés Mehldau. This isn’t a matter of abashment for LoCrasto, who affirmed that Largo provoked a sustained investigation into Brion’s history as both a producer and a singer-songwriter. (To hear LoCrasto’s version of the gospel, look here.) 

 I also heard form Erik Deutsch, whose Hush Money patently reflects a Largo influence. (That’s my assessment; judge for yourself.) “I had always been excited by Brad Mehldau’s playing, compositions, and treatment of contemporary covers, which spoke to my equal love for jazz, pop, and rock music,” Deutsch said in an email message. 

“Largo was ambitious texturally and compositionally, and definitely true to the history of sonic rock n roll production. The impressionistic jazz drumming of the trio records was replaced with straight-up rock pocket playing. There were lush horn and synth pads, crusty loops, and bubbly drum programs. There were adventurous piano treatments, including heavy distortion. Also, there were very few solos, especially from anyone in the band besides the leader. It’s not that these techniques stemmed from totally new ideas, but they did represent a new direction in jazz music, one that made sense to a younger generation of musicians (including myself).”

 Tomorrow I’ll post more on Highway Rider, with an emphasis on the Mehldau-Brion hookup, and audio clips from the recording studio.

Rank and File

The new column, about big bands and innovation, is now up at JazzTimes. You may recall that this subject had the jazz blogosphere abuzz not long ago. (If you don’t recall, just trust me, or start here and work your way back.) Alas, the online serve-and-volley transpired after the magazine had gone to print, or I would have incorporated it.

I also had to file just a few days before the NEA Jazz Masters concert, which began with the awesome head trip of Muhal Richard Abrams conducting the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra. (Thankfully I had heard that piece, “2000 Plus the Twelfth Step,” in its premiere.)

So perhaps, from the standpoint of an RSS metabolism, the column feels outdated. I’d wager that most of the people who find their way here are well aware of the ground it covers. What interests me more in this case is the potential to reach another segment of the JazzTimes readership, people like Irwin Kimke of Buffalo Grove, Illinois. He has a letter in the current issue that reads as follows:

I have been a JazzTimes reader for a long time, since back when it was a newspaper. I am disgusted. Why? I just went over the last five issues of JT and didn’t find one single, solitary article about a big band. the only references to big bands are in your CD reviews. I have just renewed my yearly subscription, but unless things change that renewal will be my last.

 Now, I’m not sanctioning the practice of subscriber ultimatum. But it’s worth considering Mr. Kimke’s point of view, however far it may fall from my own. This was one objective of the current column, and a big reason for using Stan Kenton as the framing device. The music of Darcy James Argue and John Hollenbeck may be formally conventional to some observers, comparatively speaking (I refer you again to that blog dustup, above) -- but that’s hardly true among the listening majority. Or in the case of Mr. Kimke, a vocal and selectively well-informed minority. (I’m extrapolating here.)

 The big band-related results of this year’s Grammy Awards -- which Hollenbeck covered, in a manner of speaking -- would seem to confirm my thesis. (For the record, I have seen the New Orleans Jazz Orchestra, in their hometown, and they were great. Formally inventive, no. But that’s not the only yardstick for success.) Anyway, there are a lot of people out there who love big band music. Some of them may be only dimly aware of what’s happening along the forward flank of that tradition. Perhaps they have no interest, which is fine. But with apologies to another oldfangled big band touchstone, Ya Gotta Try.

JazzFest Reflections

 

 The Winter JazzFest has come and gone, with more firsthand testimonials than anyone could hope to digest. You’ve probably already read Ben Ratliff’s excellent review, which captures some of the weekend’s heady excitement. (I was lucky enough to make it inside for that sardine-packed Claudia Quintet set. Amazing stuff; hoping for coverage from Jim Macnie and Hank Shteamer, whom I saw there.)

 I took an unpressured, leisurely approach to the festival, which was a nice indulgence. Heard the Vijay Iyer Trio, which met high expectations, and the duo of Jenny Scheinman and Jason Moran, which exceeded them. Had my first, satisfying taste of Mike Reed’s People, Places and Things. And while I was sorry to miss a lot of stuff -- including a late set by Jamie Saft’s Whoopie Pie, pictured above (in a photo by Greg Aiello) -- there was plenty of music to go around.

 And plenty of hang time, which was what really made the Winter JazzFest feel, y’know, festive. Maybe my recent introduction to the Twitterverse is playing some role here, but the weekend felt extremely connected to me. (This is one reason I’m sorry to have missed a pertinent APAP / Jazz Journalists Association panel on Sunday. It was squarely on my agenda, but other plans interfered.) In any case, I’m not just talking about virtual connections. It was the whole vibe, which bassist Ben Allison hits on in a blog recap:

The venues were cleared of tables and chairs. People stood, packed together. It was hot and sweaty inside (despite the sub-zero temperatures outside). People talked and laughed and yelled in appreciation of the music, hanging on every note. They applauded not just at the end of solos like they were taught in “jazz appreciation class,” but whenever they felt like it -- during interesting transitions, when a cool groove emerged, when the intensity of a performance changed. It all felt very organic, very musical.

I’d echo those sentiments exactly. So now, a question: how to sustain this high? There’ll be no less jazz around the city next week, and the week after that. (OK, maybe a little less.) I’d love to see the energy and passion of Winter JazzFest all year-round. Could happen.

Interstellar Signals

 Chris Potter’s Underground

Village Vanguard, Jan. 5

Jazz: Who's Listening?

 

My entrée to the latest jazz-world debate arrives a few paces behind the blogosphere, mainly for practical reasons. In the week after Newport, I found myself completely (and gratefully) submerged in work, barely able to come up for air. But the extra time also allowed me to take a step back and consider my response.

It’s all pretty much there in the piece, but it may be worth mentioning that I spoke to a handful of musicians in preparation. Here’s one point made by Scott Amendola, drummer and bandleader, pictured above at a gig in Berkeley, Calif., which he calls home:

I feel like young people are really enthusiastic about music that is sort of played for music’s sake, and that this whole commodification, this whole idea of putting jazz on a pedestal, is something they hate. People are so turned off by that shit.

I almost put that quote in the piece, minus the last sentence. Like the other musicians mentioned therein, Amendola is a good example of a jazz-and-beyond artist whose work (and audience!) complicates the metric for any surveying apparatus. In the coming weeks, he’ll be playing gigs with his own trio (Monk meets groove), the Nels Cline Singers (rock/jazz/world/noise), and the Inuit throat singer Tanya Tagaq (um, “????”). At any rate, feel free to add to this discussion, though I suspect that the internets have already had their say.

On a largely unrelated note, I have so far had a policy of keeping the blog (mostly) clear of links to day-to-day reviews, features, etc. Over the weekend, some perceptive and blog-literate friends have convinced me to reconsider. So from here on out, I’ll be posting more of that professional flotsam. To get the ball rolling:

Playlist, Arts & Leisure

Ledisi, Hollenbeck, Perowsky, Nisennenmondai, Benson

Critic’s Choice: New CDs

Pissed Jeans, Joe Henry 

Mostly Other People Do the Killing

At Zebulon, Aug. 12

J.D. Allen Trio

At Vanguard, Aug. 10

And a future programming note: my JazzTimes cover story, on Nels Cline, should be out in a few weeks. I hope people will actually go out and buy a copy. (Get this month’s issue too, with Joe Lovano on the cover.) Later this month I’ll post some outtakes from the Cline interviews, for your distraction and potential enjoyment.