THE GIG

Still Room for More

Part Four 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: Joe Tangari

Hello everyone.

 I’m enjoying the conversation a lot so far. The spirit in here is infectious. Thanks for inviting me, Nate, and I’m honored to be in on the exchange with such a fine group of writers and thinkers.

I want to start by picking up the thread of jazz and genre, and I think Esperanza Spalding is a great lens through which to do it.

 The first time I ever heard Esperanza Spalding, it was on an album called Happy You Near, by a band called Noise for Pretend, of which she was the bassist and primary vocalist. It was released on the Hush label, which for years paired its logo with a quick tag line that simply said “anti-rock.” This was 2002 (The Grammy Awards often stretch the definition of “New Artist” to the breaking point), and I wrote about the record for Pitchfork.

 There are plenty of hyphenates you could throw at that album (I certainly did), but at its heart, it’s an indie pop album. When Spalding talks about where she comes from as a musician, she’s filtering her response through a career that started with her playing in Portland’s indie rock scene.

 I don’t think it’s possible to have a “pure” lineage no matter what kind of music you’re playing — even Nicholas Payton admits he’s playing “post-modern New Orleans.” If there’s a more ambiguous term than post-modern, let me know. Human beings are synthesizers — we blur together our DNA and the experiences of our lives into a personality, or a soul, if you prefer. It’s tough not to get a little Hollywood in your New Orleans growing up in such a media-saturated world.

 I tend to side with Aaron in thinking that, on the creative side, jazz is just fine, and perhaps in better shape now than it has been in a long time. He reeled off a long list of albums he loved this year, and I don’t disagree with any of it.

 Aaron also mentioned that jazz’s siege mentality doesn’t seep into Chicago as much as it does New York. Part of the reason for this may simply be that Chicago, of all cities, is probably the one where the walled garden of genre has been most thoroughly obliterated. Since the 1990s, it’s been routine for guys like Fred Lonberg-Holm and Rob Mazurek to show up on records by bands that are putatively rock artists (or post-rock, if you like). Jason Adasiewicz is a fantastic jazz vibist. He was also a member of the indie rock/loop folk group Pinetop Seven for years.

 There’s a to-and-fro in that city’s music scene that really does create the “open field” effect that Nate mentioned in his introductory post. And I think the field is only going to open more and more, and that will happen everywhere as time goes on.

 As an example, some of what is, to me, the most exciting jazz going today is being made by Indian and Pakistani-American musicians, and in particular by Vijay Iyer and Rudresh Mahanthappa. They are making music with dual (at the very least) ancestries, and it’s opened up a whole new avenue for innovation. Indian music and jazz have been meeting on record for a long time — Joe Harriott & John Mayer’s 1966 Indo-Jazz Fusions LP comes to mind — but this new music is less an on-the-surface meeting and more a true combination of distinct traditions.

 Tirtha, Iyer’s album with Indian-born guitarist Prasanna and tabla player Nitin Mitta, is one of the most harmonically interesting records I heard this year for the way it combines Western and Carnatic harmony. And I’m not sure what you’d call Mahanthappa’s “Parakram #2,” from his recent album Samdhi. I would never say it’s not jazz, but Mahanthappa is credited with alto sax and laptop on the album, and that song in particular does some crazy things with manipulating the group performance.

 We’ve come a long way since people got angry at Lennie Tristano for overdubbing, but I can see how some people who are holding on tight to a narrow definition of what they feel jazz should be could be thrown for a loop by that. Seems like a sad world to live in, though. The expansion of that definition is what gave us the thrilling Live at the South Bank, the record Steve Reid and Mats Gustafsson made with British electronic artist Kieran Hebden (aka Four Tet) just before Reid’s death. I turned in a few top tens this year, and that album was in all of them.

 Angelika makes a good point about how multi-faceted the conversation has become — these debates are never settled. They don’t lead us to some end point in the conversation where things are wrapped up. They fan the flames of ideas for the next phase of conversation. I think the diversification of the music reflects the diversification of the conversation — there are more voices in both rooms, and there’s still room for more.

 So does jazz need a savior? I don’t think so. Besides, people waiting for saviors often end up waiting a very long time.

Straight Toward the End Zone

Part Three 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: Angelika Beener: 

Dear Nate, Aaron, Joe and Kelvin,

 What a panel.  Nate, I’m very humbled to have been invited to discuss this year in jazz with such an awesome group of folks. Hi, everyone.

 I know that the older we get, the faster time flies, but 2011 was a whirlwind, and particularly so as it pertains to jazz. A couple of years ago, during my break from working in various capacities within the “industry”, I realized that what I really wanted to do was write about jazz full-time; unabashedly, free of politics, egos, and high-handed outside opinions (based on ego...did I mention ego?). The idea of finally having that kind of freedom was super appealing to me. Then it was just a matter of the right time to launch something. If 2011 wasn’t a blogger’s dream, then I don’t know what would ever be.

 This was most definitely a year of groundbreaking happenings and ideas. My first interview of 2011 was with Ahmir “Questlove” Thompson of The Roots, and it happened on the heels of the 31-category axe from the Grammy board, or as I fondly refer to it, punishment for a Black woman with a ‘fro and a bass taking one of the highest honors.  

 Potato, Potahto.

 Seriously, though. Steely Dan over Eminem. The Herbie win   over Kanye West (though most opposers were smart enough to grit their teeth and clench their fists, rather than say something stupid or step out of line), and now this?

 I guess we should have seen a temper tantrum coming down the pike. Steve Stoute’s whining open letter to the Grammy board, where he complained that they had “clearly lost touch with popular culture,” was like a glass of cold water to the face. Not the wake-up-call splash kind, but more like the extremely humiliating and embarrassing kind. Further, that a Black guy of his alleged status could be so unknowingly ignorant and disconnected from his cultural and artistic heritage spoke to a much larger issue. An issue that has, in some form or another, ironically been the hottest debate on the table over the last couple of months. (Insert shadow lurking).

 I know what you mean, Nate, about hopes being stirred up by the Esperanza Spalding win. Mine were. I remember getting into a big hullabaloo via Facebook with folks who were appalled by her win. My argument being that whether or not the Grammy board got it right (I happen to think they did), the point was the great symbolism a win like this had.

Ten months later, I kind of feel like that’s all it really amounted to. A lot of symbolism for people who want to see it, but not much more. It’s like the Grammys quarter-backed jazz a great pass straight toward the end zone, but it’s a little too early perhaps to tell if it will result in a touchdown. Hopefully it will pay dividends beyond what the Norah Jones shake up produced some years back, which is likely since there seems to be more of an acknowledgement from Spalding, and less overall denial from the community at large that Spalding is a jazz musician. I guess time will tell. I love Norah Jones, by the way.

 On the subject of the recent jazz debates, Aaron, I totally understand the desire to want to stay above the social media jazz face-off fray, and though the argument is age-old and perennial, I think the cast of characters made it compelling this time around.

To my recollection, it started during the summer with pianist Orrin Evans, who received a lot of backlash for saying (amidst yet another club shut down), that there should be more Blacks participating in business aspects of the jazz industry. Then on the musical side, you had Nicholas Payton challenging his peers, the younger generation, and critics alike to respect a certain level of non-manipulatable, fundamental aspects of jazz (or what he was calling “so-called jazz”, before recently settling on Black American Music) established by African Americans. This Evans/Payton one-two punch caught a lot of folks off guard. As it morphed and developed, it even caused contention between Black musicians. 

Overall, I thought the whole thing was great. For the first time in a long time, the scene looked less like Black folks watching along the sidelines while the Ken Burns-esque, self-congratulating, so-called experts psycho-analyze them as if they are behind plexiglass, and more like a big family fight which happened behind closed doors, but the neighbors heard through the wall, if that makes sense. Never have things been so seditious, interesting and thought-provoking -- not in my generation. But then again, never (in my generation) has the dialogue been inclusive of so many perspectives. I think we have social media to thank in great part for that. From musicians challenging critics on diversifying their subjects, to critics challenging women to jump into the dialogue in larger numbers (thank you, Nate), to musicians challenging each other to renounce “jazz” as a colonialist concept, I think the broad inclusion of participants made all the difference in 2011.  

 Incidentally, have you guys seen this?

  

Inclusion creates a broader perspective and frankly just more stuff to talk about. I think that’s why folks who are casual or non-jazz fans are intrigued by all this. It’s tangible, it’s relatable to something outside of itself. I think jazz desperately needs this kind of flexibility in its dialogue. If we’re trying to gain new supporters of the music, the last thing we can afford to be is rigid in our conversations. No matter how intricate the music, if the talk around the music is interesting and inclusive, I believe people will give it a shot. People will give anything a shot if it’s presented in a way that has some familiar tent poles, and that’s where we come in. 

Aaron, I could not agree with you more about where things stand creatively. Jazz is definitely on the upswing, and I think this notion will continue to manifest in 2012, like, majorly. I also love Jason Moran’s recent move to become the Kennedy Center’s artistic advisor. I think if anybody in this business of this generation understands the dire situation of jazz and lack of funding for education, it’s him. (His parents set up the Jason Moran Scholarship at his high school alma mater, HSPVA, very soon after his graduating, and it’s still going). Anyone with that type of personal understanding is an asset to any arts organization. I’m really excited to see where he takes things.  There are also so many great albums coming out next year! But I won’t skip ahead, guys. But I will say this: If jazz is in need of a savior, I think Esperanza will end up being just one of them.  

All the best,

Angelika

P.S. Aretha!

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

Year of the Cannibal

Part One 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: Nate Chinen

Dear Aaron, Angelika, Joe, and Kelvin,

What was jazz in 2011? A righteous cause? A rigid custom? An inexact science? An irrelevant marker? How about a brave frigate in a roiling sea? Or a gray lump of clay, endless in its reshaping? Or a rotting plantation “haunted by its own hungry ghosts”?

One thing I can say with certainty is that jazz, or whatever you choose to call it, was something to fuss over. Blame Twitter, blame the Republican primary, but this was a year of meta-argument and counterargument, leaving many of us with, as they say, all this stuff twirling around in our heads. This was true even beyond our own scrappy guild, which busied itself with questions of qualification and inclusion (and, while we’re at it, unqualifiable exclusion). 

No, the debate(s) reached much further this year, piquing the interest of those who would identify themselves as casual jazz fans, or maybe not even go that far. Given the usual in-house caviling about jazz’s dwindling support network, you might reasonably ask whether this uptick in public disputation — about the meaning of jazz, the meaning of “jazz,” and the issue of who gets to play and/or cover it — reflects some sort of inverse correlation. In other words: jazz today has fewer patrons but more partisans. Its base is constricting and getting meaner, as with polar bears on the melting floes, or diehard fans of Glee.

And yet the Year in Jazz was effectively book-ended by two significant broader-culture moments, the first of which we fondly recall with the image at the top of this post. As you all remember, Esperanza Spalding shocked Bieber Nation (and the rest of us) by winning Best New Artist at the Grammys. In the moments before her coup was announced, watching the telecast with my laptop open, unwisely T.U.I., I registered the stark implausibility of a win. Some hours later, chastened, working with the mirthless benefit of hindsight and sobriety, I registered the plain rationality of said win. What changed during that sleepless interval was merely my perspective, along with Spalding’s Q rating. What about the visibility of jazz, on a national platform? Eh.

Jazz in our present age is desperate for saviors, and Esperanza’s breakthrough stirred hearts and hopes. (How else to account for the fact that she just became the first-ever female Jazz Artist of the Year in the DownBeat Readers Poll? Jason, any insights? Angelika, any thoughts?) But this ambassadorship is complicated slightly by her music — especially on Radio Music Society, due out in March — and more than slightly by her pronouncements on the subject. I recently reread her New Yorker profile from March of last year, and came across a scene in which she name-checks Alex Ross’s invaluable 20th-century classical survey, The Rest is Noise. See here:

  In particular, she was galvanized by something that Richard Wagner wrote in a letter to Franz Liszt. She dug out the Kindle that she’d been given for Christmas and read aloud: “‘I have felt the pulse of modern art and know that it will die! This knowledge, however, fills me not with despondency but with joy.’ She read on to the end of the passage: ‘We shall live only in the present, in the here and now and create works for the present age alone.’

  “I relate that to how I feel about jazz music,” she said. “Music is intended to be for people. And circumstances and people change with the decades, and that’s O.K. And I think that’s what Wagner was saying, too. It was, like, ‘Let it go, let it breathe, let it move, you know? We’re trying to make music for the people.’”

Here’s where we come to the heart of the matter. So much of our recent discussion and debate was fed by a mounting anxiety — heh, I almost called it “panic” — over the art form’s alleged senescence.

Yet it’s telling, somehow, that Spalding’s interpretation of the Wagner note translates “die” into “breathe.” Isn’t this what jazz musicians do — what they’ve always done? An antiquarian repertory is routinely revivified in their enterprising hands. Under the best of circumstances, an established set of practices forms the basis for startling innovation. Jazz feeds on tradition, and ultimately, to some degree, on itself. Which might seem to justify any number of cautionary screeds.

I haven’t yet mentioned Nicholas Payton outright in this post, though he’s obviously been lurking in the shadows. No one in our world was a bigger provocateur in 2011, with the heat sharply intensifying in the last month. Whether making his original argument, combating general dissenters or taking umbrage at specific ones, he’s been ruthless about his assertion that “jazz,” as most of us understand it, embodies a kind of systemic oppression. I’m not going to get into a granular analysis or rebuttal here — others have done it, exhaustively, and we only have so much time — but I do want to point out that even at his most incendiary, Payton seeks to ground himself in the lineage of what he calls (reasonably, if impracticably) Black American Music. “What do Duke Ellington, Miles Davis, Max Roach, Abbey Lincoln, Rahsaan Roland Kirk, Gary Bartz and myself share in common?” he asks. Another way to put it: ain’t no Bitches without Bitches Brew.

   

 Am I alone in feeling that Payton’s main point is a weaponized version of Spalding’s? He seeks communion with the ancestry of his art form, while rejecting both the premise of due tribute and the burden of received wisdom (not to mention acceptable behavior). Spalding doesn’t distance herself nearly as much from “jazz,” but she does take pains to emphasize the fluidity of her relationship to it, and the breadth of her nonjazz interests. This is not unusual in 2011.

Which brings us to the cheers-and-jeers portion of this exchange. The year-end lists are starting to burble up to the surface — my favorite so far this one, by Seth Colter Walls — and I can’t wait to hear what you all found most impressive on record and in real time this year. (Also: most frustrating, most disappointing, most unexpected. Feel free to bring your own modifier.) My own Top 10 albums/songs will go up later this week, so I’ll save that for a later post. It’s a general-interest list, slightly different than the one that I sent in to JazzTimes and the Rhapsody poll, but if we’ve learned anything of late, it’s that genre isn’t a walled garden anyway, so much as an open field. (Joe, I suspect you have something add on that point.)

Earlier I alluded to two larger-culture events that bracketed the year, Spalding’s win representing the first. The second, with all due respect to Paul Motian, can best be summed up with this image: 

I’d leave it there, on a note of inarguable splendor, but that wouldn’t much suit the tenor of this post, would it? So instead, allow me to tie up some strands with a resonant quote — from you-know-who, about you-know-who, with a hard jab at you-know-what:

Feb. 15, 2011

From Riches to Rags to Riches....

She was a Pop artist when she received the Best New Artist award and a Jazz artist when she was playing bass and they started talking over her.

Esperanza’s one hell of a musician, fuck Jazz! 

- Nicholas Payton

Which is not to imply that Mr. Payton gets the last word here. Aaron, you got next. Feel free to come out swinging.

Who is Esperanza Spalding?

Esperanza Spalding, a Surprise Winner at the Grammys

(a.k.a., My part in the post-award prognostication cycle)

 

Year-End: The Set Closer

Final round 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

Hey gang,

Season’s greetings from the Houston suburbs! I’m hunkered down with family for a spell, but wanted to throw out one more post before tying the ribbon on this thing. Since the last round, the year-end churn has given us a lot more to chew on, including scads of Top 10s.

NPR’s A Blog Supreme had an early roundup of roundups. Chris, your picks are up now as a slide show at the L.A. Times. I imagine the Village Voice will soon be posting its jazz poll, spearheaded by Francis Davis. (I’ll be shocked if the consensus pick isn’t Jason Moran’s Ten.) And JazzTimes has a compendium of critics’ ballots -- several of us among them. David and Shaun, Ten is our single item of overlap; Shaun, you and I also had Mary Halvorson and Chris Lightcap’s Bigmouth. Shaun and David, you guys both listed the Rez Abbasi Acoustic Quartet, which resides on my unseen extended list. (Jennifer, you may be glad to know that I share at least one fave with the Jazzfamoose, whose true identity is safe with me.) 

Critical consensus should always raise more questions than it answers, but the Moran-tastic thrust of this year feels about right. Ten was also the only album to appear on two critics’ lists in the NY Times on Sunday: my Top 10 and Ben Ratliff’s. (By the way, this week’s NY Times Popcast will feature Ben and me jawing about the year in jazz. I’ll post that when it’s up; meanwhile, last week’s edition has all four pop and jazz critics talking more generally about the year in music:)

NY Times Popcast 12/15/10  

Ben placed Steve Coleman and Five Elements at the top of his list, and rightly so.  Harvesting Semblances and Affinities is a stunningly realized statement, the sort of album that a Netflix algorithm would align precisely with my taste preferences. (Last year, I big-upped Steve Lehman, Henry Threadgill and Vijay Iyer. )

So why isn’t Coleman on my list? (For that matter, why not Threadgill again?) I’m not really sure. This year more than most, I made a conscious effort to form my list from the gut, thinking honestly about the albums that kept drawing me back. 

Ten fit that bill, and so did my No. 2: Jasmine, by Keith Jarrett and Charlie Haden. Is it completely nuts for me to suggest that this album has been slept on? Perusing the JazzTimes census, I see that eight other critics have listed it, mostly within the first five slots -- but there wasn’t a ton of discussion about the album, unless I just missed it.

 

On the surface, Jasmine might seem a conservative choice, but there are depths therein that I still haven’t exhausted. Like The Melody at Night, With You, Jarrett’s exquisitely brittle solo recital of roughly a decade ago, it’s a paean to melody and reflection. The impression it leaves is twofold: mastery and modesty. (Yes, I am aware of the oddness of deploying the word “modest” in any discussion of Keith Jarrett.) Perhaps “maturity” is the concept I’m grasping at here. For all the light and heat generated by our Halvorsons, our Tyshawn Soreys, our Irabagons and Abbasis, there’s something to be said for the direct, mature statement. Jazz does maturity well, now as ever.

It’s a brilliantly diverse ecosystem, though, and there’s room for all sorts. (I suspect your curiosity was as piqued as mine over the latest bit of Esperanza news.) So I end this roundtable more or less as I started: with deep gratitude for your participation, and benign indecision over the year’s unifying theory. I’m sorry you won’t all be at the Winter Jazzfest in a couple of weeks -- we’ll have to grab a drink some other time. How about a New Orleans hang next spring? Or Philly in the fall? Or some appointment drinking in Rehoboth Beach? To be continued... 

Nate

Outside the Usual Places

Part Six 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

OK, you guys, the sponsor relations rep at Dogfish Head thought it would be a good idea for me to work in more product placement, preferably with some clicky visual cues. So: Happy Holidaises from mah kitteh, Toshi, who luvs his Bitchez Brewses as much as I does!

I kid (um, obviously?). But seriously, Dogfish Head, call me. (Kidding! Kidding!) I do like the fact that beer has been a through-line in our convo so far; it says something reassuring about the state of American jazz criticism. Also, thinking for a moment about ethics and gag humor reminds me of a question posed by Shaun earlier in our exchange. Paraphrasing a bit: should we critics still be wary Facebookers? And how has Twitter changed our game? 

Maybe this is a bit inside-baseball for some of our readers, but I’ll touch on it for a minute. Seems worth it. The Facebook quandary has changed in degrees but not in principle, for me. I don’t friend musicians as a rule, and that flat policy keeps me out of trouble. It also keeps me out of a few potentially vital conversations. It’s an imperfect solution, but I have to trust it. The alternative feels messy and treacherous. I’d feel differently about that, I think, if the nature of my job didn’t involve so much critical evaluation of the scene. (Despite appearances, I still consider even the weekly Jazz Listings to be a form of criticism.) Still, I’m open to reevaluating the policy. As this week’s news reinforces, the Facebook reign ain’t ending anytime soon.

Nor is the Age of Twitter. (Shaun, I’m talking to you.) But there’s a key distinction between the two social-media platforms: “friends” vs. “followers,” and “ambient awareness” (baby pictures, favorite movies, Farm-fucking-ville) vs. something more like viral graffiti (hashtags, retweets, “must-read”s). Yes, I am aware of the narcissism involved in the amassing of “followers.” I’m also aware that participating in the Twitterverse constitutes a crack in my Objectivity Wall. To wit:

I joined Twitter a day or two into the new year, which means 2010 really was distinct from 2009, as far as my media metabolism goes. I’d only been aboard about a week when the Winter Jazzfest rolled around, and I found myself experiencing the event on two separate but overlapping frequencies. At one point, overheated and sardine-packed in Le Poisson Rouge for a Vijay Iyer Trio set, I heard about someone passing out in the room. Unwisely, I fired off a tweet riffing on this info. (At that point, I’d seen the ambulance but heard that it wasn’t serious. I wasn’t on duty that night, and I’d also had a few pints of Dogfish Head *.) Guess what happened? Yep, a ripple of concern from multiple sources, including Iyer himself. Not a good look for a critic.

So yeah, there are perils to our new critical sub-function as real-time commentators. Don’t be stupid. Check yourself. There’s also, it should be said, a continuing reason why jazz still needs critics who put in the time and effort for reflection. (Preaching to the choir, right?) But hey, back to Twitter. Last night there was a steady flow of updates from Prince’s big show at the Izod Center in N.J. One dispatch in particular caught my eye: ?uestlove, drummer and musical director for the Roots, uploaded a pic of opening act Esperanza Spalding.

Which brings me to the issue of jazz and pop, which registered clearly for me this year. Spalding’s case is obvious, though no less remarkable for that. (She’s a star on the rise, and rising fast. How many of those has jazz produced recently?) Then there was her ex-boyfriend Christian Scott, whose considerable media savvy -- no less, perhaps, than his considerable chops -- landed him a DownBeat cover story by our own Jennifer Odell. (Over at JazzTimes, I weighed in too.) 

 

Say what you will of Scott’s whole vibe; here he is, above, exposing a network television audience to the genius of Jamire Williams. (For the record, I think Yesterday You Said Tomorrow was a flawed album but also a big leap forward, and a good sign of things to come.) 

Speaking of New Orleans exports: Jen, you brought up Treme, another huge part of my year in jazz, and another example of our music resonating in the popular sphere. Has there ever been a truer, more richly textured depiction of the jazz musician’s social reality? Has there ever been a better reason to raise a glass to the righteous existence of Tom McDermott, Rebirth and Kermit Ruffins? The show lost some narrative steam near season’s end, but not the music.  

While we’re talking about jazz thriving outside the usual places, can we get an amen for Ravi Coltrane onstage with his cousin, the cutting-edge producer/beatmeister Flying Lotus?

 

Lotus, a.k.a. Steven Ellison, made some of this year’s most head-spinning music, and jazz was fluttering in there somewhere. I’d like to think that Coltrane, who was smartly signed to Blue Note this year, might be working with Ellison even without the familial hookup. The other night, as I was reviewing a dance-pop band, my contact at Warp told me that a big New York date was in the works for next year. He also told me that they had their eye on the Village Vanguard. (!!!) I’m not holding my breath on that front, but the mere idea is something. 

David, I am 100% with you on the continuing need for a jazz canon, and the importance of planting a flag between polarized extremes. When my Top 10 lands, sometime within the next day or two, I’ll pick up that thread a bit. But I’ll close with two more examples of jazz-pop interaction this year. First up, Herbie Hancock’s Imagine, a top-heavy Rolodex album that strikes me as the limpest, least creative approach to jazz-pop exchange. (Nonetheless: three Grammy nominations! Ask me some other time about the Hancock Clause.)  

At the other end of the quality spectrum, for me at least, was the Maxwell tour, for which I’ve already aired my admiration here. This was one of my live shows of the year, hands-down, irrespective of genre -- and a big part of the reason had to do with Robert Glasper, Derrick Hodge and Chris Dave. Something tight is happening at the margins of jazz and R&B. Just ask the diehard Prince fans who heard Esperanza last night. Now, what does that mean for jazz, beyond the audience-bait factor? Dunno yet, but I’m paying close attention. 

Wow, have I filibustered? I relinquish my soapbox and open the floor. Have at it, gang!

* The names of some beers have been changed to protect the gag premise.

Notes From the Woodshed

Part Five 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: David Adler

Dear Nate, Chris, Shaun and Jen,

Greetings, and what a pleasure to join you!

I’m finishing up a very atypical year -- yesterday marked the end of my first semester teaching jazz history at Queens College. Rewarding but stressful -- I need to sit down with a six-pack of that Dogfish Head. (Figured I’d get it out of the way.)

To answer the old question -- “Have you been living under a rock?” -- I have to say yes, partly. Just counted up my live show intake, and seems in the midst of juggling coursework and my one-year-old daughter, I was out hearing music 52 nights in 2010 -- down from a peak some years ago of well over 200 (and I’m sure Bill Bragin puts even my peak completely to shame).

Highlights? Pat Metheny’s Orchestrion gig at Town Hall, Lee Konitz/Dan Tepfer at Kitano, Fred Hersch/Nancy King at Jazz Standard (at right), Anthony Wilson’s furiously smoking nonet at Smalls.

Mostly, though, I was woodshedding prewar jazz. Anyone want to talk about John Nesbitt’s radical 1928 arrangements for McKinney’s Cotton Pickers? Seriously, heed Gunther Schuller’s advice in The Swing Era and check that shit out (“Put It There,” “Crying and Sighing,” “Stop Kidding”). I’m on a wild tangent but there’s a point: Nesbitt (pictured below, seated far left) was arguably a half-century or more ahead of his time, and yet he is completely, utterly forgotten. It got me thinking anew about canon formation, about winners and losers in the critical sweepstakes.

I did still manage to keep up on current listening -- my picks of the year are here, though I regret not giving list-props to Dan Weiss’s Timshel, the Claudia Quintet’s Royal Toast, Frank Kimbrough’s Rumors, certainly Fred Hersch’s Whirl and plenty others. And since Chris heaped well-deserved praise on the Bad Plus, and we all seem to agree 2010 was the year of the piano, shall I mention Indelicate, Dave King’s one-man piano/drums project? An item I’m itching to revisit.

Esperanza’s Grammy nod, anyone? I think it’s huge, but I also think Chamber Music Society was a misfire. Kind of like, ahem, Highway Rider.

We’ve been batting around the idea of non-linearity and jazz, of the lack of clear narratives for the music in 2010. Jen pushed back against that, so I’ll continue pushing, in less specific terms.

I’m a big no-boundaries proponent, as much as anyone. But back to the teaching thing: I’ve always believed in some notion of canonicity in jazz, and after this year I believe in it more. The argument that jazz students are too wrapped up in the tradition -- maybe it was once true, but today I think it’s poppycock. More of them are palpably, howlingly disconnected from the tradition.

Shaun, you mentioned Jason Marsalis’s salvo in support of the canon, so I thought I’d quote Wynton on the “what is jazz” issue in 1994: “Because no single criterion applies doesn’t mean that no criterion applies.” That’s the kind of statement we wave away at our peril. (Oh, check out Wynton’s new and compelling Vitoria Suite, btw).

Which brings me to the Crouch/Mtume fight over electric Miles, cited by more than one of you. I don’t share Crouch’s view at all, and yet I found myself disagreeing just as much with the pompous Mtume. “Allow me the latitude of completion,” Mtume admonished Crouch, and yet the editor of this video allowed no such latitude to Crouch, whose responses were deliberately truncated while Mtume’s went on at length. And yet the video caption tells us that Mtume “destroys” Crouch. Uh-huh. In the age of new media, intellectual honesty still applies. We have to insist on it.

Mtume also erred when he stated that Miles, in turning to electric instruments, felt there was nothing left to be said on a saxophone. Miles continued employing saxophonists until the end.

 

As a teenager first coming into jazz I felt this, and I still feel it today: There’s no need to choose. You can find a place in between the stark partisanship of a James Mtume and a Stanley Crouch, and you can stand there firmly.

Who better to illustrate this than Ethan Iverson? In mid-October I had Ethan visit my class to talk about boogie-woogie, Count Basie and Lester Young (bouncing off his mammoth Lester centennial blog series). After demonstrating the finer points of boogie-woogie bass lines on piano, he dissected Basie’s “Jumpin’ at the Woodside” and “Swingin’ the Blues.” To close, Ethan sang Pres’s classic “Lady Be Good” solo, but he didn’t just sing it -- he acted it out, like a piece of dialogue in a play.

Allow me the latitude of gushing: It was awesome. And it showed my students -- I hope -- that there’s no conflict between being a cutting-edge pianist and composer and a passionate student of the 1930s. The one feeds the other.

Prompted by Nate, I’ll close with a shout-out to my home during 2007-2008: the fine and underrated city of Philadelphia. Here’s to 10 years of Mark Christman’s Ars Nova Workshop. And here’s to the memory of Sid Simmons, who shouldn’t have been reduced to playing that hideous piano at the now-defunct Ortlieb’s Jazzhaus. Shaun, I miss you all down there. Hopefully this spring I’ll have more time to hop down the Turnpike.

That’s Round One. Back to you, General Nate.

- David

Cognitive Dissonance

Ralph Alessi Quartet

Jazz Standard, August 11

Critics’ Choice: New CDs

Esperanza Spalding,“Chamber Music Society”

Starling Nikki

 

This week in Arts & Leisure: my feature on Nikki Yanofsky, a 16-year-old prodigy being upheld, in the general-interest press, as the new face of jazz singing. Perhaps you saw her belting “O Canada” at the opening ceremony of the 2010 Winter Olympics, or strutting the stage at the finale of this year’s Juno Awards.

My ambivalent take on Yanofsky arises partly from the terms of her success. Nostalgia and precocity are always salable commodities, and when they arrive in a single package, you’ve got the makings of a story. Which is fine, except when the elevation of a Nikki Yanofsky fuels public misperceptions about the nature of jazz singing. 

 Consider this typical response to her talent, an Arts Journal post whose first sentence reads “Can a 15-year-old singer save jazz?” The author, an experienced journalist, later wrote a follow-up in New York magazine, which honed in on the center of the young singer’s appeal:

Listen to Yanofsky’s rendition of Fitzgerald’s famous scat “Airmail Special” (when it was recorded for a 2007 Verve Records tribute album, Yanofsky became the youngest artist ever to appear on the label) or to her first full-length album, Ella … Of Thee I Swing: The tracks sound as if they were recorded by an artist 30 years older—60 years ago.

Is this really what we seek in a jazz singer? Well, yes, apparently many of us do. And in Yanofsky we have someone who has been training, like an Olympic hopeful, since her preadolescent years. (Canadians are better acquainted with this aspect of her rise; for an instructive taste, consult this clip of her with pianist Oliver Jones.)

In the piece, I attempted to establish a contrast between Yanofsky’s throwback style and the contemporary currents swirling around the modern jazz mainstream. There’s a small irony here, in that a singer like Gretchen Parlato or Sofia Rei Koutsovitis or even Esperanza Spalding often works a step or two outside the public’s perception of “jazz” (note the scare quotes). They aren’t singing like Ella, or Billie; they aren’t necessarily singing standards, either. And yet I’d argue that their efforts are just as true, maybe truer, to the spirit of the music.

We’ve been here before, as I imply in the piece, invoking this story by David Hajdu from about 10 years ago. Ostensibly a profile of Jane Monheit, then in the midst of her mass-market rollout, it’s also a meditation on some of these very same themes. Hajdu likens Monheit to Fitzgerald, less than approvingly, and tempers his appreciation for her gift with his skepticism of her artistry and maturity. Monheit insists that “the term ‘jazz singer’ defines only part of who I am.” (You’ll find Yanofsky saying almost exactly the same thing.) And at the time, Monheit’s favorite showpiece wasn’t a jazz standard, per se, but rather a plain old standard, Harold Arlen’s “Over the Rainbow.”

You know where I’m going with this. My morning with Yanofsky began on the set of the PIX-11 Morning News, where she performed that same number (accompanied by pianist Randy Ingram):

 

 It’s a strong performance, no doubt. But like so much about Yanofsky, it feels calculated, put on. Not that I fault her for that, entirely. Leaving the studio, she was confronted by a pair of bedraggled autograph hounds, and a lone paparazzo. She was gracious with them, signing and posing, before she climbed into a black SUV. Off to save jazz -- or, more precisely, off to another media stop.