THE GIG

Big EMPin' up in NYC

 Today marks the kickoff for the EMP Pop Conference, held this year in and around NYU instead of its usual environs at the Experience Music Project in Seattle. You may have seen it in "the news" recently: 

The Colbert Report	Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c
Who's Not Honoring Me Now? - Seattle's Pop Conference
www.colbertnation.com
Colbert Report Full Episodes Political Humor & Satire Blog Video Archive

 (Incidentally, that's me in the red shirt when Colbert flashes a photo of an empty-looking panel from 2010. The perils of a 9 a.m. slot!)

I've gone on record before as a fan of the conference and what it stands for — and how the jazz community should by all menas be more involved with it. So I am thrilled that this New York edition will feature a great deal of jazz: Esperanza Spalding in the keynote tonight; Butch Morris, Vijay Iyer and José James on Greg Tate's roundtable tomorrow; George Wein and Seth Abramson with Ashley Kahn.

 I'll be on a "Jazz Alleys" panel with David Adler, Phil Freeman and Alex Rodriguez, Saturday from 4 to 6 p.m. (Those links go to each presenter's abstract.) Not a complaint exactly, but we're up against two of the conference's marquee panels: one with Greil Marcus, Ann Powers, Jody Rosen and Rob Sheffield; and another about mixtape culture, moderated by Sean Fennessy and featuring the likes of Zach Baron, Ryan Dombal and Tom Breihan. If you're reading this and just decided to skip my panel in favor of either of those, no hard feelings. It's killing me to miss 'em.

 More later; I've got a paper to write. (Cough, cough.)

Programming Notes

What are you doing Thursday night? If you're in the New York area and not already committed to the debut of Dave Douglas' Key Motion Quintet, I hope you'll consider this reading for the new Best Music Writing anthology, at 7 p.m. at Housing Works Bookstore Café. Alex Ross, esteeemed New Yorker critic and this year's guest editor, will be there, along with series editor Daphne Carr and eight of my fellow contributors.

Jazz folk will probably recognize David Hajdu, who'll read from his stirring profile of Fred Hersch; you should also know about Joe Hagan, whose piece is about Nina Simone, and Jessica Hopper, talking about M.I.A., and New York magazine's Justin Davidson, on some guy named Beethoven. I'll read from this essay about Miles Davis and Neil Young at the Fillmore East in 1970. Admission is free.

While we're in the realm of self-promotion, I'm happy to report that The Gig will be publishing its third year-end critics' roundtable next week. The first post should be up on Monday morning; stay tuned. For now I'll keep the lineup under wraps -- who doesn't like surprises? -- but I'm excited about who's on deck. And I'm guessing we'll have, oh, a few things to discuss. In the meantime, if you're so inclined, here are the last two editions in full:

• 2010: All of the Above (David Adler, Chris Barton, Shaun Brady and Jennifer Odell)
• 2009: A Gate-Crashing Year (Andrey Henkin, Peter Margasak, Ben Ratliff and Hank Shteamer)

Programming Note: Year-End

As the year-end summations start trickling in, allow me to plug two coming attractions. (At least, I hope they’re attractions.) On Monday, I’ll be on the BBC programme Jazz on 3, talking about the jackpot of superb piano-led jazz albums released this year (three in particular).

Appropriately, the episode will also feature a concert recording of Geri Allen, from this year’s London Jazz Festival. So tune in, Britons; everyone else, stream it here. (By my calculation, the show begins at 6:15 p.m. Eastern Standard Time.) 

And also: maybe you recall the healthy critical roundtable hosted here at The Gig last year. I’ll be doing it again with a different cast, starting on Monday, Dec. 13. So, watch this space; good stuff ahead. 

My Best of 2010 (And Yours?)

Programming Note: on Thursday I’ll be sitting down with my esteemed colleagues David Adler, Josh Jackson and Jim Macnie (pictured above, between two other guys)* to talk about the best jazz albums we’ve heard this year. We’ll be playing some of it for each other -- blind, as it were, though not actually blindfolded (I hope). Our moderator will be Howard Mandel.

The event, presented by the Jazz Journalists Association, will happen from 6 to 8 p.m. at the New School Jazz and Contemporary Music performance space: 55 West 13th Street, 5th Floor. It’s free, though I believe the JJA welcomes your registration.

On Friday I’ll post a quick recap, and unveil my picks. Meanwhile, I’d be curious to hear what you would pick. The comments are open below. To keep things moving, how about a Top 3? Results are non-binding. Publicists, behave yourselves.

* Yes, I know. Jim is standing between saxophonist Joe Lovano (at left) and Jazz Gallery executive director Dale Fitzgerald (at right). Having released no new music in 2010, Lovano is not eligible for this, by the way -- though he did appear as a sideman on albums by Cindy Blackman, Owen Howard and Kenny Werner. Hmm.

Programming Note: IZ Edition

This Thursday at the HousingWorks Bookstore Café in SoHo, I’ll be discussing the life and legacy of Israel Kamakawiwo`ole with Dan Kois, who literally wrote the book on Facing Future.

The talk, which will also include live music by Jason Poole (ukulele) and Andy Wang (slack-key guitar), was recommended by New York magazine and the New York Times. But don’t take their word for it -- take mine. I know Kois to be a really good talker, and I have my own perspective on Kamakawiwo`ole’s music.

My essay “Rainbow Warrior: Israel Kamakawiwo`ole and Another Kind of Somewhere” is due to appear in the forthcoming EMP Pop Conference anthology Pop When the World Falls Apart: Music and Conflict. (You may have seen a version of the essay right here.) Thursday’s event is free; if you’re in the New York area and in need of some Aloha, you know where you ought to be.

George Wein on the Airwaves

 

A while back, I interviewed George Wein for a 14-minute segment on the BBC radio show Jazz on 3. It aired and was archived online for a week, though I forgot to check for it. My producers kindly dropped a disc in the mail, and the conversation struck me as worth sharing. 

George Wein Interview (Jazz on 3) 

One thing that may strike you about the interview -- as it struck Jez Nelson, the host of Jazz on 3 -- is just how much credit Wein gives to the emergent generation, musicians like Darcy James Argue, Rudresh Mahanthappa and Miguel Zenón. Some of this, for an audience-seeking promoter, is merely a matter of adaptive survival. 

But some of it reflects a recent change in Wein’s outlook, which Ben Ratliff hit upon earlier this year. “It’s the way you listen to music,” explains Wein in the clip above. “I’d go out and hear musicians and I didn’t think they were playing the real jazz. I was looking for something I wanted to hear. I stopped doing that. I stopped looking for something I wanted to hear; I started looking for something the musician wanted to play, which I should have been doing years ago.” 

If that last part sounds familiar, perhaps you heard Wein say it at some other point over the last 60 years. He said something awfully similar at Newport in 1956, as Sam Stephenson recently reminded us in his Jazz Loft Project Blog. (By the way, Sam: I am fairly certain George would chuckle at those other comments today, especially the one about Armstrong playing at less than one-tenth of his potential, a common, misguided view among connoisseurs at the time.)  

I’ll leave it at that, except for the usual disclosure about my relationship with Wein. That of course is one reason why I haven’t weighed in on the value of his festivals, though it hasn’t prevented me from passing judgment on individual concerts.

P.S. -- Thus stipulated, the CareFusion Jazz Festival Newport, which Wein addresses toward the end of our conversation, will run from Aug. 6 to 8. More here.

P.P.S. -- And if you’re seeking more recent commentary from Wein, he also spoke with Scott Simon of NPR’s Weekend Edition. This clip aired in June.

 

Radio Threadgill

 

Photo courtesy of Peter Gannushkin / DOWNTOWNMUSIC.NET

Hey, look what I forgot to mention: NPR’s All Things Considered ran a brief Henry Threadgill profile last week. I’m in there mouthing off about his approach to form. Tom Vitale wrote the segment, which I should have plugged sooner. Then again, this is a story pegged to an album released last year, so tardiness may not be a cardinal sin here.

Award Tour: Jazz Edition

 The 14th annual JJA Jazz Awards threw down yesterday at City Winery, with the standard dosage of pomp and circumstance (a light dosage, really, as these things go). I’m going to break with custom and go straight to the journalist winners: Don Heckman for Lifetime Achievement in Jazz Journalism; prior Lifetime Achievement winner Dan Morgenstern, for Best Liner Notes; Josh Jackson of WBGO for the Willis Conover-Marian McPartland Award for Broadcasting; Mitchell Seidel for the Lona Foote-Bob Parent Award for Photography. For the 10th straight year, JazzTimes won Periodical of the Year. And All About Jazz -- which has complete results, including the musician awards you probably want to see -- was again recognized as Website of the Year.

Doug Ramsey, who took home the Lifetime Achievement nod in 2008, won Blog of the Year, most deservedly, for his ArtsJournal perch, Rifftides. And forgive me for burying the lede, but I was fortunate enough to grab the Helen Dance-Robert Palmer Award for Review and Feature Writing, out of an inspiring clutch of nominees.

Beyond their ceremonial function, these Jazz Awards have become an annual hang for the extended family, a place where musicians and managers and publicists (and critics) take a moment to acknowledge their common ground. That in itself is a worthy thing. And this year the event was broadcast through an online video stream, to satellite parties in Albuquerque, Scottsdale, Seattle, Berkeley and Chicago, among other places (Canada, I’m told, and various points in Europe).

 I should note here that a hush fell over the crowd at the announcement that Chicago saxophone legend Fred Anderson had suffered a heart attack and a stroke the night before. (As it turns out, those details may have been inaccurate, though Anderson is indeed in serious condition. Peter Margasak is tracking the story.)

And the Nominees Are...

 

 Attention jazzbos! The Jazz Journalists Association has announced nominees for its 2010 Jazz Awards, with winners to be unveiled at a gala event on June 14 at City Winery. As usual, the lifetime achievement category presents an awesomely tough decision for voters. (The above photo, by Enid Farber, finds pianist Hank Jones accepting that honor last year.) The rest of the field is also impressive: consider first-time nominee Darcy James Argue, up in five different categories. 

 I am honored to be included among the journalist nominees, alongside esteemed friends and colleagues; I’m also proud to note that a debut nomination was awarded to this here blog (see previous phrase, re: friends, colleagues). A full list of nominees is after the jump.

Advanced Studies

 File under: self-promotion, duologue, pianism. This weekend I will be in Princeton, N.J. for a pair of concerts featuring Vijay Iyer and Craig Taborn. The two pianists, former section-mates in the superb new-music ensemble Roscoe Mitchell’s Note Factory, will perform back-to-back solo sets, followed by new works for duo piano. To quote from the program notes: “Both pianists share an enthusiasm for structural rigor and rhythmic precision, but also maintain a more gestural, interpretive and intuitive approach to improvisation.”

 The event(s) comes courtesy of the Institute for Advanced Study, a center for theoretical research with a distinguished history. (Einstein is among the more prominent former faculty.) Iyer and Taborn are appearing at the invitation of composer Derek Bermel, the Institute’s current Artist-in-Residence. My contribution will be a post-concert conversation on Friday and a pre-concert talk on Saturday.

Tickets are free, but way gone. (I’m told that the waiting list is substantial.) No word on whether this collaboration will yield a future spate of bookings, but as precedent has taught us, it could happen.