So hey: Accelerando, the new album by the Vijay Iyer Trio, is really, really good. I wrote about it, with what I hope registers as sufficient enthusiasm. My hosanna joins a chorus of others, from my fellow critics Chris Barton and Peter Hum to, in an instructive comparative exercise, Patrick Jarenwattananon of A Blog Supreme. There's sure to be more of this; feel free to drop links in the comments.
And speaking of comments: one of the principal ideas in my notebook has to do with Iyer's creeping influence, which I suspect is already considerable. Do you have a story to tell about that? I'd be curious to read it. I'm thinking of something like this:
If you're seeking a more thorough fleshing-out of Iyer's story, I recently reread the JazzTimes profile I wrote back in 2005. Amazingly, I'm not embarrassed by it, though it does read a bit dated in some respects. (Shouts to the IAJE!) And here are a few more resources:
Also, in the process of writing this piece I wanted to use the word "permutative" in a sentence, but wasn't sure whether it would pass muster with the NYT Style patrol. So I plugged the word into the paper's search engine to see about past usage. Looks like it appeared in the paper a total of three times since 1851 — and one of those instances was in this notebook by Robert Palmer, about the AACM saxophonist and composer Roscoe Mitchell. (Palmer uses it twice in one graf!) Obviously there couldn't be a more appropriate accident: one of the first times I saw Iyer in person was with Mitchell's Note Factory.
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.
There was plenty of good information, and at least one terrific cosmic gag, that couldn’t make it into today’s feature about Pi Recordings. Some of that material was too granularly, and would have been a drag on the flow of the piece. Some of it was of dubious interest to a civilian readership. But you’re here now, so let’s get into it, after the jump.
Let’s just say it, people: the jazz internet has a
contemporizing bias. Trawl the blogs, cop the tweets, and you might mistakenly
conclude that most partisans of this music are anti-essentialists, allergic to
strict guidelines, always up for something new. But that’s simply not the case,
which is one reason for this month’s column
in JazzTimes. For some time, I had been musing
over an ascendant strain of “jazz traditionalism” that embraces the mid-century
modern axis (Shorter, Hancock) but excludes some recent fissures (Lehman? Moran?).
So what do I do, then: coin a new term of disparagement?
Please, don’t let that be the case. I embarked on my mossy trail with open
heart and earnest mind. (Of course I also hope the damn thing is a fun read.) The recent spate of jazz obituaries -- for guitarist Herb Ellis*, pianist John Bunch and critic/trombonist Mike Zwerin, if we’re keeping to a
two-week radius -- has only renewed my conviction as a mossy-stone adjunct, a sympathetic soul. But not, I suppose, a true believer.
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.
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.
Part
Seven of a year-end email conversation with Andrey Henkin, Peter Margasak, Ben
Ratliff and Hank Shteamer. (Jump to: 1 | 2 | 3 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8)
From: Peter Margasak
I think that Vijay Iyer quote sorta summed up many of the things I far less articulately attempted to express in my earlier bit. I’d like to think that everyone shares his opinion, but I’m afraid there is a generational schism; I’m sure plenty of folks would agree with his statement in theory, but reality is a different can of worms. Anyway, I think Nate’s point rings true. As the decade comes to a close this openness isn’t such a big deal, and I’m glad that’s the case. Jason Moran does indeed represent this kind of thinking as much as anyone during the previous ten years.
Looking back on the previous exchanges it seems that a few of us really focused on music that was smashing those boundaries at the expense of more traditional practitioners of jazz. I’d say great new records by everyone from Von Freeman (above) to John Hollenbeck to Matt Wilson are all in the tradition -- someone’s tradition, anyway -- and they brought me as much pleasure as any other record this year. Hell, I loved Anthony Coleman’s rather conservative spin through the music of Jelly Roll Morton on Freakish.
And while I big upped Chicago, I think there are fascinating things happening all over the country, and, of course, the globe. My beloved Chicago Reader ran a pretty good piece this week about a Thai pop singer that discusses the futility of year-end lists because there’s always more that we don’t hear. Writer Noah Berlatsky ends the piece with, “Whether or not I download that Yeah Yeah Yeahs album, the world is still going to be bigger than my list. Which is a reassuring thought.” Amen.
Part Six of a year-end email conversation with Andrey Henkin, Peter Margasak, Ben Ratliff and Hank Shteamer. (Jump to: 1 | 2 | 3| 4|5|6| 7 | 8)
From: Nate Chinen
Hey guys,
I was supposed to come up with the next link to this chain
over the weekend, but snowfall and football turn out to be wicked
procrastination-boosters. I do have some thoughts, though, beginning with this
quotation:
“When you look at the history of
jazz, everybody who made significant contributions to that music never really
saw it as a kind of music. Anybody who
can shed that preconception of what jazz is or is not, or should be or
shouldn’t be, and can just approach it as human endeavor, I think will find
something to resonate with here.” -- Vijay Iyer(via EPK )
The polls and picks are mostly in, and it looks like Iyer just might have had the consensus choice for best jazz album of 2009. Ben, you had his Historicity as your top dog,
irrespective of genre (more on that in a sec). A casual perusal of the 50 JazzTimescritics’
ballots shows that only one voter, editor-in-chief Lee Mergner,
had it quite so high -- but also that it appears on 12 total ballots, the same tally as
Joe Lovano’s Folk Art, which came
in just ahead at #1.
I’m no numbers-cruncher, so I won’t pursue that gauntlet further.
But I’ll gladly pick up another one, the one Iyer throws down in his statement
above. Throughout this roundtable so far, we’ve heralded artists who make their
way without most of the old hang-ups, ducking the heavy drag of genre
obligation.
Reflecting on that fact this weekend, I got to thinking about this
first decade of the new century, and what it has meant for jazz, in some loose
sense. Others have done this recently, including my man David Adler, who
provides a kind of personal
tour on his blog. Over at the Slate Music Club, my model for this email
exchange, there was a subplot concerning the best handle for the 2000s, which
has been known in some starchy circles as “the Aughts.” Carl Wilson kicked around a few
ideas, settling on “the Singles” -- part nod to “Single Ladies,” part acknowledgment
of the iTunes-abetted devaluation of the album. But since that trend doesn’t
really apply to jazz, here’s another possible option: “the Oughts.” (Indulge me here for
a minute, guys.)
Remember how this decade began? So much agita over
definitions! On the one hand we had imposing cultural arbiters (right) telling
us what jazz ought to be: blues-based,
swinging, firmly rooted in the African-American idiom. On the other hand, there
was the countervailing response, which spoke to a
Balkanization of jazz, literally and figuratively (cf., the Knitting Factory). At that end of the
spectrum, the thinking was that jazz ought to be open-ended and exploratory, not so serious all
the time. (Maybe their version was the Naughts, or the Nots.) Of course this is a wildly reductive take on the “jazz wars,” itself a
wildly reductive term.
The point is that we can now survey the Oughts in terms of a
cycle of action and reaction. For much of the last decade, jazz was a pendular
protectorate, swinging (or not) back and forth between entrenchments, toward
some contested new center of truth. Look at Historicity -- or, for that matter, at Folk Art, which resides so comfortably in today’s
modern mainstream only because that center has shifted. (Whether we can all admit it is another story.)
I’m not saying that Lovano is inventing a new syntax, or
even that Folk Art is more “adventurous”
somehow than, say, Congo Square. (We could play this game all day.) But I am indeed
arguing that the “preconception of what jazz is or is not, or should be or
shouldn’t be,” to borrow Iyer’s formulation, has buckled enough to allow for a
wealth of new shoots coming up through the cracks. And there’s no zero-sum game
anymore: you can dig Håkon Kornstad and Joe Lovano, the Bad Plus and James P. Johnson, Wynton and Dave.
If I had to designate a jazz artist of the decade, it would probably
be pianist Jason Moran, who has gone out of his way, again and again, to
deal with jazz tradition in an honest and personal way. (No accident that Moran is the present-day artist who closes Jazz, the new Giddins-DeVeaux book. Marsalis held down that
spot in Jazz, the Ken Burns film and ultimate Oughts artifact.)
There’s one more thing to be said about Moran and Iyer --
and Iverson, whom we’ve also invoked, and Darcy James Argue, whom I can’t
believe we haven’t. Each of these musicians has taken it upon himself to articulate
his own ideas: about his music, about his influences, and about much more
besides. Hank, you shouted
out Iverson’s interviews at Do The Math; I’m guessing you’ve already seen his
latest
bit of jazz criticism too? And has everybody read Iyer on
Monk (and physics!), Steve Lehman on spectral music, and Argue, just today, on Bob Brookmeyer? Hard to keep up with it all, right? And just think, we haven’t even gotten to Wynton’s Facebook notes. Has there ever been more transparency, more dialogue, more open-source debate, in all of jazz history?
I’ll end with a photo: the Vijay Iyer
Trio backstage at Newport this summer, with drummer Billy Hart and WBGO producer-host Josh Jackson. What’s good about jazz in 2009? You’re looking at it. One
facet of it, anyway.
That’s it for my hand in the roundtable, fellas. I’ll pass
the aforementioned gauntlet your way, keeping in mind that the holidays loom. Farewell to the Oughts and all that; Hello
to whatever’s rounding that corner!
