THE GIG

Another (Live) Top 10

Pop and Jazz Concert Highs of 2011

(With Jon Pareles, Jon Caramanica and Ben Ratliff)

Brötzmann at Vision

Ozier Muhammad/The New York Times

Peter Brötzmann: Lifetime Achievement

Vision Festival, June 8

Oneception

Brian Harkin for The New York Times

David S. Ware Trio

Blue Note, October 4

Vision Appraisal

A few weeks ago I sat down with Patricia Nicholson and William Parker, chief stewards of the Vision Festival, for an hourlong interview at their East Village apartment. That link above will take you to full audio of the conversation, and an introductory essay by yours truly.

The Q&A was at the behest of Improvisation, Community, and Social Practice, an interdisciplinary research project affiliated with the University of Guelph in Ontario. (The project’s director is Ajay Heble, a professor of English who also runs the fine Guelph Jazz Festival.) 

I won’t cannibalize the ICASP material: there’s some great stuff in there, about the struggle to remain fiercely independent, the need to recognize a Vision “brand,” and the ways in which those two imperatives can (maybe) coexist. You’ll have to sit back, though, and enjoy the full conversation, complete with a couple of cell-phone calls received by Parker. (His ring tone? John Coltrane, “Giant Steps.”)

Parker was fielding calls pertaining to an upcoming gig -- quite possibly the one scheduled for this Sunday at 2:30 p.m., with a 15-member bass ensemble performing “Segments of Light,” a new piece inspired by the anniversary of 9/11. Free with a $5 suggested donation, it will take place at the First Street Garden, on the Lower East Side.

Space: Still the Place

 

Sun Ra would have turned 96, in earth years, last Saturday. Marshall Allen, who has led the Sun Ra Arkestra for some 15 years (and played in its ranks for more than 50), turns 86 today. According to recent custom, Allen and the band will perform a birthday gig, in their hometown of Philadelphia, under the aegis of the Ars Nova Workshop. In honor of all of this, here is a piece I wrote for a Style magazine in Philly last year, which provided me with a pretext for interviewing both George Clinton and Maurice White for the first time.

There are worlds, and there are worlds. For the visionary composer, keyboardist, philosopher, bandleader and intergalactic traveler known as Sun Ra, the planet was a way station, and music was both a vessel and a channel. Throughout his earthly career, which roughly spanned the second half of the last century, he engaged an impossibly broad-spectrum sweep of musical ideas: big band swing and bebop along with future-sound electronics and ancient African rhythms, funk and free jazz, psychedelic grooves and Bizarro doo-wop, and much, much else besides. “It was a universal music,” attests George Clinton, the Parliament-Funkadelic mastermind with an intergalactic angle of his own. “There’s no box you can put it in, except that it makes you feel good.”

 So is it any wonder that in the 16 years since Sun Ra’s departure, his influence has rippled across so many borders of culture and genre? When soul-punk dynamo Janelle Monáe declares herself “an alien from outer space,” or hip-hop trickster Lil Wayne rants about being a Martian, they’re riding a wavelength best exemplified, if not generated, by the potent precedent of Sun Ra. And those are just the more flagrant manifestations of a process that reaches meaningfully into the worlds of rock, techno and electronica, along with avant-garde jazz and new music. “He never got as much recognition, even posthumously, as he should have,” says Jeff Parker, the guitarist for Tortoise, the acclaimed Chicago post-rock band. “But the influence, man, it’s everywhere.”

Questions, Answers

In the unlikely event that you’re reading this blog and don’t also keep tabs on Do the Math, a.k.a. the Bad Plus web journal, maintained by pianist Ethan Iverson: do not miss the Tootie Heath interview now posted there. (Go right ahead, we’ll still be here when you’re finished.)

Iverson, whose interviewing mojo I have hailed here before, does his usual fine job of coaxing insights from an under-sung jazz legend. I won’t step on the results except to pick up where they leave off, with Tootie on Sonny: “This is what I felt about Sonny Rollins: that he could play anything I played back at me, twice as fast and twice as good.” Iverson then posts video of an “On Green Dolphin Street” recorded in Denmark in 1968. What’s above is from the same session, which can be legally obtained as part of the Jazz Icons DVD series. (Heath begins an easygoing, melodic drum solo at 6:45, though you’d be crazy not to sit through the preceding stuff first.)

And while we’re on the subject of interviews, I’d like to take a moment to plug tomorrow evening’s conversation between critic Gary Giddins and ECM Records majordomo Manfred Eicher, both giants in their respective fields (and, I’m happy to attest, both excellent practitioners of dialogue). The event is free and open to the public; details here.

Finally, a quick programming note: I will be on Soundcheck tomorrow to talk about the Vision Festival’s 28-hour marathon this weekend. The show airs from 2-3 p.m. EST, on WNYC 93.9 FM. You should be able to listen live on the website; an archive will probably appear on Friday. My host will be John Schaefer, another expert interviewer, and an open-minded fellow besides.