THE GIG

All Things Must Come, Etc.

December, and the closing of the year;

The momentary carolers complete

Their Christmas Eves, and quickly disappear

Into their houses on each lighted street

— from "Christmas Eve in Whitneyville, 1955" by Donald Hall

 

This time of year, I tend to find myself harried and hectic, fretting over one list or another, scrambling to catch up on what I missed. One bright spot in recent years has been the Critics Roundtable, an annual email conversation hosted here at The Gig. Exchanging reflections with my colleagues always feels like the sanest and most enlightened way to bring the year to a close, a moment of communal song before we all disappear back into our foxholes.

That social aspect applies more than ever this year, because the fifth annual Critics Roundtable will be a live panel with an audience, organized in partnership with the Jazz Museum in Harlem. I'm extremely proud of the lineup — Kevin Whitehead, me, Greg Tate, Seth Colter Walls and Larry Blumenfeld, as pictured left-to-right above — and have been looking forward to this for months. Heads up, because it's around the corner:

Thursday, Dec. 12, 7 p.m., at MIST Harlem. Pleeeease come and join us. More info here.

I should also take this moment to announce that I will be mothballing this Typepad blog at the end of the year. I agonized over this decision, but it seems clear that a dignified end is preferable to a sheepish, hobbling, half-assed decline. So follow me on Twitter, and take heart: I'll be moving the bloggier dispatches over to my Tumblr, which I've helpfully also titled The Gig.

And in the spirit of Year-Endery and Closeout Sales, please enjoy perusing the previous Critics Roundtables, featuring insights from the likes of Ben Ratliff, Jim Macnie, David Adler, Jennifer Odell, Hank Shteamer, Peter Hum, Chris Barton, Peter Margasak and Giovanni Russonello:

2012 | 2011 | 2010 | 2009

Harrison at Large

Photo by Jacob Blickenstaff

My editor at JazzTimes, the fearless Evan Haga, saw the Joel Harrison 19 on Wednesday night, the night after I did. Seems like he caught more of a homerun set than I did, based on this Facebook squib from yesterday:

The Joel Harrison 19 sounded tremendous last night at Dizzy’s Club Coca-Cola—advanced but accessible modern big-band music performed by some of NYC's best. 

"Advanced but accessible" is a good way to put it. There was little about Harrison's writing that felt forbidding, aesthetically speaking, or unduly academic. Which is one reason I was slightly bummed by the headline on the Times review.  (I've said it before but it bears repeating every now and again: critics at the paper have no say — none — in the hed. We usually only see it when the piece goes live.)

No reason to rearticulate my other mixed feelings about the set, which I really enjoyed overall. I hope the big band is one more format that Harrison continues to explore.

COME AT ME JAZZBRO

It’s a small quirk of the JazzTimes publishing model that the glossy print mag reaches subscribers and newsstands weeks before any of its content hits the web. This might suggest a strange perversion of the natural order, but it does have the effect of delivering a premium benefit for paying customers. As a writer, it can be disconcerting mainly because 99% of the feedback I get comes online, and the print readership for JT doesn’t take to the Twitter. Sometimes I can feel, erroneously, like a story falls into some kind of void until it finally gets posted online. And then there are the other times, when my editor forwards a note like this, from several weeks ago:  

I saw your magazine at Barnes & Noble and, as a jazz lover, decided to pick it up. A lot of good things in there, even if I'm not really all that into guitarists. I like the idea of a jazz magazine covering the scene, the history, everything.

So why will I never pick up your magazine again? Nate Chien's offensive, "look-at-me-I'M-the-asshole" column on "Jazzbros." What a dick. It's "us against them," with Nate apparently believing he and those like him are the true jazz fans and others who come from a different path are pretenders. Fuck him. I'd rather spend the rest of my life with any number of "Jazzbros" than to hear one word he has to say about the form.

You should be ashamed you printed it.

I’ve redacted the name of the guy who sent this note, though I suspect he wouldn’t have minded being ID’d. (Dude, on the off chance that you landed on this blog, hit me up for reals.) Anyway, can I mention that I thought it was kind of awesome? It was the one genuine piece of LOL reader feedback I received last month.

I suppose I should also argue that this letter springs from a basic misreading of the column, which was my attempt at barbed humor in the jazz-o-sphere. If you’d like to see a more earnest but equally nonplussed response to the column, scroll down to the comments on that JazzTimes link. A reader named Carl Limbacher (the bassist, I presume?) makes some valid points about the ugly potential for policing audience behavior, and thereby alienating a key segment of the fan base.

So lemme just say this: yes, it was absolutely my intention to “insult” with this piece. Maybe even to “offend.” But I’m scratching in those scare-quotes with a Sharpie. Excuse the bro-minology, but I’m really just bustin’ some balls here. I kid because I care. But I also kid because, c’mon. Sometimes we can all stand to laugh at our damn selves. (When Nate Smith, drummer with Chris Potter’s Underground, tweeted the column this morning, I think we can assume he wasn’t actually disparaging his fan base.)

Then again, some folks seem to think that I am categorically anti-“WOOOO!” in the jazz club. Which is sooooo not the case. Nor did I expect to do any real killing of “killin’.” What I was taking aim at was the performative exclamation, the posturing, self-congratulatory yawp. Can I tell the difference? Eh, maybe? (Probably not.) So “woooo” on, noble jazzbros. I can’t promise I won’t be silently judging you, but then I’m a professional critic. What in Brad’s name did you expect?

Catching Up

    Yesterday I mentioned that it had been nearly two months since my last post. And I promised to d̶u̶m̶p̶ aggregate some recent highlights from the vault. Some of these pieces maybe warrant further discussion — the photo at left, ahem, is from my table on the Smooth Cruise — but for now I just need to move on. (Follow me on Twitter for more timely repartee.) Anyway, here they are, in chronological order. 

    May 30: Mulgrew Miller Obituary

    May 31: Spotlight on ShapeShifter Lab

    June 9: Arts & Leisure Playlist

    June 14: In Praise of Live Streams

   June 24: On Bill Frisell's "Big Sur"

    July 7: Smooth Jazz in Survival Mode

    July 13: re: the Smalls Digital Archive

    July 14: Another Arts & Leisure Playlist

    I also reviewed a lot of shows and albums since late May, but this is already too much retrospective self-promotion for one sitting. Stay tuned for more thoughts on the mighty Jazzbro.

 

Remembering Laurie Frink

Photo by Takashi Yashima

    If you’ve been watching this space in recent weeks, I’m really sorry. Life has been happening fast. Blog posts have not. Look for a separate item soon that will gather some highlights from the past two months or so.

What I want to talk about now, in case the photo here hasn’t tipped you off, is Laurie Frink, whose death on Saturday came a shock, if not exactly a surprise, to a lot of people.

I spent a good portion of Monday speaking with musicians who were close to Frink, as background for this Times obituary. But I didn’t need their testimonials to know how much she meant to those who knew her, perhaps especially her students. A little over a decade ago, I shared an apartment with one of those students, Jesse Neuman, and heard a ton of stories. I also heard Jesse’s daily practice regimen, as prescribed by Frink. For a while, it was like the soundtrack of my life during daylight hours.

I thought of that immediately when John McNeil, laughing ruefully, told me about the time a plumber (or was it an electrician?) came over to his apartment while he was practicing a Frink routine. McNeil’s wife answered the door, and the guy said, “Oh, is your son learning to play the trumpet?” She chuckled and said yes, to which he replied: “Whew, that’s brutal!”

I’m going to devote the rest of this post to some transcribed comments from my conversations, since the obituary was too brief to allow for more than a choice quote or two. But before you read on, please see the beautifully touching tribute that Jesse posted on Sunday. He was the person who let me know that Frink had passed, and he was the first person I called.

Haymakering

Noah Preminger Quartet

Jazz Standard, May 21

Occupied Man

New Music, May 21

Mike Pride, "Birthing Days" and "Drummer's Corpse"

This World Ain't My Home

Ruby Washington/The New York Times

Jaimeo Brown Transcendence

Drom, May 14

Gypsy Jump

Julie Glassberg for The New York Times

The Gil Evans Project

Jazz Standard, May 14

Rocket Ships

New Music, May 14

Talib Kweli, "Prisoner of Conscious"