THE GIG

Wrapping it Up

Final round of a year-end email conversation with Peter Hum, Jim Macnie, Giovanni Russonello and Greg Thomas (Jump to: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 ) 

From: Nate Chinen

Greetings, gents! 

I write to you from the suburbs of Houston, where wintry climes are but a faraway rumor, at least for now. Seems like we’re nearing the end of this here roundtable, and I wanted to reiterate my thanks to you for taking part. The other night I ran into our own Jim Macnie at the Jazz Standard — he was on his way out, and I was on my way in — and we agreed that this has been fun. I hereby resolve to keep the conversation going, on some level, in the new year. Preferably in person, and with less cause for solemn reflection. I believe I owe each of you a beer, at the least. (A couple of years ago, Bitches Brew, a commemorative release from Dogfish Head, played a supporting role in this exercise; you may be interested to know that the brewery recently reissued said elixir, so to speak.)

Thought I’d just lob a few closing thoughts here, mainly as an Amen chorus. For starters, I’m grateful that Greg brought up the issue of female instrumentalists, since the evidence of their critical mass shouldn’t be taken for granted. Frankly, this was a vexing year, in the culture at large, for conversations about women — see “war on...” and “binders full of...” and “...can’t have it all” for starters — but a heartening year for women making advances in jazz. It bothered me a little that my Top 10 didn’t reflect that, despite strong work by the aforementioned Fuller and Spalding, along with violinist Jenny Scheinman, guitarist Mary Halvorson, clarinetist Anat Cohen, trumpeter Nadje Noordhuis, saxophonist Ingrid Laubrock and pianist Kris Davis. And Luciana Souza! Greg, I spent so many hours in thrall to the first Brazilian Duos album that I probably haven’t given the sequels their proper due.

Speaking of proper dues: Initial Here, the self-possessed sophomore release by bassist Linda Oh, was in the best-of running for me — as was Be Still, the Dave Douglas album on which she appears. (More on that in a sec.) My mind flickers back to this year’s Monk Competition, and the Kennedy Center concert in which Oh fearlessly grounded a confab featuring Wayne Shorter and Herbie Hancock. No big deal. And it’s not that I was impressed by how easily she handled herself in that context as a young woman; I was just impressed, straight up, no stipulations for age or gender required. (I’m now recalling that the concert had a “Women in Jazz” subtext, and featured some others fitting that description, including Monk adjudicator Terri Lyne Carrington. No female competitors, tho.) 

Gio, you brought up Branford Marsalis as an exemplar of against-the-grain traditionalism this year. His was another album that just missed the cutoff for me, and who knows — were I compiling my Top 10 today, it might come in under the wire. I got an early vinyl copy of Four MFs Playing Tunes in the spring, and was so taken with it that I had to sound the alarm right away.

But as for Branford’s whole spiel about this music not coming with a concept — well, I’m calling BS, to borrow his own lexicographical shorthand. If you’ve heard much of the Branford Marsalis Quartet over the years, in its original incarnation as well as this one, you’ll recognize Four MFs as gloriously true to form. He’s working within a post-bop tradition (call it post-Coltrane, if you prefer) but the tradition he really upholds here is that of his own proprietary small-group syntax: his concept, basically. Which is not so different from what Vijay Iyer does in his trio. As with a few touted albums in the non-jazz realm this year — your Dylans, your Springsteens, even Nas — Marsalis built on a structure he’d already established. But calling Four MFs an album without a concept is like calling Seinfeld a show about nothing. And we all know how cleverly that one can be debunked.

Greg, I appreciate the “gut-heart-head” check that you mentioned as an implicit litmus for listening. I’d wager that each of us (and the better of our colleagues) has a similarly intuitive process for evaluating music. But what stirs my soul or stimulates my cerebral cortex could leave somebody else entirely unmoved. (Obvious, but it bears repeating every now and again.) I don’t really know where I stand, anymore, on the subject of a left-leaning critical bias in jazz — I still see a lot of love for the standard-bearers, and often not enough for those expanding the frame — but I agree that we run up against a baby-with-the-bathwater quandary if we’re no longer interested in the fundamentals. I think about that often, in fact.

Karsten Moran/New York Times

Last week I had a terrific experience with the Christian McBride Trio, which reminded me at times of the forthright splendor of Peterson, Brown and Thigpen in 1964. And one of the albums that did make it on my list, at a pretty high berth, was the latest from guitarist Kurt Rosenwinkel, which happens to feature Branford’s rhythm team. I loved Reflections, Kurt’s standards album, too — but I was glad to hear him bring that ease and mastery to bear on his own smart compositions.

By the way, I have it on good authority that when I pick up the Houston Chronicle tomorrow morning, I’ll see a feature on drummer Reggie Quinerly, whose recent debut is as straight-ahead as they come, but also a meditation on the history of his native H-town, and specifically the African-American enclave that once thrived in its Fourth Ward, where he grew up. I saw Quinerly play this music at Smoke a few weeks ago, and it was tight. 

I’d like to close now on an album that uncannily weaves together so many of the strands of our conversation: traditionalism and innovation, mourning and succor, that “renewed sense of wonder,” Linda Oh. I’m speaking of course about Be Still, the exquisite album that Dave Douglas made out of some old songs and a new band, along with a deeply personal motivation.

I love this album — for its outright beauty, for its reverence in the face of the divine, and for the way in which Aoife O’Donovan inhabits a modern jazz setting so easefully, without losing sight of her own aesthetic coordinates. And in light of recent events, I thought its message incredibly pertinent. A moment ago I glanced at the Greenleaf Music website and saw that Douglas had posted some thoughts along these lines. “We are all united as we begin to take those difficult next steps,” he writes.

After what happened in Newtown, a handful of people I know dusted off a famous quote by Leonard Bernstein; unless I’m misremembering, Douglas did so too, on Twitter. The statement: “This will be our reply to violence: to make music more intensely, more beautifully, more devotedly than ever before.”

There are countless different ways to make music intensely; likewise, beautifully and devotedly. I’m sure I am not the only one among us who takes some comfort in that. And I know I’m not the only one who looks forward, with every kind of hope, to whatever lies ahead.

End transmission, and happy holidays to all, 

Nate

The Head and the Heart (and the Gut)

Part Ten of a year-end email conversation with Peter Hum, Jim Macnie, Giovanni Russonello and Greg Thomas (Jump to: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 ) 

From: Greg Thomas

Hi Guys, 

It’s taken me more than a minute to recover a semblance of equilibrium in the aftermath of the carnage in Newtown, CT, which is about an hour from my home in Westchester. I actually found out about the loss of the Greene family’s little angel Ana right here at The Gig. Grief, rage, disgust and an irrepressible need to hug my teenage daughter were just a few of the swirl of feelings that beset me. My eternal optimism was deeply shaken. I’ve resolved to take some kind of action, and so began sharing thoughts on Facebook, with postings declaring the need for stronger gun restrictions.

That's why, Peter, I gladly accept your implicit challenge: “If I could wish for one response from the jazz community to what happened, it would be some kind of initiative, coordinated or otherwise, to lead the charge for gun control; to push for measures that could dramatically decrease the possibility of someone wielding an assault rifle against utter innocents.” 

In my final remarks for this great exchange — again, Nate, thanks one mo’ time for asking me to join in — I’m going to venture a few answers to Jim’s earlier question: What artists taught your chemistry class?

Yes indeed, coordination and chemistry are the pillars that steady any critical response to what American philosopher Susanne Langer called, in describing art, “feeling in form.” No doubt. But after reading all of your pithy, poetic, puissant descriptions of the music you dug this year, and coming through the emotional wringer above, I’ve decided to risk sounding pedestrian and all-too-basic by sharing the basis-in-body of my reactions to the music I’m about to mention.

The music below met my gut-heart-head test, which is to say that I was mentally impelled, touched emotionally and stimulated to move. That’s my personal “adhesive logic,” though it’s more earth-bound than ethereal. I wonder whether, in our critical tendency to identify and champion what we deem as cutting-edge, we at times either take for granted or undervalue how much the fundamentals of the jazz idiom ground the connection to a lay audience? That's one of the main reasons I stay close to the center when writing to a general, mid-market audience for the New York Daily News. 

Granted, I’ll have to make time to give additional listens to several cats that I — based on the artists you all mentioned — haven’t given due attention. I’ll dig deeper into Tim Berne mainly because you, my colleagues, hold his latest CD in such high esteem. My groove, apparently, is more “mainstream,” which I guess says that the foundation elements of the idiom such as the blues, ballads, ensemble swing, Afro-Cuban and other Latin rhythms, are my starting points of appreciation and evaluation. If those basics are good enough as grounding material for the acknowledged masters of jazz — those departed as well as most of those elders remaining today — then they’re good enough for me. 

After the fundamentals, though, all sorts of factors come into play. This is where, to me, the critical reception of the music becomes most revealing.

Vijay Iyer’s music has always stimulated me intellectually while hitting me in the gut rhythmically. But with Accelarando the melodic content of songs by Heatwave, Michael Jackson, and Duke Ellington gave me reference points that touched my heart through “music giving resonance to memory,” to paraphrase Ralph Ellison. Here’s my take on his trio’s treatment of Jackson’s “Human Nature”: 

Iyer plays the melody fairly straight as bassist Stephen Crump and drummer Marcus Gilmore refract time together, then separately. The pleasure comes from the play impulse, as the melodic, harmonic or rhythmic basis of any song here is not written in stone, are merely shards of measured time in the space of sounds. As when later in “Human Nature” all three dance around a center that’s not really there.

Considering my first post’s mention of the import of a center, I like Vijay’s gracious post-modern approach which yet and still flouts modernist assumptions. Vijay’s gentility is becoming. Nate, I also agree that his Ellington send-off was a fond one:

 The Village of the Virgins,” by Duke Ellington, was a brilliant choice to close this date, as they somehow respect the master with church-like reverence, and seamlessly penetrate the bounds of the blues and soft rock until the lines erase.

Notwithstanding Diana Krall’s lingerie, we haven’t mentioned many singers, but I favor Kurt Elling’s 1619 Broadway for the way he re-interprets not only American songbook standards but pop or R&B numbers such as “You Send Me,” “A House Is Not a Home,” American Tune,” and “Pleasant Valley Sunday.” If God is no respecter of persons, Elling isn’t a respecter of genres, yet jazz is his ken. Elling also ends his latest record date with an Ellington number.

 Kurt and Vijay both experiment by crossing genre barriers with respect, yet their individual styles are entrepreneurial in the manner that they create signature musical value in the soundscape. And if Vijay’s Accelerando is a refinement more than an avant-garde like break-through, that’s cool. Aesthetic statement, says Albert Murray, involves “extension, elaboration and refinement” of idiomatic particulars. If so, then Kurt’s elaborations on great songs from the Brill Building and Vijay’s refinements of his own style seem natural parts of a creative process.  

Novelist Leon Forrest has an essay entitled “The Labyrinth of Luminosity.” That’s a phrase I’d definitely use to describe the gathering steam of swing through Caribbean-esque repetition and interstitial fire on Branford’s opening cut (“The Mighty Sword”) from Four MFs Playin’ Tunes. Look at the video again, and just focus on the interaction between pianist Joey Calderazzo and drummer Justin Faulkner to decipher, if necessary, what I mean by interstitial fire. Damn—they swingin’ hard. Thanks, Nate, for including that video in Gio’s last post.

 Though I understood not a word, I took to Luciana Souza’s Duos III like a black cat bringing good luck. That’s a recording one can make love to — another criterion, by the way, worth mentioning. Remaining in the Latin vein, I favored Arturo Sandoval’s Dear Diz (the arrangements and production value are off the chain), Poncho Sanchez’s Live in Hollywood (loose precision and hot solos), and Bobby Sanabria’s Multiverse for its mixture of jazz big band, Latin Jazz arrangements, and hip hop with a historically-rich message. 

Looking ahead, I’d say that one aspect that we haven’t mentioned sufficiently that will continue to greatly impact the course of jazz is the emergence of a tipping point of female instrumentalists. Jazz discourse, past and present, is usually a guy’s game, but that’s changing not only by virtue of boundlessly talented artists such as Esperanza Spalding; or saxophonist Tia Fuller, who in her latest recording, Angelic Warrior, successfully cast off the shadow of Kenny Garrett; or singer-trumpeter Bria Skonberg, a dedicated student of Warren Vaché and his pre-bop trumpet diction; or just through Terri Lyne Carrington’s quiet but steady mentorship of a plethora of sisters-in-spirit, but also because of all of the women players in jazz programs in high school and college.

Look out, guys: there will continue to be more female instrumentalists teaching chemistry class in the years to come.

I wish you all a happy holiday season. Let’s keep Jimmy Greene and his family, and all those who suffered unimaginable losses last Friday, in our thoughts and prayers.

Keep swingin’,

Greg

Injecting Adhesive Logic

Part Nine of a year-end email conversation with Peter Hum, Jim Macnie, Giovanni Russonello and Greg Thomas (Jump to: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 ) 

From: Giovanni Russonello 

Photo by Przemek Wozny

Hey all,

This thing just keeps chugging along, like the last tune of the jam session. I’m loving reading everyone’s thoughts and recollections from the year.

Jim, your description of the Tyshawn Sorey-Ben Gerstein show had me smelling the evening air and the god-awful Gowanus Canal and the sweat on Sorey’s back. It had me hearing those cutting trombone wobbles, and Sorey’s broken cymbal clanking on the ground. It left me coveting that experience, and it really hammered home your main point: that jazz is about strengthening the ties that bind. So no matter where the music is going (toward a surrender to electronic idioms; toward free excursions; toward more tightly wound interplay) we know it won’t really be dead until the only people left calling themselves jazz musicians are playing solo sets with pre-programmed beats on their laptops. I don’t see that coming any time soon.

I’m glad you folks took a minute to meditate on Tim Berne’s warm-blooded masterpiece, Snakeoil. (Berne wrote the music, and conferred its sense of communitarian purpose, but to me this really was Matt Mitchell’s record. His piano creates the space it lives in; he’s a master of evaporating tones, and every chord he plays is broken crystal — sharp and translucent.) One we’ve given only glancing attention to, though, is Accelerando, from the Vijay Iyer Trio. The trio’s first record, Historicity, was a cabochon, but this one’s a diamond. The group sounds bounding and monstrous in its whirl of mandala-like propulsion and buried reference points. 

You’re absolutely right, Nate: That record was a refinement — but to me, the fact that this band has been ahead of the curve doesn’t preclude seeing 2012 as a turning point, so much as it anoints Iyer as a sort of prescient chieftain of the zeitgeist. (Someone’s always ahead of the curve, and yet a curve it remains; hey, Greg Osby and Steve Coleman had some of these ideas 20 years ago, and Gary Bartz was nearly pulling hip-hop into jazz before hip-hop even really existed.)

As long as I’m responding to responses, Peter, I’m glad you mentioned your trepidation about the idea of assigning any sort of governing “direction” to jazz’s present or future. It’s a cat-herding exercise, for sure. But I wonder if you agree with me that critics have a right — responsibility, even — to inject some adhesive logic into the ethereal. (How else to explain star ratings?) As you point out, jazz’s diversity, especially now, is enough to leave anybody’s head spinning. Also true: Not knowing where to begin, or what the music relates to, can scare off folks who might otherwise fall for the music. At the least, I think teasing out some commonality gives us points of reference, and helps jazz gain some traction in a broader societal conversation.

It also paints musicians who defy the greater trend with a special, luminous hue. In 2012, going against the grain meant explicitly inhabiting a particular tradition. Maybe that’s ironic, or maybe by now it isn’t. Two people who did this and caught my ear were Branford Marsalis, whose disc made my year-end list, and David Virelles, the Cuban pianist who got a lot  of love on those New York Times ballots. Branford today isn’t a ripple in the tide, or even a countervailing force, so much as a stalwart who seems to gather steam with every passing year. Four MF’s Playin’ Tunes was, well, an MF of an album: I’ve never heard him reaching this hard for an explicitly post-Coltrane ideal, partly because I’ve never heard him sounding so alertly himself (though he always does that, in some way or another).

 

And Virelles, while definitely an alchemist, struck me with how firmly and effectively he dealt with the other branch of John Coltrane’s legacy: vaguely political/spiritual, avant-garde, acoustic jazz. The choice to use Andrew Cyrille, whose sound is inextricable from that lineage, was inspired. I don't love everything Cyrille plays today — he didn't fit in with Bill McHenry at the Vanguard earlier this year, at all — but he gave this record a bristling timelessness.

Anyway, that does it for my chorus. This has been loads of fun. Thanks for the opportunity to join the rap session, Nate. On to the next soloist.

-Gio

Creole Thang

New Orleans Jazz Orchestra

"10 Years, 1 Night"

Carnegie Hall, Oct. 8

Commotion Predictions

Eric Ryan Anderson

Playlist, April 27

Branford Marsalis Quartet, Feistodon, Steve Kuhn Trio, Tomas Fujiwara & the Hook Up, Congs for Brums

Angel Faces

Chad Batka for The New York Times

2011 NEA Jazz Masters Awards

Frederick P. Rose Hall, Jan. 11

(Marsalis) Family Matters

Now online: this month’s column, about the NEA Jazz Masters, the Marsalis Family, and what I believe to be a certain lapse in judgment. I should note that I filed my copy to JazzTimes on Aug. 10, a few weeks before the hullabaloo caused by saxophonist Phil Woods, who announced his boycott of all future NEA Jazz Masters events. (Peter Hum covered this well over at Jazzblog.ca.)

When the Woods grievance hit the airwaves, I piped up on Twitter that I disagreed with his actions but had to acknowledge that he had a point. In response, guitarist-composer Anthony Wilson wrote this (I’ll collapse his serial installments into one statement): 

Branford at 50

You read that headline correctly: saxophonist Branford Marsalis was born half a century ago today. Some of us will want a minute to absorb that information. Take one if you need it.

Branford has a new album out this week with the Marsalis Family, which is naturally part of his claim to fame. That’s not what I want to talk about here, though. I’d like to talk about the specific achievements of Ellis’ eldest son: as a saxophonist, as a bandleader, and as a public figure besides. (Forgive me, folks, this may get a little personal.)