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Bowery Ballroom, Sept. 15

The Oughts, Meet the Dustbin

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 JazzTimes critics’ 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!

Let's Hear It For New York

Part Five 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: Ben Ratliff

 

Did someone before Andrey really demote New York as jazz capital of the world?   Who: the head of the NEA? The editor of Forbes? David Longstreth?

I get really excited too when I go to other cities and see a more nurturing and affordable system for musicians. Haven’t given up on New York yet, though. As a farm, it’s hopeless. As a market, it’s still pretty damn good.

I took a musician friend from Dublin to the Stone the other night to see Peter Evans’ new group (above) and she was stunned by the level of musicianship, the tenacity of everything, the brain-power on display to about 40 very quiet people. She was having what you could call a profound reaction. 

I myself had one at James P. Johnson subculture a few months ago at Smalls, the fundraiser for the headstone. Imagine, all these people in one small place, coming from completely different backgrounds and aesthetic universes, giving it up for a guy who died in 1955, and completely engaged in doing so. Nothing fake about it.

I don’t wish for more cool clubs in New York where 25-year-olds with money can feel at home. There’s no end to them here. Art-school bands are great, and supper-club bands are great, but there’s more to life. I wish for more places where three different generations can get together around music, and I wish for more music that can be gotten around by three different generations. Hold it: I’m not talking about an idea of “heritage” music, or conservatory music, or something mediated by NPR. For obvious reasons I think jazz, in the largest sense of the word, and in flavors that are yet to be discovered, is right for this void. 

Supergroup Outbreak, But No Generation Gap

Part Two of a year-end email conversation with Andrey Henkin, Peter Margasak, Ben Ratliff and Hank Shteamer. (Jump: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 )

From: Hank Shteamer

 

Dear Nate, Peter, Andrey and Ben,

Very nice to have the opportunity to e-dialogue with you all. If you’ll pardon me, I’ll begin by stepping away from jazz for a quick sec...

One of the big stories in rock this year was the supergroup outbreak. The oft-ridiculed trend yielded cheesy one-offs like Sammy Hagar’s Chickenfoot, but it also gave rise to at least one great album, the self-titled Interscope debut by Them Crooked Vultures, which brought together Queens of the Stone Age leader Josh Homme and Nirvana’s former drum basher Dave Grohl with Led Zeppelin bassist John Paul Jones. It was great to see these players decimating the generation gap so successfully, and it’s worth noting that similar collaborations have been brewing in the jazz world.

 Take 31-year-old saxist Darius Jones (left), who tapped two under-appreciated veterans -- pianist and diddley-bo expert Cooper-Moore (63), and drummer Rakalam Bob Moses (61) -- for his powerful debut, Man’ish Boy (A Raw & Beautiful Thing), a gutsy, blues-infused free-jazz session that came in at No. 5 on my year-end list. Cooper-Moore and Moses each have lengthy résumés to draw on, but Jones isn’t interested in nostalgic references. Like Them Crooked Vultures, Man’ish Boy sounds vigorous and inventive, with the younger player lighting a fire under his elders and vice versa.

Ethan Iverson, pianist in the Bad Plus, was another player who pursued intergenerational collaboration in 2009. For a few years now, Iverson has made a habit of interviewing elder musicians on his blog and then engaging them on the bandstand. This two-pronged approach obviously has a self-promotional angle - “You’ve read the interview, now see the show” - but it works beautifully nevertheless. 

Iverson’s lengthy chat with Tim Berne, posted in late June, felt like the perfect preamble to their duet gig at the Stone later the same week, with each encounter providing a different window into these artists’ strange yet fruitful rapport. This year, Iverson also anchored a band led by drummer Billy Hart, another artist he’d previously interviewed. A September gig by this quartet was for me one of the year’s true highlights; it struck the perfect balance between classy and challenging. And the pianist isn’t done yet: This coming weekend he stops by Iridium with a quintet featuring two other veterans with whom he’s published Q&As, saxist Lee Konitz and drummer Albert “Tootie” Heath.

A few other strong 2009 releases demonstrated the flip side of the coin, namely an older artist drawing on the vitality and enthusiasm of considerably younger players. Henry Threadgill’s This Brings Us To, Volume 1, cited as a year-end favorite by myself as well as Nate, found the composer riding the exquisitely open-ended grooves of drummer Eliot Humberto Kavee, while Borah Bergman’s gorgeously minimal Luminescence featured the airy lift of bassist Greg Cohen and drummer Kenny Wollesen.

Of course there were tons of great releases that didn’t fit this template. My three favorite jazz discs of the year -- Ran Blake’s Driftwoods, Chad Taylor’s Circle Down, and Jon Irabagon and Mike Pride’s I Don’t Hear Nothin’ but the Blues -- were the products of, respectively, a 74-year-old loner, a trio of midcareer inside-outside specialists and a pair of ultraversatile young mavericks. Elsewhere, I was happy to hear strong compositional visions shining through, in ensembles big (Darcy James Argue’s Secret Society, John Hollenbeck Large Ensemble, Warren Smith’s Composer’s Workshop Ensemble), small (Linda Oh Trio -- a band to which Ben tipped me off -- Loren Stillman, Seabrook Power Plant) and somewhere in between (Steve Lehman Octet, John Hébert’s Byzantine Monkey, Bill Dixon).

 

In the live arena, duos captured my imagination. The pairings of Håkon Kornstad and Ingebrigt Håker Flaten, (above, and heard at Monkey Town in April -- I know Andrey and Nate dug this gig as well), and Bill McHenry and Ben Monder (at Cornelia St. Café in September) each tapped into a special kind of meditative poetry. (To be fair, Connie Crothers’s quartet and a Joe McPhee solo set took me to a similar state of grace.)

The coming year promises more duo delights, namely the mindblowingly weird tandem of guitarist Steeve Hurdle (formerly of Candian prog-metal heavyweights Gorguts) and pianist Craig Taborn (Tim Berne, The Gang Font, James Carter, etc.), playing the Stone February 13. And for now, back to Robin D.G. Kelley’s fantastic Monk bio...

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.

Haden and Iverson

Not far into his second set with Ethan Iverson at the Blue Note on Tuesday, Charlie Haden took a moment to recall their first meeting. It was at a 2006 memorial service for the tenor saxophonist Dewey Redman. For his part in the program, Iverson sat at the piano to play “Broken Shadows,” a processional ballad from the 1971 Ornette Coleman album of the same name. (Redman and Haden both took part in that session, indelibly.) Afterward, Haden recalled, he introduced himself to Iverson, who greeted him this way: “I know what you’re going to say. I was playing your chords.”

Berne Notice

Tim Berne (second from left) and Ethan Iverson (far right), with Buffalo Collision

Ethan Iverson has an expansive and insightful Tim Berne interview at the mighty Bad Plus blog, Do the Math. The conversation covers a lot of ground, touching on Berne’s mentor Julius Hemphill, the pride and perils of the self-run record business, and of course Berne’s compositions (in detail, with audio clips). You want to go to there.

Since he began posting these long-form interviews -- past conversations have included not only bassist Charlie Haden (a Bad Plus lodestar) but also Wynton Marsalis and Stanley Crouch (both eminently worth reading) -- Iverson has added greatly to the churn of contemporary jazz criticism. His humility and obsessive attention to detail make him a disarmingly effective interrogator, even more than his common affiliation as a player. And coming at a time of constricting opportunity in the mainstream jazz media, he deserves credit for thinking to elevate the underappreciated Q&A format.

Years ago I conducted a series of interviews (pro bono) for Berne’s label, Screwgun Records. Most of these took place at the label’s HQ, a brownstone in Fort Greene, Brooklyn. I’m recalling this now because it was an indication of Berne’s sincere interest in discourse: like Iverson, he values conversation. A lot of jazz musicians share this trait, but it’s by no means universal, as I’m sure many of my colleagues can attest. Anyway, if you’re interested in those old Screwgun Q&As, check out the last four links listed here.

Iverson and Berne are playing as a duo on Friday at the Stone. Buffalo Collision, their collective band with cellist Hank Roberts and drummer David King, released its Screwgun debut in December.