THE GIG

Consensus Bureau

Yesterday’s Jazz Matters panel on the Best of 2010 was a blast -- it could only have been improved by a stronger turnout and pitchers of draft beer. (Jazz Journalists Association president Howard Mandel, our moderator, voiced his awareness that those two things are probably related.) I could hardly put together a more astute or collegial crew than the one David Adler assembled, with WBGO’s Josh Jackson and Down Beat’s Jim Macnie (and of course, Adler himself). There was plentiful agreement; I’m amused to report that the only real dissent formed around one of my picks. Read on for more about that.

But first, a side note on the comments below my last related post. Mahalo to everyone who contributed picks (and keep it coming)! I’m intrigued by the apparent consensus around Mary Halvorson’s new album, and can’t help but muse about selection bias: beyond this here blog-ville, and the teeming urban centers, how are people feeling about it? Or perhaps the salient question is: who hasn’t heard it that should? On the panel I wondered aloud whether it would even show up in the jazz-mag reader’s polls. It’s certainly in the running for my Top 10, as is the other comment-field-consensus pick, Jason Moran’s Ten. (Speaking of Halvorson and Moran, you saw this, right? Amen.) 

Ought to Be

A few songs into their rampagingly good first set at the Village Vanguard on Tuesday, Jason Moran and the Bandwagon played a somber version of “Artists Ought to Be Writing,” from Artist in Residence, their 2006 album. The track hinges on a spoken text by the conceptualist and philosopher Adrian Piper, whose work, Moran averred onstage, had been important to every member of the band. 

Artist in Residence, as you may recall, opens with “Break Down,” a choppy backbeat roil whose refrain is a sampled deconstruction of the same text. So when you reach “Artists Ought to Be Writing,” a few songs later, you hear Piper’s statement through a fog of recognition. These are the words you hear (w/ pauses notated, I think, by Moran):

Wrongs and Rights

My column in the July/August JazzTimes (not online, alas), concerns music publishing, an issue of stealth importance today. To parrot a dry but earnest line from my own self: “At a time when most jazz musicians are composers, and other sources of income are dwindling, music publishing may be the one area with growth prospects.” Given the thrust of some recent bloggery, it seems a good notion to revisit.

Jazz musicians have long paid the price for inattention to their publishing. In some cases, it’s a matter of ineffectual policing. You may know, for instance, what happened with Thelonious Monk’s most oft-recorded composition, “’Round Midnight.” After it had been introduced to Cootie Williams, the song was filed for copyright with three names on the certificate: Monk, Williams and lyricist Bernie Hanighen. “Consequently,” writes Robin Kelley, “Hanighen and his estate receive a third of the royalties from every version of ‘’Round Midnight’ produced. And in turn, the original composer and his estate receive only a third of the royalties -- to this very day.” Got that?

But let’s set aside the Big Fish example from a bygone era. Most present-day jazz musicians will never write a “’Round Midnight” -- and that shouldn’t at all diminish their interest in the publishing game. In the column, I seek illumination on that point from Dan Coleman, whose publishing-administration company, “A” Side Music, works with the likes of Maria Schneider, Brad Mehldau and Billy Childs. (More on him in the comments.) I also consult with two publishing-savvy musicians, bassist Ben Allison and keyboardist Larry Goldings.

Gangsterism Over 10 Years

 

Critics’ Choice: New CDs

Jason Moran, “Ten”

Dream Music

Playlist, Feb. 28

Paul Motian, Freeway, Xiu Xiu, Good for Cows 

Joe Lovano’s Us Five

Village Vanguard, Feb. 24

Team Moran

Add one more win to the track record of Team Moran: pianist Jason Moran was just included in TheGrio’s 100, a Who’s Who of African-American achievement compiled by MSNBC.com. He’s one of the only jazz musicians featured (Wynton Marsalis is in there too). The video above outlines a bit of Moran’s back story, and concludes thus:

“Young people wishing to get into the music are often just looking for something that is closer of a reflection of themselves. And hopefully my generation is continuing to kind of give people enough of a reflection of what can be possible within the jazz umbrella.”

Moran’s new album, Ten, drops on Blue Note in June, two days before his gig with Ron Miles and Mary Halvorson on this thing.

JazzFest Reflections

 

 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.

Someone's Tradition, Anyway

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.

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!

A Gate-Crashing Year

Part One 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

 

Dear Andrey, Ben, Hank and Peter, 

Thanks for taking time out of your perennial list-making to kick around a few ideas about the year in jazz. (I’m not going to capitalize that phrase.) I’ve always been a big fan of the Slate Music Club, as spearheaded by Jody Rosen, and after complaining for some time about the absence of a jazz equivalent, I thought it would be fun and fitting to cobble one together. Just one thing, guys: this is a No Lady GaGa Zone. Unless you also mention Sun Ra. 

Thus stipulated, I’ll open with a rhetorical question. Which did you expect to see first in this lifetime: Barbra Streisand at the Village Vanguard, or Esperanza Spalding at the Nobel Peace Prize ceremony? Somehow we got both this year, and I’m not sure which event had the tougher guest list. At the Vanguard, Streisand made a nervous quip about the tight dimensions of the stage. In Oslo, our 44th President made a (nervous?) comment about being “at the beginning, and not the end, of my labors on the world stage.” Can’t help but wonder whether Spalding felt a twinge of recognition there. Also, can’t help but share this, courtesy of Jimmy Kimmel Live:

 

Tabloid angle aside, this was a gate-crashing year, whether we’re talking about the White House, where Spalding has appeared at least twice, or the House of Swing, where I witnessed several thunderous ovations for the eminent Ornette Coleman, a once-unthinkable season opener for Jazz at Lincoln Center. (It was his first-ever JALC concert, a so-what fact except that it seemed to mean something to all parties involved.) And up in Newport, George Wein effectively crashed his own festival, or at least that’s how it felt.

This was also the year that George Lewis, from his perch in the music department at Columbia University, finally published A Power Stronger Than Itself: The AACM and American Experimental Music, a book about the challenges to convention made by a highly individualized collective. (Or maybe that should be “highly collectivized individuals” -- past a certain point, the distinction blurs.)

My two top jazz releases happened to be by Steve Lehman, an occasional teaching assistant to Lewis, and alto/flutist Henry Threadgill, a member of the AACM’s first wave. Coming in at a close third was Vijay Iyer, who could safely be pegged as part of the association’s extended family. (And I know that as regards admiration for Iyer’s record, I’m not the only one here.)

Maybe I’m just thinking about institutions and incursions because of another big piece of reading: Last week I popped into the Strand and bought Pops, Terry Teachout’s long-awaited Louis Armstrong biography. Really good so far, as expected, but I find it striking that Page 1 presents a survey of New York’s changing “cultural map” in 1956, vis-à-vis high-art complexes like the Guggenheim and Lincoln Center. It’s a strange way to begin a Satchmo book, except as a form of orientation: Teachout really knows that landscape, and he understands the tensions inherent in Armstrong’s presence there. 

 

 

Speaking of important jazz books and once-inscrutable jazz heroes, you could argue that the year began and ended with revisionist Monk. Back in February we all braced ourselves for Jason Moran’s In My Mind, a conceptual gamble that turned out to be soulful as well as smart. Moran gave us a Monk of lucid ambition and shrewd humor and tangible Southern roots -- a humane vision of the man that Robin Kelley has now articulated even more clearly.

What else? Ben, as you’ve noted, there was also something in the water this year that gave us one outstanding saxophone trio record after another. Marcus Strickland and J.D. Allen both found admirable focus in the format (though on further reflection, Allen’s entry was the sequel to an analogous 2008 release). I reviewed both Allen and Strickland live, and damned if I know which show wins. I do know that another tenor trio, FLY, which earned a spot in my Top 5 album berth, practically levitated at the Jazz Standard during an April stand. (That set made yet another list of mine: Top 10 gigs, for JazzTimes.)

I haven’t mentioned jazz’s incipient rhythm revolution, or the crumbling media infrastructure (and attendant blog awakening), or the postmillennial big band renaissance, or the great jazz audience debate. I haven’t mentioned any Norwegians. But take this in whatever direction you like, guys. No one will be calling the Jazz Police (not literally, in any case).