THE GIG

Perpetual Motian

For quite some time now, I've been privately (and sometimes semi-publicly) musing about the void left by master drummer Paul Motian, who died in November of 2011. The arrival of an incredibly well-stocked tribute concert, this evening at Symphony Space, provided an opportunity to peer into that void for a moment, in consultation with a handful of musicians, including the concert's chief organizers, Joe Lovano and Bill Frisell. My principal intention with the piece was to stoke interest among those readers who maybe hadn't been lucky enough to witness Paul's magic firsthand. 

I was going to use this blog platform to speak more to the choir, publishing some straight transcripts of my conversations, but then I saw the impressive job that Hank Shteamer did over at Time Out New York. Hank, a fellow drummer whose admiration for Motian can't be understated, spoke with more folks than I did, and has posted excerpts of his interviews online (in slideshow format). His entries on Lovano and Frisell include most of the same sentiment and background that I got, so that's where I'll steer you. And don't miss the stuff from Greg Osby and Andrew Cyrille.

I was sorry to let space constraints get in the way of some additional acknowledgments within the piece. Hans Wendl was another primary organizer of tonight's concert, and very close to Paul. And there are a number of musicians who aren't on the concert, but do belong in this conversation. (My piece, alas, was already beginning to feel overcrowded with names.) Who do I mean? Well, Russ Lossing, who released a poignant solo piano album called Drum Music: Music of Paul Motian last year; guitarist Joel Harrison, who recently made an album of Motian compositions ingeniously arranged for string ensemble; and pianist Frank Kimbrough, whose knowledge of Motian runs deep. Just for starters. 

I'll sign off with an annotation to the scene that leads off my piece. At the precise moment that the Bad Plus was playing "It Should've Happened a Long Time Ago" with Frisell, on the Newport Jazz Festival's Quad Stage, Lovano was on the smaller Harbor Stage — just over the fortress wall — playing with Sound Prints. Later that afternoon I happened to bump into Lovano, and I told him this. He shot me a pained look. "Man, I wanted to make it over there, but the schedule..." A missed opportunity? I can't say with any certainty whether It Should've Happened, but I do know that a visit from Joe is just about the only thing that would have made that moment even more bittersweet.

Heroes' Journeys

 

Robert Yager for The New York Times

About a dozen years ago, Chris Potter released an album called Gratitude on Verve. Its premise was simple: youngish turk pays homage to his formative saxophone influences, track by track. "Eurydice," track 5, bore a dedication to Wayne Shorter. The sincerity of that gesture was entirely clear. 

I'm bringing this up because of the convergence of a few things. I had a rather long Wayne Shorter piece in Arts & Leisure over the weekend; today marks the release of his new quartet album, Without a Net. Chris Potter also happens to have an excellent new album out, The Sirens, which we recently discussed: the Times has posted an edit of our conversation, centered on the album's literary inspiration. 

 And as you may have heard, the jazz internet has been all astir these last few days over a small feat of would-be iconoclasm, involving Shorter, an impulsive young musician and a vulgarity of Anglo-Saxon origin. (I'm not trying to be coy; I really don't know much more than that. The contretemps unfolded on Facebook, among musicians, and I still maintain blanket restrictions over whom I "friend." I'm working by secondhand hearsay.)

During my interview with Potter, I asked him about the millennial Shorter Quartet, which I thought may have had some influence on his current acoustic band. He shared his deep admiration, and to some extent his puzzlement — "I've seen the sheet music, but what you hear them actually doing is often pretty far afield from that" — and we moved on to other things. "Wayne is clearly no stranger to that idea of mythic space," he mused, alluding to matters of Homeric import.

Point being: you don't get to heroic stature as a jazz musician without establishing a genuine connection to your forbears. "Connection" may or may not connote influence; it certainly doesn't connote ignorance. Look at who's playing with Potter at the Village Vanguard this week — pianist Ethan Iverson, bassist Larry Grenadier, drummer Eric Harland — and you'll see three musicians with enormous knowledge of, and respect for, myriad strains of the tradition. It's not a hindrance.

To that end, I wanted to post two audio excerpts of my interview with Potter, aimed at the ear of the young jazz musician. To me these were fascinating exchanges, though a bit too "inside" for the general readership I wanted to reach in the Times.  The first clip revolves around Potter's remembrance of Paul Motian, the master drummer and composer, and one of his earliest mentors on the bandstand. I don't recall ever reading Potter on this subject, which is obviously dear to his heart.

Chris Potter on Paul Motian

And the second clip, which picks up a thread in the first, has to do with Potter's conception of "technique," which I'm putting pointedly in quotes. 

Chris Potter on Technique

I'm hoping these comments inspire some folks out there, and perhaps humble some others. In the meanwhile, there's a lot of music to be absorbed, even if you wanted to restrict yourself to Shorter and Potter within the first six weeks of this year. Maybe at some point I'll post some audio of Shorter, too. You can get a little taste in last week's NYT Popcast, which also has a lively back-and-forth between Ben Ratliff and me.

Gentility is Becoming

Part Eight 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: Jim Macnie

Photo: John Rogers / ECM Records

Guys,

I should have done a broader background check on you birds before we began our digital salon last week — I had no idea that we’d have a majority consensus about the Snakeoil disc, or that it made Peter and Nate’s year-end lists (mine too). Anyone else’s? I’m a longtime Berne fan (please don’t overlook that first Miniature album), and was tickled by the fact that the saxophonist’s longstanding rhythmic m.o. of “hurdling” was refined a bit on this one. The momentum on the new pieces has a more adroit flow – no doubt that Snakeoil ups Berne’s pliancy and poise in noticeable ways.

One of the key reasons is his connection with Mitchell. (I get a kick out of your newly coined term altopiano, Nate;  don’t you wish that Jimmy Lyons and Cecil Taylor made a duet album?) To some degree Mitchell’s left hand has to be a bassist in this band, and as he says in that JT profile Nate mentions,  Berne’s music “has to groove.”

That’s not a term often associated with the saxophonist’s Screwgun canon, but it’s dead on — if we’ve learned anything at this late date, it’s that there are innumerable way to swing. Mitchell moves the band towards that goal, and gives each of his partners — including his boss — a bit more liftoff. As far Berne himself goes, he’s seldom sounded so supple, another move forward. That tart tone may sound comfy inside those architecturally elaborate pieces of his, but this new gentility is becoming. For a sec I thought it was all due to Berne touching down in ECMville, but it’s not. As I said in my DownBeat review, he has been actively amending his playing to accommodate a wider variety of approaches. Mitchell’s got a yen for maximal phrases (don’t sleep on his own knotty stuff), but here he helped Team Snakeoil pull off some seductive minimal passages.

Two other discs waxing feathery were impressive as well. Dave King’s I’ll Be Ringing You finds The Bad Plus drummer leading a trio of pianist Bill Carrothers and bassist Billy Peterson through a series of fetching feints that present standards such as “This Nearly Was Mine” and “Autumn Serenade” in a new light. Everything is fragile, elusive, sketched instead of painted — and all the more compelling because of it. Some jazz is about looking around corners to see what’s there; this album is an exemplar of that approach. Ditto for Masabumi Kikuchi’s Sunrise. With a rhythm section of Thomas Morgan and Paul Motian, the pianist made every aspect of the music yield to a gossamer aesthetic. The act of fluttering was as agitated as the music got, and like Andrew Hill’s most poetic pieces, a single note could tug the entire procedure into a new direction. I’m going to go see if that disc made it through my flooded basement disaster (I’m thinking not). If it did, it’s a perfect ta-ta soundtrack to a gloomy Monday afternoon.

Before I close: Thoughts of peace and perseverance go to Jimmy Greene’s family, and everyone effected by the Newtown tragedy, which I believe is anyone with a heart.

Jim

P.S., Anyone in the New York area looking to sustain a deep spirit while lightening their weekly load should be heading to the Jazz Standard to see Matt Wilson's Christmas Tree-O on Tuesday and Wednesday this week. Seasonal glee as well as tidings of comfort and joy are on the docket. Five bucks says some “renewed wonder” might be in the air as well.

Occupy Jazz?

Part Five of a year-end email conversation with Angelika Beener, Aaron Cohen, Joe Tangari and K. Leander Williams. (Jump to: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 )

From: K. Leander Williams

Hey cats. Happy Holidays and all that...

 Cheers to Nate on yet another smashing roundtable. Here’s me trying like hell to maintain the high level of discourse thus far.

 As Nate said up front, I actually asked for the end slot because these days I’m not as engaged with the community as I was when weekly assessments were my gig. What I’ve found surprising is that I’m not quite as out of the loop as I’d initially surmised, and to be absolutely honest, that frustrates me somewhat. The controversies don’t seem to have changed much since I started doing this for a living in the early ‘90s, and even at that time they were tired. I mean, Miles Davis went electric in 1969 or so, right? What his bands did brilliantly was followed by a whole lot of electrified music the punk fan in me doesn’t have much use for, but that’s not really the issue here.

 The bigger point may be that jazz’s popularity has been in decline since maybe the late ‘40s; well before I got here it felt a lot like an economy in freefall — and yet we still haven’t hit bottom. (Think Sonny Rollins at the Kennedy Center, with Jason Moran waiting in the wings.) The difference, thanks to music schools, is that there are tons more jazz-identified folk sharing that pie. Is Esperanza Spalding this generation’s Grover Washington, Jr. or George Benson, jazz-educated but poised to reach folks well beyond the community? Is Robert Glasper? When Glasp hit the Blue Note in February, Kanye and Lupe Fiasco sat in. 

 So, to me, as much as the discourse aboveground turns on the moves of NARAS, Spalding and now Nicholas Payton, those years I spent regularly scouring the scene remind me that somewhere below the radar there’s always music in which sheer creativity and invention trump the symbolism and optics of a Grammy nomination, a superstar guest cameo or the latest “jazz-is-dead” screed. Who’s making that music? Where can it be found? Actually, the better question these days might be, where can a general-interest audience read/hear about it? For all the activity in cyberspace, my sense is that the realities of “search-engine optimization” (SEO) are particularly merciless in regard to any newness that lacks outsized marquee status. Once Spalding starts trending, we end up with 50 articles, blog posts, whatever, that say the equivalent of, ‘Yay, our girl’s a maaaaddd fly bassist and she bested the Bieb, but, um, isn’t that record kinda so-so?’ Meanwhile, there’s next to nothing on the conceptually-gifted unknowns toiling in the trenches, unless, of course, they’ve written it themselves? Hmmm... self-promotion as a way into (or in Payton’s case, out of?) the canon. Let’s see how that shakes out.

 At the risk of turning into the bummer patrol, there’s another jazz survival mechanism that crystalized for me near the end of the year. It came by virtue of a weird juxtaposition: The announcement that Jazz at Lincoln Center was building bridges to luxury hotels in Qatar (y’know, over there near the Arab Spring), while scores of the people we’ve come to call “the 99%” are out in the streets worldwide attempting to “occupy” everything. I’ve wondered about the symbolism of it ever since. I happened to be downtown at the Occupy Wall Street protests just weeks before the J@LC announcement, on the day that hundreds of local musicians, many union-sponsored I think, marched in solidarity with the happenings in Zuccotti Park. (Yes, my heart swelled when at one point some random brass band spontaneously broke into Thelonious Monk’s “Well You Needn’t.”) I’m not mad at J@LC’s initiative (like them, I’m fanatic enough to want jazz to be heard everywhere), but it certainly made me wonder if jazz’s premier option was to become the music of the 1%. That kinda puts me in mind of the days of swing at restrictive country clubs and the like, but from a musician’s standpoint it’s probably better than waiting on the .001% who actually purchase jazz product.

 All this said, there were a few things I caught live this year that blew me away, though I can’t say they represent trends of any kind.

 Marc Ribot’s Sun Ship Ensemble with Mary Halvorson, Chad Taylor and Henry Grimes. In theory it was a twin-guitar Coltrane tribute, but that was merely the jumping off point. Sonically, the music was raucous, more other-planes-of-there than sheets-of-sound. It’s also where I finally understood the growing Halvorson cult. She was on fire that night. I don’t know how to say it delicately, but I generally tend to feel that jazzers of her generation need to spend more time improvising on melodies they didn’t write. I’m well aware that might be the geezer in me talking. (Holy shit, am I the oldest cat in this roundtable?!? Geez, that never used to happen.)

 Matt Shipp and Darius Jones. Still haven’t heard their duo disc Cosmic Lieder, but no matter (hint, hint to Aum Fidelity’s resident new papa Steven Joerg... actually, I’m kidding; I never asked for a copy). When I caught Jones earlier in the year with the trio on his other 2011 disc, Big Gurl, it was kinda lukewarm, but at the Jazz Standard he had a soothing effect on Shipp’s key shifts, which in turn brought out the warmth in Jones’ alto.

 Double bill: Robert Glasper Trio + Vijay Iyer Trio. Wrote about it.

 Bill McHenry Quartet with Orrin Evans, Eric Revis and Andrew Cyrille. The set was fantastic, but like Aaron said, it was bittersweet for me as well. I knew Paul Motian was in the hospital, but didn’t know details. That was the night Lorraine Gordon of the Village Vanguard used the word “dying” to describe his condition. Paul and I had had a several funny conversations since I first interviewed him for Down Beat in the early ‘90s, so I was doubly sad that I’d missed his last gig in town with pianist Anat Fort in September — basically, because I didn’t wanna brave the rain, I think. Yeah... hindsight...

A Windy City Reply

Part Two of a year-end email conversation with Angelika Beener, Aaron Cohen, Joe Tangari and K. Leander Williams. (Jump to: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 )

From: Aaron Cohen

Hi Everyone,

First off: thank you, Nate, for inviting me to take part in this roundtable. All of you are writers who I admire a great deal, and I’m humbled to discuss these issues with you. 

To tell the truth, I didn’t read Nicholas Payton’s blog postings until you brought it to my attention. I do have trouble keeping up with jazz blogs (except for this one) — editing a jazz magazine all day, you can imagine I’d want to read SOMETHING else by the time I get home. Anyway, his first posting was rather poetic (he clearly thinks about the rhythms of his phrases), but I really don’t get caught up in whether or not jazz is/isn’t dead, whether or not this or that person is/isn’t really a jazz musician. I’ve been hearing all that since I started getting into the music when I was in my teens (back in the 1980s). I just never found that discourse particularly interesting — it never enhanced, nor detracted from, my enjoyment of the music and it never broadened my understanding of the culture surrounding it. I can say that there is a lot of good and great jazz being recorded now — I receive at least 100 CDs a week (of varying quality, to be sure), and with only having room to review around 35 new releases a month, one can imagine all the work that I am unable to adequately cover. Meanwhile, I’m busy catching up with as many live performances as I can. Here in Chicago, I can find something interesting to see and hear at least three nights out of the week. So I didn’t feel that Payton’s postings infuriated or excited me in any way.

Anyway, to get back to the discussion of Esperanza Spalding, she is a great bassist and a talented singer/conceptualist. I wish she would play bass more, as that’s what I feel she is best at, but I’m also aware that had she stuck just to being a bassist, she would not be the crossover star that she is. (Yeah, I would’ve been one of those who would’ve advised Nat “King” Cole to stick the piano, where he was brilliant, rather than sing, since I preferred Billy Eckstine). As far as whether or not her success is because she has transcended jazz, or will bring more attention to jazz, I just hope that whatever attention she does receive will somehow encourage more funding for music education. Glad that she continues working in Joe Lovano’s group. And I also hope that she does collaborate with Janelle Monae (my wife and I love her). 

As far as any siege mentality that jazz may be going through, or any sort of issues involving inclusion, exclusion or insularity, I think that may be more of a New York thing. Here in Chicago (where I’ve lived my whole life, except for college in Wisconsin), we tend to feel slighted in general. Really, controversy about [insert name of Manhattan jazz musician or institution here] matters to Chicagoans about as much as New Yorkers care about [insert name of Chicago jazz politics here]. 

So I’d rather just concentrate on music/musicians who I like, and this year has been filled with great, great stuff. I was fortunate to see Bill McHenry’s quartet at the Village Vanguard a few weeks ago, and they were terrific (though, sadly, that was also when I heard about Paul Motian’s condition, and his death was the worst jazz story of the year). I was also fortunate to see a number of longtime favorites representing different generations throughout 2011: whether it was Sheila Jordan (at Chicago’s Green Mill) or the Jimmy Heath Big Band (at New York’s Blue Note) or Eric Reed (at Chicago’s Jazz Showcase). I also was fortunate to steal away from the DownBeat booth at the Chicago Jazz Festival to catch Trio 3 + Geri Allen. Still and all, best concert I saw this year would’ve been Aretha Franklin’s first full-length post-surgery gig at the Chicago Theater in May. She infused every note with pure joy of being alive. 

As I mentioned in the post above, with 100+ records coming in my mailbox each week, there are so many great ones. Let me first mention the current wave of young Chicagoans — Nate’s colleague Ben Ratliff has been giving much deserved attention to vibist Jason Adasiewicz, and his Sun Rooms’ disc, Spacer (Delmark), is inventive and much fun, as is bass clarinetist Jason Stein’s The Story This Time (Delmark), which brings a sense of joy and energy to the otherwise abstract Lee Konitz-Warne Marsh school. Wonderful compositions on Claudia Quintet’s What Is The Beautiful? (Cuneiform). Darius Jones’ Big Gurl (Smell My Dream) and his Cosmic Lieder with Matthew Shipp (both discs on Aum Fidelity) really caught me off guard. And there were a number of solid recordings from so many people I had been unaware of just a few years ago: Walter Smith III’s III (Criss Cross) and Tyshawn Sorey’s Oblique-I (Pi) come immediately to mind. So many musicians I’ve liked for a few years now are still cranking out thoughtful stuff live and on disc: Vijay Iyer, Matana Roberts, Jeff Parker, Russell Malone...

 So, it’s all my way of saying, 2011 is ending with jazz in fine shape in terms of its creative end. There are only a few problems that can’t be easily dismissed, and these are economic: the inadequate funding for music education in the public schools is the most difficult. It’s also shameful that cities continue to use public financing to assist politically connected, large-scale, for-profit ventures rather than help make life easier for non-profit arts organizations and smaller scale music venues. This goes on in Chicago, and I’m guessing it’s also true in New York, New Orleans and elsewhere. But I’ll let my co-panelists weigh in here.

Best,
---Aaron

Speak to Me

So Many Musicians Inspired by Paul Motian

Keith Jarrett, Bill McHenry,

Marc Copland and John Abercrombie, Dan Tepfer

Psalm

There have already been many fine and touching tributes to Paul Motian, the master drummer, composer and bandleader, since news of his death rippled through the world yesterday morning. This morning I drove up the Palisades Parkway through a cold mist, listening the whole way to WKCR's memorial broadcast. I think it still hasn't really hit me that I'll never hear the dark clang of his ride cymbal in the Village Vanguard again.

I reviewed Motian often over the last decade; in recent years there were times when I had to stop myself from covering a gig because he'd just been reviewed, in another context, only a week or two earlier. I'm not going to link to anything right now, though, and my present thoughts on Motian -- as an adamantine creative force, a professional enigma and a shaper of the musical dialect for generations of younger players -- hardly feel adequate to the task. I hope it won't seem like a failure of purpose, or insufficient respect, but I'm going to cede the floor to others who have managed, in personal or critical terms, to articulate this loss to the jazz community, especially in New York. 

• Ben Ratliff, responsible for the best writing on Motion over the last decade, wrote the NY Times obituary. See also the Times profile that later became a chapter in Ratliff's book The Jazz Ear.
• Ethan Iverson, who is quoted in the Times obituary (and from whom I heard the news), offers his reflections here. "It's Easy to Remember" will slay you, if you really listen, as you should.
• Hank Shteamer does right by Motian's magical, "phantomizing" time feel in a blog post. I agree that certain of his musical values will surely live on.
• John Rogers, a photographer who was very close to Motian, wrote a beautiful tribute at A Blog Supreme. 
• Finally -- this one had to go last -- Peter Hum has collected reminiscences from a number of musicians, including Joe Lovano, Chris Potter, Marilyn Crispell and Frank Kimbrough. They're all linked off a main post, which also has some choice YouTube footage. 

Dream Music

Playlist, Feb. 28

Paul Motian, Freeway, Xiu Xiu, Good for Cows 

Joe Lovano’s Us Five

Village Vanguard, Feb. 24

A Triumvirate, Not a Trio

Motian! Lovano! Frisell! A triumvirate, not a trio. 

I’m borrowing the rhetorical flourish above from the late Joyce Wein, who gave it to her husband George for his liner notes to Money Jungle (i.e., Ellington! Mingus! Roach!). The conceit works here too, even if its barking tone sounds flashier than it should. For drummer Paul Motian, saxophonist Joe Lovano and guitarist Bill Frisell, a small gesture often means more than a sweeping one.

Last night I heard the Trio at the Village Vanguard, where they are wrapping up a two-week engagement. The music was nothing less than a serious astonishment, and if I trusted myself I’d say this was the most potent set of theirs I have ever heard. Honestly, though, I’m sure I say that nearly every time. The level of concentration, intuition and flat-out beauty in this band is a rare and stunning thing. I’m inclined to agree with guitarist Nels Cline, who recently opined to me that this is simply “one of the greatest improviser trios of all time.”

Mehldau Meets Motian

 

“His playing is just so incredibly wide open, like a wave. He’s from that generation, man: the Big Beat.” -- Brad Mehldau on Paul Motian, speaking to Lorraine Gordon

When I’m catching a gig at the Village Vanguard (but not reviewing), I try to catch the first set on Sunday: a venerable tradition, and usually a good hang. Tonight I had plans to hear tenor saxophonist Bill McHenry with a quintet featuring alto saxophonist Andrew D’Angelo and the sagacious drummer Paul Motian. As it turned out, there was added incentive on this particular evening: pianist Brad Mehldau joined the band, along with bassist Larry Grenadier.

Hard to believe, but this was Mehldau’s first-ever encounter with Motian, as he confirmed after the set. After witnessing their profoundly intuitive interaction, I dare say it won’t be his last. The sound of these two musicians together made all kinds of sense. There was some accommodation going on, to be sure, but there was also a good deal of unforced chemistry.