The Jazz.com Blog
July 03, 2009
The Detectives of Jazz
Will Friedwald continues his series on jazz discographers below. Your software spellchecker may not like "discographers" and try to substitute "disco photographers" in their place. But jazz fans are deeply indebted to these indefatigable researchers who determine who played what, when, where and with who. Think of them as slightly more swingin' versions of Sherlock Holmes, with a cool stereo system instead of a pipe and deerstalker. Click here for the first and second installments of this article. T.G.
Brian Rust's Jazz Records is remarkable for its subjectivity; collectors still delight in finding a hot side by a dance band that the author doesn’t list. (One area he largely overlooks is country music: there are plenty of sides by Bob Wills and his Texas Playboys with genuine jazz content that deserve to be listed. Another is bands outside of America and England and the Swiss New Hot Players. Tom Lord has made a significant improvement in his online Jazz Discography, for instance, by including all the known sessions by the pioneering Dutch hot band The Ramblers - not just those dates where Coleman Hawkins guest stars).
Published in 1975, The American Dance Band Discography is notable at once for its tight focus, and, at the same time, the sheer scope of its ambition. The ABDB strictly focuses on white dance bands, meaning no singers (except doing band vocal refrains), no small groups, no Afro-American bands (they’re all covered in detail in JR). (He also left out Benny Goodman, explaining that they were covered in detail in two book-length discographies then available from Arlington House.) And even so, it’s enormous – and its very enormity helps put the entire era in perspective, showing that pure jazz represented just a small portion of the big picture of what people listened to even in the jazz age and the swing era.
The ABDB is where Mr. Rust undertook the impossible task of documenting everything recorded not only by working bands, like Whiteman and Isham Jones, who played theaters and ballrooms all over the country, but even “house” bandleaders, like Fred Rich and Victor Young. As opposed to the peripatetic road bands of the period, their sole job it was to stay in one place - the studios - for 12 hours a day and grind out as many discs as it was possible, sending out only occasionally for scotch and sandwiches.
The sheer quantity of all of their output seems incredulous to later generations: both immediately before and after the depths of the depression, the major bands of the era were releasing hundreds of sides a year. Documenting all the dates, song titles, and piecing together all the musicians, and identifying all the band vocalists (even if it seems like the same three guys sing on every record) is the job of a lifetime. As Mr. Rust would say, the effort was “not so much exhaustive as exhausting.”
Hardcore collectors, like John Leifert and the late Jeff Healey, have added in so many corrections that there are more pencil marks on the pages of their copies than there is printing. Yet because the ABDB is the only one of Mr. Rust’s seminal works that has never been revised, I can name a few younger aficionados, who have been born since 1975, who are relying on info that hasn’t been updated for their whole lives. This is due to change this year (2009), when, after nearly 35 years, Mainspring Press (a specialist in this literature, who published the most recent –6tth—edition of Jazz Records) will release a long-awaited new edition of the ABDB.
The new American Dance Band Discography is due to the efforts of another Brit, one Richard Johnson, who has spent several decades overhauling the 1975 work, adding personnel, issue numbers, new vocalists IDs, and adding in more info regarding non-commercial sessions (for transcriptions and film soundtracks, etc). He tells me (in an old-fashioned handwritten airmail letter no less) that the new edition will come in at 5,000 pages, which is two-and-a-half times the length of the original. Among other additions, there will at last be a song index (hallelujah!) and the work will also be available in electronic form on CDROM (double hallelujah!). (I hope to review and discuss the new edition in this spot when it’s released at the end of this year.)
I must confess that in the last few years, ever since Tom Lord incorporated (and expanded upon) most of the information from Rust’s Jazz Records into the various electronic editions of The Jazz Discography (especially the current and invaluable online version), I have tended to spend less time pouring through my old-school hardcover copies of Rust’s Jazz Records. Contrastingly, all of our copies of the 1975 ABDB are literally falling apart from overuse; these are volumes that have spent most of their existence open on our desks rather than gathering dust on our shelves.
Small wonder Roger wanted to gather us all up to visit Mr. Rust in his home in TK, so we could genuflect at his feet. Roger didn’t want Rust to leave this world behind before we could tell him how essential his work is to us. Ironically, Roger died way before Brian, who is very much with us at age 87. Even more than Brian Rust himself, his legacy of research will be around forever, and future generations of scholars will continue to base their lives on his teachings.
This blog entry posted by Will Friedwald
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July 02, 2009
Swedish Jazz at the Kennedy Center
David Tenenholtz is a regular contributor to our site, whose reviews here include coverage of performances by Benny Golson and Dr. Billy Taylor. Below he reviews Jonas Kullhammar's recent appearance at the Kennedy Center Millennium Stage. T.G.
As a part of the weeklong Nordic Jazz Festival presented at the House of Sweden in Washington, DC, the Swedish quartet led by Jonas Kullhammar closed off the week with a free show on the Millennium Stage at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts on Friday. This stage presents free, open to the public concerts at 6:00pm every day, and with help from the House of Sweden (located just a stone’s throw away in Georgetown), there was a crowd of hundreds, overflowing onto the stairs next to another of the Kennedy Center’s numerous theater spaces.
The youthful quartet of Kullhammar on tenor saxophone, pianist Torbjörn Gulz, bassist Torbjörn Zetterberg, and drummer Jonas Holgersson opened the concert with “Sweet Home Snake City.” This was Kullhammar’s original tune, named after his home town of Orminge. A minor melody supported by fourths voicings from the piano, and a deep pocket of polyrhythms from the drums, this group showed its classicist bent early. The pianism of Torbjörn Gulz is straight up out of the McCoy Tyner academy, and the centered modern sound tenor of Kullhammar is one that often recalls Sonny Rollins but with an even heavier use of the saxophone’s lowest register. Actually, it is a thrilling sound, and Kullhammar on this occasion seemed more influenced by Coltrane and his devotees, namely Michael Brecker. “Sweet Home Snake City” presented the modern tenor approach in this vein, and after a couple minutes into the sax solo, the band was really burning.
I found myself wondering, “Will this hegemonic style that the Swedes demonstrate so well be the way the whole concert goes, or do they have some deeper take on this approach to jazz?” The piano solo by Gulz had nice playing; all very “correct” if seemingly falling short of a focused statement due to some more lick-heavy passages. They captured the style of some brilliant Blue Note albums like Tyner’s The Real McCoy or Joe Henderson’s Inner Urge.
While the band didn’t work too hard to escape these influences, the music was presented with focused intent, and a decent amount of interplay. Kullhammar addressed the crowd in English after “Sweet Home Snake City,” and explained that Friday was a Swedish holiday called Midsummer’s Eve. Jokingly, he mentioned that the tradition states that Swedes dance around a pole and then sing songs, such as one called “Little Frogs,” followed by drinking Schnapps and eating herring. They are too often “totally drunk,” so it was nice the quartet was playing in DC instead. The audience laughed loudly after Kullhammar joked, “Normally you would drink and then dance, but Swedes do it the other way around!”
Pianist Gulz’s tune “Rat Beat,” had a story behind it, and Kullhammar divulged it had been named after a rat Gulz had killed in his home. Indeed, an intro by Gulz made use of lithe fragments and strange dissonances, evoking images of a rat running around a house, finding small nooks to hide in and dart out of. Gulz produced his best “ECM sounds” from the piano before setting up the vamp that entered afterward, which gave a foundation for a surprisingly Monkish theme. “Rat Beat” had a fun melody over an AABA structure, punctuated by syncopated quick leaps in its phrases. Each player diced up slices of beats, before busting into galloping, bluesy changes. The fluidity and deep listening of the drummer, Jonas Holgersson, provided the propulsion the group needed to make this music shine. The piano solo was evenly paced, if a bit cautious, with some choice motifs worked through in succession.
Kullhammar introduced the “handsome” bassist, Torbjörn Zetterberg, as “the best writer of love songs in Sweden.” The ballad “October Is a Long Time Too,” offered more of a relative contemporaneity than the previous selections. In 6/4 time, the plaintive melody gave Zetterberg room to elaborate on his solo with his bow, before slowly turning it into a rustling on the strings, creating a sort of eerie statement. Kullhammar played well above the normal high register on his solo, but with so much confidence that the notes might as well be a grounded part of the instrument.
The final selection in this (on the short side) program, was the rhythmically energetic “Bristol Scream,” the title referring to an unruly bar patron who shouted some unpleasant remarks towards the band during a gig in that city. Thankfully, this audience, packed in tight as they were, remained enthusiastic about the music they were hearing, and awarded drummer Jonas Holgersson with numerous rounds of applause throughout his extended solo workout towards the end of the tune. The audience was respectful of Kullhammar’s young working band that showed where they had been, and hopefully where they were headed. Next month, the Swedes will be included in an extensive international lineup at the Stockholm Jazz Festival.
This blog entry posted by David Tenenholtz
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June 30, 2009
The Best Tracks of the Month
Five times every week, jazz.com features an outstanding recent track on its home page as the Song of the Day. These are drawn from the hundreds of new CDs heard by our team of reviewers, with the aim of alerting fans to significant music from the many current releases on the market.
Some of the artists featured this month (see below) will be familiar names. For example, one of the tracks highlighted comes from Freddie Hubbard’s Without a Song: Live in Europe 1969, previously unreleased music that captures the trumpeter in fine form. Other musicians on our June tracks—Chick Corea, Stanley Clarke, Chuck Mangione—similarly need no introduction.
But we also aim to showcase exciting young talent, such as pianists Gerald Clayton and Hiromi; established players who deserve to be better known—for example, Laurence Hobgood, Bobby Broom, Ralph Bowen and Enrico Pieranunzi; and provocative players pushing the envelope.
In the latter category, you will find Tom Abbs who built his recent album by randomly pairing 22 musical fragments—the results, according to reviewer S. Victor Aaron are compelling but “a little creepy sounding.” Meanwhile, our resident connoisseur of the transgressive Mark Saleski calls attention to a track by Gebhard Ullmann's Basement Research that sounds like “music that plays during the freaky scene in the movie when the spirit of Albert Ayler and his crazy cousins come back to inhabit the instruments lying around on the practice room floor.” You can hear it yourself . . . if you dare!
You will also find some releases a few steps outside the jazz idiom, such as tracks by blues master Otis Taylor, the great singer from Mali Oumou Sangare, and the difficult-to-categorize but fascinating-to-hear band Cyminology. In short, the selections for June represent an eclectic but interesting group of performances—a useful playlist for sampling the current state of the art.
And as always, the links below take you to a review with full personnel and recording info, a rating based on our 0-100 scoring system, and a link for (legal) downloading.
Happy listening!
Featured Songs: June 2009
Oumou Sangare: Sukunyali
Reviewed by Ted Gioia
Shea Breaux Wells: Oh Yes, I Remember Clifford
Reviewed by Scott Albin
Ralph Bowen: Canary Drums
Reviewed by Ralph A. Miriello
Jakob Dinesen: Come Sunday
Reviewed by Eric Novod
Otis Taylor: Country Boy, Girl
Reviewed by Ted Gioia
Laurence Hobgood: Que Sera Sera
Reviewed by Ralph A. Miriello
Brian Woodruff: Chorale
Reviewed by Mark Saleski
Enrico Pieranunzi: Scarlatti Sonata K377 & Improv
Reviewed by Ted Gioia
Rondi Charleston: Bewitched, Bothered & Bewildered
Reviewed by Scott Albin
3Play+: Bulletrain
Reviewed by Mark Saleski
Bobby Broom: Ask Me Now
Reviewed by Ted Gioia
Grant Geissman: Chuck and Chick
Reviewed by Ted Gioia
Tom Abbs: Torn
Reviewed by S. Victor Aaron
Gerald Clayton: Two Heads One Pillow
Reviewed by Greg Marchand
Gian Tornatore: Hearing Triangles
Reviewed by Mark Saleski
Duck Baker: Everything That Rises Must Converge
Reviewed by S. Victor Aaron
Freddie Hubbard: Blues by Five
Reviewed by Ted Gioia
Guilherme Monteiro: Air
Reviewed by S. Victor Aaron
Cyminology: Niyaayesh
Reviewed by Ted Gioia
Gebhard Ullman: Kreuzberg Park East
Reviewed by Mark Saleski
Stanley Clarke (with Hiromi): Sakura Sakura
Reviewed by Ted Gioia
Jennifer Lee: Quiet Joy
Reviewed by Mark Saleski
This blog entry posted by Ted Gioia
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June 29, 2009
More on Late Period Bill Evans
A few days back I wrote an piece in this column entitled "Late Period Bill Evans: Genius or Decline?” Bill Kirchner, a noted saxophonist, jazz scholar, and editor of The Oxford Companion to Jazz, contributes a response to this article below. (Be on the lookout soon for Kirchner's "Dozens" article for jazz.com on pianist Denny Zeitlin.) T.G.
On May 12, Nonesuch Records reissued a 6-CD boxed set by pianist Bill Evans, Turn Out The Stars: The Final Village Vanguard Recordings, June 1980. The box contains music recorded by Evans's last trio (with bassist Marc Johnson and drummer Joe LaBarbera) on June 4, 5, 6, and 8, 1980—only three months before his death on September 15 at age 51. It was originally co-produced by Jeff Levenson and myself for Warner Jazz and issued in 1996. Prior to that, the music had never before been released.
Readers of this site and JazzWax may have read recent postings by Ted Gioia and Marc Myers about this music and late-period Bill Evans in general. Both writers, despite their overall admiration for Evans, have repeatedly voiced reservations about his playing in his last years. As one might expect from my involvement with Evans' 1980 Village Vanguard recordings, I see things rather differently.
I take a back seat to no one in my affection for the Evans / Scott LaFaro / Paul Motian trio; their 1961 Village Vanguard recordings in particular are among my "desert island" treasures. But we all need to be mindful that the music of that trio was created under a distinctive and rather narrow set of parameters, especially with respect to dynamic range. No doubt this was partially due to esthetic choices, but another reason was that during LaFaro's lifetime, jazz bassists played gigs without amplification. To play the way he played, LaFaro used what bassists call a low action, which limited his volume. So if Motian had played much louder than he did, LaFaro probably would have been inaudible.
A few years later, when bassists regularly started using amplifiers, the nature and balance of jazz rhythm sections understandably changed. Bassists could be heard better—sometimes too much—and Evans gradually returned to the relative extroversion of his pre-LaFaro playing. When I first heard Evans live in 1972 with Eddie Gomez and Marty Morell at New York's Top of the Gate, I was surprised and thrilled by the often downright ballsy nature of his playing. (For a recorded example of what I heard, listen to the Evans album Montreux II.)
With all enormous respect due to Ted Gioia and Marc Myers, I have a modest proposal: it's time to lighten up a bit about Bill Evans. Great music can often serve as a kind of Rorschach test, and Evans' Village Vanguard recordings—both from 1961 and 1980—are a perfect example of this.
Marc in particular seems to be bringing "stuff" to the table—this statement, for example: "Evans' anger and stormy frustration is way too evident and disconcerting." My reaction to that bit of armchair psychoanalysis is a series of questions: Really? How do you know that? Did you talk to Evans? Did you read something that he or someone who knew him said that would lead you to believe that? (I'm reminded that John Coltrane was at one time described as an "angry" player, which apparently puzzled the gentle Mr. Coltrane no end. Intensity in music is often mistaken for anger.)
Let's go with something we know: i.e., Evans' own words. In a 1980 interview, he declared: "This trio is very much connected to the first trio. Different things have begun to happen with material that I've been playing for years. Things that were more or less static have gotten into motion and are developing." Whatever the frequent turmoil of Evans' personal life (most recently including the suicide of his brother in 1979, as well as Evans' own cocaine addiction that eventually killed him), Marc Johnson and Joe LaBarbera were inestimable sources of inspiration for him. Clearly, the direction this trio's music was taking was a most positive force in his life. Far from being angry or frustrated on the bandstand, Evans was delighted to be there.
Ted Gioia's objections to Evans' playing are more specific. Let's take this example: "Compare the 1961 version of 'My Romance' with the 1980 rendition, and see how Bill Evans at age 50 worked to squeeze the romanticism out of 'My Romance.' The same comes across if one compares 1980 performances of 'Polka Dots and Moonbeams,' 'My Foolish Heart,' and other songs with his classic recordings from the past. The later works are jittery and aloof, at times almost savage in their undermining of any vestiges of sentimentality." There are, in fact, three versions of "My Romance" in this set; it was a tune that the trio played almost every night in a multi-tempoed arrangement. What Ted hears as "jittery and aloof" I hear simply as a common practice among jazz musicians with repertoire they play frequently for years—the tendency to play the pieces faster. (Compare 1940 and 1966 Ellington recordings of "Cotton Tail" or 1954 and 1965 Miles Davis versions of "Walkin'".)
(Joe LaBarbera made a revealing comment: "That give-and-take was always there, that room to keep the music spontaneous. [Drummer] Jake Hanna came up to me after one gig and asked what I was doing on 'My Romance.' I said, 'Go ask Bill, I'm just following him.' So Jake asked Bill, who said 'I don't know, I'm just following Joe.'")
Ted makes similar complaints—including ones about Evans rushing—about several other performances in the set, and furthermore laments that "Evans no longer shows his grand conception of space and silence." In a collection of over six hours(!) of music recorded live in a club, unevenness is inevitable. But for every perceived shortcoming someone finds in this music, I'll point out multiple instances of great beauty, spaciousness, and spontaneity. Perhaps not coincidentally, these are often found in the newer pieces in Evans' repertoire, including Paul Simon's "I Do It For Your Love" and four then-new Evans compositions: "Tiffany," "Your Story," "Yet Ne'er Broken," and "Knit For Mary F."
Most of all, though, the centerpieces of the set are four extended versions (each 15-16 minutes long) of "Nardis," a piece that became a nightly highlight of any Evans trio performance. I've often remarked to students since Turn Out The Stars was released in 1996 that if they want to do a great doctoral dissertation, transcribe and analyze the Evans solos on these four versions—all different, and all mind-boggling. I regularly play one of them for my jazz-history classes, and the students are always dazzled. If proof be needed of Evans' phenomenal artistic growth in his final years, these will more than suffice.
I do not use the word "phenomenal" lightly. When Bill Evans made these recordings, he was 50 years old—past the age when most jazz musicians make major changes in their playing. Not even Miles Davis altered his own playing significantly past his late forties. So to hear Evans at the twilight of his career taking the risks he did, and succeeding as often as he did, is inspiring to me as a musician/listener/fan. Pianists like Harold Danko (who along with critic Bob Blumenthal did exemplary notes for this set), Jim McNeely, and others who heard Evans at the Village Vanguard at that time have expressed similar feelings.
In any case, for anyone with a serious interest in the art of Bill Evans, Turn Out The Stars is must-hear music.
This blog entry posted by Bill Kirchner
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June 27, 2009
Diana Krall at Carnegie Hall
Will Friedwald brings to his music criticism a deep knowledge of the American jazz and popular vocal tradition. His books include Jazz Singing, Sinatra: The Song is You, and Stardust Melodies. Friedwald was in attendance at Diana Krall’s Carnegie Hall concert last Wednesday, and shares his perspective below. T.G.
Fifteen years ago, at the time of her American debut, I initially thought of Diana Krall not only as cold but the icy figurehead of an entire movement of emotionally detached and even frigid divas who seemed to be all the rage in the mid-‘90s. Then, towards the end of that decade, around the time that she made her “breakthrough” album When I Look In Your Eyes with Johnny Mandel (and it’s follow up, The Look of Love, with Claus Ogerman), Ms. Krall seemed to be growing noticeably warmer. With two recent albums, From This Moment On (2006) and the especially excellent Christmas Songs of 2005 (probably my favorite holiday album of the last decade), the temperature was steadily rising. Then, just this week (Wednesday June 25), at the second of two nights at Carnegie Hall, Ms. Krall became red hot.
She opened with a breakneck reading of Peggy Lee’s “Love Being Here With You,” delivered so fast it might give you whiplash. She sped through the lyrics like she assumed everyone in the room already knew them, and, therefore, she didn’t have to take the time to enunciate all the words carefully. It was fast, lively, and swinging; at the piano, especially, there are a lot of virtuoso keyboardists (or even pianist-singers) who can play with a lot more harmonic depth and sophistication (admittedly the case for her instrumental skills was not helping by the acoustics at Carnegie; it was impossible to tell if the piano was made by Steinway or Fisher-Price), but Krall plays in such a way as to remind us that the piano primarily belongs in the jazz rhythm section. On fast numbers in particular, her timing is everything. (The rest of her quartet, guitarist Anthony Wilson, bassist Robert Hurst, and drummer Jeff Hamilton, are a major plus).
On the ballads, Krall is more romantic than ever. The second tune at Carnegie, “Do It Again,” introduced the 41-piece classical orchestra, playing the string arrangements of conductor Alan Broadbent (wearing a white tuxedo jacket that made him look like an elegant Good Humor Man) and Claus Ogerman, who arranged her current album, Quiet Nights. Somehow by getting less hot—and less conspicuously “jazzy”—she waxes warmer in an emotional sense. She pays more attentive to the lyric and shows more concerns with the underlying emotion beneath a song, and grows more capable of making listeners sizzle.
Much of her new release, Quiet Nights, seems like a two-headed attempt both to create a sequel to The Look of Love and, at the same time, to remake Mr. Ogerman’s collaboration with Frank Sinatra and Antonio Carlos Jobim on the classic Sinatra-Jobim album. The big bossa hits on Quiet Nights, especially the title track, “Boy From Ipanema,” and “So Nice,” are just so monumentally overdone that I can’t bear to listen to them anymore, even from a singer I like. (I prefer her duet with Rosemary Clooney on “Ipanema” from the musical matriarch’s Brazil album.) Yet the title aside, most of the album, thankfully, is non-Brazilian. Contrarily, her renditions of a pair of ‘60s pop hits, “Walk on By” and “How Can You Mend a Broken Heart,” are so fresh and lively that I almost forget I’ve ever heard them. (In terms of worthy 2009 releases, she also has a wonderful duet on “If I Had You” with Willie Nelson on the country icon’s new standards album, American Classic.)
Comparing Quiet Nights to her relatively loud night at Carnegie brings out a couple of important points: when she played Radio City in 2002 and 2004, I remember thinking that as good as she was in front of a live audience, she came across exactly in person like she was on record—the concert seemed like a stage version of what she was doing on her albums, rather than the other way around. (That’s possibly why her live albums usually turn out so well.) Yet this week, for the first time, I was conscious of Ms. Krall doing all sorts of stuff that wouldn’t find its way onto an album, even a live one. Her treatment of “I’ve Grown Accustomed To His Face” is lovely on the record, but in person, she works in an ingenious intro that quotes liberally from “Wouldn’t It Be Loverly” (another My Fair Lady number). Here’s a sign that she’s beginning to take her place in with the ranks of more experienced singer-instrumentalist-bon-vivants like Michael Feinstein, John Pizzarelli, and Anne Hampton—doing shtick both musical and verbal that’s only meant for the in-person audience.
I also vaguely remember that seven years ago, Ms. Krall barely spoke a word, the whole Radio City show also resembled a CD in that it was essentially one song after another without any spoken interruption. This week, she chatted at length at several points, in such a way as to deliberately convey that she’s not a practiced public speaker. She uses a lot of local British Columbia references most Americans (let alone New Yorkers) won’t understand. She talks about her family, she drops the names of Barack Obama and Barbra Streisand (prominent democrats both), and then chides herself for doing so. Not everything she says is completely coherent, but it all serves its apparently intended purpose of showing us that she’s completely comfortable talking casually in front of a crowd, and is no longer trying to hide behind a piano.
“Exactly Like You” is one of the highlights of From This Moment On: admittedly borrowed from Nat King Cole, it’s one of the few King Cole Trio arrangements that features a drummer (by 1949, the pianist had added latin percussionist Jack Costanzo to his threesome), and so it’s a perfect choice for Krall’s quartet. “Exactly Like You” swings agreeably on the album, but in person it expands and breathes much more, the same way as it undoubtedly did when Cole performed it in clubs; the song simply becomes more alive. The only spoken comment I distinctly remember from 2002 was in praise of Cole; at Carnegie, she spoke of listening to him “every single day. She proved it with a stunning reading of “Pick Yourself Up,” in which she played both the roles of Nat Cole and George Shearing by herself.
The set varied adroitly between the quartet, the full orchestra, and even two unaccompanied piano solos—both of which, “Louisiana” and “Singin’ The Blues” were obviously aimed at the Bix Beiderbecke fans in the house (the latter directly quoted the famous cornet solo). She wound up by reprising Peggy Lee on “I Don’t Know Enough About You,” building to a rousing piano solo that called to mind the late Herman Foster. “Every Time We Say Goodbye” (Ogerman’s chart seems inspired by Ray Charles & Betty Carter) then served as a bonus track for the concert, much as it does for the Quiet Nights album.
I remember in 2002, the show seemed to drag a little bit towards the end. Here, she practically did a full two hours, without intermission, or any sign of a letup. At 44, Ms. Krall is steadily growing as a musician, an entertainer, and a presence.
This blog entry posted by Will Friedwald
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June 26, 2009
Michael Jackson (1958-2009): A View from the Jazz Camp
Michael Jackson, for all his considerable talents, never enjoyed a large following among jazz devotees. His songs are rarely covered by jazz bands (although with one very famous exception), and if you raise his name in a discussion with serious jazzistas, they will usually change the topic to his former producer Quincy Jones, whose artistry is more closely aligned with jazz values.
Yet jazz fans are not immune to the appeal of pop. They will embrace a great songwriter like Joni Mitchell; or a pop star who fills his band with jazz players like Sting; or a hitmaker who shows some impressive instrumental chops like Stevie Wonder. But Michael Jackson did not fit easily into any of these categories.
Yet Jackson had a better sense of the changes transforming the entertainment world during the late 20th century than any of these figures. Jazz fans not only should mourn his passing, but perhaps learn from his example, Then as now, formulas were changing, technologies were evolving, and Michael Jackson was the perfect talent to seize the opportunities of this new era.
In particular, the concept of the singer-songwriter—so powerful during the 1970s (and whose individualism was very congruent with the jazz sensibility)—would collapse as a platform for popular music during the 1980s. The intimacy and nuanced effects of this approach were not well suited to a multimedia age, which wanted something larger and more spectacular. Michael Jackson provided this panem et circenses spectacle, although in his case it was a spectacle that sometimes continued offstage and in private life.
The arrival of music videos and cable television was almost like a second coming of talking movies. Just as during that earlier age, audiences were attracted to stars who could exploit the full potential of the new medium. A half-century before, movie releases had been marketed for their “all singing, all talking, all dancing” grandeur. The screen might be smaller at the home entertainment center during the 1980s, but the appetite for powerful visual effects was much the same. A Stevie Wonder or Joni Mitchell, for all their musical talent—no doubt deeper than Jackson’s when measured in mere sharps and flats—were not capable of operating on this level.
In truth, no musical performer of his generation had a more powerful visual impact on the screen than Michael Jackson. He was so dynamic in front of the camera, that the Disney corporation even built a 3D film for its theme parks around him—and got Francis Ford Coppola to direct it and George Lucas to serve as executive producer. What a strange turn of events: after all, 3D films had always focused on massive effects, scary or scenic, something on a Grand Canyon type of scale. Now a 3D film was built around a personality?
But Michael Jackson was not just another personality—he also operated on a Grand Canyon kind of scale. And I can assure you from the lines I encountered when I went to see Captain EO at Disneyland, that this was a hugely popular attraction. How many films do you know that enjoy a decade-long run? In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if the movie has a return engagement in the near future.
But it was in the more downsized and compact format of the music video where Michael Jackson crystallized his artistry and built his enormous audience. Here is the core of his legacy, one that you will not be able to appreciate if you simply listen to the compact disks or study the lead sheets.
This is not to dismiss his purely musical talents—Jackson’s genuine skills as a singer had been clear from his earliest years. And through some strange biological fluke—perhaps aided by who-knows-what—Jackson retained the childlike quality of his voice even after he reached adulthood. To some degree, he reminded me of Ella Fitzgerald, who also managed to convey a sweet innocence, almost the exact opposite of the sassiness and sultriness around her, and put its stamp on everything she sang. Jackson was the same, and in the midst of a music scene that featured some of the most brazen and push-the-envelope acts in the history of music—the Sex Pistols were formed at almost the same moment that the Jackson 5 left Motown—he always held on to the ingenuous aura of the child star.
But it was as a dancer that Michael Jackson parlayed his talents into superstardom. It was the moonwalk that killed the singer-songwriters, who stayed hidden behind their pianos and guitars while Jackson strutted the big stage. Youngsters everywhere imitated his steps, not his voice, and even today, his footwork is admired and emulated by countless stars and wannabe stars. (See some example here.)
All of this is foreign to the jazz sensibility. Jazz once had a close relationship with popular dance—not coincidentally during its period of greatest financial success. But in the 1980s, jazz had lost this connection. Jazz bands might be able to cover Jackson's tunes (not often, as I noted above—I still remember working in a combo where the sidemen rebelled after the leader wanted to play “Beat It”; he gave up and called another tune); but they could not assimilate the full effect of Michael Jackson, which started with his toes and only gradually arrived at the vocal chords and cerebellum.
Jazz fans did know about Quincy Jones, however. They had known about Jones long before Jackson and the mass audience had discovered him. They would give him much of the credit for Jackson’s hits, and certainly he played a key part in the elevation of this pop superstar. Yet Jones's brilliance lay in adapting his techniques to Jackson's inherent strengths and potent charisma—and not merely applying some formula he had learned from his jazz days.
The production tricks Jones brought to these hit tracks are fascinating to study. And sometimes daring in bizarre ways. How did Jones ever get the idea of taking little snippets of Jackson squeaking out high notes, and use them as background effects—almost like birds chirping on the trees? Then Jones would mix this amalgamation of quasi-ambient sounds with a lead vocal, hypnotic bassline and a very 80s-style rhythmic sensibility. All this was a far cry from what Jones had done with Sinatra and jazz players, but give this man—born in 1933—his due for understanding the new sensibility in a a way that no one of his generation could approach.
If you had any doubts that this was the right formula, you merely needed to look at the Billboard charts. The Jackson-Jones collaborations sold around 200 million albums. The duo eventually parted ways, and Jackson was focused on producing his own music. Yet he never came close to matching the sales of his work with QJ.
Jazz fans might think that this success was driven more by technology (videos, cable TV) than by musical factors. But a close examination of the history of jazz shows that the same marriage of music and technology has driven its own success. The possibility of jazz as an improvised art form with large scale distribution depended on the invention of sound recordings. Benny Goodman’s immense success—and indeed the whole phenomenon of the Swing Era—would not have been possible without the widespread adoption of radios in American households. Without long-playing records there would have been no Kind of Blue or A Love Supreme.
Music and technology have always been interlinked, ever since the first cave dweller figured out how make a bone into a flute, the hide of an animal into a drum. If the jazz world didn’t embrace Jackson, it was due to the fact that the technologies he parlayed into fame were those which jazz players were either unable or unwilling to assimilate into their own creative endeavors.
Yet it’s clear to me that, two decades after Jackson’s biggest hits, the jazz world can still learn from his example. Only nowadays, the stakes from comprehending the symbiotic relationship of music, technology and media are even higher.
This blog entry posted by Ted Gioia
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June 25, 2009
Why France Pays for a Jazz Festival in Germany
American jazz fans, who are mourning the loss of so many jazz institutions, can only marvel at the situation in France. This country not only supports hundreds of its own festivals, but the government even sponsors a festival in Germany to provide a international platform for its home-grown jazz talent. Hey, why not recognize that music can boost the economy as one of a nation's most distinctive exports? Thierry Quénum reports below on proceedings at Jazzdor Berlin, now in its third year. T.G.
Eric Watson & Christof Lauer
It is well known that in Europe, jazz is not only considered as an art form (rather than some type of entertainment) but that governments tend to support it both at home and as a show window of the national culture. Hence, most European nations have found their own way of promoting their jazz artists.
France, arguably the European nation with the biggest institutional support for jazz, has always favored the exportation of its musicians abroad. In Berlin, the capital city of neighboring Germany, France has a Bureau Export de la Musique Française (French Music Export Office) that takes care of the interests of French labels and musicians East of the Rhine.
For three years, this government sponsored institution has asked Philippe Ochem, the director of the Jazzdor Festival in Strasbourg (a city that is not only at the border between France and Germany but that hosts the seat of the European Parliament—see my account of the last Jazzdor festival here) to supervise another festival in Berlin to promote French jazz artists and French/German encounters. Ochem definitely was the best choice for the job, since his festival has a long tradition of border crossing and of being open to musicians from neighboring countries, including Germany.
For this third edition of the Jazzdor Berlin festival, he put together a well balanced program of younger and elder musicians playing various styles, from modern mainstream to outright adventurous. Housed by the Babylon, a 400 seats venue set on the Rosa-Luxemburg Platz, close to Alexanderplatz—the most famous square of former East Berlin, now a major shopping center of the reunited German capital, close to the huge television tower—most of the festival’s concerts were broadcast nationwide by the German Cultural Radio, and they were attended by hundreds of curious Berliners.
One of the youngest band was the trio of Géraldine Laurent, an alto sax player who reached fame when her debut album was released on the Dreyfus Jazz label two years ago. [Editor’s note: Laurent was featured here recently as one of ”Ten Hot Young Altoists.”] With her sharp, raw sound and delivery, and an unpredictable phrasing with strong Parkerian roots, Laurent brought a whiff of fresh air to the French scene, where newcomers are often brought up in prestigious conservatories. In Berlin, it appeared that she may have to take a turn and get a more professional rhythm section if she wants to evolve. What sounded young and fresh two years ago (and may still have sounded so to the German audience) on a repertoire of old and modern standards didn’t quite meet the hopes of listeners who expect a lot from this gifted energetic soloist.
The duet of French baritone player François Corneloup and veteran British drummer Paul Lovens was a premiere, hence had no risk of sounding repetitious. Its approach to sound is built on a partnership within which each player deeply stimulates the other melodically, rhythmically and also with regard to the timbre of their instruments. Corneloup—arguably one of the top baritone players in Europe—digs deep in the low register and explores the high one without resorting to the clichés that can be attached to his horn. Lovens, on the other end, searches for unheard of groove licks and rare, sometimes hilarious sounds all over his minimal drum kit. The inventiveness of this duet could bring back faith in the improvisational process to the most depressed or blasé jazz buff!
The European-TV-Brass-Trio is Matthias Schriefl (trumpet), Daniel Casimir (trombone)—both German—and French tuba player François Thuillier. The sound they produce is dense, brassy and they mold it according to their moods and humor. Vocalizing on their instruments is one of their favorite techniques and it broadens the spectrum of these virtuosos, who each have their own solo career besides playing in various ensembles. As instrumentalists, they have reached far beyond mere pyrotechnics on their horns to obtain a trio sound that can be pastoral as well as full of groove, and is a sheer delight to the ears.
That’s what another virtuoso failed to propose. Baptiste Trotignon was the young star of French jazz piano some 10 years ago, and his reputation is still high after the recent issue of his last CD recorded in NYC with a US quintet featuring Tom Harrell and Mark Turner. With his usual French trio, though, he displayed his brilliant instrumental technique with strong classical roots and a stifling tendency to mannerism. This rather typically French “intellectual” approach to jazz all but prevented the interaction between the members of the trio from being convincing and from lighting the fire of swing both on standards and original compositions. The music came across like a beautiful looking, well proportioned statue, but cold and devoid of primal vibration.
Trombonist Yves Robert’s trio was just the opposite. With bassist Bruno Chevillon—one of the stars of the upright bass in the last 20 years—and younger, ever inventive drummer Franck Vaillant, Robert not only showed that he’s one of the greatest stylists of his instrument on the European scene, but that he also is a highly original composer and leader. His long lasting complicity with Chevillon allows them both to invent new ways of combining their low key instruments. Vaillant, between his two virtuoso elders, produces a continuous array of ever surprising percussive sounds and micro-rhythmic cells. They are a wonder per se, and give the triangle a greatly original, catchy edge.
Vaillant was to play again right after—and to show the diversity of his stylistic ability—with Print, a tenor/alto/bass/drums quartet that has an even more experimental conception of interaction. It has searched in diverse directions (Steve Coleman, The Belgian Aka Moon trio, West African percussion ensembles…) to broaden its musical scope and its approach to improvisation. The result is a dense set where the horns’ solos alternate or intertwine while looking more for intensity than for formal perfection. Meanwhile the drums and bass knit a tight, efficient polyrhythmic support, mostly on uneven meters. Print’s quest for challenging musical settings is definitely as stimulating for its players as it is for the listeners who are looking for something new.
The younger quartet of soprano sax newcomer Emile Parisien has a more traditional—be it only because the piano anchors it in the harmonic field—but not less interesting approach. It is still in an experimental phase and the leader’s solos sometime have an overly expressionist feel that time will calm down. Still the group’s sound identity and interaction show an impressive maturity. André Minvielle was the veteran and sole vocalist of the Jazzdor Berlin Festival. He’s used to being alone on stage with a few small percussions and some electronic effects, but he mainly sings in French, Spanish and Gascon (a Southwestern French dialect). So, fronting a mostly German and English speaking audience was something of a challenge. But musicians rooted in a Southern local tradition like him have a way with people that goes beyond the language barrier. With his stupendous vocal and rhythmic technique, humorous or poetic scatting and “south of the—German—border” storytelling routine, Minvielle put the Babylon audience under his spell and left them stunned.
Pianist Eric Watson is usually considered as a French resident since he’s been living in Paris for decades, speaks an exquisitely refined French an has even been artistic director of the La Villette festival in Paris for a couple of years. Lately he’s shied away from stages, concentrating mainly on composing and on his new job as a teacher at the Strasbourg Conservatory. Jazzdor Berlin had the good idea of offering him a double bill: a group of his students was to play some of his older charts that they had worked on during the last semester, then Watson was to present some of his new compositions that he would play in duo with his long time companion Christof Lauer, one of Germany’s greatest stars of the tenor and soprano saxes. The student concert was interesting in that it showed a sextet of piano/sax/guitar/vibes + rhythm section in the making, with its strengths and weaknesses. Some of these young players already have a personality. Others need to work more and to play outside of their peer group, but all of them benefited from working on the challenging scores of a rooted yet non-conformist musician such as Watson.
Watson himself was a bit tense at the perspective of stepping onstage again for the first time in a year to tackle brand new material. But his compositions were so stimulating that he and his partner were soon immersed in the music and created an atmosphere that oscillated between darkness and light in an utterly romantic way, daring strong contrasts of dynamics on the piano, making apt use of the registers of the soprano and tenor, conjuring up memories of Monk and Trane, two of the long time influences of Watson and Lauer. It takes seasoned musicians in their fifties like them, though, to be able to carve their own art in the present time without copying past masters, and the audience was spellbound by the intensity of this beautiful performance.
Jazzdor Berlin may then well be said to have fulfilled its mission. As far as diversity and quality are concerned, it displayed a good panel of the French jazz scene and showed that its musical relationships with its big neighbor are well on their way. No wonder, then, that the Berlin and national German press who were present at the festival showed their appreciation and considered that Jazzdor Berlin fully deserves its place in the cultural landscape of the the German capital city.
This blog entry posted by Thierry Quénum
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June 24, 2009
Jazz Stars Gather to Celebrate Jazz Forum
The jazz stars were out in full force at Jazz at Lincoln Center’s Frederick Rose Hall to celebrate the 30th anniversary of Jazz Forum. At least six NEA Jazz Masters were in attendance, and a few individuals who will no doubt have that honor in the future. Jazz.com’s arnold jay smith was also on hand to cover the proceedings. T.G.
The year 1979 had jazz magic written all over it. Among the mojo births were NPR’s Marian McPartland’s Piano Jazz, Newark Public Radio station WBGO, even my first foray into education, “Jazz Insights” at the New School, which breathed its last in 2005. Notably in 1979 the Jazz Forum loft opened its doors above a birdseed company on Cooper Square in N.Y.C. Loft Jazz, as the phenomenon had come to be known—in reality artists who needed rent money for their converted factory warehouses so they invited musicians of every stripe to play—was also waning. The lofts had become eponymous breeding grounds for the avant-garde.
In the case of Jazz Forum—the name stemmed from a Polish Jazz Organization—the music was mainstream with some twists. It’s founder, Mark Morganelli, a trumpeter who quickly learned that competition made his efforts better placed elsewhere, gathered musicians to “rehearse” together in woodshed fashion. Morganelli morphed into a full-fledged promoter as his loft became mobile due to increasing rents and the need for space. It seemed that the landlords of said lofts saw dollar signs and evicted the lease-less artists after they renovated and made the spaces not only livable but luxurious, with kitchens and bathrooms no less.
After Cooper Square came the more popular “Bleecker and Broadway” location with its access through an alley in the dark days of the Apple. “The elevator was quirky, at best,” Barry Harris said in an interview on WBGO. “But once up there and the door opened you were among friends.”
My personal moments were when pianists performed in tandem: Harris, Tommy Flanagan, John Hicks, Cedar Walton, Ronnie Mathews, Albert Dailey, Junior Mance, Kenny Barron, Dr. Billy Taylor, Walter Davis, Jr., Walter Bishop, Jr. and more. The visitors heard musicians who, whether established or neophytes, came to play.
Morganelli took the Jazz Forum format and created Jazz Forum Arts for concerts in and around New York City, especially in Westchester where he rented space in—and saved—an old theatre with concerts including dedications to and with Dizzy Gillespie and David Amram. The Amram do’s began with a 50th birthday celebration at Bleecker and Broadway which still reverberates with its guest list of star power from radio, television, the movies, the arts replete with paparazzi, movie and TV cameras and microphones. Amram, who was at a warm memorial for Blossom Dearie, will become an OctoJAZZarian in a couple of years, and is expected to celebrate at a Morganelli affair. (A complete bio of Mark Morganelli and his multitude of accomplishments may be found here.)
On the night of June 22 some of us came out to shout hosannas at Jazz at Lincoln Center’s Rose Hall. All of the 17 participants played at one or more of the Jazz Forums or Morganelli’s later incarnations. Harris opened the festivities by “addressing” his instrument. I mean he actually spoke to it as if warning it that it had better behave. His trio mates, Ray Drummond, bass, and Leroy Williams, drums, looked on in amazement if not bemusement. He used a Monkian forearm device on “Like Someone In Love” and some Bud Powell echoes on “All God’s Children Got Rhythm” before bringing up Lou Donaldson. Sweet Lou played and sang two of his trademarked blues including a vocal on “Whisky Drinkin’ Woman.” We’ve heard it a hundred times before, but it still gets a laugh.
I should point out that no new ground was broken here; the entire evening was reminisces in the talking and the playing. Donaldson closed with “Wee” which he noted was dedicated to bebop as played at the 79th St. Boat Basin concerts that Morganelli produced.
Earlier in the evening Annie Ross also sang at that Dearie memorial. Now it was her former partner’s turn. Jon Hendricks & Co.—daughter Aria as Annie, and Kevin Burke as Dave Lambert, plus rhythm that included guitarist Paul Meyers—did a brooch of tunes which ranged from bossa to Basie with a stop at Horace Silver. Two questions: can “Jumpin’ At The Woodside” get any faster with its extended “blowing” interludes? And will Aria ever stop smiling? Her face must hurt.
Walton’s trio included Drummond, who was doing double duty due to the absent Buster Williams, and drummer Louis Hayes. He chose the original “Time After Time” (Sinatra from It Happened in Brooklyn) and glancing at his watch—Rose is a Union Hall after all—intro-ed George Coleman, who began hesitatingly but dug in after his opening chorus.
After the interval Joe Lovano, George Mraz and Al Foster broke the mold by dedicating “Fort Worth” to Ornette Coleman. The set was the highlight for me as John Scofield juxtaposed the lead with the unusual choice of “Days of Wine and Roses.” Lovano returned to trade some 4’s on “Budo.” Some nice fire and ice there.
It was obvious when Barron’s trio took the stage—Rufus Reid, bass, and Jimmy Cobb, drums—that time was fast becoming an issue. Surprisingly, “What Is This Thing Called Love?” did not become “Hot House” or “Subconscious Lee” although it had its moments. Claudio Roditi, flugelhorn and Paquito D’Rivera on clarinet joined the final blow on “Ow!” as Morganelli, also on flugel, and new guy Gregory Rivkin on trumpet added some fireworks. Hendricks had the final “words.”
I hasten to add that Morganelli and I worked together at Birdland, the Second Coming on 105th St. and Broadway, and on other projects over the decades. From this perspective, and with the benefit of 20-20 hindsight, we can safely say that the jazz world would have been significantly different if Jazz Forum hadn’t existed and that Morganelli hadn’t persisted.
This blog entry posted by arnold jay smith
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June 23, 2009
Gary Burton & Pat Metheny Perform at Berklee
Roanna Forman, who covers the Boston jazz scene for jazz.com, recently reported in this column on performances by Steve Kuhn, Jane Monheit and Hiromi. Now she reviews Gary Burton and Pat Metheny's concert at Boston’s Berklee Performance Center last Saturday. T.G.
Question: How many parts nostalgia and how many parts new ground in this recent concert at Boston’s Berklee Performance Center? Answer: Equal. “Picking up where they left off,” as Steve Swallow wrote, this famous group had plenty new to say after thirty years, thanks to their own improvisatory powers and the different energy of drummer Antonio Sanchez.
It was a stage filled with wunderkind-to-doyen phenomena: Gary Burton, who formed the Gary Burton Quartet when he was 24, and is now a jazz icon; Pat Metheny, whose hook-up with Burton and Swallow at age 20 started a path to jazz stardom; and Antonio Sanchez, a Berklee student in the 90’s who, catching a casual glimpse of Gary Burton on campus, never dreamed he’d be playing one day with what he calls “jazz royalty.”
Looking out over the audience, Burton mused that Berklee Performance Center was the hall he always imagined playing in while practicing, unlike his friend Michael Brecker, who once confessed to Burton he dreaded it, picturing an army of musicians scrutinizing his every move and note.
No such worry for Gary Burton at this Boston concert; he couldn’t have had a warmer crowd. The heavy concentration of music students and musicians not gigging that night were as friendly as ever: rising for a standing ovation at opening; yelling out “Perfect!” after Pat Metheny brought “Question and Answer” in for a landing; and registering on the applause meter the relative number of drummers, guitarists, bass players (egged on by Swallow to raise their hands), and vibes players (“come on, applaud, both of you,” Burton urged.)
The concert, part of a tour that suggested itself when the group appeared at the Montreal Jazz Festival, centered on tunes done by the Quartet when Pat Metheny joined it. There were songs by band members, as well as key artists of that time like Chick Corea (“Sea Journey”) and Keith Jarrett (“Coral”). The show was at the same time a retrospective on the era-defining music that contributed to a changed conception of jazz—more electric; incorporating rock elements; and more accessible to lay audience’s ears, like Steve Swallow’s “Como en Vietnam” and Gary Burton’s “Walter L.”
I can say musically of Burton, Metheny, and Swallow what Gary said himself in his precise, understated way, “I believe you know everybody but I’m going to introduce them anyway.” Burton continues to be technically impeccable. He never labors over his instrument, but works the four mallets like a painter—with the right touch here, the right mallet action there, to create smoothness, or he’ll move furiously up and down its length in more burning pieces. Each phrase is like a clear thought that occurs to him, whether he ends mid-measure or completes the progression down to the last beat.
When the spotlight turned to Pat Metheny, he would tell a story with each solo. Metheny never sounds like he’s playing over changes even with straight-ahead arrangements. He’s playing more than notes—maybe a cry, a wail, wonder, whatever he feels as he builds the solo. He began the lines of “Question and Answer” playing his archtop, and ended it, as he characteristically does, with guitar synthesizer, playing a leave-no-prisoners solo with the rhythm section solidly supporting him. Yet the guitar synth, used also on “Walter L,” literally distorts Metheny’s enormous gift. His musicality is more fully developed and appreciated on the archtop, which is his signature sound.
You might say Steve Swallow has the same sensibility as Metheny, although the reverse is more accurate, given the chronology. He was in great form, with some especially fine soloing on “Falling Grace,” the second tune Steve Swallow ever wrote. (We can forgive Gary Burton some historical inaccuracy for introducing the song as Swallow’s first composition. That would be “Eiderdown.” Whatever.)
Burton, Metheny, and Swallow are a known quantity, with a huge discography and a synergy one expected to stay intact onstage, even after many years. Yet Antonio Sanchez, although he has been recorded with this group, is new to the mix, so the big question was how he changed the group’s sound. Sanchez brought very tight, musical playing to this already powerful unit, and added quite a bit of kick. On slower numbers like “Olhos de Gato,” “B & G,” and “Coral,” his steadiness kept the tunes calm, with well-placed accents on bass drum and sticks. He was driving hard, and finished the high energy tunes sitting back on his seat, like a fighter who had given his strongest punch in the ring. Sanchez is a highly musical drummer: you clearly heard the tune to “Como En Vietnam” throughout his excellent solo, over and above the rhythmic figures. A less skilled drummer might be merely flashy and lose the thread to the original music during a solo.
Not surprisingly, certain of these tunes frame the vibraphone better than others. With a rhythm section smooth as glass, “Coral” shone bright as a sunset bell. Similarly, “Hullo Bolinas” sets off vibes well, and the entire band was in sync with the sensibility of this lilting, quirky tune by Steve Swallow. On songs where guitar had a prominent place, like “Question and Answer” and “Walter L,” there tended to be an imbalance in the sound and you couldn’t hear Gary Burton well enough, which was unfortunate.
Besides ensemble playing, there were several duets. A nice exchange between Burton and Sanchez on “Syndrome” brought out the percussive qualities of the vibes and the musical aspects of the drums. The centerpiece duets of the concert featured Burton and Metheny, pairing them in different contexts. With Metheny rapidly strumming acoustic guitar, Burton laid out an uptempo “Summertime” in 6/8, during which the lighting crew was a bit late switching back to Burton after Pat Metheny’s solo.
Picking up the archtop, Metheny then backed the vibes on Jobim’s “O Grande Amor,” where Burton pretty much played within the constraints of the form. While the guitar solo started closer to the Brazilian voicings you would expect (or American jazz guitarists’ takes on Brazilian voicings), Metheny flattened and widened the lines into shapes more typically his own on the second chorus. He then began a piece on his 42-string custom-built “Pikasso Guitar”—imagine harp, sitar, and acoustic guitar all in one, with Gary Burton joining eventually.
As for nostalgia, which was part of the original question about this concert, it was definitely there. No matter how much we say that what counts in jazz is experimenting and moving forward, we do come back to what James Lincoln Collier referred to in Ken Burns Jazz as the solace of the music of our youth. When the band broke into its encore, “Unquity Road,” the man I was with sat transfixed, tapping his foot and singing every note of Pat’s song about the Boston street both of them had ridden down some thirty years ago.
This blog entry posted by Roanna Forman
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June 22, 2009
Remembering Charlie Mariano (1923-2009)
Saxophonist Charlie Mariano, who passed away in Germany last week at age 85, was one of the most expansive players of his generation. Yet American jazz fans saw little of this artist’s breadth and depth, since much of the finest and most creative work of this Boston-born altoist took place overseas. Jazz.com’s Paris-based contributor Thierry Quénum experienced this music up close, and spent time with Mariano on a number of occasions. He shares his thoughts and recollections below. T.G.
Lots of American jazz musician have settled in Europe for a shorter or longer time over the past decades, beginning with Sidney Bechet and Kenny Clarke in the fifties, on to Ed Thigpen, Chet Baker, or more recently Leon Parker.
Charlie Mariano, who just died age 85 in Cologne, Germany—where he had settled more than 30 years ago—was a good example of a musician whose crossing of the Atlantic was coupled with an opening up to the music by the world at large. Meanwhile, he maintained his ability to play the jazz styles he’d learned as a young man, and continued developing as a master improviser and balladeer. He thus became an example and a favorite partner for the younger European musicians he often played with.
Having had the privilege of hearing Charlie Mariano a number of times on stage and in the recording studio and having talked with him on several occasions backstage and in various other places, I though the best eulogy I could do for him was to share that experience with jazz amateurs who might have lost track with this fine stylist of the alto saxophone, and exquisite human being.
Most jazz buffs know about Mariano’s stint with the Kenton band, where he replaced Lee Konitz in 1953. Ironically, Mariano told me that he didn’t like this orchestra—nor did Konitz who, by the way was, to become his ‘almost neighbor’ in Cologne a few decades later; as an improviser, Mariano was never much interested in playing with big bands at large. Unlike lots of his Kenton band mates, he didn’t care much either for the relaxed Californian atmosphere, and soon went back to his native Boston after Kenton. There he studied, then taught at the Berklee College of Music (Richie Beirach kept reminding him he’d been his student, Charlie told me), and in the fifties, except for his good friend Frank Rosolino, Mariano always felt closer to Bostonians—like Jaki Byard, Herb Pomeroy, Dick Twardzik, Alan Dawson or Quincy Jones—than with the West Coast players.
TRACKS REVIEWED ON JAZZ.COM FEATURING CHARLES MARIANO
Bill Holman: You Go to My Head
Quincy Jones: King Road Blues
Stan Kenton: Hav-A-Havana
Stan Kenton: The Opener
Shelly Manne: Bernie’s Tune
Charles Mariano: Avoid the Year of the Monkey
Charles Mariano: Helen 12 Trees
Charles Mariano: Neverglades Pixie
Charles Mariano: Parvati’s Dance
Charles Mariano: Thorn of a White Rose
Charles Mingus: Track a Solo Dancer
Frank Rosolino: Frank n’ Earnest
See also jazz.com encyclopedia entry on Charles Mariano
Neither was he as close to Bird as most altoists of his generation were. Mariano’s parents and elder sister were Italian-born. They listened to a lot of opera and Neapolitan songs and his sister became a classical pianist. All this made Mariano conscious of his specific cultural background and of his interest for lyrical playing rather than for Parker-like virtuosity. So, when he settled for a time in Japan with then wife pianist-arranger Toshiko Akiyoshi, Mariano got more interested in composing melodies and learning the flute than in tackling complex big band music.
His return to the US in the early sixties saw him, among others, in two unusual situations. The first one was with Charles Mingus, with whom he recorded three times. Mariano’s recollection of the reputedly often irate bassist and leader is paradoxically that of a man who was always nice to him and defended him when people asked why he’d hired a white musician. Second, though he’d met Coltrane several times, admired him and was influenced by him, Mariano admits that he was scared to death when Elvin Jones hired him in 65 to record Dear John C. for Impulse.
But for Mariano the big turn of the sixties was his trip to Malaysia which triggered his interest in South-Eastern and Indian music, a subject that he studied passionately for years. In the last years of his life, Charlie still went to India for a couple of months each winter, to play and study. Avowedly a non-spiritual musician, unlike Coltrane, Mariano saw in this type of music a brand new field of exploration for his interests in melody and rhythm, and an occasion to play new instruments like the nagaswaram, which he’d often used on future recordings, or to perform with ensembles like the Indian Karnataka College of Percussion.
In the early seventies, when he decided to come to Europe—where he’d heard there were more playing opportunities than in Boston—he knew few musicians there. Still he soon became familiar with the likes of German bass player Eberhard Weber and Italian drummer Aldo Romano as well as Belgian guitarist Philippe Catherine and Belgian keyboardist Jasper Van’t Hof, with whom he played and recorded until the last years of his life. In Europe he also met Lebanese oud player Rabih Abou Khalil, with whose international band he played, recorded and toured from the mid eighties onward.
Over the course of his 30 some years in Europe, Mariano evolved into one of the most broadly open musician you could meet both sides of the Atlantic. You could hear him in India with young jazz musicians like guitarist Hamid Heri, eager to mix the US tradition with their own non-harmonic roots or with traditional Algerian players like the Smahi brothers. You could hear him in Europe with musicians hardly younger than him such as Swiss drummer Daniel Humair and Spanish pianist Tete Montoliu, as well as with other ones who could be his grandsons like French pianist Jean-Christophe Cholet, German bass player Dieter Ilg, or Hungarian drummer Elemér Balàzs, playing standards or original compositions. You could hear him in quartet with fellow US pianist Bob Degen, or with seasoned arranger Vince Mendoza, improvising on Ravel melodies scored for a jazz orchestra.
What’s more, Mariano never sounded his age, and never indulged into nostalgia about any type of “glorious past.” When asked about the decline in the tradition of playing standards, which he mastered so well, he answered me : “It’s not that important to me. The standards used to be a vehicle for musicians to communicate during jam sessions. Today we play mostly original compositions and that’s very challenging. All this remains music, anyway.” The very words of an old wise man with a youthful vision of the art he’d practiced for so long, on four continents.
This blog entry posted by Thierry Quénum
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