Jazz Journal – 2013

December 2013

The Melissa Kassel & Tom Zicarelli Quartet continues to bring in regulars and new fans to their monthly gigs at the Lily Pad.  And for good reason.  Partially it is a matter of the quality of what is going on.  To some extent quality is an attraction for at least some music fans.  But the other factor is that this is a straight-ahead band, and most jazz fans still are enamored of straight-ahead jazz exclusively.  But this quartet is a rather strange example of a straight-ahead band.  For example, at one point 12/5 at the Lily Pad Melissa mentioned that she was about to sing the only work she has written that incorporates conventional rhyme.  Considering that this ensemble performs mostly Kassel- Zicarelli originals, one gets some idea of how non-straight this straight-ahead ensemble is.  In other words, people who show up for Kassel- Zicarelli gigs get mainstream vocal-instrumental music, but they also don’t.  And it gets worse.  This is not a comfortable ensemble.  It does not matter whether the musicians are performing “Tea for Two” or a challenging original, the listener cannot expect business as usual.  Everyone in the quartet pushes the envelope.  It may be the bombs from Nat Mugavero landing in various places on the bandstand.  Or it might be Bruno Råberg always carrying the ground of the band but throwing out sonic flares everywhere to keep soloists alert.  Even though they are used to being poised for the unexpected.  Tom Zicarelli is not a pianist who accompanies in the usual sense.  In fact, I was among audience members who were surprised that he offered no tenor sax commentary on this outing.  Yes, at the piano he provides solid grounding that buoys the rest of the band, but his solos are full of lightning bolts and staccato lines that constructively surprise and shake up listeners and subsequent soloists as well.  If that were not enough, Phil Grenadier, who split time fairly evenly between trumpet and flugelhorn, gave others on the bandstand challenging supporting lines and solos that seemed to cause the earth beneath us to crack and quiver in sympathy with his tectonic probing.  Vocalist Melissa Kassel in multiple ways is the voice of the group, tackling the off-kilter vocals, passing along information to the audience, and urging everyone else in the band to take the dangerous leaps that she does.  But she, looking and sounding fitter than ever, is no Spartan task master.  In fact, it is the joyous party atmosphere that she and everyone in the band exhibits as they play music--taking chances into areas that most musicians fear to tread--that defines the character of the group.  Party on.  Party on…

On 12/3 Anthony Braxton taught his last undergraduate class at Wesleyan University in Middletown, Connecticut.  It was the completion of forty years teaching there, influencing young people as an intellectual as much as he ever did as a leader of formal music training.  The students and music productions that came out of the Wesleyan program are significant.  I must confess that I felt a certain amount of sadness about the inevitable event until I realized that the ending of that remarkable career was opening the door to the expansion of another side of the man, the side that we know and love best.  He will focus his professional life completely on developing and making music.  It is difficult to imagine that all of us will be anything but better for it…

Much had been said leading up to the 12/8 gig at Third Life Studio featuring Dave Burrell and Garrison Fewell.  The performance even prompted an informative article by Jeremy D. Goodwin in the 12/5 Boston Globe.  But the actual event was even more engaging than the predictions.  Dave Burrell’s anecdotes between musical offerings were historically useful and personally telling.  The music itself was the whole point.  Two conflicting instruments--you don’t think so?  Just try to make music spontaneously between such naturally clangiferous instruments as piano and guitar.  And the musicians were meeting musically for the first time--in true free jazz jam fashion.  Add to that the fact that the natural inclinations of the musicians stylistically are somewhat at odds, and it was no wonder that the two of them spent the first half of the first completely free piece dodging and weaving like two veteran boxers.  But there were frequent and compelling connections between the two of them throughout the rest of the full single set.  Near the end of the evening a request by Burrell for performance of his “Black Mail Tango”--but performed slowly--gave the two of them a head to work with.  Although--like most of the material of the evening--it was a pensive work, it had something of an upbeat, light-footed feel to it.  It was the kind of musical conversation that causes one to recall those ancient Ivor Novello hits.  There was sonic joy on stage, and the energy and warmth of what happened between two musicians carried over to the enthusiastic audience.  Two sounds.  Much joy…

On 12/10 I received a note from a fine New York-based musician letting me know what he’s been up to.  Mixed in with mostly good news was the fact that this veteran performer is finding it more and more difficult to get jobs teaching at music schools, universities, and conservatories.  The reason for the difficulty is the musician’s lack of a formal degree.  The demand for degrees by music departments is greater than ever and the demand looks like it will continue to grow.  Perhaps it is time for schools that really care about student knowledge and skills to reconsider the value of music degrees, particularly in the performance component of music training/education.  I have nothing against bachelors and advanced degrees.  For myself, the only time in my life that I thoroughly enjoyed formal education was when I was in graduate school.  Also, there is the practical side of certificates and degrees.  For example, I don’t want anyone working on my teeth unless some revered school of dentistry approves of the work of the tooth mechanic--DDS to you.  But there are many types of music education.  There is “pure” scholarship for which doctoral work usually is required.  Then there is the realm of practical application of sound for purposes of communication.  That realm raises questions about such topics as “At what point does immersion in theory become an obstacle to creativity?” and “What is the line between technical ability and empty mimicry?”  Remember, the battle that Gershwin had with the academic/conservatory establishment was not exclusively one involving anti-Semitism.  Because he did not follow the prescribed path to compositional excellence, Gershwin found himself facing derision among “revered” composers whose music today is performed more out of sentiment than aesthetic necessity.  He found himself arranging his works (instead of continuing his usual practice of farming out arrangements) just to demonstrate to critics that he was in fact musically literate.  Or to flip things in a different direction, the most admired musicians who studied as undergraduates at Harvard/Radcliffe do not have music degrees from there.  For example, I believe that the most popular pursuit for such brilliant artists as Elliott Carter and Ursula Oppens was English literature (with perhaps more than a smattering of Greek).  And there is that crucial question for any music school or department, “Who makes the best teacher of performance art?”  That’s a tough question.  There are some highly-regarded faculty who teach performance and who have advanced degrees.  And yet, some of the best--even beloved--teachers have/had no formal degrees.  Gunther Schuller, Herb Pomeroy (who dropped out of Harvard as a dental-prep student), and Joe Maneri come to mind immediately, but there are many others.  I guess what concerns me is that formal degrees (regardless of what merit they may represent) are becoming the lazy recruiter’s tool for weeding faculty candidates.  Perhaps it is time to return to the very difficult and time-consuming work of discovering faculty candidates with true teaching merit.  As things are today--and more certainly tomorrow--a young Schuller, Pomeroy, or Maneri doesn’t have a chance.  And because of that fact the students are the big losers…

The gig lasted too long.  Three hours of music.  Yes, I know.  Some perfectly fine operas and free jazz gigs last that long or longer.  But the difference is four different groups on one evening.  Maybe it’s just the way I am, but I like to have a chance to digest music.  If a single band is really good, I don’t even turn on my CD player on the way home.  I want to digest what I’ve just witnessed.  And the four-band gig 12/20 at 119 Gallery in Lowell had plenty of fine music to digest.  First up was Kit Demos’ Flametet with Dave Bryant sitting in at the keyboard and Todd Brunel, Charlie Kohlhase, Jeff Platz, and John McLellan.  This is an all-star band (every guy’s a band leader).  Dave is not a regular with the band and seemed to have a little trouble hearing where everyone else was going at times, but I quibble.  The band worked really well as a unit, and one could get into a delightful argument as to which solo was the best of the lot.  BOLT was scheduled to perform last but found itself presenting music second on the bill.  No Matter.  Jorrit Dijkstra, Junko Fujiwara, Eric Hofbauer, and Eric Rosenthal gave another relaxed, engaging performance.  This time Junko and Eric seemed to gravitate towards a conversational duo with spikes and prods from Jorrit (who apparently has figured out how to make the lyricon as constructive as his alto sax in this context).  There is a cliché that “the leader of every band is the drummer.”  That’s not quite true with BOLT, but Eric Rosenthal--in Paul Lovens attire--seems to be the one minding the store while everyone else is partying.  It works out quite well because he can out-party anyone and still keep an eye on staff and product reliability.  It’s difficult to know what Marc Bisson and DEIXHRIST had in mind, perhaps obfuscation.  If so, they succeeded.  Usually ear plugs are not necessary for Mr. Bisson’s work, but the crescendo of this set called for such devices.  I noticed that I was not the only person in the room who failed to bring the Keith Rowe specials.  But there was more to obfuscation than sonic distraction.  The pair sat in an almost dark room and hunkered sufficiently so that only people in the front row and those standing had some idea visually what the musicians were doing.  I know they’ve done this before, so one would expect them to have sonic balance nailed down.  For more than half the set, the vocal contributions were inaudible or near-inaudible.  And that’s a shame because during the moments when the manipulated voice was audible, one could hear some compelling sonics landing somewhere near the intersection of Joe Maneri’s “nonsense poetry” and Liz Tonne’s improvisations.  Luther Gray’s trio with Winston Braman and Jim Hobbs closed out the night, and it was a perfect band to do so.  With some of us dragging our way to the finish line, we needed a jolt.  And we got it.  It’s a band that mixes elements of rock and jazz without watering either source down.  It’s in your face while it kicks you in the butt.  That’s an awkward image metaphorically, but the sonic result was a romping finale.  A superb sendoff from a fine evening of music curated by Junko Fujiwara…

Construction Party is a quartet--Dave Rempis, Pandelis Karayorgis, Forbes Graham, and Luther Gray--but it is a friendly party that welcomed bassist Nate McBride to the event 12/27 at the Outpost.  With all that, it is remarkable the degree to which this annual reunion in Cambridge sounds connected.  Band members joyously push soloists to peak performances and sub-groups and the entire ensemble come across as if this is a working band, performing somewhere weekly.  And these folks had better be connected.  The band goes everywhere and anywhere.  A shooting-from-the-hip solo, fiery duos, surprising trios, exhilarating foursomes, hold-onto-your-seat full ensemble work--and all of that happened even in the first piece of the night.  These men operate at a special level of communication.  I mentioned to Pandelis on the break how impressed I am at how together this band is, even though the people get together only once each year.  He said, “Really good musicians do that all the time.”  I told him I know what he’s talking about, but what I’m referring to is musician connections at a higher level.  Pandelis paused for a few seconds and said, “Well, the first time I played with Dave I felt a very special kind of communication.  Those connections are not common, but they do happen.”  Now we’re onto something.  I’m guessing that rare type of synchronicity happens throughout the band during performance.  It’s not just that indefinable group communication that impresses.  The solos are killer also.  A person could show up to witness the stunning technical virtuosity of Dave, Forbes, or any of the rest.  That is compelling in itself.  But for me it is the beauty within the barrage of notes and within the fire that lifts me out of my chair.  As I left the gig I was thinking how unfortunate it is that we fans (and more than half the seats in the Outpost were taken on a holiday-break night) have to wait another twelve months to catch these guys again.  But I suspect that it is an even longer wait subjectively for band members.  Before I leave the subject of a pretty good crowd on an off night, I should mention that there was another sequence of events that undoubtedly prevented a full-house audience.  Earlier on 12/27 band members discovered that the Lily Pad (the scheduled location for the gig) would be closed for an unspecified period due to construction.  Aside from the irony of the name of the band and the type of contract work to be done on the venue, the news came as a destructive shock.  No warning.  No phone call or email.  Just a rumor resulting in a follow-up phone call by Pandelis.  It was news that would have killed most scheduled gigs in such circumstances.  But these guys chased down options and found that the Outpost could be made available.  I’m sure all fans at the gig are thankful for the efforts of the guys and particularly the Outpost’s Rob Chalfen for making it happen…

Dave Bryant has juggled his band lineups with frequency over the years.  All the combinations I’ve heard offer solid listening experiences.  And some are particularly outstanding.  Such is the case with the band he brought to the Outpost 12/22--Dave with Neil Leonard, Jeff Song, and Curt Newton.  He’s performed quite successfully with these guys many times before in a variety of lineups.  It seems that all the experience is paying off.  The extent to which each musician hears and anticipates what each and all of the band members play and will play is extraordinary.  The result is that the band can go to any sound or any place instantaneously at any time.  And so we heard music that brought to mind traditional Asian cultures one minute and the English freedom of the Spontaneous Music Ensemble the next.  As one of the few “pieces” (each piece usually was a lengthy “suite” of material) came to an apparent close, it became obvious that moving the music to different territory was a reasonable alternative to ending the work.  At almost the same instant Jeff and Neil made “opposite” choices.  Jeff offered a bowed line to close the work and Neil (after a couple minutes of silence leading up to the moment) decided to make a move to a different place, using a held tone.  Not by any accident or “clever” plan, both tones held together as the closing statement of the piece.  I cannot emphasize enough that Neil’s tonal decision was neither “clever” nor an apparent accommodation to Jeff’s sound.  It simply was a matter that both musicians heard the music--their paired sound--as inevitably a concluding statement.  It’s the kind of sequence of events that you can expect from these guys.  Groove-driven or completely free.  It doesn’t matter because they all are on the money even before your brain is there.  Or maybe somewhere else.  But always together…

November 2013

Although I am sure it wasn’t the intention of the group, the Yuka Hamano Hunt Quartet gave lessons 11/1 at the Acton Jazz Café.  Any student jazz musician would have been fortunate to have been there among the good-size crowd both for the joy of the music and the lessons.  There is an energy that radiates from all great art, even such superficially static forms as novels and sculpture.  The failed artistic efforts do not have that energy.  Certainly the energy is evident in the great jazz performances, those special sonic events that are both product and process.  Yuka and friends--Andy Voelker, Bob Sinicrope, and Joe Hunt--demonstrated the meaning of sonic energy 11/1, and the impact for some of us was right between the eyes, cranium shaking.  People in the quartet realize that there is superficial energy and real energy.  And only the real energy--the energy at the core of the note--is what matters.  Everyone in the band knows both the right notes to play and how to articulate the core of those notes.  No one in the band exemplifies that process better than percussion master Joe Hunt.  Inexperienced and failed musicians often are attracted to the energy exhibited in the great performances.  But they do not understand the heart of that energy.  Typically they search for that seductive energy either by playing a lot of notes or by offering a pattern of notes leading to very loud notes, something like a series of empty crescendos.  Of course, a flurry of notes from Charlie Parker or an Albert Ayler wail is a fine thing.  It works for them because the flurry or the wail does not have greater weight than the core energy of each note.  Joe Hunt (almost literally) embodies the master practitioner of the note with core energy.  Observe in wonder as you watch him not move.  He is almost completely motionless from the chest to the top of his head.  Necessarily his arms and legs move, but the actions are spare.  In the same way that the mature Jo Jones’ execution was understated, compact.  Your eyes tell you that Joe Hunt is making hardly any sounds at all, a few taps or thuds here and there.  But that’s all.  However, your ears hear the “layers” within the core energy of every surface he hits.  The percussion music is rich, full, bandstand-lifting.  Joe Hunt plays no more than is necessary, essential.  He demonstrates that anything more than essential is obstructively superficial.  And, to our great fortune, everyone else in the band pursues the core energy, and with great success.  In addition to that fact, Yuka puts her personality stamp on the proceedings to great effect (so good that, in spite of the fact that the PA system had her almost drowning out the rest of the band, she sounded terrific), Andy’s playing was so strong that I had no idea he was trying to work through a problematic saxophone repair, and Bob made near-perfect support choices enhanced by very impressive solos.  I look forward to this fine band’s return… 
 

I was happy to see that the Igor Hofbauer Quintet is continuing it’s pursuit of the marriage between “classical” music and improvised music.  And these folks really know how to dress…

Note: With a tip of the hat and thanks to Richard Avedon, the image above is reproduced in black and white.

Jaap Blonk was in town to perform, but I was unable to make the gig.  However, I was fortunate enough 11/22 to catch his master class in NEC’s Keller Room.  It was one of the best master classes I’ve ever witnessed--informative, engaging, creative, and thought-provoking.  He began by reciting a Dadaist nonsense poem by Hugo Ball, immediately letting the uninformed find out through brilliant technique and theatrical impact exactly who he is as an artist.  Jaap then combined his personal biography in the context of the history of nonsense poetry (from the late nineteenth century) with a catalogue of performance phonetics to explain and demonstrate both the evolution and growth of the art of nonsense poetry and his own performance innovations.  One of the most significant events in his development was moving from the use of nonsense phonetics associated with various languages (something akin to the practice of doubletalk) to employing the International Phonetic Alphabet and the near-complete range of sounds implied by the IPA.  Eventually he discovered and added sounds to the existing IPA, coming up with a still-evolving set of written symbology.  My impression is that the students learned something and were inspired to do their own searching.  I learned some things I didn’t know about Jaap and got a chance to talk briefly with him after a separation of too many years.  As a bonus, I witnessed a fine sampling of his music.  I hope he returns to the Boston area without so much of a gap in time next time…

As most fans of music know, our public school music programs have been taking a beating during the economic crunch and even for most of the past quarter century.  Maybe there is a small ray of light.  According to Donna Wresinski, Chair of the Fine and Performing Arts Department of the Framingham Public Schools (Framingham Life November 2013, p. 21), some good things are happening.  Facing major budget problems in 2010, the town’s decision makers chose not to shut down the head trauma research program (i.e., the high school football team).  Instead, they cut the fourth and fifth grade instrumental music program, silencing 700 young musicians.  But there were people who cared.  The Performing Arts Center of MetroWest stepped in and provided music lessons in the schools.  That was a fine first step, but a variety of costs were not covered by the effort.  According to Donna Wresinski, this year “the Framingham school district has reinstated instrumental music for grade five.  Teachers from the middle schools are traveling to the elementary schools to provide lessons during general music classes.”  Enrollment is about 300.  That’s good but short of the 700 students involved before both grades suffered cuts to the program.  Ms. Wresinski is optimistic, closing her comments with, “When we walk through our elementary school halls, we pass classrooms where teachers and students are speaking in the many different languages that represent the diverse population that makes Framingham special.  As we walk a little farther, we hear the sound of music speaking once again in a language that is universal.  Words may fail, but music always speaks and it is speaking again for all the children in Framingham.”  Let’s hope this is the beginning of something big and durable…

In the world of music there is a common assumption that each type of instrumentalist falls into a certain personality range.  The idea is too much of an oversimplification.  Nevertheless, for example, it is difficult to come up with a very long list of trumpet playing introverts.  With that in mind it may be worthwhile to consider the lack of bass-playing band leaders.  Of course, there are some wonderful exceptions (Mingus, anyone?).  It is easy for an observer to get the impression that the bassist in most jazz ensembles is so used to carrying the band on his back that actually leading the band is not an obvious course of action.  Therefore it may be thought of as a special occasion when a bassist decides to lead a band.  Some of the better-known Bostonian bassists who continue to make terrific noise as band leaders include Bruce Gertz, Jacob William, and Bob Nieske.  Considering Boston area jazz bassists, one probably would not find a musician more active as both sideman and leader than Bruno Råberg.  And we’re all richer for it.  The Bruno Råberg Quartet (a wonderful group) consists of the leader, Allan Chase, Phil Grenadier, and Austin McMahon.  At the 11/12 gig by the band at the Beat Hotel the audience was treated to a fine array of standards and Råberg originals--and with an ever-improving sound system.  The trumpet-reed (mostly alto with a bit of soprano) front line did not so much project a conventional unison jazz band approach to heads.  It was more a matter of conversational presentation with commentary or line with harmonic complement, and always to great effect in itself and as a path and nest for the solos.  Allan and Phil are among the finest soloists in town.  They have sonically different linear visions, but they hear and therefore complement each other remarkably well.  Austin and Bruno get plenty of solo space, just to make sure the front line doesn’t tread water.  And what they have to say is plenty, talkative but never boring.  And everyone--not just the bass and drums--is supporting and challenging everyone else in the band all the time.  They kept pushing the music so that--as the night wore on--the musicians dug deeper into it, finding gems to reward the attentive, lucky listeners.  The four of them showed up 11/22 at the Lily Pad to offer primarily Råberg originals.  There were two jazz standards played superbly, but the rest of the gig was filled with fine Råberg vehicles, showing off compelling solos.  We got more unison front line activity than on the 11/12 gig, perhaps a nod to the tradition.  But the charts and the ideas of the soloists were all about now.  The only problem I found was the use of the exact same solo order on each piece.  A little variety would add spice.  I was thinking about the predictability of the sequence of solos late in the evening, envisioning how nice the option of two soloists simultaneously might be.  At that moment the band must have heard my thoughts.  As the standard “You Don’t Know What Love Is” came to a conclusion, the four of them broke into a semi-free final statement.  There were the two horns--but also four-instrument cross-talking in a wonderful, joyous argument.  According to Bruno, the 11/22 gig was only the third public performance of the band.  If the quartet is this good now, listeners should be impatient for whatever is coming tomorrow…

The evening of performances at Church of the Advent 11/29 was curated by Garrison Fewell.  But the overall impact of the music was a celebration of Garrison by musician friends mostly onstage with the guitarist.  In fact, only the trio of Pandelis Karayorgis, Jerry Sabatini, and Todd Brunel performed without Garrison also on stage.  The evening was a party of duos, trios, and quartets mostly, combinations that included the curator, the previously-mentioned trio, and Steve Norton, Matt Marvuglio, and Mia Olson.  Each “set” of music was different in terms of tone and architecture, but all of it was engaging and full of surprises.  Perhaps the biggest surprise was the finale which included all seven musicians.  The surprise was not the inclusiveness of the conclusion but rather the success of the music.  There was no train wreck.  There were evolving group subsets and total ensemble “noise,” all to great effect.  Special thanks are in order for Matt Samolis who makes the Advent Music series the success that it is.  Thanks also of course to Garrison for sharing his music and musician friends with all of us in such fine fashion…

October 2013

The Beat Hotel in Harvard Square is Cambridge’s newest jazz Club.  Anyone who brings a live music venue to Harvard Square is to be applauded.  Gone are the days when jazz and folk music could be heard coming from several different doorways in Harvard Square.  During the last few decades Harvard University (yes, Harvard is the elephant in the room in Harvard Square) has allowed Harvard Square to become a vast wasteland.  To the detriment of both students and local citizenry.  Or, as the 10/19/12 Boston Phoenix quoted photographer Elsa Dorfman, “What are we living through?  I don’t know.  It’s all bankified--Harvard Square is one big bank.”  Amen.  But here I was in a jazz venue in Harvard Square on 10/8, a Tuesday, one of the slowest jazz nights of the week.  And the place was buzzing.  I was happy for that, but the main reason I was there was to catch in action the Phil Grenadier Quartet--Phil plus Tim Miller, Sean Farias, and Austin McMahon.  It’s the perfect group for a club featuring mainstream jazz because these guys play solid, recognizable straight ahead jazz AND they are terrific improvisors.  For example, on one of his own originals (based on a theme from Ives’ The Unanswered Question) Phil came up with a solo that should be preserved in some real-world time capsule.  In other words, everybody wins.  Folks who want nice sonic wallpaper are content, and wacko jazz fans get knocked on their cans.  The first set of music was superb.  The jazz restaurant/bar is on its way to becoming a classic.  The sight lines generally are good to very fine, and the sound system--at least potentially--is one of the best in town.  For now the club is trying to work the bugs out of the system.  Wanting to see as well as hear the band, I took a seat at the section of the bar to the side of the stage.  The view is one of the best in the house.  But the sound system was not working well.  I found the sound engineer and asked him to see what he could do.  The suggestion helped.  I could hear the guitar much better, but that was the only instrument that came out of the bar area speaker system with greater volume.  Fortunately I could hear the trumpet directly from the stage acoustically.  The effect wasn’t great, but it was audible.  The gentleman next to me was complaining about not being able to hear the bass.  A couple that arrived just before the beginning of the first set found seats at the bar and obviously from comments and demeanor were looking forward to catching the music.  I had no chance to talk with them, but they had looks of growing frustration on their faces as the music got going.  When they got up and left in the middle of the set I did not get the impression that the couple’s departure was due to disappointment with the music.  Besides, the music was just too good to disappoint any serious fan.  The problem likely was the couple’s inability to hear what they came to hear.  After the set someone at the bar suggested that the club kept the volume of the sound system low during the first set (i.e., the most popular dinner time) to not interfere with people conversing over dinner.  That idea might make some sense if it were not for the fact that the sound at the back of the venue (i.e., near the front door) was quite fine.  But I’m not concerned.  The folks at the Beat Hotel will figure out how to make the sound system work throughout the entire room.  And, if they keep bringing in bands as good as the Phil Grenadier Quartet, the venue has a solid future...

People in Boston justifiably are proud of the area’s fine music schools and college-level music departments.  However, many Boston-based jazz musicians teach outside Boston and Cambridge.  Some even teach in other states.  For example, among them Eric Hofbauer and Jared Sims both teach at the University of Rhode Island.  Jared is Co-director of the URI Big Band.  According to the fall issue of URI’s Quadangles, that ensemble was “selected in a blind audition” to perform last August on the main stage at the Newport Jazz Festival.  Not bad.  And perhaps equally impressive, students of some teachers based in Boston find their curious and enthusiastic students showing up to jazz gigs in Cambridge, Somerville, and Boston.  A number of times I’ve seen some of Eric’s students drive all the way from Kingston to catch a gig here.  That’s a pretty long haul.  More recently I saw several of Jacob William’s students from Bridgewater attend the inauguration of the new venue, The Alternate Space, in Watertown 10/3.  The drive isn’t as far as from URI, but the enthusiasm is the same...

Near the end of  the 10/24 set by Matchbox (Pandelis Karayorgis, Jorrit Dijkstra, Nate McBride, and Curt Newton) at the Lily Pad the quartet offered a deconstructed version of “Criss Cross” that was unlike anything else the group played all evening.  It was unlike any other version of the Monk composition I had ever heard.  Jorrit began by doodling almost inaudibly around the head and eventually other band members did their own oblique, brief statements about the tune.  Then (and at strategic points through out the piece) Jorrit stated the composition almost exactly as written.  But those “exactly” moments were not what this performance was about.  Most of the time--even when the “full ensemble” came together--the piece remained splintered into its deconstructed, re-realized components.  The whole thing came across as an odd combination of whimsy and necessity that ultimately was quite compelling.  At one point during the set Pandelis introduced his new composition, “Never Ending,” by explaining that he wrote it between classes while waiting for his students to arrive.  Shades of Duke Ellington compositional mythologies.  Creative people seem to be able to do that, coming up with a ground-breaking collage technique while waiting in line in a super market.  Stuff like that.  Pandelis offered several new pieces on 10/24.  In fact, most of the material performed by Matchbox on this evening was original band member material with interpretations often involving a combination of juggled improvisatory components occurring in different directions simultaneously.  The music was engaging and joyous, to some extent no doubt because of the return of Nate McBride to the performance stage in the Boston area.  He returned here in July.  But, although he is happy with his day gig and much of his life here is coming together well, he’s still working out a lot of loose ends.  When I asked him when his next gig would be, Nate brought up the time constraints he’s working under right now.  At one point in our conversation he mentioned that he does not want to do gigs until his chops are operating at a high level.  Right now, he claims, he just does not have enough time to put in the required amount of practice.  Let’s hope that the time for practice does open up.  Among other adventures, I’d like to see where Matchbox evolves to...

Dave Trefethen had to cancel his New England mini-tour because of pressing family matters.  I was disappointed that he missed the gig 10/9 at the Acton Jazz Café, but I didn’t miss the fine music at the club on that evening.  Paul Broadnax and Peter Kontrimas were there to bring smiles to their many fans.  It is good to see Peter take the lead more frequently on some tunes along with fine bass solos.  Of course, Paul is not asleep at the piano.  He seems to be having more fun with some of the lyrics than ever, and his solos always draw the listener right into the piano.  Near the end of the second set they invited Louise Van Aarsen Koopman to the stage to sing a couple standards.  Such performances are among the bonuses of catching the generous duo in person.  I had not witnessed Louise, a Rebecca Parris student, in person before.  The Netherlands native has impressive English diction--not always an easy achievement for vocalists from the continent.  And her level of professional accomplishment exhibited 10/9 bodes well for her professional future.  And all of that music was a fine two-set first show of a two-gig evening at the club.  The second ensemble of the evening was the Jerry Bergonzi Quartet with Bruce Gertz, Phil Grenadier, and Austin McMahon.  Jerry and Bruce are pillars in the living history of jazz in Boston, and it was pretty obvious that fans--both young and old--had come to worship at the feet of the masters.  These were not a bunch of “Gee, it’s hip to be here” light weights.  These were serious fans who knew exactly why they were there.  I got the feeling that they were holding their breaths the whole time, hanging on every sound from the tenor sax, or bass, or cymbal, or trumpet.  Catching this quartet was a regular fix for this crowd.  And why not?  You’ve got everything from major league improvisation to four-way interplay to internal duos (Phil and Austin familiar from Phil’s quartet and Bruce and Jerry familiar since the invention of germs).  If that’s not enough, nobody in the band plays it safe.  No wonder the cognoscenti can’t get enough...

No doubt the new venue in Watertown known as The Alternate Space will offer music events somewhat infrequently, but the first gig there 10/3 proved to be a success as New York’s Nate Wooley and Chicago’s Ken Vandermark presented a set of duo performances of composed contexts for improvisation and a completely improvised second set bolstered with the addition of our own Laurence Cook and Jacob William.  The two sets of music contrasted nicely, resulting in an evening of music in which four fine musicians got a chance to play for an enthusiastic crowd and break in a promising new performance space.  Here’s hoping for more TAS gigs and many more returns from the visitors...

Tom Plsek and Randy Pingrey did their trombone sandwich routine 10/25 at Mobius and much more.  They offered a magnetic, varied set of music featuring duo/dueling trombones, two ensemble triangles, and a quartet.  The first triangle featured the work of theremin master James Coleman taking on the dual challenges of battling an apparently bad cold and the trombone partners.  It was especially pleasurable for me to witness this trio because usually James is too self-effacing in ensemble contexts.  However, on 10/25 James made the decision to be an equal partner with Tom and Randy.  The effect was almost a lesson in the expressive possibilities of the theremin--but without any stultifying academic veneer.  It was just more evidence of the fact that the local improvising community needs to do more to push the shy monster of the Clara Rockmore legacy to the forefront more often.  The other triangle--with Junko Fujiwara--followed.  It was a fine example of how much Junko has grown as an improvisor during the past five years.  It’s not simply that she has figured out that the demands of improvisation are different in significant ways from those of composed music and that improvisation in a straight-ahead context is quite different from free improvisation.  But, given the sound-sculpture-driven, playful nature of the Plsek-Pingrey connection, Junko demonstrated the extent to which she understands the limitless possibilities of free improvisation and the openness and technical range necessary to succeed in yet another unique context.  The set concluded with the four musicians working together beautifully in terms of hearing each other, decision making, and sonic balance.  Earlier in the evening I had asked Tom whether he had brought these four musicians together to some extent because all of the instruments involved offer natural glissando opportunities.  He claims the thought never occurred to him.  But the communication was so strong among the four of them that one cannot help wonder whether some people have a type of “sonic personality” that causes them to gravitate toward instruments with naturally sliding tones.  Wondering aside, all in all, it was a fine evening of music that was both sonically challenging and joyous.  It is the kind of event that sends one off at the end of the evening with a lighter step and a smile... 

Even though this is a jazz web site, something should be said here about the 2013 World Series.  Unfortunately, to a great extent it seems to have been a series dominated by deus ex machina (e.g., the obstruction event at third base) and incompetent play.  One must dig deep to find a single World Series game in which a team was as incompetent as St. Louis in the first game.  Prior to this Series no game ever had ended by tagging a base runner out at first base.  When was the last time you saw a runner caught between first and second base in a rundown?  Worse, how long has it been since a team that made it to the World Series was unable to execute competently a rundown play?  (Hint for next time: there must always be one player covering second base and one covering first.)  But the news is not all bad.  Ortiz batted .688 for the Series.  How does a human do that in October during a six-game stretch?  And there were some pitching performances from both teams that were simply jaw-dropping.  And also of some significance, our Red Stockings won...

It probably is no accident that the Greg Hopkins ensemble at the Beat Hotel 10/27 was a nonet.  The band opened with the first of four “Birth of the Cool” arrangements (Israel, Godchild, Boplicity, and Move) that it scattered throughout the first two sets of the evening.  Lest there be any confusion, two of the nine instruments were French horn and tuba.  That fact means that even the band’s original works performed on the gig had echoes of those Miles Davis Capitol sessions.  It should be expected that someone in the Boston area is celebrating what generally is thought of as being not only the birth of “the cool” but the birth of what became known as West Coast Jazz.  After all, the first recording inspired directly by the Davis nonet material is the Charlie Mariano Octet session in Boston (which occurred between Davis’ April 22, 1949 and January 21, 1950 Capitol sessions).  The East Coast-West Coast jazz links are so intimate in the early days of “cool jazz” that it does not make much sense to assign originality to either East Coast or West Coast musicians exclusively.  Musicians from both coasts were essential to its blossoming.  The list of “founders” overlaps considerably, everything from the important contributions of Mulligan and Rugolo on the Davis sides to the Californians in Serge Chaloff’s ensembles to the list of Bostonians found in the bands of Kenton, Manne, Baker, and others working on the Pacific coast.  And here were Greg Hopkins, Megan Riccio, Dan Fox, Stu Gunn, Shannon LeClaire, Allan Chase, Tim Ray, John Lockwood, and Bob Gullotti carrying on the legacy in a Harvard Square venue in 2013.  Although the arrangements--both old and new--were compelling, the soloists were the brightest lights of the evening.  While I was at the gig everyone except the fine French horn player (Megan Riccio) soloed, all acquitting themselves effectively--or better.  Speaking of which, some of the best solos of the evening were taken by the leader.  That fact was especially enjoyable.  Both leading a band and soloing is not as simple a process as it might seem.  I remember how rare Herb Pomeroy’s solos were when he led the big band.  On a big band gig it was the band that was Herb’s focus.  Given how much fine music I heard in the first two sets of the evening, I look forward to the band’s return to the Beat Hotel (I hope).  Speaking of enjoying the music at the Beat Hotel, I am happy to report that the sound at the bar near the bandstand is much improved with the bar PA system turned off during performances.  I imagine that the natural acoustics would work also for a quartet or quintet...

September 2013 

I guess I’ve been unconscious regarding a significant development in post-Ayler jazz in the Boston area during the past five years or so.  I’ve been discussing the phenomenon as if it were occurring in just one or two bands as somewhat isolated events.  But eventually even the obvious gets through to me.  There are times when musicians from different sets of aesthetics communicate effectively through mutual appreciation.  For example, the 1980s was a highpoint of such activity in Boston.  It was not unusual to see people such as Alan Dawson or Herb Pomeroy nodding appreciatively at a George Garzone gig.  And even in the new music realm, there were some interesting connections.  To stick with Mr. Garzone for a minute, those lucky enough to be there can remember such un-Fringelike people as Jimmy Giuffre and Raphé Malik as guest performers with the Fringe.  I can remember as the 1980s were winding down thinking how lucky I was that I didn’t live in Chicago, where the Hal Russell people didn’t hang with the AACM clique who didn’t have anything to do with the Liof Munimula folks who didn’t spend any time with the Damon Short clique who...  (Well, you get the idea.)  In time the two cities experienced a reversal of all that.  By the mid-1990s--as one symptom of the flip-flop--the Vandermark Quartet in Chicago consisted of a member of Hal Russell’s NRG Ensemble (Kent Kessler), a teacher from the AACM school (Todd Colburn), the backbone of Munimula (Michael Zerang), and someone who had his baptism in the Chicago scene as part of Damon Short’s combo (Ken Vandermark).  At about that time to my chagrin the jazz scene in the Boston area was becoming splintered.  Things have improved here considerably, and now we find more and more post-Ayler ensembles--both pickup bands and “working” bands--consisting of musicians of distinctly different musical experiences and aesthetics.  And so, what seems like it shouldn’t work somehow does work.  And (as my comments in this Journal during previous months attest) sometimes stunningly so.  Few groups in town demonstrate the coming together of musical diversity more convincingly than the Flametet--Jeff Platz, Pandelis Karayorgis, Charlie Kohlhase, Jim Hobbs, Kit Demos, and John McLellan.  Think about that lineup.  If two or three years ago I had said that 1) these guys played together in the same band and 2) the music sounded good, with justification you would have looked at me as if I had some screws loose.  Or at least more screws loose than usual.  In considering the music of the Flametet one erroneously might think of it in terms of tolerance.  After all, that’s how we talk to ourselves about social and ethnic diversity.  You know, “We may not understand the [fill in the name of the minority group], but we should tolerate them.”  So, when Pandelis takes a solo Jeff is polite and tries to come up with something “nice” that will work with that sound that Jeff is not really comfortable with.  Any fan might have reason to think that way, but nothing of the kind is operating on the Flametet bandstand.  There is no questioning or tolerance.  People in the band just dig in and bring up wonders.  Most of the time the entire band is working somewhat harmolodically.  But the particularly engaging events 9/13 at the Outpost were of two types.  The first type was duo interaction with “backup” from the rest of the band, as in the case of guitar in conversation with piano or the bolstering musical essays shared between Kit and John.  For example, can you think of two more distinctly different reed players than Jim and Charlie?  The difference brought energy rather than confusion or competition to the proceedings.  In fact, when Charlie called upon the baritone sax in such conversations with Jim, the timbral emphasis on the differences only raised the quality level of the music.  The distinctiveness of each musician brought such highlights to the second most engaging type of event on that evening, the solo with ensemble support.  As each soloist began his improvised statement, other band members responded with profound focus.  Whether that focus took the form of laying out (in effect becoming a fascinated observer) or jumping into the supportive fray, the response was one of awe-filled joy.  Each band member realized he was witnessing some very special improvisation, quite different from anything he would do in the same context.  And that remarkable difference inspired focussed support and similarly elevated work from the next--completely different--soloist.  There is  no question that musicians must share important musical understandings if a jazz performance is going to work.  But an evening such as the Flametet provided offers solid evidence that an ancient Greek krater and a compact Calder maquette can share the same display shelf and even talk to each other quite eloquently...

Charlie Kohlhase's Explorer's Club Trio--the leader, Jacob William, and Curt Newton--at the Outpost 9/19 offered surprise-filled music to a fortunate audience.  There is no substitute for years of adventuresome experience, and these superb veterans demonstrated that fact beautifully.  After a creative journey through one John Tchicai composition, Charlie mentioned an upcoming John Tchicai memorial concert in the New York City area.  Bostonians Kohlhase, Larry Roland, and Garrison Fewell are scheduled to be on the 10/18 bill at Shapeshifter Lab in Brooklyn.  Among the New York area musicians scheduled to perform are Steve Swell, Baikida Carroll, Charles Gayle, Charlie Hunter, Dmitri Ishenko, Reggie Nicholson, Warren Smith, Adam Lane, and Lou Grassi.  And more.  It should be quite a spirited tribute...

An enthusiastic and attentive audience showed up at the Boston area stop of our own Eric Hofbauer 8/18 at the Lily Pad during his tour of the Northeast and Midwest.  Being attentive was the smart thing to do, whether one focusses on Eric’s remarkable technical prowess or the far more remarkable music he makes.  Being a Hofbauer guitar fan, I have witnessed his solo work several times over the years and always with great pleasure.  This certainly was his most impressive outing.  For example, prior to the 9/18 gig I had heard Eric perform his take on the original Louis Armstrong recording of “West End Blues” countless times on his own recording of it as well as twice in live performance.  His version of the work 9/18 was dramatically different from those other performances--and significantly better than any of them.  On 9/18 Eric’s playing acknowledged Armstrong’s improvised introduction and subsequent composed melody.  The respect for the master was there.  But Eric took all of that and his own development of it and transformed the material into improvised Eric Hofbauer music to an extent that previously I had not heard.  That superb performance was indicative of the entire set.  Normally Eric is a congenial music host, offering engaging commentary between each piece of music.  That approach to a set of music--whether solo guitar or one of his fine (and currently missed) ensembles--is constructively successful.  But 9/18 he took a different and equally effective approach, an approach that gave us a transformed Eric Hofbauer sonic experience.  Basically, Eric invited us into his home with his opening remarks.  For the rest of the set he gave us sounds but no words.  Here we were, in his den or living room, witnessing the man working his way through a varied and challenging range of music.  It was as if we were directly connected to his personal creative process, his on-the-spot improvisational problem-solving.  How lucky we were...

Herbie Hancock is a superstar, loved by many jazz fans.  And Harvard just announced that he’s coming to town.  To talk.  I’m mentioning this only once, so mark it down now.  During the current school year he will be the Charles Eliot Norton Lecturer at Harvard.  His subject will be “The Essence of Jazz” or (according to a different Harvard source) “The Ethics of Jazz.”  In either case, he will be talking about just about anything he wants to.  The lectures are free of charge and open to the general public.  All presentations occur at 4 p.m. at Sanders Theater. The dates of the lectures are 2/3, 12, and 27 as well as 3/10, 24, and 31...

The first set at Third Life Studio 9/21 was a solo piano presentation by Barbara Lieurance of three composed works.  Because the focus of this Journal is not through-composed music, I will not comment other than to say that, if I were a composer attempting to push the envelope and had just completed composing a piano work for which I wanted a convincing public performance, Ms. Lieurance would be near or at the top of my list of potential interpreters.  The first improvised music of the evening was offered by the Garrison Fewell-Luther Gray Duo.  It is exciting to encounter Garrison taking up totally improvised music so late in his career after many decades as a wonderful straight-ahead musician.  It is obvious that the possibilities opened to him by the music bring Garrison great joy--as he does to his current audience.  Duos consisting of trap set and piano or sax are not that uncommon.  Such instruments usually can work successfully with percussion played judiciously.  But Garrison (unlike a lot of guitarists) does not play his guitar at 11.  Somewhere in the range of 1 or 2 is more like it.  That’s not a problem for Luther working his array of drums, toys, cymbals, and electronics.  Their search for sounds in the deepest of roots was compatibly successful.  Ricochet--Steve Norton and Noell Dorsey--offered a similar journey but along a different path.  Steve explores the sounds (as opposed to the conventional notes) of baritone sax and contra-alto clarinet.  In that pursuit Ms. Dorsey is a near-perfect partner who does not use her voice to play off Steve’s sounds.  Rather, she uses a limited but compatible palette of vocal effects as an extension of Steve’s reed sounds.  The result is that of a single but impressive sound-generating instrument.  One of the problems with parades of creative performers as are offered at Third Life’s OpenSound Series--and there are other problems that crop up from time to time--is that frequently the program runs too long.  By the time the fourth set was ready to take off, the musicians faced an aesthetically exhausted audience.  I actually felt sorry for Glynis Lomon, Syd Smart, and dancer Joan Green as I looked around the room.  About a third of the audience had given up the good fight and gone home.  The remaining music fans were game, but the bags under their eyes were dragging on the floor of the performance space.  But these three veterans are experienced and experienced together.  Glynis Lomon and Joan Green have worked together for years, and the cellist and percussionist go back together creatively for decades.  So they knew what they were up against, and they knew what to do: Pull out the stops and roar.  Glynis bowed and sang into her aquasonic, filled the room with her distinctive vocal sounds, and gave us a powerful example of her bowed cello work.  All of this was shared with the TaiChi-influenced dance of Joan Green and the handwork and electronics of Syd--eventually the two of them sharing the body motions in synch with Glynis’ sounds.  The all-out performance woke up the audience and aesthetically elevated them off their seats for the remainder of the evening.  This trio performance was a series of events interspersed with the loudest applause of the night.  It was a stunning achievement and a testament to the power of the art of Joan, Glynis, and Syd.  I found Syd’s performance especially effective.  Earlier in the evening he had told me of the painful experience he faced just a few hours before the OpenSound event began.  Later he mentioned the burden publicly.  At the end of the last set Syd announced that the performance was dedicated to his mother-in-law who had died that afternoon.  “She was my severest critic,” he said to scattered laughter and with obvious affection.  One suspects that the last set of the evening was as constructive for Syd as it was exhilarating for the rest of us... 

Back-to-back trios performed 9/25 at the Lily Pad.  Even though they shared the same drummer, the groups were as different as two post-Ayler trios could be.  First up was Pandelis Karayorgis, Garrison Fewell, and Luther Gray (from left to right as you face the stage).  Although there were quiet and even silent moments, those moments in a sense were the loudest because of the psychological contrast with what was happening most of the time.  The piano and guitar never got in each other’s way, even though they and the drums were chattering almost constantly.  It was extraordinary music in which the ears of the musicians were even more impressive than the multi-layered staccato barrage of notes.  The last time I had heard anything quite like it was a performance I caught a few years ago of the Von Schlippenbach Trio (with Parker and Lytton).  But of course this was a completely different trio in terms of instrumentation and musical personalities.  But the “conversation” was relentless and exhilarating.  Really tighten-your-seatbelts music.  The second set featured Jim Hobbs and Jacob William with Luther for music from somewhere else, sounds that brought to mind a mix of Ornette Coleman along with Jackie McLean’s Action Action LP type sessions with some Rollins Bridge-work thrown in.  Straight ahead music that was anything but straight.  And early in the second set Garrison Fewell joined the group and no doubt unintentionally (but how could he resist, consciously or unconsciously?) bringing up echoes of Jim Hall’s work with Rollins.  But was there any mimicry?  Not a chance with such uninhibited, personal music...

Scullers and WGBH-FM continue their collaboration this fall, and thanks from all jazz fans are in order.  The productive connection between jazz and radio in Boston goes back to the early 1920s.  It is good to know that it is still alive and kicking.  I caught the 9/27 second-set broadcast of the Gary Burton Quartet (with Julian Lage, Scott Colley, and Antonio Sanchez) at the club, and the band held nothing back.  The bonus is that the audience was completely into the band.  It seems that, as in the “old days,” the apparently large audience was quite happy to be part of the radio broadcast.  In other words, maybe radio brings out people rather than causes them to sit on their butts at home.  When such ventures were fairly common, there was a synergy of music, broadcast engineering, and the audience at the gig.  Let’s hope that Fred Taylor and WGBH can re-establish that relationship on behalf of the music...

There was a stretch near the end of the second set 9/28 by the Para Quartet (Jacob William, Jim Hobbs, Forbes Graham, and Laurence Cook) when Laurence moved his drum seat over to the upright piano at the Outpost and took some cymbals on cymbal stands with him.  He then began a duet with Jim followed immediately by a duet with Forbes before he returned to the trap set and the whole quartet continued its ensemble journey.  The duo sequence was remarkable primarily for two reasons.  First, according to Laurence, it was the first time he ever had accompanied another musician using the piano and cymbals.  Another Laurence first, in case you are keeping track.  “Oh, I had done something like it with vibes and cymbals,” he said, “but not with piano.”  I remember Laurence doing cymbals and vibes work.  That was more than a decade ago at the old Zeitgeist on Broadway.  But the piano and cymbals activity was now and the impact on Jim and Forbes was very much of the moment, forcing each of them to uncover music unlike anything else they had played that evening.  It may have been a tip of the hat to the recuperating Steve Lantner (the missing Para component), or it may have been simply another instance of Laurence’s challenging whimsy.  In any case, it reset the table even before the meal was over.  Like the double duo sequence, the reset of the Outpost repast was filled with ear-challenging sounds and connections possible only with the musicianship and inimitable voices of everyone in the band...

August 2013

We in the Boston area are fortunate to have dozens of world class post-Ayler musicians living and performing around here on a regular basis.  Great working groups (for understandable reasons) are another matter.  Not many outstanding jazz ensembles stay together long enough to make a profound noise that endures.  Beyond Biology is one of those rare post-Ayler ensembles that continues to impress and grow as a truly world class band.  I was lucky enough to be among those who caught the two sets of Beyond Biology music 8/6 at Ryles.  As I listened two thoughts kept bouncing around in my brain.  The first thought was how much the ensemble brought to mind the great combos of the 1950s, particularly the Max Roach group with Clifford Brown and Sonny Rollins.  The architecture and detail of what that famous band and Beyond Biology work with are significantly different.  And yet those groups are compellingly similar in terms of such important intangibles as the discipline and passion of each musician’s contribution to the whole and the shared understanding that every solo should be played as if it is the very last one that anyone ever will play.  Fans make appropriate noise about Brown and Rollins, but their comments usually fall short of the celebration that is due to Messrs. Powell, Morrow, and Roach (aside from his leadership role).  I wonder how often those three names come to fans’ minds when they listen to those tracks.  To some extent that slanted perspective was in effect many decades ago when I first put the LP on my turntable and (in the colorblindness of the moment) wondered whether Richie Powell somehow was related to either Mel or Bud.  One hopes that the outstanding “rhythm section” of Steve Lantner, Jacob William, and Luther Gray is being given far better ear time with today’s audiences.  What they do with, off, and “separate from” each other is one of the great joys of witnessing Beyond Biology in action.  All of that music they make happens hand in glove with the front horns.  I cannot imagine any single component of the band realizing itself as fully as it does without the complete connectedness of the entire ensemble.  Max Roach combos of the 1950s transformed for the twenty-first century.  Indeed.  The second recurring thought was about the 8/6 front line.  Specifically I refer to the solos of Jim Hobbs and Phil Grenadier.  Their work on this night solidified for me the extent to which each musician in this context functions as an alter ego of the other.  The instruments--alto sax and trumpet--are quite different superficially.  But in this context Jim and Phil were sharing the same muse.  During those sequences in which one musician would offer a remarkable solo, the other would answer--and “answer” is the wrong word; maybe “continue” is more on target--with a sonically different but personally identical statement about the profundity of the moment.  It is a kind of ideal of what a front line--even if ephemerally--can become in your fantasies.  That’s what Jim and Phil nailed on 8/6.  And there was no better example of that connection--for Phil, Jim, and everyone in the band--than the last piece of the last set.  Leader Jacob William proved my aesthetic limitations.  He suggested that the band close with a ballad and nodded in the direction of Jim Hobbs.  In my head I’m going, “A ballad.  You want to send everyone home with a ballad?  It’s almost 11:30.  Do you want to put everyone in the audience asleep so they are rested for the drive home?”  Boy, am I glad that musicians are smarter than I am.  That Jacob nod to Jim was akin to specifying that the “dawn comes up like thunder.”  Jim played a completely improvised ballad with knowing commentary from Jacob and Luther.  Steve and Phil--like the rest of us--shook their heads slowly as a completely original post-Ayler ballad flowed, angled, soared from Jim’s horn.  Along with the other people in the audience, I was stunned by the completely improvised beauty coming from the stage.  As I witnessed this phenomenon, I wondered, “What can anyone in the band do now?”  Well, the guys in the band recovered better than I did.  They knew what to do when you encounter the best music of the night.  Answer the call.  Continue the call.  That’s what Phil did.  He was not merely on the same page as Jim.  He was helping to set the type and layout, pushing the music in his own shared directions, helping to arouse the rest of the band to take the ballad further.  And Steve, watching in wonder (as we were) during Jim’s solo, became convinced by Phil’s example and threw blocks of ballad notes at Phil (in thanks?) and in support of the ground created by Jacob and Luther throughout the sonic journey.  If that were not enough, when the piece approached conclusion, Jim began the “return” to the imaginary “head” while Phil smiled, knowing what would be required.  (Stop for a minute and contemplate what was required.  How do you “return” after a good span of time to a completely improvised, presumably forgotten head with no recognizable melody--and of course no changes at all or other hooks to hang on to?)  Phil knew that he had to join in with Jim to reprise the imaginary closing head.  And they did...

Lou Cohen passed away on the morning of 8/21 after a battle with cancer.  He left many friends, I among them.  After attending MIT he pursued composition out of the European tradition, eventually spending time in New York where he studied with John Cage.  Most of his current friends know him as an electronics improvisor, music performance producer (in conjunction with Lou Bunk in the OpenSound series), or electronic music composer--or all three.  The best experience with Lou was to know him as a friend.  It was an experience I came late to, but for several months cherished over lunch or in his home, and always with the joy of discovery.  I particularly appreciate the kindness of Lou’s wife, Jane, for putting up with me as the end drew closer.  She never made me feel as if I were an interloper and seemed happy that Lou was engaged in enthusiastic discussion.  Thank you, Jane.  I miss Lou Cohen...

It was nice to see positive mention of Plunge, the Bruno Råberg-Phil Grenadier duo, performing 8/30 at Shapeshifter Lab in Brooklyn on p.12 of the September 2 issue (out in late August) of the New Yorker.  The brief notice is significant because that magazine is not known as a promoter of visiting post-Ayler musicians.  So the publication’s reference to the “two shrewd collaborators” is positive all around...

The results of the recent Downbeat 2013 Critics’ Jazz Poll are another annual reminder of the sad state of jazz journalism.  Here is a poll among what supposedly are the best jazz critics/journalists in the world, and the listing of poll winners and near-winners is depressing to anyone who follows jazz performance internationally with even a minimum of diligence.  The limited representation of the best post-Ayler musicians is merely the most damning evidence of how out of touch with reality these critics are.  But there are other categorical absurdities.  One major problem is the name of an entire poll category, Rising Stars.  The category is fine if we are talking about 25-year-old hot shots making their first breakthroughs.  But the Rising Star category is some strange kind of catch-all that includes musicians and bands that have been around for decades.  For example, to list Mats Gustafsson and Vince Giordano’s Nighthawks big band as Rising Stars is an insult to their endurance and remarkable achievements.  Perhaps the saddest aspect to this annual poll is that many of the problems I allude to are easily fixable (or at least improvable).  The great irony is that the fixes can be found in the archives of Downbeat.  In other words, what’s old is new (or at least it should be).  At one time what is now referred to as Rising Stars was referred to as Deserving Wider Recognition (or something very much like that).  So change the name, and we find that the Nighthawks and Mats are not identified as barely out of diapers but rather as two who are deserving of wider recognition, which they are.  Simple.  The other problem, the zombie critics, is partially fixable.  Apparently the Downbeat editors are reluctant to include very many chronologically and aesthetically alert critics in their stable.  OK, maybe we can’t do too much about that.  But let’s go back to those archives.  “Way back when” the editors included ALL of the critics’ selections (in smaller type near the back of the magazine).  That may not sound like much, but it is important to note that an astute minority of polled critics actually enjoy the music of Kjell Nordeson and Laurence Cook (as two examples).  So think how lucky a hip young music fan or musician would be--for example--turning to the complete picks of John Corbett.  What a great chance to learn something.  Such listings of critics’ complete picks were extraordinarily helpful to me when I was a youngster.  Maybe it is time for the editors of Downbeat to look backwards other than when they select voting critics...

I was among the lucky brunchers at Bullfinchs 8/11, catching the always-delightful Broadnax-Kontrimas Duo do the standards the right way.  While there I discovered that the University of New Hampshire is honoring the pianist for his contributions to the music.  The best part of it all is that the heart of the celebration is a performance by Paul in which he shares the stage with several of his most accomplished musical allies.  The lineup includes Paul Broadnax, vocalist Shawnn Monteiro, Fred Haas (Saxophones), Dave Trefethen (Guitar), Peter Kontrimas (Bass), and Les Harris Jr. (Drums).  The event takes place 10/7 at The Paul Creative Arts Center of UNH.  It will be a well-deserved sonic celebration...

If you are reading this Journal, you probably do not need a scientist to tell you that music has an extraordinary impact on humans.  Apparently we are affected by music in ways that do not touch other living creatures.  Researcher Valorie Salimpoor and friends have delved into the question of why music makes us feel good.  National Geographic writer Virginia Hughes discusses the results of the research at this site ...

I was enjoying a great vacation near the end of this month when the rains hit.  What I am about to describe has no apparent connection to jazz, but some readers may be entertained by the recollection.  I ducked into a Barnes & Noble to get out of the rain and found myself perusing the array of current magazines.  My eyes bumped into and stopped at a magazine identified as Garden & Gun.  My first reaction was that it must be some kind of National Lampoon spoof.  I smiled as I reached for the magazine and envisioned a man strolling through a garden with a Walther P-38 in one hand (for pesky chipmunks, no doubt) and a watering can in the other, admiring the progress of his roses.  The table of contents awakened me to the fact that I was holding a yuppie “Southern Living” type publication featuring articles on “The World’s Tiniest Bird Dog” to “Bourbon and Coke: A Match Made in Dixie” (Confession: before I could drink legally I used to drink that ghastly stuff and somehow survived to adulthood).  And similar articles.  It’s just more evidence that everyday reality is stranger than fiction...
 

 A fuzzy Lakes-of-the-Clouds hut from Mt. Washington Hotel on a clear day 

I spent a few days unwinding in New Hampshire and visited the Mt. Washington Hotel a couple times for food and liquid comfort.  I hadn’t been to the hotel in a couple years and discovered that, although the quality of the service staff had deteriorated significantly (doesn’t any organization train people anymore?), the rest of the experience--the views, the food, the ambiance--were as superb as ever.  And there was a bonus.  I went to dinner there 8/16 and was pleasantly surprised to find live music in the main dining room.  Not only that, the music was provided by a jazz trio--a good one.  We who are blessed to experience great sounds in places such as Boston and New York occasionally forget that some of our favorite musicians--such as Matt Langley, the Williamson brothers (of West Coast fame), Marty Ballou, and Charlie Kohlhase--have roots north of the Massachusetts border.  The good news from the North continues.  The trio at the Mt. Washington Hotel played some (necessary?) cornball, but the heart of what they pursued was solid jazz standards.  And they played them well.  Pianist Kelly Muse is no slave to the Real Book.  He tackled both heads and solos with unselfconscious abandon, sometimes even “hiding” the composed head to effective ends.  Drummer David Ellis was not wasting his time filling time.  Everything he played was supportive and challenging--and presented with a solid personal stamp.  I took particular joy in catching the work of bassist Brian Hathaway.  He may hail from Lancaster, NH, but he plays with the qualities I look for in the best players from the major jazz centers--surprising but always supportive lines and solos that make some audience members shut up and listen.  Bravo, North Country...

Steve Lantner suffered an injury to his hand and was unable to play on scheduled gigs in late August and September.  We hope he heals quickly...

Long-time readers of this Journal know that I am not in love with what has been happening at the MFA since Malcolm Rogers took over the place.  There are some people at the museum who know something about art and do the best they can under the circumstances, but the mess continues (gets worse?).  In case you haven’t noticed, it is getting more and more difficult to find the art among the fluff exhibits.  Ironically the MFA’s events publication, MFA Preview, now includes advertisements (just another way in which money talks), and the glitter continues to outshine the art.  In case you think I exaggerate, turn to facing pages 10 and 11 of the Sept/Oct issue.  Don’t spend a lot of time thinking.  Just look at the pages and quickly look away.  Which page contains promotion for a museum exhibit and which page contains promotion for a sparkly product?  Is the left page an ad, the right page, both pages?...

The gig at the Outpost 8/8 demonstrated the extent to which Luther Gray has developed as a composer/arranger and band leader.  First, Luther is building a book of composed works extensive enough to fill an entire evening (as was the case 8/8).  More important, these works--featuring accessible heads and “hooks”--are as varied in content as any fan could want.  It is important that a good deal of that variety is directed at the musicians playing the music.  No one on the band stand (or in the audience) is going to fall asleep during one of these gigs.  The charts are designed to put different types of decision-making in the hands of the musicians, a characteristic that is likely to appeal to any creative musician.  For example, there may be a section of a work in which any of several different portions of music having the same number of measures may be selected for performance by designated musicians.  The result is that a couple people in the front line, for example, perform completely different (but compatible) note sequences at the same time.  Each musician makes the spontaneous decision of what sequence of notes to select and how to make the notes work with whatever notes someone else has selected.  In another case, there is a section in which musicians are supposed to make the sound of whales on their instruments.  But the whale sound each person creates is that of a robot whale.  And that sound also is supposed to take on the character of the musician making the sounds.  In other words, the chart begins getting into the realm of the sound of one hand clapping.  Luther has grown as a band leader also, mostly regarding the types of decisions he makes.  Personnel is one fine example.  Not surprisingly, percussionist that he is, Luther obviously wanted solid “rhythm section” people to work with in a music in which the ground is so important.  “Solid” (and more) defines the work of Steve Fell and John Voigt (leaving a bit of his signature high jinx at home).  And where could you find three more distinctly different front line musicians than Jim Hobbs, Forbes Graham, and Matt Langley?  And those differences were a significant plus in a number of ways, not the least of which were the appreciative nods among band members during any of the front line solos.  For example, if you want three different whales, you got ‘em.  The Gray leadership also could be found in everything from onstage demeanor to set list sequence to the obvious pleasure everyone in the band was having.  No wonder the audience was appreciative.  Encore...

July 2013

While I was in New York for a few days I spent a good deal of time in several museums.  Wandering through the collections of most museums, one has the experience of viewing one or a very few works by a given artist.  Such experiences of focussed attention have advantages.  On the other hand, special exhibits of the works of a single artist have advantages that can outweigh the potential overkill of sheer volume.  On several occasions such exhibits have altered my perspective on artists.  For example, although I had loved the paintings of Mark Rothko for decades, seeing dozens of different Rothko works from different periods talk to each other at the National Gallery in 1998 opened the action of the color fields for me in ways that I found to be new.  As an alternative, my reaction to the paintings of Alex Katz always had been somewhat neutral.  I was reluctant to make a judgment, waiting for some type of aesthetic switch to go on or off eventually.  Well, eventually came with a recent Alex Katz exhibit at Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts.  As I encountered the considerable quantity of works, I found myself wondering why it hadn’t dawned on me much earlier just how devoid of substance these works are.  Although I have enjoyed several exhibits I witnessed this month in New York, I found two of them quite special.  The first was Claes Oldenburg: The Sixties at MOMA.  One of the remarkable characteristics of almost all important art in all forms is that a vast majority of it is psychologically dark.  There may be light moments, but there is somber--even horrifying--weight to most of Dickens, Hemingway, VanGogh, Rothko, Monteverdi, Schoenberg, Kurosawa, and on and on.  Therefore, it is a pleasant (and somewhat surprising) experience to bump into significant art that isn’t some kind of variation of Titus Andronicus.  And so it almost always is with Claes Oldenburg.  You walk through a museum, stumble upon an Oldenburg sculpture and smile.  Even though such smiles are expected, the conversation among the Oldenburg works at MOMA is special.  The catalogue for the exhibit cannot begin to articulate the extent to which the sculpture in particular works together to create an “Oldenburg world” of curiosity, questions and--ultimately--joy.  It was not unusual to witness two apparent strangers encounter the same object, turn to each other, and smile (or laugh).  A light touch pervades exhibits of works by Lichtenstein and Calder, but such events do not (nor does one imagine them aspiring to) reach the party atmosphere of this Oldenburg exhibit.  The works talked to each other in a special way.  Such visual interaction (but of a dramatically different sort) could be found at the Brooklyn Museum where drawings, paintings, and (mostly) sculpture of El Anatsui were on display.  The vast majority of contemporary creations in any art form run the gamut from mediocre to terrible.  Therefore, an exhibit of works of a substantial, living artist at apparently the peak of his creativity is particularly important.  Yes, as in the case of all great artists, El Anatsui’s work has roots in the works of preceding giants--Klimt, Rauschenberg, Bertoia, Calder, and of course a wide range of textile art.  But his use of “found objects” to create intentionally morphing works is a process-and-product unique to El Anatsui.  And that brings us to the mostly post-Ayler festival presented (to a full house) by Pandelis Karayorgis and Jorrit Dijkstra 7/5 at the Lily Pad.  As in the case of the usually trying experience of witnessing an exhibit of one or a group of contemporary visual artists, the experience of witnessing a parade of young post-Ayler jazz/improvising musicians usually is (what’s the euphemism?) daunting.  Fortunately the parade of five performances 7/5 featured a sub-set of the Boston area’s world-class post-Ayler artists.  As a result, the music of any given moment was likely a superb experience, and experienced listeners knew that great sounds would keep on coming throughout the evening festival.  One could hardly imagine a better way to open the festivities than with a percussion trio--and specifically one as imposing as that of (left to right) Curt Newton, Eric Rosenthal, and Luther Gray.  Each musician has a distinct percussion personality and is operating at the peak of his aesthetic powers.  Because these musicians know themselves and each other well, the result in this trio format is an experience in which the entire sonic canvas is clearly articulated, even when all three men are quite busy simultaneously.  The mutual “court sense” means that each man knows what action is required to fulfill the envisioned terrain shared and manipulated by the other two percussionists.  And it makes no difference whether the “busy” contribution is a multi-limbed assault or complete silence.  Each contribution invariably was clear, masterful, and necessary.  And decisively personal.  In last month’s Journal I raved about the percussion trio set at Milwaukee’s Okka Fest.  And here in Cambridge fans were privileged to witness another wondrous drum trio performance.  I’m under the impression that both performances  But not video recorded.  That’s a shame because only through audio/video documentation can one begin to understand exactly what remarkable music took place on both occasions.  Each performance--employing essentially the same instrumental resources--was as different from the other as one can imagine and equally superb aesthetically.  If a music teacher wanted to explain to a young musician the span of possibilities of an ensemble and the achievable quality level of those possibilities, he could do no better than play a video of each performance (in any sequence).  And the impact potentially would be profound, no matter what instrument the student was pursuing.  Advanced students could take a semester course parsing the meaning of the two completely different performances.  The 7/5 festival at the Lily Pad featured post-Ayler music.  That fact regarding the second set of music is particularly significant.  I refer to Pandelis Karayorgis and his latest piano trio.  I have at times mentioned the difficulty mainstream musicians have in those rare instances when they genuinely want to pursue post-Ayler music.  Of course it is not so difficult for young people to pick up the music (in the same way that young people excel in learning a foreign language).  But once a musician hits 25 or 30 (and the problem grows with age), the challenge becomes enormous.  The architecture, “rules,” and language are so varied and different from the conventions of mainstream jazz that few who attempt the crossing make it.  Those few who do not give up the voyage take years to get “comfortable” with the music (or at least one or two forms of the music).  That context brings us to the case of Mr. Karayorgis.  Until fairly recently Pandelis has established an international reputation as a formidable pianist who had built his extraordinary works on the music of Monk, Tristano, and other post-War giants.  He was among the few who retained the mainstream chordal architecture but pushed his inheritance to such extremes that the lines and the chord cycles often morphed into something quite unrecognizable, even somewhat confusing to the listener.  It was unapologetically brilliant stuff.  That reputation remains.  A couple years ago something changed.  I noticed Pandelis at pure post-Ayler gigs, sometimes sitting in, sometimes showing up as a group’s pianist.  It was pretty painful.  I found myself doing a lot of wincing.  I wondered about it.  The question was obvious: Why would one of the world’s most remarkable jazz pianists put aside his astonishing work in the realm of extended (perhaps to the limit) mainstream jazz to pursue forays in the completely different realm of post-Ayler jazz?  Even though the apparent thanklessness of the task is a basis for questions, I began to realize that Pandelis saw this “alien” music as a formidable aesthetic and intellectual challenge.  Of course I never discussed the matter with Pandelis.  The attempt at such a transformation is fragile.  I did not keep a record of the progress of Pandelis’ post-Ayler pursuits.  (Goodness, what horrible alliteration.  It looks like something written by a channel 7 news editor.)  I wish I had kept track of things.  I never have witnessed anything like it.  I doubt if ever I will again.  Those rare adult mainstream musicians who successfully pursue post-Ayler jazz do so on a long journey.  It’s a process of years.  Again, I did not observe Pandelis with a stopwatch.  But I would estimate that within three months Pandelis was making sense.  In six months he sounded as if he had been playing with Raphé Malik and Roswell Rudd all his life.  (It’s worth a pause here, just to let that fact sink in.)  The “new” (i.e., with old compatriots Jef Charland and Curt Newton)  Pandelis Karayorgis Trio has been working together for months as a post-Ayler ensemble employing composed melody and architecture that echo the past but unequivocally is operating in the now.  Pandelis’ choice of Jef and Curt is a good one, not just because they are performing at their best and are among the most respected post-Ayler musicians in town.  Curt is able to complete Jef’s sentences, and vice versa.  That kind of connection is key to the trio’s success.  I can go into details about the trio’s 7/5 performance, but, instead, I recommend something quite out of character for me.  Go to the recordings.  (It’s almost painful for me to make such a suggestion.)  For example, the Karayorgis classic Blood Ballad (Leo LR325) and the latest trio recording, Cocoon (Driff CD1302), are both fine recordings.  But listen to them to help prepare you for a live gig by the new Pandelis Karayorgis Trio.  The fine Blood Ballad is the before to Cocoon’s after.  Both albums are terrific.  Both are unmistakable Pandelis Karayorgis.  Each recording features works with a head-solos-head framework.  So there is a superficial familiarity to both releases.  But Blood Ballad is the Pandelis Karayorgis you know and Cocoon is the post-Ayler Pandelis Karayorgis.  Listen, ponder, enjoy.  And show up to catch the LIVE Pandelis Karayorgis Trio the next time these guys perform.  One of the problems in witnessing an extraordinary ensemble such as the Pandelis Karayorgis Trio is that in some ways the ears are more sophisticated than the eyes.  The eyes have advantages in helping you discern where and how, but the ears seem to be able to discern a wide range of sounds and their meaning.  So although a listener can hear “everything” that is going on musically at a gig, one finds that it is somewhat necessary to make decisions as to what one’s eyes focus on.  For example, the keyboard vs. the right hand of the bass player.  And there is another aspect to such high-quality music that Eric Hofbauer (in his solo guitar third set) demonstrated.  Eric is such an accomplished musician technically (and he always uses the technique to solid musical ends) that the listener finds it difficult not to get caught up in the technique at the cost of missing the musical content.  It is for example the disease suffered by musicians who were Bird worshippers in the 1940s (and even today) that results in floods of empty notes.  I found myself in that mental battle of the senses and mind during the first notes of Eric’s fine but too-brief set-long medley.  He opened with an improvisation based on the famous Louis Armstrong introductory improvisation for “West End Blues.”  This reprise of the performance (but different of course) on one of his three fine solo guitar recordings was so impressive to both eyes and ears technically that I had to “adjust the dial” in my brain to insure that I could keep the music in the foreground.  Although the set was too brief for attuned listeners, I’m sure Eric’s fingers welcomed the brief break.  It was brief because Eric was up in the fourth set also as a member of BOLT (along with Jorrit Dijkstra, Junko Fujiwara, and Eric Rosenthal).  As readers of this Journal for the past couple years know, I have been impressed with the improvisatory work of BOLT.  The quartet’s first successes impressed me because, although the background of each musician is a distinctly different planet, the disparate voice of each improvisor contributed to a special group character during ensemble interactions.  The 7/5 BOLT performance came across as an improvising quartet consisting of musicians from four different planets.  Period.  Such things happen, even when different planets are not involved.  It is important to add that there were instances of sonic revelation, and throughout the set the audience seemed genuinely impressed.  Therefore it is likely that my reaction is somewhat a function of surprise on my part.  And group members can take heart in the fact that some superstitious musicians believe that a flawed performance just before a recording session results in a superior recording session.  BOLT was scheduled to go into the studio 7/6 where no doubt there was a successful meeting of the Federation of Planets.  “Matchbox” is the title of a Steve Lacy composition and the name of the trio (Jorrit Dijkstra, Pandelis Karyorgis, and Curt Newton) that closed out the festival.  These folks have been involved in other (larger) Lacy-oriented ensembles.  But this is the first one that is small enough that it might be able to fit in a matchbox.  And the size of the group offers a significant challenge for both musicians and audience.  With simply alto sax, piano, and drums, there is no place for a musician to hide.  Every serious musician wants every note to count, but a mental or technical lapse with this instrumental alignment performing these charts is pretty obvious.  The reverse effect on the audience also is significant.  The trio performs spare music with somewhat crystalline articulation.   A lapse in the ears of a listener can mean something comparable to missing a major aria during a performance of Handel’s Rinaldo.  In other words, it might be argued that the producers of the festival saved the most “difficult” music for last.  It is of significance that the audience members seated at the beginning of the last set of music stayed in droves.  At the conclusion they applauded with enthusiasm.  And well they should have--for the fifth set and for the entire superb event...

They both brought an array of saxes and Jason Robinson added a flute to his duo package with Charlie Kohlhase 7/19 at the Outpost.  Except for a nod to the late John Tchicai, all compositions presented were by the two performers.  Most of the charts required a nice combination of creativity and technical skill.  A jazz fan could focus on the charts and the apparent ease with which the two reed men executed them.  I was more taken with the musical rapport they shared, no doubt stemming from their friendship.  During sections of duo improvisations the conversational nature of the connection was most apparent.   There were both powerful, dramatic exchanges and even more affecting subtle, nuanced whispers.  It carried over to the heads in which a shared dynamic or bent note (neither of which likely were articulated in the charts) signaled the extent to which they were on the same page.  Yes, Jason is a West Coast beach boy and Charlie is a Yankee fahmah to all external appearances, but they are from the same planet at the core...

I was in New York during the first week of this month, and while hanging out at Bryant Park I noticed that the upright piano is back for the summer.  I never got to the park at lunchtime, and that’s too bad.  Apparently Junior Mance (whose blues-rooted performances were among my favorites back in my youth) was playing there at noon all week.  The producers of the event were thoughtful enough to post the above notice with the piano so all would know how lucky they were...

Allan Chase led different back-to-back sets at the Lily Pad 7/24.  I get the impression that there are fans who know Allan only as a straight-ahead player, and there is a completely different group of fans who know him only as a post-Ayler musician.  Allan was born on the cusp of the two periods.  Jazz musicians born at (approximately) mid-century are the last ones who consistently seem to be able to perform straight-ahead jazz convincingly.  Also, those mid-century birth musicians came into this world at the tail end of the first wave of post-Ayler musicians (e.g., Cherry, Ayler, Haden, and other pioneers).  So all of the cusp musicians had the potential to move in those circles comfortably as well.  Perhaps oddly, cusp musicians tend to travel in one realm exclusively.  So we have Gray Sargent as a musician of mid-century birth whose work justifiably has been admired by everyone from Illinois Jacquet to Tony Bennett.  On the other hand, Raphé Malik, the late post-Ayler monster who fired up the bands of Cecil Taylor and Jimmy Lyons (as well as his own Boston-based outfits), was born a few years before Gray.  Such one-or-the-other career paths are the most common for musicians born within shouting distance of 1950.  Allan Chase (born a couple years later than Sargent and Malik) is a marvelous exception, and he demonstrated that fact by splitting his two 7/24 sets of music before and after the cusp.  The first set consisted of naked trio music incorporating baritone sax exclusively (Allan), acoustic bass (Jef Charland), and trap set (Luther Gray).  So although twenty-first century accents and commentary were inevitable in the music, the fact that Allan’s heart and Serge Chaloff’s were beating at the same time for a couple years is stamped on Allan’s mainstream compositions and improvisations.  I have thought for some time that there is much Chaloff in the straight-ahead baritone sax of Allan.  And that fact was even more apparent to me at this gig.  I hope my comments are not being misunderstood.  I’m not talking about a conscious intellectual process in the head of Allan Chase.  What may be more meaningful is the image of Allan’s horn having a musical dialogue between Messrs. Chaloff and Chase.  And how delightful it was as the trio worked its way through mostly Chase originals (also mostly written in 1982-- must been a very good year.).  The experience was a fine demonstration of the historical range technically of Jef and Luther who obviously believe in the importance of building music on the shoulders of giants.  Perhaps more significantly, Allan gave his bebopper fans as much as they could handle, and maybe a few “new music” freaks got their eyes opened.  Speaking of new music, there was a second Allan Chase set of music.  All three of the first set musicians performed in the second set along with Tom Plsek, Jim Hobbs, Randy Pingrey, and Forbes Graham--and an assist from Kathy Olson (who had traded eights and fours with Allan on “Air Conditioning” in the first set).  It was post-Ayler all the way in mix-and-match combinations ranging in size from duo (the loudest group--featuring sounds from Jim and Luther) to sextet.  The nature of the music (some provided by ensembles in which the self-effacing Mr. Chase sat out) was pretty broad, including the light but thoughtful Plsek-Olson-Pingrey “trombone sandwich” to the literally deconstructed brass of Tom and Forbes to the sometimes all-out “hot potato” romps of the larger ensembles.  It was a mostly fun but always challenging set of music, a perfect demonstration of the variety and quality of post-Ayler improvisation at its best.  Although host Allan Chase never intended it that way, the two sets of music were a terrific celebration of Mr. Chase himself...

According to the 7/25 Metro (p.26), five of the best bars in the country are in Boston.  This news comes out of the “nation’s premier cocktail conference” recently in New Orleans.  AND the local watering hole known as Drink won the prize as the Best Cocktail Bar in the World.  Does it get any better than that?  I have to admit that I had my money on World’s Most Strategically-Placed Road Construction, but I guess we’ll have to settle for major places in which to try to forget about traffic... 

Matt Samolis is one of the most thoughtful and productive creative music impresarios in the Boston area.  His gigs offer primarily (but not exclusively) new music operating in both the composed and improvised traditions at a variety of secular and theological venues in the Boston area.  Over the years he has presented music that typically is engaging and sometimes constructively provocative.  One of the effects of his activities is that he has developed an enthusiastic following among both musicians and music fans.  Both showed up 7/16 at Third Life Studio for five brief sets of improvised music.  Lucio Menegon and Steve Norton started things off with a noisy (in the best sense) set of electronics, guitar, and reeds.  The most pleasant surprise for me was Steve’s work on the contra-alto clarinet, offering some of the range of the bass clarinet with delightful, gutsy sounds bringing to mind the much larger contra-bass clarinet.  Steve has been working on the instrument for about a year, but this is my first chance to catch him playing it.  Perhaps it is a bit challenging to play and somewhat heavy.  But it fits into a case that is similar to that for a tenor saxophone.  I’m surprised that more people (particularly in the improvised music realm) do not play it.  The second set was turned over to BOLT.  I had caught the improvising quartet less than a week earlier, and at that time they were about to go into the studio to record.  In separate conversations both Junko Fujiwara and Eric Rosenthal were enthusiastic about the nearly three-hour session.  Junko claims that 30 of the 36 tracks they cut are good to outstanding in quality, more than enough to fill a CD.  That’s good news, but there’s more.  The Federation of Planets reconvened.  But this time the group members were speaking the same language and talking about the same subject.  Five minutes into the music the person sitting to my right leaned over and whispered in my ear, “They are playing better than the other night.”  I couldn’t have understated the case better myself.  They performed two completely different improvised pieces, and both were spot on.  And so the universe is whole once more.  But more important, the real BOLT showed up on 7/16 at Third Life Studio.  An unnamed band (tentatively called Potato Chip String Theory) was up next.  But, given the lineup--Junko Fujiwara, Jeff Platz, Kit Demos, and John McLellan--the name is irrelevant because the people involved are as sonically solid as the man with no name is laconically solid.  John McLellan is an understated percussionist.  He gives the musicians he performs with exactly what they need--no more and no less.  That “exactly” has a strong personal stamp.  He may well be the best of the percussionists who focus on the use of space in free ensemble settings.  Kit Demos constantly researches the possibilities of electronics and new territories for the acoustic bass.  All of that research opens doors to rethinking music in the moment.  The results of his research are so musically organic that they give the impression they are inevitable, integral of the moment.  Consistently he conjures up technically new or “odd” ideas--and never does the word “gimmick” come to mind when he does so.  The music always is better when he shows up to play.  Given all of that, what is there left for Jeff and Junko to do?  Anything they want.  Of course, (although retrojazz musicians would tell you otherwise) post-Ayler musicians cannot play just anything they want and be convincing.  But Jeff and Junko have enough new music under their belts that anything is likely to be really something.  One of the obvious manifestations of the superb work of Kit and John is just how relaxed--comfortable--Jeff and Junko looked as they performed.  And quality guitar and cello sounds were the results.  So, whether the quartet plays with “strings” or “spaghetti,” I hope there is a sequel.  Blister is Lucio Menegon and David Grollman, and they showed up with a miniature theater piece, “Who are the Banksters?”  The title of the duo production is a pun on the words “bank” and “gangsters.”  The purpose of the production (at least to some extent) was socio-political commentary.  So far, so good.  Unfortunately, although it was obvious that the duo is angry about the banking industry collapse and scandal, little else was apparent.  The articulation of the types and extent of the damage produced in the national disaster was vague and generally confusing.  The constant reference to fornication and “bank accounts” was hammered home.  The frustration with the situation was clear, but nothing else was.  Needs a lot of work.  What does not need work is the musicianship of the duo on guitar, snare drum, and assorted objects.  Fortunately for the audience, the two performers apparently have spent much more time working on music than on theater in general.  Also fortunately, most of the fourth set of the evening consisted of fine, genuinely creative music.  The final set of the evening was a Matt Samolis specialty.  It is not unusual to witness a post-Ayler pickup band at a music venue.  After all, creating music “out of thin air” is an idea that is central to much post-Ayler music.  And so, mix and match performances are quite common.  That’s not to suggest that established, working free bands are not without advantages.  But the solid, free veterans do not balk at such opportunities (if the other band members also are highly qualified).  That’s where Matt’s ongoing “experiment” comes in.  He brings together people who never have improvised together.  Some of these folks apparently never have performed free music in public.  Generally these outings do not challenge the quality of the output of established musicians who have committed their lives to post-Ayler music.  But usually the results are surprisingly good, as they were on 7/16.  One of the reasons for the success is that some of the ensemble members are experienced, helpful free musicians.  Also, Matt knows how to connect people and performance.  Bringing together Jane Wang, Glenn Dickson, Lou Bunk, and Pamela Marshall, Matt proved to be the perfect Svengali once more...

June 2013

The Acton Jazz Café at the “new” location has settled in after several months, and comments I made about it in previous Journal posts remain true.  In fact, if anything, it is more obvious with time just how much better the current version of the club is in terms of everything from sound to the food to sight lines to table service to ambiance.  I was thinking about all those good things 6/5 as I listened to the music of the Paul Broadnax-Peter Kontrimas Duo.  It struck me that the “club” atmosphere had really taken hold.  The music, the musicians, and the audience--although certainly not by design--came together in the manner of some type of musical family gathering.  No doubt some of that feeling was generated by the good-natured give-and-take of the “Paul & Peter Regulars,” some of whom have been showing up to Paul Broadnax gigs for a couple decades.  That fact, of course, suggests that the regulars (although an important part of the equation) are not the only reason for the family atmosphere at the Paul and Peter gigs in Acton.  The duo’s music is superb wherever they perform, but the “family gathering” seems to take on full shape only at the current incarnation of the Action Jazz Café.  On the other hand, there would be no “family” without the terrific, inimitable music...

I have on occasion complained that Boston area jazz support groups--although apparently operating with good intentions--generally fail to celebrate our wonderful Boston-based improvisors loudly or frequently enough (e.g., see the August 2012 Jazz Journal).  It may be of some comfort to the organizational powers that be to note that Boston is not quite alone in such failings.  I refer to Chicago-based longtime Boston favorite Hamid Drake and the fact that this coming summer he will be Artist in Residence at the Chicago Jazz Festival.  If one were to ask which three living Chicago-based jazz musicians have sustained the most substantial international reputation during the past fifteen years, certainly Hamid would be one of them.  There is no question that Hamid deserves such an honor, but why did it take so long?  Fortunately Hamid is full of energy and he’s healthy, not deathly ill or minutes away from passing (apparent criteria for many such awards).  No he’s healthy and playing better than ever.  But the wait has been too long, and in the same way there are many deserving musicians right here in Boston who still wait.  Or they are realists and have stopped waiting...

There was a sluggish start to things.  The performance began a half hour late, and two of the scheduled band members (to some extent for good reason) never made the Outpost gig.  So it is somewhat understandable that the music sounded “distracted,” wandering, not really finding its bearings.  But the 6/9 version of the Citizens Orchestra--Eric Zinman, Glynis Lomon, Jacob William, Chris Kottke, Forbes Graham, and Syd Smart--is made of substantial stuff.  About halfway through the single, substantial set the group found solid ground.  Then things really began to roll, particularly through the inventive “court sense” of Glynis and Jacob with in-your-face bowed cello and vocals on one side of Syd and pumping bass work on the other. Speaking of court sense and Syd, the drummer offered a basketball analogy pep talk before the last piece of the night, and everyone in the band got the message.  We all did...

For those of you who are into bicycles or like early warnings, you may be interested to know that Chicago’s Ken Vandermark and New York’s Nate Wooley will be doing an East Coast tour this coming fall.  That tour includes an October 3 visit to the Boston area for a quartet session with our own Jacob William and Laurence Cook.  The event is scheduled to take place at the bicycle frame manufacturing facility of Seven Cycles in Watertown.  I doubt that anyone will be around to build you a custom bike frame on that evening, but the music should be pretty good...

The Opensound series at Third Life Studio finished its spring season 6/15 with some of Boston’s favorite sound sculpture improvisors.  Kobold (Laurence Cook, Steve Norton, and Tom Plsek) opened with one of the highlights of its set, Tom creating sonics by dragging the bell of his trombone down part of the back wall of “the stage.”  Laurence’s dry humor before, during, and after the set injected a wake-up call occasionally as needed.  The start of the second Stanley Cup game pretty much coincided with the beginning of the Kobold set, and Bruins fan Steve Norton decided to incorporate distorted live play-by-play of the game into the performance.  It was done cleverly.  At first the distorted broadcast was barely audible.  Intermittently Steve increased the volume until it became obvious what was being broadcast.  However, because of the distortion, it was virtually impossible to discern what was happening on the ice.  Nevertheless, I found myself  (in spite of myself) trying to hear something about the competition, a score perhaps.  And that--for me--was the problem.  If the sporting event on the radio had been a championship curling match, the radio sounds would have been no more than an effective Cagean touch to the music.  But I was one of those nuts who stayed up to witness the frustrating third overtime period of the first contest.  So I was unable to pull my ears away from the radio broadcast.  As a result, a performance by a trio that I usually enjoy was ruined.  On the other hand, people in attendance who hate hockey probably had a terrific sonic experience.  (A relevant side note:  The Bruins won the game in overtime just as I drove into my driveway at home.)  Lou Cohen and buddy Lou Bunk are responsible for the popular (both with fans and musicians) Opensound series.  One of the unfortunate results of their production responsibilities is that we do not get much chance to catch composer/improvisor Lou Cohen perform very often.  A solo set by Lou is less common than rooster bicuspids.  And so a highlight of the evening was seeing and hearing Lou perform improvised music culled from his backlog of electronic resources.  Obviously he had thought out the program quite carefully beforehand.  But all of it came across as spontaneous dance.  Encore.  The final improvisations of the night were offered by the Kevin Frenette-Forbes Graham Duo.  These two musicians know each other well and apparently take great pleasure in challenging each other while supporting each other.  Sometimes their work came across as a casual chat.  But mostly their sonic conversation was a staccato “fast talkers” confrontation.  A face-off of joy.  Forbes continues to push both the conventional and non-traditional resources of the trumpet.  Kevin, absent too often from the Cambridge/Somerville venues during the past couple years, seems to have returned.  That’s good news for fans of a major guitar voice of his generation.  And I found his new electronic manipulations of the guitar lines particularly compelling.  All in all, the duo offered a terrific, memorable set.  The final performance of the evening featured a composed work, John Cage’s Variations III.  Performance of Cage’s music is something of an annual event.  On 6/15 Lou Cohen was joined by Joe Burgio, Steve Norton, Michael Rosenstein, and Walter Wright in tackling the composition.  Each year the performance group seems to improve its handle on Mr. Cage’s execution strictures.  With a brief exception of some metric drumming by Walter Wright, he and the rest of the group demonstrated fairly solid preparation and good discipline.  No, it wasn’t improvised music--at least it isn’t supposed to be--but it was a fine tribute to one of the most influential artists of the past one hundred years.  A nice conclusion to another fine Opensound season.  Also the evening heralds something to cherish in the coming fall...

The 6/21 New York Times noted that the prestigious Kyoto prize was awarded to Cecil Taylor for music this year.  The last time a musician (composer/conductor Pierre Boulez) received the prize was in 2009.  The prize, offered by the Inamori Foundation, includes a half million dollar cash gift.  No doubt Mr. Taylor will find some use for the bread.  Maybe after all you do not have to rehash bebop to get paid...

I spent a week in Milwaukee and Chicago at the end of June, catching the music of  Joe McPhee, Ståle Liavik-Solberg, Nate Wooley, rock guitar monster Terrie Ex (nicknamed after Terry Gibbs, but with Scandinavian spelling, by his jazz fanatic father), Dave Rempis, and other outstanding post-Ayler musicians.  Overall the music was terrific, but I will mention here only two parts of the sonic and visual adventure.  The first has to do with percussion.  Over the years I have witnessed performances of multiple percussionists many times, and often with such great drummers as Alan Dawson, Thurman Barker, Gerry Hemingway, Bobby Ward, and Denis (at the time Dennis) Charles, to mention just a few.  Several of those gigs are unforgettable, but I ran into a new level of “percussion high” at the Okka Fest in Milwaukee 6/22 in what was supposed to be a quintet of two reed players and three drummers.  It wasn’t that the percussionists--Paal Nilssen-Love, Tim Daisy, and Misale Legesse (on Ethiopian kobero drums that he made with is own hands)--were sonically overwhelming in volume so much as they simply took over the music.  About halfway through the set the reed players looked at each other and laughed, leaving the perfect storm of percussion to take its course.  You will not be surprised to read that, without any apparent signal, the three of them concluded the set at exactly the same instant.  Such events are not unusual when world-class improvising musicians are involved.  What was most impressive was the human impact of the concluding “thud” in terms of the sound, the body language, and the beatific facial expressions of the drummers.  The performance materialized as a unique life form expressed in the arc of improvised communication.  Extraordinary.  Unforgettable. The second element of the week that may be relevant here is the Ethiopian music and dance ensemble, Melaku Belay’s Fendika.  The group will be performing 7/7 in a free concert at 2565 Washington Street, Roxbury at 4 p.m.  Unlike jazz in which the improvisation is melodic, this ancient Ethiopian music form primarily incorporates vocal improvisations in a sophisticated call and response pattern.  The other intriguing aspect to the music of Fendika is that the rhythmic emphasis is on one, a fact that tends to knock people used to pop music and jazz a little bit off balance.  But there is more.  The body action in most dance of western culture takes place below the waist.  Fendika dance presents the most important body movements above the waist.  In other words, there are interesting links between what Fendika does and the songs, sounds, and dance of popular music and jazz in the U.S.  But it is the differences that are most exhilarating.  If that is not enough to attract you, kobero drummer Misale Legesse is part of the ensemble...

May 2013

Steve Lantner and Pandelis Karayorgis are brilliant musicians--and each is significantly different from the other at the piano.  Therefore, when Pandelis Karayorgis replaced Steve Lantner in the band 5/7 at Ryles, the natural question was:  How did the piano support for the group change with Pandelis at the keys?  Of course the music from the piano was different.  It would be an exaggerated oversimplification to say that Pandelis’ support was like that of a true boxer with bobs and weaves and stunning combinations of punches and Steve’s work calls to mind a relentless type of perpetuum mobile, swelling and fading in and out of the front line proceedings.  Yes, there have been moments like that, but each superb pianist is much more than such a simplicity.  Nevertheless, the description may offer some insight into the kind of work Pandelis provided for the outstanding group, Beyond Biology--leader Jacob William with Pandelis, Jeff Galindo, Jim Hobbs, and Luther Gray.  Pandelis always is a pro, ready to offer his best.  But the quality of the musical context may have pushed him even higher.  The music is totally improvised, and everyone in the band shows up to take full advantage of that fact.  For example, early in the first set Luther, Jacob, and Pandelis developed an ethnic rhythm they borrowed from some percussionists in Africa and our indigenous Southwest and pushed the energy through the roof.  Responding to that, Jeff and Jim took turns ripping up the sidewalk with groans and screams from the earth’s core.  And then no one did anything quite like that for the rest of the evening.  A terrific night of music.  And it was a delight to see some non-regulars hang around in the audience until the last notes filled the room...

Some fans and musicians are familiar with stories of the impact of prenatal sonics on future musicians.  You know, “Hey, all time comes from the heartbeat.”  Reedman Frank Morgan even has the tale of his guitarist father playing the instrument “next to my mother’s womb.”  I’m assuming the performances took place on or near his mother’s abdomen.  In any event, we now have science that seems to be confirming such prenatal influences.  According to researchers (Science News Feb. 9, 2013, p. 9), infants tested 75 hours after birth reacted differently to vowel sounds made in their native tongues rather than in another language.  In other words, before the infants had a chance to hear and react to words or sentences spoken in their native language, they “new” words in that native language.  Scientists such as Minna Huotilainen of the Finnish Institute of Occupational Health in Helsinki claim the phenomenon “implies that the fetal brain close to birth can perceive and learn most of the key aspects of speech.”  By comparison it would seem that learning a prenatal version of the bridge to “Autumn Leaves” would be a piece of cake.  Or maybe I should say a zwieback...

The Prepared Box for John Cage exhibit at Wellesley College’s Davis Museum ends 6/9.  It’s a real treat for John Cage fans.  There is a small note in the exhibit that ties Thoreau and Cage together rather nicely.  In a commentary by Carl and Arthur Solway, key people behind the 1987 tribute to Cage, they call up this statement from Henry David Thoreau: “Music is permanent; only listening is intermittent.”

Art inevitably reflects the context of the artist, from the vast and universal to the detail of everyday life.  Few contextual developments shape the immediate actions of the artist more profoundly than those provided by family and friends.  The 5/18 gig at the Outpost was filled with extraordinary music to some extent affected--bolstered, changed, prodded--by family matters. Jacob Williams’ young daughter Kriti is becoming a force to reckon with in both music and tennis.  Her success in the two arenas has resulted in some odd and extensive commutes for father and daughter, among other challenges.  Chronological extremes are offered by the first year of Silas, son of Forbes Graham, and recent BU graduate Jasper, son of Jim Hobbs.  How did all these family matters affect the gig?  Other than the fact that Jim bowed out so that he could attend his son’s graduation, you’d have to ask the folks who did perform--Jacob, Forbes, Steve Lantner, and Laurence Cook.  But the results were predictable in general--one of the better gigs by any group in 2013.  I found myself shaking my head in disbelief as Jacob and Laurence kept throwing possibilities at each other, perhaps doing so simply to discover the other person’s constructive reaction--and invariably stimulating Steve and/or Forbes to test new limits.  For example, on a couple separate occasions Laurence offered a plodding, heavy single “beat to the bar.”  Simple but challenging.  All that space in effect suggesting to Jacob, “Do anything you feel like.”  But the spare insistence was so forward in the mix that “just anything” would have been a disaster.  And, in like manner, the pianist and trumpet player were challenged to demonstrate that they were quite capable of--and happy to be--testing new limits.  And they were, and they did.  Whatever the effects of family matters on the gig in detail, it is obvious that the sonic outcome was more than positive.  And what happens when the BU grad’s father returns to the group to make it the Para Quintet?  One can speculate.  But two things are certain.  The music will be terrific, and the music will be different.  Completely...

If you are in the traveling mood this summer Milwaukee’s Okka Fest 2013 takes place June 21-23 and features a range of post-Ayler musicians and others, such as Fred Lonberg-Holm, Paul Lytton, Joe McPhee, Terrie Ex, Jeff Parker, the ensemble Fendika from Ethiopia, and more.  As a bonus, the Milwaukee Art Museum is modest in size but includes works missing or invisible in the Boston area (such as those by Harry Bertoia and Richard Diebenkorn).  You can find out more about the music at the Okka Fest site...

Because we in Western Civilization are committed to a linear construct of the universe, we have a fixation on time, particularly the specification of beginnings and endings of processes.  The assassination of the Archduke is not the beginning of World War One any more than VJ-Day is the end of World War Two.  But we obtain comfort in our linear construct with such symbolic designations.  (Notice how uncomfortable we are as a nation with wars in Iraq and Afghanistan that have “troop withdrawals” but apparently no end date.)  In that light it has struck me that 1913 may well be the beginning of twentieth century Western art in general.  Someone else will have to piece all of it together.  But one could begin by making note of the most famous visual arts event of the century, the 1913 Armory Show in New York.  As far as composed music is concerned (and that is a more relevant topic here), the twentieth century begins with three events in 1913 that kick off the four dominant musical paths of the century.  First is Edgard Varèse’s public complaint to the Futurists in reaction to publication of The Art of Noises (two paths established in one exchange).  Next is the audience uproar in response to Alban Berg’s Altenberg Lieder in Vienna on March 31.  That event may be thought of as the birth of the Second Viennese School as we know it.  The most famous of the three events is the public reaction in Paris two months later to the first performance of Le Sacre du Printemps.  With that work and its infamy Stravinsky established his dominance and influence throughout the rest of the century.  On exactly the 100^th anniversary of that event in Paris five improvising musicians--Eric Hofbauer, Jerry Sabatini, Junko Fujiwara, Todd Brunel, and Curt Newton--showed up at the Lily Pad in Cambridge to pay tribute to and musically comment on what we in the States refer to as The Rite of Spring.  I was quite curious to see how the quintet would approach the work.  Being a huge Stravinsky fan, I had the 1960 Stravinsky/Craft recording of the work memorized before any of the five performing musicians were born.  Although I knew the ensemble probably would not be doing a verbatim performance of the work (inevitably there would be improvisation), I guessed that familiarity with the composition would be of some advantage to listeners.  I believe it was an advantage.  Nevertheless, the performance was so full of contagious energy as well as visually and sonically attractive material that the full house 5/29 at the Lily Pad apparently remained transfixed for the duration.  The response was positive and enthusiastic.  All of that is good, but was the set of music qualitatively successful?  That’s a question easier to ask than answer.  There really is not as much jazz/classical conversation--substantively and qualitatively--as most cultural “interdisciplinarians” would have us believe.  For example, by now I hope most music fans realize that, although the concept of “third stream” sounds good, the relatively rare (in spite of attempts to expand the definition) examples of same virtually never sound good.  That reality is not a minor point when one considers the functional relationship between so-called classical music and jazz--and The Rite of Spring in that context.  Although it is true that jazz and classical  music were talking to each other during the first quarter of the twentieth century (Schulhoff, J.R. Europe, Milhaud, etc.), Stravinsky had not heard any jazz by 1913.  There is no jazz or jazz influence in the work.  And there’s the rub.  If you are a jazz musician and you want to do something constructive with The Rite of Spring, your options are somewhat limited.  A handful of jazz musicians who compose and arrange have dealt with the problem simply and effectively--create a work that makes no attempt to grapple with the composer’s work directly but celebrates the man in the title of the composition.  Perhaps the best-known example of this practice is Shorty Rogers’ tribute to Stravinsky titled “Igor,” a work recorded by Woody Herman and others.  The most common--and perhaps most successful--tribute musically by jazz musicians is to plug a quote from “Spring Rounds,” “Augurs of Spring,” or some other movement of The Rite of Spring into an improvised solo during performance of some other work (as in the case of Charlie Parker, Ornette Coleman, Neal Hefti, and others).  Some years ago Don Sebesky released an LP that included his arrangement of themes from The Rite of Spring.  But that’s not quite the challenge that plugging all fourteen movements into a performance provides.  Within the last couple of months we find new attempts at jazz arrangements of the complete work.  Two of them are available on CD.  The first features a big band.  I neither have read nor heard anything about the album that makes me want run out and grab a copy.  The other recent release of The Rite of Spring--this one by a trio--claims to exploit the original score.  However, given the emptiness of the trio’s performance of material by Ligeti, I can’t make myself listen to its Stravinsky.  All of that may say something about the musicians involved but perhaps even more about the difficulty of the assignment.  If you are going to take such a strong compositional statement (with compelling but definitely non-swinging rhythmic patterns) as The Rite of Spring and try to make some or all of it work as a jazz vehicle, you are facing s super-sized third stream challenge.  The problem is compositional architecture and language detail, not instrumentation.  Yes, if Stravinsky were asked to come up with a transcription of The Rite of Spring for a quintet, I don’t think he would have chosen clarinets, trumpet, cello, trap set, and guitar.  But the instrumentation is not the arranger’s primary problem here.  Stravinsky certainly could have made that combination of instruments work in a transcription.  After all, he was able to toss off popular transcriptions of the work for piano, both solo and four hands.  No, the problem is not instrumentation.  Instrumentation is the “fun” part of the challenge.  The hard part is reconciling necessarily definitive--at least somewhat crystallized--chart material with the swing impulse and the improvisational attitude in general.  It was James Reese Europe who discussed in 1919 facing the problem of performing composed classics with personnel whose cultural inclinations were to improvise.  As he put it, “I have to be continually on the lookout to cut out the results of my musicians’ originality.”  Both the time sense and improvisational “instincts” of jazz performance are different from those of classical performance.  One might even say that they clash functionally.  This fact means that the melding of jazz and classical music is at best problematic.  Otherwise, by now (jazz has been around for more than 100 years) the functional connection of the two musics would have been carried out successfully on a consistent basis.  We get hints of what such success might be like in the larger works of Gershwin and Bernstein, but none of their works (in spite of Gershwin’s objections to the contrary) truly incorporate jazz.  Almost all “third stream” attempts (MJQ included) are pretentious or otherwise boring.  For the record, in my view probably the most successful attempt at such an alloy is Yusef Lateef’s “The Centaur and the Phoenix.”  But the point is that the architecture, language, time sense, and improvisational orientation of the two music types are to a great extent functionally confrontational.  Keeping that fact in mind, we can see some of the difficulties presented to anyone who wants to take an in-your-face composed work such as The Rite of Spring and incorporate jazz elements into a presentation of the work.  To oversimplify the challenge (but suggest the heart of the problem), if you perform the piece as written and plug in jazz-type improvisation throughout the work, the results will sound like the failed effort of a John Cage student (particularly the improvisation).  On the other hand, if you write a swinging arrangement of the work (jazz it up?) and leave appropriate holes for the improvisation, the result likely will be something that brings to mind the kind of charts often written for high school jazz bands.  Such music is even painful to think about.  It is not a minor point that all examples (that come to mind) of “jazzed up” classical pieces created for pop and jazz bands are music from the Romantic period, a music filled with melodies not very far from Tin Pan Alley.  Although most such attempts fail, some reasonably successful attempts include the 1940s hit, “Tonight We Love” and the Ellington-Strayhorn Nutcracker.  (But how much better--an original work--Suite Thursday is!)  These two oversimplified options are not the only ones, but one cannot imagine tackling the problem successfully without having fixed at least one of these problems.  So this is the daunting task that faced Eric Hofbauer when he decided to take on The Rite of Spring and bring along his improvising buddies.  I have not discussed with Eric the particulars of his arrangement but hope to.  In the mean time, here’s my initial view of the effort.  First (and of no minor consequence) is the previously-stated fact of audience appreciation.  The reaction was enthusiastic.  And the audience was pretty much a mixed bag, everything from intently attentive musicians to friends to the merely curious.  In other words, the music had a positive effect on a wide range of people in the audience, and (more important in assessing the quality of a performance) it obviously impressed seasoned, serious listeners.  As suggested previously, the instrumentation is not inherently a problem.  Observing and listening to the music one gets the feeling that the instrumentation for Eric was simply a wonderful challenge.  The more relevant question is what Eric did with this specific quintet to take on the larger challenges of arranging The Rite of Spring.  Early in the performance the non-improvised music stayed fairly close to the original score.  One can imagine that Eric relished the opportunity to hand the extraordinary bassoon opening line to the bass clarinet.  But the line was preceded by an elaborate improvised lead-in from Todd Brunel.  So the first notes were improvised, and the subsequent straight line signaled respect for Stravinsky’s music as written.  In general the music proceeded in the sequence written by Stravinsky with improvisations interspersed between and during the composed sections.  Then gradually something unexpected occurred.  During the last third or more of the presentation the ping-pong effect between the improvised and the composed music disappeared.  It was not clear whether this shift was intentional or it was simply the result “of my musicians’ originality.”  As the musicians worked their way through the arrangement, they took liberties with the “transcribed” score.  The result was a music filled with both jazz-feel improvisations and sound sculpture improvisations that more and more became affected by an increasingly swing-feel written score.  By the last couple movements the performance gave the impression of being a jazz score with improvisations.  One might say that eventually the composed Stravinsky work was abandoned for a jazz-oriented transformation.  One can complain about or praise the evolution of the performance.  While it is true that more rehearsal time would have resulted in a presentation of greater clarity of the chart, the extra rehearsal time may not have improved the performance.  Such extra attention to detail may have stifled the performance of the improvisations, which were superb (particularly within the designed context).  Also, although the gradual shift from straight to swing feel in the performance of the chart was not clearly intentional, it is probable that an arranger of Eric’s skills would not allow the occurrence of an absence of intention architecturally.  More rehearsal would not alter design.  Finally, that very shift in time sense in the chart is a direct and creative assault on the problems demonstrated historically of trying to meld jazz and The Rite of Spring in performance.  As far as I know, Eric’s answer to the challenge is unique.  Applause.  I hope he does not plan to let us wait until 2113 to witness his quintet’s next performance of the chart...  

April 2013

Patricia Adams and the trio--Ray Santisi, Dave Zox, and Gary Johnson--showed up 4/7 at Ryles and demonstrated why this group keeps drawing the brunch crowd.  But one of the special reasons for people to show up for the 4/7 brunch was the return of jazz piano legend Ray Santisi.  His leg is not fully healed, and he finds a cane to be a necessary support (at least for now).  But the local icon is anything but frail.  His tongue and wit are as quick, dry, and as acerbic as ever.  And his face is full of energy and light.  With it all he obviously was joyful to see so many friends--iconic jazz entrepreneur Fred Taylor among them--show up to welcome him back.  He responded by demonstrating in obvious and exhilarating fashion that the injury had not kept him away from the keyboard.  The four band mates showed how fine music can be when presented by long-time partners.  It is obvious that Patricia, Dave, and Gary missed Ray Santisi the person.  But it also was obvious that they especially missed the musician part of that person.  And so did a lot of other people, as demonstrated by a room full of fans 4/7 at Ryles...

I picked up a copy of the 4/30 Boston Herald to read while I waited for my hair cut.  Before I got very far into the newspaper I spotted a front-page story about former Boston Celtics player Jason Collins who had decided to make public the fact that he is a homosexual.  Certainly the story is newsworthy.  No active player for a major professional sports team in the U.S. ever had announced publicly his or her homosexuality.  But what really struck me was the matter-of-fact, positive coverage of the event by what consistently is a right-wing newspaper.  Then the shock really hit when I discovered an editorial in that issue of the Herald praising Collins for his courage and for setting an example for young American homosexuals.  There has been a lot of talk about growing public acceptance of homosexuality in the U.S.  Talk is cheap.  But when the Boston Herald claims that “coming out” is the right thing--the “courageous” thing--to do, then maybe the changes are real...

Jim Hobbs and friends--Winston Braman, Jef Charland and Luther Gray--opened their set 4/10 at the Lily Pad with Ornette allusions without illusions.  Each musician was in your face from the get-go.  And soon the proceedings picked up a groove and never really let go.  The groove took on different tempos and styles, but it never let up.  Jim was at the center of it all, his horn carrying the band with him.  But much of the impact came from rocker Winston Braman on electric bass.  Creating beautiful chaos with the bassist was Jef Charland adding some of his rare screech owl guitar to the mix.  And, no matter where the music went, Luther was pushing it, making it all just a bit more outrageous.  If that weren’t enough, Jef and Luther were back for the next set of music--very different music driven by the same pair.  Luther rethought his attack and Jef switched to the instrument most familiar to his fans, the acoustic bass.  No doubt the Pandelis Karayorgis Trio was fired up because of the fine music of the first set.  The fire took them to different realms in which compositions/arrangements by band members provided solid ground for outstanding solos.  Two bands--one grooving and free and the other riding freely on composed sounds--offering an evening of superb possibilities.  Realized... 

Six posters around the stage at Ryles Jazz Club, Cambridge

Back in the October 2002 issue of Cadence I offered something of a public service.  Hearing confusion frequently about the people in the images in the frames on and near the stage of Ryles, I offered a frame-by-frame list of who is in what image.  Such a descriptive catalogue seems appropriate after so many years with such a large turnover of fans and Ryles visitors.  Just a couple days ago I heard someone at the next table identify the image of Monk as that of McCoy Tyner.  Also I decided to try to clarify further some of the information I offered in 2002.  So here’s my current attempt at a tour of the images: The musician shown in the frame to the left of the bandstand is Illinois Jacquet.  To the right it's Monk and Mulligan.  On the wall to the right of the bandstand (from left to right) you've got Sarah Vaughan, a Newport in New York poster, and Flip Phillips with pianist Mel Powell.  On the wall extension to the right of Powell and Phillips is Louis Armstrong with his trumpet.  In 2002 I was not certain that the saxophonist with Powell is really Phillips because the image is not in sharp focus.  Although I was not able to find a duplicate of the image of the two of them together online, I was able to find images of each of them that are almost identical to the framed images at Ryles.  It is possible that someone took separate images of each of the musicians and combined them into a single image.  Of course, the two musicians did play together with some frequency.  So anything is possible.  The image of Powell is probably from about 1955, and the image of Phillips is pretty close to that date (if not the same date)...

It was an especially fine evening at the Outpost 4/18 because it signaled the return of Curt Newton to public performance with four functioning limbs.  He claims that his technical ability is not 100%, but obviously his musicality remains at 100%.  I can’t imagine anyone walking into the middle of the gig and noticing any technical limitations.  And, if Curt had not pointed out specific limitations that he is experiencing, probably I would not have noticed.  (His prowess came to mind a few nights later when I attended a Boston Baroque performance of Haydn’s Lord Nelson Mass, one of the composer’s greatest works, the arrangement of which was particularly challenging because Haydn’s employer had removed all reed players from the orchestra as a cost-cutting measure.)  It may be useful to note that it was the kind of gig in which it is easy to spot weaknesses and strengths.  Such is the nature of Charlie Kohlhase's Explorers Trio--including Charlie, Curt, and Jacob William.  No walls of sound to hide behind or “clever,” distracting arrangements.  It’s just reeds, acoustic bass, and trap set--spare and almost crystalline in articulation.  All of that could be a problem for lesser musicians, but not for these guys.  They were up for music by such tricksters as Kalaparusha Maurice McIntyre, John Tchicai, and the trio’s leader.  If the nooks and crannies of those charts were not daunting enough, Charlie threw other challenges into the mix.  Sometimes it was a chart that one or more of the band members had not seen before, sometimes it was gremlins who had walked off with designated parts, and sometimes it was last-minute decisions about interpretation.  Like it mattered.  No matter what happened--or didn’t happen--these guys killed the parts.  Nailed them.  Boy are we fans of great music lucky...   

Melissa Kassel showed up 4/4 at the Lily Pad with regulars Tom Zicarelli, Bruno Råberg, and Phil Grenadier as well as veteran drummer Nat Mugavero.  Nat, with occasional asides from Phil for help, worked his way through the often tricky charts smoothly.  Tom switched back and forth between piano (mostly) and reeds as a sort of front line with Phil’s brass.  Tom is a sage but agile anchor in the group.  Bruno’s shoulder is recovering nicely (“about ninety percent”), and his contributions to the group continue to astonish.  He had just returned from several days in Japan where he did some playing but mostly teaching--“hard-working, enthusiastic kids.”  He obviously had a great time.  Phil played some of the most beautiful trumpet and flugelhorn I’d ever heard from him.  He’s been one of my favorite brass players for years, and somehow he always seems to get better.  He was enthusiastic about an upcoming couple of nights at New York’s Village Vanguard with his brother Larry (yes, that Larry Grenadier) and friends.  Lucky New Yorkers.  Melissa was at the top of her game.  Voice in control.  Pushing herself and band mates to reach higher, farther.  And her combination of repertoire choices and sequence was in my experience the best she’s ever offered.  It just keeps growing and surprising...

Here’s a bit of news for fans of Stephen King or Edgar Allan Poe.  (There is something of a music link here also; Poe has influenced musicians and inspired compositions by everyone from Debussy to Messiaen.)  Edgar Allan Poe was born in Boston but left us for much of his life.  Eventually he developed a certain amount of animosity toward our town (particularly our celebrated writers and philosophers), in spite of the fact that both his first and last published works were produced by Boston publishing houses.  He took jabs at us “Frogpondians” whenever he got the chance, as in the case of this bit of exposition in The Duc de L’Omelette: “His grace’s brain reeled as he glanced upward.  From above, hung a chain of an unknown blood-red metal--its upper end lost, like the city of Boston, parmi les nues.”  However, during the past quarter century there has been an all is forgiven sentiment growing in the Boston area.  In 1989 a plaque dedicated to Poe was established at 165 Boylston Street.  In 2009 (the Poe bicentennial) the area at the intersection of Boylston Street and Charles Street was dedicated by Mayor Menino as Edgar Allan Poe Square.  Much of the growing local support for the embracing of the author is the result of the efforts of B.C. English professor Paul Lewis and Dan Currie, president of the Poe Foundation of Boston.  The latest celebratory effort is a fund-raiser to realize a life-size statue, Poe Returning to Boston, created by sculptor Stefanie Rocknak.  On 4/1 to help push things along, Stephen King, a novelist with perhaps a bit of Poe in his works, and wife Tabitha donated $5,000 to the project.  You can find out more at the Poe Foundation of Boston

web site...

Steve Lantner is so superb at the acoustic piano that it comes as something of a surprise to witness his work at an electric keyboard in a trio with Allan Chase and Luther Gray.  He makes the instrument do what you might guess, particularly taking advantage of its almost unlimited volume potential.  During the two sets of music 4/23 at the Outpost the keyboard was loud.  But there also were times when the instrument was almost inaudible, perhaps the result of attempts at adjusting the balance in which understandably Luther seemed to be bashing to be heard above the amplifications.  You can imagine Allan’s plight, switching instruments and techniques and spending long stretches silently contemplating the maelstrom.  Everything I’ve written so far about the gig comes across as somewhat negative.  I realize that.  However, the intent is otherwise, merely an attempt to get across some broad sense of what was going on.  More subjectively, what was happening is something like being pushed over the edge of Niagara Falls and riding down that relentless wall of water, helpless but never reaching the bottom.  Thankfully.  But there was detail (from each of the three musicians) also.  It was as if I were trapped in that current of force and sound and--as I “looked around”--I saw fascinating sculptures of different materials.  Even chandeliers with sun shining through and altering the colors of the dangling crystals.  On the walk back to the car my ears still were ringing, but to my surprise my clothes somehow remained dry...   

I bumped into a couple sitting at the bar at Bullfinch’s 4/28.  They had driven up from Cranston, R.I. to catch the brunch performance.  All the dining room tables were taken.  As a result they were forced to sit at the bar, not the best vantage point to catch the music.  There were two open chairs at my table.  So I invited them the share the near-perfect location.  Cranston to Sudbury is a pretty good drive.  I was impressed.  But that’s the effect Paul Broadnax and Peter Kontrimas have on audiences.  It is not unusual for people to travel from New Hampshire or even Vermont to see the duo in action.  But this is the first time I’ve encountered someone from Rhode Island at one of their gigs in eastern Massachusetts.  But obviously the couple had caught performances of Paul and Peter on many occasions before.  As time passes, people who remember what the jazz back in the 1950s was like seek out the rare performances of that repertoire.  Even rarer is finding someone who can perform that music in an AUTHENTIC way.  It is no wonder that people travel for an hour or more to witness what Paul and Peter do.  The clock is ticking toward the time when you will be able to drive forever without finding an opportunity to experience such music...

March 2013

I was doing a bit of traveling this month.  So I missed several very good performances.  Although the number of reviews here is smaller than usual, I am happy that I did manage to catch some really fine music anyway.

The Lily Pad presented terrific back-to-back sets 3/14, offering the music of BOLT and KLANG.  The two quartets feature the work of two of the most engaging post-Ayler percussionists active today.  But that fact and the number of musicians in each ensemble are pretty much the only functional similarities between these bands.  BOLT also includes guitar, alto sax/lyricon, and cello.  KLANG’s instrumental lineup includes B-flat clarinet, acoustic bass, and vibes or (in this case) trombone.  Therefore the ensemble and solo sounds of the two groups are quite different.  But of greater significance is the fact that BOLT performs totally free music and KLANG features the compositions/arrangements of the leader peppered with improvisations.  If there had been any question previously, BOLT--Jorrit Dijkstra, Eric Hofbauer, Junko Fujiwara, and Eric Rosenthal--made it clear that the group is for Real.  It is obvious that those intriguing four distinct personalities have evolved into a single morphing but agile amoeba.  The band is (as always) all over the place, but the group members confidently think and perform as a unit.  A lot of that has to do with the astonishingly sensitive (overflowing with heart and intellect) percussion work of Eric Rosenthal.  Wherever the music goes, he’s there or he’s pushing it where it needs to go.  Eric Hofbauer is the “mainstream” wing of the outfit (having taken that frightening leap from envelope-pushing chordal music to free music that so many mainstreamers take but fail).  And we are lucky he has chosen to pursue both directions.  His chords and tuneful lines as applied in BOLT might fall flat in a more in-your-face free group.  But, because he is such a good listener (and is learning so rapidly) his contributions to the group, among other assets, give the other band members an historical grounding.  That grounding is one of the defining qualities of BOLT.  Junko takes advantage of her string-link with Eric, and their conversations--both foreground and supportive--were among the highlights of the evening.  Beyond that, Junko keeps growing as a free player.  Her decision-making (everything from bow to pizzicato, when to attack, and how to enhance) is light years ahead of where it was even a couple years ago.  And in more than one way Jorrit is the front man for the group.  With simpatico drums and two strings, he had better sound good out front.  And he does.  I must admit that I do have some problems with his work on the lyricon in the BOLT context.  It seems that all music is going through a period when what is old is all of a sudden new.  Therefore such electronic reed devices from the late 1960s and 1970s as the lyricon and the Varitone alto sax (Sonny Stitt even recorded using it) are fair game these days.  And I’m OK with that.  All sounds are OK.  It just depends on what you do with them.  And so I have heard Jorrit’s lyricon performances work well in other contexts.  But I find the instrument--in terms of both timbre and volume--to be a problem in this context.  The guitar and cello have a naturally limited dynamic range (if they are in synch) and a special sonic quality that requires sympathetic voices elsewhere in the quartet.  Mr. Rosenthal has no problem finding workable dynamics and sonics.  But the lyricon is a challenge with this group.  And being no lyricon expert, I do not know whether the challenge is insurmountable.  But the challenge is there.  On the other hand, Jorrit’s alto sax work presents no such problems in this context.  On that instrument in BOLT, Jorrit soars and connects.  I do not hesitate to say that Jorrit’s alto work during the past six months or so--and I have been a fan of his for years--is evidence of quality at a new plateau.  And that plateau consistently was in evidence during the first set 3/14.  There are many reasons for the group’s successful development, and perhaps you can find your own.  But there is no escaping the fact that BOLT is for Real.  I can’t wait for the next gig...

One of the most compelling portions of the Inventing Abstraction: 1910-1925 exhibit now at MOMA in New York is a small glass-enclosed display of artifacts of the Futurist movement.  Of special interest to those of us fascinated by the evolution of music during the twentieth century is a brief sound clip of the 1978 performance of Luigi’s Russolo’s Resveglio di una città (1914) using reconstructed intonarumori (noise machines).  It’s a piece of music that would bring a smile to any of the regulars at the monthly OpenSound events at Third Life Studio.  But there is more.  Behind the glass there is the original score for the work.  The score is a graphic chart not unlike graphic scores used by both western classical composers and post-Ayler jazz arrangers during the past fifty years.  One cannot hear the recording of the music and look at the score without pondering how well the sounds, the instruments, and the score predict such later pioneers as Partch, Cage, and the New York School in general...

The performance 3/23 at the Outpost was quite instructive to us observers.  It might be tempting to describe the lineup as “Almost BOLT Plus One.”  But that would be off the mark.  The four locals in the band--Jorrit Dijkstra, Eric Hofbauer, Jacob William, and Eric Rosenthal--included everyone in BOLT, but the cellist was replaced with an acoustic bassist.  The switch in instrument and improvisor made for an important shift in the music, even though both groups perform completely improvised music.  In BOLT the string voicings and interplay are a central component of the music.  On 3/23 the bass--not surprisingly--was not a “cello” in interplay with guitar.  Most of Jacob’s direct interplay was with the percussion.  And those two instruments talked to each other eloquently while prodding and reacting to the machinations of everyone else.  There were no instrumental subsets here.  Unlike BOLT, this quartet was an “every tub on its bottom” ensemble, and effectively so.  Because of the difference, the group sonics and dynamics also were different.  For example, although Jorrit’s lyricon posed ensemble problems with BOLT, the instrument worked well here, a situation in which the give and take of body blows transpired much more naturally.  But I find that I still prefer Jorrit’s alto sax work, which is exemplary.  I imagine he sleeps with the alto under his pillow.  And Eric Hofbauer was something of a revelation.  During the early part of the single-set evening, Eric wisely comped and conversed with others in the group.  He is relatively new to out-on-a-limb totally free soloing.  I thought he might continue in that vein, and he could have done so without presenting a problem and constructively.  But gradually and intermittently he moved more and more into the foreground.  Then he took the leap and soared.  The breakthrough came when he decided to use his slide guitar technique.  Somehow Eric’s comfort with that technique opened his brain and heart to the free world to a degree I had not witnessed in him before.  It carried over to technically more conventional finger picking and strumming as well.  And he was off to the races.  That reference leads us to the guest from California, Ross Hammond.  It was my first chance to witness his work.  He proved to be both a fine musician and a personable, thoughtful conversationalist.  I hope he returns.  At first he walked quietly into the music, somewhat minimalist and almost inaudible.  But he kept walking, more and more gregariously.  It turned out that one of the highlights of the evening was the two guitarists, both compatible but remarkably different.  The range of each guitarist is significant.  However, one subset of their approaches to the guitar may be useful in indicating their delightful differences.  At one point in the evening Ross reached down to reveal his rock roots, calling up the era of Hendrix and compatriots.  Then he handed over the solo space to Eric who pulled out his metal cough drops box to give us a taste of the slide guitar legacy.  I think I even saw some red clay clinging to his shoes.  Through it all, body language showed just how much these guitarists were digging each other.  And that was just one of the highlights of a fine evening provided by an outstanding first outing.  It’s too bad we won’t get to see this quintet again soon...

At one point early in the first set 3/28 at the Outpost Garrison Fewell moved the fingers of both hands below the frets and plucked and massaged that high-pitched free end of the strings.  He produced what for me--after years of listening to him perform--was the most profound improvised solo I ever had heard from him.  I mention this moment to get across the fact that the whole evening was filled with special moments provided by Garrison and band mates Jim Hobbs and Luther Gray.  However, such moments were not primarily what the two sets of music were about.  The tone was set before the start of the first set.  Band members were talking about a variety of subjects.  Finally the conversation gravitated to spirituality.  Picking up on the final comments in the discussion, Garrison--when prodded by a head nod from Luther to open the set with guitar--sat completely motionless.  Then, after two or three heartbeats, his face broke into a broad smile and he said, “I already started.”  Soon he began thoughtful, spare guitar work.  After a time the alto sax and drums joined him.  And that’s how the evening of completely improvised, spiritual sonics began.  From that point on the music went to many different places, but it retained its spiritual focus.  For example, at one point the music picked up an ethnic dance beat.  As it evolved, Luther slowly piled metal objects on the upper stem of his hi-hat--as if he were building a mandala that would be washed away at the end of the piece--simply to insure that the thin clang atop the hi-hat would take the dance to the perfect cafe of his imagination.  Time and again (as he often does on gigs) Jim found something at the human core of his horn and brought it up for all of us to realize and cope with in our less talented ways.  On 3/28 his soul-searing performance confronted our ears and hearts with questions of timeless and sometimes harrowing profundity.  Yes, it was an evening of especially spiritual soul-searching and--ultimately--beauty.  I’m glad that I was there and so many others were along for the trip.  All of us got our ticket stamped...

The Metal & Glassless Duo--Peter Warren and Matt Samolis--performed with Tatsuya Nakatani for much of the first set 3/30 at the Nave Gallery of Clarendon Hill Presbyterian Church and for all of the second set.  On 9/10/11 at the Outpost Tatsuya performed with the Boston-based version of his Gong Orchestra.  Both of those evenings were terrific.  All the musicians involved contributed to a trip to sonic otherworldliness.  I want to be clear that all the music in both cases was well performed.  However, I must take a bit of space here to single out for special mention Tatsuya’s work as a soloist.  During the time he was in Boston in those first years in the U.S. Tatsuya collaborated with a wide range of musicians and presented solo percussion sets of music.  My memory is that all of that work was received quite well by both musicians and fans.  And justifiably so.  And now we encounter the Tatsuya of today, a musician of all the technical skill he had back then (and I would suggest even more) and a maturity musically that transcends by far anything I witnessed by him when he lived here.  Witnessing his solo work 3/30 in Somerville, I found the saw and percussion work of Paul Lovens come to mind.  That fact is remarkable for two reasons.  The first is that, although they both employ the bow and found objects in the use of percussion, their personalities are as different as one can imagine.  In the same way, their musical personalities are quite distinct.  The second and most important reason has to do with the comparable quality of their music.  As far as making music primarily with bow and found percussion is concerned, Tatsuya Nakatani and Paul Lovens share a realm all their own.  Everybody else working with those resources is doing something else.  Some of that something else sometimes is quite remarkable.  But it remains something else.  Over the years I am lucky to have witnessed several examples of each of their solo performances.  I am convinced that Tatsuya Nakatani and Paul Lovens operate on a special plateau in a realm only they share.  I am lucky that they have chosen to share that realm with the rest of us...

The current and (if my memory is correct) most durable incarnation of Your Neighborhood Saxophone Quartet--Allan Chase, Cercie Miller, Joel Springer, and Tom Hall--returned 3/27 to the Lily Pad.  Was it a nostalgic event or was it something more?  The band is 33 years old.  I must admit that during the first couple numbers I had visions of a slightly different version of the band performing during the early 1980s in now-defunct clubs in the area.  So there was some nostalgia (at least for me).  But there certainly was more.  The quartet remains an evolving ensemble.  For example, Joel (according to Tom) wrote a completely new arrangement for the gig at the Lily Pad.  And Cercie found herself stopping proceedings a couple times until she realized that she did not have a new version of an old chart on her music stand.  A somewhat humorous moment.  But it helps fans realize that this is an evolving band.  And apparently it will continue to evolve.  Question: What is 3 times 33?  You guessed it.  The quartet over the years has pursued a wide range of music, including many of the compositions of Sun Ra.  To close out the evening Allan Chase announced that YNSQ would return in May to celebrate the 99^th anniversary of the arrival of Sun Ra on earth by playing nothing but the master’s music.  More evolving to look forward to...

I must confess that I do not know whether Smith Brothers cough drops are in business anymore.  But that was my first thought when KLANG began setting up on stage for the second set 3/14 at the Lily Pad.  I thought that, if regular band member Jason Adasiewicz had made the gig, it would have looked like an audition for a Smith Brothers cough drops TV spot.  But Jason Adasiewicz was injured, and I’m sure all fans hope he’s recovering well.  And so KLANG--James Falzone, Jeb Bishop, Jason Roebke, and Tim Daisy--took the stage performing the compositions/arrangements of leader James Falzone.  Bassist Jason Roebke excelled in the more straight-ahead material, always locking in well with the percussionist.  Drummer Tim Daisy justifiably has international status because he performs and impresses around the world.  It is a joy to witness his attention to detail, whether it is execution of the charts or support for the improvisations around him.  Of course, he is a superb soloist.  Jeb Bishop is one of the great post-Ayler trombonists of our time.  In this case he read the (presumably somewhat unfamiliar) charts as if he had written them.  And then there were the solos.  Very special. It is strange, but about eight or ten of the best post-Ayler improvisors active today that I can think of are trombonists (those “forgotten giants” of jazz).  And certainly Jeb is one of them.  James Falzone is the leader of KLANG as well as clarinetist and composer/arranger of the group’s material.  It is of significance that James identifies himself as “Composer and Clarinetist” in his correspondence.  The sequence of words indicates that he identifies himself primarily as a composer and secondarily as a clarinetist (with no reference at all to improvisation).  Ironically it was obvious that many people in the audience showed up primarily to witness the man’s clarinet playing.  And why not?  It is rare today to find post-Ayler musicians focussing on the B-flat clarinet exclusively.  And there’s the simple fact that at times James Falzone’s playing brings to mind such masters as Buddy DeFranco and Tony Scott.  At the end of the second set KLANG was joined on stage by Jorrit Dijkstra, Eric Hofbauer, and Junko Fujiwara for a train wreck of free improvisation (with occasional instances of substantive sonics).  But the mishap in the packed house also served to emphasize just how good and distinctive each of the two sets of music had been. And just how important those distinctions are...

February 2013

WGBH-FM and (particularly) Scullers are engaged in an “ancient” enterprise, so old that maybe it will be perceived as new.  None of us alive today remember broadcasts from music venues in town even back to the early 1920s.  But some of us do cherish those great air checks, recordings made in the 1930s through the 1960s.  We know about them because of articles and books and occasional air checks that have survived (Charlie Parker at the Hi-Hat, anyone?).  And it didn’t end there.  As far as I know, the last live broadcasts from any jazz club in Boston on a regular basis took place at the Willow Jazz Club on WERS-FM in the 1980s.  Some of the material was recorded off the air (i.e., “recent” air checks).  So now we have Scullers and WGBH-FM dabbling their toes in these important historical waters.  The third (and most recent) attempt at such an adventure took place 2/22 and featured the music of Antonio Sanchez’ Migration.  The basic question about live broadcasts remains unchanged.  Are people more likely to show up at clubs to be part of the broadcast (“Hey, I was there!”)?  Or do they stay at home to hear the music in the comfort of their home or hand-held devices (“Hey, those in-person performances just don’t sound real.”)?  Regardless of the perceptions of today’s real or imagined jazz fans, the effort of Scullers and WGBH is to be applauded.  There is nothing better than live jazz at its best, and the best jazz over the airwaves sometimes comes close to that.  I heard Antonio Sanchez’ band over the airwaves 2/22.  Was it great jazz?  No.  Was it exciting, engaging jazz worthy of broadcast?  Certainly.  Antonio Sanchez is an exceptional percussionist who brought with him a (presumably young) capable group of musicians with wonderful potential--Dave Binney, John Escreet, and Matt Brewer.  The band perks up the ears because they apparently are not interested in “jazz as usual.”  But I confess to concern when they opened the set with a work too much a mimicry of what Messrs. Coltrane, Tyner, Garrison, and Jones were doing in the mid-1960s.  But there were instances in that opening piece that suggested I should hang around.  And hanging around paid off.  Soon they abandoned the 1960s and found terrain closer to their musical personalities.  It was when band members sustained no more than a pulse or “drone” while one of them improvised freely that we got closer to who they are and--more important--may become.  And that brings us back to the broadcasts in general.  Both jazz clubs and jazz radio want to attract audiences.  Unfortunately, the assumption for both is (and has been for several decades) that the innocuous band with hooks is the way to go.  The serious jazz wacko is abandoned.  I don’t have any easy answers.  I understand the economic necessities.  I cannot “pontificate” about improvised music if I’m not eating with a roof over my head.  But if what is presented as jazz is not very good, does anybody win?  The boring music that passes for jazz at most clubs and on the radio in general is an insult to everyone from Louis Armstrong to David Stakenäs.  And the clubs are empty and the radio stations fail.  I’m tempted to say that there is a link between these two factors.  So that brings us back to 2/22 at Scullers.  No, Antonio Sanchez and his buddies were not great.  But--thank you, thank you--they were pushing the envelope.  Did they draw a big crowd?  Did the audience react enthusiastically?  I don’t know the answers to those questions because I was not there.  However, if the answers to those questions are “yes,” then there is hope for real jazz.  Maybe even in clubs.  Maybe even on the radio.  Bring these guys back as they grow.  Bring in mature ear-stretching bands--the Steve Lantner Quartet, the Variable Density Sound Orchestra, any of Jacob William’s Para outifits, almost anything Pandelis Karayorgis touches (as just a few examples)--and see if audiences can HEAR and are attracted to real music.  But maybe I digress.  The next ensemble scheduled for broadcast on WGBH-FM from Scullers is an anemic grandchild of something we used to call LH&R.  And so it goes...

Guest Bobby Spellman (flugelhorn) joined the trio during the last third of the evening and acquitted himself nicely.  But the centerpiece of the evening was the trio itself--Steve Lantner, Joe Morris, and Luther Gray.  The Steve Lantner Trio used to perform somewhat regularly in the Boston area.  But when Allan Chase is available to round out the great Steve Lantner Quartet, it is difficult to come up with a reason to “cut back” to the trio.  After the gig was over I suggested to Steve that it had been more than a year since the trio had performed in public.  Steve claimed that it had been only a few months.  From the standpoint of the serious listener, whatever the time gap is, it is too long.  Both the trio and the quartet are wonderful ensembles.  But it is important to understand that the Steve Lantner Trio is not merely what is left over when you remove the saxophone from the Steve Lantner Quartet.  The triangle of interactions in the trio is much different from the give and take of the quartet.  (“I get a lot more tired,” Steve joked.)  Joke or no joke, the contributions of the musicians in the trio are different, perhaps more physically challenging.  In the quartet the roles of the musicians evolve on stage as the music evolves.  In the trio the relationship and contributions of each of the musicians is more “equal,” more harmolodic.  Except in the case of solos (i.e., two of the three are sitting out), each musician is soloing constantly while providing pillar-like support for the other two musicians.  The result is that, as the music evolves on stage, the entire trio evolves as an interactive, chattering unit.  Truly exhilarating music.  And that’s what Bobby Spellman was up against 2/26 at the Outpost--a trio that refused to become a quartet just because someone else joined them on stage.  It wasn’t rudeness on the part of the band members.  They just were having too much fun and didn’t want to stop the harmolodic triangle.  Bobby Spellman chose to play along with the piano.  A wise choice.  Yes, he acquitted himself nicely...

There are a number of jazz-oriented web sites that present information about what’s going on in the Boston area.  Some sites, such as those sustained by Tom Hall, Steve Provizer, and a few others, offer think pieces, something about the music to chew on.  Recently I was checking out Eric Hofbauer’s site and found interesting commentary about the 12/9 concert at the Lily Pad in tribute to John Tchicai and what it means to be a creative musician in a world in which creativity does not seem to be valued as much as fads and glitter.  At one point, although Eric is speaking for himself, I imagine he also speaks for a lot of creative hard-working musicians who pursue jazz and other improvised music.  He writes:

So each morning I awake and think “Is this the day I walk away from it all” and everyday I pass the test and continue on, through the lack of gigs or teaching opportunities, the financial struggles, the failure to get that job, gig, tour, review, grant, big chance to share my passion for music with anyone who will listen.

However, along the way, there are these experiences that just vibrate with faith and validate completely everything in my life up to that moment.

You can catch the full text at Eric’s site...

Sometimes you go to a gig with the anticipation that you will be witnessing something genuinely special.  That’s what happens to me when I go to any of the Laurence Cook-Luther Gray Duo sessions.  I know the “conversation” is going to be music happening at another level.  Such anticipations--and we all have them--are extraordinary burdens.  Thank goodness that the musicians don’t think about such anticipations.  Some of them at least might feel and be affected by the burden.  But it is tough on the listener also.  Anticipation--unrealistic expectation--very often results in disappointment, and quite understandably so.  I wondered about that problem as I walked into the Outpost 2/28.  And then all of that distraction disappeared.  I sat in the front row, giving me a “front row seat” to the process of art.  I saw two musicians set up their equipment.  All musicians do such things, but these two musicians were preparing for something for which the term “music” seems to be inadequate.  They were not preparing to make “music.”  They were preparing to make something tangible.  It started with the offering of cymbals from Luther to Laurence.  And the exchange of various tools from one percussionist to the other continued throughout the evening.  This was not music as usual.  They were in the process of building something beyond everyday terminology.  But at the same time it was almost a type of existential craft.  I had visions throughout the evening of the two of them as workers in the Olympian foundry of Hephaestus.  They were working with the molten core of the earth to create the details of the armor and forge the invincible sword of Achilles.  Something beyond my ken.  And breathtaking.  And we in the audience sat in silent (except for occasional inconsequential applause) awe of the Olympian creation.  And the process continued that way until the forgers/percussionists asked Andy Voelker to bring his alto sax into the forge.  He brought his own metal in the form of the saxophone and brought the different mythology of the Firebird, fluttering with and off the blacksmithy of Laurence and Luther.  A different mythological source but--importantly--something also rooted deeper than simply music, something at the very essence of art.  And after the sounds were over at least some of us walked away from the event connected to a molten core.  Humbled...

Charlie Kohlhase's Explorer's Club is an amoeba-like ensemble, growing and shrinking as circumstances require from the reliable pool of about ten creative musicians.  The Explorers 2/21 at the Outpost was a quintet--Charlie, Jeff Galindo, Jerry Sabatini, Jef Charland, and Luther Gray.  Notice that Curt Newton was not on this bill.  Shortly before the gig Curt was skiing.  But you guessed wrong.  Everything was fine on the slopes.  Curt managed to slip on an icy patch on some sidewalk while other people nearby skied safely on the slopes.  His wrist is in a cast which is scheduled to be removed at the beginning of May.  Drummers don’t drum with only three limbs.  But Curt is hoping to train himself to do so.  He just can’t imagine himself missing all those gigs between now and May.  The reason I know about Curt’s plans is that he showed up at the Outpost about a third of the way into the first set--to the enthusiastic response of all.  Curt, probably better than anyone else in the room, could understand what a great job Luther did filling in for Curt.  A consummate pro all the way.  And, by the beginning of the second set, Luther obviously felt right at home, booting the band along with abandon.  As most readers know, performing a tune twice on the same gig is a relative rarity.  Some musicians hate the practice on philosophical grounds and others simply do not want to take time from other compositions that might be performed.  But Curt showed up immediately after the band had played John Tchicai’s “Sweet Smells,” a work he was anxious to hear.  Charlie and the guys fulfilled his wish by opening the second set with another wonderful, unique version of the work.  John Tchicai would have smiled.  The entire evening was full of smiles for all of us.  The really good-sized and appreciative audience.  The stop-start rhythm section work led by (at different times) Jeff and Charlie.  The joyous front line work and solos off each other of Jerry and Jeff.  And on and on.  Speaking of Jeff, we had a bit of a scare early in February when the word got out that Jeff is moving to New York.  The loss of such a special musician would be terrible for musicians and fans here.  At the end of the evening I asked Jeff about his plans.  He said that he probably would be moving to New York in May but planned to be visiting Boston on a weekly basis.  In other words, the Boston tradition of such innovators as Hal Crook and Gary Valente lives.  If everything goes as planned, we lucky Bostonians will continue to witness the music of Jeff Galindo, and New Yorkers gain some great music.  What could be better than a Steve Swell-Jeff Galindo Trombone Tandem?  Boston-New York.  Win-Win...

January 2013

The Paul Broadnax-Peter Kontrimas Duo expanded to a trio 1/18 at Amazing Things in Framingham.  They brought in long-time friend and bandstand colleague Les Harris, Jr. to take care of the traps.  Before the gig I was talking with Peter about the relationship between bass and drums in trios and other conventional ensembles.  Although all jazz fans know that the musical connection between bass and drums is important, Peter stressed the point during the conversation.  He mentioned that there are many fine percussionists in the Boston area, but he has an especially solid musical link with about a half dozen of them.  He emphasized the fact while bringing up the point of how much he enjoys playing with Les, a drummer he really locks in with.  Maybe their long relationship has something to do with the connection, but maybe it’s something a bit more intuitive or aesthetic.  In any event, both musicians gave a fine demonstration 1/18 of what being “locked-in” is all about.  Of course working with a master like Paul helps a lot.  The three of them are comfortable together, and part of the material they performed consisted of standards they’ve played together for decades.  But the surprises and other challenges were on the stage also, particularly in terms of the set lists.  The gig was billed as “Standards and Such,” and maybe it was the “such” that made this evening particularly fine.  We love hearing the most familiar tunes, but how delightful it was to witness these guys dust off and dig into “But Beautiful,” “Old Man Time,” “Beware My Foolish Heart,” among others.  Gigs where you can hear chestnuts performed by people who really know what that music means are becoming rare indeed.  We should be thankful that there are venues that still present such fine fare--and performed by the handful of people on the third planet who really know what to do with that music...

Early this month I signed on to the internet to confirm the start time of a gig I had planned to attend in a couple hours.  To my surprise and disappointment, the band I was planning to catch had been replaced by another.  I was disappointed but also frustrated because that fact meant I had posted incorrect data among the Scheduled Highlights on this site.  Pointing fingers would not be constructive.  Neither venue operators nor musicians have a vested interest in offering incorrect data about gigs.  But stuff happens.  So I will keep trying to get it right in the listings here.  However, even with that, fans would be smart to double-check the listings.  Gig information posted on the musician/band web sites tend to be more accurate than venue postings.  But some musicians have little or no gig information on their web sites.  Good luck...

As the band demonstrated 1/4 at the Acton Jazz Café, the music of Clear Audience--Luther Gray, Andy Voelker, Steve Fell, and Jef Charland--remains stratospherically high.  Leader Luther Gray continues to amaze as a percussionist (and he keeps growing impressively as a composer).  Andy (fighting off a New Jersey cold) reached down and produced beautiful sounds directly from the gut, some of his best solos in my experience.  I know that I’m not alone when I say that there is something fascinating about the interaction of two instruments of similar mechanics, such as two reed instruments or two percussion instruments.  And so I found the ongoing conversation between Steve and Jef compelling--in both solo and support.  The two string sounds played off each other to special effect throughout the evening.  I meant to ask Jef about that connection after the first set.  In particular, to what extent does the fact that Jef also plays guitar affect his performance on bass with Steve?  Is the special connection I hear real, and if so, how does Jef see that connection?  But I forgot to ask him.  That unanswered question is just one more reason for me to show up the next time Clear Audience performs...

Discussing a gig at the Acton Jazz Cafe brings to mind the fact that the “new” Acton Jazz Cafe has been around since October.  So maybe it’s time for an early status report on the club.  So far the word from musicians regarding on-stage acoustics is mixed.  Some musicians claim they have difficulty hearing themselves or other musicians, and some musicians claim the stage sound is terrific.  Room acoustics for the audience is quite fine in my experience.  Better than in the old place.  Balance without mics or a sound board is surprisingly good.  By all accounts, compared to the old Acton Jazz Cafe the new club has better food, better beverage choice, and better table service.  Ambiance is not a minor point.  The old place was a basement club with none of the constructive vibe of a classic downstairs club.  The new place feels like a real jazz venue, as if it has been a comfortable jazz hang for years.  To top things off, the owners put up a sign on the building that is visible easily once you enter the Acton Shopping Mall parking area.  So, from the standpoint of a jazz fan, being forced out of the old place is the best thing that ever happened to the Acton Jazz Cafe.  Let’s hope the crowds keep coming and growing...

What a night.  Two star-studded ensembles (including two of the great drummers of our time) performing at the same time within rock-throwing (if buildings were not in the way) distance of each other.  Over at the Lily Pad 1/26 was the Whammies who--except for one wonderful Monk foray--performed Lacy material with musicianship, passion, and panache.  One of those who “doth bestride the narrow world like a Colossus” was at the Lily Pad in the form of Han Bennink.  It is of some significance that the other Colossus percussionist performing in Inman Square at the same time, Laurence Cook, expressed disappointment to me later in the evening for not having seen Han perform, explaining that he didn’t know Han was in town.  Having said all of that, I should emphasize that the rest of the Whammies--Jorrit Dijkstra, Jeb Bishop, Mary Oliver, Pandelis Karayorgis, and Nate McBride--comprise a group of heralded musicians.  Younger than Han but justifiably heralded.  As enthusiastic as fans were after the band’s previous visit to town, these musicians outdid by far whatever happened at Killian Hall.  And the crowd was ecstatic.  I think Mr. Lacy (if he were in the audience) would have applauded loudly.  Maybe the only thing lacking in the set I caught was the very sound of the soprano sax of the late Mr. Lacy.  It was a tale of two gigs.  The best and the worst.  The good news is that during the first set of music I was part of the largest audience I ever had seen there.  And that’s also the bad news.  Fans were lined up three and four deep inside the front door of the Lily Pad.  Soon after the opening notes of the first set the aisle (the only aisle in the gallery) was clogged with people sitting on the floor.  If a fire had occurred just outside the door in the back of the stage, most of the people in the room would have perished in the panic, smoke, and flames.  If a fire had occurred anywhere else in the room, the only people with a good chance of escape would have been the musicians.  As much as I love the musicians involved in the gig, that fact offers me little solace.  I mentioned my concerns to several people as I made my way out of the club to catch the music at the Outpost.  As if to put an exclamation mark on my concerns, the internet hit me in the head the next morning with stories everywhere about the 240 people killed in a fire in a Brazilian night club.  No, it’s not possible for 240 people to die in a fire in the Lily Pad.  It is too small.  But how many deaths are too many?  Whatever the “acceptable” death rate is, it is time for Gill Aharon to meet with his staff to help insure that the Lily Pad--a vital arts center in Cambridge--is not a headline for the wrong reason.  Boston jazz historian that I am, I’m sure that I am not the only person who has read many first-hand stories about the famous Cocoanut Grove fire.  That is the fire that resulted in strict fire codes throughout the nation.  It is not surprising that one of the articles offered 1/27 by the Associated Press is titled “A look at notable deadly nightclub fires.”  The writer says this about the famous fire: “A fire killed 492 people at Boston's Cocoanut Grove club in 1942, the deadliest nightclub blaze in U.S. history. The fire led to the enactment of requirements for sprinkler systems and accessible exits with emergency lights not linked to the regular lighting system.”  With such a daunting legacy of fire and death we need to do what is necessary to avoid adding to it...

In the May 2010 issue of this Journal I discussed the bad news that people in San Francisco, inspired by Jazz at Lincoln Center, had begun the first steps in creating a jazz mausoleum to be known as the SFJazz Center.  My, how time flies.  In the online 1/24 edition of the New York Times Nate Chinen describes the official opening of that monument to an idea, jazz distastefully re-imagined.  Of course, Mr. Chinen’s take on the event is considerably more upbeat than mine.  Even his reference to the institution’s official ensemble, the SFJazz Collective, was ironically positive.  Emphasizing the SFJazz organization’s desire to have an international impact from its home base, he points out that only one member of the band is from San Francisco (Santa Cruz actually).  Everyone else is from Israel, Puerto Rico, Venezuela, Philadelphia, New Zealand, and Albany.  It makes one wonder whether local guitarist (a really good one, by the way) Carl Lockett ever will get a gig at the mausoleum.  He--like most other SF area musicians who try to make a living playing jazz--certainly will never make enough money to buy a ticket for a good seat at a gig there without taking a major financial hit.  But these things almost never are about the jazz musicians.  They are about dreams, fantasies, the clink of glasses, the manufactured certificates and awards--all designed at least partially to stroke the egos of the people specifying the guest list, designing the place cards, and arranging the chairs for the wake...

I’ve come to the conclusion that I have a bias on behalf of sax-piano duos.  Obviously we’re not talking about just any sax-piano duos, but duos with musicians of the caliber of Lacy, Griffin, Solal, Parlan, and so forth.  And that’s what happened 1/22 at the Outpost when Allan Chase and Steve Lantner presented two wonderful sets of completely improvised music.  A remarkably good-sized and attentive audience bucked sub-zero degree (Fahrenheit) winds in Inman Square to see what these guys are up to.  I can’t remember witnessing them put on an evening of just the two of them.  So audience members had good reason to put up with outside conditions.  And we were rewarded.  As someone who has caught these gentlemen performing many times over several decades, I found their duo relationship fascinating and compelling.  Early in the first set, making an indirect reference to the Steve Lantner Quartet, Steve made a comment about the two of them being “half of the Quartet.”  While the statement was factually accurate, it was far from accurate musically.  Certainly witnesses could hear sounds that might recall some activity of previous Lantner Quartet performances.  But basically this was not merely a duo but rather nothing other than a duo.  One cannot improve on something that is supposed to be exactly as it is--in this case a duo.  There were all the connections and surprises that one might expect from top-shelf musicians in top form.  But the most compelling detail of the reality of this music was that it was unique functionally.  We have come to expect certain types of architectural activity in duo performances--call and response, simultaneous or overlapping conversations, and so forth.  These expected activities are not inherently negative, particularly because so many terrific improvisors have engaged (and do engage) in such activity.  But very little of what Allan and Steve were up to involved that type of communication.  Rather, they caused the piano and sax (soprano or alto) to be manifest as a single instrument.  Two people played two instruments as if it were all a single instrument with qualities of both saxophone and keyboard simultaneously.  That fact is remarkable enough, particularly considering the quality of music produced.  However, along with all that, Steve and Allan never abandoned who they are for the sake of this “single instrument.”  Throughout the evening one never lost the clear identity of Allan Chase and Steve Lantner as distinct individual voices.  It is just that those individual voices combined to create a remarkable unity.  A little wind chill is a small price to pay for that...

I attended the two-day symposium Beyond Notation at Northeastern University 1/18-19.  Normally I would not mention here any type of symposium on so-called classical music.  But the subject of the event was Earle Brown (1926-2002), a subject quite relevant to both composed concert music and jazz.  As most jazz fans know, the relationship between jazz and European-rooted concert music has been dynamic and often strained.  Because a vast majority of the important early jazz pioneers were black, white supported music organizations in the U.S., such as symphony orchestras, tended to ignore or ridicule jazz.  Later in the century people such as George Gershwin were slighted by the white music establishment at least partially because of their black-rooted music creations.  Europe, on the other hand, was a different place, a different culture.  The influence of ragtime and jazz on Stravinsky during the first third of the twentieth century is well known.  Even as late as the 1960s, Stravinsky recorded his Ebony Concerto (written for Woody Herman in 1945) with Benny Goodman.  Erwin Schulhoff premiered his Opus 37 in 1922.  The work included movements with titles such as “Ragtime,” “Shimmy,” and “Jazz” (and even one titled “Valse Boston,” a type of waltz that was the rage in Europe at the end of the nineteenth century).  Since mid-century the relationship between the white music establishment in the U.S. and both jazz and music from non-Western cultures has been a mixed bag.  Toru Takemitsu encountered vocal derision and laughter when he attempted a rehearsal of one of his Shakuhachi symphonic works with the New York Philharmonic.  More recently, our own Boston Symphony Orchestra exhibited much back-stage grumbling during the series of world premiere performances of John Cage’s 1O1 (by intent conductorless) in April of 1989.  One of the great ironies in all of this is that during the last fifty years or more, outstanding musicians trained to perform jazz have had greater success in tackling classical music than outstanding classically-trained musicians have had in attempts to play jazz.  I have no interest in slamming individual classical performers/composers who have attempted jazz.  But it may be sufficient to point out that musicians with strong jazz roots--such as Mel Powell, John Harbison, and even Milton Babbitt--have had much greater influence with their “classical” compositions and teaching than in the jazz realm.  (And I say that with the firm belief that, for example, the late Mel Powell’s arrangements for jazz ensembles and improvisations are qualitatively superior to his award-winning classical compositions; today unfortunately he has a relatively small jazz following.)  And Earle Brown is part of that mix.  He grew up within earshot of the ballroom at Whalom Park, one of the big band stops in Massachusetts on the important Shribman brothers circuit during the Swing Era.  In high school Brown played flugelhorn and led a dance band of his own.  A musician in the service during World War Two, Brown hung out with and learned from such skilled musicians as Zoot Sims and Gerry Mulligan.  Eventually he fell in love with the Second Viennese School and was accepted as a student of Schoenberg who died before Brown could take his first lesson.  Earle Brown became a composer in the Western European tradition.  As part of those pursuits, he became an enthusiastic practitioner of the Schillinger System after studying at Schillinger House on Newbury Street in Boston (an institution that became what is known today as Berklee College of Music).  In other words, from a strictly technical perspective, Earle Brown evolved into as theoretically and practically rigorous a composer as one can imagine.  Because of that fact, it is difficult to imagine someone like Brown in the same musical world as a jazz musician.  And yet, those contradicting forces within the music of Earle Brown are to some extent what make him so fascinating--and so successful compositionally.  Earle Brown never lost his love for jazz.  One also wonders whether he came across the comment of Schoenberg (not a big Gershwin fan) who claimed that one of Gershwin’s great achievements is that his compositions “give the impression of an improvisation.”  In any event, Earle Brown spent his professional life as a composer who sought to employ the rigors of serialism and Schillinger in such a way that the performer would have improvisatory freedom approaching that of the jazz musician.  The most important result of this pursuit is that Brown composed some of the most compelling music written since the middle of the twentieth century.  Of special interest to those who love jazz is that, in his attempt to solve the ongoing challenge he gave himself, Earle Brown developed compositional techniques that have found (and may still find) their way into jazz arrangement.  For example, (before any jazz arranger I’m aware of) Brown tried manipulating conventional notation through such practices as elimination of bar lines and/or tempo indications, employing graphic scores (which he soon rejected for a return to more conventional notation), and improvisatory conducting (at a time when Butch Morris was too young to attend elementary school).  The Beyond Notation symposium was to a great extent a success.  The problems were typical of almost all such academic projects.  The most obvious problems included failure to keep the program on schedule (resulting in compression or even complete elimination of some presentations, such as the much-anticipated talk by Susan Sollins-Brown) and the inevitably defensive nature of academic presentations (in which both lectures by presenters and comments by audience members during Q&A sessions apparently were intended to feed or defend egos rather than say anything constructive).  One specific corrective comment here may be appropriate because it relates to jazz history.  During his presentation/demonstration Cornelius Dufallo (founder of the excellent Ne(x)tworks ensemble) claimed at the symposium that Butch Morris invented the practice of spontaneous/improvisational conducting for jazz ensembles.  While the efforts of Morris (who unfortunately passed away 1/29) on behalf of the practice of “conduction” is of great significance, his work on arrangements employing improvisatory hand gestures is a further development of practices initiated by New York's Collective Black Artists in the early 1970s--in the same way that Babbitt’s expansion of serialism is related to Schoenberg’s original work.  When the symposium was good, it was very good.  Talks by friends of Brown, musicians, composers, and wives generally were outstanding.  Although there were problems with presentations by academics, not all were less than terrific.  For example, Louis Pine’s presentation on Brown’s use of the Schillinger System was difficult but engaging.  Of course, not having a full-time faculty position probably disqualifies Pine as an academic.  In any case, Louis Pine may well be the most informed researcher on a subject in which ignorance and speculation are rampant.  For myself, I was able to pick up enough crumbs during Pine’s lecture to be fascinated.  On the other hand, the experience convinced me that I do not know diddlee about the Schillinger System.  Not surprisingly, the performances of music--particularly the music of Earle Brown himself--were the highlights of the two days.  One of those highlights was the conclusion of the final evening of music--a performance by Stephen Drury’s Callithumpian Consort of Brown’s Sign Sounds immediately followed by an encore of the same work with compositional elements performed in a different sequence.  It was a superb demonstration of the central premise of the symposium and a perfect sonic sendoff to people who gathered for two days to consider the music of Earle Brown...

The gig at the Outpost 1/26 strangely brought to mind Haydn’s Farewell Symphony.  It wasn’t exactly the same, but it started with one absent band member.  So, instead of Para being a quartet, it was a trio consisting of leader Jacob William, Jim Hobbs, and Laurence Cook.  The bonus was the addition of wonderful off-the-wall guitarist Jon Damian.  Then, later in the set Jim Hobbs apologetically packed up and left to perform at a previously engaged gig.  He made a parting joke about the oddity of not merely having two gigs on the same evening but that they were his “two gigs of the year.”  If you are at all an alert creative music fan, you know that a great gig--which is what this was--that loses the contributions of Jim Hobbs is taking a big hit.  True.  But the remaining trio changed directions and mined completely different terrain.  Much of the music became a conversation between the bass-drums duo and the guitarist.  And with all that the music ranged from totally free to the blues to bebop.  Yes, bebop.  It was a good demonstration particularly for fans who know Jacob and Laurence but not this part of their resources.  Make no mistake.  You could take Jacob and Laurence and drop them on the stage of the old Five Spot in New York, and they’d be stoking relentless fire for some lucky bebopper front line.  On 1/26 we were the lucky ones...