Welcome to Boston Jazz Scene

Welcome to the Boston Jazz Scene web site--the place to find out what happened, what is happening, and what is coming in jazz and other improvised music in Boston and surrounding communities. The most recent post is listed below this information. Words listed below the Topics heading to the right refer to information you can find here about jazz and other improvised music, the arts in general, food, and travel in and near Boston.

If you click on the Scheduled Jazz Highlights topic, you will see a selection of upcoming jazz gigs that we think are particularly noteworthy.

If you click on one of the History - Jazz Journal topics, you will see a selection of journal entries covering performances and relevant events that have taken place in Boston since the 1970s.

If you click on the History - Major Contributors topic, you will see a list of Bostonian musicians who have made significant contributions to the development and evolution of jazz in Boston and elsewhere.

If you click on the Images - Musicians topic, you will see a selection of photos of current and former Boston area jazz musicians and significant visiting jazz musicians. If photos of musicians are displayed on this page and you click on Older Posts at the bottom of this page, you will see earlier image pages eventually going back to page 1.

If you click on the Images - Venues topic, you will see a selection of photos of current and former Boston area jazz venue locations.

If you click on the History - Jazz Timeline topic, you will see a brief list of significant events in the development and evolution of jazz in Boston beginning with the first groundwork in colonial America.

If you click on the Essays on Music topic, you will see essays about the development of jazz and other music since the late nineteenth century and particularly the evolving context in which the music has been and continues to be created.

If you click on one of the Travel options, you will see a variety of information that may be of interest to people visiting Boston (or even some people who live here).

Monday, November 4, 2024

Upcoming performance highlights

Among the more attractive performances scheduled in the near future in the Boston area are the ones listed below.  With the exception of some gigs that feature Magazine Cover (MC) groups (which can range in quality from very good to terrible), the gigs listed below are ones that I wish I could attend.  And—if time and circumstances permit—I will be there.  
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For now some locations indoors are open for music performances.  Distancing and mask restrictions apply.  If people exhibit safe behaviors, such gigs may not be shut down.  Let's hope things improve soon.  


As far back as July a number of articles in such mainstream publications as The Philadelphia Inquirer, The Guardian, The Washington Post and others sounded warnings about the threat of Project 2025.  The 7/19 issue of The Week offered a half-page summary of commentary about the Project 2025 document and its threat to democracy as we have known it.  Dozens of extreme right-wing institutions and activists under the auspices of the Heritage Foundation (look it up in an objective online source) produced the 192-page “game plan” to take over the country after the 2024 election, assuming Donald Trump or some other MAGA politician takes over the White House.  Columnist Will Bunch stated that the document, “a scheme for dictatorship” that Trump ludicrously claims he is ignorant of.  “I know nothing about Project 2025,” he claims.  Nonsense.  At least 25 (and growing) of the Project’s 36 authors have participated in either the first Trump administration or his current campaign inner circle, and Bunch notes, the Heritage’s Project website features a course taught by current Trump press secretary Karoline Leavitt.  Washington Post columnist Philip Bump wrote, “Trump’s attempts to disown this blueprint for Christian nationalism simply aren’t credible.  He may disagree with parts of it, but Heritage Foundation activists played an outsize role in directing Trump’s policy in his first term and will be back in droves in a second.”  Project 2025 central goals are, according to Robert Reich, “precisely what Trump has called for” in his campaign speeches, including “replacing some 50,000 federal workers with Trump loyalists, more oil drilling, and mass arrests and deportations of undocumented immigrants.”  He’s downplaying the Project 2025 document to appear “less bonkers to independents and moderates.”  Even a cursory look at the Project 2025 document suggests that the agenda includes a national ban on abortion, elimination of the Department of Education, elimination of health care security for seniors and limiting it for others, and (of course) increasing costs for the middle class while giving tax breaks to billionaires (at a level even beyond his handouts to the wealthy in his 2017 Tax Cuts and Job Act, which still is in effect).  The Heritage Foundation has copies of the Project 2025 document available for sale on its website and as a PDF version of the 192-page tome (which it makes somewhat difficult to obtain, if you are not a true believer or are unwilling to hand over your personal information and email address).  I do recommend reading the document to get a sense of the full reality of how much these folks believe that most Americans want Christian nationalism as a replacement for separation of church and state and replacement of government agencies with for-profit organizations (in the belief that for-profit organizations always are the best way to go for the public interest).  In other words, these folks did not learn the functional and economic costs of handing over military functions to out-of-control for-profit operations during the Iraq War.  Today is there any caring, thinking American who believes that hiring for-profit organizations to run our state prisons results in ethically and economically sound penal operations?  Here is a chance to download a copy of the Project 2025 Mandate for Leadership document before they figure out a way to kill the URL:

https://static.project2025.org/2025_MandateForLeadership_FULL.pdf

In the Table of Contents you can find topics for all the most well known agencies of government.  Each topic includes the Heritage perspective on how that agency can be improved.  Translation: gutted.  The opening statement found at the beginning of each topic usually reads somewhat commonsensical.  As you move on to each subsequent section of the topic, the right-wing dogma becomes more and more obvious.  For Example, the Environmental Protection Agency topic begins to get substantive in the introduction titled “Back to Basics.”  The section titled “Administrator’s Office and Reorganization Responsibility” suggests the changes that are coming and “Office Of Air and Radiation (Oar)” in a supercilious manner makes it very clear that the way the EPA is operated and conceived of is the result of politically and intellectually confused decision-makers.  As you read what the Heritage Foundation plans are for each federal agency, you will notice the intention is the establishment of a theological autocracy which ironically proves the Project 2025 document is functionally akin to the Hitler-Goebbels playbook in method and is theologically unlike any words or actions of Jesus found in the New Testament in the Bible.  Throughout my political life I have been an Independent, on occasion voting for both Democrats and Republicans.  However, in this election I am voting exclusively up and down the line for Democrat candidates as a functional gesture to help save American Democracy…


11/9 – The Pablo Ablanedo Octet(o) at 4:45 p.m. (MP) – Pianist/composer/leader Ablanedo brings with him top-notch musicians Fernando Brandao (Flutes), Dan Rosenthal (Trumpet), Todd Brunel (Reeds), Eric Hofbauer (Guitar), Bruno Råberg (Bass), and Gen Yoshimura (Drums).  It should be a fine time at the Lily Pad, where pandemic regulations apply ($15/kids $5)...


11/10 - Point01Percent presents a strings and percussion quartet set and a sax, piano, drums set starting at 7:30 p.m. (PA) – Curator/percussionist extraordinaire Eric Rosenthal brings a wonderful bassless but wonderful trio of Steve Lantner (piano), Allan Chase (sax), and Luther Gray (drums) at 7:30.  Then at approximately 8:30 you get all the bass you could as for with Bruno Råberg providing the string work for Eric Barber (sax), Pandelis Karayorgis (piano), and Eric Rosenthal (Drums).  It happens at the Lily Pad, where pandemic regulations apply ($15)...


Quincy Jones died on 11/3 at age 91.  His life in music is justifiably celebrated in all news media.  He had an extraordinary impact on a wide range of music and musicians.  No doubt most of the coverage will focus on his genius in the realm of popular music.  However, he did have a great impact in jazz as a trumpet soloist, arranger, composer, and band leader.  I choose to focus on him here as a fine example of the productive connection of two jazz musicians from different generations, Quincy Jones (1933-2024) and Preston “Sandy” Sandiford (1909-1986).  After studying trumpet with Clark Terry, Jones moved to Boston in 1951 where he had won a scholarship to Schillinger House (now Berklee).  While studying there he got a gig playing in a small band at Izzy Ort’s, a strip joint in the Combat Zone.  There he got his most important arranging lessons from the pianist, Sandy Sandiford.  His memory of his studies with Sandiford offers a wonderful commentary on a constructive connection between two generations of jazz musicians in Boston:

After weeks of work I’d bring the score of my arrangement on “All the Things You Are,” every single note carefully written out for the piano, bass, drums, and the horn players.  Downstairs, during breaks, Sandy would check it out, then blow me away by tearing up the whole score and saying, “To hell with a score.  Learn how to do it up here in your mind.  First write out the chords and rhythm parts, then do the top line for the lead horn parts.  Then finish writing out the transposed parts for the whole band and forget the rest of this shit.”





Every Monday – Monday night at the Lily Pad returns with Jerry Bergonzi, Phil Grenadier, guest bassist, and Luther Gray.  Then The Fringe Duo, John Lockwood and George continuing the fire no doubt inspired by the memory of Bob Gullotti.  It begins around 8:30 pm and continues forever ($15 per group; $10 students)…


Ongoing – Non-Event online Music – Performances at various times plus an archive of music (PA) – Non-Event is offering music via online audio files and video files plus real-time performances.  The emphasis is on new music, some of which is improvised music.  For example, Matt Samolis (who unfortunately for us moved from Boston to central Massachusetts) is presenting his bowed cymbal meditation recorded on May 1, 2020.  Keep in mind, money helps support these events.  The URL is: http://www.nonevent.org/
 


If you would like to read Science News’ fine coverage of the pandemic and its implications (including dozens of articles so far), go to the site’s page of coronavirus feature articles.  On that page also is information about how to receive that publication's coronavirus update newsletter twice each week.   Science News will try to answer your questions at feedback@sciencenews.org. …


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Key codes: The abbreviation in parentheses following the name of the event or band/musician performing indicates roughly the type of music that you can expect if you go to the gig.
MC= Magazine Covers.  These musicians/bands are popular with jazz fans and therefore often find their photos on the covers of jazz magazines.  This type of band may or may not be any good qualitatively.  However, many fans like to know “what’s hot.”
MP=Mainstream/Post-Bop.  This is the music that most people think of today when they think of jazz.  It runs the gamut from Parkeresque bebop and Websterish ballads to the post-bop work of people such as Bergonzi and Lovano.
PA=Post-Ayler.  This is Anthony Braxton’s term for all the adventure that came out of Ayler, Ornette, Cecil and others (including Mr. Braxton, of course).  In some ways it is the most diverse jazz and jazz-rooted music being performed today, including everything from near zero dB whispers (e.g., undr, John Tilbury) to eardrum demolishing walls of sound (Keith Rowe, a ton of stuff from Japan) to performances built on combinations of composed and improvised material (Liberation Orchestra, Charlie Kohlhase’s ensembles) to completely improvised offerings (Evan Parker, Laurence Cook).
S=Swing.  It don’t mean a thing…  Maybe “nothing” means “anything” if you are a fan of swing.  Sadly, fine swing music seems to be approaching extinction, at least in the Boston area clubs.  The reasons are obvious and elusive.  The great names of Swing (such as Lunceford and Barnet) have passed on and taken almost all of their band mates with them.  In addition, in spite of the fact that some of the finest music of the swing era was produced by the combos of Goodman and Basie (among others), people continue to think of swing in terms of large (and therefore economically untenable) ensembles.  You can find it happening in some dance halls, but mostly at weddings and Bar Mitzvahs.  For years such names as Whitney, Winniker, and Hershman have held the fort in the Boston area.  But you’ve got to keep your eyes peeled. 
T=Two-beat/Trad.  Some of the finest contemporary two-beat jazz anywhere has been nurtured and grown in Eastern Massachusetts since the 1970s.  Everyone knows about the New Black Eagles, and a host of other musicians are held in equally high esteem around here.  Some of the better-known are Jimmy Mazzy, Stan McDonald, Jeff Hughes, and Guy Van Duser.  Unfortunately for city dwellers, two-beat jazz (and, to a lesser extent, the blues) has moved to the suburbs.  But the best of it is worth the drive.