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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.

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Tuesday, January 5, 2016

Jazz Journal – 2015

December 2015

I showed up at the gig in Somerville and ran into Curt Newton and Jerry Deupree.  It always is wonderful to see Curt, and on those rare occasions when I run into Jerry it is an emotional reunion.  Much of what he does now is outside the realm of my pursuits, and I lament that fact (even though I love that he pursues what he loves).  As Jerry and I talked, the subject of percussion dynamics came up.  I mentioned that too few jazz (and other) percussionists have respect for the full spectrum of the dynamics, particularly the lower end of the dynamic range.  I mentioned that Joe Hunt is my favorite cocktail drummer.  And Jerry enthusiastically took off, discussing his passion for quiet drumming.  He talked about the wonderful challenge of playing drums on a music and poetry gig in which the evolving time/rhythms would be clear to the audience and yet the poet could be heard clearly above the percussion.  He talked about performing in an alt-rock band with quiet/subtle drums that could be heard in the context of the noise (but still have everyone in the band and audience happy with the music).  How can you not love Jerry Deupree?  Jerry showed up before his gig to catch what he could of the Pocket Aces gig.  The last time I wrote about the Pocket Aces--Eric Hofbauer, Aaron Darrell, and Curt Newton--I celebrated the trio realizing what I’d hoped it would become.  These guys returned to the Café at Somerville Arts at the Armory 12/11, and I was more than interested to discover what they would do.  The good news is that the trio picked up where it was the last time I witnessed its music and continued to push the composed and the free elements of the group’s music.  For example (apparently spontaneously), Eric might nod to any band mate to signify that the person is to play the head as an intro to bring in the other two musicians.  If Curt gets the nod, he does the honors (full of beautiful melody) while Eric and Aaron admire his work and, at the appropriate instant, jump into the fray, inspired.  Most of the charts Eric has put together consist of originals and compositions written by jazz masters.  So it was something of a surprise when on the spur of the moment Eric chose a seasonal favorite to close out the evening.  But the selection and execution of that piece is instructive regarding the freedom that is inherent in the band’s approach to performance of composed material.  Eric soloed the composition before the rest of the trio entered.  He was into a repeat of the melody and an audience member gasped with glee when she finally realized that Eric was playing a Christmas favorite.  The response was as authentic as the introductory performance itself.  No gimmicks.  Just melodies held up to the different kinds of light for pleasurable examination.  And, almost as an aesthetic balance, the free playing in this group is “contained,” disciplined in the most constructive manner.  Oh there are wild and woolly moments, but much of the free investigation is focussed on the amazing branch of the tree rather than the whole forest.  Solid stuff.  And it fills an empty space in the jazz spectrum.  The Pocket Aces demonstrates just how important filling that space with sonic art truly is…

The instrumentation of String Theory 12/15 was two violins, two cellos, acoustic bass, and percussion/reeds.  It was a first-time venture for the group--Clara Kababian, Mimi Rabson, Jane Wang, Glynis Lomon, Anthony Leva, and Dave Peck--and it needed time to get the kinks out during the first set of the all improvisation evening.  Although some of the musicians had worked together before, during this set of music the people had to work out balance and other sonic relationships.  In this regard there were two main challenges, the non-string component (particularly reeds) and the use of electric amplification.  There was no problem with Dave’s performance.  It is just that I believe the string players would have had an easier time of it to sort things out if the group were strings exclusively.  The fact that all of the strings were amplified at least to some degree seems to have made finding the volume balance more difficult.  In fact, in terms of volume, the bass never “competed” successfully with the other strings.  Nevertheless, it was a group of pros, and there was a very real aesthetic connection before the set was over.  It makes one anticipate future String Theory gigs.  Also, even though it was not the dream duo gig that I’ve been looking for from Glynis and Jane, it was a real treat to catch the two of them perform together once again (this time on cellos), quite a fine rarity.  The second set at the Lily Pad was the acoustic set.  The volume level of the first set generally was quite high and “electronic” sounding.  The second set, offering music from the current version of Leap of Faith, featured four acoustic instruments--two reeds, percussion, and the combination of voice and Aquasonics or amplified cello articulated by Dave Peck, Steve Norton, Yuri Zbitnov, and Glynis Lomon respectively.  Of course the experience was different from that of the first set in terms of acoustics.  But, and this should be no surprise, Leap of Faith hit the ground running.  Three of the band members go back together for decades, and Steve is comfortable in this environment now.  The current group, a fine modification of the earlier incarnations of the 1990s, is a solid example of what a band committed to completely improvised music can be.  Catching the band in action, it is almost possible to see that the band works well.  Glynis sings, bows the Aquasonic, and attacks the cello as if she were meant to be on this gig.  PEK wanders from one to myriad other instruments to select his sonics, and he interjects with purposeful timing, emphatically.  Steve plays not as many instruments as PEK (probably nobody does), but he selects carefully and talks to Glynis instrumentally.  Yuri is the band’s narrator, constantly choosing the “stick” and instrument that will explain the epic story that is going on before us.  Nice gig, even though I caught only two of the three sets.  Fortunately I expect these folks to return…

Various kinds of Minimalism were the rage in so-called classical music during the second half of the twentieth century.  Minimalist composers often claim major influence from John Cage, but a number of the composers of the first half of the century paved the way (if not usually intentionally).  Minimalism rooted in the work of Cage and others has faced two primary problems.  The first is that burden of every classical form and genre--terrible composers.  But monotonously boring music is not the result of bad composition alone.  The works of such wonderful minimalists as Satie, Cage, and Feldman too often have been decimated by terrible performances.  Feldman in particular suffers from performances by apparently competent and enthusiastic musicians who have no idea what the music is supposed to sound like.  For example, listen to Feldman solo piano works performed by John Tilbury or Steffen Schleiermacher as a benchmark.  Then listen and discover how confused most other performers of Feldman’s music are.  This brief discussion of the more than bumpy road of Minimalism in the classical world is relevant to new music in the jazz world.  Oddly, Minimalism as a popular “new” form has arrived somewhat late to the post-Ayler jazz world.  But the problems encountered in the classical world seem to have carried over to the jazz world.  I have not mentioned this problem before because--until recently--jazz Minimalism (with rare exceptions) has not really caught on in the Boston area.  I have been fairly happy about the fact that Boston may be the only major center of jazz in the U.S. in which Minimalism has not caught on.  In general I believe the lack of Minimalism here has been a good thing.  Minimalist jazz--however “hip” its practitioners may be--generally has been as disastrous as classical Minimalism (if not worse).  It is in this context that I write about the Minimalism of Luther Gray.  I will not pretend to discuss it thoroughly in this Journal entry.  But given the “hip” and boring context he is working in, something should be said.  Luther showed up 12/10 at the Outpost with Allan Chase, Steve Lantner, and a handful of charts, Minimalist charts.  You know, angular, jagged, spare lines that on the surface cause one to recall, “On the page it looked nothing.  The beginning simple, almost comic.  Just a pulse,” to quote Salieri’s introduction to a score by Mozart in the film version of Amadeus.  In other words, superficially the Luther Gray charts seem to be quite similar to those composed by other post-Ayler musicians who create Minimalist jazz vehicles, boring examples of such vehicles.  Listening to the music 12/10 I was struck by the question, “Why are all the other post-Ayler Minimalists creating boring music, but Luther makes it work?”  The simple answer, of course, is that Luther is a brilliant musician who is working in a trio with exceptional musicians.  However, even though that statement is correct, it is not really useful.  It is sort of like asking the question, “When I jump into the river, why do I get wet?”  Saying that the water in the river creates a sensation of wetness is factually valid, but it does not get to the heart of the experience.  I’m not suggesting that my thoughts expressed here will clarify the existential experience of wetness or why the Luther Gray charts performed 12/10 by the trio worked superbly.  But I need to try to say something about the nature of the group’s successful performance.  I believe the purpose of the charts is one of the keys to success.  The charts are not merely composed lines that set a foundation upon which improvisation is created.  As far as Luther’s scores are concerned, before any musician pursues an improvisatory outing based on the chart, he is expected to confront and reveal the chart itself in ways that are not explicit in the notes on the page.  For example, at one point the trio was about to play a piece that Steve never had performed with the group before.  On his own in preparation for the gig, Steve had practiced performing the work.  On the gig, as the trio set up the charts to pursue the music and Luther described what he was looking for, Steve mentioned that he had wasted his time preparing to perform the work for the gig.  He was joking.  No doubt the preparation was useful.  But it was merely a chart starting point for the improvisatory realization of the chart in performance.  The charts are malleable in infinite ways.  And, of course, there is improvisation “independent” of the charts but grounded in them.  As a result, the creative possibilities for musicians while playing the composed music and while soaring in compositionally inspired improvisations are limitless.  That fact means the responsibilities of the musicians in performance are extraordinary.  If this stuff is going to work, Luther can’t get by with people who are merely great readers because playing the “heads” is a starting point for really playing the heads.  Also, he can’t get by with people who excel specifically as improvisors because grappling with those heads both accurately and creatively is an essential foundation to understanding what path is most effective in pursuing the open improvisation.  This is impossible stuff.  Impossibly stunning.  To return to oversimplifying (in the context of what I have just written), what we need for Post-Ayler jazz Minimalism to work is a “chart buster” who knows how to create challenging charts but who articulates clearly the need to transform those charts into living sonics.  But that is not enough.  The chart buster needs to bring to the gig rare musicians such as Steve Lantner and Allan Chase who understand what is needed and revel in the challenge.  And on 12/10 revel they did.  Maybe there is a future for Minimalist jazz… 

On a break during the 12/10 gig Allan Chase demonstrated a fine technique for avoiding the “Sheet Music Shuffle.”  It is so simple and so effective that I do not know why the technique is not taught in every Music Performance 101 course.  And yet, no one in the audience or the band (other than Allan) ever had learned the technique.  Allan claimed he had learned it from another musician not that many years ago.  All of us have witnessed the problem.  Many band leaders do not use predetermined set lists.  As a result, a common sight on gigs that use charts is band members shuffling through a pile of sheet music to find the right chart.  The shuffle can be prevented effectively by using the technique demonstrated by Allan.  Start by setting up the charts in a single pile vertically on the music stand so that the composition title is at the top of each chart.  Take the first chart and turn it ninety degrees so that the chart rests on the “shelf” of the music stand with the composition title perpendicular to the music stand shelf.  Take the second chart, turn it ninety degrees, and place it in front of the first chart so that the entire first chart is covered, except for the title on the first chart.  At this point in the process the first two charts are resting horizontally on the music stand with the titles of both charts visible.  Continue the process with the third chart so that the first three charts are resting horizontally on the music stand with the titles of all three charts visible.  Continue the process with the rest of the charts.  For example, if you have ten charts that may be used during a set, when you have completed the process all ten charts are resting horizontally on the music stand with the titles of all ten charts visible.  It would make the process more effective if the ten charts are sequenced alphabetically (or in some other functional order).  So, when the band leader calls for “The Dipsy Doodle,” you look down and it is staring at you right between “Can’t We Be Friends?” and “Fools Rush In.”  You grab the chart for “The Dipsy Doodle” and set it up vertically on the music stand.  Now you are relaxed and ready to play, waiting while you watch everyone else in the band do the “Sheet Music Shuffle”…

Construction Party--an annual reunion for Dave Rempis with Forbes Graham, Pandelis Karayorgis, Nate McBride, and Luther Gray--landed at the Lily Pad 12/23, and it was a type of party before, during, and after two sets of improvised music.  The evening of sonics was a bit strange.  There were periods when soloists were left hanging.  Usually one or more musicians were “supporting” the soloist, but it was as if they were not hearing him.  All of that was exacerbated by the running commentary of two men in the audience throughout almost the entire evening.  I cannot remember such rudeness at a post-Ayler gig in an awfully long time.  Perhaps ever.  The effect was the loss of some sonic detail from the stage.  And it was particularly problematic during the quieter passages.  Even puzzled looks from band members were insufficient to shut them up.  Nevertheless, most of what was happening onstage was happening.  Each musician had at least one particularly engaging solo.  Luther was magnificent all night, and sections of interplay between Dave and Forbes were quite fine.  In short, fans have much to look forward to next December.  The year-long wait is not a good thing, but it is worth it.  Especially, if there is no play by play commentary from the audience…

I’ve started reading the late Robert Craft’s last book, Stravinsky - Discoveries and Memories.  In a discussion of Les Noces, Craft makes the point that the philosophical basis of the work is the writing of theologian Gregory of Nyssa, an influence on both Stravinsky and Catherine the Great.  To elucidate his point Craft quotes the philosopher, offering one of the most succinct and meaningful comments about the value of art that I’ve ever encountered: “Every desire ceases with the possession of its object except the desire for beauty.  It is beauty alone that the insolence of satiety cannot touch.”

Jim Hobbs showed up in a somewhat disheveled Santa costume 12/19, bringing to mind Dan Aykroyd’s party-crashing Santa in Trading Places.  But that was just one of many seasonal/seasoned statements by Jim and the rest of the quintet--leader Kit Demos, Eric Rosenthal, Jeff Platz, and Pandelis Karayorgis--at the Outpost.  Pandelis spent most of the first part of the first set being silent.  Apparently he wanted to enjoy/not disturb the amazing music happening around him.  In addition, he spent much of the evening in judicious assessments, choosing moments to comment/support with lightning bolt piano attacks and in-your-face chromatic clusters/fury runs in solo spots.  Engaging solo spots.  He pushed back--as anyone would have to, given the improvisatory brilliance of the rest of the band (even in compositional sections).  Sometimes it is difficult to follow what is going on in a band this good.  On the one hand you have the humor and fireworks of Jeff Platz, offering some of the best guitar work I’ve heard from him.  And fortunately I’ve heard a lot of his work.  Eric hears everything.  The result is that you--as a listener--do not know what he is going to do (whether he is working a chart or pushing a solo), but you’d better pay attention.  The other result--the more important one--is that band members have the freedom of knowing that they can go anywhere and Eric will have their backs.  And then there is Santa Hobbs, finding lost chords, lost tones.  Breaking your heart with beauty and earth-shaking presence.  So what is the story on this night regarding the leader of the Dark Matter Series cornucopia of brilliant music/musicians?  Well, at one point he took out his hair comb and used it to do a pizzicato bit on the acoustic bass.  And that moment is as clarifying as any moment of the evening.  It was a comb strumming four strings on the bass.  In the hands of almost any other bassist I can think of, that moment would have been a gimmick (which probably is why I cannot recall someone else doing it).  But whatever devices Kit uses--acoustic or electronic--they always are used in the pursuit of great sonic art.  My goodness, how wonderfully and consistently he succeeds in his musicianship and in dark-er ensemble matters.  We truly are the lucky ones…

The evening set at the Lily Pad ended with a version of Charlie Parker’s “Blues for Alice.”  It’s a gig-ending practice of Charlie Kohlhase’s that I’ve witnessed several times during recent months.  The piece is a terrific bebop classic.  On 12/22 it was performed by Charlie and duo partner Eric Hofbauer in E-flat.  That fact is of consequence.  Charlie has made certain that at least one of his performances every month during 2015 conclude with “Blues for Alice”--each offering of the work in a different key.  What a wonderful idea, walking through the “keys” using “Blues for Alice.”  No doubt it is something Charlie Parker would chuckle about, a practice that he shedded over for years before he and the other pioneers--Monk, Gillespie, and Tinney among them--turned the world upside-down with what became known as bebop.  All of us lucky folks in the audience got the rare opportunity to witness Boston area jazz giants from two different generations “locking horns” in the most beautifully constructive way.  Perhaps significantly (a bow to profound roots?) they opened and closed the evening with blues material.  Everything between was all over the place literally (including the Middle East) and metaphorically (original compositions, free jazz, and borrowed snippets from other people, such as the revered John Tchicai).  As fine as the composed and spontaneous vehicles were, it was the hand-in-glove music the two men created that made the evening special.  Their play evolved into profound “conversation,” not the conventional duo conversation, but something more.  Something transcendent.  Listening and looking around at the attentive faces in the audience, I came upon a thought that stayed with me for most of the single-set performance: The best gift of the season for all in attendance would be to have a magic switch next to the light switch in the living room at home.  Flip the magic switch and a panel in the wall opens to reveal the Kohlhase-Hofbauer Duo performing this music and more like it.  For most jazz fans there are the fantasies of seeing Billie with Basie or the Monk tenure at the Five Spot or (fill in the blank).  I am among such jazz fans.  But I am lucky enough to know when in person I encounter a blues sandwich such as this that I also am living the fantasy…


November 2015

This month’s Journal is a bit slimmer than usual.  Holiday parties with family and friends both locally and out of state kept me out of the clubs for much of the month. And there is no doubt that one of the highlights of the month for me was several days in New York, particularly to witness the new production of Berg’s Lulu at the Met.  All the praise of the performances that I’ve read about certainly is warranted regarding my experience.  The William Kentridge staging is terrific, and Marlis Petersen’s title role performance is the best Lulu I’ve ever witnessed by her or any other vocalist/actress.  But I did more than that.  MOMA has a remarkable double bill retrospective of Jackson Pollack and the sculpture of Pablo Picasso.  I saw each exhibit twice.  The Pollack is as fine an exhibit of his work as you are likely to encounter during the next couple decades.  The amazing thing about it is that it consists of MOMA holdings exclusively.  And, yes, the last gallery of the chronological exhibit includes Ornette’s Free Jazz album art work, White Light.  The Picasso sculpture is a wonderful complement to the Picasso & the Camera exhibit at the Gagosian Gallery (on West 21st Street) a year ago.  Going through the MOMA Picasso exhibit I was reminded of the fact that Picasso’s encounter with African ritual masks caused his cubist breakthrough.  It is a famous example of the need for the confluence of people from different ethnicities/cultures for the constructive evolution of art.  But it’s not just art that suffers without that connection.  An opinion piece by three MIT grad students in the 11/12 issue of The Tech decries the fact that one-time post-graduate OPT visa extensions are threatened by--surprise surprise--a union of techies who are just as good at self-inflicting wounds as the Musicians Union (e.g., see the October 2014 Journal coverage of the visit here by The Ex).  The essay says in part, “This extension… was recently challenged in court by the Washington Alliance of Technology Workers, and this August, the District Court for the District of Columbia vacated the STEM OPT Extension on the grounds of procedural deficiency.  The court order is set to take effect in February 2016.”  In other words, foreign-born graduate students at MIT are looking at their future contributions to the welfare of the U.S. being cut off because the leaders of the Alliance of Technology Workers cannot think of a constructive way to better the lives of its membership.  Our government continues to fail its citizens because it sets up barriers to ship off and keep out the best and the brightest in both the arts and the sciences.  While we panic and close our doors to Syrians, Latinos, and artists even from Europe, we are shutting the doors on our future, a future that no longer will enjoy the riches of all the world’s cultures…

As concert director Eric Hofbauer mentioned in his introductory remarks 11/15 in Killian Hall, the celebration of the musical life of Garrison Fewell to a great extent would be various permutations of Garrison’s evolving ensemble, the Variable Density Sound Orchestra.  Throughout the single set of music, ensembles would range in size from trio to big band.  For example, the concert opened with the Pocket Aces (Eric Hofbauer, Aaron Darrell, and Curt Newton) performing some of Garrison’s earliest recorded work.  Then Charlie Kohlhase and Dan Rosenthal joined the trio to perform “X-Ray Vision,” causing an ensemble morph from three to five and moving Garrison’s music chronologically  into the 21st century.  This fine music was followed by a septet offering the best performances of composed/arranged music of the concert.  The superb sonics occurred to a great extent because of the diversity of the musical personalities on display.  There is no way anyone could imagine Forbes Graham and Dan Rosenthal taking a similar solo.  Or Charlie Kohlhase and Todd Brunel as mirror images.  And the rhythm section--Eric, Curt, and Kit Demos--gelled perfectly, perhaps to some extent because these guys do not jam together every week.  Whatever the reason for the band’s exceptional chemistry, I’d love to see the septet become a working band, performing Garrison’s music with a mix of new charts.  At this point in the afternoon the chronology offered two examples of music featuring some of Garrison’s free band mates.  I believe that Eric Hofbauer, Forbes Graham, and Glynis Lomon never had performed together before, but they certainly did in Killian Hall.  It was touch and go a bit when one of Glynis’ Aquasonics had a mind of its own, but that merely added a spice of surprise to the chowder.  The mix of straight and free musicians continued with a quartet--Steve Fell, Todd Brunel, Kit Demos, and Luther Gray.  Kit and Luther provided the irresistible engine room and guitar and clarinet delivered the wonderful “noise.”  The final blowout of the concert featured everyone who had performed on previous sets.  The selection, Garrison’s “Ayleristic,” was the perfect choice.  It was a joyous howl to the moon that no doubt Albert Ayler would have approved of.  And it proved to be a wonderful sonic farewell to all in attendance from the composer and his terrific musician friends…

Anyone interested in making a donation to the scholarship fund established in Garrison Fewell’s name can do so by going to the Berklee Scholarship Fund site where anyone can direct a contribution to the Garrison Fewell Scholarship Fund

The quintet was one of those “musicians from different planets” groups that Kit Demos loves to surround himself with--Charlie Kohlhase, Jeff Platz, Junko Fujiwara, and Laurence Cook.  The first set opened with the poetic narratives of Peter Epipoulio and the writings of his students, much of it quite poignant (and humorous).  The track record of the musicians in different contexts suggested that this would be an unpredictable but exciting evening of music 11/29 at the Outpost.  Most of the music of the first set was a “space is the place” offering but not of the Sun Ra variety.  Ethereal sounds and silence reigned for that time, as band members basked in a sonic reunion of sorts.  But the interpersonal connections at the beginning of the second (and final) set were more explosive, something closer to a hurricane--perhaps a Charles Gayle.  Obviously these monsters in sound can go anywhere, and they almost did go just about anywhere in sound, time, and structure.  Initially the guitar and saxophone (BS or TS) acted as the front line, and the percussion and strings danced in support.  But at some point (I’m speculating) Kit determined that the cello and bass were falling into a too similar pizzicato bass support role.  So for a brief period he took out his electric bass, leaving the cello to carry acoustic support while Jeff and he had a guitar conversation.  It worked quite well.  But all of it--including Charlie’s avant sax explorations and Laurence’s percussive surprises--kept evolving into an engaging array of almost visual soundscapes.  These kinds of performance developments consistently draw me to the music of Kit Demos and his friends.  Some music works better than other music, but--as in the case of this evening--the consistent quality of pursuit keeps me returning.  Wonderful musicians creating, lifting me off the anchored ground…

Writer, jazz fan, fount of information and insight, and curmudgeon Chris Rich died 11/10 in New Hampshire, according to Rob Chalfen, “after having checked himself out of Mt Auburn Hospital.”  He had been there for about a month with “numerous conditions including stomach rupture, kidney failure & liver cancer.”  I first encountered Chris through the remarkable impact he and Joe Morris had on the adventuresome booking policies of local jazz clubs during the mid-1980s, most notably Charlie’s Tap.  Later, after Chris moved to the West coast (Seattle, if my memory is correct) we continued to write to each other about the history of jazz in Boston.  At one point we had a difference of opinion (the specifics of which are somewhat vague to me now).  Our communication stopped.  When he returned to the Boston area and I heard of that return, I assumed he continued to have what I perceived to be animosity towards me.  I ran into him outside the Outpost just before a gig.  He greeted me warmly (as warmly as he was capable of), and we picked up our musings about jazz.  As people who knew him always seemed to discover, he was generous with his knowledge and to good purpose.  I found his commentaries on the ways of the internet to be sound and useful.  As I mentioned in the original introduction to the essay, Recording Jazz: A Questionable Practice?, he did not enjoy live jazz but preferred listening to jazz records.  One of the negative outcomes of that preference is that I had fewer and fewer opportunities to meet him at the Outpost (even though he lived over the gallery).  I thought it would be intrusive to knock on his door.  And now he’s gone.  But I think my experience with him is instructive.  He certainly was crusty but ultimately kind-hearted.  I never heard of him being vengeful or nasty.  For me he was a porcupine with a loving heart.  There are more extensive commentaries on other internet sites.  Among them are Steve Provizer’s comments at Brilliant Corners, Rob Chalfen’s words on his Outpost site, and the Facebook page devoted to the memory of Chris Rich…

I received word that the Act III Restaurant closed on 10/30.  Fans of the jazz venue knew that it was struggling.  Those fans owe Gwenn Vivian many thanks.  She made a go of it with three different jazz clubs in the Acton-Littleton area.  So far there is no word about a potential jazz club in that part of suburbia...

I never get to witness Jane Wang music often enough.  Although her creative activities involve everything from percussion to dance to theater pieces and more, I am particularly enthusiastic about her acoustic bass performances.  Nevertheless, I could not pass up the chance to witness her percussion work in the first set of the Opensound offering 11/14 at Third Life Studio.  Straight metal rods--some artistically twisted at the ends--rising from odd-shaped metal plates served as her array of instruments.  She bowed the rods, sometimes arco and sometimes percussively, and she struck metal to metal.  The music evolved as a Jane Wang sonic fantasy in an imaginary Harry Bertoia workshop.  It made me want to catch more Jane Wang music.  And it brought up one of my own “workshop” fantasies--Jane Wang (acoustic bass and space plates) in a duo with Glynis Lomon (cello, voice, and Aquasonic).  I can dream.  The second set of the evening featured the music/theater of the Demi Exegesis Trio (Dei Xhrist, Matt Samolis, and Emilio Gonzales).  The theater came mostly from Matt (nice comedy) and Dei Xhrist (whispers to shrill, ominous declamations).  Matt did employ the flute in a variety of effective “commentaries” while Dei Xhrist took the nonsense poetry of Joe Maneri and twisted it into her own improvised theater.  Again, her performance worked so much better in an acoustic environment, one in which there is no place to hide.  She’s just there, in your face as she is, where she belongs.  Special applause for Emilio Gonzales who perhaps serendipitously began the set inside the piano.  It was grand.  Then he decided to turn to his comfort zone, the keyboard.  But he did not stay there long.  Much to his credit, he realized that the performance needed his “inside” work.  He returned to the option that Henry Cowell is credited with inventing.  The result is that the anchor of the set was the pianist.  Thank you.  Duck That (Steve Norton, Angela Sawyer, and Jesse Kenas Collins) was--surprise surprise--mostly music/voice comedy (with some rants thrown in the mix).  The set juggled “real” instruments and toys.  That is part of the charm of this group that pursues the realm between noise for the joy of noise and the pure sound of one of the respected members of the reed/brass family.  The fourth and final set was the “big finish” of Joe Burgio’s Inedit Ensemble, an evolving/growing group of musicians and movement specialists (Do I dare say dancers?).  In this instance Joe brought two wonderful dancers and five perfect musicians--Steve Norton, Matt Samolis, Kevin Dacey, Emilio Gonzalez, and Walter Wright--to Third Life Studio as the superb closer to a fine evening of sonic and visual art.  I’m at a loss.  I think I know when something works, but only rarely am I confident that I know why.  Here I do not have a clue.  I do know that the improvising musicians that Joe gathered--from previous sets of the evening and elsewhere--were absolutely perfect in creating the sonic context for the dance.  And the improvised movement provided by Kristiana Hubley and Andrea West was completely natural, unforced.  Convincing.  Apparently the ensemble is growing in numbers.  The options available to Joe are impressive.  This Third Life closer was more than impressive.  The future of the Inedit Ensemble is scary.  In the best way…


October 2015

Mat Maneri brought together companions in music 10/14 at NEC’s Williams Hall to offer a celebration in sound.  The first half of the evening served as the last stop on his duo tour of the U.S. with Lucian Ban.  Ban is a pianist with primarily Romantic aesthetics.  As I grow older my aesthetics become farther and farther removed from Romanticism--in any art form.  My reaction to Ban’s playing is aesthetic, not qualitative.  For example, I find it painful to listen to the music of Brahms, but I remain confident of the quality of that music.  So Lucian Ban’s piano work presented aesthetic obstacles for me, but the musicianship and rapport of the two of them was significant.  I am not surprised by the praise, the breathless commentaries about their performances on the tour.  The duo format continued in the second half of the concert, but Mat performed with four other musicians.  The first duo of the second half featured music from the Magic Mountain project that Tanya Kalmanovitch and Mat are working on.  One might expect that a microtonal viola duo would come across as somewhat bland, lacking in sufficient contrast.  Nevertheless, the improvisations worked well.  The “conversation” was quite informative, quite natural.  It might be said that the second duo of the half featured something of a historic event--two major improvisors performing alone, together.   Joe Morris probably is the most important jazz guitarist of his generation, and Mat undoubtedly is the most significant jazz violinist/violist (either) of his generation.  The result was the most impressive music of the evening.  The youngster of the evening, clarinetist Zoe Christiansen, joined Mat next for what to some extent seemed like channeling father and son Maneri duos of yore.  Fortunately, Ms. Christiansen has her own sound.  So it turned out not spooky at all.  Just fine.  Because Sonja Maneri has such affection for “Sometimes I Feel Like a Motherless Child,” I expected to hear that spiritual performed in her duet with Mat.  It was Mat’s sonic wisdom that caused him to push his mother (initially unwillingly) to perform “He Never Said a Mumblin’ Word.”  Good choice.  Moving results.  Cheers all around.  The evening, filled with diverse music of high quality, served to demonstrate that Mat Maneri is one of the rare giants of new jazz in the twenty-first century…

Friends of musicians (including musicians themselves) continue to celebrate the lives of important jazz musicians who have passed on in recent months.  Apparently the poster for the 9/17 Guitar Department celebration of Garrison Fewell has been signed by faculty members, framed, and mounted outside Garrison’s faculty office at Berklee.  Regarding Ray Santisi, this month I received word from Patricia Adams that there is a plaque “that now hangs outside room 1307 at Berklee’s student dormitory in Ray’s name.”
 
The Steve Lantner Quintet that performed superbly 10/27 at the Outpost really is the best-known version of the Steve Lantner Quartet--Steve, Allan Chase, Joe Morris, and Luther Gray--joined by longtime Lantner partner, Forbes Graham.  There were two sets of music operating at the same qualitative level as all Steve Lantner ensembles covered in this Journal over the years.  That statement sounds somewhat matter-of-fact, a bit ho-hum.  However, the substance is anything but.  Anyone reading this Journal regularly knows that a Steve Lantner gig is one of those jazz rarities in any city--a sure thing.  If you show up to one of Steve’s gigs, you know that the music will be the very definition of quality improvisation.  It is music filled with knock-your-socks-off adventures, surprises.  And so it was 10/27.  The one difference in this instance was that Allan and Forbes spontaneously decided to “talk” to each other in some sort of duo concertino fashion with greater frequency than usual.  Their conversational improvisations were among the evening’s highlights.  On the other hand, the entire evening consisted of two whole sets of highlights.  A fine time.  And it was good to see a larger than usual and thoroughly appreciative audience at the Outpost…

The 10/10 issue of NEC’s student newspaper, The Penguin, includes an essay by composition student Julian Pozniak titled “I Care If You Listen.”  Those of you who are into twentieth and twenty-first century classical music may realize already that the title of the essay implies a tribute of sorts to the famously mislabeled Milton Babbitt essay, “Who Cares if You Listen?” (rather than Babbitt’s original title, “The Composer as Specialist”).  In the student newspaper essay Mr. Pozniak makes the case for the significant and healthy difference between historical performance (e.g., playing Bach and Beethoven) and performance of recent/contemporary works (i.e., bringing “new possibilities and realities into form”).  The writer--as a composer--obviously has much more in common with more recent composers such as Babbitt and Cage (among those he names) than the historical composers.  Writing as a composer, Mr. Pozniak obviously has a bias rooted in a type of self-interest.  Nevertheless his point is well taken.  As a fan of so-called classical music, I share his desire to be exposed to challenging new music, whether it is jazz or classical music.  It is no small matter that a student at NEC should bring up the subject of new composed music in a student publication.  For several decades (particularly when Gunther Schuller was at the helm) NEC stood almost alone among music schools and conservatories in the Boston area (programming at Wellesley by Martin Brody and at Harvard by Mario Davidovsky being the most notable exceptions) in championing new composed music and--more important--requiring students to perform that challenging music.  For example, it was no surprise that Longy celebrated its 100th anniversary by performing music composed on or near 1915 but failed to include works by the most ear-stretching composers of the day--such as the Futurists, the Second Viennese School, Stravinsky, Bartók, Varèse, and more.  And today NEC’s programming no longer is as adventuresome as it used to be.  Just pick up an NEC concert schedule from twenty-five or forty years ago and compare it to the programming of the past few years.  Even with the efforts of Stephen Drury, today’s programming generally is devoid of challenging recent music…

Somewhere in the middle of a wonderful single-set gig 10/8 at the Outpost Laurence Cook dropped a drumstick.  He bent over to retrieve the stick, but it found an elusive resting spot.  He used the other stick to move the misbehaving stick.  It danced and wandered around, apparently difficult to get hold of.  Pianist Pandelis Karayorgis had been standing to the side of the rest of the audience, no doubt to get a different viewing angle on the proceedings.  He saw his opportunity to help, walked to the bandstand, grabbed the drumstick, and handed it to Laurence.  He turned to return to his viewing place in the audience and hesitated.  With a look of horror in his face he said, “I just realized.  That might be part of the performance.”  He returned to his spot in the audience, obviously concerned about his “mistake.”  It was a perfect Laurence Moment.  Dry humor pervades Laurence’s everyday persona and his art.  Anyone who knows him reasonably well does not even try to discern the line between the life and the art.  And so we’ll never quite know Laurence’s intentions with the unruly drumstick.  If Pandelis had held himself in check, the resolution of the moment would have been something else.  But the resolution with Pandelis’ intervention is of no less significance than what might have happened.  In either case, the audience is confronted with questions, resonant ambiguities.  As people in the audience grapple with questions of theater and everyday life as well as music and everyday life, the total sonic experience of the evening takes on a greater expanse of meaning.  The drumstick event was only one of many different kinds of events throughout the evening.  After all, the focus of the evening for the duo of Luther Gray and Laurence Cook was sonic art (however that sonic art might be enhanced by non-sonic factors).  As I watched and heard them work 10/8, the thought struck me that there were no young drum students in the audience to learn and be inspired by creative music operating at a level beyond the classroom, beyond recordings, beyond books.  It was a lost opportunity for young people of tomorrow’s music.  First, drum duos for a whole evening are relatively rare, and what Laurence and Luther were doing was beyond rare, truly unique.  But equally important, the range and character of what they did was astonishing.  There were moments of all-out percussive torrents.  But it was not some over-the-top drum battle or “shouting match” in those moments.  Rather, they served as some ancient Greek chorus emphatically bringing us the busy and eloquent message of the fate of Oedipus.  Most of the rest of the evening’s drum work took place at the somewhat lower part of the dynamic range.  It is common for jazz duos (particularly those involving similar instruments) to pursue some type of musical dialogue.  In the hands of the better musicians, this conversational approach often works quite well.  There was a little of that sort of music to be heard 10/8 at the Outpost.  One such fine moment involved Luther dusting cymbals lightly with brushes while Laurence found almost inaudible “chimes” using sticks on cymbals.  Quite fine stuff.  Most of the time the sounds coming from the “stage” were in the middle of the dynamic range, perfect for a dialogue.  But there was no conversation going on.  It was something else, something elusive.  Then, on one of Laurence’s forays at the white keys of the piano with soft mallets, it hit me.  Cage.  Cage-Cunningham.  John Cage and Merce Cunningham, the extraordinary music-and-dance partners, created art that did not intentionally interact.  The music and the dance occurred simultaneously but not interactively.  The results were brilliant.  And that’s what was happening most of the time 10/8 between Laurence and Luther.  Sort of.  For jazz musicians the concept that two musicians could play together without interacting makes no sense.  And yet that’s what seemed to be happening between Laurence and Luther.  Picture yourself looking out a second floor window onto Commonwealth Avenue in downtown Boston.  Hundreds of people are walking up and down the street, a skateboarder zips by, a man sweeps the steps to his home, and you can imagine all kinds of activity outside your window.  All the events you see make up a ballet of life.  Quite beautiful.  And yet, all the people and other “actors” in the scene are not interacting intentionally.  But they are acting simultaneously.  In the hands of the genius of Cage or Cunningham the results are exhilarating art.  Such art happened 10/8 at the Outpost.  Most of the time Laurence and Luther were playing individual solos that had nothing to do with each other.  The solos were simultaneous but not connected intentionally.  It was like watching two separate gigs at the same time.  But somehow--and this is the kicker--those two unconnected solo pursuits came together more beautifully than the most intentionally connected music.  I thought of harmolodics but rejected the idea.  The duo played as if each percussionist were ignoring the other, and the results were astonishing.  Maybe the intention--if there was one--was to try to be deaf.  It was that beautifully disorienting.  Sort of like the disorienting possibilities of a skittish drumstick…

On 10/31 I received word that Archie Shepp has been designated a 2016 National Endowment for the Arts Jazz Masters Award recipient.  A major influence as a Massachusetts-based teacher and worldwide performer, Archie Shepp has been a Boston area fan favorite for many decades.  He will receive a $25,000 cash award and participate in the award ceremony on 4/4/16 in collaboration with the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts.  A free concert honoring the 2016 NEA Jazz Masters will take place 4/4/16 at the Kennedy Center’s Concert Hall….

The Ex is not a jazz band.  The music might be described as in-your-face alternative rock.  But the searching and the use of improvisation as an essential means of exploring sonic realities are common to the best in jazz performance and what the Ex brings to the stage.  Close to a dozen jazz musicians and fans were in the audience of more than two hundred people at Great Scott in Allston on 10/25 to catch the Ex and longtime friend Ken Vandermark in concert.  The music was terrific.  Although the quartet--Andy Moor, Terrie Hessels, Katherina Bornefeld, and Arnold de Boer--has developed a sizeable fan base over its more than three decades of existence, its audiences (as in the case of ear-stretching jazz) are not as large as those who show up for the more commercial bands.  Because it is a touring band, the musicians run into many of the same problems that European-based jazz musicians (or those based anywhere outside the U.S.) encounter when they visit here.  Several times in this Journal I have discussed the role of the Musicians Union in pushing the U.S. Government to restrict entry of foreign musicians into the U.S. (e.g., see the November 2014 Journal for a discussion of the absurd problems that the Waclaw Zimpel Quartet ran into on their U.S. tour).  As many stories as I’ve heard about U.S. immigration barriers to touring foreign musicians in the U.S., the Ex revealed to me a tactic that I was not familiar with.  It’s a remarkable (unbelievable?) financial Catch-22.  Even with Dutch subsidies, the financial burdens of band travel in the U.S. (for any band anywhere) is such that the Ex had themselves booked exclusively in clubs that would offer them guarantees.  Because of that arrangement the U.S. Government knew exactly how much money the four musicians plus Ken Vandermark would make during the U.S. tour.  The Federal response was to issue Social Security cards to the four European musicians.  I’m not making this up.  I was under the impression that only residents of the U.S. could be issued Social Security cards.  But that was only the beginning.  The purpose of issuing the cards was to make sure that each of the band members would have Social Security taxes taken from the guarantee at each performance venue.  Are you still following this?  It gets even more unbelievable.  As a result of the Social Security tax deductions, the band is projected to complete the tour several thousand dollars short of what the group anticipated.  In other words, the Ex would return to Europe owing money rather than making money.  But there is more to the Catch-22 sequence of events.  It turns out that the Federal Government is not empowered to withdraw Social Security taxes from the income of touring foreign musicians (not a great surprise, after all).  The issuing of Social Security cards to non-residents strikes one as probably illegal.  After all, do we want to provide Social Security retirement benefits to people who never lived here?  So the situation is that the Social Security Administration is not supposed to deduct Social Security taxes from the income of touring foreign musicians--but they keep doing it anyway.  Given that the deducted taxes do not belong to the Federal Government, one would expect the Social Security Administration to cancel or return the deducted taxes.  But it doesn’t quite work that way.  The touring foreign musicians have to apply for the return of the unwarranted taxes.  You know what that means: a pile of paperwork requiring fluency in the language of bureaucrats.  As you may surmise, it is unlikely for a touring musician to have the time and legal knowledge to fill out the paperwork.  In other words, there is a good chance in the case of most touring foreign musicians that the Federal Government will get to keep the ill-gotten deductions.  As it turns out, the Ex found a tax professional (in Florida, of all places) who for a fee will fulfill the paperwork requirements.  In effect, the band decided to give up $1,500.00 to the tax professional rather than lose all the deducted money.  So what we have is a situation in which touring foreign musicians with income guarantees get stuck paying unwarranted Social Security taxes or paying a tax expert for the return of most of the money that they should have received in the first place.  Either way, the touring musicians encounter unnecessary financial burdens because of absurd immigration procedures.  Such a wonderful disincentive to visit and perform in the U.S. is a Musicians Union fantasy come true: Foreign musicians stay home and both local music fans and musicians in the U.S. are poorer for it…

For all the promotional talk about Boston being a cultural center, Boston and Cambridge are cities with very little public art, once you walk away from local college and university campuses.  Yes, the MBTA and the state made some advances with the One Percent rule (requiring allocation of funds for public art whenever public construction was initiated).  Local “poverty”--perhaps more spiritual than financial--zapped those funds.  So the cities on the Charles have been pretty dismal aesthetically for a couple decades.  But there have been signs that maybe somebody with influence really cares.  This year we have had that delightful web of light down on the Rose Kennedy Greenway.  And this month you can look up in the air at the Hancock Building.  No it’s not Superman.  It’s even better than that.  It’s art.
 

Boston area jazz fans are particularly fortunate because year in and out we can witness outstanding Boston-based jazz big bands.  Sustaining large ensembles over a span of years is an astonishing achievement for all people involved.  The economic challenges are near impossible.  Add to that fact the number of musicians involved in each band, all of whom have evolving personal goals, and it is a wonder that any of those ensembles--some of which are several decades old--continue to pursue the big band muse.  But even more wonderful for the serious jazz fan is the fact that many of these large ensembles have distinct musical personalities.  For example, the Aardvark Jazz Orchestra is the all-inclusive political activist big band, scolding our intellectual/spiritual sloth while offering an eclectic (in the best sense of the term) mix of music that includes everything from ancient classics to completely improvised sonic searches.  The large groups of Greg Hopkins offer history lessons to help listeners understand his own fine arrangements, lessons with charts that evoke the accomplishments of Miles Davis’ Nonet and the subsequent “cool school” of Boston and California.  The Makanda Project is devoted to celebrating--most frequently in black Boston--the music of Makanda Ken McIntyre by performing the hundreds of unrecorded compositions of the Boston native.  Bathysphere pursues post-Ayler music.  And the list continues.  One of the most engaging big bands of that list is the Jazz Composers Alliance Orchestra, Darrell Katz’ wonderful passion.  The brilliant (and not easy to sustain for more than three decades) idea is that the band offers new works by a growing catalogue of big-band-loving composers.  The 10/18 JCAO event at the Cambridge YMCA Theater presented the work of five different composers/arrangers--Norm Zocher, Mimi Rabson, Bob Pilkington, David Harris (who also sat in on trombone on one Darrell Katz work), and Music Director Darrell Katz.  The other important characteristic of JCAO programming is that--although quality music is pursued--there apparently is no limit on style, genre, or instrumental challenges for the charts selected.  Therefore, the substantial single set of music included everything from works rooted in the blues (Zocher) to an investigation of layers and textures in sound (Pilkington) to music influenced by science fiction (Rabson) to more and more possibilities.  The commitment of the musicians to the creative ideals of the JCAO is central to the long-term success of the outfit.  Some of the band members have been involved in the project for decades.  The 10/18 ensemble included Hiro Honshuku (flute/EWI), Lance Van Lenten (alto sax), Greg Floor (alto sax), Phil Scarff (tenor sax), Melanie Howell Brooks (baritone sax), Forbes Graham (trumpet), Jeff Perry (trumpet), Doug Olsen (trumpet), Jim Mosher (french horn), Bob Pilkington (trombone), Jason Camelio (trombone), Bill Lowe (tuba), Helen Sherrah-Davies (violin), Mina Cho (piano), Norm Zocher, (guitar), Vessala Stoyanova (vibes), Brittany Karlson (bass), Royal Hartigan (drums), Gilbert Mansour (percussion), and Rebecca Shrimpton (voice).  The section work and solos were--without exception--offered at the highest musical level.  No doubt the extraordinary work by band members had something to do with the passing of poet Paula Tatarunis.  On several pieces (some not listed in the program) vocalist Rebecca Shrimpton recited or sang the poetry of Paula Tatarunis, all within fine musical contexts.  It never was mentioned specifically during the concert, but it was obvious from the demeanor and performances of all involved that the 10/18 concert was a celebration of Paula Tatarunis.  It was a great gift to all in attendance.  As fine and convincing as JCAO performances have been over the decades, this performance--from the beginning to the last note--was the most successful, the most compelling I’ve ever witnessed…

In June I caught Paul Lytton and Mat Maneri performing an improvised duo set at this year’s Okka Fest in Milwaukee.  It was one of the best sets of music I have witnessed all year.  But the quality of that set really was no surprise.  Mat is one of the finest improvisors alive, and I’ve been floored by Paul’s work for many decades.  Readers of this Journal over the past few years are very much aware of Nate Wooley’s prowess as a giant among new trumpet improvisors.  Joe Morris does not like to play guitar in Boston (perhaps believing his bass playing is some kind of sufficient insult to “unresponsive” Bostonians).  Nevertheless, no book about the history of jazz guitar can be written without including a hefty bit of information about Joe and his guitar work.  And, if a big enough name will show up in the Boston area to perform with him, Joe will bring out his guitar and perform.    Three giants showed up (including guitar) at the Lily Pad 10/29 and offered a puzzlingly disappointing first set of music.  Paul and Nate have performed together successfully countless times.  Joe knows their work thoroughly and has shared the stage with either/both of them many times.  So the disconnected sounds certainly were a puzzle.  Back in the days of the giant mainstream/bebop players, it was not unusual to catch a less-than-terrific “warm up” first set.  But that pattern is fairly unusual in post-Ayler jazz.  Usually either the music is good all evening or bad all evening.  On those rare occasions in which there is a weak set, it is likely to show up at any point in the evening.  So here we were at the Lily Pad--focussing on the music of Paul Lytton, Nate Wooley, and Joe Morris (with guitar)--and the music of the first set was not happening.  Oh, there was plenty of technique.  Even plenty of ideas.  Just not much music.  The trio was playing as if it were under water.  I was not alone in that view.  A friend at the end of the gig said that he did a rough count of people in the audience during the first set (“about 42”) and the second set (“about 26”).  But the folks who left at the half made a mistake.  Apparently someone drained the pool on stage during the break.  The trio we expected to show up began to play and--perhaps to some extent due to a brief stretch of high-intensity snare work by Paul--communicated, feeding and anticipating.  Plenty of ears and substantial sounds all around.  Thank you, gentlemen, for the second set.  All is right with the world…

Stanley Charles Swann III, founder of the Lowell Jazz Day Camp, died 10/31.  He was a jazz drummer who settled in the Lowell area and developed the two-week Jazz Camp program in 2010, and it continues each summer, having provided music training for aspirants of all ages by such notable musician-teachers as Paul Combs, Semenya McCord, Frank Wilkins, and Mr. Swann himself.  Contributions in Stanley Swann’s memory may be made to the Lowell Jazz Day Camp, c/o Lowell Community Charter Public School, 206 Jackson St., Lowell, MA 01852

The Pocket Aces realized!  I found that thought returning to my brain during the trio’s 10/16 single-set performance at Arts at the Armory, Somerville: “Tonight the Pocket Aces are realized.”  A couple months ago I misinterpreted an Eric Hofbauer comment and came to the conclusion that the trio had folded its tent.  I was terribly disappointed.  The group was very good, but it had not yet realized its interactive potential.  And what the group was achieving was unique, I believed.  Perhaps it’s born into his nature or it evolved within him naturally, but Eric Hofbauer chooses to walk that impossible line between mainstream jazz and free jazz.  I say “impossible” because even the best jazz musicians offer mixed results when they try to work with both forms simultaneously.  There are some post-Ayler musicians who offer straight interpretations of standards with some success.  One of the more successful attempts includes Cecil Taylor’s performances of standards on the early Transition Records recordings.  And there are some mainstream players who jump into moments of free music without embarrassing themselves.  But I’m unaware of anyone other than Eric whose natural intention is to walk the line between both musics.  He’s been pursuing that impossible path for quite a while.  His most successful attempt--until now--was the final version of his Infrared Band.  That band consistently over the years was outstanding, regardless of what Eric’s intentions were.  With the current trio performance 10/16 Eric and his partners--adventuresome young bassist Aaron Darrell and veteran percussionist Curt Newton--have taken the music a step beyond the achievements of the Infrared Band.  The Pocket Aces walk the line between mainstream and free jazz while constructively making that line unclear.  They dance on that fuzzy line and leap to one side of it or the other without falling--even though they are dancing on air/ear.  Whether they perform freely or within the architecture of composition/arrangement, the focus is improvisation as the very heart of jazz.  For example, apparently one of Eric’s favorite recordings is Louis Armstrong’s performance of Joe Oliver’s classic, “West End Blues.”  For several years Eric has performed the work--“improvised” intro and all--as a solo vehicle and with various ensembles.  On 10/16 he and his band mates took the work to decidedly new places.  The guitarist opened by taking Armstrong’s improvised intro through a carnival hall of mirrors, transforming the time and placement of notes.  The complete trio continued the malleable dance.  At times the work bordered on the unrecognizable--but only for the sake of constructive adventure.  It was a “West End Blues” I’d never heard before.  I imagine Louis would have been puzzled by it.  Nevertheless, here’s the point: the performance took place for much of the time on the free side of the line, but there never really was any question that they were digging into Armstrong and Oliver’s “West End Blues” with the sheer joy of a great love for the work.  Such things are possible because of Eric’s musical vision and artistic resources.  A major part of those resources consists of Curt and Aaron.  The two of them reveled in this music thoroughly while soloing and during sections of improvised support--and at an unprecedented level for this trio.  On 10/16 evening I caught the Pocket Aces realized, a trio of extraordinary ears and action…  


September 2015

It began at 8 p.m. “jazz time” (i.e., a few minutes after 8), but everything else about the tribute to Garrison Fewell 9/17 was pretty close to Swiss clock work.  The credit goes to Guitar Department Assistant Chair Kim Perlak, who organized the Berklee event.  Given the potential chaos of presenting a major portion of Berklee guitar faculty in the eleven sets of music and the problem of sets lacking instrumental variety, the presentation of the music was one of the most creative aspects of the evening.  Instrumental variety was enhanced by judicial placement of Allan Chase’s alto sax in the second set and the variety offered by Rich Greenblatt, Ron Mahdi, Jerry Seeco, and Larry Finn in the tenth set.  Another fine production element is the fact that the program booklet for the evening was almost completely accurate.  There were a few last-minute or on-the-spot changes in programming, but the changes were not problematic.  For example, Norm Zocher replaced “Donna Lee” with a composition that he wrote in tribute to Garrison.  The music generally was outstanding, something that occasionally is lacking in such events, even when world-class musicians are  involved.  Two factors seemed to be central to the musical success of the evening.  The first element was the diversity of music presented--everything from pop standards to bebop to Buddhist chant to blues and more.  That diversity provided the audience with an engaging range of musical experiences and offered an insightful celebration of Garrison’s openness to such diverse forms.  The second factor was the authentic seriousness of purpose the musicians brought to the event.  There was little or no self promotion.  These people walked on stage to play the best music they could--in celebration of Garrison Fewell.  And we who were present--an SRO house at both the orchestra and balcony levels--were fortunate to be able to share such a superb tribute…
Here is an image of the poster for the 9/17 Garrison Fewell tribute at Friend Hall, Boston.
Here is an image of the program booklet listing of performances for the 9/17 tribute to Garrison Fewell.

There’s a wonderful tradition nationally (e.g., New York’s Cedar Bar) and internationally (e.g., classical opera when dancing was not illegal) of mixed media arts encounters.  Boston--particularly in new music performances--has had a fine history of mixed media presentations.  During the past several decades we have had mixed media events of note including terrific improvisors performing with everyone from Adrienne Hawkins to Dr. T to Nancy Ostrovsky and on and on.  Many of these inter-media encounters have been remarkable for both the diversity of sensory experience and the superb quality of content.  Such events--occasionally incorporating three or more artistic endeavors (e.g., music, dance, painting, poetry, film, and more)--tend to feature music with one of two general types of activity.  The first type--the most common and generally most successful--involves improvised activity.  An example of this type of artistic integration is dancers Joan Green and Bonita Weisman performing with Glynis Lomon and Syd Smart.  The other inter-media activity of note involves predetermined artistic activity and improvised music.  An example of this type of artistic integration is Robert Pinsky trading “lines” with George Garzone.  I witnessed a successful example of the latter type of integration 9/24 at MIT’s Bartos Theatre.  The performance included new music monsters Luther Gray (the leader), Allan Chase, and Jim Hobbs.  If you’ve been paying attention during the past few years, you know that the music provided by this trio is sufficient for a terrific sonic experience.  But there was another in-your-face experience happening.  It is difficult in writing about the event not to focus on the fact that Luther created the big-screen animations to accompany the music.  So let’s try to ignore Luther and focus on the mixed media event.  Fans of Luther Gray as a band leader no doubt found themselves reveling in a set of familiar Luther Gray originals, presented beautifully by three of the most compelling musicians performing anywhere.  In back of them, filling the screen were abstract animations.  The animations were partially or completely ostinato/repetitious.  But the animations for each piece varied considerably.  For example, one of the animations featured an intentionally humorous “skateboarder” that morphed into a variety of abstract situations.  In other words, the ultimate impact of even this figurative animation was the power of abstraction.  As was the performance of the trio.  It should be mentioned that this multimedia performance is part of the Ampersand series at MIT, the presentation of musicians who add “stellar visual elements to their performances.”  Fred Allen, host of WMBR-FM’s Sound Principles show, is the man who makes it happen (along with some terrific production people)…

Not long after the MIT multi-media performance, the Longy School of Music offered its own sound-sight presentation in the afternoon of 9/26.  This event also featured programmed visual material, in this case the Charlie Chaplin classic, The Tramp.  The silent film was scheduled to be accompanied by the improvising duo of Charlie Kohlhase and Angel Subero.  But no doubt the adventure was so engaging that Peter Cassino and Jesse Mills made it a foursome.  The film began and Peter Cassino and Jesse Mills tentatively entered the inter-media fray.  This film primarily is a timeless example of physical comedy at its finest.  This was no time for their minimalist improvisation.  But the relevance of the sonics improved with the addition of Charlie Kohlhase and Angel Subero to the party.  The quartet metaphorically began to dance, and the terpsichorean sounds worked well with the pratfalls and Chaplin magic.  The bonus was Angel Subero’s apparent awareness of the great circus trombone tradition.  And he used that knowledge superbly throughout the rest of the film.  This Journal is about jazz, but it is difficult to walk away from the experience without mentioning the visual component of the presentation.   Charlie Chaplin was a master of physical comedy, and The Tramp is filled with examples of his mastery.  One hundred years ago it was Chaplin’s breakthrough film.  And here in Pickman Hall people throughout the audience laughed spontaneously at slapstick comedy to whom all physical comics since then--the Marx Brothers, even Gloria Swanson in Sunset Boulevard, Jerry Lewis, Dick VanDyke, and everyone after--owe a debt of gratitude.  But what really affected me about the audience was a child whose hysterical laughter rose above the reaction of all the others, demonstrating how truly timeless such comedic art is…

For some reason, a lot of jazz musicians in the Boston area are big fans of craft beer, turning their noses up at the mention of any “major brand” beer.  I was on a mini vacation in Western Massachusetts for a few days and came across the sign below on 9/3 in Lee.  No doubt it will bring a smile to some craft beer fans.


There were people in the audience living in or visiting Massachusetts from London, England and Ontario, Canada.  Such facts cause me to mute my complaints about driving to Littleton from Boston’s western suburbs.  These folks showed up 9/16 at Act III for the music.  They were obviously well-traveled and enthusiastic fans.  They knew they were in the presence of the real deal, reveling in the sounds, offering thoughtful requests, and remaining until after the last notes of the evening faded.  I always look forward to performances by Paul Broadnax and Peter Kontrimas, but it is an even better experience when knowledgeable music fans encounter the music of Paul and Peter for the first time.  It is the sound of surprise realized in its most joyous context.  And, as surprising as it is to experience, the music of the duo seems to get even better with each hearing.  Therefore it is with some distress that I write that the weekly Broadnax-Kontrimas Duo gigs at Act III in Littleton are finished.  Given the economic challenges faced by the venue (as discussed here several times before), the lack of funds to support the Wednesday evening gigs is no surprise.  But the loss of those regular performances is real.  Paul and Peter continue to perform in Malden and Sudbury, but those gigs are not weekly, and there is an edge for the musicians and an evolving continuity to be experienced by fans that come only from week in and week out live music…

The second part of the concert 9/26 in a room off the sanctuary at Harvard-Epworth Church featured the entire Dave Bryant group--Dave (electric keyboards), Tom Hall, Neil Leonard, Gabriel Solomon, Jeff Song, Jacob William, Curt Newton, and Eric Rosenthal--performing Dave’s original compositions and Ornette Coleman’s “Long Time No See” (in tribute to the composer).  The reverberant acoustics gave the band the roar of a subway, an overwhelming wall of sound.  Nevertheless, detail came forth from the roar, the leader’s prodding electric melodies and the fine interplay and solos of Tom Hall and Neil Leonard.  Through it all the percussion duo lit up the stage with brilliant detail and superb communication.  The roiling drive created much of the time by Eric and Curt brought to mind the Free Jazz dancing of Billy Higgins and Ed Blackwell.  Jacob was a rock throughout.  The first part of the concert took place in the church sanctuary, a perfect place for acoustic music.  And the acoustic piano came across just fine in a sextet of Dave, Gabriel Solomon, Jeff Song, Jacob William, Curt Newton, and Eric Rosenthal.  The drummers brought minimal equipment into the sanctuary, offering wonderfully transparent support, very much in synch with Jacob.  The fine acoustics offered Gabriel and Jeff their best opportunity to shine, and they did.  Their work here was among the highlights of the evening.  But what stays with me as much as anything from the experience is the piano work of Dave Bryant.  His wonderful command of the instrument--both technically and musically--brought home the fact that his performances on the acoustic piano are far too rare…

Gone are fundraisers for students in Boston area jazz education programs and the legendary annual Barbecue, but memories of the Boston Jazz Society live on.  Like so many jazz support groups born in the 1970s, the Boston Jazz Society several years ago shut down its operations.  JazzBoston was born in 2005 with, among other objectives, to serve as an umbrella group for the existing jazz support groups.  Today the umbrella is the jazz support group, and such fine organizations as the Jazz Coalition, Studio Red Top, the Friends of Great Black Music, and the Boston Jazz Society exist only as memories of jazz support activism.  Founding President of the Boston Jazz Society Ed Henderson decided to give New England jazz fans something more than memories.  On 9/24 I received an announcement from Lauren Judge on behalf of the Boston Jazz Society that the organization’s historical documents have been given to an academic institution in Massachusetts.  Ed Henderson has given the organization’s archives to the University of Massachusetts Amherst Libraries.  The collection of posters, photographs, recordings, videos, and other documents will be made available to researchers through the UMass Libraries along with the Libraries’ other jazz archive holdings…

The 9/18 performance at Church of the Advent Library opened with the Pingrey-Plsek Duo.  I love the idea of musicians from different aesthetic planets coming together because of a shared passion for discovery and making substantive music together.   And that’s what Randy Pingrey and Tom Plsek did 9/18.  Earlier in the day I had been listening to a recording of Monteverdi’s Orfeo in which a character, Echo, sings and the vocal is followed by an instrumental solo echo.  Often the staging of that event involves a substantial physical separation between the vocal and the instrumental echo--for dramatic purposes.  The opening trombone statement 9/18 involved a twenty-first century re-thinking of the same concept with Tom Plsek in the library of the church offering a sonic idea with a Randy Pingrey response employing the full acoustics of the church sanctuary.  This give and take continued, employing great trombone ideas and dramatically different environmental acoustics to great effect.  The result was of such impact that I could have left the venue completely satisfied for the evening.  But the evening was not done.  They continued with a fine variety of duo dances, the final one bringing Randy back to the central “echo” church.  But this time there was no sonic ping-pong effect.  Their trombone conversation was one of two very different trombones (because of quite different sonic contexts) exploiting the music of the church.  A truly fine set.  The second group of the evening, Tyto Alba, offered the music of Matt Samolis, Thadd Comstock, Ryan McGuire, and Dei Xhrist.  The nature of the group--almost inevitably because of the “instrumental” and personality factors--is a vocalist with backup band.  We’re not talking about Ella with a trio or even Blondie, but the vocalist definitely is out front.  So I guess this is a good time to say that this is the first time I have caught Dei Xhrist (I’m guessing that’s not her birth name) fully realized.  In previous “electronic” realizations, she often (because of lousy sonic engineering) is only intermittently audible, and she apparently loves negligible lighting and drapes to hide her presence and voice as much as possible.  These electronic antics are something of a puzzle.  Is she trying to be mysterious in some kind of camp way?  She certainly is no wilting flower, too shy to expose herself, if the 9/18 gig is any indication.  She was anything but mysterious, and a surprisingly substantial person of both voice and theater.  Acoustic obviously is her métier.  But it was a quartet.  She was able to dance so convincingly because she had three perfect band mates.  Matt Samolis is not exclusively the wonderful producer of ear-stretching gigs.  He also is a--mostly self-taught--flute player of some impact.  I have enjoyed his performances for at least a couple decades, and I’m tempted to say that I heard Matt’s best flute on 9/18.  Can’t beat that.   Thadd Comstock plays a rock role in the quartet.  He’s the foundation.  Silence his guitar anywhere in the middle of this group offering and the experience crumbles.  But, as I mentioned to him after the set, I love the lightning bolts he throws into the mix during the set.  At least since the 1990s Ryan McGuire has been offering us creative acoustic bass music.  Unfortunately I have not witnessed much of his music during the past decade.  I hope that gap in my listening experience is due to some communications screw up rather than the possibility that he has not been performing frequently around here.  As he demonstrated on 9/18, he is a special musician who knows how to make fine musicians on stage with him sound even better.  And the word better applies to the entire evening.  Matt Samolis’ Advent Library Series continues to be one of the most important music series anywhere in the Boston area.  The programming always is thoughtful and often eclectic in the best sense of the term.  Even with all that, I cannot recall a better evening of Advent Library music than what I encountered on 9/18.  Matt just keeps getting better at what he does.  And we in the audience are the lucky ones…

I have an ideal “image” in my head of Jacob William and his Para Quintet--Jacob, Jim Hobbs, Forbes Graham, Steve Lantner, and Laurence Cook--having a weekly gig somewhere.  You know, something a bit closer to the ongoing gigs of bands led by Parker or Miles in the 50s or 60s.  But even once a week probably would do it for me.  Drop in on a Monday for the gig and survive spiritually until the next Monday.  But things are not like that.  A Para Quintet performance is a far too rare reality.  So one has to jump when the band is booked, and the jumping is worth it.  Jim is possibly the most beautifully enigmatic alto player anywhere.  His lines are melodically seductive but also so searingly beautiful that you expect paint to peel right off the ceiling.  Steve’s ostinato-like lines simultaneously seek out surprising areas of discourse and support everything else that is going on in the room.  It’s something of a harmolodic ideal.  He and the leader are so connected that one can imagine the two of them playing one instrument.  That means that Jacob’s playing is more than supportive.  All the time he is playing and leading, hardly letting anyone know that he is leading.  But subtle Jacob the leader is pervasive and decisive.  He’s one of those terrific inconspicuous leaders for whom the slight nod of the head is a forceful gesture.  All of these understated connections in the band are manifestations of how high the improvisatory quality of the group is.  For example, Forbes was on fire all night, much of the time pursuing machine gun fast staccato lines--both with and without circular breathing.  There was a moment when his sonic fireworks put all of us--musicians and music fans--on hold.  We just stopped in our tracks to listen and recover.  When he finished the solo there was a pause of several seconds (that seemed like minutes) before the band came in to react to his work.  When the piece was over, Forbes apologized.  He felt that his solo had failed to create a space for subsequent sounds to enter and continue the music’s journey.  He apologized and band members laughed about it and reassured him about the value of what he had played.  It’s like that.  The band is like that--soaring but not at the cost of the whole.  Caring sonically and personally.  Of course, the not-so-invisible elephant in the room is Laurence, consistently the most creative percussionist I ever have encountered.  I never know what he is going to do, and I have had countless opportunities to witness his work since the early 1980s.  I don’t think the musicians in the band know either.  And that’s the beauty of it all.  He’s constantly throwing stuff at them that they cannot predict.  But that’s not a problem.  It’s a constructive challenge because all of the guys in the band know that he’s there for them, supporting them.  There was one glitch 9/29 at the Outpost, and it was caused by Laurence--or we can blame his phone.  He had forgotten to turn off his cell phone, and it rang during the substantial single-set performance.  He pulled out the phone and briefly went into a phone theater piece that brought back memories of his exploitation of a child’s plastic phone, a highlight of one of the Autumn Uprising festivals at Eliot Hall in Jamaica Plain.  The performance at Elliot Hall was one of the truly great examples of the percussionist’s dry humor as a completely spontaneous theater piece.  In case you had not noticed, dry humor is central to his everyday personality and his art.  And so--for a moment--those memories returned, and it was exhilarating.  Yet it is important to note that today Laurence Cook is playing the best music I’ve ever heard from him.  As is the Para Quintet…
 August 2015

The Steve Lantner Quartet raises the question of how do some band leaders do it?  The “it” is a matter of extraordinary quality and durability.  Truly high quality jazz and related improvised music is rare in most major cities in the U.S. and abroad.  And ensembles that perform the music and stay together for more than a couple years also are quite rare.  Quality and durability are separate factors.  Sometimes an ensemble of extraordinary quality--such as Jim Hobbs’ Heliopolis ensembles--shines brightly for a few performances and (to the loss of all listeners lucky enough to witness the band) disappears from the horizon.  Today that’s a common occurrence.  Audiences seldom throughout history are attracted to greatness.  Unfortunately, the times we live in are worse than most in that regard.  And then there is durability.  Even the most “populist” jazz band (however one might define that) is unlikely to endure for more than a few years.  Yes, there are the Kenny Gs and Wynton Marsalises.  However, that kind of popularity in the jazz realm is quite unusual.  But the combination of BOTH quality and durability is extremely unusual.  There are the world-famous giants such as Cecil Taylor and Han Bennink, but such people--because of a deaf world--are disappearing.  No.  The Steve Lantner Quartet is not filling large halls (even though it should be).  Nevertheless it is of extraordinary quality, and (in various incarnations) it has endured for more than a decade.  Two of the current band members--Luther Gray and the band leader--have been in the quartet since the best-known early version of the ensemble.  Over time, because of a variety of factors (other professional responsibilities being perhaps the most common), some band members show up only occasionally.  Long time band regulars such as Joe Morris and (the until recently active) Allan Chase occasionally show up--and shake things up in constructive ways.  However, during the most recent several months, as in the case of the exhilarating session 8/25 at the Outpost, the piano and drums push the envelope with the brilliant sonics of Jim Hobbs and Forbes Graham.  Regardless of the personnel changes, the quality of the evolving music never falters.  It seems that the pianist/leader attracts the best musicians who in turn mutually inspire the best performances.  It sounds like an old formula.  So simple.  Right.  You try to make that happen.  Go ahead.  Meanwhile, as you stumble, drop in to the Outpost for one of the quartet’s superb outings and be inspired…

From time to time I mention the healing power of the arts in general or music specifically, especially in terms of spiritual health or attitude.  Recently with greater frequency I have read in magazine articles about the healing power of music for people with Alzheimer’s disease.  Therefore it is no surprise that the summer issue of AARP Bulletin (p. 30) contains an article by Mary Ellen Geist titled “The Healing Power of Music.”  The article offers an overview of the status of Alzheimer’s research and examples of how music alleviates the pain of Alzheimer’s patients.  The bad news is that more than twenty new drugs have failed to treat Alzheimer’s effectively during the past decade.  However, according to researcher Jane Flinn, people with Alzheimer’s who regularly sang demonstrated dramatically sharper mental acuity during a four month testing period.  Other evidence is encouraging also.  So get plenty of sleep and exercise.  Eat healthy food.  And crank up the Betty Carter…

The Wolverine Jazz Band showed up at the Costin Room of the Framingham Public Library 8/13 to a full house.  It was not quite the complete Wolverine Jazz Band.  The ensemble performed without piano or drums (even though the library has a serviceable piano).  Band members have done this before, and it was interesting to witness how they called upon Jimmy Mazzy’s banjo and Rick MacWilliams’ tuba to make up the difference.  I doubt that jazz fans in the audience (unfamiliar with the full septet alignment) would have thought to question the quintet presentation.  The band--also including John Clark (leader/clarinet), Jeff Hughes (trumpet), and Tom Boates (trombone)--showed why they are one of the most successful trad outfits in the U.S.  These guys seem to be booked almost constantly here and elsewhere in the U.S.  The popularity is significant particularly as suburban venues in the Boston area seem to be drying up.  The Sherborn Inn is gone and the Colonial Inn, formerly an anchor of traditional jazz in western suburbia, offers a monthly schedule consisting of almost entirely pop and folk music.  But the Wolverines continue to prevail.  Having attended the 8/13 gig I can see to some extent why these men succeed.  There are questions about the authenticity of live trad music in the twenty-first century.  After all, the original Wolverines and their fellow travelers hit the peak of their art and success almost a century ago.  All that two-beat stuff was becoming passé by the early 1930s.  Today some of us wince when we catch music students trying to play bebop.  And those kids are only sixty-five years behind the times.  So there is at least the fundamental question of what a twenty-first century trad musician is trying to do.  Because jazz of any type at its core is about improvisation, mere mimicry of the recordings of Bix and Bechet would be counter-productive.  Because no one who breathed the same air as a teenage Louis or Tram is playing jazz today, authentic trad jazz--cooked in the broth of Kitty Hawk, the invasion of Cuba, and World War One--cannot be realized.  I suspect that, although there are many opinions about the nature of authenticity, the most obvious reason for the existence of the twenty-first century Wolverines is that the members of the band love the ancient recordings of two-beat jazz and they love to play trad music, authentic or not.  So we heard tributes to Jelly Roll Morton (with a startlingly spot on Morton vocal by Jimmy Mazzy) and Bunny Berigan (with echoes of the famous swing era solo but played in a trad context).  All of it performed joyously.  At some point the only question that came to mind was who had the most fun, the guys in the band or the full house of music fans?  Another way to look at it is that trad jazz today is thought of as “good time music.”  If that is the case, one would be hard-pressed to discover a band more trad than the twenty-first century version of the Wolverine Jazz Band…

A new quartet had a gig 8/27 at the Outpost.  Led by Eric Hofbauer and Dan Rosenthal, the Hofbauer-Rosenthal Quartet--including the fine rhythm section of Aaron Darrell and Austin McMahon--features original charts (some so recent that the ink possibly still was wet) featuring “ancient” architecture (even predictable solo sequences and breaks) as a ground for potentially rough-hewn, exciting detail.  The charts recall the wonderful combos led by Serge Chaloff, Shelly Manne, and other monsters of the 1950s.  But in the twenty-first century, relying entirely on what was new in 1958 is not enough.  And so the key for this band is in the details.  It pursues the transformative details.  The challenge is enormous--that line between celebrating history and pushing the envelope.  There is a good deal of significance in the fact that Eric is one of the band leaders.  His now-defunct Infrared Band danced on that line better than any band I’m familiar with.  It was a great joy witnessing over the years the band take on more and more difficult/challenging charts and nail the details while exploiting both the details and the architecture in put-up-or-shut-up solo opportunities.  The current quartet is not operating at that level.  Such remarkable developments never are overnight affairs.  The lack of polish (time in the trenches really) was most evident during the first half of the evening.  Even the composed material came across to some extent as mechanical.  Ironically, after the gig Eric explained that some of the lack of spontaneity was due to new charts and the fact that bassist Aaron Darrell had not seen much of that material before.  I use the word “ironically” because the interplay between Aaron and Eric pretty much carried the day during that earlier part of the gig.  I suspect that the intimate (i.e., trio) setting of the recently deceased Pocket Aces (including both Eric and Aaron) had much to do with their ability to thrive in a somewhat shaky context.  But there is more good news.  During the final three or four works performed, the entire quartet began to come together with the more familiar material, but--perhaps more important--working together better, hearing better, reveling in the jagged edges of the detail.  Discovering.  These are superb musicians.  If they want to go for broke over the long haul, we in the audience will be the big winners…

We tend to think of sound as a resource for creating joy.  Bach, Ayler, Sly Stone, Louis, Ornette  You get the idea.  But apparently our personal property and identity information is there for the taking through the use of non-joyous sounds.  According to a Joseph Menn 8/5 Reuters article, “U.S. researchers show computers can be hijacked to send data as sound waves,” researchers have discovered that criminals (or perhaps everyday elected officials) now have “the ability to hijack standard equipment inside computers, printers and millions of other devices in order to send information out of an office through sound waves.”  The article describes the nefarious procedure, stating that the “attack program takes control of the physical prongs on general-purpose input/output circuits and vibrates them at a frequency of the researchers’ choosing, which can be audible or not.  The vibrations can be picked up with an am radio antenna a short distance away.”  So what happens if Jim Hobbs plays his alto sax near the affected device, blanketing the device’s vibrations with the sounds of innovative beauty?  I guess the question is: Can the profound beauty of true art defeat the products of shallow egos?  Let’s hope so…

John Voigt sat facing the audience 8/28 at the Outpost.  His stick bass was idle as he sat and laughed with glee.  He’d pause and then laugh some more.  This pattern of behavior went on for several minutes.  A couple times his eyes met mine, and I could not help but join him in the laughter.  Each of us was laughing for the same reason.  The music of the other band members--Jim Hobbs, Forbes Graham, and Tatsuya Nakatani--was so joyously beautiful that laughter seemed the most “sensible” response.  Eventually John got composed and played wonderfully, occasionally laughing and playing simultaneously.  I could stop writing now.  You already know the essential information about the gig.  Two of the musicians--Jim and Forbes--are active music giants, helping to define the character of new music in Boston on a weekly basis.  We do not see John and Tatsuya around here very often.  Tatsuya first developed his U.S. musical presence during years of active sonic searching in Boston.  Now he has a residence in Pennsylvania but mostly is a road warrior.  For example, right now he is in the middle of an 80-gig U.S. tour that will continue into December.  John still performs on occasion around here, but he does a great job of hiding information about those gigs.  I’m trying to fix that problem.  So having John and Tatsuya as Outpost guests was quite a treat for all concerned.  I mentioned John’s fine support and prodding on bass.  But Tatsuya inspired Forbes and Jim as much as any force in the room 8/28.  He was on fire, offering perhaps the most superb drum/cymbal work I’d ever heard from him.  On the break I asked Tatsuya (who obviously is in amazing shape) what he does to bring up such beautiful energy when he plays.  He said, “When I was 40, I decided to become younger.  I’m 45 now.  So I’m really 35.”  How can you not believe him?  That Merlin of percussion brought all of that youth, creative energy, and experience to the quartet.  In kind, Jim and Forbes fired back brilliant lines--sometimes staccato, sometimes soaring.  Always engaging and enlightening.  I’m so happy that a good crowd showed up to catch this band that Jim Hobbs brought together.  It is the kind of intimate and exhilarating experience that should be shared.  Even as the joy brought some of us to laughter, I found that some moments of beauty caused my most “sensible” reaction to be tears…

July 2015

The Allan Chase Trio offered a fine single set of music 7/15 at the Lily Pad, a mix of jazz nuggets (mostly Giuffre) and originals with some Allan Chase material penned during his formative years in Arizona.  Italian Fabio Pirozzolo resides in the Boston area and fit beautifully within the conversational group.  Most of the time he focussed on his wooden hand percussion box (an instrument I had not seen in performance in more than a decade) and cymbals.  Rarely he played percussion with a second foot pedal.  He saved the bongos for the last couple pieces of the set.  The effect was something like a fine cocktail kit but with more pop to it.  It was a sound that worked well with the intimacy of the ensemble.  That intimacy and spare instrumentation were perfect for “allowing” the audience to hear the contributions of each musician to the ensemble and the solo space.  It is difficult to imagine a more productive group if your goal is to hear what Allan and Bruno Råberg have to say.  And that’s why I showed up.  But the reality within the experience was even better than the expectation…

Amazing signs continue to pop up everywhere.  This time such a sign appeared on a door of an entrance to the Natick Mall.  I went shopping there 7/13 and discovered that part of the shopping center had lost its electricity.  The sign reproduced below caused at least a couple double takes because of unusual wording.  I never had seen a shopping mall written about as if it were a soda machine.  Also, it remains a puzzle as to why anyone would want to thank the management for the inconvenience.
 
There are different kinds of crazy.  The one I prefer is the creative person who is the proverbial “crazy like a fox.”  That’s the kind of crazy Kit Demos is. He is an interplanetary alchemist who has the dangerous idea of taking musicians from different music planets--sometimes out of the European classical composition tradition and sometimes out of post-Ayler jazz realm--and putting them in the same space probe.  This is a very risky proposition.  Just because someone is a terrific improvisor from Jupiter does not mean necessarily that the sonic emissary will have productive onstage interactions with a titan from Titan.  And not every combination Kit has put together has lit up the solar system.  But.  Kit has an exceptional ability to bring together people of significantly different musical dialects and cause superior discourse to take place.  A perfect example of that alchemy took place 7/25 at the Outpost during Kit’s monthly Dark Matter Series offering.  He calls the sessions Dark Matter--I’m speculating--possibly because dark matter in the universe superficially is invisible to us, even though it is the primary mass of the universe.  So we have “invisible” gigs that the average guy knows nothing about, but the music on the gigs--by important measurements--is quite weighty.  Along with those factors, I’m sure the name of the series has something to do with the “incongruity” of the ensemble lineups.  You know, those wonderful musicians from different spheres who never perform together.  So, yes, some of the people in the quartet had performed together before (but generally infrequently) with one or more of the band members.  But this was the first time that all four musicians had performed together on a gig.  That fact in some ways is not a surprise, but it also is a kind of wonderment.  Think about it.  Here we have four longtime celebrated improvisors--Kit Demos, Charlie Kohlhase, Kevin Frenette, and Eric Rosenthal--on the 7/25 gig, and they had not shared the stage as a unit before.  And I was lucky enough to witness what happened when they came together.  The music of the group evolved throughout the two sets, initially as a somewhat introspective chamber group, producing music of the intellect and soul that I would have been more than happy to experience for the entire evening.  But these gentlemen are searchers.  And so the music evolved throughout the evening, working its way through a catalogue of adventuresome possibi;ities.  The final work was in the realm of the ecstatic.  And why not?  It is difficult to imagine a more fitting way to celebrate the end of such an exceptional evening of music.  Each musician found himself pursuing different ways to articulate who he was in this “alien” context, and all of them were up to the task, making the total experience far more engaging and surprising even than perhaps a more “predictable” gig of superb quality.  Thanks are due to everyone involved, especially to alchemist Kit Demos…  

Carla DeLellis, owner of Johnny D’s, announced 7/19 that the venue would close before the end of February 2016.  It’s been a couple years since jazz has been a part of the regular evening bookings there, but the Saturday and Sunday jazz brunches continue.  Even so, the number of substantial jazz musicians who have performed in the club--Fred Lonberg-Holm, Raphé Malik, Jamaaladeen Tacuma, Eric Hofbauer, Tim Daisy, John Tchicai, Jeff Galindo, Dennis Warren, Charlie Kohlhase, Raqib Hassan, Garrison Fewell, and many more--is noteworthy.  The good news is that the owner claims she is closing the venue for personal reasons rather than purely economic ones.  In some quarters that’s barter-speak for, “We want truly competitive bids so we can make some money on the place.”  But other evidence suggests that there are plans to turn the venue into something less attractive to music fans.  Let’s hope that music will win.  The down-front seating of Johnny D’s is among the best in the Boston area.  An intelligent transition to a new creative owner could be good news for fans of live music.  Maybe even live jazz…

Paul Broadnax was born in 1926.  Do the math.  It is long past time for him to rest on his laurels or “mail it in.”  But that is not what is happening to him or his young decades-long partner, Peter Kontrimas.  By some standards, I came to his performances relatively recently.  I first encountered his music in the 1980s and have been a frequent audience member for more than two decades.  And I can say that what these two gentlemen are doing on their gigs recently--and most specifically on 7/22 at Act III in Littleton--is astonishing.  I’ve hinted at some kinds of breakthroughs artistically for this duo in recent journal entries, but the quality of what they are doing keeps surprising listeners--not merely me but other longtime fans as well.  And, as the evening progressed, the sonic challenges progressed.  I was taken by Peter Kontrimas’ solos and--maybe to an even greater degree--by his support work.  He was reaching down and bringing up chords and lines I’d never heard from him before.  Wonderful stuff.  On a break I asked him about the difference musically in what he was doing with the acoustic bass.  Modestly he “blamed” Paul, claiming that Paul kept coming up with such an unexpected variety of notes and chords that Peter constantly had to make creative adjustments.  I believe that to some extent it’s a “chicken or egg” situation.  You know.  One of the men “creates trouble” and the other musician is pushed to respond creatively, and that creative response creates trouble.  And so on.  Of course, this wonderful cycle can occur only if the musicians are of the top shelf and have other profound qualities to call upon.  On 7/22 I heard Paul play an unusually large number of wrong notes.   Some of those notes truly were mistakes.  Every musician makes them (or he’s not really pushing himself).  The typical creative musician’s response is to hide the mistake with a pattern of notes that makes the mistake sound as if it were the note that was intended in the first place.  What was astonishing about the true mistakes Paul made is that Paul made no apparent attempt to hide the mistake.  I had the perception that he embraced the mistake as an opportunity to exploit it aesthetically.  So Paul took us on a brief adventure that superficially had nothing to do with the tune initially--i.e., a mistake--and brought us to new territory and a new insight into a jazz standard.  You can imagine how wonderful the intentional mistakes were.  And Peter was there the whole time to react and prod and create (all at the same time).  The duo was an evolving, growing force as the evening progressed.  Audience head nods early in the evening became head-shaking during the second/final set.  Near the final set’s close the duo pursued Rodgers and Hart’s wonderful “Dancing on the Ceiling.”  The composition presents its own peculiar challenges for improvisors.  But those challenges were not sufficient for Paul and Peter.  During his improvised piano solo, as Paul dug into the music he was sharing with Richard Rodgers, it became almost impossible at times to figure out where he was taking things.  Peter had to take care of both the chord cycle and the unknown sonic landscape that Paul was painting.  And he did so beautifully.  But we mere mortals in the audience had to grapple with the sequence of profound surprises as best we could.  Some people may have been a bit lost at times, but all of them quite apparently were solidly hooked.  On more than one occasion during that solo I could hear several people breathe in and hold their breaths--just as I was doing.  There was no boisterous yelping or hip banter.  It was a group of people caught in the moment of inexplicable beauty and relishing the magnificent bewilderment.  I don’t think I’ve ever experienced such a subtle yet palpable and pervasive reaction from an audience before.  Our exemplary jazz musicians keep improving over the years, but gradually the improvements become incremental rather than dramatic.  Over the decades the growth of the Broadnax-Kontrimas Duo has been incremental.  But during this year--perhaps in preparation for Paul’s ninetieth birthday next January--their music has exploded in unpredictable and wonderful ways.  I look forward to more extraordinary sonic fireworks…

The twice monthly publication of The Improper Bostonian is not to be anticipated with excitement if you are a jazz fan (or if you are interested in substantive culture of any type).  Nevertheless, I was alerted to something significant about the jazz category this year in the annual (and annoyingly shallow and pretentious) “Boston’s Best” feature.  Much to my amazement the jazz venue the magazine picked as this year’s best is Wally’s.  Wally’s?  It’s actually a jazz club (much of the time) with decades of credibility in its reputation.  No doubt whoever came up with the suggestion will be fired.  But wait.  Maybe there is hope for the glossy celebration of shiny objects.  Curious because of the references to Wally’s, I picked up the 7/22 issue.  I came across the Alexandra Cavallo article on the early music group, L’Academie, and was tempted to write a note of apology to the editor (until I looked at the rest of the sparkly rag).  Cavallo’s “A different Kind of Lullaby” (p.8) is a--pause for emphasis--thoughtful article on the healing power of music and the remarkable work of Leslie Kwan and like-minded L’Academie ensemble mates.  What they do is terrific.  But the great secret (because our culture ignores art) is that great art--sonic or otherwise--has the power to heal a truly open public…

Early in the first set with fine Luther Gray support Steve Lantner developed some fascinating permutations of a brief staccato line.  Forbes Graham and Jim Hobbs sat quietly, absorbing what was happening.  Then--almost gingerly--Forbes developed his own complementary pattern, gradually pushing harder until the lines were equal conversational partners.  A bit later Jim entered.  He went somewhere else with his alto sax, not confounding what the trio was doing but calling up the memory of some Hodges ballad perhaps, using the soaring line to hold up for inspection the facets of color offered by Steve, Forbes, and Luther.  And this was just the beginning of the evening.  Sometimes something extraordinary happens, and the word gets out.  That’s what seemed to be happening here.  It was a larger than usual audience at the Outpost 7/29, larger than one sees typically at gigs that feature ear-stretching music.  It makes one who loves great music wonder if perhaps people really are learning how to hear.  Since the end of the 1990s there has been much evidence that the general public--and not merely in the U.S.--has become deaf, blind, and brain dead.  At this performance I was impressed less by the numbers of people than the hushed attention of the audience.  These folks were listening, and they picked the right band to listen to.  The band tackled a wide variety of directions musically, and it would be useless to attempt an assessment of the solos of each of these musicians.  The instruments were different and the musical personalities are different.  And all of it was top shelf.  Do you really sit around and assess the quality of the soloists in the Boss Tenors or the Tough Tenors?  No.  You just sit back and be very, very thankful.  And those guys in those sessions were playing the same instruments.  Luther vs. Hobbs?  The mere question gets in the way of the music created by these special agents of sonic art.  Junko Fujiwara sat in for a terrific piece during the second set.  She has been musically invisible recently, as far as challenging improvised music is concerned.  Much of her time has been taken up with other obligations, such as teaching and local productions of Broadway musicals.  I know what you are thinking.  That’s the kind of thing that kills improvising chops.  True.  But something funny must be going on with her.  Maybe in her spare time she’s practicing improvising to a Cecil CD.  Or something like that.  No question.  Her performance exhibited super shops.  But technique is only a means, not an end.  She was all over the place on the cello, playing stuff that really mattered.  I have nothing against Mary Poppins, but what Junko was doing 7/28 was really fine.  I hope Junko Fujiwara decides to devote more of her life to the important challenge of improvised art.  It would be a waste for her not to.  After all, her performance 7/28 was the best I’d ever heard from her.  What a shame to throw it away merely to make a living.  I joke of course.  The quartet--among those who choose to create sonic art without financial compensation--concluded the evening with a brief “sign off” that left the audience with a final musical silence, maybe to let us know just how deafening that silence can be…

A.C. Nielsen has been tracking the media preferences of the public for many decades.  What was the most popular TV show in July of 1955?  A.C. Nielsen is the organization that would tell you. And today Nielsen is telling us that there is good news for Charlie Kohlhase and other radio hosts.  Apparently good old-fashioned radio reaches more adults than any of the other media.  Only 70 percent of adults use smart phones in a given week, but 93 percent of adults listen to am/fm radio.  Also TV is hanging in there pretty well with 87 percent.  It seems that we live in a neo-Victorian world in which the only thing keeping record shops alive is the popularity of LPs…

Garrison Fewell died 7/5 in his home, where he chose to be at the end.  That’s what he did in his life.  He made very strong choices.  But those choices--the ones I witnessed or experienced personally--never were ego-driven, it’s-all-about-me choices.  They were the let’s-make-music-through-the-roof choices or (typically over food and/or wine) let’s-examine-life’s-central-meaning choices.  I’ve never witnessed anyone approach death--over more than a two-year span--the way Garrison did.  He and his wife Emy by example have humbled me.  And the wonderful guitarist participated in some of my most treasured moments of live music (and recordings).  Since his passing hundreds of family members, fans, and friends have expressed their loss and thanks, most profoundly perhaps at the celebration of his life 7/19 at the Buddhist SGI Community Center in Boston.  Garrison Fewell remains with me…


June 2015

Garrison Fewell and Eric Hofbauer finally got together 6/9 at the Outpost, and an attentive audience of regulars and used-to-be-regulars showed up to catch the long-overdue event.  Both guitarists had been caught up in a variety of “business” and sonic activities that kept them from the important work of making music together--as only they can.  With great sadness I mention that the wonderful duo effort turned out to be Garrison’s last.  They chose to “re-do” the music on their Lady of Khartoum recording, all of the tracks in sequence.  It is one of my favorite recordings, so intimate, so personal.  On this evening the musicians offered relevant stories about the session and the journeys that inspired the music.  Each spoke--mostly Garrison, a remarkable accomplishment considering Eric’s penchant for taking on the role of gig raconteur (and effectively so).  Naturally I listened to the recording the next day, and my perceptions at the gig were reinforced.  The single set of music and the recording were identical and completely different.  Each “tune” on the gig was rooted in the “tune” on the CD, in the same spirit and often with the same/similar details.  But the actual experience of each--the recording and the in-person performance--was dramatically different.  And that is how it should be.  The art of surprise.  Thank you Garrison and Eric for a demonstration of the jazz continuum and how central evolution is to its nature.  And for an outstanding evening of music… 

I was away for a few days early in the month.  Part of the trip was the 6/5-7 Okka Fest 7 in Milwaukee.  I mention that fact because three of the featured artists on the festival have Boston area roots--Dave Rempis (Wellesley), Peter Evans (Weston), and Mat Maneri (Natick & Framingham).  It was a good experience for me to see old friends among musicians and music fans (some of whom I hadn’t seen in more than a decade) and to make new friends. There were many very good moments throughout the seventeen sets of music, but the sets including work by Mat were consistently of very high quality.  Among such efforts was a 6/7 quartet including Paul Lytton, Ingebrigt Håker Flaten, and Helen Gillet.  His 6/5 solo/duo performance with Paul Lytton at the Palm Tavern certainly was among the top two or three sets of music of the entire festival.  Really fine stuff…

Mark McGrain, veteran of early Leap of Faith campaigns, could not make the 6/16 gig at the Lily Pad.  He was scheduled to join Glynis Lomon, PEK (AKA Dave Peck), and Syd Smart for the reunion of the “original” Leap of Faith to present the first set of LOF music.  It was everyone’s good fortune that David Harris could make the gig to fill the brass chair in the group instead.  David told me that his free improvisation chops are a bit rusty, but he sounded just fine on the bandstand, making terrific musical decisions, particularly on trombone.  Syd Smart is a Boston area treasure.  It must make anyone performing with him feel awfully secure knowing that, no matter what chances the musician takes, Syd will be there to catch and--if necessary--repair the decision.  But poor judgment is not something Syd has to repair with long-term, telepathic partners such as Glynis and PEK.  Dave Peck has been on a hiatus of sorts for quite a while.  His sea legs are returning, and he’s getting to the point where he can dance on the bowsprit.  The improvisatory leap for Dave even from the immediately preceding gig is significant.  Welcome back indeed.  Worth checking out is a fine brief history of Leap of Faith written by Dave that fans may enjoy.  You can find it at the LOF web site.  I don’t know if I’ve ever heard Glynis sound better--and for the whole evening.  For me she has always been some sort of free improvisation ideal--unselfconscious, unfettered.  It isn’t a matter of a specific act involving the sounds on a specific instrument (cello, voice, aquasonic) or even the flawless choice of which one to employ in the moment.  It’s just that, at her best (which is remarkably common) the listener does not have the “luxury” of making judgments about such things.  The wise listener puts aside judgment and simply revels in listening.  Glynis Lomon and Fred Lonberg-Holm are my two favorite improvising cellists.  Recently I had the pleasure of witnessing Fred perform over a three-day period at the Okka Fest in Milwaukee.  Although I had had the experience before, the thought that I would love to catch Fred and Glynis perform as a duo was more persistent than ever.  I had the same thought again 6/16 throughout both sets.  What I find compelling about each of them--and the idea of the duo--is that each “forces” the listener to suspend judgment because the improvisation is so captivating and because what each of them does with and “around” the cello is so different.  And complementary.  The odds against that special duo happening are substantial.  But I dream.  Thank you, Fred.  Thank you, Glynis.  Glynis and PEK are half of the new Leap of Faith.  That fact means the new incarnation has a very good chance of succeeding.  But the other half is pretty substantial.  I’ve loved Yuri Zbitnov’s percussion for decades--even in groups that I was not fond of.  Also he has made significant contributions over the years to performances by people on stage at the 6/16 gig.  And more than once I witnessed Yuri save the day for Raqib Hassan when disaster landed on a gig by the wonderful disciple of Sun Ra and John Coltrane.  After all, one of the great skills of Raqib was people.  Yuri changed his tools a little bit from the previous “new” LOF gig.  He brought his own trap set “pieces” with him this time to make sure (I’m speculating here) that he would have a fuller range of percussion resources--ethnic resources and more conventional--to insure that he could bring it all to the party.  And he did.  Steve Norton is the “new guy on the block” for Leap of Faith.  I say that only because Steve’s music world and that of the veteran members of LOF operate on different improvisatory music planes.  I’ve witnessed Steve “making trouble” in a variety of challenging contexts since the mid-1980s.  On the surface, working with LOF may be his biggest challenge because the improvisatory terrain is so different from what he’s used to.  But this fine music ultimately is not about surface, and Steve is growing into what must be a somewhat daunting role quite smoothly.  So smoothly that people in the audience 6/16 probably did not know what I’m referring to.  To state the case briefly, the “new” LOF performance 6/16 was even better than the fine previous performance.  Encore…

On 6/11 we lost Ornette Coleman, one of the true giants of the jazz continuum.  I had witnessed performances of the master a number of times.  But I never had met and talked with him until February 14, 1992 as a result of receiving an invitation from Prime Time keyboardist Dave Bryant for my wife and me to be his guest at a concert in Pittsburgh.  I was in the Mid-West at the time, and a trip to that city was not a difficult one.  Happily I agreed to be there.  It turned out to be even better than I imagined.  I witnessed both the rehearsal/sound check and public performance of Prime Time.  And there was a remarkable bonus.  After the performance the sponsoring organization took the Prime Time musicians—and a few lucky guests--to a local restaurant for dinner.  I mention the dinner because it was there that I first got an opportunity to talk with Ornette Coleman.  Two moments relevant to the dinner stand out for me.  The first occurred just before we ate.  It was a short walk from the concert hall to the dinner.  As we entered the restaurant and walked to the private room in the back of the main dining area, the general public stopped eating, arose, and offered a standing ovation for Ornette Coleman.  Neither before nor since have I witnessed such a celebration for any artist.  During the dinner Ornette realized that I had spent most of my adult life in the Boston area.  That caused him to offer a tribute to the genius of Lowell Davidson and recall to a hushed table events that took place at the funeral of the much younger musician less than two years previously.  These kinds of memories of Ornette and his student/band mate, Dave Bryant, jolted me into the realization that I could offer no better commentary on the passing of the master musician than to include some relevant words from Dave.  I emailed a request for comment, and fortunately he responded with what follows:

When Stu asked me to submit a few words for his blog, I thought of his admirably persistent Boston-area focus, and began recalling a few of Ornette’s Boston connections. I first approached him for lessons when he played at Berklee, where I was a student, in December 1981. (Guitarist Bern Nix is another Berklee alumni.) I’d been encouraged by my piano teacher Bruce Thomas, who had played in Ornette’s “White House” rehearsal band.

When I first met Ornette, he told me, “The only two piano players I like are Cecil Taylor and Lowell Davidson.” He enthused about Lowell’s brilliant intellect and his roots in the church. I’m reminded of [drummer] Bobby Ward’s story about how after he and Lowell saw Ornette and Don Cherry play in Boston for the first time, they went out and bought a baritone saxophone and a pocket trumpet and learned the tunes. There were giants in those days! It’s well known that Ornette came to Boston for Lowell’s funeral, and I remember him recounting Lowell’s mother’s moving eulogy several times.

He called me up once to say he was planning to come to town to visit [filmmaker] Shirley Clarke, who was in a nursing home at the time. I was anxious to return his hospitality by offering to put him up at our place, but I think I scared him off when I suggested we could stay up all night listening to records …

I haven’t even mentioned his historic stay at the Lenox School, his association with Gunther Schuller, his honorary degrees from NEC and Berklee, or the fact that Prime Time drummer James Kamal Jones is another current fixture of the local scene. But I’m particularly grateful that the hospitality of Ornette and others allowed me to be in the band while living in Boston. The privilege and adventure of staying at his place was an education in itself. Sometimes after rehearsal, we’d go over to a little Pakistani steam table restaurant on 9th Avenue and solve the world’s problems at two in the morning. I knew I was the luckiest person on earth then, and I know it now.

Thank you, Dave.


Music director John Kordalewski announced early in the single set of music that, because the band was performing at the Jazz and Blues Festival in Somerville’s Powderhouse Park 6/20, the Makanda Project would perform only blues-rooted McIntyre compositions.  The idea made a lot of sense, but the challenge for the pianist/leader must have been considerable.  A set filled with nothing but “bluesy” compositions can get tired pretty fast.  It is to John Kordalewski’s credit how skillfully he selected and sequenced the material.  His advantage is that he was selecting from among compositions by the brilliant Makanda Ken McIntyre.  The section work and improvisatory excellence of band members no doubt made the effort a bit easier.  I was looking and listening as Jerry Sabatini and Phil Grenadier (two of my favorite trumpet players) took solos, and it struck me that it would be worth it to show up just to hear these two brass men create music on the spot.  I could have reveled in that and stopped with that thought.  But there was the rhythm section. John Kordalewski, John Lockwood, and Yoron Israel have worked at the core of this band for so long that everyone else cannot help but be locked in.  And the “everyone else” includes the Bill Lowe-Kuumba Frank Lacy trombones and a large, aesthetically varied reed section of such venerable names as Kurtis Rivers, Joe Ford, Arni Cheatham, Sean Berry, and Charlie Kohlhase.  Most of the current band members have been with the ensemble from the beginning (2005) or very close to it.  Anyone with ears and eyes can sense both the commitment and joy of performance here. The Makanda Project is a true Boston music treasure.  The only disappointment was the failure of the generally fine sound system to capture effectively one of the band’s great assets.  Diane Richardson’s fine solo work was quite audible.  But apparently the person operating the sound board was not aware that Diane Richardson’s voice is employed quite brilliantly as a section horn.  I saw her singing those lines but heard virtually none of them.  Fortunately we have a chance to hear the whole band again in July…


During a few days in Newport this month I came across the nonsequitur of a sign shown below.  It’s probably a great tune title
.



The Driff Festival returned to the Lily Pad 6/19 & 20, and for the first time it was a two-evening affair including eight sets of music followed each night with DJ offerings by Boston jazz icon and jazz radio host Charlie Kohlhase.  Among the celebrated attractions were guests Tony Malaby, Jeb Bishop, Taylor Ho Bynum, and Rakalam Bob Moses and two versions of the large ensemble, Bathysphere, including guests Seth Meicht, Taylor Ho Bynum, Jeb Bishop, Tony Malaby, and Katherine Young performing with regulars Forbes Graham, Dan Rosenthal, Jeff Galindo, Josiah Reibstein, Jorrit Dijkstra, Charlie Kohlhase, Pandelis Karayorgis, Nate McBride, Jef Charland, Andrew Neumann, and Luther Gray on Friday.  The same band minus Jeff Galindo and Katherine Young closed out the evening on 6/20.  The festival offered several surprises, one of the better ones was the opening set of 6/20.  I have witnessed a setup of two percussionists with one or two acoustic basses before, and the instrumentation is ugly.  Even with top-shelf musicians, in the case of completely improvised music the problems of coordinating balance, timbre, line, and discourse roles are considerable.  Well, Nate McBride, Jef Charland, Luther Gray, and Eric Rosenthal were ready.  The result was perhaps the highlight of the entire festival.  On the other hand, Bathysphere was a surprise in that it was something of a disappointment.  Early incarnations of the big band led me to believe that this outfit would become an up-to-the-minute ensemble based on architectural principles developed by Ellington, Evans, and other great band leaders.  By that I refer to the practice of incorporating arrangements that pursue two general goals: 1) creating ensemble sounds that are challenging and engaging to the ear and 2) most important, using the ensemble to create contexts for the soloists, contexts that will enhance and inspire improvisation at its highest level.  The great band leaders even associated specific arrangements or portions of arrangements with specific soloists.  For example, try to imagine an Ellington performance of “Day Dream” without Johnny Hodges.  Years after the passing of Duke Ellington the Ellington-inspired Herb Pomeroy dropped “Moment’s Notice” from his big band repertoire when Dick Johnson left the band.  Such “functionality” in arrangement is not a minor matter.  It really came home to me on the first night of the festival when trombone solos by Jeb and Jeff soared so wonderfully above the band.  The dearth of individual solos throughout that set and throughout the closing set 6/20 (including the same arrangements in a different sequence) created a palpable void aesthetically.  After all, I came to the festival with the assumption that I was attending a festival of jazz and other improvised music.  There is no way that I would mention my reaction to the two performances if it were a matter of just another popular “jazz” band.  But Jorrit and Pandelis are substantial musicians who time and again have demonstrated that they have a special talent for celebrating the art of the improvisor.  Even giants stumble.  But not for long.  The other surprise I want to mention here is certainly positive for those of us in the audience but also something of a puzzle.  One of the better sets of music at the festival was the quartet that performed on the second set 6/19 and included Taylor Ho Bynum, Jeb Bishop, Pandelis Karayorgis, and Nate McBride.  At one point early in the set of music the group performed “Razor Lip,” a Jeb Bishop composition that that composer performed with his own group at the Okka Festival earlier in the month.  I do not have a satisfactory answer for it, but the performance of the work at the Driff Festival was far more convincing than the one at the Okka Festival.  Not even close.  I have no clear understanding of why the qualitative difference is so obvious.  But there is no question in my mind that the quality of the musicians involved--Jeb being one of the giants in both cases--had something to do with it.  And so the Driff Festival is bigger and generally more like a “festival.”  There is merit to the idea of mixing guests and local musicians on the festival.  The “outsider” guests--some terrific and some musically boring--understandably help draw the crowds.  However, given the extraordinary quality of musicians in the Boston area, I would have liked to have seen more of the extra time created by the festival’s expansion devoted to our own talent.  But I suspect that I’m not as practical as Jorrit and Pandelis.  The most important point about this year’s festival is that, by almost any measure, the 2015 version of the Driff Festival was a fine success…

Gunther Schuller died on 6/21.  He was the most innovative of all NEC presidents during the past seventy-five years and possibly of all time.  Of most direct importance to local jazz fans, he brought jazz to the school, making it a “respectable” music in the generally sleepy and supercilious world of conservatory activity.  Even so, it was decades later before Juilliard woke up to the music.  His two volumes of essays about the history of jazz recordings (Early Jazz of 1969 and The Swing Era of 1989) are standard references.  His sons Ed and George are highly-regarded jazz musicians.  Not surprisingly, there is a solid Allan Kozinn obituary in the New York Times…

The trio at the Outpost was not what we expected.  Bummer (tongue in cheek, of course).  One of the great joys of living in the Boston area is that we get a chance--on occasion--to catch Steve Lantner, Allan Chase, and Luther Gray land in the same venue and make music together.  That’s what happened 6/23.  But what really happened was four sets of verbal art alternating with stratospheric music.  Chitchat from the stage on a gig typically is some form of treading water/recovery for the musicians.  I get it and (like most audience members) deal with it.  But Steve Lantner gigs are another matter.  For one thing--in this case at least--the three musicians are singularly different raconteurs.  Luther, the dry jokester, calls up off-kilter realities from his youth.  Allan, the desert fox, conjures invariably informative tales from Arizona and the left coast.  And then there’s Steve with improbable (but real) tales about music school days with Aimee Mann and then the wilds of Essex, Massachusetts.  The result is something akin to their three instruments--each quite different characteristically--working off each other to add salt, pull a leg, inform, and laugh as they remember the past and cope with/celebrate the present.  Much of the verbal art centered on the wildlife of Steve’s homesteader experiences.  On this occasion weasels--particularly stoats--were the focus of his dissertations.  Although wildlife was central to the discussion onstage, the range of subjects was quite interplanetary.  For example, no subject occupied all three musicians more than the down-to-earth problem of radon poisoning.  I almost forgot.  (Not really.)  The alternate sets of music were amazing also.  But you know that.  Let me try to encapsulate the two sets of music as simply as I can.  During the previous three weeks I had witnessed (for me at least) countless sets of music including two fine music festivals.  But nothing I encountered was any better than the music 6/23 of the Raconteur Trio…

May 2015

The first set was a special kind of celebration of continuity.  The New Language Collaborative has been performing for many years with connections going back to Boston and Bennington in the 1970s (and perhaps earlier).  But Glynis Lomon, Eric Zinman, and Syd Smart were in the Lily Pad this month to continue the story a chapter at a time.  Over the years these improvisors have been writing a sonic novel/history for all of us to savor and think about.  The new chapter 5/5 featured Syd in pain from an injury ignoring the pain to give his partners the inspired commentary and crucial support they fed off.  That process alone was exhilarating to those who knew about the pain and those didn’t.  That’s part of the beauty of sonic art at its highest level.  If you are open, you will find joy, no matter what you bring to it.  Eric contributed ideas more chordally-oriented than usual, making this chapter occasionally denser sonically than on some other occasions.  Glynis, center stage, in many ways carried the story line with vocal sonics, aquasonics, and cello eloquence that fans show up to revel in.  So this chapter of the ongoing book had segments/paragraphs that were sometimes short and sometimes extensive.  But--most important--audience members witnessed a new chapter in what is a substantial volume.  As in the case of your favorite book, one hopes this collaboration has no final page.  The second set was a kind of rebirth, difficult but promising.  Those of us who remember Leap of Faith of the 1990s (when the group was rearranging the furniture in the Zeitgeist on Broadway) remember one of the most compelling ensembles of that decade.  And here the gang was back in 2015 at the Lily Pad in a new, transformed version of the group.  My initial reaction to the two dozen (?) reed instruments scattered across the front and right-hand side of the stage was to tell Steve Norton, “It looks like a Rayburn Music fire sale.”  Perhaps only reed players in the Boston area could get the joke, but Steve certainly did, offering a brief “Get ‘em while they’re hot” sales pitch in response.  Humor aside, the overwhelming image of instruments was relevant to the proceedings in a number of ways.  But mostly it signaled the fact that the “old” Leap of Faith and the new Leap of Faith are different ensembles.  The most obvious difference generally is instrumentation.  The most common quartet version of the “old” band included a trombone, which has been replaced by reeds.  The new band--Glynis Lomon, Dave Peck (AKA PEK), Yuri Zbitnov, and Steve Norton--features bowed instruments, percussion, and two reeds.  The effect sometimes can be a bit reed-heavy, but I found band members working out the balance throughout the set.  But perhaps the greatest difference (beside the trombone to reed replacement) is the evolution of the original band members.  Generally each has grown in a broad musical sense but also in more easily measurable ways.  Yuri’s percussion in the group from the 1990s was generally recognizable as a “conventional” drum kit.  Although he used some “drum shop” equipment 5/5, most of his equipment seemed to be an array of ethnic bells, bars, and gongs with hardly a snare in sight.  In fact, at one point he moved over to Syd’s trap set to take advantage of the more traditional jazz sonics.  And all the time what he created supported what was going on in front of him, a cushion filled with superb, often pointillist sonic commentary.  Glynis has broadened her pallet also with greater use of vocal tones and the introduction since those first Leap of Faith outings of her performances on the aquasonic.  The cello remains her most stunning musical voice, but now she has an expanded set of contextual/partnering voices.  PEK always had a fascination with different members of the reed family.  But the array of reeds (and percussion toys) displayed at the Lily pad was over the top--and just what PEK wants to work with.  At the end of the set I asked PEK what the instrument that looked like a tarogato was.  “A tarogato,” he said.  A tarogato?  Nobody makes them anymore.  He told me that it was made in Hungary, and he got it online.  That’s the kind of collection he has.  And he had left several instruments at home.  Later he explained that he sees such a great array as a single instrument with enormous sonic possibilities.  So the 2015 version of Leap of Faith is quite different from that of the 1990s, even with Steve being the only “new guy” in the band.  It’s a tour de force that has yet to work out where it is going.  It should be fun to try keeping up with the band.  You will have a chance to take a peek in June when members of the 1990s Leap of Faith share sets with the 2015 version.  There was a third set 5/5 when all members of the New Language Collaborative and Leap of Faith jammed together.  Judicious sonic art prevented a train wreck, and brilliant moments of ensemble/solo transparency happened.  The only problem occurred at the end of the set when, in spite of valiant efforts by Syd, several band members chose not to let the music end…

As readers of this Journal know, I have a strong aesthetic connection to post-Ayler jazz at its best.  In addition, I share the frustration of fans and musicians regarding the lack of constructive support for the newer forms of jazz on the part of “jazz” festivals, slick music magazines, and “support” organizations.  One common complaint among deaf contemporaries of such musicians as Thelonious Monk, Cecil Taylor, and the current younger crop of sonic artists is that they don’t know how to play or that they have “no technique.”  Recently I was flipping through an old issue of Smithsonian and came across an article about Vincent van Gogh by Paul Trachtman.  At one point Trachtman discusses van Gogh’s developing technique (January 2009, p. 71).  Trachtman says, “Although he knew he needed the utmost technical skill, he confessed to an artist friend that he aimed to paint with such ‘expressive force’ that people would say, ‘I have no technique.’”  The comment is just more evidence of the degree to which the visual and sonic arts are connected…

When it comes to the most important treasures in life, such as the arts, nothing happens until someone makes it happen.  One of the great things about living in the Boston area is that we have such someones making sure that the exhilarating challenge of art continues to happen and to grow. Among the truly creative musicians that we get a chance to catch with some frequency Kit Demos also is one of the make-it-happen people. Each month he makes the journey from Maine to produce his terrific Dark Matter Series, each event featuring a mix of recurring and guest musicians often exploring ideas about composition as improvisational contexts. But Kit also is one of the better improvising musicians in town. So it was no surprise 5/23 when the music offered by this particular Dark Matter ensemble was completely improvised. Originally the group scheduled for the 5/23 gig at the Outpost was to include a front line of two clarinets and trumpet. But a last-minute problem resulted in a two-clarinet front line instead (with Todd Brunel focussing on the bass clarinet for the entire evening).  As fine as Glen Dickson and Todd are as individual improvisors, what I enjoyed most about their work on this evening was the spontaneous interplay between them, listening, chattering, voicing together.  Fine.  Just think how long it has been since you witnessed two clarinets carrying on truly joyous conversations within an ensemble--and without hogging the spotlight.  There was a third horn also, Garrison Fewell’s guitar.  I think he played more guitar than I’ve heard from him in months--by almost any measure.  For example, the musicians were so enthusiastic that the single set of music went on for almost two hours.  And Garrison was actively in the mix for most of that.  The “more guitar” also was evident in the range of contributions offered, everything from minimalist clicks and clangs to to sustained finger lightning on the strings.  My attention often moved in the direction of Gary Fieldman.  I have no idea how many straight-ahead and “out” gigs over the past couple of decades I have witnessed with Gary on drums.  Many.  As I sat there 5/23 it hit me that I’ve never caught Gary performing below a very good quality level.  Never.  That’s astonishing.  I would have trouble coming up with even a short list of jazz musicians from here or anywhere that I can say that about.  And again on 5/23 Gary made everything happening around him better.  For reasons that I’m not clear about the Boston area has an unusually high number of world-class jazz bass players.  And I believe the per capita figure particularly for post-Ayler world-class bass players in Boston must be greater than any city including New York.  The combined population of Boston and Cambridge is slightly above a million.  Does New York really have eight times as many William Parker (one of New York’s finest) caliber or Jacob William (one of Boston’s finest) caliber bass players as the Boston area?  If so, they are hiding very well.  I’d be interested in someone, for example, sending me a list of even the top ten Apple post-Ayler bass players.  Maybe I’ll be surprised.  I thought of all that as I watched and heard the gimmick-free Kit Demos use a small baton, bow, and human fingers to pursue the sonic possibilities of the acoustic bass.  Time and again he astonishes with unassuming but brilliant technique and even more brilliant music.  It was an evening to be thankful for.  I’ve seen countless giants since my elementary school years (when I would come home from school and watch wonderful Ellingtonians perform on television each week day afternoon).  I am especially lucky because now I am old enough to know just how lucky I am.  Right now…

It’s difficult to understand the coming devastation if you never have been to the Tonto National Forest in Arizona.  It is the site of deeply affecting archeological ruins, the sacred land of the once-flourishing Hohokam people and more recent Apaches.   The terrain’s living and geological beauty are an epitome of the visual glory of the West.  Attached to (hidden in?) the bipartisan Defense Authorization Act, is the U.S. Government’s swapping of four square miles of the Tonto National Forest for “equivalent” land to be named later on behalf of the Rio Tinto and BHP Billiton mining companies.  Several news articles have pointed out the legal and ethical problems (the lack of equivalence guarantees, the irony of swap promoter Senator “anti-earmarks” Jeff Flake, and the lack of a full NEPA review) in the bill.  But it may be best to state the problem simply.  The U.S. Government is “swapping” some of the most remarkable public land for land that cannot be as valuable by any ethical and moral measure.  Think of it this way: Let’s swap four square miles of New Hampshire’s Presidential Range for four square miles of land that includes the Mall of America.  Unfortunately the whole thing snuck right past us, even though the usually staid Science (12/19/14) tried a last minute attempt to garner support to kill the landmark earmark…

In some ways James Merenda is a puzzle.  It’s not just people writing about jazz, such as myself, who might find him problematic.  I guess, if you want to take his side of the story, you’d say, “Some very limited people just want to pigeon-hole him.”   Maybe I’m guilty, but isn’t it nice to have some idea what to expect when you show up to a jazz gig?  Is it too much to expect the extraordinary Paul Lovens when you show up to a Paul Lovens gig?  Maybe that’s unfair because James Merenda does show up to a James Merenda gig as James Merenda--on any gig.  But the bands keep becoming something quite unpredictable.  I first got knocked out by the alto saxophonist when he was pursuing the Charles Mingus repertoire.  I’m not big on repertory bands.  For me re-do is no-no.  But his passion for Mingus was so focussed, so legitimate--not your typical Boston-New York intellectual exercise--that I fell in love with those bands (in spite of myself).  To mention James Merenda’s Mingus bands and the Mingus ghost bands (even the ones that claim not to be) in the same sentence is a profound insult to James Merenda.  You get the idea.  I loved that band, and then a few years ago James created Ticklejuice.  No more Mingus.  Another listening adjustment.  Ticklejuice has no more to do with Mingus than Gesualdo has to do with Stravinsky.  Until you discover that there is a link.  And so there is a link between the “Mingus” James Merenda and the “Ticklejuice” James Merenda.  But what about the “early” Ticklejuice and the 5/29 Ticklejuice?  After all, the early “dance party” Ticklejuice is not the same band/charts that showed up 5/29 at the Outpost.  The same passion was there and most of the same musicians were involved.  But the “old” Ticklejuice was about the energy/party of the moment.  The 5/29 music was more about sociological and cultural roots, even to a great extent biographical.  And so the energy of the dance has been replaced with more thoughtful energy of the story, James Merenda’s story as told by the Ticklejuice Theater Company--James, Tom Duprey, David Hawthorne, Vanessa Morris, Jon Dreyer, and Miki Matsuki.  How fine it is that so many of these people have performed with him for so long.  Wherever James takes the band, they know where they are going.  Jon is rock solid, bar after bar.  And he knows how to use what the drums are feeding.  Tom Duprey has become the consummate ensemble trumpet player.  I can’t imagine an ensemble of any size, mainstream or otherwise, not being enhanced by his work.  And his solo chops impress more than ever.  Vanessa Morris over the last five years has grown more than any member of the band.  A lot of it has to do with what seems to be soaring confidence.  She takes more risks, good risks.  So band members get shocks and jolts in support, chords and lines that challenge band members to reach higher, and they do.  When she improvises, there is no holding back on lyrical chromaticism, ear-opening joy.  David Hawthorne took advantage of the range of the music to demonstrate just how remarkable his solo work in any form can be.  You want urban B-flat?  Hooky pop?  In your face jazz?  He’s pretty much scary no matter what context you put him in.  One would expect at least some of the two zillion Boston area guitar students to show up just to get a status report.  Watching Miki Matsuki work through the rhythmically varied and tricky terrain, I thought about Sabby Lewis’ comments regarding a young Alan Dawson’s first experiences in a show band.  Until approximately mid-century it was common for jazz big bands to accompany shows or revues, as was typical at the Cotton Club and Small’s in the 1920s and 1930s. Sabby’s bands supported those kinds of acts, particularly in New York. The drummer in such situations was important to keep the performance momentum going.  Also, the drum part was very tricky and near impossible to sight read. Enter the young Alan Dawson who never had backed up such a show before in his life.  Sabby gave his new drummer a quick lesson in the basics of show band percussion, went over the score with him, and gave him advice on what to do if Alan got lost during the performance.  Alan survived and became one of the world’s great jazz percussionists.  I thought of all that 5/29 when I saw Miki--as cool as a stroll down the street--work through James’ varied and bumpy charts with superb articulation and inspiring band support.  And there was no need for a press roll.  Terrific stuff.  No doubt her long tenure with James Merenda has something to do with it.  But mostly it is the result of a few lessons with Alan Dawson (and subsequent studies with Alan Dawson student Bob Gullotti) and a lot of hard work.  And then there’s James himself.  The puzzle.  But what he keeps doing is not a puzzle that I want to solve.  I just want to show up and listen…

Piano in Bryant Park in New York is up and running at lunch time (12:30-2:30) again this year.  So, if you are in the vicinity of the New York Public Library this summer for lunch, you can catch a range of people offering mostly solo jazz piano at the East end of the park.  You have missed Armen Donelian, Terry Waldo, and Bertha Hope who performed there in May, but a host of others are scheduled

Two young ladies entered the Lily Pad 5/7 in the middle of the first set of music by the Melissa Kassel-Tom Zicarelli Group.  One of the women is a student of Bruno Råberg.  The other was carrying a three-month-old child.   As the music played, the mother and child danced to the fine sounds.  I thought how lucky the infant was to hear live such wonderful sounds.  A variety of research has demonstrated that opening a child’s ears during the first three months of life is the most important time for such activity.  And I’m sure that music programs in elementary schools help also.  The group that the listening trio and others were witnessing included Melissa Kassel, Tom Zicarelli, Jeff Galindo, Bruno Råberg, and Nat Mugavero.  Jeff is the most recent addition to the ensemble, and what he brings to the music is outstanding.  His supporting lines and joyously aggressive solos are so convincing that one might believe the material performed was his own.  Most of the compositions were written by Melissa and Tom, but there were exceptions.  At the suggestion of Nat (a Boston area favorite who was having an especially fine evening with the kit), Melissa sang the swing era hit, “This is Always.”  Given the historical reference, I found myself thinking of Frank Sinatra in the Tommy Dorsey band and how much Dorsey knew about singing and breathing.  Those musical conversations came to mind as I heard the great trombone support for Melissa’s vocal and the subsequent eloquent trombone solo.  Of course, this group is a real band with great support all around.  It was a joy to catch the intense focus of Bruno’s student who no doubt was taking lessons.  But it is always a good idea to keep focussed on Bruno’s playing, even if you are not a student of bass performance.  After years of paying attention, I remain unable to quantify what it is that causes him to come up with the decisions he does, that ability to make any band--no matter the style--work better.  Tom Zicarelli always impresses, but if he’s ever soloed any better than he did 5/7 I never have heard it.  A final word about Kassel-Zicarelli decision making is in order.  There are some wonderful arrangement changes to perennial Kassel-Zicarelli compositions--primarily rhythmic--that have been made.  It was quite noticeable, even on the first two pieces of the evening.  On the “happier” pieces the tempo has been picked up and even the time signatures modified so that, when Melissa sings about joy, there is an exhilarating bounce to the word…

 
April 2015

It was a special night, the official opening of a brand new jazz venue northwest of Boston.  The Act III Jazz Café is the latest incarnation of what used to be called the Acton Jazz Café.  Many challenges lie ahead for club operator Gwenn Vivian.  The setting of the venue is far more convenient to people living near the northern half of Rte. 495 than to the denser population living inside Rte. 128.  The room can seat fewer than thirty people, not what one would define as a critical mass for an economically successful jazz club.  If that is not enough, while the Act III Jazz Café is in its infancy and requires a good deal of hands-on executive attention, Gwenn Vivian is in the process of opening a larger venue in Lowell.  Just how serious (or not) these obstacles are will be revealed with time.  But for now the venue basks in the glow of celebratory optimism.  And no celebration could be better than offering Acton Jazz Café/Act III Jazz Café pillars Paul Broadnax and Peter Kontrimas.  They performed to a full house 4/1 that included many long-time friends of the duo.  Paul was in good voice and the two of them gave the appreciative audience all it could ask for.  I have witnessed the music of Paul and Peter countless times, but I witnessed something 4/1 that I’d never seen before--harmolodic mainstream jazz (or at least harmolodic essence within mainstream jazz).  It became most pronounced during the last set of the evening.  I was paying close attention to their work (as I always do because of the rewards), and something I could not get my head around kept jumping out at me.  I think I had trouble realizing what was going on because experience told me that it just didn’t make sense.  When a small group of mainstream musicians works together, the standard improvisational situation is that one of the musicians improvises and the rest of the group offers support.  So typically in such a duo as Paul and Peter’s, one of the musicians takes a solo and the other person offers support, playing harmonic lines, chords, or runs that enhance and perhaps prod or challenge the improvisor.  Selection of support notes is very important and sometimes strikingly beautiful.  But the support person does not offer a fully realized melodic improvisation while the “primary” improvisation is taking place.  The assumption is that the second improvisation would undercut the first one.  But, as we know from post-Ayler improvisation, it is possible to have both members of a duo improvising and supporting at the same time.  Usually such things do not just happen.  Students work at it a while before they get it right.  But 4/1 at the Act III Jazz Café I saw and heard Peter Kontrimas move his support line into an independent improvised melody that also superbly supported Peter’s solo.  In turn Paul did the same during Peter’s solos.  The experience was jaw-droppingly beautiful.  After the gig I talked about the experience with Paul.  He claimed that he was completely unaware of anything like that going on.  I’m guessing that the decades of experience these two musicians share just took that form for a few tunes on a “foolish” April evening.  No doubt--if he had been present--Maestro Coleman would have smiled…

This Journal in previous months has presented the idea that eight is the magic number, as far as ensemble size is concerned.   Septets are on the cusp of being a big band and sometimes swing between combo impact and big band richness.  But when an ensemble grows to eight musicians, a big band swell seems to take over the aesthetics.  It is not clear to me whether that big band ensemble work is inevitable or it is so seductive that band leaders cannot avoid the “sound.”  Almost inevitably Boston jazz pioneer Sabby Lewis comes to mind in that context.  He and fellow arranger Jerry Heffron tackled a practical problem and created the proto-cool ensemble, the swing era equivalent of the Birth of the Cool “big band sound” with limited resources more than a decade before the Miles Davis recordings, the Boston-based Charlie Mariano Octet, and what eventually became known as the west coast “cool school.”  The practical problem was two-fold.  First, the Savoy Café, where Sabby managed to obtain booking, had a “stage area” so small that only a few musicians could set up to perform.  Second--and historically most important--there was no space for singers, dancers, other entertainers, or any space for people in the audience to use for dancing.  In 2015 it is difficult to comprehend what I’ve just written.  Try to understand that up to (and even during) World War II, clubs in which jazz was performed--such as the Black and White Club in Boston or the Cotton Club in New York--were entertainment venues.  There may have been a few musicians or wacko jazz fans huddled near the bandstand to catch every note, but the vast majority of paying customers were there to dance to great dance music or witness a great show backed by a jazz band (as in the case of the “show” scenes in the 1929 historically important--if not completely accurate--Ellington band film short known as Black and Tan).  In the late 1930s Sabby Lewis was faced with a club situation in which he had to attract an audience with a small ensemble and no stage entertainment and no public dance floor.  He came to the rather remarkable conclusion that he had to have ensemble arrangements that were so engaging that the public would show up to catch the band.  I realize the idea that music alone (no theatrics, no costumes, no twerking) would be sufficiently attractive that it would draw the general public is such an absurd concept during our early twenty-first century that it is more than difficult to comprehend.  But that is exactly what he and Jerry Heffron did.  They employed seven instrumentalists and one vocalist to execute arrangements that drew packed houses at the Savoy Café (including eventually a Harvard student named John F. Kennedy).  A bit later the band--now at eight pieces--went to New York and destroyed the much more famous and much larger Tiny Bradshaw big band on a double bill.  No doubt there were many devices the arrangers used to make the Sabby Lewis band attractive, but one of the more significant is the voicings they used to make the small ensemble “sound” larger, the same types of voicings found in the Davis and Mariano recordings and later “cool school” sessions.  Now return to the early twenty-first century.  The challenges are broadly the same: no matter how brilliant your music is, you still have to eat.  But the details are different.  Audiences are so deaf (and blind, if we are to consider all the art forms) that doing a solo gig seems to be the only way in which to limit the economic damage to significant jazz artists.  And yet we find ourselves confronted with some of the most compelling musicians anywhere on the planet showing up 4/16 at the Outpost to push the combo into the eight-piece big band version of the Charlie Kohlhase Explorers Club.  Does the “eight” turn the music into something big automatically, or is it a group intention?  For Sabby the big band impact of his septet and octet was intentional.  But in the case of the Explorers octet I just don’t know.  I’m not confident that asking Charlie about it would result in a definitive answer.  Certainly there is the intention of exploiting the possibilities of eight musicians.   But, beyond that, I’m not sure whether even the musicians ponder such a question.  Nevertheless, the results are there.  As in the case of Charlie’s previous Octet outing at the same location 10/16/14, the ensemble work and solos were terrific.  The big difference is that the 4/16 version of the band was brass-heavy with three members of that family played by Daniel Rosenthal, Jeff Galindo, and Josiah Reibstein.  The term “brass-heavy” is descriptive rather than a complaint.  What the difference meant is that Charlie (playing the only reeds) could exploit through charts and spontaneous leadership the beauty of trio family ensemble work.  The result is that these two recent octet bands--with only a single difference in instrumentation--were equally superb but markedly different sonic experiences.  As wonderful as the conversation between the reeds and the brass were, one enthusiastically might show up 4/16 only for the fine percussion section (Pandelis Karayorgis and Curt Newton) or string section (Eric Hofbauer and Aaron Darrell).  More and more it seems that the best musicians in town go out of their way to perform with the best musicians in town.  This octet is a perfect example of outstanding musicians pursuing the joy of outstanding music…

Billie Holiday was inducted into the Apollo Theater Walk of Fame 4/6, just one day before the hundredth anniversary of her birth.  Such an honor probably is as noteworthy as any in this time of “celebrations” marked by glittery but empty words.  Holiday did sing at that storied Harlem entertainment palace more than a dozen times.  The tributes are many, including Sony’s just-released Centennial Collection (for those of you who do not have most of her famous recordings memorized).  Mentioning her now causes my thoughts to turn to Jim Mendes, a black media pioneer in the 1950s who played jazz recordings evenings on a white radio station in Rhode Island.  There were a few black radio stations around telling the world about Rhythm and Blues, but those stations were so small and economically strapped that they had to shut down at sundown.  Jim Mendes played jazz recordings at night.  One night he announced that Billie Holiday had died.  That was just yesterday--when I was very young…

Glynis Lomon is one of my favorite improvising musicians.  I had the opportunity to witness her fine work in two different duos two days in a row.  As I think about the concept, mentioning those concerts must make any reader think, “Oh, no!  Double redundancy.”  Although I would be happy to catch Glynis in any exactly the same duo two days in a row, the concerts on 4/17 and 4/18 were dramatically different (if equally compelling).  The first performance was a current incarnation of a fine poetry-jazz tradition that perhaps reached its greatest popularity in the 1950s.  My favorite recorded document of such material is Blues and Haikus, in which Jack Kerouac’s distinctive “haikus” inspired equally brief improvised responses from (alternately) Al Cohn and Zoot Sims.  The late Lou Kannenstine’s Boxholder Records catalogue includes a few poetry-jazz efforts of note from more recent decades.  Even more recent successful performances of that type in the Boston area have involved former Poet Laureate Robert Pinsky reading with improvisations from such musicians as Stan Strickland and Rakalam Bob Moses.  Unlike the Kerouac poetry-with-jazz documents, the performance by Ron Goba and Glynis Lomon presented a ten-part single, extensive poem interspersed with improvised cello and aquasonic sounds.  The differences in psychological tone, poem length, and language manipulation were significant.  But shared elements--evocative imagery, the almost never overlapping alternation of words and sounds at more or less regular intervals, and the compelling risk-taking--transcended the decades.  I am happy to be able to hear Kerouac, Sims, and Cohn at my whim.  But it gives me pause to know that the “Armory/Abbey” poetics of words and music will not be repeated--in any form.  It’s a one-and-done work.  The next Glynis Lomon duo performance occurred at Dyno Records 4/18 in Newburyport with Garrison Fewell.  The offering was quite different from that of the previous day, most obviously because the presentation was completely improvised and completely music.  But it had echoes of the past as well.  One year ago Glynis and Garrison performed as a duo at the same location, and that was superb, memorable.  Although the idea of comparing the 2014 and 2015 performances is obvious to me now, no such thoughts entered my mind 4/18 as I listened to the duo.  Of course, remembering detail of an improvised music performance without aid (a recording?) would be quite difficult.  But I believe the important points about the two performances are quality and continuity.  In other words, does it really matter which performance was better?  When music is this fine (quality) and the two musicians get together a year later and pick up where they left off (continuity), that’s more than enough for me.  There was other music in Newburyport 4/18, and Glynis and Garrison stayed around at the record shop to see and hear a different duo, Charlie Kohlhase and Jef Charland, work its way through mostly Kohlhase compositions.  There is a special kind of challenge posed by limited forces--most obviously solo and duo--that pushes musicians to call up the sparest (i.e., least BS-prone) resources, and that was evident here.  There were no flourishes or any type of non-essential sonics going on.  It was all stripped down, simply beautiful music.  At the very end of the performance Charlie brought forth one more piece.  It was a bebop composition not by him and not by John Tchicai.  There was nothing post-Ayler about it.  In fact, it was the same bebop piece, “Blues for Alice,” that he has closed each of the last three Charlie Kohlhase gigs I have witnessed.  It was beautiful and somehow reassuring in its ancient solidity.  We--of a certain age and older--have bebop in our blood.  One cannot help wonder why, at the end of a performance of post-Ayler reaching, a major force on the scene keeps returning--not merely to Charlie Parker but--specifically to that composition.  I have no answer, even as I love the work and Charlie’s apparent fascination with it.  I suspect Charlie would have no “satisfactory” answer either…

On this site I had posted the gig as a quartet.  The four musicians I listed did show up.  But I was wrong.  The band turned out to be the Steve Lantner Quintet.  So it was not what I expected, but fortunately any group Steve shows up with will be outstanding.  There were no flaws in the “rhythm section.”  Joe Morris and Luther Gray have performed together with some frequency for more than a decade.  As Steve Lantner fans know, Luther is Steve’s regular drummer.  So right away, anyone in attendance at the Outpost 4/28 knew that the piano, bass, and drums were going to be really locked in.  And they were.  The trio would have been terrific all by itself.  But it had special inspiration in the front line.  Forbes Graham and Jim Hobbs are extraordinary post-Ayler musicians.  Witnessing either of them solo in the context of the trio’s wonderful busy-ness is more than worth the price of admission (even if the price of admission were greater).  But there were moments--far too brief--when Jim and Forbes engaged in heated (but not antagonistic) sonic conversation and the ceiling caught fire.  Steve shows up in town with such friends as these usually only once per month.  And such events always are among the most compelling of any month…

Fifteen musicians would make up a relatively modest big band during the swing era.  But, if you take the time to contemplate ensemble numbers in the larger post-Ayler bands, you find that few of those bands call upon much outside the range of eight to twelve musicians.  Go ahead, count up all the post-Ayler large ensembles that have persevered for more than two years.  How many exceed a dozen members?  The ICP and Barry Guy large groups seldom exceed ten.  Even the Peter Brötzmann Tentet--although it usually consisted of more than ten musicians--only occasionally reached thirteen members.  Therefore the recent performances by Pandelis Karayorgis and Jorrit Dijkstra’s Bathysphere are exceptional in a number of ways but most obviously for the band’s size--15 strong.  And strong is the right word.  The energy was obvious even before the first set began 4/12 at the Lily Pad.  Band members joked, caught up with each other’s travails, and ultimately looked to the stage--with joy.  One of the qualities of this band is the musical diversity of the band members.  Each of them has different fish on the skillet.  For example, Matt Langley raved about the southeastern New Hampshire scene that he’s involved in, partly with young lions tackling mainstream big band charts with relish.  There was a quiet comment from Jerry Sabatini about his investigation of the ancient cornetto.  And beyond.  All of it rich with the love of music.  And all of it offered by extraordinary musicians who--without exception--know the meaning of ensemble support and improvisation that reach to the roots and the stratosphere.  The big fifteen are working with the charts of Pandelis and Jorrit.  It is difficult to overstate just how brilliant the arrangements are.  Jorrit’s charts made me think that arranging for big bands is what Mr. Dijkstra was born for.  For example, the first set opened with a Jorrit Dijkstra chart that put the spotlight first on the tuba.  In other circumstances such a choice might be seen as either audacious or pretentious.  Not so here.  It’s just a fine example of a solid arranger knowing his personnel.  Josiah Reibstein did what he does--fill the room with brilliant tuba ideas.  It lifted the stage and set the whole band rip-roaring through the evening’s initial setting of the bar.  It was a high bar, and time and again the charts, the ensemble work, and the improvisations soared over that bar (while saluting it).  Pandelis, the other arranger, is a genius (as almost every fan of the music must know by now).  His first chart of the evening gave the opening salvo to the electronics, and everything that followed--including spontaneous section decision-making--was acoustically electric.  In hindsight as I think of the evening I want to offer praise to the soloists, but I’m hampered.  Some musicians offered what I believe to be the best solos by them that I’d ever heard.  But to pick out individuals would be to mislead.  What strikes me about the improvisations is the consistent quality of those forays.  My impression is that the charts were so fine and the improvisations were of such a high quality--a quality that never faltered--that each musician felt the necessity (not the stress) to offer profundity.  Was the two-set gig flawless?  Of course not.  The lack of rehearsal time caught up with the band in the second set.  There was in-the-moment scampering on the part of arrangers and the troubling sound of band members treading water.  But even those missteps were fascinating and sometimes compelling because of the heroics of band members who held their place or offered solid slabs to stand on and keep moving the big machine forward.  The other flaw was the inevitable problem of just how many solos can occur in a band of fifteen soloists.  So, if you hoped for several fine improvisations by Jeff Galindo or Luther Gray, forget it.  But the evening was filled with superb solos.  And the section work alone was sufficient reason to show up.  Terrific stuff.  Appropriately at this point I list the names of the wonderful musicians who created such sonic joy: Jerry Sabatini, Randy Pingrey, Kelly Roberge, Matt Langley, Forbes Graham, Dan Rosenthal, Jeff Galindo, Pandelis Karayorgis, Jorrit Dijkstra, Josiah Reibstein, Charlie Kohlhase, Jef Charland, Nate McBride, Andrew Neumann, and Luther Gray…


March 2015

There was no bass on the 3/17 gig at the Lily Pad.  Instead Forbes Graham showed up to complete the quartet that included Jorrit Dijkstra, Pandelis Karayorgis, and Kresten Osgood.  It was not really a substitution.  More a reconfiguration of the ensemble.  I had not caught Kresten Osgood in action before and found his dismissal of the charts during a pre-gig group prep interesting.  He looked over the charts briefly and explained that he wanted to hear the heads and improvisations and react to them in the instant.  It’s a challenging concept, particularly with charts, but during the performance there were very few sonic bubbles.  He did hear and anticipate quite well, often playing the heads in synch with the others--and emphatically.  I never saw him refer to the charts.  He plays “larger than life” and with a sense of humor.  His strongest suit seems to be chatting during improvised sections of music in which he successfully prodded some outstanding comp and solo work from the other band members.  I don’t think Kresten Osgood ever was completely on the same page as the other musicians (who play frequently together).  It was not so much a matter of an outsider crashing the party as a fundamental difference in aesthetics.  But--most important--the experience of the slightly off-kilter event apparently was engaging for the audience and a healthy jolt for the four people on stage.  Before the gig I asked Kresten Osgood whether or not he had any visa troubles when he tried to get into the U.S.  “No.  I have dual citizenship,” he said.  In other words, the way to get around absurd roadblocks created and enforced by the Musicians Union and immigration officials is to obtain dual citizenship.  (Of course, I’m just joking sarcastically.  But boy it is frustrating to try to cope with inane bureaucracy.).  And then there’s so-called meta data…

I was driving home from some shopping 3/3 just before another snow storm hit (only three inches, hardly significant compared with recent storms, but annoying nevertheless) and noticed a snow shovel planted in a snow mound along the road.  Hanging from the handle of the shovel was a white flag of surrender.  At such times a sense of humor is a powerful thing…

I’ve been to the Café at the Arts at the Armory, and the second experience reinforces my feelings about the place I had during my first visit: Good quality food and beverages.  Great sight lines.  Better than average (according to everyone I talked with after the event) acoustics.  And, at least in the case of jazz, some pretty impressive music.  The 3/6 gig at the Café featured the Pocket Aces, my second encounter with them.  The music on both occasions was undeniably of high quality.  The trio--Eric Hofbauer, Aaron Darrell, and Curt Newton--consists of impressive improvisors.  What threw me on this occasion was the consistently pensive even introspective nature of the music.  It is not as if the quality of the music ever flagged, but neither did the introspection.  I don’t know the extent to which the members of the band were aware of the subdued nature of the single-set evening.  Eric referred to one piece as being minimalist, but it was no more spare and “quiet” than the other material.  Curt occasionally brought forth percussive flourishes, as if to push at least a change in dynamics.  And there were times when Aaron’s attempts to create energy did succeed temporarily in changing the musical direction.  I guess my written reaction here to the 3/6 music is a bit stronger than pure accuracy warrants.  And I would have walked away with a very different reaction if the set had been preceded by a statement that the performance would consist of a set of variations in tribute to Morton Feldman.  But, without such a cue, the consistent direction of the music (not really calling to mind Tilbury or Feldman explicitly) left me somewhat puzzled.  These are musicians of such great variety, resources.  I did not expect more qualitatively, but I did expect them to cover something approaching the range of possibilities that they are capable of.  After all, the vast creative reach of these musicians is one of the primary reasons I show up to revel in the surprise.  That’s all the more reason to show up to the next Pocket Aces gig…

Empty House Cooperative--David Michael Curry, Matt Azevedo, Jonah Sachs, and Thalia Zedek--opened the three sets of music 3/14 with fairly loud, evolving ensemble sound sculpture.  There were ambient elements to the music, but the well-placed, lumbering detail would not let those elements carry the day.  Band members employ an array of electronic equipment--simple to complex--and even call upon “conventional” instruments to realize the group’s sonic vision.  Really nice stuff.  Pared down instrumentation and dry humor took the stage for the second set of Music at Washington Street when Matt Samolis offered improvised flute and vocal sounds on top of Steve Norton’s reed-driven composition.  The set offered a fine example of how to mix improvisation and predetermined architecture convincingly.  Forbes Graham is somewhat nutty (in a good way).  He brought us Wild May, which includes the leader and the superb trio of Kevin Frenette, Ryan McGuire, & Luther Gray to help him tackle three extremely different groups of compositions by Raqib Hassan, Earle Brown, and Forbes himself.  Think about it.  The Raqib Hassan works are inspired mostly by Sun Ra charts.  The Earle Brown excerpt from the 1954 work Folio and 4 Systems (specifically in this case 4 Systems) is a mostly graphic piece with some conventional elements.  And then there was the Forbes Graham composition, typically another example of music in which Forbes apparently tries to drag musicians outside their comfort zones.  Got that?  OK.  Now explain why all of it sounded like it came out of the mouth of the same quartet monster.  It was simply Wild May music…

OK, so it wasn’t the exact configuration of musicians I was expecting.  No percussion.  Brass instead.  But, as in all things improvisatory, it is not the specific instrumentation so much as the improvisors.  And these musicians--Steve Lantner, Allan Chase, and Forbes Graham--were the right guys 3/24 at the Outpost.  The music brought to mind a sometimes wonderful concept from the 1950s known as “chamber music jazz” or “chamber jazz.”  That music was characterized by percussion (if there was any at all) that featured particular focus on mallets and brushes rather than exclusively sticks and an “intellectual” surface often associated with twentieth century so-called Western Classical Music.  The word “surface” is intended as descriptive rather than pejorative.  For example, some of the best “chamber jazz” of the 1950s was produced by such fine creative musicians as Mel Powell and Chico Hamilton.  Younger improvisors and fans will find perhaps a more meaningful example of that music from the 1960s in the Jimmy Giuffre Trio (with Paul Bley and Steve Swallow).  At the Outpost there were no drums and not even a bass.  Just three “horns” playing improvised chamber music--a music that ran the gamut from pointillism to underwater-slow whole notes to call and response to glorious paired voices and more.  There were constant shifts among the solo, duo, and trio instrumentation.  All to fine effect.  Even laying out was as dramatic a decision as a sonic attack.  Sometimes a piece was concluded simply when the entire trio decided in the same instant to lay out.  The evening provided chamber jazz as superb as one ever is likely to witness.  As superb as imaginable--chamber or otherwise…

I was lucky enough to attend the sold out lecture by Laurie Anderson 3/26 in Paine Hall.  She used “Six Things That I Know” as an organizing device for a bombardment of memories and ideas that was so dense and full of intellectual fireworks that at about the time the lecture was scheduled to stop for a brief Q&A session she admitted to getting through about a third of the planned material--and then she continued talking.  All of these comments are in no way a complaint, merely descriptive.  She used often humorous and otherwise effective projected images throughout her comments, but the most riveting force in front of the audience remained Laurie Anderson.  Verbal images and ideas provoked this witness’ brain and heart consistently throughout the talk.  Her Buddhist references and joyous take on life and work brought to mind transformations in the life and music of guitarist Garrison Fewell.  Her gregarious, positive energy brought to mind Terrie Hessels of The Ex.  I would love to be a witness to the two of them sitting at a table, breaking bread, and talking.  I’m certain soon both of them would be levitating--literally.  Two take-aways may be instructive.  During the Q&A session someone in the audience asked her “With only a finite amount of time” to tackle projects, how does she choose the projects she pursues?  Anderson began by pointing out that she does not see time as finite.  “It is infinite,” she proclaimed (in her most joyous Buddhist voice).  Then she offered her criterion (the “secret” of everything, really): “I choose projects that I believe will make me happy.”  She explained that such a choice may not always travel in a direction that she expects, but using anticipated happiness as the primary criterion always leads to the best discoveries and surprises.  Further, she stated, she is not clear how or why, but choices rooted in happiness inevitably come to fruition.  The money and other resources materialize.  That’s powerful stuff for anyone to ponder.  At the same time it is important to note that resources are more likely to come to a person who has the intelligence, integrity, and work ethic of Laurie Anderson.  At one point in the lecture she discussed her use of electronic equipment in performance.  She explained that in such instances she always incorporates some form of choreography to compensate for the static nature of electronics.  Watching someone onstage use a laptop is “like watching someone ironing,” she said.  Amen…

Many years ago in a galaxy far away (i.e., the 1980s at the Willow Jazz Club in Somerville) I fell in love with the drum work of Chris Bowman, the thunder-maker of a trio called Shock Exchange.  I think the last time I saw him was around 1990 when he had settled down somewhere in New York City, making high-quality audio engineering setups for recording studios.  I’ve missed his playing all these years.  He continued to play drums and has returned to the Boston area several times.  Unfortunately for me something always kept me from making the gigs--until 3/18 at the Outpost when former Shock Exchange leader Dave Bryant brought Chris to work with the keyboardist, bassist Jacob William, and alto saxophonist Jim Hobbs.  The music started and I found myself transported to the brilliant trio music of many gigs at the Willow.  It was the way Chris interacted with and propelled the other three musicians that reminded me of those days.  But those were different times, and the four musicians are different--either evolved “differently” or completely different humans.  Along with Chris’ attack on the kit, there is the harmolodic compatibility.  Jacob has demonstrated time and again that he is fluent in all music languages, and Dave and Jim certainly are among the top harmolodic musicians in the Boston area.  And Chris may be my favorite harmolodic drummer of all.  I sometimes have wondered why Ornette never absconded with Chris while the percussionist was a member of Shock Exchange.  Maybe it was because Chris was and is too provocative, too demanding.  By that I mean, if you are going to play with Chris, you had better bring it with you or go packing.  I don’t suggest that any of this is negative.  It’s just that Chris shows up expecting to create with other people the most amazing music imaginable, and he comes to shower his band mates with as much percussive joy as he can muster.  So, yes, that can be a bit intimidating--but only for those who have no business onstage in the first place.  No problem 3/18.  It was Dave’s gig, so he ran the show.  Jacob thrived under the tutelage of Anthony Braxton.  And Jim eats Bessemer furnace harmolodic shards for breakfast.  In other words, these guys fed off the sounds from the drum kit and seemed to grow “physically” in the process.  Lesser men would have withered, but--in the best moments--Dave, Jacob, and Jim fed the very fire right back to the drummer.  It was one of those nights in which frequently there were moments when I did not know at which musician to point my eyes for the best view of the sonic wonder…

This web site is about music, but sometimes everyday reality sticks its nose right into one’s search for joy and beauty.  Politics “as usual” these days in its incredible incarnations is such a nose.  There were Democrats and Republicans in my family as I grew up.  They had their political philosophies and fairly strong beliefs, but they did not demonize the other party or the other candidates.  Certainly the Democrats wanted Adlai Stevenson to be elected President and were convinced that Ike would not take America in the right direction.  The Republicans were more than suspicious of Stevenson’s “socialist” leanings and thought that the former general would be the right man to help define America’s post war (both World and Korean) status.  There were arguments, ridicule, and even jokes (for example, Mort Sahl asked, with Dulles out traveling in Europe, who would be running the country?).  But I never remember Republicans in the family suggesting that Stevenson was “an imminent threat” to the United States.  Nor did I ever hear Democrats in the family refer to Eisenhower as “an imminent threat” to the United States.  Such accusation would be beyond belief.  Only a wacko such as McCarthy could say anything that inane.  But this is twenty-first century America.  Reuters published a news item 3/30 by Roberta Rampton that summarized the results of a Reuters/Ipsos online poll designed to gather attitudes of Republicans and Democrats about each other.  According to the poll results, 34 percent of Republicans ranked President Obama as “an imminent threat” to the United States, apparently more dangerous than Putin (25 percent) and Assad (23 percent).  Before the Democrats reading this begin sneering about off-the-wall Republicans, they should consider that the data suggests large numbers of people from both parties are off-the-wall.  The poll results state that 27 percent of Republicans believe the Democratic Party is “an imminent threat” to the United States and that 22 percent of Democrats believe the Republican Party is “an imminent threat” to the United States.  If it didn’t matter, the upcoming campaign insanity would be funny to watch.  But it does matter… 

Paul Broadnax and Peter Kontrimas had another of their fine occasional brunch outings 3/22 at Bullfinch’s.  They were in high spirits after a sold out gig at Scullers 3/18 with Cass McKinley.  Paul in particular continues to amaze, offering free lessons in improvisational substance to anyone wise enough to listen.  And the regulars were at the brunch to catch the hand-in-glove duo in action.  Always a pleasure.  Paul and Peter brought some other good news with them.  It seems that Gwenn Vivian and her Act III jazz forces were successful in presenting their case to the State House authorities.  In effect, the restaurant/club received a state-level variance allowing them to open Act III as a jazz venue in Littleton.  There still are details to take care of, but they are (or at least should be) relatively minor.  Current plans include opening the venue officially on 4/1 (no fooling) with Paul and Peter to kick things off.  From that point on the duo would continue performing weekly every Wednesday.  That’s a fine hope.  Let’s hope it works out that way…

Jorrit Dijkstra was a substitute for the ailing (but mending) Jeff Platz in the group that Kit Demos brought to the Outpost 3/28.  But us wasn’t some kind of ad hoc gesture functionally.  For example, the remainder of the quartet--Pandelis Karayorgis and Eric Rosenthal--performs frequently and consistently with Jorrit.  The result is that the music--which opened with a completely improvised “warm up” work--had more in common with great friends meeting over lunch than some heady intellectual assignment.  Most of the evening focussed on original charts which were savored by the band mates for the music’s challenges--occasionally with head scratching--but always exploited for their intrinsic improvisational possibilities.  While I’m on the subject of improvisation, I should say something about Kit Demos as a soloist.  Fortunately we Bostonians are particularly fortunate in the technical quality and improvisational quality of our bassists.  I’ll put up our top ten post-Ayler bassists against those of any city anywhere.  One of the most compelling improvisors among the best in the Boston area is Kit Demos.  There is a tradition in clubs and other venues throughout the U.S. that when a bassist takes a solo, it is time for people in the audience to talk among themselves.  Anyone stupid enough to talk (or do anything but listen) during a Kit Demos solo is missing out on improvisatory brilliance.  He consistently amazes both technically and improvisationally.  That’s a significant achievement for any musician performing on any instrument.  But for a musician who plays bass--the instrument that became a substitute for tuba and later an “any note will do” novelty in big bands and finally the solo you are supposed to talk over--such wonderful improvisations are both compelling and hopeful (in that people may finally listen to bass solos alertly).  But Kit played with composers and performers who are monsters in their own right.  Over the years I’ve raved about each of them--from Jorrit’s great alto work to Pandelis’ keyboard genius to Eric’s brilliantly malleable energy--but how terrific it was to see and hear them sit down to lunch and talk about music with music…


February 2015

Last month in the Journal I commented that the big snow storms were late in arriving.  The snow gremlins must have heard me because the last days of January and virtually all of February have been brutal.  Like many people in the Boston area from the Atlantic Ocean to Worcester (and beyond) I became convinced that I would spend the rest of my life shoveling snow.  It was during a brief respite in all the mess that I found myself 2/7 in the Green Room in Somerville.  The Green Room is the smallest jazz venue among those of the important Cambridge-Somerville creative music options.  A count of the house suggests that capacity is just under thirty people.  That number does not seem large.  But, as a far as new creative music is concerned, thirty people is a solid turnout for local musicians.  What is significant in that regard as far as the Green Room is concerned, all twenty-two gigs at the venue so far have been either a full house or close to it.  OK, at least half the gigs could be described as mainstream.  But all the gigs I’ve caught there have been post-Ayler or otherwise pushing the music beyond the mainstream.  Almost every gig I’ve witnessed has had a full house.  Such was the case 2/7 when I caught the Andy Voelker Trio there.  The makeup of the audience for these post-Ayler gigs is significant.  First, there is a handful of regulars, such as myself.  The second component of the audience is local musicians, more than a half dozen on this occasion.  Again, such support is common on Boston area gigs, and we should celebrate that fact.  The third (and in some ways the most significant) component of the audience is people I’ve never seen before--or at least only at the Green Room.  These are open-minded witnesses who are curious enough to discover some sonic adventures that they are unfamiliar with.  And they listen.  My only explanation for that group of people being there is the hard work of producer Mark Redmond.  Applause.  The gig 2/7 featured Andy Voelker, Jef Charland, and Luther Gray--all among my favorite musicians.  So the somewhat unformed/cautious (?) work at the beginning of the first set was a surprise.  But the cobwebs (if that is what they were) disappeared, and the three of them took us on a wonderful journey through classics, original charts (mostly), and terrific free-form adventures.  I mentioned the musicians in the audience.  The fine team of Yuka Hamano and Joe Hunt was among them.  Joe sat in to open the second set with “Beautiful Love,” a classic associated with Joe’s former boss, Bill Evans.  Of course, there was no piano on the gig.  Perhaps it was appropriate.  The band’s sax and bass and Joe Hunt were quite fine.  The trio of Andy, Jef, and Luther performed for the rest of the evening, taking the still near-full house to challenging and engaging places.  They closed with a tribute to Ornette Coleman.  Because it was a tribute, the band sounded nothing like any of Ornette’s bands specifically.  For example, Luther pulled off the fine trick of evoking the spirit of Ed Blackwell without mimicking him.  And that’s the way the music of the evening was--all Andy, Jef, and Luther.  More than enough…

While doing some research on early twentieth century band leader Leo Reisman (see The Major Contributors) I came across a 1928 Boston Symphony Orchestra program booklet for February 17 through 24 of that year.  That booklet holds more weight than BSO program booklets of recent years.  For one thing it contains a promo piece about a 2/19 concert at Symphony Hall by Leo Reisman and his Orchestra, and on another page a list of the actual program itself.  There are several works of significance on the bill, but one in particular stands out.  It is “Aunt Hagar’s Blues” featuring a solo by Johnny Dunn.  Dunn, although eventually he was overshadowed by Louis Armstrong, was the first major jazz trumpet soloist.  In 1928 he still was highly regarded and well known in jazz circles.  His performance with the Reisman Orchestra at Symphony Hall apparently was a musical success.  But what echoes loudest from the event historically is that some indignant Bostonians stood up and walked out of the concert because a black man was performing with a white orchestra.  It should be pointed out that there were mixed-race bands in Boston during the first quarter of the twentieth century (and even in the nineteenth century).  The Boston Symphony Orchestra performances listed in the same program for February 17, 18, 24, and 25 also are significant historically.  The music on the 17th and 18th featured Béla Bartók at the piano in a performance of his Piano Concerto (1926), and the music on the 24th and 25th featured the American premiere of Stravinsky’s Oedipus Rex (1927), both programmed and conducted by Serge Koussevitzky.  In other words, in February 1928 the BSO performed works written in 1926 and 1927 by two of the world’s greatest composers.  Boston would not witness its world-famous orchestra perform consistently such new works by major composers until the brief tenure of James Levine, a man inspired by Serge Koussevitzky.  And so the BSO program from February 1928 gives us pause.  On the one hand it offers documentation of an event suggesting that we have made some progress as a city racially (if not enough).  On the other hand the booklet is evidence of how retrograde the programming of the orchestra is today and how deaf the audiences apparently have become…
from BSO program for February 17-24, 1928

How wonderful it is to witness Dave Bryant playing an acoustic piano.  A really high quality acoustic piano.  Such an event--due to the lack of genuinely fine pianos in most venues--is rare.  So we in attendance at Pickman Hall 2/13 were quite fortunate.  Of course, a good deal of the good fortune was due to the work of Bruno Råberg and Jerry Leake who completed the well-connected trio.  There was much thought and work that went into the performance, including rehearsal time.  The tunes and instrumental responsibilities were worked out before the event.  But the harmolodic nature of the communication and the musical capabilities of each musician insured that the performance was quite open in terms of how each musician would handle both support and out-front improvisation.  Dave hardly could have done better than to select Bruno as the bassist.  It is not merely his track record with Jerry but his fearlessness as a contributing partner.  Consistently all evening Bruno knew where the detail of the music was going and how to offer comment most effectively as all the detail came together.  Jerry and Dave had not worked together before.  It would have been an easier path if Jerry had exploited the non-Western percussion to emulate the work of Dave’s old friend, Badal Roy.  But wisely Jerry performed beautifully in his own musical language for instruments of the Indian and African continents.  In fact, among the highlights of the evening was his handiwork on the frame drums.  As a final note about a fine evening of music, I applaud the fact that Dave apparently gave serious thought to programming.  Not enough band leaders seem to give sufficient thought to the content and sequence of music throughout a set or evening.  In this case, Dave offered three of his own compositions interspersed with works by (in sequence) Ornette Coleman, Thelonious Monk, and Duke Ellington.  The relationship among those composers and the fact that group probed farther back in time with each work offered a thought-provoking trip as a balance to Dave’s more personal offerings.  And the acoustic piano was nice, too.  The whole evening, in fact…

Individual character seems to have little to do with chosen occupation.  A person can be a holy man, an insurance salesman, a carpenter, or virtually anything and do so with character.  Therefore it may be worthwhile to note the passing of college basketball coach Dean Smith.  Corruption in college athletics is something of a disease.  But that does not stop the truly successful coaches.  There is perhaps no better example of character in sports than Dean Smith, and the media in obituaries generally recognized his contributions to the sport through his mentoring of hundreds of young athletes and his courage in his fight against racism.  One fine example of such journalism is found in The Week (2/20, p. 43) which concluded its obituary with a quote from Dean Smith.   When he was asked if he was proud of his civil rights record, Dean Smith said, “You should never be proud of doing the right thing.  You should just do the right thing.”…

We live in a retro world right now.  When the public obsession is everything from Steampunk to architecture with skeletal interiors recalling Victorian aesthetics to entertainment that focusses on obsolete niceties of English society of more than a hundred years ago and vampire fantasies.  The list could go on.  But nothing in the music world echoes the past more than the growing public attraction to LP recordings.  Eighty percent of LP manufacturing equipment in the U.S. was scrapped during the 1980s and 1990s.  Not so in Eastern Europe.  GZ Media in Czechoslovakia is the world’s largest manufacturer of LPs, producing vinyl for everyone from small indie labels to Sony.  According to the 2/9 Business Week, GZ Media is going strong and the future is bright; during the past year vinyl record sales in the U.S. were up more than 50%.  Now if they could just get rid of the pops, ticks, and other surface noise on the big disks, they’d really sound better than CDs.  But I suspect that vinyl fans just don’t care about that.  What might be a good thing is to emphasize how old school live music is.  Then people might put down the noisy grooves and discover that live music actually sounds more real.  Real.  I wonder if the public is ready for that…

Garrison Fewell was recounting a couple visits he made to Washington, D.C.  He told band members and the audience at the Outpost 2/12 that he was arrested and jailed with thousands of other people at a peace rally there in 1971.  On his next visit to D.C. he was booked at the jazz club in the Smithsonian Institution.  He concluded by saying, “In 1971 they threw me in jail.  On my next visit they provided a rhythm section.”  The tone was light but the subject matter was serious.  The music of the evening--provided by Garrison, Steve Fell, and Luther Gray--was wide-ranging but retained its pensive aura throughout the evening.  There was much to pense about personally, meteorologically, and internationally.  Every note--every sound--throughout the evening was abstract, free form music devoid of anything approaching a familiar “tune.”  But all of it was moving, profoundly beautiful.  At the end of it all the band members agreed to play one more piece.  As a signal of finality, Garrison removed his shoes.  “No more boots on the ground,” he said without a smile.  The final piece of the evening was energetic.  Emphatic…

From time to time I complain about our country’s immigration policies, particularly as they apply to visas for visiting musicians.  However, recent performances by the BSO raise related but perhaps unclear questions about those policies.  The popular guest conductor Vladimir Jurowski was scheduled to conduct an evening of music with the BSO at Symphony Hall this month, but visa problems caused the management to come up with last minute replacements for him.  The Boston Globe’s Jeremy Eichler noted that the orchestra’s audiences had experienced “more than their fair share of conductor cancellations…  But a work visa issue?”  The cause of the “bureaucratic travel problems” was somewhat vague.  Eichler even suggests that the visa problems may have been generated out of Russia.  Whether the problems came out of our immigration folks or Russia’s, when a significant musician of some international fame can’t get a visa to perform here, perhaps the main question might be which set of bureaucrats are the most screwed up.  Of course, if the international artist had been a creative improvisor, we never would have read about it in the Globe

What a wonderful antidote to the snow/cold blues in the Boston area! After a few weeks with two to three feet of snow and much higher in drifts still on the ground (and growing) and record low temperatures day after day, the wonderful septet version of the Charlie Kohlhase Explorers Club showed up at the Lily Pad 2/25 and saved my day.  Things were upbeat before the gig with chat and banter, including the statement that the brass section (Jerry Sabatini, Jeff Galindo, and Josiah Reibstein) was so much more impressive than the reed section (i.e., Charlie).  The top shelf rhythm section consisted of Pandelis Karayorgis, Aaron Darrell (who is going on a tour of the Mid-West with Charlie in March), and Curt Newton. When the group started playing the charts (all by Charlie, Pandelis, and Allan Chase), the heart of the evening revealed itself.  Even though all these folks perform regularly around town, it was obvious that each musician was enthusiastic to re-unite with this combination of people.  By now in any context Curt and Aaron are completely locked in.  But the twist on things is that this group (as band members pointed out several times during the evening) has a “bass section.”  As much as Josiah and Aaron excel as soloists, what seemed to grab people’s attention (both onstage and off) is the sound and connection between the bass and tuba performing as a single instrument.  This component of the band is quite special.  How rare it is to hear the sound of tuba and acoustic bass in unison.  At the same time it causes one to ponder the earliest days of jazz when (depending on the context) a musician would be responsible for playing either the tuba or the bass.  But even then it must have been quite rare to hear both bass and tuba simultaneously in a band.  It is such things as the “bass section,” the rhythm section, and the charts that make this septet so engaging for the audience and inspiring to the musicians.  But I don’t think all of this would happen if it were not for the leadership and the improvisors.  Charlie brings it all together and pushes it forward.  And the improvisors.  There are so many depressing stories over the decades regarding the “fact” that Boston’s jazz musicians are great technicians and readers but they can’t improvise convincingly.  I think there have been specific instances/people for which the claim is valid.  We have seen musicians here (and elsewhere) whose improvisational potential has been schooled to death. But here we are in the twenty-first century, and I’ll put Boston’s best post-Ayler improvisors up against the best from New York or any other major jazz center. This septet is a fine example of why I make that claim…

The Massachusetts Senate 2/5 paid tribute to Robert Guillemin, better known to virtually every resident of eastern Massachusetts as Sidewalk Sam.  He died 1/26 at age 75.  He first encountered sidewalk art in Paris.  Years later outside an exhibition of his works at the ICA on Boylston Street he created his first street art.  Sam believed in sharing art with all people and used his public presence to support a range of cultural and political causes.  Sam set an example for all of us as a citizen and as an artist who eschewed elitism on behalf of human connection.  Several articles about his life and accomplishments can be found in print and electronic news media including both an obituary and a photo essay in the Boston Globe online…

Producers Lou Bunk and Matt Samolis gave us four sets of music 2/28 at Third Life Studio.  As usual, the program was quite varied.  Up first was Kris Hatch offering electronics and vocal work, employing on her equipment long fingers that would make most professional pianists jealous.  Her performance offered more questions than answers--typically a plus in the arts in general--but some details made one want a few immediate answers.  For example, a good deal of rock music (and even some nineteenth century poetry) revels in the idea that the meaning/audibility of words is not a necessary or even desirable aspect of the art.  Such was the case here perhaps.  But scattered throughout the performance were discernable words one could find in any American dictionary.  As a result, it is not clear whether or not the audience was supposed to hear all the words she was singing.  But--again--maybe that was the point.  The weeks of lousy weather in late January and all of February have had a variety of effects on musicians in the Boston area.  BOLT--Jorrit Dijkstra, Eric Hofbauer, Junko Fujiwara, and Eric Rosenthal--exhibited two of those effects.  The first was rust.  Cancellations due to weather tend to dull the edge acquired by musicians who perform regularly.  In addition, it had been a while since BOLT performed in public.  So the fog of no “performance war” brought with it miscues and a bit of floundering.  On the positive side was a very different effect, one I have witnessed regarding several groups recently.  Absence does not merely make the heart grow fonder, but (in the case of improvising musicians) it makes individuals exhilarated in the re-acquaintance.  The joy of the reunion of these fine musicians was quite evident.  The rare moments of stumbling became dances of joy.  Arriving in the mid-1980s there was for a few years a fine guitarist named Geof Lipman who performed in the area in such groups as Lombard Street and Mr. Furious.  He was a musical adventurer and created a trash cover guitar.  He worked on it with significant focus.  I was so impressed with the results that I talked Geof out of a failed prototype sans strings.  He played the final product for the first time on a Mr. Furious gig at Ryles Upstairs on 8/20/89, not long before he moved to San Francisco.  Before the first set I asked Geof what the instrument--consisting of wood, strings, and a metal trash can cover--sounded like.  “It sounds exactly like it looks,” he said.  I laughed, but during the Ryles performance I discovered that his description was accurate.  The sound and his performance were wonderful.  That experience came to mind 2/28 at Third Life Studio when Lou Bunk began playing his amplified styrofoam.  What does amplified styrofoam sound like when it is struck or bowed?  It sounds exactly like it looks.  Will amplified styrofoam ever replace the trash cover guitar?  No way.  But Lou Bunk made the most of it, and the audience obviously approved the creaky music.  The last set belonged to the Unified Field Quartet--Glynis Lomon, Garrison Fewell, Bill Lowe, and dancer Catherine Musinski.  As I’ve mentioned before, Glynis for decades has been one of Boston’s champions of interdisciplinary art performance.  So it was no surprise that three musicians performed beautifully with a dancer during this last set 2/28.  Catherine Musinski knows what she is doing, but I believe the performance would have been more effective if the abstract sonics had been talking to pure motion devoid of mime-oriented theater.  Perhaps it’s just a matter that I have a bias toward unadorned impact in such circumstances.  And her dance moves were potent, not requiring “enhancement.”  But the whole of the piece did work.  The body movement and sound realm were superb.  And the Opensound production including quite varied multiple sets of music fulfilled its unspoken motto: “If you don’t like the music, wait five minutes.”…

 
January 2015

January is a new month for a New Year.  With it we received a new jazz ensemble performing in a “new” venue.  The Pocket Aces is a new jazz trio consisting of musicians with very familiar faces--Eric Hofbauer, Aaron Darrell, and Curt Newton.   In fact, the three of them had been on stage in a variety of configurations often enough together that I asked them to confirm that they never had had a gig exclusively as a trio.  What I liked most about Pocket Aces is that it really is an active trio.  The common trio presentation of front man with bass and drums backup can work well and has done so since the earliest days of jazz trios.  However, over time the bass and drums have taken on a greater role in the ensemble statement.  The evolution has been so pervasive and convincing that now people such as myself anticipate a greater role for bass and drums in any trio’s musical trajectory.  Therefore, as one can imagine, I found the shifting front line of Pocket Aces to be central to the trio’s effectiveness.  Sometimes Curt carried the main theme.  Sometimes the bass line was front and center.  But to the careful listener it did not matter where the sounds were moving to or from.  The joy is that this group forces the listener to expect surprises.  And all of this happened in an engaging way such that even audience members who apparently were not avid jazz fans were drawn to the sonic activity on stage.  Like much of Eric’s music, the compositions were straight ahead (mostly jazz classics), but the charts pushed the chord-based tunes all over the place.  Often to unexpected corners and vistas.  The venue also is new (but really “new”).  The Center for the Arts at the Armory in Somerville is housed in a turn-of-the-century building looking like a small fort that was moved to Highland Avenue from North Africa.  Pretty amazing.  The facility includes a performance hall and a café.  The 1/11 Pocket Aces gig took place in the café, which has satisfactory acoustics and a capacity similar to that of the Lily Pad or the Outpost.  Other features include tables, reasonably comfortable chairs, food, and drinks.  Apparently the bakery is on-site.  Also, it is not a small matter that the musicians seemed quite happy in their dealings with the Armory performance booking personnel.  It seems that the café is available for a variety of booking dates, but I was particularly glad to attend a Sunday afternoon gig which might be an incentive for parents to bring along children to give them a chance to witness sounds made by living humans.  In a similar way, it was good on 1/11 to see walk-ins who did not know about the gig and discovered just how fine this trio is.  Indeed…

I will try to give some context to Al Bendich’s passing on 1/5.  When I was in junior high school the big band music and small group jazz domination of the radio airwaves (where all the important music was heard in those days) was being challenged by R&B and Bill Haley (e.g., “Rock Around the Clock” c.1955).  Communism, for many intellectuals and artists during the 1930s the liberal antidote to out-of-control and powerful capitalist enterprise, had become the political anathema of not just McCarthy Republicans but also middle America.  The Cuban Missile Crisis was still a few years into the future.  It was an uptight America, seeing threats from language and action lurking around every corner and down every dark alley.  Into this era of paranoia (not enough different from our own) arose a group of thinkers and artists that became known as the Beats.  Not particularly political by nature (and some of them devoutly apolitical), several of them became embroiled in some of the most important First Amendment trials since the nation’s founding.  Three of the more significant judicial findings involved Howl, Naked Lunch, and the onstage monologues of Lenny Bruce.  Lawyer Al Bendich was not directly involved in the defense of William Burroughs and his Naked Lunch, a book banned in Boston but legally repealed with help from Allen Ginsberg and Norman Mailer.  But Bendich broke some crucial ground with the “trials” of Allen Ginsberg’s Howl and Lenny Bruce.  Al Bendich was hard-working and brilliant.  Just two years out of law school he sealed the victory for publisher/poet Lawrence Ferlinghetti with his defense brief on behalf of Howl which was so compelling that the conservative judge quoted it in his ruling.  A few years later Bendich successfully determined the jury instructions in a Lenny Bruce obscenity case and used those instructions on his way to getting an acquittal for Bruce, the only acquittal Bruce received among his four obscenity trials.  It is inspiring to read about courage, intelligence, and integrity at a time when our everyday communications are amplified (through humming birds in the garden that aren’t humming birds and boundless metadata) and our voices are silent (e.g., who would have the courage today to produce a film with content comparable to Blazing Saddles?).  You can find out more about Al Bendich in his New York Times obituary and elsewhere…

There have been three gigs at the Alternate Space in Watertown.  Not surprisingly, because Ken Vandermark’s brother Rob has produced each of those gigs, all events have involved music performed by the reed player.   On the one hand, it is possible to say that Rob creates such a fine musical environment (including free beverages, sandwiches, and sinful desserts) to compensate for the factory environment.  But I don’t buy that idea.  The Seven factory is where people create two-wheel dreams.  That’s a pretty good context in which to create sonic art.  The fine setting is a bonus for those who show up to catch the music.  And show up they do.  The folks at the Ken Vandermark-Nate Wooley gig 1/9 came from three camps mostly.  Once again there were bike fans who heard about the gig (some of them returning), post-Ayler jazz gig regulars, and Boston area musicians.  The latter give one pause.  Other cities with reasonably good jazz scenes too often include post-Ayler musicians who do not seem to understand that the pie is so small that clannish petty bickering and back-stabbing result in no winners.  New York is the major example of that phenomenon, but unfortunately the city of five boroughs is not alone.  In fact, I have the disturbing feeling that right now (and I hope it is a temporary phenomenon) Boston is the only major jazz center in the U.S. in which such petty activity is not the rule.  So the 1/9 gig was just one more Boston area gig in which local musicians showed up to catch the music of other searchers--regardless of whether the searchers were local or visiting.  The music itself was extraordinarily challenging.  The brief first two sets consisted of solo trumpet and solo reeds.  Even if the musicians are doing the Great American Songbook (which these guys weren’t), the challenge is much greater for both musician and audience than if an ensemble is doing the tunes.  I’m not sure whom to praise more, the focussed and attentive people in the audience or the musicians.  Maybe it’s a bias toward creativity, but I’m going to side with the musicians.  A major part of the reason is the first set of solo music offered by Nate Wooley.  I’m not in the habit of letting technique get in the way of focussing on the music (or lack thereof).  But I had a tough time with Nate.  He opened his set with a combination of multiphonic drone and a linear primary statement that was breathtaking.  I was so distracted by the amazing sonic experience that I had to recalculate my sensors to register the fact that all of the sonic experience was not possible without circular breathing.  And that was just the beginning of the set.  So I bolstered by ears and brain and heard the man making music.  Not easy.  But there it was.  Later in conversation I heard of his high regard for Greg Kelley (and the undr quartet) and Forbes Graham.  Greg recently has gone to the left coast.  But how fine it would be to hear an evening of Messrs. Wooley and Graham making music together.  Nate said he would love to pursue such an adventure.  If and when it happens, I hope I’m there.  The second set was all reeds (clarinet, tenor sax, and baritone sax).  Ken interspersed engaging commentary and emotionally engaging music that called up both history and techniques of our time.  The third set was the only one that employed charts, both originals and classics (primarily from the Bobby Bradford-John Carter repertoire).  For someone such as myself the evening had a terrific balance between the first two sets of unbounded searching and then bringing all that pursuit into a charted context.  Given the size and makeup of the audience at the Alternate Space, a lot of us had a chance to hear both the 2014 duo and the one in 2015.  And the remarkable progress…

Jazz musicians and jazz venues are inextricably interconnected.  Sometimes the venue is less than ideal, such as the subways and the streets.  I remember walking in New York one afternoon in the middle-1980s and seeing Denis Charles (he was Dennis in those days) packing up his drums from a gig in front of the Ed Sullivan Theater.  I told him that I was sorry I missed the gig, and we talked.  He told me about a gig featuring Ed Blackwell (whom he adored), Jim Pepper, and Don Cherry that evening.  So I missed a gig in a less than ideal “venue” but got connected to a terrific gig in a jazz club.  Ideal or not, we fans and musicians need the jazz venues.  This commentary is a lead-in to the ongoing saga of Gwenn Vivian and her mission to keep a jazz club going northwest of Boston.  After booking two clubs in Acton and running out of luck there last year, her current project is to make Act III in Littleton fly.  The main obstacle for her is the set of state fire codes.  The situation is complex and difficult, and a positive outcome is in no way certain.  For the time being she has been putting together a series of temporary permits to book one or two gigs per month.  As I write this edition of the Journal there is mention of the Jazz Café on the Act III restaurant web site, but the site tells us that no gigs are scheduled.  So, at best, things are confusing.  I visited Act III for the first time 1/21 to catch Paul Broadnax and Peter Kontrimas there.  The first thing one notices is that the room is relatively small.  It is a dining area with table seating for about twenty-five people.  Most tables have good to excellent views of the musicians.  A duo is a pretty near perfect ensemble for the intimate space (although more musicians could have been accommodated).  The piano is a baby (not a full grand), but the sound is good.  No one in the audience could complain with justification about the acoustics for the bass and piano.  In fact, the sound system on this evening was better than I’d ever heard at Bullfinch’s or either of the two Acton clubs.  The sound was helpful when Peter was featured in his signature arco performance of Ave Maria.  It drew such notice that there even were comments about the appropriateness (or lack thereof) of such a piece on a jazz gig.  No one mentioned it, but all one had to do was call up the recording of Monk’s arrangement of another Monk’s hymn, Abide with Me, for a solid case.  And hearing the piano sound better than I had heard in recent memory at a Paul Broadnax gig was a special treat.  I could hear the detail of every key stroke, revealing to an even greater extent not just the quality of Paul’s performance but the authenticity of his piano work.  Musicians who have entered the on-stage jazz world during the past few decades know of bebop and mainstream performance primarily through book study and listening to recordings.  Paul became active on the Boston jazz scene when swing era musicians were performing everywhere (usually in combos) and bebop was fresh out of the oven.  A good friend of singer Joe Williams, Paul performed with a wide range of people and wrote arrangements for (among others) Sabby Lewis and Count Basie.  He was playing music when Earl Hines was in the DNA of musicians his age, when Erroll Garner was headlining on 52nd Street, and when the locked-hands melody line was the rage (even before George Shearing was famous).  In other words, when a relative “youngster” employs techniques or ideas from these contributions, the result tends to be mimicry--or worse.  When Paul employs a moving rhythmic tremolo or causes the right hand to lag slightly, or has both hands dance as precision partners, there is no mimicry and seldom an explicit tribute.  All those activities are just part of the inevitable Paul Broadnax package produced out of that “ancient” time.  How wonderful that at least in one instance 1/21 the right venue and the right musicians came together to offer something in the realm of wonder…

It was a cold night.  The heated air conditioning in the car on the way to Methuen was not enough to keep the moisture in the breath of the two passengers and myself from grabbing onto and freezing on the car’s windows.  The windshield defroster worked but no other air system components.  We had dinner at the club, and the room was still cold by the time we finished the meal.  By 7:45 the Sahara Club started to heat up.  By the time the band began playing 1/6 for the full house I could take my winter jacket off.  As the band played on, the temperature and everything else became irrelevant.  The foundation of the quartet--Marshall Wood and Jim Gwin--knew the other men for decades and the material as clearly as the paths in an ancient and familiar park.  The front line consisted of Mike Monaghan and leader Gray Sargent.  I had not caught Mike performing in several years.  Aside from a bunch of peek-a-boo gigs that you don’t find out about until after they are over, the only Mike Monaghan gigs that people are likely to hear about on some kind of consistent basis are his Boston Pops jazz combo gigs.  Not being enamored of the Pops (although I respect what they do), I hardly ever witness Mike play anymore.  So the 1/6 gig was a treat.  When you don’t see a person perform in a long time, you tend to enter the experience not knowing what to expect.  No need for concern in this case.  Mike Monaghan’s playing was solid, so solid that it brought to mind one of countless times I caught him in performance with the Herb Pomeroy Big Band.  It was a performance at City Hall Plaza about thirty years ago, and I arrived late to the gig.  As I climbed the stairs of the Green Line station I could hear the band--and a distinctive tenor solo.  It filled me with joy to know that I had met Mike Monaghan on the stairs even before I got to the gig.  My thanks to Mike for his fine work with Herb and for bringing me joy on 1/6.  For those of us who remember and cherish the now-departed great swing and bop giants, there is no living guitarist who plays such compelling music that also evokes the aesthetic of those giants so convincingly as Gray Sargent.  Even though he was born in the middle of the twentieth century (and therefore starting life with an authenticity deficit), Gray learned at the knees of and performed with the giants during his crucial development years.  Illinois Jacquet, Dave McKenna, Slam Stewart, Benny Carter, Buddy Tate, Milt Hinton, and on and on--all of them left some of their musical journey within Gray.  And he carries that wonderful sonic journey forward with creative grace and beauty…

It is winter, and by the end of January one expects to have experienced at least a couple storms of more than a foot of snow.  It has been a bit colder than usual, but we’ve had hardly any snow.  Maybe that’s why the plowing operations in the Boston area were so poor 1/24.  Perhaps the crews were out of practice.  Apparently the plows were effective on that evening in Cambridge.  The streets were in good enough shape that (according to Rob Chalfen) there was a full house at the Outpost to catch the visiting trio.  Those of us west of Rte. 128 had no such luck.  When I left my house to go to the McPhee-Levin-Corsano gig there were perhaps six inches of snow on the ground.  It was snowing fairly hard but was scheduled to stop within an hour.  Just a wimpy storm.  My street was a mess, but that was not a surprise.  I was surprised to discover that the other roads were in bad shape.  I told myself to hang in there because the main roads would be OK.  But Rte. 20--even in Weston--was not OK.  I convinced myself that Rte. 128 would be OK.  It wasn’t.  I (and most other drivers) traveled at less that 30 miles per hour, and only that fast because traffic was light.  The challenge was similar to conditions that I’d experienced in the middle of storms of two feet of snow or more.  I used the Rte. 2 exit as a way to make a U-turn.  It took me far too long to realize that continuing was a stupid idea.  The anticipation of great music can do that to people.  I made it home and alive and happy to be.  But, of course, I feel awful about missing the trio in Cambridge...

Previous incarnations of the Charlie Kohlhase Explorers Club as an ensemble larger than the more typical quartet or quintet have been discussed in this Journal before (e.g., October of 2014).  The positive comments about those performances certainly apply to the 1/15 septet gig featuring Charlie, Allan Chase, Daniel Rosenthal, Josiah Reibstein, Pandelis Karayorgis, Aaron Darrell, and Curt Newton at the Outpost.  The evolving personnel presents no significant obstacles, in this case partially because the challenge presented by the absence of fine previous contributors was taken up by the commitment and musicianship of the guest reed player.  The big plus is that the “replacement” was Allan Chase.  His witty, historically-rooted commentary might be sufficient reason to enjoy his presence at such an event.  But his superb musicianship (most obvious in his negotiation of the charts) and his thoughtfully provocative solos were the most meaningful aspect of his presence.  Allan is one of those talented and industrious musicians on the cusp who revels in both the last stages of bebop/mainstream and the post-Ayler scene.  In other words, you can drop him in the middle of anything and he can make it work.  There aren’t very many such wonderful musicians around.  And those skills worked perfectly 1/15 on a gig in which there was music that would connect perfectly with bebop fans along with other material that pushed the envelope.  As in previous cases with these musicians, the music came from and went to an amazing array of places.  The “older” compositions came from disparate sources including Sun Ra and John Tchicai.  Most of the rest of the material was written by band members such as Pandelis Karayorgis and the leader himself.  All of it from different places and different aesthetic perspectives.  But all of it was performed with understanding and commitment.  Maybe that diversity of charts and the success in performance are due to the fact that all the musicians are from different planets, they are so compelling in their work, and they commit to each other.  That’s about as good as music gets…

Jacob William’s Para Quintet is one of the most amazing jazz ensembles performing anywhere in the world.  I thought I’d start with that statement.  That’s both a negative statement about “working” jazz ensembles internationally and a positive statement about a band that would be amazing even if the jazz world were in better shape.  The world shares a solid number of great post-Ayler improvisors, but there are not very many great working bands in that realm.  Even some of the revered long-term outfits have become too comfortable or too tired or too bored.  The fact that, particularly in other major jazz cities in the U.S., a combination of music cliques and production politics is hamstringing new jazz developments in general and therefore undercutting creativity at the ensemble level specifically is at the core of a set of relevant problems.  I hasten to add that some individuals and (more relevant) ensembles prevail over these challenges.  For example, one of the most durable of the truly extraordinary groups is AMM.  Messrs. Prévost and Tilbury should give other musicians lessons on how to survive differences in philosophy and personality.  Their latest work is as breathtaking as ever.  But they are an exception.  The decay is almost palpable.  Fortunately, I live in a city of several post-Ayler outfits that share none of those burdens.  When the Explorers show up, there are no cob webs.  The same is true for the Steve Lantner groups.  And on and on.  We have a cornucopia of Extraordinary in the Boston area.  So, when I talk about the Para Quintet, I’m talking about the crème de la crème.  If you are among the best post-Ayler bands in the Boston area, you are among the best in the world.  Because each member of the Para Quintet--Jacob William, Forbes Graham, Jim Hobbs, Steve Lantner, and Luther Gray--is such a strong musical individual, the group has the capacity--in fact the tendency--to morph into different “groups,” depending on environmental factors such as venue personality, audience reaction, room acoustics, and more.  Also, the state of mind or even temporary aesthetic orientation of one or more group members can have an impact on which “group” is performing.  For example, the ensemble 1/31 at the Outpost spontaneously “decided” that it would consist of a rhythm section supporting the two front horns (as opposed to operating as five equal partners) for most of the evening.  At the same time the arrangement was anything but conventional.  One or both horns might be playing up a storm, and the piano, bass, and drums would be supporting that effort.  But the members of the rhythm section would be supporting and challenging each other as intensely as they supported the front line.  As a result of a pushing and evolving rhythm section, Forbes and Jim quite independently offered up two completely different musical perspectives in each of the two pieces of the first set.  One piece gave us a realm devoted to trumpet of mesmerizing lyrical staccato melodies of endless variety and something of a lesson in free architecture in the second piece.  Jim heard a different lyrical voice somewhere in the air and brought forth what was among the most beautiful, searing alto playing I’ve ever heard.  In the second work of the set his horn spoke another language, guttural, perhaps that of a Prussian officer barking orders in the middle of a fierce military encounter.  And so it went.  All the while the rhythm section kept changing contexts, taking on a character all its own, rising up off the floor and rocking slowly to accommodate a Steve Lantner solo or some dance carried out by Jacob and Luther.  Separate from the horns but essential to the horns.  And vice versa.  I was thankful for the intermission.  One must recover from music so beautiful, so powerful.  But I was there for the second set.  Knowing that more of the same was to come (even though it could not possibly be the same), it is unfathomable that anyone could leave.  Leave?  As I write this in repose, that evening of improvised music remains with me.  It does not allow me to leave…