December
The Leap of Faith
performance 12/14 at the Outpost was both exhilarating and painful. To a great extent at the same time. Musically everything seemed to move along
perfectly. The size of the group--a
quintet consisting of Dave Peck, Glynis Lomon, Kat Dobbins, Bob Moores, and Yuri
Zbitnov--is almost perfect for audience access to individual sonic
contributions and the inner workings of the group as a whole. When the group works as well as it did 12/14,
then anyone with ears is going to have a great time. One of the big kicks for me was to catch Kat
Dobbins in such a small version of the ensemble. Prior to this Outpost gig I had witnessed her
Leap of Faith work as part of larger forces in which “texture” has a tendency
to overwhelm detail. Witnessing the fine
detail of her work was quite a treat.
Everyone else was listening and improvising at the usual high level. Maybe even higher. That’s where the pain comes in. Yuri Zbitnov has for several decades been one
of my favorite improvising percussionists and in my experience a superb human
being. Yuri has made the difficult
decision to walk away from music to pursue what he refers to as an essential
“journey.” All band members obviously
wish him nothing but good fortune as he takes a new path. No doubt such feelings were at the heart of
the beauty the musicians brought forth 12/14, even as the musicians and fans in
the audience tried to keep it all together while processing the
personal/musical loss. After all, each
of us is on some type of journey and we know that good fortune is the best
hope…
The Week (12/13, p. 16) came up with some significant data, in
case you are trying to nail down some hard evidence for Republican vs. Democrat
animosity. “The full Congress has passed
only 70 bills into law this year, 10 of which were for renaming federal
facilities. Congress typically passes
150 to 250 bills a year.” That’s a pretty
solid case for the failures of attempted bipartisanship. But there is more. “The House of Representatives has passed
nearly 400 bills since the Democrats took control of the chamber in 2018,” said
The
Week, "but the vast majority haven’t even received a vote in the
Republican-controlled Senate.” In other
words, either the House passed well over 200 bad bills, or the Senate does not
want to work with the House no matter what the substance of the bill is…
It was something
like a reunion celebration 12/14 at the Lily Pad. The musicians in the Bruno Råberg Trio--the
bassist plus Bruce Barth and Matt Wilson--were part of a creative music stew
during the late 1980s in Boston ,
and it seemed that the still-simmering pot was bubbling 12/14 both in the
audience and on stage. Since those days
the three band mates have crossed paths but mostly traveled to different places
geographically and otherwise.
Nevertheless, the communication on stage suggested the trio had been
shedding together regularly since the formative days. And apparently a third of the packed house
consisted of musicians who carried their passports from 1980s Ball Square and Inman Square to revel in the sonic
memories and perhaps answer questions regarding where the passage of time has
taken “all of us.” The musical language
of the afternoon certainly would have sounded familiar to fans in the 1980s,
but the musicians on stage have continued searching since then. In fact, the music of the afternoon was a
celebration of the recent CD release by the Bruno Råberg Trio (the same trio
with the exception of Adam Cruz on drums and the same compositions performed
12/14). Even the first work on the CD,
“Message XII,” was the afternoon’s opener.
Right off the bat we could see and hear that these men play music rooted
in their formative years. For example,
Bruce Barth’s piano exhibited Bill Evans aesthetics. Evans, after all, was the keyboard icon of
the 1980s in Boston
and everywhere. But those are
roots. Mr. Evans provided the foundation
for the pianist’s development, but today Bruce Barth offers his own engaging
“dance” on that structure, particularly when it is time to solo. And so it is for the bass and drums. One of the great strengths of the piano trio
is that we get plenty of opportunity to hear the solo skills of each
musician. We certainly did for the first
couple of compositions. Sometimes a
strength is also weakness, in this case a weakness in predictability. As a jazz fan I want to be surprised. Trio instrumentation has a built-in
surprise-killer. The first couple of
works presented wonderful solos but invariably in the sequence of
piano-bass-drums. Such predictability
undercuts surprise no matter how wonderful the improvisations are. As I sat there, pondering such concerns,
Bruno gave us a surprise in the form of “Tailwind.” That arrangement gave us a perfect antidote
to structurally-driven predictability.
Gone was the piano-bass-drums solo sequence. Instead we got a semi-open form arrangement
in which solo improvisation was replaced with duo or trio improvised
conversations or support duos out front with solo “support” or all sorts of
variations on those ideas. There was
plenty of improvised work to savor, and always at least part of a
surprise. There were loud applause and huzzahs
from a crowd apparently looking for such answers. The “Tailwind” event opened up the playing
for subsequent works. It was a fine
afternoon with a demand (via noise from the crowd) for an encore. The encore in jazz and so-called classical
music tends to be a simple tip of the hat or even a throw-away piece. Not often is it a gig highlight. Whether from plan or inspiration of the
moment, Bruno chose “Here’s That Rainy Day” to close out the afternoon. It was the only work of the afternoon not
penned by the bassist. Maybe he chose
the tune because his arco performance on that work on the recent CD was so
effective. In any case, he played the
head to a dead silent audience, apparently as swept up as I was. The music moved to a fine conversation between
piano and pizzicato bass with really nice brushes throughout. I suspect at least some people in the
audience got their 1980s passports updated…
I am a nicotine
addict. It’s just a fact. I learned long ago that, if I have even one
cigarette, I’m hooked, back on the “habit.”
I feel fortunate. Although I have
not had a cigarette for decades, I have much empathy for smokers who--like me
for so many years--cannot quit. As much
pain as I feel over the damage done by cigarettes, I am much angrier about the
phenomenon known as vaping. For example,
University of Pennsylvania
It was the holiday season with many locals--musicians and
fans--on the road to somewhere else.
Naturally, that meant a certain amount of personnel juggling to put
together a sextet on 12/19 at the Outpost.
The originally scheduled drummer and guitarist were replaced by the
familiar faces of Dylan Jack and Bill Lowe (who brought his trombone). Charlie Kohlhase also brought the scheduled Brian
Price, Dan Rosenthal, and Aaron Darrell.
Because it was something of a personnel shift, particularly in the case
of Bill who sits in rarely, Charlie announced that the gig would be carried on
somewhat in the spirit of Charles Mingus’ jazz workshops. In other words, the audience was to expect
some on-stage chatter and even stops and starts. The results for attentive audience members
were a delight. Watching and hearing
musicians discuss the “mechanics” of a work before (or during) performance of
the work gives fans additional insight into the process of art. The guys performed charts familiar to most
Explorer fans. But, again, each time the
mix of musicians changes, so does the music--not necessarily better or
worse--wonderfully different. On this
evening I witnessed something I cannot remember seeing before. I have seen drummers flip over a drum because
of a torn drum head, but not for any other reason. On John Tchicai’s “Quintus T” Dylan flipped
over his snare drum. He used sticks
throughout the piece. The results were
significant. First, the sound of the
drum was closer to that of a military marching band snare drum. Also the top-side snares were available for
strumming by hand or with the sticks.
Plucking to produce an emphatic snap was another option. Fascinating and effective. Obviously there are limitations to the
technique. For example, the setup does
not lend itself well to silencing the snare.
But for specific compositions/charts it obviously is quite
effective. At the end of the gig I asked
Dylan where he got the technique from.
He said that somewhere he must have seen another drummer do it, but
couldn’t think of anyone. I suspect
that, because of what he said next, he never had seen someone else do it. He went on to explain that as a small child
he had access to a snare drum. He found
the snare to be the most fascinating part of the drum. He would bang and pluck the snare to make
wonderful sounds. Then years later he
studied percussion. He said that he
played drums for a few years before he remembered his childhood snare
experiences and decided to develop the technique. It certainly was an effective application
12/19 at the Outpost. By the way, in case
you are interested in pursuing the technique, Dylan claims that he uses an
especially thin skin on the snare side of the drum because it emulates the
military snare sound more effectively.
There were a few interesting on-stage comments involving Bill because he
was less familiar than other band mates with the charts. Before tackling the Tchicai work written for
the New York Art Quartet, Charlie asked Bill to hum the support line that they
would play under the main line to be performed by Dan and Brian. They hummed the line and its permutations and
the humming stopped and Bill sang, “In the beginning God.” The six notes composed by Ellington and
Strayhorn were almost identical to the last six notes of the hummed support
line. Off by perhaps a single note. It is an event that brings to mind an
aesthetic synchronicity. The 1964 date
of the Tchicai chart suggests that Mr. Tchicai was working on his chart at
roughly the same time Messrs. Ellington and Strayhorn were writing and
arranging music for the first Sacred Concert.
Perhaps within the same 12-month stretch. Interesting, but there’s another bit of
relevant synchronicity. According to
Duke Ellington (Music is My Mistress,
p.156), when Ellington and Strayhorn were working on that six-note line, they
were separated by a continent. “When I
was writing my first sacred concert, I was in California and he was in a New York hospital. On the telephone, I told him about the
concert and that I wanted him to write something. ‘Introduction, ending, quick transitions,’ I
said, ‘The title is the first four words of the Bible--In the Beginning
God.’ He had not heard my theme, but
what he sent to California started on the same note as mine (F natural) and
ended on the same note as mine (A flat a tenth higher). Out of six notes representing the six
syllables of the four words, only two notes were different.”…
Switching to vegetarianism (particularly with the help of a
professional dietitian) can be a constructive lifestyle change. The only problem I have with a veggie diet is
the self-righteous practitioners who smugly complain about how cruel to animals
omnivores are. My retort over the years
has been, “Your problem is that you cannot hear the plants scream.” The comment was only partly tongue-in-cheek. After all, how happy can a dug up and
decimated onion plant be? Recently several
newspapers and magazines have published summaries of research that suggests I
was right all along. For example, The
Week (12/20, p.6) tells us the study finds “plants emit high-pitched
sounds, too high for humans to hear, when they lack water or have their stems
cut.” The researchers claim, “These
findings can alter the way we think about the plant kingdom, which has been
considered to be almost silent until now.”
Maybe the Triffids merely were getting back at us, giving us some of our
own medicine…
The successful
musical relationship between Melissa Kassel and Tom Zicarelli goes back to the
1980s. Most of the early gigs occurred
at the now long-defunct Willow Jazz Club, the nursery for an extraordinary
quantity and range of new music (as well as straight-ahead stuff). The audiences were not large, but fortunately
the two of them stuck to it and built a reputation among fellow musicians. I emphasize the importance of the other
musicians because the attraction of their music meant that a number of the
better musicians in the Boston
area wanted to perform the Kassel-Zicarelli music. If you have challenging and engaging music
performed by top-shelf musicians, then the results in performance have a
greater impact. The solid results really
began to take off about a decade ago at the Lily Pad, where the group continues
to perform. The functional continuity
exists because of the presence and direction of Tom and Melissa. The rest of the band on any given night comes
out of a pool of about a dozen veteran Bostonians and presents itself usually
as a quintet. The malleable ensemble
consists of interchangeable but not identical parts. In other words, the band works no matter who
shows up, but the musical personality of the band shifts from week to week (or rather
from lineup to lineup). But, because any
combination seems to work quite well, that fact inevitably raises the question:
Is there a mix of Kassel-Zicarelli musicians that works better than any
other? The answer probably is “no.” But I found myself saying “yes” 12/8 at the
Lily Pad. At one point Bruce Gertz was
“supporting” a Phil Grenadier solo and wandering to some realm he was carried
to by the music. Phil, thinking quite
reasonably that the bassist was supposed to be sticking to the chord cycle (or
facsimile thereof), turned to Bruce in mild frustration and said, “Bruce, where
are you?” The outburst was
understandable. Sometimes things are
pushed just a bit too far. But not
resulting in any negative heat. I
suspect that Phil and Bruce had a good laugh about the incident at the end of
the evening. But there’s another
factor. As a member of the audience I
did not have to face Phil’s problem. For
a moment I had the Cagean experience of hearing a mistuned AM radio that was
presenting two completely different stations at the same time, two different
musics that somehow “clashed”
beautifully as I heard anchors in the piano and the drum kit, Gary
Fieldman keeping everything together, calmly looking like he was doing the
laundry. I realize that all of this
sounds like a left-handed compliment.
But I’ll take this band without hesitation, and I have not even
commented on the fifth voice in the band, Melissa
Kassel. She was suffering from some sort
of lung infection and complained that her voice was terrible. Why is it that some musicians (some of the
better ones) always take the music to another level under duress? The vocal part of the quintet was especially
beautiful 12/8, articulating the music that is beyond mere
notes. As in the case of all of the Kassel-Zicarelli
performances in memory, most of the music consisted of original material,
except for the final work of the second set, Cole Porter’s “Ev’ry Time We Say
Goodbye.” It was a perfect closer for
the evening. OK, if this is such a terrific
band, how can it be improved? There is
nothing wrong with Tom’s piano work. It
is perfect for this group and would be an asset in any straight-ahead group. But there is nothing wrong with his tenor
saxophone work either. I miss it, and it
adds one more resource to the palette.
Melissa and Tom have a large repertoire, but for years we have been
hearing the same relatively small subset of their compositions. Fine as they are--the same audience members
keep returning to catch the repeated works on each gig--we need to hear other
options. Melissa and Tom please dig into
your files and resurrect other examples from your catalog. Or, better yet, prove to us that you still are
a compelling writing team. Rogers and
Hammerstein did not stop writing just because they had a ton of great music to
their credit. Of course, that’s easy for
me to say. All I do is listen to the
results. Quite thankfully…
November
After the too-loud performance by Dave Bryant’s ensemble in
October (i.e., too loud Dave), I decided to take a chance on the Dave Bryant
Sextet 11/10 at the Outpost. The lineup
was great and I decided to have a chat with Dave before the music started. Only five musicians showed up, but that was
not really a problem because they were Dave, Tom Hall, Eric Hofbauer, Jacob
William, and Curt Newton. Before the
music started, I explained the problem to Dave (as I have done many times
before), and he said that he would cut the keyboard volume. I tried talking him into aiming his speaker
somewhere other than at me but to no avail.
As it turned out, the best solution would have been to aim Dave’s
speaker at the guy who was recording the gig.
Nevertheless, Dave kept his word.
It was the first time in years that the Dave Bryant electronic keyboard
was not way too loud. The results were
terrific, an almost perfectly balanced band.
And there was another plus, Tom Hall’s long-time adventures with Dave
meant that he knew almost all the charts and is especially connected
aesthetically with Dave’s music. In
addition to that, both Dave and Tom had charts to read. Wonderful.
By now the rest of the people in the band recently have been grappling
with Dave’s spontaneous “excursions.” So
they are remarkably well prepared for any direction. Given Dave and Tom (bolstered by charts)
nailing the heads, it was a piece of cake for the rest of the band to make it
all work. I smiled when I recalled how
less than terrific “Detour” was in September when this band nailed the work on
11/10. Curt and the front line really
brought to life the ecstatic tension between the dead slow melodic sequence and
the nervous busy-ness of the percussion.
And the effect was unlike that of Bob Gullotti and Chris Bowman. Curt cut his own staccato path. Near the end of the fine single set evening
Dave brought out a chart that no one else in the band knew. He kept a copy and gave a copy to Tom. He asked Tom to play the line and everyone
else (without charts) would follow. Tom
looked at the chart and said that the specific way to play the line was unclear
to him. Dave hummed the pattern (not the
tones) of the line, and Tom responded by playing the chart quite cleanly. He got it.
But maybe more important, everyone in the band got it. And we in the audience got he bonus of witnessing
a chart come together in sound…
The Philadelphia Inquirer recent put together some polling data
that suggests all is not well in U.S. healthcare. “A new Gallup
poll,” says the paper, “shows 34 million Americans reported having had a friend
or family member who died in the past five years because they could not afford
needed medical treatment or medications.”
If you are in the White House or Congress that data may not get through
to you because you have some pretty nifty health care. It does not affect those politicians
directly. But wait. There’s more.
According to The Inquirer, “Nearly 23 percent of American adults--about 58
million people--said they were unable to pay for a medication their doctor had
deemed necessary in the past year.” On
the other hand, Trump and members of Congress do not have to worry about paying
for medications. But they do want to get
re-elected…
On 11/6 Mark Redmond announced that Mandorla Music is
operating under the organizational and economic umbrella of Fractured Atlas, a
development that allows Mandorla Music to be “more sustainable as it continues
to grow and evolve.” Those who wish to
support Mark’s fine work can send a check to Fractured Atlas with “Mandorla
Music” in the memo line on the check.
Then mail it to Mark at 9
Ellsworth Road , Milton , MA , 02186
According to William Falk, Editor-in-Chief of The
Week (11/29, p.3), there are some similarities between the context of
the Nixon impeachment and that of Trump.
For example, Nixon, his insiders, and political consultant Roger Ailes
were planning to create a “new TV network that would circumvent existing media
and provide ‘pro-administration’ coverage to millions.” Something like Fox News. Also, Nixon had Republicans behind him,
dismissing “the scandal as a Washington Post ‘witch hunt’.” There is a difference between then and now,
however. “Then the White House tapes,”
continues Falk, “proved beyond doubt that Nixon had used the levers of
government to pursue vendettas against his opponents and cover up his extensive
skullduggery. Disgusted GOP leaders,
including Sen. Howard Baker of the Senate Watergate committee, chose principles
over party. Nixon was forced to
resign.” But today “We live in a far
different country…. Fox News provides an
alternative reality to the ‘fake news,’ providing daily talking points to
Republican elected officials and policing them the way a sheepdog does its
flock. Those who dare stand up to
President Trump know they will be denounced as traitors on Fox, even if they’re
war veterans with a purple heart on their chests.” When the president beats the impeachment rap
in the Senate, “he should send a thank you card to Roger Ailes and Richard
Nixon, wherever they may be.” Smiling
somewhere no doubt…
Eric Rosenthal’s Point01Percent series offering 11/13 at the
Lily Pad began with a quartet version of Cutouts (apparently now spelled as a
plural)--Pandelis Karayorgis, Jorrit Dijkstra, Nathan McBride, and Luther
Gray. Pandelis’ “Shadows” was an upbeat,
energetic opener that gave everyone in the band a chance to shine. It seemed a bit strange to witness the band
without the extraordinary talents of Jeb Bishop (who was on tour in the
Mid-West). But throughout the first set,
it became apparent that the smaller resources had the advantage of a greater
ensemble transparency. Luther’s
“Sequential Failures” was a showpiece for that transparency. The work opened with a minimalist skeleton of
sound, simple lines with spare comments from everyone, leaving “holes” to be
filled in by audience ears. As each
musician presented his simple statement, the separate lines eventually came
together as if the pieces of a broken vase magically rose from the ground to
form a “repaired” whole vase. The
closing of the work was a moving spotlight shining on each piece of the vase,
reminding us that originally the vase was in shambles. Pandelis’ “Royal”(?) began with a wonderfully
frenetic energy. Fine work all around,
including the best keyboard solo of the evening. Jorrit’s engaging closer of Caribbean
rhythms featured some terrific Luther support and superb kit solos. The work is so listenable and different from the
usual Cutout/s fare that it may well become an ensemble classic. The first set was a solid way to kick off the
evening. The second set featured the
work of two locals and two visitors. The
Stephen Haynes Quartet--Stephen Haynes, Ted Reichman, Nathan McBride, and Eric
Rosenthal--was a true pickup band. The
four never had played together before.
Totally improvised music (except for an out-of-the-blue quote from
Ellington’s “Caravan”). The host duo was
somewhat restrained at first. I read
that to be a courtesy to the guests. And
Ted and Stephen took advantage of the opening, dancing together with
abandon. Of course, Nate (playing
electric guitar for the whole set) and Eric could not be restrained for
long. Although the four of them managed
to flirt with a wide dynamic range, most of the set was all-out high
energy. One of the highlights for me was
the wonderful “percussion work” between Nate and Eric, as if playing one large
percussion kit. I got the feeling that
Ted moved from accordion to piano because he wanted to become a member of a
percussion trio as a setup for the trumpeter.
But I was wrong. Ted, who is both
a visitor and a local because he teaches at NEC, had an accordion
disaster. Part of the instrument broke
as he played it. The piano proved to be
a more than workable resource. Stephen Haynes
over the years has been and continues to be a Boston area favorite. He and his fans had a great time 11/13. He seemed to enjoy the sonic environment his
band mates created for him, using an open horn mostly but having an enjoyable
time trying a variety of mutes. I’m
guessing that he was so focussed on the moment that he never picked up either
of the other two members of the trumpet family that he brought with him. It was a fine evening of two very different
Nates and two very different bands.
Point01Percent series producer Eric Rosenthal announced that the series
officially hit the four-year mark on 11/13.
The two most difficult challenges in new music today are keeping a band
together and running a monthly series of cutting edge performance art. Four years.
Applause. Applause. Applause.
Applause…
Do Democrats in
Congress produce greater economic output for their districts than Republicans
do for theirs? Early this month The
Wall Street Journal presented economic data on House districts in the U.S. The WSJ stated, “Republican House
districts produced $32.6 billion in economic output per district in 2018, down
from $33.3 billion in 2008. By
comparison, Democratic House districts produced $49 billion, an increase from
$35.7 billion a decade ago.” But it does
not stop there. According to the WSJ,
“Democratic districts also had 71 percent of digital and professional
jobs.” I wonder if the quantity and
quality of college-level institutions in blue districts has something to do
with the difference…
Pandelis
Karayorgis and friends put on a three-set program of music out of the European
classical tradition and the current post-Ayler jazz sonic arts. The pairing of the two distinct types of
music has happened at the Lily Pad before.
And here it was again on 11/22. Chromic--Dorothy
Chan and Lucy Yao--opened the evening’s music employing toy pianos (never more
than one at a time), acoustic piano, toys, and electronics and featuring compositions
by several different composers. Given
the emphasis on the toy pianos in the Chromic publicity, I was looking
forward to perhaps one of John Cage’s works.
Then when the duo performed more recent works using toy pianos and
semi-prepared piano, I kept hearing “echoes” from Cage’s works for toy piano
and prepared piano. Inevitably the Chromic
performance suffered by comparison. One
of the problems in presenting contemporary music (either now or any time
throughout history) is that the vast majority of composers are not very
good. (Quick, how many composers of the
Classical period other than Mozart and Haydn can you name?) In other words, if you perform nothing but
contemporary compositions, the chances that you will perform much music of the
quality we find in the works of Monteverdi or Maderna, for example, is
something in the range slim to none. And
Helmut Lachenmann is not likely to drop off his latest work at the doorstep of
a relatively unknown performance duo.
These words are not a comment exclusively about Chromic; it is a problem
facing any group presenting or performing music of living composers. Therefore, although the musicians seemed more
than capable of performing a wide range of music, the music presented by Chromic
for the most part neither challenged nor engaged. Composer Oliver Hickman was in attendance to
hear the Boston
premiere of his work, something a bit too Romantic for my taste but for the
most part challenging and engaging. It
was the highlight of the first set. The
second set featured the return to the Lily Pad by Peridot Duo--this time
including Rose Hegele and Ciera Cope. The vocal duo presented music of Kaija
Saariaho, Anselm McDonnell and Alexis Porfiriadis. As in the case of the duo’s previous set at
the Lily Pad, the women employed an effective combination of impressive
technique, challenging sonics, and engaging theatricality. The only disappointment was that we did not
get a chance to witness the trio version of Julia Werntz’ “Kaspoleo Melea” that
was presented at the Lily Pad in March.
It would have been quite fine to catch a reprise of the work. And it probably would have been a treat for
Julia, who was at both gigs. It seems
that the
Pandelis Karayorgis Trio now is officially known as
Pools. Pools presented its music during
the third set of the evening. The name
change is a good idea. Referring to the
group as a trio is problematic in terms of likely audience
expectations. Pools is not a piano trio
in the conventional sense--piano with bass and drums accompaniment. Certainly there is a lot of accompanying
going on in Pools, but this trio is not the revered format of featured pianist
with terrific bass and drums support.
Pools is terrific drums with terrific piano with terrific acoustic
bass. Sometimes the bass is out front,
other times the drums, and other times the piano. I’m tempted to suggest that this group is a
truly harmolodic trio, but none of what Pandelis Karayorgis, Nate McBride, and
Luther Gray do brings to mind the work of Ornette Coleman. The “burden” of presenting each piece of music
is spread fairly evenly all around. One
of the great pleasures in witnessing this music is watching and hearing each
musician take up the task of pursuing melody, support, or solo and where and
how those tasks are executed. It must be
said that one of the salient features of Pools’ music is that it is
difficult. Nailing any given piece is
fraught with challenges. But the music
is perhaps even more than difficult to grasp for audience members. Much of the music on the surface seems
simple, somewhat minimalist. But each
piece contains deceptions and booby traps.
If that is not enough, much of the music is presented very slowly. So, if you are listening to a given theme,
you hear the first tone… and… then... the… next… and… so… on… until your ears…
reach… the last… motif… long after your brain has forgotten the first
tone. Therefore, the meaning of each
tone of the structure is lost. I
exaggerate for effect. But paying
attention and digesting all of it are significant challenges for
listeners. It takes some
re-thinking. As I sat there I thought of
that Monty Python doofus who would appear on the TV show from time to time
briefly, just long enough to say, “My brain hurts.” Of course, the quality of this music was so
fine that I could not avoid listening.
But some folks in the audience lost the noble battle and withdrew into
the night. A significant number stayed
and applauded enthusiastically. But
their greatest enthusiasm was for a Pools rendition of Monk’s “Work” and the
thunderous “Undertow” closer, sonically the most “familiar” music of the
set. I am reminded of being present at
the 1994 Annual Composers Conference in Wellesley . There was an evening performance by Martin
Goldray of Milton Babbitt’s brand new “Tutte le Corde.” (There is a Goldray performance of the work
on CRI CD 746.) As the fourteen minute
performance evolved, one-by-one many composers rose, sniffed the air in disdain
and confusion, and left. The performance
was brilliant and certainly challenging (perhaps at “brain hurting”
level). I have a feeling that my brain
is being super-subjective as I remember the event, but I remember the applause
coming loudest from what appeared to be young music students. And why wouldn’t it click with them? New music presented to new
(i.e., young) people…
October
September
August
July
June
U.S. soccer
establishment has used economics as the basis for salaries: Men draw more fans,
so they get paid more. Well, now those
power brokers need to come up with another argument. According to the Wall Street Journal, the
women’s national soccer team “generated about $50.8 million in revenues
compared with $49.9 for the men’s national soccer team from 2016 to 2018.” Given the coverage and ticket sales in France for the
women’s pursuit of the World Cup, I suspect the gap between women and men has
grown. The cup victory and Proctor &
Gamble’s $530,000 political statement adds fuel to the fire. Things will change…
May
April
March
February
January
Land left in its natural state is a great resource for the
psychological and physiological well being of humans. Even parks in cities have enormous positive
effects on growing children (as mentioned here in the March Journal). Therefore, the growing loss of natural land
in the U.S.
is a significant problem. The latest
issue of AMC Outdoors (winter 2020, p.12) offers some provocative data
on the subject. “Every 30 seconds the U.S. loses 1.3
acres of natural land to development,” says that publication, and “here in the
Northeast 1.1 million acres of undeveloped land disappeared between 2001 and
2017.” More disturbing is the Republican
reclassification of protected U.S.
lands. “The U.S. federal government
continues to reclassify and downgrade previously protected land to make way for
drilling, mining, and large-scale development….
90 percent of downgrades and
downsizes to protected lands over the last two centuries have occurred since
2000.… 214 billion barrels of crude oil
were extracted from federal land in 2018, more than double the amount extracted
in 2008.” But there is hope. In a survey of 1,203 registered voters by
Hart Research Associates it was revealed that levels of support for land
conservation is 76% among Republicans, 88% among Independents, and 94% among
Democrats…
Charlie
Kohlhase and his Explorers Club showed up 11/21 at the Outpost to pursue
musical adventures, including original pieces and work by some of his favorite
musicians. A “typical” Explorers
outing. Like any long-established band
leader, Charlie faces a variety of personnel problems, mostly band mates being
out of town or being unavailable for other good reasons. Because of his reputation, Charlie is able to
call upon some of New England ’s best musicians
to replace missing persons. The 11/21
gig was a perfect example of such personnel juggling at its best. The front line consisted of regulars Seth Meicht, Daniel Rosenthal (who is enthusiastic
about his second child born in September, even if a good night’s sleep is
elusive), and Jeb Bishop. Rock solid
musicians who know all but the very newest material cold. By the way, Jeb recently had returned from
what must have been a killer tour with Jaap Blonk, Weasel Walter (does anybody
remember the Flying Luttenbachers?), and Damon Smith. According to Jeb, Damon and partner are
settling into St. Louis
quite well. The terrific front line
(including Charlie, of course) was matched with a rhythm section of superb
guest musicians who were relatively unfamiliar with Charlie’s charts. Unfamiliar or not, the guests were Kit Demos
and Eric Rosenthal, sufficient reason for fans to show up to any gig. Kit had performed with the Explorers before
but was unfamiliar with a good chunk of the material. It was Eric’s first chance to play with the
band. Even though there were charts for
most of the music, the tricky details of actual performance are the things that
evolve through practice. It was the kind
of setup that might be described as any serious jazz fan’s dream. I knew that it all would work, but I had no
idea how. Even particularly tricky
charts such as the deceptively “simple” “Quintus T” and the rollicking
over-the-top “Man on the Moon” soared to glorious heights. It all worked so beautifully because of the
perfect storm of front-line excellence of execution encountering the brilliant
ears and stratospheric creativity of the rhythm section. Somehow it reminded me of Sabby Lewis’ advice
to a young Alan Dawson in the band as it performed for an all-night stage show
(in which the sequence of acts and other details are unpredictable). “When you get lost,” advised Sabby, “go into
a roll.” We in the audience 11/21 saw
some pretty creative versions of a “roll” by Kit and Eric, but there was
something even more significant than that going on. The front line is so secure with Explorers
charts that the heads and solos are spot on--with or without a rhythm section. In other words, the time and sequence of the
music was so clear in the hands of the magnificent horns that Kit and Eric
could hear what to play in support. And they were freed up to take chances. To create.
Those facts meant that everything in the room was better because the
exhilaration of Kit and Eric’s dancing meant that Seth tore it up. People praised Dan’s brass work (even
suggesting he should focus on the flugelhorn).
Fortunately for us, he will keep the trumpet. And Jeb showed us that even a fairly short
tour was too long for him to be away.
And it keeps going. Their
brilliance inspired Kit and Eric. And on
and on. What a fine evening. Yes, Charlie is the leader, and for many
reasons. One is his breathtaking solo
(every time) on “Eyes So Beautiful as Yours.”
But there is so much more. During
the gig Charlie told us that one of his students, apparently a talented
pianist, is related to the late Alexander “Sandy” Williams. For those whose memories may be a bit foggy,
influenced by the great Jimmy Harrison, Williams was an important trombonist
beginning particularly in the 1930s. He
played with a wide range of major musicians including Jelly Roll Morton
(recording in 1930), the Fletcher Henderson Orchestra, Chick Webb’s band (even
under Ella’s leadership), Coleman Hawkins, Duke Ellington, and many others. Some of his best-known work was done with
Sidney Bechet, including a couple sessions that produced such classic
recordings as “Nobody Knows the Way I Feel Dis Morning” and “I know That You
Know.” He did not have much of a career
as a band leader, but he did front a couple sessions for the Hot Record Society
label with his Sandy Williams’ Big Eight.
It may suggest how highly regarded he was by considering the caliber of
the sidemen on those sessions, Johnny Hodges, Tab Smith, Joe Thomas, Denzil
Best, Harry Carney, and Shelly Manne among them. I mention all of this to give a sense of the
genetic material the young pianist carries and to say something about teacher
Charlie Kohlhase. At the end of the
evening Charlie showed us an EP--a 33⅓ RPM EP--of a Bechet session with Sandy
Williams on trombone. Charlie was
bringing the recording later in the evening as a gift to the young
pianist. Not surprisingly, Charlie’s
nurturing does not end when he walks out of the classroom…
October
Most SCOTUS pundits are of the opinion that during this session the Republican-weighted Supreme
Court will uphold the President’s executive order to send all DACA residents in
the U.S.
to their countries of origin. By
definition no DACA residents have any criminal records. Further, most of them are productively
engaged in the U.S.
work force or matriculating in colleges in the U.S. One of the most disturbing aspects of the
executive order is that many DACA residents were so young when they arrived in
the U.S.
that they have no memory of their country of birth. That’s a pretty scary prospect for
anyone. The American Friends Service
Committee (AFSC) is one of the most important international forces on behalf of
peace and human rights. Therefore, it is
not surprising that--even before the Supreme Court decided to make a decision
on the executive order during the current session--the fall issue of Quaker
Action was published, including information directing DACA residents
scheduled to be sent to Mexico, Guatemala, El Salvador, or Honduras to go to a
special DACA support web page. The web
page offers options to go to information about any of the four countries. After a person clicks on a country, that person
has access to information about what to do to prepare to leave the U.S. and
resources/people that will help the person to prepare to leave. It is worth mentioning that the very last
statement about transport from the U.S. to any of the four countries is,
“ICE does not respect your human dignity, but we do. Others you will find in [the destination
country] through this list will also treat you well and support you as much as
they can.” Also, there is information on
what to expect in that country, including cautions, repatriation, and
non-profit organizations in that country that provide assistance to former DACA
residents. Compassionate humans find the
idea of removing DACA residents from the U.S. to be despicable. If you care and know a DACA resident who may
be sent to any one of those countries, please tell that person to investigate
the AFSC Crossing South web page…
Jon Damian
unquestionably is a true original--still (after 45 years teaching at Berklee) a
formidable guitar technician, improvisor of enormous range and constant
surprise, composer of attention-getting and occasionally movingly poignant
works, and raconteur, humorist, and often self-effacing larger-than-life stage
persona. Quite obviously he loves
performing and his infectious joy carries band mates and audience members along
with him. On the other hand, typically
months and even years pass between Jon Damian performances with like-minded
musicians, such as the ones who took the stage with him 10/11 at the Outpost--Allan
Chase, Bob Nieske & Ralph Rosen. Therefore, whether it is a matter of
infrequency of performance or the superior quality of the action on stage, the
10/11 gig was a rarity to be cherished.
And the packed house knew what it had showed up for. One cannot overstate the importance of the veteran
nature of the sidemen, all of whom were respected leaders and sidemen in Boston and
internationally during the early 1980s.
By the early 1990s all four musicians had been in bands together and
were developing strategies of sonic communication that have expanded over the
years. What is useful to know is that
each of the band members pursues his own path, generally separate from the
other three. For example, Allan Chase is
the only jazz musician I’ve seen performing at the Outpost (or anywhere else
for that matter) wearing an Untuckit
brand shirt. But, whenever the four of
them get together--as rare as that might be--it is something of a
homecoming. In the case of a mistake
musically, it is merely an opportunity for creativity. For example, during “LaMuerte del Matador,”
when Bob and Ralph did their best to work with the mandolino meccanico with
less than great success, the humorous “failure” opened the door to spontaneous
creativity. The range of material was
quite substantial. For example, the
blues-rooted opener and closer, “Skee-dap-m-be-bap” was a wild romp. “Atsasambatango” was a samba tribute to tango
tunesmith Astor Piazzolla. “Saints and
Angels” was melodically rooted in serial works of the Second Viennese
School
Fred Taylor died on
10/26. He was gregarious, open, and a person
of constructive energy. I encountered
him many times in a variety of circumstances and never witnessed him angry or
destructive. Those statements comprise
an obituary many people might hope for.
Although true to my memory, it is not enough. His death signifies the passing of an era in
the history of jazz. As owner and
operator of the Jazz Workshop/Paul’s Mall complex on Boylston Street , Fred Taylor was the last
jazz club operator to run a viable (i.e., non-subsidized) jazz club
consistently featuring major name musicians in Boston (and arguably anywhere). Jazz clubs since the Workshop closed in 1978
all have been subsidized in one fashion or another. The Regattabar and Scullers are subsidized by
the hotels. Even the galleries in Inman Square that
usually offer some form of jazz weekly are subsidized through property
ownership and pay-to-play. The image of New York as the jazz
center of the world is what subsidizes the major clubs there. Take away the tourists and the overpriced Manhattan clubs are
gone. And, yes, some true jazz clubs in Boston offering
internationally respected musicians after 1978 were not subsidized in any
special way. But Tinkers, Lulu White’s,
and the rest lasted two or three years.
The Jazz Workshop was a going concern for more than a decade. That fact (given the state of jazz here in
the 1960s and 1970s) is quite astonishing.
Because of his love of jazz, intelligence, creativity, and hard work
beginning at mid-century, Fred Taylor developed extraordinary knowledge and skills
that he would apply to a life of jazz entrepreneurship until the very end. But his most remarkable achievement took
place beginning in 1963 at 733
Boylston Street .
When the musician-run original Jazz Workshop was destroyed during
construction of the Mass. Pike Extension, the owner of The Stable (home of the
Jazz Workshop) opened a new club on Boylston
Street .
There was some consternation when Varty Haroutunian (who did most
of the booking at the original Jazz Workshop) discovered that the new club was
sold to Fred Taylor and a partner.
Whatever the circumstances were at the time, Fred combined his
experiences during the 1950s and ongoing seat-of-the-pants learning to create a
remarkable success story, the Jazz
Workshop/Paul’s Mall performance complex on Boylston Street . Fred had intelligence, personality, and a
remarkable skill set that supported enviable problem-solving skills. His first love was straight-ahead jazz, but
he loved a wide range of music. He used
his knowledge of different musics and their fan bases to make the jazz
component of the performance complex work. The Jazz Workshop, the smaller of the two
venues, was where jazz was performed.
The bigger Paul’s Mall typically featured an eclectic range of musicians
and comics, usually reliable draws that could make up financially for the
occasional shortfall in the Workshop.
The policy helped him take a chance on talented unknowns, until
eventually such people might draw enough of an audience to make money for the
club. Some jazz names were big enough
draws that he would book them in Paul’s Mall, such as Miles Davis in the
1970s. On the other hand, Fred booked
Sonny Rollins during that same period in the Workshop in 1973, and the band
drew well enough that it was booked in the Mall in 1974 but then back to the
Workshop in 1975 and 1976. Things
started picking up with his return to the Mall in 1977. With a Milestones All-Star gig at Symphony
Hall, Sonny Rollins in 1978 was beginning his “jazz master” career
explosion. He became too expensive for
the Workshop or the Mall. This event
also was connected to the fact that the policy of booking “name” acts in a club
for three or more nights in a row no longer was working so well. More and more name musicians were looking for
a tour of lucrative one-nighters. Fred
called upon his entrepreneurial resources to keep the club going until
1978. The performance complex was
shuttered, but he never stopped. He
always was an active friend of the music and its supporters. On occasion he would be invited to consult
with members of the Board of the Boston Jazz Society as they attempted to put
on jazz concerts to make money for jazz student scholarships. Always solid advice. Always gratis. As a member of that Board I found his
comments to be constructively educational.
We were trying to do good things, and he knew how to do good
things. For example, as a way of getting
our attention to help us make smart decisions, he named a few well-known
musicians and asked us which of them would draw the biggest audience in Boston Boylston Street performance complex had
been closed for more than a decade, was still a busy guy. I won’t go into details, but the BJS got
credit for producing an evening of Miles Davis and his latest band at the
Metropolitan Theater. My notes at the
time refer to “a sell-out concert.”
Members of the BJS did work hard before and during the gig. For example, I got only brief glimpses of the
trumpeter on that night because of responsibilities in the lobby. But the key to the event--and its
success--primarily was Fred’s knowledge and skills and his personal
relationship with Miles Davis.
Gratis. Over the years there have
been feature articles about Fred in magazines and newspapers. The one offering the best insight into the
challenges and problem-solving that were central to Fred Taylor’s success is a
fine article by Jon Garelick in an “Advertising Supplement to the Boston
Phoenix” published in July 2003.
It may be available online in some form.
The title of the article is “Fred’s world and welcome to it.” The interview focusses on his experiences
from the 1960s through the early 2000s.
Fred Taylor’s strategy and tactics articulated in the interview are not
very useful today, but his creativity and work ethic as he solved problems are
valid constructive models today. Thank
you for so much, Fred…
Dave Bryant likes
his electronic keyboard LOUD. I remember
one gig at the Outpost a couple years ago when he used two drummers in one of
his groups, and I could not hear the drums because of the volume of his
keyboard. The problem does not exist, of
course, on gigs in which he uses an acoustic piano exclusively. The announcement for the Dave Bryant Quartet
gig at the Outpost 10/12 listed Dave as playing “keyboards.” Even though the word was plural, I knew that
he would not be playing both electronic keyboard and acoustic piano. However, I was optimistic. The other musicians on the gig--Eric
Hofbauer, Jacob William, and Jeff Song--were playing functionally acoustic
instruments. In other words, Dave would
not find himself encountering any musician or group of musicians competing over
who could create the loudest eleven. I
was wrong. And it’s a shame because the
four of them played together beautifully, particularly during the first half of
the evening. That half consisted of
completely improvised music, and the connections and creations were
joyous. True, one of the pieces
essentially was a generic blues cycle with spontaneous creations over the
chords. But all of it was a delightful
example of how four superb improvisors at the top of their game can create
something extraordinary out of nothing (or next to nothing). The last three pieces of the evening were
déjà vu all over again (sort of). The
problem of springing Bryant compositions on band members who do not know the
material has been discussed in this Journal before. Dave is a brilliant musician and undeniably
intelligent. And yet he shows up to
these gigs without charts for his compositions, previous rehearsals of the
material, or even sending the musicians recordings beforehand of his
compositions that will be performed. I
can understand that Dave wants to challenge the musicians in his band, and even
more so when they are as outstanding as Jacob, Eric, and Jeff are. But if your compositions/arrangements are
really well written (and Dave’s are), then band members who know
the charts will be challenged enough.
The first two of the final three offerings of the evening were Bryant
charts, and it was apparent that Jacob was the only band member (other than
Dave) who knew the work “Detour.” Dave
apparently was the only one onstage who knew the other composition. Ironically, even though Jacob and Dave both
knew “Detour,” it was the least successful performance of the evening. Neither work was a highlight. There is no question that, because of
recordings of Dave’s work that I own and decades of witnessing his music in
person, I knew those compositions by ear better than anyone in the band 10/12,
except for Dave. I also know the
material enough to know that if the sidemen had heard the recordings recently,
the problem would not necessarily have been solved. Although Dave began performing each work as
written/recorded, within a few bars he was taking a path nowhere found in
previous recordings/performances. That
kind of activity is creative and challenging when you are working with a
well-rehearsed band. But not with
unprepared musicians, no matter how superb they are. I have mentioned how intelligent Dave
is. Maybe he’s bright enough to learn
from himself. After the band tried to
play “Detour,” Dave announced that he was happy with the results when he had
completed composing “Detour,” but it took him a long time to figure out how to
improvise on it. So you have three guys
in the band who know the piece vaguely or not all, and you expect them to
improvise on a work you struggled with.
And just playing the written part (particularly with unknown side paths
thrown in) may be a bit too much to expect from the sidemen. The last piece of the evening was Ornette’s
“Dee Dee.” Dave mentioned that Maestro
Coleman’s daughter used to baby sit for Charnett Moffett. It’s a kind of personal, comfortable
reference. And the band’s performance
was personal and comfortable, probably because everyone in the band knew the
work. A fine conclusion to the
evening. Nevertheless, the volume
imbalance in the band was a significant problem. When the music began, I sat in the front row
(where I enjoy the music most). The
three “strings” were in fine balance. But
the electronic keyboard volume was physically painful to my ears (no
exaggeration). I got up and went to the back of the room and heard the rest of
the performance. The three sidemen still
were in balance, and the problem of the keyboard was not as great. But the problem was not solved successfully. I was not sitting where I prefer (even though
I got to the gig early enough to get a good seat), and the keyboard still was
much louder than any other instrument.
Still too loud. It’s too bad
because that’s a heck of an ensemble…
According to The
New York Times, while average wage earners continue to feed federal coffers
at a high rate, wealthy people pay less under Trump’s current federal tax plan
(“I’m shocked. Shocked,” said Captain Renault).
“The overall tax rate for the 400 wealthiest households in the U.S. --including
federal, state, and local taxes--last year was 23 percent, lower than for any
other income group for the first time on record.” In 1950, for example, the wealthiest
Americans “paid 70 percent of their income in taxes.” No wonder they were the good old days…
Eric Rosenthal’s Point01Percent
series returned to the Lily Pad 10/9 with perhaps the best Point01Percent gig
of the year so far. Luther Gray was away
and was replaced by a very different drummer, Curt Newton. Because they are among the best jazz
percussionists anywhere, there was no question that Curt would handle the first
set of the evening with Cutout--Curt, Pandelis Karayorgis, Jorrit Dijkstra, Jeb
Bishop, and Nathan McBride. In fact, in
spite of the change at the kit, the summer layoff, and (according to Jeb) no
rehearsal before the gig, the band was a stunning improvement over the
unfocussed effort I witnessed the last time I caught the band. There was no fuzzy minimalism. There were minimalist lines here and there,
but the insightful, crisp execution of the charts made the heads and context
for solos crackle with clarity and impact.
And that was good news for the improvisors trying to build coherent
sonics. Pandelis supported beautifully
and offered keyboard-destroying brilliance during solos. Nate was on fire, both contextually and
improvisationally. It was his most
impressive performance in memory.
Terrific. The first line of Jeb
and Jorrit is the out-front sonic image of the band, and they were at their
best. Fans show up for the trombone and
sax solos, and justifiably so. But one
of the highlights of the evening for me occurred any time the two of them
played the heads or talked to each other during soli or a solo with support of the
other horn. All ears and response at
such a high level. And then there was
Curt, doing exactly what the band needed but very clearly being Curt all
the time. Imagine a uniquely distinctive band
with two completely different drummers (i.e., Curt and Luther) that is the same
in each case but inevitably different at the same time. That’s quite something. The second set featured music created by Charlie
Kohlhase, Pandelis Karayorgis once again, Kit Demos, and Eric Rosenthal. There was some minimalist written material
called upon from time to time, but the forte of the quartet was improvisation. The set opened featuring Charlie almost
hesitatingly, presenting tones and simple motives in sequences. Gradually he developed the material until he
handed off improvisatory responsibilities to Pandelis, who built a sonic
tornado that pushed the rest of the band into soaring conversations and
solos. There were three such adventures
throughout the set, giving us a chance to witness Charlie’s mastery--on both
baritone sax and alto sax--of the art of improvisatory architecture, building
ideas into ever-growing sonic constructs.
Also there was some of Eric’s sonic textile work woven throughout the
set. It was always there for support and
direction, always anticipating while enhancing the moment. While all this was going on, Kit was carrying
everything on his back, at the same time doing his best to be invisible. However, a couple solos near the end of the
set made it obvious to anyone paying attention that Kit is a giant of an
acoustic bass player who pursues a constantly evolving (if you are lucky enough
to witness his music over the years) and original technical approach to the
instrument. At the same time, all of
that technique exists on behalf of the music.
The music. One of the most
positive aspects of the wonderful second set is that these four musicians in a
somewhat piecemeal fashion--i.e., two or more of them in some other ensemble
together--have been developing a fine artistic rapport this year in
particular. The second set on 10/9 was a
wonderful example of the potential of that growing rapport…
It was Kris Davis’ first gig in the Boston area since she joined the Berklee
faculty, and there was an SRO crowd to greet her 10/29 at the Lily Pad. An enthusiastic audience filled with
students, other teachers, musicians, and a number of Boston jazz regulars. Because it was a solo piano gig, I was
particularly excited about the performance beforehand. Kris is a total-package musician and
therefore able to accommodate her contributions to an ensemble, almost without
limits--everything from Bill Frisell to Craig Taborn to Eric Revis to John Zorn
to you-name-it. In other words, she
probably could make your uncle Louie sound good. But alone at a piano Kris Davis does not have
to accommodate anyone but Kris Davis.
She showed up prepared, bringing all sorts of useful
resources--compositions (a set list?), gadgets to use for prepared piano
forays, apparently limitless technical facility, and boundless intelligence and
inventiveness. But she is an improvisor. The resources are building blocks upon which spontaneous
sonic wonder is revealed. Although the
components used in creating her music are similar to--for example--those of the
Bebop era, the architecture and formal constraints are significantly different. The head-bridge-solos-eventually back to the
head structure is only hinted at or absent completely in Kris’
performance. Yes, there was at least one
notable exception 10/29, but I believe that is known as proving the rule (and
effectively so). Her approach to
spontaneously assembling music from the resources reminds me of an architectural
structure built in Haiti by Henry Christophe, who was attempting to establish a
post-colonial monarchy. Celebrating
release from slavery, he built and rebuilt palaces to tell the world that there
now was a new “world power.” Using ideas
from a variety of palaces in Europe in
particular, he ordered his liberated architects to create a palace and grounds
of great grandeur. Two things of
significance about the castle grounds, known as Sans-Souci, are that the architectural
style of the final castle is unique and the frenetic process of building,
destroying, and rebuilding to obtain the final structure. It’s almost as if Rome were built in a day. According to Cameron Monroe, who is in charge
of excavating the site, “I’ve excavated on Roman sites in the eastern Mediterranean , and this feels a lot like a Roman site,
except that on those, the stratigraphy is hundreds of years old, and this one
is two decades at the most (Archaeology, July/August 2018,
p.41).” It’s about as close to
improvised architecture as one is likely to discover. I find it to be something of an analogy for
what I witnessed 10/29 in the Lily Pad.
Throughout the evening Kris took a range of new and older resources and
deconstructed and reconstructed those resources improvisationally at a stunning
level. The materials were juggled
improvisationally to create malleable, unique contexts for her completely
original on-the-spot improvised lines.
Compositionally in the first set she exploited her own tone row, Cecil
Taylor, György Ligeti, and Monk. Along
the way her left-hand cycle kept the music rolling while she used her free hand
(she has only two) to prepare the piano (AKA Cage updated). Then combined hands joined the battle with
piano timbres and prepared timbres. What
a victory party! At the end of the set,
I was thinking about a certain pianist--Pandelis Karayorgis--in the audience as
Kris offered a final bit of Evidence of her love for the
predecessor giants. I did not see his
face, but I bet Pandelis (passionate as he is about Maestro Monk) was smiling
with appreciation. The second set was
reserved almost exclusively for Romance.
Who woulda thunk that Julius Hemphill would inspire such “conventional”
beauty. Early on there were dance lines
that brought to mind Chick Corea and sometime later the glorious pianism of
Tommy Flanagan. Nothing, of course, that
either of them would have played.
Throughout the set one could not avoid being impressed by her
chops. For a number of reasons I hate to
make reference to a musician’s technical facility. There is too much emphasis in music
performances on technique. That emphasis
is a distraction from the music itself.
For example, to this day among some musicians and fans there is an
assumption that Monk is not a great jazz musician because of his “lack of
technique.” The problem is not
technique; it’s small ears. But I will
say that Kris Davis’ technical skills are impressive. Her left and right hand independence are
enough to distract a listener from just how good the sonic results are. So that’s my recognition of the obvious and
my suggestion that maybe closing one’s eyes once in a while might offer an
assist to the ears. And what a jolt the
remarkably straight-forward “Prelude to a Kiss” was. Conventionally beautiful and filled
with surprises. Whether it was the
product of set lists or intuitive on-the-spot decisions, the closing material
also completed a fine programming arc.
Monk, who adored the music of Ellington, closed out the first set, and
Duke’s music closed out the second.
Almost. The final offering of the
evening was music developed from one of Kris’ tone rows, recalling the tone row
that opened the first set. What a fine
hello to Boston …
September
Two of the members of the septet arrived late because of “T”
mishaps, one the result of a Red Line problem and the other because of an
Orange Line screw up. Eric Hofbauer and
Jeb Bishop arrived at the end of “The MBTA Blues” opener and during the second
offering respectively. I’m a big fan of
mass transit rail systems, but only if they function competently. All seven of the Explorers--also including
leader Charlie Kohlhase, Seth Meicht, Brian Price, Tony Leva, and Dylan
Jack--finally got rolling 9/19 at the Outpost, but not without one more
mishap. During the first set the frames
of Jeb’s eye glasses broke, causing some difficulty as he attempted to read the
charts. At the half he went to a local convenience
store and bought super glue. From the
audience the repair seemed to work well.
As the second set opened, I somewhat tongue-in-cheek asked myself, “Will
I notice a difference in the performance of Jeb before and after the
repair?” The answer was easy. The duress made no difference. As silly as that game was, because it altered
my thinking, also it altered my perception of Jeb’s playing. Inadvertently, my attention to detail was
altered sufficiently that I gained a slightly different perspective on his
originality. Anyone familiar with Jeb’s
work knows that he is a giant of post-Ayler jazz and certainly a treasure as an
improvising trombonist. He never ceases
to surprise. And for me on 9/19 the
surprise became a constant event during his solos. I saw and heard the extent to which his
inventions are not merely stunningly creative but also constantly new. The way he improvises involves the ongoing
creation of new sounds and new ways to make sounds as a basic approach to
putting together the larger detail of the complete improvised statement. It’s the ideal approach to improvisation that
everyone talks about. But for Jeb it is
what he does. In general it was
a fine night of music for many reasons.
Tony Leva and Dylan Jack came to the group a few months ago, initially
as substitutes I believe. But they have
worked so well within the group that each of them is establishing a functional
personality within the ensemble. Also
the extent to which they work together as a rhythm section is impressive. It seemed to me on 9/19 that they were of
such a single mind that drums and bass became two manifestations of a unified
force. Telepathy. The
band included three reed players, three tenor saxes simultaneously at
times. Or “four tenors,” as Jeb noted,
making a reference to his tenor trombone.
Although Brian Price (tenor sax and clarinet) has performed with the
Explorers before, this was my first chance to catch his work. With his presence the band now has two “power
reed players.” Fortunately Brian and
Seth are very different incarnations of that kind of attack. Seth’s tenor sax is a wonderful amalgam of
Lockjaw, Shepp, and Brötzmann--shimmering, weaving, a dissertation of force in
the detail. Brian’s instruments bring
forth three dimensional solid, sonic shapes--rolling large chunks of granite
from the tenor sax and cubes and pyramids of crystal from the clarinet. In other words, now there are two different
ways in which Explorer fans can be blown out of their seats via hurricane
reeds. By the way, these guys can play
ballads also. Of course there is another
reed player in the band. Actually
Charlie works with two sets of instruments--a group of saxophones and the band
itself. He is the band’s person of
greatest tenure in Boston ,
and therefore not surprisingly he is the master reed man of the Explorers. For example, who else would you rather hear
play the lead (and solo) on “I’m Through with Love” than Charlie? But perhaps it is the other
“instruments”--his band mates as an “exploring” ensemble--that offer the best
evidence of his musical brilliance. Even
if you never have led a band, try to think of all the loose ends you must tie
together as the seasons and the band personnel change from year to year. That’s impossible enough of a task. But then consider how terrific this September
2019 version of the Explorers is, and ponder what leadership that
requires. As a bonus we got to hear this
current version of the band perform a septet arrangement of John Tchicai’s
composition/arrangement of “Quintus T” originally recorded by the New York Art
Quartet. In spite of the MBTA Eric
Hofbauer did show up and perform superbly.
But the biggest news about Eric (after the birth of daughter Ondine) is
that he is the point man for major changes at Longy. As some fans know, Peter Cassino put together
and headed the Jazz Performance Department at Longy, bringing in a terrific
faculty of teachers who (and this is vital) perform locally on a regular basis. The results (to my ears) are that the jazz
program students in recent years perform at a higher level than students in the
“classical” music departments. A few
months ago the name of the department was changed to the Jazz and Contemporary
Music Department. Then Peter retired
(almost). He stepped down from his
chairmanship but continues to teach at Longy.
This departure left a significant hole in curriculum management. The powers that be at Longy were smart enough
to invite Eric Hofbauer to take over the department. The challenges are great, but Eric is aware
of most of them. It is significant that
he is an outstanding teacher (e.g., check out his multimedia guitar techniques
tutorial online) and an active musician who for years has provided his students
with opportunities to witness what it means to create music spontaneously at a
very high level. And they do
show up to witness such music (as in the case of the 9/19 gig). So it was an evening of fine music and
optimistic prospects for the Explorers and Longy…
Perhaps because only the mega-farms will survive, it is the
small and moderate-size family farms that are being sacrificed for Trump’s
trade war with China . According to The New York Times and The
Week (9/6, p. 31), from 2014 to last year U.S. agricultural exports to China dropped
from $24 billion to $9.1 billion. That
figure for the first half of this year is $1.3 billion. One of the results of the situation is, “Farm
bankruptcies are up 13% over last year.”
Since at least my childhood the Republican Party has been supportive of
farmers (and vice versa). Is the current
economic situation enough to change all that?
Not yet. But there are many
months until the next presidential election…
Maybe the farm mess is one of the factors
affecting employment. Even before the
last U.S.
Presidential election, I was critical of both the Congressional candidates and
the Presidential candidates for making a fuss over their promises to create
more jobs. During the last term of
President Obama unemployment rates hit what many economists claimed were “ideal”
lows (i.e., just below 5%). What we
needed, I felt (and still feel) is not more jobs but rather higher (i.e.,
livable) wages for the average American.
And, while average salaries have risen during the past year, those gains
have been more than nullified by the absurd income gains for corporate
executives and stock holders. (If what I
have just written does not make sense to you, imagine that you have $100 to use
for shopping and I have $100K for shopping.
I’m better off than you are. Now
let’s assume your shopping money grows by 1%, and over the same time period my
shopping money grows by 3%. Therefore,
you have $101 for shopping and I have $103K for shopping. You have more money to spend, but you are
$2,999.00 farther in the hole than before we both received increases. The picture gets worse as you consider what
this income imbalance does to the cost of what you and I are trying to
buy.) On the other hand, although I
believe the economic disparity between the greedy and the front-line worker is
a major problem in the U.S. ,
I find that maybe I should rethink my position on unemployment. According to The Week (9/27, p. 32),
“President Trump’s trade war with China has cost the U.S. economy
300,000 jobs, reports Moody’s Analytics. The figure is expected to rise to 450,000 by
the end of the year and to 900,000 by the end of 2020.” While it is true that voters get what they
deserve, does anyone deserve something below a livable wage exacerbated by the
downward pressures on wages created by higher unemployment? Vote early and vote often…
It was scheduled as a trio, but a quartet--Dave Bryant,
Tsuyoshi Honjo, Jacob William, and Miki Matsuki--showed up. One of the pleasant surprises 9/2 at the
Outpost is that Dave pretty much abandoned the pursuit of the interpretation of
composed music. The bad weather
prevented him from bringing his electric keyboard to the gig. And perhaps that switch caused him to pursue free
music. Therefore we had the double treat
of hearing Dave play acoustic piano and the entire ensemble take on completely
free music. Reedman Honjo employed both
alto and soprano saxes. The former pupil
of Dave has carved out a career performing a variety of music with particular
public success internationally as a musician in the so-called classical
realm. I did not know about that success
until the end of the evening’s performance.
For much of the evening I found myself having trouble with Honjo’s pure
“classical” intonation. Now I realize
that he was experiencing a not unusual problem for musicians (particularly wind
instrumentalists) of mentally switching completely from one form to
another. On the whole, his performance
was fine. Also there were a couple
highlights of his work. The first
occurred during the second improvisation. The hand-in-glove work of Dave, Jacob, and
Miki at one point offered the slightest hint of late John Coltrane
Quartet. Tsuyoshi Honjo heard the hint
and unleashed his soprano sax quite convincingly, sans classical
intonation. Later, during the next-to-last
improvisation of the evening, Dave brought up a repeated pattern that he later
claimed was a theme used in a Mannix TV show soundtrack. The reed man picked up the theme and ran it
through compelling permutations. Jacob
has been busy off the bandstand with a variety of time-consuming
challenges. And soon he will be off to India for
weeks. In other words, the worst aspect
of Jacob’s music is that we get too little opportunity to witness just how
brilliant his work is. He was a machine
9/2, working particularly well with Miki.
The spaces they left for each other were among the highlights of the
evening. Miki primarily performs in what
may be thought of as “more conventional” settings, music with chord changes or
fixed keys and straight time signatures.
She’s terrific working with that kind of music; her studies with Alan
Dawson and Bob Gullotti decades ago did not go to waste. Significantly, both of those teachers are
known to offer paths to help students into new music directions. I thought of such things as I witnessed
Miki’s--often sparse--work on drum heads and cymbals, always feeding, always
challenging the other musicians to push farther or to push back at her. In a town filled with outstanding percussionists,
I cannot think of any one of them who would have performed on that 9/2 gig in
the same general way Miki did. That fact
is all positive about Miki and the other drummers. But I was particularly knocked out by Miki’s
work because of its uniqueness--and I knew it might be an awfully long time
before I’d get a chance to witness her doing it in such a free context
again. Then there is the drink meister,
Dave Bryant, turning the contextual lemons (last minute problems) into lemonade
(outstanding free music). Yes, we all
show up to witness Dave’s mix of Bryant/Coleman harmolodics. Bur how nice it is to see a leader take four
musicians into a significantly different direction and make it all fly. Really high…
Recently I was
walking to my car in the parking lot of a nearby shopping mall. It was a bright, sunny afternoon. I heard a loud bang and witnessed the
conclusion of an auto accident. The
person driving the car managed to cause the car to go up onto a raised traffic
separator and knock over a substantial metal post that had supported two
directional signs. Fortunately the
vehicle was not moving fast, and no one was injured. At the completion of the incident I saw the
driver next to the car and wearing an expression of confusion and dismay. The driver seemed to be thinking, “How did that
happen?” I did not witness the beginning
of the accident, but I’m pretty sure what caused the accident. According to the Los Angeles Times earlier
this month, 2018 was the worst year for traffic deaths of pedestrians in about
30 years. The estimated 6,227 pedestrian
deaths are blamed on “cellphone distraction and increased traffic on arterial
roads where motorists often exceed 40mph.”
Given the accumulating data, we need politicians with enough integrity
to ban all forms of cellphone use by civilian drivers in motor vehicles. As soon as possible…
I had been delayed
and arrived about halfway through the first set. Nevertheless, the impact of the music was
quite apparent in medias res. The
musical connections among musicians 9/29 at the Lily Pad were obvious and
remained so throughout most of the evening.
I had witnessed the David Haas Ensemble performing over a span of years,
but this evening’s music exhibited a special level of communication for these
fine folks. There were remarkable duo
conversations involving the wonderful clarinets of Glenn Dickson and
Todd Brunel and the cross-stage links
between drummer Joe Musacchia
and leader David Haas at the piano that gave
the impression they were sonic Siamese twins.
In some sense Scott Getchell, Kit Demos, and Kevin Frenette acted
as play-by-play commentators regarding the pairings and trios soaring around
them. But it was integral commentary. Scott certainly is heard too infrequently in
the Boston
area, and his current trumpet work is his most brilliant that I’ve
witnessed. Kevin also is heard too
infrequently in these parts. It is a
shame because he is one of the most compelling post-Ayler guitarists on the
planet right now, as he has been for years.
We are more fortunate in the case of Kit, who is fairly active locally,
bringing us his marvelous mix-and-match Dark Matter series each month. Nevertheless, his performance 9/29 was a
special one in that we got a whole evening of terrific acoustic bass and
analog synthesizer. He seemed to be having
a particularly joyous time with the latter, “pushing the synth” into new sonic
territory. Everyone in the band must
have felt the impact. Everyone heard
the impact. All of these fine people,
veterans of this ensemble and many others, brought a higher level of sonic
attention to this gig than I ever witnessed before. Never before had I experienced everyone in
the band hearing everyone else quite so well.
Over the years these men have been hammering away at this improvised
ensemble, and with much success. But
never to my ears at such an exhilarating, high artistic level. Applause…
Boston is the fifth
most vulnerable coastal city to flooding from sea level rise in the U.S. “Wicked High Tides” is a feature article in
the 8/17 Science News (pp. 16-21) about the global warming threat
to the city, including a projected cost of hundreds of millions of dollars annually
if nothing is done to minimize the impact of sea level rise. Even if you do not live in Boston, the article
is sobering and constructively provocative…
It was the first gig
for vocalist Melissa Kassel and sound engineer Steve Barbar since their
marriage in June (followed by an extended tour-of-Europe honeymoon). Not surprisingly, people in the band--Tom
Zicarelli, Phil Grenadier, Max Ridley, Gary Fieldman, and Melissa--and the
audience were still in a celebratory mood.
It showed in the music, filled with originals by Tom (music mostly) and
Melissa (lyrics mostly) and a few perfect standards. As always, the solos all around were
searching, revelatory, ear-grabbing. Few
“mainstream” bands anywhere include instrumental talents whose solos get so far
inside the music and ultimately bring out so much on each song as Phil, Tom,
and Gary. There were a couple
differences in the 8/18 Lily Pad performance.
They were bonuses. The first
bonus, a substantial one, was bassist Max Ridley. I never had heard his music. It was a tough assignment. The band leaders consistently call upon some
of the finest bassists anywhere for these gigs.
Because of scheduling problems, the “usual suspects” were
unavailable. On the suggestion of Gary , Max Ridley was the
sub. No doubt it was a daunting
assignment for the young--unless my eyes deceive me--bassist, but he brought
enthusiasm, chops, ears, wonderful timing, and an ensemble sound that (without
mimicry) called to mind the work of Scott La Faro. It was a fine Kassel-Zicarelli debut, and his future is yet to reveal itself. The other surprise was the opening of the
second set by Sammy, a long-time student of Melissa who is on the way to take
his performance skills to Syracuse
University Syracuse gives him a bit more stage presence
coaching and opportunities in front of audiences, Sammy may find that his
biggest problem is handling the groupies.
The set continued until an upbeat ¾ “dance” closer suggested by
Phil. The superb performances all around
would have had the audience humming and dancing on the way home. But instead Melissa chose to follow that with
a more poignant closer, a rhyming song she wrote for her
now-deceased father. It became the final
statement of a “family” catalog of birth (i.e., young musicians), marriage
(Melissa and Steve), and the passing of family members and friends. The life cycle. The band cycle continues at the same location
in October…
Several years ago I
had a subscription to that salmon-colored newspaper known as The
Financial Times. It was one of
those trial subscriptions. There were
some good articles now and then that had nothing to do with economics, but the
focus of the publication was Wall Street and other elements of international
economic developments. I did not enjoy
the publication in general, mostly because of being in one of the two countries
“separated by a common language.”
Economic specifics (e.g., “McDonalds” had nothing to do with the fast
food franchise) and language peculiarities (not merely the absence of
collective nouns) meant that I could not scan the paper as fluently as I would
like to find what I might be looking for.
But there was one thing the paper did have that kept me as a loyal (at
least for a time) subscriber. Once each
week (if memory serves) there was a brief feature strip at the bottom of an
“arts” page that offered observations on the history of cinema by Peter
Bogdanovich. It was wonderful. The paper dropped the feature eventually, and
I dropped the subscription. For my
birthday this year my older son gave me gifts including This is Orson Welles, a
book of interviews with Welles by Bogdanovich.
Marvelous. One of my favorite
(and most fascinating) Welles productions is his film version of Othello. So one of my first pursuits upon receiving
the book was to find out what the Q&A about the film might reveal. The words on page 233 offered great insight
about the film and much more. In
discussing the character of Othello, Welles and Bogdanovich point out that Othello
is so easily manipulated by Iago because he can’t conceive of someone like
him. Othello is a warrior and leader of
armies. In that capacity he has had no
experience with the specific dark reality of Iago. Therefore he is vulnerable to Iago’s
manipulations. As they discuss Iago we
readers discover the true nature of Donald Trump:
Peter Bogdanovich:
[Othello] could not imagine a person like
Iago.
Orson Welles: No,
and neither could a lot of Shakespeare’s
critics. As a result of which we have
eight libraries full of idiot explanations of Iago--when everybody has
known a Iago in his life if he has been anywhere.
Peter Bogdanovich:
There are several moments in the movie
which give the impression that Iago
does what he does because it’s in his character, rather than that he
he’s plotting for some particular reason.
Orson Welles: Oh, he
has
no reason. The great criticism
through
all the years has been that he’s an
unmotivated villain, but I think there are a lot of people who
perpetuate villainy without any motive other than the exercise of mischief and
the enjoyment of the power to destroy.
I’ve known a lot of Iagos in my life.
One of the key topics of the traditional warm-up on-stage
conversation of the Steve Lantner ensemble 8/27 at the Outpost was mnemonic
devices. Most of the musicians seemed to
pinpoint significant local and international events chronologically via
significant family moments such as births and weddings. I found the subject interesting because
psychologically (I think) I have pretty much erased my own birthday from my
memory because of school. Whenever my
birthday arrived I knew the summer was almost over and I would have to return
to school. Among other subjects
examined: Eddie Harris’ comedy album consisting of bandstand comments to
audiences over a span of years, each remark lasting for a few seconds to
several minutes long. Apparently the
often acerbic recording was released posthumously. For the last time this summer Ellwood Epps
joined the trio of Steve, Allan Chase, and Luther Gray in front of an
appreciative audience. Early in the
evening the music was carefully chiseled, consistently pensive as the musical
conversation moved around the stage until there was a leap into higher energy
harmolodics that Ornette would have enjoyed.
Thoughtful sonic eloquence rounded out the first set. Much of the second set was a celebration of
sound. Yes, there were sentences,
paragraphs, and even fine short stories.
But the music came in different forms--layers of sound, three or four
sources of argument simultaneously and yet somehow working together, solos
challenging others on stage to an encounter.
In the middle of all this there was one duo in particular that lifted
the bandstand. Allan on baritone sax
“confronted” Ellwood who had taken up the trumpet, and they faced each other
making sounds as each slowly bobbed and weaved, as two
wrestlers might at the beginning of a match.
In some way the encounter looked confrontational, and the magnificent
torrents of sound coming from each side of the stage (Allan to the left and
Ellwood to the right) added to that image.
But the focussed composure of each musician and the remarkable beauty
they generated brought to mind primarily ecstasy. To the pleasure of ear and eye, the forefront
duo was not brief. Eventually Steve and
Luther got caught up in it all to create a stunning audio-visual sendoff for
the audience. And for Ellwood who vowed
to return…
All of us can use
some good news, and here is some about a superb pianist. Kris Davis is one of the most extraordinary
post-Ayler pianists working today. On 8/12
Berklee officially announced what should be great news for music fans and
students in the Boston
area. During this fall semester Kris
will begin teaching at Berklee. She has
a fine reputation as a music teacher.
That means her students will be lucky.
Selfishly I’m hoping that her responsibilities mean we will get more
opportunities to witness her music, particularly after she makes the transition
from commuting here to living here.
Apparently in October we will have the first chance to witness Kris
playing solo piano in the Boston
area since February 2018…
The Fed prime rate
is low and keeps dropping. But, as The Financial
Times points out, “the average interest rate consumers pay on credit
cards topped seventeen percent in May, according to the Federal Reserve.” It is a type of decades-old unchallenged form
of usury. But we have not demanded
better. U.S, citizens have a right to be
alarmed about the national debt, but it is somewhat hypocritical to wag fingers
at fiscally irresponsible law makers when there is “$850 billion in outstanding
U.S. credit card debt.” After all, we
must share the blame with the banks for that debt…
Charlie Kohlhase
continued to perform frequently throughout the summer as a leader and as a
sideman. There were Explorers gigs, but
some of them had interesting and occasionally quite productive personnel
shifts. A sextet version of the
Explorers--Charlie, Seth Meicht, Dan Rosenthal, Josiah Reibstein, Aaron
Darrell, and Curt Newton--showed up 8/28 at the Lily Pad. It was a fairly “normal” version of the
band. Some musicians had been out of the
Boston area for
more than a month. So the atmosphere
felt something like a band camp reunion.
Perhaps because of the summer juggling Charlie kept the music mostly in
the realm of the familiar--to band members and audience members. It opened with the now-traditional blues and
continued for an hour-plus single set of music by long-time favorites such as
John Tchicai, Roswell Rudd, Elmo Hope (“Eyes So Beautiful as Yours” for Bertha
Hope), and others. Of course, there was
a good bit of music written by the leader.
There were, however, two somewhat unfamiliar works. As fans may remember, Charlie rehearsed John
Tchicai’s “Quintus T” for the first time with the band on 7/18. Josiah Reibstein and Aaron Darrell were not
on that gig. So performing the piece for
the first time since 7/18 was a challenge--with impressive results. The other work--new to me--was Ornette
Coleman’s “Man on the Moon,” a contemporary celebration of the Apollo XI
mission. Charlie and the guys performed
the wonderfully raucous work in celebration (belatedly) of the 50th
anniversary of the event. As long as the
Explorers do their thing, we have much to celebrate right here on Earth…
After World War Two with financial help from the GI Bill Sam Rivers studied music in Boston during the late
1940s and early 1950s. Years later he
offered praise for the education he received, suggesting that his experiences
here in schools and local bands gave him significant advantages over other jazz
musicians. As Cohen and Fitzgerald quote
Rivers in Rat Race Blues: The Musical Life if Gigi Gryce (p. 60), “Boston musicians… had a better musical
education than New York
musicians. We sort of looked down on the
musical knowledge of the New York
musicians because they were all there before they were ready. We all knew that. They got on-the-job training. We waited and got ourselves together first
and then we went to New York .” Sam Rivers has left all of us a remarkable
musical legacy. And now, according to Downbeat
(September, p. 66), his daughter is looking for a home for his memorabilia and
recordings, more than fifty storage containers of material. Monique Rivers Williams has called upon the
services of jazz journalist Ed Hazell to curate the trove. Previously unreleased recordings are being
made available. Ms. Williams hopes an educational institution will provide a home for the materials. Let’s hope that home will be in Boston. Information about the recordings can be found
online. As of August the site had no way for people
to do a search on a specific musician to find recordings, but there is a list
of musicians that you can click on. At
this time Sam Rivers is not in the list (even though the site has a trio
recording available)…
Yuka, wife of Joe Hunt and superb pianist with Joe’s groups,
was visiting family and friends in Japan on 8/25. Therefore Yuka could not perform on the
monthly Lily Pad gig in August. Joe Has
been working with John Sullivan for a while and asked the bassist to recommend
a pianist replacement. He suggested Dan
Pappas. During the warm-up and sound
check the pianist displayed his affinity for Bill Evans, thus indicating
affinity for the music of the band leader.
That was good news for audience members (and perhaps band members) who
may have had some anxiety about the prospects for superb music coming from a
mainstream trio that never had performed together before. Seeing a potentially fruitful way to begin
the evening, Joe decided to open with an Evans tune I associate with a 1962
Evans-Israels-Motion recording, “Very Early.”
The three men seemed right at home with the material and each other, but
Joe’s prodding and the pianist’s own initiative made sure that this trio would
not be mistaken for the Bill Evans Trio.
There was more Evans material to come during the substantial single set
of music. The compositions of other jazz
giants (e.g., Monk, Sam Jones, Herbie Hancock, and more) were offered among a
set list of mostly standards. For a
first time outing the trio worked well.
There were scattered instances of the pianist missing the leader’s hand
signals and other body language, but a single rehearsal might be enough to take
care of that. And the audience reaction
was enthusiastic. It was the first time
I ever had seen Joe Hunt groupies, leading the cheers between tunes. At the end of the evening one woman (joking,
of course) came up to Joe and asked “Will you marry me?” It was all in fun and all about the music. No one can replace Yuka…
Just when you thought we are on the bus to Hell, ever
downward without brakes, there is news of an act of genuine intelligence and
heart. According to Agence France-Presse, two
California-based college professors “have installed three pink seesaws across
the U.S.-Mexico border wall at Sunland
Park , N.M. Ciudad Juarez , Mexico New Mexico …
Agents ensured that no people/goods were crossed during the
encounter.” Think of the too-brief event
as a single candle…
They called it the BONYCH Festival because it featured
musicians from three cities--BOston ,
NYcity, and CHicago . There were four sets of music and way too
much barbecue (quite delicious) at the Ride Headquarters in Sherborn 8/31. Steve Marquette brought two guitars with him
from Chicago to
open the event. He has the techniques
down--plucking, strumming, bowing, sliding, peg-twisting, and more. But the musician/alt-music festival producer
was not really about impressing with technique.
The range of what he performed--folk to traditional jazz to completely
free--was noteworthy in itself. But what
impressed me most is that he made the mix logically connected. Anywhere you “looked” there was a “somewhere
else” that made perfect sense within the preceding “place.” A fine beginning to the celebration. Cinghiale--a duo going back to the mid-1990s
and continuing off and on through today--presented new works by reedmen Mars
Williams and Ken Vandermark that obviously were the current incarnation of the
ongoing project. What struck me about
the performance is the sonic identity of their work. Any fan from the 1990s taking a time travel
to the 8/31 gig in Sherborn would know immediately (even blindfolded) that it
was Cinghiale. And yet, this was not the
Cinghiale of old. When the set was over,
struggling to come up with my own assessment of the nature of the difference, I
asked Mars what he thought the difference was.
I was surprised to discover that the question caught him off guard. He agreed that the duo 8/31 was different
from the earlier incarnations. But he
(like me) could not quite put his finger on it.
We wrestled with it and came up with something like “surety.” In both time frames most activities were the
same--rehearsals and other preparation, passion, technical pursuit, creative
drive, communication, and more--but these were two different sets of “Cinghiale
people.” The difference was, along with
all the things they took to the gig, the confidence that--no matter what
happened in the moment--they would make the music soar. And they did.
There is no question that the biggest draw of the festival for those who
chase “names” was Ikue Mori. Oddly, even
though she is a name, the drawing is warranted.
During a conversation with her after the gig I mentioned that I had
witnessed her performances previously three times. Somehow I had confused in my mind times of
events with times of locations. I have
caught her performances at the Stone twice--not once--and remember how affected
I was by her music both times. She is
one of the most brilliant creative musicians I’ve ever known. Walking away from being the most influential
underground rock/pop drummer in New
York to become the most innovative drum machine
performer in that city simply because she got tired of carrying her drum kit up
so many flights of stairs to her apartment.
And then later she switched to laptop/electronics because it was even
lighter physically than the drum machines.
That brings us to today. Think
about it. Most potentially creative
musicians struggle to say something of substance on a single instrument or
single set of instruments, but she changes (discards) instruments in a way that
suggests the instrument itself is irrelevant.
We all know people who play a whole range of instruments at a high
level--superb musician Jerry Bergonzi, for example--but how many great
musicians do you know for whom choice of instrument is--and has been for
decades--simply a matter of physiological assets? In other words--as all of us listened to Ikue
Mori 8/31--we were witnessing a musician (in the purest sense) for whom the
music is the whole point and the means is irrelevant. The amazing thing for someone such as myself
is that whatever the “instrument of convenience” happens to be is quite
sufficient for her purposes. And--more
amazing in that instrumental context--is the transcendent music she creates
with her current “instrumental convenience.”
Yes, her set of music in Sherborn was the most astonishing I had heard
from her. Impossible but true. And finally, after and during hours of music
and food, we heard from the largest ensemble of the day, a trio of Curt Newton
(BO), Ikue Mori (NY), and Ken Vandermark (CH).
They came out on fire--fully connected and on the same page--in the
first improvised piece. The second
improvisation continued the search into a fascinating range of terrains. Then, about 3/4 of the way through the piece
it seemed that the musicians were thinking too much, eventually searching for
the closing statement. First Ken tried
the final note while Curt pushed farther and eventually brushed his way toward
conclusion with Ikue letting us know emphatically that we had reached the end. A short encore with Ikue defining the
conclusion again signaled the end of a terrific festival that continued for a
while gastronomically. But the fine
music lingered in the air--in isolated memory and in conversations for several
hours. Maybe it will return. Or something like it…
An eight-piece Leap of Faith
Orchestra--PEK, Glynis Lomon, Bob Moores, Duane Reed, Eric Dahlman, Devin
Lomon, Eric Zinman, and Yuri Zbitnow--showed up 7/6 at Third Life Studio. Recent months have been emotionally up and
down for many people in the band and the audience. The most obvious downer for people at the
venue is that this likely would be the last gig ever for most (if not all) band
members at Third Life, which is scheduled to close down its performance
offerings at the end of the month.
Nevertheless, this evening was one of the most upbeat LoF gigs I’ve ever
witnessed. And it was found in the
quality of the music. People had good
reason to be upbeat. Eight musicians and
an enthusiastic audience showed up in spite of one-inch-per-hour rain and
flooded roads. There was instrumental
joy with brass men comparing notes on instrument repair and manufacture and a
percussion party at the rear of the bandstand.
Yuri joyously was “still discovering sounds” in his still-new drum
kit. Also, PEK has been investing in
sonic sculpture that Yuri and other band members had a ball with throughout the
evening. Unlike Harry Bertoia’s works
which generally are fairly large--typically larger than the one in the MIT
Chapel and seldom as small as the ones in the compact sculpture room of the
Milwaukee Art Museum--these sonic sculptures created by Pete Englehart are
intended to be attached to a drum kit the same way a cow bell might be
attached. PEK has put together a metal
support that is designed to hold as many as a dozen of these delightful sonic
creations. It is fun to look at and to
hear. Of special note is the appearance
of Devin Lomon (son of Glynis) with the group.
I had no idea that Devin had musical talent (perhaps to complement his
visual art). He told me that as a child
he began studying the saxophone. No
longer. But he has found a voice in the
harmonica. He impressed in one of the
sub-group performances, particularly with his feel for abstract time--the when
and where of sound that is essential for successful improvised music. PEK programmed the evening with three twenty -minute sets of
sub-group combinations from the eight musicians and then the full
orchestra. One of the problems
(if that is the right term for it) of LoF Orchestra gigs is the number,
content, and total lengths of the sets of music. In some ways it is an absurd complaint. After all, one of my complaints about the
current obsession with LPs among music fans (and it certainly is not my major
complaint) is that CDs gave us longer playing time. You know sonically superior LPs were pushing
the boundaries with twenty minutes per side.
With the CD musicians were unfettered from the clock at least beyond
seventy minutes of clean reproduction of a truly ambitious music project. But I must confess that I agree with Phil
Woods who once said about the release of a double-LP set, “I’m not a fan of
music by the pound.” Then he justified the
release of the two-LP album. On the
other hand--if you are serious about your listening--some music is more wearing
than other music. And I’m not talking
about bad music. Thirty seconds of bad
music is too long. But I’ve sat through
many operas in the three to four hour range, all of them of high quality. But some of them are more taxing than
others--not necessarily better or worse--but more taxing. I’ve witnessed a superb five-plus hour
performance of Morton Feldman’s String Quartet No. 2 and (not
surprisingly) it took its toll. But it
never lost my focus. Part of the reason
is that it was a single work by a genius and a unified whole. I had to be there not just for the
resolution but also for the journey. At
Third Life 7/6 we witnessed three twenty-minute sets of music--each different,
each challenging in its own way. That’s
a lot to digest. THEN the “music”
began. The big deal was the full
eight-musician orchestra scheduled for fifty minutes. I had to ask myself, “Will I recover in time
on the break for a whole set of new music going somewhere else?” The music is challenging, and it is not like
four sets of Blakey or Cecil. It’s four
sets of differently demanding music in a single evening. In spite of what I’ve just described, as far
as I know, everyone in the audience--myself included--stayed around for the
fifty-minute octet improvisation. And no
one left until the last mother and son conversation was over and the gongs told
us that it was time to say goodbye to Third Life Studio. And now we anticipate a rebirth of Leap of
Faith in the fall in some other environment for remarkable creativity…
Six relatively short sets of
solo performances by six different improvisors.
That was the idea, something potentially problematic for the musicians
and the fans in attendance. Standing
alone, attempting to create high quality improvised music--music from
scratch--is one of the most difficult challenges a musician can tackle. Two of the six sets of music 7/16 at the
Outpost incorporated composed music, but all of the sets were challenging for
musicians and fans. Forbes Graham opened
the evening with some musique concrète projected from the back of the
room. He answered the sounds with
trumpet improvisations from the front of the room. A combination of factors, including the
separate locations of the sources of the sounds and the extremely different
timbre and patterns of the recording and the trumpet, created marvelous
ambiguity about the nature of the music.
There were times when briefly there seemed to be something conversational
going on in the manner of synchronicity or call and response. On the other hand, the performance was at
least partially Cagean--the recording and the improvised trumpet work taking
place simultaneously but independently.
Unlike Cage, Forbes apparently did not use clock time as a structural element. Forbes made his last statement on the trumpet
while the recording “played on.” Then he
turned off the recording. Whatever
people in the audience thought of the performance, there is no denying Forbes’
trumpet virtuosity as a creative musician. Bassist Brittany Karlson was up next, offering
the only sound sculpture of the evening.
I had witnessed her work before, but always in a post-Ayler jazz
context, a context that apparently tended to hide her natural sound sculpture
inclinations. Her post-traditional array
of bass techniques 7/16 was put to use in the pursuit of sound as an adventure
in itself, as opposed to the jazz perspective of sound as a means
to an end. Also, unlike post-Ayler jazz
(and all jazz for that matter), her sonics were devoid of a sustained or
evolving pulse. With one exception. Near the end of her performance Brittany
Karlson recited a poem, and that poem inevitably provided a pulse for the bass
sonics. Most of the time during the
recitation her voice was quite soft, and therefore inaudible. I do not know whether the “ghostly”
recitation was a miscalculation or intentional.
In any case, the focus and aesthetic impact of her set was quite effective. Ellwood Epps, who seems to be evolving into
some sort of honorary Bostonian, presented the third solo set. The Canadian trumpeter has been spending much
of his summer performing in New England ,
frequently in Cambridge Somerville St.
Louis
Eric Rosenthal and Taylor Ho
Bynum brought Junko Fujiwara, Nathan McBride, and Mali Obomsawin with them 7/11
at the Lily Pad to help them celebrate two decades of music from the two
leaders. About a decade ago there was an
explosion of minimalist, slow-pulse activity in the jazz world (in the U.S. Indiana U.S. Taylor Taylor
During the first few minutes
of the trio’s performance 7/17, the surprising (to me) interaction of the
musicians brought to mind the early Nat Cole Trio with Oscar Moore and Johnny
Miller. The compositions certainly were
not those associated with Nat Cole’s World War II repertoire. But the engaging technical facility of Dave
Bryant, chordal jabs of Eric Hofbauer, and rock solid footpath sustained by
Jacob William evoked the music of the earlier groundbreaking trio. It was a more than pleasant surprise, a bonus
to start off an evening of Secret Handshake music. The Secret Handshake Trio was created by Dave
in 2017 and first presented to the public at Pickman Hall on 2/10/17 (if my memory is
correct). Its purpose was to celebrate
the music of Charlie Parker and Ornette Coleman, demonstrating links between
the two jazz giants along the way. There
have been several trio reunions since that event, the 7/17 gig at the Outpost
being the most recent. After the opening
surprise, the three of them got down to business, playing usually “hang on for
dear life” versions of music by Parker and Coleman, frequently offering
back-to-back medleys. Sometimes there
were charts. Sometimes there were (too
brief to substantially help the bassist and guitarist on occasion) melodic
runs, hints to suggest a work. There was
one “ancient” work (from Shock Exchange’s first LP I believe) Dave’s piano
alluded to so briefly that, unless Eric and Jacob owned the album, there was no
way that they could jump in with confidence.
To make matters even more challenging, Dave spent most of his time
apparently performing an essay about the composition rather than
the work itself. It’s the kind of thing
that would make mortal sidemen put down instruments and run off the bandstand
screaming. Not Jacob and Eric. Apparently for them being lost is just a
chance to plug in another compatible piece of conversation. And solid ground always surfaced. Maybe the group should change its name to The
Bullet-proof Trio…
It had been more than a month
since I had caught an Explorers gig. A
quintet version of the band--Charlie, Daniel Rosenthal, Seth Meicht, Kit Demos,
and Curt Newton--showed up 7/18 at the Outpost and the long wait was healed
with an evening of wonderful music. At
one point Charlie said, “One of the nice things about a quintet is that
everyone gets to solo.” And solo they
did, one killer sonic commentary followed by another. All evening long. Of special note was the rare appearance with
the band of Kit on acoustic bass. I
never had witnessed Kit with the Explorers before, and it was quite a treat
because I never had caught anyone play harmolodic bass with the group
before. His playing was supportive in a
fairly straight forward manner during heads and most full ensemble work. But during the improvised work of others, Kit
both supported the solo and offered his own envelope-pushing improvised solos
at the same time. That work and all of
his support work had had such a strong, enhancing personal stamp that he
inspired band members to push their solo voices into places that to my ears
were not articulated previously. And all
of that came out of Kit’s typical self-effacing persona. Perhaps the highlight of the evening for me
was the rehearsal and eventual performance of “Quintus T.” As I’ve said elsewhere in this Journal,
art is a process. The Starry Night by Van
Gogh is a celebrated work of art, but it is an amazing byproduct of the art
process. There are many activities
involved in the visual art process. And
that is true in the case of jazz performance.
Two of the more well known activities in the process of jazz as an art
form are jazz recording sessions and rehearsals. Although I have been fortunate enough to
witness many recording sessions and rehearsals, few jazz fans are lucky enough
to have the opportunity to witness those two activities. On 7/18 other audience members and I were
fortunate enough to witness a first rehearsal and performance by the Explorers
of “Quintus T” by John Tchicai. The tune
originally was written for the New York Art Quartet and recorded on July 16, 1965 on the Mohawk
label and reissued on the Fontana
During the first week of this
month a Washington Post-ABC News poll of registered voters was released,
telling us that President Trump’s approval rating is the highest since he’s
been in office (47%). Joe Biden is the
only Democrat who is ahead in a matchup with Trump (53%-43%). The other leading Democrats are within a
single percentage point of the president.
As the most recent presidential races have demonstrated, winning a
majority of votes is not enough. The
winner needs the Electoral College victory.
Because the Supreme Court recently ruled that the states should do
whatever they want to about gerrymandering, we are likely to be looking at
another Electoral College victory for Trump who once again may miss out on the
popular vote. In any case, right now the
outcome looks close. So no matter what
your wishes are, get off your butt and work for or against whoever you want. And VOTE.
Remember the truism: In our
democracy you do not get what you want; you get what you deserve…
Since at least the late
nineteenth century New York City Boston Gotham established a
reputation--and for the most part justified--as the primary cultural center of
Western Civilization. During the last
quarter of the twentieth century the luster has faded somewhat, due primarily
to the fact that art and artists have been priced out of the city. For example, sculptor Richard Serra grew up
in New York Manhattan Manhattan Manhattan New York Manhattan New York New York Brooklyn and Queens . As readers
know, I have complaints about Boston Cambridge New York City New York Boston Boston New York New
York New York Boston Boston Boston New York New York New York New York New York Boston Boston New York Boston Boston New York Boston New York Chicago Europe
were common. I believe cross
fertilization artistically is an important idea. The Cedar Bar in New York Boston Church Street Cambridge Boston Boston New York Cambridge Somerville
It was “déjà vu all over
again.” A few days after the outstanding
performance at the Lily Pad which was attended by a large number of “it’s hip
to be here” jazz fans, I ran into an Outpost version of the same
thing. After witnessing months in and
months out of extraordinary performances by various Steve Lantner ensembles for
several years--presented before typically fairly small audiences--I entered
that venue for the first set of music 7/23 at the Outpost to discover a Lantner
group facing a full house. Packed. Although the weather outside was cool, the
air conditioning was off inside. The
results were a warm somewhat claustrophobic atmosphere. But what’s to complain about? The crowd was there to witness the music of
the Steve Lantner Quartet. Well, not
exactly. Listed as the Steve Lantner
Quartet, the group really was the Steve Lantner Trio--Steve, Allan Chase, and
Luther Gray--plus guest Ellwood Epps.
Ellwood has been visiting the Boston Boston Boston Montreal Canada Boston St. Louis
The 2019 incarnation of the Driff Records Festival took
place 6/8 at the Lily Pad. The seven
sets of music began at 7:40 p.m.
and presumably continued well past midnight . I caught all the sets except the last
two. The evening opened with a solo
improvisation by Andria Nicodemou. It
struck me as a fine gesture, something like a herald calling the public to an
important event. Her clarion call was
much more than heraldry. One of the
great joys of following the music over a span of decades in a major jazz town
is witnessing the development of a few young musicians into real
artists. Andria seems to be such a musician. When I first saw her and local musicians were
enthusiastic about her work, I was slow to get on the band wagon. I had seen countless wunderkinder
manufactured in academic or music institutions, all of them “brilliant” and
almost exploding with possibility.
Unrealized possibility. Andria reminded me of
such youngsters, enthusiastic and with technique in abundance. I watched, listened, and waited. As I’ve mentioned before, during the past
couple years, her tenacity and focus are paying off. Yes, her chops are obvious and she keeps
pushing the technical possibilities. All
of that is fine, but the key to her development is that more and more she
exhibits technique as a resource rather than an end in itself. Her content-driven intuition is taking over
her work, and with wonderful results. Her
solo performance 6/8 is a fine example of how much she has grown. It was not completely improvised. She did her groundwork before the gig, and no
doubt she had done more than “prepared” aluminum foil as part of the
instrumental setup. Certainly there was
an overarching plan to it all. So
“totally free” purists might complain.
Not me. Within the architecture Andria was completely in
the moment, propelled in solid instinct.
Really fine stuff. Then Damon
Smith joined her for a simpatico duet.
Damon has been an Andria Nicodemou fan for some time, and the
performance demonstrated that the musicality is quite mutual. The Cliff Trio--Pandelis Karayorgis, Damon
Smith, Eric Rosenthal--is a completely free ensemble. With complete freedom, particularly when
improvising musicians of such high caliber are involved, part of the engagement
for the audience is the risk involved. The potential for complete failure. If there were no such risk, then the
musicians would not be “doing their jobs.”
The results would be not much better than a clever random note
generator. And sure enough, these top
shelf musicians did run into creative dead spots in all their risk-taking
courage. There was a fortunately brief
period in which there was volume, energy, and busy chatter (no doubt in attempt
to break through the “wall”) “signifying nothing.” Not to worry.
In the balance of things the creative fog turned out to be a
hiccup. The music became clear, and the
conclusion demonstrated why improvisational risk is important. No.
Essential. The next set presented
both music and dance, the only set including dance. Jessica
Roseman and Jorrit Dijkstra (sometimes known as Buzz) performed at the Lily Pad
on 5/8, taking part in the Boston
tradition of the integration of improvised music and dance (Joe Burgio’s InEdit
ensemble perhaps the best-known example of that today). The duo 5/8 came across a bit too theatrical;
perhaps they were trying too hard. But
the duo 6/8 came to the gig prepared, in control. It was something like Andria
Nicodemou’s contextual preparation only more so. One had the feeling that Jorrit and Jessica
had worked out not so much “composed routines”--but rather language and syntax
forms that they plugged into their routines.
The opening loud stamping with soprano sax response did come across as
pre-conceived “composition.” However,
most of the remainder of their set was closer to what might be described as the
implementation of “comfortable” syntactical conventions. But in the middle of it all was
“compositionally driven” improvised dance and sonics. And the improvisation--much better than the
5/8 improvisation--was what made this effort so successful. The Steve
Lantner Trio (featuring Allan Chase and Luther Gray) was scheduled next. Steve has had some physiological problems
involving his right hand that have been discussed here. In addition he had injured his shoulder not
long before the 6/8 gig and was unable to perform at the Festival. Make no mistake. The Steve Lantner Trio is one of the great
post-Ayler treasures in the Boston
area (or anywhere else). The question
arises: What do you do when the leader of the Steve Lantner Trio is
unavailable? The most obvious answer is
to replace the pianist with one of the amazing bassists on the gig, and go from
there. Well, fuggedaboudit! One of the main reasons the Steve Lantner Trio
and all the other Steve Lantner groups are so amazing is that most of the most
creative improvisors in Boston
want to perform with him. I’m
speculating that rather than turn the duo portion of the Steve Lantner Trio
into something completely different by adding an “outsider,” it just made sense
for the two of them to pursue the music with what was left of the trio, i.e.,
Allan and Luther. Allan brought his alto
and soprano saxes and Luther sat at the trap set. Then they created music--both completely
improvised and calling upon themes in the Luther Gray “song book”--and they
gave us all a breathtaking lesson on the meaning of “coming to play” and
“leaving it all on the bandstand.” I
never got to hear the music of the last two sets of the evening, both filled
with some of the most extraordinary musicians of the Boston area.
I expect there would have been wonderful music on those sets. But, given that reservation, of all the music
I heard that evening--fine music--the fix-a-problem duo offered the most
impressive set. Maybe it was the
challenge of limited musician resources.
Certainly it was a matter of extraordinary creativity. But it was the highlight of the evening. Cutout--Jeb Bishop, Pandelis Karayorgis, Jorrit
Dijkstra, Jeb Bishop, Nate McBride, and Luther Gray--was up next. The group has been one of the premiere
ensembles in the Boston
area during the past couple years. But,
make no mistake, the group had some repair work to do after the 5/8 gig at the
Lily Pad. On that evening Luther Gray
could not make the gig. So the leaders
decided to drop the charts and become a completely free improvisatory
ensemble. Not a bad idea. All of the remaining band members have solid
track records in that area.
Nevertheless, the conceptual switch was potentially quite a
challenge. But the nail in the coffin
was the decision to make a game changing switch in the instrumentation. I could not bear the results and left the
gig. But now on 6/8 the full ensemble
with original instruments had returned, and hope was in the air. Certainly the music was better than on 5/8,
but much of the material consisted of new compositions/arrangements that either
were under-rehearsed or--more troubling--just as ineffectual as they sounded. But instead of recovering from the sonic
failures of 5/8 with tangible evidence that Cutout “was back,” we were stuck
with music that caused some of us to come up with excuses for this “sluggish”
outing. Well, not entirely. The band closed out the set with an “ancient”
Luther Gray composition. Yes, “Jowls” is
familiar to fans and even superficially engaging. But I cannot fault the audience for reacting
so enthusiastically, as if saying, “This is what we showed up for.” I hasten to add that it is nothing specific
to “Jowls.” Each member of the band in
recent years has contributed music that challenges and engages. But the band has the summer off to figure out
where it is going--or to simply get back on track. I’m sure the two final sets of music I missed
were quite fine. And even what I
witnessed was something to celebrate.
Likely the best Driff Festival ever…
When leaders of the U.S. and the Soviet Union were sitting next to the red phones and red
buttons, hoping never to have to use either, some young married couples were
deciding not to have children. After
all, it would be insane to welcome new life into a world of nuclear
holocaust. So let’s zip ahead to
today. The prospect of nuclear
obliteration is as real as ever--maybe more so--but we have become numb to the
threat. At the same time there is
another “end game” threat on our doorstep--climate change. Yes, we absolve ourselves of responsibility
for the problem by blaming “Republicans.”
That is a very simplistic and ineffective way to deal with that
problem. But the sluggishness of the
response is somewhat understandable. We
Americans have a history of doing nothing effective until it is almost too late
(e.g., our reluctance to stop Hitler). And
this climate change problem is particularly daunting because the progress
of the threat is glacial (pun intended).
There likely will come a time when the tardiness of U.S. entry into
the fray will prove to be too late. In
the case of global warming--if that is the nail in the coffin--it will not be
only the end of the great “democratic experiment” in North America but also the
end of the ICP Orchestra, Nigeria, daylight savings time, Fendika in Ethiopia,
Vladimir Putin, walks in Central Park, people who have been saved from River
Blindness, gigs at the Outpost, and Gerrymandering (among other things). This cautionary vision has been inspired by a
The
Week (6/7, p.21) article, “CO2 levels reach 3 million-year high,” in which
we discover recently, “Sensors at the Mauna Loa Observatory in Hawaii recorded
that concentrations of CO2--the greenhouse gas most responsible for
climate change--reached 415 parts per million.”
The article goes on to point out, “The last time there was this much CO2 in the
atmosphere was during the Pliocene Epoch, between 5.3 million and 2.6 million
years ago, when sea levels were about 50 feet higher than they are now.” Gavin
Schmidt, director of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, says that as
conditions deteriorate, “We are putting our foot on the accelerator of climate
change, and impacts and damage will continue to rise.” At the same time it is a slow demise. Glacially slow…
During a mostly rainy several days in Newport this month I was walking by a hotel
parking lot 6/18 and saw a couple vehicles used in support of someone named
Matt Fraser. Possibly he was performing
in the hotel. As the photo below shows,
he has his own limos with at least one of them displaying the entertainer’s
beaming face. Apparently he makes his
living as a psychic. As you may make
out--in spite of the fence blocking a clear view on the periphery of the
parking lot--Matt Fraser is a “Television Psychic Medium.” Television is not my first recourse for
entertainment. So I never had heard of
the man. But I’m guessing that with at
least a couple touring limos he’s probably doing OK. I include the photo here because the
information on the vehicles suggests something odd is going on with Mr.
Fraser. Notice that one of the black
limos is a “Matt Fraser Private Security” vehicle. Why would a psychic need a security detail? Any decent psychic would know well in advance
if his well being is going to be threatened.
You know, a simple call to the Newport Police Department: “Hi. This is Matt Fraser. A man in a pink hoodie is going to attempt to
rob me at 4 p.m. on the corner
of Spring and Dixon Streets.” As an
alternative, Matt Fraser could avoid the corner of Spring and Dixon between 3:45 and 4:15 . Or if he really were any good at his job
(he’s on TV for goodness sakes) he would know of every mugging he might
encounter during the next twelve months (or more) and plan his schedule
accordingly. It seems to me--regardless
of everything else--being on the Matt Fraser security detail should be one of
the softest jobs in Newport
or anywhere…
I never had been to the Metropolitan Waterworks
Museum Boston . As a museum--minus docents at night--it was
impressive. The water works machinery
alone--in near pristine condition--is more than impressive. The entire museum was not open to guests for
the music, but the pump house equipment was on display and well worth the
visit. What is in the main building is
at least three times the size of the mill powerhouse art exhibit at Mass MoCA
(minus the audio poetry and sonics of the North
Adams exhibit).
To be fair to Mass MoCA, the art exhibited in the many medium to large
buildings of Mass MoCA dwarf the Metropolitan Waterworks facility. But the museum near the reservoir is
definitely worth checking out if you are interested in the history of why and
how all of us in eastern Massachusetts
have clean drinking water today. And the
machinery is quite beautiful. But the
6/14 gig was only peripherally about the nineteenth century context. Event sponsor Non-Event had paid for the
gig. They had the right to inform the
musicians that the music is about to start, particularly when the musicians are
standing on the “band stand” at the posted 8 p.m. start time and ready. The music did not kick off until 8:20 .
Steel pedal guitarist Susan Alcorn was in town, and it had been almost a
year since I had had a chance to witness her unique sonic voice. The evening was split between her solo work
and improvisations in the second set with two remarkable Boston-based
musicians. Susan offered useful
introductions to each of the works she performed. Her modesty was disarming. Time and again she
would complain about her failures in attempting to transcribe and perform works
by others to the steel pedal guitar.
Looking at the task of coming up with an “exact” arrangement of a work
composed for different instrumentation (i.e., both different instruments and
different numbers of instruments) is a more than daunting task. For example, none of the instruments in
Messiaen’s Quartet for the End of Time (clarinet, cello, piano, and
violin) sound like any kind of guitar.
The same thing with the same composer’s Et exspecto resurretionem
mortuorum, a work with even larger instrumental resources. But she succeeded in performing those two
works as well as others by Piazzolla and music out of a Spanish tradition. When I say “performing” I refer to the music
she calls failures as being central to her art.
Susan Alcorn takes composed/arranged music that is impossible to perform
exactly
on the steel pedal guitar and transforms the music into something that is both
true to the original work and a unique personal statement of the artist. One might say that those transformations are
central to defining who Susan Alcorn is as a musician. For me one of the most affecting works of the
first set was her performance of a Catalan Christmas carol which became the
theme of Spanish refugees. The work,
known as “Song of the Birds,” is most closely associated with political
activist Pablo Casals, perhaps even more than the Bach Cello Suites. As transformed as the piece was 6/14 somehow
I heard the music of the greatest cellist coming out of the steel pedal
guitar. The second set consisted of
completely improvised music by Susan, Jeb Bishop, and Damon Smith. The set opened with a trombone statement from
the the upper portion of the powerhouse wheelworks in front of the stage. It was a fine visual and sonic device leading
to call and response among the three of them until Jeb came down to
“earth.” There were hints of classic
jazz tunes on occasion, but not surprisingly, the improvised music of the
second set was unlike Susan’s compositional transformations of the first. While much of the first set experience was
political and cautionary, the second set was a playful “mealtime” conversation
among friends who had a lot of catching up to do. And we lucky people in the audience were
privy to it all. As I think about how
fine the music was, I believe something should be said about the context. As beautiful as the surroundings are, there
are practical problems with the space.
More significant problems than at the concerts on Church Street in Harvard Square , for example. If you are not fortunate enough to be among
the 15 or 20 people closest to the “band stand,” your visual (and I’m guessing
your sonic) experience is significantly limited. There was a good-sized crowd for the event;
so most people in the audience probably did not see more than the top of
Susan’s head in the first set and the upper body of her partners in the second
set. Not being four or ten rows back, I
did not share that negative experience, but the room is all metal with some
potentially absorbing brick. There
was a lot of natural reverb audible on the breaks. It is a room that would be perfect for
certain kinds of solo and/or ambient music.
But, in this case, picking up detail sonically and visually in most
seats would have been impossible. But
maybe those folks didn’t care. The
Non-Event team does an excellent job of getting folks out to gigs, and this was
one of their greatest promotional successes.
The downside is the success is non-selective. There is no question in my mind that the
majority of the people in the audience were there for the “Non-Event” rather
than the music. You know, “Hey, it’s hip
to be here.” And generally that’s
OK. It is good to expose non-fans to
challenging music. However, I’ve been to
gigs when I’ve been bored, but I’m polite anyway. It’s the civilized thing to do. Most of the folks who showed up for the gig
were civilized. It’s the rude
few--talking and clicking--that made it difficult to enjoy the music. The clicking was even more disturbing than
the talking. It is not surprising that
several people brought cameras to the performance. But almost nobody uses a film camera these
days. So there is no reason to hear a
shutter click when an image is taken.
For reasons that make no sense in our “high tech” world camera
manufacturers still give cameras a “click” option that can make a sound when
you take a photo. But--except in the
case of a couple obsolescent digital cameras--the click sound can be turned
off. But the “photographers” at the Waterworks Museum
In an article titled “The religious right: Reconsidering
democracy” The Week (6/28, p.18) examined the rhetoric of Catholic writer
Sohrab Ahmari who claims that Conservatives must “fight the culture war with
the aim of defeating the enemy… to serve the Highest Good.” Against that view, the magazine quotes
Michelle Goldberg of the New York Times who notes that
although Conservatives control of the White House, Senate, and the Supreme
Court, “social conservatives feel apocalyptically embattled.” But the final Goldberg punch line is the best
line: “When one is accustomed to privilege, equality feels like oppression.”
Mr. Lantner brought his big band to the Outpost 6/25. Just kidding.
But I wonder what a Steve
Lantner big band would be like. I have a
feeling that he would want nothing to do with such a “train wreck.” But we did get to witness one of Steve’s
basic jazz combos (i.e., one step up from solo). As I’ve suggested before, one of Steve’s
great skills is that he causes brilliantly creative musicians to want to
perform with him. There’s no better
example of that than Luther Gray, one of the most important jazz percussionists
of his generation. It’s not the
technical chops or the fact that he can move convincingly throughout an array
of jazz forms/genres. It’s that he
always brings who he is as a musician to every gig. No. That’s
not explicit enough. There are many fine
musicians who bring their stamps/personalities to a gig. And the better examples of that are special. But what Luther brings to a gig is far beyond
that. The way he hears music is unlike
any drummer I’ve heard. And that reality
is fundamental to who he is as an original artist. Over the years I have tried to suggest how he
hears
and how he acts on what he hears in a way unlike any other drummer. A few times I have mentioned the late pianist
Mal Waldron as someone working within a similar aesthetic. True, both are percussionists. And that link is significant because I
believe both of them have a profound “percussion” link as soloists. But they are different people from different
times and perspectives. Unfortunately,
one of the most obvious links between them is how brilliantly unique they are
and how deaf the pundits are. It is not
anything new for jazz. Such deafness
goes back to the beginning of the twentieth century. Who in white America had a clue as to how
amazing the early giants were until the 1920s?
But the aural ineptness of the “critics” of the slick jazz magazines is
far worse than it was when I was a teenager, and “Leroi Jones’” Apple
Cores commentary was commonly vilified.
But I digress. There was a gig
6/25 at the Outpost, and two superb musicians showed up to make profound
sounds. Steve Lantner, the man who
brings these monthly gigs together, has been afflicted by physiological
problems (as most of the local fans of the music know). Before the music began he addressed the
obvious questions that fans in the audience had. His right hand/thumb is about the same. Functional somewhat, but amazing in terms of
what he is able to accomplish. The left
shoulder is improving with therapy. Not
long after he had the accident, Steve had “no more than 10% mobility.” He demonstrated that he could move his arm
well above his head now. Good news. The music of the first set opened pensively,
slowly. The duo conversations were deep
and superficially deliberate in progress.
Like some sort of stop-action cinematography of a blooming flower, the
solos and interplay gradually evolved into something with more propulsive tempo
and expanding energy. The final offering
of the first set mostly featured intense forward motion and room-filling
fireworks. Then there was a short break
(well, short by Lantner ensemble standards). Much of the second set was a fascinating
travelogue through different “places” melodically and energetically, with fine
duo work interspersed with compelling solos from each of them. It was some of the most varied material
presented by any Lantner group in such a compact set of music. Finally, the two of them--initiated by
Steve--completed an architectural arc by finishing with a wonderful pensive
sonic essay. The applause
was--appropriately--enthusiastic, and the two of them seemed quite happy with
the way the music evolved. The only
hitch was Steve’s shoulder. As the dust
settled, he rubbed his shoulder and said that he thought he overdid it a little
bit that evening…
May
Andrew Neumann and Damon
Smith have been busy this month, significantly both together on 5/8 and 5/10,
the latter gig at the Outpost with Forbes Graham and guest Sandy Ewen. Even though 50% of the personnel 5/10 was the
same as on the 5/8 gig, the results were quite different. Some of the difference no doubt was due to
instrumentation. No cello or drum kit at
the 5/10 performance. But perhaps the
biggest impact was the result of the hearing and the responding of the
musicians in each case. We saw a
specific side of Forbes working within the context of two quite different
electronics monsters. Sandy
It’s Sunday morning and I
have a whopper of a hangover. Gradually
some synapses begin to fire in a constructive manner and I am able to sit on
the edge of my bed--just barely. It is a
good thing the wife and kids are in church.
I look at the drawer in the cabinet next to my bed and I realize that I
do not know where my gun is. Soon I plan
to get a lock for the drawer. I try to
think. I vaguely remember sitting in my
recliner really buzzed and bored with whatever was on the TV. I decided that cleaning my gun would be a
really great thing to do. I remember
sitting there with the gun in my lap, and that’s it. The rest is all fog. What I didn’t know is the only people on the
planet other than my wife and me who knew that I keep the gun in that drawer
are my four-year-old son and the Federal Government. Yes, 9/11 changed everything with a blanket
of super surveillance technology and metadata storage and processing, all
enhanced during the Obama administration.
That began almost two decades ago.
Today the pundits casually throw around 393,000,000 as the number of
guns owned by civilians in the U.S. Washington 
Kit Demos booked a quintet
Dark Matter performance 5/25 at the Outpost, but only four musicians showed
up. However, the four--Kit, Todd Brunel,
Eric Hofbauer, and Curt Newton--are such fine improvisors that within a couple
minutes of the first tones you knew that these guys were ready for a tour. Of course, it is likely that the only
traveling these folks will ever do as a quartet happened on the 5/25 gig. Lucky for those of us in attendance
5/25. Even though each musician was
familiar with the work of the others, this specific combination of people and
instruments was not familiar. Perhaps
that is why the first improvisations, though quite successful, were relatively
brief. It was almost as if the four of
them were saying, “OK, this is quite nice.
Let’s finish and try something else.”
And without further “tests” the music did travel to a good variety of
places throughout the substantial single set (with a delightful encore). I found this ensemble to be particularly fine
at exploiting timbre and instrumental character in general--primarily in duo
conversations. There were the strings of
guitar and brushes on drum heads. The
bass clarinet and acoustic bass were as one.
A highlight was the woody connection between the thuddy tones (without
decay) of Eric’s guitar and Todd’s bass clarinet, supported beautifully by Kit
and Curt. And that was a signature of
the evening’s music. As special as the
duos were, the other two musicians on stage made those duos sound so inevitable
by throwing amazing sonics at the fine interplay. It is unlikely that this creative quartet
will be doing much traveling geographically, but all of them have been going
through significant journeys recently in their personal lives. Some stressful and some joyous. As a member of the audience I have been going
through the jolting and painful loss of a dearest friend. The healing music of the evening caused me to
think of better tomorrows. On the drive
home thoughts of the evening’s music remained as I recalled a poem of Robert
Frost. For me certainly it was a “Dust
of Snow” experience at the Outpost…
Everyone knows that sometimes
art imitates life, and sometimes life imitates art. I came across a rather disturbing variation
on that relationship recently. The
suspense film, Mercury Rising (1998), stars good guy Bruce Willis and bad guy
Alec Baldwin. The premise is that a
puzzle book contains a puzzle that is designed to confirm that a U.S.
Government “unbreakable” code is indeed unbreakable. An autistic child breaks the code, and Baldwin ’s character sends agents to kill the child to
protect the code. The agents kill
several people in their quest as Willis’ character attempts to save the
boy. If you are familiar with the film,
you know that the code test puzzle page consists of rows and columns of
letters, something like the image below.
Disturbingly like the image below.
The image below is a reproduction of page 25 of the 5/11 issue of Science
News. It is an ad published by
the NSA challenging potential recruits to break the code, showing that they
presumably are “smart enough” potentially to create super secure code for the
NSA. Or maybe not. I’ve seen the film, and there is no way I
would ever think of trying to break the code.
And if I did, I’d never be crazy enough to send the NSA my code-breaking
answer…
The trio returned to the
Outpost 5/21, and the first question during setup was about Steve Lantner’s
right hand thumb. Steve said that the
right hand pretty much is in the same shape it was on the April Outpost gig not
long after the cortisone shot. He said
that he could use the thumb without too much pain in playing certain note
combinations. But, for the most part, he
is a nine digit pianist. This state of
affairs hits even the casual fan with two significant facts. The first is troubling to ponder. Steve is a pianist of remarkable creativity
and skill, but now his performance skills are limited. It is as if, as I write this, every tenth
character I type disappears from the page--or fails to land on the page in the
first place. Oh, I might be able to make
some kind of adjustment to produce readability.
But--no matter what--there’s a problem.
Steve mentioned that he has been developing functional
work-arounds. His efforts bring up the
second significant fact: Steve’s work-arounds--to my ears at least--are
working. Astonishingly. No doubt he is aware of the technical
obstacles as he performs, but the gallery all night was littered with
ineffectual, failed obstacles. As they
always do, Steve, Allan Chase, and Luther Gray played inspired music. As if to celebrate the continuation of the
trio’s monthly adventure, the opening improvisation was a joyous dance in
sound. The high-energy first work began
with the direction defined by Steve and soon picked up by Allan and
Luther. A party with plenty of piano
fireworks. It was the kind of technical
display (but certainly much more than that) that back in the two-fisted
contests of the 1930s might have caused a “hip” observer to comment, “The piano
player had six fingers on each hand.”
The second improvisation of the first set was a pensive ballad. Again, the piano opened the door to the work
with Allan and Luther entering soon after.
Allan’s beautiful performance on soprano sax brought to mind Dexter Gordon’s
ballad work on that instrument during the second half of the 1980s. Luther stuck with mallets and brushes for the
most part--all ears. After the break
Steve gave us a keyboard sound sculpture, and the trio did not need John
Butcher to run with the idea. Allan’s
soprano sax joined the construction party, and the two of them sculpted while
Luther watched and listened. A couple of
saxophone fillips to create a perky line resulted in Luther’s entry, leading
the trio into a romp over (and through?) hill and dale to a superb
conclusion. But not before Luther’s most
stunning solo of the night. The final
improvisation of the evening took the music in a completely different direction. Jagged lines from the piano led to a trio of
angles, twists, and turns until the final music became the creation of “a
single guy” with six arms and six legs making great sounds from a complex instrument
of boundless art…
Television has changed over
the years. There always have been
commercials, many terrible shows, and a very few outstanding shows. But the details have changed
considerably. For example, most talk
shows featured music typically without vocals both as a segue
device for commercial breaks and during the show as part of the
entertainment. It was as a child that I
would come home from elementary school every day to witness Tyree Glenn leading
a small combo (with occasional guest Johnny Hodges) as a featured component of
a daytime talk show. Night time talk
show host Steve Allen played the piano and enjoyed performing with jazz
musician guests. He also played the role
of the clarinetist in The Benny Goodman Story. But such things are history. Late night talk shows today use bands as the
functional equivalent of sonic fade to commercial. However, in the midst of the plight of live
music on talk shows there is at least one bright light. I could go into Jon Batiste’s musical
contributions during Stephen Colbert’s monologues (particularly his Monk
quotes) and other pleasures, but the main things are his special musicianship
and his love of jazz. My impression is
that he is into adventuresome rock music more than jazz, but what he does with
his late night band shows that he knows more about jazz than almost
all mainstream jazz band leaders working today.
I was surprised to see the great Benny Golson in a band on late night
television 5/7 (and into 5/8), but he certainly was playing in the right
band. On commercial breaks they played
such Golson classics as “Killer Joe” and “Blues March” as if the guys had rehearsed
passionately for a week. But you know
that they didn’t have to. They and their
leader are that good. When Stephen
Colbert announced that Benny Golson was a guest in the band, his statement was
appropriately respectful, but you could tell he did not know that jazz royalty
was on the bandstand. No one had to
explain such things to Jon Batiste…
Early in the first set Phil
Scarff performed a too brief Darrell Katz work for soloist, “Sonata for
Sopranino.” It was the only work of the
evening for a single musician, and it was performed beautifully. It was a rare occurrence 5/9 at Third Life
Studio to hear a work incorporating something other than the work of five
musicians. There are two versions of
OddSong, one employing violin and tonal percussion along with four saxophone
voices. The other--the one performing
5/9--employs just the saxophones. Both
versions of the ensemble take advantage of the fine vocal efforts of Rebecca
Shrimpton. I confess that I prefer the
quintet version of OddSong. There is
nothing lacking in the septet instrumentation or any of the musicians
involved. I’m not entirely certain of
the root of my preference for the quintet, but I suspect it has to do with my
appreciation of the challenge of making a saxophone “choir” work. Like some older fans of the music, I remember
the less-than-terrific excesses of the fad of sax ensembles. There was Alto Madness prompting endless
variations on that idea. Certainly the
best tongue-in-cheek commentary on the situation was the name of our own fine
saxophone quartet, Your Neighborhood Saxophone Quartet. Most such outfits were not quite so
good. It’s sort of like all the terrible
(100%?) vocalese type groups that tried to build or “improve” on the work of
Lambert, Hendricks, and Ross. Godawful
stuff. In other words, to witness such
fine performance of arrangements for four saxophones and voice operating at
such a high level at Third Life was a superb antidote to all those bad
memories. The instrumentation was the
same as the group that performed at Jazz Along the Charles in September last
year. But 50% of the reed section was
different. The 5/9 lineup was vocalist
Shrimpton and (left to right) Melanie Howell Brooks, Rick Stone, Lihi Haruvi,
and Phil Scarff. The change caused no
one to miss a step. Also, I counted
performances 5/9 of at least five of the arrangements used at the event in
September. The performance of “Sweet
Baby James” received the most applause of recognition from the audience. I found the ballads, particularly “I Cover
the Waterfront” and Horace Silver’s “Peace,” to be the most affecting. The performance of the latter was perhaps the
most moving version I’ve heard since the Tommy Flanagan recording of the work
(a jazz sound that became iconic in the Boston Anderson Union
Square
This Journal is about music
events in the Boston New
York City Manhattan Fifth Avenue Central Park the Met features an improved rearrangement
of their abstract works, Epic Abstraction: Pollock to Herrera,
available at least to the end of the year.
If you are into Japanese culture and art, you will not be able to beat
the Met’s Tale of the Genji: A Japanese Classic Illuminated (on display
through 6/16). New York 980 Madison Avenue Fifth Avenue America
April
It was a fascinating
prospect. Phil Grenadier, one of my
favorite trumpet players, was scheduled to perform 4/7 on two very different
back-to-back gigs at the Lily Pad and the Outpost. Except for one piece near the end of the
evening, the Lily Pad audience was respectfully quiet. The band--Melissa Kassel, Tom Zicarelli, Phil
Grenadier, Bruce Gertz, and Gary Fieldman--was its superb self, even though
Melissa claimed she was recovering from pneumonia. The group now is at the point at which almost
everything is telepathic. Phil split his
time fairly evenly between trumpet and flugelhorn. All solos from everywhere on the stage were
outstanding. As people were packing up,
I told Phil that I was looking forward to seeing him on the gig at the
Outpost. He said that he’d see me
there. The band at the Outpost 4/7 was
well into its music--apparently a program of Ornette and Dave Bryant
classics--when I arrived. The lineup
consisted of the original trio Shock Exchange--Dave, John Turner, and Chris
Bowman--and guitarist Eric Hofbauer. It
was a bit strange. The music was so
inspired and authentic I had the feeling that the three of them had engaged
some form of time travel that transferred them mid-sentence at a 1980s gig to
the Outpost 4/7. To enhance the
illusion, several former Willow-era fans were in the audience. The almost superhuman percussion engine
propelled stick bass and electric keys right up off the bandstand. Creativity soared all around. Eric had his solos here and there. But mostly he seemed to be in charge of a
spiky running commentary of metal and sparks.
All in all, a fine harmolodic stew.
But no Phil Grenadier. At some
point it seemed obvious that he would not be on the gig. Initially I was concerned, but I was pretty
sure he would not run into any problems on the short walk from the Lily
Pad. Phil is one of the most in-demand
musicians in the Boston
Stephen Moore, President
Trump’s nominee for the Federal Reserve Board, was “found in contempt of court
in 2012 for failing to pay $340,693.44 in spousal support, child support, and
money owed in a divorce settlement…,” said The Week (4/12, p.32). Also, Stephen Moore owes $75,328 in back
taxes to the IRS. Does the president
know anyone outside his immediate family who is not a scoundrel?...
Update 5/6/19 : As a result of the above information (and other
problems) Moore
Charlie Kohlhase’s fine
Explorers outfit over the years presents him with a sometimes daunting juggling
act. For example, I got my first chance
to catch the scheduled Dylan Jack with the band, replacing the
buried-in-home-purchasing paperwork Curt Newton. Also on the 4/18 Outpost gig Bill Lowe
(trombone only) was a last-minute sub for Josiah Reibstein. By now Daniel Rosenthal and Tony Leva are familiar
faces to Explorers fans. It was a
quintet inversion of the 3/21 quintet at the Outpost with two brass rather than
two reeds and single brass. The
arrangements the Explorers use--original and otherwise--are not simple,
conventional charts. The time moves all
over the place, with an occasional accelerando or decelerando thrown in for
spice. Even the basic AABA form usually
contains some kind of booby trap for uninitiated musicians. But the discussions among musicians before
performance of a tricky chart usually are quite informative and entertaining
for audience members. The results are
convincing performances by musicians trusted by Charlie. As if to emphasize the evolving juggling act,
Charlie brought with him copies of a brand new LP/CD release--Impermanence
(Creative Nation CNM034)--that is essentially retrospective. First, the album is a tribute to three
recently-deceased creative friends--John Tchicai (2012), Lou Kannenstine
(2014), and Garrison Fewell (2015).
Second, all the music on the CD I acquired was performed by two
different Explorers ensembles at studio sessions in 2013. To my understanding approximately half of the
people on those sessions have not performed with the Explorers during the past
six months. But there is continuity. Charlie, Eric Hofbauer, and Curt Newton--who
perform on the CD release--certainly are among current “regulars.” In other words, even in retrospect, there is
continuity. For example, more than half
the compositions performed on the CD are part of the ongoing current Explorers
repertoire. Also there is continuity in
the ongoing “interchangeable components” approach to month-to-month
instrumentation. I use the words
“interchangeable components” as broadly descriptive rather than explicitly
accurate. Bill Lowe is no more a clone
replacement for Messrs. Bishop and Reibstein than either of them would be for
him. If anything, the interchangeable
uniqueness of musicians who wear the metaphoric pith helmets is what
makes the Explorer charts morph so exquisitely on each gig. The compositions always are recognizable (to
fans who know the material), and yet the specific set of musicians who show up
at the Lily Pad or the Outpost puts its stamp on that performance. Which stamp is best? When Tony and Dylan spend the night sharing,
twisting, and pushing each other (and the whole group), that’s the best
bass-drum Explorer team. And next time I
will be knocked out by perhaps two other interchangeably unique musicians
tackling the bass and the drums. Maybe
that’s the true nature of the Explorers: Charlie’s genius in discovering people
who get
it and can make it their own.
Just a few days after this fine gig there was more cause for
celebration. Explorer regular Eric
Hofbauer was absent from this gig, but no doubt he and wife Elizabeth were busy
making space for daughter Ondine Elizabeth who arrived 4/22...
Louis Armstrong is the
greatest musician of the twentieth century.
Because I spent my youth as a jazz fan in the 1940s and 1950s, I felt a
special connection with the major musicians of that time. Thelonious Monk was and remains my favorite
musician. As I grew into adulthood I
became incensed that newspapers and magazines so often misspelled the man’s
first name, most commonly as “Thelonius.”
For example, Ludwig van Beethoven’s last name is potentially just as
confusing to an English-speaking person as Thelonious, but it never is
misspelled. During the early 1990s I
decided to document each instance of running into a misspelling of the jazz
master’s first name. There were many
more instances than I expected, and so I stopped building the list after about
year and half. Almost as troubling as
the length of the list is how common it was for jazz journalists and jazz
publications such as Downbeat to make those gaffs. In any event, because I trust the words of
musicians more than I do critics (with a few exceptions), I seldom have a
chance to bump into the misspellings.
However, as luck would have it, recently I acquired a copy of the
recording of Monk as a guest with the Jazz Messengers in 1957. It is the Japanese CD reissue with the three
alternate takes added. Because the
original liner notes reproduced on the back of the CD are near impossible to
read, I thought I’d look online for the original liner notes or the ones by Nat
Hentoff. I did find many comments about
the recording online. One writeup in
particular by Doug Ramsey caught my eye.
It was published by JazzTimes in 1999. The headline for the article misspells the
pianist’s first name twice: “Art Blakey/Thelonius Monk:
Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers with Thelonius Monk.” Knowing how writers and editors work, I
suspect that Mr. Ramsey handed in his copy and an editor came up with the
insulting headline. Nevertheless, the
article was published almost two decades ago and at some point was posted
online by the publication (without editing again?). I realize that this concern is relatively
minor compared to the fact that politically we are trapped in an elevator and
the building is on fire. But, we who
revel in the power of art--and those people who raise important aesthetic and
cultural questions and ideas through art--need to demand more respect for art
and artists from the people and institutions that lay claim to supporting the
arts. At least that…
Lightning did strike
twice. Well, almost. Jeb Bishop, who did not make the 2/23 gig,
replaced the drummer on 4/27. Everyone
else--leader Kit Demos, Charlie Kohlhase, and Pandelis Karayorgis--was back for
a transformation of the 2/23 quartet into a drummerless one. The only other change was that Kit brought
along both bass and electronics. In this
Journal
I raved about the 2/23 gig. I almost
feel that I have nowhere to go in trying to write about the 4/27 gig at the
Outpost. When a performance warrants
superlatives (as the 2/23 event did) it does not leave much room for
qualitative assessment when the subsequent gig leaves the former in the
dust. It did, from the first note to the
last. The band never touched terra
firma. Every note from every instrument
for every second of the evening was cause for wonder. But there was more than constant excellence
in detail. Each improvised work was
completely different conceptually and in terms of surface impact. When I entered the Outpost 4/27 Kit, Charlie,
and Pandelis were setting up. I noticed
that Kit looked like he had driven all night and all day from somewhere west of
Cleveland Maine California
This month the Wall
Street Journal noted that “the FCC has fined robocallers $208.4 million
since 2015 but has only collected $6,790.00.”
Apparently the FTC is no better than the FCC as a crime buster. The WSJ tells us that the FTC has been
awarded $1.5 billion through court judgments “involving civil penalties for
robocalls since 2004 but has collected just… $121 million.” Maybe the people in those agencies should
have the difference taken from their salaries…
The Aardvark Jazz Orchestra
performances at MIT’s Kresge Auditorium are events that justifiably have been
anticipated with enthusiasm for decades.
Often there is a guest of note with the ensemble; always there is music
of pointed political significance; and the loyal and talented musicians nail
the music. The 4/6 gig at Kresge had all
three components in solid form.
Everything one could ask for was there--except a functional sound
system. Although there have been sound
system problems with jazz gigs at Kresge before, it is the only time in my many
experiences in that fine venue in which the sound system was frustratingly
ineffective for basically the entire evening.
The audience could hear the vocals, solo instruments not requiring mics
to be heard (such as tenor trombones and guitar), and the full ensemble. Everything else was in serious trouble or
completely inaudible. It was not merely
a matter of volume balance but also equalization. For example, if there were no sounds from the
stage or audience, we could hear Mark Harvey’s announcements. They were muffled rather than crisp, but
decipherable. On the other hand, it was
impossible to hear what the music director was saying during any audience
applause. The music began with Harvey
According to
WashingtonMonthly.com, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is a Fox TV
superstar. I say that with tongue in
cheek, of course. The young House attack
dog (I say that with admiration) is the focus of scrutiny by Fox News and Fox
Business to appease all the Trumpsters who hate her. Fox mentioned her name “every single day
between February 25 and April 7 for a total of 3,181 times” an average of 75
times per day. I wonder if anyone at Fox
is considering whether all that negative coverage might backfire. After all, many Trump worshippers are not
stupid. They merely are very hopeful but
confused. Even though she is presented
in as poor a light as Fox can provide, some Trump fans eventually are likely to
discover that Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is very smart, articulate, and
passionate about helping people in the middle and lower parts of the economic ladder--a
big chunk of Trumpsters…
The Steve Lantner Trio is the
essential core of all the different Steve Lantner ensembles that have performed
at the Outpost in recent years. Steve,
Allan Chase, and Luther Gray show up every month because it is unthinkable that
they wouldn’t. But this year the
continued activity of one of Boston Montreal
Iain McGilchrist probably has
sifted through more studies about the functions of the right and left
hemispheres of the brain than any other scientist. His research and conclusions while seeming
superficially outrageous have garnered a good deal of support of the scientific
community. He claims that the functions
of the brain’s hemispheres are for the most part distinct. More important, he claims that those
functions are mutually essential for effective brain function. In other words, if you block or impair the
functions of one hemisphere, the other hemisphere does not function
properly. Fine. But there’s more. Perhaps too simply stated here, a variety of
factors has caused the left hemisphere to become more and more dominant in the
lives of contemporary humans. That is
not good. The left hemisphere (among
other functions) gives us the focus to pounce effectively when it is time to go
in for the kill. That focus is essential
in some circumstances. On the other hand,
one of the key strengths of the right hemisphere is that it provides
context. For example, it is essential
for a hunter to attack a deer or other food source with great focus. But ignoring the context--e.g., the fact that
a pride of lions is focussed on attacking the same deer--could prove fatal for
the hunter. McGilchrist claims that we
in our cozy Western civilization have been ceding more and more of our
authority to our left hemispheres. The
results for our political leaders and the voting booths, he claims, are very
disturbing. If we look at recent U.S. Iraq Middle East history and status
(i.e., context). The result is that your
great great great grandchildren will be paying the price for a left-brain
course of action. Then, in spite of
negative polls, the left hemisphere voters chose to re-elect the man who led us
to the disaster. (“You can’t change
horses in mid-stream.”) The problem is
bi-partisan. After one disaster, the U.S.
The first set opened with a
barely audible simple line featuring mute.
The line slowly was repeated, gradually increasing in volume. It became louder, more complex, and
raucous. Components (including mute)
were removed as the line was replaced with long tones with a variety of
embellishments. Eventually the piece was
completed as the trumpet was reassembled including mute, and the opening line
returned. The line was repeated,
gradually becoming quieter, until the last sound, an emphatic gasp of a
breath. Depending on your perspective
(or sense of humor), Nate Wooley had just set the table or the bar for Ken
Vandermark and his reeds--Bb clarinet, tenor sax, and baritone sax. By way of introduction, Ken explained that
witnessing local and visiting giants in such haunts as Charlie’s Tap, Lulu
White’s, and the Willow U.S. Boston Memphis New Orleans Watertown
It may be too early to refer
to the improvements as a miracle, but The Week reports the government in Quito Ecuador Ecuador
The members of the quartet are jazz historians. Some of their knowledge is from books and
records. Some is from music they have
witnessed or from the words of musicians now passed on. But the passion about the music and its
creation was obvious onstage before the first notes were played, during
setup. Names and dates and “authentic”
changes or melodies were bandied about as in a volleyball warmup. The Allan Chase Quartet--Allan, Rich
Greenblatt, Gregory Ryan, and John Ramsay--came together as a special unit to
perform music of the jazz masters from 1947 to the mid-1950s and subversively
into the 1960s. Before the event I had
assumed Rich Greenblatt was on the gig simply for the fact that melodic percussion
is used too infrequently on jazz gigs these days and he is a highly regarded
veteran on the vibes. Good reasons, but
Allan was way ahead of me. The period of jazz investigated 4/2 at the Lily Pad
was exactly the time in which the dominance of Lionel Hampton was being
challenged by Milt Jackson and his post-swing aesthetics. What better way instrumentally to evoke the
period than having Mr. Greenblatt on the gig?
Gregory Ryan is one of those rarities, a high-quality jazz bassist who
moves from New York City Boston Boston Tunisia
In previous Journal entries I have written about
Musicians Union influence in the creation of ridiculous barriers to visiting
musicians who attempt to obtain temporary work visas in the U.S.
March
In spite of juggling
responsibilities in an unusually busy life, Glynis Lomon almost never is late
for a gig. But that odd occurrence took
place 3/16 at the Outpost as four Leap of Faith band mates waited at eight p.m. for her to show up. Someone in the group suggested starting
without her and playing “Waiting for Glynis” until she showed up. Elsewhere from the stage was the echo,
“Waiting for Godot.” And play they
did. Dave Peck (AKA PEK), Yuri Zbitnov,
Jim Warshauer, and Eric Dahlman dove into the music, a beautiful few minutes of
improvised music until everyone looked to the back of the room to see Glynis
applauding and cheering in appreciation.
Soon the big clock at the back of the room was set to sixty minutes, and
the group was filling the space with a fine array of reeds and percussion (PEK
and Jim), strings, a bow, and Aquasonic (Glynis), brass and an array of “toys”
(Eric), and brand new percussion (Yuri).
Yes, brand new percussion. This
seems to be the week for new instruments for very happy musicians Junko
Fujiwara and Yuri Zbitnov. In Yuri’s
case the instrument is new in a number of ways.
It was custom made for him in Austria
It probably will not be a
shock to anyone reading this Journal to discover that a recent Stanford University America
Near the end of the evening
at the Outpost Charlie Kohlhase paused to talk about his friend and mentor,
John Tchicai. Recently Charlie had a
chance to hear for the first time a cassette of a 1983 solo Tchicai performance
in Hiroshima Denmark
Early this month I noticed
two big changes in Inman Square Vellucci Plaza Vellucci
Plaza Cambridge Street Hampshire Street Cambridge Street Vellucci Plaza Hampshire Street Inman Square Somerville Vellucci
Plaza Inman Square Inman Square Inman Square Inman Square London Inman Square Save Inman Square
One of the inadvertent
misconceptions that may be created by this Journal over the years is that
venues such as the Lily Pad, Third Life Studio, and the Outpost are jazz
venues. They certainly have offered some
fine jazz performances, but they also present poetry, classical music, dance,
and all variety of performance art. This
Journal
focusses on jazz performance, but other things also happen at these
places. A good case in point is the
double bill 3/15 at the Outpost, a non-jazz duo and free jazz quintet. The booking presented an informative
contrast. Wayfaring (think “wayfaring stranger”)
might be described as a folk cabaret duo featuring the acoustic bass and voice
of Katie Ernst and clarinets of James Falzone.
The vocals were handled by Ms. Ernst with one vocal offering from Mr.
Falzone. Aside from one instrumental
solo statement in tribute to John Carter (one of the three great influences on
post-Ayler clarinetists, the other two being Messrs. Russell and Giuffre),
there was little hint of James Falzone’s jazz roots. The music performed by the duo adhered to the
cabaret norms of faithful and consistent performance of well-crafted (at best)
arrangements of songs. In this case the
folk-oriented material featured deceptively “simple” lines and phrases
articulating subjects dealing with the substantial weight of life. They are very good at what they do
effortlessly and with carefully-measured and effective doses of theater. Unprepared jazz fans may have been
disappointed, but those who paid attention may have appreciated the
accomplishment. Those who showed up in
the audience specifically to catch the duo may have been as disappointed in the
second set as the “jazz snobs” were with the first set. Jeb Bishop’s quintet (minus the violin from
the scheduled sextet) was a reunion of completely free musicians who according
to the group’s trumpeter had not played as a unit in more than a year. The ensemble--Jeb Bishop, Forbes Graham,
Junko Fujiwara, Brittany Karlson, and Andria Nicodemou--are all fine musicians
and adept improvisors. They performed
two “identical” improvisations at a very high level. Individual statements were fine and
interactive “conversations” may have been even better. But I use the term “identical” only for
effect rather than as an explicit description.
When you have so many musicians of such terrific ability offer one fine
improvisation, it makes no sense for them to rework the same pace, dynamics,
themes, and arc in the second improvisation.
I don’t think what happened in the second improvisation was a conscious
decision on anyone’s part, but going somewhere else in the second offering of
the set should have been someone’s decision.
Please do not misunderstand me; the detail of the music within the
larger context was quite fine. Brittany
Karlson has a lot of technical resources, and I particularly liked the sonic
conversations she had with Junko. But
considering that the ensemble has no percussionist, perhaps she could take
advantage of her potential to evoke pulse, staccato energy, or some other
instrumental resource to take the music someplace else. It has been quite fine to witness the growth
and evolution of the work of the talented and creative Andria Nicodemou over
time. Her chops and energy always have
been ear-catching, but it is her work during the past year or so that has been
most impressive. To state it simply, she
has exhibited that too rare capacity to make the other people around
better. She at least attempted to do
that 3/15, first with one of her signature explosive power runs in which the
notes explode off the instrument almost as visible metal shards. The result was effective but brief. Then, seeing that something more sustained
was needed (I’m speculating here, of course), Andria
According to Vox.com early
this month, the FDIC reported that banks in the U.S. U.S.
One
of the great things about the Makanda Project is that the band serves the
community of the ensemble’s namesake, Makanda Ken McIntyre, with several free
concerts each year. Every once in a
while music director/arranger John Kordalewski brings the band uptown so uninitiated
Bostonians can get a taste. Thanks to
help from Yoron Israel Berklee Performance
Center Caribbean time gave everyone a chance to “dance.” And the volume balance between percussion and
horns really hit its stride. The
simultaneous time-keeping and improvisation--as well as drum breaks--was the lift-the-bandstand
element of that piece. There was very
effective use of vibes and marimba on “Playtime.” The odd thing about the arrangement for me
was the lack of participation on those instruments from Thurman Barker. Maybe he no longer plays melodic percussion. “Sphere” may or may not be a reference to
Monk, according to pianist/leader Kordalewski, but it certainly was a fun
ride. The percussion trio set a 5 ground
for the rest of the band that seemed to be playing in 4/4. Maybe they met at 20. But I’m not sure. I should ask one of the band members. The evening closed with the blues-oriented
“You Know What?,” a fine piece that gave almost everyone a solid opportunity to
solo. Not surprising, with jazz
musicians of this caliber, the solos were quite fine all night long. The only obvious flaw of the performance was
the series of false endings of “You Know What?,” the evening’s final
offering. Not a great device, and it
tended to make the work seem to be too long.
But this evening of such fine music certainly was not too long. The Makanda Project always is a great
pleasure. At the end of the evening John
Kordalewski made special note of Thurman Barker, stating that he hoped the
percussionist would play with the band again.
That return may well happen.
After all, Thurman Barker has some pretty significant Boston Boston
Too many politicians on
either side of the aisle apparently fail to understand that the major economic
problem for the average American is not unemployment, which has been remarkably
low since the last years of the Obama administration. The problem is lousy wages and the increasing
income gap between the rich and the bottom half of the economic spectrum. As The Week (3/8, p.16) notes,
“Employee pay and benefits fell to 52.7 percent of the nation’s economic output
during the third quarter last year--down from 57 percent in 2001. If the workers’ share were still 57 percent,
they would have $800 billion more in their pockets, or $5,100 more per
worker.” To understand how bad things
are, you may remember that things were not great for the average worker in the
third quarter of 2001. Increasing the
average worker’s salary today by $5,100 would serve merely to give him a salary
as bad as it was in 2001. In other
words, the income gap is terrible and getting worse…
Dave Bryant is a master of
keyboards. (Someday I may have the
pleasure of witnessing him at the harpsichord.
Who knows?) But I most relish his
work at the acoustic piano. There is
something especially organic about that experience. I was in luck 3/12 when he showed up at the
Outpost with his Secret Handshake Trio.
Dave and partners Jacob William and Eric Hofbauer pursued everything from
“One for My Baby” to Ornette and Bryant originals. Through it all we heard Dave bring out
delicate sonics, lightning single-note runs, and stunningly “melodic”
clusters. The three of them marvelously
blurred the line between composition and improvisation. Even though people in the audience were fans
and knew all the material, the three of them were so astute and comfortable
with each other that one of the great joys of the evening was hearing the
familiar made seductively unfamiliar. It
should be noted that for the first time in my experience I saw Jacob perform
using his custom-made stick bass. It is
probably the most convincing (in comparison to an acoustic bass) stick I’ve
ever heard. Nice. As the due date approaches (first half of
May?), father-to-be Eric is really getting into the upcoming challenges. The guy really lights up when he talks about
the event. Ain’t new life grand! Even though Jacob will be traveling a lot
during the next few months, it sure would be fine to be able to catch the
Secret Handshake redux in the not-too-distant future…
NPR.org reports this month
that green spaces are good for you--everything from hikes in the White Mountains to walks in a city pocket park. Researchers at Aarhus University in Denmark
found that children “who grow up with greener surroundings, even just a city
street near a park, have a significantly lower risk of developing mental
illnesses later in life.” Considering
how off-the-rails I sometimes am these days, I can’t help wondering what
terrible things childhood walks with my mother in Prospect Park University of Richmond Boston Public Garden
Eric Rosenthal’s
Point01Percent series at the Lily Pad continues to be one of the most important
ongoing music arts events in the Boston Cambridge Massachusetts Boston
According to Bloomberg.com
the U.S.
The Metro, a free daily publication found in most fairly large
cities in the U.S. ,
has a Boston
edition. Understandably, the paper gave
a good deal of coverage to the success of the Patriots in the Super Bowl. On 2/5, the day of the downtown parade,
contributor Jimmy Toscano wrote an article (p. 9) about the locals, stating
that the Patriots dynasty is the “most impressive in the history of
sports.” It’s the kind of offering that
produces loud arguments in sports bars.
About two-thirds of the way down the first column of the article, there
was a sentence that included an eye-catching typo. The significant thing about it is that the
sentence with the typo made more sense than if there had been no typo. In making his case for the greatness of the
Patriots, Toscano and his typo light up his contention with a larger NFL
observation: “In a league designed to create parody and give more teams a shot
at the title, the Patriots have won 33% of Super Bowls since 2001…” I doubt that Roger Goodell would understand…
In the post-Ayler era of jazz in surviving/thriving centers
for the music we fans are spoiled for a variety of reasons, among them the
quality of new music (as opposed to most of the quality of the current
straight-ahead stuff) and the seriousness of audiences. A lot of fans and even musicians (accustomed
to quiet and rapt audiences at hangouts such as The Stone in New York or the Outpost here) are skeptical
whenever I bring up the fact that audiences for new jazz today may be smaller
than at mid-century but are far more serious listeners than their
ancestors. If you think I’m
exaggerating, pick up a recording of one of those early 1950s live gigs--before
the advent of tight micing--and listen to the clinking glasses, ringing cash
registers, chatter, and incongruous laughter taking place in front of the
stage. Yes, there always have been
serious listeners at clubs and dance halls, but a vast majority of those fans
were other musicians dropping by to see where the music was going. And their numbers were few. Today the numbers still are few, but people
looking for sonic wallpaper do not show up.
Thankfully. Therefore my
experience with a couple guys chattering in back of me at the Lily Pad 2/10 was
particularly annoying, perhaps to some extent because I was not sure how to
handle it. I tried giving them the “Hey,
be considerate of the rest of us” look.
Nothing. I suspected that
alternatives probably would have resulted in even greater interference with the
music. I did enjoy the music provided by
Melissa Kassel, Tom Zicarelli, Phil Grenadier, Bruce Gertz, and Gary Fieldman,
but at times I strained my auditory system to catch it all. Fortunately the loud talking duo did not hang
around for the second set. But the
incident caused me to think about the problem and why it might occur with this
band. I’m not sure, but I think it might
have something to do with the fact that the band’s music includes several
“older music” hooks, such as chord changes.
On most gigs the band even includes a few jazz standards throughout the
evening (although not on 2/10). Of
course, that’s not a slam at the music.
There is nothing wrong with straight-ahead jazz, except for how poorly
it is played by most bands these days.
My complaint is that the “conventional” elements of the band’s music
tend to bring out good-sized audiences and--unfortunately--a few people in need
of sonic wallpaper. The problem has
occurred before with this band over the years, even as far back as gigs in the
late 1990s at Sandrina's in Somerville ,
but rarely. The strength of the band is
how far it pushes the jazz conventions into challenging sonics. Superficially it brings to mind some sort of
fantasy amalgam of the mature Abbey Lincoln ensembles and Joe Maneri’s composed
microtonal vocal works. It is a terrific
combination of story-telling--both verbal and melodic--and ear-stretching
music. All band members participate
during solos and during instrumental polyphony/heterophony. On 2/10 Melissa was pushing the band as a unit
farther in that direction. At times
there were unison voices and at others each band member was taking an
independent (but contextually coherent) improvisation. Something like early polyphonic jazz before
Louis changed everything and including a nod to Ornette’s harmolodics. It’s that kind of band--telepathic,
supportive, and superbly creative. I
show up for the sonic challenge and a few show up for the wallpaper. Maybe the best part is that most people who
show up seem to like the music…
The Cambridge City Mothers are so stupid that, if someone
convinced them global warming is caused by human activity, they would slaughter
everyone living in that city. I use the
term City
Mothers with a tip of the hat to “MF” of street slang and recognition
that the city’s power brokers at least feign support for feminist causes. But here I will try to keep my focus on the
city’s misguided war on automobiles and some implications. In previous issues of this Journal
(e.g., see the September 2017 issue) I have complained that the elected
officials of Cambridge
hate automobiles. I was not serious, of
course. No sane person would want to
eliminate a necessary means of transportation from any town or city. I used what I thought was hyperbole to get my
point across. Because I do not live in Cambridge , I do not keep
up with that city’s politics. But I saw
Adam Vaccaro’s “Cambridge
wanted a big drop in car ownership by 2020.
That hasn’t exactly happened” in the Boston Globe (2/18/19 ) and found out that
my hyperbole was fact and was a city mission since at least 2014. The article, mostly supportive of the Cambridge policies,
claims that the city “took up the anticar cause decades ago to oppose a
proposed interstate highway through the heart of Central Square …” I had misinterpreted the anticar policies,
believing that removing street parking spaces to make room for bicycle trails,
for example, was merely an inept attempt at creating safer roads for
bicyclists. As Adam Vaccaro points out,
“the target, set in 2014, was to lower ownership to about 0.8 cars per
household…” Because the city leaders
apparently do not understand the problem--the day-to-day clogging of
transportation routes and environmental damage--they put
in place laws that make owning and using an automobile as prohibitive as
possible. It may be an easy stroke of
the pen, but it does not solve the problem and it creates new problems. Fixing the transportation mess and cleaning
the environment are challenging problems that require local and state governments
to implement unpopular but effective policies, policies that involve a lot more
than passing laws that restrict behavior without a compensatory payoff for the
individual citizens. I interject here
that I do not like to drive a car. I
never have been enamored of “the road.”
And since the lead-up to the last presidential election through this
very moment, I am genuinely frightened to drive anywhere. I’m assuming that the political stresses for
both pro- and anti-Trump drivers cause them to do insane things on public
roads. And drivers using cell phones
only make the situation worse. I would
love to abandon my car. But I can’t. I live in the suburbs and would be trapped at
home without a car. If I lived in
downtown Boston
or Manhattan , I
gladly would get rid of my car. Not so
for suburbia or Cambridge . There is not functional mass transit in those
places as there is in Boston
or Manhattan
(or most of New York City
for that matter). When I say “functional
mass transit” I am referring to rail transport.
New York
has (in my years of experience) an effective subway system. In most cases I can get where I am going
faster via subway than by taking a cab.
As we locals know, the MBTA subway inside Rte. 128 is not an effective
subway system. It is better than taking
a cab (unless you live in a hotel) or buses, but incompetence in design and
operation make the subway system a necessary evil rather than the fine public
service it should be. The problems with
the system are so numerous and interconnected that they would require me to
write a separate article. The fact that
the MBTA subway is superior to all the other local public transport systems is
an indication of how bad all the other local transit options are. Given that I live in the suburbs means that I
need to drive for a half hour or more to get to a subway station to get into Boston or Cambridge . I eat and attend music performances in Inman Square at
least twice per week. The only
functional alternative to driving there for me is to take the “T” to Central Square and
walk. In other words, if the City
Mothers have their way and remove all parking in the Inman Square area, I will miss all the
great gigs in that part of Cambridge . I will not walk from Central Square to Inman Square . I realize what I am describing sounds
selfish. But I believe it is a very real
and personal way to describe at least part of the problem created by City
Mothers incompetence. Instead of making Cambridge a city that is
so well run and uses its political clout so effectively that anyone living
there would get rid of his or her car because it is not necessary to take
advantage of the city’s geographically diverse resources, the City Mothers
penalize citizens who seek functional
mobility. The decision-makers seem to be
the same people who run the “T,” the ones who think that raising parking rates
is the way to reduce lot overcrowding when there is no parking option to such
locales as Alewife and Riverside . Oddly, the Adam Vaccaro article shines light
on the most productive solutions to the problem. He quotes Gina Fiandaca, Boston ’s transportation commissioner, as
saying “I’m not sure that’s the role of the city, to restrict car ownership, as
much as it is to create an environment where people aren’t reliant on a car.” Wow.
Intelligent insight. Further, the
article considers the experience of Pittsburgh
chief resilience officer Grant Ervin who claims that “car ownership rates
mostly serve as a useful indicator of whether the city is achieving broader
goals, such as vastly increasing transit ridership.” Vaccaro quotes Ervin to conclude the article,
“There would be a host of factors that would go into a number like that--people
reducing the number of cars they own because there are other valid options
available.” In other words, if
government officials are willing to think through the problem and do the hard
work involved in implementing functional solutions, then the problem can be
dealt with effectively. All Cambridge needs is
replacement of the City Mothers with competent officials from other cities…
The first of two February Eric Rosenthal creative music
series events opened 2/13 with a performance by Cutout, a quintet that performs
every month in Inman Square . The band--Jeb Bishop, Jorrit Dijkstra,
Pandelis Karayorgis, Nate McBride, and Luther Gray--is in top form. In previous editions of this Journal
I have discussed how good the quintet is and how fine all the contributions of
band members are. I will skip such
comments here to avoid redundancy.
However, there are observations about the Lily Pad performance on 2/13
that may be useful. The most important
point to make is that the band continues to operate at a very high level. It has been and continues to be part of a
small group of world-class post-Ayler ensembles working in the Boston area.
One of the great challenges for band leaders since the earliest days of
jazz is preventing ensemble fatigue.
Avoiding or overcoming that fatigue is one of the great achievements of
men such as Duke Ellington and Art Blakey.
One of the keys to that success is pushing the skills of band members
with the challenge of new material.
Ellington (and other band members, most notably Billy Strayhorn) wrote
charts for the band on an almost daily basis.
Blakey typically had musicians in his band write charts and gave someone
in the band music director responsibilities.
The result is that each band member in those ensembles had to be alert
and involved. Therefore, a major reason
Cutout has grown and sustained its level of performance over the past several
months (offering its first performance 9/20/17 at the Lily Pad) is that by necessity band members
created and performed original new material.
Now the band is at a critical moment.
It has a functional book, people know how to read/interpret the charts,
and the musicians have been working together long enough that interpersonal
communication on and off the bandstand is operating at a high level. In other words, this is the perfect time for
ensemble fatigue to set in. The happy
news is that I saw no evidence of ensemble fatigue 2/13. They handled the charts--tricky turns and
leaps included--with ease. But, more
important, each musician tackled the music with enthusiasm and intensity. It had the kind of focus and commitment that
you expect at a peak moment. If that
wasn’t enough, there was another bit of evidence that at least for now the band
is on a tear. Quick question: What is
one of the best ways to find out if a band is entering the realm of ensemble
fatigue? I’ll wait… Good guess!
Yes, older charts. If a band is
going to fall asleep, it is most likely to happen while attempting to play one
of the older pieces in the book. I can
remember Herb Pomeroy telling me that each chart has a lifetime. He claimed that his band would play a
long-time successful piece on a gig and, because of the lack-luster
performance, Herb would remove the chart from the book. Cutout had its chances to sleepwalk 2/13 but
didn’t. In fact, “Jowls,” a seasoned
Luther Gray flag-waver, closed out the evening with the best performance of a
superb set of music. The second set of
three consisted of an improvising trio--Andrew Neuman, Damon Smith, and
curator/percussionist Eric Rosenthal--that was something of a good-fortune
pickup band. I’ve never caught the three
musicians in this configuration before.
In any case, a re-match would be a great idea. Andrew Neuman has pursued the electronic muse
since Ben Franklin’s original experiments.
Therefore, he shows up prepared--when the set starts, the equipment and
the musician are ready. No mid-set stops
and starts or dead spots. And over that
span of time Andrew Neuman did not waste his time aesthetically. He’s one of those special
musicians--electronics or otherwise--that you can drop into any improvising
ensemble with predictable results. Top
shelf creative music. If that was not
enough, two improvising pillars joined him onstage. I cannot think of thirty seconds of even mild
disappointment in all the gigs I’ve witnessed Damon Smith participate in. Every string selection, choice of toy, or
arco statement is on target. And always
without empty show. He invariably makes
the music better. Normally when the
producer of a gig walks on stage it is time to groan. When Eric Rosenthal sits at the kit, it is
time for happy anticipation. In other
words, the deck for the second set of the evening 2/13 was stacked. With three such fine sets of ears, how could
anything go wrong? Well, it didn’t. The music was every bit as good as one would
hope for. But, of course, you had to be
there to witness just how good it was.
Yes, the ears were working all the time.
The solos were superb, as were the duos.
And most of the time we in the audience were treated to a joyous
trialogue. There are many different
kinds of music and as many different ways to experience music. The second set was one of sheer joy. I’m guessing that I was not the only person
in the audience who felt honored to be invited to the party. Recently Forbes Graham told me that bassist
Damon Smith will be taking advantage of an opportunity in St. Louis , likely in June. It always is positive to find out that there
is happy news for a good person. On the
other hand, I confess selfishly I am not completely upbeat about Damon’s departure. In the relatively brief time he has lived and
performed in the Boston
area Damon has been nothing but a force for good on the new music scene,
creating ensemble opportunities and offering such a fine model of what an
exemplary performing artist can be. I
wish him the best, and I hope that the good people of St. Louis will appreciate what a gift they
are receiving. The third set of the
event featured Eric Rosenthal at the kit in a duo with Jorrit Dijkstra who left
all his fine music in the first set behind.
He chose to tackle the Lyricon and lost…
A fortunate step backward for Big Brother occurred recently
when Amazon shareholders told Jeff Bezos to stop selling face recognition
software (i.e., Rekognition) to the government. According to The
Week (2/1. p. 19), “five shareholder groups with $1.32 billion worth of
Amazon stock filed a resolution to pause sales of the technology… until Amazon
can prove that it is ‘effectively restricting the use of Rekognition to protect
privacy and civil rights.’” The shareholders
plan to try to pass the resolution at the shareholders meeting this coming
summer…
One of the great
gifts to fans of improvised music is Kit Demos’ Dark Matter Series of monthly
performances at the Outpost. There are a
few musicians who show up to play with some frequency, but Kit tends to put
these musicians in the company of others who seldom or never perform
together. Intentionally it is something
of a crapshoot. Sometimes the chemistry
and/or aesthetics do not work. But, when
it works, the results are quite fine.
Such was the case 2/23. The
scheduled lineup consisted of Kit, Pandelis Karayorgis, Jeb Bishop, and Max
Goldman. Even though Pandelis and Jeb
had a solid history of working together, the output of the whole quartet was
unpredictable. Add to that the fact that
a scheduling mishap meant Kit had to dig up a replacement for the
trombonist. All of us got lucky in that
the trade was an icon for an icon. Charlie
Kohlhase brought his alto and baritone saxes.
The music began with a series of quartet adventures and continued with a
fine single set of duo, trio, and quartet sonics. I’m unfamiliar with the work of Max Goldman,
but I get the feeling that he has a lot of experience playing in rock bands
with guitars dialed into eleven. The
only problem I found in his playing was his judgment regarding balance. There were times when Charlie’s horn--no more
than three feet in front of me--was inaudible.
And yet there was fine balance in the early Max-Charlie duo, one of the
highlights of the evening. Other than
the balance problem, the drummer’s ears were quite fine with exemplary
reciprocal performance decisions.
Charlie’s playing is steeped in the jazz tradition. He’s in the process of teaching his big band
students at Longy to play charts going back to the early swing era. And he’s comfortable playing post-Ayler
music, charted or totally free. Because
he loves to write and loves to perform the compositions of post-Ayler giants,
we fans do not experience much free playing in his Explorers ensembles (fine as
those groups are). So witnessing
Charlie’s free narratives and “editing” of the work of other musicians 2/23 was
a rare treat. Over the years Pandelis
has developed a reputation as a superb arranger and brilliant improvisor within
those contexts. Justifiably so. But there was a time when he decided to
pursue the free side of post-Ayler music and got it under his belt faster than
any experienced chord-centered musician I’ve ever witnessed. It was an extraordinary leap. I have missed that side of his playing. But here I was 2/23 witnessing the free Pandelis
Karayorgis unleashed. Just
wonderful. There was a stretch near the
end of the evening where the word “obsessed” comes to mind to describe what I
witnessed. A blur of hands produced
music of such complexity and raw beauty that even the dog in the audience must
have held its breath. Kit is a wonderful
mix-master, offering such solid experiments each month. But he’s also one of my favorite musicians,
someone who would be famous in a world in which critics and fans were something
more than blind and deaf. His electronic
pursuits always are surprising and engaging, even in those rare instances when
they fail. He stuck with the acoustic
bass all evening 2/23, offering fine arco and mostly provocative, prodding
pizzicato. I know of no investigative
bassist who is better than Kit. You can
tell that he spends a lot of time finding out the sonic possibilities of the
instrument. But he is spare in his use
of those resources. In other words, he
plugs in his discoveries only when he knows they will contribute to the music
in a significant way. I think I saw him
employ non-traditional techniques only twice during the whole set. All substance. He’s a treasure. All in all, Kit brought a terrific evening of
music to the Outpost 2/23. Maybe we will
be lucky enough during 2019 to witness Kit’s attempt to see lightning strike
twice…
At a time when commentators and politicians across the
political spectrum accuse a variety of media outlets of “fake news,” it is good
to see examples of blatantly objective news reporting. Recently the Wall Street Journal, one
of Donald Trump’s staunchest supporters, but once again committed to real news,
reported that Michael Cohen tried to rig the list of CNBC’s 2014 top 100
business leaders. Trump’s attorney,
according to the WJS, paid a tech company to rig the online vote used to
establish the field of finalists. “When
Trump still didn’t make the final list, Cohen told CNBC that it would be sued,”
and Trump complained directly to network executives. In light of the fact that the WJS
probably will continue to support Trump, the story about the rigging is a good
example of objective journalism. Now, if
the directors of the paper’s editorial policy would read the paper’s day-to-day
news reporting, maybe some shift in editorial position might occur. But I doubt it…
The first quarter 2019 issue of Scout Cambridge (p.26)
includes Lilly Milman’s “Step into the World of the Lylypad Mural,” a feature
about artist Dan Masi’s mural in the popular Inman Square venue. It is interesting to read about his working
nights, sleeping days, and loving it. He
claims that being at the gallery for shows is “amusing, but hanging out here
all night, playing my own music, with absolutely nobody around, and watching
the sun come up on my way home is my most fond memory of this place.” One thing that never struck me about the
mural is that, according to Masi, it is a tribute to Goya. Now that I read the article I can see some
links visually. Thinking it over, I wish
he had been inspired to offer large depictions of the two versions of The
Maja for the facing walls of the place.
But all of us have different understandings of “magic.” In considering Inman Square gentrification and shuttered
stores, the artist is happy that the Lily Pad does not face quite the same
economic stress that other Inman
Square places have to deal with. He says, “I know that I can spend 260 hours
over six months working on this, and it’s not going to turn into a Starbucks
next week.” And that’s a plus for all of
us…
Over the decades of Steve Lantner’s ensembles--everything
from solo to beyond a half dozen in size--have proven to be worth a good
listen. But there is something special
within that instrumental spectrum--perhaps charismatic--about his quartets and
quintets of recent years. There is no
better example than the quintet that showed up 2/26 at the Outpost. Steve,
Forbes Graham, Allan Chase, Joe Morris, and Luther Gray are musicians of veteran
experience who perform at the highest level.
But there is a connection among these musicians on and off the stage
that is unusual. Through body language,
words, and sonics we audience members find ourselves in the presence of family,
brothers. The benevolent kind of family
relationship. A discussion onstage
before the music started resulted in musician consensus that it had been a year
and a half since this five had played together.
But there were no signs of rust.
Taking the pensive opening few moments as a sign of sluggishness would
have been a mistake. At the beginning of
the evening and throughout there was a lot of fully absorbed listening among
band members. Silent performance is
what I think of when musicians listen in such a focussed way during performance
of music this good. No one soaked up the
solos on the bandstand more than the non-soloists. When Luther is soloing, you cannot help but
be amazed. But you cannot help taking a
peek at Allan or Forbes or others silently playing along with him. The whole experience is infectious. These men genuinely love to hear each other
perform and have no hesitation to hesitate while they do nothing but hear. The evening consisted of two full sets of one
group improvisation each. The length of
each piece offered plenty of opportunities for solos and group interaction,
often with plenty of energy. By this
time in the evolution of the band I would not be surprised if each musician had
his own set of groupies. If so, they all
were happy 2/26. Although there were
some spontaneous unison riffs by the two horns on occasion (just for the simple
joy of being “together” no doubt), one of the most striking things about the
band is the individuality of the voices.
When it is time for any band member to solo, it is apparent that the
soloist does not construct music in the same way as anyone else in the
band. Steve may finish a whirlwind solo,
passing it over to a completely different sequence of melody/shards created by
Allan who passes his statement on to a high-speed barrage of notes from Forbes
(or some other completely different note poetry from each). It is a family of a band, and it is not
surprising that many of the musician comments on the break were about family,
causing some audience members to ponder the “family span” implied by father
Forbes talking about his experiences with his two young sons with another child
on the way and Joe revealing thoughts about his two children forging their own
lives while he grapples with an empty nest.
Each musician is a superb improvisor, and the quintet as a group is
stellar. A stellar family. Fans came out of the woodwork--even “as far
away” as the Lily Pad--to welcome the ensemble home. And those fans responded with an extended
ovation at the end of the evening…
January
The cousins came from musical families. Pianist and vocalist Paul Broadnax grew up
with musician parents. The father of his
cousin Jeanne Lee was a concert and church vocal soloist. Both cousins were wonderful musicians. But there were significant differences. Jeanne Lee died relatively young (age 59) in
2000. Paul Broadnax was a nonagenarian
who died this past year at age 92. He
wrote arrangements for Sabby Lewis and Count Basie, among others. He loved many pianists but his primary
influence was Nat Cole. His vocal model
was Joe Williams. Jeanne Lee loved the
work of Billie Holiday, but her vocal innovations opening the door to
post-Ayler sonics are most obviously linked to her innovative elders, Betty
Carter and Abbey Lincoln. Broadnax and
Lee shared genetics and aesthetic nurturing that resulted in brilliant
envelope-pushing in two completely different forms of jazz. Both musicians’ lives were celebrated
recently, Paul Broadnax on 9/1 in Cambridge Sale
There is wisdom to be found in history. We just tend to ignore what history can tell
us. For example, it is not long ago (but
now it is history) that Donald Trump promised Mexico Mexico U.S. U.S.
This is a jazz journal, but all the arts talk to each
other. Now and then I bring other parts
of that conversation here. In this case
I refer specifically to the Borromeo String Quartet’s performance 1/16 at
Jordan Hall. The quartet has been wowing
audiences here since the early 1990s, and for more than a decade I have been
convinced that the group is the world’s greatest active “full-repertoire”
string quartet. I say “full-repertoire”
because some quartets excel in the great 20th century repertoire,
some have the Romantic period nailed, and so on. The Juilliard Quartet broadcasts
from the Library of Congress in the 1970s offered some wonderful performances
of music from the Classical and early Romantic periods. Today the quartet’s efforts in that repertoire
sound tired, but more recent material seems to have inspired the group. The Juilliard Quartet’s recordings of the
Carter string quartets hold up well against other fine recordings of those
works. But somewhat convincing
“full-repertoire” quartets are rare. The
Borromeo gang is a brilliant “full-repertoire” string quartet. The 1/16 performance was a perfect
demonstration of that fact. They took
the quartet from the form’s co-creator (Haydn) to the second half of the 20th
century and presented music of three composers at the height of their artistic
powers. All of it thoroughly
convincing. The presentation was not
chronological (for solid programming reasons).
They opened with Haydn’s Opus 71, No.1 performed marvelously and setting
the audience up for the “what planet am I on?” experience (for most of them) of
the 1968 Ligeti piece. The second half
of the concert was devoted to the Beethoven late work, Opus 127 which resulted
in the loudest audience approval. How
anyone who loves string quartets would miss such an evening would be a
puzzle. And so I was there. But mostly for the Ligeti. We live in a time when the great art of the
past 100 years--sonic or otherwise--takes a back seat to carefully chiseled
pretense. Therefore, not surprisingly,
audience members near me in Jordan Hall exhibited everything from confusion to
boredom to tears of joy. So when I get a
chance to witness art at such a high level as Ligeti’s Quartet No. 2 (more than
half century old as it is), I jump. And
when I get something other than a lip service performance, the real
deal, I jump for joy. While I’m
writing about such things, I should note that Bostonians can celebrate that
they are blessed with what appears to be the only real challenge to the
Borromeo Quartet as a great “full repertoire” string quartet. I refer to the Parker Quartet in residence at
Harvard, one of the few sonic lights at that institution these days. I hasten to soften the word “challenge.” Early in this century the Borromeo and the
Parker Quartets had a teacher-student relationship at NEC. And now the Parker Quartet has carved its own
place in music with its own sonic personality (which you can check out 2/15 at
Paine Hall when they do Xenakis and more at 8 p.m. ). The
important thing is we Bostonians are the beneficiaries of these riches at NEC
and Harvard…
Back when President Trump and his party pushed through the
heralded “Tax Cut” bill, they claimed that the bill would pay for itself. The New York Times recently (perhaps
with an I-told-you-so tone) noted that the economy did grow by almost three
percent in 2018. But “federal tax
revenues fell by 2.7 percent, or about $83 billion.” The rich apparently did not put the big bucks
back into the economy nor did they generate significant federal tax revenue
(because of the bill). Another way of
looking at the lost tax revenue is that the pro-wall people in Washington
Eric Rosenthal booked his second of two Point01Percent gigs
this month at the Lily Pad on 1/22. It
featured the Pocket Aces and the KSR Trio.
A previous commitment prevented me from catching Pandelis Karayorgis,
Damon Smith, and Eric, but fortunately they are booked to perform at the Lily
Pad in February and March. It had been at
least a year since I had caught a Pocket Aces gig. Eric Hofbauer, Aaron Darrell, and Curt Newton
certainly keep in touch musically on a regular basis, through Explorers Club
performances and other events. So the
Lily Pad gig was not a conversation among strangers. The music of the current version of the trio
is different nevertheless. The most
obvious difference is in architecture and “subject matter.” Fans of Pocket Aces music have come to expect
sonics grounded in composition, originals or classics. The latest incarnation of the Pocket Aces has
abandoned sustained written melody as a creative ground in favor of sequences
of snippets of melody as the basic vehicles for creative sonics. I cannot tell whether the (often repeated)
brief sequences of notes (and/or rhythmic patterns) are composed or completely
improvised. Or a combination of both
(the option that sounds most likely). I
have not discussed the nature of the music vehicle with band members. In any case, the result is a sonic base of
evolving sounds that evoke world cultures and pop folk music (sometimes
together) over which and throughout each musician improvises--often quite
stunningly--while supporting comparable efforts by the other two
musicians. The effect often is
eye-popping and ear-popping. The men
never stop playing their butts off, except in moments when it is time for a duo
or solo showcase. There is a lot
happening here, music that requires focussed attention on the part of the
audience (and presumably the members of the trio). But for me there is a “but.” I’m trying to come up with a functional
analogy, and analogies always include problems.
But let’s try a walk down the street.
I watch the other people going my way--some walking fast; others slow;
some “dancing,” some marching. As I walk
I see magic light bounce off the awning of a passing building. Someone’s selling popcorn. Two people are arguing while another couple
is kissing. And it all zips by at an
impressive clip. The experience is quite
impressive, even affecting. But there is
a voice in the back of my head informing me that I don’t know where I am or
where I am going or why. I am impressed
by the details, but I am unable to transcend them. I look forward to a chance to re-orient
myself on the next Pocket Aces gig…
My personal friends realize that for me clothes fashions are
among the least compelling aspects of human culture. Nevertheless, the February J.Jill catalogue
did catch my eye. The current J.Jill
marketing campaign features a celebration of music and important women in the
realm of pop, jazz, and classical music.
For example, internationally renowned concert violinist Anne Akiko
Meyers is shown in the catalogue playing the violin and wearing--you guessed
it--J.Jill clothes. In the catalogue’s
take on the jazz world, full pages are devoted to “stylish” musicians Regina
Carter and Berklee’s Tia Fuller. It is
easy to be cynical about such things.
But clothes-buying females decide J.Jill’s bottom line, and a
celebration of women pursuing music who make our lives better is a pretty fine
way for the company to say thank you. In
a world in which sales campaigns tend to be crass it is good to see some
class. There is even a place on the J.Jill web site that has information
about the careers of the celebrated women and even upcoming gigs. Applause…
Update 1/7/19 : There is local coverage of Tia Fuller
in the Improper Bostonian (January 30, p. 10) in which Nathan Tavares
points out that her latest album us up for a Grammy. If Fuller wins the Grammy, she will be the
second female to win that award in the jazz instrumental album category. Apparently the only other female to win that
award is Terri Lyne Carrington (2013), also on the Berklee faculty…
According to BBC.com, during the past six years at least 259
people world-wide have died while taking selfies. Death occurred (in order of frequency) from
drowning, transportation mishaps (e.g., taking a selfie in front of an oncoming
train), and falls from cliffs, water falls, and buildings. One might think of it as technological
weeding of the herd…
The audience 1/17 at the Outpost finally got a chance to
hear the complete Explorers Club arrangement of Duke Ellington’s “I Got
It Bad and That Ain’t Good.”
Almost. Eric Hofbauer was on hand
to offer his wonderfully spikey intro to the piece, followed by Charlie’s
arrangement of the work as performed by the full sextet. It is one of the best arrangements in the
Explorers book these days. As reported
in the December Journal, Eric was on tour during the December gig and could not
perform his introductory statement then.
So we almost heard the complete arrangement 1/17. But not quite. Percussionist Curt Newton was preoccupied
making decisions and shuffling papers on the way to a new abode in Jamaica
Plain. A full Explorers ensemble minus
drums is a new experience for me. Very
interesting. And handled just fine by
Charlie, Eric, Seth Meicht, Daniel Rosenthal, Jeb Bishop, and Aaron
Darrell. Longtime jazz fans will not be
surprised that the ensemble work brought to mind what used to be called
“chamber jazz.” Aaron and Eric took up
all the rhythm section chores, and all the horns chugged right along. One of the positive results of the change is
that the horns seemed to be listening to each other with greater focus. The section work was brilliantly richer than
usual--although “usual” ain’t bad. So
when Curt returns we can hear the complete complete arrangement of “I
Got It Bad.” In any event, it was a fine
evening of terrific music that was topped off with the announcement that Eric
and wife Elizabeth are expecting a daughter in May. Hey, in 20 years she might be featured with
another great Explorers ensemble…
Typically one expects the Wall Street Journal to be
supportive of President Trump’s policies.
So we offer a tip of the cap to that paper for going against the
grain. In a recent issue the Wall
Street Journal stated, “U.S.
The Joe Hunt Trio--with Yuka Hamano Hunt, and Shane
Allession--returned to the Lily Pad 1/27.
This time the group featured the music of Bill Evans, Thelonious Monk,
Charlie Parker and a variety of classics.
No complaints from me or anyone else in the audience regarding that
programming. And the playing was quite
fine also. There was a balance
check/warm-up before the gig. It was
brief. I could not make out the tune,
but the changes and rhythmic patterns sounded like those of “Night and
Day.” Because that music was the first
piece of the evening, I got a wonderful chance to hear that it was indeed a
marvelous Yuka transformation of “Night and Day,” an arrangement that revealed
the original melody while causing the listener--at least this listener--to
re-hear the music. I hope her take on
the Cole Porter classic becomes a Joe Hunt Trio classic. Among the fine Monk works exploited to fine
effect was “Nutty,” featuring a delightful arco intro by Shane Allession. Apparently the bassist loves arco playing,
and that can be a fine occasional surprise solo. However, he solos somewhat too frequently
that way, making the improvisations sound a bit too predictable. While studying in Boston
This month I
received an email from Boston Baroque, the early music performance ensemble,
telling me (and presumably many others) that they have chosen to join other
arts organizations in sponsoring the EBT Card Culture program. EBT (Electronic Benefits Transfer)
cards can be used by Massachusetts Massachusetts
We debated--Steve
Lantner and I--the last time the classic Steve Lantner Quartet performed in Cambridge