Jazz Beyond Jazz

Howard Mandel's Urban Improvisation

City Arts, my jazz-in-the-City column

Welcome to City Arts, which bucks a trend by evolving from being a monthly section in NYPress and other Manhattan neighborhood free papers to becoming New York’s Review of Culture, a new twice-monthly stand-alone print edition and website. Beside my column, there are season previews of classical music, mustn’t miss museums exhibits (Kandinsky! Blake! Monet! O’Keefe!), books, dance, theater, and lesser known film series. Welcome to the fray, brave young journal, and may you thrive.

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Best American city for jazz? Chicago

I’m a Chicago homie — long removed but never really gone — so don’t expect objectivity, but a recent visit proved my native metropolis is #1 in America and maybe everywhere for its active, creative, meaningful, almost-economically-viable, neighborhood-rooted, exploratory and world class jazz. I say this even as my dearly adopted New York City kickstarts as freshly energized a fall season as any I recall.

Jazz is the lifeblood of Chicago in a way it ain’t in NYC, at least not right now. Jazz-soul-blues is Chicago’s street music. Chicago’s citizens — not just its visitors — seem to consider jazz this music their personal due. It’s what you hear at O’Hare going in and out of town.

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Today’s the day NYC goes beyond jazz

On September 17,New York kicks off a fall season more highly charged with new creative energies than any in memory. An army of mostly young, skilled, ambitious and devoted musicians is making itself heard in the East Village, Soho, Brooklyn, on the Lower West Side and in the clubs — while benevolence is cast by the first ever performance — at last — of Ornette Coleman at Jazz at Lincoln Center, Sept. 26.

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#jazzlives weekend update: 12-day count of tweeting fans

Buzz about who played live jazz where marked with the hashtage #jazzlives flew throughout cyberspace this weekend  — catch it all here. The impromptu campaign produced anecdotal evidence that a young and vigorous audience for America’s modern
vernacular creative music does indeed exist, spreading enthusiastic word via the social network Twitter of sets at Chicago, Tanglewood, Los Angeles (x2), Detroit and Stevens Point (Wisconsin) jazz festivals and gigs in New York, Tokyo, etc,. far and wide.

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#jazzlives: listeners tweet from across the U.S.

Audiences for live jazz from East Coast to West, North border to South, all points between and some beyond are using Twitter and the hashtag #jazzlives to buzz about bands and venues they like. A campaign begun to encourage “anecdotal evidence” that demonstrates a vibrant listenership for America’s indigenous music has resulted in hundreds of brief messages — some with links to photos of crowds, video and podcasts. No final count yet; this weekend could be big with jazz fests at Tanglewood, Detroit, Chicago, LA, Philly, Aspen, Vail, etc. And this experiment isn’t statistically relevant, just a volunteer shout-out. But people all over have big ears and broad tastes, as their little tweets demonstrate. Count yourself in by tweeting (Twitter accounts are free), using #jazzlives — as individuals have in the following samples —

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Social networking does its #jazzlives stuff

Start a Twitter campaign, and see what happens! Do as many people hear live jazz in a week as attended Woodstock, say? Using the hashtag #jazzlives, a rough count is underway, supported by independent jazz activists, musicians, festivals, journalists but most of all the listeners themselves. It’s a lesson in how people participate in culture now, with encouraging findings.

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You’ve heard live jazz ? Tweet using #jazzlives

Let’s prove jazz lives. Tweet about live performances using hashmark #jazzlives, detailing who and when in 140 characters.
Jazz fests rage across America in the next couple of weeks starting Aug. 29-30 with NYC’s Charlie Parker fest, picking up Sept 4 through 6  – Tanglewood, Chicago, Detroit, the Angel City Jazz Fest, LA’s Sweet & Hot Music Festival,  the Vail Jazz Party, Philadelphia’s Tony Williams Scholarship Jazz Festival plus some fests with jazz-influenced acts, rhythms and improv such as Jazz Aspen Snowmass, Seattle’s Bumbershoot, the Getdown fest and campout near Chapel Hill NC. Overall, tens of thousands of fans will be in attendance. I suggest we all raise our electronic hands on Twitter (accounts are free) to signal that we are listening, that there is indeed a significant audience including people young enough both age and spirit to send a noticeable wave through social networking, National Endowment of the Arts data from ’08 notwithstanding.

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Tonight Show band all-stars, slammin’ at NYC’s Blue Note

Guitarist Kevin Eubanks and drummer Marvin “Smitty” Smith in a rare East Coast five-night stand — you don’t have to know a thing about “jazz” to get into their quintet’s masterful, exciting, funky, complex, improvised, folky, powerful, inspired sounds. A night at a Manhattan club can be costly, yes, but sets of this calibre make it all worthwhile. And Eubanks has the current slant — he announced at the start that the venue’s “no flash photography, no recording” policy was suspended, urging the audience to record the music on whatever devices we had, send it to him if the recording is good, and share it with friends — “Just don’t charge for it!”

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Les Paul’s tongue

In 2004, photog Gene Martin asked the guitarist/inventor who’d just received the Jazz Journalists Association’s “A Team” award for activists, advocates, altruists, aiders and abettors of jazz, to pose for a portrait. . .

Les Paul's tongue.jpg

Les Paul’s tongue ©Gene Martin

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Smithsonian jazz ’09-’10: four shows and JAM

 Cannonball Adderley, Mary Lou Williams and Freddie Hubbard are celebrated in Smithsonian Institution concerts next October, February and April; a December “Swingin’ in the Holidays” performance by the Smithsonian Jazz Masterworks Orchestra completes its year’s jazz offerings. Well, there’s also Jazz Appreciation Month in April (otherwise known for fools and taxes) during which the Smithsonian encourages and promotes jazz activities in the U.S. and abroad. Does this represent enough support of jazz, a Congressionally recognized American treasure, by one of America’s major cultural institutions?

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Rashied Ali, multi-directional drummer, interviewed

In 1990 I interviewed drummer Rashied Ali for The World According to John Coltrane, a documentary produced and directed by Toby Byron. It was the first but not the last time I spoke to Ali, a sorely underrated musician and jazz presence who died yesterday (August 12, 2009) following a heart attack at age 74. Here’s a transcript of our talk, slightly edited and annotated, mostly about Coltrane, with whom Ali became famous. 

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