The Promontory, a large, flexible, shiny new performance hall in Chicago’s upswinging Hyde Park neighborhood (home to the Obamas) opened for music last weekend with the South Side Big Band, directed by veteran composer/arranger Tom Tom Washington. It’s an audacious attempt to restart commercial entertainment in an area that for decades has mostly been served by University of Chicago events. It’s also a test of the city’s South Side/North Side  (read: black/white) divide.

For the musical launch (The Promontory restaurant has been open for a month) an estimated multi-racial 500 patrons sat at tables, milled about the bar and gathered on a balcony terrace. Washington, who earned his spurs as a composer-arranger for mostly jazz/soul/r&b talents including Earth, Wind and Fire starting in the ’60s, conducted players known from 50 years of locally based ensembles and studio sessions, as well as blues-oriented guests, most notably singer Maggie Brown (who performs a tribute to her late father, Oscar Brown Jr., tomorrow at north suburban Ravinia. In the night’s first set, the repertoire included the theme song of late local radio show host Daddy-O Daylie (was it “Midnight Sun”?),  “My Funny Valentine,” “Don’t Go To Strangers” and “Moody’s Mood for Love” — standards especially beloved by South Side audiences of a certain age.

The new establishment is owned and operated by principals who also run Space in north suburban Evanston, the North Side’s the Empty Bottle and  Thalia Hall in near-South Side Pilsen (known for its Mexican community).  Chicagoans are rather proprietary about their immediate cultural surroundings, as seems to be unfortunately natural for a city with such a history of segregation. Though you can drive pretty much from one end of Chicago to another — approximately 27 miles — in 40 minutes if the traffic is light, only hardcore fans go across town for their jollies. Too bad, because there’s a lot of good stuff all over.

Decades back the South Side was home to famous venues including the High Chaparral, Roberts Show Lounge, the Regal Theater and Grand Terrace Ballroom (also corner blues taverns such as Theresa’s, the Checkerboard and Pepper’s). They’re all gone now. In 2012 U of C opened its Logan Center for the Arts, and before that it hosted high level and long-running student activities such as an annual folk music festival, Court Theatre (my parents introduced little me to Shakespeare there) and concerts like early ones by members of the AACM. But the U of C is virtually an integrated island on the greater South Side, where performances in small watering holes such as City Life and the Fifty Yard Line are typically visited by outsiders during the August Jazz Club Tour sponsored by the Jazz Institute of Chicago (Aug. 27, preceding the 36th annual Chicago Jazz Festival).

The South Side Big Band has been convened as an antidote to all that. Washington called it together in 2010 as much for rehearsals as performances,which he explains in a video produced by the Chicago Sun Times.

The SSBB is obviously a collective labor of love, akin to the self-empowering strategies of such Chicago musical institutions as Orbert Davis’ Chicago Jazz Philharmonic, the AACM and even earlier, Sun Ra’s Arkestra. Participants consider it an investment in the cultural education of new generations of the predominantly black community.

With soloists including local heroes like tenor saxophonist Gene Barge and trumpeter Pharez Whitted, plus  turns by singer Otis Clay, guitarist Ronnie Baker Brooks and the effervescent Ms. Brown, the SSBB

offers musical substance. Whether it’s got the style to attract young people to whom the term “South Side” probably calls up Common (who’s just downsized and relocated his September Aahh Festival), Kanye West and R. Kelly rather than Nat “King” Cole, Dinah Washington and Muddy Waters remains to be seen. Same goes for The Promontory (named for a nearby jutting of rocks into Lake Michigan). One Chicago jazz presenter who’s had some cross-boundary success predicted, “It won’t last. It’s Northsiders who don’t know anything about the South Side.” Give them credit for knowing enough to start off with the revered home team.

[PS. — All ownership and rights related to the photographs in this blog post remain with Bruce Williams. Limited license has been provided for posting these photographs on the blog Jazz Beyond Jazz.  Any other use of these images by any party requires express permission from Bruce Williams, bruce_williams@ameritech.net]

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Chicago is relatively new in bringing jazz to its many small, diverse parks but the Neighborhood Nights experiment,  conducted by the Jazz Institute of Chicago, works just fine, as drummer Michael Zerang’s Blue Lights in Logan Square last Sunday proved. Last of these free shows is Saturday (tomorrow) at 1 pm at Woodson Regional Library on the South Side, featuring pianist Willie Pickens.

Zerang’s original compositions, many of them based on belly-dance music he’d grown up with, were performed by a front line of Chicago aces: tenor saxist Mars Williams, altoist Dave Rempus, cornetist Josh Berman, plus bassist Kent Kessler.  A mellow crowd comprising local residents, families and new music devotees gathered at 5 p.m. to sit on the grass that surrounds the Illinois Centennial Monument  (according to Wikipedia, designed by Henry Bacon, the Lincoln Memorial architect, and sculpted by Evelyn Longman). Despite the gig being held outdoors without a bandshell backdrop and with car traffic zipping past, the sound mix was terrific, courtesy of Michael’s brother Ziggy, a world-class engineer. The three-horn parts were rich and clear, the solos had weight and the leader’s percussion was defined with detail. In a more confined space Blue Lights may have energized listeners to get up, hoot and holler. On this perfect summer day, one couple was dancing and a boy of about 9 caught the spirit, moving as inspired.Chicago was rather early to feature jazz in bars  — speakeasies, during the Roaring ’20s — and that tradition lives on. Not just here, of course, but with a vengeance and variety that is second maybe to New Orleans and certainly rivals New York City.

Afterwards I looked in on the fabled Green Mill, a joint long ago owned by an Al Capone gang-member. It was full of couples out for the fun of joining a party that they were sure to find there, and hearing guitarist John Moulder with New York-based saxophonist Donny McCaslin, among others. The band was on break, and I’ll write more about the place in a future post. With my friend Jim DJazz, I went on to Constellation, an adventurous music room attached to a comfortable bar, all run by drummer Mike Reed. Constellation might have been a speak in another era — it’s in an out-of-the-way location, behind an entirely unprepossessing door. Jeff Parker, the AACM and Tortoise guitarist who moved from Chicago to LA, was playing with his trio, but JdJ and I sat at the bar in conversation, so more on Constellation after the Roscoe Mitchell performance with Muhal Richard Abrams, this coming Sunday (8/17).

Constellation couldn’t be more different than City Winery, the commodious facility opened two years ago by Michael Dorf, who has a place by the same name in NYC. Dorf was co-founder of the original Knitting Factory, which started as a clubhouse showcasing downtown avant-gardists personified by John Zorn and became an empire. Full disclosure: I’ve had many dealings with Dorf, as the cd linked to my book Future Jazz came from Knitting Factory Records, and the Jazz Journalists Association has held its annual Jazz Awards event at City Winery NYC.

The Chicago club is even larger than its Manhattan progenitor, with ample outside  patio seating besides its main concert room, through which wine casks are visible behind glass windows in the rear, and a full-fledged restaurant. A glance at its upcoming schedule reveals that instrumental music is rarely booked and jazz seldom if ever presented.

To call what fiddler Jennie Scheinman played, when featured in Chi’s CW with guitarist-singer-songwriter Bruce Cockburn “jazz” is to stretch the definition way out of shape. Perhaps such a stretch would be productive for the genre, but the term might limit her, too.

Scheinman plucks and bows in a spare, sometimes stark fashion, and has a keening high-plains voice that echoes back to the Carter Family or other old timey musicians of Appalachia. She also has an acute sense of nuance which enriches the lyrics she’s written, mostly about life in Northern California — songs like the one titled “Deadheads,”  that apply the slow, sweet headiness presumably characteristic of the region’s residents to her vision of a county out-of-time.  Her stories are humorous, dry, nostalgic and forward-thinking, all at once. Her playing is blessed with an inherent swing and she dips convincingly into the blues.

Not jazz? So what? Scheinman has played jazz in drummer Alison Miller’s band, with guitarist Bill Frisell and elsewhere. Her solo performance here included little improvisation. She opened for Coburn, whose oeuvre has an earnest folky quality, and also joined him playing obligatos. Gary Craig played hand drums on one of her songs, and traps kit for Cockburn. No, drums don’t make it jazz either. Americana is probably the appropriate current label. I like that, too. This blog is intended to be about the real thing, the jazz beyond “jazz.” Jennie has that.

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Evanston Il’s cross-genre club Space showcased drummer Billy Martin’s lively, upbeat Wicked Knee brass band last night, and the neighborhood tavern Beat Kitchen hosted its weekly exploratory jam by Extraordinary Popular Delusions the night before. I’ve barely scratched the surface but clearly Chicago’s got a broad range of performance venues fun to poke into, considering the bookings.

Billy Martin, the man at the tubs for jam band jazzers Medeski, Martin and Wood, is a generous player, just trying to give everyone (band and himself included) a good time. His chief partner in Wicked Knee is trumpeter-composer-arranger Steven Bernstein who solos in the lyrical/humanistic/humor-tinged spirit that links Louis Armstrong to Lester Bowie and beyond, and leads simple, effective riffs and chorales with tubaist Marcus Rojas and trombonist Brian Drye (also good soloists) above and against the drummer’s syncopated beats.

A lot of Martin’s rhythms center around his snare drum, as if he grew up in high school marching bands and street-parade second lines. But he knows how to tie in the hi-hat, when to go to the toms or splash on his cymbals, how to thump and swing — and to expand in the direction of Balinese gamelan. The brass polyphony sang of New Orleans, with a lope through Ellington’s “It Don’t Mean a Thing (If iI Aint’ Got That Swing)” and nice use of the modal motif at the bottom of the Art Ensemble of Chicago’s “Odwalla” (also, I think, Coltrane’s “India”). A crowd of about 75 enjoyed this drop-in by Wicked Knee, during a quick midwest tour including the Dakota in Minneapolis (tonight, Aug 6) and Milwaukee’s Cathedral Park free series (tomorrow, Aug. 7).

Jim  (More Questions Than Answers) Baker, pianist/analog synthesist and friend-since-high school of mine, is the fearless leader of Extraordinary Popular Delusions, though there’s no hierarchy imposed on the contributions of reedist Mars Williams, bassist/guitarist/trumpeter Brian Sandstrom and drummer Steve Hunt (if these three seem familiar, it’s ’cause they figured prominently in the Hal Russell Story tribute concert I raved about a few days ago). They’ve played together regularly for the past six years regularly, most recently in the barely-lit upstairs rooms of a corner bar, the likes of which exists on basically every fifth block of this city. There were six, seven, eight people in the audience but we listened devoutly as the musicians perf0rmed real-time experiments in ensemble interplay, taking dynamics, pitch extremes, intensity, density and periodicity as raw materials to shape. The sounds were sometimes abrupt, conflictual, inconclusive, in search of themselves, but from every dry or ugly patch the four players eventually reached sonic areas abrim with pleasure and resolve.

If you’re looking for adventure, there’s nowhere like the underground. It’s an extraordinary popular delusion that music might or must be any one thing. Exploration examines what is and what might be. As Chicago’s home of the El, it’s not odd that there are places like Beat Kitchen where the underground is commonly on the second floor instead of the basement. Makes no difference; to dig you must go deep. We may get lost in the depths, but avant garde music hasn’t by itself killed anyone yet.
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I’m aghast at The New Yorker’s rip-off of Sonny Rollins’ good name and great heart to slag jazz in the guise of “humor.” A Daily Shouts piece, bylined “Django Gold” (surely a pseudonym) purports to be “Sonny Rollins: In His Own Words” and controverts the very essence of the art form this grand hero has embodied for more than half a century — without raising a chuckle (at least from me). See for yourself — then write the editor a letter saying “This ain’t funny.” Not that jazz is sacrosanct, but this ain’t funny.

Ok, call me sensitive. I was read “The Talk of the Town” as an infant by my parents trying to put me to sleep. I saved my copy of The New Yorker issue containing S.J. Perelman’s last story, as well as Salinger’s “Hapworth 16, 1924” and In Cold Blood. I’ve always wanted to write something that The New Yorker would publish. As a reader and later budding jazz journalist, I admired Whitney Balliett’s interviews and sopped up the front-of-the-book squibs on who was playing where. The magazine’s neglect of jazz since Balliett retired in 1998 has been regrettable, but all too consistent with mainstream media’s treatment of America’s world-renown cultural signifier.

I have often been amused by The New Yorker’s satires and cartoons. But appropriating and subverting the persona and image (photo by David Redfern) of the NEA Jazz Master/National Medal of the Arts honoree in order to scoff at what he and hordes of other performers do (mostly for self-satisfaction: It’s not like even the best-selling jazz musicians make the big bucks flowing to visual arts stars, major film directors and actors, globte-trotting orchestra conductors, etc.) is nothing to laugh at. The “joke” is based on everyone who stumbles on this realizing it’s the opposite of Rollins’ life and purpose, but yet turns on the seed of punkish resentment sophisticates presumably harbor against the music.

“The saxophone sounds horrible . . . Jazz may be the stupidest thing anyone ever came up with . . .I hate music. I wasted my life.” Oh, yeah, Django, those are real corkers!

To know what Rollins really thinks about things, check out Mark Jacobson’s 2013 interview or view any of a Bret Primack’s video posts with the man.

And what’s really wrong about this is that due to the mechanics of search engine optimization, henceforth “Sonny Rollins: In His Own Words” will likely score high in Google searches for Sonny, maybe for jazz, so that unsuspecting readers will be led to think (at least for a moment) that this wonderful, selfless 84-year-old human being actually has come to the conclusion that everything he’s poured his mind, soul, energy into — for decades in the face of society’s bigoted and snooty dismissal, commercial disregard and evidently continuing “intellectual” non-comprehension — has been for nought.

Shame on The New Yorker. What would Balliett, Robert Gottlieb (TNY editor 1987 – 82, editor of Reading Jazz), or such immortal TNY humorists as Robert Benchley, James Thurber, S.J. Perelman 0r Donald Barthelme, author of a genuinely silly New Yorker-published spoof, “The King of Jazz” say? For shame, for shame. Not that jazz is sacrosanct, but “funny” must be funny.
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Saxophonists Mars Williams and Ken Vandermark played like wild beasts before a tight and determinedly transgressive troupe recalling little-known but regionally influential multi-instrumentalist/bandleader Hal Russell (1926-1992) last night in Millenium Park’s swanky Pritzker Pavillion (the one designed by Frank Gehry) as part of the city’s free Made In Chicago: World Class Jazz series.

With bassist Kent Kessler, percussionist Steve Hunt and guitarist-bassist-trumpeter Brian Sandstrom — like Williams, stalwarts of Russell’s 1979-’92 NRG Ensemble — plus cellist-cornetist Fred Lonberg-Holm and narration by actor Michael Shannon (the tortured, murderous revenue agent of Boardwalk Empire), the two horn players employed fierce energy and wide-stretched expressive ranges to power irreglar yet structured, open-ended but conclusive works of an original if never-quite-fashionable musician whose late-life signing to ECM Records preceded his fatal heart attack by only one year.

It was impressive and shouldn’t be overlooked that the mid-summer’s eve concert attendees comprised not just hard-core jazz-beyond-jazz fans but a broad demographic including families with kids who romped as the players onstage roared, squealed, scratched and stomped. Three times this week — at Kelan Phil Cohran‘s Garfield Conservatory show, Dee Alexander’s performance on the terrace of the Museum of Contemporary Art (unfortunately the set I went for was rained out) and here at the Pavillion — I’ve observed diverse, casually curious and overall receptive Chicago audiences enjoying out-of-the-mainstream music. (Tonight through Sunday we’re pop-central as host to Lollapalooza, some of it being streamed live.)

Hal Russell was definitely out of the mainstream. At his death in 1992, he had struggled for more than a decade to establish his oddball but characteristically warm-hearted, even humorous ouevre. Earlier he’d been a swing-oriented drummer and occasional vibist, trumpet major in college and bebop sideman. By 1981, when he released his Nessa debut album, he’d added tenor and soprano saxes as well as novelty soundmakers to his arsenal, sometimes made utterances using a bullhorn or megaphone and embraced freedom from conventions encouraged by Ornette Coleman, the AACM, maybe Charles Ives, Frank Zappa and the dryly funny Dutch school of maverick improvisers.

Although well-regarded by a coterie of young Midwestern players, Russell enjoyed scant broader acclaim until his late ’80s northern European tours. But his music has taken hold. Note to millennials: Beware wizened, wind-blow and/or white-haired boomers bearing instruments. They mean business. Now older and harder, Russell’s former acolytes performed at high intensity for about 90 minutes and took no prisoners. A Jazz Institute of Chicago Jazz Links Ensemble featuring alto saxist Jenna Przybysz, trombonist Chris Shuttleworth, vibist Ben Karon, bassist Liam Coussens and drummer Michael Hojnacki opened the show worthily, though not with the same brio.

Ironman Vandermark (the MacArthur fellow who has promoted ties between Chicagoans and rugged Euro improvisers such as Peter Brotzmann and Mats Gustafson) and spitfire Williams (leader of Liquid Soul, member of the Psychedelic Furs among other rock-world gangs, he likes to begin where Albert Ayler left off and from there go to dog-whistle pitch) partnered like cannon and ball. Sandstrom had many contrasting ideas, using a slide on already-distorted guitar, burbling into his trumpet mouthpiece. Lonberg-Holm made finding the rudest snaps and crackles on his cello seem easy, while Kessler held the bass throb firm, unless he was sawing with bow. Hunt played kettle drums as well as traps, lending a reference to Duke Ellington’s jungle band classics, and chilled things out on vibes. Michael Shannon effectively intoned Russell’s quasi-autobiographical texts from The Hal Russell Story (a posthumous release). He looked younger than on HBO.

The NRG Ensemble, personnel as mentioned, still gigs — here’s a sample from June at The Hideout.

Need it be mentioned that individuals much less groups sustaining such fervor, expansiveness, complexity and laughs, too, for some 35 years are rare and invaluable? Hal Russell would have been moved. In the photos projected above the players, he was almost always smiling.
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While Hypnotic Brass Ensemble, comprising eight sons of jazz-beyond-jazz seer Kelan Phil Cohran, was tearing it up in the midst of its Bad Boys of Jazz tour at the Enclave de Agua African American Music Festival in Soria, Spain, the patriarch himself held forth nearer home at the Garfield Conservatory, on the first of four free Neighborhood Nights concerts presented this month by the Jazz Institute of Chicago.

The elder Cohran, an early member of Sun Ra’s Arkestra and original co-founder
 (though soon ex-member) of the 49-year-old Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM), announced “I am 87 today — I mean, I was 87 yesterday, too.” He recited late-19th century dialect poems by Paul Lawrence Dunbar, aptly identifiying them as proto-rap. He played harp, a note or two on trumpet and several solos on electric kalimba, the instrument he concocted and calls the frankiphone, popularized by his one-time sideman Maurice White on classic tunes by Earth, Wind and Fire.

Cohran was supported throughout his modal vamps and a rudimentary version of Ellington’s “C-Jam Blues” by his sons Tycho and Malik on tuba and Korg X50 electric keyboard, singer Phanta Celah and singer/dancer Afrika Brown (daughter of the late, great Oscar Brown Jr.).  The music had a homemade, self-taught vibe, demonstrating higher aspirations than aesthetic realization. But in this case, Cohran’s messages were more important than their aesthetics.  He spoke of enormous cultural shifts he’s observed since growing up in the 1930s, saying his aim is always to offer audiences “quality,” and speculated that “since the weather has gotten so extreme, maybe we’ll become more serious about music again.” As everyone who performs in Chicago now ought to, he made a point of dismay over the city’s deadly gun problem, acknowledging that there’s been no effective answer to the culture of violence, and offered lyrics that asserted  “got to get myself away from here” and “gotta get myself back on track.”

The huge greenhouse dating from 1884 in which the concert was set was a bubble of calm within the relative wilds of Garfield Park on Chicago’s still-desolate West Side. A friend described the surrounding streets as “rowdy,” a way of warning, “Don’t go there.” The night before, a young teenage boy was murdered and six other people wounded during a gang-related drive-by shooting. At 8:45 pm, about an hour after the performance ended, a man talking to a girl at a gas station on the far edge of the park was shot during an attempted robbery. The Chicago Sun-Times “Shooting Tracker” noted 13 incidents between 6 pm Friday 7/25 and 4 am Sunday 7/27. Of course that’s a huge improvement over the 11 dead, 60 wounded over the July 4 weekend three weeks ago. It’s not like nobody’s trying to address the issues. Over that recent national holiday, Police Supt. Garry McCarthy assigned hundreds of extra officers to patrol the city. It might have been worse without them.

After Phil Cohran’s concert mi corazon and I ate supper with three of my closest, oldest friends and multi-reedist/AACM stalwart/University of Chicago improvisational music instructor Mwata Bowden. We went one block from the Conservatory, to Inspiration Kitchens, a community service-non-profit that trains homeless people in food-industry skills, offering tuition subsidies, job placement, “retention skills” and employing them (also at a café in the Uptown neighborhood). Among us we sampled corn bisque, fresh green bean salad, shrimp over cheese grits, crab cakes, buttermilk fried Cornish hen and a house-special dessert of deep chocolate flourless cake over carmel sauce with brittle and a scoop of ice-cream. Highly civilized environs and delicious fare amidst a site of repeated tragedies. Solutions exist, but don’t come easy. Complications persist.

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Charlie Haden, who died July 11 at age 76, was the man who anchored the free flights of many musicians to the foundations of music: rhythm and harmony. This photo by Enid Farber shows how I felt about being around him, Dewey Redman and Edward Blackwell (not pictured; the saxophonist is Branford Marsalis, but the occasion was a Blackwell tribute concert).

 

Haden was a man who made connections. Ornette Coleman, who Charlie called his guru, was able to extend blues and jazz beyond limits of convention to flights of melodic imagination with Haden solidly holding the bottom line (best in duo, or with Don Cherry adding to the tunefulness, or Blackwell or Billy Higgins drumming, though Haden did important work introducing Ornette’s son Denardo Coleman, too). Pianist Keith Jarrett was able to rhapsodize generously and gorgeously with Haden at his side. Guitarist Pat Metheny, like Haden from Missouri, found a deep Americana groove in the bassist’s company, as did pianist Hank Jones, recording spirituals and gospel hymns with Haden.

With Carla Bley writing arrangements for the Liberation Music Orchestra, Haden became the overtly political conscience of the avant garde, tying a critique of America to a love of our country and insistence it can do better from the first LMO album (1969) to the last of its four (in 2005). While on tour with Ornette in the early ’70s, he was arrested in Portugal for dedicating a performance of “Song for Che” to the freedom fighters in Angola, Mozambique and Guinnea-Bisseau — released, he was questioned by the FBI. He told me he wasn’t flustered — he’d been through much more excoriating interrogations from his peers, while rehabilitating from narcotics addiction at Synanon House in 1960.

Charlie was drawn to the dark music of Central and South America, working beautifully with pianist Gonzalo Rubalcaba (plus drummer Jack DeJohnette on The Blessing; plus saxist Joe Lovano, violinist Federico Britos Ruiz, Metheny et al on Nocturne) and multi-instrumentalist Egberto Gismonti with brooding Norwegian saxophonist Jan Gabarek, among many others. His Quartet West re-invigorated the reputations of saxophonist Ernie Watts, pianist Alan Broadbent and drummer Larance Marable. In league with bassist Paul Motian, Charlie inspired Geri Allen. There’s no counting how many people he gave a lift to (Archie Shepp, Alice Coltrane, Paul Bley, Lee Konitz . . . ) either as “Cowboy Charlie,” the childhood singer on his parent’s old-time radio show, or as an insistent, earnest and sometimes, yes, corny major player, onstage or off.

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Comic actor Jack Black, master satirist of mania, married one of inherently and unselfsconsiously intense Charlie’s triplet daughters, and though it’s none of my business I always chuckle to think of those two at family gatherings. But Charlie was above all serious about what he did, the people he hung out with, the music he performed. Meeting people of such talent and dedication makes up for all the bs that goes into trying to make a living as an arts journalist. I got off a few good comments about Charlie in “Rambling Boy,” a very fine biographical film by Reto Caduff, and Charlie called me to thank then congratulate me. He hadn’t needed to do that; I had just told the truth. Charlie Haden played the bass, holding everyone together from the bottom up, faithfully, with feeling and meaning.

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Jazz above and beyond established conventions of jazz in and around NYC last month was super abundant — and I’m going to miss a lot about this scene when I move base of operations to Chicago in mid-July. In the past 30 days I heard:

•  The Eric Dolphy Freedom of Sound 2-day conference/concerts at Montclair State University, NJ May 30 and 31,
• the JJA’s NYC Jazz Awards party at the Blue Note (with music by Stephanie Richards Trumpet Quartet, beautiful Sheila Jordan singing with great bassist Cameron Brown and for a finale pianist Elio Villafranca’s explosive Jass Syncopators),
• Jack DeJohnette’s trio with saxophonist Ravi Coltrane celebrating bassist Matt Garrison’s 44th birthday at ShapeShifter Lab in Brooklyn on June 2 (where I gave Jack the JJA’s Drummer of the Year Award),
• the Celebrate Ornette! blowout at Brooklyn’s Prospect Park bandshell

 

the admirably neighborhood-scaled Red Hook Jazz Festival,

Jason Lindner playing multi-keyboards in trio at Shapeshifter Lab (I presented him with the JJA’s Electronic Player of the Year Award),

the largest yet/all encompassing Blue Note Jazz Festival,

Guitarist-singer Michael Powers’ trio followed by guitarist singer Junior Mack in the twinned-guitar band at Terra Blues

Lincoln Center’s Midsummer’s Night Swing’s season opener featuring Cecile McClorin Salvant singing with Vince Giordano’s Nighthawks (Cecile received the JJA’s Female Vocalist of the Year and Up ‘n’ Coming Artist of the Year awards),

Hans Tammens’ Dark Circuits festival of electronic music, including a workshop with the Korg Little Bits synthesizer kit,

Soprano saxophonist Sam Newsome and pianist Ethan Iverson at Greenwich Music School.

With all this going on how can I leave? Only by feeling sure I can stay in touch with the remarkable depth of musical creativity here — just as musicians and other devotees all over the U.S. (and beyond) do. Good music doesn’t live only in NYC anymore, anyway, and Chicago itself has long had a terrific creative music community. From the AACM to the urban blues, with activity stirred by Jazz Institute of Chicago, Hyde Park Jazz Festival, Joe Segal’s Jazz Showcase, the Green Mill, Orbert Davis’ Chicago Jazz Philharmonic, the reconstituted Hot House, newish Constellation, Evanston’s Space, the bistros Andy’s and Katerina’s, the Experimental Sound Studio and many places I don’t even know about yet, I’ll find plenty to hear.

I’m not “leaving” New York any more than I left Chicago in 1982, when I relocated briefly in Washington DC, then to Manhattan’s East Village. I love it here. I love it there, and a change will be good. I’m expanding my territory, will connect some dots and maintain a presence. O’Hare to LAG takes about the same amount of time as Penn Station to Union Station, Philadelphia. My blog will be here, wherever I’m filing from.

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The National Endowment for the Arts Jazz Masters of 2015, announced today, are musicians Carla Bley, George Coleman and Charles Lloyd — all personal favorites who provoked my earliest interests in jazz going beyond “jazz.” So here are listening recommendations — and my special shout out to Jazz Master Joe Segal of Chicago’s Jazz Showcase  (receiving the A.B. Spellman Award for Jazz Advocacy) who let teenage me in free to hear real jazz to begin with: Coleman Hawkins, Eddie “Lockjaw” Davis, Jimmy Forrest, Sun Ra, Rahsaan, Mingus, great Chicagoans Wilbur Cambell, Eddie de Haas, Jodie Christian and many more,  putting me on path — Yeah! Thanks, Joe — Thanks!)

• Carla Bley’s songs full of her personal wit, dry humor and spare lyricism were first recorded by her then-husband pianist Paul Bley. Her sensibility flowered in Genuine Tong Funeral,with large ensemble charts for Gary Burton (a likely future Jazz Master) and next the rousing Liberation Music Orchestra, a ’60s classic and cultural marker. Co-founder with her second husband Michael Mantler of the Jazz Composers Orchestra (and the very important, independent New Music Distribution Service), she wrote with librettist Paul Haines the “chronotransduction” Escalator Over the Hill, a masterpiece of the large, vibrant the late ’60s and early ’70s crossover downtown/Woodstock music community (w/Cherry -McLaughlin – Haden- Motian -  Barbieri – Karl Berger, Enrico Rava, Linda Ronstadt, Jack Bruce, Sheila Jordan, Don Preston, Leroy Jenkins, et al)). Since then she’s independently produced  many fine, quirky albums with small groups and large, most recently with bassist Steve Swallow, her longtime companion. A total individual whose deadpan sophistication overlays much experience, ache, commitment and originality.
• George Coleman — performing with his quartet (Geo Coleman Jr. on drums) Friday, June 27 at Alvin and Friends in New Rochelle  — stands tall a lineage of  big hearted, big-toned blues-based/progressive bop sax men. But imho the very most memorable, melody-making improvisations he’s ever recorded are on Herbie Hancock’s beautiful original tunes written for Maiden Voyage. With Freddie Hubbard, Ron Carter and Tony Williams on the date, one might have expected Wayne Shorter — but George Coleman is just wonderful: imaginative, confident, mature, nuanced. His solos are burned in my memory.
• Charles Lloyd has always been interested in frontiers. As Eric Dolphy’s successor in Chico Hamilton’s group, he played flute as well as tenor, and his first albums in the mid ’60s have an edgy feel, related to what Yusef Lateef and Sam Rivers were up to. Then came Forest Flower, Lloyd’s triumphant Monterey jazz fest performance with pianist Keith Jarrett, bassist Cecil McBee and drummer Jack DeJohnette, that got to rock-heads (sans “jazz-jazz” compromise — but check out “Sorcery“!). I always liked Lloyd’s straight-forward flute rendition of John Lennon’s “Here, There and Everywhere” on his album Love In from the Fillmore West (though in truth it’s nothing special and poorly recorded) — and his visit to the Soviet Union was hugely significant in promoting Eastern European jazz scenes. Lloyd continues to create adventurous, evocative music, finding highly creative collaborators including pianists Jason Moran, tablaist Zakir Hussain and drummer Eric Harland.

The music I’m suggesting here is 50 years old! But timeless. Bley, Coleman and Lloyd remain active, their inspirations and abilities hardly dimmed. Congrats on the official recognition and much appreciation to them for the enduring gifts they’ve given — they are truly jazz masters.

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[contextly_auto_sidebar id=”JiuiRjN7E0uAO2UaM8RXMF3k9kToOBIP”] Saxophonist and pianist Charles Gayle has one of the largest, most urgent and original saxophone sounds to be heard since the 1990s. That was 20 years after he moved from Buffalo to NYC and started playing on the streets, then was “discovered,” promoted and booked by Michael Dorf, operator of the original Knitting Factory. Today (June 11) Gayle is receiving Lifetime Achievement honors and performing with three ensembles at the 19th Vision Festival. I interviewed and profiled Charles for The Wire in March, 1994 — and read part 2, as originally in the magazine, below —

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If saxophonists Eric Dolphy and Albert Ayler, icons of bust-loose and beautiful improvisation, were alive today . . .they’d be pleased by and maybe attending the festival and concert in their honor this week in Montclair, NJ and Brooklyn. Dolphy died of undiagnosed diabetes in 1964, and Ayler either jumped or was pushed into the East River in 1970, however their music is imbued with immortal spirit.

Eric Dolphy: The Freedom of Sound Festival is an extraordinary convening of musical survivors and admirers of the flutist/bass clarinetist/alto saxophonist who enriched the explorations of Coltrane, Mingus and Ornette Coleman among other free thinkers of the early 1960s, and led several of his own brilliant sessions, such as JazzBeyondJazz favorite Out to Lunch. The fest, featuring previously unheard Dolphy compositions and unique collaborations runs Friday 5/30 and Saturday 5/31 at Montclair State

University’s Memorial Auditorium — a quick NJTransit ride from Manhattan (and I hear a bus goes there too).

Sunday 6/2 Dissident Arts is staging a Tribute to Eye and Ear Control at The Firehouse Space in Brooklyn, recalling one of most unbridled and fast-flowing of ’60s blowouts, instigated by Ayler with heroic personnel (see album cover) as a soundtrack for Canadian filmmaker Michael Snow.

Coming on the heels of the planet’s acknowledgement of Sun Ra’s 100th year and Miles Davis’ 88th birthday, the Dolphy and Ayler programs as well suggest there’s desire in the air (at least in some spheres) for red-blooded, high energy, deeply committed, subversively non-pop and indeed transcendent (mostly) acoustic improvisation fed by urban modernism, rooted in folk song, standards, sounds of nature and the blues. Yes, that’s what I like.

The Freedom Sound Festival, produced by the non-profit Seed Artists (founded by drummer Pheeroan ak Laff and his wife Luz Marina Bueno) has among its scheduled highlights on Friday night a drum duet of ak Laff and Andrew Cyrille, reedist Henry Threadgill with pianist David Virelles, a solo appearance by bassist Richard Davis, trumpeter Russ Johnson’s Still Out to Lunch with Roy Nathanson on alto, andpianist Diane Moser’s Quintet with reedist Marty Ehrlich, who will also be in a bass clarinet quintet. Saturday begins with a symposium starring Pulitzer Prize-winning composer, author and academician Gunther Schuller (a major Dolphy proponent) and flutist-composer James Newton, proceeds to the trio Tarbaby with guest artist Oliver Lake, drummer ak Laff and electric guitarist Vernon Reid plus guests, and concluding all-stars. The Freedom of Sound fest has been raising funds as an Indiegogo campaign; contributions are promised to the Jazz Foundation of America (JFA) and the Montclair Academy of Dance and Laboratory of Music (MADLOM).

The NYE&EC celebrants include The Veterans of Free (Daniel Carter, saxes and trumpet;  Karl Berger, vibes and piano; Warren Smith, drums and percussion;  multi-reedist Will Connell, vocalist Ingrid Sertso and bassist Ken Filiano);  poet Steve Dalachinsky, sax and flutist Ras Moshe’s Unit  and  trumpeter/alto clarinetist Matt Lavelle’s 12 Houses Orchestra, a 14-tet. Vibraphonist and percussionist John Pietaro has more than a little to do with setting up this concert, which starts at 3:30 pm and will run into the Game of Thrones hour. Catch the dragons later –monstrous music to hear.

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Ornette Coleman, genius musician and major inspiration to this blog and blogger, turned 84 on March 9. His son Denardo threw a family ‘n’ friends party in celebration, which I was privileged to attend. Denardo graciously allowed me to bring Hungarian photographer Sánta István Csaba, who created this portrait of one of the creative heroes of the 20th and 21st century (and all other photos on this page, except for Sound Evidence’s image of Ben Schacter and Jamaaladeen Tacuma).

Ornette Coleman has exemplified the big, natural, fundamental idea of making music (and indeed any art, or for that matter life itself) as much as possible personal, responsibly collaborative,  free of constraints, spontaneous and open to emotional expression. He recognizes beauty everywhere and in everyone.

Denardo has played drums since age six, recording a full album, The Empty Foxhole,  with his father and bassist Charlie Haden when in 1966, when he was 10 (ammd  it’s just been announced his Denardo Coleman Vibe will perform at the Prospect Park Bandshell in the Celebrate Brooklyn! festival on June 12, admission free). Back then his introduction to the scene caused controversy (everything Ornette did then caused controversy) and even outright derision, which has resulted in his being under-appreciated for decades. But that’s wrong. He long ago developed his unique skills and style, both at traps kit and as a key player in all projects harmolodic.

Denard’s fast moves, keeping of a constant pulse, dynamic approach to cymbals and lighter drum timbres provide significant propulsion to everything I’ve heard him do. For revelatory listening, find Prime Design, Ornette’s full length composition for Denardo and string quartet, recorded at the opening of Caravan of Dreams in the Coleman family seat of Fort Worth, Texas, in 1987.

Earlier — starting in the mid ’70s — Denardo had been at the core of Prime Time, Ornette’s combustible ensemble  of two electric guitars, two electric basses and usually two drummers he typically led while soloing on alto sax, violin and trumpet. That edition of Prime Time’s other principals — guitarist Bern Nix, bassists Jamaaladeen Tacuma and Albert McDowell, among them — also played with Denardo in the Firespitters, backing up poet/ nchantress Jayne Cortez, his mother. Except for that, Denardo has seldom performed without Ornette, a situation remedied at Celebrating Ornette! a spirited legacy tribute produced in Philadelphia on March 21 through the combined efforts of the Painted Bride, Philadelphia Jazz Project, Ars Nova Workshop, Bobby Zankel and musicians organized by a Philly-based force unto the music world, aforementioned electric bassist extraordinaire Jamaaldeen Tacuma.

Denardo’s quintet had an innovative lineup: electric guitarist Charlie Ellerbee (another Prime Time vet), electric bassist McDowell (who Ornette had first plucked from a NYC high school band class) and upright bassist Tony Falanga (who had played an orchestral gig that afternoon) along with tenor  saxophonist Antoine Roney. Roney on tenor has a grainy, open-plains bluesiness reminiscent of Dewey Redman, Ornette’s longtime confrere, but even more Ornette-ish was Denardo’s concentration of activity in low registers. Ornette has always had brilliant bassists (Charlie Haden, Scott LaFaro, Jimmy Garrison, David Izenzon, Chris Walker) and he likes to hear the bottom on top. Denardo’s three string-instrumentalists, who represented an enormous range of variety in their individual inclinations and sounds, tumbled around each other non-chalantly, shifting octaves and responsibilities for anchoring, soloing and counterpoint mid-improvisations.

McDowell was very much the electric bass guitarist; Falanga bowed with him, sometimes floating his pitches just above McDowell’s. Ellerbee played a variation of r&b rhythm gtr chucka-chucka chords, introducing Ornette’s most famous theme, “Lonely Woman,” with an unaccompanied, abstracted, rubato melody interpretation had me imagining a person distraught unto despair, lost in the ozone, chilled to the existential bone. Falling in behind the deadpan Ellerbee, the band — spurred by Denardo — wailed.

Jamaaladeen Tacuma — the most ecstatic, elastic, groove-laying, funkily free, deep electric bassist on the planet –followed with his For the Love of Ornette band (titled the same as his most recently released album, with mostly the same personnel). Ever since his mid ’70s debut (under another name) with Ornette on Dancing In Your Head, Jamaaladeen has been a bubbling spring of bluesy, out-bound movement, and his set starting with his “Tacuma Song” exemplified his style. Backed by powerhouse and tone-color-conscious drummer G. Calvin Weston, his frequent rhythm partner, JT established the catchy theme guitaristically on his blond Gibson ax his self-designed TacumART bass, then opened space for unrestricted solos by Wolfgang Puschnig on alto sax, Ben Schacter on tenor sax and Yoichi Uzeki, pianist.

These musicians seemed to revel in their opportunity to play before the full house (approx. 250) of Philly’s aficionados, devotees and performers (including pianist Dave Burrell) of Coleman-inspired arts. Uzeki, for instance, dismissed any contradictions implied by his classical training addressing the free jazz imperatives, applying a keyboard touch from spare to florid to the rambunctious group sound. Schacter, in from California, deployed a big, rangy tone that had some swagger, quoting several of Ornette’s famous motifs with reverent tenderness. Puschnig, an Austrian who in the ’80s co-founded the Vienna Art Orchestra, exemplified a cheerfully renegade approach to all his horn-playing, continuously spouting unpredictable melodies on alto as well as flute and hojak, a short Korean double-reed instrument.

The four players kept their minds on the songs that launched them, even while exploring how far those songs would take them away. They were fearless and intrepid — attitudes that were contagious, enlisting the listening crowd’s participation. The band performed the For The Love of Ornette title song, with spoken word by Wadud Ahmad, and some Coleman-penned curiosities, like the sketchy yet complete riff Jamaaladeen explained Prime Time had performed when guesting on Saturday Night Live.

\At least some of the basis of  Ornette’s love for Jamaaladeen was evident all the time: the bass guitarist has live-wire energy that surges confidently underwhatever sounds rise into the air. Nothing fazes him, and he can marshall fragments that might seem to issue from random corners into purposeful wholes. Of the highlights: Asha Puhtli, the remarkable Indian-emigre diva who indelibly committed two of Ornette’s most ravishing songs on his album Science Fiction in 1971, crooned “What Reason Could I Give” for the first time in 40 years. The horns’ parts wrapped sinew-like around her rich, warm voice, JT coursing like blood aboil through it all, into a duet with Schacter that segued into a dramatic blues stomp and concluded with luscious chorale finale. Wow. Exhilarating. See it here.

Ornette Coleman wasn’t in the audience, but he was surely felt as present in the hall, brought by the artists and audience he’s affected to our core. “Denardo is Ornette’s son,” Jamaaladeen proclaimed after the drummer’s performance, “but we are, too,” he said, gesturing to his band waiting in the wings, and he could have opened the gesture up to include everyone convened (yes, also daughters).

Maybe he did — probably he meant to. It seemed like everyone there loved Ornette. As all people should: He’s a man who has freed music, for and within us.

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