Rahsaan Roland Kirk Live in ’63 & ‘67 (Jazz Icons). One of eight DVDs in the impressive Jazz Icons third release, this finds Kirk touring Europe with his arsenal of horns. It is fascinating to watch him manage tenor sax, manzello, stritch, clarinet, siren and nose whistle. The forthright music he makes is even more gripping. Pianist George Gruntz, bassist Niels Henning Ørsted-Pederson and drummer Daniel Humair are among his accompanists in Belgium, Holland and Norway. Kirk’s fourteen performances include two versions of his explosve “Three For the Festival”
Archives for January 2009
Book: Willa Cather
Willa Cather, Death Comes for the Archbishop (Vintage Classics). Cather is in a class with A.B. Guthrie, Jr. and Bernard DeVoto in her feeling for the expanse and expansiveness of early America. This tale of two French priests carving their church territory out of a resistant New Mexico is an unsurpassed collection of word pictures by one of the greatest American painters-with-language. This isn’t a book about jazz? Good catch. In the credo at the top of the page, see the part about other matters.
The Blue Note 7: And They’re Off
In the second concert of their 50-stop national tour, the Blue Note 7 drew a full house Friday night at The Seasons Performance Hall in Yakima, Washington. From the opener, Horace Silver’s “The Outlaw,” to the encore, Bud Powell’s “Dance of the Infidels,” the all-star band dipped into the vast repertoire of compositions by artists who have recorded for Blue Note Records in its 70-years.Â
Although the Blue Note 7 have recorded one album, the little time they have spent as a unit is out of proportion to the ensemble’s spirit and unified sound. Introducing Lee Morgan’s “Party Time,” pianist Bill Charlap talked about the importance of the blues in Blue Note’s history and in the development of jazz. Then, with his customary taste and power, he proceeded to demonstrate. Trumpeter Nicholas Payton summoned up Morgan in his solo and worked through edgy harmonic ideas that alto saxophonist Steve Wilson developed through six choruses of story-telling improvisation. Peter Washington followed with the first of several impressive bass solos. The all-stars played to an audience so knowledgeable and receptive that the mere mention of a tune’s composer – “Joe Henderson,” “Jackie McLean,” “Freddie Hubbard” — brought applause and cheers.Â
Nash, Payton, Bernstein, Coltrane, Charlap, Wilson, Washington
Among the highlights: Payton and drummer Lewis Nash playing off one another’s energy on Hubbard’s “Hub Tones;” guitarist Peter Bernstein’s brilliant solo on the same piece; Wilson’s soulfulness in McLean’s “Ballad for Doll;” the virtuosity and humor in Nash’s long solo on Cedar Walton’s “Mosaic;” the layered Renee Rosnes arrangement and tenor saxophonist Ravi Coltrane’s joyful phrases in Wayne Shorter’s “United;” Charlap’s consistently authoritative playing throughout, at a peak on Kenny Dorham’s “Escapade.” The encore was sandwiched between two standing ovations.Â
With decades of musical material to draw on, writing for the ensemble a continuing adventure for all hands and more bus time together than any band has had since the swing era, it’s going to be fascinating to hear how this group has grown when they get off the road in New York in April. By the time you read this, they have played at The Shedd in Eugene, Oregon and are headed down Interstate 5 to California. Check their itinerary to see if it includes
your town or one near it. This is a band more than worth hearing. Â
your town or one near it. This is a band more than worth hearing. Â
Monk At Town Hall–Fifty Years Later
The unforgettable 1959 Thelonious Monk Orchestra concert at Town Hall will have a 50th anniversary recreation next month at the scene of the event in New York City. Preserved on a famous Riverside album and performed by jazz repertory orchestras everywhere, Monk’s 
compositions in orchestrations by Hall Overton are perennially fresh, full of ensemble performance challenges and of opportunities for soloists. Reissued every few years on LP, then on CD, the recording is a basic repertoire item, as timeless as Bach, Stravinsky or Charlie Parker.Â
For information about the February 26-27 concerts by two bands – Charles Tolliver’s and Jason Moran’s – click here. While you’re on the page, scroll down to trigger audio performances of “Friday The 13th” by Tolliver’s band and “Little Rootie Tootie” by Moran’s at Duke University’s Following Monk celebration last fall.Â
In this promotional but nonetheless informative, piece of video, Orrin Keepnews talks about the Town Hall concert. Keepnews was a partner in Riverside Records and oversaw the recording.
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And, to save you the trouble of seeking out the second part of the Keepnews story of Monk at Town Hall, here it is. Don’t be put off by the repeated introduction. It is the same on all segments of Bret Primack’s Keepnews interview series:
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Correspondence: Two Young Pianists
Rifftides reader Peter Myers writes:Â
In your liner notes from the great Christmas present CD I received, The Art and Soul of Houston Person, you mentioned a gifted 19-year-old jazz musician who plays few standards. I wondered if you were talking about Eldar. I was looking forward to seeing him at the Clearwater, FL Jazz Holiday back in October. I came away disappointed for the same reason. He played mostly his own compositions. Brilliant though he may be, his choice of music almost boredered on semi classical. I think he played one number, “Straight, No Chaser,” that was recognizable, and that you could tap your foot to. I wanted to approach him at the CD sales and signing booth and tell him, in a constructive, senior citizen way, but I did not.
No, it wasn’t Eldar. it was Sam Reider, an impressively talented and tasteful young man. You can find out something about him on his MySpace page and hear him in full performances, including one standard, with the Uptown Trio. You might also take a look at a Rifftides piece posted a day or two after I listened to him and his confreres in a concert. This is the paragraph from the Person notes:Â
A gifted nineteen-year-old jazz musician recently told me why he and his band play few standards. With touching earnestness, he explained that people under sixty don’t relate to standards and that his generation has no connection to the classic songs of the last century. He had just played a concert of compositions mostly written by him or his band members. It evidently escaped him that the audience, with a sizeable component of young people, gave its most enthusiastic response of the evening to an adventurous performance of Matt Dennis’s “Everything Happens to Me.” As his career progresses, it may dawn on our emerging young artist that when he provides his listeners a melody they can hold onto, they open up to him and accept considerable leeway when he goes beyond the familiar. That has been a fact of life in music at least as far back as Mozart.
As for Eldar Djangirov, the first time I heard him, in a Brubeck Institute workshop run by Roy Hargrove, I was mightily impressed. I think he was sixteen. When his records started coming
out, I heard what you’re apparently alluding to, overplaying and a tendency toward pretentiousness, also reflected in his or his handlers’ deciding that he should use only one name, a la Beyoncé or Liberace. That’s show biz. I haven’t heard Djangirov in live performance in several years and don’t wish to issue a blanket criticism of a young man who has formidable technical gifts and enormous musical potential. I hope that, ultimately, he will prove to also have taste, judgment and the ability to edit himself at the keyboard. As Miles Davis and John Lewis, among many others, have pointed out, it is important to know what not to play.Â
Those Missing Pictures
Because of a digital malfunction the nature of which I am unequipped to explain, some of the pictures in the recent Rifftides archives have disappeared and been replaced by empty boxes. The artsjournal.com technical hierarchy assures me that the gremlins have been found and summarily executed, but their mischief remains until the Rifftides staff can repair it. That is a matter of one photo being restored at a time. The staff has plenty to do and will undertake restoration as time allows. If you are browsing the archive and disturbed by those ghostly frames, we offer the standard modern mea culpa in times of disaster large or small: we regret any inconvenience.
Our Friend Dizzy
As readers of Rifftides know by now, The Wall Street Journal provides more than financial news and market reports. The newspaper has a Leisure And Arts section with extensive, varied, informed cultural coverage. It includes writing about music by several contributors. I am happy to be one on occasion. In today’s WSJ, Nat Hentoff brings together his friendship with Dizzy Gillespie and the need to care for sick or injured musicians with little or no health insurance. Â
…dying of pancreatic cancer, Dizzy, who had health insurance, said to Francis Forte, his oncologist, and himself a jazz guitarist: “I can’t give you any money, but I can let you use my name. Promise you’ll help musicians less fortunate than I am.” That was the Dizzy I knew, regarded by his sidemen as a teacher and mentor. From that conversation began the Dizzy Gillespie Memorial Fund and the Dizzy Gillespie Cancer Institute at the hospital. By now more than a thousand jazz musicians unable to pay have received a full range of medical and surgical care by Dr. Forte and a network of more than 50 physicians in various specialties, financed by the hospital and donations.
To read the whole thing, go here.Â
Nat’s piece reminded me that Dizzy died fifteen years ago this week. When I got the news, I wrote an op-ed piece. It ran in The Los Angeles Times on January 8, 1993 under the headline, “Our Friend Dizzy.”Â
As I write this, Dizzy Gillespie has been dead a few hours and KLON-FM is playing his recordings one after another. I’m sipping a red wine as close as I could find to the one he and I drank a lot of on a fall afternoon of listening and laughter in 1962 in his hotel room in Cleveland. I’m trying to summon the feelings of desolation and loss requisite when a friend and idol dies.Â
But there’s so much joy in his music, so much of his irrepressible spirit, so much of his foxy wisdom and humor, that John Birks Gillespie won’t allow me to sustain grief for more than a few seconds. At the other end of the phone line, up in Ojai, Gene Lees tells me that after someone called with the news, he stopped working, couldn’t write; a man who’s written yards about Birks, who wrote a book called Waiting For Dizzy.Â
I stare out into the rain, thinking about the next to last time I saw Diz in Los Angeles, backstage at the Universal Amphitheater following a middling concert by his quintet He was standing against a wall, relaxed, leaning on a broomstick loosely covered with bottlecaps, his famous rhythmstick. He shrugged and grinned. The shrug and the grin said, “What the hell, you can’t win ’em all.”
I think about the day I was walking down Broadway in New York and heard his unmistakable voice from the midst of the traffic roar. A car pulled up to the curb. Dizzy got out, bowed low and said, “Get in, please, you’re coming with us.” And we spent a crazy hour touring midtown Manhattan while Birks entertained everyone in and within hearing distance of the car with his descriptions of people, buildings and city life. Over the years, I had a least a dozen such experiences with Dizzy, and each of them had the warmth, spontaneity and unpredictability of his music. Multiply that by the hundreds, probably thousands, of people he treated with the same generosity and affection, and you begin to comprehend the dimesions of love and pleasure he created not only with his music but his being.Â
The last time I saw him in L.A., at the Greek Theater, he had just led his big band through two hours of perfection. There were moments that night when his trumpet had the glory, the impossible virtuosity, of the strongest performances of his youth. This time backstage there was a bear hug and a little dance and he said, “Rams, you dog, if I’d known you were out there, I’d have tried to play something.”Â
Daz McSkiven Voutzoroony, Slim Gaillard called him. Young trumpet players called him God. “It’s all in Arbans,” all in the famous trumpet exercise book, he used to say when he was asked about his technique. Right. And everything William Faulkner needed was in Webster’s dictionary. Birks and Charlie Parker, Bud Powell, Thelonious Monk, Kenny Clarke, Oscar Pettiford, and a few others transformed jazz in the 1940s and the power of their transformation influenced American music in all of its aspects, from pop hits and supermarket Muzak to the tonal values and breathing habits of symphony trumpet sections. Gillespie’s mastery of rhythm has been an inspiration to players of every instrument, including drums. Show me a jazz drummer born after 1920 who doesn’t worship Diz and I’ll leave you to listen to some mediocre drumming.Â
Driving home through the storm tonight, I played a new compact disc by a group of musicians including the young trumpeter Tom Williams. As Williams blew phrases Clifford Brown developed after hearing Fats Navarro, who learned from Dizzy, who studied Roy Eldridge, Louis Armstrong’s great successor, I reflected on the “end of an era” clichés we hear when a great person dies. The end of an era, possibly. But not the end of a tradition. Thanks, Birks. See you in the land of Oobladee.
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Other Matters: On Man
If you are at all disturbed by what we human beings are doing to one another in Israel, the Gaza Strip, Iraq, Afghanistan, Zimbabwe, Sudan, Georgia, Russia, Colombia, the Koreas (sorry if IÂ 
left out your favorite), spend a few minutes with a man who died 98 years ago. I wish I’d thought of this, but my artsjournal.com colleague Terry Teachout gets credit for recalling a classic piece of theater–and a great American philosopher. To see that man revived on Terry’s blog, click here.
Blue Note’s Birthday
Today is the 70th anniversary of Blue Note Records, and — what a coincidence — I have at hand an advance CD by the Blue Note 7. That is the all-star band of Blue Note artists on 
the verge of a three months tour to celebrate the longevity of a company that has made a difference in music. The tour opens Thursday evening at the Moore Theater in Seattle. Friday, the band will be across the Cascade mountains in Yakima, Washington, at The Seasons Performance Hall. I will be there, listening intently after having the pleasure of introducing the band. It is my intention to give you a report reasonably soon after the event. For a list of cities and dates of the tour, go here.Â
With pianist Bill Charlap at the helm, the other all-stars are guitarist Peter Bernstein, tenor saxophonist Ravi Coltrane, drummer Lewis Nash, trumpeter Nicholas Payton, bassist Peter Washington and alto saxophonist Steve Wilson–a cross-section of the cream of the modern jazz mainstream. Their new CD, titled Mosaic, includes that Cedar Walton composition and
pieces by Horace Silver, Herbie Hancock, Thelonious Monk and other musicians associated with Blue Note through the years. A companion disc, contains the original recordings of the pieces from the Blue Note archive by Monk, Hancock, Joe Henderson, Art Blakey, McCoy Tyner, Grant Green, Horace Silver and Bobby Hutcherson.Â
As I have emphasized here on more than one occasion, medium-sized bands can provide some of the greatest satisfactions in jazz. The arrangements of eight modern classics by members of the band and pianist Renee Rosnes (Mrs. Charlap) add to the successes in the genre. They respect the originals while introducing new touches–a bit of note-bending in the line of Hancock’s “Dolphin Dance,” the full-bodied orchestration of Grant Green’s theme in “Idle Moments,” a feeling of suspended animation leading into the main section of Joe Henderson’s “Inner Urge.” As for soloists, these are some of the best of their generation. They perform accordingly. PaytonÂ
impresses me more with the content of his improvisation on this record than anything I have heard from him in years. His solos here have the story-telling quality that separates first-tier jazz soloists from the herd. Charlap achieved that literary attribute long ago, but
on some of these tracks he gets into an edginess, particularly on Monk’s “Criss-Cross,” that adds an element he has seldom displayed. Maybe it’s Monk’s spirit that brings out chance-taking; Payton and Wilson also dive in with abandon on this piece.Â
Well, it’s all good, and I look forward to hearing what the Blue Note 7 have added to the repertoire since they made this album last year.
CD: Dena DeRose
Dena DeRose: Live At Jazz Standard, Volume Two (MaxJazz). Spontaneity and a sense of discovery continue in this second set by DeRose and her trio at the New York club. She, bassist Martin Wind and drummer Matt Wilson connect with one another and with an enthusiastic audience. The connection comes by way of taste, musicianship and a sense of shared enjoyment — outright fun, in fact. As in volume one, she concentrates on standard songs, but this time she includes three that are seldom done.Â
DeRose has kept “The Ruby and the Pearl” in her repertoire for a dozen years or more. She recorded it in her first album in 1996 and has deepened not only her interpretation of the lyric but also her improvisation. The track contains the first of several instances of DeRose’s vocalizing in unison with her single-note lines on the piano, something she does superlatively in the tradition of Joe Mooney. The fun reaches its apogee in “Laughing at Life,” which DeRose gives a straightforward treatment without the edge of irony in Billie Holiday’s version. Following her first vocal chorus, she begins riffing on a phrase and the trio turns the piece into a virtual blues, to the hilarity of all concerned. She brings to “I Can’t Escape From You” a melancholy reading enhanced by Wilson’s subtle cymbal splashes.Â
Derose plays a reflective out-of-tempo introduction before she takes “In Your Own Sweet Way” into a comfortable ¾ swing wth a fine bass solo by Wind. It has a chorus by DeRose that makes me wonder why she isn’t more frequently mentioned as a leading piano soloist. It is the only non-vocal track on the CD. As in his work in the trios of two other pianists, Bill Mays and Denny Zeitlin, Wilson keeps the attention of his colleagues and his listeners, layering in little packages of rhythmic surprise as he lays down perfect time. “When Lights Are Low,” “Detour Ahead,” “I Fall in Love Too Easily” and “We’ll Be Together Again” round out the album, all at a high level of satisfaction in this welcome recording.
Other Matters: Togetherness
This spring will see the release on DVD of a documentary film that dramatizes the degree to which we’re all in this troubled world together. The film uses music to make that point and the further one that music can help heal our differences. Its producer, Mark Johnson, took video and sound equipment around the world. He spent ten years filming musicians and singers in South Africa, Moscow, New Orleans, Tibet and scores of other places, then melding their work into Playing For Change: Peace Through Music. I have seen only this clip of the documentary and was moved by it.
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For more about Johnson and his film, go here to see a program Bill Moyers did in October on PBS television.
A Sudhalter Memorial
A concert in memory of Richard M. Sudhalter, the distinguished jazz musician, historian, biographer, and critic, will be held on Monday, January 12, at St. Peter’s Lutheran Church, 
619 Lexington Avenue at 54th Street, New York City, from seven to ten p.m.

Sudhalter died last September. For a Rifftides remembrance and appreciation of this extraordinary man, go here.Â
The list of musicians scheduled to perform includes Howard Alden, Donna Byrne, James Chirillo, Bill Crow, Armen Donelian, Bob Dorough, Paquito D’Rivera, Jim Ferguson, Carol Fredette, Marty Grosz, Sy Johnson, Dick Katz, Bill Kirchner, Steve Kuhn, Dan Levinson, Boots Maleson, Marian McPartland, Ray Mosca, Joe Muranyi, Sam Parkins, Ed Polcer, Loren Schoenberg, Daryl Sherman, Nancy Stearns, Carol Sudhalter, Ronny Whyte, Jackie Williams, and Marshall Wood.

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Between performances, Albert Haim, Dan Morgenstern, Pat Phillips, and Daryl Sherman will talk about Dick. Terry Teachout will play some of his favorite records.

The concert is open to the public.
Sudhalter was the ranking Bix Beiderbecke expert among jazz musicians of the second half of the twentieth century and the first years of this one. He wrote the definitive Beiderbecke biography and was a student and close friend of cornetist Jimmy McPartland, who succeeded Bix in the Wolverines. Â Sudhalter appeared more than once on Marian McPartland’s Piano Jazz program on National Public Radio to discuss Beiderbecke and play duets with Ms. McPartland on tunes Bix wrote. To hear one such program, from 2000, go here and click on “Listen Now.”
Service For Freddie Hubbard
Freddie Hubbard’s family has released information about his funeral service.Â
1:00 PM, Tuesday, January 6, 2009 — viewing from 11 AM
Faithful Central Bible Church’s Tabernacle
321 North Eucalyptus Avenue
Inglewood, CA 90301
Faithful Central Bible Church’s Tabernacle
321 North Eucalyptus Avenue
Inglewood, CA 90301
The trumpeter died December 29. For a Rifftides appreciation of his career, go here.
Bill Ramsay, Octogenarian Swinger
Bill Ramsay is a veteran saxophonist widely admired in jazz circles
across the US but little known to the public outside the Pacific Northwest.
Accomplished on alto and baritone saxes,he co-leads the Ramsay-Kleeb band and
is the baritone sparkplug of the Seattle
 Repertory Jazz Orchestra. Ramsay has
been a first-call sub on the Count Basie band for decades. His good-natured jousting partnership
with tenor saxophonist Pete Christlieb never fails to produce hard swing and spontaneous
standup comedy.
Ramsay celebrates his 80th birthday this month. Jim Wilke
will observe the occasion on his Jazz Northwest radio program on Sunday, January
4 at 1:00 p.m. Pacific time, 4:00 p.m. Eastern. Â Wilke will include previously unissued music by Ramsay’s big
band, recorded in 1961. To hear the program in the Seattle-Tacoma area, tune in
KPLU at 88.5 FM. To hear it on the internet, go here. Â
Ramsay and I are not related — except by mutual interests. Whenever I encounter him, he tells me to correct the spelling of my last name and I tell him to correct the spelling of his. Â Â