Archives for 2009

A few days short of a year ago, I told you about four 19-year-old musicians worth keeping an ear on. Three of them were the Uptown Trio, who appeared in concert supporting the gifted alto saxophonist Logan Strosahl. I wrote:

Anyone keeping a future file would do well to add those names. If these players keep developing at their current pace and intensity, it is likely that we’ll be hearing from them.

I remarked in the review that pianist Sam Reider, bassist Jeff Picker (his real name) and drummer Jake Goldblas were taking the business aspect of their careers into their own hands, contacting clubs and lining up tours. Good young players not adopted by record companies and booking agents must do that to get work.
The Uptown Trio, based in New York, has arranged a west coast tour early next month, with dates at important clubs in Los Angeles, Oakland and Portland. To see their schedule and hear a bit of their music, go here.

From a news release just received:

May 21, 2009
Washington, DC – The National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) today announced the recipients of the 2010 NEA Jazz Masters Award – the nation’s highest honor in this distinctly American music The eight recipients will each receive a $25,000 grant award and be publicly honored in an awards ceremony and concert on Tuesday, January 12, 2010 at Frederick P. Rose Hall, home of Jazz at Lincoln Center.
The eight 2010 NEA Jazz Masters are:
Muhal Richard Abrams, pianist, composer, educator, New York, NY
Kenny Barron, pianist composer, educator, Brooklyn, NY
Bill Holman, composer arranger, saxophonist, Los Angeles, CA
Bobby Hutcherson, vibraphonist, marimba player, composer, Montara, CA
Yusef Lateef, saxophonist, flutist, oboist, composer, educator, Amherst, MA
Annie Ross, vocalist, New York, NY
Cedar Walton, pianist, composer, Brooklyn, NY
George Avakian, a jazz producer, manager, critic, and educator from Riverdale, New York, will receive the 2010 A.B Spellman NEA Jazz Masters Award for Jazz Advocacy.

Congratulations to all. To see the complete NEA announcement, click here. To read last week’s Wall Street Journal profile of George Avakian by Will Friedwald, click here.

We are the masters at the moment, and not only at the moment, but for a very long time to come. — George Bernard Shaw
No art is less spontaneous than mine.
What I do is the result of reflection
and the study of the great masters. — Edgar Degas


A couple of years ago – maybe it was three – I linked Rifftides readers to a video so clever that it’s worth bringing to you again. Now that the staff has mastered the art of embedding, this time you see it right here on our screen; no linking required. When it finishes, you will see links to other creations by the same performer, who, for a reason perhaps known only to him, calls himself “Weeping Prophet.” Thanks to reader Paul Paolicelli (his real name) for reminding us of this skillful piece of work. The music is “Leap Frog” by Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie, with Thelonious Monk, Curly Russell and Buddy Rich (1950).

All of the tracks from the “Leap Frog” session and a wide range of Parker’s other Verve recordings are in this CD set.

We did not intend Rifftides to be an obituary service. It would be simpler to avoid its seeming like one if treasured musicians would stick around. We cannot ignore their passing.
The latest loss is Buddy Montgomery, who died today at the age of 79. The youngest of the Montgomery brothers, he outlived guitarist Wes and bassist Monk by many years. Admired among musicians for his creativity as a pianist and vibraharpist, his example affected a number of younger players. The prolific pianist David Hazeltine credits Montgomery as a primary influence. In the course of a career that began in the late 1940s in his hometown of Indianapolis, Montgomery played with Big Joe Turner, Slide Hampton, Miles Davis, George Shearing, and The Mastersounds (with his brother Monk). He recorded often with his brothers and led several groups of his own.
The Montgomery Brothers’ Groove Yard album is one of their most celebrated. The cover shows (l to r) Wes, Monk and Buddy. An extensive compilation of other music they recorded for the Riverside label has the deceptively similar name of Groove Brothers. Among Buddy Montgomery’s own CDs, Here Again is a standout. Go here for a full-length sample; Montgomery with his rich harmonies on piano playing “My Ideal.” Jeff Chambers is the bassist, Ray Appleton the drummer.

You never know where jazz stories will materialize. This week, one about Dizzy Gillespie’s hometown showed up in the travel pages of The Philadelphia Inquirer. The article by Jay Clarke of the Universal Press syndicate makes it clear that Cheraw, South Carolina, has not forgotten about its famous son; far from it. Two excerpts from Clarke’s story:

Dizzy Gillespie’s home no longer exists, but the site has been converted into a small park, decorated with unusual stainless-steel sculptures. One is a fence cut into the shape of a musical staff, with musical notes to Gillespie’s signature work, “Salt Peanuts.” A couple of others take the outline of Gillespie’s trademark bent trumpet.

Downtown, a bronze statue of Gillespie, with his puffed-out cheeks and bent horn, stands in the Town Green, close to Centennial Park, where most concerts of the annual jazz festival are held. This year’s fete will be Oct. 16-18.

The piece is not exclusively about Gillespie. It also covers Cheraw’s Revolutionary War and Civil War history (General Sherman slept there) and its importance in the heyday of cotton. To read the whole thing, go here. There’s more detail about Gillespie and the town on Cheraw’s web site.
For an excellent biography of Gillespie, read Alyn Shipton’s 1999 Groovin’ High. Shipton discloses that in the late 1950s on one of Dizzy’s many visits to Cheraw, he learned that his great-great-grandfather was a West African chief and it was likely that his great-grandfather was the white slave holder who owned Gillespie’s grandmother. Gillespie’s comment on that information: “That’s all over the South, you know.” The focus of Shipton’s book, however, is less on family history than on Gillespie’s music, with detailed accounts of its content and development.
For a Rifftides remembrance of Gillespie and a video clip of him playing “Tin-Tin Deo,” click here.

Beginning a west coast tour, Karrin Allyson took her quartet into The Seasons Thursday evening. Alternating between bossa nova subtlety and blues forthrightness, she drew liberally from the Brazilian repertoire of her current Imagina CD, singing in Portuguese and English. She sparkled with delicacy and brightness in Antonio Carlos Jobim classics including “Estrada Branca (This Happy Madness),” “Double Rainbow” and “Desafinado.” She displayed her Kansas City roots in “Some of My Best Friends are the Blues,” Ellington’s “I Ain’t Got Nothin’ but the Blues” and Hank Mobley’s “The Turnaround.” She blends grit and folk wisdom into the sophistication of her blues singing and piano playing.
Guitarist Rod Fleeman and drummer Todd Strait, Allyson’s colleagues since her career beginnings in Kansas City in the early 1990s, and bassist Jeff Johnson have uncanny levels of empathy with her and among one another. Allyson gave each of them extensive solo time, and each got sustained displays of enthusiasm from the audience. At one point, a Fleeman blues solo on Wes Montgomery’s “Fried Pies” inspired a man sitting near me to ask no one in particular, “Where the hell did he come from?”
In Wayne Shorter’s “Footprints,” Allyson achieved devastating minor blues poignancy abetted by rich chord voicings in her own piano accompaniment. Asked in a post-intermission chat about the increased depth of her piano playing, she seemed taken aback, as if it were being called to her attention for the first time. In fact, she is a piano soloist and accompanist of fluency and harmonic resourcefulness. Allyson’s concert was a demonstration of the completeness of her musicianship as a vocalist, a pianist, and a leader who inspires and interacts with her sidemen. Her group is a band, in every sense. She elicited two standing ovations, gave two encores and left the audience hoping for more.
Tonight, Allyson and company perform at the San Francisco Jazz Festival. To see if they’re coming to a town near you, check their itinerary.

Driving home following the Allyson concert (and a fine hang over a good glass of Washington wine), I turned on the radio. The classical station was playing Tchaikovsky’s Fifth Symphony. As I crested a hill, there was the full moon, filling half the sky. At that moment, the orchestra reached the horn arietta in the second movement, the one that inspired Andre Kostelanetz to steal from Peter Ilyitch and write “Moon Love.” In the video clip below, Leonard Bernstein conducts the Boston Symphony Orchestra. Although the “Moon Love” melody comes at 7:30, I strongly urge you to watch the entire clip to appreciate how Bernstein and the BSO build to the moment. The clip ends prematurely, but what we get is splendid.

To hear what Chet Baker did in 1953 with the standard song based on the Tchaikovsky melody, click here, then on the play arrow in the box at the upper right of your screen. This is a prime example of a jazz artist recognizing that, sometimes, unadulterated melody is the purest statement he can make. The pianist is Russ Freeman, the bassist Carson Smith, the drummer Larry Bunker.

Ken Poston of the Los Angeles Jazz Institute sent information about the tribute later this month to Bud Shank. The great alto saxophonist and flutist died on April 2.

The Bud Shank Memorial Concert is scheduled to take place May 23rd at 7:00pm at The Four Points Sheraton at LAX 9750 Airport Blvd. It’s happening during the upcoming “A Swingin’ Affair” festival but will be free and open to the public. Numerous musicians are performing, including Bud’s original rhythm section: Claude Williamson, Don Prell and Chuck Flores and his latest rhythm section with Bill Mays and Bob Magnusson.
Bud Shank Memorial Concert
May 23 7:00-9:00PM
Four Points Sheraton at LAX
9750 Airport Blvd.
Los Angeles, CA
FREE
Featured artists and speakers include:
Howard Rumsey
Claude Williamson
Don Prell
Chuck Flores
Clare Fischer
Dennis Budimer
Bill Mays
Bob Magnusson
Lanny Morgan
Pete Christlieb
Fred Selden
Doug Webb
Jack Nimitz
Bill Ramsay
David Friesen

For the Rifftides remembrance of Shank and comments from readers, go here.
Here’s Shank in the early sixties when he collaborated with pianist-composer Clare Fischer. The unannounced bassist and drummer appear to be Gary Peacock and Larry Bunker. I cannot identify the hand percussionist.

Bill Kirchner continues his Jazz From The Archives series on WBGO-FM, Newark, (88.3) and the internet with a show about a musician frequently mentioned on Rifftides. Here’s his announcement.

Musician/author Richard Sudhalter (1938-2008) wrote (in the first case, co-wrote) three landmark books: BIX: MAN AND LEGEND, LOST CHORDS, and STARDUST MELODY. He also was a fine jazz cornetist in the Bix Beiderbecke/Bobby Hackett mold. As a musician, he had wide-ranging stylistic interests and was difficult to
pigeonhole.
We’ll hear recordings by Sudhalter as a leader and as a member of the Classic Jazz Quartet (with clarinetist Joe Muranyi, pianist Dick Wellstood, and guitarist Marty Grosz). The repertoire ranges from rareties of the 1920s to tunes by Duke Ellington, Billy Strayhorn, and Gerry Mulligan, as well as Sudhalter originals.
The show will air this Sunday, May 10, from 11 p.m. to midnight, Eastern
Daylight Time.
NOTE: If you live outside the New York City metropolitan area, WBGO also
broadcasts on the Internet at www.wbgo.org. Click on “Listen Now” at the top of the WBGO home page.

For the Rifftides remembrance of Sudhalter on his passing last year, click here.

Paul Paolicelli and I got to be friends hanging out at professional meetings when we were television news directors. We were both trumpet players and found more to talk about than the state of journalism, which in the 1970s and ’80s was already a little soft around the edges. Come to think of it, so was the jazz business.
Paul still runs a TV news operation, in North Carolina, and has a blog on his station’s web site. This morning he responded to the “Giant Steps” piece below by referring me to his latest entry, which begins:

A few years ago I told my (soon to be 13 year old) daughter that one of the few things I could truly give her was a working understanding of the difference between John Coltrane and Paul Desmond. That she probably had no idea of what I was talking about, but that one day in a distant future, when she would be able to glibly discuss jazz with a full memory of the sounds, and she’d smile and thank me wherever I might be by then.
Sometimes things happen sooner than later.
The other day my daughter and I were driving to Wilmington from Chapel Hill and listening to Anita O’Day (I have a car loaded with CDs and mp3s of the old jazz greats, just for this purpose)…

To find out what happened then, go here.
To find out more about Paolicelli, go here.

John Coltrane’s “Giant Steps” is the harmonic steeplechase generally regarded as the most significant – at least the most prominent – milestone on the tenor saxophonist’s path out of bebop on his way to what he called a universal sound. Difficult as the fact may be to absorb for those still bowled over by the freshness and complexity of what Coltrane did with the piece, he made his stunning recording of “Giant Steps” 50 years ago today.
To put the lasting impact of his accomplishment in perspective, think of an influential jazz recording made 50 years before Coltrane laid down “Giant Steps” on May 5, 1959. You can’t. There was none, because jazz as a distinct form of music did not exist on May 5, 1909. “Giant Steps” is a monument to the evolution of the art of jazz in less than half a century, a phenomenon unprecedented in any other fundamental genre of music. Coltrane’s rhythm section was Tommy Flanagan, piano; Paul Chambers bass; Arthur Taylor, drums. It has sometimes been pointed out that in his solo Flanagan seems less than comfortable with the changes. If you are a musician, imagine how comfortable you would be negotiating that minefield of chords if the music were set before you for the first time at a record session.
I am not sure that the video clip below explains what about “Giant Steps” led to an opening up of the approach to jazz improvisation. Indeed, I am not sure that Coltrane’s artistry can be explained; the quotients of mystery and spirit in his music are as essential as his quantifiable elements of musicianship and saxophone technique. The clip certainly shows what his astonishing solo on the piece is made of. Thanks to longtime Rifftides reader Dick McGarvin for bringing this to our attention. Hold onto your seats and, as Dick says, follow the bouncing ball.

After you have played or sung along with Coltrane, you may wish to take a few moments to read some of the more than 1,500 comments from YouTube viewers about “Giant Steps.” They range from the simplistic but inarguable:

this is really coool ..

To those that will boggle the minds of laymen:

Look for the tonal centers. The starting B chord throws people off, it can be treated as a Bmin7, giving you 6 beats in G, 6 beats in Eb, 6 beats in G, 4 beats in Eb and 4 beats in B; then 8 beats in Eb, 8 beats in G, 8 beats in B, 8 beats in Eb. The last bar is a turnaround in B to bring you back to the initial chord- you can play the D# to D to emphasize the change in tonal center or play a B. Find the pivot tones that adjacent tonal centers have in common to play across the bar lines.

En masse, the comments emphasize the impression that Coltrane’s performance has made on jazz listeners and jazz players, most of whom were probably not born when he recorded it.
The album Giant Steps is a basic repertoire item, a necessity in any serious collection.
“Giant Steps” led the artist Michal Levy to create an inspired film animation based on an abbreviated version of Coltrane’s recording. Her work is in the spirit, but not the style, of the pioneering Canadian artist Norman McLaren. To see Levy’s piece, go here.

You may have been wondering why, to submit a comment to Rifftides, you are asked to type in a box two words like these samples.

A curious and, possibly, irritated reader asked,

Isn’t it funny when they want you to type in the words at the bottom – it’s like a “TEST” to see if you can make them out? Why don’t they make it easy for us?
Why is that? We can’t cheat. We are on our own computers. That is so funny isn’t it?

It’s not so funny if spammers grab your e-mail address and plague you with junk mail. Artsjournal.com Commander-In-Chief Doug McLennan explains:

They have to make them obscure enough so that computer spam bots can’t read them. That’s the whole point. Modern scanner algorithms can read images that are clear. This captcha program is supposed to be one of the best.

I hope that you feel safer. Test the system; click the Comments link below and send one. We’re always glad to have Rifftides readers’ opinions and observations.

Last Friday, Leonard Lopate of WNYC radio in New York invited Bill Charlap to drop by the studio where Lopate does his Please Explain program and talk about how jazz improvisation works. Seated at the piano, Charlap spoke clearly about the raw materials of music and showed what jazz players do with them in the act of creation. He used “These Foolish Things” and the blues as his demonstration models. Lopate, a personification of the inquiring mind, asked good questions. He reached a couple of layman’s conclusions with which Charlap politely and firmly disagreed. Toward the end of the half hour of good conversation and music, Lopate and Charlap took a few calls from canny listeners. It is all entertaining and instructive, even for those who may know, or think they know, the answers. To hear the program, click on the arrow in the box below. You will get a brief WNYC promotional announcement, then the show.

Occasionally, the Rifftides staff shares some noncurricular event or scene with you. I couldn’t resist showing you the downhill end of the garden as it appeared a half hour ago. Happy Spring to you, unless you live in the southern hemisphere, in which case, Happy Autumn.

Thanks to Julius LaRosa for pointing us toward a performance with the Oscar Peterson Trio by Ella Fitzgerald late in her career. Peterson sits out most of the first chorus. Bassist Niels-Henning Ørsted Pedersen generates the powerful swing with Fitzgerald. Then the pianist and drummer Martin Drew join the ride. Ella is rarely singled out for her low-register chops, but take notice of her deep range in the third chorus.

Have a good weekend.

The White House has yet to award a posthumous Presidential Medal of Freedom to Willis Conover. But there has been progress toward that goal. I was delighted to learn when I got off the road this week that Congress proclaimed April 25 Willis Conover Day. He was honored during celebrations on the National Mall. Finally, his nation has given official recognition to the Voice Of America broadcaster who sent jazz to the world and, without indulging in propaganda or politics, helped to end the Cold War. Here is part of one of many Rifftides items about Conover.

Through most of the cold war, Conover was the host of Music USA on the Voice of America. He was never a government employee, always working under a free lance contract to maintain his independence. While our leaders and those of the Soviet bloc stared one another down across the nuclear abyss, in his stately bass-baritone voice Willis introduced listeners around the world to jazz and American popular music. With knowledge, taste, dignity and no trace of politics, he played for nations of captive peoples the music of freedom. He interviewed virtually every prominent jazz figure of the second half of the twentieth century. Countless Eastern European musicians give him credit for bringing them into jazz. Because the Voice is not allowed to broadcast to the United States, Conover was unknown to the citizens of his own country. For millions behind the iron curtain he was an emblem of America, democracy and liberty. Gene Lees makes the case, to which I subscribe wholeheartedly, that,

…Willis Conover did more to crumble the Berlin wall and bring about collapse of the Soviet Empire than all the Cold War presidents put together.

To read all of that item, follow this link.
Below is a video broadcast in Russian following a Washington, DC, concert in the fall of 2007, honoring Conover’s memory. It gives us a glimpse of Willis at work in his VOA studio not long before his death in 1996. As a direct result of listening to Conover’s VOA programs, the players in the concert all developed as jazz musicians behind the iron curtain. They are Paquito D’Rivera, alto saxophone (Cuba); Valery Ponomarev, trumpet (Soviet Union); Milcho Leviev, piano (Bulgaria); George Mraz, bass (Czechoslovakia); Horacio Hernandez, drums (Cuba). The piece is Ellington’s “Take the ‘A’ Train,” the theme music for Conover’s Music USA.
This gathering of world-class artists inspired by Conover to become jazz musiciains expresses more powerfully than any congressional resolution his contribution to US cultural diplomacy. Still, that presidential Medal of Freedom is long overdue.