Archives for August 2010

In his few years, Oliver Nelson achieved major success as a composer and arranger in jazz and in the Hollywood studios. His first big band collection, Afro-American Sketches (1961), made it clear that he was an important new talent. His Blues And The Abstract Truth with an all-star septet that included Bill Evans, Freddie Hubbard and Eric Dolphy is one of the most significant jazz albums of the second half of the 20th century. A good saxophonist, Nelson blossomed as a writer. His inventiveness, productivity, adaptability and capacity to produce on schedule led him to a career composing for television and movies. He scored, among other programs, 1960s and ’70s hits including Ironside, Mr. Broadway and The Six Million Dollar Man. He became wealthy, but was leery of an essentially mercantile pursuit that he feared might sap his creativity. Phyl Garland wrote about Nelson’s concern in a November, 1968 article in Ebony magazine.

He fears that he might become a victim of his own success, for there is the constant lure of the even bigger money to be made by those who join “the club,” as that small group of openly commercial but highly solvent Hollywood composers call themselves. “Club” type success is difficult to shun, particularly when Oliver enjoys living as he does, though he has few spare hours to splash around in his own pool, and is equally proud of the home and 22-acre tract he has purchased for his parents on the outskirts of his hometown, St. Louis. He reluctantly admits, “I don’t see how I could give it all up,” but realizes that his expanding activities have left him little time in which to write music freely, to answer what he calls “this inner voice…something inside that just has to come out.”

To read all of the lengthy piece about Nelson, go here. Two years after the article appeared, Nelson was in Germany to conduct his arrangements played by an international ensemble called The Berlin Dream Band. This video from that concert gives a rare opportunity to hear Nelson speak and see him at work in his preferred milieu. The first trumpet soloist is the late Carmell Jones. I am unable to identify the other two. The trumpet section is: Milo Pavlovic (Yugoslavia), Ron Simmonds (Canada), Carmell Jones (USA), Manfred Stoppacher (Austria), Harry Samp (Germany).

Oliver Nelson managed to balance “this inner voice” with work in the studios, but for only a few years longer. He died of a heart attack in 1975 at the age of 43.

Jim Wilke, known worldwide for his Jazz After Hours satellite radio program, also runs a popular weekly broadcast featuring musicians from the Pacific Northwest. He sent this alert about the first program in a new series. It will present music from a major festival that ended last weekend.

Centrum Jazz Port Townsend Festival Big Band next on

Jazz Northwest

The All Star Festival Big Band is always one of the hits of the annual Jazz Port Townsend Festival. This year’s concert lived up to the tradition of mixing top Northwest resident musicians with visiting jazz stars and a sprinkling of guest artists and was conducted by John Clayton. Most of the artists are also members of the faculty for the week-long jazz workshop that precedes the Festival. The concert was recorded for broadcast and will air exclusively (and stream online) on 88.5 KPLU on Sunday, August 8 at 1 PM Pacific Daylight Time. John Clayton led the orchestra and featured in solo turns were trumpet player and vocalist Byron Stripling, composer/arranger Ellen Rowe, singer Saschal Vasandani and drummer Butch Miles and other soloists from the band.
Ingrid Jensen, Jay Thomas and Terell Stafford in a three- way trumpet chase with John Clayton conducting the Festival Band.(Jim Levitt photo)

(For the completists among you: [l to r]
Saxophones: Travis Raney, Alexey Nikolaev, Jeff Clayton, Mark Taylor, Bill Ramsay.
Trombones: Dan Marcus, Wycliffe Gordon, David Marriott, Greg Schroeder (hidden).
Trumpets: Ingrid Jensen, Brad Allison (seated), Jay Thomas, Andy Omdahl (seated), Terell Stafford.
Rhythm section (not seen here): Jon Hansen, piano, Dan Balmer, guitar, Doug Miller, bass, Butch Miles, drums. —DR)

This is the first in a series of concerts from Jazz Port Townsend which will air on Jazz Northwest, Sundays at 1 on 88.5, KPLU. The concerts will be heard at monthly intervals.
Jazz Northwest is recorded and produced by Jim Wilke exclusively for KPLU and kplu.org. A podcast of each program is available on the Monday following the airdate at kplu.org.

Okay, okay, it’s a plug. Rifftides plugs are strictly based on the merit of the plugees.

The alto saxophonist Lee Konitz’s inventiveness and boldness have seldom flagged. As his recent recordings demonstrate, he continues to embrace adventure and risk. If his repertoire is stocked with pieces that he revisits time and again—”All the Things You Are,” “I’ll Remember April,” “Body and Soul,” “Just Friends”—Konitz is the epitome of the jazz soloist who tries never to play anything the same way twice, never coasts on clichés, even his own.
As a listener who has been captivated by Konitz since first hearing his 1949 recordings with Lennie Tristano, I never fail to find him at least interesting. Often, he transmits a sense of challenge and discovery remarkable for an improvising musician in his ninth decade. I may wish that Konitz had retained the skipping lightness and whimsy that characterized his work in the 1950s and well into the ’60s. It may not be realistic, however, to think that as an artist deepened his tone and his intellect, youthful spirits would continue to dominate his work.
There is no better example from the latter part of that “early” period than Konitz’s 1961 Motion album with bassist Sonny Dallas and drummer Elvin Jones, and few better examples from the ’50s, at least on video, than this 1954 performance of “Subconscious-Lee” with his Tristano bandmate Warne Marsh. The rhythm section is pianist Billy Taylor, guitarist Mundell Lowe, bassist Eddie Safranski and drummer Ed Thigpen.

Tom Vitale of National Public Radio put together a report about Konitz that summarizes his career and his present approach. It includes comments from Konitz and bits of his current work. To hear the story, go here and click on “Listen Now.” At the end of the text are links to previous NPR pieces about Konitz.

Jazz listeners who derided the sing-along records and TV shows that made Mitch Miller rich and famous in the 1950s and ’60s tended to forgive him the shallowness of his pop pap because he played with Charlie Parker. Miller died over the weekend at the age of 99. See Matt Schudel’s excellent obituary in The Washington Post.
In addition to his sing-along extravaganzas, Miller produced recordings by singers as various as Johnny Mathis, Hank Williams, Rosemary Clooney, Tony Bennett and Frank Sinatra—during one of the low points of Sinatra’s career. Before his career as a pop producer and sing-along specialist, Miller was admired as one of classical music’s most accomplished oboists. He appeared in oboe interludes and obbligatos in Parker’s album with strings and in a few live appearances with Parker’s string ensemble. In this photograph from the 1949 recording session we see Miller with Parker, drummer Buddy Rich, bassist Ray Brown and violinists Max Hollander and Milt Lomask. In this case, Miller is playing English horn.

And here he is with Parker in the remarkable “Just Friends,” from the Charlie Parker With Strings album. Miller has the oboe interlude between Bird’s choruses.
Sing along with this.
(A version of this post that was up for a few hours contained factual errors that fellow blogger Alan Kurtz called to my attention. The errors are gone. Thanks, Alan.—DR)

Arizona’s once-open arms close into fist
—Headline, Yakima (Washington) Herald-Republic, 8/3/10

If you live in New York City or are headed there this week, you’re in luck. Rebecca Kilgore is in town, sharing a gig at Feinstein’s with the tenor saxophonist Harry Allen and his quartet. I learned of her appearance by way of The Wall Street Journal‘s WSJ.com, which has a New York Culture section that doesn’t show up in the national print edition. Will Friedwald wrote the piece about Kilgore. He underlines the rarity of her appearances in The Apple.

Once you do hear Ms. Kilgore, however, you’ll be hooked: With her opulent chops, lighter-than-air style, and, above all, her effortless rhythm, Ms. Kilgore is the living embodiment of the hippest singers of the big band era, like Maxine Sullivan, Mildred Bailey, and Helen Ward. Her partner in time for this three-night stand is saxophonist Harry Allen, a master of ballads and blues who plays so brilliantly behind singers because he essentially is one himself. Ms. Kilgore’s intonation has an instrumental perfection to it, while Mr. Allen’s tender tenor boasts a warmly human vocalized edge; together they should approach perfection.

True. All true. To read the whole thing and see a terrific performance photograph of Ms. Kilgore, go here. In case you missed the Rifftides review of her triumphant concert with her husband’s band at The Seasons earlier this year, go here.

Thanks to Rifftides reader Dave Lull for alerting us to a jazz blog that debuted in early July. Although its name, Tony Flood’s House Of Hard Bop, could hardly be more specific, in his first post Mr. Flood opened with a demurer:

Hard Bop: the Dominant, Not Sole, Focus Here.
I care a great deal about what came before it, and what came out of it, most of all the remarkable musicians who faced challenges (pardon the euphemism) posed by the British invasion of 1964. “Hard bop” is an abstraction, but if I manage to lead my visitor away from words about it and to the music itself, which my words might as easily dilute as illuminate, he or she will be able to put meat on the literary bones I offer.

That’s a good beginning. One of Mr. Flood’s early posts is a personalized piece about the little-known pianist Sadik Hakim, whom he knew. To read it, go here and scroll down to July 15.
When you come back (please do), you may care to go to this Rifftides archive piece, then this one, for additional reflections on hard bop.
Mr. Flood—welcome to the neighborhood.