Archives for 2014

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Midway through Lew Tabackin’s tenor saxophone solo on “Long Yellow Road,” Toshiko Akiyoshi smiled at a particularly vigorous passage in his improvisation. The two have put a lot of miles on that Akiyoshi composition since it was the title tune of a classic 1975 album. It has worked for Akiyoshi as a big band vehicle and as a solo piano piece, and at the Portland Jazz Festival it worked for their quartet. Bassist Boris Kozlov and drummer Mark Taylor joined Akiyoshi and Tabackin in a 90-minute recital of Akiyoshi’s pieces and others by Duke Ellington, Dizzy Gillespie and her initial piano inspiration, Bud Powell. After talking about Powell’s “hard, sad life,” she tore into his “Tempus Fugit” in the kind of uncompromising bebop piano playing she learned by studying his recordings when she was a girl in Japan. She smiled again, this time at a felicitous phrase in her own solo. Tabackin sat listening intently to the trio number, which he must have heard her play hundreds of times. Kozlov and Taylor soloed to great effect on “Tempus Fugit” and other pieces. Throughout the set, they were strong in support.

Other Highlights:

Akiyoshi began “Sophisticated Lady” with a mesmerizing out-of-tempo introduction and garnished her solo with Thelonious Monk touches. In his “Studio F,” Tabackin played what he described as “free bop,” performed with only Taylor and Kozlov. Now it was Akiyoshi’s turn to sit listening on the side. Using a wireless microphone attached his horn’s bell, Tabackin was often in a half-crouch as he moved forward and back across the stage. The free bop in his solo developed along the lines of a tribute to one of his early models, Sonny Rollins. His flute playing in Ellington’s “Sunset and the Mocking Bird” from The Queen’s Suite bore traces of nothing but Tabackin’s individuality. There were overtones of anguish in his tenor in the introduction to “Farewell to Mingus,” followed by his duet with Kozlov’s bowed bass and heartfelt solos by Tabackin and Akiyoshi. Following a wildly expressive “Chasing After Love,” the quartet played “Hope,” a piece from Akiyoshi’s long work “Hiroshima.” Since the 9/11 attack, she and Tabackin have played the poignant ballad to close their performances.

Dave Frishberg And Bob Dorough

Seated facing each other at twin grand pianos, the celebrated writers set out to perform songs they created singly and together. They began with an instrumental, Ellington’s “Rockin’ in Rhythm” and proceded to “Who’s on First?” the title tune of their 2000 Blue Note CD (“Which of us is the frim-fram sauce, and which is the shafaffa on the side?”). As they moved into Frishberg’s solo segment, he forgot the words of the first of his songs, then of several others. He apologized to the audience: “I’m drawing a blank on everything.” Dorough came gracefully to the rescue, singing and playing “Nothing Like You” and some of his other songs. They played another Ellington piano duet, “The Mooche.” Frishberg had no problem at the keyboard. He rallied to sing, with Dorough, “I’m Hip,” their best known joint effort. The audience gave them a standing ovation. Frishberg apologized again for his lapses. Several people in the crowd gave assurance to their fellow Portlander, shouting “We love you.”

The word the next day was that Frishberg had an anxiety attack, a phenomenon familiar to many performers. He was at home, doing fine.

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The Portland Jazz Festival booked Cécile McLorin Salvant to open for bassist Buster Williams’s “Something More” quintet, but she and her trio headed by pianist Aaron Diehl came close to stealing the show. The 24-year-old singer captivated an audience most of whose members were hearing her for the first time. As noted last summer in the Rifftides recommendation of her only album, she emerged, virtually unknown, as a fully developed artist. Salvant’s contralto, impeccably in tune from sub-basement low notes to thrilling high ones, is comparable to Sarah Vaughan’s. In Portland, those deep tones in the Gershwins’ “It Aint Necessarily So” got the set off to a thrilling start. Her interpretations of some songs carried slyness and irony reminiscent of Carmen McRae. She is partial to little known material, and gave an actor’s timing to pauses in “Nobody,” a specialty of the early 20th century black vaudevillian Bert Williams.

Salvant resuscitated the little known verse of “If This Isn’t Love,” then initiated irresistible swing as she moved into the chorus, inspiring Diehl to one of several memorable solos during the set. Her bright red dress, red pumps and white-rimmed glasses matched the drama Salvant imparted to a slow version of “So in Love.” At one point she made the word “so” seem to last forever and at another dressed the lyric with a kittenish rasp. She employed those risky techniques and a judicious bit of melismatic vowel manipulation in “He’s Gone Again” not as gimmicks but in the service of the music. Diehl, bassist Paul Sikivie and drummer Peter Van Nostrand have developed empathy with Salvant that make the four not merely a singer with a rhythm section, but a band. Following a stunning version of Bernstein’s “Something’s Coming,” Salvant answered the crowd’s demand for an encore by reaching into her bag of old songs for “I Wish I Could Shimmy Like My Sister Kate” (1922) and bringing it up to date.

Buster Williams led trombonist Julian Priester, saxophonist Benny Maupin, pianist George Colligan and drummer Cindy Blackman-Santana in a set called “Something More,” after the title of a 1989 Williams album. The sound and thrust of the band, however, was more reminiscent of pianist Herbie Hancock’s Mwandishi, which featured Williams, Priester and Maupin. A revamped rendition of Thelonious Monk’s “Epistrophy” was a highlight of the set. Blackman-Santana was spectacular not only to hear, but also to see in her bright gold blouse (photo of Blackman-Santana by Mark Sherman). She connected with Williams in mutually supportive and interactive rhythm throughout the set, as did Williams and Colligan, particularly in “All Of You.” Priester sounded a bit tentative, but in a moving solo on the ballad “I Didn’t Know What Time It Was,” found himself.

Today as the Portland Jazz Festival was at its midpoint came the call I’ve been dreading. Jack Berry is dead. Since we were in the early stages of our careers during my Portland years in the 1960s, Jack and I have been friends whose closeness was never affected by distance. As I batted around the country from news job to news job, our friendship was not allowed to dim. He was a perceptive writer on jazz and any other subject he chose to approach, and over the years he has been quoted many times in Rifftides. He was a historian, a producer, a guitarist, a champion raconteur. He knew with amazing thoroughness about literature, film and music. He was the world’s leading expert on Jim Pepper and leaves his biography of the saxophonist uncompleted, a regrettable loss. The emphysema that had dogged Jack for years finally completed its terrible work. For an appreciation of a rare human being, see Tom D’Antoni’s piece in Oregon Music News. To find Jack in Rifftides, enter his name in the search bar at the top of the right column.

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According to the Oregon Encyclopedia, Darrell Grant moved to the state in 1997, “in search of a place where his music could have a greater impact.” Not that the pianist had been ignored. He had worked for Roy Haynes, Tony Williams and Betty Carter, among others, and recorded successful albums as a leader. The encyclopedia article quotes him, “I was looking for a sense of community, a place where I could make a contribution and serve.”

Grant became a professor of music at Portland State University and began absorbing the history and culture of the city, the state and the region. His concert at the 2014 Portland Jazz Festival was a performance of his composition The Territory, a suite that he premiered last summer and performed recently in New York. In the course of its nine movements, Grant reflects on the region’s geologic, cultural and human history, including the the ice age Missoula Floods, Chief Joseph’s surrender, the homeland exile of Japanese-Americans in World War Two, good times in Portland’s black community, and the rivers that sustain the Pacific Northwest.

The nine-member ensemble that performed the work consisted of Portlanders with guest vibraphonist Joe Locke, who flew in from New York to again be featured in the suite (pictured: Grant, left; Locke, right). The emotion of Locke’s improvising balanced his precision in executing Grant’s demand material. His work in tandem with cellist Hamilton Cheifetz in the movement that pays tribute to native Americans, “Hymn to the Four Winds,” was rich in harmony and feeling. In “Chief Joseph’s Lament,” Locke was moving, as were bassist Eric Gruber, drummer Tyson Stubelek and the remarkable alto saxophonist John Nastos, whose solo demonstrated visceral understanding of Eric Dolphy without mimicking or parodying the late saxophonist. For “The Missoula Floods” Grant may have written for the ensemble what sounded like simultaneous improvisation or it may have been truly improvised. In either case, the closing passages evoked order out of chaos, stunningly appropriate to the subject.

Introducing the seventh movement, “Sundays at the Golden West,” Grant said,
“This is a jazz song.” Was it ever. Grant designed the piece to recall weekend hilarity at the first Portland hotel owned by African-Americans. It may not have been a blues per se, but Grant, Nastos, tenor saxophonist Kirt Peterson, trumpeter Thom Barber and vocalist Marilyn Keller all produced solos marinated in blues feeling. Barber played his only solo of the suite with a plunger mute in the spirit of Bubber Miley. In this piece, the simultaneous emoting by the horns was unquestionably improvised. Ms. Keller capped the movement by quoting Fats Waller—“One never knows, do one?” Following a sobering movement that commemorated the unprosecuted massacre of 34 Chinese gold miners in Oregon in 1887, Grant’s suite concluded with “New Land,” a confirmation of the promise that continues to draw 21st Century setters to the Pacific Northwest. They join Grant, whose choice of place worked out nicely for him and for his listeners.

After the standing ovation that seems to be mandatory in Portland (the piece deserved it), Grant announced the encore as “a song that, when I get to Heaven, it’ll be playing there all the time.” It was John Lennon’s “Imagine,” with a vocal by Ms. Keller and another of Nastos’s magnetic alto sax solos.

Next time, more from the Portland festival.

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For the 2014 Portland Jazz Festival’s second concert, drummer Brian Blade reassembled his band called the Brian Blade Fellowship. Some of the music was from the past of the group that he founded in 1997. Other pieces previewed their next album, Landmark, to be released in April. Blade, pianist John Cowherd, bassist Chris Thomas and saxophonists Myron Walden and Melvin Butler have played their ruminative, stately music together for so long that it often seems to unfold independent of their effort. The apparent ease comes from a remarkable degree of empathy and considerable compositional work that fashions performances with the appearance of spontaneity. Earlier in the day in one of the jazz conversations that illuminate the festival’s performances, Blade likened his method of composing to the progress of a river that must be monitored. “If the river is rising,” he said, “I feel that I should be ready.”

The evening moved from tune to tune without announcements. Near the end, Blade identified only the title tune of Landmark. Each piece incorporated Butler on tenor or soprano saxophone and Walden on alto sax or bass clarinet. They played together in textured unison or harmony, then one moved into the wings as the other soloed. Their statements tended to begin in contemplation, then accumulate passion. It was not unusual for one or the other to incorporate a riff that might have come out of a 1940s jump band. All the while, Blade booted, urged, cajoled and guided the soloists from behind his drums. The polyrhythmic variety he has personalized since his early studies with the master New Orleans drummer Johnny Vidacovich make him one of the music’s most expressive drummers. That has been evident not only in his own band, but in Wayne Shorter’s quartet. He and Cowherd have been playing together since they were music majors at Loyola University. They long ago melded into an understanding based in shared rhythmic values and belief in the importance of compositional logic. In one piece (I wish that I could tell you its name) they played what amounted to a mutual solo, Blade supporting and contrasting Cowherd’s full harmonies and melodic inventions with the counterpoint of mallets struck, and sometimes rubbed, on the drum heads.

Last night, even at its most ethereal, the Blade band’s music had a blues sensibility that seemed to reach out and grab the predominantly white audience whose average age was considerably beyond middle. It was a night for standing ovations. After theirs, as an encore Blade and company played one chorus of the traditional melody “Shenandoah,” Walden’s belly-deep bass clarinet undergirding the ensemble.

(Photo of Blade from the Portland performance by Mark Sheldon ©)

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