The Jazz.com Blog
November 20, 2008
The South Asian Tinge in Jazz
Jelly Roll Morton, in an oft-quoted passage, once spoke about the “Latin tinge” that was, in his opinion, an essential ingredient of jazz. Although Morton has sometimes been derided, and is often treated with bemused disdain by later commentators, his remarks on jazz are typically quite astute. When talking about himself, Morton could be an unreliable source, but on almost every other subject, he needs to be taken seriously. His remarks on the Latin tinge are a case in point.
Morton decidedly did not talk about the South Asian tinge in jazz. But maybe it’s time we start doing so. Rudresh Mahanthappa’s new release Kinsmen, one of the most interesting CDs to come my way in recent weeks, has spurred my thoughts on this fertile area of exploration on the current jazz scene. Attempts to merge South Asian music and African-American traditions rarely get the same attention that Latin jazz garners, but this is a vital and exciting type of fusion today, and there are no shortage of interesting precedents from the past.
Sometimes it takes some digging to unearth the history of this partnership. John Handy’s recordings with Ali Akbar Khan may be historic, even more they may be mesmerizing to hear. But they are—alas!—almost impossible to find, even in specialty stores and on the virtual shelves of esoteric web sites.
Other potent examples of Indian fusion music never appear on commercial releases. I remember a tape lent to me once by a student of Terry Riley, featuring a East-meets-West performance with Zakir Hussain, from an event organized by Riley. The music was stunning, but I was forbidden, in the strongest possible words, from making a copy. Today it lives on only in my memory. Although I still have some lingering hopes that a CD of this music may someday appear. (By the way, I plan to write more about Terry Riley—a fascinating figure in modern music—on jazz.com at a future date.)
In contrast, Bill Laswell’s work with Zakir Hussain is easy to obtain, and if you haven’t heard it, you definitely should do yourself the favor of checking it out. (See my reviews here and here.) Laswell is a wide-ranging artist, who has put his stamp on hundreds of projects, but he has a provocative sense of world fusion music that sets him apart from the crowd. I am especially fond of Laswell’s Hear No Evil, in which Hussain’s tabla plays a central role in the mixing of rhythmic sensibilities from North and South, East and West.
However, no one has done more to give visibility to the “South Asian tinge” in jazz than guitarist John McLaughlin. His Shakti band (extensively covered on jazz.com by Walter Kolosky) brought attention to Hussain as well as to violinist L. Shankar, and percussionists Vikku Vinayakram and R. Raghavan. In various settings, McLaughlin has collaborated with a host of other prominent Indian musicians. Coming on the heels of McLaughlin’s Mahavishnu Orchestra, Shakti opened up the ears of many jazz-rock fans to sounds they had never before, and helped set in motion the commercialization of “World Music” as a marketing category. Previously non-Western musical styles had lived a largely subterranean life, found in obscure recordings from Folkways or Nonesuch or even smaller specialty labels, but with the impetus provided by McLaughlin and others, it was starting to find a mainstream audience during the mid-1970s.
A few years later, during a 1980 performance at a Mumbai jazz festival, John Handy invited altoist Kadri Gopalnath to join him on stage, and their combination of jazz and Carnatic music created quite a stir at the event. Gopalnath, who shares the alto responsibilities with Mahanthappa on Kinsmen, is now acknowledged as a pioneer in developing the saxophone as a legitimate voice for Indian music. His mastery is evident on a number of recordings, still little known in the US, which avoid glib fusion formulas in favor of a mindful probing of the untapped potential of his native musical traditions.
2008 has proven to be a stellar year for the South Asian tinge in jazz. Earlier this year, the Miles in India project got some attention, both for a fine CD as well the attendant concert performances of this music. John McLaughlin celebrated his Indian connections with his CD Floating Point and a companion DVD. Trilok Gurtu has a new CD in the works (with didgeridoo in the mix!). On his recent Tragicomic CD, Vijay Iyer delves at certain points (for example, on the song “Machine Days”) into rhythmic and melodic structures suggestive of Indian music, albeit artfully clothed in dense new millennium jazz textures. In short, this is a vibrant field of exploration, still in flux and full of creative energy.
One of my favorite CDs of the year features Debashish Bhattacharya’s powerful combination of slide guitar techniques with the Hindustani tradition in Indian music. Others have ventured down this path before (see, for example, Ry Cooder’s fine 1993 CD with V.M Bhatt, A Meeting by the River), but seldom with such felicitous results. For several months now, I have been ardently recommending Bhattacharya’s release, Calcutta Chronicles: Indian Slide Guitar Odyssey—most recently during a trip I made last week to the Mississippi Delta, where people were asking me about the influence of Delta guitar traditions on other genres of music—and everyone who hears it seems to share my enthusiasm. But it is almost unknown, even among serious jazz and blues fans. Currently it doesn’t rank among the top 50,000 or so best selling CDs at Amazon.com, yet it is likely to secure a prominent place in my “best of 2008” list.
Indeed, the whole “South Asian” tinge in jazz (and blues) deserves more attention. Despite the many intriguing attempts to bring together these traditions in the period from 1970 to the present day, the most influential and best known connection between South Asian music and jazz may still be Coltrane’s attempt to incorporate Eastern-sounding modal licks into the saxophone vocabulary. This personal decision definitely changed the flavor of jazz, and left a lasting mark on how the music is played. But very few jazz fans have traced back the roots of this sound beyond Coltrane. They really need to learn that there is more to India than "India."
Yet a new generation of American players with Indian roots now seem poised to take us to the next level. Artists such as pianist Vijay Iyer and saxophonist Rudresh Mahanthappa have the talent, the commitment and the standing within the jazz world to bridge these two rich traditions and find ways of intersection and dissemination that go beyond what we have heard before. It is fascinating to watch as these top tier talents, deeply schooled in the vocabulary of jazz, explore their own heritage in a way that is neither derivative nor superficial.
A return to the roots is one of the prevailing themes of the modern era—and it is a theme that I will explore in my next book (on the “death of the cool”) where I focus on this quest for “rooted-ness” as one of the defining qualities of our times. In his new CD, Rudresh Mahanthappa shows us the surprising twists and turns that often emerge once we begin to take seriously the historical roots that pre-date our own birth and assimilation into our surrounding culture. Mahanthappa admits that he first received Kadri Gopalnath’s album Saxophone Indian Style as a joke gift from his older brother, who thought the mere title was quite amusing. (Check out my review of a track by Gopalnath here.) Yet now Mahanthappa has invited Gopalnath as a guest artist on Kinsmen. The joke gift has now resulted in a real gift . . . to all of us.
On Kinsmen, Mahanthappa also features Poovalur Sriji on mridangam (a drum common in Carnatic music), violinist Avasarala Kanyakumari, guitarist Rez Abassi, bassist Carlo de Rosa and drummer Royal Hartigan. A track from this CD (“Ganesha”) is featured as Song of the Day on jazz.com.
This blog entry posted by Ted Gioia
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November 19, 2008
Backstage at the Django Reinhardt Festival
In part one of this article, Bill Barnes reviewed the ninth annual Django Reinhardt jazz festival at Birdland. In this second, and final installment, he takes us behind the scenes for conversations with the performers and Gypsy jazz advocate Pat Philips. T.G.
Offstage at the Django Reinhardt NY Festival, guitarist Andreas Öberg allows me to noodle a bit on his $30,000 Benedetto archtop. His recent release on Resonance Records, My Favorite Guitars, has him squarely back in the mainstream, where his formidable bebop chops are in full swing. For much of tonight’s sets he opted to play the archtop, rather than his more traditional Selmer-style AJL acoustic. As the author of Gypsy Fire, one of the best instructional materials on Django guitar, he is a dedicated advocate of the Gypsy technique, but lately has been increasingly drawn back to his earlier influences, mainstream players such as George Benson and Pat Martino.
Öberg admits that he isn’t doing as many Hot Club swing gigs as he was a few years ago. Still, he remains a proponent. “There’s real power in the Gypsy technique,” he says. “You can play so much faster, with greater clarity.” He will be expanding access to his experience and knowledge in the near future with an interactive instructional website, in partnership with AOL. For now, I’m content to observe and attempt to steal bits and pieces of his remarkable technique.
While hanging out in Birdland’s green room between sets, I had the opportunity to sample the Selmer-style guitars the Schmitt brothers have been playing, courtesy of Manouche Guitars North America’s representative, Barry Warhoftig. These are just stock production models but, in Sampson’s hands, they sound like vintage Selmers. Everybody is plucking away backstage—it’s interesting to hear the different approaches to the guitar during the interplay between Kruno, Sampson and Andreas. Kruno suddenly breaks into song, demonstrating a surprisingly good voice, as he renders a lovely, poignant ballad in his native Croatian. I recognize the tune, “Letch Gurgo,” written by violinist Schnuckenack Reinhardt, a cousin of Django. Ludovic joins in with the accordion, followed by Sampson, providing the perfect guitar embellishment. This wasn’t on the program, but I’m thinking it should have been.
Producer Pat Philips and her long time partner, Ettore Stratta are by the bar, waiting for the second set. Arguably New York’s most ardent supporters of Gypsy jazz, they had actually built their reputations working with a broad array of major talent (a very long list, trust me!) from Lena Horne and Count Basie to Lew Tabackin and Joshua Redman. Ettore has produced, arranged and conducted for so many prominent artists, including the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, Tony Bennett and Eddie Daniels. So what has made them so passionate about Django Reinhardt and jazz Manouche? Pat responds, “It makes me feel good. I just fell in love with the music and with the artists.”
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I ask for her take on why there is such a resurgence of interest now, after all these years. “It’s the hippest music out there, at least in my opinion. . . . I don’t think there’s any comparison. It’s very romantic, melodic, very swinging; it gets inside you and makes you feel great—and I’m talking kids, all the way to old people. I just think it’s hip and cutting edge forever.”
They have been involved in the jazz Manouche revival ever since 1988, when they produced Stephane Grappelli’s 70th birthday concert at Carnegie Hall, featuring Yo-Yo Ma, Michel Legrand, the Juilliard String Quartet, Maureen McGovern and Toots Thielemans. Since then, they have produced regular Django-inspired events at Lincoln Center, Carnegie Hall, Birdland and other venues, getting to know many of the key players in the process—Dorado Schmitt, Angelo Debarre and Stochelo Rosenberg, to name a few.
Pat Philips loves the Romani musician’s esthetic. “Half of the people we bring here live in caravans or cottages. They could afford to buy big houses but they don’t think that way—it’s all about the music, it’s all about the family. They grow up with the music—they play for the joy of the music. That is the difference. That’s why you feel it. You feel what they feel. If they were home tonight, they’d be sitting in the living room playing music. When they get up after breakfast, they’re going to play music.” The search for the heart and soul of Gypsy jazz has led her to Romani camps across Europe. “We’ve gone there, we’ve been in their caravans, it’s all guitars, putting them in the hands of a three year-old. . . . It’s in the culture; it’s in the family.”
While the second set audience is not quite the overflowing capacity crowd of the first, they’re every bit as enthusiastic. Among the repeats of the first set’s tunes, the group offers some more classic Django numbers: “Troublant Boléro,” which is actually more of a rumba, and the popular “Swing Gitan.” The performance ends with an exuberant, buoyant crowd pleaser, “I Can’t Give You Anything But Love.”
That’s pretty much summed up the feeling when, at three o’clock in the morning, Birdland finally closed its doors behind the last of the stragglers and turned us out into the misty November night—we couldn’t feel anything but love. Latcho Drom and long live Django!
This blog entry posted by Bill Barnes.
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November 18, 2008
An Adventurous Festival that Crosses Borders and Genres
Thierry Quénum covers the jazz scene from his home base in Paris, and is a frequent contributor to these pages. Quénum writes for Jazz Magazine and other periodicals, and is a jury member for the Django D’Or (France) and the European Jazz Prize (Austria). Below he shares his thoughts on the opening weekend of the ongoing Jazzdor Festival in Strasbourg. T.G.
France doesn’t just have jazz festivals in the summer and on its beaches. The fall is also a busy period all over the country. From Perpignan, in the south, to Toulouse, in the southwest, to Nevers, in the center, to Paris and up to Strasbourg, in the northeast, France displays an impressive diversity of events that, since they are not mainly focused on the tourist audience, often offer daring programs.
Of this trend, Jazzdor is a good case in point. This festival started out in a small jazz club 23 years ago. The event lasted only 3 days back then. Now it covers Strasbourg itself and a dozen smaller cities in its neighborhood and lasts two weeks. Due to the closeness of Germany, just over the Rhine river, Jazzdor also was the first French jazz festival to cross a border and organize concerts with fellow German cultural institutions.
This may seem to be just normal for a city that, besides being the capital of the Alsace region, hosts the European Parliament and was a major cultural and university center even before Gutenberg settled close to its beautiful pink stones cathedral with the brand new printing machine he’d invented, back in the 15th century. Still Philippe Ochem, Jazzdor’s director for the last two decades, has fought hard to bring his festival to the level of creativity and international renown that it now has among artists worldwide, and among audiences more than 100 kms around Strasbourg.
The first weekend of Jazzdor’s 23rd edition was based in town, but it displayed a good sample of what the overall program would be during the following days in other places, including Offenburg in Germany. Here one encountered mostly European musicians—including many artists debuting music that had never been played in France before—and lots of full houses. The last factor is partly due to the trust local audiences have developed in Ochem’s artistic choices and also partly due to the inexpensive students passes that Jazzdor offers to reach younger listeners.
Das Kapital is a Danish / German / French trio based in Paris. Hasse Poulsen plays the guitar, Daniel Erdmann the tenor and soprano saxes, Edward Perraud is the drummer. Their performance, called “Lenin on Tour,” was a first in France and has them playing along with a silent documentary that shows three huge stone busts—one of them Lenin’s, of course—traveling through Europe on a trailer. The trio devised a magical soundtrack for this strange road movie, playing witty counterpoints to the images or totally ignoring them to build their own musical journey. The journey ends with “The International,” the communist party’s hymn, played in a tender and ironical way . . . that may have led the trio to some tiny cell way back then.
Another trio followed in the same auditorium, Swiss / German / American, this time: drummer Daniel Humair, pianist Joachim Kühn and Tony Malaby on tenor sax. These three have just issued a remarkable record in France a couple of months ago, Full Contact, but their concert was disappointing— partly due to sound problems that must have affected their morale. This, of course, doesn’t lessen the respect one has for such artists. It can only remind us that improvisation is a fragile art and that a real jazz concert can never be the mere copy of the record.
The next two days, in a smaller auditorium called Pôle Sud, typical Jazzdor French / German programs took place. Again audiences encountered live music for a silent movie: Berlin—die Symphonie des Großstadt (Berlin—the symphony of the big city), a 1927 Walter Ruttmann’s masterwork from the German expressionnist period. Playing along this classic were two pianists—Berlin-based veteran Alexander von Schlippenbach, and his wife Japanese born Aki Takase—with their son DJ Illvibe at the turntables. Trying to catch the atmosphere of this fascinating movie—which shows Berlin from the busy hours of the morning to the height of it’s crazy nightlife—the pianos summoned up memories of Harlem stride masters, of Monk, and the free jazz of which Schlippenbach and Takase have been active exponents. In the meantime, DJ Illvibe efficiently injected his creative sounds in the flow of notes that escaped from the two pianos.
The next band, Tous Dehors (“Everybody outside”—a play on words on the name of its leader and multi-reed player Laurent Dehors), was celebrating its tenth birthday. Over the years this band has built a reputation of liveliness and virtuosity, mixing its own repertoire with iconoclastic covers of Bizet’s Carmen or Mozart’s The Magic Flute. But music and humor (at least too much of it) don’t always fit together, and their succession of small pieces played with a wealth of instruments (from bagpipe to marimba through accordion and harpsichord) and covering a huge diversity of styles (from dixieland to rock & roll via Ellington) definitely lacked focus.
After that, Berlin based drummer Oliver Seidle’s Soko Seidle quartet came across, by contrast, as a bunch of purists. They played acoustic instruments, without any amplification and, believe it or not, none of them played more than one instrument: alto sax, bass clarinet, bass and drums. Still their music was full of energy, and the message it delivered was very convincing. They showed that it is still possible nowadays to follow the path of Ornette and Dolphy and still create fresh music. Even if this concert didn’t totally avoid clichés, there couldn’t be any doubt about the dedication and sincerity of the members of Soko Seidle.
Louis Sclavis concluded this week end with his usual art of juggling with his own clichés. As a clarinet player, sax player and as a leader, Sclavis is certainly the best known modern French jazz musician outside of the country. In the last few years, his manner hasn’t changed much as far as writing and soloing is concerned. Maxime Delpierre on guitar, Matthieu Metzger on alto sax and Olivier Lété on electric bass showed that once again Sclavis has made good choices among the new generation of promising young French musicians. Their energy and creativity, supported by long time Sclavis companion drummer François Merville, proved instrumental in the success of a typical Sclavis show.
Between these two sets of concerts, Sylvie Courvoisier played an intimate solo at Strasbourg’s Modern Art Museum. This pianist definitely has a unique conception of her instrument and builds a world of her own with it. Her virtuosity never shows off. Whether she plays an ostinato inside the strings or displays a delicate touch on the keyboard, everything Courvoisier does is part of a coherent vision of the tune. As a composer of the instant, she organizes lush sound textures with rare intensity.
After this initial weekend, Jazzdor was to carry on for almost two weeks in Alsace and Germany, and it’s always a surprise to see how much this festival manages to fill auditoriums in town and villages while presenting a program mostly based on contemporary jazz and European groups. Yet visitors from overseas are also coming to Jazzdor this year: Rudresh Mahanthappa with Vijay Iyer, Fat Kid Wednesday and Matthew Shipp, as well the featured artist at the concluding concert of the festival, Dianne Reeves. The rate of reservations already assured the organizers that this deliberately popular concert was going to play to a full house too.
This blog entry posted by Thierry Quénum.
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November 17, 2008
The Spirit of Django Haunts Birdland
Bill Barnes is jazz.com’s resident expert on Gypsy jazz. Regular readers may recall his intriguing three-part article here on life at a Gypsy jazz camp. Now he turns his attention to the ninth annual Django Reinhardt festival, that one time each year when a little bit of jazz Manouche comes to New York. T.G.
It’s been said that, in New York clubs and bars, there really are no strangers and Birdland is no exception. I find myself sitting at a table with one such ‘un-stranger,’ a nice, if somewhat eccentric lady ‘of a certain age,’ as they say, with whom I am engaged in lively conversation before the first set. Despite the awe inspired by the history of all the great players and singers who have graced Birdland’s stage over the decades, this is still the friendliest, classiest and most comfortable jazz room in New York—due in no small part to owner John Valenti’s constant and tireless personal attention.
It’s the first week of November and, once again, this hallowed temple of jazz reverberates with the siren song of the Gypsy caravan as the ninth annual Django Reinhardt NY Festival returns. This year producers Pat Philips and Ettore Stratta have assembled a stellar international roster representing the latest generation of Django-inspired musicians they have dubbed the “Young Lions of Gypsy Jazz.”
My newfound friend turns out to be the only person in the room who isn’t aware of tonight’s program and our lively conversation has become a detailed interrogation as she asks “why Gypsy jazz? What do Gypsies have to do with it?” I try to give her a thumbnail sketch of the history of jazz Manouche, but she isn’t letting me off the hook. “Who was Django Reinhardt?” she asks. I have her write down the name of Michael Dregni’s comprehensive Django biography, along with a list of material and CDs which could help bring her up to speed. “Why do you spell his name with a D?” Mercifully, the first set begins, perhaps saving me from the inevitable water-boarding.
“What do Gypsies have to do with it? Who is Django Reinhardt?” she asks. “Why do you spell his name with a D?” |
Producer Pat Philips introduces the program with a comment on the election. “I feel that this is a very special night because tonight, we can celebrate America.” It is the day after the historic Obama landslide and the crowd roars in approval. But, of course, we have come for the music—the audience is crackling in anticipation as bassist Brian Torff, the festival’s musical director, takes the stage, followed by Philadelphia’s top hot swing guitarist Kruno Spisic and Andreas Öberg, Sweden’s rising jazz guitar star.
The trio opens the set with a moderate swing, “Coquette,” both guitarists displaying their extensive command of Djangoese while getting a feel for the sound of the room. Kruno’s playing is firmly anchored in the disciplined Gypsy style, while Andreas is more eclectic in his approach, integrating elements of straight-ahead bebop with Django-rooted phrasing. The contrasting solo styles actually work well together.
“Coquette” is followed by a languid ballad based on a Grieg melody, “Danse Norvégienne.” Öberg’s solo intro is an elaborate display of arpeggios incorporating a few well-placed false harmonics, a technique perfected by the late Lenny Breau, but mastered by few guitarists since. I have followed the career of this remarkable young jazzman for several years; in fact, his playing was the catalyst which sparked my initial interest in the Hot Club Swing revival. If anything, tonight’s performance has increased my respect.
French accordion virtuoso Ludovic Beier now joins the onstage trio for an electrifying rendition of “Bernie’s Tune,” demonstrating the power of an instrument which, in spite of ample evidence to the contrary, is still not taken seriously by many in the U.S. jazz community. His fingers dance across the changes in rapid-fire triplets. Kruno takes his chorus with the crispness and energy that has helped forge a reputation as one of the top jazz Manouche guitar players in North America. Andreas follows suit, scatting along with his solo (à la Benson) before the quartet trades fours in a whirlwind of ideas that seem to connect each others’ thoughts.
But wait—there’s more…harmonica master Howard Levy! Simply put, Levy is a shock. I’m not normally prone to exaggeration, but what this cat does with an ordinary diatonic harmonica may be beyond the science of modern physics. A veteran of the Bela Fleck ensemble, as well as years of session work on both sides of the Atlantic, Levy is considered by many as the most advanced harmonica player in the world. Tonight his version of Django’s celebrated anthem of occupied France, “Nuages,” brings down the house.
Up to this point, all the players on stage have been Gadje, or non-Gypsies. With the introduction of Samson Schmitt and his younger brother Jean Baptiste, we are about to hear the real Magilla. Sons of the legendary Sinti guitarist, Dorado Schmitt, they provide the only element so far missing from the night’s display of virtuosity—the heart and soul of the Romani musician. Sampson galvanizes the crowd with a full-throttle, authoritative version of Django’s swing classic, “Daphne.” His eighteen year old brother Jean Baptiste leads the other guitarists pumping out a powerful la pompe rhythm.
Brian introduces the extraordinary French violinist Timbo Merstein, who frequently plays and records with Sampson. Suddenly the group is transformed into the quintessential Hot Club lineup as the fingers fly into a furious, blistering arrangement of the perennial swing favorite, “Stompin’ at Decca.” Stephane Grappelli’s influence is obvious in his quotes and phrases.
Another surprise: Ludovic brings out an odd-looking free reed wind instrument from France, the accordina, which appears to be the unintended result of a clandestine tryst between a harmonica and a button accordion. It has been making somewhat of a comeback in recent years due to its potential for subtle expression, as Ludovic admirably demonstrates in the poignant ballad “Souvenirs,” played in a duet with Sampson Schmitt. With the solid backing of Toriff’s bass, the intimate exchange between Sampson and Ludovic is intuitive and delicate. In the middle of his solo, Ludovic suddenly leaves the stage and walks through the audience, wielding the accordina like a Jaipur snake charmer. Freed of the microphone, the notes waft through the air as if they were part of a film noir soundtrack, transporting the mesmerized audience back in time to a 1930s Parisian café.
After a spirited “Lady Be Good” the whole ensemble caps off the set with a bouncing, up-tempo “Minor Swing,” perhaps the most ubiquitous number in the Django archives. As the first set audience leaves the room, you can still feel the energy from the steady pompe rhythm. I say farewell to my inquisitive new friend, who is now clearly becoming a fan of Gypsy jazz.
This is the end of part one of Bill Barnes’s two-part report on the Django Reinhardt jazz festival. Come back soon for part two, in which Bill takes us behind the scenes.
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November 16, 2008
Laszlo Gardony at Sculler's
Roanna Forman covers the fertile Boston jazz scene for jazz.com. She recently wrote in this column on the Berklee BeanTown Jazz Festival and Roy Hargrove’s appearance at Sculler's Jazz Club. Below she offers her perspective on a performance by Hungarian-born pianist/composer (and Berklee professor) Laszlo Gardony. T.G.
“We live in exciting times,” Laszlo Gardony said to a Boston audience at Sculler's Jazz Club a week to the day after the election. And his music was right in sync with all the hope and change in the air. Gospel, blues, acoustic rock—all things distinctly American and distinctly joyful—that is where this consummate jazz pianist and composer took his trio of seven years in a set of original tunes and standards, largely drawn from his latest album, Dig Deep. Gardony’s harmonic density, rhythmic complexity, and linear exotica were all there, but the music was accessible, almost throwing off the shackles of jazz esoterica to celebrate the radiant good times in this artist’s life.
Hungarian-born Gardony, who has recorded eight albums as leader, is always in fine company with bassist John Lockwood and drummer Yoron Israel, Boston’s first call musicians on their respective instruments. They’re the type of players who simply choose not to go to New York, although musically there’s no distance between them and the jazz musicians in the Big Apple.
As a unit, the seasoned trio is a must-hear no matter what they play. With impeccable dynamics and a deep understanding of their musical roles, they support and enhance, never getting in each other’s way. John Lockwood’s solid pocket anchors the piano and drums, both of which have a busier conversation over him. Gardony and drummer Israel play sometimes in sync, or, Israel will trade, echo and accent the piano’s complicated rhythmic figures.
There may be a lot of superlatives coming at you here, but, believe me, they’re well deserved. John Lockwood’s tone is buttery, his time is a rock, and he is equally comfortable with fluent runs and single notes that ground a measure in a ballad. As for Yoron Israel, he’s one of the most musical drummers I’ve heard in a long time. He doesn’t waste rhythmic energy, he channels it—shaping a tune, toping off a soft phrase with the sibilance of his cymbals, closing out a solo with the right bass drum accent.
Gardony, who’s been playing since he was five, displays his technical mastery and has the piano’s full palette at his disposal. He’ll throw in an unusual scale in the middle of a solo, off the cuff—sort of the musical equivalent of expressing an idea in Hungarian—because it fits. On Tuesday night, he played harder than in the past, when he has been more airy, delicate and attenuated.
The tunes varied from the strong slow diatonic major voicings of “Wide Awake” (what Gardony has described as a power rock vibe) to the reharms of standards like “Softly (As in a Morning Sunrise).” Much of Gardony’s new material lays down a rolling groove, like the 7/4 of “In Transit.” Its descending piano lines over a repeated bass figure give you the feeling of moving along in space as well as time. “Three Minute-Mile” —an appropriately named workout with meter changes, gospel accents, and a heavy-handed diminished chord that rocks the tricky form—was a great springboard for Yoron Israel’s solo, which echoed the tune’s phrases within its rolls and fills.
If you wanted to hear transformations, this group’s take on standards was the way to do it. “Summertime” put contemporary harmonies on a gospel feel, and Gardony cooked in an inspired, bluesy solo. In “Softly (as in a Morning Sunrise)” the bass ushered in the dawn with an eerie dirge-like motif behind it. Heavy on reharmonization, the arrangement swung on the piano solo, and Lockwood played tight, fast melodic lines over the changes before taking the tune out. The group stood “Satin Doll” on its head with what Gardony called an “Afro-Cuban/Hungarian” influenced arrangement. Yoron Israel broke loose with a hard-hitting insistent beat that pulled the tune over the top.
Reflecting on the good vibes in the room, Gardony beamed, “It feels wonderful to be an artist in these times and share these thoughts through an instrument.”
Amen to that.
This blog entry posted by Roanna Forman
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November 13, 2008
Weekend Track Review Roundup
A few days ago, jazz.com published its 3,500th track review. It's hard to believe that we only started publishing them less than 12 months ago. But nowadays the Intel® Quad-core XEON® Processor 7300 Series unit (conveniently located right next to my bed) is working so hard that my lights flicker every few seconds and my electricity bill has more numbers than a Lotto card.
But this doesn't slow down our team of almost 50 reviewers, who cover a wide range of music and contribute around 50 new reviews every week. Their incisive track reviews cover not only current releases, but also a very wide range of jazz recordings from the past.
As regular visitors know, our web site is the only member of the jazz media that reviews individual tracks, not entire CDs. This has a number of advantages. Reviewing a single performance allows us to make more detailed and less generalized assessments, and it is also serves as a useful aid to listeners in this day of downloading and iPod-ding. All reviews come with a score on our proprietary hundred point scale, and whenever possible a link for (legal) downloading.
Below are links to a few of the track reviews published in the last few weeks.
Adriano Adewale: Comboio
Reviewed by Walter Kolosky
Steve Bernstein: All You Need is Love
Reviewed by Ralph A. Miriello
Gene Bertoncini & Roni Ben-Hur: Smile
Reviewed by Mark Saleski
Paul Bley: Walking Woman
Reviewed by Mark Saleski
John Coltrane: Harmonique
Reviewed by Chris Kelsey
Bill Connors: Long Distance
Reviewed by Walter Kolosky
Miles Davis: Ife
Reviewed by Marcus Singletary
Fred Frith: No Birds
Reviewed by Ted Gioia
Dave Holland Big Band: Blues for C.M.
Reviewed by Eric Novod
Freddie Hubbard: Hub-Tones
Reviewed by Eric Novod
Jazz Arts Trio: Freeway
Reviewed by Mark Saleski
Warne Marsh: I’ve Got You Under My Skin
Reviewed by Eric Novod
Dave McKenna: Theodore The Thumper
Reviewed by Scott Albin
John McLaughlin: The Translators
Reviewed by Walter Kolosky
Ben Monder: The Third Eyebrow
Reviewed by Eric Novod
Milton Nascimento: Anima
Reviewed by Ted Gioia
Carl Orr: Unstoppable
Reviewed by Walter Kolosky
Ben Pollack: Cryin’ for the Carolines
Reviewed by Jeff Sultanof
Chris Potter: Yesterday
Reviewed by Matt Leskovic
Alan Sondheim: 776
Reviewed by Mark Saleski
Terrell Stafford: Berda’s Bounce
Reviewed by Greg Marchand
Weather Report: American Tango
Reviewed by Walter Kolosky
This blog entry posted by Ted Gioia
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November 12, 2008
Jazz Currents Meet in Sweden
No critic covers jazz in more countries than the indefatigable Stuart Nicholson, who has reported on musical events in more than a half dozen nations in this column during recent months. Below he offers his candid assessment of the recent Umea Jazz Festival in Sweden. T.G.
Although it celebrated its 40th anniversary this year, chances are you’ve never heard of Umea Jazz. Yet this Swedish festival has played host to just about every big name in jazz from 1968 to the present day.
The anniversary program featured a selection of photos of just a few of the many stars who made the hour long flight north of Stockholm, while the original black and white prints made an impressive display in the foyer of the Umea Folkets Hus, the six stage performance centre in the middle of town where the festival is held. A casual glance at the exhibition and jazz legends leapt out at you: the First Lady of Song, Ella Fitzgerald, jazz royalty in the shape of Duke Ellington and Count Basie, icons such as Miles Davis, Dizzy Gillespie, Oscar Peterson, Gerry Mulligan, Betty Carter, Dexter Gordon, B. B. King, Kenny Clarke, Nina Simone, Art Blakey and…. well, you get the picture. A who’s who of jazz have appeared at a festival you never knew existed.
Umea has the reputation of one of the best festivals in Scandinavia, and the job of maintaining its remarkable tradition is in the hands of its current director, Lennart Strömbeck. “Umea is the second biggest jazz festival in Sweden,” he says over a coffee, “It’s an exciting challenge building on the reputation the festival has built over the last forty years, but we try and mix establish stars with up and coming talent. Even though this festival is just beginning, planning is already underway for next year. It’s a year long job to get the program the best we can.”
The event opened the night before I arrived with “European Jazz Night,” so my festival began with the Dave Holland Quintet, who were predictably flawless in their relentless perfection. Next up was Swedish saxophonist Mats Gustafsson with a line-up not too dissimilar to Holland’s famous quintet—saxophone, trombone (albeit doubling tuba), vibraphone, drums and an electronics whiz instead of a bassist. Yet not only did the music seem to come from a different world to that of the Holland quintet, it could well have come from a different planet in some far off galaxy. Gustafsson reminded us that danger and surprise are still vital ingredients in jazz, elements largely absent in Holland’s performance, whose set seemed a paean to the god of virtuosity.
Gustafsson addressed the folkloric heritage of Swedish jazz embodied in the music of musicians such as Jan Johansson and Lars Gullin. Now this is tricky territory. Johansson and Gullin are icons in the Swedish jazz firmament, and their repertoire is revered—indeed the best selling jazz album of all time in Sweden is not Kind of Blue or A Love Supreme but Johansson’s Jazz pår Svenska, recorded in 1962-3. Yet Gustafsson’s arrangements were artfully constructed stories that were well told, using the contrast between inside and outside playing to dramatic and often memorable effect.
However with Joshua Redman’s Trio, we were back to well grounded certainties—theme, improvisations, theme. Despite an excellent bassist and one of the world’s greatest drummers (Brian Blade), there was a sense in which time seemed to have passed these fine musicians, and musicians playing in the post-bop idiom here in Europe, in America and the rest of the world, by. While the extended solo may have been good for Coltrane’s generation of fans, it does it not necessarily hold good for today’s generation. Reduced attention spans are only part of the reason. The other part is the increasingly self-referential nature of post-bop, partly as a result of a dominant pedagogy. Today it is almost impossible for young musicians to create solos that do not refer back, primarily, to recordings of the great masters. Like it or not, this style of jazz is about itself now.
In fact, attention is now shifting away “jazz as a soloist’s art” to ordering the infinite possibilities of ensemble sounds and textures. Many soloists are no longer intent on testing listeners’ attention spans by leaping off into the wild blue yonder with a lengthy statement that may or may not relate to the composers intention, but instead work within parameters of the composition, often in a way that blurs the distinction between the written and the improvised. The challenge today is no longer one of musical athleticism, whose frontiers have been well and truly conquered, more of expressivity and meaning.
This shift away from virtuosity-as-a-thing-in-itself to more ensemble based styles has left trumpeter Christian Scott somewhat high and dry. Hailed as the next “new” star in a decades old style, despite a nod to contemporary culture in Jamire Williams’ rhythms, he was left straining for effect. His playing, and indeed Redman’s, brought to mind Max Harrison’s observation about pianist Oscar Peterson in The Essential Jazz Records Vol. 2 that holds good for other instrumentalists, “the mere crowding-in of as many notes as possible amounted to playing the piano rather than making music.”
Henry Threadgill argued his case with his band Zooid from a position midway between tighter compositional forms and extended solos. On record he is often more succinct, and his compositions assume greater significance as a result. But here in live performance whatever meaning the soloist might have taken from Threadgill’s compositional context was often lost by the sheer length of the solos. Yet when the ensembles did coalesce, the unusual combination of instruments—saxophone/flute, tuba, cello and guitar—created refreshingly original tone colours that sparkled all too briefly.
Norwegian/Danish pianist Maria “Monk with Hiccups” Kannegaard presented her quartet at Umea, and her jumpy, fragmented themes were interpreted with audible glee by her conspicuously young band who have internalized her demanding repertoire well. This is music that does not fill you with joy, but there is something compelling about the ugly beauty of her music. Tenor saxophonist Håkon Kornstadt threw himself into the heart of her compositions, his dancing, angular lines building on Kannegaard’s awkward melodies, before expanding on her ideas with his own. As he showed with his fine work with pianist Håvard Wiik on the Jazzland label he seems to respond well to strong musical personalities.
Mats Gustafsson, whose hometown is Umea, was the featured artist at the festival and his collaboration with the German saxophonist Peter Brötzmann and drummer Paal Nilssen-Love was a festival highlight. Gustafsson’s relationship with Brötzmann (best known for his epic album Machine Gun from 1968) began as that of student-master, but he has now moved on to become a vital voice in his own right on the European free scene, while Nilssen-Love has seamlessly progressed from a hugely promising talent to a huge talent. Nilssen-Love’s ability to get inside the music and compliment its density was best demonstrated in his duets with Gustafsson that also highlighted how this style of music is a performance art—and how recordings so often diminish its effect. This is music that has to be experienced; you have to feel it, hear it and see it to grasp its subversive meanings. Although European free music has long since found its own identity at the hands of masters like Brötzmann, Evan Parker, Barry Guy and Han Bennik, Gustafsson and Nilssen-Love have emerged as new heroes taking the music to a new level.
You would need an awful lot of time on your hands to come up with a greater contrast to Gustafsson/Nilssen-Love/Brötzmann’s music than that of the vocalist, pianist and guitarist Maria Laurette Friis. Friis sings in the little-girl-lost style of several Scandinavian singers who have emerged on the scene in the last couple of years such as Susanna, Hanne Hukkelberg, Torun Eriksen, Karen, Hilde Marie Kjersen and others. But she has her own slant with lyrics that are poetic in their construction and set to simple melodies. Accompanied by Pamela Kurstin’s gently throbbing theremin, she wove an intricate spell that held her audience rapt.
The festival has within its mission the ability to commission projects that might otherwise remain a figment of the creative imagination, and for their 40th anniversary celebrations they made sure the event would not slip by unnoticed by commissioning “Jubileumsmusik,” a piece for symphony orchestra, forty voices, and Joakim Milder’s solo saxophones. Milder also composed and arranged the piece and his use of voices was imaginative, from animated conversational hubbub to Sprechstimme, and from hearty Alleluias to orthodox choral chants. Percussionist Lisbeth Diers led from behind, keeping the huge ensemble honest and on track with a virtuoso display that was visually and well as musically absorbing. Milder’s saxophones (tenor and soprano) emerged as the voice of reason in a piece of music that was ultimately as uplifting as it was non-genre specific.
Yet for all the remarkable diversity of music on offer, the festival dealt a wildcard that turned out for many to be their gig of the year. On the face of it here was another girl vocalist plus piano trio, but Nina Ramsby knows how to make an entrance. Dressed in an immaculately tailored gentleman’s white lounge suit, plus collar and tie and with her head shaven, all eyes were on her. She did not waste the moment. Singing her own originals in Swedish she had that indefinable “X-Factor” and if there’s any justice in the world she’ll scare countless lesser talents into another line of work.
Somehow she managed to pack a bigger punch than a symphony orchestra plus forty voices. The wonder of it all was how she could convey the meaning she did to the non-Swedish speaking members of the audience—like me. Yet this is not as mysterious as it seems. Today with World Music enjoying the popularity it does, it is worth noting that the prospect of audiences enjoying songs in languages they do not understand would hold little promise for them if the melodies, rhythms and harmonies did not move them in some way. But this was not World Music, it was jazz with a capital “j” and whether she was playing flugelhorn (“this will scare the boys,” she mused in English), clarinet or allowing her vocals to take flight against Ludvig Berghe’s brilliant piano accompaniment, she made absolutely certain that first thing anyone would remember about the 40th anniversary of the Umea Jazz Festival was Nina Ramsby.
This blog entry posted by Stuart Nicholson.
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November 11, 2008
Charlie Parker in Washington, D.C., 1948
Jazz fans today can hardly appreciate the hostility between the opposed spheres of modern and traditional jazz during the late 1940s. Nothing on the current scene is comparable. Even when the musicians themselves downplayed this post-WWII conflict, critics and fans fueled the fires of contention. It was as if the jazz world of that period wanted to establish its own Cold War, one in which members of the community could swear allegiance to either one camp or the other, but not both. You either subscribed to the progressive ethos of the modernists, or were an old-fashioned advocate of a tradition under attack.
The recent release on compact disk of a live Charlie Parker performance in Washington, D.C. from May 23, 1948 serves as a reminder of this state of affairs. This concert, hosted by Willis Conover, was advertised as a “Dixieland vs. Bebop” jam session. Two weeks earlier, on May 9, 1948, Conover had presented a similar event, but the choice of Ben Webster to lead the modern contingent at that event suggests the contrast between the old and new was more a matter of marketing than musical values. Webster could not be called a modern jazz player by even the most generous definition of the term.
But when Charlie “Bird” Parker was booked for the follow-up jam, sparks were sure to fly. For those who demonized the beboppers, Charlie Parker was the head devil. When poet Philip Larkin castigated the unholy trinity of modernism, he included Parker as one of “three Ps” who had done so much of the supposed damage. (The other two Ps were Pablo Picasso and Ezra Pound.) Pitting Parker and a group of like-minded modernists against Wild Bill Davison and company would definitely put a spotlight on the growing divide between advocates of jazz's future and celebrants of its past.
One can gripe about many aspects of this recording. The sound quality is merely adequate. The piano sounds out of tune (although little known Sam Krupit, then working with Boyd Raeburn, impresses with his smart Tristano-ish solos). Parker is working with an unfamiliar band. Yet the fiery brilliance of Bird’s solos push all these other concerns to the sidelines.
Parker was at the peak of his abilities in 1948. He was 27 years-old, still in reasonably good health. The previous year he had been released from the Camarillo mental institution in California, where he had received a state-mandated dose of healthy living. In time, his assorted vices would destroy him, and he would be dead in 1955—the accumulated damage is perhaps best conveyed by the simple fact that the altoist’s death certificate estimates his age at between 50 and 60, when in fact Parker was only 34. Such were the ravages Bird inflicted on himself.
But this tragic ending is still some seven years in the future at the time of his Washington D.C. concert, and here Parker is in top form. His lengthy ballad solo on “These Foolish Things” is full of melodic riches, a relaxed and brilliant performance that ranks among Parker’s finer moments, and reminds us of what this artist might have done had he lived into the 1960s, when jazz artists routinely recorded extended improvisations. He is persuasive on two of his most famous compositions: “Ornithology” and “Scrapple from the Apple.” But the dramatic highpoint of the evening was Parker’s virtuosic assault on “KoKo,” the bebop workhorse built on the changes to “Cherokee.”
Here Buddy Rich sets the tempo at a fleet 350 beats per minute. Parker takes off in full flight, and delivers several blistering choruses that assert his supremacy among modern jazz saxophonists of the day. Rich is not a classic bop drummer in the mold of Roach and Clarke and here is playing on a borrowed drum set, yet he locks down the beat and provides a very firm foundation for the rest of the band. It might be the placement of the recording microphone, but to these ears Rich sounds like he is dominating the rhythm section on "Cherokee," pulling everyone else into his conception of the pulse. Despite the passing years and limitations of the audio quality, a listener today can still sense the crowd’s tense excitement when Rich and Parker trade fours.
Everything after this is anti-climactic. And maybe even the musicians figured it out. A concluding performance of Duke Ellington’s “C Jam Blues” was cut short when Wild Bill Davison stormed off stage, apparently upset over Parker laughing out loud by the side of the stage. It is an odd story, and one suspects that there is more to the conflict than the details that have come down to us. But even if this final tune had gone on for a hundred more choruses, Bird would still have earned the last laugh. In 1948 he was the king of the jazz world, and others might listen and admire—or even disparage if they felt the urge; but no other hornplayer, whether old school or new school, was going to cut him in a jam.
This blog article posted by Ted Gioia.
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November 10, 2008
Sonny Rollins on Video
Thomas Cunniffe, who recently published an in-depth article on Mel Tormé & Marty Paich's Dek-tette on jazz.com's virtual pages, now turns his attention to saxophonist Sonny Rollins. Fans of this artist have reason to celebrate: new DVDs add considerably to the video documentation of the tenorist's work. Read more below. T.G.
Before last month, Sonny Rollins’s available video performances were limited to three sources: a 1962 episode of Jazz Casual, the 1973 performance film Sonny Rollins in Laren and the 1986 documentary Saxophone Colossus. With the September release of the Jazz Icons DVD Sonny Rollins Live in ’65 & ’68 and the October release of Doxy Records’ Sonny Rollins in Vienne, we now have nearly twice the footage (regrettably, without any film of Rollins during the 1950s). [Author's postscript: I stand corrected. The bonus disc for series 3 of the Jazz Icons set includes two Rollins performances from a 1959 European tour. I did not receive that disc in time for this review, but Jazz Icons has provided it to me and I will review it in the near future. T.C.]
The 1965 performance from Copenhagen’s Tivoli Hall represents Rollins at peak creativity. Accompanied only by Niels-Henning Ørsted Pedersen on bass and Alan Dawson on drums, Rollins plays brilliantly, his solos bursting with fresh ideas. Although this was a pick-up group, Rollins thought of it as a cooperative, with all three musicians equal partners. Nowhere is this more evident than on “St. Thomas.” After Rollins’s opening solo, Pedersen begins his improvisation while Rollins plays short phrases as accompaniment. Clearly wanting to emphasize the interaction of the group, Rollins stays out front instead of retreating to a spot behind the bass and drums. In an all-too-rare example of dynamics in jazz, Rollins and Dawson bring the volume down to pianissimo, keeping the interaction going while letting the bass solo be heard. When Pedersen finishes, the volume goes back to forte and the beat changes from calypso to swing. Rollins launches into a breathtaking solo, as noteworthy for its amazing rhythmic drive as for its seamless combination of thematic improvisation and avant-garde ideas, thus linking his past and present in one solo.
Rollins was back in Copenhagen in 1968 and he filmed a set at the Danish TV studio with pianist Kenny Drew, drummer Albert “Tootie” Heath and Pedersen returning on bass. There’s a version of “St. Thomas” here, too, and the differences are remarkable. While Rollins was energetic and inspired at the trio date, interacting freely with the other musicians, he looks bored at the quartet date, delivering good (but not great) solos, and not playing at all behind the other musicians. It’s Drew who finally livens things up when he quotes the two-note downward motive that Rollins had developed on his “St. Thomas” solo from the Saxophone Colossus LP. When the song ends, Rollins—finally feeling inspired—rips into a cadenza which quotes several songs before launching the group into a spirited performance of “Four.” While Rollins’s playing on “Four” represents his best work of the 1968 date, all the viewer needs to do is stay tuned for the credits—using footage from the 1965 “St. Thomas”—to be reminded of the superiority of the earlier performance.
We are fortunate that Rollins continues to play and explore today, and if the tenorist's performances seem to be a mixed bag nowadays, perhaps it is because Rollins is looking deeper for inspiration and sometimes not finding it. At times, the search is as rewarding as the discovery, but that is not always the case. His 2006 concert in Vienne, France shows both sides of the equation. There are two calypsos, which take up nearly half the running time of the DVD. On both, Rollins plays on and on, seemingly looking for some musical nugget but never finding it. The crowd cheers like mad, but perhaps more in recognition of the sheer endurance rather than due to anything Rollins plays. After 13 minutes of the dull calypso “Global Warming,” Rollins leads the band into the modal “Sonny Please” and when Rollins solos here, it sounds like he’s on his game again, finding the most intriguing notes in the scales and devising unique melodic ideas around them. Next up is the standard “I See Your Face Before Me” and on several occasions, it seems as if Rollins is poised to play a great ballad solo; instead, the saxophone solos are short introductions to contributions by the percussionist, guitar, bass and trombone. The tune ends without a Rollins solo and with an opportunity missed. Nothing personal against the members of Rollins’ band (which includes Bob Cranshaw & Victor Lewis), but it is Sonny who we really want to hear, not the sidemen. Oddly enough, it’s a live recording of “Remembering Tommy” which plays under the credits that features Rollins at his most melodic. We need more performances like that and fewer of the endless calypsos.
Doxy is also releasing the CD, Roadshows, Volume 1 next week. Cherry-picked from live recordings spanning 1980-2007, the disc offers abundant examples of late Rollins at his creative zenith. The album’s bookends are especially noteworthy: a stunning 35-chorus blues solo on “Best Wishes” from a 1986 Tokyo concert, and an understated “Some Enchanted Evening” with Christian McBride and Roy Haynes from Rollins’ 2007 Carnegie Hall concert. All 7 tunes on the CD come from different concerts, but the applause is cross-faded to create the illusion of a single concert. While there are a few audio defects in some of the source recordings, the sound is quite consistent throughout.
SONNY ROLLINS LIVE IN ’65 & ’68 Jazz Icons 2.119011. 87 minutes.
Copenhagen, October 31 or November 1, 1965: Rollins (ts); Niels-Henning Ørsted Pedersen (b); Alan Dawson (d). There Will Never Be Another You; St. Thomas; Oleo/Sonnymoon For Two; Darn That Dream; Three Little Words.
Copenhagen; September 20, 1968: Rollins (ts); Kenny Drew (p); Niels-Henning Ørsted Pedersen (b); Albert “Tootie” Heath (d). On Green Dolphin Street; St. Thomas; Four.
SONNY ROLLINS IN VIENNE Doxy/EmArcy 0602517675483. 78 minutes.
Vienne, France, June 29, 2006: Rollins (ts); Clifton Anderson (tb); Bobby Broom (g); Bob Cranshaw (b); Victor Lewis (d); Kimati Dinizulu (perc). They Say It’s Wonderful; Global Warming; Sonny, Please; I See Your Face Before Me; Don’t Stop The Carnival.
SONNY ROLLINS–“ROADSHOWS, Vol. 1” Doxy/EmArcy B0012165. 72 minutes.
Various locations, 1980-2007: Collective personnel: Rollins (ts); Clifton Anderson (tb); Mark Soskin, Stephen Scott (p); Bobby Broom (g); Jerome Harris, Bob Cranshaw, Christian McBride (b); Al Foster, Victor Lewis, Perry Wilson, Steve Jordan, Roy Haynes (d); Victor See-Yuen, Kimati Dinizulu (perc). Best Wishes; More Than You Know; Blossom; Easy Living; Tenor Madness; Nice Lady; Some Enchanted Evening.
This blog entry posted by Thomas Cunniffe
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November 09, 2008
Bobby Sanabria Celebrates the Legacy of Tito Puente
Eugene Marlow, who recently conducted an in-depth interview with Bobby Sanabria for jazz.com, now shares his report on an exciting performance by Sanabria devoted to the music of the late Tito Puente. As we have to come to expect from this artist, Sanabria brought plenty of fireworks: he had a 25 member orchestra on hand and almost as many charts to play. Read on! T.G.
Tito Puente, also known as el rey, the king, was a man whose whole was greater than the sum of his parts. A major figure in the evolution and acceptance of Latin-jazz in the United States, Nuyorican-born Puente was a master drummer, percussionist, pianist, saxophonist, vocalist, composer, arranger, and conductor. No doubt, Puente was a leading icon in the Latin jazz community, as well known worldwide as he was in the culture that nurtured him.
In 1993 I met Puente briefly at the conclusion of a concert his big band gave at Baruch College as part of the then “annual” Milt Hinton Jazz Perspectives concert series. At the time I was a junior member of the committee that hosted these concerts (since 2000 I have had served as senior co-chair). It was the second year of the series. Puente's fame was so widespread we had to open the theater balcony to accommodate the hundreds of people who stormed into Baruch’s Mason Auditorium. And true to form, his music was so infectious, so moving, there were, quite literally, people dancing in the aisles. His personality was electrifying. He could have played on chopsticks and the audience would have loved it. They certainly loved him.
On May 31, 2000 Puente died from heart failure. He may be gone, but he is far from forgotten. Another icon of the Latin-jazz community, Bobby Sanabria, whose heroes include, among others, Tito Puente and Buddy Rich, is a master percussionist and drummer, composer, arranger, producer, and educator, in his own right, in addition to being a deft Afro-Cuban and Latin-jazz historian. One could call him a keeper of the Afro-Cuban/Latin-jazz cultural flame.
On April 1, 2008, Sanabria mounted a 50th anniversary celebration of the 1957 recording of Machito (who together with Mario Bauzá fathered Latin-jazz) and the Afro-Cubans’ jazz masterwork Kenya. This was not merely a “legacy” re-enactment of the album, but a re-visit of the Kenya album’s 12 cuts, with contemporary arrangements of the original charts.
Seven months later, on November 3, 2008, Sanabria mounted a full concert dedicated to Tito Puente’s little known big band masterworks composed and arranged by the master. The program was as prolific as Puente’s career; a reflection also of Sanabria’s predilection for audience-exhausting performances. On the program were the following scores:
• “Elegua-Changó”: A piece that pays tribute to the rhythmic roots of Afro-Cuban music in West Africa.
• “Havana After Dark”: This piece by the legendary Cuban trumpeter, composer, arranger Arturo “Chico” O’Farrill, showcases how Tito would often take someone else’s composition and make it his own.
• “Autumn Leaves”: Tito would often perform this tune during a midnight set of boleros at the famed Palladium Ballroom.
• “Bohemia”: Composed by jazz bassist Oscar Pettiford in 1955, this piece appeared on the album Puente Goes Jazz in 1956.
• “Ran Kan Kan”: One of Tito’s first hits with dancers and one of his most enduring compositions.
• “Cuban Nightmare”: This chart appeared originally on a 78 rpm record and featured Puente’s regular percussion team of Willie Bobo on bongo and Mongo Santamaria on congas.
• “Picadillo”: Originally titled the “Arthur Murray Mambo,” this composition is completely based on one chord.
• “Mambo Buddha”: This piece is strongly influenced by Puente’s travels to Asia at the end of his military service during World War II. It features generous use of a Chinese tam tam.
• “Ritual Fire Dance”: This is one of Manuel De Falla’s most renowned compositions. Puente’s version opens with a percussion salvo mixing conga de comparsa, mambo, and rock.
• “Yambeque”: This is a hard-driving, up-tempo jazz mambo that showcases the dynamic range of the orchestras and takes no prisoners.
• “Alegre Cha Cha Cha”: Originally played in Cuba in the charanga format—a small group featuring violins and baroque wooden flute, timbales, guiro macho, piano and bass with vocals.
• “Mambo Beat”: This piece is jazz mambo in all its glory that specifically features the baritone sax.
• “Me Recuerdo De Ti”: Composed by Cuba’s Pepe Delgado, arranged by Puente, and sung by Celia Cruz, this lamented bolero, with interludes of cha-cha-cha and a final son montuno section, is an ode to the memories Celia had of Cuba with its famous nightclubs and beautiful cities, like Havana.
• “Mambo Adonis”: This piece was composed specifically for the purpose of being played when the Puente Orchestra performed at the Palladium Ballroom alongside the Machito Afro-Cubans.
The white-tie clad 25-person Afro-Cuban Jazz Orchestra also reflected the prolific tenor of the evening. In addition to the usual five-man saxophone section, four trumpets, four trombones, piano, bass, and drums, Sanabria agglomerated a veritable “army” of percussionists, including timpani. With Sanabria serving in his usual capacity as orchestra director and master of ceremonies, he also played the drums, timbales, vibes, and marimba. Add to this a platoon of players on bongo, congas, even Chinese gong.
Imparting another touch of authenticity to the proceedings was flautist Frank Fontaine. Add to this MSM opera major vocalist Rachel Kara Perez who sang “Me Recuerdo De Ti” towards the end of the concert. Perez's re-creation of this extremely rare number which Celia Cruz recorded on the Cuba Y Puerto Son disc, Celia's first collaboration with El Maestro in 1966, brought down the house with an incredible roar. It is only the second time the piece has ever been performed because of Celia's emotional connection to the song. Another connection: Rachel was the recipient of the Tito Puente Scholarship from 1994 thru 2000. Celia Cruz was in the house.
Just like the Puente concert at Baruch College in1993, just like the Kenya Revisited recreation of April 2008 at the Manhattan School of Music (MSM), the November 3 concert was filled to capacity, Standing Room Only at the school’s Borden Auditorium. And true to form, Sanabria was the central ringleader of the celebration. He understands innately that a concert of this kind is a tribal, group experience, especially because the music makes you want to dance and, as Bobby puts it, to “shake what your mama gave you.” Sanabria encourages everyone to become part of the proceedings: “Everyone in the tribe must participate,” he announces from the stage. This means everyone in the audience and on the stage who is either not playing or taking photographs (videographers wandered all over the stage during the performance) must clap the clavé.
And those not clapping were dancing in the aisles. At one point Sanabria brought the entire saxophone section to the apron of the stage and had them dance (with Sanabria leading) to the music. Renowned cha-cha-cha dancer Louis Hernandez was in the audience. Bobby invited him to the front of the orchestra to dance with his wife.
There were other notables in the house: Rene' Lopez, Joe Conzo Sr., Harvey Averne, pianist Larry Harlow, Annette Aguillar (MSM alumni), Michael Wimberly (MSM alumni), poet Sandra Maria Esteves, Hostos College faculty Jose' Encarnacion, film-maker Ivan Acosta, saxophonist and Tito Rodriguez alumni Gene Jefferson, Puente saxophone/flute sideman for 25 years Mitch Frohman, Abacua expert Dr. Ivor Miller, ethnomusicologist Dr. Roberta Singer, folklorist and cultural anthropologist Elena Martinez, Frontline PBS producer Oren Jacoby, Dean of Jazz Studies at MSM, Justin DiCioccio, the associate director of the Centro archives Dr. Alberto Hernandez, vocalist Jorge Maldonado, and Candido Camero, who fondly recalled his work on Tito's first full length album for RCA in 1955, the ubiquitous, Cuban Carnaval. MSM's President Dr. Robert Sirota cut his trip to China short to return to attend the concert. And last, but certainly not least, Margie (Tito’s wife), Ronnie, and Joni Puente. It was a celebration, indeed.
A final comment. There is always a perception that “school” bands, how shall I put it, cannot compare to bands with so-called “professional” personnel. The prevailing attitude is “How can these student bands stand up to the quality of professional players?” I have had the pleasure of listening to the MSM Afro-Cuban Jazz Orchestra now for over three years in rehearsal and performance. There are three reasons why this orchestra stands up to most if not all non-student bands: first, and foremost, is the standard of professionalism demanded by Sanabria. I have watched many rehearsals. In addition to the music, he gives the players a background on each piece of music. It’s a history lesson in addition to rehearsing the music. More importantly, if even one person is out of synch, if one percussionist is playing the wrong rhythmic pattern, if a section loses focus, or if the orchestra doesn’t play with consistent energy throughout, he makes the entire orchestra go back to the beginning of the chart and do it until it’s right. Time and time again he raises the level of the players’ play. He is unrelenting. He expects a professional attitude and he gets it, or you’re out.
Second, are the players themselves. MSM doesn’t fool around in its selection process. It attracts quality students who can cut it and it shows. Last, but not least, is the leadership of longtime faculty member and eminent jazz artist and educator Justin DiCioccio who runs the overall MSM jazz program. The program can be characterized as systematic and rigorous conservatory training combined with a myriad of performance and networking opportunities. DiCioccio has created an environment in which masters such as Sanabria can bring the best of the tradition to the students and bring the best out of the students. Combined, the result are performances that are way beyond minimal standards of quality, concerts that rival the most famous jazz orchestras in terms of repertoire and performance virtuosity.
Puente would have enjoyed the November 3 concert, not merely because all the charts had his name on them, but also because he would have seen that one of the talents he influenced, namely Bobby Sanabria, and the young musicians Sanabria is influencing in turn are carrying on the tradition—a tradition of reaching for cultural authenticity and high standards of musical quality.
Yes, Tito Puente was definitely in the house.
This blog entry was posted by Eugene Marlow.
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