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Entries associated with the tag "Jazz music":October 10th - 11:38 a.m.
Tonight the grippingly malleable saxophonist Donny McCaslin opens a two-night stand at the Green Mill with his trio. In this context the reedist deservedly and commandingly takes center stage--but his savvy rhythm section, bassist Hans Glawischnig, pictured, and drummer Johnathan Blake, deserve some special attention. Austrian-American Glawischnig excels as a support player, pumping out the crucial heartbeat of the music from the background. It's a role he’s expertly filled over the years for the likes of James Moody, Ray Barretto, and Stefon Harris. The bassist cut his teeth, though, as a long-time collaborator of Puerto Rican saxophonist David Sanchez, and it’s in a potent New York scene of post-Latin-jazz heavies that Glawischnig has thrived—it’s partly why McCaslin used the bassist on records like Soar and In Pursuit, which integrate a matrix of Latin and South American rhythms. Many of his regular cohorts returned the favor when the bassist released Panorama (Sunnyside) earlier this year. Saxophonists David Binney, Rich Perry, and Miguel Zenon (the recent MacArthur "genius" grant winner), guitarist Ben Monder, pianist Luis Perdomo, and drummers Blake, Marcus Gilmore, and Antonio Sanchez all easily traverse the borders of complex postbop harmony and rigorous Latin polyrhythms, regularly finding new mixtures and fusions. Yet ultimately it’s about finding new platforms for improvisation. Glawischnig takes some gorgeous solos, such as the lyric turn his improvisation embraces on the ballad “Set to Sea,” but more often than not he’s content to lay down that tricky pulse. He composed all nine of the album’s pieces and while none of them really breaks any new ground, they’re all highly functional for the purposes of this band. Tonight he’ll be serving McCaslin’s sturdy tunes, of course, but he’ll doubtless tackle his typical role with gusto and intelligence. Today's playlist: October 9th - 4:24 p.m.
The Morse Theatre in Rogers Park finally opens its doors tonight with a concert by the Winard Harper Sextet; Taj Mahal follows with a two-night stand. The new 299-seat venue—the result of a $6 million renovation of a 96-year-old building, whose setbacks included a suspected arson on August 10—has already announced a promising slate of concerts that indicates it could partly fill the void left by HotHouse's closing, and may as well fill in the large gaps in jazz and folk/country programming offered by places like the Jazz Showcase and the Old Town School of Folk Music. Drummer Harper, pictured, rode the cresting wave of the so-called “young lions” of neo-conservative jazz in the late 80s. He started out as a sideman with the likes of Dexter Gordon, Betty Carter, and Johnny Griffin, but in the combo he co-led with his trumpet-playing brother Philip, the Harper Brothers, he gained widespread attention. That group disbanded after five years, in 1993, and since then Harper has balanced his sideman work with his own band. The sextet he brings to Chicago tonight has been active for a decade, although its membership has undergone many changes. Their latest album Make it Happen (Piadrum, 2006) is billed as a quintet outing, but there are so many guest players it’s hard to hear it that way. A slew of percussionists accent the music with African instruments like talking drum, conga, sabar, and djembe, along with Harper’s own balafon playing, but the group never really surrenders its hard bop heart. Only the record’s bassist Ameen Saleem is playing with Harper tonight; the lineup is rounded out by pianist Jon Notar, trumpeter Bruce Harris, tenor saxophonist Dayna Stephens, and percussionist Jean Marie Collatin. August 3rd - 7:02 p.m.
In the upcoming issue I have a story about Iraqi-American musician Amir ElSaffar, whose stunning Two Rivers is a rigorous, beautiful mix of jazz and Iraqi maqam. He'll give it its local debut with a 15-piece ensemble (which includes his regular sextet) at the Pritzker Pavilion in Millennium Park on Thursday evening. In case you'd like a little taste before then, here's a track from the album. Amir ElSaffar, "Diaspora"July 25th - 4:26 p.m.
On Sunday from 2 to 4 PM Dick Buckley, perhaps Chicago's best-known jazz DJ, hosts his final show on WBEZ, where he’s been spinning records for 31 years. Aside from possessing one of the all-time great radio voices, Buckley has a deep knowledge of the music, particularly its first four decades, and his show provided excellent history and context, but his avuncular charm always made it seem like he was simply playing you some of his favorite records. Buckley was the only jazz host to survive the music purge of station manager Torey Malatia in January of 2007, and programming has been cut back again recently, but I've been told that the decision to retire was his own (Buckley turns 83 next month). This leaves the station with no jazz shows and only one in-house music show, Tony Sarabia's Radio M--to which I contribute monthly. (It's followed by Afropop Worldwide, but that's produced elsewhere and syndicated.) Sunday's extended broadcast promises a discussion of Buckley's radio career with fellow WBEZ broadcasters Richard Steele and Dan Bindert. Today’s playlist: Nush Werchowksa, Mathias Pontevia, Heddy Boubaker, Glotosifres (Creative Sources) July 25th - 1:58 p.m.
Among my favorite live jazz experiences ever were the shows the brilliant tenor saxophonist Johnny Griffin played at the Jazz Showcase. Though he'd called the French village of Mauprevoir home for the last 18 years, he often returned around his April 24 birthday—which he shared with the club’s owner, Joe Segal, who's two years older. Griffin died today in Mauprevoir. He was 80, and his agent didn't disclose the cause of death. A product of DuSable High School, "the Little Giant" (he stood only 5 foot eight) was one of the strongest and most recognizable figures of the city's hard-bop heyday. In 1963, like many other American jazzers over the decades, including Dexter Gordon and Bud Powell, Griffin moved to France to avoid the racism and lack of respect many of the greatest players faced here. He last performed in Chicago back in the fall of 2000 when he led a big band at the Symphony Center. March 28th - 4:22 p.m.
Though plenty of people still haven't caught up with the reality, jazz has long since become a truly international phenomenon. A story by Nate Chinen in Sunday's New York Times quotes Berklee College of Music president Roger Brown saying, "Domestic Caucasian students are a distinct minority at Berklee." The piece focused on musicians from overseas who've brought elements of their native cultures to jazz--to my ears, some of the most exciting work being done these days takes this approach--but it's important to note that there are also foreign players diligently focusing on the American tradition, without cutting in other sounds. Greek saxophonist Dimitri Vassilakis, based in London these days, plays jazz without a trace of rembetika or Greek folk on his most recent disc, Parallel Lines (not be confused with the Blondie classic). Supported by powerhouse drummer Jeff "Tain" Watts and Nigerian bassist Essiet Okon Essiet, he delivers a tough strain of swaggering postbop on tenor sax, with acknowledged inspiration from Sonny Rollins. On a few tracks he overdubs contrapuntal soprano lines, but otherwise the music couldn't be more direct. He hasn't transcended his influences yet, but he's nonetheless a great pleasure to listen to. Vassilakis is in the country to record a new album, so he's flown into town for a gig this weekend. On Sunday he performs at the new Uncommon Ground on Devon with pianist Dennis Luxion, bassist Bill Harrison, and drummer Phil Gratteau. Strangely, his U.S. appearances are sponsored by British luxury-car manufacturer Bentley. Today's playlist: Wolf Eyes, Human Animal (Sub Pop) February 5th - 10:44 a.m.
New York's Andrew D'Angelo, one of the most exciting and adventurous reedists working today, suffered a seizure while driving in Brooklyn last week and was hospitalized. Tests revealed a large brain tumor. His doctors don't think it's cancerous, though they won't know for sure till they perform a biopsy sometime in the next few weeks. D'Angelo first made a splash in the early 90s with Human Feel, a quartet with guitarist Kurt Rosenwinkle, reedist Chris Speed, and drummer Jim Black that pushed postbop into thrillingly aggressive, harmonically ambiguous spaces. Though D'Angelo has proved his jazz bona fides with his fluent, hard-swinging work in the Matt Wilson Quartet, elsewhere he's consistently demonstrated nonchalant flexibility and disdain for tidy categories, blurring the lines between edgy postbop and noise rock--especially in Morthana, his collaboration with the Norwegian group Moha. Last year Human Feel regrouped and released Galore (Skirl), a dynamic, explosive reminder of how prophetic the combo was in its original incarnation. And last week D'Angelo put out a new trio album with Black and bassist Trevor Dunn called Skadra Degis, also on Skirl. Today's playlist: December 3rd - 5:04 p.m.
Drummer Frank Rosaly and trumpeter Jaimie Branch have played some extended Monday-night engagements at Pilsen’s Skylark this past year, and starting tonight they’re hosting a bona fide series there, with different acts each week. The Ratchet Series kicks off with a quartet featuring guitarist Matt Schneider, phenomenal saxophonist Tim Haldeman, bassist Anton Hatwich, and drummer Dylan Ryan (Herculaneum, Bronze). The music starts at 10 PM and there's no cover--though of course the musicians won’t turn up their noses at donations. This past summer, when I caught a Skylark gig by Princess, Princess, Rosaly’s trio with Branch, the group had to compete with the yammering of diners and drinkers--with any luck the bar and the music will evolve a compromise. September 18th - 5:17 p.m.
Oak Park-bred trumpeter and santoor maestro Amir ElSaffar plays at 7 PM tonight at the Chicago Cultural Center and again tomorrow evening at the Old Town School of Folk Music with the Algerian pianist Maurice El Medioni, a fact I wasn’t aware of when I was putting together the Reader’s guide to the World Music Festival. ElSaffar grew up studying jazz, but he's also had extensive classical training and studied with a variety of maqam masters in Baghdad and in Europe. His first album under his own name, Two Rivers (Pi Recordings), will be released next week, and it’s a staggering accomplishment that subtly erases the lines between his two chosen disciplines. Maqam is both the system of modes and the name for a stately form of Arabic music. Like jazz, it draws heavily upon improvisation, but the structure and repertoire of maqam is tightly controlled. Some of the album’s pieces are straight-up maqam, moving with rigorous grace and precision, while others masterfully meld it with postbop fundamentals. The fusion pieces present ElSaffar in a dazzling front line with saxophonist Rudresh Mahanthappa--they met while they were both living in Chicago--with propulsive, beat-spreading drumming by the great Nasheet Waits. While plenty of horn players have tapped into Middle Eastern modalities since John Coltrane became fascinated with Eastern sounds in the late 60s, it's rare to hear it done with such conviction and authority. I imagine this chance to hear him collaborate with El Medioni, a Jewish Algerian expat who lives in France and plays a mixture of French chanson, Afro-Cuban son, and rai, is pretty rare--I wouldn't miss it. September 11th - 6:12 p.m.
Tomorrow night Wilco plays its only Chicago gig of the year, headlining a sold out Pritzker Pavilion in Millennium Park. As I wrote in last week’s paper, the group’s latest record, Sky Blue Sky (Nonesuch), has been subjected to a broad and surprising backlash because on the surface it sounds much more straight ahead than the group’s last two ballyhooed albums, Yankee Foxtrot Hotel (2002) and A Ghost is Born (2004). But to my ears it’s as strong as anything the group has ever produced. The off-kilter stuff is subtler, but the careful patterns sculpted by drummer Glenn Kotche and the harmonically rich guitar playing of guitarist Nels Cline (Sky Blue Sky is his first studio effort as a member of the band) distinguish the music from what Pitchfork unfortunately called “dad rock.” Certainly Cline's playing falls in line with the melodic requirements of pop-rock, and he doesn’t exactly push the sonic envelope outside of those parameters. But as a couple recent records by him make plain, Cline, a longtime forward-looking jazzer, ranks as one of the world’s most creative and forceful guitarists. Downpour (Victo) captures him at his most abstract and ferocious; it’s an all-improvised session with drummer Tom Rainey and keyboardist Andrea Parkins where the focus is on textural abstraction and high-level interplay. (A previous album by the group, Ash and Tabula, was released by Chicago’s Atavistic in 2004.) In particular, Cline’s effects-heavy washes and explosions seem to meld with Parkins's lines and chordal drones—on accordion, piano, sampler, and synthesizer—to deliver powerful waves of noise, spiky dissonance, and harmonically ambiguous cross-cutting time and time again. It’s loud and aggressive, but never thoughtless or crude. Rainey, a master of spreading beats across the kit and subdividing time like a mathematician, drives the proceedings, but he’s also adding color and prodding his partners with all sorts of splintery runs and jagged bursts. Draw Breath (Cryptogramophone), the latest album by his group the Nels Cline Singers—which is, in fact, an instrumental trio—covers more accessible territory, but it’s still plenty adventurous. Joined by bassist Devin Hoff and drummer Scott Amendola, Cline presents a variety of compositions, ranging from atmospheric ballads to corrosive, groove-oriented pieces to raucous postbop swingers, and he deftly demonstrates the fluidity of lines and the range of electronically manipulated sounds he can wring from his guitar. But the performances are rooted in ensemble-minded jazz even as they explore the boundaries of rock. The album is a knockout performance by a group that clearly possesses a deeply intuitive sensibility. Heard against his work with Wilco, these efforts only amplify his talent and imagination. For your listening pleasure, here’s an MP3 of one of Draw Breath’s most blistering pieces, “Confection.” You can listen below or click here to download. Nels Cline Singers, "Confection"Today’s playlist Isley Brothers, This Old Heart of Mine/Soul on the Rocks (Motown) August 29th - 6:50 p.m.
From the day it opened in 1994 until the day it shut down nine years later, the New York club Smalls was a crucial incubator for young talent in the city’s bustling jazz scene. Its owner, Mitchell Border, charged a cover, much of went directly to the performers, but didn’t sell drinks or food (although patrons were welcome to bring their own). The focus was on the music. Loads of musicians worked there and formed important bonds, including pianist Jason Lindner and bassist Omer Avital, who’ve worked together ever since. They play Chicago tomorrow as members of the Anat Cohen Quartet; the show is a free kick-off to the Chicago Jazz Festival at the Chicago Cultural Center, and it starts at 6 PM. The members of the Anat Cohen Quartet are part of a dynamic circle of broad-minded players who've been kicking around for a decade or so but only emerged as a force in the last couple years. Many of them, including Avital and clarinetist Cohen, are from Israel, but others hail from Latin and South America and other locales. For example, hot-shit guitarist Lionel Loueke, who plays Symphony Center tomorrow night with Herbie Hancock, is from Benin. Unsurprisingly, this international crew incorporates a wide array of sounds and styles, with post-bop as the foundation and driving spirit. Middle Eastern scales and Latin rhythms are the most obvious elements they draw upon, but the results are rarely predictable and never glib. Lindner and Avital have been especially prolific of late. Just out on Anzic Records is Live at the Jazz Gallery by Lindner’s Big Band; it was recorded in November of 2005 and includes Avital, Cohen, her trumpet-playing brother Avishai, Puerto Rican saxophonist Miguel Zenon, and trombonist Rafi Malkiel, another Israeli. Linder’s compositions and arrangements are dense, and the abundant solos are carefully stitched within the pieces rather that simply strung along. Maintaining a big band these days is a daunting prospect; funds are limited, and it’s tough to keep players struggling to pay the bills on board for rehearsals and regular gigs, but Lindner has kept this group together for a dozen years, a fact that says plenty about the sense of community and the level of commitment for these musicians. Late last year Lindner released Ab Aeterno (Fresh Sound World Jazz), a trio session with Avital and Venezuelan percussionist Luisito Quintero, which better displays his piano prowess. As he says in his liner notes, this project was started in part “to share the way in which the two of us vibe together on our instruments.” With Quintero sticking mostly to hand drums, there’s no question that the focus is on the pianist and bassist, who clearly have a rapport, playing off one another's lines with a quicksilver grace. Lindner is a restrained, lyric player, and he never indulges in post-bop acrobatics, even on a reading of Bud Powell’s “Sure Thing/Glass Enclosure.” Several tracks feature Avital on the oud, and while the instrument’s twang clearly signifies music from the Middle East, his handling of it fits right in with the music’s flow. The album includes an extended, tender version of Avital’s “Song for Amos”—there's also a lovely take on Lindner’s big band recording, but this one is far more intimate, with conversational interplay. Avital covers similar ground on the recent Arrival (Fresh Sound World Jazz), albeit with a larger group—Lindner, drummer Jonathan Blake, reedist Joel Frahm, trombonist Avi Lebovich, and Avishai Cohen. In fact, he opens the album with yet another version of “Song for Amos,” which is harder hitting than the others. Here he shows off his muscle on the bass and gives the music a backbone. Avital's also an excellent composer, and while some the arrangements are a bit too facile for my taste, the melodies are almost uniformly superb, filled with discrete episodes and long, winding development. Finally, a scalding live recording from 1997 at Smalls has been recently issued as Room to Grow (on the Smalls label), a set that captures an earlier phase when Avital was more deeply rooted in soul-searching post-bop. He and drummer Joe Strasser shape the grooves for a potentially unwieldy four-member sax section (Gregory Tardy, Myron Walden, Grant Stewart, Charles Owens) that plays the shit out of the three tunes, with a Coltrane-style intensity. The rhythm section simply wails, with Avital tapping into the propulsive power—though not the sound—of Charles Mingus. There are only three pieces, but two of them clock in over 22 minutes. They all slay.
July 18th - 5:48 p.m.
In the last few years newly discovered archival jazz recordings have accounted for some of the best-selling and most acclaimed “new releases.” In fact, Down Beat magazine created a category for “historic recordings” because titles by Thelonious Monk, Charlie Parker, and John Coltrane were rating higher than newly recorded albums. Of course jazz no longer really produces figures who inspire awe on the level of Ellington, Armstrong, and Gillespie, or even Getz, Blakey, and Mulligan, so it’s no surprise that when a fairly high quality live session surfaces, it’s a big deal. That’s certainly the case with Charles Mingus Sextet With Eric Dolphy: Cornell 1964 (Blue Note), a recording recently discovered by Sue Mingus that, according to the liner notes by Gary Giddins, was unknown to all scholars and discographers of Mingus. “Apparently no one," Giddins writes, "with the presumable exception of students who were actually there, knew the event took place.” The show occurred just after a stint at New York’s Five Spot, where Mingus debuted the sextet (reedists Dolphy and Clifford Jordan, pianist Jaki Byard, drummer Dannie Richmond, and trumpeter Johnny Coles), and a few weeks before the legendary Town Hall concert. After Town Hall the group left on a rigorous European tour (a slew of live albums from this period has been released over the years); Dolphy quit and Coles wound up in the hospital before it was over. Cornell 1964 captures the band at a real peak, bristling with excitement, energy, and a real sense of discovery. Mingus repeatedly shouts with joy and there’s no wonder why—this gig kicked serious ass. After opening with a solo take on “ATFW You” from Byard and a bass-piano duet on “Sophisticated Lady,” the band rips it up. The double CD includes thirty minute versions of “Fables of Faubus” and “Meditations,” so all the musicians are given generous space to improvise. The recording may not fill in as huge a gap as Thelonious Monk Quartet With John Coltrane at Carnegie Hall (Blue Note, 2005), a long-overdue document of a brief association, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t essential. This was a motherfucker of a band, and getting the chance to hear it play with such passion is a real treat. Keep the discoveries coming. |
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