Darcy James Argue's Secret Society

Straight to video

Until we finish mixing the "official" audio from LPR , here's some YouTubage to tide you over:

Ferromagnetic [Tim Hagans, solo]

Transit [Nadje Noordhuis, solo] (via Hooves on the Turf)

War is over, if you want it

I have a piece up at NewMusicBox today, "Dispatches From the End of the Jazz Wars."

Please don't tell me 'bout the news

I got my credentials for Netroots Nation, so tomorrow L. and I are flying down to Austin. I will report back from the massive convo of liberal bloggers, and while I'm down there I will do my level best to get a bit of a dialogue going between the legions of hardcore politics junkies in attendance and the arts blogosphere -- as represented by, uh, me. Obviously, I'll be taking in the local music scene, so if you know of any good shows happening in Austin from July 17-20, let me know.

In other news -- our LPR recording from last week turned out really great. Also: mixing a bigband recording takes roughly an order of magnitude longer than you expect. Especially since the engineer I have been working with on these tracks is about to depart for the West Coast for the remainder of the summer. So please have patience. You've heard lots of raw live recordings from this band already -- we want to bring you something different, something that will be (I hope) an order of magnitude more awesome.

Laurie

Much love and support for Laurie Frink.

You've got to be modernistic

David Byrne reviews the Lincoln Center Festival's insane Park Avenue Armory staging of Bernd Alois Zimmermann's 12-tone opera Die Soldaten:

The playbill refers to the piece as both a monument and a tombstone, since music in this genre couldn’t really develop any further. With this opera, the end of the road had been reached: like a Finnegan’s Wake of classical music, an aesthetic and formal investigation was carried to [its] logical — and some might say ridiculous — extreme. Joyce’s novel is just about as unreadable as this music is, for many, almost unlistenable. Funny that in the visual arts, it turned out a little differently: that same all-over chaos, no-holds-barred and no-rules-apply aesthetic resulted in works which many now find beautiful and pleasant to behold. (I think the same is true of the late 70s, early 80s No Wave bands, whose noisy music could only be enjoyed in short bursts, yet their artist friends expressing similar impulses became hugely successful.)

[…]

There are lots of books exploring what the fuck happened with 20th century classical music, when many composers willfully sought to alienate the general public and create purposefully difficult, inaccessible music. Why would they do anything that perverse? Why would they not only make music that was hard to listen to, but also demand, as in the case of Zimmerman, that the piece be performed on twelve separate stages simultaneously, with the addition of giant projection screens and other multimedia aspects? Were these composers competing to see whose works could be heard and performed the least? Why would anyone do that?

Having closely observed the behavior of New York’s downtown, avant-garde music scene for a few decades, I can say that this impulse is not limited to academic classical composers. There are many musicians and composers of experimental works who seemingly compete for the title of most obscure and most difficult for the listener, and even record collectors like to play along. In this world, any trace of popularity, however slight, is distasteful and to be avoided at all costs. Should a work become unexpectedly accessible, the artist must then follow the piece with something completely perverse and disgusting, encouraging members of the new, undesired audience to walk away shaking their heads, leaving behind the core of pure and hardy aficionados. This is elitism of a different sort. [My link, not Byrne's, obviously.] If one can’t be fêted by the handful of patrons at the Met, then one can be just as elite by cultivating an audience equally rarified in the completely opposite direction. Extreme ugliness and unpleasantness becomes the mirror image of extreme luxury and beauty.

[…]

In one scene, a group of bourgeois businessmen in pig masks lurch along the runway followed by two guys in Santa outfits, one of whom rapes a young woman screaming ceaselessly. When I saw the approach of the evil Santas, I got all excited — we’d suddenly descended into slasher movie territory. Killer Klowns: The Opera! The folks around me did not seem amused; I’d never seen so much seersucker in one place in my life.

A santa-clad rapist. Apparently played for horror and not kitsch. Really.

Read the whole thing.

Photos from (Le) Poisson Rouge

Sebastian Noelle, originally uploaded by Lindsay Beyerstein.

More incriminating evidence here.

Our deepest thanks to those who came out to hear us last night at (Le) Poisson Rouge. LPR has a genuine commitment to doing things right, which I'm sure I don't need to tell you, makes them practically unique amongst NYC venues.

I'm actually going back again tonight for Jenny Lin's CD launch. Lots more cool stuff coming up... A Hawk and a Hacksaw, Metropolis Ensemble, Matmos, Matt Shulman, Kathy Suppové... this is a great space to hear great music. Show them some love, people.

It will take me a little bit of time to post the audio from last night. Thanks to LPR, we were able to make a 48-channel digital recording of the entire hit (check out some of the sweet mics), and early next week we are going into the studio with Paul Cox to do the mixing and mastering. I'll post the results here when we are done -- this will be a big step up from the usual gig audio! This was a great gig for us and I am really looking forward to being able to bring you this music.

TONIGHT - Secret Society @ (Le) Poisson Rouge, July 9

Darcy James Argue's

SECRET SOCIETY

Wednesday, July 9

7:30 PM

(Le) Poisson Rouge

WHEN: Wednesday, July 9 at 7:30 PM

WHERE: (Le) Poisson Rouge, 158 Bleecker Street (btw Thompson & Sullivan), NYC

SUBWAY: ABCDEFV to West 4th Street

COST: $15

ADVANCE TICKETS: click here.

*     *     *

Wherever there is a "thriving underground arts ecology," it is all but certain that the villains and miscreants of Secret Society shall be found skulking in the shadows. So it can come as no surprise that rogue composer Darcy James Argue and his cabal of eighteen co-conspirators have ensconced themselves in Greenwich Village's latest house of ill repute, the "burlesqueish performance spot" known as (Le) Poisson Rouge. Word on the street has it that this nefarious order will take the stage to at 7:30 PM on July 9th to proselytize for the dark art of steampunk bigband. Though some may be lured by the venue's seductive amenities — including a 9-foot Steinway, state-of-the-art multichannel sound system, and a practically limitless store of Madam Geneva — those of a delicate and superstitious sensibility would be well-advised to avoid (Le) Poisson Rouge entirely, as it is said that the place is haunted by the ghost of Jacques Brel.

It is with some alarm that we note that Secret Society appears to have lured into its orbit heretofore respectable members of the Jazz Community, including trumpeter Tim Hagans, who was last spotted fraternizing with the Society at the New Languages Festival. Other co-conspirators making their Society debut include trombonists Rick Parker and Pete McIvor, and pianist Gordon Webster, who rejoins the group in New York after having aided and abetted their Canadian infiltration in January. The Society has also successfully lured saxophonists Rob Wilkerson and Mark Small back into the fold after a prolonged absence -- it seems their deprogramming was ultimately unsuccessful. All of them are surely doing their reputations irreparable harm.

Those who have stood vigilant against the Society's insidious propaganda efforts will no doubt be aware that the group makes a practice of recording their presentations and enticing the unwary to down-load them at their leisure. Now is not the time to let down your guard, as rumors are circulating that Secret Society will be making a lavish 48-track digital live recording of the proceedings at (Le) Poisson Rouge, to be subsequently "mixed" and "mastered," therefore allowing steampunk bigband to be distributed to the masses in a much more potent form than ever before. Be mindful. You have been warned.

*     *     *

SECRET SOCIETY

REEDS
Erica vonKleist
Rob Wilkerson
Mark Small
Sam Sadigursky
Josh Sinton

TRUMPETS
Tim Hagans
Nadje Noordhuis
Jason Colby
Seneca Black
Tom Goehring

TROMBONES

Rick Parker

Pete McIvor
James Hirschfeld
Jennifer Wharton

RHYTHM
Sebastian Noelle, guitar
Gordon Webster, piano
Matt Clohesy, bass
Jon Wikan, drums

I drew a map of Canada

Peter Hum notes that amidst the controversy over Dr. Henry Morgentaler receiving the Order of Canada (Canada's highest civilian honor, basically the equivalent to the Presidential Medal of Freedom), almost no one seems to have noticed that Paul Bley also got the nod this year. Bley, is of course, a genius and one of the most influential pianists in jazz, so kudos to the Order's advisory council for giving him the nod.

The other musicians named to the Order this year include trombonist and composer Ian McDougall (of Canada's favorite bigband, Rob McConnell's Boss Brass), José Verstappen (executive director of Early Music Vancouver), Charles Aznavour (honourary) and Randolph C. Bachman.

Wait... Randolph C. Bachman? Bachman, Bachman. You don't mean... ?

Yes.

Sincere congratulations to all.

Your mouth is a cigarette, your eyes are the fever

Happy Canada Day. Here's some Gil Evans -- with a searing French horn solo from John Clark -- seriously, people need to give it up for John Clark -- and Billy Cobham laying it down on, like, a 29-piece drum kit.

RIP Ronnie Matthews

I saw him only once, but it was memorable: a duo concert with Charles Ellison (fluegelhorn) at Montreal's Concordia University, back in my first year of music school. I hadn't yet had the opportunity to hear many genuine masters live, so Matthews was a revelation. The communication between him and Ellison was uncanny, especially on the ballads -- they sounded like old friends.

We learned Matthews had terminal pancreatic cancer last month. There was a living tribute on June 23 at Sweet Rhythm, featuring the likes of Cedar Walton, Randy Weston, George Coleman, Sonny Fortune, Jimmy Heath, Louis Hayes, Gary Bartz, and more. I could not make it, much to my regret.

Doug Ramsey (Rifftides)
WFIU Night Lights
Angela Beener (WBGO)
Organissimo thread
Ethan Iverson (Do The Math)

The late John Hicks and Ronnie Mathews shared something similar in touch and piano attitude. (They could easily have subbed for each other on most of their gigs.) At its best, it felt like “the real thing.” I firmly believe that their style - and indeed, most straight-ahead jazz since the death of John Coltrane - is hard to capture on record. The music that Hicks and Mathews represent is too dependent on a communal feeling for it to be documented. It has less to do with Art than Culture. You need to be there, close to the bandstand, preferably in a small club, hopefully surrounded by other patrons who really love and understand the language.

So, the moral is, go see the older straight-ahead masters now. When they are gone, it is done.

Peter Keepnews (NYT)

Via Doug, here is a great 1981 clip of Matthews with Johnny Griffin, Ray Drummond, and Kenny Washington, playing Griffin's "A Monk's Dream" live at the Vanguard:

I'm not trying to knock you out, or what's it about

It is a source of constant frustration for me that the music world has such a dysfunctional relationship to genre. Genre is easily the most superficial and least-useful frame to use when thinking about music, but genre divisions are so entrenched and taken so much for granted that lots of otherwise intelligent and sophisticated listeners have internalized a whole constellation of completely stupid beliefs about music and genre. Especially about genres that are outside of their usual comfort zone.

I often find myself looking at the film world with envy, where people who get all hung up about genre are rightly regarded as morons. (Or, to be charitable: people with a very limited and superficial appreciation of film.) Which makes the American Film Institute's recent list of Top 10 movies classified by genre incredibly annoying and regressive.

Ironically, the Fresh Air broadcast "saluting" the new AFI list actually features a full-throated assault on the practice of trying to wedge films into little genre-boxes. The segment (click the "listen now" link) opens with a 1997 conversation between Roger Ebert and Martin Scorsese, in which Roger delivers a righteous smackdown to genre essentialists:

EBERT: Frequently people will -- they know I'm a movie critic -- they will discuss the subject matter as if that is what the film is about. "Oh, it's a film about boxing..."

SCORSESE: Yeah, I know.

EBERT: Or, "Oh, it's a film about gangsters" or...

SCORSESE: Right, right.

EBERT: A film is not about its subject. It's about how it's about its subject.

SCORSESE: Right, in fact when...

EBERT: The subject is neutral. People don't understand that. Whenever anybody makes a statement, "I don't like to go to movies about..." and then fill in the blank... my response is, "Anyone who makes that statement is an idiot."

SCORSESE: No, it's true. It's true, it's true.

[Applause]

EBERT: "I don't want to go to bad films about cowboys..."

SCORSESE: Yeah.

EBERT: "I don't want to go to bad films about boxers..."

SCORSESE: I know.

EBERT: "I would like to see a good film about a boxer" might be a more intelligent statement.

(What follows is an unbelievably great and fascinating technical discussion of how Marty filmed those spectacular inside-the-ring shots in Raging Bull, so make sure you go listen to the whole thing.)

Of course, in the music world, you not only have people -- powerful, influential, respected individuals -- who not only never listen outside of their own preferred genre or genres... on top of that, they sincerely believe that anything outside of that isn't even art. And yeah, okay, that view is now slowly fading -- but it might fade a little faster if we had more strong oppositional voices ruthlessly mocking the genre-fundamentalists for the idiots they are.

So I can, so I can watch you weave

In addition to that "Listen Up!" profile I linked to before, the July edition of All About Jazz New York (PDF) also has Tom Greenland's "New York @ Night" writeup of June 13 at the New Languages Festival. (One correction -- Ingrid's solo is on "Transit" -- James Hirschfeld solos on "Habeas Corpus.")

Act fast

Want two free tickets to our July 9 hit at (Le) Poisson Rouge, courtesy of Wordless Music?

A New Venue: Le Poisson Rouge

Beginning in July, Wordless Music will present regular concerts at Le Poisson Rouge (LPR), a new venue and performance space at the corner of Bleecker and Thompson streets in Greenwich Village, at the site of the historic Village Gate.

The first 20 replies to this email with the words "Tickets" in the subject will have their choice of two free tickets to the following LPR events. Further show and venue info is available at lprnyc.com.

Saturday, June 28
Natasha Paremsky (piano) and Kate Emerman (voice)
Music of Chopin, Debussy, Rachmaninoff, and Gershwin

Tuesday, July 1
Jonathan Kane's February
Kathleen Supové (music for solo piano by Jacob TV, Carolyn Yarnell, Randall Woolf, Frederic Rzewski)
http://www.newyorker.com/arts/events/nightlife/2008/06/30/080630goni_GOAT_nightlife

Wednesday, July 9 (early show)
Darcy James Argue's Secret Society

Wednesday, July 9 (late show)
Gregor Samsa, Olafur Arnalds

Thursday, July 10
Jenny Lin
Works for piano solo by John Cage, Cornelius Dufallo, William Bolcom, John Musto, Frederic Rzewski, Daniel Felsenfeld, Raymond Scott

Tuesday, July 22
Morton Subotnick
Kathleen Supové
Morgan Packard and Joshue Ott

Saturday, July 26
Fernando Otero
Trio Tarana

Seven words for me to say

Jay Smooth for the win. Again.

But some people talk way too much

I am featured in the "Listen Up!" section of July's All About Jazz New York (link is PDF). It is reproduced below the fold.

The Bad Plus 1 featuring Kurt Rosenwinkel @ Society for Ethical Culture

The guitar-piano-bass-drums quartet is rarer in jazz than you'd expect. There's this classic joint from the Wynton Kelly Trio plus Wes Montgomery, of course. And there's Grant Green with Sonny Clark, although those records sat in the vault for years. There are others, to be sure, but I'm actually having a bit of trouble coming up with more than a handful of classic, swinging jazz albums that use the "guitar quartet with piano" lineup. Perhaps this is because it's so easy for guitarists and pianists to start feeling more like competitors than collaborators, boxed in by each other's harmonic choices. And sonically, absent a horn player or two to give focus to the front line, there's a certain sameness, a lack of contrast in the color palette and the sound envelope. (Everything decays, nothing sustains.)

The advent of rock changed all that. Suddenly, jazz guitar players with open ears found themselves with access to a much broader and more expressive range of possibilities. They could hold notes like a horn player, moan and wail like a singer, sculpt sound like a studio wizard. This sea change seemed to make the guitar-piano-bass-drums bands a much more attractive lineup for jazz musicians. Beginning in the late 1970's you started to see these quartets more frequently and prominently: Pat Metheny with Lyle Mays, John Abercrombie with Richie Beirach, John Scofield with Jim McNeely, and so on.

My generation of jazz musicians and jazz listeners is the first that grew up taking rock-influenced jazz guitar sounds for granted. And our generational favorite guitar player is, without a doubt, Kurt Rosenwinkel. Back in those bygone pre-Napster days (i.e., the mid-1990's), imported bootleg tapes of Rosenwinkel's unreleased studio sessions and live hits circulated faster than designer drugs in an afterhours nightclub. His fluid lines and unabashed heart-on-sleeve romanticism made him the object of near-universal adulation. And Rosenwinkel has always had a clear, sympathetic relationship with piano players like Michael Kanan, Scott Kinsey, Brad Mehldau, Aaron Goldberg -- and, on Heartcore and some of those cherished bootlegs, Ethan Iverson.

When Rosenwinkel and Mark Turner were rewriting the template for melodic, long-form original jazz at Smalls last decade, Ethan was there -- and bassist Reid Anderson, too. So when Ethan and Reid emerged from that scene in a trio with some insane Minneapolis-based drummer that became an unlikely major-label sensation -- just a few years after Kurt's Verve debut was finally issued -- well, it felt like a vindication. To many musicians I know, it felt like our music was finally coming into its own, finally garnering some recognition and support from the jazz mainstream.

(Of course, in retrospect, that seems deeply silly. It wasn't our music. We didn't make it. We just admired the hell out of it from afar, and tried our best to cop what we could. But hey, we were young and idealistic.)

This is basically a long-winded way of saying that Tuesday's JVC Jazz Fest concert featuring Rosenwinkel, Iverson, Anderson and King seemed like a much-anticipated reunion gig -- never mind that Dave King had never previously played with Kurt, and Kurt had never previously played the Bad Plus songbook. And to be honest, the four of them got off to a bit of a rocky start -- after King's opening drum solo, when the quartet launched into "Big Eater" there was a fair bit of internal jockeying going on, made worse by some sputtering distortion in the sound system and the Society for Ethical Culture's boomy acoustics.

Things loosened up considerably during Reid's Chopinesque "Love is the Answer" (from TBP's comparitively little-known debut on Fresh Sound) -- Kurt had room to stretch out a bit more, and Ethan's comping was especially tasty. By the start of the third tune, "Guilty," the sound issues had been mostly sorted. The Bad Plus usually treat "Guilty" as a kind of blues abstraction, and Ethan's spacious, conceptual solo was completely line with that view. Kurt was having none of it. When it came time for him to blow, he led things in an unrepentantly earthy direction.

The two Rosenwinkel originals that came next -- "Turns" and "Use Of Light" -- were transfixingly beautiful, especially the latter's rustic melodicism. Then they forged ahead with a spirited romp through Ornette Coleman's "Song X" -- Ethan's solo began with some refined, quasi-Mozartian turns, an offbeat impulse that paid dividends down the line. The set closed with an extended take on Reid's "Silence Is The Question," which built upwards from the composer's solo intro into a languid rubato melody accompanied by lightly brushed guitar harmonics, and slowly, gradually blossomed like time-lapse footage, until it had become a glorious, ecstatic, breathtaking collective rush. When it was over, everyone in the audience stood up as one.

There's really no following up a moment like that, but the crowd was not about to let the band go without an encore. They obliged us with a time-shifting routine on "Have You Met Miss Jones" -- I got the feeling this is a little something from the heyday of the Smalls scene -- capped with the Morse Code stabbing section from "Physical Cities." (Kurt remembered to turn over the page on his music stand just in time.) Fanservice? Maybe just a touch, but it was all in good fun, and hey, if you can't pull that kind of trick in front of a jazz festival crowd in New York, where can you do it?

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The opening group, which received no advance publicity whatsoever, was the British quintet Empirical, making their New York debut. Very young, very clean-cut, and sharply dressed, they looked and sounded a bit like a throwback to the old "jazz wars" (i.e., Wynton Marsalis and Stanley Crouch and Ken Burns and Jazz at Lincoln Center versus basically everyone else), with extended original tunes that owed a lot to the more conceptual 1960's Blue Note "new thing" records. Their music had many attractive moments but their vibe was a bit discombobulated -- I wanted to hear a more coherent through-line. The players are all incredibly talented musicians who never seemed to quite hit their stride. And the venue's swampy sound did them few favors. It felt a bit like a really solid Master's recital. These guys could benefit from a little more road-seasoning and a healthy injection of "kill your idols" attitude.

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Other views:

Composer Ted Hearne.

Terri G. (Terri's Music Blog)

Nate Chinen (NYT).

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Tickets to this event were provided by management.

That's what's made, well made is on my workshop

The BMI Jazz Composers Workshop (of which I am an alumnus) is holding its year-end concert at Merkin Hall tonight. Society co-conspirator Tom Goehring is among the nominees for this year's Charlie Parker Award and Manny Albam Commission. Concert is free, and a great opportunity to hear some up-and-coming composers.

Also tonight -- Joe Phillips brings a somewhat scaled-down, intimate version of Numinous (and by "scaled-down," I mean 10 players instead of 25+) to the Brooklyn Lyceum.

RIP George Carlin

Everyone's posting their favorite clips. Here's mine, seventy seconds of impeccable timing and deliciously trenchant commentary:

We need to make new symbols, make new signs

SECRET SOCIETY
NEW LANGUAGES FESTIVAL
THE LIVING THEATRE
NEW YORK, NY
13 JUNE 2008

SETLIST (click to listen; right-click/ctrl-click to download)

1) MP3: Induction Effect
Solo: Ron Horton, trumpet

2) MP3: Phobos
Solos: John Ellis, tenor sax; Jon Wikan, cajon

3) MP3: Ferromagnetic
Solo: Tim Hagans, trumpet

4) MP3: Zeno
Solo: Ryan Keberle, trombone

5) MP3: Redeye
Solo: Sebastian Noelle, guitar

6) MP3: Habeas Corpus
Solo: James Hirschfeld, trombone

7) MP3: Transit
Solo: Ingrid Jensen, trumpet

DOWNLOAD ALL (ZIP ARCHIVE)

Our deepest thanks to the large and enthusiastic late-night crowd who turned out for this hit -- we hope it was worth the wait. It was a complete thrill to have Tim Hagans and Ron Horton play with the NYC band for the first time, and we hope to have them both back soon. (In fact, one of them will be joining us for our next gig, July 9 at Le Poisson Rouge... watch this space for details.)

Our sincerest thanks as well to the organizers of the New Languages Festival: Ty Cumbie, Jackson Moore, and Aaron Ali Shaikh, for keeping the flame alive. Running an upstart, independent festival like New Languages is a thankless job at the best of times, but it is vitally important. These days, it's easy to feel like you are alone in your own isolated musical universe. Being part of New Languages made me feel like a part of a greater community of musicians and listeners -- for a moment at least, it felt like we were a roomful of people with a shared sensibility and shared goals.

CO-CONSPIRATORS

REEDS
Erica vonKleist
Ben Kono
John Ellis
Sam Sadigursky
Josh Sinton

TRUMPETS
Tim Hagans
Ingrid Jensen
Ron Horton
Seneca Black
Tom Goehring

TROMBONES
Ryan Keberle
Mike Fahie
James Hirschfeld
Darrell Hendricks

RHYTHM
Sebastian Noelle, guitar
Mike Holober, piano
Matt Clohesy, bass
Jon Wikan, drums

Stevie Wonder @ Jones Beach Theater, 18 June 2008

Attention blogdonia: where's the love for Stevie Wonder? He's one of a handful of legitimate contenders for "greatest living musical genius." Vocally and instrumentally, he remains at the very top of his game -- I am dead serious, his voice seems supernaturally ageless, and we are talking about one of the most astoundingly flexible, powerful, evocative voices in the entire history of music. As a pianist and keyboardist, the depth of his groove is unassailable -- anyone who's ever touched a clavinet or an analog synth of any kind is wholly in Stevie's debt. (And we haven't even mentioned his first instrument... )

His band, who kicked off the first hit of their summer tour on Wednesday at the Jones Beach Theater on Long Island, is led by the great Nathan Watts on bass -- Watts has been playing with Stevie for 34 years. He knows how this music is supposed to go. He evidently did an incredible job conveying that knowledge to the band, during 8-10 hour rehearsals every day for the eleven days leading up to the gig, because I'm pretty sure this is the hardest-grooving band I have ever heard in my life. I know the only thing anyone wants to talk about is the Vampire Weekend show in Central Park last weekend, but seriously. Stevie fucking Wonder, y'all. It's not like he plays all the time, either -- last year's tour was his first in a decade. I can't be the only music blogger who thought it was worth taking the LIRR+shuttle bus combo out to Jones Beach.

The full-capacity crowd was as diverse an audience as I've ever seen, twentysomething hipsters cheek-by-jowl with septuagenarian black ladies who've been fans since "Fingertips" first dropped. Everyone in the audience was amazingly good-natured, even after the skies opened up and we all ran for the concourse stairwells, huddling under cover from the torrential downpour and lightning storm that threatened to scuttle the show. But the storm eventually passed and once the stage had been thoroughly wet-vac'd, Stevie took the stage in front of a damp but fervent crowd.

The pair of women next to me sang along (well) to practically every word all night, but their breakaway favorites were two of the extra tracks from Original Musiquarium -- "Ribbon in the Sky" and "Do I Do." (I had no idea those songs had such a dedicated following.)

I didn't take notes on the setlist but the early hits were "My Cherie Amour" and "Signed, Sealed, Delivered," the ballads included "Lately," "Golden Lady," "Overjoyed," "Laugh You Right Out of My Life" (a feature for his daughter, Aisha), and -- unfortunately but probably inevitably -- "I Just Called To Say I Love You," which a radio contest-winner sang alongside Stevie. (Against all odds, she was not awful.) The new material sounded really strong, which makes me cautiously optimistic about the forthcoming album. But the best performances -- the "oh my god kill me now these are the greatest sounds I've ever heard in my life" performances -- were on "Master Blaster," "Don't You Worry 'Bout A Thing," "Livin' For The City," "Higher Ground," "Sir Duke," "I Wish,"  and the closing jam on "Superstition," especially when Stevie led the ecstatic croud in a chant of "It's time... for America... to be better than it's ever been." (No mystery what he meant.)

Most surprising additions to the setlist: "Spain" (including the introductory gloss on 'Concierto de Aranjuez,' a last-minute addition which keyboardist Victoria Theodore blogs about here -- so great to have the inside story from a member of Stevie's touring band!) and... "Giant Steps"? Yes, Stevie played (and soloed on) "Giant Steps." I did not expect that.

Stevie must have also had something planned with Q-Tip, because at one point he called him up to the stage. But -- dammit -- something must have gone awry, because Tip never materialized. Nice tease there.

I don't know if the set was cut short due to the storm delay, but Stevie played for about two hours and I would have blissfully listened to at least two more. The problem with having such an incredible body of work is that any given concert is only going to scratch the surface, but the only real disappointment was the choice of ballads -- I would have ditched "Ribbon in the Sky," "Lately," and "I Just Called…" in favor of "Knocks Me Off My Feet," "All In Love Is Fair" and "I Believe (When I Fall In Love It Will Be Forever)", and I truly desperately wanted to hear "As," "Big Brother," or "You Haven't Done Nothin'." Maybe next time. Keep touring, Stevie, we need you.

Also, how is it that I did not know about this?

RIP Esbjörn Svensson

A complete shock. Details sketchy but here's what's known, according to a press release posted to All About Jazz:

He was in a company of divers on Saturday June 14th at a Swedish jetty/landing stage under supervision of a dive-leader when he was found severely injured at the bottom. Resuscitation was unsuccessful. The police will investigate the cause of Svensson's death.

Sincerest condolences to his family and loved ones. Ethan Iverson has a heartfelt appreciation of Svensson's influential and much-loved band, E.S.T.

UPDATE: EST were one of the few new jazz groups to have an audience beyond just hardcore jazzbos. For instance, I don't think I've ever seen an obit for a jazz musician at Brooklyn Vegan before.

Ian Patterson (All About Jazz):

The shocking news of the death of Swedish pianist Esbjorn Svensson in a diving accident off Stochholm, on Saturday 14th June, will surely deeply sadden music lovers everywhere.

I say music lovers, as opposed to strictly jazz lovers, as Svensson himself was neither restricted nor confined by categories, and was perhaps rather perplexed by the need of some to constantly attempt to define what jazz is.

Bruce Weber (NYT)
Phil Johnson (The Independent)
Andrea Canter, Jazz Police
David Adler, Lerterland

A Google blog search reveals tributes pouring in from all over -- most of them are not from jazz bloggers, but from listeners who found something resonant in EST's music.

Final night - New Languages Festival

My sincerest thanks to those who came out to hear us late last night. A reminder that the New Languages Festival wraps tonight with performances by Aaron Ali Shaikh (w/Michael Formanek, bass & Randy Peterson, drums), TOTEM> (Bruce Eisenbeil, guitar; Tom Blancarte, bass & Andrew Drury, drums) and Chris Speed, Skuli Sverrison & Jim Black. Awesome music, great vibe, low price.

TONIGHT - Secret Society @ The New Languages Festival

The Society is extremely pleased to have been invited to play this year's edition of the New Languages Festival, now in its fourth year and in an exciting new venue -- the Living Theatre on the Lower East Side (21 Clinton Street btw E Houston & Stanton). The lineup for the entire three-day festival is outstanding, but we are especially pleased to share the stage on Friday, June 13 with Tony Malaby (with Matt Brewer, bass, and Gerald Cleaver, drums) and tireless festival organizer Jackson Moore (with Eivind Opsvik, bass, and Eric McPherson, drums). You can hear all three bands for a mere $10.

As for our set on Friday, June 13 at 11 PM, I'm pleased to announce that the new co-conspirators will include trumpeters Tim Hagans and Ron Horton. Tim is technically already a Society co-conspirator, having played with our Canadian splinter cell at Toronto's Tranzac -- and incidentally, there is now YouTube video available from that hit (Part 1 & Part 2) -- but we had so much fun playing with him, we had to invite him back to play with us in NYC. Ron Horton, is, of course, a tremendous composer in his own right, and the former musical director of the Andrew Hill big band, in addition to being a first-rate improvising trumpet player. I am deeply honored to have both of these amazing musicians join the Society fold for our night at the New Languages Festival.

Here is the complete list of co-conspirators for this date:

FRIDAY, JUNE 13
11:00 PM - $10
NEW LANGUAGES FESTIVAL
THE LIVING THEATRE

REEDS
Erica vonKleist
Ben Kono
John Ellis
Sam Sadigursky
Josh Sinton

TRUMPETS
Tim Hagans
Ingrid Jensen
Ron Horton
Seneca Black
Tom Goehring

TROMBONES
Ryan Keberle
Mike Fahie
James Hirschfeld
Darrell Hendricks

RHYTHM
Sebastian Noelle, guitar
Mike Holober, piano
Matt Clohesy, bass
Jon Wikan, drums

New Languages Festival kicks off tonight

Our hit is tomorrow, but this year's New Languages Festival launches tonight at 9 PM with sets by The Color Now (Ty Cumbie, guitar; Daniel Carter, winds; Adam Lane, bass; Lukas Ligeti, drums) at 8 PM, Miles Okazaki (w/David Binney & Christof Knoche, saxes; Jen Shyu, voice; Hans Glawischnig, bass; Dan Weiss, drums) at 9 PM, and Tyshawn Sorey (w/Ben Gerstein, trombone; Todd Neufeld, guitar; Chris Tordini, bass) at 10 PM. Assuming all goes well and I get all my advance shit together, I'm going to try to make it down for the big opening. Massive props to Jackson Moore, Aaron Ali Shaikh, and Ty Cumbie for all of their hard work in putting this festival together -- it takes a lot of blood and sweat to make a scrappy DIY festival like this happen.

The New Languages Festival is at the Living Theatre (21 Clinton St. between Houston & Stanton) tonight through Saturday. $10 a night, or $25 for all three.

From swerve of shore to bend of bay

Bob Brookmeyer on the late Bill Finegan:

Today is the funeral for Bill and the body goes into the ground. That is a strange place for my friend but the options just ran out. His daughter, Helen, is a PA so I was kept daily informed of the ups (few) and downs (sadly, many) of Bill's fight to continue his place in our world. At age 91 he had earned far more than he was given but to be great is not always to be rich and famous, as all musicians know well. My comment to students that "Bill had forgotten more than we would ever learn" still stands. He was a remarkably gifted man who felt that he had to work very hard to do well -- a surprising comment offered to me during our increasingly intimate relationship over the past ten or so years. It really started when his wife Rosemary became ill and I started a telephone campaign to keep his spirits engaged. How the whole thing started probably will help you out since this is the story of "Me and Bill" -- the only way I know how to tell it.

Read the whole thing.