Secret Society

Artist In Residence

The insanely multitalented Erica vonKleist has her first NYC art opening tonight at the Greenwich Village Bistro. You can preview some of her paintings on her website. She will be performing from 7:30 PM - 10:30 PM with Jamie Reynolds (keyboard), Dan Loomis (bass), and Sara Caswell (violin). No cover.

Don't call it a comeback

Mwanji returns to blogging after a two-week hiatus with a review of Jason Moran's new record.

The dead accounting of old guilty promises

Sting -- yes, the same Sting who is coming out with a record of 17th-century lute music -- accuses Beyoncé and Justin Timberlake of being "too commercial." Unlike them, Sting is focused on the "spiritual" experience -- because everyone knows there's nothing more spiritual than slick easy-listening production values and glib, disengaged vocals.

Concentric layers, proportional carbon density of the radius

Dave Douglas reviews last night's FONT hit, featuring Lina Allemano and Ingrid Jensen. It was really great to hear Lina again, especially with Ingrid, Lage Lund, and Society stalwarts Matt Clohesy and Jon Wikan.

In Oct-Nov, Lina's own quartet will be doing an extensive cross-Canada tour, with dates in Vancouver, Victoria, Toronto, Montreal, and more -- if she's playing a hit near where you live, fercrissakes go.

Here are a couple of tracks from Lina's recordings. "Concentric" comes Dave Douglas-approved.

MP3: Lina Allemano Quartet - Pinkeye
MP3: Lina Allemano Quartet - Concentric

Get Lina's CDs.

Wordless Music: Glenn Kotche, Nels Cline, Jenny Lin, Elliott Sharp @ GSF

Ronen Givony, who organized Monday's concert at the Good Shepherd-Faith Church, once asked a friend who works for the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center "So, what exactly is chamber music, anyway?" She gave the conventional answer -- it's music performed by a small group of players for an intimate audience. Ronen replied, "Hmm... I was at the Mercury Lounge last night with about 50 people in the audience, and the band was violin, viola and cello -- is that chamber music?"

She didn't think so. Neither did Lincoln Center, apparently, because appearances to the contrary, it turns out they were not officially invovled in this hit. Instead, Ronen put this thing together himself, approaching drummer Glenn Kotche after his appearance at this year's Bang On A Can festival and asking if he'd be interested in playing the first event in a new series intended to bring together musicians and audiences from a variety of backgrounds (classical, jazz, improv, indie rock) for a night of 21st century chamber music. Glenn suggested incorporating the event into his fall tour with his Wilco bandmate  Nels Cline, and on Monday they were paired with Downtown eminence Elliott Sharp and nu-classical piano virtuoso Jenny Lin, each playing solo and in various collaborative combinations.

[By the way, we know this hit was still chamber music because the audience was seated and drinking (complimentary!) wine. If everyone had been standing and drinking beer and/or liquor, that's not chamber music anymore.]

First up was Nels, who played an electronics-driven improv piece that began with funereal textures punctuated by occasional chirpy tweaks, eventually dissipating in a cloud of unpitched feedback. For a long time, there was much more knob-tweaking, pedal-stomping, Kaoss Pad-tapping, magnet-waving, and toy-megaphone-assisted-howling-into-the-pickups than any kind of traditional guitar playing, but when Nels finally emerged from all this with a clean sound and some jazzy arpeggios, it felt right. The performance also incorporated sampled-on-the-spot bursts of noise cut up and looped to make a hypnotic groove;  ghostly, theremin-like effects; and snippets of a Carla Bley tune.

Next, Elliott Sharp joined Nels for an avant-guitar workout. Elliott's spidery two-hand hammering was a nice compliment to Nels's flowing atmospherics, but this much-anticipated duo (well, much-anticipated by me, at least) was a bit of a letdown -- the two players were so careful not to step on each other that the sparks never quite flew.

Elliott's solo set, on the other hand, killed -- equal parts prog-rock, flamenco, and Downtown-improv density, with brightly ringing harmonics and hypnotic polyrhythmic vamping. At one point, he played with both EBow and slide simultaneously, for a paradoxically earthy/ethereal sound.

Jenny opened with the first two preludes and fugues from Shostakovich's set of 24 (a very popular work amongst jazz musicians thanks to Keith Jarrett's recording). Jenny continued with two late (1990's) works by the recently-departed György Ligeti: the tender Étude No. 16 ("Pour Irina"), followed by No. 18 ("Canon"), a fleet chase-piece partly inspired by Conlon Nancarrow's player-piano music. Jenny played with impeccable chops and unsentimental sensitivity, and like Marilyn Nonken, she brings an excellent understanding of groove (or "rhythmic authority," to borrow Do The Math's excellent term), which means that she can hold the tempo without getting stiff, and stretch the time without going limp. One quibble: I love those Shostakovich preludes and fugues, but their inclusion seemed contrary to the contemporary spirit of the evening. In addition to the Ligeti, Jenny's new record, The Eleventh Finger, has works by living composers like Randy Nordschow and Arthur Kampella -- it would have been nice to hear one of those  pieces instead.

As it happens, though, another living composer represented on The Eleventh Finger is Elliott Sharp, who came out to perform live electronic manipulations of Jenny's piano in a riveting performance of Sharp's "Suberrebus." This piece is a showstopper, with relentless repeated notes ricocheting off at all angles, sweeping stereo effects and torrents of breathtaking virtuosity followed up with distorted real-time commentary.

After a brief intermission, Glenn came out and launched into selections from his recent solo record Mobile. He began with his elaborate re-imagining of a Balanese music drama, "Monkey Chant," arranged for a pimped-out solo drumkit that would put Sonny Greer to shame. He was assisted in this performance by dozens of cricket boxes, strategically placed on the altar and dramatically unveiled midway through the epic piece. (The chirping continued for the rest of the concert. Glenn apologized in advance in the event we were assailed by a plague of locusts.)

Glenn continued with a sample-assisted version of João Gilberto's "Reductions Or Imitations," and his inhumanly good mbira-and-drumkit version of Steve Reich's "Music for Pieces of Wood." (Although I stand by what I wrote in June -- the duo version with Glenn and David Cossin is ever-so-slightly better, even if the solo version is more technically impressive.) He closed with all three parts of "Mobile," a hypnotic piece that begins intimately and gradually assembles itself into a towering, thrashing, unstoppable monster groove.

Nels then joined Glenn for another long-form postrock workout from Mobile, "Projections Of (What) Might...", with Nels contributing sounds that sometimes evoked bleak windswept plains, and sometimes meth-fueled frenetic paranoia. The duo eventually morphed into an oblique take on Sonic Youth's "Karen Koltrane," with Glenn contributing mbira loops and a minor pentatonic motive on glockenspiel.

The night ended with Glenn, Nels, Jenny and Elliott engaging in a bit of four-way improv. Ironically, given how dense most of the solo and duo sets were, the quartet was sparse and skittish. I wasn't sure how Jenny would fare in this context, being (as far as I am aware) the least experienced improviser of the bunch, but she didn't hesitate to mix it up and often took the lead -- at one point, she introduced a series of cascading arpeggios that were taken up in various forms by all the other players.  Nels was the best listener and the most complimentary player, while Elliott preferred to play the provocateur/shit-disturber. Glenn played lightly and coloristically, sounding (understandably) a bit drained after his grueling solo and duo sets. The improv ended quietly with solemn dirge chords slowly fading away.

The Wordless Music series is set to continue with a concert in mid-November featuring violinist Andrew Bird and Albuquerque postrockers A Hawk And A Hacksaw, with monthly concerts planned starting in 2007.

In closing, a word on the audience: it was basically the same crowd -- and in a few cases, exactly the same people -- I saw at the Bowery Ballroom the night before for the Tortoise hit. Tickets were reasonably priced ($20). I would have pegged the average age at around 30. Obviously, the Wilco fans turned out in force, but many of them did not know quite what to expect from Glenn or Nels, let alone Elliott and Jenny. Everyone was focused and attentive throughout the 3-hour long gig, which involved a lot of complex and demanding instrumental music. And yet, the response was incredibly positive.

Here is a review from Talia, a 26-year old civilian whose usual musical inclinations run more towards the Arctic Monkeys, Mates of State, and Iron and Wine. (She gives it a B.)

Old-guard institutions like, oh, say, Lincoln Center, often scratch their heads and wonder how they will ever get young people to show up at classical concerts. This is how. It's really not that mysterious -- all it requires is the willingness to look beyond arbitrary genre distinctions and cloistered notions of what constitutes "art music."

Pictures below the fold...

Tickets to this event were provided by the concert promoter.

Let’s Call This

Smack in the middle of his recap of the Thelonious Monk Jazz Piano Competition (while I remain skeptical of the premise behind what is basically "Jazz Idol," sincere congrats to winner Tigran Hamasyan and runners-up Gerald Clayton and my friend Aaron Parks), Ben Ratliff drops this bomb:

At what point will jazz just crumble under the weight of the glib encomiums paid to it?

This is a very good question, and something I've wondered about myself, especially during Important Jazz Events. Read the rest and jump in in comments. I may have more to say about this in a few days.

Tortoise, The Notekillers @ Bowery Ballroom

Okay -- just in case there was any doubt, Tortoise are an ecstatically good live band. Even on borrowed gear and (sacrilege!) synthesized mallet percussion.

[There was, apparently, an incident involving  the band's instruments, hence the need for borrowed gear and ersatz mallet perc. Guys, next time you need a set of vibes on short notice, call me -- I'll hook you up, I promise.]

Two encores, and five straight minutes of applause demanding a third, until the killjoys at the Bowery Ballroom finally turned on the house lights. One of the best gigs I have ever seen. Without any doubt the best two-drummer gig I've ever seen. (Well, technically: three drummers, two kits.)

Now do it again with a real vibraphone.

Pics below the fold...

I got my laundry on the back seat and an itinerary too

The fourth annual Festival of New Trumpet Music (FONT) opens tonight with a triple-bill (Ben Neill, Eric Biondo, and the Vector Trio at Rose in Williamsburg) and runs for a whole month. Highlights include:

• Festival curator Dave Douglas and Roy Campell in a tribute to Don Cherry at Merkin Hall tomorrow night
• Secret Society co-conspirator Ingrid Jensen and my old Banff buddy Lina Allemano at Jazz Standard on Thursday, September 21
• Cuong Vu on Tuesday, October 3 and Jonathan Finlayson on Thursday, October 5, both at Makor
• Ralph Alessi at Tonic on Sunday, October 8
• Secret Society co-conspirator Jacob Varmus on Wednesday October 11, and Montreal-based Gordon Allen with Nate Wooley on Thursday October 12, and John McNeil + Ron Horton on Friday, October 13, all at Cornelia Street

I'm just barely scratching the surface of the amazing lineup -- go check it out for yourself. FONT is clearly the most exciting annual jazz festival in the city.

• • •

Also tomorrow (Saturday), my Pulse colleague JC Sanford and his co-leader David Schumacher bring their new music big band, Sound Assembly, to the Spark Café and Arts Center. The killer lineup includes John Hollenbeck on drums and (in the incestuous way of NYC big bands) a sizable contingent of Society co-conspirators including Dan Wills, Ben Kono, Mike Fahie, Mark Patterson, Jason Colby, and Dave Rezek.

• • •

Sunday, September 17 - Tortoise at the Bowery Ballroom. Apart from the composers I've studied with personally, Tortoise is probably the single biggest influence on Secret Society. And yet, somehow, I've never managed to catch them live. This changes on Sunday.

• • •

Monday, September 18 - Wordless Music featuring Glenn Kotche and Nels Kline (who are apparently in some band together or something), performing with Jenny Lin and Elliott Sharp, at the Good Shepherd-Faith Church (152 West 66th Street). Tickets ($20) available online here. This is the first concert in a new series curated by Ronen Givony, who invited me to check out Monday's event. Here's more info from his email:

The project is called The Wordless Music Series. The idea, in a word, is to pair classical and instrumental indie-rock or electronic artists in an intimate chamber music setting. The intention is to bring together two divergent audiences, and to explore the many similarities and concerns these sound worlds share. Above all, my hope is to demonstrate that it's really one big continuum of music, and that everyone has something to learn from each other.

It's actually very exciting to see Lincoln Center get behind this kind of innovative programming. The gig's at 8 PM, but I recommend hitting the pre-concert reception at 6:30 PM.

Jason Moran's Bandwagon & The Bad Plus @ The Blue Note

One of the trios on this double-bill has a reputation for being irony-steeped hipsters who play irreverent pop covers, and who like nothing better than to thumb their noses at the jazz tradition. The other trio, while decidedly forward-looking, has earned the respect of even the most curmudgeonly Lincoln Center traditionalists by dint of their scholarly seriousness and deep respect for jazz history.

So... any guesses which band ended their set last night with a cover of Afrika Bambaataa's "Planet Rock," segueing directly into a deadpan rendition of "Moon River"?

Of course, the answer comes as no surprise to anyone who picked up Moran's 2002 solo piano outing, Modernistic. But I find it interesting how the popular perception of each trio tends to accentuate their differences, rather than, oh, I don't know... grouping them together as a movement? Because, beyond the extreme wonkishness of each group's pianist, these bands really do have a lot in common (and kudos to the Blue Note for setting up this very complimentary double-bill).

For instance: the composed material permeates the structure of every tune and isn't just used to bookend improvised solos. The anguilliform timekeeping evades easy description -- the rubatos are tight and the backbeats are loose and slippery, and the feel often slips almost imperceptibly from one extreme to the other. Both groups value the story-arc of the song over the splashiness of individual solos. They both have chamber-like communication and true equality of voices, having come to prominence as a unit, and having toured and recorded together for many years now. They are both earnest and reverent, but also wry and unpredictable. They are both a hell of a lot of fun to listen to.

Moran and the Bandwagon (Tarus Mateen on bass and Nasheet Waits on drums) were up first last night, opening with a prerecorded groove that morphed into a slamming trio version of "Gangsterism on a Lunchtable" (from Modernistic), based on a syncopated figure that darts in and around a steadily repeated high-register B. It was the first of two solo piano pieces fleshed out by the rest of the Bandwagon last night -- the other was an elegiac, hypnotic version of "He puts on his coat and leaves" from Moran's brand-new record. Other highlights of the generous set included an abbreviated version of "RAIN" (also from Artist In Residence) leading into "The Field of the Dead," from Prokofiev's score to Eisenstein's Alexander Nevsky (I really, seriously, would love to sit down and watch some movies with Jason sometime), a cagey stride workout penned by Moran's mentor Jaki Byard, and distinctive takes on two more selections from the new release, "Milestone" and "Refraction 2," with the Bandwagon stretching out just as creatively and fearlessly on the new material as they do on the older stuff.

Ethan Iverson -- who is not only the Keeper of the Blog for The Bad Plus, but also their official spokesperson at every concert (did he lose a bet or something?) -- announced their first tune as "a rhythm changes in the Dexter Gordon tradition." That would be "Let Our Garden Grow" from Suspcious Activity?, which is technically a rhythm changes head the way Breathless is technically a film noir. The rest of the set was unrecorded material -- or at least, unrecorded by the Bad Plus: Dave King's groovy "Thrift Store Jewelry," Reid Anderson's bittersweet "You And I Is A Comfort Zone," a vaguely Old and New Dreams-ish take on Ornette Coleman's "Song X" (a tune communicated directly from Ornette to Ethan), and Ethan's lighter-than-air, bonsai-inspired "Casa Particular." Up until this point, The Bad Plus were a lot more agile, subtle, and understated than most of their detractors ever give them credit for, and also, evidently, more than the talkative "fans" sitting near me at the bar expected. The gaggle only interrupted their increasingly loud and annoying conversation to shout out requests for "Chariots of Fire" between tunes. I wanted to walk over to the Vanguard and borrow Lorraine Gordon -- when she shushes someone, they stay shushed. No such help was forthcoming from the staff at the Blue Note, where apparently, running up an exorbitant bar tab buys you the right to annoy the ever-loving fuck out of everyone else. Blessedly, the trust-fund talkers finally shut up when The Bad Plus kicked into their authentically proggy cover of Rush's "Tom Sawyer," which Ethan announced with a shoutout to CanCon: "Rush, Glenn Gould, Paul Bley." 

[Okay, at this point, honesty compels me to admit that while I absolutely understand where TBP are coming from with this cover -- a sincere admiration for the collected oeuvre of Mssrs. Lee, Lifeson, and Peart -- and it must be said that TBP do play the shit out of it -- I'm afraid I can't get fully on board, because I fucking hate Rush (and their insufferable Randian lyrics) with the white-hot passion of a thousand suns. Or perhaps rather the ice-cold fury of a thousand Nunavut winters.]

The Bad Plus closed with an evocative, anthemic ballad by Reid Anderson, "The World Is The Same," a heartfelt dedication to the recently departed Dewey Redman, thereby signifying their utter disdain for the jazz tradition. Oh, wait. Not "disdain." The other word. Um... it'll come to me...

UPDATE: If only I'd known about this last night...

Jason Moran's Bandwagon and The Bad Plus are at the Blue Note until September 17. Tickets to this performance were provided by DL Media.

4 killed in Dawson College shooting

MONTREAL (Reuters) - Up to three gunman dressed in black army fatigues opened fire in a downtown Montreal college on Wednesday, and early, unconfirmed reports said four people had been killed.

RDI Television quoted unofficial sources as saying that 16 people may also been injured in the shootout. The network said one gunman had turned his weapon on himself and committed suicide, while a second had been shot and killed by police. This could not yet be confirmed.

[Reuters]

Nobody old enough to remember the École Polytechnique massacre can hear this news without an awful shiver of recognition. Do we have another Marc Lépine on our hands? Was the shooter (or shooters? It's still not clear... ) inspired by the notorious 1989 attack? December 6 is a national day of mourning in Canada, but the annual moment of silent remembrance always felt especially chilling when sitting in a college classroom in Montreal.

My heart goes out to the families and loved ones of those killed.

UPDATE (1:30 AM, 14 September 2006): Obviously, the initial news reports from the scene were very confused. It now seems there was a single gunman (a 25-year old man, whose name has not yet been publicly identified, and whose motives are still a mystery), who was shot dead by Montreal police. He wounded at least 19 people in his shooting spree, but although some are still in critical condition, only one victim has -- so far -- died, -- 18-year-old Dawson student Anastasia DeSouza. We can only hope the other victims pull through.

CNN.com
The Globe And Mail
Montreal Gazette

Montreal pianist David Ryshpan reflects on the event and its aftermath.

Blowin' steam like a cup of coffee

It's insufferably overwrought ("despite their tattoos and often rough-and-tumble venues, baristas think fine coffee should be right at home in a fine restaurant" -- you don't say...), but this piece does profile some of the best coffee joints in New York, including Café Grumpy and Gimme Coffee. Naturally, all but one are in Brooklyn.

Sound Art @ Washington Square Park

Curator/producer/emcee Jen Stock:

More pics below the fold...

It's full of charts and facts and figures and instructions for dancing

Sound Art @ Washington Square Park

September 9, 2006 - 3:00 PM

Paul Lansky + So Percussion + Luke DuBois + Joan La Barbara + Daedelus + Jerseyband

and Carl Stone's Acid Bop

Curated by Jen Stock of Soundbook One.

Free.

As Matt Marks of Alarm Will Sound writes:

If you are in or around New York, and you don't go to see this, you hate music. That's all there is to it. You Hate Music.

More info via Jen:

Carl Stone is one of the pioneers of live computer music, and has been hailed by the Village Voice as “the king of sampling” and "one of the best composers living in (the USA) today." He has used computers in live performance since 1986.

Daedelus presents a live electronic set. Experimental electronic composer based out of Los Angeles. Impeccable collage work with eclectic sound sources; recent albums include Exquisite Corpse and Daedelus Denies the Day's Demise (Mush/Ninja Tune)

Jerseyband -- experimental rock ensemble that fuses heavy-metal sounds with jazz instrumentation: “a melange of de-tuned electric guitars, crashing drums, and a seemingly traditional jazz-ensemble front-line…totally rad, and totally loud.” (The Metroland Weekly). Plays solo set and first collaborative set with So Percussion.

Joan La Barbara is a composer, performer, sound artist, and pioneer of a broad vocabulary of extended vocal techniques, praised as “one of the great vocal virtuosas of our time.” (San Francisco Examiner) La Barbara will perform “Urban Tropics Revisted,” a surround piece for voice and electronics.

Luke DuBois presents selections from Timelapse (Cantaloupe) and a live electronic set. A composer, programmer, and video artist, he is the co-author of Jitter, a software suite developed by Cycling 74, and teaches interactive music and video performance at Columbia’s Computer Music Center and NYU.

Paul Lansky presents “Ride,” an 8-channel piece using traffic sounds for source material. Paul Lansky is professor of music composition at Princeton; albums include Alphabet Book and More Than Idle Chatter (Bridge).

So Percussion plays new works from the group’s upcoming album Amid the Noise (Cantaloupe), featuring original compositions by ensemble member Jason Treuting and Paul Lansky's "Threads."

And here you thought NYC's free summer concert season was over. It's looking to be a beautiful weekend, too, so you literally have no excuse to miss this last chance to get your geek on in the daylight, before we all retreat to our black boxes, industrial lofts, and other usual haunts.

Rule number two give respect where respect due

DOWNLOAD: The Respect Sextet - "Cartel" (from The Full Respect)
DOWNLOAD: The Respect Sextet - "Postal (a.k.a. PB&J)" (from Respect in You)

On the heels of a regional tour of scenic Toronto, picturesque Rochester, panoramic Detroit, bustling Ann Arbor, and the hipster haven of Grand Rapids, the boys from Respect are road-seasoned and ready to transform the basement space at Cornelia into their own personal playground of depravity. Respectful depravity, of course.

Tonight (Thursday September 7) - The Respect Sextet. 8:30 PM, Cornelia Street Café. $10 cover.

Eli Asher, trumpet
Josh Rutner, tenor sax
James Hirschfeld, trombone
Red Wierenga, piano/accordion
Matt Clohesy, bass
Ted Poor, drums
Plus guest alto saxophonist Chris Wicks.

Exclusive MP3s offered with the kind permission of the Respect Sextet.

Putting it together

Jason Moran - Artist in Residence (Blue Note)

Piano players have a not entirely undeserved reputation for being nerdy even by jazz musician standards. Evidence is not hard to come by -- Brad Meldhau pens epic liner notes in the form of Socratic dialogues, Vijay Iyer has an interdisciplinary Ph.D. in music and cognitive science from Berkeley (that's Berkeley, not Berklee), and, of course, Ethan Iverson is a notorious Smarty McSmarterson. (And he blogs.) Jason Moran fits nicely into the pianist-as-intellectual paradigm. His music is often inspired by the works of Basquiat, Rauschenberg, and Kurosawa, and he has a wide-open conceptual approach to writing that embraces pitch-rhythm transcriptions, set theory, and Schillinger. Moran's latest CD, Artist in Residence, is (as you might expect) his most self-consciously artsy to date.

The strongest track is "RAIN," a twelve-minute, ring shout-inpired work originally comissioned by Jazz at Lincoln Center. Here, Moran's Bandwagon rhythm section, Tarus Mateen (bass) and Nasheet Waits (drums), are joined by Ralph Alessi (trumpet), Marvin Sewell (guitar), and Abdou Mboup (kora, djembe, talking drum), as well as a recorded sample of Moran's own shuffling footsteps. The almost-pentatonic trumpet melody keeps looping back on itself like a Mobius strip, with supporting (and, sometimes, undermining) harmonizations and commentary from the rest of the group.  Moran eventually joins Alessi on the theme while the sound of the footsteps becomes more rhythmic and insistent. An additive groove builds underneath, slowly picking up steam. Moran's fleet lines and inistently rising left-hand figures take over, eventually transitioning into a release section with a driving backbeat and a soulful variation on the trumpet theme. Two-thirds into the track Alessi finally gets to break away and blow, over an increasingly refracted pedal section that culminates in full-group improv. The piece closes as the players give way to the sound of mutliple sets of footsteps looping against each other in circular syncopation, not fading out as expected, but abruptly stopping. With its relentless momentum and monomanical pentatonic cycles, "RAIN" reminds me a bit of Rzewski's "Coming Together." It's followed by an earthy romp through "Lift Every Voice," in deliberate contrast to the preceeding track.

Four additional tracks are excerpted from Jason's multimedia collaboration with video and performance artist Joan Jonas, called The Shape, the Scent, the Feel of Things. Two of these are character pieces for solo piano -- "Arizona Landscape" -- which prominently features the "Happy Trails" bassline (played straight-faced) -- and "He puts on his coat and leaves," an effective bit of exit music based primarily around a two-chord vamp.  "Refraction 1" is actually a duet with Jonas herself, who gamely accompanies Moran with an asynchronous rustle of assorted noisemakers. "Refraction 2" is the Bandwagon version of the same piece -- less abstracted and more groove-oriented, with playful and conversational timekeeping from Nasheet Waits.

The remaining four selections give a taste of a theatrical piece, Milestone, premiered at Minneapolis's Walker Art Center in April 2005, and is based on Adrian Piper's The Mythic Being: I/You (Her). "Break Down," the album's opening track, uses a cut-up recording of Piper's voice as a source for pitches and rhythms -- a technique that will be familiar to longtime Moran fans, although on this cut, the use of spoken-word samples is more hip-hop, less "The Dangerous Kitchen."

"Artists Ought to Be Writing" features a much longer sample of Piper lecturing on the responsibility of artists to communicate their processes and intentions to the general public. The first time through the loop, Moran introduces a harmonization of Piper's spoken "melody." When the loop comes around again, his right hand lines reinforce Piper's voice, and on the third cycle, the voice is subtracted and we hear the melody and harmonization without the words, which Moran uses as a jumping-off point for improvisation. The effect is actually quite beautiful and, in the spirit of Piper's words, communicative.

[You can listen to "Artists Ought to Be Writing" via NPR's Song of the Day.]

The version of Weber's "Cradle Song" included here is a dedication to Moran's recently departed mother, who used to audit her young son's piano lessons, scribbling notes throughout. For most of the track, we hear the close-mic'd sound of a pencil scratching insistently against paper -- when it abruptly stops, Moran is left to finish unaccompanied.

"Milestone" was written by Jason's wife, Alicia Hall Moran, and opens with her classically-trained voice and a straightforward piano accompaniement, but when the Bandwagon jump in on Alicia's last note,  the track abruptly shifts direction, eventually heading towards a rhapsodic coda.

Artist in Residence is an ambitious and diverse project, a reflection of Moran's restless intelligence and wide-ranging aesthetic interests. Because of this, it necessarily lacks the cohesion of earlier outings like Facing Left, The Bandwagon, or his amazing solo piano record, Modernistic. Listeners who are not already familiar with Moran's work may prefer to start with those more focused albums.  On the other hand, for those of us who have followed Moran's career with interest -- and for those who share his  passion for interdisciplinary collaboration -- Artist in Residence is a gallery full of provocative, thoughtful, and rewarding works.

Also recommended: Jason's podcasts for SIM.

Artist in Residence is in stores Sept. 12. Jason Moran's Bandwagon is at the Blue Note Sept. 12-17. An advance copy of this recording was provided by Blue Note Records for review purposes.

It's now or not at all

Steve Smith joins the Do The Math invitational, opening with some passionate evangelizing for another Fort Worth native (along with Ornette Coleman and the late Dewey Redman), John Carter. Faithful Secret Society commenter Goddoggo also steps up for Carter, as well as the oft-maligned James Newton.

See, this kind of obsessive online listmaking does has its uses -- I must now sheepishly cop to never having heard a single John Carter record, and accept the opprobrium of my fellow interweb pamphleteers. (I think G. is right about the anti-West Coast bias -- John Carter is a guy whose name never seems to come up, at least not in my circles.) This is clearly a situation in need of a remedy, and it sounds like 1985's Castles of Ghana is the recommended jumping-off point.

Steve continues with his own personal '73-'90 touchstones, filling in the gaps between the records Ethan, David, Pat, and I mentioned. His list is an invaluable guide through the 70's and 80's output of fiercely independent artists like Derek Bailey, Evan Parker, Arthur Blythe, Steve Lacy, Cecil Taylor, the Art Ensemble of Chicago, Peter Brötzmann, John Zorn, Marty Ehrlich, John Lurie, and Bobby Previte. Go check it out.

This is gonna be some list once the hivemind gets done with it.

UPDATE: Destination Out makes the case for Muhal Richard Abrams and Marion Brown (includes audio).

RIP Dewey Redman

Oh no... it can't be...

Goddammit.

Do The Math have the appreciation. I don't really have anything to add to this:

Dave King has the perfect phrase to describe the late Dewey Redman, who died yesterday: “Warm modernism.” "Warm modernism" means be abstract; be surreal; be irrational — but also be an earthy motherfucker.

More:

Marc Medwin (Bagatellen)
Pat (visionsong)
Aldon Lynn Nielsen (HeatStrings)
David Ryshpan (Settled In Shipping)
Mac (Portastic)
Destination Out (includes audio)
Matt Durutti (Los Amigos De Durutti) (includes audio)
etnobofin (includes audio)
-----
Jazzcorner thread
AAJ
NYT (Ratliff)
UPI
WaPo
Fort Worth Star-Telegram -- this one's worth quoting for the local color:

On a plaque in the new Evans plaza, he is remembered as one of a remarkable generation of jazz musicians who all grew up in the same Fort Worth neighborhood. Clarinetist John Carter was two years older, the future “King Curtis” Ousley two years younger. In the band hall at the old I.M. Terrell High School, Carter and Redman met up with a pretty good saxophone player from downtown, a kid named Ornette Coleman.

From a family of Fort Worth schoolteachers, Redman set out for college and a career as a high school band director. In his mid-30s, he left Texas to try his luck as a musician in California and New York, where he caught on with Coleman’s avant-garde band. He stayed.

At his death, Redman had not lived in Fort Worth for 40 years, and had only recently started coming back to play major music festivals.

Yet he died owning a Texas driver’s license that bore his late mother’s last address on East Jessamine Street, about a mile from the 1920s frame house on East Leuda Street where he grew up.

Also, from the NYT obit:

He played his final concert on Aug. 27 at the Charlie Parker Jazz Festival in Tompkins Square Park on the Lower East Side of Manhattan.

If the Society had not been otherwise engaged on the 27th, that's where I would have been. Did anyone catch Dewey's final hit?

Time keeps on slippin', slippin', slippin'

Do The Math asks, and I must answer. Here's my own list of the jazz recordings cut between 1973-1990 that have had the most impact on me and my music.

First off, as mentioned previously, I endorse all of the records on Ethan's list that I've actually heard, especially (but by no means limited to) those by Ornette Coleman, Steve Coleman, Henry Threadgill, the Keith Jarrett American Quartet, Old and New Dreams, Wayne Shorter, Weather Report, Sam Rivers, Woody Shaw, Charlie Haden, Julius Hemphill, Paul Bley, Bill Frisell, and that fantastic Mal Waldron/Steve Lacy disc.

Naturally, I have some additions to make, but unlike Ethan, I'm going to list things by artist (instead of chronologically). [Updates in square brackets.]

[Ran Blake - Film Noir (1980)
Dammit, I just knew I would end up leaving something important off my initial list. Anyway, there are plenty of first-rate Ran Blake records to choose from in this period, but this is clearly the most representative portrait of Ran's musical and extra-musical obsessions. Blake is a unique and vitally important improviser.]

Anthony Braxton - Creative Orchestra Music (1976)
As I told David Ryshpan, it's fucking amazing. Unlike Ethan, I like my Braxton big. Maybe not 100 tubas big, but at least this big.

Bob Brookmeyer - Mel Lewis Orchestra - Live at the Village Vanguard (1980), Make Me Smile (1982)
In 1978, Thad Jones abruptly left the band he'd co-founded, led, and written almost a hundred charts for, leaving his co-leader Mel Lewis in the lurch. Mel settled on former band member Bob Brookmeyer as the band's new composer-in-resisdence. Bob had just gotten sober after many years lost to alcoholism out on the West Coast, and he returned to New York with something to prove. The 1980 record was a triumphant return to form, with the infectious, propulsive "Ding Dong Ding" and "Hello and Goodbye" (two of Bob's most-played charts), the densely chromatic but achingly tender "First Love Song," the very bleak treatment of "Skylark" (foreshadowing developments to come), and a couple of pieces written for Bob's old comrade-in-arms, Clark Terry. Having first established that he was the ideal writer to continue Thad's smart-and-swinging legacy, Brookmeyer then proceeded to write himself out of the band with a series of charts that kept pushing at the limits of what a big band was capable of -- and what the Monday night audience at the Vanguard was willing to accept. Each piece seemed like Bob was being driven further -- to be more intense, more dissonant, more stripped-down, more single-minded, more formally daring, more wrist-slittingly depressing. There were defections -- many of the old guard from the "Thad & Mel" era left the band, to be replaced by then-unknowns like Steve Coleman, Kenny Garrett, and Joe Lovano... playing alongside Tom Harrell, Marc Johnson, Jim McNeely, Dick Oatts, and Mel himself, playing with the fire and drive of a twenty-year old. Make Me Smile & Other New Works by Bob Brookmeyer is the only document of this era of the band -- a live recording of an hour-long suite, including the blistering Lovano feature "The Nasty Dance" (Joe's first recorded solo, I believe) and Bob's infamously sparse and disquieting arrangement of "My Funny Valentine." It's very dark and very intense, but also dryly funny ("Goodbye World") and immensely satisfying. A hugely important record, not just for big band aficionados but for anyone interested in how the progressive jazz and new music scene of the early 1980's sounded when filtered through the mind of a fiftysomething jazz veteran from Kansas City undergoing a creative and personal rebirth.

Bob Brookmeyer - Stockholm Jazz Orchestra - Dreams (1988)
The first recorded document of Bob's big-band writing after leaving Mel's band could not be more different from Make Me Smile. Well, okay, so the mood is still often very bleak ("Lies"), but the biting, clustery dissonances are almost entirely gone, replaced by a single-minded, almost obsessive commitment to as-long-as-it-takes motivic development. And okay, fine, the chromatic clusters do return briefly on "Dreams," but they are attenuated by the ethereal mood and pretty diatonic melody (like "First Love Song" through a cloud of opium smoke). Anyway, the opening track, "Cats," is the perfect introduction to the pared-down, distilled essence of a style Bob has been progressively refining for almost twenty years now. Maria is especially partial to "Missing Monk," which, I have to admit, is pretty fucking great. Bob also plays lots of trombone on on this record, which is always a good thing. Brookmeyer's most satisfying post-Mel, pre-New Art Orchestra recording.

Don Byron - Tuskegee Experiments (1990-1991)
Byron's first record squeezes in under the wire on a technicality. It's not quite as focused or as compositionally strong as his jazz followup (Music for Six Musicians), but it's still an impressive debut. As Hankus Netsky (who was responsible for introducing Don to klezmer) astutely observes, Don is one of the few modern horn players who has really internalized Ornette's time feel, phrasing, and irrational note choices, and is also able to make them sound good over sophisticated chord progressions. "Tuskegee Strutter's Ball" is a very hip take on rhythm changes, and you've got to love his deconstruction of Ellington's "Main Stem." (Also, I think Jason Moran must have heard Don's version of Schumann's "Auf einer Burg" before deciding to record it himself.)

Miles Davis
Obviously, all of his 1970's records are required listening. From the 1980's, Ethan goes with Tutu. I'd go with We Want Miles (1982), Aura (1985), and (especially) the posthumously released Live Around The World.

Bill Evans - I Will Say Goodbye (1977), We Will Meet Again (1979)
I actually bought I Will Say Goodbye purely because I wanted to hear Bill's version of "Dolphin Dance." As it turns out, it's the best of the Evans-Gomez-Zigmund trio records. Bill was getting into some really sophisticated rhythmic ideas late in his career, but they are often sabotaged by all the cocaine-fueled rushing. I Will Say Goodbye is one of the more relaxed late Bill outings. The solo on "Nobody Else But Me" is great. We Will Meet Again is a rare quintet date for Bill, with a (very strong) Tom Harrell and Larry Schneider augmenting Bill's final trio.

Gil Evans - Svengali (1973), Plays The Music Of Jimi Hendrix (1974)
What are we to make of Gil Evans in the seventies? Svengali is probably the most consistent offering -- a little frayed around the edges, but this live record pointed to an invigorating new direction for Gil's band. But then came the truly strange collection of Hendrix covers, which had originally been planned as a full-fledged collaboration between Gil and Jimi. However, the two of them hadn't gotten very far before a certain notorious wine-and-Vesperax cocktail made further collaboration impossible. Instead, in 1974, Gil decided to use his position as head of the New York Jazz Repertory Company to present a heavily amplified tribute to Hendrix at Carnegie Hall. (Apparently, it did not go well.) A week after the Carnegie Hall hit, they recorded this album. It has: some of the cheesiest "spacy" synth sounds you'll ever hear; liberal and inappropriate use of wind chimes, timpani, xylophone, gong, marimba, flexatone, and glockenspiel; David Sanborn doing David Sanborn-y things; Howard Johnson screaming the melody to "Voodoo Chile" into his tuba mouthpiece; guitarist Ryo Kawasaki standing in for Jimi (possibly the most daunting and thankless role in the history of recorded music); and -- impossibly -- most of the arrangements aren't even Gil's. I don't care. I love it anyway.

[I should add that Maria Schneider raves about 1977's Priestess. I must sheepishly admit that I've never actually heard this record, having been so far unable to locate a reasonably priced copy. If you happen to come across one, let me know... ]

Gateway - Gateway (1975), Gateway 2 (1977)
Atmospheric, cinematic, patient, spacious, slow to unfold -- the perfect showcase for John Abercrombie's liquid sound and Dave Holland and Jack DeJohnnette's telepathic interplay. I'm surprised these haven't been previously mentioned -- these records were huge when I was in jazz school, and were definitely a major influence. Often Gateway sounds like embryonic postrock, especially with the emphasis on timbre, mood, and long-term development over soloistic virtuosity. (I don't know how much Gateway Jeff Parker listened to, but that seems like the most obvious point of reference for much of his work with Tortoise.)

Herbie Hancock - Man-Child (1975)
Ethan went with the self-titled Headhunters, and David Ryshpan went with Thrust, but this one's my pick for Headhunters Herbie, primarily on the strength of "Hang Up Your Hang Ups," the funkiest thing Herbie ever cut. Also, Stevie Wonder's harmonica solo on "Steppin' In It" is fantastic.

Keith Jarrett European Quartet - Belonging (1974)
Ethan & co rightly venerate Keith's American quartet (with the -- goddammit -- late and much-lamented Dewey Redman, Charlie Haden, and Paul Motian), but (like David) I think the folksier European quartet is still worthy of serious consideration. Keith's conversational, twisting long-line melodies and slow-burn vamps are hard to resist, Danielsson and Christensen make a fantastic team, and Garbarek had not yet fully descended into the schmaltzy new age style that characterizes much of his later work. The ballads can maybe get a little overwrought -- okay, fine, a lot overwrought -- but everything else is first-rate acoustic fusion.

Thad Jones/Mel Lewis -- New Life (1976)
After some lackluster albums in the early 1970's -- the heartfelt but underwhelming Suite For Pops and the embarrassing Potpourri -- which features dreadful arrangements of "Don't You Worry About A Thing," "Living For The City," and "For The Love Of Money" (and, to add insult to injury, the liner notes even list the astrological sign of everyone in the band... ) -- New Life, Thad & Mel's 10th anniversary record, is something of a return to form, featuring Thad's last great charts before leaving the band -- "Little Rascal On A Rock," and "Cherry Juice." The gatefold LP is a garden of nerdy delights, including score excerpts, stereo mix diagrams, and copious liner notes.

Jim McNeely - East Coast Blow Out (1989)
Goddamn I love this record. A kickass five-movement suite, featuring each member of McNeely's reunited quartet -- John Scofield, McNeely, Marc Johnson, and Adam Nussbaum. The WDR band plays more than just a supporting role, though -- McNeely has them disturbing and provoking the soloists throughout. McNeely is an amazing and prolific writer who just this year put out three brilliant records -- but East Coast Blow Out is still my all-time favorite.

Pat Metheny - Bright Size Life (1975)
I'm also a little surprised this one hasn't been mentioned before, either. Bright Size Life was universally beloved back in jazz school, and for good reason -- it's probably the quintessential 1970's jazz record. It effortlessly blends proggy fusion ("Unquity Road"), Americana ("Midwestern Nights Dream"), abstracted world music ("Omaha Celebration," ironically), free jazz via Ornette ("Round Trip/Broadway Blues"), and Pat's corn-fed lyricism ("Sirabhorn"), without ever losing sight of the hard-swinging jazz tradition ("Missouri Uncompromised") . And it's Pat's first frickin' record, cut when he was all of 21 years old. Jaco Pastorius plays selflessly and tastefully throughout -- it's clearly his best record (with the possible exception of the ones he made with Joni) -- and Bob Moses made his reputation with his contribution here. Even Metheny-skeptics can be relied upon to give it up for this amazing record.

Charles Mingus - Changes One (1974), Changes Two (1974)
Ethan mentions that these records never spoke to him. Well, damn, they sure as shit grabbed me by the lapels and insisted that I listen. Unlike, say, Monk, Mingus remained a creative dynamo up until the very end, and the tunes on these records are some of the best of his entire career. "Duke Ellington's Sound Of Love" (which, some have wryly observed, really ought to be titled "Billy Strayhorn's Sound of Love") is Mingus's greatest ballad, hands down. (Just ignore the vocal version on Changes Two.) "Sue's Changes" and "Orange Was The Color Of Her Dress, Then Silk Blue" are two of his most ambitious and effective multi-section works. ("Sue's Changes" used to be my favorite tune to play with a quintet -- it's a terrific workout.) "Remember Rockefeller At Attica" and "Free Cell Block F, 'Tis Nazi U.S.A." don't sound anything like their titles (FWIW, the original, discarded titles were "Just For Laughs Saps" and "Jive Five, Floor Four"), but the heads are irresistible. We get first-rate playing from everyone on these sessions -- Mingus and Dannie Richmond especially. Could they be the most underrated rhythm section in jazz? None of my peers seem to share my enthusiasm for their hookup, which always baffles me to no end. [N.B. I have the Rhino CD reissues -- I've heard that the sound quality on earlier versions is not so good, but the Rhino versions are fine.]

Paul Motian - Joe Lovano - Bill Frisell - It Should've Happened a Long Time Ago (1984)
Surely, this classic recording -- the first album to feature the now-legendary Motian-Lovano-Frisell trio -- needs no further comment from me? If you don't own it, fercrissakes get it.

Kenny Wheeler - Deer Wan (1977), Around 6 (1979), Double, Double You (1983), Flutter By, Butterfly (1987), The Widow In The Window (1990), Music for Large & Small Ensembles (1990)
Gnu High (recommended by Ethan, and enthusiastically seconded by me) is one of the greatest jazz recordings of all time, but it's also a bit of an anomaly in Kenny Wheeler's catalog -- Keith Jarrett, being Keith Jarrett, basically decides that Kenny's harmonies aren't his thing, and declines to play them. It's still amazing, but it's not quite Kenny. Deer Wan (yes, I know, but you have to indulge KW his awful puns) has Jarrett replaced by the more sympathetic John Abercrombie (who would become a regular Wheeler collaborator), and the addition of a second horn (Jan Garbarek) emphasizes Kenny's contrapuntal strengths. Around 6, with a group of European players (including Evan Parker and J.F. Jenny-Clark) is Kenny's least-known ECM outing, but it's actually one of his strongest and most conceptually creative -- and the extreme contrast of Evan Parker shredding through Kenny's pretty, pensive tunes like a bandsaw through rice-paper is improbably effective. It sounds like they were going for an equally striking but more salable contrast by adding Michael Brecker to the John Taylor-Dave Holland-Jack DeJohnette rhythm section on Double, Double You, and it pays off in Brecker's fiery turn over the sus-chord vamp on "Foxy Trot" (a very popular tune to play back in my McGill days). Flutter By, Butterfly is another often-overlooked item in Kenny's discography, but it has some of his lightest and "jazziest" heads (like "Everybody's Song But My Own" and "The Little Fellow" -- aptly described by KW as a cross between an Irish folk song and a McCoy Tyner piece). The Widow In The Window reunites Wheeler with Abercrombie, and adds Peter Erskine in place of Jack DeJohnette. The record is very quiet and introspective (perhaps to a fault), but has some of Kenny's most affecting songwriting -- especially the title track and "Ma Belle Hélène." But his masterpiece is, unquestionably, Music For Large & Small Ensembles -- The Sweet Time Suite, which takes up the entirety of Disc 1, is one of the most captivating large-scale jazz compositions ever written. The opening chorale (with Norma Winstone's pristine voice blending with and humanizing the saxophone choir) never fails to draw me right in, and before I know it I've listened to the whole damn thing. Disc 2 continues with three more of KW's big band gems ("Sophie," "Sea Lady," and "Gentle Piece"), and after gorging on so many brilliant large ensemble works, as a palate-cleanser we get an assortment of freely improvised trios and duets, and for dessert, a multifaceted quintet version of the old Dietz/Schwartz standard "By Myself." Kenny Wheeler has done more than anyone since Wayne Shorter to expand the palette of harmonic possibilities in jazz.

Also, don't overlook KW's contributions to the great 1980's Dave Holland recordings -- Jumpin' In (1983), Seeds Of Time (1984) and the best of these (also with Steve Coleman, Robin Eubanks, and Smitty Smith), The Razor's Edge (1986).

I could really go on here... in addition to the ones already mentioned by Ethan and others, there are plenty of amazing records from this period by John Zorn, Steve Coleman, Muhal Richard Abrams, Henry Threadgill, Julius Hemphill, Marty Ehrlich, Tim Berne, Thomas Chapin, Lester Bowie and the Art Ensemble of Chicago, Sun Ra, Marc Johnson, Bill Frisell, Wynton and Branford Marsalis, Mulgrew Miller, Kenny Garrett, and others. Again, the above list is far from comprehensive and is not meant to be -- it's just a smattering of albums that I've lived with for long enough for them to have influenced my music, and have (mostly) not been represented elsewhere in this discussion.

As always, feel free to add your own 1973-1990 picks in comments. You have one day left to email them to Do The Math, but our comments section is forever at your service.

Ethan's Record Collection Is Not Afraid Of You And Will Beat Your Ass

This post -- a staggering list of Ethan Iverson's favorite recordings made between 1973 (the year of his birth) and 1990 (the year before he moved to NYC) -- is already legendary throughout blogdonia. The most striking thing about the list to me was not the remarkable breadth -- from Roland Hanna to Collin Walcott and beyond -- or the consummate good taste -- Ethan picked many records I don't own, but of the ones I'm familiar with, I enthusiastically support his choices -- or the engaging and perceptive capsule descriptions, which elevate it well beyond your standard-issue internet "Best Of" lists. No, what really got me about this list is that, with the exception of a handful of records (marked with an asterisk), these are albums Ethan acquired between the ages of 11 and 18. How on earth did he even find out about all these records, let alone actually locate them in a brick-and-mortar record store? (Especially in the pre-internet days!) He doesn't say. I would have given anything to have had someone like Ethan around to turn me on to these records back when I was in high school.

The overwhelming majority of the records Ethan mentions are by artists my 18-year old self had barely even heard of. (At that point in my life, of the albums on the list, I remember having Heavy Weather and Royal Garden Blues on tape, and Standards Live on CD.) Although in my late high school years I'd been collecting jazz records (well, uh, tapes and, eventually, CDs -- there was no turntable in our house, and in any event, I craved the isolation and envelopment of my Walkman) as fast as my meagre teenage budget would allow, I owned only a handful of post-1973 recordings... something to consider lest anyone think that Dave Douglas is exaggerating when he claims that this period of jazz has been unfairly marginalized by the powers-that-be (especially the jazz education industry). By the time I was eighteen I had gotten a fair number of lists of "must-have" records from teachers, clinicians, guest artists, Down Beat articles, instructional books, etc, and not one of them looked anything like Ethan's.

Ethan's list was not meant to be comprehensive, just a survey of his own personal collection. He's invited all comers to contribute their own favorites from '73-'90, which I will do in an upcoming post. Stay tuned...