Secret Society

Disco Inferno

Was disco the last musical genre that absolutely everyone had to get in on? It wasn't just the likes of Rod Stewart and the Rolling Stones and Wings-era Paul McCartney and the Grateful Dead and Kiss… a surprising number of major jazz artists also made disco-inflected records. There's Ron Carter's 1976 Pastels, which opens with the glossy string-sweetened "Woolaphant." Also in '76, Dizzy Gillespie put out a record called Dizzy's Party — here's the title track. Sonny Rollins even put out a tune called, of all things, "Disco Monk" — it's from 1979's aptly titled Dont Ask. (Rembmer, Thelonious was still around at this point and consequently had no grave to spin in.) Almost all of the big bands had their disco moments, too — Buddy Rich, Woody Herman, Thad & Mel — but nobody embraced disco with as much gusto as Maynard Ferguson. I still vividly remember the time when my teenage self first heard his disco version of the theme to Battlestar Galactica — I think my jaw still hurts from where it hit the floor.

The above tracks (and more) were all referenced in a recent Twitter discussion of jazz-disco crossovers — I'm grateful to Jacob Garchik, Dave Sumner, Mark Stryker, and everyone else who chimed in with their suggestions.

The discussion was instigated somewhat by the fact that Secret Society is going to be appearing this Saturday, August 25 at the Ecstatic Summer Festival, where we'll be joined onstage by the 17-piece neo-disco band, Escort. In addition to separate sets, we'll be bringing both bands together for a few tunes, including an original of mine called "Penumbra" (think late 70's Quincy Jones meets Guillermo Klein's rhythmic filter) and my arrangements of two influential disco-era tracks recorded by Donald Byrd, "Stepping Into Tomorrow" and "Change (Makes You Want To Hustle)" — both of which will feature special guest soloist Tim Hagans.

This isn't a vein of music that we in Secret Society get to tap explicity very much, but that doesn't mean we don't love it or aren't deeply influenced by it. So let's take a minute to get a few things straight:

• DISCO IS AWESOME. Notwithstanding the ill-advised crossover attempts listed above, the decades-long knee-jerk "Disco Sucks" backlash is lazy and tired and needs to stop. Yes, there is bad disco. There is bad everything. But disco was the natural outgrowth of 70's funk and Philly soul, and there's no shortage of deeply grooving disco tracks that easily stand up today. For the skeptical, I recommend and endorse this Sound Opinions podcast on disco's early years. For the advanced class, y'all need to get Nile Rogers' amazing autobiography, which came out last year. GQ has an extended excerpt, and the story of Chic's first single, "Everybody Dance," is one of the best things you'll ever read.

• ESCORT ARE AWESOME. Disco was always more of a product of the recording studio than the live stage, partly due to the nature of late 70's nightclub culture but also due to the huge number of musicians required to make that music happen. Escort does it up right, wtih a full 17-piece band including multiple strings, horns, percussionists, guitarists, and backup singers. They groove hard, and their lead singer, Adeline Michele, is a force of nature: Exhibit A.

• TIM HAGANS IS AWESOME. I don't think this is a particularly controversial point, I just want to remind everyone that Tim Hagans is a bad motherfucker and we're incredibly excited to feature him with us on this show.

• DONALD BYRD'S 70's RECORDS ARE AWESOME. Seriously, these records are nothing like those embarassing jazz-disco cuts by other artists referenced above. Unlike most of his peers, Donald Byrd made the transition to electric groove-based jazz successfully, and a big part of that success was his longtime association with the Mizell Brothers.

Larry and Fonce Mizell met Donald Byrd while they were students at Howard, where Byrd was on faculty. Larry earned a degree in electrical engineering and worked on the Apollo Lunar Module. Fonce went out to LA where he was a founding member of The Corporation, the Motown songwriting and production crew responsible for most of the Jackson 5's hits, including "I Want You Back." Larry eventually went out west to join his brother and together they founded Sky High Productions. The Mizells contributed to Byrd's 1972 Ethiopian Nights, but their big breaktrhough was Black Byrd, which became the best-selling Blue Note record of all time.

Larry and Fonce Mizell continued to produce all of DB's 70's output for Blue Note, including Street Lady (1973), Stepping into Tomorrow and Places and Spaces (both 1975) and Caricatures (1976). When the Mizells and Byrd parted ways, things start to go a bit astray — 1978's Thank You… For F.U.M.L. (Funking Up My Life) has an unbeatable title and is still a fun listen ("Your Love Is My Ecstasy" almost made the cut for the August 25 show) but without the Mizells' guiding hand, the cheese factor ramps up precipitously.

The Mizell-era Donald Byrd records were reviled by jazz critics and by many of Byrd's peers, who branded him an apostate and a sellout for abandoning the acoustic hard bop style he helped define. But they are seriously beloved by DJs and soul and disco afficionados, and have been widely sampled by hiphop artists — if anything, Donald Byrd is probably held in higher esteem by them than he is by jazz fans. (When I first sat down to talk repetoire with Escort's co-founders, Dan Balis and Eugene Cho, they already knew all about these records.)

It's easy to hear why — the playing, writing, arranging, production, and recorded sound on these records is just brilliant, particularly on Stepping Into Tomorrow and Places and Spaces. The music is concise, soulful, and unpretentious, qualities a lot of other 1970's recordings by jazz artists could maybe have used a little more of. The rhythm section is anchored by the unstoppable team of bassist Chuck Rainey (one of the most-recorded bassits of all time, probably best-known for his playing on Aretha Franklin's Young, Gifted, and Black, plus all of Steely Dan's best records) and drummer Harvey Mason (Headhunters, Brecker Brothers).

The tunes are full of inventive details, like the incredibly hip descending minor 9th bassline in "Stepping Into Tomorrow," or how the chord progression in"Change (Makes You Want To Hustle)" passes through the bII MA7 in the turnaround. And Donald Byrd himself is in fine form on all these records — and he doesn't just play, he also contributes lead vocals! So okay, no one's going mistake him for Donny Hathaway, but seriously, he acquits himself just fine.

The Red Bull Music Academy released this excellent video interview with the Mizells:

If you jump to about 1:19:10 you can check out a fascinating breakdown of the groove on "Think Twice," a song from Stepping Into Tomorrow. It starts with just Harvey's bass drum mic solo'd, and gradually brings in the hihat mic, snare mic, and overheads, and then finally bass, congas, rhythm guitars, and piano. More than a master class in rhythmic authority, this breakdown also lets you hear the players interact in real time. They're constantly embellishing around the basic rhythmic structure, trading fills, etc, all without stepping on each other or getting in the way of the groove. This is the best kind of rhythm section playing: it's selfless, unshowy, and relentlessly badass.

Want more? Here's a rare recording (never issued on CD, so far as I know*) of Donald Byrd & co. live at the Roxy, absolutely destroying on "(Fallin' Like) Dominoes":

Donald Byrd's 1970's records with the Mizells succeed because of the authentic and profound craft that went into their creation. They weren't carelessly tossed-off in a crass attempt to try to cash in on current trends, they were meticulously shaped by master muiscians at the very top of their game. They were made by artists who were engaged in a real conversation with contemporary muiscal culture, and even helped define it: "Change (Makes You Want To Hustle)" was a legitimate hit on the dancefloor. And the legacy and spirit of these groundbreaking recordings is alive and well — just look at the albums Robert Glasper and Esperanza Spalding released this year.

Some of you may still be thinking "Yes, but is it jazz?" To those people, I say, "Seriously? That is literally the least interesting qustion you could ask about this music."

-----

* UPDATE: In comments, Neil points out that the live version of "(Falling Like) Dominoes" is available on this compilation.

UPDATE 2: Relevant reading in the LA Times.

Have a gram on me

A series of improbable events has apparently resulted in my co-conspirators and I being nominated for a Grammy.

We are flummoxed, but very, very pleased.

Cause my baby just a-wrote me a letter

The latest edition of the occasional Secret Society News-Letter contains details on several newly-announced shows. If you did not get it in your inbox, you can read it here:

Secret Society News-Letter No. 9 — Call Me By My Rightful Name

We encourage you to subscribe. That way, you will not miss announcements like the following:

Secret Society will be appearing at the Newport Jazz Festival on Saturday, August 7. We are honored to be joined on one selection by special guest Bob Brookmeyer. Also, there is a special discount offer: $10 off the one-day general admission price ($59 instead of $69) when you enter the promo code "ARTIST" here.

The offer expires after April 9, so B. Swift.

Misty Mountain Hop

 I'm hugely, deeply honored to have been invited to join the faculty at this year's International Workshop in Jazz and Creative Music at the Banff Centre for the Arts, especially as the rest of the faculty this year includes the likes of Donny McCaslin, Jeff Parker, Ben Monder, Ravi Coltrane, Drew Gress, Gerald Cleaver, and others. (The program is, of course, under the direction of Dave Douglas, as it has been for a decade now.) The Banff Centre program really does offer an undiluted creative shot in the arm -- I am speaking from personal experience, here -- and the setting is obviously nothing short of spectacular.

The workshop runs from May 17 - June 5, 2010, and I will be there for the second week of the program (May 24 - 29). I'll be directing a large ensemble of some description, and we'll be working on Secret Society repertoire, as well as (I hope) works contributed by the participants themselves. I realize the application deadline is coming up extremely soon (January 15), but I'd like to encourage anyone interested in working on my music to apply -- especially if you play or double on flute, alto flute, clarinet, bass clarinet, baritone sax, horn, bass trombone, tuba, etc. It would really be great to get some representation on those instruments. (If you do double on additional instruments, be sure to note that in your application!)

A series of mistakes without the 'oops.'

Wow, that Branford clip has sparked so much discussion that now even Nigel, David, and Derek evidently felt the need to weigh in on the state of jazz education today:

When Derek says "you can get a degree in how to play it wrong," surely he could not be referring to the teachings of legendary jazz educator Austin McBride:

Also, as Ethan points out, Professor McBride has truly outdone himself with his latest exploration of "5/4 timing":

No dark sarcasm in the classroom

Branford Marsalis on lessons he's learned from his students:

(And you guys thought Terry Teachout was a master at stirring shit up... )

Via Ronan Guilfoyle.

UPDATE: Ronan has more:

The ability to make a decision, to take responsibility for that decision, and to see it through, is a pre-requisite for a jazz improvisation. At the school I teach in we've noticed more and more that students want to be told what to do down to the smallest detail, are afraid to take a chance, and are often looking for a "magic bullet" that will allow them to get to where they want to be as players. The fact that there is no magic bullet and that the only way to get to where they want to be as improvisers is to work their asses off, practice like crazy, immerse themselves in the world of improvised music as listeners and players and use school as a resource for information rather than an instant provider of success, is something that seems to elude many of them. To return to Branford's quote, "the idea of what you are is more important than you actually being that" -- the students want to be great players, but often can't seem to make the connection that much of the responsibility for being great players is [theirs] alone, not the responsibility of the teachers.

Read the whole thing.

Nights alive with music

The still-roiling controversy surrounding Terry Teachout's "Can Jazz Be Saved?" hit the airwaves earlier today, as Vijay Iyer debated Teachout on WNYC's Soundcheck (click here to listen). One thing that's perplexed me a bit about the various responses Teachout's piece has provoked is that, unlike many, I don't actually think his diagnosis is fundamentally mistaken. It's true that there are certain methodological problems with the NEA Survey (PDF) on which Teachout hangs his argument (and Vijay did a great job of enumerating some of them), but I think you'd be hard-pressed to argue that jazz has been immune to the very same audience aging-and-erosion trends that have afflicted classical music (you know, the ones Greg Sandow writes about all the the time), and theatre, and dance and, well, basically every single art form. The traditional model of music-making for jazz musicians is simply not sustainable, and this much has been clear to a lot of people for quite some time -- indeed, as I said earlier, the only part of Teachout's piece I really take issue with is his mistaken belief that what he's saying comes as any surprise to those of us out there working in the trenches. It's not that the situation isn't dire -- it surely is. But rather than re-sounding the same old alarm bells, it seems to me like it might be more productive to talk about the stuff people are actually doing to try to reanimate the jazz audience.

To that end, critic and blogger Howard Mandel has launched a worthy Twitter trend: #jazzlives. If you are already on Twitter, you probably have a pretty good idea where this is headed: whenever you hear live jazz -- at a club, festival, concert hall, on the street, wherever -- throw up a Tweet with the #jazzlives hashtag, and let us know where you are and who you're hearing. Some samples so far:

1WorkinMusician: Just heard The Teaching in Seattle. Killer jazz musicians! #jazzlives

clarev17: I heard 13th Assembly THBynum cornet Tomas Fujiwara drms Mary Halvorson gtr Jessica Pavone viola Freddie's Backroom Brooklyn #jazzlives

Becca00 #jazzlives Mike LeDonne Quartet @ Smoke w Eric Alexander Peter Bernstein Joe Farnsworth GOOD #jazz

For those of you who are new to Twitter, hashtags like "#jazzlives" are a way of marking keywords or categories in Twitter messages (or "Tweets") so that they show up in searches.  Twitter is simple to set up and use, and you don't need one of those fancy-schmancy smartphones to send Tweets -- if your phone can send text messages, then you can use it to send Tweets. You can also post Tweets from the Twitter website once you get back from the gig.

The point of all this, of course, is to leverage Twitter's social media juju to draw attention to the live jazz that's happening around us all the time. Even if we take the NEA survey numbers with a grain of salt, it's pretty clear that if you want the kids to come to your shows, you've got to start by reaching them the way they want to be reached.

[An aside -- ever since this debate started I can't stop thinking of this old-school SNL sketch, in which Frank Sinatra announces: "I want to do some tunes that the young people will enjoy. That's why I'm calling this album Frank Sings Tunes the Young People Will Enjoy." Unfortunately, that bit is cut off in the clip below, but Eddie Murphy and Joe Piscopo's "jazzy" rendition of "Ebony & Ivory" is classic.]

There is also a #jazzlives widget you can use to display #jazzlives Tweets as they come in. I've already added it to my sidebar -- if you would like the code for that, so you can add this widget to your own blog or website, it's below the fold.

Rome is burning you can taste the embers

OMG you guys did you hear JazzTimes is going under? I can't believe no one in the blogosphere is talking about it!

Kidding, of course. In the event that rock you've been under has been feeling really, really comfy... rumors of financial troubles at "the other jazz magazine" began last week on Howard Mandel's blog and were confirmed on Monday when the magazine's management posted a brief note acknowledging that they had ceased (sorry, "temporarily" "suspended") publication and laid off all of their staff. Apparently they are also not planning on paying the money they owe freelancers for previous assignments (i.e., work that has already been published), which totally bites. Howard also wonders aloud if the unsurprising but depressing demise of New York's JVC Jazz Festival was the final nail in the JazzTimes coffin -- his inside baseball perspective about "advertorial supplements" gives a slightly surreal look behind the curtain of the jazz publication industry.

There is a tendency in jazz, as in all fringe endeavors, to make the perfect the enemy of the good. "The politics are so vicious precisely because the stakes are so small," etc. And so while I certainly understand the schadenfreude felt by those who take a grim satisfaction in seeing the former pillars of the jazz establishment immolate in such spectacular fashion, it does seem to me that it's a whole lot easier to attempt to reform the jazz-industrial complex while some of it is still left standing. "Burn it to the ground and start over" is a fun notion to entertain, but as a viable growth strategy it leaves a little something to be desired. Also, as David Adler points out, the lazy jab at "NPR fern bar jazz" seems particularly out of step with the times, although it's nice they have a sense of humor about it. (I am not sure what species of mutant space-fern you'd need to domesticate a front line that includes Bill McHenry and Andrew D'Angelo.)

On the other hand, William Parker can be justifiably proud of what he and his wife Patricia have built with the Vision Festival, now in its 14th year and still going strong. This year's Vision Fest kicked off on Tuesday -- Magnet Magazine has a great writeup of opening night. It's also nice to see some love for the VF over at Brooklyn Vegan. (The BV commenters also inevitably bring the snark, but that is all part of the love. Really.) The festival runs through June 15 -- I'm going to try to make it down on Saturday night.

But on Sunday afternoon, I'll be heading up to the Northside Festival -- specifically, Public Assembly, where the Search and Restore crew have stealthily inserted a slice of fresh new jazz into an event otherwise dominated by indie rock. Starting at 2 PM, S&R will be presenting the awesome quad-bill of Steve Coleman and Five Elements, Andrew D'Angelo's Gay Disco Trio, Ken Thompson's Slow/Fast, and Kneebody. This is the way of the future, I think... if our own institutions are crumbling, we might as well infiltrate someone else's.

Also, a reminder that Infinite Summer is just 10 days away. Have you secured your copy yet? How about your t-shirt?

Don't it always seem to go

Back before IAJE's untimely demise (the real story of which has yet to be told and probably never will), their annual conference was kind of like the jazz version of SXSW. Except way smaller, geekier, and more insular. The "deal makers and gatekeepers" (such as they are in our little corner of the music world) were there, of course, creating an atmosphere thick with schmoozing and self-promotion. (I know I certainly contributed my share of that when we played the last-ever IAJE last year.) But despite all this, there was often a lot of great music to be heard -- it's just too bad that it was always confined to hotel ballrooms and reserved for IAJE passholders exclusively. It meant that jazz's biggest annual party had no engagement with the host city, no reach beyond the conference center walls.

The contrast to SXSW, which completely takes over Austin for a week and change, could not be more extreme. There's so much genuine excitement there -- huge numbers of people actually getting caught up in the thrill of discovering new music.

SXSW also garners a truly insane amount of coverage, from new media and old. I've been enjoying the experience vicariously through my buddy Amanda Marcotte's posts, which give an Austinite's perspective on the madness:

Day One: The Day Of The Bear, Panda And Otherwise
Day Two: You Need A Girl In Your Band
Day Three: Devolution Is Real
Day Four: Spring Break For The Cool Kids

Through Amanda, I discovered The Octopus Project and I'm really loving their stuff right now. Check out this video:

For a more exhaustive take, you could do worse than the All Songs Considered podcasts, which I've been listening to over the weekend:

SXSW Preview (Carrie Brownstein's first pick, from The Entrance Band, is killing).
Wednesday
Thursday
Friday
Saturday

UPDATE: Of course, not everything in SXSW-land is sunshine and power chords:

Some of you may have heard about this "secret" show that Metallica played at Stubb's Friday night. Or the Kanye West show Saturday night at the Levis/Fader Fort. Or the Playboy-sponsored Jane's Addiction show the night before. And, I'm sure many of you wished you could have been at one or more of them.

Well, I have a question for you: What the hell is your problem?

For all those who've forgotten, SXSW is supposed to be for unsigned bands, the place where fans and industry types go to discover new talent. Having a platinum-selling band like Metallica play a show in support of their new version of Guitar Hero isn't just a distraction, it's downright offensive.

Pete's not wrong, but that is yet another reminder how inadequate the IAJE Conference was -- the idea that there could be a large industry-oriented annual festival that was even ostensibly devoted to the discovery of unknown jazz artists seems pretty far out. To an optimist, the gap left by IAJE's implosion might look like an opportunity to build something better in its place. But I don't get the sense that there are a lot of optimists out there right now.

Always hit the mark

In awesomely unexpected news, Jon Irabagon has won this year's Thelonious Monk International Saxophone Competition. "Unexpected" not because Jon isn't a great player -- he clearly is -- but because he's not the kind of jazz musician who normally wins stuff like the Monk Competition. To give you an idea, one of his regular projects is a "terrorist bebop band" called Mostly Other People Do The Killing. (Sorry if I just got you placed on the no-fly list, Jon.) 

Incidentally, MOPDTK have a CD release show at Zebulon on Nov. 1, if you wanna check out the freshly crowned Young Lion in the flesh.

Peter Hum (Thriving on a Riff) has YouTube video of the three finalists.  Here's a different clip of Jon playing with MOPDTK in Philly, which features an extended unaccompanied solo:

Ceremonial

Heartfelt congratulations to saxophonist and composer Miguel Zenón on having been named a 2008 MacArthur Fellow. I am a big fan of Miguel's work both as a leader -- his recent disc Awake is an excellent place to start if you don't know his stuff -- and also as a member of Guillermo Klein's badass 12-piece band Los Gauchos. (Miguel is kind of famous in NYC jazz circles for playing long, complex stretches of Guillermo's dense, rhythmically contorted compositions with his eyes closed. It's been confessed to me that his apparently effortless total recall makes the other guys in the Gauchos sax section feel a bit nervous.)

Zenón was an inspired choice for the MacArthur, and fully deserves the honor. But beyond the satisfaction of seeing such a high-profile award go to an artist I admire, the symbolism of this choice is powerful and is worth considering for a moment. Miguel is the perfect example of the kind of new mainstream, post-Jazz Wars player I was talking about in my NewMusicBox piece -- someone to whom the old ideological battles between avant-gardists and traditionalists, fusioneers and purists, etc., seem completely retarded.

Previous MacArthurs given to jazz musicians have generally gone to critically respectable members of the avant-garde elite: Cecil Taylor, Ornette Coleman, Steve Lacy, George Lewis, Ken Vandermark, John Zorn, etc.^[1] No disrespect intended to these trailblazing masters, but I am heartened that this year the MacArthur brain trust had the cojones to give the award to a musician who is still in his early thirties. (Miguel is the youngest jazz musician to ever receive a MacArthur.)

Bluntly -- I am tired of awards that seem to be all about bolstering the reputation of the award itself (and by extension, the wealthy donors who support it) by throwing impressive piles of money at long-established, world-famous artists who, frankly, are not hurting for either cash or critical recognition. (A recent case in point.)  I am even more tired of the idea that jazz musicians in their twenties and thirties are unworthy inheritors -- that only the old masters (and those who hew slavishly to long-established styles) are worthy of serious consideration. And I am sick to death of people asking "Where is the new Charlie Parker?" or "Where is the new John Coltrane?" I suspect those doing the asking are the very same people who would have plugged their ears in horror at the unfamiliar sounds coming out of Bird's horn in 1945 (when he was 25 years old) or Trane's in 1955 (when he was 29).

Peter Hum, in his post on Miguel's "genius grant," observed that two of the greatest living geniuses in jazz, Herbie Hancock and Wayne Shorter, have yet to be singled out for MacArthur honors. This is true. And, in some sense, lamentable -- perhaps especially in Shorter's case, as he is having his most creatively fertile decade since the 1960's and his current working quartet (which includes comparative youngster Brian Blade) is arguably the best band in jazz right now. But as I wrote in the comments over at Peter's place, when you are handing out a half-million dollars with no strings attached, I think you ought to take more than just merit into account. I think you ought to think about the effect that kind of money and recognition will have on someone's career and future artistic output.

Does anyone believe that an extra $100,000 per year in disposable income over the next five years would make a significant difference to the kind of music Herbie Hancock or Wayne Shorter or [insert Established Jazz Genius here] is going to produce going forward? These guys are already in a position to do whatever the hell they want, and that is exactly what they have been doing. (If Herbie decides he wants to work with Christina Aguilera, it's not because he needs the gig to keep the wolf from the door.)

But -- if you will allow me to channel Captain Obvious for a moment -- half a mil over five years makes an enormous difference to a 31-year old musician who is still largely unknown even to most Down Beat subscribers -- let alone the musical community at large. All of a sudden, Zenón has the freedom to not devote every single waking moment to figuring out how to hustle up this month's rent. All of a sudden, he has options. He can pick and choose his projects. He can afford to turn down lucrative but artistically unrewarding gigs. He can afford to take more than three days in the studio to record his next album, and he can make that record as expansive and ambitious as he chooses. He can decide how much or how little teaching he wants to do. He can go anywhere in the world to research indigenous music and play with the locals. Or he could flee the NYC perma-hustle and spend a few months in remote isolation. Whatever his choices, the important thing is that now he actually has them. The MacArthur Fellowship is going to have a profound impact on the nature of the work Zenón is able to pursue over the next five years, and probably well beyond. It seems to me that this ought to be the whole point of handing out these kinds of big-money awards -- to reshape the artistic landscape by vastly expanding the opportunities available to artists who are still struggling, every day, just to be heard.

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1. (Regina Carter is the outlier.)

* * * * *

PS 1988 MacArthur Fellow and certifiable genius Ran Blake is playing a rare, free NYC show this Friday at the Third Street Music School Settlement. RSVP via email.

And your grownups all gone bankrupt

It's not our fault, I swear...

Open letter from IAJE President Chuck Owen

Reactions from around the blogosphere:

Doug Ramsey (Rifftides)

Howard Mandel (Jazz Beyond Jazz)

David Adler (Lerterland)

James Hale (Jazz Chronicles)

Andrea Canter (JazzInkBlog)

Willard Jenkins (The Independent Ear) -- see also Willard's April 4 post, which has generated a lot of heated discussion.

It's a bit surreal to think that we performed at the final IAJE conference. Evidently the organization's leadership was a bit of a mess (to, um, put it mildly), but I heard many unforgettable performances at conferences past: Bob Brookmeyer, Clark Terry, Maria Schneider, John Hollenbeck, Charlie Haden's Liberation Music Orchestra, Josh Redman's early 1990's quartet with Brad Mehldau, Ingrid Jensen, Matt Wilson's Arts and Crafts, and his also his quartet with Andrew D'Angelo (wherein Andrew infamously smashed his saxophone to the ground and began to stomp on it), the Industrial Jazz Group...

Links to my tourblogging posts related to our IAJE 2008 appearance can be found here. And here's my coverage of the penultimate IAJE conference:

IAJE 2007: Day 1. Day 2. Day 3. Photos Day 2. Photos Day 3.

Irony, man

[Okay, sorry, couldn't resist. Let me make it up to you -- here's a link to the awesome trailer. You don't get fanservice like that every day, let me tell you.]

Promoted from the comments on this thread:

In my opinion, a lot of the Broadway and Tin Pan Alley tunes that became standards were appropriated by jazz musicians the same way TBP appropriates their covers: in a kind of lovingly humorous way. For example, I find Sonny Rollins's duet version of Surrey With the Fringe on Newk's Time pretty funny, as if Sonny knows the song is corny, but still loves something about it, and is making fun of himself, in a way, for loving it. He shows us something about the tune that maybe no one else really heard, or thought to listen for. He also turns it into an amazing piece of music. I think this is what TBP does with their tunes, covers or not; these guys all have a sense of humor. A lot of people can't really hear humor in instrumental music, and/or don't want to.

MSK nails it in one. Stop and think a bit about some of the tunes that have become vehicles for jazz improvisation. I mean, "Tea For Two"? "I'm An Old Cowhand"? "If I Were A Bell"? "Someday My Prince Will Come"? "There's No Business Like Show Business"?? "My Favorite Things," fercrissakes??? (Let alone "Chim Chim Cheree"!! "Inch Worm"!!! Okay, you get the idea.)

Jazz musicians have been doing ironic covers since the very beginning.

However, viz. MSK's final sentence, I don't think it's that people can't hear humor in instrumental music. Obviously, most people have no trouble at all hearing the humor in The Bad Plus's covers, most of which "read" as at least a little bit ironic, despite the band's protestations. (I should add that I don't think irony in any way precludes sincere appreciation.) I think it's that some people have a rotten sense of humor. They are unable to perceive that music that is fun and clever and wry can still be artistically meaningful and serious in intent. They get that there's something funny about it -- but that's all they get.

All of the standards I listed above would clearly, clearly have been understood by audiences at the time as being ironic choices. But through a combination of the passage of time, the ascendence of the "Jazz Education" industry, the museumification of jazz, and and the overblown mythologizing of the "Great American Songbook," they have somehow been drained of their ironic bite and cultural significance. Most people today just hear them as melodies and chord progressions, divorced from any larger meaning.

This is impossible to do with a song like "Iron Man" or "Smells Like Teen Spirit" -- their cultural associations are still vivid and inescapable. For reasons that I think are relatively obvious, it makes a lot of jazz musicians, critics and fans very uncomfortable to think about issues of cultural significance. We are much more at ease when talking about craft -- whether the rhythm section is hooking up, or whether the improvisers are listening to each other closely enough, or whether the surface qualities of the music are "complex" and "innovative" enough to satisfy our discriminating tastes. Most of us really, really do not want to think about questions like "what does this music mean?" or "why are we doing this?" or "how does this music relate to the culture at large?" That is, unless it's in an insular, oppositional way -- i.e., "our music is capital-A Art and contemporary popular music is shit." (Now there's a stance that both Wynton Marsalis and the Vision Festival crowd can agree on!)

Most jazz musicians and fans today don't know the original source of standard tunes -- they only know them through the jazz covers, and so they all get lumped into one big undifferentiated catch-all mental category -- "standards." So today, we often don't get the irony of jazz musicians covering tunes from Oklahoma! or The Sound of Music or South Pacific, because these songs have no non-jazz associations for us. How many jazz musicians/critics/fans born after 1965 have actually watched an entire classic musical, or own any Original Broadway Cast recordings? It doesn't really matter where they are from, or even what year they appeared -- they are all just "standards" to us.

But for audiences at the time, these songs were not "standards." They were covers -- reinterpretations of recent pop songs that had specific, current cultural associations. It's not just that the songs were familiar, it's that they meant something. When audiences in 1961 heard Coltrane's "My Favorite Things," they immediately thought of The Sound of Music, the Trapp family singers, "Doh, A Deer," "Edelweiss," Broadway kitch, Austria, WWII, all the rest. The show had been playing on B'way for less than a year before Coltrane recorded his cover version. (The movie version with Julie Andrews would not be released until 1965.)

So if we are going to encourage people to "respect the jazz tradition," maybe it's worth unpacking that idea a little bit. Is it respectful to Sonny Rollins and John Coltrane to bite their covers -- to play exactly the same damn songs they covered 50 years ago, even though the cultural significance of those songs -- a big part of why they chose to cover those tunes in the first place -- has almost totally evaporated?

Also worth considering: why is it that when Trane and Sonny use irony as part of their art, we understand that there is an underlying seriousness to what they are doing, but younger musicians can't touch irony with a ten-foot pole, lest they be dismissed a joke?

Hands up, hands up for Stanley

Back when I first started this blog, I kept tossing around the idea of writing a post entitled "Why are The Bad Plus so controversial?" I was going to start by riffing on the very deeply polarized reaction to the band, using it as a jumping-off point to talk about some big picture stuff -- you know: Irony. Authenticity. Historical Continuity. The State of Jazz Today, and Just Who The Hell is Listening to It, Anyway?

For various reasons I never actually got around to writing this post. But I was reminded of it last month when I saw Stanley Crouch at The Bad Plus's Vanguard hit, walking past the long bench along the right side of the club so he could sit right next to Dave King -- he was practically onstage. This was during "Anthem for the Earnest," I think, and Stanley's eyes were fixed on Dave's hihat. Ironically, the next tune on the setlist happened to be a 12-bar blues (Ethan's "Guilty"). Stanley was clearly digging it. I later learned that Crouch had come to the club three times that week, lavishing Stanley-like praise on the band -- upon meeting Dave King his first words were: "Man, you can play! I thought you'd suck!" -- and hung out shooting the shit with the guys until the wee small hours.

So that's it. It's over. If even Stanley Crouch is willing to give the Bad Plus his seal of approval, they are officially Not Controversial anymore. In fact, I hear Wynton has tapped Ethan, Reid and Dave as the rhythm section for his upcoming Blue Note record, Is This Love? A Jazz Tribute to Clap Your Hands Say Yeah.

Meanwhile, over at Do The Math, Ethan has a loooooong interview with Crouch -- but it's definitely worth your time. Some salient excerpts:

SC: The next point is that Betty Carter always complained to me that she always was searching for a pop tune to put in her band. (She believed in the classical jazz tradition of using pop tunes to connect with the audience.) But there wasn't anything in the music of those three guys--or anyone else in big money pop music--that she could use on a gig. There wasn't enough harmony or melody.

EI: Um, there's a certain irony that you are talking to a member of The Bad Plus right now.

SC: Of course. But it's not really that ironic, because you and Reid and Dave go so far from the original tune that you aren't playing on the form of the song.

EI: Well, you're right: we don't play jazz harmony or jazz solos on the tunes the way Betty Carter would have needed.

SC: But you also don't play anything after the head that that anybody would call pop music. Your first phrase, after the melody, is always totally "out." I find it really interesting how your audience is shocked and exhilarated by the conclusions you come to with a melody they already know.

To me, the conception of The Bad Plus is actually derived from the way Coltrane and his band played "My Favorite Things," which is really far from hearing Julie Andrews sing it. What Coltrane--what everybody in his band--was playing on it is like…[shrugs] "What are they playing?" -- "'My Favorite Things.'" --"Where is 'My Favorite Things' here? I don't get it." That's The Bad Plus, too.

EI: You are on the money with this comparison, Stanley. I have actually brought up Coltrane's "My Favorite Things" to interviewers myself.

SC: Well, there you go. Right.

This is interesting, because to me, the striking thing about Trane's first recording of "My Favorite Things" is how literal it is -- listen to how much of the track is taken up by Trane and McCoy just playing the the melody. They even keeps the minor-major contrast from the original, where later it would become a straight minor vamp. It has the reputation of being some kind of radical reimagining of the tune, but it's actually more faithful to the original than, say, the reharmonized and remelodized version of "But Not For Me" from the same recording. In other words, I agree that "My Favorite Things" is a good analogue to how The Bad Plus approach covers like, say, "Everybody Wants To Rule The World," but for exactly the opposite reasons that Stanley does.

SC: I don't write things to shock people, necessarily, but sometimes, when making an argument…

Let me put it this way: Some people go out into a field of wheat and they'll pick something--just one thing that they like. However, other people will drive a thresher through there.

Sometimes, if I have a choice, I'll just drive the thresher through.

[extensive laughter]

SC: Sometimes I think that's what's called for. Style and form are what I'm thinking about, you know. Sentence by sentence and paragraph by paragraph there is an attempt to personalize everything I learned from Ralph Ellison, LeRoi Jones, Martin Williams, and Whitney Balliett. Then, in something like “Body and Soul,” I get to a symphonic version of essay form that I am very proud of. Form is always my concern and is what I am always experimenting with, even when I am driving the wheat thresher.

EI: Well…there are friends of mine that you have driven the thresher through, and I know that it doesn't feel good.

But I understand that there is an argument for being over the top, just putting it out there, and seeing the dust settle. I'm sure we will be still looking at this book long after history has forgotten those who never came down on one side or another.

[...]

EI: Should we talk in more detail about the most controversial piece in Considering Genius, which is "Putting the White Man in Charge?"

SC: Ok.

EI: I don't know too much about Tom Piazza or Francis Davis, which are your topics in the first two pages, but I do know something about Dave Douglas, who you get to at the end. Here's the paragraph:

There is nothing wrong with Douglas, who can play what he can play and should continue to do whatever he wants to do, but there is something pernicious about [Francis} Davis and all of those other white guys who want so badly to put white men--American and European--in charge and put Negroes in the background. Douglas…is far from being a bad musician, but he also knows that he should keep as much distance as possible between himself and trumpet players like Wallace Roney, Terence Blanchard, and Nicholas Payton, to name but three, any one of whom on any kind of material--chordal, nonchordal, modal, free, whatever--would turn him into a puddle on the bandstand. Unlike the great white players of the past, such as Jack Teagarden, Bobby Hackett, Benny Goodman, Stan Getz, Lee Konitz--or now, Joe Lovano--Douglas will never be seen standing up next to the black masters of the idiom. The white critical establishment couldn't help him then.

Well, all I can say is, if Roney, Payton, or Blanchard tried to play Dave's harder music, they would not find it easy--and they could never play it as well as he can. They would have trouble playing even a few bars of it unless they studied it in detail. There are authentic systems in Douglas' music that contribute to his unique voice.

SC: Whether or not there are authentic systems in Douglas’s music is not even close to the point. To me, the question is: What is jazz music? What I really don't like is how the avant-garde, which is more like contemporary European music, is treated as the solution to jazz to the exclusion of real jazz. I realized the problem years ago when Roland Kirk complained to Cecil Taylor in Downbeat that Cecil wouldn't let him sit in with his band. Cecil said they had arrangements, and that's why he didn't let Kirk sit it, but that's not a good reason. That's what holds the music back. It is a real problem that there is no agreed-upon place for avant-garde musicians and the musicians who play real jazz to play together. Because if the avant-garde musicians stay away from the jazz musicians, their music gets to the point where it has less and less to do with jazz. I don't like that. Some people do; I really don't!

I do know this: if Douglas got up on to the bandstand with Wallace, Payton, or Blanchard to play some blues, he would be in trouble.

EI: I'm not so sure, Stanley..but here, let me put this on me, not Dave. We are going downstairs to hear Eric Reed play in a little bit, and I wouldn't dare get up and play a straight-ahead blues solo after he did. He (or Cyrus Chestnut or Marcus Roberts) could cut me into little pieces. But I don't think any of them could play in The Bad Plus. You have got to make music based out of your life experience.

SC: Yeah, well, I think if you are playing jazz, you really need to be able to play some blues. Ornette is the perfect example: he always sounds like a blues musician, no matter how far out he gets. And this is why Duke Ellington could make a record--a supremely great record--with John Coltrane, with both men just playing their individual personalities but making music together. In fact, Elvin Jones told me how nervous he, Jimmy Garrison, and Coltrane were until Ellington got to the studio and cooled everyone out. Listen to the solo Ellington plays on Coltrane’s tune called "Big Nick." It's two perfect uncliched choruses that could be transcribed and made into a song.

It's a bit weird to hear Terrence Blanchard trotted out as some kind of blues-drenched hyper-authentic arch-traditionalist in this context, since his latest record (Flow) makes me think he's been listening to a lot of Dave Douglas lately. This is Stanley at his most infuriating.

Finally, Stanley and Ethan talk about Stanley's early days as a player:

EI: Julius Hemphill is someone I would have loved to gotten to know.

SC: Did he ever die too young! He's another cat who really had the blues in his playing, no matter how far out he got.

EI: You must have known Phillip Wilson.

SC: He was rough, man, a great drummer. But of those cats, it was Don Moye who impressed me the most. I heard the Art Ensemble almost every night at the Five Spot in 1976. They were playing! Wow!

EI: Back then you were playing the drums yourself.

SC: Not well, but not that bad, either, in that free-form style. Check it out:

[Stanley plays a tune recorded live in Amsterdam with David Murray, Butch Morris, Don Pullen, and Fred Hopkins. It's a long waltz with extended solos by each member--Pullen sounds the best on it. The drumming for the swinging waltz is a sloppy slow groove, quite behind the beat, and broken up by free fusillades.]

EI: I dig it! Why did you quit?

SC: Well, when I was in California, I thought I was really good. But then I moved to New York and kept hearing Elvin Jones, Roy Haynes, Billy Higgins, and all the other truly great drummers. That was a level I had no hope of achieving. In my own style, Don Moye was the guy who closed the door.

EI: I guess you had a different destiny anyway.

SC: Yeah…that's certainly true.

Read the whoooooole thing...

IAJE Day 3 Photos -- Madness in great ones must not unwatch’d go

More pics from Day 3 below the fold...

IAJE Day 2 Photos -- A Gallery of Madness

More pics from Day 2 below the fold...

A madness contagious

Other people blogging their IAJE experience:

LA Trumpet player Kris Tiner (Stop The Play And Watch The Audience).

Garland, TX-based saxophonist Kevin McNerney.

A capella vocal jazz ensemble Clockwork.

Critic Forrest Dylan Bryant (FoJazz).

Bassist and educator Matthew Wengerd (104 Weeks).

Critic/blogger J.B. of J.B. Spins.

Cedar Rapids-Iowa City public radio station Jazz 88.3 KCCK.

North Stars -- St. Charles North High School (St. Charles, Illinois).

And probably many more that Google doesn't know about yet. If you see one, let me know.

Missed opportunity

Now here's someone who knows how to make bebop sound fresh again. Why wasn't this dude booked to perform at IAJE?

Via Mwanji, who got it from Rifftides.

IAJE Day 3 - Live from the belly of the beast

First, thanks to all who enjoyed this afternoon's panel on MySpace, blogs, podcasts, and digital communities. I hope my contributions were helpful, especially for those who didn't know there was such a thing as "the jazz blogosphere." It was a pleasure to share the stage with mog.com's Michael Goldberg and artists like Brian Lynch, Lonnie Plaxico, Vinson Valega, Jaleel Shaw, and Deidre Rodman -- who I haven't seen since we were at Banff together back in 1999! Sorry for the lack of advance notice but there was some confusion about the number of panelists that could be included and I only knew I'd be part of this disucssion at the very last minute. If you're new to the Secret Society blog, I encourage you to poke around the archives (in the left sidebar -- scroll down) and, if you like, listen to or download some Secret Society MP3's (top right).

I'm currently liveblogging from one of the IAJE internet kiosks on the Hilton's third floor. I'd been hoping to do more updates from the site but my computer situation has been disasterous. See, I don't actually own a laptop -- I have to borrow Lindsay's every time I need to do a Finale workshop (or, um, go to Germany for a week), and while she has been incredibly understanding about this, needless to say she's never all that thrilled to be separated from her baby for very long. So I sprung for a MacBook Pro just before Christmas, only to have it fail catastrophically within 10 days. I had to ship the dead MacBook back to Amazon for a replacement, which was supposed to arrive on Wednesday. But it never turned up. When I put in the tracking number on the UPS site yesterday in the hopes of finding out what the hell happened, I get the following message:

MERCHANDISE IS MISSING. UPS WILL NOTIFY THE SENDER WITH ADDITIONAL DETAILS.;ALL MERCHANDISE MISSING, EMPTY CARTON WAS DISCARDED. UPS WILL NOTIFY THE SENDER WITH DETAILS OF THE DAMAGE

Draw your own conclusions.

Anyway, because of this and a few other issues that needed my attention on the home front, I didn't get to the conference until 4:30 PM today. But Ingrid Jensen let me sit in on the Sisters in Jazz rehearsal today -- since it's the tenth anniversary of this IAJE-sponsored mentorship program, I thought it might be cool to make a podcast (I bet you thought I wasn't ever going to do another podcast) featuring Ingrid and this year's SIJ participants -- Sharel Cassity, Chelsea Baratz, Mika Nishimura, Vanessa McGowan, and Tina Raymond. Today was just watching and recording the rehearsal and taking a few pictures. Tomorrow, after their hit, I'll try to get a little round table interview happening. This epsiode may take me a while to put together, but I figure you've already waited so long for Podcast #2, a few more days won't kill you.

After the panel, I managed to catch the final tune of singer Julia Dollison's hit. Julia was backed by Joe Locke on vibes and the unstoppable rhythm section of Geoff Keezer, Matt Clohesy, and Ted Poor. They did a version of "Night and Day" reharmonized with Coltrane changes, and I was surprised how much I liked it. Normally that sort of thing quickly turns into an empty exercise in harmonic hurdling, but this rendition had huge momentum behind it, thanks to Matt and Ted. I almost never get to hear those guys play straighahead swing, and it was a real treat to hear them bring the same relentless drive to that as they do in a more contemporary context. And Julia ate it up -- she's the real deal, no doubt.

Totally unexpectedly, I ran into a couple of old friends from NEC, tenor saxophonist John McClaggan and singer Lisa Berg (now Lisa McClaggan), who now both teach at Southwestern Community College in Creston, Iowa. Their school vocal group First Take is performing tomorrow, so they're in town representin'. I haven't seen these guys since we all graduated, so it was great to catch up.

I toyed with the idea of going to tongiht's Grand Ballroom hit (NEC Jazz Master Awards, plus the Clayton Brothers Quintet and the Dizzy Gillespie^TM All-Star Big Band), but by the time I was finished dinner, the lineup was absurd. (The lineup of people waiting to get into the hall, I mean -- not [necessarily] the lineup of musicians on the bill.) I figured now was a good time to feed the blog, and then head over to catch the last two hits of the night -- Jerry Bergonzi at 11 PM and Matt Wilson at 12:30 AM.

IAJE update

Last-minute heads-up -- I will be speaking on the "Jazz in My Space: Online Community-Building" panel at 6 PM today, Sheraton 3rd floor, New York West room.

IAJE Day 2 - Already madness lifts its wing

My itinerary (after being up until 7 AM last night morning blogging and getting ready for today's yesterday's Pulse hit):

11:30 AM -- subway into Manhattan. I was practicing my conducting on train, which reliably freaks out fellow passengers and, I'm fairly confident, makes me the biggest geek in the history of geekdom. Upon exit, I run into my friend elizabeth!, who is playing the late set with Matt Wilson's Arts and Crafts on Friday night. Matt's IAJE hits are always incredibly fun. A few years ago, Matt's bandmate, Andrew D'Angelo,  destroyed his alto saxophone (seriously, we're talking Pete Townshend-style smashing and  everything) at the end of the show. While this maneuver might have seemed a bit odd at, say, Fat Cat, at IAJE it was fucking brilliant.

12:20 PM -- slip into Industrial Jazz Group show, already underway. And a good time was had by all, especially during "The Job Song" (chorus: "Get a real job!"), which could be the IAJE theme song. Sunday's gonna be fun.

1:00 PM -- try to psych myself up to stand by the exit and force fliers for Sunday's IJG+Secret Society double-bill into the hands of all attendees. Fail miserably. Instead, end up shooting the shit with All About Jazz critic/editor/man-about-town Andrey Henkin, IJG mastermind Andrew Durkin and IJG trumpeter Kris Tiner. Am still mulling over the best way to describe what IJG do. Perhaps this way: Slavic Soul Party are to Balkan brass band music as Industrial Jazz Group are to big band.

2:00 PM -- obtain and consume much-needed coffee, then head up to the Hiton's Grand Ballroom to catch the premiere of Sherisse Rogers's Gil Evans commission, "Crossing Paths (3 Tales)." Beautiful performance of a killing piece, which contains occasional nods to Guillermo Klein and Pedro Giraudo (of Mr. Vivo), but is executed with Sherisse's incredibly sophisticated command of large-scale musical narrative. This is probably my favorite Sherisse chart yet. Her band also did Rufus Reid's IAJE/ASCAP commission, "Hues of a Different Blue," a McNeely-influenced post-Thad romp that featured a (literally) showstopping solo by altoist Jon Irabagon. I'd never heard Jon before but he's the kind of cat who can slay the room with a single note.

3:00 PM --  hang out, offer congrats to Sherisse & co,  shoot more shit, plug Pulse hit. We're playing at the other hotel (the conference consumes both the Hilton and the Sheraton), and I should head over there soon to get set up.

4:00 PM -- Pulse prep. Berate John McNeil for taking home the wrong part from Monday's rehearsal, insert Secret Society propaganda into Pulse programs, set up our totally unsanctioned recording device, attempt brief soundcheck. And we're off...

5:00 PM -- Pulse IAJE hit Things go really well -- this is honestly the best this music has ever sounded. Also, photo projections are actually visible this time. I'm told the sound in the room was decent, if maybe a bit on the loud side up front. John McNeil slays everyone with his playing on Josh Shneider's chart. Photos and audio from this should be up soon on the Pulse blog.

6:00 PM -- post-hit schmooze. I meet D.D. Jackson in person for the first time -- thanks for coming to check us out, D.D!  People seem generally positive about what we just did, which is nice. One of my stand lights goes AWOL, which is less nice. Oh well -- an inevitable casualty of war, I suppose.

6:40 PM -- post-hit food at the not-very-good-but-conveniently-located 53rd Street Deli. Other Pulsketeers lobby for real food, but I just want to get a quick bite and then catch Ingrid's 7 PM hit.

7:00 PM -- I'm biased, clearly, but I'm gonna go ahead and say it -- Ingrid Jensen, Geoff Keezer, Matt Clohesy and Jon Wikan owned this thing so far. Never mind the incredible playing, their pacing was a thing of beauty -- like Ingrid conceived of the set as a single cohesive piece. Her use of pedal-based electronic effects keeps getting deeper and deeper, I think party because of her uncanny ability to be in the moment without losing sight of the big picture, and partly because she's able to combine the electronics with complimentary acoustic-based extended techniques. The transition out of this skewed delay-drenched dream-world into Keezer's hard-driving "Captain John" was transfixing. Juilliard student Sharel Cassity joined in on flute, soprano, and alto for the title track from Ingrid's recent At Sea.

9:00 PM -- down to the Jazz Gallery for Sherisse's big band set. I'm sitting in the audience with Erica vonKleist. It must feel odd to her to hear this music from the other side of the stage -- Erica normally plays Reed 1 in Project Uprising (as well as Secret Society), but as more people start to realize what a bad motherfucker she is, it's become increasingly difficult for us to get our respective schedules in line. Tonight was a "I'm free for the gig but I can't make the rehearsals"-type situation, but it's a testament to just how devoted Erica is to Sherisse's music that despite her insane schedule this week, she came down to hear the band from out front.

In a (much less dramatic) parallel situation: I normally conduct Sherisse's "A Slippery Slope" while she holds down the bass chair -- this time, she entrusted the incredibly involved bass part to Ike Sturm's capable hands, and assumed traffic cop duties herself -- which left me free to actually enjoy the chart without stressing about all those frickin' meter changes and subtle tempo transitions.

11:00 PM -- up to the Ginger Man for Ingrid's birthday celebrations. Catchphrase of the evening: "Harden the fuck up" -- which has been embedded into black Lance Armstrong-style plastic wristbands that everyone's wearing.

12:30 AM -- we return to The Madness for John Hollenbeck's Large Ensemble set. They played a relatively "jazzy" set (for them) that began with "Folkmoot" (Marian McPartland meets Jimmy Giuffre) and continued with Hollenbeck's minimalist/maximalist arrangement of Monk's "Four In One," the contemplative-but-invigorating "Guarana," the hypnotic "Long Swing Dream" (AKA "LSD" -- quoth John: "I myself have never tried LSD, but Cary Grant did"), and "A Blessing," Hollenbeck's 2001 IAJE commission. I confess I often can't hang with Hollenbeck's aggressively naive text settings -- "A Blessing" is based on the Irish Blessing ("May the road rise to meet you," etc) and is a conscious attempt to reclaim those words from cliché. When Theo Bleckmann sings them I almost buy it -- that's how good Theo is. It helps that the instrumental portions of the piece are phenomenal.

I took lots of photos of the course of the day -- in fact, I completely filled my 2 GB SD card -- but I see it's once again 6 AM and I'd really like to make Jim McNeely's talk about his Paul Klee-inspired works tomorrow today at noon. So the gallery will have to wait... watch this space.

IAJE Day 1 - Descent Into Madness, and a Quick Exit

A brief background for the uninitiated -- the annual International Association for Jazz Education conference is the jazz industry's biggest annual gathering of artists, students, educators, critics, radio hosts and programmers, label reps, publishers, etc etc etc. It's a four-day blowout of concerts, clinics, panels, and the like, beginning each morning at 9 AM and continuing until the wee small hours, There's more going on there than anyone could possibly see, even if you had the stamina. Plus, in addition to what's on the schedule, there is an incredible amount of Very Important Schmoozing going on at all times -- everyone's trying to persuade the right people to come to their hit (critics, label reps, big name artists, etc) or angling for teaching gigs, workshops, a record deal, etc. A lot of people believe, rightly or wrongly, that their entire career is riding on what happens at this conference. It's exhausting, even if you're  trying to stay largely above the fray.

There are also thousands upon thousands of high school and college students at this thing -- some of them are performing with their school ensemble, some of them have won auditions to play in various student all-star groups or have their works performed at the opening ceremonies, and some of them have come on their own dime -- student registration is $170-$180, plus travel and accommodation -- to hear the big names perform and check out the various workshops. Many of these kids come from small towns and this conference will be their first time hearing top-flight jazz artists perform live. It's easy to get cynical about the meat-market aspects of the conference -- and I'm as guilty of that as anyone -- but I think it's also good to remember how exciting the whole thing can be for young players, especially the first time they experience it. I still have many fond memories of my first IAJE -- the 1994 conference in Boston -- especially since that's where I first heard Bob Brookmeyer. (He was leading the Danish Radio Band in a concert of his own music.)

The conference kicked off at 12:30 this afternoon with what was billed as a "Special Focus Section: Envisioning the Future of Jazz," but I couldn't make it down there until around 6 PM -- just time enough to pick up my credentials and line up for one of the opening performances, by Quinsin Nachoff's Magic Numbers, a septet featuring Quinsin on tenor sax, Mark Helias on bass, Jim Black on drums, and a Montreal-based string quartet: Nathalie Bonin, Noémi Racine Gaudreault, Jean René and Christine Giguère. This is a good time slot to have -- only one other simultaneous performance to compete with, and at this point everyone is still fresh and full of anticipation. (Nobody survives IAJE without getting seriously burnt out. The only question is exactly when burnout sets in.)

Quinsin is a tenor player active on the Toronto scene. I know him from the Banff Jazz Workshop -- we met there in the summer of 1999, and then were reunited at the 2000 Montreal Jazz Fest, where he played in my quintet. But I haven't seen him since, so I was excited to see him again, and to hear what he's been up to.

Magic Numbers opened with a fractured funkish groove, with Quinsin laying down some spacious long tones and the string quartet contributing a running commentary. The tune, "There And Back," winds its way through various modal areas, and Quinsin's solo became surprisingly boppish in parts, followed by some intense, active lines in the violins, reinforced at the octave by the viola, and ending with a brief pizz cello groove. The string writing was varied and effective, if occasionally a little discontinuous -- some of the ideas could have used more elaboration, and more room to breathe.

The highlight for me was Quinsin's arrangement of his own "October," the kind of simple, earnest, unapologetically pretty ballad that jazz musicians write in their first year of college (i.e., before they start acutely feeling the need to shelter themselves behind layers of surface complexity). It began with a lovely viola solo by Jean René, and ended with subtone sax and bowed cymbals.

They closed with "How Postmodern of Me," a bit of Zornish musical channel-surfing done up Toronto-style. Naturally, Helias and Black ate it up, but I thought it was interesting that, unlike the usual wrenching start-stop figures we associate with Downtown eclecticism, many of the abrupt stylistic shifts here didn't actually feel all that abrupt. In fact, at times it seemed like the deliberate discontinuity between sections actually created a more cohesive overall effect. Go figure. Anyway, the playing was first-rate throughout, and the group seemed very comfortable with the considerable challenges of Quinsin's material. This was a great way to kick off the conference.

After this, I must confess that I decided to bail on the evening's remaining official IAJE performances in favor of one of the many unofficial off-site events -- the 2007 NYC Winter Jazzfest at the Knitting Factory. This is an annual mini-festival consisting of acts that, for one reason or another, won't be performing at this year's IAJE. This year's edition featured hits by (among others) Rudresh Mahanthappa, Lionel Loueke, So Percussion, Steve Lehman, and Slavic Soul Party. This is apparently the Knit's attempt to trick visitors into believing that they still feature jazz on a regular basis. Like IAJE, it features multiple simultaneous performances, so it's impossible to catch everything, or even part of everything. I'd also been told admission was free with my IAJE artist badge. This turned out not to be the case -- apparently if you wanted to take advantage of that offer, you had to RSVP. Oh well -- the lineup was impressive enough that I didn't mind springing for the $25 cover.

I'd love to be able to comment on the many excellent performances I saw at this thing, but damn, it's 6 AM and I should probably try to squeeze in at least a little sleep before the Pulse IAJE hit tomorrow... er, I mean, today. (Thursday Jan 11, 5 PM, Sheraton Empire Ballroom.) Instead, I will leave you with more pics of Magic Numbers, as well as shots of some of the Winter Jazzfest acts, all below the fold.

Après Pavement, le déluge

So, Jazz at Lincoln Center announced their 2006-07 season:

The "Fusion Revolution" program, scheduled for October, will feature keyboardist Joe Zawinul, a member of Miles Davis's Bitches Brew ensemble and the fusion supergroup Weather Report. "Outer Limits!" in March 2007, will include saxophonist John Zorn, a stalwart of the Downtown scene of the 1980s and '90s, and pianist Cecil Taylor, one of the pioneers of the free jazz movement of the 1960s.

I like how the article casually mentions that these two programs are "unusual for an organization that has focused on the jazz mainstream."

More Madness

On the final day of The Madness, I was able to slip away from the Garritan booth for about 90 minutes in the morning to check out a one-on-one chat with Maria Schneider and Bob Brookmeyer, hosted by NARAS (aka "the Grammy people"). It was sparsely attended -- for some reason the event wasn't on the convention schedule, otherwise it would have been packed -- but there were several video cameras, so hopefully this conversation will be released on the web at some point.

Before the discussion got underway, Maria played for us an audio collage she'd assembled, snippets of Brookmeyer's work spanning from the Concert Jazz Band charts, through the recently reissued small group recordings with Clark Terry, right up to his latest New Art Orchestra CD. There were some well-known career highlights as well as some obscurities that even I didn't recognize.

[EDIT: I had a lesson with Maria today, and I asked for the playlist. I realize now in my initial verison of this post, I reported hearing some tracks that weren't there. Isn't that weird? My mind's ear must have retrospectively filled in some of the things I'd been thinking of, but that Maria didn't have room to play, like the Mulligan and Giuffre small group recordings. Anyway, here's what was actually part of the compilation:

• "Manoir de Mes Rêves (Django's Castle)" (comp. Django Reinhardt, arr. Brookmeyer), from Gerry Mulligan and the Concert Jazz Band (1960).

• "Where, Oh Where" (comp. Cole Porter, arr. Brookmeyer), from Brookmeyer's Gloomy Sunday and Other Bright Moments (1961).

• "Don't Smoke In Bed" (comp. Willard Robison, arr. Brookmeyer), from Jack Teagarden's Think Well Of Me (1962).

• "Haig & Haig" from the Clark Terry-Bob Brookmeyer Quintet's Gingerbread Men (1966).

• "Willow Weep For Me" (comp. Ann Ronell, arr. Brookmeyer), from Presenting Thad Jones, Mel Lewis and the Jazz Orchestra (1966).

• "Willow Tree" (comp. Fats Waller), from Thad Jones & Mel Lewis at the Village Vanguard (1967).

• "Hello And Goodbye" from the Mel Lewis Jazz Orchestra's Bob Brookmeyer Composer, Arranger (1980).

• "Body and Soul" from Jim Hall and Bob Brookmeyer: Live at the North Sea Jazz Festival (1979).

• "Missing Monk" from Dreams, w/the Stockholm Jazz Orchestra (1988).

• "Say Ah" from Electricity, featuring John Abercrombie and the WDR Big Band (1991).

• "Celebration Jig" from New Works: Celebration, featuring Scott Robinson and the New Art Orchestra (1997).

• "Fireflies" from Waltzing With Zoe, w/the New Art Orchestra (2001).

• "Cameo" from New Works: Celebration (1997).

• "Get Well Soon" from Get Well Soon, w/the New Art Orchestra (2004).]

I have to admit to getting a touch misty near the end -- it's a little overwhelming to survey to the scope and depth of such an incredible career all at once, especially when the creative momentum continues undiminished at age 76… and of course it's impossible not to be moved by the love Maria poured into this all-too brief retrospective.

Listening to the two of them talk, especially about the compositional issues that are so important to both of them (large-scale development and narrative, use of solo space, learning to be patient with your music, giving ideas enough room to breathe, etc) took me right back to my own lessons with Bob up in the NEC practice rooms. He also talked about his early days as a staff arranger at an NYC music service [EDIT: Emile Charlap's office, for the record], and about how the last-minute, all-night, cold-sweat panic that necessarily comes with this gig is actually good for composers -- because it forces you to make choices quickly, instead of agonizing over every little thing.

We heard an unmixed version of one of the tracks from Bob's just-recorded ArtistShare album Spirit Music -- a beautiful, heartfelt piece that really makes you wait for the first "event," and uses range and register very effectively -- especially taking away certain registers at key moments.

He elaborated on and clarified a controversial argument I've heard him make many times before -- that John Coltrane single-handedly ruined tenor sax playing in jazz -- by  pointing out that Coltrane's music was his life's journey, and for subsequent tenor players to glam on to a brief moment of that journey and attempt to appropriate it wholesale does a real disservice to Trane's legacy. (He tactfully left unsaid some of the other points he usually makes here, for instance that he thinks "Giant Steps" is a lousy composition and a terrible vehicle for improvisation... perhaps out of respect for Maria's brilliant arrangement of that tune.)

Not so tactfully, he encouraged the jazz community to dismantle the Jazz at Lincoln Center complex brick by brick, with Wynton still in it. Of course, Wynton is one of the principal advisors to the NEA Jazz Masters program which just honored Bob with a $25,000 fellowship. (Bob has always had a taste for the hand that feeds him.)

Near the end of the chat, Maria brought on Clark Terry as a special guest. At 85, Clark is as sharp as ever, and as soon as he sat down, he and Bob launched into an improvised high speed back-and-forth routine worthy of Abbott and Costello. It took a while for us to catch on to what they were up to, but at the end, they had the entire room in stitches. Clark mostly uses a wheelchair to get around these days, but he couldn't resist standing up and demonstrating how he and Bob used to literally run into each other on the street. They talked about how they used to stage shouting matches in elevators to freak out the white people, perfectly timed so that they appeared to be on the verge of landing blows just as the doors opened -- and then they'd give each other a big hug and walk out. Clark brought up Brookmeyer's infamous "To Do" lists, which always went something like this:

• Get a haircut
• Pick up dry cleaning
• Kill a midget

They talked about their amazing hookup, playing those long lines of beautiful eighth notes in glorious improvised counterpoint -- how, according to Bob, he would have his share of scuffles and clams, but night after night, Clark was never anything short of perfect. They talked about growing up in the St. Louis/Kansas City jazz scene, how players in other cities had more harmonic sophistication or better chops, but for the Missouri cats it was all about the feel. In short, they basically ignored all of us in the audience, and carried on like old war buddies. It was beautiful.

Notes from The Madness

I've been mostly confined to the Garritan booth so far and seen almost no performances at this damn thing, nor have I made the rounds doing the Big Schmooze. However, my booth buddies Gary Garritan and Chuck Israels are excellent company, and Robin Eubanks (whose podcast you should subscribe to) and Kenny Werner both came by to say hello today. Gary also presented 2006 Gil Evans Fellowship winner Sherisse Rogers with a complimentary copy of the Garritan Jazz and Big Band sample library.

I did manage to see John Hollenbeck with Big Band Graz last night at Tonic, and again this afternoon at The Madness. Both performances were outstanding -- the level of preparation, commitment, enthusiasm, and all-around ass-kickery the Austrians brought to Hollenbeck's music -- performed without a conductor(!) -- was immensely satisfying and inspiring.

Also, before the final tune, Hollenbeck abruptly broke off his crowd-pleasing deadpan patter and went over and whispered something in Theo Bleckmann's ear. John returned to the mic and announced that Theo had agreed to be the best man at his wedding.

Forced myself to stick around through some less-than-inspired performances later in the evening in order to watch Brookmeyer receive his NEA Jazz Masters Fellowship. The video bios of each recipient were nicely done, though. It was good to see Freddie Hubbard up there as well -- the man was obviously deeply moved both by the fellowship and the tremendous reception he received in the hall.