Vancouver Day Five and Out

My last day in Vancouver was full! I moved from a long lunch with one of my oldest friends to dinner with fellow DownBeat critic Greg Buium to a very satisfying -- and exceptionally well-mic'ed -- set by The Bad Plus. By then I was sated, and ready to find an outdoor cafe to settle into the soft Pacific air with a copy of David Lee's new book on Ornette Coleman.

Vancouver Day Four

One of the most enjoyable parts of any jazz festival is hanging out between shows with fans, listening to them talk about music and musicians. You get a feeling for the draw of various festivals, for one thing. Tonight, between shows by a pair of superior trumpet quartets -- led by Jens Winther and Brad Turner respectively -- I met a guy who travelled all the way from Regina for the festival. You also get a feel for the quality of the local fans, just like you can for fans of hockey or baseball by how well they grasp the nuances of the game. Last night, I overheard two guys discussing how the Vancouver festival has changed drum suppliers. Now that's nuance!

And when jazz journalists aren't hanging at concerts, they can usually be found schmoozing. There's never any shortage of that in Vancouver, thanks to the great hospitality of festival co-founder and media guru John Orysik. Here's our host (right) with Larry Appelbaum, JazzTimes and the Library of Congress, (left), yours truly, and fellow DownBeat critic Greg Buium, who was covering the Vancouver fest for the Globe and Mail newspaper.

Vancouver Day Three

Such is the spectrum of life in Vancouver that in a single day one can move easily between the deck of a multi-million dollar house with a spectacular view of the city and a torturous folding chair inside the elegantly distressed "Cultch."

I have to thank my old friend Peter Grainger for the entree into the view of how the top one percent of Canadian income earners live, and Danish guitarist Pierre Dorge for a show that encapsulated everything the Vancouver jazz festival represents: humour, adventure, a world view, and what can only be termed spirituality through music. Dorge's New Jungle Orchestra travels contrasting worlds rapidly too, swinging easily between the blues and South African township jive.

Vancouver Day Two, Part Two

How do you tell when a show's really good? Even the drum solo works.

Bad drummer jokes aside, tonight's Sten Sandell show with guest John Butcher was really first rate: one long, textured piece that climaxed with a rumbling solo by Paal Nilssen-Love, and a shorter one that was equally interesting.

That was the opener for an explosive set by Cuong Vu's regular trio. Vu had originally planned to split his set between songs from his last album, It's Mostly Residual, and a couple of new pieces he's about to record in Mexico City, but after the first of the two new ones he apologized that he was "out of gas" because of a lack of recent practice. A refreshing admission when he might just as easily faked his way through it.

Vancouver Day Two

I've written before that Vancouver's festival is somewhat unique in that it is a number of festivals within a festival; you could spend an unmatched 10 days just hanging out at the Vancouver East Cultural Centre, the Commodore Ballroom, the Orpheum, or any combination of about a dozen key venues. Size is also an important factor in how good this festival is. As excellent as the Montreal festival can be, I have never been drawn to joining 10,000 people trying to hear a free show on Ste. Catherine Street, and pushing through the mob -- which can range up to 100,000 depending on what's going on can really be crazy (gee, can't wait 'til I'm there again next week). Here, the scale makes more sense. This is the first time that I've been at the Vancouver festival during opening weekend, when free shows are held in the main tourist area of Gastown. I was pleasantly surprised to find small stages, especially a really nice one erected at the bottom of a natural, grass-covered amphitheatre (shades of the old Ottawa jazz fest in the days when I was involved with it). It that respect, it reminds me of the San Jose jazz festival, one of my favourites and a sadly under-rated one.

Vancouver Day 1

I flew to Vancouver early yesterday morning for the start of the jazz festival. Always a treat coming to my favourite city for what many consider to be the best-programmed festival in North America.

Jet lag took the edge off my enjoyment of Aki Takase's Fats Waller Project -- with Rudi Mahall, Eugene Chadbourne, Nils Wogram and Paul Lovens -- but it was a terrific, energetic and humour-filled show. I've never been a huge fan of Chadbourne's, but he fits well into this band, bringing some of Waller's nonsensical manic energy. Lovens is the perfect drummer for this, too; just a powerhouse, but never too loud.

The show, at the funky Vancouver East Cultural Centre, began with a set of duets between Takase and Mahall, which illustrated their great rapport. They both have a great sense of the absurd, and both the music and between-song banter between them was filled with humour. To say nothing of the fact that their both among the best technicians on their instruments.

Avant-Garde Economics

A couple of years ago, guitarist Marc Ribot wrote an essay about the dark future he saw for music that lives on the margins of popular taste.

Now, he’s re-positioned his thesis against the backdrop of the death of the Lower Manhattan club Tonic and the general shrinking of commercial fortunes for improvised music. He makes a particularly cogent argument for how socially/culturally conscious European countries have supported the avant-garde movement in New York City.

Very interesting, if somewhat depressing, reading.

Hot Enough to Melt a Plastic Saxophone

Scary news about Ornette Coleman, who collapsed during a set by his band at the Bonnaroo Festival in Manchester, Tennessee. The temperature at the outdoor venue was close to 100 degrees, and Coleman, 77, was reported to be suffering from dehydration and heat exhaustion. After receiving some water, he was helped from the stage.

While it’s great to see Ornette getting a venue to reach a younger generation again – as he did with Prime Time in the ‘80s – you’d think festival organizers would make provisions to take better care of their aging stars. How about installing some of those cool-air mist machines they use on the sideline at NFL games?

A '90s List

Destination: Out just published the results of a poll of musicians and journalists to determine their favourite recordings from the 1990s. Looking back, it was a pretty good decade for improvised music. For most of the decade I was reviewing for a daily newspaper as well as DownBeat, Coda and a handful of other magazines, so I listened to a lot of music critically. This list brings back some fond memories. Be sure to check out the site because there is a ton of related and supporting material, including the individual ballots of some people like Gary Giddins.

Here are the top vote getters:

1 Sonny Sharrock, Ask the Ages - 9 mentions
2 Anthony Braxton, Willisau (Quartet) 1991 - 6
3 Ornette Coleman, Tone Dialing - 5
Henry Threadgill, Too Much Sugar for a Dime - 5
4 Charles Gayle, Touchin’ on Trane - 4
5 Ornette Coleman, Sound Museum: Hidden Man - 3
Bill Dixon, Vade Mecum I/II - 3
Dave Douglas, Constellations - 3
Bill Frisell, This Land - 3
David Murray, Shakill’s Warrior - 3
Maria Schneider, Evanessance - 3
David S. Ware, Flight of I - 3
David S. Ware, Go See the World - 3

Festival Funk

Is it time for a new model for jazz festivals?

That question came up this weekend when I was going over a couple of schedules for upcoming events with a friend who I frequently hang with at these things. There’s little doubt about the validity of George Wein’s original idea: essentially, bring together a bunch of musicians on the same stage to get fans out of the hot city and dark "jazz basements" for a couple or three days. More than 50 years later there’s still few things better than lounging outdoors while great music wafts through the air.

But increasingly, festivals have ballooned up to 10 days (two prime weekends) and added layers of programming on side stages and at satellite sites. At some events – Montreal comes to mind above all others – scheduling can prove to be a major headache, as you rush between sites trying to hear everything you want to catch, or worse, miss things. Even when festivals lay things end to end, a few days at one of these events can leave you wrung out and struggling to recall just what you heard. (Back when I was something of a jazz journalism martyr I tried filing more than a dozen stories from a 10-day festival. By the end, I felt like I might explode if I heard one more Monk tune.)

These days I try to take a longer view in festival coverage, but I have the advantage of doing this for fun and profit. What about the average fan? Does the model still work for him or her as festivals increasingly push package deals (“passports”) as a way of maximizing attendance?

I don’t think I’m just being jaded when I look at most festival schedules now and start humming Peggy Lee’s “Is That All There Is?”. There just doesn’t seem to be much creativity in the programming these days at most festivals. Often, it seems to be programming by rote – Who’s on the road? What are the other festivals doing? – without much outreach from artistic director to musician. The result for the jazz fan is akin to surveying a large-but-boring buffet table.

A musical form as creative as jazz deserves a business model that’s equally creative. It’s time for someone to come up with something as innovative and popular as Wein’s Newport model.

Art Of Jazz

Not sure whether it was the hotel connection or Blogspot, but I haven't been able to connect since I got to Toronto for the Art of Jazz festival on Friday.

Terrific shows by a Kenny Wheeler sextet with Norma Winstone, Lee Konitz, Dave Holland, Don Thompson and Joe LaBarbera, a Konitz trio with LaBarbera and Toronto bassist Kieran Overs, and a special Carla Bley/Steve Swallow big band with a handful of Toronto's top players (including festival co-organizer Jane Bunnett, Thompson and drummer Terry Clarke) and some Bley standbys like Gary Valente and Howard Johnson.

The Wheeler show was in the funky -- and cavernous -- old distilling building that is one of the centrepieces of Toronto's historic Distillery District. He was in better form than is often the case these years, and Winstone proved again that she is the ideal partner for him, transforming a number of his melancholy melodies into touching songs of love and regret. Any band with Holland on bass is interesting, and he was just a pillar of strength on this gig.

Saturday morning featured a Q&A session with Bley and Swallow, which despite being in a less than hospitable outdoor setting, provided some illuminating insights into their working processes.

It was a hot, humid day, and the outdoor site was baking by mid-afternoon's gig with Konitz, but his set was a relaxing series of standards and originals that allowed the leader to show his unique voice and mastery of the alto sax.

What to say about Bley's music? Just that it is a rich palette that allows players of this calibre to sound like themselves while building taut, dynamic performance pieces.

It was an exciting weekend in Toronto, with the gala opening of Daniel Libeskind's new addition to the Royal Ontario Museum and a number of events associated with the premiere of the Luminato festival, and Art of Jazz -- now in its second year -- added some high-profile improvised music to the mix.

Postcards From Obscurity

One of the half-forgotten surprises that turned up during my research into Andrew Hill’s career was the terrific 1994 session led by bassist Reggie Workman, Summit Conference, on the short-lived Postcards label.

Aside from Hill (this was his first significant recorded appearance after returning to New York City from the West Coast) the disc also features Sam Rivers and Julian Priester -- equally lost from active recording at the time -- as well as drummer Pheeroan akLaff. Great blowing by all involved, and includes Hill's "Gone," which he was no longer.

By the way, the Hill piece will appear in the August issue of DownBeat, out July 15.

One In 365

You could be philosophical about it and say "It never rains but it pours," or simply scratch your head at the absurdity of some conflicting bookings.

The source of this head scratching is the simultaneous occurrence of the all-star tribute to Kenny Wheeler and a Cecil Taylor solo performance in Toronto next Friday evening.

Toronto – big as it is – is not New York City, so it's not like there are scores of jazz events happening every night.

What are the odds of having to choose between Dave Holland, Bob Brookmeyer, Lee Konitz and Wheeler, and Taylor?

Well, yeah, they're one in 365, but what are the odds?

Since I have an assignment to review the Wheeler tribute I'll have to placate myself with Live At Willisau, my favourite Taylor solo CD. That's the one with the amazing Bosendorfer sound and with Cecil so jacked to play that he kicks off before the audience is even seated.

Out On Highway 61

Although I've been aware of the '33-1/3' series since it started, I'd never picked any editions up until I spotted a bunch of them at a Chapters store the other day. Faced with a dozen or so choices I gravitated to the album I probably know better than any other: Highway 61 Revisited. While it wasn't the first record I bought for myself in the mid-'60s, it was the first to truly capture my imagination. Everything from the cover of Dylan in the garish silk shirt and Triumph motorcycle T-shirt to the surrealistic liner notes fascinated me, and the music still thrills. Author Mark Polizzotti's attraction to the album runs parallel, so I'm digging his detailed analysis and background.

Coincidentally, my local library just delivered a mint copy of Gary Marmorstein's new book, The Label: The Story of Columbia Records (Avalon), of which Dylan plays a small part. The book got a middling review in The New York Times, and I'm already wary because the jacket copy misspells Janis Joplin's name. Not a good sign, but the subject matter is fascinating, if only from the perspective of the calibre of artists – spanning the full range of music – who once worked for the label.

I skipped the Victoriaville festival last weekend, so my festival season doesn't start in earnest until next Friday when I head west to Toronto for Jane Bunnett's Art Of Jazz festival. Needless to say, there will be live reports. Stay tuned. We'll be back to more frequent postings.

Back Catalogue Prices

This probably doesn't apply to consumers outside Canada -- if it does, let me know -- but I've been surprised to find back catalogue CDs of Andrew Hill's listed for $25 and $26 (plus shipping and taxes). That's when you can find them.

Knowing the economics of back catalogue material, this seems like a ripoff of huge proportions on the part of EMI (the Blue Notes are those that seem priced the highest).

Of course, you can download most of these for less than $12 on iTunes, and find some of the more popular CDs on Amazon, but for those looking at expanding their collections to include some of the most exciting and -- my key finding over the past weeks of deep listening -- timeless recordings of the 1960s, it's bad news.

Appreciating Andrew Hill

Somewhat ironic given the nature of my previous post, I’ve been engaged over the past week in researching a fairly major tribute to Andrew Hill.

It has been awhile since I listened closely to his early landmarks like Judgment! and Point Of Departure, and of course you hear different things when you listen with the benefit of time and a different context.

Apart from the confidence that one hears in Hill’s early work, it’s impossible not to notice how his early signatures – particularly the episodic nature of many of his compositions and the angularity of his notated phrasing – have become lingua franca for many contemporary composers. It is, of course, impossible to isolate the influence of one particular musician without considering the achievements of his or her predecessors – possible influences – but from the vantage point of 2007 one might actually speculate that Hill’s influence is more broadly felt than Monk’s.

Sacrilege? Perhaps, but as widespread as Monk’s tunes have become, it is his quirky performance techniques – and the freedom his approach granted to all – that dominate his memory. With Hill, the influence seems more universal, beyond simply compositional or technical characteristics to something more pervasive.

All that being stated, I’d still like to plumb the depths of those knotty late-career solo outings in 1996-98 beyond what my own memory provides, which is always shaky at best.

Remembering Andrew Hill, 1931-2007

It might be a strange way to start a remembrance of a recently deceased artist, but I’ll freely admit that I had a love/hate relationship with Andrew Hill’s music. The fault was mine, of course; Hill’s music sometimes just outwitted me. I’m thinking of two solo performances of Hill’s I witnessed within 18 months of each other about 10 years ago. I left, frustrated, each time, well before Hill had left the stage. Well, not exactly. The first time, here in Ottawa, Hill left the stage numerous times, sometimes so briefly that it seemed that he might just be circling the backstage area for exercise, other times more decisively, perhaps to be shooed back onstage by the concert’s organizers. Each time, he left phrases unresolved; once, his hands poised over the keyboard and then withdrawn in second thought.

These two instances jarred with my reactions to Hill’s groundbreaking recordings on Blue Note in the 1960s and his later recordings for both Palmetto and the re-formulated Blue Note. I found Dusk ravishing and wrote glowingly of it. I assume I hit the mark with the artist since my remarks were quoted – without permission, as per the norm – to promote the recording. So we were simpatico there. But what to make of those solo performances? I wish I had recordings of them, because I’d love to plumb their depths and try to understand Hill’s logic, get as simpatico with him on those pieces as I was with others.

But my reaction speaks to why Andrew Hill’s passing deserves our attention; he was an original thinker and player.

Pulitzer Puzzle

I don’t begin to understand the politics or external pressures behind the selection of the annual Pulitzer Prize awards, but it is gratifying to see the recognition given this week to Ornette Coleman and John Coltrane – even though everything related to jazz and the Pulitzer is viewed through the lens of the initial shunning of Duke Ellington and Wynton Marsalis’ win for his 1997 recording Blood On The Fields.

In my field – journalism – the Pulitzer (which was, after all, originally a journalism prize) has always seemed relatively without controversy. It has often recognized the stellar work of lesser-known reporters and small-circulation newspapers, as well as being given to news organizations with the budgets to devote endless resources to a story. In literature and music, things get murkier. As an outsider, it would seem that in the realm of these artistic endeavours the Pulitzers resemble any of the other major U.S. awards: recognition for well-liked, predominantly mainstream, artists. Fans of Cormac McCarthy – a novelist justifiably compared to Ernest Hemingway – have been outraged for years that he has been passed over in favour of writers with less command of the language but more clout in the marketplace. As one of his fans, I’m pleased to see his name on this year’s list, although it’s ironic that it comes only after McCarthy’s latest book, The Road, was selected by Oprah Winfrey for inclusion in her “book club.” There are also those who would argue that The Road is not as deserving as earlier works like Blood Meridian or All The Pretty Horses.

The same argument can be made for Coleman’s Sound Grammar – a fine recording to be sure, but no Free Jazz, This Is Our Music! or Tomorrow Is The Question. Still, in this year that finds Coleman feted on the Grammy Awards and lauded at the International Association of Jazz Education conference, who can complain about whatever gives him his due after years of surviving in the wilderness.

Coltrane’s Pulitzer Special Citation is also overdue, but also welcome; again, perhaps the Pulitzer committee’s way of making amends for past exclusion.

Now, let’s hope that Cecil Taylor is on next year’s list. Like Coleman, he’s both a vital force in contemporary music and an innovator who should have been recognized years ago.

Keys To The Future

I've been working off and on over the past couple of months on a story for DownBeat about a very cool distance education program between the Manhattan School of Music and Canada's National Arts Centre here in Ottawa. Look for it in DB's "On Campus" section sometime in the fall.

Yesterday, as part of the story, I attended a piano masterclass by Kenny Barron. Barron was at the Steinway in the beautiful, new performance space at the Manhattan School of Music, and the students and an audience of +100 were here in Ottawa. The broadband technology is so good that Barron's Steinway sounded like it was in the house -- perhaps not with as much low-end presence as it would have if it was in the room, but clear as a bell.

There were four young pianists playing for Barron: Steve Boudreau from Ottawa, David Ryshpan (who had a trio) from McGill's Schulich School of Music in Montreal, Victor Cheng from the University of Toronto, and Hayoun Lee from Toronto's Humber College. All of them were quite good, but Lee in particular has really stayed on my mind. He performed a very moody "It Never Entered My Mind" and followed it with a crystalline take on "All The Things You Are." Both of them were filled with space, and Lee really impressed with his ability to take his time and maintain the languid feel throughout the pieces. I know from experience that the tendency when you're young and playing in an uncomfortable situation is to rush, but Lee didn't at all. Obviously, Lee's had years of classical training, but this was in another realm. The kicker was that when Barron asked him who his jazz influences were he replied that most of his musical influences were either hip-hop artists or Radiohead. Obviously, he's heard some Brad Mehldau along the way, but his command of time and mood was just exceptional.

Speaking of Mehldau, I've been sorting through some CDs I've been meaning to get to, and finally got around to listening to Mehldau's appearance on Marian McPartland's Piano Jazz radio program from 1996, which was recently released on disc. This was three years before DownBeat selected him as one of the 25 young artists to watch and just after the release of his first recording (he mentions how little solo work he'd done to that point) and it's interesting to hear how his style has evolved since then.

It's also interesting how, 12 years later, we immediately think of Mehldau when we hear someone like Lee stretching and de-constructing a tune while pledging allegiance to Radiohead.

As usual, all this makes me shake my head when I think of people who say jazz is dead or dying.

Watch out for Hayoun Lee and those three other players.

What's In Store?

I don’t live in a huge city, but the population is around 750,000 and it is a gigantic tourist draw. There’s no shortage of shoppers in the downtown area.

With that as background, understand my reaction to the scene at the only brand-name music store – a branch of British chain HMV – near the epicentre of this busy tourist city. On offer were probably less than 1,000 jazz CDs, which included many, many copies of recordings by Nora Jones and Diana Krall – I think this may be the first time I’ve noticed Krall CDs outnumbering those by Miles Davis: no small feat considering how many more recordings Davis made.

Is it any wonder that CD sales declined 20% in the last measured period, and that jazz sales in particular are in the dumper? It’s like these retailers have just given up. Fully half the store is given over to DVDs.

My line of work means I have plenty to listen to without venturing into music stores much, and what I do buy, I buy online, so the decline in marketing efforts, meagre size of stock and variety was a bit of a shock.

I’d love to hear what the situation is like where you live.