Trumpet Lord Hubbard

I wrote the other day that I'm reviewing some DVDs for DownBeat's holiday gift guide, and tonight I had the good fortune to watch Freddie Hubbard in his 1973 prime. With Hubbard's unfortunate decline over the following two decades, the death of Lee Morgan and the aging of Dizzy Gillespie, the aggressive bop-derived (well, Gillespie was bop, but he was playing variations by the '70s) style of trumpet gave way to a softer, more nuanced approach. What a jolt, then, to be reminded of what Hubbard could sound like. Stunning, really.

Watching Hubbard made me wistful, like watching Willie Mays, Bobby Hull or Jim Brown in their prime and wishing you could freeze them as you wish to remember them—young, strong and beautiful. The sports analogies are apt, because Hubbard was such a physical player, and the ravages of the years—and his admitted excesses—were akin to the toll sports took on the knees of Mays, Bobby Orr and Joe Namath.

We were all young once, but only the blessed few got to burn like Freddie.

Canada's Cloudless Sky

Those who know me have heard my rant about how Canadians are falling further and further behind in the Digital Age, particularly where music is involved.

Now, as the release of Apple's iOS 5 and iCloud approaches, an asterisk on the apple.ca page tells the tale: iTunes in the Cloud will not be available in Canada.

Like Pandora, Hulu, Spotify, and numerous other streaming media services, iTunes in the Cloud violates various antiquated licensing and copyright regulations that "protect" Canadian cultural creators. Well, creators, face the facts: Your art is not reaching the ears of those most likely to buy your art to the extent it could. And, as digital services like iTunes continue to beat traditional bricks-and-mortar music retailers into the dust, you are being increasingly handcuffed. If the federal government cuts the $1 billion levy that flows to the CBC, your music is going to be all but unheard.

Meanwhile, the Canadian government is more concerned about increasing the mandatory jail time for petty criminals.

The federal government preaches loud and proud about the health of Canada's economy, but it is ensuring that our digital economy remains on the sidelines while other countries race ahead.

Iconic Moments

I'm reviewing a number of DVDs for DownBeat's holiday gift guide, and have been very impressed by the four-DVD set Icons Among Us, a series produced in conjunction with The Documentary Channel. The set includes extensive educational materials, but the primary features are interviews and performances by a number of contemporary artists, ranging from Wayne Shorter at the older end to Aaron Parks and Jamie Cullum.

It reminds me of some series I recall from the 1970s, which tried to put jazz in a contemporary and historical context, but this one really nails it through the depth and breadth of its interviews, and by the scope of the artists who are involved.

There's some good drama, too, such as the point/counterpoint of Wynton Marsalis and John Medeski, and some touching moments with Donald Harrison, Jr., re-building his home in New Orleans, and onstage with Esbjörn Svensson just prior to his drowning death.

Watch for my full review, but this is highly recommended.

A Story: Miles vs. Trane

Writing about Miles Davis from the 1960s and John Coltrane has put me in mind of a great story I heard at one of the Miles Davis conferences that scholar Gerald Early convened in the mid-'90s. Apologies to the presenter who shared it; it was a first-person account, and I can't recall his name.

This presenter—a black American who had been a teenager in the mid-'60s—recalled the essential difference between attending a Davis show at a club and seeing Trane live.

For Davis, he recalled, he scanned the latest copies of Esquire and Down Beat, hoping for a recent photo of the trumpeter so he could intuit what Davis was wearing lately. If you went to a Miles show in the neighbourhood, you wanted to dress well, approximating the Italian-cut suits that the musician favoured at the time, but not wanting to miss out on subtle changes: pinstripes or herringbone, slim lapels or double-breasted.

For Trane, he said, you wore coveralls, because you knew that chances were high that if you sat anywhere in the proximity of the quartet in a small club you would finish the evening covered in Trane's saliva and slivers of Elvin Jones' shattered drumsticks.

Happy 85th Trane

Eighty-five years after his birth, and sadly, 44 years since his untimely death, John Coltrane stands as a towering figure in the history of Western music.

Nice to see him getting such a high profile around social media today, but remember to celebrate and recognize all of his work, not just the (relatively) easy stuff. The man was as much "Kulu Se Mama" and "Om" as "Giant Steps" and "My Favorite Things."

From my personal perspective, I can't imagine my life without A Love Supreme. Hearing Trane for the first time changed me profoundly. How many musicians can you say that about?

Jimi and Miles On Fire

When you have kids you learn to tread lightly on the "in my day" theme. I resented it when my father told me that the artists I idolized in the 1960s couldn't hold a candle to Benny Goodman and Frank Sinatra, so why lord Jimi Hendrix and Cream over my kids' infatuation with Nirvana, et.al. Also, I'm absolutely a "glass half full" kind of guy, so I root for the possibility that artists half my age will develop long and fruitful careers. I relish the (few) times when I've made a good call, such as my early championing of trumpeter Dave Douglas. When an artist like Vijay Iyer or Jason Moran emerges, I'm delighted.

I also have a good friend, Alan Stanbridge—an academic at the University of Toronto—who writes and lectures passionately and persuasively about the folly of professing a "golden age" for any artform. So, again, I tread carefully; he makes that good an argument.

Setting all that aside, I have to say that the two box sets I've been listening to this week make an equally good case that the late '60s produced some of the best popular music in the history of recordings.

I had never bothered to pick up the various bootleg versions of Hendrix's 1968 concerts at San Francisco's Winterland, although the guitarist's music dominated my listening for the better part of a decade. There was too much good stuff of his to get through without dealing with high prices and dodgy sound, I figured. So, I welcomed the official release of three complete concerts from his Winterland stand, as part of Sony Legacy's work with the Hendrix estate.

Being a longtime Hendrix fan, I figure I know what to expect from him, but the Winterland recordings have thrilled me with the energy that Hendrix brought to that stage and the joy with which he was exploring new possibilities on his guitar. We all know how quickly and depressingly the story turned, but at that point in time anything seemed possible.

Miles Davis' live concerts from 1967 are recordings I've pursued and collected, but it has been a decade or so since I've spent much time listening to them. That heightens the experience of hearing those concerts, and a previously unheard one from Copenhagen, collected in one set (Sony Legacy again). The elasticity and risk-taking inherent in Davis' quintet of the day—with, need I write it, Wayne Shorter, Herbie Hancock, Ron Carter and Tony Williams—are stunning, electrifying. To watch them interact, on a previously issued, but unseen in its entirety by me, DVD is even better. In particular, watching Williams create waves of sound from a bare drum kit is akin to the first time I watched the Hendrix at Woodstock video and realized that a passage that I had listened to a hundred or so times was played with utter nonchalance.

Pulling these two recorded documents together, of course, is the fact that Davis was checking out Hendrix around the time of those Winterland concerts, and planning his next move, into the music that became Jack Johnson and Bitches Brew.

I was too unaware and poorly connected to catch Hendrix on that '68 tour (his sole Ottawa date has also been issued on CD) and never had a chance to see Davis live prior to his 1991 comeback, and now I'm only too aware of what it was truly like when giants walked the stages.

A golden age? Maybe not, Professor Stanbridge, but certainly some golden moments here.

Jazz In The Shoulder Season

I just confirmed an assignment to cover the Quebec City Jazz Festival for the second consecutive year. Along with the SF Jazz Festival and the Berliner Festspiele, it's one of the few major jazz events in that dead zone between the deluge of summer jazz fests and Winter Jazzfest/APAP, and as I alluded to in last year's review in DownBeat, it sets itself apart by having a very strong community base.

In fact, this year, for Signal To Noise, I'm focusing on how the festival has found success after just five years by tapping into the burgeoning arts community in Quebec City's Saint-Roch neighbourhood.

This year's lineup includes Joe Lovano's Us Five, Dave Liebman, Frank Lacy, Finland's Esa Pietilä Quartet, Roberta Gambarini, Maceo Parker, Ari Hoenig's 4tet and a host of Quebec-based artists, including electric bass pioneer Alain Caron.

Down and Dirty in the Jazz Trenches

I'm not old enough to have lived through the era when some elements associated with Louis Armstrong were dissing Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, and company, but I do recall when mainstream jazz players were tossing brick-bats at Miles Davis, Chick Corea and Herbie Hancock for experimenting with electric instruments, linear tempos and rock concert volume. It wasn't pretty, and it had a destructive effect on the image of jazz as a democratic and welcoming art form.

The whole us vs. them vibe strikes me as self-defeating, and when the art form in question is already on the margins, it just seems petty and pointless. My colleague Peter Hum has a blow-by-blow and analysis of the latest shots in the "jazz sucks" meme, which follow close on the heels of the "jazz festivals have too much rock content" and "jazz criticism sucks" posts and counter-posts.

It's all pretty nasty, and while I'm sure Kurt Rosenwinkel and Dwayne Burno have legitimate points—let's face it, we've all heard bad music—I can't help but think about the effect this all has on high school musicians who are considering a music degree with a jazz concentration, or young listeners who have wondered what they should check out in jazz. Maybe they just shouldn't bother; they can never be as good as Rosenwinkel or Burno. Someone better is always going to be judging you. What's the point of just having fun and making music with your friends?

Thinking back on my own entree into the music, I'd heard a lot of Charlie Christian, Count Basie and Duke Ellington by the time I encountered—and fell in love with the beboppers, and with my contemporaries who were pioneering fusion music in the early '70s—but it was bebop and fusion that led me back to Pops and Art Blakey and Lester Young. The lesson: People make their own connections, and find out for themselves what they like and don't like. But, when a musical form seems to be awash with back-stabbing and loathing, it is just off-putting.

I know that it's putting me off.

My Italian Escape

Just back from a great 10 days at Italy's Siena Jazz Workshop, and beginning to put together my notes for a feature I'm writing for an upcoming issue of DownBeat.

A few brief impressions: Siena is an endlessly fascinating city with gorgeous Medieval architecture and more good restaurants than any small city normally has. Even at small bars, I never had a disappointing meal. And then, there's the wine. I could go on.

The music program that Franco Caroni and his colleagues have put together through their organization, Siena Jazz, also punches well above its weight. I can't recall the last time I met music faculty as enthusiastic as these guys are, and the facilities—housed within an old Spanish fortress—blow away those at most of the university schools of music I've visited. Caroni has built the program of study during the past 40 years based on strong principles of instrument-specific concentration and what he calls (using one of the few English words I heard him say) "interplay". The ability to communicate selflessly in a combo is key to his vision of jazz, and many of the visiting faculty members at the summer workshop I observed—John Taylor, Dave Douglas, Eric Harland, Franco D'Andrea—personify that, as well.

Even if the school wasn't situated in one of Europe's most interesting small cities it would be something special. But it is in Siena, which makes it almost too good to be true.

Canadian Jazz Playlist

I received a few requests to post the playlist I used to accompany the full lecture that is prefaced in the previous entry. Here it is:

Phil Nimmons: The Atlantic Suite (excerpt)
Paul Bley: Ida Lupino
Kenny Wheeler: Smatter

Norman Symonds/Duke Ellington: Nameless Hour
Ron Collier/Duke Ellington: Aurora Borealis
Sonny Greenwich: The Nightingale

Jean Derome: Partie De Carte
Normand Guilbeault: Tresor D'Arme
François Houle 5: Seventy-three

Andy Milne: Don't Let It Bring You Down
Marilyn Lerner: Honga
John Stetch: Baba Bakes

Andrew Rathbun: True Stories
Christine Jensen Jazz Orchestra: Seafever
Darcy James Argue's Secret Society: Transit

Special thanks to Mark Miller for a few of those suggestions, and to my Italian hosts—particularly Francesco Martinelli—for being so gracious and hospitable.

Watch for my report on Siena Jazz in an upcoming issue of DownBeat.

Riffing on Canadian Jazz

I'm leaving tomorrow for 10 days at the Siena Jazz Workshop, where I'll be both participant and observer. In addition to researching profiles for DownBeat on pianists John Taylor and Franco D'Andrea—both of whom are on the workshop faculty this year—I'll be delivering a lecture in the workshop's jazz history series.

My topic dates back to lengthy email (and occasionally phone) discussions I used to have with the late jazz writer Eric Nisenson. Eric was one of the first people I met online in the early '90s, and he encouraged me to expose him to what was happening in Canada's jazz scene. The basis of his interest was a comment that Miles Davis made to him while Eric was trying to wrestle the trumpeter into sitting down for formal interviews for an oft-promised autobiography (Quincy Troupe finally succeeded where Eric failed, but that's another story). Davis told Eric that he was the only white guy besides Gil Evans who struck him as truly colour blind, which Davis attributed to Evans' birth in Canada. That always struck me as one of those outrageously—and usually purposefully—provocative things Davis said, since Evans was barely out of a crib when his mother moved him from Toronto to California, but we Canadians love to claim him as our own if we can.

Eric's interest in Canadian music was also sparked by his deep love of Glenn Gould's music, his attraction to the work of Kenny Wheeler, and his abiding dislike of anything Oscar Peterson played.

It was a good time in Canadian jazz, with a lot of young(ish) players coming up, and I was happy to share tips and recordings with Eric.

Our conversations about the music led to him encouraging me to write a survey book. I demurred, saying that my friend Mark Miller had already cornered that subject, but Eric persisted, saying that there was a book to be written on what Wheeler, Paul Bley and Sonny Greenwich (an artist he knew about—through Davis—but hadn't heard until I sent him some CDs) had in common. Gould's landmark Idea of North and his various essays on the influence of the Canadian landscape on artists made Eric believe there was a link there. Good idea, I agreed, but how to interest a publisher in something like that? An academic publisher, perhaps, but not likely a mainstream one.

So, years passed, as did Eric, but I kept coming back to the idea. Every so often I'd ask a Canadian musician if the theory rang true for them, and eventually got a chance to ask Wheeler, Bley and Greenwich. No one ever dismissed it as rubbish, although Wheeler—as recently as two weeks ago, when I asked him about it again—couldn't put his finger on any specific influences.

It's certainly true that Canada is distinct from the United States in many ways, and at a symposium organized by George Lewis and Howard Mandel a few years ago at Columbia University, I spoke about how some Canadian jazz musicians (pianists Andy Milne, D.D. Jackson, Marilyn Lerner and John Stetch) retained rich elements of their ethnic heritage in their music.

In Siena, I'm going to expand on the topic, finally giving Eric his due on the validity of this theory. We'll see where it goes from there. Here's the introduction to what will be a 75-minute presentation with music samples, and hopefully some give-and-take with my European audience.

Canadian Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau once said that living next to the United States was like “sleeping with an elephant. No matter how friendly and even-tempered the beast is, one is affected by every twitch and grunt.”

If such is the case for things like trade and politics, it is amplified when it comes to art and culture, and no more so than when the topic is jazz, which my neighbours to the south love to call “America’s classical music.”

So, sleeping next to this beast, how does one create music that both respects—and builds upon tradition—and reflects your own culture?

How do you tell your own story… in your own musical dialect… when the story has shared roots like jazz?

It is a challenge that exists not just for Canadian improvisers, but for those who live anywhere in the world.

The elephant is that big!

For those who may not know, Canada does have a distinctive cultural voice… in visual arts, it is the raw, wild landscapes of A.Y. Jackson and his fellow members of the Group of Seven. It is the expressionism of the west coast rainforest, as expressed by Emily Carr.

In literature, it is the psychological inner views of Robertson Davies, the futurist feminism of Margaret Atwood, and the merciless self-examination of Mordecai Richler.

These are forms of expression you will not find in any other nation.

In his prolific writing for radio, the Canadian concert pianist Glenn Gould frequently addressed what he called ‘The Idea of North.’

By that, he meant that Canada gave its citizens a sense of space, isolation and alienation that was their own. And yet, there was always the elephant looming large.

So, artists in Canada develop their own voice, their own approach to storytelling—whether with a brush, a computer or a saxophone—but the lure is often there from the other. The grass the elephant grazes on looks sweeter. And clearly, it’s nourishing. There is enough of it… well, to feed an elephant.

But Canada—like any nation—is not static.

Like Italy, Germany, Switzerland, Finland, its face is constantly changed by global migration patterns.

It reflects the trend of urbanization that every country is undergoing.

How that affects Canada, and how Canada reflects that reality through its arts, is also unique.

America is frequently referred to as ‘a melting pot.’

The theory is that America is a land of immigrants, who have arrived in wave after wave since the 1600s. But regardless of where the waves have originated—from Eastern Europe, Ireland, Italy, the Middle East or Southeast Asia—the people who arrive in America want to be American.

They desire to blend in.

To melt into the masses.

Canada has always been different.

While many of our immigrants come from the same places, those who decide to stay in Canada more often keep their own cultural identities.

Or at least they blend their ethnic identities with the Canadian identity.

And that reality is the story of jazz in Canada.

Our artists have developed distinctive voices.

They’ve been lured to the sweeter grass. And many times they’ve returned.

And they have kept their own distinctive cultural identities, and blended into with both the Northern Voice and with the tradition of improvised jazz.

2011 TD Ottawa International Jazz Festival Wrap Up

Well, the numbers are in, and it looks like Canada's second-oldest jazz festival isn't about to climb out of the $80,000 hole it created in 2010. As Peter Hum points out in this overview, bad weather killed attendance at a number of the pricy outdoor mainstage events. Certainly, the small turnout for Elvis Costello was understandable; I've never seen it rain that hard and long in Ottawa. Anyone considering attending that night could be excused for finding anything better to do indoors.

The big drop off in attendance for Return To Forever points to a knottier problem. When they appeared before a huge crowd three years ago the weather was also pretty threatening. I recall that it had rained heavily around 6 p.m., and by showtime it was overcast and soupy. So, did Al DiMeola make for the difference in attendance, or was it something more like the curiosity factor that drew people out in 2008, but kept them away this year? Those are the kinds of questions that will make festival programmers lose sleep.

The Ottawa festival has not fared well over the years when it comes to catching a break on the weather. Perhaps the low point was a 2004 concert by a supergroup co-fronted by Wayne Shorter and Herbie Hancock. A huge crowd stood through a steady downpour on a cold night. If it had been anyone less than those Miles Davis alumni onstage they would have fled in droves, I'm sure.

So, what to do? It's going to be something the festival will have to wrestle with. As long as it's spending big bucks to put superstar acts on the mainstage it will be rolling the dice. And yet, without an act that can draw 11,000 or 12,000 to the park, you can't hope to subsidize name artists like Vijay Iyer, Brad Mehldau and Kurt Elling in expensive soft-seat venues.

2011 TD Ottawa International Jazz Festival #7

Daniel Lanois always brings his best home.

Last time he visited the city of his birth it was with a crack quartet that cooked at a slow boil while he charmed the crowd at a soft-seat suburban theatre. That was before the motorcycle accident that put a crimp in his plans to launch a new project, Black Dub, on last summer's festival circuit.

Now in the midst of an extensive tour that started in May and ends in August, Black Dub closed out the mainstage concerts in spectacular form. With Lanois paying homage to the beauty of the Chateau Laurier Hotel—and hoping thieves don't steal the copper from its roof—and reminding the audience that he was born in Ottawa, even though he grew up in Gatineau and launched his career in Hamilton, the band illustrated that good music trumps the notion that only jazz belongs in the headline position. I wouldn't have passed up this show to see anyone I can think of in what purists consider the jazz universe.

Front and centre, of course, were the astounding vocals of Trixie Whitley. Prior to seeing the band, I couldn't decide what was more impressive: that this huge, multi-layered voice comes from a lithe Belgian woman, or the fact that she sounds this seasoned and soulful at just 22. Now, I'm just as impressed that she has what it takes to sit down next to Brian Blade—one of the best drummers in jazz—and thicken the beat behind Lanois and bassist Jim Wilson.

For all his sonic genius, which he manages to translate to the live setting in large measure, Lanois always impresses most with his ability to connect to his audience in a low-key, workmanlike manner. He's never too far removed from the kid who created atmospheric sounds in the basement of his mother's house and found himself swept up in the wake of people like Brian Eno and Peter Gabriel. With his jean jacket, grizzled beard, glasses and toque (an odd look on a hot day) he still seems like a guy you might have caught playing in one of the old taverns that used to grace the streets of Gatineau.

2011 TD Ottawa International Jazz Festival #6

Saturday evening's one-time-only meeting of iconic trumpeter/composer Kenny Wheeler, pianist Myra Melford, alto saxophonist Jon Irabagon and singer Diana Torto brought together four very distinctive voices, and the degree to which one appreciated the show had a lot to do with which voice you came to hear.

Those who came to hear Melford were given short shrift. She was only cut loose once during the set—in an extended, stops-out duet with Irabagon. The young saxophonist, who won over a number of Ottawa fans last year as part of Mostly Other People Do the Killing, showed flashes of his brilliance, but for a man whose last recording was essentially a 75-minute solo, it was meagre stuff.

This was a showcase for Torto, a highly mannered Italian singer with a good range, great tone and exceptional enthusiasm, and the 81-year-old master Wheeler. The expatriate Canadian, who sticks to flugelhorn these days and has some serious mobility challenges, still has a totally original sound. All the signature intervallic leaps, twists and breathy false notes are still evident, and while he is not as strong a player as he once was, his melancholic touch is sure. And then, there are his beautiful, finely wrought compositions, which tug at your heart and send your spirit soaring.

While there were smiles all around the bandstand, and a spirit of triumph at the concert's conclusion, more than a few in the audience used the adjective "sad" in describing the show.

In sum, it was evening of both diminished and fully realized expectations and emotions. Even if you didn't get what you came for, you left with the knowledge that you had witnessed something unique.

2011 TD Ottawa International Jazz Festival #5

In the 26 years that I've been attending or, occasionally, working for the Ottawa International Jazz Festival my clearest memories are of the solo piano recitals. They were a cornerstone of the festival's programming for many years; now more of a special occasion when someone like last night's guest—Vijay Iyer—is booked.

Perhaps these concerts are clearest because for a couple of years in the '90s the solo piano series was my main reviewing assignment for the daily newspaper. Day after day throughout the 10 days of the festival I'd join the audience and immerse myself in 70 or 80 minutes of solo piano: from Andrew Hill to Joey Calderazzo, from Marilyn Crispell to Jennifer Williams. Reviewing a solo piano concert is perhaps the most challenging kind of arts writing because it's such a personal experience. It's just the musician, the instrument and the audience, and every artist approaches the experience a different way. Some, like Williams, engage the audience, turning the performance into more of a musical conversation. Others, like Hill and Crispell, might as well be playing alone in their practice space; they are so fully engaged in the music that the audience is almost superfluous. Finding an entry point to writing about some solo piano concerts can be a challenge.

I think my former colleague Doug Fischer did a superb job of capturing last evening's first set by Iyer in this review.

Reviewers often exchange impressions after a show. If Doug and I had been doing that last night—instead, I was being feted by my wife at a fabulous birthday dinner—we would've been in complete agreement.

2011 TD Ottawa International Jazz Festival #4

There were some people who had serious misgivings about the viability of the tented stage that the festival inaugurated last year. Immediately adjacent to one of the city's busiest streets, it promised to be a less-than-intimate space. That may be so; I've never seen a really quiet show in there, but it has become a terrific space for big bands.

Last year, Christine Jensen's band gave one of the best shows I saw at the festival—no surprise, really, given the music and the playing of her sister Ingrid—and last night (again, with Ingrid aboard) Darcy James Argue's Secret Society sounded marvellous.

The first time I saw the band with its full New York-based lineup (Argue has also done variations with a number of Canadian subs) was in Le Poisson Rouge in the Village, which is not the ideal place for close listening. Last night in the tent, though, everything was crystal clear, and you could see the way the band interacts with the leader and each other.

It was topped off by a nice hang at the jam session, with the room filled with Secret Society members, Christian McBride and his band, and a number of other musicians like drummer Ari Hoenig.

Fun times!

2011 TD Ottawa International Jazz Festival #3

My seat mate at last night's concert by Brad Mehldau and Joshua Redman admitted that he wouldn't recognize it if Mehldau decided to rhapsodize on a Radiohead song, and that it really didn't matter. And that statement summarizes the way the pianist and saxophonist erase the boundaries between source material and art. In their hands, everything is beauty.

In fact, it was a Jeff Buckley composition that offered the most intense interaction between Mehldau and Redman, in a concert stuffed with high-level interaction.

Timeless and sublime, it was the kind of exchange of musical ideas that went well beyond the music being played. To mine the cliché about jazz duets, it was more of a conversation than a recital. And we were privileged to have overheard.

Best CDs to Date

While I'm on the topic of things in the air, the idea of posting mid-year lists of worthy recordings seems to be gaining ground, so allow me to chip in here, if only to prompt you to check these discs out for your own enjoyment and the enhancement of some fine musicians.

Here are some things that have caught my ear, and stand a good chance of making it to my best of 2011 list:

Joe Lovano Us Five: Bird Songs

Nordic Connect: Spirals

Trio Derome Guilbeault Tanguay: Danse à l'Anvers

Erik Friedlander: Bonebridge

Denny Zeitlin: Labyrinth

Lee Konitz/Brad Mehldau/Charlie Haden/Paul Motian: Live At Birdland

Jazz Exploitation?

Given what passes for news in some media outlets now, I guess I shouldn't be surprised that the 'non-jazz artists at jazz festivals' story has the legs it does, but so be it. The story has kept growing this week as most of North America's jazz fests get underway.

I've already blogged about my own take on it here, but let me address a new twist on this that comes up in some of my former colleague Peter Hum's blog entries. (And, understand, I don't fault Peter for keeping this story going. I know he has a genuine interest in this on a personal level, which is the kind of thing that makes his blog essential reading.)

The issue that bassist Christian McBride and others raise in their responses to Peter's questions is that of festivals "exploiting" the term jazz to attract patrons—both of the listening kind and sponsors. McBride specifically posits that festivals with jazz in their title but acts like Robert Plant or Elvis Costello on their stages are "insulting the legacy of Duke Ellington and Thelonious Monk."

Well, what would insult their legacy more, I wonder: exposing dozens of jazz artists to audiences by way of the subsidization from artists like Plant, or dropping the name 'jazz' from the festival's title and booking, say, one-quarter as many jazz musicians and filling the rest of the roster with more recognizable musicians? Wasn't it Ellington who once said there was two kinds of music—good and bad? Just how does providing a good venue, good payday and audience exposure to jazz artists through healthy gate revenue violate his memory? Would jazz purists truly feel better about the whole thing if festivals like Ottawa's, Montreal's and Montreux's changed their names and focus?

There's something of a defeatist attitude in all this; as though some of these purists would like the situation for their music and the people who play it to be even worse so they can feel truly marginalized. Last year's jazz-packed lineup at Ottawa's jazz festival (standard disclaimer here that I was under contract to the festival last year) resulted in a deficit of $80,000. Would the anti-rocker faction be happy to see that trend continue in a short-term gain/long-term pain game?

And it's not just jazz fans who do this; the same is true of Ottawa's Bluesfest—one of Canada's most successful music festivals. A common refrain I hear from people is, Where are the blues acts? I often feel like asking them just who they'd book on the festival's mainstage to draw 30,000 people and fulfill that blues quotient they're pining for. The economic reality is that only certain acts are going to draw those kinds of numbers. At least people should take comfort in the fact that fame is a cyclical thing; every so often, a Diana Krall or Blues Brothers will actually get popular for a minute. More often, though, if you want to draw that kind of crowd, you're going to have to look to the diminishing number of iconic figures like Plant or the ever-changing pop sensations who are on their way up.

2011 TD Ottawa International Jazz Festival #2

So, there was the night in 2006 when a cold rain fell throughout a great show by Wayne Shorter and Herbie Hancock, and I recall trying to review a show under an umbrella one night in the '90s, but I think last night's downpour in advance of Elvis Costello's concert may be the worst I've seen. Sitting, stranded, in a parking lot at a suburban big-box mall—waiting out the deluge—I was certainly convinced that this was the most rain I've ever seen fall during five decades in Ottawa.

Fortunately, the last burst of rain ended before Costello hit the stage at 8:30, but the onslaught was enough to keep his audience relatively small (one of the newspaper critics estimated it at 2,500).

Perhaps it was the ongoing rain during the afternoon (when soundchecks are usually done) that affected the sound mix during the first 15 minutes or so of the show. Even though Costello was performing with his long-time mates Steve Nieve, Pete Thomas and Davey Faragher, it sounded like they'd never played together before. The sound was pinched and thin, and Nieve's organ—so essential to Costello's sound (especially when he's opening with "Pump It Up," basically a vehicle for Nieve and Costello's voice)—was almost absent in the mix.

The sound issues were sorted out eventually, and Costello went on to weave together a show that ranged through his entire catalogue. I felt that the show hit its peak when he performed a medley anchored by Bob Dylan and Rick Danko's "This Wheel's On Fire." It was the kind of gesture that only the most confident songwriter can pull off convincingly, using another writer's song as a fulcrum for your own show, and it was so far away from the Costello we first met in 1977 that it illustrated how much he has evolved to become one of the great composers himself.

I've become convinced that Costello's shows will always have ragged edges—a given, really, as long as he is the sole guitarist onstage—but that's his charm, and a big part of what reminds us that he was once an angry, loutish, little nerd who blew all our hair back. There's always a little part of that guy in everything he does, no matter what musical genre he's working in.