Great Pianist, Not So Great Personality

Given the fact that his death was announced at mid-day on Christmas Eve and quickly overshadowed by news of the assassination of Benazir Bhutto, it's possible that Oscar Peterson didn't get the coverage that might otherwise have been his due. Here in Canada, the accolades went on for hours on the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. Again, hard to judge what might've been the case had it not been the day before Christmas. I was surprised to see that an obituary I wrote so many years ago that I don't even have a digital copy of it was given extensive play in one of our national newspapers. Again, luck of the draw when most people have already headed home for the holidays.

In the obit I alluded to Peterson's tetchy personality, and his demands to be treated like a celebrity. Ironically, a number of other tributes noted that Peterson was a gentle giant from Montreal who was reluctant to move onto the world stage when impresario Norman Granz came calling in the late '40s. If Oscar was humble then, he sure learned how to be a royal pain later in life. He was too much the gentleman -- and too much in control of his public persona -- to ever insult an entire nation, but I'm sure he could've taught Keith Jarrett a thing or two about being a prima donna.

The stories of Peterson's demands for the star treatment are legendary -- there are at least three instances concerning promotions here in Ottawa (one of which drove a local company into bankruptcy) so one can only assume that he left damage like that in other places, too. My own experience dates to my years as a board member with the Ottawa International Jazz Festival. In my time there we booked some big names, including Ornette Coleman, Wynton Marsalis and Sonny Rollins, but Peterson was the only one who demanded a limousine be put at his disposal for the entire time he was in town. We ran on a ridiculously small budget, so that put a major dent in our finances. The fact that the limo caught fire while ferrying Peterson the short distance between his hotel and the concert venue is one of those stories that keep those of us who were involved with the event laughing.

For an artist who was lauded loudly in the press through six decades, Peterson was curmudgeonly when it came to jazz journalists. The last time that the International Association of Jazz Education held its annual conference in Toronto Peterson excoriated critics -- who make up a sizeable portion of the conference's attendees -- during a keynote address. Nice guy!

I couldn't help but laugh when I saw the juxtaposition in my obituary between a typically sour quote by Miles Davis about Peterson's ability to improvise and a Peterson quote saying that he didn't take criticism to heart because it never came from a fellow musician. I wish I could remember if I set that up, or if an editor did that, but I like to think it's payback for that limo ride.

Best Live Shows of '07

Since my concert calendar is clear for the remainder of 2007, I suppose it’s safe to select my top half-dozen live performances of the year (that’s barring the possibility that Sly Stone accepts my invitation to pop in and do a few songs at our New Year’s party).

Trio M: Guelph Jazz Festival – Three of my favourite musicians – Myra Melford, Mark Dresser and Matt Wilson – in a new band with a brand new book of compositions. What could go wrong? Well, you never know with a concert scheduled for mid-afternoon on a Saturday, but this one was stunning from the first to last notes. Her quicksilver phrasing and pointillistic technique make many people forget Melford’s background in stride piano and the blues, but this concert kept cycling back through language written in the ’20s and ‘30s, then springing forward to timeless improvisation. Wilson and Dresser are also masters of the signature statement: Wilson’s incredible cymbal dynamics, and Dresser’s unexpected ‘chords of doom.’ It’s a cliché now to use the metaphor of conversation for a jazz performance, but it was really apt for this show, with each musician possessing a distinctive accent yet sharing a familiar language. There was laughter and episodes of sustained tension; in short, a performance of the highest order.

Sten Sandell Trio with John Butcher: Vancouver International Jazz Festival – My notes for this show include a line that I decided was too cute by half to include in my DownBeat review: “You know a show is great when even the drum solo is memorable.” I write down all sorts of non-sequiturs when I’m reviewing a show, but my notes for this are pretty sparse; I was engrossed. This was the first time I’d seen Butcher live, and I was really floored by his technique, which is on a par with Evan Parker’s. He has the ability to sculpt phrases that shift from pure notes to micro-tonality. The show was one seamless piece, and for long periods drummer Paal Nilssen-Love was silent. At the end, he exploded into a solo that was one loud roar of noise. A perfect conclusion.

Kenny Wheeler All-Star Tribute: Art of Jazz, Toronto – The chemistry between Kenny Wheeler and bassist Dave Holland is always delightful, and with the piquant solo voice of Lee Konitz and vocalist Norma Winstone’s inventions added to that this was a sure-fire winner. The band pushed Wheeler to play outside his blurry, romantic comfort zone, and the program covered a wide range of his compositions.

John McLaughlin & the Fourth Dimension: Dominion-Chalmers United Church, Ottawa – I somehow missed the Mahavishnu Orchestra’s only appearance in Ottawa in 1972 and never thought I’d hear McLaughlin play with the volume and intensity that marked that band. Fronting an energetic trio that had chops to burn, McLaughlin was clearly enjoying himself, and playing with tremendous abandon.

The Bad Plus: Vancouver International Jazz Festival – An exceptionally clean sound mix in a big soft-seat theatre seems to be just what the trio needs to make every element of their sound pop out. A terrific version of Ornette Coleman’s “Song X.”

Carla Bley Orchestra: Art of Jazz, Toronto – A terrible outdoor venue, sound problems and a band that seldom plays together (albeit one stuffed with a lot of Toronto’s best players), and Bley’s book of compositions still sounds great.

The Top 10s Flow

We've started posting members' top 10 lists at the Jazz Journalists Association site. It may be too early to detect a clear winner, but among the front runners at this early stage are: the Charles Mingus at Cornell concert with Eric Dolphy, Michael Brecker's Pilgrimage, Maria Schneider Sky Blue and the live recording by Hank Jones & Joe Lovano — one that somehow escaped my notice.

Only 14 lists posted so far, so many more to come. Keep an eye on it, especially if you have gift shopping to do.

Book Learning

About four years ago I started casting about for a university course or program that could fill in the (many) gaps in my knowledge about 20th-century music outside my roots in American blues and jazz. As the lines continue to blur between improvised music and contemporary classical music — especially as it relates to electronic music — I find myself wanting to know more about the evolution of these things outside the well-known "great men."

I never found a course within commuting distance or online, but with Alex Ross' new book, The Rest Is Noise: Listening To The Twentieth Century, I'm feeling that my search may be over. Ross is such an engaging writer, and his research so compelling, that I feel it could provide enough jumping-off points to recordings and other reading that it will keep me busy for years.

Ross' book also provides a great bedside companion to the just-released new book by my colleague and friend Howard Mandel, Miles, Ornette, Cecil: Jazz Beyond Jazz. The connection between those three giants of improvised music and Stravinsky, Debussy, Stockhausen and others is well known, but how did all these composer-performers help shape and reflect what we have come to know as the avant-garde?

Lots of great reading, thinking, and more listening to come.

Court Is Adjourned

Another reminder that Toronto isn't New York City after all.

Closed ("temporarily") just five months after opening to much fanfare, Live@Courthouse is now officially dead — leaving Toronto once again without a full-time jazz club that books touring artists over multi-night stands. According to Ashante Infantry's article in the Toronto Star, Nick Di Donato pulled his support from the project. The posh 150-seat club, which operated out of a building owned by Di Donato's Liberty Entertainment Group, was meant to showcase top-flight artists, but never scored a loyal audience.

Coming on the heels of failures by the Bermuda Onion, George's Spaghetti House, the Top o' the Senator and the Montreal Bistro, it raises the question if Toronto has what it takes to support jazz beyond what goes on at the rough-and-tumble Rex and the occasional other local venue. If the rumours prove true, and Toronto fails to draw U.S. attendees in sizable numbers to next January's International Association of Jazz Education conference (the event regularly attracts upwards of 4,500 delegates when it's in New York) the city is likely to develop a real complex.

Tick, Tick, Tick

Awww, mama! Can it really be that time again?

Yes, it's top 10 time, and though there's still so much to hear from 2007 — including some teetering stacks of review copies that I haven't cracked yet — I can't put off the editor's call for THE LIST.

Okay, here goes, keeping in mind that I know there must be even better stuff out there, just waiting to be heard.

They're in alphabetical order:

John Abercrombie Quartet – The Third Quartet (ECM)
Fred Anderson & Hamid Drake – From The River To The Ocean (Thrill Jockey)
Michael Brecker – Pilgrimage (Heads Up)
Miles Davis – The Complete On The Corner Sessions (Columbia/Legacy)
Dave Douglas Quintet – Live At The Jazz Standard (Greenleaf)
Paul Motian – Time And Time Again (ECM)
Michael Musillami Trio w/Mark Feldman – The Treatment (Playscape)
Dino Saluzzi/Anja Lechner – Ojos Negros (ECM)
Maria Schneider Orchestra – Sky Blue (ArtistShare)
Trio M – Big Picture (Cryptogramophone)

Recording Profits Up? Only In Canada

New figures from the Canadian government's official statistics department show that the Canadian recording industry turned a healthy profit in 2005, and that revenue from the sale of sound recordings increased 3.3 percent over 2003. That bucks the trend seen around the world.

There's no breakdown currently shown by musical genre, but a previous Statistics Canada study shows jazz revenues declining from 2002 to 2003.

Results from the new study are available here.

Farewell, Habao

I received word this morning that my friend Joseph "Habao" Texidor died of a heart attack last Friday. Joe told me that he was a troubled young man when he met Rahsaan Roland Kirk one day in Colony Records in New York (Joe had just started work as a clerk in the store, and none of the other clerks liked dealing with Kirk) and his relationship with the saxophonist changed his life. As Kirk's percussionist and "eyes" on the road, Joe went around the world and got an extended education from one of the music's true geniuses.

Joe was a pretty shy, humble guy when I knew him, and over the years we emailed each other to mark the deaths of various people who had passed through Kirk's band. The last time we saw each other we had a Chinese meal in honour of pianist Hilton Ruiz, who was supposed to have joined us before he was murdered in New Orleans.

You won't find anything on Joe in any of the jazz encyclopedias, though he was an integral part of Kirk's recordings in the '70s, which makes me reflect on all the other forgotten and overlooked musicians who live anonymously years after adding to our enjoyment of the music.

You can watch Joe rocking out with Rahsaan on "Volunteered Slavery" here.

Now Spinning

Not surprisingly, pianist McCoy Tyner has tended to avoid collaborations with saxophonists since his years with John Coltrane, and those who have recorded with him inevitably face comparison with the mighty Trane. Seldom, though, has anyone stepped out in Tyner's company with as much authority and brio as Joe Lovano on Tyner's new live quartet recording — his debut on his McCoy Tyner Music imprint for Half Note Records. Lovano stops just short of stealing the show at the concert, which was recorded last New Year's at Yoshi's in Oakland. It's only by dint of having the last word on a solo take of "For All We Know" that Tyner reminds you that this is his recording, not Lovano's. Yeah, Joe sounds that good!

The rest of the band — Christian McBride and Jeff Watts — is not too shabby, either.

Mid-Winter Musical Break

Plans are quickly coming together for a memorable program at the Portland Jazz Festival in Oregon in mid-February. Guest artists include Ornette Coleman, Cecil Taylor, the SFJAZZ Ensemble (with Dave Douglas, Joe Lovano & co.), the Bad Plus, Myra Melford and Tim Berne. And that's just the opening weekend!

Like the Guelph Jazz Festival, Portland includes a significant number of workshops and panel discussions, with this year's focus on celebrating and analyzing Coleman's remarkable half-century at centerstage.

Among the events will be an onstage conversation between Howard Mandel and Coleman, and panels featuring me, Mandel, Berne, Melford and others. Sounds like fun, no?

You can check out the plans here.

Music Is In The House

I didn't grow up in a church-going family; in fact, aside from a couple of curiosity-driven trips to Sunday school I didn't set foot in a church until I was deep into my teens. I don't know if that takes the sense of surprise away from concerts in churches (by this point, after numerous years of attending the Guelph Jazz Festival, I've definitely spent more time listening to music in churches than in listening to religious services) but the overblown setting of a particularly spectacular church can still add a dimension to certain musical performances.

Such was the case on Thursday night in Ottawa, when I caught John McLaughlin's electric quartet in a vaulted United church — reminiscent of San Francisco's Grace Cathedral on a smaller scale — and the following evening when I saw Patti Smith in Montreal's magnificent Eglise St-Jean-Baptiste. Both McLaughlin and Smith have woven spirituality into their music throughout their careers, and continue to call on some higher power to guide their art. Not surprisingly, both shows were uplifting: McLaughlin's through his band's soaring themes and lilting melodicism; Smith's through her devotion to wayward souls (quoting Ginsberg, Hendrix and Cobain among others) and her powerful call for audience members to speak out against oppression. Looking up at the opulent, rococo decorations of the cathedral, she said that brotherhood was the best message the Catholic Church had to offer. The two nuns seated in front of us would likely have agreed had they not already bailed (one had been nodding off) during "Smells Like Teen Spirit."

48 Hours In New York

From left: Moderator Howard Mandel, Stanley Crouch, Ben Ratliff, Alain Derbez, Seda Binbasgil, Gary Giddins, Christian Broecking, Alex Dutilh, Francis Davis, Kazue Yokoi, Gwen Ansell, Greg Tate.
Photo by Sy Johnson © Copyright 2007

It really shouldn’t surprise me that the highlight of the one-day international symposium of jazz journalism, held Saturday at the Columbia University School of Journalism, was a piece of film that’s almost 50 years old. Amid more than 20 presentations – including my own on the cultural, economic and esthetic imperatives shaping contemporary jazz musicians – the most captivating few moments were delivered courtesy of a Swedish television program featuring Sonny Rollins, drummer Eddie Jones and bassist Wilbur Ware. Rollins – looking impossibly young, fit and patient with his Swedish host – was a breath of unfiltered, unquestioned and unadulterated fresh air – among many barbed comments, snipes, sidetracks and self-serving commentaries.

It never fails at these cultural symposia, music trumps scholarship – and the rarer the better. Even the longest-toothed among us had never seen this Rollins clip, and Swedish jazz historian Lars Westin wasn’t about to let it leave his hands, despite entreaties from my new friend Alain Derbez, who's about to launch a jazz television program on Mexico’s public broadcaster.

Ah, hey, we’re jazz journalists: over-caffeinated, over-opinionated, and over-stimulated by 48 hours of hanging with our peers and related brethren at the first-ever of these globally focused gab fests. Hats off to George Lewis (who is as adept an arts/academic administrator as he was a trombonist) and my pal Howard Mandel for making this happen. The vibe at the opening night cocktail party and hang at Harlem’s famed Lenox Lounge was electric. As British jazz writer and philosophy professor Andy Hamilton told me, “I’ve never met so many people I know through their bylines or email addresses.” If you weren’t catching up with someone you hadn’t seen in months, you were comparing notes with someone whose life revolves around the same central love.

Sometime in January, when Lewis’ new jazz studies program at Columbia gets its official launch, the daylong proceedings will be available as a streaming videocast (I’ll post details here). Until then, if you’re interested in an overview of the proceedings, log into the online discussion we posted during the event at the Jazz Journalists Association site. If you have any questions or comments, feel free to add them: Mandel, myself and others will be monitoring the open discussion and adding comments, answers and second thoughts, as required.

An Online Global Community

Just a reminder that the Jazz Journalists Association will be hosting a live blog all day Saturday, September 29 from the Columbia University School of Journalism, the site of the first-ever international symposium on jazz journalism.

Hosted by Philadelphia-based journalist — and inveterate blogger — David Adler, the forum will allow participants around the world to get a taste of the discussions in New York and discuss some of the topics, all of which you can find listed here.

The Interactiview software we use on JazzHouse is pretty intuitive, and there's a help screen if you get stuck at any point. One tip: refresh your screen frequently. It's also best to use the overview screen, and then dip into the various threads as they catch your interest. If you want to get a sense for how it works, you can find some archived Interactiview discussions here.

I'm not sure yet (maybe he's not, either) how David's going to approach this, but knowing his keen imagination and far-ranging interests, I'm sure it will be fascinating.

This is a new venture for the JJA, so we'd love to hear your feedback after the event. You can send them to me: jhale -at- sympatico.ca.

Forecasting The Future

As noted in an earlier post, I'll be taking part next Saturday in a day-long symposium on jazz and globalization being staged at Columbia University's School of Journalism in Manhattan.

The panel I'll be on — along with Bill Shoemaker (top left, Washington, DC), Maxi Sickert (top right, Germany) and Cyril Moshkow (far left, Moscow) — will be addressing the topic: "Who are the new musicians of our time? What are the local and international traditions and aesthetics that inform their work? What kinds of aesthetic, economic, methodological, and cultural alignments are musicians pursuing in the 21st Century?" K. Leander Williams (near left) is the moderator.

As I've also posted, I'm in the middle of putting together a feature-length obituary of Joe Zawinul, and the more I listen to Zawinul's music and talk to people like drummer Peter Erskine and producer Bob Belden the more it's clear that Zawinul could really serve as the model for the modern jazz musician of the world. Many of the people who seem to be changing the traditional definition of a jazz musician — and I would include people like Vijay Iyer, Myra Melford, Cuong Vu, Dave Douglas, Gordon Grdina and John Hollenbeck in this category — are coming from backgrounds other than the standard music institutions and often pursuing musical careers only after other intellectual interests. Their music, like Zawinul's, reflects their diversity of backgrounds and interests, and they are finding new avenues to get their music heard.

Anyway, lots to think about and synthesize into a presentation for next week.

Plans are firming up to have a live webcast of the symposium, which features a wide range of jazz journalists from around the world, and to open the proceedings up to a broad audience through a live blog that Philadelphia-based writer David Adler will be maintaining on the Jazz Journalists Association website. Tune in!

Now Spinning

The clear highlight of the recent Guelph Jazz Festival was a mid-afternoon performance by Trio M — a collective featuring Myra Melford, Mark Dresser and Matt Wilson — no small feat in a lineup that also featured Anthony Braxton and Liberation Music Orchestra.

The concert was an energetic display of Melford's under-valued and little recognized strength as a Chicago-bred blues player, and Dresser and Wilson goosed her along enthusiastically until the three players were cracking up onstage at the creative sparks that were flying.

The trio's new CD — just out on Cryptogramophone — is a more considered affair, but no less entertaining. While it misses some of the electricity of the live Guelph performance, the communication between the three is very strong, and the compositions — three by Melford and two each by Dresser and Wilson — are thorny and compelling.

Joe Zawinul

My first thought on hearing about Joe Zawinul's unexpected death this morning was that he had always seemed too tough to die — sort of the jazz version of Jack Palance or Charles Bronson. Zawinul could've been a great boxer; he had that attitude of never backing down, and his bristling ego was cut with just enough intelligence (to say nothing of talent) to make you forgive him any boast.

Despite the earlier demise of Michael Brecker, Zawinul's death seems to hit harder for those of us who came of age in the jazz-rock fusion era.

DownBeat has assigned Zawinul's obituary to me, so I'll be listening and thinking about him for the next couple of weeks, and remembering how many hours I've spent in his musical company over the years.

More on Guelph?

Due to a dodgy Internet connection at my hotel, it was difficult to post anything in a timely manner. Hopefully, I'll get caught up on some reflections later this week. Suffice to say, outstanding shows by Myra Melford's Trio M (with Mark Dresser and Matt Wilson) and Anthony Braxton's Diamond Curtain Wall Trio +1.

Guelph Jazz Festival

Guelph is one festival that challenges you in many ways: it occurs in what is usually the most time-challenged weeks of the year; it demands that you stay up late and get up early; and most significantly, it hurls ideas at you.

After a late night catching up with friends and listening to Rob Manzurek’s Exploding Star Orchestra and the Toronto collective Do Make Say Think, it was demanding to hear a 9 a.m. keynote address by Anthony Braxton. One feared a dense, frustrating presentation like the one Ornette Coleman delivered at last winter’s IAJE; instead, what was delivered was a fascinating lecture that crystallized 30 years of listening to Braxton’s music into total clarity. Not only did it clarify a lot of Braxton’s unique musical nomenclature and language, but it clarified – reinforced, really – the fact that Braxton’s humanity crackles through everything he puts his hand to.

It Must Be Fall

I'll be on assignment at the Guelph Jazz Festival this week.

Watch for some reports on Anthony Braxton, Charlie Haden's Liberation Music Orchestra, William Parker, Myra Melford and others.

Now Spinning

The co-operative trio Jewels and Binoculars (Michael Moore, Lindsey Horner, Michael Vatcher) has stretched their interest in the music of Bob Dylan further than anyone probably thought possible. They keep hitting on key components of Dylan's tunes — finding attractive riffs or telling turns of phrase to emphasize. They also dig deep into the catalogue, finding obscure pieces like "Jack-a-Roe" and "Cold Irons Bound" to place alongside tunes that anyone could hum, like "If You See Her, Say Hello" and "Gates Of Eden."

It all drives me back to Dylan's best single package of work, which I had on cassette for years but just recently got on CD. The jewels keep popping to the surface, but no matter how many times you listen, "Blind Willie McTell" always shines. Happy to see that Jewels and Binoculars love it too.