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.

Zwerin Still Alive & Well

I'm thrilled to see that my buddy Mike Zwerin, Bloomberg News' jazz columnist, is out of hospital and still smiling.

Columbia University Jazz Symposium

As noted in an earlier post, I'll be part of a day-long symposium on globalism and jazz at Columbia University's School of Journalism in New York City on Saturday, September 29. Others featured throughout the day include Gary Giddins, Greg Tate, Francis Davis, Howard Mandel and Stanley Crouch, all from the U.S., and a raft of international jazz journalists, including fellow Canadian Ashante Infantry from The Toronto Star.

The symposium is part of a festival of music and jazz films sponsored by Columbia's jazz studies program and the community of Harlem, among others. You can get more details here.

Drop by if you're in the NYC area.

The Jazz Journalists Association will also be blogging live from the symposium, and I'll post more details on that as they develop.

A Bad August

What a terrible month it has been for jazz creators and commentators of the first order.

First it was Art Davis, Max Roach and Herb Pomeroy, and now word has arrived of the death of British journalist Richard Cook, following a brief and very secret battle with cancer. Cook, probably best known for the series of Penguin guides he co-wrote with his friend Brian Morton, was only 50 years old.

Now Spinning

I thought I would introduce a new, ongoing section to catalogue what I'm currently listening to, any comments, and sometimes why.

Two drummers have my attention right now (perhaps because I'm missing Max Roach so damn much):

John Hollenbeck's new Claudia Quintet CD, For, on Cuneiform, because anything John does is worth hearing, and a friend just reminded me what a brilliant and original composer John is. So far I'm loving it.

Paul Motian's new live CD featuring his Trio 2000 with Greg Osby and Masabumi Kikuchi added. Motian's touch is just so great.

An Ear Hiatus

My vacation took me to Canada's east coast, and travelling with my aged parents meant that my wife and I didn't indulge in much music -- apart from catching a nice accordion duo at the famous Ship Pub in St. John's and a great, raucous reggae/ska band that my daughter loves.

I haven't gone this long without music in many, many years, and it creates an interesting effect that I relate to one of those palette-cleansing thimblefuls of sorbet you get at some restaurants. Everything sounds cleaner, deeper.

Thus refreshed, it's back into the fray. It promises to be an interesting fall, with a terrific lineup at the Guelph Jazz Festival, an international conference on jazz journalism at Columbia University, and an Ottawa gig (his first, I think) by John McLaughlin.

There's A Sign Upon My Door

No new posts until after August 15.

Like Louis sang to Papa Bing: "Gone fishing, by a shady, wade-y pool."

Dog Days

The weeks after the initial blast of jazz festivals in June and early July are always a bit of down time for me. The only live music I've seen is George Clinton & The P-Funk All-Stars, by special request of my younger daughter. That was a lot of fun, almost as much for the audience of 20,000+ as the assembled Clinton crew. The funk was thick, but I couldn't help wishing for a rhythm section as tight as Miles' circa 1972. Always the critic, even on holiday!

I've been enjoying Maria Schneider's new CD in preparation for a DownBeat review, and just today dug into the new Nostalgia 77 release for the same reason. On the first couple of spins, I thought it lived up to the promise of "Portishead meets Charles Mingus." That was while driving, though; it might come in for harder criticism when I sit down with it in earnest tomorrow.

Closing The Curtains On Two Jazz Venues

The end of the main batch of Canada’s jazz festivals also marks the last festival shows in two of the country’s most-venerated rooms: the Vancouver East Cultural Centre (“the Cultch” to one and all) and Montreal’s Spectrum. Both are slated to close this fall – the Cultch for major, much-needed, renovations; the Spectrum for demolition.

While neither venue has attained the kind of shrine-like status that the Village Vanguard, The Five Spot or Birdland hold, each has generated its own share of memories among jazz fans, and raise the issue of what gives a musical venue its character.

Personally, I never cared much for The Spectrum as a listening room, though I’ve heard some great sets by the Art Ensemble of Chicago, James Carter with D.D. Jackson and Masada there. Outside of the jazz realm, I also recall a show by Devo – their first performance outside the U.S. – when the buzz in the room was as tangible as any I’ve ever felt. What the place always had for me was a great funky vibe, owing to its roots in the early ‘50s, when Montreal was a hotbed for nightclubs and the neighbourhood on eastern Ste. Catherine Street was really marginal. The terraced sections in the club remind me of photographs I’ve seen of the classic Manhattan clubs from Damon Runyon’s day.

My experience with the Cultch is much briefer, dating only to 2003, but it immediately won a place in my heart because it is so definitively West Coast without even trying. First, there’s its location up the hill from the cross-cultural buffet that is Commercial Drive. Then, there’s the hip, little snack bar with great coffee and local artisan beers, and the ability to order your intermission drinks before the show starts. The portico’ed entrance and side parking lot invite patrons outside to chat and critique opening sets. And all that says nothing about the sheer intimacy of the performing space itself, with its cozy, U-shaped balcony and small stage. Even the bad shows I’ve seen there – are you listening In The Country? – have felt personal if nothing else. Put a big group, like the Dedication Orchestra, in there and the place literally fills with sound, creating an unforgettable experience.

I haven’t heard about what the new Cultch will look like, though John Orysik tells me the renovation will be substantial (the place will be closed for two years). Hopefully, it will retain its best qualities while adding things like modern washrooms and some type of air conditioning.

None of this is to say that jazz rooms have to be decades old to have that certain something. The Fourth Stage at the National Arts Centre here in Ottawa has a great vibe, terrific sightlines, first-rate sound and good bar service. Although the building is now 40 years old, the venue is less than a decade old and it’s wired with a state-of-the-art fibre optics system for broadband simulcasting. Iridium in Times Square manages to re-create that classic New York jazz bar feel without resorting to the faux-nostalgia that permeates so many other “attractions” in the area. On the other hand, The Knitting Factory, despite being wired for the Information Age, never really did it for me. Unless you score one of the four good seats in the balcony of the main room, watching music being made there has always been somewhat uncomfortable.

Here’s hoping that festival organizers in Vancouver and Montreal can find substitutes for what they’ve lost. Like all good things, they’ll probably only know what they’re looking for when they’ve found it.

JJA Awards

While I was in Vancouver my colleagues at the Jazz Journalists Association were feting the winners of our annual music and media awards.

For a full list of winners, check out the JJA site.

Here's Maria Schneider accepting her award for Arranger of the Year. The photo is by Enid Farber.

Day & Night

The weekend found me at two ends of the musician/audience relationship spectrum.

First, drummer Matt Wilson, as generous a performer as you’ll find anywhere. Despite a horrendous travel day that began before dawn for a performance that ended after midnight, Wilson was both warm and witty as he led his recently re-constituted Arts & Crafts quartet at Ottawa’s National Arts Centre. Paraphrasing Phil Woods, Wilson said: “You don’t get paid to play; you get paid to get there. My hourly rate is pretty low today.”

Flash forward less than 24 hours and listen to Keith Jarrett threaten to skip an encore after several audience members at Montreal’s Place des Arts had the temerity to take his photograph as his trio took their bows. After cussing out the photographers, he further ingratiated himself by dumping on the city’s dominant French-language media. No word on whether he threw the mattress out of his five-star hotel room and ordered a new $2,000 one in, as he did during the Toronto stop on his tour.