Innholdsfortegnelse for July/August 2019 i JazzTimes

Exclusive Content In our biweekly JazzTimes 10, Colin Fleming examines 10 great jazz movies and Michael J. West focuses on 10 late Duke Ellington masterpieces. Plus live reviews, album reviews, photo galleries, and much more. JT Blog For its 50th anniversary, the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival kept on rolling without the Stones. In her report for JT, Alison Fensterstock reaches back into Jazz Fest’s history to explain its significance now—and the ground it’s staking out between past and future. Audio & Video An exclusive premiere of the Anat Cohen Tentet’s “Milonga del Angel,” video from the 2019 Jazz Congress, and more.…

Brandon Goldberg’s YouTube channel is filled with videos of the young piano phenom performing publicly with preternatural poise and displaying jaw-dropping musical skill. There’s an eight-year-old Goldberg, outfitted in a pint-sized tuxedo, performing Haydn’s Piano Concerto No. 11 with the South Florida Youth Symphony. A nine-year-old Goldberg jamming with Monty Alexander. An 11-year-old Goldberg sitting in with Arturo Sandoval. He’s dazzled audiences on the TV show Little Big Shots and spoken and played at TEDx Talks, all before turning 10. His star clearly on the ascent, Goldberg, now 13, has released his debut album, Let’s Play! (Brandon Goldberg Music). It’s a trio recording of standards and Goldberg originals that also features bassist Ben Wolfe and drummer Donald Edwards, with saxophonist Marcus Strickland guesting on two tracks. Let’s Play! introduces the…

Although the Enja label had more room for hard-swinging jazz of the old school than ECM did, producers Matthias Winckelmann and Horst Weber were undoubtedly inspired by the success of Manfred Eicher’s label. Both Enja and ECM were German record companies documenting ’70s innovation under a mysterious acronym; both began their catalog with a release by Mal Waldron. Shortly after Eicher produced the first albums by John Abercrombie (Timeless, recorded 1974) and Pat Metheny (Bright Size Life, recorded 1975), Winckelmann and Weber put out the first album by John Scofield: Live, a 1977 gig tape with Richie Beirach, George Mraz, and Joe LaBarbera. That was followed by a studio date with Hal Galper, Stafford James, and Adam Nussbaum (Rough House, recorded 1978). These early Scofield discs with piano are fun…

When Ron Jackson showed up for his regular lesson at the home studio of Bucky Pizzarelli one day about five years ago, he received some unexpected input from the venerated jazz guitarist: “Bucky told me, ‘You know, there’s not really anything more I can teach you.’ That was a good boost for my ego, but of course I’m always learning more about the seven-string guitar.” At 55, Jackson is a master of the seven-string, which puts him in the ranks of a select few, including Pizzarelli and his son John, George Van Eps, Howard Alden, and Steve Herberman. The instrument’s extended range and harmonic possibilities are on brilliant display on Jackson’s latest album, Standards and Other Songs (Roni Music), a trio outing with bassist Nathan Brown and drummer Darrell Green,…

On April 28, for the third year in a row, the Gilded Age splendor of New York City’s Players Club—a National Historic Landmark founded by actor Edwin Booth in 1888—provided a fitting backdrop for the Gotham Jazz Festival, which focuses on jazz of a decidedly retro bent. More than a hundred musicians took part in the day-long event, including trumpeter Bria Skonberg, pianist Ehud Asherie, saxophonist/vocalist Camille Thurman, pianist/vocalist Champian Fulton, bassist/vocalist Nicki Parrott, and drummer Shirazette Tinnin. Photographer ALAN NAHIGIAN was there from the festival’s opening at noon on Saturday right into the closing jam session led by Dennis Lichtman and Mona’s Hot Four, which lasted into the wee hours of Sunday morning; here are just a few of the images he captured there.…

It was quite a coincidence. Having recently finished reading through Mark Stryker’s piece about Kenny Burrell for this issue—a slightly modified version of the chapter on Burrell in Stryker’s new book, Jazz from Detroit—I felt moved to put on a couple of classics by the guitar great. First Midnight Blue, then A Night at the Vanguard. As Burrell, Richard Davis, and Roy Haynes eased into their sly take on “Just a-Sittin’ and a-Rockin’” from the latter album, I did what one does far too often in 2019 (and by “one” I mean me): I logged onto Facebook. And there at the top of my feed was news about … Kenny Burrell. Who needed my help. What was this? A Zuckerbergian advertising algorithm interacting with my stereo? No, as it turned…

Mike Baggetta has been on a high. The multifaceted guitarist recently completed a whirlwind 10-day tour in support of Wall of Flowers (Big Ego), his out-there album with punk bassist Mike Watt and legendary session drummer Jim Keltner. He capped off the cross-country jaunt at the New York club Coney Island Baby by joining forces with fellow guitarist Ava Mendoza and ripping through an earth-scorching cover of the Stooges’ “Funhouse.” But for Baggetta, the chance to perform live versions of songs from Watt’s punk-rock opera, 1997’s Contemplating the Engine Room, has been even more monumental. That sprawling opus, a deeply autobiographical song cycle connecting Watt’s time in ’80s punk trio the Minutemen to his father’s life in the Navy, has had a lasting effect on the guitarist. “Engine Room was…

Doris Day, a singer and actress who began her career as a vocalist with World War II-era big bands before becoming a pop star and cinematic icon, died May 13 at her home in Carmel Valley, Calif. She was 97. Born Doris Mary Ann Kappelhoff in Cincinnati, Ohio, Day sang with a quick succession of bands in 1939 and 1940 before being hired by Les Brown and His Band of Renown for a six-year tenure that yielded seven Top 10 hits, including the 1945 No. 1 “Sentimental Journey.” In 1948, she established herself in Hollywood with a role in the movie Romance on the High Seas; megastardom would follow in the ’50s with Love Me or Leave Me (1955) and Alfred Hitchcock’s The Man Who Knew Too Much (1956), which…

Simba Baumgartner, Django Reinhardt’s great-grandson, is just 22, but he has already proven himself an adept practitioner of Gypsy jazz, the indelible style pioneered by Reinhardt in the 1930s. Baumgartner’s debut album, Les Yeux Noir (Arte Boreal), is a faithful tribute to Reinhardt made up entirely of songs he recorded in his relatively short lifetime, including “Blues Clair,” “Dark Eyes,” and “I Can’t Give You Anything but Love.” Baumgartner began playing guitar at age four, and he regards his great-grandfather’s music as almost a cultural heirloom. He resides with his family in the small French town of Samois-sur-Seine, where Reinhardt died, and lives a traditional Gypsy lifestyle. He speaks only French. He does not go to school, and cannot read or write. He does not listen to a lot of…

Kenny Burrell had been mulling a concept record focused on the blues for about a year before entering engineer Rudy Van Gelder’s studio in Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey, on January 8, 1963. At 31, the Detroit-born guitarist envisioned an LP that would sustain a moody, after-hours expression with relaxed tempos and an intensity that simmered rather than boiled. Burrell wrote all the music, save the Don Redman chestnut “Gee Baby Ain’t I Good to You.” The guitarist channels the spirit of the Black Bottom neighborhood of his youth, where the blues encompassed not just one idiom but many, each with a different avatar— Basie, Ellington, Charlie Parker, John Lee Hooker, T-Bone Walker. Burrell even sketched a potential cover design. It featured the title Midnight Blue rendered in block letters with…

The late Bernie McGann, a hugely influential figure in the history of Australian jazz, studied and played in New York, collaborated with Freddie Hubbard, Sonny Stitt, Dave Liebman and others, and toured extensively. But he also enjoyed a life of solace in a small picturesque coastal town south of Sydney, working as a postman and practicing his saxophone in the meditative surroundings of the bush. McGann’s history can be taken as metaphor writ large: Artistic brilliance against gorgeous isolation seems an overarching theme of Australia’s century-deep jazz heritage, which burgeoned through a dance- and swing-band craze, developed an enduring early-jazz tradition, and has branched out into all varieties of modernism. “We’re on an island in the South Pacific,” the trumpeter and multi-instrumentalist James Morrison pointed out to me late in…

For nearly 30 years, Dave Stryker has been pretty much inseparable from his Gibson ES-347s. “I saw Marvin Horne playing one at the Village Vanguard with Elvin Jones,” he explained while touring to promote his latest release, Eight Track III (Strikezone), on which he covers an assortment of ’70s pop tunes with the help of organist Jared Gold, vibraphonist Stefon Harris, and drummer McClenty Hunter. “I liked Marvin’s sound. Then I saw what would become my main guitar, a tobacco sunburst 1980 ES-347, hanging on the wall at a guitar store in Brooklyn. I traded my ES-335 for it.” Known for his rich tone, textured chording, and articulate yet soulful solos, Stryker is often asked about his gear after shows. Yet he still chuckles over the query he hears almost…

It’s tempting to describe Claudia Villela as a musician’s musician, considering that some of her most ardent fans and supporters are also her most illustrious colleagues; Pat Metheny has sung Villela’s praises, as have Kenny Werner, Vitor Gonçalves, Béla Fleck, and Jaques Morelenbaum. But it’s a double-edged superlative that implies an artist is better appreciated by her peers than regular listeners, which isn’t the case at all with Villela. The Brazilian-born vocalist, pianist, percussionist, and composer makes music of rare sophistication and beauty, and it’s as a performer that her transcendent gifts are most manifest, whether she’s spinning a new piece on stage with a fellow improviser or elaborating on an intricate setting for her poetic lyrics in Portuguese. “You give her any musical idea, and Claudia completes it in…

“This whole venture is based on friendship and synergy,” says Todd Barkan, jazz impresario and co-owner of Keystone Korner Baltimore, which opened on April 30—International Jazz Day. Barkan has partnered with high-profile restaurateur Robert Wiedmaier to bring this jazz club/restaurant to Baltimore, which hasn’t had a truly national-level jazz venue since the D.C.-based Blues Alley shut down its location there in 1990. For Barkan, the wait has been about as long. He bought the original Keystone Korner in San Francisco in 1972 for $12,500 and turned the former blues bar into one of the premier jazz clubs of its time, playing host to legends such as Miles Davis, Art Blakey, Stan Getz, and Betty Carter. The club, which often teetered on financial collapse, eventually closed in 1983. Since that time…

Michael Gregory Jackson is moving to California. “I’m ready for a change,” he says. “I’ve been living on the coast of Maine, a beautiful place, but warm weather is calling.” Not that he’s settled on a specific locale. “We’re scouting the warmest, sunniest parts of the Bay Area and seeing what we can find. We’ll give it six months; if it works out we’ll stay, if it doesn’t we’ll move on to something else.” Such restlessness is par for the course with Jackson: Musically he can’t stay in one place for too long either. The guitarist, vocalist, and composer made his mark in New York’s avant-jazz loft scene of the 1970s. Even that experimental environment, though, was too confining. After some excursions into new-wave rock and elsewhere, Jackson spent much…

Julian Lage is on his own today. In the largest of four practice spaces—and the only one with a proper soundstage—at a rehearsal facility near his Brooklyn home, the 31-year-old guitarist has come to woodshed a bit, a lone, lithe figure in an expansive room built to handle a full production rehearsal. Perhaps the scale is fitting, metaphorically speaking. For the sheer scope of Lage’s artistic output over the last couple of decades on both acoustic and electric guitar, including collaborations with avant-garde svengali John Zorn, sonic anarchist and Wilco guitarist Nels Cline, Punch Brothers bluegrass badass Chris Eldridge, pianist Fred Hersch, and jazz-noir drummer Kenny Wollesen, would seem to defy any conventional boundaries of style. Even the term “virtuoso”—no less reductive than Lage’s previous public designation, “child prodigy”—seems too…

Music’s always going to have occasional throwbacks—who would have expected that in 2019 we’d be seeing a renaissance in tubas and tenor guitars? In the related field of high-end audio, though, the throwback may soon become the norm. Many audiophiles are rejecting modern amplifiers that deliver hundreds of watts of power, instead embracing so-called “flea-watt” amps with power ratings of 10 watts per channel or less. Some of these low-powered amps employ technology that was already considered outdated when Sonny Rollins cut his first album. Such amps used to be novelties, but I’d estimate that about a quarter of the demo rooms at most audio shows now feature flea-watt amps. Can Less Be More? Why are so many audiophiles forsaking so much power? It’s because of the general belief that…

MELISSA ALDANA Visions Motéma Chilean tenor saxophonist Melissa Aldana invokes the Mexican artist Frida Kahlo as the inspiration for Visions, which was originally commissioned as a suite, with its world premiere at Jazz Gallery last June. The disc showcases a stellar quintet, featuring pianist Sam Harris, bassist Pablo Menares, drummer Tommy Crane, and vibraphonist Joel Ross, on board for all but three of the 11 tracks. (Aldana had led a chordless trio on her past two records and hadn’t used a pianist since her 2010 debut.) Aldana has always been a precocious player and composer—she won the 2013 Monk Competition at age 24—who enjoys incorporating into her work complex harmonies and flowing changes in mood and tone. Kahlo’s example took on added resonance as Aldana’s research revealed how much pain…