Innholdsfortegnelse for October 2020 i JazzTimes

Exclusive Content Colin Fleming gives us a magical-realist short story, “The Day Louis Armstrong Lost His Color,” set in the mid-1930s with cameo appearances from Josh Gibson and the Bride of Frankenstein, while Michael J. West picks 10 essential Andrew Hill tracks in our latest JazzTimes 10. Plus full-length obituaries for Annie Ross, Helen Jones Woods, and Joe Segal. JT Blog In February 2021, Entertainment Cruise Productions—the producer of both the Jazz Cruise and the Smooth Jazz Cruise—is “docking” on the shores of Las Vegas to present two weeklong programs of music at the Encore Las Vegas Resort Theater, “Jazz: Live in Las Vegas” (Feb. 21-26) and “The Smooth Jazz Cruise Live in Las Vegas” (Feb. 28-March 5). Featured artists will include Cyrille Aimée, Christian McBride, George Benson, and Dave…

Though 18 Monologues Élastiques is, technically speaking, a solo album, it’s evident from the outset that Samuel Blaser was not alone during its recording. It opens with the sound of echoing footsteps, and Blaser’s trombone enters only after several seconds, a distant echo from somewhere far off. The steps quicken as the sound draws closer, making the track, “Appearance,” an act of discovery rather than a simple improvisation. It’s an ideal entry point for listeners, drawing them in along with their mysterious guide—who, it turns out, is Blaser’s semi-silent partner in the project, producer and sound designer Martin Ruch. The recording itself became an act of literal exploration for the pair, who spent nights wandering the hallways and studios of East Berlin’s largely abandoned Funkhaus Nalepastraße. Once the largest radio…

Having moved back to his native Oakland in 2016, Ambrose Akinmusire found himself in a relatively ideal position to weather a quarantine. Speaking over the phone this summer during the height of the COVID pandemic, the trumpeter and composer described an urban oasis: fruit trees, a spice and vegetable garden, and a meditative respite from the cramped and hectic life he’d left behind in New York City. He’d already opted for a solitary lifestyle with his family before one was imposed on him. “There’s something about living in the Bay Area that prepared me for this a little more than New York would have,” Akinmusire noted. “I’ve been trying to get to a point where I’m completely self-sufficient in everything I do—musically, but also as a human. I don’t know…

Visit your local Best Buy, and you’ll get the idea that traditional loudspeakers are all but gone, replaced by wireless models from Sonos, Bose, Sony, and others. Visit a hi-fi show, and you’ll get the idea that the loudspeaker is in its golden age. As you move from demo room to demo room, you’ll find speakers that stretch above the height of the average human—with some priced beyond the cost of the average American home. Although these extreme speakers have been around for decades, they started to become more common around the late ’00s, when average audiophiles were strapped for cash and high-end audio companies turned their attention to wealthy buyers who weren’t so affected by the Great Recession. Soon, it seemed like a company had to have a speaker…

IMMANUEL WILKINS Omega Blue Note As this review is being written, the streets of America are teeming with people of all races protesting the police killings of George Floyd and Rayshard Brooks and proclaiming that Black Lives Matter. Immanuel Wilkins made Omega before those deaths occurred, but he did not lack for other examples from the nightmare of America’s racial history. Two tracks subtitled “An American Tradition” are “Ferguson” and “Mary Turner.” Turner was eight months pregnant when she was lynched, upside down, in Georgia in 1918. Such subject matter is a lot to take on for a 22-year-old alto saxophone player. Wilkins is ready. Jason Moran, who produced Omega, says something true: “Immanuel … blends traditions in a way that only his generation knows how to do.” Wilkins is…

In 2016, the Colorado-based tenor saxophonist Dominic Lalli stood onstage at Lollapalooza, playing thick, funky lines with his electronic-music act Big Gigantic. Red Hot Chili Peppers played the same night; Radiohead performed the evening prior. Most jazz musicians do not find themselves in this position. But Lalli is nothing if not versed in the ways of swing, and it shows on A Blind Man’s Blue, the first jazz LP from the saxophonist. Released in July and featuring heavyweights like drummer Rudy Royston and trumpeter Ron Miles, the focused but ebullient album stretches from Gershwin and Miles Davis to Lalli’s own intense originals. It’s all a million miles from the sound of Big Gigantic, but there are many routes to the same destination. Recorded roughly a decade ago with an estimable…

The first thing you hear is a bright, asymmetrical, unison melody that’s repeated enough times to stay in your head. Then, suddenly, it’s tempered by a slinky hip-hop groove that grounds an equally decisive, opposing melodic line. “Lost Kingdoms,” the opening song on saxophonist and bandleader Nubya Garcia’s 2017 debut EP Nubya’s 5ive, is the rare jazz composition without words that you can still sing along to. Written, played, and recorded with superlative clarity and ease, “Kingdoms” has the punch of a pop single without any creative compromise. Its heft is obvious any time Garcia plays it live, as she did last year at New York’s (Le) Poisson Rouge while opening for Pharoah Sanders and Gary Bartz. Unlike the vast majority of contemporary jazz musicians, she could close her set…

Many jazz artists have written music for large ensembles, from nonets all the way up to big bands of 16 pieces or more. But precious few have written for classical orchestras, either chamber or full-scale. We spoke with three noted jazz players who’ve taken that leap to learn a few of their tricks of the trade. John Clayton was trained as a classical bassist and has written numerous works for orchestras, including most recently Home, a piece inspired by Dvorák’s New World Symphony and composed for the Cleveland Orchestra. He advises that anyone looking to write an orchestral piece should start basic. “I’ve learned the importance of not starting with the roof,” Clayton says. “Build a foundation first. If you’re going to write an orchestra piece, don’t start with an…

For an album steeped in flighty Afrofuturism, spiky syncopation, and angular everything-else, Swirling—the first new full-length from the Sun Ra Arkestra since 1999—is gleefully set in its ways. It magically makes the past present, recalling the late Ra’s time in Fletcher Henderson’s band in the 1940s as well as his teasing avant-garde efforts of the late ’50s and mid-’70s. Equally represented, for the first time on record, are longtime leader and alto saxophonist Marshall Allen’s twitchy neo-traditionalist interpretive skills. Combined with the Arkestra’s legendarily spacey, spiritual, and sensual way with a song, this makes Swirling free, warm, and familiar; all but two of its tracks come from the Ra playbook. Yet it has an alluring adventurousness not found on the Arkestra’s last new album, A Song for the Sun, both…

To say that this past spring didn’t exactly flower for the jazz community would be a gross understatement. With the quarantine and shuttering of venues, musical plans simply withered away. For trombonist Marshall Gilkes, who was set to embark on a busy touring season, the situation birthed a seriously altered reality. “I was going to be gone more in this period than ever before in my life,” he reveals. Gilkes’ March-to-July plans had included tours with Makoto Ozone, Maria Schneider, the Vanguard Jazz Orchestra, and trombone quartet Slide Monsters, plus some playing with the Brass Band of Battle Creek and an international assortment of educational residencies in cities like Philadelphia, Calgary, and Osaka. All of it was wiped off the calendar, along with recording sessions in April for Gilkes’ first…

In the wake of Jimmy Smith’s breakout success, the Hammond B-3 roster circa 1960 included Jack McDuff, Jimmy McGriff, Don Patterson, Baby Face Willette, Freddie Roach, and Shirley Scott. Because these keyboard artists were important to the working-class Black community, making music steeped in the blues and suitable for dancing, their monumental contribution to American culture was often dismissed as “grits ’n’ gravy” and remains somewhat ignored in the jazz history textbooks. A native of Newark, New Jersey, Larry Young started his career aligned with the Smith aesthetic but soon took the organ into the contemporary modal territory mapped out by John Coltrane and McCoy Tyner. A special synergy occurred when he started mentoring a slightly younger trumpet player from his hometown, Woody Shaw. “Larry Young was one of the…

“The roughest thing is my mom,” Maria Schneider says over the phone on a recent summer morning, answering the first question of almost every conversation in the COVID-19 era: How are you holding up? The New York-based composer/conductor has been in grateful, high gear, safe and healthy at her country home while preparing the release of a new two-record set by the Maria Schneider Orchestra, Data Lords. But Schneider, who grew up in the small farming town of Windom, Minnesota, misses her mother, who’s turning 96 in Minneapolis, “in a place where nobody can visit her because they’re protecting people. “And that’s good,” Schneider goes on. “But I had this dream where I was in a hotel trying to see her and the elevator went to a negative-50th floor and…