Innholdsfortegnelse for January/February 2021 i JazzTimes

Kassa Overall, the drummer/rapper/producer whose work pushes the limits of any working definition of jazz, knows what you think of him. “Sometimes people assume, ‘Oh, he’s just throwing 808s on shit and disrespecting Miles Davis,’” he says with characteristic humor. But his argument—his mission—is a serious one, and one that he’s not sure is served by the way it’s often described. His latest album, I Think I’m Good, which was released on Brownswood in 2020, has a song on Apple Music’s “On the Corner” playlist, named for Davis’ infamous fusion album; his previous one, Go Get Ice Cream and Listen to Jazz, is featured on Spotify’s “Jazz Rap.” “I feel like some of the best aspects of my music, people don’t notice because they’re thinking about it with a certain…

1 Thelonious Monk Palo Alto (Impulse!/Sony) Documenting one of the unlikeliest gigs in Monk’s career (possible alternate title: High School Thelonious), this recording sat in a box for more than five decades. That its high-spirited swing can now be heard by all of us is one of the few blessings of 2020. As I wrote in JT’s September issue, this is one of the best live Monk recordings available, maybe even the best, shining a bright light on his perennially underrated mid-’60s quartet. M.R. 2. Art Blakey & the Jazz Messengers Just Coolin’ (Blue Note) A previously unreleased album recorded in 1959 at Rudy Van Gelder’s studio, this session has the legendary drummer employing the superstar frontline of trumpeter Lee Morgan and saxophonist Hank Mobley, pianist Bobby Timmons, and bassist…

@ Bremen 1964 & 1975 Sunnyside Recent years have been banner ones for newly discovered recordings of classic jazz greats, Charles Mingus included … but the 4-disc @ Bremen 1964 & 1975 isn’t one of those. Both these concerts have circulated for decades on pirate releases (especially the 1964 performance, from that spring’s storied European tour). This, though, is both the first legitimate release of the concerts, and the first to be mastered from the original source recording. You may know the music, but do you know it without fifth-generation tape hiss? (That said, the fidelity is still less than optimal.) If you don’t know the music, you should. The bassist/composer’s 1964 sextet was unimpeachable: drummer Dannie Richmond, pianist Jaki Byard, trumpeter Johnny Coles, tenor saxophonist Clifford Jordan, and altoist/bass…

Like a lot of people right now, I’m grieving the loss of one of New York’s most popular jazz clubs, the Jazz Standard, which announced on December 2 that it would not be reopening in the basement location it had occupied for 23 years on East 27th Street, due to the COVID-19 pandemic and deadlocked rent negotiations with its landlord. Not only did I see many a great gig in that room, but my wife and I held our wedding rehearsal dinner in the restaurant upstairs (before it was taken over by Danny Meyer’s barbecue palace Blue Smoke). And yet, as I scanned various social media in the days following this sad news, I realized that I wasn’t nearly as devastated by it as many of my friends and colleagues…

Performing with others, for in-the-flesh listeners in real time, requires one to think like an architect, and like a psychologist too. That, at least, is how New Orleans pianist and composer Lawrence Sieberth explains his approach to making music. “Being a musician is so much more than being a musician—it’s being a person that’s part of a system, a psychologist,” Sieberth says by phone, on a November evening a few days before his first gig since the March shutdowns; like most musicians, he’s largely stayed close to home during the down time. “But you’re not trying to fix anything. You’re just trying to acknowledge and interpret and integrate. “I’m a big believer in systems theory,” he says. “It’s important to understand the bigger picture. I was trained to be an…

Toshinori Kondo, a Japanese trumpeter who firmly established himself in the avant-garde and fusion scenes of the 1970s and ’80s, died in Kawasaki, Japan on Oct. 17. He was 71. Following a few years in the ensemble of free-jazz pianist Yosuke Yamashita, Kondo moved to New York in 1978, becoming a frequent collaborator with the likes of Bill Laswell, John Zorn, Fred Frith, and Peter Brötzmann; he also appears on Herbie Hancock’s 1983 album Future Shock. The following year he formed the band Kondo IMA, in which he delved deeper into electronic music, which continued to fascinate him for the rest of his life. Viola Smith, one of the first women to play drums professionally, died of Alzheimer’s disease on Oct. 21 at her home in Costa Mesa, Calif. She…

“I don’t listen to my own music,” Sonny Rollins said in October from his Woodstock home, chewing a Ricola cough drop as he got ready to reflect back on a lot of it. The one exception is if it comes on the radio he often has playing in the background. Yet he did listen to and approve of Rollins in Holland, the recently released discovery from Resonance Records in partnership with the Dutch Jazz Archive. The album unearths more than two electrifying hours of music recorded live and in the studio in the Netherlands in May 1967 with drummer Han Bennink and bassist Ruud Jacobs. (Full disclosure: I wrote a 9,000-word essay for the album booklet that covers the live and studio sessions in detail.) On those recordings, Sonny played…

Backbone Outside In Ever wonder why studio dates so rarely capture the casual vibe of a late-night hit? Perhaps it’s the pressure, with the clock ticking away, or maybe it’s the circumstances surrounding a manufactured meeting set against sterile scenery. There are simply too many potential factors to pinpoint the exact cause(s). The studio is the studio and the stage is the stage. But every so often you come across a recording that manages to blur those lines to good effect. The debut from Mariel Bildsten, a rising-star trombonist who’s already turned heads with her playing in Arturo O’Farrill’s Afro Latin Jazz Orchestra, politically charged collective Brass Against, and broad-minded forró-funk outfit Nation Beat, really bucks the odds. And that success, while obviously linked to the musicians, likely has a…

The lead video for Cuban pianist Harold López-Nussa’s latest album, Te Lo Dije, is an out-of-character dazzler. As López-Nussa works through a tune in the studio, the notes on his sheet music morph into dancers in top hats and leotards. Before long, his fingers are flying along the keyboards and Randy Malcom of the reggaeton group Gente de Zona is belting out the vocals. By the end of the song, “JazzTón,” the dancers have grown horns and tails and are taking turns on a stripper’s pole as López-Nussa and Malcom sign an official document that seems to convey their souls to the devil. The tension between culturally sacred and profane music has been a tug of war for most of López-Nussa’s life. Born into a musical family, he was taught…

One night in L.A. in the early ’90s, a 30-something John Beasley found himself, improbably, occupying the “second keyboard” chair alongside Herbie Hancock, one of his idols, during a concert tribute to Jaco Pastorius at the Hollywood Bowl. “I think we were playing a long tune like Jaco’s ‘John and Mary,’” the pianist, arranger, and composer told me recently on a Zoom call from Stuttgart, Germany. “I’m sitting next to him, playing clavinet, and I see him getting lost in the music. And when Herbie gets lost, he gets more excited; he was playing the most amazing shit. He kinda looked at me and winked and said, ‘I’m totally lost!’ And he smiled.” Beasley shook his head at the memory. “He was just going for it and not thinking.” It…

The world has seen quite a few peculiar electronic keyboard instruments over the years, especially from the era before digital technology. Some, like the Mellotron, Optigan, and Chamberlin, have achieved cult status and are coveted by musicians and collectors. Others still haven’t had their day yet. The Baldwin Fun Machine is one of the latter group, but that doesn’t make it any less cool—and if you ever see one, you owe it to yourself to give it a try. The Baldwin Piano Company had already been an esteemed instrument manufacturer for nearly a century when it introduced the Fun Machine in 1974. Indeed, for a time it was the largest maker of keyboard instruments in the United States. During the early 1940s, the first Baldwin electronic organ was developed, using…

World War II shut down large parts of the entertainment industry, including the recording segment. But Uncle Sam wanted to make sure that the boys overseas didn’t lack for rockin’ tunes. Thus the V-Disc label was launched—that stalwart first letter, of course, standing for victory, baby. Leading musical lights lent their talents, cut some quickie sessions, and off the V-Discs (with a track or two on each side) went to Europe. Take on the Jerrys by day, cut a rug to Basie at night. They were a cross between live recordings—minus an in-person audience—and epistles of sound, but addressed to a group rather than a single recipient. Unlike the troops they were meant for, the V-Discs weren’t supposed to make it back to the States. When they did, they were…