Innholdsfortegnelse for November 2021 i JazzTimes

In April, the Detroit Jazz Festival—arguably the largest free (of charge) jazz festival in the United States—announced its 2021 edition. However, owing to both the scale of the event (which usually takes over downtown Detroit) and the ever-changing guidelines for COVID protocols, its organizers took a while to decide whether it would be virtual, live, or a hybrid. In late June, they announced the festival would be live and in-person; in August, they pivoted back to virtual. Such is life in a pandemic. Luckily, the lineup stayed the same, and four days of performances took place over Labor Day weekend as planned. Although the great majority of attendees were remote, watching online via a variety of streaming platforms, a few lucky individuals did witness the proceedings onsite. Two of them,…

I’m just getting used to being misunderstood,” Keshav Batish says. “That’s brought me a lot of solace.” Most of us regard those ideas—misunderstanding and solace—as contradictory, or at least in tension with each other. But for Batish, a 23-year-old drummer/percussionist who released his debut album Binaries in Cycle in July, misunderstanding underscores a fundamental truth. “I don’t think people will ever really understand each other,” he says. “Let’s say we become best friends, right? Maybe I could start getting a glimpse into your mind after 20, 30 years, what you think about, what you feel, on a daily basis. Accepting that has helped me to find peace. To be at peace with the confusion.” Those opposing-yet-harmonized ideas make up one of the binaries Batish’s album title speaks of. A quartet…

Ralph Moore: Images (Landmark) The Washingtons’ first record together in 1988. Engaging repertoire and rousing performances from up-and-comers Moore, Terence Blanchard, and Benny Green. Ray Bryant featuring Kenny Burrell: No Problem (EmArcy) Soulful work from Bryant and Burrell in 1994 with ideal, inspired support from the Washingtons. Andy Bey: Ain’t Necessarily So (12th Street) A 1997 live date by an affecting, plummy-voiced singer and pianist framed beautifully by the Washingtons..…

For drummer Willie Jones III, Fallen Heroes is more than just the name of his most recent album. The title also relates deeply to his life as a jazz musician. After all, the impact of many a lost mentor echoes through his now nearly 30-year career as an in-demand sideman, dynamic bandleader, and determined record label owner. Jones’ current recording, released on his own WJ3 label, specifically pays tribute to the recently passed Roy Hargrove, Larry Willis, Jimmy Heath, Ndugu Chancler, and Jeff Clayton, but the long list of elders who’ve lifted Jones up also includes Los Angeles-based musicians such as Billy Higgins, Henry Franklin, George Bohannon, Larance Marable … and a pianist named Willie Jones, Jr. Indeed, growing up in various neighborhoods in Los Angeles, Jones III couldn’t help…

Billy Hart doesn’t see jazz as being split between avant-garde and straight-ahead; for him, the big distinction is between acoustic and electric. And given the drummer’s endless list of associations during a career that stretches back to the 1960s, his view should be afforded a bit more than passing credence. The National Endowment for the Arts is set to honor Hart, as well as saxophonist Donald Harrison— the drummer’s bandmate in the Cookers—this year. It’s an accolade that surprises Hart, but one that he also might have been able to forecast, considering his contributions to ensembles led by Miles Davis, Pharoah Sanders, Joanne Brackeen, and Lee Konitz, among others. In addition to being a founding member of the Cookers, Hart has sporadically led his own groups—which recently have yielded a…

What’s one of the best ways to make a jazz fan for life? Start early. The books listed below can help, and they’re just 10 out of many excellent jazz-related children’s books that have been published in the past quarter-century or so. No rankings here, as these titles aren’t all meant for the same age group—although kids from preschool to middle school and beyond are likely to get a kick out of each one. The Jazz Fly by Matthew Gollub (Illustrated by Karen Hanke) Tortuga, 2000 Reading—or being read—the story of these adorable computer-illustrated bugs and their quest for nightclub glory introduces youngsters to several important concepts: improvisation, the power of being part of a band, and the notion of music as a language (or, indeed, many languages). Charlie Parker…

– Exclusive Content Colin Fleming makes a JazzTimes 10 list of Miles Davis live albums; photo galleries and reports from the Charlie Parker Jazz Festival, Vail Jazz Festival, Pittsburgh Jazz Festival, and Monterey Jazz Festival; plus album and book reviews, obituaries, and much more. – JT News November 12 sees the release of Relief, an all-star compilation of previously unreleased music to benefit the Jazz Foundation of America’s Musicians’ Emergency Fund, established in the spring of 2020 in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic. Artists featured include Hiromi (pictured), Christian McBride, Esperanza Spalding, Joshua Redman, Cécile McLorin Salvant, Jon Batiste, Charles Lloyd, Kenny Garrett, and Herbie Hancock. – Audio & Video Guitarist Pasquale Grasso covers Duke Ellington’s classic “It Don’t Mean a Thing” in a video that premiered on jazztimes.com.…

Isolated from friends and family, with nary a gig in sight, many musicians could have spent most of 2020 in dark solitude, sequestered in their own psyches. Jason Nazary—whose credits include the electronic improvisation duo Anteloper and the equally raucous quartet Little Women—woke up every day last spring pondering what kind of music one makes during a lockdown. As he finished his morning coffee, the drummer patched cables into a modular synthesizer and recorded himself improvising along with the sounds he created, using everything from his trap kit to percussion to household pots and pans. It all happened in his living room. “My wife got me these low-noise, really sensitive mics that are used for field recordings,” Nazary says. “The idea was I’d play super-quiet, but have these mics there…

Joe Farnsworth, whose drumming has been the driving wheel in bands led by McCoy Tyner, Benny Golson, Harold Mabern, and Pharoah Sanders, is coming to grips with the idea of generational ascendancy. “Usually I’m getting behind an older great. This gig in Moscow was with Peter Washington, Mark Whitfield, Craig Handy, and a Russian piano player—Yakov Okun—and it was interesting to be in a group of people your own age, you know? I guess we’re all getting older.” Older maybe, but not old—neither in spirit nor sound. The overseas performance he’s referring to, at the Esse Jazz Club in Moscow, took place this past August 24 and was an eye-opener for Farnsworth, being his first taste of touring since lockdown. “I was a little nervous about leaving New York, [it]…

Willie Jones III counts fellow L.A.-based drummer Leon “Ndugu” Chancler as one of his most important mentors and influences. Jones opens his most recent album, Fallen Heroes, with a drum solo inspired by Chancler and his distinctive touch on the kit. Here he reflects on his personal experience with the prolific and influential drummer, who died in February 2018. Growing up, Ndugu was one of the first drummers I ever saw play in person. But I didn’t know then that he was playing with Weather Report, George Duke, and others. I just knew him around L.A. He was the young gun when I was like seven or eight. Once I got older and started to look on the back of records, I saw his name over and over. He was…

Bassist Cecil McBee lives in the moment. And during his run with the Cookers, not much has been planned. “It wasn’t promised, it wasn’t discussed, it wasn’t realized—us being together to this point just happened,” McBee said recently while discussing the band’s 10-year anniversary, which will be marked by the release of its sixth album, Look Out!, on British imprint Gearbox. The seven compositions collected on the new album largely were drawn from past recordings and span almost 50 years; pianist George Cables contributes three tunes and tenor saxophonist Billy Harper adds a pair, as does McBee. In addition to those three players, the group includes altoist Donald Harrison, trumpeters Eddie Henderson and David Weiss, and drummer Billy Hart. The only things McBee and his bandmates have expected of each…

Music streaming services debuted about 15 years ago—and audiophiles’ criticisms of music streaming services debuted the very next day. Their complaints mostly ceased a few months ago, when major services upgraded their sound quality. But the differences among the services have left many music fans wondering if they should take the trouble to switch to a higher-quality service, or stick with the one they’re using. Although high-quality streaming services such as Deezer, Qobuz, and Tidal have been around for several years, the concept really caught music fans’ attention in May, when Apple Music announced it would offer lossless streaming at no extra charge and Amazon Music responded by dropping the extra charge for its lossless service. Spotify plans a similar upgrade for sometime this fall. So will switching to a…

I recently took my kids on our annual roller coaster odyssey—a road trip of roughly three to 10 days visiting theme parks within driving distance—and this year’s edition included a return to Kennywood Park in West Mifflin, Pa. Kennywood was my conception of heaven as a kid, and it occurred to me that this summer marked exactly 50 years since I first rode its then-headlining attraction, the Thunderbolt, which in 1971 had been named the world’s best roller coaster by The New York Times. My father, a lifelong Pittsburgher, initiated a lifelong appreciation of coaster rides (along with jazz and the Steelers), as well as quelling all fears of them. My own kids are now tall enough to ride the Thunderbolt for the first time, so this trip was the…

Drummer, composer, and bandleader Nate Smith is reliving the mid-pandemic moment when he realized his life had to change. He’d been traveling frequently, recording in L.A. and elsewhere, while paying premium rent on a New York studio apartment. “Even during COVID, I was in motion a lot, and one time I looked at my calendar and realized I was coming back to New York to dump my suitcase and do laundry. I was just changing clothes in New York.”. Smith’s lease was up. Expiring along with it was his faith in New York as a place to thrive doing creative work. He looked around at the quickening pace of the creative exodus and decided it was time to move. He’s still adjusting to his new life in Nashville. “It was…

Beloved for his many cool collaborations with Tim Berne, John Zorn, and Marc Ribot, drummer/improviser/composer Ches Smith is best served hot, under his own name—on his Congs for Brums series of recordings or his 2016 ECM trio album with Craig Taborn and Mat Maneri, The Bell. His latest group, We All Break, is his most soulful yet. Originally a quartet comprising pianist Matt Mitchell, Smith and two of his percussion teachers, Daniel Brevil and Markus Schwartz, on the tanbou (a Haitian barrel drum), the band has since grown into an octet, as documented on its recent two-CD set Path of Seven Colors. But its M.O. remains the same: studying the ritual and abandon of traditional Haitian Vodou music and adorning it with modern improvisation. “Who could follow these masters [Brevil…

Bassist Peter Washington was born in 1964 in Los Angeles. Drummer Kenny Washington was born in 1958 in New York. Despite six years and 2,800 miles between them, PWash and KWash play like musical brothers from another mother. They were born to make music together. Since first sharing a bandstand in New York around 1987, they have morphed into one of the finest and most prolific bass-and-drum teams in contemporary jazz. You want your record date to sound like it was made by a working band after a three-month tour, even though it’s more likely an ad hoc group working on one, possibly zero, rehearsals? Call the Washingtons. A lot of folks already have. The Tom Lord Jazz Discography reports that the duo has made 75 recordings together since 1988,…

At 62, Billy Drummond has certainly earned the title of elder statesman, though the sobriquet in this case has little to do with lifespan. Chalk it up to experience—he’s been playing since he was four, and has accumulated well over 350 album credits—and to his influence as an educator through his tenures at Juilliard and NYU. In that role he serves as a conduit for some of the music’s defining voices, having played with such legendary figures as Horace Silver, Sonny Rollins, Bobby Hutcherson, Joe Henderson, and J.J. Johnson. Still, the unassuming drummer hardly plays the role of sage on high. “The older you get, the less you know,” he insists with a laugh, over Zoom from his home in West Orange, New Jersey. “I wish I could go back…

G. Calvin Weston laughs a lot when he talks. Or maybe he just talks a lot when he laughs. If you spend any time around the drummer and composer—watching him play, chilling in his company—you’d know that his easy chortle (fondly remembered by old bandmate John Lurie in his recent memoir The History of Bones) comes as part of the entire package of propulsive paradiddles, complex polyrhythms, and ferocious four-on-the-floors. Even when he’s at his quietest, you sense his giddiness, a muffled chuckle rather than his and his drums’ thundering guffaw. “I used to beat on my neighbors’ car,” Weston says—laughing, of course—from his Soundscape Recording Lab home studio about the loud, frenetic feel that has always been part of his style and that he honors still on a handful…

In the early 2000s, pianist Emmet Cohen, then 17, was hammering away backstage at the Jazz Band of America concert in Indianapolis. He was part of a soundcheck with vocalist Patti Austin and the late saxophonist Phil Woods. “I was pounding on the piano cause I was super-excited,” he remembered in a recent interview, “and Shelly comes over, and he’s like, ‘Emmet, you can’t pound on the piano before the concert, you’re going to put it out of tune.’” Cohen was embarrassed. “I said, ‘Oh my God, I’m sorry, I didn’t realize that.’” But Shelly—that would be Shelly Berg, pianist, composer, and dean of the University of Miami’s Frost School of Music—saw an opportunity. “Then he said, ‘You come study with me, I’ll teach you how to play the piano…

BASEL MUSIC ACADEMY FOCUSYEAR BAND 2021 Bosque Neuklang Think of Focusyear, which is part of the Jazzcampus at this venerable institution in northwestern Switzerland, as an intense, one-year jazz immersion program for promising younger musicians. It’s similar to the Thelonious Monk (now Herbie Hancock) Institute’s two-year scholarship program, but there’s a strong European modern feel, with the adventurous art-jazz far outweighing the bebop. Austrian guitarist Wolfgang Muthspiel is Focusyear’s artistic director. Bosque showcases the compositional and playing talents of the Focusyear Band’s 2020-2021 edition. Six of its eight members hail from Europe. Tatjana Nova, a Russian-born singer and pianist now living in Germany, is featured on vocals. Alto saxophonist Joshua Schofield is from England. Tenor saxophonist Gianni Gagliardi is from Spain. Sebastián Greschuk (Argentina) and Yakiv Tsvietinskyi (Ukraine) both play…