Innholdsfortegnelse for May 2022 i JazzTimes

Exclusive Content In honor of Charles Mingus’ centennial, Michael J. West chooses 10 of the Black Saint’s finest moments for our latest JazzTimes 10 list. Plus photo galleries, album and book reviews, obituaries, and much more. JT News Singer/songwriter Norah Jones has announced a 20-city tour that opens June 20 in Troutdale, Ore., and ends Aug. 4 in Forest Hills, N.Y. In addition, Jones will perform at the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival on May 8. The tour celebrates the 20th anniversary of her debut album Come Away With Me, which has sold more than 27 million copies worldwide. On April 9, Blue Note is reissuing the album in an expanded 4-LP/3-CD “Super Deluxe Edition” that includes the familiar Arif Mardin-produced recording as well as 22 previously unreleased tracks:…

Films that tell stories about jazz open a revealing window on the place and perception of the music within popular culture. See Kevin Whitehead’s compelling 2020 book Play the Way You Feel, whose insightful readings of roughly 100 films connect the dots between plot points, thematic ideas, conventions, and tropes related to race, authenticity, subculture, and personal expression. Films with jazz scores, or those in which jazz musicians sneak onto the screen for a chorus or two, are also fun to ponder. David Meeker’s massive online database, Jazz on the Screen: A Jazz and Blues Filmography, covers the territory. If you prefer scholarly psychoanalytic interpretations focused on racial and sexual identity, Krin Gabbard’s Jammin’ at the Margins (1996) awaits. However, I am less interested here in what happens on screen…

In audio as in jazz, some of the most interesting trends happen far outside the mainstream. Hop onto internet forums dedicated to headphones, and you’ll see fervent discussion of a bunch of brands you’d never find at Best Buy, like Moondrop, KZ, and Uisii. Audio enthusiasts call these “Chi-Fi”—short for “Chinese Hi-Fi”—products. Although Chi-Fi products can be found in many categories, such as tube amplifiers and digital-to-analog converters, they’re especially prominent in the field of passive (i.e., wired) earphones.. The reason audiophiles pay so much attention to Chi-Fi is that the prices can be astonishingly low. A sophisticated set of Chi-Fi earphones with three to five speaker drivers per ear, detachable cables, and an intricately machined aluminum chassis might cost less than $50 on Amazon, eBay, or AliExpress, while a…

VARIOUS ARTISTS Black Lives: From Generation to Generation Jammin’colorS For music to have a lasting impact, it must, to quote Walt Whitman, contain multitudes; it should look beyond time and place and never cease to speak. When Stefany Calembert—the executive producer of this two-disc collection from a wide variety of Black artists—conceived of the project, she looked to “give Black lives a voice and to listen to what they have to say in 2021.” That means, of course, addressing the ongoing sin of racism, but Black Lives: From Generation to Generation does more than that; this is potent music that should continue to stand alone many years from now. Twenty-five composers and dozens of musicians appear on the collection, young and old, from several countries. They slot into categories ranging…

Even through the narrow window of a smartphone-shaped FaceTime screen, it’s easy to see that the walls of Anders Koppel’s home outside Copenhagen are filled with art. The paintings and photos and such are inspiring on their own, the composer says—but even more so are the memories that they evoke. “What I have here in my room are mostly things from my long life, from friends and so on,” Koppel said. “It’s a life. It’s what you find on the beach after a storm.” Life and art intertwine majestically on Koppel’s new album, Mulberry Street Symphony. The double-CD is an epic suite for jazz trio and orchestra, featuring the composer’s saxophonist son Benjamin Koppel, bassist Scott Colley, and drummer Brian Blade with the Odense Symphony Orchestra conducted by Martin Yates.…

Sonny Rollins: Alfie (Impulse!, 1966) Bacharach and David wrote the hit “Alfie,” but Rollins composed the score, highlighted by an epic tenor solo on “Alfie’s Theme.” Art Ensemble of Chicago: Les Stances à Sophie (Pathé, 1970) The eclectic soundtrack for Moshé Mizrahi’s film includes one of the Ensemble’s funkiest pieces, “Theme de Yoyo.” Various Artists: The Other Side of Round Midnight (Blue Note, 1986) Columbia released the soundtrack, but Blue Note’s facsimile, though uneven, concludes with the finest solo performance of Herbie Hancock’s career on “’Round Midnight.”…

“It’s like the great writer William Gibson says—‘The future is already here, it’s just not evenly distributed.’” In November, the Ben Allison Quartet finished a sold-out three-night stint at Birdland. The performance featured music from the bassist’s latest offering, Moments Inside. Allison wrote seven of the album’s eight songs. Their laid-back grooves could easily appear on playlists at jazz stations across the U.S., but if they air on AM/FM radio he’ll only be compensated as their composer and lose out on royalties paid for their performance. For years, Allison has worked to change this practice, which has been enshrined in terrestrial radio’s business model since its early beginnings, when broadcasting music on air was deemed to be promotion of the artists, which meant paying them was unnecessary. In 2012, during…

The legend of Lester Koenig—record collector, bon vivant, screenwriter, film producer, friend to Hollywood’s famous—looms larger than a hundred books, let alone a few words in JazzTimes. Yet it’s as the founder of Contemporary Records (in 1952) where he arguably made his most lasting mark, creating jazz recordings with a distinctive crispness, more often than not overseen by mysterious engineer Roy DuNann, whom Koenig hired away from Capitol in 1956. (Famously, the only music that DuNann really liked was country; he was an avid square dancer with his wife every weekend.) Sonny Rollins’ Way Out West, Barney Kessel’s Kessel Plays Standards, Shelly Manne’s Bells Are Ringing, Ornette Coleman’s Something Else!!!!—the latter a focus of Contemporary’s 70th-anniversary deal with Craft/Concord Records and its first new offering, the Genesis of Genius box…

Ron Miles, jazz’s foremost modern practitioner of the cornet, who became a revered and innovative figure while maintaining a career in his longtime home state of Colorado, died March 8 at his home in Denver of complications from polycythemia vera, a rare blood disorder. He was 58. Miles worked for many years with drummer Rudy Royston and guitarist Bill Frisell (both fellow Denverites), forming a trio with Frisell and drummer Brian Blade in the 2010s. He later expanded the trio into a quintet with pianist Jason Moran and bassist Thomas Morgan—still his working band when he passed away. In the last two years of his life, Miles achieved two long-desired career goals: releasing an album on Blue Note Records (2020’s Rainbow Sign) and headlining Manhattan’s Village Vanguard, the first artist…

NOTE: Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, all listings in this directory are even more subject to change than usual, and we are unable to guarantee the accuracy of any listing beyond press time. Please check program websites to confirm. United States ALASKA Juneau Jazz & Classics Festival May 19-29 Juneau (907) 463-3378 jazzandclassics.org Fairbanks Summer Arts Festival July 18-Aug. 1 University of Alaska, Fairbanks (907) 474-8869 fsaf.org AK Jazz Workshop Summer Jazz Camp July 25-30 University of Alaska Anchorage Fine Arts Building, Anchorage (907) 332-3234 info@akjazzworkshop.org akjazzworkshop.org Audience: Creative music students from grade 7 through adults Description: Students explore the creative world of jazz improvisation with AK Jazz Artists and educators John Damberg (vibes, piano & drum set), Mark Manners (guitar), Rick Zelinsky (saxophone), Cam Cartland (drums), and Bob Andrews…

ALBERT AYLER Revelations: The Complete ORTF 1970 Fondation Maeght Recordings Elemental The last years of beyond-free saxophonist and composer Albert Ayler were more troubled than previous seasons. While his music jittered through a restless, self-restrictive vibe, his mental health suffered a sharp decline until his suicide (unless you believe the Mob got to him, as goes the legend) in November 1970. That there was such darkness haloing Ayler is one reason these long-lost tapes from four months earlier are so crucial to the saxophonist’s canon. Welcoming the unmoored freedom and light of the avant-garde back into his soul, even for a few shows, was like finding the Holy Spirit, then blasting into Heaven. Ayler’s appearances at France’s Fondation Maeght on July 25 and 27, 1970 have previously been excerpted on…