Innholdsfortegnelse for July/August 2022 i JazzTimes

→ Exclusive Content For JazzTimes’ 50th anniversary, we compiled a list of the 50 best jazz albums released between 1970 and 2020. Now we’re following up with a list of the 50 best jazz albums recorded in the five decades before we started publishing—in other words, from the start of the ’20s to the end of the ’60s. Sure, you’ll find all the giants here, from Armstrong and Ellington to Parker and Monk (pictured) to Miles and Trane, but what did we pick and why? You can only find out at jazztimes.com. → JT News Cruising is back in for 2023: After two years off the water, The Jazz Cruise, Blue Note at Sea, and The Smooth Jazz Cruise have announced their schedules and lineups for next year. The Jazz…

Guitarist Will Bernard bears the bittersweet blessing of virtuosic skill and eclectic taste, making his music a perpetual delight and yet hard to categorize. Maybe it’s because he was reared in Berkeley, California, site of one of the precious few jazz programs in a public high school, and was a fixture in the audience back when the Keystone Berkeley was renowned as one the most experimental, open-minded music clubs in the country. “Yeah, I kind of thrive off that—being involved in different kinds of music,” Bernard said with a verbal shrug over the phone in late April. As if to prove the point, he’d moved the call up a couple of hours so he could catch a flight from his home in Brooklyn down to New Orleans, where he was…

José Luis “El Tosco” Cortés, a flutist and bandleader who carved a lasting niche for himself in the music scene of his native Cuba, died April 18 in Havana of what was officially described as “a hemorrhagic encephalic accident.” He was 70. Classically trained at Cuba’s National School of Art, Cortés first drew attention as a member of Juan Formell’s band Los Van Van; from there, he joined Chucho Valdés in the legendary Irakere. In 1988, he formed an ensemble of his own, NG La Banda, which he led until his passing. The group played a key role in developing the Cuban dance-music style now known as timba. Roberto Masotti, an Italian photographer who contributed significantly to the visual style of ECM Records, among others, died April 25. He was…

“[Lionel Loueke]’s got the best rhythm and the best groove of any guitar player that I know. He’s magical. He’s a wizard, really.” In line with many resourceful jazz practitioners, Gilad Hekselman responded to the enforced isolation of the COVID-19 pandemic with a turning-lemons-to-lemonade attitude that ultimately eventuated in his new release, Far Star (Edition). It’s an eight-song date, on which Hekselman self-accompanies his guitar with keyboards, bass, whistle, tambourine, body percussion and voice, fleshing out the tracks with contributions from drummers Eric Harland, Ziv Ravitz, Alon Benjamini, and Amir Bresler; keyboardists Shai Maestro and Nomok; violist/violinist Nathan Schram; and bassist Oren Hardy. Throughout the proceedings, the 38-year-old guitarist displays the harmonic sophistication, timbral expansiveness, playful time feel, innate melodicism, and resonant tone that have placed him in the spotlight…

“You can write a piece for a hundred tubas. You can write a piece for three orchestras on different planets, connected via satellite. Music is creativity, not a prescription.” Be careful what you wish for. By the beginning of 2020 guitarist Mary Halvorson, one of the most acclaimed musicians of her generation, was also one of the busiest. Her thoroughly unique playing style—barbed and studded with effects (including her trademark, a squiggly pitch bend that resembles a sonic ricochet)—and compositional approach had placed her in high demand in the experimental jazz community and with audiences. She was moving nonstop, playing tours and festivals with her own bands in addition to working as a sidewoman. Winning the MacArthur Foundation’s “Genius Grant” in 2019—guaranteeing her an income of $125,000 a year for…

We travel (for pleasure, at least) to leave our world behind for a while. Still, bringing along the things we love most is often a good idea, whether they be family and friends, a beloved Chihuahua, or our jazz albums. Not long ago, portable audio meant big CD folders and boomboxes, so bringing Miles and Bird along with you on vacation wasn’t easy. But thanks to internet streaming and a new generation of super-portable audio products, getting great sound on the go today is hardly more difficult than playing a kazoo. Because almost everyone carries a smartphone now, we have instant and affordable access through streaming services to almost every jazz album ever recorded. The challenge is how to hear the music while we’re in a hotel room in Chicago,…

Since releasing his debut album in 1992 for Mesa/Bluemoon, Rick Braun has established himself as one of the most popular and prolific artists within the smooth jazz genre. The trumpeter’s albums routinely top the charts and his tours—both as a solo headliner and as a co-bill with artists like Richard Elliot (as R n R), Kirk Whalum and Norman Brown (as BWB), and Dave Koz—sell out theaters across the country. But his commercial success belies a strong affinity and facility for mainstream jazz, as Braun counts Miles Davis, Freddie Hubbard, and Woody Shaw as major inspirations.” “I put more of myself into this record than any other record I’ve done.” Growing up in the small Rust Belt city of Allentown, Pa., Braun picked up the trumpet because an older brother…

Running a music venue was never one of Jimmy Greenfield’s life goals. A sculptor by trade, the 67-year-old Greenfield has had a long and deep interest in music for sure, as a fan, sometime player, and brother of saxophonist Hayes Greenfield. But setting up a performance room night after night and booking talent for it? No way. However, over the past three years, his Soapbox Gallery on the edge of Brooklyn’s Prospect Heights neighborhood has become a go-to spot for jazz musicians. And although it might seem counterintuitive at first, the COVID pandemic has played a beneficial role, as Greenfield quickly took advantage of his realization that live streaming could raise the venue’s visibility. “It all feels like such an accident,” he says, “but I love it. I really love…

When you’re on TV, everybody knows you, or at least thinks they know you. Take Kevin Eubanks, who was on NBC’s Tonight Show five nights a week for 18 years, the first three as a bandmember and the rest as bandleader. Jazz aficionados may know Eubanks for his prolific years before and after that show as a gifted guitarist with chops and taste, but most people know him only as Jay Leno’s affable sidekick. What neither party likely knows are his passion for rhythm guitar, his comfort with playing free, his love for the organ in gospel music, his accomplishments as a presenter at tech conferences, and his commitment to education. Kevin Eubanks is not a man on a mission. He’s a man on many missions. “I see a disparity…

Solo improvising is allowing both the question and the answer to get shaped right then, in the moment. Creating a program of solo piano music is the ultimate challenge for any improvising pianist. The music on my latest album, Ways of Disappearing (Sunnyside), is really improvised—I just started playing—but the end result is not a stream-of-consciousness performance, nor does it come out of nothing. It comes from years of applying a certain approach to the artistic practice. You have to be very focused, get close to every detail, to see, as the great modern classical composer Paul Hindemith said, the whole piece in a flash. Playing solo is unique because you have to contend with everything at once: improvisation and composition, form and pacing, duration and rhythm, interacting with the…

Nonesuch If you’re old enough to remember the 1986 release of bandoneonist/composer Astor Piazzolla’s Tango: Zero Hour, you’ll recall that its entry onto the world music stage was akin to that of punk rock a decade earlier. Already the avatar of nuevo tango (native folk music made jazzy and cosmopolitan by his hand), the Ellington of Argentina brought fresh rhythmic and harmonic vibes—to say nothing of a modern chamber classicist’s mindset—to ancient music and made it essential. Piazzolla had been fashioning his own alluringly electric brand of tango, one that departed greatly from the form’s usual hesitation-step rhythm and was filled with improvisation and contemporary chord shifts, since the mid-’50s. In the mid-’80s, with support from his Quinteto Tango Nuevo (bass, violin, piano, guitar) and producer/American Clavé label founder Kip…

Session players have always been my thing. Not to take away from the singers or bandleaders or what have you, but I’m more interested in finding out who’s playing on a certain track. They’re the unsung heroes. If I had my chance and a lot of those musicians were still here, I’d love to sit in a room with them and ask them, “What was in your head when you came up with that?” I remember, for example, when I first heard the Temptations’ “My Girl.” Before I knew the guitarist’s name was Robert White, that guitar line stuck out to me. Then when you hear the story about it, well, he was just throwing in a major pentatonic line because the top part was never written. He didn’t think…

Jimmy Katz leads many lives. He is the preeminent currently active jazz photographer, and has shot more than 200 magazine covers and over 600 recording sessions. About 12 years ago he became an audio engineer, specializing in live recordings. His albums like Ralph Lalama’s Bopjuice: Live at Smalls are breakthroughs. They capture the blood-and-guts of live jazz with sonic resolution worthy of the best studios. In 2018, Katz began another new life. He launched Giant Step Arts. It was a new record label—an outlet for his latest live recordings—but it was also much more: a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization that presented live performances, recorded them in state-of-the-art sound, and provided CDs and 24/96 downloads for the bandleaders to sell themselves. Katz’s ambitions for the label were lofty; he said at the…

Ask founder/producer Piero Pata and VP/engineer Josh Connolly about the guiding concept behind Le Coq Records—their Las Vegas-based music label, established in January 2021—and the pair spit out terms like “honest jazz” and “clarity.” But the best way to understand the label, and the wealth of albums and singles featuring musicians like John Patitucci, Chris Potter, Rick Margitza, Bill Cunliffe, Terell Stafford, Alex Acuña, and Vinnie Colaiuta that have flooded the marketplace since its inception, may come down to two words from Connolly: “Why not?” “We love putting people together who might not have come together to begin with.” “Why not” certainly explains better than just about anything else how an Italian-Australian pianist turned ballet dancer turned flamenco music producer (Pata) and a top pop engineer for names such as…

Orwgan trios and quartets were ubiquitous by the mid-1960s. In African American neighborhood bars and clubs up and down the East Coast, throughout the Rust Belt and points far beyond, Jimmy Smith-inspired organists and bands pumped out grits ’n’ gravy blues, swinging standards, funky grooves, and ballads. Nothing fancy; social music for the Black working class. That’s nothing to take for granted—the potency of this music has been underappreciated by the critical establishment. Still, guitarist Grant Green, organist Larry Young, and drummer Elvin Jones had something more adventurous in mind when they gathered at Rudy Van Gelder’s studio in Englewood Cliffs, N.J., on September 11, 1964. Issued under Green’s name, Talkin’ About! (Blue Note) sounds as up to date as that morning’s newspaper. To the Smith template of bebop and…

Take a look at Blue Note Records’ release schedule for 2022 and it’s hard to miss the significant percentage of electronic-oriented music. In March, the label released Blue Lab Beats’ debut LP, Motherland Journey, which found the London-based duo—NK-OK and Mr. DM—assembling an enticing amalgam of jazz, R&B, hip-hop, and Afrobeat. Later this year, it plans to launch a series called Blue Note Beat Tapes, overseen by rapper/podcaster/Kinda Neat YouTube channel founder Lee Shaner. The first release is produced by beat maker Dibia$e, who developed his skills in Los Angeles by attending “Sketchbook” gatherings outside the Little Temple in Echo Park and at the Low End Theory in the early aughts, alongside other noted instrumental hip-hop artists such as Flying Lotus, Daddy Kev, Daedelus, Gaslamp Killer, Ras G, and Jonwayne;…

Nearly two decades before COVID-19 was even a twinkle in a pangolin’s eye—if in fact those endearing critters had any coronavirus connection at all—John Scofield was already messing around with looping devices to, as he puts it, “extend the sound” of his guitar. Specifically, he was playing with an early example of such gadgets, the Boomerang Phrase Sampler Plus, beginning around 2001 while working with the band that made the following year’s Überjam (saxophonist/flutist Karl Denson, keyboardist John Medeski, guitarist Avi Bortnick, bassist Jesse Murphy, and drummer Adam Deitch). “I used it really for effects back then,” he recalls via Zoom from his home in Westchester County, about an hour north of New York City. “Not so much for looping, just for sonic stuff that I would throw in. Then…