Rollins and Threadgill on The Jazz Sessions

Here's a shout out for Jason Crane's The Jazz Sessions.

Together with Stef at Free Jazz blog, the lovely guys at Destination: OUT!, npr's A Blog Supreme, Bad Plus' Do the Math (and, not to forget, my main man Tom Hull, Nate Chinen and the boys at NY Times, Gary Giddins, and a host of others), Crane is doing as much as anybody in spreading the word of jazz on the internet right now. His interview series takes an all-embracing view on the jazz world, and is conducted with equal parts curiosity, knowledge and respect. In the past, he's done sessions with such Perfect Sounds faves as Cooper-Moore, Vijay Iyer, John Hollenbeck, Matt Lavelle, Steve Lehman, Joe Morris, Mike Reed, and Matthew Shipp.

If you're unfamiliar with the series, now's a good a time as any to start listening, because this week, Crane brings out the big guns with interviews with Sonny Rollins and, available from Thursday 29th, Henry Threadgill.

Make yourself a fresh batch of coffee, sit down, and listen!

Ludvigsen R.I.P.

You foreigners won't get this, but one of my first musical heroes, Gustav Lorentzen a.k.a. Ludvigsen of the musical duo Knutsen & Ludvigsen, passed away yesterday. I can't begin to explain what their music and (mostly, but by no means always, nonsensical) lyrics have meant to me, and indeed whole generations of Norwegian children, young and old. Thanks for the memories.

Perfect Sounds Listening Booth, weeks 14-16, 2010

Wrote this a week or so ago, and had initially thought I'd have at least two more before I threw it out there, but the blog needs some action. So here's the first PS Listening Booth.

• Brad Mehldau: Highway Rider (Nonesuch, 2010) - Sure, he's melodically strong, and yes both his playing and the band is exceptionally solid and well tempered, but I find very little of what I look for and enjoy most in jazz in Mehldau's music; the tempered playing means the music is emotionally moderate and one dimensional as well. There's very little heart, no guts, no push and pull, no fun, no bursts of energy. His music feels brainy as in cold and calculated, not as in witty and smart. Highway Rider only confirms those impressions, though at times there are slightly more expansive and even filmatic themes here, augmented by a string section here and there and perhaps bent that way by Jon Brion's production. At their best, the band has a nice shuffle, reminicent of, say, Randy Newman (without the bite), but even here I miss something. Maybe it is vocals. At other times it's pretty, but very little else. For melodically strong low key jazz I'd rather look to Ben Allison. (5/10)*

* Grades are tentative, based on three or four listens, sometimes a few more. Much of the writing is done during listens, and should be considered notes more than final reviews.

EMP Pop Con 2010 - I fail, KEXP delivers

Failed to deliver on my promise to preview the panels/abstracts for Saturday and Sunday, but the fine folks at KEXP's blog have been doing reviews. Part one, part two, part three.

EDIT:

Christgau has a report on EMP here.

EMP Pop Conference 2010

The 9th annual EMP Pop Conference kicks off tomorrow, so I figuered I'd browse the abstracts to see if anything tickled my fancy.

The theme this year is The Pop Machine, and revolves around "stories of sounds and the machines that make them", which sounds a bit drier than the body and music-theme of last year. However, the first thing on the schedule tomorrow is a discussion between Nile Rodgers, Joe Henry, and Janelle Monáe, which should be very interesting.

Being a jazz fan and critic, Jason Toynbee's paper on "Jazz and the Politics of Recording" seems interesting: "It's been suggested that recordings of jazz are unrepresentative of the genre, even untrue to it. (...) In this paper I want to question the assumptions that lie behind the critique of jazz recording. Interestingly, that critique runs counter to the conventional wisdom in rock and pop criticism which has embraced recording not only as predominant medium, but also as a kind of muse, and sometimes even as the essence of the form (...)" (Friday, April 16)

Geeta Dayal will talk about Brian Eno and the studio as an instrument. (Friday, April 16)

As much as I'm tired of discussions on hipster culture (and the inevitable hipster bashing), Elizabeth Keenan's talk on the Dirty Projectors and cultural capital could be worth checking out. (Friday, April 16)

Douglas Wolk will do a talk on the future of listening to music (the abstract doesn't say, but I'd assume a discussion on Spotify, Rhapsody and the like may come into it at some point). (Friday, April 16)

Allen Lowe, musician, jazz historian, and compiler (and the man behind the great American Pop: An Audio History and the That Devilin' Tune-book and compilations, has a paper called "Looking at Down from Up: Blues from Blackface to Whiteface (or: All the Blues You Could Play By Now if Stanley Crouch was Your Uncle)", in which he among other things seems to take on Wynton Marsalis (who does deserve a beating every now and then). The subtitle of the paper, inspired by Charles Mingus' brilliant "All the Things You Could Be By Now If Sigmund Freud's Wife Was Your Mother", is also the title of one of Lowe's own composition, which you can hear from his website here. (Friday, April 16)

Will have a look at the schedules for Saturday and Sunday tomorrow.

Shutterbug

Updates coming during the week. 'til then:

Criticism, Bill Eaton, Alex Chilton, Glenn Kelly and me

"(...) a post-gig hangout with Chilton in the late '70s during which Supertramp's hit "The Logical Song" comes on the jukebox. Eaton is all ready to sneer at the thing when he sees Chilton bobbing his head to it. Once he gets over his initial shock and confusion, he processes his problem as, well, everybody else's problem. "[R]ock snobbery is an exercise in aural flagellation--a way to punish yourself because girls ignored you back in high school."

(...) a lot of people look at the critical impulse, and the work that it sometimes produces, as some kind of attempt to kill their buzz. And, beyond that, to force-feed them stuff that they don't like. It never occurs to Bill Eaton that the fact that he needed Alex Chilton to approve of a Supertramp song before he could do likewise actually says more about Eaton's own insecurities than anything else, as far as I'm concerned."

Glenn Kelly takes on Bill Eaton in Snobbery, Projection, Resentment

Agree with mr. Kelly here. Try to view criticism as a step in a disourse, with arguments - some may be good and some may be bad, some convincing while others less so - to make ones case. You may agree, wholly or not, to the arguments and the conclusion, or disagree by joining in on the discourse, whether in writing or more usually in your own head or in conversation with friends, but by golly, don't blame the critics because you haven't been able to make up your own mind.

Soon...

... I promise.

Music of the Week 11/10

I'm planning a change to this. Updates have been infrequent at best. Something along the veins of Tom Hull's jazz prospecting and Rhapsody Notes may be a good option: I could write down a few lines on any bunch of music, good or bad, I hear during a week. Not reviews as much as just jot down some impressions and thoughts, maybe even tentative grades. Updates would need to be on a specific week day, though. I'll see what I'm able to come up with. For now, quite possibly the last Music of the Week.

• Titus Andronicus: "A More Perfect Union" (from The Monitor, XL Recordings)
• Tomboyfriend: "Almost/Always"
• The Great Plains: Lenght of the Growth 1981-89 (Old 3c Records - lovely rediscovery!)
• Little Women: "Thoat 1" (AUM Fidelity)
• Steve Swell's Slammin' the Infinate: 5000 Poems (Not Two Records)
  

R.I.P. Alex Chilton

Had planned a post on Chopin, but just got the news that Mr. Chilton passed away yesterday. Too sad. Thanks for the music. More from The Commercial Appeal.

Happy birthday Ornette!

The great man turns 80 today. The good people at WKCR will celebrate the day with a special Birthday Broadcast dedicated to the man and his music. Go listen!

FAN and jazz-links

FAN #11 will be out tomorrow, so I have now posted my article on Mostly Other People Do the Killing, written for the previous edition, on the Norwegian section of Perfect Sounds.

Chicago drummer Mike Reed, whose last few records I have liked a lot, talked to Jason Crane on the frequently enjoyable Jazz Session podcast at the end of January. Mr. Reed is in the middle of a three album project inspired by Chicago's considerable, but underrecognized, hard bop-and-beyond jazz music. Around the same time, WFIU did a show on that very topic, discussing and playing the music of some of the unsung heroes of Chicago hard bop. You can listen to the program here.

Belated by:Larm reports

The Nordic mini-version of South by SW that is by:Larm went ahead and finished just over a week ago, and just like last year I watched some gigs and did some writing. If you're interested, the paper I wrote for can be downloaded here. I only had entries for the Friday and Saturday editions, and the gigs I reviewed were Massely, Pow Pow, and Supersilent for the Friday edition, and Anna von Hausswolf, plus Kira Kira as well as Kråkesølv at the Stereogum stage for the Saturday edition.

Didn't get to see much, though, so I really can't comment on the hypes. My pick of the ones I did get around to see would be Masselys, whose electronically seasoned no wave funk caught me off guard. In a good way. Here's a taste, a song called "Better and Better", albeit not my favorite of theirs.

Music of the Week 6/10

One pretty decent song off a not-so-great album by a returning funky spoken word hero, a chirpy one from Hot Chip, a joyous piece of garage pop by a re-named band, a new monster of a tune by a power jazz group, and a re-discovered (at least for me) recording by a "super group" (via Destination-Out!)

• Gil Scott-Heron: "I'm New Here" (XL)
• Hot Chip: "Brothers" (Astralwerks)
• The Soft Pack: "C'mon" (Heavenly/Kemado)
• Fight the Big Bull: "Mothra" (Clean Feed)
• New York Contemporary Five: Consequences (Fontana)
  

Coming back ...soon + Lavelle on Davis on the New Thing

I don't intend to use this blog on a too personal level outside the spheres of music consumption and the like, but I have had a few very busy weeks, hence the lack of updates. As things calm down, posting will resume.

Meanwhile, I stumbled across a post by jazz trumpet player Matt Lavelle on the Brilliant Corners blog, discussing the grumpy side of Miles Davis and his problems with "the new thing". Go read!

Jerome David Salinger, 1919-2010. R.I.P.

He was getting old, it was bound to happen at one time or another. Still, I was very sad to learn that J.D. Salinger has passed away. A fine tribute over at NYTimes.

Favorite Jazz of 2009

I've put off posting my 2009 jazz list for long enough. Pazz & Jop came up the other week, and most other lists were done even before then. I had a plan to revisit records that placed high on some of those lists, and got through a few. For the most part, I stand by my initial opinions, which I dare say I nearly allways do. A few I didn't get too, others have been slightly upgraded or down graded, albeit not by much. I also thought about writing a few words about every album here, but in the end figured there's really no need (only a few of the lists at Jazz House have comments, so I guess I'm home free). Anyway, here goes:


A few months back, 2009 looked like it was going to be a good year for larger ensembles, with interesting records by the Steve Lehman Octet and Darcy James Argue's Secret Society, and later on records by Wadada Leo Smith and Graham Collier, among others. Then a flurry of sax/bass/drum-trio records tickled my fancy, notably Fully Celebrated, J.D. Allen Trio, Marcus Strickland and later on FLY. Add to those the less traditional trio set-ups of Darius Jones Trio and Digital Primitives, as well as the Matthew Shipp, Vijay Iyer and Tyshawn Sorey records, and jazz trios certainly made their mark on Perfect Sounds in 2009. A very welcomed and strong comeback by Henry Threadgill and his Zooid and a new incarnation of David S. Ware's Quartet (guitar replacing piano) saw old(-er) masters plow new ground.

My favorite jazz (and overall) record of 2009 is Darius Jones Trio's Man'ish Boy (a Raw & Beautiful Thing), with Darius Jones on alto saxophone, Cooper-Moore on the bass-like diddley-bo and piano, and Rakalam Bob Moses on drums. Raw and beautiful are certainly fitting words to describe the music on Man'ish Boy. The melodies are often rough-hewn and blues-like, and Darius Jones' ability to switch from teeth grinding grit, as on the epic 'Trane-crashes-into-Ayler "Chasing the Ghost", to the subtle and almost carfully quiet, as on the painfully lovely "Forgive Me", makes him a stand out saxophonist in today's jazz.

That said, Cooper-Moore is all over Man'Ish Boy. He is no stranger to the raw and beautiful himself. Often playing, as he does on several tracks here, the diddley-bo (or bow, if you will), an ancient instrument that functions more or less as a bass. It sounds at times like a slapped upright, at other times like a talking drum. His piano playing is assured and can sound jagged, almost Monk-like at times. Especially note the rough blues walk on the noir-like "Cry Out". His lovely Satie-like playing on "Forgive Me" demonstrates his range as a pianist as well.

Listening to Man'ish Boy from start to finish can give the impression of a journey of some kind: the get-up call of "Roosevelt", the confident and playful stride of "Cry Out", the harrowing ride of "Chasing the Train", and the thoughtful and beautiful "Forgive Me" at the end (that is, barring the bonus cut "Chaych" with the equally talented bassist/composer Adam Lane, as well as Jason Nazary on drums). Man'Ish Boy is a great album and well deserving of my top spot.

Now, for the list:

1. Darius Jones Trio: Man'ish Boy (A Raw & Beautiful Thing) (AUM Fidelity)
2. The Fully Celebrated: Drunk On the Blood Of the Holy Ones (AUM Fidelity)
3. David S. Ware: Shakti (AUM Fidelity)
4. Digital Primitives: Hum Crackle & Pop (Hopscotch)
5. Henry Threadgill Zooid: This Brings Us To, Vol.1 (Pi Recordings)
6. Matthew Shipp: Harmonic Disorder (Thirsty Ear)
7. Vijay Iyer Trio: Historicity (ACT)
8. Tyshawn Sorey: Koan (482 Music)
9. Abdullah Ibrahim: Senzo (Sunnyside)
10. Brötzmann / Kondo / Pupillo / Nilssen-Love: Hairy Bones (Okka Disk)

11. Wadada Leo Smith: Spiritual Dimensions (Cuneiform)
12. J.D. Allen Trio: Shine! (Sunnyside)
13. Mike Reed's People Places & Things: About Us (482 Music)
14. Steve Lehman Octet: Travail Transformation & Flow (Pi Recordings)
15. Marcus Strickland: Idiosyncrasies (Strick Muzik)
16. John Zorn: Alhambra Love Songs (Tzadik)
17. Allen Toussaint: The Bright Mississippi (Nonsuch)
18. Graham Collier: Directing 14 Jackson Pollocks (Jazz Continuum)
19. Darren Johnston: The Edge of the Forrest (Clean Feed)
20. Fly: Sky & Country (ECM)
21. Tresspass Trio: Was There to Illuminate the Night Sky (Clean Feed)
22. Bill Dixon: Tapestries for Small Orchestra (Firehouse 12)
23. Quartet Offensive: Carnivore (Self released)
24. Ben Allison: Think Free (Palmetto)
25. Linda Oh Trio: Entry (Linda Oh)

Others of note: Darcy James Argue Secret Society: Infernal Machine (New Amsterdam), Gerald Cleaver, William Parker, Craig Taborn: Farmers by Nature (AUM Fidelity), Profound Sound Trio: Opus de Life (Porter), Circulasione Totale Orchestra: Bandwidth (Rune Grammofon), IPA: Lorena (Bolage), John Hollenbeck: Eternal Interlude (Sunny Side Records)

Lazy ears

Some of the points made by composer Graham Collier in this post, for example this passage "there is a pack mentality among many critics which, unfortunately for some of us, means they rarely look beyond the pile of CDs they receive to see what else is around", squares with what I wrote a while ago about how certain ever-presents on year end lists made me think too many jazz writers have "lazy ears" (That said, we all have our biases, of course. I wont deny I have mine).

I still have issues with a few of his points:

1. Seeking out new jazz (or new music in general) is time consuming work, but should be part of any reviwers job. Not merely sit and wait for CDs to fall into ones lap. However, being as it is that jazz writing in particular is being cut from the arts pages of newspapers and magazines, as well as the fact that it doesn't pay very well and that jazz PR is virtually nonexcistent these days, it can also be expensive work. We're more in need of word-of-mouth and communication - critic to critic, fan to fan, critic to fan and vice versa, musician-to-critic and vice versa - than most other arts writing departments. This need not necessarily take the form of free, physical copies being mailed to us, but dropping a line about upcoming releases does help. (For my own part, I pay for 99% of the jazz I write about. It's fair to say my jazz writing is a labour of love. I make my money from doing other things).

2. The comment borrowed from Chris Kelsey about some of the "formally conventional" big band records, is A): something I feel is not entirely correct in all instances (more formally conventional, perhaps, than Collier's) and B): makes me want to point out that paying attention to formality is something that, while certainly especially important to jazz composition, must not take the place of other important aspects of music, such as attitudes, values, stories and meanings, and the musicianship necessary (or adequate) to convey these. This is, for example, where critics of classic cinema often fail. Formality is part of the package, and can inform other aspects, but it is not the be all and end all.

By the way, at #49, is Vijay Iyer Trio's Historicity the highest placed jazz record on the Village Voice's Pazz & Jop in recent years? (Album list here. Other jazz records I've spotted so far: Darcy James Argue, Henry Threadgill's Zooid, Wadada Leo Smith, Ben Allison, Darius Jones Trio (whoop-whoop!), Steve Lehman Octet and John Hollenbeck. There are probably more).

RIP Kate McGarrigle

Touching words from Carl Wilson here.

RIP Teddy Pendergrass