Andy Navela’s Latin “Party” Album

Pianist Andy Nevala on the cover of his latest album (courtesy of Jazz Promo Services)

This coming Friday ZOHO will release a new album of Latin jazz led by pianist Andy Nevala, who is currently based in Atlanta. His influences are both Afro-Cuban and Brazilian. The title of his album is El Rumbon (the party). There are ten tracks, over the course of which Latin sources rub shoulders with the likes of (in order of appearance) Stevie Wonder, Herbie Hancock with Bennie Maupin, Thelonious Monk, Sting, Dizzy Gillespie, and John Coltrane.

As might be expected, there is a diversity of percussion, performed by Frankie Quiñones, Emrah Kotan, and Ireland Faughn. Saxophonist Carlos Averhoff Jr. takes the front line to perform Monk’s “Bemsha Swing” (composed with Denzil Best). However, the tracks, for the most part, are dominated by Nevala’s keyboard work and Quiñones’ percussion work. Each of those tracks serves up its own share of invention, and none of the durations overstay the music’s welcome.

A Guitar Trio Homage to Bebop Classics

courtesy of DL Media

A little less than a month ago, Sony Music Entertainment / Masterworks released its latest album of jazz guitarist Pasquale Grasso entitled Be-Bop! Taken as a “historical exercise,” the album can be taken as a follow-up to Pasquale Plays Duke, Grasso’s personal reflections on the Duke Ellington repertoire. As might be guessed, the new album is devoted almost entirely to trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie and saxophonist Charlie Parker. That includes two tunes that they composed jointly, “Shaw  'Nuff” and “Groovin' High.” The other Parker selections are “Cheryl,” “Ornithology,” and “Quasimodo.” The Gillespie offerings are “A Night in Tunisia” and “Be-Bop.” There is also one Thelonious Monk track, “Ruby, My Dear.” “I’m in a Mess” was written by Pearl White and found its way into Gillespie’s “book.” The remaining track is a Grasso original: “Lamento Della Campagnia.”

As was the case on Pasquale Plays Duke, Grasso leads a trio, whose other members are Ari Roland on bass and Keith Balla on drums. Samara Joy, who was also a “guest vocalist” on the Ellington album, joins the trio to sing “I’m in a Mess.” Taken as a whole, this album should provide a generous dose of nostalgia for those with fond memories of both Gillespie and Parker. Most of the improvisational work unfolds during Grasso’s performances, but there are a few “intrusions” by Roland that broaden the scope of innovations.

I suspect I shall be showing my age by my delight in a contemporary musician devoting so much attention to great masters from the previous century. The fact is that there was so much off-the-wall originality in the Parker discography that I was quickly drawn to a present-day soloist with the chops to explore new paths of inventiveness that enhance Bird’s reputation, rather than detracting from it. Mind you, I doubt that anything will ever tear me away from the many Gillespie, Parker, and Monk albums I have added to my collection; but Grasso’s own point of view offers equally engaging listening opportunities. This is one of those occasions on which past and present meet together on common ground, and Grasso’s contemporary performances can easily be taken as new lights to shine on the many explorations of twentieth-century bebop.

Sean Jones Reflects on Half a Century Ago

Last night in Herbst Theatre San Francisco Performances presented the final program in its Great Artists and Ensembles Series entitled Dizzy Spellz. Jazz trumpeter Sean Jones led a quartet whose other members were Alex Brown on piano, Kris Funn on bass, and Mark Whitfield, Jr. on drums. They were joined by turntablist Wendel Patrick and Jones’ wife Brinae Ali, who served as narrator, vocalist, and tap dancer. The narration was basically a reflection on the black experience during the third quarter of the twentieth century, a time of significant progress for equal rights set in a wider turbulent context of social unrest.

The title of the program was basically a nod to another jazz trumpeter, Dizzy Gillespie. Gillespie was one of the most inventive of the jazz musicians. He deserves credit as a “founding father” of bebop; but he subsequently directed his inventiveness to other genres, including both Latin and African influences. He was represented in last night’s program by two major Gillespie creations. “Swing Low, Sweet Cadillac” was first recorded with saxophonist James Moody. In its original version it presented Gillespie at his most African, but that context was elided in last night’s performance. The other “Gillespie classic” was “Salt Peanuts,” possibly best known from Gillespie’s performance with Jimmy Carter when Gillespie’s combo was invited to the White House. Other presidents have displayed more polished musical skills; but Carter “got the spirit” with a bit of Gillespie’s coaxing.

Last night was also about “getting the spirit;” but, for most of the program, the “messenger” was Ali. Towards the end of her narrative, she framed the entire experience with a reference to “Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome.” The intensity of both her text and its narration was punctuated with her style of tap dancing, which frequently erupted as over-the-top frenetic. Her narration reflected on, among others, John Coltrane and Jimi Hendrix, while her delivery of “Swing Low, Sweet Cadillac” (very much her own, rather than a reflection on Gillespie and Moody) contrasted sharply with her following delivery of the hymn “I’ll Fly Away.”

Nevertheless, it seemed as if any evocation of Gillespie and his music served a that-was-then-this-is-now context. The intense urgency of Ali’s verbal delivery made it clear that much has changed over half a century. Nevertheless, all that change has been haunted by an uncertainty of how many of those steps went forward and how many went back. The program concluded with what amounted to a nostalgic reflection on Pangea, before our planet separated into continents. The “message,” as such, was a plea to come together at a time when all seems to be coming apart.

Sadly, while the message could not have been better delivered, most likely last night’s recipients already knew it, while those needing to hear it were far away from Herbst Theatre.

Sean Jones to Honor Dizzy Gillespe

Jazz trumpeter Sean Jones (from the SFP Web page for purchasing tickets)

This month jazz trumpeter Sean Jones will wrap up the San Francisco Performances (SFP) Great Artists and Ensembles Series with a program entitled Dizzy Spellz. This program will use the music of jazz trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie to frame a multi-disciplinary program exploring the cultural and spiritual dilemmas within the African diaspora. Gillespie was an impressively diverse musician, one of the “founding fathers” of bebop but equally prodigious in other jazz styles, particularly those with Latin influences. Jones will lead a combo, whose other members will be Alex Brown on piano, Kriss Funn on bass, and Mark Whitfield, Jr. on drums. They will be joined by two additional performers, turntablist Wendel Patrick and tap dancer Brinae Ali, who is also a vocalist and a flutist.

This concert will begin at 7:30 p.m. on Friday, April 15. It will take place in Herbst Theatre, whose entrance is on the ground floor of the Veterans Building at 401 Van Ness Avenue, located on the southwest corner of McAllister Street. This venue is excellent for public transportation, since that corner has Muni bus stops for both north-south and east-west travel.

Ticket prices are $65 (premium Orchestra and front and center Dress Circle), $55 (remainder of Orchestra, all Side Boxes, and center rear Dress Circle), and $45 (remaining Dress Circle and Balcony); and they may be purchased through an SFP secure Web page. As available, single tickets will be sold at the door with a 50% discount for students and a 20% discount for seniors. Single tickets may also be purchased by calling 415-392-2545.

Roy Hargrove and Mulgrew Miller on Resonance

Since its founding in 2008 by George Klabin, Resonance Records has established itself as a valuable resource for jazz lovers of archival recordings. I first became aware of the label with the release in November of 2019 of Hittin’ the Ramp: The Early Years (1936–1943), a seven-CD anthology of recordings of Nat King Cole that preceded his signing with Capitol Records. That was followed almost exactly a year later by the two-CD Bill Evans Live at Ronnie Scott’s. This past Friday, the latest album, In Harmony, was released. This is a two-CD collection of previously unreleased live recordings of duo performances by Mulgrew Miller on piano and Roy Hargrove, alternating between trumpet and flugelhorn.

More specifically, the recordings were made at two different concerts. The first took place on January 15, 2006 at the Merkin Concert Hall of the Kaufman Music Center in New York City. The second was held on November 9, 2007 on the campus of Lafayette College in Easton, Pennsylvania, at the Williams Center for the Arts. To some extent this album constitutes a memorial. Miller died at the age of 57 on May 29, 2013. A little more than five years later, Hargrove died at the tragic age of 49 on November 2, 2018. This is the first album of Hargrove’s performances to be released since his death. Ironically, one of the tracks on In Harmony is a performance of Benny Golson’s “I Remember Clifford,” his memorial tribute to trumpeter Clifford Brown, who died in an automobile accident at the age of 25; but there is definitely no “shadow of death” hovering over the sessions from which the tracks of this album were taken.

These two sessions are somewhat unique in the context of the usual performances given by both of the players. In Harmony is now the only recording in the Hargrove discography that does not include a drummer. That establishes a certain intimacy that one seldom encounters is jazz sessions. Miller’s catalog, on the other hand, includes a few duo performances, as well as one solo album. As a result there is almost a sense of an understated private conversation in the thirteen tracks in this collection.

For the most part the performances at both of the sessions were familiar standards. Only Hargrove appears as composer with his “Blues for Mr. Hill,” which is probably written in memory of blues singer Z. Z. Hill, who, along B. B. King, was one of Hargrove’s early influences. On the more adventurous side of straight-ahead jazz, there are two tracks of Dizzy Gillespie (“Con Alma” and “Ow!”) and two of Thelonious Monk (“Monk’s Dream” and “Ruby, My Dear”). The Monk tracks are consecutive, suggesting that they may have been performed back-to-back as a memorial tribute. Regardless of background, however, there is considerable inventiveness to be found on every track in this collection.

Cellist Oliver Mascarenhas’ Debut Album

courtesy of Naxos of America

The very first time that cellist Oliver Mascarenhas auditioned for an orchestral position was in 1997. The position was with the NDR Radiophilharmonie, the public broadcasting German radio orchestra, affiliated with the Norddeutscher Rundfunk (NDR) in Hanover. The audition was a successful one, as was his subsequent participation in international competitions.

Almost exactly a month ago Dreyer Gaido Musikproduktionen released his debut album, whose “main attraction” is his performance of a cello concerto that Friedrich Gulda composed for cello and wind band. This five-movement concerto is coupled with three short pieces for cello and piano by Nicolai Kapustin. The album then concludes with four “bonus tracks” of Gulda leading his own trio in jazz selections by Dizzy Gillespie, John Lewis, and Frank Foster.

Readers may recall that, this past February, I reviewed five Gulda albums based on remastered tapes recorded by Südwestrundfunk (SWR, southwest broadcasting), the public radio service for the southwest of Germany. One of those albums was entitled Jazz and included a solo piano set that Gulda performed at the 1971 Heidelberger Jazztage. To some extent the four standards tracks at the end of the new Dreyer Gaido album, which were recorded in 1958, complement the solo Heidelberg tracks.

More interesting, however, is the concerto, which almost seems to thumb its nose at any effort at genre classification. All five movements are playful, each in its own characteristic way; and the interplay between the solo cello and the wind band is always engaging. Nevertheless, Gulda seems to enjoy playing at the threshold of outrageousness; and this is most evident in the cadenza, which constitutes the middle movement of the concerto.

This is the longest movement of the entire composition, a little over ten minutes in duration. While it provides an excellent platform to display the cellist’s technical skills, Gulda cannot resist going over the top towards the end of the movement by allowing the diversity of riffs that the cellist has already explored to erupt into a no-holds-barred account of “Purple Haze.” (Gulda composed this concerto in 1980, so it may well be the case that he had “staked out” this tune before it entered the repertoire of the Kronos Quartet.)

I last wrote about Kapustin when Alison Lee played his Opus 41 set of variations for her Piano Break recital. My “first contact” with Kapustin came from a Yuja Wang encore; and his understanding of jazz is comparable with Gulda’s. However, the three short selections played by Mascarenhas are not as outrageous as Kapustin’s approach to piano music, which manages to fold Cecil Taylor into a context that also includes Count Basie and Erroll Garner. Nevertheless, there is a playfulness to those three pieces, whose opus numbers happen to be 96, 97, and 98. In many ways Kapustin’s “jazz voice” provides just the right bridge between Gulda’s over-the-top approach to concerto composition and his more traditional approaches to the four standards that conclude the album.

Dizzy Gillespie in London: November 30, 1965

Humphrey Littleton giving the closing remarks for band members Kenny Barron, Chris White, James Moody, Rudy Collins, and Dizzy Gillespie (screen shot from the YouTube video being discussed)

My pursuit of jazz on video led me to another telecast from the BBC Studios in London as part of the Jazz 625 series hosted by Humphrey Littleton. This time the YouTube video Web page did not provide a specific date. However a Library of Congress Web page offers convincing evidence that the broadcast took place on November 30, 1965. The YouTube title includes “1966;” but the song list on that Web page is definitely not the one on the video!

The program presented a performance by trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie leading a quintet. He shared the front line with James Moody, alternating between alto saxophone and flute. In the rhythm section one encountered at the piano Kenny Barron, who, like Moody, would spend several decades performing with Gillespie. The rest of the rhythm was provided by Chris White on bass and Rudy Collins on drums. The duration of the video is a little over half an hour. However, the Library of Congress site says that the entire recording is “over 60 minutes;” so it is likely that Gillespie’s visit, like that of the Bill Evans Trio, consisted of two separate half-hour programs recorded back-to-back before the same audience, only one of which was readily available through YouTube.

That said, Gillespie was generous with his time, making sure that the other four members of the quintet got the attention they deserved. In Moody’s case that involved Gillespie withdrawing from the group while Moody led a performance of his flute solo work in his composition “Mmm Hmm.” (Gillespie could still steal the scene in articulating the title of this  piece while announcing it.) Indeed, the only Gillespie compositions were the ones that framed the entire half-hour set, “And then she stopped” and the beginning and “Dizzy’s blues,” which was performed while the closing credits were rolling (meaning that it was prematurely stopped).

The remaining selections were drawn from the Latin side of Gillespie’s book. “Tin Tin Deo,” by Chano Pozo and Gil Fuller, was presented as an engaging dialog between trumpet and bass. White brought an interesting background to his tenure in Gillespie’s quintet. He played with Cecil Taylor during the fifties and accompanied Nina Simone before joining Gillespie. He definitely had the chops to serve as the only instrumentalist playing with Gillespie. The other Latin selection was “Chega de Saudade” (no more blues), composed by Antonio Carlos Jobim. Gillespie explained that Philips Records had recorded Gillespie when he performed at Juan-les-Pins (another engaging example of Gillespie articulating his words) in France in July of 1962 (where White was his bassist).

This video is valuable not only for the many opportunities to appreciate Gillespie’s technique but also to see how, even as the host, he saw no reason to keep the spotlight entirely to himself.

Verve Releases Jimmy Heath’s Final Album

courtesy of Play MPE

Jazz saxophonist Jimmy Heath died this past January 19 at the age of 93. That means that he lived through just about every genre of twentieth-century jazz. His personal involvement in making jazz can be traced back to performances with both Howard McGhee and Dizzy Gillespie.

A little over a week ago Verve released his final album entitled Love Letter. There are only eight tracks, all of which are ballad classics, including songs written by Billie Holiday, Mal Waldron, Dizzy Gillespie, Kenny Dorham, and Gordon Parks (who is probably better known for his work in photography and film). Heath’s rhythm section includes Kenny Barron on piano, David Wong on bass, and Lewis Nash on drums. For some tracks the combo is augmented by Russell Malone on guitar and/or Monte Croft on vibraphone.

The album also features three “special guests.” Trumpeter Wynton Marsalis joins Heath for a duo account of Dorham’s “La Mesha.” In addition two of the leading vocalists of the current century join the group. Both of them sing songs by Parks, “Left Alone” presented by Cécile McLorin Salvant and Gregory Porter delivering “Don’t Misunderstand.”

I first became aware of Heath’s achievements through the Blue Note CD reissue entitled Picture of Heath. The album was originally issued under the title Playboys, perhaps in a coy reference to the sextet with two leaders, Chet Baker on trumpet and Art Pepper on alto saxophone. Five of the seven tracks were Heath compositions (with the other two by Pepper). There is much more quietude in the rhetoric of Love Letter; and, when listening to “La Mesha” in its current context, one can only describe the paired rhetoric of Heath and Marsalis as one of poignant lyricism.

The weakest tracks on the album are the vocals. Salvant may have been trying to sound coy in “Left Alone.” However, her voice lacks body; and her pitch is often uncertain, having to rely on Heath’s much more secure intonation to get back on track. Porter brings a much more secure sense of pitch to his delivery, but his rhetorical stylizing tends to slip into past clichés that are better forgotten.

Still, the focus of listening deserves to be centered on Heath himself. The advance publicity material described him as “a jockey-framed, spirited, 93-year-old man, who with the full breadth of his intellectual powers, delivers his final, magnificent salvo.” That last noun is a bit over the top for a repertoire of lyrical ballads. For that matter, while there is no question that Heath approaches these eight tracks with keen sensitivity to the tunes themselves, there is nothing intellectual about the foundational rhetoric.

Dizzy Gillespie at Treffpunkt Jazz in 1961

courtesy of Naxos of America

In 2011 South-Western Broadcasting (SWR) in Germany launched the SWR JAZZHAUS record label. SWR began broadcasting jazz recordings and performances in 1957. It now boasts an archive of one of the biggest unpublished collections of live jazz worldwide with more than 3000 hours of radio recordings and 500 taken from television. The SWR JAZZHAUS record label is gradually making this material available with CDs distributed in the United States by Naxos.

A little less than two weeks ago, the label released an album of performances given by the Dizzy Gillespie Quintet at the 1961 Treffpunkt Jazz Festival. The first five tracks were recorded in Stuttgart, and the remaining two were recorded in Frankfurt. The performances are almost entirely instrumental with Gillespie leading on trumpet. The other members of this particular quintet are Leo Wright on both alto saxophone and flute, Lalo Schifrin on piano, Bob Cunningham on bass, and Mel Lewis on drums.

Gillespie’s “Con Alma” was recorded in both Stuttgart and Frankfurt. The other track from Frankfurt is his “Kush.” The remaining Stuttgart tracks include Gillespie’s “Oops-Shoo-Be-Doo-Be” (the only track with vocals), his arrangement of Vernon Duke’s “I Can’t Get Started,” Duke Ellington’s “The Mooche,” and “Willow Weep for Me” by Ann Ronell. Four of the tracks are over ten minutes in duration, allowing all of the members of the quintet generous slots for improvisation, often with playful references to other jazz standards.

By 1961 Gillespie was a “seasoned veteran” of an impressive sequence of phases in which modern jazz kept coming up with new ways to be modern. Those innovations would continue after his Treffpunkt appearance, particularly with his shift from Verve to Philips and his partnership with Les Double Six de Paris. Ward Swingle was a member of that group, and its imaginative approach to singing and improvising scat would evolve into the repertoire of The Swingle Singers. Within that historical framework the Treffpunkt selections can almost be classified as “traditional.” Nevertheless, there is no shortage of innovative imagination on any of the tracks (including the shorter ones), making this new release a valuable resource for those interested in the development of Gillespie’s ever-growing capacity for invention.

Mendoza’s Tribute to Philadelphia Jazz Icons

A text search on the full list of nominees for the 2020 GRAMMY Awards revealed that Vince Mendoza is associated with three albums, one of which has nominations in two different categories. This should come as no surprise to anyone that knows that Mendoza already has six of these awards on his mantlepiece (physical or virtual). One of his achievements this year that was overlooked is a tribute album that could not be more of a labor of love.

Terell Stafford and Dick Oatts performing with the Temple University Studio Orchestra (courtesy of DL Media)

Constant Renaissance is a three-movement composition written on a commission from Temple University in Philadelphia. Its performance by the Temple University Studio Orchestra, led by Mendoza, was recorded and released by BCM&D Records this past August. (This is the university’s own label, named for its Boyer College of Music and Dance.) Featured soloists were trumpeter Terell Stafford and alto saxophonist Dick Oatts. This is another example of negligence by Amazon.com, which apparently believes that this recording exists only in digital form. Fortunately, CD Baby has created a single product page for both physical and digital purchase; and, as an added bonus, that Web page includes all of the album notes, including an extended essay by Mendoza.

The album title refers to the fact that Philadelphia was the birthplace of three jazz figures that now have iconic status, each for his/her own distinct reasons. Each of the three movements of Constant Renaissance serves as an homage to one of those figures. In the order of those movements, they are Dizzy Gillespie, Billie Holiday, and John Coltrane. The movement titles are “Bebop Elation,” “Solace and Inspiration,” and “Love, A Beautiful Force.”

To be fair, Mendoza does not try to appropriate any of the “source material” of these jazz icons. As might be guessed, Oatts has an extended solo in the Coltrane movement; and it suggests Coltrane’s ability to extend his improvisations over significant duration. However, Oatts does not go on at that length, allowing the music to be more about the relationship between soloist and ensemble. Similarly, there is no vocal performance in the Holiday movement; but, more critically, there never seems to be much of an attempt to evoke the idiosyncrasies of her intonation, which is what made her performances so arresting. Gillespie is represented by a few “signature” fragments from Stafford; but Stafford is not focused on “channeling” Gillespie any more than Oatts was trying to “channel” Coltrane.

It goes without saying that Gillespie, Holiday, and Coltrane account for a significant share of the recordings in my personal collection. I return to them frequently and always seem to discover something new with each visit. Thus, while I appreciate Mendoza’s “labor of love,” I did not find any of his evocations particularly convincing.

Mind you, I was fifteen years old when Mendoza was born. Only a few years later I would be working at a campus radio station, where the arrival of an Impulse! Records Coltrane album was always treated as a significant event. (Coltrane also performed at our campus.) While I was too busy with Philadelphia Orchestra Children’s Concerts to appreciate the impact of Gillespie and Holiday, initial exposure to the Impulse! recordings enabled me to “look backwards” and appreciate the broad scope of jazz creativity that extended over about half a century. Mendoza never quite caught the spirit of that scope in Constant Renaissance, but perhaps his generation will warm to his composition more that I did.

Shahin Novrasli: Ahmad Jamal Protégé

courtesy of PIAS

This past Friday I wrote a “heads-up” article about the latest album from jazz pianist Ahmad Jamal, Ballades, which will be released by Jazz Village this coming Friday. That date will also mark the release of a new album by Jamal’s latest protégé, Azerbaijani pianist Shahin Novrasli. Also released by Jazz Village, the album is entitled From Baku to New York City; and, like Ballades, it is currently available for pre-order through its Amazon.com Web page.

Listening to any album, particularly one of jazz piano, in the context of a Jamal album is a tall order; but it does not take long for the attentive listener to appreciate Jamal’s interest in this young pianist. He shares with his “protector” a clarity of touch in his approach to the keyboard; and, like Jamal, Novrasli is not afraid to explore the potential of high-density embellishing patterns. From a technical point of view, Novrasli brings a prodigious knapsack of skills and thematic tropes to the performance of all of the tracks on his new album; and these are skills that definitely cannot be ignored.

On the other hand, the album gives the impression that Novrasli is “trying on for size” a variety of different approaches to repertoire. There is an unmistakable fire in his take on Thelonious Monk’s “52nd Street Theme,” enough to leave me wondering how he would rethink what the most adventurous pianists were doing in the middle of the last century (Bud Powell coming to mind almost immediately). The other track that bears witness to that time is Dizzy Gillespie’s “Salt Peanuts,” supposedly written in partnership with Kenny Clarke. “Salt Peanuts” is a bebop “encoding” of George Gershwin’s “I Got Rhythm;” but Novrasli keeps the source as meticulously encoded as Gillespie did.

Indeed, he approaches Gillespie’s theme with an extended introduction based on repetitive structures that could easily have been lifted out of one of the piano études composed by Philip Glass (but definitely was not appropriating any sense of Glass). However, once drummer Herlin Riley joins Novrasli, we know for sure that we are not in “Glass territory,” even though the “Salt Peanuts” tune has yet to emerge. (I did not take out a stopwatch while listening to this, but it is the sort of extended introduction to an exposition that can be found in the first symphonies of both Johannes Brahms and Gustav Mahler.)

A similar introduction is encountered on the “Stella by Starlight” track. Once that introduction has run its course, Novrasli seems more inclined to settle into the tune as Victor Young wrote it, rather than reflecting on some of the more memorable latter-day treatments, such as the one that became part of Miles Davis’ book. On the other hand, since I confess to being no great fan of Joni Mitchell, I would have preferred to find “Stella” on the opening track, while “Both Sides Now” (which begins the album and will always be more than a little too syrupy for my tastes) would have been better situated near the end!

Three of the tracks reflect on Novrasli’s roots in Azerbaijan, only one of which is composed by Novrasli himself. These selections are based on both classical and jazz Azerbaijani sources. However, when compared to other classical encounters with such sources that I have previously enjoyed, I cannot say that I was aware of any “cultural roots” behind Novrasli’s interpretations. There are the occasional augmented seconds; but they are a bit like Aristotle’s lone swallow that “does not make a summer.”

Personally, I am more than content to listen to From Baku to New York City as an “emerging talent” recording. I shall probably revisit it from time to time. However, I am more interested in the directions that Novrasli’s “further emergence” will take him.

Musicians and Addiction

I found it interesting that two consecutive interviews in Arthur Taylor’s Notes and Tones were not only outspoken on the question of the problem of addiction among musicians but also very much of the same mind.  Both interviewees were leaders in their work, Max Roach and Dizzy Gillespie;  and both approached the whole interview process with clear seriousness of purpose.  Therefore, even though both of these interviews are about forty years old, it seems worth considering what they have to say on what is still a controversial subject.

Since I found Gillespie to be the better spokesman on this topic, let me reproduce his position:

If you study statistics you’ll find more drug addiction in the medical profession than among musicians.  But musicians have bigger names;  if a doctor gets busted, they cure him, nobody knows about it, while if a musician gets busted, it’s on the front page of the newspapers.

Gillespie gave this interview in 1970, and I have no idea how much the numbers have changed since then.  However, from the perspective of the present day, I find it interesting that the question of addiction in the medical profession was virtually untouched until Showtime decided to use it as the basis for the plot of Nurse Jackie.  Given my personal feelings about the consciousness industry and how it works, I would guess that there were any number of initiatives in play to distract the news media from pursuing stories on this subject.  Somehow it always seemed better to pick on patients succumbing to addiction as a result of treatment, encouraging the mindset that those patients lacked the personal discipline of medical professionals.

Still, Gillespie is right about the vulnerability of having a high profile.  The news media always prefer stories with familiar names;  and success in the performing arts has more to do with familiarity of name (which, in turn, is often a product of some major promotion campaign) than with the talent behind the name.  Once the name is familiar, whether it is Charlie Parker or Madonna, it becomes a magnet for “bad news content.”  One might say that we are a culture of idol-builders;  but, after the idols are built, we seem to take equal pleasure in worshipping them and smashing them.  We are no different from the child who wants every toy he sees but gives no thought to taking care of it once he has it.

Cool Born from Bebop

One of the more interesting side effects of my reading Ira Gitler's Swing to Bop: An Oral History of the Transition in Jazz in the 1940s was that it sent me back to giving a more serious listening to Birth of the Cool, the album that Miles Davis recorded for Capitol before going over to Blue Note. This was originally the title (apparently coined by Pete Rugolo) of a 12" LP of performances by what was called the Miles Davis Nonet. Eight of those recordings had been previously issued on a 10" LP in Capitol's Classics in Jazz series. The later release included three omitted instrumental tracks and one vocal ("Darn That Dream," sung by Kenny Hagood).

While there is no question that Miles was the leader for the three recording sessions (January 21, 1949, April 22, 1949, and March 9, 1950), I feel that the most important thing about the entire project was how much of a joint effort it was. Miles is sole composer of only one track, "Deception;" and he shares "Budo" with Bud Powell. Just "by the numbers," Gerry Mulligan would have to be counted as "principal composer," since he is responsible for three tracks ("Jeru," "Venus de Milo," and "Rocker"). Just as important is the contribution of John Lewis ("Rouge"); but the real sin of omission is the absence of Gil Evans' name from any of the basic credits. In the CD release one has to delve into the notes by Pete Welding to appreciate the role that Evans played, along with Miles, Mulligan, and Lewis in the birth of the Nonet and its subsequent recording sessions.

If we want to extend the birth metaphor to cool itself, then we might do well to consider it in terms of parentage. From this point of view one parent will be the small groups led by Charlie Parker and the other would be the characteristic big band sound from Claude Thornhill through the combination of his particular assembly of instruments and Evans' arrangements for that assembly. The Miles Davis Nonet thus inherited the genes of both the "Parker size" and the "Thornhill size." The CD also includes a "Special Note by Gerry Mulligan" that credits even more contributors. Most important in Mulligan's list is the presence of George Russell, described as one of the "more-or-less regulars at Gil's" and, in those early days, another arranger for Thornhill (not to mention Dizzy Gillespie's big band for which he arranged "Cubana Be" and "Cubana Bop"). Of those who appreciate just how many people were involved in the formation of the Nonet, Mulligan is definitely the most comprehensive and generous when it comes to giving credit where credit is due.

Beyond the fact that the ensemble is a nonet, the most interesting thing about it is its instrumentation. Mulligan's baritone sax shares responsibility for the bass line with a tuba played by John William (Bill) Barber, who, like Mulligan, came over from Thornhill's band. Then there was the decision to include a French horn, whose player changed in each of the three recording sessions (Junior Collins, Sandy Siegelstein, and Gunther Schuller, in the order of the recording dates). The result was a richness of sound that owed as much to Igor Stravinsky (whose name appears frequently in Gitler's oral history) as to the evolution of jazz in the forties.

The other side of the coin, however, is that, as those sounds were being explored, there was a certain sameness in how they established that "cool" mood from one track to the next. Diversity would emerge later, for Davis and Evans in their studio collaborations for Columbia. Birth of the Cool had more to do with accepting the nonet instrumentation as a premise and then homing in on its expressiveness with a very keen sense of refinement. Thus, as projects go, it was its own beginning and its own ending. After that all those who contributed would move on to other things, taking their experiences from the three recording sessions in different directions. From this point of view, that birth metaphor may be inappropriate; because what was "born" did not experience the sort of "maturation" that Gitler had documented in his oral history or that we would encounter in the subsequent period of the emergence and refinement of the free jazz movement (choosing that example because today happens to be Ornette Coleman's birthday, as well as Samuel Barber's). Birth of the Cool is a document of three splendid moments; but it did not declare the beginning of a "new era," as we might say, in classical music, of the opening measures of Richard Wagner's Tristan und Isolde or the riot that greeted Stravinsky's Rite of Spring. We can listen to it appreciatively, but we should also listen with a sense of historical context.

"… we never knocked nobody else's music."

The above quote is from Billy Eckstine. I encountered it because, in my efforts to be a better listener to jazz, I decided to provide myself with historical context beyond what I had acquired from Robin Kelley's Thelonious Monk book. Therefore, I am currently reading Swing to Bop: An Oral History of the Transition in Jazz in the 1940s by Ira Gitler. Gitler provides a loose narrative framework for the individual statements he has compiled, but he says little about the reliability of his sources. He just lets those sources speak for themselves; and, when the sources contradict each other, the reader has do decide whom (if anyone) to believe.

Thus, it is a bit idealized to take Eckstein at face value and assume that, in the early days of the 52nd Street clubs, everyone had good things to say about everyone else (or at least refrained from saying nasty things). However, there are definitely stories of good will and generosity where you might not expect to find them. Thus, when Eckstein talks about starting up the band that provided a platform for Dizzy Gillespie, he described how Count Basie offered to let him use some of his own scores while that band was beginning to build up their repertoire. One might not normally associate Basie with the emergence of bop modernism; but there he was, at least in spirit.

Flash forward now from 1944 to Sunday afternoon, December 8, 1957, back in the days when CBS had a live television program called The Seven Lively Arts. The program aired on this particular date was called The Sound of Jazz. It was produced by Robert Herridge and organized by Whitney Balliett and Nat Hentoff, and it is now available in its entirety in a 2-DVD collection entitled The Greatest Jazz Films Ever. Kelley's book offers the following recollection of Monk's appearance on this program:

While Monk was doodling around with the piano during a coffee break, the stagehands, cameramen, and everybody who could hear him wandered over to the piano. Then in came Count Basie and Billie Holiday, and Lester Young—all the stars! They gathered around the piano and stared as though they'd been hypnotized, as though it was the first time they'd ever heard anything like that. The director was so impressed by the expressions on their faces that he had Billie and Count and the rest of them stand at the piano when they show went on the air, just so he could televise their reactions while Monk played.

For the record Monk played "Blue Monk" with Abdul Malik on bass and Osie Johnson on drums. Basie was the only one who showed up on camera, and Monk did not like his presence at all. To the contrary, he found it distracting. However, having seen this video myself, I have to say that Basie seemed to be both attentive and appreciative. On the basis of Eckstine's anecdote, I am willing to give Basie the benefit of the doubt and assume that his appreciation was sincere, although I would be a bit surprised if this had been his first opportunity to see Monk perform. On the other hand I have to wonder whether or not he was aware of Monk's irritation, in which case he may have been torn between respecting Monk and respecting the authority of those only interested in producing "good television."

This was not Monk's first encounter with television. He had been a guest when Steve Allen was hosting The Tonight Show back in 1955. Conditions there were probably much more to his liking. Still, in today's world of American Idol, it is hard to imagine network television doing anything even remotely close to the encounter that CBS had arranged.

Yet Another Loss

This may well be the most morbid week I have encountered since I started blogging. I just discovered (due to sluggishness on the part of The New York Times in releasing the story) that this past Monday, when I was writing up my reaction to reading Joshua Kosman's obituary for Michael Steinberg on the San Francisco Chronicle Web site, was also the day on which George Russell died. Perhaps the delay reflected that fact that Russell was not that familiar to the general public. To this day he may still be best remembered for his collaboration with Dizzy Gillespie on the two-sided "suite" recorded on a single RCA Victor 78, "Cubana Be" and "Cubana Bop." This was one of Gillespie's earliest ventures into Afro-Cuban jazz. Russell was his arranger; and his most notable contribution was the introduction to "Cubana Be," one of his earliest departures from conventional scales in favor of the modal scales that could be traced back to Ancient Greece.

Ben Ratliff's Times obituary provides a telling anecdote about Russell's sense of self in his practice of jazz:

He later moved to New York to play drums with [Benny] Carter’s band, but he gave up the instrument as soon as Max Roach was called in to replace him. “Max had it all on drums,” he said. “I decided that writing was my field.”

Like Lennie Tristano, he had an intense drive to get at how things ticked; and, again like Tristano, his reputation was far stronger within the "brotherhood" of practitioners than in the "external" world of casual listeners. (That need to understand how things ticked, of course, meant that his approach to jazz was analogous to the one that Merce Cunningham took to dance and Michael Steinberg took to the art of writing about music, which makes this week's sense of loss all the greater.)

Looking over my own collection, I discovered that I have eight Russell CDs (as well as the 2-CD collection of the complete RCA Victor recordings made by Dizzy Gillespie). I honestly cannot remember how I accumulated those eight CDs, but I think the collection began with the Jazz Workshop recording by The George Russell Smalltet. I may have been drawn to this recording because Bill Evans was Russell's pianist. That CD gave me my first taste of Russell's own compositional voice, after which I would go after every opportunity to add another one to my collection. When I started taking my business to True Blue Music, I encountered The African Game, which I think was his only Blue Note session. My wife fell in love with that recording from its very first notes.

Regarding Russell's theoretical interest in modality, I have to confess that I am still trying to get my ears around it, particularly his focus on the Lydian mode. I suspect that this mode appealed to Russell because of the prominent position of the tritone, the notorious diabolus in musica ("the Devil in music") in the history of Western music. The Wikipedia entry for this mode illustrates it with the song "Maria" from West Side Story. Leonard Bernstein, of course, never concealed his enthusiasm for the innovations taking place around him in jazz; and I would be surprised if Bernstein had not been aware of Russell's pursuits. (His interest in Tristano's work has been documented.) "Maria" may well have been a product of Bernstein taking some of Russell's ideas and putting his own twist on them.

Nevertheless, by the middle of the twentieth century, the devil had been exorcised from the tritone as much as the structural functions of harmony had been emancipated from dissonance. By the time "Maria" came along, the tritone was not the big deal it once was. Consequently, whether or not Russell should be remembered for his theories may be little more than an academic question; but his practices played a vital role in how jazz progressed, particularly in the middle of the twentieth century. Thus, the last word on Russell may parallel the epitaph for Christopher Wren:

Lector, si monumentum requiris, Circumspice.

[Reader, if you seek his monument, look around you.]

If you seek Russell's monument, listen to just about any jazz recording after 1947 (the year of the "Cubana Be"/"Cubana Bop" session)!

Jazz Masters (The NEA Version)

The eight recipients of the National Endowment for the Arts’ 2010 Jazz Masters Awards have now been announced:

1. Kenny Barron
2. George Avakian
3. Annie Ross
4. Yusef Lateef
5. Muhal Richard Abrams
6. Bobby Hutcherson
7. Bill Holman
8. Cedar Walton

If nothing else this list reinforces the judgment of those who planned the SFJAZZ Spring Season, since Bobby Hutcherson performed with McCoy Tyner about a month ago at the Palace of Fine Arts and Kenny Barron's trio appeared last night at Herbst Theatre. Nevertheless, there are certain aspects of these selections that leave me lukewarm at best.

I suspect that my discontent is strongest when it comes to Avakian. Since he is a producer, rather than a performer, his award is for "jazz advocacy," primarily for his efforts to promote jazz through Columbia Records. My own opinions, however, have run towards the conclusion that, to paraphrase an old saw, with an advocate like Columbia, jazz had no need of enemies. Last August I went so far as to call the Columbia enterprise a "necessary evil," concerned more with "making jazz 'intellectually respectable' to those who would not be inclined to listen," rather than doing justice to serious jazz listeners and those who were at their best when performing for such listeners. Miles Davis was the primary case in point. There is no questioning the value of many of the sides he recorded for Columbia; but, in the overall progress of his career, it seemed is if there came a time when the "Columbia product" began to take priority over Miles' performances. Yes, Miles was adventurous enough to pursue directions not usually associated with jazz; but it seemed as if each of those adventures resulted in a new domain of sameness, rather than a preference for experiments, not all of which would necessarily work out as planned.

Ironically, a similar problem of sameness seemed to occupy Barron's performance last night. As I wrote in my account for Examiner.com, his approach to Dizzy Gillespie's "Bebop" was on the brink of "easy listening," if not over that brink. What sense of adventure there was for the serious listener seemed to come mostly from bassist Kyoshi Kitagawa, and even Jonathan Blake's drum work was relatively tame. This leaves me wondering whether, at least by NEA standards, a "jazz master" is one whose work has "arrived at the innocuous," more suitable as comfortable background than as provocative foreground. This would be depressing since it suggests, if not implies, that any jazz for serious listening is now more suitable for the museum than it is for the performance stage.

The Coltrane-Flanagan Collection

This morning I submitted a comment on Truthdig to the effect that writing about music and musicians was far better for my spirits than writing about politics and politicians. This gave me a chance to celebrate publicly that the San Francisco Symphony has returned from their Christmas break, and it made me realize how hungry I am to resume attending live performances. So, by way of "priming my pump" for tonight's concert, I have decided to reflect on what some (probably including myself) would regard as one of the most important recordings ever made in the history of jazz.

By way of introduction, my decision to check Eunmi Shim's new book, Lennie Tristano: His Life in Music, out of the San Francisco Public Library reminded me that, some time ago, I had purchased a copy of John Coltrane: His Life and Music, by Lewis Porter, an earlier volume in a series of jazz titles published by The University of Michigan Press. The thing about Coltrane is how radically opinions about him diverge. I am sure there are those who, having been set up by the phrase "one of the most important recordings ever made in the history of jazz," felt an enormous letdown when this paragraph suggested that I was going to be writing about Trane. At the other extreme there are probably those champing at the bit for me to disclose which of the many major recordings of Coltrane I happen to have in mind. Indeed, Porter's book covers both Giant Steps and Kind of Blue in the same chapter because their respective recording sessions are separated by less than twelve months (Giant Steps in early 1959 and Kind of Blue in early 1960). These sessions are also important for the awesome contributions of their respective sidemen (not to mention that Kind of Blue was led by Miles Davis); and, indeed, Porter's account did much to trigger memories of one of those sidemen.

So, to break the suspense, the recording is Giant Steps; and the sideman is pianist Tommy Flanagan. I feel very fortunate to have heard Flanagan not too long before he died. It arose from the happy accident of a business trip to Manhattan with one of my former colleagues. We knew we had the evenings to ourselves, and we knew we had two of them. So my colleague opted for the Alvin Ailey Dance Company at City Center, and I saw that Flanagan was playing with his trio at Birdland. At the time I knew Flanagan more by "historical reputation" than by specific listening experiences. I really wanted to change that, and I am glad I was able to do so before it was too late.

Nevertheless, it took Porter to remind me that Flanagan was the pianist for the tracks released on Giant Steps, as well as of his previous association with Trane. Here is Flanagan's personal memory of Coltrane:

I had heard him with Monk before, and even before he was with Monk I'd heard him with Miles and I knew Paul [Chambers] of course from Detroit. Just from visiting [the Davis band] I got to know Trane, and I loved his playing. For my first record date, I called him—that date they called "The Cats" [Prestige Records, April 18, 1957].

Porter also cites one of Flanagan's more music-specific memories:

I had a song on there ["The Cats"] that was difficult for me, I wrote a piece called "Solacium." But I knew that Trane wouldn't have any problem with it, so I didn't hesitate to bring that to the date. … You know from that point he called me "Maestro" because of that tune, like he thought I could cover anything that he could write.

When I heard him, Flanagan was, indeed, as much of a "Maestro" as any conductor who deserves (or insists on) that sobriquet. Even more interesting was that his age was probably greater than the sum of the ages of the other two members of his trio. Neither of those guys was a "kid," in any sense of the word. One could not possible play the music I heard that night without a strong experience base in not only technique but also the "ear" necessary to comprehend what Flanagan was doing. In a better world I would have known to prepare for this evening before leaving for New York, but I still managed to make do with my own knapsack of comprehension skills.

When I wrote about the series of piano recitals that Marino Formenti gave here in San Francisco in April of 2007, I suggested that he could have organized them in terms of Titans, Olympians and heroes, and men. Within that framework, Porter's book is very much situated in the age of Olympians and heroes, reforging (rather than continuing) a world that Titans like Charlie Parker, Bud Powell, and Dizzy Gillespie had brought into being. If pressed to push the classification further, I suppose I would single out Monk, Miles, and Trane as the Olympians (and, if one wanted to invoke a cross-cultural "Holy Trinity," that would by my Father, Son, and Holy Ghost order). The rest, like Flanagan, Chambers, and Bill Evans are the heroes, ruled by the Olympians but not always following obediently. Unfortunately, when it comes to jazz I suspect I am far more reactionary than I am with classical music, since I find the jazz "men" of today far paler (if not downright boring) than the "men" of Formenti's recitals. If I had to guess at why this is the case, my working hypothesis would be that the composers Formenti presented were as capable of being good listeners as they were of being composers, while too much of today's jazz fails from an inability to listen perceptively not only to what has preceded and endured through recording but also to what is happening among one's fellow performers. I might go so far as to say that too many of today's jazz performers act as if they were in their own echo chamber, but that might lead me to drift back into politics!

Jazzy Stockhausen

I suppose I should feel some modicum of satisfaction in having one of my conjectures confirmed by the Telegraph obituary for Karlheinz Stockhausen. The conjecture was that "the lion's share on the music from Licht [Stockhausen's cycle of seven operas, one for each day of the week] now available on recordings seems to have been inspired by performances by jazz greats such as Freddie Hubbard, Eric Dolphy, and Jimmy Knepper." The confirmation comes from this item from his early biography:

Between 1944 and 1947 Stockhausen paid for his education by working as a stretcher-bearer in a military hospital, as a farmhand, assistant to a travelling magician and as a jazz pianist in clubs.

Now this does not say anything about how good a jazz pianist Stockhausen was or even where those clubs were and whether or not they were ever visited by American performers. Nevertheless, it still means that Stockhausen had at least some experience in the practice of jazz. On this one dimension Stockhausen stands a cut above Igor Stravinsky, who kept trying to write "jazzy" dance pieces but could never really "get it." If I have a personal fantasy about Stockhausen having a collection of old Blue Note vinyls, then my fantasy about Stravinsky has him sitting in the Hot Club de France in Paris listening to Stéphane Grappelli, gnashing his teeth in envy because he could never figure out how to write music that sounded that way! I suspect that a lot of that Licht music sounds jazzy because Stockhausen still had a sense for how to play jazz, rather than just listen to it. Furthermore, Stockhausen was playing his jazz at a time when jazz was going through what was (for me at least) its most important revolution, the rise of the likes of Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, Bud Powell, and Lennie Tristano. The "jazz greats" I had previously cited would not be as memorable as they are today without standing on the shoulders of those giants from the Forties, that same period when Stockhausen was trying his hand at jazz piano. Did the jazz revolution fuel his own revolutionary spirit? There may never be a definitive answer to that question, but I can still fantasize about it!

From that point of view, I need to take issue with Ivan Hewett's appreciation piece, also in the Telegraph, which argues that most of Stockhausen's greatness lay in compositions from the Fifties and Sixties and that "vast tracts" of Licht are "cringe-making." I have no idea if Hewett experienced any of the Licht operas as theater; but, if he was writing about them as if they were "pure music," continuing Stockhausen's experiments in the grammar of how scores could be developed, then he was laboring under a great misconception. If jazz really is integral to how we should approach Licht, then we need to think of it more as performance (which happens to be staged, perhaps in the same spirit that Sun Ra performances were stages) than as composition. This move from the grammar of composition to the rhetoric of performance may, indeed, have been the act of a musician in his twilight years looking back on his origins; and, at my age at least, that is not cause for cringing!

Actually, I found Hewett's way with words more cringe-making than anything Stockhausen ever produced. What are we to make of Hewett's phrase, "the great Austrian/Jewish composer Arnold Schoenberg?" Is he trying to connote that Schoenberg's music could not have been what it was had Schoenberg not been Jewish? If so, then I suspect I would not be the only one to disagree with him vigorously!

In this respect I found the BBC approach to the news of Stockhausen's death (my initial source) to be far more interesting. Newshour approached Brian Eno for comment. Eno began by comparing him to John Cage, which I felt was a great way to start. He emphasized this connection by observing that Stockhausen should be assessed not only by his own work but by the work of those he influenced, stressing that, in Stockhausen's case, much of that influence when into the revolution on the pop music scene (Eno being one of those influenced). I think this is more important than anything Hewett said in his appreciation, which chose, instead, to invoke the cult-like nature of those who followed Stockhausen.

Finally, I am glad to hear that Licht was completed before Stockhausen died. The recordings for two of the operas (for Wednesday and Sunday) have not yet been released, possibly because they have not yet been performed. I have every reason to hope that they will be performed, and I look forward to adding those recordings to my collection.

Diz Digs Igor

I find it a real joy when I find two books that give me pleasure end up converging on a common theme. So it seems to be with David Schneider's books about the San Francisco Symphony, which rewarded me with that wonderful quote about good listening from Igor Stravinsky, and Ira Gitler's, Jazz Masters of the Forties. It turns out that Dizzy Gillespie felt just as strongly about good listening as Stravinsky did. He just had a different way of expressing himself. Here is Gillespie in his own words, extracted by Gitler from an interview conducted by Gene Lees:

I find nowadays that musicians are not as inquisitive as they used to be. You’ve got to be inquisitive. You’ve got to know why. If you respect a guy’s playing and he does something and you don’t know why, you say, ‘Why did you do it?’ What he does is easy to find, you can listen to the record. Why is what is important.

To invoke Stravinsky's approach, getting at the "what" is a matter of hearing; but it takes listening to get to the "why!" Adding my own spin to this observation, answering that "why" question, in turn, can involve appealing to matters of logic, grammar, and rhetoric, often in subtly interrelated combinations. Finally, by bringing Stravinsky and Gillespie into the same camp, it should be clear that good listening is equally relevant to composed and improvised music (although in different ways)!