With the need to keep food in my mouth and clothes on my back, I’ve completed a couple contributions to the virtual pages of www.jazz.com in recent months. (1) An Encyclopedia entry on the masterful J.J. Johnson and (2) a Concert review of " Benny Golson at 80" from the Kennedy Center.
Please also check out Michael J. West’s review of the KC show here.
Wednesday, February 11, 2009
Friday, January 16, 2009
No excuses
Hey friends,
The "weekly additions" to this blog have turned into no additions for about a month! I'm sorry. I hope to add a new post this weekend - stay tuned!
The "weekly additions" to this blog have turned into no additions for about a month! I'm sorry. I hope to add a new post this weekend - stay tuned!
Monday, December 15, 2008
No Man Is an Island
This recent article by Saki Knafo called Soul Reviver offered a thorough look into the musical world of Gabriel Roth—musician, bandleader, record producer, sound engineer, and executive for Daptone Records (picture shows Roth on the right, and partner at Daptone, Neal Sugarman, on the left). His story is one of true grit, and hopefully the article will help spread the idea that there are no shortcuts to creating lasting art. However, I would like to say that although Roth is shown to be headstrong and limited in his musical tastes, the projects he has participated in over the years have been varied. Indeed, Roth’s crew is not as “purist” as the article imposes, and there is still plenty of wiggle room in the Daptone sound. Just one example: Roth plays guitar, co-writes, and works as mixer/engineer on the Antibalas Afrobeat Orchestra album Talkatif, which is a world music/soul hybrid sound. He also has plenty of experience working alongside some of NY’s diversified working musicians—people like trumpeter Dave Guy, who plays in the Dap Kings along with Roth, as well as the Menahan Street Band, Budos Band, and in the trumpet section of jazz giant Charles Tolliver’s Big Band. I’m sure I missed at least one of the ensembles that Guy promiscuously frequents.
Tuesday, December 9, 2008
Happy-Go-Lucky Local
This week there isn't much to report, so I'll just provide a link to the review I wrote of a concert by The National Symphony Orchestra Pops with Dr. Billy Taylor, the Jazz Ambassadors of the U.S. Army Field Band, and Howard University's vocal jazz ensemble Afro Blue.
Enjoy!
Enjoy!
Monday, December 1, 2008
Being an Artist
This Thanksgiving holiday week was especially productive. Not that I had any gigs, or practiced a lot, or really have much to show for my efforts. However, a lot of mental space was cleared after I took the time to read the article by photographer Alain Briot (the link to the article is the title of this post). Briot's essay delineates what it means to be an artist, outside of earning income. Some of the fantastic points he makes are summarized here:
1. Feel free to express yourself ... Be free to express more and more of your personality, or character. Art is about freedom and creative expression ... Being an artist is first and foremost about feeling free to create. It is about expressing what is in you, expressing something that potentially others have not expressed before or have expressed in a different way. It is about expressing what you want and maybe even need to express ... If you start your artistic career by listing all the things you cannot do you reduce your creative freedom while you really need to expand it ... Before limiting what you do ask yourself why you are limiting what you can do. Is it because A-you morally object to photographing certain subjects, or is it because B-you feel inexperienced, insecure about your abilities or unsure of the outcome of your efforts? In my estimate reason A is perfectly understandable while reason B needs to be studied carefully. The underlying motivations for reason B need to be exposed and then discarded on the pile of "creative freedom reducing obstacles" that all artists have to contend with.
2. Art is a lifestyle not just an activity. One's art and one's life are eventually inseparable. One cannot be an artist without living a lifestyle which is conducive to being an artist: Being an artist means having a lifestyle that makes creativity and art part of your everyday life ... Fact is, the muses visit whenever they please and not necessarily during "business hours" ... Being an artist therefore means implementing a lifestyle that favors creativity, impulsion and freedom. Because this may conflict with other activities being an artist means learning how to organize your life so that you can handle these potential conflicts successfully.
3. Being an artist does not mean making an income from your art.
4. Being an Artist is sharing your view of the world with a specific audience ... Eventually as artists we are indebted to our audience because we need an audience to communicate with ... But above all, and with all due respect to our audience, artists eventually owe their loyalty to the pursuit of their vision. It is therefore important to remember that, as you pursue your vision, your audience can and may change to reflect your own changes in style, approach, presentation, etc.
5. Being an artist means having an appreciation for the arts.
Thinking of what makes good artists and bad artists, there are no universal answers. This week I watched two documentaries, and thought more about how Briot's words related to the subjects of each one. The first documentary was the accompanying DVD to the new Yo-Yo Ma release Songs of Joy & Peace, a highly collaborative effort that explores various songs for the Holidays. Throughout this DVD, Ma shows his deference to other great artists from numerous styles of music. Throughout his career, Ma has kept in mind who his audience might be. But with this release, the effort is to draw in further “open-minded” listeners – they may not truly find Ma’s vision as an artist intriguing, but want quality music to play for a Christmas party. This release is one of those shrewd ways that successful musicians who have risen to the top are able to stay there. They know how to sell albums, and this album is going to pull in a ton of money.
Tangent: The Ma DVD reminds me of the documentary filmed for Herbie Hancock’s Possibilities album, when Hancock collaborated with many musicians from various pop-oriented genres. Ma and Hancock seem to share the same brand of easy-going sociability in making music with other stars. But, they both also fall into the habit of providing responses to interview questions and testimonials that seem more like fore-gone conclusions than real insights. Maybe that’s just my jaded stance on interviews in general, especially with artists who like to sit down to give interviews nearly every day.
Going back a step, Ma is a successful “artist in business,” to quote another of Briot’s phrases. But Ma also maintains more revered qualities – namely that being a good artist has more to do with service for mankind than exercising compulsions or ego. Ma satisfies the entire set of Briot’s summarized list.
That brings me to the second documentary I watched...
The Ovation channel had a week-long series on Andy Warhol called FACTORY PEOPLE. The look into his artistic life, and the mixing of his compulsions with his work got me thinking more about the nuances of being a good artist. Warhol satisfies the following points from Briot, hands down:
1. Feel free to express yourself.
2. Art is a lifestyle, not just an activity.
3. Being an artist does not mean making money from your art.
As some of the interviews from Factory People suggest, Warhol’s views on commercialism, society, and cultural norms helped him carve out his artistic existence. Taking into account that his lifestyle and his art were not just intertwined, they were the same animal, Warhol not only meets the stipulation of the second criterion, but defines it. Lastly, in order to earn money, he started out in advertising, and became financially successful. But, many of his later business dealings, when it came to selling his art, were misguided.
As far as numbers 4 and 5 go, Warhol’s audience was not specific, because pop art was to be considered the complete dismantling of high-brow, middle-brow, or low-brow thought. A quote from the Wikipedia entry on him adds further proof: “All the cokes are the same and all the cokes are good. Liz Taylor knows it, the President knows it, the bum knows it, and you know it.”
Concerning Warhol’s appreciation for art, he might have been less focused on what art he likes, as opposed to what subjects he likes to exploit. Watching what I could of the mini-series, my impression led me think that Warhol enjoyed voyeuristically putting people in front of the camera without any need to have them do anything, although many times the best subjects he found were those who would satisfy their limbic urges. Warhol’s loft space, The Silver Factory, was filled with people that he manipulated into thinking that what they did was somehow vital to humanity, that “tuned out and turned on” was a real achievement. And they lived this “artistic life” as Rome burned. As much as Warhol loved these subjects, he also destroyed a few of them in the same process.
Was Warhol’s art giving to humanity, or just to himself? Was his reason for making art valid, or was his ability to bend the will of each of his subjects the end result?
After thinking more about my artistic life, I still need to mull over the details found in Briot’s essay. No artist is able to cleanly fit into each category that defines “Being an Artist,” but there will always be those that bear those lessons in mind, as well as those that never consider the purpose of art in this world. Looking at Yo-Yo Ma, we see someone who has the goal of doing good for humanity however he can through making music, but as mindful as he is of his own artistic expression, he is equally mindful of his career. With Warhol, we see someone who actually cares more about his artistic vision than money, but that vision is clouded, self-centered, and ultimately destructive.
1. Feel free to express yourself ... Be free to express more and more of your personality, or character. Art is about freedom and creative expression ... Being an artist is first and foremost about feeling free to create. It is about expressing what is in you, expressing something that potentially others have not expressed before or have expressed in a different way. It is about expressing what you want and maybe even need to express ... If you start your artistic career by listing all the things you cannot do you reduce your creative freedom while you really need to expand it ... Before limiting what you do ask yourself why you are limiting what you can do. Is it because A-you morally object to photographing certain subjects, or is it because B-you feel inexperienced, insecure about your abilities or unsure of the outcome of your efforts? In my estimate reason A is perfectly understandable while reason B needs to be studied carefully. The underlying motivations for reason B need to be exposed and then discarded on the pile of "creative freedom reducing obstacles" that all artists have to contend with.
2. Art is a lifestyle not just an activity. One's art and one's life are eventually inseparable. One cannot be an artist without living a lifestyle which is conducive to being an artist: Being an artist means having a lifestyle that makes creativity and art part of your everyday life ... Fact is, the muses visit whenever they please and not necessarily during "business hours" ... Being an artist therefore means implementing a lifestyle that favors creativity, impulsion and freedom. Because this may conflict with other activities being an artist means learning how to organize your life so that you can handle these potential conflicts successfully.
3. Being an artist does not mean making an income from your art.
4. Being an Artist is sharing your view of the world with a specific audience ... Eventually as artists we are indebted to our audience because we need an audience to communicate with ... But above all, and with all due respect to our audience, artists eventually owe their loyalty to the pursuit of their vision. It is therefore important to remember that, as you pursue your vision, your audience can and may change to reflect your own changes in style, approach, presentation, etc.
5. Being an artist means having an appreciation for the arts.
Thinking of what makes good artists and bad artists, there are no universal answers. This week I watched two documentaries, and thought more about how Briot's words related to the subjects of each one. The first documentary was the accompanying DVD to the new Yo-Yo Ma release Songs of Joy & Peace, a highly collaborative effort that explores various songs for the Holidays. Throughout this DVD, Ma shows his deference to other great artists from numerous styles of music. Throughout his career, Ma has kept in mind who his audience might be. But with this release, the effort is to draw in further “open-minded” listeners – they may not truly find Ma’s vision as an artist intriguing, but want quality music to play for a Christmas party. This release is one of those shrewd ways that successful musicians who have risen to the top are able to stay there. They know how to sell albums, and this album is going to pull in a ton of money.
Tangent: The Ma DVD reminds me of the documentary filmed for Herbie Hancock’s Possibilities album, when Hancock collaborated with many musicians from various pop-oriented genres. Ma and Hancock seem to share the same brand of easy-going sociability in making music with other stars. But, they both also fall into the habit of providing responses to interview questions and testimonials that seem more like fore-gone conclusions than real insights. Maybe that’s just my jaded stance on interviews in general, especially with artists who like to sit down to give interviews nearly every day.
Going back a step, Ma is a successful “artist in business,” to quote another of Briot’s phrases. But Ma also maintains more revered qualities – namely that being a good artist has more to do with service for mankind than exercising compulsions or ego. Ma satisfies the entire set of Briot’s summarized list.
That brings me to the second documentary I watched...
The Ovation channel had a week-long series on Andy Warhol called FACTORY PEOPLE. The look into his artistic life, and the mixing of his compulsions with his work got me thinking more about the nuances of being a good artist. Warhol satisfies the following points from Briot, hands down:
1. Feel free to express yourself.
2. Art is a lifestyle, not just an activity.
3. Being an artist does not mean making money from your art.
As some of the interviews from Factory People suggest, Warhol’s views on commercialism, society, and cultural norms helped him carve out his artistic existence. Taking into account that his lifestyle and his art were not just intertwined, they were the same animal, Warhol not only meets the stipulation of the second criterion, but defines it. Lastly, in order to earn money, he started out in advertising, and became financially successful. But, many of his later business dealings, when it came to selling his art, were misguided.
As far as numbers 4 and 5 go, Warhol’s audience was not specific, because pop art was to be considered the complete dismantling of high-brow, middle-brow, or low-brow thought. A quote from the Wikipedia entry on him adds further proof: “All the cokes are the same and all the cokes are good. Liz Taylor knows it, the President knows it, the bum knows it, and you know it.”
Concerning Warhol’s appreciation for art, he might have been less focused on what art he likes, as opposed to what subjects he likes to exploit. Watching what I could of the mini-series, my impression led me think that Warhol enjoyed voyeuristically putting people in front of the camera without any need to have them do anything, although many times the best subjects he found were those who would satisfy their limbic urges. Warhol’s loft space, The Silver Factory, was filled with people that he manipulated into thinking that what they did was somehow vital to humanity, that “tuned out and turned on” was a real achievement. And they lived this “artistic life” as Rome burned. As much as Warhol loved these subjects, he also destroyed a few of them in the same process.
Was Warhol’s art giving to humanity, or just to himself? Was his reason for making art valid, or was his ability to bend the will of each of his subjects the end result?
After thinking more about my artistic life, I still need to mull over the details found in Briot’s essay. No artist is able to cleanly fit into each category that defines “Being an Artist,” but there will always be those that bear those lessons in mind, as well as those that never consider the purpose of art in this world. Looking at Yo-Yo Ma, we see someone who has the goal of doing good for humanity however he can through making music, but as mindful as he is of his own artistic expression, he is equally mindful of his career. With Warhol, we see someone who actually cares more about his artistic vision than money, but that vision is clouded, self-centered, and ultimately destructive.
Sunday, November 23, 2008
Jazz Favorite - Ravi Coltrane
This week saxophonist Ravi Coltrane debuted as a leader of a quartet at the esteemed landmark club The Village Vanguard. For decades, this small basement club has been the site of numerous famous live recordings. Newark jazz radio station WBGO has partnered with the Vanguard to broadcast a few sets live from various performers during their stays at the venue. Ravi’s performance can be heard after the fact on the WBGO On Demand website or the NPR music website. Listening to the show today was fun, and here is my own breakdown of the goings-on:
Host Josh Jackson introduces the group, and makes the listener feel right at home (possibly because we are right at home). He also does some live blogging during the set, which includes the names of the tunes:
Amalgams (from the upcoming release Blending Times)
Round Two
Trading Duos
One Wheeler Will (by Ralph Alessi, written for Ravi’s son William)
Jagadishwar (by Alice Coltrane)
Giant Steps (by John Coltrane)
Tangent: Ravi went to college at The California Institute of the Arts. There Ravi lived with David Ake and Ralph Alessi, two jazz pros that have carved out their own niches; Ake in education and scholarship (although he’s a first-rate player), and Alessi within the NYC performing scene.
As a saxophone stylist, Ravi occupies a space where competition is fierce. When we consider some of the in-demand saxophonists around that stand at the top of the idiom, we think of Ravi, as well as Branford Marsalis, Joshua Redman, Mark Turner, Dave Liebman, Joe Lovano…the list goes on. Ravi is an incredible saxophonist, and it seems like he’s got his own thing that he’s into, which is an extension of the type of harmonic knowledge his father had brought into jazz and that many musicians are now familiar with. This statement isn’t meant to take anything away from Ravi. He’s not a mere practitioner of the idiom, but one of its true guardians. In this music, the heavy harmony and thought that came out of Post-Bop pioneers like his father, is now in a mature, readily accessible state. There are wildly inventive permutations of hexatonics, trichords, and structures based on spontaneous rhythmic groupings and displacements that arrive unexpectedly and then disappear, but this nerdy stuff is always handled with poise. During the first four selections, the music ebbs and flows between temperamental and spacey, groovy and fragmented, opaque and translucent. This is the emotional palette of “Post-Bop” 1960s jazz. Drummer E.J. Strickland comps and colors the music confidently, and pianist Luis Perdomo shows that his wide-open approach to playing modally can propel the music into new territories with just a few quick chords.
It’s true that Ravi has a career that owes a lot to his family, but he remains a favorite jazzman in his own right in part due to the homage he pays his parents. I attended his mother Alice Coltrane’s show at NJPAC in the fall of 2006, just a few months before she passed away. Highly publicized, and highly transcendent, the NJPAC performance showcased Ravi, as well as bassist Drew Gress (who is featured in the Vanguard quartet performance as well). At NJPAC, Jack DeJohnette held it all together on drums, and Reggie Workman showed up for one selection. Like John, Alice’s music was an outgrowth of her spiritual erudition. During the Vanguard set, this music is something Ravi only jovially called “Bombay meets Detroit.” He also divulged that growing up, her musical preferences were “elusive” to him, but now he’s appreciative of her depth and sincerity. After her song “Jagadishwar,” the band went into the chords of “Giant Steps” for a closer. Perdomo took the first solo, full of rapid flights, with clarity and more structure than is typical of most solos on this piece. It’s true that a jazz musician isn’t worth much if they can’t tear it up on the chromatic thirds relations progression. While I sometimes don’t dig performances of this song because they often become robotic, I did like this selection the most. With Ravi’s quartet, the musicians are perfectly at home with difficult music but the emphasis is always to make it their own. This is Ravi’s bag now.
I only wish I had been there in person to experience the vibe inside the Vanguard, where I’ve caught some excellent, inspiring performances over the years. A short list includes:
The “Joy of Sax” Quintet plus rhythm trio
Marcus Roberts Trio
Mulgrew Miller Trio
Host Josh Jackson introduces the group, and makes the listener feel right at home (possibly because we are right at home). He also does some live blogging during the set, which includes the names of the tunes:
Amalgams (from the upcoming release Blending Times)
Round Two
Trading Duos
One Wheeler Will (by Ralph Alessi, written for Ravi’s son William)
Jagadishwar (by Alice Coltrane)
Giant Steps (by John Coltrane)
Tangent: Ravi went to college at The California Institute of the Arts. There Ravi lived with David Ake and Ralph Alessi, two jazz pros that have carved out their own niches; Ake in education and scholarship (although he’s a first-rate player), and Alessi within the NYC performing scene.
As a saxophone stylist, Ravi occupies a space where competition is fierce. When we consider some of the in-demand saxophonists around that stand at the top of the idiom, we think of Ravi, as well as Branford Marsalis, Joshua Redman, Mark Turner, Dave Liebman, Joe Lovano…the list goes on. Ravi is an incredible saxophonist, and it seems like he’s got his own thing that he’s into, which is an extension of the type of harmonic knowledge his father had brought into jazz and that many musicians are now familiar with. This statement isn’t meant to take anything away from Ravi. He’s not a mere practitioner of the idiom, but one of its true guardians. In this music, the heavy harmony and thought that came out of Post-Bop pioneers like his father, is now in a mature, readily accessible state. There are wildly inventive permutations of hexatonics, trichords, and structures based on spontaneous rhythmic groupings and displacements that arrive unexpectedly and then disappear, but this nerdy stuff is always handled with poise. During the first four selections, the music ebbs and flows between temperamental and spacey, groovy and fragmented, opaque and translucent. This is the emotional palette of “Post-Bop” 1960s jazz. Drummer E.J. Strickland comps and colors the music confidently, and pianist Luis Perdomo shows that his wide-open approach to playing modally can propel the music into new territories with just a few quick chords.
It’s true that Ravi has a career that owes a lot to his family, but he remains a favorite jazzman in his own right in part due to the homage he pays his parents. I attended his mother Alice Coltrane’s show at NJPAC in the fall of 2006, just a few months before she passed away. Highly publicized, and highly transcendent, the NJPAC performance showcased Ravi, as well as bassist Drew Gress (who is featured in the Vanguard quartet performance as well). At NJPAC, Jack DeJohnette held it all together on drums, and Reggie Workman showed up for one selection. Like John, Alice’s music was an outgrowth of her spiritual erudition. During the Vanguard set, this music is something Ravi only jovially called “Bombay meets Detroit.” He also divulged that growing up, her musical preferences were “elusive” to him, but now he’s appreciative of her depth and sincerity. After her song “Jagadishwar,” the band went into the chords of “Giant Steps” for a closer. Perdomo took the first solo, full of rapid flights, with clarity and more structure than is typical of most solos on this piece. It’s true that a jazz musician isn’t worth much if they can’t tear it up on the chromatic thirds relations progression. While I sometimes don’t dig performances of this song because they often become robotic, I did like this selection the most. With Ravi’s quartet, the musicians are perfectly at home with difficult music but the emphasis is always to make it their own. This is Ravi’s bag now.
I only wish I had been there in person to experience the vibe inside the Vanguard, where I’ve caught some excellent, inspiring performances over the years. A short list includes:
The “Joy of Sax” Quintet plus rhythm trio
Marcus Roberts Trio
Mulgrew Miller Trio
Al Foster Quartet
Tom Harrell Quintet
Bill Frisell – Joe Lovano – Paul Motian
Joe Lovano Five
The Village Vanguard Orchestra
Further down the line, if I can’t make it to the Vanguard this holiday season (THE BAD PLUS ARE HOSTING DURING NEW YEAR'S, PEOPLE!!!), I’ll be tuning in after January, when guitarist Kurt Rosenwinkel and his group take the stage. It’s been a year now since I plopped down in one of the seats at the Vanguard, and I find myself chanting “There’s no place like home – There’s no place like home – There’s no place like home!!” in anticipation of the next time.
Tom Harrell Quintet
Bill Frisell – Joe Lovano – Paul Motian
Joe Lovano Five
The Village Vanguard Orchestra
Further down the line, if I can’t make it to the Vanguard this holiday season (THE BAD PLUS ARE HOSTING DURING NEW YEAR'S, PEOPLE!!!), I’ll be tuning in after January, when guitarist Kurt Rosenwinkel and his group take the stage. It’s been a year now since I plopped down in one of the seats at the Vanguard, and I find myself chanting “There’s no place like home – There’s no place like home – There’s no place like home!!” in anticipation of the next time.
Tuesday, November 11, 2008
Baljinder Sekhon at The Stone, NYC
Recently I journeyed to New York from Richmond to support a good friend, Edward Messerschmidt, whose commissioned piece for solo glockenspiel appeared on the program of Baljinder Sekhon's recital at The Stone on Sunday November 9. Sehkon's talent shone through in the presentation titled "A Collection of Solo Works," which actually incorporated a gathering of equally talented musical colleagues. Housed at the corner of Avenue C and 2nd Street on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, John Zorn's club is undoubtedly one of the centers for avant garde expression in New York's vibrant experimental music culture. Sehkon's music fit comfortably there, and the recital was a cohesive, yet varied display of pieces incorporating electronic overdubs and modern compositional techniques. Pieces often included glockenspiel, or steel pan drums. Sehkon graciously thanked his performing cohorts, numerous young elite musicians, full of chops, interpretative skill, and a knack for interaction. They tackled the challenging material with confidence, and each musician conveyed a professional stage demeanor, polite and calming. The percussionist Andy Akiho (who performed Messerschmidt's solo piece) was an exceptionally strong reader, and talented interpreter. The saxophonist Quinn Lewis had a thick, full tone, and deftly handled various effects like slap-tonguing, multi-phonics, and pitch bending on Sekhon's Gradient. My friend Edward Messerschmidt's solo piece held to metric strictures, while still providing for melodic flow and variety. Pitch-Dark Path by Sehkon closed the showcase, and had moments of beauty that were unlike much of the more introverted, solitary offerings of the evening. All together, the recital went off without a hitch, and by the end, Sehkon was relaxed enough to quickly thank the performers and then invite everyone out for an after-party.
Full program selections:
(1) Bell Canon by Robert Morris
(2) Regeneration by Baljinder Sekhon
(3) Kinderspiel für Glockenspiel by Edward Messerschmidt
(4) Conversion by Baljinder Sekhon
(5) Praying Alone by Baljinder Sekhon
(6) Barber's Dozen by Matthew Barber
(7) Gradient by Baljinder Sekhon
(8) Pitch-Dark Path by Baljinder Sekhon
Full program selections:
(1) Bell Canon by Robert Morris
(2) Regeneration by Baljinder Sekhon
(3) Kinderspiel für Glockenspiel by Edward Messerschmidt
(4) Conversion by Baljinder Sekhon
(5) Praying Alone by Baljinder Sekhon
(6) Barber's Dozen by Matthew Barber
(7) Gradient by Baljinder Sekhon
(8) Pitch-Dark Path by Baljinder Sekhon
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