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Saturday, April 30, 2005

JVC Jazz Festival Pays Tribute to Jaco Pastorius In All-Star Concert at Beacon Theater :: eJazzNews.com : The Number One Jazz News Resource On The Net

JVC Jazz Festival Pays Tribute to Jaco Pastorius In All-Star Concert at Beacon Theater :: eJazzNews.com : The Number One Jazz News Resource On The Net :: Jazz News Daily: JVC Jazz Festival Pays Tribute to Jaco Pastorius In All-Star Concert at Beacon Theater
Posted by: editoron Friday, April 29, 2005 - 09:25 AM
Jazz News The late great bassist-composer Jaco Pastorius, an undeniable force on contemporary jazz during the ‘70s as well as a towering influence on two generations of musicians, will be feted at the Beacon Theater in New York on Wednesday, June 22. Included in this all-star gala, produced by impresario Charles Carlini, are Pastorius colleagues and former bandmates like trumpeter Randy Brecker, percussionist Don Alias, saxophonist Ira Sullivan, guitarist Hiram Bullock, bassist Will Lee, drummers Kenwood Dennard and Lenny White, steel pans virtuoso Othello Molineaux and pianist/accordianist Gil Goldstein, who is acting as musical director for the proceedings. Featured bass players are Jeff Berlin, Richard Bona, Victor Wooten, Gerald Veasley, Christian McBride, Matthew Garrison, Oteil Burbridge, Steve Bailey and Jaco’s son Felix Pastorius. Opening the concert is a special reunion edition of Mike Mainieri’s Steps Ahead, featuring saxophonist Michael Brecker, guitarist Mike Stern, bassist Richard Bona and drummer Steve Smith.

For this special occasion at the Beacon, Gil Goldstein has worked up fresh arrangements of such classic Jaco compositions as “Come On Come Over,” “Three Views Of A Secret,” “Continuum,” “Opus Pocus” and “Liberty City” that will also prominently feature the Flux String Quartet. “Jaco's compositions are far and above the music of any of his contemporaries,” said Goldstein. “I think they are some of the best songs that have been written in the later jazz age. I also think they are going to have a history of being covered and recovered, and I’m hoping that these new arrangements are going to offer a different view of his stuff.”

Another Jaco Pastorius tribute concert in Miami on June 2 will include the Jeff Berlin Trio with Cliff Almond on drums and Richard Drexler on piano and Othello & The JP Factor featuring steel pans virtuoso and former Word of Mouth band member Othello Molineaux with pianist Sylvano Monasterious, drummer Gary Marsall and the Pastorius twins Felix on bass and Julius on percussion. This JVC Jazz Festival event will be held at the outdoor mall on Lincoln Road, just two blocks from the beach.

Although Jaco Pastorius passed away nearly 18 years ago (on September 21, 1987), his musical legacy remains as strong today as ever. Jazz artists around the world continue to cover his compositions or offer up personal tributes to the man on their recordings, all attesting to the indelible mark that Jaco made in his relatively short career. Born in Norristown, Pennsylvania on December 1, 1951, Pastorius grew up in Fort Lauderdale and as a teenager began playing around the South Florida music scene. Originally a drummer, he switched to electric bass at age 16 after injuring his wrist in a football game and adapted remarkably well to his new instrument. Within a year, it was clear to everyone on the scene that he possessed special gifts as a bassist. Growing by leaps and bounds, Jaco would quickly develop a wholly new and unprecedented vocabulary on the instrument. After performing in a series of local Florida bands, Pastorius was “discovered” by Blood, Sweat & Tears drummer Bobby Columby, who produced Jaco’s landmark self-titled debut for Epic Records in late 1975. Jaco joined Weather Report, the premier fusion band of the ‘70s, in April of 1976 and appeared on the band’s groundbreaking 1977 Columbia album, Heavy Weather. He remained with Weather Report for six years, appearing on a string of acclaimed recordings including 1978’s Mr. Gone, 1979’s Grammy Award-winning 8:30, and 1980’s Night Passage. Pastorius’ second recording as a leader, 1981’s Word of Mouth on Warner Bros., introduced such ambitious Jaco compositions as “Liberty City,” “John and Mary” and the adventurous title track along with a full big band arrangement of his most famous composition, “Three Views of a Secret.” Jaco’s 1983 album, Invitation, documented his Word of Mouth Big Band on tour in Japan. He subequently toured in a scaled-down sextet version of Word of Mouth and with the PDB trio-featuring guitarist Hiram Bullock and drummer Kenwood Dennard.

In the early, meteoric phase of his career, the charismatic Pastorius revolutionized the role of electric bass guitar. As the self-described “world’s greatest bass player,” he inspired legions of bass players around the world to push the limits on their own musicality. As one bassist so rightly put it, “There was bass before Jaco and there was bass after Jaco. He opened the door and we walked through.”

Billie Holiday Music Festival 2005 :: eJazzNews.com : The Number One Jazz News Resource On The Net :: Jazz News Daily

Billie Holiday Music Festival 2005 :: eJazzNews.com : The Number One Jazz News Resource On The Net :: Jazz News Daily: Billie Holiday Music Festival 2005
Posted by: editoron Friday, April 29, 2005 - 09:27 AM
Jazz News Fifth Annual Billie Holiday Music Festival
Billie Holiday, born April 7, 1915 died July 17,1959 Fifth Annual Billie Holiday Music Festival is accepting jazz poems (poets), artist renditions, bands and singers who invoke the style of Billie Holiday. Please submit tapes/poems, etc. for performances Memorial Holiday Weekend May, 29-30 in various venues in Baltimore and North Arts District. The Billie Holiday Music Festival features big Bands, songwriters, and singers who have auditioned thru tapes. The singers invoke but do not imitate the music of Billie Holiday. Email: juneteenthmuseum@gmail.com for information on submitting tapes. Date April 7th 2005 Billie Holiday Birthday Time: 11:00 am to 12:00 Where: Billie Holiday Memorial Wreath Placing and Musical performance Pennsylvania and Lafayette Avenue Baltimore, Maryland Info 410 243 8882

Date: Saturday, May 28, 2005 Time 9:30 Dress: Casual Admission: free Where: New Haven Lounge 1552 Havenwood Rd Northwood Shopping Center Baltimore, MD 21218 Singers, winners in past Mayors Billie Holiday Vocal Contest, evoke the style of Billie Holiday. Featuring the Jump Street Band with special guest. The perennial question is why does the best jazz nightclub in Baltimore call a forlorn strip mall on Loch Raven Boulevard home? The New Haven Lounge doesn't seem to care. It always wins “best jazz venue” awards, and not because there's a dearth of such clubs here and everywhere. It wins by merit, attracting national acts and keeping the best local jazz cats in business. In that respect, they deserve your patronage for keeping the flame alive. Is their lonely outpost a metaphor for the status of jazz in our culture? Please. The New Haven has been dishing up our national musical treasure for years in the same location. It's a bulwark against Kenny G and other pretenders. There's never a cover charge, except for major national acts. The waiters wear elegant tuxedos. There's good soul food available and music in the spirit of Coltrane, Mingus and Miles. It's the place to go, Daddy-O. -- Penny Colston Info 410 243 8882

Billie Holiday Music Festival Date: Sunday May 29, 2005 Time 3:00 pm – 6 pm Where Eubie Blake National Jazz Institute and Cultural Center 847 N. Howard Street Baltimore, MD 21201 Special performance by jazz stylist, Ruby Glover. Enjoy the Billy Holiday Sculptural Garden Admission: Donation $10 Info: 410 (410) 235-8882 http://www.eubieblake.org/ Tuesday - Friday 11am to 4pm Saturday 11am to 5pm Exhibits the history and legacy of African-American art and culture in the Baltimore.

Guardian Unlimited | Special reports | Percy Heath

Guardian Unlimited | Special reports | Percy Heath: "Obituary Percy Heath
Distinguished and versatile double bassist with the Modern Jazz Quartet

John Fordham
Saturday April 30, 2005
The Guardian

The American jazz musician and bassist with the Modern Jazz Quartet, Percy Heath, who has died aged 81, began his musical apprenticeship in 1946, after air force service. It was just the right time. Though the double bass had always been used sporadically in jazz, performers capable of advancing both its rhythmic and harmonic role into a distinctive jazz-bass language were arriving on the scene more slowly than trumpeters, saxophonists or pianists.

Article continues
But by the 1940s, the place of the bass had significantly changed. Swing specialists like Pops Foster, John Kirby and Walter Page had brought animation, drive and swing - as well as harmonic breadth - to bass technique, and Duke Ellington's young star, Jimmy Blanton, had added a soloistic agility that rewrote the book on the instrument. This was the bass world that Heath entered.

His playing became the quintessence of a style that suited the complex demands of a modern jazz ensemble. Like Blanton's successors, Ray Brown and Oscar Pettiford - contemporaries on the late-1940s American scene - Heath was precise in his intonation, buoyant and springy in feel and capable of spontaneous counter-melodies that enhanced the frontline's playing. He always sounded as if he was pushing the beat, rather than sitting contentedly on top of it.

If Heath had an advantage in understanding how an instrument designed for a supporting role might best coexist with partners, it was because he was raised in one of the most respected of jazz families (rivalled only by the Jones brothers, Elvin, Thad and Hank). He had worked alongside his saxophone-playing brother Jimmy in trumpeter Howard McGhee's band in 1947, and when youngest brother Al caught up on drums in the 1950s, the three sometimes performed together.

Music had been in the Heath family from Percy's earliest memories. His parents had a gospel quartet, and he began his career on violin, playing in church in Philadelphia, where the family had moved from his birthplace in Wilmington, North Carolina.

After service as a fighter pilot in the second world war, Heath began studying double-bass at the Granoff School of Music, Philadelphia. Within months, he was good enough to join the house-band at the city's Down Beat Club, where he met the bebop trumpeter Howard McGhee, who had played with Charlie Parker. By 1947, Percy and Jimmy Heath were touring with McGhee's sextet, and the following year they appeared at the first Festival International de Jazz in Paris.

By the end of the 1940s, Percy had moved to New York, and become a busy freelance bassist. He worked with many of the younger stars of jazz, including Parker, Thelonious Monk, Miles Davis, Stan Getz, Fats Navarro, Sonny Rollins and Dizzy Gillespie, regularly appearing with the latter's band from 1950 to 1952.

Before the end of the engagement with Gillespie, Heath had made the move that would shape the rest of his career. His principal bass model, Ray Brown, was leaving a quartet led by bop vibraphonist Milt Jackson, with drummer Kenny Clarke and the classically trained pianist, John Lewis.

Heath replaced Brown at the point when Lewis and Jackson were developing an original repertoire for their unusual instrumentation. The quartet's approach, a canny, but understated, mingling of jazz and blues phrasing with Lewis's classical enthusiasms, caught on. By 1952, the ensemble had renamed itself the Modern Jazz Quartet; three years later, Connie Kay replaced Clarke on drums.

The group became Heath's principal employment for the next 22 years, and his accuracy of pitch, sensitivity to dynamics and cool, almost fragile, sound was ideally suited to a band dedicated to making a jazz equivalent of chamber music - even down to the tuxedos. But if the MJQ did not often require the more dynamic and hard-swinging potential in Heath's playing, bands he recorded with when the quartet was not on tour were frequently the beneficiaries of it.

The MJQ stopped its softly-ticking clock in 1974 (although it regrouped later), but not before its Last Concert recording captured some of Heath's most beautifully sculpted solos, on Blues In A Minor and Bags' Groove.

Heath worked with singer Sarah Vaughan for a while, and formed a brisk, boppish quartet with his brothers and pianist Stanley Cowell. Though his compositions for that band were largely unremarkable, his solo playing was the diametric opposite. Looser and more emphatic than in his work with the MJQ, and often exploring his newly adopted cello, his improvisations became miniature masterpieces of low-register lyricism. His cello sound was just as immaculately defined and resonant as on the bass, and he retuned the instrument to bass intervals, in fourths.

In the early 1980s, following a reunion tour of Japan, the MJQ resumed playing, continuing until 1997, when they finally ended one of the most remarkable ensemble projects in jazz history.

The Heath brothers took this development as an opportunity to reunite, making the appropriately entitled album As We Were Saying ... (1997) and the excellent Jazz Family (1998), featuring some of Jimmy's best compositions and an expanded ensemble. On both bass and cello, Percy Heath sounded as irresistibly on the case as ever.

He is survived by his wife June, three sons and his brothers.

· Percy Heath, jazz musician, born April 30 1923; died April 28 2005

Friday, April 29, 2005

CNN.com - Jazz Musician, Diana Krall TalkAsia Interview Transcript - Apr 29, 2005

CNN.com - Jazz Musician, Diana Krall TalkAsia Interview Transcript - Apr 29, 2005:Jazz Musician, Diana Krall TalkAsia Interview Transcript

Friday, April 29, 2005 Posted: 3:29 AM EDT (0729 GMT)

Airdate: March 16th, 2005

LH: Lorraine Hahn
DK: Diana Krall

Block A

LH: Hello and welcome to TalkAsia, I'm Lorraine Hahn. My guest today is Diana Krall, a singer whose soulful voice and musical interpretations have made her one of the bestselling jazz vocalists in history.

Born in Nanaymo, British Columbia, Diana was heavily influenced by her father's love of music from the 1920s and 30s; she started music lessons, learning to play the piano at the age of four and never looked back. Her ten year professional career has been full of awards including several Grammy's and Juno's.

And now she's turned songwriter with several original compositions in her latest album, The Girl in the Other Room.

Diana thank you very much for speaking with us, welcome to Hong Kong. You up until recently have really been known as an interpreter of songs by other people and I just mentioned you are now writing a lot of your own compositions. Why are you doing this?

DK: I met the right collaborator (LH: Being?) to write with, Elvis Costello. (LH: Right, your husband). Hm, my husband.

LH: Was it...was it something that you always wanted to do but never really got a chance to do?

DK: Yes because I think that I look at interpreting the music of great American songwriters, George and Ira Gershwin, Cole Porter, Sammy Con, Jimmy Van Heusen and you know, like a character interpreting a great play. So you have to believe in what you are singing about, but then you have the freedom to soar and play over the harmonies that these wonderful writers...songs like "My Funny Valentine" where if you listen to Miles Davis, or Chet Baker, which is very very different. So I found it a very creative, highly creative outlet for me, and I didn't really feel it was my time to write. I didn't want to start trying to rewrite Cole Porter or these Great American Standards that I was studying so hard. So...Elvis and I weren't trying to do that we were just...we just started to write.

LH: Right. Now this latest album, The Girl in the Other Room, you seemed to have even blossomed more as a songwriter. What do you put that down to? Just working with your husband or being more confident about your abilities?

DK: Oh never confident about my abilities; that's a constant battle. I think that's what drives us, it's the divine dissatisfaction. And when you have someone who loves you and who also loves you enough...that you trust who's going to say, "You can do better" or "Don't give up" or "Don't throw it in the fire yet. Take it out of the burning embers and let's keep working on it" or "Leave it alone and...just be, not analyze it too much."

LH: This album in particular had special meaning to you correct?

DK: Every album has special meaning to me, this was more outwardly personal.

DK: For me, The Look of Love was more of a preparation for me about loss and songs like "I Get Along Without You Very Well," "I Remember You," but this was more...very very literally personal about my experiences after my mother's death in "Departure Bay," which is the song that I sort of I keep close to my heart, I think the most from this album.

LH: Was it difficult to write that song?

DK: Well difficult is not the right word. (LH: Challenging?) Well it's always challenging but it's highly satisfying, highly...I think one of the greatest experiences I've had in my life was playing at the Olympia in Paris, and playing "Departure Bay." Now you're from Vancouver so you know you take the ferry boat from Vancouver Island, Departure Bay to Horseshoe Bay, and as a kid you...wanting to be a jazz musician, that's the big city initially, from Nanaymo to Vancouver, and then Vancouver to New York. That's why I like Joni Mitchell, she talks about seaplanes and ferry boats, all things that I can relate to that are right at home. So you work so hard to be a jazz musician and go to New York City only to realize when you come home, the things that were ordinary to you are more extraordinary. And so I found it exciting to write about my hometown and then to go to Paris and play...start playing "Departure Bay" and having a Parisian audience clapping for that particular song. I thought how the hell did that happen?

LH: When you write, what is it...what is the process that goes through your mind? Is it just something that you wake up one day and you say, you hum a tune or you know is it something...a story you've seen. What's the process?

DK: The process is varied. It's the creative process so some days it comes easily to you and it's improvised and you turn on the tape recorder and you can transcribe what you've improvised and then you work with that as a basis. Or, there's no formula. Or...as an improvising piano player musician I can work it out in concerts.

DK Sometimes you sit down with a piece of manuscript paper and a pencil and it just (LH: Comes to you right?) Well not like in the movies but different ways, it's not any kind of set way. Some things are more difficult than others.

LH: You mentioned earlier about your collaboration with your husband, Elvis Costello. I wanted to ask you how he has influenced your approach to music and I guess visa versa.

DK: That's a very good question because one of the things I admire most about him is that you cannot categorize him. He is working on his ballet, he is working on a rock and roll record; he is incredibly open and knowledgeable about music and just follows his muse wherever he wants to go.

I trust him and I think when you write with somebody you must trust their judgment and...not their judgment that's hard for me to talk about. You trust somebody that they're going to tell you the truth and then you have to trust yourself and it's kind of getting a bit into sort of psychology. But I just admire him because he's a great musician and he's a great artist and it's hard for me to talk about because I'm kind of overwhelmed by the work that he's done.

LH: And what about the other way around. Have you influenced him at all?

DK: Well you have to ask him that.

LH: Alright, but he hasn't told you anything?

DK: Maybe. Whispered in my ear maybe.

LH: You have sold so many jazz albums in a fairly short span of time. What do you think...what do you put this down to really. I mean a lot of people have written about your looks and you know, the fact that you've been well marketed, etc.

DK: Yes I'm very lucky to have a record company who puts so much behind me. People ask me do you think the marketing and the album covers sell your albums -- yes, of course.

LH: I mean you've stopped all those glam poses.

DK: No I haven't. Wait until you see me tomorrow night. (LH: Oh ok!) I'm gonna be decked out baby! (LH: Ok I take that back). No I don't want to be put into that either well say, "No I'm not doing that anymore." Somebody said that she doesn't wear you know, dresses anymore. I'm like, "Uh...no!" I just do what I feel is right for me at the time. I do whatever I feel like doing and I fortunately have a record company who has stood behind me in every step of the way creatively. They've given me opportunities to do what I wanted to do creatively. I make my own decisions about my album covers. There's this kind of idea that they've made this, made me do this you know and I've always had my own concept of my covers and everything that I do is approved. And it's kind of an old topic and it's frustrating for me as you can tell to try to get around it without sounding kind of like...disingenuous you know?

LH: Right. Understood, understood. Well Diana we're going to take a very very short break. When we come back we'll talk to Diana about changing priorities and giving something back to the community.

Block B

LH: Welcome back to TalkAsia, my guest is Grammy Award winning jazz singer Diana Krall. Diana, what kind of a child were you? Were you somebody who always loved music, could play, outgoing?

DK: I don't think I can remember that far back. (LH: Oh no) Well you know, as you know growing up on Vancouver Island I was very lucky to be able to have the ocean and the mountains nearby, so I was a skier and rode horses and was very very and still am, like I prefer to be in the outdoors. But I also was very passionate about music and my dad collects seventy eight records so we listened to a lot of music like Louis Armstrong and Bix Spiderback and singers like Annette Hanshaw and Ruth Edding and Bing Crosby were singers I was listening to as a kid, and Fats Waller and Nat King Cole.

LH: Was anybody actually musical in your family?

DK: Well my dad plays piano, my uncle plays piano, my mother played piano and organ in church, sang in the choir, sang in the community choir, I couldn't you know couldn't get away from it. (LH: Could get away from it!) No and my grandmother was a really big jazz fan you know, so she loved...she loved more traditional jazz and but she loved songs and my dad collects sheet music so I'd have stacks of sheet music at home. And I just saw my dad about a month ago and we went through sheet music again and just all the original sheet music. It's really lovely.

LH: When your mother passed away I read that you had said that your priorities had changed. What did you mean by that?

DK: Did I say that? I think that dealing with loss and grief, there is not a plan, there isn't a...nobody can tell you how to grieve or how you're going to feel. And there's all these things that say, stages of anger, and priorities change...it takes a long time to process. Something that you know so well that's kind of not...touching it you know, but I think...I don't think my priorities changed but I think I'm still trying to learn how to: you can't always prevent what's going to happen to you but you can choose your response. And that you know it's ok to say no, it's ok to not do every single thing, but I'm a very driven person. I'm very driven artistically; I'm very passionate about what I do; I love playing the piano; I love singing, and finding balance is really really hard to do in this life. So my husband and I talk about it a lot. But I've always had pretty strong ideas of family and I had good examples so it's a process. (LH: That hasn't changed really right?) No no, it hasn't changed.

LH: Would you like to have family of your own sometime?

DK: Not if I keep this pace up, but yeah. I think about that. Yeah I would I would. But you know you end up being a bit...kind of like you're out here on the road for a year and a half touring a record, and it's really fun and it's really hard work and it's exhausting. It's all these wonderful things at the same time but you have to be careful you don't kind of lose track of time and feel like you're just...time just goes. So that's where the balance comes in. So I'm looking forward to taking some time off and just having...taking a creative breath and figuring out what I want to do next, yeah.

LH: You also spend time participating and sharing your work with charity organizations and you know, last time I saw you was in Malaysia for the F1 Gala, the tsunami relief. How important is that aspect to your work or to you as a person even, spending time and sharing that time with charities.

DK: Well, it's amazing what you can do in just playing the piano and singing for your own satisfaction and for you know all the wonderful things that come along with the success that I've been so blessed to experience. But I watched my mother who was a teacher, and a wonderful teacher/librarian and I watched her get well and how she had her days, definitely you know tough days, but she chose when she couldn't be a full time teacher, when she got well after her bone marrow transplant, which was for multiple myeloma, she was so impressed with the care that she received as were we, all of our family, that we started doing small benefits in Vancouver and we've kept going and she spoke at every benefit and was so inspiring by what she said and it was fun and I play the piano but I think it was my mother's words that so strongly affected people.

LH: So you do a lot of these things?

DK: I do what I can. (LH: Good) But I think it's important that you keep focused on something that is your thing and you do as much as you possibly can. But my thing is for Multiple Myeloma Research Foundation and for the bone marrow transplantation program in Vancouver. You see how it helps people so it's such a good way to do that.

LH: It is, yeah. We're going to take another very very short break. When we come back find out what it was about jazz that attracted the young Diana Krall. Stay with us.

Block C

LH: You're watching TalkAsia and my guest is Diana Krall, who has been described as a young girl who sings old songs with timeless authority. Diana why jazz? Why not pop, why not R&B, why not I don't know, some other type of genre? Why jazz?

DK: (Snapping fingers) Because of that. The indescribable swing feeling that you feel and when you listen to someone like Louis Armstrong or Oscar Peterson or Ray Brown, that's how I feel, I just feel good, I just feel like I just want to be in it. Or I listen to Carmen McRae sing or Ella Fitzgerald or you know, people that I admire that I get a chance to work with, people that I work with...the band that I work with. I'm sitting on the stage with my drummer Carine Rickens, my bass player that I'm working with Robert Hurst and great artists, Anthony Wilson playing guitar and on the bench sometimes I don't play anything at all I just listen.

LH: You're all very tight and you all exchange.

DK: We talk all the time about everything, about the music, about anything that we need to talk about. It's really open and it's a great vibe, it's a great place to be playing. And that's what you're doing; you are playing when you're up there. It's fun and it's exciting and there's lots of humour and also it can be very moving as well. And we're all telepathic with one another when we're improvising and you never know what's going to happen you have to take those risks in jazz music. That's why I love it so much because when you are, when it's right there it's like "Oh my God." And it's a great, it's a great experience to be playing this music. And it kicks my butt every night, it's challenging.

LH: Now you performed with Ray Charles, who recently got an award for lifetime achievement for his work. What was that like? I mean to get to work with a man like that?

DK: Really overwhelming and wonderful at the same time and you have to just experience the moment or else you can get so overwhelmed that you forget that you have to sing. And so it was a great experience. He really worked with me, he really had an idea of how he wanted me to phrase the ending of the piece we did together, "You Don't Know Me." And he was telling me, "Now I want you to sing 'No you don't know'" Until...just we went over and over it again and I was like, oh my God. This is an experience I'll never forget in my life and one of the most wonderful experiences I ever had in my life was to sing with Ray Charles. And it wasn't...it was in his studio and it wasn't any sort of separation we just, he just came down and he sat and played the piano and we were in the same room and I had my microphone. It was very natural and very...very (LH: Casual? Uh, no cuz it's Ray Charles! LH: So you weren't nervous?) But it was pretty exciting, it was exciting. It's definitely...I've had a chance to work with a lot of people and sometimes I can't believe it.

LH: Of all the big names that you've sung with, have there ever been any that really stand out in terms of having taught you something? (DK: Every single person I work with has taught me something) You pick out something from them? And they've taught you something?

DK: Yeah I find it. I find it sometimes not immediately, sometimes later, but I've always...because I was raised by you know father passionate about music, mother passionate about music, but also my mother was a teacher you know I was curious in wanting to learn and always have looked for that in all the people I meet. And they're not names necessarily; they're just people that you can...someone that you sit next to on a plane for five hours, who can teach you something. You know you just have to be really open to it and let it happen.

LH: When we think about jazz, we often think it's sort of an adult sort of genre, that you know teenagers wouldn't necessarily pick up a jazz album, but they are now. Why do you think...I mean there's a growing sort of acceptance of jazz, not only in a more sophisticated level but you know throughout the masses.

DK: It's just about this (snapping). I hate it when it gets too, too...it is a very complex process that when one...where you have to do your homework. If you want to call yourself a jazz musician you have to do your homework. If you're going to play with other jazz musicians they're gonna let you know, and you're gonna be out of there if you don't...I tell young singers, especially young women singers, I say if you want to be taken seriously then do your homework, learn how to play the piano, learn your keys so you can go and sit in with the band and you don't sort of say, "Ohh in this key or somewhere here." You say, "I want to play this in E-flat. Hit it."

DK: You know you have to do your homework, you have to do your homework, you have to study, but you also have to feel the swing and groove and once you're up there it's not about...it's not, it's not, you're not just in your own world. It's you listening and playing with other musicians and reacting musically from what they're doing and inspiring each other and it's complex.

LH: If I turn the clock back, rather clock forward, where do you see yourself (DK: Don't turn it too far forward. LH: How about ten years?)

DK: I don't live in the future. I try to live in the moment, I try not to think about that because it just freaks me out. And I just hope that I'm healthy and happy and still inspired and that I can still play music if I want to. You know that that's where it'll take me but I can leave you know, I mean when I go home to Vancouver Island and I'm on the ski hill or riding my horse and I can...I find...I'm so passionate about everything that I do you know, or my family or things that I like to do outside of music that are important to me that I need, you know I need to keep. It's important that that which gives you your initial strength and inspiration doing things that you don't lose some of those things.

LH: Very very true. Diana thank you so much (DK: Oh thank you)

And that is TalkAsia this week. I'm Lorraine Hahn, let's talk again next week.

BIG BOTTOM: The Bass And I Rodney Whitaker

BIG BOTTOM: The Bass And I:pril 27, 2005
The Bass And I

Rodney Whitaker was in middle school when he told his parents that he’d one day move to New York and become a famous bass player like his idol, the late Paul Chambers. The Whitakers, hardworking blue-collar folk, were more than a little taken aback. No one in their family had ever played an instrument, much less dreamed of becoming a star by doing it.

“They said, ‘Who is Paul Chambers and how are you going to support yourself playing the bass?’” Whitaker says. “My parents couldn’t figure out why I liked jazz. To them that made no sense because my father liked rhythm and blues and my mother liked country music.”

Well the bassist did move to New York and he did become a jazz star. And to see a Whitaker performance is to see a man moved. With eyes closed, with the instrument resting against his body, it’s as if he’s having an intimate conversation with the low notes, with the gut-deep tones, his fingers nimbly caressing the strings as if sliding on melted butter.

He’s accomplished a lot in his 37 years, having played on roughly 115 albums in addition to releasing five as bandleader (Children of the Light; Hidden Kingdom; Ballads and Blues; Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow; and Winter Moon).

Now Whitaker is back in Michigan where he’s an associate professor at Michigan State University and fronts the Professors of Jazz, a popular quintet of faculty members including pianist Rick Roe, drummer Randy Gelispie, trumpeter Derrick Gardner and saxophonist Diego Rivera. He’s also the director of the Civic Jazz Orchestra at Orchestra Hall.

Whitaker bucked familial tradition to succeed, and became a family man himself; he’s married with six children. His pop, who’s deceased, was a 9-to-5 guy.

“My father didn’t understand jazz,” Whitaker says. “To him it just didn’t make sense being a musician. In fact, one of the last things that he told my wife was, ‘You know at some point you’re going to have to make Rodney get a real job.’”

As a dreamy teen bent on becoming a pro bassist, Whitaker joined the Civic Orchestra for the Detroit Symphony Orchestra and attended the Blue Lake Music Camp, performing in Europe twice. In the early ’80s, he participated in saxophonist Donald Washington’s youth jazz ensemble called Bird/Trane/Sco/Now, which included saxophonists James Carter and Cassius Richmond. Washington had an impact on Whitaker. He had everything the bassist wanted: He was a working jazz musician supporting a family and living in a large house.

Washington too saw something in Whitaker.

“There were a lot of kids in the group who were good, but Rodney was one of the most serious ones, and he kept going,” Washington says over the phone from Minneapolis, where he now teaches and plays music.

Raised on Detroit’s East Side, Whitaker is the youngest of eight children. He got his musical start on the violin and switched to bass in middle school. Whitaker didn’t own a bass then, couldn’t afford one, so he used a loaner from his music teacher. A few years later, Whitaker purchased his first four-string — a second-hand acoustic number he got from bassist Jaribu Shahid with $800 he saved from local gigs.

Around this time, a neighbor named Charles Brown hipped the budding bassist to jazz, telling him he could, with work, become part of Detroit’s rich legacy of bassists. Brown’s records and advice changed Whitaker’s life:

“He gave me a record that had Paul Chambers and Ron Carter on it. You know they were Detroiters. That made me fall in love with jazz. Then I fell in love with being part of a legacy. You know, as an African-American child, if someone comes up to you and says you can be a part of a legacy — what that meant to me was these guys were from Detroit. From that point on I wanted to be like Paul Chambers.”

Others with whom Whitaker confided didn’t share neighbor Brown’s optimism. His counselor at Martin Luther King Jr. High School gave him the old you’re-throwing-your-life-away-on-music homily, saying musicians were a dime a dozen.

Whitaker then, of course, dived into music even deeper.

“I didn’t have a contingency plan,” he says. “I wanted to be a bass player. I just knew somehow that everything that I would do with my life would come from playing the bass. I just knew that.”

In 1990, the 22-year-old Whitaker hit New York and soon replaced bassist Robert Hurst, another Detroiter, in a quartet headed by alto sax man Donald Harrison. Whitaker also did a four-year stint with star trumpeter Roy Hargrove.

Then, in 1994, trumpeter Wynton Marsalis offered the bassist a cushy, high-profile job with the Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra. Whitaker declined.

“I have to admit that I turned him down because I was scared. He was like the Miles Davis of our generation. I regret it.”

Two years later, Whitaker quit Hargrove’s band and began freelancing, and when Marsalis hit him up again, Whitaker was ready.

“I just went for it. I just had to get over the first experience of playing with him because he was like a hero to me.”

Whitaker traveled the world with the Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra, appearing in magazines, performing at the United Nations for Secretary-General Kofi Annan and accompanying classical vocalist Kathleen Battle at the Kennedy Center.

But there were times when Whitaker and Marsalis went at it. Whitaker admits that his big mouth would get him into trouble, and he didn’t always agree with Marsalis’ decisions concerning the band. He says he criticized the leader, not to his face, but behind his back. Then once, during a contract dispute, he publicly criticized Marsalis and promptly got the boot.

While away from the orchestra, Whitaker started a combo called Foresight with fellow New York musicians and released his first album, Children of the Light, which featured mostly Detroit musicians.

Six months later, Marsalis reconsidered his hasty decision and rehired Whitaker, doubling the coin that was initially offered when the contract negotiations soured. Although Marsalis and Whitaker butted heads occasionally after that, they always respected each other’s work, and today they’re friends, Whitaker says.

After six years of being away, Whitaker was tired of commuting from hotels in New York to his home and family in Detroit. In 2002, he left the Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra and accepted a jazz studies job at Michigan State University. Whitaker says that Marsalis has helped him raise money for his various programs at MSU.

In addition to expanding the jazz program there, Whitaker performs throughout Michigan with the Professors of Jazz, playing a mix of original songs and classics. Last year, they released their debut, The Third Floor.

“Music isn’t just about playing with celebrities,” Whitaker says, looking at his career thus far. “You have to develop a vibe wherever you are. I worked with these people every day, and they are like my brothers.

“I’ve been blessed,” he says. “I sit back and laugh thinking about some of the people that I’ve played with. Especially when I’m interacting with my students and they ask me what it was like playing with Dizzy, Clifford Jordan and Tommy Flanagan.”

It could easily be assumed that one day someone will ask his students how it was learning from bassist Rodney Whitaker, a kid who turned an obsession with the bass into a career.

Bassist Rodney Whitaker and his Professors of Jazz at MSU will be performing two shows with members of the Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra, at 8:30 pm and 10:30 p.m., Thursday, April 28, at the Jazz Club inside the Max M. Fisher Music Center (3711 Woodward Ave., Detroit; 313-576-5111).

Death of Jimmy Woode :: eJazzNews.com : The Number One Jazz News Resource On The Net :: Jazz News Daily

Death of Jimmy Woode :: eJazzNews.com : The Number One Jazz News Resource On The Net :: Jazz News Daily: "Obituaries: Death of Jimmy Woode
Posted by: Anonymouson Thursday, April 28, 2005 - 01:28 PM
Jazz News Dear Readers:

Please be aware that former Ellington bassist, Jimmy Woode, passed away on Aprill 22, 2005.

"

Monday, April 25, 2005

The New York Times > Arts > Music > A Jazz Discovery Adds a New Note to the Historical Record

The New York Times > Arts > Music > A Jazz Discovery Adds a New Note to the Historical Record: April 25, 2005
A Jazz Discovery Adds a New Note to the Historical Record
By BEN RATLIFF

You might reasonably think that the recorded past of American music has been mapped out - that after all the academic books and scholared-up CD reissues, we know what's between A and Z. Of the important works, anyway. Ephemera will always keep rolling in, intensifying the reds and golds of the historical picture, broadening the context.

But now this: tapes bearing nearly a full hour of the Thelonious Monk quartet with John Coltrane, found at the Library of Congress in January. The library made the announcement this month.

The tapes come from a concert at Carnegie Hall on Nov. 29, 1957, a benefit for a community center. The concert was recorded by the Voice of America, the international broadcasting service, and the tapes also include sets by the Dizzy Gillespie Orchestra, Ray Charles with a backing sextet, the Zoot Sims Quartet with Chet Baker, and the Sonny Rollins Trio. (Newspaper accounts of the concert indicate that Billie Holiday appeared as well, though she is not on the Voice of America tapes.)

But it is Monk with Coltrane that constitutes the real find. That band existed for only six months in 1957, mostly through long and celebrated runs at the East Village club the Five Spot. During this period, Coltrane fully collected himself as an improviser, challenged by Monk and the discipline of his unusual harmonic sense. Thus began the 10-year sprint during which he changed jazz completely, before his death in 1967. The Monk quartet with Coltrane did record three numbers in a studio in 1957, but remarkably little material, and only with fairly low audience-tape fidelity, is known to exist from the Five Spot engagement.

The eight and a half Monk performances found at the Library of Congress, by contrast, are professionally recorded, strong and clear; you can hear the full dimensions of Shadow Wilson's drum kit and Ahmed Abdul-Malik's bass. It is certainly good enough for commercial release, though none has yet been negotiated.

On the tapes, Monk is Monk, his pianistic style basically formed at least 10 years before, with its sudden drawls and rhythmic hesitations. He lets Coltrane solo at length with very little accompaniment; the saxophonist plays rows and rows of original licks and runs, built with blizzards of 16th notes. The notable exception is Coltrane's solo on "Blue Monk." Through 10 blues choruses, he builds an even crescendo of logic, letting down his guard and relying less on his stock phrases. (The other songs on the tape, from the evening's two sets, are "Monk's Mood," "Evidence," "Crepuscule With Nellie," "Nutty," "Epistrophy," "Bye-Ya," "Sweet and Lovely" and a truncated second version of "Epistrophy.")

The music was discovered by accident, during the routine practice of transferring tape from the Library of Congress's Voice of America collection to digital sound files for preservation. Larry Appelbaum, a studio engineer, supervisor and jazz specialist at the library, said that he was given a batch of about 100 tapes for digitization one day in January and looked to see what was there; among them he noticed a brown cardboard box for a 7½-inch reel, marked in pencil "sp. Event 11/29/57 carnegie jazz concert (#1)," with no names on it. It piqued his interest, and one of the boxes holding the Carnegie tapes - there were eight in all - said "T. Monk." "It got my heart racing," Mr. Appelbaum said. (None of the tape boxes mentioned Coltrane.)

No bootleg recordings of the concert are known to exist, because even though it was recorded, it was not broadcast. The Coltrane specialist Lewis Porter knew of the tape's possible existence and inquired about it years ago, but after an initial search yielded nothing, Mr. Appelbaum said, he forgot about it completely. He was surprised to finally find it, of course, but his sense of surprise has been worn down over the years.

"There's always more," Mr. Appelbaum said sagely, in a recent interview in his recording laboratory at the Library of Congress's recorded sound division. He repeated the phrase so often during the afternoon that it became a mantra.

The Library of Congress holds the country's largest collection of sound recordings, and jazz of course forms only a tiny part of it. The full extent of several essential collections is thoroughly cataloged; they include everything ever recorded at the library's Coolidge Auditorium, including T. S. Eliot, Robert Frost and Robert Lowell reading their work, chamber music performances by the Budapest String Quartet, and Jelly Roll Morton singing and spieling for eight hours in 1938. All of John and Alan Lomax's famous field recordings are kept there as well.

But among the collections still being cataloged are the 50,000 Voice of America tapes, which for 40 years have been housed in a dark, climate-controlled room. The tapes constitute a valuable history of radio, and of music in New York. (The Voice of America also recorded every Newport Jazz Festival from 1955, its second year, to 1976, four years after the festival relocated from Rhode Island to New York City.) The cataloging has proceeded gradually, with first priority given to the most historically important and most physically fragile material.

Michael Gray, librarian and archivist at the Voice of America, which still operates out of Washington, confirms that in 1957, and for a long time after that, the broadcast service had access to the Carnegie Hall Recording Company's services. The Voice of America was allowed to record performances at Carnegie Hall free of charge, without paying the hall or the musicians, as long as it broadcast only overseas; this was regarded as public diplomacy through music. Of course, some musicians would not consent to be recorded, which is probably why there is no Billie Holiday on the tape.

Besides satisfying jazz fans, the discovery of the Monk tape has Gino Francesconi, Carnegie Hall's archivist since 1986, excited by the idea that much more of the hall's past may be preserved than he thought. "We knew that Voice of America recorded here," he said. "But we didn't have any formal documentation of it, and it's fantastic to know that they've discovered this." There's always more.

Saturday, April 23, 2005

NPR : A Fresh Start for Jazzman Henry Grimes

NPR : A Fresh Start for Jazzman Henry Grimes: A Fresh Start for Jazzman Henry Grimes
Apr. 21, 2005
Felix Contreras Reflects on the Jazz Aged

“I wasn't thinking about music at all. I was thinking about it, but not in a sense of creating some new music. So I'd say about 30 years I've been under that kind of a cloud.”

All Things Considered, April 21, 2005 · Henry Grimes was an A-list jazz musician in the 1950s and '60s. He played with everyone from swing master Benny Goodman to free jazz saxophonist Albert Ayler.

Then Grimes disappeared. For almost 40 years he lived a life of homeless shelters, day labor and emotional isolation. Grimes had a hard time coping with the competitive jazz scene in New York.

Grimes performed in pianist Billy Taylor's trio in the late 1950s. Taylor says Grimes' talent was not in question. "Here's a guy who whenever he had an opportunity to really express something in the context of the trio… he did it. No trio that I had, before or after that, sounded like that."

Grimes says he's surprised to hear such praise. "I didn't think that I was liked that much."

Margaret Davis, Grimes' companion and manager, says he stopped talking to people during the decades he had dropped out of sight. "He couldn't really get anyone to understand what he was trying to say, or they weren't interested or they didn't care," she says.

Grimes is better off financially than many of his peers who stayed in music. Working as a day laborer, he was careful to submit his Social Security number to employers. Now the 69-year-old can count on 38 years of Social Security and Medicare contributions.

Many jazz musicians his age lack that kind of financial security. For decades they've been paid in cash for performances and recording sessions, with little or no deductions taken out. His monthly checks don't pay all the bills. But now Grimes is adding income from performances.

Three years ago he was rediscovered in Los Angeles by a jazz fan and social worker, and soon he started getting job offers. Grimes has a new contract with a small Swedish label that will release some recordings he made in Europehe st"

News Record.Com > Coltrane items to be displayed at museum

Coltrane items to be displayed at museum: Coltrane items to be displayed at museum

4-22-05

By Alexis Gines, Staff Writer
News & Record

More John Coltrane history is at the High Point Museum.

The museum spent $19,588 at a New York City auction for items that belonged to the jazz musician who lived in High Point for years before moving after his graduation from William Penn High School.

The museum purchased the following:

• a fifth-grade history report

• three sheets of music with Coltrane's handwritten musical notation

• a Down Beat music award

The museum plans to display the items for four weeks before finding out the best way to preserve and display them long term.

Danish Jazz Bassist Orsted Pedersen Dead at 58

Danish Jazz Bassist Orsted Pedersen Dead at 58 Danish Jazz Bassist Orsted Pedersen Dead at 58

Wed Apr 20,11:16 AM ET

COPENHAGEN (Reuters) - Acclaimed Danish jazz bassist Niels-Henning Orsted Pedersen has died at the age of 58, Danish media reported Wednesday.

The musician, dubbed "the great Dane," made hundreds of recordings and accompanied jazz greats like Dexter Gordon, Chet Baker, Dizzy Gillespie, Count Basie and Ella Fitzgerald.

Orsted Pedersen played in his first band at 14 and made his breakthrough in 1973 when he joined the Oscar Peterson trio.

No further details about Pedersen's death were available.

Sunday, April 17, 2005

Indystar.Com > Trumpeter Wynton Marsalis blends tradition, spontaneity

Trumpeter Wynton Marsalis blends tradition, spontaneity:sound effect
Trumpeter Wynton Marsalis blends tradition, spontaneity
Musician-educator adds original works to a showcase of popular and jazz standards.

Wynton Marsalis

• Where: Clowes Hall.
• When: Saturday night.
• Bottom line: An esteemed virtuoso loosens up while honoring his forebears.

By Jay Harvey
jay.harvey@indystar.com


Mastery of the trumpet as well as a century of jazz tradition doesn't come any more naturally than it does in the playing of Wynton Marsalis.

When he is out of his heavier compositional mode, Marsalis can show more plainly how genuine his access is to what all the masters who've preceded him have done on the bandstand. That feeling of spontaneous creation came through in his appearance Saturday night at Clowes Hall.

He relied on popular and jazz standards to carry much of the message in a two-hour show before a capacity audience. But he supplemented that substantially with such accessible originals as "Delfeayo's Dilemma," a couple of vocal showcases from "The Magic Hour," his current CD, and a delightful romp through some countrified funk.

His saxophonist, Walter Blanding Jr., was represented by "Late," a tribute to New Orleans with a riot of alternating and overlapping instrumental lines. Otherwise, from Dizzy Gillespie's "Blue 'n' Boogie" to the encore, "Them There Eyes," there was strong evidence of Marsalis' belief in renewing the repertoire via thoroughly contemporary jazz skills.

"Jazz is both the oldest and the newest music," runs one of this oft-quoted musician's pronouncements. As usual, Marsalis knows his own mind, and his performance Saturday bore the statement out.

When he played "Stardust," for example, he eschewed the majestic balladry he offered several years ago at the Indiana Roof Ballroom in favor of a fresh, wry, elliptical approach. Like many singers, he skipped the verse and went straight into the chorus, but never stated it directly. Still, it was a thoughtful, lyrical interpretation -- just from a different angle.

And he brought with him a 19-year-old singer, Jennifer Sanon, who was wise beyond her years in renditions of the encore, "Comes Love," and a traditional blues that almost had her channeling Bessie Smith. Sanon also made her own two "Magic Hour" songs Marsalis wrote for Bobby McFerrin and Dianne Reeves. Of Marsalis' instrumental colleagues, Blanding sometimes evoked the great swing-era saxophonists, and elsewhere he delivered the roiling, elongated phrasing and bluesy harmonic sense of the hard-bop heritage. That goes for his occasional turns on his other saxophone, a curved-bell soprano.

Pianist Aaron Goldberg invariably accompanied with sensitivity and a sure sense of what should be filled in and what should be left empty. His solos were varied in texture and often inspired Ali Jackson, the fleet drummer, to exciting flights of fancy.

Bassist Carlos Henriquez completed the ensemble, vocalizing in falsetto during his melody-rich solos but never ignoring his responsibility for providing a well-placed foundation for the Marsalis band's authoritative and infectious music.

Call Star reporter Jay Harvey at (317) 444-6402.

2005 JVC JAZZ FESTIVAL – NEW YORK PRESENTS MORE THAN 100 CONCERTS & EVENTS :: eJazzNews.com : The Number One Jazz News Resource On The Net :: Jazz New

2005 JVC JAZZ FESTIVAL – NEW YORK PRESENTS MORE THAN 100 CONCERTS & EVENTS :: eJazzNews.com : The Number One Jazz News Resource On The Net :: Jazz News Daily: "Festivals: Festivals: 2005 JVC JAZZ FESTIVAL – NEW YORK PRESENTS MORE THAN 100 CONCERTS & EVENTS
Posted by: Adminon Friday, April 15, 2005 - 06:51 AM
Jazz Festivals Wayne Shorter, Keith Jarrett, Dave Brubeck, Chick Corea, Michel Camilo, Harry Connick, Jr., Les Paul, Stanley Clarke/Béla Fleck/Jean-Luc Ponty, Steps Ahead (2005), Cesaria Evora, Geri Allen & More Take the Stage!

NEW YORK, April 12, 2005 – There’s no better place to celebrate jazz than at the 2005 JVC Jazz Festival – New York, this year taking over the city June 14 – 25 with over 300 artists in more than 100 concerts (including club nights) at 30 venues in Manhattan and Brooklyn. Chick Corea & Touchstone, the Wayne Shorter Quartet, Les Paul, Michel Camilo, Harry Connick, Jr. and Branford Marsalis, Stanley Clarke, Béla Fleck and Jean-Luc Ponty, Cesaria Evora introducing Keren Ann, The Bad Plus, John Pizzarelli and other stellar artists are set to perform. Tickets go on sale Wednesday, April 13.

Highlights of the festival feature the Carnegie Hall return of Dave Brubeck; birthday celebrations from 80 – 100, including Les Paul’s 90th with guitarists from every genre turning out to salute the master; a star-studded tribute to Rosemary Clooney; a tribute to Jaco Pastorius; and three free concerts, including the JVC Jazz Festival debut at Prospect Park in Brooklyn, South Street Seaport and the World Financial Center.



“Last year was one of the most exciting years for JVC Jazz Festivals in New York and Newport,” said George Wein, CEO of Festival Productions, Inc., and producer of the JVC Jazz Festival and other events around the world. “We celebrated the 50th anniversary of Newport and 20 years with JVC as sponsor. Now, as we go into the next 50 years, we are pleased to continue in New York with more events and venues than ever, as well as offering great festivals in Newport and other cities around the world.”



The 2005 JVC Jazz Festival – New York presents seven nights of music at Carnegie Hall including a 90th birthday celebration for Les Paul and a stellar, star-studded salute to America’s favorite “girl singer,” Rosemary Clooney. The 8:00 p.m. Carnegie Hall concerts kick off with Wayne & Dave on Friday, June 17 with the Wayne Shorter Quartet featuring Brian Blade, John Patitucci and Danilo Pérez plus Dave Holland Quintet featuring Robin Eubanks, Steve Nelson, Chris Potter and Nate Smith. Last year, Wayne and Dave performed with Herbie Hancock, but this year they’re back with their own bands, marking Dave’s first performance as a leader at Stern Auditorium.



On Sunday, June 19, Carnegie Hall hosts All for Paul: Les Paul 90th Birthday Salute, presented by Gibson Guitar, the world’s premiere musical instrument manufacturer and lifestyle company, which is best known for its Les Paul model electric guitar that is recognized around the world as an icon for rock and roll music. Hear some of the best from Les Paul and his band John Colliani, Lou Pallo and Nicky Parrott plus tributes from Tommy Emmanuel, José Feliciano, Peter Frampton, Steve Lukather, Pat Martino, Steve Miller, Bucky Pizzarelli, Richie Sambora & John Rzeznik, Neal Schon, Kenny Wayne Shepherd, Derek Trucks, Edgar Winter and vocalist Madeleine Peyroux with Will Lee and Omar Hakim. The concert is produced in association with Charles Carlini for Carlini Group. Additional support comes from Dean Markley, maker of the world’s greatest guitar and bass strings.



On Monday, June 20, don’t miss Rosemary Clooney: An All-Star Remembrance of America’s Girl Singer with Debby Boone, John Pizzarelli, Dianne Reeves, Brian Stokes Mitchell featuring Scott Hamilton, Bucky Pizzarelli, Warren Vaché and John Oddo (Music Director) with Joe Cocuzzo, Jay Leonhart, George Rabbai, Mark Vinci and an appearance by Larry King. Produced by Allen Sviridoff, the concert is a benefit for the Weill Music Institute’s Professional Training Workshops.



Carnegie concerts continue with Keith Jarrett, Jack DeJohnette, Gary Peacock on Wednesday, June 22; Two Times Three featuring Trio! Stanley Clarke, Béla Fleck and Jean-Luc Ponty and Paul Motian, Bill Frisell and Joe Lovano on Thursday, June 23; Always Welcome … starring the Dave Brubeck Quartet with Randy Jones, Bobby Militello and Michael Moore plus John Pizzarelli Quartet with Ray Kennedy, Martin Pizzarelli, Tony Tedesco and guests Larry Goldings, Cesar Camargo Mariano, Grover Kemble, Harry Allen and Jessica Molaskey on Friday, June 24; and Eddie Palmieri y La Perfecta II featuring Herman Olivera plus The 2 Worlds of Ray Barretto featuring Adalberto Santiago with special guest jazz soloists Randy Brecker and Ronnie Cuber on Saturday, June 25.



At Zankel Hall at Carnegie on Saturday, June 25, at 8:30 p.m., Marsalis Music presents music from its latest releases featuring Harry Connick, Jr. and Branford Marsalis performing Occasion plus Miguel Zenón performing Jíbaro.



The magnificent new Frederick P. Rose Hall is the scene of four JVC Jazz Festival concerts including 100 Years and a Day: Doc Cheatham Centennial Jazz Party featuring Nicholas Payton, Clark Terry, Warren Vaché, Randy Sandke, Jimmy Owens, Theodore Croker with Howard Alden, Chuck Folds, Jim Galloway, Jimmy Heath, Earl May, Benny Powell, Catherine Russell, George Wein, Frank Wess, Jackie Williams and host Phil Schaap on Tuesday, June 14.



Concerts at Rose Hall continue on Wednesday, June 15 with Piano Masters Salute Piano Legends: Celebrating Ellington, Evans, Hancock & Monk featuring Geri Allen, Kenny Barron, Uri Caine and Randy Weston; Thursday, June 16, Chick Corea & Touchstone featuring Tom Brechtlein, Carles Benavent, Jorge Pardo and Rubem Dantas, members of Paco De Lucia’s Band in another look at the revered Touchstone album of the 1980s; and Michel Camilo: Solo, Duo & Trio featuring Charles Flores and Dafnis Prieto with special guest David Sánchez on Friday, June 17. All concerts are at 8:00 p.m.



JVC Jazz Festival heads to the Beacon Theatre for two nights of memorable music. On Tuesday, June 21, catch Cape Verdean folk singer Cesaria Evora introducing the much-talked about French vocalist Keren Ann and special guest Lura. Then on Wednesday, June 22, don’t miss Seven Steps to Jaco with Steps Ahead (2005) featuring Michael Brecker, Mike Mainieri, Steve Smith, Mike Stern and new member, Richard Bona plus Portrait of Jaco: Remembering Jaco Pastorius featuring Steve Bailey, Jeff Berlin, Richard Bona, Oteil Burbridge, Avishai Cohen, Matthew Garrison, Will Lee, Christian McBride, Felix Pastorius, Gerald Veasley with Don Alias, Randy Brecker, Hiram Bullock, Kenwood Dennard, Flux Quartet, Peter Graves, Othello Molineaux, Julius Pastorius and Lenny White. Gil Goldstein is the Musical Director and arranger; Charles Carlini is producer and Bill Milkowski is associate producer. Both concerts are at 8:00 p.m.



See Cyrus Chestnut and John Hicks in the No Minimum series at Merkin Concert Hall at Kaufmann Center on Monday, June 20, at 8:00 p.m. The festival travels across town on Tuesday, June 21, to Kaye Playhouse at Hunter College for A Four Score Salute to Barbara Carroll with the venerable pianist/vocalist, Peter Appleyard, Ann Hampton Callaway, Bill Charlap, Joe Cocuzzo, Dick Hyman, Jay Leonhart, Marian McPartland, Ted Rosenthal, Mickey Roker, Daryl Sherman, Dr. Billy Taylor, George Wein and others. Leonhart is the producer and proceeds will benefit the Jazz Foundation of America. Discover Anat Fort Trio at Symphony Space – Thalia Theater on Friday, June 24, at 8:30 p.m.



JVC Jazz Festival presents Joanne Brackeen Quartet with Ravi Coltrane, Rodney Green and Ugonna Okegwo at Studio Museum in Harlem on Thursday, June 16, at 7:30 p.m. Catch Lou Donaldson Quartet with Dr. Lonnie Smith, Randy Johnston and Fukushi Tainaka at Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture on Sunday, June 19, at 3:00 p.m.



The JVC Jazz Festival free concert series includes DownBeat Magazine Presents Jazz Combos featuring Chicago’s Columbia College, Amherst’s University of Massachusetts and the University of Hartford’s Hartt School of Music at the South Street Seaport on Wednesday, June 15, at 12:30 p.m. Cross the bridge for the festival debut at Prospect Park Bandshell on Friday, June 17, at 7:30 p.m. Part of the Celebrate Brooklyn Festival, the concert features The Bad Plus with Ethan Iverson, Reid Anderson and David King; Charlie Hunter Trio with John Ellis and Derrek Phillips; and James Carter Organ Trio with Gerard Gibbs and Leonard King. Maria Schneider Orchestra, produced by the Hudson River Festival, performs at the World Financial Center Plaza on Tuesday, June 21, at 7:00 p.m.



The JVC Jazz Festival club series returns to showcase outstanding artists with special programs and unique bands. Jazz Standard presents David Murray & The Gwo-Ka Masters Friday, June 17 – Sunday, June 19 at 7:30 p.m., 9:30 p.m. and 11:30 p.m. The Village Vanguard presents the Vanguard Jazz Orchestra with special guest Joe Lovano on Monday, June 20, and Don Byron: Almost Complete Tuesday, June 21 – Saturday, June 25, at 9:00 p.m. and 11:00 p.m. Byron kicks off with Music for Six Musicians with James Zollar, George Colligan, Leo Traversa, Milton Cardona and Ben Wittman joining him. On June 22, it’s the Don Byron Big Band featuring Abdoulaye Diabate with Robert Debellis, Alex Harding, Ravi Best, Ralph Alessi, Curtis Fowlkes, Alan Ferber plus Zollar, Colligan, Traversa, Cardona and Wittman. Don Byron Adventurers Orchestra takes the stage on June 23 with David Gilmore, Brad Jones, Rodney Holmes, DK Dyson, Gordon Chambers as well as Zollar, Colligan, Alessi, Debellis and Fowlkes. On June 24 and 25, catch Byron’s Ivey-Divey Trio featuring Jason Moran and Billy Hart with guests Lonnie Plaxico and Ralph Alessi.



Teaming up in a new collaboration with the Knitting Factory, on Saturday, June 25, at 8:00 p.m. JVC Jazz Festival presents New York Now!, a three-stage mini-festival in celebration of the wonderful artistry and diversity of the thriving jazz universe. Bands include Ben Allison’s Kush Trio, Tim Berne’s Hard Cell, Avishai Cohen Trio, Marty Ehrlich Sextet, Robert Glasper Trio with special guest Ledisi, Jacob Fred Jazz Odyssey, Rudresh Mahanthappa Quartet, Jean-Michel Pilc Trio, Dafnis Prieto Quintet, Kurt Rosenwinkel Quartet, Travis Sullivan’s Bjorkestra and Min Xiai-Fen’s Blue Pipa Trio.



In addition, the 2-for-1 Club Night series with special discounts to JVC Jazz Festival ticket holders will be offered throughout the festival at The Blue Note, Iridium Jazz Club, Sweet Rhythm, Up Over Jazz Café, Zinc and new additions, Marie’s Jazz Bar for the Performing Arts and Smoke. Artists include Terence Blanchard Sextet & Claudia Acuña at the Blue Note, Frank Zappa Big Band at Iridium, Kendra Shank Quartet at Marie’s, Lea DeLaria at Smoke, Bertha Hope at Up Over Jazz Café and Eddie Martinez Quartet at Zinc.



Take a trip to the movies at Florence Gould Hall on Monday, June 20, at 7:00 p.m. and 9:30 p.m. for an exclusive screening of miles electric: a different kind of blue, a look at Miles Davis Live at the Isle of Wight Festival (1970) featuring complete concert footage of Miles Davis with Gary Bartz, Chick Corea, Jack DeJohnette, Dave Holland, Keith Jarrett, Airto Moreira plus interviews with Herbie Hancock, Joni Mitchell and Carlos Santana.



JVC Special Events & Educational Programs include Jazz Reflections, visual art celebrations of jazz, presented at galleries throughout Harlem by Incorporation of Artists on the Move, Inc.; Chaka Khan at the Apollo Theater Legends Series on Sunday, June 12, at 7:00 p.m.; the Jazz Journalists Association’s 2005 Jazz Awards at B.B. King’s Blues Club & Grill on Tuesday, June 14, at 5:00 p.m.; Dedicated to Louis Armstrong, the story of the trumpet giant in narrative, song and dance, at the Blue Note on Sunday, June 19, at 12:30 p.m. and 2:30 p.m.; Paul Winter’s Summer Solstice featuring Winter, Renato Braz and others at Cathedral of St. John the Divine on Friday, June 17, and Saturday, June 18, at 7:30 p.m. and Saturday at 4:30 a.m.; and Blue Note Master Classes, Jazz Education Workshops Clinics & Lectures with Pat Martino on Saturday, June 18, and Eddie Gomez on Saturday, June 25, at 2:00 p.m.



Spend the weekend at Freihofer’s Jazz Festival (formerly Newport Jazz Festival) at Saratoga Springs Performing Arts Center in Saratoga Springs, NY, June 25 – 26, starting at noon with a line-up of world-renowned artists including McCoy Tyner, Al Jarreau, Cassandra Wilson, Dave Brubeck, John Pizzarelli, Chris Botti and Steps Ahead (2005).



JVC Jazz Festival – Newport, now celebrating the 51st anniversary of the famed Newport Jazz Festival, is set for August 12 – 15 at Ft. Adams State Park.



Additional support for the JVC Jazz Festival – New York is provided by NYC & Co, Macy’s and media partners, The Village Voice, BET Jazz and Jazz 88/WBGO-FM.



The Buckingham Hotel, located at 101 West 57th Street at Sixth Avenue, is the official host hotel of the JVC Jazz Festival – New York. For the special rate, call (888) 511-1900 and ask for the JVC Jazz Festival Room Block.



For more information, visit the official JVC Jazz Festival – New York website at www.festivalproductions.net.



Tickets for JVC Jazz Festival – New York concerts are available at respective box offices or by telephone: Beacon Theatre (212) 307-7171; Carnegie Hall (212) 247-7800; Florence Gould Hall (212) 355-6160; Jazz Standard (212) 576-2232; Kaye Playhouse at Hunter College (212) 772-4448; Knitting Factory (212) 219-3132; Merkin Concert Hall (212) 501-3330; Prospect Park Bandshell (718) 855-7882; Frederick P. Rose Hall (212) 721-6500; Schomburg Center (212) 491-2200; South Street Seaport southstreetseaport.com; Studio Museum in Harlem (212) 864-4500; Symphony Space (212) 864-5400; Village Vanguard (212) 255-4037; World Financial Center Plaza (212) 945-0505; Zankel Hall (212) 247-7800. For information and a Festival brochure, call (212) 501-1390 or (212) 501-1393 for Group Sales weekdays from 10:00 a.m. – 6:00 p.m. or write JVC Jazz Festival – New York, P.O. Box 1169, Ansonia Station, New York, NY 10023.

Times Argus > Bobby Bradford: 'One of the best cornet players playing today'

Times Argus: "Bobby Bradford: 'One of the best cornet players playing today'
Bobby Bradford: 'One of the best cornet players playing today'

April 15, 2005

By Tom Huntington Arts Correspondent

"The All Music Guide" calls him "one of the best trumpeters to emerge from the avant-garde," while no less than saxophone legend Ornette Coleman has dubbed him "one of the best cornet players playing today."

Still, it's safe to say that Bobby Bradford remains a coterie interest and relative unknown among all but the most diehard free jazz fanatics, and an unsung master of the instrument.

On Saturday, April 23, the southern California cornetist and educator will make a rare East Coast appearance when he takes the stage at the College Hall Chapel at Vermont College in Montpelier, in a concert presented by recently revived Green Mountain Jazz Series.

"It's our first leap into West Coast jazz," says Montpelier pianist Michael Arnowitt, who serves as artistic director of the series.

"He's a very interesting musician, somebody who is both experimental and accessible at the same time. He's that rare bird."

Backing Bradford will be a quintet consisting of the cornetist's longtime tenor sax player Chuck Manning, a Los Angeles-based standout who has also played with the acclaimed L.A. Jazz Quartet; Massachusetts-based drummer Claire Arenius; southern Vermont pianist and Vermont Jazz Center director Eugene Uman (who is also a member of the Claire Arenius Trio, which delivered an impressive performance at the 2001 Burlington Discover Jazz Festival); and southern Vermont bassist Jamie MacDonald.

Central Vermont chromatic harmonica standout John LaRouche, who studied with Bradford years ago in L.A., will also perform with the quintet.

Bradford, 70, is perhaps best known – if at all – for his decades-long association with the late, great composer/clarinetist and fellow Texan John Carter. Bradford was also a member of Texas native Coleman's pioneering quartet from 1961-63, replacing trumpet great Don Cherry (Dusted magazine calls the Bradford/Carter collaboration "one of the most important pairings since Ornette and Cherry").

Called "one of the most melodic improvisers in free jazz" in the liner notes of the 1996 Carter and Bradford CD, "Tandem 1," "Bradford's playing references blues, manipulates textures, springs from the unexpected and moves easily from virtuosity to understatement," according to the respected Web site, allaboutjazz.com.

The shape of jazz to come

The impressive lineup of the 2005 Burlington Discover Jazz Festival, announced last week, should be music to the ears of area jazz fans.

The 10-day soiree kicks off in style on Friday, June 3 at the Flynn Center with the Madeleine Peyroux Quartet, featuring the Billie Holiday-like chanteuse who's currently riding a sizable wave of critical acclaim for her gorgeous 2004 CD, "Endless Love." The disc has been a consistent best-seller at Buch Spieler Music in Montpelier thanks to heavy airplay by The Point.

The show will be Peyroux's first performance in Burlington since her fantastic Queen City debut a decade ago in the intimate confines of Club Metronome.

Opening up the show is the dynamic jazz-grass duo of Monkton mandolin maestro Jamie Masefield and Northfield guitar great Doug Perkins.

Closing things out with a decided bang on Sunday, June 12 will be the world debut of Trio!, a triple threat threesome of banjo phenom Bela Fleck, bass master Stanley Clarke and violin virtuoso Jean-Luc Ponty.

Other highlights of the fest include the return of jazz piano heavyweight McCoy Tyner – who wowed the Flynn crowd at the 1997 festival – and his trio on Saturday, June 11; a "Saxophone Summit" with Michael Brecker, Joe Lovano and Dave Liebman on Friday, June 10; and the dance-inducing double bill of Buckwheat Zydeco and the ReBirth Brass Band Thursday, June 9 at the "Bayou Blues Tent" at Waterfront Park that's guaranteed to get the good times rollin'.

Also not to be missed at Waterfront Park is the Sunday, June 12 Gospel Tent offering of the mostly Vermont-based Bluegrass Gospel Project. Soulful Ludlow singer Sandra Wright, backed by blues guitarist Kip Meaker and his trio, kicks things off at noon.

Tickets for all events are now on sale; call 863-5966 or go online to: www.flynncenter.org or to: www.discoverjazz.com.

Thursday, April 14, 2005

ATLANTA JAZZ FESTIVAL MEMORIAL DAY WEEKEND 2005 SCHEDULE OF EVENTS

"ATLANTA JAZZ FESTIVAL MEMORIAL DAY WEEKEND 2005 SCHEDULE OF EVENTS
at
PIEDMONT PARK"

SATURDAY - 'Atlanta's Best Jazz'

MAY 28, 2005
Coca Cola presents 'Atlanta's Best Jazz ' Conversations
The history of Jazz in Atlanta 1 pm - 2:30 pm
GM presents Youth Jazz Band
3rd place winner 'Youth Jazz Band Competition 2 pm
'Future of Jazz' February Winner 3 pm
'Future of Jazz' March Winner 4 pm
'Future of Jazz' April Winner 5 pm
'Future of Jazz' May Winner 6 pm
Deborah Brown featuring Dr. Lonnie Smith and Joe Beck 7pm
Sonny Emory and State of the Art 8:30pm pm
Late Night Jazz Jam Wyndham Midtown Atlanta Hotel
125 Tenth Street 'Woodruff Room' 1st floor 11:30pm - 2am

SUNDAY - 'Latin Jazz Experience'

MAY 29,2005
Gospel Jazz Brunch featuring Sonya Williams
Park Tavern
500 10th St. 11am - 2 pm
Coca Cola presents 'Viva Latin Jazz' Discussions
featuring Nestor Torres 1 pm - 2:30 pm
GM presents Youth Jazz Band
2nd place winner 'Youth Jazz Band' competition 2 pm
SASHA 3 pm
Claudia Acuna 4 pm
Latin Jazz All-Stars featuring Hilton Ruiz, Dave Valentin, Jorge Castro and Steve Berrios 5:30pm
Nestor Torres 7 pm
The Tito Puente Jr. Orchestra 8:30pm

Late Night Jazz Jam Wyndham Midtown Atlanta Hotel
125 Tenth Street 'Woodruff Room' 1st floor.


11:30pm - 2am

MONDAY - 'National / Legendary Expressions'

MAY 30, 2005
Coca Cola presents 'Jazz Masters Assembly Instructional Workshop
Featuring Legendary Saxophonists
Benny Golson, Sonny Fortune and David 'Fathead' Newman 1 pm - 2:30 pm
GM presents Youth Jazz Band
1st place winner 'Youth Jazz Band' competition 2 pm
Rene Marie 3 pm
The Benny Golson Quartet 4 pm
Andy Bey 5 pm
Sonny Fortune 6 pm
Carmen Lundy 7 pm

David 'Fathead' Newman Quintet


8:30pm

"

Montreux fest's spinoff gets encore | ajc.com

Montreux fest's spinoff gets encore | ajc.com: "

Montreux fest's spinoff gets encore
Nick Marino - Staff
Tuesday, April 12, 2005

This Labor Day weekend, the Woodruff Arts Center will revive the Montreux-Atlanta Music Festival, an eclectic event discontinued in 2002 after 14 years in the city.

The Woodruff will house and pay for the not-for-profit event, which is a spinoff of the famous Montreux Jazz Festival in Switzerland. Talent programming will come from Rob Gibson, a former Atlantan who runs the ambitious Savannah Music Festival.

Gibson booked talent for Montreux-Atlanta in the late 1980s and early '90s, and he said this year's event will be wide-ranging, with a mix of blues, jazz and international music, but no classical. The fest is also expected to have food and vendors, cultivating a kind of street-festival environment that organizers hope emulates the experience in Switzerland.

Much of this year's multi-stage programming will be indoors and ticketed --- in other words, patrons will have to pay for it --- but the festival will also have a free outdoor element, echoing the days when the event was free and held in Piedmont Park.

In those days, it was city-funded. But the city abandoned the project because of its expense, deciding instead to focus on the Atlanta Jazz Festival, held free in the park over Memorial Day weekend.

"We at the city are just delighted that the festival is going to be able to persist," said Camille Love, director of the Bureau of Cultural Affairs. "We never wanted to be without it. We thought it was a great part of the festival inventory in the city, a great offering."

In 2005, Love said, the city will be a partner with the Woodruff and Montreux, available to provide counsel as the event transitions from city-run to Woodruff-run.

Woodruff chief executive officer Shelton G. Stanfill said that his organization and the city have been working on reviving the festival for about two years, and that he expects it to have a budget of less than the reported $400,000 that was the estimated cost of the last Montreux-Atlanta fest, in 2001.

Stanfill declined to disclose this year's specific budget, he said, because the complete talent roster has not been finalized. (Gibson said the fest is probably 70 percent programmed already.) Stanfill added that the artist lineup and ticket prices will likely be announced in late May or early June.