Jason Moran Named MacArthur Fellow : A Blog Supreme : NPR

Jason Moran Named MacArthur Fellow : A Blog Supreme : NPR

The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation has named Jason Moran, a jazz pianist and composer known for his prodigious talent and eclectic sensibility, as one of 23 new MacArthur Fellows for 2010.

The MacArthur Fellowship, informally and externally known as the "genius grant," is an award worth $500,000, distributed quarterly over five years. The award comes with no restrictions on spending; the program is designed to encourage creativity, based on previous achievement and future promise.

Moran, 35, is an exceptionally versatile pianist, known for his fluency in both pre- and post-modern styles, and everything in between. He is just as likely to interpret jazz standards as he is to write multimedia compositions based on found sound, hip-hop or contemporary art.

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Music Review - Wynton Marsalis and Kenny Garrett at Rose Theater - NYTimes.com

Music Review - Wynton Marsalis and Kenny Garrett at Rose Theater - NYTimes.com

One of the most accurate ways to understand jazz these days is through Roy Haynes’s cymbal beat. On Saturday night at the Rose Theater, for about three-quarters of his stage time, he tilted his head toward his ride cymbal and drove a changing stream of swing through it, using every other sound — from the snare drum, kick drum and the rest of his kit — as circulating accents around that primary force. It was mesmerizing, affirmative, flexible and incredibly artful. It made internal sense.

“An Evening With Roy Haynes” opened Jazz at Lincoln Center’s new season, and marked a birthday: Mr. Haynes turned 85 in March, which doesn’t make much sense at all. He played in the first half with his working quartet, the Roy Haynes Fountain of Youth Band, and in the second half with a heavy ad-hoc group: Wynton Marsalis on trumpet, Kenny Garrett on alto saxophone, Danilo Pérez on piano and Dave Holland on bass. Mr. Haynes makes ordinary gigs feel special — it can seem as if he never learned how to be glib — but here, in the second half especially, he was especially fine. He got all the way in.

He filled the dimensions of the theater, making you hear his bass drum accents in the back rows. But he never numbed you by doing everything loudly all the time. The first important bebop drummers, of which he was one, used silences and moderation and self-imposed restrictions to make their sneaked upbeats pop more vividly.

Instead of making his sound a static thing, Mr. Haynes was flickering: working for the benefit of the music as well as the benefit of the show, even when laying back or making no sound at all. Several times he got up from his stool, prowled around the kit, shaking his shoulders and legs, and clicked his sticks together, or whacked a floor tom, or hit the edge of the cymbal at the start of a new chorus. Once he made the band sink into a period of silence and reanimated it with something like a kick-drum heartbeat. Once he got up in Mr. Garrett’s face and twirled a stick. Once, absorbing the feeling of a tune at his own speed after the rest of the band had started it, Mr. Haynes waggled the stick in his right hand, playing the air for a minute, like a draftsman preparing to sketch. And then he leaned into his ride cymbal and started again.

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The Root Interview: Roy Haynes on the Fountain of Youth

Image by Professor Bop via FlickrThe Root Interview: Roy Haynes on the Fountain of Youth

The elder grandmaster of drums Roy Haynes talks with The Root about his upcoming season-opening concert for Jazz at Lincoln Center, his roll call of influences and why his style remains in the pocket.

Roy Haynes percolating on drums is like Ali dancing on the tips of his toes, jabbin', snapping heads back, which is why they call him "Snap Crackle," for the way Haynes pops the pulse, the groove. He doesn't just keep time rudimentally -- he plays with time, listens oh so closely to his younger band mates and responds with empathy. Whenever you see him, he's always clean, dressed to the nines; in fact, back in the 1960s he was one of Esquire magazine's best-dressed men. He has a taste for vintage cars, but it's his tasty drumming style that really sets him apart and through which he's made his mark.

In the first several decades of his career, Haynes on the regular played with the icons of jazz: Pops, Prez, Bird, Diz, Monk, Miles, Mary Lou, Getz, Coltrane, Billie, Sarah, Ella, to name a bunch. Nowadays, he's a great-grandfather whose aptly named Fountain of Youth Band travels the world summoning wonder. Very recently, Haynes made an impromptu appearance at Sonny Rollins' 80th-birthday concert and threw down the gauntlet of pleasure with Rollins, Christian McBride and free-jazz pioneer Ornette Coleman.

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Why We Love Ornette Coleman : A Blog Supreme : NPR

Image via WikipediaWhy We Love Ornette Coleman : A Blog Supreme : NPR

This weekend, The Jazz Gallery in New York will host a three-day festival called Celebrating Ornette Coleman. As tributes to the jazz legend go, this one is special.

For one, the lineup is packed with stars and musician's musicians: Mark Turner, Joe Lovano, Nasheet Waits, Johnathan Blake, Kevin Hays and Joel Frahm are leading bands with such sidepersons as Matt Wilson, Seamus Blake, Marcus Gilmore, Stanley Cowell, Avishai Cohen, Joey Baron and more. (The collaborative trio of Vijay Iyer, Matana Roberts and Gerald Cleaver will also perform.) For another, The Jazz Gallery is a small room usually committed to the up-and-coming generation of artists — this weekend, they'll be packing in artists who often command theaters and weeklong club runs. And as a third, the shows are presented by Jimmy Katz, the jazz portrait photographer and audio engineer. With his wife, Katz raised all the funds; he is also recording the shows, and the musicians will own their masters. There are no guidelines for how each group will play their tributes.

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Wynton Marsalis and Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra to Perform in Havana

Image via WikipediaWynton Marsalis and Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra to Perform in Havana

HAVANA, Cuba, Sept 24.- At the invitation of the Cuban Institute of Music, American trumpeter Wynton Marsalis and the Jazz at Lincoln CenterOrchestra will perform in Cuba on October 5-9.

The concerts are scheduled for October 5,6,7 and 9 and they will all be held at the Teatro Mella theater. Some performances will feature Cuban special guests including seven-time Grammy winner Chucho Valdes.

The Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra residency includes improvisation workshops at the National School of Music and Amadeo Roldan Conservatory on Octubre 8.

“This is our first residency in Cuba and we can’t wait,” said Wynton Marsalis, Artistic Director, Jazz at Lincoln Center, as posted at the musician’s website.

Wynton Marsalis (born October 18, 1961) is an American jazz and Western classical virtuoso trumpeter and composer. He is Artistic Director of Jazz at Lincoln Center which he cofounded in 1987. He has promoted the appreciation of Classical and Jazz music, often focusing on young audiences.

As a Jazz performer and composer he has made display of his extensive knowledge about jazz and jazz history and for being a classical virtuoso.

As of 2006, he has made sixteen classical and more than thirty jazz recordings, has been awarded nine Grammys in both genres, and was awarded the first Pulitzer Prize for Music for a jazz. (ACN)

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MARSALIS SWING SYMPHONY RECEIVES U.S. DEBUT WITH NEW YORK PHILHARMONIC

MARSALIS SWING SYMPHONY RECEIVES U.S. DEBUT WITH NEW YORK PHILHARMONIC

By Culturekiosque Staff

NEW YORK, 23 SEPTEMBER 2010 — Wynton Marsalis’ Symphony No. 3, titled Swing Symphony, recieved its U.S. debut last night as part of the gala opening of the 2010 - 2011 season of the New York Philharmonic and its 36-year-old music director, Alan Gilbert. Commissioned jointly by the Berliner Philharmoniker Foundation, the New York Philharmonic, the Los Angeles Philharmonic and London’s Barbican Center this composition is Mr. Marsalis’s third symphonic work. With this piece, the American jazz artist and composer's intention was no less than to trace the long and rich history of jazz.

Given its world premiere last June by the Berlin Philharmonic together with Mr. Marsalis and his Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra under the direction of Sir Simon Rattle, the Swing Symphony is a stylish work full of American vigour, hair-raising virtuosity and a conservative, New Orleans aesthetic charm. Blues, New Orleans parade marches, Hollywood film music, the Hot Club de France and Latin Jazz are among the styles evoked in the six-movement work. And while some may not agree with Mr. Marsalis' vision of the history of jazz, he nonetheless pays tribute to the many great American jazz artists and composers, most notably Duke Ellington, who came before him.

Particularly sexy was the acoustical effect of Mr. Marsalis and his superb 15-piece multi-ethnic jazz orchestra tucked neatly in the gut of the 85-member New York Philharmonic, who acquitted themselves honestly and with enthusiasm, although there were moments when one could hear that Mr. Marsalis' ambitious score obliged them to defend their classical pedigree in unexpected ways.

Similarly, Mr. Marsalis' score makes it patently clear that to be a member of the Jazz Orchestra of Lincoln Center requires not only the same level of virtuosity and artistic talent as their classical colleagues, but in addition, demands a consumate mastery of improvisational jazz performance practice from its early days in New Orleans to the latest global avant-garde. Never an easy task for either musical genre given the history of racial segregation in both classical music and jazz in America. Astutely, Mr. Marsalis has written a work that requires the collaboration of the finest of both worlds in order to be realized. This bodes well for Mr. Marsalis' ensemble, as well as for future musicians and composers with a love of both art forms.

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Albany Student Press Ravi Coltrane puts on a great performance at Jazz Fest

Albany Student Press

Coltrane puts on a great performance at Jazz Fest

By Jeff Nania

Jazz Musicians entertain the city of Albany at the annual Riverfront Jazz Festival

The sound of Ravi Coltrane's tenor saxophone was clear on the walk to the amphitheater where Albany's 2010 Riverfront Jazz Festival was held on the 11th of this month.

The first tune was immediately recognizable as "Nothing Like You." This song was first heard years ago on an album called "Sorcerer" by the second great Miles Davis Quintet with drummer Tony Williams, bassist Ron Carter, saxophonist Wayne Shorter and Pianist Herbie Hancock.

The track is somewhat of an oddity of jazz lore, a piece of music that has its own little story to go with it. Maybe that is why Ravi Coltrane chose to start his set with it

The second piece was called "Prelude," an original of Coltrane's. It began more lightly and slowly than the first tune, starting out with just bass and sax for the first couple of bars. Unlike the first tune, it never made its way to a full on swing groove.

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‘Ella’ comes to life in Long Wharf’s musical opener - The Middletown Press : Serving Middletown, CT

Image via Wikipedia‘Ella’ comes to life in Long Wharf’s musical opener - The Middletown Press : Serving Middletown, CT

NEW HAVEN — When Tina Fabrique takes to the stage to play the jazz great Ella Fitzgerald, she re-creates Ella’s famous scat singing as though she’s singing sacred music.

Because those seemingly casual trills and dips and improvisational “beepity bops” were Ella’s trademark, Fabrique has learned them note for note — and when she delivers them to the breathless audience, it’s as though she’s channeling America’s “first lady of song” herself.

Fabrique has been touring the country for the last five years starring in the Rob Ruggiero-directed “Ella The Musical,” an upbeat, joyful extravaganza, written by Jeffrey Hatcher, that opens the Long Wharf Theatre season Wednesday and runs through Oct. 17. It features more than two dozen of Ella’s hit songs, while exploring the legend surrounding one of the greatest jazz singers of the 20th century. George Caldwell is the musical director and pianist.

For Fabrique, the chance to play Ella Fitzgerald was a perfect fit. Already a jazz singer in her own right, Fabrique had sung as a soloist with the Duke Ellington Orchestra and had appeared in several Broadway productions, including “Ragtime,” and “Bring in ’Da Noise, Bring in ’Da Funk,” and had done regional theater as well as several national tours.

When she auditioned for the part of Ella, she was considered by all who knew her to be perfect for the part. Not only did she look a bit like Ella (they share a similar facial structure), but she also knew plenty about the singer’s style.

“I was already a natural jazz singer, but my sound was more like Sarah Vaughan,” she says. “Although both women were like horns, Sarah was more like a saxophone and Ella was more like a trumpet,” she says. “A trumpet does quick, high notes and the sax does more slurred, meaty middle-voice notes. What I had to do was to connect the two and meet in the middle and become a reflection of Ella’s spirit, not an imitation of her.”

When she got the part, she says, she felt it was important to approach it as an actress rather than just as a singer. “The singing went without saying,” she says, “but I wanted to find the true person underneath. People started sending me packages of CDs and tapes of her. I watched everything I could find, about her talking about her career and about her life, and I built on that.”

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Jazz saxophonist and rights advocate

Jazz saxophonist and rights advocate

Buddy Collette, 89, a Grammy-nominated jazz saxophonist, flautist, bandleader and educator who played important roles in Los Angeles jazz as a musician and an advocate for the rights of African American musicians, died Sept. 19 at a hospital in Los Angeles.

He suffered shortness of breath a day before he died, but no specific cause of death was reported.

Mr. Collette's virtuosic skills on saxophones, flute and clarinet allowed him to move easily from studio work in films, television and recording to small jazz groups and big bands. He was, in addition, one of the activists instrumental in the 1953 merging of the then all-African American musicians union Local 767 and the all-white Local 47.

"I knew that was something that had to be done," Mr. Collette told writer Bill Kohlhaase for a Los Angeles Times article in 2000. "I had been in the service, where our band was integrated. My high school had been fully integrated. I really didn't know anything about racism, but I knew it wasn't right. Musicians should be judged on how they play, not the color of their skin."

Mr. Collette had crossed the color line before that in 1949 and 1950 by performing as the only African American musician in the orchestra for Groucho Marx's "You Bet Your Life" radio and television shows.

"We integrated the Academy Awards, too," Mr. Collette said. "It was 1963, when Sidney Poitier won. We were going to picket that thing. But I was in the band, with saxophonist Bill Green and harpist Toni Robinson-Bogart." Along the way, Mr. Collette, not satisfied with having established a career in the studios, continually laid the foundation for other African American players.

Mr. Collette came to national jazz prominence in 1955 as a founding member of drummer Chico Hamilton's influential quintet. The combination of Mr. Collette's woodwinds and, especially, his flute playing with the cello of Fred Katz and guitar of Jim Hall created a timbre that remains one of the jazz world's most specially appealing sounds.

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Wynton Marsalis, Band Share Stages With New York Philharmonic, Roy Haynes - Bloomberg

Image via WikipediaWynton Marsalis, Band Share Stages With New York Philharmonic, Roy Haynes - Bloomberg

When the Berlin, Los Angeles and New York philharmonic orchestras wanted to commission a symphony with a jazzy mood and feel, it wasn’t hard to find the artist with the right credentials.

Wynton Marsalis, the first musician to win both jazz and classical Grammy Awards in a single year, will present the U.S. premiere of his “Swing Symphony” at Manhattan’s Avery Fisher Hall tomorrow night. The backing band for Marsalis and his Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra will be the New York Philharmonic led by Alan Gilbert.

“I wanted to do something joyous and dramatic,” said Marsalis, the jazz center’s artistic director, in a telephone interview. “I wanted something we could play together and both ensembles could be challenged.” The composition, the New Orleans-born trumpeter’s third numbered symphony, had its world debut in Germany in June.

After Marsalis leaves the stage, Gilbert and company will perform Richard Strauss’s tone poem for orchestra, “Don Juan,” and Paul Hindemith’s “Symphonic Metamorphoses on Themes by Carl Maria von Weber.” The opening night gala is sponsored by Breguet, the Swiss watchmaker.

For his second gala of the week, on Saturday Marsalis will engage in some spirited improvisation with Roy Haynes, the 85- year-old jazz drumming legend and fashionista, at Jazz at Lincoln Center’s season opener.

Best-Dressed List

Haynes, one of the most recorded jazz drummers in history and once on Esquire magazine’s list of the best-dressed men in the U.S., will perform with his Fountain of Youth Band. He’ll also headline a band of notables such as Panama-born pianist and Wayne Shorter cohort Danilo Perez, saxophonist Kenny Garrett and bass legend Dave Holland in addition to the guest appearance by Marsalis.

“I saw Roy play one time with (jazz pianist) Chick Corea, and I was standing backstage with four other drummers, and their jaws dropped to the floor,” Marsalis said. “Roy has brought a clarity and intelligence to drumming. The fact that he can still play with that kind of fire is beyond astounding.”

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Jazz musician Courtney Pine CBE, plays Bridport (From Bournemouth Echo)

Jazz musician Courtney Pine CBE, plays Bridport (From Bournemouth Echo)

WHEN jazz genius Courtney Pine comes to Bridport next week the intimate Electric Palace gig will be as important to him as any of his performances in the world’s largest and grandest venues.

“Every concert is a challenge,” said the affable father-of-four, taking a break from recording his latest album, Europa, a mammoth, musical history charting the birth of Europe.

“I walk into the venue, open my eyes and think, ‘What can I do with this – and what can this space do for me? How can I present my music?’ “It’s an attitude that keeps me on my toes and means that I don’t get bored.

“I like to do something different every night. It is an addiction for me, and I hope it entertains the audience.”

He says: “Sometimes I get to venues and they are setting out the tables and chairs and thinking that an evening of jazz means that people will be sitting round politely, drinking wine.

“But I get on stage and say, ‘I am Courtney Pine CBE, please feel free to dance – you are allowed to dance.’ That is a shock to some.”

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Renee Rosnes Quartet: Live At The Village Vanguard : NPR

Image via WikipediaRenee Rosnes Quartet: Live At The Village Vanguard : NPR

Renee Rosnes has been in the news lately as one half of a jazz power couple: She's married to fellow pianist Bill Charlap, and earlier this year they released the duet album Double Portrait. But she recently made headlines as one quarter of a jazz powerhouse: The Renee Rosnes Quartet. That foursome played a week at the Village Vanguard this September; NPR Music and WBGO were there to record and live broadcast the group both on air and online on Wednesday, Sept. 15.

Let's be clear: Rosnes' talent on the piano is no fraction of anything. She's been on the New York scene for nearly 25 years, enough to play with late jazz legends and develop her own approach in doing so. At the Vanguard, she was full of subtle shadings on lesser-played standards and a few rambunctious originals. There was deep blues feeling and plenty of buttery swing, set forth among a variety of textures from her veteran bandmates. With Rosnes for her Vanguard run are the silky vibraphonist Steve Nelson and the reliable hookup of bassist Peter Washington and drummer Lewis Nash.

Raised in Vancouver, Rosnes moved to New York in the mid-1980s. Within years, she was playing in the bands of Joe Henderson, Wayne Shorter and J.J. Johnson, among others. Her self-titled 1989 debut album features such guest stars as Shorter, Branford Marsalis and Herbie Hancock. She's gone on to make more than 10 additional albums under her name, recording for a while on Blue Note Records, and to join the all-star SFJAZZ collective at its inception.

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Bobby Watson: On Jazz And BBQ : A Blog Supreme : NPR

Image via WikipediaBobby Watson: On Jazz And BBQ : A Blog Supreme : NPR

When alto saxophonist Bobby Watson returned to Kansas City, it was a big deal. Despite its jazz legacy, Kansas City felt overlooked compared to other jazz towns, and often lost its best musicians to bigger cities. So for one of its own to return — especially a world-class player like Watson — brought a lot of buzz to the tight-knit scene.

Watson is a Kansas City-area native, but he left in order to make a name for himself in the jazz world. He attended the University of Miami alongside fellow students Pat Metheny and Jaco Pastorius. After he graduated in 1975, Watson moved to New York City and played with Art Blakey's Jazz Messengers from 1977-1981. He's played with nearly everyone, from Max Roach, George Coleman and Branford and Wynton Marsalis to Dianne Reeves, Betty Carter and even Carlos Santana.

After more than 25 years touring the world and living in New York, Watson returned to his hometown in 2000 to serve as the William and Mary Grant-Endowed Professor of Jazz and Director of Jazz Studies at the University of Missouri-Kansas City. Now, the veteran saxophonist and professor has released the album of his long-awaited, seven-part work for large ensemble: The Gates BBQ Suite. (The piece premiered in December 2008 in a live performance with UMKC’s Conservatory Concert Jazz Orchestra.) Watson says the suite — more than five years in the making and completely self-financed — is a "dream piece," a labor of love. But it's also a supremely fun collection of songs in a classic big band tradition.

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