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Sunday, July 31, 2005

The New York Times: Premium Archive

The New York Times: Premium ArchiveJune 24, 2005
JAZZ FESTIVAL REVIEW; Elegant Pianism, Poised and Mostly Quiet
By JON PARELES

The last thing Keith Jarrett wants to be known as is a showman. When he led his trio on Wednesday night at Carnegie Hall, he spoke a few times to the JVC festival audience -- complaining about reviews and photographers -- but at the piano, he sought ecstatic communion with the music.

Like someone possessed by inspiration, he moaned along with sustained notes. He wiggled keys with his finger as if he could get vibrato from a keyboard; he half-stood, or sank nearly to his knees, or stared unseeing at the audience. When one tune hinted at bossa nova, he swayed his hips. Yet what came out of the piano was unshakably poised and precise, and mostly quiet.

Mr. Jarrett was leading what has come to be called his standards trio, inaugurated in 1983, with Gary Peacock on bass and Jack DeJohnette on drums. The trio doesn't have to worry about new material, since it can draw on a wealth of ballads and jazz tunes, familiar and obscure; Wednesday's set included ''Tennessee Waltz,'' Bud Powell's ''Budo'' and ''When I Fall in Love.'' Nor does it fuss about form -- the basic theme-solos-theme, with or without some piano-drums trades, served most songs. This trio finds ample room for exploration within.

It was a night of elegant pianism. Stating ballads, Mr. Jarrett made melodies sing with hushed purity over chords so transparent that even a slight change in voicing became an event, following through with improvisations that evolved from long, even runs to quick trickles of sprint and pause. Up-tempo tunes were so light-fingered that complexities sounded casual.

He has the right collaborators. Mr. Peacock's walking bass lines landed unassertively in all the right places, and his solos modestly crooned pizzicato melodies as Mr. Jarrett hung chords above them like Japanese lanterns. Meanwhile, Mr. DeJohnette worked the threshold of sound and silence with discreet brilliance, constantly varying his delicate accents. In ''Somewhere,'' as Mr. Jarrett lingered over the melody, Mr. DeJohnette visited one cymbal at a time to offer a lexicon of rustles, hisses and pings.

The group made two departures from theme-solos-theme, and both were rewarding. Mr. Jarrett started ''On Green Dolphin Street'' with the kind of ostinato he often uses in solo concerts. (He returns to Carnegie Hall on Sept. 26 to perform solo.) He turned one chord into a dancing array of notes, with a melody peeking out of the counterpoint, as Mr. Peacock and Mr. DeJohnette tipped the beat toward the Caribbean. And a brisk version of Thelonious Monk's ''Straight, No Chaser'' opened up to free improvisation: first with Mr. Jarrett's right hand tracing far-flung harmonies, then with a congenial three-way interchange.

Mr. Jarrett's stage antics might look and sound like distractions from such knowing musicianship. The paradox is that they don't. They portray all the effort that isn't heard in the notes, so music that might be heard as expertly pretty, or even dismissed as background music, isn't taken for granted. Mr. Jarrett's adoring audiences listen for the subtleties, pointed there by the spectacle. That's showmanship.

Positive, pure and powerful: Saxophonist Bartz keeps his music free of labels

Positive, pure and powerful: Saxophonist Bartz keeps his music free of labelsPositive, pure and powerful: Saxophonist Bartz keeps his music free of labels

Sunday, July 31, 2005
By Nate Guidry, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

Gary Bartz will take you to task for calling him a jazz musician. For him, it's practically an epithet.


Gary Bartz doesn't answer to "jazz musician." He's a musician, pure and simple.

Gary Bartz Quartet
Where: Kelly-Strayhorn Theater.
When: 2:30 p.m. next Sunday.
Tickets: $35 and $45 ($10 for music students); 412-361-3022.

Related coverage
Film puts spotlight back on Gammage case
Duke Ellington didn't think of himself as a jazz musician.

And neither did Miles Davis.

The volatile Charles Mingus would have gone to blows with anyone who addressed him that way.

"It's a negative word, and negative words bring negative energies," said Bartz from his home in southern New Jersey. "People like to pigeonhole you because it makes them comfortable. I don't think Beethoven considered himself a classical musician.

"I'm a musician, and we play music -- all kinds of music."

And that's exactly what Bartz and his quartet will be doing next Sunday at the Kelly-Strayhorn Theater. The band features pianist Barney McCall, bassist James King and drummer Greg Bandy.

The concert, co-presented by the Thomas Merton Center, is a fund-raiser to help support the completion of a documentary titled "Enough Is Enough: The Death of Jonny Gammage."

Gammage was killed in a struggle with five police officers during a routine traffic stop in Brentwood on Oct. 12, 1995.

Producer and director Billy Jackson said the documentary examines the Gammage incident as well as other cases of alleged police misuse of force and racial profiling, and related problems in criminal justice, law enforcement and police-community relations.

Jackson said his goal is to have the documentary ready to premiere on Oct. 12.

"We want this documentary to be part of the solution, to stimulate dialogue and inspire audiences to get involved in positive changes."

Bartz grew up in Baltimore and started playing saxophone by the time he turned 11.

"Charlie Parker was the one who did it for me," recalled Bartz. "I heard his records, and I fell in love with that sound. I made up my mind that's what I'd like to do."

After graduating from high school, he moved to New York to attend the Juilliard School. While there, he developed friendships with fellow students Andrew Cyrille, Addison Farmer, Sir Roland Hanna and others.

"It was a very educational period," said Bartz. "As young musicians, we were all heading in the same direction of music."

After he left Juilliard, one of the first groups Bartz joined was a band led by drummer Max Roach and former wife Abbey Lincoln. He had met Roach years earlier at a club in Baltimore. Bartz sat in with Roach and they played Charlie Parker's "Cherokee" and a few other songs.

Roach was so impressed that he gave Bartz his phone number and told him if he was ever in New York to look him up.

Which Bartz did.

"I used to go over to his house and have dinner with him and Abbey Lincoln," laughs Bartz. "Sometimes, I see Abbey and I remind her of that and she laughs and says, 'I used to cook.' "

In 1964, Bartz joined Roach's band. The association lasted for about six years.

"Max was very influential in developing my outlook on life," said Bartz. "He taught me about business and nationalism and chess."

After leaving Roach's band, he performed in groups led by McCoy Tyner, Blue Mitchell, and Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers.

Blakey was performing a weeklong engagement at Baltimore's North End Lounge, a jazz club owned by Bartz's father. Bartz got word from his dad that saxophonist John Gilmore was leaving the band, so he went to Baltimore, sat in one night and was hired.

"John Hicks and Lee Morgan were in the band and were my friends, so they vouched for me," said Bartz, who made his recording debut on Blakey's "Soul Finger" album.

In the early 1960s, Bartz joined Charles Mingus' Workshop, regularly rehearsing with other members of the group, including Rashaan Roland Kirk and Eric Dolphy.

"Mingus was very interesting," said Bartz. "He was all about making and performing high-quality music."

But Bartz's best and most enduring apprenticeship occurred in 1970 when he joined Miles Davis Sextet, performing in the historic Isle of Wight Festival in England.

"Miles was the best bandleader I ever worked for," Bartz said. "He cared about you. If you were in his band it was like you were part of his family. I am so grateful for what Miles did for me."

When Bartz received the call from Davis to join his band, there was no rehearsal or drawn-out interview.

"He just called and asked if I wanted to join his band," Bartz said. "He didn't give me an audition, and I think the entire time I was with him the band had one rehearsal.

"When Miles picked musicians, he already knew what you were about. I had worked with Max and Art and the other musicians, so he knew I was ready to join his group."

In between working with Davis, Bartz was busy recording "Another Earth," "Music Is My Sanctuary" and other albums, as well as forming a group called NTU Troop. The group took its name from the Bantu language. NTU means "unity in all things, time and space, living and dead, seen and unseen."

In the mid 1990s, he released several critically received recordings, including "The Red and Orange Poems" and "I've Known Rivers" an album based on the poems of Langston Hughes.

Still, Bartz feels his recordings over the years haven't been promoted well. He's grown increasingly weary of record executives.

"Record labels want to tell you what and who to put on the records, then they don't sell them," Bartz said. "They have decided that it's counterproductive to release material while an artist is still alive. Once a musician passes they open the vaults."

To counteract that, Bartz has started his own label. He now has creative control of his music and, most importantly, he owns the master tapes.

"Record labels are like plantations," said Bartz. "It's like the rapper Chuck D used to say, 'If you don't own the master, the master owns you.' Ninety-nine percent of the musicians in history don't own their masters. A lot of people talk about rap artists, but many of them own their masters. They have learned from our mistakes."

Now, in between tours with his own band and groups led by McCoy Tyner and others, Bartz finds time to teach. Since 2001, he has been helping to shape young musicians as a faculty member at the Oberlin Conservatory in Oberlin, Ohio.

"One lifetime isn't long enough to do everything you want to do and learn how to play all this music," Bartz said. "So you do the best you can."

(Nate Guidry can be reached at NGuidry@post-gazette.com or 412-263-3865.)

Saturday, July 30, 2005

A U.S. appeals court has rejected a lawsuit charging 1960s psychedelic rocker Country Joe McDonald with copyright

recycling time?Fri Jul 29, 9:31 PM ET

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - A U.S. appeals court has rejected a lawsuit
charging 1960s psychedelic rocker Country Joe McDonald with copyright
infringement for his 1965 protest song "Fixin' to Die Rag," which became
a rallying cry for opposition to the Vietnam War.

In a decision made public on Friday, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of
Appeals rejected an appeal from Babette Ory, who said McDonald's song
infringed on jazz standard "Muskrat Ramble," credited to her father, Kid
Ory.

Ory sued in September 2001, claiming that "Fixin' to Die Rag" was
similar to and infringed on "Muskrat Ramble." Kid Ory, who recorded with
jazz great Louis Armstrong, died in 1973.

The appellate judges upheld a lower-court decision saying there was too
long a delay in bringing the copyright lawsuit and awarded McDonald his
attorney fees. Ory obtained copyright to "Muskrat Ramble" in 2001.

McDonald wrote "Fixing To Die Rag" in 1965 to protest the nation's
escalating military involvement in Vietnam and the song's refrain: "And
it's one, two, three, what are we fighting for?" quickly turned into a
rallying cry against the war and figured prominently at the Woodstock
music festival in 1969.

Reuters/VNU

Miles Davis: Year-Long Celebration of Five Decades and Many Miles

Miles Davis: Year-Long Celebration of Five Decades and Many Miles
Miles Davis: Year-Long Celebration of Five Decades and Many Miles
Posted: 2005-07-18


By Chris M. Slawecki
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On October 27, 1955, Miles Davis signed with Columbia Records, where the mercurial trumpeter, composer, bandleader and conceptualist remained through most of his career. After 1955, Davis recorded and released nearly all of his greatest music through Columbia. Now part of Sony / Legacy, the label has embarked on a year-long celebration of the 50th anniversary of that contract signing by releasing a succession of new and newly-remastered titles throughout 2005.

The series began this past January with three releases: The remastered single-CD version of My Funny Valentine, a set of ballads aflame with Davis’ whispered intensity; the Kind of Blue DualDisc, which combines an audio CD of his classic 1958 album (plus the only available studio alternate take) with a DVD that presents the album in 5.1 Surround Sound plus a 25-minute documentary on the making of the album; and the remastered single-CD version of A Tribute to Jack Johnson issued to coincide with Ken Burns’ PBS documentary Unforgivable Blackness: The Rise and Fall of Jack Johnson.

It is worth mentioning that Davis himself would have most likely hated these reissues as “been there, done that.” Most likely? Almost definitely! Still, they provide valuable mileposts for devotees and the curious who may be traveling these Miles for the first time.

Index

'Round About Midnight: Legacy Edition
Seven Steps to Heaven
'Four’ & More Recorded Live in Concert
Miles Davis in Europe
Miles in Tokyo
Miles in Berlin
The Best of Seven Steps
The Cellar Door Sessions 1970


New Beginnings

‘Round About Midnight: Legacy Edition (1955-56)
With John Coltrane and Zoot Sims, tenor saxophone; Gerry Mulligan, baritone saxophone; Red Garland and Thelonious Monk, piano; Paul Chambers and Percy Heath, bass; Philly Joe Jones and Connie Kay, drums.

The series’ most recent installment is a deluxe two-CD version of Davis’ first studio album for Columbia at the helm of his first great quintet with Coltrane, Garland, Chambers and Jones.

The beauty and genius of Davis’ balladry on ‘Round About Midnight is justifiably legend. “His playing is characterized by both the nervous, jagged lines of the bop school,” wrote producer George Avakian for its original liner notes, “and the pensive relaxation of the cool period which followed.” It opens with his profound meditation on the Thelonious Monk composition that inspired its title, and its brilliance continues with his muted playing through two pop selections, “All of You” and especially the stark opening to “Bye Bye Blackbird,” where he sounds like a man sad and utterly alone.

Though this reissue provides four new, unreleased studio takes on disc one, its true bonus harvest comes from a previously unreleased 1956 concert by this band—now the first commercially available live performance by the first great Miles Davis quintet—on disc two.

It’s a performance that looks both forward and back, played with so much energy! Its centerpiece is an early recording of the elegant, celebrated “Walkin’” blues, a staple of Davis’ repertoire into the next decade, illuminated with probing, burning explorations from Coltrane, Garland and Chambers. But it also includes rare examples of Davis revisiting with ‘Trane, a more modern player, the bebop style that the leader was resolutely leaving behind: The rhythm section scrambles the opening “Max is Making Wax”; later, the band whipsaws and bounces through “Woody N’You” and “Salt Peanuts,” featuring Davis’ space-walk along Dizzy Gillespie’s upper trumpet stratosphere and hard-rocking beatdowns from Jones. Davis always killed at least one ballad in concert; in this case, the quiet, direct “It Never Entered My Mind,” a remembrance haunted by gorgeous piano and trumpet.

This new concert is prefixed by Davis’ famous performance of “‘Round Midnight” with Monk at the 1955 Newport Jazz Festival: Sitting in with Gerry Mulligan and Zoot Sims from the Mulligan Sextet, bassist Percy Heath and Connie Kay (the Modern Jazz Quartet rhythm section), and pianist Monk, his opening solo to “‘Round Midnight” at Newport sounds as good as anything that Davis ever played. Ever played. It was the strength of this performance that compelled Avakian, who was attending the festival and served on Columbia staff, to sign Davis to his Columbia contract.

Michael Brecker needs your help. :: eJazzNews.com : The Number One Jazz News Resource On The Net :: Jazz News Daily

Michael Brecker needs your help. :: eJazzNews.com : The Number One Jazz News Resource On The Net :: Jazz News Daily Michael Brecker needs your help.
Posted by: editoron Friday, July 29, 2005 - 03:17 PM
Jazz News FROM: Susan Brecker
Dear Family and Friends,

My husband, Michael Brecker, has been diagnosed with MDS
(myelodysplastic syndrome), and its critical that he undergoes a stem
cell transplant. The initial search for a donor (including Michael's
siblings and children) has not yet resulted in a suitable match.
Michael's doctors have told us that we need to immediately explore ALL
possible options. This involves getting as many people of a similar
genetic background to be tested.

There are some important points to understand concerning this process:

1. The screening involves a blood test only. It can be done very
quickly either at a marrow donation center or at a LOCAL LAB. The cost
is anywhere from $40 to $75 and your insurance may cover it. (In NYC,
you can call Frazier, at the NY Blood Bank, at 212-570-3441, and make
an appointment for HLA typing. It costs $40.00.) Check with your
local blood bank, or go to http://www.marrow.org to find the donor
center nearest you.



2. Your blood typing information can be posted on the international
registry, if you choose, where it would also be available to others in
need of a transplant. BEING ON THE REGISTRY DOESN'T MEAN YOU HAVE TO
DONATE, it just means that you may be ASKED to do so. You can take your
name off the registry at any time.

3. Should you be selected as a potential donor for Michael, please
understand that there have been tremendous advances in bone marrow
transplants and the term itself can be misleading. Bone marrow
donation is no more invasive than giving blood. Stem cells are simply
harvested from your blood and then transplanted to Michael.

4. A match for Michael would be most likely to come from those of Eastern
European Jewish descent. If you or anyone you know are in this category
please make a special effort to immediately get tested. Ultimately, you
would be doing something not just for Michael, but for so many more who
are in a similar situation as my husband.

5. You are now part of our internet-based drive for donor testing. If
everyone who receives this can motivate a bunch of their friends to get
tested, and those friends then forward this email to get their friends
to get tested, we will have rapidly expanded the pool of potential
donors. I urge all of you to get tested AS SOON AS POSSIBLE.

Any local blood center/Red Cross center can assist in organizing a
drive for Michael, although it would be desirable if you can get a
large group, e.g. a synagogue, to sponsor it. Should you have any
questions about this, please don't hesitate to get in touch with
Michael's management office at 212.302.9200 or info@michaelbrecker.com.

Thank you so much for your love and support.

We are so grateful.


Susan xo

Independent Online Edition > Reviews : app3

Independent Online Edition > Reviews : app3 Mavis Staples, Jazz Café, London
By Alasdair Lees
Published: 29 July 2005

"The trouble is, I'm old school. They all want Beyoncé now. Well, let me tell you: I USED TO BE BEYONCE!" At 66, Mavis Staples may no longer be the nubile contralto who had Bob Dylan swooning at the Newport Folk Festival all those years ago. But, she reminds an amused Jazz Café audience, "If Beyoncé keeps on living, she will be a Mavis Staples!"

Old school she may be, and a little ragged of voice, but Mavis has lost none of her vim. She's joined by her younger sister Yvonne, the only other active member of the Staples Singers, with Pops dead, Pervis retired and Cleotha struck down by Alzheimer's. "You can sit this out," Mavis tells a clearly relieved Yvonne, as she sings the title track from her most recent solo album, Have a Little Faith.

Yvonne needs the rest. The opener, "If You're Ready (Come Go with Me)", has the crowd trying to catch up with Mavis: "Is everybody ready? I KNOW you're ready... Go with me!" The voice - what the jazz writer Stanley Crouch called the "joy and thunder" of the Staples Singers - has lost its higher register and developed an alarming staccato tic, but what Mavis now lacks vocally is made up for by enthusiasm and warmth.

"I know you been waiting for this!" she says as she dedicates a poignant "The Weight" to its creators, The Band: Robbie Robertson, Levon Helm, Richard Manuel, Rick Danko and Garth Hudson. "We were so happy to share The Last Waltz with them," she says of Pop Staples and Mavis's duet with The Band for the farewell concert, filmed by Martin Scorsese.

It's the first highlight of the evening. The second is a Latin-tinged acoustic "God Is Not Sleeping" from Have a Little Faith. "It's one of my favourites," says Mavis at the end. "It's one of my favourites now!" someone pipes up at the back. The Carter Family's "Will the Circle Be Unbroken?", a standard in the Staples Singers' gospel years, is dedicated to "Pops, Mom and Cleotha" and is introduced with a sweet anecdote about Pops' Mississippi boyhood, when he and his 14 siblings learnt the song.

We're reminded of her father again in the jamming session by Mavis's band, which at first appears to be a chance for the sisters to take a breather. But, in its guitar-led instrumental blues, it echoes parts of Jammed Together, the guitar album that Pops - an influential guitarist who learnt his trade from the Delta bluesman Charley Patton - made with Steve Cropper and Albert King. It's a reminder of how many of the Singers' biggest hits originated from impromptu jam sessions with the Muscle Shoals rhythm section.

Once the band are done noodling, Mavis and Yvonne bounce back with two of those Stax hits, "Respect Yourself" and "I'll Take You There". By the closer, "Touch a Hand Make a Friend", the sisters are showing their spiritual roots, holding hands with the front row. Mavis may not be Beyoncé, but she's still every inch the star.

"The trouble is, I'm old school. They all want Beyoncé now. Well, let me tell you: I USED TO BE BEYONCE!" At 66, Mavis Staples may no longer be the nubile contralto who had Bob Dylan swooning at the Newport Folk Festival all those years ago. But, she reminds an amused Jazz Café audience, "If Beyoncé keeps on living, she will be a Mavis Staples!"

Old school she may be, and a little ragged of voice, but Mavis has lost none of her vim. She's joined by her younger sister Yvonne, the only other active member of the Staples Singers, with Pops dead, Pervis retired and Cleotha struck down by Alzheimer's. "You can sit this out," Mavis tells a clearly relieved Yvonne, as she sings the title track from her most recent solo album, Have a Little Faith.

Yvonne needs the rest. The opener, "If You're Ready (Come Go with Me)", has the crowd trying to catch up with Mavis: "Is everybody ready? I KNOW you're ready... Go with me!" The voice - what the jazz writer Stanley Crouch called the "joy and thunder" of the Staples Singers - has lost its higher register and developed an alarming staccato tic, but what Mavis now lacks vocally is made up for by enthusiasm and warmth.

"I know you been waiting for this!" she says as she dedicates a poignant "The Weight" to its creators, The Band: Robbie Robertson, Levon Helm, Richard Manuel, Rick Danko and Garth Hudson. "We were so happy to share The Last Waltz with them," she says of Pop Staples and Mavis's duet with The Band for the farewell concert, filmed by Martin Scorsese.

It's the first highlight of the evening. The second is a Latin-tinged acoustic "God Is Not Sleeping" from Have a Little Faith. "It's one of my favourites," says Mavis at the end. "It's one of my favourites now!" someone pipes up at the back. The Carter Family's "Will the Circle Be Unbroken?", a standard in the Staples Singers' gospel years, is dedicated to "Pops, Mom and Cleotha" and is introduced with a sweet anecdote about Pops' Mississippi boyhood, when he and his 14 siblings learnt the song.

We're reminded of her father again in the jamming session by Mavis's band, which at first appears to be a chance for the sisters to take a breather. But, in its guitar-led instrumental blues, it echoes parts of Jammed Together, the guitar album that Pops - an influential guitarist who learnt his trade from the Delta bluesman Charley Patton - made with Steve Cropper and Albert King. It's a reminder of how many of the Singers' biggest hits originated from impromptu jam sessions with the Muscle Shoals rhythm section.

Once the band are done noodling, Mavis and Yvonne bounce back with two of those Stax hits, "Respect Yourself" and "I'll Take You There". By the closer, "Touch a Hand Make a Friend", the sisters are showing their spiritual roots, holding hands with the front row. Mavis may not be Beyoncé, but she's still every inch the star.

The Capital Times > A bumper crop of excellent jazz recordings has arisen in recent months

The Capital Times Moran tops new jazz releases

By Kevin Lynch
July 29, 2005

A bumper crop of excellent jazz recordings has arisen in recent months, and here's the pick of the harvest:

• Jason Moran. "Same Mother" (Blue Note). At my age (54) I agree with controversial jazz critic Stanley Crouch that jazz is adult music. That doesn't mean it shouldn't deal with issues of youth.

Pianist Jason Moran, in his late 20s, deals out mature, tough-minded stuff in the CD-opening "Gangsterism on the Rise." He frames the subject with a larger cultural perspective -- the blues-jazz tradition as a mother lode of minority expression ("all from the same mother"). The opening and closing tracks prod gangsterism in a high-spirited way that I read as valuing its youthful defiance rather than its stupid, misogynist aggression.

Yet Moran, already our most important young jazz pianist, has learned capably from elders such as Andrew Hill. On "Jump Up" -- a very muscular, contemporary boogie-woogie -- guitarist Martin Sewell adds searing blues riffs to Moran's powerful piano work.

This is red-meat music that I'm eating up these days. It's leavened by beautiful and rather profound stuff: the wistful "Aubade," the snappy cubist dance of Mal Waldron's "Fire Waltz" and the crystalline yet cloudy "Field of the Dead," from Prokofiev's "Alexander Nevsky," with Sewell's mournful slide guitar.
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This opens a three-tune sequence of similarly moving thematics. "Restin' " is utterly haunted. Like Wayne Shorter, Moran is admirably influenced by film music, transmitting depth and dimension with efficient artfulness. Moran rarely wastes notes, sculpting ideas into poetic percussion and unsentimental expressiveness. Moran sounds as if he understands what it means to have lived several lifetimes.

• Fred Hersch Ensemble. "Leaves of Grass." (Palmetto). One of the more ambitious jazz records of recent years is a labor of love. These are not all complete poems of Whitman's masterwork. Hersch often plucks and weaves passages with the help of literary consultant Herschel Garfein.

The performed text is included, but I recommend you listen with Whitman's Deathbed Edition. Hersch's lyrical piano accompaniment is judicious but could've used a little more dissonance, given Whitman's often gutsy twists of imagery.

Vocalists Kurt Elling and Kate McGarry are among the most creative and sensitive singers in jazz. Elling's sweet, ardent baritone and tender falsetto find the perfect text for his apt background as a divinity student. He often imbues the words with spiritual longing that never loses touch with earthliness. Accordingly, Whitman's sometimes heady sentiments embrace humanity's deepest connections and contradictions.

In "The Mystic Trumpeter" McGarry's voice mixes Ralph Allessi's horn with a smiling knowingness. Several passages caught me unawares and teary-voiced, music and verse melding in a vortex of inspiration.

Here and elsewhere, McGarry's jazz-folk singer sensibility captures the text's exultation of nature's mysteries, wondering how to answer a child who asks, what is grass? "Fetching it to me with full hands; how could I answer the child? I did not know what it is any more than he ... I guess it must be the flag of my disposition. Or I guess the grass is itself a child, and now it seems to me the beautiful uncut hair of graves."

• Roberto Magris Europlane. "Check-In" (Soul Note). Most European jazz remains undiscovered by many American listeners, and this Italian pianist's CD invites you to experience an Italian sensibility that reaches back to the Renaissance with its sense of craft and muscular beauty while dwelling in the depths of classic modern jazz. It's especially apparent in the conversational brilliance of saxophonists Tony Lakotos and Michael Erian, who both play soprano and tenor.

Right from a deliciously swinging "I Remember You," the tenors trade fours like Coltrane and Rollins on "Tenor Madness." The pianist's originals are imaginative and moving, especially "Blues From My Sleeping Baby," 12-plus minutes of a sauntering melody gorgeously harmonized and extemporized by the saxes and the pianist's Cecil Taylorish cluster harmonies and bounding runs across the keyboard. Available at www.blacksaint.com.

• Dave Douglas. "Mountain Passages" (Green Leaf Music). Another musical adventure of sorts from jazz's most ingenious all-around musical artist.

Dave Douglas hauled his band and instruments (including a tuba) up a mountainside to record this music in the elevated realm his father once communed with. Douglas' playing recalls the splattered notes of Don Cherry, and clarinetist-saxophonist Michael Moore adds folk-dancing ethnic color. As with much excellent music, "Mountain Passages" traverses technical challenges that lead to a fresh sense of space and time, a discovery of unusual forms with their own inherent beauty. This is the first release from Douglas' own new label and available from www.greenleafmusic.com.

• Charles Lloyd. "Jumping the Creek." (ECM). Saxophonist and flutist Lloyd is a sort of jazz guru, having turned many onto spiritualized modern jazz at the Monterey Jazz Festival in 1966 (also the national debut of Keith Jarrett). A discriminating musician friend of mine once referred to him as "Coltrane lite."

Today, Lloyd is celebrated as a modern master. But at times he betrays a precious sweetness, a quality that some trace to Lester Young. Occasionally on this recording he sounds like a man rapt in his own musical presence. Other times, he attains cascading ecstasies that justify Coltrane comparisons.

But the real cargo puller on this train is pianist Geri Allen. Each time she emerges, the music surges with her fluent, sharply sculpted phrases that sometimes recall Herbie Hancock's stunning accents and dramatic swells. Now she's a master worth following.

E-mail: klynch@madison.com

Al McKibbon, 86; Bassist With Shearing, Gillespie Fused Latin Influences and Jazz

Al McKibbon, 86; Bassist With Shearing, Gillespie Fused Latin Influences and Jazz July 30, 2005 latimes.com :

California

Al McKibbon, 86; Bassist With Shearing, Gillespie Fused Latin Influences and Jazz
By Jon Thurber, Times Staff Writer

Al McKibbon, a bassist who was an early participant in efforts to merge jazz and Latin rhythms, died Friday at Good Samaritan Hospital in Los Angeles. He was 86.

A key member of pianist George Shearing's quintet in the 1950s, McKibbon had been in declining health for several months, according to Gary Chen-Stein, a close friend of McKibbon and the owner of the music store Stein on Vine.

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McKibbon became interested in Cuban jazz while playing with Dizzy Gillespie's band in the late 1940s.

"I began to feel that the Cubans were as close as you could come to African culture because they still practiced the roots of our music," McKibbon wrote in the afterword to "Latin Jazz: the Perfect Combination" (2002) by Raul Fernandez.

McKibbon particularly admired the well-known Cuban musician Machito, who, along with Chano Pozo, performed with the Gillespie band at Carnegie Hall in a September 1947 performance that critic Leonard Feather called "the first serious attempt to combine jazz and Afro-Cuban rhythms."

Fernandez, a professor of Chicano/Latino studies at UC Irvine, said McKibbon frequently went to hear Machito play and "really absorbed the style."

McKibbon brought his Latin sensibilities to the Shearing quartet from 1951 to 1957.

Shearing, in his autobiography "Lullaby of Birdland," said that McKibbon was "laying down as fine a Latin bass line as anyone ever has" and that he seemed to have an intuitive sense for the rhythms. "I never had to write a bass part for Al on those Latin numbers," Shearing wrote.

Born in Chicago, McKibbon grew up in Detroit in a musical family. His father played tuba and guitar, and his brother was a professional guitarist. As a youngster, Al was a dancer in local vaudeville shows.

At his brother's urging, he decided to learn the bass, which was beginning to replace the tuba as a rhythm section instrument in jazz. While in high school, he started playing in Detroit's thriving club scene.

During World War II, McKibbon joined Lucky Millinder's band and moved to New York. He played with leading names in jazz, including saxophonist Coleman Hawkins, and established himself as a player with a strong, full tone and a metronomic beat.

After the war, he went on tour with Norman Granz's Jazz at the Philharmonic, with J.C. Heard's band at the groundbreaking Cafe Society in New York City and with Gillespie's big band.

He also played on Miles Davis' seminal "The Complete Birth of the Cool" recordings, arranged by Gil Evans, and was influential in bringing the Latin sound to vibist Cal Tjader's group.

He found steady work in studio and network bands, including NBC, after moving to Southern California in 1958.

In the early 1970s, McKibbon joined Gillespie, Thelonious Monk and others in the Giants of Jazz group and played on Monk's last recording in 1971.

He later recorded with Benny Carter, Herbie Nichols and Sammy Davis Jr.

He had continued to work steadily — most recently at a club in Claremont — until his health started to decline.

Survivors include his daughter, Allison; and his sister, Geraldine, of Detroit.

Tuesday, July 26, 2005

Open Source Blog Archive Miles Davis: Early, Late, Real, Your

Open Source Blog Archive Miles Davis: Early, Late, Real, Yours

Miles Davis: Early, Late, Real, Yours

Chris, July 25th, 2005

"The trouble started when the first guitar player plugged into an amplifier and played the blues really loud, and rock and roll was created. … because jazz was always related to popular music until that point. …When rock and roll happened, jazz lost its best friend, …and melody took a back seat to rhythm."

Marcus Miller

[aired Monday, July 25]

24 MB MP3


We are talking tonight about Miles Davis: Early Miles… Late Miles… Real Miles… Your Miles. With musicians and others who knew him, it would be easy to do an hour just of impressions of Miles’ rasping voice and lightning wit. Charlie Davidson of the Andover Shop in Cambridge, who tailored Miles’ and the band’s Ivy League clothes in the ’50s and ’60s, is a storehouse of casual Milesiana, like this from Charlie: “One day I asked him: ‘Miles, do you really like Frank Sinatra?’ ‘Do I like him?’ he said. “If he had one tit I’d marry him!’”

The hook of our conversation tonight, as if we needed one, is the 50th anniversary summer of Miles’ breakthrough performance of “Round Midnight” with Monk at the second Newport Jazz Festival. (”Monk plays the wrong changes,” Miles complained to the Newport impresario George Wein. “Miles, what do you want?” Wein shot back. “He wrote the song!”) The other critical anniversary is of the Isle of Wight concert of 1970, now on a brilliant DVD, when the recently electrified Miles performed for 600,000 Europeans on a bill with Jimi Hendrix and The Who, and with yet another new band on stage, including Jack DeJohnette on drums and both Chick Corea and Keith Jarrett on keyboards.

With protean Miles (as in the Greek myth of the waterborne Proteus who could change his shape at will) the spectacle of self-reinvention goes well beyond the mere matter of late-60’s electrification. Miles came onto the scene chasing Charlie Parker in the late ’40’s. If he’d lived, not died, in 1991, he might have made his last recordings with Prince! In between, through cool jazz, the ineffable highs with Coltrane and the modal revolution, the ’70s fusions with rock, Sly, Santana and Hendrix, and the “chromatic funk” of his comeback in the ’80s, Miles was the biggest star — and star-maker — in the story of jazz. And the subject still of the most heated arguments.

The hope tonight is not to be definitive or even adversarial, but passionate about the essential Miles, who seems so much alive in music to this day.

NPR : For Eddie Palmieri, a Golden Anniversary and New CD

NPR : For Eddie Palmieri, a Golden Anniversary and New CDFor Eddie Palmieri, a Golden Anniversary and New CD

Listen to this story... by Steve Inskeep

Morning Edition, July 25, 2005 · Host Steve Inskeep speaks with Jazz musician, Eddie Palmieri, about his new CD Listen Here! which celebrates Palmieri's 50 years as a professional musician.

Jazz great Sonny Rollins -- 9/11 survivor :: eJazzNews.com : The Number One Jazz News Resource On The Net :: Jazz News Daily

Jazz great Sonny Rollins -- 9/11 survivor :: eJazzNews.com : The Number One Jazz News Resource On The Net :: Jazz News Daily Jazz great Sonny Rollins -- 9/11 survivor
Posted by: editoron Monday, July 25, 2005 - 10:17 AM
Jazz News JUAN-LES-PINS, France (AFP) - American jazz legend Sonny Rollins survived 9/11 but cannot forget it, the septuagenarian told a press conference ahead of his sole European concert this summer.

"I was in my rehearsal studio six blocks away from the World Trade Center when the explosions occurred," said Rollins, who turns 75 in September and dedicated his latest album to the day in 2001 that changed the world.

"The whole area was evacuated. I left my studio with my horn under my arm," he said, adding he could now "reckon the horror of war. I can imagine being in a war seeing people who ... kill other people."

Rollins, whose age has brought a limp and trouble walking, had to rush down 40 flights of stairs in his apartment building on Chambers Street, six blocks north of the World Trade Center, sources in his entourage here said.

The result was what Rollins called "a very personal record", music he was working on when the terror attacks hit then recorded live that same week, in the heat of emotion, to try to forget. He has since gotten rid of the lower Manhattan flat.

"My wife convinced me to do the concert in Boston, four days after the explosions," Rollins said, referring to his long-time spouse and agent Lucille who died in November last year.

The sources here said Rollins had planned to do a studio album with another name, but used the live Boston gig instead, in memory of Lucille, calling it "Without a Song (the 9/11 Concert)".

A jazz great for six decades, Rollins' white hair and beard now give a patriarchal look to the man known for his powerful on-stage improvisations that won him the 2004 Grammy Award for Lifetime Achievement.

His performance Friday night at the 45th edition of one of the French Riviera's biggest summer jazz festivals, "Jazz at Juan" at Antibes and Juan-les-Pins is his only stop in Europe this summer.

A regular in years past, he said this trip had not been easy.

"It's the first time I come back here since I lost my wife Lucille.

"I try not to think about it. We have to live and keep surviving as best as we can," he said.

Sunday, July 24, 2005

Dizzy Gillespie - A Night In Havana - Dizzy Gillespie In Cuba Movie Info - Yahoo! Movies

Dizzy Gillespie - A Night In Havana - Dizzy Gillespie In Cuba Movie Info - Yahoo! MoviesDizzy Gillespie - A Night In Havana - Dizzy Gillespie In Cuba (1988)

Dizzy Gillespie - A Night In Havana - Dizzy Gillespie In Cuba (1988) Poster

Jazz history was irrevocably altered when Dizzy Gillespie helped form the burgeoning "bebop" movement in the 1940s. This film offers a glimpse of a trip to Cuba from the legendary trumpet player, where he provided entertainment for the audience at Havana's Fifth International Jazz Festival. Cuban music provided a great inspiration for Gillespie, so it was a fitting location in which to film the star. With a full band behind him, Gillespie performs a series of songs that draw on the traditions of Cuban music, while some intimate footage captures some priceless offstage moments with the talented musician.
MPAA Rating: Not Rated
Cast and Credits
Starring: Dizzy Gillespie

The Epoch Times | Jazz Trumpeter Promotes New CD at J&R Music

The Epoch Times | Jazz Trumpeter Promotes New CD at J&R MusicJazz Trumpeter Promotes New CD at J&R Music
By Maiysha Campbell
The Epoch Times
Jul 21, 2005


Jazz trumpeter Sean Jones plays at J&R Music in Manhattan on July 19. Part of his jazz quintet, Tia Fuller plays the saxophone with Jones. (Maiysha Campbell/The Epoch Times)

NEW YORK - At J&R Music, jazz trumpeter Sean Jones, did us the honor of playing a five-song set with his jazz quintet on a sweltering Tuesday afternoon, promoting his new album Gemini. This up and coming musician has already received accolades from such notables as Wynton Marsalis, who recently chose Jones as lead trumpet for the esteemed Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra.

At only 27 years old, Jones has exceptional musical maturity and grace. Jones enjoyed his break from the orchestra and played pieces that told a story, had a conversation, answered back, and waited for you to respond. Jones played us the good stuff. The band seemed to enjoy themselves as much as the crowd. The audience joined in with thigh tapping and stolen dances in the back.

Jones’ major influences are Miles Davis and Wynton Marsalis. He was first inspired by jazz in the fifth grade when his teacher gave him a jazz CD. After hearing Miles Davis at an early age he said to himself, “This is where it’s at!” Jones credits the many teachers and musicians he has had over the years. In particular he credits the tutelage of William “Prof.” Fielder, professor of Trumpet and Jazz Studies at Rutgers University, where he studied.

After playing a one-hour set, the crowd clambered to the shelves to get a copy of Jones’ new CD Gemini and complained about the closed registers. Jones autographed CD’s for a line of smiling fans- the biggest smile on Jones himself.

I picked up a copy of the CD for myself. The thirteen-track album will not let down jazz lovers. With a variety of moods, the songs gracefully marinate together for easy listening or for head-on deep listening- whichever you desire. It is the audience after all that Jones is most interested in.

When asked, “what do you play for?” Jones responded, “I just want everyone to feel love. I’m not one of those [artists] who try to educate their audience and put themselves above their audience- I want the audience to feel good.”

You can catch the Sean Jones Quintet July 22 and 23 at Cecil’s Jazz Club in West Orange, New Jersey and July 29 and 30 at Zanzibar Blue in Philadelphia. Complete performance dates for the Sean Jones Quintet as well as his performance and tour dates with the Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra are available online at
seanjonesjazz.com.

Sean Jones’ quintet consisted of Orrin Evans on piano, Kenny Davis on bass, Jerome Jennings on drums, and Tia Fuller on saxophone and flute.

The Japan Times Online

The Japan Times OnlineLISTENING POST

LIVE
Ryan Kisor Quartet

By MICHAEL PRONKO

The "young lions" was a phrase used (in fact, overused) to describe the resurgence of young jazz musicians in New York that started in the 1980s. More marketing tool than stylistic category, young lions still felt like a term of respect, all things considered. One of the best, and youngest, of this generation of well-schooled, market-savvy musicians was trumpeter Ryan Kisor, who brings his band to Japan this week.

News photo

Since his first release in 1992 at age 19, Kisor has pursued his career his way. Like the other young lions, Kisor works with post-bop seriousness, and is respectful of, though not confined by, past conventions. He has played with the Mingus Big Band and Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra, two of the more preservation-minded groups in New York, yet started his own quintet earlier than most jazz musicians would dare.

Like a precocious youth, he wedges his voice into the conversation of past trumpeting greats. He lets bits and pieces of Miles Davis, Chet Baker and his near-contemporary, Wynton Marsalis, come through in his tone and technique, but Ryan's voice remains loud and clear amid the giants.

Recently, as on his aptly named "This Is Ryan," he takes on challenging classics from Dizzy Gillespie and Kenny Dorham. Amid those tricky numbers, though, he includes originals that flow with the natural, organic vitality of a musician much older and wiser. His lack of ego, though, nicely distinguishes him from many of his cohorts. One of the best of the new generation of jazz musicians, Kisor's approach to jazz strikes rare artistic balances -- hip yet unpretentious, warm but very intense.

The Ryan Kisor Quartet plays July 29 at JZ Brat, Tokyo; July 30 at Meiho Jazz Festival, Gifu; July 31 at Erde Hall, Himeji, Hyogo; Aug. 1 at Jazz on Top, Osaka; Aug. 3 at BrickBlock, Oita; Aug. 5 at Club J, Tokyo; Aug. 7 at Mamo, Gifu. Information on all shows from Mon Productions, tel. (03) 3470-0427.

The Japan Times: July 24, 2005

Wednesday, July 20, 2005


James Doohan "Star Trek's Scotty"

I met James Doohan in the spring of 1993. I was producing a jazz series at the Atlanta Penta/Rennaisance Hotel. The series was held in the 25th floor lounge. When I arrived to set up the event on that evening Mr. Doohan was seated on a coach in the lounge. I introduced myself and chatted briefly with him. He was in Atlanta for a Star Trek Convention. He ended up staying for the show. I later introduced him to the audience as the house rhythm section; Ted Howe piano, Layman Jackson bass and Jimmy Jackson drums, played the Star Trek theme song. Mr. Doohan was both warm and gracious. He seemed to enjoy the show. May he journey to the final frontier in peace.

BBC NEWS | Entertainment | TV and Radio | Star Trek's Scotty dies aged 85

BBC NEWS | Entertainment | TV and Radio | Star Trek's Scotty dies aged 85 Star Trek's Scotty dies aged 85
Actor James Doohan, who played the chief engineer Montgomery Scott in Star Trek, has died at the age of 85.

Doohan, whose role was immortalised in the line "Beam me up, Scotty", had been suffering from pneumonia and Alzheimer's disease, his agent said.

His wife of 28 years, Wende, was by his side, Steve Stevens added.

Doohan was a popular character actor when he auditioned for the part in 1966. When the series ended in 1969, he found himself typecast in the role.

The Canadian-born actor was a master of dialect, developed during his years on radio.

When asked what accent he thought his Star Trek character should have, he said: "I believed the Scot voice was the most commanding."

'Go with the flow'

Doohan's character Scotty manned the Star Trek enterprise with Captain James T Kirk, played by William Shatner, and Mr Spock, played by Leonard Nimoy.

They starred together for three seasons before US network NBC cancelled it because of weak ratings.

But the team was reassembled when the franchise hit the big screen. Star Trek: The Motion Picture was released in cinemas in 1979.

Doohan appeared in seven big screen episodes of Star Trek, and continued to voice the franchise's video games into the late 1990s.

Initially he was concerned about being typecast as Scotty.


HAVE YOUR SAY
May you continue to boldly go where no man has gone before
Joe Doody, Glasgow

In 1973, he complained to his dentist, who advised him: "Jimmy, you're going to be Scotty long after you're dead. If I were you, I'd go with the flow.

"I took his advice and since then everything's been just lovely."

He came to embrace his Scotty character and attended Star Trek fan conventions into his 80s, before falling ill.

Doohan became a father again at the age of 80, when his wife Wende gave birth to daughter Sarah.

His last public appearance was in October 2004 when he received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

Tuesday, July 19, 2005

Paris Jazz: A Guide :: eJazzNews.com : The Number One Jazz News Resource On The Net :: Jazz News Daily

Paris Jazz: A Guide :: eJazzNews.com : The Number One Jazz News Resource On The Net :: Jazz News Daily Paris Jazz: A Guide
Posted by: editoron Tuesday, July 19, 2005 - 07:21 PM
Jazz News About the early days of jazz in Paris, violinist Stéphane Grappelli said, “That was the best time for musicians, you know—no radio, no gramophone. If you want music, you must go to the musician!” These first days—when an all-African American infantry ragtime marching band returned from World War I to a weary city eager for some fun, when Josephine Baker shimmied onstage in skirts of satin palm leaves and Montmartre was a collection of windmills, vineyards, and rickety huts home to a raucous bohemian community—were the seeds of a vibrant tradition of jazz in Paris. Following decades would see American musicians of the likes of Louis Armstrong, Benny Carter, and Miles Davis cross the ocean to jam late into the nights in a city refreshingly free of racism, and the music would evolve into astonishing new forms.
Through anecdotes and quotes from the musicians themselves, PARIS JAZZ: From the Jazz Age to the Present: A Guide leads readers to hallowed jazz sites in four neighborhoods in Paris: Montmartre, Montparnasse, Saint-Germain-des-Prés, and the area around the Champs-Élysées. Many of the famed historic clubs remain open today. With this entertaining, elegant book in hand, jazz lovers will discover:


Moulin de la Galette, principal venue of guitarist Django Reinhardt’s Quintette du Hot Club de France, one of the most influential jazz groups to emerge from French soil. Raised by gypsies, Django spent much of his life in caravans on the outskirts of Paris. He was a notoriously fickle band member, causing a fellow musician to say of him, “In spring when leaves reappear, Django disappears.” (pp. 42)


The site of the Blue Note, the famous club immortalized in Bertrand Tavernier’s film, ’Round Midnight, about the lives of Lester Young and Bud Powell. (pp. 104)


The Salle Pleyel, where Dizzy Gillespie first bowled over the French public with the explosive sounds of bebop, and host to a dazzling range of jazz musicians from Louis Armstrong to Coleman Hawkins, Gerry Mulligan to Thelonious Monk. (pp. 96)


Le Duc des Lombards, a premier club in the new center of Paris’s jazz scene, featuring famous contemporary French musicians such as Martial Solal, Henri Texier, and Aldo Romano. (pp. 107)

Showcasing 25 evocative vintage black-and-white photographs of jazz legends and locations, PARIS JAZZ recreates the glamour of the Jazz Age and brings it to the present. With 4 easy-to-use neighborhood maps and a comprehensive listing of contemporary jazz clubs, readers can experience for themselves where Sidney Bechet, Duke Ellington, Adelaide Hall, Cole Porter and scores of other musicians came together, transforming spontaneous rhythms and improvised harmonies into a signature art form of the twentieth century.

PARIS JAZZ: A Guide From the Jazz Age to the Present By Luke Miner Published by The Little Bookroom $19.95 . 174 pages . 25 photos . 4 maps ISBN: 1-89214-5294 . Publication Date: October 2005

Abstract Logix - Interview - Wayne Shorter Interview

Abstract Logix - Interview - Wayne Shorter InterviewWayne Shorter Interview (#75)
2005-06-12
Bill Milkowski
Senior Writer





He is a living legend swathed in mystique and an omnipresent cheshire cat grin. He speaks in odd, elliptical analogies and similies. And he has a decided penchant toward science fiction while peppering his conversation with references to classic movies from Hollywood’s Golden Era. It’s why his Newark, New Jersey schoolmates coined the phrase “as weird as Wayne” to describe the young Wayne Shorter.
As Michelle Mercer writes in her excellent new biography, “Footprints: The Life and Work of Wayne Shorter” (Tarcher/Penguin Books): “The Shorters (Wayne and his trumpet playing older brother Alan) reveled in their social estrangement: Wayne painted “Mr. Weird” on his horn case; Alan put “Doc Strange” on his. They embraced their band’s marginal status after hearing bebop demonized by radio DJs, who excluded it from their playlists. They resolved to make the same ‘chaotic’ and ‘disturbed’ music that Dizzy Gillespie, Charlie Parker, and Bud Powell were making across the river. “We’d play at the YMCA and we’d make like a dollar fifty,” Wayne said. “There’d be ten people there. And even they’d go home saying you can’t dance to this bebop. But we were dedicated and modern. And we’d take chances.”
Mercer further reports that the Shorter brothers would arrive on stage carrying their horns in shopping bags, having deliberately left their “bourgeois” horn cases at home. And they proudly played by ear. “To flaunt that talent,” writes Mercer, “the Shorters unfolded copies of the New York Daily News and placed them on their music stands in lieu of sheet music -- their sound was so fresh, it was taken from the day’s headlines.” And as Shorter tells Mercer, “Earlier that day we moistened our suits and crumpled them up so they’d be wrinkled, for that devil-may-care effect. We thought bop players had to look that way. We even wore galoshes -- and you know it wasn’t rainin’ outside.” Apparently, Alan enhanced the zany effect of his attire by donning a dandy’s white-and-gray kid gloves, putting them on one finger at a time with exaggerated slowness. Finally, the musicians perched themselves on backward-facing folding chairs and began to play.
From his beginnings as “Weird Wayne” in Newark, Shorter would graduate to the ranks of Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers, eventually becoming the musical director of that illustrious straight ahead outfit (which during Wayne’s tenure from 1959-1964 included such great players as trumpeters Lee Morgan and Freddie Hubbard, trombonist Curtis Fuller, pianists Bobby Timmons and Cedar Walton, bassists Jymie Merritt and Reggie Workman). He later became an important catalyst and key composer for the great Miles Davis quintet of the ‘60s, contributing such memorable compositions as “E.S.P.,” “Footprints,” “Masqualero,” “Nefertitti,” “Pinocchio,” “Sanctuary” and “Fall” to the Miles oeuvre.
In 1970, Shorter co-founded the group Weather Report with keyboardist and Miles Davis alum, Joe Zawinul. It remained the premier fusion group through the '70s and into the early '80s before disbanding in 1985 after 16 acclaimed recordings, including 1980's Grammy Award-winning double-live LP set, 8:30. Shorter formed his own group in 1986 and produced a succession of electric jazz albums for the Columbia label -- 1986's Atlantis, 1987's Phantom Navigator, 1988's Joy Ryder. He re-emerged on the Verve label with 1995's High Life, an orchestral project created on synthesizers in tandem with keyboardist Rachel Z. After the tragic loss of his wife in 1996 (she was aboard the ill-fated Paris-bound flight TWA 800), Shorter returned to the scene with 1997's 1+1, an intimate duet recording with pianist and former Miles Davis quintet bandmate Herbie Hancock. The two spent 1998 touring as a duet and by the summer of 2001 Wayne began touring as the leader of a talented young lineup featuring pianist Danilo Perez, bassist John Patitucci and drummer Brian Blade, each a celebrated recording artist and bandleader in his own right. The group's uncanny chemistry was well documented on 2002's acclaimed Footprints Live!
As a followup to 2003's ambitious, double Grammy Award-winning studio recording Alegria, Shorter returns with another exhilarating live document that captures the risk-taking chemistry of his celebrated quartet on tour. Recorded at concerts in Europe, Asia, and North America from November 2002 to April 2004, Beyond the Sound Barrier continues the remarkable group-think and deconstructivist aesthetic that Shorter established with pianist Danilo Perez, bassist John Patitucci and drummer Brian Blade on 2002's acclaimed Footprints Live!, Shorter's first all-acoustic foray since his early '60s Blue Note years and his first-ever live recording.


BILL MILKOWSKI: It seems like the message of this record -- in the titles alone -- is about going beyond, thinking beyond.

WAYNE SHORTER: Yeah, beyond a sound profession, having a sound profession, beyond sound advice, taking sound advice, going beyond faith in sound. It’s like, “You’re not gonna marry this musician, you need a doctor...someone with a sound profession. Now you go get your education and hook up with a doctor or lawyer... something sound.” Well, I’m going to go beyond this. I recently got one of Stephen Hawking’s tapes where he’s talking to the science fiction writer Gregory Bedford, and he’s saying, “I want to talk about boundaries in space,” and you get chills. People might think of the end of space almost like the end of life. But then, you come to the conclusion that there’s no such thing as beginning or end. So those words, they’re kind of artificial in a sense. And a lot of people give their lives for something that’s artificial or an illusion. And illusions can hit you in the face harder than what you think reality is. The reality of it is that it is an illusion, and it’s ass-kicking to know that. Sometimes to die and then continue later on with greater wisdom, to say, “Oh, man! Now I know about how I learned that lesson.”

BM: Even in your dedications on the inner sleeve of the cd, they’re all people who went beyond their own limitations.

WS: Yes, I have a dedication on this record to Stephen Hawking because he went beyond the barrier of his own body, denying himself the length of time that anyone in his condition should have. And he broke past that. It’s also dedicated to Dr. Linus Pauling, who discovered the double helix and DNA, and to the guy who invented the traffic light -- Gary Morgan. He invented the traffic system throughout the planet. And there’s a dedication to Henrietta Brodkrany, a black lady who did experiments in her kitchen sink years ago with the idea of submarines and torpedoes, though they denied her a patent. That was around the time that J.P. Morgan was coming along, buying up all of Nikolas Tesla’s patents because he didn’t have any money, and then shooting it over to Thomas Edison, credit-wise. And then there was Dr. Vivian Thomas at John Hopkins, who was a pioneer in treatment of blue baby syndrome. And there was a lady who flew during World War I, Bessy Coleman. She was denied her pilot’s license because she was a black woman, so she went and flew for France. And then I also dedicate the record to my man Chris Reeves...ol’ Caped One...for his stem cell advocacy.

BM: I’m very interested in the tune “Adventures on the Golden Mean”?

WS: Well, I know that a lot of people equate the Golden Mean with something called the middle way, in the middle...something like that. But I was investigating even further that the Golden Mean is neither captive to the right, left, east, west, north, south or the middle. It is attached to no extreme. That’s a place to try to get to in freedom of thought and choice and all that stuff.

BM: The Golden Mean refers to a pattern that is found in nature -- in nautilus shells, stars in the universe, in our bodies. It’s this very potent point of creation found in nature and in the human body itself which artists like DaVinci and Debussy have referred to.

WS: Yeah! That’s it! And that’s a place...and I think it has nothing to do with an almighty power or nothing like that...but it’s a place that we have inside us that’s just asleep a little sleep. I guess we can say that evolution is taking care of that. But there’s a whole lot of us. I used to wonder why there were so many people on the planet. And I figured, “Oh, that means that there’s that many more chances to evolve.”

BM: That’s a profound concept to address in a record.

WS: Yeah, and I’m thinking of it like a spaceship called The Golden Mean. It’s like a lot of kids on there flying around, having a good time -- “Adventures Aboard the Golden Mean.” And they’re going somewhere along the Golden Mean. And I thought, “Wow! Somebody got away!” We’re all gonna get away at some point. We’re all going there. Life is so mysterious, to me. I can’t stop at any one thing to say, “Oh, this is what it is.” And I think it’s always becoming, always becoming. And that’s the adventure. And people when they don’t have any money they say, “What can we do to have some fun without any money?” That imagination is part of that adventure, until you get to the place where you attract the money that you need and you’re grown up enough and adult enough to know how to take care of the money so that it takes care of you and takes care of other people, so...

BM: Well, that image you just described, about being in a spaceship, going on an adventure on the Golden Mean; I got a visual image from listening to “Joy Ryder” of the band riding in a roller coaster and laughing hysterically along the way.

WS: Yeah, you know, Michelle who wrote the book [the aforementioned “Footprints: The Life and Work of Wayne Shorter”], she looked it up and apparently there’s an asteroid called Joy Ryder...some kind of asteroid that moves mishievously, elusively through space. It’s a large one too. She found this astronomy book called “Joy Ryder,” which goes on and on about this asteroid.

BM: Talk about this band and how it’s evolved...what kind of feelings you have about the group starting out and how you’ve all gone through this great adventure together and where you’ve come out.

WS: Oh yeah...there’s one thing I’ve noticed from the beginning when we first got together, and that is that nobody dwells on things in the past or things that are happening in their personal lives, like other musicians sometimes do. These guys, they all have that kind of forward-looking thing about them. And we have a good chemistry off the stage too. We’re always writing down names of movies that we’re going to get. And I’ve seen a lot and hard about a lot of movies...I’m a little older and everything...so they’re writing down names of movies, black and white ones, like ”Random Harvest” with Ronald Coleman and Greer Garson. And we also talk about books and stuff like that. So they’re collecting things, and I’m getting stuff that they talk about, that they like. It’s an interaction and sharing which I think...it’s nice for countries to follow through on that. I know that countries do that sometime but they don’t follow through.

BM: Any comments about the two tunes that you had recorded in the ‘80s, “Over Shadow Hill Way” and “Joy Ryder.”

WS: Well, since I don’t believe in the words ‘beginning’ or ‘end,’ then nothing is finished. In reality there are things that are put aside but not finished. Take Gustav Mahler. I know he used to go back and look at stuff he was writing when he was a kid and then develop it in his adult years. Beethoven too, and Mozart. Some music has the degree for evolving. I’m thinking now about developing “Nefertiti” with an orchestra. And I’m thinking that some day there’s going to be orchestras where they will improvise. They’ll be able to improvise and of course read music, but they’ll have the facility to hear each other and react immediately to what they’re hearing. And they’ll have the ear training to decipher many, many things at once. In fact, I heard in Ann Arbor there was a chamber group doing just that. They played the first two or three bars of “Daphnes & Chole” and then they went somewhere else with it. They weren’t looking at the music, they were just improvising away. So I’d like to be able to explore that with an orchestra in developing some of my older pieces like “Nefertiti.” And I know some critics will say, “Improvisation is not really studied music, it’s like cheating.” And they say, “Improvisation is not composing.” But I say composing is writing something down, then you change your mind, you get the white out, you change this, change that, change that. Who’s really cheating? This guy, the composer, can cheat all day long. How about write down the first thing that you have in mind and never change it? So it’s all relative...uh, thank you Albert Einstein. Thanks Al (laughs). By the way, I saw him one time walking across the lawn at Princeton University when I was 18 years old.

BM: Who? Einstein?

WS: Yeah. He had this ski cap on and his white hair coming down. We were unloading our instruments for a dance that we were going to play there and this guy who was helping us unload suddenly said, “Oh, I’m gonna be late for my class! There’s my teacher. I gotta beat him to the classroom before he gets there.” And I said, “Who’s your teacher?” And he said, “Albert Einstein,” and then took off in a flash. And I kept watching him as he disappeared in an archway, and I said, “That’s Al. Big Al!” (laughs) And that memory stayed with me.

BM: Oh yeah, I guess that would.

WS: But you know, I want my music to connect with people. People say it’s getting a little too high falutin’ for marketing, a little too cerebral and all that. I’m thinking that I want this music to just hit people, so if they get a chance to hear more of it, they’ll get it. This music is saying that someone who’s not famous is just as important as kings and presidents. Yeah, this is music for the common folk and it keeps us human. Back when I was 15...hearing Charlie Parker and Dizzy and all them in the high school...we played a little bit of that music and people would say, “It’s far out, it’s too deep, too technical.” I recently played “Koko” and “Confirmation” to a person who never heard Charlie Parker before and she said, “Sounds like he’s talkin’ to us.” And I’m thinking, “Wow, here’s a real 21st century person.” We need more people like her. I know what the marketing of music has been, historically...basically trying to get the formula for what works. But I’ve been trying to avoid all that...the labels and categories...and just play music.

BM: I was interested to hear that you included a version of that Felix Mendelsohn, “On Wings of a Song,” on the new album.

WS: Yeah, I still lived in California then, around 1995. I was driving, coming home, and I started hearing this melody in my head...and I was thinking about movies I saw. There would be like a western movie with the fort, the union soldiers, and they have a ball, and there’s be a waltz and it’d be like John Wayne dancing with Maureen O’Hara or somebody like that...and this song would be playing. And they’d have dialogue going over it. And I’m listening to it, and I stopped the car and found a piece of paper and wrote down the first few notes so I wouldn’t forget that I thought about it. And the same thing happened with “Smilin’ Through.” I saw that movie with Jeanette MacDonald and in it there’s this an old Irish song called “Smilin’ Through.” That movie is something. It’s with Brian O’Hearn...he did some movies with Bette Davis way back and he’d play like school professors in Scotland and Ireland and all that...real distinguished looking guy, just like Roland Coleman but in another way. And what got me about the movie was it starts with a wedding...a wedding was in progress and the minister’s asking the bride, “Do you take this man?” And the camera goes up into the balcony and there’s the rejected suitor up there with a gun. And she instinctively turns around and jumps in front of her groom...husband to be. And the guy shoots and the bride dies immediately. And the movie opens like that. And the groom, who is Brian O’Hearn, goes through the whole movie getting older and older, never married. He teaches or something like that. And he sits in the garden and sees her ghost visiting him every weekend, and they talk. And she’s waiting for him, still in a bridal gown. You can see through her and all that. But their little girl....the bride had a sister who had a child and the sister was killed in the war so the groom became the guardian of the little girl. And as she grows up, she looks just like the bride he was gonna marry. And then she falls in love with the son of the guy who shot her aunt. But she’s at the piano and she plays this song, “Smilin’ Through.” Like, whenever a tragedy comes, can you smile through it? And that song stuck with me.

BM: Well, that also seems like that pretains to your own life too, considering what you’ve had to smile through in recent years.

WS: People ask me, how can I laugh since the tragedy of TWA and my wife. Uh, you know, I laugh and do things because I know it’s not over. She’s dead but we’re gonna see each other again.

WS: What about “As Far As The Eye Can See.” Is that a new piece?

WS: Yeah, it’s actually a development from “Go” from the Footprints Live album. It’s a development of that tune. It’s like a tag that becomes a piece of music.

BM: So there was a reference to it on Footprints Live?

WS: No, there’s no reference to it. You only hear it one time...there’s only like two measures and it stops, but this one takes on a whole other harmonic thing and it’s more of an experience of the eye...how much or how far are you willing to see? People who say they don’t feel this or that kind of music -- they don’t feel classical or they don’t feel country, or all they feel is country...all they want is the safety zone or comfort zone, what they can relate to and everything. Well, I say, if your feelings are only red, blue and yellow, how far can you extend yourself in a world that needs extending today? I mean, I’m not even worrying about Arabic. You better start studying Chinese on top of it. (laughs).

BM: “Tinkerbell” sounds like it’s something generated spontaneously on the bandstand.

WS: Yeah, that’s something that came out in one piece with the bow and the piano and the fact that Brian (Blade) contributed by not putting all percussion in there every moment. As Miles would say...he would consider somebody valuable when they knew when not to play. If you could do that, Miles would say, “You’re good, man,” and then walk right by you and keep walkin’. And you’d say to him, “What? What’d you say?” Miles liked that when you’d say, “What’d you say?” Because he’d kept walkin’ and he’d say to the bartender, “Get him a champagne. What you drinkin’ Wayne?” My drinking days are over but I had more fun with Miles than anybody...those years with Miles. The short time that I was with Coltrane, when he invited me to his house, we had another kind of fun because he would get into talking about philosophy. I had one little talk with Lester Young one time up at the Town Tavern on Young Street in Toronto. I had a little time left in the Army so they let me go on a vacation and I went up there and Lester was playing. During the intermission, the place was packed...this was in my drinking days. I had my gangster suit on -- paisley tie, pinstripe suit -- and I’m trying to get to the bar. You know, waiting your turn, six people deep. And suddenly this finger tapped me on the shoulder and I turned around and looked and it was Lester Young. And he said to me, “You look like you’re from New York.” His voice was real slow. And he said, “Whatchu drinkin’?” and I told him, “Cognac.” And he said, “Let’s go down in the wine cellar and get some REAL cognac.” So we went downstairs where the barrels were and he got these big water glasses and filled the up with cognac. And as he was talking, I was getting ripped. But you know, just standing there talkin’ with Lester Young...I don’t remember what he was saying or what I was saying...we didn’t talk about music or what I played. But I was just checking him out the whole time he was talking. Then we went up the stairs and he went to do his next set, and all I could think was, “That was Lester Young!” I started listening to him closely after that. I had heard him earlier, when I was 15. He was late coming to the theatre for a Norman Granz Jazz at the Philharmonic concert in Newark. He had the pork pie hat and everything and we were trying to figure out how to get into the theater from the fire escape around the back. So we finally got into the mezzanine and saw that whole show -- with the Stan Kenton and Dizzy Gillespie bands...both bands together doing “Peanut Vendor,” and Charlie Parker with strings doing “Laura” and stuff like that. And Russell Jacquet...Ilinois Jacquet, he was blowing up a storm at that concert too. The whole thing was so amazing to me. I was just 15 and in that moment I decided, “Hey, man, let me get a clarinet.” So seeing that concert is what got me started on clarinet. I ended up getting one when I was 16, and that’s when I started music.

BM: Tell us about Sonny Rollins. You must’ve met him early on when you were coming up in Newark as a young player.

WS: I met him when I was on a weekend furlough from the Army. It was right after Clifford Brown died and Kenny Dorham was playing with Sonny. And it was at a place called Sugar Hill, up the street from where I lived in Newark on Broad Street. And Max Roach was playing the drums. Max saw me come in with my Army suit on and he was still playing something like “Love Is A Many Splendored Thing” or something like that. We...the guys in Newark...used to call it “Love is A Many A Splendoed Thing.” We had a band called The Jazz Informers in Newark. So Max was playing and he looked at me, and he waved his drumstick at me, saying, “Come on up, come on up.” So I pointed to my uniform and then pointed to the door, indicating that I was going home to change into civilian clothes. I just lived around the corner. So I went back home, changed into civilian clothes and brought my horn. And then they called me up on the bandstand. See, I had met Max at Cafe Bohemia just before I went into the Army. I had gone down to hear music, I said, for the last time in my life. I had my draft notice in my back pocket when I walked into the club. That’s when I met Max. He said, “You’re the kid from Newark, huh? You’re the Flash, the Newark Flash.” (laughs) And he asked me to play with him then. And oh man, it was just before a lot of those guys moved to Europe. Art Taylor was on the drums, Oscar Pettiford on cello. They were changing drummers throughout the night -- Art Blakey, Max Roach, Art Taylor. Jimmy Smith came in the door with his organ. He drove to the club with his organ in a hearse. And outside we heard that Miles was looking for somebody named Cannonball. And I’m saying to myself, “All this stuff is going on and I gotta go to the Army in about five days!” So Max remembered me when I was in the Army and took that furlough and he calls me up to the bandstand. They started off with “Cherokee”...REAL FAST. I had this Martin sax, which had a high pitched sound; almost sounded like an alto. And there was a guy there named Pete Lonesome who had a Nagra tape recorder. He recorded that whole set. I played only that one number with them...and man ...he recorded it and to this day some people are still looking for Pete Lonesome with this Nagra tape, you know? So when I finished playing Sonny said to me, “Did you ever think about getting a mouthpiece made? A custom-made mouthpiece?” And he said, “Call Otto Link down in Florida. He’ll fix you up.” That was cool. Sonny was really cool.

BM: Do you remember the first thing that you heard by Sonny on record?

WS: I can’t remember. But I was about 15 going on 16 when I first heard him. I heard Sonny and then Ike Quebec and then Charlie Rouse...but I wasn’t analyzing anything then. All I can remember was hearing them and then knowing that Sonny had something that was really happening. He had a lot of rhythm and all this stuff, and he would leap out at things and take it and express something. So you would see the actual force, you’d feel that statement that Sonny made; in a certain way like Charlie Parker did too.

BM: So you didn’t really analyze his playing?

WS: No, I never really analyzed it. I never hardly even talked about it but it was just a feeling. Like right now I have a cd of Coltrane talking and playing. And I also have a cd of Charlie Parker giving music lessons to a young student. And what Charlie Parker says to the young student -- Charlie plays and then the young student plays, and he’s playing scales and everything. And the student says, “You mean, Mr. Parker, I have to memorize all these scales, all these things?” And Bird -- he had that deep voice -- says, “Yes, but if you can play within your mind!” With Sonny, I never really met him until that time at Sugar Hill shortly after Clifford Brown died, but I was listening to him all through the years. He was always there; he had that excitement and that full sound. In other words, what I liked about Sonny was he had that full sound all the way up and down the horn. The high range and the low range of his horn was full -- as full as you can be, you know? And only a few people had that -- Trane and a lot of the old guys had that. Nowadays guys are whistling on the tenor, playing the high register notes and overtones on the tenor. And that’s getting up in the soprano range. But Sonny’s content was alway like a full meal -- the meat and potatoes and salad and everything there.

BM: Any techniques or musical devices that he uses to create this distinctive sound?

WS: No, I think he just worked at it from a young age. Someone asked Trane what was it like when he played with Monk at the Five Spot and he would go out of the form of what Monk’s music was...”Misterioso” or “Straight No Chaser” or whatever it was. And Trane said Monk would leave the bandstand and go sit in the audience and enjoy himself listening to Trane going out with Wilbur Ware playing bass. And then the question was asked, “Is it legitimate to go off on your own tangent or something like that?” They asked Trane, “What is it like when you do that, when you go away? How do you feel about that?” And he said, “You know when it’s the truth.” And that’s why Monk was sitting out there having himself a good time. He said, “Now I get a chance to hear some music.” I used to say this all the time: “Nobody entertains the entertainer.” As Red Buttons used to say at the Friars Club Roast...he’d say, “Moses. He parted the Red Sea. Never had a dinner!” And he goes on with all these great people...”Never had a dinner!” Now Red Buttons got some rhythm.

BM: Timing is everything...laying back just a bit before he delivers the punch line.

WS: Yeah!

BM: Do you have any favorite Sonny Rollins records?

WS: No, I don’t...just the whole total of Sonny Rollins. I don’t have many records in my house. I have Sonny’s music in my pores, in my body, in my entity. It’s like when people fight about the word ‘jazz’ and what jazz is supposed to sound like and everything. I know what jazz is supposed to sound like. To me, the word ‘jazz’ means going ahead....the whole development of democracy. Jazz is democracy in progress. It’s a work in progress. And what jazz is supposed to sound like...people are getting tied up with and involved with formality rather than substance...formality and familiarity.

BM: Well, you mentioned earlier that you liked the tunes when Sonny conveyed a sense of humor. So I’m thinking that maybe you liked that album Way out West.

WS: Oh yeah, that one! People say there’s not enough humor in jazz today. There’s a whole history of guys who had some comedy in their music, like Sonny Rollins with ”Three Little Words” and stuff like that.

BM: “I’m An Old Cow Hand.”

WS: Yeah. And I like that song “South of the Border Down Mexico Way” that Charlie Parker did. Something should be done with it to bring it back, I think. And also another one by that alto sax player who wrote “Snakes.” He’s still teaching now in New England...what’s his name? He wrote that song, “Oooh, there’s a hole up there.” He played with Sonny too.

BM: Jackie McLean.

WS: Yeah! Jackie Mac! He had some stuff that people had to deal with as far as him being so serious in the bebop days. And then he comes up with “Snakes” and “Oooh, there’s a hole up there.” Now that was unexpected. I knew Jackie when he was confronting his demons at that time, and he still kept up his sense of humor. He didn’t have that serious and almost reverent thing of, ”This is my art. My art is my life.” Or “I’ll tune out from the rest of the world in any manner, shape or form in order to be separate from those who are not with it.” You heard that expression? “Are you with it, man?” As in the movie D.O.A. where Edmund O’Brien is in a jazz club and this guy is a little high and comes up to him and says, “Are you with it, man?” Hilarious! The young guys in my band, we talk about this stuff and they see that that kind of humor is missing now in jazz. They don’t get a lot of that humor from where they’re coming from. When I was coming up, I could walk into a place and there’d be Jo Jones sitting at the corner with a newspaper and some drum brushes, beating out a rhythm at the end of the bar. And I’d walk in and he says, “Here’s a new Messenger. Bartender! Give this Messenger a drink on me,” and he’d say all this without breaking the beat, playing brushes on a newspaper. Everytime I saw Jo Jones he always had something to say like that. And you could tell that he really dug Art Blakey and what Art was doing with the parade of young people who came through his band. So there was a built-in appreciation right there. And he’d tell somebody off when they thought they were hot stuff, whatever they played. He’d say, “You still in diapers!” And these singers, he’d say, “Here comes another birdie, another tweetie.” Billy Eckstine had that kind of humor too. And he would duke it out with you, man. People thought he was a pretty boy and they’d challenge him, .but they were in for a surprise because Billy was handy with his fists. He’d get in a stance and all of a sudden...boom! But he was a gentleman too. I met a lot of great people in those days. I shook hands with Louis Armstrong at Birdland. I met Joe Louis at Birdland. And I knew Sugar Ray Robinson and Rocky Graziano...they’d come into Birdland together a lot. And Archie Moore, the light heavyweight champion, was a good friend. So it’s not just the music, it was the whole scene then. It was these boxers...these are the guys, man...the boxers who listened to bebop. And people like Kareem Abdul Jabbar. He had a whole bunch of records that he’d play for us once in a while when we’d visit his house, that one that burnt down in Belair.

BM: He said he knew you from when he was a teenager.

WS: Yeah! That’s right. He came to my birthday party at Birdland when he was 13 and he stayed with his father. His name was Lew Alcindor then. Later when he was with the Lakers we had about three birthday parties at our house in California for him. They brought a floor to dance on and everything...speakers and all that. And here come the whole Lakers team to party over at our house.

BM: Jaco (Pastorius) used to walk around with this basketball and told everyone that Kareem had given it to him years before. I never believed him, thinking it was just another one of Jaco’s stories. But at Elvin’s wake, Kareem confirmed that he did indeed give Jaco that ball years before when he met Jaco in Weather Report.

WS: Oh yeah!

BM: Any comments on Jaco?

WS: Yeah, Jaco played the banjo on the bass...and you take it from there.

BM: That’s an interesting way of putting it.

WS: There’s a guy playing in Joe Zawinul’s band now [Linley Marthe] who is coming right out of that tradition of playing banjo on the bass.

BM: You must have some humorous stories about Jaco?

WS: You know what? It wasn’t nothing really humorous. I think in hindsight, he in a sense wasn’t trying to be funny. He was kind of listening hard to some things but they just didn’t get through...he didn’t get a chance to follow through. Sometimes we’d be talking about something...a lot of people in the room and everybody’s talking at once and everybody getting into everything...and then Jaco would say, “Wait a minute! Wait a minute! This is important!” when somebody was saying something really profound. “Let’s hear that again.” And I liked that about him. And it wasn’t about being cute, hip or a hippie or making believe he’s Tarzan down in Florida swinging on a vine somewhere, you know. ‘Cause we were pallbearers at his funeral...Joe Zawinul and myself. Remember his father knocked on the coffin and said, “It’s not over yet.”

BM: His father just passed away last November. Jaco’s son Felix is playing bass now and he’s a real monster! He’s really tall, maybe six-foot-six-inches, and he looks a whole lot like Jaco too.

WS: That shows it’s not over. Yeah, I’m thinking of a whole phalanx of people from the string section who have passed -- classical, jazz and everything. Yehudi Mehuin and Paul Chambers and Doug Watkins, Jasha Heifitz, Slam Stewart, Ray Brown, Red Callendar, Teddy Kotrick, Scott LaFaro. But you know what? I don’t train in on remembering somebody with their instrument. That’s a part of disconnecting the dots. People made a history of disconnecting the dots by insisting things like, “You’re gonna specialize in this, you’re gonna study that, you’re gonna be this or that. But no, we gotta connect all the dots from the cradle from now on. And that’s learned by our parents. Some of us did a good job. I’m not putting this generation or the last generation down. There were some good people but a lot of them were shut up. That’s why I like that movie “Network,” that movie. “I’m mad as hell and I’m not gonna take it anymore. (laughs) So everytime I start talking about a person, I have to go right back to what it means in the whole scope of society. Look in the mirror. Start there.

BM: Yeah.

WS: I’d like to say one thing about Miles Davis. One time he said to me, “Hey Wayne, do you get tired of playing music that sounds like music?” And so I’m just trying to say, this is not really about music because it’s not mine. The notes are not mine. I can’t hold this stuff in my arms and give it some baby food and stuff. Music is reflecting how people talk and live. And as far as I’m concerned, I’m going to end the line with it. I’m 71 now, I ain’t got nuthin’ to lose. So I’m gonna laugh my way right straight to the door [death]...I call it the door. I’m gonna go right through that door laughin’ and see you on the other side! (laughs) Me and Clark Terry, you know? That’s all I’m doing with the music now. I’m saying to hell with the rules. A lot of musicians shouldn’t have to worry about protecting what I call their musical foundation. They want to be on their Ps and Qs on stage...their best foot forward, their best runs, their best whatever. But it’s OK to be vulnerable, to open oneself and take chances, and not be afraid of the unknown. And that goes for the audience-wise too. Because we’re gonna have to deal with the unexpected from now on. So that’s what I want to do with the music now -- take more chances and let it happen naturally. And to me, all music, all sound...the sounds of music whatever it is -- country western or jazz and all that -- if I displace myself, it’s all neutral. And people should start doing that, extending beyond the sound, or what they think the sound represents: “This is music to get married by.” Well, gimme some divorce music. (Laughs). Or they might say something like, “Oh, it’s too cerebral.” Well, they got you from the cradle on that one.


JAZZ AT THE CARNEGIE BEGINS KICKOFF ON AUGUST 6 :: eJazzNews.com : The Number One Jazz News Resource On The Net :: Jazz News Daily

JAZZ AT THE CARNEGIE BEGINS KICKOFF ON AUGUST 6 :: eJazzNews.com : The Number One Jazz News Resource On The Net :: Jazz News DailyJAZZ AT THE CARNEGIE HOTEL (JOHNSON CITY,TENN) will have its first kickoff concert on Saturday, August 6th,2005. Jazz pianist Lenore Raphael will be featured guest artist joining the Jazz Doctors headed by Dr. David Champouillon, Director of jazz at East Tennessee State University. The concert will benefit ETSU programs.
The Carnegie is located at 1216 W. State Street, Johnson City, TN
For more information call the Carnegie Hotel 423-979-6401, e mail info@carnegie.com.

Michael Brecker in Hospital :: eJazzNews.com : The Number One Jazz News Resource On The Net :: Jazz News Daily

Michael Brecker in Hospital :: eJazzNews.com : The Number One Jazz News Resource On The Net :: Jazz News Daily Michael Brecker in Hospital
Posted by: editoron Monday, July 18, 2005 - 11:35 PM
Jazz News This info comes from Randy Brecker.
Michael is in hospital for a round of chemo and then a bone marrow transplant. Doctors remain optimistic and you can send cards or letters to Mike at the following address:

MICHAEL BRECKER
Room 1137
Sloan-Kettering Memorial Cancer Center
1275 York Avenue
New York, NY 10021
USA

Sunday, July 17, 2005

Dizzy Gillespie - A Night In Havana - Dizzy Gillespie In Cuba Movie Info - Yahoo! Movies

Dizzy Gillespie - A Night In Havana - Dizzy Gillespie In Cuba Movie Info - Yahoo! MoviesDizzy Gillespie - A Night In Havana - Dizzy Gillespie In Cuba (1988)

Jazz history was irrevocably altered when Dizzy Gillespie helped form the burgeoning "bebop" movement in the 1940s. This film offers a glimpse of a trip to Cuba from the legendary trumpet player, where he provided entertainment for the audience at Havana's Fifth International Jazz Festival. Cuban music provided a great inspiration for Gillespie, so it was a fitting location in which to film the star. With a full band behind him, Gillespie performs a series of songs that draw on the traditions of Cuban music, while some intimate footage captures some priceless offstage moments with the talented musician.
MPAA Rating: Not Rated

Montreux Atlanta Jazz Festival :: eJazzNews.com : The Number One Jazz News Resource On The Net :: Jazz News Daily

Montreux Atlanta Jazz Festival :: eJazzNews.com : The Number One Jazz News Resource On The Net :: Jazz News Daily Montreux Atlanta Jazz Festival
Posted by: editoron Sunday, July 17, 2005 - 04:14 PM
Jazz News Blues legends and jazz masters in one-time-only productions; films, lectures and workshops to showcase a variety of musical genres; free outdoor performances on Callaway Plaza; new uses for a variety of spaces at the Woodruff

The Woodruff Arts Center and the City of Atlanta presents the Montreux Jazz Festival, an ambitious three-day musical celebration featuring a broad array of concerts, lectures, films and workshops in partnership with Switzerland’s internationally acclaimed Montreux Jazz Festival.

The Montreux Jazz Festival in Atlanta will take place Sept. 2-4 in a variety of indoor and outdoor spaces at the Woodruff Arts Center, offering music aficionados and fun-seekers the opportunity to experience musicians from distinct communities as they share their artistic and cultural heritage.

The three-day Montreux Jazz Festival in Atlanta will offer a unique showcase for more than 100 local, regional and internationally renowned musicians representing an abundance of musical styles and genres. Ticketed events will be held in Symphony Hall, the Rich Theatre, Center Space as well as the Alliance Theatre, which will be transformed into a “Latin dance party” and a “blues juke joint” during the festival. Woodruff’s Callaway Plaza will serve as an outdoor venue throughout the entire festival, featuring a variety of performances - all FREE to the public.

Tickets go on sale in July and are available through the Woodruff’s box office, (404) 733-5000 or www.woodruffcentertickets.org. Prices will vary depending on venue with single tickets and packages available. Outdoor concerts are free.


Montreux Atlanta Jazz Festival - Schedule of Events:

Friday, September 2

Callaway Plaza 5:30 p.m. Live on the Plaza:
Soweto Kinch Quintet; Julie Dexter; Mark de Clive Lowe

Rich Theatre 8 p.m. and 10 p.m. Blues in the Night:

Hubert Sumlin; Nappy Brown and special guests

Alliance Theatre 8:30 p.m. Musica Caliente:

Eddie Palmieri and La Perfecta II

Woodruff Jazz club 10 p.m.–1 a.m. FreeSoul Sessions Club Night:

Mark de Clive Lowe and special guests


Saturday, September 3

Callaway Plaza 2 p.m.–7 p.m. Live on the Plaza

Kevin Bales Trio, Tamboricua, and more

Symphony Hall 8:00 p.m. Legends of the Blues:

Buddy Guy; Pinetop Perkins and Friends



Rich Theatre 1:00 p.m. Montreux Jazz on Film:

“Brasil Night” featuring Joao Bosco, Baden Powell,

Gal Costa and more

2:15 p.m. Montreux Jazz on Film:

“All That Jazz” featuring Brad Mehldau,

Monty Alexander and Chick Corea

6:30 and 8:30 p.m. The Great American Songbook:

Bill Charlap Trio; Dick Hyman Trio

Woodruff Jazz Club 10 p.m.-1 a.m. FreeSoul Sessions Club Night:

Mark de Clive Lowe and special guests


Sunday, September 4

Callaway Plaza 2 p.m.–7 p.m. Live on the Plaza

International Groove Conspiracy; Sol Factor; Kingsized

Symphony Hall 8:00 p.m Keith Jarrett, Gary Peacock & Jack De Johnette

Rich Theatre 1:00 p.m. Montreux Jazz on Film:

“Jazz Meet Symphony” featuring Lalo Schifrin,

Ray Brown, Jon Faddis

2:15 p.m. Montreux Jazz on Film:

“Ladies of Jazz” featuring Shirley Horn, Betty Carter, Natalie Cole

8 p.m. Grant Lee Phillips and the Virginia Creepers

Alliance Theatre 8:00 and10 p.m. Juke Joint Revival:

Reverend Billy, Bob Margolin & special guests


Woodruff Jazz Club 10 p.m.-1 a.m. Free Soul Sessions Club Night:

Mark de Clive Lowe & special guests


http://woodruffcenter.org/wac/montreux-web/index.html


http://woodruffcenter.org/wac/montreux-web/LineUpRelease.doc



The Coastal Jazz Association Presents the
2005 Savannah Jazz Festival
September 18-25



FESTIVAL SCHEDULE (Highlighted are must sees):

Sunday, September 18 at 5:00 pm
Festival kickoff, featuring the area’s best musicians
Suzabelle’s Restaurant on the veranda, 102 East Broad Street

Monday-Wednesday at Suzabelle’s 8:00 pm
Monday: Howard Paul Trio
Tuesday: Barry Greene Trio
Wednesday: David Thomas Roberts, Ragtime Pianist

Thursday, September 22, Blues Night at Forsyth Park
Eric Culberson and EROK, 7:00 pm
Corey Harris, 8:00 pm
James “Blood” Ulmer, 9:00 pm

Friday, September 23, at Forsyth Park
Savannah Arts Academy Skyelite Jazz Band
featuring J.B. Scott, 7:00 pm
U.S. Air Force Reserve Band, 8:00 pm
Roy Ayers, 9:00 pm

Saturday, September 24, at Forsyth Park
University of North Florida Jazz Ensemble, 2:00 pm
U.S. Army Ground Forces Band, 3:00 pm
J.B. Scott/Lisa Kelly Quintet, 4:00 pm
Eric Person Quartet, 5:00 pm
Susan Pereira and Sabor Brasil, 6:00 pm
Doug Carn Quartet, 7:00 pm
(Drummer) Ben Riley Trio ft. Cedar Walton, 8:00 pm
Savannah/Coastal Jazz Association Hall of Fame Induction and Performance, 9:00 pm
John Hendricks w/ Savannah Jazz Orchestra, 10:00 pm


Sunday, September 25, at Forsyth Park
Children’s Jazz Festival featuring CJA All-Stars, Savannah Arts Academy Skyelite Jazz Band and Ronald McDonald.

*Rain Site for Forsyth Park events is Savannah State University’s Tiger Arena.
Sponsored by the City of Savannah’s Department of Cultural Affairs. Schedule is subject to change. For more information please call 912-356-2399, 912-232-2222, or visit www.coastaljazz.com