Ray Bryant, Jazz Pianist, Dies at 79 - NYTimes.com

Cover of Alone at MontreuxRay Bryant, Jazz Pianist, Dies at 79 - NYTimes.com

By NATE CHINEN

Ray Bryant, a jazz pianist whose sensitivity and easy authority made him a busy accompanist and a successful solo artist, beginning in the mid-1950s, died on Thursday. He was 79.

His wife of 20 years, Claude Bryant, said he died at New York Hospital Queens after a long illness. He lived in Jackson Heights, Queens.

Mr. Bryant had a firm touch and an unshakable sense of time, notably in his left hand, which he often used to build a bedrock vamp. Even in a bebop setting, he favored the ringing tonalities of the gospel church. And he was sumptuously at home with the blues, as a style and a sensibility but never as an affectation.

All of this contributed to his accomplishment as a solo pianist. His first solo piano album was “Alone With the Blues,” in 1958, and he went on to make a handful of others, including “Alone at Montreux,” “Solo Flight” and “Montreux ’77.” His most recent release, “In the Back Room,” was yet another solo album, recorded live at Rutgers University and released on the Evening Star label in 2008.

Raphael Homer Bryant was born on Dec. 24, 1931, in Philadelphia, and made his name in that city during its considerable postwar jazz boom. Along with his brother, Tommy, a bassist, he played in the house band at the Blue Note Club in Philadelphia, which had a steady flow of major talent dropping in from New York. (Charlie Parker and Miles Davis were among the musicians they played with there.) In short order Mr. Bryant had plenty of prominent sideman work, both with and without his brother.

One early measure of his ascent was the album “Meet Betty Carter and Ray Bryant,” released on Columbia in 1955. It was a splashy introduction for him as well as for Ms. Carter, the imposingly gifted jazz singer. It was soon followed by “The Ray Bryant Trio” (Prestige), an accomplished album that introduced Mr. Bryant’s composition “Blues Changes,” with its distinctive chord progression.

That song would become a staple of the jazz literature, if less of a proven standard than “Cubano Chant,” the sprightly Afro-Cuban fanfare that Mr. Bryant recorded under his own name and in bands led by the drummers Art Blakey, Art Taylor and Jo Jones.

Mr. Bryant had several hit songs early in his solo career, beginning with “Little Susie,” an original blues that he recorded both for the Signature label and for Columbia. In 1960 he reached No. 30 on the Billboard chart with a novelty song called “The Madison Time,” rushed into production to capitalize on a dance craze. (The song has had a durable afterlife, appearing on the soundtrack to the 1988 movie “Hairspray,” and in the recent Broadway musical production.) He later broke into the Top 100 with a cover of Bobbie Gentry’s “Ode to Billie Joe,” released just a few months after the original, in 1967.

But Mr. Bryant’s legacy never rested on his chart success or his nimble response to popular trends. It can be discerned throughout his own discography and in some of his work as a sideman, notably with the singers Carmen McRae and Jimmy Rushing, and on albums like Dizzy Gillespie’s “Sonny Side Up,” on Verve. “After Hours,” a track on that album, begins with Mr. Bryant and his brother playing a textbook slow-drag blues.

Along with his wife, Mr. Bryant is survived by a son, Raphael Bryant Jr.; a daughter, Gina; three grandchildren; and two brothers, Leonard and Lynwood. Mr. Bryant’s sister, Vera Eubanks, is the mother of several prominent jazz musicians: Robin Eubanks, a trombonist; Kevin Eubanks, the guitarist and former bandleader on “The Tonight Show With Jay Leno”; and Duane Eubanks, a trumpeter.

________________________________________

Back during the mid and late seventies Ray Bryant used to play piano regularly at a restaurant around the corner from my apartment on 2nd Avenue on the Upper East Side of Manhattan called Hanratty's.  That restaurant has been gone for many years.  Bryant was a funky two fisted pianist who had a winning combination of prodigious technique coupled with a soulful feeling.  He will live on through his numerous recordings.

John H. Armwood

‘Jazz - The Smithsonian Anthology,’ Out March 29 - NYTimes.com

Cover of Art Blakey‘Jazz - The Smithsonian Anthology,’ Out March 29 - NYTimes.com

By BEN RATLIFF

LOOK out: there’s a new jazz canon coming toward you. A boxed set of six discs to be released on March 29, it emanates from the Smithsonian Institution; it is called “Jazz: The Smithsonian Anthology.” It surveys jazz chronologically, from its complicated beginnings to its just as complicated near-present.

It was assembled by scholars and critics and broadcasters: serious names. It begins with a solo-piano composition by a Texas-born composer whose father had been a slave (Scott Joplin) and ends with a quartet track led by a Polish trumpeter (Tomasz Stanko) who loves Miles Davis. Text drips from the package, an essay for each of its 111 tracks.

You’re energized, right? Your heartbeat just picked up, your amygdala’s plumping out. You want to know what canons usually address: how and where the anthologizers claim jazz started, how they frame it now. And in the middle, how do they really feel about Coltrane, about late Billie Holiday and Lester Young, about Ahmad Jamal, Miles at the Plugged Nickel, Afro-Latinism, cool and free and fusion, live vs. studio, unsung heroes? More: Is jazz a musical language or a philosophy of action, or is it merely a genre, the art that descends from a body of recorded masterpieces? What’s its relation to race, or sensuality, or geography? And what is the deal with its rhythm sections — why do they sound so incredibly different every 15 years? What keeps the music changing? What makes it tick? What is jazz?

I am both invested in and sick of the subject, having written a kind of jazz-canon book myself, 10 years ago. So, caveat lector. But I ask rhetorically, because I’m still working it out: How could such a righteous cultural product, full of so many sublime parts, feel so cumulatively limp?

My first reaction was that maybe we’ve reached our limit, jazz-canon-wise. In the past one of the primary functions of projects like “Jazz: The Smithsonian Anthology” was simply to get this music in print, because in some cases you could not otherwise find it: probably not in your local record store or library, not on the radio, nowhere. Back then there was a causal link between a recording’s availability and the possibility of its influence. Now almost every recording ever made is buyable or poachable online: easy come, easy go, and therefore no music needs protection or special pleading. But that’s nonsense. There is still a need for cultural advocacy, even if the culture is easy to find. Meade Lux Lewis’s ferocious “Honky Tonk Train Blues,” on Disc 1 of this collection, was popular in its time and remains easy to locate online. Still, you’ll most likely never hear it unless someone points you there.

Then I wondered if maybe it’s no longer worth exploring what the new jazz reality — say, New York groups like the trumpeter Ambrose Akinmusire’s or the drummer Dafnis Prieto’s, or the New York-Los Angeles band Kneebody — might have in common with King Oliver and Jelly Roll Morton. But of course that’s wrong too. The connections are there, the closer you listen: in instrumentation, in the compressed balance between composition and improvisation, in the spirit of revision. And all those new jazz musicians have studied the jazz tradition. They may run far and wide, but they know who their parents are.

But maybe the true problem is that “Jazz: The Smithsonian Anthology” isn’t really a canon at all. It’s a House of Representatives. What’s missing is its desire to be any more than a list, rather than an argument or a thesis.

It does not lack for facts, this hundred-dollar toolbox. It is not underinformed. It does more, for instance, with free jazz and Afro-Latin music than some others have done. It represents both popular taste and scholarly consensus. It is balanced in all things, even in its split between popular choices and critics’ favorites. So there’s Miles Davis’s “So What,” Bill Evans’s “Waltz for Debby,” Getz and Gilberto’s “Girl From Ipanema,” Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers’ “Moanin,’ ” etc. — as well as solid to questionable wild-card choices like the Clark Terry-Bob Brookmeyer Quintet’s “Haig & Haig,” Mary Lou Williams’s “Virgo” and Cab Calloway’s “Hard Times.” Its final disc stops at 2003 — a minor alarm, though I’m resigned to low hopes for the final chapters of these kinds of things. You’ll always disagree about the music of your own time.

The new Smithsonian anthology is fair minded, which is to say strangely anonymous. Though the essays are signed, one can’t be sure whether the signers chose the tracks, and you won’t find out how the anthologizers, individually or as a body, really feel about anything in particular. (The boxed set was created by an executive committee of five — the scholars David Baker, Jose Bowen, John Edward Hasse, Dan Morgenstern and Alyn Shipton — and 42 more on the advisory panel: 47 ! And that’s not including yet a few more writers, who wrote track notes.) It comes with no particular orientation or obsession; it can seem as if there’s little at stake.

It is chronological, which of course carries its own logic, if kind of a dull one. It contains a few inspired sequences, like its tour of the mid-’50s, winding through mostly nonobvious tracks from Chico Hamilton, Lucky Thompson, Sonny Rollins, Sun Ra, Nat King Cole and Ella Fitzgerald with Louis Armstrong. But in general the individual tracks don’t talk to one another much, or linger on an artist and take a stand; and while the boxed set represents styles and eras and trends, it seldom leads you toward deeper questions.

The act of listening to it can also elicit a retrospective sympathy for past canons, on page and disc and screen. For instance Charles Edward Smith’s in “The Jazz Record Book”; Marshall Stearns’s in “The Story of Jazz”; Joachim E. Berendt, Gunther Huesmann and Kevin Whitehead’s, in the second edition of Berendt’s “Jazz Book”; Ken Burns’s, in the television documentary and CD series “Jazz;” Allen Lowe’s “That Devilin’ Tune,” covering jazz up to 1951 in 36 discs and a book; and Gary Giddins’s and Scott Deveaux’s, in their judicious book-length history and CD-ROM project from 2010, also called “Jazz.”

All these had causes to defend or stories to tell: the development of jazz as a self-conscious art form; the centrality of the music’s prehistory; the importance of prescient or outlying musicians to jazz history; the role of jazz in healing America’s race trauma. But what the new anthology might make you miss the most is the object it has been designed to replace: “The Smithsonian Collection of Classic Jazz,” compiled in 1973 and revised in 1987 by the critic Martin Williams.

The American jazz-education movement was just taking shape when Williams’s “Smithsonian Collection” appeared, on six vinyl LPs. (It was eventually transferred to CD; it’s been out of print for a while.) The Williams anthology became standard for jazz-appreciation classes, and on first inspection it appeared only to help you demarcate a big story and save time. Stealthily, it also advanced theories. Williams, who died in 1992, could write as if he didn’t know what fun was. But he listened with great depth and vigor, and his canon had funk in its step.

It favored rhythmic innovation above all else. It had little time for singers. It acknowledged masterpieces, but not reflexively or out of obligation. It bestowed major real estate to a small group of creators — particularly Jelly Roll Morton, Armstrong, Charlie Parker, Thelonious Monk and Ornette Coleman — and gave John Coltrane an informed kind of short shrift. If you resented any of his grudges from his writing, you saw them carried over into the anthology. (He found Coltrane tedious and Ahmad Jamal shallow.)

Yet the Williams canon radiated a meta-consciousness of jazz as a creative act. It segued versions of the same song by different people; it knitted together Charlie Christian’s guitar solos from different takes of “Breakfast Feud” with the Benny Goodman Sextet into one long, five-chorus improvisation. And it really engaged with Charlie Parker, presenting pairs of alternate takes of “Embraceable You” and “Crazeology,” cutting them off after Parker’s solo, to demonstrate how true an improviser Parker was. This could seem fanciful or time wasting when telling a big story in a small space; but he picked his spots.

All of that was radical, if not even remix-oriented or bloggy before its time. He seemed to understand implicitly that canon making itself was an act of creativity and revision; that a survey of an art form wasn’t the same thing as a survey of its reception. In any case, Williams’s anthology was argued over because it was worth arguing over.

What I’m saying is: If ever there was a place for style to follow subject, for form to follow function, this is the place. A jazz anthology has got to have spark and tension and originality. In order for jazz to feel like an open subject, we need more challenging suppositions about it, whether they translate as pluralistic or exclusive. But perhaps this just can’t be done by committee. I’ve never heard good jazz from a 47-member band.

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Celebrating Miles Davis - 02/19/2011 | MiamiHerald.com

Cover of TutuCelebrating Miles Davis - 02/19/2011 | MiamiHerald.com

By the time of his death in 1991, trumpeter Miles Davis had lived several jazz lives.

Throughout a career spanning 50 years, Davis showed an acute sense for shifting musical paradigms and an uncanny ability to both absorb and transcend the musical trends of the day. Time and again, he reinvented himself as needed, and as he did, he also changed the sound of jazz.

Two sides of Davis’ music — one acoustic, featuring classic songs from albums such as Kind of Blue, the other electric, centering on Tutu, the most memorable studio recording of his late period — are the subject of Celebrating Miles, a concert featuring trumpeter (and Davis’ protégé) Wallace Roney, bassist-producer Marcus Miller, up-and-coming trumpeter Christian Scott and bassist Ron Carter, among others. The show, part of the Adrienne Arsht Center for the Performing Art’s Jazz Roots series, takes place at the Knight Concert Hall at 8 p.m. Friday.

“It’s an honor to be part of a tribute to Miles, although I feel I pay tribute to him every time I play the trumpet,” Roney said in a recent phone interview. “I feel my own music is an extension of what he gave to the art form — but I think everybody’s music has been influenced by him.”

Roney’s career includes stints with Art Blakey, Tony Williams and Ornette Coleman, as well as 16 albums as a leader. He also won a Grammy in 1994 as a member of the Miles Davis Tribute Band, featuring Wayne Shorter, Herbie Hancock, Carter and Williams. He will perform in the acoustic half of the concert, leading an exceptional group comprised of Billy Childs on piano, Donald Harrison on alto sax, Javon Jackson on tenor sax, Carter on bass and Al Foster on drums.

Roney’s own music includes distinctly contemporary elements including turntables and down-tempo grooves. But he won’t approach this show like a repertory player performing a role.

“Playing Miles’ music is as much me as playing my own music. Playing Miles’ music is how I grew up, it’s how I’ve learned,” he says. “So it’s me. I don’t have to think ‘Well, now I’m going to role-play.’ All I have to do is go to that part of me.”

Jazz phenom

Roney, who will be 51 in May, was already being hailed as a young jazz phenom when he met Davis at a tribute to the trumpeter at the Bottom Line in New York City in 1983. After hearing him play, Davis took an interest and became his mentor. “He heard himself in me,” says Roney, matter-of-factly. “ ‘You remind me of me,’ he told me. ‘You look at me like I used to look at Dizzy.’ ”

In 1991, Davis invited Roney to be part of his concert at the Montreux Jazz Festival in Switzerland. That evening, working with an orchestra conducted by Quincy Jones, Davis revisited some of the charts of his classic collaborations with arranger Gil Evans. Roney was a featured soloist.

He chuckles as he discusses the perception and truth of Davis’ cultivated, forbidding persona.

“Miles had a vibe. He definitely had a vibe. He walked into a room and everybody would turn, and he knew how to use that to make people back away from him,” Roney says. “But he was a beautiful person. He was funny. He was friendly. He was generous. He was everything that people would love in a human being but, if you crossed him, oh buddy, ooooh buddy. Then you’d see the “Evil Miles Davis” — and I saw that, too.”

He says that often lost in Davis’ mystique is the fact that “this man was one of the greatest trumpet players of all time.”

“I got to hear his sound in my ear, and I never heard anybody sound like that in my life,” Roney says. “He had a sound that seemed to come from the clouds. I’m telling you. It was not from this Earth. It came from the clouds.”

For all of Davis’ tough posturing, his sound spoke with a touching vulnerability, which served him well in the ’50s and ’60s (just check his classic ballad playing), but also in the ’70s, as he stirred a witches’ brew of electric rock-jazz fusion.

A new groove

In Tutu, recorded 25 years ago this month, the deep humanity of Davis’ sound is set in a world of synthesizers and pre-programmed grooves. Here, he’s Everyman standing in a shiny, mechanical world of zeros and ones, smooth metal and plastic.

“That’s what I was hoping to get,” said Tutu co-producer Miller, 51, who wrote and arranged most of the songs, and played most of the instruments on the album. “To me it was the sound of someone who had been through so much, trying to make his way in this weird, technological world. Miles’ sound was perfect for that.”

The recording was strictly a studio affair. Co-producer Tommy LiPuma, then the head of jazz at Warner Bros., Davis’ new label, decided not to use a live band. To complement Miller’s work, additional musicians were called as needed. As for Davis’ involvement, Miller recalls that “Miles came in, heard the tracks and told me to call him when I needed the trumpet. That’s it. But he was involved the whole time. I was just making a suit he would put on, and hoping it fit well.”

Some of the songs in Tutu were later incorporated into Davis’ live show playlist, but the idea of playing the whole album top to bottom only emerged a couple of years ago, as a one-off event, part of a Miles Davis exhibit in Paris.

“I wanted to do a tribute to Miles, but I also knew Miles would absolutely hate the idea of going back in time and recreating something from 25 years ago,” Miller explains. “Miles never liked to look back. ... And then I got the idea: if I could find some young musicians who were babies when Tutu came out and introduce these great young musicians to the world and have them interpret it, now that could be something Miles would appreciate.”

Miller found New Orleans trumpeter Scott, who will be 28 in March; Louis Cato, drums, 25; Federico Gonzalez Pena, piano, 42, and Alex Han, alto sax, 22. The performance was a success, concerts promoters called, and the one-time-only event became a touring show.

“When we first played the music it tripped me out. Every note brought up a memory of when I was hanging with Miles, working on the music, so it was really emotional to play it,” recalls Miller. “But I really enjoyed playing it live, bringing it to life.”

“What you are going to get out of these shows is how much influence this guy had in our music, in all of us,” says Miller. “Because we are all kind of his children, his family. It’s going to be a beautiful thing to see how Miles still lives.”

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Album review: Miles Davis' 'Bitches Brew Live' | Culture Monster | Los Angeles Times

Album review: Miles Davis' 'Bitches Brew Live' | Culture Monster | Los Angeles Times

The latest in a recent string of newly packaged music from jazz’s past, "Bitches Brew Live" combines only the second CD release of Miles Davis' 1970 performance at Isle of Wight (issued on DVD in 2004 and on recent complete catalog CD sets) and three previously unheard live tracks from the 1969 Newport Jazz Festival. Tempting stuff for Davis completists.

Given the music industry's ongoing addiction to reissues, jazz fans could be forgiven for suffering a bit of Davis fatigue. They recently have seen the release of two complete catalog sets, no less than eight boxed collections of album outtakes and, most recently, a sumptuous 40th anniversary edition of "Bitches Brew" similar to 2008's "Kind of Blue" collector's set -- and that doesn't even get into the many two-disc "Legacy Collections" out there. All in all, a pretty busy release schedule for a guy who's been dead almost 20 years.

The question is, does the average jazz fan need yet another Miles Davis set?

In a word, probably. In fact, this album could be the choice for anyone who's heard all the (justified) hype and acclaim behind the jazz-meets-rock amalgam "Bitches Brew" but hasn't been able to crack its dark and sometimes thorny code. Along with the six-disc "Cellar Door Sessions 1970," this recording beautifully showcases the fire-breathing power of Davis' band onstage.

Backed by an all-star band of Chick Corea, Dave Holland and Jack DeJohnette (weirdly, Wayne Shorter got stuck in traffic and missed this set), Davis' trumpet is a fluid, nimble presence on Newport's opener "Miles Runs the Voodoo Down," which carries a more boisterous edge than the album's version recorded six weeks later. Holland can be tough to pick up here given that he was still on an acoustic bass, but his battery mate DeJohnette shines, playing off Corea's keyboard punches on the "In a Silent Way" track "It's About That Time" with the controlled fury of an oncoming train. The complete picture of "Bitches Brew" wasn't in place yet, but hearing Davis and his band open up the throttle in these early stages is often remarkable.

By the time the Isle of Wight set was recorded in August 1970, Davis' vision for merging jazz, rock and funk was in full bloom. Saxophonist Gary Bartz has taken over for the departed Shorter (whom you can hear on the 2001 live release from 1970, "It's About That Time") and the band has expanded to a six-piece with Keith Jarrett joining Corea as a second keyboardist and Airto Moreira adding percussive spikes and blurts.

The title track from "Bitches Brew," a tough sell for neophytes with its spaced-out trumpet flares on the 26-minute studio version, here reveals its heavy funk heart with Corea grinding out guitar-like tones from his keyboard over its economical 10 minutes. The swaggering groove of "Spanish Key" is highlighted by an unhinged solo from Bartz, and the duplicate takes on "Sanctuary" and "It's About That Time" hardly feel like the same song with the many new colors added by this lineup, underscoring the constant invention and reinvention of this period for Davis.

Certainly, it's easy to grow weary of all the reissues that have been scraped from the vaults over the years and targeted to deep-pocketed collectors. But when a single album documents a period this influential and sounds this good doing it, it's even easier to come back for more.

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Why We're Obsessed With Wayne Shorter : A Blog Supreme : NPR

Why We're Obsessed With Wayne Shorter : A Blog Supreme : NPR

he saxophonist and composer Wayne Shorter is one of the few jazz musicians who can without a doubt be called a living legend. Many of his compositions are jazz standards; many of his records are studied endlessly. He's one of the artists who both musicians and fans obsess over — and even at age 77, he continues to reinvent his musical personality with every performance.

So what about Wayne Shorter gives him this towering, near-mythic profile? Why did people revere this man, and why do they continue to do so?

On Tuesday, Shorter starts a brief North American tour, stopping in Boston, New York, Durham, N.C. and Toronto. On the eve of this stint, I asked Michelle Mercer, author of the biography Footprints: The Life and Music of Wayne Shorter, to help explain and appraise the phenomenon that is Wayne Shorter, both then and now. (Mercer is also an occasional NPR contributor.) I sent her a few questions over e-mail:

Patrick Jarenwattananon: So if you've never heard of him, why is this Wayne Shorter dude worth paying attention to? I know you have a whole book on this, but ... give me the roughly 150 word version?

Michelle Mercer: Here's the encyclopedia entry: Wayne is as strong and distinctive a composer as he is a saxophonist. His storied career encompasses 50 years of jazz innovation. Wayne was weaned on bebop in the 40s and went on to break new ground in the genres of hard bop, post-bop, fusion and orchestral jazz.

But here's why he's really worth a listen: At 77, an age when many musicians have settled into nostalgia, Wayne is writing and playing music that can stir people up.

PJ: It seems like Wayne could have had a place for himself in the jazz canon based only on his work in the late '50s and the '60s. What was special about those years?

MM: In 1959, Wayne joined Art Blakey's Jazz Messengers, a group that toured widely for its time, representing jazz and America around the world. Wayne became Blakey's musical director and with his compositions helped move the group from straightforward hard-bop to sophisticated post-bop. In 1964, Miles Davis recruited him for his quintet with Herbie Hancock, Ron Carter, and Tony Williams, which was sort of "the right stuff" of jazz groups. Miles loved Wayne's composing as much as Blakey had. On the '60s quintet albums Wayne has as many composition credits as Miles, if not more.

And there were Wayne's Blue Note recordings. In the '50s and '60s Blue Note was the Bell Labs of jazz, blessed with a lucky conjunction of plentiful funding, smart management and strong talent. Bell Labs produced dozens of breakthrough inventions; Blue Note produced dozens of classic recordings. A few spring to mind: Horace Silver's Song For My Father, Lee Morgan's The Sidewinder, Herbie Hancock's Maiden Voyage, Dexter Gordon's Our Man In Paris, Freddie Hubbard's Ready For Freddie. Even in such a remarkable catalog, Wayne's Blue Note recordings stand out for their harmonic complexity and memorable melodies. Wayne recorded six albums for Blue Note in one 18-month period, and these albums — The All Seeing Eye, Speak No Evil, etc. — included tunes that have become jazz standards.

PJ: I haven't read as much celebrating his music between the '60s and '00s. Did people write him off for many years in that span?

MM: My goodness, A Blog Supreme, what a leading question. I'm tempted to just say yes.

First, I'll look at Wayne's accomplishments during these years, since you asked about his achievements during previous decades. In the early '70s he and Joe Zawinul co-founded Weather Report, a group that did a lot to define the sound and structure of jazz fusion. Weather Report played to packed stadiums, and featured long, muscular solos by Wayne. For the fans who missed Wayne's acoustic playing, and they were many, there was VSOP in the late 70s, a reformation of Miles's '60s quintet, without Miles. (First Freddie Hubbard played trumpet in the group, then Wynton Marsalis.) On Native Dancer (1974) Wayne and Milton Nascimento invented the first new sound in Brazilian jazz since Getz/Gilberto's jazz bossa. In the '70s, '80s and '90s, Wayne contributed classic solos on recordings by Steely Dan and Joni Mitchell, and on soundtracks like Glengarry Glen Ross and The Fugitive.

But Wayne did suffer a compositional drought in the late '70s and '80s, especially compared to his fertile writing of the '50s and '60s. In the early '70s, with his conversion to Nicheren Buddhism, Wayne decided to "put life ahead of music," as he often says. Though he remained Weather Report's co-leader for all 14 years of the group's tenure, Wayne was much less active in the group than Zawinul.

After Weather Report disbanded in 1984, Wayne made three solo records for Columbia. These '80s albums, Atlantis, Phantom Navigator, and Joy Ryder, as well as his 1995 Verve debut, High Life, were synthesizer-heavy, with some programmed backbeats. Wayne and his producers went with the sound of the times. For many of Wayne's fans these production values were a big obstacle to their musical appreciation. As Joni Mitchell put it in one of her typically vivid metaphors, the backbeats on these albums "put fence posts through the music."

Happily, for everyone concerned, over the past decade or so Wayne has been commissioned to rework some of those '80s compositions for orchestra or chamber ensemble. When these pieces are rearranged for broader instrumentation and performed in an acoustic setting, their strengths are easier to hear. Many of these pieces have several intertwined melodies, for example — and if you pull out any one melody, it's striking enough to serve as the primary one. Basically, the way I see it, in the '80s and '90s, Wayne was becoming a serious classical composer, but the style and sound of his records obscured it for most fans.

PJ: It seems like people "in the know" are still obsessed with him, even if they didn't like his electric recordings. Why are his performances still so anticipated? He's surely more than just a "legacy act," as they say.

MM: In the jazz world, the people most "in the know" are the musicians themselves. Early on, Wayne's unconventional character and original musicianship gave him a special cachet among musicians. Whether or not they've played with him, most musicians have a good Wayne story — or five. With the growth of jazz degree programs, more young musicians began formal study of Wayne's solos and compositions. Appreciation spread and spilled over to the cognoscenti.

That doesn't really explain the obsession, though. Here are some thoughts:

As Wayne remembers it, his mother encouraged his creativity and protected his playtime from the rude incursions of the real world: e.g. his father asking him to take out the trash. Because of this maternal influence, or just because, Wayne lodged comfortably in his imagination, finding richness of experience there. Part of him has never stopped looking at the world through his mind's eye. Wayne's composition and improvisation are windows into this imagination.

And Wayne has a deep musical memory. As he lived music over the decades, he absorbed it all: the Beethoven he studied at NYU, the rhythmic fusillades of Art Blakey, the runic phrases of Miles, the soundtracks to the movies he's watched constantly since he was a kid. Add all this to his own vast catalog of compositions, and he's got a lot of music at his fingertips.

Finally, Wayne's now had a serious Buddhist practice for 40 years, which has made him very awake. Though it sounds simple, I don't know a better way to say it. He's awake. Watching a movie or eating dinner or sitting in an airport terminal, Wayne can be extraordinarily alert to the unfolding of the phenomenal world. On stage, this translates to a keen awareness of what his band mates are playing in every moment.

So Wayne's live shows offer up his unfettered imagination, sharp recall of 20th century music and committed wakefulness, which makes for an unusual combination. Fans never quite know what they're going to get when he picks up a saxophone.

PJ: Tell me about how this current band formed. As jazz fans surely know, Brian Blade, John Patitucci and Danilo Perez — drums, bass and piano, respectively — are some of the most incredibly talented musicians in jazz right now. How did they all meet for this group?

MM: John Patitucci had played and recorded off and on with Wayne since 1987. In the late '90s, when Wayne's symphonic performances began, he'd play with a jazz quartet alongside the orchestra. (He still does.) Wayne tried a few different musicians for this quartet, including John on bass, then added Danilo and Brian at the 2000 Monterey Jazz Festival. It just worked. These musicians had what Wayne wanted and needed: exceptional musical intelligence and a spirit of adventure.

PJ: So what might one see at one of these quartet shows? How else might you describe where Wayne seems to be going musically these days?

MM: You've heard the phrase "writing about music is like dancing about architecture." Describing this band's music is even more implausible: It's like swimming about brain surgery.

It's easier to start with what audiences won't hear. Even though this is an acoustic group, audiences won't hear tunes played in the style of Wayne's classic Blue Note recordings. They won't hear set compositions at all. The band will likely play a sort of stream-of-consciousness suite, seguing without break between musical ideas, which may even coalesce briefly into recognizable melodies.

Usually the leader of a jazz group is a protagonist, the central character in the music's story. Wayne rejects that role. This quartet is truly an ensemble cast, and makes good on Joe Zawinul's famous boast about Weather Report: "We always solo and we never solo." They are four equal players making it up as they go along.

There are some risks to this approach. While the band is casting about for an authentic idea, one worthy of development, a musical passage can lose tension or momentum. It may feel as if the band is stuck in quicksand. That's because the band is stuck in quicksand. But it doesn't last long.

Wayne's sound will probably be partly cloudy on tenor sax and mostly sunny on soprano. He may play slurred downward spirals of notes, or what the quartet's manager/engineer Rob Griffin calls "the Draino stuff." He'll lean into some ostinatos. If a distinct melody emerges, he'll probably improvise a counter melody. He'll leap around in wide intervals, lots of fifths and octaves, leaving plenty of space for the other guys to roam. He may whistle.

None of this explains the altered sense of time and space some fans, especially fellow musicians, experience during these shows.

The band's onstage demeanor is more elated than you might expect from a jazz quartet. Danilo and John will often shout out at a surprising musical gesture, especially if it's Wayne's gesture. Brian erupts into grooves with a force that would intimidate most rock bands. The guys are rarely out of eye contact. They laugh more often than jazz musicians usually do in performance, except maybe in New Orleans.

Something audiences won't see is how the band's pre-show conversation carries over into the night's music. Or how after the show, their banter picks up right where the music left off.

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The Associated Press: Marsalis Family among 2011 NEA Jazz Masters

Image via WikipediaThe Associated Press: Marsalis Family among 2011 NEA Jazz Masters

NEW YORK (AP) — America's first family of jazz — patriarch Ellis Marsalis Jr. and four of his sons — were presented the nation's highest jazz honor Tuesday night at the 2011 National Endowment for the Arts Jazz Masters Awards Ceremony.

It marked the first time the NEA had ever presented a group award since it launched its Jazz Masters program in 1982. The other 2011 Jazz Masters honored in the concert at Jazz at Lincoln Center's Rose Theater were flutist Hubert Laws, saxophonist and educator David Liebman, composer-arranger Johnny Mandel, and record producer and author Orrin Keepnews.

Pianist Ellis Marsalis, 76, who championed modern jazz in his native New Orleans and as an educator mentored not only his sons but such future stars as Harry Connick Jr. and Terence Blanchard, said the award had special meaning to him because he was a member of the NEA jazz panel that chose some of the first Jazz Masters in the '80s.

"I did get to vote for some of those who became Jazz Masters never really thinking that I would be voted at any time to be one of them," said Marsalis.

Then turning toward the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra — with its leader, his son Wynton, seated in the trumpet section — a proud Marsalis said New Orleans might be the "birthplace" of jazz, "but we don't have this in New Orleans."

The elder Marsalis was then joined by his sons, Wynton (trumpet), Branford (saxophone), Delfeayo (trombone) and the youngest Jason (drums), to play Jason's composition "At The House, In Da Pocket."

Earlier in the program, Wynton's warm trumpet sound was featured in a performance of Mandel's Oscar-winning song "The Shadow of Your Smile," with the composer conducting the JALC Orchestra.

Mandel, 85, who went from playing trumpet and trombone and arranging for jazz big bands to become one of Hollywood's leading film composers, said that since 2005 he has been leading his own big band for the first time.

"I never wanted to lead a band at any time and I discovered I'm having the time of my life," Mandel told the audience.

Saxophonist Benny Golson, a fellow Jazz Master, introduced Mandel as "a man who writes not only with his pen but with his heart."

"I fantasize sometimes and I think that if everybody in the world knew Johnny Mandel's music, there wouldn't be any more wars," Golson said. "Who could fight after listening to beautiful music like that."

Liebman, 64, said he felt "privileged to be here" with fellow Jazz Masters who "were my inspirations, my teachers and in some cases people I've worked with." The soprano saxophonist paid tribute to his former bandleader Miles Davis by performing a medley of "Summertime" and "There's A Boat Dat's Leavin' Soon For New York" in honor of Davis and arranger Gil Evans' 1958 "Porgy and Bess" album.

Laws, 71, decided that rather than "babbling on" in an acceptance speech, he would speak through his music by playing the standard ballad "Stella By Starlight" in a duet with Jazz Master and pianist Kenny Barron, in which the flutist drew on his classical as well as jazz background.

Tenor saxophonist and Jazz Master Jimmy Heath, who recorded his first albums as a leader for Keepnews' Riverside record label which also released LPs by Sonny Rollins, Thelonious Monk and Bill Evans, introduced the 87-year-old as a producer who "allowed the musicians artistic freedom." The JALC Orchestra performed "Re: Person I Knew" from a 1974 Bill Evans album produced by Keepnews.

Heath also accompanied Italian singer Roberta Gambarini in a special performance of "Angel Face," a tune composed by pianist Hank Jones with lyrics by singer Abbey Lincoln. That was part of a poignant tribute honoring four Jazz Masters who died last year — Jones, Lincoln, saxophonist James Moody, and pianist and educator Billy Taylor.

The awards ceremony was broadcast live by Sirius XM Satellite Radio, WBGO radio and NPR Music, which brought this year's concert its biggest audience ever, said NEA Chairman Rocco Landesman. He also announced a $250,000 grant to 15 arts organizations to present concerts featuring Jazz Masters — each of whom also receives a one-time $25,000 fellowship.

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Monster Meets Miles, Again - NYTimes.com

Image via WikipediaMonster Meets Miles, Again - NYTimes.com

Monster Meets Miles, Again

By STEPHEN WILLIAMS

The “Head Monster” was decidedly restrained at this year’s Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. And that might be a first.

Noel Lee, the head of Monster Cable who is well known for his glitzy parties during the annual electronics extravaganza and his fondness for celebrity, was chairman of an uncharacteristically low-key news conference, where he shared the stage with the ghost of a legendary, and long gone, jazz musician.

The “Miles Davis Trumpet” headphones led the news announcements from Mr. Lee, who claimed that Monster has “exploded” the headphone category and is now “the leader” in it. Just three month ago, Monster unveiled a slew of new headphone products and a speaker dock.

The new $350 “Trumpet” earbuds are the second product of an alliance between Monster and the estate of Mr. Davis, who died in 1991. The first were the $500 “Miles Davis Tribute” headphones, which were released about a year ago and, as Mr. Lee conceded, may have been a bit too rich for most tastes. The new model, to go on sale next month, is rather stunning, with blue-and-gold accents and an inline control pod that mimics the look of a trumpet’s piston valves.

Monster has been aggressive in the past about licensing personalities for its products — rapper Dr. Dre, Lady Gaga, well-known producer Jimmy Iovine are among them. At the news conference, there was a cutout the N.B.A. star Yao Ming, a reference to a line of “Yao Monster” goodies, ranging from home theater and gaming gear to headphones. They are made for the Chinese market, where Mr. Ming is revered.

At last year’s C.E.S., Mr. Lee was joined by Dr. Dre, Ms. Gaga and hosted a concert featuring John Legend and Stevie Wonder. That was a typical Monster event.

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John McLaughlin: On Coltrane And Spirituality In Music : NPR

Image via WikipediaJohn McLaughlin: On Coltrane And Spirituality In Music : NPR

Guitarist John McLaughlin never saw saxophonist John Coltrane perform. The jazz icon died in 1967, before McLaughlin had the chance. But Coltrane's historic 1965 album A Love Supreme has inspired every twist and turn of McLaughlin's career since he first heard it.

"It took me, actually, a year of listening to that record almost every day to finally hear what [Coltrane] was doing musically," McLaughlin says. "The least I can say is that he was very advanced, as a human being and a musician.

"The second thing, and perhaps the more significant, was the poem on the back of the album — the LP, in those days," McLaughlin says. "This record arrived in my hands at a very significant time in my life, when I was starting to ask myself these fundamental questions about life and death, existence — you know, the big questions we all address to ourselves sooner or later. This poem had such a wonderful effect on me. It was so inspiring and encouraging to me as a young seeker at that time, that I knew the music was really, in a more elegant and eloquent way, speaking about what he wrote about. But I couldn't hear it."

Music video for John McLaughlin and the 4th Dimension's "The Fine Line."

Source: YouTube

In an interview with Weekend Edition host Liane Hansen, McLaughlin says that the great achievement of A Love Supreme was to integrate a spiritual dimension into the world of jazz music. Now, the guitarist has recorded an album inspired by his passion for Coltrane's masterwork. It's called To the One, and it was recently nominated for a Grammy in the Best Contemporary Jazz Album category.

McLaughlin says he didn't intend to make a Coltrane tribute. But once the music on To the One had been written, he says, it reminded him of his discovery of A Love Supreme in 1965.

"About two months following [the composition of the album], I woke up in the middle of the night with the liner notes in my mind, and all the titles of the pieces," McLaughlin says. "I just woke up [with it] all in my mind — very peculiar experience. I woke up and they'd been dictated to me. If you can explain it, I would be very happy to hear it."

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Post Mortem - Jazz great Billy Taylor, pianist, educator & media personality, dies at 89

Cover of Billy TaylorPost Mortem - Jazz great Billy Taylor, pianist, educator & media personality, dies at 89

Billy Taylor, one of the musical treasures of Washington and the world, died last night, Dec. 28, at a hospital in New York City. He was 89 and died of a heart attack.

Dr. Taylor, as he was known to one and all, was a first-rate jazz pianist who grew up in Washington and was a graduate of Dunbar High School. He moved to New York in the early 1940s and was present at the birth of bebop, the new vernacular of music that transformed jazz. He played alongside Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie and Miles Davis and became a protege of the greatest jazz pianist ever, Art Tatum.

In the 1950s, Dr. Taylor began to branch out into broadcasting with a television series, "The Subject Is Jazz," and with radio programs. He appeared on CBS over the years, particuarly on "CBS Sunday Morning," interviewing and performing many of the great artists in jazz.

Dr. Taylor -- who earned a doctorate in education, by the way -- had been the artistic adviser for jazz programming at the Kennedy Center and was a constant presence at concerts at the center. He often performed with his own trio and other groups and helped make the Kennedy Center one of the most important venues for jazz in America. He launched the annual Women in Jazz Festival at the Kennedy Center and was instrumental in developing other concert series.

For several years, he was the host of an NPR series, "Billy Taylor's Jazz at the Kennedy Center," and many people considered him the foremost jazz educator of his -- or any -- time.

Dr. Taylor received every award there is in jazz and the arts, including the National Medal of Arts in 1992, and was designated a Jazz Master by the National Endowment for the Arts in 1988.

I knew Dr. Taylor somewhat, and I treasure the memory of visiting him once at the Watergate hotel, interrupting him as he was practicing on an electric piano in his room. We sat and talked for more than an hour for background for a story you can find here

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Don Cheadle Might Play Miles Davis - BlackBook

Image via WikipediaDon Cheadle Might Play Miles Davis - BlackBook

Don Cheadle is gunning for a role he seems all but destined to play in a long-planned biopic of the famed jazz musician Miles Davis. Last week, the actor attended a party atop the swank Thompson Beverly Hills hotel for the release of a 40th-anniversary edition of “Bitches Brew” as a guest of the Davis estate. “I was invited by the family,” Davis told us as he looked out over Los Angeles. “We’ve become friends over the years.”

Cheadle and screenwriter Steven Baigelman recently finished a script that seems designed for awards attention - once it’s actually made. “Davis was his own person and his own artist,” Cheadle, long producers’ top choice for the role of Davis, said with the kind of cool detachment the master musician would have approved of. “There were a lot of other musicians in that era who got stuck, but he never did.”

He went on to draw parallels between the craft of acting and Davis’ art, jazz. “You have to be aware of where you are at all times and be able to respond quickly,” he said of performing. “All his music is in heavy rotation in my house,” he said. “I have love for all music: jazz, Hip-Hop, funk, R&B. But Miles was the granddaddy.” So will we see Cheadle in the role anytime soon? That all depends on a studio stepping up and facing the proverbial music.

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Review: Ahmad Jamal is ageless wonder at Yoshi's - San Jose Mercury News

Review: Ahmad Jamal is ageless wonder at Yoshi's - San Jose Mercury News

hmad Jamal turned 80 in July. One could be forgiven, however, for assuming he's 70. Or even 60.

He still looks great and his energy level is amazing. Then there's his handiwork on the piano, which -- in terms of most of the technical aspects, as well all of the artistic ones -- surpasses what the majority of players one-quarter his age could dream of delivering onstage.

Indeed, Jamal proved to be an ageless wonder on Friday, the first of three nights at Yoshi's at Jack London Square in Oakland. The jazz man -- best known for the '50s hit "Poinciana" and his influence on Miles Davis' music -- proved worthy of the title "living legend," though his set had less to do with nostalgia than it did with proving that

he still has plenty to offer.

The Pittsburgh native's focus was clearly on his new material, tracks from 2008's "It's Magic" and this year's "A Quiet Time." That was fine with the near-capacity crowd, since Jamal and his terrific quartet -- bassist James Cammack, drummer Herlin Riley and percussionist Manolo Badrena -- made nearly every new song sound like it was destined to be a classic.

Plus, it was undeniable treat to see Jamal -- one of the planet's most accomplished jazz artists -- play in a 300-capacity club. The last time he came through Northern California, mind you, it was to perform before thousands as a headliner at the Monterey Jazz Festival.

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Mike Ragogna: From D.C.'s Kennedy Center to East Of Angel Town: Conversations with Branford Marsalis and Peter Cincotti

Mike Ragogna: From D.C.'s Kennedy Center to East Of Angel Town: Conversations with Branford Marsalis and Peter Cincotti

Legendary jazz pianist Ellis Marsalis has been accumulating a series of honors with the upcoming NEA's Jazz Masters Award being one of the most prestigious yet. He and his brood of familial, musical superstars recently played D.C.'s Kennedy Center, and that recording has been released as the album Music Redeems that unites The Marsalis Family with guests such as honorary offspring, Harry Connick, Jr.

The project's profits will fund The Ellis Marsalis Center for Music, a New Orleans-based organization dedicated to keeping the arts lively for young people. Speaking for the family is genre-versatile saxophonist Branford Marsalis who brings us up to date on the center, his father, the performance, and other topics including Miles Davis.

Also included in this post is an interview with Peter Cincotti who experienced one of the most surprising and best career 180s of the last few years. Originally produced and presented as a light "easy listening" artist and contemporary of singers such as Michael Bublé, Peter empowered himself through his very strong East Of Angel Town, one of the best pop singer-songwriter albums of 2009 in the States (it was released in 2007 overseas). Peter Cincotti is on the same playing field as Billy Joel, his keyboard chops giving The Piano Man a hard run for his money. The album's most solidly written and best performed tracks include "Lay Your Body Down (Goodbye Philadelphia)," "Cinderella Beautiful," "December Boys," "Another Falling Star," "Broken Children," and the title track whose dead-on description of the L.A. club scene is like "Zanzibar" on steroids. Peter discusses that project while taking us on a tour of his career and things East of Angel Town and beyond

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The Associated Press: Rollins at 80 still wows loyal jazz fans in Japan

Image via WikipediaThe Associated Press: Rollins at 80 still wows loyal jazz fans in Japan

TOKYO — Tenor saxophonist Sonny Rollins — one of the last surviving legends of the golden era of jazz — has just turned 80. His hair is a burst of white, and he staggers a bit when he walks on stage.

But when he plays, he still sounds like a 20-year-old, and his Japanese fans can't get enough.

Rollins is back this week on an 80th birthday tour in this nation long known for its love of jazz.

It's also a place where Rollins feels at home. Since 1963, when he first visited Japan, Rollins has studied Buddhism, yoga and meditation, and frequents the temples and bamboo forests of the ancient capital of Kyoto.

"Maybe I was Japanese in my past life," he told The Associated Press in a telephone interview from his home in Germantown, New York, ahead of his trip.

Rollins, who turned 80 on Sept. 7, has visited Japan more than 20 times, almost always playing to sellout crowds.

Each time, he brings the unmistakable power of his legacy, which includes collaborations with some of the biggest names in jazz — Max Roach, John Coltrane, Miles Davis and Thelonious Monk.

The crowd at JCB Hall in Tokyo on Monday clapped adoringly at his solos and gave him a long standing ovation after his 1 1/2-hour performance. He has three other concerts in Japan through Saturday.

"He was gorgeous," said schoolteacher Shoko Tateishi, who has heard Rollins three times, as well as Chet Baker and Ron Carter. "You didn't sense his age a bit."

Throughout his trademark piano-less performance, with Bob Cranshaw on bass, Russell Malone on guitar, Kobie Watkins on drums and Sammy Figueroa on percussion, Rollins' sound was full and energetic — befitting his reputation as the "saxophone colossus."

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Getting a big dose of goosepimples in Hancock's latest CD - SOUNDS FAMILIAR By Baby A. Gil | The Philippine Star >> News >> Entertainment

Getting a big dose of goosepimples in Hancock's latest CD - SOUNDS FAMILIAR By Baby A. Gil | The Philippine Star >> News >> Entertainment

Are you in the mood for some goosepimples? I guarantee that you will get a big dose right from the first note of Herbie Hancock’s The Imagine Project and then all throughout this remarkable all-star album.

Jazz music fans know Hancock very well. He is this great pianist whose tinkle tinkle of the ivories can produce so much soul. He played with Miles Davis. He is an insightful songwriter. Remember Speak Like A Child. He is also one excellent producer. I am sure you still remember how his last album The River: The Joni Letters, a tribute to the music of Joni Mitchell ran off with the Album of the Year award, plus a few more trophies at the Grammies two years ago. Hancock is now back with another album that will surely grab an award or two and which will be much talked about and most of all, listened to for a long time.

Hancock explains what The Imagine Project is in the liner notes. This album was recorded in various countries throughout the world, in multiple languages, and with various international artists in an effort to show the power and the beauty of global collaboration as a golden path to peace. It is just too bad that it takes more than making beautiful music together to achieve world peace. If it were, I can say that the release of The Imagine Project had already achieved this end.

But back to the goosepimples. We get the initial dose from Hancock’s piano intro to John Lennon’s Imagine followed by the vocals of India.Arie and Oumou Sangare. Goosepimples. Goosepimples. And not only that. There are also Jeff Beck on the guitar and chants from Konono No. 1. What a song! It still works after all these years. And what voices! What an introduction to the myriad delights waiting in the other cuts. As if that were not enough Peter Gabriel’s Don’t Give Up comes up next as performed by Pink and John Legend. Double wow!

Hancock, who also arranged, provides his own kind of thrills throughout the CD. He plays piano and keyboards in his own distinctive style in all of the songs. Then as in the first two tracks each one features artists who make various types of music but now perform together to create this wonderful album that they recorded in studios from Paris to London to India and other places.

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