SFJazz Collective takes on Stevie Wonder: review

Cover of Stefon HarrisSFJazz Collective takes on Stevie Wonder: review

It takes a brave soul to tackle the music of Stevie Wonder. The latest incarnation of the SFJazz Collective happens to contain eight of them.

Having taken on jazz titans like John Coltrane, Ornette Coleman and Thelonious Monk in the past, the group, which played at San Francisco's Herbst Theatre on Friday as part of the SFJazz Spring Season, picked an equally challenging target for its first foray into the pop world.

"We are celebrating the music of one of my great, great heroes," said vibraphonist Stefon Harris. The Grammy-nominated New York musician recalled listening to Wonder's 1976 masterpiece, "Songs in the Key of Life," five times in a row as a kindergartener: "That's when I knew I had a passion for music."

With a blast of horns and a skitter across the vibraphone's bars, intimidation quickly gave way to experimentation at the Herbst. The ensemble features the same lineup for the second year running - Harris, drummer Eric Harland, alto saxophonist Miguel Zenón, bassist Matt Penman, tenor saxophonist Mark Turner, pianist Edward Simon, trumpeter Avishai Cohen and trombonist Robin Eubanks.

Together they offered four distinct, loose-limbed adaptations of some of Wonder's best-known tunes alongside several original compositions by the individual band members.

The voluptuous melody of the Wonder-penned set opener "My Cherie Amour" was pulled apart and served up in an expansive jam that saw Zenón spitting back notes and Harland drawing out a maniacal groove while his head tilted back some 90 degrees.

Penman issued a dark-hued deconstruction of Wonder's "Creepin,' " while Turner retained just a few familiar chord changes amid the rousing fanfare of "Blame It on the Sun." Zenón, meanwhile, a Puerto Rican-born musician who studied at Boston's Berklee College of Music, was responsible for the Caribbean influence on the night's most faithful cover, "Superstition." He said he "put a little rice and beans and plantains into it."

The ensemble's sense of adventure spilled over into the new pieces, which veered from Harris' buoyant tribute to his 2-year-old son, "Lifesigns," to the Israeli-born Cohen's meditative, minimalist encore number, "Family." Brave doesn't really begin to describe it.

The collective serves as the house band for SFJazz, the long-running arts organization that also programs the San Francisco Jazz Festival and Summerfest, along with a host of educational services.

The spring season calendar is highlighted this year by jazz guitarist Marc Ribot, playing a live soundtrack score for Charlie Chaplin's classic 1921 film "The Kid" on Wednesday at YBCA Forum; Randy Newman performing a rare solo concert at Davies Symphony Hall on April 22; and 84-year-old Tony Bennett revisiting some of his biggest hits at the same venue on May 28.

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Pianist Randy Weston Pays Homage to Africa - The Local – Fort-Greene Blog - NYTimes.com

Image by El Humilde Fotero del Pánico via FlickrPianist Randy Weston Pays Homage to Africa - The Local – Fort-Greene Blog - NYTimes.com

When it comes to the work of Brooklyn-born jazz pianist and composer Randy Weston, the discussion is naturally about Africa, a continent that he has a long association with over a career of more than six decades.

In his travels dating back to the early 1960s, the musician has visited 18 African nations and lived in Morocco, where he founded a jazz club in Tangier.

“Africa is important because all of humanity began there,” Mr. Weston, 84, said in a recent phone interview. “This is the beginning of all of us. I don’t care where you are on the planet earth, we all got African blood — all of us.”

Mr. Weston, a Clinton Hill resident for nearly 50 years, recounts his musical explorations and travels in his recently-published memoir, “African Rhythms,” co-written with Willard Jenkins. Simultaneously, Mr. Weston has released a live album, “The Storyteller,” recorded with his African Rhythms Sextet at New York’s Dizzy’s Club Coca Cola last year.

“I thought it was necessary to document our history because African people, Africa and even African-American traditions are disappearing,” he said. “How can young people know what happened before? I was lucky to live in Africa and hang out with traditional people and just speak about what music can do and the places that it can take you, how it’s a spiritual force.”

Mr. Weston grew up in Bedford-Stuyvesant with a father who instilled a sense of African pride, and he recalled his encounters, as a young person, with Brooklyn’s jazz musicians and other artists.

“You had the black church, the blues, the comedians, the painters, the sculptors, the dancers — it was everything,” he explained. “You can go to the cinema and see a [short film] on Cab Calloway or Duke Ellington… Plus the musicians’ homes were always open, whether it was Max Roach, Ray Abrams, Duke Jordan or Cecil Payne. You just ring the bell and walk in. That’s how spiritual it was.”

Carol Friedman

In the book, Mr. Weston writes about one of his major influences, the legendary jazz pianist Thelonious Monk, whom he first saw play with saxophonist Coleman Hawkins on Manhattan’s 52nd Street. At first, Mr. Weston wasn’t impressed by Monk’s music, he said, but he later became an admirer.

“I heard the magic of Africa in his music,” Mr. Weston said. “I heard the sounds of ancient African civilization in my imagination when I heard his music — all the complex harmonies and melodies. There was a kind of magic that he puts into the piano.”

After returning to Brooklyn from serving in World War II, Mr. Weston saw that heroin was ravaging the community. To escape from that, he found work in the Berkshires, where he further developed as a musician. In 1954 he recorded his first album, “Cole Porter in a Modern Mood.”

Six years later, he recorded the album “Uhuru Afrika,” a four-song suite featuring musicians from Africa and Cuba as well as American jazz players. That same year, 17 African countries achieved their independence. Mr. Weston writes in his book that “Uhuru Afrika” was intended to show that “the African people are a global people.”

Last month, Mr. Weston performed “Uhuru Afrika” at the BMCC Tribeca Performing Arts Center to honor the work’s 50th anniversary.

“We realized that we all had the same foundation our ancestors passed [on], whether it’s the black church or the blues or whatever,” he said. “So I wanted this work of music to describe that, and at the same time to welcome the new nations of Africa.”

In 1961 Mr. Weston embarked on his first visit to Africa as part of a cultural exchange program with other musicians. He still remembers the feeling when the plane first landed in Nigeria, he said.

“My ancestors were taken from Africa in boats and chains,” he said. “Me — I’m on a plane coming back to Africa. When we arrived at 11 o’clock at night, and the plane door opened, we heard these drummers. We’re home. Our ancestral home. It was a very powerful and spiritual experience.”

Mr. Weston then settled in Morocco for a couple of years, where he became immersed with the music and culture of the Gnawa people. As a tribute to them, he wrote the composition “Blue Moses,” inspired by a Gnawa song. However, Mr. Weston writes in the book, he couldn’t perform “Blue Moses” in public because the Gnawa chief considered the song sacred. A year later, the chief changed his mind after some persuasion by the pianist.

“People in the world need to hear this music,” said Mr. Weston. But, he added, “If he had told me not to play that song, I would have not played it and left it alone. I have so much respect for those people.”

In the last five years, Mr. Weston has performed in Japan, Russia, Rwanda and Panama, where his father is from. He hopes to visit Africa again.

“When I travel to other countries,” he said, “I’m always amazed at how music does what it does. We play the music, but when it goes out, we don’t know what happens. We’re like the postmen: we deliver the mail, but we don’t know what’s inside the mail. Each person in that audience is on a separate trip. What a gift from the Creator.”

Randy Weston will take part in Jazz at Lincoln Center’s Listening Party event on Dec. 7 at 7 p.m.; free admission. Mr. Weston will also perform at the Brooklyn Museum on Dec. 12, from 3-5 p.m.; $15. For more information on Randy Weston, visit http://www.randyweston.info.

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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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Music - Coleman Hawkins Outplays Himself in Savory Collection - NYTimes.com

Music - Coleman Hawkins Outplays Himself in Savory Collection - NYTimes.com

There isn’t just one recording angel, or even a select few; there are thousands, maybe millions. Each rediscovery of old sound recordings comes to us through a different human filter: a person with a specific job, with specific tastes or aspirations.

And yet some recordings seem as if they were meant to survive, as if they were too good not to, no matter what the circumstances of their transmission through the ages, their purpose and their ownership and their custodians. In other words, sometimes a recording feels like art history, not just social history.

Among the recently discovered jazz recordings from the late 1930s into 1940 made by William Savory, an audio engineer, at least a few rise to this level. There are nearly 1,000 acetate and metal discs in the Savory Collection. Ninety percent of them haven’t been digitized or even played, and of the 10 percent remaining, I’ve heard only about a dozen complete tracks. I’m in no position to assess the whole thing. (Nobody is yet in any position to assess when, how or what portion of the recordings can be commercially released.) But all that I’ve heard are special. And at least one is amazing: a live recording of “Body and Soul” by Coleman Hawkins from May 1940.

Mr. Savory, who died in 2004, worked in New York during the 1930s as an engineer for a transcription service: the kind of outfit with access to live radio broadcasts from around the country, and the ability to make disc copies of the broadcasts for whoever needed them. Evidently he brought home copies of what he liked as a fan, what he thought important or what had sentimental value, for here was a guy who befriended jazz musicians. That’s it: no master plan, no urge toward comprehensiveness.

Looking through the names on the discs — cataloged by Loren Schoenberg, the jazz scholar and executive director of the National Jazz Museum in Harlem, which recently bought the collection from Mr. Savory’s family — I saw a whole lot of Benny Goodman, because Mr. Savory loved Goodman’s music and came to know him. (He eventually married one of Goodman’s singers, Helen Ward, after she had left the band.) There’s a lot of Teddy Wilson, probably for similar reasons. There are recordings of now obscure swing-band saxophonists: Tony Zimmers, Stewie McKay. There’s some Billie Holiday, some Cab Calloway, some Mildred Bailey, a tiny bit of Louis Armstrong and John Kirby, and some extravagantly good jam-session Lester Young. And Coleman Hawkins.

When Hawkins came back from a five-year European stay in the summer of 1939, the disposition of his music had changed. He had been playing a different role with audiences; he had become a star who blotted out the importance of his sidemen. In England and Switzerland and the Netherlands, audiences treated him with deference, as an exotic and a master soloist.

After his return, the record producer John Hammond remarked with dismay that he had become a “rhapsodist,” but that was no easy accomplishment. The studio recording of “Body and Soul,” from October 1939, is an event, an actorly tour de force in three minutes, a continuous solo after a loose statement of theme; its equivalent in another form of music might be Jimi Hendrix’s “Star-Spangled Banner.” (Hawkins once said that Thelonious Monk, incredulous and envious that the record had become a hit, told him, “There’s no melody in there; what are they listening to?”)

It was Hawkins’s most famous song, and he recorded it many times again: the complete list includes stage versions from 1949 at Carnegie Hall and in Lausanne, Switzerland; studio revisits in 1956 with an orchestra and in 1958 with the clarinetist Tony Scott; and from 1944 a more abstracted version of the song — with even less of a melody — copyrighted as “Rainbow Mist.” What we haven’t had is an example of how he played it in clubs right after the record came out. Wouldn’t that be nice? Wouldn’t that be helpful to the historical record?

That’s what Mr. Savory kept for us. This “Body and Soul,” from May 1940, comes from a gig broadcast from the Fiesta Danceteria, then a new joint in Times Square, where you could buy cafeteria food as a cover charge and dance to music free. According to “The Song of the Hawk,” John Chilton’s biography of Hawkins, the engagement went badly. The owners asked him to play stock arrangements of pop songs until the late set, and even then asked Hawkins to quiet down his brass players. Hawkins quit after a week.

But you wouldn’t suspect any of that. The Savory version, clear enough to indicate the breadth of his sound, is three minutes and two choruses longer than the studio recording seven months earlier, at a marginally faster tempo, and just as psychologically intense. Presumably many listeners knew the whole recorded improvisation by heart, but here he rarely refers to it. The performance takes its time, as Hawkins develops his improvisation alone over bass and drums, with gathering abstraction from the tune.

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Music & nightlife | Kevin Eubanks on life after 'The Tonight Show' | Seattle Times Newspaper

Music & nightlife | Kevin Eubanks on life after 'The Tonight Show' | Seattle Times Newspaper

As bandleader of "The Tonight Show" and sidekick to Jay Leno, Kevin Eubanks was one of the most recognizable jazz players on the planet. Today he's just another working musician: Eubanks recently emerged from his long, television-imposed hiatus to once again tour and record as he did decades ago, before he took one of the most reliable jobs in professional music.

In May, the Philadelphia-born guitarist announced he was leaving the show, ending an 18-year relationship with Leno. This Thursday through Sunday, Eubanks and his new band — former "Tonight Show" drummer Marvin "Smitty" Smith, saxophonist William Pierce (chair of the woodwind department at Berklee College of Music, Eubanks' alma mater) and bassist Rene Camacho — perform at Jazz Alley.

"I'll have people who immediately say, 'Oh I get it, 18 years,' " Eubanks says by phone, in the same cheerful manner television audiences are familiar with. "Those people are mostly other musicians.

"There was nothing bad about having a wonderful job like that. But eventually you want a different pace in your life and you come back home to what your first love is."

In addition to performing and writing more music, Eubanks has taken over leadership of the Thelonious Monk Institute's "Jazz in the Classroom" program. He even taped a pilot for a cooking show — Eubanks is famously a vegetarian — he's shopping to networks.

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