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| The trumpeter Ambrose Akinmusire playing with his quintet at Sullivan Hall, part of the sixth NYC Winter Jazzfest shows in Greenwich Village. Photo by Joe Kohen, NY Times. |
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| Catching Late-Night Zzzs: Jazz and Buzz
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/11/arts/music/11jazzfest.html?ref=music
By BEN RATLIFF, New York Times
Published: January 10, 2010
NYC Winter Jazzfest occupied the center of Greenwich Village on Friday and Saturday nights, holding down five clubs in a two-block radius, imposing its thoughtful ruckus on the normal Bleecker Street weekend: Long Island girls in microminis, corner dope dealers, 40-year-old boys taking in the Jets-Bengals game at a sports bar and then communing with Skynyrd covers over at the Back Fence.
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Joe Kohen for The New York Times
The drummer Mike Reed with his group at Kenny’s Castaways.
Chang W. Lee/The New York Times
The violinist Jenny Scheinman at Le Poisson Rouge.
Now in its sixth year, the festival served several ends. It showed off 55 bands for the attendees of the convention of the Association of Performing Arts Presenters, those who book festivals and concerts around the world. It gave the rest of us, for a $25 all-clubs, all-night ticket, a deep index of new jazz. And the attendance — 1,200 on Friday night, 2,500 on Saturday — created a mob. A mob breeds rumor; rumor off-gasses buzz.
And jazz needs buzz. There are always music-school students whose lives are being overturned by some saxophonist they saw somewhere; given the chance they’ll tell you about it. So will club owners, promoters, spry neighborhood sages and the odd obsessive-compulsive or critic. But jazz, frustratingly, is still not quite right for MySpace and MP3 listening — it’s too performance-oriented and makes teenagers gag — so on-the-street buzz remains in short supply. Sometimes, given the economy and the shortage of middlemen, you have to find out about musicians from the musicians themselves, which makes jazz feel kind of 17th century, pre-movable type.
Not here. On Saturday especially you were in a jazz equivalent of South by Southwest, surrounded by tales of not getting in or of hearing something killer.
Le Poisson Rouge was the festival’s flagship hall this year — the biggest space with the best sound, and consequently the most overrun. The pianist Vijay Iyer’s trio, with Stephan Crump on bass and Marcus Gilmore on drums, played to roars on Saturday night; last year the group made this audience’s consensus-favorite album, “Historicity,” and its performance showed new confidence through the intricate gnashing of the rhythm section. (The trio played its jolting, stuttering cover of M.I.A.’s “Galang” for the first time live.) There were roars on the same night for Jenny Scheinman and Jason Moran’s duets, sweet gospel-folk-classical tunes empowered with some cool dirt: catarrhal bowing from Ms. Scheinman’s violin, a single violent bang from Mr. Moran’s piano keyboard.
Just as musicians like Ms. Scheinman, Mr. Crump and the drummer John Hollenbeck ran among clubs to play very different sets with very different bands, there was hybridization in the music itself. In Rudder, a quintet that included the imposing drummer Keith Carlock, jazz turned toward smart jam-band funk; in Nicholas Payton’s SeXXXtet (yeah, I know), toward slinky R&B; in Eric Lewis’s bombast-and-bloodthirst solo piano performance, toward classic rock (the guys at the Back Fence would have dug his cover of “Sweet Home Alabama”); and in Bitches Brew Revisited, a septet led by the coronetist Graham Haynes, powered by the drummer Cindy Blackman and colored by the guitarist James Blood Ulmer, jazz became whatever it wasMiles Davis intended in 1969: spacious, black-magic stealth funk.
In a startling set at Kenny’s Castaways late on Saturday the saxophonist Rudresh Mahanthappa’s Indo-Pak Coalition — a trio with the guitarist Rez Abbasi and the drummer Dan Weiss — played hard, bright crisscrossings of South Asian music and jazz. Mr. Weiss was the music’s visual explanation. He sat low behind his tablas, his right leg bent up to access the foot pedal for a bass drum; gracefully shifting a limb or picking up a stick, he drifted between tala and swing, between hand drums and the basics of a trap set.
But what about jazz as jazz, the music’s marrow and main stem? There was a lot of that too. I definitely heard it in the quartet of the alto saxophonist Jaleel Shaw on Friday, in its elegant, diamond-cut theme lines, its sleek, fabulous rhythm section (Aaron Goldberg, Fender Rhodes electric piano; Ben Williams, bass; Johnathan Blake, drums) and its control over dynamics in a chatty room. I heard it in the trio of the tenor saxophonist J. D. Allen, compressing the sprawl of late Coltrane into energy bars, and in the trumpeter Ambrose Akinmusire’s quintet — controlled, ambitious and ready to find a broader audience, with a group sound not far from Terence Blanchard’s. It was there in Mike Reed’s People, Places & Things, a Chicagoquartet who’d never before played in New York, making freed-up hard-bop with scrappy, scholarly intensity. And even in the guitarist Mary Halvorson’s trio, with its nervous-driver lurches, tempo shifts and furious strumming: there was an elegant, flexible, Monk-like vocabulary in all that fracture.
Over the two nights I saw 18 bands. I heard good things about the music and crowds at the Bobby Previte, Elliott Sharp and Dr. Lonnie Smith gigs but missed them. At 10 on Saturday I walked over to the Bitter End to see Mr. Hollenbeck’s Claudia Quintet, a band I know and like. But the house, all standing, was packed — for a John Hollenbeck show! — and no one else was admitted. I watched through the window for a cold 30 seconds but couldn’t see or hear much through the mob. I’m happy to say I have nothing to report.
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| The violinist Jenny Scheinman at Le Poisson Rouge. Photo by Chang W. Lee. |
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The top five reasons 2010 NYC Winter Jazzfest was a smashing success
Posted in Time Out NY's The Volume by Hank Shteamer on January 11th, 2010 at 2:27 pm
In the spring of 2009, the Times reported on the disappearance of the JVC Jazz Festival, New York’s major big-tent jazz showcase. A few months later, The Wall Street Journal’s Terry Teachout incited an online firestorm by declaring of the genre, “Noboby’s listening.” The 2010 NYC Winter Jazzfest, which took over five West Village venues this past weekend, played like a one-stop refutation of last year’s gloom. Click past the jump to read five reasons why the fest was a stunner.
1. Impeccable booking. This year’s WJF schedule read like a true “everybody who’s anybody” roll call, featuring today’s rising stars (Darcy James Argue’s Secret Society, Vijay Iyer, Gretchen Parlato) alongside their more seasoned counterparts (Dr. Lonnie Smith, William Parker, Nicholas Payton).
2. Robust crowds. On Saturday night, the fest sold out out early, and every band I caught played to a full house.
3. Prompt sets. It can’t be easy coordinating more than 50 performances at five venues over two nights. But as I club-hopped up and down Bleecker Street, I was impressed to find that each site kept things running more or less as advertised.
4. Tight bands. Small-group jazz is often a musical-chairs affair, with sidemen rotating constantly, but more and more, we’re seeing the stable working unit becoming the norm. The best bands I heard this weekend—J.D. Allen’s scarily commanding sax trio, John Hollenbeck’s brainy yet fantastically exuberant Claudia Quintet (which, to be fair, featured both one sub and one special guest)—were those whose members have spent serious time honing their collaboration.
5. Enthusiastic audiences. Whoops and hollers prevailed at Vijay Iyer’s (Le) Poisson Rouge performance, while during the Claudia Quintet’s set, you could sense the packed room’s collective jaw dropping at Hollenbeck & Co.’s sprightly virtuosity.
Tags: 2010 NYC Winter Jazzfest, Darcy James Argue's Secret Society, Dr. Lonnie Smith, Gretchen Parlato, hank shteamer, JD Allen, John Hollenbeck, Nicholas Payton, Show Recap, Terry Teachout, The Claudia Quintet, Vijay Iyer, William Parker
Read more: http://www3.timeoutny.com/newyork/thevolume/2010/01/the-top-five-reasons-2010-nyc-winter-jazzfest-was-a-smashing-success/#ixzz0dlIrDmFL
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| Winter Jazzfest
It's yet another dismaying frigid January weekend, with no one with an ounce of good sense daring to stray more than 10 feet from the warming light of his or her flat-screen TV, and yet a small pocket of the Village is teeming with enthusiastic live-music fans, shuffling briskly but happily from (le) poisson rouge to Kenny's Castaways to Sullivan Hall to Zinc Bar and back again, all in the name of . . . jazz? Yes, this year's Winter Jazzfest was a smashing success. The six- year-old institution (begun at the old Knitting Factory) broke out in a big way in 2010, parading several dozen adventurous downtown-jazz luminaries (Darcy James Argue, Vijay Iyer, Mary Halvorson) over two nights in front of a couple thousand (!) adventurous fans, new and old. Aided mightily by ambitious promoter cabals like Search & Restore and Revive Da Live, the two-day fete has now inspired spin- offs like June's similarly packed Undead Jazzfest, but, hell, anyone can draw a crowd then. Nothing warms the heart quite like a winter- coat-bearing capacity crowd at Kenny's Castaways ready for a challenge, defying the odds simply by being there, listening.
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| Sax and the City: The New York Winter Jazz Festival
by Ari Bergen January 14, 2010, 2:01 PM
The sixth annual New York Winter Jazz Festival took place this weekend in Greenwich Village and illustrated just why the City is aptly known as the Jazz capital of the world.
The festival organizers curated a program of artists from around the planet that displayed the breadth of talent working in the jazz circuit today. The temperature on the streets may have been 20 degrees, but inside the venues were hot and blistering with phenomenal music.
The fest’s performances ran the gamut of styles and moods. The program featured the live electronic trip-hop of Mark Giuliana Beat Music at the club Kenny’s Castaways, and the classic vocal style of Sachal Vasandani at Sullivan Hall. The controversial, hammer- fisted Eric Lewis clobbered the piano and took on his critics by ending his performance with a pronouncement that he is unafraid to express himself in any way he desires— namely by doing away with the stool and covering current pop music. Marco Benevento, who played both in his popular trio and with the gloriously chaotic Bitches Brew Revisited, proved he can successfully apply his unique brand of slick, funky, punk jazz to multiple formats. The Nicholas Payton SeXXXtet performed a set blending soulful vocals and Payton’s virtuoso trumpet. Lionel Loueke offered a combination of African singing, a la Ladysmith Black Mambazo and articulate guitar playing. When my evening ended, at three a.m., I was exhausted and felt privileged to have been there.
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| Vijay Iyer on piano |
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| Graham Haynes on trumpet |
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Winter Jazzfest New York, New York January 8-9, 2010
Fast-forward 30 years from the days in the late 1970s and early '80s when the world-weary wisdom that jazz wasn't a living force anymore was whispered to us—maybe you are getting out of jail, maybe waking from a cryogenic sleep. Before this happened, Mingus had just died, and Miles was out of commission. Now, out free in the world again, you soak up what's new. And it is new—not only still around, but still evolving like any living species.
Let's analyze this species as it deployed itself on a sub-freezing weekend in January. The first thing noticeable as we step into Le Poisson Rouge, the flagship venue of Winter Jazzfest New York 2010, is the abundance of human bodies surrounding the underground stage. No, audiences have not diminished. What's more, everyone's getting into the music, even in the standing-room-only conditions.
This was all for the opening act—Friday January 8, at 6:20 pm—Darcy James Argue's Secret Society, a colossal ensemble that applied its pastel tones to the backdrop of a slowly shifting rock guitar ostinato. Sebastian Noelle was the guitarist, and it was the edge he gave the band that saved it as it veered at times toward blandness. Credit goes to drummer Jon Wikan, too, for his sparse punctuation, which was almost minimalist but came hard on the downbeat at just the right climactic moments.
Two or three things become apparent to the recently freed "incarcerate." First, jazz doesn't swing as hard as a rule. It can get bland. On the positive side, rigid hierarchies are being dismantled. Drums, for example, aren't just there to provide propulsion anymore, they give nuance and texture and stay in conversation with the horns.
The direction this so-called fusion has taken is the most intriguing part. In the '70s, the players in this genre sought to blend jazz and rock in a melting pot to give us a new, homogeneous product. Today's artists, as evidenced by this weekend, take a different route. Strands of bop alternate with a dose of hard rock, then a Latin or Arabic tinge is rounded off, maybe, with some classic swing.
Such eclecticism is not new in itself. What is an advance, is this simultaneous deployment, where one instrument will adopt one style and others, a complementary or contrasting one. This goes hand in hand with the new, more democratic musicianly regime: everyone has a unique role to play. Ellington once said that jazz bands create "utopias." As with all utopias, I would add, some are more equal than others. More to the point, some performances are more memorable than others. What follows are some memories of what struck me most in Winter Jazzfest.
Briggan Krauss' Trio Coordinate, New Bump Quartet
Kenny's Castaways
January 8
Briggan Krauss led an all-star trio on sax with Kenny Wollesen on drums and Skulli Sorensen on bass. Krauss had a remarkable ability to bring his playing to a near boil then simmer down and pass the pot to Svorensen or Wollasen, who would likewise hint at high-energy stylistics without spilling over the brim. Even more remarkable was the intuitive communication among the artists. Bass, for example, would pick up what sax was doing, take the pattern, translating it—reweave it into a new filigree. Or Krauss would take the chords Svorensen was playing on bass and turn them into arpeggios on his sax. Krauss inspired with a tonal mastery that ranges from the liquidity of Jimmy Giuffre to the holy drama of Albert Ayler, styles Krauss deployed in carefully calibrated increments throughout the show.
Later in the evening, drummer Bobby Previte was bound to impress. What some may not have anticipated was the verve and vibrancy of his vibist, Bill Ware. The two other members of the New Bump Quartet, tenor saxist Ellery Eskelin and bassist Brad Jones, were also excellent. But Ware gave us a new kind of music. Employing electronics and distortion pedals, he never let these rule, yet he was able to give a micro symphony, all the while staying under Previte's eye and incorporating the input of Eskelin and Jones.
The Metta Quintet, Deathblow, Terraplane, The Claudia Quintet
The Bitter End
January 9
Marcus Strickland is a disciplined Coltranist with shades of Wayne Shorter and Joe Henderson. In the outfit he starred in, the Metta Quintet, he traded fine lines with altoist Mark Gross. In the heads, the pair often played one beat ahead or behind the other. Strickland lives up to the hype bestowed on him. Not just another flashy showman, he shows great restraint and taste, never getting in the way of others and spitting out licks with hard, biting intensity.
Amanda Monaco's Deathblow not only has a great name, it is an act that pulls off the paradoxical feat of provocative understatement, as much as the scarlet pumps and black dress of the comely leader/guitarist. Monaco bounced ideas off her band—whether the mellow blues she started with, the heavy Jack Bruce number in the middle or the avant-bop that finished her set—with a seductive soupçon of freedom and fun and just the right, wry smile. She's a rising star—luminescent and enchanting.
Elliott Sharp's classic Terraplane featured postmodern blues belter Eric Mingus. Mingus was the perfect foil for Sharp's sleek, sneering aerodynamic string attacks, whether on standard electric guitar or lap steel. Sharp delivered infectious funk blues lines inflected with angular avantisms, daring you to tolerate it all. Meanwhile, Mingus was warm and soulful, daring you to dig out your own soul just as he was doing. The balance was like a Rube Goldberg contraption—a mousetrap for what ails you.
The Claudia Quintet—featuring Chris Speed on reeds, Tim Reichman on accordion and Matt Moran on vibes—was a mesh of minimalism and maximalism. At times, accordion and clarinet dueted and sounded almost alike, the slightly thicker liquid sonority of the latter all that distinguished the two. At other times, guest pianist Gary Versace would solo and Reichman would amaze with funk punctuation one wouldn't have thought possible on the instrument. Delightful and heady.
Bitches Brew Revisited
Le Poisson Rouge
January 9
Bitches Brew Revisited was the climax of the fest, at midnight at Le Poisson Rouge, and it did not disappoint. James Blood Ulmer, in blue robe and fez— and toting a sparkly blue axe—was featured. Graham Haynes led the cast of masters on computerized trumpet. Much was verbatim from Miles' 1970 masterpiece, although a hip-hop beat was added here and there. I could have done without the latter, but it pleased the kids, who were bobbing their heads.
So there you have it—club kids grooving to the classics. Contemporary masters doing justice to an immortal, and speeding his mean machine into a new decade and century. If I were imprisoned for another 30 years, I bet there'd still be new club kids, new masters and the same immortal Miles.
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| New York City Winter Jazzfest, New York, NY, 1/8 – 1/9/2010
Published: 2010/01/21
New York City’s Winter Jazzfest took over the chilly West Village on the second weekend of 2010. Now in its sixth year, the festival featured 55 bands for a price of $25 (for one day, $30 for both) for an all-clubs, all-night ticket at venues such as Le Poisson Rouge, Sullivan Hall, the Bitter End, Kenny’s Castaways and Zinc Bar. Approximately 1,200 attendees on Friday night and around 2,500 on Saturday buzzed around Bleeker Street, looking for their fix at the end of a saxophone solo.
On Saturday night at Le Poisson Rouge, the festival’s flagship venue this year, the Vijay Iyer’s trio, with Stephan Crump on bass and Marcus Gilmore on drums, played a sweet cover of M.I.A.’s “Galang.” Jenny Scheinman on the violin and Jason Moran on keyboard played
beautiful, gospel-folk music. But the spotlight of the night was stolen by Bitches Brew Revisited, a funky septet led by cornet player Graham Haynes, drummer Cindy Blackman and guitarist James Blood Ulmer.
This group featured a tremendous amount of talent: Haynes emanated Miles Davis throughout the evening. Ulmer did his best John McLaughlin impression, tastefully shredding away. On the original Bitches Brew LP, two drummers were used simultaneously but on this night, Blackman was a monster behind the kit, leaving no need for a second drummer.
Suddenly the scene took on a younger, more jamband type crowd, with fans coming out in anticipation of the Marco Benevento Trio. Playing tracks off 2009’s Me Not Me, including “Call Home” amongst others, Benevento showcased his ability to bridge the gap between jazz and rock with scholarly intensity and perfectly timed shifts in tempo.
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| Le "nouveau jazz" français excelle à New York aux côtés du rock mongol
AFP 11.01.10 | 20h38
lubs archi-combles, concerts à guichets fermés: le "nouveau jazz" français a excellé à New York aux côtés du rock mongol et des percussions burkinabé, dans deux festivals de musiques du monde tenus en présence de centaines de professionnels américains du spectacle. Pendant trois soirées, plus de 50 musiciens souvent très jeunes se sont succédés dans cinq clubs célèbres dans le cadre du "Winter JazzFest", puis sur trois scènes du Webster Hall (East Village, sud est) pour la nuit du GlobalFest dimanche. "Tous ces concerts se tiennent en présence de centaines de programmateurs de spectacles, du Carnegie Hall aux universités américaines, de directeurs de festivals: quelque 4.000 professionnels réunis à New York pour la conférence de l'APAP (Association of Performing Arts Presenters) qui se tient jusqu'à mardi", a souligné dans une interview à l'AFP Emmanuel Morlet, directeur de la musique au service culturel de l'Ambassade de France aux Etats-Unis, co-fondateur de GlobalFest il y a sept ans. "Ces festivals visent à promouvoir de jeunes artistes de haut niveau mais pas encore devenus des vedettes internationales", souligne
Emmanuel Morlet. Très soutenus par les medias américains, les deux événements ont été abondamment couverts par la radio WNYC, co-sponsor éditorial, ainsi que par le New York Times et le Los Angeles Times. Beaucoup d'artistes français se produisaient pour la première fois aux Etats-Unis, notamment le groupe de jazz électro-swing manouche "Caravan Palace", qui a triomphé dimanche pendant 40 minutes devant une salle survoltée. "On veut qu'ils reviennent aux Etats-Unis", criait un spectateur enthousiaste en se démenant sur la piste pendant que la chanteuse Sonia Fernandez Velasco, s'attirait une ovation. Au Webster Hall, 1.300 billets à 40 dollars avaient été vendus. La foule a circulé tard dans la nuit d'une salle à l'autre pour écouter la chanteuse Namgar Lharasanova et son groupe de rock bouriate, l'irlandaise Cara Dillon et ses arrangements celtiques, le burkinabé Alif Naaba et ses percussions d'Afrique de l'ouest, ou le trio de Nguyen Lê Saiyuki, composé du guitariste vietnamien, d'une chanteuse japonaise et d'un joueur de tablas indien. "Quand il s'agit de jazz, New York a quelque chose de particulier, nous sommes très honorés de pouvoir montrer notre musique, c'est un jazz européen, qui a évolué et s'inspire aussi de la pop", a dit à l'AFP Emile Parisien, 27 ans, dont le quartet a été lauréat du prix Franck Ténot "Révélation instrumentale de l'année" aux Victoires du jazz 2009. Certains artistes ont profité de leur séjour à New York pour prendre des contacts et apprendre la ville. Ainsi Ibrahim Maalouf, 29 ans, trompettiste né à Beyrouth et vivant à Paris, qui a loué un appartement à Harlem pendant quelques semaines. Neveu du romancier Amin Maalouf et fils du musicien Nassim Maalouf, qui eut l'idée de rajouter sur la trompette un piston supplémentaire qui permet de jouer les quarts de ton, très présents dans la musique arabe, il a étudié les musiques classique et arabe, et a remporté un premier prix du Conservatoire de Paris avant de créer son propre label il y a deux ans. "Ici j'ai l'occasion de rencontrer des agents qui sélectionnent les artistes pour les festivals, mais aussi de me confronter à des musiciens extrêmement talentueux et originaux", explique à l'AFP le jeune trompettiste, qui devait se produire lundi au "Barbès" à Brooklyn, un des clubs importants de la scène musicale new-yorkaise
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