| Winter Jazzfest 2011
West Village; New York, N.Y. Jan. 7 and 8, 2011
01/12/11
By Evan Haga
Online View
Winter Jazzfest, part festival and part industry showcase for the Association of Performing Arts Presenters, has since 2005 effectively and impressively fought jazz’s good fight. It’s proved that there is serious and enduring interest in the music from all angles: performance, presentation and appreciation. But at the 2011 edition, which took place this past weekend at five clubs in New York City’s West Village, the interest was so plentiful that it was, at times, downright painful. Festival organizers have written that they “processed around 4000 bodies” throughout the weekend, and that’s the right kind of rhetoric; some of the venues felt like giant masses of wool—long coats, scarves and caps squeezing in and out of clubs as if exiting the concourses at a European football match.
And that’s if you could get inside. Venues often reached capacity, leaving long lines for tedious games of one-in/one-out. (Friday night was especially problematic, as the fest was condensed to only two venues after Chico Hamilton’s 9:15 set at Le Poisson Rouge.) The scene also obscured the music at times, with an overwhelming din of boozy conversation during many sets. This kind of disinterest was strange to witness, especially at performances that usually inspire cultlike focus—e.g., Charles Gayle’s maelstrom of fire music and freebop. In all, it seemed to send a message to fans and struggling industry folks: Be careful what you wish for. If jazz stops being a secret, will it be as much fun?
Of course it will. (Remember, the most solvent art and entertainment got that way by welcoming casual interest.) Yes, there was much to be cynical about, but if you could shift your weight through the crowds or stick around until the wee hours, there was also plenty to celebrate. With its balance of eclecticism, aesthetic focus and artistic credibility, Jazzfest’s programming was, once again, a grand achievement. To put it another way, the event was free of fluff and corn and overt pop concessions, but accommodating of the expanding way we define jazz and improvised music. Even if the drummers weren’t dropping bombs and spang-a-langing, all of these acts were working in one legitimate tradition or another.
But if you had to choose a dominant vibe, it would have been cutting-edge postbop, in all its rhythmically stuttering, harmonically knotty glory. One of that music’s architects, Steve Coleman, performed with Five Elements at Le Poisson Rouge, which was the de facto mainstage. But Kenny’s Castaways was the clubhouse for jazz 2.0, and also the prime musician hang. Highlights there included Chris Lightcap’s Bigmouth, which closed its terrific set with the leader’s rousing, Ornette-ish “Celebratorial,” and Donny McCaslin’s set, during which he and drummer Mark Guiliana performed an Interstellar Space-esque sparring match mid-tune.
Much of what went down felt slightly more uptown, or at least less willful in its attempts to test jazz’s parameters. Don Byron, on tenor, clarinet and backing vocals, took jazz-minded improv to spiritual music with his New Gospel Quintet, featuring special guest Geri Allen, who can play the blues as affectingly and as convincingly as any jazz pianist this side of Cyrus Chestnut. (Byron’s drummer, Pheeroan akLaff, demonstrated that he can play within boundaries as effectively as he can break them.) Anat Cohen’s quartet with Jason Lindner on piano utilized almost danceable grooves, summoning up Masada and your favorite Impulse! LPs. Shimrit Shoshan would have been a find for whatever is left of jazz’s star-making machinery: Beautiful but legit, the young pianist led a thoroughly modern trio with confidence despite its imposing personnel (John Hébert, Eric McPherson). Her playing, which felt daring but leaned on the modern mainstream—Herbie, Chick, Mulgrew Miller, Fred Hersch—showed a similar focus and collectedness.
Funnyman Chico Hamilton played his soft-spoken West Coast bossas with his very young Euphoria band, including the deceptively powerful flutist Mayu Saeki. RedCred, an almost rocking take on the organ trio with drummer Ben Perowsky, Chris Speed and John Medeski, tackled material from Sonny Sharrock and Hank Williams. The Curtis Brothers played state-of-the-art Latin jazz and received a boost from vocalist Giovanni Almonte, whose style boasted both a jazzy mid-range croon and a romantic neo-soul falsetto. Saxophonist Noah Preminger, in a great band with drummer Matt Wilson, wasn’t afraid to work a more historical model, and played more than one beautifully glacial tenor ballad.
Jazz guitar was at its most postmodern throughout the weekend. Guitarist Nels Cline and visual artist Norton Wisdom worked in a Downtown milieu with Stained Radiance, where Cline crafted soundscapes while Wisdom painted onto a translucent, illuminated plastic “canvas.” It sounded precious on paper but it ended up being fascinating, mainly because of the craftsmanship displayed on both ends. Cline’s looping drones were plenty abrasive but not grueling; he seemed to know how long to go on molding feedback and when to break up the storm with rhapsodic, crystalline chords. Wisdom was as much artisan as artist, using idiomatic techniques and craft tricks to quickly unfurl one image after another. At first his work was visually thrilling but seemed indeterminate—ritualistic and shamanlike one minute and sexualized the next—but after awhile some thematic images emerged: Spewing oil towers swallowed up the ocean and the earth while a capitalist dandy hoarded the cash.
With his Artificial Afrika, guitarist Vernon Reid worked into punishing syncopated sound collages, but overall his project bowed under the weight of technology. Charlie Hunter was his in-the-pocket, unpretentious self, performing hook-filled highlights off his most recent group album, Gentlemen, I Neglected to Inform You You Will Not Be Getting Paid, in a trio with drummer Eric Kalb and bass-trumpeter Michael R. Williams. The addition of a guest tap dancer Hunter knew from his busking days brought down the house more than once. Over at Zinc Bar, the remarkable guitarist Nguyen Le evoked Bill Frisell, the Black Rock Coalition, Hendrix and David “Fuze” Fiuczynski, often within the same tune. With saxophonist Rudresh Mahanthappa in tow, his band also brought to mind Chris Potter’s Underground with Adam Rogers.
There were also examples of what appeared to be jazz people playing at pop, and instances of bands growing together, paring down and improving. At last summer’s Undead Jazzfest, a warm-weather incarnation of Winter Jazzfest, Ben Perowsky’s Moodswing Orchestra was freewheeling and fun but not that focused. This time out, during a set scheduled for 2:15 Sunday morning, it resembled a working rock band in spirit; Perowsky and Danny Blume on guitar and electronics negotiated an impressive variety of grooves underneath nimble, speedy rapping from emcee TK Wonder. At its most interesting the enterprise imagined a fusion of krautrock and hip-hop: the driving, stealth rhythms of Neu! upholding Wonder’s combination of Def Poetry-style lyrics with an Amanda Blank attack.
Jason Lindner and NOW vs NOW’s meld of konnakol, ’70s-era jazz-rock and live-electronica rhythm was flooring. There are similar acts, like the New Deal, who explore the band-as-DJ aesthetic from within the jam-band scene; Lindner’s trio worked on another level of tightness and virtuosity, making an argument for jazz training in any genre. The crowd loved it, including those who seemed less interested in Panagiotis Andreou’s bass technique and more into what was on draft. And that’s OK, or at least it should be.
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| Anat Cohen Quartet at Winter Jazzfest 2011. By Greg Aiello |
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| Don Byron New Gospel Quintet at Winter Jazzfest 2011. By Greg Aiello |
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Winter Jazzfest
New York, NY
January 7-8, 2011
by Gordon Marshall
Publshed January 12th 2011
Online View
What with the snow, the lines, the standing-room-only crowds, New York City's Winter Jazzfest can be a hectic, hectoring hell of force-feeding, a speed-read tasting menu of mad musical difference, as hard to digest in the instant as to coalesce in one's mind after the fact. It takes maneuvering at the right moments, in and out of clubs, and elbowing one's way into comfortable zones in reasonable proximity to the artists for an ultimate reward, and to savor the conceptual complexity of today's best jazz on display.
The 2011 Fest transpired over two days, Friday, January 7 and Saturday, January 8, with 30-plus acts each night distributed over five venues, at sellout capacity. Ostensibly a showcase for up-and-coming talent, the event was anchored by established musicians, often decidedly great ones. The whole prospect of the experience provokes frenzied cogitation and planning, with a schedule and artist lineup sheet, to maximize the intake of coveted slots and seeming highlights. As expected, things don't always go according to plan: attendees see different performances than anticipated, and technical difficulties beset the performances themselves. But this is the beauty of the ballgame, so to speak. The best experiences happen at times and places unexpected, and these are surprising and effervescent.
The first surprise of the event was The Respect Sextet festival kick-off at Le Poisson Rouge. The group's relative obscurity meant a sparse attendance for the show, making for an opportunity to get up close to the stage and see exactly what the group was doing with its instruments, which turned out to be crucial as so much was going on. Band spokesman James Hirschfeld announced that he had lost his trombone earlier that day, playing alto cornet instead—a fortuitous opportunity right off the bat, for audience to experience something it doesn't hear every day.
A free opening, morphing into funk, led to a Stan Kenton-esque, big-band-style burst. A big free buildup followed, with heavy drums. In a holding pattern, some symphonic inroads were laid down, and finally Josh Rutner started a saxophone solo; edgy and modal. This all quickly became a wall of sound that, again, encroached upon the continuing saxophone solo, serving to punctuate it.
A bass buildup from Malcolm Kirby, with African percussion from drummer Ted Poor, preceded more sax, this time evoking Archie Shepp, sassy and dry. Hirschfeld played random percussion toys on the floor, as Rutner and trumpeter Eli Asher played a kind of hide-and-seek. Hirschfeld's rhythmic reveille came to the forefront, with Asher and Rutner accenting.
A Latin pace was laid down with more sax, and pastel piano clusters from Red Wierenga. Then, a bop break into a brassy fanfare. A Clifford-Brown style trumpet solo built and climbed and tumbled as the ensemble got brassy and brassier, with lots of big drums and a Max-Roach-like drum solo with tonal emphasis, leading to a ritardo and abrupt end. Hirschfeld explained that this was a crossbreed of Sun Ra's "Saturn" and Karl-Heinz Stockhausen's "Capricorn."
Next was a Misha Mengelberg composition, with a lightly swinging saxophone intro that the two horns underlined, as the piano came in with a lush lurch and bass and drums laid out. It was almost a variation on Charles Mingus' "Fables of Faubus"—or, alternatively, a cross between Duke Ellington and Aaron Copland, with loping modal lyricism. Cymbals inched in, and Art Ensemble of Chicago-style squeaks and jumbles, with Kirby bowing his bass and then dropping the bow for some funky plucking accompanied by breathy, choppy sax. Bass and drums came to the foreground, with chirps from the brass and Wierenga coming back with a linear chromatic melody, together with a bass buildup. All reached a frenetic pace but right on the beat. Wierenga kept going, adding quick clusters like breaking glass, presaging a humming fadeout.
On the final number, a band original, Wierenga started by plucking the inner strings of the piano to a saxophone playing scalar fragments, and a muted trumpet. Hirschfeld sat down and played mbira (African thumb piano), and a gamelan sound lead to Anthony Braxton-style nervous energy. Then, a march rhythm evolved behind, like in a parade or at a circus, with an intense buildup segueing into another saxophone solo back by bass and drums, John Coltrane-like sheets of sound, ferocious circles and hot and heavy drums. All wielded their axes against the grain, and a very percussive swing came back. Asher was able to get electronic-sounding bleeps out of his trumpet mouthpiece detached from the body. Finally a cymbal ride and a glorious march to end it all.
Israeli reed player Anat Cohen was more about tone and nuance than the high drama of The Respect Sextet. Her set began with a three-against-four rhythm and a Love Supreme-style intro, leading to bright hard bop. Drummer Daniel Freedman was hot. Cohen's soprano saxophone was buttery but dark, against shimmering piano, with melodic breaks scattered in. Cohen offered a nice, salt-and-peppery solo with a Latin backbeat, turning to klezmer and tarantella. Then Freedman embarked on a tom solo with touches of cymbal as it progressed. Cohen sported "My Favorite Things" stylings, but was smoother and more upbeat and cheerful than Coltrane.
Flamenco introduced the second number with a clarinet deep and liquid, with slight cracks in the upper register. A syrupy ballad tone shifted to one of a Jewish wedding dance, with more Latin on piano to follow. Cohen and her band's mode of recursively exchanging styles, with one coming and then another, all circling back around, was intriguing and rewarding. As this song wound down, more rhythmic juxtapositions cropped up along with some side-slipping on piano from Jason Lindner, with a little salsa, and a Benny Goodman finale, followed by a surprise romantic cadenza coda. There were pop influences, too, most notably Billy Joel; through it all, Cohen demonstrated a knack for accenting the Jewish strains at work in all manner of Western music.
Abdullah Ibrahim's "The Wedding Song" was next, with Cohen switching to tenor saxophone. Throughout, the rhythm section—also including bassist Vicente Archer—was crackerjack and spot-on, interpolating and interpellating, and holding back when appropriate. When the saxophone verged on sappy they brought Cohen back in time, redeeming and transforming her like alchemy.
Brother Avishai Cohen joined on trumpet for the final number, neo-bop shading into a slower pulse and back. Anat is clearly finest on her home turf of clarinet, blending world modes and pop into classic post-swing. Avishai showed shades of Lee Morgan and Freddie Hubbard, one influence rubbing up against and fighting with the other. Nice high notes broke chordal runs as Lindner, on piano, evoked Herbie Hancock, hitting keys hard in minor extensions. Again, Freedman killed.
Full Online Review HERE
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| Butch Morris |
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| Anat Cohen |
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| CRITIC’S NOTEBOOK
Jammed Sessions Abound at a Village Jazz Festival
By BEN RATLIFF
Published: January 9, 2011
Online Version
I saw a lot of the following at the 2011 New York Winter Jazzfest, held in five clubs within a three-block radius in Greenwich Village on Friday and Saturday nights: Female musicians. Hyperarticulate trumpet players. Music from foreign lands — Iraq, India, Cuba and the lost continent of prog-rock. Bands with a Fender Rhodes keyboard. A fascinating range of drummers, very fine to clunky-passing-as-cool. And other people’s backs.
There is an audience for jazz, you know. Off the books, it’s bigger than you think. Sometimes the culture around it feels spread out and invisible, like pollen in the air. But the right big event will solidify it so that you can have a packed and primed room not for one of the few names in jazz who do heavy business, but, say, for Butch Morris, the enduringly original conductor of improvisers, as he whipped up an 11-piece collective swirl around the tenor saxophonist J. D. Allen. Or Orrin Evans, the pianist from Philadelphia, with his aggressive and swinging Captain Black Big Band. Or Jen Shyu’s Jade Tongue, a band that set up a killingly contemporary New York jazz trio — the saxophonist David Binney, the bassist John Hébert, the drummer Dan Weiss — behind Ms. Shyu as she sang and talked and waved her arms through long melodic narratives and sometimes played a two-stringed Vietnamese lute.
New York Winter Jazzfest is something to get behind: a late-night live-music stimulation overdose — 6 p.m. to past 3 a.m. each night — organized by the promoters Boom Collective. It had no educational component, no panel discussions, only the thing itself. Around 1,400 people showed up the first night and about 2,600 on Saturday night. Musicians turn out, even those who aren’t playing. But a lot were playing: nearly 70 bands in two nights.
It’s good but quite hard-core, all the standing and waiting and pushing. It has grown more hectic since it moved to this format in this neighborhood in 2009. (It began life in 2005, at the old Knitting Factory in TriBeCa.) We wanted this growth. But I worry that if the Jazzfest’s logistics aren’t rethought a little, or maybe even a lot, the event will be something to dread rather than something to look forward to. It felt like a trade show this year, so much so that it even felt a little strange reviewing it as a series of performances.
Let me introduce you to the Wall of Backs. At the Zinc Bar, even if you were 6 feet 2, there were many times when you could see almost nothing: the top inch of the drummer’s head, the pianist’s right ear. (You could hear a small portion of whatever carefully conceived group you were there to experience: usually some bass and cymbal, with conversation and bar sounds high in the mix.) If you were there to hang out and drink and talk shop — with other musicians, or those who’d been attending the Association of Performing Arts Presenters conference, which continues around town until Tuesday — you were all set. If you were there for the music, you struggled.
Too bad that the Zinc Bar scene was the worst of all, because it sounded the best. Early on Saturday, before the deluge, I heard Jacky Terrasson’s trio play a quiet and fantastically focused set there — similar to others I’ve seen in recent years, including versions of the standards “Smoke Gets in Your Eyes” and “Smile” retailored around his own original vamps, but still startling and clarifying. Much later that night, after midnight, the drummer Sameer Gupta played through his arrangements of Bollywood soundtrack songs with sitar, cello and viola appended to a jazz trio. The crowd roared its applause. Nothing wrong with that. Would have loved to have seen it, especially since I was there.
Other clubs absorbed the size and flow of the crowd better. At Kenny’s Castaways there’s a balcony, promising more sightlines, but there’s also a Fender Rhodes keyboard instead of a piano, which became a cool nuisance: it made so many bands sound similar. The ones I liked most didn’t use the Rhodes, bands like the trumpeter Kirk Knuffke’s quartet, which played a kind of early ’60s New York knockabout postbop, with thorough arrangements, brainy and amiable polyphony, scrabbly free improvisation. And it had a frontline partnership I’d like to hear more of, between the leader and the trombonist Brian Drye. I marveled at what little I saw of Agogic, led by the saxophonist Andrew D’Angelo: rattling and physical, with Luke Bergman’s electric bass and Evan Woodle’s drumming, and the trumpeter Cuong Vu playing with fine, narrowed intensity.
At the Bitter End, Sullivan Hall and Le Poisson Rouge, you could walk in an arc around the stage, hearing the music from different angles, escaping pockets of nonsense as you desired. Steve Coleman’s Five Elements didn’t whomp us quite the way they did last summer at Undead Jazzfest, a festival built around the same club circuit, with the same bookers and promoters. Then, they were a bigger band in a more intimate room. This time, at Le Poisson Rouge, the intricate rhythmic shapes of the music sounded trickier and thinner.
But what preceded them was a set that could contend with Mr. Morris’s for performance-as-experience: the guitarist Nels Cline and the Los Angeles painter Norton Wisdom, in an improvised duet. Mr. Cline set up digital loops of electric guitar — edgeless and sludgy chords, spiky and screaming single notes — and Mr. Wisdom worked with brushes and paint on a large back-lighted screen. He made shock-headed monsters holding naked women, babies and animals, oil rigs and waves, mutating the images by wiping the screen with a sponge or making one figure grow out of another.
It was obvious why the collaboration worked: the applications and wiping, the running colors, the constant development — that was what Mr. Cline was doing too. Sound equaled paint. I’m not sure it had anything to do with jazz, and it’s not the best performance I’ve ever seen Mr. Cline do, but it was stoner gold. It was also the kind of thing worth braving serious crowd nuisances for: an actual collective ah.
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| Butch Morris, right, conducting his 11-piece band on Friday night at Le Poisson Rouge as part of the two-day New York Winter Jazzfest. At left, the tenor saxophonist J. D. Allen. |
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| From left,Christopher Dean Sullivan, Charles Gayle and Michael T. A. Thompson at Kenny's Castaways. |
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| Winter Jazzfest 2011: You Were Great! Now Change
January 10, 2011
by PATRICK JARENWATTANANON, SIMON RENTNER and JOSH JACKSON
Online View
In jazz-rich New York City, it often seems like there's a major festival going on every week. But few concerts have become as hotly anticipated as those of the city's annual Winter Jazzfest. This year, the music marathon encompassed five venues, two nights and 60 performances, and drew more than 3,000 4,000 fans.
What started as a showcase designed for attendees of the concurrent Association of Performing Arts Presenters Conference has become a massive event for New Yorkers, too. It's a worthy celebration not just for its overload of shows, most of which feature less-known ensembles or known musicians' new bands; it's also an exciting scene, with plenty of that prized young audience, not to mention plenty of musicians hanging out and watching their friends play.
In addition to the great music and the equivalent vibe, this year's Winter Jazzfest was marked by sub-freezing temperatures at night. That set into clear relief the event's struggles with crowd control. Tickets — an absurdly good deal at $35 for two entire nights — sold out early, and those looking to hop from club to club often found themselves struggling to peer over standing-room-only sections, if not waiting in long lines to enter.
These are good problems to have, of course. Among the 4,000-plus were Josh Jackson, host of WBGO's The Checkout, and Simon Rentner, another WBGO staff producer. They joined me for a recap of what we all saw, via instant message. (NPR Music's Bob Boilen, of All Songs Considered, was there on Saturday evening, and had some reflections too.)
Full Online Version HERE
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| Orrin Evans plays piano and conducts his Captain Black Big Band at Sullivan Hall as part of Winter Jazzfest. |
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| Aaron Goldberg plays a brightly colored piano at Zinc Bar on day one of Winter Jazzfest 2011. |
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| Hip-Hop, R&B and All That Jazz
A New Promoter Aims to Bolster Jazz by Introducing It to Younger Listeners
By SEVE CHAMBERS
Online Version
Attendees
at Saturday's Winter Jazzfest showcase at Sullivan Hall might have been
slightly confused about the name of the festival they were seeing. The
showcase there, called Revive Da Live, did center around jazz,
presenting artists like Igmar Thomas & the Cypher, the Kenneth
Whalum Quartet and Orrin Evans Captain Black Big Band. But it also
brought together groups like the Robert Glasper Experiment, Derrick
Hodge and the Maurice Brown Effect—groups that are mostly influenced by
R&B, funk, soul and, perhaps most curiously, hip-hop.
For
Meghan Stabile, the founder of Revive Music Group, the self-described
"boutique live-music creative agency" that planned the show, the
novelty was precisely the point.
"The future of hip-hop is jazz," she said. "That's where they both are headed."
Ms.
Stablile, a 28-year-old Berklee College of Music graduate, launched
Revive in 2006 with the intention of uniting hip-hop artists and
contemporary jazz musicians in an effort to lure a wider urban audience
to the origins of popular music.
"It's about making people
recognize and appreciate this great music we have," Ms. Stabile said.
"Jazz is seen like old posters of the '50s now. Everyone thinks of it
as being photos of Miles Davis, John Coltrane and such. We want to
figure out if there is a way to reach out to kids and make them
interested in this again."
With a new blog (called the
Revivalist) recently launched to document the emerging jazz scene, as
well as a partnership with the online hip-hop Web site Okayplayer, Ms.
Stabile and the eight-person Revive team are looking for new ways to
make jazz seem young again. Future plans include inviting musicians to
play in public-school classrooms, but for now the group's bread and
butter is pairing artists from different genres on single performance
bills. Previous Revive-produced shows have featured trumpeter Nicholas
Payton with rapper Talib Kweli; bassist Esperanza Spalding with rappers
Jeru the Damaja and Large Professor; and trumpeter Roy Hargrove with
the late emcee Guru.
Robert Glasper, a 32-year-old jazz pianist
known for his work with the hip-hop-oriented Robert Glasper Experiment,
sad that the greatest obstacle in luring younger listeners to jazz is
the almost elitist attitude that jazz players and listeners often have
about other, younger, genres.
"There are these jazz Nazis that
won't let you change anything, and will have you think that you're not
supposed to listen to anything else other than jazz," said Mr. Glasper,
who was a main attraction for Winterfest's Revive showcase. "But, in
fact, jazz fused together from a bunch of different kinds of
music—that's what jazz is. That's why it changed so much throughout the
years."
Ms. Stabile noted that a recent evolution can be
detected in the wave of live bands being hired to play behind rappers.
She cited the pairing of rapper Jay-Z and hip-hop collective the Roots
for the former's MTV 'Unplugged' album of 2001 as a precedent-setting
event. In the years since, it has become a common sight to see artists
such as Eminem and Kanye West play with bands.
"The amount of
rappers having bands backing them went from zero to 30 three years
ago," Ms. Stabile said. "It's a good thing, but then you also have to
wonder, where is it going?"
For its part, Revive Music Group is giving a new generation of evolving musicians a platform to speak for themselves.
"People
coming to the shows are younger," said bassist Derrick Hodge, who
played with his own quartet at Sullivan Lounge and has worked with such
hip-hop and R&B stars as Maxwell and Common. "We have to be
perceptive of something that is relevant to them. And it is creating a
movement of its own because other people can relate to it."
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| Jay-Z's MTV 'Unplugged' performance from 2001, with backing by the Roots, helped kick off an era of hip-hop artists playing w/ live bands |
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| Pianist Robert Glasper plays a modern strain of jazz that leaves room for hip-hop beats and rapping. |
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| Winter Jazzfest 2011: The five best sets
Posted in The Volume by Hank Shteamer on Jan 10, 2011 at 8:50am
Read more: Winter Jazzfest 2011: The five best sets - Music - Time Out New York http://newyork.timeout.com/music-nightlife/music/681861/winter-jazzfest-2011-the-five-best-sets#ixzz1AnEW1ktr
Judging by my Twitter feed, there were plenty of diehards who outlasted me at this past weekend's Winter Jazzfest—I tapped out around 2am each night, exhausted and giddy with music overload. By my count I managed to catch 19 full or partial sets over the two nights. Not everything was to my liking, and intense overcrowding dampened WJF's roam-if-you-want-to multivenue set-up, but the good stuff made it all worthwhile. Here are five sets that stood out:
J.D. Allen VISIONFUGITIVE conducted by Lawrence D. "Butch" Morris
(Le) Poisson Rouge, Friday
"Butch" Morris lectured the crowd on his trademark (literally) Conduction method, and then demonstrated the system's bewitching possibilities with the help of magisterial saxist J.D. Allen, pictured, whose trio functioned as an independent cell within a deeply committed midsize ensemble.
Mike Pride's From Bacteria to Boys
Kenny's Castaways, Friday
Drummer Mike Pride's quartet offered cool, collected readings of his funk-tinged postbop pieces, doused with pure molten lava courtesy of saxist Darius Jones and keyboardist Alexis Marcelo.
Orrin Evans's Captain Black Big Band
Sullivan Hall, Saturday
The very definition of a class act, Philly pianist Orrin Evans's superbly polished organization married 21st-century sleekness and Swing Era glitz. Veteran trombonist Frank Lacy marshalled the troops with fiery exhortations, like those of a hypercharismatic politician.
Bad Touch
Kenny's Castaways, Saturday
Loren Stillman dripped honey-toned alto lines over the smartly skewed organ jazz of guitarist Nate Radley, keyboardist Gary Versace and drummer Ted Poor.
Chico Hamilton & Euphoria
(Le) Poisson Rouge, Friday
"I'm happy to be here.… At my age, I'm happy to be anywhere," joked 89-year-old drummer Chico Hamilton from the stage, before offering a textbook demonstration of how swinging propulsion can coexist with whisper-level dynamics.
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| Thoughts On Jazz From A Rock Guy
by BOB BOILEN
January 10, 2011
Online View
What jazz has that rock rarely finds is fiery and crafty improvisation. Last night, brilliant performances from some world-class players put a huge grin on my face.
I made a rare excursion to a jazz club recently as part of Winter Jazzfest 2011 — two nights of jazz spread over five clubs in New York's Greenwich Village. I went the second night and heard full or partial sets by nine acts. It wasn't until the 2 a.m. set by the trio of Jean-Michel Pilc, Francois Moutin and Ari Hoenig that I remembered so clearly why I used to care about jazz, and why rock can let me down. Pianist Pilc said to the late-night audience at Zinc Bar, "I don't know what we're going to play, but we're going to play it." And play it they did. It was an hour of nonstop magic, with each player (upright bass, drums and piano) inspiring the other and making music, not just playing music.
That's the huge payoff for me: to hear musicians react, spark laughter, surprise one another and sometimes surprise themselves. It's the delight of live performance. Every art form could use a little more of it, and rock players should take special note.
There's hope in that regard. Seeing Nels Cline's Stained Radiance, for example, hit that sweet spot of risk-taking. Cline is steeped in free jazz, but also works as the rock-guitar-texture guy in Wilco. His "Stained" project is just Cline and effects pedals, with painter Norton Wisdom. Wisdom paints live while Cline makes wild sounds, each affecting the other. Cline seemed distracted by tech issues and his music didn't unfold for me the way the painting did, but still, it reminded me of my days of seeing and making performance art. It was also nice to see a diverse audience — in terms of both color and age — at the sold-out Winter Jazzfest. It must feel the way the South by Southwest music festival did when it got its start 25 years ago. We'll see how these musicians and venues find ways to connect with this new-found crowd, but I look forward to joining them in the years to come.
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| Five Vivid Moments @ Winter JazzFest
Posted on January 10, 2011
Online View
Small moves can create big pictures. There were several full sets I dug at Winterfest, but within them are many more curt passages or pithy exchanges that are still bubbling through my mind today. And they are…
BUTCH MORRIS FRISBEES HIS CARDS
The veteran improviser was leading JD Allen’s VISIONFUGITIVE! through an array of conductions, and things were going well. Rapt attention from his charges; inventive motifs that employed continuity and juxtaposition in equal measure. But part of the Jazzfest process is perform for perspective arts programmers, so in a nifty moment of wiseacre pragmatics, he flung out some cheat sheets regarding his innovative hand-signal system, and took time to verbally break down the way he gesturally interacts with his team. The set’s music was one of the most fun I’ve seen from him. That baton is really a magic wand, right?
GARY VERSACE TURNS PERCUSSIONIST
The band Bad Touch is comprised of saxophonist Loren Stillman, guitarist Nate Radley, organist Gary Versace and drummer Ted Poor. They play intricate pieces that nod to funk beats, wink to rock rhythms, and genuflect to the nuances of steady dynamic shifts. Precision is at their core. Well, it didn’t take long for their intra-band connections to start crackling, but one particular passage by the keyboardist proved his skills as an agent provocateur. As the group was mildly disassembling a groove, Versace bent over the instrument with a madman look on his face. Instantly he turned drummer, chopping the action with staccato chords that turned up the heat and opened a new pathway for his mates to slip away on.
NASHEET WAITS EVOKES STEVE REICH
When drummers Eric McPherson and Nasheet Waits connect with saxophonist Abraham Burton, they call themselves Aethereal Base, which to some degree is about “changing atmospheres and textures.” Don’t know what you call it when McPherson’s MIA, but Nasheet had very little problem becoming Burton’s lone locomotive at Kenny’s Castaways late Saturday. The saxophonist reached the conclusion of a roaring exchange with his partner, and Waits began to develop a cymbal-less drum solo that worked a “simple” African pattern into a deeply detailed drama that blended repetition and substitution. At one point his hands were moving quicker than a dude running a Times Square shell game. Glorious.
JOHN HEBERT DOES THE CHA CHA
Matt Wilson was using every part of his drum set when I walked into The Bitter End towards the end of the entire weekend. Saxophonist Noah Preminger had begun his set with Ornette’s “Toy Dance,” and Wilson had a harmolodic flurry of splash cymbals, tom-toms, snare, and high-hat bringing the noise. But the way bassist John Hebert was whirling and bouncing and swinging with his instrument is what stuck in my head. Up on one heel, down with a bit of a leap; the bassist bobs and weaves as he created his lines, which were short yet liquid phrases that spilled into one another to assist with the group’s momentum. Yep, he did some dancing of his own.
ORRIN EVANS TURNS CHEERLEADER
The pianist’s Captain Black Big Band said farewell to some of Philly’s recently fallen, and tipped the hat to the kind of large ensembles that like to swagger while they swing. At a wall-to-wall Sullivan Hall, they landed punch after punch – four trombones throwing lots of whomp into the cascading lines of the leader’s arrangements. Or was the up-front charisma of Evans himself that boosted the energy. Leaning forward to exclaim a great solo, standing up to bark out his exuberance, swaying and skipping when the music got to be wild enough to impress even him, he was one of the most physically demonstrative leaders of the weekend.
Also Vivid: Jeff Lederer‘s opening tenor salvo with Bigmouth’s set; if you’ve only got 50 minutes, kill ‘em from the start. Avishai Cohen‘s trumpet blast at the tail end of his sister’s LPR set; a fierce assault that had no prob showing its sweet side. The grace of Jacky Terrasson’s bassist Ben Williams; during one of the pianist’s Jarrett-esque tearjerkers, Williams brought loads of slippery beauty to the table. Charles Gayle‘s fire; I wasn’t even watching saxophonist’s trio (couldn’t make close to the stage), but even while rolling through yadda-yadda-yadda conversations with pals in the back, the band’s reached out and shook me three or four times. That’s power.
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| Festival Review: 2011 NYC Winter JazzFest
January 7th and 8th, 2011
By Jacob Teichroew, About.com Guide
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After attending the last two NYC Winter Jazz Festivals (2009 NYC WJF, 2010 NYC WJF), I thought I knew what to expect. I printed out a list of the performances I wanted to see, including exact times and venues. I dressed in layers, knowing that I would be scurrying between clubs amidst the January freeze. I even packed a peanut butter sandwich so that I could avoid losing valuable time standing in line for overpriced West Village pizza.
Prepared for the 2011 Winter Jazz Festival, on Friday, January 7th and Saturday, the 8th, I showed up and proceeded the stand around. Over the two nights, over 4,000 people showed up. The ticket line outside of Le Poisson Rouge, the hub of the festival, wrapped around the block, and the crowd within was a dense, undulating life form. It spilled out of the doors, creating an impenetrable meniscus.
On Friday night, I attempted to hear saxophonist JD Allen, with VISIONFUGITIVE!, a group featuring two rhythm sections and four secondary saxophonists, and conducted by Butch Morris. I settled for watching the band from the external bar area, where the show was streamed on a flat screen TV.
At Kenny’s Castaways, the swarm was initially more manageable. I had a clear sight line for groups led by trumpeter Shane Endsley and trombonist Jacob Garchik. Endsley’s The Music Band played buoyant grooves and tuneful melodies. What began as simple forms became pulsating thickets.
Garchik’s trio, featuring Jacob Sacks on the Rhodes and Dan Weiss on drums, made me imagine understanding a foreign language through the speaker’s exuberance rather than through his words. The conversations between the three were the highlight of the first night of the festival, and I was glad that of the many bands I heard, they were one of the two or three that I could actually see.
Of the bands I heard but could not see were vocalist Jen Shu’s band Jade Tongue, and bassist Chris Lightcap’s Bigmouth. Shyu’s music, which featured David Binney, John Hébert, and Dan Weiss was dark and otherworldly. I heard what sounded like incantations, and got an occasional glimpse of Shyu’s arms weaving about, trailed by a red scarf.
Lightcap’s Bigmouth, featuring saxophonists Jeff Lederer and Chris Cheek, keyboardist Craig Taborn, and drummer Gerald Cleaver, surely would have been another highlight of my night had I been able to focus on the music. Instead, I was forced into a corner, my back to the stage, as the restrainedly rambunctious, rock-inflected music wafted by.
After the first night of the 2011 Winter Jazz Festival, it was clear that the crowds would make enjoying the music quite the endeavor. It wasn’t so much the constant chatter of the drunken APAP conference-goers. That’s just an inseparable aspect of the event.
This year, the festival’s popularity was so magnified that it became too big for its britches. While this is a great thing for New York Jazz, it is a problem for the festival, whose charm lies in its frenetic and compressed atmosphere, amidst which fans, musicians, and publicists all come together to celebrate the vivacity of a scene that can sometimes seem infirm. This deliciously unstable atmosphere was struck perfectly last year, but seemed to have combusted, leading to a slight but constant feeling of anxiety.
Among the many shows I attempted to see on the second night of the festival, two were of the sort that managed to distract me from the pressures of the stampede. One was guitarist Miles Okasaki with drummer Damion Reid and saxophonist Guillaume Perret. The musical structures were droning, complex rhythms played in the guitar and drums, which Perret decorated with shadowy echoing effects.
After the trio left the stage at Kenny’s Castaways, Ken Thomson’s Asphalt Orchestra took the stage, only not on the stage. The disheveled marching band lined the balcony, playing rousing music whose thrashing lines melted into each other. At these times and several others, the Winter Jazz Festival was at its peak. Let’s hope the audience keeps growing, and that the festival can grow to accommodate it.
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| Re-cap: Winter JazzFest Highlights
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The
Revive showcase wasn’t the only show that brought amazing musicians
together at the Winter JazzFest this past weekend. We bounced around
the festival’s countless shows to bring you the other highlights of the
amazing weekend. Read our writers takes on the shows below!
Tia Fuller
Let
me begin with a total sidebar: Tia Fuller, by far, had the flyest
outfit of anyone in the entire Festival. Unnecessary and annoying to
note—female jazz musicians get the wrong kind of attention all the
time—except that her purple-metallic-high-heeled-fur-stole flair only
enhanced what was clearly a focused, driven, talented and purposeful
presence on stage. Calling her set a “journey” in which we would “move
forward in faith, not fear,” it was clear that she knew what she was
doing—as a performer, composer, bandleader and human being. That
confidence, which likely guided her to those funky pants, also
manifested itself in her solos, interaction with her bandmates (her
sister, Shamie Royston on keys, brother-in-law, Rudy Royston on drums,
and longtime friend, Mimi Jones on bass), and engagement of the
audience. She asked us in the crowd to make 2011 the year in which we
would take “decisive steps”—the name of her new album—toward our
personal goals. She smiled, danced, and played with such passion and
purpose that I wanted to break out a notepad right there and rewrite
all my New Year’s resolutions. In all, a wonderful performance from an
artist who knows not only how to wield her instrument, but her inspired
talent, and in the direction of good.
-Kyla Marshell
JD Allen VISIONFUGITIVE!
“JD
Allen is doing a lot right now”—so say my notes from that amazing
evening, the top of the first night of the Festival. With two drummers,
two bassists, five horns, piano, vibes, and auxiliary percussion (did I
miss anything?) playing simultaneously, as well as contrapuntally, the
sound that filled Le Poisson Rouge was huge and labyrinthine, and it
felt very much like catastrophe—but a manageable sort of catastrophe.
The band opened with a long, intricate piece—then immediately
afterward, Lawrence D. “Butch” Morris, the conductor, turned to face
the audience and talk to us about Conduction, i.e., what he was
presently doing. He even tossed Conduction fliers into the audience,
little 3×5 cards with his definition printed and arranged as though it
had come straight from Webster’s. Using the first tune as his example,
he explained what each flick of the baton meant, and broke the piece
down, instrument by instrument. Not only was the audience in awe of the
music itself, but in the seamless way in which it all came together:
the oohs and ahs were not only during the initial performance of the
piece, but in the explanation which followed. It was impossible to hear
everything going on at once, but intentionally so; thus, to have Morris
feature each part individually, and then bit by bit, layer them to
build back up to the full sound, only intensified the beauty of what
was so fiercely complex and so unconventionally elegant.
-Kyla Marshell
Steve Coleman and Five Elements
There
was certainly an air of expectation as festival goers packed out Le
Poisson Rouge to witness the legendary Steve Coleman and the Five
Elements. As is sometimes the case, a few shows preceding Coleman ran
over so his set was a late in starting. Unfortunately, it also meant
that his set was cut short. Coleman on sax was accompanied by the Five
Elements, consisting of Jen Shyu on vocals, Jonathan Finlayson on
trumpet, David Virelles on piano and Miles Okazaki on guitar. The
musicians came together to incite our musical senses. Coleman’s set had
a free form style and with each selection progressing one to the other
almost as if a story were being told. Impressively, Jen Shyu used her
vocal prowess, not just merely to sing, but more like an instrumental
accompaniment. At times, the notes she sang blended to match the tone,
rhythm and pattern of both Coleman’s sax and Finlayson’s trumpet. It
was also interesting to see how involved each musician was in the songs
as they seemed to lose themselves in the music, their eyes closing for
moments and their heads rhythmically keeping time as they awaited their
return back to the piece. Artists like Steve Coleman and the Five
Elements don’t come around everyday and this show was a fine example of
what timelessness sounds like.
-Terri Neal
Chico Hamilton
For
the final act of the first night of the 2011 Winter Jazzfest at Le
Poisson Rouge, the crowd was blessed with the opportunity of seeing
West Coast legend Chico Hamilton play with his band of the past several
decades, Euphoria. Prior to him hitting the stage, the announcer
mentioned that Chico was playing at the same spot back when it was
called the Village Gate, and that he remembers it well because on one
occasion he brought a brand new drum set with him there and had it
stolen that same night. But that was a long time ago, and Chico now
takes pride in coming back to the same place. Well, actually in just
being anywhere as he joked about his old age throughout the night by
‘forgetting’ his band member’s names and what he was going to play in
his set.
What made Chico’s set interesting was the directness
and brevity of each song. Not at one moment during the night was there
a long winded solo that meandered aimlessly, or a point where the song
duration could cause modern listeners to tune out. Each composition,
which were all new ones, were performed as tightly as it gets by the
group as far as one could tell, and could easily blend into each other
but still differed in the dynamics of each song. The smooth opener ‘How
Is You Feeling’ really captured the vibe of west coast life with its
beach culture and could have easily been a predecessor to smooth jazz.
Even the playing of each of his band members was very minimal, opting
for a ‘less is more’ approach like the cutting but funky solo that
veteran bassist of the band Paul Ramsey took on the first song.
But
don’t think that each member couldn’t hold their own. The telepathic
duet that flute players Evan Schwam and Mayu Saeki took on the forth
song ‘That Boy With That Long Hair,’ a humorous description of Chico’s
appearance, was so in sync that one would had to of been staring at
them to tell when they traded notes with each other. The guitar playing
of Nick Demopoulos was also a highlight, as his tone was very
reminiscent of George Benson but came out in his own way on the second
song ‘Broadway.’ And percussionist Jeremy Carlstedt, who Chico picked
up when he saw how he would eye the ladies back in their hometown and
knew he had to be good, showcased his ability to support the band as a
percussionist and lead as the drummer when Chico stepped off on the
final number because it was time to go to the bar as the announcer told
him. Seeing the elders of the genre is a rewarding experience, but to
see one who leads with a style that is heavily overlooked on the
present scene is something that must be cherished while it is still
around.
-Putnam Doug
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