Cecil Taylor at the Whitney: Storming Places, Like He’s Always Done

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Pianist Cecil Taylor performing with dancer Min Tanaka during “Open Plan” at the Whitney Museum of American Art/ All Photographs © Paula Court

If you arrived on Thursday night at the Whitney Museum of American Art’s fifth floor, Cecil Taylor was there to greet you.
Elevator doors opened and there was Taylor—his image, anyway—in towering proportions as projected on a massive screen, moving fleetly about a piano’s keyboard while wearing a white knit cap, as captured in Ronn Mann’s 1981 documentary, “Imagine the Sound.”
The night’s real attraction was an increasingly rare invitation—the chance to see and hear Taylor, who recently turned 87, perform in person.
And in glorious context, no less: At the far west end of an imposing venue—the largest column-free museum exhibition space in New York City (more than 18,000 feet of open space), at a Bösendorfer grand piano set against floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking the Hudson River.
A yet deeper context was on display. Taylor’s concert was the prelude to a lovingly curated and wisely broad-minded exhibition and residency at the Whitney through April 24, dedicated to the full range of Taylor’s artistry. “Open Plan: Cecil Taylor,” the first of five such Whitney programs, places Taylor in the company of a wide range of creative souls: installation and performance artist Andrea Fraser; painter Lucy Dodd; sculptor/earth artist Michael Heizer; and video/filmmaker Steve McQueen.

Continue reading “Cecil Taylor at the Whitney: Storming Places, Like He’s Always Done”

Now Playing (New and Forthcoming CDs)

radio hatCarla Bley/Andy Sheppard/Steve Swallow Andando el Tiempo (ECM, May 6): As pianist, composer and arranger, Bley, who turns 80 in May, has always exuded a stern authority tempered with obvious tenderness and grace. And offstage, she’s usually disarmingly humble, even childlike in the best sense. Such was the case last year when she accepted her NEA Jazz Masters Award. As I noted here, Bley told this anecdote from the podium:

“I asked my father, ‘Where does the music come from?’ He told me, ‘A composer wrote it.’ And I said, ‘I would like to do that.’ So I wrote hundreds of notes and he told me, ‘No, no, this is much too hard for me to play. Get rid of most of these notes.’ And so that was my first lesson.”

Her new CD has, in spots, riveting emotional impact. It’s in one sense a beautiful musical study in contrary motion of instrumental voices. But what strikes me most is how well Bley has incorporated that early lesson about economy into her music through the decades, and especially here.
Melissa Aldana Back Home (Word of Mouth Music): It was no surprise to me when tenor saxophonist Melissa Aldana won the 2013 Thelonious Monk International Saxophone Competition. Aldana first captured my attention a decade ago, when she was a precocious 17-year-old whose tone, confidence and knowledge belied her age during late-night jam sessions at the Panama Jazz Festival. Pianist Danilo Pérez, the festival’s founder, predicted big things from her, and she has delivered.
Aldana, who is from Santiago, Chile and now lives in New York City, released two hard-swinging and supple-sounding quartet albums for saxophonist Greg Osby’s Inner Circle label. The title of her new CD, “Back Home,” refers not to her native country, but to the piano-less trio format she fell in love with while listening to Sonny Rollins albums, and which she employs here.
David Murray, Geri Allen & Terri Lynne Carrington Perfection (Motéma, April 15): Call it a “supergroup.” Or a “power trio.” The sound is bold, ignited principally by Murray’s bristling and active tenor saxophone (it’s easy to take Murray for granted; but name another living saxophonist other than Sonny Rollins whose sound erupts and ripples with such visceral power). Part of the fascination here is how complete this trio (sax-piano-drums) sounds without the presence of a bassist. Yet this CD is about cohesion in difficult musical terrain more than sheer force. That cohesion stems from the fact that here are three established leaders (stars, really) and owes most of all to deep connections. These include the bond between Allen (who, for my money, is among he generation’s most important musicians) and Carrington (as confident and versatile as any drummer in jazz; and who maintains an inventive trio with Allen and bassist Esperanza Spalding.
The emotional core of the album is the title track, a previously unrecorded Ornette Coleman composition (here the group expands to sextet, including longtime Coleman associate Charnett Moffett on bass and Wallace Roney, Jr (son of Allen and trumpeter Wallace Roney) on trumpet. This group shook things up at January’s Winter Jazzfest in New York City. On first listen, they seem to have settled into something no less provocative and yet more refined.
 
 

Vijay Iyer's New Day Gig at the Met Breuer

Vijay Iyer performing at the Met Breuer opening with Mark Turner/ PHOTO: SAMANTHA NANDEZ/BFA
Vijay Iyer performing at the Met Breuer opening with Mark Turner/ PHOTO: SAMANTHA NANDEZ/BFA

Seated at a Steinway grand piano in a dark, intimate room in early March, Vijay Iyerwasn’t simply playing another gig.
Aficionados in attendance could recognize a loose medley of familiar jazz themes, including Wayne Shorter’s “ Nefertiti” and Billy Strayhorn’s “Chelsea Bridge.” Mostly, Mr. Iyer and his duet partner, tenor saxophonist Mark Turner, issued an unbroken and largely abstract flow, moving easily from dense dissonances to languid melodies.
Musically, the scene wasn’t unlike Mr. Iyer’s performances at any number of Manhattan jazz clubs and concert halls. Except here, the listeners were gathered in a small gallery behind the lobby of the Met Breuer, the celebrated five-story hulk of a building that serves as the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s new outpost for modern and contemporary art.
The audience was witnessing the first installment of “Relation,” a performance residency showcasing Mr. Iyer, who is equally distinguished as a pianist, composer and educator. His ongoing performances open to the general public Friday and run through the end of the month.
“It’ll be my day gig,” said Mr. Iyer, in an interview at his Harlem home. “It’s almost like having an office.” Continue reading “Vijay Iyer's New Day Gig at the Met Breuer”

Now Playing (new & forthcoming CDs)

vintageradio3Snow flurries fight it out with waves of warm breeze. My in-box is brimming with new music. The latest:
Allison Miller and Boom Tic Boom Otis Was a Polar Bear (Royal Potato Family, April 8): Drummer and bandleader Allison Miller speaks her mind clearly and with no apologies. Such was the case in a Huffington Post essay a few years ago in which she wrote: “I am a woman. I am a dyke. I am a tomboy. I play jazz.” She’s just as confident and forthright behind her drum kit at the helm of her Boom Tic Boom ensemble, which boasts an impressive personnel of wide-ranging and distinguished players: Myra Melford (piano), Jenny Scheinman (violin), Kirk Knuffke (cornet), Ben Goldberg (clarinet), Todd Sickafoose (bass).
Miller began writing Otis Was a Polar Bear during the summer of 2014 while touring with singer-songwriter Natalie Merchant. The birth of Miller’s (and her partner, Rachel’s) first child Josie inspired the music on this latest CD. Miller began writing the music while on tour with singer Natalie Merchant and completed the project through a Chamber Music American grant. The 10 original compositions featured on Otis Was a Polar Bear chart an inspirited soundtrack to the beginnings of a new life chapter for Miller and her family.
We’ve reached a moment when it’s far from remarkable that a jazz band is led by a female drummer and is half-populated by stirring women instrumentalists (Melford should be on anyone’s list of essential pianist). When motherhood inspires good jazz. When drummers who compose stirring jazz, about far more than groove, abound. Miller’s Boom-Tic-Boom is proof of all that, and yet it sounds singular, smart, cool and with just the right amount of weirdness. Sort of like how you’d wish your child to turn out. Continue reading “Now Playing (new & forthcoming CDs)”

Entering Ankhrasmation: Wadada Leo Smith at The New Quorum in New Orleans

photos by Larry Blumenfeld, using Jonathan Freilich's excellent camera
Wadada Leo Smith leading a workshop performance at The New Quorum/ cellist: Helen Gillet/ photos by Larry Blumenfeld, using Jonathan Freilich’s excellent camera

In January, I got the chance to return to New Orleans for a focused period of writing and reflection, courtesy of The New Quorum, where I was writer-in-residence within an inaugural residency class. Having unpacked my clothes, I’m now unpacking my notes, interviews and conversations. Here’s the first of a series of posts drawn from that experience.
The New Quorum is an artist residency organization founded and directed by Gianna Chachere, and dedicated to bringing professional musicians and writers from across the globe to New Orleans for meaningful cultural exchange with local and regional artists.
If you’re a musician or writer interested in such an opportunity, now’s the time to go here: Applications for Spring residencies (May 16-June 13) are accepted through March 4.
If you’d lend financial or volunteer support go here now: This innovative program deserves such nurturing.
 
The night after I settled into my temporary and lovely home on Esplanade Avenue, the living room Christmas tree, which was still up, was dotted with sheet music. This was the first of four workshops for musicians led by composer and trumpeter Wadada Leo Smith, followed by an informal house concerts as part of his January residency.
Smith’s music, which is both singular and part of an influential movement connected to Chicago’s Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM), demands improvisatory spirit. And, well, those Christmas tree branches worked just fine as music stands.
The music itself was anything but ornamental. Smith’s work employs “rhythm units” and is expressed on paper through “Ankhrasmation.” Smith uses this neologism—formed of “Ankh,” the Egyptian symbol for life, “Ras,” the Ethiopian word for leader, and “Ma”, a universal term for mother­­—to denote the systemic musical language he has developed over nearly 50 years for, he says, “scoring sound, rhythm and silence, or for scoring improvisation.” Continue reading “Entering Ankhrasmation: Wadada Leo Smith at The New Quorum in New Orleans”

Now Playing (New & Forthcoming Releases)

recordplayer.artinfo.3-13Charles Lloyd & The Marvels I Long To See You (Blue Note, Jan. 15):
Charles Lloyd’s late-in-life burst of exploratory energy continues with this new band. Bassist Reuben Rogers (here, playing mostly electric bass) and drummer Eric Harland are drawn from Lloyd’s “new quartet,” which is no longer so new but still stunning (and features pianist Jason Moran). The Marvels was born of a 2013 musical encounter at UCLA’s Royce Hall between the saxophonist and flutist Lloyd and guitarist Bill Foristell. Frisell recruited pedal-steel master Greg Leisz. The material ranges from some favorites from Lloyd’s catalog— “Of Course, Of Course,” the title track of his 1965 Columbia album and “La Llorona,” from 2009’s Mirror, among others—and a wide range of other material—Bob Dylan’s “Masters of War,” for instance, and the hymn “Abide With Me.” There are vocals on two tracks, by Willie Nelson and Norah Jones.
Aruán Ortiz Trio Featuring Eric Revis & Gerald Cleaver Hidden Voice (Intakt Records, Feb. 2): Pianist Ortiz leads trio that includes one of New York’s most fascinating drummers, Gerald Cleaver. Ortiz is among a generation of Cuban-born musicians making influential waves on the New York scene. His new CD ends with a classic Cuban tune. Yet otherwise, Ortiz plays experimental jazz that owes to no nation in particular; his clearest lodestar is revealed on the CD’s two Ornette Coleman compositions. Though Ortiz’s work to date has been excellent, this recording represents a major leap in context and substance, and I suspect it will end up on best-of lists at the end of this year.
Two new CDs focus on the drum in very different ways:
Herlin Riley New Direction (Mack Avenue, Feb. 12): Drummer Riley is best known for his work with Wynton Marsalis and, more recently, Ahmad Jamal. Yet he’s much more than an ace sideman. Here’s my strategy whenever I’m in New Orleans: Find out where and when Riley is playing; be there. He is quite simply the best drummer in New Orleans, a city known for its lineage of great trapsmen and rhythm masters. Riley can play the whole drum kit in polyrhythmic splendor or he can establish his authority with just, say, a single detail on cowbell or snare drum. On this, his first album as a leader in a decade, he flashes several takes on the distinct New Orleans “pocket” through various jazz styles.
Dan Weiss Sixteen: Drummers Suite (Pi, Feb. 26): Drummer/composer Dan Weiss used a fascinating concept as the basis for this CD: He built a suite of pieces, each based on a specific set of beats within classic recordings of his favorite jazz drummers (Elvin Jones, Max Roach, and others): His liner notes include footnotes to brief rhythmic passages, some just seconds long (timings noted). Weiss, who plays drums, tabla and contributes “vocal percussion” on some tracks, calls the music an “amalgam of jazz, Indian Music, prog rock, contemporary classical music and other completely idiosyncratic influences” which is a longwinded way of saying that you’ll hear unexpected blends of timbres and textures in music that adheres to nobody’s formula. It helps that Weiss here gathers more than a dozen notable and notably creative players, including singer Jen Shyu, pianist Matt Mitchell and guitarist Miles Okazaki.

At Home With The Morans

Jason Moran and Alicia Hall Moran, as photographd by Dawoud Bey
Jason Moran and Alicia Hall Moran, as photographd by Dawoud Bey

I got a chance to sit around the kitchen table at the Harlem home of pianist Jason Moran and singer Alicia Hall Moran, for this interview piece in The Wall Street Journal. The piece was ostensubly pegged to the release of Hall Moran’s debut CD, released on a new imprint the couple established together—a worthy release that celebrates the pure essence of Hall Moran’s voice as it blurs lines between genres and toys with aural textures
But the Journal piece really was a chance to check in on a remarkable couple who absorb and radiate cultural details with remarkable energy and insight, and whose presence in New York recalls a moment when Harlem was full of families that made art out of community and community out of art. I’ve known them both for more than a decade and it’s been inspiring and educational—about music and marriage–to see how husband and wife affect each other’s experience and expression.
When I asked Did you open musical doors for each other? Alicia said this:

Jason took me to hear Cecil Taylor and Henry Threadgill. Those doors needed opening for me. But on a deeper level, he helped me grasp how important each individual instrument and personality is in music.

And Jason told me:

Dating a girl who knew Western classical music inside and out—who felt it—was a new kind of education. She taught me that Alban Berg was as soulful as Duke Ellington. She helped me focus on narrative. As a jazz musician, living life with someone who always demands a story makes you check everything you’re going to play.

And Jason pointed out that Alicia helped him think more deeply about the idea of narrative in his own music. He said:

Jazz instrumentalists once played with a sense of narrative but now that’s mostly not true. And in school they weren’t teaching you how to play a story. Singers always have to tell a story—in English or German or whatever. We instrumentalists don’t, and though there was a generation that said you really have to learn the lyrics, it ain’t really a rule out here for success. So living life with someone who’s always trying to tell a story or who regularly asks ‘What do you mean by that,’ makes you rethink certain things.

That last part didn’t make it into the article, but here’s the complete text: Continue reading “At Home With The Morans”

Welcome to The New Quorum (Back in NOLA)

Photo by Kerry Maloney
Photo by Kerry Maloney

I’m back New Orleans, where I’m honored to be writer-in-residence with The New Quorum—an artist residency organization dedicated to bringing professional musicians and writers from across the globe to New Orleans for meaningful cultural exchange with local and regional artists.”
Trumpeter and composer Wadada Leo Smith is here, and each meal or conversation in passing with him is much like one of his vast catalog of distinguished compositions—unique, searching, free of convention and yet finely focused. I’m getting answers to questions I’d never even thought to ask. Better yet are the workshops and house concerts Smith has been leading at our house on Esplanade Avenue (more on that soon). The other musicians in residence are no less inspiring: flutist Nicole Mitchell; singer and composer Lisa Harris; and visual artist/vocalist/musician Damon Locks.
Right now, these talented folks and the woman who created this program, Gianna Chachere, are helping me dig more deeply into the tensions between tradition and innovation in New Orleans, and in jazz culture in general.
Here’s a nice piece by Cree McCree that discusses The New Quorum in the context of its predecessor and inspiration in New Orleans, The Quorum. (A documentary on that history can be found here.)
For those of you in New Orleans, we’ll explore that and other themes in a free public discussion on Wednesday, January 13—see below or here. You’ll want to stick around for a solo performance by Wadada Leo Smith to follow the panel discussion. Continue reading “Welcome to The New Quorum (Back in NOLA)”

Celebrating Danny Barker's Essential Legacy in New Orleans

Photo copyright Eric Waters
Photo copyright Eric Waters

Outside New Orleans, the name Danny Barker isn’t all that well known.
Yet talk to a New Orleans musician of any age, who plays in nearly any style, and Mr. Barker—as these players call him—inevitably comes up, in reverent and warm tones, much the way modern-jazz musicians talk about drummer Art Blakey.
Barker’s Fairview Baptist Church Marching Band, which he founded in 1970, late in life, helped launch many careers. No Barker, no Dirty Dozen Brass Band, no Rebirth Brass Band. No Barker, and it’s hard to know what trumpeters including Wynton Marsalis, Nicholas Payton, Leroy Jones and Kermit Ruffins would sound like, just how drummers like Herlin Riley and Shannon Powell might swing.
Yet Barker’s legacy is bigger than that, and just as much about the names we don’t know. His Fairview Baptist band was a training ground for young musicians. For anyone even remotely connected to the city’s indigenous culture, Barker—who played banjo and guitar, sang and wrote songs, and led bands—is the key figure of a brass-band revival at a moment when many felt that tradition slipping away.
Back in August, away from the high-profile “Kartrina” hoopla, I moderated a panel discussion in New Orleans—”Ten Years After: The State of New Orleans Culture.” There, Barker’s name was invoked again and again, as a man who saved not just a style of music but a constellation of community values connected to an indigenous culture.
A few years ago, filmmaker Darren Hoffman made a wonderful documentary about Barker’s legacy, “Tradition is a Temple.”
Yet the best tribute to Barker’s living legacy is The Danny Barker Banjo and Guitar Festival. It begins January 14 (a day past what would have been Barker’s 107th birthday) and runs through January 17 in New Orleans, with an additional concert on January 21 by singer Maria Muldaur, who once scored a hit with Barker’s “Don’t You Feel My Leg.” Continue reading “Celebrating Danny Barker's Essential Legacy in New Orleans”

Top Ten Jazz Recordings of 2015

Steve Coleman (left) and Henry Threadgill top my list and loom large on today's jazz landscape. (photos: left-courtesy Pi Recordings; right—Nhumi Threadgill)
Steve Coleman (left) and Henry Threadgill top my list and loom large on today’s jazz landscape. (photos: left-courtesy Pi Recordings; right—Nhumi Threadgill)

Those who pine for a new big idea in jazz—one that lends the music’s next chapter a catchy name—largely miss what’s going on.
Radical thinkers—seeming outliers—are today’s prime movers. If this has been the case throughout much of jazz’s history, what is different today is that these innovators no longer beget clear schools. Jazz’s forward flow is not well measured by stylistic monikers and pop-culture breakthroughs, but rather through profound ripples of impact. The most influential musicians now suggest less about how jazz should sound or be sold and more about how meaningful musical possibilities may be awakened within the context of jazz tradition.
On those terms, two musicians— Henry Threadgill, 71 years old, and Steve Coleman, 59—loom especially large right now. Threadgill and Coleman have achieved masterly and original voices as instrumentalists (both play alto saxophone; Mr. Threadgill is also a flutist). Leading unconventional ensembles, both are starkly authoritative yet also warmly nurturing presences. Both have successfully met one of jazz’s central challenges: to synthesize the acts of composition and improvisation through personalized yet rigorous approaches to structure and form. Each has crafted and stuck to a unique process that can’t really be imitated but can be shared.
And share they have. Their influence stands behind what I sometimes call “the quietest revolution you’ve never heard of”—that is, a growing swath of distinguished musicians whose music owes to direct and indirect lessons learned from the music of Threadgill and Coleman and the bands they lead (sometimes, in Threadgill’s case, conducts). These are subtle ideas with profound effects—the “rhythm chants” that underlie most of Coleman’s music, say, and the ways in which Threadgill liberates each instrument from its conventional role.
My year-end Top 10 jazz albums list includes one musician whose close collaboration with Coleman formed essential inspiration, Jen Shyu. It includes a band that features Threadgill, led by drummer Jack DeJohnette, who absorbed essential influence in the same Chicago scene Threadgill rose from. It’s topped by dazzling CDs from Coleman and Threadgill themselves. Continue reading “Top Ten Jazz Recordings of 2015”