On August 21, one month and one day after the U.S. and Cuba reopened long-closed embassies in Washington, DC and Havana, Cuba, two new recordings will be released that hint at a cultural connection elemental to jazz’s legacy yet long choked off by political barriers, as well the promise suggested by a new era of engagement during the Obama administration. Continue reading “Embassies Reopen in Washington and Havana; Two Jazz Orchestras Wave Banners High”
Remembering Dale Fitzgerald, Founder of New York's Jazz Gallery
Dale Kelley Fitzgerald, who co-founded New York’s prestigious Jazz Gallery in 1995 and was its Executive Director until 2009, died on March 20 at Calvary Hospital in Bronx, N.Y., after a long struggle with cancer. He was 72.
Writer Ted Panken described Dale accurately in an obituary distributed by Fitzgerald’s family:
“A strapping man with a well-trimmed goatee, Mr. Fitzgerald possessed an impeccably cool demeanor, a fiery spirit, ample amounts of personal charisma, and a pedagogical bent that emerged during pre-concert introductions that he delivered in an authoritatively resounding baritone voice.”
(That full obit, which is worth reading, can be found at the end of this post.)
I’ll write at greater length about Dale, probably in connection with what promises to be a large and moving memorial later this Spring at the Jazz Gallery. (Stay tuned: For now, in lieu of flowers or other gifts in the wake of Dale Fitzgerald’s passing, his family is asking that donations be made to his son Gabriel’s education fund, HERE.)
So I’ll just speak a bit from my heart and my archives here, with more to come.
Dale was a major force and influence in my career, on matters both very large and even very tiny. His work transformed the environment for New York City jazz during a formative period in my own jazz life, and a transitional moment in New York’s scene. During my first trip to Cuba, in the late 1990s, Dale was not only my man on the ground, but he managed to change that place a bit, too. Dale hipped me to what was what in Havana, and he ended up getting me to write the liner notes for Roy Hargrove’s Grammy-winning “Habana” album. Dale was a gentleman and a scholar, a cool cat of a type they don’t really issue anymore. So he taught me important lessons in life. Plus, he was a true basketball head. He loved a lot of things, including people who were for real. And I loved him. Continue reading “Remembering Dale Fitzgerald, Founder of New York's Jazz Gallery”
Shoulda Been in NOLA: The Glory of (and Troubled Backstory to) St. Joseph's Day
People who talk about New Orleans from afar, who long to be in New Orleans and get there whenever they can—people like me—talk about Mardi Gras. They talk about jazzfest. They book their flights and set their sights on hitting the ground running for these and other moments.
My sacred pilgrimage?
St. Joseph’s Day, once the sun is setting and on into the night. When Mardi Gras Indians do the inscrutable, essential and brilliant things they do, and have been doing for a long time.
It’s been that way since I first experienced the event in 2006.
And it’s killing me that, for the first time in nearly a decade, I didn’t make it on Thursday night. Luckily, a lot of friends and associates sent photos, including the one above, from Bryan C. Lee Jr, at the Arts Council New Orleans, and this one below, from Katherine Cecil, a wonderful filmmaker and photographer.
The best context came via an article in The Advocate by Katy Reckdahl, who has deep knowledge of her city and its culture (and how the two relate), and is my favorite reporter to read on any topic concerning New Orleans. Her piece begins with some unfortunate but important history: Continue reading “Shoulda Been in NOLA: The Glory of (and Troubled Backstory to) St. Joseph's Day”
80 Years On, Still in the Vanguard: Reflections on a Celebration, and Comments from Jason Moran
The Village Vanguard celebrated its 80th anniversary last week.
The occasion made me recall what Lorraine Gordon told me a decade ago, when the Vanguard was turning 70. She’s been running the jazz club since 1989, after Max Gordon, the Vanguard’s founder, died.
“I like the coziness of the room when it’s full, when the people seem happy and they’re at one with the artist,” she said. “There’s just a certain feeling you get because it’s small enough to reach out and back and forth between the audience and the artists. So, that’s a palpable feeling. I feel it myself when I sit in the corner and I see everybody’s face is absolutely glued to the stage. It’s like a painting but it’s real life, every night.”
The real life of jazz, as it plays out—set after set, night after night—and the picture it paints for those who care to listen would be unimaginable in New York (and based on the many iconic recordings made at the club, anywhere) without the Vanguard as incubator and home.
Lorraine was sitting there, in her customary spot in the corner, on the way to the kitchen (which stopped being a kitchen long ago, and serves as both green room and office). Beside her most of time was her daughter, Deborah, who runs the club with her and, hovering nearby, Jed Eisenman, the club’s longtime manager.
To celebrate turning 80, the Vanguard turned to Jason Moran, a pianist and bandleader half the club’s age. Moran is a musician who has demonstrated, both on and off the bandstand and in various ways, that he has a singular and secure grasp of the connection between what has preceded him and where he (and we) are headed—and on the intellectual and artistic streams that have always informed and been fed by the scene at the Vanguard and the jazz scene in general. Continue reading “80 Years On, Still in the Vanguard: Reflections on a Celebration, and Comments from Jason Moran”
Jazz Hung At The Museum—"Jazz & Colors: The Masterworks Edition" At The Met
The first two editions of “Jazz & Colors,” in the fall of 2012 and 2013, took place in Central Park. Impresario Peter Shapiro’s operating principle was to place jazz bands in secluded places within the park’s grand expanse, and give each the same set list for each of two sets — mostly standards and near-standards. As presented outdoors, the event complemented nature’s mighty display of changing seasons — an improvised dance of reds, yellow, and browns — with variations on the chord changes and mood shifts of these standards.
At The Metropolitan Museum of Art on Friday, billed as “Jazz & Colors: The Masterworks Edition,” each of the 15 bands placed around the museum’s first and second floors played two hour-long sets.
See my story and a slide show of images here.
New Year's Resolution for New Orleans: Create Laws In Tune With Jazz Culture
One of the things I’m looking forward to in the New Year is some movement in the right direction when it comes to cultural policy in New Orleans.
Here’s how my piece in Tuesday’s Wall Street Journal on the subject began:
Last year in New Orleans, the calls and responses of a storied musical tradition were often drowned out by back-and-forth arguments over ordinances. At stake are a number of things, not least a culture that the city’s Convention & Visitors Bureau website correctly claims “bubbles up from the streets.”
and here’s how I concluded:
New Orleans loves to relive its past. Yet simply because its culture has long occupied embattled space doesn’t mean that must forever be the case. Despite sometimes-heated rhetoric, those advocating for enlightened policies have begun speaking less like combatants than like willing partners, or as activists completing a mission. Jordan Hirsch, who formerly headed the nonprofit Sweet Home New Orleans, now works with a nascent organization billed as a “cultural continuity conservancy.” “Where we were once focused on simply getting musicians home,” he said, “the job now is to create equitable policies that assure a sustainable cultural community.”
During a news conference at last year’s Jazz & Heritage Festival, New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu told me, “there is a way to organize culture without killing it.”
This year, the New Orleans City Council has the chance to craft policies that nurture culture and remove it from the cross hairs of controversy. If it can’t strike the right balance, that next brass band may not find its audience on a streetcorner. And that city like no other may start to sound and feel a bit more like every place else.
Of the comments and replies, the most interesting one thus far came from New Orleans-based music critic Alex Rawls (who I quoted in my piece), at his excellent blog. I especially liked this part:
…. Part of the promise of New Orleans is that you can turn a corner and walk into a second line, find Mardi Gras Indians, or step into a neighborhood bar and happen upon a brass band. The music is only part of the magic; its improbability is also important. One of the saddest features of this year’s Saints season in the Superdome—along with the defense and the interceptions and the lacklustre play—was the woeful attempt at an on-the-field second line during halftime, one without a band or the ability to join. All that was left was Saintsations walking in a line. New Orleans’ music culture invites people to participate, and the more rigorously it’s forced into a structure that’s like the structures music inhabits in other cities, the less room there is for the kind of spontaneity that offers visitors a unique experience.
Organized events are easier to market and sell, and there’s a reason why magic is called magic. It doesn’t always happen, and many people leave the city after only hearing music in the places they expected to find it. But the promise of magic has the same allure as the promise of winning the lottery but with better odds. For now, anyhow.
My friends at WWOZ-FM shared a thread of comments on my piece at Facebook, which you can find here.
Photo by Christian Bélanger via Flickr
Stars Will Come Out And Friends Will Gather to Remember Charlie Haden on Jan. 13
Below this post is a list of musicians and others who made a mark in jazz or blues, and who died in 2014, as forwarded by radio host George Klein.
I’ve posted at length on some of these deaths (Roy Campbell, Amiri Baraka, Fred Ho).
The one that hit me hardest was Charlie Haden. As I wrote here:
In conversation as on the bandstand, where he played his bass with graceful authority and achieved great renown, Charlie Haden was both soft-spoken and outspoken. In his life and his music, he was exceedingly gentle, drawn to simple beauty yet also at home within wild complexity and unafraid of controversial ideas and hard truths.
Haden was a towering figure of American music. His influence and appeal reached into all quarters of jazz, and well beyond that genre. His ability to innovate helped sparked at least one musical revolution, as a member of the Ornette Coleman Quartet. His unerring sense of time and love of melody anchored and focused many distinguished bands, some of which he led. His radiant humanity and stalwart voice for social justice was both rare and powerful in any field.
Those who doubt that jazz still has a community, one that shares a singular bond and a common purpose, don’t grasp the essence of Haden’s career and probably never attended a memorial for a fallen jazz hero.
I’ll be there—and you should be too—when musicians, other colleagues and fans gather in Haden’s honor in Manhattan for a memorial organized by his widow, singer Ruth Cameron Haden.
CELEBRATING CHARLIE HADEN 1937-2014
a memorial and celebration of his life
Tuesday, Jan.13, 2015 at 7:00 PM
The Town Hall
123 West 43rd Street NYC 10036
for more information, go here
http://thetownhall.org/event/624-celebrating-charlie-haden-19372014
THIS EVENT IS FREE! General Admission. Doors open at 6 pm.
Tax deductible donations to benefit the Charlie Haden CalArts Scholarship Fund to assist jazz students in need can be made at the venue or sent to: P.O. Box 520, Agoura Hills, CA 91376.
Among the many scheduled performers: Geri Allen, Kenny Barron, Carla Bley, Jack DeJohnette, Denardo Coleman, Ravi Coltrane, Bill Frisell, Ethan Iverson, Josh Haden and the Haden Triplets, Ruth Cameron-Haden, Dr, Maurice Jackson, Lee Konitz, Pat Metheny, Josh Redman, Gonzalo Rubalcaba, Brandee Younger, as well as Quartet West with Alan Broadbent, Ernie Watts, Rodney Green, with Scott Colley on bass, and Liberation Music Orchestra with Carla Bley, Tony Malaby, Chris Cheek, Loren Stillman, Michael Rodriguez, Seneca Black, Curtis Fowlkes, Vincent Chancey, Joe Daley, Steve Cardenas, Matt Wilson, with Steve Swallow on bass.
What follows is Klein’s roll call (annotations are his). I welcome your additions for overlooked names. And I hope to see you at Town Hall. Continue reading “Stars Will Come Out And Friends Will Gather to Remember Charlie Haden on Jan. 13”
Best Jazz Of 2014
First, my contrarian and uncool confession: I used to think that I hated lists. I just don’t think music is a competition. Nor is writing about it, for me, a ratings game. (I prefer telling stories and reviewing each recording in its own context.) Still, I see the point, know the drill and have my choices, which honor worthy recordings and form a guide to satisfying listening. And this time of year is about giving: What readers want is lists, so I should give accordingly.
Truth is, I’ve found that the making of these lists—the consciousness, conversations, even arguments they generate in the context of the many other lists made by critics, bloggers and even musicians—does in fact add up to meaningful context. That point was best driven home or me by actual public conversation at a “Year in Jazz” panel hosted by my colleague Nate Chinen and presented by the National Jazz Museum in Harlem. Nate’s list can be found among the 140 ballots in the 9th annual NPR Music Jazz Critics Poll, with thanks to my colleague Francis Davis, who does the friendly arm-twisting and diligent legwork required for such a thing. (The full results can be found here)
This year, I felt especially compromised by my current focus on New Orleans research, which meant that I wasn’t listening to a lot of the worthy CDs that came in, and I didn’t seek out new stuff as much as usual. But in truth, these days, considering the ease with which musicians and indie labels can put out unexpected and excellent stuff—considering the sheer volume and breadth of what comes out—no critic can claim to have truly surveyed the field. (And those who do must likely have given only the most cursory listen to a lot of music that demands closer attention.)
Two themes that run through my list (and that I find in a good many others, too):
—Afro Latin influence in jazz continues to flower anew. We’re hearing more complex and more finely wrought jazz built upon Afro Cuban traditions. We’re hearing the full range of Central and South American and Caribbean influences as distinct elements of this picture. What once might be called “Latin jazz” (and still is, on NPR’s poll) is no longer a cousin or an “other” but rather an elemental strand.
—Out is in, and in is out, or something like that: It’s not as easy as it once was to define a mainstream among jazz’s best recordings, and this atomization of style is liberating.
If nothing else, these lists steer us away from reflecting on the fact that some stupid stuff happened in print in 2014.
Ok, here goes: Continue reading “Best Jazz Of 2014”
Cuba: The New Normal
Even things that seem necessary, logical and overdue can arrive unexpectedly.
As with President Obama’s announcement on Wednesday that the United States will restore full diplomatic relations with Cuba for the first time in more than a half-century.
In his speech, Obama said:
…We will end an outdated approach that, for decades, has failed to advance our interests. And instead, we will begin to normalize relations between our two countries. Through these changes, we intend to create more opportunities for the American and Cuban people and begin a new chapter among the nations of the Americas.
Only Congress can lift the official embargo of Cuba, which the incoming Republican majority in both houses is unlikely to support. Yet, according to the president, the United States will: re-establish an embassy in Havana and high ranking officials will visit Cuba; review Cuba’s designation as a state sponsor of terrorism; take steps to increase travel commerce and the flow of information to and from Cuba; enable, among other things, the use American credit and debit cards on the island; and significantly increase the amount of money that can be sent to Cuba, and remove limits on remittances that support humanitarian projects, the Cuban people and the emerging Cuban private sector.
All this arrived via considerable drama, involved secret meetings and he involvement of the Pope—as reported in The New York Times:
After winning re-election, Mr. Obama resolved to make Cuba a priority for his second term and authorized secret negotiations led by two aides, Benjamin J. Rhodes and Ricardo Zúñiga, who conducted nine meetings with Cuban counterparts starting in June 2013, most of them in Canada, which has ties with Havana.
Pope Francis encouraged the talks with letters to Mr. Obama and Mr. Castro and had the Vatican host a meeting in October to finalize the terms of the deal. Mr. Obama spoke with Mr. Castro by telephone on Tuesday to seal the agreement in a call that lasted more than 45 minutes, the first direct substantive contact between the leaders of the two countries in more than 50 years.
In his speech, the president said, “these 50 years have shown that isolation has not worked.” And this: “It’s time for a new approach.” He lent context to his decision with these words:
Change is hard in our own lives and in the lives of nations. And change is even harder when we carry the heavy weight of history on our shoulders. But today we are making these changes because it is the right thing to do. Today America chooses to cut loose the shackles of the past.
Already, church bells in Havana are ringing in celebration. My in-box is stuffed with excited messages from my colleagues, including a good many musicians, about something “we’ve waited a long time to hear.” Furious statements have been fired off by the anti-Castro contingent, including Republican presidential hopefuls Jeb Bush and Sen. Marco Rubio (who posted this piece at Huffington Post).
Beyond the effects this sea change will have to relieve needless suffering on the part of innocent Cuban people and lend further maturity, ethical standing and productive thinking to U.S. foreign relations, there will no doubt be a dramatic shift in the context of the culture that has always flowed from the island of Cuba and its essential connections to that of the U.S. As the tone and direction of U.S. policy transforms, the sound of the music that has always bounced between two countries will reverberate more freely and, quite likely, change.
As I recently wrote: “Want to hear the hippest jazz in New York? Follow a Cuban musician. The most exciting storyline right now in New York City jazz and the most invigorating music most often comes from players with Afro Latin roots. That fact, and the specifics of these musical projects, says much about a broadened landscape for what used to be called (but thankfully no longer can) Latin jazz, its elemental value to whatever we call jazz, and to the cultural melting pot that is New York.
In decades of reporting on that cultural beat in New York City, and via four trips to Cuba during the last decade or so, I’ve seen just how deeply and unnaturally the U.S. policy toward Cuba has distorted and at times curtailed this elemental connection. Continue reading “Cuba: The New Normal”
At Revived Minton's in Harlem, Pianist Bertha Hope Reflects On Her Late Husband
There’s a bona fide scene going on these days under the revived Minton’s banner in Harlem, and it includes both notable music and good food. Next weekend—December 12 and 13—I’ll be sure to be there for Andy Bey, who gets my vote, hands down, as the best living male jazz singer, and who is also his own best accompanist on piano.
Sunday, December 7, pianist Bertha Hope will lead a quintet dedicated the music and memory of her late husband, Elmo Hope, an important jazz pianist and composer whose was a close associate of Thelonious Monk and Bud Powell during a time when bebop innovations were being formulated and refined. Although Betha recorded three piano duets with Elmo (who died in 1967) few knew that she was a talented pianist until her 1992 Minor Music release Between Two Kings.
Like Elmo did, Bertha has a gift for subtle innovation. I hope I make it up to Minton’s to hear her. If you’re in New York, you should too. And here’s a little piece I wrote about here a dozen years ago (hence the dated references) for Jazziz magazine, that I’ve dug up in celebration.
By the time Bertha Rosemond was in junior high school in Los Angeles in the late 1940s, she was immersed in music. She’d walk home from school with a boy from her neighborhood who just happened to be destined for jazz immortality, Billy Higgins, and he’d play his sticks on anything he could: a fence, a garbage can lid. They’d trade recordings of the latest music. One day, a friend of Billy’s lent her something exotic, from New York: The Amazing Bud Powell.
“I was hooked,” she recalls, now decades removed at an Italian restaurant in Manhattan. “I heard this interval I hadn’t encountered: the flatted fifth. I kept trying ‘til I could play that beginning. I was picking it up by ear.” The young Bertha had started on piano at 3, having played in churches for her father, a singer, at 10 or 12, and having been blessed with the ability to hear such things. Continue reading “At Revived Minton's in Harlem, Pianist Bertha Hope Reflects On Her Late Husband”