Music in the Bubble

The Oscars and Musical Pillaging

2012-01-24T12:51:00.000-08:00

The Academy Award nominees were announced today. Cue fanfare!

For the few of you that have been dedicate readers of "Music in the Bubble" over the past two years, you may remember that I used to do a bit of film reviewing (see here, here, here, and here). And like everyone, I am awards obsessed, even when I try to convince myself they don't mean anything, and always get it wrong (Crash? Over Brokeback? Really? REALLY?).

So I can't help from commenting on today's nominee announcement in some way. First, the category of what I'm excited about:

1. "Tree of Life" for best picture! And Terrence Malick for best director.

This was definitely my favorite movie of the year, but I'll admit it can be a difficult viewing experience without the proper mindset. It certainly has won its share of accolades (Palme d'Or at Cannes), but I didn't think it would be acknowledged by the more middle-brow Academy. If nominees reflect what Hollywood thinks of itself, then I feel "Tree of Life" reflects their highest artistic aspirations.

2. "The Muppets" get a nomination for best song.

Most people are talking about the fact that there are only two songs nominated (I think it's because they changed the rules so that only songs that actually appear in the film can be nominated, and only one from a particular film). But I'm just excited thinking about Brett McKenzie/Jason Segal/Walter the Muppet getting to do ridiculous things on big-time TV. I disagree over their choice of song though. I would put my money on the opening "Life's a Happy Song," the most joyously upbeat, earnest song I've heard all year.

3. "The Artist" did not get the most nominations (though it did get a lot).

Ok, so I have some problems with this movie. There are a lot of neat tricks throughout, it's well-shot and such, but it never really coalesced for me into an affecting, singular product. The story and characters felt somewhat overshadowed by all the gimmickry. It still may walk away with the top prize, but without all the technical award nominations, there's a good-sized segment of the Academy voting bloc (the technicians/cinematographers) that will likely not be voting for it. If I had to put money on anything, it would be "The Descendants," (as a makeup for "Sideways" and the rest of Payne's career), or "The Help" (the closest thing nominated to a successful, middlebrow drama). The techies will probably split between "Hugo" and "Tree of Life," leaving these actor-driven dramas at the top.

But anyway, my major complaint with the artist comes with its musical score (and its best score nomination of course, and it's win at the Golden Globes). This is my greatest concern going into the awards. Yes, I did just bury the lead again.

Ludovic Bource's score for "The Artist" has generated about as much controversy as a musical score can. A little over two weeks ago, actress Kim Novak, co-star of the Hitchcock film "Vertigo," saw the much-buzzed "Artist." Soon after, she bought out a full page ad in the trade magazine Variety lambasting the film for using music from Bernard Herrmann's famous "Vertigo" score. She called the usage a "rape," feeling that her body of work "...has been violated by the movie." Novak strongly objected to the film's re-appropriation of the music as a way to score a cheap "in" with the audience, eliciting emotions that were a product of "Vertigo" rather than the new film itself.

Bource was taken aback by this comment, and responded on the red carpet at the Golden Globes (and elsewhere, everyone asked him the same question) that the use of Herrmann's score was in tribute. Since "The Artist" is a love-letter to the art of making films, then it's only appropriate to reference famous bits of film history. Bernard Herrmann's widow Norma, then responded on BBC Radio 4, saying that although the producers of "The Artist" had never asked or even said that they were using Herrmann's cues, she said that he would have approved of their use in this context.

I agree with Novak that the use of Herrmann's "Veritgo" cues was improper, but only because of the fact that I agree with Herrmann's widow that pre-existing film music would have been acceptable to use as a send-up. When I saw "The Artist," I had known of the musical controversy, and paid close attention to when the Herrmann music popped up. I was expecting to have it jump out at me, provide a substantial musical change of pace, and be evident that this was in fact a musical reference. Instead, the famous "Vertigo" love theme blended imperceptibly into the rest of the score. The movie used a re-recorded version, giving it the same timbre as the Bource's new music cues. Bource's own musical aesthetic is that of a normal, contemporary film composer - it's subtle, and more about the general atmosphere than tunes or intricate counterpoint. It certainly is far removed from the overstatement of classic composers like Herrmann, Korngold, and others whose scores demanded the attention of the viewer, and became a character themselves.

Because Bource uses the "Vertigo" themes in this way, reorchestrating them rather than playing them in their original, grainy atmosphere, he isn't as much sending up Herrmann's work as much as plagiarizing it. By altering Herrmann's music to fit his particular aesthetic, Bource is admitting that he can't write a great tune like Herrmann's "Vertigo" love theme, and so must steal it and record it in a way that divorces the theme from its original sound-context. A true send-up makes it clear that one is referencing or lampooning a particular style. It has to be obvious, like "Back in the USSR" - the Beatles sending up the Beach Boys. In his interviews, Bource is trying to make it seem that his use of Herrmann's music is in loving tribute. Bource may actually feel that way, but the way he actually uses the "Vertigo" cues feels like a robbery rather than a tribute. It would be same as if James Horner said that the reason he steals themes from Copland, Prokofiev, and Shostakovich is that they are in tribute to their great work.

Like music critic Alex Ross said, it could be some complex meta-message about the borrowing of Art in a media-saturated world, or it could just be that Bource is a hack. A hack that's the odds-on favorite to win the biggest music award in Hollywood.

I'm not saying that I am against borrowing music for different movies. It's many times hugely effective. Kubrick was an expert (all that crazy Gyorgy Ligeti in 2001, all of Clockwork Orange), Wes Anderson is an expert (um, like everything), "Tree of Life" was made by its intense use of various classical themes. It can even be effective to recompose a theme into a new soundworld, what Bource tried to do in "The Artist." In my favorite film from last year - "The Social Network" - Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross decided to arrange Edvard Grieg's famous "In the Hall of the Mountain King" from the first Peer Gynt Suite in a weird, electronic way to accompany the big regata a little over halfway through the film.

This usage works because it plays on contradictions, like all good, clear references do. Reznor and Ross's score was eerie and ambient in the best way, and very un-classical. By appropriating a famous classical theme for the scene that symbolizes the Winkelvii's inability to be truly the best at anything, the score effectively satirizes the dying old world of aristocratic privilege they live in, a world being taken over by technology. Reznor and Ross were not trying to be Grieg, like Bource is trying to be Herrmann, but were using Grieg to make a specific point.

The ineffectiveness of Bource's appropriation of the music of "Vertigo" crystalizes for the me the problems of "The Artist" in general. "The Artist" is allegedly a tribute to the silent film era, but it doesn't embrace the sound world of silent films. Bource's score is an amalgam of Herrmann-ish and noir tropes. There aren't any notable mad-cap scenes with ridiculous percussion sound effects. The era that Bource seems to fetishize is not the silent era, but the Hollywood heyday of the '40s and '50s. In this way, "The Artist" feels like a tribute to a fictional past, an era that never actually existed. Having such nostalgia for a time that didn't actually occur is a very problematic idea - an idea central to the conservative and Tea Party mindset. While a film like "Singin' in the Rain" or a musical like "Follies" gets to the heart of bygone eras of entertainment through their embrace of contradiction and pastiche and clear references to famous films of that actual era, "The Artist" prefers to rewrite film history, and steal the good stuff to make it seem like a well-made movie.

Today Meets Yesterday on Latin Jazz Double Bill

2012-01-21T11:39:00.000-08:00

It's well known that today meets yesterday in a museum, but a concert hall is also a nice place for intergenerational communication. Sometimes its just musicians in tuxedos and audience members communing with a dead white guy. But it's nicer when there's a sense of dialogue between musicians themselves, like an old master and an up-and-comer.

The McCarter Theater here at Princeton had just this kind of concert on Friday evening, pairing Cuban piano wunderkind Alfredo Rodriguez with his legendary countryman (and rare US visitor), pianist Chucho Valdés. While both performances were standouts on their own, putting them together helped highlight how the two take their Cuban musical heritage into new places.

Some assorted observations from the evening are below the jump.
On the subject of Thursday's post, there were no music stands to be found on stage!

Yup, these two groups get you, Mr. Chinen. Both Rodriguez's trio and Valdés' long-running Afro-Cuban Messengers are working bands and are pretty damn tight. Rodriguez and his mates - Peter Slavov on bass and Francisco Mela on drums - knew the tunes inside and out and so took them way out without losing the form. The Afro-Cuban Messengers have been playing this music around the world for a couple of years ago (though I think this is their first stop in the US with this material) and if they ever performed with charts, they've long been thrown away.

What's great about bands knowing music this well is that the players don't have to focus undue attention on just executing written lines or following the form. Everyone can take risks because they've all built up an intuition about how the sections fit together. This risk-taking is an essential ingredient for a tasty and vital jazz performance.

Back to Mr. Rodriguez, what's with all these awesome young Cuban pianists?

Seriously. There's David Virelles who wowed Ben Ratliff at the Village Vanguard about this time last year, and is cutting his teeth in bands led by Chris Potter and Steve Coleman. There's Fabian Almazan, whose lush harmonies and refined touch have filled out the sound of Terrence Blanchard's groups over the past few years (getting to hear him up close while playing a concert of Blanchard's "A Tale of God's Will" was a revelation), and he's shown deep compositional ambition as well on his debut album in 2011.

And then there's Rodriguez with chops out the wazoo, a sonic creativity to match, and the maturity to use said chops judiciously. Throughout much of his set, Rodriguez would wow with keyboard-spanning runs, but without the glibness of an Eldar. After completing a musical 100-meter dash in two directions simultaneously, Rodriguez would pause for more than a pregnant moment, letting the air out of those pent up phrases before jumping on another one. In terms of his sonic creativity, Rodriguez had some urge in the last jam to prepare the piano, but didn't have anything to do it with. He called for a drum solo and ran over the drum set, seeming to rummage through a pile of percussion instruments. He pulled out a stack of papers, ran back over to the piano and laid them out over the strings. Voila, he had a vaguely middle-eastern sounding, plucky instrument.

So back the point about all these unbelievably talented and creative Cuban pianists. While their styles are all different, all three players share a common musical background in the fantastic system of Cuban public music schools. From the time they were about 7 or 8, they got lessons in both classical and Afro-Cuban music, developing prodigious chops and the important nuances of style throughout their youth. The emergence of these players shares a similarity with the emergence of a lot of now-influential Finnish composers - Esa Pekka Salonen, Kaija Saariaho & Magnus Lindberg - in the 1980s. They were a product of the music education system in Finland.

This begs the question why countries like Finland and Cuba find enough room in their national and local budgets to make good musical education available to anyone, but the United States does not. There's no secret to producing a generation of fantastic artists and musicians, it just takes a little political will. But that's a rant for another day.

Across the stage from Alfredo Rodriguez, drummer Francisco Mela was using two snare drums.

Eric Harland's been doing that for a couple years now. I just thought it was his thing, possibly inspired by ?uestlove's old setup where he had like 3 snare drums to get all those different hip-hop sounds with the Roots. Then I saw Chris Dave do it. Maybe it was a Houston thing. Now Mela shows up with two snares.

It's sure getting to be a thing.

This trend is interesting to me because jazz musicians are traditionally very crotchety about changing instruments. Sax players still go for the Selmer Mark VI's that they don't make anymore (a jazz buddy of mine got really excited when he got one that was only like 1 serial number away from Rich Perry's, he of the Maria Schneider and Village Vanguard orchestras). Small group jazz drummers have generally kept the same setup since the 40s: a small bass drum, a hanging tom tom, a floor tom, and a snare drum. Granted, Mela never turned the snares on of the second snare and pretty much used it in lieu of a rack tom. But the point was he had that other option. Knowing how influential Harland, Dave and Mela are among young drummers, I feel we may be seeing the beginning of a sea change in jazz drum kit set-ups. (I feel the dual snare drum thing comes from a hip-hop sensibility - you want one with a tight crack and one with fat plop, and it's not like you're loosing a tom sound altogether).

Moving onto the second set, Chucho Valdés' opener showed that blending Cuban forms with bop language can be a bit tricky.

The first tune of the set began with a rubato melody over a flurry of minor modal chords in the early 60s Trane vein. Once the groove locked in, the drummer plus 2 percussionist attack had already pushed the musical intensity to a very high level. In post-bop small group jazz, the soloist is the hero-leader, spontaneously creating a fully formed composition through dynamic and density shifts. With the intense rhythmic activity of Cuban dance music, there's not much room to grow in these ways - the music by its nature is pretty loud and dense. The soloists on this first tune - Carlos Hernandez on tenor sax and Reinaldo Álvarez on flugelhorn - were pretty much overwhelmed by the dense thicket of drums flying around them.

Luckily, the momentum picked up from there and didn't flag the rest of the generous 90-minute set. The best blends of Cuban rhythms and bop-style improvisation came during the wide-open vamps. Without being restricted to a form with complex changes, the soloists were able to concentrate more on arc and development, and the drummers were able to back off more and let the groove breathe. "Zawinul's Mambo," a sorta reconstruction of "Birdland," was particularly effective in how drummer Juan Carlos Castro was able to lay Birdland's famous rock groove over a mambo cascara pattern, uniting diverse styles under one rhythmic roof. Valdés' solo was particularly inspired, beginning with a humble melodic statement, then adding cheeky quotes ("Blue Rondo a la Turk"), then finally reaching a piano-shaking fever pitch, the instrument cowering under his large frame and monster hands.

I would be remiss if I did not say that Batá drums are awesome.

They're awesomely-shaped, and have two different sized heads, so they're like two drums and one. And percussionist Dreiser Bambolé had three of them. That he played at once. While singing.

Batá drums are traditionally used in Yoruba religious ceremonies, but Bambolé blended these drums' traditions into the jazz-oriented band environment. Coltrane would have approved.

But the biggest takeaway from the evening was this. While they may come from different generations, both Valdés and Rodriguez know a hell of a lot of different music.

Rodriguez's tunes were certainly based in Latin dance forms like his bolero take on "Veinte Años," but he's certainly learned a lot about the power of harmonic and melodic abstraction. And there's was a ton of rhythmic playfulness that went against the grain of the grooves, in the vein of Vijay Iyer. Plus, you can tell that Rodriguez is classically-trained with his equally-athletic left hand.

Valdés set was a study in diversity, with takes on fusion ("Zawinul's Mambo"), the American Songbook ("Stella By Starlight"), and Duke Ellington (An encore medley of Satin Doll, In A Sentimental Mood, Caravan and C Jam Blues). But before that encore, Valdés played a gentle trio version of the famous theme from Rimsky-Korsakov's "Scheherezade." You could tell Valdés loved the tune, savoring its every harmonic twist. After the playing the theme, Valdés brought it into the barrelhouse, taking it through its paces over an "All Blues"-type groove.

By hearing Alfredo Rodriguez and Chucho Valdés play on the same stage, one got a fascinating glimpse into vastly different musical visions - abstract and adventurous vs. tuneful and showy - and the musical heritage that lies at the core of both.

To Read (Music) is to Not Know?

2012-01-19T11:51:00.000-08:00

Late yesterday evening, jazz critic Nate Chinen posted a rather innocuous tweet. He wrote, "Sometimes I think jazz musicians underestimate the appeal of a band performing without music stands."

Cue firestorm.

I'm not going to report on everyone who said what, just that it touched a lot of nerves across various musical communities. Drummer Matt Wilson chimed in with remembrances of Dewey Redman. Sara Kirkland Snider and Judd Greenstein spoke from experience in the world of alt-classical. And of course the prodigious tweeter-cum-trumpeter Nicholas Payton had to get in on the action this morning ("It ain't the tool, it's the fool using it," he said).

So I responded as well with the following tweet. "[I]s it that there's less tune-learning by ear now & jazz people refer to selves as composers not songwriters?"

Chinen responded by noting that this is definitely a factor, but then noting the impressiveness of working bands that play complex music without charts - Vijay Iyer's trio and the Bad Plus.

So now I will try to answer why this set off such a firestorm, what I really meant in my tweet, and what I think about Chinen's response.

What's the big deal?

Jazz people always love a negative opinion. The oft-repeated jazz is dead meme, Kurt Rosenwinkel's modern jazz sucks rant, Nicholas Payton's post-modern New Orleans-jazz as a word has no meaning thing. Stuff like that catches on. Chinen's tweet certainly has enough snark to catch on with jazz folk, and it gets an entire idea across within the 140 character limit, so all the easier to respond to.

But it can't just be the negativity thing. There were those classical people getting in on the threat too. The great thing about Chinen's tweet is that it gets at a fundamental issue of how to teach and learn music. If a small jazz group is reading music on the bandstand, it probably hasn't rehearsed the music much. The group hasn't had time to internalize it. Written music allows for quicker uptake of more music, but the problem is that there is so much more to a piece of music than what is on the page. Chinen seemed to be speaking to an apparent epidemic in jazz where bands use seemingly use gigs as rehearsal time (even affects the best of us, like Ravi Coltrane) and aren't putting forth a strong, fully-baked product.

Which leads me to my tweet

I remember hearing guitarist Mark Stewart of the Bang On a Can All Stars (and Paul Simon's music director) talk about rehearsing a piece for the group by Ornette Coleman. Stewart said that Coleman said something to effect of, "We've had notation for hundreds of years and all it does is give us more problems." Coleman has a point in that notation as we know it isn't the best way of communicating many kinds of musical gestures. Transcribing jazz solos (especially Coleman's) can many times be an exercise in futility because everything that makes the solo great - the particular character of the rhythmic feel, the pitch bends, the tone quality of particular notes - are impossible to completely encapsulate on paper.

When one is truly "reading" a piece of music, one's focus is devoted to playing the correct notes at the correct time, and maybe getting the correct articulations and dynamics too, if the notes and rhythms aren't too hard. Any of the "music" that actually comes out is the result of the pre-programmed instincts physically encoded into the muscle memory of the player. The performer doesn't really have time to think about musical character and inflection. Seeing a group of musicians read music they're not particularly familiar with in front of an audience is like seeing a show where all the actors carry their scripts around. The latter happens, but it's definitely not standard operating procedure.

If a musician learns a particular piece of music aurally, he or she has to learn the notes and rhythms in small chunks (based on the whole 7 +/- 2 bits of information that one can hold in short term memory at a given time), but doesn't just learn the notes and rhythms in abstract. The musician learns the qualities of each note, and how they're supposed to go from one note to the next in the phrase. By the time the musician finishes learning the piece, they have already gotten inside it, internalized all of the nuances.

However, this process is time consuming and so usually only works for short pieces, i.e. songs and tunes. Which finally brings me to the point of my tweet. (Prepare for un-backed sweeping statement). Until the mid-1960s or so, jazz was primarily a tune-based idiom. Jazz bands would play versions of pop tunes of the day, having learned them from ubiquitous radio-play or what not. When jazz musicians would write their own tunes, they would be based on pop forms (sometimes explicitly, stringing a new melody on a popular tune's chord progression) or traditional forms like the blues. (Digression: big bands needed notation to coordinate many instrumentalists, but that leads to another part of the argument). When beboppers came together for a jam session, there was never a need for charts. The players just picked out tunes they all knew.

Most jazz musicians have gotten away from this mindset. Young players trying to "get with the tradition" play songbook standards out of fake book and lose all the nuance that makes a tune good. The impulse to art-ify the jazz led most musicians to write more and more complex charts with shifting meters and through-composed solo sections. There's a shift from an aural, vernacular idiom to a written, art-oriented one (America's classical music anyone?).

It's no surprise then that jazz people refer to themselves as composers rather than songwriters. To me, I feel that a lot of post-bop falls for a fetish of complexity that only a few musicians (David Binney as the prime exception that proves the rule) can pull off. My guess is that Chinen was at a gig with one of these kinds of bands when he unloaded his tweet.

There are still a few jazz musicians that work in a no-notation, tune-oriented environment. Lee Konitz comes to mind, with his pick an arbitrary standard and hope the band catches on game. Then there's Bill Frisell and his trio, who have a unique shared vocabulary of tunes across generations and genres. And then there's the whole folk/traditional/fiddle circuit where written charts would be even more out of place. It makes sense then that a lot of the bands I've been getting into lately that seem less reliant on charts come from this folk-ish sense of tune (Jeremy Udden's Plainville, Jenny Scheinman's Mischief and Mayhem).

Chinen's Response and Complexity Without Charts

I definitely agree with Chinen in terms of the impressiveness of groups like the Bad Plus and Vijay Iyer trio that can pull off tricky pieces with hardly a piece of paper music in sight. That's true with groups that play highly-complex classical music too. It's nuts seeing So Percussion rock John Cage's epic Third Construction completely memorized. And then there's Steve Reich's original group that read pieces like Music for 18 Musicians off little cheat sheets that hardly got in the way of anything.

When I perform any solo percussion piece, I always have to do it without music, just from a practical standpoint - I have to watch where my sticks are flying in order to hit the right marimba bar, or the right part of drum. Having to memorize pieces also helps me really internalize all aspects of the complex music. Having a written chart to read from may help the learning process at first, but by the time I memorize it, it's in the same performance state it would be if I learned it aurally bit by bit.

In this regard, I don't feel that the Bad Plus and Vijay Iyer playing without charts is any more special than a folk group playing a series of traditional tunes they learned by ear. The concept of "tunes" being "simple" is definitely blown up by this album by Crooked Still's Brittany Haas and composer-fiddler-laptop maven Dan Trueman (Go to track 5 for prime example). It's certainly possible to learn a lot of Vijay's and the Bad Plus's music in this way (I've done it with "Prehensile Dream" on piano). And Vijay's complexities are rhythmic rather than form or harmony-based. If Norwegian Fiddlers can learn the uneven springar meter (see the last track "Hangdog" below) by ear, it's possible to learn Vijay's crazy rhythms that way as well.

&amp;lt;a href="http://brittanddanband.bandcamp.com/album/crisscross"&amp;gt;CrissCross by The Brittany Haas and Dan Trueman Band&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;

In the end, I feel performing without written music and music stands is the result of knowing music in a deep, subconscious, programmed-into-the-muscles way. One can get to this deep knowledge by learning music aurally and capturing the entire essence of each short phrase, or by memorizing a written work over a long period of time, and gradually adding more and more nuance through practice. In a performance context, it becomes more than just showing the audience you know the music so deeply, it takes on a sense of performance art. Without worrying about the mechanics of reading music, the players have the opportunity to actually look at each other and interact, move more freely and expressively, and translate the essence of the music in a more unadulterated way. It takes on a more ritualistic bent, and a greater sense of humanity. Watching someone read is boring. Watching someone speak well is fascinating. (Maybe they can make musical teleprompters?)

I'm now led back to the first part of my entry - why this tweet set off such a firestorm. Based on the amount of word vomit here, Chinen's tweet touches on huge issues that are very central to what makes a piece of music good - the what (the notes) or the how (the character). Pretty impressive for something less than 140 characters long.

Either way, I do think we can all agree on that if you're going to get up in front of an audience to play music, you better know that music damn well, music stand or no music stand.

Best Downtown Music of the Year - Even More Intriguing Instrumentals

2012-01-02T21:45:00.000-08:00

5. Ben Allison - Action Refraction

"Jazz musicians are often their own worst enemy," bassist and composer Ben Allison says. "The classic trap is trying to add interest to a piece by making it more complex."

So when Allison sits down to compose, he keeps his "jazz" instincts in check by keeping things simple. Allison's compositions, like on his terrific 2009 album "Think Free," are quirky but tuneful, expressively direct but filled with little hidden surprises.

Because of his interest in tunes over pyrotechnics, one would think that Allison would be an expert at the art of the cover. In reality, Allison is deathly afraid of taking on well-known tunes, whether songbook standards or the rock hits he grew up with. On his first nine albums as a leader, Allison performed only two covers total.

That has all changed with "Action-Refraction."

While a jazz album with tunes by PJ Harvey and the Carpenters may appear to the cynical as a self-conscious grab for younger audiences, in Allison's case it is a great risk, and one that pays off fantastically for both performer and listener.

Even on a jazz classic like Theolonius Monk's "Jackie-ing" and classical composer Samuel Barber's "St. Ita's Vision," Allison imbues the entire album with a strong rock vibe. Drummer Rudy Royston tunes his kit dry and low, grounding the tracks in that kind of time-feel that makes you clench your lips in approval. Pianist Jason Lindner sticks mostly to keyboards of the electronic variety, including the Prophet synth that seems to pop up on every hit today. And to complete the package, guitarists Steve Cardenas and Brandon Seabrook unleash scurrying lines and thrashing dissonances that could even make Nels Cline a bit jealous.

What's most impressive about "Action-Refraction" though is how thoroughly Allison reinvents each tune without losing its essential personality. “We’ve Only Just Begun” is retrofitted with a hyperactive breakbeat from Royston as guitarist Cardenas emits full-bodied downstrums. Saxophonist Michael Blake lofts a languorous interpretation of the melody on top, capturing the casual innocence of Karen Carpenter’s vocal. All together, the cover elicits the feeling of someone caught in a crazy urban pace of life, using this song of their youth to ground them.

But the cover that sticks in the mind longest is of Donny Hathaway’s “Someday We’ll All Be Free.” Trying to duplicate Hathaway’s greasy, moving vocal from the original is an unwinnable battle, so Allison instead attempted to translate the cathartic feeling of the song into an instrumental gesture. After a subtle statement of the melody from Lindner, the band launches into a simple, two-chord slow build. Little by little, Steve Cardenas’ lines become more churlish and Brandon Seabrook gradually threatens to down the vessel with unholy noises coming from a Walkman plugged into his guitar pickup. After four and a half minutes of building tension, it all explodes in a cathartic release at the return of the main hook. Ohmygod. Dry mouth. Chills. You turn the album off for a minute just to make sense of it all.

4. NOW Ensemble - Awake

&amp;amp;amp;lt;p&amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;p&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;a href="http://nowensemble.bandcamp.com/album/awake-2"&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;Awake by NOW Ensemble&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;/a&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;/p&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;lt;/p&amp;amp;amp;gt;

A band name like "NOW Ensemble" makes a big statement. Capitalization is confrontation in typeset. It's really like having one of those exclamation points-within-parenthesis, but without the ridiculousness. So this band name asserts hipness, newness, all-around now-ness with such force that it would be an utterly pretentious name if the music didn't encapsulate what's going on in classical music today, which it does.

If the record label New Amsterdam (see the Jefferson Friedman/Chiara Quartet album too) is the face of the alt or indie classical movement in New York, and NOW Ensemble - which is co-led by New Amsterdam co-director Judd Greenstein - is the flagship group of New Amsterdam, then by syllogism NOW Ensemble is the face of New York indie-classical. On their sophomore album "Awake," this chamber presents a set of 6 distinctive compositions that articulate the indie-classical values of textural novelty, cross-genre engagement, and a mindset of "We care if you listen!"*

There is much to like in all of these pieces. There's the spine-tingling pins & needles texture in Prix de Rome winner Sean Friar's "Velvet Hammer." There are the moody, eye-liner black harmonies of Missy Mazzoli's "Magic With Everyday Objects." There's Bon Iver-like lyricism in David Crowell's "Waiting in the Rain for Snow" and darting Afro-pop guitar lines in Mark Dancigers' "Burst."

But you may not even get to those tracks for a while after falling in love with Greenstein's own "Change." It starts with a solitary flute fragment and over the course of 13 minutes blossoms into a full-on dance party. With halting phrases and bouncy rhythms borrowed from Hip-Hop and an inviting modal harmonic palette, it goes down as easy as a pop tune but with intricacies that demand repeated listens. Your culturally-aware non-listener friends will exclaim "I can't believe it's classical!" It certainly doesn't pander to fans of the National and Dirty Projectors, it just articulates a belief that classical music can be enjoyed by anyone willing to tune in.

*"Change," "Velvet Hammer" and "Burst" are by Princeton University grad students and premiered at the University, a far cry from the Babbitisms of eras past.

3. Gerald Cleaver & Uncle June - Be It As I See It

&amp;amp;amp;lt;p&amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;a href="http://geraldcleaver.bandcamp.com/album/be-it-as-i-see-it"&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;Be It As I See It by Gerald Cleaver - Uncle June&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;/a&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;lt;/p&amp;amp;amp;gt;

Like its counterpart on the vocal list (The Roots' "undun"), drummer Gerald Cleaver's "Be It As I See It" is an ambitious concept album. It translates into musical form the Great Migration of African-Americans in the early 20th century - and the move of Cleaver's own family from the rural South to Detroit, Michigan in particular. Just as no family's story, or no person's retelling of the family story, is the same, each track here has a different mood, a different soundworld, a different sense of narrative and pacing. All in all, it's quite the messy affair, but held together by the indefatigable drummer-leader and his killer band featuring the likes of Mat Maneri on viola (he of the Paul Motian strings album), Craig Taborn on piano (he of the prodigious solo piano album), and Tony Malaby on saxophone (wait, how's he not on my list this year?).

Much of the album is dense and abstract, sometimes Beefhearty on "To Love," sometimes AACM/chamber jazzy on "Fence & Post: Lee/Mae." But there's a intense warmth that permeates every inch of the music, probably stemming from Cleaver's old world, trashy cymbals. It's familiar free jazz, a story told over dinner, or a fire in the living room.

You feel the sense of history most intently on "Fence & Post: Statues/UmBra." It starts with a calm broken eighth-note feel, Taborn adding an array of lush keyboard harmonies on top. Visions fly through the darkening mind - open fields seen from a train, tall buildings far off. Then it all disintegrates under a wall of indecipherable voices, distorted guitar, and phosphorescent keyboard splotches. Cleaver and co. have just transported you to a time you didn't think you knew.

2. Jeremy Udden's Plainville - If the Past Seems So Bright

&amp;lt;a href="http://sunnysidezone.com/album/if-the-past-seems-so-bright"&amp;gt;If the Past Seems So Bright by Jeremy Udden's Plainville&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;

You've probably found a couple of commonalities in what I liked this year and since we're getting near the end, I'll freely admit them.

I love messy music.

I love music that sustains a wonderful mood for a long time.

"If the Past Seems So Bright" is both messy and leisurely, and got me right from the start, as my review from May certifies.

But what makes it hold up against all the other great music I've heard this year is how it pushes those long sustains to extremes. It is the most patient music I've heard all year.

The opening track "Bright Eyes" is the prime example of the album's patience. The tempo is in the ballpark of 40 beats per minute, about 66% slower than a big hit from the likes of Gaga or LMFAO, literally at the far end of the metronome. Drummer RJ Miller rarely deviates from this dirge-like boom-chick the entire tune, maybe adding a sizzle-cymbal accent once a minute. Keyboardist Pete Rende, guitarist Brandon Seabrook (yep, him again), and the leader-saxophonist Jeremy Udden each take long, spacious solos, upwards of 2 minutes each. They aren't laden with vocabulary, but emphasize and explore the individual sounds their instruments make. It may not "go anywhere," but it sure doesn't need to.

Maybe "If the Past Seems So Bright" can be a part of 2012 resolution: take an analog break from this crazy digital world once each day.

1. David Binney - Graylen Epicenter

The nebulous genre of "post-bop" is a real hard one to navigate for musicians. First to describe post-bop. It's um, like, gosh. Maybe the best way to describe is just any music descended from the tradition of Charlie Parker & John Coltrane (and others of course). There's an emphasis on vocabulary & harmony, playing changes. Actually, it's really the style of jazz that's taught in American conservatories. And herein lies the dual rub of this style.

First, with everyone being taught the same scales and ways of improvising, how is one going to forge and individual voice. And second, why waste your breath when Miles & Trane have already played it all?

This looks like a pretty bleak picture of post-bop, and for jazz in general, considering that it's the dominant style. But some players and composers have found their way out. Tenor Sax player Mark Turner embraced the woody sound of pre-Coltrane cool players like Warne Marsh. Trumpeter Terrence Blanchard embraces cinematic harmony and pacing (he does do a lot of film scores for Spike Lee), a moody style picked up by acolytes like pianists Aaron Parks & Fabian Almazan and trumpeter Ambrose Akinmusire. Then there's the whole crew of musicians that embraced different strains of Afro-Latin music, a list that would stretch far too long.

And then there's alto saxophonist David Binney.

In the two decades since his move to New York City, Binney has done pretty much everything a saxophonist can do. He's formed collaborative bands, some funky, some Latin-tinged. He's been a first call sideman for jazzpersons of all stripes, from Joel Harrison (see no. 9) to garrulous saxmaster Donny McCaslin. He's held a regular gig at Greenwich Village's 55 Bar for a decade now. He's even spent some time backing up the likes of Maceo Parker and Aretha Franklin. Out of all these experiences, Binney has formed a unique musical vision, combining post-bop's reputation for uncompromising angularity with a punkish sense that Binney might die if those notes don't come out of his horn.

Binney's style has reached a new apotheosis with his uncompromisingly-titled "Graylen Epicenter." And it sure does start with bang.

The beginning of the opener "All of Time" feels you're being shot out on one of those 500-foot-tall phallic roller coasters at Six Flags or Cedar Point. But instead of being over in 30 seconds, it goes on for 3 minutes without letting up. The second 2 are occupied by a thrashing and altogether astonishing dual drum solo by Brian Blade and Dan Weiss over an unrelenting ra-ta-tat tat vamp (since when is it ok to start a tune with a drum solo? Oh well, I'm not gonna argue here). Just to make sure you don't die from an adrenaline-induced heart attack, the solo subsides into a lightly swinging piano solo by Craig Taborn (see what I said about the sideman thing?). But Taborn builds it all back up before too long, unleashing a typically wild and passionate solo from Binney. Then unexpectedly at the 8:30 mark, a voice pops up in the mix. No, it's not that of Gretchen Parlato, who's been wordlessly vocalizing the melody throughout, but that of Binney himself. "If I only could only see you," Binney intones like a lost backup track for Brian Wilson's "Smile" record, "then all of time would stand still for you and I." With all the thrash and edge leading up to it, it's a disarming and vulnerable moment and it somehow feels like the just the thing the piece needed to send it out into the stratosphere.

Ok, now it is time for you to listen to this face-meltage.

Good. Now that's taken care of.

Even after a transcendent performance such as this, the rest of the album doesn't disappoint. There's still plenty of drum dueling on the quirky free-funk jams "Terrorists and Movie Stars" and "Any Years Costume." There are dynamic, exploratory solos on the title track and the chipper vamp-based "Equality At Low Levels." And there's tenderness too on the slow-build pop ballad "Everglow" and the tropic lullaby "From This Far."

On "Graylen Epicenter," David Binney takes a defibrillator to post-bop, cutting through all the irregular chaotic beats, showing that there is a pulse there, and still many new adventures to be had.

For all of time, you ask? I can't say for sure, but I wouldn't count anything out with Mr. Binney around.

Downtown Music of the Year - Vocal Edition, part Deux

2011-12-31T12:34:00.000-08:00

Without further ado, I count down the 5 best vocal albums of the year starting with...

5. Abigail Washburn - City of Refuge

&amp;amp;amp;lt;p&amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;p&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;p&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;p&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;a href="http://abigailwashburn.bandcamp.com/album/city-of-refuge"&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;City of Refuge by Abigail Washburn&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;/a&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;/p&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;/p&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;/p&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;lt;/p&amp;amp;amp;gt;

The title track on Abigail Washburn's "City of Refuge" begins quite humbly. It's just an Appalachian Old-Time clawhammer banjo tune, dry and unadorned. The lyrics begin simply enough too. "I got a mother, I got a father," Washburn intones in her clear, cracker-barrel voice, seeming as an extension of the banjo sound itself. As the song continues, more sounds are added little by little. A droning accordion, crescendo, a second voice, fiddle, and before you know it, the world of Appalachian Old-Time music has been transformed. It has the sense of U2's castles-in-the-air aesthetic, but more tied to the land, organic.

The rest of the album explores this concept further, marrying American folk traditions with the grand gestures of arena rock, the quirky orchestrations of indie, and even some flavors from the Far East (Washburn has spent quite a bit of time in China. Ask her about the time she got thrown out of cab in Bejing for not doing a traditional Chinese song right). The fact that all these disparate sounds are wholly integrated is a result of healthy collaboration. Washburn's main songwriting partner Kai Welch brings along his piano and guitar chops and his rock-hewn instincts. The band is then filled out with great hired guns like Chris Funk of the Decemberists and guitarist Bill Frisell. And it's all guided by the steady hand of crack producer Tucker Martine.

The production values are a throwback just like the music itself - to a time when big studios were playgrounds for experimentation in addition to hit factories. With the marriage of tradition and experimentation, Washburn and co. have created an album with strong roots that allow it to grow into a lush, flowering tree. It's not a "something for everyone" kind of album, but a singular work that anyone can embrace.

4. Hazmat Modine - Cicada

Back in the days before amps and microphones, the way to get a roomful of people moving was to have a big band of loud instruments - trumpets, trombones, tuba, and plenty of drums - and set 'em loose. Singer/harmonicat Wade Schuman's Hazmat Modine (a hazardous central heater - they do blow some dangerously hot air) certainly harkens back to those days, but with an ear for diverse world styles that can only be of the moment.

The tunes on "Cicada" are an encyclopedic collection of old-school brass-band styles, from down-home blues and New Orleans second-line to calypso, ska, and even a bit of tango. The band of New York studio and theater virtuosos swings through each style with equal aplomb, creating arrangements with tight unison figures and unfettered, improvisatory joy. The seemingly-lost Stax records hit "I've Been Lonely For So Long" is positively booty shaking, especially on that killer outro (let go longer please!).

But the real stunner on this album is Schuman's voice. It's infinitely versatile, with a bluesman's gravel, a falsetto in the stratosphere, and anything in between. You spend the album's full runtime in slack-jawed amazement, good feeling piled upon good feeling. If we do actually suffer an apocalypse in 2012, thank goodness there will still be good music to make us happy that doesn't need to be plugged in.

3. The Roots - undun

People like to talk about the many different sides of The Roots. There's the greatest band in late nite side with Jimmy Fallon. There's the funky jam band side when they perform live. There's the crack studio band that backs up the likes of John Legend. And then there's the group that has made worldly, thoughtful hip-hop albums of their own for 20 years. Well I'd like to argue that there's only one side to The Roots. Or better yet, they make the case themselves on their terribly ambitious Hip-Hop concept album (or maybe an opera, or a film), "undun."

"undun" tells the story of one Redford Stephens in reverse, starting with his death and recounting the choices and events that brought him there. The album is both political and philosophical, dealing with issues of fate and free will, especially how these concepts relate to issues of urban poverty. A rotating cast of singers and rappers (Bilal, Big K.R.I.T, Phonte, and more) alongside Roots MC Black Thought illuminate the many different sides of Stephens' mind in a highly personal way. Stephens is everyman and no man, not a fully-drawn character, but a loose archetype brought to life by the personal experience of each vocalist.

The music that backs up these dark and potent ruminations shows just how much music is inside the head of de facto music director/drummer ?uestlove. The album runs the gauntlet of music styles from lush neo-soul to evocative film score to free-jazz freakout. Questo leads the band through all these varied styles with aplomb, breathing life into quantized grooves and synthesized soundscapes. In fact, the album's musical seed is the short piano prelude "Redford" from inscrutable indie darling Sufjan Stevens' "Michigan" album. Just the variety of music explored and appropriated on "undun" shows that The Roots don't see any walls between their personalities, it's all part of their huge and playful aesthetic.

"undun" is as much a true Hip-Hop album as "Sergeant Peppers'" was a true rock album. By embracing such disparate styles and even abstraction, these two albums push their respective genres into art music territory. It's clear that both are transcendent classics of their time and place. But as the last plaintive string chords ring out at the end of "undun," the question remains: what's next?

2. Donnacha Dennehy/Crash Ensemble - Grá Agus Bás

When I loaded this album onto my computer, for some reason iTunes decided to import the second half first, a setting of W.B. Yeats poems for the soprano Dawn Upshaw, called "That The Night Come." So when I pushed play after it finished, this was the first piece I heard.

And I got one of those ohmygod-massive-chills-I-don't-know-what-to-do moments.

I'm someone who believes that if you come up with a heavenly sound, there's no reason to move away from that. In that first part of the song cycle - "He Wishes His Beloved Were Dead" - Dennehy magically concocts one of those heavenly soundworlds and sits there blissfully for four minutes (that I wish would go on for just a bit more!). The combination of string harmonics, high piano notes, electric guitar, bowed vibraphone, and smatterings of woodwinds congeals into one perfectly homogenous but ever-shifting mass. You feel as if you're suspended in a light-blue crystal, with little flashes of northern lights skipping across your gaze. This accompaniment doesn't feel like fancy dressing for the vocal line, but instead reverses the relationship. Upshaw must navigate her way through the texture carefully, not to disturb the delicate crystalline arrangement. She passes this treacherous test with flying colors, her warm voice becoming a true part within the gorgeous texture.

Dennehy is a true master of texture and orchestration and throughout this album, he creates many fascinating soundworlds to accompany the diverse moods of the text and diverse styles of singing. In contrast to Upshaw's clear operatic soprano on "That The Night Come," Iarla Ó Lionáird shows off his laser-beam, Sean-nos style voice on the album's title piece. To bring the music closer to its traditional origins, Dennehy experiments with more natural "just intonation" rather than the 12-note equal tempered tuning we're accustomed to. The piece is a 25-minute journey to the past and back, a luminous vision of a world we know only from memory.

1. tUnE-yArDs - w h o k i l l

So far on this list we've seen styles from around the world, unheard-of voices, kicking it old-school, embracing technology, party music, ponder music. They're all special, satisfying listening experiences, but there's a reason why they occupy spots 2 to 10.

Because tUnE-yArDs has it all. Merrill Garbus' sophomore album delivers on all the promise of her lo-lo-fi debut and then some. Her voice, from vulnerable whisper to terrifying scream, seems to come from some West African country who's name you forget, or may not actually exist. Armed with an array of loop pedals, she multiplies this powerful, acidic voice into a choir, or really a sonic army. Then there are the gut-busting drum beats, the enveloping bass lines of partner-in-jazz-crimes Nate Brenner, and some meaty dual-sax hooks that stir this mystic brew to a fever pitch. It's got the energy and let's-play-together vibe of a drum circle, but without the haphazard sonic construction. "w h o k i l l" is a party, whether it comes blasting out of a DJ sound system or your earbuds.

Garbus certainly has her way with words as well. The opening "My Country" is the official anthem of a partly-cloudy patriot, while "Gangsta" takes on the issues of cultural-musical appropriation present in Garbus' music itself. The infectious hooks and near-manic energy of all these songs make you want to listen again right after they've finished, and they reward you for it. Each time, you'll hear the composite riffs and beats a bit differently, realizing their gloriously human imperfections. It isn't music that's trying to be simply likable. It's so very human and puts itself out there without apology. And when music is this real and natural, you have to love it.

Best Downtown Music of the Year - Instrumental Intrigue

2011-12-29T20:08:00.000-08:00

2011 is ending fast, and there's still 15 more great albums to talk about! So onto my best instrumental albums of the year list, numbers 10 to 6.

10. Tim Berne/Jim Black/Nels Cline - The Veil

What happens when you put three avant-improv masters in a sweltering storefront in the East Village, let in a standing room audience of 80, and turn off the fans?

Some real hot music, that's what.

Ok, ok, haha, I'll stop with the puns. But this music is truly burning.

Black drives the bus with a manic energy. Cline splatters the canvas with torrid sheets of guitar-paint. Berne somehow wiggles a sense of narrative through this dense sonic thicket. It's a real head-trip and a massive adrenaline rush; a thinking-person's rock, and a rockin' person's jazz.

It's lightning in a bottle.

That should be enough to get you to check it out, but if you want a bit more play-by-play, I have some here.

9. Joel Harrison String Choir - The Music of Paul Motian

&amp;amp;amp;lt;p&amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;a href="http://sunnysidezone.com/album/the-music-of-paul-motian"&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;The Music Of Paul Motian by Joel Harrison String Choir&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;/a&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;lt;/p&amp;amp;amp;gt;

You've heard me go on about the uniqueness and vitality Paul Motian's drumming. But one can't have a three-decade career as a bandleader in jazz without having some compositional voice. Motian's compositional acumen tends to be overshadowed by his inimitable drumming, or his drumming is at least understood as a necessary ingredient for the success of his compositions.

Guitarist Joel Harrison disagrees with that critical appraisal and makes a compelling case for the strength and beauty of Motian's output through his rearrangements for an ensemble of 2 violins, 2 violas, cello, and 2 guitars.

That's right. No drummers here.

Motian certainly had a soft spot for the sounds of string instruments. He worked with soundscaping guitarist Bill Frisell for thirty years, then put together bands with 2 or 3 guitarists, and later embraced the wily microtonal sounds of Mat Maneri's viola (which also appears on Mr. Harrison's album). While Motian composed at the piano (having learned from Keith Jarrett in the 1970s), he probably never had the chops to compose multiple lines at once. Instead, he'd keep the sustain pedal down, letting rich chords ring out while lacing folk-like melodies above.

Harrison has serious classical-composing chops of his own, and dresses up Motian's tunes with ornate counterpoint. Yet these arrangements play to the strengths of these improv-ready musicians, never weighed down in filigree, always putting the tunes first. Just the sound of the string choir emphasizes the rustic feeling of Motian's tunes, strengthening his style's identity as surreal Americana, like a mystical landscape of Andrew Wyeth. "It Should Have Happened A Long Time Ago" is utterly transporting, unfolding like a rough-hewn cartoon flight over grain-colored hills.

Although the album came out 11 months before Motian's death at the age of 80, it proves both a fitting tribute and a convincing bit of advocacy. Here's to hoping that Harrison's tribute inspires others to explore and perform Motian's miraculous music.

8. Tyshawn Sorey - Oblique - I

Barrels through the knottiest mixed-meters with the greatest of ease. Has hands faster than Buddy Rich's and softer than Shelly Manne's.

And he plays trombone?

Yes, Tyshawn Sorey is a drumming superhero. He's been a vital sidekick for math-jazz innovators Steve Coleman, Steve Lehman, and Vijay Iyer for nearly a decade, but more recently has staked out his own unique compositional space. 2009's "Koan" was a gorgeously sparse affair, and a real surprise to those (myself included) that only knew his hyperprecise prog drumming. "Oblique I" splits the difference, featuring a set of compositions that are somehow both cerebral and inviting.

Sorey's never afraid of odd group combinations (trombone and acoustic guitar anyone?), but on "Oblique I" opts for a seemingly traditional jazz instrumentation - alto sax (the firecracker Loren Stillman), guitar (the bracing Todd Neufield), piano (the triple-armed John Escreet), bass (the rock-solid Chris Tordini), & drums. Yet this doesn't mean the results are any less novel and adventurous.

In terms of both titles (just numbers) and syntax, Sorey's compositions echo those of his teacher Anthony Braxton. There are just the vaguest hints of tonality and tunefulness, but a huge dynamic range that nary another record can match. The pieces' through-lines are built from these dynamic and textural contrasts, yielding moments of catharsis and heartbreaking vulnerability. Sorey himself guides the proceedings with his peerless drumming. He tunes his drums low for jazz, enveloping the band in a warm halo. And even though he has chops out the wazoo, he never flaunts them in a Buddy Rich-type way, instead electing to develop his own melodies around the toms and cymbals.

"Oblique" describes the music quite perceptively. It's rich and mysterious, never coming straight at the listener. One who decides to follow these circuitous routes will be very much rewarded.

7. The Chiara String Quartet & Matmos - Jefferson Friedman: Quartets

&amp;lt;a href="http://chiarastringquartet.bandcamp.com/album/jefferson-friedman-quartets"&amp;gt;Jefferson Friedman: Quartets by Chiara String Quartet&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;

I'd love to imagine Franz Josef Haydn, the proverbial godfather of the string quartet, taking a trip to the present day to hear what music is like. He comes to New York, hearing that there are some really great string quartets doing cool things there. He stops in at the place these cool string quartets like to play most, Le Poussin Rouge on Bleecker Street. One of the said cool quartets - the Chiara String Quartet - walks out on stage to play their friend Jefferson Friedman's String Quartet no. 2. They start and Haydn's head asplodes.

Cuz the sounds that just came out of the ensemble he thought he knew so well are so far beyond his wildest imagination.

Friedman's 2nd String Quartet was written for his friends of the Chiara Quartet in 1999, and it's almost criminal that it has taken so long to make its way to disk. The head-sploding intro is a string quartet gone death metal, all full-bowed sixteenth notes and gnarly dissonance. If anyone tells you classical music is boring, just play them that intro. But the piece isn't just shredding. There are these time-stopping long tones, which sound as if you're staring across an cold, undisturbed lake at sunset. There are burbling pizzicato grooves that slink and tremble underneath wry, undulating melodies.

Friedman is a master at exploring all of the new possibilities these old instruments can offer. In order to make a violin growl like an electric guitar, Friedman has violinist Rebecca Fisher (actually, everyone does this at some point) dig into the strings very close to the bridge, an eerie effect called sul ponticello. But it's not just specific techniques. Friedman seems to know what each member does well and the players know what Friedman likes to write. With composer and ensemble working together so closely, the piece takes on a life beyond the notes. There's a reason why the opening daga-daga-daga seems to jump out of the speakers and grab your throat.

To further the spirit of collaboration, Friedman asked his friends in the electronics duo Matmos to put together some remixes of his string quartets. It's a testament to the strength and imagination of the pieces that they sound just fine overlaid with quantized electro grooves and glitchy effects.

6. Craig Taborn - Avenging Angel

I had meant to review this album when it came out in June. But after listening to it once, I felt I didn't get it enough to be able to translate it. It definitely hit me like a sack of bricks that "Avenging Angel" was a monumental statement by a real deep musician. But what were all of those ideas that Craig Taborn was throwing around? Where did they come from?

Six months later, "Avenging Angel" is still as astounding and inscrutable as ever; astounding and inscrutable as why the world's best (for my money) improvising pianist has the proclivity to only put out an album of his own every several years.

In many ways, "Avenging Angel" is a very self-conscious ECM solo piano record in the tradition of Keith Jarrett and Paul Bley. The opening "The Broad Day King" is Jarrett-like in its lightly-bobbing groove and effortless lyricism, while "Diamond Turning Dream" shares Bley's penchant for pointillism. And of course its recorded in high ECM style, with that crystal piano sweeping through a reverberant hall. Yet all these influences - and tons more from classical impressionism to metal-ish dissonances - are distilled by Taborn's well-pondered aesthetic.

From a technical standpoint, Taborn is primarily concerned with two main ideas - developing musical ideas simultaneously with both hands (gleaned from the multi-keyboard work of Weather Report's Joe Zawinul) and exploring every possible color and articulation that a piano can express. "Neverland" is a tour de force in both departments. Each hand plays its own melody, rarely more than one note at a time each. While the two lines relate to each other harmonically, they don't line up in a way that makes one subservient to the other. Taborn achieves this remarkable independence through attacking notes in different ways, ping-ponging the listener's attention from one line to the other. The time isn't as relaxed as a simpler improvisation like "Broad Day King," but it shows just how hard it is to do what Taborn is attempting. Many players with this kind of technique tend to coast too much (see Corea, Chick), always doing what they do best. It's great to see someone like Taborn overload his CPU and see what unexpected things come out.

Best Downtown Music of the Year - Vocal Edition

2011-12-24T19:28:00.000-08:00

Merry Christmas Even and Happy 5^th night of Hanukkah! It is during this time of year when we all wax nostalgic upon seeing cousins and old friends home from college. And considering my propensity to shift the subject of conversation to what my father calls “Les Grandes Topiques Musicales,” I wax nostalgic about all the great music I heard for the first time this year.

Since working at NPR gave me access to a huge swath of this year’s recorded output, I heard a lot more great albums this year than last. So in a spirit of inclusion, I have not just one but two best-of-2011 lists – one for vocal albums and one for instrumentals. As last year, the official downtown music rules apply. All of these albums don’t fit super-comfortably into any one genre, and that’s why they sounded different than most else I heard this year.

Today we’ll start with the vocal list, counting down from number 10 to number 6.

10. Crooked Still – Friends of Fall EP

This quintet of Boston-based newgrass virtuosos has sadly just gone on hiatus (er’body’s got other projects, like singer Aoife O’Donovan touring around with Yo-Yo Ma and Chris Thile), but not before they put together this valedictory EP. Each member took on the role of bandleader for a day, bringing in a new tune or a favorite cover. The results, at just under 23 minutes, show just how wide their concept of folk is.

There’s a frisky cover of the Beatles’ “We Can Work it Out,” and a heartbreakingly spare one of Paul Simon’s Bachian “American Tune.” And then there are originals like banjoist Greg Liszt’s (who has a Ph.D in Biology from MIT btw) “It’ll End Too Soon,” and singer O’Donovan’s “The Peace of Wild Things” that meld pop chord progressions and poetic lyrics, while still rooted in the American Old Time style. But the highlight may be fiddler Brittany Haas’ arrangement of the traditional “When Sorrows Encompass Me ‘Round,” a driving update that makes the tune as fresh as any of the originals. Lines fly between Haas and cellist Tristan Clarridge. Bassist Corey DiMario grounds the activity with a deep time-feel. And over top of it all, O’Donovan intones the tune with a quiet intensity, as if she is screaming through a whisper.

9. Becca Stevens Band – Weightless

&amp;lt;a href="http://sunnysidezone.com/album/weightless"&amp;gt;Weightless by Becca Stevens Band&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;

Becca Stevens' "Weightless" opens with a gentle pep talk of a title track. "I know this is hard but by holding on you only make it harder," she sings. "So let go, embrace what you are." This broken, vulnerable character is a near-constant presence on the album, sometimes lamenting ("No More"), sometimes fighting ("Canyon Dust"). Combined with some choice covers, including a wonderful folksy reinvention of the Smiths' "There Is A Light That Never Goes Out,", Stevens seems to have curated a typical set of confessional, singer-songwriter-y songs.

But what makes this album special is the "band" part. Stevens' assertive, passionate vocals are backed by an array of her exotic guitars (like the South American charango on the cover), Liam Robinson's accordion, and a rocking rhythm team of Chris Tordini on bass and Jordan Perlson on drums. The arrangements are rich and intricate, like the 3-part vocal canon on the title track. It's totally hip and worldly, an organically-grown fusion of folk, jazz, and pop. The energy and bounce of the Becca Stevens Band makes this a uniquely irresistible confession. You'll want to start it again the moment it ends.

8. Fleet Foxes – Helplessness Blues

In an era where reinvention rules music, the greatest risk can be sticking with what you know. It's a risk that 2008's biggest breakout band Fleet Foxes took for their sophomore album and it has paid massive dividends. Their Blue Ridge-via-Seattle sound struck a major chord with digital world-weary fans, particularly in Great Britain, where their debut album went gold. But because of the Pitchfork-induced obsession with an indie band's schtick, another album of homey vocal harmonies may have landed with a thud among cognoscenti.

But Fleet Foxes proved that they were more than up to the challenge with the release of "Helplessness Blues." Instead of abandoning a core band sound and self-consciously experimenting with other forms, lead singer Robin Pecknold and co dove deeper into what they do best, finding new unexplored avenues within the well-hashed over realm of folk rock. Instead of relying on the wall-of-sound harmonies, Pecknold stepped closer to center stage, revealing new expressive shades of his voice. The band expanded simple songs into mini-symphonies with multiple sections, leading listeners through narratives rather than relying on hooks and images. And no band seemed to be more in step with the millennial generation zeitgeist of heading into an unforgiving world after a childhood in Lake Woebegone than the Fleet Foxes on the record's title track.

Pecknold's voice, direct-yet-mysterious lyrics, and the band's rich arrangements come together in full on "The Shrine/An Argument." A first person narrative of jilted love and yearning for peace, the song goes from burbling guitar arpeggios, to thrashing downstrumming, to an angelic a capella chorale, to a free-jazz freakout, ending with a series of plaintive string chords, revealing the many complicated emotions of the song's narrator. Pecknold is at his most affecting here, as his yelping, "Sunshine over me no matter what I do," is positively chill-inducing. "Helplessness Blues" is no rehash of their first album, but an even richer listening experience.

7. The Claudia Quintet + 1 – What is the Beautiful

Beat poetry accompanied by jazz has a much-maligned reputation. It seems terribly self-indulgent for someone to go up on a stage and say whatever and then some musicians play whatever and somehow insist that it's profoundly meaningful and if you don't get it, it's your own fault. There is a bit of truth to this stereotype, but what it really reveals is how hard it is to marry poetry - with its own internal rhythms and sounds - to music, which attempts to impose new rhythms and sounds on top of it. When it works though, it can be really special, like on pianist Fred Hersch's magnum opus jazz oratorio, Leaves of Grass, based on Walt Whitman's poetry.

Drummer John Hollenbeck and vocalist Kurt Elling were on that record, and the two have again teamed up with Mr. Hollenbeck's Claudia Quintet (the + 1 being pianist Matt Mitchell) for another successful marriage of poetry and jazz, featuring the work of the under-known Beat forerunner Kenneth Patchen. Elling's garrulous spoken-word baritone shares the vocal duties with the wistful falsetto of Theo Bleckmann. Unavailable for a recording session with the rest of the band, Mr. Elling recorded his readings separately, and Hollenbeck then composed music around it, dressing the alternating jocular and poignant words in lush textures of accordion and bowed vibraphone. Bleckmann performs a more tradition role, singing Hollenbeck's musical settings of Patchen's poetry with pinpoint intonation and aching understatement - the setting of "The Snow is Deep on the Ground" feels so natural as to suggest an otherworldly collaboration between the living composer and deceased poet.

The album's title track features Elling spilling incantations, telling the band to "Pause./And begin again." As the members of band spin layers of lines around Elling, he intones lines of simple idealism:

It would take little to be free.
That no man hate another man,
Because he is black;
Because he is yellow;
Because he is white;

Because we are everyman.

The music here is simple, yet unfamiliar. It perks up your attention, but forces you to concentrate on the clear words, making them hit home in new, powerful way.

6. Wilco – The Whole Love

It's weird that America's consistently-best live rock band is so inscrutable when it heads into the studio. Wilco's art music experimentalists one day, Stax Records nostalgists the next. In their live shows, they somehow make it all work together, but have yet to translate that experience to the studio.

Until now.

At the moment the torrid groove and burbling distortion kick in at the top of "Art of Almost," you know "The Whole Love" isn't a nice little Dad Rock record. The song is all wall of sound and cryptic lyrics, the most "out" Wilco has gone since "Less Than You Think" on 2004's "A Ghost is Born." Even more straight-ahead songs, like the following track "I Might," are filled with edgy and unpredictable sonic touches, creating a sense of nervous vitality.

The album's capstone is the gorgeously languorous final track, "One Sunday Morning." It's a 12-minute meditation on the complicated relationship of a father and son, punctuated by Mikael Jorgenson's liquid piano and a luminous glockenspiel hook. It's that kind of miraculous song that speaks to the darkest parts of the soul and yet seems to pass in an instant.

"The Whole Love" may not be an epoch-defining record like "Yankee Hotel Foxtrot," but it certainly is the first of theirs to encapsulate the whole Wilco.

What I Learned from Paul Motian

2011-12-01T23:21:00.000-08:00

Paul Motian at his favorite spot - the Village Vanguard

In the weeks since jazz drummer Paul Motian's death on November 22, the response from the online music community has been large, warm and beautiful. On the day of his passing, Motian was trending on twitter in New York. Peter Hum of the Ottawa Citizen compiled a comprehensive list of remembrances by fellow musicians. Photographer John Rogers revealed Motian's generous spirit off the bandstand in a moving piece at NPR's A Blog Supreme. Nate Chinen's New York Times playlist this weekend features all new music that calls Motian to mind. And today, Ethan Iverson has blessed his readers with his own critical-personal appreciation.

So what does that leave me to say you ask?

Well just that delving into Paul Motian's music my freshman year fundamentally altered how I think about and play the drums.

You see, up until about December 2008, I was a Drummer. Yes, capital D Drummer. My first drumming inspiration was Buddy Rich. My first instructional video was Dave Weckl's "Back to Basics" (or, look at that hair!). I was obsessed with technique, spending many hours trying to master the mysterious "secret weapons" of drumming, like the Moeller whip and the push-pull. Speed was the name of the game. My technique intoxication was sort of the drumming equivalent of "chicks dig the longball." And when I entered college, let's just say I thought I had some real pop in my sticks.

I got some real wake-up calls during my first semester of big band rehearsals. I was able to play blazing single stroke rolls around the kit, and so filled up every little space I could with them. Listening back to recordings of myself from that autumn, my drumming sounds leaden and artless (let's not even talk about my time-feel issues). But I couldn't hear that at the time, so when my director told me to dial down the density, I got both angry (why is he getting in my way) and terribly nervous (what is it that I'm doing wrong). My instincts for fixing my problems brought me back to those technique videos and method books, thinking that I just needed more control. Didn't Dave Weckl and Buddy Rich play super dense all the time? Why couldn't I?

In the end, it wasn't more chops that I needed. It was bigger ears and a new aesthetic. No more Drummer with a capital D. No more secret weapons. Just doing a helluva lot more with a lot less.

Luckily I had gotten friendly with a junior trumpet player in the band named Harrison. Harrison convinced me to check out my first-ever Free Jazz show, and then started giving me CD recommendations. First: ditch all that Brad Mehldau and Aaron Parks moody piano stuff. Second: DAVE DOUGLAS! Third: did you know that Paul Motian has a ton of sick solo albums?

I certainly knew who Motian was at that time. I had all the classic Bill Evans recordings from the late '50s and early '60s and had eaten them up when I was learning jazz piano in high school. There was a nice big picture of him in my favorite method book, John Riley's Beyond Bop Drumming. I even had his Bill Evans tribute album, with Bill Frisell, Marc Johnson, and Joe Lovano. Can't say I had listened to it much though. It didn't have all those purdy piano lines that I liked in the Evans originals.

Anyway, I took Harrison's advice and on the afternoon of December 2, 2008, I checked out three Motian CDs from the music library on campus - the Electric Bebop Band playing Monk and Powell, On Broadway vol. 1, and Story of Maryam. I surreptitiously uploaded them onto my computer that night.

Story of Maryam was first on my listening list, due to its 4 1/2-star rating, plus editor's pick, on All Music Guide (this was before I had musical opinions, ok?). I finally got around to it that Saturday afternoon, December 6. It was one of the cold, dry December days, the ones of chapped lips and hoodies worn indoors. I put on the album to accompany my Religion class reading.

I then stopped my Religion class reading.

The opening track "9x9" shot out of my headphones in a blaze of dual saxophones, shrouded by clouds of distorted guitar, and churned about by the stuttering rumble of shadowy drums and the sky-streaking clash of laser-bright cymbals. The music was deeply mysterious, but not incomprehensible. There was a folkish simplicity to the melody, though abstracted by the free-floating tempo. The rest of the album continued in this mode, bringing me into a reverie of early winters in New England. Which is saying something because I've never experienced them before.

What shocked me so much about Story of Maryam was how the first regular, insistent groove only arrived 5 minutes from the end of the record. I had just began to experiment with free-tempo playing with Harrison and thought it was just about playing whatever you wanted at any time. Naturally, I found listening to our stuff a bit boring and saw this free-time thing as a brief contrast to more groove-oriented sections. Motian's playing totally changed my preconceptions. Even without regular tempos, the album was full of momentum and expressive contrast. While Motian's playing on "9x9" was aggressively defined, his playing on the ensuing ballad "5 Miles to Wrentham" was spacious and intently patient, drawing attention to the subtlest shadings on his cymbals. Whatever the mood of the piece, Motian's drumming was totally efficient, which is surprising considering how loose it was. The strokes were seemingly random, but by the end, I could tell that they were meticulously placed.

Meticulous chaos: that's what I learned from Motian that winter, and it's just what I needed to hear at that time.

As I continued to eat up Motian's discography, I began to incorporate his approach into my playing. I cut down on snare drum chatter, started using fatter sticks, tried to strip down each performance to its bare essentials. After 3 years of this (and the addition of 14 more hours of his music on my hard drive), my drumming is fundamentally changed, yet still far removed from Motian's mysterious meticulousness and sound-so-distinctive-you-can-recognize-him-with-one-stroke.

Motian's influence on me probably comes through most clearly on a piece and I wrote and recorded this past spring called "Illyria Suite." The opening and concluding sections feature pointillistic, free-time drumming over a folkish tune. Ok, my drum & cymbal sounds are totally different than his, and the piece heads to some very un-Motian places in the middle, but I would not have even been able to conceptually imagine a piece like this before hearing Motian's music.

[Go listen to "Illyria Suite" here!]

Even after his passing, Motian will never cease to inspire my playing. There are always more layers to peal away from each performance. I'm now going to check back on Song of Maryam and see what else I can dig out tonight.

See you over the rainbow, Paul.

You Can See That Hot Marimba

2011-10-29T22:26:00.000-07:00

Now some visually incriminating evidence of my marimba performance at Princeton last weekend.

Enjoy the hilarious corrupted tape edits and the stick toss in the last movement.

Thanks to Mike & Katie Laskey for their videotaping and their whoops.

Can't You Hear That Hot Marimba

2011-10-24T21:51:00.000-07:00

The Princeton University Orchestra really let itself go for its first concert this year.

They programmed a marimba concerto for the first time in its history.

They had performed a concerto for cello and pizza delivery guy, a concerto for Norwegian Hardanger Fiddle, a concerto for electric guitar, and, for chrissakes, three viola concertos. But never the lowly, schlocky, beautiful marimba.

I had the pleasure of changing that this past weekend when I performed Ney Rosauro's Concerto for Marimba and String Orchestra on Friday and Saturday. For those of you who sadly missed out, you can find compressed, incriminating evidence here.

Before going on, I make the obligatory sign of the
Society of Free Marimbists. Photo by Kaki Elgin.

It's been a long road for the marimba from novel exotica to concert hall respectability. In fact, the concept of a marimba concerto was nearly killed before anyone heard a note of one.

“A concertino for marimba and orchestra--at first blush, that might read like a manifestation of the silly season,” wrote New York Times critic Howard Taubman in April 1940. Taubman had just seen the premiere of a marimba concertino by composer Paul Creston, the first major solo work for the instrument. At the time, the marimba was a mere novelty instrument. Taubman’s readers were accustomed to hearing marimbas in vaudevillian acts or from Clair Omar Musser’s 100-person marimba orchestra. The concert hall was hardly a place for such shenanigans.

But instead of unleashing a barrage of snark, Taubman took Creston’s work seriously. He noted that the marimba “has its limitations as a solo instrument,” but said that the piece may not be the last of its kind, as Creston used the instrument as an effective vehicle for his ideas. With that lukewarm appraisal, the marimba began its slow invasion of the concert hall.

Seven decades later, marimba concertos hardly connote “silly season” when they show up on orchestra programs. There’s still a sense of novelty, but it comes from the newness of the repertoire rather than the instrument’s former associations. While Taubman was right in that Creston’s concertino was not the beginning and end of serious marimba repertoire, it did take quite a few decades for composers to really hear the instrument in a solo capacity.

Taubman was also right about the peculiar limitations of the instrument. Lacking breath or bow, a marimba note’s sustain is limited to reverb of the hall. Planks of wood don’t vibrate particular evenly either, leading to some gnarly overtones when notes are played together. And a performer can only change timbre significantly by picking up a whole new set of mallets. The leading modernist composers that came after Creston prized timbral variety over continuity. The marimba just sounded bland and dopey to them.

In the end, marimbists themselves built a repertoire from scratch. In Japan, Keiko Abe commissioned a series of ferocious solo pieces from her composer peers, and wrote her own aswell. In the United States, an amateur percussionist and aspiring composer Steve Reich got a few marimbas into his downtown New York City loft, and they became a signature part of his sound world. And in Germany, a transplanted Brazilian percussion student named Ney Rosauro worked through a piece of his own to play on his 1986 masters recital, at least if his broken wrist healed in time.

Rosauro’s wrist did heal, and he premiered the piece with the Manitowoc (base of Wisconsin’s thumb) Symphony in November 1986. Within just a few years, the piece became the marimba’s international calling card. In 1989, Rosauro received a letter from an up and coming Scottish percussion soloist named Evelyn Glennie. Glennie mentioned that she would be coming to Brazil on tour and was looking to play music by Brazilian composers. Rosauro sent her a copy of his marimba concerto and a year later received a letter from the BBC saying that they were planning to record a video of Glennie playing the piece in Brazil. That performance and a later studio recording with the London Symphony Orchestra in 1992 proved to be major hits. The concerto’s catchy melodies and infectious rhythmic drive proved irresistible to audiences around the world. With the Rosauro concerto in hand, Glennie took the music world (including Sesame Street) by storm.

Since 1991, Ney Rosauro’s marimba concerto has been performed well over 1,000 times by students and seasoned pros alike. A YouTube search for “Rosauro Marimba Concerto” nets over 400 videos, 50 more than for “Berg Violin Concerto” or “Philip Glass Violin Concerto,” for comparison. But more importantly, the piece’s success helped convince previously cynical composers of the unique capabilities of the instrument, and also symphony programmers of a marimba concerto’s appeal. The marimba figured heavily in Joseph Schwantner’s 1995 percussion concerto, written for the New York Philharmonic’s 150^th Anniversary. Not to be outdone, the BBC Symphony commissioned a marimba-heavy duo percussion concerto from Stephen McNeff in 2010 for its 80^th Anniversary.

As ever flashier and more difficult marimba concertos come out each year, one might think that Rosauro’s concerto will lose its place in the percussion repertory. But while styles have changed and techniques have advanced, the concerto’s musical directness presents substantial musical challenges. The rhythm is unrelenting – there are no breaks from grooving hard. The harmonies are unabashedly tonal – it’s impossible to hide missed notes. In the end, the piece asks the performer to do one of the most challenging things of all – play something simple. The soloist has to make the melodies sing without breath, make instrument-spanning runs sound like no effort was involved, and make the audience forget their preconceptions of the concert hall and want to dance.

So the audience at Richardson Auditorium this weekend didn't quite get their groove on, but I would still count this weekend as a great success for the marimba. I got numerous comments from friends and strangers alike, saying how thrilling it was and that they had never heard anything like it before. My hope is that these folks will help fill up Avery Fisher Hall or the Kimmel Center next time a percussion concerto rolls in, making programmers want to add another the year after, and then commission a new one from a badass composer...

And the world becomes a happier place.

Reich at 75: 18 Takes Off

2011-10-06T08:42:00.000-07:00

Perhaps Music for Eighteen Musicians would have stayed in its oral form if not for the piece’s instant popularity. Its premiere at Town Hall in New York on April 24, 1976 created a critical stir. New York Times critic John Rockwell called it a “remarkable piece of work” and hoped that the premiere recording would the win the piece a larger audience.[1] Even the so-called “Dean of American Rock Critics,” Robert Christgau, gave the piece a very favorable review, speaking to its genre-transcending potency.[2] While Eighteen was recorded formally in the studio soon after the premiere, Reich’s label at the time, Deutsch Gramophone, sat on the recording and eventually declined to release it.[3] However, Reich eventually got a letter from the German jazz label ECM (who at the time was producing best-selling albums by the likes of Keith Jarrett and Pat Metheny) saying that they wanted to pick up the recording.[4] Upon release of the album in 1978, Eighteen received airplay on college and public radio stations alongside avant-rock artists like David Bowie and Brian Eno.[5] Within 2 years of release, ECM sold over 100,000 copies of the record. Reich’s music was busting out of downtown New York art galleries and capturing the attention of listeners and fellow musicians throughout the world.

In the wake of the popular success of Music for Eighteen Musicians, Reich came across the predicament of other musicians wanting to play his pieces. Because of the particular manner in which Eighteen was written down and learned, the existing parts would make very little sense to any musician who had not learned the piece in Reich’s group. If other musicians wished to perform Eighteen, they had to learn it from scratch by listening to the recording numerous times and then using the familiarity of the piece to decipher the shorthand directions on the written parts. Because the task of learning and rehearsing the piece would take months and was rather unfeasible economically for most professional musicians, only two outside groups took the piece on within the two decades after the original album’s release.[6] One of the performances, organized by the Amadinda percussion group in Hungary, was recorded live on May 18, 1990 and later released on CD in 2004.[7] Because the group virtually learned the piece by rote over the course of several months, they play it as convincingly as Reich’s band. The performance is louder and more insistent than the original recording. The tempo is a couple of metronome ticks faster and stays ruthlessly consistent throughout the piece, compared to the slight tempo fluctuations that the Reich ensemble settled into. It is clear that the performers in the 1990 recording have physically internalized the piece much in the same way Reich’s musicians did. The subtle differences in performance are due to idiosyncrasies in personal time feel rather than overall familiarity with the piece.

Because of the difficulties associated with performing Eighteen as such, a new decipherable score and parts set was necessary in order for the piece to have a life of its own outside the original recording and periodic performances. Luckily, this development would eventually become a reality due to the enduring success of both Eighteen and Reich’s subsequent works. Though Music for Eighteen Musicians was Reich’s most popular piece to date, it did not turn him into a one-hit wonder. Later pieces like Music for Large Ensemble and Tehillim were also critical successes and helped cement Reich as one of the most well regarded American composers – he was soon receiving many commissions from major performers throughout the United States.[8] At that time, Reich’s music was growing more conventional in that it could be (and in some cases had to be) expressed in traditional western notation. Tehillim, for instance, features a regular pulse, but near constant time signature shifts. Because of this rhythmic complexity, it could not be taught by rote in the same way as Eighteen and so was written down in a more complete fashion.[9] In the middle of these developments in the mid-1980s, the British publishing house Boosey and Hawkes began to publish Reich’s music. With its worldwide distribution, Boosey was able to bring Reich’s music to new places and allow different ensembles to learn and perform it. However, even with the backing of one of the world’s largest music publishing firms, it would take the enthusiasm of American PhD student to create a usable score for Music for Eighteen Musicians.

***Next, hear about how Marc Mellits put '18' on paper and how the score changes performances***

[1] John Rockwell, “The Pop Life,” The New York Times, 17 November 1978, page C12.

[2] Robert Christgau, “American Consumer Guide Reviews: Steve Reich,” http://www.robertchristgau.com/ get_artist.php?name=steve+reich

[3] Zuckerman Interview with Reich.

[4] Ibid.

[5] Ibid.

[6] Zuckerman interview with Reich.

[7] Amadinda & Musicians, Steve Reich: Music for Eighteen Musicians, http://www.amadinda.com/ html/Afelv_10.html

[8] The San Francisco Symphony soon commissioned Variations for Winds, Strings and Keyboards, and Reich later composed popular pieces for the Kronos Quartet (Different Trains) and guitarist Pat Metheny (Electric Counterpoint).

[9] Steve Reich, Tehillim, London: Boosey & Hawkes, 1981.

Reich at 75: People-Programming the Score

2011-10-04T10:01:00.000-07:00

After completing Music for Mallet Instruments, Reich began work on what would become Music for Eighteen Musicians, a piece which would consume his compositional energies for the better part of the next three years. In an interview with the British composer Michael Nyman around the time of Eighteen’s premiere in 1976, Reich speaks about how the piece reflects changes in his musical personality. While Reich’s pieces from around the time of “Music as a Gradual Process” were built on impersonal processes (in contrast to the emphasis on personal expression and free improvisation in the downtown New York music of the time), Eighteen is more concerned with expressive effect.[1] Reich is no longer opposed to using his musical biases to shape the direction of a piece and is less concerned with whether the audience hears the strict processes in it.[2] Music for Eighteen Musicians opens and closes with a series of eleven chords, played in fast quaver pulses by the full ensemble, while the middle sections expand each of the chords into different mini-pieces featuring some of the same rhythmic techniques from Drumming and Music for Mallet Instruments. However, while these processes are simple and certainly audible to a relatively informed listener, they do not draw attention to themselves. The listener is much more drawn in by the hyper-rich instrumental textures and the infectious, nearly tropical, groove.

In order for Eighteen to totally envelop the listener, it must be played with a machine-like consistency. For example, two marimbas play an alternating quaver pulse underneath nearly the entire piece. If one of the players flubs just one beat, the trance-like groove is broken and the piece instantly looses momentum. Despite the performance difficulties, Reich could ensure the piece’s performance quality because he had over the past several years assembled a dedicated group of musicians to play his music with him. While composing Drumming in 1970, soon after a trip to study drumming in Ghana, Reich was introduced to a percussionist named Russell Hartenberger who was also interested in travelling to Africa.[3] Through his conversations with Reich, Hartenberger was invited to rehearse the incubating Drumming and became the first full-time percussionist in Reich’s ensemble.[4] To meet the eventual playing demands of Drumming (it requires 9 percussionists), Reich brought in other percussionists, many through James Preiss, a teacher at the Manhattan School of Music.[5] As Reich’s reputation grew within the underground New York contemporary music scene, he was able to draft even more players into Steve Reich & Musicians, eventually reaching the core of 17 (plus himself) in the mid 1970s.[6] Reich notes in a 2002 interview that most the musicians he was working with at the time of Eighteen were still finishing up graduate school, so it was not difficult to bring everyone in for a rehearsal every 2-3 weeks.[7]

Reich’s working band not only allowed the composer to more tightly control the performance quality of his pieces, it also had a profound effect on Reich’s compositional process as well. In Drumming, for instance, the human phasing techniques had never been employed in any piece of music before and so it required that Reich learn how to do it himself (phasing against a tape loop) and then teach the technique to his players.[8] Notation alone would not have been able to adequately express the sound of the piece. This rote method of learning Drumming carried over to Eighteen as well. Throughout 1974-1976, Reich would work on a particular segment of the piece in his manuscript notebook (see the “pulses” example below), and then would transcribe it out in a shorthand notation on small slips of paper for each player.[9] Most of the details of the piece were worked out during the rehearsals themselves.[10] Russell Hartenberger notes that each part was like a cliffnotes version of the piece, with very personalized directions (i.e. “wait for Jay to sing that pattern, cue Steve.”).[11] At each rehearsal, Reich would bring in corrections and take suggestions from the players.[12] In this way, the composition of the piece and the learning of the piece were one process, much more akin to the members of a rock band composing and learning a song together. In both instances, the piece or song is composed into the muscle memory of the players, making a written score unnecessary.

[1] Michael Nyman, “Steve Reich: Interview by Michael Nyman,” Studio International, 1976, no. 192 (November / December): pp. 300-307.

[2] Ibid.

[3] Interview with Russell Hartenberger by Daniel Tones.

[4] Ibid.

[5] Ibid.

[6] Gabrielle Zuckerman, Interview with Steve Reich, July 2002, http://musicmavericks.publicradio.org/ features/interview_reich.html.

[7] Ibid.

[8] Hartenberger Interview.

[9] Steve Reich, Music for Eighteen Musicians, performance note, London: Boosey & Hawkes, 2000.

[10] Ibid.

[11] Hartenberger Interview.

[12] Ibid.

Party with Steve

2011-10-03T07:05:00.000-07:00

Steve Reich is 75 today! (Why is there no Google doodle?) It seems his birthday has been celebrated for a whole year at this point, but why not celebrate for so long if it's an excuse to listen to his music?

My Reich nerdiness has been well-established on this blog. So it should come as no surprise that there will be much celebration here this week too. Last year, I wrote a paper on Music for 18 Musicians at the Royal College of Music. I talked about the evolution of the piece from its original conception to eventual score to later recordings and how using the score affects performance.

I'll be posting bits of the essay here each day, so come back to here the story behind this monumental piece of music.

The music of Steve Reich is simple only in that it can be played in one of two ways: it can be either played well, or, to put it lightly, not so well. The reason for this stark dichotomy in performance quality is due to the peculiar facets of Reich’s music such as the importance of pulse and the relative harmonic stasis. The insistence of his music, particularly in works like Drumming and Music for Eighteen Musicians, leave almost no room for a performer’s (re)interpretation, resulting in the one good way to play the piece and the many poor ways. What is ironic about this dichotomy is that one would expect that a piece with little room for interpretation to have very detailed written directions about how to perform it: a thick score filled with articulations on each note, and many text directions above the articulations. Instead, many of Reich’s pieces were conceived and first performed without a formal written score. In the case of Music for Eighteen Musicians, Reich worked on the piece for the better part of three years and little by little taught the piece to the musicians in, for the lack of a better word, his band.[1] Though the composition was premiered in 1976 and recorded two years later, no full score existed until the year 1997. Instead, Reich’s musicians would perform the piece with maybe a couple of pages of hand-written, taped-up cheat sheets.[2] Indeed, the original 1978 recording of Music for Eighteen Musicians on the ECM label was the piece’s score, as the musicians on it had internalized the music through rote rehearsal and presented what the piece should sound like.

Now that a full score exists, does using the score to learn the piece affect the performance? And considering the piece was written for a particular group of musicians of particular talents, why would someone go through the trouble of making a formal score? The score for Music for Eighteen Musicians is a product of the piece’s power and success, as many musicians who would want to perform the piece would have previously been unable to unless they learned it from Steve Reich himself or from a devoted regimen of listening to the work. In that way, the score is not all that different than a transcription of a Duke Ellington big band chart: it provides a framework for new musicians to learn the piece, but a faithful and successful recreation must refer to the nuances of the original recorded performances that cannot be adequately expressed with notation.

Much of Steve Reich’s oeuvre can be described as process music, a term he coined in a 1968 manifesto of sorts titled “Music as a Gradual Process.” For Reich, process music is not just about using an impersonal method of determining pitches, rhythms, and other salient musical features, but creating a piece in which the compositional method is actually audible to the listener.[3] While J.S. Bach’s crab canon in “A Musical Offering,” Milton Babbit’s manipulation of a tone row, and John Cage’s I Ching coin-flipping are all impersonal compositional processes where particular rules dictate the written music rather than composerly taste, no listener can actually recognize these processes while listening to the music. From a cognitive standpoint, these patterns require more computing power to understand than the human brain has.[4] Reich’s own music from this time satisfies these stringent requirements, resulting in austere, yet stimulating pieces. Reich’s early tape pieces like It’s Gonna’ Rain and Come Out feature the same short audio clip played at different speeds, creating a spine-tingling build in rhythmic tension. Four Organs on the other hand is made up of a single dominant chord played repeatedly for gradually longer amounts of time over a simple maraca pulse. The listening experience can be sublimely trance-inducing or viscerally painful, depending on the listener.[5]

However, Reich’s early music is both potent and memorable, not because the listener recognizes the inner processes in real time, rather because those processes yield novel and arresting sound worlds. In an interview with Jonathan Cott, Reich notes that the first time he created phase shifting (by accident while working on the tape for It’s Gonna’ Rain), he had an intense emotional reaction to the ensuing sound.

The sensation I had in my head was that the sound moved over to my left ear, moved down to my left shoulder, down my left arm, down my leg, out across the floor to the left, and finally began to reverberate and shake.[6]

Reich’s compositions after “Music as a Gradual Process” were still driven by the development of simple processes, like phase shifting and augmentation, but were much richer sonically. Reich’s phasing magnum opus Drumming from 1971 ends with bongos, marimbas, glockenspiels, piccolo, and voices playing thickly-layered rhythmic canons. 1973’s Music for Mallet Instruments, Voices and Organ expanded on the sonic palette of Drumming’s finale, replacing the earlier piece’s total harmonic stasis with a series of lush chord sequences that changed at specific points throughout the piece.

***Next, hear about Reich's compositional process and 18's first performance***

[1] K. Robert Schwarz, “Steve Reich: Music as a Gradual Process Part II,” Perspectives of New Music Vol. 20, No. 1/2 (Autumn, 1981 - Summer, 1982), pp. 225-286.

[2] Interview with Russell Hartenberger by Daniel Tones. Percussive Notes August 2007. http://www.danieltones.com/Publications.html

[3] Steve Reich, “Music as a Gradual Process,” in Writings on Music: 1965-2000, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002.

[4] For example, humans can only carry 7+/- 2 bits of information in their short term memory at a given time. Because a tone row has 12 notes in it, it is impossible for a listener to keep track of all the notes at a given time, and therefore cannot recognize when the pattern is inverted or played around with. In terms of Cage’s processes, a simple experiment regarding predictions of coin flipping performed by Benjamin Cosman illustrates that humans are not good at predicting the behavior of a random event – humans predict more heads and tails run than what actually occur. See www.usc.edu/CSSF/History/2006/Projects/J0305.pdf.

[5] After a performance of the piece with the Boston Symphony in 1971, the divided audience responded with “loud cheers, loud boos, and whistles.” The audience at a later Carnegie Hall performance reacted even more violently, booing during the piece. Strickland, Edward (1993). Minimalism: Origins. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, pp. 221.

[6] Interview with Steve Reich by Jonathan Cott, http://www.stevereich.com/articles/ Jonathan_Cott_interview.html

Music Metadata: Does a Critic Need to Play?

2011-08-21T16:02:00.000-07:00

NPR's Patrick Jarenwattananon just tweeted out an interesting blog post from Roanna Forman's Boston Jazz Blog. In this post, she asks an age-old question: does a good music critic need to play music? What's cool about this post though is how she assembles answers from many tip-top jazz critics from Nate Chinen of the New York Times to estimable Irish bassist-blogger Ronan Guilfoyle to the ever-acerbic Stanley Crouch (get this man a jazz blog!). There was an array of views on a critic's musical chops, all the way from unnecessary to vital. Yet most of the respondents felt that skill with a musical instrument isn't necessary but can be very helpful. Crouch and Guilfoyle say that it allows the critic to hear more of what's going in real time, while Chinen says that musicians certainly trust critics with a modicum of playing experience more.

I find myself in this middle category as well, with the qualification that being a good musician doesn't mean that one will be a good critic. A good critic of any art form is someone who can make the experience of that art come alive in a tactile way. In the case of a music critic, it's about vividly describing what the music sounds like, chronicling the emotional ups and downs, pulling some semantic meaning out of the experience. A good musician may concentrate so much on the technical aspects of the music that the piece of criticism doesn't really translate any of the actual experience.

I feel this idea of translation is the real crux of a criticism, especially music criticism. Certainly every piece of criticism is going to have a judgment call. But a judgment call alone isn't going to make someone want to go out and hear music or see a play. Instead, it's the promise of a memorable experience. If the only thing the jazz critic could think of was how the sax player did these 4ths-based licks over a tri-tone substitution on the bridge, then it probably wasn't an emotionally powerful experience, which would have shut down the analytical side to his or her brain. An overly-technical piece of criticism is what I would call "Lost in Translation," where the critic certainly an aesthetic experience of a sort, but does not have the command of language to translate that experience to a non-expert.

[Short Digression: You can see this problem at work a lot in interviews with musicians, regardless of genre. Some great players and singers have a limited vocabulary of expressing their musical views semantically and give stock answers that don't really illuminate anything. Van Morrison is an especially good example.]

There are problems with too little musical knowledge as well though. The most noticeable aspects of a piece of music are its overall texture and rhythm. A critic who may write well but doesn't know the ins and outs of the music tends to concentrate exclusively on those aspects. With ears like these, Pat Metheny and Kenny G drift into the same category with Yanni and Vangelis. Even if the writing is clever and articulate, this kind of critic isn't much more than a glorified Pandora app.

In the end, a good critic needs to know both sides of the divide - the musician and the listener - and be able to translate so that the listener can really understand what the musicians are getting at, with all its nuance (not to short shrift the musicians' specificity of intent). One certainly does not need to be as good a musician as those playing to comment authoritatively, but one must know what to listen for and playing experience certainly helps in that department. I feel its more about how music the critic has listened to (and of course you listen a lot when you play). Listening to lots of different music teaches one to appreciate tightness of form, novelty of sound, technical mastery, and deftness of touch. The critic needs to know what makes a piece of music great or memorable, which most of the time does not have to do with the technical aspects. It's about recognizing some of the abstract blissfulness of a particular moment and describing it in a way to elicit that same sense of bliss in the reader.

You do see a lot of good critics with at least some musical experience. Nate Chinen played drums through college (apparently with my future high school band director at least once). Alex Ross was a dutiful piano student and took music theory with Peter Lieberson at Harvard (Lieberson called Ross's final sonatina project "most interesting and slightly peculiar."). Stanley Crouch is also a drummer, Randy Sandke is as much a trumpeter as a critic, and pianist Jeremy Denk even takes some time out from his busy touring schedule to give the internet some fine and funny insights into the music he plays. I don't think that this musical experience has made these critics insightful and successful (correlation doesn't always mean causation, my dear), but it's this experience that has made these people want to become writers/critics. If you're going to spend a great deal of energy writing about something, you really must love that something (which is likely why you seen so many memoirs on bookshelves). In my experience, I have found that my love for music has come from both listening and performing experiences, a love built of visual, audial, and tactile memory. Reading Alex Ross and listening to Felix Contreras may have made me want to write about art and music in a serious way, but I wouldn't have even gotten to that point if I hadn't fallen in love with music in the first place. In order to love something at that magnitude, you have to spend a lot of time with it and its easy to log a lot of hours in the school band or on the living room piano.

But while playing takes a back seat for most critics (just think of the time crunch), I still play more than I write. My perspective as a performer has affected my critical occupations in that I am wont to get at the psychology of the performer. I am sensitive to how my state of mind can affect my playing. Pulling up certain images can pull into the musical moment and make me swing harder behind the drum set. When I'm freely improvising, I try to hold one basic musical idea in my head and come back to it at different points, while my subconscious handles the movements from one drum to another. I try to get at this same insight when writing about other musicians. I can usually get a decent idea just by how the musician plays, what decisions he or she makes. For an improvisor, it's the vocabulary and use of space (the motor-mouthed Pat Metheny vs. the restrained and intuitive Bill Frisell). For a classical musician, it's the touch and character of the performance (how much of the performance is practice-room autopilot vs. in the moment risk-taking).

A good piece of criticism doesn't need to hit on this level, especially from the listener's perspective. But I feel this kind of insight is much appreciated from the musician's standpoint. It doesn't trust translate the music for a lay listener, but brings the listener inside the musician's very world. If the listener can understand the musician, they're much more likely to feel like they understand the music.

It has been duly noted that this is post is heavy on the masculinity. See Lara Pellegrinelli for many smart words on gender in jazz.

Subterranean Home[sick] Venue

2011-07-30T20:35:00.000-07:00

I first heard of the club Subterranean A this past January when Darcy James Argue brought his merry band of co-conspirators to Washington DC. It certainly sounded like a hip place. It booked Darcy James Argue for Pete's sake!

Speaking of Pete, I was out for dinner my first day in DC with my uncle Pete and Aunt Julie when I saw an ad for a jazz show at Subterranean A - the JD Allen trio. JD's a perennial favorite of Patrick J up on the fifth floor, suggesting that this Subterranean A place was really plugged into the NPR tastes. I imagined it being some stone-walled room in a warehouse basement, something like Cafe Oto in London, or the Bell House in Brooklyn. A sort of clean, NPR-style DIY venue with lots of folding chairs. But in the end, Subterranean A was much more plugged into NPR than I realized.

Sami Yenigun was temping with WATC during my first 3 weeks on the show. That first Saturday, he told the staff that he was having a concert at his house that night. Sounded cool, but I already had those JD Allen tickets. Then Sami said the concert was of a jazz saxophonist named JD Allen.

So Subterranean A was really just another name for Sami's basement apartment. It suddenly gained a new romanticism. It was close to the chest like a punk rock house party, but with an ethic that put music first, rather than a particular social vibe. How else would you explain JD Allen in June followed by dubstep in July?

Because Sub A was such a cool place, unique in DC, I decided to sit down with Sami and talk about how he got the idea to host shows at his place and how he actually goes about doing it. You can read the full interview at NPR's intern blog In Addition.

Run From Cover

2011-07-21T21:09:00.000-07:00

This photo has caused more than a dull uproar since its posting Wednesday afternoon. It's a bit of a surprise considering Steve Reich isn't a name that really inspires anger and shame among contemporary music types. It's been 28 years since an audience member reacted to Reich's "Four Organs" with "Stop. Stop. I confess." He's won a Pulitzer, gets birthday concerts at Carnegie Hall, and has become his own adjective (see reviews of Sufjan Stevens and Darcy James Argue for a taste of "Reichian").

But that didn't stop the torrent of comments, especially from the New York downtown intelligentsia. Composer Phil Kline (whose political music I talked about here) lambasted it as "the first truly despicable album cover I've ever seen." Composer Timo Andres didn't pile on the vitriol, but put together a slap-dash alternative cover. Seth Colter Walls of the Village Voice, Huffington Post, et al has a detailed criticism of the cover on Slate.

It's just all about the cover.

Call it provocative, exploitative, too soon, disrespectful, what have you. It certainly is all those things to different people. That's the nature of an image that has for better or worse been etched into the American psyche.

But just to keep things straight, we are talking about an album cover. Not the music. Granted, Walls heard the New York premiere and his criticisms regard the relationship between a powerful, multifaceted, and nuanced piece and a blunt cover that seems to exploit the terrorist attacks of September 11th for monetary gain, or at least for buzz.

Reich and Nonesuch had to know that this would be the kind of response. Almost 10 years out, 9/11 still seems too soon for reflection or an artistic response beyond mourning. The US is still fighting two wars because of it. And Steve Reich's listeners aren't the Rage Against the Machine types that are used to such visual provocation. I actually feel that Nonesuch execs would likely have preferred something more abstract, or at least something that wasn't as unsubtle as Will Ferrell's dubya impersonations.

In interviews and press releases about the piece, Reich talks a lot about the personal experience of the day - talking to his daughter and son in law for 6 hours, hoping the phone line in their lower Manhattan apartment wouldn't die. He says 9/11 was not a media day for him and his family. They couldn't get back to their lower Manhattan apartment for several weeks. Certainly the image brings those memories flooding back big time. And that's true for just about every American - we all remember where we were when we heard of the attack.

And that's the reason why this image is so problematic, and yet I feel it to be vital to the album's importance. Because of the emotional trauma of that day, we all feel we own a bit of that image. That's why we judge its use in this case, as if we took the photo. I'll admit I was a little taken aback when I first saw the image, doing the whole politically correct "Can they do that?" thing. But then I listened to the piece.

There are a lot of superficial similarities to Reich's class "Different Trains." The same string quartet, the use of prerecorded voices, the exploration of tragedy through the words of eyewitnesses. The piece begins with the pulse of a phone off the hook, joined by a violin, then a second a half step down. The dissonance is grating and makes your hair stand on end. The pulses are joined by the voices of NORAD operators, then police and firefighters on the scene - actual sounds time warped to the present. Like in "Different Trains," these voices become the piece's melodic material, doubled and imitated by the strings. The second movement moves into a more reflective zone, featuring the memories of Reich's friends and neighbors, recounted in 2010. In the third movement, the pulses dissolve into drones, recounting the women who recited psalms over the victims' bodies in tents on the lower east side.

By that point in the piece, I was a wreck, almost sobbing at my computer. Certainly it had a good deal to do with the images that flashed across the back of my closed eyes - the media images, yes, but also the church service I went to that night, the congregation of candles. I was responding to my memories, yes, but when the music is off, I can pull up those images and keep my composure.

For me, the most powerful musical experiences are ones that touch on more than basic emotions. But I also believe that sound itself can only communicate so much and it's the listener that brings the powerful meaning to a musical experience. My Dad says that he wells up when he listens to the last movement of Mozart's Jupiter Symphony, knowing that this bright and perfect fugue was the end of his symphonic output. I love the piece too, but I don't have the same thought or the same emotional reaction. The inherent abstraction of the symphony allows for a wondrous array of interpretations, but also some emotional experiences that are more potent than others.

Reich's use of recorded voices, particularly of the first responders, is a blunt expressive gesture. And while the piece ends up exploring other sides of the event, it still boils down to the attack itself and how that instant changed everything. Because the piece's impact is fueled by the specificity of memory, the album cover should reflect that. John Adams' "On The Transmigration of Souls," for instance, was a requiem, and its solemn skyline reflected that. Reich's "WTC 9/11" is the day and its aftermath boiled down to its emotional essence, almost reporter-like in its presentation. The cover reports the pivotal action of the day.

The emotional directness of the piece and the cover steps close to the line of exploitation in how powerfully it plays with our memory and emotional. But to elicit these emotions is not exploitative in and of itself. It's exploitative when it's used to sell a war or a political campaign. Yeah, a cover is there to sell an album, but Reich has never been one to worry about selling albums (he ran a moving company with Phillip Glass to make ends meet). Instead, appropriating this indelible image for an album cover challenges our emotional and intellectual relationship with the image and with the events of 9/11. Our political correctness monitor responds and we feel that the move is tasteless. But if we recognize that reaction, and give it just a second of reflection, we begin to think about why we feel this way. We think about whether art about a specific event can communicate unaltered truth, or if it's just biased media sensationalism. Our thoughts and memories become more complicated, they keep coming back at different points for days afterward. We're moved to talk about it. Write about it. Argue.

And that brings us here. Just a simple album cover depicting a single event has made us consider what the meaning of art is in the most abstract sense. In the below video, Reich says that the piece will live on or fade away based on its musical merits alone. He's right.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-13318490

In the end, the piece doesn't just bring back memories of September 11, 2001 and store them away once it leaves. The music demands that we examine our emotional reaction to it. We can't just get away with cheap catharsis. "WTC 9/11" is a pandora's box that releases our deepest thoughts about how to deal with history and what art means. A cover that has the power to do the same is the right match.

New Jazz in Brief - Ari Hoenig and John Escreet

2011-06-30T19:26:00.000-07:00

Ari Hoenig - Lines of Oppression

At his regular gigs at New York's Smalls Jazz Club, hyperkinetic drummer Ari Hoenig rarely leaves a jaw undropped. His style is unusually intense and extroverted, overflowing with knotty complexity yet weirdly infectious. Over the course of his 15 years in New York, Hoenig has assembled a rotating core of like-minded musicians with a collective vocabulary of endless rhythmic permutations. Hoenig's new album "Lines of Oppression" features a band of young veterans that matches the leader's intensity minute by minute.

Hoenig's complex rhythmic trademarks jump out from the get go. The opening title track starts as if in a simple 4-4 feel until Hoenig barrels in, revealing that the opening hook was actually in 3. It's a moment both disconcerting and playful, sort of like an over-banked turn on an old wooden roller coaster. The rhythmic surprises only multiply on the following "Arrows and Loops," featuring a treacherous mixed-meter melody and some thrilling dialogue between Hoenig and pianist/beatboxer Tigran Hamasyan.

The band's uncanny precision in such rough rhythmic terrain certainly elicits more than a few dropped jaws. But the moment of most-sustained jaw droppage isn't in some crazy time signature at a blistering tempo. Midway through the album, Hoenig begins a drum solo with soft mallets on his tom-toms. His run sound eerily melodic, as if he's playing a set of high-pitched timpani. Gradually, Hoenig works his way into the bluesy Bobby Timmons classic "Moanin'," except the kicker here is that he plays the melody on his drums. The melody is unbelievably clear. Hoenig is somehow able to accurately alter the pitch of his toms with his off stick to make a full blues scale. It's so cheeky and slick. Don't even try suppressing a chuckle.

John Escreet - The Age We Live In

So the Brits are supposed to use better grammar than Americans? Then why would their top new jazz export end his new album title with a preposition? For shame John Escreet.

Ok, I keed (and "The Age in Which We Live" is a much worse title). But I guess what I'm trying to say is that this album throws cultural stereotypes out the window.

The 27-year-old Escreet grew up in Doncaster, England, a pleasant ruralish area in the country's midsection, and studied jazz piano at London's Royal Academy of Music. He has the pedigree of one of those nice British jazz boys, but an in-your-face aesthetic that sounds all hard-edge Manhattan.

Escreet moved to New York after graduating in 2006 and soon fell into the cadre of saxophonist David Binney, holding court at the 55 Bar. "The Age We Live In" is Escreet's second record for Binney's Mythology label and reveals a shared language rather than a master-padawan relationship. Like Binney, Escreet has a penchant for driving rock and funk-related rhythms, snake-like melodies, and the slow build. Binney even co-produced the record and is the lead horn voice throughout. Yet there's never a doubt that Escreet is the leader on this album.

Escreet's various electronic keyboards are pumped high in the mix and he attacks the keys with intensity in both hands. Compositions like the title track and "The Domino Effect" feed off his energy and his ability to fill space playing two keyboards at once. His chops and aggression can be reminiscent of Cecil Taylor, but Escreet knows the benefit of toning it down too, especially on the valedictory backbeat ballad "Another Life." Sticking mostly to an acoustic grand, Escreet underlays the tune with a patient pulse, letting Binney build his solo to a cathartic climax.

The rhythm team of drummer Marcus Gilmore and guitarist Wayne Krantz (another long-time Binney associate) lays a rhythmic backdrop that matches the music's edgy character without getting in the way of Escreet's pyrotechnics. Gilmore's drums snap, crackle and pop, driving the music to almost trance-like states. Without a bassist underneath him, Krantz adds biting lead lines, tangling the tunes in roving counterpoint.

John Escreet is a pianist with high energy and big ideas. But he's also a smart producer and arranger, adding in enough sonic tricks and unexpected detours to hold your attention for a full 54 and a half minutes. I do have a slight quibble with the short intro/interlude/outro tracks - they're cool vamps and all but don't sit long enough and break up the album's continuity. But hey, they only last 90 seconds total, leaving 52 minutes of really good, uncompromising jazz.

Only Human - Chris Dingman's "Waking Dreams"

2011-06-16T08:52:00.000-07:00

On the back of the CD case for his album "Waking Dreams," vibraphonist Chris Dingman places his name at the bottom of the personnel list. It's a small gesture, easily overlooked. The eye is instead drawn to this admonition: "Special care was put into making this album an experience. For best results, listen from beginning to end without pause."

In an age where Shuffle and 99 cent singles have made our ears crave musical variety with a voraciousness traditionally reserved for saturated fats, an album that feeds on sustained attention is anything but conformist. And in a culture where pop stardom is more about selling a personality than selling music, a self-effacing bandleader is downright heretical. Before "Waking Dreams" ever leaves its case, the album announces that its not interested in being cool or popular. It asks the listener to take it as it is and judge the whole self, not a 3 minute first impression. If one is patient and empathetic, one will encounter music that is filled with disarming humanity - messy yet lovable.

Dingman's humility is confirmed at the outset. There is no declamatory show of four-mallet virtuosity, but rather a plaintive prelude by pianist Fabian Almazan. As Almazan's final notes plink out like wind chimes, Dingman finally enters with bassist Joe Sanders, conjuring a mood of mystery and meditation. Trumpeter Ambrose Akinmusire soars above the mist in solitude, later joined by Loren Stillman on alto sax. The music floats as a raft lost at sea, occasionally buoyed by Justin Brown's tom-tom waves. When the raft appears to stall hopelessly in doldrums, Sanders and Brown set a new course with a groove funky and fleet. Sax, trumpet, and vibes snake through a slippery melody before launching into a series of solos, one building into the next. Brown's combustible drumming brings the energy to a fever pitch, yet the energy dies away under glacial chords from Dingman's vibes and Ryan Ferreira's guitar.

While Dingman can't quite escape the inherent coldness of the vibes, his playing reflects a search for new sounds and textures on the instrument. Through a variety of means, he is able to smooth over the vibraphone's jagged edge. He pushes for the illusion of vocalized sustain by striking with extra fat mallets, bowing as if it were a string instrument, setting the electric-vibrato fan on slow. Instead of flinging icicles, he showers a soft layer of snow.

Dingman's search for deeper sounds continue to play out over introspective compositions. Whether the rhythms are surging or placid, Dingman and pianist Almazan layer on harmonies that are dark, rich, and ambiguous. All the players are zoned in, relentless in the pursuit of deep questions. This intense focus gets the best of the tunes about two-thirds of the way through the album. The tracks begin to blend together, bogged down by the heavy harmonies. Yet this near-monotony plays an important part in the character of the music. It affirms the music's realness and the complexity of the emotions conveyed. The dullness is conscious, and in some ways audacious move on the part of the musicians. They choose emotional honesty over shallow likability.

"Waking Dreams," isn't a perfect debut, but it shows a jazz composer who's deeply engaged with the expressive side of his music. The notes on the back of the CD case are born out track by track. You trust Dingman's message, even if it's not always what you want to hear. You trust him enough that you'll certainly pay attention when he's got something new to say.

Chris Dingman's "Waking Dreams" comes out on his own label, Between Worlds Music, on June 21. He has a CD release show at the Jazz Gallery in New York on Saturday June 18.

New Jazz for You - Tim Berne/Jim Black/Nels Cline, or How to Listen to Free Jazz

2011-06-02T21:16:00.000-07:00

Tim Berne, Jim Black, and Nels Cline are all behemoths of free improvisation. Well, Cline and Berne are at least, standing in 6'4" range. Jim Black is more of a mop-topped hobbit (see right).

But never mind that. Regardless of height, these three musicians have been true giants in their respective music scenes with instantly-recognizable voices. Multi-saxophonist Berne has been putting out edgy and varied records for almost thirty years, specializing in long form pieces where one is never sure what is composed and what is improvised. Jim Black's spiky-sounding drums propel New York-downtown music of all kinds, whether Berne, Balkan, or Punk-flavored. Cline is seemingly everywhere these days, spreading guitar mayhem with Wilco and his own projects.

Because the guys are so busy with project upon side-project, getting them together in one room requires nothing less than perfect syzygy. The three did manage to meet up the Stone in New York on July 30, 2009, spewing their improvisational magic over the 80 or so people that can uncomfortably fit into the former corner storefront. It seems a shame that so few would get to experience this gathering of musical titans (and a dwarf), but thankfully the Cryptogramophone label was present to catch it all on some stick of digital memory. The mystic brew was so potent that the label has kept it under wraps since that fateful night nearly two years ago.

But no longer. "The Veil" is lifted next Tuesday, June 7.

So how does it sound, you ask? Well, it sounds just like a Berne, Black or Cline fan would expect, which is just friggin' great. If you are a fan of any of these musicians, you should be anticipating this release like a Belieber on line for "Never Say Never." No need to review any more.

"But all I've heard of these guys is Nels in Wilco," you say. "What can I get out of this?"

I'll start by admitting that this album can be quite the head trip for the uninitiated. There are weird sounds, profound dissonances, and nary a repeating hook. But with a bit of direction, anyone new to free improvisation can make his or her way through "The Veil" and actually enjoy it.

The most important thing is to keep your mind on at all times. Music this abstract invites you to get creative with the sounds you hear. Luckily, the opening track "Railroaded" begins full throttle, giving your adrenaline levels a boost to keep you focused. Jim Black sets the tone with an unrelenting breakbeat while Cline and Berne layer on the noise. Cue in to what Cline is doing. What is that yodeling wah-wah thing? How does he change sounds so quick? Just trying to follow Cline's sound explorations can be a fun challenge.


Nels' infamously powerful effects pedal board

After zoning in on the details, take a step back and try listening to how the players respond to each other. Not locked into a strict song form, Black is able to put on the breaks at any moment, and somehow Berne and Cline respond as if it were all planned. After the group has exhausted a particular idea, someone throws in a new sound or new groove or a new parcel of melody. The others' ears perk up and suddenly the trio goes careening into a totally new place. Sometimes an old idea is brought back, like Black's machine gun rim clicks at the end of "Railroaded." It rounds out the form and signals to everyone that we're done here moving on. The destination? The audience sure as hell doesn't know.

Such close listening can cause a bit of a brain burnout, so after a while, it's kind of nice to chill out a bit and just revel in the sound. After "Railroaded" and the equally rollicking "Impairment Posse," the character shifts into an eerie netherworld. Cline's guitar swells and swallows the space around it, soon followed by creepy digital noises from Black's laptop and screechy multiphonics from Berne's saxophone. This section is called "Momento," perhaps the soundtrack to a creepy thriller by Christopher Nolan in bizarro world. The sound overtakes you. Images flash across your semiconscious mind. A shadowy man surrounded by white light. Doors that open into nothingness. A faint voice emanates behind you. It comes closer. You turn around and...

The trio at fever pitch

A pile of drums falls down the stairs. This racket awakens you from your dream and you find yourself hearing Cline and Black locked in hand to hand rhythmic combat. After 100 seconds of fierce fighting, the two call a draw and lock into a knotty metal hook. Berne drives the ensuing "Barbarella Syndrome," coaxing Black and Cline to new levels of intensity with his abrasive tones. The trio boils over into a rhythmic morass, yet the temperature continues to rise. Black then lets loose a positively headbanging tribal beat. The music threatens to overflow the speakers, yet you want it to keep going, so locked into that groove.

Then suddenly Cline and Black stop short, throwing Berne off a cliff. The saxophonist is alone, attempting to fly just that much further to reach terra firma in the next section. Does he make it? Does the epic saga of improvisation continue? Well wouldn't you like to know.

Ok, ok, ok. So I know some of that description sounds a little bit ridiculous. I'm not trying to say that Berne, Black, and Cline have a definite narrative in their music, but rather that an engaged listener can bring a lot of cool experiences to abstract music that make it all come alive. Perhaps the creepy sounds of "Momento" make you think of an alien abduction rather than a surreal thriller. Perhaps Black's slippery drumming makes you think of collages by Kurt Schwitters in how he takes short snippets of different grooves and rearranges them in a nonsensical order.

Either way, I invite you to check out this brilliant and visceral music and find your own way through it. For those of you who can't wait until next Tuesday, check out the video from last fall's Angel City Jazz Fest in LA.

More of my Music

2011-05-17T12:29:00.000-07:00

If you enjoyed "Spring and Fall: To a Young Child," check out my first orchestral piece, "Back Brook."

It's really slow and full of gooey textures. The title comes from this little creek behind my elementary school whose actual name was Back Brook. Because, you know, it was out back. Behind the school. I have fond memories looking for bugs and plants and stuff there. It held a sort of mystical quality for me because even though it was very shallow, you were never allowed to cross it. I have yet to travel to the far bank, though I'm pretty sure it just leads to the soccer fields by the middle school.

Definitely leave comments on the piece below!

Music at the Edge of Intellect - Eldar Djangirov and Vijay Iyer at the McCarter Theater

2011-05-13T22:24:00.000-07:00

I just strolled back up campus from the aforementioned show in a pretty good mood. Vijay and his trio (with Tyshawn Sorey sitting in for Marcus Gilmore on drums) had a very satisfying set. It was full of rhythmic playfulness, the kind where you bob your head to some undiscernible underlying pulse. Moods swung from meditative and brooding to blissfully cathartic. Iyer, Sorey and bassist Stephen Crumb are on another plane musically. They privileged the audience with a brief look into their rhythmic wonderland.

So, um, what did I think of Eldar's opening set?

How can I put this lightly...

The old folks behind me seemed to enjoy it a lot :)

I on the other hand had a bit more difficulty. As a preface for what is to come, I was enamored by Eldar last time I saw him. I was sixteen going on seventeen. Naive, timid, and scared was I, though with budding jazz chops. He just played so fast and in 7 and I just thought, "Wow he's only 19! This is so nuts." I of course sheepishly got an autograph afterward and awkwardly commented on his stuff in 7.

The first instinct that a lot of my friends and I have about Eldar is that his virtuosity is just a novelty. It's impressive, a good bit of showmanship, and the audience usually responds as such (tonight was no exception). But even as a stingy, artsy music snob, I usually react well to good showmanship. Jazz has been filled with expert showmen like Oscar Peterson, Buddy Rich, Dizzy Gillespie, and Papa Jo Jones (please comment with anyone I left out), dating all the way back to Louis Armstrong. The inimitable Roots (they're a jazz band in my book) continue this tradition every night on Jimmy Fallon's show. But tonight, I didn't get any feeling of showmanship from Eldar. His virtuosity is eerily unselfconscious. I feel that what he played tonight is his own honest music. Yet after all of his hyperactivity and machine gun phrasing, I was left cold, dozing off in the heat of battle.

As I walked back tonight, I thought about the reason for this disconnect. I'm not usually the one coming out of a concert thinking I just didn't get it. This was a really weird feeling. After a good ponder, I feel Eldar's music is something like jazz with Asperger's (ok, I did think of jaszperger's, but that seems like unfair cheap shot). The virtuosity and ease of his playing is savant-like, seemingly beyond what any other human can do. However, the music lacks the nuance that makes emotional expression and recognition possible. It all comes off as a rote exercise in musical recall.

Eldar's so-cerebral-it's-scary music is an interesting foil for Vijay and his trio. Iyer is potentially the sharpest guy in the jazz world, or at least the most over-educated (BA in physics and math from Yale, MS/PhD from Cal Berkeley. Really says a lot coming from me huh. Ba dum crash.) Annnnnnyway...

So what's going through Mr. Iyer's big brain? Does it really matter?

I'm just saying that one would think Iyer's music would be the one that suffers from intellectual incomprehensibility, rather than Eldar's. His music can be pretty heady, like the third tune from tonight's show, called "Cardio." It starts off in this really fast 3+4 pattern that feels like it's in 2 but with beats of slightly different lengths. Then they layer groups of 5 and 6 beats on top of it. Sounds like a rhythmic morass, doesn't it?

The big guy with the little drum set

But to be totally honest, I wasn't really paying attention to all that rhythmic stuff. I only figured it out after talking to the trio in the lobby. In the moment, I was dialed into the slippery groove. The piece built up gradually, gathering tension as notes flew by in ever-denser clusters. And suddenly, Tyshawn burst the musical knot open with a thundering cymbal crash followed by a riveting drum solo. The piece's complex mathematical time signature wasn't what made it engaging. Instead I like to think the performance was great despite the complex clave. Vijay, Stephen, and Tyshawn are so secure in their rhythmic feel that they can play the piece with total commitment, nuance, and flexibility. In the end, "Cardio" and the rest of the trio's set brimmed with vital communicative power. Call it passion, call it soul, call it whatever you want. You just know it when you hear it and when you hear it, it feels pretty good.

New Jazz for You - Gerald Clayton, Adam Cruz, and Jeremy Udden's Plainville

2011-05-06T22:19:00.000-07:00

Gerald Clayton - Bond: The Paris Sessions (Decca)

Clayton is a new breed of young lion. As the youngest in a prominent jazz family (his father John is a bassist and bandleader and uncle Jeff plays reeds), Gerald has prodigious chops and an intimate relationship with jazz tradition. But he's no brooding neoclassicist. If his wild dreds and long tie-with-jeans getup don't make that clear, his music certainly will.

Lookin' sharp, Gerald

Clayton's new album "Bond: The Paris Sessions" opens with the cliched standard "If I Were a Bell." It's a move that would seemingly send younger listeners packing, but Clayton pulls it off with a slick little groove that allows him to phrase the melody in unexpected ways. Bassist Joe Sanders and drummer Justin Brown relish the space in between Clayton's chords, bathing the tune in quiet busyness. In just under 8 minutes, the trio presents a fresh and urbane view of jazz that updates oft-used methods with a distinct rhythmic crackle.

With this emphasis on rhythm, it makes sense that the trio has a thing for vamps. Almost every tune has one, allowing the band to show off its immense vocabulary of rhythmic tricks. All three musicians are under 30, but they've been playing with each other in various groups since their teenage years. They know each others' tendencies so well that they seem to communicate in a tri-composed monologue rather than a friendly conversation. While the album's emotional gamut runs only from pensive to cool, there's a lot to enjoy - Sanders' effortless counter-lines, Brown's snappy snare accents, Clayton's deft touch. Gerald Clayton's city-slick jazz has a vital pulse and plenty of avenues left to explore.

"Bond: The Paris Sessions" comes out on May 10

Adam Cruz - Milestone (Sunnyside)

Gerald Clayton has now produced two full-length albums before his 27th birthday. On the other hand, drummer Adam Cruz has taken quite a bit longer just to get through one (he's just over 40). That doesn't mean Cruz isn't one of the busiest musicians in New York. Cruz is one in-demand sideman, playing with the jazz-famous likes of saxophonist Chris Potter, pianist Danilo Perez, and the almost-actually-famous Chick Corea. Cruz can lay down swing, funk, and Latin grooves (plus any combination thereof) with equal aplomb, but has yet to step out as a bandleader and composer until now.

Cruz doing what he does best - just layin' it down

The results on his appropriately-named debut "Milestone" are mixed at best. It's not because of a lack of musicianship - Cruz has assembled a crack band including Potter, MacArthur-winning saxophonist Miguel Zenon, versatile guitar ace Steve Cardenas, and Cruz's longtime rhythmic foil Ben Street on bass. The performances are all solid, but lack a certain spark. It has all the hallmarks of the past decade's mainstream jazz - driving Latin-ish vamps, knotty melodies, complex non-functional harmonies, lots of room for the soloists to blow.

Although Cruz's chameleon-like flexibility and unyielding tastefulness make him an ideal supporting actor, they're a bit of a liability now that he's taken a leading role. He lets his partners be themselves, instead of challenging them with new musical contexts in which to improvise. Though many of the tunes have multiple sections, few have an engaging and dramatic arc. There certainly are some good moments on the album, like the sax battle on "Gadfly" and Cardenas' tropical pluckings on "Outer Reaches." Unfortunately, the compositions can't sustain the momentum of these moments, yielding an album that sounds surprisingly typical.

"Milestone" was released on April 12

Jeremy Udden's Plainville - If the Past Seems So Bright (Sunnyside)

If Brooklyn has been too-oft described as a musical Eden with diverse genres sharing the same lush pastures, its only because the myth is too often confirmed by yet another great genre-blowing album from a Brooklynite. This month's album is "If the Past Seems So Bright" from the saxophonist Jeremy Udden and his band Plainville.

Udden and the gang in action

No matter who your favorite hipster band is, you'll find something to like here. Wilco fans will fawn over the layered electronic pianos and distorted guitars. Disaffected Sufjanistas will go giddy at the sound of gently arpeggiated banjos. Fleet Foxes fanatics will float along with the gently harmonized folk melodies.

But "If the Past..." isn't great because of its similarities to good 'n folksy indie rock. It's more like it's great despite those similarities. It's not like, you know... hmm... some... exhilarating pastiche. Instead, Plainville has a strong musical identity that melds the disparate personalities of its members into a sturdy whole. Udden has a pleasing, woody tone on his various saxophones, imbuing the simple melodies with vocal honesty. Guitarist/banjoist Brandon Seabrook and keyboardist Pete Rende create a rustic and immersive soundscape, using a color palette of diverse instruments and effects pedals. And all along, bassist Elvind Opsvik and drummer R.J. Miller ground the music in a time feel that breathes with perfectly-placed imperfections.

The album is bracingly analog, a blurred photograph, a letter from your ancestor, so real you can taste it. The stark opening drum beats transport you to a world of deep memory, and you remain there long after the last guitar fades.

"If the Past Seems So Bright" comes out on May 31.

My Most Important Influences

2011-04-27T08:46:00.000-07:00

Part of the reason for my semi-hiatus from blogging this semester is the fact that I've been doing a lot of composing. Through an orchestration class with composer Steve Mackey, a tour of Estonia with the university Jazz Composers' Collective, and a junior composition project, I've put more ink on paper during these last 3 months than I've probably put down in my life so far. Up until now, I've considered myself a player who dabbles in composition, mostly as an alternative to playing cheesy jazz standards. But after spending more time musing and notating, I feel more confident in expressing the sounds I like on paper in some form.

With a week of classes left, I've gotten to a point where I think I'm finding some sort of musical personality. There are gestures and soundworlds to which I seem to gravitate. I now say that I have a musical philosophy (in a nutshell it says that music itself communicates very little, but there needs to be something in it, usually a sound, that engages the listener and prompts him or her to bring metaphorical meaning to bear. Ok that was a long parenthetical comment). Anyways, along with this thought of personality comes thoughts of influences. Especially in my junior project (a setting of Gerard Manley Hopkins' "Spring and Fall: To a Young Child"), I can probably identify like 50 tracks on my computer from which I lifted some small gesture or sound. I know that real music critics hate people that describe music as a combination of some other artists, but I'm going to do it anyway. Below is a list of artists and a track of theirs that seem to have seeped into my aesthetic in some way. Maybe the list will make you listen to my JP a little differently.

Aaron Parks - "Peaceful Warrior"
Alex Cline - "Nourishing Our Roots"
The Bad Plus - "Prehensile Dream"
David Lang - "The So-Called Laws of Nature"
Barenaked Ladies - "Brian Wilson"
Bela Fleck - "The Whistle Tune"
Ben Monder - "Ellenville"
Bill Frisell - "Gimme' a Holler"
Billy Bragg & Wilco - "Remember the Mountain Bed"
Bob Dylan - "Like a Rolling Stone"
Bobby Previte - "The 23 Constellations of Joan Miro"
Brad Mehldau - "Goodbye Storyteller"
Brian Blade Fellowship - "Crooked Creek"
Brian Eno - "Music for Airports I"
Charles Mingus - "Moanin'"
Chicago Underground Duo - "Blue Sparks from Her, and the Scent of Lightning"
The Claudia Quintet - "Crane Merit"
Gustav Mahler - Last movement of Symphony no. 3
Aaron Copland - Symphony no. 3
Darcy James Argue - "Phobos"
Dave Douglas - "Summit Music"
David Binney - "All of Time"
Samuel Barber - "Knoxville: Summer 1915"
Dirty Projectors - "Two Doves"
Django Bates - "Life on Mars"
Don Cherry - "Symphony for Improvisers"
Duke Ellington - "Happy Go Lucky Local"
Eric Dolphy - "Straight Up and Down"
Fleet Foxes - "Ragged Wood"
Fred Hersch - "Leaves of Grass"
Guillermo Klein - "Miula"
Herbie Hancock - "Actual Proof"
Jason Moran - "Blue Blocks"
Rebecca Fanya - "Superhero"
Jenny Scheinman - "Song of the Open Road"
Jim Black - "Maybe"
John Adams - "Dharma at Big Sur"
John Cage - "Third Construction"
John Coltrane - "Moment's Notice"
John Hiatt - "Have a Little Faith"
John Hollenbeck Large Ensemble - "A Blessing"
John Zorn - "Beeroth"
Joni Mitchell - "Hejira"
Joshua Redman - "Faraway"
Judy Collins - "Since You Asked"
Kate Bush - "This Woman's Work"
Keith Jarrett - "Koln Concert IIc"
Kenny Wheeler - "Sweet Time Suite"
The Kinks - "Strangers"
Kurt Elling - "Leaving Again"
Igor Stravinsky - The last 10 minutes or so of the Firebird Suite
Luciana Souza - "Tonight I Can Write"
Lyle Mays - "Alaskan Suite: Ascent"
Steve Reich - "Music for 18 Musicians"
Osvaldo Golijov - "Pasion Segun San Marcos"
Maria Schneider - "The Pretty Road"
Miles Davis - "Bitches Brew"
Wayne Shorter - "Fall"
Joseph Schwantner - "Percussion Concerto"
The New Pornographers - "Challengers"
Nick Drake - "River Man"
Norma Winstone - "Distance"
Oasis - "Wonderwall"
Ornette Coleman - "Lonely Woman"
Pat Metheny - "San Lorenzo"
Patricia Barber - "The Moon"
Paul Lansky - "Three Moves for Marimba"
Paul Motian - "9x9"
Paul Simon - "Born at the Right Time"
Respighi - "Pines of Rome"
REM - "Man on the Moon"
Radiohead - "Paranoid Android"
Jeanne Lee - "Newswatch"
Sam Sadigursky - "After Paradise"
Sarah Kirkland Snider - "The Stranger with the Face of a Man I Knew"
So Percussion & Matmos - "Shard"
Sonny Sharrock - "Promises Kept"
Stephen Schwartz - "All Good Gifts"
Stevie Wonder - "Golden Lady"
Sufjan Stevens - "Casimir Pulaski Day"
Frederic Rzewski - "Coming Together"
Ted Leo & the Pharmacists - "Biomusicology"
Terrence Blanchard - "Transform"
Todd Sickafoose - "Tiny Resistors"
The Velvet Underground - "Heroin"
Vijay Iyer - "The Color of My Circumference I"
Joe Zawinul - "A Remark You Made"
Wilco - "Via Chicago"

So what the hell does this all mean anyway? Is a musical aesthetic just a combination of previous musical experience?

Whatever.

Pause and Remember for 5

2011-03-12T12:20:00.001-08:00

Jazz drummer John Riley reports that famed traps-man Joe Morello passed away this morning at the age of 82.

Morello is easily one of the most heard jazz drummers of all time. He played in pianist Dave Brubeck's quartet from 1955 through 1968, bringing his subtle swing and impeccable touch to American college campuses and developing countries alike. Brubeck and Morello pioneered the use of asymmetrical time signatures in jazz, especially on Brubeck's best-selling 1959 album, "Time Out." The opening track, "Blue Rondo a la Turk," skips along with awkward yet infectious 2+2+2+3 pattern. Morello then gives a masterclass on how simple five-four time can be with his solo on the now universally-known "Take Five." After his time in the Brubeck group, Morello focused his energies on drum education. He was a technique guru and published his challenging warm-ups and exercises in a series of books called "Master Studies." He is a legend among hard core drummers of all styles and stripes for his flawless technique and willingness to pass on the tools of the trade to future generations.

When I was learning drum set in middle school, Joe was an important teacher and inspiration. Ok, I never actually had a lesson with him (even though he lived in New Jersey), but I listened to "Time Out" a lot and did my fair share of work from "Master Studies." At that time, my principle drum deity was Buddy Rich and so needless to say I was all about playing loud and fast. I had some recordings of Art Blakey and Max Roach, but their style seemed weak in comparison to the unyielding power of Buddy's single strokes behind a big band. Joe could easily keep up with Buddy in a pure speed contest which is likely what drew me to him. However, Joe had a much different touch and feel around the kit. Every tap was carefully placed and shaped. The listener wasn't beat over the head with how great his technique was.

His "Take 5" solo was particularly perplexing to me in that he used space. He literally stopped playing at certain points, then would repeat an idea, develop it more, move on to another. This kind of drum solo was from a conceptual standpoint totally different from Buddy's. It was a thread meant to lead the listener along rather than a tidal wave meant to impress the listener into submission. Joe's playing made me being to listen to drummers differently and appreciate touch and space. I don't think I would have had any interest in Paul Motian's playing with the Bill Evans trio (a massive touchstone for me now) if it wasn't for my time spent with Joe Morello on "Time Out."

I was a bona fide drum nerd by the time I was in eighth grade, at the occasional annoyance to my older brother - I couldn't stop talking about it when he drove me home from school. But I guess the annoyance ended up being a good thing when my brother's high school chemistry teacher mentioned that her husband played jazz drums after seeing my brother lead the school jazz band at an assembly. She said that her husband studied with this guy that lived in the area, but who had a pretty big career at some point. My brother mentioned that I was getting really into jazz drumming and they agreed it would be a cute idea to get me an autograph of this erstwhile famous drummer.

On Christmas morning that year, I opened a rather innocuous envelope from my brother and freaked out when I found a personalized, autographed photo of Joe Morello inside. It immediately went up on my dresser, and has sat there through my hours of practicing since then. I never ended up meeting Joe, but I did talk to my brother's chemistry teacher's husband about him. He said that Joe was enthused upon hearing of a young, aspiring jazz drummer and was happy to give a token of inspiration.

Even as his magnum opus "Take 5" becomes a well-worn musical artifact, emblematic of a time yet divorced from its makers, Joe Morello will linger as a legend among drummers he will never meet. His enthusiasm for for sharing music and knowledge still flows from his records, books, and even a little autograph.

Bebop Lines and Tight Rhymes

2011-03-07T14:57:00.000-08:00

A couple of weeks ago, Kanye West and Mos Def crashed a gig by the pianist/keyboardist/hip hop's official jazz guru Robert Glasper and the Blue Note in Greenwich Village. Lupe Fiasco was already on hand as a special guest, meaning this gig would have filled Giants Stadium, let alone the Blue Note's airliner-thin interior. CiscoNYC has the record here.

After the planned set, Mssrs. Def and West got into some spirited freestyle battling. I'm not going to pretend to be some arbiter of the match (though Kanye can make an egotistical rant sound riveting). To be frank, it was the audience involvement, especially during Kanye's go, that got me thinking.

For the the Glasper originals that opened the show, the audience was as polite as you could be at a jazz show, quietly chatting, applauding at appropriate points, etc. Even with Chris Dave digging into a massive pocket on the drums, the audience seemed to treat the whole thing as a mere sonic appetizer. When Kanye began his freestyle, the audience was deeply engaged. There were big responses when he rhymed "urine" with "touring," used big words like "Illuminati," and threw in a chorus-ending reference to "Jesus Walks."

Throughout West's performance, I couldn't help but think how they related to a great bebop solo. In any great solo, the player throws out some licks that feel irresistibly impressive - filled with lots of notes, flying in and out of the key, ending in the screaming upper range - just like West's virtuosic way with words. A well-timed musical quote, like those used by the tenor saxophonist Dexter Gordon, can add a strong dose of humor as well. Considering that great jazz improvisers and great rap freestylers use the same improvisational techniques, the difference in contemporary audience response between a jazz solo and a piece of freestyle is jarring.

The easy answer for this discrepancy even within the Glasper gig is that young listeners haven't listened to much jazz at all and so impressive runs have no meaning to them. But then again, improvisation is well-received among the young, whether at a concert with Phish or the Roots or with the local party band that jams out over James Brown tunes. I think part of the audience response problem is the context in which people today here jazz the most - classy restaurants and concert halls. These two venues put a premium on manners and appropriate behavior, rather than letting the listener freely engage with the music by cheering or dancing.

If one moves hard-swinging jazz out of these venues and into basement rock clubs, the performance vibe skyrockets. A couple of years ago, I saw the saxophonist Joshua Redman at the Highline Ballroom, a club more inclined to more popular strains of music than what jazz is now. With most of the crowd on its feet scattered around the room, the unyielding groove of the band's two bass-two drum attack got bodies moving. And when Redman jumped into the saxophonic stratosphere (see 3:29 in the vid), there was a mighty cheer. Any listener will respond to great instrumental freestyle if there's no need for permission.

Digital Disappearance

2011-03-02T20:53:00.000-08:00

Psst. Over here.

Yes you.

Don't make me speak louder.

So you know I've been in hiding for the past two months and cannot reveal my exact whereabouts. I've become a musical-guerrilla-partisan-mercenary, offering up my services to various groups bent on musical liberation. I have not been able to post here for fear that some may get the idea that I am not busy enough and will contact me for other jobs.

However, here are a couple of things that you can look forward here in the coming weeks:

A post on some new music by the guitarist Anders Nilsson
Ike Sturm's "Jazz Mass" and sacred music in secular spaces (but for the moment, check this out)

But more importantly, I am leaving soon for a top-secret musical mission in an unnamed Eastern European democracy. I will dispense periodic reports from the field to all those with appropriate clearance (yes, you).

This all I have time for now, but will report back soon.

Over and out.

If you can stand another list...

2010-12-30T19:27:00.000-08:00

you can find my favorite 15 albums of the year here, at the esteemed Billy Hepfinger's blog, Tenth Avenue Music.

But before you click on over, here are a few other year-end awards, commemorating everything from the worst to the weirdest of the year.

EPIC FAIL album of the year: Herbie Hancock - The Imagine Project

After pulling off the upset of all upsets during the 2008 Grammy Awards, I guess Herbie Hancock felt he was musically invincible, that even a silly idea like playing pop tunes with famous people around the world would turn into an epoch-defining album. Well, he did that, and it was just as terrible as one would think. I couldn't get through Seal and Pink singing the most ponderous version of "Imagine," well imaginable, before laughing in pain.

Honorable mention: Brad Mehldau - Highway Rider

It was ambitious, risky, and messy (which I usually like, see linked list), but it never got airborne. Mehldau is better with fewer people around him, not more.

Albums that probably would have made my list if I had actually heard them:

Steve Coleman & the Five Elements - Harvesting Semblances and Affinities
Chris Lightcap's Bigmouth - Deluxe
Geri Allen - Flying Toward the Sound
Myra Melford's Be Bread - The Whole Tree Gone
Jason Adasiewicz - Sun Rooms

Sharpest Dressed Performer - The JACK Quartet, Bang on a Can Marathon

Some very classy pastels belied the intensity of their performance of Xenakis' Tetras. I then saw one of them go into Banana Republic after the hit.

Honorable Mention - Darcy James Argue at Cafe Oto
He's upgraded from baggy jeans and dark t-shirts to a garish silver vest. Just needs to get matching ones for the band :P

Most Absurd Orchestral Moment - The opening three minutes of Marc Anthony Turnage's "Hammered Out" at the BBC Proms

He liked it and put a ring on it.

Honorable Mention - The New York Philharmonic performing Magnus Lindberg's "Kraft"

It's nice to see the notoriously crochety ensemble (they still haven't played a note of Phillip Glass!) take on a piece that requires the percussion section to go to a junkyard and then hang gongs from the ceiling.

Doubleplusunbad

2010-12-14T14:31:00.000-08:00

The esteemed jazz critic of the New York Times, Mr. Nate Chinen, is hosting a virtual year end round table at his blog, TheGig. Chris Barton, jazz critic of the Los Angeles Times, has some interesting thoughts about the Bad Plus, or more specifically, why they aren't talked about the same way, ten years after their debut album.

As for [Ethan] Iverson, and maybe this is simply the difference in being on the West Coast, but along the lines of the ‘mainstream conversation’ you mentioned it strikes me how little (present company excepted) the Bad Plus gets talked about anymore. Maybe after 10 years they’re just “that trio that does wacky stuff with the ‘120 Minutes’ songbook,” which would be a shame because I’m right there with you, Never Stop was their strongest record yet. Maybe there’s something in the ever-fractured promotion machine of 2010 that’s not serving them right, or maybe it’s a byproduct of not fitting into one category or another.

Hmm, very interesting indeed. Oh, so what do I think?

I'm definitely with Chris on how potent the Bad Plus are at this point. I saw them here in London during the jazz festival (twice for good measure) and I think my jaw was in some drooped position for 90% of the show (during the other 10% it was resting). There are few things in this life more pleasurable than watching Dave King drum.

But in terms of the Bad Plus in musical media right now, at least part of it seems to be how people responded to them when "These are the Vistas" came out. Most all of the reviews concentrated on the novelty of the covers, whether they thought it was good or bad. Even the ads for the show in London mentioned those early reviews and described the band in those terms - post-modern jazz trio, as fun as highbrow gets. By it's nature though, the novelty narrative dries up pretty quickly.

I feel (and Ethan & co. correct me if I'm wrong) that the band is so much more than "Heart of Glass" and have preferred to explore their many musical interests, rather than developing their image and touring with semi-big rock acts (something that Medeski, Martin & Wood did when they opened for Phish). The Bad Plus jumped off a major label anyway, which gives them a lot more musical freedom and the ability to more organically affect how people view them. They may not reach the same markets now, but they can connect to individual listeners in deeper ways.

What surprised me most when I saw them though is how the group has integrated so many influences into their collective sound that the music has this very pure, sui generis nature (which I hear in Braxton and Palestrina as well). The fact that the music seems to defy the storylines pegged to it from the first album makes it hard to write about. The Bad Plus are a few steps ahead of us, and I'm just fine with that.

A London-Town Rundown

2010-12-12T08:59:00.000-08:00

I leave London in T minus 3 days. Kinda crazy. Played much, heard much, learned much. I'm going to miss all of that, but I don't know if I can wait any longer for real pizza and bagels.

So here begins an end-of-year show, complete with all the highlights of the past few months and some special awards at the end!

A Catalog of Every Show I have seen in London

September 11/12 - The Thames Festival - **1/2
CW Stoneking, aka the Blues Savant, and Sweet Billy Pilgrim were fun surprises. The Pilgrim's tune "Kalypso" is just plain gorgeous. Everything else was barely worth the price of (free) admission.

September 11 - Tom Arthurs Trio and Kit Downes Trio @ King's Place - ***
Some interesting ideas thrown around, but it was all a little too clean and polite.

September 25 - London Philharmonic @ Royal Festival Hall - ****
A fantastically odd mix of pieces stretching from the 15th century 'til today, and refreshingly void of 19th century middle class classics. Vladimir Jurowski is an imposing and brilliant conductor.

October 2 - Django Bates 50th Birthday Bash @ King's Place - *****
I was going to a formal review of this mind-blowing show. Then I heard tons of Batesian ideas cropping up in things I was composing. If the music had burrowed into my system so quickly and subconsciously, there wasn't anything else that needed to be said. Except that Bates' music gave me possibly the biggest music high in my life; tickles the brain and moves the feet.

October 8 - Henry IV @ the Globe - ****1/2
In America, it's nearly impossible to find a Shakespeare production without the sense of academic exercise. In Shakespeare's recreated stomping grounds, there is no sense that his plays are dated or serious. It's just damn good entertainment, always bawdy and rambunctious. Falstaff was spot-on, as was the young Prince Hal (who happened to be my favorite actor from "The History Boys").

October 13 - London Philharmonic @ Royal Festival Hall - ***
Conductor Osmo Vanska was guesting. He's gotten a lot of good press for his work with the Minnesota Symphony. His wild gestures seemed to get in the way of the music. The recent Magnus Lindberg piece that opened the program had none of youthful snark of his earlier work, and I really don't need to hear the Mendelssohn violin concerto for a while. William Walton's first symphony is engaging for its peculiarities, how it prefigures John Adams, and the most of epic of snare drum hits in the finale.

October 16 - Orchestra of the Age of the Enlightenment & London Sinfonietta @ King's Place - ****
The program mixing Stravinsky's "Pulcinella" and its Italian inspirations highlighted latent similarities in very old and very new music. A wonderfully transparent and engaging performance.

October 22 - The BBC Symphony 80th Birthday Concert @ the Barbican - ****1/2
The beeb is a new music machine, and gave premieres of two concertos on this night. The percussion one was silly, the clarinet one was transportive and striking. And to top it off, an incisive reading of Rite of Spring. Conductor David Robertson was a perfect choice to lead the evening.

October 24 - Eric Whitacre with the LSO/LSC @ the Barbican - ***1/2
Really was the Eric Whitacre show, the LSO did what they could. It was nice to hear Barber's oft-neglected "Knoxville: Summer 1915" and Whitacre's new piece showed off a darker side of his personality.

November 2 - The Royal Philharmonic @ Royal Albert Hall - **1/2
One star goes for the experience of sitting in that gargantuan venue. The rest go to timpanist Matt Perry who can rattle the seats at the back of the hall when necessary. Unfortunately, there was a conductor from hell (who liked to plug a pet charity no less), a nervous reading of the Mendelssohn violin concerto (ok, I'm going for a moratorium on this one), and an oboist left out to dry in the second movement of Dvorak's "New World" Symphony.

November 5 - Oliver! @ Theatre Royal Drury Lane - ***
The production really pulled out all the stops; an enormous cast, saturated dance sequences, a tech-savvy set. The songs were as catchy as ever and the cast was adequate for the material, but sound clarity is impossible in a theatre of that size and the first 25 minutes of the play, no matter the production, are painfully boring to watch.

November 11 - The Philharmonia @ Royal Festival Hall - ****
The performance of Debussy's "Afternoon of a Faun" proved how the piece is maybe the most sublime ten minutes of music ever composed. Prokofiev's 2nd violin concerto was pleasingly off-beat. And the orchestra really went for it on Tchaikovsky's oh-so-romantic Fourth Symphony. It was penetrating and vulgar, music that speaks to the gut.

November 12 - A Century of Jazz Voice @ the Barbican - ***1/2
Gretchen Parlatto is breathtaking. Nikki Yanofsky makes me nervous watching her. The other singers did what they were called to do. Conductor/arranger Guy Barker must not sleep. Sort of fun in the end, but nothing special.

November 13 - Sam Crowe Group and Kit Downes Trio + 3 @ Royal Festival Hall - ****
Sam Crowe makes more nice-guy British jazz. Kit Downes sounded a world away from what he was in September, much weirder, more risk-taking. "The Wizard" was positively druidic in its mysteriousness. Let's hope Mr. Downes continues down this dark path.

November 18 - Darcy James Argue Secret Society @ Cafe Oto - ****1/2
In-your-face music is best experience when your face is literally in the music (I could read Argue's scores from my first-row seat). I think Josh Sinton blew my hair back a couple of times with his bari sax. The band just keeps on getting better, more comfortable with Argue's challenging music.

November 19 - The Bad Plus w/Wendy Lewis @ King's Place - *****
I don't know if there's anything more pleasing in life than watching Dave King play drums. Maybe the tightest band on the planet, their live shows are always a wonderful surprise. And then Reid Anderson sang "Heart of Gold" as an encore. If you don't come away smiling from a Bad Plus concert, check your pulse.

November 20 - The Bad Plus meet Django Bates @ King's Place - ****
Oh how I wish they just had time to rehearse a bit before doing this. There were some exciting sparks and genuine fun, but it had some of the pitfalls of a first meeting. Someone please put up the money to lock these guys in a studio together for a week and let them go at it.

November 26 - BBC Symphony @ the Barbican - ****
Another show packed with new works. Sean Shepard's "Wanderlust" was intermittently interesting, but it was funny when he, the hairy hobbit, shook hands with conductor Oliver Knusson, Hagrid's older brother. Copland's "Eight Poems of Emily Dickinson" just had a bit too much happiness in them. But Julian Anderson's "Heaven is Shy of Earth" was gloriously messy, a mass by way of Wendel Berry.

December 5 - The London Symphony @ the Barbican - ****
Marin Alsop is a sparkplug on the podium and the orchestra responded in force. The orchestra was able to convey both the dark and frolicking aspects of Beethoven's Leonore Overture no. 3 (with some tasteful alterations by Mahler here). The ensuing set of Lieder by Alma Mahler sounded like ideas Gustav started, through into his garbage can, which she thought were good, and then completed in his style. But even Mahler's incomplete ideas are a heck of a lot better than most composers' best ones. The performance of Beethoven's 7th symphony was an absolute joy, the finale flying by at autobahn tempo.

And now onto the awards.

Music Awards

Best Condcutor - Vladimir Jurowski
Ok, so I've loved David Robertson for like ever. He's probably still my favorite conductor out there. But the award must go to Jurowski because of how he has left his personal stamp on an orchestra. Jurowski is endlessly knowledgeable and creative, but more importantly, he's not afraid to use that knowledge and creativity to put together adventurous programs. At 38 years of age, Jurowski is part of a wave of younger conductors (including Alan Gilbert in New York and Gustavo Dudamel in Los Angeles) who don't see classical music as something akin to an old painting hanging on a wall in a museum and are reaching out to new listeners. Jurowski straddles the various tasks given to an orchestral music director and performs them as an experienced pro.

Loudest Orchestra - The London Symphony Orchestra
I really felt that Beethoven from the top balcony of the Barbican.

Best Percussion Section - BBC Symphony
I'm terribly biased here because my teachers play in this one. But every week, these players have some of the hardest music on the planet thrown at them and they make it look remarkably easy.

Concert of the Season - Django Bates @ King's Place, October 2, 2010
May Django make 50 more years of wonderful, humorous, and unique music. And may some smart arts promoter bring him to the states on a regular basis.

Venue Awards

Best Overal Venue - King's Place
Royal Festival Hall is too dry, the Barbican has a terrible location and odd stylings, and the Albert Hall has acoustics akin to a gymnasium. You may not be able to fit a symphony into either hall at King's Place, but anything smaller than that, it's hard to find a better venue anywhere. Both halls in the complex have impeccable acoustics and there's not a bad seat in the house. Plus, it sports sleek, postmodern architecture and has an art gallery to boot.

Venue London needs more of - Cafe Oto
London has fantastic institutional support for the arts - just look at the number of major orchestras, large venues, and amount of news coverage. However, because of this support, I don't get the same kind of quixotic energy from the musicians on the ground. Musicians in London haven't had to become the player-composer-writer-publisher-promoter just yet, though with impending austerity cuts, that day may be just around the corner. When that day comes, places like Cafe Oto in Dalston will have a great head start. Oto caters to the fringiest of fringe music, anything from Japanese laptop experiments to the anarchic energy jazz of Peter Brotzmann. The club is in an abandoned warehouse in a rundown area, but has a warm atmosphere and a dedicated staff. It's the kind of place you see in the East Village or Brooklyn, but at this point are hard to come by in London. Even with great institutional support, a lot of special music falls through the cracks. There needs to be more Cafe Otos to scoop that music up.

Weirdest Venue Bathrooms - The Barbican
I think it's supposed to be some sort of trough, but it's really just a wall. Beware of splashback. And the foot-operated sinks threw me for a loop the first time as well.

(Digital) Musical Dumpster Diving

2010-11-27T16:53:00.000-08:00

If the book/movie "High Fidelity" was created now instead of 10-15 years ago, I feel Rob Fleming would flaunt the size of his iTunes library as a sort of come-on. Kinda like that scene in "Up in the Air" where George Clooney and Vera Farmiga get turned on sharing the fancy plastic in their wallets.

I feel music snobs everywhere (myself included) can't help but judging one another by the size of one's digital library. I mean, it's very easy to think that one with a large library has listened to a huge amount, and therefore must be more worldly and cultured. Especially in a musical culture that prizes genre-bending and novel combinations, it's a potent statement if you mention that you can listen to music for a month straight and not hear the same song twice.

But a large library also poses many problems and I will say I'm not totally happy with the *mumblegarble*-eight gigs of music I have on my computer. When my music collection was much smaller, say during my senior year of high school, I could really get into a particular album much more, really soak it in. I listened to Kurt Elling's album "Nightmoves" so many times that year that I still can sing his entire vocalese solo (in my car, alone) from "A New Body and Soul." Now with so much more music, I'm a bit overstimualted. After listening to an album once, I make a snap judgment on it and move on to the next one in my library. Sometimes I don't get a chance to listen to something new and just totally forget about it. To be honest, there's quite a bit of music on my computer that hasn't been listened to at all. I feel that's nearly sinful.

However, the endless abyss of tracks does allow for some pleasant surprises when I turn on the shuffle. When I'm in the right mood (i.e. tonight), I won't hit the skip button very often and actually pay attention to what comes on. I just had a nice surprise with a track from the trumpeter Ingrid Jensen. I first heard Jensen on Maria Schneider's "Sky Blue" album and was really drawn to her playing. She's great in that she's got a secure "bop" (if you can call it that) vocabulary, but is never someone who just connects the changes. There's always unpredictability, an errant squeal, a warbling long tone. Her solo the other night at the Secret Society gig on "Transit" was ecstatic and physically draining. I've gotten a couple of her own albums over the past year and a half or so, but haven't given either of them a good listen for whatever reason.

The track that caught my ear tonight was Jensen's take on Bill Evans' "Time Remembered." However, it wasn't for Jensen's trumpet, but the guest vocalist who added plaintive lyrics to Evans' melody. The singing was sultry, but dry of usual jazz-singing histrionics. It was really quite hip, sounding like something Gretchen Parlatto would do, not all that far from her delivery on "JuJu" from that vocal concert a couple of weeks ago. I looked back to the track and saw that it was from 1997.

Wait, something that sounds so hip was really from 13 years ago? How is it that whoever this singer is presaged some of the most important trends in modern jazz singing and yet hasn't made enough waves to make me seek her out and add her to my *mumblegargle*-eight gigabyte library?

Turns out the singer is Jill Seifers, a student at the Berklee College of Music at the same time as Jensen. Seifers has released two albums under her own name, one a collection of standards recorded live with the pianist Michael Kanan, and another with a more varied program and an all-star backing band of peers from Berklee including Kurt Rosenwinkel on guitar, Joe Martin on bass, and Jorge Rossy on drums. Judging solely on the band, the label (the great incubator, Fresh Sound New Talent), and the variety of material - from Ellington's "Solitude" to Mingus to Hendrix to her own stuff - it's probably a really hip record. Seeing a program like this on a modern jazz vocals record is part of the territory right now, but was certainly more an anomaly 11 years ago when the album came out.

My question is that how a singer with a lot of forward thinking ideas and an arresting individual sound fell out of the business soon after. Seifers hasn't released an album since 2000, hasn't appeared on one since 2004, and doesn't have a web presence. Some investigation is due. And despite the fact there's still eons of my own music to go through, I'm definitely going to be on the lookout that Seifers album.

Update 1:10 AM GMT: I went back and listened to the other track that Seifers sings on, the Kenny Wheeler composition "Consolation." Towards the end of Seifers' scat solo, Jensen joins in and then begins some scary good interplay, like the two are of one mind. And then it seamlessly returns to the melody. Certifiable musical chill, big time.

Blogging the London Jazz Festival - Big Bands Redux

2010-11-19T16:40:00.000-08:00

See below for some incriminating evidence of Wednesday night's RCM Big Band hit at the Bull's Head (you may need to turn up your speakers pretty high).

It's Gordon Goodwin's delightfully candy-shopped version of Miles Davis' "Seven Steps to Heaven," featuring Peter Whitehouse on trombone, Steffan Ciccotti on vibraphone, Toby Street on trumpet, and a little bit of yours truly on those drum breaks at the end.

Speaking of incriminating big band evidence, I was able to see Darcy James Argue's Secret Society on Thursday evening in their (very fringe) London debut. My unyielding loyalty to Argue and his co-conspirators is well-trod, so it doesn't say much that I thought the concert was friggin' unbelievable, even better than when I saw them in New York about a year ago. So instead, here are some comments, musings, and the like from last night's show.

#1: Cafe Oto is a gnarly venue

Really screams jazz club, doesn't it?

On the downside, it's quite a nuisance to get to - two tube lines plus the infrequently-running London Overground. However, Cafe Oto is the kind of DIY venue that I hadn't been to in London before. Oto takes up the first floor of a converted warehouse in the northeast London neighborhood of Dalston, land of the fried chicken shops it seems. It has a vibe quite similar to 45 Bleecker in New York and caters to the weird and wonderful things that will never make it to Southbank or the Barbican. And last night, it was packed. It was so packed, I was virtually sitting up Darcy's butt.

#2: That first row seat was actually pretty frickin' sweet
During the break, the guy sitting behind me asked, "Are you ok with being that close?" I responded that I'm a drum set player so I'm usually even closer to the sonic onslaught. He then added that it was pretty amazing to have so many musicians in such an intimate space. Very much agreed.

Speaking of sonic onslaught, my big band director in high school once made a particularly weird exhortation that we should make a phalanx of sound. It only made sense to the two people that payed attention in world history (300 didn't come out until next year), but in terms of last night, it's a pretty apt description. Not only were the full ensemble sections fiercely loud, but they were also perfectly ordered and balanced. It was a wonderfully terrifying sonic experience.

They seem kindly and chill here, but trust me, Leonidas wouldn't wanna mess

It was especially terrifying when Josh Sinton brought his full force to bear on his baritone sax. During the pulsing sections of "Habeas Corpus," I could only imagine how much more potent Steve Reich's Music for 18 Musicians would be if Sinton doubled the bass clarinet parts on bari. During his solo on the new piece "Dymaxion," inspired by the American futurist Buckminster Fuller, the instrument seemed to buckle under the the torrential winds from Sinton's lungs, literally screaming in pain.

The Dymaxion Car

The advantage of that seat wasn't just sonic, but visual as well. I had a nearly unobstructed view of Mr. Argue's scores, which excited my super-technical music nerd side. For example, the other new piece on the program was called "Induction Effect," a meditation on how the human brain is so well-programed to disorient itself. The piece began with what was supposed to be a totally disorienting vamp, but I had the inside scoop on how it all was supposed to work. First the bass came in playing a straight triplet pattern in 5/4 time. Drummer Jon Wikan laid down a fat rock beat on top. Then the electric piano played a different repeating figure that suggested a different time signature. And then the guitar added another part that felt totally unrelated to the other three. And the band came in and...

I just lost my place.

#3 The band's collegiality is inspiring
Taking a big band that plays unclassifiable and weird music on the road is definitely a shoestring effort. The only reason the Secret Society was able to come over to England the first place was a grant from the Mid-Atlantic Arts Foundation and the group may still end their trip in the red.

That being said, the only reason that 18 musicians would join up for such endeavor is that they love and believe in the music they're playing. It's one thing when Darcy gets to travel to Europe and do his music with one of the state-sponsored big bands, but it's not quite the same as when the music is played by close friends and colleagues. It was great to see folks like Ingrid Jensen in the trumpet section, Curtis Hasselbring on trombone, and Erika von Kleist leading the saxes. These players (and many more in the band) are leaders in their own rights and could be off working on their own projects, or at least doing more lucrative studio work at home in New York. Instead they chose to travel halfway around the world to play in some old warehouse in a dingy part of town in front of maybe 100 people. If that's not for the love of the game, I don't know what is.

The Secret Society has grown from a pick-up band just a few years ago into a tight-knit group, truly co-creators in this music. The band is more fluent now in Argue's complex musical language, more comfortable in navigating his cruelly difficult solo sections. On "Habeas Corpus," trombonist James Hirschfeld gave it his all, soaring over the insistent background figures and on "Phobos," saxophonist Mark Small gracefully weaved his way through the chord sequence that changes on the whim of Mr. Argue. But more importantly, they've developed a deep sense of camaraderie. Erika von Kleist got a high five from Darcy for her stirring solo on "Obsidian Flow." There were quite a few hoots coming from the band during the collective soloing of Sam Sadigursky and trombonist Mike Fahie on "Jacobin Club." Trumpeter Matt Holman got a hearty applause from his bandmates for somehow navigating through the web of "Induction Effect."

No matter who plays the compositions, Darcy James Argue's music is dark, richly layered, and finely crafted. But it takes the particular talents and commitment of his Secret Society to make it immediate and exciting, something that will stay in the listener's mind well after leaving the show. Here's to the hope that Darcy James Argue will always have the help of a Secret Society to make his music too good a secret to keep.

Blogging the London Jazz Festival - Mid-Fest Update

2010-11-16T14:51:00.000-08:00

Tomorrow evening features what very may be the mostly hotly anticipated performance of the London Jazz Festival. Is it the Barbican's double bill of Charles Lloyd and Norma Winstone, featuring new MacArthur Genius grant winner Jason Moran? Of course not! It's the Royal College of Music Big Band playing at the Bull's Head in Barnes.

Alright, I keed, I keed. But this is the one performance where I have to put the money where my mouth is and actually play, rather than just sit back and post snarky comments later. We're doing a particularly old school set, but this isn't some lightly swinging dinner set. There's some Thad Jones, Mingus, the Duke, definitely not background music by any means. Our fearless director, Mark Armstrong, will take some blazing trumpet solos and hopefully we'll get through it all in one piece.

For my London readership (population: less than or equal to 1), come down to Barnes for our 8:30 PM hit. For everyone else, I'm planning to do a bit of bootleggin' and if anything comes out ok, it'll make it's way onto the internets in some capacity. Be on the lookout!

In other news, this guy from BBC radio 3 really liked Gretchen Parlato on Friday. Take notes, Miss Yanofsky.

Taped Blogging the London Jazz Festival - Sam Crowe Group + Kit Downes Sextet

2010-11-14T15:00:00.000-08:00

The Royal Festival Hall was packed on Saturday evening for a concert featuring Herbie Hancock and his ironically titled "Imagine Project". Knowing that the audience, expecting a full-out onslaught of trippy Mwandishi kosmigroov, would be disappointed in Hancock's performance, the promoters threw in a free opening gig in the lobby featuring two British pianists whose best work is in front of them, rather than behind - Sam Crowe and Kit Downes.

There was quite the lively vibe at the hall, with families resting their legs after a big shopping day, old friends conversing over pints, teenagers just there to hang out. I couldn't even grab a seat near the stage, rather electing to stand behind the back row of chairs in plain view of the drums (Even if I didn't like the music that much, I could at least pick up an idea or two). It might not have had the same self-congratulatory optimism at the Undead and Winter Jazz Fests in New York, but there sure were a lot more people, and a lot more different kinds of people. It seems that jazz is a lot less uncool in Britain than in the states. Maybe it's the fact that there isn't this self-important "Jazz is America's classical music" preachiness to it all.

Don't they look nice!

That inherent coolness was embodied by the Sam Crowe group's slick attire (see right) - suit jackets with colorful shirts and jeans, pointy shoes, designer 5 o'clock shadow. They look those "nice boys" your mom always wanted you to date...

Oh wait a sec, haven't I seen this before?

Downes, bassist Calum Gourlay, and drummer James Maddren have been playing together since starting at the Royal Academy of Music in London in 2005, and they took the stage with a relaxed politeness. Like those "nice boys" your mom always wanted you to date. Except that Downes has a mighty beard and pony tail.

Oh right, I guess I thought the same thing about Kit Downes and his mates when I saw them a couple of months ago. Is British instrumental jazz just "nice boy" music (also considering I haven't seen one female jazz instrumentalist on stage here)?

Certainly Django Bates is more than a little too intense and subversive for this category, but Sam Crowe seems to fit the bill quite well. The pianist's harmonic palette is sweetly tonal, not far removed from the likes of Esbjorn Svensson or the American young guns Aaron Parks and Taylor Eigsti. There's no down and dirty swing, no vicious attacks on the piano. Crowe and his group seem content to sit in glossy landscapes, and that can be quite nice, at least for a while.

Although Crowe was working with deps in the drum and vibe chairs, the band sounded tight and surefooted. It was clear they all knew the language of Crowe's music, which makes me wonder if the blend of poppy harmonies and icy even-eighth groove is the young British jazz musician's vernacular. If it is, then I guess it's safe to say that British jazz speaks in a posh accent

But throughout the mostly mild-mannered set, there were some rhythmic sparks. Bassist Jasper Hoiby in particular was never afraid to throw the soloist some slippery curveballs, his big tone penetrating the bustling room. He and Crowe seemed to share quite a few devious smiles when interjecting on a vibes or soprano sax solo. The last tune of the set was quite rhythmically playful and was dedicated to Crowe's nephew Max (don't worry, his niece Phoebe also had a song dedicated to her earlier). It began with a sprightly major-key vamp, leading into a simple song, beguilingly innocent. Everyone got to show off their chops playing over the quick tempo, but it always stayed in character.

As I waited through the stage change, my next review was forming in my head:

Kit Downes came on next and his set sounded just like it did last time, nice and pretty, blah blah blah...

The end.

Well, after about five minutes I was scrambling to erase what I had thought and just catch up with what was actually happening. Downes, hair neatly cropped now but still with that beard, came on with significant reinforcements - 2 saxes and a cello - and a different drummer. The band jumped right into a sort of tipsy parlor song, then seamlessly transitioned into a tune both folksy and funky. Downes said afterward that it was inspired by pianist Keith Jarrett's tambourine playing in the 1970s, which he often did with his fantastically off-kilter and vastly underrated "American" quartet. Drummer Tim Giles (on right) perfectly channeled Paul Motian (from Jarrett's band) on the tune with a thuddy sound and impeccable placement. Already, this performance had a much wider trajectory than the one of two months ago.

Perhaps due to his success following his Mercury Prize nomination, Downes seems more willing to take ambitious risks in his music. For example, on the tune "The Wizard," he let saxophonist James Allsop and Giles go for it at the outset before chiming in with deep, dark chords and keyboard-spanning runs. This wasn't your Harry Potter playtime kind of wizard, rather something much more mysterious and druidic. The music here wasn't afraid to ruffle the audience's feathers and was much more engaging for that.

It didn't always mean it was loud, in your face music. On a ballad called "The View," Downes began the tune solo, playing much too softly for a noisy lobby. Yet in a Cagean fashion, the shear quietness of the piano was so unnerving, it was impossible not to pay attention. Throughout the set, Downes and his band played deftly with such contrasts in volume, harmony, timbre, and tempo (or total lack thereof). Although such contrast may suggest a lack of individual vision, the contrasts here showed that Downes does indeed have a personal sound. Everything was united by Downe's careful touch and intense patience. The contrasts belie a multitude of influences, but all integrated into a particular vocabulary that Downes already speaks quite fluently.

Who knows what Downes' music will be like next month. It's hard enough predicting his hairdo.

Before the last tune Downes mentioned that all the set's music had been recorded by the group and was going to be released on a new album in March of the coming year. If the performance is any indication, this is certainly an album worth looking out for. With the additions to his normal trio, Downes doesn't have to carry the weight of melody and accompaniment all the time. He can be more texturally inventive while backing other soloists and also use the new voices to enrich the variety of his compositions. Downes' music is starting to head down dark and mysterious paths. While that means another Mercury nod is likely not in the cards (it'll be too terribly adventurous for a mainstream prize soon enough), it is clear we can expect great things from this young piano wizard.

Live Blogging the London Jazz Festival - A Century of Jazz Voice

2010-11-12T17:16:00.000-08:00

Tonight is the official start of the London Jazz Festival with a big show at the Barbican titled "Jazz Voice: Celebrating a Century of Song." My drum kit teacher at college, Ralph Salmins, was laying down the grooves for this gig and invited some of us n00b RCM drummers to sit on the rehearsal. Below is my running commentary on all the afternoon's tuneage.

2:22 PM - Some preliminary thoughts.
This is a serious gig. Seriously large that is - full big band plus strings and (count 'em) 9 vocalists. My compatriot Oli says that the music director, trumpeter Guy Barker, leads this big band on a regular basis, having just released an album called "The Amadeus Project." Oli promises it's not as cheesy as it sounds.

Speaking of cheesy, it's hard not to get any more cheesy than jazz + strings. It's very easy for the tunes to just get loaded with excess everything, and then it all sounds like Hollywood circa 1940. Because these albums sound dated from the first note, it's very hard to give them a sense of immediacy or distinct personality. For a jazz + strings album to work, there has to be some subversive aspect, the soloist drawing the attention away from the backing. Saxophonists Charlie Parker and Stan Getz both had turns with a jazzy orchestra with shockingly adventurous results, and Joni Mitchell's "Travelogue," a jazz + strings take on her back catalog, takes flight on the wings of Brian Blade's drums.

I have a feeling that this gig will have mixed results, depending on the singer and the repertoire.

2:32 PM - A look at the saxes
The 2nd alto player is wearing a Milwaukee Brewers shirt! Considering how little baseball memorabilia I've seen in England, I'd like to know the story behind that one.

Hmm, the saxes are seated tenor-tenor-alto-alto. Haven't seen that other than in Buddy Rich's band. But then also the bari and bass trombone are as far away from the rhythm section as possible. Considering how it hard it is to hear everything on a stage like this I'd move them to the other side...

2:39 - Gretchen Parlato and Butterfly
Brooklyn resident Gretchen Parlato is the jazz singer of the present, a consummately sure-footed musician with wide influences and creativity to burn. One of the highlights over debut album from last year was her take on Herbie Hancock's "Butterfly," stripping the fusion anthem down to something percussive and tropical. Adding a big band and strings to the mix could weigh it down but we'll see.

2:41 - Oo that's hip
Actually the string backings are pretty darn slick. It's not as precious anymore, and with this production value it has a great studio hip-hop vibe. Even Gretchen has to bounce along to that slippery backbeat. Her warm and airy voice fits the string sound perfectly. If this version made it onto some film soundtrack, it would be a hit.

Parlato's perfectly-sculpted hair never moves

2:45 - How was that?
A really satisfying performance, and shockingly the first time that Gretchen did this with Guy or the orchestra at all. She's a musician's kind of singer, in total command of her instrument, always listening to the band, no trouble fitting in.

2:55 - JuJu
Now she takes on Wayne Shorter's JuJu with a funky groove in 3 (Kinda' like the last movement of Steve Reich's "Sextet"come to think of it, maybe a tad slower). The orchestrations are a little too much here, taking it into film noir territory with all those harmon mutes. And Gretchen has this little lyric "...footprints will lead us..." That's a bit cheeky for the song, referencing another Shorter classic.

3:11 - Time for the big run
Wait a second, that's Dougray Scott from "Desperate Housewives"! I promise I only learned that from Oli. Really, I swear. Anyway, he's the emcee for the evening.

3:14 - A big little overture
Woah, here comes the old school Hollywood scoring. Sounds a little bit like what Gordon Goodwin does for Disney films. Kind of makes you miss Gretchen already.

3:16 - Workin' hard and hardly workin'
Singers Charlie Wood (think the voice of Tom Wopat in the body of Jim Gaffigan) and China Moses (who has certainly learned good lessons from her mother Dee Dee Bridgewater) wander on stage for a bluesy number straight out of the overture. I think there's about 50 too many musicians on stage to actually make this tune work.

3:24 - "Teach Me Tonight"
China gets a solo turn on this Rodgers & Hart ole timer. Definitely one for the blue-haired ladies. Barker does his best Nelson Riddle imitation. China is quite the gregarious performer but doesn't bring any new insights this time around.

3:29 - "It Never Entered My Mind"
Up next is Jacqui Dankworth, the first daughter per se of British jazz (her parents are the late jazz saxophonist Johnny Dankworth and the singer Cleo Laine), singing another oldie. Her voice is clear and big, with a bit of a posh accent (ma-e ma-eend). She doesn't oversing, admirably, preferring to project a pensive and stately mood. Somehow the clarity makes me think of Judy Collins, which is funny considering Collins is about as un-jazz as you can get. Either way, this is how you do a straight-ahead standard and make it work.

3:35 - An homage to Peggy Lee
All of the tunes here have some anniversary connection to 2010, like the performer died in 1980, the composer turns 70 this year, the actor who played that character in the movie this song's from was born in 1890, you know all those insightful connections that make the songs more meaningful.

Peggy Lee would have been 90 this year, so Georgie Fame performs her pseudo-latin version of Cole Porter's "Always True to You (In My Fashion)." It's very '50s, and positively silly in an endearing way. Georgie sings with a theater actor's gusto and Barker's arrangement doesn't shy away from humor, especially in a cruelly difficult string pizzicato section.

3:41 - Butterfly back
Gretchen returns to sing "Butterfly" again. It feels a bit cheapened in context with the rest of the program, the strings don't pop like they did before. But as it goes, it becomes easy to hear that the band is having a lot more fun with this one, with all the tricky meter shifts and the infectious groove. Ralph is particularly impressive here, because he nails the chart while still being playful, really goes for it at points. It feels like the rhythm section is really committed to this one.

3:47 - Average Sinatra is still great fun
In a pleasantly surprising turn, Hamish Stuart of The Average White Band comes on to sing a Sinatra signature, "That's Life." They got this one in because Sinatra joined the Tommy Dorsey Band in 1940. Really, did you really need to be so desperate for this connecting theme?

To be totally honest, I'm still thinking about Butterfly for the first couple minutes of the tune, but then those fat-back horns and old school 6/8 R&B groove finally get me. Stuart seems to just be having a blast whenever he performs and really milks the fantastically cliched half-step modulation on the last verse.

3:52 - The band gets a bone
In order to demonstrate how instruments can evoke the human voice, the band brings out the one musician who can make a piece of wood breathe... Guitarist Bill Frisell!

No, Alan Barnes did not have one of those

Alright, alright, maybe in my dreams, but clarinetist Alan Barnes jumps up from the reed section to perform Artie Shaw's clarinet concerto. Barnes, who also had been doing a lot of bari and bass clarinet work up there, seems to be London's answer to Scott Robinson (see right). Except less weird - no stupidly large instruments, no planet-speckled vests.

The composition itself is a fun piece of novelty, using every popular dance beat, every clarinet trick, and even some nifty meter changes (I guess Shaw beat Steve Coleman to the punch by forty years). This episodic music would lend itself perfectly to a Pixar short.

But the performance seems a bit stiff, not quite nailing the proto-rock 'n roll attitude of the "Roll 'Em" vamp. And Barnes first taps his foot on all four beats to the bar, and then 1 & 3. Oof, let's lay into those backbeats folks. At least there wasn't hand clapping in this one.

4:04 - I Wonder what's next
Dougray Scott calls the next performer, Noel McKoy, the godfather of British soul. Does that make Paul McCartney the great-godfather? (Exhibit A: Gotta Get You Into My Life, Exhibit B: Let it Be)

Scott performs Stevie Wonder's "I Don't Know Why I Love You." Wonder is a natural choice for a big band/string thing because he was pretty much a big band writer in his own right, except he used layers upon layers of synths as opposed to horns. I'll argue that he's the next logical step after Duke Ellington, but that'll be for another day.

McKoy really does a good job matching Wonder's particular timbre and phrasing, but has a darker tone down low. His big range jumps really stick out in that regard. The band isn't quite funky enough at the outside but a potent tenor solo that would make Lenny Picket proud helps push it forward to the big ending.

4:09 - Faith at long last

The fruit was foregone for this performance

Before leaving for London, my composer friend Tim told me about this weird new pop scene coming out of London that was like cosmic David Bowie does 1940s/50s cabaret. He didn't quite get it, but told me to check it out anyway.

I have been bad and have not sought this music out, but then the next singer in the program happens to be the reigning queen of this style, a singer who attempts to merge the husky soul of Amy Winehouse with the obscene grando-pomposity of Lady Gaga - Paloma Faith. The British music TV show host Jools Holland says Faith's voice is reminiscent of Etta James, so obviously Faith's tune is "At Last."

Faith bounds up the stage with a ridiculous getup - huge curly red locks, aquamarine dress suit, polyurethane-pink heels. And I mean heels. Faith's imitation is quite awkward. She really tries hard to do everything James does, but it's impossible to figure out if she's doing it respectfully or ironically. So therefore I don't know whether to laugh or cry. She seems much more of an actress than a singer, more interested in the production than the song itself. It sounds like a hollowed out version of what the tune should be.

4:15 - The cheese is on ice
Frank Loesser was born in 1910. Apparently, according to Mr. Scott, was another allegedly famous American songwriter, Frank Loss-er. Oh well, I'll give him a break because he's Scottish and at least pretended to know who Herbie Hancock was during the "Butterfly" announcement.

Charlie Wood and Jacqui Dankworth return to do that oh so trite duet, "Baby It's Cold Outside." For me, you're not going to get any better than Rudolph Nureyev and Miss Piggy on the Muppet Show, just because it amps up the preposterousness to well, preposterous levels. But I'm open to see what they can do.

The tempo here is a bit slower than usual, a bit sleazy. By the time the band settles in on the first verse it's downright sexy swing. The performance really benefits from this, highlighting the sexual tension covered up by Loesser's cute lyrics. Wood is great as the alpha male while Dankworth's straight-laced appearance suits her character well. Alright, I'll put this one in the pleasantly surprised pile.

4:21 - The moment we've all been waiting for
Nikki Yanofsky is the Justin Bieber of jazz. Same age, same nationality, same kind of fawning-over on daytime TV. She's asked to test the mic and says "Do you want me to sing? Ok. I don't know why this just popped into my head but... When you wish upon a star..." No comment.

Luckily we are spared a full orchestra rendition of that one, and instead are treated to an uptempo version of Ray Charles' "Hallelujah I Love Her So." In light of the "It Gets Better" campaign, I thought it would be a nice gesture to keep the lyric's gender the same. Oh well, I guess we'll leave the political statements to Ke$ha. Wait, did I just say that?

Less than halfway through the first verse, Nikki just flat out grabs the mic from the stand and takes over. She has a very demanding stage presence, but there's something just a bit uncomfortable about it. I don't know if it's shear nervousness, or fear of not being liked, or just raging hormones (she's 16 for crying out loud), but she doesn't seem able to be a real human being on stage. She doesn't look back to the band or the conductor at all, doesn't project a feeling of warmth and intimacy to the audience. It sounds like an Ella Fitzgerald-spouting automaton, or a drama queen that doesn't know when to turn it off, rather than a living, breathing jazz singer.

4:45 - Break time
I take a mosey on up to the CD store on the second floor. They're piping in Nikki Yanofsky. I think I'd rather just listen to Ella.

5:00 - But not for long...
The band is back in full swing, washing the theater with schmaltz, schmaltz, and more schmaltz.

Wait a sec, it get's modal all of a sudden. The band, which has been licking its chops all day, finally gets to chow down on some moody post-bop.

5:04 - Jump cuts
Wait a sec, it's now Charlie Parker's "Ornithology" all of a sudden. Woops, I mean Canteloupe Island. No, Chameleon. I'm sure I actually said "St. Thomas," which gets another goofy string pizzicato treatment. And now we're back in modal land.

I really don't get this medley at all. Must have something to do with the anniversary thing.

Update, Saturday 13 November 2010, 10:05 PM GMT: Upon further research, all these tunes have a birthday in 2010 connection. Charlie Parker would have been 90. Herbie Hancock has turned 70. Sonny Rollins just turned 80. And that modal tune that bookended the medley is by the Anglo-Canadian trumpeter Kenny Wheeler, who also has turned 80 this year. Methinks a little happy birthday quote somewhere in there could have made this a bit clearer.

5:13 - Mosey on by
China Moses returns to sing Dionne Warwick's "Walk on By." It gets a sultry Bossa Nova treatment and it kinda works. It's just that perfect tempo for a lyrical piano solo and the piano man takes full advantage.

5:19 - Send me a downbeat

Nothing says Film Noir like artsy black and white photos

Scott announces (apparently to those in the audience who potentially suffer from amusia) that Guy Barker (on right) likes film noir. "Send Me Someone to Love" has all the right noir-ish trappings, like those swirls of strings and raunchy trombone plungerings. On the last pass through the verse, Hamish Stuart funks up the melody and then the band comes down splat on the downbeats. No need to be slickly syncopated here, just send a bullet through the audience.

5:25 - Delightfully placid cruise
Noel McKoy returns to sing Smokey Robinson's "Cruzin'". The guitar really sets the groove up nicely with some bluesy fills and pointed strumming. It all just lets Noel do his thing.

5:30 - Zhu-Zhu
I guess the Scotts have a particular way with their J's. Parlato returns for a full run of "Juju." Her voice emerges at the top from a green gray mist, delightfully unmoored from the thick accompaniment. On this run, Parlato's improv solo is startlingly gorgeous. I can't really call it scat because she doesn't really sing anything faster than a quarter note. It's a solo of manipulated sustains, playing with the length, volume, and color of each note. One swell just freezes my spine. After the final melody, Parlato gets one more solo on the outro, singing a repeating rhythm that always pushes over the next bar line. It's rare to find a singer with this kind of rhythmic control.

It then all fades to nothing.

5:37 - "Let's Get Lost" is sound advice here
Paloma is back on stage, and in contrast to Parlato's rhythmic control, Faith is unable to snap accurately on 2 and 4 while singing. Some of these performances today aren't doing much to dispel the British people's reputation for lack of rhythm. At least Mr. Scott learned from his past mistake and announced that the song was by Frank Lesser.

5:41 - "Everything Happens to Me"
Having listened for more than 3 hours at this point, everything's starting to run together a bit. But then Georgie Fame says that he's going to do a little Chet Baker and jumps into an impressive bit of vocalese, even nailing those quick bebop runs. Parlato looks up from her macbook. Fame proves he's more than just an old crooner and gives the audience a wake-up call in the process.

5:47 - To take your mind off tough economic times...
Charlie Wood returns to sing Ray Charles's "Busted." It's a really down and dirty 6/8, but gets a nice push from Ralph's hi-hat. There's a pitch perfect trombone solo and then Charlie takes us out.

5:51 - One last little bit of dairy for ya
When the word "wizard" exits Dougray Scott's mouth, I already have a complete conception of what the next song is going to sound like, note for note. Yanofsky's waiting in the wings, it's gonna be "Somewhere Over the Rainbow," I can just turn on the Katherine McPhee version.

Ok, that's more than a bit presumptuous, but now after the first A section, there hasn't been anything to convince me otherwise. Yanofsky's voice is a little frail at the extremes, but I think that's a good thing. I'm brought into the song more, beguiled by the child-like imperfections. But then Yanofsky goes for the belt again, and the character isn't any different than what I imagined. Barker throws in a slick reharmonized turnaround on the last verse, but it still ends as a syrupy sweet.

Because of this very Broadway take on the song, I'm thinking about where Yanofsky's going to go from here. Is her love of jazz singing going to bring her from Ella to Abbey Lincoln to Betty Carter to Luciana Souza and eventually to her own mature style? Or is she going to stay on this pop-oriented route and then when she becomes yesterday's news, will make a guest appearance in some big budget musical, a la Clay Aiken?

5:57 - Take us out Ralph
What's a better way to end this evening than with a rousing rendition of "Sing, Sing, Sing"? Well a whole Louis Prima medley of course. There's "Just a Gigolo" and "Jump, Jive and Wail", but sadly no "Pennies from Heaven."

6:12 - That's a wrap
The shows over, and I'm on my way out. But everyone else... they gotta do this whole thing again in an hour.

Update 13 November 2010, 11:34 GMT: Apparently Peter Quinn liked the real performance a lot more than I liked the rehearsal. So did Londonjazz.

Americana in Earnest

2010-11-03T17:20:00.000-07:00

N.B. I've noticed since coming to London that concert reviews here are really short, maybe about 400 words if the author is lucky. Everything also gets a star rating. Consider this an attempt to write a London-style review.

Eric Whitacre with the London Symphony Chorus and Orchestra - ***1/2

Composer Eric Whitacre has a new album out on Decca Records, called “Light and Gold.” That title is a canny descriptor of both the music and the man behind it. Whitacre’s pieces are built with thick and heavy harmonies that seem to glow in their earnest tonality, earning them ubiquity at American high school band and choral concerts. With this performance pedigree, it was understandable that when Whitacre led the esteemed London Symphony Orchestra and Chorus in a concert of his works, he could barely contain his enthusiasm.

“Thank you… um. I love London!” Whitacre exclaimed at the start of the performance. With his shoulder-length blond locks and perfect J. Crew stubble surrounding a billion-megawatt smile, it was impossible not to get caught up in the aw-shucks of it all.

The earnest music was perfectly suited to match the mood. On the program, Whitacre paired his pieces with others by his American forebears, a sort of catalog of influences. Aaron Copland’s “Old American Songs” for choir and orchestra opened the concert. Aside from some brassy sound effects in the playful “I bought me a cat,” Copland did little to dress up the folk tunes, instead building simple and sturdy arrangements. Whitacre wisely stepped out of the way and led a performance that was clean of sentimentality.

The mood darkened heavily with “Mid-Winter Songs,” by Morten Lauridsen, Whitacre’s tonal godfather. Lauridsen chose to set the music to disarmingly personal love poems by Robert Graves, blowing up the author’s emotions to billboard size with monolithic chords and thunderous percussion. Even with an impassioned performance by the orchestra and choir, the anguished narrator drowned in orchestration. Whitacre also included Samuel Barber’s “Knoxville: Summer 1915,” a piece whose elegant craftsmanship Whitacre agonized over while studying at the Juilliard School. Soprano soloist Hila Plitmann, Whitacre’s wife, worked hard to send James Agee’s stream-of-consciousness text to the back of the hall, but was too glam to project the girl-next-door vibe the piece feeds on.

Because the concert was also a British coming-out party, the program was filled with several of Whitacre’s million-dollar pieces. “Water Night,” “Sleep,” and “Lux Aurumque” certainly fit that bill, washing the audience in milky tone clusters that were never dissonant enough to offend the audience. “Rak HaHatchala,” a set of five Hebrew love songs with lyrics by Plitman, was more agile than the others. The troubadour melodies were not weighed down by harmonies here, instead quietly pushed along by a tambourine.

But the centerpiece of the program was Whitacre’s new commission for the LSC, “Songs of Immortality,” featuring dark, reflective poems by Dylan Thomas and Emily Dickinson. It was a deeply personal work for Whitacre, completed while his father suffered through severe health issues. The optimistic major keys of “Sleep” and “Lux Aurumque” were replaced by ambiguously minor modes, while the burbling orchestral writing gave the choral parts tense momentum. “Immortality” isn’t going to be another gold-selling composition for Whitacre, but that’s a good thing. The piece shows that Whitacre can do more than sweetly beguile an audience, that there is dark substance beneath the innocent exterior of both the man and his music.

It's a small...

2010-11-01T15:14:00.000-07:00

...music world at least. One of the fun things about going to a music school is that even overseas, it's pretty easy to find people with mutual-musical friends. Like a few of the exchange students at RCM from Boston University had a high school friend of mine as a counselor at music camp, and one of the percussionists here met another percussionist at a festival in Germany that I had roomed with for a seminar in Philadelphia.

Yes, the music world, and the percussion world in particular, is a small place, further evidenced by the daily "friends suggestions" I get on Facebook. Some of them have been quite amusing, and a bit flattering, as the all-powerful Facebook thinks I am 1 degree removed from super-crazy-talented musician X rather than 6. Here are some interesting names that have popped up:

Killin' Drummers:
Billy Kilson, the mother-funkiest drummer on the planet, even when playing with that dashing blond trumpeter I always get awkwardly asked about by relatives at party. Instead of expressing my near-loathing of this player, I like to answer, "He's gotta great drummer!"

Ari Hoenig, an athletic wild man on the kit, who also likes to play jokes on the audience by playing the beat like a 16th note off from where it should be. Super sneaky.

Old-school jazzers:
Bassist John Clayton, who always swings most gracefully and whose big band is much beloved by the Grammy-nominating committee.

Saxophonist Lew Tabackin, who still makes surprisingly satisfying neo-bop with his wife, the pianist and composer Toshiko Akiyoshi. It's sad that their long-time big band folded back in 2003.

Pianist George Cables, who is generally known as a great straight-ahead guy, but I first heard him playing a mean Fender Rhodes on a peculiar and fun album with vibist Bobby Hutcherson. He went through a period of kidney and liver problems a couple of years ago, with no insurance to boot, so it's nice to see that he's ok enough to make a facebook profile. Oh yeah, and play all over the place.

Classical Percussionists:
Greg Zuber, principal of the Metropolitan Opera and head of percussion at the Juilliard School.
Michael Burritt, head of percussion at the Eastman School of Music, and the guy who started the percussion teaching merry-go-round that complicated my college choice 2 years ago
Steve Weiss, perhaps the most famous person in the percussion realm. Who else are you going to go to for a 48 inch gong, or that exact timpani mallet for the excerpt form Bartok's Concerto for Orchestra? And it will somehow get there the next day.
Nebjosa Zivkovic, virtuoso percussion soloist. But that doesn't give him an excuse for his exceptionally cheesy web intro and press photos.
Colin McNutt, well kinda sorta. He's big in the drum corps world. Like he has his name a drum stick big. Actually come to think of it, all of these guys do. I think that's the sign you've made it.

There are some suggestions of people I've actually met before, whether at college auditions, music festivals, or just sneaking backstage after a show. There are percussionists Chris Deviney, Alan Abel, Jonathan Haas, and Doug Perkins; jazz(?) improvisers like saxophonist Steve Wilson and guitarist Grey McMurray. But either way, though I've friended musicians in the past after I saw them play and maybe got an autograph, I think I'll hold off here. Do I really need to know that Steve Weiss has a thing for tie-dye and that Greg Zuber takes his triathlons as seriously as his paying gigs? Oh wait...

Know Your London Orchestras! A (B)ig (B)irthday (C)ake (S)urprise...

2010-10-23T15:16:00.000-07:00

Considering the shocking (to an American at least) number of orchestras in London, one would think that the public professional orchestra has had a long and storied tradition here. Well that's not really the case, especially considering that for an English cultural institution to have a long and storied tradition, it has to have been around for hundreds of years like Shakespeare's Globe or the University of Oxford. And while across the pond the New York Philharmonic is pushing 160 years old, the oldest permanent professional orchestra in London had a birthday yesterday and is a whipper-snapper of 80 in comparison.

So to which orchestra should you send your warmest wishes? Well from the obvious titular hint, it is none other than the BBC Symphony!

But wait a minute! Wasn't the London Symphony Orchestra founded in 1904, making it a good 26 years older than the BBC? Well, the LSO unfortunately was one of the many casualties of the Great War and really didn't exist from 1916 through 1919. The BBC Symphony has exploited this loophole for marketing purposes because just like in the US, inflating one's relative age in Britain also inflates one's prestige (just ask the Universities of Pennsylvania and Delaware; I promise they're not really older than Princeton).

But either way, it took a while for British orchestras to leave the Royal chambers and churches, and yesterday was indeed a special day for the flagship orchestra of the British Broadcasting Corporation.


David Robertson, who wore that same shirt last night

And what better way to celebrate this momentous occasion than with a concert highlighting both the BBC's storied past and its present vitality. Led (slightly ironically) by its American principal guest conductor David Robertson, the orchestra presented two new concertos book-ended by past staples at the Barbican Center (the LSO's home ballpark, just to further the irony).

The concert began with one of those staples, Wagner's Overture to the Flying Dutchman, a piece that was performed during the BBC's inaugural concert on October 22, 1930. Considering my distaste for historical fetishization, it was somehow appropriate I arrived minutes late to the concert and only heard the overture through the tiny lobby speakers. But from talking with percussionist Alex Neal earlier in the week (my teach at Royal College), the piece was really just to get the blue-haired ladies in the door and not something the orchestra was really excited about. In the end, no big loss.

So my evening with the BBC instead began with the brand-spankin' new ConcertO-Duo, a percussion concerto for the young men of, you guessed it, O Duo (Owen Gunnel and Oli Cox, RCM grads!) written by Stephen McNeff. The piece began with a gargantuan percussion setup strung across the front of the stage, but no percussionists. As the orchestra played on, it seemed to be a bit of a dadaist joke until the duo ran up from the auditorium's side doors, reaching their posts just in time to deliver an ear-numbing thwack. However, the setup continued to serve a dadaist purpose as the next portion of the concerto featured the percussionists' formidable polyrhythmic clapping technique and the beautiful sounds they can coax from a wooden stage with little drumsticks.

O Duo took to their setup bit by bit, adding groovy tom-tom runs to the orchestra's vaguely bluesy backings, then some woodblocks and cowbells for spice. As the players switched to marimba and xylophone, their parts were assimilated into the orchestra's. It wasn't a concerto where the heroic soloist(s) was pitted against an orchestral onslaught, but one where the two worked as a team, using their varieties of instrumental textures to create an intoxicating sound world. Until orchestra percussionist Alex Neal interrupted everything with a ferocious seizure for two flexatones.

See, even O Duo's press kit photos are silly

But of course there had to be some show of percussive virtuosity, and that came near the end of the piece during the extended cadenza. Oliver Cox started a descending run at the high end of the marimba. Then Owen Gunnell followed him (literally) step for step down the instrument. When Cox reached the bottom 5 octaves later, he scampered back to the top for another ride. Then Gunnell did the same. Cox liked the run so much he went back again, this time faster. So did Gunnell. By this point the crowd was snickering, which was obviously a cue to go on to the groovy Latin section. It was nearly danceable, but there is no dancing at British classical concerts, only gentle swaying at the last of the Proms.

Alright, so the cadenza ended, followed shortly by the piece itself in a final flash of loudness. The crowd gave many ovations. They seemed to enjoy all of the silliness that had ensued. But unfortunately, that silliness seemed to overshadow some seriously beautiful moments scattered throughout the piece, like the part when the xylophone and marimba traded surprisingly lyrical melodies despite the brilliant attack of hard rubber mallets. Considering that percussionists always seem to want everyone to take them more seriously, another percussion piece that emphasizes show-man choreography and a massed array of bells and whistles isn't what percussionists need right now. The instruments become the stars rather than the players. In the end, all of the wonderfully musical things O Duo did throughout the piece were pushed out of the audience's memory by the mad-cap marimba run.

The second half began in a darkened hall with Finnish composer Kaija Saariaho's recent clarinet concerto D’om Le Vrai Sens, which I think roughly translates to "On the True Meaning Of." The open-ended title is quite apt for the wonderfully abstract piece, performed last night by another Finn, Kari Kriikku. The music lit up the darkness with eerily lush string chords that perk up the spine and tense muscles. It was so powerfully transporting that when I heard a cellphone beep, I mumbled a serious "fuck you" for disturbing my reverie. And then out of nowhere came a sound like a rocket, a growling clarinet from an unseeable source. The line continued, as the clarinet didn't just play notes, but notes between the notes, sounds beyond the notes. Sometimes the clarinet would melt into the orchestra and suddenly reappear. It was hard to know where each sound was coming from, especially with the extensive use of amplification and the fact that I still couldn't actually see the clarinetist. No matter, as it was interesting enough to watch David Robertson's careful gestures and the percussion section's muted entrances. I was adrift on a cool, gray sea and wasn't hoping to leave any time soon.

Peter Sellars, renowned opera director and Belo Knock, renowned clown

By the beginning of the second movement (though I hesitate to break the seamlessly flowing piece up in this way), the clarinetist was on stage, wading through the orchestra, making wide gesticulations to emphasize the color of each sound. The choreography and lighting for this performance, conceived by famed opera director Peter Sellars (who has yet to change his clown-like hair style), added to the otherworldly quality of the music. After moving across all of the stage during the second and third parts, the clarinetist became a pied piper, taking most of the violin section with him back into the audience. Although I couldn't see much of this development from my balcony seat, I'm was pleased to hear from my stalls-seated friend that the string players were as into this final set of choreography as the impassioned clarinetist.

When the piece finally let the atmosphere dissipate, four concert-goers to my left bolted for the door as much of the audience gave a rousing ovation with many a curtain call for the composer, director, and performers. And in that way, the piece was fantastically successful. It wasn't one of those "oh, that was nice" kind of pieces, but one that made you actually feel something. Whether or not you liked that feeling was another question, but these kinds of affecting pieces are the ones that have the most staying power. The classics of today were generally met with some sort of hostility at their premieres, a perfect example being Igor Stravinsky's riot-inducing "Rite of Spring." Which of course was appropriately programmed to finish the concert.

As I was listening to "Rite," it became clear just how much my mind's ear of the piece has been affected the Philadelphia Orchestra's version from "Fantasia" conducted by Leopold Stokowski. The Philadelphians have always featured a loud string section, which gave those famous string accents at the beginning of the piece so much impact. Even in a loud and resonant hall like the Barbican, the BBC's smaller string section couldn't match the Philadelphian's force. But what they lacked in shear volume, they more than made up for in clarity and groove. Especially with Robertson on the podium, a master of navigating such rhythmically complex works, the piece had a razor sharp edge and a fleetness that most orchestras even struggle to get in a studio. And because the string section was not as loud as to what I was accustomed, I was able to hear all of the neat inner wind and brass parts that almost always get lost.

As the piece went on, the orchestra showed that it could rear back and smash the audience's faces with sound when it wanted to, especially when the brass section went full throttle. After the emphatic final chord, the audience gave yet another hearty ovation, a testament to both the energy and precision of the orchestra. In an audacious program that spanned centuries and traditions, the BBC showed that they are a chameleon of an orchestra. At one moment they can be a schmaltzy Romantic philharmonic, and the next, a hip new music ensemble. The group's commitment to music of all stripes is particularly noteworthy in a time when falling ticket sales are pushing many orchestras toward programming nothing more than radio FM classics and video game scores. Because they perform challenging and disorienting new music with such verve, it's hard not for the audience to grab onto something cool in the piece. In the end, it's a win for all involved. The composers love the BBC because they will play their new and weird stuff. The players love the BBC because they get to play new and weird stuff that poses interesting musical challenges. The audience loves it because they may come for the Wagner, but it's the world premiere that they remember.

Know Your London Orchestras! The Orchestra of the Age of the Enlightenment and the London Sinfonietta

2010-10-16T15:55:00.000-07:00

After profiling the musically-varied London Philharmonic, I bring you stories of not one but two specialist orchestras, in one post!

This Saturday, the Orchestra of the Age of the Enlightenment (oof, that's a bit of a mouthful, let's stick to OAE for short) and the London Sinfonietta joined together for night of courtly mashup. With their forces united on one stage, their numbers were a staggering... third of what the LPO has on a normal night. Ok, so both groups are small. But hey, bigger isn't always better. The real interest here is the fact that the musical specialties of the respective ensembles are polar opposites. The OAE is London's top early (like pre 1750 or so) music ensemble that doesn't play in a church while the Sinfonietta restricts its repertoire to the past hundred years. One would think that the ornaments of high Baroque and the abrasive harmonies of modernism don't have anything in common. But in their performance, the groups revealed that the very new subconsciously plunders quite a bit from the very old.

The centerpiece of the concert was Stravinsky's suite from the ballet "Pulcinella," based on the beakéd stock character of Italian comedia and music traditionally ascribed to Giovanni Pergolesi (though it could have been written by Domenico Gallo, Carlo Ignazio Monza, or the Count Unico Wilhelm van Wassenauer). Like a good art show, the OAE contextualized the Stravinsky by pairing it with other music by the possible "Pulcinella" composers. All of this music was filled with the familiar tropes of the galant style - those pesky "Pachabel's Canon" bass lines, the extended dominant pedal points - but there were also a few pleasingly weird moments. In Gallo's Trio Sonata for two violins, 'cello and continuo (fancy-shmanzy for accompanying harpsichord) there was a series of rapid modulations that moved the piece into a surprisingly far-away key. And although the Count Wassenauer was more known for his skills at diplomacy than music, the opening section of one of his "Concerti Armonici" featured rich dissonances among the florid counterpoint.

Many of Stravinsky's pieces are musical provocateurs and while "Pulcinella" certainly fits into this category, it is certainly not for the same reasons as the visceral and riotous (literally) "Rite of Spring." What is shocking about "Pulcinella" is how effortlessly Stravinsky-isms blend with the dated source material. For the most part, he doesn't stray far from the original Pergolessi (or Monza, whatever); there are no double-stacked bitonal chords here. When Stravinsky does throw in one of his trademarks, like a whirring flute texture straight out of Petrouchka or a jazzy trombone gliss, it's appropriately funny. These interruptions draw attention to themselves, yet they don't interrupt the flow of the music. Everything still hangs together, but how?

Jean Baptiste Lully, the reason why conductors today use small sticks

It really comes down to the rhythm, or the groove if you will. In the time of Pergolessi through Haydn or so, the orchestra was only about 30 men strong (as was the case in this performance, except that a majority of the men here were female), and rarely featured a conductor. The French composer Jean-Baptiste Lully from around the same period sought to popularize the technique of beating a staff on the ground to keep the orchestra together. However, Lully's death in a staff-related accident (he struck it through his foot and so contracted blood poisoning) prevented this from catching on. So, in order for the musicians to have any hope of staying together without the help of a beating staff, the music needed to have a strong regular pulse and the musicians needed to feel that pulse in a uniform way, hence the rhythmic verve common to almost all 18th century music. While 19th century composers came to emphasize harmony, gesture and just pure massive sound over tight rhythm, modernists like Stravinsky and Bartok rebelled against the pulseless excess, though usually by interpolating folk music. When Stravinsky began studying galant music to prepare for "Pulcinella," he said it was like looking in a mirror as much as looking to the past. The primacy of pulse is what links Scarlatti and Stravinsky, Rameau and Reich, Locatelli and Louis Andriessen.

So despite their contrasting specialties, the OAE and London Sinfonietta proved quite compatible partners. The music they play demands a strict interpretation of pulse, and so their reliable senses of time led to a wonderfully transparent and energetic performance. Dare I say Gallo grooves?

Know Your London Orchestras! The London Philharmonic

2010-10-10T12:53:00.000-07:00

Note: this is the first in a series of undetermined length.

The city of London has an obscene amount of orchestras. While big US cities like Detroit and Philadelphia are having trouble supporting their 1 orchestra, London boasts 5 major orchestras, not to mention the smaller specialty ensembles that play only really new music or really old music, and all those orchestras at the conservatories. So there's the London Symphony, the London Philharmonic, the Royal Philharmonic, the Philharmonia, and (to break up the naming pattern) the BBC Symphony.

A few Saturdays ago, I checked out the London Philharmonic, led by their principal conductor, the young and wiry Vladimir Jurowski. Dressed in racing stripe black from hair to foot, Jurowski can look a bit intimidating on the podium, his high cheekbones and piercing eyes reminiscent of one of those Soviet spies from Cold War action films. But his conducting style is both efficient and animated, eliciting a performance that engages the audience both intellectually and viscerally.

Jurowski also has a flair for unpredictable and mind-tickling programs, where the relationship between the pieces isn't obvious at first blush. At this concert, the Philarhmonic began with Haydn's Symphony no. 63 (out of 106 no less!), surprisingly played with period instruments: pedal-less timpani, valve-less horns and trumpets. This is something of anomaly for a romance-sized orchestra like the LPO and like all anomalies had consequences both good and bad. Good: the group's sound was clean and intimate, making the large Royal Festival Hall seem more like Prince Leopold's sitting room. Bad: natural horns are really hard to play. There were many a flubbed noted, and of course, Haydn does love his repeats. This gave the horn players another crack at those notes, but it was particularly disheartening when they'd screw it up the second time around. Luckily, the orchestra overall played with a comfortable and insistent groove. Jurowski at points would stop beating time, trusting his players to sit in the pocket while he shaped the larger phrases.

The second piece, the world premiere of "Flight from Byzantium" by the Italian composer Matteo D'Amico, was just about as sonically different as you can get from Haydn at an orchestra concert. For this piece, the orchestra increased the string section by 50%, tripled its brass, and constructed wall of percussion instruments in the back, not to mention the addition of some middle eastern lute-y and flute-y instruments, a Renaissance vocal quartet, and an amplified narrator. Oof. That's a lot of sound-producing things in one place.

D'Amico's piece was based on texts by the Nobel Prize-winning author Joseph Brodsky, including an article about the Roman emperor Constantine, autocracy, and his founding of Constantinople, declaimed by the narrator, and a selection of his Nativity poems, sung by the Hilliard Ensemble in their ethereal Renaissance tone.

The piece was filled with conflict. The rational tone of the narrator versus the contemplative spirituality of the singers. The exotic sounds of middle eastern instruments versus the western orchestra. All of this was to underscore the conflicts of east and west, Christian and Muslim, and autocracy and democracy that were dealt with in the texts. While D'Amico filled his work with bold harmonies, rich string pads, and sprightly percussion textures, the whole thing felt a bit like the score to a picture-less documentary. The music certainly was effective at setting moods, but not as good at getting inside your head, drawing attention to itself. He let the texts tell the story, which is all well and good if you're composing a soundtrack, but maybe not so good if the piece stands alone in a concert hall.

After the interval, the Hilliard Ensemble returned for a little solo set featuring the 15th century music of Guillaume Dufay, including a piece that also had Constantinople in the title. Hmm, looks like a pattern. Or maybe it's just that since the LPO hired the Hilliard Ensemble, it would let them do their Renaissance thing for a bit. The austere harmonies and tight canons in the music were very revealing, not of the singer's intonation but rather of the dryness of the hall. This kind of music was written by guys who had only heard music inside stone Gothic cathedrals and much of its beauty is stripped when the notes decay too quickly, as was the case in this dry hall.

But the orchestra was back on before too long to play Bela Bartok's ballet, "The Miraculous Mandarin," with full chorus but sans dancers (the stage isn't that big). The ballet tells the story of a miraculous Chinese man that pursues a winsome young woman, is beat up and killed by a group of goons, recovers and continues to pursue said woman, and then finally dies when the woman embraces him. A little absurd, yes, but the score brims with energy, shows off the orchestra's virtuosity (crazy, crazy piano part), and even manages to swing a bit (I was head bobbing). Jurowski deftly handled the many moving parts without sapping the forward motion in a performance that confirmed Bartok's status as a total baller.

As I left the hall (and passed by an old lady congratulating Mr. D'Amico, who I didn't realize was sitting just a couple of rows away), I still was a bit confused at the rationale of the program. I definitely loved the fact that the four pieces were from four different centuries and there wasn't one overplayed romantic work in there. Someone walking out seemed to think it was about storytelling, but to me the Dufay didn't seem to have much a story (but what do I know, I don't know Latin, just going off a hunch). I ended up having to do a bit of snooping after getting back and found out that the Haydn symphony was really just a collection of incidental music for a play called "La Roxalane," about one of the wives of the Ottoman emperor Suleiman the Magnificent.

Aye, there's the rub. It's all about the West's fear of the East. Certainly, that was an obvious theme in the D'Amico premiere, but more subtle in the Haydn - there weren't the cymbals and triangle that scream "I'm making Turkish music!" But certainly, a play in Vienna (where Haydn worked) about the Turks (who not that long before laid siege to the city) would play on the audience's fear of the eastern exotic. Dufay - there's the Constantinople connection, I think I get it, enough at least. And though the Bartok refers to a place farther east than the others, it is about fear of the other, a lack of understanding. The woman continually rebuffs the Mandarin, who comes off as a bit creepy, and the goons would rather beat him up than ask questions.

So although the London Philharmonic is not known as the top London orchestra, it certainly puts on both a thoughtful and varied program, one that can be enjoyed by the elderly patron, the over-analytical student, and the performer alike.

Chilled Ashes

2010-09-30T12:53:00.000-07:00

Last night while I was making my pretentious internet reading rounds, Wilco's "Ashes of American Flags" came up on iTunes. After about 3 seconds or so, I was stopped mid-sentence on Slate, paralyzed by a piercing chill. It's been a while since I've had a musical chill that strong, probably the last one being the first time I heard "You Stepped out of Dream" as recorded by the vocalist Jeanne Lee and the pianist Ran Blake back in July.

I was surprised my reaction to the song was so strong, considering I had heard it before. Usually for me to have that super-crazy-oh-my-God moment I have to be hearing a piece of music for the first time (like my near out-of-body experience lying on the floor of a common room in Forbes listening to Steve Reich's Music for 18 Musicians, or the time I first heard Fred Hersch's "Leaves of Grass" on a plane to Florida). So why did I respond so strongly to "Ashes of American Flags" that I stopped everything else and just stared into space, letting the music wash over me?

Certainly the opening sounds have a lot to do with it. The warbling feedback and windblown bells seem to make time stand still, suspending the world coming into your ears. Then comes that distortion-laden guitar lead that carves a red streak through a purple sky. By the time Jeff Tweedy finishes up the first verse, filled with these perfect little images of diet coke and atms, I'm gone, trapped in the world the song has created. "All my lies are always wishes/I know I would die if I could come back new."

fuck.

So needless to say I wore my Wilco t-shirt today. And realized something peculiar. I had never listened to Wilco's "Yankee Hotel Foxtrot" all the way through.

I did just that tonight, and on the way was struck by how it's not a true rock/pop album by any stretch of the imagination. The song forms are really pretty simple, and "Radio Cure" that actually changes keys somewhere in the middle. There are backbeats, fuzzy electric guitars, wurlitzer piano. But just the way it's all put together, the way the sounds line up and mingle, is about as un-pop as you can get.

It starts with the drums. On Wilco's earlier efforts, like "Being There" and "Summerteenth," there are plenty of weird studio tricks and walls of guitar noise, but one thing that is never messed with is the drum sound and time-feel. Ken Coomer's drums sound like big rock drums and he plays like he wants you to move your butt. Or at least bob your head. But on "Yankee," new drummer Glenn Kotche adds a slew of small percussion sounds to the mix, like the soothing ring of crotales and trashy cymbals. Even the drums themselves sound like they badly miked, sounding oddly thin. And the whole thing just doesn't really groove in the way a rock album should, even the nostalgic and playful "Heavy Metal Drummer." It's not that Kotche doesn't have good groove (just check out the ferocious "Monkey Chant" from his solo percussion album), it's just that, well, the album wouldn't work as well as it does if you wanted to tap your foot to "Jesus, Etc."

"Yankee Hotel Foxtrot" feels more like an art (read, classical) musician's take on what a pop album should be. All of the aspects of a good rock album, the snarling guitars, the thumping bass, the insistent drums, the witty couplets, are passed through a thick prism on "Yankee." The familiar is transformed into something startling. You listen and think, "Everything that's supposed to be there is there, so why does it feel so uncomfortable?" Instead of pleasing the listener with expectations fulfilled, "Yankee" challenges all those who come in contact with it, much like a good piece of avant-garde concert music, be it the winding atonal melodies of Schoenberg's "Pierrot Lunaire" or the infinitely dense chords of Gyorgi Ligeti's "Atmospheres." But it is this challenge makes the music so powerful, forcing the listener to comfort the vast unknown, the pleasurable terror of the sublime.

So I can definitely see why Reprise Records wanted Wilco do make the album again. All of the songs are basically witty folk pop tunes that got radically fucked up in the studio. The execs weren't ready to peddle art music, sitting music, contemplating music. And so it also makes total sense how Wilco ended up on Nonesuch, a primarily art music label whose artists include stalwarts of progressive American art music, like Steve Reich, John Adams, Bill Frisell, and the Kronos Quartet.

In the end, no matter how powerful a listening experience "Yankee Hotel Foxtrot" is, it falls victim to the same issues that plague the interaction of almost all art music with its listeners: it is music whose power can only be truly grasped in a state of quiet, of darkness, alone-ness, whether through a pair of headphones or in a dimmed concert hall. I get ecstatic chills listening to "Ashes of American Flags" alone in my room, but I'll scream out the chorus to "Being There's" "Monday" at a party with my friends.

But back to "Ashes." I still haven't quite figured out why I had this reaction to the song now, rather than when I first heard it. My one guess is that it has at least a little to do with the fact I'm in London and what's happening back home. Come to think of it, my pretentious nightly reading may have a bit to do with it then because at the time "Ashes" came on last night, I was reading a piece about Christine O'Donnell. With Tea Party hysteria in full swing, a government paralyzed by polls (and some pure godawful stupidity, ie Jim DeMint), and an election about a month away, it's very hard for me to be watching this all from half a world away. Though "Ashes" doesn't have an explicit political statement, it does speak to the heart of how I feel about the political situation right now: vapid, full of desire for change, just hoping someone has the balls to proverbially burn the American flag - do something that's deeply controversial and unpopular, but something that needs to be done.

Musical Dumpster Diving

2010-09-25T08:34:00.000-07:00

Today, one of my friends convinced me to go to the Portobello Market with her. Portobello advertises itself as the world's largest (no, not mushroom) antique market, so it sounded a bit more up my uncle's alley than mine. But no matter, sunny weekends in London are a valuable commodity and seeing the market would be pretty miserable on a cold wet day. So onward! Oh, the tube isn't running to Notting Hill Gate? We'll just walk!

Anyway, I was pleased to find that Portobello Market was more of a kitschy street fair. So there was new kitsch, like t-shirts that read "My Boyfriend went to London and all I got was this T-shirt." And old kitsch, of course. I was especially excited by the musical kitsch. First, I found a stall specializing in CD box sets, like those ones from the Time Life informercials (The Folk Years! The Swing Era! Motown Gold!). Then there was a guy with a pretty big stack of used CDs, and a surprising amount of material from the ECM label. I almost went for a CD by the drummer Alex Cline from the late eighties, but the scratched condition didn't warrant my £8. I later passed by a used vinyl store with a super neat jazz collection, including a lot of weird '70s avant garde stuff. But they were more collectors items and priced as such. So I continued to window (err, what do you call window shopping without windows?) shop.

While standing on line for some lunch, I saw an OxFam bookstore. It was like Goodwill meets Princeton Record Exchange/Labyrinth Books, except all the money goes to help people. So, I thought to myself, if I buy something in there, I will be doubly happy! After chowing down on my hefty bruschetta, I walked in and peered at the jazz vinyl collection. Just a couple of LPs in, my jaw dropped.

PAUL BLEY! With Paul Motian and Bill Frisell too!!!???

Bley is kind of like the most distinctive jazz pianist since like ever. Motian is one of my favorite drummers with quite the surreal style to complement Bley's pointillism. And if you look a few posts down, you can get an earful of why anything Frisell does is worth listening to.

I had known about this group (which also included British sax-off-onist John Surman), but had never found one of their albums. I was friggin' pumped. Then my eye went slid up to the price tag. £10.

A slight grimace. That's like $15 for something I won't be able to listen to until I get home. Or what if it's scratched and it won't work at all? Oh screw it. It will still be awesome just to tell my jazz nerd friends I have it. And think of the children in Haiti!

So I picked it up and walked over the cash register to look at their cd bin. Over the next few minutes, I felt less and less attached to the LP. I've lived down the street from one of the best used vinyl stores in the US and never bought one. There's something about vinyl that makes me just not want to get into it. Maybe its the inconvenience. Or the fact that it's now "cool" to release new albums on vinyl. I looked up from the cd bin, walked back to the record rack and slid the Bley LP back behind some Ellington compilation. Some Pakistani child must be crying.

It was getting late and I needed to get back to my place before heading out to the London Philharmonic in the evening. But on my way, I walked through Notting Hill back towards Hyde Park. Again, more kitschy shoppes. Including the Music & Goods Exchange.

Music? Exchange? Sounds a bit familiar, I must check it out!

The store is definitely a throwback, something you find in trendy college towns across the US. Like they had an entire small section of Tangerine Dream LPs. You know, that band that made music that was meant to mirror the fealings of an acid trip, time to the t?

Right. But they had a pretty extensive used CD collection, including a section dedicated to contemporary "classical" music. I passed a CD on the Innova label, a small midwestern label dedicated to the weird and wonderful - a very good sign. I then came to the debut album by the hip New York string quartet Ethel. £3? I'll take it. A little farther down the stack was an album from another hip New Yorker, Phil Kline. I had listened to some of his stuff from the University library and dug it quite a bit; it's ambient but richly textured, with lots of bell sounds. I had wanted to check out this CD, Zippo Songs, as well, but it was like on permanent loan or something. Theo Bleckmann sings on it too, which means it's at least going to be super interesting with weird falsetto jumps and inward singing. So £4? I had to.

With both CD's in hand and a wallet seven pounds lighter, I walked happily across Hyde Park back to my res-hall.

At this point in my writing, I've listened through most of Zippo Songs and it's really quite striking. It's a series of songs about war, with texts taken from Donal Rumsfeld's briefing of the Iraq War, and poetry soldiers wrote on their Zippo lighters during the Vietnam War. The texts run the gammut disheartening ("There will be some things that people won't see. And life goes on," from the Rumsfeld briefing) to the hopeful ("When the power of love overcomes the love of power the world will know peace") to the bitterly funny ("When I'm dead and in my grave, no more pussy will I crave"). Kline adorns the text with simple textures of guitars, violin, and tuned percussion. The music is varied enough to hold your attention, but never gets in the way of the poignant words. I'm definitely going to have to listen to it a few times to really get the emotional heft of it all.

Based on this assessment, I'd have to say bargain hunting in London was a success. It's probably a good thing that Music & Goods Exchange is a little too far away for me to go every week.

Tenth Avenue Blog-Out

2010-09-23T03:29:00.001-07:00

An Immortal Ode

I have a friend named Billy,
In my band he would sing willy nilly.
He now has his own blog,
His insights will leave you agog,
So check it out, it sure is a dilly.

The esteemed Billy Hepfinger, alumnus of my band Funkmaster General (in addition to the Nassoons a capella group and the Princeton Triangle Club), has started his own music blog,http://tenthavenuemusic.blogspot.com

There are many fun and interesting things on his blog, such as reviews of Weezer's new album and Sufjan Stevens' unexpected and epic EP "All Delighted People," and some humorous insights into the making of legendary albums, most recently Joni Mitchell's "Blue."

But in a move of dubious wisdom, he asked me to write a companion piece to his "Blue" post. So, my near hero-worship of Joni Mitchell's infinitely underrated album "Hejira" is now up and ready to read.

Check it out here: http://tenthavenuemusic.blogspot.com/2010/09/traveling-in-some-vehicle-why-youve.html

Completely unrelated, I somehow acquired £1 tickets to see the London Philharmonic Orchestra on Saturday. Stay tuned for a review of one of London's other orchestras.

N.B. I meant to add in links, but blogger is not letting me, so just copy and paste the web addresses into your command bars and it'll go swimmingly.

Images coming into focus

2010-09-12T06:40:00.000-07:00

On September 7, Britain handed out its highest award in popular music, the Mercury Prize. Before you dismiss it as another useless music prize handed out by the music industry to boost its own lagging sales, the Mercury Prize is voted on by musicians and critics, and always features self-directed artists among its nominees. While the band The xx took home this year's Mercury for their debut album, the bigger surprise came in the nomination of a jazz album: "Golden," by the 24-year-old pianist Kit Downes and his trio.

Sounds like Herbie Hancock getting that Grammy album of the year nod in 2008 right? Uh, not exactly.

It's more like that guy that lives down the dorm hall from you was nominated. You know, that guy that seemed pleasant to talk to, was very polite, kind of kept to himself, supposedly played a lot of "jazz" gigs at some clubs off campus that never went to see...

So yeah, I'd have to say that was a surprise. And it also suggests that there are young jazz musicians in the UK playing engaging and vital music that appeal to listeners of all ears. So in regards to my earlier post, I had to go out and find where Kit Downes and like-minded people play.

Ok, it was a little easier to find than I initially thought. From September 9-12, a combined visual arts and concert venue called King's Place (located down the street from Platform 9 and 3/4, muggle side of course) was hosting a huge festival to kick off their eclectic season of music. On Saturday, one of the halls at King's Place was taken over by London's F-IRE Collective, a hip young (ish) organization of progressive jazz musicians. One of the organization's members, saxophonist Ingrid Laubrock, had just played a killer show that I saw at the Stone this summer with drummer Tyshawn Sorrey (so the group seems legit). Kit Downes' trio was on the program. It was almost eerily precisely what I had been looking for when I got to London. I had to be there.

Before Kit Downes, I caught a set led by trumpeter Tom Arthurs. In addition to his usual trio, Arthurs invited a string quartet to the show in order to try out some new music he had written for the slightly askew combination of instruments. Arthur's own playing own playing resides in the abstract regions of free improvisation, but he also comes armed with a tone more enveloping than abrasive and a quirky melodic sense. The music felt as an experiment, as the string quartet members sometimes looked a bit quizzical trying to figure out how they're written parts were going to work after Arthurs' freely improvised cadenza. The music was most convincing when Arthurs dispatched with the free improv for a bit and played some zig-zagging tune, harmonized by the strings. Arthurs certainly is a thoughtful player with a great group (drummer Stuart Robbins really shined, flying around the kit armed only with chopsticks), but his new music lacked organic flow from section to section. You could tell what was on the page and what wasn't.

After a short interval where some angsty spectators did some rocking out on a junk percussion setup outside the hall, Kit Downes and his trio came on. Downes, bassist Calum Gourlay, and drummer James Maddren have been playing together since starting at the Royal Academy of Music in London in 2005, and they took the stage with a relaxed politeness. Like those "nice boys" your mom always wanted you to date. Except that Downes has a mighty beard and pony tail.

The ensuing set was filled Downes' original compositions, music that was warm and inviting, but never constrained by tight forms. The tunes were nearly hummable, but that didn't stop Downes from flying into the stratosphere with piano-spanning runs. Even with the feats of technical prowess, the music was humble, content to let you listen as you pleased, as opposed to grabbing you by the collar and smacking you in the face. It all was a little too polite, as if Downes wasn't confident enough in his music to demand your attention. At this point in the game, Downes' music sounds that it is still searching for something. Downes certainly isn't a carbon copy of Brad Mehldau or Esbjorn Svensson (which is a lot better than a lot of his peers both in Europe and the States can boast) but he hasn't fully arrived as an artist yet.

One thing is for certain though: I will continue to check up on Mr. Downes after returning to the states.

Snap Judgments

2010-09-09T13:42:00.000-07:00

I have been in London for about 36 hours, and I am already making rash generalizations about its music scene, or at least its jazz/improv scene.

It all started when I began exploring the lineup for this year's London Jazz Festival that runs from November 12 to 21, inclusive as the Brits like to say. The festival is full of the heavy hitters in jazz - Sonny Rollins, Herbie Hancock, Gary Burton, Terrence Blanchard - not to mention some younger (and not so younger) hip cats like the Bad Plus, Darcy James Argue, Robert Glasper, Brad Mehldau, and Dave Douglas. But wait a second, I'm sensing a pattern here. Why are all these folks American? Isn't this the London Jazz Festival?

Well, I may be oversimplifying the issue here. Django Bates and Norma Winstone get featured performances. There are plenty of names I don't recognize on the lineup, so this could be more about my lack of familiarity with British Jazz (It goes dark after Evan Parker and Kenny Wheeler). However, the pattern I can confirm is that the big venues, like the Barbican, are stacked with American acts.

Though I am excited at the chance to see some great shows here in a couple of months, I feel that the lack of Londoners in their own jazz festival could say a lot about the jazz/improv dynamics here.

From perusing the LondonJazz blog and specific venues, most jazz gigs in town are meant to accompany a meal. Not a good sign. Jazz as accompaniment to classy dinner is never jazz you want to pack up in an audio doggie bag.

But hark! Two venues in particular caught my eye as places where adventurous improvised music has a home - The Vortex and Cafe Oto. Surprisingly (or not surprisingly), the two clubs are virtually next door, a quick walk from the Dalston Kingsland train station in northeast London. While their "what's on?" pages also have a share of internationals (Pieter Brontzman! Ken Vandermark! Sax anarchy!), it's not at the expense of local musicians. I'm particularly interested in hearing drummer Steve Noble, who appears as a nexus of several groups, and the London Improvisers' Orchestra, who have a monthly residency at Oto.

Geographically, these clubs are really on the fringe of London. I'd have to change tubes twice to get there. I wonder if the location of the clubs suggests something about the intensity of the music, or the press they get. Though it is interesting that some of the Americans at the London Jazz Festival (Dave Douglas, Darcy James Argue, William Parker) come out of fringe New York improv scenes in the Village and Brooklyn. This story begs further investigation, and hopefully an interview.

Please pardon all the namedropping, and on the subject of snap judgments, here is a list of the top 5 paintings at the British National Gallery, where I spent 4 and half hours today.

5. Hans Holbein - The Ambassadors

4. Bronzino - An Allegory with Venus and Cupid

3. Caravaggio - The Supper at Emmaus

2. JMW Turner - Rain, Steam and Speed

1. Jan Van Eyck - The Arnolfini Wedding

East of the Sun

2010-09-06T18:56:00.000-07:00

As of 7:20 PM tomorrow, Music in the Bubble will no longer be south of downtown, but east. Quite east. Like across the Atlantic east.

I will be spending the next 3+ months at the Royal College of Music, in the heart of London. In addition to my music studies, I will try to soak in as much music as London has to offer and squeeze out my liquid observations here. I'll have to catch the each major London orchestra at least once (and I wonder if any premieres will have eerie quotes of Lady Gaga or something ). There's also the London Jazz Festival in November. Definitely looking forward to Django Bates jamming with the Bad Plus.

I've never been much of a photographer, but I will bring a camera along. Stay tuned for image-enhanced blog posts.

Ta ta for now...

Into the Great Unknown

2010-08-16T07:48:00.000-07:00

It seems everyone has a favorite "unknown" rock band. You know those groups that float below the mainstream surface, on tiny diy labels, playing basement clubs in midwestern cities, or touring out of a Chevy Astro Van. They're just too good, in the words of Jeff Tweedy, to get signed to a record deal, get a song on the radio, or even get a show. These bands are a constant subject of late-night conversations among hip collegians, with each person trying to seem hipper than the last. But the allure of these loving and telling one's friends about these bands is that there is a glimmer of hope that they could get famous. Like a Death Cab for Cutie, Sufjan Stevens, or Arcade Fire, whose new album just topped the Billboard charts.

It's another thing entirely to talk about unknown jazz musicians. For the most part, all jazz musicians are unknown, just some more unknown than others. So talking about an unknown jazz musician isn't really about creating buzz around friends, but rather acknowledging achievement that has unfortunately gone unnoticed by the limited means of the jazz press-promotion world. Here are a few "unknown" jazz musicians that deserve a little of your consideration.

Jason Rigby - Tenor Sax

Jason Rigby just really looks like a downtown jazz musician. He's got the perfectly unkempt hair, scraggly stubble, and slightly-distant stare. Although he spent a good part of his early life in Ohio, Rigby has more the demeanor of a northern Californian; chill and thoughtful, with an ethereal air. His sound is warm and breathy, descended from his teacher Rich Perry. But while Rigby may be cool in temperament and his sound evokes "cool" saxophonists like Paul Desmond and Warne Marsh, his music is far from relaxing accompaniment to a mid-summer's eve.

Instead, the music on Rigby's two albums, "Translucent Space" from 2005 and "The Sage" from 2009, is uncompromisingly abstract. But before you run away from the music and say "I just don't get it," you hear the warmth and passion of Rigby's playing, and his ability to elicit the same energy from the members of his band. The jagged music is oddly inviting; it's like looking down into the orange spires of Bryce Canyon. And when you accept the invitation into Rigby's soundworld of knotty rhythms and assymetrical melodies, you can't help but want to go back again and catch all the fine edges of his music.

Matt Gallagher – Trumpet

While many great jazz musicians flourish artistically under our noses in the hopping New York scene, others do the same far from West Village clubs and Brooklyn bars. Just a 90-minute trip (without traffic) down I-95 takes one to Philadelphia, home to a smaller, but just as dedicated jazz scene. Philadelphia has been an incubator of jazz masters, from Coltrane and McCoy Tyner to Christian McBride and Kurt Rosenwinkel. Though all these players found success elsewhere, many other fantastic musicians have taken up residence in the city.

One of the Philadelphians that deserves wider recognition is trumpeter Matt Gallagher. Gallagher is a fine bebop-oriented soloist, but is usually entrusted with the flashy-yet-thankless task of leading a big band trumpet section. It’s in this role that Gallagher shines most. He’s got a monster range, impeccable intonation, and a laser-beamed sound. He gives any band he’s in a swingin’ potency that you may have thought died 60 years ago. Be sure to check him out at Chris’ Jazz Club on Samson Street with the Lars Halle Big Band. His double c's can shake the walls.

Ralph Bowen – Tenor Saxophone

It’s almost impossible to find a jazz musician that doesn’t teach in some way. There just aren’t enough tours and club gigs in the genre to make a pure performance career tenable. That being said, there are some players that have devoted significant energies to mentoring young musicians in colleges and conservatories, often at the expense of their own performance careers.

Tenor saxophonist Ralph Bowen came to a lot of people’s attention in the 1980s as a member of the young-lion band, Out of the Blue. According to his one-time bandmate, alto saxophonist Steve Wilson, Bowen was one of the two or three most advanced saxophonists around, the familiar link between the Branford-Brecker generation and Chris Potter. But beginning in 1990, Bowen took over as chair of the jazz studies department at Rutgers University in New Brunswick, New Jersey. Bowen’s commitment to education did not dampen his pursuit of greater playing heights. You can always hear him working on new scale permutations between his lessons at Rutgers, and his solo albums feature compositions that are mathematically complex yet downright funky.

Though Bowen may not get the press of a young lion anymore, his playing is even more confident and advanced, deserving another listen.

Wolfgang Muthspiel - Guitar

Like many other guitarists of his generation, Wolfgang Muthspiel did post-graduate work at the Paul Motian School for Electrified Bebop. But somehow, maybe due to his Austrian home address, this shredder doesn't have the name recognition of his peers (see Rosenwinkel, Kurt and Monder, Ben). And boy, does he shred with the best of them.

Muthspiel's playing is fluid and effortless, but never overly-imposing in its technical prowess. On his best album, a 2007 duo outing with drummer Brian Blade, Muthspiel makes you not miss the bass player, filling the space with labyrinthine lines and layered loops. But what really makes the record special is the intimacy of the two master players and how closely they follow each others' moves. When the pair nail a gut-busting downbeat on the power-chorded "Heavy Song," you can't help but scowl and nod in approval.

Blast from the Past Bodes Happy Future

2010-07-07T06:47:00.000-07:00

I'm listening to drummer Billy Hart's 1985 album "Oshumare." Hart is really a sideman's sideman, always tasteful but never sleepy. He always makes the bandleader look good. So it doesn't surprise me that when he does lead a session, it's as much about the sidemen as it is about him. "Oshumare" has quite the all-star lineup - Dave Holland on bass, Steve Coleman on sax, Bill Frisell spotting on guitar, Kenny Kirkland on keyboards - but it also has not one but now two directors emeriti of Jay Leno's Tonight Show Band, saxophonist Branford Marsalis and guitarist Kevin Eubanks, who left the show last month.

Because of his decade-plus tenure with Leno, Eubanks hasn't had much time to record himself. After listening to his playing and composing on "Oshumare," it's tough to hear the lack of output as anything but an unfortunate loss. Eubanks certainly has bebop chops to burn, which he shows on the burner "May Dance." But what's striking is how he marries these chops with a keen sensitivity to the sound of his guitar. He's not afraid to use effects here, and on a couple of tracks I almost thought it could have been Frisell breathing into the guitar with a gain pedal.

So many jazz guitarists today fall into two camps, which I will call the shredders and the soundscapers. Shredders descend from players like Pat Metheny and John Scofield and place an emphasis on single-line soloing. Sounds can differ from player to player, but each one won't do too much to his or her guitar sound during the course of a gig. The soundscapers come much more from Bill Frisell and Sonny Sharrock. Soundscapers aren't as much about threading the changes perfectly, but rather choosing the perfect sound and fewer notes to create the right character for the music. Latter-day shredders include guys like Kurt Rosenwinkel, Lage Lund, and Nir Felder while Hilmar Jensen and Ben Monder are expert soundscapers (but who too have quite a bit of facility on their instruments).

To hear a player like Eubanks that can both shred and soundscape when the music calls for it is refreshing, and an important asset on a gig or in the studio. Especially on "Oshumare," the music is stylistically diverse because of the many different compositional voices featured. Dave Holland contributes a couple of Neo-Bop tunes, while Steve Coleman brings along a very M-Base freefunk piece. And Eubanks fits into all of them, taking the bold solo when he needs to and then adding cool little accompanying sounds that make you go, "Wait a sec. Was that actually a guitar?" Eubanks' ability to make stylistic diversity sound unified is encapsulated in his on piece on the album, "IDGAF suite." It is episodic and full of nonlinear surprises. The opening floats with no strict pulse and ominous atmospherics before settling into a restlessly funky groove underneath Steve Coleman's alto solo. There's another detour into swing before settling back into another floating section, this time with lush modal harmonies. It somehow all feels organic, as each section has a dramatic yet spontaneous arc.

If Eubanks' mind hasn't melted from years of Leno monologues and cheesy pop covers, we may see the reemergence of an important and distinct voice on jazz guitar.

An Americana Mix

2010-07-03T10:48:00.000-07:00

Some time ago, I can't remember exactly when, I was bored and made a pretty large "Americana Mix" in iTunes. Being the history nerd that I am, it wasn't just a jumbled collection of songs, but ordered chronologically in terms of the time period the songs/pieces evoked. Very quickly, this list ballooned to 16 hours of music and I never went through it.

So as it is fourth of July weekend and the 147th anniversary of the Battle of Gettysburg, I am going to listen to all 16 hours of the playlist over the next three days and will record my liveblog musings here.

I began last night, going from Bill Schumann's setting of "Chester" and moving from the Revolution to the expansion into the old northwest and the 2nd great awakening. Sufjan Stevens to Charles Lloyd to Brian Blade. Ends with Copland's Appalachian Spring, a piece that I've heard countless times, but never looses its depth and evocative power.

Saturday July 3

1:45 PM
In the midst of the civil war section. Steve Earle's rollicking "Dixieland" about the fictional Buster Kilrain of Michael Shaara's "The Killer Angels" slides into Bill Frisell's "Monroe." Frisell's tune just makes me think of Matthew Brady photographs at Antietam. The initial optimism on both sides of a quick war dashed to pieces.

1:50 PM
Views of the dead morph into more gruesome images of the dying in John Adams' setting of Walt Whitman's "The Wound Dresser." Adams' sensitive yet dark-hued setting lets Whitman's powerful verse transport the listener back to those battlefield hospitals. An image that skewers the nerve endings ("die for you" leaping into baritone Nathan Gunn's upper range is especially potent.) History like this can be difficult to remember but vital not to forget.

2:05 PM
What's so powerful about this poem and the setting is how major climaxes come from simple gestures, just looking into the eyes of a dying soldier. The lack of any groove with melodies floating on top of melodies makes the poem appear timeless, only strengthened by Whitman's uncanny ability to communicate so personally across centuries of time.

2:10 PM
The war ends and on comes Mary Fahl's "Going Home" from the film "Gods and Generals." An unfortunately tiring movie, but a song that sounds both folky and hip, in a weird way. Mary Fahl's commanding voice, put to theatrical use in her band "October Project" is perfect for the tune and violinist Mark O'Connor gets a nice little solo. A song for healing.

4:30 PM
Back from haircut and epic soccer match, resuming with James Horner's music from the end credits of "Glory." Man, he was so good at Coplandesque weepy music before he started copying Prokofiev. And himself.

4:46 PM
Musical chill at the beginning of "Mystic Trumpeter," from Fred Hersch's breathtaking "jazz" oratorio based on Whitman's Leaves of Grass. Another piece that still gets me after endless listens. Ralph Alessi really rips it up here as the aforementioned mystic and it somehow transitions seamlessly into the lush bucolic chorale that follows. This is going to be a good next 20 minutes.

4:56 PM
Now into The Sleepers with Kurt Elling. It's so striking how Hersch is able to make Whitman's wild free verse seem so naturally singable. He uses wide-open, floating vamps that allow him to fit the words in at the rate the words suggest, not forcing them into four-bar phrases or anything. I guess it took a jazz musician to finally set Whitman's verse into songs rather than through-composed works. Actually, Whitman-as-song sounds vaguely like Joni Mitchell in her jazzy, Hejira stage.

5:08 PM
Musical chill during "After the Dazzle of Day." Kate McGarry and Kurt Elling weaving in and out of each other is definite one of those "OH MY GOD" moments that are seldom found outside of Mahler symphonies.

5:12 PM
"I'm tired of living and scared of dying."

5:34 PM
In the throes of Western Americana, Copland's Billy the Kid begins. Never has continuous I-V sounded so interesting. You rock it Saul Goodman.

5:42 PM
The Mexican Dance movement really grooves. Can see why it made so much sense for Bill Frisell to cover it.

5:48 PM
Gun battle. Like the big firefight scene in an action movie, only that you don't need visuals for this one.

Sunday July 4
12:44 AM
Happy Fourth! After epic baseball game, getting back into swing of things with Bill Frisell and Jim Hall on their version of "Throughout." Nothing says wide open plains like Frisell's pulsing drones and Hall adds some tasteful acoustic lines. Analyzing Frisell's many performances of this tune can give a pretty good picture of the evolution of his style.

1:00 AM
Honestly rhetorical Question: Is there anything that grooves harder than Art Blakey's shuffle on Moanin'? And Lee Morgan, Benny Golson, and Bobby Timmons really hit back to back to back homers on this one.

1:20 AM
Or, nothing says wide open plains like an electric sitar? Well it somehow works wonderfully for Pat Metheny on "Last Train Home."

1:31 AM
Cotton Eyed Joe is just so much better with pennywhistles, bodhrans, and small pipes than with cheesy synths. You go Chieftains. Ricky Skaggs at the end: "That was hot!"

1:41 AM
How quickly exuberance transitions to nostalgia with the onset of Copland's Corral Nocturne from Rodeo. Images flood. Time flows backward. With a little help from the instant nostalgia machine known as facebook as well.

1:49 AM
It's what's for dinner.

1:55 AM
On to Pat Metheny's Midwestern Night's Dream. Again, it just feels expansive with the healthy reverb and Bob Moses' washy cymbals. But it still has this inner fire, inner restlessness that too many ECM records lack. This also reminds me how much I miss Pat's massive Gibson that he got rid of like 25 years ago. He can say more with this guitar than with his robot orchestra.

2:10 AM
With the ending of the Promise of Living, I am now in a very weepy mood. I guess I just haven't really listened to much Copland recently. It's like coming back to an old friend you haven't seen in a while and you miss them so much, you tear up. There's this hope you'll be seeing them more, but still you know this moment is probably just another moment before way leads onto way. And this knowledge makes the optimism even stronger. Sounds like a good place to end the night.

Chronologically, it's getting to the 20th century, music evoking the great wave of immigration forthcoming. But for tomorrow.

5:10 PM
Gettin' a late start today. Distracted by trip to see Toy Story 3. Real weepy. Pixar's getting eerily good at this. But Buzz Lightyear dances Flamenco. Music begins with John Adams' "My Father Knew Charles Ives." Orchestral textures resembling beef stew, but with quirky gestures bouncing in and out. Evocative of Ives but without sounding a whole lot like him and that's a good thing.

5:16 PM
Hilariously surreal march. And the New York Mets have more bullpen issues.

5:28 PM
I just love it when John Adams writes these floating trumpet solos over slippery string textures.

5:40 PM
Time for wind ensemble greatest hits section of the list, featuring Eric Whitacre's October. It's ungainly and doublethick, but just gorgeous at points. Pretty much the best thing you can do with too many wind and brass players on stage at once.

5:44 PM
Maria Schneider makes her first appearance on the list with "The Pretty Road." The title is very descriptive of the piece. But when the tempo just stops and everything floats, you can't help but get lost in it. A tune where every listen reveals hidden surprises.

5:48 PM
Go Ingrid Jensen! Go!

7:09 PM
I got a little too lost during the floaty section of "Pretty Road" and proceeded to drift in and out of consciousness the next hour plus. We have since left the heartland and joined the immigrants in the cities via Dvorak and Bruce Springsteen. Jazz reigns supreme now, from the Duke to Basie, to the more chaotic edge of Charles Mingus. Also can't forget James P. Johnson via Jason Moran's version of "You've Got to Be Modernistic."

7:12 PM
"Think you make it, get to the wicket, by you a ticket, Go!!!!"
George Russel does Manhattan with Jon Hendriks and crazy good big band. Like Elvin, Bill Evans, Coltrane, Art Farmer. Still too hip for it's own good.

10:03 PM
Back to the raft after 4th festivities. Brad Mehldau's heartbreakingly simple reading of Someone to Watch Over Me. He's a player who gets better the fewer people he plays with because he can think and play so far beyond what anyone expects. Sometimes too many people just hamstring him. Just check out Highway Rider.

10:11 PM
Bill Schuman's George Washington Bridge. Why does bitonality evoke industrialism to me? The middle section is reminding me of the music from the great Chris Marker film La Jetee. I wish film music went back to sounding more like this, instead of like, you know, James Horner.

10:19 PM
Billy Bragg and Wilco's Mermaid Avenue project revealed a side of Woody Guthrie's songwriting that never made it into his full songs. "Airline to Heaven" shows Guthrie as an industrial-aged mystic in addition to a biting political critic. Really foreshadows Bob Dylan's later surreal folk musings.

10:23 PM
Well, and Joni Mitchell's surrealism as well, especially here on "Amelia." Can't get much more surreal than "dreams of 747s over geometric farms." Guitarist Larry Carlton and vibist Victor Feldman really kill on this too. Immaculate songcraft and pop production, yet refreshingly devoid of artifice and studio trickery.

10:29 PM
Bill Frisell, Paul Motian, and Joe Lovano deconstruct "Somewhere Over the Rainbow," find its yearning essence, and lay it bare.

10:33 PM
Reich's "Different Trains." I've noticed that a lot of the music that I have the strongest aesthetic reactions to are the ones that somehow create a mental image or triggers some associative memory. Both of these are frequently accompanied by goosebumps. In terms of this response, Reich really hits the jackpot with the recorded reminiscences. Reich's use of spoken word and deriving melodic material from it has roots in both Frederic Rzewki's use of writings by political prisoners and such, and Harry Partch's 43 note scales meant to better replicate the subtle pitch changes of human speech.

10:41 PM
One of my more peculiar transitions just occurred, the opening of different trains, spilling into Samuel Barber's Commando March, or more like the former (as the female speaker repeats "1941") brutally interrupted by the latter. An unintentionally appropriate transition into the World War II section of the list.

10:45 PM
...which will be totally encapsulated by Copland's Symphony no. 3. An attempt at the all-encompassing American musical statement. And like almost all of his work, unabashedly optimistic, yet well-made by a master craftsman. The way Copland blends modernistic dissonances with tonality can be heard very strongly in a lot of the music of post-minimalist composers. By being old fashioned, Copland was ahead of the times.

11:27 PM
Bring on the anvils!

11:28 PM
And the National Emblem March celebrates victory in the same key.

11:33 PM
Swung and straight eighths together is one groovy concoction. Thank you Chuck Berry.

11:40 PM
Time for out of the blue undefendable but true statement, which I will call the Ornette Coleman Postulate. Lonely Woman is probably the greatest tune ever, including Don Cherry's flubs.

11:59 PM
I remember listening to Pat Metheny's San Lorenzo on a family vacation to Grand Canyon, Bryce, and Zion National Parks. I always identify the two now. It's so nice to hear Metheny in a mode where he's not afraid to be lush and hypermelodic, but also not overly-composed. The original PMG record was a band album, not a studio album, something they unfortunately got away from a lot. And man Danny Gotlieb's really groovin. I used to play along with this track all the time just to match his ride cymbal touch in the "chorus" sections.

Sunday July 5
12:08 AM
Now I'm thinking of Reading Rainbow. I guess early 80s synths will do that.

12:21 AM
Cassandra Wilson's Strange Fruit. Soooo raw and potent. I think even better than Billie Holiday's. What blasphemy!

12:25 AM
We shall overcome. Amen Charlie Haden. And with that good night.

5:29 PM
In the midst of Joseph Schwantner's New Morning for the World. Another one of those inspirational text read dramatically by some political figure/actor pieces. Yeah, you know like Copland's Lincoln Portrait. But a lot more music than Martin Luther King text here, which makes the music more like a commenter on the text rather than an accompaniment. In that way it works, it turns in Schwantner's own interaction with the text, giving him more creatively leeway. A lot of neat percussion flourishes with crotales, but sometimes the overtly emo tonality (like those 4/2-3/1 lydian sus chords. Whatever you'd know when you heard it) rubs me the wrong way.

5:41 PM
Hmm, Schwantner sets an earlier version of King's "I Have a Dream" speech, which was a motif in a fair number of sermons and speeches, which he improved into his march on Washington address. I like it because it forces you to actually listen to the words, rather than just recognizing it and tuning it out.

5:45 PM
Onto Wayne Shorter's "Fall" played by the late sixties Miles Davis Quintet. Some of the most fleet and effortless music this group put together. Abstract and loose, yet impressionisticaly evocative, especially Herbie Hancock's piano solo. A great group at their unparalleled peak.

5:53 PM
Leonard Bernstein is the king of melodies with consecutive leaps in the same direction, usually a fourth or greater. Like here, in Make Our Garden Grown from Candide. Music so inspirationally potent, it almost got him blacklisted.

5:57 PM
No better way to start off a good 40 minutes of flower child themed music than with the Mamas and the Papas' California Dreamin'.

6:51 PM
John Adams' Dharma at Big Sur. Really otherworldly music, but as Adams notes in his recent autobiography, it's not quite how it's supposed to sound. He had to compromise his desires for just intonation, especially in the brass, and most orchestral musicians aren't used to this kind of music where so much of it comes from off the page. Maybe if some like-minded experimental/new music people were to make an orchestra, the piece could finally sound like it's supposed to. Oh well. I'll just enjoy the fantastic drones and electric acrobatics as they are ;)

Drumming on a Street Light

2010-06-28T17:54:00.000-07:00

Yesterday was the umpteenth Bang on Can Marathon, the New York downtown music scene's special day to bombard unsuspecting shoppers at the World Financial Center with decidedly un-elevatory music. I was there. So was Will Robin, who keeps a nice blog over at seated ovation. He has a thoughtful rundown of the day's music. You should check it out because there will be no rundown and very little thought going on here.

Instead, here are some isolated feelings about what was fun about listening to avant garde music in an upscale mall and what could've been more fun.

English Ph.d's love parsing the well-worn books owned by famous authors, hoping to find some insight into how these great writers read. Unfortunately, it's much harder to find out how good musicians listen. Which brings me to fun item 1: the musicians actually stuck around to listen to the other groups. Seeing performers become audience members really helped the communal vibe. You felt in the know because this was where all the hip cats were hangin. But I also had fun watching the musicians watch the performances. Drummer/comoposer John Hollenbeck, whose big band kick started the proceedings at noon, was seated about 10 feet in front of me during the JACK quartet's freakishly precise performance of Iannis Xenakis's Tetras. I caught myself watching him as much as the performers, seeing how he reacted to a particularly blood-curdling glissando or some tricked-out noises coming from the cellist's bridge. He rubbed his chin a few times but for the most part sat rather still, definitely playing closer attention to the music than I was. After the quartet's electrifying ending, I slid my eyes backed toward Hollenbeck and caught slack-jawed, mouthing "wow." So what are my musicological conclusions about Hollenbeck experiences Xenakis? I have no idea. It's nice to know that he liked it though. Wonder if he'll throw in some of those glissandi into his next big band piece

Fun item 2 is related to fun item 1 because it involves musician watching: musicians are people too. After shredding quite a few hairs on his bow getting the biggest ovation all afternoon, the violist from the JACK quartet went shopping in Banana Republic. Gotta say those four dudes dress pretty slick.

Digression! Best dressed award goes to Kambar Kalendarov & Kutman Sultanbekov from Kyrgyzstan and Gamelan Galak Tikva. Fluorescent baggy pants and cool hats should be required for all BOAC performers.

Fun item 3: seeing a 10 foot-tall double-contra-awesome recorder, courtesy of the lovely ladies of Quartet New Generation.

Fun item 4: Moritz Eggert played the piano with his face. For realz.

But unfortunately the marathon wasn't all fun and games (though you could play music by BOAC founders Julie Wolf, David Lang, and Michael Gordon on a Rock Band setup on the balcony). There were some programing mistakes and missed opportunities for more cool stuff. So if the aforementioned founders somehow get lost on the internets and find their way here, I have a few recommendations for future marathons.

1. Please don't stop the music. The twelve hour marathon concept is a bit misleading. There's not 12 hours of music, more like 7 hours and quite a lot of downtime for set changes. The placement of the JACK quartet on top of the stairs across the atrium from the stage was money, there just should have been more stuff going on up there as the big groups take their time to get set up. Maybe there should be small groups set along the sides to distract folks during set changes. Like some peeps doing "Music for Pieces of Wood" or a Xenakis's "Psappha." Or a communal rendition of "Clapping Music"! Come on, it's a big enough space, so use all of it!

2. Loved the inclusion of John Hollenbeck and Steve Coleman. Get more of that. The downtown jazz and classical worlds are becoming increasingly intertwined. Improvisation crops up more in "classical" works (just check out electro-violinist Todd Reynolds and So Percussion). There isn't a lot of head-solo-head in avant-jazz music, and guys like saxophonist Ken Thomson write some pretty crazy through-composed parts. Let's see this intermingling in action by adding more jazz *gasp* groups to this classical festival. There already are a lot of "jazz" musicians in the BOAC community, like the aforementioned Ken Thomson and trombonist Alan Ferber whose bands would fit perfectly with the marathon. Or Darcy James Argue and Sam Sadigursky whose records are out on the classical-oriented New Amsterdam label. Or the hyperkinetic spectral music of Steve Lehman, the chaotically composed superfunk of Kneebody, the eclectic crossover of Bobby Previte, Josh Sinton's Ideal Bread... [Kevin's conscience: stop name dropping! Do you think anyone reading this actually knows who all these people are? Do they even care?] Ok, point taken. Maybe I just want a free outdoor avant-jazz festival to match BOAC. Get cracking Adam Schatz.

3. Just program better. The World Financial Center is a great space. Lot's of light and space, beautiful view of the immaculate Jersey City. But it sure is big and live. While it's admirable for BOAC to show an immense variety of music at their signature event, some of it just doesn't work in the space. Like the percussion group Slagwerk Den Haag's performance of Ludica by Marco Momi. I probably would have really liked it in Zankel Hall, but it lost me here when it stopped at a dull drone for a good thirty seconds. The best music for the marathon vibe is stuff that's loud for the most part, and has constant activity so the listener doesn't get distracted by the bajilion other things going on around them. Xenakis works well. Reich works well. Burkina Electric is just about perfect. Recorder quartets are not (and there were five of them in the first 4 hours). There's a lot of good music here, but save it for the right spaces.

Well it seems like that I just want the Bang on a Can Marathon to be more of a new music party than a new music concert. Maybe take out the seats, throw in another stage, always have something going on. The show may be a marathon but it shouldn't have to feel like one.

View from the Highway

2010-06-11T20:30:00.000-07:00

You press play on the trusty CD player and the lights seem to fade. The sound of quivering strings and splashing piano enters your ears. Your eyes close. Images form on the back of your eyelids. Is this a dream? Have I been hear before? The images become clearer, running together to make a scene. Dusty mountains under a pink morning sky through a window. You realize you're in the backseat of a car, cruising down a lonely stretch of I-15. The driver is a rather demure man, brown-haired, about 40, with dark sunglasses that stop his eyes from ruining a perfect scowl. He doesn't talk, except to say that his name is Brad. He doesn't say where you are going, doesn't stop to look at the bison, doesn't impulsively pull off and take a scenic route. You just drive, the mountains gradually melting into the horizon of your mind.

Such is the Herzogian road trip that is pianist Brad Mehldau's newest album, "Highway Rider." Entering the recording studio as a leader for the first time since 2005's "Day is Done," Mehldau doesn't just bring along his trio of bassist Larry Grenadier and drummer Jeff Ballard, but producer Jon Brion, saxophonist Joshua Redman, and a chamber orchestra. The resulting music thick and dark, but with anxious grooves simmering below the surface. It's a soundtrack so enveloping, you don't need the visuals to tell you that you're in a road movie.

Certainly "Highway Rider" is cut from the same cloth as a pair of earlier Mehldau albums--1997's "Elegiac Cycle" and 2000's "Places." All three are each a sort of song cycle, each one possessing a unified musical language and a highfalutin' philosophical theme, whether the meaning of art in a transient life, the meaning of place in a transient life, or the meaning of well... transience, in a transient life. Yet despite the intellectual seriousness of "Elegiac Cycle" and "Places," they're profoundly engaging for their technical brilliance (maybe the most impressive extemporaneous tonal counterpoint on record) and clarity of storytelling. But while "Highway Rider" is an attractive album, it doesn't stick in the mind like the earlier ones do.

A big reason for that is the addition of the orchestra. Though Mehldau's tunes on "Elegiac Cycle" and "Places" had the same classically-oriented harmonic language as their counterparts on "Highway Rider," they were basically straight heads, allowing Mehldau add on extemporaneous variations at will. There was a logic to the solos, but there was also an element of surprise, as Mehldau could take the piece wherever he pleased whether by himself or accompanied by his uncannily sympathetic trio. The orchestra parts act as a straitjacket on Mehldau's playing--the thick blotches of ink on paper drag Mehldau's whimsical explorations back to earth. There are certainly beguiling moments during the 90 minutes of music, especially Mehldau and Co's admirably un-touched-up singing on "The Falcon will Fly Again." But the moments of joyful looseness highlight just how stifling the rest of the album can be.

Producer Jon Brion also makes a few surprising choices in the mix. Sometimes the volume of Mehldau's piano seems a bit too artificially inflated and Josh Redman's passionate saxophone solos aren't given enough of a boost to carry over the thick orchestral writing. And Brion doesn't bring the same kind of sonic playfulness that he inserted into Mehldau's 2002 effort "Largo,"(no silly putty in the piano this time). Overall, the production is clean and tightly controlled, more like what you'd hear on a concise pop record than the freewheeling jazz records Mehldau puts out. Though the texturally rich music of "Highway Rider" evokes strong images of vast western expanse, the listener is stuck looking at them through a car window. There is no off-roading or scenic detour, no adventure with an uncertain path. All you get is a view from the highway.

Sex Mob at the 55 Bar - May 20, 2010

2010-05-21T10:22:00.000-07:00

The slide trumpet is an unruly instrument. It sounds more raw than its valved cousin and intonation's just a bitch. When Steven Bernstein puts the instrument to his lips while fronting his band Sex Mob, he doesn't tame the beastly horn, but lets the thing out of its cage. It's hard to imagine anything other than a slide trumpet leading this raucously fun band.

Even after 14 years together, Sex Mob still plays with irrepressible energy, an energy that threatened to blow out the windows of the tiny speakeasy venue. While its repertoire is more indicative of a bar band, Sex Mob deconstructs the cheesy pop tunes with a great deal of subversive wit. The melody's there, but doesn't sound quite right. The groove's there, but Wollesen puts the backbeat just a little too far behind the pulse to make it comfortable. And it's just frickin' hilarious when they transition from Duke Ellington's "The Mooch" to "The Macarena" without blinking an eye.

Bernstein's also one hell of an emmcee. He filled breaks with goofy stories about Bill O'Reilly and doctors of music writing pot prescriptions, and was totally comfortable asking the audience about volume levels during sound check (Somebody should get him on a late night show. Seriously.) This casualness runs into the music as well. Se Mob's not about creating well-manicured works where everything lines up exactly, but that's not to say they aren't a tight band. It's more like wickedly-precise untogetherness, making it sound like a group of four guys just picking up instruments and deciding to play whatever they heard on the AM radio.

Sex Mob is very analog music. There are no quantized divisions between genres, or pitches, or tempos. It's all just a soupy texture of pop tunes you're embarrassed to like and mind-blowing free jazz. And in a digital music world, nothing can be so refreshing.

Painfully Real (Without 3-D!) - Daddy Longlegs

2010-05-14T08:43:00.000-07:00

The great irony of reality TV is that in order for it to be effective, the audience cannot feel sympathy for the people on screen. Whether confined to a tropical island or thirty-second singing audition, reality show participants are boiled down to their unsavory antics and personality flaws. Because they are divorced from the rest of their humanity, we can laugh at their ridiculous faux pas without a tinge of guilt. But to see a real human being screw-up in royal fashion is a much more nerve-racking affair. And this is what precisely unfolds before us in Josh and Benny Safdie’s Daddy Longlegs.

At the movie’s outset we are introduced to Lenny (played convincingly by Ronald Bronstein), a lanky thirty-something munching on a hot dog as he runs through the busy streets of NYC to an appointment. He falls while attempting to jump a fence, loses his hot dog, and lies in the grass, laughing at his own misfortune. Lenny is so irresistibly exuberant and carefree, you can’t help but laugh with him. But when Lenny gets to elementary school to pick up his boys, Sage and Frey (real-life brothers Sage and Frey Ranaldo), for a two-week visitation, he gets into a verbal spat with the school principal due to a lack of discipline. Everything isn’t so happy-go-lucky in Lenny Land, but he tries his best to keep it that way.

Despite his charms, Lenny is a total space cadet and a thoroughly incompetent father. He loves his kids, but as a buddy rather than a friend. Lenny takes his boys on a trip upstate with a girl he met in a bar, leaves them to play with the photocopier at the movie theater he works at, and sends them to the grocery store on their own. And when you think he can’t screw up any worse, Lenny administers sleeping pills that leave Sage and Frey nearly comatose. Each of Lenny’s mistakes is groan-inducing and stomach-twisting. As the blunders pile up, all you can do is put your head in your hands and sigh. Though Lenny is visibly regretful after each case of negligence, he is somehow unable to learn anything from his mistakes, creating an even more excruciating viewing experience.

You won’t enjoy watching Daddy Longlegs, as it creates the unconscionable urge to jump into the film and give Lenny a Homer Simpson-style strangling. But that doesn’t mean it is a movie to be avoided. There are few movies that push the viewers’ buttons in this way, and even fewer that push them as effectively as this one does. Like in many films that look back on youth, Josh and Benny Safdie imbue the film with a sense of altered memory. Events end abruptly and then cut to a scene many hours later, with things seemingly back to normal. Instead of following a traditional narrative arc, the film moves with the unpredictable rhythms of daily life. The film is an oddly idealized portrait of childhood, not in that it smoothes over the ugly parts, but in how it emphasizes certain moments, stretching time out or deleting it entirely. In Daddy Longlegs, the Safdie brothers have concocted a distinctive film with rare emotional intensity. Of course they’re not the kind of emotions we want when seeing a movie, but that’s what makes the experience all the more visceral. Sometimes we need a movie that isn’t an escape, but rather throws us headlong into the pains of reality.

Daddy Longlegs opens today in Manhattan, and hopefully coming to an indie cinema near you.

Regal Butter on Royal Toast

2010-05-11T22:24:00.000-07:00

I know I'm addicted to NPR. You don't have to tell me again. And yes, my mother has every reason to make fun of me for rolling my eyes when she would talk about something she heard on NPR at the dinner table.

But seriously, it's hard not to love it after spending a day there. It's like watching a 6-hour episode of the West Wing in real life. Just tons of smart and funny people saying tons of smart and funny things. And any organization that has 70,000 music CDs on the premises is good by me. There's also NPR goes Gaga.

Not to mention their exclusive first listen is pretty frickin' sweet. Recently I've checked out new albums by Nels Cline, the New Pornographers, and the National, all of which are now on my Princeton Record Exchange watch list. And this week, NPR is hosting a preview of the new album by drummer John Hollenbeck's Claudia Quintet, Royal Toast.

In terms of name ridiculosity, the Claudia Quintet certainly one up's the Ben Folds Five. On this record at least, there are no less than six members in the quintet, none of them named Claudia. The instrumentation's a bit off-kilter too, with the sounds of accordion and vibraphone swirling around tenor sax, bass and drums(with the addition of piano this time around). Over their near-decade together as a band, Hollenbeck and co have staked out a unique musical territory, somewhere in the murk that separates jazz, indie pop, and chamber music. Improvised solos are seamlessly inserted into heavily notated pieces, while Mr. Hollenbeck lays down an almost-danceable groove.

Their self-titled debut album was notable for its hard edges separated by ample space. Accordions, vibes and saxes don't blend very well, and so the music was built on interlocking and angular melodies, all jumping into the foreground simultaneously. Royal Toast marks a sonic mellowing out of sorts. Gary Versace's piano fills in a lot of the frequencies between the bass and lead instruments, smoothing over the music's stark lines. After playing with this particular combination of instruments for so long, Hollenbeck is uncannily attuned to how they sound together and so Royal Toast is oh so carefully orchestrated. The instruments jump in and out of the mix gracefully, creating blissful sonic landscapes. In a lot of ways it's reminiscent of good pop production, except for being totally acoustic and all.

Especially on Royal Toast, Hollenbeck's compositions sound like an audio analog of Charlie Kaufman's films. They're subdued, a bit cerebral and carefully controlled, but with a good dose of deadpan humor thrown in. On the two part tune Keramag, Hollenbeck begins with an admirably sloppy drum solo; the drums aren't falling down the stairs by accident, he's dropping them at exact times. Then suddenly the rest of the band jumps in and it all turns into a broke-down dance party, with the backbeat uncomfortably loose. This may be the only time the music gets louder than a dull roar, but that restraint only brings the listener in more. Despite a harmonic palette and gain level reminiscent of ambient music, Royal Toast certainly isn't an album that fades into the background. There are just too many little jokes and "aha" moments to find in this lush music to tune it out.

So pull out your good pair of headphones and head on over to NPR to check out the Claudia Quintet and Royal Toast.

Coherent Babblings

2010-05-10T21:59:00.000-07:00

So it's the night before all written work for the semester is due here at Princeton U and about an hour ago, a large group of students in the courtyard of nearby Holder Hall screamed like a pack of teenage banshees pissed off that the next episode of "Glee" was postponed because of the World Series or something.

Yeah, not so pleasing.

But at least there are somethings that scream beautifully. Like Little Richard. And Bill Frisell's guitar.

To hear some of the wonderful sounds Mr. Frisell coaxes from a modest piece of wood and steel, check out the audio piece below. Think of it as a segment from the "All Things Considered" rejection bin. (sorry for the cheesy photos but I have to put it in video format).

Oscar Wrapup

2010-03-08T21:02:00.000-08:00

Ok, I'm getting a bit obsessed with movies. I think my last two significant conversations over meals were about stuff I've been watching. The good news is that I'm no longer blabbing about music no one else has heard before. The bad news is that I'm still not over my egocentric need to voice critical opinions.

And thus begins a few reflections about the Oscars last night.

In the fallout of "The Hurt Locker's" big night, some have argued that the secret to its success vs. the box-office behemoth that is "Avatar" is that actors, who make up more than 2/3 of the Academy voters, feel threatened by its profusion of special effects. Or it at least makes them think about how much is filmed in this universe and how much is created in the digital one. These voting actors wanted to award a movie that showcases acting, rather than effects. And that's why they gave the best picture Oscar to "Up in the Air."

Whoops. Maybe not.

But this would be the logical conclusion from this argument. If actors were indeed voicing their preferences for performance-driven movies, "Up in the Air" would certainly take the cake. It had the most nominations in acting categories and probably would have picked up a couple if it was nominated in most other years. So this can't be the whole secret to "The Hurt Locker's" success.

While Jeremy Renner, Anthony Mackie, and Brian Geraghty certainly did a good job in animating their roles in "The Hurt Locker," their performances did not make the movie. What gave the movie its emotional potency were the technical elements. "The Hurt Locker's" Baghdad is one of the most penetratingly real settings ever filmed for a war movie. The attention to detail combined with the tension-driven story make the film a nerve-racking thrill ride from start to finish. I think this had a lot to do with "Hurt Locker's" eventual success--the technical elements are transparent and easy to recognize and have a definite expressive purpose of amping up tension. The film has a bite that was lacking in every other film nominated for best picture. "The Hurt Locker" did what a good action movie is supposed to do--keep your adrenaline up for a good two hours--and was rewarded for it by both actors and technicians.

So yes, I am a bit disappointed that two terrific films--"Up in the Air" and "An Education"--went away empty handed. But that has more to do with the strength of this year's nominees than anything else. I could easily see "Up in the Air" taking a good four or five awards home if it were came out last year and was up against that weaker field. Oh well. The one bit of silver lining is that Jason Reitman and Carey Mulligan are still at the beginning of their careers and certainly have the obscene talent to get their hardware in the near future.

In the end, as A.O. Scott so elegantly put it in Sunday's New York Times, the Academy Awards are really about what Hollywood thinks of itself, or at least wants itself to be. As more and more boutique studios get shut down and the box office is dominated by buzz rather than artistic merit, I think many academy members wanted to show that there is still a place for thoughtful and independent film in the industry. Just the number of cracks last night about "Avatar" showed how much Hollywood is uneasy with technical and economic Goliaths. This isn't to say that artsy movies are going to make a comeback. The so-called independent films that got nominated were far from weird or inaccessible, were cleanly made, and came from relatively mainstream sources, be it best-selling novels or prescient current events. With this lens, it's easy to see how a well-shot indie movie with an archetypal plot like "Slumdog Millionaire" was so successful last year.

I feel I can't end though without some final thoughts about "Avatar." So what if it came home with three minor awards. It's still the most audacious piece of filmmaking out of the nominated bunch. You can criticize the script, the score, and the acting all you want, but it's hard not to admit they did their job well. "Avatar's" real problem lies elsewhere.

It's a bit ironic that a sci-fi movie that was so immersive through its use of 3-D technology would feature a relatively compact alternate world. In the great sci-fi and fantasy movies, like "Star Wars," "Star Trek," and "Lord of the Rings," the worlds that the filmmakers have created are so rich and detailed that you feel that the story you're watching isn't all that's going on out there. The worlds are filled with minor places and characters that probably have colorful histories of their own; you just have to fill them in. "Avatar" lacks a world of this magnitude. Pandora is a land lost in time. The Na'avi live the same way they have lived forever. There are no other adventures to be had on the other side of the planet. Everything that's important or interesting about this world is confined to the 3 hour run time. Our imaginations aren't allowed to run wild after the fact like they do after watching "Star Wars" or "Lord of the Rings." Certainly James Cameron loves the world he has created, but he doesn't make it large enough for the audience to take a piece of it home with them and love it too.