"Weird Means Something You Never Heard Before": Rolling Jazz D-bag Thread 2015

idk, it's cool i guess?

From WSJ: didn't know he was from the Chicago New Thing scene!

Review of Jack DeJohnette’s ‘Made in Chicago’
Jazz drummer Jack DeJohnette goes back to his roots by convening a band featuring all-star musicians from his early days in Chicago.
By
Martin Johnson
March 11, 2015 6:28 p.m. ET

Drummer Jack DeJohnette has been an integral part of the New York area jazz scene for more than 50 years, long enough to forget that he’s originally from Chicago. Before moving east, he participated in the band that gave birth to the Advancement for the Association of Creative Musicians, a collective that has nurtured several generations of great Chicago jazz musicians.

On his new recording, “Made in Chicago” (ECM Records), Mr. DeJohnette goes back to those roots by convening a band featuring all-star musicians from his early days in Chicago; he is joined by saxophonists Roscoe Mitchell and Henry Threadgill and by pianist Muhal Richard Abrams. Each is a renowned innovator and leader who rarely plays sideman gigs. The recording documents an August 2013 concert by the band in Millennium Park during the Chicago Jazz Festival. The band will perform Thursday night at the Walker Arts Center in Minneapolis and again this summer at the Newport Jazz Festival on Aug. 1.

In the early ’60s, Mr. DeJohnette, who is 72 years old, was a classmate of Mr. Threadgill, 71, and Mr. Mitchell, 74, at Wilson Junior College (now Kennedy-King College) on Chicago’s South Side. They played music together in school settings and at the many jam sessions that took place in the city’s jazz clubs and lounges. It was at one of these sessions that Mr. DeJohnette met Mr. Abrams, now 84, who led an ensemble called the Experimental Band; fittingly for its name, it functioned as a workshop for musicians with ideas that didn’t fit into the jazz mainstream. Messrs. DeJohnette, Threadgill and Mitchell all played in the band, which featured a varying roster of musicians and ultimately grew into the AACM in 1965.

The Chicago Jazz Festival invited Mr. DeJohnette to create a project of his choosing in honor of his appointment as a Jazz Master by the National Endowment for the Arts. On “Made in Chicago,” the four jazz greats are joined by veteran bassist Larry Gray, who is also a native of Chicago’s South Side.

The set list consists of Mr. Mitchell’s “Chant,” which has been staple of his repertoire for 40 years, and one less-familiar tune each by Messrs. Mitchell, Threadgill, Abrams and DeJohnette. It closes with an improvised jam. There are stellar moments throughout the recording. For instance, Mr. Mitchell’s tense coiled sounds are offset beautifully on “Chant” by Mr. Abrams’s ruminative piano chords. The pianist and the drummer engage in a powerful duet in Mr. DeJohnette’s “Museum of Time.” And Mr. Threadgill’s pungent alto saxophone is heard on several pieces.

But the record falls prey to the issues that mar many “supergroup” recordings. The product of only a few days of rehearsals, it is an uneven affair; there are moments of sublime synthesis followed quickly by moments where the playing feels measured and less assertive. Yet the best parts are intriguing. Save for some gems on imprints like Nessa and Delmark, Chicago’s avant-garde jazz scene of the ’60s was under-recorded, and this album—though made a half-century later—offers a glimpse into what might have been heard during some of those Experimental Band gigs.

At Mr. Abrams’s urging, Mr. DeJohnette moved to New York in 1964 and quickly found elite-level work, playing in bands led by saxophonists Jackie McLean, Charles Lloyd and Wayne Shorter. In 1969, he joined Miles Davis’s band, playing on the classic “Bitches Brew” sessions. During the ’70s, Mr. DeJohnette made his mark not only with his own group, Special Edition, a showcase for several up-and-coming saxophonists, but with New Directions, which featured such top players as guitarist John Abercrombie and trumpeter Lester Bowie. Much of Mr. DeJohnette’s time since the early ’80s has been spent performing with Keith Jarrett’s Standards Trio, which has become one of the most popular groups in jazz.

Messrs. Threadgill and Abrams also moved to New York in the early ’70s and still live there. Mr. Mitchell spent some time in Europe before settling first in Michigan and now in Oakland, Calif., where he teaches at Mills College. It is easy to hear the Chicago roots in their sound, but not so much in Mr. DeJohnette’s—and I suspect that is the point of “Made in Chicago.” He shows his Windy City side, and it adds a new, introductory chapter to the lengthy discography of a great jazz drummer.

Mr. Johnson writes about jazz for the Journal.

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/08/arts/music/50-years-on-association-for-advancement-of-creative-musicians-influences-jazz.html

NY Times covered them too.

___________________________________________

x-post

idk, it's cool i guess?

― lil urbane (Jordan), Wednesday, March 11, 2015

The question mark says it all. Haven't heard the effort yet. Saw Shigeto once and enjoyed but wasn't wowed.

gonna shill for my new york peeps and ask if you'd like to join me for a dual harp recital with an open bar for a $10 ticket:
http://www.greenwichhouse.org/announcements/uncharted-brandee-younger

Somehow missed that DeJohnette AACM connection myself until that Times Article. Guess I should have made a bigger dent in that George Lewis book.

Saw Made in Chicago last night, totally blown away, they were ragin', full on, one of the best shows I've ever seen

I should add that I love Shigeto, both on record (especially the most recent) and live.

Ted Gioia, who I haven't seen praise a living jazz musician in print in longer than I can remember, weeps for the 1950s again, this time because Verve has been absorbed into Interscope/Universal.

An adaptation of an extended Twitter blast (21 tweets in all):

Flippancy at Ted Gioia's expense aside, I have some serious thoughts about major labels and jazz. I kinda wish major labels would get out of the jazz business entirely, and leave it to the indies. Just let the catalogs lapse, and let the music shrug off the weight of history and move forward.

In the music’s perceived golden era (50s-60s), most (not all) of the best stuff was on indies Blue Note, Prestige, Impulse! & Verve. There were great records on Columbia, RCA & Warner, of course, but the indies were doing the lion’s share of the work. And majors haven’t really cared about jazz since the 70s. For 40 years, jazz has been independent (if not underground). The majors made their play later, buying the indies & reissuing their catalogs. That’s not creativity, it’s cannibalism. And it’s still like that. Reissue after reissue keeping decades-old catalogs alive, at the expense of new/living artists. Active players have to compete with Miles Davis boxes for listeners’ attention. And guess which gets a bigger marketing budget?

And OK, yeah, pop singers making boring albums of 80+ year old “standards” is a problem, too. But that’s just marketing – using the term “jazz” to grant prestige to boring crap that shouldn’t have been recorded at all. I can’t hear a difference between a Barry Manilow “standards” album and a Wayne Newton or Robert Goulet album of yore. But here’s the thing: JAZZ DOESN’T SELL. Like, it REALLY doesn’t sell. The average new jazz CD sells ~1000 copies. 5000 = triumph. So unless you’re running on the tightest of budgets, jazz CDs are a guaranteed money loser. So it’s UNDERSTANDABLE that the only “jazz” records majors are making are actually what used to be called “pop vocal” in the 60s. Major labels can’t tighten their budgets enough to make real (instrumental) jazz releases profitable. Too many salaries to pay.

Real jazz (creative, largely improvised instrumental music) is out there, being played for people who want to hear it. You’ve got to look to indie labels, though. Posi-Tone, AUM Fidelity, Pi Recordings, Criss Cross, Mack Avenue, Sunnyside, Delmark, Fresh Sound New Talent, HighNote, Smoke Sessions... So if you like jazz, don’t waste your time worrying about majors and their focus on history. The music’s alive…on indies. (S/O to Blue Note, ECM, Nonesuch, Impulse! & Okeh – major imprints doing lots of great work, too, of course.

Ornette Coleman's Beauty Is A Rare Thing: The Complete Atlantic Recordings box is being reissued on 3/31, in less-lavish packaging (a clamshell case, with the discs in slim cardboard sleeves). You do get the original booklet, though, and Amazon's got it for $40. If you don't already have it, it really is a must-own.

Pi Recordings is indeed a good example, and I was thinking about the valuable older indies when I saw the mention of Nessa on that xpost WSJ De Johnette piece, as one of the few labels (along with Delmark, which you also mentioned) to provide us with excellent evidence of the early 60s Chicago avant-jazz community.
Early evidence of spring led me to the Neon Art trilogy of previously unreleased Art Pepper albums, the press sheet for which I posted upthread. Nice roomy but never overblown live tracks, from Seattle and Japan, in 1981, and more indications that he seems to have been rolling right through his ninth life 'til its end, in '82. "Red Car" starts with terse, genial phrases, then gets rougher-edged, like a Noo Yawker putting his two cents in, maybe a cabbie in an old movie; later tracks find him going for more of a cool lyricism, hard bop, new thing, mambo, "Over the Rainbow," blues---here's most of the sheet again, minus the visuals:

Neon Art: Volume One contains two tracks recorded at Parnell’s in Seattle, Wash., in 1981, with Art accompanied by Milcho Leviev (piano), David Williams (bass), and Carl Burnett (drums). “Red Car,” originally released on 1977’s The Trip, appears in a stunning 17-minute version, while “Blues for Blanche,” first heard on 1980’s So in Love, sees the original version expanded to 18 minutes. Street date for Volume One is February 17, 2015.
Neon Art: Volume Two includes three tunes drawn from the unissued performances of his 1981 tour of Japan. The album features Art’s composition “Mambo Koyama,” as well as his very personal and soulful rendition of the classic “Over the Rainbow” and the bebop workout “Allen’s Alley.” The band on Volume Two, which also appears on Volume Three, is composed of George Cables, piano; David Williams, bass; and Carl Burnett, drums. Volume Two hits the streets March 10.
Neon Art: Volume Three features three more tunes drawn from the unissued performances of his 1981 tour of Japan. Pepper funky originals “Make a List (Make a Wish)” and “Arthur’s Blues” are joined by the standard “Everything Happens to Me,” which has previously been recorded by Frank Sinatra and Billie Holiday. Release date is April 7.
“Art hated the idea that people put jazz in a pigeonhole. He wanted to make people forget the categories and ‘make them open up and listen’,” says Laurie Pepper. The release of these three albums of previously unissued Art Pepper recordings, now available in all configurations, will allow anyone the ability to ‘open up and listen.’
The three albums, now available on CD and digital, as well as in their original colored vinyl, form an entry point into the multifaceted, colorful world of Art Pepper.
Track Listings:
Neon Art: Volume One
1. Red Car (16:52)
2. Blues for Blanche (17:57)
Neon Art: Volume Two
1. Mambo Koyama (18:39)
2. Over the Rainbow (14:37)
3. Allen’s Alley (9:17)
Neon Art: Volume Three
1. Make a List (Make a Wish) (24:41)
2. Everything Happens to Me (8:36)
3. Arthur’s Blues (10:29)

Milcho Leviev (piano)new to me, and immediately engaging on "Red Car." I see that Pepper's a sideman on some of Leviev's own albums; anybody heard those??

i don't know anything about art pepper. is "neon art" a good place to start?

It shows his range and appeal, but he was pretty prolific, especially considering several stretches in prison, and I sure haven't heard it all. Art Pepper Meets The Rhythm Section, with Miles Davis's sidemen, is a good example of his 50s sound, but I'm more familiar with his later work, like one of his post-jail comebacks, Living Legend, where he's absorbed the influence of Trane, and he's got Hampton Hawes (always good to have more Hawes; he didn't exactly flood the market), Charlie Haden, and Shelly Manne. Also The Trip, with Elvin Jones etc.

he's a west coast guy though, right? that always sort of puts me off for some reason ...

Ornette reissue great news!

Speaking of Pepper and reissues, I would love to have Complete Vanguard reissued. That is fantastic stuff

RIP Bob Parlocha :(

I've decided to take a run at Bill Evans; bought 12 Classic Albums 1956-1962.

Here's the cover art (apologies for hugeness):

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/81%2B2AiHgV7L.jpg

^ You can't get a much better collection than that - I've had to note down the link as that will make the perfect stocking filler for a few friends - a steal at that price. If you're still hungry after all that I can't recommend the Complete Sunday at the Village Vanguard highly enough.

Finally got onto that Bill Evans and Tony Bennett re-release. Sublime as I remember but I really love hearing the alternate takes and how much they differ at times to the originals. Geniuses at play.

Played my ancient (yet Digitally Remastered Chrome) tape of Pepper's xpost Living Legend again, and it still sounded fine---Hawes still doesn't soound quite like anybody else, even when he switches to electric piano; Haden co-stars, without showboating---and Straight Life is maybe even better. Pepper's alto is quicksilver, glancing off the original melody even while building/finding an intimate vibe, which is never too sentimental (what a version of "Nature Boy"). Shifts into atonality a few times, but it's never jarring; just something he's gotta do. Here he's got Tommy Flanagan, Red Mitchell and Billy Higgins. Must check his Spotify stash, esp. for So In Love, on Artist House, with Haden, Higgins, Ed Blackwell, George Cables. I'll also look on there for the Vanguard material.

Kevin Whitehead on Tony Malaby's Tubacello and Scorpion Eater, with promising excerpts:
http://www.npr.org/2015/03/18/393850257/saxophonist-tony-malabys-new-quartet-brings-out-his-rowdy-side

"Tain" Watts is remarkably chill & self-effacing to a fault in this interview: http://www.thetrapset.net/

Not sure why I expected any different?

Also listened to this Chris Potter video today, it's kinda cool to see the musicians rehearsing and Nate Smith is a bad-ass:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=si-7m7u84Do

But then I followed it up with this Brian Blade Fellowship festival set, which makes CP's music seem cold & corny by comparison:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dP_-wwU-KQ8

Got a 3CD set in today's mail containing all six Max Roach +4 albums (including one originally credited to Booker Little) from 1958-59. Really interesting stuff; on a lot of the records, the lineup was Booker Little on trumpet, George Coleman on sax, Ray Draper on tuba, and Art Davis on bass.

wow, not sure if i've heard any of those records with tuba.

That's an amazing set, and the arrangements with Draper are stunning.

Don't know where to post so posting here:
http://www.kcet.org/arts/artbound/counties/los-angeles/drummer-peter-erskine-on-whiplash-film.html

From Soul Jazz Records

http://www.soundsoftheuniverse.com/mailouts/img/main/600/w/tannersuitecover.low.jpg

Available in all good retail, internet and digital stores from next Monday or from us right now!

Soul Jazz Records/Universal Sound are releasing here the third album from deep jazz flautist and composer Lloyd McNeill (alongside the earlier ‘Asha’ and ‘Washington Suite’ - both now sold out).

Tanner Suite is one of the most beautiful and by far the rarest of all of McNeill’s records, a unique piece of music especially commissioned by the Smithsonian National Gallery Of Art in the late 1960s to accompany an exhibition of the work of Henry Ossawa Tanner, the first African-American painter ever to gain international success.

Tanner Suite was originally released in 1969 as a private individually numbered pressing of 1000 copies on McNeill’s own Asha Record company and has never been issued since. Soul Jazz Records new pressing of this album is also limited to 1000 copies each on vinyl and CD. Both editions come in heavyweight exact-replica hard tip-on USA card sleeve original artwork.

This beautiful and intense and set of pieces based around improvisation was the soundscape to the significant exhibition of Tanner's work, created at an important point in post-civil rights African-American self-definition. The music is both profound and spiritual.

Lloyd McNeill is flautist, composer and painter. As musician he studied with Eric Dolphy, played with Nina Simone, Mulatu Astatke, Nana Vasconceles, Ron Carter, Dom um Romao and Sabu Martinez. In the mid-1960s McNeill headed to Paris and became friends with Pablo Picasso.

more info/audio here: http://www.souljazzrecords.co.uk/index.php

ESP-Disk is reissuing the sole studio album by Last Exit (Peter Brötzmann/Sonny Sharrock/Bill Laswell/Ronald Shannon Jackson), Iron Path, on May 26. New cover art, but no bonus tracks. The album is way more Laswell-ized than their live discs, but it's still got moments of greatness. The press release calls it the beginning of a "partnership" with Laswell, so maybe the rest of their catalog will get reissued, too. When I interviewed him a couple of years ago, he said it would be easy to put it all into a box, if someone was willing to put up the money.

Yeah, that's great news. ESP's always had their periodic biz drama though...

Also from Soul Jazz: Pharoah Sanders, Elevation(1974)
info/audio:
http://www.souljazzrecords.co.uk/releases/?id=32694

And Michael White (electric violinist, great on John Lee Hooker's Never Get Out of The Blues Alive)
Spirit Dance(1972)
http://www.souljazzrecords.co.uk/releases/?id=32697

Spirit Dance and another of White's albums, Pneuma, were reissued by Impulse on a 2-for-1 CD a few years ago. I reviewed it at the time, called it "early '70s dashikis-and-shakers jazz." It's OK, not great.

Never heard his albums, but on Never Get Out of *These*(correction)Blues Alive, his violin rides the guitar boogie, like a harmonica sometimes, and on "TB Sheets," it's fluttering around, bumping, something trapped in the room, behind and over the Hook and Van Morrison.

Yay Myra Melford. Anybody heard Snowy Egret?

from WSJ:

Unusual Background, Unusually Good
By
Martin Johnson
March 23, 2015 5:42 p.m. ET

Myra Melford is one of the most interesting and underrated pianists in jazz today. Her work is both ambitious and accessible, full of bright, intense rhythms and complex harmonies. Yet she has remained at jazz’s margins. After participating in the downtown New York jazz subculture of the ’80s and ’90s and spending a year in India thanks to a Fulbright Scholarship in 2000, she relocated to Berkeley, Calif., teaching at the University of California and performing in the Bay Area.

Her work is on par with more celebrated players’, such as trumpeter Dave Douglas, pianist Jason Moran and saxophonist Joe Lovano, but she doesn’t do the things that enhance a jazz pianist’s profile. She hasn’t recorded a collection of classic repertoire, nor has she covered contemporary pop and rock tunes. Instead, she’s created works that take inspiration from the essay “The Myth of Sisyphus” by Albert Camus and the novel “The Woman in the Dunes” by Kobo Abe. The music on her new recording, “Snowy Egret” (Enja/Yellowbird), which is also the name of her newest band, is inspired by the “Memory of Fire” trilogy by the Uruguayan author Eduardo Galeano.

In addition, starting Tuesday, she will perform for six nights at the Stone in New York, in a variety of different ensembles. The engagement amounts to a retrospective, as it will feature many of the bands she has led during her diverse career. Some of the highlights include performances by her sextet, Be Bread; two performances each by her quintets The Same River Twice and Snowy Egret; and a reunion of her trio from 25 years ago. A full schedule of concerts is at www.thestonenyc.com.

Ms. Melford, who is 58, was born in Evanston, Ill., and grew up in a Frank Lloyd Wright home there. That seems to inform her music, which is strikingly well structured and intelligently arranged. It’s always easy to hear what each instrument is doing and appreciate the often changing rhythms. Although not a member of Chicago’s Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians, Ms. Melford studied with Leroy Jenkins and Henry Threadgill, two of the musicians who figured prominently in the collective’s early days. Ms. Melford’s music shares the traits of many bands that emerged from the AACM. In her arrangements her use of space is similar to that of Air and Eight Bold Souls, while her willingness to use nontraditional jazz instruments mirrors, at a smaller scale, the Art Ensemble of Chicago.

Most of her ensembles feature unusual instrumental combinations, which yield unique harmonies. For instance, the members of Snowy Egret are drummer Tyshawn Sorey, guitarist Liberty Ellman, cornetist Ron Miles and bassist Stomu Takeishi.

The music on the recording is lean, lithe and appealing. There are numerous passages where the unisons of cornet and guitar are contrasted with the more conventional rhythms of drums and piano. Mr. Sorey and Ms. Melford’s rousing duet drives the recording’s opening track, “Language,” then the two give way to pithy solos by Mr. Ellman and Mr. Miles that are augmented by undulating drumbeats by Mr. Sorey and propulsive riffing by the leader. “Language” is an up-tempo track, but the band is just as adept at turning elegant, slower numbers like “Night of Sorrow” into equally compelling music. Mr. Sorey’s subdued drumming and Mr. Miles’s brassy murmurs underpin graceful solos by Ms. Melford and Mr. Ellman.

Two of the other highlights from the recording build on the blues, another early influence of Ms. Melford’s. “First Protest” begins with 90 seconds of warp-speed piano clusters and furious drumming that give way to a bass line from Mr. Takeishi that is an abstraction of a bluesy beat. The beginning of “The Strawberry” takes its cues from classic barrelhouse piano before deftly shifting into a stuttering beat that vaguely recalls Argentine tango.

Ms. Melford’s background is unusual among jazz musicians; she’s participated in the jazz scenes of the Midwest, East Coast and West Coast, and there are elements of each locale in her sound. Her lack of media recognition hasn’t slowed her. “Snowy Egret” is her 21st release as a leader, and she has more than double that number as a sidewoman. She was named a Guggenheim Fellow in 2013 and has won awards from the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation for her efforts in reworking the jazz program at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco. Fortunately there is a growing awareness of Ms. Melford’s considerable gifts, even if recognition still hasn’t permeated the mainstream jazz community.

Mr. Johnson writes about jazz for the Journal.

not yet; am very much looking forward to seeing her live later this year

Yeah, the new Melford album is really good. I just turned in a review to Jazziz; I profiled Melford for the mag a few years ago, too. Ellman and Takeishi (both of whom are also in Henry Threadgill's Zooid, it should be noted) are great on it.

This is a quick, quarterly reminder that all available tracks mentioned on this thread (and a few album selections) are being posted as updated to a thread-specific Spotify playlist that I'm maintaining. I just did a quick sweep prior to posting this message and updated as of today with everything that's been added on Spotify since it was first mentioned.... still no Myra Melford yet.

That playlist is currently a bit more than four hours of music and is clickable below. Give it a spin and subscribe if you want to listen along through the year.

Rolling Jazz 2015 Thread Spotify Playlist

Never heard much Wes Montgomery, aside from the proto-smooth jazz, wondering about this---anybody heard the previous collection on this label?

RESONANCE RECORDS PRESENTS
IN THE BEGINNING
BY JAZZ GUITAR ICON WES MONTGOMERY,
A 26-TRACK COLLECTION OF
RARE AND NEVER-BEFORE-RELEASED
TRACKS SPANNING 1949-1958
ONLY THE THIRD ISSUE OF PREDOMINANTLY UNHEARD MONTGOMERY MATERIAL SINCE HIS PASSING IN 1968;
INCLUDES COMPLETE, NEWLY DISCOVERED 1955 RECORDING SESSION FOR EPIC RECORDS PRODUCED BY QUINCY JONES

In the Beginning due out May 12, 2015 in two-CD deluxe digi-pack and separate
three-LP set; features booklet with previously unpublished photos, plus essays and recollections from Quincy Jones, Pete Townshend,
Bill Milkowski, Ashley Kahn, producer Zev Feldman, and more.
Includes excerpts from unpublished autobiography by Buddy Montgomery.
Lots more info here:
https://t.e2ma.net/message/2xbzg/mdpv1d

Thanks for the playlist, forks! I'll make time for it soon (I hope)

wes montgomery is the shizznit; that sounds great

just threw some jimmy smith wes montgomery on that playlist, cuz why not

at the risk of spamming the board, here's the lineup of pertinent shows at NYC's SummerStage for the upcoming season:

FREE SHOWS featuring (in alphabetical order) ANDY BEY, CAMILLE THURMAN, CESÁRIA ÉVORA ORCHESTRA, DR. LONNIE SMITH, FANTASTIC NEGRITO, JEFF ‘TAIN’ WATTS, JOE LOVANO, KING SOLOMON HICKS, MICHAEL MWENSO, MYRA MELFORD, OLIVER LAKE BIG BAND, ROY AYERS, ROY HARGROVE, RUDRESH MAHANTHAPPA, WYCLIFFE GORDON, and many more

• Saturday June 6 - Central Park - 3pm - Blue Note Jazz Festival with Meshell Ndegeocello + Roy Hargrove + Gabriel Garzón-Montano
• Sunday July 12 - Central Park - 3pm - Cesária Évora Orchestra + Mayra Andrade + Dino D'Santiago
• Sunday July 19 - Queensbridge Park, QNS - 4pm - Queens Family Day with Wycliffe Gordon and Friends + B-Love’s Hip Hop Jazzy Groove + Karisma Jay and Abundance
• Saturday July 25 - Central Park - 3pm - Bombino + Young Fathers + Fantastic Negrito
• Wednesday August 12 - Marcus Garvey Park, BX - 7pm - Mobile Mondays! Live: Everybody Loves Roy Ayers
• Friday August 21 - Marcus Garvey Park, BX - 6pm - The Charlie Parker Jazz Festival featuring Oliver Lake Big Band + King Solomon Hicks + Michela Taps: Bird Lives
• Saturday August 22 - Marcus Garvey Park, BX - 3pm - The Charlie Parker Jazz Festival featuring Dr. Lonnie Smith + Andy Bey + Jeff ‘Tain’ Watts + Camille Thurman
• Sunday August 23 - Tompkins Square Park, MN - 3pm - The Charlie Parker Jazz Festival featuring Joe Lovano + Rudresh Mahanthappa: Bird Calls + Myra Melford + Michael Mwenso

Sweet! Ditto this, hopefully
NPR Jazz Night In America series, streaming shortly

Cassandra Wilson Sings Billie Holiday

9pm ET / 6pm PT

• Kennedy Center, Washington, D.C.

Esp. considering this, from Wall St J:

Review of ‘Coming Forth by Day’ by Cassandra Wilson: Tribute Album as Birthday Present
A recording that recasts Billie Holiday on the singer’s 100th birthday.
By Jim Fusilli
April 7, 2015 5:33 p.m. ET

Through their achievements at popular music’s highest level, Billie Holiday and Cassandra Wilson are peers across time. Accordingly, Ms. Wilson is free to pay homage to Holiday without fealty, and she does so on her new album, “Coming Forth by Day” (Legacy), by radically reinterpreting, with characteristic confidence and nonconformity, the Holiday canon. Its release this week coincides with the 100th anniversary of Holiday’s birth.

“Coming Forth by Day” isn’t a traditional jazz album, nor does it attempt to evoke the Lady Day music aficionados know through recordings and legend. Ms. Wilson, who is 59, went out of her way to avoid easy comparison to Holiday’s classic versions. During a phone conversation last week, she said she gave “zero thought” to a tribute that sought to capture the Holiday sound, adding that to do so would be, by the jazz musician’s code, an unacceptable affront to her memory. “In our world, that’s an insult.” She said, “I was always focusing on the artist and what she represents: extraordinary things.”
Cassandra Wilson ENLARGE
Cassandra Wilson Photo: Rick Diamond/Getty Images for Americana Music

Thus, Ms. Wilson’s understanding of Holiday goes well beyond the standard biography of the singer, who died at age 44. The typical telling portrays Holiday as a tragic figure abused by men and the drugs she used, whose mastery of tone, tempo and lyrical interpretation was either a birthright or an intuitive response to hardship rather than the result of supreme artistry refined through intelligence and dedication.

Ms. Wilson discounted what she called “the salacious.” “There’s a depth of musical knowledge as well as a knowledge of the psyche,” she said of Holiday. “She was an amazing musician, a genius, that opened up an entire world of vocalization.“

Imitation wouldn’t have suited Ms. Wilson, either by temperament—she has been going her own way since before her 1986 debut recording, “Point of View”—or by technique: Abbey Lincoln, Carmen McRae and Sarah Vaughan, rather than Holiday, can be seen as her influential predecessors. Liberated from a literal homage, Ms. Wilson sought an unorthodox team for the project. “Coming Forth by Day” was produced by Nick Launay, who is best known for his work with Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds. Van Dyke Parks wrote the string arrangements, and Nick Zinner of the Yeah Yeah Yeahs and T Bone Burnett play guitars, along with Kevin Breit of Ms. Wilson’s band. The Bad Seeds’ Thomas Wydler and Martyn P. Casey on drums and bass, respectively, provide the core of the rhythm section. Frequent Wilson collaborators Jon Cowherd, on piano, and Robby Marshall, on reeds, round out the supporting musicians, and they nod to jazz in the indigo arrangements, which range from Mr. Parks’s gorgeous orchestral setting for “The Way You Look Tonight” to the slow-motion rumbling of “Billie’s Blues.” The latter recalls Ms. Wilson’s recasting on her earlier recordings of blues by Son House and Robert Johnson.

“Coming Forth by Day” is a loving but somber affair. Joy is muted and none of the album’s 12 tracks bounce or swing. Thus, these familiar songs, now made unfamiliar, prompt careful examination that suggests new meanings. Strings, electric bass and clarinet give “What a Little Moonlight Can Do” a different kind of lift, and Ms. Wilson’s chaotic take on “Good Morning Heartache” is anything but a bittersweet welcome to misery.

Throughout the album, she enters cautiously, as if she is waiting to see what evolves or how she can move the band where she thinks it needs to go. “Don’t Explain” picks up after Mr. Marshall’s saxophone solo brings out a dark chuckle from the singer, who instructs him to “say that one more time.” An almost unrecognizable “Crazy He Calls Me” is taken as a down-tempo blues with the band entering as if from a rehearsal. “Yeah. All of that,” she cajoles as the song takes form.

The stately reserve that can be characteristic of Ms. Wilson’s work is appropriate for the cinematic reading of “Strange Fruit,” a song about lynchings that Holiday introduced in 1939, and yet the band explodes in rage as the song drives to its end. Her exquisite performance in “These Foolish Things” emerges from a simple setting of drums, bass and guitar until Mr. Marshall enters with brief statements that usher her to the bridge.

The album closes with an enchanting original composition by Ms. Wilson inspired by what she called a “devastating” incident: the denial of Holiday‘s request to sing at the funeral of her estranged but longtime associate, the saxophonist Lester Young. In “Last Song (for Lester),” she sings from the point of view of Holiday, who is stung by the rebuke but believes she will be reunited in the afterlife with the man she dubbed “Prez.” Ms. Wilson said, “I’m a believer in the spirit world. We live inside what we created.”

She refuses to judge Holiday. “What a short life she lived,” she said, “but tomorrow isn’t promised to anyone. Who is to say that it’s better to live longer? It’s quality over quantity, and she burned brightly.”

Mr. Fusilli is the Journal’s rock and pop music critic. Email him at jfusi✧✧✧@w✧✧.c✧✧ and follow him on Twitter @wsjrock.

Jazz Night In America is tonight!

Oh yeah, so far so good (and no imitations)
http://www.npr.org/event/music/396687392/cassandra-wilson-sings-billie-holiday

Violinist Charlie Burnham, of Blood Ulmer fame, is playing some deliriously deft solos, fit right into the calmly committed (in more ways than one!) "Crazy He Calls Me." he's distilling Van Dyke Parks' string arrangements on the album. Also on stage: Jon Cowherd, Kevin Breit, Lonnie Plaxico, some others I don't recognize. "All of me..."

O my GOFD. This will be archived (starting maybe later tonight) for one week.

i'm going to see Cecile McLoren Salvant do a Lady Day set tomorrow; pretty psyched. She's more or less my fave jazz vocalist of the moment.

That should be nice.

Took my longtime jazz fan Dad to see Herbie Hancock and Chick Corea last night at the Kennedy Center. They were at Carnegie hall the night before. 2 pianos and 2 synthesizers together. An hour and 10 minute set with a 15 minute encore. I liked the more melodic, lyrical stuff they did (Miles Davis "All Blues" plus a bit of Sketches from Spain) although the first number (Hancock made a mention of Corea emailing it to him earlier) which was challenging and had some classical bits along with noisy touches (Corea reaching inside his piano to pluck sounds) had its moments. The synth duet with ambient and almost techno and atmospheric found sound soundtrack-like touches was interesting also. Looks like the DC show was similar to NY based on this Pareles review in the NY Times

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/11/arts/music/review-chick-corea-and-herbie-hancock-on-two-grand-pianos-at-carnegie-hall.html?ref=arts&_r=0

Going to see Rob Mazurek at the Jazz Gallery tonight - he's touring with both São Paulo Underground and Black Cube SP (which is SPU + violinist Thomas Rohrer), and told me via email that tonight's set will be SPU with Rohrer guesting for a few numbers, so both bands in one. Should be cool.

Mazurek set was killer—I shot video of a bunch of it, will post some on YouTube later this week.