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The Pen is Mightier Than The Sword: Jazz Journalists in Conversation with Musicians/Writers, National Jazz Museum of Harlem Visitors Center
104 E. 126th Street, Suite 2C
New York City
Saturday July 25, 10 am - 4 p.m.
I'll be taking part in this day-long panel discussion with composer Steve Coleman, John Gennari (author of Blowing Hot and Cold: Jazz and its Critics) and moderator Greg Thomas. For more information: 212-348-8300
At the 2009 Jazz Journalists Association Award ceremony many musicians thanked the writers and critics present for connecting their work for and to a larger public. While the music and the musicians who play it are the best exemplars of the art form in action, jazz journalists play a key role in the mass and niche media by way of bridging the art and artists with consumers and listeners. But do journalists and musicians see eye-to-eye on a vision of a jazz future? What role does race and cultural background play into the often contentious discourse between and among musicians and journalists and critics? What is the present state of jazz journalism and the music?
http://howardmandelpresents.blogspot.com/2009/07/national-jazz-museum-of-harlem-jul-25.html
Evian Roller babies
Thursday, July 16, 2009
National Jazz Museum of Harlem, Jul 25
John Clayton in the Motor City....
Congratulations to our Artistic Director John Clayton, who has been confirmed as artist-in-residence at the 2009 Detroit International Jazz Festival. In honor of the festival’s 30th anniversary, Clayton was commissioned to compose a new work to be performed at this year’s festival Labor Day weekend. The new composition will be performed by Detroit-based Scott Gwinnell Jazz Orchestra, along with the Clayton Brothers.
Of course, Jazz Port Townsend audiences can listen to the Clayton Brothers during their closing, mainstage performance on Saturday, July 25.
http://www.centrum.org/jazz/
Jazz Workshop Alum Heads to Montreux
Jazz Port Townsend alum Stacey Carter is on her way to Montreux, Switzerland, to participate in the Shure Montreux Jazz Voice Competition.
She was one of nine singers invited to participate in the prestigious program.
Carter will be performing at the Petit Theatre (Montreux Palace Hotel). The winner will receive $5,000 in swiss francs, a Shure ULX Wireless System and one week of recording time at Balik's Farm Studio located in Switzerland's Toggenburg region.
The winner also will perform as an opening act to one of the performers of the Montreux Stage the following year.
Carter received a basketball scholarship to play for Louisiana State University and graduated with degrees in art history and interior design. She came to realize her calling as a jazz vocalist and received a scholarship in the jazz studies program at Michigan State University.
Carter was one of six students selected to be in the Dianne Reeves Vocal Jazz Residency at Michigan State, and she received a scholarship in 2008 to attend Jazz Port Townsend.
Carter was one of 20 singers invited to participate in the Bobby McFerrin Workshop "Instant Opera," which culminated in a sold-out performance at Carnegie Hall.
Congratulations Stacey, and good luck!
http://www.centrum.org/jazz/2009/07/jazz-workshop-alum-heads-to-montreux.html
Terri Lyne Carrington Headlines Free Outdoor Concert
Berklee College of Music and ParkARTS present music outdoors in Roxbury's historic Fort Hill neighborhood with the Terri Lyne Carrington Group and opener the Berklee City Music All-Stars. The annual Jazz at the Fort concert is free and will be held on Sunday, August 2, at 5:00 p.m., at the four-acre Highland Park on Fort Avenue, Roxbury, MA. Rain date is August 9. Folding chairs, blankets, and picnics are encouraged. Jazz at the Fort is accessible from the MBTA's Orange Line Roxbury Crossing stop. Walk down Columbus Avenue to Cedar Street to Fort Avenue. Roxbury Community College provides parking on the corner of Columbus Avenue and Cedar Street. Highland Park is wheelchair accessible.
Drummer/composer/producer Terri Lyne Carrington will spotlight selections from her new CD, More To Say, an album that features her vocals and a range of musical styles: funk, r&b, neo-soul, Latin, and classic jazz. Carrington executive produced, arranged, and wrote or co-wrote most of the 15 tracks. Joining her on disc are an all-star cast of jazz musicians, including George Duke, Patrice Rushen, Jimmy Haslip, Christian McBride, Danilo Perez, and Walter Beasley, and vocalists Nancy Wilson and Les McCann. The CD also features Carrington's saxophone-blowing father, Sonny, on her original “Papa San."
Opening will be the Berklee City Music All-Stars, an ensemble comprised of scholarship students from Boston's urban neighborhoods. The group will perform a mix of standards, contemporary jazz, and Latin music. In April, the All-Stars performed in New York City at an event hosted by Quincy Jones to promote national music education for youth.
http://www.allaboutjazz.com/php/news.php?id=39394
Ornette Coleman and Mark Kostabi
Ornette Coleman and Mark Kostabi perform an improvised music composition on Title This, the game show where celebrities compete to title Kostabi paintings for cash awards.When in New York call Kostabi World for free tickets to attend the filming of Title This or go to the website for tickets. titlethis dot com.
Saxophonist Ornette Coleman....
Born:
March 9th, 1930 in Fort Worth, Texas
Instruments:
Saxophone / Trumpet / Violin
by Jacob Teichroew,
Saxophonist Ornette Coleman sparked controversy in jazz almost as soon as he began playing. Although highly influenced by blues, R&B, and bebop, in the 1950s he began playing with such an unorthodox approach to improvisation that to this day jazz musicians and scholars aren’t sure what to make of him. One thing is sure, however: that Coleman changed the way people thought about jazz improvisation, and as a result opened new avenues of creativity for later musicians.
Unrestricted, Unashamed:
Coleman’s first professional work with rhythm-and-blues bands brought him to Los Angeles, California, in the mid 1950s. His largely self-taught style agitated audiences and musicians alike. While working odd jobs, he studied music theory in his spare time, and began to experiment with loose interpretations of melody, harmony, and rhythm. His experiments contrasted sharply with the disciplined approach of bebop musicians, who focused on fitting their improvised melodic lines into the tempo and chord changes of a given song.
Despite his unconventional style, Coleman managed to meet likeminded musicians, including bassist Charlie Haden, drummer Ed Blackwell, and trumpeter Don Cherry who later collaborated with him. Pianist John Lewis, best known for his playing with the Modern Jazz Quartet, helped secure Coleman the opportunity to record with Atlantic Records. In 1959 he recorded the seminal album The Shape of Jazz to Come with Haden, Blackwell, and Cherry.
Breaking From Tradition:
Rather conventional by contemporary standards, The Shape of Jazz to Come broke barriers. Coleman and his quartet improvise freely over drones and shifting pulses, like on the song “Lonely Woman,” and sometimes even over familiar harmonies, like on “Blues Connotation.”
At times Coleman allows the saxophone’s tone to squeak or break, resembling a straining human voice. On this recording, the influence of blues and Charlie Parker is present, but at the forefront are the moods created by the band’s stream of consciousness approach.
The Five Spot:
In 1959, the quartet landed a regular gig at New York’s Five Spot café, where they exposed their controversial sound to many top musicians, including Leonard Bernstein, Lionel Hampton, Benny Goodman, and Roy Eldridge. Bernstein and Hampton were thrilled, and Goodman and Eldridge were disgusted. This divergence in opinion was reflected throughout the jazz world.
Free Jazz:
With The Shape of Jazz to Come, and Coleman’s next album, Free Jazz: A Collective Improvisation (1960), was an avant-garde movement in jazz that favored the free jazz and harmolodic aesthetic, and which had the fewest restrictions for musicians.
The freedom with which Coleman played inspired others to search for even greater freedom. On recordings by saxophonist and clarinetist Eric Dolphy, saxophonist Albert Ayler, and saxophonist John Coltrane, conventional melodies are abandoned in favor of raucous and raw sounds, which are used to attain moments of intensity unreachable by music bound by laws of harmony and melody.
Legendary Iconoclast:
Throughout the following decades, Ornette Coleman has continued to search for new balances of liberated improvisation and composition. In 1962, he took three years off from performing so that he could teach himself the violin and trumpet, both of which he later performed in addition to the saxophone.He has since composed and performed works for orchestra, string quartet, and various jazz ensembles. In 1994 he received the MacArthur Foundation’s “genius” grant. An iconoclast who has earned mainstream recognition in his decades of musical adventurism, Ornette Coleman, in rejecting standard jazz practices, has become one of the most well known figures in jazz history.
http://jazz.about.com/od/classicjazzartists/p/OrnetteColeman.htm
Herbie Hancock's Bedtime Voyage by John Beasley
Herbie Hancock's "Bedtime Voyage" performed by
John Beasley (piano)
Trevor Ware (bass)
Bill Wysaske (drums)
Recorded Sunday April 27, 2008 at the Rising Jazz Stars studio in Beverly Hills, California. (http://www.ResonanceRecords.org)
Pianist John Beasley Releases "Positootly!" On Resonance Records
In Demand Piano Veteran, Composer and Louisiana Native John Beasley Bows Second All-Star Release On Resonance Records Positootly!
Follows His Acclaimed 2008 Release Letter To Herbie
“To my ears, he's absolutely one of the best of his generation" --Bennie Maupin
Veteran pianist-composer-arranger John Beasley gained invaluable bandstand experience on the road with such revered jazz elders as Freddie Hubbard and Miles Davis while also recording with the likes of Chick Corea, Hubert Laws and Dianne Reeves along with serving as musical director for Queen Latifah and Steely Dan. In recent years, Beasley has made impressive strides as a bandleader in his own right. On Positootly!, his eagerly anticipated follow-up to 2008's acclaimed Letter to Herbie (Beasley's impressionistic take on the music of Herbie Hancock), the Louisiana native showcases his own engaging compositions along with a few choice covers.
Joining Beasley on his second outing for Resonance Records are drummer Jeff “Tain" Watts, bassist James Genus, percussionist Munyungo Jackson, Grammy-winning trumpeter Brian Lynch and saxophonist Bennie Maupin (a charter member of Hancock's Mwandishi Sextet and Headhunters).
A prolific film/tv session player and composer (for Star Trek, Cheers, Family Ties and Fame as well as such Hollywood box office hits as WALL-E, Finding Nemo, Erin Brockovich, Godfather III, A Bug's Life and Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me) Beasley was also associate musical director for season four of American Idol (the year that produced country music sensation Carrie Underwood) and has been lead arranger season after season. He returns to his passion composing jazz music, which is heard on the eminently swinging Positootly!
“Letter to Herbie was more about arranging," he explains. “I had fun mashing up Herbie's songs. In fact, when I was 13 years old, before I really got into playing the piano, I was writing and arranging. I wanted to be like Thad Jones and Quincy Jones, writing, arranging, producing and playing jazz, funk and pop for records TV and films. For this recording I really wanted to showcase my writing."
Positootly! opens with Beasley's driving, hard boppish “Caddo Bayou," an energized quintet number named for the marshy body of water where he played as a child. The title track, a buoyantly swinging, highly interactive trio number, features some of Beasley's most lyrical and uplifting piano playing on the album.
From the spirited 5/4 rendering of Jobim's “Dindi" to the intensity of “Black Thunder" on which Beasley channels the spirit of the late, great drummer Elvin Jones, the pianist's stylistic diversity and deft arranging skills show why he is in demand across musical styles in today's hippest recording sessions.
An authentic Louisiana spirit comes out in full force on Beasley's infectiously funky “Shatita Boom Boom (Club Desire)," named for a social club in New Orleans' Ninth Ward that was devastated by Hurricane Katrina. A Shreveport native, Beasley's stunning recreation of “Tanguedia III" by the Argentine tango master Astor Piazzolla represents one tour-de-force on the album.
There is the soulful original ballad “Elle," a kind of gospel-blues quartet number as well as an inspired updating of Bobby Timmons' soul-jazz anthem “So Tired" which is handled with a modernist sensibility that deftly straddles the worlds of funk and swing.
“The Eight Winds" is Beasley's other compositional tour-de-force on Positootly! A challenging, suite-like piece, it traverses different tempos and moods, from a beboppish opening theme to an odd-time Afro-Cuban motif to a burning, Max Roach-ish double time feel.
The collection closes on an introspective note with the solo piano piece “Hope...Arkansas," Beasley's personal reflection on the election of President Barack Obama. This song is about what we've been through as a nation - reaching across the aisles -- and the hope that we must carry to move forward."
That rich expression, which taps into Beasley's own past while projecting an optimistic future, culminates what is easily his most potent and personal recording to date.
http://www.allaboutjazz.com/php/news.php?id=39334
Bassist John Lee's New Jazz Label, "Jazz Legacy Productions"
JAZZ LEGACY PRODUCTIONS, A NEW JAZZ LABEL FOUNDED BY BASSIST JOHN LEE AND DISTRIBUTED BY ALLEGRO, LAUNCHES WITH FOUR NEW RELEASES FEATURING VETERANS CYRUS CHESTNUT, HEATH BROTHERS AND STEVE DAVIS, AND THE DEBUT OF SAXOPHONIST SHAREL CASSITY
JLP'S MISSION IS TO FILL A JAZZ VOID BY RECORDING THE UNDERDOCUMENTED AND UNDOCUMENTED THE CHESTNUT AND HEATH CDS STREET AUGUST 4; DAVIS AND CASSITY CDS ARRIVE SEPTEMBER 8
At a time when major jazz labels are shrinking their coverage and signings, and the recording industry at large is enduring an erosion of sales, it comes as a pleasant surprise to discover that a new independent label committed to jazz is on the launching pad to fill a valuable-and historical-void. Welcome to the New York-based Jazz Legacy Productions, which celebrates the jazz heritage and the music's future with its first four CDs, which will be distributed by Allegro:
Release date: August 4
Cyrus Chestnut - Spirit
Heath Brothers - Endurance
Release date: September 8
Steve Davis - Eloquence
Sharel Cassity - Relentless
“There are so many great artists nowadays, and the only ones it seems who are getting deals are the vocalists," says veteran bassist John Lee, who founded JLP and is piloting the artistic direction of the label. “So many artists who had deals before haven't been re-signed, which means there's important music that's going undocumented. This is a great moment in jazz history, and it would be tragic if that music gets lost."
JLP's goal is to make the recording model be cost-effective as well as offer artists attractive deals so they can sell their own albums. “We're stressing the importance of keeping the recording costs down, and we're charging the artists a lot less money to buy back their own CDs," says Lee. “Most musicians these days are doing well by selling their albums at their gigs."
For every three established artists JLP records, there will be one newcomer. In the first set of CDs being released, the upstart is Oklahoma-born, New York-based saxophonist Sharel Cassity, who mixes originals with standards on Relentless, which features pianist Orrin Evans, bassist Dwayne Burno, drummer E.J. Strickland and such guests as trombonist Michael Dease and trumpeter Jeremy Pelt. It marks her recording debut.
Cyrus Chestnut's latest CD, Spirit, is an inspirational album of hymns, spirituals and some pop-oriented tunes like “Wade in the Water" and “Bridge Over Troubled Water." It's a follow-up to his Blessed Quietness album, released on Atlantic Records in 1996. The Heath Brothers'Endurance features Jimmy Heath and Tootie Heath, and is the first recording since their brother Percy passed away in 2005. The CD is dedicated to him and represents, according to Jimmy, a tale of where the brothers have been and where they're going. The set comprises several Jimmy compositions as well as a Brazilian piece and standards. Trombonist Steve Davis offers standards and originals on Eloquence, which features Roy Hargrove and Hank Jones as guests.
As for the one-word titles of each release, Lee says that's part of JLP's mission to brand the label. In addition, each album cover is photographed by Thomas Haynes. “We wanted people to be able to see our releases and identify them immediately as JLP," says Lee, who adds that the label plans to release eight albums each year. Future signings include the sextet One for All (including Eric Alexander and Steve Davis), Jazz Master pianist Randy Weston, trombonist Michael Dease and young guitar phenom Yotam Silberstein.
Lee, who appears as a guest bassist on three tracks of Davis' album, says, “Eventually I will be on the label too." He's currently a member of the Dizzy Gillespie Big Band. The Philadelphia native who's based in the New York City area has an impressive resume that includes early '70s gigs with Joe Henderson and Pharoah Sanders before joining Max Roach's group in 1972. He also performed in Larry Coryell's Eleventh House, worked with Gary Bartz and Gerry Brown, and in 1981 joined Gillespie's all-star touring band.
Lee's partners in JLP include Steve Milvia Jones and Lisa Broderick, who serves as executive producer of the albums.
http://www.allaboutjazz.com/php/news.php?id=39336
