By CHRIS MORRISChris.Morris@newsandtribune.com
NEW ALBANY — Rauch Inc.’s annual Imagine Awards is much more than a fundraiser. It’s an eye-opening experience for many who attend the event.

The event helps put a face with Rauch. While most know about Rauch, few know about all of the things the organization does to help those with disabilities.

“We’ve been really successful with it ... it’s our main fundraiser,” said Rauch CEO Bettye Dunham. “It also helps us get out the word of who we are and what we do. The big thing is it allows us to recognize people in the community who are doing things to help people with disabilities.”

The 12th annual Imagine Awards begins at 5:30 p.m. Saturday at Horseshoe Southern Indiana in Elizabeth. Tickets are $75 and are still available by calling 812-945-4063. The event kicks off Disability Awareness Month by presenting three awards to an individual with a disability, a community leader who has advocated for people with disabilities and an organization assisting people with disabilities.


Also, as in year’s past, an entertainer with a disability will perform. This year, 19-year-old jazz pianist Matt Savage, who was diagnosed with a high-functioning type of autism at age 3, will entertain the crowd. He taught himself to read and play piano music and is currently studying at Berklee College of Music in Boston.

Savage was inspired by New Albany jazz legend and educator Jamey Aebersold who publishes play along books. Aebersold, and his quartet, will join Savage on stage during the event.

“It’s ironic because I called up Jamey to tell him about Matt and he knew him. Matt says he learned how to play Jazz through Jamey. The two of them will be brought together for the first time,” Dunham said. “It should be really special.”

Teressa Jackson, director of development for Rauch, said a talent agency helps find entertainers with disabilities each year for the event.

“They are a big help,” she said.

Another big part of the event is the silent auction. Jackson said there are more than 80 packages available to be bid on prior to and during the event. The items should be listed on Rauch’s website — www.rauchinc.org — this week.

“We try to focus on things that people can’t go out and buy,” Jackson said of the auction items.

The Imagine Awards benefit the Rauch Foundation while the golf scramble in August benefits Rauch Inc., Jackson said.

Besides the entertainment, auction and dinner, which includes filet mignon, crab cakes and a trio of desserts,  awards will be given out in three categories. The honorees include:

• Individual: Gregory Thomas Court, who has Duchenne muscular dystrophy and has relied on the full-time use of a wheelchair since age 8. His movement is limited to his hands and he is on a ventilator full-time. He completed his associate of science degree in computer graphics from the Purdue School of Technology. Following graduation, he established his own company, Designs-by-GTC, through which he fulfills graphic and Web design contracts. He also works to support other individuals with disabilities.

• Community Leader: Geradine Schultze began her career as a speech language pathologist specializing in those that are deaf or hard of hearing. Working for the Department of Defense schools in Germany in the 1990s, she focused on preschool special education programs. Later, she pursued certification in early childhood special education and became involved in horseback riding therapy. She advocates for early diagnosis, intervention and education of children with special needs. Now the early intervention coordinator for New Albany-Floyd County Schools and building supervisor for the Children’s Academy Early Learning Center, she and the early intervention team have built a program providing a wide spectrum of services to all Floyd County preschool children and their families. The Early Learning Center provides evaluations and programs including speech, occupational and physical therapies and services for children with developmental delays, vision, hearing, orthopedic and multiple disabilities.

• Organization: Tunnel Hill Christian Church has held bi-monthly dances for adults with disabilities since 2005. Some of the dances draw 150 or more individuals. Church member families and a Boy Scout troop support the volunteer outreach. The impact of the events has rippled throughout the church community, resulting in involvement of members in Special Olympics, Sunrise Horse therapy, DADS [Dads Appreciating Down Syndrome] and gestures such as knitting hats and scarves as gifts for participants. Also important has been the connection among people with disabilities and between their parents, providing a vital opportunity for them to build a support network and friendships.

“I certainly feel like this event brings people of the community together who may not cross paths on a day to day basis,” Dunham said. “We always hear people say they had no idea what all we did, or some may know our name but have no idea what we do. It really does help us reach out to that group.”

While some corporate sponsorships are down this year, individual ticket sales are up, Jackson said.

Jenny Scheinman: Some Serious Mischief

It's often the case that the most interesting music is made by musicians with a broad musical palette and openness to new paths and horizons. Violinist/composer Jenny Scheinman certainly qualifies in both regards. Equally at home playing folk tunes or working in essentially modern jazz setups, Scheinman also jumps at the chance to play with classical musicians, and is increasingly in demand as an arranger for a diverse range of musicians, such as Lou Reed and Metallica, Lucinda Williams, Bono, Sean Lennon, and Jesse Cutler.

A tremendous improviser, Scheinman is perhaps best known for her collaborations with guitaristBill Frisell over the last decade, and while it is fair to say that Frisell's influence on Scheinman has been significant, her emotive, lyrical playing has also left an indelible mark on over half a dozen of Frisell's CDs and countless concerts. Like Frisell, Scheinman is not given to exhibitionism, and is instead keenly focused on creating power and beauty through collaboration. With Scheinman, as with Frisell, the song is the thing.

Since her debut recording, Live at Yoshi's (Avant, 2000), Scheinman has written plenty of captivating compositions of her own, making the leap into singer/songwriter territory on Jenny Scheinman (KOCH Records, 2008) while also working on the ambitious and compelling 13-part suite Crossing the Field (KOCH International Jazz, 2008), featuring a string orchestra.

Scheinman doesn't do comfort zones, and talks of seeking "the thrill of jumping off the cliff every night." One such cliff from which Scheinman has leaped into the unknown came on a 50-date, 2011 tour with Canadian singer/songwriter Bruce Cockburn, when she opened the shows with a solo set, without loops, recorded tracks or gimmickry. It's another example of Scheinman's insatiable curiosity and of her fearlessness as a creative performer.

Scheinman's sixth recording as a leader, the wonderfully titled Mischief and Mayhem (Self Released, 2012) sees her at the helm of an exciting band, which features guitarist Nels Cline, bassist Todd Sickafoose and drummer Jim Black, and which takes its inspiration from rock, West African music and surf punk, as much as from jazz. There's a tremendous energy and spark about the music, which will once again alter some people's perceptions about the ever-versatile Scheinman— and she probably wouldn't have it any other way.

All About Jazz Your CD Mischief and Mayhem is a great recording. You must be pleased with the way it's turned out, no?

Jenny Scheinman Yeah, I am, definitely. I love the band, and it was a great process to make it. It was fun to make something a little bit out of control. This one was full of surprises the whole way.

AAJ: It certainly has a different feel from your other solo albums. Mischief and Mayhem is a very appropriate name, but there's a lot of subtlety in the music as well, particularly in Nels Cline's guitar playing. Could you talk a little about Cline's contribution to this CD, and your musical relationship with him?

JS: I've known him for a long time. I first met him in 1998, I think, and we toured a lot together with Scott Amendola, a drummer from the West Coast. The three of us, and Todd [Sickafoose], the bassist, are all from the West Coast, and we were in the band together. We got to know each other very well on that. We set up facing each other as we did on Mischief and Mayhem, and over the years we've developed a language of egging each other on and combining sounds to make swirly textures. There are a lot of unison gestures combined with back-and-forth sparring and dodge ball.

Nels is a very sentimental player, I think, and that, combined with the thrill-seeking in him, is really exciting to be around. He's full of heart and love, to be moved and to move people. He seems to pass the standard expectation of what is sentimental and goes into a kind of mystical zone, especially with the looping and extended technique; I don't know anyone better at that stuff, in terms of having a huge vocabulary of sounds that he can weave into a solo. He loves language and has a very big vocabulary. His solos are much like his talking—he'll take you somewhere.

AAJ: The band on Mischief and Mayhem sounds very tight. Part of that is surely because you've known and played with each other for so long, but had you played this music much live before going into the studio?

JS: We got together in 2007, and we've done at least one tour every year, not really long tours compared to a rock band, but we've also played these wonderful weeks at the Village Vanguard, which are 12-set runs [over six nights]. You get to play 12 one-and-a-half-hour sets in a row. It's a really beautiful sonic and acoustical environment. It's an exciting place to have a powerful band because it's pretty small for a venue. I think it fits 180 or something, really crammed in there. You feel like you're really about to pop the roof off when you get loud. It never really hurts either, so it's a brilliant room. We had just done that for 12 sets in a row, and then we went into the studio, so all the material on the record we had just played.

A lot of the music was new, and I wrote it for that week at the Village Vanguard. I wrote it pretty quickly in three days before the Village Vanguard sets. A lot of those tunes we hadn't toured a lot, but we have a way of playing together as a band, and we have the advantage of 12 hour-and-a-half rehearsals, if I can put it that way, with the addition of a packed, excited audience. We had a head of steam, going into the recording.

It's like a little rock band, and in order for it to feel like it's losing control at moments it really has to have something in it that is focused. That's the tension I like in the band. If everything is wild and chaotic then, to my ear, it often ends up sounding fatiguing and not exciting. A lot of the songs have pretty simple, clear structures, and then we pump the edges of them a bit.

It's part of the idea of the band, and it's also part of the nature of the players. Everybody in the band—[drummer] Jim Black maybe slightly less—has played a lot of songs. We haven't had a life completely dedicated to experimental, improvised music. I've played with Lucinda Williams, and of course I sing as well. And Nels has done all this stuff with Wilco, and Todd was with [singer/guitarist] Ani DiFranco. Todd is always doing stuff with singers, producing records and so on, so we're drawn to song form. But we also like to kind of go crazy.

http://www.allaboutjazz.com/php/article.php?id=41404

Music Review: Various Artists - A Year of BFM Jazz 2011

With the contraction of the economy and the music industry in particular, it can be difficult for independent artists to maintain a consistent platform. BFM Digital created the label BFM Jazz in 2010 as a way to give jazz players more public attention. These aren’t unknown players trying to make their marks — these are well-known, veteran session/studio players creating their own musical statements.  A compilation album, A Year with BFM Jazz 2011, celebrates the one-year anniversary of the label's birth.

Steve Gadd, one of the most respected, sought-after drummers on the scene today, has worked in many genres and is known for his inventive use of rhythm. This is evident in his up-tempo version of the Horace Silver classic “Sister Sadie,” taken from the album, Live at Voce (featuring Ronnie Cuber on baritone).

Accomplished percussionist Luis Conte contributes two pieces (“Water Pots” and “Conga Melody”) from his CD, En Casa de Luis. These ethereal, lighter-sounding mood pieces stand at the opposite end of the musical spectrum from the straight-ahead jazz on this collection. From reed player Bob Sheppard’s album, Close Your Eyes, minor- and diminished-scale riffs on the aptly-named “Surface Tension” and “Brain Fog” resonate a bit darker than other songs on the CD.

The compilation also contains two releases from pianist Larry Goldings‘s solo piano recording, In My Room. “Crawdaddy“ is a New-Orleans feel-good piece (it's a bit mellower than one might expect) while “Libre” is a contemplative improvisational ballad that reflects Bill Evans’ impact in phrasing and intonation.

Speaking of Evans, pianist Alan Pasqua counts him as an inspiration. His album Double Bill consists of dual-track duets on which Pasqua accompanies himself on songs associated with or inspired by the jazz legend. “Vindarna Sucka Uti Skogarna” is a traditional Swedish song performed by Evans’ trio in 1964.  “Grace,” written by Pasqua, is a ballad that pays tribute to the master.

Read more: http://blogcritics.org/music/article/music-review-various-artists-a-year/#ixzz1nhkv7qx5

Students get lessons from jazz Greats

By Bill Robinson
RICHMOND — “Music is another way of telling a story,” a jazz great told a group of about 350 high school and college musicians Saturday at the EKU Center for the Arts.

It was not the band leader who spoke, but the point seemed well taken by students who were expecting Wynton Marsalis to offer some instruction on the final day of Eastern Kentucky University’s 23rd High School Honors Band Clinic.

Walter Blanding, a saxophonist, and trumpeter Kenny Rampton, members of Jazz at Lincoln Center, spent about an hour giving pointers to a few individuals brave enough to get on stage in front of their peers as two world-class musicians evaluated their work.

Stephen Waun, who plays saxophone in Lexington’s Bryan Station High School band, said he was a bit disappointed Marsalis was not present, but getting to interact with a saxophonist such as Blanding was exciting.

Barren County High trombonist Lucas McCoy and Williamstown High trumpeter Ciarra Krist also got on stage with the Lincoln Center musicians.

Each student played a few lines of music, which they repeated after getting brief input from Blanding and Rampton.

All three noticeably improved when they then repeated what they had played.

“Playing music is not just playing the notes, just as reading a book is more than just reading the words,” said Blanding, who like Rampton took care to be gentle with the teenagers.

Blanding recited a story line in steady monotone fashion and then switched to a more emotive narration. Then, he sounded a musical line twice, using a similar contrast.

“Put emotion into it, and be more lyrical,” Blanding said. “Play the composition as if you wrote it. That is how you should read a story, and that is how you should play music.”

In the narration of music, just as in a verbal narration, “Every note dynamically leads to the next note,” Rampton told McCoy. “Put a little crescendo into your 16th notes.”

He also encouraged the students to express their personalities by exaggerating the dynamics.

Both professions emphasized the importance of breathing.

“Take your time, and take a breath as you prepare” to play a phrase of music, Blanding said. “When you prepare to jump, you think about where you’re going to land.”

“Practice slower and sing the music’s first phrase into your head before you begin,” Rampton said, “because each note has meaning.”

Players also should not let up on their breathing when playing softly or when the music goes into the lower register.

Blanding crossed his arms and wrinkled his brow as he studied the music Krist was playing.

Tyler Wilkins, a 2011 EKU graduate now studying at the Cincinnati Conservatory of Music, drew praise from both Blanding and Rampton.

“Being a rocket scientist is easier than playing the oboe,” Blanding said, as he spoke of the difficulty of playing the instrument well.

Ten EKU trumpet players also came on stage and played a piece they were working only.

Playing as part of an ensemble does not lend itself to as much individual expression because the players must follow their section leaders, Rampton, a fellow trumpeter said. But, both he and Blanding advised the section leaders to put more of their individuality into exaggerating the dynamics and encouraged the other to follow their lead.

Although jazz music is famed for its improvisation, “Improvisation is not a a free for all,” Blanding said.
Read more on: http://richmondregister.com/localnews/x843245031/Students-get-lessons-from-jazz-greats

African roots

Written by 

Carroll DeWeese

Correspondent

February is Black History Month. To inform and inspire its students, Birmingham Berkshire Middle School held an African Music Assembly. Many students do not realize it, but gospel, jazz, soul, rock ‘n' roll and many other forms of “modern” music are deeply rooted in Africa.

The school invited the Gratitude Steel Band, a full-time family group offering Island, African and gospel music, to play and educate students about African music and its contribution to the world. Students explored different regions and cultures of the continent of Africa through singing, clapping and drumming with the band in Swahili, Zulu and Yoruba songs.

Students learned about different instruments used in various regions of Africa. They also learned about the influences of African music on modern Americanculture and discovered the meaning of “Respect Our Elders Proverb” through dance and how it will better their grades and success in life.

http://www.hometownlife.com/article/20120226/NEWS02/202260371/1019/rss02

Pianist Scott Martin Remembers Clare Fischer

By Scott Martin

The first time I encountered the late Clare Fischer’s music was playing one of his big band charts as the pianist for my high school jazz band, back in 1973. I’d just gotten into the band as a sophomore and had to take the music home and basically memorize it in order to be able to play it. It was in an odd time signature and the piano part was a series of II-V, minor to dominant ninth chord arpeggios that required all of my skills to master, yet made sense and used voicings I already knew, but just in a way I’d never conceived of putting them together before. In the years since, as I’ve gotten to know Clare’s playing, writing and arranging a lot better, that original impression of his music has never changed. 

Clare took the building blocks and traditions of jazz, salsa, bossa nova and classical music and combined them in ways that were absolutely original and personal. In short, he developed his own harmonic language, which puts him in the company of the very greatest innovators of the jazz world.

About 10 years after learning his jazz band chart, I saw Clare perform with his band at the Baked Potato in L.A. My friend was playing percussion in the band and briefly introduced us. By that point I’d played “Pensitiva” and “Morning,” his best known compositions, and listened over and over to his work playing and arranging for the Brazilian genius Joao Gilberto.

A little later, I noticed he’d written the score for Prince’s movie, Under the Cherry Moon. I also became familiar with his salsa records with Poncho Sanchez that used closely harmonized vocal arrangements he’d developed for the Hi-Los back in the ’50s combined with melodic and rhythmic devices that recalled Stravinsky.


I’ve always admired the incredible range all of these various projects demonstrated. More recently, I even watched a scratchy YouTube link of him performing his own deeply moving arrangement of “America the Beautiful” on the huge pipe organ at the National Cathedral. Not many “jazz pianists” could stretch that far.

But the most indelible and valued memory I have of Clare is spending most of the day with him a few years ago while I was in L.A. for a music conference. I’d emailed him, recalling the time we’d met over 20 years before at the Baked Potato, and mentioned some of the things I’d done after that as a studio musician in N.Y.C. His wife, Donna, wrote back and said she was corresponding for Clare since he was recovering from a broken leg, but invited me to drop by when I’d be in town.

I came over in the morning and Clare sat and watched the entire live DVD of my jazz band, which I’d really just brought to give him as a gift. As we sat, drank coffee and ate cake Donna had made, I learned that they’d been close in college, but both married different people and then came back together in their later years. I thought that was highly romantic. In little asides, Clare mentioned that “nobody” had ever played or recorded his songs correctly, that Brazilian music had to be felt in half-time, and that he’d really made a good living playing in the studios.

Afterwards he decided he wanted to go have lunch at his favorite Italian restaurant just down the street and insisted I join him and Donna. He joked with the waitresses and owner, who knew him well, and ordered food he wasn’t supposed to eat, reminding me a lot of my grandfather, who always did those very same things.


It was clear Clare had reached that great place in his life that musicians get to where they’re content with what they’ve accomplished and spread good nature everywhere they go, without judgment or discrimination. He totally opened his door to me, basically a perfect stranger, and reinforced for me the idea that the very best musicians are often the most humble and unassuming.

After lunch he again insisted on driving me back to my hotel, about a half hour away. As we drove through Laurel Canyon, I thought about all of the incredible musicians that have lived and worked in L.A. over the past decades and how great the vibe of California has been for music for my entire life. Since then I’ve gotten the occasional emails announcing his big band playing at various L.A. spots and the release of some new and reissued records.

It is such a blessing to be able to connect the music you’ve grown up with to the musicians who created it and I’ve been very lucky that way in my life. When I heard on the jazz radio station in Denver that Clare had passed away last week, and then heard the song they played to commemorate him, “Como Come,” where he plays a grooving montuno piano part that a guy born in Michigan in the 1920s has absolutely no business playing and where his ideas and harmonies jump out of every bar, I thought back to that day I spent in his company and turned up the radio even louder.

http://jazztimes.com/articles/29535-pianist-scott-martin-remembers-clare-fischer

Adam Kromelow Trio: Youngblood

Adam Kromelow is a sensational young jazz pianist who will be coming to Buffalo with fellow pianist Angelo DiLoreto at 7:30 p.m. March 7 to do two-piano improvisations on the music of Genesis at Denton, Cottier & Daniels in Amherst.

A young pianist presenting a new trio could hardly have better bloodlines than Kromelow. His first trio disc was produced by Arturo O’Farrill and at the Manhattan School of Music, he studied under Jason Moran and Vijay Iyer. And if that isn’t credential enough, Brad Mehldau has had Kromelow play for his Carnegie Hall jazz piano master class.

What is typical of twentysomething Kromelow’s jazz generation is his bristling at anyone attempting to define or confine him by orthodox jazz pieties. His young trio, he says (with bassist Raviv Markovitz and drummer Jason Burger), doesn’t see itself as a jazz trio. “We also share an equal admiration for many other genres. Personally, I have a very special place in my heart for classical music and rock music.”

When you hear Kromelow’s gorgeous version of the Beatles’ “Across the Universe,” you’ll understand what he means when he says “there is a noticeable thinning of the lines between contemporary jazz, classical and rock genres and in this band we really don’t see these lines at all.”

Which doesn’t mean that as a more conventional jazz trio playing “free, collective improvisation” on the likes of Thelonious Monk’s “Brilliant Corners” and Kromelow’s own new composition “Black Mamba,” they aren’t already as exciting in their way as some of the best of Kromelow’s masters Moran and Iyer. “Brilliant Corners” is atomized in “whichever of” the song’s themes “we are in the mood to tamper with” until the final “original melody as Monk conceived it.”

A preview of the Denton concert is the trio’s version of Peter Gabriel’s “Mercy Street.”

A brilliant young musician with the right trio mates to introduce him.

http://www.buffalonews.com/entertainment/gusto/music/disc-reviews/article740016.ece

John Brown: Music for Shakespeare

DURHAM, NC - Grammy-nominated bassist and Duke University ProfessorJohn Brown and his 15-piece big band will join forces with the North Carolina Shakespeare Festival (NCShakes) to present performances of Such Sweet Thunder in March and April.

Inspired by the masterful works of William Shakespeare, acclaimed jazz greats Edward Kennedy "Duke" Ellington and Billy Strayhorn created this suite of pieces bringing the worlds of literature and music together in this triumphant work.

The suite features compositions inspired by A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Julius Caesar, Henry V, Macbeth, Othello, The Taming of the Shrew, Romeo and Juliet, Hamlet, and Antony and Cleopatra. In this first-ever collaboration, the two companies will present a series of performances of Such Sweet Thunder, with each piece introduced by NCShakes actors.

Such Sweet Thunder will premier in High Point, N.C., on Friday, March 30, followed by performances in Charlotte on Saturday, March 31, and in Durham on Thursday, April 26. The High Point and Durham events will include ballroom table seating, with the ticket price including tabled hors d’oeuvres and beer and wine.

"I learned of these pieces when researching the suites of Duke Ellington some years ago," Brown said. "I have long been inspired by the music of Duke Ellington and Billy Strayhorn, and I marvel at their mastery of bringing out the colors and sounds in the fabric of the jazz ensemble. Such Sweet Thunder is particularly demonstrative of this gift, and the message brought forth in this performance will change how people hear music and allow themselves to be moved by art." - http://today.duke.edu/2012/02/brownshakespeare

Mil perdões - Chico Buarque

Take 5 with Tim: Ron McCurdy

Ron McCurdy will bring his Langston Hughes project to Purdue University on Wednesday. / Photo provided

Ron McCurdy is a jazz musician and educator. Both titles get equal billing as the trumpeter travels the country performing and teaching students -- from elementary age to college -- all aspects of jazz. He can talk the talk and play the diminished scales.

A professor of music at the University of Southern California, McCurdy also directs the Grammys in the Schools program, a jazz band that performs during Grammys week, and he is a consultant for the Grammy Foundation. McCurdy will bring his Langston Hughes Project to Purdue University at 7 p.m. Wednesday at Fowler Hall inside Stewart Center. Hughes is a celebrated poet from the Harlem Renaissance. McCurdy composed music to Hughes' poetry collection "Ask Your Mama."

1. What is a brief summation of your Langston Hughes Project?

I was a professor at the University of Minnesota in the mid-1990s. ... I was teaching on the Harlem Renaissance in class and stumbled upon Langston Hughes' piece "Ask Your Mama" and put it together. That was in 1994, and I've been doing it ever since. We added the videography and composing music with the poem. ... We've done it literally thousands of times over the country. For me, it's an extension of my classroom.

2. What is your role in the Langston Hughes Project: speaking or performing?

Both. We're bringing the multimedia spoken word, jazz quartet and video of the Harlem Renaissance period, and I'll be doubling as spoken word artist and trumpet player.

3. Did Hughes' writing influence you in any way before this project?

It's been a little bit of influence. I can't do this for 18 years and have it not be. His poetry lends itself to jazz. It has a certain rhythmic quality that lends itself to jazz. In a subliminal way, the poetry has influenced my music.

4. While we all know about bringing jazz into high, middle and elementary schools, are college students in the know about jazz?

A lot of students don't know about it who aren't music majors, but once they hear it and experience it up-close and personal, they like it. If it's made available to them and not too esoteric, it goes over well.

5. As someone close to the Grammys, what were your thoughts on the 2012 Grammys?

I loved it. I loved Adele. I didn't know a whole lot of her before the Grammys. Paul McCartney was great as was the Whitney Houston tribute with Jennifer Hudson.

Online: www.ronmccurdy.com

http://www.jconline.com/article/20120224/ENT15/202240307?nclick_check=1

Out in Berkeley: Jazz quintet, Irish music and more

 by Andrew Gilbert

One of the pleasures of living in Berkeley is that the world beats a path to our doorstep. Over the next week the city hosts a deliriously diverse array of musicians, from a virtuosic traditional Irish duo and a beloved Chilean cantadora to a new Brazilian dance band and a Near Eastern electro-acoustic ensemble.


But let’s start with the most exotic combo, Canada Day, a capaciously inventive jazz quintet led by Toronto-born drummer Harris Eisenstadt that makes its Bay Area debut Wednesday at the Subterranean Art House.


The Brooklyn-based bandleader and composer is associated with jazz’s exploratory left field. Over the past decade he’s collaborated with some of music’s most insistently creative artists, including Bobby Bradford, Butch Morris, Yusef Lateef, Wadada Leo Smith, and the recently departed Sam Rivers. He’s also soaked up far-flung rhythmic traditions through work with ensembles exploring the music of Bali, Gambia, Ghana, Morocco, Iran and Senegal. But it’s as the leader of Canada Day that Eisenstadt has truly found his voice as a composer.

Harris Eisenstadt: working with nostalgia. Photo: Peter Gannushkin

The group, which performs as part of double bill with San Francisco bassist Lisa Mezzacappa’s rambunctious combo Bait & Switch, features a stellar cast of improvisers, including trumpeter Nate Wooley, tenor saxophonist Matt Bauder, bassist Garth Stevenson, and San Jose-reared vibraphonist Chris Dingman. When Mezzacappa’s combo explores the rough and tumble aesthetic that informed the 1960s free jazz movement, Canada Day has honed an almost pastoral sound, full of open spaces, transparent, dappled textures, and inviting melodic lines. The group is focusing on music for its acclaimed 2011 CD “Canada Day II” (Songlines) and an upcoming release “Octet.”

“I wanted to find a mix of people from our micro-scenes in New York who had worked together and could find new things in the music,” says Eisenstadt, who earned an M.F.A. from California Institute of the Arts in African American Improvisational Music in 2001.

“This is my first band that’s been an ongoing project over several years with several recordings. All the tunes are five to 10 minute songs, with lots of changes, sections and textures. It does sometimes come from a nostalgic place. I left Canada almost 20 years ago, and for me Canada represents that period of my life, from birth to 18.”

Martin Hayes and Dennis Cahill: distilling the essence of traditional tunes

Martin Hayes and Dennis Cahill in concert

Nostalgia also plays an important role in the music of Irish-born fiddler Martin Hayes and Irish-American guitarist Dennis Cahill, who open a two-night engagement at Freight & Salvage on Friday.

The remarkable duo has honed a ravishing repertoire by distilling the melodic essence of traditional tunes. They can play a reel that sets feet stomping, but they’ve distinguished themselves by bringing the intensity and dynamic control of chamber music to folk tunes created for community celebrations.

“It’s so obvious and transparent and simple, and that’s why it’s so difficult,” Hayes says. “The beauty of traditional Irish music is the nature of the melodies. Are you actually comfortable being vulnerable, doing something slightly minimalist and simple?”

The son of P. J. Hayes, the leader of the celebrated Tulla Ceili Band, Hayes grew up in County Claire, and his exquisite fiddle style is marked by the graceful lyricism long associated with that region. The fact that Cahill has found his main musical expression in traditional Irish music is more of a surprise. His parents were native Gaelic speakers who came to Chicago in the late 1940s, but he grew up with little exposure to Irish music, and didn’t visit the old country until he was about 30. He studied at Chicago’s prestigious Music College and performed everything from classical, blues, folk, pop and rock before he and Hayes took up as a duo.

Cahill notes that his immersion in traditional Irish music is “a bit strange, but I looked at it as being music first, and a genre second,” he says. “Irish music has an incredibly strong, pure musical core to it. It has beautiful melodies and great rhythms and is so evocative that it communicates really well to people who aren’t Irish or haven’t grown up listening to it.”

Other recommended gigs

Stellamara, the wondrous world music ensemble led by vocalist and producer Sonja Drakulich and multi-instrumentalist Gari Hegedus, performs its singular blend of Turkish, Arabic, Balkan, Medieval European and Persian musical traditions on Friday at Rudramandir.

Chilean-born vocalist and multi-instrumentalist Lichi Fuentes, a force on the Bay Area scene since the early 1980s, performs Saturday at La Pena.

And Richmond’s Banda Bey Brazil, which plays a propulsive mix of samba, pagode, rock, forró, and axe, plays Ashkenaz on Saturday.

Andrew Gilbert, who writes a weekly music column for Berkeleyside, also covers music and dance for the San Jose Mercury News, Contra Costa Times, Los Angeles Times, Boston Globe and KQED’s California Report. He lives in west Berkeley. 

To find out about more events in Berkeley and nearby, visit Berkeleyside’s Events Calendar. We also encourage you to submit your own events.

http://www.berkeleyside.com/2012/02/23/in-berkeley-canadian-jazz-quartet-irish-music-and-more/

Berklee on line

Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra comes to the Ferguson Center

By David Nicholson

Fifteen of jazz music's leading instrumental soloists make up New York's Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra comng Monday, Feb. 27, to the Ferguson Center for the Arts on the Christopher Newport University campus.

Led by renowned Juilliard-trained trumpeter Wynton Marsalis, the orchestrta performs a broad range of repertoire, everything from rare historic compositions to works commissioned by the Jazz at Lincoln Center organization. Marsalis, the group's music director, is the first jazz artist to be awarded the Pulitzer Prize in music for his oratorio, "Blood on the Fields," which was commissioned by Jazz at Lincoln Center.

http://articles.dailypress.com/2012-02-23/entertainment/dp-fea-ticket-marsalis-lede-20120223_1_ferguson-center-jazz-at-lincoln-center-wynton-marsalis

African and African-American arts festival concert plays at the HUB

By Mike Hricik, Collegian Staff Writer

Jazz giants like saxophonist Hamiet Bluiett and renowned poet Quincy Troupe brought the funk to, of all places, the HUB-Robeson Center on Wednesday night to celebrate African-American music’s heritage.

Bluiett, Troupe, a DJ, a hip-hop dancer, rappers and other groups gathered for the Tribute to the Influence of African and African American Music, Art, Literature and Dance festival.

About 70 people gathered in the HUB-Robeson Center’s Heritage Hall in what many attendees considered the main draw of this week’s festival, organized by the Penn State Jazz Club and funded by the University Park Allocation Committee.

“[Bluiett and Troupe] are some heavy, heavy hitters,” Matt Bugaj, a former officer of the Penn State Jazz Club, said.

Flanked by a faux urban skyline and elaborate lighting set-up, other artists for the evening included Harriet Tubman: The Band, guitarist Kelvyn Bell, bassist Nimrod Speaks, percussionist Eli Fountainand Penn State Professor of Integrative Arts Ronnie Burrage on drums.

Multi-instrumentalist Bluiett, considered one of the foremost avant-garde jazz baritone saxophonists of his generation, performed solos of extreme range beneath Troupe’s introspective rhymes.

Infusing funk, blues and foundation, his solos drew the largest audience responses from a mostly subdued crowd during the night.

Troupe, a poet famous for his sporadically syncopated style and work on Miles Davis’ autobiography, slyly waxed on the nature of art and culture, backed by his professional band.

“We suffer because we must. There is no other way to find beauty,” he said, in a near-trance.

At one point, RAM Squad Vice President Quilan Arnold (junior-integrative arts) joined the band backing up Troupe with interpretive hip-hop dance.

Yaayaa Hunt, one of the evening’s mistress of ceremonies, said she appreciated the opportunity for African American dedication.

“I’ve learned that music has always been a facilitator for our culture,” Hunt (freshman-public relations) said.

http://www.collegian.psu.edu/archive/2012/02/23/african_and_african_american_arts_festival_concert.aspx