News of Past Guests, Summer 2018 Edition

I think we begin virtually every other post this way:  "It's been a while."  (You get busy, right?  There are distractions--things going on in the world.)

There's a lot we've missed over the past five or six months, and we won't bother trying to catch up.  But here's what's new right now (we began this post on May 27th, and have added to it since then).

The 2018 Jazz Journalists Association Awards were announced a couple of weeks ago, and if you've been following the Redwood Jazz Alliance for a while, you'll recognize a lot of these names:

• Musician of the Year:  Matt Wilson
• Record of the Yard:  Matt Wilson's Honey and Salt: Music Inspired by the Poetry of Carl Sandburg
• Female Vocalist of the Year: Cecile McLorin Salvant
• Jazz Band of the Year: Vijay Iyer Sextet
• Trumpeter of the Year: Tom Harrell
• Alto Saxophonist of the Year: Miguel Zenon
• Tenor Saxophonist of the Year: Chris Potter
• Baritone Saxophonist of the Year: Claire Daly
• Clarinetist of the Year: Anat Cohen
• Pianist of the Year: Fred Hersch
• Bassist of the Year: Linda May Han Oh
• Player of Instruments Rare in Jazz of the Year: Gary Versace (accordion)

More of the same in the annual DownBeat Critics Poll, whose results were published in the August issue:

• Jazz Artist of the Year: Vijay Iyer
• Jazz Group of the Year: Vijay Iyer Sextet
• Female Vocalist: Cecile McLorin Salvant
• Jazz Album:  Cecile McLorin Salvant's Dreams and Daggers
• Trumpet: Ambrose Akinmusire
• Alto Saxophone: Rudresh Mahanthappa
• Clarinet: Anat Cohen
• Rising Star Drums: Johnathan Blake
• Rising Star Composer: Tyshawn Sorey

Ryan Keberle posted to his Facebook page a couple of videos shot by an audience member at his season-ending April 16 show with Catharsis at the Arcata Playhouse.

In advance of his new book Playing Changes: Jazz for the New Century, former New York Times writer Nate Chinen (now with WGBO and NPR) shares some entries from his list of "The 129 Essential Albums of the Twenty-First Century (So Far)." You can read his very smart assessments of Ben Allison's Peace Pipe (2002); the first outing of John Hollenbeck's The Claudia Quintet (2001); the eponymous debut by AlasNoAxis (2000) the quartet led by drummer Jim Black (Endangered Blood); Perceptual (2000) by the Brian Blade Fellowship (Blade appeared here with Joel Harrison and Spirit House); and Science Friction (2002) by alto saxophonist Tim Berne, a member of the Michael Formanek Quartet.

Lots happening these days at New York's Jazz Gallery (one of our presenting partners for Fabian Almazan under a Chamber Music America/Doris Duke Foundation grant)--which means lots of artists speaking to the Gallery's "Jazz Speaks" blog. For instance: Johnathan Blake, Linda May Han Oh, and Chris Potter dish about their "BOP" Trio.  Joel Harrison comments on his 8th annual Alternative Guitar Summit.  And Melissa Aldana talks about her new commissioned piece, "Visions: For Frida Kahlo." (Aldana, who just recorded an album entitled Doubtless with her new quartet, also took her first "Blindfold Test" in the July issue of DownBeat.)

Speaking of tenor saxophonists: the prolific Noah Preminger has yet another new album out--his third in twelve months, by our count--this one with his "Dead Composers Club" co-led by Rob Garcia (and featuring Nate Radley and Kim Cass).  It's The Chopin Project, the DCC's take on Chopin nocturnes, preludes, and etudes.  Buy it directly from Noah; preview a couple of tracks right here:





Walter Smith III (Ambrose Akinmusire Quintet) has just released his fifth disc as a leader, TWIO, with guest spots from big dogs Joshua Redman and Christian McBride:



And Donny McCaslin, still in the process of reinventing his sound, post-Bowie, releases a new single, "What About the Body," on June 13th.  NPR's All Songs Considered thinks it's the most exciting example of "art rock" they've heard in a good long while.

Meanwhile, young trumpeter Adam O'Farrill (Rudresh Mahanthappa's Bird Calls) takes a leap forward on a new album, El Maquesh, with his group Stranger Days.  Hear Kevin Whitehead's review on NPR's Fresh Air with Terry Gross, and hear some tracks on Bandcamp:




Much more to come; stay tuned.

News of Past Guests, New Year 2017 Edition

I don't know that "happy" is an adjective we're ready to apply to 2017.  But some of us on the RJA board started the new year off right, anyway, with a visit to New York for Winter JazzFest. Our old friend Donny McCaslin was part of this year's lineup--as well as a recent visitor to NPR's Tiny Desk:



--and an interviewee of Dave Sumner at the Bandcamp Daily blog.

Across the pond, Phronesis have announced a forthcoming album, The Behemoth, to be released in March. The name might have something to do with the fact that the trio are backed by the Frankfurt Radio Bigband, arranged and conducted by Julian Argüelles. Here's a preview track, "Zieding":



Noah Preminger also has a new album, Meditations on Freedom--a protest album of sorts, with tunes that respond passionately to our difficult times. He talks about it on the Straight, No Chaser podcast, and you can buy the digital download or the CD at Noah's website.

It's the season for new sax albums, evidently. Miguel Zenón's Típico was recently featured on NPR's "First Listen."  You can't hear it there any more, but you can listen to one track below and another on Soundcloud.  Then buy the album from CD Baby (where the artist gets a much more generous cut of the purchase price than at most other digital outlets).



Finally, Linda May Han Oh is leaving Dave Douglas's Greenleaf Music label and joining Fabian Almazan's Biophilia label.  Preview her forthcoming album, Walk Against the Wind, below:

News of Past Guests, Summer 2016 Edition

Jazz critic Kevin Whitehead has a smart appreciation of Matt Wilson's Big Happy Family on NPR's Fresh Air with Terry Gross:


And in other drummer news: Allison Miller talks with Drew Miller about Otis Was a Polar Bear on his Wing Walker Music podcast.

RJA veterans included in DownBeat's July feature story, "25 for the Future" include saxophonist Melissa Aldana; drummers Marcus Gilmore (Vijay Iyer Trio), Tyshawn Sorey (Myra Melford's Snowy Egret), Justin Brown (Ambrose Akinmusire Quintet) and Mark Guiliana (Donny McCaslin Group); and guitarist Matthew Stevens (Linda Oh's Sun Pictures).

Meanwhile, as usual, our past guests are well represented in the 64th annual DownBeat International Critics Poll, whose winners include Vijay Iyer (Jazz Artist of the Year), Ambrose Akinmusire (Trumpet), Anat Cohen (Clarinet), Regina Carter (Violin), and Cécile McLorin Salvant (Female Vocalist). "Rising Stars" include Tim Lefebvre (Electric Bass), Mark Guiliana (Drums), and Liberty Ellman (Guitar). 142 writers, journalists, and critics from around the world participated in the poll.

On August 12, Réne Marie stopped into the NPR studios in Washington to perform a set for the Tiny Desk Concert:

Finally, in album news: guitarist Charlie Hunter assembled a new quartet with Kirk Knuffke, trumpet; Marshall Fowlkes, trombone; and Bobby Previte, drums, for a CD on the GroundUP Music label entitled Everybody Has a Plan Until They Get Punched In the Mouth. Here's a track:

And Entertainment Weekly,  Rolling Stone, and Pitchfork are among those touting Donny McCaslin's forthcoming album, Beyond Now, due out in October, which will include two Bowie covers, "Warszawa" and "A Small Plot of Land." You can read an interview with Donny (and hear "Small Plot") at EW, and you can pre-order the album from Motema.

News of Past Guests, Spring Break 2016 Edition

Michael Blake's new album, Fulfillment, a suite of compositions for large ensemble on the themes of immigration and exclusion, is out on the Canadian label Songlines. Read about the project at the label's website, where you can also download a free track. Here's another cut, "Sea Shanty"--



--which is one of three tunes from Fulfillment that are part of a Michael Blake playlist at Songlines' Soundcloud page.

The New York Times calls Melissa Aldana's brand-new release, Back Home, her "finest album" yet. It's available at the usual online vendors (and, if you ask for it, at your local record store). Read the transcript of an amazing conversation between her and Sonny Rollins at Burning Ambulance.

The April issue of Jazz Times focuses on bassists--and it includes profiles of Chris Lightcap (Chris Lightcap's Bigmouth, Regina Carter's Southern Comfort) and Scott Colley (Antonio Sanchez Migration), a "Before and After" listening session with Eureka's own Trevor Dunn (Nels Cline Singers), and Linda Oh picking (and discussing) some of her favorite bass duo tracks. Select content from the magazine will go online April 5.

And speaking of bassists: out March 18 from Omer Avital is Abutbul Music. (Abutbul is one of Avital's ancestral surnames.) DownBeat magazine's "Editor's Choice" review says that some of the album's tunes mix genres, "mov[ing] through various guises, switching rhythms and meters with a dancer’s precision," while "[o]thers hone in on a single genre and explore it through Avital’s distinctly groove-filtered lens."  Case in point: "Bed-Stuy," which "incorporates hushed, Mingus-flavored swing":

Preparing for his last record, Intents and Purposes (an album of acoustic covers of classic 70s fusion tunes), inspired guitarist Rez Abbasi to compose some electric "fusion" of his own. The results are on a new album, Behind the Vibration, out May 20th:



Finally: the Donny McCaslin Group is the subject of a story on the cover of the May issue of DownBeat (the same issue also contains an interview with drummer Allison Miller). 

Donny and the rest of the band also talked about their experience with the late David Bowie (they're the core group on Bowie's celebrated swan song, Blackstar) on a recent episode of The New Yorker Radio Hour:

News of Past Guests, Spring Supplement

Too many things going on for one (March) blog post, it being the season of renewal and rebirth and all.

First: our old friend Myra Melford is only the latest RJA alum to be asked to program a week's worth of shows at John Zorn's performance space The Stone, a tiny venue of outsize prestige on Manhattan's Lower East Side.  Call it a mid-career retrospective: duets with Allison Miller, Ben Goldberg, and Marty Ehrlich.  Reunions of her 90s Trio, her Crush Quartet, The Same River, Twice (her quintet with Dave Douglas), and the Be Bread Sextet. And a release party for her newest CD, whose name, like the group that plays on it, is "Snowy Egret" (Ron Miles, cornet; Liberty Ellman, guitar; Stomu Takeishi, bass guitar; and Ted Poor sitting in for Tyshawn Sorey on drums).  Man, we wish we could be there!  Consolation: two tracks from the new album--"The Strawberry" and "Language"--are streaming at Fully Altered Media.

Next RJA vets at The Stone, by the way: weeklong residencies by Scott Amendola and Ben Goldberg in April.

Speaking of Ben Goldberg: he, too, has a new album out--a recording of Orphic Machine, a song cycle commissioned several years ago by Chamber Music America and the Jewish Music Festival. The players include lots of old friends, starting with...Myra Melford and Ron Miles, plus David Breskin, Greg Cohen, Nels Cline, Carla Kihlstedt, Ches Smith, Rob Sudduth, and Kenny Wollesen.  Check out "Line of Less Than Ten" and "Care," also courtesy of Fully Altered Media. Here's a video on the making the album:



And here's "Care" performed live at Freight & Salvage in Berkeley in 2012:


(Details: Ben Goldberg's Orphic Machine "Care" from Black Parrot Productions on Vimeo)

And speaking of publicists and streaming: the set by Dafnis Prieto's Sextet (say that three times fast!) at the Zinc Bar may be the best thing we heard at this year's WinterJazzFest in New York. Thanks to Two for the Show Media, you can preview the group's new album, Triangles and Circles, in its entirety:



Other new albums: saxophonist Tony Malaby (Ralph Alessi's This Against That, Chris Lightcap's Bigmouth) has a new one, Scorpion Eater, with a new quartet, Tubacello. (Sitting in the quartet's drum chair: John Hollenbeck.) Kevin Whitehead reviewed it for NPR's Fresh Air with Terry Gross:



(If you're a Spotify sort of person, you can preview the whole album at Clean Feed's website.) Also: saxophonist Donny McCaslin has a new one, Fast Future, with an old quartet--or at least the same one that played on his last album, the superfunked-up Casting for Gravity. Hear the title track and order the album at Greenleaf Music's Bandcamp Store, and hear Donny talk about making it with Dave Douglas on the Noise from the Deep podcast.

Finally (for now): Anat Cohen, whose new album we told you about last time, appears on NPR's Jazz Night in America with her band Choro Aventuroso on Wednesday, April 1 (no foolin'!).  And Uri Caine was at New York's newest jazz club, Mezzrow, recently, playing a duet with bassist Mark Helias. The club, started by Small's impresario Spike Willner, specializes in piano-bass duos. Here's the evidence (thanks to Karen for the tip!):

News of Past Guests, December Edition

Happy, Happy.  (You know: holidays.)

Notice anything funny about the sky last night? Ben Allison's new album, The Stars Look Very Different Today (with Steve Cardenas, guitar; Brandon Seabrook, guitar and banjo; and Allison Miller, drums), is out today, and you can buy it and stream it on Ben's website.  The band played live on WNYC's Soundcheck last Tuesday, November 26th (player embedded below), and they were featured on NPR's All Things Considered on December 1st.  "Audacious sci-fi jazz," the Denver Post calls this music.

Elsewhere on the airwaves: saxophonist Noah Preminger was in the studios of Newark's WBGO a few weeks ago, playing and promoting his latest album, Haymaker, on The Checkout.  You can hear the show by clicking that link just a few words back, and you can hear the entire album at the Palmetto Records website.  Anat Cohen (see last month's post) came to the same studio a few weeks later with her brothers Avishai and Yuval to perform live selections from their new album Tightrope.

We've already told you about René Marie's new stunner--it will almost certainly top our "Best of 2013" list--but you should go back/scroll down and have a look-n-listen for yourself if you missed our previous post. René lights up the cover of the December issue of Jazz Times, and if history is any guide, that cover story should be available on the JT website in a few weeks.

Every month, WBGO and NPR Music team up to broadcast/podcast Live at the Village Vanguard. Several past RJA guests have been featured on the program since it started up a few years back (if you check out our artist web pages, you've probably heard some of those performances already), and coming up on December 10th at 5:30 Pacific Time, it's drummer extraordinaire Brian Blade, who came to the Arcata Playhouse last spring as part of Joel Harrison's Spirit House, and who will appear on LATVV with his long-running Fellowship Band.  As you can well imagine, the show has an awesome archive.

The Grammy nominations are out, and while cats in the jazz world often complain that the people who make those nominations don't know much about jazz, this year, at least, they got one thing right, nominating Donny McCaslin in the "Best Improvised Solo" category for his burning solo on "Stadium Jazz," from his latest album Casting for Gravity.