News of Past Guests, Fall 2017 Edition

As we start this post, it's just after Labor Day, so we've put away our white shoes--and begun a new season of concerts and workshops.  (Big love to Matt Wilson and Honey & Salt! And to the Dayna Stephens Quartet featuring Billy Childs! Next up: John Ellis and Double-Wide on November 10th.)  And even though we posted the first edition of this update before summer was officially over on September 21st, we thought it was time for an autumnal edition of the news.

The saddest event we have to report is the death of guitarist John Abercrombie on August 22. Our deep condolences to his family, friends, and fellow musicians.

Here are remembrances from:

• Peter Hum, Ottawa Citizen
• Tom Cole, NPR
• Nate Chinen, The Record (NPR/WBGO)

In happier news: Eureka-born bassist Trevor Dunn (Nels Cline Singers, Endangered Blood) completed a prestigious weeklong residency at John Zorn's soon-to-be-former East Village mecca for new music, The Stone.  (It's moving across town to The New School.)  The New Yorker commented: "Quiet as it's kept, except among the freethinking musicians who depend on his imaginative anddaring playing, the bassist Dunn has been an M.V.P. for both new-jazz and experimental-rock outfits for some four decades now. . . ."

Meanwhile, pianist Fred Hersch spoke with Fresh Air's Terry Gross about his new memoir, Good Things Happen Slowly and his new solo album, Open Book:

Hersch is everywhere these days: read Peter Hum's review of a rare performance of Hersch's Walt Whitman song cycle Leaves of Grass at Lincoln Center.  Elsewhere, at PopMatters, to be exact, Andy Jurk reviews a new album on ECM, Gnosis, by young pianist David Virelles (heard in Arcata in 2011 with the David Binney Quartet). Here's a taste of that album:

At NPR Music, Nate Chinen talks to drummer (and composer of the soundtrack to Birdman) Antonio Sanchez about his new album Bad Hombre. The story includes a streaming track from the album. Sanchez was also guest DJ on a recent edition of NPR's Alt.Latino podcast, and he's on the cover the drummer-centric November issue of Jazz Times.

Meanwhile, NPR Music's "First Listen" recently streamed Rudresh Mahanthappa's new album, Agrima (with his "Indo-Pak Coalition," featuring Rez Abbasi and Dan Weiss, RJA veterans all) in its entirety, ahead of its mid-October release. Not coincidentally, Mahanthappa is on the cover of the November DownBeat, which also includes interviews with Rez Abbasi and Linda May Han Oh. Abbasi, too, has a new album, Unfiltered Universe, with Iyer, Mahanthappa, Weiss, and others:



And Iyer, whose new sextet album Far From Over appeared late this summer to rave reviews (see our previous post), was the focus of the latest Jazz Night in America on NPR, which featured performances from the recent Ojai festival that Iyer directed.

Cécile McLorin Salvant, a big winner in this year's DownBeat Critics Poll (see our last post once again), was the subject of a great cover story by Phillip Lutz, "True Character," in the October issue of DownBeat.

Another RJA genius: drummer-percussionist/composer/polymath Tyshawn Sorey (Myra Melford's Snowy Egret) has been named a 2017 MacArthur Fellow.  Coverage at Jazz Times and NPR, and a profile (including a video) at the MacArthur Foundation.

Around 100 pages of the latest issue of the journal Music & Literature are devoted to saxophonist Mark Turner (of the trio Fly).  There are appreciations from twenty fellow musicians, an interview with writer and critic Ben Ratliff, and transcriptions of Turner's music. You can purchase it at the journal's website.

Finally, elsewhere at NPR, you can listen to a rebroadcast of an appearance by trumpeter Dave Douglas on Marian McPartland's Piano Jazz way back in 2000--a publicity warm-up, perhaps, for the release of Douglas's new album (with Anwar Marshall and The Westerlies), Little Giant, Still Life:



(You can also watch a series of interviews about the album with Dave, The Westerlies, and drummer Anwar Marshall at the Greenleaf Music website.)

News of Past Guests, 2016 Holiday Edition

Just in time for the holidays--well, just in time for the solstice--pianist Frank Kimbrough has released a beautiful trio album, Solstice (Pirouet), with bassist Jay Anderson and drummer Jeff Hirschfield. Here's the title track:



Pianist Uri Caine, meanwhile, has a new trio with bassist Mark Helias and drummer Clarence Penn--and a new album, Calibrated Thickness, with cornetist Kirk Knuffke guesting on several tracks. (Buy and listen to samples at CDBaby.)

And speaking of trio albums, drummer Allison Miller plays a big part in two of them just out. The first, Swivel, is by the collective Honey Ear Trio, with bassist Rene Hart, saxophonist Jeff Lederer (now filling founding member Erik Lawrence's shoes), and guest trumpeter Kirk Knuffke.  Two tracks here:



And then there's Lean, with saxophonist Jerome Sabbagh and bassist Simon Jermyn.  Here's a taste of their eponymous debut:



Meanwhile, Miller's group Boom Tic Boom (with RJA vets Myra Melford, Ben Goldberg, Kirk Knuffke, Jenny Scheinman, and Todd Sickafoose) released a video from a recording, made back in May, of their upcoming appearance on WBGO's The Checkout:

(As it happens, Boom Tic Boom bandmate Myra Melford appeared on the November 21 edition of The Checkout, performing solo and talking about her own band Snowy Egret.)

Guitarist Rez Abbasi appeared in a live webcast from New York City's Asia Society on Friday, December 16 with his band Invocation, featuring fellow RJA veterans Rudresh Mahanthappa, Vijay Iyer, Johannes Weidenmuller, and Dan Weiss. The concert of music from the band's upcoming release Unfiltered Universe was previewed with a profile and interview in the Village Voice, and you can watch an archive of the webcast (the band comes on around 12'30"):

Finally: the 2016 Jazz Critics Poll, facilitated as always by Francis Davis and hosted (for the 4th year in a row) by NPR, may be dominated by what Davis calls the "avant elders."  But the Top 10 also include records by past guests Vijay Iyer, Michael Formanek, Nels Cline, and Matt Wilson.  Keep going into the top 50 and you'll see Tyshawn Sorey, Tom Harrell, Fred Hersch, Donny McCaslin, Frank Kimbrough, Melissa Aldana, The Cookers, Jeff Parker, and Allison Miller.  (Rene Marie tops the special "Vocal" category; Camila Meza is #3.)  We--and 139 of the world's most knowledgeable jazz writers--can't be wrong. Right?  Happy Holidays!

News of Past Guests, May 2016 Edition

Okay, sure: we'll start this post in the traditional way, with news about past guests.  For instance, over at Jazz Speaks (the weblog of New York City's venerable performance space, the Jazz Gallery), bassist Linda Oh talks about her upcoming album (and playing with Pat Metheny).

Then there's Matt Wilson (below), who has a beautiful new album, Beginnings of a Memory, with a group he's calling Big Happy Family.



The "memory" is of Wilson's beloved wife Felicia, who died in 2014, and the "family" are a dozen members of his three working bands--Felicia's favorite players, who came together to play some of her favorite tunes. Wilson talks about the album in the June issue of DownBeat. Here's the title track:



There are other albums out, too (or coming out soon), by Rez Abbasi, with a new ensemble called "Junction":



by the Claudia Quintet:



--and by Phronesis bassist Jasper Høiby:



Plus, vocalist Rene Marie has just released a full album of her own compositions:

And if you'd like to hear Chris Lightcap's Bigmouth, Allison Miller's Boom Tic Boom, and/or the Vijay Iyer Trio again, then you might be interested in WNYC's New Sounds podcast, since they all appear on the same episode devoted to "Groove-Based Jazz":



Otherwise, though, our news this month isn't about past guests, but about old friends from closer to home. To wit:

Last month, longtime jazz fanatic and radio programmer (at KZYX in Fort Bragg) Doug Moody was named a "Jazz Hero" by the Jazz Journalists Association.  A co-owner (and Senior Vice President for Marketing) of North Coast Brewing Company, Doug has also been one of the RJA's most stalwart supporters since the very beginning of our ten-year existence.  As beneficiaries of his largesse, we're in good company: North Coast supports jazz presenters, performers, and educators all over California and all across the country, not least through its sales of its "Brother Thelonious" abbey-style ale:

These days, Doug and North Coast are presenting jazz, too, at their "Sequoia Room" in Fort Bragg. Road trip, anyone?

Finally, bassist Shao Way Wu left Arcata a couple of years ago for the bright lights of Portland, where he's been illuminating that city's own local jazz scene. He's got a new album, Canvas Sky, with his bass-piano duo "Tar Beach."  You can buy it on Bandcamp after you listen to it here:

(You can also find albums by the PDX incarnation of his Coconino Trio and tracks by his bass-guitar duo "Day In the Sun.")

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, March 2015

It's been awhile.  So without any further ado:

Antonio Sanchez's arresting score for the Oscar-winning Birdman was disqualified--on an ill-conceived technicality--from consideration for a well-deserved award.  Still, you can buy a copy of the score for yourself and appreciate it all you like.



In better news: the results of the 2014 Expanded Jazz Times Critics Poll came out in the March 2015 issue, and who should we find at the top of the list?  Best New Artist: Melissa Aldana.  Artist of the Year: Miguel Zenón.  Farther down: Best trumpeter: Ambrose Akinmusire.  Tenor Sax: Mark Turner.  Alto Sax: Miguel Zenón again.  Clarinet: Anat Cohen.  Violin: Regina Carter.  Drums: Brian Blade (Joel Harrison).  Female Vocalist: Cécile McLorin Salvant.  Podcast: A Noise From the Deep with Dave Douglas.  We'll try not to break our arms patting our own backs--but you gotta admit, we do know how to pick 'em.

And elsewhere:

Joel Harrison, who organized the Alt Guitar Summit in New York in February, speaks with guitar god Nels Cline on the latest episode of his podcast, Say What You Mean.

Also in February, René Marie was Michael Feinstein's guest on NPR's Song Travels, performing duets with Michael and talking about Eartha Kitt.

On March 4, Anat Cohen performed on NPR's Jazz Night in America with her group Choro Aventuroso, which plays the improvisatory Afro-Brazilian instrumental music known as "choro." You can stream that program by following the link above, and you can order the band's new album, Luminosa, at the Anzic Records Bandcamp store (and preview three tracks from the album right here):



And speaking of new albums, trumpeter Eddie Henderson (The Cookers) and The Vijay Iyer Trio both have new releases.  (The New York Times says Iyer's album, Break Stuff, "confirms his stature in jazz's contemporary vanguard, along with the dynamic excellence of his working trio.") The new incarnation of Harris Eisenstadt's "Golden State" features Trio M's Mark Dresser and Humboldt's own Michael Moore on Golden State II (you can stream two tracks and download one at the Songlines Records website.) Dafnis Prieto's Sextet--who played maybe the most exciting set we heard at this year's WinterJazzFest in New York--has some terrific new tunes on Triangles and Circles. And guitarist Rez Abbasi, the subject of a feature in the March issue of DownBeat, has a fantastic new record with his Acoustic Quartet. With a nod to the late, great Bill Dixon, he entitled it Intents and Purposes. It's available from all the usual suspects: iTunes, Amazon, eMusic, etc.--and, if you're an audiophile, at HD download sites like Pro Studio Masters and Qobuz. Here's the Video EPK:



Chris Lightcap's Bigmouth just released Epicenter on the always hip Clean Feed label.  The title track and two others are available for streaming:





Finally, to our great shame, we never got around to plugging what was probably our favorite album of 2014, Michael Blake's brilliant, swinging tribute to Hawk & Prez, Tiddy Boom: