News of Past Guests, Fall 2019 Edition

Let's start with bassist Linda May Han Oh, who performed her double-quartet chamber jazz project "Aventurine" on the September 19th episode of NPR's Jazz Night in America.



The album, which we previewed in a previous post (and which you can get on Bandcamp) is getting great buzz.

Pianist Helen Sung, meanwhile, contributed to the episode of the NPR series Turning the Tables: 8 Women Who Changed American Popular Music devoted to piano icon Mary Lou Williams.  Her video segment is entitled "How to Swing Like Mary Lou Williams."

In a recent newsletter, Helen also mentions how proud she is to be part of the album Shoulder to Shoulder: Centennial Tribute to Women's Suffrage (released August 30th) where she "joins the Karrin Allyson Sextet (and some very special guests!) to perform creatively reimagined songs from the Suffragette Movement." Billboard wrote about the project here.

Speaking of iconic pianists: Fred Hersch, renowned for his intimate trio work, has a new big band album (with Hamburg, Germany's NDR Bigband), Begin Again, that was recently reviewed by Kevin Whitehead on NPR's Fresh Air with Terry Gross.

A week or so later, Whitehead also reviewed a new record by Ben Goldberg (Plays Monk, Myra Melford's Be Bread), A Good Day for Cloud Fishing, built around the poetry of Dean Parks and featuring guitarist Nels Cline and cornetist Ron Miles.  (You can buy the album from a number of online venues, including Bandcamp.)

And speaking of big bands: our first guest of the 2019-20 season, Emilio Solla, has a special talent for writing and arranging for large ensembles.  He debuted his own big band, the Tango Jazz Orchestra, at Jazz at Lincoln Center's Dizzy's Club Coca-Cola earlier this year, and now his debut big band album has dropped.  It's called Puertos: Music from International Waters, and you can get it from all the usual online vendors, including the artist-friendly CD Baby (want a high-resolution format? try Qobuz).

Other new albums:

• Tenor saxophonist Noah Preminger's 15th album as a leader, Zigsaw: Music of Steve Lampert, is available for pre-order (CD or download) at his website.  It includes the talents of John O'Gallagher, Jason Palmer, Kris Davis, Rob Schwimmer, Kim Cass, and Rudy Royston.
• Alto saxophonist Miguel Zenón's latest is dedicated to a legendary Puerto Rican singer, Sonero: The Music of Ismail Rivera. (Miguel also did his first "Before and After" listening session for the September issue of Jazz Times.)
  
• Saxophonists (and longtime friends) Donny McCaslin and David Binney team up with fellow reedmen Dave Liebman and Samuel Blais for a sax quartet project called Four Visions:
• Bassist Chris Lightcap (who was recently interviewed for the Burning Ambulance podcast and the Jazz Gallery's "Jazz Speaks" series) combines his ensembles Bigmouth and Superette into a large ensemble called--you guessed it--SuperBigmouth, featuring two tenors, two guitarists, and two drummers.  "With whatever band Lightcap is leading," says the New York Times, "he strikes a masterly balance between urgent, punctuated bass playing and smooth, sighing melodies on top."  "SuperBigmouth commingles prog rock, spiritual jazz and the indie-lounge vibes of Stereolab, resulting in something altogether new." You can pre-order--and listen--on Bandcamp:  
• Bassist Ben Allison's new disc is the second with his collective trio "The Easy Way," featuring saxophonist Ted Nash and guitarist Steve Cardenas; it's called Somewhere Else: West Side Story Songs (preview | order)
• Guitarist Joel Harrison teams up with Anupam Shobakhar and the Talujon Percussion Quartet for Still Point: Turning World (order & preview on Bandcamp):
  
• Guitarist Rez Abbasi, meanwhile, is coming out with two new albums, one a soundtrack for the 1929 silent film A Throw of the Dice (interview in DownBeat), the other a collaboration with French harpist Isabelle Olivier, Oasis.  Here's a preview track:
  
• Drummer Harris Eisenstadt has a new live album with his quartet Canada Day (pre-order it at Clean Feed Records), as well as a new studio album with his other quartet Old Growth Forest (pre-order it--and preview it--on Bandcamp)
• Drummer Dan Weiss (who has played for the RJA multiple times as a sideman) returns as leader of a "Trio +1" with Utica Box
• Drummer Gerald Cleaver (Michael Formanek Quartet) leads his band "Violet Hour" (which includes Chris Lightcap) on a live date for Firehouse 12 Records entitled, strangely enough, Live at Firehouse 12 
• And pianist Uri Caine has written an oratorio, The Passion of Octavius Catto, dedicated to the 19th-century Philadelphia civil rights activist.  Order it from Caine's website with the link above, or from CDBaby. Here's a review, and here's a promotional video:

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, 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, Summer 2014 Edition

New albums:

Eclectic, prolific, endlessly creative guitarist-composer Joel Harrison has a new disc, Mother Stump, with covers of tunes by Luther Vandross, Paul Motian, and Leonard Cohen, among others. You can nab the album at Cuneiform Records' Bandcamp site. And you can stream Harrison's cover of the traditional gospel blues "John the Revelator" right here:

Some people are putting David Binney's new one on Criss Cross, Anacapa, among the restless alto saxophonist's all-time best.  Brad Farberman, for instance, in a profile of Binney, "The Long Haul," in the June issue of Jazz Times.

When we saw pianist Fred Hersch in New York in January, he hinted that he might be naming his upcoming trio album on Palmetto after a certain city by the bay in Humboldt County. Looks like we have to settle for one tune. (We'll take it! See Track 6: "a regal, bracing straight-eighths piece [that] took its name from a Northern California [town] famed for its beautiful giant redwoods," as Peter Hum described it.) In the end, Fred entitled the album Floating, and it hit the streets (and the online stores) in mid-July. Jazz critic Kevin Whitehead reviewed the album on NPR's Fresh Air, Scott Simon interviewed Fred for a feature story on Weekend Edition, and you can buy the album from Palmetto Records.

Old friends & collaborators, trumpeter Dave Douglas and keyboardist Uri Caine, issued an album of duets, Present Joys, inspired by the tradition of "shape-note" singing, on July 22.  You can hear a preview at Radio France's France Musique site or at the Greenleaf Music store.

Finally: saxophonist Michael Blake stopped by WBGO's The Checkout a few weeks ago with his trio "World Time Zone" (Ben Allison, bass and Ferenc Nemeth, drums) to play music from his latest project: music inspired by sax legends Coleman Hawkins and Lester Young.  Also on The Checkout of late: Tom Harrell's chamber-jazz project "Colors of a Dream," recorded live at the 2014 Montreal Jazz Festival. Harrell also has a new album, Trip, out on HighNote, with Mark Turner, Ugonna Okegwo, and Adam Cruz.

And speaking of Turner: on September 9th, the highly regarded tenor saxophonist (and member of the trio FLY) releases his debut as a leader on ECM, Lathe of Heaven, with a quartet featuring trumpeter Avishai Cohen and two other RJA alumni, Joe Martin (bass) and Marcus Gilmore (drums).



(Kevin Whitehead reviews the album on NPR's Fresh Air with Terry Gross.) A week later, it's the latest release from Kenny Werner, Coalition, with a band that includes Lionel Loueke and Miguel Zenon (who, coincidentally, are two-thirds of the trio on Mark Turner's FLY-mate Jeff Ballard's latest album...)

And in other news...

Not all of them are people, but of the "80 Coolest Things in Jazz Today" (according to DownBeat magazine--it's their 80th anniversary, see?), Humboldt County has experienced nearly 10% of them--viz., Ambrose Akinmusire, Vijay Iyer, Dave Douglas, Han Bennink, Instant Composers Pool, Fred Hersch, and Tony Malaby--under the auspices of the RJA.  Read all about it in the July issue.

RJA guests are also well represented in this year's DownBeat Critics Poll, whose results will be published in the August issue. Rising--make that skyrocketing--star vocalist Cécile McLorin Salvant, whom we will co-host with Center Arts in September in a special pre-season show--fairly cleaned up in the poll:


Other RJA-veteran category-toppers:

• Ambrose Akinmusire, Trumpet
• Joe Lovano, Tenor Sax
• Anat Cohen, Clarinet
• Vijay Iyer, Piano
• Regina Carter, Violin
• Wayne Escoffery, Rising Star Tenor Sax
• Rudy Royston, Rising Star Drums
• Matt Moran, Rising Star Vibes
• Ben Allison, Rising Star Composer

Last: looking for a way to pass the time on a lazy late summer afternoon? Play "Drum Fill Friday" with Quizmaster Matt Wilson, courtesy of NPR's All Songs Considered.

Bob Doran Takes Great Pics!

Wanna see something real real nice?


Bob Doran's Flickr set of the Uri Caine show.

Uri Caine talks to Bob Doran

The Uri Caine Interview (for the North Coast Journal, conducted by Bob Doran)

You seem to have a lot of projects going.

I do. I have different things happening.

I've been listening to your Live at the Village Vanguard album, thinking what you do is basically straight-ahead jazz. Then I took a look at the discography on your website and realized that's just one aspect of what you do. You seem to be musically omnivorous.

No, it's just a sequence of things. Musicians who grew up with a lot of different kind of music — and also if you're a keyboard player — you get a chance to play a lot of different styles of music. That's what I did when I was younger, which was a good way to start thinking about different ways of playing.

Different like your more electronic band, Bedrock...

Exactly. And sometime it's taking classical music, using it as a basis for improvisation playing with an ensemble. A lot of that is based on some of the CDs I've made, using those [pieces] as a basis for improvisation. And I play with all different types of improvisers. I've been doing that pretty much since I started playing music. But as I said before, playing keyboards has a lot to do with that — it's versatile. Looking back on the strong musical experiences I've had, everything from playing with singers and playing with choirs to playing different styles of jazz, free music, more swinging stuff, I've tried to get in touch with all of it.

It's omnivorous in contrast to other musicians who might focus more on just one style.

That happens in all types of music and art. For me, it's not just eclecticism for its own sake; it's more just moving from one opportunity to another. Playing swinging music is a different challenge from playing with an orchestra, or learning how to record yourself on a computer. You work on all those things. I think it's good also to have a wide variety of composition styles. In some cases you need something quite specific, other times you need something loose and open.

When it's more or less spontaneous composition...

Exactly. Or you set certain guidelines, underlying things that happen in each piece to set a structure for improvisation.

So while you describe yourself as a composer, sometimes that only means providing a framework.

Depending on the situation, you might have a group of musicians where some are reading and others are improvising or everybody is improvising over a certain chord change. Sometimes you create different sections within a piece by setting who's playing and who is not. Again, that comes from my experience. When I was growing up I was playing more straight-ahead jazz, bebop influenced, but at the same time I was working with people who were more into freer compositions.

Weren't you also studying composition with established modern composers?

That's right. I was lucky. When I was a teenager, I was studying with a composer in Philadelphia, George Rochberg. He was teaching a parallel course where we would go through a lot of classical forms. We'd write in forms like a Mozart sonata or a Beethoven development form. He had been known more for serial atonal work, but he'd switched back to more tonal styles and doing collage music that had snippets of other people's music. In academic circles that was considered radical.

Do you think we've reached a point in music where you don't expect that sort of reaction, where pretty much anything goes?

There's certainly more tolerance, allowing different styles to coexist. Especially today there's this information overload: You can sit and listen to music from Bali, then Beethoven, then to what was once obscure contemporary music or obscure electronic music — you can find it all. That tends to even things out. Everything becomes everything. But I think back then in the academic world coming out of the '50s and '60s, there was this thinking that there had to be a strong theoretical influence from contemporary music to be taken seriously, Arnold Schoenberg etc. etc.

What does it take today to be considered seriously?

A YouTube page.

Or a MySpace page.

Right. That's what I mean. The context is changing. I think it's a good thing for musicians. The whole idea of ownership of music and making money from music that way has changed.

It's hard to say what the new music business model will be if everyone can get music for free.

One of the things it does for performers is, it makes the performance more of an avenue. That's not touched the same way. People still want to see live music.

What's your deal with your recordings? It seems like you have a lot of liberty.

I record a lot for a record company based in Munich. It was Jazz Music Today, then it became Winter & Winter. They've made about 19 of the 20 or so CDs I've done.

Is it safe to assume you have relationship where they let you record whatever you want, up to a point?

Some of the music I've wanted to do is harder because it's very expensive, especially the more classical things with orchestra. You have a lot of musicians to pay. But most of my stuff was done through him.

What do you have in the works?

I'm making a new Bedrock CD, so we are editing that now and also working on building computer grooves. We're trying to get a certain rhythmic sound in editing on the computer. We looking for a certain spaced out sound, so that involves either working on what we've done and playing over it, or going in the studio then deconstructing it.

And in the middle of that you're shifting gears to work with a trio playing straight-ahead. Does that require realigning your thought patterns in some way?

No. Especially with our group because we've been together so long. We're used to playing with each other, so it's just natural. In that group we're mostly playing standards and originals, but there's also an open aspect to it. Things can go into different fields or grooves — we try not to play things exactly the same way. After working for days trying to construct something like what we do with Bedrock, it's actually a relief to go out and just play. You're free. You're not second guessing. You're just going for it. It's also different from this other thing I'm trying to finish, a piece for string quartet. The goal there is to create a piece that has space for improvisation but also a structure. That's also hopefully to be recorded in spring. All these different things make you think in different ways.

I see on your website that your record The Othello Syndrome was nominated for a Grammy for "Classical Crossover." What is that? I'm not sure I know what it means.

I don't know what it means either. I'm not really trying to do that. You have no control over how people interpret what you're doing. You just do it and hope that it's OK.