For the December issue of DownBeat, drummer Antonio Sánchez subjected himself to the "Blindfold Test"--and passed with flying colors. The print version hasn't yet been made available online, but you can listen to it as it was recorded at this year's Monterey Jazz Festival:
A lot of people have sworn off the hoary "Top 10 List" this year, but...
Jazz Times compiled its writers' Top 50 picks for 2019, and that list reads like a Who's Who of RJA alumni: Camila Meza's Ámbar (#4), Tom Harrell's Infinity (#6), Johnathan Blake's Trion (#9), Linda May Han Oh's Aventurine (#10), Dave Douglas/Uri Caine/Andrew Cyrille's Devotion (#12), the Fabian Almazan Trio's This Land Abounds With Life (#13), Miguel Zenón's Sonero: The Music of Ismael Rivera (#16), Ralph Alessi's Imaginary Friends (#17), the Anat Cohen Tentet's Triple Helix (#18), Melissa Aldana's Visions (#22), Frank Kimbrough's Monk's Dreams (#25), Ryan Keberle & Catharsis' The Hope I Hold (#26), Tyshawn Sorey & Marilyn Crispell's The Adornment of Time (#27), Fred Hersh & WDR Big Band's Begin Again (#36), and Allison & Miller's Boom Tic Boom's Glitter Wolf (#37).
The Ottawa Citizen's Peter Hum, one of the smartest, most sympathetic jazz writers around, also includes Meza, Oh, Almazan, and Blake (3, 2, 4, and 16) in his year-end list, along with Ben Monder's Day After Day (14) and Jason Palmer's Rhyme and Reason (15).
Those names--and other past RJA guests (Parlour Game, Noah Preminger, Scott Robinson)--show up again and again on other lists (LA Times, NextBop.com, AllAbout Jazz, the Jazz Journalists' Association, PopMatters, the Chicago Tribune). See for yourself here.
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:
As we first put fingers to keyboard, it was the day after Memorial Day, and that's the unofficial start of summer, right? Besides, our Spring post was getting so packed that Blogger told us we'd exceeded the limit on "tags." So put on your shorts and sandals, grab a gin & tonic, and let's go:
At the Jazz Gallery's Jazz Speaksblog, saxophonist Tony Malaby (Chris Lightcap's Bigmouth) talks about his new collective trio with guitarist Ben Monder (Theo Bleckmann) and drummer Nasheet Waits (Dave Douglas & Brass Ecstasy).
Jazz Speaks also spoke with saxophonist Melissa Aldana, as did Burning Ambulance:
In the August issue of DownBeat you'll find this year's installment of the magazine's prestigious Critics Poll--which, like similar polls by Jazz Times critics and the Jazz Journalists Association (see our Spring Update), lauds plenty of RJA veterans. For instance? Cécile McLorin Salvant (whom we presented in 2014 in collaboration with Center Arts) took both Female Vocalist and Jazz Artist of the Year. The Fred Hersch Trio: Jazz Group of the Year. Ambrose Akinmusire: trumpet. Miguel Zénon: alto sax. Anat Cohen: clarinet. Regina Carter: violin. Brian Blade (Joel Harrison and Spirit House): drums. Adam O'Farrill (Rudresh Mahanthappa's Bird Calls): rising star trumpet. Dayna Stephens: rising star tenor sax. Allison Miller: rising star drums.
The July DownBeat had feature articles on Melissa Aldana and clarinetist Anat Cohen, a four-star "Hot Box" featured review of Fabian Almazan's This Land Abounds with Life, and a profile of vocalist and guitarist Camila Meza (Ryan Keberle & Catharsis). Not to be outdone, the July Jazz Times includes a cover story on saxophonist Chris Potter, a feature on multi-reedist Marty Ehrlich, an interview with multi-instrumentalist Scott Robinson, and a "Before and After" listening session with saxophonist Dayna Stephens.
On May 31, Meza released her fifth album as a leader and her first on Sony Masterworks, Ámbar. In April, DownBeat previewed a tune from the album as part of its online "First Listen" series, while back in 2018 The Pace Reportinterviewed Meza (and recorded her in performance) when she debuted her Nectar Orchestra at the APAP conference in New York:
The Chilean-born guitarist-vocalist-composer-bandleader also came in for special praise from NPR's "Alt.Latino" recently, after she appeared with her new project on NPR's Jazz Night in America:
Meza also continues her work with Keberle's Catharsis on The Hope I Hold, due out June 28. Here's a video of the album's first single, "Despite the Dream":
Elsewhere in print: in the July/August Jazz Times, Andrew Gilbert writes about vocalist Claudia Villela's recent travails and her latest album ("Into the Fire, and Out Again"). And in the June DownBeat, Suzanne Lorge had a short feature ("Sanchez's Borderless Music") on drummer Antonio Sánchez and Migration's Lines in the Sand, a timely album about border issues, as well as a long profile ("Seeking Unity") of bassist Linda May Han Oh (about whom Steve Futterman also said nice things in a recent issue of the New Yorker), while Bill Milkowski highlighted guitarist Ben Monder's Day After Day, a double album (one solo, one trio) of imaginative covers.
More drummer news: Johnathan Blake (Omer Avital Quintet), featured on the Straight No Chaserpodcast, just released his third album as a leader, Trion, a double live set with two other RJA alums, tenor saxophonist Chris Potter and bassist Linda May Han Oh (each of whom has recent new releases of their own; see our Spring 2019 update):
And drummer Allison Miller was interviewed for both Burning Ambulance, and DownBeat, where she spoke (among other things) about "Parlour Games," her quartet co-led with Jenny Scheinman. (See our previous update). And drummer--well, multi-instrumentalist--Tyshawn Sorey (Myra Melford's Snowy Egret) was recetnly the object of praise (Steve Smith, "Composer Portrait") and the subject of a profile (Alex Ross, "The Shape-Shifting Music of Tyshawn Sorey") in The New Yorker.
Spring can really hang you up the most. But let's not dwell on that. Instead, let's get right to it, shall we? In no particular order:
A belated discovery: last summer, saxophonist Michael Blake wrote a brilliant profile/appreciation of tubaist extraordinaire Marcus Rojas (Dave Douglas's Brass Ecstasy) for All About Jazz.
In other tenor sax news: Noah Preminger has a new album, After Life, with Jason Palmer, Kim Cass, Max Light, and Rudy Royston; you can order it here. While you're at it, go to CD Baby and check out trumpeter Palmer's new double-CD, Rhyme and Reason. (Listen to a track on Soundcloud, first, if you like:)
At CD Baby you can also find Preminger's Chopin ProjectCD, part of his "Dead Composers Society" project, co-led with drummer Rob Garcia. And by the way: there's a profile of Preminger, "Perpetual Motion Machine," by Dan Ouellette in the April issue of DownBeat.
There's also a new one from multi-instrumentalist Scott Robinson (Ryan Keberle and Catharsis), Tenormore, with Helen Sung, Martin Wind, and Dennis Mackrel. It's available here.
Keberle's Catharsis itself (with Robinson, Camila Meza, Jorge Roeder, and Eric Doob) will see the release The Hope I Hold on June 28. Read all about it at Greenleaf Records (and read an interview with Keberle at Jazz Speaks).
And tenor saxophonist Melissa Aldana just unveiled her Visions:
Meanwhile, you can listen to drummer Bill Stewart's latest, Band Menu, with Walter Smith III and Larry Grenadier, on Soundcloud before purchasing it at CD Baby (where you can also find also saxophonist Miguel Zenón's Grammy-nominated Yo Soy La Tradición, featuring the Spektral Quartet).
Guitarist Joel Harrison assembled an all-star crew of RJA veterans (including David Binney, Uri Caine, Chris Tordini, Stephan Crump, Brian Blade, and Allison Miller, with guest spots by Nels Cline and Theo Bleckmann, among others) for Angel Band, the third volume of his "Free Country" series, featuring jazz-inflected arrangements of classic country tunes. Buy it from Joel; watch a promo video here.
Trumpeter Ralph Alessi has reconvened his quintet This Against That for his third outing on ECM, Imaginary Friends. (Fly Trio bassist Larry Grenadier, meanwhile, has done a solo session for ECM entitled The Gleaners.)
Trumpeter Dave Douglas, meanwhile, has three new releases on his Greenleaf label: Brazen Heart: Live at Jazz Standard (capturing a five-night run with his most recent quintet), UPLIFT: Twelve Pieces for Positive Action in 2018(with frequent partner Joe Lovano and the twin guitars of Julian Lage and Mary Halvorson), and Devotion, a trio record with Uri Caine and Andrew Cyrille.
Antonio Sanchez and Migration's Lines in the Sand, says jazz writer Brian Morton, "makes its strong point" about xenophobia and immigration "without surrendering even a fraction of its musicality." Hear more in this NPR story:
Bassist Linda May Han Oh talks to Burning Ambulanceabout many things, including her latest album, Aventurine:
And finally (in the "new releases" department, anyway):
Shall we talk awards? The Jazz Times Critics Picks put albums by a bunch of RJA vets in its Top 10 albums of 2018: Ambrose Akinmusire (Origami Harvest, #2), Myra Melford's Snowy Egret (The Other Side of Air, #3), Cecile McLorin Salvant (The Window, #5), Ron Miles (with Joshua Redman, Scott Colley, and Brian Blade in Still Dreaming, #6), and Miguel Zenón (Yo Soy La Tradicion, #10). More recently, the Jazz Journalists Association recognized Linda May Han Oh as Up and Coming Musician of the Year and Bassist of the Year, Cecile McLorin Salvant as Female Vocalist of the Year, Scott Robinson as Multi-Reeds Player of the Year and Player of the Year of Instruments Rare in Jazz, Miguel Zenon as Alto Saxophonist of the Year, Chris Potter as Tenor Saxophonist of the Year, Anat Cohen as Clarinetist of the Year, and Brian Blade as Traps Drummer of the Year.
That same issue of Jazz Times (February 2019) had a long-overdue profile of Myra Melford by Matthew Kassel, "Both Sides Now."
Speak of the devil: Melford herself penned a remembrance of the late Cecil Taylor--and vocalist Rene Marie pays tribute to Aretha Franklin--in the March issue of Jazz Times.
In addition to being an important composer and bandleader, Melford is of course an integral component of Allison Miller's Boom Tic Boom--and Miller, who is "blowing up" these days, almost deserves a section of this post all her own. To begin with, here's a great mid-career profile by Suzanne Lorge in the February issue of DownBeat, "Allison Miller's Life of Contradictions." Of course Boom Tic Boom's latest, Glitter Wolf, has been out for a few months now, but Miller is just as busy these days with a new band co-led by BTB member Jenny Scheinman, Parlour Games, whose debut is set for release on Royal Potato Family in June. (You can listen to a teaser track when you hit that pre-order link.)
It's been a while since we did a roundup of our past guests' recent activity, and after such a long pause, it's hard to catch up. What follows, then, is more selective than comprehensive.
December is, among other things, the "Best Of" season. NPR's "50 Best Albums of 2018" include the new record by Myra Melford's Snowy Egret, The Other Side of Air, as well as Ambrose Akinmusire's Origami Harvest. (In his "Favorite Albums of 2018," former New York Times and Jazz Times jazz writer Nate Chinen, now Director of Editorial Content for NPR's flagship jazz station WBGO in Newark, New Jersey, also favored Akinmusire and Melford, as well as Cécile McLorin Salvant and Dan Weiss.)
The New York Times's "The Best Jazz of 2018" likewise includes Akinmusire and Melford, along with albums by Justin Brown (Akinmusire's longtime friend and drummer), Allison Miller (with Carmen Staaf), the John Hollenbeck Large Ensemble, and Cécile McLorin Salvant.
Salvant is also included among Rolling Stone's (well, veteran jazz critic Hank Shteamer's) 20 Best Jazz Albums of 2018, together with Dan Weiss's Starebaby and Still Dreaming, Joshua Redman's all-star tribute to the band Old and New Dreams, whose lineup also includes RJA alumni Ron Miles, Scott Colley, and Brian Blade.
Ambrose Akinmusire and Myra Melford are also high atop the Jazz Times Top 50, with Salvant, Still Dreaming, and Miguel Zenon not far behind. (Other RJA vets on the list: David Virelles, Tyshawn Sorey, Dan Weiss, Noah Preminger, Martin Wind, Gilad Hekselman, and Chris Lightcap.) At the Ottawa Citizen, Peter Hum singles out Frank Kimbrough, Ben Wendel (Linda Oh's Sun Pictures), Noah Preminger (with Frank Carlberg), and Myra Melford.
Recent Interviews: Jazz Speaks spoke to Jamie Baum, The Jazz Session hung with Helen Sung (so did WBGO's Salon Sessions), and Straight No Chaser chased down Ben Allison and Rudy Royston. Royston was plugging a new album, Flatbed Buggy, which had a featured review in DownBeat and an Editor's Pick in Rolling Stone. Sung, meanwhile, was touting her collection of settings of Dana Gioia poems, Sung With Words, which was also featured on NPR's First Listen in the week preceding its release.
Other notable new releases include Frank Kimbrough's magisterial, multi-volume set of the complete compositions of Thelonious Monk, Monk's Dreams:
and Miguel Zenón's collaboration with the Spektral Quartet, Viejo:
And speaking (once more!) of Allison Miller: the Thanksgiving episode of NPR's Jazz Night in America showcased the supergroup "Artemis," with Allison Miller, Anat Cohen, and Cecile McLorin Salvant.
Earlier this year, the We Have Voice Collective, a "new group of female and non-binary musicians in jazz and experimental music" (see stories in the New York Times and on NPR), invited music festivals, presenters, venues, educational institutions, record labels, media outlets, and other members of the music industry/ecosystem to adopt a new Code of Conduct promoting safe(r) workspaces in the performing arts.
The Code calls for "zero tolerance of harassment of any kind, including but not limited to sexual harassment and bullying."
The Redwood Jazz Alliance is proud to join dozens of other organizations in committing to uphold this Code of Conduct. It's a no-brainer. Time is indeed up.
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 Aldanatalks 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 Consideredthinks 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:
