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23 Articles

what’s on JAZZTIMES.COM

Exclusive Content For our latest JazzTimes 10 list, Michael J. West combs through the catalog of iconic tenor saxophonist Stan Getz to find 10 standout recordings. Plus photo galleries, album and book reviews, obituaries, and much more. JT News The Playboy Jazz Festival didn’t happen in 2020 or 2021, and now that it’s coming back to the Hollywood Bowl this year, it isn’t the Playboy Jazz Festival anymore. Rebranded as the Hollywood Bowl Jazz Festival and presented by the Los Angeles Philharmonic, it’s currently scheduled to take place on June 25-26, 2022. Terri Lyne Carrington (pictured) + Social Science, Gregory Porter, Cory Wong, Christian Scott aTunde Adjuah, José James, Gordon Goodwin’s Big Phat Band, Azar Lawrence, and Gerald Clayton are among the headliners. Audio & Video Curtis Stigers sings and—for the first time on record—plays…

what’s on JAZZTIMES.COM

Getting Two-Timed

If an unusual thing happens once, most journalists will find it noteworthy. If that unusual thing happens twice, they’ll say it’s a trend. This may not be the most praiseworthy trait of a modern-day journalist, but it’s easily understandable—and the final results of the 2021 JazzTimes Readers’ Poll (which you can see in full on pg. 50)—are making me yield to the same temptation. Regular readers of this magazine may recall that the 2020 Readers’ Poll, in our March 2021 issue, named alto saxophonist Charles McPherson as Artist of the Year. They may also have noticed that a single flip of the page backward from the poll results took them to that issue’s Overdue Ovation feature. Its subject: alto saxophonist Charles McPherson. An odd coincidence indeed, and certainly not one that was…

Drop-Dead Divas (and Deer)

Wayne Shorter and Esperanza Spalding’s opera …(Iphigenia) begins with a woman dropping dead. Even in opera’s greatest tragedies the bodies don’t usually start piling up quite this soon. As it turns out, though, a body count drives the entire first act of …(Iphigenia). By its end, we’ve seen the killing of five women and two deer—and one of the deer has transformed into a woman who is marked for death. The women, though each is dressed in a different and very bright color, are all named Iphigenia. They’re distinctive and they shine, especially in contrast to the earthtones of Frank Gehry’s set (yes, that Frank Gehry) and the costumes of the Greek soldiers that the males play. In the men’s eyes, though, they are interchangeable, with no purpose other than…

Drop-Dead Divas (and Deer)

Not Stopping the Music

If you haven’t heard of the San Francisco-based trio Charged Particles, you’ve likely heard of the iconic artist that the group salutes on its latest CD: Live at the Baked Potato! (Summit) pays tribute to tenor saxophonist Michael Brecker (1949-2007). The album was recorded in March of 2019 at the famed Los Angeles nightclub, where keyboardist Murray Low, bassist Aaron Germain, and drummer Jon Krosnick, joined by tenor saxophonist Tod Dickow and guest percussionist Omar Ledezma, captured nine favorites from Brecker’s 20-year solo recording career and his work with sibling/trumpeter Randy in their heralded fusion act the Brecker Brothers. Randy, who knew his brother’s music better than anyone, testifies to the disc’s power on its back cover, calling it “smoking and intense from beginning to end.” Dickow first played with Charged…

Not Stopping the Music

Paying tribute to Sérgio Mendes with a spirited sound that blends jazz improvisation, Uruguayan candombe, and breezy Airto/Flora-esque pop is never a bad thing. Just ask the six members of Brasuka, whose luscious 2021 debut album A Vida Com Paixão—which translates as A Life with Passion—is a welcome balm of cross-cultural rhythm and righteous, jazzy soul. Brasuka is rooted in a 20-year-old friendship between percussionist Ricardo Bozas and vocalist/multi-instrumentalist Rosana Eckert. The twosome worked various gigs together in Dallas, playing Latin jazz, salsa, and tango in bilingual (Spanish/English) church services. “One day before a service, I found Ricardo in his car blasting Mendes’ Brasileiro,” Eckert recalls from Brasuka’s Texan HQ. “When he saw how much I loved it, he asked, ‘Do you want to start a band and play Sérgio Mendes?’…

Better Late than Never

If Jesse Palter’s brisk, buoyant composition “Spinning ’Round” sounds familiar to you on first listen, there’s a reason for that: Other jazz singers like it a lot. Sara Gazarek recorded it on her Grammy-nominated 2019 album Thirsty Ghost. Cécile McLorin Salvant has performed it at the GroundUP Festival and at New York’s Village Vanguard. “There is nothing more exhilarating than when other artists think enough of my songs to record or sing them live,” Palter says. “It’s the grandest of honors. But it feels so profound to me that people can finally hear my version.” “Finally” is the proper adverb here, as the release of Palter’s own rendition of her song has been a long time coming. She recorded it in 2013 as part of a full-length album, cut with a…

Better Late than Never

Greg Tate, a critic, musician, activist, and scholar who was among the most trenchant of observers and writers on Black American culture, died Dec. 7 in New York City. He was 64. From 1987 to 2005, Tate was a staff writer for The Village Voice, where he covered many subjects but with a special focus on jazz, funk, hip-hop, and other musical forms. He also contributed to DownBeat, Rolling Stone, Spin, Essence, Vibe, ARTnews, and JazzTimes. Much of his writing for these publications is collected in his books Flyboy in the Buttermilk: Essays on Contemporary America (1992) and Flyboy 2 (2016). Read more on pg. 49. Denise Perrier, an internationally appreciated vocalist based in California’s Bay Area, died Dec. 8 in San Francisco after a long illness. She was 82. Although…

Homage to Catalonia

From the very beginning, in 1966, we’ve been a festival for the people of Barcelona, not for tourists. We’re known to our community and to the music students here too,” says Joan Anton Cararach, artistic director of the Voll-Damm Barcelona Jazz Festival. His statement points to both a longstanding programming approach of mixing local and international artists, and a current survival strategy dealing with pandemic restrictions. Like many other annual festivals in Europe that continue to face the upside-downing impact of COVID, Barcelona has managed to soldier on while respecting shifting regulations and dwindling audiences, and it presented a robust schedule this past October and November. Significantly, the 2021 program featured a range of events in the city’s Conservatori Superior de Música del Liceu, the 183-year-old institution that first forged a…

Homage to Catalonia

The Great Unknown

There are two kinds of jazz listeners. Those who recognize Jim Knapp as a profound large-ensemble composer and arranger of uncommon imagination, depth, and expression—and those who have yet to hear his music. Knapp, who died November 13 at age 82, was a revered bandleader, composer, arranger, trumpeter, and teacher in the Pacific Northwest. He taught for decades at Cornish College of the Arts in Seattle and worked in myriad idioms: big bands, free improvisation, chamber orchestra, collaborations with dancers. But he operated below the radar of the national jazz media and outside professional networks in New York and Los Angeles. Even musicians well-versed in big-band literature are unlikely to have encountered his music. Still, anyone who spends time with it winds up proselytizing for it. The beauty and integrity of Knapp’s…

The Great Unknown

Jeff Ballard—drummer, bandleader, educator, and intrepid spirit—plops himself down into the chair onstage with a smile and a dark beer. Less than an hour after arriving by plane in Barcelona, he’s ready for a full day of activities: a performance with a student big band under the direction of Majorcan composer/arranger Toni Vaquer, as part of the Voll-Damm Barcelona Jazz Festival; a master class at the Conservatori Liceu, a leading European music institution; and a 90-minute Before & After listening session in one of the conservatory’s performance/lecture rooms, open to all Liceu students and a few members of the public. As the exercise is explained—“how Jeff interacts with the music is what we want to hear”—he tilts his head back and snores. The students all laugh. “That was me on…

Allen Lowe never skimps on details. As a music historian, his output includes 1998’s American Pop - From Minstrel to Mojo: On Record 1893-1956, a 282-page book that was released with a companion set of no less than nine CDs crammed full of early American popular music. That Devilin’ Tune: A Jazz History 1900-1950 (2006) and Really the Blues? A Blues History 1893-1959 (2010) performed the same encyclopedic task for both of those genres, each containing a whopping 36 discs. The author/musician has been no slouch in more recent times either. In 2020 he self-published Turn Me Loose White Man, or Appropriating Culture: How to Listen to American Music, 1900-1960 Volume 1. (Volume 2 dropped the following year.) True to form, the companion piece to this 352-page tome is a box…

THE Mouthpiece AND THE Reed AND THE Holy Ghost

On an unseasonably warm evening in December, just at the opening break of Omicron and yet another shift in everyone’s lives, alto saxophonist/composer Immanuel Wilkins is busy in his new Brooklyn home. Cooking. A lot. Calm in the face of a just-canceled show at the Village Vanguard while readying The 7th Hand—his second Blue Note album with his longtime quartet (pianist Micah Thomas, bassist Daryl Johns, drummer Kweku Sumbry)—Wilkins passionately runs through cuisine-related minutiae as if he were tightening his ligature or wetting his reeds. Preparing braised short ribs with more tinkling and crashing than you might hear from his drummer’s cymbals at a gig, Wilkins laughs as he discusses the joy of cooking. “I had spent so much money on exorbitant dinners before COVID that I didn’t want to suddenly start…

THE Mouthpiece AND THE Reed AND THE Holy Ghost

“I think that the greatest thing to have happened has been George Floyd.” What? As an artist, Henry Threadgill has never shied away from provocation. The music he’s made over his 50-year career challenges listeners’ ideas of rhythm, harmony, form, and timbre. This, however, is—to say the least—an unexpected assertion. Especially from the 78-year-old multi-reedist, composer, and bandleader, whose personal manner is unfailingly gentle and cerebral (not to mention a little playful). But after the initial shock, it’s clear that Threadgill is talking about the aftermath of Floyd’s 2020 murder by a Minneapolis police officer: protests, activism, and the United States’ public reckoning with race and inequality. That, to him, has been overwhelmingly positive. “It’s kind of like the civil rights movement,” he says, speaking by phone from his home in New York.…

IN MEMORY OF…

Armando “Chick” Corea 6/12/41 – 2/9/21 BY CHRISTIAN MCBRIDE I first became aware of Chick on an album that wasn’t his. In fact, he wasn’t even on it! My mother used to love Al Jarreau’s version of “Spain” on his album This Time. My mother would say, “That’s Chick Corea’s song.” And I would say, “Who’s Chick Corea?” And she would respond, “Oh … you’ll learn about him.” As I started getting into jazz, some of my earliest Chick memories on record were Three Quartets with Michael Brecker, Eddie Gomez and Steve Gadd, and Echoes of an Era with Freddie Hubbard, Joe Henderson, Stanley Clarke and Lenny White. And the live one they did with Nancy Wilson. We had all of those records. The one where I really started to get into Chick was…

2021 Readers’ Poll

VOTING CONDUCTED VIA AN ONLINE SURVEY POSTED AT JAZZTIMES.COM Winners are bolded; runners-up are listed below in order of number of votes (an asterisk * denotes a tie). When casting their ballots at jazztimes.com, readers were asked to focus on artists’ achievements occurring between January and December 2021. Best of All ARTIST OF THE YEAR Allen Lowe Brandee Younger Pat Metheny Emmet Cohen NEW ARTIST PAKT Samara Joy Nicole Glover Emma-Jean Thackray NEW RELEASE Brandee Younger Somewhere Different (Impulse!) Pat Metheny Side-Eye NYC (V1.IV) (Modern/BMG) PAKT (Percy Jones/Alex Skolnick/Kenny Grohowski/Tim Motzer) PAKT (MoonJune) Chick Corea Akoustic Band LIVE (Concord) VOCAL RELEASE Tony Bennett & Lady Gaga Love for Sale (Columbia/Interscope) Veronica Swift This Bitter Earth (Mack Avenue) Esperanza Spalding Songwrights Apothecary Lab (Concord) Kurt Elling SuperBlue (Edition) HISTORICAL/VAULT/REISSUE RELEASE John Coltrane A Love Supreme: Live in Seattle (Impulse!) Louis Armstrong The Complete Columbia and RCA Victor Studio Sessions 1946-1966 (Mosaic) Lee Morgan The Complete Live at…

2021 Readers’ Poll

2021 Expanded Critics’ Poll

FOR THIS ANNUAL COMPANION POLL TO LAST ISSUE’S TOP 50 CRITICS’ PICKS, OUR REGULAR CONTRIBUTORS PARTICIPATED IN THIS SURVEY BASED ON OUR YEARLY READER’S POLL. Winners are bolded; runners-up are listed below in order of votes. Contributors were asked to focus on artists’ achievements during 2021 rather than assessing entire careers. An asterisk * denotes a tie. Best of All ARTIST OF THE YEAR William Parker Wadada Leo Smith James Brandon Lewis Chick Corea NEW ARTIST Samara Joy East Axis PAKT Ocelot Best of the Industry RECORD LABEL Blue Note Smoke Sessions Pyroclastic Pi SYNDICATED RADIO PROGRAM Jazz Night in America Jazz After Hours with Jeff Hanley Radio Deluxe with John Pizzarelli and Jessica Molaskey Jazz Inspired with Judy Carmichael PODCAST The Checkout A Noise from the Deep The 5049 Podcast with Jeremiah Cymerman Straight No Chaser FESTIVAL Vision Festival Newport Jazz Festival DC Jazz Festival Montreal International Jazz Festival CLUB Village Vanguard Blues Alley Smalls The Jazz Gallery DOCUMENTARY Buster Williams: Bass to Infinity Listening to Kenny G Billy Bang: Lucky…

2021 Expanded Critics’ Poll

In a Silent Way

The work-from-home trend has brought families and roommates closer than ever … for better or worse. On the worse side, many professionals are finding it hard to concentrate on their work while the kids are playing nearby, and they’re getting frustrated when the noise from ever-present family members makes it hard to hear their jazz albums. Many commercials and tech columns suggest noise-canceling headphones as a solution—but they wrongly assume noise-canceling headphones cancel all noise. The reality is, for much of the noise you probably want to cancel, noise-canceling headphones are no more of an effective block than standard headphones and earphones are, and sometimes not as good. Noise-canceling headphones work by using microphones inside (and sometimes outside) the headphones to pick up noise. The audio signal from these microphones is…

In a Silent Way

Setting Up Camp

“It’s almost like a nirvana for jazz artists.” From Straight Life to Jazz and Justice, creative-music literature is rife with horror stories about artists—especially Black ones—getting ripped off. As pianist/composer/educator Jason Moran reiterates to JazzTimes, “The history of our music and being taken advantage of goes back to slavery in this country.” Moran spent 18 years on Blue Note Records, which he describes as a positive experience. After fulfilling two contracts for the label, it was time to move on. But when he surveyed the streaming landscape for new options, he found it wanting; history seemed to be repeating itself. And so, with Charles Mingus, Max Roach, and Ahmad Jamal in mind—artists whom he cites as “taking back the catalog”—Moran decided to follow in their footsteps, 21st-century style. Instead of releasing his post-Blue…

Setting Up Camp

CECIL TAYLOR Return Concert Oblivion Are you kidding? Spring of Two Blue-J’s, a Cecil Taylor triumph, is just the shorter second set of a two-set night in November 1973? Perhaps it’s not world-reshaping news, but it’s big, and the newly released full concert from New York’s Town Hall (his first public performance after nearly five years in academia—thus the “Return” of the title) deserves your attention. Much of the focus rightly belongs on the 88-minute (necessitating the album’s digital-only format) “Autumn/Parade,” which takes up the whole first set. The piece is one of Taylor’s most motivic, with short phrases that he introduces the moment he starts playing and that his quartet (alto saxophonist Jimmy Lyons, bassist Sirone, drummer Andrew Cyrille) promptly begin developing. As Lyons moves into hiccup-y atonal shrieks, the pianist holds firm…

MARQUIS HILL New Gospel Revisited Edition Call it a successful back-to-the-future gambit: Marquis Hill, the gifted Chicago trumpeter and composer whose career has played out at an accelerando since he won the Thelonious Monk Competition in 2014, has returned to the scene of his lauded 2011 debut for a second, even more thrilling take on that release’s sophisticated, stirring compositions. This time, he’s accompanied by a new band of blue-chip musicians: tenor saxophonist Walter Smith III, drummer Kendrick Scott, pianist/keyboardist James Francies, and fellow Chicagoans Joel Ross and Harish Raghavan on vibes and bass, respectively. Hill’s tunes, and his own playing, sound fresh and smartly reinvigorated. The sextet, feeding off an enthusiastic crowd at Chicago’s Constellation nightclub, brings the firepower right away (following a brief intro piece) with the sprawling “Law & Order,” at…

CÉCILE McLORIN SALVANT

Ghost Song Nonesuch In the 12 years since Cécile McLorin Salvant arrived on the jazz scene by winning the 2010 Thelonious Monk International Jazz Competition, she has diligently redefined the popular concept of a jazz singer. In addition to being a vehicle toward a romantic vision of emotional bliss as told in the words of the classic American songbook, Salvant has added numerous other identity tropes. She’s the cultural-studies professor examining, even interrogating the lyrics of classics. She’s the crate digger, finding nuggets from forgotten musicals and films, and obscure songs by great songwriters and singers. And she’s a storyteller, bringing an actress’ arsenal of nuanced theatricality, wit, and intelligence to her stage persona. Her accomplishments extend beyond her five albums as a leader or co-leader, several noteworthy collaborations, and three Grammy…

CÉCILE McLORIN SALVANT

View from Above Self-released Up-and-coming saxophonist/composer Alison Shearer has planted her jubilant stamp on a diverse set of thrilling New York groups. The influence of hip-hop has been a driving force within her wide-ranging arc, as evidenced by her membership in the multicultural Red Baraat and her co-founding of the rap-centric PitchBlak Brass Band. Shearer’s debut under her own name, View from Above, occupies a more straightforward realm than those aforementioned groups but is no less of a revelation. What’s especially refreshing about it is that, while its underpinnings are of the cosmic variety, Shearer’s breezy compositions don’t fit under the “spiritual jazz” umbrella that’s all today’s rage. Rather, the set’s 10 pieces are crisp, upbeat, and distinctly accessible, an airy confluence of jazz, R&B, and gospel with honeyed melodies. Conceived following the…

I’ve had the good fortune to be on a stage with Pat Martino a few times. The first time—at a jazz festival in Reading, Pennsylvania—was one of the scariest experiences in my life. Imagine going to the zoo and seeing a lion or a bear. They look intimidating enough when they’re on the other side of the cage. But now imagine you being in the cage with that beautiful, powerful animal. They seem to grow a little bigger. You can hear them breathing. You can feel the energy coming off their bodies and you know that at any given moment, they can rip you to shreds. For me, that’s the way it was getting on stage with Pat Martino. I felt lucky to walk away breathing! But I walked away…

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