#jazz spectrum

[theloniousbach]

ON SEEING ABDULLAH IBRAHIM IN 2018

Kim Kleinman, Contributing Writer, WGTE’S JAZZ SPECTRUM Blog

My most recent contribution to this blog was a recollection of seeing Sonny Rollins perform in 2009. Now I return with a memory, now bittersweet due to his own death this week, of seeing Abdullah Ibrahim in 2018. Rollins was 79, old only until the moment when the band and his own playing lit a spark. Ibrahim was 83 and although ever alert and observant, he was less energetic. But he guided his band with all too brief solo improvisations and then the occasional incisive chord that changed mood and direction, launching the band in a fresh direction.

I remember being mildly disappointed that there wasn’t more piano. I had prepared for the gig by listening to that early trio album presented by none other than Duke Ellington, several of the often solo tribute recordings Ibrahim made honoring Ellington, and the album “Water from an Ancient Well.” Since the tour was initially billed as a reunion of the Jazz Epistles, Ibrahim’s first band with Hugh Masekala, I listened to those foundational sides. Masekala, whom until then I knew solely due to “Grazing in the Grass, a wonderful tune that too quickly became an earworm, had to cancel the tour due to a recurrence of the cancer that killed him three months before I saw his old friend and bandmate.

Instead, Ibrahim soldiered on with his his band, Ekaya, with Freddie Hendrix taking on the trumpet duties.

Ibrahim began the proceedings with a solo rumination before he was joined by Cleave Guyton on flute (otherwise, Guyton primarily played alto saxophone and led the horn section) and bassist Noah Jackson on cello for a piano trio that evoked European Tradition chamber music. With that the other horns—Hendrix’s trumpet, a tenor sax, baritone sax, and trombone—and the drummer joined the fun. Ibrahim had a rich palette that could evoke Ellington, the Jazz Epistles (and their admiration for Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers), church, and the townships. Jazz to be sure but also distinctively South African. His countryman musician Nduduzo Makhathini recently evoked the “fugitiveness” of this music forged in America and returning to Africa and its impact on generations of Africans from Ibrahim and Masakela through to him today.

Throughout I wished for much more of Ibrahim’s piano and yet, like his hero Duke Ellington, he was playing his band with gestures and facial expressions as much as a well placed chord. He did take another short solo interlude before being part of the chamber music trio with flute and cello. And then the music existed in memory, one I’m glad to be able to revisit now to honor Abdullah Ibrahim.

[theloniousbach]

Once Again Working on The Enigma off Ornette Coleman

February 28, 2024

By Kim Kleinman, Contributing Writer

When he invited me to this birthday party for Ornette Coleman, Fritz wrote, “…I’ve loved his music since I got the ears to hear it correctly, and now I’m convinced I’ve underestimated his brilliance and the sheer beauty of his music.”

“The ears to hear it correctly” captures my efforts too. I dutifully read Martin Williams as a new jazz fan in the late 1960s or early 1970s and saw that Ornette Coleman was not only NEW, but IMPORTANT. I think I snatched up the Atlantic Best of collection from the Columbia Record Club. It was new, important, but not really much fun. Still, it would come out for at least one side from time to time in those days of vinyl LPs as the soundtrack to underaged beer and the deep but tedious thoughts of young people trying to figure out the world. Like the world itself, this music was mysterious, challenging, and a little scary.

I kept returning to Coleman, though far more often than other avant-gardists, even late-era John Coltrane. There was brilliance and sheer beauty, plus a vulnerability that kept drawing me back. A.B. Spellman’s Four Jazz Lives showed Coleman to be shy and brave, thoughtful and enigmatic. Later I saw Shirley Clarke’s documentary “Ornette: Made In America,” which conveyed an overwhelming sense of loneliness. It was with that impression in mind that I walked into the green room after a 1981 concert with Prime Time when I began to get the ears to hear him correctly. Shy myself, I shook Coleman’s hand to say thanks, for that night and all the years before. It was easier to talk to bassist Jamaaldeen Tacuma, who asked what I played. We both heard me blurt, “Er, stereo.”

In 1981, over the two drums, two basses, and two guitars with the leader, I heard just how Ornette sang, not just on alto but on trumpet and violin. Somehow the lack of technical prowess on the latter instruments expressed that vocal element of his art. That’s what he’d been doing all along; I finally had the correct ears to hear him singing brilliantly and beautifully.

With that insight, I could go back to those early Atlantic albums and really hear them for the first time—the coherence and poignancy of the melodies, the rich interplay of the voices, the harmonies that are there even without a chordal instrument to frame them. The previously daunting “Free Jazz” had a logic and opportunities to triangulate Coleman’s music with the more familiar voices of Freddie Hubbard, Eric Dolphy, and Scott LaFaro, a chance to hear how they played this music.

Coleman composed some wonderful tunes—my favorites are among the obvious ones: “Ramblin’,” “Una Muy Bonita,” “Peace,” “Lonely Woman.” Other musicians have covered these and a few other gems, but they aren’t really part of the canon. Still, the lead sheets of his that I’ve seen in fake books are straightforward, but his highly personal concept of “harmolodics” was not widely developed by others. He certainly contributed to the shape of jazz that came along in the 1960s with terse snarling lines and swoops of sound, but to parse out the Coleman from the Shepp, the Ayler, the Dolphy, the Coltrane, in an adventurous young saxophonist of today is difficult.

Yet his sound is distinctive and I do revisit it often enough. Usually it’s the Atlantic albums from the early 1960s, though I have a selection from the late-sixties Blue Note sides and I paid attention to his work with pianist Geri Allen in the mid 1990s.

As part of the Jazz Spectrum birthday bash for Ornette, I once again have listened to those favorite early albums this time around, including the one standard that Coleman covered, which is included in this week’s Song of the Week segment, “Embraceable You.” It’s a chance to test his approach with a recognizable point of reference. In the same vein, I also returned to his contribution to “Sonnymoon for Two” from Sonny Rollins’s September 2010, 80th birthday concert at the Beacon Theater in Manhattan, which is collected on Road Shows, Vol. 2. It is, in the end, not all that good. For one, it is way too long, though to be fair Coleman doesn’t start playing until the nine-minute mark. They solo only serially in two- or three-minute segments over the remaining 12 minutes with little direct interplay. They certainly listen to one another but the interaction is passive. Coleman does invoke the theme at least tangentially in one solo, but more revealing is the way his improvisatory approach rooted in melody and theme has an affinity to Rollins’s and yet is so different. They each hear those intersections and lean into them.

It doesn’t quite work, but I am glad I listened. Coleman’s music does work, brilliantly and with sheer beauty. I am glad I have listened to it again and again and again.

[theloniousbach]

JAZZ SPECTRUM’S SONG OF THE WEEK, 23 SEPTEMBER 2023, “Dedicated to You”

I got the chance to contribute to my good friend’s show with this third hour (9-10 pm CDT) this weekend. I wrote the following note which is published here https://www.wgte.org/blog/this-weeks-song-of-the-week-dedicated-to-you-notes-on-the-eight-versions and follows below.

“Dedicated to You”

That descending figure and resolution over a I-IV chord pattern is what grabbed me when pianist Randy Ingram played “Dedicated to You” on a Small’s Live Stream from Mezzrow’s recently. I played Name That Tune with my usual level of success until Ingram announced it afterwards.

Fritz offered me the chance to pick this week’s song; the choice was easy. Choosing versions was less easy, but more fun.

The first recording of Sammy Cahn’s tune and our starting place is from Andy Kirk and His Twelve Clouds of Joy who made their name in Kansas City. It sets the mood with a concise big band recording from 1936. The middle of the first set includes pianists whom I want to know better: James Williams and John Hicks. Williams recorded “Dedicated to You” on his first solo album as he rose to prominence as a member of Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers. Hicks was everywhere in the 1980s, but my musical attention was being distracted from jazz and I didn’t get to fully appreciate him. His smart trio work here, with Buster Williams, and Louis Hayes, is familiar and right. The first set ends with a lush Sarah Vaughn/Billy Eckstine duet.

If I rediscovered the tune courtesy of a Small’s Live Stream, then it’s fitting to have musicians I see regularly there—Eric Alexander, Jim Rotondi, Steve Davis, David Hazeltine, Peter Washington, and Joe Farnsworth—work out on the tune, performing under the name of One for All. A very young Rachael Price performs what is the title tune to her 2008 album, reminding us that her prowess in Lake Street Dive builds on this serious jazz apprenticeship. “Dedicated to You” is just one luxurious melody Freddie Hubbard dug into on his “The Body and The Soul” albu, and that could be where we could leave things.

But, we wrap up on an even higher level with what, I belatedly remember, is the version I first heard—Johnny Hartman singing with John Coltrane, pushing the tune’s richness to exquisite limits.

After two sets of a beautiful but particularly slow ballad, it seemed like a palate cleanser of Count Basie and the Orchestra doing their rousing anthem “One O’Clock Jump” was in order. This version from Newport in 1957 features soloists Lester Young and Roy Eldridge before Illinois Jacquet rides it out with the throttle fully open. I close out the hour with Billy Childs, joied by the trumpeter Ambrose Akinmusire, taking on Chick Corea’s “Crystal Silence,” another simple, delicate, beautiful tune.

[theloniousbach]

CELEBRATING THE COMPOSITIONS OF WAYNE SHORTER, JAZZ SPECTRUM on WGTE, 18 MARCH 2023

Last week’s show was all Wayne Shorter’s playing on many of these very same tunes as selected by the regular host. He was a wonderful saxophonist, playing with both Art Blakey and Miles Davis (and essentially their music directors/composers) in two of the finest bands of their eras.

On the shared notion that he is also in the next tier of jazz composers just below Ellington/Strayhord and Monk, I took the assignment of showing how the tunes breathe and have a life of their own in the hands of the ever evolving jazz community.

My method was to find interesting/favorite players take up these tunes. Often I relied on the Secondhand Songs website for suggestions. But I had some definite ideas, such as relying on Palladium, an ensemble organized by Jesse Markowitz that plays Wayne Shorter music and includes young heroes like Nicole Glover and Sean Mason. Then there’s both Shorter tunes on the Jimmy Rowles/Stan Getz desert istand album, The Peacocks. And, what to do with the Weather Report era? Easy, Christian McBride did one with his pianoless quartet, New Jawn, that nonetheless conveys all the keyboards and percussion.

That was my first set: Palladium’s ESP that includes Shorter’s own voice, Sightseeing, and Lester Left Town.

I first heard Palladium when they did all of Speak No Evil, so that was the next idea with an array of artists and ensembles assaying that brilliant album.

Sanctuary from Ingrid Jensen and Jason Miles, and, at the end of the night, Masqualero with Marc Copland addressed Shorter’s contribution to Miles’ Bitches Brew. And I closed with Sean Mason’s meditative solo piano version of Weather Report’s Palladium as yet another reflection on how the electric tunes are above all tunes with life beyond the production elements.

But mostly I dug into the Blakey and Miles era tunes from the likes of Dave Liebman/Richie Beirach in Quest, the Dave Douglas/Joe Lovano Shorter tribute band, George Cables, Mary Halvorson in Thumbscrew, Fred Hersch (a couple of times), Kenny Werner.

I took the liberty with the Song of the Week segment to make Footprints the Tune of the Week bookending the original with his return to it with his wonderful latter era quartet. There’s Kenny Barron in there along with the SF Jazz Collective (Renee Rosnes arranged the tune).

It’s all pianists at the end.

Here’s the playlist:

18 March 2023

Set 1 (29:11)

Palladium, Don’t Look Back, “ESP” (14:48)

Christian McBride’s New Jawn, Christian McBride’s New Jawn, “Sightseeing” (8:30)

Jimmy Rowles with Stan Getz, The Peacocks, “Lester Left Town” (5:53)

Set 2 (30:05)

Kirk Lightsey Trio, Isotope, “Witch Hunt” (8:00)

Sal Nastico, Complete Bee Hive Sessions, “Fe Fi Fo Fum”. 5:58

Thumbscrew, Theirs, “Dance Cadaverous” (6:19)

Denny Zeitlin, Early Wayne: Explorations of Classic Wayne Shorter Compositions, “Speak No Evil”. 7:17

Set 3 (27:08)

Fred Hersch Trio, Heartsongs, “Infant Eyes” (7:38)

Jerry Gonzalez and the Fort Apache Band, Rumba Buhaina, “Wildflower” (6:44)

Ingrid Jensen/Jason Miles, Kind of New, “Sanctuary” (5:44)

Kenny Kirkland ,Thunder and Rainbows, “Black Nile”. 6:45

Set 4 (29:44)

Joe Lovano & Dave Douglas Sound Prints, Scandal, “Juju” 9:05

Stephen Scott, The Beautiful Thing, “Oriental Folk Song,” (4:32)

Nicholas Payton, Mysterious Shorter,  “Tom Thumb” (6:41

George Cables, One for My Baby, “Virgo”. 7:34

Set 5

Wayne Shorter, Adam’s Apple, “Footprints” (7:29)

Kenny Barron/Regina Carter, Freefall, “Footprints” (9:37)

SF Jazz Collective, Live 2008: Fifth Annual Concert Tour, “Footprints” (9:44)

Set 6

Cutting Edge, The Cutting Edge, “Footprints”  (8:03)

Wayne Shorter, Footprints Live!, “Footprints” (7:55)

Set 7

Ralph Peterson’s Gen Next Big Band, Listen Up,  “This is for Albert” (7:04)

Palladium, Don’t Look Back, “Contemplation” (6:48)

Set 8 (25:14)

Quest, Circular Dreaming, “Nefertiti”. 6:23

Jane Ira Bloom/Fred Hersch, “Miyako” (6:41)

Clifford Jordan and the Magic Triangle, On Stage Vol 1, “Pinocchio” (7:30)

Jimmy Rowles/Stan Getz, The Peacocks, “The Chess Players” (5:43)

Set 9 (27:30)

Kenny Werner Trio, Live at Visiones—Standards, “Fall” (5:51)

Joanne Brackeen, Invitation, “Iris” (6:58)

Marc Copland, At Night, “Masqualero” (4:56)

Palladium, Don’t Look Back, “Palladium” (10:45)

[theloniousbach]

PROGRAMMER’S NOTES FOR JAZZ SPECTRUM 27 AUGUST 2022

THE LEGACY OF ART BLAKEY

There were two bands from the 1950s on that were elite graduate schools for jazz players, composers, and leaders—Miles Davis’ and Art Blakey’s. Since chasing down Miles’ voodoo down from Bitches Brew back was the start of my jazz education, I met John Coltrane, Cannonball Adderly, Red Garland, Wynton Kelly, Bill Evans, Hank Mobley, George Coleman, Wayne Shorter, Herbie Hancock, Ron Carter, Tony Williams, Chick Corea, Dave Holland, Keith Jarrett, Joe Zawinul, John McLaughlin, and Keith Jarrett that way. Miles’ constant reinvention and creation of fusion were enough to keep me occupied.

It sure seemed that the Art Blakey of the 1970s was reinventing a tried and true formula of two or three horns and rhythm section. The parts were interchangeable and the current players, probably Wynton Marsalis first and foremost, were staking out a particular bit of turf and, sure, the likes of Terence Blanchard and Donald Harrison had bona fides with the Jazz Messengers on their resumes, but I thought I knew them—and I thought I knew where they came from.

Indeed, the hard bop horns and rhythm (and sure the rhythm here was impressive) was the bread and butter of jazz. So I didn’t go back to place Clifford Brown, Lee Morgan, Jackie McLean, Horace Silver, Benny Golson, Wayne Shorter, Bobby Timmons, Freddie Hubbard, Woody Shaw or even Wynton Marsalis in context and I missed out on Cedar Walton and Mulgrew Miller. But what bands Blakey put together again and again and, though I probably held it against him because he wasn’t a significant composer, what a legacy his book was.

This show then is a penitential exercise, an initial recapitulation of what I might have done in parallel to looking at the Miles Davis bands.

I’m chronological and use iterations of the Messengers doing standards before seeking out tunes composed by the band members but not necessarily played by them. Spending more time with Horace Silver in particular has been valuable. I don’t get to Freddie Hubbard and Wayne Shorter until after Song of the Week, so I give short shrift to the 1970s, but I discovered that Joanne Bracken was the only woman Messenger and that Keith Jarret and Chuck Mangione (huh?) were in the band together.

Jarrett evidently wanted to play with Blakey even as he wanted to play with Miles—and held his nose to play Fender Rhodes at that. He was doing post-docs evidently. But he and Shorter and Mobley are interesting cases to think of how the two influences worked in synergy.

Shorter played a similar role in both bands as composer and soloist and, like Mobley, he was a Messenger first. Shorter established himself with Blakey and was starting to record on Blue Note as a leader as he joined Miles. Here it was as if Miles wanted some of Blakey’s mojo in his band. Perhaps Mobley, who didn’t really work out as per a gratuitous aside in the Quincy Troupe autobiography, was a first attempt. Now good as Mobley is, he is not, nor is anyone, Wayne Shorter as a player or composer (well, Charles Mingus is a comparable composer and of course Thelonious Monk and the Duke Ellington/Billy Strayhorn mind meld top them all). But I know realize how magical those albums when Shorter was a Messenger are.

But, for the most part here, the focus is on those 1950s/early 1960s Jazz Messengers where Art Blakey was perfecting his defining and very appealing band concept. The tunes are smart, crisp, and intelligent and they swing hard. That it seems so familiar and even passé is simply the result of his vision and innovation.

He made a huge contribution and one I absorbed. But it was not directly enough. Hence this penance.

Here’s the playlist:

Set 1 (29:39)

Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers, A Night at Birdland, "The Way You Look Tonight" (9:59)

Warne Marsh, Back Home, "Joy Spring" (7:24)

Conrad Herwig, The Latin Side of Horace Silver, "Peace" (8:18)

Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers, A Night at Birdland, "Lou's Blues" (3:58)

Set 2 (27:39)

Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers, At the Cafe Bohemia, Vol 1, "Alone Together" (4:15)

Alan Braodbent Trio, Like Minds, "This I Dig of You" (6:24)

Joe Henderson, Page One, "Blue Bossa" (8:03)

SF Jazz Collective, Live 2010: 7th Annual Concert Tour, "Senor Blues" (8:57)

Set 3 (30:07)

The Jazz Messengers, The Jazz Messengers, "It's You or No One" (5:36)

Donald Byrd, A New Perspective, "Cristo Redentor" (5:43)

Clifford Jordan, Whistle Stop, "Windmill" (3:56)

Art Farmer's Tentet, Brass Shout, "Nica's Dream" (6:02)

Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers, Hard Bop, "Stella by Starlight" (8:50)

SET 4 (29:31)

Jackie McLean, New Soul, "Hip Strut" (11:15)

Bill Hardman, Politely, "Politely" (6:14)

Johnny Griffin, The Little Giant, "63rd Street Theme" (7:30)

Junior Mance, Junior's Blues, "Cracklin'" (4:32)

SONG OF THE WEEK--Gone with the Wind

SET 5 (17:37)

Claude Thornhill and His Orchestra with Maxine Sullivan, Harbor Lights (2:45)

Hank Jones, Hank Jones-Red Mitchell Duo (6:17)

Frank Sinatra, Only The Lonely (5:17)

Johnny Hodges and His Orchestra, Blues A-Plenty (3:18)

SET 6 (20:41)

Billie Holliday, In My Solitude: Billie Sings Ballads (3:27)

Stan Getz/Kenny Barron, People Time (3/3/91, Set 1), (6:31)

Sarah Vaughn, Vaughn and Violins (3:22)

Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers, At the Cafe Bohemia (7:28)

SET 7 (17:54)

Artemis, Artemis, "The Sidewinder" (5:06)

Stan Getz/Jimmy Rowles, The Peacocks, "Lester Left Town" (5:55)

Ralph Peterson's Gen-Next Big Band, Listen Up, "Arabia" (6:53)

SET 8 (27:50)

Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers, The Big Beat, "Only a Paper Moon" (6:41)

George Cables,, You Don't Know Me, "Up Jumped Spring" (4:06)

Jerry Gonzalez and the Fort Apache Band, Rumba Buhiana, "This is For Albert" (4:13)

Cannonball Adderly Quintet, Them Dirty Blues, "Dat Dere" (5:32)

Milt Jackson, At the Kosei Nenkin, "Bolivia" (7:18)

SET 9 (29:43)

Art Blakey's New Jazz Messengers, Buttercorn Lady, "My Romance" (6:07)

Art Blakey, Jazz Messengers '70, "Moanin'" (5:46)

Same, "Whisper Not" (6:34)

Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers, A Night in Tunisia, "A Night in Tunisia" (11:16)

[theloniousbach]

PROGRAMMER’S NOTES: JAZZ SPECTRUM, WGTE TOLEDO PUBLIC RADIO, 2 JULY 2022

The host, my friend for over 60 years, needed to record three shows this past week, so he asked if I had ideas, suggestions, even a whole show. Well, sure I did. This one—save for one substitution and sets seven and nine—is mine. I did have a Song of the Week and five other sets, but I didn’t plan it as a whole show as such. “Just some sets to use over the three weeks,”Fri(end), along with a set of blues by Kansas City connected musicians (and there are some amazing jazzers from our shared home town) for next week when I will be there to see my sister. The July 16 show is probably mine as it takes off from Ornette Coleman’s Free Jazz.

Here, with interspersed commentary, is the playlist:

Set 1

Herbie Hancock, Maiden Voyage, "Dolphin Dance" (9:16)

Grachan Moncur III, Evolution, "Evolution" (12:24)

Renee Rosnes, Written in the Rocks, "Galapagos" (7:14)

I discovered GM3’s Evolution through my recent listening project of listening to the vibraphone instead of piano as a bed for horns. His collaborations with Jackie McLean are even edgier than Dave Holland’s brilliant quintet with the same instrumentation. GM3 died in the middle of that excursion, so this tune is in order.

Of course, I would like a tune called Evolution, but it’s an impressive composition. So is Rosnes’s Galapagos which shares an inspiration. Dolphin Dance is always good to hear and is at least vaguely related.

Set 2

Milt Jackson and the Thelonious Monk Quintet, Milt Jackson and the Thelonious Monk Quintet, "I Mean You" (2:47)

Fred Hersch Trio, Alive at the Village Vanguard, "Dream of Monk" (6:10)

Eric Dolphy, Out to Lunch, "Hat and Beard," (8:25)

Grachan Moncur III, Evolution, "Monk in Wonderland" (7:54)

Milt Jackson and the Thelonious Monk Quintet, Milt Jackson and the Thelonious Monk Quintet, "Mistrioso" (3:24)

We kid ourselves that every show should have some Ellington/Strayhorn and some Monk. Bags was part of the vibraphone journey so he frames three tributes/pastiches by some worthy acolytes, including GM3.

Set 3

Miles Davis, Round Midnight, “Round Midnight” (5:58)

Thelonious Monk with John Coltrane, Live at Carnegie Hall, “Monk’s Mood” (7:52)

Ornette Coleman, New York Is Now, “Broadway Blues” (8:40)

Pat Metheny, 80;/81, “The Bat”  (6:05)

A bit more Monk, but this set and the next was to see how sidemen sounded with different leaders. So John Coltrane with Miles and Monk, then Dewey Redman and Charlie Haden with Ornette and Pat Metheny. Here is where the substitution was as I had a tune by Keith Jarrett’s American quartet. I have no objections to this choice, but Jarrett was more familiar to me and that band has always intrigued me for what it synthesized. But Metheny does the same thing and 80/81 is a more significant album. It may be a bit more Ornette influenced though.

Set 4

Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers, Africaine, “Lester Left Town” (7:57)

Miles Davis, Miles Smiles, “Footprints” (9:46)

Ornette Coleman, The Art of the Improvisers, “The Alchemy of Scott LaFaro” (9:53)

Here it’s Wayne Shorter and his tunes with the Messengers and Miles before Scott LaFaro with Ornette and, at least by plan, THE Bill Evans Trio. That he played with both is illuminating about all three of them. It may be that he’s more out there with Evans.

Set 5–Song of The Week

Invitation has shown up on my streams and intrigued me, but I heard the Webster Jazz Faculty do it at a program that also featured tunes from the 1957 Monk/Coltrane Carnegie Hall concert. There it got fixed in my mind that it was written by Bronislau Caper who also gave us On Green Dolphin Street.

I do poorly with singers but Sarah Vaughn, Tony Bennet, and Dinah Washington are safe, right? Jackson, Joe Henderson, Lee Konitz, and John Coltrane too make for illuminating improvisational juxtapositions.

Les Brown and His Band of Renown, The Les Brown Story, “Invitation” (3:16)

Milt Jackson Sextet, Invitation, “Invitation” (3:55)

Joe Henderson, Live at the Lighthouse, “Invitation” (7:34)

Sarah Vaughn, You’re Mine You, “Invitation” 2:16)

Set 6

Tony Bennet, The Good Things in Life, “Invitation” (3:14)

Lee Konitz Trio, Oleo, “Invitation” 4:38

Dinah Washington, I Wanna Be Loved, “Invitation” (2:39)

John Coltrane, Standard Coltrane, “Invitation”  (10:22)

Set 7

Walt Dickerson, To My Queen, “To My Queen”.

Set 8

Out to Dinner, Play On, "Rebecca's Dance" (5:34)

The Stan Getz Quartet, In Paris, "The Knight Rides Again" (10:10)

Sonny Rollins, No Problem, "No Problem" (7:43)

 Melissa Aldana, 12 Stars, “Falling” (6:21)

This set both plays with vibes and guitars, but no pianos, and a tenor sax survey with new favorites, Nicole Glover and Melissa Aldana, each with tenures in the all star band Artemis, framing giants Stan Getz and Sonny Rollins. That’s Glover’s tune with Behn Gellice’s project that uses the Dolphy Out to Lunch instrumentation while Aldana’s Falling kicks off her album with Lage Lund that started me down the sax/guitar project.

The Knight Rides Again with Gary Burton is way edgier than lots of Getz. The Rollins is not as spectacular as he can be, but he is with Bobby Hutcherson and guitarist Bobby Broome. On The Bridge he and Jim Hall opened up spaces and tested the guitar as a substitute for the piano; this is the example I found of him playing with Bobby Hutcherson.

Set 9

Glenn Dickson, Wider Than the Sky, “Brave Shines the Sun”. 9:44

Tomas Fujiwara, March, “Silhouettes in Smoke”. 5:29

John Yao’s Triceratops, Off-Kilter, “Quietly” 6:53

Gordon Grdina Nomad Trio, Boiling Point, “Shibuya”.

Sets 7 and 9 are from the regular host and they are typically interesting. I’m sure I’d learn some new music, but I will do that by other means as I’ll have turned off the radio by then because I’m old enough to have been friends with someone for over 60 years.

[theloniousbach]

PROGRAMMER’S NOTES, JAZZ SPECTRUM, 4 JUNE 2022

While there is an obvious gimmick that defines this show, I took the challenge of finding songs with women’s names in alphabetical order as a structuring convention that could define this invention the way the Rhythm changes launches countless wonderful improvisations, even more, compositions.

This show is about the tunes and there are many favorites here, precisely because the composers are paying tributes to loved ones. There is a lushness, a poignancy, an ache, and a beauty because they are love songs.

My Romance is a fitting Song of the Week and I culminate with Bill Evans/Scott LaFaro/Paul Motian at The Village Vanguard in 1961. But there are other rich versions, even vocals by Ella Fitzgerald and Sarah Vaughn. And there’s more of that band with Waltz for Debby and Gloria’s Step.

There would have been Alice in Wonderland too, but the show’s host pared things down in effective and interesting ways. In any case, I wanted to start with Eric Dolphy’s Miss Ann. The changes he made improved the show. So let me count the other ones:

—Sam Rivers’ own Beatrice rather than Stan Getz with Kenny Barron.

—Ingrid Jensen’s Christiane, not the Buster Williams Christiana by Sphere.

My two choices would have been recent repeats, precisely because they are favorites.

—The tribute to Emily Dickinson is nice on two levels. I very much like the Johnny Mercer tune, but our host went against his inclination and played it recently. So it is not a love song, instead a nice tribute for a significant women artist by a woman composer. That’s what Melissa Aldana’s Frida by Artemis which follows also is.

—I had Clifford Brown also doing Portrait of Jenny hard on the heels of him Jacqui. Louis Smith’s is another fine version

And, yes, I put Charlie Parker’s Kim in there. It’s my show and my name.

I had started My Romance in the middle of a set, not at the top of the third hour, a way the concept became a constraint. But he fixed that.

O is hard, so I went with Charles Mingus’s Orange Was The Color of Her Dress. Q is hard too, but I had two, sort of, with the Sons of Kemet’s tribute to Harriet Tubman from My Queen Is A Reptile and Jackie McLean’s Song for My Queen. There are two Ns, but Nefertiti as one of them is a nod in this direction too.

It gets to be late in the show but there are two Monk tunes and three performances with the poignant solo version of Ruby My Dear when she was ill and Monk had to go on as well as the version when John Coltrane was in the band.

I guess there isn’t any Ellington/Strayhorn, but Monk and Shorter, Mingus, Golson, and Parker. If it’s about the tunes—and it most definitely is—then the likes of them had to be here. But there’s much love and beauty here that transcends what could be a gimmick too clever by half.

And here are those tunes:

SET 1

Eric Dolphy w/Booker Little, Far Cry, “Miss Ann” 4:18

Art Farmer & Benny Golson Jazztet, Complete Mercury Recordings, “Along Came Betty” 5:32

Sam Rivers, Fuchsia Swing Song, “Beatrice” 6:14

Gary Peacock Trio, Now This, “Christa” 4:44

Ingrid Jensen, Vernal Fields, “Christiane” 7:14

Set 2

Chet Baker and Paul Bley, Diane, “Diane” 5:33

Bill Evans, Waltz for Debby, “Waltz for Debby” 6:48

Jane Ira Bloom, Wild Lines: Improvising Emily Dickinson, “Emily & Her Atoms” 6:43

Artemis, Artemis, “Frida” 7:21

Set 3

Bill Evans Trio, Sunday at the Village Vanguard, “Gloria’s Step” 6:12

George Cables Trio, Cables Fables, “Helen’s Song” 6:35

Miles Davis, ESP, “Iris” 8:34

Clifford Brown/Max Roach, Study in Brown, “Jacqui” 5:12

Set 4

Louis Smith, Ballads for Lulu, “Portrait of Jenny” 7:00

Charlie Parker, Now’s the Time, “Kim” 3:00

Ella Fitzgerald, With the Nelson Riddle Orchestra, “Laura” 3:46

Miles Davis, Filles de Kilimanjaro, “Mademoiselle Mabry” 16:37

Set 5

Ben Webster/Sweets Edison, Ben and Sweets, “My Romance” 6:08

Sarah Vaughan, Sassy, “My Romance” 3:16

Houston Person, My Romance, “My Romance” 5:54

Set 6

Red Garland, A Garland of Red, “My Romance”. 6:52

Benny Golson Quartet, Free, “My Romance”” 7:30

Ella Fitzgerald, The Rodgers and Hart Songbook, “My Romance” 3:46

Bill Evans Trio, Sunday at the Village Vanguard, “My Romance” 7:14

Set 7

John Coltrane, Giant Steps, “Naima”. 4:23

Miles Davis, Nefertiti, “Nefertiti”. 7:55

Charles Mingus, Plays Piano, “Orange Was the Color of Her Dress, Then Silk Blue” 4:17

Set 8

Thelonious Monk, Brilliant Corners, “Pannonica” 8:50

Charles Mingus, Revenge!, “Peggy’s Blue Skylight”.12:53

Sons of Kemet, Your Queen Is A Reptile, “My Queen Is Harriet Tubman” 5:38

Set 9

Jackie McLean, Jackie Mac Attack, “Song for My Queen”10:24

Thelonious Monk, Alone in San Francisco, “Ruby My Dear”. 4:00

Thelonious Monk, Thelonious Monk with John Coltrane, “Ruby My Dear” 6:20

Mingus Big Band, Live in Time, “Sue’s Changes”. 11:23

[theloniousbach]

PROGRAMMER’S NOTES: CELEBRATING CHARLES MINGUS ON WGTE’S JAZZ SPECTRUM, 16 APRIL 2022

Please consider listening to the stream at the WGTE.org website or on the TuneIn app tonight from 7-11 CDT.

Charles Mingus was born a century ago next week, 22 April 1922. As we did for Thelonious Monk five years ago and as the long-time host did in 1999 for Duke Ellington, Jazz Spectrum devotes multiple shows to honor these giants of jazz. I got to do a show and what follows is my comments on the playlist I put together.

Mingus is certainly a volcanic force and in the very upper echelons of jazz composers. I might nose Wayne Shorter ahead of him after the undisputed leaders: Ellington/Strayhorn (b. 1915) and Monk, as he probably gets covered more. But Mingus has Ellingtonian ambition and scope, but also a knack for getting his bands to express both themselves and himself.

The first set opens with his “Duke Ellington’s Song of Love” from the Changes albums from the mid 1970s that opened up this world to me. Mingus was in Ellington’s band briefly and obviously adored him, learning not just from being in band. As I say, he orchestrated even in his small bands and found ways to get quirky players (long time drummer Dannie Richmond, Rashaan Roland Kirk, the beloved Eric Dolphy) to build on his canon and to be written for. But church is a pillar too, hence “Wednesday Night Prayer Meeting” and Ellington’s majestic “Come Sunday.”

Another pillar is Charlie Parker and that is what set 2 is about. The regular host doesn’t quite see the Mingus connection—and that’s perfectly fair. The alternate title of the actual Mingus tune that closes is “If Charlie Parker Were a Gunslinger, There’d Be a Lot of Dead Copycats (except he doesn’t say “copycats”). So I put some of the most prestigious of those acolytes doing Parker associated tunes before the punchline. They are all great players and Bird’s influence is unavoidable and should be celebrated. It is Mingus’s genius that he could evoke and build on him even more creatively than these other worthies.

Arguably, Mingus’s best known tune is “Goodbye Porkpie Hat” for Lester Young. This one too backs into the Mingus angle. There are three historic examples of Prez with his collaborations with Billie Holiday and Count Basie obvious. I read about how Young’s solo on “Sometimes I’m Happy” got incorporated into Stan Getz’s solo and this Gerry Mulligan composition for Birth of the Cool. I don’t quite hear it, but they too more generally celebrated Lester Young in their work.

Set 4 explores how the compositions have been taken up by other players. Again, I sense Shorter’s music gets played more broadly, but these are amazing tunes worth exploring as Joe Lovano does. Pepper Adams, one of those wonderfully quirky players who added much to Mingus’s bands on baritone sax, did a full tribute album with the master’s blessing and collaboration, and, more recently, Kirk Knufke with Jess Stracken did a duo tribute that emphasize the compositions more than the arrangements. The Mingus Organization has a revolving ensemble arrayed in Mingus Dynasty, the Mingus Big Band, and the Mingus Orchestra to keep exploring the repertoire. I chose the Big Band to evoke the Tijuana Moods album which is a idiosyncratic favorite of mine.

A regular feature of the show is Song of the Week, so mine is “All the Things You Are.” I mostly stay true to form with an almost first recording from Woody Herman with Helen Forrest and another vocal version from Frank Sinatra (my sense of singers is weak, but I’m on very safe ground with Sinatra and I know the regular host will approve). Mingus is on the famous Quintet recording and Lee Konitz too worked this song often so why not the version with Gerry Mulligan. But, once again, it leads up to Mingus’s own reimagining of it as “All The Things You Could Be By Now If Sigmund Freud’s Wife Were Your Mother.”

Set 6 is more Ellingtonia with his own version of “Mood Indigo” and his compositionally inventive mash up of the master’s “Main Stem,” Monk’s “Straight No Chaser,” and his own “51st Street Blues.” Dolphy’s Monk tribute is a slight outlier but he’s so connected to Mingus that it works.

Set 7 evokes Mingus’s anger at racial injustice, whether the asshole was a Democratic Governor of Arkansas in the 1950s or the Republican Governor of New York who himself was part of a ruling family in the 1970s. The very recent sprawling version of the Black National Anthem by Isaiah Collier is a proper mix of anger and hope. It deserves a slot on air.

Set 8 starts with “Celia” from the one album that pairs Bill Evans with Mingus before heading into some of the later, ambitious orchestrations. These choices are just the beginning of my exploration of those albums. I know “Adagio Ma Non Troppo” as the amazing spontaneous composition that opens the equally unique Mingus solo piano album. It really is worthy of orchestration.

The regular host has plenty to work with, but there’s a romantic side that goes with all the volatility that I didn’t get to. And the 1964 band is one of the truly great ensembles in the music.

But, here’s what I came up with.

SET 1 (26:50)

Charles Mingus, Changes Two, “Duke Ellington’s Song of Love”

Duke Ellington with Charles Mingus and Max Roach, “Fleurette Africaine

Charles Mingus, Blues and Roots, “Wednesday Night Prayer Meeting”

Eric Dolphy, Musical Prophet, “Come Sunday”

Charles Mingus, Ah Um, “Open Letter to Duke”

SET 2 (30:31)

Jackie McLean, A Long Drink of the Blues, “Embraceable You”

Sonny Stitt, Ornithology, “Scrapple from the Apple”

Phil Woods/Franco D’Andrea, Ornithology, “Just Friends”

Frank Morgan, Frank Morgan, “My Old Flame”

Charles Mingus, Mingus Dynasty, “Gunslinging Bird”

SET 3 (27:44)

Billie Holiday, Lady Day: The Complete Columbia Recordings, “All of Me”

Miles Davis/Stan Getz, Conception, “Prezervation”

Lester Young Quartet, Jazz Masters 30 (Verve), “Sometimes I’m Happy”

Stan Getz, Plays Standards, “Yesterdays”

Miles Davis, Birth of the Cool, “Jeru”

Count Basie with Lester Young, The Essential Count Basie, “Lester Leaps In”

Mingus Big Band, Blues and Politics, “Goodbye Pork Pie Hat”

SET 4 (26:49)

Joe Lovano, Rush Hour, “Peggy’s Blue Skylight”

Pepper Adams, Plays the Compositions of Charlie Mingus, “Haitian Fight Song”

Kirk Knufke with Jess Stacken, Orange Was the Color, “So Long Eric”

Mingus Big Band, Que Viva Mingus, “Los Mariachis”

SET 5 (26:44)—Song of the Week—“All The Things You Are”

Artie Shaw Orchestra with Helen Forrest, The Essential Artie Shaw

The Quintet, Jazz at Massey Hall

Frank Sinatra, Songs by Sinatra

Lee Konitz with the Gerry Mulligan Quartet, Lee Konitz Plays with the Gerry Mulligan Quartet

Charles Mingus, Charles Mingus Presents Charles Mingus, “All The Things You Could Be By Now If Sigmund Freud’s Wife Were Your Mother”

SET 6 (32:59)

Charles Mingus, Mingus Mingus Mingus Mingus Mingus, “Mood Indigo”

Charles Mingus, Mingus, “M.D.M.

Eric Dolphy, Out to Lunch, “Hat and Beard”

SET 7 (27:09)

Charles Mingus, Ah Um, “Fables of Faubus”

Isiah Collier, Lift Every Voice and Sing EP, “Lift Every Voice and Sing”

Charles Mingus, Changes One, “Remember Rockefeller at Attica”

SET 8 (32:38)

Charles Mingus, East Coasting, “Celia”

Charles Mingus, Mingus Moves, “Opus 4”

Charles Mingus, Let My Children Hear Music, “Adagio Ma Non Troppo”

Charles Mingus, His Final Work, “Farewell Farewell”